Conservative Behaviour

Two articles from The Conversation. The first looks at recent trends in Australian power consumption, admittedly from a small sample of years, suggesting that consumers are using less electricity and exploring some of the likely causes.

The second, is a damming dissection of climate change denial in The Australians ongoing campaign against reality.

Powering down – has Australian electricity consumption hit its peak?
A number of recent reports have documented an unprecedented decline in electricity consumption. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Research Economics, in its 2011 Energy Update, shows a decline of 5.4% in 2008-09, followed by a 1.2% decline in 2009-10.

Event horizon: the black hole in The Australian’s climate change coverage
The problem is that on one side of the debate you have 97% of the world’s published climate scientists and the world’s major scientific organisations, and on the other side you have fools.

Excuse my bluntness, but it is past time to acknowledge that the science underpinning anthropogenic climate change is rock solid. The sceptics have had the time and opportunity to come with up a convincing case, but their best efforts read like arguments that NASA faked the moon landing.

The Australian’s anti-science campaign takes many forms. One is the inflation of the credentials of their fake experts. For example, OpEd writer and member of the Outdoor Recreation Party Jon Jenkins was referred to as an “Adjunct Professor”. Bond University wrote to The Australian informing them that this was not true.

Howard Brady was called a “climate change researcher from Macquarie University”; in fact, Brady is a 70 year-old retiree who has published just seven scientific papers (on Antarctic sediments, not climate), the most recent one in 1983, following which he worked for 17 years in the oil industry. Macquarie University contacted The Australian to set the record straight.

In neither of these cases did The Australian publish a retraction or clarification.

One feature I really like at The Conversation site is the ability to vote down comments as unconstructive. For some trivial childish reason I take great pleasure in voting obvious stooges down - and take heart that all is not lost when others appear to share this sentiment.

Power consumption makes historic drop

The ABC has a report on falling power demand on the local grid - its a shame summer peaks aren't dropping as well - as we are in a weird situation of investing heavily in transmission infrastructure to satisfy falling aggregate demand - Power consumption makes historic drop.

One of Australia's largest electricity distributors says it is experiencing a "historic" cut in households' demand for power.

Ausgrid, which provides power to much of New South Wales, has announced demand for its electricity by regular households has fallen 2 per cent each year for the past four years. It is the first time the company has seen a fall in demand since the 1950s.

"If you go right back to the 1950s, residential consumption has continued to rise year on year, and in around 2006, we saw that plateau," Ausgrid energy efficiency specialist Paul Myors said.

Ausgrid says the drop is caused by consumers switching to energy efficient hot water systems and light bulbs after seeing their power bills go through the roof.

"One example where we have seen most strongly is with residential hot water because we often separately meter this in households," Mr Myors said. "We've seen reductions even greater than 2 per cent, even up to 8 per cent per year," he said.

It is expected the Australian Energy Market Operator will also announce a fall in power demand of 5 to 6 per cent in the next decade.