Weather Banter - Day ?K?*10^3 - The Sun hibernates

http://www.spaceweather.com/
"Daily Sun: 10 May 09 The sun is blank--no sunspots. Sunspot number: 0"
"Far side of the Sun: This holographic image reveals no sunspots on the far
side of the sun."
"Planetary K-index
Now: Kp= 1 quiet"

"10-May-2009 05:04"
The visible face of the Sun is spotless:
http://mdisas.nascom.nasa.gov/gif_he...t_igram_fd.gif

Please visit:
http://blog.nj.com/southjersey_impac...SolarCycle.jpg

The right panel shows the visible face of the Sun as it looked on a good day
during the late Modern Warm Period. Sunspots are the apparent size of
craters on the moon. The left panel shows a Sun as it appears today.

Please write to Al Gore so that Al knows that the Sun is not living up to
his religious expectations. Al Gore is a divinity school dropout. George
Carlin had a better grasp of the true nature of God's creation, than does Al
Gore.

Please visit:
http://www.co-intelligence.org/newsl...es/sun-etc.jpg
which shows the relative sizes of the Sun and planets. Compared to the Sun,
Jupiter is the size of a pea, earth is the size of a grain of sand.

Carbon market's disappearing act
GREENCHIP: Giles Parkinson | May 11, 2009
Article from: The Australian

THE delay in the federal Government's proposed emissions trading scheme had
an immediate, but virtually unreported, effect on financial markets. Within
minutes of the announcement last Monday, the year-old national carbon market
had simply evaporated into thin air and electricity prices for delivery
after the scheme's former starting date of July 2010 fell 10 per cent, as
the carbon price was quickly extracted.

"Bids and offers just disappeared from the screen," NextGen broker Ashley
Free said.

"All the interested parties have pulled right back."

Although there has been less than 1 million tonnes of carbon emissions
traded since the national market opened informally last May, the market had
acted as a leading indicator as to what actions business was contemplating
to reduce emissions. The pace of trade and price making was quickening
appreciably as companies began to put their carbon abatement plans into
motion, but now investments in new technologies, renewables and efficiency
programs could come to a halt.

"We were beginning to see companies taking action on carbon emissions,"
Arcadia Energy head of trading James Gillard says.

"Now, with a delay and a set price for the first year, they don't have to
think about it."

Newedge Australia vice-president of energy commodities Gary Cox says the
lack of certainty about policy direction means price-making activity in the
carbon markets will remain closed until legislation has passed through
parliament, an event that now seems no more likely than before last week's
policy changes.

"This is not good -- it hasn't provided any certainty at all."

But there will be a broader effect on business than just the eradication of
a nascent carbon market.

Most affected by the delay will be the power generation industry, where the
biggest and most urgent transformation would need to take place should
Australia pursue a 25 per cent carbon reduction target.

Origin Energy chief executive Grant King told a senate committee just 10
days ago that the industry craved certainty to make investments and that the
cost of uncertainty was likely to be greater than the cost of the scheme
itself.

Origin Energy is a top 20 company and one of the largest energy retailers
and generators in the country.

"A trading scheme and a price on carbon is the best way of giving a very
clear direction to commercial organisations as to where they should invest
in terms of their current assets, research and development, and new assets
that need to be built to maintain a reliable and competitive electricity
supply system," King said.

Generators and energy traders have said uncertainty about carbon policy has
caused a dramatic winding down of forward purchases and hedging activity in
the national electricity market, the primary risk management tool of power
utilities.

"By the way, these risks are substantial," King said.

"They are hundreds of millions of dollars a year. They have broken and can
break companies."

The domestic gas industry, which includes Origin, AGL and Santos, is anxious
to lock in a carbon price so it can go ahead with up to $9 billion worth of
investments by 2020, which the industry argues can achieve greater carbon
reductions than carbon capture and storage, and at a fraction of the price.

"The clearest thing we need before making investments in base-load power
generation is a carbon price," says one gas industry executive.

Likewise, many Australian industrial companies will also can plans to reduce
carbon emissions in the absence of a carbon price.

BlueScope announced last week that it had put on hold indefinitely plans to
build a $1 billion co-generation plant, and companies such as explosives
group Orica are unlikely to rush to implement filtering technology that
would reduce more than half the estimated 3 million tonnes of greenhouse
gases that flow from its ammonia plants.

Orica is one of the country's heaviest greenhouse gas emitters, but Citi
analysts have estimated the $50 million investment would parlay a
significant liability into a 9 per cent lift in earnings under a $40 carbon
price.

"In the current economic environment, companies would not commence
construction of a new facility if it wasn't sure of a decent carbon price
signal," Westpac director of emissions and environment Emma Herd says.

"Everyone knows what they are going to do, but no one is going to do it just
yet."

Industry participants say the hiatus may delay some investments in renewable
energy, and there is concern that energy efficiency programs such as
Greenhouse Challenge Plus and Energy Efficiency Opportunities will either
not be extended or be delayed.

"Effectively, there will be no voluntary (carbon offset) market in
Australia," a principal consultant at Energetics, Anna Reynolds, says.

"We will operate in a vacuum."

The delay in the ETS means Australia may lose out on its ambition to become
the carbon trading hub for the Asia-Pacific.

One European bank is said to be considering winding up its Australian carbon
trading operations altogether.

The international carbon market is expected to grow to more than $US150
billion ($197 billion) in 2009, but is predicted to leap to become a
multi-trillion-dollar market should the US implement its plans for a
cap-and-trade scheme.

Booz & Co executive adviser Rob Fowler says many carbon market experts have
been looking to Australia as their next destination.

"Maybe that (destination) is now Washington," he says.

BluGlass pursues toxin-free technology

SHARES in green technology company BluGlass rose by more than a third on
Friday after it announced it had signed a licence agreement with South
Korean group BLK and would look for opportunities in the solar PV market.

BluGlass was listed in September 2006 to pursue commercial opportunities
from technology developed at Macquarie University to allow gallium nitrides
to be deposited on glass wafers at lower temperatures than conventional
means. Not only is it a cheaper process, it does not emit toxins.

Until now the company has been focusing on the LED market, which includes
traffic lights, computers and mobile phones, but the agreement with BLK will
look at opportunities to use the technology in the household and commercial
lighting markets.

BluGlass chief executive Giles Bourne says LEDs could cut energy use in
lighting by 30 per cent and the market is tipped to have annual growth of 20
per cent to $12.5 billion by 2013.

As for solar, Bourne says indium gallium nitride is one of the most exciting
materials since the silicon solar cell and could lift the efficiency
potential of solar cells to more than 50 per cent from about 20 per cent
now. The solar PV market is also expected to soar in coming years, with
estimates that it will grow almost fourfold to $74 billion by 2017.