Tuesday 31 October 2017

Russia inquiry charges: how close does this get to Trump?

The indictment against George Papadopoulos offers the hardest evidence yet tying the Trump campaign to Russian government interference in the election. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

On the day that Donald Trump summoned James Comey to a one-on-one dinner and asked the then FBI director to pledge loyalty, a crucial interview was taking place at the bureau. George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, was questioned about contacts with a Russia-linked professor who had offered “dirt” on election rival Hillary Clinton.
Papadopoulos lied during that 27 January encounter, it transpired on Monday. He is the first person to face criminal charges linked to interactions between the Trump campaign and Russia during last year’s presidential election.
And ominously for the White House, the indictment against him states that, following his arrest at Dulles international airport in July, he has “met with the government on numerous occasions to provide information and answer questions” – implying that he has “flipped” and is now assisting special counsel Robert Mueller.
Preet Bharara, the former US attorney for the southern district of New York, who was fired by Trump, tweeted: “Special Counsel Mueller appears to have a cooperating witness, George Papadopoulos. That is significant. Time will tell how significant.”
The revelation came on the day that former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates were also indicted on 12 charges of conspiracy against the US, conspiracy to launder money, failing to register as a foreign agent, making false statements and failure to report offshore bank accounts.
These were the first public actions in Mueller’s sprawling investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Moscow. Even in the best times for a US president, that would be hugely damaging. For this president, it may be only the beginning.
Trump made a characteristic attempt to downplay their significance and deflect attention elsewhere. “Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign,” he tweeted. “But why aren’t Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????”
Three minutes later he added for good measure: “....Also, there is NO COLLUSION!”
It is true that Manafort’s indictment makes no mention of Trump or Russian involvement in the election campaign. But they do indicate that he is accused of illegal foreign lobbying on behalf of a Ukrainian political party with a pro-Russian stance from 2005 all the way up to and including 2016.
 White House: No sign of collusion in campaign aides' indictments – video
The Center for American Progress Action Fund noted: “The inclusion of money laundering charges indicates something important: leverage. If Manafort’s Kremlin-aligned partners were aware of his money laundering crimes, that would give them leverage over the head of Donald Trump’s campaign.”
And the fact that, with so many skeletons rattling in his cupboard, he was hired to work for Trump suggests that the campaign did not employ the type of “extreme vetting” the president now advocates for immigration to the US. The indictment filed in federal court in Washington accuses Manafort and Gates of funneling tens of millions of dollars in payments through foreign companies and bank accounts.
Manafort – campaign chairman from March to August 2016 – was also among the participants of a June meeting at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-linked lawyer that raised suspicions of coordination between the campaign and Moscow. Gates, for his part, never left the campaign, was on the inaugural committee and has made visits to Trump at the White House.
The indictment against Papadopoulos offers the hardest evidence yet tying the Trump campaign to Russian government interference in the election. The administration will probably claim that Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty earlier this month to making false statements to FBI agents, played a limited role in the campaign and no direct access to Trump, as it has with similarly nebulous figures such as Carter Page.
But the indictment, which was unsealed on Monday, is damning. “Papadopoulos impeded the FBI’s investigation into the existence of any links or coordination between individuals associated with the campaign and the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election,” it states.
The international energy lawyer initially told investigators that the professor was a “nothing” and “just a guy talk[ing] up connections or something” when in truth he understood that the professor had “substantial connections to Russian government officials,” the document says.
The special counsel said Papadopoulos told FBI agents he had been in contact with an unnamed foreign “professor” who claimed to have “dirt” on Democratic nominee Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails”, and that Papadopoulos claimed such contacts occurred before he joined Trump’s campaign. However, Papadopoulos in fact did not meet the professor until after he joined Trump’s campaign, according to the indictment.
The Manafort charges were not unexpected after initial reports emerged on Friday night, but the Papadopoulos case may have taken even Trump by surprise. The president spent the weekend typically trying to fling mud in other directions to obscure the picture. On Sunday, he called Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt” and tweeted about the special counsel’s attention to “phony Trump/Russia, ‘collusion’, which doesn’t exist”.
Fox News and other conservative media are also likely to remain loyal, questioning the significance of the charges and continuing to focus on Clinton instead. And perhaps most reassuringly for Trump, his populist base rarely seems troubled by the issue, cheering at rallies when the president mockingly says that he did not see any Russians in Pennsylvania, West Virginia or other states.

Nevertheless, the odds on the special counsel’s investigation leading to Trump’s downfall just shortened again. People will talk. Matthew Miller, a former justice department spokesman, tweeted: “Mueller’s choreographed one-two punch today sends a signal to every Trump official: cooperate & get a good deal or resist & get hammered.”

Halloween: Australia crosses to the dark side with festivities 'here to stay'

Posted about an hour ago

Halloween is a tradition with Celtic and Pagan origins, but it has well and truly arrived in Australia — why?
Whether it is Aussies' love of parties or the challenge of dressing up, it is not just children in Australia enjoying the sweet treats this Halloween.
One business owner has noticed this year, people of all ages are donning spooky costumes and taking part.
"It's not only just the kids it's the adults having a go as well," Michael Soames from the Base-House Warehouse said.
The party shop at Alexandria in Sydney's inner-east has had a slew of customers buying Halloween decorations.
"I think it's certainly escalated the range in this store, [it] just keeps getting bigger and bigger every year as demands asks for different things," Mr Soames said.
Cob webs, pumpkin buckets and toy weapons have all been big sellers this year, he added.

It's all a bit of fun


Mr Soames said he believed Halloween was being embraced because it was a community event that any neighbourhood, business or school could be part of.
"You get a lot of people doing dress-up themes for businesses," Mr Soames said.
"A lot of the schools get on board with things these days.
"I know a lot of older people now are taking up the vogue and dressing up tombstones and figurines in the front yard.
"I think Australians just like to have a party sometimes."
Chris Raynor, who runs website Halloween Australia, said she was addicted to the holiday.
"We usually get told our decorations are the some of the best in Mosman," she said.
"You can get disparaging comments from some people, but it's all just fun."
Ms Raynor defended Australians who may be criticised for participating in Halloween-themed events.
"It's not just the US — it's also the UK, so it's not an issue of people blindly copying America."

'There is no use fighting it anymore'


Other New South Wales residents said they had been shocked by the rise of Halloween in Australia, after having lived overseas and returning home.
Andrea Martinez of Erskineville returned from Papua and was not expecting the new prevalence of Halloween.
"When we came back we were quite surprised at how popular it was just in the last couple of years," she said.
Merridy Eastman of Newtown lived in Europe for some time, and upon coming back realised Halloween was not just a fleeting trend down under.
"I left in 2003 and came back in 2009 and the difference was extraordinary," she said.
"It's big in the eastern suburbs, it's big in the inner-west so it's here to stay. There is no use fighting it anymore."

Jupiter's two strange auroras pulse to their own X-ray beat


Scientists have detected a powerful X-ray aurora hotspot near Jupiter's south pole and it does not behave how they expected.

Key points:

  • Mystery surrounds what powers Jupiter's auroras
  • X-rays from a newly detected southern aurora hotspot show a regular pulsing pattern
  • This doesn't match the pattern at the north pole and is a surprise to scientists
  • They hope the findings from this study, combined with data from the Juno spacecraft, may solve the mystery
Rather than pulsing in sync with the northern aurora, the southern hotspot runs to its own regular beat.
"The south has this really strange regular pulsation every 11 minutes," said William Dunn, an astronomer at University College London and lead author of the study, published in Nature Astronomy.
This behaviour, he explained, is different to aurora on Earth, where the northern and southern lights are both irregular and generally mirror each other.
"If you think of the [spots] as these twin features then maybe you expect them to be identical and behaving in time with each other and they are not doing that at all," Dr Dunn said.
The discovery adds to the mystery of how Jupiter's powerful auroras are created — a puzzle scientists hope will be solved by NASA's Juno spacecraft, currently orbiting the planet.

Jupiter's auroras not like other planets

Jupiter has the most powerful auroras in the solar system, but they are very different to those on other planets such as Earth, said astronomer Lucyna Kedziora-Chudczer of the University of New South Wales.
On Earth, an aurora is created when the solar wind — a stream of charged particles from the Sun — rains down on the planet's magnetic field. The lines of that field direct the particles to the poles, where they collide with gas atoms and emit light.
But while Earth's auroras only appear during solar storms, Jupiter's are permanent.
These powerful displays are generated by high-energy particles in the atmosphere of Jupiter and its moons, interacting with the planet's own magnetic field.
"These [particles] are accelerated in magnetic fields and slammed onto the high atmospheric layers in the polar regions of the planet," said Dr Kedziora-Chudczer, who also studies Jupiter.
One question puzzling scientists is whether, and to what degree, the solar wind also plays a role powering Jupiter's aurora.
In 2000, astronomers discovered an aurora hotspot spewing out X-rays at the planet's north pole.
Recent research by Dr Dunn and colleagues found brightening of this hotspot during a solar storm, which suggested the solar wind was indeed involved.
But auroras at the planet's south pole are much harder to see from Earth.

Spotting the southern X-ray hotspot

To find the southern aurora hotspot, Dr Dunn and his international team analysed data collected by two X-ray space telescopes on two separate occasions, 10 years apart, in 2007 and 2016.
On these days, not only was Jupiter's south pole tilted towards the two observatories orbiting Earth, but the northern hotspot was also visible.
The team then compared the activity of the southern and northern hotspots — both of which cover an area greater than the surface of the Earth.
While the southern aurora gave off pulses like clockwork, pulses from the from the northern spot were less predictable.
"Sometimes it pulses at 45 minutes, sometimes it pulses at 12 minutes, and sometimes it pulses erratically," said Dr Dunn.
The researchers also saw the intensity of the two auroras increase and decrease at different times.
Dr Dunn said the regular pulse his team detected at the south pole may be caused by the solar wind hitting a specific part of the planet's magnetic field, causing it to vibrate and send waves towards the south pole every 11 minutes.
The charged particles can then surf these waves and collide with the atmosphere of the planet to produce the bright X-ray aurora.
"It is weird because the aurora are like the signature of the magnetic field. Whatever is happening on a magnetic field line should trigger things that happen in both poles."
Dr Dunn said it's possible that because we don't get as good a view of the southern hemisphere, we may only be seeing some of the lines that are vibrating.
But, he said, there is mounting evidence from other observations that show the two auroras are acting independently of each other.

Juno spacecraft may solve aurora mystery

Dr Dunn said the next step in solving the mystery of Jupiter's auroras was to compare polar observations taken by the X-ray observatories with ultraviolet and infrared data from NASA's Juno spacecraft, which is flying directly over the poles every 53 days.
Juno is tasked with measuring Jupiter's magnetosphere for the first time.
"Juno is essentially rewriting much of what we had previously thought we knew about the planet, just as these X-ray observations contradict what we thought we knew about the aurora," said Dr Dunn.
Dr Kedziora-Chudczer agreed that local effects in Jupiter's magnetosphere could cause the aurora to behave independently, but said more observations were needed to confirm these results.
"Observations of auroral emissions in all wavelengths, together with measurement of particle fluxes in situ by spacecraft like Juno, will give us a complete picture of these interactions." 

Plastic bottles, toothbrushes, chip bags make up huge floating garbage site in Caribbean


Posted about an hour ago

Just off the Caribbean island of Roatan lies a massive pile of floating garbage.
It spans kilometres of ocean and consists of everyday plastic items like chip packets, cutlery and ziplock bags and even flip flops.
The emergence of this rubbish patch is likely due to recent hurricanes that struck the region, one of Australia's top scientists has said.

"It is shocking and it's very confronting", said Dr Britta Denise Hardesty, the principal research scientist for oceans and atmosphere at the CSIRO.
"I wish I could say that I'd never seen anything like that before."

Dr Hardesty has worked in the Caribbean, which was "scoured" by wild weather during Hurricanes Irma and Maria last month.
She said the floating rubbish would contain everything from building waste and household waste to "all sorts of things" coming off the land.
And Dr Hardesty said Australia was not immune to the perils of plastic marine waste.
"No matter where you are in Australia you will still find trash on each and every single beach," she said, adding that three quarters of this rubbish is plastic.

Great Barrier Reef clogged with plastic pollution

The CSIRO completed a survey at more than 200 sites, every 100 kilometres around Australia's coastline, with some areas so remote scientists used sea planes to reach the beaches.
"Even in places that are as remote as the Kimberly, every single one of those beaches had trash on it, whether it's tyres or fishing gear, toothbrushes or balloons and things like that," Dr Hardesty said.
"Some of the highest concentrations of plastic pollution floating in our ocean were just inside the Great Barrier Reef.

"Is that because of the runoff that's coming into those areas?
"Is it because there's an outer Barrier Reef that helps keeps things trapped in there? Is it because we happen to have surveyed that area recently after large rains?
"I can't tell you the answer to that."
Dr Hardesty said even Antarctica was showing evidence of plastic pollution, which she saw first-hand when she visited the continent in December 2016.
"As we were walking on some of the most remote places in the entire world, we still found plastic debris."

Indonesia proves transformation can be quick

But Indonesia's success in removing vast amounts of plastic waste from 2014 to 2016 has shown the situation is not hopeless, Dr Hardesty said.
"In under two years they transformed these canals that were literally full of trash and junk and choked with plastic bags, water bottles and things like that.
"They went in there, cleaned it up and really turned the entire city around."
Dr Hardesty said the Indonesian Government tackled 12 major canals and are now working to restore more than 1,000 minor canals and waterways.

"They created jobs and dealt with a tremendous, huge, long-standing waste issue in their canals," she said.
"Jakarta is an amazing story of hope and inspiration. And it's really about how quickly transformation can happen.
"It's made it a cleaner, safer place. It's completely transformed those areas and become a source of pride for the communities living there."
Dr Hardesty said she was often asked if working in the field of plastic pollution was depressing.
"It's not," she said.
"Because most of the trash that gets out there into our oceans was in someone's hand at one time."
So the question at the centre of it all is always, "what do we really value?" she said.
"Do we want to live in a clean world? Or do we want to live in a world that's disposable and full of throwaway items?"

Monday 30 October 2017

Productivity Commission pulls no punches on 'appalling' energy crisis, calls for carbon price

    Extract from ABC News

    Analysis

    Updated 14 minutes ago

    Basil Fawlty couldn't have done it better.
    Treasurer Scott Morrison last week stood at the lectern and delivered a thundering dissertation on the urgent need for cuts to company taxes.
    The occasion was the release of the Productivity Commission's latest report on how best to lift our living standards.
    So convincing was the Treasurer's speech, so lucid his argument, a reasonable person may well have formed the impression that the commission endorsed his major policy initiative.
    Sadly, not. In fact, not a single sentence on company tax is to be found anywhere in the entire report, the modestly titled 'Shifting the Dial: 5 year productivity review', which runs to six chapters with various forwards and appendices.
    Instead, it focuses on health, employment, urban planning and the rather sticky question of energy. And it's here that it drops a bombshell and aims several Exocet missiles at strategic targets.

    The energy crisis fix — a carbon price

    A sober document it may be, as you'd expect from an apolitical body like the Productivity Commission. But the headline on energy pulls no punches.
    "Energy is an appalling mess", it screams, describing Australia's electricity markets as being in "a fragile state".
    Little wonder the Treasurer opted for the diversion tactic: the old "Look over there, it's a puppy" device.

    The Productivity Commission report contains some blunt assessments on the nature of our energy problems and how to fix them, which indirectly deliver a savage blow to the Coalition's policies and strategy.
    The primary recommendation is to adopt a carbon price. It isn't the first time the commission has urged the Government to rethink its carbon emissions strategy. But the looming catastrophe in our energy markets has given the message new urgency.
    Having been a cabinet minister in Tony Abbott's government — which junked the carbon price and established a multi-billion-dollar handout program in its place — the Treasurer's reluctance to address issues raised in the report is understandable.
    But, as the commission points out, it is the very failure to address the problems that have led to the dire situation in which we now find ourselves.
    Inaction and indecision from the Federal Government has killed electricity generation investment. If that's a strategy to maintain the status quo, to retain coal fired generators, it is doomed to failure.
    As the commission points out, policy failure or fence-sitting is likely to hasten the demise of coal fired electricity generation.
    "Doing nothing on emissions intensity (via price or via some other proxy) is most likely to ensure that the fear of redundancy for coal will become a reality," it says.

    Why a carbon price?

    There are three competing factors in electricity generation: reliability, cost and emissions.
    Unfortunately, our current system of regulated prices has failed to send the correct signals on those factors.

    A decade ago, state governments overinvested in their poles and wires to "gold-plate the system" to avoid a political backlash from power blackouts. No thought was given to the cost of that extra reliability. But that now is a major component in our soaring power bills.
    It's a similar story with generation and emissions. Those regulated prices are slow to adapt.
    Just as they don't reflect the true cost of carbon emissions, or the cost involved in reducing those emissions, they similarly don't price in the real cost of the unreliability of renewable energy.
    The recent report by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, now largely abandoned by the Government, attempted to overcome the problem on unreliability with renewable energy projects by making them factor in battery storage or back-up with gas as part of the project cost.
    The point is, improving the reliability of renewables comes at a cost. So too does reducing carbon emissions.
    A price on carbon would make those costs far more transparent and lead to innovation and investment that would secure our energy supplies in the long term which ultimately would bring down prices.

    The trouble with subsidies

    Ask most economists, and they'll tell you a truly free market is the most efficient way to allocate resources. A market price provides incentives to both producers and consumers.
    The carbon tax installed by Julia Gillard was about to revert to a carbon price before Mr Abbott fulfilled his election commitment and axed it.
    Instead, we've relied upon a motley collection of schemes which essentially provide subsidies in a bid to speed up the switch from fossil fuels to renewables.
    The problem with subsidies is that they are inefficient and taxpayers end up shouldering the cost.
    In 2001, the Howard government installed the Renewable Energy Target (RET), a program that was boosted in 2009 and 2011 by the Rudd and Gillard governments but then reduced by the Abbott government.
    The problem with the RET is that it discriminates between power generation methods and doesn't directly deal with carbon emissions.
    Gas, which produces much less carbon that coal, is out the mix because it isn't renewable. Ludicrously, in Europe under its RET, burning timber has increased in popularity because it's renewable. The problem is, it still emits carbon when burnt.
    Dr Finkel opted for a Low Emissions Target, which was preferable, because it didn't dictate which technology to use. It also would have introduced a defacto price on carbon. That's now been junked.
    Instead, we have the National Energy Guarantee (NEG) which shifts the dial slightly towards a pricing mechanism. Retailers who do not meet their emission reduction targets will able to trade with those who do.

    Sadly, the mechanism still is short on detail and the announcement from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was made after the Productivity Commission had delivered its report.
    But given the commission favoured Dr Finkel's idea over the RET, it is likely to at least acknowledge the Prime Minister's NEG plan is an improvement.
    This is what it had to say on Dr Finkel's Low Emissions Target:
    "The critical point is that while there are various ways of placing prices on carbon, establishing an agreement on one of them, even if not perfect, provides a guide for investment toward the lowest cost emission reduction options."

    Whatever happened to Direct Action?

    It's the subsidy that dare not speak its name.
    Around $2.23 billion was spent on government handouts to industry and some of the nation's biggest carbon emitters. Much of the money went to companies planting trees or those who stopped clearing land.
    As an emissions reduction program, it was a complete waste of money. Total greenhouse gas emissions rose 0.8 per cent while the program was in operation and the Government confirmed it would not meet its 2030 climate target with the policy.
    In May this year, the Parliamentary Budget Office calculated Australians would need to fork out $23.6 billion for the policy to meet the Coalition's Paris Accord commitments.
    Compare that with the carbon tax when emissions fell during its short life.
    Research by Swinburne University's Jayanthi Kumarasiri and Christine Jubb found the country's biggest emitters said they lost focus on reducing emissions once the tax was repealed because they lost the commercial imperative.
    As for the energy crisis and the future of coal, perhaps the Productivity Commission should have the final say.
    "The financial viability of refurbishing existing coal-fired power today appears very doubtful, as uncertainty is actually priced into current management models," it said.
    "Advocates of older generation technologies who oppose prices that reflect emissions are actually doing themselves a major disservice. Lacking information on risk, investors most likely will not commit."
    As Basil told Polly: "Listen, don't mention the war. I may have mentioned it once but I think I got away with it."

    Saturday 28 October 2017

    Sea levels to rise 1.3m unless coal power ends by 2050, report says




    University of Melbourne paper combines latest understanding on Antarctica and current emissions projection scenarios

    Crack in Larsen C Ice Shelf, Antarctica
    The extra contribution to sea level rise from Antarctica will not kick in if warming is kept at less than 1.9C above preindustrial levels, the researchers found. Photograph: IceBridge/Nasa


    Coastal cities around the world could be devastated by 1.3m of sea level rise this century unless coal-generated electricity is virtually eliminated by 2050, according to a new paper that combines the latest understanding of Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise and the latest emissions projection scenarios.
    It confirms again that significant sea level rise is inevitable and requires rapid adaptation. But, on a more positive note, the work reveals the majority of that rise – driven by newly recognised processes on Antarctica – could be avoided if the world fulfils its commitment made in Paris to keep global warming to “well below 2C”.

    In 2016, Robert DeConto from the University of Massachusetts Amherst revealed that Antarctica could contribute to massive sea level rise much earlier than thought, suggesting ice sheet collapse would occur sooner and identifying a new process where huge ice cliffs would disintegrate.
    But that paper only examined the impact of Antarctica on sea level rise, ignoring other contributions, and didn’t examine the details of what measures society needed to take to avoid those impacts.
    The new paper by Alexander Nauels from the University of Melbourne and colleagues uses simplified physical models that allowed them to explore all known contributions to sea level rise, and pair them with the new generation of emissions scenarios which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will use in the next set of reports.

    They found that if nothing is done to limit carbon pollution, then global sea levels will rise by an estimated 1.32m. That is 50% more than was previously thought, with the IPCC’s AR5 report suggesting 85cm was possible by the end of the century.
    But the extra contribution from Antarctica would not kick in if warming was kept at less than 1.9C above preindustrial levels, the researchers found. Temperatures above that threshold risked triggering the additional processes in Antarctica identified in the 2016 paper, causing much greater sea level rise.
    “The 1.5C limit in the Paris Agreement is a much safer bet to avoid this additional contribution than only achieving 2C,” Nauels said.
    The work, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, showed that the current carbon reduction pledges which governments have made as part of the Paris Agreement by 2030 – their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – are so weak they would require very deep cuts between 2030 and 2050 to avoid triggering those extra processes in Antarctica.
    Since the authors used the next generation of emissions scenarios (the “Shared Socioeconomic Pathways”), which include assumptions about socioeconomic factors that are driving emissions – such as energy demand, energy generation, population growth and GDP – they were able to examine what actions could be taken to avoid the sea level rise.
    Those scenarios suggested coal could only make up 5% of the world’s energy mix by 2050 if sea level rise is to be limited to about half a metre.
    Similarly, those scenarios suggested a global carbon price would have to be well over US$100 per tonne, since at that cost, sea level would rise by 65cm by 2100.
    John Church, a leading sea level rise expert from the University of New South Wales who was co-convening lead author of the chapter on sea level in the third and fifth IPCC Assessment Reports, told the Guardian the work was further confirmation that the world needed to prepare now for substantial sea level rises.
    “Under all scenarios we are going to have to adapt,” Church said. “We cannot stop all sea level rise.”
    He said the research community was not in consensus yet about the accelerated contribution of Antarctica to sea level rise, identified in the 2016 paper and modelled in this study, but examining the implications of those findings was still important.
    DeConto, the lead author of the landmark paper from 2016, said it was important to recognise the good news in his original findings and this extension of that work.

    “In the aggressive mitigation pathways, where we assume that the global community gets its act together and we reduce emissions, it’s a much rosier picture. There’s a much reduced risk of dramatic sea level rise from Antarctica,” he told the Guardian. “This study fully reinforces that.”
    Nauels said his team’s work assumed that Antarctica would contribute to sea level rise as was suggested by the 2016 paper by DeConto, but more work was needed to confirm those findings.
    “We still have to find out what’s going on in Antarctica,” he told the Guardian. “We can’t base all future sea level rise projects on just one paper. And the Antarctic ice sheet community are frantically working on the new insights.”

    'Way off the planet': regional businesses use renewables to slash costs

    From solar to running generators, some have quit the energy grid and several others are showing interest in ‘defecting’

    Solar panels
    Businessman Jason Sharam’s Linked Group has spent $460,000 on a solar and battery installation. Photograph: Jason Sharam

    In the heart of Queensland’s mining belt, a businessman who has grown his enterprise mostly off the back of the coal industry sees the energy sector going only one way.
    “I think renewable energy is where the market’s going – what we class as the energy revolution,” says Jason Sharam.
    The self-described “dumb-arse electrician”, who will have grown his Mackay mining energy business from a starting staff of six to 150 by mid-2018, says he is trying to help people “see through the politics” on energy.
    “We try to stick to the facts and the real numbers,” Sharam says.
    In Mackay, as elsewhere in regional Australia, power prices are already eye-watering for small and medium businesses.
    One of Sharam’s clients has gone off the grid to run a diesel generator, which is not cheap, but still cheaper than paying for network electricity at an average of 86 cents – and as much as $1.26 – a kilowatt-hour.
    “They’re the sort of stories around, that’s just one client,” he says.
    Renewables being held out as a scapegoat for rising costs in the energy debate is “typical politics” but a complete red herring, Sharam says.
    The “elephant in the room” is the network and distribution charges that “we’re all paying exorbitant prices [for] and it seems to be the small to medium enterprises that are copping the brunt of it”, Sharam says.
    These “go through the roof” when a business uses more than 100 kwh a day.
    This is especially so in regional Australia because it lacks the concentrated populations to keep down network and distribution charges, which make up half of a business’s energy bill, he says.
    That means renewables like solar are a countervailing force, a way for businesses to drive down their network power costs, even if they stop short of getting off the grid.
    Sharam’s Linked Group Services has quit the grid entirely however, and some clients are also interested in “defecting” after hearing how the numbers stack up.
    Linked Group has spent $460,000 on a solar and battery installation, including what Sharam thinks is the first off-grid use of a Tesla Powerwall battery system in Australia.
    And yet the business will immediately save $75,000 a year on its energy bill – even while paying off a bank loan over six-and-a-half years for the installation.

    Mysterious object seen speeding past sun could be 'visitor from another star system'

    If its origins are confirmed, the asteroid or comet, named A/2017 U1, will be the first object known to come from elsewhere in the galaxy, say astronomers

    A false-colour image of the object, which appears as a faint point of light in the centre. The streaks are stars, caused by the telescope tracking the object.
    A false-colour image of the object, which appears as a faint point of light in the centre. The streaks are stars, caused by the telescope tracking the object. Photograph: Alan Fitzsimmons/Queen’s University Belfast/Isaac Newton Group La Palma


    A mysterious object detected hurtling past our sun could be the first space rock traced back to a different solar system, according to astronomers tracking the body.
    While other objects have previously been mooted as having interstellar origins, experts say the latest find, an object estimated to be less than 400m in diameter, is the best contender yet.
    “The exciting thing about this is that this may be essentially a visitor from another star system,” said Dr Edward Bloomer, astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.
    If its origins are confirmed as lying beyond our solar system, it will be the first space rock known to come from elsewhere in the galaxy.
    Published in the minor planet electronic circulars by the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the observations reveal that the object is in a strong hyperbolic orbit – in other words, it is going fast enough to escape the gravitational pull of the sun.
    Objects originating from, and on long-period orbits within, our solar system can end up on a hyperbolic trajectory, and be ejected into interstellar space – for example if they swing close by a giant planet, since the planet’s gravity can cause objects to accelerate. But Dr Gareth Williams, associate director of the Minor Planet Center, said that wasn’t the case for the newly discovered body.
    “When we run the orbit for this [object] back in time, it stays hyperbolic all the way out – there are no close approaches to any of the giant planets that could have given this thing a kick,” he said. “If we follow the orbit out into the future, it stays hyperbolic,” Williams added. “So it is coming from interstellar space and it is going to interstellar space.”
    The object’s orbit.
    “If further observations confirm the unusual nature of this orbit, this object may be the first clear case of an interstellar comet,” the report notes. A second report, published later the same day, redesignated the object as an asteroid on account of new analysis of its appearance, giving it the handle A/2017 U1.
    According to observations made by astronomers, the object entered our solar system from above, passing just inside Mercury’s orbit and travelling below the sun, before turning and heading back up through the plane of the solar system towards the stars beyond. At its closest, on 9 September, the object was 23.4m miles from the sun.ead more
    First spotted earlier this month by a telescope at an observatory in Hawaii, astronomers around the world are now following the path of the object. Among them is Professor Alan Fitzsimmons from Queen’s University Belfast.
    “It is fairly certain we are dealing with our first truly identified alien visitor,” he said. Fitzsimmons added that his team is currently working on measuring the objects’ position better to improve calculations of its trajectory, and to gather information relating to its chemical makeup, and size.
    Early results, he said, suggest that the object might be similar in make-up to many of those of the Kuiper belt – a region past Neptune in our solar system that contains myriad small bodies.
    Bloomer says we should not be too surprised if it does indeed turn out to have come from elsewhere in the galaxy.
    “Beyond the planets and past the Kuiper belt we think there is a region called the Oort cloud, which may be home to an astonishing number of icy bodies,” he said.
    “Computer models have suggested that disturbances to the Oort cloud do send some stuff in towards the inner solar system, but it would also send stuff outwards as well – so we might be throwing out icy bodies to other star systems.”
    If so, Bloomer said, there is no reason to suspect that disturbances to other star systems, as a result of gravitational interactions or other processes, wouldn’t throw material out too. “Just statistically, some of them are going to reach us,” he added.
    Williams noted that objects could also be thrown out from the inner region of other solar systems as a result of gravitational interactions with giant planets, casting them into interstellar space.
    And Fitzsimmons added that there was another possibility – that the object had been thrown out during the planet-forming period of another solar system.
    “We know now that many stars, probably the majority of stars in our galaxy, have planets going around them, and we know from studying those stars but also primarily from studying our own solar system, that planet building is a very messy process,” he said.
    With large quantities of material thrown out into interstellar space, said Fitzsimmons, is was expected that there would be objects travelling between the stars.
    “This object itself could have been between the stars for millions or billions of years before we spotted it as it plunged into our solar system,” he said.
    But, he noted, puzzles remain, not least that Kuiper belt bodies, which are believed to be icy, would give rise to an atmosphere and tail if brought close to the sun.
    “There is no evidence that this object has behaved like that, all our data show it as an unresolved point of light, implying it is more like a rocky asteroid than an icy comet,” he said. “There are mysteries to be solved here.”