May 2012 petrol and diesel prices

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From AA Petrol Watch, 21 May 2012

Pump prices have finally fallen – after the AA first called for prices to drop a month ago – with Z cutting the price of petrol 4 cents per litre, and diesel 3c. It’s the first price change in 10 weeks, and the first price drop since early February. It’s also the longest period that motorists have ever paid so much – $2.20/litre – for petrol. While petrol prices peaked at $2.22/litre in May 2011, that lasted less than a week – the previous longest run was a month on $2.19/litre in early 2011. The highest diesel price was $1.92/litre for 10 days in 2008.

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Letters to the Editor

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The Soda Water scare

quill pen

To the Editor
Climate Conversation

22nd May 2012

The climatists have a new alarm – the soda water scare.

We are told that the oceans, which weigh 300 times more than all the gases in the atmosphere, are being turned acidic by the 0.0012% (12 parts per million) of man-made additions to the carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth’s atmosphere.

CO2 is a natural gas that dissolves in water. The amount absorbed depends upon how much CO2 there is in the air, and the temperature of the water. CO2 dissolves best in cold water and is expelled as the water warms. And far more would be absorbed if there was 100% CO2 in the atmosphere above.

When concentrated CO2 gas is bubbled under high pressure into ice-cold water much CO2 dissolves, producing acidic soda water whose pH (acidity) could be as low as 4. This is 1,000 times more acidic than pure water whose pH is a neutral 7.

But oceans are much warmer than that and atmospheric CO2 is at much lower pressure. Therefore in the open ocean, pH seldom gets below 8, ten times more alkaline than pure water.

This weak soda water could only be described as “acidic” by someone pushing an alarmist agenda. Continue Reading →

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Our water use raises sea levels

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A new article in Nature Geoscience attributes 42% of recent sea level rise to discharge of groundwater to the oceans by human activities.

Pokhrel, Y.N. et al., 2012. Model estimates of sea-level change due to anthropogenic impacts on terrestrial water storage. Nature Geoscience, advance online publication.

Abstract

Global sea level has been rising over the past half century, according to tide-gauge data. Thermal expansion of oceans, melting of glaciers and loss of the ice masses in Greenland and Antarctica are commonly considered as the largest contributors, but these contributions do not entirely explain the observed sea-level rise. Continue Reading →

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