Pull the other one.
No Bias — Audrey Zibelman,
Audrey Zibelman, the improbable green-lawyer manager of our National Energy Market claims her advice is not biased towards renewables. This is the same Zibelman who tells us that “resisting the energy transition is like trying to resist the internet.” As if governments had to legislate “An Internet Target” and mandate we do 16% of our shopping online. The same Zibelman believes “we’re the last generation on earth who can really do something about climate change.” She thinks she’s changing global weather with our power grid. By 2100 historians will have people rolling in the aisles with that one. What were they thinking?*
Her bias is so all encompassing she can’t imagine a world twenty years hence which still runs on coal and gas and views the temporary experiment with unreliables as a disastrous, predictable mistake, a historic dead-end. Renewables are the B-size-batteries, the hydrogen-filled-air-ships and the X-rays for shoe shops that didn’t take over the world. She assumes that the forced “transition” to renewables is inevitable, natural and necessary. What if it’s an artificial, uneconomic, unnecessary accident of profit hungry industry rent-seekers and fatuous virtue signaling fools?
Hands up who thinks that solar panels and windmills will stop storms and lower the tide!
Hands up who thinks techononogy will save the day and is 100% guaranteed to convert high maintenance, low efficiency energy collectors into something reliable and cheap, and in our lifetimes? What if our solar panels are a hundred years too soon? Say hello to the modern cargo cult, and who put a clan chieftain in charge of 50,000 gigawatts?
Who indeed… Malcolm Turnbull knew exactly what she was when he rescued Zibelman from the collapsing Clinton empire last year. She is hopelessly, intractably, biased, and that’s just what Turnbull wants. If he wanted cheap electricity, he would have appointed someone else.
The government should auto-bin every AEMO report until someone else runs it, or Zibelman admits that we don’t have to have one single windmill or solar panel operating in Australia. There are no laws of physics, nor economic, free market arguments or even one national example that suggest that intermittent, unreliable power generators should be driving our grid. The only thing they have are computer models based on simplistic assumptions that no one has audited and which fail every test. And there is no country on Earth that has lots of wind and solar and also has cheap electricity.
If Zibelman wanted cheap electricity the AEMO would consider all options, including the one where we just do what all our competitors are doing, and what we used to do, and stop subsidizing a failed, immature technology, start building the 1601st new coal plant around the world, start talking about nuclear energy, and stop destroying what was a perfectly good and efficient national grid and market.
AEMO chief rejects claims of renewables bias in energy model
Perry Williams, The Australian
“There’s no bias in the model,” Ms Zibelman said yesterday. “It’s a cost-base engineering optimisation model. The implication that somehow the modelling is biased one way or the other is simply not true.’’
A few sane men:
Government backbenchers Tony Pasin, John Williams, Ken O’Dowd, Craig Kelly and George Christensen criticised a report released last month by the AEMO into the electricity sector, saying it did not focus on lowering prices.
Spot the bias?
The report warned Australia would need to spend up to $27 billion replacing retiring coal plants in the next two decades with fossil fuels set to be ousted from the country’s national electricity market. In its place would be a mix of solar, wind, storage and gas along with new investment in electricity transmission.
Who says?
The problem is not so much that there is bias in the model. The disaster starts with the bias mandated in the legislation that says we have to force this transition, we have to pick technologies, we have to mess with the market, and we need to pick supernatural weather controlling cult clanswomen to run our grid.
Is this the AEMO Report they refer too: Integrated System Plan, July 2018? This unbiased document refers to REZs 244 times. What’s a REZ? It’s not defined, but a REZs (how awkward) means “Renewable energy zones”. For some reason, the unbiased, technology neutral AEMO has spent money and time identifying REZs so that supposedly profitable competitive suppliers don’t have too?
This is the How to Save Money Report that Vestas would write.
Here’s more bias buried in vague blah:
Due to the changes in technology, the transformation requires the adoption of new technologies and approaches to provide services needed to operate the power system that are currently provided predominantly by thermal generation.
Nobody mention that thermal generation is and will be the mainstay of almost every country on Earth:
When existing thermal generation reaches the end of its technical life and retires, the most cost-effective replacement of its energy production, based on current cost projections, is a portfolio of utility-scale renewable generation, energy storage, distributed energy resources (DER), flexible thermal capacity including gas-powered generation (GPG), and transmission.
Why do we need more “storage?”:
• There is a growing need for energy storage over the next 20 years to increase the flexibility and reliability of supply.
The Australian grid didn’t need storage for the last hundred years. An unbiased report would mention that. It also didn’t need more billion dollar interconnectors. Each state used to be able to power itself.
The invisible elephant in this room is the option of Not Subsidizing Renewables, or Not Mandating we have to have green electrons.
At no point does the AEMO model compare costs of the renewable cult to costs of Australia’s renewable-free history. All the savings and improvements are compared to strawmen mismanaged-half-bodged expensive grids:
AEMO estimates that the additional transmission investment proposed in the ISP would conservatively deliver savings of around $1.2 billion on a net present value (NPV) 3 basis, compared to the case where no new transmission is built to increase network capabilities between regions (in the modelled Neutral case).
The value of the identified transmission investment can be quantified by comparing total costs of supply against a ‘no new interconnection’ option…
It’s like a hundred years of grid efficiency and history has been made invisible. It’s beyond bias — the AEMO has become a marketing and advertising tool for the Renewables Industry. This is the How to Save Money Report that Vestas would write.
Lest We forget how bad those climate models are:
The models not only fail on global decadal scales, but on regional, local, short term, [1] [2], polar[3], and upper tropospheric scales[4][5] too. They fail on humidity[6], rainfall[7], drought [8] and they fail on clouds [9]. The hot spot is missing, the major feedbacks are not amplifying the effect of CO2 as assumed.
________________
*A great title for a book, eh? Look out for the launch of the marvellous John Spooner’s work any day now. today!
In general, methane gas fields contain at least 30% of CO2 by volume worldwide. This CO2 is NOT sequestered or re-injected but vented to the atmosphere at gas processing plants eg Longford etc.
This one conveniently overlooked fact, makes CO2 emissions from burning coal, lower than that emitted versus burning methane for the same amount of energy. If one counts methane leakage from wells and pipelines then GHG emissions from methane gas fields are even higher.
Coal is simply “greener”, by far, versus methane.
Unless something can be done with the fugitive CO2 from methane gas fields eg turning it into methane, thereby closing the carbon cycle, it is not a viable oxidized energy source, assuming CO2 is a GHG problem.
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Geoff, I suggest that you are wrong about natural gas. The Longford processing plant does not strip much CO2 from the gas. There are I believe three functions in 4 trains. 1/ Oil and condensates are recovered -the Bass Strait field is mainly a light crude oil field. In the process water and H2S are also removed. 2/ The Longford is the major producer of LPG (liquid petroleum gas) which is propane and butane -the LPG for motor vehicles contains a higher proportion of butane while domestic LPG (eg bottles for your BBQ) contains more propane. 3/ Separation of Ethane (C2H6) which is separately piped to Melbourne for chemical processing -making of plastics.
Have a look at this article https://cementafriend.wordpress.com/2011/10/. Typical natural gas contains around 4% CO2. The Bass Strait gas contains little CO2. In some fields there is little processing done with the CO2. On some gas fields there are wells which have a very high amount of CO2 close to 100%. I think there is one Victoria in the Otway field. This is collected and processed to put into soft drinks like Coca-Cola.
There was about a decade or more ago concern about fugitive methane (CH4) or loss from natural gas pipelines (mainly Russia,& middle east) which was causing an increase in atmospheric CH4 (about 1.7ppm) but the money has been spent to stop the leakage especially with the rising price of gas and the level of CH4 in the atmosphere has stabilised. The supposed fear about CH4 from human and animal emission is absolute nonsense and a scam by green vegans to get people to eat more of their unhealthy food.
140
Esso/BHP have a licence to vent 1-2 MT of CO2 per annum ex-Longford. It is an official Vic EPA number. Have not looked at their well logs. Plenty of media reports on the numbers.
I have about 50 odd references about CO2 content of very many gas fields. Cooper Basin varies. Read Beach and Santos ASX reports. You will soon get the idea.
Wherever there are volcanic intrusions into a hydrocarbon source rock then a lot of CO2 is going to get formed eg Otway Basin.
Got the Otway numbers from various reports and reservoir engineer, 30-96%, often 80%. Will look up AWE reports and check their well log.
Not worried about GHG effects. Not a real problem. Even the bull from the greens is based on bull.
170
The point of exposing this hypocrisy shows that AEMO and most government based or supported environment groups have very little technical understanding of how to audit the hydrocarbon cycle.
As an example SA has blown up coal fired power stations (rather than import low ash thermal coal) and replaced them with gas turbines. Drilled methane has far more CO2 emissions than thermal black coal, even more than low quality Leigh Creek coal.
So net CO2 emissions will increase along with the cost of power. Industry will leave SA. How they will be able to build ships at a sustainable cost remains a mystery? Obviously, whatever they do, it is going to be expensive versus doing it almost anywhere else.
Socialism is rampant in SA.
Stupidity is rampant in the government.
Vote buying is rampant in parliament.
240
The 30% is too high and around 4% is probably more typical although major fields under development such as Gorgon and Wheatstone contain in the order of 15-18%. Agree with the issue that this content is not counted when gas is used to produce electricity.
20
Qatar Gas Field
“The North Field, the supergiant gas field, was discovered in 1971. It is
probably the largest non-associated gas field in the world, with proven
reserves of around 6,430 billion cu m, and total gas in place estimated at
about 10,800 billion cu m. The field covers an area of some 6,000 sq km
in relatively shallow water. The reservoir is the Permian Khuff limestone
formation at a depth of around 3,000 metres, containing gas in four
layers, one on top of the other. The Khuff gas is sour, with up to 7 per
cent CO2 and 6 per cent H2S by volume.”
Did not count the H2S. Yet another reason to use coal, not methane.
Just scratching the surface of this opens up the possibility of a BIG mistake in the numbers used up by both sides of the CO2 argument. Coal has less emissions than methane.
Has anyone done a comprehensive study of all the known gas fields for CO2 versus methane content?
50
We are the green Borg….resistance is futile…..allegedly….
”
“….who tells us that “resisting the energy transition is like trying to resist the internet.”
91
yes it is a very stupid comparison. the internet is mostly free and what isn’t is subsidized via free markets. what she is talking about is just the opposite.
Everything I’ve ever heard from her is stupid. Who did she scru to get her job?
60
Actually this claim might be rather spot on.
As with most ‘Left v Right’ topics the ‘Left’ tend to dominate social media where they can make their peer reviewed statements and shout agreement or abuse as required. To put it broadly they are the ‘mobile’ platformers.
The ‘Right’, who usually have longer attention spans, tend to use the more ‘long form’ methods of communication where they can more deeply investigate and discuss the issues. The ‘Right’ dominate the blogs and youtube type discussions that is typically best accessed via a full computer and keyboard. Or, to word it another way, via the internet.
So the claim ‘resisting the energy transition is like trying to resist the internet’ is not about the morals, ethics and unavoidable destiny of the topic, it is describing the actual battle between reason and greed.
We resist the energy transition. They resist the internet. It’s a battle both sides believe they cannot afford to lose.
So yeah, not in the way she probably intended, but actually a wonderful comparison. Well done Audrey, now tick off.
30
Apperentlty, unreliables and futiles will protect us from cold snaps and snow …. in WA….
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-02/perth-weather-snow-bluff-knoll-cold-front-power-wa-homes/10064746
“The tail end of yesterday’s strong cold front ripped through much of Western Australia overnight and delivered damaging winds and widespread hail, as well as snow to one of the state’s highest peaks.
Homes and cars have been damaged across the state, with the State Emergency Service receiving almost 80 calls for help with 59 coming from the Perth metro area.
Bluff Knoll, 350 kilometres south-east of Perth, attracted snow chasers this morning who were rewarded with a layer of crusty white on the side of the mountain.”
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“. . . wind gusts in excess of 100 kilometres per hour”
When an area gets infrequent winds such as this, many things start to move around, fall down, or become airborne.
We live where wind gusts often get to 80 kph (60 to 70 are common).
Thus we tend to NOT leave things in the yard (lawn chairs, empty garbage cans) that take flight in a good wind.
Further, unsound limbs of trees tend to get culled more often, and when smaller. Root systems are deeper and stronger.
Some places get very wet, then winds (Seattle area or Washington State) — winds cause havoc.
Here, the few trees that get completely uprooted are those not native that have been planted as landscape items — small — and then grow toward their normal size.
Some of us do not park cars near/under trees of a suspicious nature.
Personally, we like the wind.
Sorry about all the damage
80
No change until Turnbull and his ceo acolytes are booted out as the lights go out.
340
The only problem with this option is that unless the Libs see the light and replace Mal with a conservative alternative, Shorten and his merry men will be far, far worse!
40
Well done Jo. Traversing “vague blah” in search of something meaningful is a rotten job.
221
“we’re the last generation on earth who can really do something about climate change.”
Hopefully this is the last generation stupid enough to try.
442
After all it is “Generation Z”
Perhaps that’s prophetic.
151
Funny how the current global fascination with zombie movies is a reflection on the brainwashing of humanity, an expose of the global comatose collective mind…..
The infamous “10:10” greenist snuff movies comes to mind too, a hint that at the core of the globalist-directed extrene green movement, there beats a black and maelovelent heart intent on doing humanity harm, and in the “10:10” propaganda , openly targets children…..think about that for a moment….
191
Steve,
I didn’t refer to Satan in one of my recent posts without reason.
There is a serious evil at work and unfortunately the only solution that presents as viable is the one offered to Marie Antoinette.
KK
40
‘Hopefully this is the last generation stupid enough to try.’
Well actually I see a bright future for geoengineering, now that the Holocene has passed its used by date.
40
Unfortunately we have entered the Idiocene.
60
We already have an excess of “storage” It is called COAL.. stick it a fire… boil water into steam and generate electricity.. Simplified process description I admit , but then the solution is indeed “simples”
311
Every Coal plant has “storage” it’s called the “Stock Yard” where there is always 2, 3, 4 weeks (Joe BP liked MONTHS so he could wait out the unions!)ready to charge up the boilers! That’s reliable, none of this hope its sunny and windy now, today, tomorrow! hope the battery can get charged! hope power prices don’t go up! hope others have sun and wind so the Grid don’t fail! and God help us if there is a big cyclone that clouds most of Queensland with wind speeds too high for bird choppers for a WEEK OR MORE after the coal is gone!!
260
I call coal “Solid Sunshine”.
90
In New England in the last winter the public just got through the freezing ‘climate’ thanks to the coal fired power stations. Years of green generated outrage prevented any more natural gas or oil pipelines being installed, and in any case the really cold weather increased demand (and prices) elsewhere. Those obsolete coal stations just continued running, thanks to vast quantities of coal stockpiled next to them. It is common in northern America for two months consumption to be stockpiled going into winter, as that avoids little things like blizzards stopping rail (and road) traffic.
The output of the wind turbines despoiling the hills of Vermont was reported as “disappointing”.
90
Love it Cola.
60
Consider this for a minute.
Say we do what she says and transition to renewables by 2030, having replaced every coal fired Unit in the Country, (and trust me on this, that will NEVER come to pass) and that’s now 11 years away.
Currently the generated coal fired power is delivering a bit more than 11 times the power of the generated wind power.
So, that means we ramp up wind power by a factor of 11.5.
We currently have 5222MW of Nameplate (not the same as generated power here) so multiply that by 11.5, and you come up with 60,000MW, and that’s just the EXTRA, because by 2030, most current wind plants will be ‘time expired’, so they’ll need replacing as well.
60,000MW of Nameplate in 11 years, so that’s 5500MW a year give or take, and hey, that’s the current existing Nameplate, so that amount every year till 2030.
The biggest wind plant in Oz is Macarthur, which has a Nameplate of 420MW, so now requiring 5500MW, that’s 13 NEW Macarthur’s EACH AND EVERY YEAR, not proposed, but built and on line delivering power.
Now can you see why it will NEVER happen.
You may wonder why I have left out Solar plants. Well currently at 0.5% of delivered power, they couldn’t add much anyway, and seriously, if they worked or there was a shirtload of money to be made from them, then surely they would be building more of them eh. And rooftop solar power. That does the home with the panels, and not the wider power consumption, and we’ve got good coverage now we are told.
Hydro, well forget that, no new dams, and pumped hydro is a net power consumer.
Batteries, at zero point(however many zeros you want to add here) small number, again, next to nothing.
So, the vast bulk of it will HAVE to come from wind power.
Think of that again.
13 NEW Macarthur’s a year for the next 11 years, and then just keep on building them. I couldn’t care less where they get the money, if they can, but hey, you just couldn’t get them built in that time. There’s a five to seven year lead time on them anyway, and if you think that’s ‘fake news’ on my part, dial up Coopers Gap Wind Plant. More than ten years since that proposal, and still just listed as proposed.
Sometimes, I just shake my head with laughter.
And these people get credence in the media, and it’s me who is the one who gets laughed at.
In 2030, I’ll be almost 80, and it’s useless my making bets now on whether this will happen, but this is just not going to happen.
Even if they attempt to achieve it, you’ll still have days like yesterday when every wind plant in the Country was only delivering 1.4% of the power required to MEET the evening peak. so what happens then?
Tony.
520
By 80 you could be some sort of energy Svengali Tony. 🙂
151
“Told you so!” is just such a useless phrase.
I’d much better prefer “At last, someone sees sense!”
Tony.
260
That’s interesting—in a sense.
Not having had the relevant training I cannot read in any meaningful way Christopher Monckton’s mathematical reasoning (see here, for example).
Yet the experts, not least the Minister for Energy (or, more correctly, enervation) in SA and the head of AEMO, seem unable to employ fairly simple arithmetic.
Is this a record?
No. Recall the preparations of the Third Reich for Operation Barbarossa—and the result.
70
Tony,
Some $$ on the back of the old ciggy packet might help?
Macarthur is valued NO not valued – COST ~ AU$1,030,000,000 (shite my ciggy packet can’t fit all these 000’s) = $1B + $30M!! for 420 MW “Name Plate” that’s about $2.45M/MW so on your figures above we build 5500MW per YEAR that’s almost $13.5B PER YEAR!
That’s $148B over the next 11 years + renewing the renewable wind turbines (life cycle of turbines is 11 – 15 years??) so throw in another $13.5B (NOT including demolition costs!) so $161B!
That’s $161,000,000,000 BLOODY HELL, no more room on the ciggy packet!!
Care to grab your ciggy packet and estimate the cost to maintain Coal and add HELE?? 🙂 🙂
80
And then throw in a guess at the battery costs to make a number even more beyond the scope of the cigs packet
30
Ah forget the demolition costs. They just walk away and leave the things to rot and the green lobby just turn a blind eye.
30
You are grossly underestimating the cost. Just linearising the current generating capacity and the current output results in a highly optimistic, unrealistic cost. Fundamentally this makes the wrong assumption that the native capacity factor for the wind generators will remain unchanged. That is not the case. As the market share of ambient generation increases, curtailment of output becomes more frequent. On most days a large slice of the installed capacity would not be permitted to produce at its unconstrained output because the supply would be exceeding the demand.
To achieve 100% market share for wind, the constrained capacity factor will be around 10%. So to supply the NEM demand of 190TWh, the installed wind capacity needs to be around 220GW. At $2000/kW (AEMO optimistic figure), the cost works out at $440,000,000,000. Then there is the cost of storage, which will be a similar figure. 100% market share is impossible without massive storage.
This is the greatest jobs scheme ever created. All electricity consumers go to work to earn enough to pay for the electric energy that is embodied in everything needed to survive. Society just exists to create electrical energy from the wind and sun. About 25% of workers would be employed in the electric energy generating and distributing sector.
20
As usual Rick your expertise is invaluable. This and Tony’s explanation should be plastered across the front of every newspaper and news bulletin in the country in big bold letters for the masses to see. Let Zibelman and Schott try to explain them away if they dare.
20
Its much worse than that. wind energy can be constrained FOR MONTHS – wind is not like Solar, given the way the rosby waves circle the globe and interplay with weather you can pretty much statistically say that the maximum cloudy time in the clear air band around the subtropics is around 5-7 days. 10 Days of storage is enough to make Solar reliable. But you pretty much have to overbuild to charge that solar in 2 days. So if your usage is 25kWh a day for a typical family you will need 250kWh of storage, and about 30kW of panels to go off grid wholly on solar. For wind we may need to design storage for a month and there might only be a week of generation between calming continental highs. This means that much more storage is required. For wind for 25kWh household you would need around one MWh of storage and a generation capacity of around 25kW to make it reliable. While wind has more potential because it works at night – sometimes it needs much more storage because it is less reliable than solar. Just like S.A. this means that when there is wind you have much more power than you know what to do with, because you are hedging the longest calm time.
Instead it is far more economic to use a fossil fuel backup strategy, use Solar and at night recharge the battery if it goes flat with a generator. Raw costs are about 1/10th of the hedged solution, because you can get away with just 12h storage. 12kWh, thats about 3x 24V-200 AH traction batteries and a small 6kW genset to charge it at night. Now bearing in mind that after the cooking peak at 6PM which uses your accumulated solar power, night time use is low – so the genset hardly ever runs except when it cloudy. Not much fuel ever gets used. You don’t need to overbuild to store energy for a bad day either the diesel just runs for two hours on those days. The Spec is.
Just 5kW of panels, 3 x 200AH 24V traction batteries (forklift batteries) and charger, inverter and a 6kVA diesel generator with electric start/stop. If you buy right and get STCs then such a system might be set up for around $10K
10
” and it’s me who is the one who gets laughed at.” Not by us Tony. Love your posts.
250
And it just shows the ignorance of the people that our current Govt. chooses to head our energy policy.
90
Sinecures are always populated by gang members –who you know, not what you know; and yes, Audrey’s in the gang.
100
Whoops Tony, I forgot to ask permission to send your comments to a friend – hope that was OK, Don
00
Tony, a man after my own heart. I happen to be 81 and there’s little chance I’ll survive to see the grandiose plans of the renewable power pushers fail — if they get their way and rid us of fossil fuel generators. Confession: I spent 30 years in and around nuclear plants, and 3 years in a coal-fired plant, so I admit to some bias. I’m also an engineer, have some understanding of the power system, and admit to being a climate change skeptic.
What really amazes me is that otherwise rational and intelligent people who live with the sun and wind every day ignore the facts that the sun only shines part of each day and the wind is constantly changing — in direction and speed. Neither can provide dispatchable, reliable power and we don’t have storage that can provide back up.
If we follow the 100% renewable crowd, and use fairy-dust battery storage, we have to have sufficient generating capacity to meet the instantaneous load during the day, plus capacity to charge the batteries to carry through the next 12-14 hours. But if the wind stops blowing for several days, as it occasionally does each winter, the system will most likely go black.
The renewable advocates here in Arizona have managed to get an item on the fall ballot which, if approved, will require something like 50% renewable power by 2030. In my opinion it’s stupid, but in all likelihood it will pass. So, my electric bills will start looking like those in South Australia, and my 0.9997+ reliability will be degraded.
210
I have a pretty good bulldust detector, years of having to deal with Corporate types who will smile as they stab you in the back, and also have an Engineering background. Enginerinhg project management will also equip you to hanbdle technical and also politely verbally “correct” idiots who cause stupid problems, if you get my drift.
What started me questioning the climate lie was the more I asked, the more hysterical people became and it was clear things weren’t,but should be, open to question. From an engineering point of view, indeed democracy, openness is critical to its operation. The more I asked and was rebuffed, the more I dug, and the harder I pushed until I got a huge ‘BLEVE moment’ from my relentless but fair questioning – questioning that any open and fair situation should have no problems answering.
I feel sorry for the genuine greenies who just want a better world and are harmless. the Green movement seems to have been infiltrated and turned into a Communist-run extreme-green anti-capitalist anti-human zombie.
110
Some pithy comments on wind and solar over on Cfact, where it hurts most, in the hip pockets of the hapless customers:
And lots more of the same.
30
If you have read “Clinton Cash” (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=clinton+cash+by+peter+schweizer&t=ffhp&atb=v90-7_j&ia=products) or any of dozens of articles and books you will realize three things.
1) The Clintons are incredibly rich and have made most of their $millions on crooked schemes, deals, and abuse of their positions in government.
2) Crooked and schemers were drawn to the Clintons, and those who violate their sworn loyalty do not end well.
3) There have been dozens or deals, schemes, and influence pedaling schemes since Bill was Governor of Arkansas.
This Clintonista will ruin your power system while making $millions. You must take steps to send her home and the sooner the better.
241
And people who attempt to testify against the king and queen of the Deplorables , all seem to suffer from terminal “clumsiness” …..
120
Great summary Jo of yet another Liberal Black Hand subversion, sadly when or if this mess comes to light the instigators will be untouchable and the useful Ms Zibelman’s of the world will plead ‘meant to do good’ innocence.
Some people will go to their graves still convinced the planet is in danger from certain CO2 levels, unfortunately there’s a lot of those people about and others believe them out of social peer pressure, I’m hoping the financial peer pressures of green energy will convert them otherwise.
141
Would love to hear/see a debate between Audrey and Jo.
110
That’d be like Einstein (Jo) verses a poo throwing monkey.
190
The poo throwing monkey would try and sue Jo for showing what she really is to the public!
40
Also the upper echelons of the police would send her the bill for cleaning up the mess even though it was all caused by the leftist loonies.
60
With no disrespect to Jo, I beg to differ. The people like Audrey are very smart and that is what makes them so dangerous. They know exactly what they are doing, they have an agenda and they are not working in our best interests.
Graham
120
No doubt she and the Chairman of the centre of excellence at the University from which Peter R was removed neatly fit the profile of those aligned to our President Trumble.
Clintonista relocators from the US of A.
It is just so hard to believe that we have moved so quickly from an age of enlightenment to a state of delusion and slavery.
KK
60
I too am impressed by the pace of the carpetbaggers’ progress.
When the RET is removed they’ll move even faster escaping their liabilities, or maybe they’ll talk the individual states into creating a substitute.
Right now I’m agog waiting for the artefact our fork-tongued globalist lackeys in government will produce to replace the Beloved Windbag’s imminently stillborn NEG. My tip is that it will be called the POS.
20
“The Australian grid didn’t need storage for the last hundred years. An unbiased report would mention that. It also didn’t need more billion dollar interconnectors. Each state used to be able to power itself.”
Yeah well that was all pretty humdrum wast it? Now we can have billions invested in useless intermittent supply, layers of management systems, technologists and bureaucrats, and all the players looking to clip the ticket along the way as each want their % and career enhancement. Who wants cheap reliable supply when you can have all that? reminds me of the house of cards that was IT systems and network management in the 1990s. As ably demonstrated by public service IT and the banks we can still blow stuff out of the water.
132
You want a return to the 1950s, when power bills were manageable and rarely changed.
Bring back government involvement in energy utilities, socialism with Australian characteristics.
103
El Gordo,
I was a child of the fifties.
In hindsight, the management of the society that I lived in was highly socialist in nature, supportive, disciplined and fair.
Of course nothing lasts forever and by the mid sixties things began to change.
By the mid seventies total upheaval of the social climate that made Australia the poster boy of Socialist life was achieved, paradoxically, by the incumbent Socialist Party.
Now we are in a Dream Land totally isolated from Reality.
KK
20
The rot set in only recently when the Liberals in NSW sold our poles and wires to an overseas investor.
They were adopting a ‘free market’ version of capitalism which I strongly disagree with, especially as Premier Gladys has spent a lot of the money in Sydney. Laissez faire economics is so last century.
20
Public ownership (aka government) of a monopoly service as was the case until the 1980s when the World Bank forced it’s “private good, public bad” mantra upon the world, is sheer good economic sense. The characterization of it being “Socialist” is one of the distortions of the social and economic fabric which have led to the present debacle. It’s in the same propaganda domain as “mankind’s CO2 emissions are dangerous” and cause CC or Climate Calamities. It has nothing to do with Socialism but a lot to do with propaganda.
40
All true, we once had a perfectly balanced ‘mixed economy’ and then governments threw away the handbook. Its been open slather ever since.
20
El Gordo, you really should do some background reading. The Electricity Commission of NSW (Elcom) was only established in 1950 as a result of an act passed in 1946. Before that there were a number of companies,some private (like the Balmain Electric Light Company-Balmain power station), council owned (eg Sydney County Council), and government owned (such as the railways). Many of the large industry had their own power stations eg Broken Hill was supplied upto the 1990’s by the Broken Hill Central Power Station owned by the largest two mines, BHP had their own power at Newcastle, Port Kembla and Whyalla. The cement works at Berrima, Charbon, Darra (Qld), Fyansford (Geelong Vic), Kandos, Maldon, Portland (NSW), and Railton (Tas)had their own power stations of which some like Berrima, Charbon, Kandos,Portland and Railton supplied power to the local town upto the late 1970’s. All the pulp and paper plants in Tasmania, as well as the one in Nowra had their own power with cogeneration (ie steam and power). Mt Isa had its own PS at Mica Creek owned by the mine using coal from its own mine but now a private company company using natural gas. Queensland has a privately owned coal fired power station at Millmerran (850MW) which was commissioned in 2002. Brisbane, Gold Coast and Toowoombawere being supplied by private operators until 1961 when the Southern Electricity Authority of Queensland was formed. Callide A, I think was originally private, Callide C (2*460MW) using “supercritical” boilers is a joint venture between the Qld govt. CS Energy and the private Intergen. Private operators have always been more efficient than government owned corporations and Queensland power stations more efficient than other power stations in Australia (particularly union controlled PS in Victoria and NSW)
Australians want cheap reliable power. The answer is to get rid of RET and subsidies of all power generation, take the market operator of the hand of government and all free unrestricted competition in the supply of electricity with contractual obligations (such as 24hr/7day/365days reliable supply ie no wind and no solar)
50
The price of electricity in Australia fell during the embryonic days of removing the State monopolies on the grid supply. The wholesale price rises of the current decade can be sheeted directly to the Rudd government dramatically increasing the RET in 2009. That is when electricity prices hit boost.
60
Thanks Cementafriend, I stand corrected.
30
For Infigen wind fans here’s Alan Moran at Catallaxy:
“Today we saw the release of wind farmer Infigen’s annual report. Reported revenue is $200 million this year. $120 million of this is subsidies and much of the rest boosted by subsidy-forced plant closures. Directors paid themselves $11.2 million in 2017.”
That’s a nice little earner for Mal’s baby boy Alex. Daddy will be proud. Another generation of buccaneer bankers. Recall too that Infigen’s fleet of bird-choppers is mostly clapped out now.
I believe Infigen is also still fighting the class action by burnt-out land holders for the 3,400 ha Currandooley bushfire it “allegedly” started at one of its southern NSW wind eyesores in January 2017 — Infigen claimed a self-immolating crow did it. Roughly $20 million sought in damages. We have also yet to hear of the official enquiry demanded by many into Infigen’s wind farm activities after the blaze. It was only a couple of years earlier that an Infigen representative at a government hearing claimed that wind turbine transmission oil is non-flammable. Infigen has a history of inconvenient bushfires in VIC and NSW, so heaven forbid that someone should lift the lid on its activities.
Then we have the Clean Energy Finance Corporation annual report also out a few days ago.
• In the 12 months to June 2018, new commitments were $2.3 billion ($1.1 billion in renewable energy).
• At 30 June 2018, total CEFC investment commitments since inception exceeded $6.6 billion. There’s 6.6 billion we’ll never see again.
• In its five years of investing CEFC has contributed to clean energy projects with a total value of $19 billion.
As Moran points out, it is “not only a waste of resources but negative value as the program is undermining the electricity that can be commercially supplied at one third that which renewables get.”
And finally we have Frydenberg who recently said, “we are living in a carbon constrained world.”
I don’t know what world he imagines he lives in, but when Mal and the Insect and Pyne go, I do hope they take Josh with them and relocate to an unstable, carbon-free Pacific sand bar far away.
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2018/07/31/australian-energy-policy-driving-us-on-the-road-to-venezuela/
150
Daddy must be proud …
https://stopthesethings.com/2017/03/13/born-lucky-stars-align-perfectly-for-pms-son-with-mammoth-bet-on-wind-power-outfit-infigen/
20
Here is a different perspective on AEMO from reneweconomy:
https://reneweconomy.com.au/major-solar-wind-projects-stumble-in-front-of-new-grid-hurdles-71104/
The project proponents believe the cost of grid upgrade should be borne by the grid owner and passed on to consumers through transmission price rather than being part of the project cost and included in their cost of generation.
The interesting aspect in all this is that the financial modelling done by AEMO is simplistic and highly flawed. Ambient generation is based on capacity factors rather than time of generation and they have extraordinarily optimistic capital costs for intermittent generation and battery storage. They have battery life of 15 years – no one guarantees that life and there is no example of that life being achieved for a full battery although some individual cells still operate after 15 years. The authoritative source for battery costs and battery life was Bloomberg New Energy Finance – have no idea why a finance company would be your go-to source on battery technology unless you did not want the real picture.
Cost estimates for the different types of power generation were supplied by — CSIRO!!!!. When was the last time CSIRO built a power station?
100
That is the question, what do these enthusiasts for renewable ratbaggery imagine the world will be like in 2040?
How do they envisage the energy demands of for instance 1.5 billion Chinese 1.7 billion Indians reaching the middle-class with all the accoutrements of a middle-class lifestyle, including electric vehicles, being satisfied — windmills and solar panels?
I haven’t been overseas for a few years but my Apple TV has fascinating screensavers of drone-style night views of some mega-cities in China and they are a blaze of light and movement.
If Australian governments continue down this renewables road the nation will slowly slip down the economic rankings into irrelevance.
I’m not suggesting a Venezuela-style collapse, an analogue might be Argentina once in the top ten of world economies but due to dependence on a narrow range of exports and dogged pursuit of crony-capitalist-corporatist autarky, a policy long abandoned by most other advanced economies, is now ranked 61 out of 182 for GDP per cap.
That sort of slow decline is self-reinforcing by the powerful vested interests who benefit while the ‘Audrey Zibelmans’ move on – oh hang on, that can’t happen to the ‘lucky country’.
110
I think the brains will just leave Australia……let it sink…..
I dont want to go, but faced with it becoming another Zimbabwe with a Marxist “leadership” and ruined by PC…well , they can have it. When your country gets to the ludicrous point of defining 16 different “genders” and everything you say offends some pathetic milksop leftist, its very much a case of leaving it to the 2nd Class Telephone Sanitizers and going and living somewhere interesting and thats not crippled by rank fools….
110
Where?
41
Heard Island looks promising.
20
Looks like fun!
11
Yonnie,
What have you heard?
30
Isn’t it time the Russians were blamed for Gorbal Warning ?
Or was it exaggerated climate models polished up with some slight of hand by IPCC editors making
the perfect recipe to hand off to flim flam global warming salesmen from the unethics school of Enron U .
Or as its affectionately known F U . The folks that brought in a solution to a problem they invented .
They brought us such gems as the Chicago Climate Exchange and government policy to fleece tax payers through never to be repaid loans and grants in the
$$ Billions .
Sweet, unless your the tax payer who is being robbed by the scary climate industry and your own government .
The inconvenient truth is Russia can’t hold a candle to the climate cabal but they are so much easier to blame for some reason .
Maybe just lazy journalism .
60
If it wasn’t the Russians, it may have been Stormy Summers.
She has an appropriate climate change effect name!!!!!!
Fancy her husband filing for divorce because of infidelity. Unbelievable!!!!
20
Has anyone actually asked for the assumptions made in the model? I believe it was made by frontier economics who also have models telling the SA government that if they pile on more and more renewables, prices will drop dramatically.
As a former programmer of process computers (FORTRAN RULES!) I would dearly love to see the code and you can bet there will be multiple parameters (fudge factors) that give a desired result.
Across the industrialised world there is a direct correlation between wind and solar market penetration and electricity prices, yet models program in inverse correlation.
100
“FORTRAN RULES!”
FORTRAN was the first programming language I learned. The local High School had an old IBM 1620 “Scientific Computer” that a local company had donated to the city and one of our science teachers taught an intro FORTRAN programming class on Saturday morning at the High School on that machine.
20
Those “Things”, you mention Peter, are Not Models.
As you clearly state: A Model is Not a Model when it predicts the Reverse of what actually occurs.
Real Models work, unlike those used by our Governments to mislead the public about Global Warming and Electricity Pricing.
These “models” have only one purpose.
To mislead and “tap” the Treasury.
I am thinking now of Marie Antoinette, a “model” for our Solution.
KK
42
All the assumptions are provided in an Excel workbook that AEMO provides publicly. A fundamental input is the need to achieve the various State and Federal RETs. So the large-scale RET is 42,000GWh and is forecast to be met by 2021. The forecast cost to achieve this transition is in the range $8bn to $27bn depending on the assumptions. Obviously consumers will pick up that tab.
The core modelling uses PLEXOS software:
https://energyexemplar.com/news/introduction-to-plexos-2/
Although the software can work at short time interval I do not believe it has been set up for the ISP analysis at the level. Going into actual time of generation for ambient sources results in a much higher cost than using the capacity factors. So this is an easily overlooked fudge that gives the wrong answer.
The report also shows that rooftop solar, termed Distributed Energy Resources(DER), is a cheaper option than using grid scale ambient generators. I am at least pleased with that recognition. It is a point I made in my submission and the distribution owners favoured DER over grid scale generators. While the RET remains it is better for consumers to have higher proportion of DER over grid scale ambients as STCs are about 1/3rd the price of LGCs.
The question that is not considered by AEMO or anyone in government is what is required to provide the lowest cost electricity. So there is no basis to compare the cost of achieving the RET. The RET is a starting point assumption.
The ACCC and AEMO reports are at odds. AEMO have identified that rooftop solar is the lowest cost path to achieve the RET but ACCC has recommended abandoning the SRET but maintaining the LRET. It would make economic sense to get rid of both.
30
This deep state madness needs to stop right now.
https://www.compliancequarter.com.au/new-energy-zones-identified-in-new-south-wales/
30
So that’s what the AEMO is up to.
I had been wondering what they do all day and now I know. It’s called makework.
30
I found these two comments from JoNova informative.
“start building the 1601st new coal plant around the world, start talking about nuclear energy, and stop destroying what was a perfectly good and efficient national grid and market”
and
“Her bias is so all encompassing she can’t imagine a world twenty years hence which still runs on coal and gas”
JoNova is equally guilty of bias in that her comment “start building the 1601st new coal plant aroud the world” is not only misleading but is also misquoting, a piece from the New York Times published July 1 2017 that stated “Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries” (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/climate/china-energy-companies-coal-plants-climate-change.html) The omission of “under construction” significantly changes the emphasisof that comment as it suggests there are 1600 new coal plants under construction around the world. There are not.
By including “talking about a nuclear option”JoNova is being disingenuous as no party currently embraces that option. As Josh Frydenberg said last September:
“Australia has a large natural advantage when it comes to uranium,” The development of a domestic nuclear power industry would not only need bipartisan support but also state-based support. To date the Labor Party has been opposed to it. Any investigation would need a long-dated timeframe and would unlikely address the more immediate issues of affordability and reliability.”
(https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/nuclear-the-energy-alternative-for-australia-none-dare-name/news-story/34bb25412a576fbb343ae02d4365b0c2)
422
Blimey we did get out of the wrong side of the bed today.
Your first point is a ridiculous quibble.
Second point, if no party “embraces” a nuclear option then it’s about time they do “start talking about nuclear energy”.
153
“Your first point is a ridiculous quibble”
Not in the context of my comment. Omitting ‘or under construction” and so altering the emphasis of the statement is hardly a “quibble” as it could give the uninformed reader the impression that far more new coal plants are being constructed than is actually the case.
As for your second point. I agree with you entirely. it is well past time the nuclear option was ioperational. Perhaps you can write to your MP asking when he will push for the introduction of nuclear power. I have
410
Ian, Who uses the junksheet NY Times?
I’m using Coal Tracker (which you’d know if you followed my link in the article). They define “new” as built since 2006 and list 1,027,015MW of New Coal.
There are 2,440 new and old power stations currently operating with a capacity of 2,002,620MW. So the average size per plant is 820MW. If the new ones are the same size there are around 1252 new coal plants. Plus there are 270 under construction and another 500 that have “permits” or are “approved and permitted”.
If Australia started today we wouldn’t be building the 1601st new plant, it would be the 2022nd new coal plant (or so) and the 3210th operating coal plant (minus whatever retirements happen in the meantime.)
Would you prefer I used those numbers?
Or perhaps this is all utterly irrelevant? Tick, yes, “whatever”. If we were only building the 1001th new coal plant, who cares? Everything else about my argument stays exactly the same.
What I’m showing is not bias but something called perspective and satire. How many people in the audience assumed that I meant 1601 as a literal and exact number. I think you’re it Ian.
102
Thanks for your reply Jo. Apologies for taking so long but we have been travelling for a couple of days as we wind up our time overseas. I have addressed your criticisms hopefully in a manner you regard as appropriate.
Thank you for your reply. Yes I did follow your link to your post of July 4 2017 which was headlined:
“Coal Boom: 1600 new plants in 62 countries around the world – increasing 43%.”
I assumed that as you had put in a link to that post there was a connection between it and your comment about the 1601st. Obviously I was mistaken and should not have jumped to an erroneous conclusion. Apparently I was the only one to do that as no one else commented on the numbers. Although an alternative explanation might be perhaps they chose not to.
But this is not my prime concern which is that in two separate posts you have kept relevant information from the reader, namely that the 1600 power plants to which you refer to include those planned but not in progress. I disagree wth your deliberate or otherwise, modification that omits facts that might detract from your message. As you consider this not to be bias I guess it’s the way politics works. As I’m not a politician what would I know about that?
You refer to Coal Tracker defining “new” as built since 2006 and ask if I would prefer you to use numbers that, presumably, corresponded to the Coal Tracker definition. No Jo, I would not have the temerity to even consider suggesting what numbers you choose to use to make your point.
On that, as I’ve written below, the “1600 coal plants etc’ came from the director of Urgewald. I wonder if she knew of Coal Tracker’s definition of new.
.
You write “Ian, Who uses the junksheet NY Times?”
Well, Jo, you do or at least you did in your July 4 2017 post where you gave this link to your readers
“Chinese companies build coal plants — NY Times ”
and gave this extract from the piece which was headlined
“As Beijing Joins Climate Fight, Chinese Companies Build Coal Plants”
“These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal, according to tallies compiled by Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin. Many of the plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are in other countries.
Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.
“Even today, new countries are being brought into the cycle of coal dependency,” said Heffa Schücking, the director of Urgewald.
In fact far from the comments about “1600 coal plants planned or under construction” emanating from the “junksheet” NYT it was in fact coming from the tally made by Ungewald. Are they junk too?
Given your disdain for the NYT why you did not link directly to Urgewald to obtain the information for your readers. The question is, of course, why did you even link to a junksheet?
And credit where credit is due, the “junksheet”NYT did inform its reader that the 1600 coal plants include planned plants as well as those in construction. Of course one could argue that as planned plants will be constructed in the future they need not be differentiated from those under construction
I did spend some time using Coal Tracker, to which you referred, and extracted a couple of databases that are pertinent to the need or otherwise, to differentiate between planned coal plants and those under construction
The data below which expand those data you suppled, are as at July 2018
Power Coal
Stations Plants
1 Announced 164 283
2 Pre-permit 163 290
3 Permitted 111 217
4 Sum (1-3) 438 790
5 Construction 270 491
6 Shelved 503 654
7 Operating 2440 6709
8 Cancelled 999 (2010-18)1705
9 Retired – 1780
(https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kXtAw6QvhE14_KRn5lnGoVPsHN3fDZHVMlvz_s_ch1w/edit#gid=191821593)
The take home message seems to be that there are nearly twice as many (1.89:1) power plants cancelled or shelved (1502) as there are under construction or planned (808). The corresponding figures for coal plants of 2359 shelved or cancelled and 1281 under construction or planned also show nearly twice as many (1.84:1) not progressing as there are progressing.
I think that shows fairly conclusively the numbers of planned coal plants and coal plants under construction should not be amalgamated. to form an exaggerated whole which suggests coal is more popular than it really is.
Applying the ratio of 1.84:1 for coal plants to the headline:
“”Coal Boom: 1600 new plants in 62 countries around the world – increasing 43%.”
it would read :
“Coal Boom: 870 new plants built or planned but 730 shelved or canned in 62 countries around the world – increasing 23%.”
Perhaps a little less heart warming (or should that be hearth warming) for aficionadas of coal but more in keeping with the facts
One final point. The government in Australia may be havering and wavering about coal fired power and but the Brits aren’t. The government states it will close all the UK coal fired plants by 2025. I wonder why the Brits aren’t up in arms, predicting the economic destruction of their country by wind farms and solar panels. Why are the UK Conservatives so much more Liberal then the Conservatives here?
11
Ian,
1. The UK is not using coal because they are one of the few countries on Earth that have used all theirs up. They mined coal since Roman times and ran out.
Nearly all the 20 countries that agreed to stop coal have either got none or got nuclear or major hydro.
2. You ignore my main point — relevance?. My argument is not changed if it is the 1000-th plant or the 3000th plant. Who seriously thought I meant 1601st plant literally and exactly given how long it takes to build them? The number is not misleading, and I even explained how 1601 is roughly in the middle of the high and low estimates. Read my comment #19.2 again.
3. You refer to a six month trend in coal. I’ll stick to 20 year trends:
Fossil fuels, coal, same dominance of our energy mix as 20 years ago
Coal, just became Australia’s number one export (again)
I use IEA key energy statistics.
BTW Pakistan news yesterday: https://www.ft.com/content/5cd07544-7960-11e8-af48-190d103e32a4
PS: Of course I link to junksheets. Sometimes they have useful data that they then misinterpret.
If I didn’t link to junk like the ABC / The Guardian / The SMH, what would a blogger do?
PPS: The first line of the NYTimes quote I chose includes the phrase “building or planning to build”. The second para ” 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction “. Was that the secret I am trying to keep from readers?
32
You write “You refer to a six month trend in coal. I’ll stick to 20 year trends”
I’m sure you will and no doubt rightly so to in the correct context. However that is not the context here
The headline to which I refer (Coal Boom: 1600 new plants in 62 countries around the world – increasing 43%) was from July 2017 not July 1997. What is the relevance of your 20 year time frame? I saw little point in discussing coal stations built over the last 20 years. What relevance has that to a 2017 headline. The following taken from the article in the NYT and republished in your 2017 post states:
“Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.”
That statement uses the present and future tenses only so surely discussing what has happened since July 2017 to the present is more relevant than detailing what had happened prior to July 2017.
I contend the data I gave are more relevant to this discussion than those prior to 2017.
In your original reply you wrote “Ian, Who uses the junksheet NY Times?”
When I pointed out that you yourself do, you write “PS: Of course I link to junksheets. Sometimes they have useful data that they then misinterpret.”
I’m sure I don’t need to comment further on the obvious contradiction between those tow statements.
11
Masterful.
And, Ian, I want to sincerely, most cincerely, apologize for any past posts of myne that have caused the impression that I believed you weren’t wholly debating the science.
Sincerely
KK
12
Thanks Keith that is very gracious of you and of course I accept it in the same spirit in which it was made. if there are future occasions on which we disagree I will ensure my comments are civil and focussed on the science.
Sincerely
Ian
00
Turnbull, boosted massively by the entire mainstream media, left, right and centre, was put in the place he occupies. The media, albeit with sinking heart, still find desperate and twisty ways to keep boosting this inarticulate poltroon, along with globalist automaton Frydenberg. If Bolt bags Turnbull for a bit of Murdoch “balance”, rest assured he will give a pat to Josh, because Josh is a good bloke who just needs to see the light. Josh might even say that coal sorta kinda has a future…to be outlined once the mugs get their votes in again. If Malcolm sinks, Josh might float. And Josh will do all that’s expected of him.
A Turnbull booster will probably appear on this thread, because Turnbull-boosting is one of those long, monotonous, top-to-bottom jobs that can’t be neglected because it defies gravity. A Turnbull will always sink in the public esteem because nobody is likely to trust for long a sly plutocrat who blatantly makes disastrous decisions favouring globalist money-shufflers, corporate lobbies and green carpetbaggers over the national interest. (Did I miss anything? Did a GE light bulb go on for anyone?)
Zibelman has been put where she is because…ah, just see above about “globalist money-shufflers, corporate lobbies and green carpetbaggers” then add the word Clinton, for a nice touch of horror.
Yes. These people are that bad. We need them gone yesterday. If Australians really want Shorten let them at least be presented with an alternative before they decide. We know what Labor will do with the energy, water and migration taps…it’s what Malcolm would do if he didn’t have those pesky back-bench Coalition types from last millennium on his back.
Nothing brilliant or particularly virtuous asked for. Coal power and some kind of alternative. We’ll settle for that.
100
Yes we might as well have the real ALP party instead of the fake LNP party in government. However, the ALP will be worse but that’s the pain we have to suffer to get rid of the fake party. We would run the risk the LNP won’t learn their lesson in which case we might be stuck with the ALP in government for a long time. Then again a significant proportion of the voters actually prefer socialism so what chance is there anyway we would ever get a real conservative or centre-right party to form government? I suspect very low, at least not until we go through the crash and burn scenario at which time most Australians will finally wake up and discover that socialism is death.
90
Realpolitik is finally coming to Canberra in the form of the ginger group, whose politics and principles are based on ‘practical rather than moral or ideological considerations.’
30
Is that wishful thinking or do you have some inside info you like to share with the rest of us?
30
I’m using my intuitive intellect.
20
I can guarantee that there aint no intuition nor intellect in Canberra.
20
The thing is, if I’m wrong then democracy at federal government level is on the skids.
As you know Australian millennials want a dictatorship in Canberra, so if the NEG is allowed to go through without new coal fired power stations then it will be crash and burn for our antiquated democracy.
Too early to call, but I think the ginger group will save the day because at the moment they are destined for the Opposition benches. Key words: Realpolitik will defeat green ideology because of the hip pocket nerve.
30
el gordo our nation has been on the skids for some time now. We now need to stop it if we are to avoid the crash and burn. That requires the people to wake up and be counted instead of treating politics as a joke even on election day. The next federal election will be very telling.
40
I want a fight now.
‘Cabinet ministers are promoting a new ‘NEG-plus’ plan to broaden the appeal of Malcolm Turnbull’s signature energy policy.’ Oz
21
” so what chance is there anyway we would ever get a real conservative or centre-right party to form government? I suspect very low, at least not until we go through the crash and burn scenario”
What constitutes a centre-right party in your opinion?
In the 1970s Fraser welcomed Vietnamese refugees. is welcoming “asylum seekers” compatible with a centre-right party?
In 2001 Howard introduced the RET to encourage growth in renewable energy. Is that compatible with your idea of a centre-right party?
What are your criteria for a centre-right party?
46
Good question. Our major parties are a mixture of left and right flavours of varying degrees so we never had a true centre-right government. Centre-right to me is along the lines of libertarianism with minimal government as distinct from an authoritarian or dictatorial style typical of communism (far left) and nation socialism (far right). Conservative governments are similar to centre-right but the trouble is one can be too conservative and it ends up placing a stranglehold on changes where there are good reasons to do so. Instead conservatism can and often leads to stagnation if one is not careful. Centre-right to me though leaves open the opportunity to allow change without too much government intervention to occur within reason. Of course that’s like asking for nirvana or a benevolent oligarchy but as we all know when humans are involved that’s impossible to maintain for long. I also understand some will disagree with all this as they believe the left/right spectrum is not real and was made up to confuse the masses. There is some truth in that but we still need to use such terms as a reference when discussing political tendencies.
31
Thanks. That’s a good answer. I agree absolutely with your comments on the Conservatives stranglehold on changes as they seem to lack the mental flexibility to even have arational discussion about changes let alone accept them. As for making things up to confuse the masses, there is clearly no need for that
26
Yes people confuse conservatism with centre-right. They are very different. The problem with conservatism is what does one conserve and who decides? Conservatism is defined as the commitment to traditional values and ideas with opposition to change or innovation. The first point usually is good but what are the traditional values and ideas? Most might be good but not all. The opposition to change or innovation is a major problem. Centre-right is better since it allows for the freedom to innovate. The problem though of course it can also lead to bad innovation as well as good innovation. Worse still is can lead to far-right tendencies if kept unchecked. In the end there is no ideal system as long as humans are involved.
21
Conservatism, fuddy-duddy it is not, in fact it is
the opposite, trial and error nature’s way. Case study,
Great Britain, of Magna Carta evolution and innovations
in science and industry.
https://beththeserf.wordpress.com/2016/01/24/36th-edition-serf-under_ground-journal/
10
You obviously use “conservative” in the sense of no change at all, rather than the other sense which is probably closer to the truth – change at a measured pace, or increment.
People deride Abbott and Howard as being “conservatives”, but they changed things, for better (and worse), so it looks like you’re bang out of luck with your assessment of those whom you brand “Conservative”, in my view.
If make a conservative estimate on…something or other, it means it is an estimate which is not making wild assumptions or claims, not that it will never change.
Still, it’s more or less a free world, so you can interpret things any way you see fit.
30
Yes I’ve heard that definition before. The trouble is conservative governments too often are too slow to change resulting with the people changing government for the sake of change. That’s why Howard lost eventually. He was a boring old conservative. If only he used more of the surplus to help start major infrastructure projects he might have defeated Rudd and thus avoided the big spending spree. Admittedly it’s very hard to find the balance between being conservative and promoting innovative change for the real benefit of the nation, and more importantly to maintain it so that voters don’t become so bored and apathetic they vote in a government like the ALP+Greens. In the end Howard failed miserably on that front. I realized Rudd would be a disaster for us the moment I heard him speak on TV yet he won comfortably. Such are the people – they need constant innovation to keep them awake, informed and interested. Howard managed to put people to sleep and Turnbull managed to swindle enough people on both sides into thinking he would be innovative, and as we now know he is not. This is why he has to be replaced soon. The next government if led by either Turnbull or Shorten will lead us to a crash and burn scenario.
01
PeterS it took you longer to slip in Turnbull’s name into this post than it did in the one about human evolution. Glad you got there though – you don’t want to ruin such a long run.
13
Yes Gee Aye but you mentioned him much sooner than I did 🙂 Also what’s your point? Are you a supporter of him and see him doing well managing the nation?
00
Hi Ian,
Fraser – who at best was a Centralist – welcomed ‘refugees’. You then asked if this was any different from ‘asylum seekers’.
(Your terms btw, but actually very important.)
The Vietnam ‘refugees’ were fleeing their place of birth after the West was foolish or fatigued enough to believe that the Paris Peace Accords actually spelt the end of the Vietnam War. The point here is that Australia and others had spent considerable time, money and blood attempting to maintain South Vietnam and the well being of the people who lived there. In 1975 we failed from our POV to protect those people and their country and taking them as refugees was seen as rescuing them from something we failed to prevent.
(Side note – the Left were I believe openly against this if I recall correctly)
Compare and contrast to ‘asylum seekers’. Are they ‘refugees’ who literally have no place to live? Or simply people who think that moving to the West is a good idea because look at all the cool stuff they own?
The ‘Right’ are open to refugees because the Right have pragmatic compassion. They are against ‘asylum seekers’ because they don’t believe they have a real claim.
The ‘Left’ were against refugees in 1975 because their traditional (white male) working class voter base wouldn’t stand for it. They are for ‘asylum seekers’ now because their new inner city latte voter base will stand for it.
Or not.
Discuss.
🙂
30
You got it all there perfectly Mudcrab.
The early Vietnamese refugees were the real deal; grateful for a place of refuge.
They got jobs, lived frugally and paid tax.
Children were encouraged to educate themselves.
I’d better stop there.
KK
20
One of the difficult arts of Turnbull boosting, practised by the likes of Davidson, Devine etc from the very start, is to criticise around Turnbull. The trick is to keep the focus on past Liberal leaders or on Coalition personalities not critical to the globalist screenplay. Malcolm is almost in the background, responsible for nothing, victim of or non-participant in past follies – until something looks like it might go well, in which case he is rushed to the foreground. Even after three years of Turnbull as PM, the subject needs to be Abbott or someone raised from the political crypt unless the news is good, then it’s Malcolm time.
I was pretty indifferent to Abbott and not pinning too many hopes on the Libs when Turnbull was thrust upon us all in the wake of scandals and blunders that could hardly rise above the standard – but which were obediently magnified by the Common Enemy of Mankind (that’s the media, duh).
Remember just how absurd it was. A cheesily grinning Turnbull taking the suburban train while Bishop was mired in Choppergate, miring Abbott with her. Turnbull taking trains for no reason and eating meat pies is about as convincing as bubble-gum machine jewellery, but those in the media bubble are convinced that the punters go for all that. Elections show otherwise…but who needs elections right away?
Then there were those excruciating moist-leg appearances on the ABC in the wake of the Turnbull Spring. We were suppose to get excited that we had a business-genius-cum-renaissance-man as PM, one who could discuss favourite books and cafes with the likes of Leigh Sales, then go mix it with the high end of town. The bubble people were sure it was working. It wasn’t working.
This nonsense would be worth it if Turnbull was any good at all. But he’s a fake-tanned globalist appointee who never met a white elephant he didn’t like. He has to go, so Labor doesn’t come. Labor will still probably come and, with the compliance of the corporate media, proceed to take our economy to the pub. Without Turnbull, Frydenberg and Bishop, the media will turn viciously on the Coalition, catching up for the three years of forced moderation.
A leadership loudly announcing coal as the pivot of our own Energiewende at least has a slender chance. But I wouldn’t wait one more week.
110
If one can get sufficient numbers of conservatives elected into the Senate then that could put a brake on ALP/Green horrors. But unfortunately I do not see that happening. We simply need an enormous electrical crisis before the people are moved to revolt. At present apathy rules.
10
What happens when it does not work? Who pays? Maybe the legislation can come with some guarantees from those proposing it, to be tithed enough of their wealth so that they become subject to the same level of disfunction that the rest of the population will have to endure.
It is laughable that we have imported a Clinton refugee here to make us into an outpost of Clinton corruption. Does she have an email server of her own? Does she keep a hammer near her hard drives? Does she have difficult questions fed to her prior to interviews by network operatives?
70
Guarantees from the National Energy Guarantee? We are dealing with a government that would make George Orwell say “I told you so”.
70
No bias here!
Let us* make it clear,
There’s nothing to fear,
March on, look straight
-Ahead, not right,
And certainly not left,
Just listen up,
Big Brother knows
What’s best for you.
* Turnbull, Shorten,
Soros, the U.N ‘n EU
et Big AL.
60
I will always see only four fingers not five no matter what the party says.
10
While I agree with most of the sentiments expressed here, I fear they are unrealistically optimistic and doomed to failure.
In order to have the solutions implemented that are so obvious to most of us here on this site, the government would need to be composed of competent people who are not just seat warmers.
Think about it a bit: the competent people we require already have jobs and lives they are reasonably happy with. Why would they give these up in exchange for a swim in the swamp and dealing with the human excrement we laughingly call our “leaders”?
Given the choice between root canal work and running for office, anybody who chooses to run for office is clearly identifying themselves as being unsuitable for the office. Kinda catch 22.
Bottom line? We are done for.
100
The West is destined to go through a crash and burn scenario. It’s inevitable. It might be postponed thanks to Trump’s influences but he won’t last forever. One really has to have their head buried in the sand not to notice things are deteriorating everywhere in the West, and I’m not talking about conspiracies. I’m talking about reality backed up with lots of historical evidence. Mankind keeps repeating the same sort of mistakes over and over, and it’s not going to be different this time around. All we can do is look after each other to weather the coming storm the best way we can.
30
Democracies can turn on a dime, as the US has demonstrated many times. It seems we are demonstrating so again. Our fed is raising rates and worried about inflation while the socialist world is still in QE; The US is growing while the socialist world is in stasis, heck, even without really trying the US is reducing CO2 while the rest of the world blabs and fails.
Don’t need to blame Trump; the catylst is not necessarily the reaction, which is collective. The left hates prosperity. If the government can’t ration resources, can’t dole out welfare, can’t manage energy, healthcare,food and shelter with the the implied promise of same being withheld if you don’t toe the line then the left retreats to the university with critical mass of isolated, insolated kooks and the cities where a critical mass of the miserable has collected.
PeterS, the west shouldn’t be considered a monolith. Flyover America is doing better. Trump’s main influence is optimism. All the hate spewn in opposition to things getting better is gaslighting by a group that had control for a long time, and is losing it.
When America came out of the great depression, our government gained a good deal of authority,m and a few of the institutions that had been dreams of the left were incorporated into our body politic. But far more of the “solutions” the left imposed were left stillborn, or in the dustbin of history. Collective farming, government power control, packing the court, the CCC were rejected as the antibodies of capitalism fought the socialist infection. The left failed to cure the depression of the economy, but Roosevelt, optimism, and eventually catharsis of war cured America. We credit him in spite of his policies. And his coziness with Stalin, because everyone knows that it is fatal for an American leader to talk with the Russians….OH! MY!
History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.
It’s happening again.
41
An electric light – not a gaslight.
On Tuesday, the Labor Department reported that in the past 12 months wages and salaries rose 2.8%, the largest single-year pay raise since September 2008. The US economy, in 18 months, has turned the blah & depressing economic performance of Barack Obama’s two terms into a bad memory in the rearview mirror.
People are being made to forget. The noise obscures the past. Focus on the shiny object today is noise destroying history. It was awful. In January 2013, the unemployment rate was 8%. For black Americans it was 13.7%. Consumer pessimism reigned, same for business. Don’t hire, you’ll risk a lawsuit. Ask the government for permission before doing anything. The world of “Dear colleagues”.
With the notable exception of the guy who translated this grim world into “Make America great again,” most politicians , don’t know how to talk about economics as a lived reality, or choose lies over the truth because…..power.
The reality during the Obama years was that people were losing hope. Mr. Obama’s constant speeches about “a job that pays the bills” and “a chance to get ahead” were just mental masturbation. Many commentators on the left proclaimed: “new normal.” Translation no hope but for government.
On Tuesday, the Labor Department reported that in the past 12 months wages and salaries rose 2.8%, the largest single-year pay raise since September 2008. In other words, the Trump economic team, in 18 months, has turned the economic performance of Barack Obama’s eight years into a bad memory.
It’s true for blacks. It’s true for hispanics. It’s true for women. And I absolutely hate myself for thinking in these formulations because it attests to the success of the left in dividing us into groups and ranking us by degree of victimization.
It’s true for Americans. The “new normal” has been buried by the American normal–enough freedom to change things & make them better.
82
History does repeat in cycles if you read the history books. If you consider the fall of eahc and every empire/nation/civilisation since the beginning of time as a rhythm I hate to think what you would describe as a collapse.
00
You can see why this grotesque Clinton-clone, Zibelman, left the USA.
The game was up.
Now she’s trying the same loony green/leftist rubbish that was defeated back where this infection arose.
90
You hired a Clintonista. You got the Clinton results. Its an infection, that can become an epidemic.
Everything the Clintons touched has a residue of self serving slime. Unlike a lot of politically pure ideologues,
Clintonistas are willing to say anything and ally with anybody to get their way; their friends have as much
to fear from them as their enemies if it serves their momentary needs. Ask Bernie.
The Clintonistas have no principle but the acquisition and exercise of power, salted with a heavy dose of self-enrichment.
Sorry.
101
Three quarters of a Century ago, Evil was a Foreigner with a gun.
Today Satan manipulates the radio, TV and Print media and the more anonymous Online influencers.
The Devil no longer carries a gun and is adept at dealing with the very rare individuals who can see the corruption and are silly enough to try to stop it.
We are strapped in for the ride and it’s hard to see it being stopped.
Doomed to inhabit a failed society. Ugly.
KK
61
* More to the point, “What were the smoking?”
10
theirABC had this as their second-top news headline on all their radio news bulletins a few days ago (BBC World Service radio had it as #1):
30 Jul: ABC: Donald Trump ignores New York Times’ plea to rein in ‘increasingly dangerous’ anti-media rhetoric
The publisher of The New York Times has said he “implored” US President Donald Trump at a private White House meeting this month to reconsider his broad attacks on journalists, calling the President’s anti-press rhetoric “not just divisive but increasingly dangerous”…
Mr Sulzberger said he told Mr Trump that while the phrase “fake news” is ***untrue and harmful, “I am far more concerned about his labelling journalists ‘the enemy of the people’. I warned that this inflammatory language is contributing to a rise in threats against journalists and ***will lead to violence”…
“I warned that it was putting lives at risk, that it was undermining the ***democratic ideals of our nation, and that it was eroding one of our country’s greatest exports: ***a commitment to free speech and a free press,” the publisher said…
—
how many of the following ACTUAL cases of violence & harassment (the number keeps growing – it’s up from 538 a couple of days ago) has theirABC covered or NYT covered?
5 Jul: Breitbart: Rap Sheet: ***542** Acts of Media-Approved Violence and Harassment Against Trump Supporters
by John Nolte
https://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2018/07/05/rap-sheet-acts-of-media-approved-violence-and-harassment-against-trump-supporters/
Thursday 2 Aug 7pm US time (9am Friday 3 Aug Eastern Australian time), President Trump will hold a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to campaign for Rep. Lou Barletta.
no major MSM in the US (or anywhere else) is reporting the following hunt that has gone on for weeks:
2 Aug: WPXI: President Trump in Pa. Thursday as manhunt continues for man who threatened him
President Donald Trump will be in Pennsylvania for a rally Thursday as police intensify their search for a Schuylkill County man who threatened to kill him.
Police said Shawn Christy, who has been on the run since June, posted on Facebook that he was going to shoot Trump in the head.
Investigators are continuing efforts to locate Christy, searching woods near Wilkes-Barre, where Trump will hold a campaign-style rally Thursday night…
https://www.wpxi.com/news/top-stories/president-trump-in-pa-thursday-as-manhunt-continues-for-man-who-threatened-him/804104231
27 Jul: Mornng Call: FBI offers $10,000 reward for information on Schuylkill suspect in Trump threat
By Laurie Mason Schroeder
In addition to online threats against the president and District Attorney John Morganelli, he’s also threatened to use “lethal force” on any law enforcement officer who attempts to arrest him, authorities said.
The threats, posted on his Facebook page, were made between June 3 and June 12, according to the indictment.
On June 12, he allegedly wrote, “Keep it up Morganelli, I promise I’ll put a bullet in your head as soon as I put one in the head of President Donald J Trump. Remember where you came from punk.”
Christy has been on the run for more than a month…
***In 2010, Christy, then 18 years old, was served with a protection-from-abuse order from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for allegedly bombarding her with unwelcome emails. The next year, Christy and his father, Craig, were arrested by federal authorities in Allentown on charges of harassing Palin’s lawyers in phone calls.
Christy pleaded guilty to harassment in that case and was sentenced to probation. He served some time in federal prison when he violated terms of the probation…
http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-nws-shawn-christy-fugitive-reward-20180727-story,amp.html
2 Aug: Morning Call: Police: Man wanted for allegedly threatening Trump may have stolen school van
by AMANDA CHRISTMAN
Christy, who’s accused of stealing three semi-automatic pistols, ammunition and other provisions from a relative’s home on Klinger Road in Drums last week, is considered armed and dangerous and should not be approached…
10
a bit more background on Christy. btw most local coverage of the manhunt fails to mention the Palin saga:
27 Jul: RepublicanHerald: THE SAGA OF SHAWN CHRISTY
https://www.republicanherald.com/news/the-saga-of-shawn-christy-1.2366507
00
Hausfather knows best!
1 Aug: CarbonBrief: Zeke Hausfather: State of the climate: 2018 set to be fourth warmest year despite cooler start
Temperatures on the Earth’s surface in the first half of 2018 were lower than over the same period for the three previous years. This was due, in part, to a moderate La Niña event during late 2017 and the first half of 2018.
However, the world is quickly switching to El Niño conditions, which should contribute to a somewhat warmer finish to the year.
Sea ice has been at record or near-record lows in the Arctic for much of the year, but has recovered slightly over the past two months.
Antarctic sea ice extent has generally been on the low-end of normal for the first half of 2018.
With the data now in for the first half of the year, Carbon Brief estimates that 2018 is most likely to be the fourth warmest on record for the Earth’s surface. Depending on what happens in the remaining six months, it could be as high as the second warmest in some temperature datasets, or as low as the sixth warmest in others…
With half the year’s data recorded and forecasts of El Nino development over the next six months now published, it is possible to estimate ***with reasonable accuracy where 2018 annual temperatures will likely end up…
https://www.carbonbrief.org/state-of-the-climate-2018-set-to-be-fourth-warmest-year-despite-cooler-start
10
Of course none of this makes sense, punishing Australians for using coal.
Consider breathing. A quick calculation.
Each person produces 14% CO2. 5-8 litres/minute, say 1 litre of CO2 per minute. That’s 1440 litres per day, 500,000 litres per year. A litre is 1/22 of 44 grams, so 2 grams per litre. Not much but a million litres is 1 tons per person, per year. About a tenth as much as a car but there are more people than cars.
Now consider that since 1940 the world has 5 billion new people, all producing 1 tons of CO2 per year, 5,000 extra Mega Tons, ten times what Australia produces in total.
Australia’s total output is only 576mega tons!
So why are our politicians punishing us, blowing up and shutting working power stations.
This carbon story is all science nonsense of course. Made up. No one believes it. Certainly not Malcolm.
Malcolm and his Black Hand are acolytes of a movement to destroy the democratic institutions which made Britain and Australia great, great places to live. He started with the Royal family and his Republican movement, then the Christians where he prefers another group, mass migration 260,000 per year while stopping the boats and the blatant corruption of the political parties. Malcolm and friends are anarchists and opportunists, running up insane debts to drive Australia into ruin. Why? So other countries can take our coal, gas and oil for any price they want. This is all run by the UN and EU and their close friends, the people behind the Paris Accord.
Consider we are already $700Billion in National debt and soon we will have to pay others for our own gas. As one of the richest energy countries in the world, we are being forced into bankruptcy. Any banker knows why. Turnbull’s Black Hand are openly flaunting that they have fooled everyone.
No bias? Patently absurd. You can’t fight this with facts. It is nonsense.
Since when were windmills reliable power? Nothing has changed in 500 years. The only thing reliable about the sun is that it is missing 16 hours a day.
So how does someone even begin to argue that we can somehow provide adequate power on a stinking hot windless night, so common in this country. No, this is all about bankrupting the country. It’s not about CO2. The winner’s circle is not even in Australia.
91
1 Aug: DesmogUK: Mat Hope: Scientists Urged to Take a Stand Against BBC’s False Balance on Climate Change
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire’s decision to have climate science denier and UKIP supporter Philip Foster on to debate a (non-climate) scientist about whether or not humans have caused climate change immediately drew much ire.
Foster completed an undergraduate degree in Natural Science at the University of Cambridge before teaching secondary and sixth-form schoolchildren in Nigeria. In 2012, Foster organised anti-climate action events to coincide with the landmark Paris climate conference, at which high-profile climate science deniers including Christopher Monckton appeared.
The furore was largely down to Rupert Read, a philosopher at UEA and former Green party candidate for Cambridge, who is now chair of the Green House thinktank, tweeting that he’d been asked to go on but “said NO” after he was told the show’s plan.
“When it was described to me what it was going to be – just a straight back and forth debate between myself and a climate science denier – I thought this was time to say ‘no’”, he told DeSmog UK.
“And when they told me they were going to say ‘we’ve got this heatwave, does that mean climate change is real?’, I thought ‘no, this is not acceptable’”.
“If people start doing what i’m doing and start saying no to them if they’re going to have a climate science denier on to debate, then the BBC will have to start thinking about whether they can do this.”
It’s not the first time that the BBC has been in trouble for offering ‘false balance’ – when two sides of a debate are unreasonably given equal weight – for example, when the reality of human-caused climate change is presented as a controversy despite the overwhelming weight of evidence…
Dr Emily Shuckburgh, a climate scientist based in Cambridge at the British Antarctic Survey, who pre-recorded a segment for the programme, told DeSmog UK that she felt the programme had “tried but failed” to explore how the recent heatwave related to climate change.
“The main problem is that it wasn’t properly explained what the scientific credentials of the participants were, and when incorrect statements were made they weren’t challenged, which is a dereliction of the BBC’s journalistic duty”.
“I think it’s fine for them to have debates, and invite on whoever they want, but it has to be properly explained who is on. And when basic facts are misrepresented, that they are properly challenged”.
Read’s sentiment has certainly struck a chord.
“The reaction I’ve had to this on social media has been far more positive than to any other cause I’ve ever championed”.
“I hope other people will take up this cause and say we’re just not going to play along with your games anymore, you’ve got to make more of a step-change towards the kind of debate we really need to be having.”
A BBC spokesperson told DeSmog UK:
“The Chris Mann show is a topical debate show. The majority of time was filled by expert scientist contributors. There was a much shorter contribution from Phillip Foster whose views were rigorously challenged in line with our guidelines.”
https://www.desmog.co.uk/2018/08/01/scientists-urged-take-stand-against-bbc-s-false-balance-climate-change
10
ex-BBC’s Richard Black (ECIU) beats Zibelman’s doublespeak hands down (with help from Bloomberg):
1 Aug: Bloomberg: Britain’s Energy Bills Are Actually Falling
By Rachel Morison
Energy bills for U.K. households are declining, ***largely driven by a drop in the amount of gas and electricity used in homes.
Adjusted for weather, the average dual-fuel bill fell 6 pounds ($7.87) in 2017 from a year earlier, according to a report by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (LINK), a London-based environmental lobby group. The unadjusted drop was 36 pounds.
Spending on electricity and gas in British homes has fallen by almost 4 billion pounds since 2008, despite tariff increases by utilities that prompted Prime Minister Theresa May to take action to reduce “rip off” charges. About two-thirds of British lawmakers thought bills were rising, according to a survey commissioned by the ECIU for the report.
“Measures to cut energy waste work — reducing energy demand, cutting carbon emissions and driving energy bills downwards,” said Richard Black, director of the ECIU…
Europe is expected to use 10 percent less energy in 2040 than now, according to the International Energy Agency. Data shows that energy use has peaked in many countries, the IEA said…
By the end of the year, the government will cap domestic power and gas prices for those on Standard Variable Tariffs…
Since the introduction of the Climate Change Act in 2008, the average annual energy bill had fallen by more than 100 pounds: ECIU…
All six of the U.K.’s biggest utilities raised bills this year…
Nine percent of the dual-fuel bill is due to the cost of shifting to low-carbon electricity supply and supporting energy efficiency improvements in U.K. homes. That compares with 38% for wholesale costs and 26% for network costs…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-01/britain-s-energy-bills-are-actually-falling-as-homes-use-less
30
That’s what is really puzzling about ‘renewables’.
We are told they are cheaper. That is self evidently not true. (Hepburn Wind is receiving our cash when they have no debts. Why?)
We are told they are reliable. Ditto.
We are told our power stations are ‘old’ when they are not. Their lifespan is infinite.
We are told it is eternal. No, the lifespan of the equipment is only 20 years.
We are told renewable energy is free but so is coal, gas and oil.
We are told they are inevitable and we must move to ‘renewables’. Why?
We are told they are adequate when that is also self evidently not true.
We are told now we have to buy massive batteries from overseas, an entirely new idea which appears to deny all the previous statements.
Assuming no one is actually mad or irrational, why all the pork pies?
Then
We have to fine businesses $100Million for daring to use electricity, which contradicts any idea of adequacy.
We are told we have to pay businesses cash to keep employing people despite the world’s highest energy prices.
We have to pay people to go home because there is no electricity.
What is the real agenda of Turnbull and his Green friends and his Banker friends?
Who is deciding all this? The only ones who agree with this are the Greens and they have one seat in the House of Representatives.
What is going on in our government? Who benefits from all this? It has an explanation. What is it?
91
We are told firstly that humans are increasing the amount of CO2 in the air and then that CO2 is heating the planet because it is a ‘greenhouse’ gas without either of those things being proven.
The entire beatup on Carbon is that coal in solid form is black and therefore dirty, apart from diamond.
In fact CO2 is transparent. The real climate changer is water but declaring water an industrial pollutant is absurd, laughable.
Water is essential for life on earth. Equally so, CO2. Governments have finally taxed breathing.
122
Water vapour is the biggest greenhouse gas, but the models have difficulty detecting its influence.
Nevertheless we do have a problem, stuck up here on the plateau it appears CO2 might cause a little bit of warming.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_July_2018_v6.jpg
02
We know the oceans are warmer. We know evaporation cycles water through the air and oceans, as well as air itself. Would it be any surprise that warmer oceans release CO2 and warmer oceans heat the air, not the other way around?
Everywhere is read coincidence as theory as self evident proof. Any made up theory is immediately correct. In a science argument should have to prove the influence of CO2 or anything else, not just propose it.
42
We could also call water vapour by its real name, clouds. Lord Monckton even published a paper which drew the coincidence between a relatively cloud free Pacific and higher ocean temperatures. I suppose it’s just too obvious and no one is at fault and no taxes can be raised and no elections won on the issue of clouds.
33
A strong La Nina would give us breathing space.
00
El Gordo
CO2 cannot cause specific atmospheric temperature rise.
KK
03
How much CO2 does a human breath out in a year, and what would the carbon tax be on it?
Then how much is the amount of carbon tax that is paid in the course of everyday life? Heating, cooking, aircon, transport etc?
00
Wouldn’t you just love to see some of these self righteous lawyer types answer a few basic scientific questions?
How soon would their positions crumble if the basis for their arguments was exposed as ignorance & “Me Too” meme momentum?
90
Patton,
Right on.
You have been taken to the cleaners by these Elites.
So have I and All of our neighbours.
So I can say “Me Too”
But when The Elites control both the Government and the Legal System we have no Redress.
Democracy can only be restored in one way.
Think; Marie Antoinette.
KK
72
Surely you don’t mean we should eat cake. Do you?
11
I wonder what it is that BHP and Rio Tinto know that the coal advocates don’t? Why did BHP, that gets 20% of its revenue from coal, sever ties with the World Coal Association? Why is BHP targeting zero emissions in the second half of this century? It has cut its emissions by 60% but it is still one of the worlds’s top emitters and it seems passing strange that the world’s biggest miner is pushing the CAGW barrow. Why is it?
Why has Rio Tinto, the world’s second biggest miner, quit coal and is selling more than $4 billion of Australian mines
Jo asks “Hands up who thinks techononogy will save the day and is 100% guaranteed to convert high maintenance, low efficiency energy collectors into something reliable and cheap, and in our lifetimes? ‘
It looks as if both BHP and Rio have their hands in the air. Is that not significant?
These companies are not minnows and are very profitable indeed. Does it not, at least, raise questions among those that believe coal has a future why both these major miners are backing off at speed? (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-05/top-miner-bhp-quits-world-coal-associatin-over-climate-clash)
The answer may be that globally, investors are not interested in companies that are involved with coal. If that is the case then coal has a vey limited future indeed.
A recent report stated “While many miners are bullish on coal, the fuel has become a flashpoint for a growing movement of investors calling for miners to cut their exposure. For example, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund doesn’t invest in firms that make 30 percent of their sales from coal, while the Church of England sets the limit at 10 percent.’
(https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-27/rio-calls-time-on-coal-with-sale-of-last-mine-for-2-25-billion)
If this trend continues the future of coal may not be as secure as many think. It may be easy to dismiss the comments of those who oppose coal as sad losers but that the two biggest miners in the world are backing off coal should definitely be of interest and concern to the coal lobby. Are BHP and Rio biased? I doubt they are. Their bias is only to their balance sheet
Why has the new Minerals Council chief Tania Constable vowed to take a “technology-neutral” approach to climate and energy policy, signalling the pro-coal agenda run by her predecessor Brendan Pearson is dead? Is she biased? Incidentally her appointment was by the MCA not Turnbull.
(https://www.afr.com/business/mining/bhp-will-retain-minerals-council-membership-20171218-h06wup).
I doubt that Audrey Zibelman really is biased as most who get offered positions such as hers are usually too professional to let personal views get in the way of objectivity. Still, perception is reality and if the perception is that she is biased then to all intents and purposes she is.
There seems to be quite a number of straws in the wind that might cause the pro coal lobby to think a bit more deeply about the future of coal. The signs don’t seem too good.
58
Some fossil fuel suppliers are betting that the CAGW politicians continue to win the day and therefore coal that coal has no future; however . . .
One of these days, the pushers of 100% renewable energy are going to find themselves beseiged by angry folks who miss cheap, reliable electric power. Maybe the sooner the 100% renewable people get their way, the sooner the whole system will come down around their ears and the masses will be demanding reliable power — and coal will be back in business.
It’s going to take a while, but seems to me South Australia should be teaching us that it’s foolish to rely on unreliable, undispatchable electric power.
150
BHP and Rio are not where they are by making dud decisions but although both have made some in the past but not about the same thing. Here they are in accord. That looks ominous for the coal lobby but time will tell. However I would not buy shares in Glencore
48
For that reason, South Australia should not be permitted to take electricity from outside…let them really live up to their insistence on ‘renewables’ (which aren’t) and all their sneaky diesel generators and see how they really cope. Same for the ACT.
81
Good points. Profits. The competition in coal is fierce as with steel and BHP was a steel company which totally abandoned steel. Too much competition from China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Russia. Plus like the banks it is politically acceptable to pretend to responsibility. Consider the position of the holier than thou banks in Australia, caught ripping off everyone while pushing the good guy image. Superannuation companies too and they invest your money in such ventures while charging fortunes for nothing at all. A consortium of do gooders in your pockets, like the government itself.
At the same time the miners may be moving to bigger niche markets which are not as crowded. There is big money to be made in lithium, copper, rare earths for batteries and electronics. Uranium, thorium perhaps. Coal is politically dangerous and the current target of the Green extremists but it does take the heat off gas, shale, fracking, diesel. Miners like to go to parties too and hang around politicians and get tax breaks and other concessions.
I would not argue that the coal miners are being socially responsible. Or the banks. Or the superannuation companies. Or the government. At every level what drives such groups are power and cash. The rest is a thin veneer. Big companies made bigger fortunes in WW1 and WW2 and everyone needs banks. All the ethics of a dog on a croquet lawn.
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I would also not argue that the miners think coal is doomed. They are simply chasing the best profits for their investment assets, the next big thing. BHP are out of steel, but steel production is higher than ever. It’s just that Australian steel is doomed in a country where the government is shutting down manufacturing, making energy unaffordable, taxing the trucks, the diesel and making sure they do not use cheap imported labour. Ethics, science, engineering and even the mythical climate change? Nothing to do with it.
120
This is in a country where the leader of the Greens, medical Dr. Di Natal said Whyalla could continue making steel as long as they did not use coal?
It is amazing to me that a medical graduate has no memory of schoolboy chemistry, of reduction the opposite of oxidation, the reducing of Fe2O3 to iron Fe by using C to make CO2. Making bulk steel or concrete or lead or aluminum or concrete from ore without making CO2 is impossible.
So you can see why investors and companies want to get out of this science ignorant country. The really odd thing is that the same people believe science tells them that CO2 is bad for the environment when all life would cease without it? Does Di Natali have no idea he and his patients are carbon lifeforms, made ultimately from CO2 and H2O as carbohydrates?
It might be the lucky country. It is definitely not the smart country. The very discovery which made the 19th century possible and saved the forests of Europe is being fought by the Greens. Meanwhile our politicians deliberately force us into massive debt. Not an accountant among them. Except for Abbott who has a degree in Economics as well.
80
I would also point out that Thyssen Krupp, once the world’s biggest company from the Ruhr valley, are getting out of steel. Just now a merger with Indian Tata steel. Then they will sell the other half. This is the family and the company which funded a certain Mr Hitler. Their investors think there is more money in elevators and plastics, copper and brass. In Australia we have one integrated steel mill left in Whyalla and now owned by Mr Gupta and called Liberty One Steel who is talking sustainability and like a Green politician. Steel and coal are bigger than ever. We are being betrayed by our politicians and the capitalists are surrendering, except for a certain Donald Trump.
100
A quick search and I found this reference to the 1975 Lima agreement ,,,
http://www.cirnow.com.au/what-is-the-lima-agreement/
40
Also worth considering …
https://www.unidroit.org/about-unidroit/overview
20
The Left always alter the language to suit their own nefarious ends. We need to look at the word “renewables”. It is essentially meaningless except for the fact that it has an association with expensive and unreliable electricity production. All fossil and nuclear fuels are also renewable in the sense that the supply is for all practical purposes unlimited for the foreseeable future and at present rates of consumption. Market forces serve to manage consumption and also will cause alternatives to be found if supply ever becomes diminished.
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To all readers of this web page: The October 1977 edition of FORTUNE magazine said we would fall short of energy in 15-30 years. What happened?
50
Lots of nuclear power plants were being built and now lots of coal fired power stations are being built. Australia for some reason is now against both technologies and so is destined to crash and burn if nothing is done about our energy policy.
40
Australians have lived those years on a diet of footy, beer, horses, pokermachines and fairy stories read to them by politicians.
All reinforced by the National Employment Guarantee called the dole.
National Entrainment and Conditioning and now we have arrived in the future and been effectively Disenfranchised and enslaved.
Every Australian Family now contributes $1000 annually to the special invisible Elites fund via the electricity system.
We Are Slaves.
KK
30
National Poverty Guarantee
http://stopturnbull.com/national-poverty-guarantee-2017-2018/
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It is interesting whether the states have a case to get the Federal government out of energy. Of course energy was not part of Federation. Defence, trade, customs between states. The Federal government had no role in minerals and there was no concept of energy. So since the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2001 the Federal government has tried to seize control of this new subject, but in doing so has wrecked the minerals business which is the States exclusive right. Gas is another. Onshore is definitely a States rights issue but offshore should be Federal, except that it isn’t except for defence.
So we have Turnbull trying to control coal (indirectly), oil, gas and energy distribution between the states. Fertile ground for interference in what were State specific issues. Gillard tried to control State education mainly but also the police and the same energy market. Her mining tax was illegal but structured to try and get around this problem. The same with her a carbon tax on minerals. The most deceitful legislation though was the RET, the world’s biggest carbon tax and did not mention carbon and in fact is not a tax but a government enforced payment direct to third parties, illegal under Westminster tradition.
This is where they need the big international agreements to argue that it is part of the Federal government’s purvey to interfere in previously State issues like coal, gas, oil. They need the Paris Accord to give them power.
You get the feeling the country is being run by the massively indulged mandarins in Canberra in concert with the Merchant Banks like Turnbull’s Goldmann Sachs. We are simply the deer in the headlights. Even the explanations for their decisions do not make any logical sense and the pretend science is absurd. We need Abbott back. He is the only one making good sense and he is not a merchant banker or party animal or Union stooge or calculating Green opportunist.
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The Federal government may not have the power under the constitution to legislate the NEG. When the Act appears, if it appears, it will be important to look at the quoted part of the constitution. I would guess they draw on their international obligations and they in turn would be enabled wholly by the Paris Accord.
So walk away from the Paris Accord and any NEG based on it would be come null and void. That must be the first move of an Abbott government after repealing the RET which was never legal.
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[…] all about it. Audrey Zibelman, the improbable green-lawyer manager of our National Energy Market claims her […]
20
At least Audrey Zibelman has some good people working for her in the AEMO operations area to keep the lights on despite the unreliability of increasing amounts of wind and solar.
I think that the problem with the 20 year Integrated System Plan prepared by AEMO is that it simply creates scenarios based on projected government policies. “The modelling is consistent with current experience in the NEM, where new renewable generation is being proposed and commissioned at high rates. Some of this generation is incentivised through the Commonwealth’s renewable energy target, and renewable energy schemes in Victoria, Queensland, and the Australian Capital Territory, and encouraged by an expectation of future government policy in the National Energy Guarantee to support generation with low emissions.”
So they did not consider a free market scenario without the NEG and without 40-50% RET targets in Qld and Vic.
But note one significant statement: “Maintaining existing coal-fired generation up to the end of its technical life is a key element of a least-cost approach.” But coal generation does not have an end of life, witness the new HELE plants being constructed around the world, and Dr Finkel’s estimates for Australia: Wind $92/MWhr without backup, Supercritical coal $96.
The real heart of the problem is the green bureaucrats led by Dr Kerry Schott in the Energy Security Board. They are the ones who could have presented a scenario of no government intervention. “The National Energy Guarantee (Guarantee) is a key piece of the puzzle. It is the first and best opportunity to integrate climate and energy policy to support investment in the right combination of resources.” I haven’t yet been able to locate their “modelling” that reportedly shows we will all save $300 per year by 20/21 without the NEG.
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From National Poverty Guarantee …
One crucial but overlooked point is that Turnbull was aided and abetted in this policy by a group of ultra-ideological, “expert” global warming bureaucrats who run the electricity grid, especially the Energy Security Board Chair, Dr Kerry Schott.
These people allowed Turnbull to place all the responsibility for the promises about the policy on their back, to help him politically. Why are these anti-carbon dioxide fanatics helping Turnbull defeat Labor when Labor policy pushes greater emissions cuts? The obvious answer is that they want to protect Turnbull’s leadership in order to destroy, for the longer term, their only effective opposition, which is conservatives within the Liberal Party.
Dr Kerry Schott, considered the primary architect of Turnbull’s policy, is an eclectic bureaucrat and veteran oligarch who has previously had close connections with Turnbull and the Labor Party. She worked for the investment bank Turnbull started with former NSW Labor Premier Neville Wran and former Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s son, Nicholas Whitlam in the late 1980s. She has also been a board member of the Whitlam Institute, which maintains Gough Whitlam’s archives.
During Turnbull’s time in the Howard Government’s ministry, first as Parliamentary Secretary for Water and then as Environment Minister, Schott was CEO of Sydney Water. They both agreed that Australians must pay higher prices for water to fund global warming-friendly infrastructure (like desalination plants that turned out to be white elephants).
30
Their big fear surely, is if the Liberals are not supporting the renewable scam, they will offer the country an alternative — like Abbott did and which he won 90 seats on. Hence stopping the Liberals from voicing a skeptical opinion is everything. We all know what the voters would choose if they had a choice.
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This is interesting …
“8th December, 1984 – A Business Review Weekly magazine article recognises the seeming paradox of Turnbull, that he has close associations with the Labor Party but his attempts at a political career are all with the Liberals.
“…despite his cultivation of Labor politicians and Labor lawyers, Turnbull had become a member of the Liberal Party, with aspirations to a political career.”
Of course, when you understand that Turnbull lives in a very safe Liberal seat, and needs a safe seat to become Prime Minister, you can understand why he probably has no other realistic option but to join the Liberals. Finding a safe Labor seat to contest as a carpet-bagger is probably not going to work for someone like him.”.
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How did he become a Liberal MP for Wentworth, who helped him and more …
http://stopturnbull.com/a-change-of-tactics-2000-2009/
00
Re my comment on ESB modelling: Anthony Lynham, Queensland’s energy minister, said in a letter to the board sent Thursday that he wanted “the detailed market modelling” for the final design of the National Energy Guarantee. Queensland wants to see the full set of inputs, reports and worksheets that went into the model, Fairfax Media understands.
I second the motion.
“Independent modelling released by the expert Energy Security Board shows that households under the National Energy Guarantee will be $550 a year better off than they are today,” Mr Frydenberg said. “The modelling details assumptions around electricity demand, retirements, fuel costs, batteries, committed builds, state based polices, emissions targets, exchange and inflation rates and much more.”
Bruce Mountain, head of the Victorian-government backed Victoria Energy Policy Centre, said key questions remained about the forecasts made about the policy that could only be answered if the full modelling calculations were released.
“The key question is this: the ESB predicts not a single megawatt of additional generation, renewable or not, with the [policy], than without,” Dr Mountain said. “How then can it predict wholesale prices to be 35 per cent [or more] lower and also say that without the [scheme] renewable investment will halt?”
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On Crikey: If you believe the Energy Security Board (ESB) and Acil Allen’s new modelling released yesterday on the National Energy Guarantee (NEG), you are believing in a fairytale.
This modelling suggests that in a time of unprecedented disruption and technological change in global energy markets, Australia’s electricity system will basically stand still for eight years from 2021/2022-2030. That the only changes are those that are currently planned — closures of two coal-fired power stations — Liddell and Gladstone, the building of Snowy 2.0 and the onward, unstoppable march of rooftop solar.
ACIL Allen admits that their modelling is not meant to be a prediction of the future — they say so in bold font … “It is important to note that the modelling results presented are not a prediction of the future.”
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Being past my “thee score years and ten” best before date, I may not be around to see how this all plays out. However for my grandchildren’s sake I hope it goes something like this.
We will bumble along until the existing coal fired fleet dies of sheer exhaustion and during that time small modular reactors will start to be mass produced and be an economically viable solution.
Once one or two are installed at local substations the public will see that they aren’t the big scary monster the green hand-wringers have made nuclear out to be and public resistance will abate.
A win, win we get to use our uranium, the dirty coal (yes it is dirty, dust suppression is a big big problem) can be used to make liquid fuels or gas for either feed stock or heating.
What’s not to like?
Graham
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It is impossible for unreliables to supply enough power and yet no one will allow any proper power stations to be built.
The deficit of power is being secretly made up by hundreds of diesel generators running at huge expense.
71
The pattern is now clear. Whether they realize it or not both Turnbull and Shorten are gradually implementing policies that will destroy all our industries including the farmers. We currently import fuel, cars, etc., next we will import milk, cheese and meat. Given time we’ll probably even have to import coal if we still have any coal fired power stations. If it were possible I bet we’d be importing electricity by now. I’m really amazed how it’s gone so far already. Farmers as we know are very humble and don’t like to complain a lot. They can’t even if they wanted to because they are too busy growing and supplying the produce we need. I wonder what people will think if we had to start importing some of our milk from China. Will enough care?
40
pardon my total ignorance of correct terminology in the following:
as I can’t find anything documented, will just say I heard on 2GB (Alan Jones, from memory) that the NEG modelling was sent to the media (not 2GB) on Wednesday, before backbenchers(?) had even seen it.
on Peta Credlin a couple of days ago (from memory), she said Turnbull is not taking the NEG to the party room/cabinet (not sure which) before the COAG meeting. instead, he will try to get Labor States on board – whatever that takes – and only then will he present it to his own party room or whatever.
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Yeah that would be his style, good work Pat.
40
3 Aug: Mining Monthly: Australian govt to get US$1B from Rio coal sale
RIO Tinto’s decision to exit the coal business has delivered the Australian government US$1 billion in transaction-based taxes
The company completed the sale of its remaining coal assets in Queensland for $3.95 billion this week.
The transactions include the sale of Rio Tinto’s interests in the Hail Creek coal mine and Valeria coal development project to Glencore for $1.7 billion, and its interest in the Kestrel underground coal mine to a consortium comprising private equity manager EMR Capital and PT Adaro Energy Tbk for $2.25 billion.
Rio Tinto CEO Jean-Sebastien Jacques said the sale of the remaining Australian coal assets delivered exceptional value to its shareholders.
“Once again, I would like to thank the many people across Rio Tinto and the communities in which we operate who have contributed to the coal business…”…
https://www.miningmonthly.com/investment/international-coal-news/1343829/australian-govt-to-get-ususd1b-from-rio-coal-sale
17 pages: 1 Aug: SeekingAlpha: Rio Tinto PLC (RIO) CEO Jean-Sébastien Jacques on Q2 2018 Results – Earnings Call Transcript
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4193471-rio-tinto-plc-rio-ceo-jean-sebastien-jacques-q2-2018-results-earnings-call-transcript
p5: Christopher Lynch CFO Rio Tinto: During the first half, we’ve announced $5 billion of divestments from our coking coal assets in European aluminum smelters. We’ve now received $4.1 billion pretax proceeds from the disposal of our coking coal assets, Hail Creek and Valeria, Kestrel and Winchester South. The bulk of this was actually received overnight, a pretty close timing.
p6: On these proceeds, we expect a tax liability of approximately $1 billion. We expect to receive the remainder of the proceeds from the other sales later in the year. Yesterday, the Board’s approved that the post-tax proceeds of $4 billion will be returned to shareholders, and the decision on the form and timing will be made in the coming months…
Jean-Sébastien Jacques: Thank you, Chris. Let me now share some thoughts on the macro environment. The mining industry has two key drivers; GDP growth and global trade. Overall, the GDP of our group remains solid with positive growth indicators in most geographies. However, global trade is potentially a concern.
Focusing on China a bit, the biggest market for the mining industry. We remain optimistic about the medium to long-term. As expected, growth is slowing, but only modestly, and we’ll see that 6.7% in Q2. Furthermore, the government is introducing measures to support domestic demand and increased liquidity, including fiscal stimulus, which should underpin growth. In addition, China’s policy changes have had a significant and enduring impact on several industries, including the mining sector.
Supply-side reforms and production controls have resulted in capacity reductions, which are unprecedented. This is particularly the case in steelmaking, the outcome of which is higher capacity utilization and improved profitability. The change in industry structure has also led to shifts in iron ore demand, which in turn has given rise to a significant premium for higher-quality product. And that is absolutely good news for Rio Tinto…
Now turning to trade. Ongoing threats to global trade is potentially a concern. History shows fair trade and open market are the best driver of growth and prosperity. We believe this will continue to be the case in the future. In these uncertain times, resilience is absolutely key. That’s why we are so focused on four key drivers; one, driving performance…
p7: Oyu Tolgoi and Resolution are two of the largest copper projects in the industry. Long life, low cost and close to our customers in China and in the USA. Our Canadian aluminum smelters are in the first quartile. Long-term, as demand grows, we will strengthen these assets through continued productivity gains and potentially brownfield expansions.
These smelters are already the greenest in the industry. And the new technology joint venture between Rio Tinto, Alcoa and Apple to create carbon-free smelting will mean an even more attractive product for our customers and further reduction in operating cost…
(note: CFO Christopher Lynch is leaving, to be replaced by Rio Tinto has named former Royal Dutch Shell and Maersk executive Jakob Stausholm)
00
3 Aug: ABC: Indigenous group takes anti-Adani fight to the United Nations claiming human rights violation
By Josh Robertson
(Josh Robertson is a journalist in the ABC’s Brisbane newsroom. He was previously Queensland correspondent for Guardian Australia… As a senior crime reporter and investigative journalist for the Courier-Mail and the Sunday Mail, he extensively covered organised crime and outlaw motorcycle gangs)
Traditional owners fighting Adani’s proposed Carmichael mine in Queensland have urged the United Nations to urgently intervene by formally censuring Australia at a meeting in Geneva this month.
United States-based lawyers acting for the Wangan and Jagalingou (W&J) Family Council have called on a UN Committee to publicly condemn Australian authorities for “violating” an international pact against racial discrimination by wiping out their native title rights.
In a scathing complaint against the Queensland and federal governments and the National Native Title Tribunal, the mine opponents accuse Australia of “serious violations” of a UN convention and Adani of using the “coercive power” of native title laws stacked against Indigenous groups.
Those opposed to the project within the W&J, which is split over a land use deal with Adani that is now in dispute in the Federal Court, accuse the Government of preparing to extinguish their native title claim even if the deal is ruled invalid…
Australia is better than this, lawyer says
California-based lawyer Noni Austin from Earth Justice, who helped prepare the UN appeal, said the mine “threatens to destroy the Wangan and Jagalingou’s ancestral homelands and culture, and their very existence as a people”.
“This is a violation of the Wangan and Jagalingou’s internationally-protected fundamental human rights, and the actions of the Australian and Queensland governments and Adani Mining are responsible.
“The Wangan and Jagalingou are now forced to ask a UN Committee to urgently protect their human rights, because Australia has failed do so, in violation of international law.
“Australia and Queensland are prioritising a foreign company’s profits over the permanent loss of an entire people — Surely Australia is better than this.”…
It comes a day after the Queensland Government revealed it would force Adani to identify the source of the Doongmabulla Springs, a critical W&J cultural site which experts say is at risk of drying up under Adani’s proposed groundwater plan.
Queensland Environment Minister Leanne Enoch also told a parliamentary hearing on Wednesday that her department “has been investigating matters” of environmental compliance around the Carmichael coal mine.
But under questioning by state Greens MP Michael Berkman, she refused to say more than the investigations were “ongoing”.
Ms Enoch said Adani was subject to the state’s “incredibly strict” environmental conditions…
The complaint has been sent to political leaders including Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop, Federal Attorney-General Christian Porter, Australia’s ambassador to the UN Gillian Bird and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.
An Adani Australia spokesperson said the company continued to engage with traditional owners “as we are legally bound to do under the negotiated, agreed and registered Indigenous Land Use Agreements and the Cultural Heritage Management Plans”…
Adani and W&J mine supporters claim the land use deal was supported by traditional owners in an overwhelming 294 to 1 vote in 2016.
They reject claims against the legitimacy of the deal.
W&J mine opponents contend the meeting was “fraudulent” and accuse Adani of discreetly paying thousands of dollars to recruit people to vote, including Aboriginal people with no links to the mine site…
The W&J native title representative group of 12 is now evenly split on the mine.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-03/anti-adani-campaign-by-indigenous-group-goes-to-the-un/10065240
Australia failing to protect Great Barrier Reef
chinadialogue ocean-24 Sep. 2017
From [New] Caledonia, to Hawaii to the Seychelles and Kiribati, reefs are bleaching,” said Earthjustice lawyer and report author Noni Austin…
Countries with coral reefs must do more on climate change – Unesco
The Guardian-10 Jul. 2017
An Earthjustice attorney, Noni Austin, who also attended the world heritage committee meeting, said…
Great Barrier Reef just the tip of the climate change iceberg
The Sydney Morning Herald-9 Mar. 2017
… warming and acidification caused by out-of-control greenhouse gas emissions,” Noni Austin, an Earthjustice lawyer and report author…
Australia failing to protect Great Barrier Reef from shipping disasters …
The Guardian-21 Nov. 2016
Noni Austin, an Australian lawyer at US-based Earthjustice, said the world heritage committee was watching closely
10
comment in moderation re: 3 Aug: ABC: Indigenous group takes anti-Adani fight to the United Nations claiming human rights violation
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Who bankrolls you?
[Sixth auto-bot repeat. Anyone home? – Jo]
00
Is there any country or region in the world operating a successful energy supply system with the infrastructure that AEMO envisages for Oz? The variability of supply volumes would dictate a highly sophisticated comms system linking loads with sources and storage .
That approach would appear to add a couple of levels of unreliability to the supply chain…failure of comms, failure of storage. Given the amount spent to improve distribution system reliability in the past decade(one of the major contributors to the crazy prices for electricity now imposed on us by AEMO and Co ) , adding unreliability to the sources component of the mix seems like a refusal to deal with reality.i.e how many decades of unreliably sourced electricity will AEMO impose on us before admitting 24/7 supply is best provided by coal technology?
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“before admitting 24/7 supply is
bestonly provided by coal technology?30
That’s the other frustration. We are not allowed nuclear power.
In fact we are not allowed to have anything that politicians do not understand. So far waves, hot rocks, windmills and solar cells. It is like being run by the Amish.
There is so much more but despite the billions being spent, we have to do what the windmill and solar manufacturers of China and Germany want.
5,000 ‘The Problem Solvers’™ in the CSIRO spend hundreds of millions trying to even detect Climate Change. They fail. Forget the Bureau of Meteorology. What would they know about Climate?
Now the CSIRO is directed to solve the problem. What problem?
So where are the Problem Solver’s solutions for power alternatives to coal? Why are we even paying for these people? Add them to all the QUANGOES and Agencies and Climate Change people and ecologists chasing frogs and Green is a huge employer soaking up tens of billions of our money. For what? ABC/SBS, government departments are the fastest growing part of our job scene in both numbers and wages. Socialism at work running up government debts. Paid with borrowed money.
Now another $440 million in cash for the reef. No tender. Just cash to stop something which is purely natural and does not need to be stopped, even if it could be.
Imagine how rich this country would be if Malcolm and friends did not spend their days working out ways to send the coal and gas and iron ore money overseas to their friends in the UN, EU and Goldmann Sachs and Julie Bishop did not need another party invitation. Never in our history have Australians owed so much, for such waste by so few. It’s all a game in Canberra.
20
Add to that the disgusting attitude towards our farming industry. We could easily become the food bowl of the world yet our politicians are more interested in letting our agriculture go to dust, literally. Why bother with a defence force when our real enemy is within.
10
Social security and all the other feel good expenditures bleed our economy white.
I don’t have the best memory of these things but the only long term gov funded capital works outside of the cities I recall is the rail extension from Alice to Darwin. No dams, no hydro plants, no nuttin. Everything else has a distinct smell of pork for the cities.
10
I wonder if she understands 1st year physics: “energy cannot be created or destroyed…only transferred”.
The models may transfer money, but not energy….
31
quite funny:
2 Aug: TampaBayTimes: Cool Atlantic could mean a weaker hurricane season
by Josh Solomon
Can you tell the difference between one degree Celsius?
Hurricanes can. At least that’s what Colorado State University researcher Phil Klotzbach is banking on…
“Right now it’s the coldest on record in late July, in the tropical Atlantic,” Klotzbach said. The record goes back to 1982…
“Given how cold the Atlantic is, as Yogi Berra would say, it’s getting late early,” said Klotzbach, invoking the great and quotable New York Yankees legend.
The likelihood of storm landfall was also reduced. Klotzbach estimated Florida and the U.S. east coast have a 63 percent chance of being struck by a named storm, down from the usual 81 percent…
So what’s keeping the Atlantic temperature down? Klotzbach said it’s likely a combination of two factors. There have been strong winds across the Atlantic, and winds tend to churn deeper, cooler water to the surface. Also, the air over the water has been dusty. The particles tend to reflect sunlight before it warms the ocean…
A weaker season would add another wrinkle to the debate hurricane scientists are having about whether the Atlantic Ocean is in a period of relatively high activity, as scientists agree it was from 1995 to 2012, or if it switched to a period of relative quiet. The 2013-16 seasons were slower seasons, and some scientists wondered if the ocean had transitioned to a slow cycle. A slow 2018 season could lend more credence to the theory that the Atlantic switched back to an inactive period in 2013, and last year’s historically hyperactive season was an anomaly.
The cool ocean temperatures, while welcome, were surprising, Klotzbach said.
“In this day in age, you expect everything to be hot, record high,” he said. “So when you see record cold, that makes you pay attention.”
http://www.tampabay.com/hurricane-guide/Cool-Atlantic-could-mean-a-weaker-hurricane-season_170497404
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3 Aug: ABC: Young Greens resign ‘in disgust’ over handling of sexual misconduct allegations
By Clare Blumer, ABC Investigations
Young Greens have written an open letter to the party demanding it “reshape its culture around sexism within the party”, as dozens “resign in disgust” over the handling of sexual misconduct allegations.
Key points:
•Senior NSW Greens politicians Lee Rhiannon and David Shoebridge used social media to air their support for women who appeared on the ABC’s 7.30 program
•Young Greens have made a list of demands in an open letter to the national, state and territory branches of the Greens
•Many said they had already resigned or would resign from the party
The petition comes in the wake of an ABC investigation which revealed the Greens mishandled complaints about sexual misconduct by members (LINK)…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-03/young-greens-resign-in-disgust-over-partys-failings/10069348
00
read all. excerpted the bits which show party meeting comes after COAG meeting:
2 Aug: AFR: Labor states want emissions target to bypass Senate
by Ben Potter & Andrew Tillett
Labor states have raised the stakes in the negotiations over the National Energy Guarantee by asking that the carbon emissions reduction target be enshrined in federal regulations rather than legislation to make it easier for a future government to raise…
The National Energy Guarantee (NEG) goes to a critical meeting of Council of Australian Governments on Friday 10 August. Mr Frydenberg will ask state and territory counterparts to endorse the NEG in principle so that legislation to implement the landmark reform can be drawn up…
A Coalition party room meeting will be held on August 14…
“We’re not rubber stamps,” (Craig) Kelly said…
https://www.afr.com/news/labor-states-want-emissions-target-to-bypass-senate-20180802-h13h8s
00
AUDIO: 12mins46secs: 3 Aug: 2GB: ‘If you’re cheaper, why do you need subsidies?’: Craig Kelly goes to town on renewable energy ideology
by Warren Moore
As some government backbenchers voice fears of an electoral rout over power policy, Cabinet ministers are now touting the merits of a new “NEG-plus” package.
A clear attempt to appease and win the support of its internal opponents, the “NEG-plus” will reportedly add the consumer watchdog’s report to the National Energy Guarantee. Given a key recommendation from the ACCC was for the government to underwrite new dispatchable power generation, it is thought this new NEG is about cutting power costs.
Before this news materialised, Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly caught up with Warren Moore.
He maintains that the NEG, in its original form, will lead to more power bill pain.
“The main concern is about the issue of price,” he tells Warren.
“The Australian energy market regulator, even they admitted that the lowest cost generation that we have at the moment is our existing coal-fired power generators. It’s quite simple.”
“If you artificially force-feed through some legislative mechanism with penalties, if you force-feed intermittent renewables into the grid and you displace that lower cost production from coal-fired power stations, prices can only go one way. That’s up.”
Tiring of renewable energy evangelism and opposition to coal on ideological grounds, Kelly is calling for the subsidies around renewables to be revoked.
“This year through federal government subsidies, there is something like $3.6 billion that gets directly added onto consumers’ electricity bills to pay for the subsidies of renewable energy targets.
“If you’re cheaper, why do you need the subsidies to continue?”
https://www.2gb.com/if-youre-cheaper-why-do-you-need-subsidies-craig-kelly-goes-to-town-on-renewable-energy-ideology/
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There was also a wonderful article in the just past Spectator magazine. The writer was remembering a time when engineers were put in charge of engineering projects. Top engineers. Not politicians or lawyers or public servants or friends of the Prime Minister or career managers. This new class of manager knows nothing about the problem but they know what the person who appointed them wants. Who cares about the facts?
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2 Aug: Carbon Pulse: Ontario formally launches lawsuit against federal carbon price
The Ontario government on Thursday announced its legal challenge to the constitutionality of the federal government’s ‘backstop’ carbon pricing scheme, making good on another of Premier Doug Ford’s campaign promises and setting up a courtroom battle over Ottawa’s attempt to impose its climate strategy on the rest of Canada.
1 Aug: Financial Post: Bloomberg: Ottawa eases carbon tax thresholds to help Canada’s big industries compete
The Trudeau government is scaling back carbon pricing guidelines for some of the country’s heaviest energy users
Large industrial companies in Canada will face an easier carbon limit when Justin Trudeau’s government starts putting a price on emissions next year.
Most firms that produce 50 megatons of carbon dioxide or similar levels of pollution a year won’t face any penalties until their emissions reach 80 per cent of the average within their specific industry. The previous limit was 70 per cent, according to a framework published July 27 by Canada’s environment ministry.
The limit will rise to 90 per cent in four industries facing “high” competitive risks — producers of cement, iron and steel, lime and nitrogen fertilizers.
“We want to have the most energy efficient, smart industries here that create good jobs, at the same time do what we need to do to tackle emissions,” Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna told reporters in Quebec, according to remarks aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp…
***The decision comes after Ontario’s new Premier Doug Ford said he would sue the federal government over its plan to impose carbon pricing on all provinces starting next year. Provinces are also allowed to create their own rules and avoid federal regulation if they accomplish the same goal…
https://business.financialpost.com/commodities/energy/citing-competitiveness-pressures-feds-ease-carbon-tax-thresholds
2 Aug: Financial Post: Feds mull further changes to carbon tax plan amid U.S. tax changes and tariffs
OTTAWA — The federal carbon pricing system for heavy emitters, softened last week to ease the impact on Canadian industry, could be amended even further this fall as Ottawa looks to address competitiveness fears in corporate Canada fuelled by U.S. tax cuts, tariffs and environmental policy roll backs…READ ON
https://business.financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/feds-mull-competitiveness-changes-this-fall-after-easing-carbon-tax-thresholds?utm_campaign=magnet&utm_source=article_page&utm_medium=related_articles
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VIDEO: 8mins36secs: 1 Aug: Bloomberg: Scaled-back carbon tax still ‘economic poison’: Scott Moe
by Rajeshni Naidu-Ghelani
The federal government’s move to scale back its carbon tax policy is not enough to reduce the damage the plan will have on the economy, according to Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who’s calling for Ottawa to scrap the proposal completely.
“Poison is still poison when you water it down. What we’re seeing here today is a watered down initiative of what is essentially economic poison in the nation of Canada,” Moe told BNN Bloomberg in an interview on Wednesday. “It’s not enough. This tax needs to be pulled back.”
Ottawa’s changes to the carbon tax amount to an admission that the tax will make Canadian companies less competitive – something his government has been saying for the last two years, said Moe.
Ottawa’s new carbon plan still doesn’t work, won’t reduce environmental outcomes and will cost jobs, said Moe.
“The federal government would do well to go back to the Vancouver declaration where all first ministers signed on behalf of their provinces and territories to work collaboratively with different provincial plans to achieve our Paris commitments, not this made in Ottawa climate tax,” he said…
In an effort to protect Canada’s global competiveness, the federal government confirmed it was changing the requirement for companies to pay tax on 20 per cent of their greenhouse gas emissions from an initial 30 per cent announced in its original plan…
“We’ve seen no backing up on what this is going to cost families across the nation. Families are still going to pay their 10 or 12 cents on the fuel tax, except in Saskatchewan or possibly Ontario,” Moe said.
He reiterated that Ottawa’s carbon tax policy is flawed and won’t work in Canada if it hasn’t worked around the world.
“[Ottawa needs to] re-engage with the provinces, understanding that the [carbon] plans will look different across our nation. The economy in Saskatchewan is different than the manufacturing economy in Ontario, and is different than economies of Atlantic Canada,” Moe said. “Each province is moving forward with credible plans, they should be recognized and they should all be brought together.”
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/moe-1.1117669
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behind paywall:
Solar subsidy had role in 20pc bill rise: Origin
The Australian-17 hours ago
A 20 per cent spike in electricity prices last year was partly driven by a federal rooftop solar subsidy that crept up as a “sleeper” charge on consumers’ power bills …
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This is a very rich educational thread; thanks to all.
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It’s a bit late to make this comment, but I just noticed that this is the mob that wanted detailed comments on a major policy proposal containing hundreds of pages between Christmas an New Years. A total of 1 to 2 working weeks. Biased, much?
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Don’t forget demand is as important as supply. They have plans for you.
In the UK, part of the grand scheme is “smart meters”. They are advertising them as a clever way to save energy, but of course the real reason is so that they can switch off consumers devices to lower demand when it peaks above supply. Don’t think the greens wouldn’t switch off your air conditioning on the hottest day of summer.
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“Demand management” is Audrey Zibelman’s specialty. She has raved about it on a number of occasions as a form of “generation” in her twisted concept of what constitutes power generation.
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