The closures and “heartbreaking” decisions are escalating as electricity contracts for businesses are being renegotiated in the new era of higher wholesale electricity prices. Family run operations that have survived for 40 years are being destroyed. Years of work, investment and training are being erased.
UPDATE: Dated July 2017
Businesses brace for crippling energy bill increases
Frank Chung News.com
“This is the biggest business crisis I’ve seen in my lifetime,” said Peter Strong, chief executive of the Council of Small Business Australia. “The GFC was managed and it affected everybody, but this is only Australia and we cannot see a solution.
“What we’re hearing is terrible. We’re seeing closures have already started, I fully expect there will be more closures and staff put off. When you’re running a small supermarket, where do you find an extra $70,000?”
Businesses are more exposed to the rapidly rising wholesale electricity costs than householders are, and long term contracts are being renegotiated. As they do, rises of 120% are hitting small businesses.
The price hikes hitting businesses of up 120 per cent — dwarfing the 20 per cent increases faced by households — have been partly blamed on the closure of cheap coal-fired power stations, including Hazelwood in Victoria and Playford in South Australia.
Another key driver has been the high price of gas, partially due to a shortage of east coast domestic supply.
Managing director [of Plastic Granulating Services] Stephen Scherer said his monthly electricity bill had increased from about $80,000 to $180,000 over the past year-and-a-half,…
Blame Tony Abbott, what else?
Sadly Peter Strong thinks the problem is a mythical creature called a “policy deadlock”. The only deadlock in Australia is the poison grip of rampant renewables subsidies which have relentlessly increased year after year without missing a day:
The small business lobby group says urgent action is needed to resolve the decade-long national deadlock on energy policy in the face of what’s being described as a bigger crisis than the GFC.
Mr Strong hit out at the Liberal backbench for being too focused on “ideology”. “The dissenters in the Libs need to shut up and go away,” he said.
“Tony Abbott in particular is the reason nothing has been done. The Finkel Report is a good report and it needs to be actioned. To promise power prices would go down [through scrapping the carbon tax] and to have them go up 110 per cent is one of the biggest policy failures we’ve ever seen.”
Abbott couldn’t have solved the electricity rises unless he axed the RET. Axing the carbon tax helped, but was not enough.
Someone needs to write to Peter Strong. Ask him what kind of electricity and policy kept small businesses running for 40 years.
Unreliable renewables are destroying businesses, the last thing we need is more of them.
Are Aussies EVER going to wake up ?
Sad .
420
We have to remember we are still well off in so many ways. One only has to look at the beaches, the major cities during the day and night, and the like. So most people are still under the illusion that things are OK and will continue as they are forever. Of course that’s what it is – an illusion. The high cost of electricity is effectively a GST increase for us all. Many still can afford it but many can’t. It’s a race as to how much of the population can withstand that “tax hike” and for how long. I suspect as long as the unemployment rate remains low things will continue as they are now. Once the next financial crisis hits though all hell will break loose and it will make the GFC look like a picnic with the unemployment rate exploding to new highs. Then and only then will enough people wake up.
400
We pay three times as much as we should for power. How stupid is stupid?
350
Very, excessively, totally, any of these and doubtless plenty of other descriptions of stupid.
180
But there is a glimmer of hope”
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-carbon-tax-washington-state/
“Climate Change Alarmists Suffer Huge Blow In Deep Blue Washington State”
“Global Warming: Environmentalists were hoping to score a huge victory in Washington state with a statewide tax on CO2 emissions. Alas, even liberals in Washington don’t believe climate change is that big a threat.
“Before the election, glowing stories in the press talked about Washington “taking up the fight” on climate change after President Donald Trump dropped out of the Paris climate deal. The state would make history. It would be a “bellwether,” and would start a trend across the country.
Carbon Tax
“The initiative proposed a $15 tax on each ton of carbon emissions in the state starting in 2020, with the tax rate climbing each year. It would have cost families in the state nearly $1,000 a year by 2035.
“Keep in mind that the proposed carbon tax was a tiny baby step toward what environmentalists’ claim will be needed to avoid a worldwide climate catastrophe. The United Nations says we’d need a global carbon tax of up to $5,500 to achieve that.
“Washington voters rejected even this minimalist step toward fighting what a large majority of them claim to believe is an existential threat to humanity.”
“Think about it this way. Washington is a deep blue state where Trump got less than 37% of the vote in 2016. Only six states in the nation were more anti-Trump.
“Yet 56% of Washington voters rejected the CO2 tax. Only three counties in the state — Jefferson, King (where Seattle is located), and tiny San Juan — voted for the tax.
“Deep Green State
“This is also a deep green state.
“According to a 2016 survey, more than 80% of its residents “are sure climate change is occurring.” More than two thirds (69%) say they support the state’s taking action to reduce CO2 emissions.
“But when it came time for these voters to put their money where their mouths are, they snapped their purses shut.
Washington state was a bellwether, as it turns out. It showed how so many of those who wring their hands about “climate change” don’t actually want to do anything about it.”
After all, if they really believed what climate alarmists are saying — that catastrophic warming is ahead unless the entire world takes drastic actions to reduce CO2 emissions immediately — they’d do anything to stop it.”
50
I observe the Australian effort to make electricity
more expensive from here in the US … where I suspect
we will be next.
I can’t figure out the Australian “energy logic”,
perhaps because I live in the wrong hemisphere?
Australia has a lot of coal.
Australia exports a lot of coal.
That coal gets burned in other nations,
adding CO2 to the atmosphere.
What difference would it make to the atmospheric CO2 level
if more Australian coal was burned by Australian power plants
rather than being burned in power plants located in other nations ?
(other than providing cheaper electricity for Australians)
This Australian energy policy appears to be the equivalent of
“shooting yourself in the foot”
to use an old American expression
My climate science blog:
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
121
Peter S, the high cost of electricity is a de-facto Carbon Tax by another name.
Electricity price rises have been thrust upon us to cover the cost of subsidies paid to Renewables to attract “investment”
A further disaster thrust upon us by the “Climate” industry and the rent-seekers investing in Wind and Solar farms. The future of these “investments” will be a blight on the landscape as the subsidies dry up and their replacement becomes due and uneconomical.
421
And the hardware will not be demolished, just left to rot.
No war, no bullets fired: Just the greatest Money Transfer (please excuse the euphemism to avoid the sin bin), that has ever been perpetrated on Australian Energy users.
The Elites have reaped and reaped and we are being plowed into the dirt like manure.
KK
411
This policy is actually not the redistribution of wealth, it’s the redistribution of poverty!
80
Yep, definately redistribution – of OUR wealth upwards, and THEIR debt downwards.
They think they are immune, but will be the first ones against the wall…
40
Not to mention the environmental impacts of the heavy metals etc in solar panels and the electric generators in wind turbines once these have to be decommissioned.
130
Perhaps the ugliest legacy that is being left for our grandchildren.
100
Yep, we have beautiful beaches to camp on while unemployed….we are the lucky country….
130
This is how it’s supposed to work; destroy the industrial capability of a country, reduce it to an agrarian society and then effectively take it over (by the UN).
The unions are fighting the wrong fight, when our industrial capability is gone, jobs are gone, what’s left for them to fight over?
521
For Marxists the middle class is a major hindrance to achieve its goal which is to never achieve one, while there’s still the existence of people who can of their own free will create and build a private business or career without complete permission from total authority then you can never control a market or the wealth created by it.
The rising cost of electricity is only a part of the scheme, consider the gradual implementation of,
– Decreased censorship within societies leisures and learning institutions.
– The demonisation of religious beliefs.
– The increased reliance on Government assistance to maintain expected living standards.
– A blind acceptance of a bigger government.
– The post war open acceptance of hard left politics within the political sphere.
– The social compliance of the unenforced and unlegislated quasi-law of political correctness.
– The automatic mass public participation for government/NGO organised charities/causes events.
– The belief that complete globalism is a fair system.
– Turning a blind eye or not knowing the dangers of removing the separation of powers.
– A majority belief in the accuracy and integrity of MSM outlets.
– The fear of questioning a failed hypothesis that is being used against their very existence.
– An unknown acceptance of Malthusian ideology through Green politics.
And finally the rise of a foolish and disingenuous belief in the idea the creation and achievements of Western civilisation was wrong and racist despite its ability to adapt with political and technological changes to give an unprecedented amount of people from all backgrounds the chance to live a prosperous, safe and happy life.
I fear for this abandonment of brief sanity.
472
There is nothing in Marx’s manifesto about deindustrialisation , so our greatest enemies are the pseudo marxists.
80
Marxism is about industrialisation, just ask the 10 million peasants starved to death to provide food for the workers in Russian factories.
60
IIRC also nothing in the manifesto that Marx was living on money Engels was diverting from that family business either
10
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/11/ideology-power-left/
30
Thanks for the link.
A really on target description of what’s going on.
KK
20
Correction ‘For
MarxistsFascists the middle class is a major hindrance’They arent Markists they are Fascist, which is taking over the EU, Latin America, North Amerika, and down under.
101
Correct, we are under the subtle boot of a neo Fascist movement, effecting every facet of our lives, families divided and a gag on politically incorrect speak.
The pure Marxists reckon China is a Fascist state, so joining the dots it feels like a fait accompli.
80
Yes. WWIII is well under way. This time instead of bombing the factories, they have conned us into shutting our factories before they get here.
150
Ted it is a pity you are not the Federal seat of Fairfax MP with the same name. I just noted that his electorate in July put forward motions to the state conference (LNP) for a new coal fired power station and an inquiry about having nuclear power. The Ted O’B MP at least stated he voted for the spill (which got rid of Turnbull) as his electorate wanted but it seems that he like all politicians is influenced by the elites and voted for Morrison. Fairfax previously voted in that clown Palmer thinking that as a business person he might turn government to thinking about Liberal principles and private enterprise particularly small business but they were lied to. Palmer is out advertising on TV but there is no chance anyone in SE Qld or Townsville area will vote for him. Can not understand why Palmer is not in jail. He has admitted he committed perjury and backdated documents submitted to court.
80
How would he go as a Democrat with a CV like that?
10
The unions need to read and understand the UN World Government manifesto as set out in Agenda21/30.
110
The Unions won’t do anything and will suddenly find out there all of the businesses have closed and there are no more workers employed and able to pay their union dues. The Union leaders will suddenly discover that there is no one to pay the credit card bills for the flights, hotels, restaurants – and other *cough* expenses.
120
William. “The unions”. We’ve got to have unions. Trouble is, we have allowed communists to run our unions. Even the National Farmers’s Federation is too dopey to see.that by pursuing Economic Rationalism and Free Market Theory they have brought the Marxists half way home to their goal of abolishing private management of industry. Who wrote their Economic Rationalism texts?
These Marxists firmly believe that if they get rid of the bosses by destroying the capitalist system then the workers will take over the factories and keep them producing. That is where we are heading. They know that higher power prices will shut the factories. They believe that “The Workers” will reopen them. And when that doesn’t work, they will claim that the outgoing bosses sabotaged the system.
30
bemused says:
This is how it’s supposed to work
Yep.
And then, along with the rest of the 3rd world, we can make secret deals to subsume our interests to the Chinese belt and road plan.
40
Not until the lights go out.
80
Aussies aren’t as bad as the Europeans. Look at Germany’s delusion it’s not just electricity but EVs. Except Germany has a get out of jail card – French nuclear energy and/or new HELE Coal plants. In Australia the debate is nobody will fund these. I would have thought cheap and reliable energy was a vote winner? Silly me.
50
From the text at the link:
Mr Strong said he never had a debate with his members about “whether climate change exists”. “No one’s ever questioned the renewables,” he said. “Whatever happens they understand we’ve got to do something — we don’t have many climate change deniers.”
Looks to me as though OZ’s problem extends well beyond its clueless politicians.
You have a long way to go before you get a dead cat bounce.
Pray for a Miracle.
401
John, from this site we saw the AGW world wide propaganda machine double its effort after Abbott’s landslide election win in 2013. But a protest vote had denied Abbott a majority in our upper house. Al Gore spotted the opportunity this presented, and somehow persuaded Clive Palmer to “protect” the RET from Abbott’s landslide mandate.
So Abbott was not allowed to abolish the RET. He reduced it by as much as Clive Palmer would allow. Then the Abbott haters blamed Abbott for the RET. This Peter Strong seems to have fallen for that lie, along with many others.
170
For which I believe Al gore should be charged and extradited to stand trial for sedition. Talk about foreign interference in government! The US democrats are experts in it. Just see who pays gillards Salary and join the dots.
70
I owned and operated two small supermarkets in Alberta, Canada for a number of years. Even in cold Canada, electricity for refrigeration was my highest operational cost besides wages. Low margins meant that even a modest increase in this cost could force a money-losing situation and even possible bankruptcy. I fear that supermarket closure or much higher food costs will only be the first result of high energy costs. Would you rather die of starvation or take a chance of a couple of warmer days each year?
401
This is exactly what the UNFCCC wants to happen. We’re moving to an economy where the value added to raw materials is transitioning from mostly labor to mostly energy. The UNFCCC wants to make energy significantly more expensive in the western world by scaring them into undermining their own competitiveness. They are trying to accomplish this with fake science supported by a self serving consensus contrived by the IPCC for the benefit of the UNFCCC and its agenda of penalizing the developed world for being too competitive.
341
The belief in the sermon of free or energy from wind and solar is strong in Australia. There haven’t been many business owners/leaders willing to stand up and decry the economic devastation that is coming with wind and solar and it seems Peter Strong is still drinking the Kool-Aid and pointing fingers in all the wrong places.
271
The story this is linked to is from July 4, 2017. Seems a little in the past for a current discussion.
70
Electricity prices are about to go up again ,this story will be relevant in a years time just as now .
171
Yes Tom, as an old Yaghtie once said about sailing, “yes the wind is free, but everything else costs a motza “.
Same Wind Farms!
180
Coal is free too, it’s just laying there, just gotta dig it up.
50
Here is a note I sent to my senators and congressman:
“I would like to take this opportunity to inform you of the game changing climate change analysis authored by our fellow Montanan Dr. Ed Berry (https://edberry.com/blog/climate-physics/agw-hypothesis/contradictions-to-ipccs-climate-change-theory/). His work builds on that of other respected atmospheric physicists and shows that human emissions of carbon dioxide are only a small part of the atmospheric content and are not increasing that percentage from year to year. His paper will be presented at the American Meteorological Society meeting in January.
This proof should end the efforts to control CO2 emissions as these efforts are ineffective. Along with the recent paper by John Christie and Ross McKitrick showing the fundamental flaw in the IPCC accepted climate models and dozens of new papers demonstrating the lack of correlation between atmospheric CO2 and temperatures should put an end to the hypothesis that we are ruining the climates of the world by using fossil fuels and allow the reassignment of the massive funding to more important things.
I hope that you will use this factual information to help form your decisions concerning Montana’s and the nations future direction.”
Dr. Berry builds on Salby and Harde work and focuses on how it disproves the IPCC explanation of CO2 increase in the atmosphere.
For any who haven’t followed these works I recommend Harde 2017, Kohler et. all 2017 reply. The ensuing process of silencing Harde’s(https://hhgpc0.wixsite.com/harde-2017-censored) response is one of the darkest spots in climate science but has not been covered well on the sites I review. Maybe Jo would consider covering it.
220
If any of this was based on actual science, the AGW meme would have died ages ago.
But it isn’t, these facts that have been known for quite a while, are irrelevant.
1. Human contributions to the rise in atmospheric CO2 are small.
2. There is no measured evidence anywhere that atmospheric CO2 actually causes any warming.
264
It reads well, hopefully eventually some politicians will feel enough of the public understand this to make a difference to their election.
70
Of course hes not the only one, anti AGW theory, besides the ENORMOUS volumes of evidence against AGW, but THEY arent interested THEY only want total world gov control of everything. To get rid of hydrocarbon fuel TOTALLY, make we the people depend on useless ‘(un)renewable’ so called ‘renewable energy’, which a useless term and totally meaningless. WW3 will more likely occur first.
70
I am not sure how this news is being carried to the population in general since Unemployment is at a 6.5 year low (5% there abouts) and inflation for 6 years has been 1-2% and most people have a living wage. So since their view of the world is often only by experience. Things have to be good.
I am absolutely convinced that to have someone believe something about the future, it better be obvious or faith based.
CAGW: faith based
Green Wind mills are great: Faith based
7 month pregnant women going to have a bady: obvious
Hate to say this prediction to most people out there is neither obvious or faith based so it will be ignored. (until it slaps them in the face if real.)
110
Timo,
It’s already slapping the business owners in the face, they know. When an “office” has the $10,000 account move to $30,000 the owners notice.
They probably won’t see the connection between that and the extra work load they are carrying from then on, or alternatively the “letting go” of staff.
KK
110
“Letting go” of staff is the inevitable result. What needs to be done is ensure that staff understand that the extra $20,000 has to come out of the same pocket as theiir wages.
50
How many solar panels would save $20,000 in electricity per year? Could you fit it on a decent sized building roof?
30
No it can’t, then there is the problem of night time solar power… Thats called “solar zero” but like coke zero solar power without any power.
10
Agree Timo. Although a small minority have thought this through to its disastrous/expensive consequnces, for the rest are either faithfull or dont care until slapped in the face.
Trouble is the slaps are spread out over time through billing cycles, contract renewals, supplier behavious etc but the trend is only in one direction and pronounced. Businesses will struggle, some will close now, some later, some survive , cost of living escalates all over time. Do the populace see cause and effect? In the main no I odnt think they do. As long as the manipulators can avoid wide scale blackouts all this will just roll on in a passive society like Australia.
100
Yes Yarpos, think frog in Warming Water over heat source. That is the populace in this energy experiment. There is only one ending, and it will not be pretty.
140
Sadly, the truth is no longer enough..!
It will take a biblical scale revalation to change the thinking of the committed warmists
Infacr considering it like converting a radical islamist to judaism is a easier task !
40
Funny you should say that…ive always said this is a spiritual war. Leftists are anti-christian, as a lot of comitted communists seem to be. Our society is based on judeo- christian values, so they are tearing it apart, bit by bit, creating stress, formenting dissent. SSM was another attack dog. Our society is being actively undermined. In rhe Bible, Jesus took on a man infested with a legion of demons, so why is it hard to consider other demons arent working to destroy our christian-based society?
111
Richard Lindzen has a clear vision of the future.
‘What we will be leaving our grandchildren is not a planet damaged by industrial progress, but a record of unfathomable silliness as well as a landscape degraded by rusting wind farms and decaying solar panel arrays. False claims about 97% agreement will not spare us, but the willingness of scientists to keep mum is likely to much reduce trust in and support for science. Perhaps this won’t be such a bad thing after all – certainly as concerns ‘official’ science.’
Icecap
81
Lindzen has to stop using logic.
40
As senior physicist Tom Quirk calculated and I agree, the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 (the RET) is a hidden and illegal carbon tax of $200 a tonne on coal and $400 a tonne on gas.
This is never discussed, never mentioned by politicians or the press and everyone is left to blame someone else.
As I said directly to Tony Abbott, repeal the RET and electricity prices would instantly halve.
Who does anyone think is paying for all those billions in ‘subsidies’ windmills and solar panels? We are.
430
Tdef it’s not a tax it’s an “impost” or possibly wealth distribution, if it was a tax the politicians would call it a tax surely !!!!!
100
Sure, the Act was a clever piece of public service work from the Green swamp in Canberra. If you read the act, it takes great pains to avoid using the words carbon or tax by talking about what isn’t ‘eligible’. Also taxes under the constitution MUST go into General revenue.
As I explain later, this is mandated, legislated government order with punitive fines and is administered by the ‘Clean Energy Regulator’. You register the sale electronically. Cash goes directly from your electricity retailer to ‘vendors’ of these fake certificates. Fake because they do not exist. Fake because they are worthless. Fake because they are not the property of anyone. A more cunning deception would be hard to imagine and you are right. It is not a tax. So what is it? What would you call it?
Theft.
371
Extortion?
190
That’s a good one.
112
Theft..into the pockets of the banksters..
130
That’s more the point. When a government orders the payment for nothing at all of benefit to us, under threat of heavy fines, it is robbery with menaces. Pay or else. That is not what our government, representing us is not supposed to do. They could not pass a tax, so they have hidden the robbery under layers of impenetrable legislation and within a carefully crafted public utility which aims for ‘carbon abatement’.
Who agreed to this? Not the people of Australia. The politicians say nothing. Even Tony Abbott.
240
In Canberra, there are virtue signalling solar farms that taxpayers paid for but never actually get any benefit from.
Likewise, the gummint spent money promoting the SSM nonsense, but I doubt got public approval to fund it….
Out of control….
70
For those who don’t know, it is illegal because it is not a tax. It is a government mandated payment of money from your electricity bills to anyone who can produce non fossil fuel electricity. Governments do not have this power under English tradition since Magna Carta. They cannot enrich third parties. Your electricity retailer is forced to pay cash for certificates (STC, LGCs) from windmill and solar vendors at a ‘market price’. This is not a market at all as you have to buy them and they are worthless. The government supervises this but the money never goes to the government, so it is not a tax. The Act does not mention carbon once, so it is not a Carbon Tax.
This was introduced by the 2000 Liberal Howard government as a way of funding windmills and solar by the back door. It does not appear in the government as it does not go into General Revenue as every legal tax must.
We are being robbed. About $6Billion a year at retail by the time it hits your electricity bills. For that we get absolutely nothing. Finished single windmills like Hepburn Wind are still receiving $800,000 a year when the windmill is built, finished and has no debt. This is not for electricity. This is a legislated and mandatory gift of our money for nothing. Failure to pay results in heavy government fines.
I have never heard this mentioned in parliament, never read it in the press. It’s as if the world’s biggest carbon tax did not exist.
441
Consider what a government is. Like a body corporate, it does not have any money. As Margaret Thatcher said, it only has your money. This money it can raise by taxes (which must go into general revenue and the budget), fines and fees for service such as medical care. Governments try to raise more taxes such as parking fines for councils and police fines, a form of double taxation after you have paid your rates.
However it is traditional law that governments are not allowed to enrich third parties. They cannot force you to pay anyone else, except when intervening in a dispute under contract law or in fines or orders under criminal law. Forcing you to pay double to your electricity retailer for fund third parties to build windmills, buy and install solar panels is against every Westminster tradition and the prohibition on enrichment.
I said this to Tony Abbott. He said he had not considered it before.
I wrote to John Roskam of the IPA but ultimately the IPA argued that modern jurisprudence would allow it.
In other words, no one cares. The government can do as they please.
Why is money going to people who have built their windmills and have no debt? At $1million per windmill per year. This is not for electricity. As the Act makes clear, this is a bonus. Sales are extra. No wonder AGL wants to shut coal power stations!
The Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 would not stand up to a High Court challenge. What we need is someone like Wilson Transformers (whose electricity bill went up $1Million in a single year) to refuse to pay the RET, challenge the electricity supplier and refer the question of the legality of the Act to the High Court.
We had Mabo. We need someone to challenge this illegal theft.
371
Well put, but who has the money for a high court challenge? Thats the problem, then getting real lawyers to mount the challenge, by real i mean those that arent bought off.
70
Consider Wilson Transformers. The irony is that they are major players in the energy distribution business. They are paying a huge tax in a tough competitive business. Still the attitude of many people including the IPA is that nothing can be done against a rapacious government.
Parking fines, land tax, payroll tax, rates and greed for cash we understand. Forcing the public to build windmills and hiding the theft of billions is unbelievable. The pink batts was perhaps $2.5Billion. The LGC/STC theft is closer to $30Billion and climbing fast and it’s as if it did not exist.
161
You have twelve months before your general election. Get your act(s) together and act now.
40
Tdef… Tom quirk has some physics education and he is old. This is not the definition of a senior physicist.
37
You forgot the most important disqualifier.
Presumably he is White?
KK
61
and hetero male.
21
Poor GA,
Sorry you are incapable of following Tom’s work, being as you have a 10 year old mind and zero physics education.
72
Andy:
make allowances for him being a believer. That means he cannot do simple arithmetic let alone count costs.
The mantra is
“wind and sun are free therefore they are cheap”.
And the cost to build? “that is cheaper than the coming heat”
And what proof is there that there is warming? “97% of
scientistsmen dressed in white coats agree”.The sun doesn’t shine at night and the wind doesn’t blow all the time “storage will solve that”
Who will pay for that storage “the Tooth Fairy”.
71
thanks all for your puerile comments. Mine was a bit hard to refute though wasn’t it?
KK, to quote another white male, “oh you poor baby”.
14
Hard to refute? Any kid with google…
What are your physics quals?
90
I know all that.
Sorry but you know as well as I do that “senior physicist” implies that he is still employed and active in that field and is regarded by his peers as someone leading the field. You know a lot of people who did PhD’s back in your day and have spent their careers doing things different from their chosen field. Not one of them would call themselves or be referred to as a senior medical scientist or whatever.
27
Clearly you have no idea at all. What utter nonsense.
51
nicely thought out rebuke. He even lists himself as a biotech director.
25
“Quirk has worked for resources company, CRA (now known as Rio Tinto).
He has also worked in the United States at Fermilab, the universities of Chicago and Harvard and at CERN in Europe.
He was an early director of Biota, a company which developed an influenza drug.
He has held several positions in utilities, electricity and transport industries including a founding directorship of the Victorian Power Exchange.
Quirk was Deputy Chairman of VENCorp, which managed the transmission and wholesale natural gas market and system planning for the electricity market in Victoria, Australia.
He is also a former Chairman of Victrack, the owner of the state’s railway assets.
Quirk also worked for James D. Wolfensohn in a venture capital fund based in New York City.
Quirk was appointed as a Fellow of the Heide Museum of Modern Art in Victoria, of which he is a benefactor”
So Gee Aye, what are your qualifications in Physics, Gas, Power, Electricity and what position did you have at CERN?
Also a Don at Oxford in Physics. How much more senior can you get? Abuse is not argument.
81
“He even lists himself as a biotech director”
Weird.. GA thinks biotech is not science.
WOW.. can you dig any deeper into your leftist anti-science quicksand, GA? !!
32
Gee Aye
Are you implying retired scientists are not allowed to have an opinion or able to continue research in their
“retirement”? In some cases because they have more time and are not distracted all the meetings and bureaucracy of their former places of employment, they are probably able to do better more productive work.
41
He is not a retired scientist. He left science behind a long time ago – well before retirement age (40 years ago or so) to pursue other interests. He did so successfully and even he does not make the claim to be a retired scientist.
24
No GA, it is YOU that left science behind.. if you ever actually had any.
Tom has remains active in the science field for basically all his life.
He is so far above you in science that you look like an single celled amoeba in comparison.
You are, in obvious fact, a scientific NON-ENTITY.
31
Tom Quirk was the first person (to my knowledge) to suggest industrial CO2 was quickly absorbed into the land and oceans close to where it was emitted.
Roger Pielke found a couple of good papers worth mentioning.
https://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/two-informative-climate-science-papers-by-tom-quirk/
20
“Mine was a bit hard to refute though wasn’t it?”
NO, your comment was a complete and utter LIE. !!
12
For folk wanting to know to what extent Tony Abbott had something to do with this …
Let’s go to the green grifter, Simon Holmes à Court @twitter:
“this reminds me of something a psychiatrist friend told me — when abbott was PM said that more than half her patients brought up tony abbott at some point during their sessions.”
https://twitter.com/simonahac/status/1048948276551024645
Abbott should take solace knowing he lives rent free in so many green heads.
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If Tony Abbott was capable of, and responsible for all the things the media, and useful idiots claim, then he really does have god-like powers.
Possibly the only thing more astounding to me than Abbott Derangement Syndrome, is Trump Derangement Syndrome.
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The Howard LNP Government as part of their Kyoto Agreement signing introduced a once-off 3% RET with no intention to increase the target, it was meant to be a matter for the private sector to consider.
The Rudd Gillard Labor Government raised the RET to 28% and actively pushed for action, the State of SA jumped in first.
The Abbott LNP Government abolished the carbon tax Labor had introduced, and tried to abolish the RET 28% but were blocked in the Senate where negotiations resulted in the RET being lowered to 23% but the Senate would not abolish it.
50
Like another poster here phrased it…The Howard LNP Government installed a big green button and to think their globalist comrades (the ALP/Greens) would not push it, was naive at best. Obscenely negligent in their pandering for non existent ‘green votes’ I would say.
30
At the time of the Kyoto Conference in Japan the “climate change” IPCC agenda was just beginning and most UN members fell for the deception, or at the very least were wary of it but not willing to opt out when most were signing up. Australia therefore signed the Kyoto Agreement but refused to ratify it, that was done several years later by Rudd Labor.
Accordingly, PM Howard declared that Australia would do its best to meet the Kyoto “greenhouse emissions targets” but was not prepared to damage our economy in the process, instead a common sense, practical approach would be adopted and that was done. Australia did meet all the targets and is one of the few nations that signed the Kyoto Agreement that did.
Actually Australia remains on track to meet its modest Paris Agreement carbon dioxide emissions target too. As PM Abbott suggested we would before he was replaced in September 2015. The Paris Conference was held ending December 2015. The delegates returned to Australia and following their report to Cabinet it was agreed that Minister Greg Hunt would go to New York during April 2016 and sign the Paris Agreement. He was sent back in November to ratify the Agreement when the Turnbull Government learnt that the US, that President Trump was backing out of that Agreement.
There is far more to this than “green votes”, they mostly flow to Union Labor. Australia is a small population nation and about 2 per cent of global economy and dependent on international trade. Our government has to tread carefully at times subject to the majority of nations attitude to UN matters. However in my opinion not joining President Trump and our closest allies in dropping the Paris Agreement is foolhardy. After all most nations have decided to ignore it.
20
Yes the problem is one that falls into the category of “until it hits you” type.The only way
people will begin to ask the big question -why do we have an this unfolding economic crisis?
The answer to this will be when the boss says – I can’t employ you any longer because my electricity
bills are too high.Now I’m pretty sure that a few people have heard this answer now.At the
moment unemployment figures across the country are pretty good so these affected people
have moved onto other jobs or the dole.The only explanations Australians have been given
so far by the government is (A) price gouging by energy retailers -and (B) the need to lower
energy prices !!!
Well as I said two months ago -when Mal was shown the door.I didn’t think Morrison would do
anything about it and he hasn’t.Meanwhile the msm and the ABC continue to peddle the same stories
about energy costs and that ridiculous form of it called renewables .Okay things will change
in the future when Labor gets elected and ramps up even more renewables then many more
small businesses will go to the wall and therefore shed employees.However this undermining
of the economy will not be “easily” fixed if at all.Highly leveraged families (with mortgage and credit card debt) will also begin to take a hit when either partner of their dual income join the unemployed.All this will help the decline in housing market values (the market is in decline
now).So for Australia right now there is really no way out of this mess -since it was created
by both Labor and the LNP at the behest of of the UN protocols and agreements and of course
aided and by croney green energy capitalists who have made a fortune out of the scam.
Cheers Mike Reed
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I emailed Craig Kelly to support his view on Climate Change:
I got an automated reply within minutes but was surprised to get this direct response within a day:
I hope my local Liberal rep is tuned in.
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Send Craig a followup:
“Thank you so much for supporting our stance! We will be publishing our understanding of your desire that
a. We must treat the Greens and RET just as we treated the Nazi’s.
b. We must recognize that the Greens and RET have been appeased, as Chamberlain did with Hitler.
(we are so glad you recognized this.)
c.) It is time to go on the offensive and dismantle RET and shove any Greens and the like out the door.
We are so proud to have an MP that is finally ready to stand up to these NAZI equivalents.
Regards”
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?
10
In Ontario, the Liberal leader led her party to ‘decimation’ in the recent election. They lost their party status. She still doesn’t get it:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-hard-to-watch-former-premier-kathleen-wynne-reflects-on-life-in/
The photo says it all.
I hope your local rep is tuned in too. Our new government has a real mess on its hands.
70
She’s? Lovely.
10
Ron Perlman’s looking a bit gaunt nowadays……….
10
What did he say that was wrong?
Craig Kelly MP mocks climate change ‘exaggeration’ in presentation to Liberal party members
“Coral bleaching has been happening for centuries, threats of rising sea levels to countries such as the Maldives and Tuvalu are greatly exaggerated and temperature gains have been grossly exaggerated by scientists.
These are the assessments of the member for Hughes, Craig Kelly, who is part of a Tony Abbott-led speaking campaign to pull the Liberal party back from the centre.
The Guardian has obtained a tape of a presentation by Kelly at the right-aligned Mosman branch of the Liberal party in September that outlines in detail his climate scepticism.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/09/craig-kelly-mocks-climate-change-exaggeration-in-presentation-to-liberal-party-members?CMP=share_btn_tw
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Jo, and others,
Could not be more on topic, The Heartland Daily Podcast,2 days ago.
The High Cost and Market Distortions From Corporate Renewable Energy Subsidies
Not only an American issue, but international one!
https://soundcloud.com/user-694711047/the-high-cost-of-and-market-distortions-from-corporate-renewable-energy-subsidies
15 large politically connected companies have received more than 75 percent of the $19 billion in production tax credit subsidies helping some multi-billion companies pay no income taxes at all. These subsidies are expected to top an additional $48 billion before then finally phase out in 2029. They also cost taxpayers and ratepayers who pay higher prices for electricity from high cost wind farms that often operate when the price for electricity is actually negative, and other sources of electric
70
I posted links to these two charts showing the changes in rooftop solar output from early November 2013 to the same date in 2018 (both weekdays).
This is 2018:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Aq1iAj8Yo7jNgxNdcge5EGWOp6Zq
This is 2013:
https://1drv.ms/u/s!Aq1iAj8Yo7jNgxIjkv7fKHrFsI9h
There is clear indication of the “duck” curve becoming more apparent. But also note that the evening peak in 2018 is around 2GW lower than in 2013. These charts include estimates for “behind the meter use” so the reduction cannot be due to that factor. The remaining possibilities are:
1. Higher prices have resulted in reduced consumption.
2. It was cooler in 2018 than in 2013 so the air-conditioning demand was lower.
3. Improved efficiency has reduced demand.
4. Power price sensitive businesses have closed down.
5. A combination of all of the above.
For some time it has been my view that connecting intermittent wind and solar to the grid would result in its eventual demise. The process is now evident and probably faster than these two charts suggest, unless it is just cooler, because the population growth is masking the real rate of decline.
Energy intensive businesses that do not have an off-grid strategy for their electric power supply will not survive in Australia.
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Even Non “Intensive” businesses are dying: think, accountancy, law and other office type work. The next levels up include food stores, fast food and restaurants.
Meanwhile the government covers the additional unemployment by creating more “funded” learning positions in Universities.
As TdeF keeps saying, this taxation via electricity is almost certainly illegal but it’s O.K. because no government is going to investigate and prosecute itself when they can cover it over. Besides, the hidden beneficiaries are so keen to repay the favours.
Boy, do I hate Politics. It’s disgusting.
KK
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This afternoon a pharmacist explained that her business deals with a huge number of prescriptions every day and uses robotic equipment to pick and pack the orders, and that without that equipment the additional qualified staff required would be unsustainable for the business.
21
It’s possible that it’s all just the accidental blowback from our enviro-neurosis and the need to “tackle” problems which don’t exist or which cannot be controlled.
Or it’s possible that nobody is this thick and that it is a programmed de-industrialisation which stifles energy use onshore while pushing massive energy resources offshore. Like you have an Australian atmosphere to be kept pure and an Asian atmosphere to be used. Everybody knows that makes no sense, but through the Common Enemy of Mankind (reminder: that’s the media, from ABC to Murdoch) we can be accustomed to things which make no sense. Like the Parson’s Green “bomb” which couldn’t even damage itself or the studio-lit roadster in space. The media can make me believe anything and my only defense is that off-button.
As a fully credentialed conspiracy theorist I reckon this is programmed. I’m not saying our programmers aren’t thick. I’m saying nobody is so thick that they’d make a boot manufacturer go offshore to make products which fall apart to stop the sky from falling. Nobody, however neurotically green, is that thick.
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For those who want to know about the management of all the amazing carbon ‘abatement’ schemes, look to the “Clean Energy Regulator” which administers the LGCs and STCs. By ‘clean energy’ they mean a government body to administer the removal of coal, gas, wood, oil, petrol, diesel from our lives.
This impressive, impenetrable and largely unknown body of public servants punishes any company who does not pay their carbon taxes, except they are not called that. Anything but that. After all, Tony Abbott removed the dreaded ‘carbon tax’.
‘Carbon Abatement’ is all administered by this group of public servants. Their job is not to make electricity adequate, reliable even cheap. Its entire mission is ‘carbon abatement’, the shutting down of coal power stations by making them unprofitable.
You see CO2 is the problem. There is a Climate Crisis. The world must stop pushing up the carbon dioxide levels because mankind is responsible for the carbon dioxide levels and they are rapidly heating the planet. Except none of it is true, but that is not the concern of the good people at the Clean Energy Regulator. Carbon is filthy stuff.
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That’s OK, the government can drop all that filthy carbon off on my front lawn. My only stipulation is that it be in the solid crystalline form (for compact storage of course)…
20
The watermelons are going to hit a reality wall over diesel replacement. There is no equivalent solution to diesel power under 10 times the cost, and freight is already a large component of the cost of consumables for our city based population.
30
I personally know someone (retired) who ‘works’ for the clean energy regulator. He drives a large diesel truck and flies everywhere. Last year he took a 5 month holiday overseas and was able to carry on his work via his computer whilst out of the country. Talk about jobs for the boys!
GeoffW
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“You see CO2 is the problem.”You see our western civilization is the problem.”…There…fixed it for you….
The occultists who run the UN / Globalists, have decided ( which is written in their own New Age texts if people want to research them ) that our high functioning economy is impacting thier false god “Gaia”, and so their “Matreia” ( i.e. their occult “christ” ) cant arise while the world is in a high carbon ( dioxide ) state.
So in real terms, they are commiting a form of slow motion religiously-driven genocide – the removal of cheap energy to appease their false pagan god ( “Gaia” ), which will slowly kill many, mostly elderly and children.
They also write openly that some people will accept their New Age “christ”, some will accpet after being “re-educated” and some ( like most Christians who read their Bible ) will refuse, and be offered a “benevolent death”.
The “New Age”/”Age of Aquarius” seems to reek of Nazism….
30
“Mr Strong said he never had a debate with his members about “whether climate change exists”. “No one’s ever questioned the renewables,” he said. “Whatever happens they understand we’ve got to do something — we don’t have many climate change deniers.””
This statement shows clearly that Strong is just another green nutcase, using the small business council as a facade from where he can preach his CC dribble. Back in reality land, the people he claims are CC deniers (who do question renewables) have been sending loud warnings for the past 10 years, that RE equals economic suicide. Ironically, now that those warning have materialised and we are perched at the edge of the cliff, he still pretends that more of the arsenic laced RE is the road to salvation.
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A few years ago Prof Richard Tol estimated the global carbon tax required to achieve the IPCC’s 2C of warming target. That is CO2 levels constrained to 450ppm. Starting in 2020 it would require an initial carbon tax in of around $210/tCO2 in 2020, then escalated by 4-6% a year forever. That is to make the use of fossil fuels unaffordable. (see here)
There are two problems with Australia’s skyrocketing electricity prices as a policy instrument. First, moving to renewables is sub-optimal as it is not a carbon tax. Second, Australia’s policy is not global.
It is not difficult to work out that pushing up electricity prices in Australia will do nothing to stop the rise in GHG global levels, the supposed aim of policy. Neither is the policy encouraging other nations to follow suit. The Paris Climate Agreement (pdf here) specifically excludes developing nations from an immediate obligation to reduce their emissions, nor even from any obligation to timetable the peaking of their emissions. With about two-thirds of global GHG emissions, and collectively accounting for about 100% of the global growth in GHG emissions since 1990, this renders any action by Australia (with <2% of global emissions) pretty much useless.
Suppose in the medical field, patients were forcefully prescribed medical treatments that were both useless and had known painful side-effects. Those who prescribed the treatment would be rightly sued through the civil courts and prosecuted through the criminal courts for negligence. But in climate science and climate policy prosecution it is the projected image of combating dangerous climate change that matters, not the suffering inflicted.
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“A few years ago Prof Richard Tol estimated the global carbon tax required to achieve the IPCC’s 2C of warming target.”
Problem with that is the amount is infinite as NO tax or wiping CO2 from the atmosphere will do a darn thing to the temperature.
00
Its a national scandal that threatens Australian business and households alike. But PM Morrison and ‘NEG’ Frydenberg continue on their merry way with the failed Turnbull power/subsidy policies, and ‘Electricity Bill’ Shorten will be worse.
Self immolation of a nation?
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But Alex Turnbull (Malcolms Son) says electricity is cheapest in South Australia! https://twitter.com/alexbhturnbull/status/1058247443211415553?s=21
It seems renewables are the way to go?
50
That is untrue and he knows it.
What a hide.
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Like father, like son!
GeoffW
31
Peter Strong is the Canberra-based Chief Executive of the Council of Small Business Organisaions Australia (a Ltd Company), the peak body representing small business in Aus.
Members of COSBOA are small business representatives and small businesses themselves. The board of COSBOA is made up of member representatives.
With the attitudes expressed by Strong, small business is going nowhere in a hurry. Anybody that thinks the Finkel Report is a “good report” and not tainted by leftist ideology is not on the page.
Small business will probably go the the wall in droves before their peak body understands the gravity of the green grip on power generation, and governments.
161
I begs the question – do we have any sceptic organizations that have written to groups like this to explain the CO2 lie?
20
Good question. I would have thought one or more of the major sceptic organisations would have come out by now screaming from the rooftops about how much of a hoax the CAGW story has become.
00
Check out the Institute of Public Affairs.
https://ipa.org.au/ipa-today/right-climate-for-nuclear-power
https://ipa.org.au/publications-ipa/parliamentary-research-briefs/ten-points-about-the-paris-climate-agreement
And the Australian Taxpayers Alliance. Add your name to the petition supporting their nine point plan.
Scrap The Paris Mandate
Provide Certainty For Gas & Coal Investment
Abolish All Green Subsidies
Support Struggling Families, Pensioners & Businesses
Unleash Australia’s Natural Resources
Supporting Land Owners
Incentive state-based energy competition
End Gold Plating & Boost Competition
Legalise Nuclear
20
“Abbott couldn’t have solved the electricity rises unless he axed the RET. Axing the carbon tax helped, but was not enough.”
Far from solving “electricity rises” (sic) Tony Abbott did the exact opposite.
Judith Sloan in The Weekend Australian August 12 2017 (https://tinyurl.com/yboe9sfm) succinctly summed up Abbott’s woeful contribution. In a piece headlined “Tony Abbott’s RET, emissions policies made energy policy a farce” she wrote:
“Tony Abbott may have seen the light on energy policy since ceasing to be prime minister. But when he had the top job, he made two fatal mistakes.
The first was to agree to the renewable energy target being renegotiated rather than ditched or paused. The second was to agree to the emissions reduction targets of 26 per cent to 28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030 as part of our commitment to the Paris climate agreement.
What was he thinking? He may claim he acted on the basis of dodgy advice — and there was an overabundance of it at the time (and still is) — but he was warned on both matters.”
Abbott is now prancing around insisting Australia leave the Paris Agreement, an Agreement to which he himself both committed Australia and stipulated the commitments Australia would make.
He and he alone is the architect of the problems with Australia’s energy policy and to insinuate otherwise is merely an attempt to rewrite history.
Both Turnbull and Morrison are being unfairly excoriated for sticking to Abbott’s commitments that continue until at least 2020. Don’t blame them blame Abbott.
42
I don’t understand these ‘targets’. They are aspirational and have no force in law, as far as I can see. The Clean Energy people report on the targets but it is the LGCs and STCs which rip the money from the public and pay for all the windmills and solar panels. They are the mechanism for killing the coal power stations, not targets.
However targets do focus the public mind as the problem pushing up prices when they are as far as I can tell, irrelevant. Set them at 200%. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is the river of money coming from the public, not the government. Governments do not pay for anything. We do. About $1million cash per windmill per year! On top of what is paid for the power at the world’s highest rates. These windmills pump cash and we pay for them but do not own them.
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Ian, I don’t read the Australian, but I reckon you and Judith Sloan are very right to be outraged by retention of the RET and by emissions reduction targets of 26 per cent to 28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030 as part of our commitment to the Paris climate agreement.
Too many Murdoch readers have just been opponents-on-principle of Tony Abbott and mindless boosters of that bungling, inarticulate wastrel, Malcolm Turnbull. It’s great to encounter two such vigorous opponents of the RET and the Paris agreement as Judith Sloan and yourself.
50
A totally fair description of Abbott and the criticism is spot on .
10
Please explain how the Abbott Government with a Senate minority could abolish the RET when the Senate majority refused to cooperate.
Or not at least accept a RET reduction offered to the Government?
More AbbottAbbottAbbott and don’t let the facts stand in the way.
Like that claim that Abbott signed the Paris Agreement, ignoring that the Paris Conference ended in December 2015, PM Abbott was replaced by PM Turnbull in September 2015, that the Paris Agreement was signed in New York in April 2016 and ratified in New York in November 2016.
The Abbott Government Cabinet was dominated by Turnbull and his Black Hand faction who were working to overthrow their leader. Of course Cabinet got what they wanted in the lead up to the Paris Conference and PM Abbott had no choice but to accept. PM Turnbull could have changed the targets taken to the Paris Conference.
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Didn’t Abbott repeal the carbon tax with the same senate ? If Abbott stuck to his conviction of climate change was crap not flip and agree it needed to be addressed my opinion of him would be different .
Abbott never signed the Paris agreement ? I thought Bishop went over and signed while Abbott was still PM but I might be mistaken .
One thing I do know is Howard started the rot and don’t give me the “he only set a small target” , he opened the door and let them in .
31
The 1998 El Nino occurred at a good time for the IPCC. That was about the time I started to take a serious look at Global Warming and no doubt many others did as well. At the time I was involved in a dam design in North Queensland and trends in rainfall were a key concern
The first time I looked at a long term temperature record in any location in Australia was 1999. I was a lot less concerned about global warming after looking at the temperature data for Broken Hill; a place I lived in for a while and knew it had not changed much in a hundred years. It also had a solid scientific and engineering community for a long time so I felt the historical data would be as reliable as anywhere. It was hotter in the 1890s in BH than the 1990s. A while later I was given a booklet from a CSIRO scientist who refused to toe the party line on Global Warming, resulting in him being shown the door. That increased my skepticism.
In Howard’s defence he would have been listening to a whole heap of government funded voices proclaiming the dire future of Global Warming. Rudd was the big mover with his dramatic increase of the RET in 2009.
You need to cast your mind back to your thoughts on Global Warming two decades back before expecting pollies to have an accurate crystal ball.
The insanity no prevailing where adding more intermittent generation to the grid in the vain hope of lowering electricity prices is simply that – insanity.
90
Again I agree with what you’re saying and yes I was a warmist too until I decided to look further but I didn’t have advisors being over paid by the millions to give me advice either .
50
Abbott signed the Paris agreement but made it clear that Australia was not going commit to anything until all of the major “polluters” were on board. Bishop ratified it, but it was still non-binding. Turnbull’s NEG, however, would have made emission reduction binding, with penalties in place for non-compliance. Thankfully that UN loving infiltrator is out of the picture.
When Howard set up the target it was merely 2% if I remember rightly. This is not enough to effect the cost or stability of power generation, but was a sop to the climate fanatics (not that they expressed any gratitude).
60
There was the Paris Conference the ended in December 2015.
Prime Minister Turnbull was appointed in September 2015.
During April 2016 Minister Hunt travelled to the UN in New York and signed the Paris Agreement.
When the Turnbull Government learnt that President Trump’s America was rejecting the Paris Agreement Minister Hunt was sent back to New York to ratify the Paris Agreement.
The original Howard Government RE was a “trial only basis” as part of many initiatives of the government aimed at meeting Kyoto Agreement emissions targets and that was around 2000. Labor introduced the RET in 2009 after forming government in 2007.
PM Howard always maintained that his government was only prepared to tackle “greenhouse gas emissions reduction” if the measures implemented did not harm the economy, they preferred what PM Abbott later called “direct action” measures such as a plan to better utilise LPG as a transport fuel because most produced here was burnt off due to a lack of market demand.
The confusion about PM Abbott’s role in the Paris Agreement is based on a Cabinet media statement earlier in 2015 relating to a decision by the majority of Ministers as to the emissions (carbon dioxide) reduction target that the Minister responsible would take to the Paris Conference in France later that year. I understand that PM Abbott did succeed in the target being lower than many of his Ministers were calling for.
From 2009 to 2015 Tony Abbott was the leader but never had the full support of his Cabinet. The Turnbull Black Hand faction worked to undermine him, “relentless negativity”, anonymous leaking to media, etc., and effectively that resulted in a poor image of the Coalition generally.
It interests me that IF the Paris Agreement is good for Australia why do politicians and media try to blame (blame?) Tony Abbott for signing it which is untrue?
40
Abolition of the carbon tax was an election mandate so the Senate had to take that into account, and they did.
30
You, like many others, do not seem to fully understand the procedures laid down for the Paris Agreement. Abbott has admitted he did sign the initial commitment. This is what was reported in The Guardian on June 19 2018 (https://tinyurl.com/ya5pslyp),
“Tony Abbott has claimed he was misled by bureaucrats before he signed Australia up to the Paris international climate agreement in 2015 during another sortie by government conservatives against the national energy guarantee”
The subsequent signing of the Agreement by Greg Hunt to which you refer, was a ceremonial affair in which representatives from 175 countries formally signed the Agreement.
Clearly by this time what they were formally signing was the commitments previously made in 2015, in the case of Australia by Tony Abbott. These representatives didn’t just arrive and sign a blanket statement saying “we agree with the Paris Agreement”
With regard to your comment:
“The Abbott Government Cabinet was dominated by Turnbull and his Black Hand faction who were working to overthrow their leader. Of course Cabinet got what they wanted in the lead up to the Paris Conference and PM Abbott had no choice but to accept”
That is not the case. This is what Abbott is reported to have said at the time.
” In announcing Australia would adopt an emissions reduction target for 2030 of 26% to 28% on 2005 levels, Abbott said: “There’s a definite commitment to 26% but we believe under the policies that we’ve got, with the circumstances that we think will apply, that we can go up to 28%.”
.
Those clearly are not the words of a man reluctantly acquiescing to the demands of the Cabinet but of a man actively pushing the commitments Australia would make. Finally you write:
“PM Turnbull could have changed the targets taken to the Paris Conference”. By the time he became PM the commitments were already sent. And of course the Morrison government has just stated Australia will honour these commitments.
PM Turnbull could have changed the targets taken to the Paris Conference.
31
Well, Ian, it’s just reassuring to find someone as thoroughly outraged by the RET and the Paris agreement as your good self. You and Judith Sloane together make a great team for condemning the worst excesses of Green Blob in Australia.
So many attack Abbott over onions and winks. But you’re exclusively concerned by any role of Abbott in the destructive waste of the RET and the Paris agreement. No matter which personalities we attach most blame to, the RET and Paris agreement are certainly on the nose. Your outrage is well justified, as is Judith Sloane’s.
Of course, Abbott lies well back in the past. He was two PMs ago. The question is what to do about the obscene RET and the execrable Paris agreement now. They’re still with us.
60
‘Obscene’RET and ‘execrable Paris agreement? Say, moso…
why hang back?
40
Sorry. Next time I won’t miss.
But isn’t it refreshing to read Ian’s comments? So get so many old ABC-transfixed GetUppers nagging on about their personal resentments of Tony Abbott and conservatives. But Ian is concerned exclusively by the foul RET and insidious Paris agreement.
The Blob’s in trouble now.
40
Rubbish Ian, and I note your source is The Guardian, maybe you have a Faux Facts source too?
There were no commitments until Minister Hunt signed the Paris Agreement in New York during April 2016, the Paris Conference was a meeting for discussions and Australia tabled the target our government was prepared to accept.
The Paris Agreement was later ratified by Minister Hunt in New York during November 2016.
Ian have you ever heard of “cabinet solidarity”, that members of a cabinet usually stick together and do not publicly criticise one another or cabinet decisions and therefore an honourable prime minister accepts cabinet decisions and in public supports that majority decision?
By the way, Australia did meet all Kyoto Agreement emissions targets using direct action initiatives, and Abbott also referred to this, and that the target for consideration at the Paris Conference were achievable too.
Why do you want to blame Abbott for the Paris Agreement?
What is wrong with it that PM Turnbull does not want to be responsible for signing, as his government did?
50
After reading and familiarising myself on Abbott I have to agree his achievements of fixing the Border mess that Rudd Gillard Rudd started ,repealing the Carbon and Mining tax were in themselves major milestones .
Seems I’m guilty of placing more weight on the failings of his Government than the achievements he made .
And while the stuff ups were many and varied those few achievements should be recognised .
31
Good.
31
I think we have to face some facts. One, the government will not fix the problem. Two industry will not force government to fix the problem. Industry groups supposedly working for business interests are no different to government. Too many sectors of industry are profiting from the madness.
Let the system collapse. Let the businesses fail. Let our energy system destroy the economy. Only when people really suffer, it seems, will they wake up.
130
It’s our government. They represent us. Letting them ruin the country is not a great move. Making them responsible is the question.
This whole mess is Federal government created. Rudd wanted to nationalize all communications, thus the NBN. Gillard wanted to nationalize schools, police, mining. However it is the Liberal party which has nationalized power when there was previously no problem at all with prices or supply at a State level and no need at all for a ‘national grid’. All this comes from the year 2000 foray into National energy at the Federal level. The disasters in South Australia and Tasmania are a direct result. The coming disaster in Victoria a direct result.
Governments were pushed out of electricity in the 1990s, selling off the power stations, sometimes for nothing. However the swamp has fought back and now private companies are involved in shutting down power stations to participate in the free for all on electricity generation and replaceables. The Liberals are also up to their armpits in this at a Federal level, which is why they say nothing, do nothing. It’s all posturing.
170
The idea that this is all for the greater good somehow is absurd. Even if it were true, the US, India, China, Russia, Africa, South America, Central America, South East Asia, Pakistan are not participating. So why are we suffering? Greatest stupidity challenge in our generation. I think that’s what Rudd said.
180
I do know one thing, if it gets really, bad, were off…..
10
Where would you head then? I still think that the UK and Australia are good, despite the utter, seemingly wilful stupidity of governments in both countries.
20
Annie:
And Australia is warmer.
20
North Korea !
00
? we’re off
00
Gillard also wanted to nationalize education. These are all State matters under Federation. Really the Federal government was only for defence, duties and customs, immigration. Birdsville for example was a State customs collection point.
Thanks to the invention of a National income tax, the Federal government have most of the cash and get around the Constitution by abusing section 96 where they make ‘donations’ to various states and to universities.
“96. Financial assistance to States
During a period of ten years after the establishment of the Commonwealth and thereafter until the Parliament otherwise provides, the Parliament may grant financial assistance to any State on such terms and conditions as the Parliament thinks fit.”
Otherwise all these areas, including power are State responsibilities and power generation was tied to coal mining and gas, still exclusive State rights.
The creation of a new laws about a Electricity was a simple move by the swamp to move all power, literally to Canberra.
In fact the so called Global Warming crisis was an unmissable opportunity. We never needed a National grid. Perth is still not on it. We never needed an NBN either. Nor Snowy II. The biggest waste of money in a lifetime has come from mad politicians and scheming Greens public servants in Canberra. Money flows like a river. After the sale of Telstra control of Communications moved to Canberra with the NBN and after sale of the State electricity generators, electricity control moved to Canberra and no one noticed it! The swamp grew and grew and public servants created the innocent looking RET, not a Carbon Tax at all.
The Clean Energy Regulator? What? Sir John Monash would be horrified. Billions being given to windmill operators for simply owning windmills for which we paid and not for power at all. If the first was ‘subsidy’, the second is theft. Plain theft.
101
Yep I see it the same way Tdef ,all major political parties have no regard for the people anymore .
The only thing now is popularity and selfies and saving the planet for our own good , Australia at this time needs a real alternative to the three major socialist parties ,and while the ACP have faults at least their singing from the right side of the song sheet .
71
Gullard is a hard core Socialist,. and knows the value of indoctrination via the lefty-controlled “education” system.
I met her once, pre-PM days, I was underwhelmed.
What I know now, just confirms what may be her red-ragger component….
51
Yes, privatisation plays a part but it’s the economic distortions of forcing fossil fuel generators to pay up to 3 times their nominal cost of production to buy certificates that distorts the market such that AGL profits more from adding trivial amounts of intermittent unreliable energy than significant amounts of low cost HELE coal or nuke energy.
What the government needs to immediately do that is entirely within its power is to immediately reduce the penalty for failing to surrender certificates to $1 per MWh from $80 per MWh . Jo if you read this, can you immediately call for this. Maybe on outsiders.
20
If our government really wanted to represent the people, as we the people expect, as is our right when we vote for representatives, those representatives would not rely on UN Treaties to get around the Australian Constitution.
There would be referendum to enable voters to decide what we want, no UN Agenda 21 and Agenda 30 being implemented with little or no accounting to us.
No man-made global warming caused by carbon dioxide hoax accepted and the Paris Agreement signed and ratified based on reducing carbon dioxide emissions resulting in economic vandalism by deindustrialisation and financial damage to all business ventures, resulting in ever increasing cost of living for the people.
Our only defence is via the ballot box at elections.
I will not vote for the major parties in the Senate. In the House of Representatives I will not vote for a major party candidate and therefore deny them the $2.70 a primary vote they receive from the Electoral Commission paid by taxpayers.
Hopefully the next government will be from another hung parliament, 2010 but forming government next time much more difficult based on so many alliances needed to form a minority alliance government.
40
Just to repeat the trend in wholesale electricity prices in Victoria per AEMO:
2015/16 $46/MWhr
2016/17 $67/<whr
2017/18 $92/MWhr
2018 since July $86/MWhr
It's harder to find the trends in network costs that make up about 40% of consumer electricity costs, but the ACCC report into retail electricity prices indicated that for Vic, the network asset base increased from $10 billion in 2006 to $15 billion in 2017 (constant 2016$). I wonder how much of that was due to additional control systems and network upgrades to cope with the growth in distributed intermittent wind and large solar and rooftop solar?
And Vic gas prices per AER:
3Q 2015 $4.68/GJ
3Q 2016 $8.83/GJ
3Q 2017 $8.57/GJ
3Q 2018 $9.43/GJ
With forecasts of $12-15/GJ this summer due decreasing supply and increasing demand.
Now tell me again how electricity prices are going to decrease with more intermittent generators coming onstream.
50
Robber, the network costs component is an important issue, but difficult to get accurate detail. The Victorian increase in network assets of $5bn over 11 years (say $450m per year) will be the costs of new additions less depreciation of existing assets. Therefor the actual expenditure on new infrastructure is likely to be more than $5bn. Most of this must be due to network expansion, although bushfire repair/improvement since 2009 will have an effect.
It would be reasonable to clearly know what proportion of this new capital is required for new renewable projects, and this must be added to the their true cost.
30
so many good comments regarding the most shameful aspect of the CAGW scam. it’s a topic that receives almost no media coverage, apart from the odd individual business case being cited.
certainly Abbott played a part in getting us into this mess, but perhaps he has had an epiphany of sorts.
11 Nov: Guardian: Alex Turnbull would fund moderate independents to fight Abbott and Joyce
The financier and son of deposed PM says he wants action on climate change and would back ‘small-L liberals’ not brutalised by the party machine
by Gabrielle Chan
Turnbull said he would both donate his own money and help raise funds for the right candidates in key government seats. He named those held by Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce and energy minister Angus Taylor.
“If [the hurdle] is a money thing, you would be surprised at how much could be raised,” he told Guardian Australia…
“The issue is, if you are going to win, you need someone with local credibility, who is practical and reasonable. Their only real barriers are cash and organisational support. Cash often solves organisational issues.”
Turnbull said he would personally donate if the National Farmers Federation president, Fiona Simson, chose to run as a independent in Joyce’s electorate of New England…
In Abbott’s Sydney seat of Warringah, Atlassian cofounder Mike Cannon-Brookes has also offered to donate to Jane Caro if she decides to run against Abbott…
Alex Turnbull said at issue was how to scale up campaigns to give people “some support”, but candidates needed to be locally based, particularly in rural and regional areas.
“I want action on climate change but it can’t be chia seed-munching hipsters in rural electorates,” he said…
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/11/alex-turnbull-would-fund-moderate-independents-to-fight-abbott-and-joyce?CMP=soc_568
8 Nov: Guardian: Energy minister Angus Taylor may face former GetUp chair Anne Coombs at election
The journalist and activist is considering joining the movement of independents seeking to dislodge Coalition MPs at next election
by Gabrielle Chan
Coombs, a former chair of GetUp and founding member of Rural Australians for Refugees, confirmed she was considering a challenge to Taylor in the southern New South Wales seat of Hume.
“The fact that Angus Taylor is supporting coal and encouraging new coal mines while not biting the bullet on climate change is crazy,” Coombs said…
The National Farmers’ Federation president, Fiona Simson, who was the first NFF president to place climate change on the public agenda for farmers, has been urged to run as an independent against Barnaby Joyce in New England. Simson is understood to be considering her options…
Also in northern NSW, the Coonamble-born IT businessman, Charles Tym, has donated to a startup political movement called “Anyone But Nats” with a former state independent candidate, Rohan Boehm, to challenge the National party, with a focus on action around climate change.
The dairy farmer and agricultural leadership mentor, Lynne Strong, said she had been approached separately by three people to run as a locally based independent in Gilmore on the NSW south coast, currently held by the Liberal MP, Ann Sudmalis, on a margin of 0.7%…
Strong has had a high profile in agriculture. She won the inaugural Bob Hawke Landcare Award and the National Landcare Primary Producer Award and is a member of Farmers For Climate Action…
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/09/energy-minister-angus-taylor-getup-anne-coombs-election
29 Oct: Guardian: Farmers federation’s Fiona Simson urged to run as independent against Barnaby Joyce
Simson is considered one of the few people in the NSW seat with the profile to challenge former Nationals leader
by Gabrielle Chan
She attended the Rural Women’s Award on 15 October, where a number of people urged her to run against Joyce…
It is understood Simson is considering her options as her three year term as NFF president expires in November next year…
30 Jun: Guardian: ‘We’ve turned a corner’: farmers shift on climate change and want a say on energy
Podcast: Why farmers are getting behind the science on climate change
by Katharine Murphy
Fiona Simson, a mixed farmer and grazier from the Liverpool plains in northern New South Wales, and the president of the National Farmers’ Federation, says people on the land can’t and won’t ignore what is right before their eyes. “We have been experiencing some wild climate variability,” Simson tells Guardian Australia’s politics podcast. “It’s in people’s face”…
Simson isn’t trying to pretend black is white. She acknowledges the Neg looks a whole lot like the emissions trading scheme that her group shouted down only a couple of years ago. “I think the Neg for us is some sort of ETS potentially. It certainly talks about carbon and putting a value on that. There will be a price on that and there we go.”
She says it’s time to see the climate change-driven transition under way in the energy market as opportunity, rather than something to resist…
She is supportive of the efforts of the agriculture minister, David Littleproud – a next-generation Queensland National – to reset the resting disposition for the Nationals on climate change and energy. Littleproud is happy to acknowledge that climate change is happening and he characterises the shift to renewables as “exciting”…
20
[…] At last it seems that a leader in small business has roused from his torpor and said something. […]
10
“Al Gore Claims Wind and Solar are Now Cheaper than Coal”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/11/10/al-gore-claims-wind-and-solar-are-now-cheaper-than-coal/?cn-reloaded=1
Quotes this thread too
21
In comments
” Joe – non climate scientist
November 10, 2018 at 3:33 pm
At a micro level, the marginal cost of producing an additional kilowatt of electricity from solar or wind is significantly cheaper, primarily because there is no fuel costs. Numerous studies show that the marginal cost of renewables is cheaper than fossil fuels.
However, what is ignored and / or intentionally misrepresented are the fixed costs and the macro costs. As such, the overall costs of renewables remains significantly greater than fossil fuels”
50
Another comment
” HotScot
November 10, 2018 at 4:46 pm
Duncan Smith
You’re gonna love this.
From the BBC, no less, the standard bearer of everything climate alarmism.
Government-subsidised plug-in cars may never have been charged
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46152853
Hybrids always on petrol
70
And on Prince Charles
” jorgekafkazar
November 10, 2018 at 10:56 pm
Talking to plants, if done close up, bathes them in CO2-rich exhalations, thus helping them to grow. Even so…
…Long live the Queen!”
60
I nearly wet myself laughing when I first read that.
40
Australia is heading down a path of investing three times what it should cost to keep electricity flowing.
1. There is the existing coal and gas based system that needs to be operational and maintained.
2. There is grid scale wind and solar subsidy farms that are being built at a great rate.
3. There are small scale rooftop solar and some batteries being installed by low intensity electricity users because grid power costs are so high due to the combination of 1 and 2 that it is now cheaper for residential and small commercial consumers to make their own.
I would put the odds of the RET being terminated in Australia within the next 5 years at about 1 in 10,000.
50
NSW is working flat out to force up power prices in that State to get ahead of South Australia:
https://www.afr.com/news/nsw-turbocharges-grid-to-tap-wind-and-solar-power-surge-20181108-h17oaf
This is a subsidy farmers dream. Here is the government encouraging TransGrid to spend $2500M on the high voltage network to enable connection of $28000M of subsidy farms and interconnect to the existing farms in SA.
Does anyone know where this money comes from? Answer – Banks. Does anyone know who pays for it – Answer – Thoes financially disadvantaged consumers who cannot afford to make their own electricity.
This is the party line:
Downward pressure This is just plain rubbish. There is no way that all that investment is being made without the prospect of a good return. So there is the existing coal assets that are needed and must make a return or will close; leading to blackouts. There is all this massive new investment in the grid that will make a handsome return. And then there is bill shock and favourable transfer payments providing incentive for owners of roofs to make their own electricity and rooftop solar is increasingly lucrative as grid prices rocket to the moon.
The NEM is in long term demise as an economic entity. Anyone living in the hope that it will improve is delusional. The whole situation is insane and the inmates are in charge of the asylum. South Australia has the most expensive electricity in the developed world and all other Australian States are trying to emulate that sad fact. (Not sad for subsidy farmers though)
At 1pm Sunday 11Nov SA rooftops were producing 795MW out of a total load (including behind the meter estimates) of 1366MW. So just under 60% of the load from rooftops alone. In 4 years the grid demand in SA will be zero through the middle of the day. That is where the rest of Australia is heading but about 5 years behind.
40
To pay for this “renewable” nonsense we must continue to “sell the farm”. Foreign debt incurred by Australians acting privately represents more than 100 per cent. of GDP. De-industrialisation must surely reduce GDP; terminating coal exports—as climate change enthusiasts insist—makes Oz not only a laughing stock but completes the process of making the place no longer an independent nation.
South Australians, I have little doubt, would happily become a dependency of China. The exhibition at the State Library, “One mountain, one river, one sage: Treasures from the Shandong Library” (link) is curious. For English speakers the curating of the pieces is minimal; in one case nonexistent. The whole, though, does seem directed toward speakers of a Chinese language (Mandarin, presumably). Particularly noticeable is the notion that one people can have a “cultural heritage” and, by implication, another (English-speaking) may not.
Australians face a range of frankly dreadful decisions. What will follow is anyone’s guess. But the behaviour of elites in government and elsewhere offers little encouragement. The public turns to “circuses” with relief: so much easier. Remarkable all round and just one hundred years after the effort to win a war raging on the other side of the globe but affecting Australians’ interests intimately. So often we read (or hear), “Lest we forget”—forget what?
20
C. Paul Barreira:
I don’t get down to the State Library much these days, living just up the road from you, but I imagine that they are partly influenced by the number of chinese students who are there busy studying unlike australian students in ‘snowflake’ courses.
Incidentally, it doesn’t matter what chinese language they speak, the written language has the same meaning e.g. the same symbol may be pronounced ‘Jo’ in the north and ‘chow’ in the south but means the same.
20
Basically, Graeme No. 3, you are right. Although I have argued with a number of people about the conscientiousness of students, regardless of origin. What is clear from North Asian students and visitors is the shock—sort of pleasurable, certainly of envy—at the very easy loads of study that prevail in Oz, well, South Oz anyway.
Further, numerous people have said that students from North Asia wish to improve their facility with the English language. And yet does anything happen of that sort. I doubt it. After all, government here has laboured—remarkably successfully—to reduce the capacity of English in South Australia to communicate anything much. Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Tractatus (allegedly) remarked:
No questions allowed either, which matters little in the absence of language.
20
Of course the theft will only accelerate.
After real,private,businesses close their doors our politicians will then offer government grants and tax benefits to “support local business”.
Regan had that pegged..something about tax business to a standstill,then subsidies “winners”.
Strange how such chosen ones are always rewarded by party affiliation.
CAGW,Climate Change or whatever they are calling it this week is an open assault on civil society by the people paid to protect and maintain social order.
No matter which way you twist the evidence these facts stand out.
Our bureaus are engaged in Policy based Evidence Manufacturing.
These activities are blatant and freely admitted to.
The Precautionary Principle being an open admission of such.
Ditto their own words of too many high priced imposers of policy.
Westminster traditional government relies on Evidenced based Policy Manufacturing reversing the two leads straight to revolt.
And rightly so.
My problem is I am fat and comfortable,even though I recognize the demise of our comfortable society in the actions of these fools and bandits.
Government has declared war on the citizens,eventually the citizens will react.
Power generation,of the electrical kind, is too important to our current technology to be entrusted to Government Control.
I have come to visualize “Government Help” as adding sand to your gearbox.
Seems our transmissions are chock full of sand.
71
How long before someone has a go at building their own Thorium reactor in their garage ?
30
Probably never. Thorium is harder and more expensive to prepare for fuel for the reactor, and is more radioactively hazardous in the short term. Better off working on a ZPM 🙂
20
Too bad, its the size of a small suitcase and could have been used on Martian missions.
10
Not so fast. For an informed thorium/uraniumsynopsis, go here.
Thorium ‘wins’ hands down, except when it comes to weapons, and there’s the rub.
20
J. Martin:
All uranium fuel reactors can be set to burn thorium. Equally firing up a thorium reactor requires starting with (highly radioactive) U235.
It would be safer and far cheaper to install a diesel generator.
10
In effect, it is already being done…by private companies.
Several independent companies are developing small modular Thorium reactors to sell commercially
00
So in a market where profit rules (this includes the state owned operators who have to pay a dividend to their respective government owners), to make more profit by chewing up small business is just good business, as small businesses cost more to service. We saw this when supermarkets chewed up the corner stores, using a cheaper in bulk cost model. In this case, the energy market manipulators are able to hide behind the renewables smokescreen, which in terms of predatory capitalism is a gift. This sceptic, for one, is not buying it.
30
I’ll second that.
Economies of scale dwarf small business, but if a small business continues to operate, even under difficult conditions, then the big boys use predatory pricing to squeeze them out of the market. I speak from experience.
30
Interesting commentary from Nick Cater (Director Menzies Research Centre) in the Australian. In 2014 investors were warned off coal shares by Choice and the Australia Institute.
So? New Hope shares have nearly tripled in value in only two years. At the same time shares in Green Infigen have more than halved. Those who bet on Green energy against coal energy are six times worse off in just two years. Universities for example. Superannuation funds.
Coal prices are simply soaring past what poor countries can afford, thus saving the planet, making capitalists richer and condemning whole populations in poor countries to misery without heating or electricity. Caring people these Greens. The right word is selfish.
80
Don’t kill the patient — Iatrogenesis
10
Then today..
‘Victoria’s Daniel Andrews refuses to heed the lessons of his fellow Labor left government in South Australia by announcing an ambitious plan to ensure that 40 per cent of the state’s electricity will be generated from renewables such as solar and wind in only seven years.
Mr Andrews is ratcheting it up a notch by proposing to enshrine this target in law. Like something out of the ABC television satire Utopia, he promises that this will “drive down prices, attract billions of dollars of investment and create thousands of local jobs”.
To try to reach his mandatory target, Mr Andrews will adopt a Tony Abbott-style direct action policy to use taxpayers’ money to directly subsidise renewables projects from the budget.’
At least this is honest, legislating to use tax payers money to subsidize more Green windmills and Solar Panels and being accountable for the expense in the budget. Publicly he talks about having his own RET. It shows Daniel Andrews does not understand the Federal RET either.
The underlying principle of the Federal RET is that it is off budget, secret and massive and makes coal, oil and gas unprofitable. Unprofitable he understood when he increased the price of Victoria coal in one day by 300% to force the closure of Hazelwood. Unbelievably his energy minister said a price rise was long overdue. It worked. Now Enron/Hazelwood pay us nothing for our free coal. Who is better off? Not the people of Victoria.
The new class of politicians look after themselves. Like the crooks who ran Victoria in the 19th century, buying land and running public railways through them.
The number of snouts in Green troughs world wide are beyond counting. The people who vote for Green policies are almost invariably the middle class beneficiaries of theft from the poor, the elites. All frequent fliers, especially to conferences on stopping other people from flying or having electricity.
110
The fact is , Andrews HAS learned from SA….
He has learned that you can get away with this stupidity (he is a politician after all !)..and retain his position as Premier , buy just going with the popular green view.
He doesnt care about the situation 5-10 years down the road,..he wont be around.
Its just a simple political move to grab power for a few more years.
The real fault lies with the voters in Victoria who will return him and his lies back to power….
…..probably using illegal polling tactics as they did last time !!
60
Actually, we can blame the Libs etc ( state and Federal). also, for not highlighting the stupidity , and serious dangers of the Andrews policies and taking a hard line against them.
Somer is coming, and SA is already on life support from Vic generators, so hopefully there will be some clear demonstrations of the future results of these green policies.
60
Wow!…that was quick !
Maybe someone is listening in or reading us here…
Libs propose new power plant in Victoria..
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-12/liberals-promise-new-power-plant-for-victoria/10487870
Posssibly only Gas, ..but irs a step in the right direction.
30
Interesting the Tones luv here.
But…think back to 2013. By far the biggest stuff up that Abbott made was alienating what was in many peoples opinion a RW friendly Senate.
Abbott had a Senate that the Libs could have worked with to prosecute their agenda. That the Senate the australian people elected and as PM he has an obligation to accept that and work with it. Instead, they went the born to rule we have a mandate shut up and vote how we want route. FAIL. As long as the Libs are scared of the right wing MP’s and their capacity to wreck (because of tight HoR numbers ) they are crippled.
Still, on current polling, long term trends (the scary thing for the Lib/Nats), and recent actual election results, its a change in Govt at the next election, hopefully a workable Senate for the incoming Govt, and a period of stability (LOL!, anything being more stable than the Libs) where there will be more policy and governance done than party / club games.
35
“anything being more stable than the Libs”. What like the rudd/gillard/rudd years? Surely your memory is not that short? Both parties are the same Anti-Australian rubbish these days. The Libs have a handful of good guys but they are being swamped by the Photios black hand poodle brigade who actively conspire with extremist Getup against fellow MPs! Can you list things that these Liberal MPs you mention have done or said that make them ‘right wing’ and what have they ‘wrecked’ exactly? It seems anyone to the right of Hanson Young is a ‘right winger’ these days.
31
Who cares? Its ancient history, AND, whats apparent is that the ALP have learned the lessons of it that the Libs have obviously missed.
Lots of data out there that the RW of the Libs led by Tone, no sniping ot wrecking, Abbott are NOT appealing on policy basis to the center voters that the Libs NEED to not get a complete shellacking come election time. But they and their supporters are delusional enough to ignore that?
No worries though. Will get sorted by the australian electorate in the “only poll that matters”. 🙂
42
Energy policy, NBN, Budget, debt and deficit, Higher levels of tax / gdp…consistently…….doGs too many to list.
But, delusiona conservative keep lapping up their assertions. Funny, but a staple of our politics at the moment.
34
Yes Phil Labor have a lot to answer for don’t they .
11
they wrecked themselves
52
That’s what i find just so weird. I think they will continue to do so until they have a good thrashing, 2-3 terms in opposition to get the lessons reinforced and rebuild on sustainable lines.
33
Don’t worry. When they lose the election I think the Liberal party will disintegrate. A new party will be formed on the Centre Right and be in a prime position after Labor makes their usual mess in the first 3 years.
If you don’t agree about the last see today’s Australian and Bowen’s article. You would agree with it.
51
“I think the Liberal party will disintegrate”
What “Liberal Party”?. They have already disintegrated
Turnbull knifed the real leader of the party, and it became the leftist suckophantic Turnbull party
Morrison has yet to make the necessary correction to put the once-was Liberal party back mon the map.
There is NOT enough room in Australia for three leftist parties., ..
.. yet that is what the Turnbull aka Morrison party remains, one of the parties of the left..
42
You should know that until the climate war is fought and won the Party will remain fractured, so Morrison needs to wave his hand like Donald and say CO2 doesn’t cause global warming.
In other nooze …..
Rail infrastructure, they already have a plan to build a VFT network from Beijing to Melbourne.
‘Bill Shorten defends Daniel Andrews for joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative, arguing the deal was part of the “normal day to day work” of state MPs.’ Oz
50
Unless they do a good cleanout in the aftermath of the election though (which should have happened post Howard but didn’t) they will just find something else to fracture over. They need to show an ability to learn, and not get dragged to the extreme. Trump has gone to the extremes and look at the results of the mid-terms? As more counting comes in getting harder and harder to spin it as anything other than Repug embarrassment. 🙂
21
Mid terms you say Phil ! Using the last three presidents mid term results in their first year just how did Trump go with his mid term ?
10
A dive off into irellevancy then robert? These results on where we are now, Trump did not do well. Had a good laugh at the number of Repug candidates Trump actively endorsed and how many of them lost.
00
The Liberal Party has to return to its base, centre right, which is hardly extreme.
‘…they will just find something else to fracture over.’
The moderates in the Party who refuse to accept that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming, will be demoted and marginalised. On all other issue they will fall into line.
00
The punters are betting Labor will win $1.25 and the Coalition has drifted to $3.50. They are also confident it won’t be a hung parliament.
A thrashing is foreseeable.
20
The Liberal Party has no-one to vote for them…
And are making zero effort to bring back people you once voted for them.
41
Gawd. We’ve had a full decade of Mega-debt economics and Globalist Green government…and now some want the new Labor version with turbo-charged ultra-boost and added hyper-gumption. Like Turnbull wasn’t enough.
Keep in mind that the snobby, cynical climber Shorten has resented every moment of playing his common man gig at mine disasters and street rallies. He’s going to make us all pay for that. What doesn’t get handed to China or the globocrats will just be taken to the pub. Does he have to draw us a picture?
21
BLUEPRINT FOR A theirABC PROGRAM:
10 Nov: ABC Blueprint for Living: Jonathan Green
Sinking cities (AUDIO 13min21sec)
The threat to cities from rising sea levels is increasing so how prepared are our urban centres for the impending floods?
The threat to cities from rising sea levels is increasing; according to a recent landmark report, already sinking cities including Jakarta, Houston and Shanghai face immediate and growing danger from devastating floods and severe storms.
The map of the world, by the end of the century, climate scientists tell us, will be radically redrawn and global cities are at the centre of this dramatic story. So how prepared are urban centres for the impending floods? And what kind of cities might be able to withstand the threats they now face?
Guest: Ashley Dawson, Professor of English at The City University of New York and author of Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change
PHOTO CAPTION: A representation of what two degrees of global warming of what two degrees will look like shows parts of Shanghai under water. (Climate Central)
(DURING THE ABOVE ANTI-MARKET SEGMENT – THE BRIGHT SPOT IS HARLEM ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE GROUP FIGHTING ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM, PIONEERING THE CREATION OF RENEWABLE ENERGY MICROGRIDS (GOOD INCOME/GOOD-PAYING JOBS) – JONATHAN GREEN MENTIONS FAILURE TO ACT – HOW WE STILL DRIVE CARS.
HE THEN IMMEDIATELY GOES TO NEXT SEGMENT WHICH IS ABOUT AUTHOR WHO TAKES THE LONGEST ROUTES POSSIBLE AS SHE TRAVELS THE WORLD BY PLANE AND CAR – FRANCE, US, ITALY ETC – AND HOW ONE OF HER MOST WONDERFUL LOST EXPERIENCES WAS IN FRANCE, WHERE SHE FOUND HERSELF IN THE MIDDLE OF A WIND FARM, AN AWESOME SIGHT, A MAJESTIC FOREST OF WIND TURBINES, AND HEARING THE WHIRR & EVERYTHING LIKE THAT. JONATHON LAPS IT ALL UP)
En Route
A counter-cultural defence of meandering, digressing and getting lost.
Guest: Juliana Engberg, curator and author of En Route
(JONATHAN GREEN DOESN’T MENTION: Melbourne University Publishing: Juliana Engberg
is a professorial fellow at Monash University in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, and an adjunct professor at RMIT in the Faculty of Architecture and Design.)
THEN IT WAS ON TO HOW FOR 200 YEARS FROM INVASION DAY OR WHATEVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT, AUSTRALIANS HAD NO FOOD, UNTIL MIGRANTS WHO LIKED FOOD CAME ALONG AFTER WWII WITH THEIR GARLIC. NEVER MIND THE FACT THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE DIDN’T HAVE GARLIC FOR 40-, 50-, 60-THOUSAND YEARS – THEY HAD PEPPERBERRIES WHICH WERE HOT, SO THEY SHOULDN’T BE MERCILESSLY MOCKED:
The getting of garlic
The history of the transformative effect of garlic on global food culture.
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/blueprintforliving/
10
Pat, I gave up giving the time of day to ideocrat Jonathon Green almost a decade ago..ABC Radio National basically ‘belongs’ to the likes of him..Definitely NOT my ABC !
Surely you risk being contaminated spending so much time reporting it back to us here.
🙂
30
The wonderful world of the NEM run by AEMO.
Currently, Qld is sending 540 MW to NSW, so NSW can send 530 MW to Vic that is sending 360 MW to SA (25% of SA demand). But to do that Vic is also receiving 150 MW from Tas – why they don’t save their water for peak summer I don’t know.
60
That sounds like a perpetual motion machine! Then TAS sends it back to QLD..happy days!
20
I wonder what how much electricity is lost “pushing it’ through all those high voltage powerlines over such big distances ?
10
Giles loves Lazard:
12 Nov: RenewEconomy: Lazard hails “inflection point” as wind, solar costs beat new and old fossils
by Giles Parkinson
Wind and solar technologies have extended their lead over fossil fuel generation on costs of new plant, and are now as cheap, or even cheaper, than existing coal, gas and nuclear power plants – even compared to existing and fully-depreciated fossil fuel generators.
These conclusions are made in the 12th edition of the annual Lazard Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis, which has become one of the major global industry benchmarks.
Its conclusions, both on the huge cost advantage of new wind and solar over new coal and gas plants, and now with existing gas plants – tallies with observations in Australia from the likes of Origin Energy, Snowy Hydro, AGL, Simec Zen’s Sanjeev Gupta, and any number of private analysis…
https://reneweconomy.com.au/lazard-hails-inflection-point-as-wind-solar-costs-beat-new-and-old-fossils-72497/
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It’s not a levelised cost when the costs of backup to deliver 24×7 electricity are not included in the costs of intermittents like solar and wind.
And in the detail:
“As alternative energy costs continue to decline, storage remains the key to solving the problem of intermittency and we are beginning to see a clearer path forward for economic viability in storage technologies.” It cautions that while storage technology holds great promise, “alternative energy systems alone will not be capable of meeting the base-load generation needs of a developed economy for the foreseeable future.”
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Two Bob each way.
40
This is amazing stuff. How do they keep getting away with it.
40
11 Nov: France24: Paris Peace Forum vows ‘fightback’ against nationalist, authoritarian surge
by Benjamin Dodman
“It is easier to make war than peace,” an aging Clemenceau observed on the battlefield of Verdun, months after guns had fallen silent on the Western Front. It could have been a motto for the Paris Peace Forum that opened in the French capital on Sunday – a catchier one perhaps than the somewhat drab “Peace is linked with global governance” adopted by the organisers…
Offering a passionate plea for global cooperation, Merkel denounced the “national vaingloriousness and military arrogance” that led to the “senseless bloodshed” of two world wars. The German chancellor said the world “must not simply stand by and watch” as more conflicts continue to unfold around the world. “Isolationism didn’t work 100 years ago, how could it work in today’s interconnected world,” she asked, in a veiled dig at Donald Trump…
“The concern I have is that blinkered nationalist views may gain ground once again.” Echoing her words, the UN’s Guterres spoke of “parallels” between the present day and the unstable and dangerous interwar years that dragged Europe back into global conflict…
Financed by international donors and NGOs, the Paris Peace Forum aims to “bring together all actors of global governance to strengthen multilateralism and international cooperation”. Designed to come up with practical solutions to international challenges, it showcases 120 projects selected from almost a thousand applications, divided in five areas: peace and security, environment, development, new technologies and inclusive economy. All share the notion that multilateral solutions are the answer to global problems. Examples include international mechanisms to crack down on tax evasion, climate-resilient “zero-budget” programmes to help farmers in developing countries, and initiatives to help firms and states fight off cyber attacks…
“The aim of the forum is to show that there are lots of forces in the international system — states, NGOs, foundations, intellectuals, companies — who believe we need a world of rules, an open world and a multilateral world,” said the Forum’s chief organiser Justin Vaisse. On Monday and Tuesday, philanthropists, corporate leaders and leading figures from international institutions will debate ways to tackle global challenges such as climate change and policing the internet. Macron is hoping the forum will become an annual gathering of political leaders and civil society groups to discuss democracy — along the same lines as the Davos meeting of business leaders in Switzerland…
Trump no-show
With its workshops and roundtable discussions devoted to global governance, climate change and regulation, it is easy to see why Trump, who has made no secret of his contempt for “unelected, unaccountable global bureaucracies” such as the United Nations, decided to skip the Paris event despite attending the Armistice Day commemorations earlier in the day. Other world leaders routinely criticised for disregarding international norms, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, were present at the Forum, though it was hard to imagine them offering more than polite applause to the pleas for multilateralism…
The Paris event was conceived soon after Macron’s election victory in May 2017, which France’s youthful new leader sought to portray as a sign of renewed confidence in liberal democracy and European integration following the twin shocks of Brexit and Trump’s election. But Macron is now himself on the back foot, looking increasingly isolated and weighed down by dismal ratings. And Merkel, seen as the other major bulwark against surging nationalism, has announced she will be standing aside as chancellor by 2021, adding to the sense that Europe’s leading advocates of multilateralism are in retreat…
https://www.france24.com/en/20181111-paris-peace-forum-far-right-nationalism-authoritarian-surge-fight-back-macron-merkel-trump
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So which of these “great leaders” will be the first to open their borders to all?
30
11 Nov: Toronto Sun editorial: Trudeau’s carbon tax a pig in a poke
When Trudeau signed the United Nations’ Paris climate accord, he committed Canada to reduce our emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2030 — 12 years from now.
To achieve this, we will have to lower our annual emissions from 704 megatonnes (Mt) in 2016 — the last year for which Canadian figures are available — to 512 Mt by 2030.
That’s a 192-Mt cut, requiring the equivalent of shutting down Canada’s entire oil and gas sector (189.5 Mt annually) in 12 years.
In addition, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently announced signatories to the Paris accord, like Canada, must now achieve even more drastic cuts to avert catastrophic climate change, reducing emissions to 45% below 2010 levels by 2030.
To achieve that, Canada will have to cut emissions from 704 Mt in 2016 to 382 Mt annually in 2030, a drop of 322 Mt.
Again, the cost of actually keeping that promise would require the equivalent carbon reduction of shutting down our nation’s entire oil and gas sector (189.5 Mt annually), plus 76.6% of its transportation sector (132.5 Mt annually), in 12 years…
Trudeau’s mandatory carbon price is currently set at $20 per tonne of emissions next year, rising to $50 per tonne in 2022.
Given that his government’s own experts have said this is far too low to achieve even Trudeau’s Paris accord targets, how much higher does he plan to raise his carbon price after 2022 to meet his targets?
Because without that information, what Trudeau is really doing is asking Canadians to buy a pig in a poke.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-trudeaus-carbon-tax-a-pig-in-a-poke
9 Nov: CarbonPulse: German finance ministry shoots down Schulze’s domestic CO2 price expansion plan
Germany’s finance ministry has shot down Environment Minister Svenja Schulze’s plan to expand carbon pricing domestically.
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lol:
11 Nov: Barrons: Al Gore Says Climate Change Is ‘the Biggest Challenge We’ve Ever Faced’
by Mary Childs
Al Gore, the former U.S. Vice President and co-founder of Generation Investment Management, continues to ring the alarm that climate change and environmental damage is a global emergency.
“This is the biggest challenge we’ve ever faced,” Gore said at the Summit LA18 festival. “Nuclear war is the only one in the same category, and we’ve held that at bay pretty successfully. This is an existential threat to our civilization and potentially our species.”
Following the news lately has felt like a hike “through the Book of Revelations,” Gore said, given historic floods in Texas, historic hurricanes in Florida and Puerto Rico, historic wildfires in California. He was speaking at the Summit conference in downtown Los Angeles on Nov. 4, with moderator Jaden Smith, the actor and singer who co-founded the eco-friendly water company Just. There’s “practically a year-round fire season here now,” Gore said, because of the area’s increasingly dry climate.
“This is not a tomorrow problem,” he said. “The time for complacency is over.” We have tools to address it, he said, and “we’ve got to do it” because “it’s at our doorstep.”
The packed house at the Orpheum Theater, in downtown L.A., broke into applause as Smith amplified his comments: “It’s right now! It’s right now!”…
In 2004, he teamed up with former Goldman Sachs investor David Blood to found the London-based Generation. Blood and Gore (yes, really) thought that research on sustainability, combined with regular investing, could yield better returns.
So far, so good: The long-only Lombard Odier Generation Global fund has generated an annualized 9.9% from 2008 through November 7, compared with 6.9% for its benchmark, according to its website.
Wealth managers like UBS have said that investing for a more sustainable environment can help prevent a global climate no longer hospitable to civilization, and also generate returns in line with normal, global-future-agnostic investing.
And Gore’s Generation Investment Management firm recently joined forces with Canadian pension CDPQ to invest $3 billion in sustainable businesses.
Gore and Smith sat in front of nearly 2,000 people, mostly affluent young and young-ish entrepreneurs and tech workers. It was an audience that already believes in the science of climate change and doesn’t need converting, but who may have untapped resources to devote to help ameliorate it, at the very least via their various social media platforms…
Gore: “These climate-deniers, funded by fossil fuel companies, they count on all the psychological tricks they can use to convince people, oh, we can wait on that. Oh, one-tenth of 1% of scientists don’t agree? Let’s wait on the one-tenth of 1%.”…
Gore and Smith discussed their different approaches to convincing people to take the environmental crisis seriously: Gore leads with optimism, “premised on the assumption” that people understand the danger and that we have access to some solutions, like solar and wind energy, and electric cars. More investment and policies supporting those existing solutions will help them make a difference…
Some people head straight for despair, he said, “without stopping on the intermediate step of solving the damn crisis which we have the capability to do.”
“I believe in democracy, I believe in a reformed form of capitalism, I believe in humans,” he said. “In spite of our limitations, we also have the ability to rise above our limitations.”
The only thing missing: “political will.”
But his hope is not misplaced: “Your generation is helping to lead the way,” he said to Smith…
“I try to scare them as bad as I can,” Smith said. “Honestly! Because the kids in my generation, they’re like, ‘I’m tough, I don’t care, I’ll be fine, I’m just going to skate for the rest of my life.’ I’m like ‘well, bro, if the skate park floods, you’re going to have to learn how to surf.’”…
https://www.barrons.com/articles/al-gore-says-climate-change-is-the-biggest-challenge-weve-ever-faced-1541934062
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full text:
11 Nov: UN: When nations work together, hope prevails and collective solutions can be found – UN chief tells Peace Forum, marking World War centenary in Paris
From conflict and economic downturn to disease and climate change, global problems require “more than ever” a strengthening of international cooperation, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres told world leaders at the Paris Peace Forum on Sunday, commemorating 100 years since the end of the First World War.
“Over the past 100 years, the desire to settle conflicts peacefully on the basis of common rules has been converted into a universal system of institutions in the political, economic, social and environmental spheres,” said the UN chief…
This Paris Peace Forum, the first of its kind, is an initiative of the French Government led by President Emmanuel Macron. Held from 11 November to 13 November in the French capital, and labelled “a global forum for governance projects,” it gathers dozens of world leaders and representatives of international organisations, for a series of roundtables to discuss and reaffirm common commitment to tackle the great challenges of the world today…
One key issue for which multilateral efforts are particularly crucial, the Secretary-General stressed, is climate change. As the world is gearing up for the Climate Change Conference in Poland (COP 24) this December, the UN Secretary-General warned of the urgency of taking action.
“Climate change is moving faster than we are,” he regretted. “Arctic sea ice is shrinking, desertification is spreading and coral bleaching is widespread,” he said, referring to the latest findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which “exceed even the most pessimistic forecasts”.
Citing demography and migration as the second great challenge of our time, Mr. Guterres called world leaders to “come to [their] senses.”
“In a context of climate change, inequalities and conflict, migration will remain an enduring phenomenon,” he stated. “Without international cooperation, and if we retreat behind our national borders, we will sacrifice our collective values, and we will perpetuate the tragedy of migrants being exploited by the worst traffickers”…
Among the participants of the Forum was the President of the UN General Assembly, María Fernanda Espinosa…
Other prominent participants on the first day of the Peace Forum included Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, India’s Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu, Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde, and the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki.
Although the United States of America played a central role in World War I, President Donald Trump declined the invitation.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/11/1025461
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Oct 2018: Uni of Huddersfield: Largest solar power study to date discovers 25% power loss
Dr Mahmoud Dhimish: Solar power study
Regional ‘hot spots’ account for the power loss and these are more prevalent in the North of England than in the south
RESEARCHERS at the University of Huddersfield have undertaken the largest study to date into the effectiveness of solar panels across the UK and discovered that parts of the country are suffering an overall power loss of up to 25% because of the issue of regional ‘hot spots’. Hot spots were also found to be more prevalent in the North of England than in the south.
Dr Mahmoud Dhimish, a lecturer in Electronics and Control Engineering and co-director of the Photovoltaics Laboratory at the University, analysed 2,580 polycrystalline silicon photovoltaic (PV) panels distributed across the UK. The UK has been fossil-free for two years and demand is constantly increasing for renewable energy.
After quantifying the data, Dr Dhimish discovered that the panels found to have hot spots generated a power output notably less than those that didn’t. He also discovered that location was a primary contributor in the distribution of hot spots.
Photovoltaics hot spots are areas of elevated temperature which can affect only part of the solar panel. They are a result of a localised decrease in efficiency and the main cause of accelerated PV ageing, often causing permanent damage to the solar panel’s lifetime performance.
According to Dr Dhimish, this is the first time an investigation into how hot spots impact the performance of PV panels has been conducted from such a large scale dataset and says the project uncovered results which demonstrate the preferred location of UK hot spots.
“This research showed the unprecedented density of hot spots in the North of England,” said Dr Dhimish. “Over 90% of the hot spots are located in the north and most of these are inland, with considerably less seen on the coast.”…
In order to increase the reliability and durability of future residential photovoltaics installations, Dr Dhimish has made three recommendations…READ ON
◾The research article, including all of the data collected, is to be published by the peer-reviewed journal IEEE Transaction on Electron Devices, co-authored by Dr Dhimish, Dr Violeta Holmes and Dr Peter Mather, entitled Evaluating Power Loss and Performance Ratio of Hot spotted Photovoltaic Modules.
https://www.hud.ac.uk/news/2018/october/mahmoud-dhimish-solar-power/
11 Nov: InterestingEngineering: Largest UK Solar Panels Study Identifies Zones With 25% Power Loss
The research analyzed 2,580 polycrystalline silicon photovoltaic panels distributed across the UK and even determined the key regional hot spots.
by Taylor Donovan Barnett
Though the idea of the free generation of electricity from the inexhaustible sunlight is promising, solar energy still faces many hurdles before the world can truly replace fossil fuels…
The challenges associated with solar include, its reliability, efficiency, and overall costs. One common technical issue that can impact all three of these factors are hot spots. For the uninitiated, hot spots are areas on solar panel with an elevated temperature.
These specific high-temperature areas result in a lower power output, decreasing the efficiency of the panels and eventually accelerates the degradation of the panels. Hot spots can completely destroy a solar panel…
https://interestingengineering.com/largest-uk-solar-panels-study-identifies-zones-with-25-power-loss
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Green oligarchs have their factories in China. They want to destroy Western competition by high energy prices and taxes.
You can explain much of current politics by looking at it through the glasses of the ruling class. Billionaires earn more with these policies and they can bribe the government, media and other supporters.
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10 Nov: NDTV India: Reuters: At UN, India Makes Climate Change Case For Nuclear Power
Nuclear reactors do not produce greenhouse gases like power plants using coal and, therefore, can increase electricity generation without contributing to climate change.
India has declared that nuclear energy is vital for meeting the challenge of climate change and suggested supporting efforts to promote its public acceptance amid growing opposition to nuclear power and plans by some countries to phase out their atomic generation plants.
“Nuclear power remains an important option to meet the challenges of increased energy demand, address concerns about climate change, redress volatile fossil fuel prices and ensure security of the energy supply,” Sandeep Kumar Bayyapu, a first secretary in India’s UN Mission told the General Assembly on Friday…
They can provide a steady supply of electricity because unlike solar and wind power sources, nuclear plants can operate when there is no sun or wind and are not affected by fluctuations in water availability like hydroelectric plants.
To meet one of the points of opposition to nuclear power plants, Mr Bayyapu advocated building advanced fission reactors, including fast reactors, that use nuclear fuel more efficiently and reduce radioactive waste.
While speaking during the debate on the IAEA’s annual report, he presented thorium-based technologies as solutions to other objections to nuclear plants.
Mr Bayyapu said that thorium-based fuel cycles and technologies are inherently less susceptible to be used for weapons production and can also provide enhanced passive safety features.
According to the Department of Atomic Energy, India is planning to more than treble its nuclear electricity generation from the current 6,780 megawatts to 22,480 megawatts by 2031…
Of the nine reactors under construction, one is an advanced fast breeder reactor with 500 megawatt capcity being built at Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu.
The fast breeder reactor uses thorium to create uranium 233 for power generation.
A test reactor of the fast breeder type is already operating in Kalpakkam.
Thorium is more abundantly found in India compared to uranium, for which the country has to rely on imports.
India has seen opposition to nuclear power plants, especially the one at Kudankulam in southern Tamil Nadu…
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/at-un-india-makes-climate-change-case-for-nuclear-power-1945368
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In my opinion the Greens are given too much credit for things we dislike in politics.
For example, UN Agenda 21 and 30, local government in hand with state governments are the prime movers and councils tend to be “green” and cooperative however those agenda items are not green party, they are UN globalist socialist unelected by us officials supported by politicians who have ambitions to become UN officials and part of the new world order, one world government being imposed slowly but surely ignoring sovereignty and constitutional law illegally, that would otherwise not be possible if a government had a real opposition with the people’s interests in mind.
What we have now is a cooperative of major political parties.
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True, theres also that ‘Common Purpose’ , sinister organisation in UK (and elsewhere) that is attached to the ‘Agendas’ you mentioned. The greens dont mention them either.
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imagine writing drivel like this every day!
12 Nov: NBC: Would flooding the deserts help stop global warming?
The idea is “risky, unproven, even unlikely to work,” according to Y Combinator. But if it did work, it could slow climate change.
by James Rainey
Imagine flooding a desert half the size of the Sahara. Using 238 trillion gallons of desalinated ocean water to do the job. Creating millions of 1-acre-square micro-reservoirs to grow enough algae to gobble up all of Earth’s climate-changing carbon dioxide. For an encore: How about spreading the water and fertilizer (the dead algae) to grow a vast new forest of oxygen-producing trees?
A Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Y Combinator, unveiled the radical desert flooding plan as one of four “moonshot” scenarios that it hopes innovators will explore as potential remedies to catastrophic global warming.
But would it work? And should it even be tried?…
“We do not want to have this be purely profit driven,” said Greg Rau, a University of California, Santa Cruz climate scientist and part of the team that helped Y Combinator craft the request for proposals. “We are trying to benefit the planet, not just make money. So we need this kind of research and development first, but then oversight and governance over how any of this is deployed.”
The Y Combinator proposal grows out of what is now the consensus of climate scientists — that humanity needs to move beyond slowing the production of carbon dioxide and begin removing excess levels of the gas already straining Earth’s atmosphere…
The startup accelerator that helped finance Airbnb, Dropbox and Reddit asked innovators last month to come forward with specific proposals on desert flooding and three other extreme plans for reducing greenhouse gas concentrations…
It declined to say how many took up the desert flooding option. But Sam Altman, Y Combinator’s president, predicted that in 2019 his firm will fund three companies to pursue the “Plan B” climate solutions…
“It’s a desert for a reason,” said Lynn Fenstermaker, a research professor at Nevada’s Desert Research Institute. “Flooding the desert and then keeping the water there, in an already water-poor area with all the evaporation, is hard to imagine.”…
Unprecedented cost
Y Combinator pegs the price tag at $50 trillion. That’s roughly half the entire globe’s economic productivity for a year. Altman said in an interview that the cost for any solution will need to drop into the billions to become more realistic. “You can do a lot of things that require spending more money than you will ever be able to get,” Altman said, “and it just doesn’t come.” Brought to a more realistic price, he believes that governments will pay…
Many species would be wiped out by massive man-made flooding of deserts…
Interfering with nature can have unexpected consequences…
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/would-flooding-deserts-help-stop-global-warming-n934551
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11 Nov: San Diego Union Tribune: Is California going the way of Germany when it comes to energy?
By Rob Nikolewski
One place possesses the fourth-largest economy in the world. Another is home to the fifth-largest.
Both places have instituted ambitious energy and climate goals.
But one — Germany — is struggling to meet those targets and its citizens pay some of the highest electricity prices in the industrialized world. Is the German experience a cautionary tale for the other place — California?
It’s a question increasingly on the minds of some energy experts in the Golden State…
“There are a lot of parallels,” said James Bushnell, economics professor at the University of California at Davis. “Both have been leaders and both have experienced a period of energy cost increases that are starting to create some worries of a pending backlash. I think that backlash has hit a little more in Germany.”…
Greenhouse gas emissions in Germany have not decreased for the last nine years and emissions from the transportation sector have not fallen since 1990. In fact, the United States has reduced carbon emissions more than Germany, in both real and nominal terms…
Wind farms in Germany produce plenty of power but they are largely located in the northern part of the country. But German factories are concentrated in the south. About 5,000 miles of transmission lines are being laid, paid for by German utility customers.
In addition, wind energy production is so robust that windy conditions can sometimes deliver more energy than the grid can handle, overloading power lines.
In August, Germany’s economics minister said grid expansion plans were “catastrophically behind schedule.”…
In an ironic twist, phasing out nuclear power triggered the construction of new facilities using coal, one of the most polluting fossil fuels.
Renewable sources such as wind and solar have problems with “intermittency.” That is, solar production drops when the sun goes down and wind power wanes when breezes don’t blow. In order to fill in the gaps, grid managers turn to “baseload” generation from other, more traditional, sources.
In Germany’s case, lignite, or “brown coal,” is plentiful. More than one-third of the country’s supply of energy last year came from coal — 23 percent from lignite and 14 percent from black coal…
“Prices for natural gas have increased in the last (few) years, making it less competitive compared to coal,” said Michael Pahle of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in an email…
Bushnell, who is working with Pahle on a study comparing California with Germany, said, “There’s a pretty clear uptick in fossil fuel and coal production that you can trace to the nuclear phaseout. I would wager that’s probably one of the biggest reasons why they will miss their climate targets.”…
“In Germany, commercial industrial rates have not gone up much,” said Severin Borenstein, professor of business administration and public policy at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.
“And for good reason. It’s easy for companies to move across boundaries within the (European Union) so that if you raise commercial industrial rates very much, you would just get a bunch of leakage as companies moved to other parts of the EU … So they’ve ratcheted up residential rates.”…
While Germany’s grid wrestles with handling abundant amounts of wind generation, California’s operators deal with excess solar production.
So much solar is produced at peak periods that wholesale energy prices can drop to zero or into negative territory. That puts strain on the grid, and the California Independent System Operator (the organization which oversees the operation of about 80 percent of the state’s electric power system) often has to send the excess solar to neighboring states like Arizona or curtail it altogether…
Michael Shellenberger, president of the Berkeley-based research and pro-nuclear group Environmental Progress, said California will struggle — just as Germany has — without nuclear power.
“If you shut down nuclear plants, your emissions are either not going to decline or they’re not going to decline nearly as quickly as they would if you kept nuclear plants open,” Shellenberger said…
Shellenberger says without nuclear power, California won’t reach its climate goals.
“It’s never going to happen,” he said. “It’s just public relations, just a veil to mask the replacement of nuclear with natural gas … And the people that end up paying for it, of course, are the ratepayers.”…
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/sd-fi-california-germany-20181111-story.html
19 Apr: Forbes: Thomas Del Beccaro: The Top Four Reasons California Is Unsustainable
Indeed, its government has made California unsustainable.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasdelbeccaro/2018/04/19/the-top-four-reasons-california-is-unsustainable/#27f63013a239
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some interesting threads:
IceAgeNow by Robert
12 Nov: Lack of sunspots to bring record cold, warns NASA scientist
“It could happen in a matter of months,” says Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center READ MORE…
10 Nov: Minus 17F in Montana – Minus 15F in North Dakota
That’s -27.2°C and -26.1°C respectively.
“And to think winter is only 42 days away…” says meteorologist Kevin Lawrence.
https://www.iceagenow.info/
10
11 Nov: UK Times: Britain ‘at risk of blackouts without more gas storage’
by Emily Gosden
The country’s gas supply position is “precarious” and winter shortfalls could jeopardise fuel supplies for power stations, according to Wood Mackenzie.
Graham Freedman, its principal analyst for European gas, accused the government of “taking its eye off the ball” after the closure of Britain’s main storage site and urged it to act to “get some more gas storage in place”.
The question of gas security has risen up the agenda after the “Beast from the East” cold snap in the spring, when a supply scare led to prices surging to two-decade highs. MPs on the business and energy select committee have launched an inquiry to examine the need for more gas storage…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/britain-at-risk-of-blackouts-without-more-gas-storage-x7f8m9qkz
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Branson backs competition to find cleaner air conditioners
Financial Times-10 hours ago
11 Nov: Fast Company: Richard Branson just launched a $3 million prize for a better air conditioner
When people move out of poverty, one of the first things they buy is an air conditioner–and the world can’t handle the emissions that are going to come from an air conditioning boom. So Branson and the Indian government are launching the Global Cooling Prize to find a sustainable solution.
By Adele Peters
“The increase in energy consumption for cooling represents a massive risk to meeting our climate goals,” says Richard Branson, who today helped launch both the report and the Global Cooling Prize, a $3 million competition to spur new technology. The prize, he says, “can literally help save the world from the disaster it’s facing.”…
“This is a $20 billion market ready for a shake-up,” says Branson…
12 Nov: InsideClimateNews: Fast-Rising Demand for Air Conditioning Is Adding to Global Warming. The Numbers Are Striking
With window units set to more than triple by 2050, home air conditioning is on pace to add half a degree Celsius to global warming this century, a new report says.
By Phil McKenna
Increasing demand for home air conditioning driven by global warming, population growth and rising incomes in developing countries could increase the planet’s temperatures an additional half a degree Celsius by the end of the century, according to a new report by the Rocky Mountain Institute.
The demand is growing so fast that a “radical change” in home-cooling technology will be necessary to neutralize its impact, writes RMI, an energy innovation and sustainability organization…
To ramp up efforts to bring down emissions from cooling, RMI joined the government of India, British entrepreneur Richard Branson and other organizations on Monday in launching the Global Cooling Prize, an effort to spur development of highly efficient cooling technology to reduce further warming from the residential air conditioning sector…
Approximately 1.2 billion window-mounted air conditioning units and other small-scale, room-cooling devices are currently in use worldwide. By 2050, the figure is expected to increase to 4.5 billion, according to RMI…
RMI estimates that the amount of energy that will be required to power the 4.5 billion window air conditioners expected by 2050 is equivalent to the current electricity demand of the United States, Germany and Japan combined…
Growth in the demand for air conditioning is already outpacing growth in solar power, with new residential air conditioning units worldwide consuming approximately 100 GW of energy in 2017, compared to 94 GW of new solar energy generation…
RMI is partnering with the Indian government’s Department of Science and Technology and others on the two-year, $3 million Global Cooling Prize competition to foster the development of air conditioners that have 80 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions because they use less energy and transition to coolants that aren’t powerful greenhouse gases…
At least one company already sells an air conditioner with associated greenhouse gas emissions that are 71 percent lower than today’s market average, Campbell said. The device, built by Indian manufacture Godrej Appliances, uses 60 percent less energy than other air conditioners and uses a coolant with a lower global warming potential…
Cost is important, particularly since the countries that are expected to see the greatest increase in home air conditioning demand in the coming decades are developing countries. With that in mind, the prize rules require that the cost of any new device must not exceed two times the cost of the current market average. A device that is twice as expensive but several times more efficient than existing air conditioners could pay for itself in less than four years through lower electricity bills, Campbell said…
Nikit Abhyankar, an engineer in the International Energy Studies Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said the changes will have to come quickly as the demand for air conditioning grows. “The scale of the problem is huge and is just going to explode,” he said.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11112018/climate-change-home-air-conditioning-half-degree-global-warming-by-2100
Branson and Rocky Mountain Institute (Carbon War Room) have a history.
10
pat:
And the companies currently making air conditioners have been neglecting this advantage? What a load of nonsense.
00
I wish he’d hurry up and take off for Mars. It’s been “imminent” for nigh twenty year.
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