On the one hand, our bureaucrats are telling us coal power in Australia might be finished by 2035.
..
On the other hand, in the rest of the world, coal prices are hitting records, China and India are suffering rolling power cuts. In China, floods have shut about 10% of the 682 coal mines in the Shanxi Province. China is so desperate for coal that a few days ago, it finally unloaded the Australian coal it held hostage in the 80 bulk carrier ships that have languished offshore for months in a petty trade war. Pune, in India is in a coal shortage crisis, forced to shut down 13 power plants because they’ve run out of coal. They’re asking people to be “sparing” between 6 and 10 both morning and night. India has 135 coal fired plants in total, and fully 70 of them are currently working with less than four days coal supply.
China coal futures hit record as flood swamps mine hub
Even with the efforts, China could face a coal supply gap of 30-million to 40-million tonnes in the fourth quarter, Citic Securities analysts said in an October 8 report. A shortage of the fuel could cut industrial power use by 10% to 15% in November and December, which would potentially translate into a 30% slowdown in activity in the most energy-intensive sectors like steel, chemicals and cement-making, according to UBS Group AG.
The State Council said electricity prices will be allowed to rise by as much as 20% against a benchmark, compared with a current cap of 10%.
Meanwhile BHP is suddenly renegotiating the coal assets it was giving away a bit too cheaply.
Kerry Schott’s declaration of the death of coal is a brave announcement given that Australia is still 70% coal powered. In 14 years it would take a big shift to get it to down 50%, much less zero. But it’s especially heroic given what’s happening in the rest of the world.
It’s almost like Kerry Scott had the press release on her desk since the last COP ready to be released “on schedule” for this one.
Why Australia will be THE biggest winner from the global energy crunch – with China’s ban on coal backfiring as prices surge to record highs
The Daily Mail
It’s just a blip.
People + demand = coal
QED
332
O Steve,
x + y = z
Is it possible that the Overlords are not too worried about y because they are ‘expecting’ a reduction of x?
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>”People + demand = coal”
Haven’t heard “keep the coal in the hole” for a while. Green mantra in NZ a while ago, major Green Party proponent now deceased.
Except NZ has all but abandoned domestic coal in favour of Indonesian. I live near Port of Tauranga and can see the trains loading from the wharf hoppers.
That coal is then railed to dual coal/gas Huntly which is literally built on top of a coal seam that runs under the Waikato river. I did engineering work on a coal handling facility at an east side u/g mine many moons ago – all for nothing.
Now wondering, with coal futures on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange at US$218.76 per ton, how long NZ’s opportunity cost can be ignored (yes, we still have large untouched reserves).
180
Better get a dozen nuke facilities under construction.
They might be finished, tested, and on-line by 2035.
She reminds me of Baghdad Bob.{Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf}
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More like 2055, the way the toxic greens fight anything nuclear.
30
Now is the time for Australia to announce it’s ‘intention’ to immediately phase out all coal exports (but only coal exports).
Send a message to China and the World – this is what you wanted, this is what your gonna get…
Wait a few months as the price crunch peaks, then reluctantly admit that you have to rescind your ‘intention’ as a humanitarian action!
By that means, you can fully jam the point down the throats of all the eco-mongers…
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Absolutely.
111
Including India? I think not.
51
Kerry “Foot” Schott?
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In recent weeks there have been up to fourteen ships parked off NovoCastria waiting for something; don’t know what.
At high tide they come out, across the bar, fully laden with something, wait for the helicopter to come pick up the pilot and then head off over the horizon.
In the meantime the pilot has been dropped onto one of the waiting ships and they’re in.
But Kerry is totally unaware of all this activity and is certain that she heard somewhere that someone’s friend heard about ways of harvesting the wind, waves and Sunbeams to make electricity.
Kerry has a mobile phone that she charges with electricity from the wall socket and that power pulses at 50 beats a second.
Unfortunately, the new electricity she touts has no pulse at all.
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It’s quite a sight to see one being taken out with the tugs front and rear. Funny that they always come from the same set of wharves up river a bit.
110
Kerry?
00
Schott
00
Wasn’t Ms Schott a Turnbull appointee? Huff said.
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Nuff said, predictive text strikes again.
210
Huff works okay though 😀
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“Her early career included investment banking for Deutsche Bank and Whitlam Turnbull.”
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no skin in the game, cushy high level roles, at retirement, can afford to pontificate and virtue signal , the consequences will be for others
40
The DEEP STATE is EVERYWHERE.
They have sold their soul.
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They dont have a soul to sell, its already been sold to the Devil.
Modern days Fausts, the lot of them.
100
I wonder how this madness is going to end. We can see the devastation being wrought in Britain and Europe. We can see how these nations are impoverished as industry is forced off shore yet our leaders don’t care. Like lemmings they blindly follow in the same path. Civilisations routinely encounter problems and barriers that force them to evolve. These can be psychological/ethical problems like abolishing slavery, equal rights for women and people from other races and complex questions like euthanasia. They can also be more physical problems like resource limitations or in this case energy. Those civilisations that do not evolve and find new better solutions die.
In this case the concept that we can abandon the fossil fuels that were the solution to our last energy crisis to go back to more primitive less dense and less reliable energy sources is absurd. In my opinion a more accurate view would be that civilisation is outgrowing chemical energy and needs a new denser energy source. We have the solution already, it is nuclear. If we don’t like uranium fission then develop thorium fission. As I understand things this is not only safer but it generates less nuclear waste which is radioactive for a shorter time and uses a more abundant fuel. Don’t like that either, then really embrace research into fusion as a national emergency project like the Manhatten project.
If the population does not come to its senses really quickly I fear we are seeing the decline and fall of western civilisation. An entire civilisation committing suicide. I doubt the emergent Asian civilisation will treat us in the way we might like. Victors rarely do.
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“If the population does not come to its senses really quickly I fear we are seeing the decline and fall of western civilisation. An entire civilisation committing suicide. I doubt the emergent Asian civilisation will treat us in the way we might like. Victors rarely do.”
The question is:
Is this belief, a growing belief in our society, that we must stop using fossil fuels a cause of civilizational collapse, or is it simply one the symptoms of that collapse?
When a rose blossom dies, for instance, are the brown tips of the petals a cause of its approaching end – and we should do all we can to cut them off to protect the bloom – or is it simply one of the symptoms of the flower’s inevitable demise?
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Interesting reading here (IMO)
“Is resistance to COVID-19 mandates reaching critical mass?”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2021/10/is-resistance-to-covid-19-mandates.html
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Yes, it is interesting.
But the question is whether this is a problem for the Deep Green NWO folks, who want to bring down the West for their own ends.
If 30% or so of all occupations – nurses, pilots, truck drivers, etc – walk off the job and are not or cannot be replaced – hospitals, airlines and supply chains will eventually collapse.
I am not sure whether this isn’t EXACTLY what they want to see happen.
Total collapse of the system – a central aim of Marxist Communism – will allow them to re-make the world as they want it to be.
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Logic says we have massive supply chain disruption coming.
Taiwan is as good as gone, and soon.
This us all about tearing down our society and rebuilding into a hideous communist mess.
Covid is the excavator that is being used to undermine and collapse our western civilisation.
Bring on Covid Nuremberg….
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I thought Jo was trying to discourage this sort of poppycock made up fear mongering
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Taiwan?
Before it has “gone” expect a certain amount of “instant sunshine” to have been released. An Asian ‘Samson Option”. I suspect they may be planning a “Dylan Thomas” and have NO intention of going quietly into that good night.
The people of Taiwan are all too aware of what awaits them if they are “re-incorportaed” into China. The other twist is that Taiwan was NOT traditionally part of China and has a substantial “native” population who ate basically Polynesian genetically and culturally. Sort of “Northern Hemisphere Maoris”.
As Irma Bombeck quipped:
“The grass may well be greener over the septic tank, but it is greenest over the mass graves”.
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Very true.
US troops to Taiwan, just to make life a bit more interesting.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3151705/beijing-expected-take-countermeasures-after-reports-us-troops
“Beijing expected to take countermeasures after reports US troops are training Taiwanese military
And the supply chain disruption is hanging on, I suspect once Taiwan kicks off and cheap goods ( including some food ) stops coming from china, it will get interesting.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/03/supply-chain-whack-a-mole-covid-leaves-some-australian-supermarket-shelves-bare-as-thousands-of-staff-isolate
“‘Supply chain whack-a-mole’: Covid leaves some Australian supermarket shelves bare as thousands of staff isolate
This article is more than 1 month old
And of course this is just part of the overall strategy to weaken the country.
The USA is also suffering, and in the UK they have had to deploy troops to keep fuel flowing.
Nope…no supply chain disruptions here… move along..nothing to see…..
“Workforce deficits in NSW and Victoria disrupt distribution centres, causing widespread product shortages
21
Mark; People need to have visions goals and aspirations, its the way people are made. Unfortunately we have reached the point where things are so good that we dont really know what constitutes making things better. Instead we put our energy into becoming more and more risk adverse, creating an over regulated nanny state. This massively discourages innovation which involves risk taking. When we run out of tangible risks to tackle, in a desperate bid to have a goal to aspire to, we create some, irrespective of whether or not they are real and we pour our energy into them. If someone comes along and claims the risk is imaginary the response is anger and rejection because that view challenges our entire perceived raison d’etre. We want the risk to be real because it gives us an outlet for our efforts. There are none so blind as those that will not see.
One sees the same in companies, starting off very entrepreneurial and then as they become more successful they become more and more conservative and risk adverse. Eventually they become so conservative they stop developing and get out competed – post mature. So CAGW is really a symptom of a post mature civilisation that has lost its will to innovate and explore in any sort of meaningful way. In a perverse way we are almost wilfully destroying what we have because by that destruction we regain a reason to strive.
You can see that clearly; when I was a child we could experiment with chemistry sets, I could buy all sorts of chemicals at Selbys in town (even quite dangerous ones) – cant do that now because its “too dangerous”, you need a licence to buy chemicals. You used to be able to buy fireworks and have a bonfire. Not any more, fireworks are too dangerous and a bonfire needs a permit. I experimented with ham radio and building electronic systems. Now electronics are all surface mount, too small for amateurs to play with. We used to find challenges in taking and printing photographs. Now every phone is a camera and everyone can take excellent photos. Gone are the days of seeing an image slowly appear in the developer, of striving to modify an image. Click and its there finished, nothing more to do. So what can young people do to challenge themselves. Play computer games, consume? How about telling everyone else how they should live and what massive catastrophe will occur if they dont listen and obey.
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michael, what Britain needs currently is the return of Nigel Farage pointing out the stupidity of Boris Johnson’s energy strategy.
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John; it seems to me that what the world really needs is some influential politicians with the courage and conviction to stand up and say the theory of CAGW is completely wrong and hysterical actions in its name will do massive damage to our society.
I note with interest, the latest findings on Svensmark’s theory of cosmic ray modulation of cloud cover have found the changes in solar magnetic field modulates earths energy budget by 2 watts/sqM not the 0.01 watts/sqM claimed by the CAGW crowd. 2 watts/sqM is almost as much impact as claimed for doubling CO2 (claimed 3 watts/sqM). That’s when CO2 gets to 560 ppm and we have quite a way to go to get to that.
00
I keep noticing what is not reported except in passing. For example in discussing the extraordinary rise in the price of fossil fuels
“The cause of the gas shortage is blamed on the long, cold winter at the start of the year, which depleted supplies”
Again and again I read of the long cold winter and the author is not specific to country. But nothing is said.
Worse, one report changed and it became the rapid rise of world economies after the pandemic. It’s nice to know the pandemic is over though and that coincides with winter.
You would think after 33 years of rapid tipping point man made Global Warming that the world would be warmer. Must be a blip, average temperatures dropping right across the world. The IPCC, NOAA, BOM would have noticed? Surely it would be newsworthy and not an isolated event?
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One of the things about the Left is that they can maintain two contradictory mutually exclusive interpretations of reality.
So:
A) there is a fossil fuel shortage because of a “long cold winter”.
B) we must stop burning fossil fuels because they are causing global warming.
Are two contradictory and mutually exclusive positions that they can comfortably maintain.
The mistake that conservatives and other rational thinkers keep making is to assume the Left have some logic, you just have to understand it. But there is nothing to understand as it doesn’t exist.
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George Orwell called it double think in 1984.
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It appears to be a form of leftist psychosis….
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I can’t think of anyone ever on any side of a debate claim this
so please enlighten me.
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From the BBC … Natural gas is a fossil fuel. Shortage due to lack of storage is implied.
Call it a ‘staged shortage’ if you prefer
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58879101
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Lewis Carrol nailed it decades ago:
“Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” (Through the Looking Glass, Chapter 5)
and:
“”But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.” (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 6)
60
And if the market is experiencing a rapid world recovery after the pandemic, wouldn’t that mean there was a massive oversupply for a long time and reserves were high, not low? And the anticipation of another ‘long, cold winter’?
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Economic rebound seems to be the most common reason for energy sources. Absolute tosh!
20
Failure of energy supply that is.
20
Rational thinkers should just let the Left destroy all the proper power stations.
It’s the only way people will come to realise that unreliables (solar and wind) are unsustainable.
Preferably they should follow Australia’s lead. One of the few things Australia now leads the world in is destroying proper power stations as soon as they are turned off rather than just mothballing them as sensible people might do.
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And as I search for the right word, impractical? Humans have waited for the sun to come up for hundreds of thousands of years. With solar we are back there. Through the middle ages and into the 19th century when all shipping was wind driven, people have waited for the wind to blow, but not too much. We are back there too.
Now we are told we cannot make steel, aluminium, copper, concrete, fertilizer or drive or fly or operate machinery. To save the planet? From what? And for whom?
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Work out the “for whom” and that’s your answer.
“The whom” is the Leftist Elites who are the beneficiaries of “regulatory capture”. (See definition I posted yesterday.)
They obtained and maintain that position thanks to a vast army of useful idiots of the Left that suffer while their Elite controllers fly around the world to climate conferences in private jets.
“Follow the money trail.”
Incidentally, the same applies to the covid billionaires.
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It’s all about the Marxist credo….the end justifies the means…the credo that defies logic and reason and abhors freedom of the individual… and licenses literally anything ….no matter how heinous… as its means.
So the Marxists’ ends have always been their eternal holy grail …total control of the world and everyone in it by a Marxist ‘elite’ of self-styled ‘intellectuals’….serfs and the politburo.
They’d tried every means including the systematic slaughter of more than 100million people in their forced famines and pogroms of the Soviet Union … the Communist Chinese Cultural Revolution and the killing Fields of Cambodia…but that wasn’t enough to bring to heel the individual thinkers who stood in their way ….so for their cause , the blip of warming that followed the ‘new ice age’ scare of the late 70s was fortuitous…a manufactured ‘threat’ to the planet itself… that would license them to deploy the ultimate means….destruction of democracy.
With their ends in mind…..truth didn’t matter a damn…so they expunged the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period and the natural warming as the earth emerged from the LIA and all the periodic warm and cool cycles caused by the natural oscillations…pretended the natural causes of the 20 year blip of warming from the late 70s to 1998 …ie the natural Great Pacific Climate Shift that started it and the natural 1998 uber-El Nino that lifted global temperature to a new plateau ….didn’t happen…and even when IPCC and UKMET had to acknowledge the PAUSE that followed the blip …they rejected that….because they could.
Why could they? Because by then Marxism ‘owned’ the MSM in all the democracies via the LW journalists they’d trained up.
By this time the Social Sciences that had always had the same Marxist ends were deeply embedded in the schools and universities and a critical mass of their post-modern product had been indoctrinated into believing nothing was absolute…there was no objective truth …not even in the natural sciences…which were now to be post-normal science where truth had to make way for political expediency and the Marxist ends.
By then democracy was pretty much over only we didn’t know it.
And now it seems there are two distinct but symbiotic groups…..the pure ideological Marxists …in it for the power over other people’s lives…and Big Money….the already uber-rich Marxists with their own vested interests to build and protect …the opportunistic carpetbaggers rushing to suck on the money siphon while the gormless hapless national governments are handing out squillions in taxpayers’ money …and that indispensable sector that have always been there to back the Marxists and bury the people …the behemoths of world finance …the bankers and international moneylenders.
As Josh Frydenberg announced last week…it’s those bankers and the international moneylenders…tyranny’s trump card… who’ve finally come to the rescue of the Marxist would-be global rulers ….to bring recalcitrant democratic governments and their pesky resistant constituents finally to heel….for the holy grail of one world government.
00
In the 1800’s, people waited on the wharves for weeks waiting for sailing ships to materialise .
80
Fast forward 2021: we are still waiting for our goods and friends to arrive.
Maybe next year, unless your friend is a cricketer, or, Nicole Kidman. And if you live in WA, add a few more years.
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But Australia can dig up, process and export all these goodies so China can convert them into random energy generators that the world clamours for. Making Australians very wealthy in the process.
Wind power is roughly 100 times more materials intensive than gas power.
Think of the mammoth task of converting the current power system to wind energy using 100 times more materials than used now and then multiply that by 3 times to cover transport and industrial uses of energy. It is beyond mind boggling.
Fortunately for Australia the maths challenged fruit loops cannot do these basic sums and, despite the impossibility of achieving net-zero, the resource boom is already unprecedented and will continue to grow until the maths challenged fruit loops see the obvious.
Australia needs to fully support COP26. In fact it would be in Australia’s interest to host such events. The worst thing for Australia right now would be a cold northern winter that makes the hopelessness of net-zero become obvious.
Those with a humanities bent will continue the belief that technology will prevail but, until fusion is a reality on Earth, the current energy systems have unavailable limits.
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Not so fast…a lot of the ‘goodies’ can be sourced in Africa or South America where the local labour is cheaper and more compliant than here.
In the post-democracy world the One World Government can call all the shots…form consumer cartels to control who can produce what and where they can sell it.
As envisaged by German Economist Hans Werner Sinn in his Green Paradox essays…after forcing resource countries to leave their resources in the ground…the UN will become the de facto owner of the resources and will decide to whom and by whom they will be sold.
Sinn says the resource countries will not be happy and military conflict may ensue…but he seems OK with that…a justified ‘means’ no doubt…when the ‘ends’ can be sold as ‘saving the planet’.
In this new order it might be that neither Australia nor the US would have much clout, because strong as the US still is now …it’s weakening faster than we ever thought possible…and if you read about how deeply embedded and invested many of the UK and European movers and shakers are with China, personally and on a national scale… it’s hard to see that China doesn’t leapfrog America before the US can get out of the present precipitous slide.
I think Europe would choose to appease China no matter how much China was threatening Australia …militarily or tradewise…if America continues to weaken and is seen as a fading power rather than a strong reliable ally.
10
Trouble is that having done that, there may be no way back. Being able to say “I told you so” may be very satisfying but it doesn’t repair the damage.
00
Schott is a total idiot and a treasonous looter.
461
🙂
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I’m sure she’s a very personable character.
Malcolm created a whole array of sinecures with which to reward people he came to admire during his years of ascendancy.
Lord knows were he to be given the reins again he’d have a bunch of new acquaintances to reward beginning with France’s soon to be ex-president Macron.
40
Was it that Turnbull admired them or more likely he rewarded them because they admired him. Turnbull is a narcissist like Rudd and absolutely wants people to adore him for his brilliance. You know the brilliance of pumping water uphill to make a battery or to buy a nuclear submarine with a diesel engine. Like the emperor with no clothes he surrounded himself with sycophants whose job it was to tell him that he was smart.
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“I’m sure she’s a very personable character. ”
Apparently, so were Himmler, Megele, Stalin and Mao.
10
Soooo not a fan Mr Galt? people have been asking who you are btw
00
Now Scomo has jumped aboard the “clean energy catastrophe”.
Scott Morrison says the Coalition must “come together” to combat climate change and embrace a new global energy economy.
“It is now a question of how, not if”.
Exactly, how, and at what cost?
Yes, I know, SA occasionally delivers 100% “renewable” electricity, but 100% backed up by gas and diesel, and a long power cord from Vic. And Tas does it with hydro.
But let’s see the how for Vic, NSW and Qld without coal.
Qld earlier this year launched a $2bn renewable energy and hydrogen jobs fund to “grab the opportunities that are coming from clean energy”. So more government subsidies? And no coal?
Iron ore magnate Andrew Forrest has proposed a $1bn hydrogen manufacturing facility in central Queensland.
If “ruinables” are so low cost, why is any government target required? Let the market act.
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Yes, I know, SA occasionally delivers 100% “renewable” electricity,
Like on this date.. 😉
https://i.postimg.cc/3RYL0fZR/SA-Gas-27-June.jpg
Imagine if they didn’t have so much fossil fuel back-up !
Adelaide would be a ghost town… oh wait … 😉
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Don’t worry, the local daily, the appropriately named The Advertiser, has launched a week long series about the joys/advantages/jobs etc. of the coming Net Zero.
80
There is a shift in the Australian government narrative, I think. If you listen carefully to what they are saying, my interpretation is that Australia has a “net zero” target not because of global warming but because trade depends on it. “It” being a verbal commitment to “net zero”, not an actual commitment to “net zero”. In other words, the exact same policy being pursued by most of the world’s governments (but not Germany, Britain, California, South Australia, for example) If you subscribe to the concept that politics is the art of the possible, then it is arguable that the Australian government is doing the best they can for the country. Personally, I would prefer them to be up front and simply say that they will give reliable energy top priority. I do understand that this could cause problems in the short term at least, but until some country stands up for sanity, the insanity will continue.
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A good point but The Feds are still allowing/enabling/subsidising far too much Renewable disaster construction here in Australia: it costs now, it will cost in the future and recycling the bits is an ecological nightmare.
One of the ugliest sights of my life was about six months ago.
On a harbour cruise we floated past the old State Dockyard, closed for 30 years and laying outside the main building was a massive set of turbine blades freshly imported from somewhere else.
Total rubbish when we are importing this expensive junk from the country which is taking boatloads of our beautiful, shiny, black, diamondiferous coal and loading it just a kilometer away.
Come on Australia, stand up.
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The global pursuit of net-zero is creating the greatest resource boom the globe has ever experienced. It is an unachievable task with current technology but will make Australian’s very wealthy.
I spent most of my working career in the Australian mining industry. I did not encourage my boys to follow however my grandchildren could have very fruitful careers in the resource industry. Trying to get to net-zero is like the carrot on the stick. It is an enticing yet unachievable target. The only prospect of achieving it is fusion power in Earth and there is not much hope for that this century.
80
Would that have been called “window dressing” in the past?
30
Mainly backed up by brown coal.
50
And ScMo and the Liberal Party wonder why Australians are joining United Australia Party.
Palmer call out for federal candidates
Unlike other parties, membership to the United Australia Party is free, and Mr Palmer said in September that 46,000 people had already joined.
Last week, a Facebook post claimed the membership had swelled to 60,000.
Mr Palmer has also foreshadowed more high-profile candidate announcements in coming weeks.
110
Farage should start a similar party in the UK. To attract votes across the politics spectrum, it should pledge that on all issues beyond a few core ones like climate change, it will be guided by public referendums and/or the votes of randomly chosen Commoners’ Committees, one per topic. (E.g., Housing, Education, Welfare, Health, etc..)
00
I say promise everything then do NOTHING. After all most other countries play lip service to this economic claptrap.
70
The way to go. Pass Glasgow’s high priced help’s BS parade and then actually do what most countries do, get exempted.
40
…..mehh!
Just make sure coal is for essential manufacturing capacity for the high tech sector, manufacturing capacity for police uniforms, military vehicles and drone manufacturing and rare earths for making mobile phones and tracking devices, Ai camera’s, and make sure big pharma manufacturing experiences a golden age of increased growth, and manufactured textured vegetable protein to feed the masses and every should be fine. There will be heaps of free housing too…no brainer..
Why are people on this blog so pessimistic?? 🙂
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“hy are people on this blog so pessimistic??”
Some of us are old enough to have seen too many “interesting” events.
And to have been in “interesting” places whilst these were occurring, or not long afterwards.
20
Kerry Schott has no idea what she’s promoting, though to be fair, that’s a very common thing in the modern world.
Waiting in the background, but never to be called, are The Engineers, who in the space of one day could do a simple cost analysis to guide our future efforts.
Imagine, yes imagine, four towns to be provided with electricity from one of the four current options.
Town 1. Wind Turbines.
Town 2. Solar panels.
Town 3. Nuclear power.
Town 4. Ultra Super Critical Coal Fired power.
So our engineers go to work and have a quick useable cost estimate that ranks the long term electricity price for each town.
I would like to live in No 4, it’s cheapest.
Nuclear, is noticeably more expensive than coal but is significantly cheaper than the Renewables.
No amount of new analysis can change that cost reality.
For the Renewables Advocates like Ms. Schott there’s another fantasy world to inhabit where the benefits of promoting Renewables far outweigh the excess costs of the product she’s promoting.
Skimmm,skimm $$$$$$$. MalEx444.
280
The answer is obvious; cut the external power to Canberra which wants to go 100% renewables. Let them live the way they want us to live. See how it goes and for how long.
50
Oh, how I long for those cold wet windless evenings in winter, with no electricity !
It will be such fun !
The future beckons… Think of the children!
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And in Vicdanistan you won’t even be able to collect firewood to keep warm because the Government banned firewood collection in many areas.
That dead wood is badly needed to fuel next summer’s round of uncontrollable bushfires.
400
That’s an interesting juxtaposition. Not that I’d want anybody to suffer the smoky winter hell that plagues some suburbs and towns, but I wonder how practical commercial scale firewood collection would be. And maybe a business compressing the firewood into pellets to feed a Drax like power station.
20
It takes energy to make different energy from stored energy.
Basic physics that even an old bloke like me can comprehend.
Turning trees into compressed pellets takes energy to manufacture a relatively low energy-density “fuel”.
It takes energy to mine coal. It takes energy to drill for oil, It takes energy to transport coal, oil or “pellets” to where it is to be “oxidized”.
THE ultimate source of ALL the energy on the planet is the process that formed the solar system and the continuation of that in the solar radiation that enables life on this convenient rock.
00
Its definitely crunch time for a failed hypothesis and with CO2 in short supply there will be a price hike in fizzy drinks.
140
In my lifetime, CO2 was being drilled out of the ground in Western Queensland, specifically for commercial / food usage.
Talk to an un-corrupted rock-doctor (if you can find one),for more details
10
PeterSweden7 Tweeted this:
I have little doubt that Australia will be one of the first countries to implement such policies. The last 18 months has shown how Australian Government policy is dominated by such Leftist thinking and also the preparedness for dictatorial government decrees to be violently enforced by a misused police force.
290
David,
I hear what you are saying. The green scam is killing our civilization and economy. I totally agree. The Green Scam is, however, a background country killing issue.
Using logic and reality to predict what will happen in the immediate future. …. We are not going to see the green scams play out… as you describe… see the end of that pointless game.
Reality/Politics is forcing a change. Biden is a step away/a health issue, away from the end of his career and has absolutely unequivocally, lost any hope/public/media support of being the 2024 US Democratic candidate.
Trump is starting to rebound because of Biden/Democratic party’s absolute failure and because the public are starting not trust the US media.
If you were an evil advisor of China. What would you advise China should do now? The risk now, is Trump could/will win the 2024 election and change everything. For example Trump could release Ivermectin to address covid. Trump is not dependent on Big Pharma. Trump is a super star who could change/fix things like the Ivermectin problem.
This is the time (Biden presidency) when the US and the world is most vulnerable to a sneaky attack.
China has immunity from our, Greta/COPXX civilization, ending CO2 problems. We are so stupid…. The EU has forced most countries to force change to natural gas. The problem is the EU has no local sources of natural gas. The loss of a couple of large natural gas pipelines and the closing of the Suez channel could shutdown the UK and most of Europe.
Countries stop when the energy stops and when shipments of key materials slowdown and stop. Logically, this is the time when the US is most vulnerable to a sneaky economic attack.
What would happen if China stopped shipping us steel to built stuff?
The world consumption of steel is 1.6 billion tons.
China is the largest steel producer in the world. India 100 million tons/year is the next largest producer of steel.
https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/china-crude-steel-output-to-top-one-billion-tons-for-first-time-further-rise-in-2021
China’s Steel Output to Top 1 Billion Tons This Year for First Time, Report Says
(Yicai Global) Dec. 22 — Chinese steelmakers will have produced more than 1 billion tons of the alloy this year for the first time ever, according to a new industry report.
Production of crude steel is expected to have climbed 5.4 percent to 1.05 billion tons in the 12 months ending Dec. 31, the China Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute said in the report it published yesterday. Consumption likely jumped 9.6 percent to 981 million tons.
https://www.worldometers.info/coal/china-coal/
China Coal Summary Table
Coal Reserves 149,818,259,000 Tons, 4th in the world
Coal Production 3,708,155,408 Tons, 1st in the world
Coal Consumption 4,319,921,826 Tons, 1st in the world
Yearly Deficit -611,766,418 tons.
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If the last 18 months have told us anything, it is that the average Aussie cannot think for themselves at all. The inner tyrant has come out and while they excel at their national sport of stigmatizing, dobbing in etc, they cannot see further than the length of their nose that one day this might come back to bite you, but “I STAND WITH DAN”. This country really seem to live up to it’s name of “The lucky country” because I’m seriously starting to doubt if there’s enough intelligence around that the prosperity came from innovation. It’s sad…
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a bit of unnecessary self flagellation , I doubt things are that bleak nor the grass that much greener elsewhere
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and yet Schott is saying no coal for Australia by 2035 (and this is in the West Australian), while Joyce and Morrison are moving to net zero by 2050 according to today’s papers.
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Kerry:
Mouth For Hire. $5,000 a sentence.
Nice work if you can get it, and you can get it if you try.
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speaking from experience, or is this just some idolising on your part
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Be a better troll.
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Yes Forrest the FitzRoys of the world are the reason for its dumbing down.
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I didn’t do it.
https://youtu.be/G_-ctuv3qYA
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In a way, its unfortunate that Australia still has so much gas and coal fired electricity available as back-up for when wind ans solar don’t function. It means that reality will not bite us here for quite a few years.
Hopefully as the anti-CO2 agenda starts to bite in the EU and UK, our population will start to wake up to reality and we can get our woke, weak politicians to see the light..
… before there is no light to see.
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Australia needs a coal free day now and then, you know, just to clear the skies.
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I like your thinking and just to make it interesting all fossil fuel generation will power down at the same time to make it more realistic like intermittent ruinables .
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I never imagined that the entire world would swallow the stupid idea of so called renewables and now even the Murdoch group have decided to join in and promote this ludicrous disaster.
Andrew Bolt, Rowan Dean, Terry McCrann etc will continue to fight, but it’s a hopeless task against all the World’s govts and MSM.
Next we’ll have the Glasgow comedy festival to endure and all the stupid clowns will be happy to place our collective necks on the chopping block.
We’re supposed to be returning to the use of weather DEPENDENT energy, what could possibly go wrong?
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It is unAustralian to fight this madness. Go with the flow as the rest of the world demand Australian commodities at ever-rising prices to change the weather. Net zero is manor from heaven for Australian miners and the wider Australian economy.
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manna
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You spelled “Manure” wrongly.
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“Net Zero” is as INANE as “Covid Zero”
These people are certifiable – WHERE is the Cost/Benefit analysis?
An ineresting paper “The Physics & Chemistry of Carbon Dioxide Formation, Absorption, Gasification and Transport in the Earth’s Atmosphere & Hydrosphere” just published in Shalemag.com
Fairly long but challenges a lot of the thoughts on CO2 retention in the atmosphere etc.
Cheers,
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Being certifiable is “the new normal”.
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The Two Great Cons of the 21st Century…Bitcoin and Climate Change Part 1
Tuesday, 12 October 2021 — Gold Coast, Australia
By Vern Gowdie
Editor, The Rum Rebellion (received as email – wife made mistake of subscribing me, yet to unsubscribe as like to see opposing views)
‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.’
Albert Einstein
‘Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.’
Albert Einstein
Albert’s wisdom is a source of great comfort to me.
The infinite potential of human stupidity has been on display this past week.
Net-zero emissions by (pick a date) – what does that actually mean, what will it actually achieve, at what cost and more importantly, who are the privileged few that stand to make a motza out of this massive con?
But very few ask the hard questions. Most just nod and go along with it. We’ll join some dots on this climate fraud in Part 2 tomorrow.
In recent days, the worthless Bitcoin (BTC) has soared back towards its April 2021 high. Last time I looked, the medium of exchange for fraudsters, criminals, and ransomware was over US$57k.
The speculators are speculating on the speculation of the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) potentially approving a futures-based bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) a product, if approved, that’ll facilitate even greater levels of speculation in a valueless offering.
The fact this product is even being considered shows just how far removed we are from common sense. Sadly, this is what happens when speculation has been actively encouraged to continue for so long. People lose their bearings. What was once considered absurd now seems reasonable. Why? Because, relative to other stupid schemes, this seems less stupid.
According to CoinDesk, a US$1.6 billion buying spree (lasting all of five minutes) contributed to a sharp lift in the bitcoin price:
‘As CoinDesk’s Muyao Shen reported Wednesday [6 October 2021], a buyer or a group of buyers entered an order on a centralized exchange to buy $1.6 billion worth of bitcoin.
‘That much supply hitting the market in under five minutes (13:11 to 13:16 UTC Wednesday) is a lot to jam into any one exchange (or three). It almost immediately sent bitcoin prices skyrocketing 5% to roughly (US)$55,500.’
But there’s more to this story. Where did the US$1.6 billion come from?
As reported by CoinDesk (emphasis added):
‘While the purchase is denominated in the press as $1.6 billion, it wasn’t actually $1.6 billion in greenbacks paid for bitcoin.
‘dollars themselves were most likely not the currency used but instead the transaction appears to have been largely done using the stablecoin USDT, issued by Tether, which was an on-ramp for many in China to trade on exchanges like Binance or Huobi.
‘“Most trading volume was from BTC/USDT,” Ki told CoinDesk regarding Wednesday’s trade, “which means buyers already had USDT coins.”’
The whale/s punting on bitcoin ‘already had USDT (Tether) coins.’
Interesting.
They liquidated US$1.6 billion of Tether [USDT] stablecoins on the same day this article was published by Bloomberg – hmmm
A journalist not taking things on face value and doing just a bit of background checking.
Hmmm – sounds familiar.
This is from the 29 September issue of The Rum Rebellion:
‘In 1920, Charles Ponzi achieved lasting notoriety with his international postal reply coupon arbitrage “opportunity”.
‘Ponzi convinced people he was buying postage coupons abroad at a discount and selling them at face value in the US. Tremendous profits were to be had.
‘A half-truth was all Ponzi needed to germinate the seed of his scheme.
‘Throw in the promise of a 50% return in a matter of weeks and money poured in.
‘A journalist named Richard Grozier sensed all was not right.
‘In theory you could make a profit from the arbitrage opportunity.
‘But nothing like the alleged “profits” Ponzi was delivering to investors. Why? Well, how could Ponzi claim to be trading US$10 million to US$15 million in coupons, when there only a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth in circulation?
‘The numbers did not add up.
‘The rest, as they say, is history, and so was Charles Ponzi.’
Tether has all the look, feel, and touch of a modern-day Ponzi scheme. If Tether does have the money, where is it invested? Certainly not in US investment grade corporate bonds or US treasuries.
Rumour has it that a good chunk is invested in Chinese corporate debt…specifically debt which has been issued by near-insolvent property developers. Tether denies this of course.
Maybe the whale/s with US$1.6 billion in Tether stablecoins didn’t buy this denial – instead they bought worthless bitcoins with their worthless stablecoins.
Ah, the stupidity of mankind.
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I really dont see much more asset credibility in those numbers the bank stores for me and the little sheets of plastic in my wallet. Fiat money isnt really propped up by much more than belief, a lot like cryptos.
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The Left keep telling us that anthropogenic global warming is “settled science”.
There is no such thing as settled science.
By definition, if it can’t be questioned, it’s not science.
Some actual science needs to be introduced to cancel the dogma of the anthropogenic global warming fraud AGW(f).
Sadly, Australia is one of the foremost countries in submitting to, and promoting this fraud.
Few countries are as committed to self destruction over AGW(f) as Australia is.
Australia has comfortably returned to pre-Enlightment values where dogma and not objective scientific truth dominate. It’s exactly where the Left want us.
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“By definition, if it can’t be questioned, it’s not science.”
If it can’t be questioned, then it is religion.
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“By definition, if it can’t be questioned, it’s not science.”
“Science is the belief in the falability of experts.” – Richard Feynman.
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Perhaps TonyFromOz can tell us how many more proper power stations Australia can afford to lose before we face grid collapse due to too many unreliables and not enough actual real power generators.
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Pretty sure the proverbial will be heading towards the fan when Liddell closes.
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Will Liddell be spectacularly blown up as a multimedia event for the ignorant like the power station they blew up at Port Augusta?
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A study in Germany in about 2011 showed that the optimum level of renewables in an energy system was 30%.
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Just how many solar subsidy farms wind subsidy farms and parasitic battery farms do we need before a green utopia is realised and at what cost to the economy , jobs and society .
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“…at what cost to the economy , jobs and society .”
You should always ask the leftists: “And then what?”
It’s a question they never ask – even themselves.
But it is a basic question when you actually care about something and someone proposes a “solution”.
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Liddell will be enough if we get anything like the hot day of the 10th of Feb, 2017. The loss of Hazelwood for the NEM put the grid on the brink for days like that. With Liddell’s shut down next year (even if it’s “only” 3 of the 4 500 MW units), the grid will face a generation shortfall if the entire east coast experiences high temperatures and there is a high pressure system around the South Australian, Victorian border.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-10/nsw-power:-blackouts-across-the-state-averted/8260830
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/tomago-aluminium-smelter-on-the-verge-of-disaster-as-electricity-cut-off-20170210-guabaw.html
We won’t get to the point of the grid simply being unable to be brought back up at all. The inner suburbanite crowd that supports the green transition will revolt once they have experienced a couple of outages denying then the air conditioning, chilled chardonays and lattes for a few hours. Then we will begin the slow process of rebuilding our thermal baseload generation assets but not before the pain has truly been felt by the inner greenists.
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And it just gets crazier and crazier…..
Not long in Calidopia, before you will not be allowed to mow the grass.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/10/11/california-climate-activists-just-banned-backup-generators-and-fire-pumps/
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The challenge – buy, install and sort out operational issues for 20GW of firm generating renewable capacity over the next 14 years – what could go wrong?
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This is only the tip of the iceberg for Australia. With the developed world hell-bent on achieving net-zero using random energy generators and everything electric, resource rich Australia will enjoy unparalleled economic boom. It is wonderful and it has already started. It is the reason Australia should have huge delegation at COP26 encouraging the fruit loops to go full bore with their unachievable targets.
Australia can only hope that insanity prevails and no one comes up with viable fusion power in the next few decades. From what I have seen of fusion power generators, they will be more resource hungry than fission. Fission will be good for Australia as it will also be resource hungry.
It is good to be an Australian miner right now – no matter the commodity. There will be a huge transfer of wealth from the rest of the developed world back to Australia mostly via China.
At some point not too far in the future, the world will stop wanting US denominated paper. Their net international position is unsupportable in any sense other than military action and there is now a balancing power. China will have reduced need to hold US debt. It will be very challenging for the USA to have to start living within its means. Right now USA owes the rest of the world USD15,000,000,000,000 – about 12 months of total economic output. And it is rising at a rapid pace with current account USD200bn in the red each quarter:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/current-account
This has to be highly inflationary for the USA. They have stopped fossil fuel development before they have anything approaching an alternative.
Trump had changed the course but Biden has got the US back on track to be an economic sink hole. Not as bad as the fanatics in Europe but getting there.
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China did us a favour and themselves a disservice, when they banned our coal.
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From Rafe Champion newcatallaxy.blog – Parallel universes
I have never been a fan of the parallel universe theory in physics but I can see that it is a real thing in climate and energy matters. Check out the contrast:
The British universe.
The alternative universe in Australia.
Britain condemned to a decade of energy crises – by Juliet Samuel for the Telegraph
Updated: 8 hours ago
We reap what we sow. Collective indecision on energy policy by successive governments over many years has led directly to the impending crisis now threatening to engulf us.
Over-reliance on green energy won’t cut it according to Juliet Samuel, leaving us dangerously reliant on unreliable providers.
“More renewables might be able to help a bit, but because weather-generated power isn’t consistent, the grid cannot handle much more of it. To plug the gap, just as with our declining gas production, we will have to import more and more.
In practice, this means the UK is now reliant on sources of energy that are exempt from all of our green targets and whose price is entirely controlled by Vladimir Putin.”
There are only two realistic alternative sources of energy which can plug the gap but this will involve a reversal of our current energy policy:
“If the Government gave up its ahistorical insistence that nuclear plants rely on “private” financing (which in effect means partial foreign state funding) and if it committed to a consistent plan for a dozen new plants, costs would soon start dropping through the floor. This is exactly what has happened in countries that have run their nuclear programmes well, like South Korea. The first time you build a plant with a new reactor design is always the most expensive. The sixth time, everyone knows what they are doing.
Unfortunately, even in a best-case scenario, we won’t be able to get nuclear capacity back to its peak for another decade. To build it up to what’s really required will take even longer. The Government is pinning its hopes on a series of mini Rolls-Royce reactors still in development, but the earliest one won’t start operating before 2030. We are facing a decade of crippling energy crises and this is a mess entirely of our own making.
Unlike in most situations, there is a relatively quick fix. We are still sitting on more than a decade’s worth of gas supplies in one form or another. Our shale and remaining undersea resources are like a gift from a fairy godmother. We could start granting permissions tomorrow and within a few years get the gas flowing to plug the gap until the new nuclear plants can take over.
Such a plan wouldn’t even have an environmental downside. If we don’t produce our own gas, we will simply import gas from elsewhere or use electricity generated by others, some of which will involve burning coal. Yet in an act of almost unparalleled stupidity, we have designed our regulations to incentivise precisely the opposite.”
The full article can be read here with a link to the original beneath it:
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The alternative universe in Australia.
Australia’s $2.1 trillion future with 672,000 jobs and net zero emissions
Billionaires, blue collar workers and green groups have all joined forces for Mission Zero — a new plan to get Australians more jobs with a smarter, cleaner nation.
Joe Hildebrand
Australia is the best-placed nation on earth to be the global winner in a net zero world, with more than 672,000 jobs created and $2.1 trillion in economic activity generated by 2050.
Billionaires, blue collar workers, green groups and the national architect of the blueprint to net zero have all joined forces for Mission Zero — an unprecedented new project that reveals for the first time the enormous economic forces Australia could unleash by harnessing the clean energy revolution.
This includes construction of the world’s largest solar plant, powering our iron ore exports with hydrogen-fuelled machines and the rebirth of our mining industry as a global treasure chest of rare earths and other minerals.
Research commissioned by News Corp shows the massive injection into Australian GDP would include a projected $363bn in clean energy production – including renewable power and carbon capture – and $407bn in the production of energy efficient products, including lighting, heating and cooling systems.
There would also be an estimated $611bn of extra economic activity in the transport and mobility sector, including the adoption of electric vehicles, plus $107bn in urban infrastructure such as public transport and traffic systems.
New investment would be greatest in NSW, with $616bn projected, followed by Queensland with $473 billion and Victoria with $432bn. Opportunities in WA total $356 billion and in South Australia $114bn.
The Valuing Mission Zero report was compiled by former prime ministerial economics supremo Andrew Charlton for global firm Accenture and draws on 56 separate reports and sources from around the world.
“With our abundant renewable energy resources Australia is the best-placed nation in the world to benefit from net zero,” Dr Charlton, the Asia-Pacific Sustainability Lead and Managing Director at Accenture, said.
“There are trillions of dollars of new business opportunities across the economy in transport, infrastructure, utilities, resources, agriculture and construction.
“The transition to net zero will create hundreds of thousands of jobs. No matter what your skill level or where you live, there will be new jobs in farming, factories, transport and information technology.”
Billionaire entrepreneur Mike Cannon-Brookes, who is building the world’s largest solar farm in the Northern Territory, said Australia was perfectly positioned to be a world-beater in the new economy.
“We should be pushing the world to decarbonise because, literally, we will be one of the biggest winners on the planet,” he said.
“We can create a fast, stable and better economy with more jobs and everyone’s bills will be cheaper.”
Mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, who is transforming his Fortescue Metals Group into a carbon neutral company, said the new economy would deliver massive opportunities for the mining industry and the regions.
“The time has come for people throughout the country, and in the country, to really be excited by the new future of sustainable energy and sustainable products which come from it,” he said.
“They don’t have to say, well, we’re giving up fossil fuels, we’re taking huge risk. No, they’re just embracing an industry which they will be very good at.”
Coal miners’ union boss Tony Maher said a wealth of other minerals in Australia would keep Australian mining strong even as domestic coal consumption drew to a close and global coal demand gradually tapered off in the decades ahead.
“We’ve got every mineral there is. We’ll always have a strong mining industry,” the CFMEU Mining Division president said. “And we’ll have a strong coal industry for a long time to come.”
Recycling king Anthony Pratt said Australian manufacturing would also thrive in the new environment.
“Australia has always been an innovation nation and I believe our manufacturing industries have a great future,” he said. “Australia has all the ingredients to lead our region in sustainable manufacturing – and we’re already doing that in many areas.”
Australian Workers Union national secretary Daniel Walton said workers had a bright future in both mining and manufacturing.
“Australia can and should be a 21st century green manufacturing powerhouse, but if we want that future tomorrow we need to keep the lights on today,” he said.
“Australia has incredible opportunities in the resources of the future – hydrogen, sustainable timber, rare earths, uranium, lithium, the list goes on. But we shouldn’t limit our ambitions to exporting raw materials. If we want quality blue collar jobs to exist in the future, we have to be investing aggressively in the manufacturing industries of the future.”
Former Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, now the federal government’s Special Adviser on the road map to net zero, said Australia had unrivalled opportunities
“Getting to zero will bring enormous opportunities for Australia’s export industries,” he said.
“Our industries and exporters will produce products for the new economy that will contribute to national economic growth. And it is easier to share the benefits equitably if our economy is strong and growing.
“Young and old can be part of the new economy, building our prosperity while eliminating the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming our planet and causing climate change.”
Australian Conservation Foundation CEO Kelly O’Shanassy said Australia needed to act now to seize the benefits.
“Australia has enormous opportunity and could be the envy of the world, but it will take genuine national leadership to co-ordinate this push. And we need it fast,” he said.
“We’re not the only nation in the world with the natural advantages, the technology and know-how to make us a clean energy superpower. There is a competition afoot and we need to be in it.”
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From the Comments
– Everything is so “wishy washy” feel good. We need to do what we can to help the environment and their are so many ways without destroying the economy and distributing the wealth making us yet poorer again… The main point of the article to me was mentioning how many jobs were to be created but no mention of how many would be lost. At the moment it is all “pie in the sky” stuff; we are destroying the economy and will be relying on reliable and cost-effective technologies are yet to be – and may never be – invented. It is the closest thing to the proverb “cutting off your nose to spite your face” that I have seen in almost 60 years on the planet. All these people that carry on about it have no answers – just constant complaining
– Expected population increase by 2050 is 12 mio people … oh wow 672,000 jobs. A natural projection of people currently working in solar and such industries is 500,000. Pretty woeful !
– A simple question I keep asking and no-one will answer it. Can a wind-farm create the power required to replace itself with another wind-farm?
Can a solar farm create the power required to build another solar farm?
Why is everyone avoiding a very simple question?
– Almost the entire world is now scrambling for coal and gas supplies at any cost. They must be fools for not choosing solar farms and windmills instead.
– Did anyone notice that not a single one of these “Mission Zero” people mentioned nuclear energy ? That’s because there’s no money in it for them. Don’t be fooled!
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The dopey green future replaces about 5 regular jobs with one green job, how is that a benefit.
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The trouble with this statement is that the first $trillion and 670,000 jobs are overseas because we produce didly-squat of what is needed. Is this factored into their thinking?
20
UK’s energy policy is not much better. At least they have some nuclear power but they too are suffering the same disastrous consensuses that we are facing. It appears the UK and Australia are doing their best to destroy their respective economies. Spare us the BS PM Morrison. Just be honest and declare your intention to destroy our nation with your BS emission reduction policies, or else change direction and start supporting new coal fired and nuclear power stations, which is what countries like China, India and Japan are doing.
Tories asleep at the wheel!
and PM Morrison asleep in the back seat.
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‘Charlie boy’ is at it again with his latest interview with the BBC (who else?) and his ‘last chance saloon’ comment warning of ‘catastrophic’ results for the world if we do not heed his warnings and bow down at the cop 26 in Glasgow. It’s all more of the same.
But Charlie is doing his bit; he is driving his car on a cocoction of wine and eco petrol and warming his palace with renewables as ‘much as possible’ I believe he said.
Charles has his right to an opinion . . but I don’t care for them!
GeoffW
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I guess nobody asked him about his previously failed predictions of doom. I dont see why his latest effort will be any different. With enough Princes and enough guesses he may be right one day.
10
A daily visit to the AEMO data dashboard should convince even the dumbest leftie that wind and solar cannot power anywhere. The current fuel mix for Queensland shows 79% coal and 4% gas. The lights would never come on again if wind and solar were the only generators.
The closure of Liddell will be the final tipping point for NSW.
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I used to do that until they reconfigured everything and it became impossible to get the overall picture in one display.
The dumbing down is all of a piece with these latest announcements by our Prime Minister; Big Tech has already guaranteed there will be no discussion on anything between the poles of decarbonization and vaccination. We’re to bite our tongues or be interned innit?
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News Corp is going Full Bore on Mission Zero
How hydrogen power could change Australia forever
We’ve known about hydrogen for hundreds of years, but suddenly it’s being touted as the clean, green solution. This is why hydrogen is so hot right now.
Prince Charles’ warning to ScoMo on climate change
Prince Charles has issued a warning on climate change to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, saying “this is a last chance saloon”.
Western Sydney to the Hunter: How NSW can go green
NSW is perfectly positioned to become a global leader in low carbon heavy manufacturing, but it needs one key thing to make it happen.
Mission Zero
More to pay no way: What Aussies will do for climate change
Most Australians want the government to protect our environment but almost half say they don’t want to pay for it, a YouGov poll has found. Have your say.
Victorian manufacturing’s next frontier in Latrobe Valley
The closure of Ford, Toyota and Holden has long cast a shadow over the Victorian manufacturing sector, but the global shift to a net zero economy presents huge opportunity.
‘Incredible’: New SA jobs sweat on climate-friendly fuel trial
An experiment in South Australia could lead to a new market of jobs, where locals make climate-friendly fuel to modernise things like steelmaking.
How Toowoomba is going even more green
Ruby Cook and Allysia Krause are playing their part to reduce their carbon footprint by planting trees. But bigger developments are afoot.
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I flagged this yesterday, News has gone ferral – I think the renewables camp are throwing everything into the ring at the moment as they realise that COP26, being held in Glasgow in bitterly cold November, is a mistake. I expect it was intially chosen as a venue as Scotland largely relies on renewables (wind and hydro) and was to be seen as a symbol of all that is good with renewables. See world, in Winter, renewable rule!!! However, a lack of wind means that COP26 is likely to be held up as an object of ridicule as it will rely on coal, gas and muclear. All the while the UK will be seen to be shutting down industry with pensioners and the working poor once again buying books from second hand book stores to burn for heating, and light.
The least COP26 should do is issue a statement that it will run on renewables only and not use reliable coal, gas or nuclear. And that goes for its venues, accommodation, transport (EVs only of course) restaurants and all supporting infrastructure. Delegates can arrive there on the UKs electric train network – and Greta can organise a boat for them to get to the UK.
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Please forgive my typos!
20
They could issue the statement you want quite easily, then just play shell games with supply and contracts like the ACT. They claim 100% “renewable” while sitting in the middle of a dominantly coal and gas grid. Reality can be anything you want to make up with energy claims atm.
00
I wonder if scomo has been swayed by jugears, he was cool on the idea to travel to Glasgow before, also might be the easing of covid quarantine rules.
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PoliticsNow: Scott Morrison ‘more likely’ to attend Glasgow climate meeting
Scott Morrison is “more likely” to attend the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow. While nothing has been confirmed, The Australian understands that the importance of the summit means the Prime Minister is now leaning towards attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which begins on October 31.
It comes as Prince Charles urged Mr Morrison to attend the climate summit, warning the talks were a “last chance saloon” to avoid global “catastrophe”.
When told by the interviewer the Prime Minister may not attend the summit due to concerns about quarantining, Prince Charles asked: “Is that what he says, is it?”
With the country’s international borders set to open on November 1, Mr Morrison will be able to undertake seven days of home quarantine on his return, if he chooses to go.
Two weeks ago it appeared that Mr Morrison wouldn’t go to the climate summit, outlining to Queensland radio a raft of reasons why he wouldn’t attend.
While noting the decision wasn’t final, he cited New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s likely non-attendance at the climate summit. He added he needed to first be able to explain his government’s emissions plan to Australians, “not people overseas”.
He had also spent a considerable amount of time overseas already, he said. Moreover, with the nation’s reopening plan ramping up, Mr Morrison said there would “be a lot on here” for him to deal with. But he added Australia would definitely be represented by a senior member of his government.
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The big concern is inflation through an energy spike and the markets are jittery. If the price of gas in Australia becomes unaffordable for domestic users, then we should expect political repercussions.
‘Australia faces pressure on gas prices as a global crunch spreads to the nation’s energy sector in a move that could further strain manufacturers and heavy industry.’ (Oz)
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“Kerry Schott’s declaration of the death of coal is a brave announcement given that Australia is still 70% coal powered.”
The deceit in this idea that solar and wind can be a complete solution to anyone’s needs is past silly. It is absurd, almost insanity.
Even the 70% figure is fundamentally deceitful, flawed logic. It can be 100% and it can be 0%. No one would buy a car like that. Unreliables.
And no one would buy even the 30% of wind and solar if it was not heavily subsidized by compulsory carbon taxes on the 70%.
Hasn’t anyone noticed that electricity prices are incredibly high with the addition of ‘free’ energy?
The fact is that for every dollar in value a wind or solar generator receives, they are given another dollar free of charge and often free of tax. And the poor coal or gas or diesel producer is told to produce power on demand and is stood down as much as possible. They want out. The free cash is in producing random, unreliable power.
For much of the time, Australia is 100% coal and gas and diesel powered. It has to be. The sun doesn’t shine for half the day. And we are often becalmed for long periods. Every public servant knows this but still they talk of Clean Energy and run the Clean Energy Finance corporation and all the other government departments tasked with destroying coal and gas.
The Government of Adelaide now has its own diesel powered supply, so they are fine. And who needs manufacturing, farming, travel, mining? Everyone can work for the Government. And we can buy everything from overseas, with the money earned by coal and gas and iron ore. Devious hypocrites all.
It’s free cash, not free energy. And the lifespan of wind and solar is far less than a serviceable coal power station.
And if we try to keep our coal and gas and oil and uranium and iron ore in the ground, the rest of the world will come and take it. They will not ask nicely.
140
““Kerry Schott’s declaration of the death of coal is a brave announcement given that Australia is still 70% coal powered.””
She is more of an urger and a spruiker, what makes her qualified to make such statements.
70
Yes, the coal phaseout is going well, until you find you need some ‘firming’, then it’s all hands on deck.
70
PM Mprrison, stay at home and avoid burning 100 tonnes of jet fuel, help the environment, Glasgow will just be a lefty wankfest.
80
Who is Kerry Schott, she looks like she should be home knitting bootees for her great grandkids.
60
“Coal power will exit early say experts”
Those ‘exspurts’ have been wrong before.
50
Just some actual data to ponder. (on our way to Nett Zero)
Here are the averages across the most recent year, to this date, today 12October2021. These are the averages for each and every hour across that whole year.
Hourly Power Consumption – 23,310MW
Average supply from coal fired power – 14,870MW
Average supply from rooftop solar power – 1670MW
Average supply from Solar power plants – 940MW
Average supply from wind power – 2580MW
Average supply fro Hydro – 1730MW
(So, the total for all renewables is 6920MW)
Keep in mind that the average daily power consumption of 23,310MW is an ABSOLUTE.
Keep in mind that the minimum daily power consumption of 18,000MW is an ABSOLUTE
Keep in mind that the average daily peak of around 28,000MW is an Absolute, (and can rise to 32,000MW PLUS)
At that minimum daily power consumption at around 4AM, take away both solar power sources, and the average for two renewables is now 4,310MW of that 18,000MW.
At the usual evening peak, around 6.40PM, take out both solar, and the average for two renewables is 4,310MW of 28,000MW PLUS.
The best those three renewables can manage is at around Midday, when both solar sources reach their peak. The total is around 10,000MW, not even close to the absolute minimum of 18,000MW, and when the average power consumption at that same time, around Midday, is 26,500MW
Those main indicators are ABSOLUTES. Australia ….. turns off with anything less than that.
Take away coal fired power, and fossil fuelled power added to that, and you have, quite literally ….. NOTHING, well, maybe chaos, and whatever else you can imagine might stem from that.
Even Nett Zero (whatever the weasel word phrase means because no one actually knows) and you have nothing as well.
Good luck getting rid of coal fired power.
Oh, and when the time does come, good luck even trying to explain just why we CANNOT do without coal fired power.
Tony.
200
Just watched some cooling towers from a retired Welsh (presumably fossil-fueled) power station being demolished – just like the SA Govt did to the Port Augusta plant. Is this what is going to happen to every retired coal-fired power station in Australia? These actions are equivalent to a one-way ticket to oblivion when alternatives are not in place.
60
We all know that coal won’t go away, especially given China, India, Japan and many other countries are increasingly relying on it big time. The question then is why are so many people in Australia even talking about reducing emissions to net zero when we know with absolute certainty that will never be possible even if we switch over to 100% nuclear? Agriculture and other aspects of a viable economy need to be included in the mix. Unless of course they want to take them away as well, which would be tantamount to terrorism. The whole thing is a scam on steroids, and the main perpetrators of the scam ought to go to prison for life.
80
You won the argument for me when you pointed out that coal fired generation was sited convenient to accesible coal delivery.
The push for generation siting is much about the push to utilize stored energy depots be it coal/gas/hydro and even solar/wind/nuclear
30
Tony: Would you be able to put this data out in a more graphical format? This would enable the significant differences in demand and supply to be seen.
00
It now seems inevitable that Morrison will knife 25M Australians in the back and implement net zero. And to push the knife even deeper than Gillard’s big carbon tax lie, he will go from claiming to reject Labor’s crazy 45%, to go for the full nation destroying 100%.
From a political perspective this will spell the end of the LNP, so I’m astonished that any leader would implement a policy that would so obviously kill not just their changes at the next election, but the entire party. The reason for this being a fatal blow is obvious. Anyone who is crazy enough to want net zero is either a Greens or Labor voter. The LNP will gain no votes from this policy, but they will lose their entire conservative base, most likely to the UAP and One Nation. This will hand the ALP an easy victory and we will end up with a hard Greens alliance that will then try and bring net zero forward to 2030 and create a green new deal socialist / hard left Marxist regime. The LNP will never recover from this as the voting public will never trust them again and they will be unable to take back the net zero commitment. It’s game over. It also leaves conservative voters without any consolidated party and this is very bad for the nation.
The economic outcome will be predictable as we halt all coal and gas exports, close down all energy intensive industry, such as aluminum smelting, close down the beef and livestock industry and then try and import $ billions of RE products from China without any means to pay back the borrowings. We will then watch the massive budget deficit spiral out of control on top of the already massive COVID debt. Net Zero will leave us with Net Zero and this will be a one way ticket to poverty. The final act is being taken over by China and having all assets and land confiscated and transferred to CCP elites and supporters.
70
and yet so many people will still vote for his party. Stupid is as stupid does. I suppose one could say voting for the other side is even more stupid but in actual fact it’s irrelevant. Stupid is as stupid does does not care about which side is more stupid. Stupid is stupid.
30
“Keep in mind that the average daily peak of around 28,000MW is an Absolute, (and can rise to 32,000MW PLUS)”
You need to get people to actually walk through a 2.6GW power station like (in NSW) Eraring, Bayswater or Mt Piper.
Then explain that we need 10 of these all running flat out to meet peak demand, which means we need at least 15 if not 20 to allow for maintenance, failures etc.
They don’t appreciate the scale of these things – the numbers mean nothing.
Walk them through a working power station, then they begin to understand.
As a tip for those who haven’t done an actual walk-through…
You know you see the helicopter shots of the cooling towers, with all the steam rising from them?
Look closely at the bottom and see a little zig-zag bit.
See it? Looks small, dunnit?
It’s about 4-5m high – just the zig-zag bit!
Now look at the actual power house building using that for scale.
Big, innit?
That’s why it takes at least a decade to build such a behemoth from first sod turned to fully commissioned.
These things only get decommissioned (in sane times) when the 50Hz “hum” has shaken the concrete to destruction and it’s no longer safe – that takes about 50 years. Everything else can be repaired or replaced while the rest of the plant continues to operate, but the structure can’t.
70
“Net Zero will leave us with Net Zero…”
You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy.
That’s the claim.
Not as happy as the oligarchs who will own everything though – they’ll borrow heaps to pay you out (at 10c in the dollar, still leaving you on the hook for plenty), then reap the benefits of inflation and negative interest rates when the “official” digital currency comes in, a la China.
So, it really will be “Lot’s of people got very, very rich. And no-one was really poor – well, no-one worth speaking about, anyway” as per Douglas Adams.
It’s all part of the plan – it’s just that your part is to become poor and/or die.
60
It is worth putting Australia’s world-leading foray into random energy generators in context.
In the 2020 Australian energy update, the energy mix is as follows:
Australia’s energy production – 19,711PJ
Australia’s primary energy use – 6,196PJ
Australia’s solar energy (PV and water heating) – 61PJ
Australia’s wind energy – 63PJ
So ALL the investment in random energy in Australia meets 2% of Australia’s energy use and 0.6% of Australia’s actual energy production.
https://www.energy.gov.au/sites/default/files/Australian%20Energy%20Statistics%202020%20Energy%20Update%20Report_0.pdf
Could anyone claim that the investments were wise?
I do not know if there is an accurate word for net-zero; delusional comes to mind. But this is the era of consensus science and there is no point bringing physics to the debate. The message is to make most of the opportunities – who bought coal shares when end of coal was in sight a year or two back? Consensus science is a belief system. It cannot be challenged. The best approach is to go with the flow and look for opportunities – there are many for Australians.
80
The liberals lie to voters, labor lies to voters – voting for them is a waste of time, voters must punish them now before they punish voters with high inflation. The nats should post candidates in every electorate before its too late.
Anyway, I think we are looking at this the wrong way – we are looking at the losers — there are winners here and we need to find them and call them out. – Is this chaos in Europe a continuation of the pandemic Chaos. Deliberately engineered to make the engineers rich? The Elite have realized that they can steal wealth and tuck it away in crypto or assets like commodities and they have experts hire to make money out of that price chaos, whilst the rest of suffer. Governments are borrowing from the future to make the rich even richer. Politicians and their swamp masters are all part of it. Expose them or it wont stop.
110
Guy Fawkes, the only man ever to enter parliament with honest intentions.
60
I just joined the Liberal Democrats. Heaps of climate sceptics there. John Ruddick, Ross Cameron and Campbell Newman give conservatives a place to go. No subsidies for renewable is be a good start
30
Kerry Schott does not impress me with her views on Australia’s energy supply . .
GeoffW
20
She seems an odd person, not one to be distracted by reality is Kerry.
70
I will vote for any party that will build a couple of coal fired or nuclear power stations and cease all government subsidies to the ‘renewable grifters.’
90
Same here!
30
Excellent. Now all we need is at least a few million voters to do the same and perhaps things will change for the better for a change by sending a loud and clear message to both major parties. That’s how our democratic system of government is meant to work. Too bad most people don’t see it that way and instead waste their vote by supporting one of the two main parties.
10
Good to see the renewables acting as backup doing some heavy lifting. Oh there’s no wind . Sorry bout that. Are there any old coal fired plants we can get up and running.
20
REMEMBER: solar, wind, and battery technologies are NOT (WRT current technological advancements) renewable energies. Clean energy? YES…but NOT renewable (this only applies to wood and water). What are solar panels, wind turbines and storage batteries made out of ? THIN AIR? Get real; how long do you think these things will last? Yehh, I can imagine a corporation that would build wind turbines and solar panels that will last for 50+ years…LOL. Ever heard of PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE?? This is the New World Capitalism, and I’m at least somewhat surprised that the Green Slime supports this.
20
I’m hoping that ScoMo doesn’t heed the advice of that Old Fart Prince Charles, and attends COP26 (AKA snouts in troughs fest). I just wonder how much of a carbon footprint these morons will create in Glasgow. China must be writhing in laughter at the antics of these idiots.
10