cornonacob. You seem to be a bit excited.
I asked for numbers and the only numbers in your rant are the time and date. No good raving old son, I want numbers. The fact that you have not done so suggests to me that you do not have any. I hope that you have and that when you settle down will put them in your next post.
Cheers.

Cohenite: the figure of 26% for South Australia’s wind penetration is measured in actually kilowatt hours, over the year. Capacity is something else. You need to check facts with AEMO before making hasty assumptions.

It’s an intriguing theory you have that wind farms have caused the economic crashes “in places like Greece, Italy, Spain etc” – please explain more! I’m sure this astounding new explanation for the global financial crisis would be well worth publication at this site. Or perhaps you should try the Fortean Times.

Rhrosty: I’m all for wave, algae biomass and geothermal if and when they are working at scale. But right now, wind and solar-thermal are the best large-scale renewables that have been demonstrated at commercial scale.

Eyejaw: Nuclear power is a fantasy in the sense that next to no-one in Australia would accept a nuclear plant within hundreds of kilometres. Look around. Japan is only running one of its fleet of nuclear power plants. Germany is planning to phase them out altogether. That giant hole in the ground that BHP is planning at Olympic Dam may turn out to be a stranded asset the way we are going.

On the other hand, solar and wind power are very popular in any poll you look at.

For all the people suggesting that wind power doesn’t, can’t, shouldn’t etc work: you need to study the places where it is working, and how it is working. Start with AEMO figures on South Australia. You will see that the simplistic models that predict it can’t work in the grid are just that: simplistic models.

And for those who think global warming is bogus, well what can I say that scientists haven't? Gravity is just a theory too, so why not go jump out the window and see what happens? Honestly, I can’t give you a much more sensible answer than that

Ben. I 'look around' as you suggest and I do not see just Germany, I also see the UK. There, after Fukushima they instituted a high powered scientific examination of UK nuclear power in the light of the East Japanese accident. The outcome was that the accident was irrelevant to UK because there has never been an earthquake of energy within orders of magnitude of the monster that hit Japan. and there has never been a tsunami.
As a result the Minister for energy (or whatever his title is) said in the Commons that the government (Right of centre) was going ahead with the 10 new nuclear stations planned. As he sat down the shadow minister (Labour) stood up and agreed with that decision. Even the one Green party member (from a wealthy area of course) said that she wanted certainty that the plans would not require government subsidy.
The position of the Labour party was and is only to be expected as it was the former Labour government (Brown) that instituted the planning for the new plants.
Ben, you did not mention the UK decision. Why not? Did you not know or did you selectively choose only Germany?

Let’s hope we can put the final nail in the coffin of wind farms before they bankrupt Australia.

http://thegwpf.org/uk-news/5151-the-p120-billion-blunder-wind-energy-ten-times-dearer-than-gas-power-stations-.html

India already has 2 30 megawatt thorium reactors! Pebble reactors can be factory mass produced; making the nuclear option one of the cheapest. [Moreover, they are small enough and safe enough to power all our future shipping, which would be a big advance on bunker fuel and many tons of carbon; or indeed, the endless environmental threat this represents.]
Pebble reactors are small enough to be trucked on site and put into service within days. Additional modules can be bolted on with increased demand. Marble sized pebbles of enriched uranium are coated in grapefruit sized carbon. Even were the coolant flow, [helium,] stopped the separating carbon balls; prevent a melt down from occurring.
I live not to far from a coal-fired power station and they reportedly emit heavy metals including arsenic, cadmium, lead and uranium, just to mention a few, which arguably makes them a far greater health hazard than say a new thorium reactor or pebble reactor.
If I were given a choice of living alongside a coal-fired power station; replete with smokestack emission or a new pebble reactor, I'd choose the reactor!
But then I've been trained in some of the sciences and worked in a power station, in a science based capacity. Rhrosty.

Eyejaw: Nuclear energy is not my main interest, so I was unaware of the sad news from the UK; but I understand some other countries have also decided to forge ahead with nuclear.

Rhosty: you seem very keen on technology that is hypothetical. Where is the pebble-bed-reactor-factory? Is it really safe enough to entrust to mass production? I also work as an industrial maintenance fitter; I barely trust cars, let alone reactors, based on what I've seen.

More broadly, as a cheeky person told me today, all that happens when there'a big spill of solar energy is what's called a nice day...