An excellent case for nuclear power.

But to NOT single out a major cause is Green Grifting. It has only happened because Adelaide power is so unbalanced by wildly variable "sources".

And it will only get worse, sheddable loads such as Arrium are closing and will not be replaced, no one will invest in SA now. This will increase any effects of the already volatile "sources".

"The Weekend Australian launched an attack on 'intermittent sources' with Environment Editor Graham Lloyd quoting Bjorn Lomborg, an analyst with no credibility in climate science institutions, claiming renewable energy will contribute only marginally to the ultimate climate change solution."

That amazes me, because a few years ago, Lomborg was saying the exact opposite.

When did he change his tune, and why?

There was no 'superstorm', just a weather event that stopped the holy windmills and proved their unreliability. Neither wind nor solar can be 'synchronised' and used when such events occur.

What has climate change got to do with a 'one in 50 years event, by the way?

And what about the subsidies paid to fossil fuel production? Surely, the climate hysterics would be pumping that one for all it's worth, but it doesn't figure at all in their propaganda. If there is truth in it, at least the subsidies are going towards something that actually works.

Then we have this little snippet to spice things up: the WHO claims that 'climate change', a natural and regular phenomenon, "will cause the deaths of an extra 250,000 people per year. Yeah, well that sounds about as genuine as all of those other predictions - that were all proved wrong by nature - made by the climate hysterics cum rent seekers. You can't put us under, with your literary anaesthetic, doctor.

I agree with Tombee and feel Lomborg may have very good cause to change his position?

Due to the release of papers confirming SAFE, CLEAN ,CHEAP nuclear power as molten salt thorium reactors is a proven concept! Rejected fifties technology on the grounds there was no weapons spinoff!

If former green activists like Lomborg are able to realize that we have no more time to waste and that thorium could not only save the planet but end want and war.

Recent advances in low cost desalination utilizing deionization needs only clean cheap abundant energy to water the world! Make formerly inhospitable deserts bloom!

And as they do so provide safe harbors for 65 million currently displaced people.

Yes, thorium reactors are small and not ideally suited to a extremely vulnerable national grid! And their very advantage! Given they can be mass produced as walk away safe modules then trucked almost anywhere! And just beaver away through storm and tempest, whether transmission lines stand or fall, producing the world's cheapest energy as where and when you want! As well as opening up the very real possibility of creating synthetic fuels from seawater! Proven science, not theory!

The only thing preventing this now, is mind numbing political intransigence and the absolute absurdity that the government has no business in business!

But further compounded by rare stupidity of selling the energy sector and the farm to debt laden foreign speculators, [or worse, foreign government agencies,] who respond by price gouging, repatriating profits, avoiding fair and reasonable tax!

While we mugs out there in mugsville pay through the nose to monopolistic cartels!?

And then wonder why our economies seem to be going to hell in a handcart!

Government revenue continues to shrink while domestic and foreign debt goes through the roof into uncharted territory!

Insanity is doing what you've always done while expecting a different result! Take a leaf from Lomborg and let inescapable conclusions to allow you to chart a different course!
Alan B.

Pathetic piece of agitprop.

Graeme, science doesn't supply value judgments, whereas policy requires them, so this completely disposes of your entire article, and proves that you have understood neither the science nor the policy arguments.

Secondly, science doesn't mean blind faith in big-hat-wearing authority as the source of knowledge. You have misunderstood science to mean the *exact opposite* of what it actually means. The whole reason why the rise of scientific knowledge was revolutionary, was so that issues of fact would *not* be decided the way you are deciding them.

Thirdly, what you are talking about is weather, not climate.

Fourthly, since the premise of your climate change argument is that governmental control of the energy supply was the worst mistake in the history and pre-history of the whole world, therefore you have no basis for your *assumption* - which you neither identify nor defend - that the solution is more governmental action. You're contradicting yourself.

Fifthly, the ideologically-driven circular garble-yarp of the global warming religion has been stripped bare and soundly thrashed in this forum over and over and over and over and over and over again.

See here:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16680&page=0
and here:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16726&page=0
and here:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16753&page=0
and here:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16757&page=0

What you've got is religion, not science, Graeme. But if I'm wrong, prove it. Answer the questions ALL the warmists run away from.

The problem is, the data don't support the theory, and you have no way of knowing, let alone proving, the net benefits of any climate policy.

If you want your unspoken premise of catastrophic global warming caused by man-made CO2 emissions to be accepted, you need to *prove it*. Citing the authority of vested interests, and expecting everyone else to swallow it as uncritically as you have, is not proof.

In the result, you have provided no justification for any climate or energy policy whatsoever.