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The Forum > Article Comments > Talk is cheap. Climate policies are not. > Comments

Talk is cheap. Climate policies are not. : Comments

By Tristan Prasser, published 21/5/2019

The utopian renewable future promised by Labor and the Greens is based on more fiction than fact, underpinned by faux moralism and will come with an undetermined price tag for little environmental benefit.

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A full two-thirds of the households of this world are places where there are no washing machines and even where there are, some households can barely afford the power they use! Over 40% of Australian households now live below the poverty line. And what tax they pay, is often partly plundered to pay increasingly unaffordable franking credits and negative gearing etc.

It's ok the grandkids will never miss it as they fry on a planet that is allowed to go past a point of no return, tipping point! There are other power options beside MSR thorium, but none as cheap to just roll out. A solar thermal power plant would only need to occupy a square mile in our arid interior, I'm informed to power the whole of Australia? And given economies of scale and the automated production of the reflectors for comparable costs to similar coal-fired plants. Moreover, the fuel forever free and for longer than human habitation on the planet! But undoable due to the upfront cost and the thousands of miles of wires that would consume as much as 80% of the daylight hours power generation.

Another option is to rollout household waste digesters and use that to power our domestic domiciles and doable, With at least a 50% saleable surplus If converted to 24/7 power with ceramic fuel cells!

Hardly for the masses, without government funding and rollout due to the considerable upfront costs.

Coal can be used for mostly carbon-free power and here I refer you to commentary I've presented here in the past two days. We are saddled with ratbags, I believe, with absolutely no future vision and no real concern for our fellow Australians Just as long as they're doing well and their bank accounts nicely padded?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Tuesday, 21 May 2019 11:20:57 AM
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What an utterly bereft article. Not a single mention or accounting of the cost of global warming.

No mention of the criminal exporting of abundant natural gas reserves which should have been able to provide a lower carbon intensive means to compliment our renewable sector, gas we are now looking to import back from Japan.

Moreover it links to a 'paper' from another of those shadowy climate change skeptic organisations the Energy Innovation Reform Project whose CEO Sam Thernstrom served in the Bush administration.

More propaganda from vested interests I'm afraid. Time to move on.
Posted by SteeleRedux, Tuesday, 21 May 2019 12:02:06 PM
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Alan,

You raise a crucial point: if the inner-city elites could dictate to the world, would they allow the people of India to aspire to better lives ? Should they have similar rights to those elites to comfortable, long lives with all the mod cons that the elites take for granted (even the world trips) ? Should they have electricity and modern infrastructure (and even electric cars) like other people ? Or should they sacrifice themselves for the presence of mind of those elites ?

Unfortunately, since the kale-and-chinoa circle can't dictate to the world (Oh, the injustice !), India will seek sources of energy to drive its electrification. There's crappy coal, and there's high-quality black coal from the Galilee Basin. If they don't take Australian coal, they'll quite naturally get it from somewhere else. China too.

Yes, one degree temperature rise every 160 years, and one inch sea-level rise every decade will have serious effects - an extension of growing areas and longer growing seasons across the entire northern hemisphere, for example. More CO2 in the atmosphere will mean faster plant growth, including crops, and more oxygen returned to the atmosphere.

With one-metre tides twice a day (are they teaching that to the littlies these days ?), that inch per decade might not sound much but it gradually mounts up: if we live to be five hundred, it would be up to our shoulders ! And we can't tell yet whether technology will counter that one-degree rise every 160 years either ! Anyway, technology is capitalist and therefore evil.

Except renewable energy capitalism in which, I assume quite unfairly, affluent environmentalists are happily investing.

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Tuesday, 21 May 2019 12:07:48 PM
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One day the obvious penny may drop that while we can clean the environment up and minnimise polution we have never and will never control the weather. It may come as a surprise to many these days that we are not god. Australia will continue to have floods, droughts, snow and no amount of fiddling computer models will change that. The high priests of gw can't even predict next month's weather accurately let alone 10 years in advance. We certainly do never learn from history as people refuse to even look at the total failures of past predictions. Somehow I think the models used to predict the election on the weekend are similar to models used for future predictions of climate. Pathetically flawed!
Posted by runner, Tuesday, 21 May 2019 12:30:33 PM
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Dear Loudmouth,

Mate you really are ignorant on this stuff aren't you.

India puts Australia to bloody shame.

"India is one of the countries with the largest production of energy from renewable sources. In the electricity sector, renewable energy account for 34.6% of the total installed power capacity. Large hydro installed capacity was 45.399 GW as of 31 March 2019, contributing to 13% of the total power capacity.[1] The remaining renewable energy sources accounted for 22% of the total installed power capacity (77.641 GW) as of 31 March 2019."

"Wind power capacity was 36,625 MW as of 31 March 2019, making India the fourth-largest wind power producer in the world. The country has a strong manufacturing base in wind power with 20 manufactures of 53 different wind turbine models of international quality up to 3 MW in size with exports to Europe, the United States and other countries.[3] Wind or Solar PV paired with four-hour battery storage systems is already cost competitive, without subsidy, as a source of dispatchable generation compared with new coal and new gas plants in India."
Wikipedia

Our renewables are well less than half of theirs as a percentage of energy production. We had some very bright minds come out of our universities and we could have been exporting solar and wind technology around the world. These people were not supported and instead had to go to other countries like India and China where they have driven high levels of renewable sector industries.

What a bunch of ideologically driven, coal industry financed, idiots we have in this country supported but the likes of you.

At least one billionaire has called them out.
http://www.afr.com/news/experts-back-mike-cannonbrookes-australia-can-be-clean-energy-superpower-20181102-h17fjn
Posted by SteeleRedux, Tuesday, 21 May 2019 12:36:42 PM
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I'm afraid I agree with former PM Bob Hawke and that we should embrace both nuclear power and taking other folk's nuclear waste and storing it here.

But not before we've very safely extracted the unspent energy still stored in it 98+%!

And transmit it where ever we want using graphene under our roads. The first consequence would be power price for domestic and industrial use alike, below a cent PKWH! Add in future maximised automation and no other nation will be able to hold a candle to our manufacturing and production capacity!

Rather than see the countryside dotted with solar farms and windmills. And given these (superconductor) highways replace the entirety of our high tension power distribution also double as an endless, recharge on the go, for our future electric vehicle fleet.

MSR thorium will also allow us to become the cancer cure capital of the world, with the lowest real taxes and with the most prosperous population. And the preferred place for all the high tech manufacturer of the world. As for financing it? We already have super funds over 2.5 trillion dollars and with that could easily lever 2 trillion more to work here for us!

Good managers Hasbeen?

Like those who used to run our foreign control banking sector? Well, I bet you used to think the sun shone out of their collective annus sphincters?
Alan B.
Posted by Alan B., Tuesday, 21 May 2019 4:19:48 PM
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