When will people understand. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is explicit:

all renewables, nuclear and COAL itself are dependent on NET ENERGY input to our global civilisation. Just their transport and mining and manufacturing costs alone, let alone maintenance and upgrades, require endless OIL. The only exception is GEOTHERMAL which is tied up in red tape by fossil fuel magnates. The problem is that there is not an endless supply of oil and there are good reasons to believe that global oil reserves are overstated to prevent economic markets from collapsing with a rapid descent into global war.

The Gillard government and its bean counters are having an each way bet, pinning their economic thrust on coal exports while raising a carbon tax to keep prying minds from the ugly realities of their selfishness. Or perhaps they are just schizophrenic and don't know if they are Arthur of Martha, Abbot or Costello, GREEN or filthy coal tar black.

It doesn't really matter. Despite everyone's GST going to an underperforming Victoria and despite the global warming/carbon tax propagandering to neuter informed debate and despite an overtly dumb CSIRO that has been politically emasculated, the Australian populace has indicated at every election that despite the consequences for their children and future generations they are happy to live it up and use every litre of oil they can while the going's good!

You can't fight a faux immigration/GST-destabilised-democracy and it seems you can't fight the attendant evil.

ITS lurking!And far too few are willing to contest it.

Benjamin, 'bollocks'.

"We need to focus on delivering energy to those who currently lack access to it and supporting developing countries’ economies to grow"

Global coal may have peaked in 2011 (Patzek) or will soon, 2015 (Zittel). Other estimates range as far as 2029-2043. (Heinberg and Fridley) say that “we believe that it is unlikely world energy supplies can continue to meet projected demand beyond 2020.”

Less than one percent of our elected leaders have degrees in science. They’re too busy raising money for the next election and their political duties, even they may not have time to read enough for a “big picture view” of (systems) ecology, population, environment, natural resources, biodiversity/bio-invasion, water, topsoil and fishery depletion, and all the other factors that will be magnified when oil and coal, the master resources decline.

Since peak fossil fuel is here, now (we’re on a plateau), there’s less urgency to do something about climate change for many leaders, because they assume, the remaining fossil fuels won’t trigger a runaway greenhouse. Climate change is a more distant problem than Peak Oil. And again, like peak oil, nothing can be done about it. There’s are no carbon free alternative liquid fuels, let alone a liquid fuel we can burn in our existing combustion engines.

There’s no time left to rebuild a completely new fleet of vehicles based on electricity, the electric grid infrastructure and electricity generation from windmills, solar, nuclear, etc., are too oil dependent to outlast oil. Batteries are too heavy to ever be used by trucks or other large vehicles, and require a revolutionary breakthrough to power electric cars.

I think that those who deny climate change and peak oil, despite knowing they are real, are thinking like chess players several moves ahead. They hope that by denying climate change an awareness of peak oil is less likely to occur, and I’m guessing their motivation is to keep our oil/coal-based economy going as long as possible by preventing a stock market crash, panic, social disorder, and so on.

The burning of coal and other fossil fuels will have to reduce sooner or later. The sooner it is done the less will be the impacts, both economic and in terms of dangerous climate change.

Benjamin, if stopping coal fired generation will reduce temperatures by 0.2 deg over 100 years surely this is preferable to increases of 2-4 degrees that would occur if we keep on burning it?

There are alternatives - solar wind, biomass and geothermal. They are all more expensive than coal and we'll have to get used to paying much more for energy. At three times the cost of coal it would still be cheap.

The ones claiming that renewables are impractical and too expensive are the 'emissions intensive trade exposed' resource corporations They use cheap energy to make billions out of flooding the world with coal and metals that are being used inefficiently by the relatively affluent (e.g. 65 millions unoccupied apartments in China.)

I have seen how effective small PV systems are in providing light and basic communications to villages. I agree with Taswegian, we should be helping the energy poor by assisting them directly into renewables.

Taswegian. I gather that you are a keen supporter of Australia moving from coal to nuclear? What are your chances of getting Green support on that plan?

There is an endless supply of oil! Some algae are up to 60% oil. Algae absorb up to 2.5 times their body weight in Co2 emission; and double that body weight every 24 hours under optimised conditions.
Optimised conditions include a closed circuit system inside long large clear plastic pipes filled with algae being fed by effluent and or its problematic nutrient load; and smoke stack emission, which can be fed directly into a closed cycle system; meaning, zero emission; and, given we are talking about converting 50% or better of all our Co2 emission into algae based oil production; namely, all our oil needs indefinitely!
We can also use wave and or tide power to produce endlessly reliable peak demand energy; and indeed for a lot less than current coal-fired power costs, which is around 3-5 cents per kilowatt hour.
Nuclear power is also an option using either the new safer and vastly less costly pebble reactors or thorium reactors. we can also convert our biological waste to onsite power for around a third of current coal fired power; given, no moving parts to wear out, and an endless supply of virtually free biological material!
India is currently running 2 30 megawatt thorium reactors. Those governed by this or that Ideological imperative need to remove the ideological blinkers and or stop thinking within a very narrow circle of ideas; or, acting as virtual road blocks to effective carbon free/neutral alternatives, which can and must include coal fired power!
We must act with urgent alacrity; given, if the ambient temps rise by as much as 5C by 2070, we will be annihilated, along with all other life forms! This is recorded faithfully as fact in the palaeoecological record the very last time ambient temps rose by around 5C. Rhrosty.

I not only support nuclear but I think there is no realistic alternative. I might add that I've had solar PV for a number of years, I drive a car fuelled by biodiesel and I cook and heat on wood stoves. My conclusion is that these alternatives cannot scale up. At least I'm on grid power at night. Some neighbours who rely on batteries also support nuclear. Funny how the closer you get to raw survivalism the less appealing it becomes.

I might add that it seems stupid to claim that Australian coal exports help the downtrodden. Perhaps we could build a coal fired power station on stilts to help the people of Kiribati as they sink below the waves. We should leave coal in the ground as pre-sequestered carbon. Help the developing countries buy small scale nuclear. Worry about uranium depletion 50 years from now by which time we should have long lasting alternatives, nuclear or otherwise.