Do stop worrying wobbles, if we run out of oil & gas, we'll just go back to all that coal you greenies made us leave in the ground.

If that runs out, there is all that excess timber growing all over once productive grazing land to burn.

After that we will of course have to burn the greenies, not at the stake as they would like to burn the rest of us, but in our power houses. Bet there is a sudden reduction in greenies, before we get anything useful out of them.

Having eliminated greenie opposition, we can then harvest the methane from the tundra.

After that, if the sun has not gone nova by then, it will be the methane clathrate, harvested from the deep ocean.

By then, about 4012, the people of the day can do their own thing, I won't really care.

All this is of course ignoring much new evidence that hydrocarbons are welling up through the mantle, & not actually dead dinosaurs, so will not run out. The depth that oil is being found, under quite deep oceans does tend to disprove the dead dinosaurs theory, but does it really matter?

The answer is obvious, Nuclear energy is far cheaper and safer than most renewable options, it is also far more reliable.

All these so called, green powers, have one thing in common. They are un reliable.

so, what do we do to fill the void.

We have vast reserves of natural gas, but we need to sell that for peanuts, us we have too many expenses and not enough revenue.

Do we have coal fired power stations sitting there 'on hold'.

Of cause, like any business, if they are under producing, they are also non viable. So who subsidizes these?

The other problem we face, is that in order to prosper, we need growth, and growth needs fuel.

I still think our focus should be on carbon capture, rather than setting unrealistic reduction targets.

One way is to change building standards and increase the amount of timber used, as timber stores carbon for as long as the house stands.

The trees can be plantation grown, which in turn captures carbon.

Mark Lawson here

wobbles

I never said it would be too difficult so don't do it.. th article says that the shift to renewables has proved far more difficult than first imagined, and for various reasons the sector is not growing at anything like the rate required to meet govenment targets.

I didn't address the point about whether alt energy actually saves carbon in the article (apart from a brief remark).. I will get into that at another time, but if you want my considered opinion now they are largely a waste of time and money, even from the point of view of saving carbon..

Wind and solar are going gang busters in Victoria. The sea used to be good for carbon storage, but with the ocean warming is is giving up the carbon stores.

Curmudgeon,

Point taken, but from what I can see of the avalanche of articles still being published they typically range from outright denial to token criticism of every solution put forward.

After examination, most sources appear to be only a couple of degrees of separation away from vested corporate interests so I doubt that anything significant is likely to be done for many years to come.

None of the opinions bother to offer any real alternatives so it's easy to question motives beyond then being part of the Manufactured Doubt Industry.

I think the only likely practical alternative will be to introduce rationing.

Hasbeen,
Not everybody who doesn't blindly accept unsupported conservatively sponsored views can be automatically labelled a greenie, a leftist or a socialist.