What a great interview.
The implications for Australia are substantial. If his predictions about shale gas are right, Australia is in for an export bonanza with its gas.

This last train is in the station and ready to start on a single one way journey!
That given ever burgeoning demand, may only extend our energy supplies by 10-20 years?
What then?
Wring our hands and say, don't just stand there, somebody do something!
What, like build many publicly owned, cheaper than coal, thorium reactors?
And a network of rapid trains, trams and trolley buses, that will not only run on locally produced energy and carry you, but your rechargeable E-bike/mobility scooter as well?
We are confronted almost biannually by enduring droughts, and a Murray darling basin, that is clearly over allocated.
What we need are very profitable crops that use vastly less water!
Oil rich algae could be one of those crops! And the save the Murray fund could be lent in very low interest loans, to kick start it's broad scale production!
In clear plastic pipes, growth can be doubled every 24 hours.
They do well on effluent. They don't even need arable land.
Some are up to 60% oil!
Some oil rich varieties, produce a naturally occurring diesel or jet fuel!
All that is required to extract this fuel, ready to use as is, is a rotating cylinder filter, then sun drying followed by a very rudimentary crushing!
Virtual child's play and the ex-crush material may be suitable as fodder, or support an endlessly sustainable ethanol industry/production!
This crop uses just 1-2% of the water, of traditional irrigation.
Under optimized conditions, they absorb 2.5 times their body weight in atmospheric carbon, and double that body-weight and absorption capacity every 24 hours.
Given we almost alone, would be doing it as very broad scale production? In ten or fifteen years, we could be supplying an energy hungry world, with bio fuels! Pollies, with just a tiny modicum of foresight, would see this very possible future, and start preparing the ground work!
Rhrosty.

Really very nice post.

Rhosty, if only... but as I have posted in the past, it will only be when the very LAST litre of fossil fuel, lets say a virgin litre of premium unleaded gets auctioned off on E Bay or Gumtree at some exhorbitant amount that we will see alternate thinking happen en mass. The oil barons, vehicle makers and multi nats won't have it any other way.

We have the alternate technology, we have the minds to effect all this, but we are kept in the dark with Mining Taxes, Carbon Taxes, taxes ad infinitum by the pollies who feed us rubbish and piffle with which to detract our attentions from the nuts n bolts of what is really going on.

In Oz we live in the most ideal part of the world, and could show our stuff with the brilliant minds herein. For example Google a little invention called the GEMINI ELECTRIC MOTOR...makes power as it operates as a prime mover or increases the power output...brilliant but no one here (in OZ) wants to see John Ettridge succeed, so like so many others he will probably take his wares overseas...pity !

Geographically we are in the most ideal locations between Darwin and say latitudes around Perth/Sydney for solar related technologies - all its variants.

Yes I hear the naysayers snigger, GREENIE, dreamer, but is only because the myopic governments will not see past the next election cycle. If we brought back an old practice from early democracy called Ostrakos Vote, then maybe the bastards might do what they're elected for and represent the electorate and not do as they do.

But we live in hope.

Cheers...Albie.