///Once again the usual suspects have gone off topic. The article is, and responses should be, about Australian coal and who exploits it;///
No one should, because climate change will destroy the world's poor...

///its benefit to Australia;///
Marginal short term financial gains while climate change gather's steam. It's like selling the shop, you get a cash injection but kill your longer term method of earning an income. Coal is killing the goose that laid the golden egg, and any other cliche you can think of. Why cliche's? Because your 'contribution' here is one of them: strawman the real subject, energy, and typecast it as only coal.

///the Australian environment///
See climate change comment above

///whether the first two have anything to do with the poor of India///
See climate change comment above

///Bilge about different kinds of energy resources is irrelevant///
See climate change comment above

You're clearly no Punkawalla Max.

Max,

You are clearly obsessed with climate change. I am not. You also appear to be better at copying and pasting than you are at expressing yourself. I tried to work out how your comments were relevant to my post, to no avail. I'm not sure if you are telling me what I should be thinking, or whether you think that I have misinterpreted the theme of the piece. Climate change certainly wasn't an issue with the writer or with me.

What an interesting reply. You’re either having genuine problems with comprehension, or are just so stubbornly ignorant about climate change that you can’t see this article screams against climate science. Phrases like ‘rent-a-crowd’ greenies denigrate the average Australian citizen that is concerned that a corporation like Adani should not be receiving a government built railway to then ship coal across our Great Barrier Reef all the while giving worldwide climate agreements the finger! Apparently, in your view, because we’re discussing an ‘article’ about a ‘mine’, we are immune from the flow on effects as spelt out by the laws of physics, and then the laws of human nature.

“Stopping Adani would abate no net carbon dioxide emissions.”
Yes it would: it would stop the emissions from that coal mine. Others are fighting for climate stability in other parts of the world. They respect the laws of physics, whether or not you or this author calls them ‘rent-a-crowd ‘greenies.

“Stopping Adani may, however, raise the price of electricity for poor Indians.” Or they could do what the French did and fast-track clean, CO2 neutral nuclear power. Oh wait! The Indians are! They’re even building test breeder reactors because one day they want to extract 60 times the energy from uranium that today’s LWR’s extract: in other words, burn nuclear waste!

It appears the author made a typo: I’ll fix it with capitals below.
“Foreign aid charities that profess to care about world poverty should NOT back this project.”

Climate change will bankrupt the poorer nations of the world before it does the rich. More coal is definitely NOT in India’s long term interests!

Rhosty,

You keep repeating this type of post regarding biogas.

"twice as cheap, endlessly available Biogas connected to ceramic fuel cells; able to provide very local electricity, for quarter of the price of coal!"

"My rationale is based solely on sound economic grounds"

This is the third time I've responded asking if you have invested any of your own money in these projects, as you seem convinved they are no only feasible, but ranging anywhere from half to a quarter of the price of our currently cheapest option. So, again, have you invested any of your own money, and if so, where?

India REALLY needs more coal! Like, REALLY!
(What are we, racists that think Indians need wiping out? They're breeding too fast so we may as well contribute to bumping off a few million?)

"Proof of the grave air pollution problem confronting India is seen not just in the suffocating smog that on many days crowds out the sun in New Delhi, the world’s most polluted city. It can be measured as well in the fact that the country has the world’s highest death rate from chronic respiratory diseases, which kill an estimated 1.5 million Indians every year. A 2014 World Health Organization report concluded of the 20 most polluted cities in the world, India has 13."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/23/opinion/cutting-through-indias-smog.html?_r=0