Thanks,Prompete, I know you're right: that belief system is now part of who they see themselves as being. It's religious.

And yes, I agree, our big hope is Trump. If he steps back, the rest of the world will have to step back or wear huge disadvantages in trading with American companies.

As I explained in a previous OLO comment what can replace coal will probably cost at least double. For example any combination of wind power getting the $90 per Mwh LGC subsidy and 40% efficient gas fired generation with gas at $10 a gigajoule. A typical wholesale electricity these days is $45 per Mwh but any wind/gas combo must cost at least $90.

I don't think the public wants a doubling of electricity prices. Nor at the present time do aluminium smelters want expensive nuclear electricity.
Don't wait for gigawatt scale batteries to arrive as they may not. Electric cars could add 15% to annual electricity demand. We could largely replace coal with nuclear but it may take a few years to grasp this. As the big coal stations close we'll simply pay more perhaps for another 20 years.

I'll leave it to others to argue the ACF's position on climate change. Far more interesting is what the ACF's overall clean energy transition strategy might be. Does the ACF recommend that gas replace coal as soon as possible? Or does it think that sun and wind alone are going to do the trick? If the latter, they are dreaming. Even if the official position of the ACF is a coal-to-gas transition, then they still need to tell us what comes next after that, since gas can reduce emissions by only around 50% and then only for electricity. That's a long way short of the 80% total reduction in emissions climate stabilisation calls for, especially as it ignores the other 60% of our total energy supply on which our health, welfare and prosperity absolutely rely. Unless the ACF can put forward a credible overall energy strategy that meets these objectives then I recommend it simply shuts up.

Dear Suzan, coal means jobs, jobs mean properity and proserity is what makes the wheels turn.

Your efforts would be better spent researching a way to deal with carbon as the reality is without coal the wheels will stop turning. Then what!

well if a lie is told often enough it will be believed. Evolution is the greatest example of that. Scare the kids and the naive with the gw faith. They are shameless as they fly the globe producing far more carbon than most and then preaching their heresy with moral indignation. Have all those fool movie actist moved to Canada yet?

Oh dear, so many correspondents pushing the same lines. There seem to be too many to address at one time [Yawn].

Carbon pollution? While it is true that the author is using code to refer to the amount of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere, this is neither new nor rare.

Carbon dioxide as a harmless gas and one necessary for plant life? Certainly necessary for photosynthesis and one that is being recycled through living things back into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, it is being added to the atmosphere at a vastly faster rate than photosynthesis or solution in the waters of the earth can keep pace with. The concentration in the atmosphere keeps increasing. At this point, let us be aware that carbon dioxide is a very effective greenhouse gas: it allows the shorter wavelenghts to pass through while not allowing longer wavelengths radiated from a heated earth to escape back to space. This raises the temperature of the earth and causes many changes, not the least of which is a raising of Arctic ice and land temperatures, leading to the rapid outgassing of methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more effective than Carbon dioxide.

Let's use nuclear in place of renewables? A most incredibly expensive activity which produces more carbon dioxide than it substitutes for, along with environmentally dangerous tailings, lethal 'spent fuel' and structures which cannot be used for anything until their radioactivity had dropped to safe levels. Uranium, useful for 50 years, dangerous for fifty thousand, and unable to proceed without massive subsidies.