Don Don, the grey goose is gone and the fox has left the town-o:
Like all religions, they end in confusion and madness.
Is it a "yay" for the Da Vinci Code nay sayers, or a "yay" for the mad Gnostics?

What thinnest thoug Nickname nick?

About the same time , we had PM John Howard and his 'not a core promise' !

In other words , say anything.... just like our 'Eco Scientists' are prone to doing .... it doesn't have to be correct.

With the vulgar adolescent orange haired "reality" TV fake persona soon to be in charge, and using Twitter like a brash no-nothing adolescent, wall-to-wall lying now floats freely with no pretense to be anchored in any kind of verifiable evidence.

Just the fact that he uses Twitter and apparently will continue to do so when he actually becomes president intrinsically cheapens and degrades the USA body politic, and by extension the entire world.

Any sense of reasoned sobriety in the very serious matter of the governance of the worlds most powerful state having been flushed down the toilet by the pussy-grabber in chief.

In the case of climate change denial, neither truth nor facts are worth a fig in the minds of those who don't want it to be true!

Robby Burns said, facts are chiels tha' dinna whinge. And that's the problem for (paid for comment?) coal advocate Don?

Robbie Burns, were he here Don, might've said, two facts ye canna argue wi' Professor, is a sun. in waning phase since the mid seventies, (NASA) canna produce a record warmest ever year, followed closely by many more of the same, as a trend line on an accurate graph! (Hot of the press!) With 2016, the hottest ever recorded! FACT!

Simply put, intelligent folk, with an intelligent plan and intelligently led, can use climate change, whether real, a scam or just a figment of overwrought imaginations, to usher in a period of energy driven, unprecedented prosperity! (Be it crapiness or clapedoutness? Or just problematic for coal fired profits) Profitiness?

And as simple as decarbing our punch drunk and staggering economy, with cheaper than coal, cleaner than coal, safer than coal, easily recovered, abundant (less radioactive than a banana) thorium!

And enough in our topsoil to power the planet for the next 1,000 years! And thousands more if we mined thorium rich igneous rock!

Look, if I were to step outside my backdoor and fill a one cubic metre box with dirt, then apply ultra simple gravity separation, I'd likely recover around 8 grams of thorium, with a recovery cost of around $100.00 dollars all up? And enough, ready to use as is, non-enriched thorium, to power my house and car for the next 10 years? That's a dollar a year Don!

The real terror for the four trillion a year fossil fuel industry, and virtually all who directly or indirectly, profit from it? Given it would decimate their industry and their profits streams/cash flows/grant money Don!?

I'm not worried if the fossil fuel industry and or, their paid for comment advocates, get rich or poor Don, just my fellow Australians/the rest of us! Very large needle and tiny tiny camel? Don?
Alan B.

Using selective, cherry picked facts, to paint a misleading picture, seems to be you particular forte, Don? Or should that read, forteiness?
Alan B.

Hi Alan,

Okay, I'll bite: why ? Why isn't any company, or anybody with a bit of spare cash, putting their money into thorium reactors ? One for every household ? If it's so cheap and easy, why isn't anybody - it appears, anybody in the world - doing it ?

If this was fair dinkum, imagine the impact on poor countries without any skin in the fossil fuel game, say many African countries ? How much would they need to get their entire economies and societies fully provided with enough energy for all their present and future needs ?

Cheers,

Joe

I'll tell you a fact.

No matter how interesting an article written by Don Aitken starts out, it will always end in some deadly dull dig at climate science.

Now that's a FACT Jack.

Diver dan
"What thinnest thoug Nickname nick?"
wha-what?
A little bit worried about Alan , he says $100 over 10 years is $1 year.
As you would know, thorium is about 4x10-4 gr. of soil and obviously is 600gr. cubic meter soil. As price of Thorium is $5000 kg dropping soon to $10kg US then Alan's wheel barrow heap costs him $3000 to $6 or a bit more $Oz. So $100 is in there somewhere and Alan is between facty and ficty rubbery figures , truth to tell.

Truthiness is entirely relevant to whatever factiness you choose to use to justify your truthiness.

In other words: Perception is everything.

That's why we need advertising, public relations, think tanks, lobby groups, intelligence agencies, governments, broadcast media discussion panels and print/online media opinion pieces.

These can be further broken down into sub-truthiness agencies - preventive health, wars on terror (drugs, 'brutal tyrants' du jour, drinking, welfare), corporate 'job-creation' benevolence, law and order - which all promote their particular brand of factiness designed to keep us all in a state of outrage, fear and a sense of superiority over anyone that challenges their factiness.

These all exist to create a standardised version of truthiness, based on a standardised version of factiness, that passes for conventional (or prevailing) wisdom. In this way, any other version of truthiness can be dismissed as dissent, radicalism, personality deficit or treason.

In this sense, very little has changed since the days of burning witches and heretics.

A big Christmas thank you NNN

Hi Killarney,

Well, as Don suggests, there ARE such things as facts: for instance, for the first hundred years of its post-contact history, South Australia employed only one person in its 'Aborigines Department'. Not hundreds, as the Conventional Narrative suggests - and requires in order to hold water - but one. Of course, he utilised the unpaid assistance of police, missionaries and pastoralists in order to supply rations to around fifty ration depots, and for much of the time, there was a part-time 'Sub-Protector' (another couple of verifiable facts), in crucial parts of the State.

Perhaps all manner of atrocities were occurring out beyond the 'frontier' but the Protector would have had his hands full organising supplies, transport and record-keeping. The Conventional Narrative therefore needs 'truthiness', i.e. suspicions of atrocities without much evidence to back it up.

Another fact: only one case of 'stolen' children has been proven in South Australia. Perhaps there were others, many others, but they would all be exhaustively recorded, so it shouldn't be difficult for any aggrieved person to take any matter to court. Don't hold your breath.

Sometimes Narratives absolutely depend on 'truthiness', 'post-truth', suspicions without evidence. Perhaps it's time for a better narrative, one based substantially on evidence, which in turn is based substantially on 'facts'.

Cheers,

Joe

Happy Nuclear year , Dan.
If someone moves into your house , Loudmouth, and gives you your garage with pc link, all is good. You have what you need.

Yes nick my typed 100 (one hundred) somehow became 10 (ten)? I'm saying that a $100.00 worth of easily recovered thorium, would power both my house and car for the next 100 years! And the very reason why we're not all using thorium as our principle source of clean safe cheap energy!

Joe, Can you imagine what that ($1.00 a year per person) would do to the four trillion a year fossil fuel profits? Or big nuclear! Or the nuclear weapons industry!

Or, those politicians from both sides of the aisle, already in those very voluminous pockets? If you think Watergate was a big deal, you ain't heard nothing yet! [Expose that Jules if you can!?]

Understand Joe, these folk have already acted to suppress not just the facts, but any ongoing research, wherever they retain influence.

A deliberately misled populous, misled by mendacious mischief making vexatious activists, whose only brief is to mislead and suppress the facts as long as we allow it!? Is the only reason we are not already powering our homes and industry with this stuff!? And in so doing, effectively mitigate against climate change!

And let's not forget former K.B.G chief Putin (and thousands like him in positions of power) thinks a warmer Siberia , Alaska, Antarctica etc, would be wonderful?

Maybe, always providing that increased warmth wasn't accompanied by routine life and property destroying, howling gales, provided by the reported, recorded, increased global convection, the other unwanted side effect of (imagined) GW!

Suggest you get online and U tube and hear what principle NASA scientist, Kirk Sorensen has to say on the subject, or indeed a number of eminent scientists, some of who operated the Oak Ridge, molten salt thorium reactor for 5 trouble free years! Or watch a documentary that shows the build phase in complete detail!

Why aren't we all using it? Good question and needs to be answered by the folks suppressing the facts? Or should that read, factiness?
Alan B.

A gold panning dish to get your big bang buck of thorium is $6.
But the separation from monazite (Ce,La,Nd,Th)PO4 will cost you.

"Breeding in a thermal neutron spectrum is slow and requires extensive reprocessing. The feasibility of reprocessing is still open... 2012 report by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, about using thorium fuel with existing water-cooled reactors, would "require too great an investment and provide no clear payoff," and "from the utilities’ point of view, the only legitimate driver capable of motivating pursuit of thorium is economics." There is a higher cost of fuel fabrication and reprocessing than in plants using traditional solid fuel rods.

Thorium, when being irradiated for use in reactors, will make uranium-232, which is very dangerous due to the gamma rays it emits.. The irradiation would then make uranium-233 in lieu of uranium-232, which can be used in nuclear weapons to make thorium into a dual purpose fuel."

However Alan could dig up his back yard , sell the processed monazite to North Korea and buy solar to power the magnetic separator .

Thanks Alan,

I did learn to tie my own shoelaces quite some time ago, but thanks for your careful lesson. Yes, of course, people with huge investments in certain industries are likely to try to influence policy to inhibit any developments in alternatives, so of course fossil fuel - and renewable - industries are not friendly to cheaper alternatives like thorium nuclear reactors, IF they work.

But any investor with half a brain would also bet both sides by investing in precisely those industries, since the scope for their use on a massive scale would also be profitable. Nineteenth century investors in railways probably had the sense to switch some of their portfolio to road vehicles (and road-making, fossil fuels and service stations) in the twentieth. After all, no sensible investor would put everything into one alternative, IF some other industry seemed viable. There's money to be made, after all, from fossil fuels, renewable energy AND - IF it works - thorium.

Capitalism has no gods, it has no loyalties whatever, it will back whatever makes a buck. A billion dollars @ 15 %, say, no matter in what, is a preferable investment to one @ 14 %.

Or have I got that all wrong ?

Cheers,

Joe

May be profitable , may not..
" One large hole that can be punched in the argument for thorium involves the economics of thorium reactors. Experts say compared to uranium, the thorium fuel cycle is more costly and would require extensive taxpayer subsidies."
Or the other way around.

Thanks Nick,

Want don't you understand about the word 'IF' ?

Joe

I don't understand "if" when written "if they work". Thorium works:
".. seven types of reactors that can be designed to use thorium as a nuclear fuel. The first five of these have all entered into operational service at some point."

Hi Nick,

Well, wind power works: energy can be generated from wind towers. But financial viability is also crucial: if wind-powered energy generation is ever cheaper than using fossil fuels, then it will become viable: I hope far more research funding is put into lowering its costs because we need forms of renewable energy generation to replace fossil fuels, eventually. Ditto with solar power, geothermal power, tidal power, etc.

And the same with thorium: generation energy from it may be scientifically viable, but is it financially viable ? IF so, then go for it.

IF.

Joe

Goodoh , that's 2 IFs : science , economics. Scientifically , you can burn banknotes in a steam boiler but are you a good scientist or Trump-sceptic economist?

Hi Nick,

I don't claim to be either. I'm simply (well, for most people) proposing that any alternative to fossil fuels, since they are in rampant production, needs to out-compete them on price. And that means much more research into such a vital and necessary project.

If Thorium reactors can beat renewables on price, it will be adopted in preference. But until even thorium nuclear energy generation can compete successfully with energy derived from fossil fuels, they will be preferred, economically speaking, if not morally or environmentally.

Efficient and cost-attractive renewable energy is vital for the future. But if wind-towers and solar panels are actually manufactured using fossil fuels, then we are simply pushing the issue of CO2 etc. down the road, and probably in some other country like China. Once (if) the technology can be developed to make it viable to produce the implements of renewable energy using renewable energy, then it will be able to out-compete fossil fuels.

Of course, then smart capital will flow to renewables, because that's where the money will be. If Thorium nuclear energy generation can out-compete either of those, then it will be seen as the honey pot.

Cheers,

Joe

Agreed.
But Alan has still been peddling substances with this:
"Joe, Can you imagine what that ($1.00 a year per person) .."
His cousin owns a Nigerian bank with your sister's life-insurance bonuses lottery safe-deposit urgent to my barrister.

We must not let factiness get in the way of truthiness, must we?

Hi Bagsy,

Or vice versa - neither is worth a hill of horse manure. We must let evidence 'get in the way' of both, i.e. rely on something to back up our prejudices which can be verifiable, rather than just twisting words or seizing on maybes and wishes.

There are such things as facts. Here are two:

* in South Australia, the entire 'Aborigines Department' in the nineteenth century had one employee: the Protector, whose main task was to provide rations for up to fifty depots all over the State/Province.

* the last person hanged in South Australia was executed in 1964; the last Aboriginal person hanged was executed in 1862.

Those two facts knock the daylights out of the conventional narrative. That's what facts, or evidence, tends to do.

The truth is that evidence and truth doesn't need 'truthiness' or 'factiness' to remain valid. And that nothing can make them valid.

Cheers,

Joe

@Loudmouth, Sunday, 8 January 2017 1:47:34 PM

"The truth is that evidence and truth doesn't need 'truthiness' or 'factiness' to remain valid. And that nothing can make them valid."

Agreed. Thanks Joe.

This "subject" reminds me of an a Criminal Jury case in Victoria about 30 years ago when the Foreman reported to the Judge that a fellow jury member resolutely refused to discuss the evidence, saying at every turn: "My mind is made up, don't confuse me with facts."

The Judge nearly had a stroke (he was a largish fellow with a perpetually red face as it was). His associate/clerk always reckoned it was particularly fortunate that the Judge's mic had malfunctioned.

Like evolution man made gw is mainly embraced by people who hate truth and have adopted pseudo science and pseudo morality as they trash what is wholesome.

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