Another "call to action on climate change"! Or really, another call from a public servant to spend other people's money for nothing.

Hot and dry in Perth! How unusual for this time of the year! A bit like my own Adelaide, where the climate has been hot and dry for all my 73 years; except for winter,when it's cool to cold, and wet. Some people have the memories of goldfish. Ordinary, ever day experience- free of alarmism and hysteria drummed up by computer - indicates that little,if anything, has changed about the climate in any practical, meaningful way. Life goes on.

Dr. Peter Schraeder has been sleeping away in PUBLIC health, unaware that we have heard it all before, don't believe it, and are thoroughly browned off by it. There are many remote country areas in WA where he could make himself useful as a much needed GP, doing what be is actually trained to do. The climate does not need doctors poncing around politicising it. People need doctors. 'Doctors for the Environment' are as much use as the proverbial tits on a bull.

No doubt someone will point out that Australia is a minor emitter on the world stage with half a billion tonnes out of thirty billion. However we can't expect the US and China to take drastic action when we don't ourselves. It should be clear by now that giving subsidies and guaranteed market share to wind and commercial solar does not do enough to reduce emissions. For the LRET in 2017 that could be 26 TWh X $86/Mwh = $2.2 bn on power bills. After years of this sort of thing our emissions are essentially the same as in 2005.

I think the correct approach is to drop the RET and Direct Action and have tough emissions targets. Tough means not riddled with giveaways. Remove the prohibition on nuclear power and use ACT style reverse auctions for wind and commercial solar. Gas could be the short term winner except that the raw fuel cost keeps escalating. With say 15 GW of nuclear baseload Australia could reduce emissions 30% or so, thereby fulfilling Turnbull's pledge at the Paris conference.

I agree with the intention of this article, however at least one statement is not technically correct. There is good reason to believe that the characteristics of wind farms did, along with other factors, would have resulted in a blackout,regardless of whether some pylons of parts of the high voltage transmission lines collapsed - which of course made things worse.

South Australia's recent blackout was primarily due to a storm and other factors. It was, at the very least, possibly initiated by shutdowns of wind turbines before the towers collapsed and was made deeper and longer due to some features of the wind turbines, so it is not reasonable to say that the blackout had nothing to do with the renewables.

Two specifics:
Large numbers of turbines shut down immediately before the towers collapsed. This was, at least in part, due to the very fine protection settings for individual turbines and groups, which should ideally have been able to ride through the faults which preceded actual tower collapses.

The second is that growth of wind capacity in the SA system ate away at the essential capacity for what is known in the industry as inertia, which is the ability to respond instantly to faults. The current current system, due to large wind capacity, lacked inertia and relied on being able to start gas turbines very quickly to re-establish power after the event... but they failed to start as contracted.

The story to date has been published in two reports issued by AEMO, with a third one due in March. https://www.aemo.com.au/Media-Centre/Update-to-report-into-SA-state-wide-power-outage

The role of inertia is explained in Wiki and elsewhere.

While it is incorrect to claim that wind played no part in the blackout - the root cause was, IMHO, a failure by "those in charge" to manage the transition away from carbon-emitting electricity thoroughly and professionally, thus leaving the system exposed, from a technical perspective, to situations where a bad situation became very much worse.

Silent! I have been anything but silent! But lined up against mannon and the forces of darkness it supports/pays for? Whose listening?

The, you can go visit the nearest taxidermist, I'm alright Jack, crowd, who think everyone is just as money faced/willfully blind, as they so clearly are?

I'd understand if the required changes could ever harm/cripple us economically!

But intelligent change, based on cheaper than coal, cleaner than coal safer than coal, carbon free, thorium, coupled to new deionization dialysis desalination and other income earning infrastructure! Rolled out as publicly owned and operated amenity, would conversely, turbocharge our faltering economy!

Then supercharge it as well!

And place our nation/economic sovereignty, in a far less subservient parlous position and indeed, allow us to more than compete with the emerging economies for quite massive market share!

I don't usually blow my own trumpet, but I'm not the intellectual lightweight my fossil fueled antagonists, would have you believe?

In fact as a young medic,sitting beside around a baker's dozen already qualified medicos, I passed my final medical exams with an average passing mark of 98%, which as it so happens, broke a previously unassailable 70 year old army medical school record.

I also have other tertiary qualifications and work related practical experience. And verifiable as part of the public record!

All I ask is that folk/the decision makers get on U tube/google tech talks and check out the verifiable facts! Then get proactive with a plan or plan based on verifiable facts!

How hard can that really be? I'll even demonstrate how it can be funded in a veritable plethora of win/win outcomes!

I'm already in my seventies and can't want this for me!

Look, every decade of delay literally doubles the cost!

We're saving absolutely nothing with the endless prevarications by diabolically dithering decision makers!

Must we wait until we're all daisy pushers and manifestly, far too late!
Alan B.

must be part of the ama. They are full of socialist dogma. I once thought you needed a few brains to be a doctor. The author shows you certainly don't need to think rationally.

Runner, you are right when you say you need brain to be a doctor!

But no visible evidence of any to be a climate change denialist!

Please be sure to engage brain before putting mouth into gear! And please try not to get too disturbed by that strange burning smell? It always happens, when a previously unused cerebral cortex over revs?
Take care, Alan B.