There are 1.7 million people living in South Australia. With $90 billion they could each be given $50,000 -- surely a sufficient incentive for most of them to pull up their roots and settle in some other, more viable, location?

This sort of article has become increasingly common: 'With [sufficiently large sum of] money we could change life for [relatively small number of] people!' Well, yes, you could. That's more or less what money is for. But the question is whether it could be better spent doing something else -- building and running serviced accommodation for 1.67 million people in central Queensland, perhaps.

And I'm sure most readers can come up with even more productive ways to spend this enormous sum.

Doog and Helen 1978, sorry what are you saying? Perhaps another post with a bit more detail.
Doog "Years ago" is not good enough. The money start up was Government money and that means we put it all up!

Ladies and gentlemen we have a winner JonJ.
The dumbest post on OLO for the month.

JonJ that would give Runner and run for his money.

I am afraid most posters here are not taking ERoEI into account.
The ERoEI of wind and solar are not really good enough to build
and maintain our civilisation in its present state.

As Ugo Bardi says in his article past civilisations had good ERoEI
and they were thus able to build Cathedrals.

http://tinyurl.com/kx42dzm

The upshot of it is that Sth Australia was always going to come to grief.
They could never have succeeded. They were doomed from the start.
Bardi suggests that it might be possible if we give up aviation,
driving cars etc. With the ERoEI of wind & solar and putting
batteries into the mix will only make it worse.

The politicians and commentators, in all the hours of waffle that we
have heard over the last few months, have never mentioned ERoEI.

It is the one fundamental factor that never gets mentioned.
It means that all their plans are meaningless if ERoEI is not in them.
If we do not take it into account then Joseph Trainter's
Collapse of Complex Systems is upon us all.

Bazz,

I suggest you follow your own link and reread Ugo Bardi's article, for it explains why most to the claims about EROEI are wrong. At most EROEI only limits the rate of growth of energy use (which Ugo seems to have conflated with economic growth).

I'd go further and say that the use of nuclear power makes even that irrelevant. Even if we don't use it ourselves but just trade with countries that do, the amount of energy available to invest is no longer a limiting factor.

For scientists designing new power sources, and engineers commercialising them, EROEI is important. For everyone else, it's irrelevant. It is not what limits our progress.

Time grow up Aidan, & learn to apply a bit of math.

When you chose something with insufficient ERoEI, the costs skyrocket. People like car manufacturers can not survive & compete when faced with these costs.

Without these manufacturers & with little agriculture, you have nothing to trade with. Hence the current situation where South Australia has no real reason to exist, & has to bludge mightily on the other states for it's daily bread.

If it is not ripping others off for money, it is using all types of contrived con tricks to rip them off for the water to grow the bit of wine it does have.

Rather than the renewable state, it is the rust bucket state, in need of a new broom in the form of sand blasting to get rid of the rust, the cr@p & the lefty garbage, that has destroyed its enterprise along with it's industry & power generation.

There really is no reason to continue supporting the place. The premier claims this is the most anti SA government ever, just after that fool Turnbull promises them 50 Billion, yes Billion in a sub contract.

South Australia has nothing of value to offer as trade to the rest of Australia, or the world but continued waste. Their only trade goods sympathy, but that is growing pretty thin.