Cont. If we were really serious about climate change and doing something practical about it without harming our economy, just the very opposite, we'd be rolling out, walk away safe, tried and not found wanting, molten salt, thorium reactors. Fifties technology rejected solely because there was no weapons spin off!

Look, if I were to step outside my door and fill a cubic metre box with dirt. From tha dirt, using ultra simple gravity separation, I'd be able to extract around 8 grams of ready to use as is, abundant thorium, and at an approximate cost of $100.00! Then power my home, car and produce all my material wants for the next 100 year with that 8 grams of carbon free thorium. And that my friends is just a dollar a year!

We have enough in the dirt to power the planet for 1,000 years and thousands more if we mine igneous rock.

Abundant and arguably the most energy dense material on the planet; and carbon free power with huge side issue benefits.

Finally in summation, These reactors work at normal atmospheric pressure, so, will never produce a pressure related explosion! Moreover, thorium is less radioactive than a banana!

The only reason we don't already have it is, I believe, prevaricating politicians serving self interest, rather than the real national interest? 40 MW reactors can be mass produced in a factory, and contained ready to use in a stock standard shipping container, then shipped and used anywhere, given the coolant and heat transfer medium is liquid salt!

So, for the first time we have two cheapest ever options than are as reliable as we can ever want, safe clean and CHEAP! And not reliant on a gold plated and unreliable national grid!

And the very sovereign risk reason we don't have truly affordable, nation building, drought proofing power!?
Alan B.

Why does the author still promote the unsubstantiated hypothesis that anthropogenic greenhouse gases cause catastrophic global warming? Like the supposed scientists who peddle that hypothesis, it is apparently because he has a vested interest in so doing.

Otherwise he would have to argue that there is no scientific or economic justification for investing in renewables, and acknowledge that the Australian energy crisis is purely of the federal and state governments’ own making.

“Don't invest in renewables at all without investing in the back-up capacity needed for reliability.”

Given that the politicians foolishly decided to go down the path of promoting investment in renewables, they should have listened to the engineers and ensured that the existing coal-fired capacity was maintained or supplemented so as to provide back-up capacity for unreliable renewables.

Instead, the SA and Victorian governments chose to eliminate back-up capacity by closing-down coal-fired stations that could have been retained at relatively low cost until such time that they could be replaced by more efficient coal-fired stations. Gas-fired power stations are suitable for back-up capacity, but not as efficient as coal-fired for providing base load. Besides, in large part because of flawed government policies, we have precarious, high-priced gas availability for Australian users.

Consequently, although the politicians will not admit it, we have an energy supply crisis – not only is reliability at high risk, but market prices have hit the roof. Disruptions to the Whyalla steelworks, BHP’s Olympic Dam and Oz Minerals operations combined amounted to around $0.5 billion due to the September 2016 SA blackout; Victoria’s Portland smelter suffered around $100 million damage in the December 2016 blackout that affected 200,000 SA users; NSW’s Tomago smelter had to ‘power down’ to avoid major power disruption in SE Australia in a February 2017 heatwave; just today a brickmaker announced it was considering moving offshore because of exorbitant gas prices.

Which entrepreneurs in their right minds would invest in new businesses in Australia today?

We must have Co2 in the atmosphere, wow ever thre is a limit to that amount.
As in past times climate change has taken place, why is that.
In past times the world was more volcanic than at present. And from time to time released an oversupply of Co2 into the atmosphere and upset the balance of nature, this is shown in ice core samples from Antartica.

This time around climate change can not be blamed on volcanic action alone, for a couple of hundred years man has been ramping up his release of Co2 into the atmosphere to a point where nature has been compromised to the extent of changing weather patterns around the world. We are in the grip of another event that has happened many times before, this time man is to blame.

Polititions have been known to lie,sometimes for their own benefit, sometimes because of their own belief of church teachings. Both are very destructive to the people that put their trust into a political party. Polititions that lie have hidden agendas,s. As we all know and regrett.
We trust their lies to be truths. Only to find it was all a scam to defraud the populous into a fraudulent election. And what does their own party do about it. In their own interest they knife the perpetrator and say that is justice.
When the tables turn such perpetrators will be dealt with properly.

Australia needs a price on carbon release into the atmosphere.
Coal power is dead meat.
Get with it or get out. The world future is in jeopardy, because of mans greed for money.

Science says the worlds Co2 emmitians have stabilised. A good first step. Unless emmitians are greatly decreased to 1970 levels. We are in for a torrid time. With a 50 year lag time there is gigantic storms to come for a long long time before a 50year decrease will occur.

Nature has been compromised to the point of climate change. Let's hope volcanic action has ceased forever otherwise there will be no return.

"Unless emmitians are greatly decreased to 1970 levels. We are in for a torrid time. With a 50 year lag time there is gigantic storms to come for a long long time before a 50year decrease will occur."

This is pure speculation on your part, and on the part of anyone else who shares your view.

All politicians are motivated by various political / popularity agendas .. their decisions are rarely taken primarily on the basic of informed factual advice.

So what if 'storage' / batteries is required to make renewable energy more reliable ? It's only using the same principle as dam storage to tide us between rain events .. and no-one whinges about water storage in dams.