The ACT should maintain a data dashboard like King Island
http://www.kingislandrenewableenergy.com.au/
so we can see where their electricity is coming from at any moment in time. When the interstate connector from a wind farm is down we'll know how they worked around it, not by using coal power of course. Or if a drought decimates hydro how the ACT ended up using most of the output but not neighbouring Queanbeyan.

Google and Apple are now saying some of their server farms are 100% renewable powered. If you buy an REC for daytime solar power apparently that means you are using solar at night. I also suggest the ACT should have its own wind farms such as on Mt Majura. When they are outside the ACT it's like clothing made in sweatshops insofar as the beneficiary doesn't see what others had to go through.

One achievement for the ACT would be to encourage schoolkids to question the territory government's claims.

The only question on power is, how do Australians regain it?

"The evidence of climate change is overwhelming". Yes. But the evidence for human cause is so 'underwhelming' as to be non-existent.

Why on Earth anyone wants to keep raking up the lies, kicking them about, is beyond comprehension for any sane, logical person.

Climate change, yes. Can mere mortals do anything about it, no.

Boring, boring, boring - and very costly.

ABC bleat this morning: "Why is Australia so slow at adopting electric cars?". Then: "In the race to adopt electric cars...".

Answer to the silly question: because they are expensive and impractical.

The "race to adopt" : there is clearly no 'race' at all - in Australia or elswhere. The average person has more common sense than ABC employees.

The only reason that electric cars are selling anywhere else is because they are subsidized by the taxpayer to the tune of >50%. That even then they are still very expensive and short ranged is probably why any sane individual will not touch them.

warmist know just like the evolution fantasy that by repeating lies often enough the young believe and embrace the narrative. No wonder the getup generation is so dumbed down, Meanwhile the debt in the country grows at a massive rate and electricity prices soar.

I can see why one would rail against some of the identified assumptions Don and the idiocy in using coal fired/charged electric vehicles.

Even so, we don't need to currently import coal! So there would appear to be some sort of economic rationale in the supposition?

For mine if we are to go completely electric and I can think of several extremely compelling reason why we should? And all of them based solely and exclusively on economic outcomes alone.

Moreover, if the preferred paradigm eventually and progressively reduces greenhouse gas to preindustrial days? Can be economically exploited to reverse desertification, which in turn may allow displaced refugees to be repatriated to their homelands, in their tens of millions?

And if adopted and deployed here, would quite massively boost our economy! And here I'm talking about, nuclear technology.

Not just any nuclear technology, but tested and not found wanting, molten salt thorium technology.

Thorium is the most energy dense material on the planet. And three times more abundant than uranium.

While is is of little matter that is carbon free energy, it nonetheless is! And for an excellent summation, I refer you to Super Fuel, subtitled green energy, written by, of all people, a prize winning investigative journalist. If memory serves, his name is Richard Martin.

Professor Hargreaves of, [Thorium cheaper than coal fame,] is on the public record, claiming energy costs below 2 cents as the median!

Recent advances in cost effective desalination now make desalinated water economically viable for broad crop agriculture? And if coupled to thorium energy, also rechargeable electric vehicles.

All of which become vastly more viable with an energy production paradigm of less than 2 cents P.K.H! And as fully privatised models!

I believe I could halve that by deploying competing cooperative models, that would still be free market, proven the most successful, private enterprise!

And better yet, doesn't avoid tax, doesn't repatriate profits and unable to price gouge! And ideally, all Australian!
Alan B.

"The evidence of climate change is overwhelming". Yes. But the evidence for human cause is so 'underwhelming' as to be non-existent.

Why on Earth anyone wants to keep raking up the lies, kicking them about, is beyond comprehension for any sane, logical person.', says ttbn.

Well of course the pay is very good mate.

It would be interesting to know just how much Commissioner Professor Kate Auty is being paid. I bet the dollar level per rant is really high. I'll also bet the retirement conditions won't leave her worrying about the old age pension.

It is of course impossible to know if the lady concerned is just stupid, or a smarty working the angles to improve her retirement fund, but either way she obviously does not give a damn about the wellbeing of her fellow Australians.

I once spent an hour talking to the chair of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. She was an English Professor, & knew a bit less about the reef & the ocean than the average tourist. This ambulance chaser does appear to be of similar ilk, but has done very well for herself.

Michael Mann has stated:

"Continuing to argue about what's causing the planet to warm is the moral equivalent of arguing over whether wood burns while a fire is climbing up out of the basement of your house. It's time Republicans stop arguing and got out the hoses instead."

Climate science began in the early 1800s through Fourier.

Of interest, Ross Garnautt has stated that the wholesale cost of renewables in South Australia is now lower than States where coal is the chief source of power.

https://amp.afr.com/news/south-australias-power-now-cheaper-than-coalfired-states--ross-garnaut-20171106-gzfqaf

A very major Report has just been published in relation to how climate has impacted on the USA in 2016 which has been referenced by thousands of scientists.

https://science2017.globalchange.gov

Professor Francis speaks about how the science of the Arctic's influence on climate has been refined:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiEFROIktMo&feature=youtu.be

There are a number of Research papers published about how ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctic are being undermined by warm Oceans.

2017 won't be the warmest year recorded; though, it has been suggested it will be there near the top. Record temperatures were recorded in many areas of the USA for there summers, some records are now being broken for the time of year.

Just saying that the climate isn't changing without any evidence doesn't make sense when on a daily basis science reports are being published.

Lately, there have been studies published about how the Amazon is no longer a sink for CO2, coral reefs being bleached off Western Australia, ice sheet demise, subsea permafrost degradation in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, the Totten Glacier in East Antarctica less stable than thought, increasing CO2 levels seen as part reason for demise of bees, and more.

Only complete nutters would or could argue a natural causes rational, during a waning phase of the sun, which traditionally would have ushered in a naturally occurring cooling period or ice age!

NOT RECORD BREAKING HEAT WAVES AND ICE MELTS! NEVER!

The word is out? Just as in big tobacco and asbestos, oil industry scientists are saying one thing to their employers and another to the general public! Ditto the nuclear fuel industry!

To be sure, you just can't polish a turd, but when has that stopped any of the aforementioned from trying?

Just get over yourselves, give your troubled minds a rest and simply look at what's on the table through rational lenses!

Never mind about climate change or anything you just don't want to believe, even a round world that revolves around a currently waning sun!

And then just focus solely and purely on the economic argument alone! Just that and nothing more! After all at the end of the day, it's the economy stupid!

If undecided, check out U tube, Google tech talks and Super fuel, subtitled green energy.

Or the case for thorium by speakers like, Kirk Sorensen, Former NASA engineer and nuclear technologist, for the bona fide facts!

Just burying the head and repeating the lies now promulgated by sections of a very economically threatened fossil fuel or nuclear industry just won't cut it, neither will resorting to troll like abuse! And endlessly questioning or challenging assembled facts!

We can do so much better, particularly if we all man up and man the oars and for just once! All row together and in the same flamin direction!

Rowing in ever decreasing circles can only see our lifeboat Australia rammed up our collective jacksey.

The fight we must have, is out there! Not here at home amongst ourselves! United we stand, divided we fall! Even when our backs are to the wall!

Ain't that the plane truth!?
Alan B.

Alan is quite correct when he says, "you just can't polish a turd", be sure as hell is trying very hard to disprove this fact,

Nuclear powered cars? Sign me up.

Nuclear powered cars? Has anybody come even close to suggesting that!? Everybody except resident fools, everybody knows that one plugs said electric car into a power socket! And the pays for the recharge as PKH.

Be it wind, solar, hydro, coal, a guy in thermal underwear peddling very fast, to keep warm and the exercise bike, turning an alternator, or nuclear!

That said, a nuclear powered car is not as silly as it seems, with some scientists working on a prototype that uses a laser beam to excite a few grams of thorium, which in turn heats a gas, CO2? Which then turns a turbine, which then turns an alternator?

[8 grams of thorium enough, it would seem, to power the car for a hundred years without refuelling?]

Even with those steps? Far fewer moving parts than a modern gasoline powered car.

Incidentally, China is on target to manufacture around a million electric cars this year, more next year and more the year after that. Costing around $17,000.00 each and with a range of around 200 kilometres.

Moreover, without subsidised production. And expects to completely outlaw any conventional powered production by 2020?

What we could conceivably do here, is build a nice big roomy carbon fibre, autonomous vehicle, then power it with a thorium powered miniaturised power plant and end forever the tyranny of distance in wide fair land!

It'd be impossible to supply the international market for a hundred years or more! At which time, we'd likely have to tool for the new model!?

One would still have to re gas the air conditioner, the turbine, change light bulbs, wiper blades, tyres, brake rotors, brake pads, steering components, the odd wheel bearing, shocks and the battery, for the entire operational life of the vehicle!
Alan B.

Hasbeen:
You of all people would be an expert in this area! And we all bow to your expertise!

After all they tried to "polish you" so as to try to make you appear a suitable and thoughtful candidate, governed solely by logic's rites?

Rather than an overbearing (hard right) ideologue, who rarely if ever bothers with fact checking or things like common courtesy and or civility! Or just giving credit when and where it's due!

Just rubbish anything too technical or not from the (coal fired) 18th century!

And about where you and your current (it's all about me) calcified mindset belong. As with a royal wave of your royal purple pinkies you just dismiss our only possible future, along with any and all inconvenient truths!

Overruled by advancing dementia and the absolute certainty of knowing, you are always right? And such a comfort!

You've heard about the V8 that got quite startling mileage? With the simplicity of only firing four cylinders while cruising and only firing up all 8 under load?

The first may be described as the waning (cool) phase and the second the waxing (hot lap) phase! Understand yet, genius?

You all have a nice day now y'hear.
Alan B.

Alan B for goodness sake make a thorium reactor and make yourself rich! Give us a rest from your nonsense. If it worked it would be done so it obviously does not work.
Give it a rest idiot!

Just to be pedantic, turds can be polished, if they are old enough.

http://www.momtastic.com/webecoist/2010/08/10/coprolites-a-few-words-on-prehistoric-turds/

If it could be done it would have been done? It was At Oak Ridge Tennessee. And stopped by that paragon of virtue, President Nixon because it couldn't be easily or safely weaponized!

A number of countries are rolling out R+D on it and they include China, India, South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia and Czechoslovakia. Just to name a few!

We are bound to look as dumb as drink water, if near neighbour and coal producer/exporter Indonesia, has a walk away safe, molten salt thorium reactor before we do!

Yes I know a few folk would sooner I shut up about it, given it could kill coal, traditional nuclear and virtually every renewable!

I mean, you tell me which one of those could produce reliable power for a tad under 2 cents P.K.H! Moreover, can any renewable or coal produce Bismuth 213. Already a proven miracle cure for a number of nasty, death sentence cancers! Some given just hours to live!

So why should I shut up, folks on death row won't thank me and I couldn't go to my maker if I didn't give it my best go including getting some material on walk away safe thorium reactors to Four Corners.

Stop? No way, I've only just begun and if I have to get you folk just to look at the facts one by one, then that's what I'll do!

NO I WILL NOT SHUT UP!

Check out Super Fuel, subtitled, green energy, Or enter the case for thorium into your search engine and see what nuclear technologist Kirk Sorensen thinks about it or the Author of, Thorium cheaper than coal, Professor Hargreaves thinks. Along with a dozen or more highly qualified highly credentialed scientists!

And the very last thing the detractors want! Cause they know if any thinking rational human, not in the fossil fuel industries big pockets, will have no choice but to join me in advocating for economic sanity and thorium!

If it hadn't been starved of funding, because of a political and or economic imperative, we'd all have one in our backyard by now!
Alan B.

Sorry Alan B you are entitled as anyone to state your point of view. If Nixon stopped it that means forty plus years ago, why the continuing delay then. Mind you your first part said IF?

One seriously challenged individual, apparently not able to get on U tube to check the relevant facts, suggested I should build a thorium powered reactor?

Well as stupid as that sounds and is. Not even remotely possible here, given our regulatory framework forbids any such activity, with the word nuclear anywhere in the title or heading!

And you guessed it those regulations were cunningly crafted in this nation's parliament by public servants or signing off pollies! And courtesy of big nuclear and the fossil fuel industry?

Even R+D thorium is forbidden by law, in the US?

What is it about thorium that those apparently opposed to it fear?

Perhaps having their current business models rendered completely obsolete might just have a little something to do with it?

As the price gouged energy market (business model) gradually and progressively kills our (insignificant) Australian economy!

How's that for shutting up about it old son?

Build one?

Well get the regulations changed that forbid it as a first step and I just might accept that challenge!
Alan B.

Alan B,

Don't shut up; thanks to you I've been reading up on Thorium Reactors and although I've a way to go, I'm in there and willing to learn even though I lean toward steam power and wood fuel (a renewable resource!).

I hold to the theory of burning it productively before the next bushfire wastes it.

Yes Is Mise, good enough, but why when you're wasting an endlessly sustainable resource currently flushed as millions of annual tons into already massively polluted oceans!

And I'll call as it is, human sourced sewerage. Waste wood, fallen timber, can be turned into wood chips, then feed into a digestor, to create, food and arable land free, ethanol!

Aussie innovators have developed a closed cycle, smell free, two tank system. One aerobic the other anaerobic, to treat and thoroughly sanitise this waste and turn it into bladder stored methane, which can then turn a diesel engine to power and heat your home electrically, and on demand 24/7!

Virtually every Australian domicile produces enough biological waste to completely power their homes 24/7!

Further, scrubbing this gas to remove a modest CO2 content, enables it to be used in methane consuming ceramic fuel cells! Where an 80% energy coefficient allows the sale of around about a 50% surplus!

And at today's and tomorrow's prices, able to completely draw down any borrowed money, used to build a complete system, in around a decade?

Moreover given all the costs are upfront, the power virtually for free, with a bonus of endless free hot water, reusable, recyclable nutrient loaded water and carbon rich soil improver! And carbon sequestered for hundreds, nay thousands of years!

And with realistic maintenance, still doing duty a hundred years from now? Given, we've eliminated most moving parts and their subsequent wear and tear!

And endlessly renewable, given it relies on something we're hardly ever likely to run out of? To be sure, until or unless the whole population develops an extreme, very full in the face, anal retention syndrome?
Alan B.

A few pointers on electric cars.
Firstly though, a friend has an electric car and it costs him $1.50
a week to drive to work, five days a week. Service is zero and one
day he will have to buy some tires and the wear on the brakes is very
low because of regenerative breaking.

Now, it has been reported that the energy efficiency of electric cars
from mine to power station to wheels is significantly better than
from well to refinery to service station to wheels.
Don't ask me for a reference as I read that some years ago.
Just had a thought that it might have come from RMIT.

The highest selling car in Norway is the Nissan Leaf electric car.
If you do daily long runs in the country then an electric car is
probably not for you.
In the UK the electric highway is being built with fast chargers
along all motorways.

However if you are are a two car family and one does short trips to
the shops, then across town to friends to work etc then an electric
car is a real proposition.

As far as price is concerned no country has a subsidy anywhere near 50%.
Not all countries have subsidies.
The price in Australia is TGARO !
The Great Australian Ripp Off !
The Nissan Leaf for example sells in the US just under $30,000.
In the UK it sells for about $40,000 and in Australia in 2012 it
sold for $51500 ! They couldn't sell them, so they changed the price
for the latest models to $57,500 !!
Says it all !