No different to The Great Koala Scam

Scaremongering has indeed become a proper little industry. There are those who like to do the scaring, and those who like to be scared. It will never end.

The only battle we seem to be having is obliging, selectively blind and deaf, recalcitrant intrangicents to look at the evidence!

The first of which is, we shouldn't be experiencing climate change replete with record heat waves and extreme weather events! When we are deep in a waning phase of that, which controls all normal cyclical climatic conditions, the solar furnace in the sky.

Currently deep in a waning phase (NASA), and since the mid seventies. When associated normal cyclical climate change should have seen cooler weather across the entire planet along with advancing ice etc/etc.

Yes coral is tough but not invulnerable, as testified by dead reefs the world over. And in some cases because they're loved to death by hordes of tourists! When tourism (the mindless green mantra) is left as arguably the only economic activity that earns essential export dollars.

Yes, we can limit toxic runoff from primary production by laser leveling and ponding of cropland.

But what we can't seem to prevent, is effluent being pumped from urban and tourism development out onto the reef which is overwhelmed by the excessive nutrient load/turbidity. Which spawns the very weed infestation that is the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak.

As for coal and petroleum. Well the crisis we're currently facing is inevitably caused by the carbon load in the atmosphere, not rouge radiation from nuclear power stations which produce far far less than coal or fracked gas! TBC

"Move when you have to" is no longer general policy. Eating out the natural local food and polluting your own dunghill can now be overcome with transported food supply, piped water and sewage systems.

And so cities become bigger and bigger with more and more nutrient overload pollution dumped daily into river and ocean ecosystems of this planet.

Nutrient runoff from farms only occurs following rain and running rivers. Sewage from cities and towns is dumped daily, every day.

Why blame or point the finger at farmers, especially if there may be another source of nutrient overload/pollution?

Coral has never ever survived for 500 million years under impact of over 7.3 billion humans, whose leaders are too ignorant or selfish to deal with solutions

The resident con artists think everyone is just like them and judge all others on their highly flawed, inevitably inherently dishonest standards?

A flawed problematic mindset that alone enables them to avoid looking at the inescapable, irrefutable evidence, that proves them and their business models! Wrong, wrong, wrong!

You see, decarbonising the economy is not only, the only way to reverse climate change, but massively boost our economic prospects into the same bargain!

Because, thorium promises everything fusion promised, but couldn't and probably never will deliver? In my kid's or their kid's lifetimes?

Whereas, we've already successfully tested thorium in a LFTR. And while there are a few, not insoluble technical difficulties with using thorium as a fuel?

Most of them would seem to be using thorium in solid fuel rods and conventional reactors? When few if any of the alleged difficulties, seem to present in FLIBE or, molten fluoride, lithium, beryllium and thorium.

As for coal and petroleum? Why can't all we use need or want or export? Just come/go via Darwin and just avoid the reef altogether?

Too simple?

And be supported by long overdue rapid double decker rail freight? Or better yet, an inland canal that culminates at lake eyre. Which would then be permanently full, used as a central Rapid rail, roll on roll off, hub?

A dual lane, self flushing, lock gated canal, would not only keep it full. But serve as a limitless source of water for the adjacent thorium powered, deionization dialysis desal plants? That would as a planned combination! AFFORDABLY transform central Australia!

[Much of the predicted route(s), already just above or just below sea level! Unusually high northern tides, literally flushing shipping in and out!]

And ensure our very best, most productive days, are still in our future! Not our past, [where the thinking of this particular (as thick as two planks) author belongs!]

Never ever dependant on coal, oil or gas, or indeed problematic, price gouging, tax avoiding, profit repatriating, foreign investment!
Alan B.

Great article Viv.

Alan you need to get out more. Sitting at a computer googling only gives you access to the garbage put out by these same academics, Greenpeace, WWF, Wikipedia & other such sites, mostly disgorging the same garbage.

Clowns mucking about in a large fish tank at AIMS, the Marine Park Authority, or James Cook learn about 2 pennies worth of stuff all about the reef. Conducting experiments to confirm their theories is about as useful as tits on a bull, & siting their pronouncements as evidence of anything is even less useful.

Yes immediately post war, when fertilisers were very cheap, & governments subsidised farmers to throw the stuff about, farm runoff combined with urban runoff did have real effect to close inshore reefs. Today the stuff is so expensive that no farmer can afford to waste even a few grams. The runoff from town gardens would be greater than that from agriculture.

When I was sailing around the Pacific islands, I had to learn to navigate like the Polynesians or Captain Cook. If I wanted to get through the fringing reef somewhere there were no sectored light houses, or channel markers, hell even some coastlines were dotted lines, I had to find a river. You see we knew fresh water, more than sediment, nutrients or any other factor of man kills coral. Rivers mean a passage through a reef, on uninhabited islands or in Oz.

In the same way that atolls grow outward, & the lagoon has little live coral, a factor of low salinization during the wet season. So called scientists will never learn such simple facts while they play around in fish tanks, adding chemicals at ridiculous rates to make a case for their next grant.

We took 1250 tourists to Hardy reef a week, & marine activists who looked very hard had to admit there was no difference between the 300 metres we used, & the 30 nautical miles of the rest of the atoll circle of reef.

God I get sick or garbage served up as fact.

Alan B wrote:

"[the sun is] Currently deep in a waning phase (NASA), and since the mid seventies."

What you say is factually incorrect (quelle surprise!).

While the very most recent cyclic phases have been somewhat 'quiet', those in the 70's and 80's were among the highest recorded.

Since you base most of your views on AGW on that error, then, clearly, your further opinions are flawed. I look forward to seeing your NASA data.

But its good to see that the truth about thorium is finally dawning on you. Whereas previously you asserted that thorium was available now, we now see you finally admitting that it may be available " In my kid's or their kid's lifetimes?". Kudos, I think?

_____________________________________________________________

We know that temperatures have been higher than the present for fully 25% of the past 12000 years. Surprisingly, given the hysteria, the GBR survived those periods of higher temperatures. Yet, this time it'll be different, apparently. But in fact the only differnece is that we now have an army of careerists and graduates whose entire life is based around the supposed imminent demise of the reef. Given that the 'experts' need the reef to be threatened in order for their careers to be not threatened, its little wonder that they constantly assert the threats to be real and immediate and that none, or very few, bother to even try to look at or explain why their previous predictions failed to materialise.

Superb article Viv

I note from http://www.desmogblog.com/viv-forbes you are a:

"Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy

...[and] also had a long association with the coal industry. According to his biography at Stanmore Coal where he acts as director, Forbes has over 40 years of coal industry experience.."

You be a true mate of Adani Coal I trust.

Happy New Year

Anyone is perfectly free to use Google to see what NASA not only said, but their most recent article, accompanied by Photographic evidence!

Mhaze; In my grandkids lifetime was attributed to fusion, not thorium!

Suggest both you, and Hasbeen. Need to both read what I've actually written, before you further impugn me, or deliberately mischievously misrepresent my words.

I like everyone else posting here? Use google to deepen my understanding of topics I actually know something about. And commend Google tech talks/Google scholar.

As for thorium, Ivy league Professor (ret) Robert Hargreaves, Author of, thorium cheaper than coal. I quote him when I say the median price of power generated from thorium, is $00.1.98 PKH. Yes, an educated guestimate?

Even so, nearly spat out my dentures this morning, when some spokesman for the government claimed the wholesale price of wind turbine energy was just 5 cents PKH.

Given economist Robert Hargreaves know his maths/extrapolation. Wind power costs twice as much then some, than thorium.

The government spokesman went on and on about how much (cents in the dollar) we'd save after the labor government had locked down energy prices.

Well they're they only one profiting from something bought and paid for by Queensland taxpayer, which the government apparently is using as its personal ATM to balance a very dodgy budget?

Mhaze: you'll be pleased to know the Australian Parliament commissioned a report on thorium, which I've read in full, where the alleged Author saw some technical difficulties.

Not too surprising, given he was applying it theoretically to a solid fuel reactor?

Technical difficulties which didn't seem to arrive, according to NASA scientist, nuclear technologist Kirk Sorensen, when used in a molten salt reactor. Like that which ran for four years without accident or incident, at Oak Ridge.

Unexpectedly, there were several largely overinflated problems associated with a massively premature shut down?
Alan B.

What a perverted stupid brainless article.

The latest wheeze from the rent seekers is that they are claiming to be able to fix the Coral Bleaching. Apparently Coral Bleaching occurs and the coral fixes itself. Now these white coats and clipboards are "Developing" magic to fix it? I can see them getting the Nobel Prize, making themselves rich and all on the meeja's believing anything the Greens say.
We must ensure the ABC are not allowed to report this fiction as fact!

Reports that the GBR was going to be eaten up by Crown of Thorns, appeared more than 50 years ago.

It is just as well that Crown of Thorns developed incurable coral indigestion

Alan,

Laser powered fusion reactors will likely be commercially viable within 5 to 10 years. Once they are, Thorium reactors will go into the dustbin of history.

Geoff

That's a pretty wild call Geoff. Do you have access to some real facts, most of us don't?

What ever, I sure hope you are right. The fact that it is not the bomb might be just the difference needed to get it past a brain washed population, terrified of anything nuclear.

mhaze
You stated:

"We know that temperatures have been higher than the present for fully 25% of the past 12000 years."

Jeremy Shakum comments on matter:

"It’s been warmer in the past…
This statement is absolutely true, but it’s often used to imply that humans aren’t changing climate now or that warming is no big deal, both of which are ill-conceived. Nature can and does change climate, but this doesn’t prove that humans can’t as well (the evidence listed above shows we have in fact). As an analogy, there have been forest fires for millions of years, but that doesn’t mean humans can’t cause those too. Also, while the world has been warmer in the past, it was a different world when it was, with higher sea level and different rainfall and vegetation patterns. The question isn’t if the earth can cope with climate change – it has for four billion years and will again – the question is how well we’d do with unchecked global warming, which is less certain since we haven’t experienced a big climate change before. One last, more subtle point that is often missed by people downplaying current warming by highlighting big past climate changes is that the larger climate variability has been in the past in response to natural climate forcings, the larger it likely will be in response to anthropogenic forcings. "

From:

http://www2.bc.edu/jeremy-shakun/global_warming.html

Charlie Vernon, a recently retired expert on coral, states the Great Barrier Reef is in dire trouble.
Charlie Vernon, knows more about corals than anybody commenting here.

http://www.theage.com.au/good-weekend/charlie-veron-the-dire-environmental-prognosis-we-cannot-ignore-20170711-gx8tqr.html

Quote:

"He has identified more than 20 per cent of the world's coral species, and has been likened by David Attenborough to a modern-day Charles Darwin."

It is not just the Great Barrier Reef that is at risk; but coral reefs generally.

That is so true Raycom.

I took the entire board, & management from the Marine park authority, plus a bunch from AIMS & James Cook out to our facility at Hardy reef one day. The boss lady of the Marine park authority was an English professor, who had as you can imagine, a great knowledge of things marine, & coral in particular

Most of the "scientists" never got very far from the bar, but one of the AIMS scientists who did spent half an hour telling me we would be out of business with in a year. Apparently he, & his people predicted the Crown Of Thorns were going to finish destroying the area with in that time.

Strangely I had 2 permanent staff, both keen scuba divers living out there, & a marine biologist doing her thesis on the effects of tourism living out there about half the time. I also took 2 dive instructors & a bunch of their students out there 4 days a week. All of these combined had seen only 7 Crown of Thorns in the area in a year. I did wonder, but did not ask, if he had ever actually seen one.

Of course, Ant would have believed him, & probably still does.

Geoff. Think you may have been referring to laser excited thorium as a miniaturized system; that may power your electric vehicle for as many as 100 years, without refueling, with just 8 grams of thorium.

Something being worked on now in China and elsewhere?

Don't know if it'll be a water based heat transferred thorium powered steam engine though, but some sort of energy transfer that turns/compells electrons into electricity?

And maybe as part of that process turns pig iron into platinum or gold as the sacrificial anode gives of many of its electrons as part of the neutron exchange? Expect some exciting announcement 01/04/2018?

Fusion is dead easy, containing the reaction for more than a few microseconds, has to date, defeated some of the best brains ever to don a lab coat!

The Swedes reinvented the steam engine some years ago, as a gas powered almost instantaneously powered up, steam engine, where after impressive power application, condensation replaced the boiled water, once it had been used in a miniaturized Saab turbine?

Round and round it goes where it hides or becomes, nobody knows.

Levity aside, it seems to me a laser excited thorium power plant would provide as much usable heat, if not considerably more than gas.

And while the whole outfit could be heavy, possibly not as heavy as the battery bank we'd need to get useful range out of an electric vehicles?

The advantage with this particular concept, would be the almost limitless range one would achieve; and through, keep it simple stupid, as applied management policy?

And given the rank collusion and (politically assisted?) manipulation of/inside our energy market!

It'd be quite a pleasure driving past that last outpost service station, honking loudly, without ever stopping for gas/diesel, for a lifetime of driving pleasure, or freight forwarding!
Alan B.

Alan B,

"Anyone is perfectly free to use Google to see what NASA not only said, but their most recent article, accompanied by Photographic evidence! "

Translation: there is no evidence for what AlanB said. He just made it up and/or significantly misunderstood something he'd read.

A better man would either offer up the evidence to prove his claim or admit to error.
A lesser man would....well would do exactly as Alan B has done.

________________________________________________________________

ant,

Yes, the fact that it was previously warm doesn't mean that the current warm isn't man-made. But that's entirely beside the point in this regard.
I was simply pointing out that coral survived non-man-made warming in the past, and will survive current warming, whether natural or man-made.

I know you struggle to follow a logical thread, but give it some thought and it might come to you.

mhaze

So you know better than Charlie Vernon, a scientist who has spent 50 years studying coral?

Come on Ant.

I know people who have spent 50 years studying their navel, & they have learnt stuff all too.

Hasbean,

Here is one link, there is a link within it to the scientific paper

http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/2017/12/laser-initiated-hydrogen-boron-fusion-now-leading-contender-for-energy-source.html

Geoff

"So you know better than Charlie Vernon,"

Well I'm not sure. If he's saying that higher temperatures in 2020 will wipe out corals which survived similar or higher temperatures over the past 12000 years, well yes I do know more. More about logic and deduction.

But from the article you linked, he's not saying that, so we don't know what he thinks.

But he is of the standard we're-all-gunna-die crowd, which is why the Age praised him and why you uncritically accept his fact devoid assertions.

Thanks for that Geoff, I must start paying attention.

mhaze

How many corals have you discovered?

David Attenborough provides glowing comments about Chalie Vernon.

I suppose you will now provide negative comments about David Attenborough.

Quite an amazing comment:

"But he is of the standard we're-all-gunna-die crowd, which is why the Age praised him and why you uncritically accept his fact devoid assertions."

We are all going to die mhaze, nobody knows when it is to be.

Here we go again. Another 'sceptical' article by someone without any appropriate qualifications, typical for OLO.

Mac "appropriate qualifications? The UK chief Scientist some years ago said change cars to diesel. Now years down the track he says Oh no! that is a mistake. Never mind the famous and much touted "Peer review" BS. Now he is saying they have to change back to petrol but he keeps his big fat pension and knighthood.
Can you see why we regard these people as dishonest and charlatans?

JBowyer

A very famous economist said that when the facts changed he changed his mind. Scientists use the same approach, unlike climate change sceptics who don't let facts get in the way of an uniformed opinion. Who is the charlatan?

"Sceptics" have an agenda. When sufficient amounts of smart capital is transferred to renewables, the coal lobby will fade away, apart from the usual crackpots. We've seen this all before in the campaign by tobacco companies to confuse the issue as much as possible.

Mac, you are confused. The facts did not change. His analysis was sloppy and wrong and his mates backed him up! Now he says everybody pay for my error (Not a mistake) and I will strut around coming the big I am!
Scientists have been involved in absolute fraud over the last few years and we just have to call them out!
Oh, by the way, I am pretty old so I have heard the long long succession of doomsday stories from people making a big quid out of fraud and lies. Do not worry it will all come to a head.

JBowyer

Your comments don't make sense, according to your logic:

Every science peak body tells lies, every climate scientist tells lies, politicians from many countries having different modes of government and believe climate science tell lies.? Inuit experiencing climate change tell lies?

Science disciplines that support climate change science tell lies?

Data collected from the troposphere and stratosphere tells lies??

Billionaires such as the Koch brothers tell the truth?

The conspiracy you suggest has gone on for almost two hundred years.

No Ant, it has gone on ever since B grade universities, & their C grade academics needed to publish or perish, & scientist became public servants who had get grants or become unemployed.

While ever these low rent academics need grants to keep their job, the public will continue to be fed this bulldust, dummies in the media will continue to publish their press releases, it's easier than gathering real news, & the really dumb, or just plain lazy, will continue to believe & regurgitate it, as if they knew which way was up.

Hasbeen

So "... it has gone on ever since B grade universities, & their C grade academics ....?"

Fourier in the 1820s, Foote and Tyndall later in the 1800s and so on developed the science of climate change. Fourier's theorems are still used, he was no C grade academic.

All Universities that teach climate change are "B" grade; what nonsense, Hasbeen.

You clearly do not understand ... data collected from the troposphere and stratosphere tells lies??

Ant, I am not sure if you are up to reading this but have a go anyway, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/04/fuel-duty-cut-for-diesel-cars-was-wrong-says-ex-chief-science-adviser
See what I mean Matey? He was too stupid and lazy to check anything but greedy enough to take industry goodies and hang the people who were paying him. Even worse, where is your "Peer review"? You and your ilk babble on about science, sources and peer review well here it is in all its glory.
If only I did not have to pay for this fraud and with no consequences for this lazy dishonest fool, Sir David King, who only blames others. Mate you would have to be an ex public servant?

JBowyer

The first sentence of your reference reads:

"David King, who served Labour and Tory governments, says he was misled by car industry over levels of diesel pollution"
You might recall that VW has been in trouble in many countries for falsifying emissions from their diesel motors.

Its the same as EPA being misled by fossil fuel companies a few years ago about old capped fracking sites being secure and not emitting methane. Independent assessments showed that the fossil fuel companies were not providing accurate information. A matter discussed on Years of Living Dangerously, Four Corners regarding Australia and Ecowatch. The team from Years of Living Dangerously measured methane escaping ... the news was not good:

http://yearsoflivingdangerously.com/story/chasing-methane/

https://www.ecowatch.com/abandoned-oil-and-gas-wells-high-emitters-of-methane-gas-1881986576.html

Come off it Ant, it was all the greenie activists, trying to denigrate petrol, Greenpeace, WWF & the rest, that pushed diesel, & peanuts like King sucking up to the greenies that caused the blunder.

Just about every thing you & your ratbag mates want always produce unintended consequences. You know stuff all about anything, so fall for every bit of propaganda no matter how ludicrous.

If there is a menace, & a threat to life, it is you fools.

Oh god! On the news tonight, they have resurrected the Crowns Of Thorns scare yet again.

You certainly can't call this marine biologist lot very imaginative, no where near as imaginative as the climate fraudsters.

Hasbeen the latest wheeze is the "Cure" for bleaching which is coming soon. The science blob are touting a cure when the problem actually cures itself. This will result in extra funding and all sorts of environmental awards! just watch this space.

Oh the corruption of man. The scientists are certainly not exempt.

Hasbeen

You stated:

Just about every thing you & your ratbag mates want always produce unintended consequences.

So are you sayng that VW did not commit fraud?

Abstract to the state of coral reefs about the time when denier groups started attacking climate change science:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2486.1996.tb00063.x/full

The Great Barrier Reef:

http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/about-the-reef/reef-health

The Dunning-Kruger effect is alive and well; which equals, knowing better than what the research from professional people says, and relying on no replicatable evidence.

Oceans are warming and hottest year on record and yet the sharks are frozen. Now the heats not hiding in the ocean where has it gone? What a joke.

Ant your scientists are part of a grubby and greedy scam! They score money from idiot politicians (Our money) backed up by useful idiots like you.
Yes VW told lies but surely any proper scientist would not only test the hypothesist but get a peer to test his test? Of course not they just picked up the money and then blame someone else, was it ever different?

JBowyer

Who were the climate scientists who should have checked VW emissions. It was the computer technology in the VWs that was providing the wrong information. So Oceanographers, Glaciologists, Astro Physicists etc should have checked the emissions from VWs?

Ant the chief scientist should have done his job and properly investigated. His peers should have re-done his work to ensure it was correct. Now if the chief scientist cannot be trusted and neither can his "Peers" what hope is there?
Oh of course computer modeling! Same as VW did, see you get there eventually mate, now go and have a lie down.

JBowyer

You are trying to compare apples and oranges.
Or, to put it another way; pushing your opinion in one situation to generalise it to the n/th degree.