You can be sure if Quiggin turns out to be way off the mark it won't cause the slightest embarrassment. The idea seems to be to generate the greatest outrage at the entrenched evils of the establishment. It doesn't matter so much if the argument stretches physical plausibility because the audience doesn't think that way.

That means that people of that mindset won't recant if Germany finds itself unable to shut its last nuclear reactors in 2022. The reasons will be due to some kind of dark conspiracy.

Australia uses a Gwh of electricity every 2 minutes or so. We have perhaps 5 Gwh of batteries and pumped hydro or 10 minutes national power supply in storage. Ergo 100% nice energy via storage must be within easy reach. This is what Quiggin and friends are teaching our young people.

everyone knows that Turnbull is a labourlite pollie who is willing to sacrifice pensioners and low income earners not being able to pay power bills for no other reason than to suck up to the gw fraudsters and UN. Disgraceful that Liberal and Labour have put us in this position. When the Greens/labour get in things will be even worse.

Here are some interesting aspects on the future of coal in China -

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/reports/2017/05/15/432141/everything-think-know-coal-china-wrong/

It matters not how one reads or if everybody who doesn't agree with runner is a proven perverted laborite/commie? Or if you read it stand on your head inside the toilet bowl, where runner get his best inspiration and formulates most of his responses, while (hopefully, occasionally) holding his breath?

At some point not too far ahead in time, the entire world will accept due diligence and abandon coal fire power! NO QUESTION!

The anti-development, anti-industrialisation greens will insist it has to be wind or solar voltaic?

The thundering dunderheads on the extreme right, Jawhol? Will insist and against a mounting tide of proven irrefutable facts to the contrary that GW is a fantasy!

That farmers aren't doing it as tough as they reckon,? After all, we've always had droughts! Moreover, for the most part, are lazy bludgers looking for a handout and free stuff? As the extreme right chant, the government has no business in business, unless it's coal-fired power business!

That there's nothing cheaper than coal-fired power!

And quote private enterprise in the US that reported wholesale power prices from ROM coal and virtual slave labour wages a low a 3 cents per KwH.

Summarily dismiss PROHIBITED thorium on the grounds, they don't know of a current operational power producing reactor! HARD TO DO FORBIDDEN.

Ostensibly, to protect the fossil fuel industry, big nuclear an big pharma from profit harming (theirs) competition!?

Even though MSR and thorium was successfully trialled at Oak Ridge over half a century ago during the fifties, without accident or incident, abandoned in the mid-seventies because it couldn't be easily weaponised!

But could, in fact, be deployed to burn up weapons-grade plutonium and current stockpiles of nuclear waste, (Kirk Sorrenson/Richard Martin/Jam Petersen) all while producing power for less than 2 cents per KwH! (Robert Hargreaves)

And WITHOUT QUESTION our future carbon-free energy, if it has to be reliable, dispatchable, safe and CHEAPER THAN COAL!
Alan B.

With all the mounting evidence, to the contrary, & all the totally failed predictions of fraudsters promoting global warming, you have to doubt either the intelligence or follower traveller morals of any one who can say, "The thundering dunderheads on the extreme right, Jawhol? Will insist and against a mounting tide of proven irrefutable facts to the contrary that GW is a fantasy!"

I obviously can mot know why anyone who seems intelligent would hitch their wagon to the UN. or clowns & con men like Turnbull But some do, & appear to be totally glued on for ever.

Incidentally the quote is not the way to win friends or influence people. Insult is the last refuge of someone with no scientific argument to offer.

"New coal costs more than the combination of renewables plus storage". How was such a claim developed? There are to my knowledge no grid systems comprising just solar and wind (which are presumably the renewables of interest here) firmed with storage, either batteries or pumped hydro. So there's no basis for reliable costings. I know that the gossip tends to make the punters think that storage is an everyday component of grid-scale energy systems. It isn't. The fashion for battery storage has reached ridiculous levels.