Insult is the last refuge of someone with no scientific argument to offer. Must have been addressing the "man" in the mirror when you came up with that one Has?

Overheard conversation between a conservative and a liberal.

Con: we must maintain a pocket of poverty to suppress wages and demands for better conditions.

Lib: but these folk are our customers and if we suppress wages growth? Who's going to keep demand up at healthy levels and keep turnover turning over?

Con: Repetition of the last statement.

Lib: you don't get it if our customers have more money in their pockets then so do we!

Con: Yeah? well, they're not getting it from me!

Lib: nobody wants yours, we just need to export more! And grow wages by growing the economy! And that only needs affordable reliable (cheaper than coal) carbon-free energy and water!

Con: Carbon-free power? What clean coal?

Lib: *&^#@%^(!)

Don't need to get insulting, I know how an economy works, just sell everything to price gouging, tax avoiding, profit repatriating foreigners for a fee for me and mine.

We'll be alright and that's all that really matters. I'll donate a stained glass window to the local church and that should keep the great unwashed happy along with free to air footy! You've got to know these what's important to these folk and the hot-button issues that burn them, then play on that for all your worth, while we accrue personal fortunes?

. LiB: what about the growing homeless, the poor and downtrodden?

Con: show them where the bleeding heart's soup kitchen is and chuck in a couple of bucks into the poor box. We've always had pockets of poverty and always will, it's inevitable!
Alan B.

Malcolm (return bill) Turnbull, is in an invidious position! Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. And wedged on energy policy between Tony Abott and co and his own moderate libs on energy policy!

And simply can't go cap in hand seeking the support of labor this close to an election, just to get a compromise through, nor can he leave until after the election? Given how many more seats he could lose to Labor!

And most of those now in doubt seems to be among hard-line conservatives who in truth want the Paris accord scrapped? To differentiate themselves from Labor and pick a bun fight on energy prices?

Well, all possible if the topic was nuclear energy and power prices as low as 2 cents per KwH. All they need is to understand the following! and with highly credentialed scientific support, i.e., Professor Robert Hargreaves, Kirk Sorenson, Jam Petersen, Richard Martin and several other highly credentialed experts who ha made public domain docos, that could be used to educate the public during a longish campaign?

Thorium is safer than coal cleaner than coal and cheaper than coal! And where we need to be heading if we have any real intention or prospect of not only decarbing the economy, but quite massively turbocharging it as well! Labor will invoke a sh!t storm and protest on idiotic ideological grounds, while ministers, who having got up to speed on Thorium based energy, can extoll the safety aspects and the massive price differentiation/hip pocket nerve, plus the PROVEN health spinoffs!

And the POSITIVE economic and environmental implications! And with a Labor party in complete lockstep against it without a leg to stand on to prove why not! And satisfy Tony and co, who just want a great big bun fight with Labor!?
TBC Alan B.

Cont. And still with a viable policy for coal! As CLEANER, CHEAPER future transport fuel! and more than possible with thorium 2 cents per Kwh energy!

And rolled out in shipping container sized modules mas produced in factory assembly plants over th next two decades to replace aging coal-fired power plants over the next two decades or so and in their place new plants that process coal to produce cheaper replacement alternative fuels and fertilizer etc.

And SAVE SOMEWHERE NORTH OF 26 BILLION PER for currently fully imported oil and refined transport fuel. Then there is bitumen and many carbon-based products like lampblack and highly profitable manufactured graphene

And all doable with Power costing as little as 2 cents per KwH! And in the process create methane of purer quality than current CNG? Which can power any conventional engine as CNG.

Other products could include ammonia/diesel alternative and an alternative Jet fuel or power kero. Some of which could be exported!

There's no downside here, but may require some government as financiers and facilitators of the cooperative enterprises tasked with manning said operations and power plants etc.

Well, the hard right would have put their hand in the taxpayer's pocket to pay for a new coal-fired power plant or two? Where's the real difference? And best of all because the FREE MARKET, PRIVATE ENTERPRISE, cooperative business model isolates and eliminates all union involvement!

And because the manufactured CNG would cut transport emission by around 40% and where desirable piped into the home or factory where it could be used in ceramic fuel cells, where the exhaust product would be mostly pristine water vapour. Or could be used to rekindle our own glass industries etc!

And with thorium deployed, power plant CO2 emissions by 100%!

Tell me Has, WTF is wrong with any of that? And or have you even bothered to read or look at any of the exampled experts on U tube and google tech talks?

Take a butchers before you ever once again take me to task for accurately describing you and your likeminded ilk!
Alan B.

Aidan,

The bond rate is 1.5% and anyone that thinks this rate of return is acceptable is an idiot as it allows nothing for variable conditions and upgrades.

Secondly, the privatisation of the networks dramatically dropped the price of power mainly because private enterprise managed to dramatically reduce running costs while improving service thus both dropping prices, making a profit and paying tax.

Shadow,
1.5% is acceptable rate of return when there's no risk whatsoever. Provision for variable conditions should be included in the base cost not the financing cost, as should preparation for upgrades (but the upgrades themselves should be financed separately). Allowing the infrastructure companies to profit from the financing of the infrastructure is unnecessary and inefficient.

Is your claim about the effects of privatisation based on reality? It looks more like a theoretical claim by someone versed in the dogma of privatisation and unaware of the problems! Where is the evidence of a substantial drop in the price due to privatisation?

A report on a book Dumb Energy by Norman Rogers turned up on my
screen today and the author demolishes wind and solar as viable systems
for electricity generation.
The book is applicable to the US but looking at the figures quoted
and the subsidy methods it seems reasonably applicable to Australia.
Unfortunately the web site it turned up on does not display it again.

However here is an Amazon page I found for the book.

http://tinyurl.com/y8e7bjvh

What I had previously had two large extracts from the book which were
quite interesting. If they pop up again I will add them here.