Now, everybody 'knows’ how unpopular Shorten was, and how bad ALP policies were. And the Coalition win should not have been a surprise. Well, it was a surprise only to those saps who keep believing polls and 'experts’. You don't get a prize for picking the winner after it's all over!

“ The most obvious conclusion to draw from the election is that voters readily differentiate between state and federal issues”. No. Nothing to learn from the election; that's always been the case. And, it was always “clear that climate change was not the issue that Labor, the Greens and GetUp! were telling us it was” to the non-ideological, non-Green/Labor sensible silent majority.

Four pages of bumf from an ex-politician unaware that most of us are well ahead of him and his kind.

Bernie, You are a gold plated dunderhead. We Just don't have decades any more than the warm and comfortable frog being slowly warming in a bowl of water slowly brought to the boil! Your article suggests all we need do is adapt?

What next Genius? Life on Venus? And because even on the hottest planet in the solar system and in the habitable Goldilocks zone! Life will always adapt?

Simply put genius, we don't have decades to address climate change! We have if we're smart and lucky one decade! And in a future that can not only include coal but a massive economic expansion and jobs jobs jobs. If we must use up and sell ur finite coal reserves as fast as we can, we need to demonstrate we can do so AFFORDABLY, without adding very much to the planet's CO2 load.

And requires a complete change in the way we make and transmit dispatchable coal-fire power.

First, Cook the coal in a closed and sealed environment to extract every ounce of methane gas and using only flameless heat! (Solar thermal?)

then transmit this gas directly to the end user where ceramic fuel cells transform scrubbed gas to electricity on demand! With endless free hot water as one of the byproducts.

The exhaust product of this method is mostly pristine water vapour! And gas can be produced when the sun shines and store in bulk to allow for a total eclipse of the sun for over two weeks.

Clean coal enthusiasts happily propose thousands of miles of leased pipelines to carry away CO2 emissions, yet bag the idea of a similar gas grid that we own and build creating thousands of jobs in steel and construction across the nation as a first consequence.

Go figure the mind of those welded to mindless vested interest? That said there are far more cost-effective means of generating and transmitting power. See my earlier commentary.
Alan B.

Miles and miles of wires could b replaced by under pavement and or roads, Graphene film. And because graphene is besides being the strongest material on the planet, also a superconductor.

That would also eliminate much of the considerable transmission and distribution losses. Losses (75%?) which the consumer still nonetheless pays for and usually through the neck.

Moreover, under asphalt, graphene would allow those roads to become literal, miles long, charging mats (magnetic induction) that charge future electric vehicles on the go and paid for with tolls like those now applied to some commuter highways using cameras.

Tonnage, size and distance impacting on the monthly invoice. And end any range limitations on non-carbon emitting electric vehicles.
Alan B.

'Human-caused climate change is real' . Telling lies often enough don't make them true. A baby born with a penis is male.

in reply to ttbn: you wrote "“ The most obvious conclusion to draw from the election is that voters readily differentiate between state and federal issues”. No. Nothing to learn from the election; that's always been the case."

It may have always been the case but the ALP clearly believed that state voting results would translate into federal polling results. How else do you explain their belief that they'd win up to 5 seats in WA and several seats in Victoria?

reply to Alan B:

You wrote "We Just don't have decades any more ..... Your article suggests all we need do is adapt?"

Australia's chief scientist Alan Finkel says we have several decades to solve the climate change problems, so please read what he's had to say and then tell him why he's wrong. I'm happy to accept his advice.

And, while adaptation is one option, it's not an option I support, hence why I'm suggesting we stop putting taxpayer money into solar subsidies etc and instead fund cutting-edge research and development so that we can help the world develop the technologies needed to reduce humanity's global CO2 footprint.

God it is frightening to think that a bloke as dumb as this could have been the shadow minister for science and the environment from 2001 to 2004. No wonder the coalition were & still are getting so much wrong.

CO2 can not cause run away global warming, with out a whole pile of mythical tipping points, now totally disproven, doing the job for it.

He is even silly enough to say "Yes, we can generate electricity cheaply with renewable solar and wind but we still need batteries or pumped hydro or some other way of storing that energy in a way that will provide dispatchable, non-intermittent", power. While any Liberals believe wind & solar are cheep, we are in trouble.

He obviously has a political brain, & realises the current range of renewables can't keep the lights on, but still falls for the scam.

I am as happy as the next Chappy, the grub who ripped-off the lowest paid, the cleaners, for millions, and raped a sixteen yo girl on his staff, is not to be PM.

But I'm not happy with a "log" high up in the National Party, who short shifted eighty million dollars of taxpayer funding to his big end mates, and walked away Scott free either.

In the end, the boring election figures prove the point. Both major parties actually lost primary votes, as the election outcome became the business as usual tussle of the swinging seats.

As boring as bat S* and nothing will change for the better for most of us.

Dan

Bernie, you maintain in your article that nuclear is not an option and Oz should invest into research into storage.

The problem is research is not a linear approach to the problem. You presume that throwing money at it will yield a serendipitous storage solution that viably makes intermittent renewables dispatchable.

We need a national education project on the facts surrounding nuclear energy before a debate on its pros and cons unsullied by the dogma that led to its prohibition.

Bernie. Our so-called Cheif Scientist Is contradicted by several NASA scientists and has remained stubbornly silent on nuclear energy. As I understand it, his salary and entitlements are paid for by the government And consequently limited in what he's allowed to say?

. And you have clearly not read or not understood anything I've proposed. Nothing on nuclear waste burning MSR, nor what Graphene highways would do for electric vehicles and their range. Little wonder we have the energy policy/shambles we have and our patently stalled economy, chocking to death on unaffordable power and unaffordable homes, etc etc.

And down to, I believe, self-serving recalcitrant tin-eared folk just like you all struck down with a very severe and enduring Sargent Schulz syndrome? One has listened to our Cheif scientist on numerous occasions and remain terribly unimpressed. He seems cast in your mould as a new idea-free zone or gagged?
Alan B.

"It may have always been the case but the ALP clearly believed that state voting results would translate into federal polling results. How else do you explain their belief that they'd win up to 5 seats in WA and several seats in Victoria?".

So, I'm not wrong then, Bernie? and it was only the ALP that believed the myth?

Ttbn.

If both major parties actually lost one percent of primary votes by comparison to 2016, then that really says the election was won on preferences.

Voters obviously didn't stampede towards the major parties. It was entirely an election fought on preferences.

So people didn't get what they voted for at all did they.
What they voted for would appear to be the minor parties.

It's a rip-off, how typical. If your happy with a rip-off election outcome, go for it China!

The only encouraging signs I observe, of manipulated election outcomes, are South Africa and Indonesia. People actually get off their back side and protest against the criminals.

Dan

Dan I think you would find, if you could get to the why of peoples voting, that quite a few wanted to elect LNP or Labor, but wanted to give them a bit of a kick in the butt, & a bit of worry along the way. I know many here did.

We knew that One Nation, the greens or Aus Conservatives would not get up in the house, but depending on our politics, we gave one of them first preference, & the few bob for the vote. I preference our LNP member 3Rd. Not that it mattered when he got over 60% first preferences, but they did not get some vote money.

For the senate My first major candidate was at 6Th. The first 5 probably elected a couple of minor party members, then a few LNP, with one or 2 exhausted, as there was no one else I wanted to elect. I know quite a few who intended to do this, although some probably gave up & voted above the line, when they saw the paper.

Hopefully the parties will read the correct message from the allocation of first preferences, but perhaps not, they can be pretty thick sometimes.

Gee willakers, Bernie. You actually wrote "Human Induced Climate Change" in your opinion piece. Nobody says that anymore. Not even the UN climate change panel who invented the whole fantasy. The reason being, that if the UN IPCC keeps using that term, somebody is going to demand that they prove that human activity is causing global temperatures to rise. And they know that they can't do that. So they just keep carping on about "climate change" and hope that the naive and easily duped will make the connection without them having to say it.

Now Bernie, you are saying that Queenslanders chose jobs over climate change. You are therefore implying that Queenslanders are greedy and don't give a damn about a situation threatening the whole of humanity. I suppose that makes you feel all morally and intellectually superior to your social inferiors, but consider this.

We have been hearing this climate change claptrap for thirty years now. According to your alarmist friends, Miami should be under 5 meters of water, right now. The North Pole should be ice free and all the polar bears should have drowned. The Himalayan glaciers should have melted. The Antarctic should have shrunk. The dams in Australia should have never filled again. If climate scientists claim that they are experts and make doom filled predictions based upon their "expert" knowledge, which are laughably inaccurate, then even supposedly dumb and immoral Queenslanders can conclude that they don't have a single, solitary clue what they are talking about.

That being the case, a more worthy explanation for the election result in Queensland, Bernie, is that working class people are street level smarter than hubris suffering inner city graduates, living in their trendy urban ghettoes, living off daddy's trust fund, and endlessly virtue signaling by extolling fashionable views that they chant like mantras, and which they never bother to critically examine.

Yep to that hasbeen, but the there are two shoes.
The other is exampled by Clive Palmer.
Palmers was a mop-up operation designed deliberately to fool the electorate (or the less educated of them), into believing he was an alternative.

But an alternative he never intended himself to be!
His blatant abuse of the system, is a stark example of abuse of privilege which he openly and gleefully admitted to.

It could be speculated, his three percent of the primary vote he purchased for fifty million dollars, was a conclusive factor in the outcome of an election which, if he had not participated in, would be a totally different outcome.

So actually, this is not your election hasbeen, it was Clive Palmers. That my boy is corruption at the top level!

Dan

As a very crude measure of weather change, Lake Eyre has filled twice this year. It has filled only a handful of times since post-settlement, in this land of droughts and flooding rains.

Joe

I can't speak for other areas Dan, but I know you are wrong about Palmer in this area. His whole performance was treated as a joke, & not only affected very few votes, but the minor flow on to the LNP was of votes they would have received directly, or like mine as a second or third preference from more conservative candidates.