Don, You, a handful of coal-fired, retired academics Engineers etc. Are entitled to your opinions!

As for global warming as caused by man. Seems that as many of 97% of the climate scientists around the world share that opinion, reject yours/other fossil fuel advocates.

One also notes that many if not all the scientists employed by the THREE TRILLION a year fossil fuel industry, are like the former asbestos/tobacco industry, saying one thing privately, another quite different to the public at large!

Those with their moral compass, ethical standards/honest interpretation, still intact, the decency to resign.

Nor are the majority of these experts receiving grants or monetary reward for their principled stance!

Although the same cannot be said for all those retired academics speaking for the fossil fuel industry?

If we are to have a rational discussion on future energy policy, it has to be limited to economic outcomes only!

Should such sanity finally prevail? There can be no other choice than MSR thorium, which among other things, can be tasked with the reduction of the world's entire stockpile of nuclear waste!

Thereby reducing the halflife to just 300 years and making long-life space batteries from what remains.

The energy generated from MSR thorium will be carbon free and cost far less than a single cent PKWH! Moreover, there's passive safety in the design/normal atmospherics

The safest, cleanest, cheapest energy we could ever produce, delivered with the added benefit of having others pay for all the R+D/infrastructure build! As annual billions!

[ If one includes graphene highways, one also excludes most of the 75% total transmission and distribution losses?]

I suppose you'll have a problem with that or as is your current practice, just ignore that which quite massively outperforms coal at all levels, safety, economy and carbon pollution.

Thorium is the most energy dense material on the planet, has a half-life of around 15 billion years or 2 billion years more than the projected life of the universe, which means, we'll never ever run out of it!
Alan B.

Don, it is worrying that you can't tell the difference between the positions of the scientists and the alarmists.

Back in the early '90s, the scientists examined the data and rejected the alarmist position. It was clear to the scientists that although changes were occurring, they were on a much longer timescale than the alarmists were saying.

Fast forward to today: the original alarmists have been proved wrong, but now the denialists are accusing the scientists of being alarmists!

A superb article Don

Right on the button.

Only the gibbering knuckle draggers, who populate OLO,

would doubt your profounditudinosis.

Your academic colleague

Poida de Eric
PhD VD STD (and Bar)
http://youtu.be/NqFcdz4gGKA

Anyone, with an alphabet soup after their name, can subjectively select cherry-picked data and label other scientists finds as fraudulent. The cooling you claimed as fraud Don, wasn't any such thing. The sun as reported by NASA as being in a cyclical waning phase and since the mid-seventies, CORRECT!

And if the climate was normal as you seem to want to believe? Would have ushered in a cooling phase or new ice ae of indeterminate length.

That this has not happened should have sounded, alarm bells for the intellectually able! Whereas you and your ilk just condemn out of hand, scientifically collected data, as fraudulent?

Should you have any evidence of this alleged climate fraud, Don? How about tabling it rather than inferring it exists and in so doing slander/impugn the good names of a number of participating NASA scientists?

The fact that you once advised a PM, should explain why our parliaments are largely science free zones and the troglodytes that inhabit the Canberra bubble are by and large, (rubbish in, rubbish out) stupidly welded to coal and coal-fired energy?

OUTCOME?

Among the highest, economy-crippling, record energy prices, in the world!?
Alan B.

consensus opinion is now considered science. Everyone else is a 'denier', a nazi, ignorant. I mean all the brilliant minds in the Labour party believe we are frying the planet so they must be right. Ask Kev07 'the biggest moral issue on the planet'. Just don't ask Zali to drive a small car or pay for solar panels or Al Gore to give up him multi million massions or private jetting around.

Congratulations Don on your well thought-out and accurate description of the very unfortunate ‘politically correct’ academic regression our society is progressively now sliding into.

The deleterious consequences will likely build and reverberate for many years to come to everyones ultimate cost, if it continues.

It can be validly argued that the ‘enlightenment’, the rejection of ‘hierarchical authority’, the adoption of the scientific method and freedom of speech, more than any other factors, was responsible for the amazing advancement made by mankind over the last few centuries.

Do we really want to regress at this time of exponentially increasing world population and the problems and tensions that this brings? I don’t think so.

If not, what can we do about it?

Government’s, if they wish to be returned at the next election, will find it increasingly difficult or impossible to speak frankly about this, (and other controversial issues), irrespective of their person views or the veracity of the relevant underlying science.

As Aitkin has correctly pointed out there are many reputable scientists and others who hold valid, but opposing views. Both sides simply cannot be right, we urgently need to sort this out.

Another way has to found.

My suggestion is for government to set up an Independent, major Inquiry into ‘Climate Change’, charged with a Terms of Reference of, as Aitkin suggests, starting right from square one, doing the necessary due diligence, examining all the evidence of both natural and anthropogenic influences on climate, and coming to a clear, informed view.

Funding should be provided to invite top global experts in their respective fields, from both sides of the argument, to make detailed presentations to the Inquiry and answer follow-up questions.

The detailed, Referenced, Final Report, written in language that can be readily understood, would then form a sound basis for future, evidence based, climate related policy development and implementation.

Climate Change is such a disputed, complex, costly area that crucially needs to be clarified. With such an Inquiry we could then look forward with much greater confidence to a future built on sound intelligent foundations.

Yes, I agree with your analysis. It boils down to the old catchphrase "everybody says so".
The recent manifestations - worldwide street marches, "full-blown climate emergency" (John Hewson), Clover Moore's declaration ditto, have me shaking my head in disbelief that so many educated people can swallow this nonsense without blinking.
Despite the hysterical cacophony, the only thing that I can see is the steady cycle of the seasons…

Wow a new poster, welcome R Perkins of central London.

A bit off topic I know but thanks for the offer but it’s currently nine (9) degrees Celsius, perhaps you could arrange a delivery of one trailer load of well seasoned jarrah wood for my heater.

This would be much appreciated and luckily that segue puts me right back on topic. The smoke from your delivery should assist in masking those frightening sun rays from overheating My little part of Perth.

There we go, some positive climate change action for all you worriers. You can all sleep better tonight, and tomorrow too, that wood will last a few weeks if it ever arrives!?

My lady is I assume typical of many who "believe" in the global warming rubbish. Although she has the education & the math to understand the full story, she refuses to even countenance any discussion of the subject.

On the couple of rare occasions when she has said anything it has been in the vane, "1f hundreds of experienced educated professionals tell us it is fact, who are you or we to say they are wrong". She just can't stand the fact that these professionals could be either liars or fools.

I am not as kind as Don. I believe many know damn well that the whole story is rubbish, but having invested their whole career in what has now become a scam, can see no survival if they admit their error.

I wonder how many that accept or believe the global warming story are similar to my lady. Then of course we have the Greens who want to destroy our way of life, for us if not themselves, & the useful idiots, who accept what ever position their politics tell them to accept.

I think it is going to be a huge battle from here, with so much money now invested, & so much face to be lost. Even if the sunspots continue in their current path, & we go into a new Maunder minimum we may still not break the story that it is CO2 caused, that global warming can cause extreme cold.

Consensus is not science; it is the gathering of a group of people who collude or agree on something. There is no attempt to replicate the claims that they agree with, because there are no funds to do so.

On and on they go, old fools, refusing to believe that fossil fuels are endangering the planet and all life on it! Call any scientifically collected peer-reviewed data they don't agree with, fraudulent. Impugn the reputations of hundreds of honest diligent scientists with their claims and because they are willfully blind and the facts they rail against are economically inconvenient!

If coal and gas are so good Hasbeen? Why are there so many accidents and deaths associated with it?

Not a problem? Because presumably (I'm all right Jack) not you nor none of yours are adversely affected?

Black lung disease, mine explosions, pipeline leaks and associated explosions taking out hundreds of living or ability as able-bodied to continue to support wife and family?

Reported smokestack emission from coal-fired applications includes carcinogenic cadmium, arsenic, uranium, mercury and lead to mention some. Reportedly, (Sydney papers) turned up in town water reservoirs.

Simply put, one can't have normal cyclical global warming during a waning phase of the sun! Which has been the case since the mid-seventies (NASA)

Yesterday, Southern France experience yet another record-breaking heat wave! How much verifiable evidence does it take for the moribund hasbeens of our world, the only one we have, to finally wake up and do something!

If there weren't vastly superior alternatives to all fossil fuels and at far less cost one might understand the coal-fired objections? Mining? Well, thorium and lithium need to be mined as does graphene, rare earths and cobalt!

So, if thermal coal mining is wound way back, other massively more financially rewarding, locally owned and operated, mining ventures and occupations, will replace them and hopefully without the spectre of black lung disease and God awful, underground mine explosions!
Alan B.

If our energy paradigm was formulated on efficiency and cost alone! Then the only answer would be thorium! Thorium is the most energy dense material on the planet.

[the only thing denser, would have o be coal-fired troglodytes in charge of our energy policy!?]

Compare the two, a 350MW light water uranium burning reactor, requires during a 30-year operational lifetime (at 150 atmospheres of pressure) 2551 tons of highly enriched and fabricated solid fuel uranium. Uranium on the periodic table shows up a being as rare as platinum and obviously, therefore, as expensive?

Imagine, 2551 tons of platinum refined and burnt as fuel, with less than 1% actually contributing to the energy output! And over 2550 tons of highly toxic waste created in the process! Which is the case for a 350MW light water, enriched uranium fired reactor

Contrast that with an MSR thorium, a FUJI 350MW? Which requires a single ton of refined thorium during a projected thirty-year operational lifetime. [These figures are estimated extracted and extrapolated from the thorium usage between the fifties and seventies, at Oak Ridge reactor, Oak Ridge, Tenessee.]

And during that projected operational lifetime, creating less than 1% as far less toxic waste. In a walk away safe, thorium reactor operating at near normal atmospheric pressure! Creating a lifetime of safe, cheapest ever, carbon-free, clean power for less than a single cent PKWH! That alone makes the case for thorium irrefutable and destroys the one for coal, on the economic business case alone.

Answer? Have yet another delaying inquiry and even more critical years wasted! As the sound of the foreign-controlled coal-fired till keeps karchinging!

Even where it, MSR thorium, demonstrably and progressively reverses climate change and adds a whole host of endlessly sustainable seawater fuels and desalination options on a far more self-reliant doorstep and critically so!

The waste from MSR thorium, eminently suitable as long-life space batteries that stabilize inside ten years? And burn up with re-entry!
Alan B.

You really are a blind fool Alan.

Most of us have no objection to nuclear, or any other new source of power generation, simply we realise coal is a great fuel, & CO2 can not do most of what the warmists claim.

Most thinking people simply want economical power, obviously you only want some pie in the say, non existent system.

Time to grow up laddie.

An MSR thorium reactor was operated between the '50s and '70s at Oak Ridge Tenessee, without accident or incident.

The chief operating scientist was at first, Alvin Weinberg, the patent holder and inventor of the first operational nuclear reactor.

Alvin is on the public record saying we made a wrong turn choosing uranium over thorium as our future fuel. And he of all people would know!

Moreover, fired for expressing such heretical sentiments to the nuclear agency?

Facts.
Thorium is as common as lead and 5,000 tons of thorium contains as much energy as 65,000 tons of uranium plus 5billion tons of coal plus 31 billion barrels of oil plus 5 trillion cubic metres of gas!

It is the most energy dense material in the world and delivers everything fusion promised but could never ever deliver

Further, a halflife of 15 billion years or 2 billion years longer than the projected life of the universe, means we can never ever run out of the stuff!

One nuclear reaction inside a safe nuclear reactor,(MSR) is 5 million times more powerful than anything produced by coal.

MSR thorium as demonstrated by Avin Weinberg at Oak Ridge is not a pipe dream. But a most impressive demonstration of where we would be heading but for congresses prohibition?

Enacted one believes to protect the interests of the fossil fuel industry, big nuclear and big pharma alike.

All of who would be seriously damaged or destroyed by a successful rollout of MSR thorium. The most plausible reason we still don't have here or there and why Uncle Donald, another coal oil and gas enthusiast/investor? Is so keen to win back stolen intellectual property, one believes, from the Chinese who basically took all the data and notes from Oak Ridge and are spending billions on MSR thorium development!

Imagine what the successful deployment of MSR thorium would do to OPEC, Russian oil and gas, and the oil oligarchs the world over.

I have posted a couple of videos to Facebook and for public viewing. At least look and then learn, if that's possible?
Alan B.

Hey Don, and the rest of you.
Are you all so engrossed in this topic with your heads in your keyboards, that you just missed a blatant attack of shear arrogance in the form of an advertisement on this medium, by Mr R PERKINS, on page 2.
Don, it is a blatant breach of the rules and proto-col.
I respectfully demand that the advertisement be removed forthwith.
I thought you guys were a bit quicker than this.
I picked it up straight away as I just locked onto this topic.
Had I gotten on sooner or been following it, I would have jumped on it then.

Hey ALTRAV I was straight onto it, didn’t you notice my post immediately below it.

By the way, I am still waiting for my wood :-)

Galen

Galen, sorry, I yield to a better man.
I cannot deny that I did read your comments but did not make the connection.
I actually thought you were using the reference to wood as part of an explanation about GW or CC.
Sorry, I give you full marks for your quick action.
As I said, I wish I had come onto this topic sooner I would have gotten pole on this one.
I note your in Perth as well, and I also note that it's 12:46 here and the 'advertisement' is still up.
What does a guy have to do to get consistency on the adherence to the rules?
Hello, anyone awake at OLO headquarters?

Hasbeen. Engineers or former engineers like yourself usually deal in facts/figures!

Fact!

The great nuclear furnace in the sky normally controls our planet's climate, with small variations due to an elliptical orbit.

Agreed?

Under normal cyclical variations, a waxing sun (more solar activity) makes things warmer. Right? With me so far old timer?

Under those same normal variants, a waning sun (less solar activity and at the bottom of such a cyclical variation, the typical fried egg look that demonstrates unusual lack of activity) Usually accompanied by a cooling period!

Still with me thus far old mate?

The latter heralding in all of our historical ice ages,
some short (mini) some long.

Given the sun has been in a waning phase since the mid-seventies! (NASA) should have heralded a new cooler period or the start or dawn of new ice age!

Now stop and rest if you are struggling with any of these facts.

Moreover, NASA published a recent photograph of the sun at the bottom of a normal 11-year cycle, demonstrating the typical fried egg appearance, for anyone with eyes to see, the typical fried egg look that indicates lack of thermal activity! Ok?

So, explain to me in light of these peer-reviewed, published findings, why is the joint is warming up, with record heatwaves and fire events! Accentuated by other extreme weather events and massive cold spell cold spot and simultaneous record-breaking heat waves, only explainable by increased global convection/recorded CO2 increase!? Sometimes described as the greenhouse effect!

Moreover, if we would reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere to pre-industrial levels? we need to produce far less of it!

The Sahara was once the granary of Rome. Look at it now and what remains of the Mayan culture after they changed their climate via extensive logging of their immediate rainforest.

Producing far-far less means changing our fuel usage to that which produces far less CO2 without tanking the economy! For mine that leaves only the nuclear option! One, we need to crack on with now, while we're able!
Alan B.

I haven't seen any post by R. Perkins, and it doesn't seem to be on this thread. Sorry, Altrav, I can't help you.