Hasbeen. How do you expect anyone to build something, although field-tested and found safer than coal, cheaper than coal and cleaner than coal by Alvin Weinberg, the inventor and patent holder of the first operational nuclear reactor, thorium is like all nuclear power, prohibited here by government regulations? And for all one knows by the government you were part of?

Moreover, also prohibited by congress one imagines, to protect your much-valued fossil fuel industry, which would be largely destroyed by the successful rollout of cheaper than coal thorium and electric vehicles! Moreover, 200 times stronger than steel graphene placed as a layer of cling wrap thin, layer under our highways and byways and used instead of very vulnerable, transmission towers, enable a few things.

#1 The reduction of transmission losses.
#2 the massive strengthening of our road works, bridges and other infrastructure.
#3 Allow electric vehicles fitted with underbody magnetic induction plates to be continuously recharged as they travel. The same principle that allows you to recharge your phone by just placing it on a recharge mat. In the foregoing, the recharge mat is hundreds or thousands of miles long and cling wrap thin!

And given we progressively roll out such road works and infrastructure, quite massively reduce essential maintenance and associated costs. And as a solution, eliminate the tyranny of distance, that currently limits electric vehicle range!

And more bad news for recalcitrant petrol heads!

If you won't help the next generation have a better future than the one you inherited from your forebears? Then just get out of the way!
Alan B.

Got a date on that Alan?

Anyone remember when the Obamessiah told his nodding followers that "We can't drill our way out of this [oil dependence]" or "It's time for Big Oil and some in Congress to stop misleading the public about what more drilling can do, and instead push for real solutions to soaring gas prices.”

That was way back before the fracking revolution got underway.

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin was admonishing the country to "Drill, baby, drill!"

Its claimed that Obama was the smartest person in the room.
Its claimed Palin was a bimbo.

Anyone see a problem with those claims?

Yep another thing the entire developed world can thank Trump for. Getting us out of the control of the Arab oil billionaires. If it weren't for his policies we would be paying hugely inflated prices for Arab oil. His freeing up of the US for drilling has put a lid on the prices Middle Eastern oil producers can charge.

Now all we need is a government with the guts to make Oz petroleum retailers supply only that refined in Oz. That would rebuild our refinery capacity & take us out of the hands of Asian oil refiners who are ripping us off in place of the Arabs.

Then we could frack our own huge shale oil deposits. Thus not only saving huge foreign exchange costs, but delivering a vast number of high paying jobs.

Drill baby drill, & make Australia great, for once.

Yes, Hasbeen, we should be drilling like there's no tomorrow, but we aren't and we won't because we aren't the USA. The single easiest and best way to reduce CO2 emissions (if that's something that is of concern - hint, its not) has been overlooked because its politically way too hard.

One big difference here as opposed to the US is that over there, the farmer gets a cut of anything that comes out of the ground he owns. Here, no.

So pass a law that guarantees farmers a percentage of the profits of fracking, and you'd be knocked down in the rush. Farmers who currently whine about the affects of fracking on their cows or whatever, would suddenly decide those affects weren't there.

Fracking would take off just like the US. And the opponents know that so won't permit such changes.

We will eventually frack but only after things become so bad that there is no other choice. That's current Australia for you.

Actually, Peak Crude Oil occurred in 2005 and is currently on a slowly
declining plateau. What happened was that an old technique of fracking
was employed and so you see the current production of tight light oil.
Deep sea drilling rigs seems to have become economic also.

As far as CO2 is concerned, well maybe we might be able to stop worrying
about that in the next few years if the work by Turku Uni in Finland
and Kobe Uni in Japan can get attention. They have shown that global
warming and cooling is a natural cycle.
Caused by sun variation, sunspot variation and cosmic rays effect
on cloud cover. It has been around for a while but recently much
more effort has been put into it.
Interestingly they show that co2 has almost no affect on temperature.

http://tinyurl.com/y3h3qpa5

Their hypothesis explains the warm period in Roman times, the medieval
warm period and the Maunder Minimum in the 18th century when the Thames froze every year.
They postulate that the warming in the late 20th century was the peak
and the next hundred years will be getting colder.

It will be interesting to watch the IPCC to see if they treat these
papers seriously or just ignore them.
To acknowledge it will cause much grinding of guts in the pollies etc.