This bloke seems to exist only to rubbish South Australia.

My recollection is that with the former Chrysler and Mitsubishi plant a third of workers got new jobs elsewhere, a third went casual and a third remained unemployed. Good to see a Valiant being driven in the new series of the TV show Fat Pizza.

Compounding the lack of truthiness about Holden workers is the new hydrogen plant at Tonsley Park. The idea is that renewable energy (SA is actually 51% gas powered) will be used to electrolyse water and a few percent hydrogen will be add to the gas grid. It would be far more efficient to charge the batteries of electric cars and not waste most of the energy on hydrogen.

Perhaps GM could one day make cars again at Tonsley but this time EVs. I'm from SA originally and I think the state has a massive sense of entitlement.

Taswegian,

So glad you left.

Did anyone really expect anything different to these findings.

One of the main reasons for failure of the car industry in Australia was the fact that the manufacturers paid their workforce over twice what a process worker could earn for the company.

Of course it wasn't just the car industry. With the advent of cheap container shipping for white goods & hardware, & roll roll off shipping for cars, our industries were opened up to foreign competition. Our ridiculously high labor costs for semi skilled workers meant our industry was doomed.

These wage rates flowed on into everything thus we have very expensive building costs, & extremely high housing prices, & a bureaucracy over paid by a factor more like 300%.

You have to feel sorry for the ex factory workers now living with these high costs, but unable to generate enough profit for an employer to be employable at wage rates required to live with our high costs.

There is going to be a hell of a lot of pain before we get out of this high cost trap we have got our selves into.

Hasbeen,

Good summing up. Everything, including wages, is too expensive in Australia.

Taswegian,
When the EVs are there, no doubt their batteries will be chargehed. And no doubt there will be a large fleet of EVs here soon (though GM certainly doesn't want to make them here). But the EVs are not there yet. And by the time they are, SA will be generating a lot more electricity from renewables. We need to ensure there's a use for the electricity we generate. A new connection to NSW will do that for a while, but it's not a permanent solution.

It's a bit misleading to claim SA's 51% gas powered, as the amount of electricity generated from renewables in SA exceeds half of the electricity SA uses (the difference being due to exports to Victoria). By the end of next year, SA's electricity will be 100% renewable sourced a lot of the time. And when it isn't, the electrolyser can be switched off.

Every state in Australia has a massive sense of entitlement. But SA has much more trouble getting what it's entitled to than the eastern states do.

Aidan since we're talking SA electricity the elephant in the room is that Olympic Dam in the centre of the state is the world's biggest uranium deposit. According to the state development department in 2016 it powered 22 gigawatt years or 193 Twh of clean electricity overseas. SA itself used 14 Twh of gas dominated electricity last year. Instead of playing around with batteries that can supply only a few minutes power on a hot day shouldn't SA go nuclear?

When SA can get below 40% gas dependence I'll be impressed. Note the 1969 built Moomba gas pipe is now half a century old. As we speak another issue about to bite SA is the wastage of water in the lower Murray. If anything SA is showing us what not to do.

Taswegian,
Nuclear power is an expensive option. SA has vast solar and wind resources, and although harvesting them was initially expensive, that's no longer the case - they're cheaper than all the alternatives, and getting cheaper still.

With hindsight, nuclear power would have been a great option in the late 20th century. But it doesn't make sense to start with it now we have a cheaper alternative.

> When SA can get below 40% gas dependence I'll be impressed.
I don't know what's so impressive about that. SA managed it last month. As more solar and wind farms keep being added, it's only a matter of time before we can sustain that figure for the whole year.

> Note the 1969 built Moomba gas pipe is now half a century old.
So?
You do realise SA's gas supply isn't entirely dependent on it, don't you? SA also has a gas pipe from Victoria to improve its energy security.

> another issue about to bite SA is the wastage of water in the lower Murray.
I presume you're referring to the presence of the barrage rather than the way the weir there is operated? (The latter is a problem that I think needs urgently addressing).

Again with hindsight, the barrage should have been constructed upstream of the Lower Lakes. But its final placement was not a unilateral SA decision, and since then it's the upstream states that have greatly expanded there water use. Meanwhile the ecosystem has adapted to the barrage being in its present location. Though moving it is something that should be seriously considered, it's something that should possibly be done after extensive consultation, not something that should be imposed.

Aidan your bland statements on the cost of power generation, like all your statements are merely assertions, with absolutely no backing to support them.

Because you read something on an activist web site does not make it true, in fact with out evidence to support these claim, they are sure to be totally wrong at best, & considered lies at worst.

Support your claims, of don't expect to be taken seriously.

Incidentally my joke that King Neptune must have given CO2 a paddle to stir ocean currents is at least as likely as any of your claims that CO2 can alter ocean currents without supplying a mechanism which enables it to do so.

I look forward to your next fantasy.

Hasbeen,
This site is not a scholarly work, and references are generally not well received here. If you were genuinely interested in the claims I'm making and wanted to check for yourself, I would take the time to supply references on request - indeed ISTR I previously posted a link to a CSIRO report that came to that conclusion. But when you reject anything that doesn't conform to your prejudices, no matter how good the source is, I have no desire to waste time with references.

Meanwhile, you're claiming CO2 to have the opposite effect on the amount of water vapour our atmosphere holds than what practically every meteorologist and physicist understands to be the case. Yet you've supplied no references. Previously you said you'd lost the document; now you claim there to be a second one but you won't say who it's by. It looks very much like a fear of scrutiny. Such ludicrous claims with a total lack of supporting evidence are (in your own words) sure to be totally wrong at best, & considered lies at worst! Support your claims or don't expect to be taken seriously.

>Incidentally my joke that King Neptune must have given CO2 a paddle to stir ocean currents is at least as likely
>as any of your claims that CO2 can alter ocean currents without supplying a mechanism which enables it to do so.
That just proves your own idiocy. The mechanism is, as I said, heat. Indeed my original claim was that heat could alter ocean currents (which should be obvious as it's the effects of heat which drive them in the first place) - you were the one who changed it to CO2 in a pathetic attempt to ridicule me.

Do you require further explanation of how heat drives ocean currents?

So aidan, as it is not a scholarly work, it is OK to make up stories & tell lies.

I guess that is how greenies work.

Of course it means all your posts are worthless.

Of course it's not OK to make up stories and tell lies. So please stop doing so!