Cont. What can replace coal as an energy source? Well cheaper than coal, MSR thorium!

And in steel smelting? Hydrogen.

Our current energy exports? Reticulated carbon-free energy transmitted via graphene cored undersea cable were we are the price fixers, and given we are intelligently lead at prices none can beat! Yet still win a handsome profit for we the supplier!

Always providing that power is generated in nuclear waste burning MSR's and managed via essential cooperative capitalism the government ought to both fund and facilitate. And where these new start-ups go head to head in fierce competition for market share.

This feature will allow our money to remain here earning income and tax for us! And where the usual flow-on economic factors will make one dollar do the work of seven or more!

Finally, if we and we can, couple this cheapest of all energy to new space age desalination, i.e., deionisation dialysis desalination we will be able to use this inexhaustible supply on cost-effective broad-scale irrigation on any crop we choose and on the arid driest country if we so chose!

None of the above is hypothetical but tried and tested field trialled innovation and MSR is the safest way to generate energy on earth and has the added advantage of being carbon-free.

Do this and all other nations will see there is nothing to lose and everything to gain by transitioning to cheaper reliable, dispatchable, carbon-free 24/7 safe, clean nuclear energy.

Mining jobs, we can mine many other minerals besides coal and more importantly use them here in local manufacture!
Alan B.

Are the bushfires a result of climate warming?
No !
Climate change is a result of a natural evolutionary cycle. The Bush fires & pollution are caused by consumerism & bureaucratic stupidity !

The Earth, being a dynamic system, always has and always will change.
Hence the climate has and will change as time passes.
It is unproven whether or not that the actions of Homo Sapiens is a direct cause. However we are not doing ourselves any favours by burning fossil fuels and polluting our only atmosphere. Hence it may be fair to say that our actions certainly are exacerbating the rate of change.
We will never stop climate change but we can make life easier for ourselves, probably too late, and future generations, still possible. However the first step in achieving any semblance of progress in this regard is to reduce the population of Homo Sapiens to a sustainable number, whatever that may be. It is obvious to even blind Freddy that the current numbers are NOT sustainable in the short or long term. Seeing as two humans cannot generally agree on anything getting 7.5 billion plus to agree to a voluntary reduction in births is pretty remote.
Mother nature will sort it out in a not too pretty fashion.
Obviously Hanrahan was correct........

Come on Peter old feller, even at your age you still have to show some responsibility.

That means you have to do just a little research before you go bursting into print with ridiculous stories, or intended lies.

The 1974/1975 burnt an area 9 times greater than these disastrous fires today. Yes these are disastrous, but mainly because of greeny preoccupation with the global warming scam, fighting fuel reduction burns, many more have built homes in the bush fire prone areas, & the incompetent national parks organisation have been given control of previously productively used native forests, controlled by foresters.

You can no longer simply run verbal diarrhoea & get away with it old boy, we all have access to the net, & can quickly do the research you didn't bother with, before this rubbish, or hoped we wouldn't do, so you could get away with these wild lies.

With this rubbish you have destroyed any credibility you may ever have had, so I think you best toddle off, to some greeny enclave, where such lies are the basic fare.

Check with Mr O, he'll know all such places, & the arty farty folk who inhabit them.

IF it turns out that increasing fuel load was by far the major factor in these devastating bushfires, coupled with state, NP and local council policies to prohibit the cutting down of trees around houses and along roadways, and wind back fuel reduction plans, then to a large extent, climate change and CO2 become quite irrelevant.

Bushfires need dryness, ignition and fuel load. Australia's periodic droughts provide the dryness. Thunderstorms [and a handful of arsonists] provide the ignition. And policies provide for the extent of the fuel load.

In fact, heat doesn't have to come into it at all as a factor, although obviously it helps.

Of course there is climate change, it's probably nearly as hot now was it was back a thousand years ago, when Greenland grew crops and grapes grew in the north of England. Of course CO2 is a major factor which contributes to current climate change, along with the actual heat artificially produced over the past 200 years. But they are not necessary for bushfires to start and spread.

Joe

The answer is categorically NO!
And BTW alarmists, STOP pushing the absolute BS and mis-representation of what is an absolutely NORMAL occurrence.
Go ahead and call it GW and CC if it makes you feel better, BUT:
DON'T GO CALLING IT HUMAN INDUCED GW OR CC!
IF we (Aussies) have done anything, it is so small, it is not worth calculating.
The alarmists are going to have to throw in the towel and admit they have been conned.
I know it sounds absolutely absurd that anyone would start such a fantastic lie, but con-men will try anything because they know that the greater majority of the population are weak and easily led.
At first, I sat on the fence, finding this whole thing too preposterous to be even close to the truth, but because I did not know enough about it I kept looking, and slowly the evidence came forth, and as the record of my postings and comments from way back will attest, I have now taken the side of denialists, simply because the truth proved I was right all along.
Now I am curious what all the know-all, know-nothings, are going to do with all this spare time on their hands.
I won't bother repeating what a lot of people have already said in confirming and explaining why this whole climate thing is a big NO!
I'm going to guess, you're all sick of hearing about the earth's temperature cycles every few hundred years.
Yeah, OK, I know, that's enough of that.