We are approaching the point where it will be increasingly apparent that climate change alarmists are continually "crying wolf" with alarmist predictions falling far short of reality. The trouble is that by the time this reality fully sets in we will have wasted billions on expensive intermittent electricity infrastructure and made our energy intensive industries uncompetitive.

Much of the West has become captive to a nervous-Nelly mentality, while China laughs all the way to the bank.

"Agreement with observations is the measure of scientific truth."
If you want some observations I might make a couple of very relevant ones. Glaciers all over the world are retreating. A friend has recently returned from the base camp to Everest where in the past 20 years a glacier has dropped by some 50 feet, river flows all over south east Asia have slowed because there is less ice melting in the Himalayas as glaciers disappear. Tundra in Siberia is melting and generating vast amounts of methane as thawed out organic material decomposes. Polar bears are starving because ice floes are melting in the Arctic summer and depriving them of refuges.
David

A scholarly tome worthy of a university Dean, Don. But one I mostly and vehemently disagree with, as do around 97% of credentialed climate scientists.

Our children will inherit the planet and all we have done to it at the behest of the wealthy, privileged elite! To suggest they don't have a right to an expressed opinion on what we leave/have wrought is, I believe, extreme intellectual arrogance!

One sees the coal lobby front and centre in this piece and indeed the concerns of the likes of oil and gas oligarch Mr. Putin!? And he has so few real friends, Don! Albeit almost inexhaustible funds and a dirt file to compel assent/acquiescence, Don!?

No mining job need be lost if we transition to thorium as our primary energy source and with it carbon-free electricity for as little as 1 cent PKWH!

Thorium is the most energy-dense material on the planet! Just 8 grams contains enough potential energy to power my house and car for a century and without ever needing to refuel!

The cost of mining and refining 8 grams of abundant thorium around 100 AUD. That my friend is just one lousy dollar a year!

Something that would end coal mining for centuries! And drilling for gas, most of if not all the so-called renewables, plus big nuclear.

As well as put a serious dent in big pharma's/cancer industry's profits and make the profit curve go into, oft times, a terminal curve?

This means all of the above are terrified of thorium as a preferred power source and with good reason! TBC.
Alan B.

Yes David, glaciers are melting and that is because the warming period
has peaked right on schedule. The last minimum cold was around the
late 1700s to mid 1800s. That was known as the Maunder Minimum.
The next cold minimum will be in about 300 to 500 years time.
The cycle length varies because it is made up of three different
unsynchonised cycles.
This cyclic warm and cold system has been in operation for thousands of years.
CO2 is totally irrelevant to the warming of this modern time.
People like to think it is caused by industrialisation because it
seems to have started warming from that time.
It is pure coincidence that industrialisation started at the cycle minimum.

No matter how "perfect" the essay is, people convinced of the human-cause myth of climate change will never be convinced. Eminent scientists have been opposing the Leftist myths about CO2, misnamed carbon by the scaremongers, for a very long time; but they are ignored at best, actively gagged and rediculed at worst.

We are going to have hit rock bottom with a buggered economy, no jobs, and slaves to Communist China before the penny drops.

Our reliance on China for our coal and iron sales is the thing that binds to China, as their economic slaves, nothing else!

Transitioning to thorium and using that source as the cheapest energy available will do more to end that slavish reliance! As will exporting green steel made here using the same energy source to power the arc furnaces we will need along with the water molecule cracking plants that will produce copious hydrogen and all manner of replacement endlessly sustainable fuels for pennies and from inexhaustible seawater! And usher in a truly massive and mindblowing industrial renaissance with no parallel

When the coming carbon tariffs begin to bite it'll be too late then and our reliance on our coal exports will dry up as will iron ore, due to the fact that a now hostile China will replace all that from non-Australian sources as we just bury our heads or rattle rusty WW1 sabres, in fruitless objection!

In around twelve months a working molten salt reactor will be adding around 500 MW to the Indonesian grid. And at around 1 cent PKWH! Smirk all you like then or pretend we can't transition away from coal as or aging coal-fired power plants become to costly to continue to maintain and need to be replaced as will our transmission lines that served during WW11 And that is where Graphene rolled out as cling wrap thin under highway underlays will all but eliminate both transmission and distribution losses!

Yes, there could be some stranded assets. But not a gas pipeline, which could end its productive life, transporting hydrogen/biogas. We have no compunction spending trillions on preserving the status quo but SFA on R+D and commercializing local innovation!

Ditto rapid rail, the cost of which doubles in real terms by the decade as dithering and conflicted pollies strive manfully to avoid doing anything real or upsetting their personal benefactors?

No names no pack drill. but by their fruits, ye shall know them! Deeds or lack thereof! TBC
Alan B.

One wonders how the author swallows their own ignorance, this claim alone should "alarm" anyone

"In fact, history shows that warmings of a few degrees Celsius - which extended growing seasons - have been good for humanity."

Lets take a look at that claim

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record#/media/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

Anyone spot on that chart were there is ANY global warming of "a few degrees" ? I mean the author claimed to have this information and made an assessment that it was "good" and yet that's an easily proven lie.

So lets use the ice core that go back further then 10,000 years have to say

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png

Last 10,000 years, the rise of human civilisation, temp looks remarkably stable ? no rises of temp increases of a couple degrees at all. Still only minor perturbations around the mean right up until the modern era, no such "warmings of a few degrees Celsius" at all. So another lie ?

As to Lindzen, the guy that claims there is no link between smoking and lung cancer is the guy you want to go with ? Why not the 1000s of other scientistic or the one who called out Lindzen's bullsh1t, Dr James Hansen ? ? If you don't like the scientists quoted, perhaps Professor Jason Box, or Professor Kevin Anderson, or Dr Peter Kalmus ?

Don't like Hansen ? Professor Oppenheimer said in an interview once, "there are a handful of truly meaningful scientific climate change studies that have been done, I have them all in my draw here, many of them are by James (Hansen)" That guy ? Not one paper there by Lindzen.

All I can surmise is the author really doesn't understand this at all. There are still many scientists who don't accept evolution. Whatever you may think of the political rhetoric around climate change, the author is being completely disingenuous about the actual science here.

Many moons ago I advised all you coal-fired drongos to get out of coal and buy Lithium. If you had but listened, you'll could've more than tripled your wealth/capital gains by now!

We are led, I believe, by pig-headed, bone heads who wouldn't know the time of day, but for clocks!

Were this not so we would already be making plans to quite massively reindustrialise/convert our economy to MSR thorium-based nuclear ASAP!

Intransigent recalcitrants like the Author would no longer dance to Mr Putin's/coal investor's tune!

One of the children of MSR thorium is, miracle cancer cure, the alpha particle, bismuth 213.

Bismuth 213 would enable medical tourism of our outback rural/regional districts/add annual billion to those economies for as long as there is death sentence cancer, which currently claims more than 2 million lives P.A.the world over!

That number grows! As does big pharma's balance sheet and profit curve, along with that of the cancer industry!

The above economic paradigm would save many a rural/regional town and our airline industry, or make a business case for every rapid rail, stack up economically! I'd opt for the latter as we could use electricity. Move more people more profitably minus the huge carbon footprint!

Moreover, with MSR thorium at our disposal, we could completely drought-proof the joint/make arid desert regions become veritable gardens of Eden! Places where we grow rice, cotton, all manner of exportable produce!

Automation requires copious cheap energy That's the promise of Thorium as well as setting us up as an economy that is carbon-free for the most part!

What prevents the above? The same bone-headed drongos, who between them have tried to weld our futures to coal for obvious personal, if but for highly fallacious, fundamentally, fatuous financial reasons!

The definitely upcoming carbon tariffs will ensure our coal-based economy tanks! It'll be too late then for the above-referenced boneheads to embrace, safe, clean, ultra-cheap, no downsides thorium!

No names no pack drill, but you'll know who you are!

You'll have a nice day now,y'hear.

P.S. It's the economy, stupid!
Alan B.

Every western-style economy, rests solely on just 2 support pillars! Energy and capital!

Capital has never been cheaper nor more abundant!

Energy never dearer, nor more price gouged by those who worship/are addicted to, money and power! Mostly foreigners?

If we want the economy to fully recover/flourish beyond all current expectations? Then we will need the lowest costing energy that we can access! That energy is MSR thorium and unsubsidised energy prices as low as 1 cent PKWH.

Moreover, this now available technology can be retasked to burn nuclear waste until a 90%+ remaining energy component is used up, leaving only a 5-8% far less toxic product that's eminently suitable as space batteries, that stabilise in around thirty years and burn up with reentry!

What prevents any of the above?

Just tin-eared, recalcitrant pollies and coal enthusiasts like the advocating/postulating author?

Let's us not forget a treasurer who walked into the chamber to address it using a lump of coal as a prop/now wants to transition to gas as the most determinedly dumb energy policy, that'll cost more than the abandoned coal!

Renewables, batteries/pumped hydro are not cheap, will never ever match it with unsubsidised MSR thorium or this same technology tasked with waste burning that generates a profit component before we commission a single reactor!

Can never meltdown or explode as a consequence of internal pressure. And shielded to be less radioactive than a banana!

There're no downsides here! Just massive economic growth and cooperative capitalism opportunities that would grow our economy so large that any debt would be fully repaid by that growth and the usual flow-on economic realities!

Create an economic paradigm that leaves none behind or impoverished! And none of the elite privileged, financially worse off by any measure!

Take off the blinders, remove the earplugs and just get on with the economic recovery, as opposed to the business as usual, divisive politics!

Don't just do something, stand there, or get into the holiday spirit and the hula-hula.

That'd probably move economically productive than the current energy policy or lack thereof
Alan B.

Alan, I hope the Indonesian reactor works as intended because replications of it scattered around the Australian grid would be about the only thing that I can see on the longer term horizon saving us from disaster. Given the history of Thorium technology, I am not holding my breathe, but here's hoping anyway.
David

It'll be a working model and housed in a double-hulled barge of extraordinary seaworthiness.

This prototype can be towed inland via estuaries and waterways. And as a floating concept, much of the coastline where our population is concentrated.

The Indonesian model is using sodium as the molten medium, which is where I fear there could be problems if moisture ever egresses. But given that doesn't occur, a prototype the rest of the world could see and one our bonehead drongos can no longer ignore!
Alan B.

"The Indonesian model is using sodium as the molten medium, which is where I fear there could be problems if moisture ever egresses".

I think you mean "ingresses", but it would be fairly spectacular, whichever.

David

OH for God's sake.

There is no "working model". There never has been a "working model". There are mere proposals about what might happen if a proof of concept model is built.

All that is currently happening is that carpetbaggers are looking to see which government will cough up some subsidy to continue so far utterly unsuccessful research.

The Chinese are closest to building a proof-of-concept model some time this decade. But there's never been a watt of usable power out of a thorium plant and there won't be until the early 2030s at best and only then if everything goes perfectly.

Alan B has fallen for this myth and continues to do so. He's been raving about it for years and the big breakthrough is always gunna happen 'next year'. Back in 2018 we were told that India was gunna build a thorium plant 'next year'.

The technology is complex, dangerous and unproven. Don't expect to see anything useful for at least another decade, if ever.

Mhaze, The technology is simple, just mix U233 with Th and away it goes. That is the theory. To my knowledge, the Indians amongst others have been baffled by what I might describe as metallurgical problems since the 1960s and it seems to be a never ending story. I wish the Indonesians luck, but I too am very sceptical. I think we will have to rely on proven up to date technology into the very near future and we had better start doing something about it very soon before the greenies run us out of electricity.
David

VK3AUU,

Theoretically its simple. In practice its, currently, a disaster waiting to happen. The US built an " experimental molten salt reactor" in the 1960s. It ran for a few years but after it was closed down, the side effects of the reactions were realised and the decommissioning was a nightmare. See here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment#Decommissioning

It might eventually work but not this decade or probably next.

Meanwhile, we've got plenty of coal.