Just get back to using coal and stop the madness. Global emissions are rising, and will continue to rise no matter what stupidity the lunatic class comes up with. Coal, nuclear, solar, piss and wind - no matter what - the weather is not going to change any more than it does naturally.

Looking at NEMwatch just now I see 12 GW out of 30 GW demand is being generated by black and brown coal. That's despite two decades of renewables subsidies and mandates. Within a week of the PM elect telling us power would get cheaper it went up by about 15% all around Australia. For all but the true believers the 100% renewables nirvana must be wearing a bit thin.

I suspect losing baseload will mean the end of aluminium smelting in Australia. We can always import aluminium from China where it is made using Aussie alumina and thermal coal. A bit inefficient but our conscience will be clear. Alas I fear it will be some years before the public grasps the problems of lack of baseload or 30% efficient hydrogen.

Agree with most of this and add that current CO2 levels are in uncharted territory. If we would reduce this without reducing our living standards and tanking the economy, but the opposite, then only carbon free nuclear is available! And the best of that is MSR thorium. MSR technology can also be tasked with burning all our nuclear waste, which in MSR is mostly unspent fuel which when burnt leaves a vastly less toxic material that has a half life of just 300 years. This unspent fuel is what others will pay us annual millions to take from them and money we can leverage to build as mass produced reactors. That together with the reprocessing plant, fit inside a shipping container!

There were some issues with MSR thorium, corrosion and tritium, which have now been resolved. The first I,, believe with, metal heat treatment, oil plunge and the carbonizing of reactor metal surfaces, the second by using nitrate salts in the heat transfer side, where nitrate salt absorbs most of the tritium.

Add in under road, cling wrap thin, superconductor 200 times stronger than steel, graphene as the transmission system, you then reduce the combined transmission and distribution losses of 75% by a very significant amount!

More so if microgrids are part of the plan going forward. Finally, nuclear waste continues to decay and over a period of thirty or so years decays to mostly plutonium, which can be processed to remove the transuganics, including cessium and strotinium.

The latter two being able to be used in freezer free, all food types, preservation. The plutonium can then be used again as nuclear fuel in an MSR nuclear reactor. The waste from MSR is not much more than 5% and is still useful as long life space batteries.

Thorium as the refined metal is fertile not fissile and is less radioactive than a banana! MSR thorium is walk away safe.

See LFTR in five minutes.
Alan B.

I don't see the justification for this statement, "Phasing out fossil fuels is essential".

CO2 levels are not the problem because most of the heating (greenhouse) effect caused by CO2 is approaching saturation. Adding more CO2 does not produce warming proportionally. There is no guarantee that increasing levels of CO2 will warm the world or indeed prevent the world from plunging into a far more catastrophic ice age. We just don't know.

We still have not a single scientific proof that human CO2 emissions are the cause of warming - I'm quoting Professor Ian Plimer - and we currently sequester far more CO2 in Australia and our seas than is produced by our population. I'm with the professor on this subject.

We should forget entirely any efforts, expenditures, laws or regulations that attempt to constrain CO2 emissions and spend the effort far more productively enhancing our industries for the common weal of the people.

Just cut back on un-necessaries & all will be well & that includes dumbing-down education !

Why do people cling to the absurd belief that we need BASELOAD electricity? It reminds me of the joke about the Irish hydroelectric scheme to deliver cheaper off-peak electricity!

The base is then easy part to supply; we certainly don't need dedicated power stations to provide it. It's the peaks that are more difficult.

____________________________________________________________________________

Taswegian,
It's the fossil fuels, not the renewables, that are responsible for the price rise. More renewables will counteract that.
For 9 years we've had a government in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry. Meanwhile the cost of renewable energy has come down substantially while the cost of fossil fuels has gone the other way. So what's stopping you from becoming a true believer? It makes more sense than being a lie believer!

Baseload may die, but cheap electricity will continue therefore the aluminium industry will continue, though it will probably change the way it operates.
And on wat do you base your claim of "30% efficient hydrogen"?
It's cheap electricity, not baseload, that the aluminium industry relies on.

"The base is then easy part to supply; we certainly don't need dedicated power stations to provide it. It's the peaks that are more difficult."

In Europe it is a different story, with the supply of power from woody biomass greater than that of wind and solar, and essential for providing base load power.

https://www.politico.eu/sponsored-content/the-backslide-on-renewables-europe-cant-afford/

Repeating a lie might convince more of the gullible, but it wont stop the lights going out.

Fester,
In Europe it is indeed a different story, as there's quite a lot of baseload nuclear power.
Europe does have a lot of biomass power, partly because some of the power stations were converted from coal fired to wood pellet fired. But where did you get the idea that it's baseload power? The report you linked to doesn't claim it is, and I consider it far more likely to be load following - not least because nuclear power has long made baseload coal unviable!

I see you're trying to convince the gullible by repeating the lie about the lights going out. I know the gullible are the majority on this site, but why don't you try telling them the truth for a change?

The author makes the same error as many scientists.
Because we started burning coal in large amounts starting around 1800
and that the earth temperature started rising at that time which is
known as the Little Ice Age and the Maunder Minimum they thought the
increase in co2 was the cause of increase in temperature.
That is known as the sensitivity of temperature to co2 levels.
That error has been pointed out a number of times and J Kauppenin
showed that the fossil fuel burning since 1800 amounts to 0.1 deg C.
The rest is due to the natural cycle of sun, earths orbit, sunspots
and cosmic rays and their effect on cloud cover.
It is a well known cycle and has been know for yonks.
There is now too much money and reputations tied to the co2 story
for it to be allowed denial.
To save face we will be driven to destitution if the mob does not revolt.

Aidan,

Okay, what should you call it then? How about on demand power, dispatchable energy or reliable, non-chaotic energy? Whatever you want to call it, it is essential for patching up the chaotic energy shortfalls from erratic energy sources.

My concern is that the debate is so politicised that scientific/engineering/economic considerations are no longer a priority. The link I provided gives an example of this, with woody biomass, the main contributor of renewable energy in Europe, at risk of being pulled as a consequence of political agitation. And look at the debate here about nuclear power. The climate council lists illegality as its primary reason for not having nuclear power in Australia. Doesn't that strike you as somewhat moronic? I mean, here we are supposedly on the brink of catastrophe and we cannot consider a solution because it is unlawful here. Yes, unlawful because of the commies. It is garbage arguments like that from greenie/commie zealots that make me fear for the future of Australia.

Well there is hope for us all.
The German Greens Party is advocating for more nuclear energy !
How is that for a turnaround ?

NuScale a US company has had its Modular nuclear power plant approved
by the US government. It produces 924 Megwatt at a cost of $3.3 billion dollars.
Construction time is 36 Months.
The article claims that is competitive with renewables if battery
backup is included in the renewables cost.
It is in tomorrows Australian.

Fester,
If you want to discuss dispatchable power we can. But don't conflate baseload, dispatchability and reliability; they're completely different things, and if you can't recognise that then you can't realistically expect to understand the concepts involved.

Yes, I agree the future of nuclear power in Australia shouldn't depend on present regulations. But it should depend on economics, and those are against it.

Anyway, nobody is seriously proposing getting rid of dispatchable power, so the crazy rhetoric about the lights going out serves no purpose other than to fool the gullible.

____________________________________________________________________________

Bazz and Captain,
Though there are many different variables, none of the others have anywhere near as much impact as CO2 levels. Some make small contributions to global warming, while the contribution of others is negative. And none of them have changed as much, or as fast, as CO2 levels, which have risen 50% since preindustrial times.

It is fortunate that the warming from CO2 isn't proportional, for if it were, the change would have been catastrophic already! But claims of saturation fail to take into account the doppler effect and that radiation can be absorbed and reemitted many times.

Bazz, I presume the "J Kauppenin" you referred to is actually the Jyrki Kauppinen whose claim was debunked at http://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/non-peer-reviewed-manuscript-falsely-claims-natural-cloud-changes-can-explain-global-warming/
Why are you so reliant on cognitive dissonance?

Well, he is not on his own, the scientists at Kobe Uni and Svenmark
also agree,
Also you are surely not suggesting that those previous cycles did not happen ?

Bazz,
As I said back in 2019:
Svenmark was under the impression that global warming had stopped. But the data since then has proved otherwise. His conclusion about the relative effects of cosmic rays and CO2 has been shown to be incorrect.
Cosmic rays do have some effect on cloud formation and therefore climate. But the effect is far less than that of CO2.

>Also you are surely not suggesting that those previous cycles did not happen ?
Indeed, and I'quite surprised you found it worth checking. Of course they happened!
But cycles are not an alternative explanation to changing variables; cyclical factors and feedback loops caused variables to change. Atmospheric CO2 is of course one of those variables.

Human actions have raised the atmospheric CO2 concentration by 50% and the world is warming faster than it has for millions of years. Other variables have a negligible or negative contribution to the warming, Yet still you try to fool yourself and others into thinking CO2 isn't responsible. Any scientific paper with a conclusion you like is regarded as proof no matter how much it's debunked, while the other 99% you ignore.

Of course you're not alone in this cognitive dissonance - it seems to be the majority view on this board. The best explanation for this mass delusion I've seen is that when anticapitalists tried to coopt global warming to suit their own agenda, people not only believed them, but also decided that anything capitalism is incompatible with fixing couldn't possibly be real!
Is that the case with you?