On climate ratbaggery, “Australia is an inconsequential player in a game where all the major players are doing little more than pretending to play”. And it is wrecking our economy and national security.

Since China started to make everything, OECD countries’ percentage of GDP for manufacturing has plunged from 18% to 14%.

Australia's was only 14% to start with, and it is now down to just below 6%. That makes us the lowest: even lower than Luxembourg, according to ‘Macro Business’.

(https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2025/10/a-vulnerable-china-leaves-australia-exposed/)

Now, while that makes us and the rest less liable to ‘future shocks’, Big Boy China, hogging the manufacturing, is more susceptible to downturns, and more than half of the steel produced in China is reliant on Australian iron ore. Which means Australia, with its super-dooper entanglement with China, is “deeply indirectly exposed”.

China goes bad. Australia goes bad. We are just too reliant on China: exporting our resources and jobs to them, along with some of our 1.3% of emissions to add to their 30% of the world's emissions, with Albanese jabbering about ‘Made in Australia’ when our electricity is too expensive to make anything.

But, the Albanese government has a great plan: bring Australian businesses and manufacturers to their knees with outrageously expensive electricity, then bail them out with taxpayers’ money.

While Australian politicians are making absolute fools of themselves, the UK has spent 1 billion pounds, this year, on shutting down wind turbines because the weather has been too windy. They are waking up to what fools they were for falling for the con, while our lot get sillier and sillier.

Burn the Aboriginals wood and light Chinese candles, but be quick, hardwood sawmills are closing the length of the East coast for want of access to hardwood forests: Lost jobs and insecurity are trumps.

""False narratives distort public understanding, erode trust in science and institutions and delay urgent climate action". All a bit vague. Does the AHRC suggest that all criticisms of energy policy are false, perhaps punishable? I hope not."

Yes, that's the scary part. The failure of wind and solar is like the failure of socialism. In each case the failure was blamed on the critics and a conspiracy of misinformation peddlers (aka the evil fossil fuel lobby). It amounts to a push to gag free speech, which would intensify the disaster, as pointing out the myriad of technical, environmental, economic and logical shortcomings of the wind and solar fantasy would make you an enemy of the state.

Removing the ban on nuclear power and building a few coal fired power plants would go a long way in reducing power prices and exposing the wind and solar scam.

Coal is the cheapest form of power. The Coalition punts for nuclear because it allows them to cling to their (and it is theirs) obsession with Net Zero.

If they had accepted that Morrison had made a stupid mistake signing up to Net Zero (without the country's permission) and guaranteed to drop it, they would have been elected - with a few other minor promises. But no! They were too weak, thinking that they could betray their supporters (who would forgive them) and get votes from people who wouldn't vote for them in a fit. Now they are finished, as they deserve to be. They will never be forgiven.

Ho Hum,

Just more of the same. A recycled article that adds little, if anything, new to the discussion.

Yes we already know that we get much more from fossil fuels than just energy.

Yes we already know that transition takes time - that's why it is called transition and not "instant use of 100% renewables".

The author quotes a transition time of 70 years.

How does this compare to say transition to nuclear?

We would be starting from scratch so let's look at England that has had nuclear energy and its associated R and D for decades.

The UK government is committed to a "a significant acceleration of nuclear" energy in the hopes that this "would represent up to around 25% of ... projected electricity demand" by 2050.

In comparison "AEMO’s Quarterly Energy Dynamics Report says renewables, including solar and wind, powered 43% of Australia’s electricity grid in the first three months of 2025 – the highest first-quarter amount in the National Energy Market’s 25-year history.

At the moment there is no comparison and a transition to 100% nuclear would take arguably longer than 70 years.

Repeating the same Mantra over and over in a forum like OLO is pretty much a waste of time.

With the way environmental protections are, new coal power and mining are effectively banned as well as nuclear. Remove the ideological restrictions and let capitalism do its thing. Cult leader Albo thinks that you can make wind and solar work by banning the alternatives and with massive subsidies. Australians are being conned.

"At the moment there is no comparison and a transition to 100% nuclear would take arguably longer than 70 years."

The French supplied 150% of their electricity demand in fifteen years with nuclear power. They started the program half a century ago. When the program ended, the build time for a nuclear power station was five years. There is no reason why a multinational effort could not achieve the same today.

Nuclear power is a proven technology, and provides very low cost and reliable dispatchable energy over the operating life of the plant. No wonder the wind and solar scam artists hate it so much.

It’s funny how often data gets presented as proof of disaster when it actually shows the opposite.

Between 2017 and 2024, solar and wind output almost quadrupled, and renewables rose from 15 % to 35 % of total generation. That’s not a collapse, it’s a transition doing exactly what transitions do: growing fast, then levelling into steady expansion.

Even the "slow" years in that table added more clean generation than the entire decade before 2015. AEMO’s latest figures put renewables at 43 % of the grid this year - a new record.

Yet somehow, this becomes evidence that renewables are "failing." When you're against something for purely ideological reasons, everything must look like a failture.

If this trajectory counts as ruin, we should be so lucky in every other sector.

That’s not a collapse, it’s a transition doing exactly what transitions do: growing fast, then levelling into steady expansion.
John Daysh,
On more normal transitions I'd wholeheartedly agree however, in the alternative energy circus this is not the case. The only fast growing & steady expansion are the crowds of hanger-on wannabe engineers & consultants & the highly polluting manufacturers of this unsustainable folly !