"The left whingers have been proven wrong too often and have held the lectern for far too long."

OK, I admit, the left have gone on a bit about global warming . . . and we were so wrong about that!

ajay, face the fact that this is way more than a simple left/right blame-game.That aside, everything else you say makes perfect sense. I wasn't kidding about Shrub, et al.

Labor Right has no answer to this, even after all these years - they never did and likely never will. (Barry's post makes that clear.)

One for the pro-nukes fraternity: Are you proposing a Single Desk for uranium marketing? Does The Prime Minister still claim he had no knowledge about, nor control of of, that other great Single Desk, the AWB? That's a hell of a Bump in the Road when you think about it.
A Horse and Cart future? Not if we kill the horse to build the Cart.

I guess it is inevitable (orchestrated) that the ‘robust’ debate so quickly degenerates into emotive name calling. Intelligent and productive as shown by the war with Iraq debate, the Global Climate Coalition, the economics used to justify apposing Kyoto to name three of the more recent all resulting in misapplied effort rewarding few and penalising many.
So lets debate facts. On the subject of alternative energy and Nuclear Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute says at
www.ccnr.org/ampory.html
and on the use of energy efficiency and nega watts on
www.rmi.org/siterpages/pid171php#EO4-O2
The ACF site at
www.acfonline.org.au/news asp?
Should lead you to an address by Ian Lowe on October 2005. Here he also argues against nuclear and pushes Amory Lovins’ ideas.
These are the alternate views and theories. Lovins and Lowe are each trained in analysing data and each has a world wide reputation for integrity.
The nuclear argument is more aggressively promoted on many sites found by nuclear using most search engines.
The big questions to my mind is still safety and waste disposal and in each case who will benefit (profit) should the approach be chosen. The soft energy path of Lovins is of course widely used though asking Greenhouse Australia for concrete data, for example how many houses have solar panels is unproductive. According to Lowe if half were so fitted some seven percent of our electricity needs would be met.
It should be remembered that nuclear only supplies electricity representing only 35% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. (Unless or until we have a Hydrogen economy and nuclear electricity is used to make H from H2O.) The rest is transport land fill clearing and similar.
It is interesting how rapidly those who desire it can turn an argument on facts into an emotive diversion in which “facts” become the coinage of deceit. As interesting is the public susceptibility to such, fear often a part of it but advertising and hype like the current frenzy (useful to those who sell) relating to the world cup.

To paraphrase another saying;
Its the Storage Stupid !

Why is it that anyone who proposes solar and wind power never address the problem of storage ?
The sun does go down and the wind does drop, usually at sundown !
I know, I know, it is quite practical to operate normal domestic premises from solar and wind without any outside electrical supply.

HOWEVER do you really think it is possible to supply every house, office, factory, hospital with enough storage batteries and solar cells and wind generators and keep them serviced and replaced ?
There are nowhere enough electrical technicians to do the work !
How much greenhouse gas would be generated by their manufacture assuming the raw materials are avilable in such ginormous quantities.

Anyway you have a much bigger problem looming than global warming and it is almost upon us. I speak of course of Peak OIl.
Don't worry about international travel, unless of course you want to fly in a coal powered aircraft !
If you don't have a clue about what I am talking about goto
www.peakoil.net where you will be educated in a real worry.
Lots of links available on that premium site.
Bazz

Re: Leigh's comment on the blackouts in SA.
Well it is not usually understood by proponents that you can only have about 10 to 20% of solar or wind power on a network before instability of the network arises. This subject was addressed by a German study of the SA network and warned of just these problems if unreliable generators are fed into the network.
Solar & Wind are unreliable generators and are unable to be base load generators.

Bazz

The article concludes:

"As a last resort I could sell the car, stop flying, freeze in winter and fry in summer. On balance, I think I'll go with the wind farm."

This sort of misleading simplification was used to make people buy snakeoil. Thank God some of us are not that gullible, and with Internet we have access to information that the press fails to publish. Such as this for instance:

Windfarms do NOT deliver the goods. Their erratic production during days with wind, and their absence of production when there is no wind, makes it necessary to keep building fossil-fuel power stations AS IF WINDFARMS DID NOT EXIST. And fossil fuel is burnt for nothing during the 24-hour, 365-days-a-year backup operation.

Dr. Etherington published a remarkably well documented article on this: http://www.iberica2000.org/Es/Articulo.asp?Id=2950

Mark Duchamp
http://spaces.msn.com/mark-duchamp

In countries with little hydro power (such as Australia), once wind power reaches about 10% of peak hour supply every extra megawatt has to be backed up with a power plant which can be turned on and off, or up and down, as required. (Hydro dams are a form of "storage battery" and hence in NZ that figure may be as high as 15%).
Windpower also increases the demand for transmission systems to enable the windpower to be moved around as required.
Anyhow, once that back up point is reached, the cost of the back up supplies creates a huge "price mountain" against further generation. Typically, governments subdisise the wind power so that the consumer is unaware of how much that "fee wind" is actually costing.
I have nothing against wind power or solar power. I have a windmill on my small farm to irrigate my gardens and have a solar water heater on my roof.
But actually using these systems makes you realise how frequently the energy is not there when you most need it.