mhaze,

Gas is simply replacing some of the rapidly declining coal fired production, which due to ageing plant, and no new investment is falling, and will continue to fall in the foreseeable future. Renewables are replaying some of that loss, but not all to match the rapid decline in coal. Gas is a short term stop gap measure only, and in turn will also be replaced by renewables.

Why are you banging on about smoking, you once argued here that smoking is good for you. The Marlboro Man told you so, shortly before he died of lung cancer!

mhaze,

If someone’s trying to quit smoking but cuts down on cigarettes overall - while occasionally using nicotine gum to get through a rough patch - they’re still heading in the right direction. What they’re not doing is buying two packs a day.

That’s the biggest flaw in your analogy: Fossil fuel use isn't doubling - the mix is being refined to meet demands. Yet fossil fuel use continues falling across much of the developed and is beginning to fall globally. So your excitement is as premature as that of a climate change denier chuckling smugly because they experienced a cold day where they live.

You talk like “long-term goal” is just political spin - but governments set long-term goals all the time, and society accepts it. Education reform, infrastructure planning, crime prevention, superannuation - all of these involve investments where the benefits take decades to fully materialise. No one calls them lies just because they don’t pay off in the next news cycle.

The energy transition is no different. You don’t rebuild national infrastructure, retrain industries, and overhaul energy markets overnight. That’s not spin. That’s just how large-scale change works. You assert that “they know we can’t get there,” but the evidence continues to say otherwise. Clean energy is growing faster than it was even forecast to. Storage tech is improving. Private investment is accelerating.

Sometimes the hard road is still the right one. But in this case, I suspect the people shouting “It’s impossible!” are just hoping no one tries. As for those who gleefully farewell something that clearly isn't going no where? Take a break from the echo chambers and conspiracy blogs once in a while...

"you once argued here that smoking is good for you."

Well that's a straight up lie. But it is Paul so we can't expect any better.

"[Coal] which due to ageing plant, and no new investment is falling".

Coal is failing because the government decreed that it was finished. There is no new investment because the government decreed that coal no longer had a place in Australia. The plant is aging because there is no incentive to replace or upgrade plant when the industry is effective persona non gratia in Australia.

All of this to attempt to cut our miniscule CO2e emissions while China in 2023 ADDED more coal plant to their system than the entire Australian coal industry.

Both sides of politics are now scrambling to find a replacement for the coal power that they destroyed and gas is, they now realise, the only possible replacement. They used to tell us that it would be replaced by solar/wind but even the charlatans of the renewables industry can't get away with that lie any longer.

So we're back to relying on fossil fuels to power our economy while we continue to pay exorbitant prices for the privilege of having token renewables disfiguring the country-side.

A generation ago Australia had close to the cheapest power system on the planet and that underwrote a very high standard of living. Then we were sold on the need to cut CO2e and we've been going backwards ever since. Meanwhile the majority of the rest of the planet carries on producing the cheapest power they can find without regard to emissions. We'll catch on eventually.

mhaze,

Your rewriting of history does a lot of heavy lifting in your arguments, doesn't it? Coal isn’t failing because gOvErNmEnT - it’s failing because it's icky.

Not helping matters is the fact that investors, insurers, and grid operators have deemed it unviable. The plants are aging because no one - not even private energy companies - wants to sink billions into technology that’s less flexible, less competitive, and facing increasing maintenance and reliability issues. No one had to “ban” coal for it to become economically unattractive - it happened all on its own in a world moving forward.

You keep pointing to China as if its behaviour justifies inaction here. But even China - while building coal - is also investing more in renewables than any other country on Earth. They’re not choosing between coal and renewables. They’re overbuilding everything to meet colossal demand and reduce blackouts, with the long-term goal of becoming the world’s clean energy supplier.

That’s not hypocrisy - it’s scale.

And no, we’re not “back to fossil fuels” because renewables failed. Gas is being used as a firming mechanism - a backup for variability while storage and transmission catch up. That was always part of the transition plan. Acting like this is some gotcha moment is either disingenuous or just deliberately ignoring how energy systems actually work.

Yes, power used to be cheaper. So were houses, petrol, food, and airline tickets. Welcome to global markets, inflation, and reality. Pretending we’d still have 1990s electricity prices if we just stuck with coal is nostalgia - not economics.

We’re not going backward because we’re cutting emissions - we’re adapting to a changing global landscape. The real risk isn’t Net Zero. It’s waiting too long to modernise, while other countries move ahead and we sit here blaming wind turbines for everything from prices to progress.

1600 new coal fired power stations around Asia isn't exactly what I'd call a failing situation.
The Asians have been at the top of civilisation before & they're getting there again now !
The West has become a breeding ground for idiocy & moral bankruptcy !