Shadow, I do believe your man Malcolm has had a number of meetings recently with our man Richard to discuss common ground in a number of areas. Greens are in fact closer to Liberals like Turnbull on many social issues than they are to conservative Labor people. Why should I support Labor with Shorten in command. At both the last Federal and State elections I gave my preference to the small 'l' Liberal candidates over right wing conservative Labor people. Now if you were the Liberal candidate it might have been a different story, I may have preferenced you just below Attila the Hun, due to Attila's better social policy than yours.

Now Paul 1405 that is a better commentary.
There is no doubt that Abbott lost the support of the parliamentary
liberal members. After all they would know him better than any of us here.
As you put it the populous politicians will not take the risk of saying
it like it is. That is largely the fault of the voter who also is very hard of hearing.
I can see that even on forums like this.

We have a limited time to move to a different energy system and if we
can do it successfully we may be able to get some growth but that
should not be our prime aim. We have to learn how to run a steady
state sustainable economy. That is an economy with a stable or perhaps
a slightly declining population.

I suspect that it cannot be done without nuclear energy if we are to
have a living standard not much different to what we have now.
Without nuclear, uranium, thorium or fusion, I do not see anything
else on the horizon.
Rhosty has a number of suggestions re algae and similar.
They are not new techniques so I wonder why they have not already taken off ?

So Paul, we are in a bind, the politicians and the public do not
believe there is a problem and all it needs is to fiddle with taxes
pay rates, social benifits and all will be well.
Most civilisations failed because of declining returns on resources employed.

'According to Muradel CEO and University of Adelaide Associate Professor David Lewis, if the demonstration plant is successfully scaled to a commercial plant, it will produce 500,000 barrels of refinable green crude a year by 2019 – enough petrol and diesel to fuel 30,000 vehicles for a year.'
It seems to be on the go in US and costs here are similar to crude oil, or were last year. The long term costs may be efficient whenever China climbs out of the red.

Nicknamenick, best you check your figures again.
That much fuel will supply Australia for about 12 hours even allowing
for refinery gain.
Australia uses one million barrels a day.
Another problem would the Singapore refineries be prepared to reset
their plant to process that small amount of feedstock ?

'At the time of the 2015 Motor Vehicle Census (MVC), there were 18.0 million motor vehicles, including Motor cycles, registered in Australia'
You're right , 18m is larger than 30,000. 1 year is longer than 1 day.
Darn it , have to tell the S Aust researchers that.

Yes Nick, it is not uncommon for stories to get exaggerated by not
looking properly at the figures.
Quite often there have been dramatic announcements of "HUGE" discoveries
of oil and quote billions of barrels or something.
Then when you work it out it amounts to 2 1/2 hours of the worlds usage.
Not that that is not a worthwhile find but it would not change the
supply problem for the world.