Dear Steele,

I agree with you about most of the posters on
this forum. They are a great bunch. I guess
what I was trying to say but did not do such
a great job was that I enjoy reading your posts.
You are able to get to the crux of the discussions.
I would miss your contributions
very much and I'm glad that you continue to post.

I see our greenies can actually pee in their own pocket & rant simultaneously. WOW!

The last thing we need is gas back up for damn fool windmills. Even the Danes & the Germans have realised they have gone off half cocked & rushed down a very false technological side track with windmills.

They are building coal fired power houses while backtracking just as fast as they can from windmills without actually admitting what fools they have been. Just what we will do, sometime, once we get rid of the scam & the suckers who've believed it.

Some of the scientists have been swallowing brave pills, & hundreds of them are writing papers refuting the CO2 bogeyman, & they are getting these papers published now. Some recent German research have matched the suns activity more accurately to our climate. Surprise, surprise the very thing that stops the earth from being a ball of ice, actually does the warming. Who would have thought it, other than those who looked at the Dalton & Maunder minimum honestly.

It won't be long before no one, except perhaps doog & steely will utter the word windmill without blushing.

The Forums 'Usual Suspects' now realizing dirty coal is no longer a viable means of producing our energy requirements have in their wisdom, discovered a new panacea, they are calling it clean coal.
Although it looks and acts very much like dirty coal, it seems according to these new found experts, clean coal is the way to go!

Unfortunately like so many other childish wonders 'clean coal' does not actually physically exist. The now failing dirty coal industry has created an advertising slogan, called "clean coal" to help revive its totally discredited product. Big Coal, is becoming desperate, and of course like they always do. our gang of misguided forum fools are falling dutifully in line to sing the praises of this mythical product.

In our neck of the woods, we have a ridiculous Prime Minister now trying to sell the advantages of this nonsensical clean coal. Silly as it would be to give the tobacco industry health dollars to build faster fag producing machines. Turnbull is advocating diverting environmental dollars away from Australia's $10 billion green bank and giving it to the dirty coal industry, to help it clean up its filthy act. "Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg confirmed the government is considering issuing a new ministerial directive to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to put investment in so-called "clean coal" on the table."

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/green-bank-could-fund-coal-under-malcolm-turnbull-rule-changes-20170219-gugb4i.html

Maunder minimum is a "messy thing" and there are conflicting events in it. "The current solar cycle 24 is the lowest sunspot cycle in 100 years and the third in a trend of diminishing sunspot cycles. Solar physicists expect cycle 25 to be even smaller than Cycle 24 and expect the sun to move into a new minimum, comparable with the Dalton or even the Maunder Minimum." Warmer is cooler so they say.

SR,

The banning of energy exports by the US in 1970s given the huge energy deficit was the equivalent of the Saudi's banning the export of ice, and had little to no effect on energy producers in the USA or their profits. A similar ban in Aus which is a large net exporter of energy would be catastrophic and reminiscent of the protectionist idiocy that turned a major market correction in the US to a world wide depression. Secondly the majority of gas exports are from the north WA or Queensland from where there is little or no infrastructure to pipe gas elsewhere or even to ship it to other states, and thirdly, in the EU the gas fired back up generators have been the first to fail as their financial operating model is the most affected by intermittant renewables.

The net result of such idiocy in Aus would be the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and tens of $bns p.a. in lost tax revenue, and the worldwide increase in carbon emissions and misery as alternate energy sources are used. Fortunately, not even the labor party is so stupid.

Paul,

Given that one of the prime need of businesses to succeed is a cheap reliable electricity supply, the model that SA labor has employed is a dismal failure. As the network experts have clearly stated that an excessive weighting of intermittant renewables puts the network stability at risk, and SA's electricity prices are highest in Aus (close to the highest in the world)

To any reasonable person, building a power station that could provide reliable and relatively cheap power for 1/3rd of the emissions of Hazelwood would seem a reasonable compromise, but unfortunately the Greens can in no way be described as reasonable.

'Clean Coal' ...aka "picking up a turd by the clean end." Ditto the use of Uranium. Australian politicians, all of them, have and continue to, sell us out in regards to resources and primary industries. No surprise to read SR's comment about ex ministers getting plum jobs overseas.

'Safety' (as defined) in any of the oil/gas/resources maintenance, construction & support industries I have worked in over the past 15 years is simply this: " A risk mitigation strategy designed by lawyers at the behest of insurers to limit the losses to ordinary shareholders."

All too many times I've see the pious looks, bowed heads & the crocodile tears shed at morning toolbox meetings. The Superintendents, the Mine Managers wringing their hands bemoaning the death of "so & so" due to some 'avoidable accident'. In all those years I've yet to see one of them give up their "productivity bonus" or "tonnages met" cheques to the widows or families of the deceased.

I have absolutely no doubt that some time into the future a catastrophe on the scale of Fukashima will visit our shores, it is but human nature for anything else to happen. Recently I worked with a geo-engineer who had been in the CSG industry with Halliburton and his prediction of current wells being fracked was; that in less than 50 years all ground water sources (world wide) would be undrinkable. What a legacy.

The renewable energy generation sector has a long way to go, but it will only be allowed to do so when the Fossil Fuel Fossils get off their polished mahogany chairs and release their grip on the monopolies crushing and stifling innovation.

Stay tuned for more pollie waffle, jobs for the fat cats and ground rhinocerous horn fuelled holidays in the Bahamas - courtesy of your local mega corporation and Messrs Graft & Corruption.