Not being a sheep who follows the "man made global anything disaster garbage," I am a full supporter of burning coal. It is the only fuel source we have that is efficient enough to cover base load power generation.

Gas isn't enough. You need to use more gas to generate what is required. Solar and wind power may look good on paper to the tree huggers, but in the end will probably never be enough to cover even a small amount of the country's requirements.

How about spend the money on making the burning of coal much more efficient and stop worrying about the CO2 going into the atmosphere. After all, there are lots of other good scientists out there who claim there is a deficit of CO2. And these scientists are not govt paid puppets.

Hasbeen, "We were gunna have fusion before I left school, then before I left Uni, then before I left work"

So, almost as long as 'they' have been confidently claiming that a safe, permanent means of disposal of waste is 'on the horizon', if not imminent.

The last mentioned, disposal, has just about been sorted for Uncle Sam, the Brits and other countries, who just know that the Land of Oz that was beaut for the Brits to test bombs (and rob Australians of using the land forever), has even more governments who are lining up, rears exposed, to accept whatever waste they want to ship this way.

As for fusion, wasn't that always the 'bait & switch' to sell yesterday's nuke technology and avoid talking about the mammoth costs of ever decommissioning them?

One day it will work I hope. The worry no one seems to want to face is
will it be too late ?
We may have gone over that peak of technology into a collapse.
It will take so much money and resources to get from just one
experimental fusion machine, to a working operational machine and then
to a fleet of fusion machines world wide, that we will be exhausted
before we reach that goal.

It could be that someone will have a working machine and the rest of
the world may have to rely on it to bootstrap the rest of the world.

I think Alan's Thorium machine is a far quicker solution.

Currently, around a billion Indians are burning wood and cow dung to cook their meals. Unless Indian wood and cow dung produce no CO2, I would suggest that an enormous amount is going into the atmosphere, and if they keep using those fuels, will keep doing so.

IF coal-fired power stations could provide all their electricity needs, as long as they produced LESS CO2 than the current methods, then it's a bonus for environmentalists. Yes, coal-fired power stations produce CO2, but the big question is: would they produce less than current cooking methods ?

So why not ?

The current generation of nuclear power stations are vastly safer than the earlier generations: we don't hear of Chernobyl-type accidents about the reactors in France or Finland. Such nuclear reactors produce very little CO2. Australia has plenty of uranium. It could even be exported to India, to avoid almost all CO2 production far into the future.

So why not ?

Joe

Hope Aidan and doog will be on hand for pedaling and treadmill duties when their precious wind and solar sun fails, as it does and will.

Joe, much as I would hate to cook my food on cow dung, & cooking on campfires is for the birds as far as I am concerned, don't forget that these fuels are circular when it comes to CO2.

Not that it matters of course, but you have to have grass, herbage or trees to provide those fuels The CO2 produced in the burning has to be first extracted from the atmosphere, & is simply returned with the burning. Our flora needs more CO2, so I'll stick to good old coal powered cooking thanks.

Infact, if greenies were in any way conservationists there would be a thriving industry supplying cow dung to those inner city high rise apartments, so they could practice what they preach.

Of course we all know that green is simply the resprayed red of communism, & has nothing to do with conservation. The way they have us going, we will soon be back to horse & carts for city deliveries, so they will have lots of horse dung delivered right to their front door, ready for collecting. I wonder if they are ready for using it?

Anyone know if horse dung is as good a fuel as cow dung? Hell this could become as interesting an argument as whether E10 ethanol contaminated petrol is as good as the real stuff.