Aidan if you want to include hydro in your renewable, you had better give us an idea of where you are going to find both the water & the topography for it to be collected & run down hill.

Then you are going to have to give an assurance that your fellow ratbag greenies won't demand this water won't be used for environmental flows, as so much of the Snowy water now is.

Even Tasmania ran out of water, when trying to make a buck selling "GREEN" power to Victoria.

post after post want to remind us we have always used coal
But ignore that while we did start to use it much more at the start of the industrial revolution, we numbered about half of what we do today
As our population increases so too our out put of climate damaging gas
Too as more and more of the world warns us we see more without basic proof deny climate change is man made

Altrav, The charge is that the co2 is increasing.
An increase from 350 to 450 parts per million
Is the increase much larger than humans can generate ?
Satellite observations I have read state that the earth is greening
because of the increased co2 in the atmosphere.
If both those observations are correct then we are in fine fettle !

Put together with the sunspot count I think we need some scientist with
a clear mind not preprogrammed by by the Global Warming fanatics.
The real problem is to get the politicians to be skeptical and take
steps to get real answers. The IPCCC has been so compromised that we
need to start from scratch. Anything to do with the UN is a worry.

JBowyer,
>simple challenge. Why if renewable solar and wind are cheaper than coal has my bill increased four fold?
Several reasons:
• The price of fossil fuels has risen substantially. Gas prices have risen more than four fold.
• Much more is being spent on poles and wires, and the regulators have let the infrastructure companies make huge profits at consumers' expense.
• The wholesale electricity market is not always efficient, and at peak times it's often more lucrative to keep prices high even when a lower price would still be profitable.
ª Retail price margins have risen.
• Wind and solar power were not always as cheap as they are now.

__________________________________________________________________________________

ttbn,

>And, well before that, before there was large-scale industry, the CO2 level was much higher than it is now.
FALSE - see http://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-relentless-rise-of-carbon-dioxide/

It may surprise you to learn that ignorance is the opposite of what you seem to think it is. Ignorance means ignoring the facts, as you're doing. It does NOT mean disputing your predetermined conclusions and conspiracy theories.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Bazz,
Plimer is being deliberately misleading (and quite possibly plain wrong). His point, I think, is that there's considerable churn of CO2 - huge amounts get absorbed by plants, but ultimately get reemited into the atmosphere - either by the plants themselves or by animals, bacteria, fungi, bushfires etc. And when it does, the CO2 molecules emitted are not the same molecules that were created by human activity.
And it's not just plants - CO2 is going into and coming out of water and even rocks!

I think his "1 in 85000" figure is very unlikely to be right, considering how rapidly humans are adding CO2 to the atmosphere. But assuming for the sake of argument that he's technically correct, it's irrelevant. Where nature absorbs CO2 molecules and emits the same number, it doesn't change atmospheric CO2 concentration. What counts is the net effect. Thus the true figure is not 1 in 85000 but over 1 in 4. And it's rapidly heading for 1 in 3.

Dear Bazz,

The following link may be of interest -
especially the chapter about Australia.
Interesting stuff.

http://www.skepticalscience.com

“The foundation for most public relations businesses is to spin truth into lies and lies into truth with the understanding that it doesn’t matter what’s true, it only matters what people believe is true.” [Captain Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace]

Works well for climate propaganda, too. Aidan et al chose to believe what suited them at the beginning of the human-cause climate change myth, and they are too thick or too pigheaded to listen to alternatives. As said before, it's a waste of time reading their speils more than once. They have not changed their minds each time one of they beliefs has been proven wrong by the climate itself, and they never will.