Smacks of desperation.

Keep up the good work!

Neil Brown, arch conservative, redundant Liberal politician. What Brown had to say about aspects of the incumbent government.

"It is now virtually unrecognisable. Its decline to its present state of despair"

"abject failure in every way"

"it has brought chaos"

"It was supposed to have as its centrepiece an economic plan; but if it had one, it was well concealed and buried under a mountain of gobbledegook and three word slogans"

Luciferace,
There's a very broad consensus that we need to grow the pie, but you seem to have fallen hook line and sinker for two rightwing myths: firstly that those on the left treat it as a zero sum game, and secondly that the best way to grow the pie is to give the rich a better deal!

In reality, opportunity is a much bigger limiting factor than incentive, and the small gains achievable from giving the most productive a greater incentive to work more are dwarfed by the gains that could be made by increasing the productivity of everyone else.

There doesn't seem to be any great difference between the track record of the major parties on productivity. Labor seem to have a slightly better understanding of the issue at the moment, but that's not saying much.

SA's last batch of diesel generators were originally planned to be leased, and I don't know why the previous government decided to buy them instead. But buying them rather than more batteries was perfectly reasonable, as there weren't a fleet of large batteries available at that time, and the performance of batteries was yet to be proven.

The link you supplied doesn't make the semantic claims you do. You seem to feel so threatened by the viability of grid scale batteries that you want to unilaterally disqualify anything that doesn't store power for days at a time - which is silly, as batteries are obviously not the best kind of storage on that timescale.

>Bottom line, if SA disconnected from fossil-fueled electricity it'd be stuffed.
Of course - SA usually needs considerably more electricity than it gets through wind and solar. Though the proportion generated from renewables is the second highest in the country and rising rapidly, the state's not going to decommission all its gas fired power stations any time soon! However, if SA disconnected from Victoria, SA would still be OK - it has the generating capacity.
(tbc)

Luciferase (continued)
>The question "If grid-storage is so feasible why does Germany build coal instead?"
>obviously presumes renewables will charge it and negate the need for coal
And one day they will, but the question is in the present tense, and at the moment there isn't sufficient power from renewables.

>but Germany hasn't taken that path because it is economically infeasible by comparison with building baseload.
Baseload is unlikely to be what they need, so I expect they'll start investing in storage before long.

>Now you're saying SA knows better than Germany?
Not quite - I'm saying SA's done better than Germany.

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Saltpetre,
>Surely that's a bit of a hopeful call? My understanding is that Shorten's plan to meet
>higher emission reduction targets relies heavily on carbon credits sourced from overseas.
Considering how tame his reduction target for the electricity sector is, that seems very unlikely. It may be the case for other sectors though.

Hydrogen isn't as unsafe as it might appear, as it's so much lighter than air that it gets out of the way pretty quickly. There have been several experimental hydrogen vehicles - some using fuel cells, some using hydrogen in engines. There have also been vehicles with engines using hydrogen together with other fuels. However what you're describing sounds more like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water-fuelled_car

And CO2 emissions can be reused, but though the production advantages of doing so may be great, the emissions advantages are small, as it's effectively a substitute for atmospheric CO2 inputs.

Given one posters lurch in to fantasy land, we seem free to say anything we want to
We can only hope that freedom is for those of us who rebut the silly right of reality stuff
An election will not be turned because voters are lard heads
The chook pen empowers right of reality and yes the greens, but remember,all of them, together, can change nothing
YES I think the greens harm Labor
Too that the equally strange right harm the LNP
Above all they, in my view, stall real change real policy implementation on both sides

Morrison & LIB/NAT took a helluva gamble not to address the asset test for old age pensioners before this election.