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Children, unlike dogs, are little sponges crafted by Nature to prioritise and absorb the key knowledge needed for later life. That’s why toddlers yet unable tie their shoes find it easy to master the rudiments of language and syntax. Shoes are practical and do wonders for a well-cut suit, but an adult can get by at a pinch without them. The ability to tell the doctor about frostbitten toes and other ailments is a rather more important skill in the grand scheme of things.
But dogs, as a species they’re a different matter entirely. This is wisdom I acquired, appropriately enough, as a very small boy, when a kind and elderly neighbour took the trouble to explain why Norman, his little shih tzu, wouldn’t fetch, roll over, shake hands, play dead or demonstrate any talent beyond eating, defecating, sleeping and, every so often, bursting into episodes of pointless yapping. “Son,” old Mack began, “Normie can find his food bowl. He is as smart as he needs to be.” After reading Waleed Aly’s latest epistle in the Fairfax press, it seems the same rule applies equally to certain columnists.
Aly’s theme is the death of coal, and he assures us in that patented, portentous and patronising way of his that the future is all very dark for the black stuff. Remaining Age and SMH readers find this patter most re-assuring, much as followers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi were eager to lose themselves in the mantras he conjured for their enlightenment and gave them to repeat. For some — far too many, alas — there is much comfort in the mindlessness to be drawn from an endless invocation of empty words.
As to facts, who needs them? Aly certainly doesn’t. Like Normie the simpleton shih tzu, the thoughts he shares are as smart as they need to be, which isn’t very smart at all when you consider that Fairfax’s target demographic these days consists of share-house students, bristling lesbians, green ranters, social justice virtuecrats, neo-wowsers, light-rail fetishists, gender-fluid bicycle fanciers and representatives of all those other claques and cliques former Age and SMH advertisers do not want in their shops and stores under any circumstances. For this audience Aly delivers a column inspired by the closure of Victoria’s Hazelwood power station, which until this week supplied 22% of the state’s electricity. Rather than address the RET and the market distortion it has imposed, not to mention rent-seeking wind farmers and solar scammers, he directs our gaze across the Pacific to Donald Trump’s America, where the purported lesson is that coal will soon be as dead as the dinosaurs of which it is said to be composed.
Renewable energy is also growing rapidly as technology makes it easier to generate more of it … Coal power stations were closing before President Obama’s clean power plan was even announced. By the time Obama was elected, the number of coal workers had already halved since the 1970s. The trend is therefore clear, and much broader than anything Obama inflicted.
Aly has found his readers’ bowl and, as with an earlier assurance that being blown up by one of his more ardent co-religionists is a mere “irritation”, has filled it with yet another dog’s breakfast of reeking slop. Fairfax readers will enjoy it, of course, much as dogs are always keen to inhale the ripe aromas of each other’s bottoms. Sharper readers will catch the whiff of familiar untruths, garnished as always with conspicuous omissions, that have grown rancid in the course of frequent packaging and re-packaging.
First, as the Washington Post recently explained (but Aly barely mentions), US coal-fired plants have been closing because natural gas makes them uncompetitive.
The 2,250-megawatt [Navajo Generating Station outside Page, Ariz.] has faced increasing financial pressure in the face of record-low natural gas prices, which have made it more expensive to produce electricity at the facility than to purchase it from cheaper sources.
This has no relevance to the Australian situation, where state governments have banned gas exploration and thereby promoted shortfalls in domestic supply. Compound that with an over-abundance of green sentiment, and it all goes a long way toward explaining why our gas is expensive and America’s isn’t.
And yes, coal-industry employment in the US has declined precipitously, just as Aly asserts. But it hasn’t been declining only “since the 1970s”. Rather, the shrinking has been underway since 1920, when coal kept some 785,000 people employed, as opposed to the 102,000 working in the industry as of 2015. Those figures come from the Brookings Institute, which Aly should know all about, as it was only in December that he shared an ABC microphone with a Brookings boffin for a discussion about Trump and what the result of last November’s election would likely mean. One imagines that, by Aly’s reckoning, Brookings is a reliable source. After all, it made Julia Gillard one of its “distinguished fellows”, so no nest of fusty conservatives.
But Aly’s shtick is to serve up the muck his readers favour, so there was no need for him to do a little more googling before putting pen to paper. Pity, that, because the Gillard-friendly Brookings folk might have set him straight. As Brookings co-authors Devashree Saha and Sifan Liu explain in paper published as recently as January, it is neither green thinking nor coal’s alleged non-viability that has zapped US coal-industry jobs but advances in extractive techniques and technologies. Saha and Liu spell it out in terms so simple even a Fairfax editor might come close to grasping their point, especially if the char lady happened to be passing through his office at the time and could spare a moment or two to explain what the word “automation” means.
By 2015, coal mining had shed 59 percent of its workforce, compared to 1980. During the same period, coal production grew by 8 percent, to about 897 million short tons in 2015 (23 percent below its 2008 peak). At the same time, coal mining productivity jumped from 1.93 short tons per miner hour in 1980 to 6.28 short tons per miner hour in 2015. (emphasis added)
Saha and Liu also provide a handy chart
and they detail some fascinating trends and figures:
One of the early harbingers of automation in coal mining was the shift from underground coal mines in the Appalachian region to the open pit mines of the West (especially in Montana and Wyoming). Surface mining—also known as mountaintop removal mining, in which miners use controlled explosions to open mountains and mine the newly exposed coal seams—is less labor-intensive and more automated than traditional underground mining.
Between 1980 and 2015, underground mining’s share of total coal production dropped from 41–35 percent, while surface mining production increased from 59–65 percent. Coal companies in the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming can extract more than 11 times as much coal per employee hour as coal companies in the Appalachian Basin.
All of the above, you might think, explains why the US coal-industry workforce is shrinking, also refuting the tossed-off nostrums Aly heaps in his readers’ dish en route to the column’s climactic sentence:
[Coal] is a dying industry for reasons that aren’t merely environmental. They’re commercial as well. And while climate denialism is one thing, this commercial denialism is quite another because in the long run, it screws the very people it claims to be protecting.
“Screws” ’em, eh, with “commercial denialism”?
Well let’s just wait until summer, when the blackouts come, and we’ll see then who gets screwed by a genuine variety of “commercial denialism” — the sort that has hugely inflated by government policy and edict the cost of an easily obtained commodity ideal for firing boilers and making lots of cheap and useful electricity. It won’t be Aly who gets screwed, of course. Even if written in pencil by the light of candle and delivered via darkened streets on a bicycle, Fairfax will still be running his columns. The Age and SMH don’t have too many readers left, but their editors, even if they know nothing else (least of all a story worth reporting), appreciate how much their audience enjoys a lovely bowl of green nonsense.
Mind you, when things do go dark, Aly might find it both convenient and diplomatic to explore another topic. Just like the imaginary threat of CO2, there will always be those phantom legions of Islamophobic hijab-tuggers to fall back on.
Roger Franklin is the editor of Quadrant Online. He enjoys air-conditioning on hot days, but has accepted that he will need to hire a punkah wallah for Melbourne’s next summer.
Many have the gift of the dis, but you Mr Franklin set it apart as an art. Thank you
I would second that comment Mark Smith.
A joy to read.
I want my punkah wallah to have a degree in medicine or at least IT.
The signs are all there! No doubt about it! Jesus is coming back!
The laws of physics and chemistry will no longer apply!
Quick! Strip mine everything everywhere!
Good on you Ian, you on the road to epiphany.
In Australia we call it open cut.
And a witty response would be an ‘upper cut’.
In early November 2016 from memory I was driving along listening to an interview on 3AW with the thrilled Lily D’Ambrosio, who was on her way to announce to the Hazelwood workers, the loyal CFMEU Union members and the breathless press that Hazelwood would be closing. She explained that it was more than 50 years old, EXPENSIVE and was the ‘dirtiest’ coal-fired power station in Australia. Even for a Labor Minister three ‘factual’ errors (or is it ‘fictional’?) in three statements is right up there with the best as she was announcing a win-win for the planet, with just the collateral damage to the economy, the loss of skilled people who worked at Hazelwood, the impoverishment of their families and the collapse of local towns dependent on their spending. Let’s face it, if you have ever visited a ghost town like Burra Burra, Coolgardie or Cossack, they have a mythical and historical appeal. Unfortunately the families of these places are not mythical, just impoverished as the value of their properties sank to zero.
When measuring short run comparative production costs, Hazelwood was the second cheapest coal-fired electricity generator in Oz (beaten only by Loy Yang next door {built in 1984}). Hazelwood was cheap, efficient and non-polluting as it emitted only steam and the wondrous life-giving CO2.
As I said in an email in February when SA went into blackout:
“And the Andrews Government was proud to announce the loss of 750 jobs with the closure of Hazelwood in March. There goes 20% of the Victorian electricity generating capacity and 100% of the interconnector to SA, so that means NSW will have to pick up the load. I hope they do not, or cannot, as we need to keep SA as a Petri Dish Experiment demonstrating the Green Dream.
I suppose that with the attention span of a goldfish and the brains of a jellyfish it is not worth pointing out that during last week’s Cyclone Debbie and for 5-7 days thereafter neither wind, nor solar in Queensland produced a single Mw of electricity. There are only two dots in this picture, but can Jay, Sarah, Dangerous Dan or all but a few of our ‘water can be made to flow uphill’ politicians join the dots and draw the correct conclusion? On past performance, the evidence is not very inspiring.
Roll on the green insanity, it is fun watching it from my all-electric air-conditioned condo with a monthly electricity bill of $50. Oh, did I mention that 30km away is a huge (and I mean HUGE) coal-oil-gas-fired power station supplying cheap reliable electricity to more people than there are in Oz. It is being expanded as I write. Where in Oz is there such a mythical beast? There isn’t, so I left the asylum and moved overseas to where sensible people live and work in a vibrant and expanding economy. When Oz could no longer ‘hide the decline’ (of its economy, culture, security and way of life) it was time to move.”
I am temporarily in Oz to finalise the closure of the businesses I built over 20 years. Today I booked my hydrocarbon fuelled flight in June back to my chosen home. I thought the Cory Party was the last chance for conservative Oz, but my offer to help organise it in Victoria has been rebuffed as I am too rude in my approach (plus add my own view that I am also frustrated and unsure of what this new movement actually stands for). I should confess that my Myers-Briggs Test rated my greatest failing as ‘shows a very low toleration for people he perceives as fools or foolish’. Maybe it is just me, but I considered that a strength …
So, the political spin has begun with the Minister now blaming the French owners for the decision to close Hazelwood (while conveniently not mentioning that the brown coal royalties were increased and taxes for emitting CO2 are the real cause of the financial losses.
Jay had NOTHING to do with SA ‘leading the way’ to North Korean darkness; and the closure of Hazelwood was NOTHING to do with it being pushed over a cliff by the progressive far-Left Andrews Governments tax policies.
I have to say, my decision to become a spectator in the demise of Victoria is less stressful than I thought it would be. What was stressful was watching Victorian industries failing or being regulated out of existence, the interminable rise of culture-enriching crime, education becoming more Orwellian and less educational by the month, plus our parliaments deliberately (like the Titanic) setting rules that are INTENDED to drag the rest of Oz beneath the waves with the South Australian bow.
Frankly, the decline of Oz, with its culture being replaced by fear and terrorist Islamic pressure, of our sovereignty being deliberately lost, the increasing difficulty of doing business here and my rising inability to politely tolerate the treason I perceive means that my decision to move overseas and make that our permanent home and regard Oz as my intermittent holiday home (somewhere to visit now and again) is one about which I no longer have any doubts.
Note that my Federal Member will not receive this as at his request I no longer include him in any emails. You gotta know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em.
I have other things to do, so the machine has won, so thanks to my MBTI assessment being correct, I fold.
My half completed home is 10m from the sea and 1.5m above high tide, so that tells you what I think of the greatest scam ever perpetrated on humanity.
Which country have you chosen ? I’ve examined the idea a few times for much the same reasons as you list. There are three (3) criteria in my view, all of them equally important: language (English *must* be widespread, not necessarily the lingua franca); taxation regime; temperate climate. This last criterion gives the clue as to why I haven’t left – circumbobulate the globe east-west in the temperate zones for both northern and southern hemispheres and find countries that satisfy the other two criteria. I’ve pretty well drawn a blank.
As for the actual topic of this article – Wally Weed. He’s so egregiously stupid and dishonest that any comment is an ad hom by necessity. He is a perfect example of the vacuous din that the MSM constantly make and with which it attracts large, stupefied audiences.
I shifted to Bali, Indonesia, 4 days after my daughter turned 18 – “I’ve done my job, your life is now your responsibility” (well, apart from no rent….) – and have had zero regrets, but the climate would not suit you, although it does the many thousands who have done as I – pleasant 30 max all year round.
Comical Aly surely just joshing.
He couldn’t possibly be serious, could he?
You know,I’m glad I’m old. I won’t have to put up with the farce that my country has become for too many more years. But what really gets up my nose is that my generation and all the generations that came before me worked hard,made sacrifices and some even gave their lives to make us the envy of most of the world.I wonder how we survived without the Waleed Alys of the world telling us that all the things that gave us a comfortable life were bad. Every time I see that smug face I get an overwhelming urge to give it the slap that his parents should have given him – often!
I remember thinking years ago, when we first started exporting gas to Asia ( for about 9 cents a litre and we were paying something like 55cents at the time), that it was like when we sold our butter to Britain for 25 cents a pound and we were paying 50cents. Why are we paying more for our own produce? I thought exports were calculated AFTER the home market had been satisfied. Silly me.
The continual lying and sneering by deadheads like Aly, Weatherall, Andrews and company just make my blood boil. How have we come to this? Maybe because of the march of the non usefully employed through our unions, governments, schools and universities. And maybe we let it happen because we haven’t spoken up sooner before their nation destroying ideology took hold. I still can’t believe that there are people stupid enough to give these morons credence.
There endeth the whinge!
IanL,
My new home fits two out of three of your criteria as I choose to live in one of the warmer parts, thogh cooler and temperate is available away from the coast. Also, it ha:
4. very low crime,
5. costs me under $50K/year to live well (including paying the maid above award wages).
6. has every facility I desire (clubs, restaurants, brilliant 100Mb+ internet {I use Netflix, Foxtel and ‘Expat TV’ with 50+ international channels (for $25/month) so I can choose to watch the ABC [but rarely do]}.
7. reliable coal-fired electricity (take that Ian MacBot),
8. clean water from the tap, excellent shopping, good wine and local food, etc. My sunset watching ritual is a large cold glass of Chilean Sauvignon Blanc to wash down my French Camembert.
9. Excellent roads and transport (which I use frequently as I tour the places I have not yet been to.
10. Do I miss my Australian friends and their company? Not really as there is a regular stream visiting for a week at a time.
11. It is worth mentioning that Bank deposits are not taxed, so I have put in enough money to live on the interest alone. The government was screwed by the IMF so it decided it would encourage saving and reduce taxes. I am happy to help by moving money from Australia to here and spending my earnings in the local economy.
12. One downside is the pressure the government is exerting on me to reopen a business here. The offer is becoming hard to refuse, though I will not be doing so for the money, but because it is nice to be ‘valued’ and not regarded as an ‘enemy of the people’.
Thank goodness Cory turned down my offer …
Where I am is no secret, any many know it, but the trolls and MacBots of this world do not. However, Roger can send you my email address if you are serious about moving to heaven while still alive and leaving Oz to the ministrations and mercies of Waleed, MacBot, Adam, Sarah, Richard and its future Chinese/islamic/UN owners. Poor fellow my country indeed.
en passant,
Can you please let me email you, too? I am seriously worried about where Australia is headed.
I’m afraid it might be Bali
Bali is becoming even better – well-behaved, polite, respectful Chinese have overtaken Australians as the numerically most common tourists although most of the drunkenness, public vomiting, foul language, rudeness and incompetent motorcycle riding is still “owned” by Australians, but it’s highly concentrated in a few areas that most ex-pats avoid (and so many Australians think of as Bali – a bit like thinking Wilcannia is Australia).
If Australia goes down the proverbial financial drain, fewer, hopefully, will visit – the dole won’t stretch as far as it now does. Why Indonesia waived the visa fee for Australians last year is a mystery – it still usually costs $200 or more for an Indonesian to get a visa to visit Australia and it did not deter any “quality” tourists but gave the bogans $45 less to spend on booze.
You could be describing inner Sydney any night of the week with your description of what is “owned” by Australians.
Is this the brave new world that the Left has given us? Legitimate question.
Discussing today’s world with a mate dating back to our youth who has chosen to live and work (as an upholsterer/sail-maker, so he can operate with minimum contact with others) in a large iron workshop on 30 acres in the bush – rainwater, generator and mobile telephony – and he mused how arguably we used to drink too much, but we weren’t idiots like today’s youths. Maybe it’s drugs, maybe it’s the “brave new world”.
Another mate says the problem is “no-one knows their place anymore”. That leads to the lack of respect for authority that results in police being expected to be vilely abused and spat at but not react in what I think an appropriate manner, and teachers being subjected to terrible behavior, abuse and physical threats and assault (and Australian bogans urinating on Hindu shrines in Bali).
In Oxford Street Sydney a few years back a young man yelled abuse and spat in the direction of a walloper who’d had enough, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck with one hand, opened the back of a paddy wagon with the other and threw him in. I spontaneously applauded; good chance the cop was disciplined and just as well I was the witness, not some luvvie.
A teacher, also a friend from our youth, was on yard duty when 3 well-known bullies had bailed up a well-known nerd. Mate stepped between them and said “Back off”. One stepped forward, mate put his hand on his chest and firmly pushed him away. Pushed, not hit, intervening to prevent bullying. Upshot, punk goes home and whimpers to Mummy Dear (what sort of snowflake does that?), who is quick smart in the Principal’s office complaining, Principal carpets mate and says he has to undergo Anger Management training, mate refuses further yard duty, transfers to a county school at the end of the year (not wanting to disadvantage his students – he loved teaching and was made a Maths Senior Master at just 24, but preferred teaching and took a salary cut and returned full-time to the classroom) and took his pension as soon as he turned 60, albeit with many more years of good teaching in him.
What strikes me as particularly different today is the “coward punch/king hit”, the kicking when down, the group assaults on a single person. We had fights when young, but they were “honourably” fought – “dukes up”, one on one, go down and the other steps back, yield and the victor stops immediately. Disagreement sorted out, pecking order established, on with life. We had boxing gloves in Primary School (farming country town) and the teachers turned a blind eye while we sorted things out. In early primary school my daughter asked “How come boys have a punch-up and minutes later are playing together, but girls have an argument and months later are still on about it?”.
Honourably conducted biffos serve a valuable purpose for males (like Packer and Gyngell – why did that justify a team of cops, interviewing neighbours, convictions, irrelevant fines?).
Sounded like Probolinggo in your first post, but “clean water” throws me a little; certainly it’s not potable there, but it’s not dirty, so it can be called clean!
How about: “I drink the water straight from the tap without boiling it and have never been sick from doing so. Sometimes I sterilise it with alcohol blended in Scotland …”
As a woman called Karen, who regularly responds to online articles on XYZ, frequently says: ‘This is your best ever post’. Whether or not this is your best ever, Roger, it is both scathing and entertaining. I love the extended Normie metaphor and the slop poured into his bowl.
It’s ironic, the demolition job you have done on that total prat, Waleed Aly, probably would have caused Sky News to shut down entirely, had one of their commentators posted it. I eagerly switched on the telly to see how ‘Outsiders’ might be coping without their star performer, only to find the whole programme had been axed. I spent the next five minutes, of what would have been viewing time, rattling off yet another complaint to Sky contact, despite the fact I know they won’t bother to reply (they didn’t with my first one, sent immediately after hearing about his dismissal).
Listening to him on Luke Grant’s 2GB Saturday morning show, I gather he’s received several offers of employment already, a couple being from ‘start up’ on-line publications. He didn’t say which these are, so hopefully some Quadrant reader may know and can let the rest of us know how to reconnect with Australia’s future Trump.
Just ditch Foxtel. We have. Lots more interesting things on U-Tube and Netflix.
That’s the problem Jody – like Roger I’m a hopeless hostage to Foxtel’s footy monopoly and effectively their prisoner for the duration of the season. Unfortunately there is no reasonable alternative otherwise I’d consider it. I note also there is Bolt and Credlin who seem to maintain their shows/make regular appearances. One hopes with the demise of ‘Outsiders’ (if that is what they’ve done after sacking Latham) that the few other credible conservative voices remain. One would have to question the sanity of the Sky exec who decided to axe the program. At least Rohan Dean makes regular appearances on Bolt – I wonder if he could or would invite Boofhead back on his show as a guest? Besides we need more than just the erudite Mr Franklin to serve it up to that oily little sophist twit Waleed Ali – we need to see it on the box and Sky programs like Bolt still remain the only place that’s going to happen.
Mark Latham has set up a Facebook Page appealing for donations to set up a website ‘Mark Lathams Outsiders’.
I’m supporting that effort.
Good comments all. As someone who decided not to do Latin and Ancient Greek at high school, as I did not see my future as an ambulance chaser or a big pharma pill pusher, I was regarded as a bit slow (not recognising my being for unusual reasons about 18 months younger than most in my year) So I did Geography, got my first compliment from a teacher ever, which fired my youthful enthusiasm as distinct from many thrashings as a small boy, from teachers who I irritated, and went on to do Economic Geography for Honours and got much to my surprise First Class Honours and First in the State of NSW Leaving Certificate Exams the ripe old age of 15. Why mention this? Just to let you know I’m no slouch in such subjects. I have a passion for both knowledge and truth. But those who have gifts should share the benefits with deserving others or the gift is wasted. I believe you are very likely deserving. (Forgot, topped that off with a degree in Economics and Finance)
I would like to provide you with some facts which you can use to demolish any opponent at a dinner party in a few sentences. Even the odd idiot professor.
Australia, the island continent, is in the middle of the Great Southern Ocean, is fairly remote from most of the major world population centres and markets. It is situated in the Horse Latitudes, which in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres contain most of the worlds great deserts. It is the driest continent. Our soil tends to be poor and tired, because the continent is the oldest which has not been underwater for aeons, the imparter of fertility, whilst most others have. In inland places around the old inland sea, there is excellent soil but this is useless without water. Seventy percent of the Southern Hemisphere is ocean and the rest is land but that includes Antarctica. Seventy percent of the Northern hemisphere is land, and there is the great bulk of the worlds human population.
The seas around Australia are not rich in fish. So in a highly competitive world what competitive advantages do we have that we can trade on to survive and thrive? Like our sister nation Canada, we are blessed with an abundance of mineral resources. Much of Australia’s wealth is hidden under a 200 metre layer of dust and sand. It is very difficult to find.
But we have one big advantage. Energy. Australia has the worlds most prolific resources of coal in East and Central Australia and excellent resources of natural gas, and the worlds largest resources of uranium. Over half the global seaborne trade in coal comes from Australia. Newcastle NSW is the worlds largest coal port by exports. A stranded coal deposit has been recently discovered in central Australia that is so big that it is larger than the resources of the rest of the world combined. Some of the seams of this top grade coking coal are 200 metres thick, something unimaginable in the rest of the world. In Russia’s Donbass for example it is 1-1.5 metres thick.
Adding all, Australia is the worlds largest energy exporter, by energy value if those exports, which is the energy base of the huge growth in the economies of China, Japan, Korea and so on. Japan and Korea have almost no native energy resources.
In the middle of all this, according to recent charts I have seen Australia now has the second most expensive electricity in the world, and is close to the dearest. This was not always the case. In Queensland the largest state supplier of coal, there is not one coal fired power station in north Queensland.
We have not one significant nuclear power station, and are now in NSW running short of gas for domestic supply. It is becoming increasingly expensive.
I put it sincerely that we have endured some of the most stupid and incompetent governance in this respect of any country in the OECD. We should have the worlds cheapest and most reliable power in the major cities, especially electricity. Then at least would be an incentive for international corporations to base world scale productive facilities requiring cheap power here, thus providing a fair supply of well paid employment.
The demented popular mania about carbon dioxide is now proven to be utterly absurd, but many will not be up with the real science. Even if it were true, in our isolated oceanic location and low population Australia makes almost precisely zero difference to any global carbon accounts. Carbon dioxide cannot hold heat, nor can any gas, it is essential for plant life and is at unhealthily low levels historically speaking. I could go on for hours. Our politics is governed by ideas that are almost at comic book level of simplicity. Coal is not the enemy, it is our best friend.
Coal has no future? The idea is breathtakingly stupid. As just one example, Japan is in meltdown over the global scale disaster that is unfolding at Fukushima nuclear power station. Billions of tons of highly contaminated water are being used of necessity to try to cool the melting cores to stop an explosion that could level half Japan and poison the rest. All the five reactors are now involved. It is going into the Pacific Ocean and is poisoning it all the way to the USA. It will go much further. So Japan has shut down most of its nuclear power. It has announce from a top government level that it is returning to coal. About 45 brand new large scale coal fired power stations are to be built. Much of that coal will likely come from the most economically and qualitatively attractive supplier, Australia. It will require both brown and coking coal. From memory, China is building new plants running into the thousands, this time with proper particulate pollution control. Electric cars are on the rise, and these need to be charged from the output of electric power stations. Wind and solar energy are only economic with major subsidies. Australia cannot afford to do this with a small tax base. Coal is the answer and Australia has it in large quantity. Much is near ports, and ships are so large today and so efficient that distance is no longer the problem it was especially around the Pacific basin.
It is time our political enthusiasts took their blinkers off and learnt about which side our bread is buttered on and the utter nonsense of the global warming mega fraud, for that is all it is. Don’t listen to what the rest of the world says, watch what it does. What it is doing is going for coal and gas. The mega disaster of Fukushima is waking many up to the potential mega hazards of nuclear power in a natural disaster, while a coal fired or a gas fired one can be turned on and off with a switch. Coal fired is reliable, scalable, cheap both to build and run. Australia can score many home runs with this but it does require a body politic with a lot of nous and a minimum of quack “enviro” stupidity.
As for “Wally” Ali, and the ABC get out from your little ninny sinecures and do your damned homework for a change. As for the Greens so called, stop pretending and do something you all understand. Maybe do ironing or drive a truck.
Bryce M: An absolute classic of a QO comment.
Well Bryce, you have done that in spades: or shovels or posthole diggers, or something.
Oh Wow!
Well, if you say so, Bryce. “Almost precisely 0” = 0!…!! A major contribution to mathematics there!
The Venusians might disagree, but let’s not be distracted by that.
Bryce M, we need you in Federal Parliament. You are cabinet material, at least!
Why not contact Pauline right away? Forget Malcolm in the Middle (or should that be Muddle?)
If not there, then in the CSIRO! And you will have publishers of textbooks of physics and chemistry brawling in the streets to get you signed up! Not to mention universities!
Well, that certainly proves Arrhenius and his fellow chemists wrong! And the physicists too! And the IPCC! Quacks, the lot of them! They have never understood that physical, chemical or for that matter historical truth is based on the immediate short-term needs of the economy, and particularly of those in the coal business, from mining machinery operators up to magnates. Fools!
And solar… And wind… And geothermal…. Coming up on the outside rail…
And it will last forever! Forever, I tell you. Forever!. And it is good for nothing else than furnace fodder. Forget road tar. Forget chemicals…
I always knew that the environment was at last analysis a duckyard. Dirty birds; even worse than chooks!
Bryce M: Well done sir!