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Exactly the same news cycle, irony in print. One “filthy” CO2-spewing coal power station is to be kept operating beyond its scheduled closing date of August 2025. While, at the same time, one “cleaner” natural gas extraction project is delayed by the courts, yet again. Though, as for the latter, this time around, neither the Rainbow Serpent nor the Crocodile Man figure in proceedings. Small mercies.
As to coal power, it remains disconcertingly reliable, affordable and connected. And that is proving to be a problem for those who would rid us of this epitome of evil. NSW’s Premier Minns and his Labor climate warriors wish and hope to run NSW on intermittent sun and wind, with back up from hydro and batteries, and in so doing achieve greenhouse gas emission reductions of 50 per cent by 2030, 70 per cent by 2035, and the nirvana of net zero by 2050. Of course, it just ain’t gonna happen as the desperation to keep Eraring power station open shows. Dusty Springfield explained it melodiously.
Wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’
Plannin’ and dreamin’ each night of his [emission-less] charms
That won’t get you into his [net-zero] arms.
Quelle surprise, NSW’s fragile new-beaut energy system can’t cope with losing a further 25 percent of its reliable power. Eraring is Australia’s largest coal power station, providing 2,922 megawatts of electricity from four 720 megawatt coal-fired generators and one 42 megawatt diesel generator. It is located approximately 120kms north of Sydney. Originally built and owned by the state government, it was sold to the listed company Origin Energy in 2013.
Test question for high-school children: How many wind turbines and solar panels would it take to replace Eraring? Answer: More than an infinite number because, however many there are, none produce any power at all on windless nights (or on windless, heavily-clouded days for that matter).
Origin tells us that it is “committed to a cleaner, smarter energy future.” Of course it is. Thus it decided in February 2022 to signal to the powers that be that Eraring would be retired early in August 2025, and a big battery installed on the site in its stead. Consider the battery.
The battery will store two hours’ worth of 460 megawatts of electricity before it has to be recharged. If you are wondering how the battery compares to Eraring, which Origin studiously avoids assessing, here’s the answer. The battery will discharge less than one-sixth of the power Eraring generates each and every hour and day, and for just two hours before it expires. Furthermore, it is a truth seldom acknowledged by today’s woke energy companies, a flat battery must be in want of a charge.
Why Eraring’s closure and the battery are bracketed together can be explained only as a symptom of climate-cult makebelieve. Is it lying? I am not sure. It may be delusional. As George Constanza says, it’s not a lie if you believe it. Once truth is defenestrated, lies and delusions fill the void and it can be hard to pick one from the other.
Santos acquired the Narrabri gas project way back in November 2011. I recall, some years ago, Kevin Gallagher, the boss of Santos, saying that he had optimistically thought the approval process would go fairly smoothly because all of the gas was destined for domestic consumption. I was wrong, he said. And here we are in 2024, still sans gas. This is Santos in October 2021, again being optimistic, will they never learn:
Santos welcomes the judicial review decision of the NSW Land and Environment Court on the Narrabri Gas Project, upholding the decision of the NSW Independent Planning Commission…Santos Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Kevin Gallagher said while the legal process had pushed the timelines for the project back 12 months, Santos was committed to bringing much needed domestic gas to New South Wales.
Now, in a seemingly never-ending conga-line of legal obstacles, a group of traditional owners, the Gomeroi people, appealed a decision of the National Native Title Tribunal (NNTT) to give the project the go-ahead. And when did the NNTT get involved, and what’s it got to do with it anyway? Who knows! I don’t know. In any event, two out of the three judges opined that the NNTT had not properly considered the effect of the project in generating greenhouses gases (GHGs) and, I suppose, thereby endangering the world.
All hydro-carbon fuels and related processes, on which the modern world is absolutely dependent, produce so-called GHGs. We’d be without adequate food, clothing, transport and shelter without GHGs. More than most countries, Australia rides on the back of GHG emissions. Apropos mining and agricultural exports, it’s an absurdity, akin to a national economic suicide note, to think we can put a legal lid on developments which produce GHGs. Judges getting woker begets a country getting broker.
Finally, another high-school test question: Australia is responsible for huge amounts of GHGs. What is the only possible solution? Answer: close Australia down.
If you are paywalled out of reading the link in:
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power station is to be kept operating beyond its scheduled closing date of August 2025.
try:
https://todayspaper.theaustralian.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=8d673b2a-17e4-40a1-8c69-544c499c284c&share=true
” NSW’s Premier Minns and his Labor climate warriors wish and hope to run NSW on intermittent sun and wind, with back up from hydro and batteries,”
Snowy 2 Hydro will pump water to the top of the hill using ‘excess’ electricity. Ha!
Yes, but, Peter — none of those First Nations folk would think of using any power derived from fossil fuels. After all, they all lead traditional lifestyles, living on Country, practising Culture in harmony with Nature and according to their Dreaming (or Tjukurrpa, or Alcheringa, or whatever it now is).
Note to the Editor: Nothing speaks more loudly of the philosophical bankruptcy of your ‘conservative’ position than your lack of willingness to post my comments; which are always in support of mainstream science. If they were philosophically weak, your ‘conservative’ followers could have a merry time indeed exposing their flaws; followed by devastating discussion of same.
But clearly you want no such discussion. I wonder why? Maybe one or two of your ever-dwindling antiscientific following could come up with an answer. But they are cut out of the discussion too.
The curses of ‘conservatives’ against those who brought those who came before us out of the Dark Ages and into modernity must be audible on Mars. (NB: not however, on Venus, with its surface temperature equal to around the melting point of lead, thanks in turn to its huge atmospheric load of heat-trapping CO2.)
Ian, as I’ve told you previously, you’re a relatively sensible man on all topics but global warming. You rabbit on, citing ratbags and charlatans and main chancers with their noses in the climate trough. When brought to account, you then simply repeat your original furphies.
If you are determined to extrude more warmist ordure, please do so at The Turnbull Guardian. They love strident nonsense there and you’ll feel right at home.
Here you remain free to share your thoughts on everything except the climate con.
Without wishing to start a debate about Venus, but just as a point of information.
The partial pressure of CO2 in the Venusian atmosphere is 100 times our atmospheric pressure.
The partial pressure of the trace gas CO2 in our atmosphere is minuscule.
Unlike Venus, biological and geological processes inexorably strip our atmosphere of CO2 leading to failure of plant life to thrive as it gets starved of available atmospheric CO2.
This reference requires careful reading and rereading to understand.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/10/03/svensmark-on-venus-mystery-of-the-unknown-uv-absorber-solved/
This reference requires careful reading and rereading to understand.
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Intense article indeed – I struggled.
Ian, you really should rethink your comment about Venus. There is more going on there than just the proportion of CO2. Venus’s atmosphere is 93 times the mass of that of the earth, and the surface pressure has more than 90 times sea level pressure. The high pressure broadens the absorption lines of CO2, which means that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can absorb a much greater amount of infrared light. If you go to altitudes on Venus where the pressure is at earth levels (about 50km up) the temperature is around 20 to 37 degrees C, which is where it would be expected to be simply due to being closer to the Sun if it had Earth’s atmosphere! And yet it’s mostly CO2 even at those altitudes, and far higher than Earth would have even if all fossil fuels were burned.
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Actual air density gets ignored in this. Yet it shouldn’t. It’s why the tops of the Andies are snow capped at the equator whilst the temperatures are high at sea level.
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Claims about earth’s temperatures are mostly about what the feedback mechanisms are. Specifically it’s assumed that water vapour will enter the stratosphere (where it won’t condense to form clouds) and will enhance warming. That’s where these figures come from.
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I worry about ‘mainstream science’. As a concept it is reminiscent of the supposed ‘scientific consensus’ which is invariably weaponised against dissenters from popular opinion on matters such as ‘carbon emissions’ and the Covid ‘pandemic’.
There are two problems here. The first is that there rarely exists an actual concensus among scientists. During Covid, for example, it was claimed that lockdowns would eliminate the pandemic by ‘stopping the spread’. Yet there was, at the time, no scientific consensus on this subject – unless it was the opposite of what the authorities and the media claimed. Michael Levitt, a Nobel prizewiiner, repeatedly refuted the modeling behind the policy of lockdowns. A group of distinguished experts in infectious diseases published a manifesto against lockdowns only to be dismissed by the authorities as ‘fringe epidemiologists’. John Ioannidis, the most cited medical scientist in history, made numerous attempts to persuade the authorities that they were on the wrong track, eventually declaring in exasperation “lockdowns destroy everything”. But proponents of lockdowns managed to sideline these scientists and create the false impression that there was a scientific consensus behind their policies.
The second problem with the idea of ‘mainstream science’ is the well-known fact that it is nearly always wrong: we know from history that major scientific advances are usually the result of a minority insight that goes against the textbooks of the day. There is no essential virtue in being ‘mainstream’ in science.
Thankyou Roger. On most subjects I M’s views are salient, but on global warm…sorry,climate chan…. sorry “climate Catastrophe ” , he is a fellow traveller. The greatest hoax (the Plandemic comes in second) ever foisted on humanity, Marxism through the back door in order to punish the West for succeeding. The void filled by the collapse of communism, with all the self-righteous hitching their wagons to this unprovable Trojan horse. Sorry Ian, cite as many stat’s as you want , my 63 years on this planet tells me the only warming is coming from the hot air expelled by the left , for that is the genesis of this mother of all frauds.
Darwinian evolutionism is the grand-daddy of modern hoaxes. It stripped the modern world of meaning and logic and left us with mere socialism, and was perhaps the greatest and most successful exercise in mass brainwashing ever accomplished. Brilliant really, when you consider that it is nothing more than the repackaging of ancient superstition as mock-science – that chance and chaos proceeding from nature are the ultimate creative force. But it provides a space for humanist elites to set themselves up as the gods of order and ‘unity’.
Apropos Venus. Point of information: Atmosphere of Mars 95% CO2; average temperature = minus 60⁰C. What does this mean? Nothing.
In fact although the Martian atmosphere is less than 1% Earth’s it actually has more CO2 in total than Earth does.
They can all go to buggery. I have enough panels and need only lay in one more battery to enhance the two already in the box. That will happen in the next three months. Then a sparkie to install the necessary hardware to protect those upstream from my junction box for when my generator needs to run during the high demand periods of the day, or at whatever extraordinary time is necessary. Of course, the Guv’mint will rush in to prevent me from running my generator, or in some other manner, prevent me from, cooling or warming or cooking or bathing or washing or eating or relieving or driving or……well, just going on living. I will not, in any manner whatsoever, assist them in what they are doing. They are lying to us, lying to us from the common man’s level, and on up through all the many layers of unnecessary Guv’mint, and yes, right up to the mongrel in the pms office. I am angry and I believe a lot of other people are angry. I can sense it, I can see it in our villages, towns and cities. They are angry and will soon be ready for a fight if someone can’t turn this disgusting mob of people who have been lying to us for many, many years into fertiliser and set about repairing this once great and friendly society of ours.
Have to say great post PH ! My sentiments exactly.
Great reply Paul Harrison and I hope you feel better after the rant. We are all lecturer and abused by so called experts who shout answers at us, but to the wrong fundamental questions. Their obtuseness causes the anger. Keep up the good work.
Sorry Paul, AEMO has declared your ‘Consumer Energy Resources’ (your batteries you paid for) to be theirs, they are a a’sunk cost’, so they don’t need to include it in Kean and Bowen’s ‘cheapest power’.
You will be forced to connect them to AEMO’s ‘smart meter’ which will drain them all, including your EV, when AEMO needs the power, not you.
Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.
Chris Blackout Bowen was at it again today telling the Opposition they were dreaming when they said they could have a nuke up and running in ten years. I suppose Chris was thinking that his union buddies would take that long to have a shave but over in a third world country (or is It?) called Abu Dhabi they have brought a 5.6 GW nuke on line in 8 years. Having forgone democracy the resident boss says do it and it gets done not by union labour but by Filipinos and other hard working foreigners..
Quote: What is the only possible solution? Answer: close Australia down.
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Today is Nyepi in Bali, I experienced it years ago – total 24 hour close down of shops, airport, sea port, TV, radio. No lights allowed, even inside your house, no cars except emergency (without sirens), no leaving the home, streets patrolled and anyone out walking arrested……
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Reason, simplified, it’s the day the evil spirits return to earth to do, well, evil, but when they see no signs of life they just fly over.
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People mock that, but that belief results in a one day shut down that arguably does good for a lot of people (I benefited from experiencing it), vastly different to the beliefs and actions leading to the result PS writes of and easier for me to understand how people can hold that belief.
Thank you, PS. Another high-school test question for your list: What is the Superpower Institute?
According to the ABC Nightlife site: “the Superpower Institute has been established with the aim of changing the narrative on the economy and climate change in Australia. While Australia has active debates on productivity and tax – usually no mention is made of climate change which the Institute argues should be central to both topics.
Joining Philip Clark to explain what the SI aims to do last Wednesday was “the Chair Rod Sims, who is now a Professor at the ANU, but spent many years as Chair of the ACCC, and Director of the Superpower Institute, Ross Garnaut, who was a former Ambassador to China and was principal economic adviser to Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke in the 1980s.
The interview illustrated well how rational folk can be so beguiled by the fantasies of Greentopia (cartoon above). Neither of them dared question the key premise of their CC Bogeyman. I texted a comment:
“The notion that anyone can create a Goldilocks climate in Australia and the planet using RE, wind, solar, etc., is so fanciful yet promoters, activists, governments and others – including the Minister for CC – continue to push it as a practical solution to an imagined problem.”
The climate cult are pathetically uninformed. They say there is an emergency and I would ask, “What emergency?” I wonder if the purveyors of this nonsense have any idea of basic physic.
CO2 has a negligible effect on climate. All the warming due to CO2 gas in the atmosphere has already occurred as the gas is now saturated. The warming effect of each molecule of CO2 decreases significantly and logarithmically as its concentration increases in the atmosphere. For a doubling of the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere, there is a theoretical temperature rise of only 0.7 degrees C, a temperature change that is not discernible to anyone.
This is well known to IPCC scientists but they would rather invoke large positive feedback to their models that increase their warming to 3 degrees C or more for a doubling of CO2.
We are currently in a CO2 drought. Fortunately, because of fossil fuels and/or suboceanic degassing major benefits have been brought to agriculture and forestry by increasing photosynthesis, and, accordingly feeding the masses on our planet.
The great Professor Will Happer puts the frenzy and religiosity of the climate, demonising the life gas, CO2, down to a series of behavioural anomalies of human nature. They are the Noble Lie (Plato), the Political Lie, Ignorance, Stupidity, and Greed. https://www.youtube.com/wat…. I reckon he has it about right.
The Narrabri saga is appalling, but it’s not just the courts – I stress “not just”. No courts have the powers of Solomon, making whatever orders and decisions they like. In this case the Federal Court was simply construing legislation. Parliament put the legislation in place.
This is not to say that the majority decision was the right decision. I think it was the wrong decision, and the net result is quite appalling – Narrabri, 13 years and counting. It’s madness. But If these sagas are not to be repeated, the starting point is Parliament.
As usual, the Left’s walk does not come close to matching its talk – From The daily Telegraph 12/3/24:
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Climate warrior and Greens leader Adam Bandt has slugged taxpayers just short of a million dollars in expenses in a single year, including spending $204,000 on printing costs.
Also on his eyebrow-raising expenses list was $23,000 on two private jet flights and another $12,000 on a government-provided vehicle and petrol allowance.
Mr Bandt, whose Greens party runs on a platform of climate change prevention, forked out $23,000 on two private jet trips during the 2022 election campaign.
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Even more at:
https://todayspaper.dailytelegraph.com.au/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=16a996b2-46a8-4157-afcc-3b14cbd2cc51&share=true
There are more than 400 nuclear power plants in operation in 32 countries around the world including Iran in the Middle East, but in the backwater known as Australia, we don’t have even ONE nuclear power station which would give us essential reliable energy.
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And don’t forget there is only ONE planet so ALL countries on this planet Earth should have to reach ZERO carbon dioxide emissions if the Left’s theory is correct. But, NO, China can do whatever it wants and the Left says nothing, of course, because they are Communists too and the whole Climate Change, Climate warming scam is to weaken the Free Democratic countries of the West so that the Chinese Communist CCP can have the advantage over all of us.
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Australia gives the CCP our intellectual property and large swathes of our land and rivers. Further Australia sells our CCP enemy our coal, our iron ore, our gas, our huge supplies of uranium, but the Australia Government REFUSES to allow Australians to use those same energy resources. We are told we must use bird slaughtering, non-biodegradable, visually and noise polluting wind turbines that cost the earth connecting to the electrical grid with copper wire going everywhere; as well as solar panels made in China, which, together with the wind turbines, are taking over hectares of our once beautiful countryside and turning it into a ‘metal’ jungle.
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Australians are told we must reach ZERO carbon emissions but the Australian Government gives our enemy, the CCP, free rein to belch out as much black soot, poisonous sulphides, carbon dioxide and other pollutants as it wants. China is the most polluted country on the Planet and couldn’t care less about net ZERO. There is no doubt about it, Australia is a basket case.
My comments are not an apology for China’s politics or behaviour. However, at least they are developing high-efficiency state-of-the-art coal plants that scrub out nearly all toxic gases and particulate matter so virtually pure, clean CO2 gas is released. Their cities are much less polluted as a result with the planet’s agriculture industries and forests being the benefactors evinced by a 15% greening of planet Earth over the last 50 years, according to NOAA.
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Governments and the IPCC have too much political capital (and, no doubt money) invested to abandon the Green Dream of Net Zero. They are certainly making it easy with our taxpayer-funded dollars to create new-found billionaires and carpetbaggers, and let us not forget the research community who are ultimately funded by governments to the tune of US$1.3 trillion.
geoff rankin, you said, “However, at least they are developing high-efficiency state-of-the-art coal plants that scrub out nearly all toxic gases and particulate matter so virtually pure, clean CO2 gas is released. Their cities are much less polluted as a result with the planet’s agriculture industries and forests being the benefactors evinced by a 15% greening of planet Earth over the last 50 years, according to NOAA.”
Short answer, well if they can do it with our imported coal, why can’t we? Australia has got the coal, but the Australian governments are wilfully denying us reliable electricity leading to black-outs which will endanger our commerce, our industries, our domestic use. Also lives are at risk with black-outs.
China may have more pollution in total of all countries (courtesy in good part to its massive population, but is far from the top in rankings such as IQAir 2022 World Air Quality Ranking.
Thanks lbloveday for the reference to IQAir and World’s most polluted countries 2022. It is interesting that it is put out by WHO. But after their world Covid pandemic fiasco, working in cohorts with the Chinese CCP, I prefer to look further for other opinions. Found a few that put China at number 1. Nevertheless, none of the many references give China a good bill of health. As you said, and I agree, that if the graph you refer to in the IQAir “World’s most polluted countries & regions” was arranged by population size, then China would be at the top of the list.
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https://climate.selectra.com/en/carbon-footprint/most-polluting-countries
Most polluted countries in the world: 2022 ranking
China is number 1 with 9.9 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions
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https://climatetrade.com/which-countries-are-the-worlds-biggest-carbon-polluters/
Which countries are the world’s biggest carbon polluters? 2021
China is number 1 with more than 14 million tons of CO2 released
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https://healthyhumanlife.com/blogs/news/top-polluting-countries
Carbon Dioxide emissions pollution by country
China is number 1 with 10.3 kilotons
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https://www.aqi.in/blog/top10-most-polluted-cities-in-the-world/
Top 10 Most Polluted Cities in the World (2022 Data)
China is number 1 – the city Kashgar is the worst.
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https://news.yahoo.com/black-carbon-soot-greater-china-india-thought-222015066.html
Black Carbon Soot Greater in China, India Than Thought 2014
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https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/most-polluted-countries
The State of Air Quality: The World’s Most Polluted Countries
China is number 11
‘All hydro-carbon fuels and related processes, on which the modern world is absolutely dependent, produce so-called GHGs.’
As do all mammals including Humans each time they exhale – freshly minted CO2 as a by-product of cellular respiration. How quick our Green zealots overlook the CO2 demons liberated by the mere fact of being alive. Funnily enough, Nature’s tendency to negative feedback loops and the conservation of energy means that the CO2 provides for plant growth and plant respiration which in turn produces Oxygen for the mammals and humans to breathe. CO2 should be celebrated not demonised.