Climate Wars back in Australia: Both parties pander to zealots, ideologues and renewables industry

The climate circus is back in Australia

Election 2019 is coming and Turnbull just lit a fire under the conservative base. The Deplorables are angry. Phones are running hot today. The DefCons awaken. In the last election defiant non-left voters were the “most influential group” — the swingers who ultimately decide the winner. This was the same group the journalists completely missed, like Brexit and Trump voters.

The Australian government, despite the polls showing Australians don’t want to pay more for renewables, has agreed to try to legislate a 26% reduction in emissions, setting a target in stone that almost no other country has done. (Have any?) Most countries have committed to nothing, or rather, they’ve committed to building nearly 300 coal plants. They’re planning 400 more.

A 26% mandatory target means so much more than just higher electricity bills, we’ll have to carve up our cattle and sheep, transport, waste and the rest of the economy too. What are they thinking?

We could lead the world in agriculture or medicine but we picked hara kiri?

We are the largest coal exporter in the world and it’s our largest export earner, we have a lower population density, bigger distances, higher transport needs, and 300 years worth of coal. We already pay some of the highest electricity rates in the world. We have faster population growth than practically any other first-world nation (so we’re offering to ignore that completely and cut our total emissions, not our emissions per capita? Master negotiators, not.)

This is industrial and economic suicide, but on the upside we will look fashionable in UN cafe-latte circles right until the lights go out. Good work Malcolm.

Sadly, the main opposition party’s aim is to destroy jobs and lifestyle even faster. Why go out on a limb when you can launch yourself with a canon? The “conservatives” want a 26% reduction, Labor thinks a 45% cut will stop storms and make electricity cheaper. (So why not do 100%?)

This is a big risk the party did not have to take

Just like 2009 — Turnbull fell on his sword over climate change and was tossed out as opposition leader, he’s doing it again. He runs a one seat majority government, up to ten MPs have such great reservations they say they might cross the floor (and vote against it). Turnbull has to get the Labor party and states to back this. If he fails, the word is it will cost him his leadership. That gives the Labor party huge leverage over the policy details.

They may say “No” because the policy is not suicidal enough and they are scared of losing the Green voters. Or because they want to troll the Libs, watch them immolate and pick a new leader, in which case, the joke’s on them. If somehow Turnbull pulls it off, the Liberal base will desert the party, he’ll have to put in two million dollars of his own money this election to replace the lost donors, and he’ll likely lose anyway. What drives this man?

Foreign readers can get some idea of the schism in Australian politics — the last Prime Minister of the very same party writes of the dissent in the ranks at the party meeting on the NEG: ” there were lots of pleas for unity, but as one MP said, we’ve got to be loyal to our electorates and to party members too, and not show the “unity of lemmings”. On Abbott’s Facebook page there are over 600 commenters, most of whom are congratulating him and pleading for cheaper electricity.

Peter O’Brien replies — Tony, The Real Lemmings are Smarter

What they [Liberals] have done, to put it in the most simple terms, is back a policy that will now be filtered and modified by the demands of state premiers to whom Turnbull will be obliged to defer if he hopes ever to go before the cameras and claim with that patented supercilious grin that his NEG has carried the day. It won’t be his NEG by that stage. What sort of a “conservative” leader places his destiny in the hands of Laborites?

For people looking to understand the political ramifications, read all of Peter O’Brien’s piece at Quadrant.

These men need our support

It’s a high risk play to talk about crossing the floor in a government that rules by one seat.

Australian politicians, photo, climate, carbon, skeptics, NEG.

There are still some men in Parliament who stand for something.  Image: The Australian.

Only a few politicians are brave enough to stand up to the namecalling and media intimidation, and say what most Australians think. Send them your thanks, and let them know how much you appreciate their effort.

The Australian has named and interviewed these key men:

Some just want a price guarantee which Turnbull may be able to (in theory) add to the NEG but the wisest MP’s won’t settle for anything less than pulling out of Paris:

Mr Turnbull and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg yesterday claimed the partyroom meeting as a victory for the NEG with majority support for the policy, and dismissed questions about MPs threatening to cross the floor. However, it is understood that, privately, there were concerns within the leadership group about the fate of the policy. The Australian has confirmed Barnaby Joyce told the partyroom he couldn’t support the bill. He was joined by South Australian MP Tony Pasin, the LNP’s George Christensen, Victorian Kevin Andrews, outspoken NSW Liberal Craig Kelly and NSW Nationals MP Andrew Gee. All cited price guarantees as a minimum requirement for support.

West Australian Liberal Andrew Hastie, Tasmanian senator Eric Abetz and Mr Abbott claimed they would not support the bill on principle because its only purpose was to legislate the Paris target of reducing emissions by 26 per cent on 2005 levels. LNP senator Barry O’Sullivan has also indicated he could cross the floor in the Senate.

….  But it is understood it will fail to win the support of Mr Abbott and Mr Hastie, whose opposition to the NEG is based solely on the Paris target.

Then CC your messages to your local MP — whoever they are.  And if you have the energy, CC it to the editors of the major daily papers.

Can a reader (or two) please do an email list of current politicians? (Here’s the 2015 list).

Australians go early to bed,
To reduce power bills which they dread,
Due to blind dumb ambitions,
To cut ‘carbon’ emissions,
By their leaders who serve Paris instead.

–Ruairi

Tony Abbott says the NEG policy should go back to the drawing board:

The Member for Warringah tells Ben Fordham he won’t support the policy as it stands.

“Had I been at the top table, it would have had to go back to the drawing board.

“Certainly in John Howard’s time, a submission from a minister that got the kind of treatment that Minister Frydenberg’s submission got yesterday, it would go back to the drawing board.

“Because the first duty of the leader is to keep the party together, we should be fighting the Labor Party, not fighting ourselves.

“At the moment, thanks to this so-called National Energy Guarantee, the fight is an internal fight.”

Barnaby Joyce says “This is bulls***. This has got to stop”.

Mr Joyce says people, especially our farmers, “are terrified every time the power bill turns up”. “We’ve got the Salvation Army, a reliable source, saying people are going to bed at half past four in the afternoon to stay warm.”

Andrew Bolt: Speak now Libs or forget hopes of being tomorrows leader:

When the Liberals are beaten at the next election, they will look for leaders who stood against this madness.

I note, on that point, that Andrew Hastie was reportedly brilliant in putting the arguments against the NEG in today’s party room meeting.

 The NEG would be a disaster for Australian Industry, consumers, electricity prices. If we are lucky, the Labor Party and Greens will be so delusionally overconfident they’ll vote “No”. (Shh. Don’t tell them).

PS: For foreign readers, the Liberals in Australian are theoretically the conservatives here. RINOs.

9.3 out of 10 based on 72 ratings

288 comments to Climate Wars back in Australia: Both parties pander to zealots, ideologues and renewables industry

  • #
    John F. Hultquist

    And I thought California was the land of fruits and nuts.

    Going out for a bag of popcorn.

    200

    • #
      Another Ian

      How about a Cadbury “California Chocolate” as well?

      Otherwise branded “Fruit and Nut”

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      • #
        angry

        Not Cadbury, it is H A L A L…..

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        • #
          Another Ian

          Can’t be helping sales then – they’re on half price specials pretty regularly

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          • #
            angry

            Because nobody wants their crap chocolate.

            Aldi chocolate tasts better and does not support terrorists.

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            • #
              Annie

              Have you tried Aldi Organic dark chocolate? Quite good. I was going to suggest sending some to Jo shortly.

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              • #

                Thanks for thinking of me Annie. Where is that dark chocolate sourced? I hear the cocoa bean concentrates cadmium, and that African cocoa has higher levels of Cd than South American cocoa…

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              • #
                Annie

                Hi Jo. I have just checked the bar. It is Organic Fairtrade, packed in Germany from imported ingredients. Not much help as to actual source of the cocoa, is it? Oh dear, perhaps I’m becoming cadmium-rich?
                On a happier note, my OH asked me to assure you that chocolate supplies are on their way.
                Aldi dark organic chocolate ingredients:
                Organic cocoa mass, organic cane sugar,organic cocoa butter, emulsifier (322 from soy)
                Contains 70% cocoa solids minimum.
                Contains soy
                May contain peanuts, tree nuts, gluten cereals and milk.
                So there you go. I do wish they wouldn’t use soy in it; most other brands seem to as well.

                10

            • #
              Another Ian

              A long drive from here to the nearest Aldi

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              • #
                Annie

                That’s the problem here too…the drive is a minimum of one hour to any branch. I go about once per month and do a large shop to justify time, energy and car fuel. I try to do other chores or visit other stores at the same time although I come home pretty tired out at the end of it. (I hate shopping!).

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            • #
              Neville

              .. and Lindt is even better still!

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              • #
                Annie

                The 85% is good and the new raspberry, so long as you don’t mind pips in your teeth! Their 78% is good but haven’t seen it lately; the local supermarket doesn’t stock it. 🙁

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              • #
                Annie

                Oh dear! This all went off at a tangent from likening our political situation to that in California. At least it made for some cheerfulness in the gloom! 🙂

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        People need to remember – this is a religious war.

        Based on observed evidence, there appears to be an New Age Occult-driven group who wish to see Australia nose dive into its own grave to appease their “gods”. I say “gods”, because from a Christian perspective, such deities are what Christians such as myself know to be demons/devils/djinn/evil spirits.

        If you watch the behaviour of many people, there seems to be a “mania” of sorts creeping into every day life, where people seem abnormally not open to reason. I see it as a spiritual condition. We have turned our backs on God as a nation – when a nation does this, Judgement follows. It could simply be that God has allowed the Godless nhilists to tear our nation apart, brick by brick, life by life, until all that remains is the bones of a once functioning, but now evil, nation….

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  • #
    Betapug

    “Why go out on a limb when you can launch yourself with a canon?” (Canon…”An ecclesiastical law established by a church council.”)

    Because it is vastly more efficient and sustainable than using a cannon!!

    120

  • #
    Tony K

    Keep on them Jo. Turnbull/Frydenburg/Bishop have become an embarrassment to Australian conservatives. If I were a Labor politician at present, I’d be falling over myself to grease the path for the NEG. The passage of the NEG means several things:
    – Turnbull remains as PM and Labor chances of winning the next election go up exponentially
    – Its passage into law continues to fracture the conservative political and voter landscape
    – Once implemented, the hard part is done and it can be amended almost at will by a Labor government to further favour wind and solar
    – It smooths the way for implementing a carbon tax

    Until the coalition stands up against Turnbull and his supporters and removes him from office, my recommendation FWIW is to vote anyone but Lib/Nat. The Australian population it seems, needs a rapid and harsh dose of reality by being plunged into darkness, joblessness and poverty. The quicker, the better. Then hope that whatever the green zealots legislate can be undone at a later date.

    At this stage, the Lib/Nat coalition can kiss the next election good-bye. They should be planning on the following election and choosing a leader who can drag the country out of a nightmare.

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    • #
      Graeme No.3

      Tony K:

      The way I see it is that the next election will gut the Liberal Party and there will be no way back for them. They are doomed to become one of those minor parties that never die e.g. the DLP.

      20

  • #
    Sean

    Mitt Romney, who got the presidential nomination in 2012, took a moderate position on climate change, healthcare and other policies near and dear to the hearts of Democrats in the US. He lost and could not even turn out as may voters as John McCain did 4 years earlier. Australia Liberals needs an internal party coup to survive.

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    • #
      Spetzer86

      They had a coup. It gave them Turnbull. The real question is if there is anyone that can bring them back from the edge of the RE cliff.

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      • #
        PeterS

        Of course there are several people who could replace Turnbull and turn around the LNP and win the next election. The trouble is the number and magnitude of the changes in various polices are so huge it would put virtually all of the current ministers out of their jobs. Hence they will not relinquish their support for Turnbull – they want to keep their jobs even though they are supporting policies that will guarantee a massive defeat at the next election. Such is their self-righteous arrogance, ignorance and hatred of Australia. They deserve to be humiliated at the next election so hard their careers will end and they will have to find another job. That is if the LNP wants to have any hope of ever being re-elected to government.

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  • #
    Sean

    Mitt Romney, who got the presidential nomination in 2012, took a moderate position on climate change, healthcare and other policies near and dear to the hearts of Democrats in the US. He lost and could not even turn out as may voters as John McCain did 4 years earlier. Australia Liberals needs an internal party coup to survive.

    40

  • #
    Komrade Kuma

    Just a small point to start with. Its “hara kiri” not “hare kari” and could Tony Abbott please do it asap because he is an onion chomping, utter galoot and the very worst, the least credible person to be leading the charge against “climate change” lunacy. He is closely followed by Abetz and Christensen and as for Baaaanaby well not much else need be said.

    If you want to know why climate lunacy has such sway, the answer is idiots and galoots like them being the loudest voices in opposition. The case needs Jordan Peterson’s to prosecute it not grandstanding, self promoting imbeciles like Abbott and co. Hastie yes, Abbott and co no.

    Every time Abbott takes the onion out of his gob and speaks all Turnbull and co need do is roll their eyes.

    957

    • #
      Mark M

      I own one of those green thumbs.

      I have been trying to find the recent interview (last couple of days) with Abbott where he says he wants to cut electricity prices, and then adds it would be good if we cut emissions as well.

      Why?

      Because Abbott still believes cutting emissions would stop a drought.

      You would not even utter it if you didn’t believe it.

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      • #
        Mark M

        Barnaby joyce jumps the shark:

        “Renewables are ‘like greens on your dinner plate’ it’s good to have some but not too much …”

        https://twitter.com/SkyNewsAust/status/851619592044597248

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        • #
          PeterS

          Typical stupid analogy from Joyce since there are lots of people including myself who like their greens for a good reason – they are good for you and taste good. There is nothing good about renewables.

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          • #
            Apoxonbothyourhouses

            Gracious but you are a humorous lot. This has zip to do with greens; Joyce has at least had the political balls to stand against Turnbull’s effort to emasculate Oz.

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          • #
            Annie

            Peter S, surely there are some cases where so-called ‘renewables’ are reasonably appropriate? I’m thinking of bush and outback locations far away from the grid. I guess they would still need a gennie and batteries though.

            30

            • #
              Ted O'Brien.

              Just batteries. Little two bladed windmills were part of a 110v system for isolated areas when I was a kid. In the 1950s and 1960s mains power extended further than any modern scholar could ever imagine, so you don’t see many in recent times. That looks like changing, especially if the cost of replacing ageing poles is too high.

              30

        • #
          Ted O'Brien.

          I hadn’t paid much attention to twitter, but that example seems to show that there are an awful lot of ill informed people out there. How do we counter this outflow of garbage?

          30

          • #
            Annie

            There are far too few real scientist and engineers in government.

            61

          • #
            Graeme#4

            You subscribe to an MSM and get stuck into them at every opportunity, constantly pointing out with facts where they are wrong. While this site is very important for discussing info at a more detailed level and to obtain very useful facts, in the MSM you gave to keep it simple. But don’t stop – we need to conteract the alarmists at every opportunity.

            30

          • #
            tom0mason

            Ted O’Brien.

            “How do we counter this outflow of garbage?”
            By engaging with a good narrative, a story and story lines that are both real, and appeals to peoples’ sense to be uplifted without guilt by science, and to have fun and enjoyment.

            Currently the climate message is all about fear, doom and a decrepit future.
            Counter that by taking time each day to remind people of a particular prediction that has failed. Show them that as far as it known the catastrophic event failed to appear, and instead nature gave us so much better.

            Remind people that in 100 years this planet has warmed quite naturally out of the LIA by about 1°C. And that back when atmospheric CO2 was at 0.027% the weather was very much more extreme — why should we wish to be back there?

            Remind them that weather extremes are not getting worse by citing historical catastrophes that really happened and such events have lessened since.

            Remind them that natural weather disasters of the past were very intense and/or long lived, remind them that NATURE is the real power here, not puny humans!

            Remind them that compared to those historical events the weather currently is most benign, and that as far as can be measured humans appear not to be altering the range nor duration of weather extremes.

            0.04% of the atmosphere! How can that control our weather? How can that be the denominator of the weather, it’s not logical, reasonable, or rational. Well is it?

            Remind people about the story of King Canut and how that fits with the alarmist and doomsters of today.

            Remind people of the worse excesses of the alarmist and all their high-life antics, jetting around the world, buying beachfront mansions, and making money from keeping people afraid. Remind them of this great hypocrisy.

            Remind people that all this alarm and fear keeps the windmill owners making their fat profits while not supplying electricity reliably. Always refer to so called ‘renewable energy’ as ‘expensive unreliable providers’ or ‘grid ruinable suppliers’!

            40

            • #
              Ted O'Brien.

              NOAA terminated their published chart of Sydney’s Fort Denison tide gauge at about 2010. One of the world’s longest and best kept tidal records, it showed a remarkably steady rate of rise of 0.65mm per year over more than 100 years. 6.5 cm per century. No uptick as predicted.

              Now they are telling us that the rate has increased to .71 mm/year, and their new chart shows an uptick from about 2010.

              In the meantime, while looking for info on Fort Denison, I discovered a new departmental web page which told us that the tide gauge is cleaned and recalibrated monthly. Alarmed by this word recalibrated, I drew the attention of several people to it, but I don’t remember who. When I looked again for it later I could not find that page. I surely saved a copy, but I don’t recall where.

              If anybody else has a copy of that page, please look after it better than I did. It should be useful.

              10

      • #
        Dennis

        I would like to read a transcript of exactly what he said, not what the fake news producers report.

        Like them blaming him for signing the Paris Agreement, ignoring that he was no longer PM following the September 2015 spill and the Paris Conference was held from end of November into December 2015.

        And signed by Minister Hunt in New York during April 2016, ratified in New York November 2016.

        It is however intriguing that the government does not want credit for signing and ratifying.

        210

        • #
          Ted O'Brien

          Also getting away to date with blaming him for the RET. He cut the RET by as much as he could. It was Clive Palmer in consort with Al Gore who “protected” the ALP’s RET from Abbott’s landslide mandate.

          How did Al Gore persuade Clive Palmer to do this?

          220

      • #
        Sceptical Sam

        Mark M says:

        Because Abbott still believes cutting emissions would stop a drought.

        Mark, you are being obtuse. If you are an irrigator producing Lucerne for hay to feed stock, or veggies for the table or cotton or soy beans or any other irrigated crop, then cheap, reliable and plentiful electricity is a must. Paris forces the price of electricity up to uncompetitive levels.

        You sound as though you live in Newtown or some other trendy left wing ghetto and think that milk (soy or otherwise) comes out of a carton. Tell me why I’m wrong.

        70

      • #
        Bushkid

        Yes, Mark M, I read that too. Utterly incomprehensible!
        “Global warming” is either “crap” or it isn’t, Mr Abbott. Make up your silly mind, stop trying to have bob each way! Those you’re trying to appease will never vote for you anyway, so just tell it like it is and forget about them.
        Repeat after me: “Global warming is crap” – good. Now go away and write that out 1000 times, in a neat hand.

        20

    • #
      ColA

      And I have another of those green thumbs, you did notice that NONE OF THEM actually call out the huge elephant in the room?

      We NEED some one smart, articulate, knowledgeable and committed, not to call out “The King has no clothes” but to scream “CLIMATE IS NOT DRIVEN BY CARBON!”

      211

    • #
      angry

      The moniker “Komrade” is obviously appropriate for a COMMUNIST.

      Rebels urge ministers to quit over national energy guarantee plan…….

      http://morningmail.org/turnbulls-faecal-touch/#comment-84272

      31

      • #
        Komrade Kuma

        Yeah, he used to be a faux commie taking the piss out of leftards but got sick of it so reverted to stright shooting.

        Tony Abbott et al are all for straight shooting too, straight into their bloody feet.

        So what is the difference in practical terms of a leftard and a rightard? Not that much frankly. A counterproductive idiot is a counterproductive idiot. Tony Abbott or Lee Rhiannon, take your pick.

        316

    • #
      Ted O'Brien.

      That onion certainly made an impression on you. I want to know more about it. An onion you can eat like an apple! That could go very well in our kitchen.

      50

      • #
        Komrade Kuma

        Yeah, but do you want to post a video to Youtube/Fakebook/INstagram of you munching it? And if you are PM and have made a galoot of yourself over Sir Prince Phillip, are you really so stupid as to give the msm such footage to then voice over or use out of context at their leisure? Turnbull could probably get away with it as could Hawke, Keating or Howard. TA just looked awkward and like a geekey galoot. imo.

        13

    • #

      “Primitive people once killed goats to appease the volcano gods. We’re more sophisticated now but are still sacrificing our industries and our living standards to the climate gods to little more effect.”
      – Tony Abbott, October 2017

      [Tony Abbott] said despite the rate of carbon in the atmosphere increasing from 300 to 400 parts per million there had been no “dramatic consequences” on the climate.

      “Storms are not more severe; droughts are not more prolonged; floods are not greater; and fires are not more intense than a century ago – despite hyperventilating reportage and over-the-top claims from Green politicians,” the former prime minister said…

      “Sea levels have hardly risen and temperatures are still below those of the medieval warm period.

      “Over time, temperature change seems to correlate rather more with sun spot activity than with carbon dioxide levels,” he claimed…

      http://joannenova.com.au/2018/07/its-on-abbott-dumps-paris-speaks-science-and-ramps-it-up-against-turnbull/

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      • #
        John of Cloverdale, WA, Australia

        And maidens.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUWMWBbEhJA

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      • #
        Komrade Kuma

        All of which is spot on Jo and good stuff I totally agree with but uttered in the context of the current House of Reps situation let alone that in the Senate, in the context of his mutual loathing of his political leader it can be portrayed by the msm, Labor and the Greens as nothing more than backstabbing Turnbull, i.e. treachery with the very real down side that Labor will win the next election…….

        He comes across as not being a team player, as being a zealot in his own right and Labor, the Greens and the msm leftards are easily able to do to him just what he did to KRudd-Dillard-Krudd. That is why I have given him a spray in earlier comments and I find it interesting so many here are ticked off about that.

        It seems to me they have stars in their eyes about Tony Abbott’s political prospects just because he holds his climate skeptic/’denier’ views. His problem and that for the climate change skeptic/non believer side of the issue is that he is a lousy advocate. In sporting terms he gives away far too many free kicks to the other side/bowls too many no balls.

        20

    • #
      yarpos

      Lotso red thumbs. Have never understood the enthusiasm for Abbott, in any case his time has come and gone , time for some new talent. Seems to be an Oz thind hankering for the past and past personalities. Do we seriously think a conservative twist of Rudd, Gillard, Rudd will have any better outcome?

      10

      • #
        Kinky Keith

        We are looking for an immediate replacement for our current President, if not Abbott, flawed as he is, then who?

        444

        60

  • #

    but we picked hare kari?

    Your duty pedant wishes to draw your attention to the last two words above.

    When I was learning Japanese many years ago, my instructor said the word was harakiri from ‘belly’ and ‘cut’, and I took his word for it. My dictionary, however, comes up with a number of meanings for ‘kiri’ from ‘paulonia’ to ‘fog’ but none of them is ‘cut’.

    This ‘harakiri’ word confuses the hell out of English speakers, including me, 🙁 and I’ve found the easiest way out is to use ‘seppuku’, which if you’ve read “Shogun” you’ll have found the word on just about every other page. (A pity politicians don’t follow the practice when their policies fail).

    ‘Seppuku’ means ritual suicide by disembowelment, and it seems Australia is becoming ever more entranced by the idea on a national scale! What’s a bit of pain, eh?

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    • #
      John F. Hultquist

      FijiDave, “‘Seppuku’ means ritual suicide

      Interesting info — thanks.
      Now if we can get a major motion picture by that name folks will learn the meaning.

      In the USA, there is this other problem.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Caray

      30

      • #
        sophocles

        John F. Hultquist @ # 7.1:

        There’s James Clavell’s 1975 novel “Shogun.”

        Unfortunately, it’s rather large (at some 1500 pages) and reading seems to be becoming a forgotten art. Because of its size, nobody has made a film of it. A 9-hour mini-series seems to be the main venture it’s had into video.

        Signing up Tom Cruise [ The Last Samurai] might fix that—in whatever way you could wish. 🙂

        Peter Jackson—the director/producer who turned a single small-ish book into three full-length feature films—with a minor love interest—(Tolkien’s The Hobbit ) could turn it into however many parts could be wrung out of it—9 1-hour episodes seems a bit wimpy. 🙂

        20

    • #
      Ve2

      The translation from English for Harikiri also includes Seppuku and disembowelment.

      10

    • #
      Komrade Kuma

      Seppuku = ritual suicide comprises hara kiri performed by the suicide themselves and beheading by a trusted colleague/friend to minimise the agony and bring on death. I have no doubt Tony Abbott will have no shortage of volunteers for the political latter should he finally decide to do the right thing.

      It is not that he holds the wrong views so much as he is a complete galoot in articulating them and it is clear that every time he opens his stupid gob it is a fee kick to Labor and the Greens. Even Hanson hates him. He is like the numskull on your team that gives away free kick after free kick or bowls no ball after no ball.

      As for his bitterness over losing his job to Turnbull, well what goes around comes around, that is just party poliyical karma. Turnbull deserved to be dumped and so di Abbott. It is not like the party did not have a fully informed choice in September 2015.

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      • #
        Komrade Kuma

        PS

        as for all the negatrons who give my comment at #5 above the ‘thumbs down’, remember that Trump is in power thanks to the idiots in the msm and beltway elites whose groupthink shrouds their ability to take a good hard look at themselves and their own incompetence, idiocy and arrogance. That does not just apply to the ‘left’.

        38

        • #
          Annie

          I gave you one because I dislike your terminology in relation to Tony Abbott.

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          • #
            Komrade Kuma

            for “onion chomping” ?- a matter of fact on the public audio visual record
            or “Galoot”? – just my opinion but not unreasonable imo given his counterproductive carry on.

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            • #
              toorightmate

              He has probably done more for the community and aborigines than any other PM.

              100

              • #
                Komade Kuma

                Certainly agree re Aboriginal affairs, he was a hands on and boots on the ground minister but frankly after that the Peter Principle kicked in, i.e. he was elevated to the level at which he was incompetent. I was an Abbott supporter until “Sir Prince Phillip” and it was revealed he was a bit of an idiot and it was little wonder he could get nothing through the Senate and that he was the real driver of Senate chaos. Both Palmer and Hanson hated him with a passion let alone the Greens and the ALP. THAT is Abbott’s problem, he is way too divisive to be able to get a majority concensus. He is a dead end for the ‘conservative’ position. He could be a born again virgin for all I care, if he still walks and talks like a galoot then for practical purposes he is a galoot.

                22

              • #

                Sure, Abbott drove Clive-the-coal-miner into the arms of Al Gore. We believe you Komrade. Abbott. Abbott. Abbott.

                The divisive people are the ones who turn every situation into a Black versus White racist issue, who want different laws or payments according to skin color or chosen identity.

                Abbott was hated by parasites and power-mongers because he broke their sacred rules and said what the masses were thinking. Nothing scares them more than that.

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              Annie

              That ugly term for mouth. Also, why ever is he not allowed to sample one if he wishes? What a silly thing to ridicule him over.

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          OriginalSteve

          Trump came to power because normal people were sick of being reamed by the Deep State party that runs Amerika.

          This is also why the Deep State-run MSM froth at the mouth every time Trump drives a well deserved stake through the heart of one of the putrid organs of the Deep State.

          It seems the Deep State is nothing more than a powerful criminal cabal, who fear a straight talking, straight shooting politician.

          Or put more simply – darkness hates the light….

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          • #
            Kinky Keith

            The United Nations and Environs is a future fund manager for the world elites who are able to sequester a few “special” tens of millions along with their Primary donations of our tax money.

            Probably they just see it as commission.

            444

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      • #
        Bobl

        However at least Abbott is pretty honest about his views, transparent even, he has even apologized and said that if he had known Paris would cause this much economic dislocation he never would have done it. The fact that he still would reduce emissions opportunistically isn’t a problem for me. If CO2 reductions comes for free then there isn’t much harm in a bit of virtue signalling. It is when that virtue signalling costs us $8500 per family is a little more serious.

        However, the people here are insulated, you all know how to opt out of the electricity grid and take control of your costs. So all is not lost for you, you can avoid the NEGative effects. You will be the new wealthy in a society that is universally poor.

        The big problem will be the lack of jobs, already we have a sustained real unemployment rate of over 10% maybe as high as 15% under employment is rife youth unemployment is over 20%. Trumps USA has a rate with a 3 in front. Which is working better, Trumps MAGA or Turnbulls socialist swamp.

        100

    • #
      John of Cloverdale, WA, Australia

      ‘Hare kari’! And I thought Jo was talking about some type of rabbit.

      10

  • #

    Correction.

    腹切 = harakiri = belly cut. Well I never. I better get a more modern dictionary….

    40

    • #
      Yonniestone

      Anyway you spell it Australians will have to choose if they want to hold the sword, have a stranger hold it for them or use it against the enemy within.

      80

      • #
        Greg Cavanagh

        I just want to cut loose, and let em have at it.

        I’m over other people controlling what I need to think, what I need to pay and how much. All it is, is other people with their hand in your pocket. And all for no good reason.

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  • #
    Ruairi

    Australians go early to bed,
    To reduce power bills which they dread,
    Due to blind dumb ambitions,
    To cut ‘carbon’ emissions,
    By their leaders who serve Paris instead.

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    • #
      C. Paul Barreira

      ambitions,
      To cut ‘carbon’ emissions

      Which, as far as one can tell, the public supports. They may also want cheaper electricity. They cannot have both. It is the Australian public—all twenty-something million of ’em—that has to start doing some thinking, something that, on the evidence so far, the public refuses to do. Whining by the public about electricity prices counts for nothing with today’s political class (elected and, especially, unelected).

      Even now Abbott is quoted as saying the NEG needs to be renegotiated. The Paris agreement remains the foundation of policy. Liberals and National Party members are utterly incapable of arguing a case, least of all a case against that of the intellectual classes, academy, bureaucracy and media. Among media one should include local newspapers (see here, for example) and, I think, motoring magazines which appear to support, strongly, electric vehicles (see here, although government is again a strong—and probably disastrous—influence on the directions of the industry).

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        angry

        No, The Australian public does not support this BS !

        90

      • #
        Bobl

        Not the slightest bit true. When polled how much would you be prepared to pay to lower emissions 75% said zero, more than 90% are not prepared to pay more than $10 per month. That’s why they have to force us.

        Try this, set up a collection in competition with buy a bale, raising money to mitigate climate change to save farmers, a charity where you state all the funds will go to AGL for building solar farms and wind parks without a cent going to actual farmers. How much do you think you would raise, would you think buy-a-bale might outdo you by a tidy margin? Australians care about people, the only reason they support the NEG is this indefensible lie about downward pressure on cost. People think solar and wind are “free” but so is coal, it’s just lying in the ground waiting for us to dig it up.

        100

        • #
          C. Paul Barreira

          The issues are contrary, which the public has failed to recognise. For the intellectual class no such contradiction occurs for the expense is as nothing to its members.

          The public, I suspect, has failed to make the connection between cost and “climate mitigation”. It simply recognises the increased expense of electricity; my conversations (in SA only) suggested to me that, generally, people have little or no idea why the price of electricity has risen in the way it has. And no part of Australian media will endeavour to change that. Hence the public comes last in the political equations; politicians—elected or unelected—have no need to explain the significance of such a connection.

          And nothing is “free”. Indeed, one of the problems of out time is the failure of the public—and the political class—to acknowledge just how much some things do cost. The CPI, for instance, is a more or less worthless measure. We have major problems both now and looming and, apparently, no political will to face them, even to define them with care.

          20

      • #
        Graeme No.3

        Paul:

        The problem is that the Greens over reached. With support for reducing ‘pollution’ a vote winner they, for some reason, decided to push for unlimited reductions AND only by those methods that they approved of.
        We could have had 22-23% reductions with HELE coal with less price rises and certainly more stable supply. No! they wanted wind and sun and convinced themselves, and a good deal of the public, that it would be clean and cheap. Their problem is that it isn’t cheap, both are twice the cost of old style coal and more expensive in themselves than the HELE approach. Then the cost of backup comes in, so there is no way that electricity prices will come down. At some future time, probably after a lengthy blackout, it will occur to the public that they have been duped and ripped off. Watch for the reaction, which is likely to involve not just the Greens but both major parties.

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    Kim

    A huge problem that Australia has is that it lacks national conversations. Where media – such as the SMH – has comment columns they are heavily censored. And there are a lot of trolls. Hence Conservatives operate corporate style and keep their heads below the parapet and act in the background. That means that come election time they make their voices heard and the politicians don’t know what hit them.

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    • #
      el gordo

      Kim in this political fight Rupert Murdoch is behind the ginger group, which means the Coalition should win the next election, minus Turnbull.

      50

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    PeterS

    If in my electorate the appropriate person in that group of men will only ever get my support if and when they resign and become independents or join one of the other minor parties, such as ACP or ON. Until then a vote for them is a vote for LNP and hence a vote for Turnbull, which is totally out of the question as it would be a betrayal of Australian values. Turnbull is taking the LNP over the cliff. The longer the LNP MPs deny it the more they deserve to go over with the party.

    210

    • #
      Dennis

      #overtheclifffwithmal

      90

    • #
      angry

      These individuals need to switch parties, or they will be taken down when Turncoat is defeated.

      70

      • #
        PeterS

        Agree but not yet. Wait and see if they can get enough support to dump Turnbull. If they can’t the only option left is to resign if they are not spineless hypocrites.

        60

        • #
          toorightmate

          How much more proof do you need that they ARE spineless hypocrites?

          80

          • #
            PeterS

            None as I’ve come to that conclusion a long time ago. Some however are starting to grow a spine albeit the size of a small fish so perhaps we should give them a little more time to see if they can do the right thing for Australia and convince those in cabinet to rethink their future with Turnbull. Failing that the resignation option is essential to avoid Turnbull then Shorten reigning hell on us.

            60

            • #
              el gordo

              “Certainly in John Howard’s time, a submission from a minister that got the kind of treatment that minister Frydenberg’s submission got yesterday, it would go back to the drawing board, because the first duty of the leader is to keep the party together.”

              Tony Abbott

              40

  • #
    Another Ian

    An overlooked explanation

    “Quote of the Week: ‘Climate Barbie’ claims sewage leaks will increase due to climate change”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/08/15/quote-of-the-week-climate-barbie-claims-sewage-leaks-will-increase-due-to-climate-change/

    30

  • #
    MrGrimNasty

    “The Climate Change Act commits the UK government by law to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% of 1990 levels by 2050.”

    So we currently have the smart meter debacle.

    And government and industry bodies are still blaming greedy suppliers for stinging energy price rises 2 or 3 times a year.

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    • #
      Gerry, England

      And the slimy Ed Milliband changed OFEGM’s brief from solely protecting the consumer to supporting the insane energy policy. Hence the OFGEM boss having a propaganda article in the Daily Telegraph in support of ‘Smart’ meters that does at least admit their real reason is to manage demand when the supply is unreliable. But the main lie is that consumers will save money. And in the recent OFGEM review of prices they were not allowed to show that the real cause of some of the recent rises is government global warming policies.

      30

  • #
  • #
    el gordo

    But wait there is more …

    ‘Keith Pitt, Assistant Minister to the deputy PM, is considering resigning from the frontbench over his opposition to the NEG.’

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    • #
      PeterS

      Total waste of time. To be of any real impact he and others have to resign from the party. In any case it looks like the NEG will be a long drawn out affair. The Andrews Victorian government is to to stall on the NEG until after the state election in November.

      50

      • #
        el gordo

        Nobody is going to resign at this point, if a dozen cross the floor and squash the Bill, then Turnbull would need to consider his future.

        50

        • #
          PeterS

          True there is no hurry to resign now. However, if things continue the way they are and the NEG gets to the point of being legislated with the help of the ALP crossing the floor then the ginger group have no other real option but to resign if they really believe in Australia’s future and not just their careers. SO let’s wait and see. Besides there is still the hope that Turnbull will be rolled albeit a very slim one.

          40

          • #
            el gordo

            If Labor support the NEG then the ginger group would be in a quandary, but its too early to speculate.

            ‘…no other real option but to resign …’ and get out of politics altogether.

            20

          • #
            Bobl

            I want one of them to resign or just put a no confidence vote and give us an election. Turncoat would have to go.

            20

            • #
              PeterS

              Hang on not so fast. I haven’t loaded up on my popcorn yet 🙂 Seriously though I rather allow them one more chance to see if they all can grow a spine to threaten the cabinet they either dump Turnbull or they resign. It would be a much sweater humiliation on the leader.

              30

              • #
                el gordo

                Dutton is thinking he could be PM in a few weeks, if he plays his cards right.

                ‘Peter Dutton says he would need to resign to the backbench if he publicly criticised the national energy guarantee or Malcolm Turnbull.’ Oz

                30

              • #
                PeterS

                If he resigns to the backbench he will have even less chance of challenging the leadership. All he is saying is the obvious. Cabinet members must always publicly agree with the PM no matter how much they disagree with him privately. So for Dutton publicly to disagree with eh NEG he has to resign from the cabinet and sit on the backbench. Nothing significant. Now if the whole cabinet did that it would be significant.

                30

              • #
                el gordo

                Nothing significant you reckon, whereas I think its clever strategy.

                Dutton is saying to the PM I have the numbers to unseat you, anyway George is more forthcoming.

                ‘George Christensen has issued a list of demands to Malcolm Turnbull over the national energy guarantee and has issued a threat if they’re not met.’

                40

      • #
        glen Michel

        Who knows how the Senate will vote.

        20

  • #
    el gordo

    I just sent off an email to Andrew Gee, my local member, and gave him my full support.

    60

    • #
      PeterS

      What’s he going to do? Cross the floor or resign?

      30

      • #
        el gordo

        I believe Andrew will cross the floor, he has little choice because his electorate encompasses coal mines and there are a lot of angry miners.

        40

        • #
          PeterS

          Crossing the floor will not be enough if the ALP cross the floor the other way. If the ALP does cross the floor he and others then need to resign as a last resort. Otherwise, we might as well kiss goodbye to Australia.

          50

          • #
            el gordo

            If the ginger group is marginalised by the cultural Marxist consortium then they may as well resign from politics, their careers are over.

            30

            • #
              PeterS

              Yes that could be so but before they quit politics altogether they could try to build a new party coalition with ACP and ON for example. It might not work but it’s certainly worth a try. The benefits if that succeeds would be immense for Australia. We can then sing and dance around the LNP corpse.

              40

              • #
                el gordo

                Nope, splinter groups and rumps are of little value now, give me glory or a political death and early retirement.

                11

              • #
                Sceptical Sam

                Nope, el gordo.

                The best option is to resign from the Liberal and National Parties but stay in Parliament and set up an Australian Conservative Party using the benefits that flow from incumbency.

                They’d have about 12 months to get momentum before the next election.

                30

              • #
                el gordo

                At best they would only be a rump in an overarching cultural Marxist one party state. No doubt they would need to consider their future outside of politics.

                10

          • #
            Marc

            Labor will either vote for the bill or not. They will not be crossing the floor if they vote for it. Labor members are not permitted to cross the floor. If they do they are disembowelled.

            30

            • #
              el gordo

              If both the majors support the Bill then the ginger group would have to leave the chamber in disgust.

              20

  • #
    Antoine D'Arche

    without a spill replacing Turnbull, we are screwed. Properly.
    Turnbull and Labor both will legislate Paris, the compact on migration and WHATEVER else they feel like bundling in with it, in small print.
    Which means pain, and a lot of it, until such time as 1) the electorate revolts and we get a real change in Parliament, or 2) the people revolt, actually revolt, and there’s carnage. I’d much prefer the former. But the latter will happen if Parliament continues to legislate without a mandate from the people.
    Also, I’ll repeat my assertion that Turnbull is the ultimate Trojan horse. Monckton warned us of this, and everything is playing out as feared.

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    • #
      PeterS

      Yes it’s interesting to see how Lord Monckton’s warnings have been and still are being realised precisely. It’s taken a little longer than he thought but timing is always hard to predict. The key is Turnbull and Shorten are both on the same page as to where they want Australia to be in the long term. They want Australia to show the world how we are so good at globalisation by bending over backwards helping the UN to be our masters. It’s perhaps a sign of some sort of inferiority complex. Rudd was and still is a perfect example of that. It’s no coincidence that Turnbull got along well with Rudd and agreed with his policies on climate change. They are all very different in character form the likes of Abbott and Trump. If anyone in the LNP really want to stop Australia going the way we are under Turnbull and soon Shorten then they have the obligation on behalf of the Australian people to get rid of Turnbull. As I posted elsewhere a couple of times there are two ways to do it. Try the first one and if that fails they really have no option but to execute the other option if they really care for Australia’s future.

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    • #
      James in Melbourne

      Antoine, that nutso theory that Abbott was removed by The Conspiracy to pave the way for a more compliant Turnbull falls apart on the simple fact that Abbott took office with huge amounts of goodwill, thanks to destroying Rudd-Gillard-Rudd, and then proceeded to immolate that goodwill through his own errors and incompetence. God, don’t start me. A half-decent performance and he would still be there.

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      • #
        Bobl

        Not the slightest bit true. He was immolated on news poll anxiety because of agitating by the labor party, over inconsequential things like honoring the prince on request of her majesty and some blow back over NBN changes. In general Australians liked where he was taking us, they liked direct action they liked reining in debt they were ecstatic to have the carbon tax gone. An election would have reminded us why we voted for Abbott.

        The polls are a reflection of the time, low polling means the public wants you to change course on something, in Abbott’s case it was fibre to the premises. Interestingly it was a failure in Trumbull’s portfolio, communications, that led to Abbott back stabbing making you wonder if it wasn’t engineered that way. Incredible but true.

        Turnbull is a snake in the grass he needs to go.

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        • #
          James in Melbourne

          Agree that Turnbull is a snake in the grass.
          But why did Abbott not only renege on his campaign promise to repeal Section 18C – and then allow his A-G to actually strengthen it!
          Why the cushy jobs for Stott-Despoja and Combet – straight away, the voters knew he had gone soft.
          The $200 million UN Climate Fund handout – again, voters thought “more of the same.”
          Why the “debt levy” – it was a figurative punch in the face to the Liberal party’s core constituency – it was a new tax, despite the weasel words with which Abbott tried to obfuscate that fact – he was pilloried as a liar and promise-breaker just as effectively as he pilloried Gillard.
          Why advocate for the PPL scheme – it was impossible to defend it.
          The terrible look of the token Defence Force pay rises and the $7 Medicare co-payment.
          The cigars.
          “Poor people don’t drive.”

          Sir Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh SA 5111.

          As a long-suffering Coalition voter, I could just about – somehow – have dragged myself to support the Australian knighthoods, if they were going to be used to recognise someone for their service to this country, above and beyond the recognition available through the Order of Australia system. Heaven knows, maybe someone could have been found who deserved such a knighthood, through selfless service, at home or abroad, to their fellow man; something that made Australia proud enough to recognise this lifetime of contribution, above and beyond the call of duty, to deal out this new supreme form of public acknowledgement of service, of worth, of sacrifice, from a grateful and humble nation.
          But Prince Philip? You have got to be kidding me.

          All of that could have been borne by those who fight on the Coalition’s behalf, on the Twittersphere, at dinner parties, and everywhere else where Australians speak, if those people could just had some faith that the government had a backbone and at least believed in something, that it thought long and hard about the things that it said and did, so that those statements and actions gave some heart to Coalition supporters that the 2013 electoral mandate was not going to be given up without a fight, was not going to be pissed away in a mishmash of bumbling, incompetent pandering to opponents, and shooting itself in the foot – and that the government had an agenda and a core purpose and intention to change the country for the better, and that it could articulate that in a way that made its supporters proud to have voted the way that they did.

          Instead Abbott pandered to the Left from day one, created a vacuum of inactivity that Labor successfully filled, squibbed his first Budget, supported hacks like Hockey and Bishop B to the detriment of his government, and then slid out the back door with the weapons-grade stupidity and crass political insanity of knighting Prince Phillip.

          Thanks a bunch, Tony. We now have Shorten, Plibersek, Wong and Albanese dreaming of building a Great New Brussels of tax-funded Social Democracy in the Great Southern Land, and sending every for-profit business in the country broke if it does not pay tithes to the Bruvvas and to Gaia.

          51

          • #
            OriginalSteve

            Its simple – Abbott spoke the truth on many matters, and wasnt signed up to the globalist agenda, so he was deposed.

            And along comes the Sacks of Gold barrow boy to do his masters globalist bidding…..

            This stuff isnt rocket science…its good old fashioned power politics and Machiavellianism at its finest.

            60

            • #
              James in Melbourne

              I don’t believe he would have been deposed if he had behaved, and governed, like a Coalition leader should. He had the mandate and the majority to do so. Instead he wimped it at the first whiff of grapeshot.

              And I’m sorry, that borderline-mental-defective (when he is clearly not!) halting, repetitive monotone, repeating those moronic three-word slogans over and over again, like the electorate was thick – to be fair, a mode of delivery he copied from Gillard – just topped it all off.

              I wanted him to succeed. But he did it his way. He has no-one to blame but himself. Sweeping into office like a man who had a mandate, and starting confidently to deliver on it, he could have done wonders. But no, there was the pause in activity – apparently he believed Australians were sick of ten announcements a day from Rudd-Gillard-Rudd, and would look kindly on a government that seemed to be thinking deeply and taking its time – and then his very first action was a new tax.

              It’s just sad.

              41

          • #
            Kinky Keith

            James, you have some good points there.

            One thing that stuck with me was the idea of giving new mothers recourse to extraordinary payments while off work after delivery.

            Otherwise he seems to have good intent.

            444

            10

      • #
        Dennis

        He took office with the Black Hand faction breathing down his prime ministerial neck including from inside his cabinet.

        You need to go to the website and check the relentless negativity and undermining…

        http://www.stopturnbull.com.au

        80

  • #
    TdeF

    As yesterday, the Prime Minister always gets support because half the MPs have perks which include Minister, Outside Ministry, Speaker, Leader of the House, Leader of the Senate, Parliamentary Secretary, Board member ($30K per year per board). So there is ‘loyalty’ which means you cannot afford to lose the huge salary.

    To upset a PM you have to have a deal, which is what Malcolm and his Black Hand did, openly conspired against a successful sitting Prime Minister. He made sure everyone was going to be better off, except Tony Abbott and friends of course. This is the pork barrelling. Even then it was the flood of newbies who owed their position to Tony Abbott who succumbed to the promises and lost their seats in the next election.

    Many of the survivors of Malcolm’s disastrous early election and even those who expect to survive the coming tidal wave expect to be on the back bench on the basic $197,000 salary. Their best hope is a shadow position, a gift of whoever is leader. They have given up hope of winning.

    So it is quite remarkable that even ten people are prepared openly to cross the floor and defy the Prime Minister. Now “Keith Pitt, Assistant Minister to the deputy PM, is considering resigning from the frontbench over his opposition to the NEG.” That is real conscience at work and perhaps a sense that real privilege will not last long.

    Of course, in Van Onsolen’s ‘Killing season’, if it looks like the PM will be tossed out in a real reshuffle or an early election, sides will change quickly. The process of ingratiation starts. If the back bench thinks Tony can pull off a victory again, it will be a landslide. For us who watch this circus, we can only hope that Malcolm is gone soon.

    One Nation and the Nationals and the original Liberals would stand a chance of getting rid of the RET, the NEG and the whole farce of ‘clean’ energy. There has never been cleaner energy in history than coal, quite apart from the fact that mankind cannot control essential CO2 levels and they obviously are not connected to air temperature anyway.

    However to be the first country to enshrine the entirely optional Paris Accord in law would win an international prize in self harm. The EU and UN would be thrilled, just as they were thrilled when new PM Turnbull ratified the agreement the day Trump withdrew. How insulting was that?

    Turnbull has already gone down as our worst PM, even worse than Gillard and Rudd in waste and subservience to the UN/EU and looking after his friends with tons of gold. This gift to the world bankers and bureaucrats and communists would be his crowning achievement. We can only hope he fails.

    221

    • #
      Dennis

      Still no US Ambassador appointed.

      50

      • #
        TdeF

        None of Turnbull’s close friends want the job. Trump is the sworn enemy of the elites, the merchant bankers, the saviours of the Barrier Reef and the UN/EU types. Worse, Trump is a hated conservative. So probably a racist, mysogynist fascist as well.

        80

        • #
          TdeF

          Although the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times are still looking for evidence.

          80

        • #
          Dennis

          I was referring to no US Ambassador to Australia appointed since the cancellation of the last appointment.

          President Trump must not be impressed with Chairman Mal the globalist who undermines Australia.

          140

          • #
            TdeF

            Understood. It is an act of great censure to withdraw your ambassador.
            To not appoint one at all sends the same message.
            This is Julie Bishop at work, our Foreign minister who said when Trump was elected that we would endure the Trump presidency.
            Of course there are thousands of people who would want the plush job of Australian Ambassador to the United States.
            To appoint no one is deliberate. It says the Turnbull/Bishop government is not happy with the United States or Donald Trump. Especially with the withdrawal from the Paris accord.

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  • #

    Australia consumed 119 mt of coal in 2017. It exported 372 mt of coal in 2017.

    See how globalists work? There is no call (nor should there be) for a reduction in exports for foreign cash. All the pressure is on domestic consumption and domestic controls. If a slight reduction of China’s 3607 mt should come about, that slight reduction will be used to shame Australians. (China is on board! Big business is on board! The big exporters are on board! Chinese emissions are on the way down!) Yet it is obvious that if China reduced its consumption of coal by the entirety of Australia’s consumption it would be chump change. Even the entirety or Australia’s exports wouldn’t make much of a dent. All obvious to anyone not soaking in slave media and its manipulations – which means just about all the media all the time.

    Conclusion?

    Either coal becomes a much cleaner and nicer substance after a boat ride, or…

    A certain serf has sent me this link which may offer some explanations which make a little more sense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ykELwj1Ta8

    I’ve mentioned this lady before. She comes from the liberal Democrat left…but she gets it. Do we get it? What Turnbull, Frydenberg and Bishop are doing – and what Shorten will do – is not done in error. The only error is our placid tolerance of collectivism simply because it has changed its undies and sprayed on a little Chanel so we forget its grisly efforts from the previous century.

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  • #
    Zigmaster

    Whilst the NEG is in theory a global warming policy it is really an Australia warming policy. Australia’s contribution to global climate if you believe in it is far greater than just what is claimed because by exporting the coal as it does it increases all the overseas end users carbon ( dioxide) footprint. This is not just about pissing of the liberal supporters but it pisses off the greens. Ironically if the green rule this country in conjunction with labor God help us. We will have coal exports ( and probably all mining ) banned as well.
    The NEG will take Australia and the Liberal party over a cliff and don’t be surprised if One Nation and Corey Banardis party poll almost as high as Liberals in some states.
    The only hope for us as a nation is that the Labor states reject the NEG and Turnbull gets overthrown, otherwise it is dark times ahead ( cause of all the blackouts.

    80

  • #
    angry

    Time for the NO CARBON TAX RALLIES to recommence !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    NO CARBON TAX !!!!!!”!!!!

    60

    • #
      PeterS

      Waste of time since the alternative is the same. It’s not like the last time when Abbott was the opposition leader and he won the election hands down on that slogan. The fight is now inside the LNP. There are now only two options left. Either Turnbull is replaced by a suitable leader before the next election who can turn the party a full 180 degrees and get rid of a whole group of anti-Liberal and anti-Australian LNP members, or as a last resort LNP members have to resign and bring down the LNP by forming an alliance with other minor parties, such as ON and ACP.

      10

      • #
        angry

        Not a waste of time.

        Apply for a postal vote.

        Number every preference at your leisure at home.

        Place Minor Parties FIRST, ALL Major Parties LAST.

        Australians have to stop flip flopping between Dumb (Coalition) and Dumber (ALP/Greens).

        Nothing will ever improve unless this is done !

        50

        • #
          PeterS

          Most voters are clueless, ignorant or don’t give a damn. Only those that bother to use their brains will do the only sensible thing and vote for some other minor party as you suggest. So in the end it will mean Shorten will become PM. I think (not sure) a better outcome is to have hung parliament. Too early to tell if that’s even likely. I’d be content seeing the LNP slaughtered almost to extinction so that a new party can come out of the ashes with or without the assistance of other minor parties.

          30

          • #
            Kinky Keith

            Harsh on many trusting and busy or less able voters.

            Politicians occupy positions of Trust.

            That they can’t be trusted says more about them than the voters.

            Politicians making poorly documented donations to groups very loosely associated with the United Nations and assorted ” save the planet ” type ” future ” funds need to be brought to account.

            There is no legal justification for these actions.

            444

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    Kinky Keith

    Thank You Jo.

    Thank You.

    For framing what has happened over the last few days as Australia’s Brexit and Trumpit.

    We desperately need to shake ourselves free of the United Nations, the International Protocol on Climate Change, the virtually self appointed Social Justice type Warriors who fly from Conference to Conference, in our name, distributing our hard earned Taxes like Manna from on high.

    There is No Morality in what they do.
    Self Aggrandizement is the key word here.

    There is No Science behind this Global Warming Mythology.

    Carbon Dioxide does not and never will “drive atmospheric temperature”.

    It is a measure of the ever present threat of job loss and harassment that keeps academics Silenced but in physical chemistry there is No Doubt, Carbon Dioxide cannot cause global warming.

    So it is a lie, and the fact that observations made over a hundred years ago by a Scientist called Arrhenius, are being used to justify the myth would have him turning in his grave.

    You could write a book about the scientific distortions of this scam, and that is a sad commentary on the functioning of our system of government and the lack of rigorous control we have over it.

    The Great Big Barrier Reef Foundation has to be thanked for its part in showing us the real purpose $ $ $ $ $ $
    of the Man Made CO2, Death by Atmospheric Incineration,

    Scam.

    We need a turning point, hopefully the public has had enough of sending $1,000 per household annually to places unknown via their electricity accounts and will finally demand honesty and scrutiny of our public representatives.

    The roll of Honour of those known to have given or accepted donations to worthy “Future Funds”:

    William Jefferson Clinton.
    Hillary Rodham Clinton.
    Julia Gillard.
    Kevin Rudd.
    Julie Bishop.

    And let’s not forget the Great Big Barrier Reef Foundation.

    KK

    160

    • #
      Annie

      So we include Turnbull and Frydenberg on that ‘little list’ then?

      21

      • #
        Kinky Keith

        Yes.
        I suppose that frydenberg wouldn’t have put himself so far “out there” without a lounge chair being reserved for him on the great big barrier reef.
        🙂

        444

        40

  • #
    Graham Richards

    Wish to God somebody would do something to stop the insanity. If you’re waiting for Abbott to do anything about anything we’re waiting in vain. He will not, much to my own disappointment, do anything that will “damage the Party” . Smash the country but leave the party alone. The whole Paris Accord will be implemented, for the he sake of the now useless Party.
    Within the coming months, in accordance with Paris, a carbon tax on petrol & diesel fuels will be implemented. I wonder if the public will even raise an eyebrow as we’re led further down the road to poverty.

    100

    • #
      Ve2

      Abbott is only a backbencher FFS. The clowns who got rid of him still control the party.

      70

      • #
        PeterS

        And the people of Australia will get rid of the LNP at the next election if Turnbull is still PM. The clowns will then know how Abbott felt but with much greater emphasis. Callers to 2GB over the last couple of days are as mad at Turnbull as they were at Rudd. The fire-storm has started and Turnbull is toast one way or another.

        70

  • #
    PeterW

    So how is the agriculture sector going to reduce CO2/Methane?

    It’s pretty hard to find a solar-powered tractor. Or a wind-powered one.

    Maybe we end up with something like the US program in which farmers were paid to not grow things. As the joke goes, “I plan to start in a small way, by not-raising 100,000 hogs”. Or in my case, sheep.

    How do you taxpayers feel about paying me to put half my fartting sheep in a hole in the ground, so I have a whole lot more spare time at your expense?

    40

    • #
      Tom R Hammer

      A new tax would likely be the place to start based on a complicated formula of weight of sheep divided by methane potential of feed consumed multiplied by daytime temperature variation, expected fleece grade and beast activity level multiplied by a constant squared for good measure.

      30

      • #
        PeterW.

        Good luck trying to tax people who are in the middle of a drought and borrowing money just to eat….

        00

      • #
        PeterW.

        But then, land-owning peasants are frequently amongst the first to go up against the wall when the Communists take power.

        00

  • #
    Ve2

    And that odious little twerp has doubled down and announced a Labor target of 45%.
    Not good enough for the Greens, they want 90%.

    40

  • #
    MudCrab

    Remind me, does NEG stand for Never Elected (a)Gain or Negotiated Exclusively with Greens?

    50

    • #
      TdeF

      The only thing that makes sense is that Turnbull already has a deal with his friends the Greens and even with Bill Shorten. For all the posturing about 50%, the NEG is a Labor/Green dream. Labor would agree instantly if the bill allows them to jump to 50% Unreliables by regulation, not legislation. Malcolm may concede this. His NEG would then pass overwhelmingly.

      However as with his dream of Green preferences at the last election, Turnbull will find they are duplicious. There is more to gain by hanging him out to dry, reneging at the last minute and winning power anyway and passing their own Emissions Trading Scheme, which is what the NEG is.

      The only fear Malcolm’s Liberals, the Greens and Labor have in common is opening the door for Tony Abbott, the one member of parliament who could upset this. He would not only remove the NEG and the RET, he would win in a landslide.

      80

    • #
      angry

      NEG……..

      No Energy Guarantee
      No Energy Garbage

      30

  • #
    toorightmate

    The CO2 horsesh*t has to stop.
    While all this stupidity about a NEG continues has anyone bothered to take a look at steam coal prices. They are at an 8 year high BECAUSE Asia continues to build new coal fired power stations.
    Next thing we’ll have Turnbull and his mates (Shorten and Richard N) telling us that Asians are dumb.
    I wish I was as dumb as most of the Asians I have dealt with.
    I eagerly await my red thumbs and a couple of idiotic trolls telling me how Asia is moving to renewables.

    150

    • #
      TdeF

      It has never been about CO2. No one even talks about CO2 anymore. Global Warming does not even get a mention.
      At best, the nebulous ’emissions’ which evokes pollution, which is what they call CO2.
      No it’s all about taxation, money, windmills, money and socialism, making life better for other people by shutting down our businesses.

      Can you imagine a law which penalizes a business $100million for not shutting down on demand from the government? That’s the NEG.

      You could build a lot of power supplies for $100Million. It is a clear message for big manufacturers, smelters in particular to leave the country or else. Australia is to be run on windmills while others take our coal at a price they set.

      120

      • #
        toorightmate

        TdeF,
        Agree.
        I have spent my life in the resources industries (yep, even before I started school).
        Up until about 2000, governments of all persuasions pressured the resources industries to maximise the amount of downstream processing carried out in Australia.
        We have now developed to a stage where the energy stupidity is openly encouraging downstream processing to go offshore.

        80

      • #
        • #
          TdeF

          That’s the official objective. The real EU/UN objective is to turn energy and resource rich countries in to vassal states of Europe, Germany and France in particular.

          In Australia they want us to buy their cars, their metals, their food, their aircraft, the desalination plants ($100Bn worth). They do not want us to make our own cars, our own metals, our own electronics or to build dams. We should also have great hotels, fine beaches and serve fresh food to beachside hotels. A bit like Greece but much better. Of course we should be bankrupt too. It makes everything so much cheaper.

          70

  • #
    Interested

    QUOTE (from the above post by Joanne): ” …If somehow Turnbull pulls it off, the Liberal base will desert the party, he’ll have to put in two million dollars of his own money this election to replace the lost donors, and he’ll likely lose anyway. What drives this man?” – UNQUOTE

    “What drives this man?”
    To me, it’s plainly obvious.
    Years ago, Malcolm Turnbull first asked about joining the ALP as a Finance Spokesman, utilising his knowledge of high finance from his Goldman-Sachs days.
    Take note.
    He didn’t ask to join the LNP.
    He asked to join the ALP.

    How he ended up leader of the LNP is not fully understood but I suspect there were many secret meetings along the way.
    As I’ve said, he’s a socialist. His mission isn’t to save the LNP and serve the best interests of the Australian people. His first task was to unseat Tony Abbott because Abbott had shown he understood that Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) “is crap”, to quote a pithy phrase!
    The ferocity of the Mainstream Media’s (MSM’s) attacks on Abbott are an indicator of what a good job he was doing for the Australian people in that regard – but that’s NOT what the Left wants.

    Turnbull doesn’t answer to the Australian people. He answers to the United Nations and, more specifically, he draws his brief from Agenda 21.
    That IS what the Left wants.
    His overriding aim is to steer the LNP to electoral disaster in 2019 and ensure that the ALP/Greens alliance becomes our new government. And he is well on the way to achieving that aim.
    I have no doubt Shorten (or his party replacement) will be deconstructing our economy with CO2 emissions regulations and opening our borders to all comers in just a few months from now.

    CAGW is just a tool. But it’s easily the most effective tool the Left has ever devised to persuade more ‘useful idiots’ ( a term coined by the Bolsheviks in revolutionary Russia) to back their push for a socialist totalitarian regime worldwide.
    People have conflated ‘saving the planet’ with voting for socialism for God’s sake!
    It’s a masterful ploy!!
    Put this together with humanity’s tendency to ‘vote for free money’ in any case – i.e. to vote for the Left – and the ALP simply can’t go wrong.

    With unrestrained growth in Federal debt, wide open borders, and an economically-suicidal energy policy, our new ALP government next year should oversee the final demise of Australia as the prosperous 1st-world nation we’ve known for the last century and more.
    It will become poor, chaotic, unsafe, and completely dependent on the despotic United Nations for everything.
    But that’s the plan.
    We’re sleepwalking into a future in which democracy plays no part.
    And, largely because of the highly effective propaganda efforts of the Mainstream Media (MSM, Marxist State Media), I don’t think there’s a damned thing we can do about it any more.

    190

    • #
      PeterS

      Democracy will eventually play a major part. It will boot out the LNP and hopefully destroy it. The public are fools some of the time but not always. More and more people have had enough of the hypocrisy. Time to eject. I prefer to see the LNP decimated to the point of ceasing to be a valid party. The irony of it all is it could all easily be reversed simply by replacing Turnbull with an appropriate leader. What does that say about those in the cabinet? They are all treacherous, self-righteous, ignorant fools.

      80

  • #
    philthegeek

    Bring back Tones and his brave band of heroes!! Maximise the chances of an election outcome in 2019 that is good for the country!! 🙂

    Of course the test for this lot is if they cross the floor or not in the HoR on the NEG?? If Turnbull reckong the NEG is good he should put it to the HoR so its actually clear what is on offer to the states at the next COAG. Any amendments agreed there can go to the Senate, and back to the HoR. Interesting bloodsport politics. 🙂

    30

  • #
    philthegeek

    Interesting historical reference.

    40

    • #
      PeterS

      Good find. Just goes to show there’s nothing new under the sun.

      20

    • #
      el gordo

      Phil they were wrong then and they are wrong now, CO2 in the atmosphere doesn’t cause global warming. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation is a major player and indications are that we have entered a cool phase.

      51

      • #
        PeterS

        It’s worse than that. Even if it were true that CO2 causes global warming, the man-made component is irrelevant and as such it matters not how much we as a whole we reduce our emissions as it would make one millionth of bugger all difference to the climate. It’s the greatest scam in history and yet the LNP as a whole is following their leader over the cliff to prove nothing but how pro-UN and anti-Australia they are. I can’t wait to see the LNP destroyed at the next election for being so treacherous.

        81

      • #
        John F. Hultquist

        The PDO is a spatial pattern and not a temperature change.
        It is not the thing driving Pacific Ocean changes, but rather a result of something.
        Further reading:
        Bob Tisdale

        Arthur J. Miller & others

        30

        • #
          el gordo

          Thanks John, I have a lot of respect for Bob Tisdale. This caught my eye.

          ‘I’ve also marked the year that another shift took place in the Southern Ocean SST anomalies, 2000. Seven to eight years later, there was a significant La Nina, and the PDO is said to have shifted to its cold phase.’

          So on the surface it appears the PDO is not the driver, I’ll look further.

          10

        • #
          el gordo

          From a recent paper, a close association but …

          ‘Previous studies have investigated the relationship between ENSO and PDO, but none have examined whether the warm (positive) and cool (negative) phases of PDO in the North Pacific influence the frequency of ENSO events in the tropical Pacific.

          “For the first time,” said Prof. ZHENG Fei from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and co-author on the study, “we have quantitatively demonstrated that El Niño is 300 percent more frequent than La Niña in positive PDO phases, and 58 percent less frequent in negative PDO phases.”

          Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-north-pacific-climate-patterns-el.html#jCp

          10

    • #
      TdeF

      The question of whether the CO2 heats the earth, makes the air hotter and so heats the earth is whether the CO2 stays in the air. It doesn’t.

      The instinctive idea that CO2 stays in the air forever is the same as the one which says heavy things fall faster than light things. It’s not science. In fact CO2 and all gases go in and out of the vast oceans at high speed and our piffling total contribution is not even 1% of world CO2.

      CO2 has been in the air and in the oceans for all time. How much is in the air, in fact how much air is above the water is dependent entirely on Henry’s Law, not us. CO2 existed before the time of humans and will be there long after we are gone.

      Simple Carbon dating shows that there is almost no man released CO2 in the air. That is not debatable. It is fact.
      Man made Global Warming is based on a chain of logic every step of which is wrong. Would someone lie to us for fame and fortune? Of course.

      91

    • #
      manalive

      Interesting find.
      Since 1912 human CO2 emissions have increased over tenfold and concurrently the global average temperature has increased by ~0.9C (HADCRUT4).
      However around half that global av. temperature increase (0.45C) occurred between 1912 and 1950 during which the human emissions increased only marginally.
      Go figure.

      30

      • #
        manalive

        The greenhouse effect is well established science and the accepted atmospheric temperature effect of adding CO2 is around + 1C for every doubling of the atmospheric concentration, all else remaining equal.
        However the ‘all else’ are unknown but estimates of the end climate sensitivity to increasing CO2, i.e. accounting for all effects based on empirical evidence, has been declining as more empirically-based research is done.

        10

        • #
          TdeF

          Regardless of ‘established science’, are you sure we humans are adding CO2 to the atmosphere, increasing the CO2 levels? Are you sure that is even possible? Can you measure it? I can. There is none.

          51

          • #
            manalive

            Respected ‘sceptical’ scientists (all scientists ought to be sceptical) like Roy Spencer for instance say that the source of the long term increase in the CO2 atmospheric concentration since industrialisation, rather than short term fluctuations, is unlikely to be totally natural.
            IMHO one of the problems with attribution disputes around putative AGW is it is presented as a binary issue, a false dichotomy, rather than a complex combination of factors.
            For the sake of the argument I think it’s reasonable and more productive to accept that humans are influencing the climate to some extent and argue about the relative costs and benefits of a bit of warming and increased atmospheric CO2 as opposed to the costs and no benefits of trying to ‘do something’.

            11

            • #
              Kinky Keith

              Sorry Manalive,

              but the simple physics of the situation is that natural CO2 has No effect on world temperature.

              Imagine then, how much human origin CO2 affects temperatures when it is only 3 or 4 % of total atmospheric CO2.

              We need to be thankful that something is delaying the exit of our daily solar energy ration from our planet’s surface.

              That something is Water.

              Without clouds to intervene with Gaia on our behalf we would freeze overnight.

              The CO2 thing is a scam.

              Read my post at #22

              444

              20

            • #
              TdeF

              That’s waffle. You are talking about the biggest expense short of WW2 on something which is putative?
              What’s a false dichotomy? Why is attribution an issue?
              “unlikely to be totally natural”? So we should cripple our country on a hunch?

              Science is clear. Unequivocal. There is no man made CO2 increase. Therefore there is no man made problem. If we reduced our CO2 to zero (and that means you have to stop breathing), it makes no difference.

              What is clear, what is obvious is that a lot of people are making a lot of money out of this equivocation. My input is that you are being utterly decieved and robbed.

              The crown of thorns starfish is necesssary and regular. It turns coral into beach sand.
              The water heating is not caused by CO2 which is supposed to heat the air, not the water.
              Fires and floods and droughts are well known and totally natural, made worse only by refusal to admit that.
              CO2 is essential for life because without it, there is no life.

              Man made Global warming is not true because the CO2 growth has not stopped or even hesitated. The temperature growth of 0.5C a decade has stopped, unless you start grasping at straws of 0.01C one way or the other.

              So there is no problem. Except people cannot believe they have been deceived on such a scale. So they attack the idea that man made Global Warming is a hoax. Of course it is. It always was. You have been deceived.

              The only people pushing it are the ones who profit from it, like every scam in history.

              10

          • #
            Kinky Keith

            Any human origin CO2 “put into the atmosphere” is gone within seven years.

            The Only Crisis that atmospheric CO2 levels may be involved in is that they might Drop.

            This, of course, would be a result of world cooling brought on by variations in our planet’s orbit around the Sun.

            444

            10

            • #
              TdeF

              Roughly right. The half life is 14 years, half is gone every 14 years. The IPCC statement (among many) is that the CO2 hangs around for ‘thousands of years’ is just made up stuff.

              I am amazed in reading some IPCC reports that they are detailed science and then you get throwaway lines like this, without evidence, without data, without explanation.

              However the IPCC also base the rating of all gases on the half life of CO2 which is set at 80 years. In no IPCC report can I find where anyone actually establishes that? The reports just seem so disjointed, so narrow, so confusing. Out of this the committees of politicians make pronouncements which have not much to do with the papers.

              The key to the IPCC, the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change is that the title says it all. A purely political organization set up to make reports and demand things to do with man made Climate Change. They are not going to report that it is not true. That is not their job. It also does not pay the wages.

              10

              • #
                Kinky Keith

                Hi TdeF,

                There were a number of papers in 2017 which indicated that the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere was so short as to be insignificant for most assessments.

                I was wrong in quoting 7 years.

                When I checked it showed up as 4 years.

                That’s full turnover in 4 years.

                When I consider that in the heavy growth period of the year my lawn will yield about 450 lbs of grass, much of it CO2, I think I’m doing a lot of carbon sequestration.

                The flux of CO2 detected over and around growing crops during the 24 cycle also points to the likelihood of a short atmospheric residence time, much to the consternation of those pushing the global warming barrow.

                As you say, the structure of this monster is Political, but we must never let them get away with bogus science.

                444 T

                10

        • #
          Kinky Keith

          The greenhouse effect is rubbish.

          Call it religion or politics but it is Not science.

          Read my comment on “the science” at #22.

          It is Not “accepted” science, it is a viciously enforced imposition from the manipulative Elites, feathering their own nest.

          Some probably believe it because they instinctively trust others. Many believe it because it suits them to do so and enables them to continue in a well paying job.

          In the end it is the return of Slavery, by stealth and abuse of trust.

          444

          42

  • #
    NB

    Liberals sing from the Venezuelan song sheet:

    National Energy Guarantee: energy price caps being considered …
    https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/…energy…price-caps…/a2a795cc7e6756c1b3629b47…
    9 mins ago – PRICE caps for default electricity contracts are being considered as part of a … Treasurer Scott Morrison confirmed this morning the government ..

    Mr Morrison is quoted as saying ‘We are tired of first world issues – all those whingey constituents. We would rather solve third world issues. Our policies will ensure Australians can identify completely with the problems of third world economies. We call it compassion, compassion for Gaia and compassion for those less fortunate than us – for the moment.’

    61

  • #
    ROM

    I posted this last night in Jo’s Mid Week unthreaded @ # 3.2.2 but it went into moderation for some reason so I will post again as this is a more relevant headline post and the articles I refer to are very relevant to what is now occurring in energy politics here in Australia.

    There is a rather solid nail now being driven into the coffin of Renewable energy around the world with almost no recognition of the potential consequences for renewable energy and its advocates and supporters in the longer term .

    It seems that there is a growing shortage of investrors and investment money prepared to finance Renewable Energy in almost all of the nations that were the greatest promoters of renewable energy only a couple of years ago.

    Euan Mearn’s & Roger Andrews blog Energy Matters [ Have investors lost interest in “clean energy”? ] has just done an analysis on the investment levels into Renewable energy from data provided by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

    Only half of the yearly increase in global electrical power production [2016 >2017 ] of 621 TWh ie; 2.5% increase in annual global electrical power generation is being catered for by investment in more renewable energy.

    Which leaves the replacement of fossil fuel generated power by Renewable energy as a very definite non event as only enough Renewable energy is being installed to cover around half of the yearly increase in the global electrical requirements.
    The rest of this increaased demand for electrical power is being covered by the building of coal plants and installing the big closed cycle gas fueled base load generators.

    The poster child of the Renewable energy industry and its advocates, Germany, has now reached a point where its investments in Renewable energy are flat and becoming non existent and as Roger Andrews puts it, Merkel’s fabled “Energiewende” the “transition to renewable power”, is” dead in the water” which even some German political supporters of German Renewable energy are now also saying.

    Germany is now slated to begin removing at least 2000 old, [ 20 years! ]uneconomic and obsolete wind turbines out of its 29,000 land based turbines beginning in around 2020.

    The whole “Energy Matters” article along with the graphs on investement in Renewable energy in each major nation is an almost mandatory read to see just where Renewable energy is actually going and what its future path is likely to be.
    In this case as is so often quoted when one wants to know the future direction of some enterprise, it is another case of just “Follow the Money”.

    “Following the money” says that renewable energy as a major component of nearly all national electrical grid systems is almost over and done with as far as Renewable Energy investment around the world is concerned.

    The really sad part being that apparently Turnbull and Shorten and the greensseem to be so fixated to the point of being seemingly quite literally illiterate when it comes to finding out just what is happening around the world to Renewable energy and the present investment in Renewable energy and the why-nots of the situation.

    Turnbull, reputedly being a banker by repute [ ever heard of a real banker giving away $444 million dollars of his OWN money ] it is even more surprising that he doesn’t seem to have taken any recognition of or even knows about the rapid fall off in global Renewable energy investment and the reasons why it has occurred and is occurring right now and has been within a very recent time frame.

    Just reading the “Energy Matters” blog and its data on Renewable energy investment around the world could likely save the Coalition enormous heart ache and pain in the period ahead as they would come to realise that the whole Renewable Energy industry is a dead end industry totally reliant for its existence upon government mandated very high prices for electricity and / or very large government / taxpayer subsidies / transfers of very large tax payers funds over into the the renewable energy shonks brown paper enevelopes.

    A further read on the future of Germany’s renewable energy industry and its seemingly imminent collapse as translated from german to english is Pierre Gosselins NoTricksZone blog post ; Business Daily Handelsblatt: German Wind Industry In “Serious Crisis”, Could “Implode”…Consequences “Could Be Fatal”!

    And to fill the gap and guarantee Germany’s base load electrical energy needs , we see lignite coal [ brown coal ] mines being developed such as this one from an article published by Thompson Reuters; Villages die as community makes way for coal in Germany
    There is a huge message there for our politicians from nations that have been there and done that in renewable energy and have now only got a moth eaten T shirt left as evidence of their involvement with renewable energy of wind and solar.

    Unfortunately our politicians are so up themselves to use the colloquial and so arrogant in their personal belief in the righteousness of their personal saving the planet ideology and beliefs that we will as a nation have to go through a potentially nasty energy purgotary where the weakest are thrown onto the pile of hummanity which can safely be ignored and disposed of by the elites and politicians before we begin to get some reality back into the supplying of energy to our industries and citizens.

    101

  • #
    Serp

    What an extraordinary future beckons!

    I suppose people have to see it actually broken before they set about remediation.

    No amount of argument can stop the money men (isn’t that the message Gore passed to Palmer?).

    In the meantime as we underbeings have always done grin and bear it.

    30

    • #
      PeterS

      Yes the sooner Shorten becomes PM the better so we can get rid of Turnbull and have someone else put in his place.

      31

      • #
        glen Michel

        Some hard times to come our way and only then will Australians’ grow a brain.The only comfort I get is that political cycles are short and volatile.

        21

        • #
          PeterS

          Often it’s stated we are many years behind the US in most things. Usually that’s a good thing but this time it’s not. By the time we are ready, willing and able to have our own Trump the US will lose theirs and turn down hard leading the West downhill fast, especially if a Democrat wins. Unfortunately we are locked into a downward spiral.

          10

  • #
    David Maddison

    I think most politicians and sheeple don’t realise it is possible to get out of Paris just as President Trump did. All you have to do is give 12 months notice.

    81

    • #
      PeterS

      Yet we have the LNP bending over backward going the other way and legislation it via the NEG with penalties for non-compliance. If that’s not being treacherous I don’t know what is.

      50

  • #
    HarryG

    Slightly off topic.

    I received an email from a Solar Company bemoaning the fact that solar PV subsidies may be cut and suggesting I act quick.

    I responded to the email saying I wanted all subsidies for PV and Wind cut immediately as I was of the opinion that the current madness was sending Australia down an economic black hole for no good reason
    The response from the solar company was in the form of a question “Do you also want the subsidies for coal fired power stations to be stopped In WA? we pay around $300 million a year to keep them going..”

    Is there any truth in this claim?

    I need help with a succinct response please.

    Cheers

    H

    20

    • #
      Kinky Keith

      What do you think, bearing in mind the many hundreds of tons of misinformation shoveled at the Australian voters over the last twenty years?

      30

    • #
      Kinky Keith

      And, why bother responding?

      30

    • #
      ROM

      .
      Harry G @ # 33

      I don’t have data handy at the moment but in the past, what is being called “Subsidies” to coal fired power stations [ and coal mines ] by the greens and the renewable energy industry are the completely normal business expense related tax deductions made by any business for all those costs that are associated with running a business.

      Perhaps you could throw the claim that $300 million a year are being paid to coal fired power stations as subsidies back at the solar company asking them to provide you with a detailed account on what those subsidies are for and how they are calculated by the solar industry and how does the government and consumers pay those subsidies to the coal fired power stations in WA.

      You might just find that those subsidies the solar company is claiming as subsidies are as I have noted above, taxable deductions for business related expenses that are part and parcel of every business.

      Which of course the solar and wind generation industries exploit to the full [ and a bit more if they think they can get away with it ] themselves which could then be counted as further substantial and hidden indirect publicly funded subsidies to the wind and solar industries as well.

      Of course if they actually do provide you with that data and not just hand waving claims then you can readily dissect it to see whether there is any truth in the claim.

      Somehow I think the solar company will duck your request for them to describe in detail and provide an accurate assessment of what they claim are subsidies to coal fired generators in WA.

      Of course, offering to publish their detailed assessment on where and how those subsidies are paid and what for to the coal generators and getting an outside and expert assessment on their claims might give them a whiff of the shakes at being revealed as shonky liars.

      ———————-

      Every power station runs three meters;

      1/ The output meter showing the supply of power to the grid on which they get paid.

      2/ The internal useage meter for the power that is used to run the entire operation of the power station which of course unlike renewable energy such as wind in a similar situation , is power drawn from their own internal power generation but is a tax deductible item being a business related expense associated with running the power station and an expense for which the power station owners get no recompense.

      3/ A business / administration meter which covers all those non generating tax deductible expenses and costs that again are associated with and an essential part of running a business.

      Wind turbines draw up to and possibly much more [ its a closely guarded secret in the wind industry ] than 8% minimum [ it could be up to 15% or more in some situations for heating blades and etc ] of their generating capacity from the grid to run their systems such as controlling gearbox oil temperatures , electronics, magnets in the older wind generators , feathering of blades , directional control, braking of the turbine blades and etc depending on location, weather and etc when they are not generating due to calm weather or too much wind and etc.

      They DO NOT pay for this energy use despite it being drawn from the grid and no doubt generated by fossil fueled generators.

      The power drawn down from the grid and used by the wind turbines to maintain their systems and therefore their ability to generate when the wind blows and conditions are again suitable for their operation once more has to be paid for somehow and therefore has become just another unseen, unrealised, direct and substantial.[ nobody knows the real data on this carefully hidden state secret aspect of the wind industry’s operations,] subsidy to the wind turbine industry by the once again seriously exploited consumers of electrical power.

      The really big, big subsidy to solar power generators is the expensive to build and run intermittently and on a completely unpredictable time table, the massive base load generators that HAVE to be available 24 / 7 / 52 to begin providing power literally in minutes when the solar generators stop generating or rapidly reduce generation through cloud cover, sunset and etc.

      And THAT is a direct subsidy of immense expense that has to be counted in the costs of solar energy but never is as the renewable industry so far has been able to dodge any liability on its real costs when the back up systems are also counted as a part of the costs of renewable energy.

      These costs show up in the consumer bills which inexorably rise as more and more back up base load fossil fueled base load generators have to be installed to run unpredictably and intermittently and unforcastably at any time 24/ 7 / 52 to take up the genration load as the renewables of wind and solar drop out .
      We as consumers have to now pay for TWO complete power generation systems , one of which is completely unreliable and unpredictable both in timing and output but gets first chop at generating and getting paid.

      And the other system which has to be dead reliable and has to have and does have the full capabilities to run the entire power generation requirements on its own but only gets to generate when the unreliables drop out.

      The astonishing thing here is that the those base load standby generators MUST be 100% reliable abut the supposed renewable energy they are supposed to suppliment is allowed to be unpredictable with NO consequences economically, technocally and socially yet are still given priority in genration and supplying power to the grid over and above those 100% utterly reliable supplementary fossil fueled generators.

      Call it stark staring mad and crazy and an utterly imbecilic power generation policy by the elites and politicians but that what we get when common sense is so uncommon amongst the rulling elite who are dead set on saving the planet all on their own and the hell with the real needs of those suckers beneath them on the status pole.

      If ever there is a screw up assessment made on the decisions of the grossly over paid elites and greens and politicals inside of the elitist goat cheese circles in the cities then this forcing of unpredictable, unreliable renewable power generators over and above the utterly reliable coal fired base station generators as the first mandated choice of generators to supply essential to an industrialised society’s power to the grid would have to be the daddy of them all.

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      • #
        HarryG

        Thanks ROM

        I have done as you suggested and asked for a detailed account.

        Love your last sentence – may have to borrow it and use elsewhere.

        Cheers

        H

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      • #
        HarryG

        Interesting all I got back was a pdf of the Synergy Annual Report. Looking through it I cant find the $300million subsidy mentioned, so I asked for a pointer

        Cheers

        H

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      • #
        Kinky Keith

        The fact that turbine operators don’t pay for operating electricity drawn from the mains is gobsmacking.

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        • #
          Peter C

          Is it True? Who can we ask?

          10

          • #
            ROM

            Information on the use of grid power by renewable energy wind farms is Very hard to come by.

            The main source for this information is a treatise on wind farm energy consumption in the USA [ and Denmark ] the dating being around 2012.

            Energy consumption in wind facilities

            In this article you will see a number of references from both the USA and Europe to the fact that wind turbines draw energy from the grid and a quite firm claim based in correspondence by the author and other sources that they don’t pay for the power they draw back from the grid.

            Given all the previous history of power generation via fossil fuels, it probably doesn’t even enter the minds of the bureacrats drawing up contracts and agreements that wind turbines will draw back power from the grid let alone pay for that power if they can avoid doing so.

            Another shorter and more readable pdf version of the above article via the ‘National Wind Watch’ of the UK.

            Energy Consumption of Wind Facilities

            And to quote from the above;

            The electricity used by WTG’s is not metered or accounted for in any way, and consequently is not paid for by the WTG operators.

            Information was obtained from these sources:

            Swedish report on hydrogen and wind power, as printed in Yes2wind.

            The Danish Wind Industry Association’s guide to the technology.

            Industry spec sheets.

            20

  • #
    pat

    finally posted online 15mins ago. video is above the headline, which took me a while to realise.

    this says everything about what is wrong with our politicians/politics. video counts down time, but listen at least from about 3-4mins in, if you don’t have time to listen to it all:

    VIDEO: 13mins32secs: 16 Aug: Sky News: Paris Agreement will do little to meet global temperature targets: Molan
    FULL INTERVIEW: Liberal Senator Jim Molan argues he ‘wouldn’t have a bar’ of the Paris Agreement. Mr Molan has told Sky News he believes the treaty, even if it were executed perfectly, would fail to satisfy the established global temperature targets…

    Mr Molan says he has not threatened his colleagues with crossing the floor over the NEG.
    https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_5822663432001

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    • #
      TdeF

      He’s not fence sitting. The real question is how many people are prepared to do what Malcolm Turnbull did, cross the floor against his own party on this very issue. The actual number may be very surprising on the day and may include Jim Molan. You can hardly offend your colleagues if they all join you. Turnbull and his Black Hand cronies may see what they did not see in the engineered party meeting.

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      • #
        Dennis

        It is now clear that the meeting was carefully stage managed, speakers were added to the list to speak early and others on the original list were cut short at the end.

        And Black Hand faction leaked proceedings to waiting journalists to talk up the Turnbull Party position and get in before their opponents briefed media.

        It’s not a done deal, state governments have not yet signed off on it, just agreed to support it until they review what is in it.

        And then a vote in Parliament and Senate.

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  • #
    Dennis

    People seem to ignore or forget that cabinet ministers in particular are not free to say what they think, unless they make anonymous media comments Black Hand faction style ….

    ‘I’d have to quit if I cross PM on NEG’
    Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton at the opening of the Australian Cyber Security Centre at the Brindabella Business Park in Canberra, Thursday, August 16, 2018. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas) NO ARCHIVING
    12:18PMGREG BROWN
    PoliticsNow: Peter Dutton says he would need to resign to the backbench if he publicly criticised the national energy guarantee or Malcolm Turnbull.

    I wonder how many others maintain cabinet solidarity but do not support NEG and others, Paris Agreement, Compact on Migrants etc?

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  • #
    Peter C

    Jim Molan is one of the people who seems to be missing in action.

    If he is against the Paris agreement, why is he not speaking up now.

    Also I have heard nothing from Senator James Patterson!

    40

    • #
      philthegeek

      Also I have heard nothing from Senator James Patterson!

      He wont pipe up until the IPA tells him what to say.

      40

      • #
        Peter C

        Actually I think he is not taking instructions (unfortunately).

        IPA is very clear that they oppose Paris.

        20

  • #
    pat

    2 and a half years, and millions of $$$ later –

    Bruny Island has a population of 700 permanent residents – BrunyIslandLongWeekend website.
    Awards are coming thick & fast:

    13 Aug: ARENAwire: CONSORT Bruny Island Battery Trial recognised at Clean Energy Summit
    By ARENA
    Last week, state-owned energy network TasNetworks received the Clean Energy Council’s Business Community Engagement Award for their involvement in an innovative project using solar and batteries to meet energy needs during holiday periods, when the island’s population soars.
    More success has followed as the project advanced to the finals of Engineers Australia’s Engineering Excellence Awards after taking out the Tasmanian prize at a ceremony in Hobart last night.

    The Bruny Island Battery Trial ***aims to to reduce reliance on diesel generators by harnessing energy from solar panels and batteries installed at ****34 houses across the island.
    ***Launched in early-2016, ARENA is providing $2.89 million to Australian National University (ANU), who are leading the $7.99 million project…

    The 34 household ‘mini generators’ represent about seven per cent of the island’s fluctuating population, delivering up to 110kw of renewable energy to meet the spikes in demand during popular holiday periods…
    Historically diesel generators filled the gaps, but Thiebaux says they trying to offset their use with battery power…
    https://arena.gov.au/blog/consort-bruny-island-battery-trial-recognised-at-clean-energy-summit/

    ****it was 40 homes:

    1 Aug: RenewEconomy: Clean Energy awards highlight innovative and engaging projects in regional Australia
    Clean Energy Council
    TasNetworks worked with the Australian National University and ARENA to turn ***40 homes on Tasmania’s Bruny Island into “mini power stations”…

    TOTALLY CONTRADICTORY ABC, DECEPTIONS AND ALL:
    16 Aug: ABC: Solar power: Does it make economic sense to buy batteries now or should you wait?
    By Genelle Weule for Life Matters
    Solar power is a hot topic of conversation on Bruny Island.
    The tiny island off the southeast coast of Tasmania is home to a solar battery trial (LINK).
    The idea is that solar batteries could help the islanders save money on their power bills…

    This so-called virtual power plant will be commonplace in the future, predicts Evan Franklin, a University of Tasmania researcher working on the Federal government funded trial along with the state energy operator TasNetworks.
    “I think that in another 10, 20 years’ time, there’s going to be 1 or 2 million batteries installed in households behind the meter, and they can together tackle [the issue of network supply],” he said.

    So, is it time to invest in a solar battery system or upgrade your existing system to tap into the trend?
    “The answer is it’s a little bit complicated,” Dr Franklin said…

    “At the moment every inverter that’s installed in the country has the ability to autonomously operate to detect what’s going on locally and respond as requested and programmed,” said Mr Johnston who also sits on the Clean Energy Council (CEC).
    “But then we’re looking at the new ‘smart’ batteries having communications with the network operators to respond in a dynamic way.”…

    The solar industry is booming, with a record number of people putting solar photovoltaics on their rooftops in 2017.
    “We have the right conditions. High electricity prices, lots of sunshine, strong familiarity with solar technology and higher uptake of new technologies in general,” Mr Johnston said…
    The CEC reports about 12 per cent of new solar systems installed in 2017 included batteries, and that installations of solar batteries tripled from 6,750 in 2016 to more than 20,000 in 2017.
    “This year it looks like we are on target to install 33,000,” Mr Johnston said.

    While some people are investing in smaller batteries, Mr Johnston said most people commonly pay between $10,000 and $15,000 for a “decent sized” battery.
    “By decent sized I mean able to run their house for a third of the day without any solar output,” he said…
    The main thing driving this rise according to a survey of members of consumer group CHOICE, is the desire to be independent of electricity companies…

    Plus there are the environmental considerations.
    “Some people think it’s a greener way of living, all that sort of thing, but actually that’s not as much of a motivator as you might think,” Mr Barnes said.
    “For most people it does come down to dollars and cents and trying to reduce their bills.”…

    According to the CEC, the cost of lithium ion batteries has fallen by 80 per cent since 2010 and is expected to halve again within seven years.
    “As battery prices come down they’ll become more attractive,” said Niraj Lal, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University’s Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems.
    “They’ll also have the ability to provide some of these additional network services to aggregate and bid into the wholesale market or take part in a virtual power plant.”…

    But for now solar researchers, industry analysts and consumer groups all agree: unlike solar panels, it doesn’t quite make economic sense for the average householder to invest in batteries…
    Mr Barnes agreed.
    “If I was to answer absolutely I’d advise most people to hold off,” he said…

    Even if batteries don’t make economic sense for most people just yet, investing in solar panels does…
    There are still a few issues with sending stored energy to the network without flooding it all at once to be ironed out too, according to Dr Franklin…
    Back on Bruny Island, Mr Kobylec has become the go-to person for other islanders curious about the trial.

    ***”They are not installing batteries at this stage because [batteries] are more expensive, but they are looking at the market, and seeing when the price of the batteries comes down,” Mr Kobylec said…
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-08-16/does-it-make-sense-to-buy-solar-batteries-or-should-i-wait/10119900

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    • #
      Peter C

      Letys cut them off and let them live on Solar, Wind and Battery.

      The King Island project has already shown that it won’t work.
      http://www.kingislandrenewableenergy.com.au/

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      • #
        Peter C

        Right now it is quite windy.

        King Island Solar is not producing anything (it is night time).
        Wind is producing 50% and the diesel power plant 50%.

        30

        • #
          Annie

          No wind up here atm. I wonder if it reaches us? Intermittent sun too.
          BTW, just briefly, enough cloud parted early evening to see Venus, Jupiter, the waxing crescent Moon and Mars across the sky…beautiful to see.

          22

          • #
            Annie

            Hmmm…should have read back further, assumed you were talking about Melbourne! However, no, Bruny Island and King Island.

            22

      • #
        Graeme#4

        Flinders Island is another interesting case study. It seems that these schemes don’t like saying how often they have to run their diesel generators. And they never show the financials.

        00

    • #
      yarpos

      ““I think that in another 10, 20 years’ time, there’s going to be 1 or 2 million batteries installed in households behind the meter, and they can together tackle [the issue of network supply],” he said.”

      50,000 to 100,000 battery installations a year for 10 to 20 years. Impressive isnt it? I wonder that includes replacing the first ones cause they dont usually last that long.

      40

      • #
        Graeme#4

        I cringe every time I hear the words “when the price of batteries comes down.” Like our car batteries over the last 100 years?

        00

  • #
    Dennis

    Alan Jones of Radio 2GB has challenged Chairman Mal to deny claims by Hunter Valley farmers that Mal’s several properties have been grazing Black Angus Cattle on the long paddock, the public area between roads and farm fencing where traditionally farm animals have been grazing under supervision during droughts.

    The complaint is that Mr Harborside Mansion can afford to pay for stock feed which most neighbours can no longer afford. And then consider the poor drought relief effort from government.

    Professor David Flint has stated on radio that national parks, many areas former pastoral lands, should be opened up for drought relief grazing.

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    • #
      Kinky Keith

      Good thinking by David Flint.

      Where exactly is Australia’s Compassion Industry when needed?

      And while on the topic of government focus my hope and aspiration for the future is that we can elect a government that focuses on Making Australia Great Again.

      That can only happen when the Paris thing is removed from our homes and industries and once again, We have Cheap Coal Fired Electricity generation.

      444

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      • #
        PeterS

        Make Australia great again? That’s news to me. So when are we joining the US so that Trump can be our President? Seriously though, things will have to get much more painful before the plebs realise we need to turn things around in a big way. Trump didn’t win the election because of his good looks. He won because enough people there suffered a severe financial crisis (GFC) and so they realised they needed a major change in leadership. THey were desperate and were willing to take the risk and stop voting for the usual suspects. That is yet to happen here although we are getting closer. One possible crisis here would be say a 40% fall in property prices. I’m not suggesting that’s going to happen – just an example of how bad things were over there, and that was just a small part of the crisis.

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        • #
          Kinky Keith

          It’s just a metaphor, Peter.

          Same theme, different actors, but I can’t imagine Julie Bishop playing the part of Trump.

          444

          20

  • #
    pat

    15 Aug: Breitbart: Alabama Coal Mine Reopens, Names Excavator After the President
    by John Binder
    The Alabama coal mine, which closed in 2014, was highlighted by The Atlantic last month wherein former coal miner Randy Johnson said he would reopen his business and rehire his 22 coal miners. Johnson even named his new excavator “Trump” in tribute to the president he says helped save his business…

    Trump celebrated the reopening of the coal mine in Alabama, tweeting The Atlantic story out yesterday:
    TWEET: Donald J. Trump: “Hope and Change in an Alabama Coal Mine”
    LINK: Atlantic: Hope and Change in an Alabama Coal Mine”…

    Tha Alabama coal mine is just the latest American coal mine to open since Trump has taken office.
    Last year, Trump celebrated the opening of a Pennsylvania coal mine which employs 70 to 100 coal miners, Breitbart News reported…
    https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/08/15/alabama-coal-mine-reopens-names-excavator-after-the-president/

    15 Aug: GatewayPundit: Jim Hoft: POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE! Trump Approval Ratings with Black Voters Soars to New All-Time High at 36%
    President Trump’s approval rating with African Americans hit 31% on Monday.
    This is a HISTORIC NUMBER!

    And today Trump’s approval with African Americans “>jumped again… to 36%
    The president’s approval is up 19 points since last year at this time:

    TWEET: Rasmussen Reports: Today’s @realDonaldTrump approval ratings among black voters: 36%
    This day last year: 19%
    15 Aug 2018

    In the last ten presidential election cycles the highest black vote share for a Republican was 12% for Bob Dole in 1996.
    If Donald Trump captured 25 percent of the African American vote he would win the 2020 election in a landslide.
    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/08/political-earthquake-trump-approval-ratings-with-black-voters-soars-to-new-all-time-high-at-36/

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  • #
    Ian

    I find it difficult to reconcile views opposing Australia’s committing to the Paris Agreement with the reality of Australia’s commitment. Despite denials from many it is fact that Tony Abbott committed Australia to the Agreement while PM in 2015. This is what he said at the time

    “In announcing Australia would adopt an emissions reduction target for 2030 of 26% to 28% on 2005 levels, Abbott said: “There’s a definite commitment to 26% but we believe under the policies that we’ve got, with the circumstances that we think will apply, that we can go up to 28%.” It was this commitment initiated and signed by Abbott that was the first commitment to the Paris Agreement by Australia .

    Many have said Abbott didn’t sign it but they are wrong. This is what he has said recently “Tony Abbott has claimed he was misled by bureaucrats before he signed Australia up to the Paris international climate agreement in 2015 during another sortie by government conservatives against the national energy guarantee.”

    As the Agreement rolled on it had to be ratified or not, as the case may be which was done by the Turnbull government on November 16 2016. Australia was the 104th country to ratify. This is what was said at the time. As an aside, I wonder why there was not a mass protest from Conservative MPs .

    “The 2015 agreement came into force during the first week in November and has been ratified by 103 countries and covers 70 per cent of global emissions” It was also said at that time “The Federal Government will ratify the Paris climate change agreement, despite concerns US president-elect Donald Trump will withdraw support once in office”

    Surprisingly, when Trump’s withdrawal from the Agreement is discussed it never seems to get mentioned that the earliest any country can realistically leave is 2020.

    Abbott has repeatedly said recently that although he signed up in 2015, as times and circumstances have changed, he would now, well in 2020, pull out. Turnbull may say the same about his signing in 2016

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    • #
      Dennis

      There was no commitment until end of November 2015 in Paris when Australia indicated that our government supported the Paris Conference objectives.

      The Paris Agreement was not signed until April 2016 by Minister Hunt in New York at UN HQ, and was ratified there in November 2016.

      You ignore the reality, a Prime Minister is the leader and sits in the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet. His role is something like a public company board chairman of directors, cabinet ministers are like non-executive directors. Policy and other matters are subject to a vote by all members. Sometimes the PM will make a decision that the majority disagree with but if a PM did that too often he would not remain leader for too long. Unless he had cronies in the majority in cabinet. PM Abbott, as the September 2015 spill motion indicated, was subjected too leaking and relentless negativity by the Turnbull Black Hand faction, including Minister for Communications Turnbull and Minister for DFAT, Liberal Deputy Leader Bishop, and Minister for the Environment Hunt.

      I cannot understand why, if the signing and ratification of the Paris Agreement is a good thing, big if, why they attempt to pass the blame onto Abbott?

      Obviously they know it is electoral poison.

      Please stop posting deceptive comments.

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      • #
        Ian

        “Please stop posting deceptive comments”

        You may not like the comments but they are not deceptive The story below is from https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jul/03/tony-abbott-urges-withdrawal-from-paris-agreement-despite-signing-australia-up-as-pm.

        “Tony Abbott, the prime minister who signed Australia up to the Paris agreement before losing the Liberal party leadership in 2015, now says Australia needs to pull out of the treaty to end “the emissions obsession that’s at the heart of our power crisis”.

        In a significant escalation of his campaign against the national energy guarantee, and in an overt political attack on Malcolm Turnbull, Abbott used a speech to a group of climate sceptics on Tuesday night to claim he would not have signed up to the Paris treaty had he known the US would withdraw from it.

        Despite saying in 2015 that Australia was making a “definite commitment” to a 26% reduction in emissions and “with the circumstances that we think will apply … we can go up to 28%” – Abbott says now he didn’t anticipate, as prime minister, “how the aspirational targets we agreed to at Paris would, in different hands, become binding commitments”.

        On Tuesday night, Abbott said the impact of emissions policy on economic outcomes “wasn’t widely grasped”.

        “I didn’t anticipate how agreeing to emissions that were 26% lower in 2030 than in 2005 would subsequently become a linear progression of roughly equal cuts every year over the next decade,” the former prime minister said.”

        That isn’t a deceptive comment but a recent report in The Guardian. You almost certainly don’t read that Newspaper but are you accusing it of publishing deceptive stories? If so what supportive evidence do you have?

        The material I published which you call deceptive is from https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jun/19/tony-abbott-tells-party-he-was-misled-by-advisers-over-paris-climate-deal

        As you will see, should you take the time and trouble to check what I wrote, is precisely what was published.

        Again, are you accusing The Guardian of publishing deceptive stories? If so evidence that they are deceptive is needed to support your contention

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    • #
      Dennis

      There never was a 2015 Agreement.

      The Paris Agreement was signed by Minister Greg Hunt in New York in April 2016 and it was ratified in New York in November 2016.

      In late November to early December 2015 there was the Paris Conference of delegates who met to discuss a proposed UN Paris Agreement.

      Are you a Black Hand spin doctor?

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      • #
        Sceptical Sam

        Please stop posting deceptive comments.

        And:

        Are you a Black Hand spin doctor?

        We know that he is from his previous postings here.

        The truth is not in him.

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      • #
        Ian

        You ask if I am a Black Hand spin doctor and state “There never was a 2015 Agreement”

        To answer the first “No I’m not, you’re just shooting the messenger. This piece from

        https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/well-climate-change-is-real-josh-frydenberg-reminds-tony-abbott-he-signed-paris-deal-20171011-gyyfx8.html

        clearly shows there was a 2015 Agreement

        “Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg has pointedly reminded Tony Abbott that “climate change is real”, and that it was the former prime minister’s decision to sign Australia up to the Paris climate change deal.”

        “Well, climate change is real. We take our advice from the scientific experts. We believe we need to reduce our emissions. That is why Tony Abbott signed up to the Paris agreement. I point out that, at the time, Tony Abbott said that the agreement Australia struck at Paris was a definite commitment and that it was economically responsible and environmentally responsible. They were Tony Abbott’s words,” he said.

        Are you suggesting Josh Frydenberg was lying? Or that the SMH manufactured the report? If so what is your supportive evidence?

        I understand that what I write often is not received well by readers but does that mean the truth should not be written in case it causes offence? It is quite plain that Abbott signed Australia up for Paris while PM and although later backed away from his actions was serious in his intentions at the time.

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        • #
          Sceptical Sam

          Are you suggesting Josh Frydenberg was lying?

          Yes. See 43.1 below. What is it that you can’t comprehend in that?

          Does that clear it up for you?

          30

          • #
            TdeF

            It’s what politicians do when they say ‘let me be perfectly clear’. To a politician a misleading statement is not a lie, just lacking a bit of accuracy.

            10

      • #
        Kinky Keith

        Dennis, wasn’t Tony Abbott the person who arranged to have trees planted and counted towards carbon emissions.

        As a firefighter he knew that you could fight fire with fire.

        He accomplished the Carbon Sequestration as specified, and turned parts of Australia green.

        This wasn’t appreciated by the Greens who wanted bird Choppers and bird Fryers.

        444 T

        42

  • #
    Dennis

    Oops, your misquoting is obvious …

    “Many have said Abbott didn’t sign it but they are wrong. This is what he has said recently “Tony Abbott has claimed he was misled by bureaucrats before he signed Australia up to the Paris international climate agreement in 2015 during another sortie by government conservatives against the national energy guarantee.””

    He said that did he.

    41

    • #
      Kinky Keith

      Also Dennis

      As I understood it, Tony signed a memorandum of understanding indicating that Australia would sign when arrangements by all parties were completed.

      Someone else signed the actual agreement, to suggest otherwise is misleading and sad conduct.

      444 T

      52

      • #
        Ian

        “Someone else signed the actual agreement, to suggest otherwise is misleading and sad conduct.”

        Possibly you are correct but it seems unlikely. Abbott himself is on record as recently saying in a speech to climate sceptics:

        “Abbott used a speech to a group of climate sceptics on Tuesday night to claim he would not have signed up to the Paris treaty had he known the US would withdraw from it.”

        That certainly does not sound like equivocation and surely Abbott admitting he himself signed up to the Paris treaty can hardly be classed as “misleading and sad conduct”.

        Frydenberg is also saying in this statement, that Abbott signed:

        “That is why Tony Abbott signed up to the Paris agreement. I point out that, at the time, Tony Abbott said that the agreement Australia struck at Paris was a definite commitment and that it was economically responsible and environmentally responsible.”

        Again there is no equivocation. Frydenberg,is categorically stating, just as is Abbot himself, that Abbott signed. Is that “misleading and sad conduct”?

        You also say:

        “As I understood it, Tony signed a memorandum of understanding indicating that Australia would sign when arrangements by all parties were completed”

        Neither Abbott or Frydenberg mention a “memorandum of understanding” Would you advise the source from where you obtained that information?

        21

        • #
          Sceptical Sam

          Ian, for goodness sake face the reality. Abbott did not sign the Agreement. Read your own words:

          Possibly you are correct

          Apply the First Law of Holes to your analysis.

          22

          • #
            Ian

            “Possibly you are correct” was a courtesy statement. The evidence clearly shows, indeed from Abbott’s own speech, that he did sign up for Paris. Perhaps read the whole post not just the first three or four lines. I don’t think you can get much clearer an ad mission than this “Abbott used a speech to a group of climate sceptics on Tuesday night to claim he would not have signed up to the Paris treaty had he known the US would withdraw from it.”

            11

            • #
              Sceptical Sam

              He may have “signed up to the agreement” as you say but he didn’t sign it.

              He was prepared to go along with it if the conditions that he put on it were met. Of course, when muddleheaded Malcolm signed it those condition were not met, were not in place.

              You choose to conflate the language in typical dishonest lefty fashion.

              If you can’t see the difference then you have a serious problem with your comprehension of the subtleties of the English language.

              20

      • #
        Dennis

        Yes, but the memorandum was a Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet document, not a prime ministerial document. In other words the decision of cabinet as agreed by voting, and in 2015 leading up to September (Paris Conference end of 2015) when Abbott was dumped in favour of Turnbull his cabinet was hostile towards him in the majority, including ministers Turnbull, Bishop and Hunt who signed the Paris Agreement in April 2016.

        Ian, your sources are well known left leaning unreliable (fake) news sources.

        00

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    pat

    behind paywall – rallying around the Foundation:

    Reef-centric bodies rally behind $443m Great Barrier Reef Foundation
    The Australian-14 hours ago
    Government, university and tourism groups say they are prepared to work with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation to deliver $443.3 million in programs to protect…

    ***remember the funds have nothing to do with “climate change”:

    15 Aug: AFR: Great Barrier Reef Foundation to keep a rein on administrative costs for $443.3m grant
    by Mark Ludlow
    The Great Barrier Reef Foundation said it was confident it would be able to cap administration costs for the record $443.3 million grant at 10 per cent to ensure taxpayers got the best bang for their buck in leveraging private investment to save the reef from the ravages of ***climate change…

    Mr Schubert – who was involved in the creation of the foundation, which has a long list of corporate big hitters on its board and chairman’s panel – is still believed to be overseas and unavailable for comment on the latest furore…

    Labor senator Kristina Keneally: “There’s also an issue about the confidentiality clauses that are in the agreement may be impenetrable even to the audit office. The confidentiality clauses in the agreement continue until perpetuity. Cabinet decisions at least become public after 20 or 30 years. This is half a billion dollars in confidentiality clauses that may keep the public’s eyes unable to see certain aspects of the agreement forever.”
    https://www.afr.com/news/politics/great-barrier-reef-foundation-to-keen-a-reign-on-administrative-costs-for-4433m-grant-20180815-h1405d

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    BoyfromTottenham

    A great point made earlier – IMO the electricity generation sector is just the thin end of the Paris Agreement wedge. As this sector only accounts for a fraction of our total energy consumption (think how much liquid fuel is consumed by road and air transport, the petro-chemical industry, etc.). How do we reduce our use of these by the same proportion without destroying our economy? We simply cannot. Have the pollies no ability to think beyond the end of their noses? The Paris agreement is a multi-decade plan to destroy the economies of the developed nations and then say that a ‘global government’ is the answer. Except that the US (thanks to Pres Trump) and a couple of EU countries have seen through the trap. Lets hope that this trend continues long enough to save us.

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      Dennis

      And eventually along comes the UN IMF to save us.

      Greece and the other broken economies of what was called the PIIGS.

      50

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    pat

    16 Aug: GoondiwindiArgus: Solar farm given green light despite Goondiwindi concerns
    by Aidan Wondracz
    The Northern Joint Regional Planning Panel green lighted two major solar farm projects in the Moree Plains Shire on Thursday, amid heated public concern for one of the sites at Boggabilla.
    “Our submission is purely based on the flooding aspects and the possible affect … the new development will have on the town,” Goondiwindi Regional Mayor, Cr Graeme Scheu said.

    A 4.99 MW solar farm is to be set up 12km north-west of Boggabilla, along Kentucky Road. The $6 million project will comprise of two solar arrays, three blocks wide and eight blocks long and sit on the left bank of the Macintyre River, opposite Goondiwindi…

    “Far too much is at stake to not address the concerns of 6,000 residents in Goondiwindi,” (Scheu) said.
    A levee bank was constructed around the Queensland border town in 1956 in the wake of devastating floods.
    According to Mr Sheu, the levee now protects in excess of 1, 200 properties on the Queensland side.
    Goondiwindi resident Rob Tweedy said he was concerned that the proposed chain mesh fence around the solar farm would counter the purpose of the levee.
    “I live straight opposite the development site … [I am concerned] whether the fences around the panels will build up the debris and force water back towards Goondiwindi.”

    Cr Scheu called for a halt to the development of the site, until the flood modelling and planning took into account the accumulative affects of potential floods.
    Northern Joint Regional Planning Panel chair Garry West said the project would proceed and also take all community concerns in its stride…

    SMK Consultants were taken on to undertake a Kentucky Flood and Debris Assessment in the lead up to the meeting on Thursday.
    The report noted that while the chain mesh fence around the solar farm would carry some debris the potential of the site to block the floodwater was minor…
    The report recommended that strategic sections of the chain mesh fence be modified to allow some passage of floodwater and any flood debris. In this way, the integrity of the Goondiwindi town levee bank would not be impacted.

    The Northern Joint Regional Council also waved through a 4.99 MW Solar Farm to proceed at Bullarah. The $6 million project will be located along the Gwydir Highway, 95km west of Moree.
    https://www.goondiwindiargus.com.au/story/5587312/solar-farm-projects-given-the-green-light/

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  • #
    pat

    16 Aug: RenewEconomy: Gupta: ACCC underwriting idea may help slash solar costs to $20s/MWh
    by Giles Parkinson
    UK billionaire Sanjeev Gupta says that the ACCC proposal for the federal government to underwrite new “firming” capacity could help drive down the cost of solar in Australia to prices as low as $20/MWh, and no more than $50/MWh with back-up.

    Gupta on Wednesday unveiled the first of his planned one gigawatts of “dispatchable” renewable capacity – to power the Whyalla steelworks and other major users – at a ceremony at the site of the first project, a 280MW solar plant at Cultana near Whyalla.
    This will be followed in the next year or two by yet more solar capacity, plus what would be the world’s biggest lithium-ion battery (120MW and 140MWh) near Port Augusta and a pumped hydro facility located in old iron ore mines in the nearby Middleback Ranges.

    Gupta’s plans for solar go much further than that – and he has outlined a vision for up to 10GW of solar capacity across the country to restore Australia’s position as a cheap energy producer with a strong manufacturing base.
    “There is no doubt in my mind that Australia should be cheapest solar energy producer in the world,” Gupta told RenewEconomy in an interview on Thursday.

    He pointed to recent contracts in the Middle East and India in the mid $US20s/MWh, and said this was underpinned by access to cheap land, cheap finance and lower construction costs…

    Ironically, he said his vision to “solarise” the Australian economy could be accelerated by the proposal from Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims for the federal government to “underwrite” new firming capacity in the market.

    The Turnbull government has indicated it will adopt this idea, although many commentators, and many in the Coalition government, see this as an opportunity to bring in new coal-fired power stations – despite a virtually unanimous view in the energy industry that new coal makes no economic, or environmental sense…

    Gupta, on the other hand, sees the auction as an opportunity to bring down the cost of solar, because the government underwriting commitment – providing a minimum return of around $45-$50/MWh to a new project from years 5 onwards – would lower the cost of finance…

    ***“We think solar is cheapest energy option. It is not enough by itself, we need solutions for the non solar hours, but we are working on those” with the addition of battery storage, pumped hydro and financial contracts…

    Gupta says that most businesses in Australia were not interested in political debates around fossil fuels and renewables, they simply want access to the cheapest supply. It’s just that he has no doubts that renewables are the cheapest…
    https://reneweconomy.com.au/gupta-accc-underwriting-idea-may-help-slash-solar-costs-to-20s-mwh-19171/

    10

  • #
    pat

    15 Aug: Canadian Solar revenues drop
    Fewer project sales and lower module prices blamed for decline
    Canadian Solar has reported net revenue of $650.6m in the second quarter of 2018 – a drop of 54.3% on the $1.42bn in the previous quarter and less than the guidance range of $690m-$730m.
    The company attributed the fall mainly to lower revenue from project sales, which was $85.6m in Q2 compared to $879.9m in the first three-month period.

    Canadian Solar chairman and chief executive Shawn Qu said: “Our second quarter revenue was affected by the deferral of several project sales as well as an industrywide lower average module selling price.
    “The solar policy change in China effective on May 31, 2018 has caused a significant disruption in China, and the global solar industry…
    http://renews.biz/112152/canadian-solar-revenues-drop/

    15 Aug: ClimateChangeNews: China solar industry struggles through sudden subsidy cuts
    After years of breakneck growth, solar panel manufacturers are tightening their belts as the government slashes support
    By Liu Bin
    (The article was produced jointly by chinadialogue and Energy Observer. This version has been edited from the Chinese original)

    “We’ve already halted work on 11 megawatts of industrial and commercial distributed solar PV projects,” says the marketing director for one solar photovoltaic (PV) module manufacturer in Guangdong province.
    “Without subsidies there’s no return on investment for over a decade, so investors and property owners aren’t interested in distributed solar. With subsidies it only takes seven years to recoup the investment,” he adds.
    This is one consequence of China’s “531” policy that was announced by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, and the National Energy Administration without warning on May 31 (hence the “531” name)…

    During the 12th Five Year Plan period (2011-2015) subsidies were paid late and there was significant wastage of both solar and wind power. Those lessons should have been learned by now, says Meng Xiangan, deputy director of the China Renewable Energy Society. To avoid a repeat, the sector can either lobby for an extension of subsidies and continue its rapid and unsustainable expansion, or accept that new capacity will face a tougher challenge on costs…

    The new policy, which came into effect immediately, has no target for the construction of solar farms, and orders local governments not to approve solar farms that need subsidising…
    However, it is distributed solar projects, such as small-scale commercial and consumer rooftop installations that will see the biggest change…
    In 2017, 19.44 gigawatts (GW) of new distributed solar was added – as much as the total for the previous three years. A further 7.68GW was added in the first quarter of this year, an increase of 217% year-on-year and 79.6% of all new installations in China. The new policy has put in place a target of 10GW of new distributed solar capacity (as oppose to solar farms), which means that the entire 2018 target was almost reached in the first three months of the year…

    Alongside limiting the amount of new solar installations eligible for subsidy, the 531 policy also reduces the level of subsidy for solar farms and distributed solar, which were set through regional pricing policies in 2013…
    The new policy has dropped those subsidies to 0.50, 0.60 and 0.70 yuan per kilowatt hour across the three regions, with the distributed solar subsidy falling to 0.32 yuan per kilowatt hour.
    This is the second cut in subsidies in less than a year. In December 2017 the distributed solar subsidy fell from 0.42 yuan per kilowatt hour to 0.37 yuan.
    “We were expecting subsidies to be cut back but this was too sudden and too sweeping, with no buffer period,” says a source at the Guangdong Solar Energy Association…

    The market has dropped significantly. Wang Bohua, secretary general of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association, expects to see 30-35 gigawatts of new capacity in 2018, a drop of 43% on last year…

    Because solar installations were not coordinated with power grid construction, the grid has limited ability to absorb the extra power and connection to the grid has been difficult. National Energy Administration figures show that curtailment of solar PV was 19.81% across those five provinces – that is, one fifth of solar power capacity is being wasted…
    Ultra-high voltage lines can be used to carry the power 1,000 and more kilometres to eastern and central China, but energy loss through transmission and transformation makes this a hugely uneconomical option for the State Grid…READ ALL
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/08/15/china-solar-industry-struggles-sudden-subsidy-cuts/

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  • #
    Mark Allinson

    “What sort of a “conservative” leader places his destiny in the hands of Laborites?”
    I would also ask: What sort of a Liberal Party put its destiny in the hands of a Laborite leader?

    50

    • #
      Sceptical Sam

      John Howard had a hand in that if I recall correctly.

      Shame on him.

      10

    • #
      James Murphy

      At first glance, I thought you had typed “Labradors”.

      Now I know what is meant when something has “gone to the dogs”.

      30

  • #
    pat

    ???

    16 Aug: RenewEconomy: Origin profit surges as energy consumers feel the pinch
    by Sophie Vorrath
    ASX-listed power generator and retailer Origin Energy has announced a 110 per cent increase on underlying profit for 2018, up from $438 million to $838 million in FY 2017.
    The result marks the latest in what has been an orgy of money-making for Australia’s big three gen-tailers, as consumers continue to feel the pressure of bloated electricity prices.
    Last week, EnergyAustralia reported a half-year profit of $A375 million to June 2018 – up from $A129 million a year earlier – closely followed by AGL Energy, with a near-tripling in its own net profit for 2017-18.

    Each company has reaped the benefits of higher wholesale electricity prices – which each has partially attributed to the short-notice closure of Victoria’s Hazelwood coal-fired power station…
    (Origin CEO Frank) Calabria also noted that Origin continued to support the federal government’s controversial National Energy Guarantee, as the best available policy to bring stability and investor certainty back into the market.
    “Whatever emissions setting is made, (the NEG is about ensuring) we get there without a reliability or affordability shock along the way,” he said.
    “It’s about making sure there is not the repeat of coal assets leaving the market at short notice. That’s what it’s all about.”…

    Interestingly, Calabria also noted that the rapid increase in new, renewable generation that had come onto Australia’s grid, partly in response to the closure of Hazelwood, had pushed down power prices in the forward market.
    “There has been a supply response …since the closure of Hazelwood,” he said. “The increased renewable supply has put downward pressure on the market, and we’ve seen that go through to lower prices.”…
    https://reneweconomy.com.au/origin-profit-surges-as-energy-consumers-feel-the-pinch-45674/

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    • #
      el gordo

      Old World Capitalism

      ‘Each company has reaped the benefits of higher wholesale electricity prices – which each has partially attributed to the short-notice closure of Victoria’s Hazelwood coal-fired power station…’

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    Greg in NZ

    Life on the tropical Sunshine Coast back in the idyllic ’80s seems like another world away now… oh right, it was. Your circus is a much bigger circus than ours: all we get is suits accusing each other of spending too much on travel allowances, to wit, “Ms Ardern said efforts were made, for example, when there were several MPs travelling to the same place – to hire a van.” A van!!!? A petrol/diesel pollution-emitting common-folk stinky-dirty van? Wash your mouth out with carbon footprint a hundred times and repeat, “It’s only two million dollars.” Chauffeur-driven BMWs is how ALL sustainable public servants get around, don’t you know…

    https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/364227/mps-spending-expenses-revealed

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    pat

    neat and to the point:

    15 Aug: NextBigFuture: Global Renewable power spending has been virtually flat for seven years and most countries will need expensive grid upgrades to handle more solar and wind
    by Brian Wang
    Global investment in renewable energy (Solar, Wind, Hydro and biofuel) edged up 2% in 2017 to $279.8 billion, taking cumulative investment since 2010 to $2.2 trillion…There has been an increase in overall installed renewable power each year because of the dropping prices. A 2% increase in spending has resulted in 10% increase in global installations from 2016 to 2017…

    A record 157 gigawatts of renewable power capacity was commissioned in 2017, up from 143GW in 2016. This was more than the 70GW of net fossil fuel generating capacity added last year. However, the installed fossil fuel power generates more kilowatt hours because of the low capacity factors of solar and wind power…

    China spent $126.6 billion on renewable power. This was the highest figure ever and more than 45% of the global total. China 53GW installed with solar investment of $86.5 billion, up 58%. Renewable energy investment in the U.S. was down 6% at $40.5 billion. Europe had a decline of 36% to $40.9 billion. The biggest reason was a fall of 65% in U.K. Investment to $7.6 billion, reflecting an end to subsidies for onshore wind and utility-scale solar. Germany also saw a drop in investment, of 35% to $10.4 billion…

    Within five years most countries will need expensive energy grid investment to handle more solar and wind
    The increased share of solar and wind means the energy grids will require upgrades, reinforcement and interconnections, storage, demand-side response and other flexible supply to accommodate the higher levels of solar and wind…
    https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/08/global-renewable-power-spending-has-been-virtually-flat-for-seven-years.html

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    pat

    15 Aug: BarrieToday: (Ontario) Province cancels solar installation at Oro-Medonte airport
    by Nathan Taylor
    Project one of many in area scrapped by government
    Construction was about to begin on the 6.75-megawatt solar installation at the Oro-Medonte airport when the government announced recently the cancellation of multiple renewable energy projects across the province.
    It would have been the second-largest solar installation at an airport in Ontario…

    In addition to the Lake Simcoe Regional Airport project, the province is cancelling a number of smaller, rooftop and non-rooftop solar installations in the area, most of them in Ramara. Nearly 30 projects are scheduled to wind down in the township.
    See the complete list of affected projects here (LINK).
    https://www.barrietoday.com/local-news/province-cancels-solar-installation-at-oro-medonte-airport-1016185

    17 Jul: Toronto Sun: EDITORIAL: Fixing Ontario’s green energy disaster begins
    The damage the previous Liberal government did to Ontario’s electricity system was mind-boggling…
    According to Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk, by 2015 they had overpaid $9.2 billion for wind and solar power because they ignored the advice of their own energy experts on how to price green energy.
    Instead, they locked electricity ratepayers into paying absurdly expensive, 20-year contracts to wind and solar developers, at twice the average cost paid for wind in the U.S., and 3.5 times the average cost for solar power.

    They mandated that expensive and unreliable wind and solar energy, which cannot provide base load power to the grid on demand, had to be bought first, before all other forms of energy, making the entire electricity system less efficient.

    Given all this, last week’s announcement by Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government that it’s cancelling 758 small renewable energy projects, at a savings of $790 million, is a step in the right direction.
    The Liberals’ justification for their green energy blunder was that they used it to eliminate coal-fired electricity generation in Ontario. That’s absurd.

    Coal provided 25% of Ontario’s electricity in 2003 when the Liberals came to power, while wind and solar — which have to be backed up by natural gas plants — today supply about 8% of Ontario’s energy needs.
    Obviously you can’t replace 25% of the system in 2003 with 8% of it in 2018.
    What the Liberals actually replaced coal with was nuclear power — which doesn’t emit greenhouse gases or pollution — and natural gas, the cleanest burning of the fossil fuels.
    What the Liberals really did was to waste billions of dollars on wind and solar power, contributing to skyrocketing electricity bills, that wasn’t needed to replace coal.
    The PCs are, at least, beginning to correct the damage.
    https://torontosun.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-fixing-ontarios-green-energy-disaster-begins

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    pat

    15 Aug: National Observer: Ford government jettisons Hydro One board
    By Steph Wechsler
    Premier Doug Ford says his Progressive Conservative government has completed its promised overhaul of the management at Ontario’s largest utility company, Hydro One, ejecting all members of its board of directors.
    The company, partially privatized in 2015 by the former Wynne government, was a key target of Ford during the last election campaign that brought him to power in June, as he criticized rising electricity rates and high salaries of Hydro One executives.

    “We are sending a clear message to the entire energy sector,” says energy minister Greg Rickford as he and Premier Doug Ford announce changes to Hydro One’s board, via @NatObserver #onpoli

    “A new day has dawned at Hydro One,” Ford told reporters at a press conference, accompanied by the province’s energy minister, Greg Rickford on Wednesday. “The Hydro One CEO is gone, he’s done. And as of yesterday, so is the old Hydro One board.”
    Ford said that newly-adopted legislation would now regulate the pay of Hydro One board members and require cabinet approval for any changes…
    First announced on July 11, the Hydro One Accountability Act will also require the electricity provider to publish salary information online each year…

    Ford and Rickford didn’t indicate if they had additional policy initiatives intended to address other factors that have been linked to Ontario’s rising energy costs, such as the state of its infrastructure, maintenance costs on aging nuclear facilities as well as the ongoing recovery from the province’s historic dependence on coal-fired power plants which were all shut down by the previous Liberal government…

    The former Hydro One CEO, Mayo Schmidt, resigned last month having made an arrangement with Ford that he would not receive the $10.7 million severance his contract entitles him to, instead taking a $400,000 package, Ford said. His pension and stock options could still yield him millions of dollars.

    The premier told reporters that there are “not going to be any more backroom deals” regarding compensation packages. “Those days are done.”…
    “We are sending a clear message to the entire energy sector,” said Rickford, that “at our government, respect for our people, respect for the ratepayers comes first.”
    https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/08/15/news/ford-government-jettisons-hydro-one-board

    Ontario freezes broader public sector executive pay
    Toronto Star-18 hours ago
    Ontario has frozen the salaries of executives across the public sector…

    It may seem unfair, but Doug Ford has the legal right to shrink city council
    Toronto Star-15 hours ago

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    pat

    23 Jul: Center of the American Experiment: Ontario, Canada, to Scrap 758 Renewable Energy Contracts to Protect Ratepayers
    by Isaac Orr
    Simply put, the backlash against renewable energy programs was prompted by skyrocketing electricity prices. Ontario now has the highest electricity prices in Canada, and the top rate for electricity prices has risen four times faster than the rate of inflation since 2006.
    As a result, the high cost of electricity became the number one source of frustration for Ontario voters…

    If you look at the graph below, you’ll see prices steeply climbing and then suddenly falling after November of 2016. Was this caused by a breakthrough in renewable energy technology that we are so often promised?
    No, it was caused by politicians fearing the wrath of voters who were infuriated over the rising costs of electricity.
    The fury over electricity prices caused politicians to enact a 25 percent cut to electricity prices to hide the results of their misguided policies…

    Lessons for Minnesota
    Minnesota’s electricity prices have skyrocketed as a result of the state’s goals of closing coal-fired power plants and the decision to spend $15 billion on wind turbines and the transmission lines needed to move the electricity generated by wind to major population centers.
    Amazingly, many of the candidates for public office want to increase the amount of renewable energy generated by the state.
    Who will stand up for ratepayers?
    https://www.americanexperiment.org/2018/07/ontario-canada-scrap-758-renewable-energy-contracts-protect-ratepayers/

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  • #
    pat

    where’s Gupta when you need him?

    15 Aug: BusinessStandardIndia: Funding cloud on Modi govt’s solar plan for farmers after FinMin red flag
    The Finance Ministry has reportedly asked the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy rework funding plans
    by Shreya Jai & Arup Roychoudhury
    The government’s ambitious plan to roll out solar power-run irrigation pumps for farmers is facing funding challenges. KUSUM (Kisan Urja Suraksha Evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan), one of PM Narendra Modi’s pet projects, may see a reduced budget support as the finance ministry has raised red flags…

    The scheme was announced with a total outlay of Rs 1,400 billion, including a budgetary support of Rs 480 billion over a period of 10 years. The project needs an initial funding of close to Rs 280 billion, according to a calculation by the nodal department of Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE).
    Sources in the ministry, however, said the finance ministry denied such a huge sum for the scheme and asked the ministry of MNRE to rework the funding…

    “The allocation for any scheme should accompany a sound financing plan. MNRE has been told to come up with proposals to partly finance the scheme through other means,” said the official requesting anonymity.
    MNRE officials said they were looking at other funding sources through multi-lateral funding agencies, banks, co-operatives etc…

    The KUSUM scheme entails installation of 2.75 million solar pumps (1.75 million standalone and 1 million grid-connected), 10 GW of solar power plants with an intermediate capacity of 0.5–2 MW, 50,000 grid-connected tube-wells or lift irrigation and drinking water projects across rural areas. It also includes replacement of existing diesel-run pumps with solar ones. Farmers will also be allowed to sell the surplus solar power generated through these systems.
    https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/kusum-dwindles-for-lack-of-fund-finmin-turns-down-100-budget-support-118081500988_1.html

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    pat

    Michael Howard, Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition from November 2003 to December 2005 (for all those who have totally forgotten him):

    16 Aug: Daily Mail: Thirty years ago Margaret Thatcher warned of man-made global warming. I fear this blazing summer is proving her right, says former Tory party leader MICHAEL HOWARD
    By Michael Howard
    This blistering summer, during which we sweltered for weeks on end, reminded many of the great heatwave of 1976.
    But there is a significant difference: this year’s heat has not been limited to the United Kingdom…
    It is hard to escape the conclusion that something unusual is disturbing our weather…

    PIC: Crowded beach full of happy people

    Although we should not rush to assume it is man-made climate change, common sense demands that we ask the question.
    Are the dramatic events unfolding around the world being shaped by the greenhouse gases that we are adding to the atmosphere, and which stop heat escaping from the Earth into space, as scientists have repeatedly warned would happen…

    Margaret Thatcher, in whose government I served, is unique among prime ministers in having had a science degree and having worked as a scientist before entering politics.
    She was better qualified than any other politician to understand climate science and to foresee the likely course of climate change if left unchecked…

    Mrs Thatcher’s concerns led to her becoming the first leader of any major nation to call for a landmark United Nations treaty on the issue.
    Four years later, as Environment Secretary, I played a small role in ushering that UN treaty into existence at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro…
    Then, and in the years since, I have had many conversations with climate scientists. Although the details have become clearer, their essential message remains as it was: greenhouse gas emissions are changing the world…

    Since 1992, there has been a backlash against the notion that climate is affected in any way by human activity.
    I believe that the extent of this backlash is often exaggerated: a few prominent commentators in this country are sceptical, but they have not shaken the public consensus…

    One effective step is to trade in your diesel or petrol car for an electric model or a hybrid. On the basis of the lifetime of the vehicle, the costs are now comparable.
    If that seems too drastic, you could resolve to use public transport more often and walk wherever possible.
    At home, it’s wise to review your heating regularly, making sure you use it efficiently — this being a good way of cutting household bills, too.
    When the public sets an example in this way, government takes notice.

    We are already reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. Indeed, in April, the National Grid announced that more than three whole days’ electricity supply had been generated without burning coal, for the first time since the 1880s.
    It came from gas, which is much less polluting than coal, renewable sources and nuclear.
    Nuclear power stations can play an increasing part in this energy revolution…
    Cynics and pessimists claim that burgeoning pollution in China and India makes it impossible for the West to reverse its effects.
    I disagree. Anyone who has been to a Chinese city knows the terrible atmospheric problems they endure. But people there are not prepared to put up with it any more. China’s government recognises this and is implementing changes.
    In India, politicians accept they must reduce carbon emissions. Both countries have huge plans for renewable energy and electric cars.
    The big question is whether change can happen fast enough to avoid damaging consequences for future generations.

    The obdurate refusal of U.S. President Donald Trump to do likewise is a matter of regret, but in individual American states, much encouraging progress is being made…
    This summer has shown that Margaret Thatcher was correct. We are conducting an experiment with the atmosphere and it is a dangerous one.
    It is only right that we permit the experiment to proceed no further, by eliminating greenhouse gas emissions as soon as we can.
    Doing so will not cost the Earth and may yet succeed in ensuring that we pass it on to our grandchildren in a condition fit for them to enjoy.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6064961/MICHAEL-HOWARD-says-summer-proves-Margaret-Thatcher-right.html

    from comments:

    If Lancashire could get Spanish weather and lose the rain then i will be eternally grateful to man made climate change.

    hes not the messiah he’s a very naughty boy, now p off

    Scare tactics to provide a means for more taxation. We should be taxing the cows in the fields and all those volcanoes. Wonder if they worried about Global Warming during the last great ice age. The Earth warms up, the Earth Cools, thank you the Sun for all the changes you have brought our planet.

    Why didn’t you do something about it while you were in power then?

    34 years ago Thatcher said there was no coal mine closure programme. Sir Arthur tried to tell the world she was a liar. Now who WAS it that lied.
    ETC

    more to come.

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      pat

      first, the CAGW mob are already loving the Howard piece – Carbon Brief has it, it’s being carried by minor news sites, PLUS:

      16 Aug: TWEET: Richard Black ECIU (ex-BBC):
      A welter of scientific findings and #HeatWave2018 show Mrs Thatcher was right on climate change, Lord Howard writes for @DailyMailUK
      reply: Mike Clark:
      What’s depressing is the quality and quantity of comments on the story, rejecting the premise that human activity impacts the climate.
      Richard Black replies:
      Yes – but, as far as I could see, without a single attempt to give any evidence.
      https://twitter.com/_richardblack/status/1030007190873145344

      16 Aug: TWEET: Jeremy Leggett: Heatwaves are proving that Mrs Thatcher was right on global warming 30 years ago, a former Tory leader writes in the Mail. Michael Howard: “Margaret Thatcher, in whose government I served, is unique among prime ministers in having had a science degree.”
      16 Aug: Stephen Lowe Watson
      Replying to @JeremyLeggett
      Welcome but surprising comments coming from the chairman of Soma Oil & Gas. Has he had a damascene conversion?
      https://twitter.com/JeremyLeggett/status/1030043857352904704

      what a joker:

      3 Jun: Daily Mail (ThisIsMoney): Rural revolt over Michael Howard new town: Former Tory Minister faces fury over vast development planned in the heart of rural Somerset
      By Jamie Nimmo
      Former Conservative leader Michael Howard is one of the key players behind plans to build a massive new town that will despoil vast swathes of some of the most beautiful countryside in England.
      Lord Howard of Lympne is the chairman of South West Strategic Developments (SWSD), a little-known company ultimately owned by a private equity firm based in Bermuda, which has drawn up proposals to build up to 15,000 houses in rural Somerset, next to the village of Sparkford.
      A large slice of the land in question is owned by a multi-millionaire property developer, Bill Hopkins, who is best known for a bitter High Court battle over his fortune with his ex-wife. The cement tycoon, who would stand to profit handsomely from the deal, also owns a nearby castle.

      Local councillors say it will wreck a beautiful part of the rural landscape and is motivated by greed. Critics also argue the land is on a flood plain and that the town could take up to 20 years to build, causing huge upheaval in an area where there are no extra opportunities for employment and no rail infrastructure…

      Cardinal is owned by a firm called CRBF Private Equity Limited, which is based in Bermuda, a well-known offshore tax haven. CRBF was named in the so-called Paradise Papers because it used Appleby, the law firm at the centre of the leak that exposed offshore dealings of banks, billionaires, and major world companies…
      Lord Howard lives between London and Kent, both well over 100 miles from the planned town.

      Controversial path to a pot of gold
      He makes £75,000 a year as a director of Watchstone Group, the company created out of the ashes of troubled technology business Quindell…

      ***Howard is also chairman of Soma Oil & Gas, a Somalian oil explorer that is not listed on the stock market, in which he has a 3.9 per cent stake.
      The Serious Fraud Office dropped a probe into alleged bribery at that company in 2016, saying there was ‘insufficient evidence to provide a realistic [prospect of] conviction’. Soma, which is majority-owned by the Russia’s billionaire Djaparidze family, denied any wrongdoing…

      Howard remains a paid consultant to Vancouver-based miners Entrée Resources after stepping down as chairman and is on the advisory board of Tanzanian gas firm Orca Exploration. He was also a director of Global Switch, the London-based data centres giant which is now controlled by Chinese investors.
      http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-5798473/Former-Tory-Minister-faces-fury-vast-development-planned-heart-rural-Somerset.html

      KPMG fined £3.2m over work with Quindell
      Financial Times-11 Jun. 2018

      Just how did Slater and Gordon manage to get bowled out by Quindell
      Independent – Mar 1, 2016

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        Greg in NZ

        “the land is on a flood plain”. No, can’t see any problems here, Lord Lowbrow of Limpy. And ssshhh, don’t mention the Russkies…

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    pat

    reply with followup re Michael Howard piece is in moderation.

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    ROM

    Now if you want Rudd’s Pink Batts imbroglio cum disaster both technically, socially, economically and morally but enhanced a hundred fold, just try on solar panels after 20 years when they about run out of life and have begun to structurally deteriorate.

    There are a number of articles on the looming solar panel waste disposal problem with all the toxic metals including the toxic and carcogenic heavy metal cadmium prominently featured.

    A couple of articles out of dozens now surfacing on this upcoming problem and maybe disaster as it has just been found that if solar panels are broken ior dammaged they will begin to leach the metals used in their construction such as cadmium which is both very toxic and highly carcinogenic .
    It won’t do your lovely clean rainwater any good at all if those damaged and maybe broken [ hail? ] solar roof panels begin to leach heavy metals such as cadmium onto your roof to be washed into the water tank whenever it rains.

    From Forbes and if you hadn’t thought that solar panels can be very detrimental to yours and your family’s health then this article and many others like it might disillusion you about the joys of having solar panels and cheap power .

    If Solar Panels Are So Clean, Why Do They Produce So Much Toxic Waste?
    .

    From the NoTricksZone blog; New Study: Solar Module Owners Sitting On A Pile Of Hazardous Lead And Cadmium

    Quoted;; Contrary to earlier assumptions, the result shows that hazardous material such as lead or carcinogenic cadmium from broken pieces of solar modules could be completely washed out by rain water of a period of several months.”
    .

    &
    Toxic Chemicals in Solar Panels.

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    pat

    final followup re Michael Howard & Soma Oil and Gas – the perfect response when the CAGW mob embrace him:

    14 May: DesmogUK: Introducing Empire Oil: A DeSmog UK Special Investigation
    By Chloe Farand
    The UK likes to brag about its credentials as a global climate leader. But a new DeSmog UK investigation reveals that beneath the green veneer lies some dirty business.
    At the centre of it all is the City of London and its junior stock exchange, the Alternative Investment Market (AIM).
    DeSmog UK’s new three-part investigative series Empire Oil: London’s Dirty Secret, lifts the veil on a “boys’ club” that generates wealth for The City from environmentally damaging activities in politically unstable regions…

    LINKS:
    Part one, ‘Black Gold’: London’s African Oil Hub, maps the London oil companies operating in Africa.

    Part two, Taking AIM: London’s Wild West Stock Market, lifts the lid on London’s junior stock exchange, the Alternative Investment Market (AIM).

    Part three, Exposed: The Elite ‘Boys Club’ Running London’s Opaque Oil Network

    The series fundamentally challenges the idea that London and the UK are global leaders in green business, and shows the urgent need for market reform…
    https://www.desmog.co.uk/2018/05/10/introducing-empire-oil-desmog-uk-special-investigation

    FROM PART ONE: ‘Black Gold’: Mapping London’s African Oil Hub
    Since its creation in 2013, Soma Oil and Gas has changed its registration address five times in central London according to Companies’ House. Soma Oil and Gas was founded in 2013 by the former leader of the Conservative Party and now company chairman Lord Howard of Lympne to pursue oil and gas opportunities in Somalia.
    In 2015, it was the subject of a criminal investigation by the Serious Fraud office (SFO) “in relation to allegations of corruption in Somalia”. In 2016, the SFO closed the case because of “insufficient evidence”. No charges were ever made.
    The company told DeSmog UK the address change was due to the “initial founding of the company” that was “followed by three moves to different sublet offices to lower costs in response to the low oil price”…

    Companies’ ties to tax havens also occur through a major shareholder. This is the case of Soma Oil and Gas and Cap Energy.
    More than 50 percent of Soma Oil and Gas is owned by Winter Sky Investments Limited, a private equity fund registered in the British Virgin Islands which invested more than £50 million in Soma.
    Cap Energy’s major shareholder is Global Energy Trade Limited, a firm owned by two Cap Energy directors and incorporated in the British Virgin Islands…

    In Somalia, experts estimated there could be up to 110 billion barrels of proven oil reserves off the country’s coast.
    On its website, Soma Oil and Gas states: “Eastern Africa has seen some of the most dramatic hydrocarbons discoveries in the world in recent years. Yet Somalia is at present the last remaining frontier on the region’s energy map. Industry experts consider it to have huge prospective resources, both onshore and offshore.”…

    In 2013, Soma Oil and Gas signed an agreement with the Somali government granting exclusive rights to the company to carry out offshore seismic survey and then bid for up to 12 oil blocks.
    At the time of the deal, the company was the first to be awarded a contract for oil exploration since the country’s civil war in the 1990s.

    The company said it would assist the government “in its objective to promote the oil and gas sector to attract investment and activity, boosting Somalia’s economy and helping the process of normalisation” while generating “employment and economic opportunities” along the way.
    The agreement with the Somali government came under scrutiny after a leaked UN report accused the company of “serious conflict of interest, [and] in a number of cases appearing to fund systematic pay-off to senior ministerial officials”.

    The company denied any wrongdoing and claimed UN officials “fundamentally misunderstood” the payments. In December last year the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) dropped its case against the company, citing “insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction”.
    A spokesperson for Soma Oil and Gas told DeSmog UK that the allegations of corruption were “unfounded” and the company’s “foresight for transparency and principled governance proved extremely beneficial” in responding to the SFO’s investigation.

    ***In February, the company’s executive director, Hassan Khaire, resigned from his post to become Prime Minister of Somalia.

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    pat

    final comment re Michael Howard/Soma Gas & Oil is in moderation.

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    pat

    Sky News doing newspaper round-up just now. praising 300-plus US newspapers doing anti-Trump editorials because he said FakeNewsMSM is the enemy of the people. Sky’s guests and presenters unanimously criticised President Trump.

    reminders:

    Wikipedia: JournOlist
    JournoList (sometimes referred to as the J-List) was a private Google Groups forum for discussing politics and the news media with 400 “left-leaning” journalists, academics and others. Ezra Klein created the online forum in February 2007 while blogging at The American Prospect and shut it down on June 25, 2010 amid wider public exposure. Journalists later pointed out various off-color statements made by members of the list denigrating conservatives, as well as a seeming conspiracy to prop up then Presidential candidate Barack Obama…
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList

    Wikipedia: Newspaper endorsements in the United States presidential election, 2016
    Media journalist Jim Rutenberg writes that endorsements in the 2016 presidential election are distinguished by “blunt condemnation” of the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and by a “save the Republic” tone.

    Trump received endorsements from only 20 daily newspapers and six weekly newspapers nationwide, of which only two, the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the (Jacksonville) Florida Times-Union, had circulations of above 100,000. The small number of endorsements received by Trump was unprecedented in American history for a candidate from a major party…
    Many newspapers that endorsed Clinton encouraged readers to vote for her primarily, if not solely, to prevent Trump from being elected president…

    Summary of daily newspapers
    Hillary Clinton endorsements: 243
    Donald Trump endorsements: 20

    2012:
    99 Barack Obama; 47 Mitt Romney; 19 No endorsement; 1 Split endorsement; 76 Undetermined
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_United_States_presidential_election,_2016

    6 Oct 2016: NYT: The Editorialists Have Spoken; Will Voters Listen?
    by Jim Rutenberg
    https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/business/media/the-editorialists-have-spoken-will-voters-listen.html

    listen to FakeNewsMSM? lol.

    Apr 2016: NBC: Bad News: Just 6 Percent of People Say They Trust the Media
    by Associated Press
    https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/bad-news-just-6-percent-people-say-they-trust-media-n557591

    who will investigate FakeNewsMSM for collusion with Clinton campaign (Podesta emails) or for collusion with FBI in Spygate? the redacted names of reporters in IG Horowitz’s report need to be made public:

    14 Jun: NY Post: IG report finds FBI agents have cozy relationships with reporters
    https://nypost.com/2018/06/14/ig-report-finds-fbi-agents-have-cozy-relationships-with-reporters/

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    TdeF

    Hello KK,

    The common belief in the 1950s at the birth of radio carbon dating was that the half life of CO2 in the air before it was absorbed by the oceans which contain 98% of CO2 was about 5 years. Then C14 dating was invented. There was precious little effect of industrial CO2 (with no C14) from two world wars. The only possibility was absorption in the oceans. The question of the half life remained speculation though. However it was solved by accident, experiment if you like.

    In 1965 with atmospheric blasts, we had a perfect global experiment where the C14 was doubled almost instantly.

    Now C14 is only one in a trillion carbon atoms and makes CO2 like C12(99%) and C13(1%). With a half life of 5,400 years C14 cannot vanish from the biosphere quickly, but it has. A perfect e-kt curve with no compound curve. Straight line on a log graph. Almost all gone and back to the ancient levels pre 1965 shown as 100% on the graph.
    The decay is so rapid it has been used to date modern teeth! This is fascinating as the dating usually is based on almost constant C14 production caused by cosmic radiation

    So we know
    1. there is only one sink for CO2 and it is huge
    2. the half life is 14 years
    3. it is not the biosphere as defined in the Bern diagram, for example. That would leave a substantial residual of C14 in the air.

    The famous BERN diagram showing the ‘balance’ of CO2 between the biosphere and the atmosphere is wrong. This is the basis for man made global warming.

    If you have papers which show a different half life, I would love to see them. This gigantic world size experiment could not be repeated in a laboratory. It is called a silver lining from the time before atmospheric testing was banned.

    You can check by eye quickly. The constant level for the last 20,000 years is shown as 100.
    In 1970 the value is 500, so half way to the constant level is 300.
    This occurs around 1978 which gives a half life of 18 years. It’s nearly all gone in 1996.
    Remember if the 50% increase in CO2 was due to fossil fuels as argued, the current level of C14 should be 66% of historic levels.

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      TdeF

      The way the IPCC weasel out of the obvious is to argue that only the top layers of the ocean are involved in CO2 exchange with the atmosphere. They argue that the gas is stuck in the depths and cannot escape until the deep currents surface over thousands of years. Again this cannot be proven or disproven in a laboratory but from the C14 graph we know the whole ocean is involved, the 98% of all CO2. Our modern CO2 is absorbed very quickly and the level set entirely by water temperature. The water temperature has gone up in the 20th century and so has the CO2. Warmer water releases CO2.

      Perversely Climate Change ‘scientists’ argue that warmer water absorbs more CO2, which doesn’t even pass the pub test. Warm beer goes flat. It does not gain fizz. Acidification is a crock too.

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        TdeF

        I always look at people’s qualifications as scientist. So often these days they are ‘plant scientists’ or ‘ecologists’ or like Christiana Figures, head of the IPCC ‘anthropologist’ and the funniest one yesterday from a professional climate change expert with an MSc in ‘Political Science’. Tim Flannery’s degree was in English from La Trobe university when it had just opened and lacked even lecture theatres. He studied ancient dead kangaroos for his PhD. Scientists all.

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      Geoff Sherrington

      TdeF,
      Two days ago I posted under my name at WUWT on the Javier blog that the accepted Establishment story of residence time of CO2 airborne fraction according to Davis was wrong. There is a logical fallacy that portion of the CO2 hangs around awaiting slow reactions like those with rock silicates.
      So yes, the real residence time can be calculated quite simply from post bomb data. It is short, a few years. Geoff

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    What do you expect? The only other country I know of that forces its citizens to vote at gunpoint is Brazil. Brazil’s gun-suppression program has resulted in the leading murder rate, and election subsidies go to 16 communist parties and another 16 nationalsocialist parties. At least there the spineless “ranked” balloting has not taken hold to make matters even worse. If that insanity is imported from Australia now, the entire nation will be left without electric power by 2030 I’d wager.

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      Roy Hogue

      Hank,

      A quick look told me what ranked balloting is but it didn’t tell me why you are apparently so much against it. It doesn’t look like automatic trouble because if a runoff election were held those same voters might well vote the same way.

      What am I not seeing?

      Thanks

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        Roy Hogue

        As those who remember my past comments about compulsory voting will know, I’m not a fan of it for several reasons but since I don’t live in Australia all I get to do is try to understand it.

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    TdeF

    I remain amazed that our Prime Minister clearly argues that the regular bleaching event at the Great Barrier Reef (front page AUstralian yesterday) is due to Climate Change, a consequence of man made Global Warming. However Global Warming is about the air getting hotter, not the water and certainly not the specific water around the Great Barrier Reef. Similarly the NSW drought is man made Climate Change instead of being the climate in a dry country, a land of droughts and flooding rains.

    Meanwhile our genius PM is spending $12 Billion (Abbott’s figure) pumping water uphill and very proud of the fact that he does not have to build a new dam.

    For that money we could have new dams and two new huge coal power stations, but apparently dams and coal power stations are banned by the Greens, so that is not possible. You have to wonder who is running the country.

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    angry

    Conservative MPs call on Peter Dutton to seize power from Malcolm Turnbull and take over as prime minister in dramatic leadership coup

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6067805/Conservative-MPs-call-Peter-Dutton-prime-minister-dramatic-leadership-coup.html

    Dutton didn’t vote against the NEG, So NO!

    No point in trading one idiot for another one !!!!!!!

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    Dennis

    For The Guardian, The Age, and all the other faux facts publications, and Ian:

    1. Prime Minister Tony Abbott was replaced by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in September 2015.
    2. Late November into December 2015 the Paris Conference was held for delegates to discuss a possible Agreement.
    3. In April 2016 the Paris Agreement was signed in New York, UN HQ, by Minister Greg Hunt.
    4. It was ratified in New York in November 2016.

    Tony Abbott MP has spoken about the badly flawed Paris Agreement including what he would have done if he remained PM, twisting his words including attempting to blame him for signing the flawed Paris Agreement is intriguing: WHY? What is the political motive? If Paris Agreement is good the present government would be proudly declaring their achievement, wouldn’t they.

    In today’s news is evidence that Paris Agreement and National Poverty Guarantee are electoral poison.

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