Australian wholesale electricity prices have doubled in the last year (and it’s because we don’t have enough coal power)

Luckily for Energy Oligarchs, Australian electricity prices have bounced right back to pre-pandemic insanity. Wholesale rates are romping around $170 dollars a megawatt hour in April across the whole national grid…

The media mouthpieces are blaming it on outages of coal turbines — even though wind power fails every week, and solar fails every day. If unreliable generators cause high prices, then Wind is King Fickle. They’re also blaming high coal prices, but coal itself, is a small part of the cost of a two billion dollar plant. Naturally, neither political team has a clue how to fix this. But it’s all so banal — the prices are set at auction, and some fuels are cheap. Add more of the cheap type, and we’d get cheaper electricity.

Right now, if there were more black coal plants setting the price more of the time, electricity would be half the cost. If enough brown coal plants like Hazelwood were still running, the prices would be a fifth. It’s all there in the data that ABC journalists never find. Consider the winning bids by fuel type in Australia for the last quarter of 2021. For Brown Coal, the average winning bid was $11 […]

Elon buys Twitter and suddenly there is a Ministry of Truth

It’s like we’re living in a satirical movie — Idiocracy comes to mind, but these people have real names. The new Chief of Thought Police in the US is Nina Jankowicz, who would fit right in singing on The Hunger Games. She thinks the Right deals in highly emotional rhetoric, but she’s the one who said women can’t use the Internet because it’s just too upsetting for them. She claims that anyone who uses the free-speech-versus-censorship line is speaking a false dichotomy.

Meanwhile Homeland Security Secretary, the man in charge of the government’s guns, Alejandro Mayorka, talked of identifying people who could be descending into violence… due to disinformation.

What’s disinformation? Whatever the Democrats say it is.

The good news is that if they weren’t losing every single public debate they wouldn’t need to set up a “Disinformation Governance Board”.

It’s one of those moments in history where everyone needs to tune in:

Or read it (at the link)

Snippets from the Transcript

When Elon Musk first announced that he was buying Twitter, it was pretty obvious the Democratic Party would soon become unhinged, not just angry or annoyed in the way you’re very […]

Weekend Unthreaded

7.5 out of 10 based on 6 ratings

Patrick Byrne: Major risks of Dominion Voting machines hidden before US Election

Dominion Voting Machine

What would you do if you discovered three weeks before your national elections that the voting machines your nation was about to use were easily hackable by local or foreign state actors? The Dominion electronic machines were going to be used in 16 states, and it was a “matter of national security”.

Judge Amy Totenberg decided it was all far too hairy, and too late to do anything, so she sealed the entire 25,000 word report by Dr Alex Halderman. But strangely in September the following year the author was still unable to send these “national security” documents to DHS-CISA. They were still legally sealed, and he was unable to give that information to the government.

Dr Patrick Byrne, the Stanford graduate of Philosophy, and also Asian studies, polymath, and self made Overstock billionaire wrote a story last October that in a normal world would have printed its own front page headlines, along the lines of “Scandalous report on Risks of Dominion Voting Machine Suppressed before 2020 election”. Naturally, no one has heard about it. Note that the report and study was done before the elections and contains no evidence that the 2020 elections were […]

Thursday Open Thread

8.8 out of 10 based on 12 ratings

China boosts coal again: set for record in 2022: Official says energy security trumps carbon neutrality

A week ago our newspapers were full of dire warnings that the Australian coal mining industry was going to be left in the lurch by declining orders from China. “The End of Australia’s coal export boom is Imminent” said the AFR — parroting a report by a group that includes Alex Turnbull, someone known to profit from renewables.

What none of the headlines mentioned was that China is set to hit a new all time record of coal use this year.

China now wants to boost coal production by 300m tons —six times* as much coal as Australia uses each year

China already burns 32 82 times as much coal each year as Australia does. Soon that will be 34 88 times as much. But who’s counting?

China promotes coal in setback for efforts to cut emissions

By Joe McMoncald, AP Business Writer, 25th April 2022

Official plans call for boosting coal production capacity by 300 million tons this year, according to news reports. That is equal to 7% of last year’s output of 4.1 billion tons, which was an increase of 5.7% over 2020.

Chinese officials are blunt about why they need more coal:

Denmark suspends Covid vaccination campaign

What a contrast. Victoria Australia and the Northern Territory are sacking thousands of teachers for not getting their third injection. And in Western Australia, from tomorrow, the unvaccinated will be allowed to dance in packed nightclubs, but they still can’t go to work and earn money to support their families, for “health reasons” (the health of Pfizer?).

Meanwhile, Denmark is going to pause vaccinations entirely:

Denmark has said it is suspending its widespread Covid-19 vaccination campaign. All remaining Covid restrictions were lifted in the country in February. Noting that the epidemic was under control and that vaccination levels were high, the Danish Health Authority said the country was in a “good position”. “Therefore we are winding down the mass vaccination programme against Covid-19,” said Bolette Soborg, director of the authority’s department of infectious diseases.

Around 81% of Denmark’s 5.8 million inhabitants have received two doses of the vaccine and 61.6% have also received a booster. Denmark noted a drop in the number of new infections and stable hospitalisation rates.

They say they may bring it back some vaccinations in autumn.

9.7 out of 10 based on 38 ratings […]

Rafe Champion guest post. Carbon taxes and RE fails as usual in SA.

Alan Moran published an account of the carbon taxes that both the Coalition and the ALP support. In The Spectator he spelled out the cost of two forms of carbon taxation that we have at present and on top of that the ALP is determined to impose a great deal more.

Read the story here Stoking the fires of energy policy

The existing taxes arise from the RE mandates that increase the amount of wind and solar power in the mix and associated costs that arise from the additional transmission infrastructure required to service dispersed sources of power. Secondly there are taxes to support grants and soft loans dispensed by agencies like the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

The ALP spelled out their vision for increased power costs in a document called Powering Australia which represents a triumph of aspiration over reality. To quote, it will close the yawning gap between our current Federal Government and our business community, agricultural sector and state governments when it comes to investing in the renewables that will power our future.

Our plan will create 604,000 jobs, with 5 out of 6 new jobs to be created in the regions.

It will spur $76 […]

Apoplexy!: MSNBC host warns that Musk could use Twitter to silence candidates and influence elections.

The video will become legendary. An MSMBC host creates great satire accidentally.

There is truly nothing funnier than this MSNBC host ranting about what Elon Musk could do to Twitter, and accidentally giving a perfect description of how Twitter has actually operated for the last five years

pic.twitter.com/bskfBHQGON

— Cabot Phillips (@cabot_phillips) April 26, 2022

So Ari Melber (the host) knew what the Twitter team were doing for years, but he’s only concerned now?

Half of twitter is alive today with people returning to it, while the other half are apoplectic because a billionaire just bought a media outlet.

Cabot Phillips mocks the Influencer meltdowns:

Elon Musk Is Evil! She says, in a video posted to an app controlled by the CCP, on a phone made by slave labor, repeating propaganda from a newspaper owned by Jeff Bezos.

But the EU and UK have both already warned Elon Musk that Twitter must comply with The Digital Services Act:

“Whether on online harassment, the sale of counterfeit products… child pornography, or calls for acts of terrorism… Twitter will have to adapt to our European regulations which do not exist in the United […]

Tuesday Open Thread

9.2 out of 10 based on 11 ratings

Elon Musk gets Twitter: A Grandmaster Chess move for Free Speech, or a high stakes bet against Monster Funds?

The deal everyone is talking about, that has just gone through:

Elon Musk taking Twitter private in $44 billion deal

Reuters

NEW YORK, April 25 (Reuters) – Elon Musk clinched a deal to buy Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) for $44 billion cash on Monday in a transaction that will shift control of the social media platform populated by millions of users and global leaders to the world’s richest person.

It is a seminal moment for the 16-year-old company that emerged as one of the world’s most influential public squares and now faces a string of challenges.

“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a statement.

Sundance explained the bind the Twitter Board might have been in:

Keep in mind that Twitter is slated to report first-quarter earnings this Thursday, and originally the board was going to wait until after that earnings announcement to respond to the bid. Something changed.

[…]

Rafe Champion guest post. Tasmania burning GAS (correction, not oil) in prolonged wind drought

This morning at sunrise the wind across the NEM was average (29% of capacity) with interesting variations between the states. Most of the states were close to balance with some flow of power from Queensland through NSW and Victoria to Tasmania.

My main purpose to track these numbers is to see how often SA depends on coal power from Victoria which is always when the wind is less than average between sunset and sunrise.

The other purpose is to see how much coal and gas contribute between sunset and sunrise to assess the feasibility of getting through nights on the back of hydro, wind and storage.

Across the NEM wind was delivering 14% of power at 29% capacity, with coal 75% and gas 3%. NSW, wind 13% at 40% capacity and coal 85%. Queensland, wind 7% at 60% capacity and coal 86%, Victoria, wind 10% at 11% (wind drought) and coal 82%. South Australia, wind 75% at 45% capacity and gas 25% (no imported power).

Tasmania, wind 1% power at 3% capacity, hydro 83% and gas 16%.

So the message is that even with average wind across the SE of Australia and better than average in SA, Victoria and […]

Monday Open Thread

Anzac Day in Australia. Lest We Forget.

10 out of 10 based on 16 ratings

Tetanus vaccines work so well we may not need the ten year boosters, only a 30 year one…

Who knew? A study came out way back in 2016 showing that most people still had antibodies against tetanus, or “Lockjaw” even 60 years after their last vaccination. It’s a reminder of what successful vaccination can look like. It also shows the extraordinary ability of the human immune system to acquire lifelong protection — that doesn’t happen with all diseases, but it does with things like influenza, polio, measles, and mumps, and possibly tetanus and diphtheria.

The study tested the blood of 546 people. Given the striking results the authors suggest that the need for a ten year booster should be reassessed, but six years after the study came out the CDC and the Australian government are still saying we need “ten year boosters”. Is anyone even looking at this data?

Notably, shifting to a 30 year schedule could save the US government US$280 million each year. But Big-Pharma won’t be too happy about that. It may also prevent “80–160 cases of brachial plexus neuritis” — a rare side effect.

New Study Suggests We Don’t Actually Need a Tetanus Booster Every 10 Years

by Fiona Macdonald, April 2016

We’ve all grown up knowing that we need […]

Rafe Champion guest post. Energy Talking Points from Alex Epstein

His latest talking points, an Earth Day Special!

Contrary to rhetoric that we’ve “destroyed the planet,” the world has never been a better place for human beings to live. Life expectancy and income have been skyrocketing, with extreme poverty (

Weekend Unthreaded

9.6 out of 10 based on 12 ratings

Unvaccinated Australians now permitted to leave the country (but the Government won’t tell them)

Great news! We win. The Pandemic Emergency declaration is officially over and unvaccinated Australians are free to leave the nation.

Since Senator Rennick exposed it, and I mocked the Department of Health about how Unvaccinated Australians can’t leave Australia unless they escape, and how it was due to a WHO treaty so we could “protect the world” — things have changed. The mocking was on April 8th and 9th. Presumably the government recognized how stupid it all looked to restrict unvaccinated Australians when at least 72 nations around the world are happy to let them in, and everyone knows now, that vaccination doesn’t slow transmission. After all, the whole world caught Omicron thanks to vaccinated travellers.

In the last two weeks the plans to write special laws to stop the unvaccinated from leaving the country silently vanished. But most Australians will not be aware the unvaccinated were still banned from leaving the nation until a few days ago, and are now free to go.

The Australian official website still tells Australians they have to have a vaccine. Click to enlarge. | Source: Dept of Health

Two weeks ago the Chief Medical Officer even said they were dropping […]

Rafe Champion guest post. Germany’s triple failure in energy policy

The failure of European energy policy has become easy to see lately although the usual suspects want to replace imported coal and gas with more green energy. They double down on the green energy policies that have failed. You couldn’t make this up, but here it is!

None of this is surprising in the light of the failure of the German energiewende – the green energy transition that has been driven by the resurgent Greens since the 1990s.

This video from the Five Dock Climate Realists describes the German Trifecta of Failure – failure on the three sides of the energy policy triangle – price, security and emission reduction.

VISIT THE FIVE DOCK CLIMATE REALISTS VIDEO CHANNEL

Hitler learns there is no climate crisis.

10 out of 10 based on 41 ratings

Energy Crisis in the UK: 40% face fuel poverty by winter and Govt may finally stop “Green Levies” (too late)

Wow. What does it take to get a democratic government to stop picking winners in socialist electrical generation? It takes a war, a 50% price rise, and the possibility that 4 in 10 households might be reduced to third world conditions within months.

Share the word — no country on Earth has lots of intermittent renewables AND cheap electricity.

…Bosses warn 40% of households face fuel poverty after October’s price cap hike…

Daily Mail

Energy bosses have called for more Government support for households facing a ‘truly horrific’ winter, with as many as four in 10 people potentially falling into fuel poverty before the end of the year.

Energy bills for the 22 million British households not on fixed-term deals rose 54 per cent to just under £2,000 a year on average in April, the last time the Ofgem price cap was reviewed.

The clean Green transition was supposed to reduce costs, create jobs, and set people free, instead the experiment failed everywhere it was done. “Free” energy turned out to be a high maintenance, unenvironmental expensive fantasy loaded with hidden costs:

Analysts have warned of a further jump […]

Thursday Open Thread

9.1 out of 10 based on 10 ratings