By Jo Nova
Todays magic trick is how to make electricity look cheaper by taking money from children
Tomorrow — we pretend to control inflation by printing more money.
The Labor Party tried to control the weather with our power stations and promised us it be would cheaper. For some reason that every engineer can explain, they damaged the electricity grid and electricity got more expensive.
In order to hide this, they have to borrow money to pay us so they can pretend electricity is slightly less expensive, and inflation figures are not so scary. Since our children will pay off that debt one day somehow, the Labor Government is nicking the money from babies and telling us how compassionate they are.
“This is hip pocket help for households, and it recognises that people are still under pressure,” Treasurer Jim Chalmers told the ABC.
“Without our assistance and without our interventions, electricity would be more expensive.”
More expensive that what Jim?
The next magical $150 electricity rebate to households will cost $1.8 billion dollars. Think of it as a performance art, a piece of theatre, or a band-aid on a gaping wound. For Australians this will be the third year of rebates, so the total cost, respectively, is $3b in 2023 , plus $3.5b in 2024, plus $1.8b for a total of $8.3 billion.
There’s no intellectual merit in the rebate, it’s not like it’s an incentive scheme for homeowners to “stay alive” or use more or less electricity. The sole point of the rebate is to hide the failure of the governments energy plan. It’s to bury the market signal which is screaming “bad, bad, bad” so the Labor Government can do more of the same “bad things” that got us into trouble in the first place.
The PM also thinks giving away money reduces inflation:
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the cost of living measure would put downward pressure on inflation.
We wonder why any country ever suffered inflation when the solution is so easy?
$8 billion in Rebates could have made electricity cheaper for 30 years
Unfortunately “rebate” doesn’t reduce real electricity prices or inflation, except in advertising and ABC news. If the government is going to incur a debt on our behalf, it could have used this $8 billion to buy at least four new gas plants and an advanced efficient coal plant, any or all of which would have reduced the price of electricity for 30 years to come (or 60 years in the case of a coal plant).
For reference the cost of the 660MW Hunter Power Project is expected to be around $1b.
China started building 92GW of coal plants last year, which is twice as much coal power as Australia has.
“Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the cost of living measure would put downward pressure on inflation.”
So handing out freebies to the plebs is not inflationary, well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.
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Suddenly the recession hanging over Australia for some time, per capita recession longest ever underway, RBA and others warning that governments spending is fuelling underlying inflation and will become a problem in months ahead, record-high immigration intake pushing government services and housing availability into danger zones, etc.
But thank you POTUS Trump for the promised by you MAGA and excuse to pass the blame.
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China can pay for Australian iron ore and metallurgical coal in A$, not US$.
We can pay for Chinese goods in Renmimbi.
Victoria has 36.3 Billion barrels of easily extractable light crude in its brown coal, C6-C20, at US$28/barrel.
Victoria is becoming a bankrupt state.
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Jo, what you say is exactly what the Lamestream Media and the Liberal “leadership” should be asking and saying.
But we just get… silence.
This country is being systematically destroyed.
America has TRUMP. Who do we have?
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Most “churnalists” are politically complicit.
ESPECIALLY the tax-payer funded ones.
They take their self-appointed role as “opinion-shapers” very seriously:,
When they want your opinion, they will give it to you, good and hard.
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We have Sir Starmer in the UK.
He is being ‘pragmatic’. He told us so, today.
And our pragmatist is bringing forward the ICE ban, from 2035 to 2030.
Very pragmatic.
And the ‘measure’ to allow makers to spread their mandated sales [which aren’t happening] of EVs up to the 2030 deadline means having to sell more EVS when the public will want the ‘last’ ICE cars.
Like your neighbourhood loan shark – “You can’t pay. No worries. Have more money now. I’ll be round on Friday for your kids – and your kidneys!”
Real pragmatism … he said.
Auto
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I find it amazing that Starmer can get away with his dictatorial edicts.
But then again, there has been a dramatic demographic change in the UK due to the deliberate importation of a demographic from a culture that doesn’t believe in freedom, free speech or democracy.
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Pauline???????
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Instead of $8b in rebates, Labor could have built gas and coal plants and actually made cheap electricity.
Don’t be silly, these labor knuckleheads don’t want to actually do anything to fix the problem, no, they would rather gain votes from the gullible by spending our money grandstanding , making out they are “lowering the cost of living”.
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Just imagine what could be added to the list of benefits if we added to it the money allocated to the Olympic cash pit?????
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The UK government will pay a £7500 subsidy towards a heat pump installation that hardly anybody wants.
For the same price they could replace 5 old inefficient gas boilers for modern high efficiency ones.
And of course as with any government subsidy, it just becomes extra profit to be harvested by the subsidised service provider, the end customer gains little in reality.
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Yes. As soon as a government i.e. taxpayer-funded subsidy is applied to any energy-using appliance, or indeed anything, the price of that thing goes up by about the amount of the subsidy.
We see this in Australia all the time where it’s easier to make money harvesting taxpayer-funded subsidies, especially in anything related to energy, than in doing something useful and productive.
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The LNP MUST gain power and the first item on the agenda must be the end, the eradication of subsidies on power, EVs, in fact subsidies, tax credits or any other scam imposed on the taxpayer where anything “ green “ is the beneficiary.
If this is not done now the subsidising of the country’s economy downfall will continue to the point where one day the whole cumbersome monolith collapses in on itself & the opposition are left to clean up & start afresh whilst taking the blame for not preventing the collapse in the first place.
Like any sick patient, the medicine will be unpleasant, the cure maybe months or years away
But the patient will recover & be stronger for the experience.
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Jo, the headline contains an obvious mistake. It includes the phrase “Labor could have build…” The past tense of “build” is “built”.
[Thanks Roy. Doh! “Build” made sense in the draft headline, then I did a last minute rearrangement. Sigh. That’s how these daft words get in there. – Jo]
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And the past tense of “Labor” is “Coalition”!
NONE of them have done anything to improve the Australian energy situation because they are sucking on the Net Zero tit with their eyes and ears firmly shut.
The Australian credit card will hit $1,000,000,000,000 = 1 TRILLION $ this year and none of them seem to care, they don’t even mention it, they just spend like drunken sailors after 12 months at sea!
It really is a bad position when there or no fiscal parents in the room!
Who the hell do you vote for???????
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Actually it’s far worse than that.
Taking into account federal, state and local government debt, its over $2 trillion. Last time I checked it was going up at over $6000 per second, it’s probably far worse now. It’s frightening. (See http://australiandebtclock.com.au/ )
I think a lot of the spending relates to:
1) Politicians not caring what they do with taxpayers’ money.
2) The innumeracy of many or most politicians, how many could write one million, one billion or one trillion in numerals or have any idea of the size of these numbers? These huge numbers are meaningless to them.
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Builded would have been acceptable in Middle English, however.
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I keep saying, things need to get very, very bad before they can be changed. We’re not close to bad enough yet. Albo will get in and we will have three more years of rapid descent. All the LNP offer is a slightly slower descent. Not useful. Until we address debt, defecit spending, poor immigration policy and spending who’s outcomes we cannot measure we will continue our clockwise spin down the plugole.
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Ahh Bernoulli effect!
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Bernoulli effect ?, nah, Coriolis effect.
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Argentina might be a comparable example. A once-rich country like Australia ruined by decades of socialism.
It is now finally getting back on track due to Javier Milei but Argentinians had to first suffer very badly
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Argentina is EXACTLY the Nation I allude to.
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And if we have to descend, it’s better to do it rapidly under a Green Labor regime than take slightly longer under a Liberal regime.
Let’s get it over and done with quickly then rebuild like Argentina. Not a longer drawn-out affair as it will be with Liberals.
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Very much my thoughts. It IS going to happen, and I lament the pain that all of us who read History (and our well adjusted, sensible families) are going to suffer because of these brain dead automatons and the way they vote.
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“Without our assistance and without our interventions, electricity would be more expensive.”
NO, NO, NO, It is BECAUSE electricity is more expensive that rebates are offered .
I speak English, I understand a little Italian, I know a few words in German but this language of political double speak is beyond me. The fact that politicians of all persuasions can talk this drivel and expect people to believe them beggars belief.
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I am amazed. Rebatees? Normally I ignore mispelling as a fast but error prone typist myself, but surely one balloon is not needed?
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AI did it.
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Rearrange the balloons and it could be a hidden message from Chairman Xi or his mini me Dokta Fauxi or even El Bo’ himself:
BAT SEER (E)
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That’s what we are becoming, ‘rebatees’.
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And I repeat part of my relevant CO2 post from Tuesday..
In the bizarro Green world no one cares if all the CO2, all the mining, all the money goes to China. It’s Green policy. So all the steel industry, mining, manufacturing and all the carbon credits and carbon cash go to China. And the world’s Green parties and the UN find that a desirable and adequate solution to Climate Change.
Australia’s massive, devastating, invisible and unknown 35% CO2 tax will produce hundreds of billions which will find their way to China while all our ‘biggest polluters’ go out of business, crippling Australia’s independence and employment and Federal incomes, as intended. Just like banning rare earth mining. No one voted for this massive punitive CO2 tax, supported but not mentioned by all political parties.
China wins everything and Australia loses everything and the world is worse off. Like rare earth bans, Green policy and the 35% CO2 ‘tax’ or ‘theft’ is not being mentioned by any party in the Australian election. This inexplicable disastrous massive cash grab is 10% this year and 15% next year as thousands of jobs are already lost and all prices soar. What Canberra has done to electricity prices is being done to all goods and services and food and mining. Punish Australians massively to move Climate Change to China.
It is unbelievable that the “Safeguard Mechanism” 35% CO2 ripoff is not the killer governance issue or an issue at all in the Australian election as everyone tries to placate mad, unthinking Green voters and pretend we can really stop world Climates from changing. All on our own! It’s brutal Monty Python logic. Chop our legs off and beg.
Stop all the CO2 ‘rebates’. They are all theft. Hundreds of billions of dollars and huge and devastating punishment for all Australians. By our own governments. For nothing.
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Very few people have heard of or understand this 35% tax, TdeF. Including well-informed people.
The Liberals should be shouting it from the rooftops.
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They have reached the limit of crushing coal providers and coal based electricity. Now they are going after fuel users, but avoiding private cars. Everything else is going to be taxed at 35%. Everything. Even the MMBW Sewage. And who gets all this money. NOT the government, us.
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Does anyone have the time to chase down this money. Last year was 5%. The act creates or uses a department and the department has a report. Someone must be able to work out how much they have handled (the government does NOT touch the money). And perhaps who gets it all?
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Here is a starting point.
The Goolag search preview for that said the following but at a cursory glance I did see it at the link.
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Conservative-oriented Grok AI says:
Grok search term:
where does the money from Australia’s “safeguard mechanism go
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I haven yet found how much $$$ is handed over or to whom.
Here is a list of facilities for 2022-23.
https://cer.gov.au/markets/reports-and-data/safeguard-facility-reported-emissions-data
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“it drives financial transactions where: Money from non-compliant facilities goes to carbon credit producers ”
No, you are supposed to pay millions to strangers just to run your business. For nothing at all. And the government oversees and enforces the daylight robbery. This is illegal in democracies, being forced to pay third parties, friends of the King and for nothing. At least since Magna Carta.
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You have to find the government department overseeing this ripoff. They will never report dollars but in their Annual report you may get number of ‘certificates’ issued. Then the value of each certificate, currently over $A300. This enormous theft is hidden so that reporters have to do a lot of work. The government view is that it is nothing to do with them, even though they are the essential enforcer. To the Australian public all this is secret communist finance, off balance sheet and to be hidden. As for who gets the real cash, you will never find that.
I guess there are no real investigative journalists in Australia. And even experts have no idea that Australia has perhaps the highest carbon taxes in the world, because they are not taxes. Legally they are theft, hidden. The Mafia are a form of government. This is the Canberra Mafia. Unaccountable.
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They also hint they have done special deals with steel and concrete people, because it is IMPOSSIBLE for them to reduce CO2. Except by closing Whyalla and Port Kembla and import our concrete. Aluminum too.
Of course there is always Albanese’s favorite. Green Hydrogen. What an evil man. Sheer full frontal lies. Like Darwin. Like the Chinese warship threatening us. Could not lie straight in bed.
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Australia’s largest industrial facilities?
Qantas, Virgin, MMBW, TT (Trans Tasman), Toll (freight)… all smelters, gas manufacturers, chemical manufacturers.
And they CANNOT reduce CO2. That’s chemistry. Or go out of business. So it’s cash for nothing unless they close. Which many have done.
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How do you make iron, steel, aluminium, copper, concrete, fertilizer,… without producing CO2? Or using huge amounts of energy in gas, coal and electricity? So just stop making anything!
And all major transport companies.
And every miner in Australia is on the list. Our biggest export. 35% tax. Beats tariffs. We punish our top performers and send the cash overseas to people who promise not to cut down trees?
It’s all ‘off budget’ as the money never goes to the government. So they have no reason or compulsion to say anything about the cash, how much or where it goes.
No government has the right to do this.
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I bet that the typical Uniparty politician would be unable to write a basic combustion reaction, even the simple one for complete oxidation of carbon as related to coal and which produces the dreaded CO2 they are prepared to destroy the country for.
C + O2 → CO2
Just like I bet most would be unable to write one billion in numerals.
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The swine have deliberately avoided the 35% tax on private vehicles because the pitchfork and tar and feathers brigade would be on them very smartly.
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David, on your humongous Grok quote I went straight to the last 3 words – the very bottom if you will:
“abatement and compliance”.
Translated from Aus UN Newspeak to English:
Stop and apologise!
Cease and don’t do that again!
You vill own nussink unt be happy!
Or possibly: Stand and deliver?
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Why do people blame the Labor Party? When has the LNP proved to be any different? Who introduced “net zero”?
Our political system is a carcass and it’s not going to save us from anything. We elect a committee which is heavily influenced by both unions and then more committees in the ‘public service’. Committees inevitably atrophy because they eschew leadership and enterprise. We have a uni-party system now because the committee has absorbed all differences within itself. Maybe the west is re-discovering an unpalatable actuality, in that a king is a necessity.
Even worse, it has inculcated a risk averse mindset in the citizenry, because the likelihood of punitive punishment and the weight of social compulsion has become so oppressive.
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I can’t add anything to Jo’s comments but I know that Aussies have wasted endless billions of dollars for zero climate change since the 1990s and will continue to do so until we completely destroy our economy and environment.
How Aussies can vote for Labor, Greens and Teals and then sleep at night is beyond belief, but we definitely seem to be heading off the cliff after May 3rd.
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Looking at your recent link to Australia’s emissions over the years, the emissions have only dropped 5% since 2005, yet are supposed to be down by 43% in the next decade. Never going to happen.
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Graeme 4 here’s the world’s co2 emissions and no increase from Aussies and OECD countries since 1990, but 15.3 billion tons more from China, India and NON OECD countries since 1990.
So you’re correct, but why can’t most of our clueless pollies find the time to look it up?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?country=OWID_WRL~AUS~Non-OECD+%28GCP%29~OECD+%28GCP%29
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When you remove the other countries to just focus on Australia, our emissions did go up, but just as quickly dropped down again, so basically very little change.
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Almost every Labor policy associated with renewables ends up as a reverse Robin Hood scheme.
The vast majority are funded by subsidies that are kept “off budget” so that no one can see in one location, or from one federal government agency, how expensive this transition to renewables actually is. Fortunately, subsidies for Australia’s renewable industry were documented in the following report:
https://35b1ca50-ea91-45c2-825d-3e16b7926e46.filesusr.com/ugd/b6987c_4c95f7692ebe490f9b3beaa47e6a758a.pdf
The report’s title is “The Hidden Cost of Climate Policies and Renewables”, by Dr Alan Moran. Section 1, pages 10-12 show that direct government subsidies total $6.913 billion each year. That was back in 2020!
So who pays the subsidies? Every Australian electricity consumer:
https://www.aemc.gov.au/news-centre/data-portal/price-trends/2021/trends-act-supply-chain-components
https://www.aemc.gov.au/news-centre/data-portal/price-trends/2021/trends-nsw-supply-chain-components
https://www.aemc.gov.au/news-centre/data-portal/price-trends/2021/trends-qld-supply-chain-components
The subsidies differ from state to state, but are captured in the light blue section of the table shown at each of the above links. What does all this mean?
Labor’s plan to achieve 82% renewable electricity by 2030 can only be funded by increasing subsidies. Those increasing subsidies directly result in increasing electricity costs for Australian consumers. Those increased costs create energy poverty for people on fixed incomes, pensions, welfare payments, retirees, and families living on minimum wages.
And who gets the benefits of all these subsidies? Generally, those who are well off. Want solar panels on your roof to reduce your electricity bills? Well, first, you need to own your own home, have a secure job, and have about $10,000 in the bank. Or perhaps you are an investor in renewable energy, like Simon Holmes a’Court. Then these subsidies allow your renewables farm to show a profit, guaranteed by the government! Or you might be a virtue signalling environmentalist, who is looking to promote his environmental altruism by purchasing an EV.
Don’t worry about the sticker price being nearly double of an equivalent ICE vehicle. The government offers you tens of thousands of dollars in subsidies to bring down that cost for you – as long as you own your own house, and can afford to also buy the necessary home charger! So who gets left behind? Just those who rent, live in an apartment block, or live in the country where EVs are just not practical.
All these subsidy schemes are designed to take from the poor, and give to the rich. Why does no one talk about this?
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Peter, you made a hash of culling the excessive Government and WFH grifters but here’s a couple of words that The Libs need to utter before it’s too late.
“We’ve Cancelled all solar/wind subsidies”
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I fully expect to hear Albo-Tross squawk “let them eat cake” with a strong French accent while wearing a large coiffured white wig.
Australia is unlikely to ever recover from this irresponsible period of vote buying
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Alabanese will not ‘rule out recession’ with a US tariff. Our major exports do not go to the United States. But he has imposed a 35% CO2 tax on every export we have and do and says nothing about it. Nor does Peter Dutton. 99% of Australians do not know the magnitude of hidden illegal compulsory ‘CO2 carbon credits’ they have to buy. And inflation is due to the war in Ukraine. Nothing Alabenese says is true. And he is perfectly happy with China owning Australia, starting with the port of Darwin. And ending with all our coal, oil and gas which he has kept safe.
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And don’t forget:
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“It is completely beyond belief that Chinese communist government owned companies can control and occupy and airstrip that is able to take jet aircraft for their exclusive use,’’ he said.
Understandably, the CCCCCCP will be keen to visit their new aquisitions and reprimand the overseers for not achieving 150% production efficiency.
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Isn’t it amazing, we usually have to wait until the first Tuesday of the month to see what interest rates will do, now, it is being proclaimed that ‘we will have four interest rate reductions by the end of 2025.’
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Labor hasn’t ‘build’ more gas and coal powered stations because they accept the global scientific consensus regarding agw. When will the science shy sceptical community find the alternative facts necessary to overturn the current position ?.
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Apologies Miasma. My thumb slipped. I meant to give you a down vote.
And scientific fact has nothing to do with “consensus”. That’s not how science is done.
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If your thumb had slipped it should have been brown.
The consensus exists due to the consilience of overlapping evidence from different disciplines, that’s how science is done .
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Consensus is a political construct, never a scientific one. This has been proven time and time again throughout history by true scientists prevailing against the consensus beliefs of the time, the most recent example being Barry Marshall. Can I recommend looking at Richard Feynman’s lectures to obtain a correct understanding of the scientific method.
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I think you meant to say that consensus was a woke construct .
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‘alternative facts’ – facts don’t have alternatives
See the problem we have here?
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I see that Jo can’t get her slam dunk evidence to float outside the confirmation bubble.
Any peer reviews ( which I strongly doubt she has dared to seek ) would have highlighted her fallacies, instead she relies on pal reviews.
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Us in the science shy sceptical community tend not to be so concerned with peer reviews.
We just have the experience of long lives so through our own personal observation, we sense that weather now is much like weather was 50 years ago. We read a lot of history and find natural disasters are a constant theme of existence.
And we also know there have always been quack scientist chicken littles telling us the sky is falling.
With Governments always looking for the next big scheme to spend money on (well, at least since WWII and the appetite for taxing grew)
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Always remember, ” The only wind and solar plant that works reliably is the old Hills Hoist.”
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Of course you’re not concerned with peer review, it’s part of the scientific method which rejects your ‘evidence’ .
In thumbsy land anecdotal evidence wins , weather equals climate and natural disasters happen ( wait til the scientists hear that one !).
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You talk about the scientific method but clearly you have no understanding of what this term really means, instead launching off sideways with meaningless phraseology and diversions. A very typical childish approach to debating with adults.
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Sorry that you can’t understand how science progresses.
Why don’t you present your wonderful evidence to the scientific community ?, that’s what adults do.
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‘Cos it’s full of leftards who believe in the ‘Not Invented Here syndrome’.
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If you want Australian news, go to America. All our news is doom and gloom and the incredible leadership of dear leader Alabanese.
This from Breitbart after China restricted access to their very expensive rare earths where they have cornered 90% of the market.
“Australian mineral companies expressed optimism on Monday that they could benefit from China reducing its supplies. Australian refiners were already making plans to cut into China’s huge share of the rare earths market, so Beijing’s export controls could give them the money and opportunity they need to execute those plans more rapidly.”
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That word ‘execute’ always sends shivers down my spine. Is that why traitors wear suits and ties, as they have no spine to hold themselves up…
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Well that’s sort of good news.
But why only release gas fields annually?
Release as many as people are prepared to explore.
And only halving project approval times?
Why only half? Is that the best he can do? Australia has an energy crisis after all. Gas needs to be brought into production as fast as it can be found.
And what’s he going to do if a Rainbow Serpent is claimed to live at the gas field, which it almost certainly will be?
And if gas is found, will he do what Howard did and give it away to the Chicomms at world’s cheapest prices on a bizarre 30 year contract with no provision for inflation or market prices?
https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/how-australia-blew-its-future-gas-supplies-20170928-gyqg0f.html
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Peter isn’t achieving to the best of his ability, can do better, must try harder.
Sounds like my school report.
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If the ALP gets back in as either a majority government or a minority with the Greens/Teals, Australia is completely stuffed because it just proves there are enough fools who’ll fall for the left’s lies and fearmongering to give them another go despite all the proof that they’re unfit to govern. The Liberals aren’t much better, appealing to people who’ll never votes for them anyway with Dutton’s cowardly backdown on WFH and confused stance on energy.
The Libs don’t really deserve to win this election, it’s just that labor deserves to lose it and be banished to the opposition benches with just a handful of MPs for show.
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Without your government’s (and previous governments) intervention in the market electricity would be much cheaper.
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100%.
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What I have said all along is that if this renewables fiasco runs its full course it will have cost so much and will be so over-complex and will be so unreliable and will still not actually be finished as they put patches on patches on patches until the whole network is made up of patches, that the powers-that-be will shrug and whisper to themselves “Well, f**k me, we should have gone nuclear after all.”
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News tell us that ‘Copperstring’ the proposed project to send electricity to Mt Isa and surrounds is going to blow out to around $14B, it would be cheaper, better and smarter to build a SMR or two outside Mt Isa to supply the mine, the city and other industries nearby, Century mines, phosphate Hill fertiliser etc.
Also, it’s unlikely there’s any copper at all in the string, it’s all steel cored aluminium these days.
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Said the same thing some time ago. Why is this country wasting money on long transmission lines to remote country towns that are easily impacted by localised storms? By the time they complete this expensive line, SMRs should be available.
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Some years ago, I was having a look through the Longreach power museum, talked to a couple of locals there and they said they remember the power supply was more reliable when they generated their own on site in town, now they are on the end of hellishly long transmission line.
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