By Jo Nova
Trump switches on the giant dormant coal infrastructure of the US
In the last twenty years 770 coal turbines have been switched off in the US, and Donald Trump wants to turn as many back on as he can.
Any moment now President Trump is expected to sign an executive order that will boost coal mining, keep old coal power stations running and restart shuttered coal plants. The word is that the US government will define coal as a “mineral” which allows him to use presidential wartime authority to speed up approvals for coal mines, and to bypass environmental red tape and even prioritize exploration and mining on federal lands.
US agencies will be told to rescind any policies that aim to “transition away from coal” or “otherwise establish preferences against using fossil fuels”. The country with the largest known coal reserves in the world is now planning to increase coal exports.
Furthermore Trump will ask the Energy Department to consider whether coal should be listed as a ‘critical mineral’ — something described as a ‘coveted status’ which activates even more emergency powers.
Shares of coal companies in the US are up 11 to 18%, and the whole Australian obsession with closing our plants suddenly looks like a quaint book club garden party.
While this will trigger the green brigade, they have nothing but the usual fantasies and wowser scoffing.
[The Guardian] Energy experts say any bump for coal under Trump is likely to be temporary because natural gas is cheaper and there is a durable market for renewable energy such as wind and solar power no matter who holds the White House.
Except there is barely any market for pure wind and solar power without truckloads of government subsidies. As soon as subsidies end, the solar panel companies go out of business.
And of course, the intellectual titans hope pure scorn and mindless indignation will scare people away like little teenage girls:
“What’s next, a mandate that Americans must commute by horse and buggy?” said Kit Kennedy, managing director of power at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
This changes everything
As this news breaks, Australia is 3.5 weeks away from an election. We have the third largest coal reserves in the world, and are often the world’s largest exporter of coal. Despite this, we treat coal like it’s kryptonite.
It’s time to break this spell. The last week of tariff turmoil has been tough for the conservative opposition here in the shadow of teetering stock markets, but this could flip that effect the other way, if the Coalition can peg the Government as being irrationally anti-coal, pointlessly out of touch, and still fighting the last war while the real world steams on.
This is the golden opportunity for Peter Dutton. This is the moment when Australia could run industrial AI datacenters on the cheapest coal power in the world. Our brown coal plants are still winning wholesale bids at less than 3 cents a kilowatt hour. We don’t have to be just a quarry where people do raindances to control the weather.
Trump Order Seeks to Tap Coal Power in Quest to Dominate AI
By Ari Natter and Jennifer Dlouhy, Bloomberg
President Donald Trump is moving to expand the mining and use of coal inside the US, a bid to power the boom in energy-hungry data centers and revive a flagging US fossil fuel industry.
The steps including emphasizing the US is back in the business of selling coal mining rights on federal land and ordering the rock be designated as a critical mineral. Other actions include accelerating the export of US coal and related technologies.
Nevertheless, the executive order underscores Trump’s commitment to tapping America’s coal resources as a source of both electricity to run data centers and heat to forge steel. The president and top administration officials have made clear boosting coal-fired power is a top priority, one they see as intertwined with national security and the US standing in a global competition to dominate the artificial intelligence industry.
Coal advocates were cheering the planned action Tuesday.
Trump wants to fix the electricity grid crisis:
“Despite countless warnings from the nation’s grid operators and energy regulators that we are facing an electricity supply crisis, the last administration’s energy policies were built on hostility to fossil fuels, directly targeting coal,” said Rich Nolan, the president of the National Mining Association. “The explosive growth and parallel energy demands of artificial intelligence and electrification have rendered that path not just unsustainable but plainly reckless.”
Mining.com lays out how big the coal industry used to be in the US. There is a massive skeleton of infrastructure Trump is working to revive:
Coal accounts for about 15% of power generation in the US today, down from more than half in 2000, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Since 2000, about 770 individual coal-fired units have shuttered, according to data from Global Energy Monitor, with more set to close.
No other major coal country is tying themselves into knots to keep the coal underground, or doing their best to stop using it. Australia is a basket case.
let China eat cake – gimme coal!
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The world media says Trump is stupid. What does that make Australia?
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We’ll tell you next week. If the compass hasn’t turned,the answer is stupid.
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I fully agree Ted, If the County Party can’t convince their federal Liberal partners to embrace coal security as the Queensland government just has and reject Net Zero policies, the election is likely lost to Labor and the Greens. That result is almost too horrible to contemplate, given the economic disaster that’s already unfolding due to priority renewable energy policies. The coalition will have to grow a spine, take up One Nation’s climate and energy policies and fully reject the anti-fossil fuel `Green’ mantra before it buries us.
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China’s exports to the United States are toast.
Guess who benefits the most from this trade?
Its not China.
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So, wait a minute. US utilities replaced coal with natural gas. Why? It’s cheaper.
The US is now world’s largest oil producer and also the largest nat gas producer.
Here is the math.
1 barrel of oil = 6,000 cubic feet of natural gas = .22 tons bituminous coal
Oil barrel is 42 gallons West Texas Intermediate = $62.00
6000 cubic feet natural gas = $18.00
.22 tons of coal = $22.00
Gas burns clean. Coal leaves an ash pile. Guess what?
We still need our coal and I live in Montana and we have lots. Mine it. Screw the stupid Communist Greens.
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China have analysed and understood the the growth in power demand years ago, especially in AI, why the hell do you think they have been building coal power stations en-mass. They are not eating cake they are gobbling coal and stockpiling the leftovers, they dig about 14,000,000 t/day and then import nearly 1,000,000 t/day (I guess mostly quality coking coal for steel).
Unreliables are a pacifier for the West @ less than 20% of their grid and I bet they will never let it get much more, hoping/expecting net zero to die soon!
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Also, China has promoted unreliables in the woke West to destroy Western economies and their competition, especially those with the more stupid and gullible woke Uniparty “leadership” like Australia.
China gets to profit by:
1) Destroying the competition.
2) Selling the means of destruction, windmills, panels and batteries.
Why the fake conservative Liberal Party is incapable of understanding or articulating this is beyond me. Even though they’re not a conservative party, they are still slightly more rational than Green Labor.
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It is interesting that during the Rudd-Gillard Labor terms 2007-2013 the Renewable Energy Target of 32% of supply was legislated, and that 30% is most often recommended to be the maximum supplementary supply from wind turbines and solar systems intermittent operation, and of course with controllable generator back up and other support equipment, feeder transmission lines to main electricity transmission lines.
Albanese Labor raised that 32% RET to 82% from soon after they formed government in May 2022, and since they have raised their RET to plus 90%
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A rare moment of (relative) sense from Kruddy.
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The RET remains at 33GWh per year. That is what was set under Abbott.
Albo’s target is a notional target like NetZero. There is no market incentive to achieve it.
The RET ends in 2030 and is already being replaced by the AEMO capacity contracts. Blackout has already got Australian taxpayers on the hook for $20+bn in new wind and solar farms and batteries.
The price of LGCs has been sliding over the past 6 months. Basically halved to $22/MWh now:
https://www.demandmanager.com.au/certificate-prices/
When the RET ends in 2030, there will be no direct subsidy for existing wind and solar. No one will be bidding negative prices. I would not be surprised if coal fired power stations price grid scale wind and solar out of the market.
Victorian government has already mandated zero feed-in tariffs for rooftops from July this year.
The Port Fairy wind farm is being shut down because it is not cost effective to replace the aged turbines.
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Jun 24, 2015
Australia on Tuesday became the first developed country to cut its renewable energy target – adding to its honour of being the first to dismantle a carbon price – when the Senate passed legislation reducing the large scale target from 41,000GWh to 33,000GWh by 2020.
Abbott Government was unable to get rid of Labor’s RET completely but did abolished carbon and mining taxes.
Hostile Senate was the negotiating hurdle
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According to some definitions of mineral they have to be inorganic and crystalline which coal is not.
But there are other definitions of mineral as in a “mineral resource” that include coal and even oil and gas.
The following definition comes from Wikipedia which has been taken over by wokesters but they provide this definition:
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Words have meanings.
Remember when vaccine had meaning. Just change the definition, it’s not like it hasn’t been done before.
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Not to mention the word democracy.
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Or ‘liberal’ which now means an intolerant fascist.
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Trump is seriously considering reversing the endangerment finding from 2009, which classifies CO₂ as a dangerous greenhouse gas, if he does that, it will make the EPA a toothless tiger and drive the greenies and dumbocraps totally mental!
Oh and by the way, ChatGPT doesn’t know Trump is President, most of it’s info cut of in September 2021!
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Elon Musk’s Grok seems somewhat better informed and seemingly not woke. As a test I asked it who is the US President and then I asked what he did on this day one week ago and it gave a detailed and correct answer.
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MINE – ral, mineral, that which can be mined.
Simple.
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Well Dr David, for the last decade 2+2=5 seems to have become a mantra so I am happy to consider diamond a mineral! Considering what Disney just released as “Snow White”, coal/diamond seems P.C.
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At least it seems that the US was sensible enough to mothball its coal plants (about 770 turbines according to above).
Other countries also mothballed rather than destroyed coal plant.
Australia maliciously starts to destroy them on the day of closure, e.g. like they did at Hazelwood. Is that a perfect definition of stupid, or what? Or maybe just evil. Or both.
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There is ‘mothballed’ and there is ‘mothballed’.
If they didn’t do something about the main bearings in these large machines, (eg regular rotation, most probably oil pressure maintained to levitate the surfaces, then the machines are due a major rebuild.
It could still be years before that mothballed plant gets up to speed.
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I would hope that if a plant was mothballed the correct shut-down and maintenance procedures would be followed. Apart from oil circulation, corrosion protection measures or fluids drainage if appropriate, keeping out human and animal vermin, sealing off openings etc..
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A lot of heavy machines use oil pressure to lift the rotation surfaces apart. That takes some serious wattage to achieve. Do you really think that a private business is going to invest in that when they’ve just been paid by the government to close down?
Besides, the government will just lift a few hundred million from the treasury if they ever want to rebuild the plant. It’s not like the taxpayer has to be concerned about any of this……..
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The very first plant to go was Playford in SA, it was destroyed by dynamite
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Depends on how far back you want to go. Quite a few coal power plants were shut down before Playford. Twelve coal plants have shut down since 2010.
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Twenty odd years ago when Xstrata closed its WA vanadium mine the Windimurra site was totally decommissioned, sabotaged one could say, in order to hinder competitors from moving in and exploiting the abandoned resource and thereby diminishing the value of Xstrata’s other vanadium deposits elsewhere in the world; demolishing coal fired power stations is unlikely analogously to protect the commodity’s market value — it is at best a bit of that sorcery which, with cannibalism, has been the leit motif of our first nations for the however many thousands of years they have skulked around doing absolutely nothing worthwhile on this largely uncongenial continent.
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Even funnier things happened. When they closed the Didcot power plant near Oxford the turbines were sold off … to the Germans who now use them to crank up their ramshackle energy supply.
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Great news and we should be doing our best to use more cheap, reliable coal and gas ASAP.
Baseload energy is the most reliable choice for the next 100 years, not toxic, unreliable rubbish like W& S and we save thousands of klms of our environments on the land and in the sea.
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And in Australia’s case, ‘coal’ is right there in your opposition’s ramshackle name:
The Coalition v Snow Flake & the Green Dwarves.
Time to leave the 17th century behind and step into the future… good luck.
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The socialist Australian Government is executing a plan just like that of that other socialist in WW2 when he decided to blame Germans for losing and destroy Germany under the Nerobefehl or Nero Decree.
Fortunately for German civilians, Albert Speer refused to follow orders for once.
This is exactly like the Australian Government destroys one of the most vital parts of Australia’s infrastructure, power stations and energy supplies. This alone is guaranteed to destroy the country, apart from all the other destructive socialist policies.
But unlike Gernany, in Australia we have no one who refuses to follow orders. A nation of sheep, or at least the “leadership” are.
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>Fortunately… Albert Speer refused to follow orders
Thank God von Choltitz refused to follow Hitler’s orders too.
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It seems to me that only the most fanatically woke countries remain committed to Net Zero, the others have either abandoned it (USA), were exempt (China India) or are only paying lip service to it (EU).
The wokest of the woke countries which remain committed to self-destruction seem to be:
Australia
Canada
New Zealand
Once Great Britain
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Don’t forget the Krauts.
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You will find that not only is the new US administration re- energizing (see what I did there) coal they will be labelling it “clean coal”. Something which the dullards in the LNP could also easily do and win votes. Because a perception has been built by the green blob that coal is somehow “dirty” and antiquated. Amazing how the Chinese don’t think the same. Or the Japanese, Koreans, Indonesians, Thais and Vietnamese. It’s just dumb Germans and Aussies who do.
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Yes, but the problem in Australia is that the term “clean coal”, through clever marketing, has come to be associated with absurd and implausible “carbon (sic) capture and storage” (CCS) schemes. They are a gold mine to harvest taxpayer-funded “research” grants.
Can you believe that despite their absurdity, there are 16 announced CCS projects.
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Yes, I can believe that David, because we are so dumb. Present company excluded, of course. 😊
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Thank you Ross! 🙂
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If all else fails, TRUMP can call it a food resource.
Back in the day (1966,) coal was such a cheap and abundant resource, it was considered investigating whether it could be used as a food source by turning it into protein using microbial synthesis.
This paper was from Nature, decades before it went woke.
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But will he take it? I’m not holding my breath.
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Now that his plan to fire 41,000 public serpents has been abandoned, as well as his plan to actually make them attend the office rather than work at home, it appears that he has few remaining major policies except to build nuclear plants, but he still remains committed to the Paris Accords.
And the chance of building 6 or 7 nuclear plants during his tenure are zero. They are not even likely to be built and online in 15 years if ever.
So the Sheeple will just vote for the party which gives the most “free stuff” which is a Green Labor Government with the commies Al-bozo and Bandt.
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Free stuff wins every time. Besides, it’s not like we have to pay it back. It just comes from the treasury. They can print all the non inflationary money that they want.
I wonder why we still pay bills, surely the treasury can cover it.
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I think the Australian Government takes its economics lessons from South Africa.
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The problem isn’t Dutton, its us. Sadly to be electable Dutton can’t promise to exit Paris. He would be shot down by the media as well as big business, Labor, the “Greens” and the teals. The time to exit Paris is after he gets elected. Once elected set a plan to reeducate the people – including schools and universities which are the root cause of our delusion.
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Of course he wont take it, all he has to do is build 7 HELE’s instead of 7 nuclear plants but to do that he would need to be associated with trump in some way and they wont want that. Could you imagine over 80% of voters who already suffer from TDS now being told by LAB/GRN Dutton got his energy plan from Trump. The child like voters will turn on Dutton like Port Adelaide supporters turn on their coach.
No, Dutton will continue down the path of his unobtainable energy policy, lose the election to a blithering fool, retire from politics with a fantastic super (commonwealth employees unlike public servants have a great super) and in about 12 months pop up in some cushy job getting paid the big bucks.
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Repowering Coal Fired Power Stations.
SMR Technologies Australia website contains a lot of information and submissions to the not often mentioned Senate energy inquiry and nuclear options, this is an update of repowering;
https://www.smrnuclear.com.au/_files/ugd/c733f6_1ea5acf3c281440fb2b9f801d512bc2b.pdf
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FWIW
“President Trump’s Energy Dominance Agenda Leaves Climate Juggernaut on Brink of Collapse”
“It has taken President Trump and his ‘energy dominance’ agenda less than 60 days to put the entire edifice of the climate juggernaut – over 30 years in the making – at risk of collapse.”
More at
https://hotair.com/headlines/2025/04/08/president-trumps-energy-dominance-agenda-leaves-climate-juggernaut-on-brink-of-collapse-n3801552
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It is worth reading President Trump’s first term address to the United Nations in New York, he advised them to consider many changes including downsizing by getting rid of attached organisations and to stop interfering into the affairs of sovereign nations. He also decided the US must not proceed with Paris Conference emissions reduction agreement.
I understand that from decades earlier (UN Lima Protocol agreement 1975 signed here by Whitlam Labor Government) DJT has followed the trade based transfer of wealth from developed nations to developing nations by allowing transfer of manufacturing industry and other tactics.
In February 1992 ABC National Radio broadcast a series of lectures. – 24 Hours programme Whatever Happened to The New World Order, I have the transcript on file.
Today we are wondering about the loss of coal fired power stations here while Indonesia builds more of them and India, China and other countries.
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FWIW
“NEW: Senior CIA Official Who Played Role in Biden Military Covid Vaccine Mandate Fired”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/04/new-senior-cia-official-who-played-role-biden/
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Good to see reason getting a look in.
Want to get to the root of the problem? Intermittent energy belongs only where it is usable. Think pumping water into dams.
Require all power delivered to the grid to be dispatchable.
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Intermittency and firming have been around for a hundred years or more, farmers often bought engine driven jack pumps to cope with weeks of no wind, sheep and cattle have to drink whether the wind blows or not.
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Intermittent electricity works well with any system having cheap energy storage. In locations like Tasmania where there is ample hydro capacity but is water storage constrained at certain times, intermittent generation can conserve the perched water.
Likewise, since installing my heat pump hot water, I have found that it is a low cost means to store electricity produced from solar through the day as heat to be used at night. Storing energy to heat water is a lot lower cost than chemical storage in a battery. The 270 litre hotwater tank stores around 12kWh of heat energy.
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Back in the day the “surplus” cheap power from coal power stations was also dumped into domestic hot water systems on off-peak rates.
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Yes, but how do you run a light bulb off hot water.
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Yes in a healthy political environment in Australia it would be. But it isn’t. We are still delusional about reliable and affordable energy. From my understanding the CSIRO GenCost report is a disgrace to the scientists who signed it. Billionaires who hide behind Climate 200 and now fund the Labor party via the Union controlled pension funds is mostly why they get away with the deception of the masses. But if I had to blame any group most responsible it would be our universities. Roughly 40 years of indoctrination by our schools and universities. These people now vote and fill boardrooms.
As we saw with the shameful protests at the Sydney Opera House on 9 Oct 2023, I am ashamed of what my country has become. I fear that Australians are about to vote for the most socialist far left government since Federation in 1901. And if Adam Bandt’s “Greens” form a minority government then I doubt the country will ever recover. We would need a great awakening once the inevitable blackouts and economic collapse takes hold of our once great country.
On Trump the Australian media is firmly against him. Its like Christians in Roman times, one dare not admit you are a Trump fan lest you risk being ostracized.
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I wore a MAGA hat to the Elizabeth shopping centre once, my wife told me to take it off because of all the foul looks i/we were getting to quote,
But in the case of Elizabeth you risks getting shivved
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“Roughly 40 years of indoctrination by our schools and universities. These people now vote and fill boardrooms.”
You think it’s bad now, wait till the ADHD more-ons homeschooled by winemums reach management age.
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hopefully i will be dead by then LOL
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Speaking of mining, China may have done us a big favour by banning exports of rare earths to USA, if we are smart enough (??) to take advantage of this and get the US to spend money to help us develop our rare earth mines, we could be on a winner for the future.
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Countries with the most rare earth’s, in order.
But rare earth element processing is very energy intensive.
We would likely sell raw materials as usual.
We wouldn’t be able to process them economically with expensive “green” energy. None of the other countries on that list have that problem.
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We’re going to need more wind turbines …
sarc.
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Finally I agree with one of your geology/mining comments.
Without an economic energy supply, our miners cannot treat geologically difficult raw ores without quicktime bankruptcy (the minerals consultancy I still work with has a few dozen mothballed projects in Aus like that – most of the workflow is o’seas now).
Treatment plants attached to the mines in some other countries also have little green tape to increase costs.
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Another good spot for a SMR or two, if Canada can build them what’s our excuse.
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The most any Australian political party is offering, courtesy of gas, is maintenance of the status quo. Which, thanks to uncontrolled immigration and debt and ever-deteriorating productivity means declining per capita GDP and widespread impoverishment. Quite why lower living standards appeal so much to the political classes (elected and unelected) is not clear, beyond contempt for ordinary people. With one or two exceptions the lot should be told to go pound sand. But that won’t happen. Instead, on the evidence so far, Canberra will align with Beijing. Incidentally, on that prognosis, Elbridge Colby received Senate confirmation a few hours ago . . .
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Good stuff.
Oh… and if that was 100 “undecided” voters on the Sky forum last night, I’m Mickey Mouse.
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Inspired by Tdef and his NVES comments, I ask my troops what they knew about it, basically they new nothing. One responded with something about dirty coal, from there the conversation went like this.
Q1, What is dirty coal and they had no idea, they said it makes carbon pollution
Q2, What is carbon pollution, they had no idea so I told them it was CO2
Q3, What is the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, they didn’t know, I said have a guess and they said 50%, I told them it was 0.04%
Q4, What happens if it fell below 0.02%, they didn’t know that either
These are not stupid people they are just lazy so now you know why we get the quality of politician we get. We don’t make them work very hard to earn our vote we give it away every 3 years.
Dutton will keep the NVES just as Labor had planned because they are one the same and they get away with it because we as a whole are too apathetic to do anything about it.
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The left side of politics are very good at spin and marketing their hoax agendas. We know that Carbon Dioxide is not Carbon pollution but the general public fall for it and I suspect the black dirty carbon emphasis of pollution convinces many.
Wind and Solar farms – another example, Green Hydrogen and Green Electricity – some have even agreed to pay a premium price for green electricity but I don’t know how they know they received it.
Climate Emergency whenever there are bushfires or floods and so on.
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crakar24 mentions this:
Okay, so ask them this.
While they are all, each and every one of them, and their family, sound asleep at 4AM, each and every morning, how much power is the whole grid of the AEMO consuming?
That’s the absolute minimum power consumption each and every day. The power required to actually keep Australia running.
It’s 18,500MW and rising slowly every year.
That’s more than two thirds of the average total power consumed every day ….. whilst everyone is sound asleep.
Only 4,500MW of that 18,500MW currently comes from renewable sources, (and most of that is Hydro) less than a quarter of the total ….. and it will NEVER change.
This point in time is where coal fired power delivers its most power, basically, 14000MW of that ABSOLUTE requirement, basically three quarters of what is needed.
Take away coal fired power, and Australia ….. STOPS.
Tony.
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Yes, that’s the idea. Unfortunately.
Otherwise we have to believe that Albanese, Bowen and Bandt really think that wiping out our coal power will save the world.
No one in their right mind would believe that.
And officially no one in China, Russia, Africa, India, SE Asia or America believes that coal CO2 is a problem. Only the UN and the EU, Australia and Canada. That’s a tiny 5% of the planet.
So why are they doing it?
And soon 35% payments for worthless bits of paper for our ‘biggest CO2 polluters’. Cash they have to pay for making steel, flying planes, making chemicals or moving stuff. Or process sewage. Or run the Tasmanian ferry. And given that none of these people can actually reduce CO2 they have two choices. Close or pay strangers overseas for the right to run a business in Australia. And pass those costs on to Australian or overseas customers.
The Chinese people, a billion more than in 1900, generate more CO2 by breathing out than Australia’s entire commercial output. And pay no CO2 taxes on making half the world steel and far more than half from iron ore, which is much more CO2 than melting it.
The greatest enemy Australia has are its politicians with one eye on the UN and the other on their retirement packages. We are being ripped off either by non compos mentis or malevolent people.
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And how anyone with a knowledge of simple chemistry can think CO2 is pollution is beyond sense. We are carbon lifeforms! We and all living things share the stuff. We all have the same genes. We all burn carbohydrates and breathe out CO2.
A living thing is something which is animated by carbohydrates and breathes out CO2. And carbohydrates are hydrated carbon dioxide, formed by the sun, water and CO2.
It’s beyond insane that CO2 is now legally a pollutant. Without CO2 there is zero life on earth. And as we know from the dinosaurs, more CO2 means more life on earth, more animals, more plants and more rain and more beaches and an easier life. Zero CO2 is zero life. So we have to pay 35% to breathe?
When did the crips take over the liquor store? Is it really just Australia, the EU, Canada and New Zealand which believes this nonsense?
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In the US this may well be true, they have an awful lot of gas and an awful lot of pipes getting it to where it is needed but a few winters ago I recall Texas getting into deep do do when gas well heads froze up. Everyone knows it never gets THAT cold in Texas.
The coal fired boilers where they had a mountain of coal on the pad just soldiered on.
I’m not anti-nuclear but I am more pro coal
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Yep, coal ain’t broke and doesn’t need fixing whereas building nuclear installations places us in the hands of scoundrels –just look at the shenanigans England has signed up for with its ongoing nuclear travails.
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Natural Resources Defense Council
Makes it sound like they are environmentalists when they are actually ecofascists.
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