By Jo Nova
Firstly, all that money we spent — it’s done nothing (shh!)
It turns out Australia’s economy has been decarbonising at the same rate for decades regardless of how many windmills and solar panels we install, or how many UN speeches we give. Carbon taxes can come and go, coal plants can close, and we can fill up the roof with pink batts. But in the end, the Australian economy, our GDP, is decarbonising at about 2% a year, and has been since 1992. All the frequent flyer carbon schemes, carbon certificates, waste management plans and electric cars amount to a cake decoration.
Roger Pielke Jnr, graphs 30 years of government failure.
Mission Impossible
By Roger Pielke Jnr, The Honest Broker
For all of the sound and fury of Australian climate politics, which have claimed the careers of a few prime ministers, there is no evidence that Australia’s emissions reduction policies have done anything to meaningfully accelerate the rate of decarbonization over many decades.
We see how Labor, Liberal, makes no difference. The dinosaur era where we used mostly coal power had nearly the same reduction as the Rudd renewable era where we started out quest for “renewables”, and the “Decade of Denial” that followed that was as successful as anything the Labor Greens ever managed.
At it’s peak, our Australia emissions reduction per unit of GDP reached nearly 3%. But if we are to reach even the lower end of the new 2035 goals Pielke calculates we need to double the reduction to nearly 6%.
Not only are the implied rates of decarbonization far in excess of anything ever accomplished in Australia, they are also far in excess of any annual rate of decarbonization achieved by any country — ever.
We know they can’t do it, they know they can’t do it, and they know we know.
Pielke Jnr calculates we should be rushing to install 25 nuclear reactors, if we were serious.
And we are serious, of course, just not about carbon dioxide. We are serious about converting the free market to a socialist paradise.
When every business is dependent on the State, none of them will criticize the Party. Hallalujah.
When energy is unaffordable here, Australia will be the perfect quarry for China, and happy clapper for the UN. …Almost there!
Image by psychofladoodle from Pixabay
Australia has managed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions despite an increasing population and GDP. This is something to celebrate and contradicts Jo’s assertion that doing so will wreck the economy. But it’s still not fast enough. Because global reductions have not occurred, things now have to accelerate quickly. Net zero greenhouse gas emissions will occur one way or another before the end of century. It will either be willingly or through the destruction of the global economy as the effects of climate change hits hard.
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China, India and many others will disagree with you.
It’s ‘Emissions Impossible’ as far as the Planet goes.
Australia is such a small part of the Global Economy.
520
Au contraire Simon. The graph shows that pouring billions into carbon schemes and windmills, EVs, and bug burgers in the last ten years was a waste of money.
We’re at the point where the easy efficiency gains were made 30 years ago, and the hard fractional gains are becoming obscenely expensive. The more intermittent unreliable electricity we have, the higher the costs become for storage, stability, back-up, transmission, but we pour this money in, hoping to change the weather in 80 years time. Like pagan witchery at 50Hz.
370
Grifters pay themselves by force of government by bribing weak minded voters with free money. There is a reason this is only happening in western democracies.
Any subject that can be used to create fear is used as the justification.
There is nothing special about climate change.
Perhaps Simon would like to explain why China has created rockets with 61 nuclear warheads. Do they intend to use them to counter climate change? Just maybe the freedom of speech that Simon currently enjoys is not a human right. Its been paid for with our ancestors’ blood.
Making our country weak by pursuing an energy mix that does not support making stuff is not the smartest thing to do in a very dangerous world.
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Simon,
Haven’t you been paying attention on this site? There is no scientific basis for CO2 emission reductions, because the IPCC have never been able to provide any physical evidence linking CO2 emissions to global warming.
You don’t have to believe me. You could try reading all six of the IPCC’s WG1 assessment reports with a critical eye:
https://archive.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_first_assessment_1990_wg1.shtml
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar2/wg1/
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar3/wg1/
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar4/wg1/
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/
Yes, they do suffer from exponential growth in the number of words that say nothing, but you don’t have read them in their entirety. The key chapter in each report includes the word “attribution”. AR6 had no such chapter (you can make of that what you will!), so you only need to read five chapters. Disregard anything that relates to model projections. The output from models is not evidence.
Alternatively, you can look for the references that proved that Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. Except you will struggle to find that proof, particularly as Wikipedia lacks any page explaining this theory. Perhaps you can explain why, out of the tens of thousands of scientists who support consensus climate science, not one is able to succinctly explain the fundamental theory underpinning the IPCC’s claims?
However, I have found an even simpler way to prove my point. Try to find the first modern peer reviewed paper that established the frequently repeated relationship between atmospheric CO2 levels and surface temperatures, using the readily available instrument records.
I’ve looked for two decades, and have never been able to find it! If there is no scientific basis to AGW theory, why do you believe that we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
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In 1938 Guy Callendar presented a paper showing that the Earth had warmed since 1890 and that CO2 had also increased. In 1938, he noted that global temperatures had risen by about 0.3 degrees Celsius over the previous 50 years. One of his graphs showed that at about 425 p.p.m. the effect would raise the temperature about 0.9 degrees and by 600 p.p.m. the rise would be about 1.6 degrees rise. He was congratulated by the assembled meteorologists as showing a possible reason for the end of ice ages.
In 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen delivered influential testimony to Congress, warning of the potential for significant global warming. Hansen had been involved in climate research prior to that date.
It is found that even an increase by a factor of 8 in the amount of CO2, which is highly unlikely in the next several thousand years, will produce an increase in the surface temperature of less than 2 deg. K.
Schneider S. & Rasool S., “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols – Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate”, Science, vol.173, 9 July 1971, p.138-141
Those results were based on a climate model developed by none other than James Hansen.
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Stephen Schneider is mentioned. He was a strong supporter of anthropogenic global warming, which is funny, considering that in the 1970s, he was also a strong supporter of anthropogenic global cooling.
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Yes G 4 and here’s a young Steve Schneider in Nimoy’s ice age scary video in 1977 at about 20 minutes.
I must admit that it did look grim nearly 50 years ago.
Interesting to look at today and how these fears evolve.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQRqr9_jw5I&t=1192s
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The video seemed confused. Schneider was taking about ice melting in a video about the possibility of global cooling and a new ice age.
10
If you dig back through the literature in the first half of the ’70s and take notice of the names pushing “we’re all gonna freeze” and then jump ahead 10 years to the start of the “we’re all gonna fry” garbage it is amazing just how many times you will see the same names.
It was studying environmental science at uni between those periods and watched the whole thing with amusement.
50
Read Chapter 3 of AR6:
The likely range of human-induced warming in global-mean surface air temperature (GSAT) in 2010–2019 relative to
1850–1900 is 0.8°C–1.3°C, encompassing the observed warming of 0.9°C–1.2°C, while the change attributable to natural forcings
is only −0.1°C to +0.1°C. The best estimate of human-induced warming is 1.07°C.
038
Simon, read history. Examine Reality instead of Fantasies.
The likely range of any global warming prediction having occurred for the last 100 years is Zero.
All of that Zero accuracy is attributable to wilful ignorance, grift, greed, powerlust, and gullibility.
All of the forcings are political, economic, egoistic arrogance and a complete lack of comprehension of economics, maths, physics, engineering, resource limitations, and an abundance of ideological fantasy.
340
And? According to NASA. https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/faq/what-is-the-greenhouse-effect/ The Earth’s surface temperature should be 15 c. According to Copernicus, average global temperature for 2024 was 15.1 c. Where is the problem?
140
Copernicus reports temperature anomalies. You’re getting confused with something else.
017
Wrong. https://climate.copernicus.eu/global-climate-highlights-2024#:~:text=2024%20was%20the%20warmest%20year,air%20temperature%20above%20this%20threshold. Key temperatures for 2024. Globe. Actual temperature 15.10c. The only one getting confused is you.
100
Simon,
Why do you think that the IPCC uses the unscientific term “likely” with those estimates? Because it relies on probabilities, not data! It even had to make up its own terminology, entirely unrelated to any scientific or mathematical field, to come up with its terms.
As I pointed out in my first comment to you, the IPCC has never been able to establish any relationship between atmospheric CO2 levels and surface temperatures. And it certainly has not provided any data that allows that relationship to be reduced to a mathematical relationship
Compare the results the IPCC comes up with, to results calculated from real world data by physicists:
https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/The-Role-of-Greenhouse-Gases-in-Energy-Transfer-in-the-Earths-Atmosphere.pdf
“Increasing carbon dioxide will cause a small additional surface warming. It is difficult to calculate exactly how much, but our best estimate is that it is about 1 C for every doubling of CO2 concentration, when all feedbacks are correctly accounted for.”
Compare that to the IPCC’s estimate of human induced warming of 1.07 degC for an increase from 280ppm to 420ppm, only a 50% increase in atmospheric CO2.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02626667.2023.2287047
“The observed increase of the atmospheric CO2 concentration from 300 to more than 400 ppm has not altered, in a discernible manner, the greenhouse effect, which remains dominated by the quantity of water vapour in the atmosphere.”
https://www.sepp.org/science_papers/A%2520Few%2520Notes%2520about%2520Climate.pdf
“Notice that the entire change in CO2 radiative forcing, from the least CO2 to the most, is 12 W/m2. By some feat of magic, that is supposed to suppress a total increase in surface IR emission of 140 W/m2. What’s a factor of twelve among friends?”
10
“likely” is perfectly acceptable in science discussion text when the actual data is also being presented. Science uses such terms often and uses stats very often. Has done for centuries.
Find something real to moan about.
03
It is highly likely that the benefits of increased CO2 ( more bio-life- FOOD- on the same land with no additional water required)
will continue to increase as the CO2 PPM increases, and the failing to manifest harms will decrease as any thoretical warming will also further reduce with additional nearly complete atmospheric saturation of CO2 LWIF radiation.
00
On which data do you base this?
00
Simon – Suggest you read
https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Lindzen-Happer-Comment-EPA-Endangerment-Finding-2025-09-22.pdf
Richard Lindzen – Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Emeritus Massachusetts Institute of Technology
William Happer – Professor of Physics, Emeritus, Princeton University
At the outset it is important to understand that carbon dioxide has two relevant properties,as a creator of food and oxygen, and as a greenhouse gas (GHG).
As to food and oxygen, carbon dioxide is essential to nearly all life on earth by creatingfood and oxygen by photosynthesis. Further, it creates more food as its level in the atmosphereincreases. For example, doubling carbon dioxide from today’s approximately 420 ppm to 840
ppm would increase the amount of food available to people worldwide by roughly 40%, and doing so would have a negligible effect on temperature.
and
https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-10-22/s71022-20132171-302668.pdf
AS CAREER PHYSICISTS, SCIENCE DEMONSTRATES THERE IS NO CLIMATE RELATED RISK CAUSED BY FOSSIL FUELS AND CO2,
THUS NO SCIENTIFIC BASIS FOR THE PROPOSED RULE,AND, IF ADOPTED, DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES FOR PEOPLE WORLDWIDE AND THE U. S. BECAUSE
IT WOULD REDUCE CO2 AND THE USE OF FOSSIL FUELS
June 17, 2022
Plus
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/363669186_Climate_of_the_Past_Present_and_Future_A_scientific_debate_2nd_ed/link/63296077071ea12e36487da9/download?_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIiwicGFnZSI6InB1YmxpY2F0aW9uIn19
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This was never refereed or peer-reviewed, you can safely throw it in the bin.
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Just like you can throw AR6 in the bin since the IPCC were caught out deliberately manipulating the CERES data.
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Simon,
It is dead easy to reduce our CO2 emissions by shutting down our large industry using political demands and lack of incentive to keep industry open and welcome to newcomers.
Sadly, it is an exceptionally bad idea to cancel large industry.
Example 1: Oil refineries, 20 years ago we had 8. Today we have 2.
Example 2. Aluminium industry, we now have about half the number of refineries and smelters that we had in 2000.
Example 3. Aircraft manufacture. The Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation manufacturing aircraft grew from 1936 until late 1980s, then dissolved.
It is easier to list the loss of major industry than to find examples of new ones after 2000. There is little if any sign that a reversal of loss has started recently.
This catastrophe invites comparison to acts of treason.
Geoff S
660
Iron & Steel are the big ones … almost completely gone in Australia and the Whyalla plant is probably going to close for good. It would take some kind of miracle to get Whyalla back into a profitable business again.
BlueScope Illawarra is really the last one left, and they mostly just make roofing … which is still useful but far short of what Australia used to make. I think there’s a bit of scrap steel being recycled as well … although a lot of the scrap simply gets shipped out to India.
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Simon, the 28% reduction that Australia has supposedly achieved since 2005, which I think is now our baseline has been achieved mainly by banning land clearing and allowing regrowth, 24% of our reduction, with the other 4% being attributed to the hundreds of Billlions spent on Climate mitigation programs. Re this achievement of Net Zero being achieved by the end of the century either willingly or by the destruction of our economy by the effects of climate change, the policies being employed by this Government willl wreck the economy by the end of this decade, as industry and capital offshore, private employment has tanked with public employment reaching 80% of new jobs this past three years, and social schemes explode mainly off-budget, see Snowy 2.0, NBN, not to mention NDIS which is on the Budget but which has exploded beyond control.
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Simon wrote:
No it hasn’t. It is an accounting fiddle. We do not count CO2 produced from the wild fires generated from leaving forests with high fuel loads to sequester carbon and we do not count CO2 produced in China to make all the stuff Australia imports.
So the only thing Australia has done is played along with the climate scam and fiddled the books.
540
Good bye Australia, it was nice knowing you.
Oh right, it’s only Simon: keep digging…
351
‘ … as the effects of climate change hits hard.’
You may have to expand on that, we are returning to the Medieval Warm Period. The MWP came late to Australia as did the LIA.
I’ll have a look to see what this land down under was like during the MWP, to allay your fears.
100
Just getting the dates right.
‘The Medieval Warm Period (950-1250AD) is apparent in the Northern Hemisphere reconstruction, while in the Southern Hemisphere there was an extended warm phase between 1200 and 1350. Both hemispheres then experienced a long-term cooling trend, with the peak of the Little Ice Age from 1594–1677.’ (Australian Antarctic Program)
Australians wouldn’t have noticed how the climate changed, but they would have been aware of the dramatic fall in sea level around 1300.
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Simon,
[snip] Why are you swallowing every lie and piece of computer modelled climate change propaganda and regurgitating it at every mention of those models and alarmist predictions in fact being wrong and fake.
Or you know the truth and you’re just trolling for replies /reactions in some need for attention?
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Name one doomsday prediction by alarmism which has come true or one aspect of the climate which has deteriorated.
The fact is the climate today is as benign as it gets. Agriculture is at record levels, the planet is greening and more people are leading better lives.
This: It will either be willingly or through the destruction of the global economy as the effects of climate change hits hard. Tells me that alarmists want bad things to happen because at base they are misanthropists and the entirely confected global boiling allows them to justify their misanthropism.
90
You might like to amend the headline name, jo.
As I understand it, nuclear reactors are off the agenda even though you have uranium.
So what other way could you possibly meet the silly target?
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Culling the population? (I’m pretty sure that is the Club of Rome’s preferred solution)
Offshoring all industry to Indonesia and other ports abroad?
Rationing petrol/electricity/meat?
170
Culling the population? LOL, our unesteemed “leaders” have been increasing it by ever larger numbers for two decades.
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I’m quoting Pielke in the headline. He himself said we need 25 nuclear reactors “if we were serious”. But he’s the one who takes Paris commitments as if they mean something and if another country had achieved the kind of reductions we are aiming for he would know.
Presumably he’s just looking at the last 40 years, so France’s nuclear build out isn’t counted, and nor is the collapse of the Soviet Union where emissions plummetted in the early 1990s.
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Jo, my reference was to the spelling of the author in the headline, not what he said.
30
And the leaders of the Liberal party and National party think its a grand plan. And defenestrate any member who disagrees. Since Tony Abbott, a Liberal party tradition. All the way with Albanese and Xi.
Why? Like The Voice, a Liberal National coalition which just stopped spending and CO2 taxes would romp home in an election.
Just the lousy few hundred million we are now going to gift to military dictatorships in Africa to get on the roster for the Security Council would be a good start. But perhaps Xi wants his friends on the Council, especially a pretend white democracy for once. And control of the Pacific and the invasion of Taiwan.
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There is simply no opposition. Sussan Ley should be shouting from the rooftops that this is nonsense, unfunded, ridiculous, unaffordable long before you get to the point whether it makes any sense.
But she isn’t. Nor are the Tories.
The fastest way to power, a minority dictatorship as with Adolph, is to nobble the opposition, so Australia and the UK and perhaps Canada have governments no one wants. As no one wanted the Biden charade where there was no US President at all, weekend at Biden’s, just a papier mache figure at the beach with an icecream. And a nodding duck signing all the forms. For four years.
360
If the Libs shouted from the rooftops why would I ever believe them?
If they do say global warming is a scam it would purely be based on the polling of what the voters want, not what the Liberals believe.
I voted for the Libs most of my life. I haven’t done so for a while now.They have yet to prove to me that Ihey deserve my vote again.
Holding my nose and voting for labor-lite over labor is not an option for me any more.
They are both unelectable rabble.
In conversing with a number of people since the last election the majority of them agreed with me that neither labor or labor-lite deserved to win.
Yet most did cast, and will cast their vote in the future for either of these 2 parties.
It’s madness.
If we don’t vote for change we won’t achieve change.
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That was the story with Tony Abbott, overwhelmingly elected to fix the problems. And immediately defenestrated by Malcolm Turnbull and the Black Hand who used Abbott to get power and then turn sharp left, passing Labour as socialists and doomsayers. Power and money. Still the attraction of politics for many for whom it is far easier than getting a real job. Turnbull has never accounted for the $444million he took for ‘fix’ the Great Barrier Reef. And neither side of politics says a thing.
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Australian Prime Ministers are the new clowned princes. And spend billions, now trillions without any justification to parliament or the people.
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Yes.
The wolf in the henhouse.
I well remember Miranda Devine who I think is a good journalist lable me and others as “delcons” for having the temerity to call out Malcolm Turnbull as the first labor leader of the Liberal party. I was and still am proud of being given that lable as I was proven to be correct.
Stupid Liberals.
BTW, just to clarify for Jo’s foreign readers, The Liberals in Australia are supposedely our conservative party.
200
Don’t forget the meddling by Al Gore in that.
110
“purely be based on the polling of what the voters want”
Isn’t the representation of the voters’ wishes and desires why politicians are there to promote?
Politicians are not our lords and masters, though many have forgotten this. They are supposed to be public servants
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As the economy continues to collapse and deindustrialise as we regress to a less advanced, less energy intensive, less prosperous, Net Zero Prosperity economy, I fully expect the rate of “decarbonisation” (I hate that term) to accelerate.
This is simply because there is a direct correlation between energy usage (in Australia’s case measured by “carbon” because that’s where most of the useful energy comes from) and standard of living. Thr lower the standard of living the less “carbon” used.
In extremis, primitive pre-industrial people, had a lifestyle that many on the Left wish for non-Elites to have, of “Net Zero” emissions and “Net Zero” prosperity.
Conservatives and other thinking people should not tolerate the destruction of their lifestyle by the anti-energy policies of the Left.
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And David, we will be seen as a weak pliable nation open to even more exploitation than our current political leaders *cough* have driven us to. Other stronger countries that haven’t destroyed their manufacturing bases and their economies, or demilitarised will see us as a vast pit of undefended resources.
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There is a new Blockbuster Film, soon to be released called – “Emissions Impossible”
Staring, the ‘New Muppets’ – ‘Airbus Albo’, ‘Blackout Bowen’, Wenny Pong’ and many other New Muppets.
It’s sure to be a winner and will save the Planet.
360
Very good. Especially Mr Pong.
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It’s Not Easy Being Green 🎶
30
I assume that is limited to a specific time frame.
I would be surprised if France in the 1980s during the height of their nuclear rollout didn’t achieve something in that range. And obviously, Germany probably achieved that from 1942-1945 when they were running out of fuel and all their power plants were getting bombed by the allies. And I’m pretty sure ancient Rome’s Carthago Delenda Est policy was very effective at reducing Carthage’s annual emissions, as was God’s old testament policy towards Sodom and Gomorrah (not to mention the whole global flooding episode from which only one dude’s family and two animals of each species were spared).
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The decline tracks the manufacturing intensity of Australia’s economy. Manufacturing contributed 13.8% of GDP in 1990. It was down to just 5.3% of GDP in 2023.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/aus/australia/manufacturing-output
The only reason CO2 is falling is because Australia does not count the CO2 that went into making the stuff it imports.
In past eras, Australian governments focused on adding value to our mined minerals. All that ended with the CO2 scare mongering. It takes energy to convert minerals to useful materials and Australia has hobbled its economy through the climate scam.
Instead of their CSIRO working for industry in Australia they are active in killing it.
Pauline Hanson for Immigration Minister
Malcolm Roberts for Mining and Energy Minister
Peta Credlin for Communications Minister
All in a Price/Hastie led coalition.
Australia needs these “right wing populists” in control. We need wolves in the hen house of Canberra not timid mice. Both UK and Australia are far worse than the US in terms of the deep state pulling the strings. Australia is not run be democratically elected representatives but by deeply flawed institutions.
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And deeply flawed people.
As Donald Horne said in The Lucky Country, 1964:
He clarified the statement in 1976 in Death of the Lucky Country:
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Be very careful with Horne, he was a first rate smartarse, at best a second rate person, and a full blown communist.
Both those books were from the point of view of a communist lamenting the fact that Australia hadn’t become a communist country.
30
Larry,
As one from the Australian mineral industry, I have been objecting for years to Horne’s “lucky country” concept.
Yes, Australia derives a large part of its national income from the sale of mining products to other countries. (We also save by using our own minerals, not importing them.)
It is not luck that got us there. It was the determined and skillful use of careful, proper science in the hands of capable people. Some were from government, like those who did the systematic mapping of geology in the years after WWII, before the purpose of government was so corrupted by control freaks. The heavy lifting was mainly done by private enterprising fighting the dead hands of regulators. Propagandists have rewarded our mineral people by smear such as the epithet “Dirty Miners”. If there is luck involved, it is lucky that poor education has produced a mass of voters who believe the propaganda.
Geoff S
30
Don’t forget that the Net Zero Australia report also states that Aussies will have to increase our energy use by 100 times.
What will that cost?
Will it totally destroy our environments?
How can toxic, unreliable W & S generate the electricity if the average capacity factors are just 29% per year for Wind and 15% for Solar? See Wiki.
The horrendous cost of 7 to 9 TRILLION $ will be repeated every 15 to 20 years. See Renew Economy report.
Has anyone got any ideas and by how much will this ongoing toxic mess drop our temperature by 2050 or by 2100? Any ideas?
170
I am firmly convinced that governments still committed to Net Zero are being run by the South Park Underpants Gnomes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_(South_Park)
Step 1. Make Net Zero Plan (Collect Underpants)
Step 2. ?
Step 3. Net Zero! (Profit!)
They’re just running on faith that Step 2 will work itself out. Or that they won’t be in their current job when Step 3’s deadline arrives and the whole house of cards collapses.
130
I think it’s Bowen doing the presentation…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO5sxLapAts
30
Sorry, Wiki now claims just 24% capacity factor for Aussie Wind and not 29%.
But very important to point out that Aussie Wind capacity factor today is lower than their claims a few months ago. Why is it so?
80
A recent article claimed that wind turbines reduce their output at a rate of 3% pa. Another earlier article claimed a 50% output reduction after 10years. Wonder if we are now seeing those reductions.
60
With solar panels it’s 5% pa.
Have you looked at the latest battery scam they are touting? Interest free loan with you paying it off at 5%/year for the home batteries. Pity the things are only rated for an 8 year life and overall only actually last about 5 years. So you’ll still be on the hook for something that you’ve had to replace for another decade and a half.
That’s a ripsnorter of a scam.
30
I’ve mentioned another one recently. $6000 for a battery, paid off in 10 years interest free. But you have to handover control of your battery to a power provider.
10
Paid off in 10 years, somewhere between 2 and 5 years after it has died and you’ve had to shell out for a new one.
Gee whiz, that’s a good deal.
How about an interest free loan on a car that will fall apart in 5 years but will take 10 years to pay off, or a 20 year mortgage on a house that will fall down in 10.
You know, we could be onto something here. 😀
30
If there is a genuine need for Australia to further decarbonize – IMO, there is NO need – the obvious and developed path is by finally starting our own Australian nuclear electricity generation.
(There are wild, off-putting cost estimates by last-ditch activists who are running out of objections, but countries like South Korea have build and operating figures of relevance.)
It matters little that Australia has abundant uranium in the ground and in mines. I helped in this effort and just happen to know a bit about the topic.
The weight of uranium in a reactor is small. It is not a major part of the overall cost of nuclear, which is a big advantage. Our benefit from having uranium in the ground is to have a part in the global nuclear industry supporting a skilled domestic workforce for expansion and invention.
…..
It IS important for Australia, right now, to get going in other parts of the global uranium fuel cycle, in these ways:
Pre-enrichment. The raw yellowcake from our mines is converted to products like uranium hexafluoride, the input into one enrichment technique. This adds huge $ value to ach gram of U.
Enrichment. Using one of several process used elsewhere, we increase the portion of the isotope U-235 to create a starting product for fuel rods or pellets that varies in enrichment level from reactor design to another. There is a big dollar value available for Australia to share by enrichment.
Custom manufacture of fuel rods or pellets for our future and other widespread global reactors, more than 400 of them now.
Re-processing of fuel part burned in existing reactors. This is not waste, it is not spent fuel, it is a valuable source of more fuel for more el4ectricity.
Fuel storage. Rods or pellets removed from reactors after a burn benefit from a reduction in short-lived generated isotopes that make handling difficult by storage in isolation for terms like a year to cool off. The quantity that is not going on to more processing, sometimes named nuclear waste, needs to be stored away from where people are for terms that vary according to their reactor history. This term can be one hundred to a few hundred years, not the activist estimates of 240,000 years or “forever” based on half-lives of some isotopes. The inland of Australia has enormous potential for such storage, which is a nice $ earner for doing very little effort.
…..
Activism has caused huge economic losses to Australia from scare stories by people who seem to know little about physics and chemistry and past performance of nuclear elsewhere. Look at how pretty France sits now by going major nuclear in the 1980s.
I am happy to comment on any objections that readers might raise here. I started hands-on science work on nuclear around 1970.
Geoff S
260
Enriching uranium is energy intensive and not something that household batteries can support.
You first need low cost energy and that requires gas and electricity. The lowest cost electricity in Australia is from burning lignite. The existing coal fired capacity should be extended until new lignite fired plants can come into service.
The fastest track for Australia to get back to a viable, modern economy is to cancel the RET and then change the wholesale electricity market bidding system to daily as opposed to 5-minute. That would immediately favour dispatchable generation over intermittent. The only intermittents that would survive are rooftop solar and grid scale stuff that has fossil fuel or hydro co-generation. All current coal fired generators would be fully scheduled or close to it. Discourage rooftops from exporting and taking other demand from the coal generators.
170
Rick,
Agreed.
All of my future nuclear scenarios require cheap, reliable electricity.
I know of no informed colleague who would prefer to do these things with “renewables” when hydrocarbon fuels are widely and cheaply available for generating reliable electricity.
Geoff S
30
The nonsense about 240,000 years storage is from one minor isotope of plutonium. None of the wacky Greens day mention those products coming from our own nuclear plant which are used in medicine, those with high reactivity because their half-life is measured in hours.
People like Simon don’t understand half-life; they think radioactivity lasts for ever. Think a half-life of 12 hours means the radioactivity is one quarter after a day, and less than 0.001 by the end of the week. Yet there was opposition in southern Sydney about nuclear waste being stored in a hospital, along with demands that it be moved elsewhere, along with opposition to any moving. Finally it was moved in ordinary trucks.
170
sorry but reactivity (a chemical term), half life and energy emissions are independent of each other.
Why make up mythical stupid straw men? Not sure which wacky greens you mean but I know/knew quite a few who are/were medical scientists who actually use radioactive P, H, S etc and are happy to put residual back in their lead or perspex pots (or whatever is appropriate), and leave them to be dispose of harmlessly after the appropriate time.
Done it myself. The techniques I use now though replaced radioactively labelled nucleotides, amino acids etc with other tags.
211
When Roger Pielke Jnr says “there is no evidence that Australia’s emissions reduction policies have done anything to meaningfully accelerate the rate of decarbonization over many decades”- I cant help but feel the underlying cynicism. That what he is really saying is ” …hey. you blithering idiot Aussies, you done all this pain for no real gain”. Is there an award for the biggest own goal in world economy vandalism? Because if there is, the contenders would be Australia and Germany. Probably Germany would get the prize because they once had a thriving nuclear power industry, now severely depleted. So we would only get second prize in the Emissions Biggest Losers competition. Great, not even bragging rights. At least with the Biggest Loser TV program, the winner got a cash prize. We get nothing, but probably now will pay to host the next COP in Adelaide. Australia, the smart country, except for all the times we’re really dumb.
190
At least with the Biggest Loser TV program, the winner, after shedding all those kilos, ended up with more energy…
I sincerely hope we don’t get to host the next COP OUT. Apart from the cost, the sight of Big Wind Bowen smiling as he announces all of his sycophantic climate change buddies will be flying in on their private jets would be nauseating.
10
A statement from the uTube clip below (language warning – he is passionate!)and an example of this net-zero foolishness by the ACT Govt.
Electric fire truck ‘fail’ – after costing taxpayers millions
I follow this up with another thought-provoking examination of the future of heavy haulage:
We as a society are nowhere near achieving a rational net-zero when examples such as above are highlighted.
120
Meanwhile our new Ansto Nuclear research reactor is saving thousands of lives and we know that Nuclear is the safest BASELOAD energy in the world. See OWI Data.
Here’s an informative 4 minute video of the new Nuclear research reactor at Lucas Heights Sydney NSW.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiAkelzSIGg
40
New? It was built (from memory 2007) and has just been refuelled for the second time.
And Australia has had several (small) reactors as far back as 1957.
40
Gosh Graeme no.3, it replaced our old reactor that worked from 1957 and was opened by Menzies, so I’m calling this reactor new.
BTW the USS Aircraft Carrier Ronald Reagan wasn’t refueled for 27 years and our new Nuclear subs ( if we ever get them) will also require no refueling after decades of use.
40
And today nuclear fuel rods are considered to be valuable assets that are recycled several times so value expressed as electricity produced using nuclear reactor technology and steam turbine generators is the basis for valuation of depleted uranium fuel rods.
20
50
The basic argument of show me anywhere where any of this nonsense is working remains sound.
Anyone can huff and puff about so called emmissions all they like, because the alleged problem and its fantasy solutions exist only in their fevered minds. As soon as they try to make anything real it just falls apart. The so called “transition to renewable energy” is a joke that has failed everywhere and will fail here also.
Total energy demand continues to rise. So called fossil fuels continue to do the heavy lifting.
The death of climatism is accelerating.
150
A major headache for Albanese Labor now is the lack of investors for wind, solar, batteries hybrid system. Offshore proposed locations negotiations have ended unsuccessfully. On shore locations remaining have lower potential site by site for wind towers to operate profitably even with taxpayer funded subsidies and reliable power stations handicapped. And a wholesale electricity pricing system favouring the highest price bidders.
Secondly the Building and Construction industry labour and materials crisis is impacting transition, and most other government and private sector projects.
As AEMO have warned several times the transition is failing to deliver, power stations are needed, in desperation Labor have now reinvented gas turbine generators and gas the transition fuel that was previously being transitioned out of the system. Delivery of gas turbine generators is now delayed longer than the grid can wait for the back up support.
It’s a thorough mess of incompetence driven by politics.
140
I suspect the rate at which each country is adopting economically-suicidal green policies is proportional to the degree of CCP infiltration and control over it.
140
I would ask one question in parliament. What is the benefit of all this for Australians?
80
Includes names from both sides of the political spectrum and supporters each side
40
Or the Andrew Bolt question – ” after all these actions, what will be the drop in the earth’s temperature in 70 years time?”
50
All you would get is some emotive BS about claiming to save the planet.
The question is a good one and one that should be asked in reviewing all policies. We do not have people centred government, we just have ideology.
80
Net zero is the perfect solution for a problem that doesn’t exist, claimed to be human activity climate change global warming and just about any other description for the political agenda possible.
Carbon Dioxide as Carbon pollution example.
As compared to natural Earth Cycles.
70
The whole thing is faker than a really fake thing. Humans cannot change CO2 levels anyway. And haven’t, which is proof of that.
It has been fake since it was made up by Al Gore and friends but the money is very real and devastating.
And left out are the 5,000,000 electric cars we are supposed to buy from China. Plus all the infrastructure we have to build to charge all these cars from windmills. It’s not science, it’s mass government theft for their friends in China.
120
Donald Trump said something more than it’s a Chinese hoax. He said the people behind it are evil.
130
He is of course telling the truth, and as he started when first elected President first term and his lengthy address to the United Nations in New York.
Including warning the UN to stop interfering in the affairs of sovereign nation members.
120
Has it been proven to not exist?
Try to think logically.
We make sacrifice and The Son God returns.
You dare to challenge The Sun God by stopping to make sacrifice because you refuse to accept that our sacrifice makes the Sun God return each day?
Climate change has not killed us.
So our efforts have obviously saved us.
Go ahead, stand by the Sea (or on the veranda of your 10,000 square ft. beach cottage) and wait for Climate Change to consume you in the flame of your denial.
The Orange Man is obviously sent by the forces of darkness against the True Religion.
He dares to walk into the cathedral of the New World Order and challenge Truth.
All while the blessed child of one the Holy Hollywood Divine Order bravely spoke, struggling through her N95 barrier against demonic possession, in one of the most inspiring demonstrations of piety ever.
We must reject the Orange One and follow the Divine Children of Hollywood … and Yale.
Hopefully George Clooney will bestow upon the US its’ next savior POTUS from his mansion on Lake Cuomo.
Believe in Science.
And follow it.
Consensus is Truth.
40
For references we need to read the views of (lord) Christopher Monckton just before the Copenhagen Climate Conference and his auditing of the climate computer modelling revealing the errors and omissions as compared to historic record data.
For his work the UNIPCC blocked him from addressing UNIPCC conferences and denied his audit report details claiming the science is settled so no correspondence entered into. A while later hackers released what became known as climate gate 1 & 2 batches of emails exchanged between UNIPCC “scientists” discussing how to create the warming trend model without getting caught for misleading.
And right now Albanese Labor are plotting to stop us from discussing climate matters unless we agree with the climate is settled claims.
100
And even if it was true, is Global Warming the biggest problem facing Australia?
There are many problems. They are usually triaged. Cost/benefit. And a list is made.
Why is this ‘problem’ the one which gets all our money, no matter what the cost?
This cost is on a par with total war. Waged by the Australian government on Australians.
130
60
As we stand around paralysed watching our beloved country deliberately destroyed by the Albanese circus and its:
“CLOWN-CAR REDUX”
“Albanese is a Ruddy mess all over again!” (my caps, my bolding)
https://www.spectator.com.au/2025/09/clown-car-redux/
60
I’m still trying to find an actual definition of “net zero”.
I’ve looked, and I’ve found lots of green verbiage, but no scientific or economic definition.
What does “net zero” actually mean?
Does it mean zero human emissions? Or does it mean human emissions are balanced by natural uptake of C02? Or something else entirely?
Because if it’s the second one, we are already there, and if we want to increase that C02 uptake we actually need to start cutting down a lot of mature trees and planting young ones in their place.
40
Whilst insane as an aim, decarbonisation is easy … so long as you don’t count how much hydrocarbon you burn doing the decarbonisation.
40