Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon; Only solutions which don’t involve extractive industries or capitalism seem to interest Aussie greens.
Environmental groups warn against push for nuclear power in Australia
Paul Karp @Paul_Karp
Mon 16 Sep 2019 04.00 AEST
Last modified on Mon 16 Sep 2019 10.02 AESTJoint submission calls nuclear ‘a dangerous distraction’ from real action on climate as Zali Steggall backs 2050 zero-emissions target
Environmental and civil society groups have warned the government nuclear power has “no role” in Australia as crossbench independents urge it to recognise climate change as a health issue.
…
The anti-nuclear group warned it is “a dangerous distraction from real movement on the pressing energy decisions and climate actions we need”.
“If Australia’s energy future was solely a choice between coal and nuclear then a nuclear debate would be needed. But it is not,” they said in a statement.
“Our nation has extensive renewable energy options and resources and Australians have shown clear support for increased use of renewable and genuinely clean energy sources.”
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/sep/16/environmental-groups-warn-against-push-for-nuclear-power-in-australia
Green opposition to nuclear power completely undermines their claims that we face a climate emergency.
Claims that nuclear power is too expensive are straight out lies. France has had an affordable nuclear programme which delivers most of their nation’s electricity since the 1970s.
Claims that nuclear power is too dangerous – dangerous compared to the end of the world? If a global climate disaster is imminent, how can it possibly make sense to oppose a potential solution because of concerns about the alleged risk of a few meltdowns?
If greens think there is time to play politics and oppose the one zero carbon energy source which might win bipartisan support, they obviously don’t believe the problem is that urgent. Fake concern about global warming is just an excuse greens use to advance their political agenda.
So ugly wind farms, which have fibreglass wings which cannot be recycled and have to be thrown in a land fill, and solar panels which cannot keep up with demand, batteries which cost tens of millions, is the only way to save the planet 😐 nuclear which is used all over the planet and gives a constant power supply is bad? Honestly humanity has gone totally dumb!!
The way the objections to nuclear are posed always makes it sound as if there will be no nuclear power on the planet if ‘ don’t build it.’ ( fill in the appropriate here ). Of course that is completely untrue. There is already a LOT of nuclear running, being built, and planned all over the planet.
ain’t the only humans building things. So for example if in Canada never build any more nuclear, that won’t be stopping Russia, China, Rumania, …. etc. from building it. There WILL be nuclear. It/s just whether or not will have nuclear.
oops.. moderator please delete my previous submission. Errors therein.
Excerpt from article:
Nothing new there, …… they have been doing it for decades.
If you have a terminal illness, and a very short time to live, …… you can not be given an untested, experimental medication, ….. simply because there is a chance that said medication will kill you.
Sunny : “Honestly humanity has gone totally dumb!!”
Whoa there, don’t go lumping us in with the masses… and certainly not with the Greens.
We already solved humanity’s energy needs, quite possibly forever, 18 miles Southeast of Arco, Idaho at 1350h, December 20th, 1951.
Sunny says, “Honestly, humanity has gone totally dumb!!” The one effect of increased CO2 that seems obvious to me is severe brain damage in a susceptible segment of the population. Or maybe they just breathe in too much of their own exhaust.
Nuclear is unacceptable because it is reliable, cost effective and safe, thus is able to power a complex energy dependant productive society that is less willing to be controlled. And control is the end game, regardless of the misery, grief and loss of life incurred.
To adopt your own language: your claim that Frances nuclear is “affordable” is a straight out lie. You link to WP as though this supports your claim, try reading it:
In France as in all of the countries which developed nuclear power it was only “affordable” because much of the budget was military. With France having its own independent nuclear arsenel, that remains the case.
From the consumers point of view, it is deceptive to single out kWh pricing since in France there are many other things which make up the bill, less than half of which is the cost of kWh consumed. This is partly because water and electricity tariffs are controlled and indexed linked in France. The suppliers get around the law by loading fixed charges which rise well above inflation and are now a major part of the bill.
The Green arguments are clearly dishonest. It would be preferable to counter them honest ones , rather than imitating their dishonesty.
Nuclear is also profoundly dangerous.
And you only now noticed? It is amazing how intelligent individuals can be collectively dense.
Well there are some solutions for glass fibre blades and active research on the carbon fibre ones.
https://www.livingcircular.veolia.com/en/industry/how-can-wind-turbine-blades-be-recycled
But tell me, what percentage of the material from a coal power plant or nuclear reactor is recycled? where does the demolition waste go?
What percentage of a coal plant can be recycled?
With the exception of the foundation, pretty much all of it.
What percentage of a nuclear plant can be recycled?
With the exception of the core and foundation, pretty much all of it. Even the core can be recycled after it cools down in 100 years or so.
If it weren’t for Climate Change, aka the Ice Ages, the Australian Aborigines and others that live in Indonesia would never gotten there until many millennia later!!!😃😃😃🤪🤪
Meanwhile from the Australian ABC today …
https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-17/climate-change-deniers-are-a-threat-to-our-children/11518138
Haven’t heard from the flannel in a while, he must be running out of money to pay for his sea front property. Go away Tim “Our dams will never be full again” Flannery.
He owns a beach house…mustn’t be that concerned.
has kids so not responsibly childless either;-)
and I REALLY resent the statement that skeptics are as bad as child abusers
when the stress fear and suicidal kiddies are FROM being scared **itlessBY the agw scumbags preying ON kids.
and he links his climate protesting with Eureka stokade?
crap
the eureka stockade WAS a rebellion againt govt fees charges taxes etc
ie control
the oppositeo f what this mob is after
auntie abc started running antinuke scare stories within HOURS of a govt proposal to re examine nuclear options for Aus
frankly Id prefer we used our own plentiful coal for the forseeable future
unless they will do small units scattered where needed
but if they can run subs n ships on small plants then the techs there and has longtime data for support.
“Only solutions which
don’t involve extractive industries or capitalismbring on genocide for 7 billion humans seem to interest Aussie greens.”(there, fixed it)
Apparently in the Greens’ pinheads, solar PV panels and wind turbines grow on trees and do not require “extractive industries” or capital investments. What a bunch of morons.
AND they require more energy input per harvested energy out than any other conversion. Some are in fact, net losers.
Translation:
“Nuclear Power can supply realiable power without (What we hope we’ve convinced everyone to fear..) carbon emissions but it won’t give us control of the Government. Therefore, “Nothing to see here. Move along.”
For once I agree with the Greens that this push for nuclear power is a distraction. However it’s not because there is anything wrong with nuclear power but because it tip toes around the real issue , carbon dioxide is not an evil pollutant. Until that is agreed upon we really can’t progress. Even talking about Hele coal plants is a concession to the global warming myth. Sceptics have to smash the myth and I sometimes hear well known supporters of our side of the argument say that yes their is global warming and man has some influence but it is not dangerous. To me that is too big a concession to make. Whatever the science indicates the empirical evidence indicates a correlation so tenuous that virtually none exists and their is even less of a relationship when one tries to tie CO2 to climate change. Until the US unequivocally removes the endangerment finding in relation to CO2 the debate remains in the balance. Once they can overrule that finding all other aspects of the debate collapse and the real global socialist agenda of parties like the Greens gets fully exposed. Global warming/ climate change is merely the Greens ( and others) Trojan house to destroy the western civilisation societies that have proven to have been so successful in lifting most of the world out of the poverty which was a feature of the pre industrial era.
I totally agree. Moreover, I am not aware of any statistically significant or reliable measure which ties CO2 to “climate change” (whatever the hell that is) or global warming (also requiring a coherent definition, if there is such a thing as “global” temperature.) I believe that electricity needs can be met safely and economically with properly designed atomic power plants, but I am doubtful that the least developed countries, which need electric power the most, are up to the technology and safety requirements. Most importantly, it is a distraction as Zigmaster says.
If we can get the truth about the harmless nature and high value of CO2 out to the people, we undermine all the other arguments. BTW, always labelling it “CARBON” is part of the scare scenario. It plays on the massive ignorance of elementary science, people not realizing that everything is made of atoms (horror! bombs!) and chemicals (horror, toxic wastes and cancer!!!).
Zigmaster – September 16, 2019 at 2:34 pm
Nuff said, …… end of discussion.
But it will never happen, …….. too many “do-nothing” careers and too much “free” money.
When I was the President of a uranium exploration company I researched a lot of the issues, and even attended the IAEA Uranium Redbook meeting in Vienna, Austria. The few incidents involving nuclear reactor disasters, most notably Chernobyl and Fukashima, were instructional events that greatly increased the safety of nuclear reactors. If some amount of caution is exercised, like not siting nuclear reactors in active seismic zones, near sea-level where a tsunami might affect it, and considering the prevailing winds, the safety statistics are excellent compared to other sources of electrical energy. The issue is one of politics and advancing an ideology for the greenies, not anything remotely associated with reality. Go Nuclear!
If the emergency generator at Fukushima hadn’t been kept in the basement where it could be flooded, nobody would have ever heard of Fukushima.
That’s right, MarkW, and they should have pulled the fuel rods as a precaution earlier anyway. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima, in addition to other issues, show the tendency of operators to deny the seriousness of developing disaster. Perhaps nuclear reactors need a shut-down sequence, activated by a series of protocols, impossible to disarm?
There was only a few minutes between the earthquake and the tsunami.
I doubt pulling the rods a couple of minutes sooner would have made any difference.
They have to keep the cooling water circulating for a week or two before the core cools off enough to stop being dangerous.
IIRC the rods were pulled automatically when the earthquake was detected.
Not manually because they thought a big wave was coming
Technically, a major problem was a switch-gear room that was inundated. They did have above ground air-cooled emergency generators survive, which continued power to Units 5 & 6, but could not transmit power to Units 1-3 due the loss of the switch-gear room(s) (Unit 4 was de-fueled at the time of the earthquake for routine maintenance).
Reactors at Onagawa survived (despite being closer to the epicenter of the earthquake, and the town virtually destroyed by the tsunami), owing in part to a higher sea-wall. The reactor complex served as a sanctuary to the community (they were the only ones with power), and they provided housing in their training center.
The Fukushima events were a tragedy of nature, with thousands of lives lost in the earthquake and tsunami, and zero lost due to radiation.
Precisely.
There is an old joke: the all-purpose management decision graphic.
Draw a triangle. Label the vertices “Good”, “Fast”, and “Cheap”. Turn to the audience and say “pick any two”.
The updated version for people in AGW panic is “Carbon Free”, “Scalable” and “
TotallyMostly Safe”. If adding another 100-200 ppm of CO2 will precipitate an extinction-level event, what are a few Three Mile Islands in a century? Or even a Chernobyl or two?We simply cannot replace fossil fuels with wind+solar+geothermal+biomass to equal current world energy usage, let alone the expected growth over the next 30 years.
We can replace almost all coal with a combination of natural gas and nuclear, plus some renewables to keep the children happy. If the children demand less CO2, then they have to accept more nuclear. If the children would stop throwing temper trantrums, perhaps we could do some serious engineering work on better nuclear designs to bring the cost down and the supply up.
“If the children would stop throwing temper trantrums…” Since they act like children, it’s time they were treated like children – given a thorough spanking and sent to their room.
‘If the children would stop throwing temper tantrums’- exactly! On a recent visit to London I was challenged by a young woman with a placard about people burning, (slight exaggeration perhaps?), and I asked what good waving bloody silly pieces of cardboard about would do, suggesting that if she really thought the problem was so serious she should actually try to do something constructive. The answer to this appeared to be to call be a denier and shout abuse…….
Nuclear power might or might not be expensive compared to coal, and possibly gas. France is a special case and as such, is a red herring. But it certainly should be considered as it can provide stable, base-load power. Nothing whatsoever to do with climate.
Why?
When I previously pointed out that France had successfully used nuclear, economically and safely, for a very long time, a bunch of folks posted explaining that France did a bunch of things right. Is the problem that the French Surrender Monkeys may actually be right occassionally?
The problem is that the Greens have no intention of doing things right, so nuclear is out of the question.
(I thought about adding a ‘sarc’ tag, but then realized that my statement was too true to be sarcasm.)
France did things right, while everyone else did things wrong.
Therefore France is a special case that must be ignored.
And France re-processes the “spent” fuel rods …… and thus saves BILLION$ in trying to figure a safe way to dispose of them.
France did things right- like sinking the Rainbow Warrior, lol. Love ’em for that!
They did do some things right in the 80’s and 90’s, which represents most of their nuclear fleet today. That was then, this is now. Safety standards, for better or worse, are much higher, some of that due to Fukushima, and the newer reactors cost way more. Even France is now scaling back their nuclear ambitions. I’m not saying it can’t be done, just that it’s much harder now.
Nonsense Bruce. Nuclear was made more expensive by requiring insane overkill on safety. It was a political football. Greens and peaceniks didn’t want nuclear at all. Governments basically agreed to humungous costly overdesign just to get them built. There hadnt been but a half dozen accidents causing death since 1950 on nuclear research reactors and nuke electricity plants. Even check this out on Wiki.
We let nuclear power research lie fallow for half a century because of this pressure. Think for yourself! We’ve since had an electronic revolution which makes controls infinitely more safe. We have robots to do critical potentially dangerous tasks, ultimately to run and remedy problems remotely.
Oh, and BTW, a study of nuclear workers health and longevity was done in the 60s or 70s , believing that they would prove to have suffered from this occupationally hazardous work. Surprizingly, this group was shown statistically to lead healthier longer lives than a control group. This research was buried from view. A link to a copy of the report was given during an earlier thread on WUWT many months ago.
That the anti-nuclear cause is the exact same one that underpins phony climate worries. How can we centrally planned goons control the people and the economy of this earth if they have access to abundant reliable energy? This is a terminal condition for socialists and they are going to fight tooth and nail to keep the ‘dream’ (your’s and mine’s nightmare) alive.
It’s worse. Try mandatory private insurance to pay to decontaminate to a level below background should any release of radioactivity ever occur, with punitive premiums designed to shut the industry down.
Greens decide that if they can’t compete on price, they can compete on legislation. Who pays to decommission windmills? They wil all be placed in bankrupt holding companies and left to rot.
I’m sure the States & Canada & elsewhere are similar, you can sit on a rock on Dartmoor & receive your annual dosage up the rear end whilst eating you packed lunch! The radiation scare story is simply that, a scare story!
Considering the potential effects of a catastrophe at a nuclear plant, please explain how the safety levels are insane?
These so called catastrophes exist only in your imagination.
It should be remembered the left wing GND troops of today are exactly the same people who were left wing CND troops back then.
They had a pathological hatred of all things nuclear in the 1970s and 1980s, for political reasons, then when the cold war ended, they needed a new bogey man to focus their ongoing “long march through the institutions” on and viola, along comes Global Warming. Their nuclear blind spot was retained, and has been used to block all nuclear growth in the West ever since. The fact it would resolve their faux fossil fuel concerns at a stroke is just ignored and they refuse to even get into discussion about nuclear anything.
To be fair, the Greens refuse to get into actual discussion about anything to do with energy, or climate. They just like to preach to their followers and ignore those who don’t follow their religion.
So if “solving the CO2 problem” is “a dangerous distraction from real movement on the pressing energy decisions and climate actions we need” does that mean there is a hidden agenda ??
“does that mean there is a hidden agenda ??”
Yes, it does.
They want political power, not nuclear power.
Like Malthus, they think humanity is no wiser than any other species. We are supposed to breed like rabbits, deplete our resources and die in great numbers. Do they not notice that advanced societies tend to have much reduced birth rates? Have they not noticed that advanced societies tend to use less resources, not more? Even Al Gore noticed that. link
curious thing..the greens are also the bleeding heart types pushing for more imigration into aus, but supporting the lgbtqwhhatsit meme of having AI kids etc as a right… at the same time theyre saying theres too many of us already
now that! is some real cognitive dissonance
There is icing on the nuclear cake. Just suppose, for grins and giggles, that what is really going to happen is a centuries-long cold snap. Were that the case nuclear would be just the thing! If climate changed not at all; the thing! And, if the highly controversial relationship between man-generated CO2 and warming proved the case; here too!
Win-win-win.
‘Splain me why ’tisn’t happenin’.
Russian nuclear (cake) on Arctic ice(ing).
https://twitter.com/EmbassyofRussia/status/1173480665997819904
To read more about Akademik Lomonosov and it’s siters:
http://www.rosatom.ru/en/press-centre/news/rosatom-s-first-of-a-kind-floating-power-unit-docks-ahead-of-commission-in-chukotka/
Nuclear would never get installed in Australia, it would be bogged down in anti-nuclear protests, court challenges, tied in red tape and then when it’s over the greens and Labor will claim it is too expensive anyway.
Time for some realpolitik in Australia. We are running out of water due to the Greens, Dubbo a large country town has 3 weeks supply and Sydney has 11 months! The Greens and Labor have tied this country into a knot of inaction on critical infrastructure to save the planet. Evidently, Australia is not part of the planet.
Even many of the Liberal (conservatives) politicians have swallowed this green mantra of ‘trust the scientists’ ie their scientists.
our town has NO dam or mains water from elsewhere
we survive on less than ideally salty borewater and are on permanent restrictions
and w’ere not in the outback and are 100k from a large town with river and storage..but we have been denied a pipeline sincethe 70s when the town WAS larger and booming.
i only have 2k gallons of raintanks so being miserly with water unless in winter and decent rains is “usual” not the exception.
Id actually like everyone to cope as we all do here for a learning experience
The only dams that can be built here in OZ are pumped hydro dams and it’s this reason some communities are running out of water .
The Greens are about 10% of the vote but influence 100% of the decision making which is why our new submarines are being made with pedal power instead of nuclear power .
I blame hydroelectricity for the water shortage. If they didn’t keep discarding water through their virtue signalling hydro system they might have some water left for drinking and irrigation.
Australia is one of the driest places on Earth, wasting water on hydro is completely nuts.
Australia wastes more water via damaged and broken water pipes and the millions of private swimming pools. Australia builds water catchment areas where rain don’t fall. Today in Sydney, it’s raining quite a lot and has been for about 12hrs. It’s not falling over the catchment areas. It’s flowing right out to sea.
DocSiders – September 16, 2019 at 3:33 pm
DocSiders, ….. the fact is, …. just as David Ball said it was, to wit:
“Just so you are aware, academia is a very narrow measure of intellect.”
If one genuinely wants to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050…it is nearly impossible even with nuclear energy. Just to cut global emissions in half we need to fire up more than 1 new Gigawatt Nuclear plant every day between now and 2050. That ain’t gonna happen.
That would take an almost impossible effort AND GETTING THERE WITH WIND AND SOLAR BY 2050 is frankly nuts. The scale of construction and land use and environmental destruction is NOT GOING TO HAPPEN…once costs of renewables start to cripple economies… PLUS THE 2 times 65% EXTRA CAPACITY NEEDED FOR STORAGE that nobody ever adds into the equation.
The CAGW story just doesn’t work in totality:
• They’ve invented a problem that’s too big to fix in the allotted time…without devastating economic consequences. FUTILE
• Projections of the expansion of global energy use in developing countries swamps any efforts made by the West. FUTILE
• Almost nobody is really willing to alter their lives to the extent required…NOT NOW….and really not when the ugly costs and consequences start rolling in. Germany has made heroic and costly efforts already with very little in emissions reductions. Recalculated costs using real data indicate each household would need to shoulder about $300 monthly forever to reach their goals. FUTILE
• Almost nobody is honestly bearing any costs from the effects of climate. Only lower costs so far. Folks will start noticing that the climate isn’t so bad when energy costs start showing up in household budgets. FUTILE
• Ditching half a billion internal combustion engines in anything less than 50 years just cannot happen. That would be so expensive that we would truly need to see 20 Cat5 landfalling hurricanes annually plus 8 feet of sea level rise to make it worthwhile. FUTILE.
The reality is that the CC story doesn’t have to draw a coherent picture of any possible future reality. It’s not about the climate…it’s just a clever tool for the acquisition of power by our international socialists global wannabe authoritarian tyrant overlords.
The scientists that are silent have either sold out to the socialist plan or they haven’t taken the time to calculate the incalculable damage Climate Change Action will create. To bloody hell with all of them.
The Greens just don’t have their nuclear energy stock funds set up yet. Got to establish the graft pipeline. Once they get that, watch for nuclear to become the only viable solution…
The Red-Green Climate Alarmists believe that nuclear power will cause people to glow green in the dark and their limbs to fall off spontaneously. Rational consideration of nuclear power is beyond them and in any case Global Warming/ Climate Change is not the main issue for the Red-Green Alarmists who are simply using the idea as a stalking horse for the destruction of Western Civilisation and Societies that have proven to have been so successful in lifting the whole World out of the poverty which was the pre-industrial era.
It’s hard to take the greens seriously when they are unwilling to budge on any issue.
A solution that works is just a distraction away from our preferred solutions which don’t work.
Since veteran environmentalist Bob Brown came out against bird-killing wind turbines in Tasmania recently, and since the solar panel industry is in the wars over their greenhouse footprint, does that mean we need to return to cooking our lentil porridge over dried cow dung? Oh wait we aren’t allowed to have cows any more either.
Former Greens leader Bob Brown campaigns against wind farm (15 July)
The solar panel toxic waste problem (15 Sep)
Tim Flannery has just had an article published at the The Conversation in which he’s suggesting an alternative to nuclear (which back in 2007 he rejected) as a “cure” for climate change.
The gloves are off: ‘predatory’ climate deniers are a threat to our children
https://theconversation.com/the-gloves-are-off-predatory-climate-deniers-are-a-threat-to-our-children-123594
The gloves are off in that he’s resorted to insults because it’s hard to believe people are doing nothing about the “rapidly melting glaciers, terrifying megafires and ever more puissant hurricanes, of acidifying and rising oceans”.
Obviously aimed at getting the numbers up for the global schools climate strike in a few days, Timmy urges teachers to join the march and he has some suggestions for dealing with the “idiots” who are deniers trying to create a world in which “a large portion of humanity will perish”.
“But the climate crisis has now grown so severe that the actions of the denialists have turned predatory: they are now an immediate threat to our children.”
His solution isn’t nuclear but he suggests he’s now in favour of the Extinction Rebellion strategy, and seems impressed that that in April they “shut down six critical locations in London, overwhelmed the police and justice system with 1,000 arrests, and forced the British government to become the first nation ever to declare a climate emergency.”
…
“The new and carefully planned rebellion by the young generation forces us earlier generations of climate activists to re-examine our strategy. Should we continue to use words to try to win the debate? Or should we become climate rebels?”
Timmy seems to be giving up on reasoned debate in favour of civil unrest, social disruption and police confrontation to force us to carpet Australia with windmills and solar panels.
Yes read that.
Good old Tim. Tim got famous for talking a few well meaning people to pick up rubbish from our creeks and rivers. “Clean up Australia” Fine, a good and noble thing and something we should do anyway. But then he got ambitious.
Has anyone heard any more of the $90 Million AUD of taxpayer money that disappeared into one of his “Hot Rock” projects. Lord only knows how much private investment went down the hole as well.
He was once in favour of Nuclear, then ditched it for Australia although he was then happy for us to dig it up and ship it to somewhere else. (NIMBY). Now it is totally evil.
What bothers me and I am no expert, is that here in Australia we have ample reserves of coal and uranium and every other mineral imaginable, iron, copper, silver, lead, gold, lithium and so forth.
Yet Tim and his mates expect us to simply forget about our own resources and rely on imported solar panels and wind turbines. We don’t have the luxury of abundant cheap labour or the market size to produce these things ourselves.
How the heck does he expect us to pay for them if we can’t extract and sell our minerals? How the heck are we supposed to physically import them once fossil fuels are totally banned?
Blind Freddy can see it is insane. Little wonder the greens were told to get on the their collective bikes in the recent Queensland election.
“Clarky of Oz September 16, 2019 at 6:14 pm
Has anyone heard any more of the $90 Million AUD of taxpayer money that disappeared into one of his “Hot Rock” projects. Lord only knows how much private investment went down the hole as well.”
IIRC, he was a Govn’t adviser too at the time. It most likely enabled him to buy his beach front property. Nice little earner if you can get on that gravy train.
““The new and carefully planned rebellion by the young generation forces us earlier generations of climate activists to re-examine our strategy.”
I’m skeptical that younsters carefully planned everything. I suspect some rich, activist adults had more to do with the planning than the younsters.
I do know how to spell youngster, I just didn’t manage to get the “g” in there twice in my earlier post for some reason. 🙂
I always blame sticky keys.
Should have turned on “autocorrect”. That way you would get the wrong word, spelled correctly.
The more shrill and incessant the cries for abandoning fossil fuels become the better the chances of going nuclear become. Do they believe people are willing to deconstruct civilization? Really?
The Greens true colors are showing and they aren’t green, they are red.
It seems clear to me that eventually the Greens will be demanding that we stop using all fossil fuels AND ELECTRICITY. After all, building sufficient wind and solar plants, and requisite batteries, would produce enormous amounts of CO2. Nuclear is ‘obviously’ (to them) unclean. So, wrt climate, there is no green way to produce electricity.
A few billion people would die, but then Man would be living in harmony with nature (their definition). Of course, everything is going to be extinct one day, so I’m not exactly sure what that would accomplish.
Eventually even living will not be allowed since anyone living consumes resources and produces co2 simply by breathing.
Australia exports significant amounts of coal, natural gas and uranium to Asia. At competitive prices.
With cheap electrical power, manufacturers in these regions sell cheaply priced goods to Australia.
Why?
Because the greens have controlled political life.
Ian Plimer published a book on it a couple of years ago.
Nuclear energy doesn’t allow leftists to control other peoples lives. Nor does it give them opportunity to shame people so they can feel morally superior. There is no way the up sides to nuclear power can make up for these failings.
A solution is not wanted this was never about CO2 emissions its about the style of government.
The Green New Deal is a harbinger of anthropogenic climate change, death, and dodos from recovery to reclamation, for the feathered, the fetal, and other inconvenient conceptions.
The environmental lobby for the Green New Deal is for clean, green, and redistributive change. But are people so green?
The Greens like to point to the occasional problem with Nuclear, and say, “”There we told you so , its dangerous, so never have it.
So lets look at Civil Aviation. In the early days, 1920 to about 1970 there were air crashes, and yes people died, but in every case the cause was found and the solutions went into new designs. QANTAS was and still is the safest.
Today we seldom hear of big disasters and going on the millions of kilometres per person, air travel is far safer than driving a car.
By the same way of thinking we should ban all privately driven motor vehicles. In the case of cars, most crashes are caused by human error, and even that is getting better from a safety point of view. Of course the Greens want to ban them, its far more their way that we only travel by bus and trains, but of course they are so important that they must have their hand built cars, remember the big Ziss of the old USSR.
The Greens are only interested in one thing, Power and how to obtain it. Today that is CC , if that does not work then they will find something else to scare us with, possibly Plastic .
Their aim is and has always been, to destroy the economies of the Western countries, then to offer the voters their alternative political system which looks a lot like Communism, with them as Boss, fat chance.
MJE VK5ELL.
Thank you Michael.
As I read down the comments, I was planning to post one mentioning the issue you just highlighted – if nuclear poses some identifiable risks, we should refrain from using it, but for some reason this “logic” doesn’t apply to aeronautical, naval or terrestrial transport solutions.
The disconnect with rationality by The Greens is always on display.
“Michael September 16, 2019 at 5:49 pm
Today that is CC , if that does not work then they will find something else to scare us with, possibly Plastic.”
They are already on to that one banning single use bottles, plastic bags and straws etc. With the plastic bag bans (We now have multi-use plastic bags made from 80% recycled plastic. How much energy is consumed, no-one tells us). Once consequence I see with the change in bags, people use the trolleys to carry shopping home. Those trolleys need to be collected using a truck and trailer.
The French in the 70’s were not bound and gagged by lawfare preventing the building of nuclear power plants, in typical French style, they just got on with it. Since the last French nuclear weapons test on Mururoa in 1996 (I was in NZ then) in the Pacific however, they have given up their nuclear programs, as we know, in favour of “renewables”.
The Aussie Greens are bourgeois inner urban enclave dwellers who are almost exclusively employed by the public service at pay rates far higher than comparable jobs get in the private sector. Most of the jobs they hold have vague position descriptions with no assessable outcomes. They mainly work from home too.
Now what did Travis Bickle say about some day a rain will come…
Because my poor country can’t afford the Greens and their lifestyles.
The greenies display considerable ignorance about the future nuclear technology – small modular molten salt Thorium/uranium reactors. Anything that one can say negative about current conventional nuclear reactors, regardless of how exaggerated, cannot be said about molten salt reactors
Thorium is vastly safer than Uranium. Here in Australia, we have around 17 1/2 % of the world’s Uranium and around 20 % of the world’s Thorium. The Thorium reaction requires 2 neutrons, which means that in the event of an untoward event, the collar of U235 can be released from the reactor, quenching the reaction almost immediately. Thorium reactors can also use existing nuclear waste and get some energy out of it! How good is that? It is also said that Thorium reactors can be made small scale, reducing transmission losses. Thorium powered car or house out the back of nowhere perhaps. Goes for 200 years without refuelling. How about Antarctic bases powered by Thorium- great for the telescopes at the south pole that have the most insanely clear atmosphere.
The Greens are obviously not genuinely interested in having carbon-free baseload power. They seem to have a love of their bird munching windmills that give expensive, intermittent energy. I can, however, see the logic of their insanity- it is based on consistency. Those useful idiots that vote for them expect the Australian Greens (like AOC) to regularly come out with utter lunacy. It is almost like they are actually the Village Idiot party. Their supporters, who behave more like dung beetles than humans, are addicted to their lunacy and would suffer withdrawal symptoms if their regular diet of BS were to be disrupted. Heaven forbid, they might actually have to use their brains!
Alas, our pathetic politicians in Australia are sucked in by their noise-making and bow down to their idiotic demands. They think the din of their demands in mainstream media and hysterical diaper-soiling tantrums are majority thinking. Much kudos to the political parties (like One Nation) that tell them where to go. Note, these parties will and have been equated with Nazis. They smear those they fear. Thus, it is these parties that get smeared as racists, deniers, Nazis etc that are the ones to vote for.
The irony is that want something that doesnt work, as this keeps them in jobs where they can forever ask for things for which there is no solution.
And renewable energy is supposedly environmentally friendly?
sigh….
I keep pointing out that Big Oil runs the Greens.
‘Renewable’ energy is not a substitute for conventional oil and gas
Nuclear, coal and fracking are.
Cui Bono?
They dont want solutions that work because what they really want is a radical change of society. The made up “problems” and “solutions” are just an economic and cultural attack on the Western World. Ask what are the alternatives? What will it cost? And who is going to pay? If there are no alternatives and they dont know what it will cost its typical socialism.
The principal problem with nuclear power is that, if propagated on a world-wide basis, it can put the ability to make nuclear weapons into the hands of all sorts of unsavoury régimes led by none-too-stable lunatics who might well use them… Just saying.
“Joint submission calls nuclear ‘a dangerous distraction’ from real action on climate as Zali Steggall backs 2050 zero-emissions target.”
It sure is a distraction, not from real action on climate, but from the real goal, controlling the world and forcing all in it to live by their commands. The last thing they want is non-polluting, CO2 free, cheap electricity.
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
– Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
“As we all know, this isn’t about truth at all, it’s about plausibly deniable accusations.” – Michael Mann (Climategate Emails)
“The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man.”
– Club of Rome,
premier environmental think-tank,
consultants to the United Nations
In these times, its important to reflect on how such movements ended in the past and how very similar CC?AGW alarmism is to them.
“The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man.”
– Club of Rome,
premier environmental think-tank,
consultants to the United Nations
The great ideological divide is between those who believe that theories should be adjusted to reality and those who believe that reality must be adjusted to fit their theories. Many of the horrors of the 20th century were created by the latter. Thomas Sowell
i am, and always have been a lot more worried about my personal end, than the end of the world. Live everyday as if it is your last, it just could be. If you are a Christian, remember Jesus points that out in the Bible.
I am not Christian and I live every day as if I will have many more.
I do not want to spend all my money today and wake up broke tomorrow. I never live with an empty larder since a catastrophe might close all the supermarkets and I might be alive and hungry.
I have built a warmer house because we will likely still have cold winters but of course it is also easier to keep cool. I have a window air conditioner in case it gets too warm. Used it for the last two warm years and did not even bother to install it this year. It was a darn cold summer and spring.
By the way I live in Alberta, a Canadian province subject to extremes of heat and cold but warmer could only be an advantage.
Living every day as your last seems to be totally insane and likely to become a self fulfilling prophecy
Attcman Sept 17. If the use of Nuclear power caused all nations to have a atom bomb, how come nations such as Iran don’t already have one. ?
A bomb requires about 99 % purity, a power station requires about 12 %, a very big difference.
MJE VK5ELL
Tell that to the customers who are paying for the Virgil Summer Units 2 and 3 and Vogtle Units 3 and 4 debacles. Or Flamanville 3 in France, for that matter:
https://www.powermag.com/edf-announces-more-delays-cost-overruns-for-flamanville-3-reactor/