Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Australia’s Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce, leader of the junior partner in Australia’s coalition government, has stated he he will not support any legislation which threatens coal jobs.
Barnaby Joyce’s bizarre climate change comments
Caroline Schelle
NCA NewsWire
September 26, 2021 11:35AM…
“It doesn’t sound like you are at all keen on anything that’s going to hurt coal industry jobs,” Insiders host David Speers said on Sunday morning.
“No, no, it’s the little old bush accountant saying that lots of clients have ideas, but if you sit down with them and say, ‘OK, that’s your idea, let’s prudently go about this because otherwise you’re going to get yourself in more strife than the early settlers’,” he said.
He refused to go into detail about discussions he was having with prime minister Scott Morrison about the emissions target, but said the Nationals were “part and parcel” of talks.
“We look at it through the eyes of making sure that there is not an unreasonable loss of jobs or any loss of jobs in regional areas,” Mr Joyce said.
“These people also rely on the Nationals to make sure that we don’t pull the economic rug out from underneath them.”
He highlighted skyrocketing gas prices in the United Kingdom to urge caution and that Australia didn’t want to replicate the “obvious chaos” happening overseas.
…
“Are you saying there should be no coal jobs lost, is that the bottom line for you?” Mr Speers asked.
“Well, not by reason of domestic policy.”
…
Read more: https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/barnaby-joyces-bizarre-climate-change-comments-c-4073040
Barnaby Joyce, despite his occasional odd turn of phrase, is immensely popular in rural Australia. He is one of the few leading politicians who bothers to regularly leave the more densely populated East Coast and cross the Great Dividing Range, spending time visiting and listening to supporters in remote regions of rural Australia, including regions where the local economy is dominated by coal mining jobs.
Barnaby is not opposed to renewables. Barnaby’s support base includes regions where people make money from renewable energy, he supports renewable energy grants which pump money into regional communities.
Aussie Federal Resources Minister Keith Pitt, who sometimes features on WUWT due to his outspoken defence of reliable, affordable energy for Australia, is a member of Barnaby Joyce’s National Party.
As junior coalition partners, the Nationals are not the dominant voice in the Australian government. But their political support is indispensable, so they have some influence. Without the support of the National Party, Prime Minister Scott Morrison would not have a majority in Federal parliament.
Given recent news, the Nationals should lay down an ultimatum to their coalition ally, and promise to leave unless the Liberals get more reasonable on energy policy. Wind and solar will not sustain an industrial society, no matter how much blather is spread.
Tom, I think it’s going to get COLD. Not cold, COLD.
Fifty + people in Texas died of exposure indoors in February this year (2021), including an eleven year old boy who froze to death in his own bed, in his sleep. At the same latitude as Bermuda. That should be a siren call of what is coming all across both hemispheres. Mass casualties will occur if we continue to strangle fossil fuels, and do not invest in more nuclear. We see solar and wind failing enough across the western world to know they cannot even make basic human needs secure.
I lived through that Charlie Foxtrot, and spending most of a weeK snowed in with intermittent electricity and no water was decidedly not pleasant.
The greens will still try to excuse wind and solar, but they performed as expected, a total failure.
Allowing too much wind and solar onto a grid will result in the same result as South Australia or Texas, a near total grid shutdown.
Any politician who tolerates such folly hound be removed.
We have an outage every winter, sometimes lasting up to two days and where I live it gets quite cold, as in 10F or lower. Not a lot of fun, but it’s always the electricity that drops out (grid problem), not gas delivery.
I think it is too early to call the beginning of the next ice age, but I’d b a lot happier if the world was warmer. It seems likely the current warming will be as short as the medieval warming – maybe fifty to a hundred years to go until it becomes really cold.
Since we appear to be about 11,000 years into the current interglacial, it may be 50 – 75 thousand years before the next 2-mile thick sheets of glaciation move back in. That said, I personally am delighted with the current warming trend. It’s much more comfortable and the CO2 that seems to follow warming is allowing crops to grow more abundantly. It’s ironic that the “greenies” want to stop this greening of the planet.
A 50 – 75 thousand year interglacial would seem to be a bit of a break with the pattern of the last million years. Having said that, it seems likely our descendants will command sufficient engineering capability a few hundred years at most to set the Earth’s temperature to whatever they want, providing we don’t wreck our current civilisation.
You’re right, and I don’t know what I was thinking. Interglacials only last about 10,000 years and I was off by an order of magnitude. Good grief! Anyway, whether our great, great, ever-so-great grandchildren will have engineering skills to change planetary temperature is worth discussing. It’s all just energy transfer: where will you get it from, where will you move it to, and how will you move it. We don’t know the answer to any of those questions in our generation, but maybe they’ll figure something out. More likely, humanity will do what it’s done for all of its existence – adapt to changing conditions, rather than changing the conditions so they won’t have to adapt.
Optimistic, 3,000 years tops to the next glaciation.
Antarctica has COOLED by 2 degrees C since 1980.
You are correct. Sorry. I was having a bad math day.
Does it count that we have more volcanoes becoming active in recent years? The La Palma eruption seems to be rather gassy, which does matter.
Because of avoidable, previously flagged up failures in the natural gas power system.
More wind turbines wouldn’t help much during a Europe wide wind drought, and solar is not much use this time of year, or at night.
What’s your solution Griff?
So you agree, we should start fracking right away.
Well done, griff.
Griff Logic.
Position the baby’s pram on an outdoor train platform with wheels pointing towards the tracks.
Apply the brake only a little.
When said pram rolls onto the tracks, blame the station designer for not completely enclosing and weather proofing the station. If that was done no drainage fall would be required to shed water off the platform.
We need the fossils to make stuff out of – burning them is rank insanity
Ice Ages happen when the plants die – effectively via starvation as the inexorable, natural, process of soil erosion occurs
In our literally fatal (##) addiction to sugar, we have massively accelerated that natural process of erosion. massively.
When ‘stuff’, any stuff, falls into the ocean, it does not ever return – notably CO2 and farmland soil. Dust off farms, cities, mines/quarries, roads etc etc
Also ‘flood’ water of any colour other than translucent light-grey.
If the dust falls onto land instead of sea, it creates ‘Global Greening‘
If *THAT* doesn’t give anybody a clue, we really are f****d
## Re fatal addiction
Diabetes was known about, just, over 100 years ago and a perfectly good remedy/cure was effected.
Heart attacks and other cardio disease were unknown until Eisenhower’s time.
Alzheimer’s likewise, now it kills 20% of everybody
We have the technology already to hold off the ice, pretty well forever.
That technology exists at every mine, quarry and farm on this planet.
Now. It is really basic simple stuff and could even involve the fantastical cure-all= shovels, as in Shovel Ready Jobs.
We can sort this now.
The clue to how to do it is in the word ‘dust’ and why I always will and always have asserted that volcanoes are ‘Fountains of Ambrosia‘
To a greater/lesser extent volcanoes are what pulls Earth out of Ice Ages – by throwing dust around, not CO2
PS
This morn (27 Sep ’21) I was watching the Wunderground PWS near where I used to live, in Cumbria. A cold front came through, it’ll be here in Newark soon.
As it went over Cumbria, the surface air temp dropped by 7°C inside one hour flat as the sky clouded over and the rain started.
Where is the GHGE, where is the Trapped Heat and especially, where is the Warming Effect of Cloud?
Where?
Recall, it takes just ONE valid experiment to go against any Beautiful Theory to require that theory be permanently dumped
Umm, Peta – the BULK of those greenhouse emissions come from the ecohippies and others of their ilk. The more they yak-yak-yak, the more CO2, etc., they emit. I am quite sure of this, there are so many of them hiding in the woodwork and other dark places, and they only appear when it’s warm and sunny…. something like that.
But seriously, it’s colder than it should be where I am for this time of year and the lake to the east of me (Lake Michigan) is having more and more restless surface action (waves up to 10 feet), which means something is stirring it. Haven’t checked the other Great Lakes yet, but they are very large water bodies and do have an effect on the local weather.
The Coalition partners Federal Government are well aware that solar and wind cannot sustain an industrial society, even with the back up systems for those installations. Accordingly Federal subsidies were listed for cancellation by 2030 which has made investors wary of proceeding with new installations. The Coalition Federal Government is pushing for new gas fired power stations and other initiatives to keep the electricity grid reliable.
But because of the Federation of States the Federal Government does not have the power to approve new power stations or installations or the responsibility for electricity supply which is also State Government responsibility via the world’s largest interconnected grid.
Too many Australians know too little about their system of government and tend to blame the Federal Government instead of blaming States.
Exactly, you can’t Sustain a modern industrial electric grid with unreliable sources.
So…Wind and Solar are really Un-Sustainable
The trouble is that Australians are between a rock and a hard place. With a federal election looming in May next year, there is no way we can afford a split between the coalition members, it will with out doubt let in the alternative, a Labor Party which will go full zero and full woke, because they will need the help of the Greens. We have been there before. Fortunately Labor proved itself to be unelectable on the previous occasion. I am not sure this will repeat itself next year.
And meanwhile US coal exports to China have increased to take up the loss of Aussie coal. What hypocrites to tell Aussies to stop exporting coal.
https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2241659-us-coal-exports-hit-2year-high-in-june
Can we-lease exchange Jacinda for Barnaby? Double gain for New Zealand!
Please -please – please!!!
Sorry Mike, we feel for our New Zealand cousins but we’ve got too few sane politicians to spare one.
Why? You want her to ruin both countries?
Sorry Mike, but we are building those new nuke subs for a reason – PROTECTION TO THE SOUTH EAST!
You’re stuck with her.
You kids allowed your defence spending to run down to near zero, so you have only yourselves to blame.
Naturally, the National Party (née Country Party) are and always have been agrarian socialists.
Some of them, but their party also contains some of the most right wing elected politicians in Australia.
Stopping coal mining in Australia would be a disaster for the economy. Around 70 per cent of electricity comes from coal fired power stations, most of the rest from gas, hydro and diesel generators and UP TO weather conditions permitting 12 per cent wind and solar.
Coal is a significant export and many countries rely on supply for electricity generation and steel production, if the export customers could not obtain coal from Australia they would turn to other suppliers regardless of the quality of the coal, most not to the Australian standard.
However, the UN and member nations pushing Australia to do more to reduce emissions based on the climate change hoax and warming creatively accounted modelling, as compared to natural climate and weather, ignore the fact that Australia is one of the few UN Member Nations that exceeded the Kyoto Agreement emissions targets, and now is on track to meet or exceed the Paris Agreement targets.
Let the bullies catch up and then they can start negotiating from positions of strength.
The Paris Agreement is really about money.
A contribution to the UN Green Slush Fund is the source of virtue
for certain developed countries. That list includes AU.
Send them a lump of coal.
Coal is a significant export and many countries rely on supply for electricity generation and steel production
a decreasing number of Australia’s customers outside of China are investing in coal – they are now not building coal power plants and many are closing it.
Australian coal exports will decrease – better to have a plan to transition coal workers to other jobs, like in Germany.
That is so funny. It takes an enormous amount of coal to build, transport and erect a wind turbine. Likewise for solar panels and the batteries needed to give dispatchable output.
Random Energy power generators give the illusion of sustainability. They can never recover more energy than they consume.
On the other hand Barnaby needs to get on board the gravy train. Most politicians and business leaders in Australia realise that Australia can get very wealthy supporting this illusion by supply low cost commodities like coal, iron ore and bauxite, at exorbitant prices to China so they can convert them to RE monuments to feed the insanity pervading the developed countries. Australia has never had it better:
https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/current-account
The greatest resource boom in the country’s history. Existing Australians are growing rich as they age.
I wonder if Griff realises that coal fired power stations can operate 24 hours a days regardless of wind or solar activity, and they need no expensive backup generators and storage?
It has been pointed out that a wind turbine is like a car that is guaranteed to start 2.1 days in every 7.0 days on average. The problem being that nobody can accurately predict the days it will operate.
It’s a lot worse than that. To extend the analogy, all of those cars, when they can run, all run at once and clog up the highways so that none of them can actually move. The overall result is that they mostly don’t run, and when they do, they are mostly useless.
China very recently offered to cease building coal fired power stations in foreign aid recipient nations but made no such offer to stop their own building programme that plans hundreds more to be built. China now produces over 30% of global emissions and increasing each year by the total of emissions from Australia per year.
Explain why Australian quality coal is in high demand from export destinations, apart from its high quality other than producing electricity from power station generator units and producing steel.
Australian coal is supplying a declining market outside China.
It could in theory keep supplying China… if they don’t get into political rows e.g over subs.
Given how touchy th echinese are, easy to cause offence!
ROFL a diminishing market … we shipped record amounts and due to ship more next year.
A Griffism right there … aka a blatantly stupidly wrong statement
You’re like a conspiracy theorist: no matter how much evidence is put to you, you will always ignore it.
Once again, visit this site to see how much coal fired power is being built and planned – https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants
Use the date slider and slide to 2021.
It is out of date.
shows plant in Germany built and cancelled as still planned, shows now cancelled plant in Greece, Hungary and Poland, so too in other parts of the world.
Try this one which has a filter to allow only planned plants to show – select pre-permit, allowed, announced.
Global Coal Plant Tracker | End Coal
Then click on the actual plant listed and see wiki page to see how many showing in the pipeline are now actually cancelled.
(click also on cancelled to confirm plant not left out)
It helps to have forced labor making half the world’s polysilicon for solar panels and building coal plants to power that supply chain. It also helps to have complete CCP control over information in China so green trolls in other countries won’t be disrupted in their message management to the gullible. Beware of the Covid-19 infected (imported) frozen seafood as outlined by the CCP and remember to keep paying your dues to WHO.
He’s a Kiwi, not an Aussie.
Tamworth.
Just cause they have sheep there doesn’t make it part of New Zealand.
It was a technicality. Barnaby Joyce’s father was born in New Zealand, and migrated to Australia. Barnaby was eligible for New Zealand citizenship, but hadn’t applied for it, however the high court took the view, against the advice of the Attorney General, that eligibility for citizenship in another country was enough to disqualify people, even if they had never sought citizenship in that country.
Australia’s constitution requires that elected federal politicians have no claim to nationality other than Australia.
This ultra strict interpretation of citizenship raises the prospect that foreign powers could interfere with Australian politics by suddenly announcing some MP they don’t like is a citizen of their country, which in turn could prompt their ejection from elected federal office – a clearly ridiculous state of affairs.
More on the eligibility crisis here.
Joyce good. Morrison is a con artist. Last election he fervently promised electricity prices would come down. Now we’re paying the highest prices (net of tax) in the First World in the East of Melbourne. Big manufacturers now paying the Chinese Communist Gov controlled AusNet millions on tariffs while Chinese manufacterers are receiving genuine reductions in the cost of electricity via new schemes for exporters. Morrison and Andrews are fully in bed with the Chinese. The nuke sub deal is a game run by the US military complex. The Chinese are no threat outside their long standing claims. We’re increasingly controlled by military and green interests aligned with financial institutions.
‘ The Chinese are no threat outside their long standing claims’
Such as unifying Taiwan by force when necessary.
well, designating the South China sea as Chinese property could become a problem as well. And what makes anyone think that if China gets all it claims, that they will stop there? Hitler initially claimed to only want the Sudetenland.
To be fair, Victorian electricity prices are mostly state premier Dan Andrews’ province. Maybe when he’s finished getting his police to shoot rubber bullets at construction workers, he could ask a few of them to build a new coal plant.
You have, of course, seen the “nine dash” map of the South China Sea? So they are only a treat to Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, and the Philippines. That makes a demand on the Sudetenland and Gdańsk seem moderate.
It is absurd that any leader in Australia, political or business, does not fully support the illusion of Random Energy (RE).
Australia can ride on the back of this magnificent waste of resources for a long, long time. It has already underpinned the greatest resource boom in Australia’s history as China works hard to convert Australian resources to monuments of economic suicide that the rest of the world are willing to trade real wealth for. If it keeps going, most Australians can just sit back as we have done for the last two years and enjoy the support of the rest of the developed world. It is nothing short of magnificent:
https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/current-account
Barnaby needs to get on board this fabulous gravy train. Let the POMS and their EU brothers freeze and starve as they join an economic suicide pact.
Barnaby,
If you read this, there is a helpful suggestion.
I sent a copy to the PM today.
Geoff S
…………………..
12 PERTINENT QUESTIONS TO SHOW OUR SCIENTIFIC IGNORANCE OF THE HYPOTHESIS OF ‘CLIMATE CHANGE’, THE SO-CALLED ‘EXISTENTIAL THREAT’.
Assume that there has been a warming of about 1⁰C in the customary global near-surface air temperature, GAST, over part or all of the last century.
There have been many assertions that this warming has produced or will produce changes so threatening that they must be avoided in the future, even at very high economic and social cost.
Such assertions are more credible when a mathematical relation between GAST and the alleged change is established. Here are some relationships to ponder, for the last century or for a shorter time with data available.
For a 1⁰C change in global temperature (GAST) –
1. By how many millimetres does the sea level surface height change?
2. By how many ppm does atmospheric CO₂ change?
3. By how many tonnes does the weight of terrestrial vegetation, like forests, change?
4. By how much does the pH of the oceans change?
5. By how many square km does the average area of cloud cover change?
6. What change is there to the global accumulated cyclone index, ACE?
7. What is the net change to the global abundance of –
a. Birds
b. Land animals
c. Marine algae
8. By how many Watt per square metre does the Top of Atmosphere (TOA) radiation balance change?
9. By how many tonnes does the weight of ice change –
a. Over land
b. Floating on sea
c. Grounded over sea
10. By how much does total precipitable rainfall TPW change?
11. By what number does the number of large bush fires change?
12. By how many tonnes do yields of major food crops change, expressed as tonnes available per person per year, for –
a. Rice
b. Wheat
c. Beans
d. Barley
e. Maize
I appreciate and applaud your appeal to common sense and (*gasp*) science. However, like that character from Harry Potter, “he who shall not be named,” because of overwhelming primal fear, those are “questions that shall not be asked,” for the same reason. Anyone who answers them honestly would find themselves cancelled – metaphorically or literally.
I think it’s going to take some real hardship this winter to stand any chance of the message getting through to the complete numpties in Parliament.
[Affordable] Energy is the one thing – where life can depend on it – where the precautionary principle, ie having adequate power – does not apply.
Now I”m completely confused.
We’re going to have go go on using fossilized fuel-stuffs to cook and stay warm and the whole Greenbeaner shtick is failing (slowly, but surely), and a politician in another country wants to keep using fossil fuels….
I can’t keep up with this stuff any more, but I did wonder how long it might be until some political person stuck his oar into this and said “Nonsense. We NEED that stuff.”
He takes the time to go out and find out what people want and it looks like many people are not keen on green. There is an example here that the Washington DC crowd should follow instead of cutting the people out of the process.