Essay by Eric Worrall
Does “there’s no sense in signing up to targets you don’t have any prospect of achieving” translate to a commitment to dump Australia’s Paris obligations?
Dutton to pull Australia out of Paris Agreement if elected
By Mike Foley
June 8, 2024 — 2.27pmOpposition Leader Peter Dutton has signalled he will scrap the nation’s legally binding 2030 climate target and risk Australia’s membership of the Paris Agreement on climate change, following his vow to deploy nuclear energy to reach net zero by 2050.
Dutton declared on Saturday that a Coalition government would not pursue Australia’s legally binding climate target to cut emissions by 43 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030 – a significant escalation of Australia’s long-running climate policy war ahead of the next federal election due by May next year.
Dutton told The Australian on Saturday that the government’s renewable goal was unattainable and “there’s no sense in signing up to targets you don’t have any prospect of achieving”.
The opposition has said if it forms government it would build up to seven emissions-free nuclear power plants to replace the energy supply from Australia’s dirty coal plants, which have begun to shut down across the country. He would also pause the rollout of wind and solar farms.
…
“You can’t have the prime minister saying we aren’t going to have coal, we aren’t going to have gas and were not going to have nuclear power and we are going to keep the lights on – that’s just fantasy. We now have a debate about energy which I think we can win,” he told The Australian.
…
Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/climate-change-dutton-to-pull-australia-out-of-paris-agreement-20240608-p5jk91.html
Suggesting Dutton’s statement is a commitment to pull out of the Paris Agreement seems a trifle exaggerated.
WUWT has repeatedly criticising the Aussie opposition’s Frankenstein climate policy. While on the surface Dutton’s nuclear push might seem a good idea, in my opinion it is actually a weak attempt at appeasement politics.
At last year’s Aussie CPAC MP Keith Pitt, formerly a staunch defender of coal, made a bizarre speech about the need to demolish coal plants and build nuclear plants in their place, to take advantage of all the distribution infrastructure which has already been built for the coal plants.
The problem is there is still plenty of coal, mostly brown coal, in the ground in the proposed nuclear sites. Building a nuclear plant on top of a coal field risks sabotaging remaining stocks of coal – even a low level radiation leak which seeped into the coal layer would make burning the coal even more controversial than it already is. Building a coal plant and using the available brown coal would be far cheaper and would offer almost immediate cost relief to business and domestic energy consumers.
Nuclear plants, however desirable in the long term, do not offer short term benefits in most locations. Aside from the high upfront capital costs, and the lack of local expertise, greens would immediately launch a tsunami of well funded lawfare. I have no problem with nuclear plants being built in locations where they offer an economic benefit, but the decision should be based purely on economics, such as installing a nuclear plant to service a remote location and save on fuel deliveries. The decision to go nuclear should not be because mainstream Aussie politicians are too timid to challenge the greens head on and fully exploit Australia’s abundant coal resources.
The one silver lining of the opposition nuclear push is it has sabotaged the renewable plans of the current Aussie administration. It’s hard to get a bank loan when the opposition leader is promising to withdraw the subsidies which are your basis of your business profitability.
What can we conclude from all this? On this issue I believe claims Aussie Conservative leader Peter Dutton is trying to leave the Paris Agreement are exaggerated. As far as I can tell Peter Dutton is just as onboard with Paris as other mainstream Aussie politicians, he just wants a different approach. I’m glad Dutton has taken a stand against absurdly unrealistic emissions reduction targets. But I’m saddened that Dutton still hasn’t found the political courage to do what he is being accused of – ditch all emissions targets and tear up Australia’s participation in the Paris Agreement.
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I bet he has a thing for boomerangs.
Demand the impossible is an old tactic of the left.
It really doesn’t make any difference whether countries continue to remain supposedly committed to the Paris agreement or not because there are no penalties associated with the failure to reach whatever targets were pledged. If there had been, almost no one would have signed the agreement in the first place because why should taxpayers have to pay fines to some unelected body like the UN. . So countries came aboard just to make it look as though they were actually taking measures against climate change when in fact they didn’t have to do anything. Even worse, to reach unattainable targets like Net Zero would entail the adoption of costly and largely unreliable power and transportation sources like solar, wind and EVs, among others. It’s something like an overweight and out-of-condition individual joining a fitness facility without his being required to improve his overall health and fitness level. He can say he’s working out but doesn’t have to show any improvement, and no one has the clout to make him account for his failures. So the Paris deal has been essentially dead from the outset, and it’s time someone performed the last rites once and for all.
Trump did. Biden reversed.
There were two reasons Paris Accord ‘enforcement’ is just ‘name and shame’.
US could not have signed otherwise. Little detail called A2§2.2 of the Constitution
The apparent solution is for Trump to back out of Paris on Day One and then resubmit the proposal to Congress for either Ratification or Disapproval of the accords. Provided more than 1/3 of Congress refuse to ratify then the agreement is no longer an issue. I don’t believe that any President would attempt to use Executive Orders to override the will of Congress
Well, the former United States currently has an imposter now who overrides the Constitution, The House, The Senate, The Supreme Court, the Will of The People any existing inconvenient Law or Regulation…
Ya got me there…and he fouls his pants while he’s doing it
Those lumpy farts are a problem.
Thanks for the quote.
Election coming? Check.
Grid in danger of failing from renewables? Check.
Australian politician lip service to global warming? Check.
So go nuclear in Australia? Greens not gonna let that happen, so he will lose to worse losers. Greens want Net Zero without nuclear—the impossible dream.
Obvious right local energy answer is for AUS to go with best practice USC steam coal—like China. That way AUS can sell LNG to rest of local Asia at a big profit. Obvious to anyone who isn’t a green global warming alarmist.
USC Steam = Ultra Super Critical Steam
Perhaps this LINK
They got no choice. Because politicians are too lazy, or too stupid, or terrified of looking at the science, they will accept that we are in some kind of crisis and build nuclear. The way I see it, Australia WILL HAVE nuclear powered electricity because there ain’t nothing else left when you remove coal. Reality will hit the Greens so hard on the head that even they will feel it.
I think that is what is happening now. The article asks the question: “What can we conclude from all this?”
We can conclude that it is becoming more and more obvious that Net Zero is an impossible dream, and a few politicians are waking up to the facts and are trying to figure out how to keep their constituents supplied with electricity to keep them happy and keep them voting for the politicians who made this happen.
It will be slow going for the few politicians who try to break out of the mold, but a trickle will become a torrent in the future.
Some politicians are waking up to reality. They reallze that an energy transition to wind and solar is not practical or possible, and are now looking for the alternatives.
Nuclear is a good compromise. It can supply the needed electrical power and it doesn’t produce CO2.
Yes, we are getting to the tipping point for unreliables. Going farther down this road will only bring more problems, and some politicians are starting to see this.
Fully agree Rud, we don’t need nuclear yet in Australia, as best practice low emissions coal plants backed up by gas would do the job in providing on demand, cheap reliable power as it used to do before the environmentalist climate activists invented their climate crisis ideology, thus discouraging any needed upgrade investment in coal energy generation. The proposition that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant, is so much ignorant unscientific garbage, it is indefensible to any unbiased scientist, and easily disproven given its subsidiary role in the greenhouse effect compared to dominant water vapor that modulates temperature. It’s beneficial effect is highlighted by its vital presence as plant food that is visibly greening the planet, and its contribution to important ocean carbon sinks that produce food for aquatic species that we harvest.
The Paris Agreement is voluntary and not legally enforceable, its threat is created by the moral inducements of trade imposts by the EU/UK that undid Morrisson’s government climate policy. He should have held the traditional Howard/ Abbott Liberal line that there is no existential climate crisis and certainly not caused by carbon dioxide emissions, that we need to act recklessly to minimize as advocated by Labor and the deluded Greens. Sadly, Australia has not acted in its own best interests or in the interests of the general population, so no wonder the public is up in arms against the current climate/ energy policies that are directly causing us to be impoverished by cost of living issues, that are not only financially hurtful but also morally and intellectually bankrupt..
Hopefully…. he is actually committed to data-driven, sensible, energy policy (which, of course, means tossing “Net Zero” into the trash bin). First, he must get elected… .
This sounds unprincipled, but, it is simply the reality of getting the average person to vote for him. He is not entering into a marriage covenant, or even a contract, making binding promises. He is selling himself.
Sometimes, to sell a product, it is wise to not tell the customer a beneficial feature, one that the customer will later love, once they realize it is a very good thing for them. For example, telling some car or truck purchasers that the engine is very powerful, can accelerate from 0 to 60 (Edit: miles per hour, heh) in 4 seconds, etc., etc., will only frighten them. They want a smooth ride, good gas mileage, and a reasonable price. (((POWER))) frightens some people.
Nevertheless, …… after driving around in it for few days and observations begin accumulating…… when they make it to that meeting on time…. when they can easily pass that driver going 5 under the speed limit…. when they simply experience the JOY of stepping on the accelerator as they merge onto the freeway and feeling that wonderful surge of power….. THEN, they love that powerful engine (and no, they will not care that their gas mileage goes down sharply at those times).
Tell them ahead of time and they won’t buy.
Gasoline engines actually operate more efficiently at wide open throttle than just crowding the throttle to go faster. There are losses from pumping air through a partially open throttle. It’s using the brakes or even just decelerating because you went too fast, that costs you the fuel economy.
Never “too fast.” 😀
P.S. Thank you for that great information. I wrote imprecisely. The increased gas “mileage” I referred to was actually fuel consumption, i.e., the engine gulping down fuel when one steps down hard on the gas pedal to accelerate sharply.
The part about utilizing the existing power grid seems good. Grids have to be maintained to be reliable (and not cause big problems, such as major fires) but they don’t normally have to be created in toto, meaning good maintenance should be considerably less expensive.
Claims have been made that nuclear fusion plants have the potential to provide power for several thousand years, that is the necessary fuel materials exist. Australia is supposed to have large nuclear fuel reserves.
If one wants to think about leaving possibilities for future generations, then not using up all the easily accessible coal reserves might be a huge boon should there be a major technology breakdown some day, to say nothing of the usefulness of coal for so many things other than just burning.
What might the tradeoff cost of building the nuclear plants near enough to existing grid facilities that a (relatively) short extension would lets the nuclear plant use the existing grid without the potential of contaminating the coal field?
While it might present a political problem, I much doubt that damage to a reasonably designed nuclear plant would present any real danger to coal reserves.
I think it is funny to talk about leaving coal for a future generation because the assumptions needed to make that statement fly in the face of reality. For example, given a known reserve of two hundred years of coal, do you know who will be occupying the land at that time? The descendants of your enemies? Given both genetic entropy and the massive decline in intelligence, competence and ability as each generation successfully knee-caps its children with massive debt, failed education and an abysmal work ethic – who says that in a couple hundreds of years it will not be basically Planet of The Apes?
With the death of Western Civilization, the Protestant Work Ethic, high-trust societies and commonly held transcendent moral/value codes the current trajectory is Mad Max or at least a return to the civilizations of a millenia ago which were pretty much identical to the civilizations thousands of years even before that.
In short, a high tech, high trust, mutual benefit society that we currently enjoy and are working at a feverish pace to comprehensively destroy is a historical anomaly given the span of human history.
Like Uranium, which constantly decays, the affluent economic times we live in presently are fleeting and decaying and only existed for a very short window of time in human history.
Use up the hydrocarbons, there is no sense at all in preserving for a hypothetical civilization that has a low probability of existing.
As is often said, the Stone Age didn’t end because they ran out of stones. Besides, I’m sure the Krell will figure out something else to worry about.
While most of the points made are valid enough, we need a hope for the future approach rather than more, the why bother we are doomed we see in most of the divisive social issues, including.
So burn everything to the ground to deny it to the enemy. In any rational world Sherman would have been hung as a war criminal.
Even just saving it for the existing society as a resource too valuable to be burned makes sense if we haven’t already degenerated too far to have any other hope of a way to keep warm. In a longer time frame, it might be the survival of the human race that is at stake, and with no remaining memories of today’s ideologies or racial nonsense carried along as millstones around the necks of the children.
AWG you make a lot of sensible comments about using the resources we have now to improve our lives now, never mind what may happen in the future.
We don’t know what technology break throughs we will have in the near future that may eliminate today’s costly power issues, but we should place ourselves in the position to allow that to happen.
However, that cannot happen with a renewables-only future, that is pure elitist delusion, driven by the Green existential environmentalists who appear to want to save the planet by going back to pre-industrial lifestyles and traditions. However, they also want all the social benefits of modern technology, but they can’t have both, they are in a moral dilemma!
Please don’t believe in an existential climate crisis, because science totally rejects this stance by environmental alarmists, there is no credible evidence for any runaway warming now or in Earth’s history- it is pure nonsense and need to be vigorously called out. Humans have not the technology or ability to seriously affect climate. This is especially the case when mild current warming is good for civilization, we should not be denigrating this positive news, because of far-left fringe political views from the UN globalist elite.
Thorium Liquid Salts Cooled Reactors will provide safe cheap abundant electricity.
I’m not as convinced as I once was, the liquid salts are hideously corrosive. Thorium uranium pebble bed seems the best option for a totally safe reactor.
The salt must be pure…..contaminants are the cause of corrosion……https://Copenhagenatomics.com
The process still seems a bit fragile – Molten Thorium Fluoride is nasty stuff, it could potentially pick up contaminants from abrading any of the components in the containment system.
The pebbles are solid. I like solid state systems with big lumps of solid, less mess to clean up when they spill.
IF they’re ever built to utility scale and connected to the grid
Sure . . . with them being “just around the corner”, like they have been for something like the last 70 years or so.
In The Age article the author uses a favourite lefty rhetorical trick of using the definite instead of indefinite article when referring a controversial policy or outcome as in “.., to encourage industry to invest in the energy transition …” as if their “energy transition” is not a matter of if but when.
They also use it when referring to any possible change from a limited monarchy form of government to a republic for Australia by using ‘the republic’ instead of ‘a republic’, a change that was rejected by referendum 54% to 45% in 1999.
The republic and the energy transition are both equally hopeless causes.
Politics is the art of the possible. Peter Dutton seems to understand that. He plays his cards close to his chest. He quietly demolished ‘The Voice’. He didn’t go too early on the issue. He didn’t make hyperbolic claims. He let the two best qualified people run the campaign. Now he is running quietly but firmly on nuclear energy, while not making himself too big a target. The result is that the issue is being discussed – by Australian standards – quietly and calmly. The issue is out in public, but it’s not a wild political brawl. Yes, there is an element of not fully facing up to everything, but if you want things to actually get done rather than just enjoy a brawl, then just maybe Peter Dutton is on the right track. Time will tell.
Senator Matt Canavan once said something similar to me.
I think the right is out of patience with compromise politics. Look how badly the Tories abused this line in Britain, how badly they abused the trust of voters. Unless Ditto finds the courage to say something interesting, my first preference is going to someone else.
We live in hope.
The ‘Paris agreement’, what a joke.
This is movement in our direction we need to take it. If he thinks he can get some nuclear started I am with him. We can always urge that coal be kept on line in the near future, until nuclear is well established. The only thing to consider concerning the Paris Agreement is to ignore it. It is a worthless pile of dung.
I don’t have a problem with nuclear, I have a problem with the plan to shut down coal. And I am concerned about building nuclear on top of coal reserves. If one day we need those coal reserves, it will be pretty sad if using them is delayed by concerns they have been contaminated by low level radioactive waste.
Why would anyone build a nuke above a coal field? And aren’t there orders of magnitude difference between their respective footprints?
Why would anyone build a nuke above a coal field? – to take advantage of the existing distribution network. But this puts the coal field at risk IMO.
The Liddell site would be quite sensible.
Not actually over the top of the coal, but right next to Lake Liddell for cooling, and next to the massive Liddell substation and distribution infrastructure.
Of course, building a modern coal-fired replacement for Liddell would be a far more sensible idea.
TOO SENSIBLE FOR OUR MEDOCRE POLITICIANS AND BUREAUCRATS!
Where is the risk, from nuclear waste, unless you are trying to store it in the coalfield. This is a furphy!
The PA is now useless, as 2/3rds of the industrial expansion and global emissions is being generated by the BASIC “developing” nations led by China and India who can ramp up their economies as much as they like with fossil fuels whilst the poor western democracies suffer the Net Zero consequences of their political foolishness. The fightback against NZ has begun in Europe, where their economies have greatly suffered from stupid Green energy policies, but we appear to be slow learners here in Australia, especially given New Zealand has now thrown off the spiritual green mantle bequeathed by Arden and faced economic reality squarely, to their ultimate benefit.
Hopefully, Trump will kick start the decline of the energy wars and the end of NZ stupidity, perhaps he will help defund the source problem-the UN with it’s overt world government ambitions. Then the IPCC and related NGO can be consigned to the dustbin of history.
No. If they did that they would have to explain the science (of which they are unaware) or be called deniers with no counter argument. Australia will have nuclear power for this reason.
It’s only a matter of time before Labor goes down the same track.
EU <> USA (obviously, and the EU parliament architecture looks like a Babel tower for a reason): although it’s a EU level congress, electing EU representative only has country level meaning, as parties are country specific and campaigning for the citizen vote is never done at the EU level. There is no equivalent for any US-wide popular political event in the EU.
So EU parliament election must be interpreted as popularity contest country-wide not EU-wide.
The French population gave more than twice as much vote to “far right” (more center left in historical political terms actually) RN = “Rassemblement National” than to Macron’s party (whose name I can’t remember as they keep changing it).
RN is anti mass immigration and anti punitive ecology, and skeptical of the rechargeable chemical battery electric car (they keep on suggesting H2 car is the future, I don’t know if they believe that nonsense or if they use it as a clever PR device, but RN is not trumpist and not known to be clever in any way shape or form).
Note: I forgot to explain that we use “Proportional Representation” with 5% cutoff but in term of member state elections, for the EU parliament.
And the one real right wing anti immigration French party, the party of Éric Zemmour passed the cutoff!
H2 might be an even worse option than Battery…if the concern is atmospheric GHG levels. H2 cars have emissions … H2O … which is a far stronger heat absorbing gas compared with CO2 and more abundant in atmospheric concentrations. H2O emitting H2 cars will add to the GHG load even more than Gasoline powered CO2 emitting vehicles.
H2O isn’t a “forcing” according to the “consensus” elites bodies.
Likely because it is considered a feedback and not an emission. Once it becomes an emission this is likely to change.
If CO2 is a forcing molecule, why are we not using it as a power generation?
Oh. The laws of thermodynamics are not a malleable as government edicts.
Harold the Chemist says:
ATTN: Everyone and Aussies.
GO: http://www.john-daly.com or search for: “Still Waiting for Greenhouse”
From the home page, scroll down to the end, and click on “Station Temperature Data”. On the
world map click on “Australia”. You can then examine the temperature graphs of a number of cities and locations.
Check out the graph for Alice Springs. The average annual temperature has been fairly constant since 1859 to 2003.
Now go to western region of North America and click on “Death Valley”. The graph shows the annual average temperatures for the four seasons. The temperature plots are pretty flat. This means that the increase on CO2 in the air did not cause any “warming”. The humidity is very low and there few clouds to affect air temperature.
All the temperature graphs indicate that there no “global warming” to 2003.
I have concluded that the claim by the IPCC that CO2 is the cause of the recent “global warming” is a lie. The IPCC should be disbanded before it wrecks the economies of the world. However, the “global warming and climate change” fraud can not go on forever.
Building nuclear to back-up wind presents a problem. In the U.S., nuclear is run base-loaded (100% power, 24/7) to keep costs per MW-hr as low as possible. So in Oz, this scheme would require backing off wind power in favor of nuclear. Technically, though, this is not a requirement, France has mastered how to load follow because approx. 70% of their generation is nuclear.
However, nuclear plants do not have the instantaneous ramp rate that coal plants do, that makes it hard for them to cover power shortfalls and increases from intermittent sources.
That depends greatly on what power level the nuclear plant is operating at the time it is called upon to “ramp up” its power output:
1) a nuclear power plant operating at, say 80% of nameplate power output rating, can actually ramp up power output faster than can a fossil-fueled power plant,
2) most nuclear power plants operate for about 92% of the time at their full rated nameplate output power level (= “capacity factor”), so there is little opportunity for them to “ramp up” power (the other 8% of time is mostly used for refueling of the nuclear fuel rods and for other maintenance). Ref: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/01/f58/Ultimate%20Fast%20Facts%20Guide-PRINT.pdf
How many coal plants, which are all (almost all?) baseload can pretend to any semblance of anything approaching an “instantaneous ramp rate”?
“there’s no sense in signing up to targets you don’t have any prospect of achieving”
Well, there’s that . . . but also this:
There’s no sense in signing up to targets that, even if Australia achieved them, would result in an insignificant decrease in worldwide, human-originated emissions of CO2, particularly considering the absence of any real commitments by China and India to reduce such emissions.
The entire Paris Agreement is based on false science and MUST be abandoned. We have the spectacle of the Maldives getting money – partly UK money too – to help with the supposed fact that the Maldives are (still!) about to be overwhelmed by a predicted sea rise – which hasn’t even commenced. Instead they are using the money to build five new airports at near beach level.
What the hell is going on? Only the two countries causing the most pollution (India and China) are exempt from paying the Paris levy yet they are the very two nations contributing to CO2 levels. Now we see that it is clear that CO2 does NOT affect the climate after all.
Softly softly catchee monkey-
Peter Dutton’s criticism of Labor’s emission reduction targets is ‘political genius’ (msn.com)
As smart political operators well know only the impotent are pure and all in good time