Essay by Eric Worrall
“It will take leadership from the top, with aggressive goals.”
Peter Dutton’s nuclear power push does not address the urgency of the climate crisis we now find ourselves in
Alan Finkel
Wed 19 Jun 2024 13.25 AESTTemperatures are rising much faster than anticipated. We must respond with the following rapid solutions
…
Yet, with all this in place, it is surprising to see that the transition to solar and wind power in Australia has flatlined. …
The problem? Barriers.
…
The second category consists of social-license barriers such as landowner resistance, traditional owner negotiations, heritage requirements, and the outsized focus on protecting local biodiversity irrespective of global biodiversity benefits.
Combined, these systemic permitting barriers and the very tangible social license barriers constitute a “wicked problem” that will not be overcome with anything less than an intense and ambitious effort from the highest levels of government, supported by industry and communities.
What can governments do?
The goal must be to lower the barriers urgently. Governments must lead.
…
It will take leadership from the top, with aggressive goals.
…
Biodiversity regulations should also be overhauled to take into account the global benefit to biodiversity, not just the local benefit. …
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/19/peter-dutton-nuclear-power-plan-coalition-liberal-party-plant-sites-comment
Dr Finkel, the reason a heavy handed approach to the renewable social contract won’t work is power line companies need landowner cooperation.
Thousands of miles of incredibly valuable copper and steel support structures are a tempting target for thieves. It would be unimaginably expensive to mount constant patrols of power lines. Power companies need landowners to call the police when they spot metal thieves, not make them tea and biscuits.
Preventing metal theft without the cooperation of landowners would be a truly wicked problem. In Africa thieves have learned a new trick. They don’t steal the copper wires, which would trigger an instant SWAT team response, they steal the pylon support structures. That way the line keeps running, there is no immediate alarm on the control board, and the thieves are long gone by the time the next storm or strong wind knocks the power pylons over.
So quite apart from the outrage and distress ramming approvals through by force would do to society, there is the very practical problem that a society which has lost its cohesion cannot protect its energy infrastructure. Just look at the situation in South Africa if you want evidence of what could happen to Australia, were the Aussie government to go full fascist with energy infrastructure approvals.
And this is not even considering the greens who actually care about the environment, who would probably be out there dynamiting construction equipment if they lost access to legal means to stop the wholesale destruction of their beloved wilderness regions.
Obviously WUWT does not condone or encourage violence or sabotage – but you don’t have to be a genius to predict the likely consequences of trampling people’s rights, especially in sparsely policed rural regions of Australia. I’ve been to the countryside meetings and seen the anger, the only thing preventing that anger from boiling over right now is rural people are clinging to the hope there are civilised, legal means for them to redress the wrongs which are being done to them. Crush that hope at your peril.
Update (EW): I should have mentioned, most of the rural people I met are willing to compromise, their demand is if the cables are built, they be buried underground, to mitigate the fire risk and impairment of visual amenity. So far to my knowledge power companies have shown no interest in the underground cable option.
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“The Climate Crisis” is a text book example of “The Big Lie”
The Big Lie is a lie so colossal that no one would believe that someone
could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.
What Climate crisis.
Australia was warmer in the late 1800’s early 1900’s..
The Federation Drought .. now that was a crisis.
Australia has a great variety of very pleasant climates.
There is certainly no climate crisis in Australia.
Finkel is a goose, and always a has been.
Yes! We can hitch those kittens to the plow! Just get a bigger whip!
Or more Cat Treats.
One will run out of Cat Treats long before running out of bigger whips.
Judging from how they are acting, and how desperate and stupid the warmunists sound posting here, they know they are losing. They don’t have the science. They don’t have the arguments. Nobody wants their stupid command and control governance of the economy and liberties.
The first priority of any government is to protect the citizenry FROM the government.
The second priority is the greatest good for the greatest number.
All of this is, of course, done with the fullest compliance to whatever Constitution formed the governemtn.
A socialist wanting to go full fascist. How surprising. /sarc
Inside of every prog’ is a totalitarian screaming to get out. I love that quote.
Right wing totalitarians are the same , as can be much worse.
Next minute they will want to force their opinions/beliefs on school kids , the Ten Commandments- the bible version.
I think when it comes to body count, communist tyrants like Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein totally eclipse right wing despots like Pinochet.
True. Progressives who deny this – especially about Stalin – need dope slapping until they snap out of it.
Read anything by progressive Anne Applebaum to get properly schooled up. I’m half way thru Red Famine and get bogged down in the extensive biblio. But I’ll finish it. Also any new periodic articles – where she aptly compares those on Eric’s list to Predecessor.
Hitler
Hitler was left not right. Socialist party, you know.
“Hitler was left not right. Socialist party, you know.”
Debunked long ago, you know.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/05/right-needs-stop-falsely-claiming-that-nazis-were-socialists/
Too many facts to randomly excerpt, but well presented. Read it all….
Sorry I wouldn’t trust anything the washington post printed. The nazis were consulting with the democrats prior to WW2, and they actually called themselves a “Socialist party”
Predictably, can’t refute the message, diss the messenger. As for Dem association with the Nazi’s 90 years ago, left behind soon after. Death blow, 1948, with their adoption of racial integration into their platform, and the beginning of the Dem racists reregistering as Republicans. Got anything from the last 75 years?
Yes, the Nazi’s stole the word “socialist”. They, were in fact, right wing racists fascists.
The closest we got to Nazi ideology was their approval of our Jim Crow laws….
I don’t believe anything the post writes so there is no point in reading anything they print. The big switch is a democrat lie. I also believe that the nazis were who they said they were rather than believing they stole the word socialist. Give your head a shake.🙄
As opposed to forcing trans ideology on school kids?
Once writing with the left hand was forbidden in schools , do you want that to return too
Trans kids exist too. Even in my day at high school there kids of both sexes who were different
trans don’t exist. you cannot change your sex. You can however have a mental issue called gender dysphoria.
Nope. They’re there, and have no more “mental issues” then the rest of us. Check with any mental health pro for proof.
No, I don’t get it either. But I volunteer as an abortion clinic escort and several of my fellow volunteers are trans. Live and let.
Maybe open your eyes to what you’ve been overlooking. I’ve thought back on my hitch in the Seabees and now realize how many of my ship mates were gay, many years ago. At the time, totally clue free….
People who think they are trans are not gay they have gender dysphoria. It is impossible to change one’s sex. I also believe live and let live for adults but leave the children alone. They are not mentally capable of making these life destroying decisions as their brains haven’t fully developed. No doctor should be allowed to remove perfectly operating appendages sterilizing their patients for a mental condition.
I doubt Finkel will get much support even if he was once the nation’s chief scientist. Was that chief’s job due to immense respect from scientists as a result of brilliant climate research – or merely a political appointment?
he was a neuroscientist, but mostly a university bureaucrat .
The Chief scientist is merely another bureaucrat with a large staff of the usual paper pushers , some might be working scientists.
the current CS
‘While working at CSIRO, Dr Foley made significant contributions to the understanding of nitride semiconductors and superconducting electronics. Dr Foley and her team’s most successful application is the LANDTEM sensor system used to locate valuable deposits of minerals deep underground, such as nickel sulphide, silver and gold.’
Everytime they get an actual electrical engineer its totally remote from power systems and the electricity we all use. The previous guy also an electrical engineer PhD but research speciality was micro currents/voltages in human organs. he admitted he knew nothing about power systems , except an basic course when an undergrad
We were corporately researching and improving TEM in the 1970s.
It is no panacea. It is another technique to find certain mineral targets, routinely used alongside a package of scientific research techniques.I can’t recall TEM being important in our discoveries. Geoff S
He never had any support even when he was chief scientist.
Most people laughed at his antics.
SPEAKING OR REALLY STUPID LIES for kids
“When people burn carbon—whether it’s coal in a power plant or gasoline in a vehicle—it creates carbon dioxide (CO2). This invisible gas builds up in the atmosphere and traps the sun’s warmth near the Earth’s surface”….wasn’t this debunked 20 years ago (paging Al Gore)
https://www.fastcompany.com/91142194/extreme-heat-earth-global-warming-humans-climate-change?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
No way Alan Finkel is a real scientist. There is a lot of these scienactivist’s running around these days spewing garbage.🤔 A pox on all of them.
Former Aussie Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, known affectionately amongst all that know him, as Rat Finkel.
If you start with a lie: “Temperatures are rising much faster than anticipated. We must respond with the following rapid solutions” you should not expect a warm welcome in response.
Actual temperatures are only rising at about 1/3rd the rate predicted by all the models, except the Russian one.
Temperatures have been rising steadily since the end of the Little Ice Age 100 to 150 years ago, while CO2 did not begin to rise rapidly until about 50 years ago. There has been no increase in the rate of temperature rise since the rapid rise of CO2 began.
Since the 2016 El Nino. Australian temperatures have been falling.
a negative trend even with the spikes from the 2023 El Nino.
Not Australia but South Wales. We went to Tenby for a week after Christmas. All over the countryside and villages in the southern areas we passed through were plentiful ‘No Pylon’ placards.
Is there something in the water or air in Australia that produces people like Finkel and Flannery? I suppose not insofar as the USA, the UK, and other places have ClimateCult™ members equally nutty.
John,
The Australian Academy of Science has been captured by ex Chief Scientist types who have published about punishments for deniers if their beliefs and who are interfering with school curricula. For some, they are doing anti-science, problematic.
Experienced author Tony Thomas in “Quadrant” shreds them in several articles. Geoff S
Yes, it’s called oxygen. Same thing that produces the less nuts politicians and the populace at large. However, there’s also nurture, and genetic variation. Some are (unfortunately) born nuts, or stupid. Most had to be taught to be that way.
Today’s socialists are so ignorant they believe fascism isn’t a form of socialism. Most mistakenly believe fascism is capitalistic. They don’t understand that communism and fascism are two competing sides to the same coin.
Ask all the socialist and communists Hitler had eliminated.
Hitler was even asked by an american journalist ( pre 1939) why they had socialist in the name
Hitler himself refuted they his ideology was socialist
[its actualy Nationalsozialismus a german compound word, different languages often different meanings to similar words]
theres a right wing party in Germany today with the name Christian socialist , its because the original latin word used by romans was socii or allies
Thanks for confessing how stupid and debased you are.
Hitler can “refute” all he wants, but if you examine the political and economic platforms of the Fascists and Nazis, it’s straight up socialism.
In Europe, anyone who isn’t an out and out communist, is considered right wing.
Your attempts to defend socialism are getting ever more pathetic.
Its part of the US economy , a mixed private- state system
Maybe you benefit from something like
The National Flood Insurance Program, where the insurance company is the face but the government provides the underwriting
Agriculture especially is ‘supported’ by state socialism
https://www.grants.gov/learn-grants/grant-making-agencies/u-s-department-of-agriculture-usda
Now no major new factory doesnt even start construction without a whole line of local and state socialism
“We are socialists, we are enemies of the capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”
~Adolph Hitler, May 1st 1927
LOL . NOT Hitler A quote from one of his rivals
Instead, these are the words of early Nazi party official Gregor Strasser, printed in a 1926 pamphlet titled Thoughts about the Tasks of the Future.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hitler-nazis-capitalist-system/
Same pamphlet also said
If the issue is urgency then it would be commonsense to preserve and extend those coal fired generators to beyond the worst case scenario of renewables failing to meet the expectations that they can achieve the alarmist crystal ball predictions due to restraints on the unrealistic technical and financial expectations.
The urgency is now !
Theres been a prolonged cold spell, breaking 20 year records. Low winter sunlight along with neglible wind means all the burden is on gas generation alongside coal
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-20/aemo-warns-of-immediate-gas-shortage-risks-in-se-australia/104003166
naturally they blame the lack of gas storage , and only the fine print mentions “lulls in renewable energy”
If Liddell was still running, that’d be another 2GW or reliable capacity available
If they are stupid enough to close Eraring Power Station, that is another 2.88GW reliable capacity they don’t have.
The blame is totally and absolutely on the clueless morons pushing the anti-CO2 “unreliables” scam.
Old power stations do have reliability problems, but they are built for that by having multiple generators. Likely to be rare after 30 years to have all running at full capacity. But your point is true about a significant portion of the output is still on demand reliable
“Former Aussie Chief Scientist and Former Rational Thinker Alan Finkel…”.
Australia’s main Federal opposition party has just announced a policy to build nuclear above renewables.
In reality, there are very few people in Australia who know enough about nuclear power generation to comment wisely on it. I have worked in the nuclear fuel cuycle, but not with reactor technology. I have used a reactor and owned a tiny one, a fast neutron generator, that have taught me some principles, but not enough to inform national policy.
This has not stopped all and sundry commenting. I have noticed a phone-in by union/left men and women who recite old green boilerplate with a conviction that hides their ignorance.
We do not want our electrical future planned by mobs of morons. Geoff S
“Thousands of miles of incredibly valuable copper and steel support structures are a tempting target for thieves. It would be unimaginably expensive to mount constant patrols of power lines.”
A typical Eric stretch. First, the HV lines are not made of copper. But we already have thousands of miles of them. And they pass through uninhabited bushlands as well as farmland. We don’t have a problem with metal theft. And there is no reason why lines carrying power of renewable origins should be different.
We don’t have a problem with climates either.
So what’s the rational rationale for trashing an economical, reliable, sustainable electricity generation & distribution system?
Not trashing, enhancing!
Enhancing by adding old technology, increased costs, clearing land, electricity with intermittency and lack of frequency control?
I have no objection to wind power when and only when a sound economic case can be demonstrated, including without subsidies. I accept, for instance, that windmills can supplement diesel a little at remote mines. Show the case, get it done. No need to close the mind. Dr Finkel has closed his re power generation. His bio shows no experience with national grids, yet he promotes a personal choice. He can like what he likes and wants, but society has a right to choice as well. It is not being adequately serviced by words like Dr Finkel’s. And by yours?
Geoff S
It’s enhancing the incomes of those who are pushing them.
NO, Wind and solar DO NOT enhance the grid in any way whatsoever.
They are a parasite that sucks the reliability and synchronicity.
They are totally non-dependable and non-economic, and totally unsustainable.
Wind and solar don’t enhance power, they trash it. As demonstrated by every electrical grid on the planet.
Not enhancing.
Wind and solar and hydro and geo all have their niches and within those the performed moderately well.
At issue is promoting them to the first line of energy production when they simply are not capable of meeting the demands and the costs are going to collapse economies and societies and put us back to 1859, when the first oil well was drilled.
The massive ecological destruction these massive projects will cause is nightmarish.
The difference is the push for approvals without land owner approval.
Power to your home – they already have that, that got approved and supported long ago. Power lines to make greedy city greens rich – why should anyone support that?
He did not say that lines should be built without landowner approval. He is talking about slow regulatory processes.
No, he said barriers have to be lowered with “strong leadership”. The only reason the approval process is slow is lots of landowners are objecting to the build. The only way to shorten the timeframe and get more approvals is to override those objections.
That’s your construction. In fact he said:
“Whether the application is approved or denied, shortening the approvals process from five or more years to 24 or fewer months must be the goal.”
Have YOU got that wind turbine in your back yard yet Nick?
Have you traded in your 4WD country workhorse for a “never-go-anywhere” EV ?
If not, you are a rancid little hypocrite. !
In fact he said:
“Yet, with all this in place, it is surprising to see that the transition to solar and wind power in Australia has flatlined. …
The problem? Barriers.”
…
“What can governments do?
The goal must be to lower the barriers urgently. Governments must lead.”
“It will take leadership from the top, with aggressive goals.”
What other construction is there, Nick?
These HV power and lower voltage distribution lines are aluminum.
Some are. Some are still copper. Some are graphite enclosed in steel.
Lots of variations depending on when the power lines were first deployed/installed.
The upper level (and likely middle and lower level) bureaucracy of Australia appears, from this and much other evidence, to have been stacked with people who have rather extreme collectivist and authoritarian ideologies. These people feel that they know much better how Australians should live their lives, in minute detail, from what they eat to what medications they should or should not take to where they should live and on and on. This creeping authoritarianism has been building now for decades and appears to be coming to a head on several fronts at once.
That this pattern is repeated in many other Western countries would, at least to me, serve as strong evidence that this is something that is not mere happenstance. There appears to have been a deliberate and concerted effort over an extended period to put in place senior bureaucrats that would support and implement authoritarian policies against the interest of the freedom of the citizens of their countries.
It’s called creeping socialism; these people are following the dictates or example of their UN hero’s Strong and Bolin that invented the climate crisis caused by CO2 emissions, so they could reinvent modern energy dominance away from rich democratic nations who successfully utilized cheap and reliable coal, oil and nuclear to build their industrial economies. These greenie socialist elites that control many bureaucracies have condemned dirty fossil fuels and dangerous nuclear power, so their favorite solution to the climate problem is `renewables’, even though they will not solve climate issues because CO2 has very little influence on climate. Humans have little or no control on climate so new costly and unreliable power systems won’t have any desired effect, except to increase Big government spending, and impoverish those who can’t afford the higher costs and inflation they produce. These are the working class deplorables referenced by Clinton and co.
However, entrepreneurs posing as climate saviors, are making billions from government subsidies for all kinds of green and renewable scams to save the environment, that rampant renewables, especially remote wind farms are busy ruining. The hypocrisy of climate activists is astounding and is only matched by their ignorance of science and the scientific process, that has shown there is no climate crisis to be worried about in the first place. However, to admit that publicly would ruin the $billion climate academic industry and defund the activist UN/EU and national bureaucracies reliant on policy development and regulation who are sucking the live blood of nations. So, they keep the scam going.
Globally this is damaging hated capitalist economies due to the low efficiency and unreliability of wind and solar power that requires conventional backup, in effect two parallel systems- costly madness. Those developing nations not subject to or ignoring UN dictates, in particular China and India are now have thriving economies using demonized fossil fuels, so they have overtaken western democracies in power consumption and produce 2/3rds of the dreaded global emissions. Thus, western nations are giving away their pre-eminent economic and political power base for a total lost cause! Australia being amongst the worst affected by this insanity, go figure!.
I agree with Dr. Finkel there is a barrier to wind, solar and storage. They don’t work. That is the ultimate barrier.
To show how far removed from reality Finkel actually is, consider the following few facts. Even though the use of renewables continued to rise last year, so did the use of fossil fuels; e.g., natural gas remained steady, but coal use climbed 1.6%, and oil 2%.Another slap in the face to the Greens: oil production reached 11 million barrels/day for the 1st time ever. As a result, fossil fuels still provide 81.5% of the world’s energy supply. The real irony of these numbers stems from the fact that The Guardian, one of the world’s worst climate crisis promoters, published the article reporting the above, rather than trying to suppress them.
Correction: oil production reached 100 million barrels/day for the 1st time.
Finkel – Australia’s former top politicized scientist…….says nothing meaningful. How’s that green hydrogen brain fart of yours coming along Finky? I remember you were very bullish on ‘green’ hydrogen and BEV’s. How’s the market for those today?
Ooooh I must book my ticket. — World Hydrogen Week.
Eric, can you get over to Copenhagen and send us back a report for WUWT.
Fun thought – other commitments then unfortunately.
“Biodiversity regulations should also be overhauled to take into account the global benefit to biodiversity, not just the local benefit. …” Yes. That’s the ticket. Reduce our biodiversity for global good. /sarc. Takes yourself first Alan.
“…especially in sparsely policed rural regions of Australia.”
In the early 1960’s, in the north-east corner of South Australia. Every six months two constables from Marree would visit the stations (ranches) , “Anybody new working here?” “Any unusual activity?” City criminals thought they could ‘hide’ in small up-country settlements. Not a chance. But that was about all the police cared about.
Don’t expect to “Call 911” (999) and expect law enforcement to be there in minutes.
The whole green revolution is a non starter when it comes to cost, any calculation of the battery capacity Australia needs quickly runs into the hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars.
Is it just me or does Australia have an even greater percentage of Finkel like “scientists” than US?
Embarrassingly, it seems we do, much to our shame. The conformism in our system is increasing through the political thought control taught in universities for a generation and now in schools. Post modernism is rampant, so genuine academic scientists are a dwindling force for good amongst the socialist dross.
Not really. Just read Biden’s climate report from last year.
Just note NASA and NOAA and other agencies being called out for data fraud.
The fundamental problem is world wide, education no longer teaches critical thinking and instead promotes self-esteem by never blaming anyone for mistakes.
When I grew up, mistakes were owned, learned from, and set as a goal to never repeat. Learning how to accept defeat and mistakes and how to recover/overcome and more forward was the basis of self esteem and character building.
We did not have STEM. We had science. We had math. We had engineering. And we developed technology, not merely study how to use it.
Friday rant, again. I apologize.
The overhead lines use aluminium not copper for the conductor.
I would note that Al is even more valuable than Cu as scrap metal. Many many moons ago I was recycling the steel chassis, aluminum heat sinks, and copper wire from our business with a local scrap yard. They paid a penny a pound for steel, 10 cents per pound for copper, and a dollar a pound for aluminum. The price differential is driven by the cost for re-processing the scrap vs the cost to refine new. Al uses huge amounts of power to refine, but is easy to melt and alloy once done. Steel and Cu require much more work to make scrap into useful ingots.
In short, the risk of metal theft would increase if the conductor was an Aluminum cable.