The bit.ly link is to his website, which is pretty much slashdotted and difficult to get to.
The announcement that he is not going to recontest but will serve out his full elected term is very formal and dignified pull-together-for-the-party stuff, with only one glimpse of what must be his massive personal disappointment in how things have turned out over the last year:
However, I regret that another important reform begun during that time, the establishment of an emissions trading scheme, is no longer Liberal Party policy.
Apart from this obviously being “great news for John McCainTony Abbott“, what next for Malcolm?
He’s well out of it. Libs will be out of office for the next decade. Not much of interest there for Malcolm…. Mind you he has left the party in the hands of the neanderthal wombats. Joe Hockey is going to be a lonely man. Expect to see him go if not before then shortly after the next election.
Is it too late for Rudd to appoint Turnbull to the post of Ambassador to the Holy See?
This seems like an appropriate thread on which to note that at least one part of the MSM has finally caught up with what quite a lot of us, and other people like Possum Comitatus, have been saying all year.
Let’s see … Ozemail … Goldman Sachs … FAI … the Republican movement … the Liberal Party … what other institution needs the kiss of death?
Well, Ken, as Katz has already suggested there’s the Vatican.
He released it on Twitter first. Hmm.
How many ways can you parse a 140-character message?
“I will not recontest Wentworth at the election this year”.
“I will not recontest Wentworth at the election this year“.
Several what-next scenarios come to mind:
1. Running the ice-cream stand at Bondi Beach in between appearances on Dancing With The Stars.
2. Buying a small Pacific nation and installing himself as potentate.
3. Moving into a state NSW seat to have a shot at Premier.
4. Starting a new liberal party thereby splitting the conservative vote and confounding the progressive vote for decades to come. Good times!
5. Waiting until the party implodes before being begged to return.
6. Inventing a time machine and going back to advise his younger self to join the ALP.
Frankly, I’m not certain which of these is the least likely!
I’m going to break form here and say good riddance to him.
Ultimately, Turnbull’s role was going to be to put a more saleable face on what was a reactionary party. While annoying Abbott (or whoever is in charge at the time of the next election) would have been of some amusement value, it wasn’t so much that I would have the slightest sympathy for him.
He was, plainly, a lot more intelligent than the coalition incumbent. Yet he participated in the xenophobic and misanthropic hysteria over “boat people” for reasons which at best were purely opportunistic. He wailed illiterate nonsense on “debt”. Had he not been rolled, he would have been circulating guff over the insulation program. He was of course in favour of that giant scam “clean coal” and favoured the CPRS polluter handouts and pushed for even more than the CPRS ultimately offered. He had nothing to say about spending megabucks in defence procurement. He favoured continuing the Afghan adventure. He had nothing substantial to say on health.
This was no accident because he was simply the head of an organisation that somehow thought that they only had to wait a while for normal services to be resumed and for the born-to-rule to be recover the plush leather seats. With his blockpartners — the moronic Hockey and the equally mindless spruiker Pyne fancied that he might just do it.
So really, going back to merchant w*nking (as opposed to the political variant) is probably where he is best suited.
You got it Fran except I not sure the asylum seeker stuff was confected outrage. I spoke to people in Wentworth who contacted Turnbull about some poor sod banged up in Villawood and they were angrily sent on their way with a few choice words from Malcolm..
Seems its heartfelt which is a worry. And yes yes yes you right about all the other stuff. Only shining light for him was emissions trading and I suspect even that may have been a bit of a con. A point of difference between himself and Abbott. he was a dud communicator and his inability to make and friends in the party cost him. I know having been on the end of a Turnbull spray in an earlier life that he can be quite vocal. People in the republican movement believe he almost single handedly cost them the referendum Although I think that a big call as the republicans allowed Howard to split them over what sort of republic. But My point was that he was a moderate in the party and now the inmates are taking over the asylum. Greg Hunt so vocal and a flag bearer for climate change now going around making idiotic statements about Peter Garrett killing insulation workers and causing house fires. Joe Hockey has become mute on the economy Barnaby Joyce like a bull in a china shop and Abbott just erratic. Not seen the verdict on last night’s Q & A but I got the feeling the kids weren’t buying him.
It’s certainly a trying time, that’s for sure.
Mercurius @ 6 -
Sort of hope he (or at least someone) does, if only to starve the ALP of outright control of the senate for the next decade, no good could possibly come of that happening. The ALP in itself is not a safe option, a new party with a halfway decent set of policies, good funding and some high profile candidates might chip away at both big party votes, but I won’t hold my breath.
I don’t know, at least he tried to influence good policy, even if he was a bit of an arrogant blowhard doing it. I don’t think anyone will win if we leave the Libs to the Far Right Conservative block, because they may get back in at some point (Seems unlikely now, but you never know) or being the power-hungry horrors they are, whey will jump ship and start infesting the ALP. They won’t be denied just because the party is going down, believe me.
PinkyOz
I reckon Rudd’ll find him something nice. Who wouldnt skewer the Libs once more with that?
Durutti
While Abbott is at best, a shining exemplar for Dunning-Kruger and an intellectual indolent into the bargain, there can be no doubt that he bears more candid witness to where the coalition core is today. On that ground alone, he is better positioned to be their leader and is thus of greater utility to all of us.
As for an ETS being Malcolm’s shining light, his iteration of it also spoke against him. It was a giant boondoggle which I’m glad the coalition voted down. It would have brought the entire mitigation movement into disrepute, much as the early noughties European scheme did. There’s no way I would want to have spent the next decade apologising for that. Better to have nothing and simply point to the venality of those continuing with b-a-u as the source of the ongoing climate anomaly.
Perhaps that would explain this.
I take a different view Pinky.
Bad ideas have to be defeated fair and square in the minds of those who hold them before people can move on. The conservatives and delusionals would always have felt cheated and dienfranchised if Malcolm had stayed in charge.
They have to be given free rein to be as moronic as they like and allowed to see how that plays out. Running the risk that they will get back in and make a repulsive mess is the price one pays for moving society forward.
Successive, painful, demoralising periods of political irrelevance and being laughed at is what they need most of all.
That’s why it took so long – he was stitching up some sort of deal with the ALP. As much as he might, and I stress might have made the Libs less like the bunch of death’s-head yowling phantoms they are now, its still good riddance. There is only one kind of good Liberal in my book – one who drops out of politics.
Malcolm leaves as he arrived: a victim of his own impatience and hubris. Had he not effected the demise of Nelson, he would have been in prime position for leadership post-election. Even now, were he to display some patience and let Abbott be demolished, Hockey line up for the next slapping, and then step in, he could have been a real contender.
Regardless of what you say, Fran, I will miss him. He was a moderating force within the party, and a damned sight more capable and rational than Abbott or any of his winged monkeys.
I agree, patrickg. Didn’t have the patience for the “strong and slow boring of hard boards.”
Well, I would expect that Malcolm will now proceed to make a squillion dollars trading in alternative energy initiatives. What better way is there to be RIGHT!! In every way.
“winged monkeys”……..I like that!
Just watching Malcolm Turnbull on SKY News. He has no plans to go anywhere else in politics, making the point that there is more money and less aggro for him and Lucy in the business world. You can forget about Turnbull heading a breakaway party.
John Hyde Page prediced Turnbull’s rapid departure from politics in his 2006 auto biographical page-turner ‘The Education of a Young Liberal’, which ends around the time Turnbull rolled Wentworth incumbent Peter King in the LPA’s biggest branch stack in history.
The book is a great read for the politically obsessed: http://www.smh.com.au/news/book-reviews/the-education-of-a-young-liberal/2006/08/21/1156012451880.html
They keep throwing out the good wood. I’m starting to think they’d be crazy not start a fire with that woodstack.
#9 PinkyOz – yes, decent opposition of any kind would be a welcome change right now, not just in the senate but in any debate on public policy.
So, they’ve gone through Costello, Nelson and Turnbull. When Abbott gets beaten they’ll be down to Hockey. A bit sad really.
Not if Hockey can’t get elected.
Nothing to regret about this departure except that he might go back to logging Pacific Islands.
Actually, it was precisely because he failed to be “a moderating force” on the Liberal Party, once he became leader, that he proved to be such a disappointment.
State seat of Vaucluse could be on the cards for M. Bligh Turnbull.
Perhaps the Liberals will draft this woman to become their next Federal leader.
She’d be better than Bishop. Mind you, she’s probably a Labor or Green voting actor just trying to make a living.
“Mind you, she’s probably a Labor or Green voting actor just trying to make a living.”
From an organisation that apparently selects on the basis of how much a health fund has paid them for their recommendation rather than how good the deal is.
Capitalism, joe2. We’re stuck with it.
(Until i work out a really good way to overthrow it .
Fran Barlow @ 13 -
Despite what you may think, I won’t shed a tear when the Abbott opposition or any of his ilk are laid to rest in the halls of the forgotten, I just don’t think it could be that easy. They will be back, and they may be under a different banner, I would dare say a successful ALP would be their next target If they can’t get it together where they are.
Otherwise I agree, shining the light of logic on their drivel will do all the good in the world, let’s hope that not too many rational, moderate right get caught up in it and we do end up with a better option (compared to now) on that side of the divide.
Jesterette @ 21 -
Yep, agree totally, let’s hope we get an outcome that will encourage better policy, because that’s why we elected this bunch in the first place.
PinkyOz
Fran, emission trading schemes are a mystery to me as they seem so complex and the rent seekers seem to get so much compensation it looks like a free for all (except us taxpayers) I note in the Copenhagen talks China baulked at an emissions trading scheme with clear set targets as did India but would have worn a carbon trading regime which just put a price on carbon but without targets. It is a lack of a clear carbon price that is stalling alternative energy businesses in Australia.
Does this make sense?
PS I have been reading a lot about base load solar power stations in Spain which are running now take about three years to build and at half the cost of coal or nuclear. they use molten salt to provide the heat when the sun is down so they are on line all the time.
Here is a bit about them, In Australia I hear not a word and coal interests can still go on radio and say there is no substitution for coal when it comes to base load. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Spain
A quick update of my Malcolm’s Musings sonnet seemed appropriate. I prefer the first version but I do like the idea of him with really happy thoughts
No more disgrace or polls and party fights.
Ne’er again will I beweep my outcast state,
I still have the private power of money’s might,
As Lucy said to comfort me, sweet mate.
See Tony now, who once was rich in hope,
Exposed as surfing fool with hairy chest.
So much for Howard’s part, and Minchin’s role!
Now that great wealth I have will serve me best
To fly me far from Liberals’ despairing.
Julie, I think on thee, and Joe’s great weight,
‘Friends’ like Barnaby, no more rejoicing.
Bronwyn, Wilson, years ahead I know your fate.
That happy thought of you and my heart sings
As I see Rudd around you running rings!
There is a God!
Only joking. Losing his intellect is unfortunate. Losing his arrogance and lack of political experience – not so much.
Durutti began:
It’s perfectly simple. A given jurisdiction has a quota (called a cap) of emissions that are allowable. Those wishing to emit bid for the right to emit some part of the quota. This creates funds that can be used to:
a) compensate people for higher costs associated with buying the quotas
b) fund low emission alternatives
c) fund R&D
d) do remediation
e) audit the system
The desire to gain a competitive edge by emitting less and selling the quotas (thus funding the innovations leading to lower emissions) or avoiding buying them drives technological innovation because it is now cheaper not to emit than if there was no cap.
You may not realise it but you’re channelling Plimer (who is channelling the Inhofe fringe) here. Under capitalism, every producer can be called a “rentseeker”. It means nothing substantial. The question is — do the people being paid provide a valuable service? The answer is, potentially yes. If someone gets a reward for sequestering some dangerous emission, then that is exactly the same in principle as if you pay someone to clean your house and dispose of waste. The fact that that person employs a receptionist and an accountant doesn’t make these latter “rentseekers” if they are essential to doing the business.
Moreover, we are not merely taxpayers but air-breathers and water-users and food eaters. We want our governments to ensure that we get access to clean air, clean water and a stable climate for prodiuction and distribution of food. That costs money or it costs lives. We get to choose which. Right now, the producers of fossil energy get to treat the biosphere as a giant free waste dump and shrug their shoulders at the consequences for humans, which are very considerable.
Well they don’t trust us and doubtless they don’t like the idea of bearing a disproportionate share of the burden of fixing what is mostly a western-driven problem. In the end though, they won’t escape, because we are all in the same boat.
Try reading this and this
The hard reality is that these facilities:
a) cannot be constructed at industrial scale at acceptable cost and within an acceptable timeframe, even in Australia
b) cannot be constructed ubiquitously. Places like Japan for example, simply couldn’t do it.
c) have their own environmental footprint orders of magnitude larger than for properly specified nuclear facilities
Short of some truly stupendous cost and technological breakthroughs on storage and transmission solar thermal can never displace coal. When coal and gas become unviable, we will get nuclear.
Fran,
I can’t let you get away with that
“The hard reality is that these facilities……..”
You keep refering to people
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/directory/barry.brook
who, while having very impressive academic credentials, have never built a thing in their lives.
I keep pointing you to
http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Trieb_Franz_1145639871.aspx
who is in the thick of Europe’s renewable energy construction programme, and you never respond. I have no doubt that Dr Trieb, and even Australia’s Professor David Mills would emphatically discard
“a) cannot be constructed at industrial scale at acceptable cost and within an acceptable timeframe, even in Australia
b) cannot be constructed ubiquitously. Places like Japan for example, simply couldn’t do it.
c) have their own environmental footprint orders of magnitude larger than for properly specified nuclear facilities”
these conclusions.
Even the US DOE is now saying that CSP will very soon have the potential to match the cost of coal generated electricity for both price and delivery.
So, Durutticolumn, I would urge you to research a little further and not take anyone blog commentators opinion as fact, no matter how many references to other bloggers they may put forward.
Fran @36: “When coal and gas become unviable, we will get nuclear.”
You are at it again Fran! Nuclear as a universal panacea…
Would you please give us a mass balance on the entire world switching to nuclear, which is what you are implicitly proposing? How much will be used each year, and how long will the total reserves of uranium last?
And after the uranium reserves are exhausted??? To paraphrase you “When nuclear becomes unviable, we will get…”???
Secondly, what about the many sets of data in the public domain on the high lifecycle cost of nuclear? Governments routinely take on a significant proportion of the costs, probably due to their secondary agenda on nuclear armaments. Nuclear power companies don’t include these costs in their accounting and energy prices. We pay the rest indirectly, via taxes to the government.
Consequently, we have incomplete accounting for the true cost, when nuclear power companies claim that the energy is “cheap”. The total cost is still paid for by society, so there is no point in hiding the total cost, unless you are a nuke nutter.
Be honest, Fran, and stop bulling around on this topic.
Here is an interesting read (transcript).
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2010/2857412.htm
Elise
Your question has been answered adequately here:
without hot air
The RARs of uranium and thorium, if used in more than once through processes (eg Fast Spectrum) will last for at least 1000 years before we would need to think about finding more.
Those that I have seen are seriously flawed. One even tried to factor in the carbon cost of nuclear war. Very sad.
The lifecycle costs of IFR would be tiny, given that no new uranium is needed and they would use pyroprocessing to extract energy from existing hazmat and decommissioned weapons exclusively, effectively attacking two problems simultaneously.
But even more conventional nuclear is tiny compared with any other energy source at industrial scale.
This needs more precision. What are we talking about here? How much? If it really is an externality, let’s price it in.
Back to Malcolm Turnbull, I note that Dennis “The Oracle” Shanahan thinks his departure is great news for Tony Abbott, and only strengthens his political hand:
Linked text
I sometimes wonder whether Tony Abbott has some compromising pictures of Dennis Shanahan hidden in an envelope somewhere.
Dr Franz Trieb
“http://www.zoominfo.com/Search/PersonDetail.aspx?PersonID=1145639871″
addresses the nuclear issue in simple form (exerpt from the ABC interview):
“Naomi Fowler: What about the nuclear power option that seems to be attracting the most investment when you look at the most developed countries?
Franz Trieb: Well, the nuclear power option is getting most of the subsidies, 50% of the subsidies in energy worldwide and they are growing with -1% per year. Renewables are getting 10% of the public funding worldwide and they are growing with 25% per year. So you tell me, who will solve the problems of the future. Very simple.”
It should be noted that Dr Trieb is a scientist in a government energy agency that has nuclear energy responsibilities, and he therefore has first hand quantitative information available to him.
Elsewhere in the interview Dr Trieb disposes of the energy distribution issues.
The reference to Dr McKay’s (without hot air) publication cannot be taken seriously as we saw in his work on solar energy that he got most of the information, and therefore the evaluation, wrong.
Tigtog,
You cannot ever say that you preside over a balanced discussion if you delete comment this furiously. It is a bit sad.
@Bilb,
Actually, you were caught by the spaminator. It happens sometimes. [eta: and keeping on trying to publish the same comment over and over again just makes the filterbot even more convinced that you are acting like a spammer]
Shrug.
P.S. I deleted exactly one comment over the weekend. Everything else that went into the moderation filter was published, albeit perhaps redacted.
Mercurius, this is you channelling the Green electoral strategy id, no?
I can’t imagine any ALP apparatchiks subscribing to the idea that a revival of the Australian Democrats on Malcolm’s coin would be a tragedy.
If I was into speculative political fiction I’d say it’s possible Rudd has secretly promised Turnbull that if he starts his own party then there will be a double dissolution. Bob Brown and co are always going on about how we need more PR in Australian elections—could it be their wish is about to come true?
It would be just too funny to watch them complain about having all 76 senate seats up for election, that it’s a sad day for democracy in Oz.
@43 Nice one, Bilb. Direct vituperation at a moderator for doing her job, which includes fetching your
considered commentsunfocused ramblings out of the automated spaminator. Like tigtog, my own “delete” tally for the past month or so is in low single figures, on one hand.May I remind readers that this is a hobby for LP mods, who are not remunerated and pursue this out of personal interest and a desire to engage with the ideas and views for others.
So anybody who wants to make it their mission to make this hobby less enjoyable for us, will find their welcome mat withdrawn, permanently. Seriously, if you have a problem with that, go and start an “LPWatch” blog and bitch about us there.
You need to apologise for casting the most uncharitable aspersions towards a person who is just trying to keep a discussion vaguely on rails, including dealing with a tech environment that sometimes gets in the way of that.
First Minchin now Truffles. Talk about rats fleeing a sinking ship. Can’t wait for Malcolms’ book.
Can we keep the endless nuclear debates to the nuclear threads? It’s bad enough dragging this out every time someone posts a thread on power generation, but to do it here is wholly a derail.
Apologies TigTog.
“unfocussed ramblings” Mercurius? OK, I stand suitably diminished.
BilB
There are some obvious problems with the Franz Trieb claims.
1. Well, the nuclear power option is getting most of the subsidies, 50% of the subsidies in energy worldwide and they are growing with -1% per year. Renewables are getting 10% of the public funding worldwide and they are growing with 25% per year. So you tell me, who will solve the problems of the future. Very simple.
We have no way of knowing what he bases this claim on or how he measures it. Does he include R&D — presumably yes. It would be stunning if this were so.
A more useful measure of subsidy would be to express it as a ratio of actual energy sold in a market place. Nuclear power has, after all, been producing power at industrial scale for half a century. You would expect something operating at this scale to be constantly reviewed to see if it could be made safer and more efficient. Expressed as subsidy per unit of output, nuclear is getting a mere bagatelle compared with renewables. One figure I saw put renewables at about $US17 per KwH and nuclear at about $0.03.
Moreover, nuclear power companies pay taxes whereas renewables get tax write-offs.
I note this also, from your link:
So, Dr Trieb says he’s done the arithmetic, and it seems the World Bank has too; it recently announced it’ll contribute $5.5 billion towards the building of 11 concentrating solar power plants in Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan and Egypt. That’ll triple the world’s current concentrating solar power capacity. And apparently there are many more new builds on the way.
Again, we don’t know what proportion of the build costs this represents, but it’s obviously quite a lot if true. Some of it may be for the desal which is part of the Desertec proposal but it is not clear. What is clear is that they want to build HVDC lines to Europe. They are speaking about a 5000 km line (not counting the connections between the 100GWe of solar collectors they say they are going to spread out across North Africa). HVDC lines in Australia run out at about $2million per km. So there is $10billion for starters, and this must go under water for a long way or take a longer route. So again, the build costs for that sort of thing will be huge. One suspects 5.5 billion won’t be much of a fraction of the ultimate cost, and FiTs aren’t going to be close to enough either.
I’d like to see a budget for this whole project before giving it the nod.
Malcolm can have a new job managing the construction of…
this
for Bob Katter. That way, it guarantees it’ll never get built.
Oh dear God, now Kay Hull. The trickle of Lemmings is turning into an avalanche. This just gets funnier every day. The one highlight of my day now is to watch poor old Dennis Shannahan clutch at straws as he and his laughable credibility go down the gurgler yet again. What is the point of such public flagellation??
Couldn’t resist, eh Fran?
Uteman @ 51.
While accepting that a person of a certain age should never use YoofTalk, all I can say in response to your link is ZOMG…
Otherwise – unbelievable. But from an atheist that is, surely, acceptable.
As for Malcolm, my feelings are mixed, but he’s ever been a quitter…
Sorry Patrick but Durutti opened the door … I had no desire to thread-hijack but really, I wasn’t letting that pass …
A statue of Pope Tony the first (in speedos) would cut a striking silohuette against the twilight sky.
Fran,
Rather than cast endless doubt, have you considered sending Dr Trieb’s office an email outlaying your concerns. When a government officeholder, in this case the German government, comments on national media I would expect the information put across to be well researched and accurate. You have your doubts so you really should investigate at the source. I would expect you would receive a thorough response directing you to a welter of published information.
Undersea cable Morocco to Spain, 13 klms, powering Gibraltar along the way.
ZOMG indeed Fiona.
I have to admit that I’m puzzled about Turnbull as a character. We keep hearing what a towering intellectual he is (see Bernard Keane over at Crikey today) but he seems more given over to impulse and pigheadedness than any recent political leader I can recall. Those aren’t attributes I normally associate with “intellectual”.
It’s Minchin, running like a school kid through the halls off parliament during Malcolms beheading, that will forever define that era for me. Still not 100% why Minchin walked: that’s a far bigger puzzle than an impulsive Turnbull snit.
Uteman @ 57.
I think that “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” – both parts thereof – are now in post-production. Otherwise, if Jason Isaacs were not available – I think that the producers should make an immediate bid for (almost ex-) Senator Minchin’s services.
There are few people who would be more properly typecast.
I’ve got no time for the Liberals, or even much for Turnbull. But the speech he made when voting for the ETS was an exemplary piece of oratory.
His departure is a serious blow to the Coalition, regardless of how their boosters try to spin it away.
No way Fiona, Minchin doesn’t inspire that level of sympathy in an audience.
Abbott on Lateline looks about a thousand years old. I haven’t seen him look this haggard since before the 07 defeat. The marathon has drained every bit of colour out of his face. You’d think that his media minders would have the good sense to shove his head in a bucket of pancake makeup and hold it there for a few minutes if they don’t want to frighten the horses. I’d dearly love to know what sort of hornbags Janet Albrecthsen has in mind when she suggests that the Women of Australia are secretly drooling over this man. I’m thinking curlers, chenille dressing gown and a fag from the side of the mouth with an inch of ash that’s about to fall into the mince.
I am going to give that a try BilB. One of the frustrating things is the lack of clear data on these claims.
I cannot begin to understand why, if people such as Trieb are even close to being accurate in their advocacy, that their suggestions are not attracting more interest than they are where it counts.
Unless in practice it is a lot more expensive per unit of output and/or unable to do the job of coal what would be the reason?
Here in Australia, defence procurement gets to spend squillings is done without any serious feasibility analysis at all. 25-40 billion for subs? No problem. A bunch of second rate tank plinking aircraft for helping invade the Middle East at another 20 billion or so? No problem. So really, if governments make up their minds they want something, it doesn’t need to be useful or cheap.
If they aren’t buying this stuff on a large scale, you can’t but suspect it must be either a lot more expensive than subs or “joint strike fighters” or even less useful.
As I’ve said a number of times though, if someone can show me some way in which some non-nuclear suite of options can do no worse a job than nuclear would of reducing emissions in the same time frame and which could attract majority support, then I’d be happy to campaign for it even if it turned out to be three or four times as expensive. While I am as a rule, against waste, as I noted above, there’s enough other fat in the system we could cut before we could worry about the opportunity cost of this.
Some years ago a delegation of business people from my area here went to Germany to talk with the German government about CSP. They learnt that all of the data had been sent to the Australian government to raise awareness of the possibilities, as Australia was seen as the optimal country for CSP, but they got no reply from the Australian goverment of any sort. So the message to the business delegation was that if the government was hostile to CSP then it would be impossible (at that time in the Howard years) to achieve an installation here. There are 2 main reasons why this has not taken hold here, and they are political apathy and lack of imagination. Send off an email to Prof David Mills in the US if you want to learn of the wall of hostility that he faced for many years. Not just from government but from his academic colleages.
And while you are researching don’t forget to keep an eye on the CO2 clock
http://co2now.org/
.
Uteman
I think someone as narcissistic as Turnbull would simply assume that the statue was going to be of him.
Even more justified since his crucificion over the CpRoS.
That’s not a bad idea alex – beatific, 400 foot high statue of Malcolm Turnbull sighing skyward, bleeding palms faced outwards, “why hast though forsaken me?” writ large on his careworn, furrowed brow. It’d be better if I could convince Katter to make a proper, 400 foot high sepulchre like you used to find in miniature on catholic front yards though. I really dig those. Especially the ones surrounded by goldfish, although in this case we might have to use basking sharks to get the scale right.
Fran @62: “…non-nuclear suite of options can do no worse a job than nuclear would of reducing emissions in the same time frame and which could attract majority support, then I’d be happy to campaign for it even if it turned out to be three or four times as expensive”
Liar, liar, pants on fire!!!
How many times have you said words like these, Fran, without meaning it at all?
Ziggy did not deny the claim today that nuclear could only meet 7% – 15% of our total energy needs, by 2050. By 2050, Fran. Too late for avoiding the tipping points. Only 7% to at most 15% of energy needs, Fran.
What sort of maniac would suggest that we sink billions of taxpayer dollars into a venture than only reduced our emissions by less than the amount we could meet by improved efficiency measures? Someone with a nuclear physics background?
“…non-nuclear suite of options can do no worse a job than nuclear would of reducing emissions in the same time frame and which could attract majority support, then I’d be happy to campaign for it even if it turned out to be three or four times as expensive”
Go on, convince us that efficiency measures are greater than 3-4 times as expensive as nuclear power…???
Malcolm = RadioActive Man or something. I’m sure there’s a connection.
Tempting as it is Elise to do another iteration of the nuclear debate, I suspect enough of the regulars know what I would say for me not to bother saying it. I will simply say that if Ziggy said 15% he was not being ambitious enough. We need to replace fossil fuels. Efficiency measures don’t change that reality, as laudable as they are. I am on record here as being very enthusiastic about doing efficiency, they are the cheapest way to quickly reduce emission by a fair margin — but it’s not enough — not even close, because in the end, we still need energy.
As to whether I’d support anything else, you need to propose something with some costs. Until you do, your claim has no validity.
Maybe Radioactive man Paul – which could cast Chrissie Pyne as “fall out boy”.
Although, I watched “Watchmen” the other day and figure Malcolm as “Doctor Manhattan” – a cruel prisoner of his own awesome, nuclear accident powers, no longer capable of comprehending the implications of mortality and estranged from former friends?
Nah. Like Costello, he’s just a sulk.
Alos Elise
Just checked your Ziggy Switkowski reference:
My view is that if we get to 50 reactors by 2050, they would produce about 75 gigawatts of electricity which would be about 90 per cent of the country’s needs
So a lot more than 7-15%
For the record, assuming a fairly modest growth in electrical capacity between now and 2050 — about 1.5% p.a. — and a starting point of 25GWe (baseload) we’d have just over 46GWe by 2050, which for 90% would imply roughly 41.4GWe which would be 32*1.4GWe reactors.
Fran, apart from the myriad of other problems associated with nuclear, problems some of which are explored by people such as Elise/Scott Ludlam/Irene Kirczenow/Franz Trieb, just think for a minute about
“32*1.4GWe reactors”
and what that really means in human terms. What you have postulated is 32 bays, harbours or rivers each with a white concrete monolithic structure interfering with the aesthetics let alone the ecology. More importantly it represents 32 regional political battles which would make a new pulp mill seem like a local council corner store issue.
This cuts back to Malcolm Turbull’s demise. Malcolm was ousted over a relatively minor political hot potatoe which the public barely understands. Nuclear power is something that everyone has an opinion on. Australia is relatively untouched in the nuclear contamination sense and it is this special status that makes the nuclear issue an intense hot spot of community concern. Any politician who tries to drive nuclear through is risking political career spontaneous nuclear combustion. John Howard for instance.
You might look longingly at France’s nuclear industry and imagine that this has paved the way for the future. Remember, though, that nuclear power was introduced into France at a time when nuclear weapons were seen as a national security essential, and France’s intense national pride lubricated the rapid introduction of its companion nuclear electricity industry. Could this process be repeated today? Improbable to impossible.
A nuclear electricity industry in Australia? That is going to be an interesting question to ask Malcolm Turnbull next year.
BilB said:
Doesn’t look that bad to me.
Roughly half the population thinks it’s Ok in principal, though of course, only a fraction of those think one should be located near where they live. OTOH, in practice, what the current arrangements mean is that quite nasty coal plants — like Hazelwood, which is toxic to those in its footprint — are near where people live. So the challenge for opponents of nuclear is to show that these plants and the gas plants that might one day replace them are inferior in likely performance to something else apart from nuclear.
I wrote to Trieb, because I am interested, but I am especially keen to get rid of coal plants (and to a lesser extent gas plants because they are also very dangerous if you consider the potential damage from a gas pipe rupture andf their emissions as well). As we have been reminded again over the last couple of days, coal is a killer on a scale that utterly dwarfs even the Chernobyl disaster and that is before we even consider climate change.
Don’t get me wrong here, Fran, I really dig thermonuclear power. But that thing that you point to up there, that is very crude. This is real thermonuclear power
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yohkohimage.gif
of the kind that I relate to. Out of this world!!!
This would explain your sunny disposition
The Age’s back page “Are you paying attention?” quiz today has the question “Which electorate in NSW will not be contested by Malcolm Turnbull at the next federal election?”.
The pedant in me immediately answered “presumably all of them”. (Of course there is only one electorate that will not be recontested by Turnbull.)