We are reaching peak melt season in Greenland
Todays melt is BIG .
What the ā ā ā ā ā ā ā ā ā ā ā ?
Labor has asked the Morrison government to explain why a Great Barrier Reef-focused charity received jobkeeper despite still having hundreds of millions of dollars remaining from a nearly $500m grant it received three years ago.
The Great Barrier Reef Foundation, which expanded from six to 38 fulltime staff after accepting a $443m grant that it did not request from the Turnbull government in 2018, confirmed it received about $351,000 in jobkeeper payments in the 2019-20 financial year.
It received another $50,000 from a federal program to boost cashflow for small and medium-sized businesses and not-for-profit organisations during the pandemic.
Labor wrote to the federal treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, asking him to confirm and justify the payments after they were reported in the Australian Financial Review.
I mean for climate change deniers, its OK to be proven wrong, its just your kids and their kids ( if they have any due to falling male fertility ) will have to live with the consequences of pushback from some vested interests and politicians like Scomo and Joyce.
The preponderance of views of leaders around the world is to cut emissions. Car companies are going electric, Banks are refusing to fund coal mines, utilities are going renewable and despite the protestations of the likes of B1408, we will be forced to cut back on fossil fuel use for energy and thatās a good thing for all of us.
Yeah, but how goodās Ariarne Titmous? And, Go Sharkies!
Iām not against removing fossil fuel based carsā¦I want it to happen for the right reason though, not via mass manipulation by the Fabian UN and the Fabian MSM (and the Fabian Blitzers).
Whilst China is still installing coal power stations willy nilly, Australia has basically shifted all our manufacturing off shore to them, and it has made fark all difference to global CO2 levelsā¦maybe even made it worse, since there are no EPAs in China.
Make no mistakes, the core reasons for the closure of Australian aluminium, steel and car manufacturing is mostly based on power costs AND the pressure brought to bear from people like you to āsave the planetā. The shift of all these wonderful industries to China has made NO difference to CO2 levels, and just achieved the destruction of the livelihoods of tens of thousands of Aussie workers because of the lack of foresight of the woke people in Australia.
Great, destroy Australian peoples livesā¦for the total gainā¦wait for itā¦nothingā¦thats what I am on about.
This is an interesting one. I agree with you 100% that power prices are causing a massive problem to the Australian economy. But the problem isnāt the obvious.
The SEC in Victoria created a super cost efficient power supply. Low cost coal for base load. High cost gas and low cost stored hydro for peaks. It worked well and made us cost competitive.
Hazelwood was the oldest and least efficient coal power plant in Victoria. It was the most polluting in the Southern Hemisphere. It also had an absolutely catastrophic mine fire that caused massive health issues to residents over months, potentially years. The mine footprint was limited. It made sense for a whole range of reasons to shut it down and replace it. I grew up literally line of sight to that power station, I could hear the roar every time they had to vent pressure to atmosphere. My grandfather built that place, so itās personally extremely odd to see it come down, but thatās life.
The question is how to replace it.
A new coal plant doesnāt stack up for a number of reasons. First, brown coal is the absolute worst possible fuel. Black coal in NSW is far preferable if you must use coal. Second, the business case for coal doesnāt work anymore. You canāt guarantee a 25 year return on investment on a coal power plant, no bank will fund it.
But thatās fine, thereās a demand for electricity and the private market will just build alternative types of power generation to meet that demand. Nope.
The Australian government is a massive risk to any large scale private energy investment. By destroying the carbon policy that Labour implemented, the Liberals put a massive red flag on investment in Australia. Itās quite obvious to everyone overseas that this policy environment canāt last given the global trends, so nobody is willing to invest billions of dollars in energy right now.
Itās ironic that the Liberals attempt to make power cheaper by eliminating climate action has backfired so spectacularly.
Now none of what Iāve said here is based off climate change being real or fake. This is pure economics. Bankers donāt give a ā ā ā ā about climate change, they care about risk and return on investment.
If we had a stable climate / energy policy, you would see far more private investment in the sector. Cost of generation would be reduced. The broader economy would benefit.
The other factor driving up energy prices is the massive over investment in distribution. Privatisation of this sector set specific profit margins for transmission. Now every private company needs to show profit growth, so they needed to find ways to get more cash out of a regulated cap. The answer was capital investment. If the infrastructure is upgraded, the private company can increase the cost of transmission to pay for that investment. The result has been gold plating of our energy infrastructure and stripping back of emergency response capacity.
So yeah. Power prices in this country are ā ā ā ā ā ā . But itās largely due to the uncertainty caused by lack of emissions regulation rather than overly harsh climate action.
6 Likes
I do like to spruik this.
This is a free government service that compares power prices. Itās awesome. I highly highly recommend everyone do this. My folks saved $1k per year with this.
If anyone is on welfare, or knows someone who is, they give you cash just for opening a profile on their site. Donāt even need to change power providers.
Just absolute no brainer to do this every year or so.
Big claim. Regarding the car industry I seem to remember it was because Coalition govt refused to bail them out, did the sums and could see they werenāt going to lose many votes denying that slice of corporate welfare. Why they needed bailing out -
āFifteen years ago, the Holden Commodore led the market with close to 90,000 sales per year. Today, Australiaās top-selling car notches up a little over 40,000 annual sales.
There is not a car factory in the world that can survive on such small volumes, other than luxury brands that command premium prices. The UK car industry survives because it exports eight out every 10 cars it manufactures (in 2016, 1.35 million of the 1.7 million vehicles produced).
But Australia couldnāt export its way out of trouble because it is surrounded by developing countries with much cheaper labour costs. The minimum wage in Thailand equates to less than $2 an hour (Australian dollars, so about Ā£1.20). Car assembly line workers are paid more generously ā about $6 an hour (Ā£3.65), or close to $12,500 a year (Ā£7660) ā but itās nowhere near the average Australian car manufacturing worker wage of $69,000 (Ā£42,850).
You can all bite meā¦had the solar panels and battery inspected and commissioned this morning.
6 Likes
That post cost you fractionally less, but you canāt put a price on smug satisfactionš
1 Like
Which battery did you get?
1 Like
Sonnen. 10kwh.
1 Like
Sorry to be āFabianā Benny, but the Adam Smith based lassez faire exponential growth based private enterprise model is the biggest Ponzi Scheme in history. Eventually the abundant resources will dwindle in an inflationary spiral and it will crash. The crash will be triggered by massive stresses of climate change, destruction and obsolescence of built capital, and scarceness of the very resources that allowed it to grow exponentially with human population over the last 200 years.
We are farked. ( OK maybe not us, but our kids. )
2 Likes
I agree with you, but Iām not sure how that has anything to do with my post.
1 Like
$$?
I only got an all up price but i think it was about $8K, and got a total Vic govt rebate of something over $5k.
If you didnāt get the battery, youād get a rebate on the panels.
I think, all up, after rebates, it was $13.8K, but that included an $800 extra of a jobbie that goes straight to the battery for power if thereās a blackout.
Wait this was your place?
230 kilometres away.
I agree with your post. I found it informative, back in my early career I was posted out bush to live in Traralgon and work at Maryvale Mill. I only lasted about a year. Air quality down there was really bad at times.
What ever coal there is in the ground out in the valley should stay there . Its basically dust that burns.
.
1 Like
Thanks. Let us know how it works out for you.