I do appreciate such posts which help to inform me before judging.
Most of us have unconscious bias, but that should not exclude shifting an opinion on the basis of relevant facts not previously in the public domain.
Very informative @Benny40 thank you
I genuinely now feel Australia is heading in the right direction, albeit slowly. We really do need to connect the whole grid up. Itās our old transmission infrastructure holding us back a bit now.
After Australia is at 100%, we can start exporting our surplus clean power overseas.
Just thinking, I wonder if southern Australia could build pipes to connect our desalination plants up so we can shift an endless supply of fresh drinking water across the country?
You definitely can make big pipes that go a long way. Problem is energy. I think the north to south pipeline that brings water from the Murray irrigation system to Melbourne used 1m diameter pipe, which is a very expensive thing to build over a 1000km distance. Then if you have the pipe, you need to push the water along it. Imagine the energy needed to push 1t of water over 1000km and then multiply it by the tonnes per minute youād need to make a dent in the water shortage. Then add in the energy needed to run the desal system at that rate.
Eye watering amount of energy, Iāve no idea exactly how much other than very very bigly expensive.
Makes the Romans look impressive with their aqueducts.
Gravity is your friend with moving water, but doesnāt do much for you when pumping from the beach down on the south coast.
North to south means itās all downhill so gravity will do the work.
Reading about a seiche causing those earthquakes round the globe, Iāve learned the difference between a seiche and a tsunami.
Give up, youāre not going to make this Word of the Day over ākeriorrheaā.
Can you pronounce it though
Which one? 
Any other one, as youāve now had an unfair advantage in looking them up.
I surrender.
Just to get this off my headā¦
Coal power plants are very expensive to build and operate, but if used flat out they can spread that cost out over a lot of power delivered to the customer. This was the model up until the growth of rooftop solar. Now thereās a huge surge of solar generation during the day, which pushes coal out of the market while the sun is shining.
Now coal canāt switch off, they need to keep the plant hot at all times, so theyāll run at minimum rates and absorb negative power prices during the day and then ramp up to maximum at night. What that means is all the cost of operating the coal plant still needs to get recovered, but now the money is all made at night.
This means that currently consumers are paying for two sets of power infrastructure, the old stuff which is screwing us over at night and the new stuff which isnāt making much money during the day because coal canāt get out of the way. Adding nuclear to that mix would be just as bad from a cost perspective as nuclear also relies on running flat out to spread out their massive capital costs.
The only way for coal to become cost effective again is to rip off everyoneās rooftop solar. That isnāt going to happen. So the idea of coal being a cheap thing we should go back to just isnāt possible in todayās reality. The cheap future is to get these under-utilised expensive behemoths out of the grid and allow newer nimble solutions some room to breathe.
Iām glad that others have learned from my mistakes.
Solar cycles fyi:
Yeah, Iāve already provided a quality reference that the solar cycle causes at most a 0.1C temporary increase in temperature. And being cyclic, it is captured multiple times in the historical record so doesnāt explain why we are seeing a record high global temperature.
Gravity would help move that water yeah?
If you had of watched this it says its more like .5 of a degreeā¦. & impacts lots of other stuff.
I wonder if it also impacts on the polar Jet Streams behaviours?
No. Gravity isnāt your friend when starting at sea level and pushing to something higher 1000km away. Thereās two issues, first youāre net going up hill, second is you are fighting against 1000km of friction from the walls of the pipe.
Pumping liquids or gases over long distances takes a serious amount of energy.