Must watch: Gillard's Press Club Address today

She nailed it, finally putting some emphasis on what I consider the most important points regarding this topic. These points talk about our technological and economical opportunity for Australia's future. Try and catch it if you can, it may be on the ABC News 24 website as an on-demand video later today?

It has been a frustrating couple of weeks; there has been too much focus by the media on people's baseless feelings that this tax will cripple them financially, and that it won't "fix" climate change. It never claimed to fix the environment. These baseless feelings are mostly thanks to Tony Abbott's baseless scaremongering - more and more of which is being debunked as quickly as I can write this post.

Some further very entertaining reading regarding the topic of how it will effect Australian homes: You shut your goddamn carbon-taxin’ mouth | Heathen Scripture (temp)

I have no idea why we as a country have got caught up so much in climate change and fucking carbon tax.

Maybe now instead, politicians could focus on recycling our sewerage for a boost in a water supply. But god forbid, the scaremongering of the science behind drinking recycled piss that is far cleaner than our current drinking doesnt seem to hold sway in a conservative pollies mind. Unless someone came up with the idea of piss pricing, and then another of piss tax, maybe we might see more slap in the face change that should have happened years ago...

We've gotten caught up in it because the government is scared of being left behind, and rightfully so. History repeats itself, and we need to be on the right side of the coin when it does; rich countries that missed the boat on what were then future efficiencies are now comparatively poor (e.g. Africa).

A revolution in energy technology is about to be forced, and forced for good reason(s). The first is climate change, but if you're a climate change skeptic, then consider that we're running out of easily obtainable "dirty" resources anyway. Getting the hard stuff means further ripping our planet apart and at a much higher cost.

No one really wants that - but those big companies want to keep making money, so will continue to rape our planet until there is enough financial incentive to look at other options. So, that is essentially what this is about; finally getting our arses into gear and forcing the development of new clean alternatives. China and Europe have already started, and we need to try and keep up if we want this amazingly wealthy Australian life we have now retained for our children's children and so-forth.

If this goes as well as planned, we'll not only keep up, but be a leader who is able to on-sell tech and expertise, putting us at the forefront of the emerging global industry and our economy will boom even further.

If we don't act all, the industry here will shrink and potentially collapse down the line, as what we can mine and sell will diminish dramatically as there becomes less of a reliance on dirty fuels from the rest of the world (who are going green). Jobs will be lost, and we'll have to eventually buy clean tech and expertise from someone else at inflated costs.

In before the Liberal nutters from your facebook land.

There was only one; Nytcrawler. :P

DJs blames Gillard government taxes for profit plunge

^ Talk about not understanding your own market.

Quote:
According to the DJ's boss, the "aspirational customer" has stopped shopping and was now saving their money and paying down debt.

Mr Zahra said that some of his stores recorded sales falls of as much as 20 per cent on particular days, with foot traffic and the size of purchases by customers both in freefall. The sales dive was across all categories but particularly acute in electronics.

Keeping in mind:
"0? Feeling the pain? Carbon class war? You must be joking - The Drum Opinion - The sense of greed and entitlement in this carbon tax debate is almost beyond belief. (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

He's taking the piss, right? What a moron.

Somewhat related.

Tweet revenge: Turnbull publishes climate critic's number

Quote:
Federal opposition frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull has out-trolled a "troll" by publishing on Twitter the name and phone number of a man he says has been sending him abusive text messages.

"I don't mind abusive emails or tweets but why does Thomas Lynch [mobile phone number omitted] think its ok to send me abusive smses about climate change," the former Liberal leader tweeted today.

And lol:

Quote:
Poll: Who is your preferred Opposition Leader?

Tony Abbott 15%
Malcolm Turnbull 79%
Other 6%
Total votes: 19213.

I'll admit, Turnbull was interesting as an opposition leader. With Abbott it's like watching a retard fight against Fedor Emelianenko.

That is ethically appalling and devoid of professionalism, especially considering his position. It's hard to stomach that there are people like in our political area. Not just that, but they're wanting to run the country. I don't care if he now supports the carbon tax, he's a tool.

They just need to get it done quick. If it get delayed they will be trouble however if the price on carbon goes in now it will be in for over a year before the next election and people will realise nothing much has changed buying power wise. It will be a repeat of the GST OMG the sky is falling everyone will not be able to afford anything and SMEs will go broke yet a year latter nothing.

Absolutely, I made that point on Facebook too.

John Howard said the Liberal government would never introduce a GST. Then in 2000, it did.

When it was announced in 1998, its massive opposition yelled until they were blue in the face all kinds of ridiculousness - the same sorts of things being said now about destroying families and even financial collapse.

Hysterical idiots.

This is what wonks are talking about when they use the term "framing the debate". Abbott has up until now managed to dictate the battlefield for the public debate on the carbon tax and, with the assistance of more the conservative elements of Australian media, been able to make the public see it through the lens of what they stand to lose rather than what there is to gain. It's an easy sell for him, too, given that the loss part is much more immediate and tangible. It's easier for people in general to grasp the notion of paying a bit more for groceries when they go to the store than it is to make them visualise a future with abundant, clean energy.

As it turns out the pain of adopting this policy isn't nearly as acute as anyone thought given that the Government (and I'll admit I'm as surprised as anyone about this) has actually done a good job of mitigating the impact on consumers. This is after all a tax meant to be levied at big polluters and not individual Australians. However this has meant that Abbott (and other elements opposed to this policy) have had to go "over the top" and exaggerate the impact of the tax even more than he'd have to if it actually was bad policy in order to make it seem like he has a legitimate beef, and that's largely how we find ourselves in this ridiculous situation we're in now with confected outrage over a few cents here, or a couple of dollars there, which will ultimately be reimbursed (in some cases with interest) to 90% of Australians anyway.

One of the most popular criticisms levelled at the carbon tax is that it won't do anything to meaningfully reduce global carbon pollution. I agree, to an extent. The common argument that Australia, in global terms, emits a negligible amount of carbon pollution (depending on your definition of "negligible" I suppose) is true. But it's also completely wrong and misses the big picture entirely.

If you look overseas you'll see - and this isn't an exaggeration - that the world really is waiting with bated breath to see what happens here in Australia. Those that care about this sort of thing, that is: foreign governments, journalists, think-tanks and opinion leaders are wondering if we can pull this off. If the Government gets its arse handed to it at the next election it will no doubt be attributed in large part to this tax and that would have devastating implications for the potential for other Governments around the world to stand up and implement similar policies.

On the other hand, if the current Government is returned despite the Opposition, a chunk of the media and a vocal proportion of voters turning their jets on them full burn it may just embolden other policy makers around the world get on with the job of tackling their own levels of carbon pollution. If that happens then Australia will have had a massive impact on global carbon emissions.

All the taxes, pollution and what not aside for the moment, if you need just one more reason to resist what the Opposition is saying it's because what we're seeing right now from them is disturbingly reminiscent of the kind of divisive politics that have been the signature of the Republicans in the US for the last decade or so - promoting parochialism, celebrating ignorance, pandering to most selfish instincts and encouraging the basest emotions of voters. If they were to succeed in using this issue to destroy the current Government at the next election then not only would it signal to other countries that they shouldn't go near their own emissions reductions schemes, it might validate the Opposition's tactics and drag future Australian political discourse in the same direction as has gone in the US - straight into the gutter.

Note that although I've made references to carbon emissions and pollution in this essay I haven't once used the term "climate change". That's because I think you can be a complete climate change agnostic (hell, even a denier) and still see the merit in this policy if you look at it as an instrument of long-term economic security instead of some kind of socialist, tree-hugger plot to let the Government stick their hand in your pocket. But of course for those people to look at it any other way they first have to step back from the frame.

I also haven't talked here about the carbon tax fostering the development and uptake of viable renewable energy alternatives either, since that tends to be a focal point of every article written elsewhere in favour of the carbon tax anyway. I'm just concentrating on the broader political implications of the policy's success or failure since I think that's a separate discussion that hasn't had enough attention.

I'm just going to jot down a few quick points on this rather biased thread

1. Gillard is a puppet
2. The Carbon Tax will be ineffectual at best
3. Tony Abbot is a dumbass
4. The opposition will win the next election purely because they will change leaders at the last moment and any unknown will win against Gillard in a landslide at this point.
5. The best long term energy solution available at this point is nuclear power but that is bad politics due to the greens being against it in general (zealots that they are) and the recent issues in japan which aren't really applicable to australia since we're not prone to earthquakes/tsunami's

You don't need compensation if you don't have this stupid new tax. Saying that 'Australians' will be compensated and only the top 5-10% polluters will be effected is bull s****.

Re: DoWhatUWant

1. Not going near that one. I think resorting to sledging is the fastest way to undermine legitimate debate
2. Most people aren't denying that. If you'd read my post (and tbh I can't blame you for not tackling that wall of text) you'd see I'm someone who supports the carbon tax that acknowledges it would have little to no impact on local carbon emissions reductions
3. See point 1.
4. Quite possibly! Turnbull is a good chance to roll Abbott and beat Gillard with broad appeal, trouble is that he probably supports a carbon tax anyway.
5. 1989 Newcastle earthquake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Great Adelaide Earthquake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia South West Seismic Zone - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The puppet comment was in reference to her being on the strings of the greens.

I did read your post but unlike you i don't agree with doing something that will have no impact just for the sake of doing something.

Australia unlike japan is huge and sure there are regions of plate movement (seriously though that earthquake you linked was 5.6 magnitude which is pathetic) but unlike japan we have the option to not build anywhere near them which is what i was referring to in terms of us not being in the same situation. They knowingly built in those areas and even then withstood the quakes but it was the tsunami that screwed them.

Quote from DoWhatUWant;398279:
2. The Carbon Tax will be ineffectual at best

Ineffectual at doing what? Reducing emissions when considering the global position? Probably. But you seem to have missed a large chunk of the point I made regarding the future of the world's energy; how quickly we act is going to decide whether we sink or sail (economically speaking) when the world adopts clean energy.

And as mentioned earlier, climate change aside, it's only a matter of time until that happens. Quite simply, we're running out of dirty energy; oil is the world's biggest fuel, and the latest reports say that globally we've got about 40 years of it left. Coal is the second biggest, and in Australia looks to last about 150 years at current estimates.

Quote from DoWhatUWant;398282:
The puppet comment was in reference to her being on the strings of the greens.

I beg your pardon, then. I misunderstood what you were getting at.

Oh and FYI, just had a quick looksie; Uranium and Natural gas are both around 50 years too? Even if it's quadruple that, that's not long at all.

If you don't mind my asking rec where are you getting these 40/50 years numbers from for coal/gas/oil/uranium cause those numbers sound significantly off compared to what I've read.

Regardless though there's no economic advantage in shifting to new technologies until they are economically viable (i.e similar cost to existing ones) and they haven't reached that point yet and you gave no arguments to indicate the basis for your claims that this would benefit us financially speaking. Switching to those energies earliest doesn't give us an advantage but a disadvantage until they are at least on par with other energies. This day will come soon enough anyways with the dirty energies constantly rising in price so i see no reason/benefit in artificially stimulating this transition.

@ rec & @DoWhatUWant - There's a lot of variance in those "X years of commodity Y left in the ground" figures floating around and before they're quoted you should check to see if:

1. That figure is based upon ongoing use at current levels OR if the projection takes into account a gradual increase in consumption over time based on global population growth and the maturation of developing nations, and:

2. Whether that figure is for ALL the projected reserves of a given resource in the ground or just the "low hanging fruit".

Otherwise you're comparing apples to oranges and one person saying "50 years of uranium left" and another saying "300 years of uranium left" could both technically be right.

@DoWhatUWant, the argument about new technologies being unproven/not economically viable is one of the most dazzingly disingenuous remarks that keep getting rolled out. Of course some of them are unproven or not economically viable - they're new technologies. That's kind of the point. If they were both proven and economically viable we wouldn't be having this conversation. Instead we'd be saying "Pfft! 'sif fossil fuels! LULZ!"

And yes, the private sector will probably cotton on at some point and left to their own devices they'll invest in developing renewable technologies themselves, but I think it would just be smarter if we had Plan B ready to go before oil hits ",000 per barrel. Hell, Radium (for example) wasn't even discovered until around 1900 and figured out pretty quickly it had some unique properties, medical applications and potential as a source of energy but it didn't do a lot for 35 or 40 years until a Government threw a shitload of money at it and in less than a decade we wound up with atomic bombs and nuclear power. And ironically they were then used to fight socialism, but I digress...

Do people actually realise that already 20% of power here in South Australia comes from wind turbines? Stop and read that figure again and think about it. 20%. A fifth. That's actually a lot, and it's from renewable energy. Right now. We have a target to be at 33% by the end of the decade. Fully one third of power generation in this entire state will be from wind power. No, really.

It'll never be 100% from wind power, of course, because you do need a fair bit of space and the wind is variable. But a bit of wind, a bit of solar (currently in the "not economically viable" category) and a bit of geothermal (currently in the "unproven but promising" category) and it's not unreasonable to think we can have all the power we need. That's not starry-eyed hippie, tree-hugging rhetoric, either. It's achievable, but it'll take time and investment.

Saying that many the current types renewables are unproven or not economically viable is actually valid, but dismissing them because of that is just intellectual laziness. Even the most cursory amount of consideration is enough to conclude that if a concerted effort is made those technologies can be iterated, adapted and applied to our needs faster than anyone realises. And when I say "faster" I still mean like 20 - 30 years, it's just a pity when most people hear that you might as well be saying "1 million years".

A revelation that will no doubt come as a shock to millions is that in all likelihood there will still be a world after next week's Dancing with the Stars, the next WoW expansion, the next AFL Grand Final and our eventual deaths from old age. Just because we won't be there to see it ourselves doesn't mean we can't get a start on making sure it's an alright kind of place to live in.

Right now we're in the driver's seat economically in large part due to our abundance of exportable raw materials, including fossil fuels. This carbon tax isn't going to ruin the economy, in fact if anything could go on to underwrite our economy for decades (albeit not for decades, if you catch my meaning). It's just unfortunate we're not used to being able to grasp concepts that far in advance. If we play our cards right we can get right back in the drivers seat when the world changes cars from fossils to renewables because we'll have such a big head start on the technology. Instead of seeing our economy grind to a halt when nobody wants to buy coal anymore we can switch tracks and start selling them our green tech instead.

The sad thing is too many people, like you, say they see no reason in doing it. But it's not like you'll be the one trying to figure out how to make a more compact solar cell or discover a way improve the thermal transfer coefficient of molten salt. That'll be taken care of for you. You just have to part with a couple of bucks every week (and probably get most if not all back in the end anyway).

Seriously... when did we as a people get to the point where doing nothing at all became too hard?

To balance any anti-nuclear talk coming from Japan.
Fukushima's toxic legacy: Ignorance and fear • The Register
Fukushima fearmongers are stealing our Jetsons future • The Register

I completely agree with Bams post above. I'm a dick at times, and I'll debate either side to gain a better understanding of whats going on. There is advertisement here in Chicago, in the papers, on TV, on the internet, everywhere, about America's steps for environmental change... I can tell you that everyone cares, but no one is willing to put forward any money, but there is significant investment (Way more than ours) from their government, but federal and local for change, and not only that from industries reinvesting power inefficient processors and investment into new environmental friends processors.

Until we make a change so local investment is higher in new technologies we create... then we wont have the ongoing problem of CSIRO/Australian Universities researching, creating and then selling the technology to the US/britain/china... Who then have the patient and sell units of the stuff back to us. If we dont invest, our profits are going to be insignificant in comparison to what it could have been.

I just like pointing out to people that the radiation exposure is greater for a coal fired plant than that generated by a nuclear plant. Damn anti-nuclear hippies I better not catch you eating a banana(although I doubt hippies can afford bananas ATM).

PS love this chart http://xkcd.com/radiation/

Also in regards to nuclear, look up Thorium and MSRs. Also not to mention research in nuclear 'waste' reprocessing is something that's going to be reality soon enough (ie. reuse used nuclear waste).

Major issues with renewables at the moment is power availability and power storage/transmission. eg. 150MW solar plant will only have about 30% available for use. Other problems being great locations for renewables are far away from population density which makes transmission difficult (bring on room-temp superconductors).

^ Hence more research points required. kthx.

That all said, I work in a mining-related company, most of our clients are coal mines.

Quote from Jay;398295:
Thorium and MSRs.

Definitely. Thorium has amazing potential as an energy source and I name-dropped molten salt in my last post. Both definitely need to be explored. Although I've been harping on about renewable energy in my last posts, the argument I'm trying to make is primarily an economic one and so for that reason I'd also support looking into the further development of Thorium based energy generation even though it's technically not a renewable.

Unfortunately at the moment the nuclear energy industry is Uranium-centric and are loathe to promote the benefits of Thorium because it can't be easily substituted into their current fuel cycle and would require a lot of re-tooling or render a lot of their current generating infrastructure obsolete. At least, that's my understanding of why we haven't done something as apparently sensible and beneficial as switching to Thorium overnight. Someone correct me if I'm wrong by all means.

As an added bonus, Australia is possibly sitting on the second or third largest cache of Thorium in the world. So, you know, money. And stuff.

Paul Keating on last night's Lateline talking about the carbon tax, the political climate and the state of the media in Australia.

[Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxsQda_aC3A]

Interesting stuff, but I'm kind of left with a sense of depression from listening to someone talking about what's going on with the level of intelligence and comprehension that Keating has and then comparing that to the level on discourse at ground level. :\

Great watch.

For those who would rather read than watch, an article on the interview:

Paul Keating ridicules 'nutter' Tony Abbott | The Australian

I am bored, and a day of testing has driven me to drink, so I came to troll this thread with my pro-nuclear random thoughts.

This will be a rambling, barely coherent post with no real structure to it, so... like... whatever.

The thing that pisses me off when people go "what's the point of going from coal to nuclear when uranium only has X years left!" is this: Coal is a fucking organic product. That means it only occurs where there was once massive amounts of organic material. Uranium is a fucking element, and will be, like, fucking everywhere man.

There is uranium and thorium on Mars.

There is uranium on the fucking Moon.

Asteroids, planets, moons. There is an estimated 600 trillion tonnes of uranium in the solar system (and 40 trillion tonnes of that is in the Earth's crust... so get digging, bitches).

Australia has 1.6 million tonnes of identified recoverable uranium deposits. 1.6 million fucking tonnes.

A 1.3 MWe reactor will use about 200 to 250 tonnes per year.

There are plenty of articles and papers floating around, so feel free to look them up, but it would take somewhere between 20 to 30 x 1 MWe reactors to meet our carbon reduction targets.

30 x 250 = 7,500

1,600,000 / 7,500 = 213+ years.

Yeah, sure we will sell some, etc, et-fucking-cetera, but remember somewhere amoungst my swearing how I mentioned the 1.6 million tonnes was identified recoverable uranium?

Well they define recoverable uranium as uranium that can be recovered at <= US"30/kg...

...as mining (and hopefully fucking space) technology improves (which it fucking better in the next 100 years), the amount of recoverable uranium will sky rocket.

Hell, in 2007 it increased by 15%, simply because Al Gore annoyed mining executives enough to get off their fat arses and go exploring.

Remember how I mentioned there is an estimated 40 trillion tonnes of uranium in the Earth's core?

And that's just uranium. As people above mentioned, thorium is where the future's at... and it is more plentiful, both on Earth on in space (dddiiiggggs innnn spaaaaace).

It should also be mentioned that the reason thorium is plausible is fast breeder reactors, which use fissible material more efficiently. Well that also means you get more energy per wad of uranium.

Anyway, I am bored now. So I am going to watch some Craig Ferguson and some Futurama.

Oh wow.

He says, she says in a faux election

Quote:
''HOW do you measure how much emissions we're using? How would you do that?'' It's a question at the heart of Julia Gillard's campaign to deliver Australia a clean energy future, yet the vast majority of people the Prime Minister is asking to support her price on carbon would have no idea how carbon dioxide emissions are calculated.

It fell to Andrew Cullen, a young cleaner with an inquisitive mind, to ask the question of Tony Abbott when the Opposition Leader stood before a group of workers in their lunch room at a South Dandenong engine factory this week. ''That's a good question!'' Abbott replied, engaging not just Cullen but the entire room.

''It's actually pretty hard to do this because carbon dioxide is invisible and it's weightless and you can't smell it,'' Abbott began, projecting frankness.

''So it's not something that you can just look at and say: 'Yeah, we can quantify that'.''

I literally lolled. He's really helping that remark by Keating that he's an intellectual nobody.

So, Abbott can't quantify something that's invisible to the senses, but he is a fundamentalist believer in the Christian God? What a hypocrite. ;)

No wonder he is against the tax. He believes carbon dioxide is weightless, so he is probably sitting there going: "Cut emmissions by 15%? but 15% of 0 is 0!!! Mission accomplished!"

Let the Labor PR campaign begin...

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