Coronavirus/COVID-19

[cecil]

The Coalition's bill to defund ARENA and CEFC was defeated in the Senate, funding continued.

You're missing that funding was still cut by around 25%, and is due to run out within the next year or so with no sign of an extension yet.

It is inevitable that renewable sources of energy will emerge, no wonder there is investment although if renewable is going to be so good, why isn't there more ? It isn't lack of political will, it’s the cost and unreliability, remember South Australia ?

There isn't more because it is still cheaper to use old coal-fired power stations to produce electricity, rather than switching to renewables. However, and it is the key point, for new-build projects renewables are cheaper. Thus, as time passes and coal-fired power stations are closed, the share of renewable energy should expand. This should be significant and quite quick, because the fleet of coal-fired power stations are aging, some significantly, and private companies are beginning to close them early. Yet, and this is a sign of the lack of political will and pandering to their base exhibited by the Libs, they are still trying to build more coal fired power stations rather than renewables even though new build prices of renewables are cheaper per Mwh produced.
Sources if you don't believe me: https://theconversation.com/factche...per-than-renewables-as-an-energy-source-81263

Your comment regarding South Australia is a bit weird seeing (what I believe you are referring to) was caused by a situation initially prompted by coal-fired power stations being offline themselves. The issue has since been resolved by large scale battery projects, which basically everyone advocating for renewables state is essential? There are now numerous instances of the battery projects "saving" the grid when coal-fired power stations fail.

It's not so much a “why should we” argument as the utility of it. If Aus completely transforms, it would make no difference to world emissions. It might give some a feeling of virtue, but that’s all. Is there any point transitioning until it’s enconomically feasible ?

If we don't transition then how can be rightfully compel other countries to transition? Noting that we are undoubtedly a laggard in transitioning. This argument is the whole reason for the Kyoto and now the Paris agreement.

When Germany closed down, I think it was 17, nuclear power stations in 2011, they replaced the source of power with coal fired. Emissions are higher than they were with the Nuclear Stations. To top it off, the owners sued the Government and were awarded 19 bil euros.

German emissions have been trending down for a long time.[/QUOTE]

 

[King Harold]

You didn't have time to watch the documentary, so don't put words into my mouth. Do your homework.

You have jumped onto a bandwagon, void of evidence. I've presented a raft of medical opinions that actually back up Trumps bungled messages.

Trump is a twit, so are mainstream media. I prefer evidence over emotion. Just watch the Michael Moore doco. It will keep you off here and educate you.

watched the doco ,
Yep I owe you an apology , so please accept !
Gore it seems is also motivated by money as is Trump going on what was presented.

not exactly sure what the film told us , except that big business will exploit any chance it can to make more money.
It didn’t paint solar or Turbine power in a positive light , but I don’t believe for one minute that they don’t have a net positive effect.

Re Trump , i don’t agree with you , he is not just a twit. He is far worse than that .
He is morally bankrupt and a compulsive liar.
His latest offering is him boasting he may have saved up to a billion people with the action he has taken re covid.

So no Gore is nowhere near making him look like a saint , but I do realise you were only using a turn of phrase .
At least I hope you were ?

By the way have I missed your raft of medical opinions of Trumps antiseptic injection idea .?
The inference by your posting the media were hard on him ?
Even though the whole world , other than Fox News , called it out for what it was.

 

[dogwatch]

OK I just watched the Planet of the Humans too. Pretty disturbing, but mostly no surprises.

Lots of talking points on various topics and on various segments of the environmental movement. We could discuss them for weeks. I'd certainly like to see/hear some public commentary from alternative sources because some of the "facts" they put forward seemed a bit out of kilter with my understanding of them. However if you accept its underlying thesis, it's pretty much what I said in this thread some time over the last 24 hours - we're all f**ked.

Actually it's not quite as simple as that. It hints that there might be a way out for long term survival. This escape route involves everyone in the industrialised world consuming less, abandoning our love of economic growth, stopping the earth's population from growing any further, rooting out corrupt power and corrupt public figures, ensuring every segment of industry/society adheres to a strict discipline of restraint and eschews greed, and stopping billionaire industrialists from exerting influence over public policy for their own benefit.
OK?

No? ... ah well then ... we're all f**ked.

 

[cecil]

OK I just watched the Planet of the Humans too. Pretty disturbing, but mostly no surprises.

Lots of talking points on various topics and on various segments of the environmental movement. We could discuss them for weeks. I'd certainly like to see/hear some public commentary from alternative sources because some of the "facts" they put forward seemed a bit out of kilter with my understanding of them. However if you accept its underlying thesis, it's pretty much what I said in this thread some time over the last 24 hours - we're all f**ked.

Actually it's not quite as simple as that. It hints that there might be a way out for long term survival. This escape route involves everyone in the industrialised world consuming less, abandoning our love of economic growth, stopping the earth's population from growing any further, rooting out corrupt power and corrupt public figures, ensuring every segment of industry/society adheres to a strict discipline of restraint and eschews greed, and stopping billionaire industrialists from exerting influence over public policy for their own benefit.
OK?

No? ... ah well then ... we're all f**ked.

I'll flag I haven't had a chance to watch the Doco yet, but from reading the few posts about it here it makes me think it ties in with the "degrowth" movement. It is gaining some (relatively minor) steam here in Melbourne, with some academics pushing for a move towards it. This article in The Conversation is an interesting read for anyone who has watched the doco and wants to have a quick look https://theconversation.com/life-in-a-degrowth-economy-and-why-you-might-actually-enjoy-it-32224

 

[ScragCity]

OK I just watched the Planet of the Humans too. Pretty disturbing, but mostly no surprises.

Lots of talking points on various topics and on various segments of the environmental movement. We could discuss them for weeks. I'd certainly like to see/hear some public commentary from alternative sources because some of the "facts" they put forward seemed a bit out of kilter with my understanding of them. However if you accept its underlying thesis, it's pretty much what I said in this thread some time over the last 24 hours - we're all f**ked.

Actually it's not quite as simple as that. It hints that there might be a way out for long term survival. This escape route involves everyone in the industrialised world consuming less, abandoning our love of economic growth, stopping the earth's population from growing any further, rooting out corrupt power and corrupt public figures, ensuring every segment of industry/society adheres to a strict discipline of restraint and eschews greed, and stopping billionaire industrialists from exerting influence over public policy for their own benefit.
OK?

No? ... ah well then ... we're all f**ked.

We just need to build a warp drive and leave our solar system and find other habitable planets that we can harvest to continue our economic growth

 

[dogwatch]

We just need to build a warp drive and leave our solar system and find other habitable planets that we can harvest to continue our economic growth

It's no spoiler to say that right at the start of the doco a bloke suggests that same thing but then says "no, we'd probably f**k up that place too".

Bottom line is you can change a lot of things but the very traits that made humans so successful will probably be their undoing. You can't change human nature.

 

[Dry Rot]

Anyone silly enough to download the govt's new COVAIDSafe spyware app?

Love the name, so too would George Orwell.

We are only a few steps away from China's Social Credit citizen surveillance state.

 

[dogwatch]

Anyone silly enough to download the govt's new COVAIDSafe spyware app?

Love the name, so too would George Orwell.

We are only a few steps away from China's Social Credit citizen surveillance state.

You can see the hand of Scotty from marketing in the naming of the app. Did you hear the presser? They had a range of reputable non-politicians lined up to say how safe it was and - carefully rehearsed lines - how good the Australian public have been and no doubt will continue to be during this crisis. Also how important it is to protect our health workers.

A lot of that is of course true but it was so hamfistedly orchestrated with a combination of flattery and emotional blackmail (they didn't have "the stick" at their disposal on this occasion). The delicious irony of this is that they need to do all this sucking up because the public have been lied to by politicians of all persuasions for decades, and this lot has taken freedom from information and covert surveillance to totally new levels in recent years. Chickens coming home to roost.

Having said all that, yes I do intend to download and install the app. In these awful circumstances the possible good outweighs the bad. And the bad ain't really that bad when you consider they've already got WAY more surveillance of us than anything this app will tell them.

 

[D Mitchell]

With regard to the bolded, what exactly are you referring to? German emissions from energy generation last year were the lowest they've been for decades (see figure and raw data here), and certainly lower than they were in 2010/2011/2012, so just wondering if you mean something more specific than that.

My source is

Jarvis, Stephen; Deschenes, Olivier; Jha, Akshaya (December 2019). "The Private and External Costs of Germany's Nuclear Phase-Out" (PDF). National Bureau of Economic Research. Cambridge, MA

Among its conclusions are that the shut down led to an increase in CO2 emissions of 36.12 megatons p a. and that what Germany should have done was to phase out coal fired retaining nuclear rather than the reverse. Disclaimer, I’ve relied upon the Abstract, not the full report (you have to pay for that). Your graph shows diminishing emissions were most achieved between 1990 and 2009, 2 years before the shut down. From 2011, emissions increased in 2012 and 2013, dipped in 2014 then increased again until 2016. That’s consistent with the NBEC analysis. CO2 isn't the only gas emitted. The UN convention takes into account other gasses, converted into CO2 equivalents, there's a bit of tinkering.

 

[ScragCity]

Anyone silly enough to download the govt's new COVAIDSafe spyware app?

Love the name, so too would George Orwell.

We are only a few steps away from China's Social Credit citizen surveillance state.

Yeah, I've downloaded it. I'm all for protecting our privacy but I don't really see an issue with voluntarily submitting what is essentially just location data. And to be honest, I used to be a lot more libertarian in my views until recently. The government has already had to enforce stay at home orders which is far more Orwellian in my mind than asking us to download an app. If I didn't think the app had real utility then I'd be against it but it's honestly our best option if we want to ease restrictions any time soon. Having said that, I can definitely understand why someone might not want to download it.

 

[philmb]

Anyone silly enough to download the govt's new COVAIDSafe spyware app?

Love the name, so too would George Orwell.

We are only a few steps away from China's Social Credit citizen surveillance state.

Yep, I've downloaded the app. I think it's a few weeks late (at least there's a ready app for the next time a similar requirement emerges), but this is for the good of society and being able to rebound quicker...With pretty low numbers and high testing already, I'm confident the contact tracing measures in place likely remove the necessity of this app - this app though, I hope, gives Government the final assurance it needs for new cluster contact tracing so as to lift stay-at-home restrictions

 

[D Mitchell]

You're missing that funding was still cut by around 25%, and is due to run out within the next year or so with no sign of an extension yet.

My post was in response to an assertion that Abbott cut funding as soon as he was elected. Government funding rightly has conditions and limits. Governments have budgets. ARENA does not have an absolute right to funding.

T..... and this is a sign of the lack of political will and pandering to their base exhibited by the Libs, they are still trying to build more coal fired power stations rather than renewables even though new build prices of renewables are cheaper per Mwh .....

As far as I know, there are no planned coal fireds. I'm aware of a proposed contribution by Government towards a feasibility study for a station in Nth Qld. If that's right what's the basis for your accusation of lack of political will ?

Your comment regarding South Australia is a bit weird seeing (what I believe you are referring to) was caused by a situation initially prompted by coal-fired power stations being offline themselves...

The last coal-fired in SA was closed in May 2016. There were a series of blackouts from December 2016 to February 2017. SA’s wind powered electricity was supplemented by coal-fired from Victoria. In one of the blackouts, that failed, in another there was supposed to have been destruction of power lines. If a State Government wants to have reliable power it has to have a reliable source capable of overcoming unusual events. SA didn’t because it relied upon an unreliable source. If they’ve solved the problem by use of batteries, good. My understanding is that storage technology is still not reliable enough to enable the amounts of power necessary to run a State, let alone a country, to be stored from intermittent power sources.

If we don't transition then how can be rightfully compel other countries to transition?

It's unrealistic to think that Aus could compel anyone, let alone China, India, US. The usual way of expressing what I think you are getting at is that Aus must transition so that it can say to others that they should etc. That's similarly unrealistic. The big emitters aren't persuaded by moral considerations. The US pulled out of Kyota, China agrees not to increase its emissions beyond 2030, in the meantime building coal-fireds as quickly as it can on its version of the moral imperative, that it is trying to lift its population out of poverty using cheap energy just like the West did.

German emissions have been trending down for a long time.

A very long time. I responded to the same point made by Arkangel above.

 

[Dogs_R_Us]

Amazed at the tin foil hats revealed by some who I thought would be better than that. You do know that you can give a fake name if you’re paranoid enough, and the data is deleted after 21 days? Your (fake) name, age range, phone number and postcode, which is all the registration asks for, are bound to be misused by the gummint, or Chinese hackers, or the CIA, right?

 

[BEaston]

Amazed at the tin foil hats revealed by some who I thought would be better than that. You do know that you can give a fake name if you’re paranoid enough, and the data is deleted after 21 days? Your (fake) name, age range, phone number and postcode, which is all the registration asks for, are bound to be misused by the gummint, or Chinese hackers, or the CIA, right?

There's nothing really tin foil hat about thinking the government may misuse any data they get their hands on, either intentionally for nefarious purposes or just by simple incompetence (not enough data protection for example). Having said that though, everything I've read about the app so far indicates it's probably pretty well protected/unlikely to be misused.

 

[wayniac]

I don't mind you posting this stuff as it keeps us all on our toes (although it's a bit long) but it's only fair to quote your source when a substantial part of it is verbatim from one person, in this case Janet Albrechtsen of the Australian (31 March 20). In fact apart from the first paragraph it appears to be all her work.

Must say I'm enjoying the wide-ranging debate(s) and the material being posted. There's so much material that I can't keep up!
Mrs dogwatch and I are going to watch the Planet of the Humans doco tonight. Thanks for alerting me to it.

I quoted Albrechtson because it was the first one that came up on a Google search. Loads of other commentators from the industry have remarked on the ineptitude of the Industry funds.

I ran a mutual fund in the USA and believe me, the regulation is much tighter than here in Australia. Blind Freddy could have seen the collapse coming and not to have a reserve of cash to pay out a pittance to their members is incompetence.

Most of the dividends paid from our "blue chip" stocks has been at the expense of increased borrowing to fund this fallacy. The price earnings of the S&P once more hit a high and when that happens we always see a return to the mean. (The mean is also indeterminate).

Some of the smarter operators went almost 100% cash months ago.

 

[wayniac]

I doubt the two of them understand what they are posting.... in fact, I would say it’s probably just trolling.

Wow, just wow. Can you even read?

 

[Sharpiesadog]

I’ve downloaded this app. Both my wife and I work for ourselves and are currently out of work so anything that helps things move towards normal are essential for us.
I’m not too worried about privacy, we can get tracked all the time by google and other online presences. This app doesn’t track where you have been, only who you have been in contact with.
Even if it did track location, I don’t care if they know that I have been to Woolies and had a kick in the park with my sun. Hardly earth shattering information.
Hopefully cases will continue to be low and we can all return to normal life ASAP.

 

[ivan rassmussen]

I quoted Albrechtson because it was the first one that came up on a Google search. Loads of other commentators from the industry have remarked on the ineptitude of the Industry funds.

I ran a mutual fund in the USA and believe me, the regulation is much tighter than here in Australia. Blind Freddy could have seen the collapse coming and not to have a reserve of cash to pay out a pittance to their members is incompetence.

Most of the dividends paid from our "blue chip" stocks has been at the expense of increased borrowing to fund this fallacy. The price earnings of the S&P once more hit a high and when that happens we always see a return to the mean. (The mean is also indeterminate).

Some of the smarter operators went almost 100% cash months ago.

I appreciate you’ve got industry experience. Dogwatch’s point was that you didn’t “quote” her, your post read like it was your words. It helps with context if you attribute someone else’s words, otherwise it’s plagiarism. .

 

[ivan rassmussen]

One thing that is abundantly clear on this thread in recent days, is that as (almost) all posters have made their arguments respectfully and relatively clearly, and discussions have crossed numerous essential issues of concern, Bulldogs BF posters really should replace the current ‘leaners’ inhabiting the Federal parliament. There are enough divergent views to develop some solid policies, a predominant absence of slogans, and 100% of us support the best club on the planet. Personally, I nominate dogwatch for leader, as he is measured, erudite, and seems very well-read. Plus he wouldn’t have to relocate!

 

[NBates]

Lol! Up in arms about the new app? Here's a shocking fact. The government can already find out where you are if they want to.

The app simply targets CV19 and lets you know if you've been around someone who has/had it.

 

[wayniac]

LOL, 10:00 ABC News. NAB cut their dividend and are trying a 3 Billion capital raising.

But I'm a troll. How much have industry funds invested in our great banks?

And should you have a milion in our banks, just remember that the $250,000 bank guarantee is just that.

If you have Westpac, St George, Bank of Melbourne, Bank SA. It's the same owner. You could lose 3/4 of your cash if that's your idea of diversification.

Yours Janet....

 

[LittleG]

Wow, just wow. Can you even read?

I was wrong about you. Apologies.

 

[wayniac]

I was wrong about you. Apologies.

No worries, we're all in this together. My 87 year old Mum is in lockdown in Leeds, UK. Called her yesterday, she's fine. Old school as they say. She hasn't left her flat for 3 weeks. Her father died aged 43 when I was one year old. We all coped in much harder times.

 

[House_of_Dahl]

I don’t care if they know that I have been to Woolies and had a kick in the park with my sun. Hardly earth shattering information.

Personally I'd say developing your own working fusion reactor to be pretty earth shattering information.

 

[Sharpiesadog]

Personally I'd say developing your own working fusion reactor to be pretty earth shattering information.

I've got on the back of my DeLorean!

I can also let everyone know everything is back to normal by March 2021, and we win 3 flags in four years from 2022. Been there numerous times to enjoy them.