Abbott & NLP: x2 Lost Wars Already, #3 Renewable Energy

[Mugwump]

^ fair enough, David, but we were talking about a mature Western democracy, not a genocidal regime. You'd be hard-pressed to make the case that it concerns a Prime Minister supporting fossil fuels when they represent about 80% of world energy consumption and 30% of the country's net exports.

[pietillidie]

^Again, you're misrepresenting the facts. He's doing more than "supporting fossil fuels", if that weren't bad enough already. Abbott is actively promoting and funding fossil fuels, and actively spurning and defunding renewables.

It is a completely false framing of the matter to put it any other way because he himself has overtly ratified his position with boundless handouts, PR and diplomacy for fossil fuels on the one hand, and funding cuts and negative PR for renewables. Funding cuts! Negative PR such as his BS with Alan Jones on wind turbines! Not even a rational phase in: Active deterrence!

And WTF has he done for the other 70% of exports? Do you even mix with the rest of the world beyond fossil fuels?

Abbott has mismanaged the export mix and revenue streams by over-weighting commodities, pushing the Aussie dollar up and crushing the rest of that 70%!

He has handed tourism and education racist PR; he has made endless cuts to education; he has attracted grossly negative publicity for his views on global warming and his refusal to protect the Barrier Reef and forests.

This bloke is a massive menace to the other 70% of exports, and now the times are changing with commodities down, the cost of his mismanagement is finally being made visible, and the nation is suffering because of it.

On culpability, Mugwump, you also said a similar thing about the culpability of the oil baron and oil CEO who negligently invaded Iraq. Apparently, all people have to do to satisfy your criteria of moral action is to have a few layers of public relations and low-ranking minions in between.

[Mugwump]

^ much of the remaining 70% of exports consists of red stuff they dig up in the west and put on boats near Port Hedland, and i thought he was pretty keen on those as well. As was Keating, and just about any PM you care to name. Australia's lifestyle is built on hard commodity exports, and if you think we're going to be anywhere near as prosperous based on exporting education, tourism and internet products, or even wool and wheat, i have an eastern seaboard to sell you.

None of that, of course, says that resource taxes should not be levied and used to help grow emerging industries, and also lower carbon fossil fuels such as natural gas, since it is a major export and likely to play an increasing part as coal is backed out of the global energy mix. Howard and Costello have much to answer for, in using a commodity windfall to buy votes with tax cuts rather than build a sovereign fund for some later government to, er, speculate with.

Since Abbott's clear proposition in getting elected was that he didn't buy AGW, however, I can understand him not rushing to plough dosh into renewables because Ptid thinks it's treasonous to do what he said he'd do.

[pietillidie]

Nice deflection again, dragging in the general commodity cycle, as if that has anything at all to do with this discussion. You really are the master: No one is arguing or has argued commodities are going to vanish tomorrow.

Also, Keating is a great contrast because he is respected for modernising the Aussie economy and social perspective (prior to the present networked computing age), not because he was a wandering PR agent for fossil fuels, nor a spineless git living off the cyclical income of commodities while actively quashing future prospects and externalising costs.

The issue is about responsible policy and leadership for the good of the whole. To reiterate because you keep avoiding the fact, Abbott has actively de-funded renewables, and has completely neglected other services, allowing them to be smashed by the dollar and his own shocking international PR.

Abbott hasn't even been neutral; he has been quashing renewables. And let's not forget his earlier de-funding of science and the CSIRO.

You also keep avoiding the fact that the costs of fossil fuels are being externalised and postponed; where is your accounting for those costs? You can't pretend Abbott is doing the right thing by going for the income when he's also postponing the costs. Potentially astronomical costs, too, when you think of an increase in extreme weather events, or say the decline of the Barrier Reef.

As you know full well, not all capital investment is of the same quality: Some investment produces better careers, less pollution, more useful infrastructure, and so on. Mining would just about be at the bottom of the pile in that list, and the crime here is not making money from mining, but elevating it above much better alternatives, to use a pun, and neglecting the costs.

And one of the worst of those costs you keep avoiding is this: Every day renewables are delayed is another day of sustenance for many of the most bloodthirsty thugs and terrorists on the planet. Fact. Indisputable fact. Many of the very same terrorists who threaten Australian lives, no less.

Moreover, almost every economist on the planet has been calling for Australia to diversify its revenue streams by taking full and serious advantage of education and tourism, especially given the rise of service exports despite the ridiculous dollar valuation. The importance of the shift has been pushed for a long time now, and received wide coverage earlier this year:

http://www.afr.com/news/world/asia/services-exports-can-save-australia-from-the-commodities-bust-20150417-1mmjsx

http://www.smh.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/iron-ore-no-longer-our-biggest-export-20150313-142za6.html

Also, note that now your moral schema clears people to do anything they like once elected, that same wonderful moral schema that ratified the crimes and chaos of George W. Bush. Does being elected clear what that scumbag did, too? People vote on the basis of lots of things, and in the end are pushed into a single vote with a grab bag of stuff thrown in; that in no way justifies negligence and destructiveness on any related issue.

Again, for you there is always someone else to hide behind, no matter how poor or how negligent the leadership or use of power.

You sound a heck of a lot like a shoddy PR agent for a certain industry. Don't allow your ample intellectual and moral capabilities to be snookered by a very ugly, very thuggish industry when you have the brains and mobility to contribute otherwise.

[Tannin]

[Mugwump]

^ fair enough, Tannin, i was simply working from his (in)famous and well-publicised statement that climate change was "crap" (one of the moments that convinced me he was unfit for the office). Happy to stand corrected.

[Tannin]

No apology required - it must be very hard for an expat to follow his very odd and unashamedly devious performances on this issue.

Abbott undoubtedly either doesn't understand the science even in outline, or (worse) doesn't care. But he is clever: except by accident, he never, ever comes out and says what he believes. (Once in a blue moon, doubtless to the horror of his minders, he lets something slip. The two best-known examples are his notorious "climate change is crap" remark, and his much more recent "coal is good for humanity" idiocy.) His policy is, and for years has been, to pay vague and pious lip-service to the science, to (for example) to promise ongoing support for the long-established and important bipartisan renewable energy target (brought in by Howard himself, let us remember), and to repeatedly claim that he "accepts" or "believes in" climate change. (As if it was something like a god or a dream that you can "believe in" rather than a physical reality which exists independent of anyone's opinion and which can be and has been demonstrated scientifically beyond all reasonable doubt.)

But he does so - every single time - in a way which is calculated to send a message of denial to all of his anti-climate supporters. Very clever. Very slippery.

Abbott is a past master of untruth and his favourite technique - as demonstrated here - is the smartest way to lie of all: to tell the exact truth, but to tell it so unconvincingly that everybody "knows" you are lying.

[Mugwump]

^ptid, not sure where to start with all that. You asked immediately above “WTF has he done for the other 70% of (non-fossil-fuel) exports”… I pointed out that this 70% is heavily laden with hard commodities, which he has strongly supported, and you considered that “deflection”. If that’s deflection, I’d hate to play darts with you.

Of course I’m not saying that whatever a government does after election is ok if they trailed it in advance. I was just responding to the absolutist, totalitarian idea that lawful policy choices are “treason”, which is where this discussion began. Bizarre in itself, I just thought it even more bizarre when the policies were pretty predictable. As a conservative democrat, I accept the possibility that truth reflects the values and judgements of independent wills, and that most people (even on the Left ) act in basically good faith, even if they are misguided. There are exceptions to this of course ; it may be that Abbott is one, but it’s not obvious to me that he is simply malevolent. Short of outright barbarous behaviour (eg ISIS), I lack your sense of certainty about the motives of others.

An apologist for fossil fuels ? I do think that reasonably priced energy is central to living standards and that much misery is caused by sudden economic dislocations. I also know that modern life depends upon the energy system we have today. If that makes me an apologist, then so be it.

In that regard, since I serve on the Board of a speciality chemicals company, I know lots of well-qualified people whose pay cheque does not depend on fossil fuels, and the great majority of them believe that renewables are not yet technically and economically viable at scale. Since I’ve not personally analysed the numbers myself, and there is so much partisan presentation of data and contrary opinion on this subject, it’s really a matter of upon whom one relies upon for the best analysis. In that regard, I'll read the links (inter alia) Tannin posted above with interest, when I start leave in ten days time

[Tannin]

[Mugwump]

Yeah, maybe it's just all the pictures in hard hats, and the general air of vituperation and allegations of mining company collusion that my various leftwing friends post on FB. If he hasn't been cosying up to the big miners, I'm sure he will soon, when he's stopped badgering them about prices (funny business, this free-market stuff).

In case it is not clear, I'll be perfectly delighted when we produce power through renewables, and I sold my shares in oil companies a long time ago out of concern about AGW when the scientific opinion seemed to coalesce into something near consensus. The issue is about viability and technology and transition, not direction of travel. I also think that Abbott's government is pretty poor, as best I can judge from this far away. Even when I agree with his general intent (eg on border control and government cost containment), I often don't admire the bullying methods. But claims like "treason", "torture", "child abuse", "truth and reconciliation commissions", etc, undermine the precision that should fix in place a true critique of policy and methods. We should be more serious than that.

[Tannin]

I stand by my use of the term "treason". What Abbott is doing is far more dangerous in the long term than anything, for example, that Nazi sympathisers in England did (or even wanted to do) during the war. If we had lost the war, Hitler would be long dead now anyway. Governments - even the very worst ones - come and go and in a decade or a hundred years, or at most in a few hundred years, life can go on. But destruction of the biosphere can never, ever be repaired or made good. From the point of view of history as it will eventually be written, Abbott's crime is far, far worse than anything Quisling or the Taliban or Pétain or Guido Fawkes ever did.

[Mugwump]

[Tannin]

By the way - and on an entirely different thrust - you could do a lot worse than follow at least the high points of the renewable energy industry's rapid growth via a suitable news site such as the excellent Renew Economy - http://reneweconomy.com.au/ - which is run by the same chap who founded the now defunct Climate Spectator back before the then-current owners sold it out to Murdoch. Renew Economy is, of course, all in favour of renewables: nevertheless, it has very good coverage of the industry from an Australian perspective but with lots of international news as well. It is most impressive if you visit it one or twice a week for a month or two: over time, the sheer volume of major renewable wins rapidly becomes very persuasive. Most persuasive of all are the hard news items: major contracts signed, big projects coming on-line, and the relentless march of cost reduction.

More esoteric but also of interest is http://www.wattclarity.com.au/ which is ruthlessly agnostic with regard to fossil vs renewable generation but focuses simply on the workings of the Australian wholesale electricity market. There is a great deal to be gleaned from its pages about the nuts and bolts of integrating renewables into the grid; pricing and demand patterns, and so on, including amazing real-time graphic readouts of all the electricity being generated in Australia, colour-coded so you can see the coal - wind - solar - gas - hydro mix at the present minute. You can also follow things like the flow of power between the different states. Beware! You can quickly lose untold hours if you start reading this stuff!

If you are short on time, just flick into Renew Economy for a few minutes a couple of times a week.

[HAL]

No I don't think I can do follow things like the flow of power between the different states.

[Tannin]