A career CSIRO scientist, rose to Chief of Division. I don't mind what you think, so long as it makes sense. For abundant clean energy you'll need nuclear.
Melbourne, Australia
Joined November 2015
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All you need to know about Australia's (oh so slow) "energy transition" is summarised in this table of official electricity output data, modified for slightly more user-friendly units (petajoules, PJ).
Here we go again! "Renewables soaring" ("skyrocketing" elsewhere in the same piece). Exaggerations, false claims, all based on capacity, not output, designed to mislead and deceive the poor suckers who don't know better. The renewables lobby will one day be called to account.
Here’s a first, for me at least. You know those phone calls that come from all over the place. Most think of them as spam. Well I just got one from the Gibson Desert. How on earth can they make money this way? Truly a mystery, exciting. Makes those weird calls worthwhile.
It’s Saturday and I get the weekly hard copy of my “newspaper”. In one flick I can see within seconds, in different headlines, CALAMITY, CATASTROPHE, DISASTER. How come? Should I try to summarise? No. Except to say now I believe NOTHING I read any more. Very sad.
Energy, science, emotion:
Imagine if you can
Panic dominates world responses to CO2 impacts
Passion for solar/wind distorts all energy policies
Distrust of nuclear energy diverts all outlook away from the single practical remedy
Imagine
Total failure of science
Impossible?
Not!
This is what nuclear power does to a really fine city, Marseilles, France. Aren’t all you Aussies out there, especially in the Labor party, glad you have kept nuclear out all these years?
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Marseilles tile roofs……in Marseilles! This is what nuclear power and absence of solar-mad energy politics do for a nation. Aussies are led by fools!!
Seen the phrase "I'm passionate about renewables" thousands of times from "energy professionals"?
Ever heard the saying "Love is blind"?
They'll help you appreciate my latest sceptical piece:
Fastest, Cheapest, Best
onlineopinion.com.au/view.as…
"Slow, Costly, Misleading" more like it.
I see that Dr Abdel-Fattah has been awarded a Peace Prize. I'm guessing that must be the rarely mentioned Hitler/Stalin/Tojo 1945 Peace Prize, awarded irregularly because so few qualify.
Stunned to see this announcement csiro.au/en/news/All/News/20… of success in research to replace coal with agricultural waste in the steel industry. Love to see an assessment from any respected Australian pyrometallurgist. My bet is that it's premature.
To all my faithful followers. You will be happy to hear there is a 50% chance of at least nothing happening to me today. (with acknowledgements to our wonderful Meteorological Bureau)
Australia's energy policy, especially the "renewables target", is hopelessly distorted by a failure to understand that just 30% of its fossil-fuel consumption goes into electricity generation. Can't put it any simpler than that.
At last I've had a sensible response to my question, posed for years to Google etc, "what fraction of fossil fuel production goes towards generating electricity". ChatGPT gets it. The others always used to answer a different question. Right answer is 30 - 40%.
Running a country, or the world, entirely on electricity from solar/wind/storage (or anything!) is nowhere near the "proof of concept" or "demonstration" stage. Fragments of good news can't be extrapolated. The chest-beating about renewables is juvenile. Grow up!
Is iron ore a "steelmaking ingredient"? I guess one could say that. "The Australian" just did, in a piece on exports to China. A bit like saying "water is an ingredient of coffee"? What do you reckon? Me? I see it as an insult to "the cornerstone of the Australian economy" (AI).
This is my (rather old) travel bag for toiletries. Much older than Twitter/X. I’m worried. Will it pass Customs?
