Thursday, July 10, 2008

Q&A, Andrew Bolt, Helen Coonan, and some idiots

Climate change.

Andrew's wasted, he can't address the questions, not enough time and the audience is stacked like Dolly Parton!
Emerson was running around in circles waving his arms around (well, not really, but he sounded like he should be).
Milne said that Australia can produce base-power with renewable sources, they're doing it in Canada and... Andrew couldn't address the statement.
Helen Coonan played safe.
Milne (or was it Small Minister Emerson) accused the Coalition of saying they'll never, ever agree to an ETS.
Jaivin's a clown Marieke Hardy, with better manners.

Some idiot in the audience talked about pollution and how we need a ETS.

It's hit the panic button with the idiots.

Some other f/head in the audience asked why a convicted paedophile shouldn't be left alone after serving his sentence. (That's got a lot to do with climate change.) I'll write what I think later. Maybe.
arrgh!

I bought an electric blanket today. Stuff them. All of them.

Picked up my car from the panel beater.
Had 50k's left in the tank.
Couldn't release the petrol tank lid.
Took the car back - it's fixed now.
Back to work tomorrow, perhaps something will go right then?
I'm looking forward to my coffee on the way to work.

9 comments:

Skeeter said...

I'm sure Andrew could have provided good answers if he had been allowed the time. On several occasions, the moderator chopped him off just as he was getting to the point. In contrast, the moonbats were allowed to waffle on uninterrupted for as long as they liked.
That was Q&A's second chance to get me as a viewer. They will have to come up with some improvements to get me through a third viewing.

Anonymous said...

I loved the bit at the end where Tony Jones (supposedly neutral compere) said "I never thought I would have said this, but Andrew Bolt, you should have the last word".

Oh brother!

Anonymous said...

I thought Andrew put in a pretty good effort, but Tony was the typically rude host he always is and did his best to make sure Andrew was constantly interrupted, cut off, and just generally unable to answer.

It's a very annoying habit of Tony Jones, and one that will never be discouraged at the ABC.

kae said...

All correct!
It was very annoying.

Who are the AGW believers who keep banging on about "If people disagree, why don't we hear from them?"
Well, that was a perfect example.
Discussion and anyone putting forward a different view is stifled.
Now, I have to get dressed and go to work.

kae said...

PS
Leccy blanket was beaut!

Boy on a bike said...

I submitted two questions this week via the Q&A website. Didn't get a followup email or anything to either of them.

They were of the type though that the ABC would immediately dump into a decontamination unit for fear of being infected with a conservative ideology.

Anonymous said...

At the ‘risk’ of sounding a little tedious/technical - here goes. I wrote most of this last night, got fed up so I stopped and watched the Tour instead. That was more enjoyable

From last night:

I watched a little of it too.

Well the ignorance was palpable. So many people talking so much rubbish.

Emerson insists that an ETS will allow the (no longer) free market to work and that entrepreneurs will jump in to develop new cost effective (but more costly than now) power generators. Crap! Even if that were possible, there is no current technology to implement plus pesky irritations like the Laws of Physics, the time it takes to bring new projects from development to completion, investment costs, human resources and so on.

And he thinks that geothermal power can be a solution - more ignorance ....psst Emerson .....
• Geothermal sources are in remote locations such as the border between South Australia and the Northern Territory.
• Geothermal power sources are actually mining heat from the earth which is delivered at a hot temperature but not high enough for the energy conversion to be efficient.
• Geothermal power sources can only extract a certain amount of heat from a given area and hence must be spread out over relatively large areas to capture a reasonable amount of energy. This complicates the overall heat collection and power generation processes and further reduces the energy conversion efficiency.
• Large scale electricity distribution infrastructure (at great cost) would be required to deliver geothermal power to the main grid.

Summary.... Emerson .... dream on ... dream on ....but please dream at your own expense.

Milne thinks that we can generate base load electricity from solar (or was that Emerson too?) More crap. But she does want a hefty buy back price to encourage (subsidise) people to install photovoltaic solar cells on their roofs. Oh yes sure, but at what price and who pays? But how does that help provide the power at times of the system peak, i.e., usually during the early evening? Won’t base load power stations be needed for this task and won’t those base load power stations be made less efficient as they get backed off during the day to allow the solar cells to generate power? — Argh ... don’t ask!

And oh yes she thinks “WE” should invest in new technology etc etc... More grand rhetoric extorting the masses to toil for the collective good. Just crap and meaningless jargon. Wait on, I think that I may have been incorrect. It should be expressed as either ‘They’ should ... or better ‘They’ orta ... And presumably when no-one actually ortas or invests on the scale required she will then bemoan the fact and lambast the wicked public for not acting... Christ!

The one curious aspect about the whole business surrounding emissions trading is that the proponents are all lying about how it will operate. And this comment applies to everyone of whatever political or religious persuasion. The kindest thing I can say is that the proponents just do not have a clue. I suppose it is not surprising that no-one has actually explained why it will not work and why it will actually fail both to limit and reduce emission levels because the explanations are technical and tedious and do require a broad understanding of science, engineering and finance as well as an ability to think things through. Oh what the heck - here goes .... for starters ....

Simply, energy is used in the economy to perform work. The amount of energy that we use is the energy required for the work that is undertaken at the efficiency with which the energy is used or converted. The proposed (utopian) emissions trading scheme will
• impose additional costs on energy making conventional energy sources more costly,
• at some stage actually restrict both the supply of and demand for conventional energy,
• supposedly allow the entry of entrepreneurs to ride in (like white knights on their shining chargers) to produce new magical clean energy sources to meet all demand.

But there are a few physical facts that refuse to go away:

• So called renewable energy generally consists of low level power sources unsuitable for large scale capture and use. If developed despite being uneconomic, there are huge issues with timing and lack of infrastructure and human resources to be addressed. There is insufficient renewable energy to meet our energy growth needs let alone replace existing energy supplies. The locations of renewable energy source are generally not convenient for collection, e.g., wind farms, tidal energy, solar (White Cliffs was one example) and so on. The sun only shines during the day and the solar insolation is low and variable.
• The potential improvement in energy efficiency across the board as a way of reducing energy requirements (in our economy) has been grossly exaggerated and I say this from experience of many years working in this area
• Even if the claimed theoretical improvements in energy efficiency were possible, shortages in technical expertise would prevent their being realised,
• Other ‘clean’ technologies such as carbon capture and storage are not viable but if implemented will be very very costly.

I could go on and talk about other dreams such as the hydrogen economy, or biomass fuels or compact fluorescent light globes (CFLs) They all have their problems.

In amongst all this stuff there is one major aspect of an emissions trading scheme that is never discussed. At some time it will mandate the restriction of both energy supply and energy demand. Energy suppliers will be limited in how much energy they can produce and businesses will be limited in how much energy they can purchase and use. We will have rationing and no energy substitution contrary to the suggestion by Garnaut and his disciples. There will be little to no energy substitution for all the reasons mentioned above and when that reality collides with the demand for more energy, something will have to break. It will be the economy that breaks and it will be a matter of how long it takes, not if.

And while all this is happening all manner of people will be at the trough - the lawyers, the accountants and so on providing all manner of advice and devising reporting and regulatory regimes for the scheme. In fact that is happening already. When the East German State collapsed thirty percent of the population was engaged in spying on the remainder. I wonder if we could outdo that before our economy collapses under an ETS.

A final comment - Andrew Bolt was correct in suggesting Nelson position himself not to support an ETS in the absence of world participation. I think that was Howard’s position forgetting the official policy at the last election and that his approach would have been to declare that we had the mechanism’s for an ETS ready but would not implement it without other countries being on board. Of course world participation will not happen but it would have given time to call the Scam on what it is in three or five years time when the sky has not fallen in.

Enough – /end rant.

I may post something at Blair/Bolt if there is a worthwhile thread.

Minicapt said...

"Milne said that Australia can produce base-power with renewable sources, they're doing it in Canada ..."

No idea what he's thinking of unless he presumes all of our power is hydro. See graph below for the renewables:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/pdb/ghg/inventory_report/2005_report/images/fa9_1_l_eng.gif

Cheers

kae said...

I hope I get to watch it sometime on the weekend.