Malcolm is excellent at talking a lot while saying nothing. Listen to him in parliament pouring scorn on Labor and yet it seems that all of what is coming out of his mouth is blah blah blah... He takes us on a rhetorical road trip with twist and turns, precipices of windmills and mountains of coal, forests of decapitated trees and insults towards a zingered Shorten and all we hear is blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah... It may have something to do with the monotone, monochromatic emotional CONtext, the colour of his suit and of course the sniggering idiots behind him. And does he change his mind? We would not know because as shown in the toon above, there is a lot of ambiguity in what he says. Does he mean for COAL TO TAKE A BATH (vanish) of for coal to take a bath (clean up -- an impossible task)? Either way he treats us like fools in need of being taken to the cleaners.

How do you sell a plan that is ostensibly about reducing emissions from electricity generation, to a room sprinkled with vocal pro-coal climate sceptics? 

Well, that was the task the environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, was faced with when he stood before the Coalition joint party room earlier this week. And Fairfax Media obtained and published a copy of the presentation Frydenberg used.

So, here’s how you convince a room full of coal-lovers that the Finkel review is good for coal – featuring slides from Frydenberg’s presentation.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jun/16/13-ways-frydenber...

The Allam power cycle or Allam cycle is a process for converting fossil fuels into mechanical power, while capturing the generatedcarbon dioxide and water. The main inventor behind the process is English engineer Rodney John Allam.[1]

...

the Allam cycle uses a single turbine, driven by a working fluid consisting of only water and carbon dioxide, the mass of the latter being around 97 percent of the total. This is achieved by using pure oxygen instead of air to burn the fuel. Similarly to combined-cycle plants, the intended fuel is natural gas or gasified coal. The exhaust gas is cooled in a heat exchanger, and the steam is condensed and separated from the flow, becoming a potential source of fresh water. The carbon dioxide is compressed mechanically, and a small amount, matching the amount continuously added through combustion, is captured at high pressure, ready for pipeline transmission. The rest of the carbon dioxide is reheated in the heat exchanger and recycled into the combustion unit, where it continues to form the vast majority of the working fluid.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allam_power_cycle

Note: though the efficiency of the Allam Cycle system is undeniable, it still produces CO2 that eventually HAS TO BE SEQUESTERED. At present, all the technologies to sequester carbon dioxide have failed and are far more expensive than the energy produced.

Only very expensive laser driven high-temperature machines can split this reluctant molecule, apart from photosynthesis which demands a very complex, yet fragile, set of nearly 50 chemical reactions within plants. Photosynthesis is still the best option to deal with CO2, yet our deforestation has compounded the problem of dealing with it. In order to photosynthesise the excess carbon we release through burning fossil fuels, we would need to plant more that a quarter more of the existing forests and stop emitting CO2.

It might seem a million miles from the climate policy debate of today but Australia’s decade-long climate wars arguably began with perfect being the enemy of good.

On at least three occasions, the chance for Australia to have relatively strong emissions policies were squandered, leaving many people in politics, industry and the environmental movement today wishing that something weaker – but therefore more politically feasible – had been instituted when it was possible.

That legacy has meant a culture of extreme pragmatism has taken over the climate policy debate in Australia. Second-best policies have become the preferred option, until they’ve been ruled out, and suddenly third-best policies are considered the only feasible option.

This pragmatic turn has infected not only the political parties and some NGOs but also official, independent government offices, and left Australia with virtually no genuinely independent advice in the climate policy space.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/jun/17/how-australias-cl...

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History will show that all the missed opportunities were due to the Greens inability to compromise and then Tony Abbott looniness. At present the Finkel stuff is a half-baked cake with too much sodium bicarbonate in it. It will blow up.

To the list of spoilers, one must also add most of the Liberals (KONservatives) who have not an ounce of scientific curiosity but plenty of fake news in their little shrinking brains -- from Frydenberg to the pseudo-Liberals of the new KONservative party led by Bernardi and that of PHONey. We must also add the hypocritical Labor party members who support the Adani mine. All in all we've been left with no-one with guts apart from a few wild Greens and a few Laborites who don't fear to tread on the toes of the coal industry.

We're stuffed, all left with an imaginary "action" that is not worth two bob in the real world but makes "innovative" accountants happy.

From the gadfly...

We start with news from God, via the Human Rights Law Alliance, an organisational friend of the Australian Christian Lobby, which deftly fuses law and God. 

The alliance is run by a young groover named Martyn Iles, a former chief of staff at the ACL and a giver of sermons at the Pentecostal Southside Bible Church in the far-flung ACT suburb of Kambah. 

Applications are now open for the alliance’s inaugural legal academy – a training and networking experience for Christian lawyers. It only takes two weeks to digest the entire course. 

The alliance claims to be the source of a number of stories in The Catholic Boys Dailyabout the Safe Schools program and the persecution of Christians. 

There are also fundraising opportunities. For instance, Kathy Clubb, a mother of 13, is a member of an outfit called the Helpers of God’s Precious Infants. She stands outside Melbourne abortion clinics making “simple offers of help”. 

Ms Clubb has been arrested and charged with breaching a Victorian law and now the HRLA is rattling the tin for contributions to her defence fund. 

As The Catholic Boys Daily says, the alliance will “fill the void left by the publicly funded human rights commissions and legal centres”.

It’s almost a given that those who believe in God also believe in coal. Members of the religious right, particularly in the Nasty Party, are leaders of the Coal Prayer Group, which calls for the Finkel report to be burned alive. 

It’s incredibly puzzling, particularly as the report is significantly a political document designed to help Prime Minister Trumble and Minister Frydenberg chart a path with minimal resistance to a lower carbon future. 

Surely no one with even a slender grasp of reality believes that by 2050 30 per cent of our power will come from coal. The existing power stations are all old, and nobody, except perhaps a mad Abbott government, will build a new one, principally because renewables are cheaper and getting more so, and storage is getting better. 

The obsession with coal can only be explained by the fact that it defies science, which godly people see as an article of faith. The fact that 70 per cent of those polled want faster action on renewables shows what a heathen nation we have become.

read more:

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2017/06/17/gadfly-sunday-law-school/...

Such new ultra-supercritical coal plants are being built in Germany and Japan, for instance, but building one is slow and expensive compared to solar and wind.

It's unlikely any will ever be built in Australia as the cost of renewables continues to fall. Finkel proposes that renewables be made more reliable, incidentally, by requiring solar and wind plants to provide substantial battery storage to protect against the vagaries of sun and wind.

So you'd think there's room for a sensible compromise here. Set the level around 700 or 750, knowing that it's a partial concession to future coal-fired power, yet understanding that there's unlikely to ever be any new coal-fired plants built in Australia.

But no. Labor says that it's already made a tremendous concession to the government by abandoning its previous commitments to even consider a low emissions target.

The Labor position is that it could perhaps agree to a target of 600kg as Finkel suggests, but absolutely nothing above this level. In other words, Labor insists that there must be no concession to coal, even if it's purely token.

Whereas the firming Coalition position is that, unless there is at least some token subsidy to coal, there's no deal.

Coal in, coal out, in other words. No room for compromise. And, on this trajectory, no electricity in the summer peak season, either this summer coming or the one after.

There will be plenty of blame, exactly what the parties love to hand around to each other, but not enough electricity for the Australian people. The only real hope would seem to be overwhelming public pressure on the parties over the weeks ahead to force them to a compromise. On the positions as they are hardening, both sides will be squarely to blame when the lights go out.

READ MORE:

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/parties-to-blame-when-the-lights-go-out-20...

Peter Hartcher tells a bit of a fib here, while stting on a fence. We have to consider history in which the Labor carbon pricing was working to reduce CO2 emissions. As well, the Labor party had various devices to futurise the sources of energy in a manner that was self-funding through clean energy loans. With this device, it was going to be easier to tweak, as more stringent emission demands would come, possiby becoming zero by 2050. At that level, Labor was way ahead of the Finkel fiddle which to say the least is giving the carbon polluters a leg up... So, we can only blame ALL THE LIBERALS (KONservatives) who are ALL ignorant and somewhat idiotic about blaming anything else, especially Labor, but themselves. The South Australia syndrome had nothing to do with windmills, but with the vandalism from the gas exporters. Eventually, even gas burning will have to be phased out, like by say, yesterday. The global warming problem is far more severe than the Trumble and his royal cohorte of religious zealots can imagine. They are idiots. At least the Labor party had a "progressive" system which off course was destroyed by that more idiotic than a mad turd, Tony Abbott, — with the help of his secret mate Clive Palmer, whose only SHORT incursion into politics was to destroy the "carbon pricing". NOTHING ELSE. The deal had been done before the election of Tony Abbott as PM, but in order to mask the Machiavellian deviousness of their relationship, they "had a few arguments" along the way.

This Clean Coal: Briefing Paper follows the recent release of the Finkel Review report in June 2017.

The Finkel Review finds the electricity system must achieve four key outcomes:

1. Lower emissions

2. Increased security

3. Future reliability

4. Rewarding consumers

Coal power doesn't meet the above criteria. Yet the Federal Government has introduced legislation to enable the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to invest in coal with carbon capture and storage.

This briefing paper demonstrates that there's no such thing as 'clean coal' and that Australia must pursue a renewable energy future.

read more:

http://www.climatecouncil.org.au/cleancoal

Southern suspended costly work Wednesday on a flagship power plant in Mississippi that was meant to showcase technology to capture carbon dioxide from coal — sometimes called “clean coal.”

The Kemper plant, which has cost $7.5 billion so far, has been supplying customers with electricity by running on natural gas for three years, but its once-promising carbon capture and coal gasification technology has been $4 billion over budget and three years behind schedule.

The plant was once held up as an example of promising technologies that could help fight climate change.  In 2014, then-Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz flew to see the plant and declared, “I consider seeing this plant a look at the future.”

Instead, Kemper has imposed financial burdens on tax payers and local households.

Thanks to legislation passed by the Mississippi legislature, Southern has been able to pass along about $800 million of those costs to ratepayers, the company said.

In addition, the Kemper plant has received $382 million in federal Energy Department grants, according to the company.

read more:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/06/28/thi...

Good news: the "clean coal" technology does not work...

In a major blow to proponents of “clean coal” technology, Southern Co., parent company of Mississippi Power, announced in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing today that it's throwing in the towel on efforts to generate electricity from coal and will instead use only natural gas at its flagship Kemper County, Mississippi power plant.

The project, which relied on a “gasifier” to turn a cheap and common grade of coal into fuel, is over, at least for now, Southern said.

“On June 28, 2017, Mississippi Power notified the Mississippi PSC that it is beginning a process to suspend operations and start-up activities on the gasifier portion of the Kemper IGCC.”

Further, Southern warned that it may record a $3.4 billion loss for the project in the second quarter of 2017, depending on how negotiations with state utility regulators unfold.

If “Mississippi Power does not ultimately obtain rate recovery of the $3.4 billion … , Southern Company and Mississippi Power would be required to recognize a charge to income in the second quarter of 2017 for those unrecovered costs, in addition to any other costs required to be incurred,” the SEC filing says.

The filing comes on the heels of a historic vote by Mississippi's state regulators that rejected asking the 187,000 customers who may get electricity from Kemper to pay for the long-delayed and far over-budget “clean coal” experiment. The 582-megawatt plant, initially projected to cost $1.8 billion, has so far run up a bill of over $7.5 billion in construction and engineering expenses. In comparison, a typical 700-megawatt natural gas plant would have cost rougly $700 million to build, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Earlier this month, Southern told investors that vital machinery for the coal-powered section of the plant had started leaking, and would take 18 to 24 months to repair.

Mississippi Power Co. still plans to try to recover some or all of the $3.4 billion from power customers, Southern Co. said in its SEC filing. The company will pursue that through settlement negotiations and “any available settlement alternatives” and other options to recover its costs.

read more:

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/06/28/breaking-southern-co-officially-ya...

...

The letter of the law says Frydenberg and Hunt are right. National data collected under internationally-agreed formulas clearly show us under our 2012 Kyoto target and likely to be the same for our 2020 target. But science and common sense say otherwise.

Science warns that the main cause of warming is direct emissions from fossil fuels, and Australia’s fossil-fuel emissions rose by 28 per cent between 1990 and 2012. That the government is able to imply otherwise is due mainly to a deal known as the “Australia clause” of the Kyoto Protocol

Secured by the Howard government when it threatened to pull out of climate talks in 1997, this clause and the overarching Kyoto decision to cover land use and forestry allow federal and state governments to selectively use such data to “offset” (or conceal) increases in fossil-fuel emissions.

Tasmanian emissions, for instance, are made to look spectacularly good by including take-up of carbon by today’s regrowing forests, yet our fossil-fuel emissions have not moved for years. Greg Hunt called this sort of accounting “gold standard”. I call it cooking the books.

Real gold-standard emissions accounting is the aim of Hugh Saddler, of the ANU’s Centre for Climate Economics and Policy. The story told in his latest quarterly National Energy Emissions Audit, published by the Australia Institute, is in stark contrast to the official one.

There’s a lot to learn from Saddler’s graphs of energy emissions since 2010. Emissions from coal and gas generation dropped markedly during the years of a carbon price (2012 to 2014), but rose sharply from July 2014 when the price was abolished. We hear nothing of that from government.

read more:

http://southwind.com.au/2017/07/04/atmosphere-reveals-that-were-living-a...

read from top...

Imagine, if you will, a government board to champion Australian arts without any artists on it, or an agency to advise on medical research without any medical researchers.

Or perhaps even, imagine a government authority set up to provide expertise on climate policy without any actual climate scientists.

Well you don’t have to imagine that last one, because that’s what we now have – the government’s Climate Change Authority is now sans climate scientist.

Prof David Karoly, of the University of Melbourne, has just finished his term on the authority’s board – the only member to stick it out for the full five years.

Karoly says without someone to replace him, the authority will struggle to fulfil its legal mandate. He told me:

I think that it is critically important that at least one member of the Climate Change Authority is an expert and experienced climate change scientist. Such a member is needed to provide information and interpretation on the latest climate change science publications and data.

In my view, it can only do that with a climate change scientist as a member, to provide expert assessment of the effectiveness of proposed greenhouse gas emission reductions nationally and globally, and the projected impacts on Australia from current and future climate change.

The Climate Change Authority Act 2011 states that, in conducting a review, the authority must have regard to environmental effectiveness among a number of other matters.

I asked the Department of the Environment and Energy if there were any plans to replace Karoly with another climate scientist. The department said:

Government appointments to the CCA are a matter for the Government under the CCA’s legislation. The Chief Scientist is an ex officio Member of the Authority and can assist on scientific matters and in providing access to the scientific community, including climate scientists.

So in other words, it won’t replace Karoly and will instead just rely on the chief scientist, Alan Finkel, to act as a go-between, which of course is much more efficient and logical than actually having a climate scientist right there in the room. That would be silly, right?

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/jul/05/climate-ch...

See also:

What is global warming?

...

After refusing to comment on the president’s views, Pruitt said that the “degree of human contribution” to global warming remains uncertain. That uncertainty, Pruitt suggested, makes it difficult to decide how policymakers should respond.

And then he read aloud from the now-infamous Times column written in April by conservative never-Trumper Bret Stephens. The piece, which sparked a weeks-long media firestorm, made a convoluted case for more skepticism of climate change models—which Stephens equated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign polling. “Much…that passes as accepted fact is really a matter of probabilities,” he wrote. “That’s especially true of the sophisticated but fallible models and simulations by which scientists attempt to peer into the climate future.”  Last week, NBC announced that it was hiring Stephens as a contributor.

Stephens, like Pruitt, insists he isn’t a climate change denier, but the columnist’s argument was nonetheless widely rejected by scientists; a few dozen of them signed an open letter arguing that Stephens “mischaracterizes both the certainties and uncertainties regarding climate change, and misrepresents how science reports uncertainties.”

It’s hardly surprising that a misleading New York Times column would be promoted by the administration of a president who sees global warming as aChinese hoax. Skeptics have long sought to validate their views by injecting them into respectable media outlets. And they’ve frequently been successful. Here’s a short history of climate misinformation infiltrating the mainstream news media:

In 1997, countries around the world signed the the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s first serious attempt to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Months later, the New York Times reported on documents showing that the oil industry—including representatives from Exxon, Chevron, and Southern—were planning a campaign to “maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media, and other key audiences.” The campaign, the Timesreported, would include an effort to track “the percentage of news articles that raise questions about climate science and the number of radio talk show appearances by scientists questioning the prevailing views.” It would also develop a so-called “sound scientific alternative” to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international body of scientists that evaluates climate change research.

Industry representatives told the Times that the plan was “tentative” and had not yet been approved. Nevertheless, the next decade-plus featured plenty of false-equivalency and he said/she said arguments in news stories about climate science. In many cases, the statements of scientists and other experts were “balanced” by those of deniers. In 2008, Maxwell Boykoff, who is now a University of Colorado professor, published a study in the journal Climatic Change that looked at news programs on ABC, CNN, NBC, and CBS from 1995 through 2004. He found that 70 percent of the networks’ global warming stories “perpetuated an informational bias” by including the unscientific views of climate skeptics. In another study published in 2004, Boykoff looked at coverage in major newspapers from 1988 through 2002 and found that half of the 636 randomly selected articles gave roughly the same attention to skeptics’ arguments about the supposedly natural causes of climate change as they did to the scientific consensus that humans are warming the planet.

read more:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/07/timeline-climate-denial-n...

See also:

What is global warming?