Category Archives: Uncategorized

A road map to a sustainable Australia: an ambitious work in progress

We are making changes to Earth systems biologically, radiatively, chemically – in an Earth system that is sensitive to small changes.  As global temperatures rise with emissions and land use change the risk of crossing thresholds and initiating abrupt change … Continue reading

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The Chicago Boys V. Salvatore Allende, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara

I am working on a theory that the climate war is the latest manifestation of western economic conflicts between left and right.  The culture war is now fought out on blogs –- or symbolically in the streets at rallies and … Continue reading

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Tipping points in Earth’s biological and geophysical system

I fell into tipping points – pun intended.  I was rehabilitating a shallow coastal estuary – just salty enough to make a lake that smelled like rotten eggs.  The catchment is heavily urbanised and industrialised since convicts first hauled coal … Continue reading

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Capability Brown’s oblique approach to climate policy

‘Remember, then, that scientific thought is the guide to action; that the truth at which it arrives is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we can act upon without fear; and you cannot fail … Continue reading

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Thresholds and epochs in the Grand Climate System

The map – a thermally enhanced satellite photo – below shows September 2015 sea surface temperature anomalies – that is the difference from average temperatures over a period. During the most resent El Niño.  The oceans have a sun warmed … Continue reading

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Using all of the heavy elements in nuclear waste to provide energy

Light water nuclear reactors use half a percent of the energy in nuclear fuel.  The rest goes to waste as heavy elements that decay to safe levels of radioactivity over hundreds  of thousands of years.  What if we could use … Continue reading

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Are we to let people starve while the powerful grow bioenergy and restore forests for their tranquility?

The bottom line here is that misguided climate policy can and has increased poverty and hunger.  There are better ways forward on liberal principles evolved since the Scottish Enlightenment – on which the US for one was founded.  The rule … Continue reading

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Economics, Environment and Energy

The increase in the retail price of electricity as a result of 80% renewables penetration (in the US) by 2050 is estimated at some $30/MWh.  The current average retail price is some $13/MWh.  Such high penetration depends in large part … Continue reading

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100% renewables by 2030 and no Adani mine – let’s save the world from climate activists

Australia committed in Paris in 2015 to a 26% reduction on 2005 in CO2 equivalent emissions by 2030.  On a per capita basis that is a 60% reduction.  The Australian Liberal Party has a holistic policy including a safeguard mechanism … Continue reading

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Small modular nuclear reactor promise? SMR prospects are good!

Factory made, dropped into a bunker or a mine, run uninterrupted for 20 or 30 years using leftover ‘nuclear waste’ – of which there is enough for hundreds of years of energy supply.   And then recycle the fuel core to … Continue reading

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