Even Gore thinks Rudd goes too far | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog
Andrew Bolt promotes skepticism of "clean coal" technology, and he's right to do so I reckon. (Have a look at the link to the letter from Professor Ivan Kennedy.)
It makes much more sense (to me) to use the money to help investment in ways to avoid producing the CO2 in the first place.
Climate change issues are very complicated: half the time the people who want to do something about it are wrong (misplaced trust in carbon trading schemes, clean coal & wind power; dragging their feet on new nuclear; not caring much about the coal sold to China and India;) and half the time the people who don't want to do anything about it are right by being dismissive of those same things, even if it is for the wrong reason.
Speaking of nuclear power, I see that Brave New Climate has become very fond of the idea lately. But, in the Australian political climate, the argument just doesn't get any serious consideration. Couldn't Malcolm Turnbull mark out a distinctive position for the Liberals by getting it to promote small scale nuclear for Australia? I am inclined to believe that thoughtful city dwellers would buy it.
Part of the problem is that most AGW proponents of nuclear go for new, big designs. (IFR, thorium, etc). My inclination is still to go for small, modular designs, about which Next Big Future recently ran a story promoting their cost benefits. (It also had a post listing the various types that are proposed.)
Apart from cost, I suspect that the roll-out time for small modular reactors would be a lot quicker than building giant individual ones. It also seems that many small designs do not have the problem of requiring siting next to the ocean for cooling water, hence solving the major issue of which bit of our prized coast line is going to scarificed to a power plant. (Queensland would claim the reefs mean it can't be there; Victorians will worry about their penguins, etc.)
Sadly, the South African plans for a test of a pebble bed reactor (small, modular and intrinsically incapable of meltdown) continue to recede further into the future, yet it seems to me to the ideal form of reactor research and development to be funded by government.
China continues to work on a similar design, but with that country's appalling product safety history, I am not sure that a Chinese design is an easy sell to the Australian public.
I would be much happier for our government, or the Americans, to buy into the South African development project to get their test reactor up and running, rather than spending billions on carbon sequestration.
2 comments:
The Labor policy for energy, the environment, and climate change are particularly stupid and will probably be hugely destructive to our economy and way of life several years down the track.
It would be nice if the Liberals could get their crap together and won, or at least came close to winning, next electoral cycle, since on the face of it their policy seems to be far more sensible than Labor, but it seems unlikely. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a decade of destructive Labor policy before they are rejected by the Australian public at the polls.
I think Rudd likes his climate and energy policies to be confusing. He seems to relish the kind of intricate arguments over nothing that they have spawned.
Tim, you sound so conservative at times that I wonder why you are treated well when you post at LP! They must be more forgiving of the creative type.
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