Bloomberg just published another stark reminder of the shifting landscape for energy generation – fossil fuels have a limited time as viable sources of energy. And I’m not talking about saving the planet or carbon taxes, simply economics. Coal, gas, oil, all have economics based on a scarcity curve: the more we use, the deeper
What could possible go wrong? Via the ABC: It’s 2029 and every merchant ship in the world is fertilising the ocean with iron — a last-ditch effort to draw carbon dioxide from the air as global emissions near the point of no return. This global attempt to remove CO2 from the atmosphere has been 11
MB has been a great admirer of Andrew Bolt’s exposure of Gladys Liu and his longer term fight to bring rationality to population growth. But in another area, Bolt’s stubbornness refuses to adapt to changing circumstances. For many years, Bolt denied that there were rising temperatures globally. Time has proven him comprehensively wrong: These days
This is one for Betoota: In just five hours, those living in the coastal town of Stockton Beach watched in horror as the heart and soul of their community was washed away. “It’s a crisis, a complete crisis,” Lucas Gresham, a local of five generations, told news.com.au. “We’ve lost our suburb, because that beach is
I’ve given him a mighty serve on a foreign labour arbitrage business model and mass immigration hypocrisy but Mike Cannon-Brookes has some kick-arse ideas, via AFR: Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes will invest part of his personal wealth in an audacious $25 billion project to create the world’s biggest solar farm, its biggest power storage system,
Via The Guardian: Scott Morrison is increasingly seen as running a “denialist government” that is not serious about finding a global climate solution and uses “greenwash” to meet its emissions commitments, analysts and former diplomats say. Australian observers in New York said Morrison’s failure to attend a UN climate action summit on Monday despite being
Via the ABC: Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg has captured the world’s attention in a fierce and passionate speech at the United Nations headquarters, accusing world leaders of failing to act on climate change. The UN event was aimed at mobilising government and business to break international paralysis over carbon emissions, which hit record highs
Via New Daily: Global warming is already eroding Earth’s ecosystem in ways that will release misery on a global scale if it is not mitigated soon, a landmark UN report has revealed. The past five years were the hottest since global temperature records began, the report – compiled by the world’s leading scientists for the
Via Crikey comes a nice wrap of QLD troglodyte responses to the worst fires in 130 years: Campbell Newman Naturally, in the face of the calamity afflicting his beloved home state, former premier Campbell Newman did what any great statesman would do: he went searching through the archives to prove it really wasn’t that big a
Via The Guardian: A new snapshot of Australia’s clean energy sector warns new investment committed in the first half of 2019 has fallen back to 2016 levels, when Tony Abbott invited an investment strike when he tried to abolish the renewable energy target. While the Morrison government has been trumpeting record recent investment in renewable energy
Via The Guardian: Beijing has condemned Australia for acting like a “condescending master” towards Pacific countries, insulting climate-vulnerable nations and “spreading the China threat fallacy among island countries”. In excoriating remarks, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Pacific island leaders do not share Australia’s fear of Chinese influence in the Pacific, and accused Australian
Via AFR today: In late February Peter Coates, Glencore’s non-executive director, appeared at an event in Sydney to make a rare intervention from a mining leader — a full-throated defence of the coal industry, whose very existence is under threat because of its role in global warming. …Six months later, the industry decided to take
China is out with its 70-city new house prices measure for July at 0.6 month and month a 9.7% year on year: Top tiers are still struggling but below that is strong: And strength remains quite broad based: Here they are: Stable gains.
China’s July data dump is out and there is no hiding the pain now. Industrial production hit the lowest level in living memory at 4.8%, retail sales retraced sharply to 7.6% and fixed asset investment slowed to 5.8%: Under the bonnet, real estate sales continue to fall: With developer land purchases signalling much worse ahead
Chinese inflation is out and it’s firm for consumers at 2.8%: But it’s all about pork as the epidemic of African swine fever slaughters supply and will thus pass: Meanwhile, and more importantly for Australia and the world, producer inflation is cooked and is about to plunge as the trade war hammers industry: Just wait
Via FTAlphaville comes the next phase in the fight against climate change: Edoardo Saravalle previously worked on sanctions and economic statecraft matters at the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think-tank. In this guest post, he proposes a different approach to tackling climate
Some amusing stuff today on US/China trade talks. They’re going nowhere, via Reuters: U.S. and Chinese negotiators wrapped up a round of trade talks on Wednesday without visible signs of progress and put off their next meeting until September, extending an uneasy truce between the world’s two largest economies for at least a month. …The
From the IEA: Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Electric Generator Report and Preliminary Monthly Electric Generator Inventory Between 2010 and the first quarter of 2019, U.S. power companies announced the retirement of more than 546 coal-fired power units, totaling about 102 gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity. Plant owners intend to retire another 17 GW of coal-fired capacity by
Here’s the chart: Note Asia Pacific sales are declining again. China’s excavator sales are an excellent proxy: Though mining has been helping: The problem is realty where private players are preparing for hard times: CAT is a good real time indicator for China’s construction pulse and it is fading despite rising house prices, credit and
The rank hypocrisy of The Greens has mushroomed, with current party leader, Richard DiNatale, defending former leader Bob Brown’s opposition to the proposed Robbins Island wind farm in Tasmania: Dr Brown told The Australian this week the wind farm was comparable to the Franklin Dam, and yesterday condemned the company behind the proposal, UPC Renewables, as
The rank hypocrisy displayed by former Greens leader, Bob Brown, over his opposition to the proposed Robbins Island wind farm in Tasmania has mushroomed, with Brown likening the project to poker machines. From SBS News: Former Greens leader Bob Brown has defended his opposition to a proposed wind farm in Tasmania’s north west, comparing the
Former Greens leader Bob Brown is campaigning against the proposed Robbins Island wind farm in Tasmania. The $1.6 billion project will be one of the world’s biggest wind farms if it goes ahead, and a new undersea cable would be built to take the electricity it produces to the Australian mainland. Brown claims that the
Nice podcast here from Grants discussing the significance of the recent Baoshang Bank default in China with Carl E. Walter, a former bank executive, coauthor of Red Capitalism: “(Baoshang) is scaring everybody because they’re not the only one. They’re the one that couldn’t hold it together in the end, but… I’ve been trying… to figure out
by Chris Becker While the latest new car sales figure highlighted a systemic underyling economic weakness in Australia, there is a glimmer of hope: electric! From the VFACTS data by Jason Murphy at The New Daily comes this interesting chart: Electric-only car sales have nearly doubled from barely nothing to something to talk about, while
Via Global energy Monitor: Through a massive increase in portside infrastructure, floating offshore terminals, and oceangoing LNG vessels, the natural gas industry is seeking to restructure itself from a collection of regional markets into a wider and more integrated global system. If successful, this transformation would lock in much higher levels of natural gas production
Via the ABC: Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have reached record highs in many sectors, continuing an upward trend that began in 2013, according to official Government figures released on Thursday. The Federal Government’s Quarterly Update of the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory for the three months to December 2018 shows emissions increased by 0.8 per cent
The Australian energy carcass is being torn apart by hyenas today. Leading off are the dying manufacturers: Australia’s big energy users will hold urgent talks with the federal government requesting emergency gas market measures to ensure heavy industry can stay afloat amid opposition from top producers to government intervention in the sector. The country’s largest
Is it an asteroid? Is it a plague? No, it’s The Guardian Australia: Australia’s major political parties are facing calls to explain what role they will play in securing a global deal to save nature after a major scientific report warned a million species across the world face extinction. The assessment by an international scientific panel
By Leith van Onselen The Economist ran an interesting article on how overpopulation and climate change are straining the world’s water supplies, with Australia likely to experience a “severe water shortage” by mid-century: Last year Cape Town in South Africa averted only narrowly the unwanted prize for being the first of the world’s big cities
There’s one at Domain: The key economist cited in the election row on climate change has doused fears of a major blow to growth from deeper cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, saying the impact would be a “small fraction” of the economy by 2030. Australian National University Professor Warwick McKibbin said federal government policy to
