There is no real point in picking on the trashiest of climate science report panic which is current in the Murdoch Media Empire.  I picked up a Daily Telegraph in the coffee shop over lunch, and dispassionately read Andrew Bolt diatribe declaring "the panic has ended".  Not true, the Murdoch Media is in an absolutely frenzied state of panic that the glory days of fossil fuels are coming to an end, and Andrew Bolt is a daily hysterical positive proof.

Our proclivity for advancing our own short-term interests has made a mess of things from the beginnings of this current iteration of civilization.

Understandable in terms of evolution, that we are and remain social and self-centred, as global collapse symptoms grow. Link to article by Elizabeth West.

Ian Dunlop on the well-known myopic self-interest we human beings are all prone to.

In the magical thinking of Australian policymakers, a pathway of gradual change, constructed over many decades in a growing, prosperous, coal-fired world stretches enticingly before us. The world not imagined is the one that now exists: of looming financial instability; of a global crisis of political legitimacy; of a sustainability crisis that extends far beyond climate change to include all the fundamentals of human existence, and of severe global energy sector dislocation.

A pile of bullshit or a pile of coal? It is both for the Australia government climate and energy policy.

Liberal MP Craig Kelly is Chair of the Government's backbench Committee on Environment and Energy.  Who in the government commissioned this committee?  Why does it seem to be running the Australian government? Energy and environment are key government policy areas. A bunch of bullshit backbenchers should be having rather limited influence. Craig Kelly is keen on climate change denial.

Rising carbon dioxide makes plants grow less nutritious, even as they grow larger than normal.  This should be no surprise, as plant nutrition comes from soil.

Michael T Klare writes about the method in the Trump madness, of glorification of fossil fuels, and the addictive power that they bring, requiring complete denial of climate reality.

Barnaby Joyce, this carbon crazed, addicted man somehow got to be Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. His carbon cravings are our peril.

Australia contemplates its energy future and the constraints of a carbon budget. It is too bad that this is a hard dual constraint, requiring Coal carbon emissions to fall to near zero in 2 decades.  Economic growth has been based on net energy from fossil fuels, after subtracting the energy needed to bring them to the location and condition required for oxidative energy release.  Nafeez Ahmed reports here on biophysical economics that shows the Energy Returns on Energy Invested for fossil fuels are in net decline. Renewable energy is becoming cheaper than fossil fuels in net EROI terms. Zero carbon energy collection is a societal responsibility, a social investment, and social property, a return from collective shared resources, and should not be thought of in terms of government granted license to private foreign capitalists, for mining, extraction and sale of depleting fossil fuels.

Renew-economy aims to de-bunk the Coalition and Media scare campaign over AGL's planned closure of Liddell Power Station.

Various points which stand out :

What was wrong about Liddell was selling it to AGL in the first place. The ACCC said at the time it was a bad idea and it would reduce competition and send prices up, and it tried to stop the transaction but it was over-ruled by the courts. The geniuses in the NSW government effectively gave Liddell to AGL for free as part of its package with Bayswater.  Great result: Give the plant away for nothing and watch competition contract and prices go up.

So it was a "Game of Mates" giveaway.

Is AEMO suggesting we need a new coal-fired power station? No. and neither is anyone else outside the confines of the Liberal National Party and the Minerals Council of Australia, and some right wing commentators. So let’s move on.

But surely Liddell is cheap and reliable. What’s wrong with keeping it open?  Because it is actually very old, very dirty and not very reliable. And as ITK analyst David Leitch points out, quite costly too. It has barely run at more than half of its capacity in recent years; has had frequent outages; and was unable to respond in the middle of the NSW heatwave last summer. AGL says it is expensive to maintain, and it is rapidly depleting its supply of cheap, subsidised coal.

So Liddell power station is a heap of dirty coal-polluting junk which could break down anytime during the next summer heatwave.

Every year the global economy puts out an average of another 40 Gigatonnes of CO2. At this rate, in 10 - 20 years time, our global warming fate will be sealed, and 2 degrees of warming and more will be certain.

Australia's  expectations must be then, that in another 10 years , our supplies of oil, gas and coal will be undergoing rapid curtailment, and our climate will be warming at its fastest rates.

Malcolm Turnbull and the LNP have a "dirty energy target", which is coal at any price, what they call "economics and engineering without ideology".
The Beyond Zero Emissions report - Renewable Energy Superpower - 2015,  has not gone away. It merely does not exist for the entire LNP government, and can never be mentioned. Climate change has not gone away, it merely does not exist for the entire LNP government, and can never be mentioned. The BZE report is the results of first class design of "economics and engineering and not ideology", which is not allowed to exist in the minds of the entire LNP government. It has zero coal, and not much for gas. This is what the global investors and controllers of the LNP government do not want the Australian people to know.

Australia energy provider AGL, Australian Gas Light, has put the Australian government on notice that the intend to retire the old Liddell coal power station by 2022, in five years time.  Asking for extensions on the operation of coal power stations in Australia is a climate change denial fantasy of government.

The Game of Mates in Australian Federal Parliament, is trying very hard to go ahead with the Adani Coal Mine, regardless of how much public and environment activists oppose it. Both sets of parties need to be investigated for gross corruption, for improper administration of government, for playing their game of mates, for being under the influence of foreign corporate power and money.  Mining the Galilee Basin makes the rest of Australia losers, as it would end up ruining the land and water of the entire region, rendering them unfit for all other purposes, like tourism and agriculture. It would finish off the barrier reef.  And push catastrophic global warming onwards more rapidly than we are already doing now. Coal mining the Galilee Basin will be very harmful. In no way could it now be helpful to Australia.

Santos shareholders approve killing off everything by Coal Seam Gassing the atmosphere, in their Game of Mates with the NSW goverment.

Mr Peter Cotes , CEO of Santos . . "the pathway we adopt is 4 degrees of global warming".

Report of Environment Justice Australia shows how much coal power stations are costing our local communities, our personal health , and how lax Australia regulations and enforcement fail to protect us. The money we pay for Coal Power goes to the Game of Mates. We and future generations bear the accumulating ills, while the Australia Government and Minerals of Australia play marketing games of deception.

Read the report, sign the petition, write to the government, support the organisation, etc. Important that this gets changed.

In India, Adani has been charged in a fraud case where allegations with evidence say it inflated invoices for an electricity project in India to shift huge sums of money into offshore bank accounts, to the value of US$235m.

"Game of Mates : How favours bleed the nation"  - by Professor Paul Frijters and Dr Cameron Murray is a must-read book. The nation is Australia, and the topic is "Grey Corruption", which is the trading of  favours that involve Grey Gifts". The multiple games played in all economic sectors steal from the pockets and well-being of ordinary people, and in Australia this has reached rampant proportions, taking up more than half our national wealth, while doing great damage to our future. From published evidence, the book details the sectors, the names and the games.

Although our big four banks have wisely turned against funding the Adani Project, they still fund  fossil fuels more than renewable energy, which goes against the global trend.

As Adani ramps up, we must rise to the challenge.

Where:  Paddington Town Hall, 249 Oxford Street, Paddington, NSW 2021
When: Sat. 2 September 2017, 9:30 am – 4:30 pm AEST