Martin Parkinson, head of the PM’s department, told CEDA what we need to do to become truly innovative.
What caught my eye was what he said about Australian management in manufacturing:
The week began with Newspoll maintaining Labor’s TPP lead at 52-48, and ended with Kelly O’Dwyer endorsing a bill that criticised the Government. In between Turnbull got the Senate to pass his legislation supporting Victoria’s CFA volunteers, with Pauline Hanson’s support, and one of the National senators stood aside so that Pauline could join the NBN committee.
The major political event of the week, however, was Labor killing off the marriage equality plebiscite legislation. Sure, it still has to go to the senate, but Xenophon, the Greens and Labor oppose it, so it can’t pass.
Laura Tingle says the Faustian bargain Turnbull struck with the Nationals to become PM is eroding the rationale for replacing Abbott with Turnbull. Continue reading Liberals flounder as the marriage equality plebiscite turns to sludge
Per Bolund, Sweden’s minister for Consumer Affairs and from the Swedish Green Party, is introducing legislation to give tax breaks to repair white goods to keep them running.
In fact it may be exactly the wrong thing to do. Items like fridges washing machines, air conditioners and TVs take far more energy to run than to make. Upgrading to a new and more efficient machine may be better for the environment than keeping the old one. Continue reading Climate clippings 186
My idea of a driverless car is that you can sit back and read a book. In fact it may be more like this:
Most people don’t realise that 64% of the EU’s renewable energy is in fact biomass. The scam starts with UN and EU rules that say if you cut down a tree you don’t count the carbon it emits when you burn it. The assumption is that the tree will grow back again. The New Scientist (probably paywalled) has the story. Continue reading The great EU biomass scam
One of the more eye-catching comments on the SA blackouts was from AGL Energy’s CEO Andy Vesey telling the All Energy conference in Melbourne that a secure power system would be rooftop solar and batteries in a distributed power system with power being generated at the point of consumption. He also said that politicians were blaming the South Australian blackout on renewable energy because technological disruption was confounding their “mental models”.
Greg Hunt, a man clearly in a muddle, went in hard, as reported by Giles Parkinson at RenewEconomy:
Continue reading After the blackout, a new dawn for renewable energy
We all know George Brandis is a pompous git. Bernard Keane writes persuasively (pay-walled) that he is an incompetent pompous git, both as a lawyer and as a politician. Labor says that he should resign for misleading parliament, and the lying about lying. Michelle Grattan says there is talk about him getting the shunt, either to the High Court (unlikely – who would wish that on the court?), or to London as high commissioner, as Alexander Downing’s term is coming to an end in May.
Anyway, there is open warfare between Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson and Attorney-General George Brandis. A senate inquiry is working to sort it out, and may save Brandis by disallowing his directive that the advice from the SG should be sought through him, even if it’s the PM or GG. Continue reading Saturday salon 8/10
Now that the CEOs of the Big Four banks have been questioned by the Parliament’s Economics Committee it’s time to ask, what now? The Committee is a House of Representatives organ. It’s generally acknowledged that the heavy hitters for this kind of exercise are in the Senate. These mega-salaried CEOs are teflon-coated, obviously well-briefed, and it’s reasonable to wonder whether anything will change as a result of the hearings. Not much, I suspect.
David Gallagher of the Centre for International Finance and Regulation, probably a conservative outfit, says:
Gallagher is arguing that the wrong-doings of the banks are not substantial or endemic enough to warrant a royal commission, and that our regulatory system is world-class and fit for purpose. I think he should have been listening to talkback radio over the last few days. Continue reading Banks get thrashed with feather dusters
James Hansen and Makiko Sato have just released a new temperature graph, which highlights the underlying trend, and is more than a little alarming:
See also his blog post that looks at the implications and what we need to do. Continue reading Hansen’s new temperature graph heads north
That’s the judgement of NASA GISS boss Gavin Schmidt, while praising her two million-year temperature reconstruction.
National Geographic reports that other scientists have backed Schmidt’s judgement, while praising her temperature reconstruction. The paper claims that the long-term committed warming from today’s CO2 levels is 5ºC (range 3-7ºC), and that if emissions double the long-term increase will be ~9ºC (range 7-13ºC). She’s talking long-term, over the next few millenia. Continue reading Carolyn Snyder’s temperature forecasts are just plain wrong!
In what is called ‘attribution science’ climate scientists are getting better at analysing how much climate change has influenced particular extreme weather events.
In short, it is no longer a question of weather there is an influence, rather how much.
It would be useful to know, for example, whether the kind of storm that hit South Australia is still a once in 50 years event. Continue reading Climate clippings 185
“Ignorant rubbish” is what Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews called Malcolm Turnbull’s initial comments on the SA electricity blackouts. “It’s the weather, stupid”, is more or less what Bill Shorten said, and he was right. The press has reported two ‘tornadoes’ in the north of SA which made pylons look like this:
The questions to be asked in this case are not about the reliance on renewables, rather on why fractures to the grid 200 km north of Adelaide took the whole state down. Continue reading Saturday salon 30/9
