It's about 120 years since the birth of a lot of technological advancement in the history of humanity. There had been some mighty science development before this time but it was quite limited in its application. 120 years ago, the invention of the steam engine and that of the combustion engine were supplemented by the broad usage of electricity. 

As well, about 120 years ago, the new science of "climate change" was first being studied with proper mathematical models.

Yesterday, The Sunday Telegraph told us in an exclusive article that people are going to be charged an extra $700.00 a year for using air conditioning (AIRCON is the heading) during "peak" times. If you believe the Telegraph, it's your problem... though the concept sounds okay to me...
Here we have the meeting of three major notions: climate change (aka global warming), the production of electricity and the cost thereof. 
The cost of things is always what first gets The Telegraph and the basic plebeian morons up on their battle horses. The "cost of living" is always a tender issue and managed so by this sensationalist media and devious governments in the manipulation of political power. We are all (most of us) bits of flotsam in a sea of deception and dead rats.
These days, we, especially the kids, rarely wonder about the feats of technology, including that of solar panels (my granny saw some of the first "planes" (sticks of wood and cloth) flying in Europe when she was in her forties — around 1909)... Even the most basic plebeian moron like me expects technological gizmos to provide goodies such as energy, transport and communication. This is a given. 
Mechanical thingies don't rely on horse farts anymore and HAVE TO WORK as per the warranty. We need to relax and have a bit more fun — especially tempting the devil.
Should our web-link go down the drain for ten seconds, we post a letter of complaints. Should our cell phone go through a black spot, we change provider. We get our car serviced regularly to avoid break downs. We used to be able to fiddle with carburettors, suspension and brakes — up to the 1980s — but since the invention of computerised injection and ABS braking systems, we're at a loss on where to look under the bonnet. We could learn mind you, but after three years of intense schooling, delays dealing with spare parts orders, diagnostic equipment hire and hoist rentals, we would end up paying fifty times as much as letting the experts do the job. Less time to amuse ourselves with nasty video games, going to the beach to burn like a fat steak or going to church... Though we could have fun there in what we do, like singing, there is not much fun in the belief. We should be terrified! The devil is giving us hell!... But the tooth fairy will save us...

160 years ago, the "industrial" revolution came of age. This is when new technologies of the processing of chemical elements which had been fiddled with since the bronze age, came into quickened production. Rather than relying on a bit of luck, some wood-fire, some empirical knowledge, bellows and an arcane prayer, the technological application invested brain power in precisely understanding the metallurgic processes. Science was being applied. And it worked. 
Added to these technological feats, a new system of consumption had to be developed in tandem, into what became the "mass market". More goods being "mass" produced, more people could afford these cheaper goods, useful and otherwise, though there was still a sub-class of dirty toilers doing the mining and hot industrial tricks, who could afford zip... The social order was being rebooted by technology.
Welcome.
But the real important development happened 120 years ago. Electricity came online. The mining of fossil fuels made this magical development possible. The burning of oil and coal provided the elementary energy source that fuelled machinery into transport, electricity and other comforts, such as heat in winter. In was the birth of "convenience". The selling of goods rose beyond selling salt and carrots at the local village market. New technique of selling these new goods had to be devised thus. Advertising (spruiking, lying and propaganda) came to prominence.
This process led to the development of a new style of "democracy" in which the common moron could become comfortable at a price and feel more important than a serf. The higher proportion of comfortable people versus those who toiled and died in the mines in relation to those who controlled the political power, dictated a new version of values. The bell curve of self-importance indicated a larger middle class, that had to be cajoled into supporting a particular format of "democracy" — the same elitocracy as ever, where kings and their coteries were "replaced" by rich geezers, with illusion of participation for the underclasses. The vote...
So, the new enlarging middle class had to be quickly swindled into believing its peacock worth, while the top class would still control the loot. The middle class provided the fuel: taxes. It's a long story here but even in the 17th century, kings would go broke if the middle class (much smaller then) did not pay taxes till it bled. It was "joked" then that the poor had no money thus could not contribute to the loot, except by providing bleeding fodder for the king's armies, while the nobility, ahem, could not be taxed considering they were the official king's arse lickers — the corrupt and the privileged. The clergy could amass its own loot (mostly from robbing the poor) as long as it declared the king was divine and kept the plebs in the darkness of good and evil...  Good was having a tight arse and evil was debauchery, drinking and fun... 
But this is another story. By the end of the nineteenth century, as the middle class was growing, a much bigger taxable base could be seen by the rulers. Consumption had to be encouraged in order to "fatten" the middle class for it to lay the golden eggs. The industrial revolution provided the engine for the growth of money. Money is power. A new gamut of entertaining distractions had to be devised beyond the village idiots doing cartwheels. Holidays, sailing, picnic, movies, and other concepts that could still be merged with a tad of religious beliefs, all for cash — though the truly enlightened people of the age of enlightenment were pushing hard for secularity. God does not exist, but we can still make you believe in it. Sneeze? God bless you. Amen.
Behind the scene, some mighty serious experiments were devised to further understand the processes that underlined the scientific applications. Humans needed to know the chemistry and the atomic structure that lurked below the surface of matter. We needed to know the fabric of the universe in order to exploit the planet beyond herding grazing sheep.
Chemistry was quite advanced already, 120 years ago. We knew how to mix various elements to make some molecules. It was rudimentary though. The calculations were precise enough as we made models of exacted elementary behaviour. The first name to come to mind is Mendeleev who in 1869, presented his most important work, the periodic table of elements, to the Russian Chemical Society. This provided an understanding of chemical relationships and stability. The scientists of the society drank champagne — or was it Vodka? I would have liked to be there for either.
World War One was a sorry catalyst that also helped more discovery, especially killer gases.... But peace thereafter provided time for reflection, introspection and shared study of what laid below the surfaces. Pure energy was being investigated. Should we want to blow up something big — or power the Ptolemy, the first nuclear ship (1920s story) I discovered in science fiction — we needed to crack atoms open... Ptolemy (2nd century AD) was of course the author of the Almagest (Mathēmatikē Syntaxis), a manuscript that recorded Hipparchus' amazing work on trigonometry  — as well doing some cosmology, cosmography and star readings. 
Back in the late 1800s the periodic table provided a great basis into the formulation of the configuration of the atoms. 
First, the concept of "atom" had to be understood. The way matter behaved indicated it was made of small bits that would combine "specifically"as wholes. There was no fractions of the continuum. Someone had to discover what we call carbon dioxide was made of... This goes back to studies made by John Dalton in the early 1800s that elements ALWAYS combined in precise proportions to create stuff. For example his study of tin oxide showed there was two possible combination of oxygen and tin PRECISELY. Dalton proposed that elements only combined in WHOLE numbers of precise units. This discovery lead to further the concept of atom. The atom is the smallest unit of matter in which elements combine precisely in chemical reactions. But as well, one had to understand the notions of "elements" and "compounds". Carbon is an element. Carbon dioxide is a compound.
For example there are two main types of carbon oxide: carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide (carbon trioxide is unstable but still exists in three formats). In carbon oxide, a carbon atom is attached to one single oxygen atom. In the second oxide, the carbon atom is attached to TWO  atoms of oxygen. Simple enough to accept this knowledge, but it took a lot of experiments and refinements of thinking power to come to this amazing conclusion: our universe is made of small bits. It is likely that time itself is made of bits. In graphene, all carbon atoms are linked to three other carbon atoms. In diamonds, carbon atoms are linked to 4 other atoms.
Lego only took up the idea of bits on a gross entertaining scale — a concept which was also used by the romans: they made bricks and tiles. It was easier to cart and to assemble bricks and tiles, than push several tonne single blocks of stone, though the Romans, the Egyptians and the Greeks (and other civilisations such as the Jews) still used those big blocks to make buildings and fortifications... We have invented better cranes since the pyramids.
The fact that tin and carbon can have two or more oxides, led to the formulation of "valence". That is to say that atoms are rarely free but need to be linked by a precise whole number of links to other atoms. The number of links determine the valence. In some cases some double links can join atoms. 
Thus the theory works. Chemistry made leaps and bounds. The next stage of course was to discover what created the links. 
Simultaneously, a new scientific era also developed from seriously studying magnetism, electricity and radioactivity. A certain J J Thomson was given a Nobel prize in 1906 for discovering a sub-atomic particle that was about 1800 times lighter than an atom of hydrogen. It was eventually called the electron. 
When all the scientific disciplines were joined together, it could be deduced that the chemical links were provided by electrons. Electricity was provided by electrons. Still is. Both are still true. Electrons revolve around a core in an atom. 
These concept became more and more complex though. Neils Bohr visualised a basic structure of the atom in 1915, being a core around which electrons whizzed around at specific altitude from the core. These specific altitudes have been defined as quantized orbits. This was revolutionary and this is (was) the basis of quantum mechanics which was truly formulated by 1927. 
Only the electrons of the outer orbit are involved in the chemistry of elements, The number of electrons on this top layer thus provide a specific "valence" to a particular element. This was formulated in 1916 by Gilbert Lewis.
In quantum mechanics, energy and particles are status specific, that is to say that there is no gradual in-between. Then the real fun with particle-smashers started... It was discovered that the core of atoms could be spit, release the tremendous force mentioned earlier (Ptolemy). The atomic bomb was born. The Higgs boson, formulated in the 1960s, was confirmed in 2013. 
From this, what is known of classical physical Newtonian mechanical properties — further developed by the theory of relativity by Einstein — do not apply. Atoms are not little stars and the bits that make up atoms are not like smaller universes. Clear? This is the way our universe ticks with its small bits: quarks, mesons, bosons, etc... This is why there is still a big gulf between quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity... Both work in their respective scale but they don't add up, though they could meet in black holes.
We all know that a ton of feather weights the same as a ton of iron... But we also know that a ton of feather takes about 200 times more space than a ton of steel. The concept of density and atomic weight had to come in as well for the universe to make sense. It does not. There is no sense to the universe. It just is as is with its very specific complexity and laws.
All in all, new formulations of matter had to come in in order to fit observations. Including life.
Life of course is a large chemical reaction in various bits. 
Life involves a basic self-duplicating nucleic acid in the form of DNA protein molecule (specific assemblage of atoms), itself sustained by environmentally supplied carbohydrates (including sugars), lipids (fats) and proteins. The assemblages are very precise though can change in evolution and devolution, due to variations in duplicating errors and environmental conditions. 
We know a lot about the mechanics of life, including the need for trace elements like potassium in our 'diet". Forensic DNA is the bread and butter of cop shows on TeeVee... At first, like in single cells organism, acquiring other substances is done using various techniques, including osmosis. In complex cellular association, specialisation of cells led us to barbecue, smorgasbords and candle-lit suppers with a glass of vino. Enjoy.
Of course there is more to life than C6H12O6 (glucose). And we need our ancestral electrolyte — sea water. Due to its reactivity with the environmental factors, the DNA molecule developed some safeguard positions — accidentally and reactively. Thus "life" grew a variety of DNA standards (speciation) and the development of a greater individual memory, upon which characteristics of the environmental changes and dangers could be imprinted in the construct to provide a pattern recognition of "supplies" and avoid danger. Senses such as sight are part of the food catching and danger-detection process. Life "uses" billions of molecular chemical reactions in just one individual, every seconds. Life is billions of molecular chemical reactions in just one individual, every seconds. Like the universe, life does not make sense but is just is.
The memory in humans, through the vagaries of evolution, has become slightly bigger than needed for the species to survive. The memory is still dependent of molecular structure as noted when our memory fails us. Some substances (molecules) will benefit our memory while others will shut it down, like in Alzheimer's... We can "loose our marbles" (note: marble is a mineral carbonate that has nothing to do with memory...). Exercises can train our brain to be more efficient and respond faster. Our processing power — our consciousness — is the quantum delta shift of our memory in reactivity with environmental factors, inner and outer — and is also dependent of proper molecular chemical processes. We can become blind drunk. We can also become deluded with ideas. Ideas can modify our emotional and comprehension of the environment status. Ideas are learnt reactivities — that are correct or not — "implanted" (associated) in the molecular structure of memory. All beliefs should be deemed incorrect. We can deceive our self as well as others, with beliefs. 
And we can have fun, using our senses in other ways than to detect danger. We can smell roses and declare the perfume is beautiful. Pleasure. Some drugs have similar delusion effects as bad ideas... and we can become blotto. We can't see.
And in this vast universe we can see with instrumentation beyond the black — right to the edges poised at nearly 14 billion years from us — which now could be 28 billion light years away from us, but don't tell anyone, there are only a very few specific laws that rule its primal existence. 
For example there are ONLY around 100 stable elements (some are very rare, like gold) in the entire universe. We have tried to create new ones, but they are unstable... And we know why. There are only eight blood types in humans... Weird. Though we can postulate the existence of other universes, we can only see ONE — and badly see it at that. We can only see 25 per cent of what is possibly lurking out-there. Mathematics (numeral logic of ideas extrapolation) tell us of this conundrum with a high degree of precision. 
And by observations, we can only deduct that what is seen out there is the very same stuff than what is on our little pebble. The same elements, possibly in various proportions but the same phosphorus, the same carbon, the same hydrogen making up the stars and the cosmos. With observation tools and probes, we see a one billion kilometres distant comet in close up. Dust and water. Cold. Icy. We know the relationships between elements and their thermo-resistance. Thus we know climate and climate change. It's a simple relationship between various settings in the atmosphere and the position of the planet in relation to the sun. Simple. But we are dogged idiots on a large scale. From our leaders to the bottom class pit, via our middle class, we cannot see past our hard earned coal comforts. What we can't see is that we are changing the settings on the planet's surface by burning fossil fuels at a rate of knots... 
I can understand why we are idiots. I am one of them. Most of our philosophical arguments resides around good and evil. Real idiocy. We have not grown up beyond the trumpeted battle of Jericho, despite the advancement in the understanding of what makes the universe tick. We know with an extraordinary precision the state of the universe at a thousand of a second after the big bang and we still demand the tooth fairy to be good to us. It's quite uncanny. Stupid really, but fun. It would be okay if this did not increase our ability to lie to our self. It does.
We still fight each other with silly beliefs and guns, possibly because the science is not telling us enough or telling us too much and we resent it — or it's too hard. It's easier to learn dogmatic religious inanities... or decree that "global warming is crap". It saves a lot of time rather than spend learning reality with science... We can go on and goof off somewhere else, while burning the planet down for fun. Foolishly inconsiderate.
Science should be our guiding light. But we still allow religious voodoo from the dark ages to dictate our relationships. It's tradition. it's crazy-plus. But as mentioned, unfortunately, it's easy to swindle our pea brain with simplistic religious rubbish that is no more than illusions of trickery in our uncertain memory.
On the other hand, science is hard yakka — MOSTLY BECAUSE IT IS BADLY TAUGHT and not taught early enough. We don't develop the habit... We teach deception of religious beliefs and Santa Claus to our kids way before we teach how things work. In fact most of us have no idea how things work. We just press buttons.
A person like Tony Abbott is a scientific ignoramus, is full of religious shit and of deceptive manners in his demeanour. The question is how on earth can people such as him get to where they are?... Simple. Because on average, we're idiots, are full of shit and practice our learnt deception with unparalleled skills. So we elect him, until we realise he is a bigger shit than we thought we were and we start to shake the possum. 
Even our "behavioural sciences" are a bit iffy due to our necessary uncertainty of purpose in a relative universe... This has led to our adeptness at lying to our self and others, and the only way to maintain stability in our reactive system on a day to day basis, is to develop ritualised social and traditional habits of sorts. We can become lemmings. We follow the troops without knowing nor CHOOSING for our own self what we should be doing. Our choice is restricted to the general direction. We like fairly tales and we don't understand sciences. We believe our leader knows what he is doing. He does not. He manufactures more idiotic lies as he goes along the precipice and we follow...
Traditional lies like religious beliefs annoy me. I do not dispute the relationships. For example should one read the book of Nehemiah (please do something for yourself — read and laugh aloud at the incongruity), the more sober of the chroniclers in the bible, one can see a semi-historical record of events such as the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem for defence... Good, I can understand that. In those early days of "civilised" humanity, some dudes were always after what someone else had (nothing changed since). A big wall was a way to protect thyself. Change the locks. Life does it. Life cannot survive without protection. We delude ourselves that the illusion of god is our protection... Idiots. Can human survive without illusions?... The illusion of god is still powerfully managing our relationships because of convenience in simplifying complexity. We hate complexity. Ufortunately, quite a lot of people are now free-wheeling off the religious track but stay on the same path without deviating from the erroneous tight-arse concept of good and evil... Some illusions are good and feed our imagination. Some leave us with a blank look. We can loose traction in the understanding department if we don't understand complexity. Meanwhile, the god delusion is feeding our simplified lunacy.
At particle level, there are particles and anti-particles. Some particles are their own anti-particles... They do not have a moral value attached, and we don't know really which one is which, except our mathematical models make a choice of opposing value. We start with the premise that the real world is the positive one. This is only for convenience. All in all the accepted value of the total energy in our universe is very close to zero. Apparently, all the particles that make up matter are of half spin and all the energy transfers between matter particles are done by particle of integral spin. This can become rather complicated if we don't try to understand or have fun with it. At the big bang, there were some particles and anti-particles mixes that would have been retarded by having to push others out of the way, say 2 x 10 (-50) second after the start of the boom. This would have led to "flaws" in this first phase: inconsistency of density, increase of "instant" uneven heat, then cooling. Thus cosmic Inflation as a theory makes sense. 

Should (cosmic) inflation not happened it is likely that the universe would not have gone beyond being made of hydrogen atoms everywhere. Hydrogen blancmange... That's my proposition. 
Inflation tells us of a secondary phase in which the universe slowed its expansion drastically, then the expansion became constant. It is likely that at this second stage, particles assembled together in a variety of ways according to the laws of this universe They took less space. They might have shrunk a bit like steel atoms realign themselves at 750 degrees Celsius. Heated steel shrinks at that temperature (750 C) then expands again (the carbon atoms are the culprits) as the temperature steadily goes up. 
Here, in the cosmic environment, we had cooling and a gravitational force. This should have led to the collapse of the universe. Strangely, the universe expansion is accelerating. This is "explained" by the theory of "dark matter"... the 75 per cent of the universe we cannot see.  This for my money is a state of high fluidity of unattached particles at low temperature. It's too cold (the field has no energy) for quarks to assemble into protons. Superfluidity. I really don't know... But science needs to investigate.
So what about the price of electricity going up during "peak". What is peak?... In the generation of electricity, it took a while to devise the system we're using now. Some countries like the USA are still on the crappy 110 Volt AC while in Australia we're on 220/240 Volt AC. 
120 years ago, rudimentary installations in Paris for example were DC and on much higher voltage that used arc lamps to provide illumination in the streets. Dangerous as hell. The lower the voltage, the thicker the wires needed.
Electric improvements were mostly due a certain Mr Tesla who "invented" AC (alternative current). AC had many advantages over DC. It could be scaled down via transformers easily. It is safer to use, it can travel longer distances and is cheaper to produce. There was of course a Battle of Currents in the USA (late 1880s), where Edison was fighting for his DC while most European electricity supply companies and Westinghouse in the US were batting for AC (patented by Nikola Tesla). AC won.
One has to know that electric power supply is generated to supply a sizeable market. This means that according to the consumption of electricity, the power generators have to increase or reduce electricity production in order to maintain the voltage, by switching on and off generators on the grid. This can be tricky. We've all heard of the massive outages in the US, when a winter over-consumption led to a breakdown of one power station, leading to all others to shut down like falling dominoes. In general we don't see the switching, except at times when suddenly an ordinary globe goes brighter or dimmer. 
Thus the average price of electricity is in tune with the amount produceable and the amount produced. At peak, that is to say the entire generating power is used to the max. The switchers pray that no-one else is plugging another toaster online. The system is stretched to the limit. Should someone plug in too much "resistance", the voltage would drop, according to the formula of electromagnetic power. Something could go haywire.
So as the heat of global warming increases, more people are coming online with air conditioning units. This leads to the generation of more power in the grid overall, until the grid becomes "overloaded" and the voltage drops. Generating this extra electricity is placing more pressure on global warming by releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere, leading to more people coming on line with air conditioning units. This of course is a vicious expanding circle (a spiral).
The power companies may want an extra $700 per air conditioning unit for their troubles (37 C in Sydney's west yesterday — high humidity, cool change now — 26 days of high 30s and one day of mid 20s and some idiots claim that's the end of global warming). 
It is of course a con — an air con — but a reasonable one at that, because should they produce more electricity by burning more coal, electricity producers won't be able to cash in on Tony Abbott's ludicrous generous subsidies he wants to pay out of taxpayer's pockets to those companies that "pollute" less — however this rigmarole is possibly elastically calculated (fiddled with) to favour his mates... The CON is not with the companies charging more for electricity, but with Tony promises of cash for less CO2 produced... It's a stupid vicious way to rob the public purse when the previous carbon pricing was reasonably efficient, tweakable without costing the earth and easy to calculate... 
In the end we need to have fun... while being alert... and we need to learn... and we need to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions to zero... So what's the problem?
Under the direction of Tony Abbott this nation is turning to shit. 
It is ludicrous that after 120 years of science and technological advancement, we still get ignoramus morons like Tony Abbott in charge of the affairs of a country. And Tony is killing sciences. God help us...! Thank god I am an atheist...

The media, including the Sunday Telegraph, hopefully will drop him — and all his acolytes — like a bad dream... Queensland included.

Gus Leonisky
your local atomic geezer...