Adani has agreed to a new royalties deal with the Queensland government, weeks after an earlier proposal was junked amid internal uproar that it gave the Carmichael coal project too much taxpayer support.

On Friday, ministers attended a snap cabinet meeting and agreed a royalties “holiday” for Adani’s $16bn project, Australia’s biggest proposed coal mine, would be wound back.

On Tuesday evening, Adani announced it had agreed to a deal, which “met its expectations and requirements”. “The royalties arrangement means the project is back on track to generate 10,000 direct and indirect jobs in regional Queensland,” the company said in a statement.

read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/30/adani-reaches-mine-roya...

 

This deal should never been go ahead, never be approved, never be a proposition. It's a load of crap for which the future generation and ours will pay for a long long time...

 

The death of the Great Barrier Reef is one of the “great tragedies of our lives”, US senator John McCain has said, arguing America should uphold its commitment to the Paris climate agreement, or accede to it with minor modifications.

Speaking in Sydney on Tuesday night, the veteran politician and former Republican party presidential candidate said climate change was undeniably real and that it was incumbent upon world leaders to act now to halt and reverse global warming.

“I think that climate change is real. I think that one of the great tragedies of our lives is the Great Barrier Reef dying [and] the environmental consequences of that,” he said.

The position of the world’s second-largest carbon emitter on the Paris climate change agreement is uncertain and a subject of global speculation. US commitment to reducing emissions or otherwise could have significant ramifications for other countries upholding their promised reductions.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/may/30/john-mccain-urges...

 

Here we go again with "Pretty Pictures of Beautiful Babies"...... 

McCain has a lifetime pro-environment rating of 24 on a scale of 100 on the League of Conservation Voters's National Environmental Scorecard, which reflects the consensus of experts from about 20 leading environmental organizations.[222] According to the League of Conservation Voters' 2006 National Environmental Scorecard, McCain took an "anti-environment" stance on four of seven environmental resolutions during the second session of the 109th congress. The four resolutions dealt with issues such as offshore drilling, an Arctic national wildlife refuge, low-income energy assistance, and environmental funding.[223]

Read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_John_McCain

 

 

The Government has placed energy security, not power prices, at the centre of its opposition to an Emissions Intensity Scheme (EIS), claiming it would quickly force out coal generators and lead to more instability in the system.

Key points:

• Josh Frydenberg again rules out an EIS ahead of final report on electricity sector
• Chief scientist's draft report found an EIS would have "the lowest economic costs, lowest impact on electricity prices"
• He suggests two pathways for Australia to meet its climate targets

 

Energy and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg has again ruled out an EIS, ahead of chief scientist Alan Finkel's final report into the electricity sector next week.

Dr Finkel's draft report, released last December, found an EIS would have "the lowest economic costs and the lowest impact on electricity prices" of all the options presented to meet Australia's climate commitments.

But Mr Frydenberg said an EIS would punish generators which emit high levels of greenhouse gasses.

"Right now that would mean we would quickly push out the black and the brown coal generators that we can't afford to lose because of the impact it would have on the stability of the system," he told Lateline.

The Coalition has long opposed any form of carbon pricing, including an EIS, on the basis it would push up power prices.

Mr Frydenberg also claimed a lot has changed since the modelling for an EIS was conducted.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-01/frydenberg-says-emissions-scheme-w...

Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg has hit the phones to the Coalition backbench to calm growing concerns about the federal government's climate change review, and to stress the need for Australia to remain in the Paris agreement.

The calls were made after Fairfax Media last week revealed at least five government MPs wanted a possible re-think of Australia's commitment to the deal to reduce carbon emissions, after US President Donald Trump announced his country would quit the deal.

The move by Mr Frydenberg, who is allied with the conservative wing of the Coalition and who has been charged with overseeing reviews of the electricity sector and climate policy, underscores growing concern at the highest levels of the Turnbull government about new fissures opening up over the contentious policy area.

read more:

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/4710109/frydenberg-hits-phones-to-keep-colleagues-in-line-over-climate/?cs=7

 

The calls went as follow:

Frydenberg: Guys, hold your horses. By staying with the Paris Agreement on CO2 emissions, we present a caring front to most of the people, including those silly environmentalist -- especially the idiot Greens... As you know this "agreement" is on a "voluntary" basis and we've made sure our emission reduction targets are as fictitious as "Harry Potter" on a broomstick.  Meanwhile we "voluntary" double our coal production by presenting alternative facts about "clean coal" and we take cash from the "renewable" energy funds to buy the needed CLEAN shovels. 

Life could not be better. Hypocrisy is bliss... No?

Mates:  Yeah... may be... could we not do the same with MEDICARE?

The Finkel Report has little if anything to do with the real issues around climate change, it is all about satisfying the Coalition party room, writes Mungo MacCallum.

 

MALCOLM TURNBULL likes to describe himself as a "technology agnostic".

As with many of his other utterances, this is not to be taken literally; our prime minister is not wrestling with the problem of whether technology actually exists or not. After all, Turnbull is the master of innovation; Tony Abbott once said that he invented the internet, although perhaps we had better not go into that right now.

What Turnbull is presumably saying that he is unconcerned about what kind of technology he employs, particularly when it comes to energy generation. Coal, gas, oil, nuclear, solar, wind, hydro — even parliamentary bluster if nothing else suffices.

It is all the same to him as long as it works — by which he means as long as it is acceptable to the party room. It has little if anything to do with the real issues around climate change: it is all about satisfying Tony Abbott, Barnaby Joyce,George Christensen and Eric Abetz.

If AGL can drop coal, why can’t the government’s conservative wing?@McKenzieAmanda @JoshFrydenberg & @Mark_Butler_MP respond#QandA pic.twitter.com/zEwscIkJEC

— ABC Q&A (@QandA) June 12, 2017

 

For this reason, Turnbull also refers to his insistence that the debate must be "technologically neutral", which is seriously misleading. Energy generation is not about taking the engine out of gear and letting it coast along as far as it will go — it is about choice, about looking for the most efficient solution.

But, of course, this involves making very sure that the question can be defined in a way that entails its own answer, which is what Turnbull did. He asked the chief scientist, Alan Finkel, to look for ways to make energy cheap and reliable — and, as almost an afterthought, to control emissions within clear limitations.

Finkel, acutely aware of the politics of his brief, could not even consider what his fellow scientists and economists all but unanimously agree would be the best result: a price on carbon, preferably morphing into an emissions trading scheme, giving security to investors and mandating a swift and orderly transition away from fossils to renewables.

He was forced to opt for second, or even third, best: a so-called "Clean Energy Target" that continues to offer carrots rather than sticks to polluters, a pious hope that electricity prices can be reduced and a hospital pass to Turnbull and his colleagues, leaving it to them to decide just what the target should be and how — or perhaps if – it can be realised.

Mr Gonski sold out, now Mr Finkel -- Finkel calls for CSG and is used as a political tool to fight Vic https://t.co/2EKIo6MMPr

— Rowan (@FightingTories) June 8, 2017

 

Finkel, like Turnbull, says he wants to get rid of the ideology of around the decade-long quarrel; perhaps he is being ironic. Climate change is about science, not ideology; the best minds on the subject agree that man-made emissions, especially of carbon dioxide, are having a measurable effect, overall global warming is increasing and as a result, extreme weather events will become increasingly more common and more severe. The ideologues are those who either choose to deny the science or, even less forgivably, regard their own self-interest as more important than that of the planet.

Step forward Tony Abbott, who sometimes regards the science as crap and at other times not but, in any case, sees it as irrelevant. To settle the issue would prevent him from getting into another good stoush, the fading memory of his triumphant mud wrestle against Labor’s carbon tax. Thus any olive branch from Bill Shorten must be rejected and if that involves tossing Finkel under a bus in the process, well, tough.

And so Abbott has hoisted his battle flag, with its heraldic arms emblazoned by a shining lump of coal. In spite of Scott Morrison’s bizarre appearance in Parliament a couple of months ago, not all Liberals are active coal fetishists. Most, indeed, can probably take it or leave it and the heavy users can, presumably, be weaned away from it — perhaps they can be persuaded to embrace other forms of carbon, like graphite, or better still diamonds.

But coal has become a symbol — an ideology, if you like. It can be used as a casus belli against Labor and that is all that really matters. Finkel, understanding their obsession, has offered them an out — longer life for coal powered power stations and even the prospect of building new or refurbished ones, if anyone silly enough to invest in such anachronisms, can be found.

.@RosemaryECA: "The community wants this matter settled." #QandA#FinkelReview pic.twitter.com/aJaP1NECvd

— Energy Consumers Aus (@energyvoiceau) June 13, 2017

 

To Labor, the Greens and probably the majority of the electorate, this is not acceptable; it is fair enough to allow a reasonable time for coal to be phased out but the idea of encouraging, even subsidising, new coal as part of the energy mix of the future is perverse. Which leads us, inevitably, to Adani.

Adani is not yet a coal mine; indeed many good judges believe it will never be a coal mine, despite all the ballyhoo about its founding chairman Gautam Adanisigning off on the project. It has been clear for some time that the economics of Adani are, at best, rubbery, that claims of jobs are absurdly exaggerated and the actual returns – financial, environmental and social – for Australia are more likely to be a net negative than the bonanza being trumpeted.

Only the gullible and desperate have fallen for the hype: Queensland’s Labor Premier Anastacia Palaszczuk clearly believes that there will be, sometime, somewhere, a pot of coal at the end of the Adani rainbow. But even she admits that it will not happen soon; in the meantime she is handing out the prospect of a royalty holiday for Adani (the proceeds of which will presumably end up in the family vaults in the Cayman Islands) and ramping up the pressure for Turnbull to give a billion dollar loan to the company to build a railway to transport its products to the Great Barrier Reef.

It is not certain that this cosy little arrangement is part of the deal Adani signed last week, but what the hell – Federal Labor is largely against it, so it makes a great wedge issue, a definite strike in the ideological war Abbott and his colleagues are determined to pursue.

And they will take any allies they can get: Clive James is an accomplished poet and a brilliantly successful entertainer but, as he boasts, he knows bugger all about science, let alone the complexities of climate change. Nonetheless, last week he let fly in The Australian with a barely coherent diatribe like a more literate version of the deranged One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts — and the right wing ideologues lapped it up.

James’ last major work was a translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy — a medieval fantasy about good and evil, entirely appropriate as a manifesto for the Mad Monk Tony Abbott and his band of crusaders.

Mungo MacCallum is a veteran journalist who worked for many years in the Canberra Press Gallery. This article was published on 'Pearls and Irritations'.

 

read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/mungo-maccallum-the-finkel-report-turnbull-and-compromising-at-the-planets-expense,10395

New high-efficiency low-emission (HELE) coal-fired power plants have a role in the energy mix and the government is prepared to intervene in the market, Josh Frydenberg has said.

The energy and environment minister told Sky News on Sunday that new coal plants “need to be considered” alongside other sources of baseload power, and the government could intervene if the market failed to deliver the “best possible outcomes” in the electricity market.

The comments leave open the possibility of government intervention in favour of coal, despite Frydenberg saying in July that the government would only support new coal power plants “if the market supports that”.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/aug/13/new-coal-plants-h...

 

High-efficiency low-emission coal fire plants are a figment of the minister's imagination trying to let us know he is lowering CO2  emissions. It's bullshit.

Doctors also joined the chorus of voices warning the changes would negatively affect environment targets, saying our love of fossil fuels is already killing 5700 Australians each year, and will continue to do so until we phase it out.

Clean coal ‘doesn’t exist’

Richie Merzian, the climate and energy program director with the Australia Institute, said ‘clean coal’ was nothing more than spin.

“Clean coal doesn’t exist. That’s the first thing,” Mr Merzian told The New Daily.

“Over the last 15 years, Australian governments have invested $1.3 billion into making clean coal work.

“There isn’t a single commercial clean coal, carbon capture storage power plant in Australia. And there are hardly any overseas – you can count them on one hand.”

Australia has only one carbon capture and storage gas plant. It’s currently leaking emissions into the atmosphere, because it doesn’t work.

The Gorgon gas project in WA received $60 million in federal funding but did not start storing emissions until 2019, three years after productions started.

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2021/02/17/clean-coal-scam/

 

Rea from top.