The Turnbull Government of Australia
September 2015 – ?

October 2016; he failed to keep his promise. He said recently, coal will be a part of Australia's energy mix for "many, many, many decades to come".

As shown in the image on the right, Malcolm Turnbull has said things that indicate he is serious about climate change action, but his lack of action, indeed, his blatant opposition to action on climate change since becoming Australia's Prime Minister suggest that he has put ambition before scruples.

Malcolm Turnbull in August 2010 "We are as humans conducting a massive science experiment with this planet. It's the only planet we've got... We know that the consequences of unchecked global warming would be catastrophic. We know that extreme weather events are occurring with greater and greater frequency and while it is never possible to point to one drought or one storm or one flood and say that particular incident is caused by global warming, we know that these trends are entirely consistent with the climate change forecasts with the climate models that the scientists are relying on... We as a human species have a deep and abiding obligation to this planet and to the generations that will come after us." The Guardian

PM Turnbull's condemnation of a terrorist who was responsible for the death of some 22 people in Manchester is the grossest hypocrisy when he is involved in actions that will bring about the deaths of enormously more people and do incomparably more harm.

More hypocricy, July 2017

What Mr Frydenberg did not say was that the transition was taking place in spite of the COALition's best efforts to stop it.

1. $10 billion target for lending to climate change solutions by 2020 and $25 billion by 2030.
2. Tighter criteria for financing any new coal mines. Financing for any new thermal coal projects limited to existing coal producing basins and where the calorific value of coal meets the energy content of at least 6,300kCal/kg Gross as Received – i.e. projects must rank in the top 15% globally.
3. Commitment to actively reduce the emissions intensity of the power generation sector, targeting 0.30 tCO2e/MWh by 2020.
4. Continued commitment to a broad market-based price on carbon as the most efficient way to.

According to The Guardian all of Australia's big four banks have now ruled out funding, or withdrawn support from, the Carmichael Mine. Quoting The Guardian:

"NAB ruled out funding the Carmichael project in September 2015, a month after Commonwealth Bank parted ways with Adani as project finance adviser.

The CEO of ANZ, Shayne Elliott, in effect ruled out financing the mine last December when he predicted a downward shift in the bank's exposure to coalmining would continue for the foreseeable future."

RenewEconomy reported, 2017/05/02, that 15 other banks around the world had also refused to fund the mine.

A part of Boco Rock Wind Farm, NSW The installed capacity of Boco Rock WF is 113 MW; it will probably generate around 350 GWh per year. Photo taken 2016/11/14

"Declining gas production may result in insufficient gas to meet projected demand by GPG [gas powered generation] for supply of electricity from summer 2018-19.

– To meet electricity supply needs, the NEM [National Electricity Market] requires either increases in gas production to fuel GPG, or a rapid implementation of alternative non-gas electricity generation sources. If neither occurs, AEMO projects that declining gas supplies could result in electricity supply shortfalls between 2019 and 2021 of approximately 80 gigawatt hours (GWh) to 363 GWh across South Australia, New South Wales, and Victoria."

Renewable energy systems, especially wind and solar, could and should be built at greater rates than at present. However, gas fired electricity is valuable for keeping generation up to the peaks in electricity demand; some types of gas-fired power stations are well suited to providing power exactly when it is needed, wind and solar PV cannot do that (although solar thermal with storage can).

Demand for gas could be reduced in several ways:

1. Solar thermal power with energy storage could be developed, it is well developed in the USA and Spain;
2. Incentives could be given for household battery systems and electric vehicle batteries to be linked to the grid and to supply power in periods of exceptional demand;
3. Existing hydro power could be reserved as far as possible for generating in peak consumption periods, reducing the need for gas peaking power plants;
4. Batteries or new pumped hydro systems could be used to store electricity when it is abundant so that they could then feed it back into the grid during peak demand;
5. The gas that is not required because of new generation from renewables could be stored in Victoria's Iona underground gas storage for later use in periods of high demand;
6. Those who use gas for home and water heating could be given incentives to change to electricity instead. Electric heat-pumps (such as reverse-cycle air conditioners) are a more energy-efficient way of heating than gas;
7. It is in winter when electricity demand is highest in Victoria, for home and water heating; winds tend to be strongest and most consistant in winter, so wind power would be well suited to at least partly take the place of gas in that state.

Construction of Coober Pedy Wind Farm, February 2017 Image credit Coober Pedy Regional Times

PM Turnbull has said that this, going from zero to 50% in 17 years is dangerously rash.

Coober Pedy is a small town 750 km north of Adelaide. It is not connected to the eastern Australia National Electricity Market (NEM) grid. The town has had a small, 0.15 MW, wind turbine since 1991, but has relied mostly on very expensive diesel-powered generators for its electrical supply.

In 2017 the town was adding two 2 MW wind turbines, 2 MW of solar PV and batteries. They are going from near 100% diesel-generated power to 50% renewables in a matter of a few months!

PM Turnbull, if the SA government is rash, what are the people of Coober Pedy?!

Clements Gap Wind Farm

PM Turnbull blamed the 'load-shedding' on our renewable energy. This was quite dishonest. The low winds were forecast, the low level of wind power was expected, the high demand for power to run air-conditioners was expected. There was ample generation available had Pelican Point No. 2 gas-fired power station been called in; it was not.

This was a simple case of poor management by AEMO.

Futher, the SA state government has little direct control over the day-to-day running of our power supply since Liberal Premier John Olsen privatised our electricity supply – after promising not to before the election that put him into power. AEMO reports to the Federal Energy Minister, so if any politician needs to take responsibility for the load-shedding it would seem to be he.

PM Turnbull has simply and quite dishonestly used this event to further the interests of the coal industry that is one of the main drivers of climate change and ocean acidification and is responsible for millions of deaths around the world every year from its air pollution.

Load-shedding in NSW, same heatwave, next day, 2017/02/10

A power outage affecting 11,000 customers in the Sydney suburbs of Burwood and Strathfield at around the time of peak electricity demand (around 4pm) was not caused by load-shedding, but would have reduced power demand at a critical time.

South Australia didn't have an aluminium smelter that could curtail its power consumption the day before.

PM Turnbull, is there any significant difference between this event, in mainly coal-powered NSW, and the event the day before, in more renewables-powered SA?

Mugga Lane Solar Farm One of the solar farms recently built in the Australian Capital Territory – photo November 2016

These are not needed and not wanted by most of the Australian people; both large-scale solar and wind power are expanding and there is little increase in electricity demand from the grid. The continuing installation of solar power on the roofs of Australian homes as well as the increasing number of utility-scale solar power stations (like the one in the photo on the right) is also reducing demand for new fossil fuel power.

The Coalition are proposing heavily subsidising new coal-fired power stations because banks and investment funds will not support them – simply because they are a very bad investment.

As Frank Jotzo, Director, Centre for Climate Economics and Policy, Australian National University, wrote in The Coversation,

"New coal plants wouldn't be clean, and would cost billions in taxpayer subsidies".

"Major Australian energy companies have ruled out building new coal plants. The Australian Energy Council sees them as "uninvestable". Banks and investment funds would not touch them with a barge pole. Only government subsidies could do it."

Map of the Great Barrier Reef showing results of aerial surveys for 911 reefs Image credit ARC Centre of Excellence, Coral Reef Studies Media release dated April 2016

How many disasters will it take?

How many more disasters like this will it take for you and your government to state taking serious action over climate change PM Turnbull?

Is it PM Turnbull's ambition to go down in history as the man who did the most toward the death of the Great Barrier Reef?

Not financially viable Adani has been unable to get finance for building the railway line from the normal sources because it is very unlikely that the Carmichael mine will ever be financially viable; the banks don't want to know about it. Indian Energy Minister Piyush Goyal has repeatedly stated he plans to end virtually all thermal coal imports into India by the end of the decade. Adani is also into solar, but Turnbull can't see past coal In early December 2016 Adani commissioned the biggest single-location solar PV power installation in the world, 648MW in his homeland, India.

This will produce a multiplicity of new threats to the reef that is already suffering heavy damage from both pollution and global warming.

Another port on the GBR coast will result in silting of the reef. The many ships that go into and out of the port will add to pollution and there will be accidents, spillages of fuel and groundings. Finally, of course, the last thing this planet needs is another coal mine to add to the greenhouse emissions that are the main cause of disastrous climate change.

The context of the map on the right can be seen on CoralCOE.

Also see Great Barrier Reef suffered worst bleaching on record in 2016, report finds, BBC.

South Australia's storms and power-outage of September 2016
Blame them on renewable energy!

South Australia suffered two such events – exceptional winds and rains – in September 2016; the first on 14-15^th and the second on 28-29^th. The second of these events, coming on top of already saturated soils, caused flooding and the loss of grid-electricity over the whole of the state.

There are four major power transmission lines connecting Adelaide to the north of the state; 22 or 23 power pylons on three of these were blown down. We were told that the state's power system could have handled the loss of two of the transmission lines, but three were too many; the system had to shut down to avoid further damage. (The saturated soil combined with high winds caused some of the pylon's legs to pull out of the ground; others were simply bent over by the force of the wind.)

What does this have to do with the Turnbull Government? The Turnbull Government did its best to blame the power outage on SA's high level of renewable energy! True to form, they continue to mindlessly support the coal industry (one of the main causes of climate change and the increasingly frequent violent weather events) and denigrate renewable energy. Blaming damage caused by burning coal on the renewable energy industry is classic Orwellian political reasoning by a political party devoted to the dying coal industry.

As of early February 2016 Mr Turnbull in his PM's hat seems to have betrayed all of these ideals.

• He is supporting the unnecessary plebiscite on same-sex marriage, when a number of polls have left no doubt that the majority of Australians want same-sex marriage recognised in law. The only reason for the plebiscite seems to be to delay changing the laws.
• Since becoming PM Mr Turnbull has done very little to increase the amount of renewable energy in Australia and to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions; the hiatus in wind farm construction engineered by PM Abbott continues under PM Turnbull and it has just been reported that Australia's emissions have increased for the first time since the Howard years.
• PM Turnbull has said that he still supports Australia becoming a republic, but he seems to be opposing it happening in the near future.

PM Turnbull has a son, a daughter and two grandchildren. Does he not care about the world that he is going to be responsible for handing them? With his unconditional support for fossil fuels and implacable opposition to renewable energy, he seems to be doing his best to destroy it.

The coal industry is dying, the renewable energy industry is growing exponentially, yet PM Turnbull and the Coalition, apparently blind to the future and living in the past, are desparately trying to hold back the tide. This is not only environmental madness, it is economic madness.

Australia has among the highest per-capita greenhouse gas production rate of any nation on the planet. We therefore have a greater responsibility than any other nation to reduce our emissions; but instead of leading the world we are perhaps the most recalcitrant of all the nations in the global effort to save the future for our grandchildren.

It would be interesting to know what conversations PM Turnbull has had with his son and daughter about the damage he is responsible for.

How can a man knowingly do such evil? I cannot imagine how he can live with his conscience.

Map of the Great Barrier Reef showing results of aerial surveys for 911 reefs Image credit ARC Centre of Excellence, Coral Reef Studies Media release dated April 2016

This being so, will you change the decision to allow the Carmichael mine to go ahead? Will you start taking climate change seriously?

The context of the map on the right can be seen on CoralCOE.

The sixteen warmest years (1880-2015) Image credit NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, USA)

The sixteen hottest years

PM Turnbull, how much damage to our planet are you willing to tolerate before you do something significant about Australia's exceptionally high emissions?

Australia came third last among 58 nations ranked on climate change performance

For more read the article written in The Guardian by Lenore Taylor, 2015/12/08.

Australia's electricity generation industry, where is it, where is it going, and where might it go if we had good government?

	Image from Nem Watch

The colours indicate the type of electrical generation:

Black:	Black coal
Brown:	Brown coal
Red:	Gas
Green:	Wind
Yellow:	Small-scale solar
Orange:	Large-scale solar
Blue:	Hydro-power

As the graph indicated, most of our electricity was coming from coal-fired power stations. This is a pretty typical snapshot of Australia's electricity generation mix.

What we could be seeing if we had serious action on climate change

While solar generates much less power in Australia than wind at the time of writing, solar also could easily generate 40% or more of Australia's electricity. (The data for the graph were collected early in the day when the sun was low in the sky and solar power was modest.)

What we are seeing under our present government

By early December 2015 it wasn't looking like Malcolm Turnbull as PM was going to substantially change the shameful situation in which Australia is one of the most greenhouse gas polluting nations on the planet.

We must accept that the future is with renewable energy; there is no other option that can be sustained.

We have two choices: we can cling to the dying fossil fuel industry like a drowning man grasping at a straw, or we can make a bigger effort and swim to the nearby renewable energy lifeboat. The first option may be the most profitable in the short-term, but will cause irreparable damage to our planet; the second option will minimise the damage to the planet and will give us the best long-term economic result.

Australia has huge resources in wind and solar power. Why are we not developing them?

Electric cars and home battery banks will allow a more flexible use of power. Charging will be able to be done when power is plentiful and, in a well operated grid, car and home batteries will be able to feed power back into the grid at times of high demand, high power prices and low generation.

Owners of solar PV systems are being treated badly by the power retailers. There are a great many of them and there's a lot of dissatisfaction out there.

PM Turnbull, it seems clear to many that the way power is generated, transmitted, distributed and retailed in the country needs to be seriously revised. Do you intend to take on the challenge?

Considering the importance of the Murray-Darling to Australia's economy, do you see this as yet another reason to act on climate change PM Turnbull?

My country

I've lived in this country all my life, I believe all my grand-parents were born in this country. I love this country, but I don't like the way it is going.

Australia is among the worst greenhouse polluting nations on the planet. We should be fixing this; we are not. Our government is doing as little as possible about greenhouse gas production.

Our national anthem says "We have boundless plains to share", yet we send refugees overseas and lock them up under appalling conditions.

The Howard Government involved Australia in George W. Bush's Iraq war, which was immoral, unjustified, unethical, and in the end hugely disastrous. Subsequent governments continue to follow the US lead, wherever it may go.

I don't much like this country the way it is being run at present, but I will try to change it for the better rather than leaving.

Prime Minister Turnbull, can we hope for something better soon?

Disasters compared Numbers of human deaths likely

The graph on the right attempts to summarise the result. Apologies to those not mathmatically inclined, it had to be logarithmic if it was to have any chance of showing the numbers involved.

An important difference between ACC and other disasters, and no doubt one of the reasons that ACC doesn't get the attention it deserves, is that while the other disasters would happen in hours, days, months or at most a few years, the worst effects of ACC will probably take a century or more to develop.

PM Turnbull, how can we continue to 'fiddle around the edges' of ACC rather than take serious action and retain any self respect?

This is curious, even bizzare, because we have many excellent unused on-shore wind farm sites and off-shore wind power costs about twice as much as on-shore.

Off-shore wind power is attractive in those countries that lack the space for more on-shore wind farms, for example, Denmark with 113 kW of wind power installed per square kilometre. Australia has only 0.5 kW per square kilometre (World Wind Energy Report 2014).

One has to wonder if there is some sort of hidden agenda in this PM Turnbull? Could it be a move to discredit wind power by looking into the costs of off-shore wind power and then claiming wind power in general is too expensive?

Or is it simply that Minister Hunt knows very little about wind power? That would not be surprising since he, like all the Turnbull Government, seems to be fixated on fossil fuel energy rather than renewables.

Coal pollution is the most dangerous

The research showed that air pollution from the burning of coal for electricity generation was something like five times as damaging to our hearts as was general air pollution. The research also showed that Diesel traffic-related soot was associated with heart disease deaths but that particulate air pollution from both wind-blown soil and biomass combustion were not.

PM Malcolm Turnbull is known to have serious concerns about the burning of coal and the resulting climate change, yet he still follows the Liberal party line and promotes the dying coal industry. Will this news give him any second thoughts? I suspect that ambition will win-out over his conscience, again.

The health study report can be read at Environmental Health Perspective.

China's cancer rates "exploding"; ABC

"In some of the industrial provinces, lung cancer rates have increased a staggering four-fold" and the cause seems to be air pollution, largely due to coal burning.

"Cancer has been the leading cause of death in China since 2010, with lung cancer causing the most deaths."

Energy poverty

We'd be doing the Indian people a much bigger favour if we were to help them develop renewable wind and solar power to lift them out of energy poverty without the pollution from coal-burning.

Electricity costs have gone up Australia-wide, not just where there is new renewable energy

Minister Frydenberg has notoriously criticised South Australia's renewable energy for pushing prices up, but since South Australia's electricity demand is about 7% of Australia's total it plays very little part in Australia-wide electricity prices. About 80% of Australia's electricity demand is in the three eastern mainland states and they are predominantly powered by coal.

Plainly, wholesale electricity costs in Australia are not going up because of renewable energy.

Mike Sandiford is Chair of Geology and Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, University of Melbourne.

Table credit: Household Energy Costs in Australia 2006 to 2016, Ben Phillips, ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods, February 2017.

South Australia, renewables and electricity costs

The table on the right shows that electricity expenditure in the period from 2006 to 2016 has increased more in the predominently coal-powered states of Victoria, NSW and Queensland than they have in SA. (Most of SA's renewable energy was built in this period.)

The Australian Capital Territory is transitioning to 100% renewable electricity by 2020 and also has some of the cheapest retail electricity prices in the nation. As can be seen in the table, the ACT's growth in electricity costs is also among the lowest in the nation.

It seems that any honest person would put down the electricity price rises to causes other than renewables.

100% renewable power and cheapest electricity in Australia

The ACT's Minister for Environment and Climate Change, Simon Corbell, said "We are demonstrating through these policies that not only is a transition to a renewable energy future achievable, it is affordable and is creating jobs."

This demonstrates that renewables now are highly competitive with fossil fuels, especially including coal. This being so, why would anyone choose coal in a world that must reduce carbon emissions as quickly as possible?

You'd have to wonder why the Turnbull Government is doing all it can to discredit the renewable energy industry and the federal Labor Party's modest emission reduction aims other than to undemocratically support the coal industry against the needs of the future of the planet.

The Great Barrier Reef is playing the part of the canary in the coal mine; the canary is dying and showing us that the atmosphere has become dangerously loaded with inappropriate gasses.

While Australians have been keen adopters of innovative green technology such as rooftop solar generation and household batteries, our uptake of electric vehicles is woeful compared to that of similar countries worldwide. In recent years, market share of EVs has reached as high as 0.75% in the US, 0.58% in Japan, and up to 1.1% in the UK – while they make up only a paltry 0.01% of the Australian market.

The lack of take-up of electric cars in Australia has been attributed to a corresponding lack of incentives provided by the Australian Government, in contrast to other governments around the world.

Of course the Turnbull Government is opposed to EVs because they don't burn fossil fuels.

Graph source: The Conversation

The deficit only increased during the Abbott and Turnbull Governments.

In February 2016, having achieved nothing toward improving the government's income/expenditure ratio, PM Turnbull announced a huge increase in spending on 'defence', at a time when there were no obvious external threats to the nation. (Terrorism was a minor threat, but not one from which conventional armaments could protect the nation.)

(At the same time the COALition has destroyed the wind farm construction industry together with many, many renewable energy jobs.)

Hazelwood coal mine fire, February 2014 It seems that the then Victorian Liberal government were quite happy to have coal mines in this area, even when they are run incompetently, but wind turbines were against the law. Does the reader see any ethical problems with laws like this? Image credit 350.org

Australia has huge potential for renewable energy developments, including particuarly, wind, solar and wave power. This is obviously the way of the future of energy, at a time when we must reduce greenhouse gas production and when the costs of renewables are continually declining. Australia's renewable energy potential gives us a big natural competative advantage against other advanced nations, should we ever get a government willing to develop the industry.

In regard to uranium mining, the South Australian Royal Commission into the nuclear cycle had recently stated in their provisional conclusions that nuclear power in South Australia was too expensive to be viable. nuclear power had previously been shown to be much more expensive than at least some renewables elsewhere.

Port Augusta's closed Northern Power station is on the left. Sundrop Farm's solar power-tower is on the right. The way of the past is on the left, the way of the future is on the right

October 2016

The Northern Power Station at Port Augusta was the dirtiest in the country in terms of emissions per KWh of power generated, it was old; it was an obvious choice for closure as a means of reducing emissions; but it was not closed because of the damage it was doing to the world. The coal resource at Leigh Creek was mostly mined-out, but the main reason the power station was closed was because the owners decided it was uneconomical to keep it open.

If the Turnbull Coalition government was to use taxpayer's money to reopen this old power station it would have to be one of the most unethical acts ever by an Australian government (at least since Liberal PM John Howard got Australia involved in the Iraq War) and Australia would be even more an international climate-inaction pariah than it already is.

You know, don't you, that we should be closing more coal-fired power stations, not reopening closed ones. You know this, but you also know that if you do the right thing the right wing of the Liberals – who seem to be running the party at present – will take your job away from you. Have you considered doing the right thing because it is the right thing? It's not as if you need the PM's salary, you are a very wealthy man.

PM Turnbull, you have a family; even if you put your own ambition before the good of the world, do you put it before the future of your children?

Read more on this proposal to turn back the clock in the Sydney Morning Herald.

It seems that everyone other than the Australian Coalition parties know that 'the end is nigh' for coal. Burning coal causes millions of illnesses and deaths each year from air pollution, and it is one of the main causes of climate change and ocean acidification.

There is more on Sundrop Farms elsewhere on this site.

I can't help thinking, though, that we'd be doing the Indians a bigger favour if we were to help them develop non-polluting renewable wind and solar power to lift them out of energy poverty.

More than seven in ten (71%) said the government was not doing enough to ensure "affordable, reliable and clean energy" for households and businesses. Only 12% said it was. Fewer than one-quarter (23%) of Coalition voters thought it was doing enough. 62% of these voters said it wasn't.

The poll found 45% agreed with the proposition that recent blackouts "are due mainly to failures of the energy market in responding to extreme weather events". 19% agreed they "are due mainly to the privatisation of electricity supply". Just 16% said they "are the result of too much reliance on renewable energy".

Dear PM Turnbull;

I will make my main points right at the start:

• Coal has no future, environmentally or economically;
• The world is changing to renewables;
• An eventual change from fossil fuel powered vehicles to electric vehicles, with the electricity being provided by renewables, is inevitable;
• Australia must recognise these facts and keep up with changing technology, or we will be left behind by more progressive nations.

The wind farm development has been a positive all around for my region. The wind farms provide employment, income for all the farmers who host turbines, and the operators of all the MN wind farms provide substantial community development funding.

There is no good reason that this success should not be repeated in many regions around Australia.

I'm sure that you know as well as I do that wind farms harm nobody's health.

Will you do the right thing for Australia and the world, and support renewable energy development – and serious climate change action – in Australia?

All the events below happened within a couple of months in mid 2016.

I put it down to something in the air, and I reckon that something has to be the increasing carbon dioxide level! It's time to take our emissions seriously Prime Minister Turnbull.

Koala chases girl on quad bike

Wombat attacks woman walking her dogs at Canberra

Kangaroo attacks two women on Riesling Trail, Clare

Peter Dutton lashes out at the ABC and Guardian