Experts react to the Finkel Review on the future for Australia's electricity generation

Many of you will have been glued to the internet (or television) over the past few hours, first watching the Comey session before the Senate Committee in the USA, then the elections in Britain. While you were being entertained, an important report was released here in Australia. It's known as the Finkel Review, because the panel preparing it was headed by Australia's Chief Scientist, Dr Alan Finkel.

The report is called the Independent Review into the Future Security of the National Electricity Market. It has important implications for how Australia manages the transition away from fossil fuels (particularly coal) into the new energy economy.

Some people are being pragmatic about it, others are concerned that it will mean that Australia will not move quickly enough, and that we won't meet our international obligations.

Below is an article about the report, just published at The Conversation.

Luddite Eric Worrall huffs and puffs and wants to bring back smog @wattsupwiththat

This is interesting. Probably without knowing it, Eric Worrall at WUWT is arguing for a national strategy for the shift to renewable energy. He was writing about an anti-renewables article in The Australian. In part, the article was about how, in the absence of a national electricity strategy, more people will leave the grid. However, the article was clearly propaganda against the shift to renewables, as is the norm for The Australian and it's war against humanity.

That article in The Australian was a Murdoch slant on the preliminary report released last month by the Energy Expert Panel, chaired by the Chief Scientist, Dr. Alan Finkel: Independent Review into the Future Security of the National Electricity Market (saved here).

Dissenting view on Climate Change Action - No longer silent, but is it too little, too few, and too late?

Two members of Australia's Climate Change Authority have published a minority report, dissenting from a new report from the Authority.

Unlike the Climate Commission, the The Climate Change Authority (CCA) wasn't shut down when Tony Abbott became Australia's Prime Minister in September 2013. Instead it was left to all but disintegrate, with budget cuts and no filling of board vacancies until Turnbull took over as Prime Minister in September 2015 (half the board seats were vacant - 5 out of 10, for most of those two years). [Update: see article by Clive Hamilton and an article on the resignation from CCA of former Reserve Bank Chair Bernie Fraser, for more on this subject. Sou 6 Sept 16] The CCA was set up as an independent statutory body, or as independent as a government body can get these days, which isn't much. It's been a toothless tiger struggling along with occasional mostly wimpy reports promoted by government when it suits them, and buried when it doesn't.

The members of the Authority (ie the board) include Clive Hamilton, John Quiggin and David Karoly who were all appointed under the Labor Government in 2012. In the past, these three people were prominent advocates for climate action, and were willing to speak out fearlessly. They've been much quieter since they were appointed to the CCA. It's now six years since Clive Hamilton's book "Requiem for a Species". (Update: It's not as bad as I thought. See comment from MikeH below to articles by Clive Hamilton. Sou 6 Sept 16)