Lack of leadership to blame for energy prices
Lack of leadership and internal divisions within the federal government have contributed to rising power prices. The National Energy Guarantee is weak and has been put on the back burner. Uncertainty, together with aging coal-fired power stations requiring increasing maintenance, is the real reason for rising power prices.
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It is a myth that coal is more reliable and more suitable for baseload power than renewables. Proponents of this myth point to the outages in South Australia, but these had nothing to do with the power generation. The outages were caused by power distribution as the weather itself tore down the power lines.
Renewable energy, together with battery storage, will deliver cheaper and more reliable power than coal into the future. It is a huge indictment on the federal government that AGL moved to close the Liddell power station transitioning it over to renewables and the federal government intervened. This aging dinosaur, with increasing maintenance costs and decreasing reliability, was pushed by the federal government to continue operation and lead to the resignation of AGL CEO Andy Vesey.
If only the government had the leadership and vision to transition from fossil fuel to renewables we would start to see power prices coming down. Economic growth together with real jobs will be created by manufacture of components for renewable energy generation and these components can be exported as well.
Michael Bayles
Wagga
Water shortages a myth
Of the four substances water, air, earth and fire, water is the only one without which life as we know it cannot exist.
Fortunately there is no shortage of water in Australia, or indeed on planet Earth. Water is the only element on Earth which exists as a solid, a gas and a liquid at the same time in its natural state. A newspaper report recently stated that we must be careful with our use of water so as to save it for future generations. Such a statement is a nonsense. You cannot get rid of water. It just keeps changing its state, but does not disappear.
There is the same amount of water on Earth now as there was soon after the Big Bang. Sometimes the distribution alters so there can be a build up of ice at the poles and less in the oceans, but still no less of water. There are sometimes shortages of fresh water. This can easily be fixed by desalination at some cost. Collectively we do not harness water efficiency.
If every householder put in an underground tank they would have sufficient water for their own (economical) use most times. If the federal government put in more dams and harnessed rivers there would never be shortages.
All vegetation uses water, but it only borrows it. The plant transpires this moisture straight back into the atmosphere. It doesn’t take it with it when it does. The moisture laden air is transformed into rain or snow or hail and returned to earth. And so the cycle continues.
Norm Alexander
Wagga
Turnbull gets free ride
The Q&A Malcolm Turnbull special was the most egregious, blatant, obvious piece of bias the ABC has even come up with.
He was spoon- fed Dorothy Dix questions from the hand-picked audience, never interrupted by Tony Jones, never asked any difficult questions like about the $450 million handout to the Barrier Reef fund, or whether he ever tried to join the Labor Party.
You could tell by the expressions on the faces of the audience as the camera panned over them they were all Malcolm groupies.
If Media Watch doesn't pull the Q&A producers up over this one, MW has no credibility.
