In which it's back to the scalding tears and the hole in the bucket man and cackling Claire ...

 

A survey of the lizard Oz commentariat, the leet of Surry Hills, this day produced a deep sigh of despair. 

First petulant Peta drives the pond down into the pits yesterday ... and the next day this selection is all that's on offer ...

What to do? The pond hasn't the slightest interest in prattling Polonius's relative, nor in simplistic "here no conflict of interest" Simon, nor tedious Tom, nor the meretricious Merritt still doing his best for war crimes ...

That's why on a Friday the pond always somehow ends up trying to fix holes in buckets by referencing some great historical figure, strictly Western canon, with dear old Henry ... and it never ends well ...

You do me wrong to take me out o' th' grave.
Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound
Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
Do scald like molten lead.

Oh enough of the maudlin self-pity, let's just do it, we'll do it live ...

The pond immediately understood the old curmudgeon and appreciated the invocation of JSM. What a dire threat to News Corp, which routinely disseminates information with the intent to deceive or cause serious harm to the planet ...

And there are others who are just as bad. Why that wag Charlie Lewis in Crikey (paywall) yesterday disseminated a tweet which purportedly featured News Corp crappy merch ...

The pond didn't believe it for a second. But at least Charlie followed it up with an oldie, but a goodie ... though a tad parochial and a slight on the national reptiles, who surely should have been given the pictorial honour ...

Sorry, the pond's mortified ... it should be taking JSM and the hole in the bucket man seriously. The old curmudgeon and disinformation disseminator is taking it personally ... as if being tackled by ACMA was in any way worse than being given a stern slapping by a tepidly warm lettuce leaf ...

Indeed, indeed, and what is truth but a morass, a bog swamp of contradictions and relativism and both siderism and uncertainties and chaos? 

The pond suddenly imagined itself in a Charlie Brooker Black Mirror episode where there were ontological planes and levels of existence playing out on screen thanks to a Quamputer, or even worse trapped in a nauseating Sartrean Holt street hell, “I am alone in the midst of these unhappy, unreasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven's name, why is it so important to think the same things all together?”

Yes, that's a deliberate misquote and for all you know the pond could have hired in a Quamputer to write our Henry's column and pound the keyboard to devise the pond's response ...

What a nightmare of existential doubt and uncertainty. The only way through the miasma must be to allow as many falsehoods to multiply as can be devised, and soon enough you'll end up in RFK Jr land ...

Indeed, indeed, let the falsehoods run wild and free, and boost Chairman Rupert's coffers with blessed shekels, and soon enough you'll have the mango Mussolini back in the White House, where all the best con artists and snake oil salesmen belong ...

... and more falsehoods than you know what to do with (paywall) ...

Just the facts, ma'am. Some spoilsport will probably come along and try to upset Gym's apple cart ...

...At the time of the Hall of Famer’s death, Kennedy said it was “part of a wave of suspicious deaths among elderly closely following administration of COVID vaccines,” adding that the Atlanta Braves legend had “received the Moderna vaccine on Jan. 5 to inspire other Black Americans to get the vaccine.”

Despite Jordan’s claims that Kennedy was merely “pointing out facts,” his suggestion that Aaron died from the vaccine has been disproven over and over again. In fact, the medical examiner’s office that examined Aaron’s body said the 86-year-old died of natural causes.

But Gym was just repeating the facts ... always the facts...

Uh oh, there's a logic overload in the old Quamputer, so it's time for a gigantic billy goat butt. 

Please, butt away, billy goat ...

And indeed the pond's opinion of Henry's opinions should be taken with a grain of salt, or else you might find yourself with the endless moronic stupidities of a comatose graphics department, now reduced to running free huge pictures to illustrate nothing much, except perhaps that portraits of JSM exist and can be used gratis by the lizard Oz ...

And so to a final gobbet of our Henry defending misinformation, and yet the pond can't think of a more intellectually stagnant and fetid cesspool in which to swim each Friday ...

Beyond the valley and over the hill of post-irony rode the horsemen to discover that this desiccated coconut, this aging curmudgeon, somehow thinks he's kept his mind open ... when it snapped shut hard, just like a rat trap, decades ago ...

Talk about iron in soul and brain, and while it's a kind of perverse comedy, enough already.

Desperate, and hoping a bonus might produce a switcheroo in the pond's fortunes, the pond turned to the top of the digital edition to see if there was some light relief...

Utopia Jim?

Was that on the tree killer edition too?

It was, it was, but at least the pond is relieved, knowing that the alleged news reporting has disappeared up the lizard Oz's fundament, and opinion can now freely parade as news, mingling freely and with gay abandon, and our Henry will be cheering from the sidelines ...because the lizard Oz has found its true calling and can carry on like a rabid blogger using cheap nicknames for easy point scoring.

And speaking of that sort of fun, that's when the pond noticed that cackling Claire, legendary climate scientist and expert in energy, was also at the top of the digital page ...

Of late WaPo and the NY Times have taken to tracking the way that the weather has been kinda funny of late in the US of A (and elsewhere, all over the shop and the planet if you indulge in climate change porn) ...

It's also produced the odd cartoon ...

So how does cackling Claire, legendary climate scientist and energy boffin, tackle the problem? 

Spoiler alert: nuke the country, nuke the planet, it's the right thing to do.

What's the bet it's all the fault of renewable energy, and the only solution is to nuke the country and never mind the canaries?

Sorry, the pond already did the spoiler, so best get to the end as quickly as possible ...

Dame Groan?! Is there no way of escaping the Groaner and her Groaning. And why are the reptiles always up each other's fundament and quoting each other? Oh that's right, the pond had already conjured up a Sartrean hellscape ...

“I am alone in the midst of these unhappy, unreasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven's name, why is it so important to think the same things all together?”

And so it seems we must abandon renewable energy, and spend squillions on inventing nuclear energy down under, and all because of a file photo dragged from the bowels of the reptiles' lost graphics department ...

Okay, the pond will admit that this day it too has relied on visual distractions, cartoons and the like. 

That's because the nuclear energy debate is a tired, hoary, eternally hashed over reptile trope and meme, and the pond is heartily tired of it ... and almost the last person on the planet the pond would turn to for advice on nuclear energy and renewables is cackling Claire, doing what all the reptiles have done of late ...

Meanwhile, on entirely another planet, far removed from the land above the Holt street faraway tree, the pond sometimes needs to visit ... The question of nuclear in Australia’s energy sector ...

...Using the standard formula for levelised costs plus the additional calculations specific to storage and transmission, wind and solar come in at a maximum of $83 per megawatt hour in 2030. This is a useful point in time for comparison because this is the earliest date at which nuclear SMR could be built in Australia.

In contrast, SMRs come in at $130-311 per megawatt hour. This range allows for nuclear SMR capital costs to halve from where we think they are at present. 

"Nuclear costs per megawatt hour are calculated by converting the hard infrastructure costs into annual loan repayments, adding other annual costs such as fuel and maintenance and then dividing that sum by the annual energy output. Every item in the calculation has an uncertainty factor resulting in a cost range," Paul says...  

And again ...

...Beyond the unfavourable economics, is the long time to build nuclear capability. The opportunity for the technology to play a serious role in emissions reduction for Australia is fast running out. 

According to Renewables 2022, the latest edition of the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) annual report on the sector, renewable energy will surpass coal by early 2025 as the largest source of global electricity. Over the forecast period, their share of power will increase by 10 percentage points, reaching 38 per cent in 2027. Electricity generation from renewables is the only energy source that is expected to grow, while shares for coal, natural gas, nuclear and oil will decline.

"We know that in terms of addressing climate change and hitting emissions reduction targets, the electricity sector really needs to be the lynchpin," Paul says.

"It needs to go first – and it needs to do that very quickly – and then other sectors like transport, building and manufacturing can use electrification of the energy grid to reduce their own emissions. It would be a real challenge for nuclear to come in and make a contribution in a timely way."

That’s especially true in Australia, where there are a range of other considerations at play: not least the fact that that nuclear power is currently not permitted by law. Two separate pieces of Commonwealth legislation – the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998 and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 – expressly prohibit the approval, licensing, construction, or operation of a nuclear plant. The only exception to that rule is a research reactor near Sydney, which is used for research and the production of medical isotopes.

"Plenty of other people have made the case against nuclear on the basis of issues like a lack of social licence, or the challenges involved with siting. Those issues are not unique to nuclear – but unlike other technologies, nuclear hasn’t had to go through siting or approval processes before in Australia," Paul says.

"Taking all that into account and knowing that the longer it takes to build something the more likely it is that real costs will increase rather than decrease, it’s very clear that nuclear is going to find it very challenging to compete against renewables."

And with that NIMBYism in mind and remembering what recently happened in SA in relation to a little nuclear waste ...

... that means it must be o'clock time, and so time for a closing infallible Pope ...

And while that guest appearance by the planet is more than enough, why not a few more celebrating the pond's current favourite loon and distraction when the going gets tough, and the tough times get truly weird ...