Just nuke the country already, so the bromancer might have some nukes for his war on China by Xmas ...

 

What to do when conflicting issues distract the pond? 

There was, for example, the ongoing decline and fall of Media Watch. Having established that petulant Peta was peddling what might be kindly called misinformation, or what the dog botherer labelled simply not true, nonsense, Paul Barry decided the lie might best be called "disputed". 

What can't be disputed is the way that Media Watch has fallen by the wayside when it comes to herpetological studies. The pond is glad it was away when the fuss erupted, and regrets that it watched another eruption of both siderism on the ABC last night ... because on any other planet it couldn't be disputed that she told a porky.

Then there was the complete unawareness of the reptiles of what's currently happening in Victoria. The reptiles are always seeking to have a go at comrade Dan, and yet here he's cutting swathes through assorted bodies that oversee the government - the Privacy Commission, the Ombudsman - and not a squawk from the reptiles, as the Department of Injustice does Dan's budget-slashing bidding. On the other hand, not caring about cardigan wearers does conform to the reptiles' love of Ronnie Raygun's view of government ...

And then there's the matter of climate disasters. Both the ABC and the BBC led this morning with news of records in California and Canada, and yet in the lizard Oz ... crickets ...

It seems any news about climate-inspired disasters is whisked off to the cornfield in a nanosecond, while talk of the suffering of Big Miners hits the lizard Oz headlines. 

And yet, strange, no mention of Mark McGowan, yet in Crikey's Mark McGowan has been auditioning for his new mining job for six years (paywall), you might read ...

...According to The Australian Institute, the WA government spent $320 million assisting fossil-fuel industries in 2022-23, McGowan’s last financial year as premier, with $1.4 billion budgeted for the future.
And of course, the largesse moves in both directions. To pick an entirely random example, Mineral Resources Limited paid $126,000 to WA Labor over the last two financial years.
Rhetoric In the lead-up to the 2021 election, ill-fated former Liberal leader Zak Kirkup announced a $400 million renewable energy plan that would see coal phased out. McGowan said the plan would mean “many many billions of extra debt, huge increase in family bills, rolling blackouts across the state and huge job losses” — rhetoric that could have quite literally been copied and pasted from arguments mounted by fossil-fuel companies across the world for years.
And lest we forget his final act as premier, awarding Western Australia’s Person of the Year — decided by Celebrate WA, a non-profit sponsored by BHP, the WA government and Lotterywest — to humble mining billionaire Gina Rinehart.

They always disappoint ... as do the reptiles, with this motley mob down below in the comments section...

There's Jimbo propping up the lizard Oz paywall ... and it seems the only way you can EXCLUSIVELY read Jimbo's thoughts is by dropping some shekels in Chairman Rupert's pockets ... because there's no sign that Jimbo decided to make his column freely available on his own website ...

They always disappoint, especially as it meant that all that was left for the pond was a jolly good groaning on a topic that has already become exceedingly tiresome ... what with the Caterist one day, and the Groaning the very next ...

The pond thought it might freshen up the routine by reverting to its patented William Burroughs' cut and paste format.

Over at the Nine papers you could read Mike Foley's Coalition’s campaign for nuclear energy implausible, experts say (soft paywall).

If you substitute "reptiles' campaign" and "Dame Groan campaign" for "Coalition campaign", you could read on ...

Former chief scientist Alan Finkel says it would take decades to develop a local nuclear energy industry, as he and other experts reject the Coalition’s push to switch focus from renewables to nuclear energy as implausible since Australia needs urgent replacement for its ageing coal-fired power plants.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton (and lizard Oz columnist Dame Groan and many other reptiles) wants Australia to deploy emerging nuclear power technology, while Nationals leader David Littleproud has criticised what he calls the government’s “reckless race to renewables” and asked for the government’s clean energy target to be paused and reconsidered.

The Albanese government has pledged to more than double the amount of power the electricity grid sources from renewables to 82 per cent by 2030, to help achieve its target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent by the same deadline.

Federal parliament banned nuclear power in 1998 and the moratorium has remained in place with bipartisan support, but Dutton is calling for the deployment of small modular reactors to reduce emissions from the electricity sector, instead of renewables that require a vast array of new power lines to link wind and solar farms to the cities.

Finkel said it was highly unlikely that Australia could open a nuclear power plant before the early 2040s, pointing out the autocratic United Arab Emirates took more than 15 years to complete its first nuclear plan using established technology.

Meanwhile, back with the Groaner, here the pond must issue a caveat. This Finkel is of course a mere scientist and therefore entirely clueless, up against the rampant expertise of Dame Groan ...

At this point, as the demonisation of renewables continues down a familiar path, the pond should note that the reptiles began to insert what the pond fondly thinks of as "pictoids" ... cheap, inexpensive illustrations dug up by what was once a proud lizard Oz graphics department ... and serving much the same point as meaningless factoids ...

 

The pond can't begin to count the number of meaningless snaps of coal-fired power plants the reptiles have slipped into the mix over the years ...

And then of course there's the Finkel ...

“There are a lot of very attractive things about nuclear energy for our clean energy transition. The problem is timing and cost,” Finkel said. “If we did large-scale [nuclear power], I would imagine something approaching 20 years in Australia.”

The economic viability of Australia’s ageing fleet of coal-fired power stations, which still make up two-thirds of the electricity grid, has been hammered by cheaper sources of renewable energy. Replacement power is urgently needed, with five of 15 plants due to shut within a decade and more tipped to follow.

Responding to assertions that small modular reactors, which are smaller than traditional nuclear plants, may be quicker and cheaper to build, Finkel said: “The reality is, it’s not being done in Europe and America.

“There’s no operating small modular reactor in Canada, America or the UK, or any country in Europe.”

Finkel noted that private company Nuscale is aiming to commission 12 small modular reactors starting from 2029, but he said it would probably take at least a decade to follow suit in Australia.

“I just can’t see anything less than 10 years from the time that the [Australian] government saw Nuscale start operating in America,” he said.

But would any of that stop the Groaning?

Wyoming. Always Wyoming, and to be fair, Dame Groan did mention the demonic Bill Gates, down there with George Soros, strangely missing in the Caterist rant yesterday on the very same topic.

And also to be fair, the Finkel did understand the appeal, from a purely monomaniacal groaning perspective ...

...However, Finkel said from a “purely engineering” perspective, nuclear technology was appealing, with zero emissions, a continuous supply of baseload power and a small mining footprint for fuel.

The Coalition has called for nuclear plants to be built on the sites of retiring coal-fired power plants, to link up with existing transmission lines.

Energy analyst Dylan McConnell, a senior research associate at University of NSW, said retired coal plants “are not a stranded asset that’s sitting there unused”.

“The connection points at coal-fired power stations are very valuable and coal plant owners are already building batteries on these sites,” he said.

McConnell said deploying a small modular reactor at an old coal plant would not be the “plug-and-play” operation some optimists have suggested.

“You would have to decommission the existing coal plant and then build a new nuclear plant,” he said.

Alison Reeve, a climate and energy expert at the Grattan Institute, said investors could not start to investigate a nuclear project in Australia until the moratorium was lifted by federal parliament, and it would probably take years after that for states to pass their own laws and for a regulatory framework to be developed.

“This is not as simple as just removing the moratorium and then everything will be fine,” Reeve said.

Come now, Ms Reeve, it's pretty simple if you're a reptile, a Caterist, or Dame Groan ...

There we go. Always the same. A rampant desire for nuking the country, and yet a strange reluctance to admit it's in any way necessary ..."if decarbonisation is the paramount concern."

Years of climate science denialism can't be shaken off easily ... but when it comes to renewables, any port in a nuking storm.

And so to the bonus, which features another oddly repetitive routine ... the bromancer's desire to have a war with China by Xmas ...

Of course there's a timeline. We must prepare for war with China by Xmas, with the bromancer as armchair strategic Generalfeldmarschall...

The pond decided it would leave in situ assorted snaps of kit, because there's nothing like a thrusting rocket, surging its loins into the ether to get the bromancer excited ...

Oh come now bromancer, of course you mean to be churlish. You can see that the war with China by Xmas isn't altogether in vogue at the moment ...

It was different not so long ago, grand days with heated rhetoric and Marles chomping at the bit ...

Glory days for war mongers, and not so long ago, and what a splendid success that fuss in Ukraine has been for sociopathic Vlad, and now all the reptiles can offer is a snap of a bit of Collins class kit for the bromancer's war ...

Oh it's a dismal scene, and it seems that the chance for the bromancer to play armchair  Generalfeldmarschall has fallen on hard times ... but the pond will always stay loyal ...

Meanwhile, speaking of the Americans, how goes it with Chairman Rupert's project? As usual, nothing in the reptile la la land, and so the pond had to turn to the immortal Rowe ...

There was also a new Luckovich ...

Speaking of quitting, there was this in Ronan Farrow's extended report on Uncle Elon in The New Yorker ...

...In 2018, the Times reported that members of the Tesla board had grown concerned about Musk’s use of the prescription sleep aid Ambien, which can cause hallucinations. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that he uses ketamine, which has gained popularity both as a depression treatment and as a party drug, and several people familiar with his habits have confirmed this. Musk, who smoked pot on Joe Rogan’s podcast, prompting a nasa safety review of SpaceX, has, perhaps understandably, declined to comment on the reporting that he uses ketamine, but he has not disputed it. “Zombifying people with SSRIs for sure happens way too much,” he tweeted, referring to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, another category of depression treatment. “From what I’ve seen with friends, ketamine taken occasionally is a better option.” Associates suggested that Musk’s use has escalated in recent years, and that the drug, alongside his isolation and his increasingly embattled relationship with the press, might contribute to his tendency to make chaotic and impulsive statements and decisions. Amit Anand, a leading ketamine researcher, told me that it can contribute to unpredictable behavior. “A little bit of ketamine has an effect similar to alcohol. It can cause disinhibition, where you do and say things you otherwise would not,” he said. “At higher doses, it has another effect, which is dissociation: you feel detached from your body and surroundings.” He added, “You can feel grandiose and like you have special powers or special talents. People do impulsive things, they could do inadvisable things at work. The impact depends on the kind of work. For a librarian, there’s less risk. If you’re a pilot, it can cause big problems.”

Great stuff, and way more fun than talk of nuking the country, and it seems that Ron DeSanctus could do with a bit of ketamine ...

The minute the pond read that denial, the pond realised the yarn was true. The pond can still remember the naughty boy who used to dip pigtails into the inkwell sitting atop the desk, back in the day when pens with nibs were a thing ... not to mention the naughty boys who lodged spitballs on the ceiling each morning with a ruler.

And then as a bonus came this ...

And so to end with an Uncle Elon joke ...