Relax, the bromancer is here to bung on a war, and Dame Groan will joke about the demise of the Norwegian Blue planet ...

 

The pond paid enough attention to learn that King Donald called it for the wrong team, wandered around lost on the field, had a photo op with the QB's loser family, told a pack of lies and nonsense about the loser QB, and had them backed up by that prime deadbeat and loser Tommy T...and then Patrick Mahomes' horrible first half led to so many Tommy Tuberville jokes during the Super Bowl...

... And so on, and not knowing or caring, at least the pond could be there for the laughs, because the pond is frequently in need of laughs these days ...

Oh dear, it's a crisis, we must resuscitate the liar from the Shire, or even at a pinch, Malware 1.0 ... you know, Team Australia. 

Perhaps appoint the mutton Dutton as special ambassador to save the day ...

The pond has no idea why the reptiles went into a panic. We have a dinkum cobber sitting like a hunched and malevolent gnome in the corner waiting to help ...

Oh wait, he's actually an American ... a furriner still looting a large part of Australia ... 

Best get ready to pad up in the usual way ...

Over on the extreme far right, the reptiles seemed relatively unfazed, surprisingly calm about it all ...

Simpleton Simon made the trade war all the fault of Albo, while there were Pearls of wisdom on view, but nowhere was there the sort of air of desperation that saw this in the Nine rags this morning ...

No fair ... no fudging or funny knuckles ... 

Damn you sir, it's almost an insult, which isn't quite the same as an actual insult, it's almost pistols at dawn... and yet ... the cash is in the paw, the cheque is in the bank, we can still do a starry-eyed singalong ...

Phew, the infallible Pope came early this day, in goodly time for Ēostre...

Time to settle and get on with it, and as usual the bromancer has the matter in hand ... 

PM still doesn’t get ‘international order’ has changed under Trump, The Albanese government’s true international position is to curl itself into the smallest version it can of the foetal position and hope nobody notices it.

Oh sheesh, there's five minutes of it, so the reptiles say, and the bromancer is in a celebratory sociopathic mood, so the opening snap is joyous, US President Donald Trump has made it clear the US will no longer pay any lip service to the liberal rules-based order.

The bromancer has no time for rules-based order, what with any rules-based order inherently liberal. Any talk of rules-based order verges on the demented ...

Trust the bromancer, he's for crazed anarchic libertarianism of the nihilistic kind. He's never seen an ethnic cleansing or a genocide that doesn't deserve to go unnoted or unpunished...

A radical, epoch-marking change has occurred in the international system of which Australia is a part.
A failure to understand this change, even to see it, by the Albanese government, and by much of the wider society, is contributing to Australia’s inability to pursue its national interests effectively.
Let’s illustrate the problem, then elucidate it.
Amid the blizzard of early actions by the new Trump administration, one was very striking. Donald Trump imposed official American government sanctions on those officers of the International Criminal Court who had issued arrest warrants for war crimes against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister and who were investigating Americans for alleged war crimes.
I think Trump absolutely right to do this. Among many grave moral and legal deficiencies in the court’s action, it’s meant only to prosecute officials of those countries that don’t have their own legitimate legal processes. Israel has one of the world’s most robust judiciaries.

Ah, say what you will, he's always good for a laugh.

Robust? That's a new way of saying spineless and supine ...

Government legal advisors and judges who for years proudly spoke of jurists’ involvement in scrutinizing IDF’s operations have grown silent. Those who, during the Second Intifada, pointed out the Court’s ability to intervene in real-time in military operations seem to have forgotten this ability. They also caught amnesia with regards to the Court’s judgments prohibiting torture and the use of human shields (what is known in Hebrew as the “neighbor technique”) even when there is clear evidence that Israeli security forces have disobeyed both these judgments since the war began. Moreover, several of the petitions submitted to the Court did not even require intervening in military operations but merely intervening in providing basic humanitarian requirements such as food and medical aid. In these petitions – to which Israel has referred in its communication with the ICC prosecutor prior to his application for arrest warrants – the Court served more as an alibi for the government’s claims than a judicial institution aiming to prevent human rights violations. (here)

Not to worry, the bro has another bone to gnaw on, hit it billy goat ...

But that’s not my point here. When the court issued its infamous arrest warrants, Anthony Albanese said he couldn’t comment on them one way or the other because he didn’t comment on legal proceedings. This was both fatuous and cowardly.

Cue another snap, this time featuring those who can't hear, speak or see, Anthony Albanese, Penny Wong and Tony Burke at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Martin Ollman

That sent the bro into a righteous rage ...

It also served to illustrate the official bureaucratic view that what is frequently called by Australian policymakers “the liberal international rules-based system” was actually a legal system, similar to our own legal system, or that of Britain or the US. And that it was, like them, run by autonomous, neutral, trustworthy, non-politicised, in a technical sense disinterested, institutions. The implication is we can rely on the integrity and impartiality of these institutions and must therefore abide by all their decisions.
Yet that’s plainly absurd. And ordinary people know it. Straight after World War II, the US created most of these institutions and totally dominated them. Given that the US is by far the most benign superpower the world has ever known, when these institutions worked entirely under US influence they were genuinely liberal and tried to act fairly and with some degree of impartiality. That’s no longer the case.

Always good for a laugh.

The most benign superpower? Tell that to Iraq or Afghanistan, or of late, Greenland, Denmark and Canada ...

As an aside, the pond has no idea why Canada doesn't immediately begin negotiating to join the USA. Of course there'd have to be rigorous discussions, but if each province and territory were to be counted as a state (13) - only fair - that'd make 26 senators.

Don't even get the pond started on the number of members of the lower house they should score. A guaranteed apportionment, never to go under a squillion. Only fair. 

As for the electoral college, if California can score 54 electoral votes for having just under Canada's c. 40 million, then Canada should be able to collar a few more. 

By golly, if these two states joined up in an alliance - they'd have over a century of the 500 plus votes - they could do something of a reverse takeover, and San Francisco/LA, deeply decadent Hollywood liberal values could rule for a century. So they just need to sign up to the CanCal Alliance, CalCan if you prefer, CaCa for short, before Canada joins the union ...

Oh and Canada really should be offered a VP slot with a power of veto over everything, and six members on the Supreme Court (they'd be giving up 3, which would be right generous of them)...

Why it could be marvellous, it could be the perfect Valentine's Day  for the new couple... think of all the guns and health care they'd be getting ... not to mention all the rest ...

Sorry, something came over the pond, some kind of hallucinatory effect, which often happens reading the bromancer, especially when he substitutes "liberal" for "woke", and rants away, as if trying to impress JD Vance with his advanced Catholic thinking ...

So the Albanese government won’t say boo to the ICC or to most of the so-called liberal institutions, many of which have become fiercely illiberal and operate against Australian interests. Scott Morrison tried to discuss this, very cautiously, once or twice as prime minister but was howled down by the heresy hunters of public policy, who very often don’t even understand the institutions they’re notionally defending.
The underlying institutional mathematics are simple. Most of the world’s nations are not democracies and don’t practise the kind of separation of powers that underpins an independent and reliable legal system.
These nations form the majority at the UN. They shape its institutions in their own likeness and to serve their own purposes.
We certainly shouldn’t leave the UN. Too much real national interest is transacted there. But we shouldn’t base our policies on what its institutions decide. This is especially the case with institutions such as the UN Human Rights Council, which is more often reminiscent of a Monty Python send-up of left-wing lunacy than it is of a body seriously concerned with human rights.
Back to Albanese, Israel and the court.

What a disappointment. No cry to leave the UN? Just a celebration of two experts in the art of ethnic cleansing, President Donald Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The pond almost had a fainting fit watching Russian state media actually talk of Stalin's mass displacement of people, relieved apparently by him allowing them to survive inside the house... perhaps in a nice gulag in Siberia... (so much to fit on that pin head).

The bromancer had no qualms at all, think of the real estate opportunities for ethnic cleansers...

So far as I know, the Albanese government hasn’t answered the question of whether it would honour the ICC warrant and arrest the relevant Israeli politicians should they be silly enough to come to Australia. This reflects the Albanese government’s true international position, which is to curl itself into the smallest version it can of the foetal position and hope nobody notices it. That’s not the very worst position it could choose, though it’s pretty bad.
The Albanese government adopts the foetal position as its core operating principle because it lacks the intellectual horsepower or political courage to resolve, confront, transcend or even acknowledge the contradictions that increasingly paralyse its policies.
For at other times the Australian government describes Israel as an ally. It always describes Australia as a friend of Israel.
When Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus went to Israel recently to consort with the ministers of the alleged war criminal his government would apparently arrest if ever presented with the possibility, the Left and the Greens abused him. What are you doing, going to consort with war criminals, they asked.
The Left had a good point. If the Albanese government believes Netanyahu is a war criminal leading a government of war criminals, it certainly shouldn’t be sending senior cabinet ministers on goodwill visits. And if it doesn’t believe that, it should have had the courage, as did many of our allies, including routinely non-courageous allies, to criticise the absurd ICC arrest warrants. You can’t coherently hold contradictory positions simultaneously.

Naturally the bromancer is coherently in favour of ethnic cleansing and genocide, as any good Xian would be ... 

Now back to that damned notion of liberal rules-based order ...and puh-lease, no rulez ...

Its failure to criticise the warrants reflects in part the deadening hold the paradigm paralysis of investing unrealistic faith in the international rules-based order has, especially on our bureaucracy but also on the foreign policy culture of the Labor Party. Sometimes Labor moderates use notional adherence to the rules-based order to ward off the Left, taking refuge in some interpretation of an international consensus that allows them to ignore or delay the Left’s inevitably destructive policy demands.
Bob Hawke was different. He took the Left on directly, opposing it on foreign policy on grounds of principle, arguing that democracy was better than communism, liberty better than tyranny, that our alliances embodied our values as well as our interests.
Trump has made it clear the US will no longer pay any lip service at all to the liberal rules-based order. This is sensible because that order no longer functions. Anyone who allows themselves to be governed by the institutional expressions of that defunct order is basing policy on fantasy.

Damn you liberal rules-based order, damn you to bromancer hell ...

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

At this point, the reptiles flung in another snap, a disturbingly huge one of Mark Dreyfus

The pond would have preferred a portrait by the immortal Rowe ...

Ah Toad, what a merry prankster ... what a boost to Tesla sales. Get into the dirty laundry Mr Toad in washerwoman drag ...

At this point the bromancer sensed that he might have gone a tad too far, and so let out a gigantic, epic Billy Goat Butt ...

This doesn’t mean abandoning morality in foreign policy, or trying to blow up international relations. 

But he immediately realised that this silly Goat had gone way too far in its Butting ...

It means sensible nations must be much more choosy about which institutions they sign up to and, signed up or not, which they abide by.

Yes, pick and chose like a mean girl, and give the four eyes bullying hell ...

In short, be truly Xian and do an Aleister Crowley or perhaps a Henry K., "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law", and if that includes bombing the shit out of Cambodia, remember to look pious, or perhaps sanctimonious ...

Allow the bromancer to expand on the notion ...

Hugely powerful nations such as China, Russia and Iran don’t let the rules-based order inhibit their actions in any way, even as they continue to influence those institutions and use them to inhibit their strategic competitors.
Even nations much less threatening than those three sensibly take a selective view. To take just one example, India will never in a million years let any of the UN bodies anywhere near its troubles in Kashmir.
In a fine essay in Foreign Affairs recently, Walter Russell Mead argued the new American mood is not isolationist but represents a return of Hamiltonian pragmatism, based on the ideas of Alexander Hamilton. This approach recognises there is no such thing as a global legal order but neither is it amoral. Its three key ideas are the centrality of business success, the need for patriotism, and an enlightened realism in foreign policy.

There is no global legal order? So those wretched Nuremberg trials were just so much humbug and ordure, a hanging dance party for the winners?

Yep, the bromancer is right on board, as any Xian turned wild-eyed anarchist sociopath would be ...

All great powers seek not only to dominate but in a sense to become the international system. In the long post-World War II period, the US effectively achieved this. That was a very good outcome for Australia. Completely new international dynamics have destroyed that order. Paradoxically, this makes us more dependent on America than ever and also requires us to do more for ourselves (a task we’re shirking monstrously). It requires hard-headed action and clear, genuine, political judgments on our part.
Beyond recognising our continued dependence on the US, there’s not a schmick of evidence anyone in the Albanese government has the faintest clue or any coherent thought about any of this.

What a relief. When China moves on Taiwan, or decides it might like to acquire Tasmania to ensure a plentiful supply of apples (do they still grow apples?) or NZ to keep the sav blanc flowing, they can quote the bromancer ... "there is no such thing as a global legal order, and we can be as bloody immoral as we like if we think we can get away with it ..."

And we all know what that means ...

Enough with the bowing and scraping and sucking,  because for a bonus, the reptiles kindly arranged a standard Dame Groan outing ... 

Green hydrogen has gone the way of the Norwegian Blue,If you believe Chris Bowen, green hydrogen in Australia is not dead or deceased or bereft of life. It’s just resting, pining for fields of solar panels and wind turbines.

It was allegedly a five minute read, and began with Satan's chief helper ... finger pointing as usual ...Energy Minister Chris Bowen is still spruiking the benefits of green hydrogen. Picture: Jeremy Piper

It so happens that "green" hydrogen isn't the hill on which the pond would prefer to die, especially as Dame Groan trotted out a potent Python sketch, first aired (so the intertubes say) on 7th December 1969 ...

An excellent way to date the old biddy, and to hint that perhaps back in the Cretaceous period she thought she had a sensa huma ...

As the Norwegian Blue parrot is to the pet shop owner in Monty Python’s Flying Circus, so green hydrogen is to Chris Bowen.
If you believe the Energy Minister, green hydrogen in Australia is not dead or deceased or bereft of life. It’s just resting, pining for fields of solar panels and wind turbines.
Sadly, for Bowen, green hydrogen made from renewable energy using the process of electrolysis has all the features of that dead parrot, as more and more projects are cancelled. The latest is the Gladstone hub, where the newly elected Crisafulli LNP government has pulled the pin.
The massively expensive green hydrogen project in South Australia, sponsored by the Malinauskas Labor government, is looking shaky as the future of the Whyalla Steel Works becomes more uncertain.
The trouble with green hydrogen is that it’s far too expensive; there is simply not the available ­renewable energy; the technical complications are unresolved; and there are no customers. It’s not just dead here; it is gently being interred in other parts of the world, including Europe. It was a pipedream when it was first floated under the previous Coalition government; it remains a pipedream.

The reptiles inevitably dragged in an AV distraction featuring the dog botherer, Nationals MP Colin Boyce has commended the Crisafulli government for canning the Central Queensland Hydrogen project. Australia’s largest green hydrogen project has collapsed, with the Queensland government pulling funding from construction of the $12.5 billion plant and pipeline in Gladstone. “This is a common sense decision – a very good economic decision from the Queensland government,” Mr Boyce told Sky News host Chris Kenny.

The pond's own preference is to drag in some mention of climate change news.

This day it was Ben Eltham, rabbiting on yesterday in Crikey ....As Lismore’s library reopens, recovery yet to begin in Ingham. Welcome to the endless cost of climate change, Adapting to climate change is really, really expensive. We’re still underestimating the challenge. (paywall)

Once you start to think seriously about climate adaptation, the staggering scale of the task becomes apparent. A recent paper in Nature modelled what researchers call the “economic commitment” implied by climate change — the spending that would be required by a warmer and more disaster-prone world. The figure they came up with was US$38 trillion. A slightly more sober exercise by Deloitte Access Economics put the figure for Australia between 2020 and 2060 at $1.2 trillion.
You may not believe such figures: they are projections and predictions, after all. But it’s a simple fact that the cost of disasters keeps escalating. One recent estimate of the impact of January’s fires in Los Angeles put the damage at US$250 billion. The insurance cost of 2024 hurricanes Helene and Milton in the US has been estimated at between US$35 and US$55 billion. North American wildfires are thought to have cost $67 billion between 2017 and 2024 — not counting LA this year. 
Losses at this scale are uninsurable. Private insurers rely on a business model that pools risk across large numbers of policyholders and assumes that insurance payouts will be sporadic and predictable. A recent article by Fitch suggested that the impact of the LA fires could eat up one-third of the “catastrophe budgets” of European reinsurance firms. Big insurer State Farm responded to the LA fires by seeking an emergency hike in premiums by an average of 22%, while other insurers are getting out of insuring in California altogether. Insurance is already difficult to obtain in many parts of northern Australia. 
As private insurers exit, governments are inevitably called on to step up. The result, as in Florida, is state or federal governments taking on hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions of dollars of risk. 
The problem is exacerbated by confusing climate adaptation with disaster response. Much of what governments do after disasters is not adaptation, but crisis response. Swiftboat rescues, disaster relief payments to victims and urgent repairs to critical infrastructure are all necessary, but they don’t do anything to future-proof communities for the hotter and more dangerous world ahead.

Sheesh, Ben, settle, Dame Groan's got the matter in hand with a sterling example of the Groaner Gloats ...

The Coalition even went to the trouble of getting then chief scientist, Alan Finkel, to undertake a review of the prospects for hydrogen production in Australia.
The final report was reasonably upbeat, although it’s hard to see how it could ever make sense to use electricity to produce hydrogen to produce electricity.
It’s not necessary to fill out the spreadsheets to realise that the economics of this transformation are unlikely to stack up – the ratio of energy in to energy out is around 0.3.
The Albanese Labor government has demonstrated even more enthusiasm for green hydrogen than the Coalition’s preliminary steps. The Prime Minister has enthusiastically declared that Australia has “an enormous opportunity with green hydrogen and to bring things back here”.
In his opinion, “the reason why we’re doing hydrogen hubs around Australia is that the growth and potential of this industry isn’t a niche industry. This is something that will make an enormous difference to Australia’s economy.”
Similarly, the pet shop owner – OK, Chris Bowen – has stated that “reports of the death of the green hydrogen industry are greatly exaggerated”. By the end of the decade – in five years’ time – he foresees “a green hydrogen industry (that) will be up and running as well as electric planes in the skies”.
The Albanese government has had several attempts to kickstart a green hydrogen industry. There is the $2bn Hydrogen Headstart program, as well as green hydrogen production tax credits estimated to be worth nearly $7bn over a decade. These initiatives have been undertaken even though the barriers to the development of a green hydrogen industry are close to insurmountable.

At this point the reptiles decided to celebrate steel, Premier Peter Malinauskas and Federal Minister Ed Husic talk to steel worker Matt Rogers at the Whyalla steel plant in 2023.

Perhaps a tad unfortunate, keeping in mind what King Donald I has promised for Oz steel ... but do go on ...

There is now some acknowledgment that liquid hydrogen won’t be transported to overseas destinations – the costs and technical barriers are just too great.
But both Albanese and Bowen hold on to the remote possibility that green hydrogen can be used to transform bauxite and iron ore to make green alumina, green aluminium and green steel and that customers would be prepared to pay a price premium.
At this stage, you would have to say they’re dreamin’, to quote a classic Australian expression.

Oh yes, it's dreaming time alright ...Earth is already shooting through the 1.5°C global warming limit, two major studies show

...In the European paper, the researchers looked at historical warming trends. They found when Earth’s average temperature reached a certain threshold, the following 20-year period also reached that threshold.
This pattern suggests that, given Earth reached 1.5°C warming last year, we may have entered a 20-year warming period when average temperatures will also reach 1.5°C.
The Canadian paper involved month-to-month data. June last year was the 12th consecutive month of temperatures above the 1.5°C warming level. The researcher found 12 consecutive months above a climate threshold indicates the threshold will be reached over the long term.
Both studies also demonstrate that even if stringent emissions reduction begins now, Earth is still likely to be crossing the 1.5°C threshold.
Given these findings, what humanity does next is crucial.
For decades, climate scientists have warned burning fossil fuels for energy releases carbon dioxide and other gases that are warming the planet.
But humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase. Since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its first report in 1990, the world’s annual carbon dioxide emissions have risen about 50%.
Put simply, we are not even moving in the right direction, let alone at the required pace.
The science shows greenhouse gas emissions must reach net-zero to end global warming. Even then, some aspects of the climate will continue to change for many centuries, because some regional warming, especially in the oceans, is already locked in and irreversible.

Relax dudes, a Good Groan Gloat and an ancient Python skit will see everything hunky dory ...

Let’s not forget here that during the last election campaign, Albanese pledged that the new gas plant at Kurri Kurri in the Hunter Valley would be partly fuelled by hydrogen. The fact was – and remains the case – there is no source of green hydrogen in the precinct. Ironically, the plant used diesel for several months before the gas ­became available.
Take the case of the proposed and now ditched Gladstone hub. To meet the aspiration of four million tonnes of green hydrogen per year, there would be a requirement for 110,000 megawatts of additional renewable energy, which is close to two times the existing capacity of the entire National Electricity Market.
In turn, this will involve some 10,000 wind turbines and 2500sq km of solar panels. This was never going to happen.
The electrolysis process also ­requires water – some 4500 megalitres per year.
What happens to the money committed to green hydrogen in the context of the swath of abandoned projects?
Hopefully, moneys committed but not yet spent can be recovered. There is also the upside that the forecast outlays on production tax credits will never materialise.
Having said this, there are some significant issues that remain outstanding. The first relates to the Integrated System Plan developed by the Australian Market Energy Operator.
AEMO is fully on board with green hydrogen, and it figures prominently in its forecasts of future demand for electricity. There are some extraordinarily naive commercial assumptions about expensive electrolysers being switched on and off depending on the availability of renewable energy.
Take this assertion. “Hydrogen load is expected to lift minimum demand and have minimal impact at times of peak demand. It is also expected to be technically capable of providing flexibility by turning off for whole days when weather conditions are unfavourable, depending on the commercial implications of doing so.”

Time for another, disturbingly large snap of the beast, Chris Bowen announcing Australia’s first green hydrogen hub in Newcastle.

It was designed to terrify, as if the pond - having been caught in weather mayhem, with pediments that had lasted a hundred years blown off the roof and sent crashing to the concrete below - wasn't terrified enough ...

Take it away, Graudian, do a Ben reprise ...

UK insurers paid out record £585m last year as climate breakdown intensifies, Insurers blame ‘significant and consistent bad weather’ after year of 12 named storms:

Insurers paid out a record £585m for weather-related damage to homes and possessions in Britain last year, after record-breaking rain and storms hit the country.
The data, from the Association of British Insurers (ABI), revealed that claims for damage to homes from windstorms, flooding and frozen pipes in 2024 surpassed the previous record in 2022, for the same types of claim, by £77m. The figure is £127m higher than the weather-related claims payouts for 2023.
The insurers blame “significant and consistent bad weather” for the record payments. The 2023-24 storm season included 12 named storms – the most named storms since 2015-16.
Climate breakdown has made recent storms more frequent and intense, analysis by the Met Office found. Insurance premiums are climbing globally in areas susceptible to increased risk of severe hurricanes, floods, fires and other extreme events. In the UK, the annual average price of combined building and contents home insurance in 2024 went up by £55 (16%) to £395, compared with 2023.
The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential
Mark Shepherd, head of general insurance policy at the ABI, said: “Our latest data serves as a blunt reminder of the devastating damage that adverse weather can cause to people’s homes and businesses.
“Insurers are braced for these sorts of events at any time – but prevention is always better than cure. That’s why we continue to advocate for climate resilience measures to be carefully considered in all planning decisions and building standards, to ensure properties are fit for the future and that they are not built in areas prone to climate risk. We’ve also long stressed the need for government to further invest in flood defence and maintenance, and to take swift action on mitigating surface water flooding.”
The UK government has recently committed to boosting flood defence spending to £2.65bn over the next two years, but the ABI is calling for more guaranteed spending. Insurers want the government to promise at least £1bn a year in flood defences from 2026 onwards. They argue this saves money as research has found that for every £1 spent on flood defence maintenance, £7 is saved in capital spend.
Businesses were also hit by extreme weather. The data shows insurers paid out £102m to businesses for weather-related damage and business interruption during the final quarter of the year. This is an increase of 7% on the previous quarter, and 16% on Q4 2023.

The figures come after Guardian analysis revealed that more than 100,000 new homes will be built on the highest-risk flood zones in England in the next five years.

Insurers have suggested not building homes in areas prone to climate risk if possible.

Relax dudes, Dame Groan has the matter in hand, we're all really pleased to be in a pet-shop with a dead parrot ...

According to the ISP, green hydrogen will lead to more investment in renewable energy, which will be available for the entire grid when it suits the market operator. Ask any engineer about operating a capital-intensive piece of equipment on this basis and they will also talk about dreamin’.
The broader point about the ISP, and one that is being made forcefully by Aidan Morrison of the Centre for Independent Studies, is that AEMO’s planning process is fundamentally flawed. Instead of following the underlying legislation and the need to ­fulfil the objectives of efficiency, lowest cost and emissions reduction, the ISP is really a case of the tail wagging the dog.
All the parameters of government policy are simply accepted – think here renewable energy penetration, emissions target, take-up of electric vehicles – and the features of the plan are devised around meeting these parameters. In effect, the objectives of efficiency and cost are deprioritised, to the detriment of households and businesses.
The second issue is Bowen’s decision to reject outright the option of blue hydrogen made from natural gas, in combination with carbon capture and storage. This is where much of the action is in the US, with government subsidies of $US85 available for every tonne of CO2 captured and stored.
Certain sectors of industry require hydrogen, in particular fertiliser manufacturing, and Australia is ill-advised to turn its back on blue hydrogen given the relative ease of extracting hydrogen from methane. We also have several obvious sites to store the captured CO2, particularly in the Cooper Basin.
But at this stage, Bowen is showing all the stubbornness of the pet-shop owner who expected the purchaser of the parrot to accept that it wasn’t dead. It was.

Yep, the planet is pretty much on the way to being a Norwegian Blue and how pleased that makes Dame Groan ... but what does she care, she'll be shipping out soon enough, chortling as she goes ...

And so to end with some splendid Faux Noise news ... as the loons return home in time for winter ...

How the loons love to cluster together, whatever the little tiffs they have along the way ...

Take it away, immortal Rowe ...

That detail ...

... has something of the Stan Cross about it ...