Ken Fabian

The essential nature of GSHP's is that (where they are reliant on summer warming of the ground, which I believe most are) the ground stores heat accumulated through summer which is used in winter - I would not call that short-term storage. During the summer phase the flow of heat would be outwards from the pipework, diminishing with distance but would not be lost except to the surface - or where groundwater flows are involved, lost to those, in which case it would not be suitable for the kind of use as storage I am talking about. The heat becomes part of the surrounding geothermal heat that replenishes what is taken by the pipework in winter. I don't see a lot of room for outright loss of that heat even through loss to the surface - because during the summer the temperature gradient through to the surface would be less, and closer to the surface, reversed.

Studiot, GSHP's take heat from the surrounding ground and has to reduce it's temperature. I would read that as being replenished by solar warming of the soil surface. I recall reading that summer heat from the surface slowly replenishes the heat that was taken out over winter, and calculation of the ideal depth of the ground pipes is based on that. The source cited above mentions GSHP being used for summer cooling, which does return heat to the ground - but I am not aware of it used intentionally as thermal energy storage, eg. diverting excess solar PV through summer; I would expect raised ground temperatures should improve winter effectiveness for heating. I live in a warm climate, where this technology is not in common use and am not familiar with it - although air-source heat pumps are becoming common for efficient electric hot water systems. Those are becoming a popular and cost effective alternative to passive solar hot water for households with solar PV especially, using solar electricity that otherwise would go back to the grid, although also popular for those without rooftop solar who might otherwise use inefficient resistance type water heaters.

Descriptions of ground source heat pumps (GSHP's) talk about extracting heat from the ground for residential heating, but I haven't heard of putting heat back into the ground as thermal energy storage using these systems. Does anyone do that? Would it be efficient - or at least cost effective - where an oversupply of say, solar energy during warmer seasons can be used?

I whistle sometimes - a bit of bluesy stuff mostly, sometimes with roughly played guitar, sometimes by itself. I haven't found a good answer to why it is more difficult to whistle when my mouth and lips are dry. I've read claims it is because the mouth shape is easier to achieve with a lubricated mouth but was not convinced; I've seen harmonica players dip their instruments in a glass of water and recall school sports where the teacher/umpire dipped sports whistles in water like that ( to get more volume I thought), so I think it not just about the human mouth. I speculate that the wet film both smooths the texture of mouth surfaces and a wet surface reflects sound waves better - but does anyone have something more than speculation?

Why would I refrain from saying there is high level of agreement amongst scientists? It is true. Experts always know more - with more accuracy - than non experts. Trust in experts is not about blindly believing them because they are experts but because of trust in the institutions and practices, the codes of conduct and professional standards within which science on climate is done. Being able to convince you or not is kind of irrelevant as well as, I expect, futile; we get similar posts with similar points quite often at this site. That there are things you don't understand, can't understand or choose not to understand about climate change does not make any difference to whether the mainstream science is correct. I would note that science based knowledge and expertise is almost always what courts of law use for deciding cases of negligence, reflecting that common sense truth that expert knowledge is not made false by refusing to accept it; if people with fiduciary duties - holding positions of trust and responsibilty - ignore expert advice they can be held negligent; "I am not an expert and I don't trust experts" will not get you any credit in court and it won't here. The kind of faith I think is most at issue here is good-faith in this discussion; I could attempt to explain, for example, why your claim that science hasn't considered past historical climate change is incorrect or why what is likely to happen over the next decades and centuries is far more significant to people of the present and near future than climate changes of the pre-civilisation, pre-human past. But - will you read and give real, thoughtful consideration and responses to arguments I or others make?

I had in mind things like carbon pricing that make the externalised costs part of the pricing of various transport choices, not forced vehicle confiscations. I want reasoned and reasonable responses to climate change from governments - preventing unreasonable responses as well as promoting reasonable ones is a legitimate thing ordinary people can do when they vote. Facing up to it - taking the expert advice seriously - should be the barest minimum to expect, not something an irate public has to demand from someone holding high office. Climate change is not about socialist versus capitalist, it is about accountability and responsibility. It is not anti-free enterprise to want accountability and costing of climate externalities.

I disagree - responsibility at the government department level is, in a very legal sense, obligatory (or should be), but individuals have wide discretion to believe whatever they like. Collective actions that are beyond the scope of individual choice are what governments are for. Our civic institutions are necessary to put responsibility and decision making beyond the reach of individual self interest. I think a significant part of the counter-messaging by opponents of climate responsibility and climate action has been make the issue a will-of-the-people decision in order to justify those holding positions of trust and responsibility failing to take the expert advice seriously and failing to act, using a combination of widespread misinformation, apathy and denial to prevent appropriate policy from being developed, enacted or used effectively. That it appears that the tide is turning - a lot of people are informed and concerned and beginning to demand governments like Australia's act - doesn't let governments off the hook; they have had close to 3 decades of consistent expert advice, but many within governments not merely failed to act, they were (and many still are) active participants in misinforming their constituents.

I would expect anyone studying physiology would know that with respect to our senses you need to be able to count past five. I've seen counts that go as high as 21, but it depends on how you define a single sense. Take Touch for example; if you define touch as whatever the skin senses then it is one, but if you distinguish between feeling pressure on the skin and feeling something disturb the hairs on the skin or feel warming or cooling or pain as different to simple touch, you count more than one. These can have quite distinct and different nerve receptor endings as well as sensations - but, for example, it is quite common for direct skin contact (nerve endings under hairless skin) and contact with hairs (nerve endings within hair follicles) to blur together and be perceived as a single sensation, but that is a result of not really paying attention.

Accusations of deliberate, widespread bias and falsification of results, across every major institution (in several different nations) doing climate science and climate modelling really does require evidence. Evidence of which, if this misconduct was really going on, would leave a much clearer trail than a couple of questionable phrases in one email exchange. There is no such evidence, just accusations or it would have come to light a long time ago. Does anyone really think successive governments across the developed world, many with demonstrated hostility to climate science's reports and studies, could not uncover that extent of deliberate bias and collusion? Or that level of incompetence not be noticed within long running non-secret institutions where high standards - with everything on the record - are essential to everything they do? The claims of bias and incompetence are all accusation and no evidence. We have agencies that can pick out guarded exchanges between anonymous terrorist conspirators but they can't catch out hundreds (thousands?) of published working scientists conspiring within and between legitimate government agencies? They haven't exposed this alleged conspiracy of incompetent science and world subjugation because it doesn't exist. Making casual accusations against ordinary people doing their job (better than some people like) is, itself, a serious kind of wrongdoing (slander), besides being very insulting to people who, so far as evidence goes, have been doing their jobs with all the appropriate care and attention and honesty. All that professional effort to work out how our climate system really works, only to be casually accused of being everything from colluding in incompetence to engaging in a global conspiracy! What upsets me almost more than anything else, is that climate scientists have given us an extraordinary gift in the forewarning and foresight they have given. The window of time to transform the way we do energy has been precious beyond price; that we have been squandering it is not the fault of climate scientists failing to communicate. The persistent counter-messaging by opponents and obstructors is indicative of a far more insidious conspiracy of biased incompetence than even their made up version of conspiratorial climate scientists and green-socialist-globalists. In the face of that kind of politicking, and given the seriousness of the climate problem it is climate scientist who do not resort to advocacy that I find questionable. Mistermack - I think you are too gullible and that you have been gulled. I don't expect you to believe anything from me even if you did give it due consideration. Or from Al Gore or from Greenpeace or whoever; however, I do think you should consider taking the Royal Society and National Academy of Sciences, the NOAA, NSIDC, NASA, CSIRO, Hadley CRU and so on, seriously.

Mistermack, I take it the answer is NO? Do you realise you are making a serious accusation of widespread serious professional misconduct to deliberately give false and misleading results? Do you have any evidence of this? Sounds to me like you are repeating unsubstantiated slander - the sort that probably originated from people engaged in climate counter-messaging, to undermine public confidence in all those consistent expert studies and reports. And it looks like it worked. If you are going to make such serious allegations - Citations are definitely required!

I suggest you have been taking the counter-messaging about climate change science far more seriously than it deserves and you are getting things very wrong as a result. Year to year variability since that particular 18 year slice of time (why 18 years? Why those particular 18 years?) has already caught up on all that "missed" warming - which indicates that warming did not pause or stop and that it always was, as the actual experts (not the counter-messagers) said, within the range of variability overlaying a consistent warming trend. I could try and explain why 18 years is too short to judge if warming is continuing or not. I could try and explain why starting at 1998 - a record breaking year with high grade el-Nino conditions - creates the illusion that what came after looks like cooling, even years with temperatures above the predicted warming trend. I could suggest that other measures of global warming - Ocean Heat Content for example - don't show any "pause" during that period; for it to be a real pause, OHC would show it. ------------------ I think this is an issue we really can't afford to get wrong. Will you read and pay attention and give real consideration to what I write? I would note that a common theme of anti-climate action counter-messaging is to encourage distrust and resist arguments based on what climate science experts say. If you have internalised that message (from here it looks like you have) it may not be possible to use real world measurements and scientific reason to persuade you of anything about this.

Yet people who actually study climate and work on these problems do believe the nature and likely extent of climate consequences of human emissions can be predicted. That you don't understand how that can be done (and doubt that it can) does not mean that they do not know how that can be done. Perfect prediction? No, but the broad sweep of changes and their consequences can be well predicted. The fundamental connection between greenhouse gas concentrations and global climate is well understood. The US National Academy of Sciences and The Royal Society - and I expect people holding positions of trust and responsibility to take the expert advice seriously - that for such people to ignore or reject it, because they don't understand it, can't understand it or don't want to understand it is negligence. Mistermack, you are free to believe what you like unless you hold such positions of responsibility. But that individual human "right" does not extend to those who do have fiduciary duties of care. The scale and long duration of the problem and the extent of influence of those who seek to avoid addressing it can work to effectively indemnify them - hard corruption bypassing legal requirement in exchange for bribes, or soft corruption influencing regulators to make it not-illegal and exempt them - but the essential legal principles for people being accountable are well established within common law legal systems.

Interesting question. I think it is mostly about choice of words and I can't see it as a big problem - but is running climate models from the conditions current 100 years ago to see how well they "project/predict" climate changes only up to where we have real world data to compare to really prediction? Well, it does get called hindcasting to distinguish it from models that start with near-present known conditions to see what future conditions might be. Hindcasting is done to verify how well the models work given various inputs, such as including the known rise in things like GHG concentrations, solar input and occurrences of volcanic eruptions over the period. Or alternatively without the rising GHG to see how climate might have changed without them. Is it a prediction (or projection) if it only projects from further in the past up to when real world data runs out? I don't think calling it that is completely unreasonable, but it probably deserves clarification. _____________________________________ There are a lot of misunderstandings about climate model projections/predictions and, like claims of reasonable climate concerns being labelled alarmist, a lot of the claims about modelling getting it wrong originate in the counter-messaging by those opposed to climate action. The "pause/hiatus" controversy for example arose from mistaking - often on purpose and ignoring expert objections - the average of many model runs giving an 0.x degrees per year of warming as predicting that every year will be 0.x degrees warmer than the one before. Which is like saying because models of seasonal temperature changes based on Earth's axial tilt say that on average each Spring day will be warmer than the day before - and therefore, because we just had a string of cooler than that average days, the models are wrong and Summer won't be warmer than Spring. And then suggest it could be the start of a new ice age. Each individual model run actually show similar year to year variability that the real world does - ups and downs, pauses and accelerations, within the range of expected variability; that they do so is indicative of how well they work, not how badly. They just don't have those ups and downs in the same place each time. Which is why temperature trends look at averages over enough time that the expected variability doesn't mask underlying longer term changes. That variability from year to year averages out to a very wobbly line if the period averaged over is too short, such as with "The Pause" which showed less warming than the 0.x degrees per year - and large parts of that variability can be attributed to known climate processes. The largest would be ENSO - el Nino Southern Oscillation - which causes year to year temperature changes much larger than the underlying warming trend - take a ten year period and if there are more la Nina years than el Nino then global average temperatures will be lower, despite an underlying warming trend. The other way about and they will be higher and it could look like warming has speeded up - it takes about 20 years or more for averaging for them to see past the global average temperature swings ENSO induces. Climate scientists most often use 30 years to be sure and routinely point out that looking at shorter periods can be very misleading. Of all measures of global warming I think this one most directly shows actual gain of heat by Earth's climate system - and whilst it has year to year variability a much shorter period for averaging is needed to see past it. Ocean Heat Content shows no sign of an early 21st century Pause in warming (and is not explainable as ".. a consequence of growth of a city, and paving over of land.") -

I live somewhere where half a degree is often the difference between frost and no frost on any given winter night - and perennial weeds that were kept in check by frosts can and are becoming rampant with warmer winters and fewer frosts. More labour, more cost for weed control. Around here the fire danger season starts sooner and finishes later with that "insignificant" half a degree of global average warming - and, significantly, the non-fire danger season is noticeably shorter. Burning during the cool season to reduce fuel loads is an important part of reducing the intensity and risks of out of control bushfires later - the opportunities for doing so are fewer and the risks of them escaping containment are increasing. More labour, more equipment requirements, more vigilance. The impacts of "hardly change at all" are actually very real. When I consider the likelihood of several more degrees I am legitimately alarmed. This relates to one of the questions I asked - "If where you live appears to benefit from global warming but other places suffer does that have any influence on your thinking?" Not irresponsible - looking at worst case scenarios is an essential part of risk management - although my own mention of 3-6 degrees of warming was not even looking at the worst case. I was asked for a citation for further temperatures rises reaching those levels and I gave one, and it showed the potential for higher temperatures than what I suggested. The 2000ppm CO2 levels probably is unrealistic - well, it is clearly labelled as an EXTREME scenario - but there are still influential people who do advocate maximising the use of fossil fuels, who want no limitations placed on their use, who want and expect all known reserves of fossil fuels to get used, which could indeed take it to that 2000ppm level - so scenarios for very high emissions continuing for the rest of this century are not impossibilities. A total breakdown of international agreements and internal policies to reign in emissions is something actively being campaigned for and undermining confidence in climate science has been a key theme being used to do so. I sort of presume views like Mistermack's, if widely shared by policy makers, would raise the likelihood of that, making "unlikely" and "extreme" scenarios more likely. If we don't end up with the extreme scenarios it will be in large part because of people taking the science on climate change seriously enough to seek and campaign for alternatives. One of the other themes of anti climate action campaigning is blaming the messengers - ie climate scientists and climate action advocates. Who is it labelling reasonable climate change proponents as alarmist? I suggest it is predominately people campaigning against strong climate action, as part of counter-messaging efforts to undermine overall confidence in all those expert studies and reports - who want the whole issue to be seen (falsely) as exaggeration. Suggesting we should try and avoid worst case scenarios (which, within those reports, are scenarios, not exaggerations) isn't what gets climate change proponents seen as alarmists, it is constant and widely disseminated counter-messaging claiming they are alarmists that is promoting the idea that they are alarmists. In the absence of constant counter-messaging what was in those reports - which is by any measure, genuinely alarming - would be much more likely to be taken seriously and acted upon. Which would, of course, make the extreme scenarios less likely. Organised opposition engaging in counter-messaging to prevent strong climate action has never been a reaction to irresponsible alarmist exaggeration, it is a response to the legitimately alarming mainstream expert advice. That opposition chose to do so for their own reasons - I think mostly responsibility avoidance although they may well have alarmed themselves with their own alarmist economic fears of going without fossil fuels.

Mistermack - the numbers were from memory, but I believe, within the expected range, depending on how our emissions in the future go. Assuming widespread agreement with you we would have no broad effort to constrain emissions, so at the high end of projections. Like this -

Mistermack - if one degree C of global average warming looks good to you right now where you are, is that something you expect to be an enduring condition? Do you expect things to be just as good with 3 to 6 degrees - or to be even better? Or is that you do not expect that amount of warming can take place? If where you live appears to benefit from global warming but other places suffer does that have any influence on your thinking? Do you think what happens elsewhere will have no impact on UK prosperity or security? Whilst there are other contributors here I could ask questions like this I don't think I would get a civil discussion let alone answers. I am okay with lively discussion and disagreement but make no mistake, my own views unashamedly reflect the mainstream science based advice - which is not a matter of faith, but of trust in the institutions, practices and practitioners of science. I will say that I think your statement above trivialises the issues. We have had close to 30 years of consistent expert advice - unchanged by whether it was commissioned by Progressives or Conservatives (or however you want to label the 'sides'). I think that is a good indicator that the understanding of crucial climate processes is correct - but then, I am of the view that those reports and studies were competently done in good faith and genuinely represent what is known and not known.

Olin, you can quibble over definitions of what is waste or pollution and what is not, but the climate consequences of rapidly raising atmospheric CO2 content, beyond the limits of natural variability in the absence of human influences, are real and they will have a profound effect on agriculture, infrastructure and economic systems - not my opinion, but the consistent conclusion of more than 3 decades of expert reports and studies. CO2 is a waste product from fossil carbon burning, and it is also modern civilisation's most abundant waste product. No matter whether commissioned by Progressives or Conservatives, the expert reports continue to say essentially the same things - because there is now a genuine science based understanding of the fundamental processes involved in climate and what causes climate to change. That was not true in the 1970's, but the groundwork within mainstream science - programs to build climate data and get a good quantitative understanding of the various elements began even before then. Your arguments are not consistent with the body of science based knowledge and it looks like you are burdened with some basic misunderstandings - mostly about the relative importance of things like CO2 to climate and to plant growth and how they are likely to impact human societies and economy. And it looks like you are resistant to being informed by people who are better informed about these things than you do - and I am not talking about the people posting here, or Al Gore or Greenpeace either, but about the people who have done the studies that raise this above mere differences of opinion. The IPCC reports, the State of Climate reports, National Academy reports, Royal Society, NOAA, NSIDC, CSIRO, BoM, CRU - well, every institution that studies climate and every peak science body says essentially the same. But close to 30 years of science informing on climate/emissions/energy has been accompanied by nearly 30 years of vigorous, well supported counter messaging by those who don't want climate responsibility to be legally recognised or the costs of it impacting their near term activities. One of the themes popular amongst the counter-messaging is that adding lots of CO2 to the atmosphere is a good thing. As long as you don't look too deeply - don't actually study these things or base your position on those studies - it is easy to believe raised CO2 will deliver an overall benefit. But people who do study them know it is not so simple and that some greening from CO2 fertilisation will not make the other concerns about raised CO2 go away or, given those other other factors, will lead to an overall benefit. Olin, I don't expect you to change your position or learn anything - teaching resistance to arguments based on science and reason, to reject the role of expertise, has been another major theme of climate change counter-messaging. You aren't making a good impression here by putting up false and misleading arguments and sticking to them no matter what.

It is because the climate system is susceptible to change that adding lots of CO2 is such a dangerous thing to do - it would take a climate that is unchanging to be unchangeable. It is the vehicle with bad steering that is most likely to run off the road and crash. Olin - The consistent expert advice - three decades of every institution that studies climate and every expert report governments have gotten on it is that this is a serious problem. Why should I set that aside and believe that you know better than they do? That the consequences of AGW can and will seriously impact human activities and prosperity. Not that it takes a genius to figure that destabilising something as fundamental as our planet's climate system is very unwise and - given that persistent expert advice - dangerously irresponsible. I don't ask or expect anyone to take what environmental advocacy groups are saying on trust, but I do expect them to take what the world's leading science advisory bodies, like the US National Academy of Sciences and UK's Royal Society say about it very seriously. These organisations draw on the world's most accomplished and respected experts. My personal experience - of about 0.5 C of global average warming as experienced in this location - is that vegetation has been effected; perennial weeds that were kept in check by hard frosts are becoming rampant with warmer winters, leading to more work and more costs to deal with them. Bushfires are a real problem here - and that is not new. What is happening is that the 'fire danger season' is, on average, starting earlier and finishing later and the opportunities for 'controlled' fires to reduce fuel loads ahead of the high risk periods are becoming shorter with increasing risk of escaping containment, requiring more vigilance, labour and equipment. Fires could, by picking the right conditions, be expected to go out overnight as dew added a natural fire retardant - but less cool nights, less dew and more fires that don't go out on their own. More work, more expense, more risk.This means less of that hazard reduction is getting done and the consequences in the hot, high risk periods is intensified. That is with a mere 0.5 degrees of global average temperature change; the prospect of 3 to 6 degrees is something I find terrifying. Regions like this could become so unsafe that people cannot live here permanently without an added expense of fire resistant construction and endless vigilance. The appropriate perspective is needed - looking at too short periods, where normal variability appears to overwhelm gradual changes is a common way to get misled. So is looking at too long periods, where historic climate changes of great magnitude can make what is happening now appear inconsequential. Both blurr the reality and make it hard to see that gradual changes accumulate and will have serious consequences with dangerous economic and security implications.

Trust in scientific institutions, methods and practices - and practitioners working within professional codes of conduct - is not the same as believing something because random people claim something. People who study stuff and work with it full time are almost always more knowledgeable than those who don't. People who study stuff and commit to permanent records the data and the reasoning can and do have their conclusions reviewed and critiqued by others before it gets accepted more widely. Ridicule and abuse is what people tend to get when they think they know better than the post-review and critique knowledge that has earned it's right to be widely accepted by other experts.

NortonH - the problem is exactly that; the initial set up and the environment changes each time - and we have no means to determine the differences down to the precision that is required to predict the final outcome. As has been pointed out, if it were pre-determined, because of the physics of balls in motion with collisions, air flow turbulence etc, the result would be the same every time. If anyone is accurately predicting lottery numbers it is news to me - and if they are, I would be looking for some kind of fraud before I would assume someone can calculate the outcome by predicting the motions of the balls.

The "Climate has always been changing" argument actually has it backwards; like the vehicle with bad steering that is more likely to run off the road and crash, it is a climate system that is susceptible to change that is most at risk of change from things humans do. The planet is warming - multiple different measures and indicators all show it. And - " There are well-understood physical mechanisms by which changes in the amounts of greenhouse gases cause climate changes. " (The US National Academy of Sciences). The nasty bit of personal slander has no place in these discussions; if you have evidence of serious criminal behaviour, you should inform the police. If not, it is your behaviour that looks criminal. Fake accusations from behind the safety of internet anonymity - I'm surprised it hasn't been deleted by moderators. I recommend the Royal Society or National Academy of Sciences for non-partisan expert assessment; making sense of complex science for policy makers and public is their job. Their exemplary reputations are earned. The people they draw upon are not incompetent or biased. Or part of a conspiracy or driven by any political agenda apart from that of pursuing excellence in science for the benefit of humanity. I see the science getting it mostly right. I see real world consequences of climate change in the landscape around me - weeds that had previously been kept in check by heavy frosts becoming rampant because there are fewer frosts, bushfire hazard reduction made more difficult by warmer winters and the fire hazard 'season' coming earlier and finishing later - that's with about half a degree C of average warming (of personally experienced change in this location). 3 to 6 degrees is terrifying to contemplate. Sure, if your region is mostly cold, rarely hot, that might not seem so terrifying, but most of the world's (too large) population lives in places that get very hot, where a few degrees can make the barely bearable conditions unbearable. People ordinarily have a right to believe what they like, but if they hold positions of trust and responsibility ignoring or rejecting expert advice can be negligence. Should lives and fortunes be harmed, that can become criminal neglegence.

The majority of the world's population live in climates that can make good use of solar energy. I think Hydrolysis will supplant Hydrogen from fossil fuels; even with pro-fossil fuels government support, Hydrogen from Australian brown coal, for example, has not been very successful. Meanwhile a half megawatt electrolyser is going to be trialled in Sydney. Being cynical, I do think the gas suppliers supporting it are more interested in being able to add "green" and "renewable" into their ongoing marketings of fossil fuel gas than in actually displacing the gas - but it is a start. I do understand some of the resistance to wind turbines - nice views are highly prized. I just don't prize them so highly that preserving the views are good justification for failing to commit to low emissions. It may turn out they are a transitory technology that will not be replaced at the end of their working life - I hesitate to predict how the end game of a transition to low emissions will play out; solar will improve, tidal and wave power will improve, storage will improve, long distance power transmission will improve. I don't expect space based solar - at multi-millions US$ per ton to launch to LEO - to become a real thing, although I still do wonder if the transmission elements of space based solar proposals might somehow be turned to a global energy transmission network. Beam up from summer daytime Australia, around the world and back down to winter night in Russia or Scandinavia. Nothing really happening in that area, but we are going to end up with things we didn't expect - like we have with low cost solar. Nuclear has serious issues beyond the mess of partisan politics (that I think doesn't reflect the reality), but it will improve also - and be popular in those climates and regions that have poor solar resources and limited transmission links to RE rich regions. Efficient storage is going to be vital - and if, a decade ago I thought the R&D commitment to storage was inadequate, not any more. If a household of the future requires the equivalent of one new car's worth of technology in the form of batteries, to complement the solar on their roof, I don't think that will impoverish anyone. The large scales for any new technologies to make a difference don't daunt me; whatever we do, right or wrong, is going to be at unprecedented scales.

In fact solar energy is proving very popular in Australia. About 1/5th of suitable rooftops already have solar panels on them (I think that is by number of buildings, not their total available area) and the rate of installations has surged. A lot of larger scale solar farms are both coming on-line and under construction. Solar and wind are delivering the lowest cost new electricity generation options in the Australian electricity market and even long established, mostly coal and gas reliant electricity producers are investing in them - even with strong expectations that subsidy support will be withdrawn. There are some serious proposals for Hydrogen production including for export, but this is still in it's infancy. Proposals to add Hydrogen into gas supply lines are also being considered - taking advantage of existing infrastructure. However, use of pure Hydrogen will require it's own infrastructure. My own view is that Hydrogen will be most valuable for industrial purposes - smelting steel for example. On the subject of steel, the new owner of Whyalla's steel works, Sanjeev Gupta, is investing in wind, solar and storage in a big way, because he sees those as providing the least cost power for the facility - although not yet for steel smelting.

My own view is that the main game for the informed and concerned is currently with support for renewable energy - that the current circumstance where adding new electricity generation using wind, solar and "firming" is cheaper in most places than new coal, is an extraordinary and unexpected opportunity that should not be wasted. The most profound near term outcome this makes possible isn't solving the climate/emissions/energy conundrum as such or measured in CO2 emissions avoided, but in changing the political landscape by undermining the depth of support for obstructionist opposition. We have an unlooked for opportunity for breaking through the deadlock of divided politics and allowing a more rational unity of purpose to emerge within governments and policy makers. Alarmist economic fear of abandoning fossil fuels and becoming dependent on renewables is a main PR thrust of opposition and obstruction - persistent undermining trust in climate science being the other main meme. Just as denying the reality of the problem has become untenable in the face of global warming's reality, fear of economic harm from shifting to renewables no longer has the persuasive punch that it did only a few years ago because of cut price solar and wind. When businesses that have no PR skin in this began putting solar on their roofs - to save on electricity costs - the overwhelming unity of opposition by business lobby groups to strong climate policies was and is undermined. When long running electricity companies began taking on large renewables projects - willingly, even with the expectation that ongoing subsidy support would be phased out - a profound change in thinking has taken place. When Solar and Wind became cheaper - even intermittently and seasonally - nothing would be the same after; we are only just at the beginning of that, it's full implications still not well understood. To me it looks like just the right time and issue to push back against the denial and obstruction. I tend to see the long running doubt, deny, delay response of conservative-right politics as reflective of the wishes of commerce and industry, for whom the alarmist economic fears of high cost energy and devalued fossil fuel assets were central to the stance they made. Renewable energy has driven a wedge into that collective agreement to oppose and obstruct and that, rather than the extent of near term emissions avoided, is what presents us an unexpected opportunity to shift the way policy makers approach the problem. I expect even nuclear will find itself much advantaged if this gets used effectively to bring about the end of mainstream climate obstructionism - supporters of nuclear can come out from behind the wall of denial conservative right politics made within itself, that prioritised denial and obstruction over contributing meaningfully to future energy policy development.

My own view is it is a consequence of our evolutionary history - and entirely natural. Humans don't have a clear fertile season, nor is a single sex act very effective for reproduction; humans need to have sex often, throughout the Oestrus cycle to reliably reproduce. That means it's an evolutionary advantage to have a strong sex drive that is not closely linked to specific conditions or signals. It isn't focused narrowly on a single partner or a single kind of sex act or a clear signal of fertility; a whole range of triggers for arousal exist that have no direct connection to fertility, including some that have no physical basis at all and are purely thought and imagination based. Socially however, that strong sex drive can be a source of serious conflict. I think having alternatives for those without mating ties (homosexuality as well as masturbation) for that unproductive (or unreproductive) sex drive, would have been a way to reduce conflict. That variety of potential triggers for arousal also mean that people who might have a preference for their own sex can still be aroused by the opposite sex and still be capable of reproducing. Plenty of gay people still want - and succeed - at having children. So any genetic component can, will and has persisted within the population.