A tale of two tipping points

The tipping point that keeps warming alarmists awake at night occurs when the level of CO2 reaches a point where interactions and feedbacks trigger 'runaway warming' with catastrophic effects.

Their collective nightmare is also a misleading rumour.

The geological record shows periods with much higher CO2 levels and higher temperatures than today, but curiously no 'tipping points'.

What's more, life on Earth flourished during the warm periods.

The best historical time for living things was during the Roman Warm Period. It was nearly two degrees warmer than present day, which suggests that we can welcome warming for many decades to come, while additional CO2 is greening the planet. For more on these matters, see this handy primer on climate and energy.

The other tipping point is an existential threat to the continuity of our power supply. This is the point where the downward trending capacity of reliable power (essentially coal) approaches the base load of power that is required, day and night.

Between 2012-24 the installed capacity of coal power declined from 30GW to 22 GW in round figures and that is near the base load that ranges from 17GW to 20GW depending on the season.

The earlier management of AEMO could see the problem coming when the Hazelwood power station in Victoria closed in 2017. They issued a warning that we were travelling without enough spare capacity to handle extreme conditions. Sure enough, in January 2019, parts of Victoria experienced rolling blackouts. Since then, the day of reckoning has been deferred by deindustrialisation which has kept the demand for power almost flat, despite population growth.

The rise of renewable energy is supposed to replace the diminishing capacity of coal power, but intermittent energy can displace coal without being able to replace it because during nights with little or no wind, there is little or no renewable energy regardless of the installed capacity.

We have reached the point where any further loss of coal capacity will place South-Eastern Australia, the NEM, in a red zone where blackouts will occur whenever the wind is low during the night.

In addition to the risk of blackouts, the cost of power is killing power-intensive industries.

Before the rise of renewable energy, our coal provided some of the cheapest power in the world, sustaining a substantial manufacturing sector including numerous smelters. Manufacturing has been gutted by the spiralling cost of power although it cannot be quantified due to the scandalous lack of official documentation. For example, two of the six aluminium smelters have closed, and all the others are at risk while the Copper, Nickel, and Zinc smelters are actively seeking state support.

The government is apparently in denial about the loss of industry and is obsessed with the golden economic opportunities that beckon when we become a wind and solar superpower.

Net Zero enthusiasts are fortified by the belief that the election result demonstrates overwhelmingly popular support for Net Zero and the Opposition will be in the political wilderness as long as Net Zero sceptics keep rocking the boat.

That is wishful thinking because the Coalition did not provide an attractive alternative energy policy. The nuclear ploy backfired under the impact of blatant Labor lies about the cost. Ultimately, the Coalition offered the prospect of increasing power prices based on a mix of all sources, including nuclear, with the prospect of cheaper power in the very distant nuclear future.

That was one of the four scenarios sketched by the Page Institute

Net Zero with 100 per cent renewable energy is the most expensive, followed by the AEMO Integrated System Plan, then the 'all of the above' Coalition scenario.

The fourth pathway calls for new coal power from state-of-the-art, highly efficient generators. This calls for less capital expenditure than the other options and it is the only one that delivers cheaper power, possibly as much as a 25 per cent reduction in the retail price). And there is more, it terminates the pillage of forests and farmlands that will continue under all the other plans.

That looks like a winning trifecta when the Coalition lives up to its name and forms a united front to boldly and consistently explain the options to the punters.