Clive Palmer's views are out there for us all to see & as it should be.
As someone accumulating wealth from Australia's exploitation of its coal reserves you would expect him to argue the case for the role of using coal to improve material standards of living. Energy security is a huge issue & we face a massive challenge to deliver without rendering the troposphere unfit for human habitation.
I was interested to hear his assertions about moving to other technologies if & when they become cost competitive. I can't ever recall hearing him support funding for the R&D to get there of course. Use up all that coal first seems to be Palmer's preferred option & he looked visibly shaken when others on the panel & in the audience asserted solar base load options are becoming competitive much sooner than many think - maybe even before some of his coal-fired projects become oeprational.
While chewing his tongue all the while, Nick Minchin begrudgingly appeared to finally acknowledge that scientists have not been colluding to construct lies, CO2 levels are rising & that global warming was underway until at least the late 1990s.
True to form though, Minchin again ignored our own CSIRO data demonstrating tropospheric warming.
After his walk on the beach with a switched on climate change activist who refused to be intimidated by his bully boy tactics, Minchin still loves to plant his head firmly in the sand on Denial Beach. To do otherwise would be an admission by Minchin of the damage he has already caused by adding to public confusion on this complex issue & by assisting Tony Abbott to scuttle the Rudd-Turnbull ETS.
