Interested in energy, our transition, climate change and facts. Just blocks ad hom. All tweets and replies are personal thoughts only
Earthling
Joined July 2009
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exhibit A for clueless lefties
xitter.cf/potkinetic/status/1846…
on the road to Damascus or is it the Stuart Hwy retweeted
Great chart Ben, thanks for tracking this down. No, it's not odd at all. This is a crystal-clear example of planning failures in NSW.
Because quite a bit of that wind power was flowing to Victoria, against price, the wind was switched off. To prevent the "Negative Residue", ie interstate bills that no-one agreed to pay, from racking up.
And then this caused a price spike in NSW, because there was now none of that low price wind dispatched.
This wouldn't be a problem if our transmission was planned in the right sequence, with Sydney Ring South being built first, which would fix this problem between all of NSW's wind fleet (outside Canberra) which can't reach Sydney. Then HumeLink could follow, Project EnergyConnect, etc.
But we're building things in exactly the wrong direction. So this problem won't be solved until the mid-2030s.
The failure on AEMO's part to manage the construction of transmission according to an orderly plan is catastrophic.
on the road to Damascus or is it the Stuart Hwy retweeted
This is unsurprising. Muslims massively outnumber Jews in the UK and globally. A significant proportion of them harbour deep-seated Jew hatred—partly doctrinal, partly exported to the Arab world by the Nazis. "Free Palestine" heightens tribalistic hatreds & provides a pretext.
Jewish people are nine times more likely than Muslims to be victims of hate crime, Home Office data show.
The figures revealed that Jewish people faced hate crimes at a rate of 116.5 offences per 10,000 people last year compared with 13.3 per 10,000 for Muslims🔗
telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10…
on the road to Damascus or is it the Stuart Hwy retweeted
Parkinson’s Law – Why the State Bureaucracy Grows When the Work Shrinks
In 1955, a British naval historian wrote a joke for The Economist. Seventy years later, it remains one of the most accurate descriptions of the modern state ever written. Everyone knows the slogan: work expands to fill the time available. Almost no one knows the mechanism underneath it. That mechanism explains Europe.
1. The evidence. Between 1914 and 1928, the Royal Navy lost two thirds of its largest warships. Over the same years the Admiralty – the office that ran the ships – grew by three quarters. There were fewer ships and more men behind desks. Then there was the Colonial Office, which kept growing while the colonies left one by one. It was hiring while the empire was shrinking.
2. The first mechanism. An official who feels overworked has three choices. He can resign, he can share the work with a colleague, or he can ask for two subordinates. He never chooses the colleague, because a colleague is a rival. Two subordinates are a rank. So one tired man becomes three. Then each of the two subordinates feels tired.
3. The second mechanism. Seven people now do what one did, and they keep each other busy with drafts, approvals, and comments on the approvals. Everyone works hard, and nothing is produced. You have been in this meeting. You have been copied on this email. You have watched three people sign the form that one person filled in.
4. The law of triviality. Parkinson noticed that a committee will approve a nuclear reactor in minutes, because nobody understands it. The same committee will debate the bicycle shed for an hour, because everybody does. Bureaucracy does not avoid the important question by accident. It avoids it by design – the small question carries no risk, and on the big one, someone’s name goes on the decision.
5. The ratchet. A business that fails closes. A department that fails gets a bigger budget, because the problem is now bigger. Failure is the bureaucracy’s best argument for itself. This is why the state never shrinks on its own: every problem it does not solve becomes a new office for solving it.
6. The civilizational lesson. Burnham described the managers taking over. Parkinson showed how they breed. Put the two together and you get Brussels. You get France, where the state spends more than half of everything the country produces and still cannot fix a hospital. This is not because the people inside are wicked. It is because the machine works exactly as Parkinson said it would.
7. The vindication. Parkinson was dismissed as a humorist. Then Milei cut Argentina’s ministries in half – and the country did not collapse. It barely noticed, except on the bill. The lesson is simple: you cannot reform a bureaucracy by asking it what to cut. It will always propose to cut the ships – and hire someone to manage the cut.
on the road to Damascus or is it the Stuart Hwy retweeted
A Statement of Conscience on October 7
I will not start by saying ‘as a Muslim’ or ‘as an imam’, but as a human being.
On October 7, over 1,200 innocent people were killed in a single day. Families were shot in their homes. Young people out dancing were hunted across open fields. Over 250 people, including children and the elderly, were dragged into Gaza as hostages. I think of a mother hiding in a safe room with her baby’s mouth covered. I think of a father listening as the line went quiet. I think of families who waited month after month for someone to come home, only to receive a coffin. I didn’t need my faith to recognize the evil of what happened. My heart told me first.
But I’m a Muslim and an imam, and I owe the world one honest sentence: what was done that day was a crime against God. God teaches that whoever kills one innocent soul, it is as if he had killed all humanity.
This day has an author: Yahya Sinwar. He planned it, ordered it, and knew what would follow. Every death of that day and war he started rests on him and Hamas leaders who sat in tunnels and foreign hotels and called slaughter a victory. It rests on every Palestinian leader who cheered, excused, handed out sweets, or said nothing. They chose this. They own it.
But Sinwar did not invent himself. He was the fruit of a tree planted almost a century ago by the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas named itself in its founding charter as the Brotherhood’s branch in Palestine. The Brotherhood’s poison is slow. It arrives through study circles, youth camps, charity boxes, and kind words to lonely young men. Drop by drop, it teaches him that his religion is a political party, his neighbour is his enemy, the Jew is the cause of his sorrow, and God is pleased by rage. By the time the gun arrives, the soul is already taken.
I have seen this poison in mosques where sermons became rallies and young men could recite slogans but not sit still for a verse on mercy. Every people that let the Brotherhood in has paid in blood and ruined generations. It has never built anything it did not first set on fire.
Behind Hamas stands another hand: the IRGC. It was the IRGC’s money, weapons, and training that turned a hateful idea into an army. One calls itself Sunni and the other Shia, and they may curse each other’s creeds, but they are united in what they worship. It is not God. It is power. The same IRGC that armed the killers of October 7 shoots Iranian girls for showing their hair, hangs young men for asking to be free, and has left graves from Tehran to Damascus to Beirut. They speak in God’s name. So did Pharaoh speak in the name of heaven.
So let me say this clearly. Hamas and the IRGC are not merely enemies of Islam. That would be too small a charge, as if their crime were only against us. They are enemies of God. God is the Giver of life, yet they deal in death. God calls Himself the Most Merciful, yet they have made cruelty a sacrament. God honoured the children of Adam, yet they look at a child and see a target or a shield. To murder what God created and sign His name to it is the oldest blasphemy.
And we Muslims have been too quiet. Some of us were afraid. Some told ourselves it was not our business. Some, God forgive them, felt something other than horror that morning and never confessed it. Silence was the soil this poison grew in. I will not add to it.
So on this anniversary, let us say plainly what our scripture already says. The Jews are not our enemies. They are our cousins in Abraham, and their dead were created by the same God who created us. Today belongs to them: the murdered, the hostages, and families who still set a place at the table. To them I say: I am sorry for what was done to you by men who used the words of my prayers. You’re not alone in your grief or remembrance.
The enemies of God are those who murder in His name. We know their names. It is time we said them from our own pulpits, in our own voices, before they speak for us again.
Imam Tawhidi
on the road to Damascus or is it the Stuart Hwy retweeted
Just 2 absolute bangers I've seen this weekend:
on the road to Damascus or is it the Stuart Hwy retweeted
Greens leader David Shoebridge: “time to tax the rich.”
Also David Shoebridge: four properties in his wife’s name, and no comment on the tax breaks.
Woollahra home, transferred to her in 2007, then estimated at $2.2m in a suburb where houses now clear $4m.
Darlinghurst flat, bought for $535k, later around $1.5m.
Ultimo terrace, bought for $543k, then estimated at $1.4m.
Plus one interstate.
He’s on the mortgages.
Asked what tax breaks she used to build the portfolio, he declined to answer.
Elites are a problem. Just not when the title is in the spouse’s name, and you conveniently live in the most expensive one.
on the road to Damascus or is it the Stuart Hwy retweeted
His @greens senator mate @NickMcKim did a video calling me ‘a rich landlord prick’ who only cares about my negative gearing then said ‘Hughesy, you can go fuck your self’
It led to people sending me DMs wishing me dead. I then told him I have four properties, didn’t negative gear any of them, and rented them at 50 percent market rate to help low income people, and gifted one of them to special needs adults. He didn’t take down his video. I then got told he had four properties. I asked him how much they rent for and does he negative gear them. He didn’t respond. The video is still up. I still get people hating on me because of it. The @greens are a complete fraud. The worst type.
New Greens leader David Shoebridge has promised to fight the rich – while four properties previously registered in his wife’s name do not appear in the Senate’s public register of interests > bit.ly/4dk5ykB
on the road to Damascus or is it the Stuart Hwy retweeted
Friday afternoon ramble on my frustration with recent media reporting. Two headlines that are factually incorrect, from both of the dedicated energy reporters at both of the biggest papers.
Is it too much to ask for them to check their facts? @australian @FinancialReview
We haven't "surged past 50%". We've crept past 45%.
Over last three years, we've added just 2.7% per year.
At current rates, we won't hit 50% for nearly two years, possibly after the next federal election.
So I can't let this slide.
One of my jobs as an energy researcher is battling misinformation, which distorts public debate, and presenting true facts in context.
See below my letter to the dedicated energy reporter at @australian, Colin Packham, asking for this '50%' howler to be corrected.
Sadly Colin has already indicated to me he's to busy to update today, and that he was actually aware that his 50% number was the peak of a seasonal, fluctuating quarterly number, not a sustainable annual average.
So please share and comment widely enough to make sure those in charge of our major newspapers realise that this kind of misinformation is unacceptable, and needs to be called out.
Dear Colin,
I'd like to request a correction to factually inaccurate and misleading headlines and content in today's Australian in the "Energy Nation" feature:
"Renewables push past 50pc but next phase proves harder"
"Renewables surge past 50pc but the next phase proving harder"
As well as further incorrect claims in your article:
"Renewable energy has breached 50% of electricity generation in the national market, a significant advance on a year ago and a major step towards Labor's target of 82%"
"Australia's 50 per cent renewable milestone therefore comes at an awkward moment."
This claim is misleading, and factually unsubstantiated. If this was a claim made by any person of public note at Energy Nation Forum, please let me know, and I will pursue a correction and acknowledgement of the mistake from whichever organisation that person belongs to. But if it is your own (as I can find no attribution in your writing, so I assume that it is) I would kindly request a correction published in The Australian, proportionate to the prominence afforded to this article associated headlines.
The source of your confusion might possibly be from headlines published by AEMO claiming more than half was generated from renewables in a single quarter (Q4 2025), which I link below. The highest quarterly number that can be attributed to an authoritative source is 50.1%, see page 22 of the Quarterly Energy Dynamics report, also linked.
However, if you inspect other such quarterly reports prior to or after that one, you'll realise that this is an outlier due to seasonal fluctuation. The 4th Quarter consistently achieves some of the highest renewable share, and a 50% share has never been sustained over 12 months. A convenient means of viewing these statistics, derived from AEMO data, is to use the tracking tool in the OpenElectricity.org.au website, where you'll find that the quarters prior to and since that single quarter range from the high 30s (eg Q2 2025 at 37.4%) through to the high 40s (eg Q1 2026 at 46.1%).
Given the very large seasonal fluctuation that is expected between quarters, the proper basis for assessing milestones for renewable energy penetration must include 12 sequential months. Assessed again using OpenElectricity, this could be the last calendar year at 43%, the last financial year at 44.9%, or the last 365 days up to 23rd of September, at 45.3%. But to claim "renewables surge past 50%", and make direct reference to this as progress towards government targets like 82% which must be assessed on an annual basis, it is a fundamental and serious misrepresentation of the facts. Your article and headlines claims a rate of progress that has no basis in reality.
Since FY 2023, when the renewable share was 36.8% to the close of FY 2026 when we had 44.9%, renewable share has grown by just 2.7% on average per year. Therefore, it is most likely that at the current rate of progress, the 50% milestone which your article claims has been achieved will still not be achieved at the time of the next federal election campaign.
For major media outlets with prominent standing in the energy debate to establish in the public mind that such a milestone is already behind us is a serious disservice to debate.
I therefore request an immediate and clear correction to the articles and headlines in proportion to the prominence given.
Please find links to sources below:
explore.openelectricity.org.…
aemo.com.au/newsroom/media-r…
aemo.com.au/-/media/files/ma…
Sincerely,
Aidan Morrison
theaustralian.com.au/special…
on the road to Damascus or is it the Stuart Hwy retweeted
Absolutely stoked to get a full tank of petrol for $60.00 this morning...
It was for my lawnmower but I'm trying to stay positive.
on the road to Damascus or is it the Stuart Hwy retweeted
They are liars cheats and crooks and you can’t believe a single word they say.
@VictorianLabor is gaslighting they would have you believe Matthew Guy believes there is no public interest case for the Airport Rail.
LIES LIES LIES
Guy was referring to the Keilor East station which is blatant pork barrelling in Benny Boys seat.
"The whole concept of a Keilor East station was never factored in to the original airport rail line," opposition public transport spokesman Matthew Guy said.
"This has only come in, in the last few years, because of his seat. There is no public-interest case for it."
A Labor MP described the case for Keilor East station as "entirely a political construction"
theage.com.au/politics/victo…
#LaborLiars
#BootOutBenny
#DitchLabor
#FreshStartVictoria
for the credit card fees on coffee we could get 8 nuclear power stations
Albo math
Bam!💥🎆 #SouthKorea and the United States Announce Historic Strategic Investment Projects🇰🇷🤝🇺🇸💰 including a $120B blueprint for the construction of 8 #Nuclear power plants (10GW): 2 X 1.4GW APR1400 and 6 X 1.2GW AP1000 reactors⚛️🏗️👷🤠🐂 #Uranium 🌊🏄 commerce.gov/news/fact-sheet…
on the road to Damascus or is it the Stuart Hwy retweeted
Bam!💥🎆 #SouthKorea and the United States Announce Historic Strategic Investment Projects🇰🇷🤝🇺🇸💰 including a $120B blueprint for the construction of 8 #Nuclear power plants (10GW): 2 X 1.4GW APR1400 and 6 X 1.2GW AP1000 reactors⚛️🏗️👷🤠🐂 #Uranium 🌊🏄 commerce.gov/news/fact-sheet…
on the road to Damascus or is it the Stuart Hwy retweeted
Treasurer Jim Chalmers blasted Scott Morrison when rates hit 0.35% — here's what he says now!
Treasurer Jim Chalmers accused Scott Morrison of dodging responsibility when rates lifted from 0.1 to 0.35%. Four years later, here's what he says about the 15-year interest rate high.
✍🏽Oscar Godsell
Eight words muttered by Jim Chalmers have come back to bite him as the Treasurer faces pressure over soaring interest rates and high inflation.
“All of the credit … none of the responsibility.”
That was Mr Chalmers’ attack on former prime minister Scott Morrison in May 2022, when the Reserve Bank lifted interest rates from the 0.1% to 0.35%.
“This is a full blown cost of living crisis on Scott Morrison's watch and now interest rate rises are about to be part of the pain,” Mr Chalmers said at the time.
“Now this Prime Minister has an excuse for everything and a plan for nothing. When things are going well in the economy he takes all of the credit.
“And when times tough in the economy, he takes none of the responsibility.”
news24.com.au/politics/austr…
if they can screw up such a simple thing , now imagine an economy
on the road to Damascus or is it the Stuart Hwy retweeted
Breaking: the price of everything goes up to cover the cost of merchant fees.
