Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "ABC News In-depth" channel.

  1. AEROSPACE ENGINEER HERE: I did my degree in American in the late 80s when Reagan was spending tons of money. Our department was flush with DARPA funding for Reagan's Star Wars. In my final year we had to do 2 or more advanced option classes which we shared with the post graduate students who also had to present conference level papers. One of my classes was in Spacecraft Dynamics which is the single hardest class I ever had. Its all about how you make spacecraft point in space. It sounded real cool when we signed up and then the math started. In that class was the single most mathematically gifted engineer I've ever met. We were all pretty smart but he made us all feel dumb. He was actually able to simulate a solution to making a laser cannon point accurately in space. The problem is that its not like a satellite or the Hubble space telescope which rotate and point very slowly. Shooting down missiles is more like skeet shooting in that its all very rapid recognition, movement and shooting. What really killed off Star Wars 1.0 and this will still hold true today are 2 basic facts. 1) Lasers reflect off shiny surfaces. So all you need to do is make the surface of your missile a mirror finish and lasers become fairly useless. 2) The basic mechanics of shooting at something that accurately at an object that might be 1,000km away or more moving at hypersonic speeds is absurd. People just don't get how big space actually is. Even the space close to the Earth that we call Low Earth Orbit is a massive amount of territory.
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  2. I'm Australian but went to college in America and you have summed it up perfectly. Just as Australia had a recent report that said how the top 10% had done brilliantly over the past 25+ years while the rest of us struggle the Americans had a similar report last September EXCEPT its EVEN WORSE. The American report was done by the Congressional Budget Office, which means its beyond question. If you want I explain the data but in nutshell the Top 10% of America have not only recovered from the GFC, but are now over $30 Trillion better off than they were in 2007. The Middle 40% are finally better off but it took a while and they aren't that far ahead of their 2007 position. The Bottom 50% who lost almost 1/2 their wealth in the GFC, not only haven't recovered but are still a long way behind their 2007 position. That's 165 Million Americans are still behind where they were 15 years ago and another 132 million are barely above water while about 33 million who got bailed out after the GFC they created are booming.
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  3. ENGINEER HERE: There isn't one of these projects that doesn't have some merit and some real payback to us the general population of Australia. The real problem is HOW these projects are planned from the start and that includes the contracts that are rarely negotiated in good faith by either or both the government or the contractors. So for everyone interested here's 4 basic project items and for anyone who has ever done a project and wondered what went wrong simply ask which of these wasn't done well enough. Sorry if some of this is longish but I hope it will explain a number of things and how to NOT have projects go wrong. 1) SPECIFICATION: This is the basic what, why and how. What are we going to build - a bridge, a road, a building, a sports stadium or even a submarine. Why are we building this bridge, road, building, sports stadium or submarine. The what and why don't need much detail. Its can be as simple as, We need this bridge to go over that river because the old bridge needs replacing. BUT the HOW must be detailed and most importantly it must explain what STANDARDS must be met. Most people and especially lawyers don't realise that most engineering standards are NOT required by law or regulation. There's actually very few standards that are required to be met by law and yes this stuns most people. So its incredibly important that every standard that a project needs is absolutely listed and described for its applicable use IN THE CONTRACT(s). The single biggest issue with lawyers and engineering projects is NOT what they put in the contracts but what they leave out. See the comment at the bottom. 2) RESOUCES: In all engineering projects there are 3 main resources - labour, machinery and money. Labour from top to bottom needs to not only be available but also the required skills needed need to be available. This is an area where non-engineering human resource people are utterly hopeless. For all their claims (and I have experience with this issue) they CANNOT tell the difference between an mechanic and mechanical engineer, electrician and an electrical engineer or any other engineering skill set. Machinery is another monster bug for engineers. Its no use planning to rent a 50ton crane when you need to lift a 100ton object AND YES THAT HAPPENS. You have to have people who know their subject plan what they need and when they need it. If you suddenly have to rent things like cranes, digging machines, scaffold,... etc. the people supplying those services can charge whatever they like because they know that holding up a billion dollar project is worse than paying ridiculous money to rent something. Money is the worst thing engineers have to deal with because there's always some clown waving an economics degree like a caveman swinging a club screaming "What's the business case for that?" or "Who's going to pay for that?" In 99.9% of cases the reason why its costing more than planned is because the economics clown interfered back at the planning stage. 3) TECHNICAL VIABLITY: This is something that most engineers hate because it involves Donald Rumsfeld's 3 knowns. There's known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Planning is about having as many known knowns as practical and the best way to have that is CLEAR SPECIFICATIONS. Think about the Apollo program. It had the very simple 2 PART specification. 1 - get a man to the moon and 2 - get him back SAFELY. That was why they could go there 9 times and land 6 times and not lose anyone in the process. The times they lost people were in training accidents where they were less clear about what they were doing and people were rushed and NOT checking properly. 4) COMPLETION DATE which is also called CLOSE OUT: This is possibly the worst thing done in all projects and again goes back to the specifications. If a job is NOT clearly specified then its gets very murky to what it means to be finished. Despite what people might think an unclear completion is music to a contractor because its easy to make a lot of money late in a project. Most of the major items are already in place so its mostly labour or variations and both are more money on top of profit. As we can all see from some of the enquiries into the Big 4 consultancies getting repeat work is what they want more than anything. In an engineering the equivalent to that are the contract variations at the end of a project. The way to avoid that is by (right up front) detailing in the specification: "This is what we want and this is what we mean by being finished." Go check any project you know of and you'll quickly see the problems that happen when one of these things is not done. And a perfect example of bad planning is Snowy 2.0. Yes as an engineer I can emphatically state that it is a project with merit and eventually we the Australian people will benefit from it. HOWEVER when you plan on building a power station you also need to connect it to the power grid. That was NOT done in the initial plans and that's where the biggest cost blowouts are. Plus the contractors KNOW they have us by the short and curlies because what's the point of building Snowy 2.0 if you don't connect it to the grid. It has to be connected so they have us. Its a perfect example of the problem of what's left out of the contract.
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  4. Mate it wasn't the Greenies trying to ban bull bars it was the road safety advocates because of how deadly they are on pedestrians and cyclists. Your forgetting that there's a staggering number of bull bars on Toorak Tractors and other vehicles that have never been outside and will never be outside the metropolitan areas. A lot of people from the country actually need to spend more time in the cities just as much as a lot of city people need to spend more time in the country. I grew up in towns and cities but my mothers family are farmers and I spent a lot of time on farms. Its always staggered me how ignorant BOTH SIDES are of each other.
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  5. Your right John Bolton is not the right person to have commenting on good and sound leadership let alone character.
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  6. I'm Australian but went to college in America (late 80s) on a sports scholarship and I can barely believe what's happened. I love America and the people and especially college sport, but your politics has been out of control for decades. I was even able to see it back in the 80s. I was there during the 87 primary season and remember the Gary Hart scandal which was a so what because everyone knew what Washington was like and that was years before Clinton got blown. Even during the Clinton blow job scandal Newt Gingrich was banging his secretary. I did aerospace engineering but a bunch of my friends were pre-law and they'd drag me into their conversations which gave me an interesting education on the US Constitution. My only real political or legal education was studying Orwell (1984 & Animal Farm) in High School so I'd argue that any nation can fall into a totalitarian dictatorship if it wasn't careful. My friends always argued back that was impossible because of the "System of Checks & Balances." These days I consider the US Constitution one of humanities finest achievements but its NOT perfect and it has one major flaw none of my college friends ever considered. That flaw is in granting so many freedoms allows people with nefarious motives to exploit it. That's where the Heritage Foundation goon plays his part. Heritage like CATO and other Washington Think Tanks isn't just some place where people think its where they plan to get things they want without any consideration of the consequences to others. That's what scares me about American Libertarians. Its not that defending liberty is bad in fact defending liberty is one of the noblest ideas. But American Libertarians demand the liberty to strip other people of their liberties. They are at their core authoritarians who believe there's 2 types of laws. The laws they don't believe apply to them and the laws they believe apply to everyone else.
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  7.  @davespanksalot8413  No actually he's a V chromosome. That's what you get when the Y-chromosome has its lower middle leg cut off and you're just left with a V. Its the genetic equivalent of being castrated and we all know he's only on those shows because he hasn't got any.....
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  8. My fellow Australians lets put this into context. FIRST: America is still 25% of the worlds economy and most of OUR TRADE like all international trade relies on the US Dollar being the worlds reserve currency. Either our deals are done directly in $USD or the currency exchanges rely of $USD. SECOND: We are about to stake the future of our nation's security on America still functioning as a reliable partner. I actually went to college in America and have many American friends. No doubt most American's can be relied upon but we are talking about the guy who sits in the Whitehouse as the world tries to deal with some very serious issues: Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine and China-Taiwan. THIRD: There's the elephant of all elephants stomping through the room, CLIMATE CHANGE. Make no doubt about it climate change will affect the worlds food supply and starving millions make for dangerous times. One of these 2 doesn't care and the other is incapable of doing what's needed. Love America or hate it, doesn't matter as much as knowing the guy in the Whitehouse is RELIABLE and can be counted on to do the right thing under pressure.
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  9.  @aprildawnsunshine4326  Sorry but your mother might have worked on spacecraft but she DID NOT WORK on what I'm talking about. This stuff was only being worked on by 1 person and his professor. As for AI solving the problem the answer is NO and it never will. The real issues with missile defense (as Joe pointed out) are NOT software but the actual mechanics involved with trying hit small objects moving at very high speeds at great distances. I have tried explaining this many times and nobody seems to listen. Its quite frustrating. As for the whole AI thing. Most of it is a giant mirage. Yes LLMs are very impressive and can seem to do some very clever things, but when you look at many of the claims made in recent years there's an awful lot of stuff that's been found to be 100% conjecture with no basis in reality. There's a journalist named Ed Zitron who's actually behaved like a journalist and looked through the hype and looked into the backgrounds of these tech bro billionaires. There's a staggering amount of outright scamming among these guys. They do startups and then hype the crap out of them. Then they sell them off to people who believe the hype and its ended in some pretty bad outcomes. I think we are headed towards the second dot-com bubble burst except this time its going to be worse. A LOT WORSE
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  10. Good that somebody pointed that out. An amazing number of the YouTube and social media brigade are in it to make a living. They all sell merch and they all promote it. In politics they target a particular audience (left, right, whatever) and will say whatever it takes to keep that audience PAYING or via YouTube earning money.
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  11. Its pretty damn simple what Chian is up to and these people in the Pacific have no idea. 1st the Chinese need to feed their people and fishing rights in these small states is their key aim. 2nd the 1.4 billion Chinese get 1 vote in the UN general assembly. These security agreements get them more votes in that assembly. Worse its our fault for letting it get this bad.
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  12. Don't forget Howard in that. And don't forget that both Howard and Blair are lawyers which means they have even less of an excuse than Bush because you'd think they would have taken at least 1 class in International Law.
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  13. Not certain but I think Joe Hilderbrand might have just gone past him in the arrogant self deluded self righteous shite category. "you've all had a turn, time for the grown ups to take over" I'm not certain if that's a joke or the worst take we've had on climate change in the 121years since Svante Arrhenius won the 1903 Nobel Prize for Chemistry when he predicted too much carbon dioxide would be a problem. I think Joe might want to be careful with that attitude before someone beats the crud out him.
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  14. ONLY COMMENT in the list DESERVING a THUMBS DOWN.
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  15. They were not tactical nuclear weapons you clown. They were the biggest bombs that could be built at that time. In both cases the bombs were too large to fit into the B29's normal bomb bay and the planes had to be modified. The only reason they weren't of higher yield was because in those days they couldn't purify the Uranium for one bomb as much as they can now and they couldn't get enough Plutonium for the other bomb.
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  16. I have no idea why anyone is surprised that the planet is swinging back and forth like this. Having more energy in the earth's climate system was always going to cause wild swings. Its like pushing a child harder on a swing they go higher one way then swing back higher the other way.
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  17. I absolutely agree David Speirs is (at times) among the worst of the smuggest arrogant interviewers. I think Noel Pearson has been one of the best among the 1st nations public figures for some time. I remember a few years ago when he openly said that native Australians had to stop seeing modern education and specifically math and science as "white man's stuff" and that education was a human thing.
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  18. ENGINEER HERE: This is reasonably easy to understand and my apologies if this gets longish. Its ANOTHER outcome of what we now call neoliberal economics. The short answer is we need more supply because anyone who ever did an economics course (and I did as an elective) gets told that IF demand is greater than supply then PRICES GO UP. In Australia we have built vast arrays of solar and wind BUT we have not built any new large bulk capacity BUT we have turned of several like Hazelwood in Victoria and Liddell in NSW. The last time Australia built a power station with more than 1,000MW of base load capacity was 1993 when our population was 17.6 million and we are now just over 26 million. For sure Callide C (810 MW) in 2001, Millmerran (852 MW) in 2002 and Kogan Creek (750MW) in 2007 helped but there's another 5.2 million people in the country since Kogan Creek was commissioned. For sure Snowy 2.0 at 2,000MW will help but that's not a base load generator its a storage system. Something else still has to generate that 2,000MW. Bottom line we need to build new major base load power stations in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales and plan on building future major base load power stations in Queensland and Western Australia. To give you an idea of the costs involved the Hinckley Point C nuclear power station with 2 x 1,630 MW units is now expected to cost £35 Billion (about AU$66.5 Billion). So the cost of 1 of those 1,630 MW units is about AU$33.3 Billion each. Based on what power stations have either closed or are going to close through age we'd need 1 or 2 in South Australia, 3 or 4 in Victoria, 4 or 5 in NSW and 1 or 2 in Queensland. In total that's 9 units to produce 14,400 MW up to 13 units producing 20,800 MW. The combined total of Australia's coal fired plants is just over 24,700 MW. That's just to replace lost capacity from power stations just getting too old to keep them running. It has nothing to do with climate change or anything else. That's between AU$300 and AU$433 Billion just to fix the stupidity of the last 25+ years it doesn't account for future population growth and we have some people wanting us to grow to as many as 55 or 65 million. The long answer on how we got here is below. I started informally studying economics because I got so frustrated from clowns waving economics degrees interfering in projects. What I found was that things like Reaganomics and Thatcherism didn't end they morphed in to this thing we now call neoliberalism or Chicago School economics if you're an academic. At its core is the line expressed by Ronald Reagan himself "government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem." In practice it has "the belief" (and its only a belief) "That anything a government does the private sector can do better." Part of that was Milton Freidman's "Greed is good" line because in his view greed drives efficiency because its financially rewarded. Milton also gave us that the free market can and will solve everything because it self corrects. Australians heard a version of this recently when Philip Lowe governor of the RBA said that the housing crisis was just the market correcting itself. Philip Lowe's comment about the housing market SHOULD CONCERN US ALL about the energy market, because part of the neoliberal ideology is that regulators should do as little as possible and let the market self correct. The 2008 GFC told us that's nonsense. It didn't self correct and there were $TRILLIONS in BAIL OUTS. The current housing crisis tells us that's nonsense because its not self correcting. The current inflation driven by supply chain issues and profiteering tells us that's nonsense because its not self correcting. The current energy crisis tells us that's nonsense because its not self correcting. This neoliberal nonsense of self correcting markets just DOES NOT WORK for certain things. Housing and energy being 2 of those things because they take time. It takes months to approve and build a house and longer if its something like a multistory apartment complex. Power stations take years to approve and if they are large scale can take years to build. Education is similar it takes 13 years of primary and secondary education and another 4 doing a degree, cadetship or apprenticeship just to make a functioning adult. There is no business case for spending $2-300,000 dollars on a 5 year old hoping that in 17 years they'll do something. The new nuclear plant the British are building, Hinckley Point C, took 7 years to design and approve. It will take 10 years (at least) to complete and power up with first power around 2028/29. It will take at least 15 years to break even on costs and that's only if its energy is sold at higher rates. There is no viable business case in the "Greed is good" neoliberal model that says you can spend £35 Billion and the break even point is 30+ years in the future. During an engineering consult circa 2016 I discovered that Australia not only hadn't built any new large scale bulk delivery power stations since the late 1990s we haven't even got any proposals on the table to discuss. Snowy Hydro 2.0 might have a 2,000 MW power station but its NOT a generator its a pumped hydro energy STORAGE system. Those 2,000 MW have to be generated somewhere else. This is the basis reality the neoliberals have wrong. There are some things that Governments have to do because they don't need a viable business case for shareholders. CEOs need profits while Governments needs a functioning economy. Governments measure themselves by GDP which is dependent on employment, wages and the effects of things like education and health care. Its complex while a CEO's task is simple we made $X and that gets $Y per share - done. When Governments build power stations the outcome is measured in GDP growth. They don't have to care if it makes just 0.01% profit or even if it loses money. So long as the outcome is GDP growth which can happen when companies can start or expand on cheap energy then so what. More people get employed. More people can buy things that other people make - including houses. So when we privatised our energy sector back in the 1990s we went from a system that was measured as part of GDP growth and designed to create jobs and growth to a system that had but one purpose. Milton Freidman said it in his famous 1970 New York Time essay "There is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits..." If you ask why none of the so called experts in this video have NO ANSWERS its very simple THEY DON'T HAVE ANY. They all come from think tanks (like Tony Woods), lobbyists (like Ben Barnes) OR they are economists, lawyers, business leaders, academics,.... They are all people without any motivation to solve anything. This is something British Rebel Economist Gary Stevenson (here on YT) points out that is WRONG with current economics - too many of the people speaking have no motivation in solving anything. And why don't they dare talk about solutions whether they be hydrogen, solar, wind, nuclear and there's a whole raft of nuclear technologies to discuss.
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  19. That's a fair comment. Even if somethings have gone well for Ukraine, having 8 million people be displaced and your country in ruins isn't a good thing.
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  20. We are not out of ideas we are out of people who will listen to new ideas. We have too many in management who have 1 overriding question to almost everything: How will this get me a bonus? Their next most often asked question is almost as cynical: How will this get me laid?
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  21.  @WhatNotEven  At least I can read a book. And for the record I have read many books since reading Animal Farm. Its what you get from living in a country with a functioning education system,
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  22.  @andrewcoulthard-clark  They're worth listening to occasionally so that you get reminded how bat crap crazy they are and how damn dangerous they are.
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  23. WHY?? What did he say that's so off putting?? Unless you're a bot.
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  24. That's absolutely right. I'm an engineer and without any doubt when you consider the technical functionality the nuclear power option should have always been on the table. Over 10 years ago when the subs were first being mentioned I happened to be working with an American electrician who had been in the US Navy as a nuclear power plant operator on aircraft carriers. He explained a few things. We have wide open deep water territory which is where nuclear subs are simply work better. The only places where diesel electric subs (which are typically smaller) have any advantage is in Littoral waters (close to shore) where its noisy and their size makes them viable. If you actually have a look at the original French deal it was never really viable and made no sense in 2 key areas. Quick note the French Sub offered from DCNS is the Shortfin Barracuda which is the non-nuclear powered version of the Barracuda which the French Navy has. FIRST - The Collins class has basic crew of 42 and the Shortfin Barracuda requires 60. We have only been able to bring a 4th out of 6 Collins into active service because the RAN took a Frigate out of service. The real issue (that's not EVER been discussed) was how did the RAN intend to crew these 12 submarines when they can barely crew 4 now. This is going to be an ever bigger issue with the Brits and Yanks because despite the fact the British Astute and American Virginia class subs being of similar size and purpose to the Barracuda they both have bigger crews (Astute 98, Virginia 135) making them even less viable. SECOND - The actual cost per sub. The French Navy paid just over $2 Billion AUD for their nuclear powered Barracudas and yet DCNS was asking Australia to pay $7.5Billion AUD for each of the non-nuclear powered Shortfin Barracudas. Imagine walking into a car dealer who offers a Renault or Peugeot for $75,000 when YOU KNOW he's selling the same car with the upgraded engine to others for $20,000. Any reasonable person tells the salesman to "** off" and walks out the door. On the diplomatic side - we should have asked DCNS for the price on nuclear powered Barracudas and if they had said anything over $2.5Billion each ($30 Billion all up) we walk. There's no secret to what these subs cost its all available on public platforms like Wikipedia. What has to happen without any doubt is that we (the Australian people) are presented with a plan on how we will train and crew these subs and MOST importantly deal with them at the end of life. Whether its 8 or 12 or some other number in 40 years time we will have a bunch of decommissioned nuclear reactors to deal with. BEFORE WE START THIS we need to know what we are going to do with those reactors.
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  25. Yeah I watched his who press club speech yesterday and to put it simply. He is right about some things but totally full of SHlT on others. His claim we could have and operate 45 Collins class replacements is so breathtakingly IDl0TlC its barely wroth considering. We have 6 Collins class now and only enough submariners for 4. So where do you think the smartest man in Australian politics is going to find all the submariners to crew those 45 subs?
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  26.  @sportsfanivosevic9885  NO I am factoring in how much military contracts blow out over time. You are right - Collins compared to AUKUS looks like a bargain, but Collins compared to other current non-nuclear programs is a dog's breakfast that we should not ever want to do again. As an engineer we should have been having sensible public discussion on this years ago. This is the thing that aggravates me the most in this. All we have are clowns who are pumping their NARRATIVES with no thought to what we actually need. When the Collins replacement first came up circa 2006/07 and they emphatically said we will not go nuclear I was working with an American who was an ex-US Navy nuclear power plant technician and operator. He'd served on Aircraft Carriers, but they still had the same power reactors as the subs. Its just the ACs have 2 and the subs have 1. He EXPLAINED that with Australia's vast ocean areas why diesel-electric was stupid. The biggest factor is the speed nuclear subs can maintain. Subs like the Astute (30kts) are 50% faster than a Collins (20kts) and do not have to slow down each day to breath air. HE ALSO EXPLAINED part of the American design philosophy and that revolved about having very little automation. This is why American subs have huge crews compared to others. The French sub is 60, the British Astute is 98 but the Virginia crew is 138. This is what I find so aggravating, there is no nuance in the public discussion. Its all opinion, narrative, rage, outrage and whatboutisms. I'm lucky in that I once worked with someone who could explain this stuff and I am fortunate to remember it.
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  27. On the crew size (and this really aggravates me) any society only has so many of any sort of person who can do certain things. There's only so many who can be surgeons or dentists or engineers, or AFL/NRL players or Olympic athletes. We only have about 240 submariners (4 x 60 Collins crewman) as in people who will go into subs. Maybe that number can change with better recruitment but do not forget for almost 10 years we only had enough crew to keep 3 Collins active. The incredibly bad reputation the Collins first had might be part of that, but don't forget it took almost 10 years before they could reliably fire a torpedo. That's why as project it needs honest discussions on what went wrong as well as HOW they got past all those issues. I saw a great review of the Collins last year and they went over many of the improvements made over the last 20 years from operating the Collins. One thing mentioned was the time needed on the surface to recharge the batteries had been reduced from several hours to about 1/2 an hour. The main reason that review was made was they are concerned Australia will lose all the knowledge, skills and experience gained from the Collins and that is a very serious topic that needs a proper public discussion.
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  28. That can also be read as "Pander to the whims of an angry mob and you can easily find an audience willing to listen to any absurdity."
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  29. I don't know if you support these clowns or not but you are certainly on the right path. If you are going to target MSN (who are horrible) don't leave out FOX who are just as disgusting when it comes to lies and propaganda. The mainstream media on BOTH SIDES of pumping their opinions as fact for decades. It certainly goes back to before any of us were born.
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  30. I don't know about an award but it should never have dragged out this long. Just like how our government dragged its boots on Australians at Guantanamo its keeps trying to play nice with bullies. Most humans know by about the time they reach 12 years of age that you can't simply negotiate with bullies.
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  31.  @dumcasta9327  Duh - I watch it regularly. In fact if you want tp get a decent assessment of American issues it does it better than almost any American show does. So it does not surprise me the American commenting here don't get it. Plus if you take this interview in isolation from all their other interviews it looks bad, because it was soft. And all that's irrelevant because Jon Baron never gave Bolton even one "rope question" let alone a trap door.
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  32.  @GerardoFrancisco  Thanks. Its something that totally infuriates me and a lot of other engineers. Even in industry we have the same issues. I have worked on several mining and resource projects where the incompetence of senior management was staggering and $$Billions were wasted. Worse - Project management is such a simple thing to do if you plan well. You don't have to plan perfectly you just don't have to ignore things and/or dismiss them as "somebody else's problem." If you haven't watched the 4-corners on the consultants its a MAJOR PART of the problem. They have so utterly infected government, the military and the private sector that it will take decades to clean them out. The only real skill they have is sucking money out of projects.
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  33.  @culturekingsboy6555  In some ways I don't disagree as there are so many engineers who get promoted by sucking up rather than doing the job properly, but you are picking a fight with the wrong engineer. I'll agree any day you like that there are too many engineers who don't know what they are doing and don't have enough practical experience BUT DON'T YOU DARE try and claim that labourers don't screw things up. The amount of stuff I have had to personally pick up tools and fix because some smartass thought they knew better is staggering. In fact there's way too many project mangers who aren't engineers at all making idiotic decisions that people like me have to clean up and I've had to clean up a lot of their SHlT in my time.
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  34. I also have a background in engineer (control systems) and some of the stuff being spruiked by the pro-5G crowd are just idiotic. The stuff about building efficiency is already being done via control systems inside the buildings and via the NBN. 5G wont make a micro-gram of difference. As for the driverless cars that's simply BS. All the major manufacturers sold off their stakes in that technology over recent years once the worked out how much it was going to cost to make it work. Then there's the reality of having a computer powerful enough to run it successfully that would fit in a car. Even Uber gave up on that before this program was first aired. I actually find some of the garbage being spruiked by these people to be incredibly dishonest.
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  35.  @gerryblais6786  That's call "promoting your product." The stupid thing these people do is scream, rant and yell about crazy idiotic stuff when all they simply need to do is ask back - WHY DO WE NEED IT? Who actually needs to be able to download a movie onto their phone in 2 seconds? How does that actually make our society function better? The stupid thing is nobody seems to be asking the practical questions, like - WHY DO WE NEED IT?
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  36. Its a nice idea, but NO. Go and look at the number of people it takes to operate an LA Class (129). On one hand it does look sensible as the USN is about to mothball a couple of them. But we have NOBODY who is trained on operating them. I'm an engineer, I work in industrial control systems and automation. A once worked with an electrician who's first career was in the US Navy as a nuclear power plant operator in aircraft carriers. It was 5 years of training to get qualified and that was on similar gear to what's in an LA Class. We could do it but for about 10 years we'd have to PAY for US Personnel to be on our boats. The other massive issue with the LA Class is they have a very large crew (129). originally the Collins was only 24 then upgraded to 58. The French sub is 60 while the British Astute is 98. The German 214 is only 27. Our real sub problem isn't what we can buy its how many submariners do we have to operate them. Right now we only have enough for 4 of the 6 Collins we have. So at best we could have maybe 2 LA Class or maybe 3 Astutes at a stretch. Navies around the world are having the same problem. NOBODY wants to be stuffed in a tin can and send underwater for 3 or more months with zero contact home. There's a joke in the US Navy. "If you want to get rid of a wife join the submarine corps!"
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  37. Engineer here 1) There's nothing that says AI drones would work at anything. You're simply reading way too much into the RIDICULOUSLY OVER HYPED capabilities of AI. 2) The entire AUKUS program is ridiculous and not because its nuclear. I have supported for almost 20 years that our next submarines should be nuclear. In 2006 I had a technician who was an ex-US Navy nuclear power plant tech/operator who'd worked on aircraft carriers which have exactly the same nuclear reactors as the subs. There'd been some news story on what Australia should have after Collins and he simply crushed the stupidity that Australia should have diesel electric subs with the amount of ocean area we have to patrol. The 2 best reasons AUKUS is ridiculous are: 1) The cost. At $268 Billion for 8 Subs that's $33.5 Billion each over their lifetime. The basic cost of a Virginia class is $5.5 Billion. So where is the other $28 Billion going? No one is even asking that. So I did some research 2 years ago and even building and maintaining all that I could find listed and then multiplying the costs the closest I came to $268 was around $155 Billion. I have discussed this with other engineers and there's at least $100 billion none of us can work out where its going. 2) Crewing the Virginia class Virginia class subs need almost 140 submariners while the Collins requires 60. Australis has struggled with getting enough submariners qualified to operate 4 of the 6 Collins class subs we have. Just to crew 2 Virginia class subs would take MORE THAN the current RAN Submariner corps. Who's going to crew the other 6? An ex-RAN Submarine commander was asked about this on 4-Corners and his answer was: "We'll have to do better." YES that was his answer. Nothing about how. Nothing about training. Nothing about where these people would come from. He had nothing, nada, zip or diddley squat AND THAT'S THE BEST ANSWER SO FAR.
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  38. @ that's a comeback Jimmy Carr would be proud of
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  39.  @dangerzone007  WHY DOESN'T RUSSIA HAVE TO NEGOTIATE?
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  40. Have you seen (ex-Republican) Adam Kinzinger's description of it?
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  41. Eventually one of them is going to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and say the wrong thing and then there is going to be one of the grandest butt kicking's in Australian history. When they get out of hospital there'll be no end of their whinging about it. Eventually there's going to be some blowback from this narcissistic garbage.
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  42. I am an engineer and you are one of the few people I have seen who gets that basic reality. At Liddell in NSW they are replacing a 2,000MW coal fired power station with a 750MW battery. Those batteries are super profitable and pay off in as little as 18 months. But 2,000MW of GENERATING CAPACITY has gone. At full power a 750MW battery pumping out at a rate of 2,000MW is fully drained in less than 23 minutes. As an engineer ITS INFURIATING that so much of the public discussion on energy is presented by incompetent media who keep putting microphones in front of clowns and there are clowns on EVERY SIDE of this. Will that battery at Liddell be worth it? Absolutely, but people need to be properly informed about what it means. It will help buffer the wind and solar systems BUT IT WONT SOLVE THE OVERALL PROBLEM. As engineers we can solve these problems but all the clown brained media hacks, the vested interests, all the charlatans & scumbags out to make a quick $$$, all the self interested twats who just rant about crap and all the rest of the ignorant clowns NEED TO STFU and let us do our jobs.
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  43.  @MatthewSummerton  Great point
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  44. What to you expect they are owned by Murdoch.
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  45.  @kidShibuya  I wouldn't say its over yet, but I'd say its bigger than we think. From the Chinese perspective its certainly convenient to get everyone looking somewhere other that Taiwan.
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  46. Well actually Planet America is in some ways a half-Parody of serious news or did you not here the name of the show is "Planet America." One of the compares has a background in political comedy and was the famous "dressed as Osama at the APEC conference" stunt. The interviewer here is John Baron who's normally very good, but this is easily one of his worst interviews ever. I love the show but hate the fact that every so often they let people off lightly or as in this case simply have someone on that they just shouldn't.
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  47.  @dumcasta9327  I agree, there's a lot of ignorant sepos commenting here. But to be fair interviewing Bolton isn't that smart unless you're going to hit him with a least 1 tough question.
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  48. ENGINEER HERE: It doesn't matter because once the Australian people realise just how badly this disaster has been put together they are going to go nuts. 1) The Virginia-class is simply not suited to Australia's navy. yes the technology is arguably the best there is but the Americans have a different philosophy to other nations. Not only do they build large but they have large crews. The Virginia-class has a basic crew of 140, the Astute is 100 and the French Barracuda is 60 like the Collins-class. The German 212-class which isn't nuclear but is Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) has a crew of 27. Singapore has a variation of the German 212. We don't have enough submariners to crew 2 Virginia-class subs let alone 5. 2) We are being taken to the cleaners on the costs. When you look at what these subs have as delivered (as in what the US, British or French navies pay) then we are being screwed to a level of absurdity that should horrify people. Its not the only Australian Navy Contract that needs to be publicly questioned. - The Arafura-class offshore patrol vessels are more than 10 times the cost of the Armidale-class boats they are replacing. Plus the need 30% more crew and weigh over 5 times as much meaning their operational costs will be much higher. - The Hunter Class Frigates are over 3 times the price the British Navy is paying for the same vessel. There is nothing in the variation or that they are being made in Australia that can justify that. I have actually done a ALTERNATIVE project costing on the submarines. I have 2 Astute-class variations and then 4 AUKUS with 6 German 212s. that would be a sub fleet that would be VERY HARD for Australia to crew. - The nuke boats are all built in England with an Australian work force on site of 6,500. The first 212 would be built in Germany with an Australian workforce of 1,000 and the last 5 built here in Australia. - I have included some borderline outrageous bonuses for the Australian people working on them overseas as a means to getting it done on time and on budget. - I have included costs for port upgrades in both Western and Eastern Australia based on publicly available information. - I have included costs for disposal of the subs after their service using parts of Olympic Dam in South Australia. Why because its already a site with 30% of the World's known Uranium. It can't be contaminated any worse than it already is. I have TIRED to OVER COST things and am still AU$115 Billion *UNDER the lower AU$268 Billion we are being told it will cost Even if I stick a AU$50 Billion contingency on top of all the other contingencies I already have in the project I still can't explain where AU$65 Billion let alone AU$165 Billion is going. MAYBE THIS IS WHY ACTUAL PROJECT DETAILS ARE HARD TO COME BY.
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  49.  @petermcculloch4933  Its very very simple and engineers learn this in their first year. If you lift the temperature of water, even when its below boiling point you increase the evaporation rate and add water vapour to air layer above the water. Its effectively transferring thermal energy into the air. If you do that for the worlds oceans, that's a lot of additional water vapour being pumped into the atmosphere that eventually forms clouds. That's why we can expect MORE rainfall and MORE snowfall. So when we get major storm events (rain, wind, hail or snow) they are more likely to be more severe than normal because there's more water vapor in the atmosphere to come down on our stupid heads.
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  50.  @petermcculloch4933  I've never understood what was hard about it. Higher temperature means more evaporation More evaporation means more clouds More clouds mean more rain and snow. Its just a matter of where it falls. Climate is like pushing a kid on a swing. Normally its just a matter of nudges to keep it going, but if the nudges are just a smidge harder at the right timing then the swing starts going higher and higher. Eventually you either stop or launch the kid into space. I did aerospace engineering and we once had a NASA guy visit who'd done a project to estimate what it would take to make Mars liveable. Basically we can't for a pile of reasons but the best one was that planets don't like being changed unless its very gradual over millions of years. Its just like suddenly pushing that kid on the swing with one enormous push. Sure they'll zoom away as you expect. Maybe it will just keep going and the kid will fly off but then maybe it'll swing back and smash you in the face. Either way wont be a good outcome for you or the kid.
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  51.  @YaMumsSpecialFriend  Co-crewing would be the only way possible for Australia to operate LA Class or any other American submarine. I saw an awesome documentary years ago on WHY Iraq was going bad. It was by PBS Frontline and called "Rumsfeld's War" and you can still find it here on YT. About 1/2 way in a retired former general describes the 4 key points of the Powell Doctrine. I'm an engineer and those 4 points translate perfectly into engineering project management and I have used them ever since. One of those key points is Resources (men, machines and money). First we never could afford the ridiculous costs of the French Subs. Were were going to pay 3 times more for a downgraded version than the French Navy's nuclear powered version. PLUS we never had enough submariners to ever crew 12 of them. 60 x 12 is 720 and these days we barely have 250 and most of the time struggle to have 4 Collins in the water. The other 2 are in dock with no crews. Anybody with a brain who could do basic math knew it was crap.
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  52.  @TT-nk5hi  You're absolutely right. If China, America or any of several Asian nations ever wanted to invade Australia there's nothing we can actually do to stop them taking over our country. Its comes down to numbers. There's 25 million of us and hundreds of millions of them. Its the same for any smaller country. However there's the cost, as the Americans found out in Afghanistan and Iraq and as the Russians are finding out in Ukraine. There's some really smart people with military backgrounds commenting sensibly on what's happened in Ukraine. In less than 100 days the Russian lost over 200 tanks and keep losing more every day. Australia has 59 M1 Abrams tanks with an $3.5Billion order for another 75. The Chinese PLA has over 4,600 main battle tanks of various types. Sadly Ukraine cannot win, they just don't have the numbers, but they can make Russia pay a price they can't afford. As America learned form Afghanistan and Iraq, invading is one thing, controlling a population that hates you is another thing entirely. I recently heard an American analyst call it a "Strategy of Denial". Its where you have enough in place that the other guy with the massive military is always asking "What will it cost to start a fight?" So its NOT a matter of Australian being able to do anything to anyone else its a matter of how much do we need so that others wont do anything to us.
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  53.  @kallekas8551  Unfortunately (and I do means this with some sadness) the best you could call it these days is the SA "States of America" because the word United has LEFT the building. It might even be argued that it left the building some time ago and I genuinely mean that saddens me. I had a fantastic time going to college in America and its sad to see what's happened. And if you want to blame Australian born Rupert Murdoch, then fine. We tried to warn the Brits and America what he was like neither of you listened. But feel free to deal with that problem. I'd recommend the Dirty Harry method.
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  54. Way to put yourself out there for the world championship of BS. Keep going and Rupert Murdoch will give you a job.
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  55. You make a valid point about Brandis (or any other politician) helping themselves, but the espionage charge has nothing to do with what Julian Assange's nationality is. The girl beside him, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, has the best point I have seen anyone make in a while. The Oxford definition of espionage is: the practice of spying or of using spies, typically by governments to obtain political and military information. How does what Julian Assange did fit that? FYI - I'm from Melbourne but went to uni in America. I did engineering but a bunch of my friends we pre-law and we used to discuss the US Constitution a lot. So I know that in a sensible court this would get thrown out on 1st Amendment grounds in about 5 minutes. Its also not just the free press thing either. That final part of the 1st says ", and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." So what do you call the things Julian Assange uncovered like the helicopter gunship shooting innocent civilians and prisoner abuses other than grievances? I'm actually stunned its gone on this long.
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  56. Way back in 2004 there was a documentary called "Outfoxed" one of the warnings in that documentary was that Rupert Murdoch was dragging the entire media industry down into his gutter. Almost 20 years later that warning has become prophecy come true. Here on YT, you can check what's being said across the entire world and its the same everywhere. The complete breakdown of our media is arguably the biggest threat to humanity there is for the simple reason: "How can any of us make any sensible decisions when we are being drowned in hype, garbage, misdirection?"
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  57. Why don't you go an try the simple logic on a fan of Sky NEWS and see how they take a dose of reality. Be warned they take logic, common sense and reality like a feral cat with a tooth ache.
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  58. You are right but the issues go much deeper because the privatisation cancer started back in the 90s and we now have 25+ years of idiotic policy. If you are interested I have written a lengthy comment on this page describing what I know as an engineer.
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  59. @ Yeah that was one of the other outcome scenarios that scared the crud out of everyone. Even a small limited space battle could render low earth orbit unusable for decades. But the biggest killer was the simple fact that eventually something would get through and it only takes a single nuke to EFF-UP your day. Ask the Japanese
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  60.  @David-f5u6v  OF FARK - You have mistaken DELUSION for vision. Can people like you just stop making idiotic claims and for the record its spelt AI not A1 🤣😅😂 And that's before you realise that there's an international treaty that prohibits ANYONE from putting weapons in space. You can't hide either a laser battery or missile battery in space. EVERYONE WOULD SPOT IT FOR EXACLTLY WHAT IT IS.
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  61.  @WilhelmSallsten  You're right on the atmospheric issue but anything in space is effectively a satellite. The thing people don't seem to get is that everything in space not only moves but moves incredibly fast. The Space Station goes around 28,000 kmh or about 100 times faster than a Formula 1 car. This is what I keep trying to explain. Its not a matter of AI or satellite tech or weapon types. Its just the basic reality of orbital mechanics. Its even hard for other engineers to understand because the math is so convoluted.
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  62. Its not so much a matter of corruption as bad practice. I'm an engineer and have left a lengthy explanation in a separate comment explaining how to NOT screw up projects.
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  63. You are a combination of 1/2 right and 1/2 utterly wrong. Your are right the price increases are straight out because of privatisation. As Milton Freidman said “There is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.” As for the reliability of networks you are 100% WRONG. You can get just as much unreliability from private systems as from public. Look at what happened in Texas a couple of years ago. When 5 year old kids are freezing to death in their beds don't try and say private markets work like the M0R0N from Harvard did. You can also look back to Enron. What they actually got caught doing was an unusual form of market manipulation. They'd deliberately trip out a power station every so often. Usually in the late afternoon when there was the daily surge. What that did was spike the local power market at a peak time by causing an artificial supply shortage. Despite losing the income from that power station their other power stations would make a killing off what ever reserve power they had available. As for break downs. I'm an engineer and you can get slack people in both public and private sector employment. These days its a matter of rewards. Traditionally there were none in the public sector. They never tried anything like "If you guys keep the power on by keeping the system well maintained we'll give you a bonus based on performance." And so you know I don't know of many private sector companies that have reward systems for maintenance. I have done maintenance engineering and it sucks because all anybody in the accounting systems see are costs. They never see any benefits. The problem with maintenance is that the better you do your job the less evidence your doing it well exists. Poor maintenance has lots of evidence. Good maintenance has nothing. Famous example of that is QANTAS the Australian airline. Early one when they got their first 747s they had a corporate risk assessment done that said you can't EVER afford to lose a plane. So they built the best maintenance any airline had ever seen. it was so good other airlines took their 747s to it and IT MADE MONEY. After NOT having any 747s fall out of the sky and after having made money QANTAS sold off that division. That's what engineers get for doing maintenance properly.
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  64.  @biggpicture2930  That's actually a reasonably nuanced description. Be careful with Mearsheimer he represents a very narcissistic side of American politics. I watched one of his lectures he did at Yale about 5 years ago on Liberal Hegemony. Its was by far the best I have ever seen anyone describe the flaws in American Liberal Ideology. What you will never see him do is go into any of the flaws in his side of political ideology which he calls "offensive realism." Peter Zeihan called Mearsheimer's suggestion that we simply let Putin have what he wants as HORSESHlT. Putin wants the rest of the world to sit back and let him write the security policies for over a dozen countries with around 270 million people in them and they'd have NO SAY IN IT. So I'd be very careful with what Mearsheimer has to say. He's very smart and very knowledgeable on various topics. He's also a narcissistic sociopath.
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  65.  @Eric-kn4yn  You're 1/2 right. Getting the business relationship with China for raw materials has been awesome and 1,000s of Australians have done well out of it, BUT sending slabs of our manufacturing to China has been a farking disaster and letting the Chinese steal intellectual property and trademarks has been a disaster. However clowns like Hawke, Keating, Howard, Costello, Rudd,... etc. kowtowing to them on these issues has been even worse because now we all have to deal with the ramifications. Its all part of the basic rules of politics. Rule 1: If "it" works then take credit for "it" even if you don't deserve any credit at all. Rule 2: If "it" doesn't work then IBDeW: a) Ignore and act like "it" doesn't exist (as Keating just did on certain questions); or b) Blame someone else for why "it" didn't work (as Keating just did on certain questions); or c) Deflect and change the subject (as Keating just did on certain questions); or d) When all else fails and you can't take credit, deflect or blame the go full attack mode. Call anyone who asks a fraud, fake news, a scumbag or a clown. Just as Keating did when asked about if he'd be just as critical of the Chinese Communist Party and what they have done in Hong Kong and to the Uyghurs. Most importantly NEVER answer their question.
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  66.  @sportsfanivosevic9885  What do you mean by that? And compared to what? Do you know what the Collins class cost per boat and what that is in 2023 dollars. That whole program cost A$5.1 billion (1999) for 6 units that's over A$9.2 Billion in 2023 dollars or $1.53 Billion each. Here are some prices for current gen non-nuclear submarines. Swedish Blekinge - A$1,010 million ea. German 212 - A$896 million ea. Japanese Taigei - A$790 million ea. French Scorpene - A$672 million ea. So the Collins class have been damn expensive. As an engineer I can tell you that's what happens when you have a poorly planned project.
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  67.  @skunkwguitar  well put.
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  68.  @S3NTRY  That's a reasonably valid argument but when you consider how these people behave they're garbage. They aren't interested in any facts just pushing a narrative towards an audience that might pay them. In that they are no different to Murdoch, MSNBC, CNN or any of those multi-nationals. Its why their brainless supporters behave as they do.
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  69. Yeah I watched the whole thing (painful) and you are right he made some very good points, but as an engineer who can do basic math some of his claims are utterly stupid. Fine if we bought 45 Collins class subs where do we get the crews for them. There is so much hyperbole and stupidity in this discussion is AND He's not the only one. From the outset of this hour Greg Sheridan spoke complete SHlT At 2:12 he says the intimates the Virginia class can launch "any kind of missile to hit any target in the world." and that is complete nonsense. Anyone can fact check that on Wikipedia. The Virginia class only has the use of Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. It can't launch a Trident and it can't launch any of the HIIMARS. Its just a ridiculous statement. From all the sides in this there's just a staggering array of BULLSHlT and not many facts.
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  70.  @markmcdonald9260  As to the this deal is bonkers crazy - YES I 100% AGREE FIRST - Keating is wrong we should have nuclear powered subs because we have a huge area of sea to patrol and they are 50% faster than a Collins. In addition to that the Chinese have made a huge strategic grab in the South China Sea and that does threaten our trade with both Japan and South Korea. That part of the see lane is about 4000NM from Perth. A Collins takes (at full speed) at least 200 hrs (8-1/2 days) to get from Perth into that area. An Astute takes only 133 hrs (5-1/2 days) to go the same distance. That means on any given deployment they get an extra week on station. ITS BONKERS BECAUSE I HAVE from my experience done a full project costing for the construction of and 35 year lifetimes of 5 Astute class and that includes a lot of very generous estimations. The number is around $70 Billion. SO WHERE IS THE OTHER $200 - $300 Billion going?
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  71. I'm Australian but went to college in America on a sports scholarship. YES over 70 million Americans lost their minds when the put Trump back into power, but the other 260 million or so of them are decent people that we really should call friends and allies. The main culprits in this clusterf--k are the Dum-o-crats who utterly lost the plot. Right now Labor seem to have hired the same campaign people because their early ads are all about "More of the same." Remember Kamala Harris's famous answer "I can't think of anything I'd do differently"? That comment was what sunk here campaign and why over 7 million people who voted for Biden in 2020 did NOT vote in 2024. Fundamentally any party anywhere in the world that goes with the "More of the same strategy" is going to lose and lose huge. Even if its to a clown howling that "They're eating cats and dogs!" This is what happened with Brexit and European elections and French elections and other places.
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  72. Well then those people will have NOTHING. Because no matter what anyone wants those power stations will wear out and they will be turned off. As an engineer this utterly frustrates the hell out of me because this basic fact isn't in the discussion. Hazelwood and Liddell were turned off for the basic fact they were old and worn out and could not be kept running. Blame whoever you like for the lack of maintenance but its a fact they could NOT be kept running. The stupidity of the public discussion is that it never includes any engineers and you all of the DUMB CLOWNS in the media and the commentators and think tankers and celebrities wont be building you a new power station it will be engineers and tradesmen AND YOU CAN EITHER start to listen or stop complaining about your power bills.
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  73. Your 1/2 right but sadly the issues with our power industry go much deeper than energy storage. If you are interested I have written a lengthy comment on this page describing what I know as an engineer.
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  74. I'm not quite certain to say about her performance here. As a man I don't know what I can say that wont get me banned from YT.
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  75. Sorry but there answers they just aren't the sorts of answer that ANY TV station wants to air right now because some of the numbers are very scarry for the uninformed. I am an engineer and If you are interested I have written a lengthy comment on this page describing what I know as an engineer.
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  76.  @leskobrandon4518  Its arguably the biggest problem and threat to Western Society (across the board) even more than China's ambitions. We are being drowned in opinions to such an extent that its almost a full time effort to workout what the facts on any matter actually are. Plus all those opinions are coming from the specific ideological viewpoints of the presenters & producers or even worse the money. We now have chunks of our societies totally confused about what's real and what's not and they are being egged on by a rapid pack of money grubbing narcissists screaming "free speech" when ever they are questioned about what they promote. This can't end well.
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  77. YEAH and WTF are they biased about in this? A lot of people like you scream and rant about ABC bias. What about Murdoch media bias? What about Channel 7s bias? What about Channel 9s bias? What about Channel 10s bias?
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  78. Your opening question is actually a really valid question and one not likely to be asked too soon on Qanda. I'm Australian but went to college in America so I have slightly more nuanced take on the whole American thing than most Australians having lived there. There is no doubt that Australia's alliance with America has brought many significant benefits, BUT it has also meant acting at times like a 51st state. There was a really interesting moment about a year into Trumps presidency when DFAT had to accept 2 facts. 1) Australia could not simply us the standard foreign policy of "What does America want now?" which had been in place for almost 50 years because Trump was all over the place. 2) DFAT had no experience and nobody with any experience in writing foreign policy without American involvement because it hadn't bee done for over 50 years. So at the Diplomatic level Australia, thanks (🤷‍♀🤷‍♂) to Donald Trump, has gained some separation and independence from the US State Department. The problem is that Biden (and the people yanking his strings) want all that control back under their control.
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  79. On the demonization of other countries for the sake of globalization, I think you have that a little flipped around. I don't think they are demonising countries FOR globalization but to deconstruct globalization. America (again thanks to Trump 🤷‍♀🤷‍♂) is trying to de-globalize and that's the one policy of Trumps that Biden is running with. In fact it possible to claim, if you consider the computer chips, that Biden is even more hawkish than Trump on that subject. On China there 's a couple of interesting things that are starting to come out. Peter Zeihan talks about their demographics and its a disaster that's slowly eating the Chinese economic model. The 1 child policy was way more successful than anyone realised and it was kept in place for way to long. Those factories full of cheap labor have a problem. As the older workers retire there's not enough younger people to replace them. Its created a labor shortage and that's caused wages to rise making China less competitive. If you then add in what Biden has done on the microchip front and Chinese industry has a problem. Its really quite simple after exporting jobs fore several decades America wants those jobs back in America. Because of Trump's hawkishness that's being pursued aggressively. AND it includes dragging jobs out of Europe. Sure the yanks will still buy 1,000s of Audis, BMers, Mercs and Porsches. They'll just be made & assembled in Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Texas,... There'll still be some bits made in Europe but most of it will be in America. Never forget in America nothing wins elections more effectively than jobs.
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  80. You are absolutely right that the main stream media have twisted stories to suit certain agendas and been doing it for decades. BUT DON'T wildly claim that these independent journalist don't do the same. SOME of them are truly disgusting narcissists who will twist any story and promote any lie for money, attention or both.
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  81. Careful I first read that as MSN not MSM (main stream media) and assumed you meant MSNBC which is part of Microsoft, which is also a massive part of the overall problem or corporatized media. If you get a chance go back and check the 2004 documentary "Outfoxed" in it they warned that Murdoch's methods were dragging the rest of the media into the same business model. That's why politics in the media as well as the media's incessant need to hype stories into full frenzy mode like the A Current Affair story shown here, has become the giant maelstrom of garbage it is.
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  82. You are right on the money. During a recent American 60 minutes a US Navy commander commented about containing China and his reply was "Do the Chinese need to be contained?" and it was in reference to what China has done in the South China Sea. Its exactly the same thing with journalists. "Do journalists need to be contained or limited?" I think that after all the cappy misinformation and nonsense they have been pumping out in recent years the answer is YES THEY DO LIMITS! But we also need to be very careful of what those limits are because if they cant tell us about things we should here about that's dangerous.
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  83. You guys should interview Scott Galloway because he summed up Biden's legacy quite simply when he said "The only thing Biden deserves is to be buried in the same hole as Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Diane Feinstein." Scott's one of the few people in America willing to stand up and tell these SELFISH geriatrics that include Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell and others to get out of politics and let younger people have a go. I can't say I agree with Scott on all of his views but on this I am 100% in agreement. Even though I am Australian I went to college in America and the problem with these geriatrics is their stubbornness and selfishness has GLOBAL ramifications. Unfortunately the American system promotes people staying in office until they die of old age.
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  84. And nobody wants any of this culture war garbage either. A day is coming when I can see a very angry mob storming the Sky News studios and beating the daylights out of everyone of them and then that mob going down to the Coal Board and doing it again and then going to the offices of a few mining companies and doing it AGAIN. At some point the younger generation is going to realise how much of the future is stuffed AND THEY ARE GOING TO EXPLODE. There's dozens of historical lessons to learn this from. When you strip the peasants of HOPE they revolt.
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  85. There's already variations to the original Monopoly game but they are all licensed by who ever owns the rights.
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  86.  @nephriteitsarock5377  That's a damn good answer - well said. Its about going FORWARD. If there is one thing I would have like to a have seen happen before now is a discussion with the Sami people of Scandinavia who were the first to get a voice to their parliaments in Norway, Sweden and Finland. I'd have 3 questions for them. 1 - What's worked? 2 - What hasn't worked and there's always something that didn't? 3 - What can we do to learn from their experience and get it right?
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  87.  @TT-nk5hi  They might not be wanting to take over Australia in a military sense but they damn well want to control our resources. The most important of those is agriculture, because food security is the major issue facing Asia and other large populations. Its why the Arabs are buying every farm they can in Australia. Don't crap on about us needing Chinese agriculture technology its the other way around. We have some for the most advanced agriculture in the world. Go watch ABC Landline and look through the back episodes, we are so far in front most countries its a joke. Our great risk is not looking after that sector or letting too many foreigners control it and they already have too much control. Ukraine isn't a land grab. Go look up Peter Zeihan he's a geopolitical strategist who specialises in demographics. He's explained WHY Russia invaded Ukraine and why they had to do it now. Its got to do with control of territory that's been used for 1,000 years to invade Russia again and again. they had to do it now because like many other countries they are ageing and if they didn't do it now in 10 years they wouldn't have enough 20 years olds. Its actually why China might need to invade Taiwan now rather than later. Their population is also ageing rapidly and they are running out of 20 year olds and wars are fought by 20 year olds.
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  88.  @TT-nk5hi  Go look up Peter Zeihan he's commented extensively on the comparison between Ukraine and Taiwan. Ukraine had some preparation and a land border. Taiwan has been in preparation for decades and is surrounded by a moat. How will China invade. If its by air they'll get shot down and it if its by sea they'll get sunk. Eventually they'd overwhelm Taiwan, but what would they gain other than an utterly destroyed island.
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  89.  @TT-nk5hi  Which is exactly what the Chinese are doing with predatory loans to smaller developing nations. AND WHY THEY ARE ANGERING PEOPLE. Have you stopped to ask why would any country take a loan they have to pay back instead of straight development grants from wealthier nations???? They pay off government officials. The Chinese haven't just got corruption in their system they have actually industrialised it. Go look it up. Government officials being paid to do favors is a key part of the Chinese system. So they have no issue with paying government officials in other nations to take on loans. Its how they do business and they do it everywhere.
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  90.  @petersinclairphd6626  Yeah I know its not new, but its something NOBODY in Australia is discussing. Its also a huge issue in other places. Leslie Dewan pointe out in one of here talks how after Chernobyl and Fukushima that the number of students enrolling in nuclear engineering collapsed and America lost an entire generation of engineers. I just started watching the MIT Open Course lectures on basic nuclear engineering. Its easy to have gotten the basics as I did from physics classes but these lectures go into a lot more detail. The truly surprising thing is how small the class rooms are, but then that course only has 12 attending students. Here in Oz the Murdoch media are pumping "nuclear, nuclear, nuclear" into the air waves. I swear Rupert must have shares in something, but there is utterly no mention on time frames or training. As I have said in comments i worked with an ex-USN nuclear power plant operator a while back and he told me about the years of training that took. Peter Zeihan the geopolitical strategist points out how China (through the 1 child policy) has a shortage of 30 year olds. the problem is it takes 30 years and 9 months to make a 30year old. Its not as bad as that for nuclear techs but you need to grasp the scope of the task which more than anything for us is starting from scratch.
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  91.  @topologyrob  Then why does American media refer to "Team America?" Why was the film titled "Team America World Police" instead of "Team USA World Police" or would that have confused people?
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  92.  @kallekas8551  Interesting times????? I'll be on this weeks Steve Keen & Friends and I'll show you interesting because this is "sort of" trivial compared to what's in a particular US congressional budget Office report into family wealth that has gotten very little air play and even less analysis.
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  93.  @JamesTulip  Great reply. On the first point I 1/2 mostly agree because I think one of the biggest mistakes made too many times is relying on America to lead outright rather than being more collaborative at the leadership level. Often you must have a clear person leading, but even then they need support team. Too often too many of us just sit back and wait for America to do everything or at least most of it. This is a major flaw in NATO and will eventually repeat in AUKUS because it will eventually become JAUKUS, SKAUKUS or CANAUKUS or some other multi-national behemoth incapable of doing anything like NATO and the UN are now. On the second point your are 1,000,000% right. America has some incredible systemic issues. I used to warn my American friends (because I had studied Orwell) that ANY society could fall into a totalitarian state. That was what Orwell was actually warning about rather than being specifically against communism. They used to tell me that it was impossible for that to happen to America because VIA the Constitution there were the systems of Checks & Balances. Well thanks to Mitch McConnell the Senate is a disaster and thanks to the Federalist Society SCOTUS is a catastrophe and they are the 2 main parts of the Checks & Balances to keep Congress, the Whitehouse, the Military and other agencies from going too far. So, sadly the system is broken and wont get fixed because there are too many people with too much vested interest and are making mountains of money from the broken system that they helped break. On the 3rd point you are also correct and it goes to the first point of over-relying on American leadership. On the 4th point you are even more correct. Australia MUST focus on better relations with the major economies of Asia. As to the South Pacific, our FAILURES there are so bad it should be seen as a national embarrassment that will take years to fix. None of those nations should respect us until we EARN IT BACK and I can't scream that loud enough. I am going to be on the Steve Keen & Friends podcast in a few hours and might bring up a couple of these points because they are so on topic. Just note it will be at 2:00am EST.
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  94.  @roughhabit9085  Go look at the YT Channel the Analysisnews hosted by Paul Jay. He has recently re-posted an interview he did with Gore Vidal in 2005. Its titled "Mini Doc: Gore Vidal's History of the National Security State" Its right in line with your quote from Mencken As to your second point on food production. Sorry but there is no evidence at all that its guaranteed that a government in charge of food production will cause mass starvation although I will agree that it has happened. One of the most notable times was Mao's "Great Leap Forward" when he pulled people off the farms and shoved them into factories. It would have worked had he given the remaining farmers tractors and mechanised sowing and reaping machinery. What you are claiming is the same sort of nonsense that Milton Friedman claimed which is that governments can't do anything right. I'll give you 4 things on that. 1) The Apollo Program not only did as intended "Get a man to the Moon and safely return him to the Earth" but also gave America such a major technological boost that the money spent was easily recovered via American industry exploiting it. FYI - I did aerospace engineering in America in the late 80s. After the Challenger accident when there were calls for NASA to be disbanded the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics commissioned a study by an economist as to the value of NASA. Due to time constraints the report focused on Apollo. They found that by 1986 Apollo had returned $9:50 for every $1:00 spent making it the most profitable investment in history at that time. Considering that the things it returned money on (industrial output) ahs NOT stopped then that $9:50 is likely to be much higher these days. 2) Here in Australia like many other countries we privatised our power industry on the promise that: "competition would provide better services at lower prices" We now like many other places pay much higher costs for electricity. 3) Private Industry constantly claims it is overregulated and taxes are too high. FIRST - deregulation hasn't helped any industry or shareholders BUT IT HAS massively helped the top 1% make around $200 Trillion since the 1970s. SECOND - deregulation hasn't helped the general population anywhere. Not only has it not delivered for the average person but many services have decline, most consumer protection has evaporated and (1 I hate) is that its lead to things like the Boeing Max-8 where they built a plane that was always going to crash. 4) Here in Australia we have spent over AU$20 Billion on consultants (PwC, KPMG,.......etc) in the last decade or so and yea that number has stunned us. Those consultants were hired by successive governments from both sides to help various government departments do their job better. You will not find many who think we got a damn thing out of that AU$20 Billion because nothing is working any better and that's because most of the consultants are ex-Government employees. Its just 1 giant ongoing scam that was started by Margret Thatcher. Its spread across the entire developed world. So yeah I get Milton Friedman's point that the government can suck, but the solutions his advocates have served up have FAILED and FAILED and FAILED.
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  95. A number of years ago I saw a saw a couple of WW2 comparison studies into combat effectiveness one was the Hurricane compared to the Spitfire and the other was the Sherman versus the Tiger tank. In every fundamental department the Tiger was superior to the Sherman - better armour, bigger gun,..... But it also had some fatal flaws. It was heavy and in soft fields it was easy to get bogged. It was also incredibly complex and difficult to maintain, but by far its biggest issue was how many man hours it took to produce them. The Germans simply didn't have that many and they were simply overwhelmed by the Sherman often outnumbered 10 to 1 or more. If you check Wikipedia there were 1347 Tiger Is and 492 Tiger IIs The Germans also made about 6,000 Panther medium Tanks. By Comparison there were over 49,000 Shermans made. Its pretty easy to see what the Russian plan is. They'll use these old tanks to swarm the Ukrainians and force the Ukrainians to use huge amounts of munitions to deal with them. There's already been serious issues with the consumption of ammunition especially things like stinger missiles being used against drones and javelins used against tanks. Eventually they will simply run out. They're using less stingers now as they have German Anti-Aircraft hardware to shoot them down now. Don't be surprised in there's some incredible carnage this year.
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  96.  @stuartspencer2161  No problems there. As I have pointed out to a few they should never have interviewed Bolton or of they did set him up and let him hang himself. I love the show but this was disappointing.
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  97.  @yimmeistaryimmeistar7239  Where are you from? Do you even know the show at all?
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  98.  @cestoblique  That's why people swing to the right as they get older they go from idealistic but stupid to selfish & brainless.
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  99.  @jitteryjet7525  READ WHAT I SAID The impossible bit was terraforming Mars and that simply comes down to where are you going to get several hundred trillion tons of air in the first place. Forget all the issues with having enough gravity to keep it place and a million other details. Its simply a matter of where do you get that much air from?? As for Earth Yes its arguable some places are getting 6C and others 1.5C but the average for the planet is still at 1C with most of the inhabited regions at 1.2C A lot of that depends on which year they are comparing their data to. Type this into google "NOAA NOAA climate change global temperature" The first link should take you straight to NOAA's page with the current data. That's the most reliable source.
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  100. ENGINEER HERE: This is the sort of story that utterly infuriates engineers, because its engineers who have to do the work to fix this disaster. NOT Economists, NOT Lawyers, NOT Overrated TV personalities and NOT Politicians. Engineers have been trying to tell Australia for over a decade that these power stations were getting too old to keep them running. Like any machine they eventually wear out. I'm mainly from manufacturing and mining and first became aware of how precarious our situation was in 2016 when I did a small project into Australia's energy sector. Other than being shocked at our situation was I found the same situation is prevalent across the developed world AND ITS CUASED BY ECONOMISTS. This is why hearing another Economist blab on as if they know what they are saying is so infuriating. Economists have managed to do more damage than politicians, lawyers and religious fanatics combined. They told everyone the privatise everything including energy BUT they had no idea how energy works in an economy. Go look up STEVE KEEN. He's one of the few economists who's actually awake to how badly the rest of the economic profession has been. We can fix this mess but the clown brigade need to SHUT UP and GET OUT OF THE ROAD.
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  101. If we were holding them accountable then we would have already executed most of them. That whole stupidity of pushing interests rates down and down was always going to bite when they went back up and they were always going to go back up.
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  102.  @dumdumbrown4225  NOBODY has ever proven that to be TRUE for any country. That's just another function of NEOLIBERAL ECONOMICS and its just as flawed as the REST of NEOLIBERAL ECONOMICS. NONE of the central banks are truly independent because they're all run by people from the banking industry and do whatever the banks want. Go have a look at how many Goldman Sachs people run the US Fed and we're no better. If you don't understand how much power the banks actually have over our lives then you really do need to WAKE UP.
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  103. And Media Executives across the world keep wondering why people have lost faith in what they pump onto the airwaves. I missed it because like so many others I can't be bothered watching their waste of time childish news services anymore. What I watched of the Winter Olympics a lot of it was with the mute button on because the commentary was so damn awful.
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  104.  @zen1647  Sorry but we need a lot more than just 1% of our land mass for solar and wind. When you look at how much power you get from each square meter of floor space both wind and solar are quite poor compared to other systems. Nuclear is the best in that department. Price is NOT the best way to identify locations for wind and solar geography and condition data are.
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  105. ​ @PopcornMax179  Yeah - sorry for the length but its a subject I have been looking into ever since I had this consult job about 7 years ago. I found out how old our large power stations were and that there were NO PLANS to replace any of them. Even today right now there are NO PLANS even on the table to even discuss. Its like all the people are involved know there's a problem and are just waiting for "someone else" to do something. That's one of the major flaws I found in neoliberal mentality. One of its central ideas is the notion that "someone else" will do what's needed. Problem is if nobody can see a way to make money then it never gets done and you just have people standing around waiting like we have right now. 🤷‍♂🤷‍♂🤦‍♂🤦‍♂
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  106.  @zen1647  Your right neoliberalism has some very serious issues. There's lots of people way better qualified than me to talk about that. Mark Blyth is one of the best and his Rhodes Centre podcasts where he talks with a lot of people who have written books is with your time. Mariana Mazucatto is worth your time on the subject of government being effective at managing projects and NOT letting itself be dominated by consultants. There's a recent series of 4 lectures by Damon Silvers on neoliberalism that starts with "Understanding Neoliberalism as a System of Power." Yeah its almost 6 hours in total but totally worth the time if you really want to get your head around neoliberalism.
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  107.  @MrRatclima  Absolutely correct on the foreign money. We changed the rules years ago and allowed a flood of money to come in. Its was all following the mantra "Foreign investment is good" which is an unquestionable economic policy that NOBODY is allowed to challenge. What we did was allow a lot of very questionable money to be laundered through our real estate market and its had a devastating effect on house prices and the rental market. But because the political power of the banking, real estate and construction lobbies its NOT allowed to be questioned.
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  108. ​ @MrRatclima  As I have said to others its all symptomatic of neoliberal economics, but people need to realise that neoliberalism more than just economics. Its a whole set of ideas that includes political and social ideology. At its core is the elitist view that people are incompetent and they need to be managed. To do that "we (the elite) have to have the freedom from law to do what we need to do to manage the rest of you." That's where the American Libertarians get their "We need the liberty to strip you of your liberty." political ideology from. Its a weird from of Orwellian logic that comes from what we'd normally consider the political Right rather than the political Left. Its incredibly arrogant and a lot of the hard core neoliberals are insanely arrogant. Their establishments are places like Harvard, Yale and the University of Chicago. Most of their economics comes straight out of Milton Freidman's "Greed is good" and "Corporation's have no other task than profit." mantras. Freidman was a professor at the University of Chicago. Neoliberals manage governments through consultancies and in that game the biggest of the consultancies is McKinsey which was started by James McKinsey another professor from the University of Chicago. They have infected the American justice system and the main player there is the lobbying think tank the Federalist Society which was started by students at Harvard, Yale and the University of Chicago. They felt their universities were the bastions of real judicial knowledge. Right now the 9 on the SCOTUS consist of 4 Harvard, 4 Yale and Notre Dame who's a known member of the Federalist Society. If you really want to understand neoliberalism better. There's a lecture series by Damon Silvers over on the UCP IIPP page here on YT. Warning there's almost 6 hours but its worth your time if you really want to know what neoliberalism is about. The first one is titled "Understanding Neoliberalism as a System of Power" and even if you only watch that one you'll understand neoliberalism better than most people.
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  109.  @davidcarey9135  Sorry this reply is long but I’d like to know what you think. I had a stunning bit of enlightenment recently. I was watching Steve Keen explain his modelling work to a couple of British students. At one point Steve jumped on his favourite topic of slamming classical & neo-classical economists like William Nordhaus and their inability to properly model things. In the middle of this rant, he suddenly said "They don't even have energy in their models." As an engineer that stuns me because EVERYTHING in human society needs energy and the means to produce & use it. This is why economists have nothing but vacuum on the energy crisis. They don't have any suggestions let alone solutions. They don't even have hot air because hot air requires energy. Its like they just did what some others I have encountered. They drew a line in the dirt and said everything on that side of the line is an engineering problem and has nothing to do with us. I have this idea I call "Engine Theory." I like to explain it in terms of ancient Egypt because that was the world’s first economy. Prof. Mark Blyth (Brown U.) has repeatedly pointed out a Bank of England report (Q1 2014) that has 2 papers that explain what money is and how it’s created BY WORK. The problem is as any engineer will tell you all work is a function of using energy. As in work is produced by converting energy via an "engine" hence the name Engine Theory. Simply put, anything that converts energy into work is an engine (mechanical, biological... whatever). Smith & Marx both termed everything in terms of labour. I think they got it wrong because there’s other ways to do work than just through labour. My idea is that all work stems from the conversion of energy into work no matter if it’s done by a person, animal or machine. Therefore, all economic value comes from energy being consumed or tapped by these “engines.” The fundamental rate of return is actually a function of energy efficiency. The better you consume and use energy the better the rate of return and more wealth is generated. Going back in ancient Egypt they had slaves that sowed & reaped food, built houses, roads and monuments and they were fuelled by food. They had ox that pulled ploughs & heavy wagons and horses that pulled light wagons & chariots and they were fuelled by fodder. The ox & horses aren’t too dissimilar than the comparison of diesel to petrol vehicles. The Egyptians also had sail boats powered by the wind to go up & down the Nile. The difference was that the sails tapped a natural energy source (the wind) rather than consumed fuel like the slaves, ox & horses. Irrespective they had a variety of engines because different engines do certain types of work better and more efficiently and that’s a major part of Engine Theory. In Engine Theory you have different engines for different tasks, and you evaluate them on their efficiency to do that task. In Egypt they could have pulled ploughs with slaves but that’s not as good as an ox. They could have pulled chariots with ox, but that’s not as good as ahorse because chariots need speed. This is why today all the wind, solar, nuclear and other people proclaiming “we have the solution that will save humanity” are all wrong. They have to start seeing themselves as PART of an overall combined solution instead of the single magical “does it all” solution. Then there was the industrial revolution when we started making better engines that could convert fuel (quite literally) by the mountain and with it do mountains of work making mountains of wealth. Plus, some of these news engines didn’t do work and instead they produced energy that other engines could tap instead of converting fuel. We call these things power stations, and they could not only make more energy but do it better allowing energy to be more readily usable across a broader economic landscape. This is why I think economists have it so wrong. Karl Polanyi said you can’t commodify people because they are people. I think energy is the similar. You can’t commodify it because it works at such a fundamental economic level. Neoliberals are trapped in their own ideology and just see it as another thing they MUST marketize because marketization is the best way to distribute anything and everything. Its an ideology not backed up by real world experience. I think a lot of people realise the neoliberals are wrong they just don’t know how to argue it and that’s what I am trying to do. I started informally studying economics out of the frustration of clowns waving economics degrees interfering in projects. Part of the argument is: If work creates value (as economists say), then if they don't include the energy to do that work then they have been WRONG since the dawn of civilisation because the work that has been done has always required energy. It didn’t matter if the fuel was food, fodder or the energy was the wind. They had to convert fuel & energy into work. The massive change was the industrial revolution when we started producing BULK CHEAP energy. The bug in the neoliberal computer (as Mark Blyth puts it) is that they thought they could commodify it like they think they can do with everything and that’s just NOT TRUE as Polanyi pointed out. And this is where the neoliberals have utterly stuffed up. They switched the BULK CHEAP energy systems from economic drivers into profit machines making energy more expensive and with it everything else. That's made everything else less economically efficient because all of the work became more expensive. Unless we can flip that back we’re stuffed. The energy transition won’t make any difference so long as it remains a for profit system because the economics won’t change. We not only have to change to cleaner energy to save the planet but (economically speaking) more efficient to save all our economies which are already on the precipice of a major catastrophe. We dodged a big event in 2008 but the bail outs only made the clowns at the top think they can keep gambling with our future even more. I don’t know if you’re aware but the global FX-Swap market which is a glorified casino now has a betting pool of US$100 Trillion, which is around 5 times the size it was in 2008. Bizarrely NONE of it’s on any balance sheet because of the nature of FX-Swaps and how accountants account for them. Most of it isn’t even held by banks. It’s held by non-banking entities gambling on currency shifts. All it will take is the wrong clown to make the wrong mistake and 2008 will seem like a bad fart in an elevator because there won’t be a way off of this elevator as it plumets down the shaft. Sorry, this was so long but I'd like to know what you think.
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  110. ​ @davidcarey9135  No, No you misunderstand. The fuel type is irrelevant THE COST of the energy to BOTH society and industry is the important thing. You are totally right about Britain being the first to use coal at scale gave them a growth spurt. The most important thing there is they changed to a better "engine." Remember the rail industry changed from coal to diesel and electricity after WW2 and there was NOTHING forcing it except they were better engines economically. This is something I am trying to get all the players to understand. They various technologies will be the main player wherever they are the better engine. I really do hate when the wind, solar, nuclear (all types), wave and FOSSIL FUEL people all claim that they are the ONLY WAY. That's just garbage. That's the lesson of history, starting with the Egyptians and every economy since. EVERY type of fuel/engine system has its place and its not because people want this or that its because they are the better engine. I seriously can't see fossil fuels being 100% abolished because there will simply be places where its better than everything else, but you can't tell that to a lot of people. Likewise for the fossil fuel people to think that wind & solar aren't going to be major players in certain markets is equally delusional. In some places they will need nuclear because its the best engine in that place. Hydrogen will be a major player, but because of its basic nature its not going to be the savior that many claim and that's being said by someone who's a huge believer in hydrogen. But then I also know the limits of hydrogen. And here's the grating thing - they all lie and all misdirect and it takes hours for engineers to explain it. When I mean they all lie. I mean ALL OF THEM. Wind, solar, nuclear, fossil fuel,..... ALL OF THEM. Even the hydrogen people lie and that's my thing.
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  111.  @davidcarey9135  Yeah so coal is more energy dense than wood - that's NOT THE POINT. Uranium's energy density is orders of magnitude more energy dense than coal. So is Plutonium and Thorium but I don't see you going on about that. I'm an engine for fark sake you don't need to explain to me about efficiency. I took the classes I have the degree and I have 30+ years of experience. THAT'S NOT THE POINT. You are doing what so many others do. You are fixating on 1 thing. This is exactly why we don't have solutions. We have all these people who hype up lateral thinking and then fixate on 1 thing. This is the entire problem with economics and with it everything else because economics is so dominant in the decision processes. Neoliberals FIXATE on things and then see everything else as the enemy of humanity. Either people STOP fixating on irrelevant issues and coal is as irrelevant as it gets. OR There is no future - period.
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  112. Yeah this is 8 minutes of the same economic crap that got us where we are. All Jennifer Westacott is saying is the investor class want the same crap they always want - lower corporate taxes and less regulation. They have been getting that again and again and again since Reagan and Thatcher unleashed their SHlT upon us and no matter what they get its never enough. For Sarah Ferguson not to simply say straight to her face "Isn't this the same stuff you've been saying for years?" is just pathetic on her part.
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  113.  @mytwosense9135  1) he never said to silence dissenting views 2) the Commie reference shows you just another right wing bigot. 3) the campaign Jacinta Price is part of is based on LIES. BIG LIE #1 There is no provision for the voice having any influence over non-aboriginal issues like the military. BIG LIE #2 There's the claim that once done the Voice cannot be undone and that's absurd because its claiming we can't change the constitution and yet this referendum is like every other referendum before it a means to change the constitution.
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  114. ​ @andrewduan5123  There was an ABC story where they revealed that there were 10-12 ex US Navy officers (including at least 1 admiral) who had been in Australia for more than 10 years consulting on the Collins replacement. They were being paid between $5,000 and $8,000 PER DAY that's $1.2 million to $1.9million a year. Further to what I looked through I found that ASPI, the think tank in Canberra that is heavily funded by our government to give advice ALSO receives money from the US State Department. I think that's called a conflict of interest.
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