media « Antinuclear

Aaron Patrick of Australian Financial Review misrepresents economist John Quiggin on nuclear power

John Quiggin’s reply to the AFR’s misleading headline, and Aaron Patrick’s article:

“This is a typical gotcha from Aaron Patrick. My view is that, if we could get a substantial carbon price (at least $50/tonne) now, it would be worth removing the existing nuclear ban. As I’ve written elsewhere, nuclear power can’t get started here for at least 20 years, and in the meantime renewables would wipe out all coal and most gas.”

Left support for NSW nuclear power industry, Australian Financial Review https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/left-support-for-nsw-nuclear-power-industry-20190830-p52mji Aaron Patrick Senior Correspondent
Sep 2, 2019

Left-wing economist John Quiggin has urged the NSW Parliament to legalise nuclear power, making the University of Queensland academic the most prominent environmentalist to support the controversial energy source.

Economist John Quiggin supports nuclear power. [?]

Professor Quiggin told a NSW parliamentary inquiry into uranium mining and nuclear power that the ban should be lifted simultaneously with the introduction of a price charged for emitting Greenhouse gases.

“The Parliament should pass a motion … removing the existing ban on nuclear power,” he said in a written submission. “Nuclear power is not viable in the absence of a carbon price.”

The inquiry, one of three similar under way, is seen by some Coalition MPs as the start of a long process of convincing voters to support nuclear reactors to replace the state’s ageing coal power stations, including Liddell in the Hunter Valley, which is due to close after the summer of 2023……..

The Minerals Council of Australia, a lobby group, successfully pushed for a federal parliamentary inquiry into nuclear, which is examining the feasibility of a new generation of compact power plants that are meant to be safer and much cheaper than the huge stations that supply about 11 per cent of the world’s electricity……..

The NSW inquiry is the result of a private members bill introduced by state One Nation leader Mark Latham that would allow uranium mining. Nuclear power is banned in NSW under federal and state regulations…….

The biggest impediment to development of the industry is opposition from the Labor and Greens parties, environmental groups and left-wing think tanks such as The Australia Institute.

The conditional support of left-wing academics such as Professor Quiggin could, over time, lessen opposition to nuclear power, which supporters say could be used as a back up for wind and solar power.

In Victoria a parliamentary inquiry began two weeks ago at the request of a Liberal Democrat MP, David Limbrick.

The 12-month inquiry will explore if nuclear energy would be feasible and suitable for Victoria in the future, and consider waste management, health and safety and industrial and medical applications, AAP reported.

Aaron Patrick is The Australian Financial Review’s Senior Correspondent. He writes about politics and business. Connect with Aaron on Twitter. Email Aaron at apatrick@afr.com.au https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/left-support-for-nsw-nuclear-power-industry-20190830-p52mji

September 2, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, media | Leave a comment

Dr Jim Green explodes the Australian Financial Review ‘s propaganda promoting Small Modular Nuclear Reactorsll

Small modular reactors and the nuclear culture wars https://reneweconomy.com.au/small-modular-reactors-and-the-nuclear-culture-wars-73761/ Jim Green28 August 2019 Aaron Patrick, senior correspondent with the Australian Financial Review (AFR), is the latest journalist to enter the nuclear culture wars with some propaganda that’s indistinguishable from that served up in the Murdoch tabloids.

There’s lots of misinformation in Patrick’s articles. For example he uncritically promotes a dopey Industry Super Australia report, described by RenewEconomy editor Giles Parkinson as “one of the most inept analyses of the energy industry that has been produced in Australia”. (I’ve asked the authors of the Industry Super report if they intend to withdraw or amend it. No response.)

The focus here ‒ and the focus of Patrick’s recent articles ‒ is on small modular reactors (SMRs), which he describes as new, small, safe, cheap and exciting (and he continues to make such claims even as I continue to feed him with evidence suggesting alternative SMR adjectives … non-existent, overhyped, obscenely expensive).

Some history is useful in assessing Patrick’s claims. There’s a long history of small reactors being used for naval propulsion, but every effort to develop land-based SMRs has ended in tears. Academic M.V. Ramana concludes an analysis of the history of SMRs thus:

“Sadly, the nuclear industry continues to practice selective remembrance and to push ideas that haven’t worked. Once again, we see history repeating itself in today’s claims for small reactors ‒ that the demand will be large, that they will be cheap and quick to construct.

“But nothing in the history of small nuclear reactors suggests that they would be more economical than full-size ones. In fact, the record is pretty clear: Without exception, small reactors cost too much for the little electricity they produced, the result of both their low output and their poor performance. …

“Worse, attempts to make them cheaper might end up exacerbating nuclear power’s other problems: production of long-lived radioactive waste, linkage with nuclear weapons, and the occasional catastrophic accident.”

Patrick quotes an SMR company representative saying that SMRs have been “researched and developed for the best part of 50 years”. Fine … but surely AFR readers ought to be informed that every single attempt to commercialise SMRs over the past 50 years has failed.

According to the Coalition’s energy spokesperson (p.34), “new-generation reactors with maximum safety features are now coming into use”. That was 30 years ago, and the spokesperson was Peter McGauran.

A wave of enthusiasm for SMRs came and went without a single SMR being built anywhere in the world, and there’s no reason to believe the current wave of enthusiasm will be more fruitful.

Diseconomies of scale

Interest in SMRs derives primarily from what they are not: large reactor projects which have been prone to catastrophic cost overruns and delays. Cost estimates for all reactors under construction in western Europe and north America range from A$17.5 billion to A$24 billion, and the twin-reactor V.C.

Summer project in South Carolina was abandoned in 2017 after the expenditure of at least A$13 billion, forcing Westinghouse into bankruptcy and almost bankrupting its parent company Toshiba.

But SMRs will cost more (per megawatt and megawatt-hour) because of diseconomies of scale: a 250MW SMR will generate 25 per cent as much power as a 1,000MW reactor, but it will require more than 25 per cent of the material inputs and staffing, and a number of other costs including waste management and decommissioning will be proportionally higher.

So the nuclear industry’s solution to its wildly expensive and hopelessly uncompetitive large reactors is to offer up even-more-expensive reactors. Brilliant. Small wonder that nuclear lobbyists are lamenting the industry’s crisis and pondering what if anything might be salvaged from the “ashes of today’s dying industry“.

Aaron Patrick claims in the AFR that SMRs are “likely” to be installed in North America and Europe. No, they aren’t. William Von Hoene, senior vice-president at Exelon ‒ the largest operator of nuclear power plants in the US ‒ said last year: “Right now, the costs on the SMRs, in part because of the size and in part because of the security that’s associated with any nuclear plant, are prohibitive.”

The prevailing scepticism is evident in a 2017 Lloyd’s Register report based on the insights of almost 600 professionals and experts from utilities, distributors, operators and equipment manufacturers. They predict that SMRs have a “low likelihood of eventual take-up, and will have a minimal impact when they do arrive”.

Likewise, American Nuclear Society consultant Will Davis said in 2014 that the SMR “universe [is] rife with press releases, but devoid of new concrete.”

And a 2014 report produced by Nuclear Energy Insider, drawing on interviews with more than 50 “leading specialists and decision makers”, noted a “pervasive sense of pessimism” resulting from abandoned and scaled-back SMR programs.

Independent economic assessments

SMRs are “leading the way in cost” according to Tania Constable from the Minerals Council of Australia. NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro claims that SMRs “are becoming very affordable”.

But every independent economic assessment finds that electricity from SMRs will be more expensive than that from large reactors.

A study by WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff prepared for the 2015/16 South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission estimated costs of US$127‒130 per megawatt-hour (MWh) for large reactors, compared to US$140‒159 for SMRs. The Royal Commission’s final report identified numerous hurdles and uncertainties facing SMRs.

A December 2018 report by CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator concluded that “solar and wind generation technologies are currently the lowest-cost ways to generate electricity for Australia, compared to any other new-build technology.”

It found that electricity from SMRs would be more than twice as expensive as that from wind or solar power with storage costs included (two hours of battery storage or six hours of pumped hydro storage).

A report by the consultancy firm Atkins for the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy found that electricity from the first SMR in the UK would be 30 percent more expensive than that from large reactors, because of diseconomies of scale and the costs of deploying first-of-a-kind technology.

A 2015 report by the International Energy Agency and the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency predicted that electricity from SMRs will be 50−100 percent more expensive than that from large reactors, although it holds out some hope that large-volume factory production could reduce costs.

An article by four pro-nuclear researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Engineering and Public Policy, published in 2018 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, considered options for the development of an SMR industry in the US.

They concluded that it would not be viable unless the industry received “several hundred billion dollars of direct and indirect subsidies” over the next several decades. That’s billion with a ‘b’: several hundred billion dollars.

SMR corpses and a negative learning curve on steroids

A handful of SMRs are under construction, all by state nuclear agencies in Russia, China and Argentina. Most or all of them are over-budget and behind schedule. None are factory built (the essence of the concept of modular reactors) and none are the least bit promising.

China and Argentina hope to develop an export market for their SMRs, but so far all they can point to are partially-built prototypes that have been subject to major cost overruns and delays. South Korea won’t build any of its ‘SMART’ SMRs domestically, not even a prototype, but nevertheless hopes to establish an export market.

Alarmingly, about half of the SMRs under construction are intended to facilitate the exploitation of fossil fuel reserves in the Arctic, the South China Sea and elsewhere (Russia’s floating power plant, Russia’s RITM-200 icebreaker ships, and China’s ACPR50S demonstration reactor).

Equally alarming are the multifaceted connections between SMR projects, nuclear weapons proliferation and militarism more generally (see here, here and here).

Recent history is littered with SMR corpses (none of them mentioned in Patrick’s articles in the AFR).

The Generation mPower project in the US was abandoned. Transatomic Power gave up on its molten salt reactor R&D. MidAmerican Energy gave up on its plans for SMRs after failing to secure legislation that would force rate-payers to part-pay construction costs. Westinghouse sharply reduced its investment in SMRs after failing to secure US government funding.

Patrick mentions Rolls-Royce’s SMR plans in the AFR, but he doesn’t note that Rolls-Royce scaled back its investment to “a handful of salaries” and is threatening to abandon its R&D altogether unless massive grants are forthcoming from the British government.

Rolls-Royce SMRs “should become commercially available around 2030”, Patrick writes, without noting that they won’t be available ever, anywhere, unless the British government agrees to an outrageous set of demands detailed in an important new report, ‘Prospects for Small Modular Reactors in the UK & Worldwide‘.

Rolls-Royce estimates that Australian demand for SMRs could reach 2,000 megawatts of capacity, Patrick informs AFR readers. So SMRs could supply a very small fraction of Australia’s electricity demand according to a company with skin in the game … gee whiz.

In yet another propaganda piece, titled ‘The Rolls-Royce option for Australian nuclear power’, Patrick regurgitates Rolls-Royce’s claim that it could build an SMR in Australia for “only £1.5 billion ($2.7 billion)”. No information is provided regarding the capacity of the proposed reactor, so the dollar figure is meaningless.

Surely readers of the Financial Review would expect at least some basic economic literacy from the paper’s Senior Correspondent?

Patrick cites an SMR company representative who claims that costs will become more competitive over time. Let’s compare that speculative claim to a real-world example.In 2004, when Argentina’s CAREM SMR was in the planning stage, the Bariloche Atomic Center estimatedan overnight cost of US$1 billion / gigawatt (GW) for an integrated 300 MW plant.

By April 2017, with construction underway, the costhad increased to a staggering US$21.9 billion / GW. The project is years behind schedule and years from completion, so costs will increase further. It’s a negative learning curve on steroids.

Patrick uncritically quotes an SMR company representative saying that there won’t be “sticker shock” with SMRs. Argentina’s 2190% cost increase isn’t sticker shock?

NuScale’s creative accounting

The US company NuScale Power is the Next Big Thing in the SMR universe, if only because so many other projects have collapsed. NuScale is targeting a cost of US$65 / MWh for its first plant.

But a study by WSP / Parsons Brinckerhoff prepared for the SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission estimated a cost of US$159 / MWh based on the NuScale design ‒ that’s 2.4 times higher than NuScale’s estimate.

Lazard estimates costs of US$112‒189 / MWh for electricity from large nuclear plants. NuScale’s claim that its electricity will be 2‒3 times cheaper than that from large nuclear plants is implausible.

And even if NuScale achieved costs of US$65 / MWh, that would still be higher than Lazard’s figures for wind power (US$29‒56) and utility-scale solar (US$36‒46).

Likewise, NuScale’s construction cost estimate of US$4.2 billion / GW is implausible. The latest cost estimate for the two AP1000 reactors under construction in the US state of Georgia (the only reactors under construction in the US) is US$12.3‒13.6 billion / GW.

NuScale wants us to believe that it will build SMRs at one-third of that cost, despite the unavoidable diseconomies of scale and despite the fact that every independent assessment concludes that SMRs will be more expensive to build (per GW) than large reactors.

No-one wants to pay for SMRs

No company, utility, consortium or national government is seriously considering building the massive supply chain that is the very essence of SMRs ‒ mass, modular factory construction. Yet without that supply chain, SMRs will be expensive curiosities.

In early 2019, Kevin Anderson, North American Project Director for Nuclear Energy Insider, said that there “is unprecedented growth in companies proposing design alternatives for the future of nuclear, but precious little progress in terms of market-ready solutions.”

Anderson argued that it is time to convince investors that the SMR sector is ready for scale-up financing but that it will not be easy: “Even for those sympathetic, the collapse of projects such as V.C. Summer does little to convince financiers that this sector is mature and competent enough to deliver investable projects on time and at cost.”

Dr. Ziggy Switkowski ‒ who headed the Howard Government’s nuclear review in 2006 ‒ recently made a similar point. “Nobody’s putting their money up” to build SMRs, he noted, and thus “it is largely a debate for intellects and advocates because neither generators nor investors are interested because of the risk.”

Switkowski made those comments in an interview with the AFR’s Phil Coorey. But Aaron Patrick doesn’t give AFR readers any sense that SMRs will struggle to get off the ground given the profound reluctance to invest. Current investments ‒ from the private sector and national governments ‒ are orders of magnitude less than would be required to kick-start an SMR industry.

A 2018 US Department of Energy report states that about US$10 billion of government subsidies would be needed to deploy 6 GW of SMR capacity by 2035. But there’s no likelihood that the US government will subsidise the industry to that extent.

To date, the US government has offered US$452 million to support private-sector SMR projects, of which US$111 million was wasted on the mPower project that was abandoned in 2017.

Canadian Nuclear Laboratories has set the goal of siting a demonstration SMR at its Chalk River site by 2026. But serious discussions about paying for a demonstration SMR ‒ let alone a fleet of SMRs ‒ have not yet begun. The Canadian SMR Roadmap website simply states: “Appropriate risk sharing among governments, power utilities and industry will be necessary for SMR demonstration and deployment in Canada.”

In 2018, the UK Government agreed to provide £56 million towards the development and licensing of advanced modular reactor designs and £32 million towards advanced manufacturing research.

This year, the UK Government announced that it may provide up to £18 million to a consortium to help build a demonstration SMR, and up to £45 million to be invested in the second phase of the Advanced Modular Reactor program.

But those government grants are small change: companies seeking to pursue SMR projects in the UK want several billion pounds from the government to build a prototype SMR. “It’s a pretty half-hearted, incredibly British, not-quite-good-enough approach,” one industry insider said.

Another questioned the credibility of SMR developers in the UK: “Almost none of them have got more than a back of a fag packet design drawn with a felt tip.”

Federal inquiry ‒ get your submission in

The Federal Parliament’s Standing Committee on Environment and Energy has begun an ‘inquiry into the prerequisites for nuclear energy in Australia‘ with a focus on SMRs.

The Committee is controlled by Coalition MPs and they need all the education we can offer them ‒ about the whole suite of energy options, not just nuclear power and SMRs ‒ so get your submission in by September 16.

Dr Jim Green is lead author of a Nuclear Monitor report on SMRs and national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia

August 29, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, media, reference, spinbuster, technology | Leave a comment

Shock Jock Alan Jones takes time off insulting women, to praise thorium nuclear power

Thorium ‘more environmentally friendly and safer’ than nuclear https://www.news.com.au/video/id-5348771529001-6074698767001/thorium-more-environmentally-friendly-and-safer-than-nuclear August 20th 2019
Sky News host Alan Jones explains the element thorium, which is “seen by many as more environmentally friendly” than nuclear as an energy source. Mr Jones said thorium-based reactors are safer too because the reaction can easily be stopped and produce less waste that is radioactive. “It’s three times as abundant as uranium, we’re told, and there’s enough thorium in the United States alone to power America at its current energy level for a thousand years,” he said. The broadcaster noted that rolling blackouts for smelters and manufacturers has created a “crisis” for the energy market and suggested thorium as a possible answer.

August 24, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, media, politics | Leave a comment

Australian investigative journalist Mark Davis explodes the myths around Julian Assange

While the Internet was meant to democratise the transmission of information we see a few giant technology companies, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, have near total control of what is seen and shared.

The situation is even worse in Australia with two or three media companies and the same technology giants having control. And the Government of Australia has granted them ever wider market access to extend their monopolies.

Slowly, instance by instance, the malicious and deceitful smears of Julian Assange’s character have been exposed for what they are; an effort to destroy trust in a system of anonymous leaking that will educate everyone.

WikiLeaks’ threat to the powerful was recognised and every effort was, and is, being made to criminalise anonymous leaking, which would be akin to criminalising Gutenberg’s printing press, but there is not much chance this criminalisation will succeed.

It’s time to bring Julian Assange home. Torturing and punishing him has never been legitimate and serves absolutely no purpose.

Media dead silent as Wikileaks insider explodes the myths around Julian Assange, Michael West, by Greg Bean — 16 August 2019 – It is the journalists from The Guardian and New York Times who should be in jail, not Julian Assange, said Mark Davis last week. The veteran Australian investigative journalist, who has been intimately involved in the Wikileaks drama, has turned the Assange narrative on its head. The smears are falling away. The mainstream media, which has so ruthlessly made Julian Assange a scapegoat, is silent in response.

Greg Bean likens the revolutionary work of Julian Assange to that of Johannes Gutenberg who invented the printing press. Government reaction, 580 years later, is similarly savage.

Five hundred and eighty years ago, Johannes Gutenberg introduced the printing press to the world. That single act created a free press which gave birth to the concept of freedom of speech. The two are inextricably linked; printing is a form of speech.

Gutenberg’s invention started the Printing Revolution, a milestone of the 2ndmillennium that initiated the modern period of human history including the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution, and began the knowledge-based economy that spread learning to the masses.

Such mass communication permanently altered the structure of society. Removing control of information from the hands of the powerful and delivering it into the hands of the disempowered…….

From paper revolution to digital revolution Continue reading →

August 17, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, civil liberties, media | Leave a comment

Nuclear lobby claims that Australia will hold Parliamentary Inquiry into nuclear power, especially small modular reactors

Australian parliament to launch nuclear energy inquiry. http://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Australian-parliament-to-launch-nuclear-energy-inq, 02 August 2019

Australia’s Energy Minister Angus Taylor has asked the House Standing Committee on the Environment and Energy to investigate the nuclear fuel cycle, Committee Chairman Ted O’Brien announced today

“This will be the first inquiry into the use of nuclear energy in Australia in more than a decade and I believe it’s the first time the Australian Parliament has ever undertaken such an inquiry,” O’Brien, who is Member of Parliament for Fairfax in Queensland, said. He will be tasked with leading the inquiry after the ministerial request is considered and adopted by the committee.

In a letter to O’Brien, Taylor said the inquiry will consider the economic, environmental and safety implications of nuclear power. The minister has specifically asked the committee to inquire into and report on “the circumstances and prerequisites necessary for any future government’s consideration of nuclear energy generation including small modular reactor technologies in Australia”.

The terms of reference for the inquiry include: waste management, transport and storage; health and safety; environmental impacts; energy affordability and reliability; economic feasibility; community engagement; workforce capability; security implications; national consensus; and “any other relevant matter”.

“Australia’s energy systems are changing with new technologies, changing consumer demand patterns and changes in demand load from major industries,” the context for the inquiry notes. “At the same time the National Electricity Market is seeing a significant increase in capacity in intermittent low emissions generation technologies.” The country’s bipartisan moratorium on nuclear electricity generation – which has been maintained by successive Labor and Coalition governments – will remain in place, it said.

The inquiry will have regard to previous inquiries into the nuclear fuel cycle, including South Australia’s 2016 Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission and the 2006 Review of Uranium Mining Processing and Nuclear Energy in Australia, which is also known as the Switkowski report after its lead author Ziggy Switkowski.

The minister has requested that the committee completes the inquiry and delivers its report by the end of this year.

August 3, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, media, politics | Leave a comment

Australian govt ignored nomination panel, appointed uranium industry’s Vanessa Guthrie to ABC Board

ABC board: secret shortlist of candidates ignored in favour of mining executive revealed
Documents show Coalition government passed over some of Australia’s most eminent cultural figures to appoint Vanessa Guthrie, Guardian, Margaret Simons, Sat 3 Aug 2019 The government passed over some of Australia’s most eminent cultural figures in order to appoint a mining executive to the ABC board in 2017, despite the fact that she was not recommended by an independent selection process.Documents released under freedom of information legislation show that in February 2017, the government rejected singer, writer and director Robyn Archer, former managing director of SBS Shaun Brown, and Sandra Levy, former chief executive of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School.

They were on a list of eight names recommended by an independent nomination panel after an extensive application and vetting process. The then communications minister, Mitch Fifield, instead appointed the chair of the Minerals Council of Australia, Vanessa Guthrie.

Guthrie had no media experience. At the time, the ABC was facing constant government criticism over its reporting on the coalmining industry and energy security.

Guthrie had also been through the application process but was not recommended for appointment. Fifield’s press release at the time said that while Guthrie had not been recommended, she “was identified by the government as having the requisite skills”.

However, until now, we have not known who was passed over in Guthrie’s favour.

Robyn Archer – singer, writer, director and public advocate for the arts, as well as the former artistic director of the Adelaide and Melbourne international arts festivals.

• Shaun Brown – former managing director of SBS for four years from 2006. Before that, a reporter, presenter, producer and senior executive with Television New Zealand.

• Sandra Levy – former CEO of the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, former head of drama at Zapruder’s Other Films, former director of development at Channel Nine and, before that, director of television at the ABC.

• Emile Sherman – Academy award-winning film producer, known for his work on the films The Kings Speech, Lion and Shame. Co-founder and managing director of See-Saw Films.

• Tim Reed – CEO of the business software company MYOB.

• John M Green – publisher, novelist, former executive director of an investment bank, business writer and commentator, member of the governing council of the National Library of Australia.

Georgie Somerset was also on the list recommended by the board, and was appointed with Guthrie. She is a Queensland cattle farmer with board experience across the not-for-profit sector.

An eighth recommended person’s name has not been released at their request. …….

Out of the current nine-member ABC board, five were appointed by the government despite not being recommended through the independent process. As well as Buttrose and Guthrie, the others are company director Dr Kirstin Ferguson (appointed 2015), businesswoman Donny Walford (2015) and businessman Joseph Gersh (2018).

The revelation of the rejected February 2017 applicants is the result of a 22-month battle. The original freedom of information request was lodged in October 2017…….. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/aug/03/abc-board-secret-shortlist-of-candidates-ignored-in-favour-of-mining-executive-revealed?CMP=share_btn_tw

August 3, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, media, politics | Leave a comment

Andrew Bolt’s media attack on Greta Thunberg – Greta’s answer

Teen activist Greta Thunberg hits back at ‘deeply disturbed’ jibe from Andrew Bolt, SBS News, 2 Aug 19 Sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg has responded to an op-ed written by columnist Andrew Bolt which describes the teenager as ‘deeply disturbed’.

Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg has derided criticism levied at her by conservative commentator Andrew Bolt.

Her response follows an opinion piece by the News Corp columnist, labelling the 16-year-old a ‘deeply disturbed’ messiah.

In a tweet, Greta returned fire, saying “hate and conspiracy campaigns” around climate change had prompted her strident advocacy action.

“I am indeed ‘deeply disturbed’ about the fact that these hate and conspiracy campaigns are allowed to go on,” she tweeted.

“Just because we children communicate and act on the science. Where are the adults?”

The Swedish activist’s School Strike for Climate initiative has sparked a worldwide movement calling for greater government action on climate change.

She has been nominated for a Nobel peace prize for her campaigning, which has emphasised the need for urgent human action against global warming.

But in his opinion piece, Mr Bolt questioned why so many are listening to her “climate panic”.

“No teenager is more freakishly influential than Greta Thunberg,” Mr Bolt wrote in his op-ed……

Mr Bolt targeted this unwillingness to “compromise” in his opinion piece.

“This allows followers who are tormented with doubt and burden of freedom to relax into her totalitarian certainty,” Mr Bolt wrote.

“What is so fascinating about this Thunberg cult is not just that she’s believed so fervently even though she’s wrong.”…..

He said it was troubling to him that this “wrong” view was being accepted. …….https://www.sbs.com.au/news/teen-activist-greta-thunberg-hits-back-at-deeply-disturbed-jibe-from-andrew-bolt

August 3, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, climate change - global warming, media | Leave a comment

Senate voted on Press Freedoms – Matter of Public importance

Press Freedoms – Matter of Public importance Senator Sarah Hanson-Young

Antinuclear

Australian news, and some related international items

Aaron Patrick of Australian Financial Review misrepresents economist John Quiggin on nuclear power

Dr Jim Green explodes the Australian Financial Review ‘s propaganda promoting Small Modular Nuclear Reactorsll

Diseconomies of scale

Independent economic assessments

SMR corpses and a negative learning curve on steroids

NuScale’s creative accounting

No-one wants to pay for SMRs

Federal inquiry ‒ get your submission in

Shock Jock Alan Jones takes time off insulting women, to praise thorium nuclear power

Australian investigative journalist Mark Davis explodes the myths around Julian Assange

From paper revolution to digital revolution Continue reading →

Nuclear lobby claims that Australia will hold Parliamentary Inquiry into nuclear power, especially small modular reactors

Australian govt ignored nomination panel, appointed uranium industry’s Vanessa Guthrie to ABC Board

Andrew Bolt’s media attack on Greta Thunberg – Greta’s answer

Senate voted on Press Freedoms – Matter of Public importance

Adani protest: French journalists arrested while filming anti-coal activities

The raid on journalist’s home by armed federal police

News Corpse comes out with a weird pro nuclear ramble

Four Corners let that dill Sussan Ley off lightly on environmental issues

Busting the spin of Australia’s pro nuclear propagandists

Adani is not about jobs, and never really was,

Australia’s police raids on the media will silence whistleblowers

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