Australia

Why petrol is costing more at the pump

Petrol price cycles in Australia are highly volatile at the best of times, but Vivek Dhar, mining and energy economist at Commonwealth Bank, said there were two main reasons why petrol prices across the country have surged in the past week.

"One has been a tightening of oil markets, and that's driven by one resilient demand, as well as OPEC+ supply cuts, which is a group of countries that control about 40 per cent of global supply," he said.

"That has, for us, been instrumental in driving oil prices higher and tightening oil markets.

"The second factor has been a fall in the Australian dollar ... and as the Australian dollar falls, it makes it more expensive to buy petrol."

Also this seems important:

Those wholesale price movements make up around 85 per cent of what motorists pay at the pump .... while the remaining 15 per cent is from retail price movement.

The colony shall destroy the mother ship. Victory is our only option.

We are one. But we are many. From all the lands abound we come.

To destroy the English!

So I just stumbled across something called Occupation: Rainfall, which is SciFi, made in Australia, set in Australia etc etc, so it ticks a lot of boxes for me.
Apparently it is a sequel to Occupation, and regardless of how these things actually rated with reviewers, I feel like I've missed something by being unaware they even came out.

And this is almost certainly because I've made a concerted (and broadly successful) effort for over a decade to avoid ads.

How does everyone here find TV, Movies, Music etc that may be of interest to you?

Just turn on the idiot box and put up with the spew?

A couple of days old, nevertheless a good read on the role of the RBA

1894: Lawrence Hargrave lifts off in his box kite at Stanwell Park.

In 1894, almost a decade before the Wright brothers celebrated the first powered flight, Australian inventor Lawrence Hargrave connected four box kites of his own design, added a seat, and flew 4.8m off the ground, proving it was possible to build a safe, heavier-than-air flying machine.

At the observatory, Hargrave designed and built adding machines to assist his astronomical calculations.

The area is well known for its winds favourable for gliding, and on the morning of 12 November 1894, Hargrave launched a linked series of four box kites off the town beach and climbed into a seat attached to the lowest kite.

Hargrave's designs were taken up by other inventors, including the French-American Octave Chanute, whose designs were later incorporated by the Wright brothers into their Wright Flyer, which, in December 1903, became the first aircraft to achieve powered flight with a pilot on board.

Weeks later, on 6 July, Hargrave died of peritonitis following surgery in Sydney, aged 65.

Sorry about the ad, saw this on channel 10 last night. I appreciate advertising which doesn't treat me like an idiot

Nationals leader David Littleproud says he wants to have an “honest” conversation about Australia’s energy transition. Well and good. But maybe Littleproud himself can help that process by not telling outright lies.

On Sunday, Littleproud did us all a favour by spelling out in detail the Nationals energy policy, just in case it wasn’t already obvious: Stop renewables and wait for nuclear.

It has been, he admitted, the party’s policy for at least the last decade, if not longer.

That’s not surprising, given that its the favoured policy and strategy of Big Oil, Big Gas, Big Coal, and the likes of Gina Rinehart to whom the Nationals appear completely beholden. And it wins support at all levels of the Nationals grass roots through a co-ordinated and quite extraordinary campaign of fear and misinformation.

Littleproud’s train crash of an interview on ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday – well, it might have been a train crash if he had been questioned by someone with the wit to hold his talking points up to scrutiny – highlight the tragedy of Australia’s and the world’s current climate policies.

All these policies are focused on net zero by 2050, or 2060 if you happen to be China. As many scientists fear, it’s a target that is used as a prompt by naysers and do-nothings – such as the Nationals and the fossil fuel industries – to put things off for another day.

It is another excuse for delay, delay, and yet more delay – even though the science tells us, quite clearly, and more emphatically given the summer in the northern hemisphere and tumbling heat records – that what matters most is how quickly we act now.

Littleproud is completely unfazed by the science. In fact, it is a stunning rejection of the science. He wants a “pause” to the roll out of wind and solar and transmission links and a stop to the “reckless pursuit” of the government’s 82 per cent renewables targets.

He suggests that wind and solar has its place, but that solar should be built on city rooftops, not on “prime agricultural” farmland, or in remnant forests. We should wait for nuclear, he says, because “we’ve got time” and net zero by 2050 is the government’s “only commitment.”

He wasn’t asked the obvious question about the Nationals acceptance of climate science, the need to act by 2030, the need to try and cap average global warming to 1.5°C, a target that would require net zero to be reached more than a decade earlier.

Littleproud appealed for “honest conversations”, and then said the federal government’s 83 per cent renewables target requires 28,000 kms of new transmission lines.

Let’s be absolutely clear, that is simply not true.

The Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan suggests that up to 10,000kms of new transmission will be needed over the next two decades under its “step change” scenario, which includes the 82 per cent renewable share that is now the federal government’s target.

That renewables target, by the way, is key to reaching Australia’s modest emissions reduction target of 43 per cent below 2005 levels – a year chosen because of its peak land clearing of remnant forests under the Liberal/National Coalition.

Granted, the preparation work for the transmission lines have been poorly handled, by transmission companies, governments and the likes of AEMO, but it should be noted that most of these transmission lines are considered necessary even in the “slow scenario”, where science is completely ignored and coal hangs around a lot longer.

Littleproud’s number of 28,000kms is only mentioned in the “hydrogen superpower” scenario that imagines huge arrays of wind and solar in remote areas that might need to be connected to the grid. It is of course, his sponsors’ worst nightmare – because it means the end of the fossil fuel industry as we know it.

Littleproud then goes on to mention the prospect of nuclear SMRs (small modular reactors), and even something called “micro reactors”, which are little more than an idea, and probably even further down the pipeline than the SMRs, which are themselves at least a decade away, and not likely to be cheap.

The Nationals leader reckons big industry users like smelters might like the idea of micro reactors because they are modular, and about 3-5MW and can be used to power their facilities, and bring down costs.

It’s a ridiculous suggestion. A smelter draws up to about 500MW of load, so it will need around 100 of these things that don’t exist, and as the former head of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission wrote recently, only ideologues and ‘tech bros” think that nuclear can be cheap. And the Coalition.

The owners of Australia’s smelters, for the record, have already made their views clear. Rio Tinto, for instance, has said that its smelters only have a future beyond the end of the decade if they can convert their power supply to renewables by 2030.

If not, they will not be able to compete with the rest of the world, either on cost, or on emissions. And who is providing the biggest stumbling block to renewables? The Nationals and fossil fuel industry led campaign against wind, solar and transmission.

And therein lies the tragedy, the dishonesty, and the absurdity of the Nationals’ and the Coalition’s stance against green energy.

It will stuff industry in Australia, and the local economy, long before it stuffs the planet and the environment. But by then, they – and the Murdoch media which trumpet their positions, and the mainstream media that refuses to question it – will have found something else to whinge about.

Resolution:

Tldr: nothing has changed

Thankyou to everyone who has contributed to this thread over the last couple of days. In keeping with the advice offered by some our more prominent members, we will hold off on this until there has been sufficient growth and it is discussed again. However, feel free to make use of the !news@aussie.zone community if you wish and make sure you subscribe to it if you don't use our local feed.

I will keep this post stickied for a few days, the original proposal is below for historical purposes

Proposal

At this stage in the growth of this community I think we should begin to consider moving general news content into the dedicated !news@aussie.zone community as well as focusing political content onto !australianpolitics@aussie.zone and environmental content in !environment@aussie.zone. And use this community mostly for opinion pieces and discussing stuff which doesn't necessarily fit into politics or the environment or any other community here.

To make things clearer here are some examples of posts I believe would belong in the news community:

• Burger giant Wendy's signs deal to open 200 Australian stores by 2034
• These Australians are happy to get on their hobby horses — and they're keen for others to do the same
• Australian government lifts humanitarian intake cap to 20,000 visas
• Mushroom mystery: family lunch leaves Australian town reeling after three deaths in suspected poisoning

These would belong in this community:

• Foreign interference through social media is an active threat. Here's what Australia can do
• Why are so many boys and men feeling alone and in the cold?
• Families distressed after 'highly misleading' video used by anti-Voice campaigners goes viral

These would belong in the politics community:

• WA Premier Roger Cook announces repeal of Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Laws
• Australia has a dose of ‘long Morrison’, and it’s nothing to sneeze at

These would belong in the politics community but would be well served by a cross-post to environment:

• NSW Labor accused of ‘fundamental breach of trust’ over logging in promised koala national park
• Thousands of Labor members take climate challenge to Albanese

Why?

The main reasons why I want to do this are:

1. Establishing a distinction in content now is easier from a moderation perspective while there are relatively few people posting news stories - if we do this now it will become clear to new users where content belongs making maintaining the distinction easy.
2. It makes room in this community for longer-running discussions that people can easily keep track of so less arguments are repeated, since it can become difficult to keep track of many posts.
3. Users can tune into what they want and out of what they don't want to hear about. E.g. if you don't want to know about politics you can completely ignore that community.

Other discussions

There has been a discussion of this issue in this post and in reply to this comment.

Why the long post?

I want to know what everyone's opinion on the matter is and how this system could be improved or whether it's worth pursuing at all.

Thousands of Labor members have thrown their weight behind a challenge to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to take stronger action on climate change and develop new policies to respond to mammoth subsidies for renewable energy in the United States.

Mostly focused on SE Queensland, but it's interesting that the talk of building higher density housing is starting to appear in earnest.

Exclusive: The government has reached a confidential settlement with Barati’s family, who say they ‘fought for justice for Reza’

It will make Pauline Hanson angry.

“The Matildas have beaten France 7-6 in a dramatic sudden-death penalty shootout in Brisbane, with Mackenzie Arnold and Courtnee Vine the heroes.”