JoNova

Coalition updates their climate policy, and it’s good …but not good enough

Jo Nova — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 22:23:16 +0000

Image by Алекс Бон from Pixabay

By Jo Nova

The Coalition have finally updated their climate policy. They are reigniting the climate war, at least on half their burners. They will scrap Net Zero and the Safeguard (carbon trading) Mechanism, and the New Vehicle Emissions Standard (which punish diesel and petrol cars and favor EVs). They will try to steer our energy regulators back towards cheap energy instead of the expensive sort that supposedly fiddles with the weather.

“Coalition unveils plan to end Chris Bowen’s green revolution at The Australian’s Energy Nation summit” — The Australian

“We will take a chainsaw to Labor’s ideologically driven, energy restrictive approach to energy,” Mr Tehan said ahead of announcing the plan at The Australian’s Energy Nation summit on Wednesday.

“This bill will be the first of many actions to reset the course of energy policy in this country. It will be about, purely and simply, energy abundance, not energy restriction, as is the current approach of the Albanese Labor government.

If they’d have taken this to the last election, and made it the battle, they might have won, but times have moved on, One Nation has gathered [...]

Wednesday

Jo Nova — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 16:01:00 +0000

(Oops! The actual equinox this year. Thanks to Barry!)

10 out of 10 based on 8 ratings

It’s time to ask if we can convert Snowy 2.0 to an adventure park

Jo Nova — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 18:59:45 +0000

By Jo Nova

Snowy 2.0 could be one hell of a water slide

Here at the Renewable Crash Test Dummy, the bad news about Snowy 2.0 (the pumped hydro project) is either piling up or it’s being buried alive, smothered by bureaucrats afraid of losing their jobs.

At this point, converting it into a tourist attraction might be the only way to recoup a fraction of the cost.

I’m thinking of the world’s first 7 kilometer underground white water rafting ride? The kids will love it. People will fly in from all over the world, and we can probably make up a new Olympic event by 2032.

The Battery of Nation is so cheap the cost is kept secret

The latest news is that the contractor Webuild produced a major reassessment of what it will cost to finish Snowy 2.0. But even though they told the Minister their assessment in June, here we are in September and the finished report is nowhere to be seen. The Finance Minister expected it in July. But it hasn’t been fully submitted to the government, which is convenient because the government doesn’t want to talk about it either. They all want to just [...]

Tuesday

Jo Nova — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 16:10:00 +0000

9.1 out of 10 based on 11 ratings

Monday — the Southern Hemisphere steals the sun back

Jo Nova — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 17:48:00 +0000

Happy Equinox, wherever you are.

UPDATE: Barry Goldman points out that this year, the equinox falls on Weds 23rd at 10:05am EST! Foiled!

9.8 out of 10 based on 44 ratings

Sunday

Jo Nova — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 16:32:00 +0000

7.6 out of 10 based on 16 ratings

AI demands for regulation are just like Big Pharma’s: it’s about protecting them, not you

Jo Nova — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 20:24:16 +0000

By Jo Nova

Ed Dowd, the former BlackRock Hedge fund manager who bravely led the way in analyzing excess deaths after Covid vaccination, sums up the motives behind the sudden demand for AI regulation. The behemoths of the biggest stock market boom are at a crunch point. They face competition from open source AI models that threaten their market position. But they are “burning cash” and investors are wondering where the profits are. The bubble faces the sword.

Wouldn’t it be convenient suddenly if a government regulator was set up by the top dogs in the industry to inspect and slow down the competition and if they got an antitrust waiver to protect them from law suits? This is the stuff empires are made of.

So the AI supergiants appear to want the equivalent of an FDA-for-AI and a waiver. That’s been a good model for Big Pharma, they get all the profits, and none of the risk from injury, damage, (and copyright lawsuits) and …it’s a handy way to kneecap the competition.

With the world moving towards using AI as the ultimate search engine for information, those who control the information flow, can control the world. They can [...]

Saturday

Jo Nova — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 16:08:00 +0000

9.2 out of 10 based on 12 ratings

BHP says each Battery Truck will cost 1,000 hours in productivity — it will keep diesel and delay Net Zero

Jo Nova — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 20:03:29 +0000

Image from Pixnio

By Jo Nova

Just another day in the great unwinding of the Green delusion

The largest company in Australia has just announced they are delaying their Net Zero plans. They will still reach the mythical land of Net Zero sometime, but it will just take longer. Their emissions nine years from now will be about 33 per cent higher than what they had been aiming for.

The biggest obstacle was that they had hoped to shift their massive mining operations out of diesel trucks and into electric ones, but the constant need to charge them was crippling. It took ten times as long to “fill them up” each day as a diesel truck. That’s a lot of expensive capital (and staff) sitting around doing nothing.

The company has ‘delayed’ a $5.6 billion spend on battery powered haul trucks. If the grand transition plan had come off, their diesel use would have peaked in 2028. At this stage they are forecasting their diesel use to peak in 2035.

BHP says its carbon emissions, diesel use will stay higher for longer

— By Peter Ker, Australian Financial Review

In comments that will [...]

Friday

Jo Nova — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 16:36:00 +0000

9 out of 10 based on 9 ratings

Looks like solar activity can change the Pacific ocean…

Jo Nova — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 21:16:19 +0000

An active sun affects the stratosphere which in turn changes conditions underwater.

By Jo Nova

Have we finally cracked a connection between sunspots and ocean cycles?

The most powerful and enigmatic forces on our weather are the Pacific El Nino and La Nina phenomena which cause floods and droughts on opposite sides of the Pacific. Unfortunately, climate modelers can’t predict them much more than three to five months ahead, which tells us there’s some big driver they are missing. But a new paper from Chinese researchers suggests that a large blob of water in the North Eastern Pacific is responding to something in solar cycles.

This vast slab has the catchy name of The North Pacific eastern subtropical mode water (NPESTMW). It sits about 100m below the surface and grows and shrinks as the solar cycles rise and fall. It appears to be a very important blob. A different paper last year found that changes in the NPESTMW volume led the El Nino events by about 9 months.(Liu, 2025) Remarkably, they found in the 1991–2022 record, seven of eight large drops in this water volume were followed by El Niño, while eight of nine large increases were [...]

Thursday

Jo Nova — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 17:21:00 +0000

8.8 out of 10 based on 14 ratings

The drone attack on the Saudi Pipeline exposes how the US is self sufficient and Australia is hung out like a shag on a rock.

Jo Nova — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 21:20:46 +0000

…

By Jo Nova

We backed ourselves into this corner

The reason the price of oil has been well behaved in the last few months is because boats were sneaking out of the Strait of Hormuz and Saudi Arabia has a big pipe. But drones from Iran took out a big pumping station in Saudi Arabia a few days ago, and at least for a while, the world is going to be five million barrels of oil short each day. (Five million barrels shorter than we were.)

There is speculation it will only take a few weeks or even just a few days — to get the pipe flowing again. But even if that’s true, the next drone strike could be just around the corner.

There’s a reason our Minister for Perfect Weather and Random Energy is suddenly flying to Saudi Arabia next week — our national economy hangs by a thread. With vast distances and an economy based on heavy industry, we’re more dependent on diesel and oil imports than any other country, and yet we have only two refineries (2!) and one of the smallest stockpiles of diesel.

Maybe the Minister thought we could run the [...]

Wednesday

Jo Nova — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 16:34:00 +0000

8.6 out of 10 based on 15 ratings