The Aftermath

Confronted with the twin facts of its uselessness and irrelevance, the entire NBN Board hands in its notice. Forensic accounting will now begin. Excellent.

(ETA: Since I posted this, information has come to light which suggests that in fact the new Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, demanded the head of each and every one of these worthless creatures, and that the resignations seem to be either as-requested or to avoid the disgrace attendant upon being sacked.)

Aussie conservatives were rightly in an uproar at David Suzuki getting an entire hour of the show Q&A to himself, to spout his ludicrous theories, but Andrew Bolt reports that the audience was not so generous as the presenter. A few well-informed skeptics made it past the defences, so to speak, and served this hypocritical charlatan his own head on a platter.

Also reposing in the head-on-a-dish department is Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery. His presence on the government payroll ought not to be missed, especially since he was a shareholder in a geothermal energy project that was the recipient of tens of millions of dollars and seems to have contributed very little to the problem of energy generation in Australia except how NOT to go about doing it. When one accesses their instantaneous share price history, it seems relatively stable until one selects a much broader timescale - at which point one sees that a company that started out a little above a dollar begins to trend progressively downwards from May 2009 and, absent a couple of local peaks during the descent (October 2010 and July 2011), is now in the doldrums at about ten cents a share. The October peak is coincident with this statement (from which I quote):

Geodynamics Limited is pleased to announce that all conditions precedent for the $90 million grant awarded to the Company under the Federal Government’s Renewable Energy Demonstration Program (REDP) have been satisfied. Geodynamics has received confirmation from the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism that the grant is now unconditional and that funding will commence in line with agreed milestones.The $90 million grant was initially awarded to Geodynamics in November 2009 and is the largest amount awarded to any project under the program. The funding deed was executed by the Federal Government and Geodynamics in July 2010.

and the July 2011 peak with this one, which I had problems loading the full text of, but which led from the following text on its webpage:

Geodynamics welcomes clean energy package

11 July 2011

Geodynamics Limited (ASX: GDY), Australia’s most advanced geothermal energy developer, welcomes the Federal Government’s climate change initiatives announced yesterday under the Securing a Clean Energy Future package.

In other words, both share-price surges - neither sustained - seem to relate temporally to the acquisition of government funding or support as opposed to technical achievements. Readers may draw their own conclusions, but mine are uncharitable for obvious reasons. The timescale of Dr Flannery's shareholdings, acquisitions and depositions, if known, would make a fascinating comparison. Does anyone out there have this information?

That geothermal energy works is beyond doubt, and New Zealand is the proof. That it does not necessarily work everywhere now also seems beyond doubt, and Geodynamics could well be the proof of that.

In other news, Islam continues to be the Religion of Peace it always has been (sarc!!), proving that its brave warriors are always up to the challenge of defending the faith, any way they can.