Totally agree there Silverthorn, but there are plenty of distortions about at present and the biggest one is the housing/credit bubble Australia is in right now. Housing is starting to dip right now and IMHO is well over due for a correction. With our banks so over leveraged to the housing market any fast correction could see some very hot water for all of us ahead. The renewable energy ramble I had above was just one idea I had but is a perfect case in point for Australia to start diversifying it's industry. I'd love to see AUD $1.70/US (along with similar strength to the other countries) it would mean a number of great things for this country like: The RBA will have had some tight(relative) fiat monetary policies, the rest of the world will have realised that Australia isn't a "risk bet" and inflows of capitol would have to be genuinely considered as Australia being a "Safe" and stable country with a strong and diverse economy. A large number of things need to change before this happens. All it takes is a bit of will and encouragement from the Australian government. Cheers Chris
Me personally I don't really care either way. I have no major bones to pick with coal. It's cheap, easy to use, easy to mine and we have bucket loads of it. It's the gov't that wants to produce "clean" power but is doing nothing about it. They want to destroy industry by creating a carbon tax with out an alternative. What they should be doing is getting out of the way for another form of power (or several) to make coal obsolete. Sorry for the thread Hijack, back to the Rocket Aussie Dollar. Cheers Chris P.S. After Tokyo I highly doubt we will have Uranium based Nuclear power in Australia. I am highly bullish on Thorium though! Would love to see it get a shot in Australia very very soon.
Yeah housing is a worry but I suspect what ever government is in if it really starts to drop will try to prop it up. It will be a double whammy, banks would be under pressure just as construction employment really tanks. If they take their off it though it might get up a head of steam before they do much.
If we go nuclear, goodbye Kakadu and any other place that has Uranium underneath it. It's not rocket science. You do realise that Uranium is a finite source of energy that has to be mined just the same as coal, don't you?
See this is why we should have more solar panels ... more panels more demand for silver... 1+1 = 4 ps. Mining uranium is cleaner than Coal isn't it? There isn't as much sulfur and phosphorous and acid involved.
I'm sorry, but I am sick of people referring to the economy as separate from everything else. The economy is made up of every government decision and every dollar spent by every person. It is the culmination of all those pricks around the world manipulating silver and gold and every sly salesman trying to sell you a dodgy car. Other than forcing the government to do the 'right thing' (whatever that is) the only thing we can do is continue on our current path (If yours is credit, I suggest you pay it off first).
Whoa. I'd prefer a countryside full of wind turbines and every house being FORCED to fit a solar panel than nuclear powerplants around. Lucas Heights is enough.
I think we should set up a Uranium Deposit Scheme. Other countries buy our uranium at a premium, use it, return the waste to us to get their deposit back and we reprocess it into fuel for new GenIV reactors out in the middle of nowhere and then sell it again. In the mean time, we build our own thorium reactors.
I'd prefer Solar panels than Wind because I've read that turbines kill a lot of birds which fly straight in :| Apparently expensive to upkeep as well especially since it's that high up.
The bird strike thing is complete and utter rubbish. It started in the U.S. where somebody had the brilliant idea of placing a major windfarm smack bang in the middle of the migratory path of a particular type of bird, even after a number of detailed studies proved that (a) the birds flew right through that area, (b) the birds had been flying through that area for at least the last 150 years, and (c) a fair number of birds would be killed if anyone was stupid enough to build a windfarm smack bang in the middle of the area where the birds were flying on their migratory path. As it turned out, a fair number of birds ended up being killed. That windfarm (Altamont Pass in California) that started the whole issue with bird strikes wasn't a case of "Oh no, we hit some birds!". It was a case of "F*** the birds, we're putting turbines here and they can fly around them or get chopped up". They were also using a type of turbine that is particularly dangerous to birds (low gear, small blades spinning very fast) which aren't used any more since the newer types (high hear, big blades spinning slowly) are much more efficient. Anyway, way more birds get killed flying into the glass windows of office towers every year than get hit by wind turbines, and way more birds will die in the long term if we don't do anything about our air pollution.
Met a guy three years ago while doing a road trip around Australia - think we were in the Bungle Bungles at the time. Anyway part of his job was monitoring bird deaths at wind farm sites - he said that in a couple of years of doing the job, he'd found about three dead birds under turbines... but had hit about fifty in his car driving to and from the windfarm. Think we hit about a dozen birds in WA so I believe him.
Have hit 1 crow in my life, I like crows, but being able to hit one with a car is quite an achievement.
I hit a flock of Finches in my old XC hardtop. There were little orange feet sticking out of the grill, up from under the bonnet edges, under the wipers, under the windscreen mouldings...
Ive had a dove hit me in the forehead on my bike in the days of helmet exemptions ...didnt tickle at about 80Ks
Spinifex pigeons - we called them suicide pigeons. Surprisingly, we hit a couple of bats as well. Not a great trip for the conservationists in us.