Backed by nine Australian companies, including miners BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, they have launched a study into finding possible sites to host the $1 billion plant.

The Managing Director of the Worley Parson’s sustainability arm, Peter Meurs, says the project is ambitious.

“Each power station could provide power for 300,000 homes — and our vision is that Australia’s a suitable place for this and we could build up to 34 of these power stations by 2020.

“The ideal location for a thermal solar power station is a desert type location, you want maximum solar with the least cloud cover or interference and our dry desert locations are ideal,” he said.

Green’s Climate Change spokeswoman, Christine Milne says it is a big boost for the renewable energy sector and should be supported by the Federal Government.

“This is really an acknowledgment that clean coal is never going to be achievable and the coal industry itself is leapfrogging clean coal and recognising the power of renewable energy and solar thermal in particular,” she said.

[From ABC News]

Worth watching to the end.

Even though the woman was deemed well enough to travel by road from Mount Isa to Townsville the Queensland Ambulance Service had no vehicles capable of carrying her.

She was even too large to be safely carried in King Air light aircraft operated by the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

A Defence Force spokesman confirmed a C-130 Hercules was despatched from the RAAF base at Richmond, Sydney after a request from the Queensland government.

The cost to taxpayers was not disclosed but a Hercules aircraft costs about $13,000 an hour to operate, putting the total cost of the nine-hour operation at more than $100,000.

(Via Zanetti’s web site)

GetUp’s Executive Director Brett Solomon reflects upon Monday’s candle ceremony.

Laid out before the most powerful institution in the country, the Australian Parliament, 4000 candles flickered spelling out the words ‘Sorry, the first step’.

Over fifty GetUp members in Canberra spent the day laying out the candles on the 60m x 80m lawn. Hard work on a hot day, but as new volunteers arrived with fresh enthusiasm, we managed to prepare the site in time for sunset.

The first candle was lit by Lorna Fejo, a Warumungu woman and member of the Stolen Generations who was taken from her family at 4 years old. As she lit the candle she said, ‘A big relief…at least I’m alive to hear it, I’m one of the lucky ones’.

Temperatures rose by between 1.0 and 2.0 degrees in most parts of the country, with the national average hitting 29.2°C (84°F) for the summer month, said the bureau’s head of climate analysis, David Jones.

‘It’s a remarkable number certainly. Averaging, as we did across the whole country 1.3 degrees above average is the highest temperature we’ve seen in our history of records for Australia in January,’ he said.

But Wednesday’s move by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denying California and 16 other states the right to set their own standards for carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles was an unpleasant surprise; even by Bush standards.

The announcement, made by EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, temporarily torpedoes state efforts led by California to drastically reduce CO2 emissions from cars by treating the greenhouse gas as a pollutant that could be regulated like any other.

The California initiative, part of the state’s landmark climate change plan, could have provided a nationwide model for cutting automobile emissions, one of the single biggest sources of greenhouse gas in the U.S.

‘The Administration has done a number of indefensible things on the environment and global warming,’ says Jim Marston, director of the state climate initiative for Environmental Defense. ‘But this is the worst in terms of process, and the one that will be most harmful to the health and safety of the American people.’

In less than a month, the tiny state of Singapore will seal a deal that will ensure it owns more commercial assets in Australia than the Federal government.

This means, to put it bluntly, that “While other nations such as China, Singapore, Russia, Korea, Kuwait and Norway build up huge sovereign funds, Australia, with its world-beating dowry of natural assets, still has a Federal Government with a negative net worth of $10 billion in the middle of an unprecedented commodities boom.”

The Melbourne Age has a lot more to say about the situation

When shareholders in Perth-based energy utility Alinta Ltd gather to vote on the $15 billion carve-up of the company on August 13, few of them will realise the remarkable historical event they will trigger.

In accepting $4.5 billion of cash from Singapore Power for a suite of Australian electricity and gas distribution assets, Alinta shareholders will lift the total value of Australian business assets controlled by the Singapore Government to almost $30 billion.

This will exceed the value of commercial assets owned by our own Federal Government, which is surely an unprecedented situation for any First World country. How can a foreign power own more of Australia than our own government?

The world’s driest inhabited continent, already enduring one of its worst droughts, was waging its own unique climate war, said Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology yearly climate report.

Half the country was desperate for water and the other half was awash with a year’s rainfall for the entire continent.

“Most scientists agree this is part of an enhanced Greenhouse effect,” said bureau senior climatologist Neil Plummer.

“Temperatures are actually rising a little bit faster over Australia compared to the global average, and we know that of Australia’s 20 hottest years, 15 have occurred since 1980.”

As the first cyclone of the summer bears down on Western Australia’s north coast, bringing more rain and potentially destructive winds, the report revealed extraordinary climatic contrasts.

Some areas experienced rare summer snow falls over Christmas to dampen bushfires, even as the drought tightened its grip and major cities imposed tough restrictions on water usage.