Oh my. I was watching that last night and cringed so much that I found myself leaving the room. Malapropism Mal.

To be honest, Suki, I have rather thought much of Turnbull’s commentary of late has been sensible; this is the same guy who cashed in his Comcar for public transport. Then he goes off and proves he’s got serious intellectual limits.

Nuclear power is all well and good until you have to dispose of the spent fuel and materials made radioactive by the reactor. Mal’s comment that nuclear power is ‘greenhouse friendly‘ completely overlooks the use of fossil fuels in the process of mining uranium, construction and operation of the reactor and disposal of nuclear waste.

Can you believe that Mal tried to contend that our coal is somehow ‘clean’? Sheesh.

That’s the clincher with almost all “clean” fuels at the moment, innit? The amount of fossil fuels required to produce the energy required to produce the “clean” fuel negates that fuel’s benefit. Ethanol is one example, apparently.

But nucular is a whole different story altogether. You don’t need to bury ethanol leftovers in the ground and cross your fingers for the next couple of thousand generations.

Ed, ethanol isn’t a totally bad fuel, but it’s got lots of impracticalities. It particularly irks me when Howard tries to push his mate Manildra’s ethanol products for use in vehicles designed for petrol. The dumbest suggestion is to use Australia’s massive reserves of natural gas to distil ethanol when LPG itself is a terrific motor fuel, which burns some 90% cleaner than petrol.

Biodiesel and diesel fuel recovered from waste plastics are a short-term solution. Biodiesel (both virgin and from waste vegetable oils) is at very least greenhouse neutral as the carbon released from burning it is then locked up in the next generation of oilseed plants used to produce it.

Mal’s excuse regarding French use of nuclear power for 75% of their electricity generation is profoundly silly. This notion overlooks bleeding obvious variables like the massive decommissioning costs of nuke plants. Moreover, the French don’t give a shit who they hurt with their nuclear crap- unless anyone needs reminding about them testing nuclear weapons in our global neighbourhood and murdering a Greenpeace photographer when their secret agents mined the Rainbow Warrior in NZ not too terribly long ago.

I had something to say about Howard, ethanol & Manildra back in September of 2005.

I haven’t spotted any new labelling on the petrol bowsers. Wonder if there’s now Manildra ethanol in fuels and we’re simply not being told.

Nukoolar. It shitted me to tears, especially from an ex barrister.

Is Turnbull so far up Bush’s bum that he’s decided to say the word the same way Bush does?