Post by Polly Hemming / Redsky

It's entirely consistent with The Conversations's mission. They don't pay for articles, it's just a conversation starter. They platform lots of left field ideas.

jun 19, 2025, 8:47 am • 0 0 • view

Theyre currently fundraising off the idea that they publish 'journalism'.

jun 19, 2025, 8:54 am • 2 0 • view

It's not journalism, it's an opinion blog publisher not a news source, so they're wrong there.

jun 19, 2025, 9:01 am • 0 1 • view

omg! not @theconversation.com !!! More than disappointing 😣

jun 19, 2025, 8:54 am • 1 0 • view

The Conversation is not a bad bloggy thing. Green steel and the like are good ideas. Continuing to mine coal and gas is a net terrible idea. Bad for the environment and only a trivial economic benefit for the Australian economy when exported. Great news however for gas companies.

jun 19, 2025, 10:38 am • 0 0 • view

Net-Zero has always been green washing. Stop burning stuff

jun 19, 2025, 9:53 am • 2 0 • view

This is not journalism and its disingenuous to fundraise off the idea that it is.

jun 19, 2025, 9:11 am • 38 3 • view

Don't worry about exporting fossil fuels! You just export more not-fossil fuels and the emissions disappear like magic. It's very good maths and extremely good real science. #auspol #climate

jun 19, 2025, 8:39 am • 120 27 • view

A convenient article to come out during the Bonn UN climate conference where Australia thinks its going to be awarded COP31 hosting rights. #auspol #climate

jun 19, 2025, 8:46 am • 49 4 • view

I'm planning a diet. It involves subtracting the weight of the salad I eat from the weight of the chocolate I eat. Because the salad displaces chocolate I otherwise would've eaten. If, some days, I eat more salad than chocolate, then I will claim I have actually eaten net negative chocolate.

jun 19, 2025, 9:31 am • 70 11 • view

This is sound maths and good nutritional practice. Im getting hammered on Jack Daniels right now but I'm going to drink some milk to cancel it right out and soon I will be net sober.

jun 19, 2025, 9:36 am • 53 3 • view

This may be the groundwork for the second edition of the CSIRO approved diet for Australians

jun 20, 2025, 5:25 am • 7 1 • view

It’s overall unsatisfactory, but it’s reasonable as an intellectual exercise to consider how you might cancel out emissions. This could support a cap and trade scheme with real emissions reduction benefits until as the authors point out, fossil auto exits. This might hasten fossil demise.

aug 29, 2025, 1:43 am • 0 0 • view

The issue here is that the publication and misleading headline have given this “ credible weight” with media. And fossil fuel lobby is more than happy with this. They probably had a few rounds at the pub when this came out.

aug 29, 2025, 8:26 am • 0 0 • view

If people read the headline only and not the content then - well that just seems like mostly what people do. If you cut out the bit about fossil fuel production and we just do green steel, what exactly would you expect should be the outcome? No attribution for the reduction in CO2?

aug 29, 2025, 8:39 am • 0 0 • view

The paper and data are public domain if you want to crunch imaginary “if” numbers for green steel etc. Australia a long way behind, and no serious intent from leadership.

aug 29, 2025, 12:25 pm • 0 0 • view

Great call. I’m using that analogy with my Economics classes. Cheers!

jun 19, 2025, 9:21 pm • 4 1 • view

Empirical data required so I tried it last night @pollyjhemming.bsky.social and I can safely say a. It doesn’t work b. Tastes real bad in the morning

jun 21, 2025, 1:12 am • 2 1 • view

Cartoon of thugs explaining to police that they bought a Murder Offset

jun 19, 2025, 10:20 am • 6 1 • view

I have based my lifestyle on this method 😀

jun 19, 2025, 9:56 am • 4 1 • view

What do call "salad"? Lettuce and alfalfa or carrots, beetroot, cabbage with tofu, chicken, etc? And is yr chocolate light milky stuff like an aero or heavy and dark? Hmmmm 🤔

jun 19, 2025, 9:41 am • 0 0 • view

Milky chocolate is salad!

jun 20, 2025, 5:06 am • 2 1 • view

"No, officer, I might appear to have blown over the limit but the beers I drank today are negated by all the soda water I drank yesterday so I am, in fact, in negative beers, currently"

jun 20, 2025, 1:14 am • 8 1 • view

I'm a chocolate manufacturer, and this time, I'm serious. I'm going on a REAL DIET. Sometime in 2030. Maybe.

jun 23, 2025, 7:27 am • 0 0 • view

unless you're literally pulling CO2 out of the air and changing it into another chemical then you aren't doing shit

jun 20, 2025, 7:02 am • 0 0 • view

Is the argument actually that the atmosphere works like a balance sheet?

jun 19, 2025, 9:00 am • 1 0 • view

If I buy enough products on special at the supermarket this week, I'll get rich!

jun 19, 2025, 8:53 am • 5 0 • view

Yes. That is also good science and good economics.

jun 19, 2025, 8:55 am • 1 0 • view

Especially if I use my credit card to achieve this wealth 🫠

jun 19, 2025, 8:57 am • 0 0 • view

Green Iron & Green anmonia don't involve removing any CO2 from the atmosphere,so this "offsetting" just provides an excuse for someone emittig more CO2 and warming the planet more. The baseline has to be processes that don't produce CO2. Otherwise you lock in ever increasing global warming.

jun 19, 2025, 9:05 am • 3 0 • view

Some fantastic words. Salad is nice and healthy too, so word salad must be good, right?

jun 19, 2025, 10:17 am • 0 0 • view

Ah, "green". A very convenient adjective for any fossil-fuel producer to splash about. Just produce a minimal qty of hydrogen via electrolysis as window-dressing, then generate the bulk from LNG, etc. The final product is colourless so who could discern if it started out as green or otherwise?

jun 19, 2025, 11:45 am • 0 0 • view

And I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure if you *import* the same amount of fossil fuels that’ll get you to net-zero too. That’s why I’m investing heavily in import credits.

jun 20, 2025, 4:39 am • 5 1 • view

And if you import MORE fossil fuels than you export, emissions actually DECREASE. I am an expert and this is how Australia's policy and economics works - you just make up anything and chuck some graphs in.

jun 20, 2025, 4:51 am • 13 0 • view

I'm not an expert, but if fossil fuels=excess sugar, then the article's message - "don't worry about it, just do this workout and you'll look good" - is cosmetic, ignoring the real problem of the excess consumption. Do the ANU's experts not see this? Or do they assume non-experts will be fooled?

jun 21, 2025, 3:04 am • 0 0 • view

* excluding the Aus Inst pubs

jun 20, 2025, 5:29 am • 0 0 • view

Thanks Polly, I thought that was the case but I didn't wanted to sound stupid

jun 20, 2025, 5:04 am • 5 0 • view

My rule of thumb is if a proposal means you can keep approving gas and coal then its acceptable policy and means you will probably get a job advising government.

jun 20, 2025, 5:11 am • 13 2 • view

Are you two laughing or crying? It’s quite difficult to decipher the noises involved. Also the face palming and head desking aren’t sufficiently clear..

jun 20, 2025, 6:15 am • 0 0 • view

more like (as the Russian saying goes) laughter through the tears

jun 20, 2025, 6:18 am • 2 0 • view

For the record (obviously you know this), Australia already does import quite a bit of fossil fuel - which makes this even more poignant.

jun 20, 2025, 6:21 am • 0 0 • view

👍

jun 20, 2025, 6:07 am • 2 0 • view

Yeah not the first time I have seen things like this , unfortunately academics can still have agendas and get paid off.

jun 19, 2025, 11:08 am • 4 0 • view

The lead author was recently employed by federal govt and appointed to NSW govtnet zero commission and QLD govt 'clean economy panel. Some nice fossil fuel projects planned in those states. He's the latest old guy of many to complain to my boss about my unprofessional social media 🤣

jun 21, 2025, 10:34 am • 8 0 • view

However I can see why he would get employment with denialist governments; they must love arguments like this.

jun 21, 2025, 2:35 pm • 1 0 • view

The lead author is from one of my ANU affiliations - whose just retired director recently wrote to tell me there is no climate change "emergency" because it's "expected". I applied as his replacement, naturally was not short listed. Sophistry and denial - both examples. Very sad.

jun 21, 2025, 2:26 pm • 6 0 • view

Also, this is not net zero. Energy from renewables will (hopefully) replace energy from fossil fuels. But it will NOT lower GHG levels, it will only slow GHG growth. M/time, just as with old fashioned net zero, it creates moral hazard, this false equivalence could paradoxically delay the transition.

jun 21, 2025, 3:09 pm • 4 0 • view

"360 million tonnes [mt] of emissions could be negated by a mix of green exports". Word "negated" is objectionable. "Saving" 204 mt of CO₂ is not same as sequestering 204mt (another pipedream btw); hole we are in wouldn't get shallower; the GHG emissions aren't cancelled.

jun 21, 2025, 3:30 pm • 3 0 • view

Australia should just get on with the energy transition (at least attempting to). I hope the COP selection committee sees through this, but they probably won't. Net zero is a mix of scam, delusion, desperation & wishful thinking. www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.116...

jun 21, 2025, 3:30 pm • 5 0 • view

Does this mean that we need to import more oil to balance our exports of coal & gas? Wouldn't that count as net zero?

jun 19, 2025, 11:51 am • 1 0 • view

I think it's a great article, only because it clearly demonstrates exactly how nonsensical the net zero rhetoric is. I think mainstream media coverage has allowed it to be too abstract for most people. This article gives us something to point to that demonstrates the lunacy to anyone.

jun 20, 2025, 4:41 am • 9 2 • view

and this also from the conversation bsky.app/profile/did:...

aug 29, 2025, 12:56 am • 3 0 • view

Quite literally a contradiction in terms. The mental gymnastics that these journalists have to go through just to justify the status quo is ridiculous. Like how an Israeli denies the most obvious case of genocide in history, fossil journos continue denying the negative effects of fossil fuels.

jun 21, 2025, 6:01 am • 0 0 • view

Unfortunately this is by an ANU academic who is well aware that this is a nonsense argument but appears to be captured. Its essentially just a blog post but the conversation is fundraising off the idea that its content is journalism.

jun 21, 2025, 10:37 am • 5 0 • view

Even worse than I initially thought, an opportunist academic larping as a journo, on a glorified myspace blog.

jun 21, 2025, 10:41 am • 1 0 • view

The Conversation’s climate stuff is pretty consistently bad. Worse even than The Guardian who at least have started to occasionally refer to fossil carbon burning as the primary driver of heating.

aug 28, 2025, 12:12 pm • 0 0 • view

To their credit, the Convo ran a series “Getting to Zero” which included this seminal work on the risks of the current MO. No point governments & the renewables sector chasing a Nett-0 mirage & claiming sainthood when we’re exporting megatons of FF emissions. theconversation.com/a-renewable-...

jun 20, 2025, 7:14 am • 0 0 • view

net zero is a scam. people and organisations are starting to wake up to this con www.wsj.com/articles/net...

aug 30, 2025, 2:04 am • 0 0 • view

The economist's mentality has ruined so many of our most brilliant minds

jun 19, 2025, 9:14 am • 4 1 • view

Unsurprisingly, the lead author does appear to be an economist, ahem, an "environmental economist".

jun 19, 2025, 9:45 am • 1 1 • view

And also recently employed by federal govt and appointed to NSW govtnet zero commission and QLD govt 'clean economy panel. Some nice fossil fuel projects planned in those states.

jun 19, 2025, 9:51 am • 7 2 • view

Absurd!

jun 20, 2025, 5:57 am • 0 0 • view

fine criticism of editorial policy of The Conversation published in the Australian Book Review about 2-3 months ago...seems a failing ship, needs rescue.

jun 21, 2025, 3:40 am • 2 0 • view

‘The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.’ George Orwell- 1984

jun 20, 2025, 2:32 am • 27 6 • view

Fuck me dead, people are still trying to do the "clean coal" thing? We need a gulag just for them

aug 28, 2025, 11:02 am • 1 0 • view

As always the answer is creative accounting, wishful thinking and pixie dust. Lots of pixie dust.

jun 19, 2025, 9:29 am • 3 2 • view

And you're advertising it!

jun 19, 2025, 8:46 am • 0 0 • view

Yeah I am. Because its bad enough that it needs to be called out as misleading.

jun 19, 2025, 8:47 am • 9 1 • view

I understand, but IMHO, lots of people would simply read the very large headline and think "that's good"!

jun 19, 2025, 8:50 am • 1 0 • view

Now I have to read the article to see if it's just about importing an equal quantity of fossil fuels as they export...

jun 19, 2025, 10:53 am • 1 0 • view

Don't give them ideas - that's what import terminals are for!

jun 20, 2025, 4:46 am • 1 0 • view

It's a comedy piece . . .

jun 19, 2025, 8:53 am • 1 0 • view

It's like saying no-one got shot producing these guns....

jun 19, 2025, 9:07 am • 1 0 • view

real murder offsets vibe in that one...

jun 19, 2025, 9:31 am • 6 0 • view

The Conversation has been going downhill for years, accumulating some real shockers. Thanks for the reminder to cancel my monthly donation!

jun 19, 2025, 11:34 am • 4 0 • view

Their argument: Australia should do zero to curtail its bad energy exports (like heroin) instead increase its export of good energy (like heroin therapists). No. We should definitely increase the export of good energy- but we should not think this gives us license to profit from planet poisoning.

jun 21, 2025, 2:32 pm • 1 0 • view

They is not paywall for the theconversation website. Therefor it must be propaganda. If you are not paying, you are the target. Real information must be payed for.

aug 28, 2025, 11:31 am • 0 0 • view

Net Zero is a con - how can we negate our emissions responsibility by selling our fossil fuels to others. It’s just wrong. Can we bring back a Carbon price - which WAS working under the Gillard government. #auspol

jun 19, 2025, 9:27 am • 17 4 • view

Remember the Gillard govt’s policies didn’t curtail exports. Also tax policy is not really an effective way to wind down a profitable industry. We really need to grasp the nettle of explicit policies to wind down extraction.

aug 28, 2025, 12:05 pm • 2 0 • view

Buy out Fossil Fuel Cos and wind them down? Enable Foreign markets to expand renewables?

aug 28, 2025, 9:05 pm • 1 0 • view

That would be a start. The “buyout” wouldn’t need to involve public money given the negative value the industry has once climate damage and site remediation costs are factored in. But in terms of international coordination of policy we need to go bigger.

aug 28, 2025, 9:12 pm • 2 0 • view

We definitely don’t want the public to explicitly take on remediation liability. This is already the default and we want to squeeze as much remediation out of the companies before they fall over.

aug 29, 2025, 1:45 am • 1 0 • view

Bad approach because the only way the corporations can contribute to site remediation is by continuing to operate when we need them wound down. Their NPV is negative and their past profits are elsewhere now.

aug 29, 2025, 1:54 am • 0 0 • view

bsky.app/profile/vale...

aug 29, 2025, 1:57 am • 1 0 • view

Better thread from me on this topic here: bsky.app/profile/vale...

aug 29, 2025, 2:02 am • 1 0 • view

It is an interesting dilemma. We gave them a break to get started, then they needed to make their money back, then they rolled in it and then we thought about the end. What would a remediation scheme funded out of dividend reduction look like? You can have your cake but no icing.

aug 29, 2025, 3:10 am • 1 0 • view

It’s not a dilemma, you just haven’t thought it through. You’re asking for the monster that ate the village’s children to give the village new children. Read down the threads I posted in my comments to your earlier comment.

aug 29, 2025, 3:21 am • 2 0 • view