MAX CRUS: What to do when you've got gas

Equally, other renewables such as wind can now blow their own trumpet, writes Max Crus

Phew, just got the solar panels up in time.

According to the PM, solar energy can stand on its own two feet now and shine its own light without any assistance from the public purse.

Equally, other renewables such as wind can now blow their own trumpet.

Renewables have matured and our government can redirect financial subsidies to new emerging industries, such as gas.

Gas, only discovered recently in 1626, and only even more recently mined as an energy source in 1821, this fledgling industry is cleaner than coal, well, until you burn it, but gee you get some bang for your buck when you do, and no plumes of dirty black smoke and no gas dust up peoples' nostrils.

Okay, there's other greenhouse stuff going on but that's invisible and anyway gas is only needs to emerge briefly until batteries, wind, tidal and pumped hydro catch up and provide the much vaunted base-load executive salaries…um, I mean base-load power.

Once gas is superseded, all its greenhouse goo can go back in the ground the same way that carbon capture and storage puts coal smoke back in the ground or will when they work out how.

Meanwhile it's important to give gas as much money as we can before, um, well, Elon builds a better battery.

Furthermore, to all you nay-sayers who think this is wasting money because gas-fired power plants are only going to be used when the sun doesn't shine, wind doesn't blow and water stops flowing downhill and we should just ask Elon to build a bigger battery, which he could do tomorrow and we'd be up and running, but where's the fun in that?

And to those other nay-sayers who ask what are we going to do with all those pipelines from Queensland to every capital city in Australia, haven't you heard of the Granite Belt?

Then they can re-route the rest of them past every wine region in the country, hook it up and Bob's your uncle.

How many trucks would that take off the road? Win-win for everyone.

Put one of these down your pipe and suck it up :

Max Crus: (Column No.1398)

VIEW GALLERY

Scarborough Hunter Valley Gillards Road The Obsessive Chardonnay (Picked on 16th January) 2018, $40. Serious chardonnay and seriously sharp in both senses it matched the company perfectly, if not the host. 9.5/10.

Scarborough Wine Co. (Hunter Valley, Green Label) Semillon 2020, $20. Great wine with which to play darts, specially if you're winning, and when you're not, something to repair to in despair. 9.3/10.

MollyDooker McLaren Vale 'Two Left Feet' Shiraz Cabernet Merlot 2018 $30. Typically big in the Molly' mode (15.5%), only real men and real women will be brave enough to try this…in moderation of course as is the way of real men and women. 9.4/10.

MollyDooker McLaren Vale 'Summer of '69' (by Sarah) Early Picked Verdelho 2018, $25. That's a lot of grammar, punctuation and spacing to get right, not to mention getting the wine right, which, given it's verdelho, is not easy. But they get a pass. No distinction, but a pass, which is comparably pretty good. 8.8/10.

West Cape Howe Mount Barker Book Ends Cabernet Sauvignon 2017, $30. Not sure if this is just clearly better than the 2016 version or my taste buds are, either way it's a good thing. 9.4/10.

West Cape Howe Mount Barker Two Steps Shiraz 2016, $30. Ideal wine for coalition types who think one step forward, two steps back is good energy policy or for those who prefer dancing to politics. 9.3/10.

Originally published as MAX CRUS: What to do when you've got gas