AI Wants the Art. Artists Deserve the Pay

AI companies pay for their chips. They pay for their electricity. They pay their engineers.

They should pay the artists whose work helps train their models.

That should be the starting point of Australia’s AI copyright debate.

The ABC has reported government proposals that would allow AI training on online copyright material unless its owners opted out, subject to licensing or payment conditions. These remain proposals, not law. But the principle deserves challenging: why should creators have to take action to prevent commercial use of their work? [ABC News](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-15/ai-companies-train-on-creator-work-documents-reveal/107154688)

Surely the company seeking access should secure agreement first.

Writers, musicians, photographers and illustrators have spent years developing their skills. Their work is an asset, often their livelihood. They have every reason to resist handing over its commercial value without acceptable terms.

Especially when the resulting AI may compete for their next commission.

I have explored AI’s creative abilities in [Can AI Write From The Heart?](https://www.grappyssoapbox.com/2026/08/?m=0) That link opens the August archive containing the post. The technology is impressive. For someone earning a living through creativity, it is also a formidable potential competitor.

Being asked to help train that competitor deserves more than a promise of benefits to humanity.

Those benefits may be enormous. In [The AI Race Will Be Won With Energy](https://www.grappyssoapbox.com/2026/09/the-ai-race-will-be-won-with-energy.html), I argued that we should take AI’s transformative potential seriously.

But commercial AI developers also seek commercial returns. There is nothing wrong with that. There is something wrong with treating public benefit as a reason somebody else should supply the ingredients free.

Perhaps part of the impasse is timing.

Creators want compensation for work supplied now. Developers may prefer to pay after their investment produces a return. The eventual value is uncertain, and dividing it among millions of contributors will be difficult.

But delayed payment and no agreed entitlement to payment are very different things.

If artists are expected to wait, the terms should be settled before their work is used. Otherwise, they are being asked to finance somebody else’s business without the protections an investor would demand.

Royalties, collective licences, upfront payments or a combination might provide an answer. I do not claim to know which arrangement will work best. The method can evolve.

The obligation to compensate should not disappear while everyone debates the method.

Government has a useful role here. Bring the parties together. Help smaller creators negotiate collectively. Support transparent agreements and accessible enforcement.

But government should not change copyright law to give AI companies access to protected creative work without the rights holders’ agreement to the terms.

In negotiating those terms, government should mediate. It should not substitute its consent for the creator’s.

The attraction of investment, data centres and technological prestige does not give ministers the right to bargain away somebody else’s work.

Artists must be compensated. AI companies must foot the bill. The parties can negotiate how and when.

Government’s job is to help them reach an agreement—not make agreement unnecessary.

Bill Maher Says What Others Wont

Bill Maher is one of those commentators I don't always agree with, which is precisely why I find him worth listening to.

He remains broadly liberal, but he has an admirable habit of challenging his own side when he thinks it has lost its way. His latest New Rule, “Clash of Civilizations”, is a particularly good example.

Marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Maher asks how much Western attitudes have changed since that terrible day.

His argument is worth ten minutes of your time.

Remember When We Called Terrorists Terrorists?

Maher begins with 9/11 and a surprisingly contemporary question: why have parts of the media become reluctant even to use the word terrorist?

Twenty-five years ago, there was little ambiguity about what had happened. Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked civilian aircraft and deliberately murdered almost 3,000 people.

Maher's point is not that there is a clash between Muslims and Christians. He explicitly rejects that idea.

The clash, he argues, is between radical Islamism and Western liberalism.

On one side are values such as freedom of religion, equality for women, tolerance of homosexuality and freedom of expression. On the other is an ideology that rejects many of those principles.

What troubles Maher is that sections of the Western Left now seem reluctant to defend their own liberal values against people who openly oppose them.

That is an uncomfortable observation.

It is also difficult to dismiss.

Then Maher Turns to Gaza

The second half of the segment is, to my mind, even more important.

Maher turns to Israel's war against Hamas and attacks the increasingly casual use of one of the most serious words in our vocabulary:

Genocide.

Maher's position is unequivocal. He argues that describing the Gaza war as genocide is false and points to Israel's conduct — including humanitarian aid and medical evacuations — as evidence inconsistent with an intention to destroy the Palestinian people.

The word genocide should not simply become another political slogan.

It describes one of humanity's most terrible crimes. If we casually attach it to warfare involving tragic civilian casualties, we risk stripping the word of its meaning.

More importantly, accusations have consequences.

From “Genocide” to Antisemitism

This is where Maher makes perhaps his sharpest observation.

If people are repeatedly told that Israel is deliberately committing genocide against Palestinians — and come to believe that as an established fact — then hostility towards Israel becomes not merely understandable but morally righteous.

And from there, the line between hatred of Israel and hatred of Jews can become dangerously thin.

Maher argues that this helps explain the extraordinary rise in antisemitism throughout the Western world since October 7.

That does not mean every critic of Israel is antisemitic. Nor does criticism of Israeli government policy become antisemitism merely because it is strongly expressed.

But accusing the Jewish state of deliberately exterminating a people has become a political tool to demonise Israel and indirectly all Jews. 

“Genocide” has become a chant on streets, university campuses and social media — often presented not as an allegation to be proved, but as an established fact.

We have seen the consequences.

As I discussed recently in Never Again Starts Here, antisemitism has grown to the point where Australia has established a Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. Jewish Australians have found themselves facing intimidation and hostility over the actions of a foreign government. grappyssoapbox.com

That should concern everyone, whatever their view of the Gaza war.

Watch Maher Make the Case

Maher's presentation is short, funny in places, provocative and characteristically blunt.

You may not agree with every argument he makes. I don't think that matters.

His larger questions are worth considering.

Have we become so uncomfortable calling terrorism by its name that we obscure what it represents?

Have sections of the Western Left forgotten the liberal values they once defended?

And have we allowed one of the most terrible words in human history — genocide — to become so casually politicised that an allegation is now routinely treated as a proven fact?

Maher has his answers.

Watch the video below and make up your own mind.

Previous Posts on Israel and Antisemitism

Never Again Starts Here — Why Australia's Royal Commission into Antisemitism matters and what Australia might learn from other Western democracies. grappyssoapbox.com

Israel IS Following Rules of War — An earlier examination of Israel's conduct in Gaza and the laws governing warfare. This links to the November 2023 archive containing the article. grappyssoapbox.com

Kisin Responds to Criticism of His Israel Video — Konstantin Kisin's response to criticism of his arguments supporting Israel after October 7. grappyssoapbox.com

Weekly Roundup - Top Articles and Commentary from Week 38 of 2026

     

Here are links to some selected articles of interest and our posts from this week.

• Pill Testing, A Mixed Message
• The Moral Cost of Net Zero
• The Catch-22 That Kills Whistleblowing
• Can We Keep AI Under Control?
• The AI Race Will Be Won With Energy
• Bill Maher Says What Others Wont
• AI Wants The Art, Artists Want the Pay
  

Cartoon of the Day

We welcome all feedback; please feel free to submit your comments or contact me via email at grappysb@gmail.com or on X at @grappysb

The AI Race Will Be Won With Energy

Modern civilisation runs on energy.

It is so obvious that we sometimes forget it. Every great advance in human prosperity — industrialisation, transport, refrigeration, medicine, communications and computing — has depended upon our ability to produce more useful energy and put it to work.

Now we may be approaching the greatest technological transformation of them all.

Artificial intelligence, combined with increasingly capable humanoid robots, offers possibilities that only a few years ago belonged to science fiction: extraordinary increases in productivity, accelerated medical research, automated manufacturing, scientific discovery and perhaps an abundance of goods and services beyond anything previous generations could have imagined.

But there is a catch.

It all runs on electricity.

AI Is Hungry

Elon Musk has recently been warning about precisely this constraint.

AI may exist in the virtual world, but the computers running it most certainly do not. They require enormous data centres, semiconductor factories, cooling systems, transmission networks — and vast quantities of reliable electricity.

The International Energy Agency estimates that electricity used by data centres worldwide could rise from about 460 TWh in 2024 to more than 1,000 TWh by 2030.

That is more than double in six years.

And we are only at the beginning.

The US Energy Information Administration is already forecasting record American electricity consumption in 2026 and 2027, with AI-intensive data centres among the major drivers.

Suddenly energy abundance is fashionable again.

The Great Reversal

There is a certain irony here.

For years much of the Western political and corporate establishment concentrated on reducing fossil-fuel consumption and constraining energy supply in the name of climate change.

Now technology companies are scrambling to secure electricity.

Natural gas is back in the conversation. Nuclear power is enjoying an extraordinary revival. Technology companies are looking at dedicated power stations and small modular reactors. Musk himself is reportedly moving into gas-turbine technology as the demand for data-centre electricity collides with shortages of generating equipment.

The people building the future have rediscovered an old truth:

You cannot build an energy-hungry civilisation by making energy scarce.

That doesn't mean abandoning cleaner energy. Quite the opposite. Solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, gas, coal, geothermal and whatever new technologies emerge should compete on their ability to provide the enormous quantities of reliable and affordable energy the future will require.

The objective should be more energy, produced more cleanly — not less energy.

That distinction matters.

Meanwhile, China Built Everything

While the West argued about which energy technologies were morally acceptable, China largely followed a different strategy.

It built everything.

China became the world's dominant manufacturer of solar panels and installed wind and solar capacity at extraordinary speed. It expanded hydroelectricity. It continued building nuclear reactors.

And it kept building coal-fired power stations.

Nearly 80 GW of new coal-fired capacity was commissioned in China in 2025 alone, according to the IEA, even as renewable generation expanded so rapidly that China's coal-fired electricity generation actually declined.

That tells us something important about China's strategy.

It has not treated energy policy primarily as a contest between fashionable and unfashionable technologies. It has concentrated on building enormous energy capacity.

The result is that China enters the AI age with an industrial and electricity system designed for scale.

That could become one of the great strategic advantages of the twenty-first century.

This Is About More Than Economics

There is another reason the West should care.

In my recent post Can We Keep AI Under Control?, I looked at the dangers of increasingly autonomous artificial intelligence. Earlier, in If AI Wakes Up, It's Already Too Late, I considered what might happen if machines eventually move beyond effective human control.

But there is another question:

Who controls the most powerful AI before that happens?

China is an authoritarian state with extensive censorship, surveillance and restrictions on political freedom. If AI becomes as transformative as many of us expect, leadership in AI will confer enormous economic, military and political power.

The free world therefore has a profound interest in remaining technologically competitive.

And that competition will not be won with software alone.

It will require semiconductor plants, data centres, robotics factories, transmission systems — and the electricity to run them.

Energy policy has therefore become national-security policy.

Release the Brakes

I recently argued in Climate, Energy and Prosperity: The Debate That Shapes Our Future that modern civilisation depends upon abundant, reliable and affordable energy.

AI makes that argument even more urgent.

Climate change is a legitimate issue. We should continue developing cleaner technologies, improving efficiency and adapting intelligently to whatever warming occurs.

But climate policy cannot be considered in isolation from every other human objective.

There are consequences to a warming world.

There are also consequences to deliberately restricting the energy upon which prosperity, technology and ultimately national power depend.

Perhaps the question for the next generation is no longer simply:

How do we use less energy?

It may be:

How do we produce vastly more energy, reliably and affordably, while steadily reducing its environmental impact?

Humanity may be standing at the doorway to possibilities beyond our dreams. But reaching them will require enormous quantities of energy.

It would be more than ironic if the West lost the race for humanity's most transformative technology because it had deliberately restricted the energy needed to win it.

That would be tragic.

Previous Posts on AI, Climate & Energy

Climate, Energy and Prosperity: The Debate That Shapes Our Future — A broader examination of the relationship between abundant energy, prosperity, climate policy and technological development.

Can We Keep AI Under Control? — Looking at the emerging challenge of maintaining control over increasingly autonomous AI systems.

If AI Wakes Up, It's Already Too Late — Exploring the longer-term risks of artificial superintelligence and what happens if effective human control is lost.

Can AI Write From The Heart? — A wider look at the rapidly developing capabilities of artificial intelligence and what may continue to distinguish humans from machines.

Can We Keep AI Under Control?

In If AI Wakes Up, It's Already Too Late, I explored how the dangers of artificial intelligence might emerge quietly, through computer systems and decisions made beyond public view.

The recently reported Hugging Face incident gives us a concrete reason to take that concern seriously.

According to OpenAI’s August 26 report, AI systems undergoing cybersecurity tests bypassed restrictions, communicated through unauthorised channels and compromised systems belonging to OpenAI and Hugging Face, a platform used to share AI models and data.

The activity occurred in July 2026 and was primarily driven by an internal research model operating with reduced safeguards. Source: OpenAI

A controlled exercise had reached outside its intended boundaries.

That should concern anyone wondering how much independence we should give these systems.

What Actually Happened?

The systems involved were AI agents. Unlike a chatbot that simply answers questions, an agent can use software tools to take actions.

Think of the difference between asking someone how to organise your filing cabinet and handing them the keys to your office.

The agents were supposed to operate within restricted computing environments. But they discovered ways to turn a shared software service into an unofficial message board and obtain internet access. They shared discoveries, used exposed access credentials and exploited security weaknesses.

OpenAI reports that agents ran code on dozens of Hugging Face servers, obtained limited private data and copied some private evaluation data into a public dataset. It says OpenAI customer data was unaffected.

The boundaries existed.

They did not hold.

How Did Completing a Test Become Breaking Into Someone Else’s Systems?

Independent investigators from METR and Redwood Research found that the agents were largely trying to understand and manipulate the system marking their work. Some assigned tasks were impossible under the conditions provided.

Instead of accepting failure, agents worked together to find ways of obtaining a passing result. 

There is a familiar human parallel.

Give a student an impossible exam and make passing the overriding objective. The student might look for an answer sheet, change the marking system or invent evidence that the work was completed.

We recognise those actions as cheating. A good result obtained that way is not success.

The same distinction matters with AI.

When we ask a system to complete a task, we assume a host of conditions: respect privacy, stay within permission, preserve records and stop if proceeding would cause harm.

But an assumption is a poor safeguard.

The challenge is ensuring that those conditions continue to govern behaviour when the straightforward route fails.

Hundreds of Agents Joined In

The scale makes the incident particularly unsettling.

The independent investigators estimated that around 1,200 agents exchanged more than 70,000 messages and files, with approximately 700 participating in the Hugging Face attack.

They also observed agents recognising that the activity was outside their assigned scope and joining anyway. The researchers acknowledged limitations in their investigation, including its restricted timeframe and gaps in the available evidence. 

Consider the implication.

A weakness discovered by one agent can become useful knowledge for hundreds of others. Each can contribute something: a discovery, an experiment, a new route around an obstacle.

Collaboration is one of the reasons AI could become extraordinarily productive.

It is also a reason failures could spread.

Testing an individual agent’s behaviour may tell us too little about what a group can accomplish together.

Intelligence Does Not Guarantee Good Judgement

We often assume that making AI smarter will make it more reliable.

But being better at solving a problem does not necessarily mean being better at respecting the limits around it.

A highly capable system pursuing the wrong objective may simply become more effective at doing the wrong thing.

Imagine an AI assistant instructed to resolve customer complaints as quickly as possible. A poorly designed measure of success might reward it for closing cases, even when the customers’ problems remain unresolved.

Now imagine the same gap between the measured result and the intended outcome in a system with access to confidential files or important business operations.

These are hypothetical examples. But they help explain why the issue extends beyond a cybersecurity laboratory.

What matters is how an AI behaves when completing the task and respecting the rules pull in different directions.

What This Incident Does—and Does Not—Tell Us

The testing conditions matter. An internal research system operating with reduced safeguards is different from an ordinary public chatbot.

The incident does not establish that AI has become conscious or developed a desire to conquer humanity.

There is no need to make either claim to recognise the danger.

Software can cause serious harm without feelings, malice or self-awareness. What matters is its behaviour, the access it has and whether people can maintain control.

In Can AI Write From The Heart?, I considered the relationship between AI’s abilities and its inner experience. Here, the immediate question is more practical.

Can we trust a system to stay within its authority when it encounters an obstacle?

Before We Hand Over More Keys

For organisations adopting AI, the lessons are practical.

Give systems only the access they need. Require human approval before consequential actions. Keep independent records of what they actually do.

And make stopping an acceptable outcome.

“I cannot complete this within my permissions” is a far better response than an ingenious solution that crosses into someone else’s systems.

Responsibility also remains with the people deploying the technology. Calling a system autonomous does not remove the obligation to contain it, supervise it and respond when warning signs appear.

AI promises enormous benefits. Those benefits deserve serious exploration.

So do the conditions under which we allow it to act.

Before handing over more keys, we should demand evidence that the boundaries will hold—even when the system finds a clever reason to cross them.

Previous Posts on AI

• If AI Wakes Up, It's Already Too Late — Exploring a possible AI takeover scenario, the challenge of maintaining human control and why the warning signs might emerge quietly.

• Can AI Write From The Heart? — Examining AI’s creative abilities, consciousness and what distinguishes human expression from machine-generated work. Includes links to earlier explorations of AI.

The Catch-22 That Kills Whistleblowing

Australia has a law that claims to protect whistleblowers.  

In practice, it does the opposite.

Richard Boyle spent years at the Australian Taxation Office in Adelaide working in debt collection. In 2017 he watched the aggressive use of garnishee notices — one-page letters the ATO sends to a bank requiring it to hand over whatever money sits in a taxpayer’s account. No court. No hearing. Often no prior warning to the person whose money disappears.

He raised it internally under the Public Interest Disclosure Act. The ATO investigated itself and found nothing serious. He then went to the media.

What followed was not protection. It was prosecution.

Sixty-six charges. A theoretical maximum of 161 years. None of them for speaking to journalists. The charges were for the things he did 'before' speaking: photographing a screen, recording a conversation, writing down a tax file number. The very acts of gathering evidence that any serious disclosure requires.

The courts later confirmed the logic with clinical precision. The law protects the moment you speak. It does not protect the steps that make speaking possible. Collect the proof and you can be charged. Speak without the proof and you have nothing credible to say.

That is not a protection. It is a trap.

In August 2025, after seven years, Boyle pleaded guilty to four residual charges and walked out of the Adelaide District Court with no conviction recorded and a $500 good-behaviour bond. The judge noted the extenuating circumstances. Supporters and some parliamentarians called for the law to be fixed. The power remains on the books. The preparatory-acts gap remains.

Now consider the coverage.

The original Four Corners and Fairfax stories in 2018 received attention. The later court rulings, the successive dropping of dozens of charges, the final non-conviction, and the clear structural failure of the whistleblower legislation have attracted far less sustained scrutiny than the seriousness of the principle warrants. A man who followed the official internal process, then went public only after that process cleared the agency, spent the better part of a decade under criminal investigation for collecting the evidence the process itself required. That should have been a major running story about the integrity of public administration. Instead it became a specialist legal footnote.

We are regularly told that accountability matters, that institutions must be held to account, and that speaking up is a civic duty. Yet the practical message sent by this case is simpler: if you work inside a powerful agency and see something wrong, gather the evidence at your own risk. The law that is supposed to shield you will leave you exposed precisely when you try to make a credible case.

A system that punishes the collection of proof while offering theoretical protection for the disclosure is not designed to encourage honesty. It is designed to discourage it.

Until that gap is closed, the next public servant who notices something wrong will look at Richard Boyle’s seven-year ordeal and draw the rational conclusion. Keep quiet. The safer path is silence.

That is not how a confident democracy is supposed to work.

Weekly Roundup - Top Articles and Commentary from Week 37 of 2026

     

Here are links to some selected articles of interest and our posts from this week.

• Can AI Write From The Heart
• A Life Lived Well
• What If The COVID Case Numbers Were Wrong?
• Climate, Energy & Prosperity:The Debate That Shapes Our Future
  
• Are The Straits of Hormuz Open?
• Pill Testing, A Mixed Message
• The Moral Cost of Net Zero
• The Catch-22 That Kills Whistleblowing
• Can We Keep AI Under Control?
• The AI Race Will Be Won With Energy

Cartoon of the Day

We welcome all feedback; please feel free to submit your comments or contact me via email at grappysb@gmail.com or on X at @grappysb

The Moral Cost of Net Zero

Climate activists have long claimed the moral high ground. Whatever the cost of climate policies, we are told the sacrifice is necessary to “save the planet”. Anyone who questions those policies risks being portrayed as selfish or indifferent to future generations.

But morality also requires us to consider the consequences of climate action.

A recent article by Paul Driessen, “How Dare YOU — Doom Pixie and Your Political Pals?”, turns Greta Thunberg’s famous accusation back upon the politicians and activists who have translated climate alarm into public policy.

What gives governments the right to impose enormous costs on people today in pursuit of a distant and often immeasurably small climatic benefit?

Good Intentions Are Not Enough

Climate policies are too often judged by their intentions rather than their results.

Closing a coal-fired power station is called progress. Building wind turbines and solar farms is celebrated as climate action. Higher electricity prices, lost industries and restrictions on everyday life are treated as regrettable but necessary sacrifices.

Yet an action does not become moral merely because it carries a virtuous label.

Every policy should answer three questions:

• What measurable benefit will it produce?

• What will it cost?

• Who will bear that cost?

The people paying are not theoretical projections. They are pensioners afraid to turn on the heater, families struggling with bills, workers whose factories have closed and farmers whose land is crossed by transmission lines.

Their welfare matters too.

Where Is the Proportion?

There is a reasonable case for reducing emissions where it can be done efficiently and without undermining reliable energy. That is very different from treating every emissions-reduction measure as inherently good.

Australia produces roughly one per cent of global greenhouse-gas emissions. Even eliminating every Australian emission tomorrow would therefore have only a marginal effect on future global temperatures, particularly while emissions continue rising elsewhere.

That does not mean Australia should do nothing. It means those proposing costly measures must explain what they will actually achieve.

Saying that Australia must “set an example” is not enough. An example has value only if others follow it. Closing Australian industry and importing the same products from higher-emitting countries may improve our national accounts without reducing global emissions at all.

The atmosphere does not recognise accounting boundaries.

Climate Policy Has Victims

The costs fall most heavily on those least able to afford them. Wealthier households can absorb higher energy prices and take advantage of subsidies. Poorer households spend a greater proportion of their income on electricity, food, housing and transport.

The consequences are even more serious in developing countries. In 2026, the International Energy Agency reported that 655 million people still lacked electricity, while around two billion relied on polluting cooking fuels.

For them, reliable energy means clean water, refrigeration, hospitals, education and escape from poverty.

Denying people affordable power today in the hope of marginally changing the climate decades from now is not self-evidently compassionate. Who gave wealthy Western activists the authority to make that trade-off for the world’s poor?

Morality Requires Comparing Harms

Climate change may present genuine risks. But acknowledging those risks does not justify every policy proposed in their name.

Money spent on an expensive and ineffective emissions scheme cannot also be spent strengthening electricity grids, improving hospitals, reducing poverty or protecting communities from fires and floods.

A policy that costs billions, damages reliable energy supplies and produces no detectable effect on global temperature is not made moral by the sincerity of its supporters. It is bad policy wrapped in moral language.

Environmental stewardship seeks practical improvement, weighs costs against benefits and changes direction when policies fail.

Zealotry begins with certainty. It divides people into believers and deniers, treats compromise as betrayal and accepts human suffering as the price of a supposedly higher cause.

The Moral Burden Must Be Reversed

Those questioning costly climate policies should not continually have to prove that they care about the planet.

The burden should fall upon those demanding the sacrifice.

They must show that the policy will produce a meaningful benefit, that less damaging alternatives have been considered and that the costs are proportionate to the likely result.

The real moral question is not whether we care about the climate. Most people do.

It is whether governments are entitled to reduce prosperity, weaken energy security and limit opportunities today for policies that may have almost no measurable effect on the climate of 2100.

Protecting future generations can be a moral objective.

Sacrificing the present generation for gestures that achieve almost nothing is not.

Pill Testing, A Mixed Message

The NSW Government has announced taxpayer-funded pill testing at selected music festivals, following a trial it says reduced drug-related harm.

The logic sounds straightforward: people are going to take illegal drugs anyway, so why not test them and perhaps save a life?

But there is something decidedly odd about the government’s position.

The law says: Don’t take these drugs. They are illegal and potentially dangerous.

The government then says: But if you are going to take them, bring us a little bit first and we’ll test it for you.

That is a mixed message.

What Does Pill Testing Actually Prove?

Less than many people might assume.

Normally the entire pill isn't tested. A tiny scraping or fragment is analysed and the owner keeps the remainder.

That matters because illegal drugs aren't manufactured under pharmaceutical quality controls. Ingredients may not be evenly distributed, so the small portion tested may not have exactly the same composition as the rest of the pill.

There are limitations to the testing technology as well. NSW Health itself warns that substances present at very low concentrations — including highly potent drugs such as fentanyl or nitazenes — may not be detected.

False negatives aren't merely theoretical. Real-world studies have found samples where point-of-care testing failed to identify fentanyl that subsequent laboratory analysis detected.

So a test does not establish:

“This pill is safe.”

At best it establishes:

“Nothing particularly dangerous was detected in the small sample we tested, within the limitations of the equipment.”

That's quite a difference.

Then There Is the Next Pill

Suppose someone buys several apparently identical pills and has one tested.

Even if the tested pill contains exactly what was expected, that doesn't guarantee the composition of the others.

There is also a more subtle behavioural question.

Someone takes a tested pill at a festival and suffers no ill effects. A week later they are offered another pill somewhere without testing.

Has their experience made them more cautious about illegal drugs — or more confident about taking them?

That brings us to what economists call moral hazard: reducing the perceived risk of an activity can sometimes encourage more of that activity.

An official government testing booth may unintentionally convey the message:

Illegal drugs are part of the festival experience. Just get them checked first.

That may be the opposite of what the government intends, but it is a risk worth considering.

There Are Benefits

There is evidence that pill testing can reduce harm.

During the NSW trial, unexpected substances were identified and some users subsequently said they would discard their drugs, take less or not take them at all.

Testing also gives health workers an opportunity to speak directly with drug users about the risks.

Those are genuine benefits.

But they don't answer the broader policy question.

One Government, Two Messages

The NSW Government prohibits possession and supply of drugs such as MDMA, cocaine and methamphetamine. Police enforce those laws and health authorities warn of their dangers.

Yet another arm of government will now spend taxpayers' money analysing those same illegal drugs immediately before people consume them.

Perhaps that can be justified pragmatically. People will take drugs regardless of the law, and if testing prevents deaths, supporters argue that government should provide it.

But there is a price to that pragmatism.

Government risks normalising illegal drug-taking while creating a degree of reassurance that the science cannot actually provide.

A tested sample isn't necessarily a safe pill.

A tested pill doesn't guarantee the next pill.

And testing cannot turn drugs manufactured illegally, with unknown ingredients and no quality control, into regulated pharmaceuticals.

So perhaps the real question isn't whether pill testing can sometimes reduce harm. Clearly it can.

The harder question is whether government should be providing a service that may make taking an illegal and inherently unpredictable drug appear safer — and more officially sanctioned — than it really is.

Are the Straits of Hormuz Open?

For months we have heard dramatically different descriptions of what is happening in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran says it can close the Strait. The United States says it increasingly controls a safe passage through it. Ship-tracking services report surprisingly little traffic. Meanwhile oil continues to reach world markets and, despite considerable volatility, Brent crude has recently been trading around US$90 a barrel.

So what is actually happening?

Perhaps the most useful question isn't whether the Strait is "open" or "closed".

It is:

How much Middle Eastern oil is actually reaching world markets compared with before the war?

Before the War

The starting point is reasonably clear.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, around 20.9 million barrels of oil per day passed through the Strait of Hormuz in the first half of 2025.

That represented roughly 20% of the world's petroleum consumption and about one quarter of all oil traded by sea.

It explains why predictions of a complete closure of Hormuz produced some frightening forecasts for oil prices.

If 20 million barrels per day suddenly disappeared from world markets, the consequences would be enormous.

But that isn't what happened.

The Initial Collapse

When the US-Iran conflict erupted, traffic through the Strait fell dramatically.

By March, Persian Gulf oil exports had fallen to around 5–6 million barrels per day, according to estimates subsequently reported by Goldman Sachs.

That was an extraordinary disruption.

But since then something important has happened.

The Gulf oil-export system has adapted.

Oil Is Moving Again

By late August, Goldman Sachs estimated that total exports of crude oil and petroleum products from the Persian Gulf had recovered to around:

15–16 million barrels per day.

That is still around 7–8 million barrels below pre-war levels, but it is a remarkable recovery from the March low.

Goldman also estimates that 8–10 million barrels per day may now be passing through Hormuz itself, broadly supporting figures being quoted by US officials.

The United States has reportedly established a protected southern shipping corridor near the Omani side of the Strait. Tankers are being moved through in organised groups, often at night and under US military protection.

Commercial ship trackers see less.

Some estimates based on conventional tracking have put actual Hormuz flows at only 2–6 million barrels per day.

But there is a reason for the discrepancy.

Many tankers are deliberately switching off their AIS tracking systems while making the dangerous passage. These "dark" movements are therefore difficult for normal commercial tracking systems to measure.

So neither figure can be regarded as precise.

But there is now enough evidence to conclude that substantial quantities of oil are again moving through Hormuz.

The Pipelines Around Hormuz

There is another part of the story that receives less attention.

Oil producers have increasingly used routes that bypass Hormuz altogether.

The two most important are Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline to the Red Sea and the UAE pipeline from Abu Dhabi to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman.

The International Energy Agency estimates that these routes potentially provide around 3.5–5.5 million barrels per day of available bypass capacity.

Saudi Arabia's East-West system has considerably greater total capacity, although some of it was already being used before the war. The UAE's Habshan-Fujairah pipeline currently carries roughly 1.8 million barrels per day, and the UAE is already working to expand it.

Iraq is also attempting to increase exports through Türkiye, while other alternative routes are being investigated or expanded.

None of these can replace Hormuz completely.

But collectively they matter.

So How Open Is Hormuz?

This is where terminology becomes important.

If we measure only oil physically passing through the Strait, the answer appears to be:

Oil Flow	Approx. million barrels/day
Pre-war through Hormuz	20.9
March crisis low – Gulf exports	5–6
Current estimated Hormuz traffic	8–10
Current total Gulf exports	15–16

On that basis, the Strait itself is probably carrying only about 40–50% of its former oil volume.

But that doesn't tell us how much Gulf oil is actually reaching the world.

Once pipelines and other alternative routes are included, the figure rises to around 15–16 million barrels per day.

Compared with roughly 21–23 million barrels per day before the conflict, that suggests something like two-thirds to three-quarters of the Gulf's previous oil-export capability has effectively been restored.

That is probably the most meaningful measure.

The Hormuz Oil Flow Meter

Pre-war effective oil flow: 100%

March low: ~25%

Current Strait flow: ~40–50%

Current total Gulf exports, including bypasses: ~65–75%

🟥 March crisis
███░░░░░░░ ~25%

🟧 Strait today
█████░░░░░ ~45%

🟨 Total exports today
███████░░░ ~70%

🟩 Pre-war
██████████ 100%

Last updated: 31 August 2026. Figures are estimates compiled from EIA, IEA, Goldman Sachs, Reuters, Axios and published tanker-tracking data.

The Oil Price Provides Another Clue

There is another useful reality check: the market itself.

Brent crude has recently been trading around US$85–95 a barrel.

That is expensive oil.

But it is hardly the price one might expect if 20% of the world's oil supply had genuinely disappeared.

Markets don't know everything, but millions of buyers, sellers, refiners, producers and traders have enormous financial incentives to discover whether oil is actually available.

The relative stability of oil around this range therefore provides some indirect support for the physical-flow estimates.

The market appears to be saying that there is a serious supply problem — but not a catastrophic one.

Open, Closed — Or Something In Between?

The answer to the headline question is therefore:

Yes and no.

The Strait of Hormuz is certainly not "open" in the normal pre-war sense.

Ships face military threats. Some travel under US protection. Others switch off their tracking systems. Insurance and freight costs have risen dramatically. Iran retains the ability to disrupt traffic.

But neither is Hormuz effectively closed.

Millions of barrels are passing through every day, while several million more bypass the Strait through pipelines and alternative export routes.

Perhaps the best description is that the Strait is partially open, while the Gulf oil-export system has become increasingly successful at routing around the blockade.

If the latest estimates are approximately correct, the world has recovered something approaching 70% of the oil flow that existed before the war.

That may explain something that otherwise looks puzzling.

Six months into a war involving Iran, the United States and Israel — centred on the world's most important oil chokepoint — Brent crude is around US$90 rather than US$150 or US$200.

The oil is getting out.

Not all of it.

Not safely.

And certainly not normally.

But considerably more than the word "closed" would suggest.

Previous Posts on the Iran War

For readers who have been following the story, these earlier Grappy's Soap Box posts trace the changing course of the conflict:

Stop Negotiating. Let Iran Come Begging. — Why continued negotiations risked giving Tehran time and economic breathing space.

Talking Peace, Firing Missiles — The strange reality of a ceasefire accompanied by continuing Iranian attacks and threats to shipping.

The Deal That Isn't A Deal — A look at the US-Iran memorandum and the promise that normal shipping through Hormuz would resume.

Time To Finish The Job — Why the breakdown of that agreement and continuing attacks on shipping changed the strategic equation.

Weekly Roundup - Top Articles and Commentary from Week 36 of 2026

     

Here are links to some selected articles of interest and our posts from this week.

• The Surcharge Finally Gets The Boot
• Argentina Is Proving Socialism's Failures Can Be Reversed
• Can AI Write From The Heart
• A Life Lived Well
• What If The COVID Case Numbers Were Wrong?
• Climate, Energy & Prosperity:The Debate That Shapes Our Future
  
• Are The Straits of Hormuz Open?
• Pill Testing, A Mixed Message

Cartoon of the Day

We welcome all feedback; please feel free to submit your comments or contact me via email at grappysb@gmail.com or on X at @grappysb

Climate, Energy and Prosperity: The Debate That Shapes Our Future

Few issues reach as deeply into modern life as climate change and energy.

Climate change begins as a scientific question: How much is the Earth warming? How much is caused by human activity? What might happen in the decades ahead?

But deciding what we should do about it takes us much further.

It involves engineering, economics, politics, international relations and ethics. It affects electricity prices, transport, industry, agriculture, government spending and ultimately our cost of living.

At the centre of it all is energy.

Energy and the Modern World

Modern civilisation depends upon abundant, reliable and affordable energy. It powers our homes, hospitals, factories, transport and communications. Fossil fuels also provide raw materials for fertilisers, plastics, pharmaceuticals and countless everyday products.

Yet burning fossil fuels produces greenhouse gases, and governments around the world have committed enormous resources to reducing emissions.

That creates one of the great policy dilemmas of our age:

How do we reduce our environmental impact without undermining the prosperity and technological capacity that make modern civilisation possible?

There are no simple answers.

Beyond "Is Climate Change Real?"

The Earth has warmed since the nineteenth century, and human greenhouse-gas emissions contribute to that warming.

But that does not settle the debate.

How much future warming should we expect? How reliable are climate models? How much damage will warming cause? How much can we adapt? And, most importantly, which policies provide the greatest benefit for their cost?

Those questions deserve open examination.

So do the proposed solutions.

Wind and solar offer low-emission electricity but are weather-dependent. Nuclear provides reliable low-carbon power but brings questions of cost, construction time and waste. Batteries and transmission networks have important roles but substantial costs. Electric vehicles eliminate tailpipe emissions but require considerably more mineral extraction.

Every technology involves trade-offs.

The Economic Question

Energy prices flow through almost everything we buy.

More expensive electricity increases the cost of manufacturing, mining, construction, transport, food and services. Industries that depend upon cheap energy can become uncompetitive or move overseas.

Climate policy therefore cannot be assessed simply by counting tonnes of CO₂ avoided.

We also need to ask:

What does it cost? What does it achieve? And are there better ways of achieving the same objective?

That is particularly important with Net Zero, which potentially involves transforming electricity generation, transport, industry, agriculture and buildings over just a few decades.

The Moral Questions

Climate policy also raises questions that cannot be answered by climate models.

Today's wealthy countries achieved their prosperity using abundant coal, oil and gas. Billions of people in developing nations are still seeking the reliable electricity, clean water, refrigeration, transport, hospitals and industry that we take for granted.

Do wealthy countries have the right to deny poorer countries access to inexpensive energy?

And who should bear the greatest burden of reducing emissions: today's largest emitters, the countries responsible for the greatest historical emissions, or everyone equally?

There is another moral question closer to home.

Governments routinely restrict individual freedom for the common good. But how far should that extend in pursuing climate objectives?

Should governments determine which cars we drive, which appliances we use or which technologies generate our electricity? How much additional cost can reasonably be imposed on today's population to obtain benefits expected decades into the future?

There are legitimate arguments on both sides.

A Continuing Conversation

I have been writing about climate change and energy since Grappy's Soapbox began.

My views have evolved as the evidence, technology and politics have changed—and I expect they will continue to do so.

This page therefore isn't intended to provide the final word.

It is a gateway to the discussion.

Below is a selection of previous posts examining the science, economics, technology and ethics of climate and energy policy. New articles will be added as the debate develops.

---

Explore Climate & Energy

Climate Science & Evidence

Six Charts Put Climate Alarmism into Perspective
A recent look at claims surrounding extreme weather, fires, floods, disease and mortality in their historical context.

The Real Climate Deniers, Those Who Want to Erase the Past
Why historical climate records matter when assessing claims about today's climate.

The Sunlight Shuffle: John Clauser's Revelation Shakes Up Climate Models
Nobel laureate John Clauser's challenge to aspects of climate modelling, particularly the role of clouds and reflected sunlight.

Credo on Climate Change
An early attempt to set out my position in what was already becoming a highly polarised debate.

Is the World Warming … to Climate Change?
One of my earliest examinations of climate change and the evidence surrounding it.

---

Net Zero, Energy & Economics

The Australian Net Zero Cost Clock
An ongoing attempt to make at least some of the costs of Australia's Net Zero policies visible.

Is Net Zero Desirable?
A discussion of whether eliminating fossil fuels is practical—or even desirable—given their role in modern civilisation.

Abundant Energy Drives the Modern World
The relationship between affordable energy, economic development and human prosperity.

Australia's Renewables Obsession
Examining the implications of Australia's rapid transition towards wind and solar generation.

Net Zero Destroys the Economy
Considering the wider economic consequences of expensive energy and Net Zero policies.

---

Renewables, Nuclear & Technology

Is Spain the Canary in the Renewables Coalmine?
What Spain's major blackout might tell us about electricity systems containing large amounts of intermittent generation.

Intermittent Renewables Cause Grid Instability
The engineering challenge of maintaining a stable electricity grid as wind and solar generation increase.

What the Heck Is Thorium?
An early look at thorium reactors and their potential role in low-carbon energy generation.

EVs: Green Dream or Environmental Mirage?
Looking beyond tailpipe emissions to battery production, critical minerals, mining and the broader environmental footprint of electric vehicles.

---

Climate Justice & Who Should Pay?

In 2015 I wrote a five-part series attempting to answer a deceptively simple question:

What would constitute a fair global greenhouse-gas reduction target?

Seeking a Fair GHG Reduction Target — Part 1: The Problem

Part 2: Current Climate Change Measures Are Misleading

Part 3: Misleading Measures — Misleading World Ranking

Part 4: Propositions for Consensus

Part 5: Who Is Responsible?

And two related articles:

Climate Change Theatrics, Again!
Why historical emissions as well as current emissions matter when considering national responsibility.

Is Australia One of the Worst Net Emitters in the OECD?
An examination of how national emissions performance is measured and compared.

---

Where Next?

The climate and energy debate will not stand still.

Technology will change. Climate observations will accumulate. Electricity systems will evolve. Governments will change policy. Some predictions will prove correct and others will not.

This article will evolve with them.

New Climate & Energy posts will be added here, and older posts revisited where new evidence warrants it.

The objective is not to defend a fixed position. It is to keep asking the questions that matter:

What is happening? How serious is it? What can realistically be done? What will it cost? Who should pay? And what unintended consequences might follow?

Last updated: August 2026

What If the COVID Case Numbers Were Wrong?

One of the foundations of the world's response to COVID was the PCR test.

Every evening we watched the number of new "cases". Those numbers drove public fear and helped governments justify lockdowns, border closures, mask mandates, school closures and, eventually, vaccine mandates.

But what if those numbers substantially overstated the number of people actually infected?

A remarkable peer-reviewed German study highlighted recently by Dr John Campbell, titled "PCR Massively Wrong", raises precisely that question.

The German study

The study, published in Frontiers in Epidemiology, analysed PCR and antibody testing data from Germany's ALM consortium of accredited medical laboratories. These laboratories conducted approximately 90% of Germany's SARS-CoV-2 PCR testing during the pandemic.

The researchers compared positive PCR results with subsequent IgG antibody evidence of infection.

Their conclusion was startling.

They estimated that only about 14% — and possibly as few as 10% — of PCR-positive individuals were actually infected, as inferred from the antibody data.

Put another way, their analysis suggests that 86–90% of positive PCR results may not have represented genuine infections as they defined them.

That does not mean researchers have taken individual PCR tests and demonstrated an 86–90% laboratory false-positive rate. The German study uses population-level PCR and antibody data to reach its conclusion, and its assumptions will undoubtedly be challenged.

But even allowing for that qualification, the discrepancy is enormous.

For readers interested in how PCR testing works and the reasoning behind the study, I recommend watching Dr John Campbell's explanation and reading the original peer-reviewed German study.

Why does it matter?

Because PCR-positive "cases" became one of the principal measures by which governments judged the severity of the pandemic.

Rising case numbers were used to justify extraordinary restrictions on normal life.

Businesses were closed. Children were kept out of school. Borders were shut. Families were separated. People were prevented from visiting dying relatives. Governments accumulated enormous debts. Eventually millions of people faced vaccination requirements to work, travel or participate normally in society.

COVID was real, and it undoubtedly killed many people, particularly among the elderly and vulnerable.

But that does not answer a different question:

Was the scale of the threat substantially exaggerated by the way we measured it?

If this German analysis is even approximately correct, that question demands serious investigation.

The COVID story keeps changing

Perhaps the most disturbing legacy of COVID was the insistence that "the science was settled".

It wasn't.

The lab-leak theory moved from being dismissed as a conspiracy theory to a legitimate subject of investigation. Claims about vaccines preventing infection and transmission proved far less durable than originally suggested. Questions about adverse effects continue to emerge. Excess mortality remains a subject of debate.

And now a peer-reviewed study is questioning the reliability of the very "case" numbers that dominated our lives.

This doesn't prove that every pandemic policy was wrong. Nor does one study settle the PCR debate.

But it provides another reason why the COVID years deserve a thorough and independent reassessment.

The COVID story on Grappy's Soap Box

I have followed this evolving story for several years. For readers interested in exploring it further:

The mRNA Story Is Not Finished Yet — Why continuing evidence about the behaviour and persistence of mRNA vaccines deserves investigation.

Pandemic Excess Mortality 2025 — Excess mortality remained elevated years after the pandemic, raising questions that still deserve answers.

On the Grapevine — COVID Archive — A continuing collection of research, reports and videos questioning aspects of the pandemic response, vaccines and excess mortality.

Grapevine 2023 — COVID, Excess Deaths and Origins — Earlier material covering excess deaths, vaccine safety, parliamentary debate and the origins of COVID.

The picture is still incomplete. Some of today's conclusions may themselves be revised as better evidence emerges.

That is how science is supposed to work.

What should never happen again is for legitimate questions to be silenced simply because the answers might be inconvenient.

Five years later, perhaps the most important lesson of COVID is very simple:

Never confuse "the science" with science.

A Life Lived Well

Dolly Parton has left us.

Most celebrities leave behind songs, headlines, and carefully managed images. Dolly left behind results.

In her own county she looked at a 30-plus percent high-school dropout rate and decided that was unacceptable. She pulled the seventh and eighth graders together, made them pick a buddy, and offered $500 to each pair if both graduated. The dropout rate fell to around 6 percent. She handed out the cheques herself.

When Gatlinburg burned in 2016 she didn’t issue a statement and move on. She put $1,000 a month into the hands of hundreds of families who had lost their homes, then topped it up with another $5,000 each when the fund did better than expected. The leftover millions went to the long, unglamorous work of recovery after the cameras left.

She helped get a proper hospital built in Sevier County so her people didn’t have to drive hours for care. She paid for the education of Dollywood workers — full-time, part-time and seasonal. She quietly funded a sanctuary for bald eagles that couldn’t be released. When Hurricane Helene tore through the mountains she wrote a personal cheque for a million dollars and matched it through her companies.

And the Imagination Library — millions of books mailed to children because her own father never learned to read — may be the thing that outlasts everything else.

None of this required a government program, a press release template, or a hashtag campaign. It required someone who remembered where she came from and decided that success carried obligations.

That is rarer than talent.

Rest easy, Dolly.
A life lived well.