Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova; Glencore produces large quantities of metallurgical coal, an essential component of solar panel and wind turbine manufacture. But greens still want them silenced and shut down.
‘Worse than tobacco’: Climate activists push for ban on fossil fuel ads
By Angus Dalton
July 24, 2022 — 1.41pmAustralia’s largest coal producer, Glencore, launched its first national advertising campaign last month with sweeping footage of glittering solar panels and an idyllic vista of twirling wind turbines.
At least one climate advocacy group argues such marketing should be banned in Australia, in a move similar to the outlawing of tobacco advertising three decades ago.
Comms Declare, a group made up of 300 marketing, public relations, advertising and media professionals, as well as 80 organisations that have committed to not supporting companies contributing to the growth of fossil fuel emissions in Australia, has launched a campaign of its own calling for a tobacco-style blanket ban on advertising by coal, oil and gas companies in Australia.
“We founded in recognition that, famously, marketing and PR has been used for decades to help polluting companies,” Comms Declare chief executive Belinda Noble said. “We want that to stop.”
…
Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/worse-than-tobacco-climate-activists-push-for-ban-on-fossil-fuel-ads-20220716-p5b24e.html
Vast quantities of coal are required to chemically process high quality sand or quartz, to produce silicon wafers for solar panels. Silicon production is similar to iron smelting, mixing coal with iron ore in blast furnaces, to strip oxygen from the ore and produce molten iron.
We are used to greens being engineering dyslexics, but their refusal to face reality, to accept how vital coal is to the manufacture of renewable energy systems, is one of the more ridiculous manifestations of this wilful ignorance.
Without coal companies like Glencore, there would be no green energy.
Greens should be encouraging companies like Glencore to produce coal, if they ever want their net zero green energy revolution to happen.
It’s time coal, gas, oil etc got on the offensive with adverts showing the benefits we all enjoy and how the world economy, both traditional and “green”, would collapse without fossil fuels
Why – they have never had higher profits. Building solar and wind farms places huge demand on real energy production. The clued up real energy suppliers love the mad waste going into things that use more energy than they produce. Why get off the gravy train that is so good for their business?
For now
Those record profits are being plowed right back into record R&D.
‘Why – they have never had higher profits.’
That, and the fact that they’re absolute cowards. Wouldn’t want to be thought badly of by the NY Times or the ABC now, would they?
In 30 years with mining, I approved only 1 advertisement to go public. As I predicted, it had bugger all effect.
We did set up phone polling system with head office staff volunteering to work a few dozen phones for a couple of hours after work. Only one citizen of the thousands we called ever asked who we were (we used a neutral mean-anything generic cover name)..Overall, little benefit except to confirm most of the public knew very little about economics, resources, ethics, governance. Nor did they care much, except for a tiny few folk who cared a lot.
Advertising is the curse of the 21st century so far. It drives social media which drives bullshit. It will fail because it’s false foundation fails – you cannot make many more of the public believe that the impossible has now become possible.
Geoff S
Would you believe that farming is racist?
oh lordy is there anything that isnt rayciss now?
ben eltons books gave some real scary plotlines of the utter stupidity of people, once I thought they were just fun and then…oh no this is exactly whats happening and he was that bit ahead and saw it.
a lot like the MaxHeadroom UK in the 80s was warning of what was coming
Yep. An advert listing all the hundreds/thousands of products that contain or are made with fossil fuels or their derivatives. Then a voice over announcing that without fossil fuels none of these things would be produced.
The greenies would soon wet their pants when they saw laptops, phones, and North Face jackets on the list.
It’s long past time IMO, Redge.
A rough estimate is that a solar panel in a grid supply network will take 83 years to recover the energy it took to produce it, transport it and mount it. Solar panels are an unsustainable device for energy conversion. Much smarter and way cheaper just to burn the coal for electricity production.
BHP run advertisements in Australia informing people how much copper it takes to make a wind turbine. Miners are set to dominate the business world as all economic output is directed at unsustainable methods of energy extraction.
Albo’s 83% target for wind and solar electricity will benefit Australian exporters of coal, bauxite and iron ore but impair the rest of the economy.
Rick, I agree that Miners will play a big, if not dominant part in our future success. Miners deal with tangible objects and concepts with little time for social fairy stories like ESG and LBGQ+ and global warming. They are into measurement, observation, verification, uncertainty, cost:benefit etc as you know.
Trouble is, as Richard Lindzen noted years ago, you need a high quality education and competence to get into mining, while topics like environmentalism and climate studies are full of the dregs of education. That is not about to change. Geoff S
Solar/electric panels were invented for satellites because the extension cords were too cumbersome.
The extension leads were much better than the catenary system that was there beforehand.
/sarc (stated for those too thick to see)
They do not actually want Green energy to happen. What they want, is to stop all forms of energy being available to anyone who does not measure up to their idea of, worthy consumer.
Draw your own conclusions of where that leads us.
We need to stop allowing the insane greens to run the asylum.
You sure do have to stop the inmates running the asylum .
We have to get the voters to see where these insane policies are taking us.
I think its high time to form Climate Realism parties to contest general elections .
These would get the message out there that there is no climate crisis .
That there will never be a climate crisis .
No politician or scientist can control the weather .
Billions of dollars is being wasted every year trying to go carbon neutral .
They would tell the public that this global warming scam is the biggest fraud the world has ever seen .
Amen!
I have stayed several previous times that the “crisis” is manufactured to control and subjugate the naive into becoming obedient “proles”.
One only hopes that there are enough rational thinkers remaining to see what is being foisted upon us.
Orwell’s “1984” was supposed to be a precautionary take, not a plan to follow.
What a pack of morons. Any advertising would be in trade magazines. We have f*** all high-tech manufacturing in Australia anyway. A purchasing department in a company would be sourcing any materials they need. A sales department looks for customers for their product.
Greens have zero ideas of how the world works.
Was Glencore thinking of advertising in Womens Weekly beside the bra and knicker ads?
I was thinking along the same line….even here in the US the oil companies almost never advertise. Once in a blue moon you might see an ad (on tv or on paper) virtue signalling something to the effect of “(insert name of oil supplier) is focusing on clean energy” with pictures of windmills and solar panels. There is a smattering of local advertising for suppliers of heating oil and LP gas for residential customers. And the only time you ever see any ads for gas stations are those focusing on various food and drink items available in the attached convenience stores. And that (the stores) are of course where gas stations make their money, as there is so little profit on fuel sales.
We are used to greens being engineering dyslexics, but their refusal to face reality, to accept how vital coal is to the manufacture of renewable energy systems, is one of the more ridiculous manifestations of this wilful ignorance.
I’m not so fussed about them going after CO2. Completely eradicating CO2 would kill all life on Earth, but I can’t see how they could have any impact on CO2 levels whatsoever. Most of their activity actually raises CO2 levels.
I am more worried about them going after Nitrogen. That is critical to agriculture, and it looks as if they are having some success in persuading governments to ditch it. No country has yet collapsed from activism against CO2, but Shri Lanka and the Netherlands are currently suffering greatly from N2 activism.
Anti-Chemical activism is very odd.
Anti-chemical activism is trendy. One major educational material source for school use tells us how CO2 dissolves in water to yield carbolic acid, a known toxin and dangerous smelly chemical that burns the skin and increases ocean acidity at a fanciful, furious rate. Horrible ignorance is beingi sold for profit to educate our young. Comes with other ani-chemical distorted propaganda. It is sickening. Geoff S
Do they ever report those burns from carbonated drinks?
Shhh! Don’t mention the Big Drink Conspiracy!
Is that the Big Cola Conspiracy?
BCC.
Easily confused with one of Gang Green’s [and Poisoner Putin’s] bigger facilitators, with an HQ in London, oddly enough!
Auto
It always amuses me to watch some idiot on TV explaining the “science” by dropping a piece of coral into a tank of pure acid, watching the coral fizzle away to nothing and then proudly declare that this is what “ocean acidification is doing right now!”.
It’s the equivalent of sticking someone’s head in a bucket of water, watching them drown, and then announcing that this is what happens if you drink a glass of water.
Educational source? Teaching that CO2 and water forms carbolic acid, when it actually forms carbonic acid — the stuff that makes drinks a bit tart?
Slowroll,
Yes. A mate is writing it up in detail so I will not steal his thunder, but there is a document for sale by a group who makes material for schools to use in their teaching. Here is a short part of it:
Press “Play” to watch the clip.
A direct effect of excessive CO2 production. The oceans absorb as much as 25% of all human carbon dioxide emissions. The gas then combines with other elements to form compounds such as carbolic acid.
Geoff S
Comms Declare, whoever they are, are idiots.
Fossil fuels notably coal and LNG made up about one third of Australian total exports in value (coal AUD 62b, LNG AUD 48b) in ’21 – ’22.
Banning fossil fuel ads would be like France banning wine ads or Spain banning olive oil ads.
Or the Dutch banning clog ads.
Commies Declare ?
😉
At least one climate advocacy group are complete whackjobs and should be ignored until there mental condition is fixed.
There fixed it for you
The condition shall hereafter be called Mad Dog Bandt Syndrome
And that dog is a chihuahua, same height as Bandt.
It’s about de-development
That’s why energy and food are under attack
👍 👍 Yup. When the global elites announce that there are too many people, and their paid-for puppets enact policies like Net Zero that are going to cause a lot of deaths, it’s probably safe to conclude that they want you dead.
It’s hard to keep up with whether Glencore is a hero or a villain.
If they truly wish to prove their point, I would suggest first liberating them from all the fossil fueled items and services in their lives to insure they can live in purity.
Once they have conclusively proven how much better off they are they are free to ask others to do same.
The fossil fuel companies should go on the offensive and challenge these idiot greens to spend just one month without any product that has fossil fuels involved in its production or supply. When they are starving and living in their own sh*t they’d soon change their little greenie minds.
I’ve challenged several alarmists on this. They come back with the claim that the world is so set up as to make it impossible to live without fossil fuels.
In their minds, it’s easy for society to switch to non-fossil fuels alternatives to everything. All that’s needed is the will to do so.
How about the Aussie Greens disconnect themselves totally from the grid for a year or two?
We can then have a discussion about how practical and affordable their ideas are.
Why should that happen, when the complainants have absolutely zero proof of any harmful effects? Time for a court case where these idiots would be compelled to produce their proof, or withdraw paying all costs. Isn’t there even one oil or coal company prepared to defend themselves?
The false equivalency to tobacco is stunningly stupid. Australia has banned tobacco advertising but not tobacco. 2.1 million Aussies (~10% of adults) still smoke even though a pack if cigs costs A$27. Australia government takes in $17 billion per year in tobacco taxes. Now keep in mind that tobacco has virtually no beneficial effect on users but oil, coal and gas are essential to human health, welfare and quality of life.
Yes if the intent is to ban ads for any products that can harm people’s health, why not single out bicycles?
How many people are admitted to hospitals or cemetaries each year after bicycle falls?
electric scooters are doing well too death injury and fires
try closer to 47 for a 20pack. they havent actually cut down smoking as much as they think
the chopchop markets apparently thriving..as they seem to have found checking sewage recently
You can’t have your cake and eat it .
Unless your a greenie .
Renewable energy built with fossil fuels and pretend it doesn’t happen .
Leftists know they can’t win an honest debate. That’s why their first reaction to any opposition is to ban it.
Processing those silicon wafers into solar cells doesn’t take as much energy as creating the wafers in the first place, however it is still a lot of energy.
Eric,
Your disclaimer about leaving out a few steps is well taken, but just for everyones’ information, the silicon produced in your graphic would be metallurgical grade suitable for say alloying a magnetic steel or wrought iron. To reach the level of purity need for electronic grade silicon ( 20 ppb impurity) would require a further electrolytic process, or a chemical process beginning with conversion to a silane (SiH4) or a chlorinated version like trichlorosilane. There is a lot of embodied energy in electronic grade silicon.
These are people who don’t want people deciding for themselves. They want to be the only voice heard because they have no argument that is believable.
Clean, green actually, renewable probably, with technology certainly, efficient, reliable, and nutritious in some ecosystems. Go hydrogen, go carbon, for green and viable.
What a silly Virtue Signalling advocacy. People don’t get sold on using fossil fuels by advertising — they tank up their ute and turn on the gas stove — because they need them.
All fossil fuel deliveries to silicon manufacturers need to be blocked, all fossil fuel inventory at the factory needs to be returned and the green devils made to pay for it all.
the abc and the fool Bandt will be right in there I bet. all the rabid anti everythings are crawling outta the woodwork, even funier is the recent govt realisation that china makes all the pV and if we get into ick were stuffed to be as squeakygreen as they pretend they want to be. rather amusing really
personally stuff the PV wherever its made and lets use the coal we have in abundance