Essay by Eric Worrall
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Australia can save the world by manufacturing cheap goods using green hydrogen.
Irrelevant to global decarbonisation? No, Australia’s crucial to it
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editorThe Coalition spent over a decade coaching Australia into a state of learnt helplessness over any action on climate change.
One of its most effective arguments was that Australia emitted only 1 per cent of all global greenhouse gases, so even if it eliminated all of them it wouldn’t make a jot of difference. What was the point of trying?
In truth, Australia has the potential to make a cut to global emissions of 8 per cent, according to new research by the eminent economist Ross Garnaut.
…
By what magical arithmetic can Australia eliminate 8 per cent of world emissions if it churns out only 1 per cent? By functioning as a major world supplier of zero-carbon goods and services which will allow the rest of the world, and China especially, to cut its emissions.
…
One of the book’s co-authors, ANU economics professor Ligang Song, says that “using Australian renewable electricity and hydrogen produced from renewables to convert [iron ore] into iron metal and steel would reduce global emissions by around 2 per cent – almost twice as much as Australia eliminating its own emissions”.
…
Read more: https://amp.smh.com.au/politics/federal/irrelevant-to-global-decarbonisation-no-australia-s-crucial-to-it-20221003-p5bmnv.html
Nobody to my knowledge has found a way to convert hideously expensive green hydrogen into competitively priced green steel and silicon.
Although hydrogen can in theory be used in place of coal to reduce ore into iron and silicon, in practice hydrogen is a bad substitute.
In steel, hydrogen impurities in steel are a disaster, they cause hydrogen embrittlement.
Hydrogen mixed with silicon is possibly even worse than using hydrogen to reduce iron ore. Silicon and hydrogen form toxic silane, which over the years has been responsible for a significant number of fatal industrial accidents.
Why do Australians fall for such absurd green narratives?
The reason appears to be that many Australians yearn for the days when Australia was a booming manufacturing hub, before Australian manufacturing went into decline 60 years ago (see the graph at the top of the page). The green industry narrative plays into this yearning.
The reality is Australia’s manufacturing decline will not be solved by a few solar panels.
As far as I can tell, the decline in Australian manufacturing was caused by a combination of greedy government tax rises, and later, in the 90s, rising energy costs, after the Australian government became obsessed with renewables.
Expensive, government subsidised green energy will not fix these problems.
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Professors of Economics should stick to economics and leave science to the scientists. In my school, I taught Economics and the Science teachers taught science. That seemed a very reasonable division of labour.
Australia has one of the highest labor rates in the world and couldn’t compete in the manufacturing sector with global competition using its cheap home grown FF energy, let alone using the most expensive form of energy possible, which is hydrogen generated from expensive and fully imported RE infrastructure. Of course the author of this article would understand this very obvious fact, including why all of their RE infrastructure is imported, despite the raw materials being mined in Australia and sent to China for processing.
Even if Hartchers pigs begin to fly…give China a couple of years to steal the technology and start production themselves and the Australian hydrogen industry will disappear faster than a Spanish solar panel!
There is no “green energy.” Wind mills and solar panels are 100% dependent on fossil fuels for their existence.
And hydrogen is NOT, and will never be, an energy “source.”
read Ross garnaut
immediately stopped and know its utter crap
All of these discussions about a country’s relevance to Climate Change/Global Warming are all complete nonsense. The only people that even consider such notions that any country has the capacity to impact Climate Change are those who continue to project CO2 is the climate control know, despite no supportive evidence. The situation is even more bizarre when you remember study after study of historic evidence shows CO2 having no correlation to the initiation of climate change but does show a strong correlation to be affected by climate change.
The impact sea temperatures have on what the climate does and hence what CO2 does seems pretty obvious to those with an open mind.
With all that, can I say Australia is one of the most blessed countries in the World. It has a population under 30 million on a land area equal in size to the contiguous states of the USA. Australia is self sufficient in energy, self sufficient in food production, self sufficient in all mineral resources, and self sufficient in forestry and fishing.
How did they ever get into a situation where a bunch of so called Green politicians ended up convincing Australians, they must atone for their immense good fortune and start wearing sack cloths and turn their industries into ashes?
More causes of the destruction of Australian manufacturing are the high cost of labour in Australia, high energy prices as the RET starts to bite and the removal of import duties to protect Australian manufacturers. Most of these are the result of government policies.
Ross Garnaut would not know if the bull was up him – on any subject you wish to nominate.
He has been a favorite of the far left Luvvies for decades.
Because Australia has such an enormous effect on the Pamet’s CO2 emissions (<1.3$) and therefore the apocalyptic climate change we are experiencing every single day, I have started to shallow my breathing and have decreased the number of breaths per minute appreciably.
Do you want my address for the Nobel Prize or the Congressional Medal?
I am surprised SMH is still published. Still Oz does have a 10% Green vote.
More food for my spinach, which will make make me stronger, so I always eat my ‘Greens’.
Regards
Climate Heretic
PS Apologies to Popeye
Another round of wishful thinking and deliberate misdirection but the acolytes. Problem is, in a democracy you eventually get fired for ruining peoples lives.
Expensive, government-subsidised ‘Green’ energy will only make all problems much worse. All governments have a solid track record of creating disasters instead of solving them.
The SMH article is so fanciful. Who make this stuff up?