Essay by Eric Worrall
The recent anti-renewables rally in front of Australia’s federal parliament appears to have encouraged leading opposition politicians to harden their stance on renewables.
Shock at call for moratorium on ‘reckless renewables’
The coalition has been accused of being out of touch with families and the climate for change by backing anti-renewable energy activists.
The Rally Against Reckless Renewables in front of Parliament House on Tuesday marked the start of the 2024 federal parliamentary year.
…
“Toxic rhetoric from Barnaby Joyce and other Liberal and National Party MPs at the rally today are stark reminders that the energy policy that lost the coalition the last federal election is alive and well,” Smart Energy Council CEO John Grimes said.
He said it was “outrageous” that Nationals leader David Littleproud backed the call for a moratorium on renewables, putting more than 60,000 Australian renewable energy jobs under direct threat.
…
Climate Capital Forum founder Blair Palese said the coalition’s campaign to suspend investment in decarbonisation was “reckless and shortsighted”.
“There is no time left for these delaying tactics and disinformation about the renewable transition,” she said.
…
Read more: https://www.aap.com.au/news/demo-against-reckless-renewables-as-parliament-begins/
“There is no time left for these delaying tactics” is exactly the kind of arrogance which kicked up so much rural opposition.
I’ve previously spoken in person to some of the people who attended the recent rally, at previous events in Widgee, Gympie and elsewhere.
My understanding, initially many rural folk were not hostile towards renewables, but they wanted the powerlines to be buried underground. They were worried about EMF emissions, and were also worried overhead power lines would cause problems if firefighting helicopters and aircraft needed to access their land. They didn’t want their tranquil rural view and amenity wrecked by unsightly power pylons. They also wanted to minimise the risk of downed power lines starting fires.
Rural people told me the power company response to their polite concerns was all too frequently “sign this or we’ll get a compulsory acquisition order and seize your land anyway”.
When grassroots movements gathered momentum, powerline companies made more effort to communicate, but these outreach efforts were marred by allegations of hostile acts, like claims power company representatives trespassed on people’s land to conduct surveys without permission, and removed and confiscated roadside protest signs.
The large rural rallies I attended weren’t intended to be one sided. The organisers sent sincere invitations to politicians and energy company representatives. Leaders of the grass roots rallies I attended were genuinely shocked their invitations were ignored by mainstream party politicians whom they had trusted for years to look out for their interests. Frequently, the only politicians who cared enough about concerned rural residents to show up to meetings were politicians who strongly oppose the green agenda, politicians like One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts and LNP MP Colin Boyce.
This is very much a political mess of the greens own making. Green and mainstream political unwillingness to listen, and unconcealed contempt and hostility for country people’s concerns, has hardened the hearts of the Aussie rural community, and turned what was a polite request for a little dialogue into hardline opposition to green energy projects.
Why are you objecting when you know I’m right?
Story tip:
https://redstate.com/benkew/2024/02/07/ford-announces-billions-in-losses-on-electric-vehicle-range-worse-than-even-expected-n2169794
And Toyota is the opposite – ~ $50 billion bottom line this year because they didn’t go all in with BEV commitment, stayed with hybrid.
Can we separate into “plug-in” BEVs and non-plug-in hybrids, please
A non-plug-in is still essentially a fossil fuel powered car with a battery and an electric drive system.
tru dat.
And the PHEV models are selling well, but the original Prius-style (and what Rud has as the Ford version) are still going strong.
Diesel Electric motive power is ages old !
Most non-electrified railway locos still use it.
All those big engines that really do the hard haulage work.
First diesel electric railcar was around 1914, iirc.
Refined over time to include battery assist so regen braking etc can be implemented for fuel efficiency etc.
Just a point of clarification.
All those exotic minerals and metals only produce electricity, as they CANNOT make any of the PRODUCTS being used in society.
The use of coal and gas is mainly for the generation of electricity.
Crude oil is virtually never used for the generation of electricity, but is the basis of the more than 6,000 products that did not exist 200 years ago.
We’ve become a very materialistic society over the last 200 years, and the world has populated from 1 to 8 billion because of all the products and different fuels for planes, ships, trucks, cars, military, and the space program that did not exist before the 1800’s. Until a crude oil replacement is identified, the world needs a back-up plan that replaces crude oil that will support the manufacturing of the products of our materialistic society.
Today’s materialistic world cannot survive without crude oil! Conversations are needed to discuss the difference between just ELECTRICITY” from renewables, and the “PRODUCTS” that are the basis of society’s materialistic world. Wind turbines and solar panels are themselves MADE from oil derivatives, and only generate occasional electricity but manufacture NOTHING for society.
How dare the ruling class, powerful elite, and media, avoid energy literacy conversations about the “Elephant in the Room”, as the end of crude oil that is manufactured into all the products and transportation fuels that built the world to eight billion people, would be the end of civilization as “unreliable electricity” from breezes and sunshine cannot manufacture anything.
Further, all the parts and components of wind and solar are made with the products based on crude oil.
The equipment to mine for those exotic minerals and metals is ALSO made with the products based on crude oil.
Rid the world of oil and we’re back to the pre-1800’s!!!!
Please share this information with your friends to further enhance conversations about Energy Literacy as Breezes and Sunshine cannot manufacture anything. Electricity CANNOT exist without crude oil !
I doubt heavy machinery- like farm tractors/harvesters, logging machinery, mining machinery, etc. will ever be electrified. Maybe, but at much higher cost which such folks in those industries cannot afford.
I doubt heavy machinery…
They’re trying, but I don’t think they’re going to sell very well.
Not to mention what the extra capital cost and productivity loss would do to food prices and thereby the cost of living…Considering back yard gardens are to be forbidden.
I clipped this from another post – I think at WUWT, but not sure.
The Caterpillar 797F dump truck is powered by a 4,000 horsepower turbocharged diesel engine. At full power it will require 2.98 megawatts of energy. Assume the truck runs at 50 per cent of maximum power for an eight-hour shift. It would consume around 12 megawatt-hours of electricity. It would need 120 of Tesla’s latest automotive batteries to power it.
I don’t have the knowledge to know how accurate this is, but suspect it is a reasonably accurate depiction. How long would it take to re-charge those batteries? How many of those trucks are used in the mining of the minerals needed for unreliables? What other heavy equipment is used – hydraulic shovels, front-end loaders, graders, bull dozers, etc? So, I don’t see electronic powered mining equipment coming to the rescue any time soon.
And, something else reported – again, I don’t have the expertise to verify, but this info is similar to what I have seen reported here and by Mark Mills:
A Tesla model Y battery takes up all of the space under the passenger compartment of the car.
To manufacture it you need:
–12 tons of rock for Lithium (can also be extracted from sea water)
— 5 tons of cobalt minerals (Most cobalt is made as a byproduct of the processing of copper and nickel ores. It is the most difficult material to obtain for a battery and the most expensive.)
— 3 tons nickel ore
— 12 tons of copper ore
You must move 250 tons of soil to obtain:
— 26.5 pounds of Lithium
— 30 pounds of nickel
— 48.5 pounds of manganese
— 15 pounds of cobalt
To manufacture the battery also requires:
— 441 pounds of aluminum, steel and/or plastic
— 112 pounds of graphite
The Caterpillar 994A is used for the earthmoving to obtain the essential minerals. It consumes 264 gallons of diesel in 12 hours.
Finally you get a “zero emissions” car.
Presently, the bulk of the necessary minerals for manufacturing the batteries come from China or Africa. Much of the labor for getting the minerals in Africa is done by children! If we buy electric cars, it’s China who profits most!
BTW, this 2021 Tesla Model Y OEM battery (the cheapest Tesla battery) is currently for sale on the Internet for $4,999 not including shipping or installation. The battery weighs 1,000 pounds (you can imagine the shipping cost). The cost of Tesla batteries is:
Model 3 — $14,000+ (Car MSRP $38,990)
Model Y — $5,000–$5,500 (Car MSRP $47,740)
Model S — $13,000–$20,000 (Car MSRP $74,990)
Model X — $13,000+ (Car MSRP $79,990)
It takes SEVEN years for an electric car to reach net-zero CO2. The life expectancy of the batteries is 10 years (average). Only in the last three years do you begin to reduce your carbon footprint. Then the batteries have to be replaced and you lose all the gains you made in those three years.
1 tonne of lithium, requires 2200 tonnes of fresh water to process.
Then I wonder what happens to that water? Is it cleaned or just dumped somewhere- back in a river, polluted?
My understanding is that here in Wokeachusetts- the Net Zero loonies in the state government do understand that some big machines may never become EVs. So, they want to make up for it with—- of course…. carbon credits. And, by locking up all the forests! Yes, they’d like to kill the rather small forestry economy in the state and the entire region- despite the fact that 99% of all the wood consumed in the state already from outside the region. If they allowed forestry to grow- it could produce 5-10 times more wood- they love “locally grown food” but hate “locally grown wood”.
“they love “locally grown food” but hate “locally grown wood”.
A very pertinent comment. 🙂
That Tesla battery weighs between 1,000 – 1,100lbs so 120 of them would be 60 – 66 tons of Additional tare weight and reduce what can be hauled per trip also increasing costs and end pricing
Many mines running 100 ton dump trucks use electricity with overhead wires. Large equipment is easily and economically electrified, just not with batteries.
The serial boondoggery with transport has been to try to electrify personal transport except in warm, crowded cities with short travelling distances.
Street cars in Chicago ran on compressed air provided by Taylor hydraulic compressors until 1935. They were replaced by electric trams. People used to be able to travel from New York to St Louis on interconnecting trams, all of which were electric. The foolishness is batteries, not electricity. The heaviest transport in Europe has long since been powered by electricity. The Swiss have barely used anything else since the 50’s.
Barnes M
i visited a large copper open mine in British Columbia in the 80’s. The huge excavators that loaded those huge trucks were powered by electricity. No batteries, just cables in the ground.
Toronto has for many years had a fleet of buses with tires and overhead electric contacts. No train tracks.
Electric trains often do not have batteries or a third rail on the ground. They have overhead wire contacts.
So it is a matter of technology choice rather than batteries per se. If we asked engineers for solutions instead of agitators and politicians, even mobile applications could be solved with electricity.
Personally I like the idea of building main roads with induction capabilities and charging vehicles as they pass.
and now Canada wants to put people in jail for saying anything like what you have just posted – perhaps that is a sign that they are losing the battle
Yep.
NDP bill would prescribe jail terms for speaking well of fossil fuels
Fortunately, private member’s bills rarely pass into law. But this shows the level of insanity present in Canada’s ruling class. (The NDP is a far-left political party.)
Indeed, the world economy today cannot survive without oil. That, I strongly suspect, is why the high priests of the green religion, and those that pooh-pooh “materialism” so much, want its production and use suppressed.
The Australian version of the Swamp thinks ignoring objections to their policy will make it go away.
Even big green is having to do it on the cheap(ha!) – pylons etc rather than buried underground.
But the problem is a difficult one when you’ve convinced yourself that you cannot be wrong – even in the face of evidence confirming it.
It’s a monochrome [woke] world; either you’re with us or you’re against us.
The maximum capacity of underground cables is <70 kw. Overhead long distance transmission lines are typically 1,000,000 kw or higher. These lines operate at several hundred thousand volts which would require very thick and expensive insulation to burry while overhead lines just require adequate separation.
Don’t you have lightning in Australia? There goes your underground cables. Hopeless.
Sorry. That’s nonsense. HVDC easily manages 500MW per cable for example for the 2GW IFA1 link between the UK and France.
How dare anyone challenge the authorities! It’s traitorous. Dam climate deniers! Don’t they know the oceans are boiling and that there are now far more droughts, floods, atmospheric rivers, hurricanes, forest fires, diseases, car accidents, wars, plagues, threats from ETs, asteroids, etc.- all due to THEIR emissions of carbon pollution! Off with their heads! /sarc 🙂 🙂 🙂
How long till they define opposition to themselves as being a form of insurrection, which will disqualify you from holding any public office?
Fun, nay absurd, Story Tip:
Anglo descended Americans get ready for a shock
“”The first Britons were Black
The exhibition at the Black Cultural Archives, which receives funding from Lambeth council and Arts Council England, is based on the Bloomsbury children’s book Brilliant Black British History, by Atinuke, the Nigerian-born poet and author.
…
Britain was Black for 7,000 years “”
…
The Brilliant Black British History exhibition, which runs until January 28, covers the racial makeup of Britain from per-history to the modern-day, and claims that the 3rd century AD Roman Emperor Septimius Severus was “a Black Roman ruler””.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/27/the-first-britons-were-black-exhibition-on-diverse-history/
Historian? Archaeologist? Learned scholar? No, Atinuke is an oral storyteller of traditional African folktales.
But white America can rest easy – it’s really black.
It’s been known for along time that early Briton’s were black (with blue eyes).
Cheddar Gorge has remains from which they got DNA:
First modern Britons had ‘dark to black’ skin, Cheddar Man DNA analysis reveals | Genetics | The Guardian
It should not be a surprise. Mankind evolved in Africa where high pigmentation helped prevent burning and cancers from the sun.
Obviously, mankind didn’t evolve to lose the melanin before moving to northern climes.
I thought he was more dark skinned, rather than black.
It’s no more absurd than the famous “Black Beethoven” meme, pushed assiduously by The Guardian, of course: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/sep/07/beethoven-was-black-why-the-radical-idea-still-has-power-today
Septimus Severus was from northern Africa, a Roman colony at the time, which, relatively speaking wasn’t all that long ago. His wife, Julia Domna, was from Syria, also a Roman colony. Neither were “black” as we currently divide up the human species.
Yes, and Cleopatra was noir…
Warning – the first comment to mention “Bigus Dickus” here will be removed.
Oh wait . . . ):
And coming up next . .. .
Archeological dig uncovers artifacts from ancient BLM riot.
Now I know what “black humour” means!
The way I understand it, the ancestors of most modern Northern Europeans stopped off in Ukraine (which, in breadbasket terms, is to Europe as the Great Plains are to North America), and stayed there long enough to lose a fair bit of melanin before moving west.
Here it is, in all it’s glory.
Ricky Gervais sketch on cultural appropriation.
Not for those of a sensitive nature. Guardian readers beware.
and isn’t it pathetic that these days we have to issue a “sensitivity warning” before we write, say, sing, show or even nod about any topic, let along laugh out loud at it.
I vehemently maintain that as soon as we lose our sense of humour, it’s time we checked out. Permanently.
The ability of governments to step all over people’s rights and desires at their own expense to fulfill an unproven theory is totalitarianism. When did we vote to exchange reliable energy for unreliable energy? How about the vote to do away with ICE cars and replace them with EVs? Did the UK vote to convert themselves to heat pumps? What was the percentage of the vote to require new homes to be electric only that said no? When the people voted to give subsidies to so called renewable energy what were those percentages? All rhetorical questions that need to be asked of the candidates before you vote for them ….. or not.
The federal bureaucrats are assuming more and more power because Congress has neither an incentives nor the will to stop it. Only the PEOPLE can stop this and the proclivity to spend beyond their means by voting for Congress members that have the courage to stop it.
Just desserts for all the progressives. They will reap the rewards for destroying people’s lives and comforts, while failing to have any significant impact on the bogey man climate change.
This quote from William F. Buckley, Jr. is on the Mark Steyn site and seems quite apt here
“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views,
but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
Yep.
The rustics of the Australian outback simply don’t understand that they’re unqualified to make serious decisions about the production and use of energy. It’s just too complicated. Best to leave it to the “rootless cosmopolitans of the world cities”, as Spengler called the self-appointed elite.
I don’t think so.
It’s questioned if you are thinking at all 😀
You don’t think.
Greens are perpetually shocked.
Shocked, stunned, stupified, dazed, confused….
It’s just who they are.
Didn’t you see the hissy-fits from the green scammers…
Just part of being a far-leftist..
Petulant children when they don’t get their own way.
No, I didn’t.
So, not paying any attention to what’s going on..
Not even caring, just spouting uninformed gibberish, as per usual.
Refusing to see what you don’t want to see. Again.
Socialists spend so much time in their carefully groomed echo chambers, that many of them are honestly surprised to find out that there actually are, people out there, who disagree with them.
Nothing like a bit of Eminent Domain to make your pi×× boil and your index finger twitch.
Story tip:
300 years of sclerosponge thermometry shows global warming has exceeded 1.5 °C
Abstract
Anthropogenic emissions drive global-scale warming yet the temperature increase relative to pre-industrial levels is uncertain. Using 300 years of ocean mixed-layer temperature records preserved in sclerosponge carbonate skeletons, we demonstrate that industrial-era warming began in the mid-1860s, more than 80 years earlier than instrumental sea surface temperature records. The Sr/Ca palaeothermometer was calibrated against ‘modern’ (post-1963) highly correlated (R2 = 0.91) instrumental records of global sea surface temperatures, with the pre-industrial defined by nearly constant (<±0.1 °C) temperatures from 1700 to the early 1860s. Increasing ocean and land-air temperatures overlap until the late twentieth century, when the land began warming at nearly twice the rate of the surface oceans. Hotter land temperatures, together with the earlier onset of industrial-era warming, indicate that global warming was already 1.7 ± 0.1 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2020. Our result is 0.5 °C higher than IPCC estimates, with 2 °C global warming projected by the late 2020s, nearly two decades earlier than expected.
There are concerns about the methodology by Marotzke and Latif, I can’t find links to their comments as I started from German news. where the study was linked.
No need to look into the methodology. Their underlying premise is error:
Anthropogenic emissions drive global-scale warming
NOT proven.
Moreover, the burden of proof lies even more heavily than that with the AGW conjecturists. That is, they need to provide evidence countering this fact:
Human CO2 emissions up GREATLY. Warming not.
(Also, they must counter the data: in ice core proxy data, warming PRECEDES a rise in CO2 by a quarter cycle.)
I just found the complete German statement Marotzke gave:
“I can’t say anything about the geochemistry or how well the isotope ratio used reflects the local temperature. I assume that both are in order. But the statements that the proxy data for the local temperature reflect the globally averaged sea surface temperature are purely speculative and not backed up by solid evidence.”
“The problems are as follows: First, the trend used as evidence in Caesar et al. (2018) spans almost 150 years, but here we are talking about decadal fluctuations. This ‘evidence’ is therefore none. Secondly, the fact that the local temperature change in the Caribbean is unaffected by natural variability is only speculation and not supported by any evidence. Their own figure ‘Extended Data Figure 4’ blatantly contradicts this assumption. Thirdly, the calibration against the global temperature change over the period 1960 to 2017 is statistically untenable. It is correlated with the regression line. Fourthly, it is argued – demonstrably incorrectly – that in equilibrium the warming over land and over the ocean should be the same. Differences in transient warming are not only due to the higher heat capacity of the ocean.”
“The work provides no conclusive evidence that the sponge skeletons at a single location say anything about the global mean temperature.”
When asked to what extent the results prove that the global average temperature at the Earth’s surface has risen by 1.7 degrees since pre-industrial times:
“The conclusion that the world has already warmed by 1.7 degrees is untenable. The paper does not even begin to try to find out the cause of the different results.”
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Meanwhile I found some other comments here:
Hear, hear! 🙂
“industrial-era warming began in the mid-1860s,”
So, well before mythical human CO2 warming could have had any effect whatsoever.
Aim at foot.. pull trigger !!
Yes, It has warmed since the LIA, coldest period in 10,000 years.
Rejoice !!.. Be happy !!
“They were worried about EMF emissions, and were also worried overhead power lines would cause problems if firefighting helicopters and aircraft needed to access their land. They didn’t want their tranquil rural view and amenity wrecked by unsightly power pylons. They also wanted to minimise the risk of downed power lines starting fires.”
Greens didn’t invent power lines. In fact, the way most rural folk get electricity is that power lines brought it from far away. Australia has been criss-crossed with power lines for many decades.
“Australia has been criss-crossed with power lines for many decades.”
So there should be absolutely NO NEED to put in extra ones just to hook up to a supplier of random electricity.
Do YOU have a huge transmission line over your property.. would you want one?
Do you have an industrial wind turbine on your property?
Or are you a typical hypocritical marxist NIMBY. !
As an owner of a rural property for 20 years, I can inform Nick that transmission lines to new areas requiring grid electricity HAD TO PAY FOR IT THEMSELVES.
Our area formed a co-op to get our properties connected back in the 1990s. We undertook to do a lot of the route clearing work ourselves, which took us ~ 18 months.
Then, depending how far the junction line from the new trunk line to your house property or shed was, you paid for that yourself.
Ours was about $17k back then.
Imagine now if all new wind & solar transmission lines had to be paid for directly up-front by the promoters / intended users.
I’m absolutely certain these projects would die in the arse.
“Imagine now if all new wind & solar transmission lines had to be paid for directly up-front by the promoters / intended users.”
In fact, they do. But that is how goal posts keep shifting here. We had rural folks complaining how green electricity (but not the other kind) spoils their view, “emits” EMF, starts fires etc. But what about the existing network, that mainly exists to bring power to those same rural folk? That’s OK, we HAD TO PAY FOR IT OURSELVES!
You know very well what they’re concerned about Nick, it’s the “greenfields” new transmission lines to connect remote wind & solar “farms”* to existing main route lines.
Also, fun fact – rural property owners are being paid by the government to plant vast tracts of gum trees to consume CO2, while at the same time encouraging and subsidising wind & solar “farms” to cut down all the established trees they want to, because “saving the environment”.
“The stupid – it burns”
Way to miss the point, Nick. !
The local stuff is just simple timber post normal voltage stuff.
What these renewable scammers want to put in is massive steel pylons carrying high voltage, and industrial size hug wind turdines.
I repeat,. would you want that on or next your property.
Just reporting what I’ve been told and seen Nick.
perhaps if a few of your fellow travellers showed up at the meetings you could have persuaded them. But in most cases the only outsiders who responded to invitations were climate skeptics.
So rural people pretty quickly formed the only possible conclusion about who was listening to their concerns, and who wasn’t listening.
THe fact that there are already power lines, justifies adding more?
Came across this the other day.
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/HdM5HfdLCTSVCxnQ/
The amount of travel miles Malcolm Roberts has put in to meeting people in the last few years is off the scale. He even turned up to a local youth crime meeting in my area. Whenever someone sends him an invite there is a good chance he will be there.
Very nice Eric. Being polite is a good thing but there are times to be less polite. Now it is past time to be less polite.
Here is one of my gripes:
He said it was “outrageous” that Nationals leader David Littleproud backed the call for a moratorium on renewables, putting more than 60,000 Australian renewable energy jobs under direct threat.
This issue is not about jobs, it is about affordable, reliable, dispatchable energy generated in a responsible way and in a way that strengthens the grid.
Some of the people who didn’t show up to meetings when invited were liberal and national MPs, so there is a fair bit of bridge re-building to do, if they want to win future elections. Frankly I’m pissed he just called for a moratorium.
It might be a small step but it is a step forward. We need to embrace and celebrate every step forward. Cheers.
Too small for my liking. A federal LNP senator told me to my face there is no chance of them abandoning Net Zero goals. I told him I think they are falling between two chairs with their nuclear push. They’re so keen to try to please everyone, they’ve forgotten the most important selling point their energy policy could provide is immediate price relief.
Doesn’t look like a bad size crowd for WoKanberra.
A real tsunami of support, The anti renewables rally got about 200 people out of a population of 26 million. I’ve seen bigger rallies to support the local park. Lots of media coverage though.
Its WoKanberra.. ultra-leftist pubic serpents, high on the climate change kool-aide and trough.
Demonstrations like this show that consumers are suspicious of and tired of all these green products and initiatives being rammed down their throats, especially when they’re proving to be both unreliable and expensive as well. The clincher is that there’s no evidence that they’re alleviating a “climate crisis” that doesn’t exist in the first place.
The demo was an embarrassment, the numbers pathetic. I actually thought they might get a few thousand, but it seems that despite National Party tirelessly spouting nonsense about the terrors of renewables for years, they hardly convinced anyone. Bravo Australia.
WoKanberra is green/labor leftist NIMBY land. !
But its where the politician are.
Show us where the industrial size wind turbines are in Canberra or the ACT…
… see how much they really “believe”!
Out of touch, feckless greens.
where have I heard that before?
Wait, everywhere.
need elections in germany and canada now to show just how little these policies reasonate.