Essay by Eric Worrall
Last week Rising tide provided an impressive showcase for plastic fossil fuel products during their climate protest.
Arrests made as Rising Tide climate change protesters take to Newcastle Harbour over coal exports
By Romy Stephens and Bridget Murphy
In short:
Activism group Rising Tide says multiple people have been arrested at an anti-fossil fuels demonstration in Newcastle.
Thousands have attended the multi-day protest, where Midnight Oil front man Peter Garrett delivered a speech and performed.
What’s next?
The demonstration is expected to continue until Sunday evening.
Several people have been arrested at a climate protest in Newcastle that involved hundreds of activists taking to the city’s harbour in canoes and kayaks.
The demonstration, organised by activism group Rising Tide, was advertised as a “blockade” of the world’s largest coal port.
A Rising Tide statement said multiple people were arrested on Saturday afternoon, most of whom were released without charge.
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-23/police-arrests-climate-change-protest-rising-tide-newcastle/104620058
If you look closely at the picture above, you would struggle to find one thing which is not made of plastic, other than the ship carrying the coal. Their life jackets are plastic, their oars are made of plastic, their kayaks are made of plastic, their T-shirts are mostly plastic, and if we could see them, we would likely discover whatever they were wearing on their feet is likely made of plastic.
If all the petroleum products carried by and being used by the protestors were to suddenly disappear, they would all find themselves naked and swimming in the water.
China makes extensive use of coal in plastics synthesis. Mainland China has lots of coal but very little oil or gas, so their petrochemical industry is increasingly geared to use coal as its base plastic synthesis hydrocarbon.
Black Coal to White Trash
February 13, 2020 By Richard Liu
Coal has long been China’s “black gold,” supplying over half of the nation’s electricity. Yet as coal’s energy share decreases due to domestic action to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, a new coal industry is emerging. In China’s arid northwest, eight plants are pulverizing coal chunks and “cooking” coal powder into something more valuable than power—or maybe even gold. These coal conversion plants, soon numbering over 20, churn out chemicals to produce plastic.
In China’s Thirteenth Five-Year Energy Development Plan, central policymakers set a target to decrease coal’s share in China’s energy mix. Reducing coal power puts China on track to meet its 2015 Paris Agreement commitment to peak emissions by 2030. But China’s investments in coal conversion now threaten to increase coal consumption. The risk of China deepening its coal dependency intensified at the 2019 United Nations Climate Summit, when China’s State Councilor Wang Yi made no new commitments to cut coal.
…
China’s love affair with CTO
While most plastics are produced from natural gas or crude oil, Chinese plants are converting coal into chemicals used to produce plastics through direct coal-to-olefins (CTO) or the multistep coal-to-methanol (from coal) and then methanol-to-olefins. China is the only country to implement CTO at scale. From 2011 to 2015, China’s CTO capacity grew from 1 million tons annually (MTA) to 7.2 MTA, equivalent to 20 percent of China’s plastic feedstock capacity.
While methanol-to-olefins has become unviable in recent years due to uncompetitive methanol pricing, the profitability of CTO draws investment. According to Tian Yajun, a coal conversion expert from the National Institute of Clean and Low Carbon Energy, “CTO companies profit from high oil prices. In recent years, CTO has the best return out of all coal conversion industries because demand is high and the central government doesn’t control olefins or plastic prices.”
…
Read more: https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2020/02/black-coal-white-trash/
Most Kayaks today are made from polyethylene resins – a direct product of China’s growing coal to plastic chemistry.
I find it difficult to see this ridiculous plastic Rising Tide “climate protest” as a legitimate protest. I see it more as an unconscious cry for help from young adults who were failed by their teachers and the Aussie education system. If they had the faintest clue about science or the machine age products they take for granted, they wouldn’t be out there making such fools of themselves.
What happens to the coal which is exported from Newcastle? You are wearing it and sitting on it, Rising Tide.
Update (EW): purecolorartist points out I neglected to mention which Newcastle. The protest was in Newcastle, NSW, Australia.
FRom memory Germany ran WW2 on fuel from coal, because thy had no access to oilfields, which was a handicap as regards the highest octane fuels required for top performance fighters. OK for tanks/diesel engines, but they mostly used petrol, even in tanks. They had 87 octane. We had 100 Octane from the USA.
https://legionmagazine.com/gassed-up-the-juice-that-fuelled-victory-in-the-battle-of-britain/#:~:text=The%20newly%20developed%20aviation%20gasoline,in%20the%20war's%20early%20stages.
Don’t forget all those lifejackets !
And those paddles
All are GD hypocrites
They could return to the old style made from cotton fabric with kapok as the flotation material.
Or birchbark canoes!
Don’t forget the tents banners and general clothing for Gretahead playtime-
Climate protesters gather on Newcastle beach to protest coal exports after a NSW supreme court ruling | Watch
There is no cure for stupid.
Willfully stupid?
Just wondering how many of those 30 or so protesters seen in the lead photo of the above article have part of their life—or part of the lives of their loved family members and friends—dependent on manufactured pharmaceuticals (i.e., medicinal drugs).
Pharmaceuticals represent about 3% of petrochemical use but almost 99% of pharmaceuticals contain petrochemicals.
(ref: https://petroleumservicecompany.com/blog/history-evolution-medicine-2/ )
“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
— Luke 23:34, Bible (KJV):
Unfortunately they do and we desperately need an indigenous Trump-
Council sparks fury after pledging $22,000 to coal protesters
They probably worry that rising sea levels will inundate their boats.
Rising Tide… 1mm/year at Fort Denison ! SCARY ! 😉
The earth surface is in constant motion, rising and falling.
Some sea levels are rising wrt the earth, others are falling
Some lands are growing, others are shrinking
In the US, the east coast from New York City to Key West is slowly sinking, while New England is slowly rising, because it had a mile of ice on it.
The Netherlands built a sea wall system started in 1954, finished in 2010.
Rotterdam is 6 meter below sea level, as is most of the west side of the country, with about 12 million people, the rest of the population about 5 million, lives above sea level.
Its not just plastic. Its steel, and a whole lot of other things.
You can’t build railways, farm and heavy equipment, condo towers, wind mills, bridges, cars and so much more.
The zealouts do not understand that the leisure time they have is predicated on an economy that that would collapse. Not only would they have no kayaks and no clothes, they’d have no jobs, nor stipends from their parents who would also have no jobs, and they would spend 16 hours a day srabbling in the dirt for enough to eat each day. On the good news side, they would be getting plenty of fresh air and exercise.
When I talk to thr younger generation about these things, they have confidence that replacement products will magically appear. That is the problem with today’s youth. They’ve grown up with an easy life all around them, but three generations divorced from the massive efforts it took to build that standard of living. They think it just existed since they were born and will always exist.
Good times make weak men…….
Learn something each day.
I thought plastics mainly came from oil and gas.
Didn’t realise the Chinese were able to make plastics from coal… very clever.
Can’t all modern products be made from bamboo, hemp and sisal?
I’m sure all hospital supplies could be made from such greenery.
Can’t use help. Most, if not all, species of hemp contain THC even if only at trace levels.
“help” = hemp
“I thought plastics mainly came from oil and gas.”
“Coal gasification”, a process that converts coal into a “syngas” mixture (that can be further processed to produce pipeline-quality gas resembling natural gas) has been around since the late 1800’s. Coal-derived syngas can be converted into transportation fuels such as gasoline and diesel through additional treatment, or into methanol which itself can be used as transportation fuel or fuel additive, or which can be converted into gasoline.
(ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gasification )
I knew about coal gasification, just didn’t realise they had come as far as using it to make plastics.
South Africa has been the leader in coal gasification due to their lack of oil.
The birth of the modern plastics era – came in 1907, with the invention of Bakelite by the Belgian-born American Leo Baekeland.
It was the first synthetic plastic – the first to be derived not from plants or animals, but from fossil fuels.
Baekeland used phenol, an acid derived from coal tar.
Thanks for the education.👍
not fossil fuels, for fack sakes
HYDROCARBONS!
Well they might simply need carbon fibres for their windmills among other things like steel and cement-
Coal – Minerals Council of Australia
Just for transitioning until AI takes over and strands all the coal assets in Utopia of course
Yes. Except coal is not a hydrocarbon. It is coal.
Well, in fact coal does contain hydrocarbons in additional to elemental carbon.
“Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock with a high amount of carbon and hydrocarbons . . . Anthracite contains 86%–97% carbon and generally has the highest heating value of all ranks of coal. Anthracite accounted for less than 1% of the coal mined in the United States in 2022 . . . Bituminous coal contains 45%–86% carbon. Bituminous coal in the United States is between 100 million and 300 million years old. Bituminous coal is the most abundant rank of coal found in the United States, and it accounted for about 46% of total U.S. coal production in 2022.”
(source: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/coal/ , with my bold emphasis added)
yes, coal is a solid form of hydrocarbons and nothing to do with ‘fossils’
Not so.
“Definition and formation: Coal balls are calcareous masses of fossil peat found in coal beds. They are formed in the original peat before it undergoes coalification (DeMaris and others, 1983; Scott and others, 1996). Individual coal balls can be inches to many feet in diameter, and coal-ball clusters may occupy a small part (concentrated along the top or bottom) or the entire height of a seam. In one eastern Kentucky mine, an operator reported finding “real wood” in a seam, which turned out to be well-preserved fossil wood in a coal ball.
“The Scientific Importance of Coal Balls
Coal balls have been encountered in more than a dozen coal seams in the Illinois Basin, especially in the Springfield (W. Ky. No.9) and Herrin (W. Ky. No. 11) coal beds. Although they are a mining nuisance, coal balls commonly contain exceptionally preserved plant fossils. In many cases, plant fossils in coal balls preserve details of the ancient peat-swamp plants to the cellular level. Analyses of coal balls has allowed scientists to accurately reconstruct the appearance and ecology of the ancient coal-forming plant flora (Schopf, 1931; Phillips and others, 1976, 1977; Winston, 1986; DiMichelle and Phillips 1988; Willard, 1993).”
(above two paragraphs quoted from https://www.uky.edu/KGS/coal/coal-mining-geology-coal-balls.php )
Ah, the devil is in the detail.
Of course. Nothing is perfect.
Containing hydrocarbons does not make it a hydrocarbon.
And no escape to traditional kayaks either. Those are made from cured hides and sealed with grease derived from animal fat.
“If all the petroleum products carried by and being used by the protestors were to suddenly disappear”
There is no objection to making plastics from oil or coal. The objection is to putting CO2 in the air. If you don’t burn the FF, it isn’t a fuel, just a feedstock. All good.
“The objection is to putting CO2 in the air. “
Which shows just how moronically stupid and anti-life these clowns really !
You have to burn the fuel to get the energy to make things, you senile old coot !!
Nick old mate, you’re just a voice in the wilderness as far as climate protestors / cranks are concerned.
If you’re not onboard with the whole climate crisis > energy shutdown agenda, you’ll soon find yourself ‘canceled’.
And as we all know, being ‘canceled’ by peers is the absolute worst disaster that can be inflicted upon an acolyte of the “woke” community.
No, this is just a WUWT strawman. As is being ‘canceled’. As the article says, protestors have no objection to plastic kayaks. They are right.
So clear this up for me if you will, Nick –
these protestors actually believe that a bit of nuisance theatre disrupting a minor shipping port for a while is going to convince China, India, Japan to withdraw from using coal to fuel their combined 1,585 existing coal-fueled power plants, with that many again in development?
The only rational reason they could possibly pose for their gathering would be –
“a day out on the water in the summer sun with all our congregation”.
That would give them at least a scintilla of sanity. Maybe.
They are right to be unconcerned about using plastics.
They are completely stupid to be concerned about COAL. !
Are you STUPID enough to be concerned about COAL ??
Coal is needed to refine FeO2 into Fe and further integrated into the lattice to turn Iron into Steel.
Coal is also required to purify silica into Silicon for Solar panels and all electronic components
We know they are totally unconcerned about using fossil fuels for ANY purpose that THEY want…
… like travel to and from protests, floatation devices, flags and signs, clothing, trips to conferences, making junk erratic electricity supplies, killing whales with off-shore wind factories etc etc….
Only concerned when it is something that actually BENEFITS the bulk of society.
Except for that whole Microplastics in the ocean thingy.
No Nick, they are WRONG and they are totally CLUELESS.
You are not quite demented enough, yet, not to realise that.
Coal produces CO2, which is entirely necessary for the life of the planet.
Using plastic kayaks while protesting Coal is the absolute pinnacle of gormless idiocy and hypocrisy.
There is no wonder you support it.
So plastic bags are kosher again?
Plastic bags are a pollution issue, not a climate one.
There are NO climate issues related to CO2 and fossil fuels..
Without coal or hydrocarbons there is no plastic.
They are protesting themselves into extinction.
Plants and animal need feedstocks too.
Yes, and they had them long before we came along.
Until recently, only bare subsistence levels.
Much higher levels of CO2-gas of life, a long time ago.
Plants would prefer at least twice what they currently have.
But you knew that, too. !
Disingenuous.. as always.
Feedstocks
noun
Animals had “industrial processes” before humans came into being, Nick?
Well bugger me!
(please don’t take that literally)
OK, take this up with Scissor!
Sadly pathetic how senile leftists try to blame someone else.
Why not explain that the word “feedstock” is also regularly applied to animal food.. eg
Malted barley waste, a sustainable feedstock for cattle – evokeAG.
Reality check: seaweed as a feedstock for cattle likely to be nothing more than a ‘niche market’ by 2030 | Countryman
Of course, the more usual way is to call it “stock feed”.
The industrial processes in question include production of fertilizers.
Plus – I reckon Scissor would know more about the ingredients and industrial chemical processes involved in production of bulk foods and supplements for farmed animals than most of us here old mate.
It was Scissor who said “Plants and animal need feedstocks too”
Not me.
as they do
So what were you on about here?
Your point that it is only plastics for which oil is a feedstock.
It also serves production of many more essential ingredients of the means required to feed, clothe, medicate and shelter the ~ 8 billion people around the planet.
Combustion of coal, oil, gas fuels the “means of production”.
I’m surprised that your socialist heroes are not scrambling to expand and control this pillar of your ideology.
“Your point that it is only plastics”
Where did I say that? My point is that the objection to FF is the emission of CO2 into the air. If you don’t burn them, no issue. Most useful things are made without burning the feedstock.
So the objection is total idiocy… that is your point.. !!
Making kayaks uses plastics, that, despite your ignorance, still requires the release of CO2.
Basically EVERYTHING is made using energy from fossil fuel, and delivered using fossil fuels…
… even a fool like you knows that,
you are just making a mindless non-argument.
If you don’t burn them, you don’t have reliable electricity or transport to make and deliver just about everything that gets made to make modern society livable.
Nick, just think, if we 2 here were relying on unreliable, intermittent “renewables”, one of us would be off the internet for at least 12 hours,
And then how would we be able to both enjoy this riveting discussion?
So common ground for us would be if we all committed to dispense with wind, solar, batteries. coal, gas and diesel, and instead installed SMRs everywhere, we could all sing Kumbaya together forever?
Coal C + FeO2 + heat (from coal) = Fe + CO2
Both Steel AND Silicon production create CO2 as a byproduct.
Both Steel and Silicon are required to create the tools to harvest Part Time energy from weather dependent generation sources.
What a complete weasel you continue to prove yourself to be.
the buggering?
But not in the abundance required to sustain 8.4B people.
Are you prepared to allow 8 billion people starve to death in your lifetime to achieve your Utopia???
Nonsense. You can’t make anything without mining the raw materials first. Nobody does that without burning fossil fuels.
Unless you are suggesting going back to forced labor, its a non starter.
You could be trying to do something about real toxic stuff:
Burning old TVs to survive: The toxic trade in electrical waste
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gvq1rd0geo
So could you. Dealing with waste is an issue. But it isn’t a climate issue.
NIck doesn’t do anything about real toxic stuff.
His comments are a total waste.
CO2 is not a “climate issue” either.
“Dealing with waste is an issue”
Like what to do with all the short-lived wind turbines and solar panels.. right , Nick !!
No, but like plastics it is an environmental issue
Where is the Rising Tide statement that some coal mining is OK, Nick?
The kayaks.
What a totally DUMB comment !!
Only allowed mining coal when they need to use it to complain about mining coal.
Don’t you see the complete gormless idiocy behind your comment ??
Nick, you have no evidence the kayaks are not simply ignorance.
Eric, you have no evidence that anyone is concerned about use of mined carbon for making plastics. And there is no reason why they should. They are not ignorant, they are right. Only you dreamed up this connection.
If you look at their website their demand is no more approvals for new coal mines and a phase out of fossil fuel use.
There is probably enough coal in existing stockpiles for a century or more of plastic making. Certainly we don’t need new mines for plastic. And yes, phase out fossil fuel use. Fuel is stuff you burn.
Seriously Nick you are making stuff up. There is no indication Rising Tide are aware of the connection between coal and plastic.
They probably are, but there would no issue for them. That is your strawman. Coal used for plastic is not emitted as CO2.
Another completely idiotic comment
Nick thinks you can make plastics without emitting CO2….. SO DUMB. !
I doubt the “stupids” of Rising Tide are actually “aware” of anything !!
Adding logic fallacies to the long list of things you don’t remotely understand. Gee-whiz.
WOW, you are getting more demented very post you make.
COAL and other fossil fuels provide for basically everything in your pathetic dotage.
You could not survive without them.
It is utterly stupid and totally unnecessary to phase out fossil-fuels at all.
Australia DOES need new COAL mines, for export purposes and for power stations..
Just like we need new coal fired power stations.
OMG, still trying to protect the utter HYPOCRISY of these clowns.
Yes, they ARE totally ignorant… I have met several of them. !
And they are totally WRONG about the whole CO2 nonsense, just like you are.
If they KNOW their kayaks are made using coal and/or gas, oil and use them anyway….
… then they should have them confiscated.
“They are not ignorant,”
YES THEY ARE !
When some clown regurgitates mantra BS like this…
… It is absolute proof that they are VERY ignorant.
The fact that Peter Garrett was also there furthers the proof of complete ignorance.
You are a fool, they don’t want any fossil fuels for any reason, you are the master of disingenuity
Unlike you Nick, i spoke to these morons and they don’t want ANY oil, gas or coal.
Nick doesn’t realise JUST HOW DUMB AND IGNORANT most of his fellow “klimate kooks” really are !!
But then you still have to mine the coal and drill for oil and gas and can no longer “Keep It In The Ground”
Nick, you are not the fount of all knowledge. With just a smattering of research you would have learned how oil is THE feedstock for making plastic feedstocks. If you knew how oil refineries actually work, you would know heat is involved.
The following discusses just one of the plastic feedstocks created by refining oil.
From: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/08/how-plastics-contribute-to-climate-change/
“With just a smattering of research you would have learned how oil is THE feedstock for making plastic feedstocks.”
You don’t read very well. That is just what I am saying. Carbon and hydrocarbons are worthy and useful materials. There is no reason not to go on using them, as we will. The only issue is with burning them and putting the CO2 into the air.
Geez, talk about not reading very well. Here is the last sentence from the web site I listed.
It says CO2 emissions will expand 34% just from ethylene production. CO2 isn’t just created only from burning gasoline and diesel in ICE engines. Check into refineries and how various products are made. In many cases, they are nothing more than sophisticated moonshine stills.
“web site listed”
of which the sole author is:
“Brooke Bauman is an intern at YCC and a student at UNC-Chapel Hill studying environmental science, geography, and journalism.”
Ms Baumann sees no good in plastics. But making plastics is an industrial process like many others. They can be decarbonised, to avoid incidental emissions. But there is no essential emission. Processing oil to ethylene, does not yield CO2 as a product.
From: https://www.emerson.com/documents/automation/chemical-sourcebook-chapter-1-2-ethylene-production-polysilicone-production-en-138242.pdf
This doesn’t cover the CO2 from furnace heating.
CO2 IS generated in many refining operations.
From: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666821121000788
This is literally scraping the botom of the barrel. The purpose of cracking is to turn hydrocarbons to other hydrocarbons, catalysed here by steam. They definitely don’t want to oxidise them to CO2. A minor unwanted product is carbon which deposits on the walls, and what they are saying is that water removes that with water gas formation, with CO2 a minor byproduct of that.
Here is their list of intended products:
over 80% of crude oil is made into products we “burn” as fuel. Only 13% is used for “other products” (source: US Energy Information Administration). What happens to the price of that 13% if we stop “burning them”?
It may well go down, with all the production infrastructure in place, and a drop in demand. But whatever, the finished products attract a far higher price than the price of feedstock.
We must always be vigilant and DON’T FEED THE TROLLS.
We need another BIG climate protest in NYC, covered by the world wide media, to show off their MASSIVE hypocrisy, and afterwards they all get in their SUVS and drive home. (But it is okay if THEY do it, because they CARE, or at least pretend to.)
Also Kayak is an Inuit word indicating that they are used to open water. In addition Inuit hunt Whales and other air breathing mammals. Air breathing means there is open water – in the Arctic.
Air breathing also includes exhaling CO2.
UPDATE
> 170 protestors arrested and charged now.
These protests are no more than anti-social street theatre.
And just as b . o . r . i . n . g .
I prefer them to the lunatics who throw paint on our cultural heritage. At least they are out in boats having fun.
The ones the cops had to help out of difficulties to save them from drowning probably weren’t having fun.
And as an old surf lifesaver, I can confirm that lots of people we rescued didn’t say thanks, probably because they are on the point of going into shock.
I have no respect for these mindless activists.
Many of the inflatable canoes were provided free by rising tide, so who wouldn’t want to go for a paddle on a nice sunny day in a free canoe.
We would prefer the out of towners stay away from here, we have enough ill educated children of our own.
Being a coal mining and industrial city the trendies from Sydney have traditionally turned their noses up at us, we don’t mind that, just so long as they keep away. Unfortunately that is changing.
I suspect that the protesters believe what they are paid to believe. ie, that there is a flood of money to anyone prepared to protest against fossil fuels. The flood of money comes from the billionaires pocketing wind and solar subsidies. IOW, some of those subsidies are used to pay the protesters. And whose money funds the subsidies? Yours and mine. We are funding the protesters. Unwillingly and even unwittingly maybe, but it’s our money that keeps the protesters going. I think it would be very reasonable for the public to protest against protesters being released without charge, and to insist on heavy fines and/or prison sentences. Let’s face it, the cost of building more prisons for that would be a better use for our money. Better still, of course, to stop the flow of our money to greedy antisocial billionaires in the first place.
I don’t think it is completely mercenary, I suspect it’s more of a disguised luddite movement. They are people who don’t understand the world around them, the technology is all magic to them. When you are surrounded by magic it is not difficult to imagine some of it is black magic.
“some of it is black magic.”
Hey, that sounds racist, naughty Eric !!! 😉
I’d apologise but I don’t know which pronouns to use 🙂
No Eric….. NEVER apologise for not using the “correct” pronoun. !
From other occurrences it is not clear the protestors know much about what they are protesting. They memorize the chants but do not know which river and which sea. They are out there for the excitement, and because they have been told the will be saving the world, without any specifics on how the world would be saved with their disruptions and destructive behaviors.
I suspect it is all to gain some kind of ego driven self-importance, the virtue signaling that creates a kind of camaraderie, simple excitement at being part of something exciting, and so forth. They will be able to recite rhetoric, but will not know what the meanings are.
IMHO
I had no idea that this was Australia. Nowhere in the article did it mention that this was Newcastle, Australia. I was thinking this was Newcastle, England or Newcastle, Delaware, USA. Or maybe there is a Newcastle, Denmark?
This wasn’t the only article that forgot to mention where this was.
I had to Google it to find out which country this was in! Just sayin…
Fair point, bad Eric…
Can I have a turn at Nick-Picking too?
There was this at the bottom of Eric’s post –
” . . . were failed by their teachers and the Aussie education system”
Not a definitive reference I grant, but still, a stronger connection than there is between CO2 and AGW.
The fact that the link was to ABC Newcastle, and some of the pictures show NSW patrol boats, might have been good hints 😉
Although I guess that I live near Newcastle NSW helps too.
I actually recognised a few people in videos else where… Not the brightest turnips. !
A couple of clues in the article …
Picture of a NSW Police vessel.
More From ABC NEWSWe acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn, and work.
This beach being the launch point for my regular paddle was left in a terrible state with rubbish from these morons.
Thankfully the police were very understanding, letting me through the cordon to go on my regular paddle south to Merewether without any issue.
The morons didn’t like it at all when i pointed out what you stated in the article, that it was hypocritical to use fossil fuel products while calling for their ban. Its virtue signaling pure and simple. Drive all over the place to protest about products you use.
For a self-identified environmental crusade, it is reprehensible the trashing of the local environment caused by these criminals.
ABC link says people came from Cairns and from Melbourne.
I wonder how much fossil fuel they used. !! 🙂
I’m sure they rode their carbon fibre plastic bicycles?
More likely by plane. Flown the Newcastle ↔ Melbourne flight many times.
There is probably a flight from Cairns to Newcastle as well (may have to go via Sydney)
Cairns ↔ Newcastle by SUV is a fair trip, around 1400km+ each way.
(and probably almost impossible by EV)
I wouldn’t try that road in an EV. The main highway North is a 2 lane pot-hole nightmare north of Gympie in Queensland, especially when you get north of Rockhampton, and in some places it is very lonely and baking hot.
There is also a significant wildlife issue, on a different Queensland country road my heavy SUV almost got tipped over last December because I hit a wild pig which suddenly ran out in front of me. Those buggers can top 1000 lb. If I hadn’t been in a rugged high ground clearance vehicle I would probably still be in hospital.
I bet there aren’t many EV charging places up there either. 😉
I have family members who are very much like the people referenced in this article.
My step-mother earns most of her retirement income from natural gas royalties. She lives alone in a 2,500 square foot home, is constantly renovating her home, traveling for pleasure and is convinced that fossil fuels are causing global warming. Also she’s a life long Democrat.
She has done nothing to decarbonize her lifestyle or income stream. In fact she represents everything climate alarmists hate.
I also have a brother and sister-in-law (also life long Democrats ) who routinely fly to their second home in Hawaii and recently flew there to assist the local Arbor Day Foundation chapter sell trees to combat climate change.
So it doesn’t really surprise me how clueless climate alarmists are to their own hypocrisy.
People like my family members represent the worst of what climate alarmists are, wealthy out of touch people who can afford to hold luxury beliefs while promoting a political agenda that subjects the rest of us to higher prices and lowered living standards.
History is full of inconvenient idealists discovering the revolution wasn’t what they thought it would be.
During the Iranian Revolution socially liberal leftists supported the Ayatollah because they believed his promise of free and fair elections once the Shah was gone. Naturally the leftists were first against the wall when the Ayatollah won power.
Newcastle Australia that is. There is Newcastle in the North of England which also was a coal producing and exporting harbour. There is an idiomatic English expression ‘bringing coal to Newcastle’ meaning the same as ‘giving bread to the baker’: giving to those who don’t need it. Like that overweight Indian woman – coming from a country that has nuclear weapons, has landed spacecraft on the Moon and has more coal-fired power plants than the whole of Europe – demanding without a hint of irony that 300 billion a year was not enough.
The Gretaheads in Oz are well tucked up in bed late at night while the NEM grid is running 77% on fossil fuels with two thirds black and brown coal. Only 9% wind with the balance hydro but all Hell will break loose if their aircons go off with a bit of a heat wave forecast.
Add cell phones to the list.
You can’t beat natural gas.
Not even with a stick?
/humor
This must be a joke. The head of a band called “Midnight Oil” leading a protest against fossil fuels while paddling around the harbour in a plastic boat. As Alanis sang so wistfully “isn’t it ironic?”
He was never the brightest bulb in the closet.
The insufferable hypocrites, if they were “true believers”, they’d be out there in wooden canoes!