Essay by Eric Worrall
First published JoNova; 30 years too late, but its a start.
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen brutally lambasted by leading conservationist following false claims
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen has been brutally criticised by a leading conservationist after walking back false claims about the scale of renewables projects.
Laurence Karacsony Digital Reporter
October 11, 2025 – 10:51AM
…
It came after conservation group Rainforest Reserves Australia accused Mr Bowen of misrepresenting data published in The Australian, which mapped the accelerating renewables rollout.
In the RRA’s comprehensive mapping of renewable projects, which vice-president Steven Nowakowski said had taken four years to collate, the group highlighted the sheer scale of the Albanese government’s plan.
…
The RRA showed 1000 projects costing $1.33 trillion, including 25,000 additional wind towers with 45,000km of associated roads, as well as 250 million solar panels on 406,000ha.
Mr Bowen ridiculed the RRA in a social media video, branding the organisation as “anti-renewable, pro-nuclear activists” and claimed the area to be covered by renewables was just 12 per cent of the RRA mapping.
…
However, the NSW Agriculture Commissioner’s 2022 report only appeared to refer to NSW and not on a national scale – as was the focus of the RRA’s mapping.
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Read more: https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/climate-change-minister-chris-bowen-brutally-lambasted-by-leading-conservationist-following-false-claims/news-story/a213ebe8e4d9a607733fc2df292e63a2
The map is well worth viewing, a trillion dollars of renewable installations and proposed installations covering a sizeable fraction of Australia’s prime agricultural land and adjacent protected wilderness like a cancerous blight.
Why agricultural land? Because agricultural land already has access roads and access to water to clean the solar panels – water which will be removed from farmers to wash solar panels which do nothing but add instability and cost to Australia’s energy grid.
It is no surprise Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen got his numbers wrong. We are talking about a guy who has repeatedly demonstrated his profound ignorance of engineering. He thinks we can store electricity like water.
This isn’t the first time greens have complained about mass destruction of protected habitats.
Australian aborigines have also complained about wind farm developers wanting to bulldoze their sacred grounds;
But to date greens who oppose wind farms have been very much in the minority, mostly that handful of greens who actually walk the walk, by living in the midst of the wilderness they claim to love. Most city greens either don’t seem to care or are ignorant of the vast destruction being wrought on the wilderness they claim to love. Or they make excuses to themselves, trying to convince themselves all this wanton destruction of nature serves the greater good.
Who knows, maybe these lone voices of outrage will eventually coalesce into a serious opposition to those who support bulldozing nature to save the environment.
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This free renewable energy is costing us a lot, isn’t it, Nick?
Bowen and Mr. Fake ID have plenty of things in common. They have both uttered lots of utterly ridiculous and absurd statements about energy and CO2.
Interesting about Mr. Fake ID. He seems to have been missing from commenting on this site for some months.
I’m pretty sure the ID is real. It’s just that there was a character in a TV show who had the same name.
Nick isn’t fake
Chris Bowen is Australia’s version of Joseph Goebbels.
I mostly avoid comparing greens to various horrible people from the past these days, the problem is such people mean different things to different people, so it doesn’t really help advance understanding.
Absurd as Bowen is, I don’t think he’s a bad person, even if he is profoundly ignorant of engineering and pushing a damaging energy policy on Australia. Quite the opposite, he likely thinks he is the good guy, forcing through measures against self interested opponents to restore the Australian economy and save Australia from climate change.
In addition Bowen is not a terribly effective public speaker IMO, they kind of kept him hidden away during the last election campaign. Though I guess some people must find him convincing, otherwise he wouldn’t be a ministerial level representative of the Australian people.
He’s a minister, and he’s here to help.
Is there an opt out button?
“Absurd as Bowen is, I don’t think he’s a bad person, even if he is profoundly ignorant of engineering and pushing a damaging energy policy on Australia”
Sounds like one definition of a bad person.
Respectfully, I disagree. If you blindly push policies that hurt people and hurt economies and are unwilling to recognize unintended consequences and change your positions due to pigheaded ideology, you (general or royal you) are a bad person. Shirking responsibility by claiming the best of intentions is no excuse.
Eric, you know that the ONLY constituency that matters to Labor politicians is the Unions who placed them in their roles.
Eric:
Nice post!
Bowen, like most other “climate change” fanatics are employees of the
“Good Intentions Paving Company”.
The more adamant they are, the less they seem to know about climate [or energy].
Fanatics need to be ridiculed about their lack of knowledge.
Grid solar is a stranded asset in Australia and wind is not far behind.
I applaud all the punters installing solar and batteries in Australia to head off the growth of grid solar and wind.
South Australia leading the charge to affordable household electricity with rooftops right now supplying 1737MW with a net demand of 1600MW so SA rooftops exporting to Victoria as well as the entire State demand.
Over the past 24 hours grid solar produced 1.9GWh and curtailed 2.9GWh. Wind produced 20.1GWh and curtailed 4.5GWh. Rooftops supplied 24% of the demand over the last 24 hours per attached. Not that curtailment of grid wind and solar are now listed categories. Their economics are in freefal as rooftops take away their demand.
And rooftops are winning big now with September being both the highest rooftop solar uptake and by far the biggest battery uptake. Since Sleezy offered OPM for household batteries from July 1, households have installed 1GWh of batteries. And increasing at 100MWh per week.
The batteries mean the rooftops are being curtailed less often. I drew 0.4kWh from the grid yesterday and exported 2.8kWh but my export did not start till 12:30pm.
The environmental harm caused by grid scale WDGs will be on the back burner as Blackout comes to the stark realisation that the punters have voted for their own electricity supply rather than supporting his NetZero fantasy. Fossil fuel generators are an essential service so cannot go away and will charge increasingly higher unit costs to make up for their standby costs being spread across much reduced demand. Who could have predicted this – rooftops leading the transition and grid scale WDGs stranded assets!
And now the unravelling NetZero fantasy of the lunatic asylum that is Canberra.
Even in Queensland you can’t power your own aircon with solar.
I’ve got a friend who is making a real go of it, around $30,000 of solar power pouring into his battery (or the grid), and he makes a real effort to not use aircon – which brings him about as close as you can get to self sufficiency without half an acre of solar panels and batteries. He’s not a green, he just doesn’t trust the government to keep him supplied with reliable energy.
But that grid power is still needed whenever his aircon comes on, or when a few days of cloudy weather crashes the battery charge.
I’m in NE vicdanistan and I’m off grid, solar to battery back-up. We have air con and all works well, any day of the year, for heating or cooling.
For $30,000 they are either doing it wrong or got ripped off on the install. Are they insulated and shaded or are they trying to cool the outside world?
Wouldn’t it be easier just to have a backup diesel generator instead? If it’s outages you’re worried about.
If you’re trying to trim down your electric bill, solar almost makes sense, not sure how long it would take to break even though.
A Hobbit hole would be better. Better insulation, maybe no need for aircon at all.
Nah, she gets annoyed when I call her a hobbit.
Hmmm
As I understand, in Queensland there are legal limits to the amount of rooftop solar panels one can install if one is connected to the grid, presumably to reduce the risk of overloading the grid.
If one is not connected to the grid, and one covers the whole roof with solar panels that are appropriately tilted towards the sun, and one has sufficient battery storage, there should be no problem in powering an air conditioner any time of the day.
I asked Google if air conditioners can be powered by rooftop solar panels without a grid connection. This was Google’s AI response.
“Yes, air conditioners can be powered by rooftop solar panels without a grid connection, but it requires an off-grid system with significant battery storage to ensure continuous power when the sun isn’t shining. A system for this includes a large enough solar panel array and a sufficiently sized battery bank to meet the high energy demands of an AC unit at any time, even at night or on cloudy days.”
Wind & solar were only ever supplemental power for remote mines, cattle stations, etc.
In that role, they were very effective, economic & efficient.
Saved diesel fuel consumption, maintenance, etc for the main generators.
But switching their role to that of primary generator source just doesn’t work.
Intermittency is elementary, Dear Watson.
How much power would be generated if we built 1.33 trillion dollars worth of nuclear? Clean, steady and affordable power.
And that nuclear would last a lot longer than the ruinables too.
Too many Australian Conservation groups have been too silent for too long. I wonder how many of them are dependent on government grants. The cynic in me thinks that funding is inversely proportional to criticism of government policy.
Hardly any wind or solar in the UK for days now. These people are unhinged.
Sunday morning 10 a.m. , wind is providing 2% and solar 4% of demand with a high pressure system forecast for the coming week
I hope this doesn’t happen in January.
ANY battery is a sieve. Ultimately you cannot store electricity. It’s a CARRIER not a SOURCE. You can only store SOURCES like oil, gas or coal.
“Most city greens either don’t seem to care or are ignorant of the vast destruction being wrought on the wilderness they claim to love.”
“Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”
Or …
“For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”
Ecclesiastes 1:18
The image of the minister gesturing with his fist reminds me of the old barrister’s adage.
If the facts are on your side, pound the facts; if the law is on your side, pound the law; if neither is on your side, pound the table
Green vs Watermelon, or Watermelon vs Watermelon? Either way, exposes the top Watermelons for what they are.