Image by David Mark from Pixabay
We are a fossil fueled world. Solar & wind power make up just 7.5% 6% of our energy needs.*
The world has set a new record for energy use in the last year. And even though renewables are being installed at the fastest rate they ever have been, it isn’t enough to keep up with the growing demand for energy let alone to “convert” the world to Net Zero.
Overall, despite our best efforts to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, the world remains “stuck” getting 82% of its energy from them.
The Energy Institute has released the Statistical Review of World Energy, and it shows global energy use has not only recovered from the pandemic, it is now 3% higher than it was pre-Covid in 2019. The relentless human desire for energy continues. In 2022, humans used 1% more energy than they did the year before and 70% of that growth was from China.
To put the historic size of the “Renewable Energy Transition” into focus, here’s the last century of energy transformation. The Energy Institute did not seem to want to highlight the insignificance of renewable energy, so I created this from the OWID myself.
Greenhouse gas emissions from homo sapiens reached 39.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. An increase of 0.8% in the last year.
Renewables are not keeping up with the growth in demand
Indeed, if we just look at electricity — demand grew 2% around the world last year. Renewable generators grew at a blistering pace. Solar recorded a 25% growth in output. Wind power grew by 13%. But despite that extraordinary (hard to believe) increase, the gap between the supply of renewables and the total demand for electricity grew even larger.
The Energy Institute spun this the best way they could saying:
“Renewables (excluding hydro) met 84% of net electricity demand growth in 2022.”
But think how pitiful this is. Renewables met none of the normal demand at all, and could not even supply all the new demand.
Soberingly, energy use grew in every region of the world except for Europe.
This is a report written by a new team dedicated to “Net Zero” — so we know it’s as rosy as possible, but it’s still devastating.
“The Energy Institute (EI) is the chartered professional membership body for people who work across the world of energy. Our purpose is to create a better energy future for our members and society by accelerating a just global energy transition to net zero.”
REFERENCES
Statistical Review of World Energy, The Energy Institute, (formerly BP), Media Release
* Total renewables is 7.5% of “Primary Energy” but includes biomass, geothermal, and tidal etc (but not hydro). Stripping away the “other renewables” leaves wind + solar at 6.1%. Wind power now (theoretically) makes 3.75% of total global primary energy. Solar makes 2.4%.
Unreliable wind and solar generators all need some form of backup. Since battery backup is infeasibly expensive and impractical, even by “green” non-standards, that backup has to come from coal, gas, nuclear or hydro power stations.
As more wind and solar is installed, if power stations for backup don’t already exist, they will need to be built. Western countries generally have few available unexploited hydro sites so the only options for mature countries are more coal, gas and nuclear power stations or in immature Australia only coal or gas.
If these extra power stations are not built, the continued addition of wind and solar is going to cause the grid to go dark every time there is no sun or wind. Also, power stations have to be maintained on “spinning reserve” so coal and gas units are still producing the dreaded CO2 anyway.
For the thinking person, it all seems so pointless.
The dangers to the grid are not hard to understand. It’s tragic that no one in a position of power to do something about it such as a government scientific advisor is prepared to speak out loudly.
621
Batteries can never be a backup – they do not generate electricity, they only give back a portion of what they absorbed. Think of them as a UPS that supplies power for a very short time (usually enough to save open work on a computer and do a clean shut down).
As you say they are useless without real power stations to keep them charged and the unreliable wind generators won’t cut it, neither will solar because it is not available 24/7/365.
520
Just to limit the exaggeration here a little….you are forgetting laptops, tablets etc !
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“Just to limit the exaggeration here a little”
Well you could have gone a bit further and mentioned remote power supplies . . . . a Redflow battery or two , a small VAWT , and a couple of solar panels.
The sort of thing you’d find in the Outback , or remote parts of NZ.
https://redflow.com/project/vodafone-case-study
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The cost of these, from a quick search of the intraweb, and no one will be surprised by this…impractical.
Ill tell you what isnt impractical. Generating electricity using real forms of energy, not ground unicorn horn and magic mirrors.
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Cant see how its an exaggeration at all. The conversation was about power at scale. Ivans comment was relevant and applicable and Ive seen it work a few times in data centres. Mentioning toys does little except change the topic.
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The requirement of 100 percent back up to a wind and solar grid is the key to stopping this nonsense. People are just ignoring it at the moment, but it is very much a reality and once they are aware of this, I think the wind and solar thing will stop. It’s just too overwhelming a point to ignore – and fairly easy to comprehend, requires a little bit of thinking but not that much, so it’s a point that could be sold to the masses.
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Problem with converting the masses is that it’s not enough. Power lies with the political classes, and I’m not sure how we can persuade them. They’re too far gone, and they willfully ignore democracy anyway – and facts.
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More EV leakage
FWIW
“The Hemi Is Dead – Tesla Credits Killed It”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2023/06/27/the-hemi-is-dead-tesla-credits-killed-it/
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The 5.7 litre Hemi in my Ram will do 700 km on Friday and 550 on Saturday all at freeway speed. Chiefio would love it as it does very little idling.
What a wonderful world we had before the socialists started to ruin it. Are the poor better off now? We do know that the middle class are getting poorer thanks to socialist policies including subsidies to wind and solar farmers. Please explain how renewables are changing the world for the better Mr Bowen. You are digging up more dirt and creating more emissions by making things that only work sometimes and then for only a few years.
We could make the world a better place with a simple stroke of a pen; by voting out the clowns that cause this pain.
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You realize of course, that there is no place for a RAM (ute/pickup/truck) in the highly dense urban environment which is the only solution to the overpopulation which is plaguing earth?
/sarc
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Hi ozfred.
There seem to be a lot of belief that the world is overpopulated.
They haven’t heard of population collapse.
Look up ” Birthgap” on YouTube.
It’s a documentary about the falling birthrate is going to result in very rapid fall in population.
I think it is an issue we will hear a lot about soon but children are still being taught overpopulation is a problem.
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You did note my end of sarcasm flag? Didn’t you?
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It’s not about socialism it’s about autocratic control.
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Wow!
That was a really good article. Explains why car makers are forced to funnel money to Tesla. So the car industry is not free market capitalism anymore, it’s controlled by socialist rules.
And the author puts it very well, y’all should read it. Saved the site in favourites.
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Philip, ..if you were not aware that was happening in the auto industry,…
….are you aware that the exact same transfer of funds is happening between the FFueled generators and the Wind/solar industry
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Good morning Jo,
O. M. G.
You never fail to perform!
This is a work of art.
I’ll be showing this to everyone possible in the coming weeks- inc. my local member, who thinks he can “re-invent” capitalism Ma. Chalmers!
Keep up the scintillating work.
Warm regards, reformed warmist of Logan!
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And when the fossil fuels required for the mining, milling, refining, manufacture, transport and installation, including site preparation, to get these so-called “renewables” up and going, is totted up, those pitiful percentages would look far smaller, if indeed even positive.
Paul Miskelly
321
Yes, it’s all a fraud. The $1.5Trillion a year on awful unreliables should be going into two fields, fusion research and thorium reactors. Fusion is a Hail Mary shot but Thorium is 100% consumable unlike Uranium which is 0.7%. So waste is reduced by 99.3%.
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And I have to say how nice it is to be able to write FRAUD. There was a time the comment was removed.
I suspect that as everything associated with man made tipping point rapid Global Warming sea level rise polar bear killing Climate Change is obviously fraudulent it saves having to self censor.
And Al Gore is now a real billionaire and apart from a few chads in Florida was nearly President of the United States. And his ethical standards still did not meet those of Joe Biden, another inconvenient truth.
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Planet Earth has always and will always be subject to Climate Change. And guess what? After 4.5 Billion years or so – It is still here.
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I liked the incredibly rich Carboniferous period. We owe a great deal of debt for all the free energy left.
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Yes and according to the experts we only have about 5.4 billion years left before our very small star throws in the towel.
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Think what sort of carbon taxes can be extracted over 5,400,000,000 years. Enough to pay for an appetizer in the Restaraunt at the End of the Universe and watch while the lights go out.
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Hasn’t grumpy Greta made another (bound to be wrong) prediction yet?
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Now that every single one of them has been caught lying/gaslighting with their alarmists predictions, most have learnt to keep it a vague prediction of impending doom and some non specific future time (it’s for the children!)
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Sorry, but I believe fusion is a fantasy that will never materialise outside of a heavily subsidised lab. Technically it’s feasible but in reality it’s too expensive and difficult to be economically worthwhile.
The sensible nuclear future is based on SMRs – China and Russia are leagues ahead of the West in that field.
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I expect that $1.5Trillion a year on windmills would solve any problem. That redefines heavily subsidized. And ALL research is subsidized.
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Sweden seem to be headed down the SMR route from what I read about their recent change of course
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TdeF, Indeed so.
The Energy Institute, [EI], quoted in Jo’s article above, was the Petroleum Institute when I joined them in, IIRC, about 1991.
I left in about 2018 – they had got a ‘Watermelon Board’, and couldn’t [or wouldn’t] do simple sums on how much energy needed replacing to go ‘woke and broke’ green
– and that was before everything was to be electrified, transport [including aviation & shipping!]; heating; and presumably also model aeroplanes; and defence hardware. Electric 65 tonne tanks seem ludicrous even now. Well, they are; the ‘enemy’ will not stop for 24 hours whilst you recharge!
No comeback from the EI when I resigned, telling them why.
Not interested?
Or not caring?
You tell me …
Auto
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And we in Australia are 3 days from the staged compulsory shutdown of all Australian activity by 35% under the Safeguard Mechanism, 5% a year for at least 7 years OR the compulsory purchase of Australia Carbon Credits which were established by law in 2011. The stealthy imposition of massive carbon taxes has been happening since 2001.
Soon on top of the long established and illegal ripoff in your electricity bills by hidden carbon taxes you will have to pay at least another 35% for everything and this time in real Government printed Carbon Credits, run by the people sworn to shut down Australia, the Clean Energy Regulator. Even sewage treatment will be hit. All transport including the Tasmanian Ferry. Tractors, trucks, machinery. The war on Australian CO2 is accelerating and the target is your life style and cash.
As we are carbon lifeforms, swapping oxygen to carbon dioxide with every breath, it is amazing science that we are now allegedly our own worst enemy, destroying the planet. And our very own Governments have now legislated our demise. How nice of them. And you have no Voice at all. In fact you might even find yourself paying rent on your land or being asked to leave by the real owners who arrived first apparently. Under the long standing and irresistible International Law of Finders Keepers.
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And as is obvious from the graph above, the nett impact of all this Australian government taxes on CO2 is absolutely zero. But someone thinks it is a great idea. Possibly the people who get the money.
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The most amazing thing is that these “getters of money” are prepared to wipe functioning society from the face of the earth without a thought for tomorrow.
These “getters” will be living in tomorrow’s world along with their children and grandchildren; a world of chaos degradation and mental and physical dangers.
Does it make any sense at all?
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“These “getters” will be living in tomorrow’s world along with their children and grandchildren; a world of chaos degradation and mental and physical dangers.”
Does it make any sense at all?
Gated villas and private jets and Swiss Chalets ease the pain somewhat.
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🙂
True, but you have limited movement and interaction with the wider world and always need a security back-up.
60
Rather limited by a lack of people with knowledge and spanners to keep those jets flying.
And similar with the fuel
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Sorry Ronin, but without us educated erks to design, build & run the Gated villas and private jets and Swiss Chalets, they won’t exist.
I wonder how few of us the elites expect to need to run their world for them?
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“You might even find yourself paying rent on your land or being asked to leave by the real owners who arrived first apparently. Under the long standing and irresistible International Law of Finders Keepers.”
As we can see from all the ‘Always was, always will be’ and ‘Welcome to Country’ and the ABC’s ‘this program was made on Gadigal country or such’, we are being prepared for the next phase, the Voice.
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So the more TOXIC W & S we install the more RELIABLE coal , gas, hydro or nuclear have to be built to support these loony disasters?
And TOXIC, UNRELIABLE W & S combined have a capacity factor of about 20%?
Wind is about 30% tops and Solar is less than 12 hours a day and batteries are also a super expensive TOXIC joke.
Think about wind on STILL nights and solar isn’t worth ZIP from about 5 pm to 8 am during winter.
The so called reduction of co2 using the TOXIC W & S lunacy is a blatant lie and yet the OECD countries still don’t understand these very simple sums?
AGAIN, where are the so called Engineers, so called Scientists, the MSM and Pollies etc, who should be calling out this TOXIC fraud and con trick 24/7? Are we really this stupid?
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Scientists are about 1% of the population. And if they practice as scientists 99% work for the government where they are not allowed question anything. And most medical doctors believe everything they read, which is their job.
In that way fake science rules. And if a real scientist actually questions the fake science, they are called names and shills for energy companies or fired. And amazingly there are plenty of scientists who seem overwhelmed by the vast amount of publicity that it is all true, so they look away. And some just don’t care.
Still you have to wonder after 35 years since man made Global Warming was announced in 1988 and 250 years since it started, why there has been none. And why every common weather event is held as proof.
Meanwhile we are told the Science is Settled. Yes, it’s all a lie but the money is fantastic. And punitive taxes on coal are making the Queensland government rich. Victorian Communist Premier Daniel Andrews will be looking hard at their success now that he’s run out of cash. I would not be surprised if the brown coal export business was revived, the very one quashed by the Labor government. Briquettes for China. After all Chinese CO2 is clean.
What is interesting this time is that King Charles, Greta Thunberg and the usual suspects have not put a time limit of say 5 years on human survival. Even they may be starting to suspect it’s a fraud. So it’s off to save the yellow bellied tree frog after all.
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“AGAIN, where are the so called Engineers, so called Scientists, the MSM and Pollies etc, who should be calling out this TOXIC fraud and con trick 24/7? Are we really this stupid?”
It seems the real scientists have been browbeaten and their careers threatened to such an extent that they have become mute and invisible, if you need more proof, just have a look at what Peter Ridd copped.
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That was why Prof Ridd had to be silenced. I met him and asked him not to go to court, partly as I have never seen justice done. But he believed in the system. Finally they had to spend millions of our money to silence him and punish him. And now he is proven right but the villains on the million dollar salaries are still there.
And there are a lot of scientists,engineers and pollies calling this out. Jo herself when she originally supported the alleged science.
Defenestrated wildly popular Prime Minister Tony Abbott for example. Brave Senators Matt Canavan and Gerrard Riddick. But conservatives here and in most countries have gone with the polls and support every loony left cause. There are very few conviction politicians. And they are outnumbered by those who lack convictions or should be convicted.
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Actually I was amazed to look up Jo on Wikepedia and find this statement
“She has falsely claimed that fewer than half of climate scientists agree with the IPCC’s conclusion that CO2 is the dominant contributor to climate change.[4] PolitiFact described that as a “flat-out wrong” interpretation of data from a survey, and the lead author of the survey in question said that the survey showed “a strong majority of scientists agree that greenhouse gases originating from human activity are the dominant cause of recent warming.”[4]
And it is interesting in all this that Climate Scientists as in the original 97% Cook study actually excludes all the 10,000 meteorologists he actually surveyed. Half the meteorologists disagreed, so they were all dropped. So such surveys are restricted to a very narrow definition of self appointed published ‘Climate Scientists’. For these people, Climate Change is obviously their meal ticket.
The fact is that man made aerial CO2 is absolute science nonsense. It is fact that 98% of all CO2 is in the water and in rapid equilibrium. And therefore 98% of all man made CO2 ends up in the water and there is no possible man made problem. The only way the IPCC gets around this is by arbitrarily stating the half life of CO2 in the air as 80 years. And this is so obviously absurd. We know that because we breathe, rapidly exchanging CO2 for O2 across a water boundary, like all living things.
So the point is how do you defeat something which is obviously wrong? And what is Politfact doing fact checking science?
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This is what happens to honest scientists and engineers and other truth tellers:
https://joannenova.com.au/2023/06/to-condition-people-to-censor-themselves/
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Eric Worrall pulls apart the Australian govt BS and fraud about our “clean energy” future and idiocy like “green hydrogen” to make steel.
And where do we find these rare Earth materials like lithium or cobalt etc?
Lithium at our current level would take hundreds of years to make a difference.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/27/aussie-government-admits-the-green-energy-revolution-will-require-lots-of-coal/
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“Renewables are not keeping up with the growth in demand”
Is it any wonder, with all the demands that we transition to electric hot water, electric home heating, electric vehicles, etc etc.
Unreliables will never replace our present power generation systems, just look at King Island and Flinders Island, in the path of the Roaring Forties and they still can’t make it.
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The new game for Flinders Island is watching the bars on the battery go down and down. They seem to be desperate to avoid turning on the diesel until they have no option. Currently (and for the last hour) it is wind 55kw battery 33kw and solar 12kw. Battery store is down to 2 bars so dropped 4 in this period so diesel will be firing up soon particularly as solar cannot get above 15kw – winter sun for ya.
Of course it is applaudable that they are saving on “dirty” diesel however in doing so what stress is put on the battery continually switching from discharging to charging as they try to keep at least 2 cell battery level. The other negative for them of course is the speed at which the supposed “backup” battery drains when the wind dont blow and the sun dont shine.
As I close wind 35kw battery 53kw and solar 12kw, with battery showing 1 cell. Make way for the diesel.
20
I though the point of the whole exercise was to lower diesel consumption, so the behaviour you describe is sort of what you would expect isnt it?
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Why can’t our stupid govts observe the data from King island and then stop wasting endless billions of $ on TOXIC W & S?
This morning wind has the yips AGAIN and drops to ZIP and then up to about 20% and solar is SFA AGAIN.
If we can’t generate power in the roaring forties then how can we rely on these TOXIC disasters to generate power to 26 million people?
The 1700 people on King island should be very thankful they have their RELIABLE Diesel generator.
https://www.hydro.com.au/clean-energy/hybrid-energy-solutions/success-stories/king-island
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It is about control, not anything else. Not efficiency, not ‘your safety’, not to avert a crisis, not because they know better. Control. Authoritarian control.
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Those wind turbines and solar panels have a short life span. Increasingly, new installations will simply be replacing old ones and not adding to the total. What a crock, and what an expensive crock it is too.
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And when you factor in their carbon dioxide debt, it is likely windmills do absolutely nothing to reduce CO2. Not that humans control CO2 anyway.
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Great job, Jo.
Could you send this story to ACMA and ask if it would be deemed “misinformation” or “disinformation” under their new proposed law?
Just to calibrate your website?
Maybe someone will realise a risk that real non-political data can be used to lawfully question their own masters.
Methinks their new laws could be used to expose the insanity of either “the energy transition” or the logic of the proposed laws.
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The last thing Jo needs to do is poke the bear! They will discover this site soon enough, but as it is not one of the public notice boards, such as Twitter of Facebook, it might be able to say what it likes. Time will tell.
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The CSIRO tell us that the entire SH is already “a co2 NET SINK” and the NH is “a co2 NET SOURCE”.
So how much longer do we have to wait before our govts admit their BS and FRAUD?
Here’s the CSIRO quote AGAIN from their Cape Grim Tassie site.
“Seasonal variation”
“Carbon dioxide concentrations show seasonal variations (annual cycles) that vary according to global location and altitude. Several processes contribute to carbon dioxide annual cycles: for example, uptake and release of carbon dioxide by terrestrial plants and the oceans, and the transport of carbon dioxide around the globe from source regions (the Northern Hemisphere is a net source of carbon dioxide, the Southern Hemisphere a net sink)”
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Sorry, here’s the link to the CSIRO Cape Grim site and look for “seasonal variation” for the quote.
https://capegrim.csiro.au/
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I see that someone has had the good sense to save this Cape Grim page on the Wayback Machine. These things have a habit of disappearing …..
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The world is already struggling to produce “enough” wind turbines to meet the demand for new subsidy-harvesting installations.
The Regressives claim a wind turbine life of 25 years but that is an obvious lie, and in any case not comparable with the life of a power station of at least, easily, 50 years.
A more realistic life span is 12 years, and even that after heavy, frequent, unscheduled maintenance. (See link.)
If the world can’t even keep up with demand for new installations, how are they going to build enough replacements for the existing ones?
Wind turbines should be regarded as use-for-a-short-time disposable items, hardly environmentally friendly, apart from the other destruction they cause to the environment such as clearing of trees, infrasound, killing of birds, bats and insects and massive visual pollution.
Not to mention the huge cost and economic destruction caused by their fundamentally defective product.
See https://stopthesethings.com/2023/04/23/costly-pathetic-performance-thousands-of-wind-turbines-being-replaced-after-12-years/
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David that means that the capacity factor for TOXIC W & S could be reduced AGAIN, even on my LOW estimate of about 20%?
And we have the observations of thousands of whales off our east coast this week and just think about the introduction of donkey Bowen’s OFFSHORE wind disasters for their future migrations.
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Do the fraudulent “calculations” made by the Regressives showing wind power as the “cheapest of all” take into account that while a coal, gas, nuclear or hydro power station can keep going, easily for 50 years and often far more, just in 48 years a wind turbine would have to replaced 4 times plus undergo frequent, heavy, expensive, unscheduled maintenance?
200
Spot on David and the ongoing cost blowout would be horrendous and China, Russia etc must be laughing at our stupidity and just waiting for the right time to attack.
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The growing demand for fossil fuels is largely the result of the Net Zero imperative. Net Zero infrastructure development has massive energy requirements which are overwhelmingly being supplied by fossil fuels.
It’s past time for Renewable Energy to be known as Regrettable Energy.
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And we know the capacity factor for renewable, unreliables by now. So we know you need to install AT LEAST 3 times the capacity factor listed in any demand/request/tender with all associated infrastructure supporting it to get remotely close to meeting that demand.
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And and even that’s meaningless when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
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AT LEAST 3 times the capacity factor
” And even that’s meaningless when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.”
‘Average’ electrical output just doesn’t cut it, it’s useless.
Electricity has to be available, ready to work 24/7/365, not when the sun is shining or the wind decides to blow at the correct limited speed, I.E. not too much and not too little.
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Ruinable is better than regrettable
20
Where is the voice of the Chief of CSIRO or the Chief Scientist? (Both individuals I did my doctoral studies alongside)?
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Nice jobs if you can get them. But they will have a back bowl, a documented position or advice which points out that it is all a complete waste of money and environmental sacrilege but not their decision. Real Yes Minister stuff.
140
That was a great episode. The truth was always on a note in the bottom of the last red box on the assumption that the minister would never get that far but they could claim he was told. No Chief Scientist is going to walk away from that sort of salary by shirt fronting his political superiors.
30
From your comments and observations on this site it would then seem that not all PhDs are a waste of space – some seem to acquire the ability to think on the way as well. 🙂 Or maybe we are the squeaky wheels who don’t know when to shut up while the rest happily feather their nests and couldn’t give a damn.
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Thanks Rupert. 🙂
30
Larry Marshall is about to be replaced. Maybe retirement?
30
They saw what they did to Peter Ridd.
30
“The Energy Institute (EI) is the chartered professional membership body for people who work across the world of energy. Our purpose is to create a better energy future for our members and society by accelerating a just global energy transition to net zero.” Emphasis “FOR OUR MEMBERS”, like a Union, this is a protection and money-making racket and the poor society is added as an afterthought.
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So as pointed out by Jo, when such a body of activists points out that unreliables are achieving nothing, it is a hell of a tacit admission of total failure and pointlessness of activism.
140
A look at those running the Energy Institute show a bunch of activists that are fully sold on the ‘climate emergency’ fantasy. Sadly this is true of many formerly respected institutes in the UK. One half of the EI is the former Institute of Petroleum, the other I have never heard of.
00
AGAIN co2 emissions were 22 billion tons in 1988 and today about 39.3 billion tons according to Jo’s link.
And that’s an increase of about 17+ billion tons in just the last 35 years.
Yet the combined USA and EU 28 co2 emissions REDUCTION over that period is at least -1 billion tons. Why don’t the UN and world govts THINK and then WAKE UP?
AGAIN, China and the developing countries must be laughing at our stupidity.
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
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Yet another issue is that the ignorant masses have never seen a power station or have any idea of the tremendous amount of continuous, reliable, inexpensive power produced at one.
They see a few bird choppers on a hill and think they are actual replacements for a power stationss, even if they are astute enough to notice that the blades aren’t spinning.
They have no clue how any of this works.
….And they vote….
Even politicians and their highly overpaid “expert advisors” have no clue how it all works.
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Reliable is a good word. I cannot help but think about servicing any of these gigantic devices so high in the air. Everything which moves needs constant service and major parts replacements, bearings at least. How can anybody think these gigantic money pumps are actually serviceable? What’s the warranty life?
140
So I found the warrranty.
Warranties are normally 2-3 years onshore and up to 5 offshore. But with exclusions for extreme weather.
Then it gets more difficult and additional warranties are ‘available’.
However it seems that no one guarantees that these things are actually fixable at least in situ. It could be reasonably held that you should know that.
More likely you have to buy a new one.
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Who’s going to pay the $6000 an hour for the crane hire.
71
And probably much more for a barge-mounted crane.
60
And therein lies a major problem with offshore wind.
Specialist ships, not just a crane on a barge, but actual purpose built ships are used for the installation of offshore wind tower and the turbines on top of them. Those ships are enormously expensive to construct, and then enormously expensive when being used for the installation of offshore towers and turbines.
Where they are now in most use are in and around Europe, and they have (relatively) constant work there.
Okay, so where’s the problem then.
Imagine a crane on a barge in rolling seas with an extremely heavy turbine at the top of the extended crane trying to place it on top of a non moving pole hundreds of feet in the air.
The problem with the now huge ramping up of offshore wind in the U.S. is that these specialist ships will need to be constructed in increasing numbers. It’s not a case of ….. umm, can you wait while we finish this current install, and then the next, and then the next.
And then there’s the case of ocean travel, and even from Europe to the U.S. is a long haul, especially if there is constant use in Europe.
And now think of Victoria’s plans for offshore wind in the depths of Bass Strait, and getting those ships to travel from the Northern Hemisphere.
The costs for offshore wind rise exponentially with that now added extra, or they could be built here in Oz, umm, if we had that specialist shipbuilding capability.
Now add that to the cost of the rare materials used for wind power, and the new construction of Transmission Infrastructure.
And we keep being told often that wind power is so cheap.
Yeah! Right!
Tony.
240
You’re being way too logical there Tony. You need to stop. Obviously those crane ships can be “wished” here. Sort of like ” I dream of Jeanie”. Jeanie can wiggle her nose and nod her head and the wish can come true.
50
“Renewable energy – like offshore wind – is Australia’s golden ticket to a reliable, affordable, and clean energy future. Investing in the offshore wind industry is a no-brainer, but it needs to be done right.”
Here endeth the lesson. ROFLOL
00
Umm, not like this guy then.
Salazar’s Wind Power: First Open Mouth, Then Change Feet
Tony.
20
A Green energy superpower no less. What are these people on?
20
I wonder how the blades are balanced.
40
And how they stay balanced more the point. Of course they deform under load as well and at that size the loads cannot be uniform. Some of these really big windmills will self destruct. Working one day and bearings on fire the next. I expect there is already a big dropout rate of windmills which no longer work at all but it’s impossible to distinguish from those which are not working at the moment.
70
“I wonder how the blades are balanced.”
Chip on each shoulder?
20
No, Made in China not New Zealand.
10
Another problem is the sudden change in lateral shear loading as individual blades sweep by the tower into a wind shadow (whether blades are upwind or downind). This causes fatigue and more noise.
This problem becomes more pronounced as the blades get longer and therefore more flexible. This also leads to the possibility of tower strike so the hub has to be longer causing more load on bearings therefore bigger bearings blah, blah, blah…
It woukd be easier just to build a power station…
110
ABC Business
“Energy experts warn higher power prices could be the ‘new normal’ until transition to renewables is complete.”
LOL, and then it will take off into the stratosphere.
150
On the basis of Jo’s chart above, we don’t need to worry about the take off of power prices after “until then” comes along.
The current rate (only 84% of annual demand growth – nothing of the base) implies higher power prices WILL be the ‘new normal’ for the lifetimes of even today’s newborns.
Comparative area-under-time-curve of power prices for all those years would be interesting.
50
Re ” and then it will take off into the stratosphere.”
“And then the hockey stick arrives”
00
We have the quasi- government wind pushers in our state doing local media eg radio. At the moment they’re pushing the powerlines to link up these useless monstrosities. They claim the powerlines are needed to ” keep the lights on”. It’s an extraordinary lie when you consider the lights and powerlines getting electricity, mostly from coal generation, work just fine.
40
What is it with fuel prices? Notice this week ( school holidays ) in Victoria fuel prices (eg petrol, diesel ) have gone down. Usually during school hols, they go up. So, I am assuming an oil production glut? If you are OPEC and you look at these energy statistics, I don’t think you’re too worried. If suddenly Battery Powered Vehicles take off and there is reduced demand, what’s to stop our Arab Oil sheik mates just lowering the oil price artificially?
70
mmmm I was buying LPG for 89.9 on Monday. Been a while since that happened.
00
The wind subsidy-harvesting racket has spurred a whole new industry of monster cranes.
30
Many countries seem to now recognise the solar and wind disaster and are holding back on more power station destruction.
At present, I can think of no country more committed to destroying its power stations and the grid than Australia is.
What do you think?
110
This is what NetZero policy demands. “Renewables” consume more fossil fuel in their implementation than they can possibly save through their operating life.
NetZero policy in the lunatic asylum inevitably demands a lot more coal to be burnt in China where the CO2 demonisers have no influence.
Who thinks electricity prices in Australia will come down in the next decade?
A calm, mild winter day in Southern Australia and SA wholesale electricity price hit $12,922/MWh at 0755. This is The Australian state where “renewables” shine but often don’t.
Madeleine King has some appreciation of the resource requirement for the transition, stating:
https://www.riverineherald.com.au/national/critical-minerals-main-event-in-climate-change-action/
She is out by a factor of 10 because she has some notion that gas fired dispatchable plant can be related to weather dependent generators. A gas plant having equivalent dispatchable output of a wind or solar plant produces no CO2 because the dispatcable output is precisely ZERO.
40
“A gas plant having equivalent dispatchable output of a wind or solar plant produces no CO2 because the dispatchable output is precisely ZERO.”
I hadn’t thought of it in those terms, what a great statement, read it again.
40
QUOTE
90
Hi Jo,
Just double check “Solar & wind power make up just 7.5% of our energy needs” – I think it’s actually closer to around 2.5%
80
You could both be right. “Primary energy demand” is calculated using a very specific definition.
10
Yes Craig I think you’re correct but I mean no criticism of Jo.
I think about 2.5% would be an accurate number if you add in the very short life of TOXIC W & S and the long life of Coal, Gas , Nuclear or hydro.
All could easily last 50 to 60 years.
40
Craig — I noted the discrepancy and tried to figure it out:
So Emily Gosden said this in The Times:
>“Solar accounted for a mere 2.1 per cent and wind 3.3 per cent of total global energy usage, which includes not only power generation but also energy used in transport, heating and other applications. In total, renewables including hydro accounted for about 14 per cent of global energy consumption.”
Yet when I went to the PDF report with all the tables of data:
Summary: “Renewables (excluding hydroelectricity) share of primary energy consumption reached 7.5%, an increase of nearly 1% over the previous year.”
Which I confirmed with numbers in the data table. Primary Energy Consumption page 9.
On page 47 “Renewable Energy Generation by Source”
Other Renewables = geothermal, biomass, etc, but not hydro. These vague other renewables only make up 18.5% of the total renewables number.
So if 7.5% of total world energy is “renewables” (excluding hydro, but including biomass/geothermal) then the total of wind+solar = 6.1%. So Emily Gosdens numbers still don’t add up. I tried to resolve this discrepancy, but at 3am I gave up and took out the Gosden quote from the post because I couldn’t reconcile the numbers, and I think she might be wrong.
I’m grateful if anyone can figure this out. Note that there has been a massive, huge, wild annual growth rate increase in solar of 25% from 2021 figures. So perhaps Gosden was just quoting the 2021 figures? Wind output supposedly has grown 13% in just the last year. These are enormous shifts in a single year.
50
Post updated to say Wind + Solar = 6.1% (not 7.5%)
*Total renewables is 7.5% of “Primary Energy” but includes biomass, geothermal, and tidal etc (but not hydro). Stripping away the “other renewables” leaves wind + solar at 6.1%. Wind power now (theoretically) makes 3.75% of total global primary energy. Solar makes 2.4%.
70
The chart you used from World data can be produced in relative terms:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-source-and-country?time=latest
If you click on this chart you will see solar is 1.65% and wind wind 2.98%.
The 7.5% may have been TWh rather than % because wind and solar sum to 7.6TWh in the World Data page.
10
But OWID only have data to 2021, not including the latest figures.
What should percent be measured in if not TWh?
10
See page 9 of the latest report.
Total primary energy of the world is 604.04
Total Renewables = 45.18
= 7.47%
This is measured in Exajoules.
But renewables includes solar wind biomass geothermal (not hydro)
So go to page 47 which is reported in TWh. In that case Renewables = 50% wind, 31% solar and 18.5% “others”.
World Total = 4203 TWh
Wind total = 2104.8
Solar Total = 1322.6
Renewable other = 776.9
I read the fine print*. I don’t see how we get numbers other than Wind = 3.75% and Solar = 2.4%. But I’m very open to persuasion.
00
Thought EIA said that solar and wind energy total was only 2.8%. But that might have been for 2021.
Reading the EI summary info in Jo’s link, it seems that EI are saying that for electricity, solar and wind contribute 12%. Lots of different figures…
30
Thanks Jo. I have just posted the graph on my family Instagram account. Waiting now for the screams of angst from all the lefties on my daughter’s in-law side. Always good for a laugh.
90
You do raise a point we all take for granted, that man made Climate Change is a political issue split precisely on Conservative and Socialist views. Why? It’s supposed to be settled science.
I object to the idea because it’s not true. There is provably almost zero fossil fuel CO2 in the air. That should be the end of it.
You could also say that water vapour is a vastly more efficient Greenhouse gas and varies from 0% in the air of the Egyptian desert to 4% in the tropics. Across Australia on average about 1%. Which is still 25x the amount of CO2 and likely 100x the effect. CO2 just doen’t matter.
And ocean warming produces CO2. CO2 does not produce ocean warming unless someone can explain how.
It’s not on paper a political issue at all. It’s fact versus fiction.
So what is it about UN directed government dictated man made Carbon Dioxide which makes it something socialists love? Or is it just a football match?
I mean after 35 years it’s not a new idea and there is no warming or sea rise and the polar bears are fine. Is the next generation really feel extinction pressure? Alleged man made Global Warming is older than they are and none in their lifetimes.
70
Fossil fuels aren’t the problem.
The problem is the “fossil fools” in government, way past their “use by” dates. 😉
60
But there’s no one to replace them.
And the younger ones are even more dumbed-down and more stupid than the older ones and have been brought up with even more post-modernist influence.
80
As I’ve said, the people we NEED in politics are those that don’t want to be pollies.
We don’t want free-ride-through-life-courtesy-of-the-political-gravy-train ex musos and real estate agents who are given portfolios they have zero competence to administer.
There are completely capable and enlightened people out there who would do great jobs as pollies (if not hamstrung) but who despise politics.
This does of course demonstrate why the crash & burn is inevitable.
Afterwards, maybe Jo could get a job as an energy & environment minister? 😁
30
Let’s build power stations instead of wind and solar subsidy harvesters.
50
I heard about them, cheap and reliable base load generators of the olden days.
lol
50
Maybe “Dreamtime Doug”, the paid aboriginal land usage inspector could check proposed solar & wind farm sites and say “Naah mate. No energy farm going in here. I found a pointy rock and some shells. Sacred site now.”
Or will that scenario just apply to white folk food production farms and rural population expansion?
52
Just construct some beer can middens.
20
Saw one the other day that looked like an alien crop circle.
Fireplace in centre, surrounded by a group of seated people, next ring out was a circle of VB cans about 300mm deep, 500mm wide.
20
Definitely some worship going on there.
10
Thanks for “biomass”, timber or wood for non-Green minds, as today on the Mid North Coast NSW is cold and on the Great Dividing Range behind freezing cold.
And CO2 being released to feed the food crops.
30
Someone the other day posted on Twitter that they were now using the latest in solar storage batteries. Below which was a photo of his wood stack.
50
Anyone thinking about their future home now should be considering a cheap hectare or so of land with good rainfall and plant trees with enough separation for fire break from a house block. The right species could be thinned out in 5 years and produce enough firewood until the next thinning in a few years.
I live in Melbourne and average about 20kg of solid sunshine every day for around 100 days a year. So about 2 tonne a year of mostly dry wood. An acre with the right species and growing conditions will maintain that. . Allow firebreak to house and a hectare would do.
Trees alone reduce the temperature extremes so requirement for heating and cooling drop as the trees grow. I would most likely justify double glazing and high standard of insulation. North facing windows with automatic shutter control plus solar panels, battery and small generator to operate off-grid.
10
mmmmm cheap hectares are thin on the ground so to speak, and where they exist they also correlate to a lack of access to trades to execute. Nice plan though , and we did something similar 15 years ago. I guess when we eventually sell the next generation can add the cherry on top. I guess if you have the funds you can make anything happen, but then you wouldnt be concerned about the hectare price.
20
I live in a reasonably leafy area and a few neighbours know I am happy to help them trim trees and take the offcuts.
I used to chip all the wood I got off my 1400sq.m block but now I cut it up ranging from kindling to logs big enough to split but it only produces about 30% of my annual wood.
If I was looking for property now, I would be looking at low maintenance hectare or so that would grow trees within 100km of a major centre. I spent the last 10 years of working life working from home or on planes travelling to industrial sites around the world. Working from home is much more common now than a couple of decades ago and is a good lifestyle. Any work that avoids traffic congestion is a big plus.
10
Bright Green Lies – The film, directed by award-winning filmmaker Julia Barnes, dismantles the illusion of Green Technology in breath-taking, comprehensive detail. From the proposed benefits of solar panels and wind turbines, to green consumerism and electric cars, the film takes a bold peak behind the green curtain. In doing so, it reveals the extent of the lies being told by prominent environmentalists and their supporters in-order to perpetuate the myth that out-of-control human consumption can be continued if people just ‘buy green.’
The majority of ‘green technologies’, heralded as solutions to environmental destruction are, in fact, adding to the problem, speeding up our consumption and enabling people to live in the fantasy of “green-washing.”
Bright Green Lies takes an in-depth look at the newest wave of environmentalism and its belief that through 100% renewables, recycling and electric cars, we can have industrial civilization without destroying the planet.
“Over the past several decades, this ‘Bright Green environmentalism’ has become mainstream,” said Julia Barnes. “There are an incredible number of claims being made about “green” technologies that are frankly untrue. Words like “clean,” “free,” “safe,” and “sustainable” are often thrown around by bright green environmentalists. They act as if solar panels and wind turbines grow on trees.”
Through the film’s examination of the unseen processes involved in making flagship green technologies, a very different picture is revealed. Their mass production requires increased mining, industrial manufacturing, habitat destruction, greenhouse gas emissions, and the creation of toxic waste. Renewable energy does not even deliver on its most basic promise of reducing fossil fuel consumption. On a global scale, the energy produced by ‘green technology’ is simply being stacked on top of what is already being used.
The solutions we are turning to as our saviours are adding to the destruction, accelerating the mass extinction of life on earth, and wasting time we don’t have on false solutions. Tackling the most pressing issues of our time will require us to look beyond the mainstream technological fantasies and ask deeper questions about what needs to change. “We can’t save the world by destroying it,” said Max Wilbert.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210316005126/en/%E2%80%98Bright-Green-Lies%E2%80%99-Explosive-New-Documentary-Debuts-Exposing-the-Illusions-of-Green-Technology-in-Stark-Detail
Video on the JC2 private forum.
Book here:
https://ufile.io/1d0n63c7
10
Sorry, I am a bit late today but when we have a topic like today,
I go to NEM watch for a source check on our energy supply. Coal is supplying about 54% of our (Australiawide) electricity (1505_NEM time). Can’t wait until Net Zero.
30
Another reason why we have too many scientists.
Humans’ unquenchable thirst for groundwater has sucked so much liquid from subsurface reserves that it’s affecting Earth’s tilt, according to a new study
I never thought of that when I lived in a sinking Jakarta for 20 years.
My apologies for an off topic comment.
00
Aboriginal Elders Australia wide speak about Voice, note that the government tried to stop them from being heard, see video note …
https://vimeo.com/836044036
31
Tony Abbott spent two weeks of every year living with aboriginal people. Labor take posed photographs in Canberra. This ‘Voice’ is utterly dishonest. Like Climate Change and nett zero. Just look at that graph. Why is Canberra pursuing this? Why did they get rid of Tony Abbott?
Remember when Julia GIllard’s team tried to get the big mob at the old Parliament House to attack Tony Abbott? The guy who organized the fake awards ceremony and tried to get the mob to attack fled the country while everyone else denied it. The aborigines were played for mugs by Prime Minister Gillard.
And the fire at the old Parliament House. So many decades of peaceful protest and then devastation. These people are right to be very suspicious of the motives of the Labor party and Albanese. From Whitlam onwards as they attest, they have been used, abused. The freedom to drink themselves to death with government subsidy is not freedom. It is genocide.
The person I respect most is Jacinta Price, the plain speaking and emotional former deputy mayor of Alice Springs. She has seen terrible things. She makes perfect sense and her strong views are hers, not that of the Liberal party or Labor. There are enough people of aboriginal descent in the parliament now to properly represent the aboriginal causes. Adding race rights to the constitution is beyond belief.
So this has all the appearance of yet another stitch up of the Australian people, using race to divide us and even attack the foundation of our democratic government where all people are equal under the law. Playing on emotional issues. It is happening in all countries. Canada, Britain, Sweden, Hungary, Italy, America, everywhere. The attempt to disrupt all countries, destroy boundaries, create havoc with race and mass migration. Remember the boats which could not be stopped?
Partly to distract the press from the savage attack next month on the cost of living in the so called ‘Safeguard Mechanism’ which will devastate every part of life in Australia. For no reason at all which makes sense because there is no point Australia reducing CO2. Look at the graph. It’s all devastating and its all completely pointless, except there is a point.
It looks like the minions of Canberra are just feathering their own nests. And that of their friends in the UN. The ‘Voice’ is just another scam. Who knows what they are up to? Australians and the aboriginal communities who don’t want it are just left to wonder. Labor is just hoping the children, the journalists and sporting clubs and Woke company leaders and universities and even the salivating lawyers and judges will get it over the line. And the National Science and Technology council has announced that 115,000 Australian scientists support it. The same group (mainly CSIRO) are fully supporting all the Climate Change nonsense.
40
“Science & Technology Australia notes the Climate Change (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2022
requires all government agencies, programs or schemes that deal with aspects of emissions
reduction must consider Australia’s emissions reductions targets and the Paris Agreement objectives
in their work.”
So despite the utter futility of carbon taxes, Nett zero and the whole edifice of STCs, LGCs, and now Australian Carbon Credits as demonstrated in the graph above, all government scientists and government agencies are forced to support taxing Australians to death and destroying manufacturing, transport, mining and farming.
No, they do not. Only the gnomes of Canberra and their minions. There was a time the CSIRO, the Industrial Research Organization was created to assist Australian Industry, not kill it.
10
was an interesting listen
00
Australia subsidies foreign mining to the tune of $30 billion a year.
What are the total government subsidies of big oil over the last 10 years?
And what would be the government subsidies for (foreign) renewables over 10 years including the extension cable to nowhere?
Must at the $90 billion mark for renewables over the last 10 years?
20
EU Looks Into Blocking Out the Sun as Climate Efforts Falter
The European Union will join an international effort to assess whether large-scale interventions such as deflecting the sun’s rays or changing the Earth’s weather patterns are viable options for fighting climate change.
The bloc will announce a framework Wednesday for assessing the security implications of a rapidly warming planet, such as the potential for scarce water or food to trigger conflict and migration, according to a draft document seen by Bloomberg. Part of that assessment includes studying the potential dangers of re-engineering the atmosphere.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-26/eu-looks-into-blocking-out-the-sun-as-climate-efforts-falter?leadSource=uverify%20wall#xj4y7vzkg
Roll out solar globally then block out the sun.
Idiocracy II…
30
Some clowns want to spray seawater up in the sky over the GBR to ‘make clouds brighter’, where do you apply for the grant for that.
20
Just Stop Oil donor admits tactics are FAILING and ‘counterproductive’
A Just Stop Oil (JSO) donor has said its campaigner’s protests are “counterproductive” and “not accomplishing anything”.
Trevor Neilson, co-founder of the Climate Emergency Fund, has condemned “performative” slow marches in central London.
The Californian entrepreneur, who is a primary funder of both JSO and Extinction Rebellion, raised concerns about the direction of the movement.
He stepped down as the fund’s chairman in 2021 but has now spoken out as he believes the protests have become “disruption for the sake of disruption”.
“Working people that are trying to get to their job, get their kid dropped off at school, survive a brutal cost of living crisis… there’s a certain hierarchy of needs that they have,” he told The Sunday Times.
“If, at the same time, they have a pink-haired, tattooed and pierced protester standing in front of their car, so that their kid is late for their test that day, that does not encourage them to join the movement.
“It’s just performative. It’s not accomplishing anything.”
https://www.gbnews.com/news/just-stop-oil-protest-disruption-climate-change-trevor-neilson
No sh#t Skip! 🙄
30
VW Curbs EV Production As EU Demand Falters Amid Gloomier Economic Picture
German newspaper Nordwest-Zeitung reports Volkswagen has temporarily reduced the production of electric vehicles at one of its plants.
Volkswagen’s Emden plant in Lower Saxony has reduced production of the electric ID.4 compact SUV and ID.7 sedan for the next two weeks because of weakening sales.
Industry blog Autocar reported Manfred Wulff, head of the works council for the Emden plant, told German Press Agency in an earlier article published by the North West newspaper that while EV production was being reduced, production of combustion-engine models, including the Volkswagen Passat, are unaffected.
Wulff said 300 of the current 1,500 temporary workers employed at the plant would not have their contracts renewed in August. And he noted EV demand is 30% below planned production figures.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/vw-curbs-ev-production-eu-demand-falters-amid-gloomier-economic-picture
So the NWO objective is to destroy capitalism, and with it the global economy, yet somehow people are going to buy pricey ev’s?
It’s a deliberate plan to create a fundamentally flawed energy system that will fail and trap the masses.
30
Somebody please wake me up when we can actually manufacture wind turbines and solar panels with the energy they generate themselves.
10
We are a fossil-fueled world. Solar & wind power will never make up our energy needs. More the reason we should use more fossil fuels to wean ourselves off renewables.
20