Everyone wants to claim credit when something is a success. My guess is that the real architect of the emerging energy crisis will eventually, be remembered as the absolute worse Prime Minister Australia ever had. Of course, he couldn’t have achieved this all on his own and his environment minister, then senator Robert Hill, played a big part in it all.
It was during Howard’s term as PM that the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000 was conceived and implemented creating subsidies for wind turbines, that are not windmills.
As Alex Nicolls, not to be confused with Alex Turnbull, explains in this little video clip there is a lot of money to be made out of installing a wind turbine. While expensive, and subsidised, it is not obvious how much useful electricity is actually generated by each turbine.
That John Howard continues to be held up as a paragon of conservative values is an absolute travesty.
That John Howard is being invited by psychologist Jordon Peterson to be part of the new Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), including to champion a new and better approach to environmental issues is ridiculous. Too many of my colleagues are telling me how excited they are to be a part of this event that will be held in London later this year. Useful idiots the lot of them.
The Howard government not only introduced the legislation that created the subsidies for the explosion in investment in this different form of unreliable electricity generation, but it was also under John Howard that the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 was introduced. While ostensibly affording a great amount of protection to natural environments, in reality it resulted in more legislation, more employment of new graduates and activists, that came up with plans making it that much harder to do anything useful for the environment, like control woody weed regrowth on farm.
Back then, I was employed as environment manager for the Queensland sugarcane farmers lobby group, Canegrowers.
I remember being visited by someone from the Humane Society who tried to convince me to get onboard. He explained that just by supporting their work, and being less antagonistic towards the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), I could become more important. He went on to explain that I could grow my own career, including through the direct employment of more people as my assistants – all financed by the federal government through the new EPBC legislation. I eventually told him to get the F*ck out of my office.
During John Howard’s time as prime minister the amount of direct federal government expenditure on environmental issues ballooned from A$500 million to A$4.3 billion all of this to mostly implement the vision of the WWF because John Howard didn’t actually come to government with his own vision.
It is the case that not long after the EPBC Act was introduced, people associated with WWF Australia were appointed to serve on Federal Government environmental advisory committees. A short time later, WWF Australia in conjunction with the Humane Society International was awarded a contract to disseminate information about the Act amongst environment organisations.
In return, the Howard Government frequently used WWF Australia’s name and public statements to promote its environment policies. Press release after press release mentioned WWF to add credibility to the John Howard’s many environmental policies; There were a total of some 64 media releases back then that cited WWF Australia many from the office of Robert Hill and many probably written at least in part by Imogen Zethoven.
The feature image is a photograph taken by me looking through mangroves to a full moon that is reflected back from Weyba Creek. The world is not always as it seems and environmental politics is full of smokes and mirrors with very little that benefits the natural environment.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Below is an email I sent to Andrew Bolt re Chris Bowen’s delusions.
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Andrew
Asking an AI.
What is the depth of the Pacific Ocean 20km east of New South Wales? > answer > “The continental shelf off the coast of New South Wales is relatively shallow, with an average depth of 100-200 meters”
200m, plus 250m above sea level = 450m
The Empire State Building is 480m tall.
The top floor on the Eiffel Tower is 276m.
Jennifer Marohasy might provide some thoughts here.
Building and MAINTAINING , wind turbines in the Pacific Ocean will be bloody difficult.
Add 50m of foundational piling. That is 500m of infrastructure. Plus massive cabling to get the power to shore – then to users. XX towers, plus rectifiers at $yy = massive cost
All wind turbines, solar panels etc need inverters/ rectifiers to synconise the fluctuating (0 to max) power to a constant AC voltage – precisely at 60 Hz cycles per second.
Base load (coal? nuclear?) conventional rotating-gerarator power, is absolutely required :
1 when the sun ‘don’t shine’ and the ‘wind don’t blow’
2 to provide that 24/7 synchronizing, 60 Hz cycles per second AC electricity (costly & complex. Don’t think Bowen would know much about this)
3 to ensure that our industrialized society, has power for heavy electricty demand – commuter trains, factories etc – available 24-7.
Possibly Electrical-Engineer advice would be useful.
Thanks for this post, Jennifer. Howard is lauded because he won elections but, as you and Clive Hamilton have shown, he was an opportunistic politician quite happy to ditch sensible behaviour if it helped him gain votes, no matter where they came from. The Environment and BioDiversity Act was and remains one of the worst pieces of legislation for our farmers and Howard was quite happy to bring it in if he got kudos from the enemies of our farmers. Whether he was worse than Whitlam is debatable but he was clearly not the great man many believe him to be.
The video clip of Alex Nicholls contains useful and damning information about these wind turbines which most of the public would be unaware of. There are some very unscrupulous people out there and the gullible public are continually falling for the confidence job.
Jackboot Johnny was always just a jumped-up suburban solicitor with delusions of grandeur.
His other delusion is that he is doing something “right” if the churnalists are urging him on. Given the general behaviour and desires of the “opinion-shapers”, such a notion is outright dangerous; not to him, but to those of us living closer to reality.
Yes Jennifer I think you are right. He was a cunning politician, nicknamed “The Rat” for good reason.
About 25% – the best part – of my private forest was expropriated under John Howard’s environmental policies. No compensation. Didn’t know about it until after it was declared, no right of appeal, no compensation.
It’s now essentially a national park, but I still pay the rates.
@ Sam:
AI thing is weird.
DC is what comes out of “batteries” or what you get when you “rectify” AC and squeezes it through a “filter” network to remove the “remaining AC “ripples.
Oz runs at 50 Hertz per phase, not 60. The frequency makes a difference when big transformers are in use. DC is NOT used for general transmission because it CANNOT be easily “stepped” up or down in voltage using transformers. Batteries are DC only devices, to make it “transmissible”, it needs to be run through an “inverter”. This is basically a circuit that, via an oscillator and something closely related to a serious audio power amplifier, produces a 50Hz sine-wave at the local line voltage, (230V AC, here in Oz), Those with “solar” rigs will have one in their package.
If that “answer” came from an actual AI source, I would avoid that one in future. The old computing term; GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage OUT), springs to mind. Any half-decent on-line tertiary course can supply actual information in eye-watering detail and quantity.
I am NOT a “sparky” (just a lowly electro-mechanical tech / cabling ferret), but I have worked with the real deal for decades, often on large construction sites. The “high-Voltage” types, (11,000 Volts and above, are a different breed. “One flash and you’re ash” being a recurring thought”. The ones who get around in helicopters, flying in VERY close proximity to those big transmission towers and cables are REALLY different. “Flash and / or Crash”; what a way to earn a living. You can understand why lesser mortals go into politics or churnalism.
I may not agree with you, but keep the fire burning, Jennifer.
@Bruce
You are right about 50 Hz. Thank you. (US uses 60 Hz). Also, I know not to trust AI answers.
Do you know the depth of the Pacific Ocean 25 km offshore?
While I am a Civil Engineer, not an Electrical Engineer, I do understand AC and DC, and electricity transmission issues.
Further – There are many, many issues related to political promises to build massive offshore wind turbines in the Pacific Ocean. All potential costly disasters.
Depth varies of course, but around Newcastle depth typically 50m 4Nm offshore. At 13Nm (roughly 25km) depth is ~120m.
Stop Press [ Newcastle Herald ]
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“Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has dismissed warnings about the viability of the Hunter’s deep-water floating wind farms as at least two proponents prepare to lodge licence applications.”
Good grief !
Yes Jen, your raising of Mr Bonsai’s EPBC Act reminds me that when the move to turn our local SW NSW redgum “whiteman’s forests” into National Parks was afoot, I wrote to then Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett.
The reason given for the move was to protect the ‘endangered’ superb parrot and I pointed out a lot of facts about their breeding habits, range, etc. Plus some info on the ‘whiteman’ history of the forests.
Much to my surprise I received a personal reply, signed by him.
He pointed out that under that EPBC Act he was obliged to act on reported dangers.
I read a lot of the Act and this was true. If any semi-reputable info on dangers to flora and fauna is reported, whole areas can be virtually shut down.
I wonder, as the Shires even were involved in being ‘useful idiots’ to formulate the thing, who was really behind it?
But you, like me, know some of that.
Robert Hill finessed himself into the Liberal Party parliamentary line-up, just as Malcolm Turnbull did.
Both were / are ideologically aligned to leftist causes.
Howard led the Liberal Party as his mentor Robert Menzies decreed – as a “broad church” of positions on all matters.
Hill was left to run his assigned portfolio as he saw fit, with Howard relying on him to operate in accordance with the established conservative values of the party, as was the case with all elected Liberal ministers and MPs.
As environment minister, Hill pursued his “planet-saviors” WWF approaches and snuck under Howard’s radar.
Howard ultimately engineered Hill out of the parliamentary line-up.
Some of the Hill / Howard story (debacle?)is covered here –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hill_(Australian_politician)