When Green Energy Failed in Broken Hill

By Jo Nova

On October 17th a storm blew seven transmission towers over, disconnecting the Broken Hill area [in Australia] from the national grid. About 19,000 people live there, and with a 200MW wind plant, a 53MW solar array and a big battery, plus diesel generators it was assumed they’d be OK for a while without the connection to the big baseload plants.

But instead it’s been a debacle. They had nearly a week of blackouts with intermittent bursts of power, barely long enough to charge the phone.

The fridges in the pharmacies failed, so all medications had to be destroyed and emergency replacements sent in. Schools closed. Freezers of meat are long gone…  Emergency trucks finally brought in food and eventually the schools reopened. Full reconnection did will not happen until November 6th.

Read More: https://joannenova.com.au/2024/10/650m-in-renewable-energy-didnt-save-broken-hill-from-days-of-blackouts-after-a-storm-islanded-it/

The ‘Aunt Dolly Bushfire System’ is doomed to fail

By Roger Underwood AM

Environmental activists and green academics in Western Australia are pushing the government to make radical changes to bushfire policy and operations. In place of the current approach, which integrates pre-fire mitigation with post-fire response, the activists are pushing for “response only”, otherwise known as ‘the Aunt Dolly Bushfire System’.

Specifically, they want the government to abandon the program of mild-intensity prescribed burning, a strategy aimed at reducing fuel levels in a mosaic pattern across south-west forests so as to make it easier, safer and cheaper to control fires under the worst case scenario situation.

Continue reading “The ‘Aunt Dolly Bushfire System’ is doomed to fail”

Why I did not vote Green

By John McRobert

I didn’t vote Green [in the recent Queensland State election] because of their unrelenting and unjustifiable efforts to destroy the coal industry, the industry that afforded the lifestyle we all enjoy today; the industry that delivered the electrified railway system on which Greens generously offer cheap tickets to those close enough to use them, subsidised by the working country people unable to access this localised largess.

Greens promote free lunches for schoolchildren – what an abrogation of parental responsibility, what a logistical and legalistic nightmare. What are they thinking of?

Greens support subsidising rooftop solar panels, at the expense of everybody, rich or poor, in increased electricity costs. This is an unbelievable transfer of wealth from the homeless have-nots to the haves who own houses on which they can mount these imported, short-life toys that parasitically live off and undermine the efficiency of a once efficient coal-fired grid. 

It takes a good person to admit he was wrong, but in so admitting, can inspire others. The road to Damascus is an enlightening story.

Greens have the drive, may they soon see the light.


John McRobert BE (Civ)
CopyRight Publishing Co P/L
Indooroopilly Q 4068
Web: www.copyright.net.au

The Broken Hill Blackout

By John McRobert

Al Jolson introduced Talkies with, “You ain’t seen nuttin’ yet”.

The recent Broken Hill blackout where Wind and Sun failed to provide power when needed, demonstrates we ain’t seen nuttin’ yet. That blackout is a harbinger of big blackouts for big cities when they become reliant on unreliable green energy sources.

I have experienced what that will be like.

On St Valentine’s Day 1985, during a Union-strike power blackout, my office was on the 24th floor of a building in Brisbane CBD. After navigating roads with no traffic lights and reporting for work, lifts didn’t work and the fire-escape access staircase was unventilated. Trudging up to an unairconditioned, unlit, unpowered office, windows would not open and no power points worked.

I walked down the fire-escape to buy lunch and St Valentine’s Day chocolates for my wife. The shopping arcade was in darkness, shop-owner incandescent, stock melted. Back up 24 floors to spend a sweltering afternoon in unproductive endurance. After work, walked downstairs in gloom to renegotiate roads with no streetlights or traffic lights. Returned home to a romantic candlelight dinner of freshly-thawed steak (before it rotted), cooked on a gas-powered camp hotplate.

Reliable energy sources are essential for modern society.
We still need coal.

Why I’m Voting the Way I Am

By John Droz jr.

Someone recently asked me why I like Trump.

My answer was that I don’t really like a lot of things about Trump, but this election is not about choosing the most likable person.

We are voting between two vastly different ideologies. We are voting for the country we want to leave our children and grandchildren.

Trump has proven that he can deliver. He is a patriot to the core and even served his country for four years without pay.

Continue reading “Why I’m Voting the Way I Am”

If Green Energy is the Future, Bring a Fire Extinguisher

By Steve Goreham

A version of this article was recently published in The Wall Street Journal.

Alternative energy is exploding─literally. Lithium battery fires are breaking out on highways and in factories, home garages, and storage rooms. The rise in battery fires is amplified by government efforts to force adoption of electric vehicles and grid-scale batteries for electric power.

Continue reading “If Green Energy is the Future, Bring a Fire Extinguisher”

Blind Freddy on Green Hydrogen

By Geoff Derrick

Everyone knows “Blind Freddy”. He’s the man who sees problematic issues with extreme clarity, who identifies projects based on humbug, who calls out scams and wrong-doings, who is our quiet protector on many controversial social and business issues, and who keeps many of our radical politicians, businessmen and policy makers in check. 

It is Blind Freddy who could see that “Green Hydrogen” was set to fail (“Writing on wall for green hydrogen”, Weekend Australian,  5-6 Oct), simply because making green hydrogen by passing an electric current through water is extremely expensive and energy consuming. It is Blind Freddy who sees that this process uses more energy than hydrogen can produce, and that it costs more to make this green hydrogen than its world sale price.

Operating at a loss may well be standard socialist philosophy, but it is not the way capitalism works.

And it is Blind Freddy who can see that renewables will never replace fossil fuels because they cannot do the job of powering a nation 24/7.

Tipping Points

By Graham Pinn

The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) describes a tipping point as a “critical threshold beyond which a system reorganises, often abruptly, and/or irreversibly”. Their examples include melting polar ice with sea-level rise, increasing extreme weather events, and release of methane from thawing permafrost; currently nine potential such events have been identified, none currently occurring.

When initially discussing such events, the IPCC believed a temperature rise of 4C would be necessary for these events to occur, this figure was progressively revised down, to a 1.5C rise making them more probable, the latest figure is 1.5 – 2.5C. When looking back, to what we know has occurred historically, even the concept of temperature increase depends on the starting point.

Continue reading “Tipping Points”

Politicians: If Net Zero is Achievable, Why Not Give Us A Small-Scale Demonstration?

By Dr. John Happs

Dr John Happs

Imagine a company that claimed to have a battery-powered airliner that would carry 200 passengers over a distance of several thousand kilometres. Imagine also that the government funnelled a few million taxpayer dollars into the development of such an aircraft, politicians and the public would demand a demonstration of its capabilities and safety before anyone boarded for a flight.

By the same token, if anyone makes the claim that a constant, reliable, zero emissions electricity supply, based on wind and solar, is achievable, surely it’s essential that we verify this claim before rushing into such an expensive, untested nation-wide scheme.

The claim was made in the 1950’s that nuclear energy was a viable source of reliable energy and a demonstration was quickly and successfully provided in Arco, Idaho when the city was powered by nuclear energy on July 17th, 1955.  The Borax III reactor supplied the small town of Arco with nuclear power.

The Arco success was followed by another nuclear power demonstration at Shippingport, near Pittsburgh, in 1957 when the plant was completed in just over 2 years. It was reported:

“So, on December 18, 1957, after having operated the reactor and the plant’s steam systems on and off for about two weeks, it came to pass that the first full-scale atomic power station to be built in the United States was synchronized with and connected to the grid.  At first, the plant was operated at just low power levels.  It didn’t take long to complete some tests and reach full rated power on December 23, 1957, with the plant putting its full rated 60,000 kilowatts onto Duquesne’s commercial grid.”  

https://www.ans.org/news/article-2093/atoms-on-the-grid-shippingport-1957/

Continue reading: https://papundits.wordpress.com/2024/09/02/politicians-if-net-zero-is-achievable-why-not-give-us-a-small-scale-demonstration/

The Web of Deceit

By John McRobert

Farms grow food. Solar panels, wind turbines, transmission lines and access roads sterilise land, locking it away from real farming. To call these installations ‘farms’ is a travesty.

And to read that 182,000 solar panels have been approved to cover 393 ha of land near Canberra despite the overwhelming objections from nearby landholders, demonstrates the Government agenda of net-zero targets will stop at nothing.

These Net Zero targets must be challenged. They will do nothing to change the climate for better or worse but they are impoverishing our nation by closing down a reliable energy source in favour of a logistically impossible network of dilute energy collectors interconnected by a web of transmission lines – a shocking misuse of governmental and electrical power – a great web of deceit.