Category: Fossil Fuels

A Diesel in the Shed

By Viv Forbes

You can have your solar panels
              and your turbines on the hills;
You can use the warmth of sunshine
              to reduce your heating bills.

You can dream you’re self-sufficient
              as you weed your vegie bed;
As long as you make sure to keep
A diesel in the shed.

When I was a kid living on a small dairy farm in Queensland, we relied on green energy – horses and human muscles provided most motive power; fire-wood and beeswax candles supplied heat and light; a windmill pumped water and the sun provided solar energy for drying clothes and growing crops, vegies and pastures. The only “non-green” energy used was a bit of kerosene for the kitchen lamp and the dairy lantern, and petrol for a small Ford utility for a trip to town every fortnight.

Continue reading “A Diesel in the Shed”

Time for Employees and Shareholders of Resource Companies to “FIGHT BACK”

The oil, gas and resource industry in Australia has shown itself to be pathetic in the face of criticism. Board room responses to virtuous criticism are ridiculous self-destructive woke company policies, even though the employees work hard to produce essential goods. They run advertisements showing wind turbines or solar panels which could never provide the power required for their operations but, apparently, reality doesn’t matter. The electrical power generation industry is different in that it’s focus is to co-opt politicians to force consumers to subsidise uneconomic inefficient intermittent unreliable renewable energy schemes.

Politicians, but for a very small number, lack a backbone and are readily captured by nonsense rather than stick up for Australia and the community at large. Perhaps I’m wrong and they actually believe all the “global warming/climate change” and “green energy” nonsense and think it’s worth destroying the economy to get their own warm inner glow. Parties.

Every now and then someone actually stands up to the nonsense. Northface an outdoor clothing manufacturer, in a virtue signalling exercise, criticized the oil and gas industry, going so far as implement a product boycott on one company. Here is a response from Chris Wright CEO of Liberty Oilfield Services.

If only we had more company CEOs with a spine, and more politicians who acted in the best interests of Australia.

Andrew Chapman
Victoria, Australia

Additional information: https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2021/03/22/colorado-oil-gas-north-face-sustainability-flap.html

“Electrify Everything” Policies Would Eliminate Gas Heating and Cooking

BBQBy Steve Goreham

Originally published in TheInvadingSea.

Natural gas and propane serve as excellent low-cost fuels for heating and cooking. Last year, natural gas usage grew faster than renewables in the United States. But advocates of green energy policies would eliminate gas for heating and cooking. Continue reading ““Electrify Everything” Policies Would Eliminate Gas Heating and Cooking”

Greentopia

They planned the Land of Make Believe.

They wanted water without building dams, cheap reliable electricity without using coal or gas or nuclear power, transport without using petrol or diesel, food without farmers or fishermen, employment without factories, metals and motor fuels without refineries and bridges and buildings without cement and steel.

Their countryside was uglified by paddocks of magic mirrors, forests of whirling bird-slicers and spider-webs of access tracks and power lines that delivered abundant electricity when it was least needed (and little at peak demand).

But the taps went dry, cattle and crops died, batteries went flat, lights went out, seafood and rice came from Vietnam, metals were smelted and refined in China, trains were built in India, cars and trucks came from Japan, motors fuels were imported from South East Asia, construction slumped and savings fled to Zurich.

Welcome to Green Australia.

greentopia

PDF version: https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/greentopia.pdf [PDF: 327 KB]

Wasting Australia’s Resources

By Viv Forbes

Foolish politicians driven by extreme green ideology are wasting Australia’s resources.

Australia’s nuclear resources are largely wasted. We have abundant geological potential for uranium and other nuclear fuels, we know how to explore and extract them, but with bans and restrictions that change every election, and approval processes that take either some years or forever, only three mines are operating. And Australia is the only G20 country to ban clean silent low-emission nuclear power.

Australia’s waste and sterilisation of coal and oil shale resources is also an international disgrace. Solid hydro-carbon resources are very concentrated stores of value, but cannot be used without temporarily disturbing other resources such as soils, vegetation and stored water. Continue reading “Wasting Australia’s Resources”

Forget Mad Max – What About Mad Drax?

Dr. John Happs

The 1979 Australian action movie Mad Max was set in asociety teetering on the brink of collapse. The screenwriter James McCausland, reflecting on the 1973 oil crisis, speculated about the prospect of Peak Oil and the violence that might accompany the end of oil:

“The ferocity with which Australians would defend their right to fill a tank. Long queues formed at the stations with petrol-and anyone who tried to sneak ahead in the queue met raw violence. … George and I wrote the [Mad Max] script based on the thesis that people would do almost anything to keep vehicles moving …”

https://www.couriermail.com.au/business/scientists-warnings-unheeded/news-story/f4ca1ac96028f9c15d5d565efcff281e?sv=801cf324c28674e14cc330adb3266daandnk=fdb8dd65f8a4d5c184efd913f938acb1-1550985738

The notion of Peak Oil has been vigorously promoted by green groups and those vested interests wanting to promote biofuels and inefficient, unreliable wind and solar sources of energy. For instance, Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University of Technology and many others have frequently paraded the Peak Oil chimera.

https://islandpress.org/blog/peter-newmans-resilient-cities-sustainable-transport-city-0

Continue reading “Forget Mad Max – What About Mad Drax?”

Back to the Medieval Green World

Greens dream of a zero-emissions world without coal, oil and natural gas. They need to think what they wish for.

First there would be no mass production of steel without coke from coking coal to remove oxygen from iron ore. People could cut trees in forests for charcoal to produce pig iron and crude steels, but forests would soon be exhausted. Coal saved the forests from this fate. Continue reading “Back to the Medieval Green World”

Hydro-carbons Beat Biofuels on all counts

Coal and oil are made from plants and animals that died millions of years ago when the atmosphere contained abundant carbon dioxide plant food. They are now very concentrated forms of energy which can be extracted from very small areas of land. Burning these natural hydro-carbons returns CO2 and fresh water to the atmosphere thus greatly assisting global plant growth. If we are lucky these extra gases in the atmosphere may also slightly delay the start of Earth’s next cooling cycle, but this looks unlikely.

Ethanol and biodiesel are made from plants growing now – sugar cane, beets, palm oil and grains. Growing these crops requires large areas of land and valuable fresh water for irrigation.
Growing bio-fuel crops extracts CO2 from the atmosphere but burning them quickly puts it back. This is a zero-sum game that does nothing positive for the environment or the climate.

Coal and oil are thus more enviro-friendly than biofuels. It is environmental desecration to lock-the-gate on coal, oil and gas while supporting policies that waste land, food crops and water for motor fuels.

Speculators should be free to make biofuels but these should not be subsidised or mandated.

By Viv Forbes

Adani Double Standards

Greens claim that the Adani coal mine in Queensland may force some desert finches to move a bit further out.

What is the Green Solution to this possible minor environmental disturbance? – ban the mine.

But every wind turbine continually chops up threatened birds and bats. A survey at one wind “farm” in Victoria found that 1,500 birds were killed in one year – wedge-tail eagles, falcons, kites, hawks and other birds as well as un-counted bats.

There are 94 wind farms in Australia, each with its own avian graveyard.

The Green Solution to this real environmental abomination? – pretend it is not happening.

By Viv Forbes