Fact is,Dick Smith has revealed the lies about renewables
- 12:00AM MARCH 30, 2024
- 1168 COMMENTS
The RMIT ABC Fact Check own goal against Dick Smith exposed not only the green-left bias and deceit of the national broadcaster and the so-called “fact-checking” outfit, but also the central lie at the heart of the national climate and energy debate. The renewables-plus-storage experiment that Australia has embarked upon is not only unprecedented but impossible with current technology.
This is an inconvenient factthat is denied daily by the Australian Labor Party, the Greens, the ABC, theclimate lobby, and the so-called elites of our national debate. We are underminingour national economic security by chasing a mirage, and our taxpayer-fundedmedia deliberately misleads us down this dead-end path.
In an age when most of us wereanalogue, Smith made an electronic fortune then turned his attention back tothe organic and irreplaceable, focusing on conservation and adventure.
The Australian Geographicfounder epitomises the admirable qualities of initiative, innovation, andenvironmental stewardship.
Which makes it confounding thatthe RMIT ABC nexus targeted him. It seems he committed the mortal sin in theireyes of supporting the only reliable, weather-independent, emissions-freeelectricity generation available – nuclear.
It is an energy sourceincreasingly embraced by green activists and leftists in Europe and the US. Butnot here. Whether it is due to intellectual rigidity or partisan positioning,the left in Australia are stuck in an old-fashioned, Cold War mindset ofnuclear fearmongering and denial.
READ MORE:ABC apologises to Dick Smith over fact check ‘full of lies’ | My week listening to ABC radio: no wonder ratings are infree fall | Getting to net zero without nuclear means poverty | Nuclear no-brainer for self-imposed energy crisis | Sacrificial lambs on the altar of climate change |
The ideological blinkers are sostrong at RMIT ABC Fact Check that when the renewables enthusiast andenvironmentalist Smith made perfectly sensible and apolitical comments aboutthe inability of renewables alone to power a country, he made himself theirpublic enemy. The fact checkers decided to take him down, even though he wasright.
THEAUSTRALIAN.COM.AU06:32
Chris Kenny welcomes Dick Smith’s ‘big win’ over ABC’s fact-checking
Sky News host Chris Kenny haswelcomed Dick Smith’s big win over the ABC and its “so-called fact-checking…outfit” with RMIT after the broadcaster issued an apology for a fact checkwhich had been published. Mr Smith had previously stated no country had beenable to run entirely on More
This is an example of all thatis wrong in our public square.
Facts do not matter so much asperceived motives or ideological side.
Anyone who has spoken withSmith, listened to him being interviewed or read his comments would be in nodoubt that he would favour an all-renewable energy system if it could work.(For that matter, who would not?)
But with his technical nous,environmental bent, and practical mindset, Smith asks the obvious question: ifrenewables alone cannot give us an emissions-free world, what is the mostefficient and effective way to deliver that goal?
And his answer is nuclear.
Despite Smith aiming for theright goal and advocating the right outcome through the only indisputablyeffective means, his answer apparently is not what the woke want to hear.
Because in making his case,Smith dared to speak the truth about renewables.
“Look, I can tell you, thisclaim by the CSIRO that you can run a whole country on solar and wind is simplya lie,” Smith told 2GB.
“It is not true. They are tellinglies. No country has ever been able to run entirely on renewables — that’simpossible.”
It is worth picking over thisdispute because it is illuminating. Smith’s initial complaints to RMIT ABC FactCheck were ignored, until he appeared on my Sky News program threatening legalaction and got his lawyers involved.
The eventual apologyspecifically retracted their claim that Smith opposes renewable energy. Littlewonder, this is a bloke who charges his EV with renewable energy – Smith lovesthe technology, he is just realistic about its limitations.
Reworking their “fact check”after Smith’s threats, RMIT ABC included tortured and implausible arguments.They reported that the CSIRO denied ever having said you could run a wholecountry on renewables.
It is not difficult to findcontradictory evidence. For instance, a 2017 article on the German “EnergyTransition” website was headed “CSIRO says Australia can get to 100 per centrenewable energy”.
The article talked about a“toxic political debate about the level of renewable energy” that can be accommodatedin the system.
“CSIRO energy division’sprincipal research scientist Paul Graham said there were no barriers to 100 percent renewable energy, and lower levels could be easily absorbed.”
Years later, Graham doubled downon this, declaring; “The whole system is getting ready for renewables supportedby storage.”
In 2020, on Australia’s “RenewEconomy” site, we saw the headline “CSIRO embraces transition to net zeroemissions ‘without derailing our economy’ ”.
And just last December, theCSIRO published an article titled “Rapid decarbonisation can steer Australia tonet zero by 2050”,
There is no renewablesscepticism or realism in those statements. It seems that Smith was right aboutthe thrust of CSIRO analysis.
Yet now, via RMIT ABC FactCheck’s revised article, we learn the CSIRO has a more nuanced, and realisticstance: “Its position is that ‘renewables are a critical part, but not the onlypart, of the energy mix as Australia moves towards the government-legislatedtarget of net-zero emissions by 2050’.”
Smith has flushed out animportant concession to reality from the CSIRO. The “renewables are a criticalpart, but not the only part” formulation is exactly the point Smith was makingwhen RMIT ABC tried to take him down.
Talk of a 100 per centrenewables-plus-storage model is fantasy for now. I wonder how long it willtake the politicians to become similarly frank, and most of the media.
Perhaps even more deceitful wasthe RMIT ABC pretence that some countries are already powered entirely byrenewables.
“There are four countriesrunning 100 per cent on wind-water-solar (WWS) alone for their gridelectricity,” reported RMIT ABC, quoting an academic report that cited Albania,Paraguay, Bhutan, and Nepal.
Right off the bat, these were ridiculouscomparisons. These are not large, modern, or developed economies (why notcompare our emissions challenge to the performance to subsistence farmers insub-Saharan Africa?). Australia’s GDP per capita is about eight times higherthan Albania’s (which had to import electricity from neighbouring countriesjust two years ago anyway, thanks to a drought undercutting its hydrogeneration), 10 times higher than Paraguay’s, 20 times Bhutan’s and about 50times higher than Nepal’s.
The comparisons are laughable onthose grounds alone, but it gets worse. The so-called fact checkers were onlyaccounting for the electricity grids in these nations, even though huge partsof their populations and economies are not connected to the grid, and there isheavy use of other fuels for heating, cooking, and transport.
The most pertinent figures, nowincluded in the RMIT ABC updated article show that renewables account for onlya third of Albanian energy, closer to 40 per cent in Paraguay and just 6 percent in Nepal. A long way from their previously claimed 100 per cent.
Perhaps self-conscious about theabsurdity of their claims about those small, poor nations, the fact checkershad also made reference to a comparable developed economy, choosing the USstate of California.
Stanford University’s Mark Jacobsonnoted California had “been running on more than 100 per cent WWS for 10 out ofthe last 11 days for between 0.25 and 6 hours per day”.
Really? As little as 15 minuteson renewable energy and that proves a modern economy can thrive on renewablesplus storage?!
The intellectual rigour at playhere is Thunberg-esque. California has nuclear energy, gas generation andconstantly falls back on interstate interconnection to coal-fired power. Anddespite all this, it is dealing with supply shortages that have led to callsfor EV owners to avoid charging their vehicles at certain times.
The green zealots are going tohave to do a lot better when coming up with their examples of renewable energy nirvana.The RMIT ABC’s desperate attempt to talk up renewables only underscored DickSmith’s crucial point – renewables can and often do fill the grid in placeswhere they have high penetration, such as South Australia or Germany, but theyare intermittent and cannot reliably provide power when it is needed.
So far, except in some uniquesituations with abundant hydro-electricity, there is no way to efficiently andaffordably store sufficient electricity for long enough to underpin arenewables-only system.
The International Energy Agencysays current technology can only get us about halfway to net zero, the rest ofthe emission reductions will have to come from technology not yet in operation.
All this exposes the big lie atthe heart of the nation’s climate and energy debate. Labor, the Greens,activist groups like the Climate Council and activist journalists at the ABCand elsewhere are consistently misleading the population about the prospectsfor renewables. They not only suggest that renewables can get us to net zero,but that some countries are already there.
This is absolute bunkum, it isspouted daily, and Dick Smith has exposed it. By fact checking the factcheckers he has corrected the narrative.
Perhaps RMIT ABC might like tofact check the constant government claims that renewable energy is deliveringreliable, affordable power and a green jobs bonanza. They might also want tointerrogate whether there is such a thing as a “renewable energy superpower”.
They might test whether theclaimed prohibitive costs of nuclear energy have sent France, Finland, the US,UK, South Korea, Japan and China broke.
Perhaps RMIT ABC might want tocheck facts instead of pushing propaganda and attempting to discredit theirperceived ideological enemies.
ASSOCIATE EDITOR (NATIONAL AFFAIRS)
