In terms of the silliest anti windfarm spiel, this article ranks second: beaten only by the report in The Australian that Victoria's wind farms hadn't reduced the amount of brown coal burnt in that state's power stations, but failing to mention that this was because the extra electricity was exported to NSW.

The fact that fossil fuels are used in constructing wind farms is well known. But the amount used is small compared to the amount of electricity they generate. Similarly the amount of electricity they consume is small compared to the amount they produce.

So in answer to Gary's question at the start of his article:
"So what is the point of saddling Australia with an increasing load of wind turbines?"
The main answer is TO REDUCE OUR CONSUMPTION OF FOSSIL FUEL.

Until we do that, whether we can eliminate our use of fossil fuel is a purely academic exercise!

There is potentially a second answer: to drive down the price of electricity. But whether they achieve that outcome depends on how they are funded.

Hey I wonder how many resources go into building and operating a Power Station?

+ its Fuel.

Wow
I am incredulous that the Australian would even print an article like this, which has no connection with reality, I can only guess they thought it had merit as fiction.

Of course Gary Johns is correct as far as he goes in arguing why renewables can’t replace all energy sources. If he tried going further he would soon get bogged down in technicalities and numbers, leaving most readers behind. But it’s a critical subject; the politics of future energy is shaped entirely by public opinion on the matter. The renewables camp demands the immediate end of fossil fuels. They accept no excuses and invoke weird conspiracies to explain the delay. I see it again and again.

So, why cannot the matter be resolved authoritatively? Surely it’s just about technology and engineering, facts and numbers.

There’s no simple answer. I confess my own theories are a bit conspiratorial too. Firstly, the ‘experts’ are nearly all conflicted. For example there is barely a solar or wind or geothermal (or CCS for that matter) expert who is not a solar or wind or geothermal (or CCS) advocate. Perhaps worse, the folk who make a living out of supplying energy and should be in the best position to settle the matter authoritatively don’t really mind where their electricity comes from because someone always pays the asking (subsidised) price no matter the cost of the energy source. Plus, they feel the political pressure to toe the green line. And they are not terribly interested in what will happen when penetration of renewables into the whole grid system starts to approach its inevitable limits.

Reminding people that no solar panel or wind turbine has ever been built without fossil fuels is useful. Gary could have stressed that the ‘50% target’ is only about electricity, representing around 40% of primary energy. Transportation, heating, cement production etc. account for the rest. While electrified personal transport should be feasible, fossil fuels will be much harder to replace for many other uses. The ‘let’s stop now’ brigade ignore those limitations.

All of these constraints can usefully be fed into realistic thinking about cutting carbon emissions. Renewables will hardly register in the solutions.

warmair it's not actually fiction. It's just a bunch of irrelevant, mostly obvious, facts cobbled together with ignorant opinion that reinforces the party line!

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Prompete, when the limiting factor is the amount of fresh water available, more CO2 doesn't help much. And if the higher CO2 levels result in warmer temperatures causing a sea level rise which floods our farmland, we'll be much worse off.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Tombee, the problem is those limitations (which are really technical problems to overcome rather than actual limitations) are being used as an excuse to do nothing even though we're nowhere near the "limits" at the moment.

Australian coal, oil and gas companies receive $4b in subsidies
Sue Lannin 11 Nov 2014,
A new report finds exploration by coal and energy companies is subsidised by Australian taxpayers by as much as $US3.5 billion ($4 billion) every year in the form of direct spending and tax breaks.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-11/coal-oil-and-gas-companies-receive-4-billion-dollar-in-subsidie/5881814