People are catching on. At last! Not before time. Just imagine the billions of our money that could have been saved if the modern equivalent of the Tulip Craze or the Millennium Bug was knocked in the head before it got under way. And, if we had had politicians who listened to the people and not to crooks looking for a quick buck.

There has still not been a shred of evidence that the life-giving gas, carbon dioxide has anything at all to do with climate change, or that climate can be changed to suit by mere human beings.

Another way of looking at this is the EROI Cliff as described by several authors. The massive population and economic growth since the 1800s came on the back of high yielding energy sources starting with coal. Now some want us to go back to foraging for wood. We can't have a luxury lifestyle without high yield energy. Try getting new solar panels and prescription medicine in a medieval village economy.

In my opinion the killer blow will be when oil is no longer affordable. Probably global warming will decline with it. The daft renewable religion twits on TV last night failed to grasp all their food and flying holidays comes courtesy of oil. BTW thanks to OLO for allowing contrary views to the publicly funded controlled media such as the ABC, SBS and The Conversation. One example; no farming near nuclear plants. Tell that to the winemakers of Bordeaux.

While there is now a capacity for the production of 1,600GW of solar panels annually, the demand for the monsters has flatlined at 500GW, causing a crisis in manufacturing. Barely 3 years old factories are closing in Europe.

Nevertheless, the children in the Albanese government are determined to spend a billion of our dollars in a ridiculous attempt to make the things here.

Rising interest rates and rising electricity costs are souring silly solar.

In what appears to be a consistent theme from those who are against renewables, the article criticises renewable energy sources with exaggerations and decades-old arguments that ceased being valid years ago.

The immediacy of an energy crisis in Australia is exaggerated. Despite the challenges, significant progress has been made in developing solutions like battery storage. The Hornsdale Power Reserve, for example, saved consumers over $150 million in its first two years by stabilising the grid and providing backup power.

The claim that a global transition isn't happening despite significant subsidies and political support ignores substantial advancements and decreasing costs in renewable energy technologies. The cost of electricity from solar photovoltaics, for example, fell by 82% last decade, while onshore wind costs dropped by 39%. Moreover, fossil fuels still receive significant global subsidies, estimated at $5.9 trillion in 2020.

The correlation between increased renewable energy installations and rising global fossil fuel consumption and CO2 levels is misleading. The rise in fossil fuel use is largely driven by the economic growth of developing countries. Renewable energy adoption is a gradual process, with its impact on global emissions becoming more significant over time.

Somehow the claim that renewable energy is unreliable and more expensive due to additional infrastructure and storage needs is never discussed with the massive improvements to the technology over the last 20 years, nor the plummeting costs. Also ignored is the necessity for cleaner energy. A balanced perspective would discuss these, too.

The article also overstates the transmission costs associated with renewable energy, while failing to mention their necessity for grid diversification and resilience. Further to this, every dollar spent on the energy transition results in savings of between $3 and $7 from reduced health and environmental costs. (http://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2019/Sep/IRENA_Transforming_the_energy_system_2019.pdf)

All energy sources have environmental impacts, but the impact of renewables is tiny in comparison. Land use concerns are often overstated. For instance, supplying the entire world's energy needs with solar power would require less than 1% of global land area. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960148121016499)

Dollars and destruction is what wind and solar unreliables are all about.

Billion-dollar foreign companies are stripping our countryside, crushing our farmers, wildlife and birds.

Bjorn Lomborg gave a presentation recently and argued that doing nothing about climate change would have a small economic cost whereas aggressively pursuing net zero would be ruinously expensive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWqv6RH-3WE

His argument is for civilisation to do what it always has done and develop technologies until they are economically competitive. The main problem today is that people are being lied to by being told that wind and solar will give us cheap energy and save the environment when the reality is that it is providing expensive and unreliable power and destroying the natural environment at an unprecedented rate in modern times.

Fester,
The frightening part is that the more 'educated' are the dumb ones who believe all this hype.
Our problem is not pollution s such, it's the pollution of minds which in turn cause environmental degradation. Just think how much pollution all round could have been avoided if the "educated" had their merit examined before being listened to ?
Just to avoid any opportunistic confusion please think of the difference between learned people & mere educated. I have witnessed literal village idiots making more intelligent decisions than the experts imposed upon us by Govt.

Fester,

It seems Lomborg was very selective with his data in the talk you linked to. As a result of this, all his claims are misleading to varying degrees. I counted 16 erroneous claims in total. I’ll address the five worst for now.

That the percentage of the Earth's surface burned by wildfires has decreased from 4.2% in 1900 to about 3% now is correct, but Lomborg fails to mention contributing factors to this such as changes in land use and fire suppression efforts. More importantly, though, is the increase in the intensity and the destructiveness of wildfires today due to the hotter and drier conditions brought on by climate change.

The argument that more people die from cold than from heat is true and has historically been the case for as long as we can tell. But the point is that heat-related deaths are on the rise due to climate change. This trend is particularly concerning as the frequency and intensity of heatwaves increases.

His point about net-zero policies costing a quarter of global GDP each year is accurate if you only look at the higher end of cost estimates and ignore the significant long-term economic benefits of transitioning to a low-carbon economy. Numerous studies have found that the costs of inaction on climate change are far greater than the costs of implementing net-zero policies; in part accounting for.

Lomborg’s assertion that we are 150 to 250 years away from achieving 100% renewable energy is overly pessimistic. Technological advancements, decreasing costs, and increasing political and public support are accelerating the transition to renewable energy much faster than Lomborg suggests, and achieving 100% renewable energy is feasible within this century with the right policies and investments:

http://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2022/re-futures.html
http://www.irena.org/Digital-Report/World-Energy-Transitions-Outlook-2023
http://www.iea.org/news/rapid-progress-of-key-clean-energy-technologies-shows-the-new-energy-economy-is-emerging-faster-than-many-think

Finally, with a clear consensus backed by 99.9% of the over-66,000 relevant peer-reviewed studies​, coupled with the IPCC’s predictions often proving to have been too conservative when they come to fruition, debunk Lomborg’s claim that science is presented with exaggeration and bias.

John,

Lomborg has been consistent in his message over the years, one of skepticism of catastrophists, technical optimism, and a belief that the best strategy for a civilisation is to develop a prosperous economy with the resources to solve problems.

It is ironic to see France hailed for its low cost/low emission nuclear. It was founded from catastrophism relating to the oil shock of the early 1970s, ending in failure some fifteen years later with the oil shock obviated by technological advances and leaving the French with expensive power.

Australia is following the same catastrophist motivation today with the pursuit of wind and solar. Unlike nuclear, the destruction of the environment is huge, with wind factories sited on the ridges of the Great Dividing Range, those natural wildlife preserves protected by their topography being destroyed without constraint. And unlike nuclear power plants, those dysfunctional wind and solar factories will be toxic junk long before anyone might have thought them a good idea, leaving only memories of the genocide of our natural heritage and the destitution that they brought.

You might be interested in a talk hosted by the American Nuclear Society in June about nuclear waste. It isn't the problem that you seem to think it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_S1zKs8ubs

John,

You criticise Lomborg for his criticism of heat related deaths. I think you misrepresented his criticism, but that is not a concern for me. What I'd point out to you is that the number of deaths from extreme temperature is falling. Would you acknowledge that as a positive for global warming?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/hot-cold-extreme-temperature-deaths/