All of the crap about plastic bags and light globes is just another government ruse which makes them seem to be doing something. All it does is inconvenience the population for absolutely no gain, while the government continues to bring in more immigrants to tell the same rubbish they are telling us.

Why do Australians believe anything politicians say about climate change when our population has now reached 21.5 million – 65% more than the optimum population for the hottest, driest continent in the world?

According to this author, the Rudd Government’s ‘big ticket’ ideas are not much use either. Nor is the author’s suggested “conversion to large-scale renewable energy supplies” of much use: currently, not enough private money has been put into research of alternative energy (even less now in a global recession). Added to this, ‘hot rocks’ are far too expensive and the ‘obvious’ (to Greens) one, wind power, is unreliable.

“During the heat wave of late January this year, the output from South Australian wind farms was a maximum between 1am and 3am and NEGLIGIBLE during the hours of MAXIMUM DEMAND between noon and 6pm.” (Ray Evans electricity engineer, Tom Quirk former deputy chairman Victorian Energy Networks Corporation; ‘Quadrant’, March 2009)

Evans and Quirk also state that: “This performance from an investment of some $800 million whose profitability is guaranteed by statute should lead to a public outcry and a royal commission.”

Solar power doesn’t fare much better due to cost of panels, and “Solar power stations based on collecting the sun’s radiation and focusing it on small steam generators have been tried and found wanting.” Added to this: “The CSIRO’s experimental solar station at White Cliffs in outback New South Wales…was given much publicity when it was first commissioned, but it was an economic failure.”

The renewable energy producers are described as “rent seekers” who got at John Howard in 1997,and he was persuaded to “commit to requiring electricity suppliers to purchase electricity from renewable resources such as windmills, whenever the windmills happened to be delivering power.”

Continued...

Evans and Quirk raise another matter not generally broadcast about wind power:

“In practice, every wind farm has to rely on someone else providing back-up generating capacity. This means that the wind farm is entirely superfluous to the electricity system and that WE ARE PAYING FOR ELECTRICITY OVER WHICH THE SYSTEM OPERATORS HAVE NO CONTROL, but which they are REQUIRED BY LEGISLATION TO ACCEPT AT THE GOING SPOT PRICE. The wind farms gazump all the other generators so that even at times of minimum demand, if the wind is blowing somewhere over a wind farm, a scheduled generator has to reduce its output (and thus reduce its revenue.) Nonetheless, because the coal-fired stations have to maintain their output, albeit at reduced levels (and therefore at reduced efficiencies), the wind farm electricity has virtually no impact at all on emissions of carbon dioxide.” Apparently varying output of coal-fired generators is difficult and costly.

We are paying “over $600 million more for electricity as a consequence of John Howard’s MRET legislation. Most of this is pure profit, and so the wind farm operators will be prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying for extension of the scheme, and Kevin Rudd has obliged them with his commitment to mandate 20% of our electricity production from renewable by 2020.”

The only practical way to deal with climate change is to adapt to it, not let politicians and people with money to make fool us that any of their hare-brained schemes will make one iota of difference. This includes scientists, always hungry for grants.

The first step is to reduce our population and demand for water in the driest continent on earth. No more immigration; no more handouts for having babies; no more first home-buyer hand outs or ‘stimulation’ packages. Learn thrift, and knock globalisation on the head.

I've guessed that "trading" will not save us from the polluting effects of CO2 emissions, and it's good to have Kim Hudson shine a light that penetrates the smoke and mirrors of the Emissions Trading Scheme.

But I need to know more about the person behind the light. We are told that
"Kim Hudson has been admitted as a barrister and also conducts voluntary global warming educational presentations as part of an international program."

I'm pleased to read and judge this well-written essay on its merits, but I live in a global village, and would now like to know a bit more about the author and his/her fellow villagers.

Who sponsors this international program? What interests do they declare?

Ray Evans, Tom Quirk and 'Windschuttle's' Quadrant Leigh?

Straight shooters in their collective mind's eye.

Adapt yes, but you would do well to learn a little more (from other sources) about alternative forms of energy.

Leigh, I couldn't agree more with your last paragraph about population. I have consistently banged on about it in these columns and elsewhere. Why do we have to continue to expand our population to an already unsustainable level ? If we just lower our so called standard of living a little and lower our expectations a little, rather than chasing our tail with the a "granite bench top" syndrome, we will all be better off. I recently read the following which surely must add to the combined pollution on this planet with all the infrastructure required.

Consider some of these notes from National Geographic Traveler:

In the past 20 years, the world added about 3 million people a week to its urban populations

More than half of the world's populations live in cities and more two- thirds will by 2030

The fastest growing cities are all overseas: India has 40 cities with more than a million people; some Chinese cities are growing at more than 10% per year; and Africa's population should double by 2050.

Ps Leigh

"Learn thrift, and knock globalisation on the head."

I couldn't agree more ... but like the population issue, it is easier said than done - it will take time.