I don’t need to remind readers that the ‘climate change’ scam has been scientifically refuted. When predictions based on scientific theory fail to materialize it is usually the end of the theory. But zombie like, the idea of imminent (but always far enough into the future not to be immediately apparent) climate change catastrophe has a life of its own and no number of facts or reality checks seem able to put a stake through it heart.
There is a psychology involved here. It takes enormous integrity of character to disagree with the underlying beliefs of all your peer groups. Most people ‘won’t go there’. I have often heard people avoid confronting the failure of the catastrophic climate change theory, by claiming that eliminating fossil fuels and using renewable (i.e. unreliable) energy is somehow a good thing anyway. Depending on their sophistication, they will waffle on about saving the planet from carbon pollution (without distinguishing carbon dioxide from real pollution) or peak oil or reliance on OPEC. Of course, nuclear power, which produces no greenhouse gasses, will never be contemplated as a replacement to fossil fuel generated energy. But that’s another story.
I have my own theory of how to get through this psychological barrier in Australia. It’s a four-point plan. It’s not sufficient to tell people that the cost of electricity has gone up (more than doubled in five years) because of ‘unreliables’. We need to explain in all its gory detail how and why it has increased. We need to publish a detailed, but easily understood, explanation of how and why the retail price of electricity has risen. This will show how the RET (Renewable Energy Target) has effectively taxed coal fired power out of business in South Australia and Victoria. It is apparently illegal for petrol companies to show what percentage of the price of petrol at the bowser is tax (over forty percent). Perhaps government fears that if people knew this they may become dissatisfied and start asking questions about what they get for their taxes. At any rate, government always prefers taxes to be hidden because that way they can extract more from their unsuspecting citizens. We need to detail, state by state, region by region what percentage of the current retail price of electricity is due to the RET and what proportion of the increase in prices over the past five years is due to the RET.
Some years ago claims were made that the privatized electricity suppliers had let our infrastructure degrade and were passing on the costs of upgrading the infrastructure in increased electricity bills. We need an analysis of the cost of upgrading or modifying the electricity infrastructure to support a more decentralized grid where intermittent power from commercial and private sources are generated. Again, we need to understand what percentage of the price of electricity is due to supporting ‘unreliables’ as opposed to normal maintenance of the grid.
Thirdly, we need to analyze who benefits and who pays as a result of the RET. This will expose the carpet- bagger, rent seeking renewable energy generators who benefit at the indirect cost of the tax payer, through a guaranteed price set by government. In the process the coal fired power generators are forced to buy electricity from the renewable energy generators at a price much higher than they produce it themselves, thereby causing the more marginal coal fired power generators to become economically unviable. The fourth part of the report should expose the myth of job generation by migrating to ‘unreliables’. We need to show how many more Australian jobs are destroyed compared to how many are created for every percentage point increase in ‘unreliables’ on our grid.
When Australians realize how much ‘unreliables’ are costing them, who is pocketing their money and how their livelihoods are being destroyed in the process, they will have a greater incentive to reassess their assumptions about catastrophic climate change.