Nuclear debate blows up climate gods

Nuclear debate blows up climate gods

After nuclear weapons were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki forcing the Japanese surrender and therefore the end of World War II, emperor Hirohito (pictured below) made a stunning admission.

“I am not a god”, he sheepishly admitted to a population steeped in the idea their ruler was divine.

The day is fast approaching when the green-left elites who hold sway in the Labor and the Liberal party will also admit they are not gods, able to control the temperature of the planet with their net zero policies.

Peter Dutton’s planned deployment of zero emissions nuclear power will have net zero impact on “global boiling”, but what it will do is blow up the climate religion and get Australia back on a path of energy security and prosperity.

The Greens have already counterattacked with a new election slogan – No Coal, no gas, no nuclear.

This means no money for you and me because without fossil fuels or nuclear there is no affordable and reliable electricity.

Without affordable and reliable energy there is no economy.

The Labor Government says nuclear will be too expensive and too slow yet they can’t say how much their renewables-only energy transition will cost and when it will be finished.

Net Zero Australia estimates it will cost $1.5 trillion by 2030 and up to $9 trillion to complete the transition by 2060.

This comes with tens of thousands of kilometres of new high voltage transmission wires spread across farm and bushland to far flung windmills and solar factories.

This week I flew from Toowoomba in Queensland to Sydney passing over several windmill factories.

They are sprawling affairs taking up hundreds of hectares with access roads to each giant tower scarring the landscape and clearly visible from 25,000 feet.

They are an ugly blight on the environment.

I then flew over a coal-fired power station in the New South Wales Hunter Valley.

By comparison its two concrete water-cooling towers and generator were on a compact site barely visible from the air.

Sure there were coal mines and they are not pretty but they are also beautifully remediated these days so that when the mining is done, evidence of it vanishes back into the bush.

It’s patently obvious that a retired coal-fired power station site is the place to put a nuclear reactor.

The electricity can simply be plugged into existing transmission lines.

In contrast, giant wind turbine blades producing intermittent electricity are propped up by towers spread across the landscape anchored in 20 tonnes of concrete.

When the 20-year life cycle of the blades is complete, these cannot easily be disposed of in an environmentally friendly manner.

They must be buried in giant pits making the land above unstable and unusable.

Australia’s net zero folly – pursued by both Labor and Liberal for the past 30 years, is driving our nation to economic ruin.

High electricity prices driven by taxpayer-subsidised windmills and solar panels drives up the cost of not just your household electricity, it drives up the cost of everything.

That’s because everything that is produced needs energy.

Politicians who have created the cost-of-living crisis with these foolish policies then provide us with “cost of living” relief by offering us rebates on our electricity bills.

But there’s nothing that turns the dumpster fire of inflation into a raging inferno more than throwing government money at subsidies and rebates.

The cost-of-living crisis we are all feeling is politician-induced.

Let me say it again - government spending is petrol on the inflation fire.

But Jim Chalmers, our economically illiterate treasurer does not know this.

In his column in the Australian this week, economic journalist and US correspondent Adam Creighton quotes the eminent Canadian scientist Vaclav Smil.

Here’s what Smil says:

“Since the world began to focus on the need to end the combustion of fossil fuels we have not made the slightest progress in the goal of absolute global decarbonisation.”

Creighton goes on to say that since 1997, fossil fuel consumption in absolute terms has increased 55 per cent. It’s share of the total has declined from 86 per cent to 82 per cent.

Despite the trillions being spent subsidising windmills and solar panels, and batteries which are only capable of powering cities like Sydney for a few minutes, we have made net zero progress in bringing down supposedly dangerous emissions.

Even if batteries that could firm renewables for when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining actually existed, it is impossible from an engineering and economic point of view to build enough windmills, solar panels and transmission lines in time to meet the Paris targets.

Creighton quoted the International Energy Agency which says more than 80 million kilometres of new transmission lines would need to be built by 2040 if the world’s Paris Agreement targets are to be met.

Clearly this is not going to happen.

But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and so-called energy minister Chris Bowen are doubling down with their renewables only strategy to re-wire Australia’s electricity system.

They appointed former New South Wales Liberal so-called energy minister Matt Kean as the head of their climate change authority.

Kean’s zealotry in closing down coal-fired power stations has been so damaging to prices and electricity reliability that the in-coming Minns Labor Government was forced to reverse his decision to close the giant Eraring power station simply to keep the lights on.

If net zero by 2050 is needed to save the planet, there is only one way to get there and that is through zero emissions nuclear power.

[picture of Greta Thunberg]

It’s been five years since Greta Thunberg told us we had five years to act.

Well Greta, we are still here, snow is still falling on the ski fields and our dams are running over.

The good thing about the nuclear bomb Peter Dutton has let off in Australian politics is that it has the potential to pop the religious bubble of the climate cultists.

Nuclear energy may well save our economy and household power bills from being nuked by reckless renewables.

Whatever happens, the day is fast approaching when Anthony Albanese, Matt Kean, Malcolm Turnbull and Chris Bowen will admit they are not climate gods after all.