Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Energy & Nuclear

Vale Ray Evans & How to Win an Argument

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I first meet Ray Evans at a dinner at the Institute of Public Affairs. It must have been in about 2004, ten years ago, because I had just seen the movie ‘The Day After Tomorrow’. Staring Dennis Quaid as a paleoclimatologist professor, the movie was about the Gulf Stream shutting down resulting in catastrophic global cooling and a new ice age.

Ray Evans 1935-2014
Ray Evans 1935-2014

We were seated at the same table and I mentioned that I had enjoyed the movie, that it had been entertaining. He was scathing of my comment, while admitting he hadn’t seen the movie, and didn’t intend to. He understood that it was themed around advocacy for anthropogenic global warming. Ray was already vehemently opposed to the new doctrine. While he wasn’t keen to discuss the plot of the movie, he was keen to engage me in a discussion of the Gulf Stream.

I think that the next time we meet was at a lunch in Perth, also hosted by the IPA. On that occasion he was scathing of my suggestion that wind turbines could be beautiful. I may have also attempted a defence of wind farms as a source of renewable energy. But was properly put in my place by Ray who had a great depth of knowledge, not only of the economics of wind farming, but also of the quantities of steel and cement used in the construction of each turbine and their associated carbon footprint.

Whenever we met, he always managed to challenge my opinion and impart new knowledge and win the argument.

I now know a lot more about renewable energy, especially after reading an article by Ray full of useful facts and distressing politics published by Quadrant in July 2012 entitled ‘The Ruinous Privileges of Renewable Energy’.

Ray also knew a great deal about bushfires and the politics of control burning in Victoria. When it came to many issues, Ray Evans seemed able to see the wood and the trees and how big the forest was, but he never seemed daunted. Not in the least, and he always seemed to revel in the small facts.

You win arguments by understanding the detail. By forcing your opponent to engage with you on the detail. He once said something like that to me.

Ray stood for enlightenment values from a conservative Christian perspective and seemed to have a deep understanding and knowledge of everything that threatened that ethic.

And he believed you won arguments by getting into the detail. That is perhaps the most useful piece of information that he imparted to me, and by example.

Thank you Ray.

Remembering Appalling Policies Introduced by Previous Coalition Governments (Part 1)

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POPULAR sceptical blogger, Jo Nova, has responded to Labor’s defeat in yesterday’s Australian federal election with the headline ‘Voters crush the carbon tax and corruption – worst Australian government gone’. Howard and Abbott

I’m not so sure. It remains my view that the previous Coalition Government lead by John Howard was a disaster, particularly when it came to mismanagement of both the economy and the natural environment.

Indeed the Howard government, of which our new Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, was a senior Minister, was instrumental in introducing a raft of very damaging legislation.

Top of the list is perhaps the renewable energy certificate, an ongoing economic disaster as detailed in an article by Ray Evans and Tom Quirk entitled the ‘The Ruinous Privileges of Renewable Energy’:

“THE mechanism through which electricity consumers pay greenmail to the owners of windmills and solar panels is the mandatory Renewable Energy Certificate, introduced by John Howard in his 2001 MRET legislation. As James Delingpole explained in the Australian on May 3, writing about the ghost town of Waterloo in South Australia (now depopulated by the impacts of the sub-audio frequency vibrations generated by the nearby wind farm), a 3-megawatt wind turbine, costing $6 million, will be lucky to generate electricity worth $150,000 in a year, but will receive $500,000 in RECs, paid for by the hapless electricity consumer.
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What Will Power Sydney in 5 Years, If Not Gas?

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I’VE been some what dismayed by the approach of many agriculturalists to the development of a coal seam gas (CSG) industry in New South Wales. There have been many widely publicized claims that the CSG industry will pollute the air and water in particular through hydraulic fracturing, also known as ‘fracking’. Screen Shot 2013-08-11 at 9.31.05 AM

Some of the noisiest objectors are on the Liverpool plains and have claimed this new extractive industry threatens their groundwater aquifers. In reality, the affect of agriculture on the aquifers in the Liverpool Plains has been inadequately monitored and is probably significant. [Read more…] about What Will Power Sydney in 5 Years, If Not Gas?

The Long and Costly War on Carbon: Viv Forbes

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‘The Australian government claims that next month’s tax on carbon dioxide cannot be blamed for today’s soaring costs of living.

This tax, however, is just their latest assault in the decades-long war on carbon that is already inflating the cost of everything.

For at least a decade, power companies have been obliged to source 10-15% of their power at inflated prices from costly and unreliable sources like wind and solar. And for every wind or solar plant built, a duplicate backup gas facility is needed, increasing the demand and price for backup gas, hitting other gas consumers. Moreover, the threat of more carbon taxes has deterred the construction of efficient new coal-burning power plants. Rising electricity costs feed into the cost of everything from public transport to building materials.

The climatists are also responsible for numerous policies pushing up the price of food. These include the ethanol/biofuel madness, the restrictions on the fishing industry, the Kyoto scrub clearing bans, the spread of carbon-credit forests over farming and grazing land, the never ending war on irrigators, and the virtual ban on building new water-supply dams.

Then we have all the hidden costs of the climate industry. Thousands of our smartest graduates are lured into well-paid dead-end desk jobs in the overheads industry devoted to climate red tape, while real entrepreneurs are unable to find workers to develop our continent of under-utilised resources. There is an overpaid bureaucracy devoted to climate “research”, alternate energy, international junkets, Kyoto give-aways, and administration, auditing, enforcement, accounting, law and propaganda for their empire of climate taxes and subsidies.

Finally we have income tax implications from all the money being flung around to bribe people to accept their carbon tax? Every Australian will get these bills somewhere, sometime. And who pays for the hundreds of millions poured down subsidy rat-holes like carbon capture, solar panels, pink bats and the IPCC?

Australia’s crippling carbon tax is but the latest symptom of the costly Climate Madness infecting the well-fed elite of the western world.

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Text from Viv Forbes, photograph from Jennifer Marohasy taken near Lithgow, NSW

Live Near a Wind Project?

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DARRYL Read is a fourth year psychology honors student at the University of New England in Australia. His research project involves surveying citizens near proposed or established wind developments, worldwide. His interest in this area of research began after speaking with rural residents living in Crookwell, New South Wales (NSW), which has the oldest wind project in Australia.

According to Mr Read the conversations enabled him to gain an understanding of the range of issues surrounding wind developments. Following those talks he says he began to read wind articles in the media and most of these stories failed to identify the issues and genuine concerns of the residents:

“IN the beginning my study was designed to gain an understanding of the structure and strength of both positive and negative attitudes toward wind energy developments. The initial plan was for the survey to be distributed throughout the renewable energy precincts in NSW. Following the launch of the questionnaire earlier this month, the study has caught the attention of various pro-wind organizations and individuals who have attempted to discredit the study.

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