Andrew Bolt: Chris Bowen’s National Press Club speech reeks of idiocy

Scepticism about Chris Bowen’s climate fear-mongering and net-zero plans is growing, but it’s what he revealed at the National Press Club that proves he may be an idiot.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen said something about me at the National Press Club on Wednesday that forces me to conclude he’s really an idiot.

Otherwise I’d be forced to call him a liar.

So this is what this idiot said about me in selling his disastrous plan to force Australia to run its economy totally on unreliable wind and solar power: “Full on, open climate change denial is now less fashionable than it was 10 or 15 years ago in the public debate…

“Andrew Bolt still does it, but most other people don’t bother with it.”

Actually, scepticism about Bowen’s climate fear-mongering and net-zero plans is growing, but let me deal with his most fundamental misunderstanding. I won’t say lie.

Chris Bowen addresses the National Press Club in Canberra. Picture: Martin Ollman

I’ve never been in “denial” about climate change. I’ve always said the planet has warmed slightly over the past century.

But why I anger Bowen is that I’ve pointed out we haven’t had many of the predicted consequences of that – Bowen’s “climate catastrophe’’.

Some examples. Former Climate Change Commissioner Tim Flannery predicted nearly two decades ago that global warming could dry our dams, and Sydney could be without water in a few years. Instead, Sydney’s dams are 99 per cent full, and Melbourne’s 87 per cent.

We were told the Great Barrier Reef would die. Instead, hard coral cover is at – or near – record highs.

We were told rising seas would drown atoll islands such as the Maldives and Tuvalu. In fact both nations have grown.

We were told we’d get more cyclones, but Australia has instead had fewer over the past 50 years. And our grain harvests have grown.

Bowen is defacing our countryside with wind farms.

Yet to “save” us from this fake climate crisis, Bowen is defacing our countryside with wind farms and destroying our reliable coal-fired power system, claiming wind and solar will give us cheaper power.

As if. Look at your power bills.

And look at the billions Bowen is blowing on green energy schemes, including green hydrogen, a fuel made from water that’s unproven at scale anywhere in the world.

Yet Bowen on Wednesday again told us we can’t have nuclear power stations, a proven technology, because they’d be built too late to save us. He means, to save us from the energy crisis he’s causing.

So, no, I don’t deny climate change. I just deny that Bowen’s mad spending will do anything to change our climate, or save us from his “climate disaster’’.

Prove me wrong, Chris.