Andrew Bolt: Global warming hysteria overlooks practicalities

To say Australia should be powered by technologies that haven’t actually been invented or proven is insanity. We can’t stop burning coal and say “something will turn up”.

Australia got rich with cheap, coal-fired electricity. Now, hysterical about global warming, we want to stop burning coal and use … what, exactly?

Has the country gone crazy? The big political parties – both chanting “net zero” – now say Australia should instead get electricity from technologies that haven’t actually been invented or proven.

Wow. That’s like jumping out of airplane called “Coal”, with the pilot promising he’ll invent your parachute before you hit the ground.

I even read in The Australian this fantastical fact, that Labor “is yet to outline … how it will achieve net zero”. The Morrison government is no better.

“Something will turn up” is an insane policy for powering a sophisticated economy that needs reliable electricity to not just keep on the lights but keep people alive.

Energy Minister Angus Taylor has a long list of those “somethings”, beside the wind and solar power that’s too on-again-off-again. He’s suggested blue hydrogen, green hydrogen and carbon capture projects, for instance.

But I remember.

The Rudd government funded projects using waves to create electricity. Picture: Gary Ramage

I remember then prime minister Kevin Rudd in 2008 allocating $400m to create a Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute to “lead the world” in stopping global warming by burying carbon dioxide in the ground.

Oops. Today, more than $1bn of taxpayers’ money later, Australia has precisely one project running at a commercial scale, and running as smoothly as a two-legged dog.

Chevron spent $3bn on a carbon capture scheme at its Gorgon gas project in Western Australia, and five years later still isn’t burying even half the emissions it promised.

Carbon capture and storage turns out to be horrendously expensive, and green energy entrepreneur Andrew Forrest last week claimed it failed “19 out of 20 times”.

I also remember the Rudd government handing $90m to Geodynamics to pump water on to hot rocks deep underground at Innamincka, to create steam for electricity generation.

The Sydney Morning Herald excitedly announced this ‘“hot rocks’ energy is being touted as the latest solution to climate change”.

Shareholder and global warming preacher Tim Flannery claimed this technology was “relatively straightforward”.

Except the pipes blocked. The project flopped. Not one Australian home is now powered by thermal energy.

Green energy entrepreneur Andrew Forrest last week claimed carbon capture and storage fails ‘19 out of 20’. Picture; Gaye Gerard

I also remember the Rudd government funding projects using waves to create electricity. The West Australian government funded one that would power Albany.

Another flop. Wave generators off Newcastle and Port Kembla sank or were smashed, and the Albany experiment was abandoned as a money pit.

Oh, the money! The CSIRO estimated five years ago that $122m had been invested in ocean energy in Australia, a third from taxpayers. Yet not one Australian home is today powered by wave energy, either.

I’m definitely not saying the latest “green” technologies won’t work, either. But experience tells me to guard my wallet.

Oh, yes. Didn’t you know? All these brilliant new technologies are flogged by people demanding government grants, subsidies, quotas and taxes on their competition to give them a hand up.

That’s suspicious. Henry Ford didn’t need a tax on horses to help him sell his cars.

But governments are now so mad to seem green that they’ll hand bank-loads of cash to green carpetbaggers.

Greta Thunberg has dismissed practicalities about how to use blue or green hydrogen as ‘blah, blah, blah’. Picture: Getty Images

The European Union alone plans to spend $740bn by 2050 just on green hydrogen. The NSW government has just promised to hand over $3bn.

Sure, “green hydrogen’ made with renewable energy or “blue hydrogen” made with natural gas may well be fantastic. The CSIRO has enough faith to fund 74 demonstration and pilot projects.

But wait. Blue hydrogen is very expensive and green hydrogen even worse.

The costs are falling, but the problems don’t end there. Hydrogen is four times lighter than natural gas, so takes extra energy to pump down pipelines. You could freeze it into containers, but that costs, too.

Using hydrogen in your stove or heater is also a problem because it’s 20 times more explosive than petrol, and can even become brittle and permeate through solid steel.

What’s more, whole landscapes of solar and wind farms are needed to make green hydrogen, and the gas to make blue hydrogen creates emissions that must be captured and buried.

That’s why the head of Britain’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association quit in August, calling blue hydrogen a “wrong answer”.

But who cares about such practicalities, which warming goddess Greta Thunberg last month dismissed as “blah blah blah”?

This is a religion, so let’s just jump from the coal plane and trust the green gods to catch us before we splat.