Self-Blowing Windmills

Back in the 8^th century, one of the earliest rent seeking energy scam artists cooked up a perpetual motion machine called a ‘magic wheel’.

Since then, a succession of energy miracles have been proposed, including a self-blowing windmill.

In 1775, the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris put a stop to debunking the energy scamming business by stating they “will no longer accept or deal with proposals concerning perpetual motion”.

Since then, the various grifters have evolved into other forms of energy solutions. Don’t get me wrong, these ‘miracles’ still require other people’s money to make them viable but they have found new traction among a bunch of wide-eyed zealots.

You might know them as renewable energy – most notably wind and solar power.

We are constantly told they generate power for free and will save the planet from carbon dioxide, fossil fuels and global warming.

Unfortunately the truth is far from that.

Let me acknowledge that we can generate electricity from solar and wind. However, these supplies can only be delivered with huge start-up and ongoing subsidies from taxpayers.

The number of times we’ve been told they are now cheaper than old fashioned reliable power plants, yet the new ‘projects’ don’t get off the ground without the benefit of taxpayer cash.

Back in 2016, a company chaired by perpetual energy spruiker and loser of the unloseable election, Dr John Hewson, claimed they were going to build the  cheapest and most efficient solar thermal power station in the world at South Australia’s Port Augusta.

The initial stage would be completed within a year and it would require no government funding to support it’s ‘conservative business case’.

Five years later, we’d still be sitting in the dark if we were relying on that project to light up our lives.

But the advocates continue to blow wind up investors and taxpayers wallets with turbines of terror, aka, wind farms.

Even Green evangelist Dr Bob Brown doesn’t want them in his backyard while the likes of Zali Steggall, elected on a platform of green promises, hasn’t yet sort to have them erected on the Northern Beaches of Sydney – despite a petition for her to do so.

That’s hardly surprising as, according to her website,  this global warming evangelist is still waiting for a ‘suitable electric car’ and doesn’t actually want a wind farm in warringah.

But it’s not just the lack of cost competitiveness and poor reliability of these technologies that make them a folly.

The cleanup after their somewhat useful, taxpayer subsidised life is done, is hardly mentioned.

The dark side of ‘clean energy is that their production and disposal creates more pollutants than the fossil fuels they are designed to replace.

Solar panels are filled with noxious chemicals and toxic metals.  They are often dumped in third world landfills where the poisons leach into the water supply.

Not only are these developing nations being denied reliable and dispatchable power from coal and gas, they are now being poisoned by the very technology claiming to save them!

But there is hope on the horizon. Hydrogen power is being touted as the next best thing and have attracted hundreds of millions in government money. .

Hydrogen is abundant, the technology apparently works, it’s clean and is the answer to our future energy demands….or is it.