“Trust the science!” is the great conceit of the contemporary left. But – leaving aside that the left are awfully picky about science when it comes to, say, gender ideology – how can we “trust the science” when Australia’s peak science body is so obviously trying to baffle us with bullshit?
Here’s the headline on the CSIRO press release on Friday: “Renewables still the cheapest new-build power in Australia”.
Wow, sounds like good news. Like all such news, too good to be true.
The report makes the breathless claim that “Even taking into account these extra system integration costs” (by which the author means ‘big-arse batteries and new transmission lines and switches’) “solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind continue to be the cheapest new sources of electricity for any expected share of renewables in the grid — anywhere from 50 per cent to 100 per cent”.
My, my, that’s impressive. Previously wind and solar only seemed cheap when you didn’t factor in the cost of alternative power to switch in when, you know, “the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine”.
This analysis at least purports to factor those costs in; and even with them added, wind and solar are still cheaper than all the other forms of electricity generation and especially (wicked) black and brown coal. So, case proven?[…]
Actually, no. Like everything promoting wind and solar, this analysis is — not to put too fine a point on it — utter garbage. Or, to express that in more polite academic terminology: GIGO, or Garbage In Garbage Out.
As the old joke goes, a scientist guarantees a chicken farmer that his experimental technique will send production through the roof: “But it only works for spherical chickens in a vacuum”.
There’s a gargantuan spherical chicken hidden away in the vacuum of the fine print of the CSIRO report.
What the breathless press release did not say was that the so-called “proved cheapness” of wind and solar came with an asterisk — a very large asterisk. That the “costs” of coal and gas-fired generation included a massive and massively increasing carbon tax imposed on them[…]a carbon tax (which the report, mindful of the misfortune of a former certain PM, calls a carbon price) that starts at $75/$100 an emitted tonne in 2025 and rises to $275/$390 a tonne by 2050. And so the “cost” of power generated is similarly dramatically increased[…]
So there’s the basic analytical dishonesty (there always is, I would add, almost gratuitously): to wit, we prove wind and solar are cheaper than coal because we make coal artificially more expensive.
Which is indeed the reality of “renewable” energy, everywhere it’s been forced onto consumers: spiralling costs and reduced efficiency. In fact, South Australia has the highest electricity costs in the world – and state-wide blackouts.
But the biggest concern with this report is what it says about the state of the scientific integrity of the CSIRO.
In its own terms, even more impressive is the breathtakingly, almost bottomless, analytical stupidity. There’s not the faintest understanding that the whole analysis is entirely circular[…]
Those who built the CSIRO to our great national advantage and benefit through the 20th century would be turning in their graves.
The Australian
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