OPINION
The Climate Cult is not exactly renowned for rational thinking. After all, these are the people who make a virtue out of completely ignoring that the dire predictions they’ve made for the last century or more have conspicuously failed to come to pass – and they just keep on making the same predictions, for five or 10 years hence. Only days ago, the UN’s executive climate secretary babbled that we have only two years to save the world.
At least some of the more cunning cultists are banking their predictions a good half-century ahead, knowing full well they won’t be around to be held to account.
In few areas is the gibbering lunacy of the cult demonstrated more than energy.
But if you thought swapping cheap, reliable oil and coal for intermittent, expensive wind and solar was barking mad, wait til you find out about hydrogen. This is the latest ‘green wonder fuel’ for the climate cult. The only trouble is that hydrogen, despite being the most abundant element in the universe, almost always has to be manufactured on Earth. Mostly it is manufactured by steam reforming natural gas or by electrolysis of water.
As you might have noticed, both of those processes use energy. Lots of energy: a kilogram of hydrogen holds 39.4 kWh of energy, but typically costs around 52.5 kWh of energy to create.
Oil, on the other hand, returns about 20 times the energy it takes to manufacture.
Then there’s that other “renewable”: bio-fuels. Fancy name aside, bio-fuel simply means stuff like ethanol, made by processing corn and sugar. The Energy Return on Investment (EROI) of corn ethanol is 1.04 and for sugarcane 1.797. In other words, corn ethanol produces barely more energy than it takes to make, while sugarcane returns less than twice the energy (compared with the aforementioned 20 times for oil and about 30 times for coal).
But the appalling inefficiency of these green wonder-fuels is nothing compared to their externalities. As you may have noticed, both corn and sugar are foods. If not for humans, then for livestock.
But now vote-seeking politicians are dictating that more farm produce must be consumed as ethanol by the hungry iron horses of today – millions of cars, trucks, tractors, bikes, and stationary engines. In the year 2000, most of the huge US corn crop went into food for people and livestock, but by 2013, 40 per cent of a bigger crop was consumed making biofuel, with questionable savings in emissions once the whole process is considered. In other countries, the ethanol and biofuel madness has seen native forests and food plantations cleared to make space for ethanol crops. Even more land is being sterilised by solar panels, wind turbines, access roads, big batteries, and power lines. Today’s hungry green horses gobble far more food than our Clydesdales ever did.
Even here in food-producing Queensland, the party of the workers promotes policies that reduce the supply of food to the tables of the workers to produce more ethanol to burn in cars, bikes, SUVs, yachts and limos, and even for the ‘going-green’ US Navy when it visits.
In Africa, the impact of biofuels has been even more dire. In particular, they’re driving a wave of land-grabbing from poor African farmers. “African farmers risk being forced from their lands by investors or government projects.” Yes, the smugmobiles of wealthy Western Climate Cultists must come before feeding poor people in the developing world.
This pro-ethanol policy pits plant farmers against animal farmers and green politicians against food consumers. It will ensure that every feedlot, piggery, chicken house, and family farm will see a reduced supply of animal feed because grains and sugar cane have been diverted to motor fuel. The ‘Ethanol Tax’ will be paid at meal times where the prices of cereals, milk, cream, sugar, treacle, syrup, pork, bacon, eggs, hamburgers, and steak will be higher than they would have been without ethanol coercion […]
The increased use of biofuels has forced global food prices up by 75 per cent – far more than previously estimated – according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.
Europe burns more than 17,000 tonnes of rapeseed and sunflower oil every day and this has resulted in spiralling food price rises […]
This is biofuel lunacy. There is no moral, scientific, or economic justification to legislate ethanol folly.
Spectator Australia
Of course not – like everything to do with the Climate Cult, it’s purely political. It’s all about winning votes in the wealthy Teal and Green seats.