Thursday 29 September 2016

Turnbull blames renewables for South Australia blackout - Orwell files


South Australia has suffered a natural disaster at the hands of what is being described as a once in a 50 year "super storm", with high winds and 80,000 lightning strikes. Electricity towers we blown over and the state suffered a big blackout of power due to this. Many houses still don't have electricity.


 Climate scientists said there will be more of this with climate change unless serious action is taken to address the problem:
The storm which has ravaged South Australia is a disturbing preview of what's likely to come if Australia fails to act on climate change, according to the Climate Council. Storms like the one which knocked out the entire South Australian electricity network are occurring in a warmer and wetter atmosphere, the Climate Council's Professor Will Steffen said. "These conditions, driven by climate change, are likely increasing the intensity of storms like the one in South Australia," he said. "Australians are being affected right now by climate change. We have people trapped by floodwaters, property destroyed and doctors working by torchlight in Adelaide as they struggle to cope with the latest in a series of more frequent and intense extreme weather events. "The atmosphere is packing much more energy than 70 years ago, which contributes to the increasing intensity of such storms. Intense rainfall is projected to increase in Australia and has already increased at a global level. "This is a prelude to a disturbing future. And it's only going to get worse if we don't address climate change." Sydney Morning Herald
However in a bizarre political move by the Lieberals, they are now blaming renewables for the storm in some twisted Orwellian doublspeak, saying pretty much that the renewables in place were jeopardising the states power "security", insinuating that renewables aren't able to carry base load power. Shorten's response was savage:
He has asked the federal energy and environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, to convene a meeting with all state and territory energy ministers before he meets with state premiers.

 “Let’s focus now and take this storm in South Australia ... as a real wake-up call, let’s end the ideology, focus on clear renewable target. The federal government has one as you know, 23.5% is our target.”

 Bill Shorten has slammed the government’s response to the storm, saying it is “disgraceful” that conservatives are playing politics with a natural disaster.

 “If they want to play the blame game, surely isn’t it appropriate to wait until all the houses have their power back on, until we know the bill, until we know what’s happened?” Shorten said.

 “This is a super-storm, 80,000 lightning strikes. That didn’t happen because of the renewable energy target. That’s the weather.

 “If the Greens had blamed, while a bushfire was underway, if they had talked about climate change, Barnaby Joyce would have been all over them like a rash, calling them un-Australian and all the rest of the nonsense, yet here we have the conservatives trying to play politics about renewable energy when this is a storm, it is the weather blowing over towers,” he said.

 In three separate interviews on Thursday morning, the National party leader, Barnaby Joyce, argued that South Australia had become too reliant on renewable energy, wind in particular, and said its lack of coal-fired baseload power had contributed to the blackout. The Guardian
I've noticed a bit of sarcasm on this with the Twitterati suggesting other things that one might blame on renewables: 




 
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