Green Disaster: South Australian Blackout Due To Loss Of Wind Power

Australian Energy Market Operator Orders Wind Farms To Limit Generation

A dramatic, sudden loss of wind power generation was the root cause of South Australia’s state wide blackout last week. And the bulk of damage to high voltage transmission lines that was caused by high winds and paraded as evidence to defend renewables most likely took place after the power had been lost. These are the major facts contained in the Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) preliminary report. --Graham Lloyd, The Australian, 5 October 2016

TEN South Australian wind farms have been ordered to limit generation in the wake of the disastrous statewide power blackout because the national electricity market operator has declared they have not performed properly. The state’s biggest wind farm, at Snowtown, is among those which the Australian Energy Market Operator has targeted in its “management and analysis” of last Wednesday’s unprecedented power outage as it gradually restores the power network. The move will prompt further questions over whether renewable energy jeopardised electricity grid stability and triggered the cascading blackout, which started when fierce winds damaged 23 Mid North transmission towers and severed three high-voltage lines. --Paul Starick, The Advertiser, 4 October 2016

The climax last week of Labor’s 14-year campaign to de-industrialise the state of South Australia was less than triumphant. This time, perhaps even Weatherill realised that his hokey, greenish socialism had gone too far. It is barely two months since he demanded $100 million from Canberra to keep Arrium Steel working. Yet it was the blackout, a consequence of Labor’s renewables policy, that ­finally shut the Whyalla plant down. Enforced idleness is costing Arrium about $4m a day. Nyrstar’s Port Pirie lead smelter will be out of action for another fortnight. BHP Billiton is unable to say when it will restart mining copper at Olympic Dam. Where is the old industrial Left when it’s needed? The communists merely wanted to take over the factories. The greenish Left wants to close them down. --Nick Carter, The Australian, 4 October 2016
 
For nine years, two professors – Wieslaw Maslowski from California and Peter Wadhams from Cambridge – have been in the forefront of warning that, thanks to runaway global warming, the Arctic will soon be “ice-free”. Their every dire prediction has been eagerly reported by the warmist media, led by the BBC, In 2007 they said this would happen “by 2013”. In a note for the Global Warming Policy Forum, Dr David Whitehouse, formerly science editor for the BBC website, shows how,  ever since  those scary predictions began in  2007, the trend of summer melting has been completely flat. Shouldn’t all those climate zealots be wondering whether Prof Wadhams is really the most reliable “leading scientist” they should be quoting on this particular story? --Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 2 October 2016 
 
This is the most complete book to date that takes a critical look across the whole of the recent history of climate change as science, as input to policy, and as a driver of far-reaching societal change. Michael Hart, who has spent the last decade working on this book, has produced a scholarly and accessible analysis of this saga. This book should leave any dispassionate reader deeply disturbed. It should be required reading for people in policy and politics who deal with these matters. No thought leader should be ignorant of the contents. --Professor Michael Kelly, Global Warming Policy Forum, 30 September 2016

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