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There’s absolutely not a shadow of a doubt that the current energy crisis is all the work of a naive and gullible, numbskull, politically correct political class.
 
It’s so easy to say they have no idea BUT They—Have—No—Idea
 
An extract from Nick Cater’s column in today’s Oz…
 
“….It would be wrong to give Mike Rann and Jay Weatherill all the credit for turning South Australia into wackadoodle windmill world. We should recognise the contribution of those who egged the premiers on, like Al Gore, auteur of An Inconvenient Truth. When it came to showing leadership on renewable energy, said Gore, South Australia was “one of best examples of any state in the entire world”.
 
Neither should we forget the public servants who gave the premiers frank and fearless advice that was utterly bonkers. A wind-powered economy, premier? What a courageous idea.
 
When governments are capable of errors of judgment on this scale it’s little wonder the public has grown weary of experts. We should not be surprised at this distrust of politicians who outsource vital decisions to mediocrities and act on sentiment rather than evidence.
 
Weatherill called his aggressive pursuit of renewable energy “a bit of an international experiment” in an interview 14 months ago. “We have got to take risks to show what the future of community looks like,” he said.
 
Last week The Advertiser dispatched a reporter to the Adelaide Hills to discover what “the future of community” might mean after three major blackouts in the past six months. “We’re nervous about buying bulk meat,” said one resident. “We lose our water … we can’t have a shower because we run on tanks.” The fish shop in Hahndorf has grown used to throwing out stock. “You hear about Third World countries having power cuts,” says owner John Stanley. “What are we?”
 
Coopers Cafe and Bistro would like to buy a generator, but after the losses it has suffered through power cuts it can’t afford one.
 
It’s bad enough to treat voters as crash-test dummies in a trial of dumb ideas; it is more infuriating when the intellectual lightweights who caused this mess refuse to accept responsibility. When 60,000 premises in his home state were plunged into darkness last week, Labor’s federal spokesman on climate change, Mark Butler, called it a “hiccup”. SA had been having “a very, very bad run” for several months, he told ABC Radio. “On each occasion it has had nothing to do with renewable energy.”
 
Nonsense. When the power shut down on Wednesday, demand was more than 3000MW, according to the Australian Energy Market Operator, yet the windmills were dribbling out less than 90MW. It is not called intermittent energy for nothing. Closing the coal-fired power stations in Port Augusta, which the government now wants to demolish, proved to be a foolish mistake…” Third world beckons as Weatherill plays the fool