This week’s comment of the week comes from Alistair Clark. His comment was inspired by the article, The Australian embarrasses itself – again (Friday, 20 April) where it was explained that while wind power did cost more than conventional fossil fuels, contrary to The Australian’s assertions it was in no way responsible for South Australia’s high residential electricity prices.
Perhaps perceiving what was to come on ABC’s show, I can change your mind about....climate, Alistair tried to provide an explanation for why The Australian seemed compelled to publish things that were so clearly wrong when it came to climate change issues.
At least understand the propaganda
A good article and (mostly) sensible posts. However, The Australian seems to be only using some dubious propaganda to push a correct point, ie. that using wind power is, at the moment, going to cost (someone, somewhere) more than fossil fuel power.
I am not against this and nor should sensible people with some foresight. Wind power is the lowest cost renewable available in Australia today and is one of the ways we have to use to move to a lower carbon electricity grid.
However the Australian's propaganda is no different to that furphy constantly used by Matthew Wright when he says things like - Germans pay less in power costs than Australians, implying that their electricity costs are lower than Australia’s. Which of course they are not. German households simply use less electricity that Australia does. Germans use more gas.
So the propaganda falsehoods and misinformation cuts both ways as the "evangelicals" battle the "luddites". Too many people, including myself at times I am sure, overstate or twist facts to push a particular barrow.
I personally loath Murdoch and The Australian and haven't read it for years, but many Australians do. I think what many business people react so strongly to is the evengelicals in the Greens. It’s likely their loopiness causes a counter loopiness reaction in response to keep the equilibrium! Which in turn leads to more loopiness etc. etc.
The sad part about politics and policy today is getting off the loopiness conveyor belt.
