The IPA is Filling the Zone with Shit and it’s tax deductible
“Rinehart said that renewable energy projects could see one-third of Australia’s agricultural land ‘taken over’ and suggested that ‘eyesore’ solar panels should be placed in ‘city parks and rivers’ rather than in rural areas,” the AFR reported.
Matt Saunders and Mark Ogge were struck by the heroic assumptions the IPA used to reach its scary headline.
Just for openers, there’s one that wouldn’t pass a Year 7 science exam, let alone being worthy of tax deductibility: The IPA assumes renewables need to replace the total primary energy from fossil fuel use instead of the actual delivered energy – the stuff that counts, what we get to use.
“Most of the energy from fossil fuels is lost as heat,” explain Messrs Saunders and Ogge. “For instance, for coal at least 60 per cent of the primary energy from coal in coal power is lost as heat, at least 40 per cent from gas.
“Renewables do not have to replace the waste heat from fossil fuels, just the delivered energy, which is significantly less than half the primary energy figure which includes waste heat.
“This is a very basic error,” they conclude – with considerable understatement.
Yet the rubbish circulates and finds supporters among those who want to believe it. It is reliably and uncritically regurgitated by denialists, turning up in comics like the Spectator and spread in the echo chambers of the deluded or self-interested.
And it is tax deductible, costing the rest of us money.
Source: National Times – Michael Pascoe: The IPA is taking Gina Rinehart… | Facebook
olddogthoughts 