In the other corner is the ABC’s $1.1billion propaganda machine. Stan Grant’s Friday session on 7.30 a week ago featured a set of interviews with people waiting for trains at Blacktown Railway Station. He had brought along Professor Steven Sherwood from the Climate Change Research Centre. (Have you ever noticed how many climate advocates are American?)

Not surprisingly the “passengers” agreed that action on climate, and renewable power generation, was “urgent”. The Finkel review had to be acted upon, and so on.

Sitting close to my electric heater the next morning, Saturday, June 17, I decided to look at how our “renewables” were faring on this cold morning. You can access sites such as anero.id/energy/wind-energy and read daily results for yourself.

Outside there was no wind or sun, just fog. That morning the Australia-wide average for wind energy production was just 5 per cent, and did not rise above 5 per cent of Australia’s wind capacity until well after midday, peaking at about 15 per cent that Saturday night. 

Days like that give lie to the fable that, “the wind is always blowing somewhere”.

Solar? Canberra, that wonderfully Alice-in-Wonderland place that imposes foolish ideas on us, claims that it will go 100 per cent renewable by 2020! They must have a magic trick up their sleeves, because on that cold foggy Saturday morning, the Royalla solar farm near Canberra was producing less than 5 per cent of its capacity until about 9.30am! 

During that Saturday, Royalla barely reached 30 per cent of capacity except for a brief ray of sunshine at about 2pm that momentarily rocketed output for a few minutes to 60 per cent. 

In other words, if we had been depending on wind or solar power for base-load electricity on that cold Saturday, our lights and heaters would have been blacked-out.

Industry can’t operate when power supplies become unreliable and costly. Australia has the dearest industrial power in the developed world. American factories pay one third of the price for electricity that Australian factories pay. Is it any wonder that Australian wages are stagnant, when any gains in productivity are immediately absorbed by 20 per cent rises in electricity prices?

And what about the often repeated lie that China and other industrialised countries are moving away from coal power?

An ABC website report, “Japanese government planning to build 45 new coal fired power stations to diversify supply”, explains how Japan is planning High Energy Low Emissions (HELE) coal-fired plants which will cut emissions by up to half. We, too, could slash emissions and power bills, and keep power station workers and miners in jobs.

Chinese engineer and inventor Professor Feng Weizhong is also general manager of Waigaoqiao Number 3 power station, which produces 138 per cent as much electricity as the ­Yallourn coal-fired plant in ­Vic­toria’s Latrobe Valley, yet emits just 13 per cent as much carbon dioxide equivalent. 

“If it’s not commercial, we can’t do it. No subsidies,” Feng added.

Just how cheap could electricity become if we avoided heavily subsidised wind, and invested in low-emissions clean coal?