Jon Faine's foolish unproductive Bjorn Lomborg interview

Jon Faine is a master at creating the conversational environment he wants. Bjorn Lomborg has enough to say on the topic -- he easily could have been the sole guest for the whole hour, probably two. Instead a couple of clueless greenies were allowed to dominate and drown out Lomborg for most of the hour.

Bjorn's earlier radio interview with Newcastle ABC was better.  It was only about 10 minutes long but so much more productive than the later Faine interview. He actually had a chance to make his point in a clear and concise way. I couldn't find a link to the audio, the print intro is here.

 

In the later interview with Jon Faine at 11:00 am AEDT (not "AEST" as Bjorn Lomborg tweeted)...

 

 

https://twitter.com/BjornLomborg/status/405114005762490368

 

http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2013/11/26/3899053.htm?&date=201311

 

...Bjorn's sensible message was almost totally drowned in a sea of green fantasia, between Faine, Liu and the other one.  Everything Peggy Liu stands for, her very career, is the antithesis of what Bjorn Lomborg argues. She thinks solar, is about as good as nuclear, is about as good wind, just so long as you have a broad mixture of these things.

 

See how wonderful it is? You don't need energy solutions that work, you just need wishful thinking, and a broad mixture of it.  Just from a social point of view I don't how Lomborg stands these the presence of these green fantasists.

 

He seemed comfortable, but really he was stifled, his message made to seem like a bit of a sideshow curiosity on the main show which was how cool Peggy Liu and the other one were at implementing their vision for the green fantasia of renewable energy.

Actually I didn't even listen to the other one, whatever her name is, so I don't know what she said. Well why would you? Why would you have two totally boring guests taking time away from one really good one? Is it because Faine likes to condescend and downplay concepts foreign to his big govt airy-fairy greenie ideas?

Lomborg is saying that existing technology such as wind farms and solar schemes don't actually effectively reduce carbon emissions. Essentially they're a scam, even if you're a fully payed up believer in the IPCC climate change scare. Peggy Liu's job relies of ignorance of the complete ineffectiveness of existing renewables as a solution to global warming.

She used unscientific, vague concepts like "improving the grid" and "diversifying energy production technologies", as though if you only diversify it makes up for the fact that none of the constituent technologies, like wind and solar, actually work.

Lomborg mentioned improved nuclear technology, and Liu responded we need all forms of energy including nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, guy-on-a-bicycle...etc. I say why? If, for example, you have effective, latest generation nuclear, then why do you still need stupid ineffective wind power, or a guy-on-a-bicycle? This woman is not an engineer, she is...I don't know, a PR person for renewables schemes? She's not a scientist let's put it that way, probably a law/business graduate.

How the hell Lomborg sat through that whole hour without blowing his stack at that woman and her misconceptions I don't know! But he sat there like a perfect gentleman. His common sense message was totally swamped by green claptrap for almost the whole hour. What else would you expect with Jon Faine? The man is a true, slimy green scumbag.

Bjorn makes his point on the folly of German solar schemes starting 33:50. He says (paraphrasing): 

Germany has the biggest per capita investment in the world of solar panels. Yet the net effect of spending $130 billion dollars is to delay global warming by 37 hours by the end of the century.

34:16 Peggy Liu groans and responds: 

Mmmm, It's more nuanced than that Bjorn, because we have to do a lot of learning in order to get to higher efficient solutions and better technologies....we can't sort of leap to the future, like in one day...

What the hell are you talking about lady? You learn with a budget of $130 billion dollars?! That's what Bjorn is saying: spend the $130 billion on R & D, not existing technologies. And this will likely be orders of magnitude more effective at helping the people of this world.
This woman probably makes a fat salary, yet is utterly ignorant of how power sources or electricity grids actually work. It's just a matter of "diversifying" whatever the hell that means. I would say that just one decent energy production technology is enough. Decent like nuclear, coal etc.

Spending $130 billion is not learning, that's implementing. The panels are technology that will stay the same for their service life. The panels themselves do not morph and evolve with time. Spending $130 billion on this is not "learning", it's wasting.

The new technology needs to be developed first and implemented second. Peggy Liu thinks the order is reversed. You implement the existing technology and waste $130 billion on it, and then you learn! Is she really that stupid? I guess so!