Mr Hockey, you are a disgrace!
Let me start by saying that I am affiliated with no political party as not one party in this great country of ours truly represents the ideals that I hold dear, in fact, most years I throw my vote away by drawing a box and writing Chuck Norris as a candidate. I am in no way condoning or advising anyone to follow me in this voting behaviour as your vote does count and you should vote for the party that best represents your values as a human being. I am going to voice my opinion though on your current behaviour toward science.
Renewable energy is the way of the future (at least until fusion is ready in 20 to 100 years) and your comments that “wind turbines are utterly offensive” only goes to show the public how ignorant you truly are. Generating electricity from wind will never be our only source of energy for Australia or anywhere in the world for that matter but it is a valuable part of our future electricity needs.
Apart from the fact that wind farms generate clean electricity and their upkeep is almost a non-existent expense they provide power without huge amounts of efforts and energy going into mining and burning like traditional coal and gas supplies. Now before you jump on your high horse touting us a no good hippy greenies let me say this, we are under no illusions that wind, solar and the cavalcade of other renewable energies can provide full network power to Australia in their current forms but most of these energy technologies are only in their infancy and require global investment in the order of billions upon billions of dollars to bring them up to match coal and gas.
The travesty here is that you, a man of power and influence to call wind energy “utterly offensive” is a complete misuse of your position.
What scientific evidence do you base your “offence” on?
Is it the aesthetics? If that is the case, then pardon my language but who gives a F#@% what it looks like. Coal power plants are ugly and spew millions of tonnes of toxic by-products into the atmosphere and you don’t seem to care about them! If there was a power plant that looked like a dog’s breakfast but could provide us with clean energy for free I would put one on my roof tomorrow because climate change is not something to be debated and negotiated, it is something that needs to be fixed. One thing that you need to get into your head is that climate change is scientific fact, it doesn’t require you to believe in it to be fact.
Science has given us so much and taken humankind out of the caves and into space. Over half of the global economic growth since the mid-1800’s is because of Science and without investment, basic understanding and trust in science Australia will fail to grow and become prosperous once more. To give you a better understanding Mr Hockey of the things in your life that you use on a daily basis that you have Science to thank for; your clothes, food, home, computers, phones, transportation, health care, electricity, newspapers, social media, television, the internet and so much more.
Your latest budget starts off great for science with the establishment of the $20 billion Medical Research Future Fund to provide additional funding for medical research. However it is not all good news for science, the Australian Research Council will see funding reduced by 74.9 million over three years and savings of 111.4 million will be made to the CSIRO budget over four years. The Budget cuts also include the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) ($120 million), Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) ($27.6 million), and Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) ($7.8 million) – as well as Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs) program ($80 million).
You Mr Hockey and politicians of your ilk are the reason I lost faith in Australian politics and why Chuck Norris gets my vote every time because I would rather vote for a fictitious martial arts god than trust people like you, who haven’t got the basic understanding of science that even 11-year-olds have.
Stay Curious – C.Costigan
