Wind energy’s high level irony in Knight’s airborne turbines cartoon

This week the eastern and southeastern states copped an absolute earful of wild, windy weather, hail and rain. I guess we should be used to weather with “attitude” these days. Apparently it’s all due to this thing called climate change* and many scientists predict that these severe weather events will become the norm.

In Victoria and Tasmania, gale force winds* lashed those two states for nearly a week, with trees down, roads blocked, homes damaged, power supplies cut off, internet and phone networks down and people told to stay home.

Generators* became the new status symbols* for neighbourhoods. Forget the BMW parked in the driveway; if you had a diesel generator revving away in the frontyard lighting up the house and keeping the fridge running, you were someone to be both admired and envied.

Anyway it can’t be all bad, I thought. It’s good weather for the wind energy business, the turbines* must be going flat stick pumping out tonnes of kilowatts of electricity with this constant supply of a brisk breeze.

It was then that I found out these gusts were at times too strong for wind turbines and that they were locked down in such extreme weather situations to prevent the rotating turbines from being damaged.

Sometimes cartoon ideas just flash inside my head when I read or hear something and this was one of those occasions.

I imagined a vista of rolling green hills in rural Victoria, planted-out with those majestic* white rotating wind turbines, harnessing the breeze from the southern ocean provided for us by Mother Nature and generating clean, renewable* electricity.

But Mother Nature can be a testy* type at times and this week the winds were so powerful, over 120 km/h, that I imagined not only trees and kids’ trampolines taking off, but our huge wind turbines being torn from their foundations. The cartoon shows the uprooted windmills soaring skyward, self-relocating, due to the cyclonic* conditions.

This is of course me being the typical cartoonist and using my cartoonist’s licence to exaggerate to make a point, but when the wind exceeds a designated* speed, the turbines stop spinning. Fair enough. They probably would take off if those blades were spinning freely in a 120 km/h breeze!

POLL

GLOSSARY

• climate change: long-term shifts in global temperatures and weather patterns
• gale force winds: strong winds of force between seven to 10 on the Beaufort scale – an empirical measure that relates wind speed to observed conditions at sea or on land – or from 45 to 90 km/h
• generators: machine that produces electrical power
• status symbols: something that a person has or owns that shows they have something of value or importance to others
• wind turbines: machines that converts kinetic energy from the wind into electricity
• majestic: impressive, magnificent, very beautiful or striking
• renewable: energy produced using natural resources that are constantly replaced and never run out
• testy: bad tempered, irritable, grumpy, easily provoked
• cyclonic: relating to a cyclone, refers to very wild or cyclone-like conditions
• designated: specified, indicated

EXTRA READING

Sailors’ wild wind and wave rescue

Tassie devil fears threaten $1.6 billion wind farm build

Renewables in power struggle

QUICK QUIZ

1. What do many scientists predict?
2. Which two states were lashed by gale force winds this week?
3. Which item suddenly became a neighbourhood status symbol in affected areas?
4. What happens to wind turbines in extreme conditions?
5. What did the winds in Victoria measure in kilometres per hour this week?

LISTEN TO THIS STORY

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1. Humour analysis
After reading and analysing the Mark Knight cartoon in the Kids News explainer, complete the following analysis questions to help you get the full humour out of his drawing.

Mark Knight cartoon analysis:

What is the main issue Mark Knight is highlighting:

Who is portrayed in the cartoon?

How are they portrayed?

What is the humour in the drawing?

Who might agree with his viewpoint?

Who might disagree or possibly be offended by this viewpoint?

Do you think he makes a good point? Explain your answer.

Time: allow 25 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Personal and Social, Critical and Creative Thinking

2. Extension
Being able to draw is only one of the skills needed to be a great cartoonist. Write a list of all of the other skills that you think cartoonists like Mark need to do their job.

Next to each skill, write a sentence that explains why that skill is important or helps them to do a great job.

Time: allow at least 20 minutes to complete this activity

Curriculum Links: English, Personal and Social Capability, Media Arts, Visual Communication Design

VCOP ACTIVITY
Describe it
Look at the cartoon and make a list of five nouns that you see. Then describe those five nouns with five adjectives. Now add a preposition to those five nouns and adjectives.

Finally, choose your favourite bundle and put all the words together to make one descriptive sentence.

(For lower reading level articles, remove “add a preposition”)