Billionaire Elon Musk has joined Australian businessman Dick Smith to criticize ABC fact-checkers for spreading “lies and misinformation” about nuclear power.
The 80-year-old Smith told radio station 2GB last week that Australia must switch to nuclear energy ‘now’ because a country cannot run ‘completely on renewable energy sources’.
‘This claim from the CSIRO that you can run an entire country on solar and wind energy is simply a lie. It’s not true, they’re telling lies,” he told Ben Fordham.
‘No country has ever been able to run entirely on renewable energy sources, that is impossible, and that is why we should make a decision now to switch to nuclear energy.’
But the comments prompted the ABC’s fact-checking unit to claim that four countries – Albania, Bhutan, Nepal and Paraguay – have been running on 100 percent wind, solar and water energy as of 2021.
The response infuriated Mr Smith, who said he was furious at being labeled a liar by fact-checkers.
And on Monday, Smith found an unlikely supporter in billionaire Elon Musk.
Billionaire energy magnate Elon Musk (pictured in 2022) also weighed in on the fact-checking saga
Dick Smith (pictured with his wife Pip) has blasted an ABC Fact Check report on nuclear power
Musk tweeted on X on Monday his distaste for the idea of government “fact checkers.”
The billionaire responded to a tweet from American columnist Michael Shellenberger about the report.
Mr. Shellenberger tweeted that “one of the government’s top fact-checking groups has been caught spreading misinformation about renewables and nuclear power.”
Mr Musk responded: “Having government ‘fact-checkers’ is a giant step toward tyranny.”
“It’s deeply disturbing Black Mirror s***,” Mr. Shellenberger agreed.
Mr Smith has since demanded a correction to the Fact Check report, which came from a dedicated team at RMIT University and was published on the ABC website on Friday evening.
“The bottom line is, I’m a liar,” Mr. Smith said The Australian.
“It damages my credibility, and nothing like this has ever been done to me before.”
Returning to 2GB on Monday, Mr Smith dismissed the report’s claims and accused the ABC of taking his comments out of context.
He said Nepal has motor vehicles and transportation that run on fossil fuels and many households burn wood – resulting in much higher carbon emissions.
The businessman also debunked the claims of sustainable energy expert Mark Diesendorf of the University of New South Wales in the report.
“Several countries (and Tasmania) already run their electricity systems on 100 percent renewable energy sources,” Diesendorf said, adding the state was also using hydropower.
Mr Smith says the expert referred only to electricity, whereas he was talking about all forms of energy when he made his original statement.
“From my experience with the ABC, because they think they should be left behind, they should be against nuclear power,” he told 2GB radio on Monday.
‘All my left-wing friends are all against nuclear energy, with them it is a kind of religion.
‘What the ABC has done is distort that by just looking at electricity, which is only 25 per cent of our problem.
“Our government and our scientists say we need to get to zero carbon. That’s all energy, not just electricity.’
Mr Smith (pictured in 2017) has since demanded a correction to the Fact Check report
Billionaire Elon Musk owns X, formerly known as Twitter, SpaceX and Tesla
The businessman also took issue with statements published by the ABC Fact Check about the use of renewable energy in California.
It stated that California had been operating at “greater than 100 percent WWS (wind, water, sunlight) between 0.25 and 6 hours per day for 10 of the past 11 days.”
Mr. Smith said California could use renewable energy because it was connected to the nuclear grid of Arizona and Washington state.
“What they don’t say is that California has nuclear power, so it’s just completely unfair,” he said. “So in other words, they prove what I say is right.”
An ABC spokeswoman defended the report in a statement, saying: ‘RMIT is committed to upholding the integrity of public information and stands behind the accuracy of its work.’
ABC has announced plans to part ways with Melbourne’s RMIT University fact-checkers after their contracts expire at the end of this year.
Last August, Facebook also shut down the RMIT FactLab after complaints about the way it handled material on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.