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@basilio my guess is people are going to be in for a shock, I may be wrong but reading all the information I can on what Australia is doing, I think we are a lot further down the track than people are being told or realise.
Time will tell.
With regard the elderly lady in the photo, good on her, she certainly is getting a better response, than the girl burning a pram IMO. Or the old bloke the other day, spray painting graffiti, that tax payers are going to have to pay for the removal.
Yes I did, apologies if I've taken awhile responding, grandad duties.Did you read the rest of the story SP ? Cause if you did..
Your comment ignores REALITY.The reality is, if an unstructured, unplanned charge to zero emissions causes a breakdown in society or mass failures in any of our systems, be they dealing with effluent, water, electricity, hospitals or any other essential service, our society will descend into anarchy very quickly.
As @basilio's link pointed out, they say they hear our concerns but continue to pay lip service. What has to happen for them to act?People using social disobedience, to push an agenda that is already acknowledged, do nothing to further the cause IMO.
I think you have that back to front. Government has behaved appallingly, yet they claim to understand what is happening. It is reprehensible that they do nothing, and are hypocrites of the highest order.They IMO are using a cause as an excuse to behave badly, I would expect when this issue runs it's course, the very same people will be chaining themselves to bulldozers, that are trying to build the dams for pumped storage.
That is one area where the power really is in the hands of consumers.An interesting article on clothing, the part that caught my attention other than the mountain of clothes in Africa, was the statistics on clothing.
The sad part it doesnt fit the rhetoric, the whole issue is the Govmnts fault, those who are doing the complaining dont want to change their consumerism habits, they just want the Govnmt to make it carbon neutral.lolThat is one area where the power really is in the hands of consumers.
Just don't buy clothing that falls apart after being worn twice and don't throw away perfectly good stuff.
That doesn't need government to legislate, it doesn't need something to be invented and it doesn't need extensive infrastructure built. The power's firmly in the hands of consumers to reject this stuff.
I liked your post smurf as we seem to be always on the same page, and I agree with you.Comes down to what the objective is.
Neither Europe nor the USA are presently planning to go fully renewable. They're planning to go more renewable but they're not doing it so that it scales to 100%.
Hence the massive new investment in natural gas supply to Europe, the ramping up of gas in the US and so on. Nord Stream 2, with the capacity to supply an additional 55 billion cubic metres of gas annually, isn't being built without confidence that the future involves more gas not less.
Where the likes of Snowy 2.0 comes in is if, hypothetically, we wanted to go 100% renewable.
Here's a full year's worth of wind and solar generation for Victoria:
View attachment 128886
Look closely at the winter months and note that, assuming a shift from fossil fuels to electricity for heating, that's the time when consumption will be highest.
Doing that without bulk storage in some form, storage that can be discharged on multiple consecutive days without recharging, and some serious interstate transmission capacity is hugely problematic. Not impossible but it would take massive overbuilding to get those very low days' production up to match demand, noting that demand is set to rise not fall as the direct use of fossil fuels shifts to electricity.
What happened there at the beginning of July isn't a freak occurrence, there's been at least one equivalent scenario each year for as long as we've had significant wind and solar in the grid so it's likely to keep happening. For that matter look closely at June this year, or late April 2021, October 2020 or August 2020 and it's much the same. Multiple consecutive days of very poor wind and solar yield.
The EU and USA solution to that problem is to burn natural gas. That being Russian natural gas in the EU's case hence the politics with the US around it.
Those advocating Snowy 2.0 and similar projects are essentially advocating the use of stored renewable energy to fill those gaps rather than using gas.
Personally I'm firmly in the latter camp that going fully renewable is what we ought to be doing but I'm also well aware it won't actually happen, at least not within my lifetime. In practice it looks like we'll build as much bulk storage as the political process can deliver and fill the rest with open cycle gas turbines and perhaps a few large internal combustion plants running on a mix of local natural gas, imported LNG and diesel.
That's what the private players with $ billions are backing and realistically they're not likely to blow their money, gas isn't going away anytime soon.
My own view for the record could be summarised as:
Do not build new fossil fuel power generating capacity.
Electrify everything in an orderly manner. Eg I'm not suggesting we ban petrol cars but let's get new ones to be electric ASAP, thus bringing an orderly demise of petrol. Same concept with everything where technology permits the adoption of an electrically powered solution.
Don't put renewable energy infrastructure in places where it's going to harm endangered species or destroy unique environments etc. The principle being to avoid impacts of significance that can't be reversed at a later time.
If the land involved is generic and of no unique value and/or if the impact is readily reversible then quite simply we have to accept that some environmental impact from building renewable energy infrastructure is unavoidable, we can't say no to everything, and just get on and build it for the greater good. If society a century from now needs to dismantle some by then obsolete infrastructure and plant some common trees or grasses on the land in order to return it to natural condition well that's a pretty minor problem for us to be handing them versus cooking the planet.
Acknowledged that others will have different priorities but my own view is firmly that the need to reduce emissions is more important than any other impact if it's reversible. Only if the other impact is irreversible, for example nuclear waste or impacts on endangered species, is there anything to debate in my personal view.
That boat well and truly sailed with the 2013 IPCC Report, while the four before it outlining what was likely to happen.As I always say, time will tell.
Not relevant.It was only 10 years ago Australia was producing solar panels, now we have the very same people who let them shut down the manufacturing, complaining we should be making them here.
Not relevant.The same people bemoaned the closing of the car industry, yet put the wheels in motion that brought about its demise.
Perhaps you need a reality check because the bush fires and catastrophic flooding in the northern hemisphere taking place over recent months make it obvious that our planet's climate is out of whack.Life is full of pessimists, yet life goes on, then the pessimists find the next issue to be pessimistic about.
Sorry, you keep missing the boat.One day the pessimists will be right, that is the law of averages.
You can show us how they are doing this, can you?I on the other hand am optimistic that Canberra is actually aware of the issues and is addressing it in an orderly manner,
Are you hiding in a bunker?There is only one or two that don't accept reality IMO, but have endless amount of energy to try and convince all and sundry, that they alone know the "truth", on almost all issues.
That line of argument does not work in a consumer driven world and never has.That is one area where the power really is in the hands of consumers.
Just don't buy clothing that falls apart after being worn twice and don't throw away perfectly good stuff.
That doesn't need government to legislate, it doesn't need something to be invented and it doesn't need extensive infrastructure built. The power's firmly in the hands of consumers to reject this stuff.
Morrison wants to blame developing nations for the problem because they are increasing CO2 emissions.This surprisingly pretty much nails it SP look away
The abc peddling the propaganda for the large corporations. I mean nothing speaks clean aboutdigging endless toxic products out of the ground to make something to ineffective at a wind mill.Excellent story on the directions we need to take to obtain future metals.
Where and how will we get the metals to feed our future technology needs?
ABC Science
/
By environment reporter Nick Kilvert
Posted 8h ago8 hours ago, updated 5h ago5 hours ago
View attachment 128905
The US has ramped up investment in wind energy to meet its emissions goals.(
Supplied: Blue Economy CRC
)
Sh
If you had a tonne of ore from a gold mine, and a tonne of iPhones, which is likely to contain more gold? What about silver?
You've probably guessed the reason for the question is that the answer is surprising. And yes, in both cases, it's the devices that are a richer source of the precious metals.
In fact, the metals for all Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic medals came from recycled e-waste.
Over two years, the organisers gathered enough gold, silver and bronze from small electronic devices to make the almost 5,000 medals awarded to the athletes.
And it's not just our computers and phones.
Everything from electric cars to wind turbines and solar panels — things we need to transition the world to net-zero emissions — require an array of metals, like silver, palladium, platinum, copper, aluminium and rare-earths, such as neodymium.
So where will we get them from? Will we have enough? And what role can recycling and reuse play in ensuring we can supply our technology needs into the future?
Rare metals needed to fuel our high-tech future are in our hands right now
Transitioning the world to clean energy is going to require a huge amount of different types of metals. But do we have enough, where will we get them from, and what impact will that have on the environment?www.abc.net.au
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