wayneL
VIVA LA LIBERTAD, CARAJO!
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Numbskull thinking, sorry not sorry.
Numbskull thinking, sorry not sorry.The four tenants. Move up and down depending on audience.
1. Global warming is not real. It's about scientists' falsifying data.
2. OK my nuanced opinion is that maybe it s real but it's natural, not man made.
3. OK Even if it's man made We can't do anything about it so should ignore the problem.
4. Ok , the shts hitting the fan but anyone who who mentions it shall be called a ###.
Regarding the map you posted, I'll simply point out that if we look at the places where emissions are falling then it's largely in spite of organised environmentalism not because of it.If you really want to make a difference some how, why don't you actually address the real issue.
Tim Buckley, a director of Clean Energy Finance
"If I go and flood the NSW market with a shedload of solar, that's going to gut Eraring, it's going to gut Bayswater because they have zero flexibility," Mr Buckley says.
The four tenants. Move up and down depending on audience.
1. Global warming is not real. It's about scientists' falsifying data.
2. OK my nuanced opinion is that maybe it s real but it's natural, not man made.
3. OK Even if it's man made We can't do anything about it so should ignore the problem.
4. Ok , the shts hitting the fan but anyone who who mentions it shall be called a ###.
Indeed.Should we allow ourselves to go into energy poverty putting us at geostrategic security risk while others have a free pass to destroy the planet and build the World's largest unfriendly military in our backyard? Any student of history knows where this is heading.
Surely there are other alternatives to on river hydro, like coastal hydro where the water is pumped from the ocean to a dam on the land then let back into the ocean?I'll add that there are very good reasons to not dam every last river for hydro, t
Indeed you may wonder GG. And indeed anything, maybe , could happen.We had quite a pleasant coldish winter up here in Townsville. I just wonder about global warming and whether it will self correct or become manageable.
When was a young child all the talk was about another ice age and global cooling.
Anyway, we are heading in to the change of season and I will let all know how hot it becomes during summer.
gg
Indeed.
I'm not a climate scientist but common sense says that changing the composition of the earth's atmosphere should bring some sort of consequence. Given the irreversibility of it that's an inherently high risk thing to be doing.
On the other hand it's delusion in the extreme to think that simply de-industrialising the West and relocating the point source of emissions to China is even the slightest bit of progress. Quite the reverse is true, first because it means we've lost control of the issue, second because the economic effects mean we'll lose the ability care about it anyway, and third because it's the path to major war which most certainly won't do the planet any good whatsoever.
I see both sides. I absolutely agree there's a lot of problems with fossil fuels and I'll add that there are very good reasons to not dam every last river for hydro, there are places wind farms shouldn't be built and so on. Likewise nuclear power undeniably has serious downsides too.
On the other hand, we live in an imperfect world and suffice to say I cannot grasp why anyone wants to de-industrialise the West or why they're opposed to all dams or all nuclear. Unless they're an agent working for some foreign country, it's an irrational stance and it's sending us down the path to poverty and war, ironically casting aside the environment in the process.
With some sense and logic we could largely fix this problem in a way that even those unconvinced of the need won't sensibly object to. That doesn't involve de-industrialisation however, and it does involve breaking some eggs when it comes to building the required infrastructure.
Should we allow ourselves to go into energy poverty putting us at geostrategic security risk while others have a free pass to destroy the planet and build the World's largest unfriendly military in our backyard? Any student of history knows where this is heading.
The big problem isn't how to deal with short duration peaks in power demand. Batteries can do that and so can relatively simple, low impact pumped hydro projects.Surely there are other alternatives to on river hydro, like coastal hydro where the water is pumped from the ocean to a dam on the land then let back into the ocean?
The issue is simply that increasing the cost of energy in the West, without increasing the cost of energy in China etc, massively tilts the table.Not quite sure what you mean by de-industrialise the West . De carbonise industrial production is the goal. The process of sending major industries offshore to China was driven by economic considerations.
When China looked like a friendly or at least neutral political arena it seemed like a good idea.
but it's still a problem as such if our industry all goes to NZ or England.
POTY . Sums up the situation excellently.The big problem isn't how to deal with short duration peaks in power demand. Batteries can do that and so can relatively simple, low impact pumped hydro projects.
The real problem is how to deal with 10 days straight of above average demand and dismal output from both wind and solar. We know that happens at least once practically ever year.
For that the options are basically something that burns, large storage hydro projects, or nuclear. Noting there that nuclear is horrendously uneconomic in that usage, but technically it's doable. Either that or massively scale up the wind and solar and simply accept most of it being unused the rest of the time - that's about as bad as nuclear economically though.
Present planning in Australia, in the context of the NEM, is to do the job using the existing hydro assets with some minor enhancement + Snowy 2.0 for just under 50% of the task on a capacity basis and to the rest, which is just over 50%, using natural gas and diesel.
So what we'll have is a system that's circa 97% renewable (the actual figure varies a couple of % depending on assumptions etc).
Does it matter? Well I won't claim the ability to answer that one. It means a lot less CO2 being emitted but it's not zero.
Bearing in mind electricity's only 25 - 35% of present total emissions depending on which statistics you prefer to look at. For the other 65 - 75%, a lot of that also isn't likely to go to zero at least not rapidly:
The direct use of liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons is so utterly entrenched, there's literally a few billion consuming devices all up, that any decline is going to be extremely long and drawn out. Cars, railway locomotives, ships, trucks, buses, aircraft of all types both civilian and military, ovens both domestic and commercial, boilers, water heaters, central heating, BBQ's, boat engines, tools and on it goes. Even gas streetlights aren't actually extinct, there's still some use of them as functional lighting today and they've been technologically obsolete for over a century.
Cement which by its very nature releases CO2.
Steel and other industrial processes where full replacement of fossil fuels is problematic at best.
Agriculture has emissions from both fuel combustion sources and non-fuel sources and that's an industry we're definitely not going to simply do away with.
Meanwhile population and overall consumption continue to trend up.
Put that all together and the concept of "net zero" relies very heavily on sinks and accounting trickery. In reality, it's not happening by 2050 in the manner it's intended to mean. Whether that matters or not I don't know but if anyone's pinning their hopes on net zero by 2050 they're in for a shock unless society radically changes course.
What I do know however is society needs to make its mind up about this. There's no point collectively running around in circles saying we want net zero ASAP but we don't want to do the things required in order to achieve it. One or the other, we need to make our collective minds up. Either we're doing it and we're going to get on and do it using the technology available right now, or we're not doing it with present technology and are just aiming for lower but not zero emissions so stop complaining that fossil fuels aren't going completely extinct unless / until new technology comes along. One or the other.
Noting this isn't simply about hydro versus gas. The same basic problem exists globally, that's partly what all the drama in Europe was about, a sustained period of poor wind yields, and depending on which country the answer varies. Suffice to say enthusiasm for new nuclear is growing, there's a reason for that, but it does raise the same question - do we need fully non-emitting electricity? Or will mostly non-emitting with a bit of oil and gas here and there be good enough? Answer that and it settles the debate about what needs doing, which is probably why there's a reluctance to answer it.
In terms of biases, personally I'm not really that keen on "dam the lot" approaches and I wouldn't seek to fully eliminate gas in the medium term but that said, as a generic concept I'd pick hydro over oil or gas yes. The basic reasons being it's inherently long lasting, it uses a sustainable renewable resource, and it doesn't come with the price shocks and potential wars and human misery that oil and gas do. So long as building it hasn't wiped out a species etc, I'll argue it's a less bad alternative.
For the industry as a whole, no secret the bias is toward gas turbines. That's the default position, it's the preferred solution absolutely, because it ticks the boxes private investors and even many governments are looking at. Essentially zero technical risk with "off the shelf" standardised equipment running on standardised fuel that requires essentially no in house technical expertise, relatively low capex, pretty easy to site and thus far pretty much immune to anyone protesting about them. It's hydro, coal, nuclear, wind and transmission lines that cop the opposition, not gas turbines hidden in plain sight.
What's not clear is what politics and the media wants. One day they want zero emissions, 100% renewable energy and so on on a timescale that's incredibly ambitious to say the least. Then they're dead against any attempt to actually do it. That's not a new thing, it's gone on for decades now.
End result is, and there are surveys which do back this, public support is eroding at this point. The general public does see climate change as a problem, they want something done about it, but they're tired and weary of the whole thing. Sentiment is shifting from "it's an emergency" to "slow and steady, no need to rush" as an approach.
That shift is of course not at all surprising. If on one hand someone runs around screaming about an emergency, whilst on the other hand they're worried about making a mess, well that doesn't stand scrutiny. If the house really is on fire you don't complain that the fire brigade trampled the garden, woke the neighbours up and parked in a no standing zone. Nah, you keep right out of the way and let them get on with it unless you're actually doing something to help.
So how important really is it?
If I listen to what's claimed then it's an emergency. Planet's cooked in the near future.
If I look at the actions of governments and the environmental lobby then it's perhaps a problem, but one that a slow and steady approach will be sufficient to address. Their actions don't align at all with the notion of an emergency. They're not akin to saying the theatre is on fire, they're more akin to saying the show is now over, there's no encore, but we're still selling merchandise and while you will need to leave, there's no hurry just amble out in an orderly manner.
In the real world, well practically every new house built in Adelaide has one thing in common. Gas. There's the odd exception but it's in the overwhelming majority and that being so, no chance gas is being done away with for a very long time yet. Politicians of all colours can huff, puff and try blowing the house down whilst flapping their wings but bottom line is once installed this stuff has a fairly long lifespan. Go to Victoria and there's over 5 million gas appliances in the state. 5 million.....
Our children know it is real and they will have to live with it and expect out nation to be a force pressuring other nations as well as showing best practice. We will over time do this because governments want young people's votes.I assume you're replying to the data regarding Australia's contribution to global CO2 emissions, which might be point number 3.
Should we ignore the problem (if it's real), no.
But, what should we do?
Should Melbourne City Council commit $15m of ratepayers money to climate initiatives that do nothing to change the temperature? Should our schools be teaching 8 year olds that they are going to imminantley die because their parents drive an ICE vehicle?
Should we allow ourselves to go into energy poverty putting us at geostrategic security risk while others have a free pass to destroy the planet and build the World's largest unfriendly military in our backyard? Any student of history knows where this is heading.
Our children are not going to blame us for global warming, they are going to blame us for not looking after our best interests as a nation.
Numbskull thinking, sorry not sorry.
Without shooting it down or being negative, I'll question how well this really stacks up?The CH1 building has an experimental external evaporative cooling system. They have a 10 floor office with no air conditioning and 95% fresh air compared to a normal office building with cosily air conditioning and 5% fresh air.
It does have a heating system which is to do with the floor slabs. It uses some tech which gets the heat from special sources. Can't remember. Also the floors are very solid and have a large thermal mass reducing temperature change.Without shooting it down or being negative, I'll question how well this really stacks up?
Or more specifically, how the place is heated?
Reverse cycle A/C leaves any other common means of heating for dead so far as efficiency is in concerned, even a bad one will save two thirds of the energy otherwise used and a good one will be far better than that. Bearing in mind that in Melbourne's climate a typical building is going to need far more heating than cooling.
There's a local government building in Tasmania that, for whatever reason, insisted they weren't going to put air-conditioning in when they built it ~20 years ago despite pretty strong advice that they ought to. Let's just say their total energy use is roughly double what it otherwise would be due to that, the resistive heating burns up some pretty serious amounts of energy. Just installing split system A/C's would cut their heating cost hugely.
Even a simple box type A/C, the old "window rattler" albeit a modern version, will save 70% on heating costs compared to resistive.
There's no real cooling in it (the one in Tas) just relying on thermal mass and that the state generally doesn't get prolonged periods of hot weather.The Tassy building was probably based on natural cooling through window ventilation and the chimney effect
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