SP, the Green/Labor left wing socialist party will not be happy until all the coal mines are closed and thousands of workers are thrown out of a job.
Without coal, iron ore cannot be smelted so there goes the iron ore mining.....more workers thrown out of jobs.
What hypocrites they are when they have the audacity to criticize Abbott for considering buying subs from Japan and perhaps throwing 3000 out of work
SP, the Green/Labor left wing socialist party will not be happy until all the coal mines are closed and thousands of workers are thrown out of a job.
Be good to make a distinction between thermal and coking coal. Coals ain't coals to mimic an old TV ad.
Personally I'd love a future where we don't need coal to produce electricity. Not sure how feasible it would be to replace coking coal, but that's a far smaller market.
Wouldn't you like a future where we no longer needed to burn a substance that spreads mercury, sulphur, and small particulate matter over large areas?
Firstly, you are so wrong with your facts about coking coal.......coking coal is the second largest export commodity after iron ore....see the link below....we mine and export more coking coal than steaming coal.
Australia's coal export market represents 27 % of the world supply.
Coking coal has less than .5% sulpher.
So now if the Green/Labor socialist left wing party closes down all the coal mines, and that is what they plan to do, what will silly Billy do with the 57,500 workers who are currently employed in the coal industry?...send them down to Adelaide to build subs....and what will do for base power supply when the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing?....Nuclear would be the way to go but then we would have lots of opposition from the Greens.
The other fallacy the Green/Labor coalition promote from the alarmist propaganda is every time they show coal fired power stations, they show photos of chimney stacks emitting heaps of black smoke...photos that were taken 40 years ago.....to the best of my knowledge modern coal fired power station have anti pollution equipment as required by law and all you see now is a steam vapor being emitted from low large diameter concrete stacks.
How will he produce power without coal ...coal produces 85 % of Australia's power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal
So you prefer a world where we need to burn coal to produce electricity? I look forward to a future where the economics of renewable energy can compete with fossil fuels. I look forward to a future where Govts don't subsidise resource companies.
China may not want our coal quite as much as they used to - see below graph for just how big an impact their new policy is going to have on coal producers in Australia.
I don't hear anyone from the centre of politics calling for mines to be immediately closed. I just hope eventually they are, and long before we've used up all the coal.
As for the hot steam that gets you riled up, it's the fly ash or soot that I'm more worried about. 500 tonnes of it dispersed from a 500MWh plant each year. Then we're faced with:
Then we get the more solid wastes like:
- Over 50kg of lead, 1.8kg of cadmium, other toxic heavy metals, and trace amounts of uranium.
- 220 tons of hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (VOC), which form ozone.
- 102kg of arsenic, which will cause cancer in one out of 100 people who drink water containing 50 parts per billion.
- Sulfur dioxide (SO2): Takes a major toll on public health, including by contributing to the formation of small acidic particulates that can penetrate into human lungs and be absorbed by the bloodstream. SO2 also causes acid rain, which damages crops, forests, and soils, and acidifies lakes and streams. A typical uncontrolled coal plant emits 14,100 tons of SO2 per year. A typical coal plant with emissions controls, including flue gas desulfurization (smokestack scrubbers), emits 7,000 tons of SO2 per year.
- Nitrogen oxides (NOx): NOx pollution causes ground level ozone, or smog, which can burn lung tissue, exacerbate asthma, and make people more susceptible to chronic respiratory diseases. A typical uncontrolled coal plant emits 10,300 tons of NOx per year. A typical coal plant with emissions controls, including selective catalytic reduction technology, emits 3,300 tons of NOx per year.
- Mercury: Just 1/70th of a teaspoon of mercury deposited on a 10 hectare lake can make the fish unsafe to eat. A typical uncontrolled coal plants emits approximately 77 kg of mercury each year.
- Over 125,000 tons of ash and 193,000 tons of sludge from the smokestack scrubber each year.
- Toxic substances in the waste””including arsenic, mercury, chromium, and cadmium””can contaminate drinking water supplies and damage vital human organs and the nervous system.
Then we're looking at something like 270B-681B litres of water each year to cool a 500-600MWh plant. Do you remember during the last drought some of the generators in QLD were operating at reduced capacity because they didn't have enough cooling water?
Hopefully that gives you a better understanding of why I'd prefer we moved away from energy production that leaves us to deal with the above by products.
Rumpy, Smurf is right.....we have strayed from the appropriate thread, however with all that pollution hot air you have stated and given your superior knowledge on the subject,
Are you talking to me or syd ?
It is somewhat telling as to the real problems that society faces that a thread about the current Australian Government generally, has ended up on the subject of energy.
Our domestic oil production meets only one third of consumption and that figure is rapidly falling.
. Oil, not electricity, is the real energy problem we're facing and the one that politicians of all persuasions ought to be worried about.
Seen those "without trucks Australia stops" signs on the back of trucks? What they should really say is "without imported diesel Australia stops" since that's the reality of the situation we're in.
I'll take this as a Clarion call to our self proclamating 'Infrastructure PM ' to take shovel and pick axe in hand, turn the first sod* on the Melbourne-Brisbane rail freight line and set night sky of the western plains aglow with the fire boxes of hundreds of CHOO-CHOO trains, run on good Aussie coal, not that barbarian Arab Oil, On Aussie steel wheels and tracks not that multi god worshiping Indo-Indian Rubber .
On the Scotland referendum, they voted no to split from the UK.
I haven't heard of a Tasmanian secession movement, but Tasmanians would these days have little choice but to vote no. So tragic for the state to have come to this.
So far as infrastructure is concerned, it is by its' very nature a long term investment.
Roads, rail, airports, power, water, gas, fibre / copper communications....
It all has a lifespan measured in decades or longer. If we're going to build infrastructure, and this government seems pretty keen on that idea, then we need to be looking at what we need in 2030 and beyond, not what we need today.
Without focusing on any specific issue, this government seems to have the basic concept right (build infrastructure) but is focused on simply extrapolating and scaling up the past without any real thought to what we're really going to need in the long term.
I'll take this as a Clarion call to our self proclamating 'Infrastructure PM '
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