A Carbon Tax

Australia and the world needs a carbon tax and the money from this providing green cheques to the community and towards the growth of renewable energy.

THE WAY TO GO

On many many occasions those who have insisted that there is an inextricable link between nuclear power and nuclear weaponry and that this is a serious thing have never gotten the publicity they deserve. All the time trust; trust that no state will use their resources to achieve nuclear weaponry by stealth. is all we have between those who haven’t got the bomb yet. and trust is all we have between those who have. There is no other deterrent than trust and the love we have for the human species and indeed for all of life on earth. Unfortunately brought down by evolution we have in our genes and used by ideologies the desire for disastrous confrontation to resolve problems. Spare plutonium and fissionable unaccountable material floating around the world is not a good mix in this situation. But sixty-eight tones of plutonium destined to be for weaponry has had a strop placed on it both by Russia and the United States. That’s only the accounted amount. More is floating around and it’s this stray unaccountable amount, together with yet unprocessed fissionable material, which causes greatest concern. There are still countries that are nuclear weapon states that will not sign up to the NPT and there are countries that want nuclear technology and we in Australia have a pro-nuclear lobby gaining strength believing that nuclear technology is the answer to global warming. There will be lots of countries in the world and through Asia developing nuclear reactors and some of them will want to have nuclear weaponry and the more nuclear material floats around the world the greater the chance of disaster. Nuclear reactors are very safe and there would have to be multiple things to go wrong for present generation reactors to melt down. I am a ‘not in my back yard’ person though even so. To sum this up:
1 We don’t have the genes as a result of evolution and as a result of ideology encouragement to resist using nuclear weaponry to resolve confrontations.
2 More nuclear material floating around as a result of civil projects means a greater risk of disaster through states wanting a nuclear weapons program too.
3 There is only one way to mitigate against this and that is to encourage the use renewable energy and not go anymore into nuclear energy.
4 Solar thermal with storage, wind, wave, and geothermal are just some of the many renewable energy systems to produce base power and all the power we need.

AREVA AQUIRES 100% OF AUSRA

This sounds a wonderful step forward for CSP but I can’t help being cynical about it. What happens when a big fish swallows a small fish? The big fish remains and grows even bigger but the small one is gone forever and the big fish can continue doing what it was always doing i.e. eating the small fry. Companies all over the world are eating the smaller companies and getting even bigger dominating the market, dictating the price and closing down that which they deem not to be viable. It would be easy to engineer it this way for CSP and other renewables.

World Wide Tax For The Polluters

Tony Abbott the leader of the opposition in Australia has joined Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in paying the polluters. His idea is that everyone will be paying much much less to reduce carbon in his direct action approach but he is still paying polluters to continue polluting. We all know that to reduce carbon we will have to pay to do it. It certainly is not going to happen by itself. In my opinion there’s only one way to do it that will work. A universal carbon tax all over the world directed at those that pollute. If you pollute you pay, and if you pollute more you pay more. This tax can’t be traded or sold in any way but is administered by a worldwide authority (to be decided) and this tax money is given to those who do not pollute i.e. the renewable power generation sector. This of course is very severe and is a double whammy for the polluters because they will be paying for the renewable sector to grow and this stick approach will also push them into stopping their own pollution. They (the polluters) will eventually morph into the renewable sector. And it has to be a universal tax being simpler to administer and each country will have the same conditions.

Copenhagan Was a Failure

Yes it was. Well if you really wanted to see the results that should have happened. Will that happen in a years time when the next conference occurs? I think we will not see the result the earth needs. But who cares? Skeptics say the earth is cooling. But cooling is just as serious. Greatly affected parts of the earth will wipe out population anyway. Veritical farms using city skyscrapers are touted as being a way of producing food and there are many unused sky scrapers in all cities but they will need lots of energy especially in cool or frozen environment. And so we get back to the energy question. Renewable energy will be of utmost importance to keep the ship sailing. Mining coal,uranium, and oil will be all that much harder in a frozen environment and will therefore become prohibitively expensive. Wind blows almost continuously in polar regions. It probaly will do the same when the earth is frozen over large parts of it and wind generation will be one of the main power sources.We had better get on greatly increasing renewable energy NOW and not wait if what's has happened in the Northern Hemisphere this last twelve months is any guide.

PAID TO POLLUTE

If you pollute you get paid and if you pollute more you get paid more. That’s the policy of the Rudd government now and it’s the policy all over the world. Who pays for this? Those who don’t have the money to pay, and don’t have the money to lobby and buy government and therefore democracy- if you are in some sort of a so-called democracy. And if you are in a totalitarian nation state you can’t even try and buy it! Democracy is not for all, even in a democracy, but its very much better having at least some democracy in a democratic state and if you are of the majority, and the majority in Australia is 70% who believe that global warming is real and is happening at ever increasing rates and will threaten our very existence soon, then you would want to do something about it now!! No you can’t! At least you can’t do all that’s necessary to save the planet. And you wont be able to channel enough money into the right areas. You haven’t got the money to do that even if you are of the majority because the Pondsi schemed financial sector has ensured that they will be paid for the pollution they’ve created, the crash of the economy they’ve created and the threat to the environment they’ve made and go on business as usual continuing the lie and hoodwinking you. But the environment is not silly even if we are. We are basically environmentally, economically and ethically bankrupt.The environment has limits and we are seeing those limits right in front of us as we smash into the world’s finite resources. Like it or not we are going to have to change immediately!! Otherwise we will keep on smashing into the environmental limits and we will be bounced back each time. None of the proposed options to reduce CO2 emissions by the polluters will work in any effective way because to do so will close their businesses. The polluters will probably control the Copenhagen meeting in December and make promises and perhaps listen to the poorest and most affected nations. That’s likely all that will happen. Effective emissions reduction means a total cut in emissions now!! The anthropogenic triggered rise in CO2 has tipped the fine balance between positive and negative feedbacks of this planet resulting in a summed positive warming effect rising exponentially. This is a disastrous situation to be in. Disastrous global warming will now happen certainly at least in our grandchildren’s lifetime or possibly sooner instead of playing out over the millennia. We need to understand that the planet is a heat sink gradually absorbing heat from the sun hence the rise in temperature as result of positive feedback. We can’t say the planet is cooling because of local temperature decrease. Or warming because of an increase in local temperature but we can say it is warming because we see more extremes of weather everywhere. And we all know about the polar icecaps melting. An analogy would be to see convection currents becoming more vigorous as more heat is applied to a pot of water on the stove eventually resulting in boiling. Already just a half-degree sea temperature rise has caused fish to migrate out of their usual areas to other areas. This is both good and bad as we are now seeing fish we never have seen before resulting in the collapse of some fishing industries. Overfishing and pollution has exacerbated it. More warming and hence more vigorous convection currents in sea and air –well you know the result. There now is a never-ending list of environmental degradation and collapse that could be cited. Carbon capture and storage for the coal industry, with all its other pollutants, will never work on a global scale and certainly the amount of money being spent to realise this is far too small and it will never happen. Nuclear power has its inextricable connection to nuclear weapons and is very costly. The pebble bed nuclear power system has not been proven for global scale and still involves transport of uranium with its inherent dangers and has more waste to deal with. The only way forward is to dump the model we have, understand how we are interconnected with the environment and all its ecologies and build an economy based entirely on the environment. We can use immediately already proven technologies for the energy sector using the environment for energy production and using it in a way that doesn’t destroy it and us, as we are part of the environment. We have taken a long time to learn and as an example we have built and are still building large-scale hydroelectric schemes but they have tended to destroy the environment at best and at worst destroyed it entirely and with it also peoples livelihoods. We need to know how to not do it that way. It’s hard to see how future projects of damming rivers to produce hydropower could help the environment. So we need to concentrate on technologies that impose little or no degradation and are not dangerous to human, and environmental health or security. Large-scale wind farms spread throughout the country in uninhabited areas or out at sea away from sight an analysis has shown will provide base power if connected to a grid over a sufficiently large area as at any one time there will always be a third of them producing base power 24/7. Tide and wave power together with direct absorption of photons from the only safe nuclear reactor we have-the sun in solar thermal installations with storage will provide the rest of needed base power. Solar thermal installations can be sited in desert areas. There’s plenty of desert in China, the Middle East, North Africa, Australia, America. And only relatively very small areas would be required and connection to where the power is needed by High Voltage Direct Current transmission lines which loose less power typically 3%. The present push for carbon capture and storage system of credits, it would be better to have a carbon tax all over the world where carbon taxes can’t be bought. This tax could then be put into financing renewable power systems. Worldwide cooperation will be needed. The Copenhagen talks should work along these lines.

DID GLOBAL WARMING DO THIS?

A few days ago Sydney received the worst dust storm in history. Of course Sydney has had many dust storms over many years as has most of Australia, but this one was THE WORST for Sydney. In my opinion global warming could be the genesis of more of these to come. After all the world’s weather is doing strange things nowadays resulting in horrendous destruction more often than usual, and even more extreme events could occur in future, and not too far down the track at that. It blew many many tones of top soil and fertility away but for this dust storm, what is of concern also is the fact that this dust came from dust in the heart of Australia where uranium mining is active, in particular Olympic Dam. A mine which is intended to be increased in size to a hole three kilometres wide, four kilometres long and one kilometre deep. True, the radioactive dust was diluted in the mix, but it spread out all over the Eastern States and even as far as New Zealand. With greater intensity and frequency of extreme weather events expected as global warming occurs it would not be too difficult to imagine, that we may be entering a time when carcinogenic certainties manifest themselves in the same way as we have seen in the asbestos scenario, as we will be receiving more radio activity than we would have normally from background radiation, this dust once driven deep into the lungs could cause 20-100 times more problems. And it only takes a minute particle size of plutonium to cause cancer once in the lungs as specks of plutonium are still lying around from the Maralinga atomic tests in the 50’s and we also have rare earth metals associated with uranium and all tailings from mines release radon gas. With the new scenario emerging this time all of Australia’s population will be at risk, which will have even greater consequences. And this of course will happen anywhere in the world where this scenario occurs. It must be added to the list of reasons why we must not go down the nuclear path and why we must adopt the very sound reasons of producing our power from renewable sources.

A global Warming Shock

The unprecedented bushfires in Southeastern Australia being Australia’s worst natural disaster and the floods in northern Australia in Queensland has shocked Australia. Fire fronts from Warnabool in the west to the Alps in the east and traveling at speeds of 120km/hour consuming and flattening and killing everything in its path. A wild fire of gigantic proportions left the landscape bare just like a nuclear holocaust. To date 181 people have died and will likely grow to more than 300, hundreds of others injured, 4000 homeless and 750 homes destroyed. At the same time at one stage 60% of Queensland was under water or affected by floods having had 2 meters of rain in about 5 days. All over the world extremes of weather are now happening. Is this a result of global warming? We only know that as time goes by more extremes of weather will occur and they will be even worse! Thousands of scientists discredit global warming at least that which is triggered or generated by man saying the earth is warming anyhow and some say it is cooling and we humans have had nothing to do with it. No matter which way you look at it, it is warming and we know that we have to do as much as we can to retard the process. We still have a small window of opportunity to do so, ten years at the most. If we all as global citizens understand better how nature works and have a better understanding of science, biology, geology and physics of the earth, we will understand that we need to look after the big fish, the large animals, the large old growth forest trees, as well as the understory, the macro as well as the micro in order for the earths ecologies to survive and we will know how we fit in and how dangerously close we are to extinction. We actually can’t live without intact ecologies! Also importantly we will have a greater chance to reverse the direction of global warming. It will quickly come upon us that we have to change our ways drastically. To do so needs massive education worldwide. The only mass worldwide educational tool is the Internet. Think for instance how those who cut down forests in third world villages to replace them for palm oil production or whatever, if they had a computer connected to the internet, they could learn how to earn a living without cutting the forests down or continuing in destructive ways and to protect the environment as well. In Australia our government is still pandering to the fossil fuel industry providing billions of dollars to it whilst leaving the renewable industries to almost fend for themselves saying that the fossil fuel industries provide the jobs and therefore have to be helped. This pandering has to stop. Our government like many governments in the world today are plowing massive funds providing an economic stimulus with the intention of preventing global economic collapse. It has been suggested that a small part of the 42 billion package in Australia be directed towards the funds needed to rebuild all that has been destroyed by the recent bushfires. This should be at least 2 billion. But it is also plainly evident that in view of global warming massive funds need to be directed to the renewable industries and to mass education worldwide. Understanding the physics of this planet and the implementation of renewable industries is where our future jobs will be and this is where the economy will be on a secure footing taking the environment into the economic equation. This is where global warming will safely be reduced and eventually stopped and where we will ultimately arrest those massive bushfires and disastrous floods and extremes of weather and where our food supply will be secured.

Commit to New Technologies

This planet is on a course for massive global warming. It is difficult to see if anything will arrest this as not only do we have global warming we also have world economic problems. But there is a way to help both. Global warming has to be considered the only issue, as we will not have an economy if we do not stem global warming. Presently politicians and business do not understand how serious it is. On the technical front we have the know how to produce 100% of our power needs from renewable sources. When the true cost of the market system is seen in terms of environmental degradation as it is at present only then will we be in a position to understand how to run our economy in a manner that will also help the environment. Today our market system is still based on the theory that there is no biophysical limit to growth of the market system. We are still in the age of trying to find new environmental horizons and plundering expectant wealth those horizons might reveal and plundering what we already have. There is no possible way to grow our economy using the old system. That’s why it’s imperative we change our ways now and one of the ways to help is to inject massive funds into renewable energy. It is a sunrise (excuse the pun) pursuit. It will provide much needed jobs and grow the economy in an environmentally responsible manner. Similar economic management has been done in many times of recession or depression e.g. the building of the railway system although back then there was no understanding of environmental issues and purely economic gain were to be had. We have that environmental understanding now, be it very limited, and we can now move ahead with the environment in mind. “Dramatic immediate commitment to nurturing new technologies is essential to averting disastrous global warming” –Jeffrey Sachs director of the Earth Institute Columbia University.

ENERGY OPTIONS IN THE WAR WE HVE TO WIN

If we can spend billions of dollars on wars in this world, we can spend just as much on global warming because we have to win this war!

Here are some of the things happening in Australia towards the war. It’s not much at all but worldwide it will have to be!

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s2197789.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s2196083.htm

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2008/03/13/2187801.htm

Due to a serious health condition I will be unable to post to this site for several months. Hopefully it won’t be too long and I will post again. In the meantime look at this site and the links I have provided, they will lead you to new pathways in renewable energy that perhaps you have not seen before. Please continue commenting.

It's Happening and Growing

Proponents of nuclear power will always cite figures that are taken from old renewable energy data to boost their argument in favor of nuclear power as to how much more viable nuclear power is suppose to be and proponents of renewables often don’t take notice of the latest in nuclear power but there are some very fundamental differences in the two that make renewables much more attractive. Meanwhile there are many economists who say that we can do it by using renewables without negatively damaging the economy. Prof. Ross Garnaut is one of those [1]. So the renewable industry in Australia like elsewhere is just getting on with it [2] [3].

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2008/s2168338.htm

[2] http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5625

[3] http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,23238663-5006301,00.html?from=public_rss

Helping the planet to cool itself down.

This planet was on course to cool down towards another ice age but it’s not. Why? Because of human intervention. We have tipped the balance and set the course for our extinction by burning fossil fuels and disrupting the normal ecological processes. The only thing I criticize Lovelock on is his idea that nuclear energy will save us. His idea of the planet being regulated by life forces should not be ignored however. Every indicator that the earth is warming up fast can be seen by faster than predicted rises in sea level, CO2, and temperature. Still everything that can be done should be done to try and stem or slow down it and new ways to do it must be given serious money. Solar thermal power is going ahead and we expect big things from this. But there are other ways of doing things and they don’t happened to be nuclear. A huge amount of research is going on to find new ways and some success is coming through. New ways to produce hydrogen [1] storing sun and wind energy [2] harnessing wave power [3]. It’s this last thing that’s as important as any because if we are going to use the planet to help it cool down, like James Lovelock says we need to, then we need those scientists on that front, take seriously his idea of using the planet itself to do it. Due to global warming the normal regulatory mode of the oceans keeping the planet cool is breaking down. The top layer of ocean is clear and devoid of algae and nutrients that would otherwise regulate the atmosphere because this warm water stays on top not mixing with lower layers. His idea is to use an enormous number of tubes vertically about 100 meters long and 10meters diameter with a valve on the bottom and as the waves pass over them this has pumping action bringing cold water from below. Or next big thrust must be in wave technology not only in producing power and desalinated water but cooling the planet down as well.

[1] http://www.news.com/Producing-hydrogen-with-water-and-a-little-metal/2100-11392_3-6184879.html?part=rss&tag=2038-12_3-0&subj=news

[2] http://www.news.com/Storing-sun-and-wind-power/2100-13840_3-6221396.html?part=rss&tag=2038-12_3-0&subj=news

[3] http://www.news.com/2100-13840_3-6223220.html?part=rss&tag=2038-12_3-0&subj=news

TREV an Electric Vehicle for Cities

The arguement as to whether electric vehicles will be mainstream will go on for a long time yet. It depends on just how you express the problem and what figures you include and what you don't and the same applies for using bio- fuels or doing anything else for that matter. Meanwhile manufacturers are just getting on with it and using the best technology available knowing that there will be a market in a sunrise industry ( no pun intended) which will enable them to get to the next stage and what doesn't come up to scratch of course will fall by the wayside. An example is the TREV which I think has a bright future.

clipped from www.product-reviews.net Trev which stands for The Renewable Energy Vehicle has been designed by a bunch of students in South Australia. These university students describe this car as the possible future for Australian cities, thanks to some impressive figures. Trev will go from 0 to 100kph in about 10 seconds, and will reach a top speed of 120 km/h; TRev will have a range of about 150km until you need to re-charge again. To give you an idea of how cheap the car is to run, just $1 AUD will see you to at least 100km. The reason why you get so far so little money is due to Trev’s design, the wheels are made from low-mass allow along with low rolling resistance tires. The body is made from foam, fiberglass and acrylic, with an aluminum honeycomb chassis, all of these materials helps to keep weight down. Trev is a two-seater, so you as the driver will have room for just one passenger and not much else. Visit Trev

Khosla and the Electric Car

We rely on scientists and companies like Khosla Ventures to bring battery costs down so that the electric vehicle can be in the majority. Khosla doesn't seem too confident yet. But there are many types of batteries like the fuel cell running on hydrogen that could well be the way we go. It remains then for companies like Ausra to complete the picture and the motor industry would then be carbon free from hydrogen produced from solar thermal power plants. Luckily Ausra (another Khosla interest) are building large scale power plants now based on much more mature technology.

clipped from gristmill.grist.org Search Gristmill Search Gristmill using Grist's improved search. I am open and hopeful, especially longer term, on serial plug-in hybrids (a point I'll address in Part III). Price still remains a major issue. Even for serial hybrids, the ability to keep cost, or at least monthly payments, close to that of a regular ICE (internal combustion engine) car is unclear. Maybe another blogger with knowledge of practical automotive costs can detail the likely trajectory of serial hybrid costs (say, with a typical 40-mile "battery range"), as this remains the critical question. I believe that battery costs will decline and performance increases will continue, but my review of the technology suggests that the upside with known chemistries is limited to maybe 2-4x change in cost per kwh of capacity -- a significant improvement to be sure, but not nearly enough to change the hybrid or plug-in hybrid cost dynamic.

The Concepts of James Lovelock

Dr. James Lovelock: “There is no sensible alternative to nuclear power if we are to sustain civilization.” - James Lovelock, preeminent world leader in the development of environmental consciousness. Since 1974, Lovelock has been a Fellow of the Royal Society. Since 1994, he has been an Honorary Visiting Fellow of Green College, University of Oxford. New Scientist described him as “one of the great thinkers of our time. The London Observer has called him, “one of the environmental movement’s most influential figures.” Prospect magazine named Dr. Lovelock in September 2005, “one of the world’s top 100 global public intellectuals. But in fact he just about tries to demolish every renewable energy source as of little benefit in tackling global warming! His response to nuclear waste. “I have offered in public to accept all the high-level waste produced in a year from a nuclear power station for deposit on my small plot of land it would occupy a space about a cubic metre in size and fit safely in a concrete pit, and I would use the heat from its decaying radioactive elements to heat my home. It would be a waste not to use it. More important, it would be no danger to me, my family or the wildlife.” This of course would be a stunt as universal disposal in this manner. For one thing we would end up with nuclear material of a strength or activity much higher than background radiation all over the place, a rather irresponsible thing to do. Lovelock does not appear to have perception that the nuclear industry will never ever be a safe one as the world is entrenched in crazy ideologies and to disperse material such as this even in a limited way will play into the hands of the black market even more than what is happening now. Granted we are in dire need to produce clean energy but there is an even greater need to produce this energy without creating an apocalypse that can easily destroy us long before global warming does.

There are 27000 nuclear weapons 70 times more powerful in the world today than those dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima and of those 27000, 4000 are set on hair trigger alert to explode at a few minutes notice from threat or perceived or through accident or malfunction or by decision of the machine. There is no safe nuclear waste storage anywhere in the world and there is no properly managed inventory and probably will never be, to account for spent and waist products or nuclear fuel itself. There are many buyers out there to buy black market nuclear fuel and there were 650 cases of smuggling nuclear fuel in the last ten years. Thanks to the internet diffusion of knowledge a good PhD student could make a crude nuclear weapon in the backyard in two or three years.

No ethical code for scientists exists. Too many scientists have nuclear knowledge and not containing it and putting it up to the highest bidder and making money out of it. Scientists must think of the end result of their work. And not just say I’m a computer scientist or I’m a nuclear scientist or an environmentalist etc. And despite it being true that the world is bathed in low level radiation both from within and from our nearest safe nuclear reactor, the sun, it is not a legitimate reason to use this to deaden the understanding of just how tremendously dangerous the nuclear path is. A huge amount of capital is invested in the armament industry and hundreds of thousands of jobs are directly involved in it and we are all involved in some way or other and it will become worse if we take Lovelock’s approach. And he states, “I believe nuclear power is the only source of energy that will satisfy our demands and yet not be a hazard to Gaia (Planet Earth) and interfere with its capacity to sustain a comfortable climate and atmospheric composition This is mainly because nuclear reactions are millions of times more energetic than chemical reactions. The most energy available from a chemical reaction, such as burning carbon in oxygen, is about nine kilowatt hours per kilogram. The nuclear fusion of hydrogen atoms to form helium gives several million times as much, and the energy from splitting uranium is greater still.” He cites Biomass, writing, “Bio fuels are especially dangerous because it is too easy to grow them as a replacement for fossil fuel they will then demand an area of land or ocean far larger than Gaia can afford… We have already taken more than half of the productive land to grow food for ourselves. How can we expect Gaia to manage the Earth if we try to take the rest of the land for fuel production. Just imagine that we tried to power our present civilization on crops grown specifically for fuel, such as coppice woodland, fields of oilseed rape, and so on. These are the ‘bio fuels’, the much-applauded renewable energy source…We would need the land area of several Earths just to grow the bio fuel.” This I do agree on! And we could also damage even further our health and not only the planet’s health. Presented by National Geographic, Strange Days on Planet Earth, reveals intriguing new discoveries about the health of our fragile planet which in turn affects our health e.g. dust blown from one continent causing asthma and many other strange things happening in a far removed country. He also tries to demolish all natural energy flows as being worthless not noting that the whole annual energy requirement of the world in sunlight falls in just two days over the area of Australia alone and that economies of scale will kick in with all the technologies used. Or that new solar cells are many times more efficient than the older generations of them and also many times less expensive e.g. slither solar cells and distributed on every roof are a very sensible way to produce extra power. And he appears to be uninformed about the potential of solar thermal energy with storage as it is now. His fossilized concepts of a past century appear to not allow him to understand that energy wise we do not need to continue in the same way as we have done in the past.

Renewable Energy Best Way to Cut Emissions

Ultimately it is the only way.

clipped from sustainablog.org A report commissioned by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says that renewable energy is making a difference in the fight against global warming and that we need more of it. In fact, renewable energy is the best way to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. So how to do we keep this momentum going? While renewable energy may have moved from an “alternative” source into mainstream use, Mohamed El Ashry, head of the global policy network REN21 that produced the report with the WorldWatch Institute, said that policymakers can do more: Unlike the promises of future technologies like “cleaner” coal or mainstream carbon sequestration, renewable energy is the best option to mitigate global warming because it is here, now, and making an impact. The UNEP reports that the costs of renewable energy will continue to decline and that the clean energy sector is an avenue to economic development, energy security, local environmental benefits, and a global warming solution.

Climate Change Prophets Condemned by the Pope

The Pope condemned climate change prophets of doom but he says that to combat climate change nuclear power must be used?? And he warned them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology. He is the leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics and he said that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering. He thought that some concerns may be valid but that the international community must base its policies on science and not dogma of the environmentalist movement..

The 80-year-old Pope said the world needed to care for the environment but not to the point where the welfare of animals and plants was given a greater priority than that of mankind.

Does the Pope not know or understand that extinction of plants and animals is happening on a massive scale and largely as a result of human activities and increased over many years by the teachings in the bible go forth and populate the world and have dominion over plants and animals? Does he also not understand that it is the very plants and animals-the biosphere right down to the extremely important micro flora, fauna, viruses, bacteria, plankton etc supporting them, and constituting the largest amount of life on this planet, singularly strengthening a synergism are actually more important than all humans and without them we would all be dead no matter what ideology or faith we have. We come last in the scheme of things! We have to look after them totally! And that means looking after the environment totally! The total environment is the currency of our priority. Without it we have none. And to rely on nuclear power as the only future major power source saving the planet shows little or no understanding of the immense power of natural energy sources. It also shows little regard for the fact that the nuclear industry can never be a safe one because of the world’s entrenchment in crazy and dubious ideologies and we are in dire need to branch out on a safe power source devoid of either nuclear or fossil fuel with science as the currency. It is of great concern that a man is such a position leading the world of so many people will by his very pronouncements increase the chances of an apocalypse.

Hot Rock Power for Adelaide

No doubt it could be done by wave or solar thermal power too. But anything that's not powered by fossil fuel is a winner.

clipped from www.smh.com.au An exploration company has been granted a licence to search for a source of geothermal power in the Adelaide suburbs. Torrens Energy Ltd has been granted a licence to establish heat flows over the Port Adelaide region, in Adelaide's north-west. If successful the company could tap into a source of clean energy that could boost Adelaide's electricity supplies and provide power for a future desalination plant.

The Tindo Bus

Great to see! I'm sure it wont be long before completely solar powered buses will be seen in most cities of the world. If Adelaide can do it so can any city.

clipped from www.ubergizmo.com Australia will play host to the first solar-powered electric bus in the world, with Tindo leading the charge in Adelaide, Australia. 100% powered by solar energy thanks to a BP Solar-sourced photovoltaic station, this green ride can ferry up to 42 passengers at once - without forking out a single cent. According to the Adelaide City Council, "The solar electric bus and the recharging system at the Adelaide Central Bus Station represent a significant investment by the Adelaide City Council into a sustainable future for the City of Adelaide, while providing leadership in sustainable public transport options for cities around Australia." When will we see such buses roaming the streets of US?

Energy Options to Tackle Global Warming

The question as to how we combat global warming on the energy front given that nuclear energy is not an option for several reasons and the Rudd government is relying heavily on “clean coal” and sequestration, which is only on the drawing board as yet and may not be proven for 15 years-we don’t have that sort of time so our transitional time for gas fired power plants will have to be very short. And biofuels are not a good idea due to global warming causing unreliable weather conditions failing the parent crop and biofuels causing food shortages as well. Notions of renewable energy being somewhere in the mix as a niche or damaging the economy has been shown to be very wrong it remains that renewable energy our insurance is going to play a very much more important role than we ever dreamed of. Thoughts of renewable energy always come with wind generators foremost in the public’s mind with lots more spread around the country and in distribution together with flow batteries can level out peaks and provide some medium power. But Australia in particular has abundant other sources of renewable energy. The sun’s energy falling on Australia in one day is equal to half the total annual energy required by the whole world and can be tapped by solar towers [1] or PV cells [8] or concentrated solar thermal stations with storage enabling it alone to provide base power production for all of Australia [2] and in America with Australian know how is now in the commercialization phase [3] and will provide power at equal to or cheaper than fossil fueled power. Pity the Howard government caused those scientists to go off shore. They should be here now doing it and we selling it to the world! Solar thermal stations work well in desert areas [1] [3] [7] and we have plenty of that as has the Middle East and China. Solar thermal power in conjunction with geothermal power [4] using HVDC transmission lines [3] [7] which in themselves tend to stabilize transmission, could provide large amounts of base medium or peak power on demand. Wave energy and tide [5] in the demonstration phase and touted to be able to provide 10 times more than Australia uses and as Australian cities are in the main spread around the coast could easily provide that power and the system inherently producing high pressure sea water for desalination as well. All of the above can provide power to produce hydrogen for motor vehicles with fuel cells but in the lab are new ways to do it directly from sunlight water and ceramics and there are new ways to store it. If given the political will the hydrogen economy would soon be here. And in the commercialization phase slither solar cells [6] at least four times cheaper than conventional cells and much more efficient should be on every roof. The Rudd government has promised it will very greatly increase spending on renewables. They will have to be kept up to it and do even MORE on this front than they have promised.
[1] http://www.enviromission.com.au/
[2] http://www.trec.net.au/
[3] http://www.ausra.com/
[4] http://www.aussiehotrocks.com/
[5] http://www.ceto.com.au/home.php
[6] http://www.originenergy.com.au/1160/Solar-manufacturing-facility-SLIVER-plant
[7] http://www.trec-uk.org.uk/index.htm
[8] http://www.solarsystems.com.au/