The climate change debate continues.

[facthunter]

The stocking rates in the desert areas are LOW. They don't even fence the properties in the NT in a lot of areas. Nev

Edited December 22, 2021 by facthunter

[old man emu]

Fenced or unfenced; high or low stocking rates. It doesn't matter. Each and every ruminant contributes to total methane exhalation. Those in desert areas would produce more than their feedlot brethren because of the  much higher fibre diets they have to live on.

 

And surely at least twice in their lives the desert dwellers are rounded up and worked on. That's the time to drench them with a bacteria bomb, especially at their first yarding when they are sorted, marked and tagged.

[pmccarthy]

Source: the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Coal 2021 report.

[old man emu]

That's the trouble with a graphic representation of data. You can't  accurately analyse trends. If you had the raw data, you could make a graph for each group and then determine the gradient of the line in order to compare differences between groups numerically.

 

It is not good communication practice to colour the areas under each line. Which line belongs to which group? Does this graph show that in 2000, the United States consumed 3000M tonnes, or was it only about 1000M tonnes (the distance between "Other Asia" line and the United States line? Did the European Union consume 8000M tonnes in 2021?

 

Graphs are the graffiti of statisticians.

[Marty_d]

Mike Cannon-Brookes and Canadian company Brookfield have put in an offer to take over AGL for $8 billion, with a view to shutting down their coal powered plants early.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/feb/20/mike-cannon-brookes-and-brookfield-in-bid-to-takeover-agl-and-shut-down-coal-plants-earlier

 

While this is an excellent thing to do, and I applaud them for it, it's a sad thing that we have to rely on billionaires for the leadership that our government should have been showing.

[facthunter]

Australia is severely compromised by THIS LieNP UNHOLY ALLIANCE that has avoided and frustrated action for over 10 CRITICAL  years when we could have been in the forefront of the clean energy  drive. There's no other Country more suitable to it than here.. but COAL and GAS OWN the  present gov't and even the ALP is funded also, but not so much..Nev

[pmccarthy]

We are moving from having energy and storage based on hydrocarbons to having them based on minerals. It may not be a good change for the world's environment. The average grade of copper mining is 0.5% so we have to dig and dispose of 199 tonnes of rock to get one tonne of copper to wire the electric cars, solar panels, windmills and so on. It is worse for some of the other minerals that will be needed in huge quantities.

Edited February 20, 2022 by pmccarthy

[onetrack]

I don't really understand why such vast amounts of new copper are continually needed. Copper doesn't degrade much and a vast amount of it is recycled. So where is the huge demand for new copper coming from? Is it because every Chinese person has a raging desire to own their own personal EV?

 

https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/metals/120721-feature-copper-market-to-be-well-supplied-in-2022

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

Origin and AGL are already bringing forward Co9al plant closures: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/feb/17/australias-largest-coal-fired-power-station-eraring-to-close-in-2025-seven-years-early

 

And now, following in SA's footsteps, NSW will build a big battery (see same article).

[facthunter]

The Federal LNP Gov't made a big JOKE about the Labor SA government  move to batteries, but the Liberals who replaced them expanded the system, and NOW we have NSW Libs following suit.. Nev

[Old Koreelah]

8 hours ago, facthunter said:

The Federal LNP Gov't made a big JOKE about the Labor SA government  move to batteries, but the Liberals who replaced them expanded the system, and NOW we have NSW Libs following suit.. Nev

These monumental mistakes don’t really matter to much of the electorate, who have very short memories.

[pmccarthy]

BERLIN, March 2 (Reuters) - Germany on Wednesday took more steps to diversify its energy supplies in a bid to cut dependence on key supplier Russia, announcing a 1.5 billion euro order for non-Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) and slowing its exit from coal.

"Pragmatism must trump every political commitment," Economy Minister Robert Habeck told public radio Deutschlandfunk in remarks that would have been unthinkable by a Greens minister a week ago.

-Reuters

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

Yeah.. OK.. The point you are making is humans are a) either too stoopid to stop their own destruction; b) too selfish to stop their own destruction; or c) both..

 

The statement has nothing to do with the science..

 

For what it's worth,  I resemble at least one of those three assertions.

[red750]

Here is another email I received, for you researchers to decry and debunk. America-centric, as they all are, but...

 

NOT SO GREEN! !!! SERIOUS STUFF YOU NEED TO KNOW!

 

That little yellow thing is a bulldozer. It is burying windmill blades used for green energy. Why? Because these blades need to be disposed of and there is presently no way to recycle them. That’s how green energy works!

Who knew? Maybe the people that make them knew. Why would they let that cat out of the bag, after all they are government subsidized with tax payer money. After all It's all about the money every time! Just like the oil industry powers every electric car. 

Also politicians do not want those huge eye sores in their backyard. 

Right now the average wind farm is about 150 turbines. Each wind turbine needs 80 gallons of oil as lubricant and we're not talking about vegetable oil, this is a PAO synthetic oil based on crude... 12,000 gallons of it. That oil needs to be replaced once a year. 

 

It is estimated that a little over 3,800 turbines would be needed to power a city the size of New York... That's 304,000 gallons of refined oil for just one city.

 

Now you have to calculate every city across the nation, large and small, to find the grand total of yearly oil consumption from "clean" energy.

 

Where do you think all that oil is going to come from, the oil fairies? Well thanks to ? it now comes from our enemies in the Mideast.

 

Not to mention the fact that the large equipment needed to build these wind farms run on petroleum. As well as the equipment required for installation, service, maintenance, and eventual removal.

 

And just exactly how eco-friendly is wind energy anyway? 

 

Each turbine requires a footprint of 1.5 acres, so a wind farm of 150 turbines needs 225 acres; In order to power a city the size of NYC you'd need 57,000 acres; and who knows the astronomical amount of land you would need to power the entire US. All of which would have to be clear-cut land because trees create a barrier & turbulence that interferes with the 20mph sustained wind velocity necessary for the turbine to work properly (also keep in mind that not all states are suitable for such sustained winds). Boy, cutting down all those trees is gonna anger a lot of green-loving tree-huggers.

 

Let's talk about disposal now. 

 

The lifespan of a modern, top quality, highly efficient wind turbine is 20 years. After that, then what?  What happens to those gigantic fiber composite blades?

 

They cannot economically be reused, refurbished, reduced, repurposed, or recycled so guess what..? It's off to special landfills they go.

 

And guess what else..? They're already running out of these special landfill spaces for the blades that have already exceeded their usefulness. Seriously! Those blades are anywhere from 120 ft. to over 200 ft. long and there are 3 per turbine. And that's with only 7% of the nation currently being supplied with wind energy. Just imagine if we had the other 93% of the nation on the wind grid... 20 years from now you'd have all those unusable blades with no place to put them... Then 20 years after that, and 20 years after that, and so on. 

 

Hello there, how green is that? 

 

I'm so glad the wind energy people are looking out for the world.

[octave]

Recycling of wind turbine blades is now starting to happen.   Most industry in the past have created items that ended up in landfill. If I think back to when I was a child when our tv or radio died it would end up in land fill.   Now theses items are recycled as recycling techniques have improved.   The technology for recycling tends to lag behind.  In earlier times my first PC ended up in landfill because recycling did not become economic until there were enough used PCs around economically justify it.   

 

This article does not do a comparison with the waste from coal fired plants Coal ash has become one of Australia's biggest waste problems

 

It is interesting that the article talks about the end life of composite materials but only considers turbine blades and not other sources.  We could apply the same criticism to the composites used increasingly in the aircraft industry as well as marine applications and other areas where composites are being used or introduced.

 

 

These bike shelters are made from wind turbines

 

Here is an interesting and I would suggest more balanced article  Adding Perspective to the Wind Turbine Waste Debate Electricity from coal produces 200 times as much solid waste as electricity from wind

 

 

 

It is  entirely reasonable to question the life cycle of all products we create but it is easy to not see or think about the waste from the products that we are already producing.   

 

 

 

[willedoo]

I remember years ago doing a short job to help unload a shipload of slag.  It was at the CSR cement factory. We would send iron ore to Japan and they would send the slag back for us to blend in cement. Very basic recycling.

[pmccarthy]

Power station flyash has been added to cement for at least 50 years. Typically 20%, but in some applications up to 60% FA is possible.

[octave]

OK I can't help myself.

 

4 hours ago, red750 said:

That little yellow thing is a bulldozer. It is burying windmill blades used for green energy. Why? Because these blades need to be disposed of and there is presently no way to recycle them. That’s how green energy works!

 

No way at the moment does not imply no way ever.  Recycling plants are being built  GE announces first US wind turbine blade recycling program with Veolia

 

Newer blades are made to be more easily recyclable.   World’s first “fully recyclable” wind turbine blades roll off production line

 

4 hours ago, red750 said:

Just like the oil industry powers every electric car.

 

This is obviously false. The notion that all EVs are charged on 100% fossil fuels is quite clearly wrong.   An EV owned by a Tasmanian if charged solely from the grid would on be charging almost exclusively by renewables  Tasmania is now powered entirely by renewable energy  An EV in Victoria would (using average figures) if charged solely from the grid use 24% renewables.   However of course the proliferation of home rooftop solar must be considered.   I am considering an EV in the near future (would have already don't if the stock marked hadn't taken a dive - thanks Vlad)   I have been operating my ICE car as if it were an EV. By that I mean modelling each trip in terms of electricity required.   I am pretty sure I could run an EV almost solely on my excess solar production rather than selling it back to the grid for f***all.  The exception would be longer trips where I would need to charge at a public charging station.  Networks like Chargefox claim to only be renewable power for their network.

 

4 hours ago, red750 said:

Each wind turbine needs 80 gallons of oil as lubricant and we're not talking about vegetable oil, this is a PAO synthetic oil based on crude.

I haven't researched these figures but as a general comment I would say that a lot of technology requires lubricants.  I would assume that thermal power plants also require large quantities of lubricants in their generators.  I would also assume the as is the case when I get an oil change in my car, oil from electrical generators would be recycled.   The use of renewables is not necessarily about not using any fossil fuel derived product but rather not burning fossil fuels.  Crude oil will be around for many years to come because we need it for plastics, chemicals ,drugs etc.

 

 

4 hours ago, red750 said:

Not to mention the fact that the large equipment needed to build these wind farms run on petroleum. As well as the equipment required for installation, service, maintenance, and eventual removal.

   Yep that is certainly true at the moment but of course this is also true for fossil energy production.  As with renewables at the moment there is a cost in fossil fuel to build and maintain it but in the case of a fossil fuel power plant these building and operating fossil fuels costs are as well as the running cost.     

Because at this stage steal and concrete and transport require a high fossil fuel input it doesn't mean this can never change, in fact it is changing.  ‘Green steel’: Swedish company ships first batch made without using coal  Likewise construction and transport equipment is changing.

4 hours ago, red750 said:

Each turbine requires a footprint of 1.5 acres, so a wind farm of 150 turbines needs 225 acres; In order to power a city the size of NYC you'd need 57,000 acres;

 

I have no idea if this is accurate but it does sound reasonable but on the other hand it is misleading.   The 1.5 acres required for a single wind turbine is still available to be used in other ways.   This year I have done quite a bit of travel around western Victoria. It is difficult to drive very far without coming across a windfarm.  I do not recall seeing a windfarm that didn't have livestock grazing around it or crops growing.    The notion that we need vast tracts of land to turn over to wind farms is not the case as far as I can see. In fact if anything it represents an intensification of land use.  Farmers are able to graze livestock and grow crops and receive an income from the turbines.    I suspect that the future of wind may be more large offshore wind.

 

 

4 hours ago, red750 said:

keep in mind that not all states are suitable for such sustained winds

Indeed, but I am not sure any credible person is saying that the only source of power should be wind.  Some areas are rich in sunshine others are rich in wind or hydro potential.

 

4 hours ago, red750 said:

Boy, cutting down all those trees is gonna anger a lot of green-loving tree-huggers.

I cant really think of any location where clear-felling has been undertaken to build a windfarm.  Farmland seems to be the most common site for a windfarm.

 

4 hours ago, red750 said:

They cannot economically be reused, refurbished, reduced, repurposed, or recycled so guess what..? It's off to special landfills they go.

 

I think I have already dealt with this one.

[red750]

As I said in the first line of post, America-centric, as all these emails are. Is there anywhere else?

[old man emu]

1 hour ago, pmccarthy said:

flyash

Where are we going to get fly ash from in the future when the flies give up the fags and stop ashing everywhere?

[spacesailor]

Simple question! .

If Not near a grid, 

OR

The grid is down, how to charge the mobile and all the other renewnable batteries.

Just heard  a US state is banning ALL small  ic motors, mowers , chainsaws,  generators ect.

I.ll have to get my ' steam engines ' upgraded. 

Jay Leno,s garage,  will be happy with their Stanley steamer, puffing thrugh town.

spacesailor

 

[nomadpete]

Spacey. Don't put too much faith in 'The sky is falling' stories

[nomadpete]

PS. I can charge my mobile phone, etc. From my car anytime. So can you.

[nomadpete]

BTW, if the sky is falling, why would you bother charging your mobile phone. It ain't gunna work!

[Marty_d]

Not only America-centric, but from the rabid right wing coal-lovin' nut job side of it, I'd guess.

 

There was a bloke on the radio the other night, Aussie chap who'd lived in the US for a long time and advised Joe Biden on renewable energy policy.  He said that Ford is bringing out an electric version of the F-100, one of the most popular utes in the US.  Its battery can power a house for 10 days.  The cost will be $40,000.

 

Why the hell can't we have something like that here?