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Category: Science (Page 7 of 17)

‘Green Fuels’ Aren’t Green

via Small Dead Animals:

The ETC Group, an international organization supporting sustainability and conservation, has just published its newest report, an 84-page document that presents a lengthy criticism of “the new bioeconomy.” In it, principal author Jim Thomas argues that using biofuels for energy and resources isn’t green — in fact, he says, it’s even more harmful to the environment than coal.

“What’s being presented by the government as ‘the green way forward,’ is this idea that we can use plant matter from crops, trees, or algae and convert it into fuel, plastics or chemicals,” Thomas told FoxNews.com. “And it’s just assumed that it’s carbon neutral. But when you burn something like a tree, you release as much, if not more, carbon dioxide than when you burn something like coal.”

Not to mention the fact that besides not reducing ‘greenhouse emissions,’ large scale diversion agricultural land from food production means (doh!) less food produced, which means higher food prices, which means more hungry people.

All these pious schemes which do more harm than good but which make wealthy Westerners feel good about themselves remind me of the following exchange from the Poirot story The Kidnapped Prime Minister:

Sir Bernard Dodge: You don’t seem to realize, Poirot, this is a national emergency. I do not intend to sleep until the Prime Minister is found!
Hercule Poirot: I am sure it will make you feel very virtuous, Sir Bernard, but it will not help the Prime Minister! For myself, I need to restore the little grey cells.

In any case wasteful and expensive ‘green fuels’ are just not needed. It is now clear we have vastly more energy reserves than was imagined even two years ago, which means enough cheap fossil fuel to sustain steady growth in the West, and rapid growth in developing nations for many generations to come.

And just for the heck of, and in case you missed it earlier this year:

African Crops Yield Another Catastrophe for the IPCC (but fortunately, not for Africans).

Julia Gillard Makes No Sense

Julia Gillard is not stupid.

But as Forrest Gump said, ‘Stupid is as stupid does.’

And there could hardly be anything more stupid than putting a punitive tax on the resource – cheap carbon fuels – that has underpinned the fastest ever growth in development and standards of living around the world, including health and education, and without which there would be no modern industry, no fast, economical transport, no large scale agriculture providing cheap food, etc, etc.

There is simply no reason for such a tax. The world is not running out of oil or coal.

So this claim by Ms Gillard is nonsense:

‘The alternative is very stark, if we continue to do nothing we will pay a heavy cost – electricity prices will spiral up. Our power supplies will begin to run short.’

No, our power supplies are not going to run short and cause spiralling prices.

But putting unnecessary taxes on energy resources will push prices up, causing industry to move offshore, and impacting especially harshly on poorer families.

So why do it?

Because human activity is causing the world to warm catastrophically?

If that’s the real reason, Julia, just say so. If you can prove it, I’ll back you 100%

But before you impose even more taxes on Australian businesses and families, I suggest you do some reading:

How Not to Measure Changes in Temperature

And the Survey Says …

In the latest episode of Climate Family Feud, activist paper Scientific American ran a survey to guage its readers’ opinions on IPCC traitor Judith Curry and her opinions.

The results show that Scientific American’s readers (over 4,000 of them) are better informed than its editors.

A couple of examples:

What is causing climate change?

Greenhouse gasses from human activity 31.4%

Solar Variation  33.8%

Natural processes  76.7% 

(responders could choose as many answers as they wished)

The IPCC is..

A corrupt organisation, prone to groupthink, with a political agenda  81.9%

How much would you be willing to pay to forestall the risk catastrophic climate change?

Nothing  77.1%

That’s because while climate changes all the time, there is no evidence of any impending catastrophe, and even if there were, we would be better off preparing for it, rather than making Canute like efforts to stop it (unfair to King Canute, but that’s another story).

Via Small Dead Animals

Rare Earths, Monazite, Thorium and China

The rare earth elements are not ‘earths’ but metals. Nor are they rare. They are expensive because they are difficult to extract.

Thorium isn’t a rare earth. It is generally found as a by-product of the processing of Monazite ore for rare earths elements (REEs).

Thorium is a radio-active metal approximately three times as abundant as Uranium. I’ll come back to Thorium in a minute.

REEs are used in the production of automotive catalysts, pigments, batteries and magnets. Many of the ‘high tech’ items we take for granted depend on them. Demand for REEs is increasing.

China produces virtually all (97%) of the world’s rare earths. In 2009 China announced that over the next few years it would reduce supply from about 70,000 tons per year to 35,000 tons per year.

In September of this year, China said that it would cease supply of rare earth oxides to Japan completely. Given that Japan is a leading manufacturer of mobile phones, TVs, electronic medical equipment, etc, this is potentially devastating to Japan’s economy.

Japan cannot afford to be without REEs.

However…   China is not the world’s largest supplier of REEs because it has the largest deposits, but because its low labour costs meant that in the 1980s it was able to force every other producer out of the market.

Up until the middle of last century, most REEs were exported from Brazil or India. Later the US (California) was the leading producer.

Global Rare Earth Production 1950 - 2000

The two main ores from which REEs are extracted are Monazite and Bastnasite. Bastnasite has been preferred because the cost of removing Uranium and Thorium in Monazite has been prohibitive.

Australia has good (nowhere near the most, but good) supplies of Monazite.

Two things are happening which will make Australian production of Monazite viable.

First, China’s massive reduction in exports of REEs.

Secondly, new developments in the use of Thorium in nuclear power generation.

A ton of Thorium can generate as much power as 200 tons of Uranium. Thorium reactions do not produce Plutonium.

Plutonium is one of the key ingredients of nuclear weapons. Weapons production was the reason Uranium based reactors became the standard.

Despite this, Thorium based reactors are now on the verge of being commercially viable.

They are safer, more efficient, and more secure – there is no risk of by-products being diverted into weapons production. So Iran, for example, could have nuclear power without giving everyone the heebie-geebies about the possibility of its developing nuclear weapons.

This means that Thorium will no longer be a low value, nuisance by-product, but a valuable resource in itself. Australia has some of the world’s highest Thorium deposits.

So by investing in the development of Australian Monazite deposits, you could potentially make a fortune, help to deliver energy to the world’s poorest nations, and make the world safer, all at the same time.

Cool!

Fixing Things That Ain’t Broke

With solutions that don’t work.

I hope soon to comment on the Murray Darling proposals (costing billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs to ‘preserve’ something that never existed until fifty years ago) and SA’s proposed marine parks (costing some 1,000 jobs and approximately $1 billion in lost income from commercial and charter fishing to ‘protect’ fisheries which are under-utilised and not remotely in danger).

But for now, wind farms: Europe’s Ill Wind, a 25 minute video packed full of information.

If you only see, read or listen to one thing about wind farms, this should be it.

And excuse the sometimes shoddy camera work. Unlike global warming alarmists and alternative energy ridiculists, rational people don’t have access to vast sums of government money for high end production work. The facts are what count. Unless you’re a greenie, of course, but then you probably won’t watch it anyway.

Osama Bin Laden Worried

And so he should be. But what is he worried about?

Climate change. Of course.

There are two possibilities here.

Either Osama is an ignorant bloodthirsty hypocritical loon, and he really does believe that anthropogenic climate change is a bigger threat to world peace than he is.

OK, it’s certainly possible.

Or he is an intelligent bloodthirsty hypocritical loon, who knows that spending billions on trying to change something that cannot be changed will weaken Western economies and distract Western governments from the real threat. Him and his borg buddies.

And as for this: “What we are facing… calls for generous souls and brave men to take serious and prompt action to provide relief for their Muslim brothers in Pakistan.”

It seems to have escaped his notice that it was Western governments who protected Muslims during the war in the Balkans, Western governments who saved Kuwait from Saddam Hussein, Western governments who came to the aid of Indonesia after the tsunami, Western governments who provide most of the support and aid for the Palestinian Authority, Western governments who are working, at a cost of billions of dollars and the lives of their own young men and women, to build safe and stable societies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Western governments who are providing most of the aid to flood affected regions of Pakistan.

Resistance Is Footle

Are the Islamists and Greens more like the borg, from Star Trek, or the Necromongers, from the sadly under-rated Chronicles of Riddick?

The Borg - You Will Be Assimilated

Necromongers - Convert or Die

OK. Don’t get the idea I have spent hours on this. But ..

The Islamists are more like the borg. They are not interested in everyone. Some people are beneath consideration and might as well be dogs or pigs. The borg create nothing, but take the culture and technology of others and and use and claim it as their own. They have an ideal of perfection, and destroy without mercy or remorse anything that does not contribute to the achievement of that ideal.

The problem is that the ideal, when realised, is  a kind of living death that only sustains itself through the objectification and demonisation of others.

The necromongers are similar. But they don’t assimilate technology or culture. Their one purpose is to sweep across the universe on their way to a new, pure ‘verse, where there are no disagreements. There are no disagreements because anyone who might have disagreed with them has been converted or killed. Those who are not necromongers are contempuously described as ‘breeders’. Necromongers have no use for children. Their leader is two faced. Or three or four faced really.

So the necromongers are more like the greenies.

But in both cases the message is the same: Join us or die. Resistance is futile. No pressure. Your choice.

Everyone has heard by now of the appalling video produced by the 10:10 climate campaign. It was meant to be amusing, apparently. And to teach a message.

But the only people who could possibly find it amusing are psychopaths, and the only message that could possibly be drawn is that greenies are either complete zomboids, or raving eco jihadis.

Whoever produced this parody version has drawn the same conclusion:

And if you think that is unfair, get into the groove with this cool idea from Franny Armstrong, 10:10 founder:

“Doing nothing about climate change is still a fairly common affliction, even in this day and age. What to do with those people, who are together threatening everybody’s existence on this planet? Clearly we don’t really think they should be blown up, that’s just a joke for the mini-movie, but maybe a little amputating would be a good place to start?”

Still not funny, Franny.

The Rising Tide of Stupid

Over forty morons were arrested in Newcastle in New South Wales today.

It is not that stupidity is illegal in Australia. In fact the government relies on it for lottery income.

These particular morons, repesenting ‘Rising Tide Newcastle’ broke into an area of the Port of Newcastle where coal is stored, and climbed up coal piles, loaders and terminals with banners protesting climate change. They managed to shut down the operation of the world’s largest coal port for most of the day.

No one denies that sea level has risen. It has been doing so for the last 10,000 years. The rate of increase has slowed rather than risen over the last three decades.

John Daly, sadly missed, made this submission to an Australian Federal Parliamentary joint committee on the Kyoto Protocol.

In it, he notes that there are myriad reasons for local sea level rise and fall, and that records showed that there had actually been a slight decline in sea level at Newcastle over the period for which data was then available.

Changes in sea level are not correlated to short term changes in climate, just as changes in atmospheric or ocean temperature are not correlated to preceding changes in atmospheric CO2.

But hey, why let an annoying detail like the facts get in the way of a good protest?

Incidentally, seaframe measurements of sea level over the last eighteen years show virtually no sea level rise in the South Pacific, including for the supposedly ‘endangered by climate change’  Kiribati and Tuvalu.

No rise in sea level in the South Pacific

No rise in sea level in the South Pacific

Unwarranted Assumptions

It turns out unwarranted assumptions are the largest single source of renewable energy.

Take for example the Zero Carbon Australia, 2020 report which claimed that all of Australian energy could com from renewable energy sources by 2020. Ted (F.E.) Trainer, a well known Australian energy theorist pointed to some of the plans flaws,

To summarise, my back of the envelope impression is that when the foregoing points are added the ZCA conclusion is out by the following factors:

i. The efficiency gain assumed for electric vehicles should be perhaps halved.
ii. The assumed proportion of travel that can be transferred to electric vehicles is too high, in view of how well people and freight can be got to intended destinations by light vehicles and public transport, and in view of what people will accept.
iii. The embodied energy costs of plant might be much more than 10 times as high as has been assumed.
iv. Far more storage for solar thermal needs to be assumed, perhaps 96 hours, as distinct from 17.
v. The amount of solar thermal capacity might need to be trebled I am right about the peak vs average issue.
vi. Very optimistic assumptions and estimates have been made throughout, including regarding costs.

Trainer was not the only critic of the ZCA plan to point out its unrealistic optimism.

Dave Burraston has offered fact based critiques of the ZCA plans assumptions about wind implementation time, and solar facility construction times Martin Nicholson and Peter Lang, offered a long and detailed critique of the ZCA plan. They note, BZE make a number of assumptions in assessing the electricity demand used to calculate the generating capacity needed by 2020. In summary these are:

1. 2008 is used as the benchmark year for the analysis. BZE defend this by saying “ZCA2020 intends to decouple energy use from GDP growth. Energy use per capitais used as a reference, taking into account medium-range population growth.”.
2. Various industrial energy demands in 2020 are reduced including gas used in the export of LNG, energy used in coal mining, parasitic electricity losses, off-grid electricity and coal for smelting.
3. Nearly all transport is electrified and a substantial proportion of the travel kmsare moved from road to electrified rail including 50% of urban passenger and truckkms and all bus kms. All domestic air and shipping is also moved to electric rail.
4. All fossil fuels energy, both domestic and industrial, is replaced with electricity.
5. Demand is reduced through energy efficiency and the use of onsite solar energy.

Thus the net effect of these assumptions is to reduce the 2020 total energy by 58% below the 2008 benchmark and 63% below the ABARE estimate for 2020. The plan thus assumes that over 50% of energy demand will simply disappear by 2020 because of efficiency improvements.

The Nuclear Green Revolution site from which that comes is a left-wing climate alarmist site. But their analysis of the costs and practicality of so called renewable power is spot on.

If the whole disastrous anthropogenic global warming scary monster thing were true, and if reducing CO2 production by 20% would really do something to stop it (it isn’t and it wouldn’t), it would be possible to do so. But not with ‘renewable’ engery.

Reducing CO2 and other greenhouse emissions by 20% could be done if the pointless NBN was cancelled, and the $45 billion planned to be wasted on that was instead spent on nuclear power and the introduction of fuel cell technology for most land transport.

And that wouldn’t be a bad idea anyway.

Floods and Dams

On Kangaroo Island, we have just been through a record breakingly wet Winter.

There have been floods on the mainland too, but water restrictions are still in place in capital cities.

The excuse for not building new dams has been that it isn’t going to rain any more. But then why have state governments been subsidising the installation of rainwater tanks at private homes?

‘Solutions’ like desalination plants are being built around Australia. But these massively expensive by comparison with dams, use large amounts of energy, require high levels of maintenance, and are untested over the long term.

There has been no overall reduction in rainfall on the Australian continent over the last century, so why are we still being given the ‘no point, no rain’ excuse?

Australia is a country of extremes. Long droughts followed by massive floods. Overall, there is plenty of water for everyone.

The problem is not that there is not enough water, but that there is not enough water storage.

The more water storage we build, the better we will be able to cope with the perfectly predictable dry periods, and the less damage will be done by floods (because more of the water will be captured).

Even if rainfall was reducing, this would be a reason to build more dams, not less.

CO2 Lunacy

A comment I posted on Tim Blair’s blog this morning:

There are between three and four molecules of CO2 for every 10,000 particles of air.

Anthropogenic CO2 is assumed to be about 4% of that, which comes to about 14 molecules of CO2 per 1 million particles of air.

Australia’s contribution to global CO2 is assumed to be about 1.4% of the total of anthropogenic CO2.

That amounts to 0.2 molecules of CO2 for every 1 million particles of air.

If we reduce our CO2 output by 20%, destroying our transport and primary industries in the process, our contribution to global CO2 will go from 0.2 particles per million of air, to 0.16 particles per million of air.

In other words, from an indetectably tiny and insignificant amount, to a very slightly smaller insignificant amount.

And this will only cost us our competitivness in in international trade, a massively increased cost of living, and massively increased unemployment.

But, you know, feeling like we’re doing something is so important.

Go you greens!

BBC Biased?

Well, it was biased. But we’ve fixed it. It’s all OK now.

That’s according to Director General Mark Thompson.

Well, good. Everyone in England who owns a TV pays for the BBC through taxes and licence fees. So it really should be unbiased, as least as far as that is realistically possible. It should be everyone’s BBC.

Like many English persons, I will be looking forward to genuinely balanced debate on the Beeb on political and environomental issues.

Australia’s ABC is paid for by every Australian. It even tells viewers and listeners they should care about what happens to the ABC, because it’s ‘your ABC.”

But it’s never been my ABC. I never hear my opinions expressed on the ABC, except maybe by a courageous lone voice quickly shouted down by a ‘balanced’ panel.

Clive Hamilton thoughtfully explains why it is not necessary to offer a variety of opinions for consideration.

It is because only one opinion is right – his:

Presenting both sides is biased when one ‘side’ is backed by a large body of peer-reviewed research and the other is not. The ‘other side’ would deserve some reporting if there were a significant minority view that had some legitimate science to sustain its claims, even if that science proves unsustainable. In the case of climate science, there isn’t. …

A number of studies have substantiated what is obvious to anyone with even a casual knowledge of the research on the science of global warming – that is, there is an overwhelming consensus on the main conclusions presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.

The trouble is Clive, there is no discussion of whether this amazing consensus actually exists.

And of course, Clive, it doesn’t. At least 31,000 scientists in the US alone agree with me. And several in Australia.

And now, Clive, even former IPCC insiders are admitting the ‘consensus’ was a complete fabrication. It wasn’t a worldwide consensus. It wasn’t even the claimed 2500 experts. It was just a couple of dozen scientists whose income depended on generating alarm.

Or, Clive, if you really think there is no peer reviewed research questioning the basis of global warming alarmism, you could start with this list of 800 peer reviewed papers.

So let’s begin to make it everyone’s ABC, Clive, by being honest about disagreements in matters of politics and environmental science.

Or is that too much to ask?

It’s Freezing. Must Be Global Warming.

Arctic Summer temperatures have been trending down since about 1960, so have temperatures in San Diego, cold snaps are killing all manner of things in South America, Antarctic sea ice is increasing, the southern hemisphere oceans seem to be getting colder, and it’s been flipping cold here in Australia.

I want my global warming now!

News flash: global warming causes carnivores to lose height and body mass. Oh, wait. That was 55 million years ago.

Greenies Experiment on Black Children

From Family Security Matters writer Fiona Kobusingye, co-chair of the Congress of Racial Equality Uganda:

I wish I had a shilling for every time someone told me spraying homes with DDT to prevent malaria is like using Africans in evil experiments. I would be a rich woman.
 
That claim is a blatant falsehood. Even worse, it hides the many ways poor Africans really are being used in environmental experiments that cause increased poverty, disease and death…

Bluntly put, environmentalists are using African parents and children in anti-DDT experiments. Against all the evidence from decades of using only nets and drugs and maybe other insecticides, they want to keep ignoring DDT as a long-lasting spatial insect repellant. They want to keep us doing what has at best worked only partially, on the assumption that maybe it will work better next year – or that a 30% malaria reduction is good enough.
 
They are playing with our lives. So are the government agencies, health NGOs and others who support their policies. This is wrong and immoral. And it is only one of the ways they use Africans as experimental laboratory animals. They are also denying us access to other modern technologies that can improve and save lives…

600 million people in sub-Sahara Africa live on two million shillings ($900 USD) or less per year. Nearly 700 million never have electric power for lights, refrigeration, schools, shops and clinics – or have it only a few hours per week. Millions die from diseases that would be prevented, if they did not have to burn wood and dung, and had safe water, better healthcare and higher living standards that reliable, affordable electrical power would bring.
 
But environmentalists constantly block coal, gas and hydro-electric power plants. They want us to live in experimental societies where people get whatever limited electrical power can be generated day to day with wind turbines or solar panels. They pressured the World Bank to reject loan applications for power plants in Ghana and South Africa, and support President Obama when he says Africans should focus on wind, solar and bio-fuel power, instead of fossil fuels.
 
Meanwhile, they live in wealthy countries, with all the electrical power they need. With the health, opportunity and prosperity electrical power brings. With freedom and mobility that cars and fossil fuels bring. With blessings most Africans can only dream of.

There’s more, and it’s all worth reading.

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