Looks like the halo is fading. Today-Tonight is a current affairs show in Australia. Today a few more Australians discovered that free energy is not just expensive but creates its own kind of pollution.
This hardly a surprise for anyone who can spell cost-benefit, but it’s healthy to see the prime-time media in Australia doing something other than singing the Clean-Green advertising jingle.
h/t Scott of the Pacific
Pretty sad really.
I do think that the Green solution won’t be to stop building “sustainable” products though. They’ll just make them more expensive and thus require even more subsides.
251
Kind of reminds me of…..
C: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this parrot what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.
O: Oh yes, the, uh, the Norwegian Blue…What’s,uh…What’s wrong with it?
C: I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it, my lad. ‘E’s dead, that’s what’s wrong with it!
O: No, no, ‘e’s uh,…he’s resting.
C: Look, matey, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now.
O: No no he’s not dead, he’s, he’s restin’! Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, idn’it, ay? Beautiful plumage!
11
Nice of the Australian Media to finally catch up.
The Daily Mail UK was on to this over 6 years ago.
31
I’ll bet the outcome of the Finkel inquiry will be:
1) Compulsory batteries at households, companies and grid scale batteries. Follow the money trail to see who benefits from that.
2) Compulsory DRED technology where the power utility can shed load when the wind stops by remotely turning off your air cons or other heavy power use appliances plus shutting down industrial machinery.
83
I bet it wont. How much would you be willing to bet? I bet neither of those resemble a recommendation.
42
Well it certainly won’t be nuclear or more fossil generators so there aren’t many other options. The best we can hope for is a second rate power system in what is now a second rate country.
51
I never said you’d agree with the findings just that your suggestions wont be there. Granted the components will be mentioned in some form- home and grid batteries, wind etc – but not in those recommendations. You might get close if new homes or multistory residentials are encouraged to take on some form of cooperative battery system.
BTW there is a public interum report that was released in December.
02
Note here that the first areas to be shed from the grid are residential areas.
They know full well that to shed any areas where there are CBD’s and other large Commercial consumers is a potential for disaster, and while some of you think disaster means personal injury, it’s not that at all. The government just CANNOT have people stuck inside tall buildings, and they just CANNOT have large consumers like Woolworths or Coles supermarkets in shopping malls being forced to throw out all cold storage and frozen goods, so the disaster here is a monetary one for Governments, now probably facing litigation from all those Commercial enterprises.
So, when it comes to load shedding, it’s those large Residential areas which will lose their power first, as shown so graphically during the recent load shedding occurrence which happened in South Australia. The fact that you may lose some frozen food is neither here nor there to them, but if Coles or Woolies drop even one degree from the mandated temperature setting, then, no matter what condition the food may still be in, it has to be tossed out, by law. And unlike the small amounts of food in your fridge’s freezer, which in most cases you, as the homeowner will gamble with, Coles and Woolies face litigation if they DON’T chuck it all out.
Imagine an inner city CBD with all the workers stuck inside the building, now unusable, and having to use the stairs to get out, because that is also what happens when the power goes off in those high rises. Everyone has to leave, because without power, their is no breathable air circulating throughout those buildings, and that is a safety matter, hence evacuation is also the case for them. So the residential sector is the FIRST to lose power.
Tony.
200
I have a forthcoming article on DRED technology in the April 2017 Silicon Chip magazine if anyone is interested in this DREDful development where the power operator takes control of your appliances so they can shed load without turning your lights out.
71
True, Tony, the residential areas will be hit first. As to whether or not they will “take a chance” with the food, well, that doesn’t really matter since if they don’t, the only other option is replacing it with more, and “isn’t that good for the economy, anyway?”
30
Of course, if you add up all the “small” amounts of frozen food lost by individual households when the power goes off for a whole suburb, it does add up to rather a lot. But that just belongs to “little” people, and the “little” people just don’t matter to the evangelical green barrow-pushers and carpetbaggers.
20
Here we have the unintended consequences of unexamined and unquestionable noble causes. By not identifying the consequences nor talking about them,they grow without limit. The sacrificed is only every living thing. What could go wrong?
Maybe, just maybe the use of fossil fuels is not nearly as destructive as the so called renewable energy sources. For example, the area I grew up in the Midwest was a major strip mining area for coal. By the time I was in high school, there were hundreds of lakes in the area filled with fish. There was abundant other wild life in the growing green areas around them. The mining did not kill the life, it simply increased the verity of life living in the area. It provided hunting, fishing, and interesting places for people to explore and even to swim in the summer.
However, about all we can expect is the green blob will continue to demand the stopping of the use of fossil fuels and expanding the use of their so called renewable energy sources. All with the attendant unmentionable and unmitigatable catastrophic damage in far away places. By their results, saving the planet is not their goal. They want to kill every living thing on it.
440
Noble cause my fat aunt Matilda,
Perhaps noble intentions by the hoodwinked who buy a Prius, but far from noble by the perpetuators of the myth, & the crony capitalism that has made an industry of the fraud.
Mark Parnell, Green MP didn’t know. Believe that & either you or he are “bloody idiots”. If you believe it you are pretty thick, if it is true, he should be chucked out today. Any MP would have to sealed themselves in a dark soundproof room to not know.
Who are the most disgusting people on earth. No not the thugs that would rob you in the street, but the greenies who “don’t know” but will preach their religion everywhere, ignoring the damage it does to people & places.
40
The cost-benefit calculation has never stacked up. This is not just because of understating the costs, and overstating the benefits (that is reducing the estimated future costs of warming). It is also because the future benefits require that globally greenhouse gas emissions be reduced to near zero. That ain’t going to happen, as most of the world – the developing countries – are doing nothing to reduce their emissions. But no amount of evidence will convince the eco-crusaders that we (developed countries like the UK and Australia) ought to lead the world on reducing green emissions. In reality we spend billions on creating real environmental disasters.
310
Wha…?
There is no free lunch?
No holding hands in a global utopia singing “The Age of Aquarius” with ISIS?
No flying car.
No moon vacation.
Now this.
290
The question should be ” why now ” we have been banging on about this problem for years in places like Mongolia and its the same with corn based bio fuel , why is it that the compliant MSM are now taking an interest in these problems ? , I’m puzzled , what is their agenda or am I just an old cynic
390
The Daily Mail highlighted the lake of toxic waste at Baotou, China in 2011. In 2010 they also looked at the vast Bayon Obo open cast mine, about 150 km north of Baotou. It also mentioned not just the toxic lake, but the dangerous working conditions of those in the refineries.
It just makes no difference. These environmental issues, are not part of the green agenda to save the planet, so are ignored.
290
That’s right Kevin. There are horrible environmental disasters the greens will protest and riot to stop. There others, as horrible or worse that they take no interest in and seem to ignore. The subject article here about horrible toxic dumps in China to support our appetite for computers, cell phones, electric cars, wind farms, etc. are mostly invisible to the leftists greens. As is the bat and bird slaughter they always cause invisible to the wind energy proponents.
However, even as the slaughter of bald and golden eagles continues unabated by wind turbines and solar plants which use the reflected heat of the sun, a citizen of the US can receive significant fines and prison sentences for bothering or taking of these eagles.
It is not the wildlife/environmental damage done that concerns the leftists greens, it is the person or organization doing the damage. Big oil–a serious crime. Big wind turbines– a necessary loss for the greater good, or it never happened, or some other rationalization not only to gladly accept the wildlife destruction, but strident calls and demonstrations for more wind turbines. There are few hypocrites that can even hold an organic candle to the CO2-global warming hypocrites.
180
That article came immediately to mind when I first read Jo’s piece this morning, I intended to refer to it when I could get to a computer. You beat me to it at 5.1, just a shame no MSM current affairs program picked it up then, six years it’s been sitting there and widely referenced on this and similar sites. I wonder what got today tonight to finally pull their collective heads out of the sand!
10
There is also a 2015 article from NEWS. com. au on the toxic lake at Batou.
A major reason why this environmental scandal is not publicized is that self-proclaimed environmental groups are promoting phoney causes. In Britain Friends of the Earth were recently reprimanded by the Advertising Standards Authority when they used wild and unsupported claims of the harms of fracking to raise funds. This included phony claims about the health hazards of the chemicals used and contamination of water supplies. Yet the very real evidence of the toxic chemicals and water supply contamination in the production of the beloved wind turbines are ignored.
171
It could be that mission accomplished, now they may throw the greenies under the bus to make sure there are no loose ends…
20
I hear you DD. Being familiar with the mining industry I have also banged on about this issue for years. Not like Four Corners would ever connect these dots though… Someone else’s ABC is too busy vilifying mining in Australia where environmental regs are far, far stricter.
10
Meanwhile over at ‘their ABC’
Farmers combat the ‘climate warming’ greenhouse effects – by turning their paddocks into greenhouses!
160
The report on the ABC’s Landline programme was of some interest but it lacked any technical details such as maintenance costs. It said it was cheaper than glasshouses as it’s only $3mil/4ha. I can only guess at the maintenance cost of motorized cable operated shade cloth.
They couldn’t help themselves claiming this was mitigating climate change! They also mentioned one of the installations had public funding, which I found curious if the viability was so positive….strange.
50
I can see one day as a very old man small children will point at a decaying wind turbine in a field innocently asking me ‘what are those things Poppy?’
to which I’ll reply ‘They are proof that even the most evolved and luckiest people can be fooled by fear and false hope, we now call them virtue signals’
322
At least you will not need to go very far to show then the decaying wind power plant.
93
An ‘environmentalist’ who’s bought a Toyota Prius and never asked what’s in the batteries and how they’re made? Why am I not surprised?
311
If viewed in isolation, Kanck appears to have some reasonable views on euthanasia, that’s about as positive as I can be.
Had she not been a Democrat, she would have made an ideal Greens MP with her tenuous grasp on reality, and her steadfast ignorance of anything related to science or engineering.
(For some perspective, her seemingly reasonable views on euthanasia should always be considered alongside her very strong views on controlling population size and growth rate)
70
Greens believe in human depopulation. That’s why they support anything that kills, impoverishes or maims people such as opposition to DDT, Golden Rice, vaccinations or support for “renewables” and euthenasia to name just a few. See my comments below.
10
Toyota PIUS
142
Kevin Russ said all of us would be driving the Pius by 2014.
This was one of his least disastrous predictions/edicts.
What an A grad D*CKHEAD that man (?) is.
11
Well no-one at the dinner parties would ever ask such a ridiculous question. Everyone knows that Prius’s come from Toyota shops!
60
Just pull another xmas cracker! . .
GeoffW
21
Small minded people-pseudo intellectuals living in their own nice, safe bubble! Even now after being made aware of this environmental disaster, she (the woman with the Prius) cannot believe that she may be part of the problem . .
GeoffW
60
Interesting that a Green hadn’t heard of what was happening in China with rare earths? Greens forced the closure of all the rare earth mines outside China. One consequence was that the price of rare earths went up 300x, but as long as all the CO2, pollution and overpopulation is in China, Greens could not care less.
It is all about making sure South Australians does not bear any consequences of their own consumption. The ultimate NIMBYs using other people’s money like the WA’s GST to pay for a low Carbon Dioxide, no mining, no manufacturing, no smelting environment, their own Nirvana. Who cares what cost to the rest of the planet? Now if they could only stop farming, they would have the perfect life. Government jobs and no responsibilities. You can always buy power from Victoria, unless they go Green too.
332
Forget the prius with its 11kg, each windmill has 300Kg of Neodymium. 300,000 windmills so 3 millions tons of heavy metal. An environmental disaster waiting to happen. Renewables with a lifespan of 20 years should be called replaceables. They will be dead long before coal power stations which can be continuously maintained and updated. There is nothing free about wind power. It is an energy source of last resort and totally unsuitable for a modern society with constant energy needs.
271
Can the neo magnets in one of those windmills get recovered and recycled?
If it can, you’d have to be careful in dodgy neighbourhoods….whoops…where did the windmill go?
40
TdeF
There are rare earth mines outside of China. Notably one of the richest is in WA:
https://www.lynascorp.com/Pages/Home.aspx
Lynas is now producing around 10% of world neodymium output.
The price for rare earths collapsed as Lynas started production. The story is that the Chinese producers flooded the market. Prices are now high enough for Lynas to be making cash. Their plants are state of the art with regard to safety and environmental controls but they have struggled against the dominance of the Chinese suppliers. Lynus is creating a market niche simple because it is an alternative to China.
60
Yes, the hole in the market is being exploited and the very high prices. Lynas appears to have started at Mt Weld around 2007. I note Ziggy Switkowski (Kodak, Optus, Telstra, NBN, RMIT chancellor) joined the board in 2010. I have read of other mines opening in South America. The super high prices were just too hard to resist. Now the Chinese have dumped into the market to depress competition, as the Saudis did with oil against fracking. That’s business but the impossible market was created by Green intransigence, effectively insisting that everything outside China closed. As Trump suggested, the ones who have done brilliantly out of Global Warming have been the Chinese, despite being the world’s highest emitters of CO2. The Greens are seemingly happy with that. They only attack democracies.
131
Incredibly the Chinese businesses even receive Carbon Credits for building hydro which they were building anyway. Global Warming. The gift which keeps giving.
221
The rare earth elements and magnets are increasingly being used in Intercontinental ballistic missiles, military robotics, drones, and so on.
Use of rare earth magnets and rare earth elements will gradually be phased out for domestic civilian use.
IMO
02
Processing our rare earth sands is not done in Australia. I believe Lynas does most of their processing in what was once pristine areas of Malaysia.
There is talk of using the thorium by-product of rare earth element for thorium reactors, however, since thorium itself is also an extremely toxic processing process, we will all be well and truly pickled and the oceans will be well and truly at their tipping point if they are not already.
03
How can Parnell and Kanck say they were unaware of the environmental damage being caused by this technology? On top of their processing facilities, China has been mining REEs for years and years in Africa, with no real environmental controls there either – it’s no secret to anyone with internet access, and a functioning brain.
Either they are lying, or they are even more stupid and ignorant than I gave them credit for (which is a remarkable achievement).
I cant recall if the Greens had any opinion on the proposed rare earth processing plant in/near Port Pirie a few years ago, but I would suggest that if the project comes up again, and if they had any semblance of intelligence, they’d support it, as it is very likely to be “better for the environment” if such processing is done in Australia than in China.
Of course, as China has the monopoly on REEs then I doubt any other country will get a look-in any time soon…
240
When manufacturing is looked upon with disdain. When everyone wants to be rich at the expense of others. When caring about something means voting Green, even while Green is openly toxic. When jobs are destroyed by government in order to be popular. When science is about funding, not data or result. Then we have a rich country eating its own.
Our demise is now overt. No power, no water, no new cities. The stuff of wealth.
When leadership is swamped by the ignorant, simple tasks become impossible.
210
Geoff. And the willfully ignorant.
90
This story is about appalling environmental standards in China, not about damaging renewables per se. Rare earth metals are not intrinsically bad in them selves.
A lot worse things could be said about renewables, including the environmental damage caused by exporting such polluting industries to China, but this is at least a start.
100
Big Wind’s Dirty Little Secret: Toxic Lakes and Radioactive Waste
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/big-winds-dirty-little-secret-rare-earth-minerals/
70
Pollution on a grand scale in China………
http://www.aircrap.org/2015/11/30/in-china-the-true-cost-of-britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-pollution-on-a-disastrous-scale/
70
I will never forgive or forget anyone who supports “green” energy even if they do realise its evils at this late stage.
It is simply inexcusable as a human being to remain so ignorant aboit anything for so long.
We must have Nutemberg-style trials to try and punish all those politicians, public serpents and industrialists that promoted and deliberately profited from the “renewable” energy sc am and other associated global warming nonsense.
People go to jail for many years for corporate fr auds involving much less money than taken from the taxpayer and consumer than has been taken in the name of “global warming”.
Greens kill. Look at the 50 million they killed by malaria due to them banning DDT based on false data that it thins egg shells of birds. Or the milllions that are going blind today because of their opposition to the introduction of vitamin A enhanced Golden Rice in third world countries. Or people dying today or being kept in poverty due to expensive and unreliable “renewables”. At some point these Cultural Marxist monsters must be held to account.
244
‘At some point these Cultural Marxist monsters must be held to account.’
The real Marxists in Beijing have little respect for humanity and everyone in the Western World should be aware that they have 80% of international trade, it would be unwise for the Trump Administration to start a trade war.
The pseudo Marxists are an ignorant lot, the pollution at rare earth mines in China has been well known for years and its highly unlikely that a young green zealot would forego the latest state of the art mobile just because of massive pollution in outer Mongolia.
81
That is, they have 80% of the trade in rare earth.
40
Dave:
the majority of green voters are gullible and don’t check the facts. The Greens tactic is to issue a claim of coming disaster, not bothering if it is true at all. The media love these stories ( Bad News Sells) and so they get free publicity. Their gullible followers and most of the public take the headlines as true, although lately trust in the media has dropped considerably.
Their great coup was to claim CO2 is a pollutant so in surveys who is going to say they are in favour of pollution? The other boost they get is talking about “Climate Change” enabling them to link any variation in the weather to coming disaster. This worries the gullible even more.
The politicians see the resulting polls and think they reflect the real wishes of voters and pander to those phantom beliefs. That the claims of big temperature rises made in the 1980’s (and 1990’s) haven’t occurred isn’t widely known.
Perhaps the answer is to sue those who made false claims on the grounds of disruption to your life e.g. the claim of rising sea level deterred you from buying a mansion on the waterfront of Sydney Harbour and missing out on making millions. Or sue because your nudist winter holiday resort in southern Tasmania folded for lack of global warming?
162
Think before posting. How about offering a reward for missing global warming?
51
Renewables push will up prices
MICHAEL MCKENNA
Labor’s plan to produce 50 per cent of electricity from renewables by 2030 has been dealt a blow by the AEMO.
NATIONAL AFFAIRS THE AUSTRALIAN
[paywall]
90
Power policies “a terrible failure”
SARAH MARTIN, RICHARD GLUYAS
Two former premiers have joined the push for a major overhaul of the nation’s energy policies.
The Australian
[powerwall]
80
test
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/renewables-push-will-hike-up-prices-lead-to-instability-says-aemo/news-story/09eed702fdef5c4e7ba247b25cd971b6
00
Test failed. Google cache has the story.
Here
10
I’ve put in my 2 bob’s worth in the comments. Only one green making a last stand so far. I hope he has a good supply of bandaids because of the responses he’s getting.
100
What hope of fiscal responsibility is there when child care unionists demand an increase in wages (news Sunday night) and try to explain a raise would not be at the cost of the parents of children being cared for, the union rep explained the government would pay the extra.
130
In the video the reporter says “you’ve probably never heard of rare earths” and then goes onto say “they are elements high on the periodic table”.
Well, if they haven’t heard of rare earths I am willing to bet they have never heard of the periodic table…
This is all part of the deliberate dumbing down of the education system.
181
If you finished high school, there is no way you couldnt know of the periodic table…..
30
Depends what you mean by finished.
10
It is good to see the truth slowly leaking out even into the bastions of Political Correctness like the ABC. There is much more to this story, like the deaths of bats and birds and the thumping noises of the wind-turbines driving local residents mad. If enough of this information is investigated, the Greenies and Warmistas may come to their senses.
100
The greenies and warmistas are unlikely to ever come to their senses, but the voting public may do – due to the ever-increasing pain in the hip pocket nerve.
00
O/T
Email I sent to my state Liberal “representative” who is the shadow minister for energy, resources and renewables.
Hi Xxxx,
I know you don’t read emails from the Deplorables who voted for you or they are not passed onto you by your staff but I am just copying you on my submission to the Finkel inquiry. I would feel guilty if I didn’t. At least you won’t be able to say “you didn’t know” about the issues raised.
Here is my submission to the Energy Market Review.
Kind regards,
Dr David Maddison
171
Not Dan van Holst Pellekaan in SA? He has been vocal recently, although when looking up the list of Shadow ministers in SA I was surprised by how few I had heard of (except Vicki Chapman who I hear far too much of).
70
Poisonous desolation, the other side of western blinkered reality.
Watch the clip.
KK
30
I have nothing to do with this but there is a lecture in Melbourne tonight you may be interested in. You need to register but I believe it is free but I saw a comment elsewhere that it was $20. Whatever the case you don’t pay when you register.
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/terry-mccrann-alan-moran-climate-change-in-the-trump-era-tickets-32110362960
Let me know if you are going so we can try to meet – would be nice to meet some fellow JoNovians.
DESCRIPTION
Terry McCrann introduces climate change economist, commentator and writer Alan Moran to speak about his new book “Climate Change: Treaties and Policies in the Trump Era”.
How will the Trump presidency effect climate change responses?
Who sets the climate agenda now?
What are the costs to Australia in pursuing the current agenda?
With Trump demolishing the Paris Agreement, what is Australia’s exit strategy?
How can we return to reliable, low-cost energy supply and avoid the debilitating policies favouring renewables?
These questions and more discussed and answered on the day by two of Australia’s most recognised commentators on these important and topical issues.
Special thanks to Connor Court Publishing, cosponsors of this important event.
* FREE TICKET
* Cash bar/drinks
* Book signing available at end
NOTE: There is also a separate, same-day Luncheon event featuring Andrew Bolt and Alan Moran. Details here.
61
Oh rats! Too short notice for me and can’t make it. A pity it isn’t a week later when we will be coming down to Melbourne.
10
Who was it who said that totalitarian governments like China’s are better suited to solving the world’s environmental problems?
50
That would be the previous UN flunkie Ms. Christiana Figueres
http://unfccc.int/secretariat/executive_secretary/items/1200.php
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-01-13/top-global-emitter-china-best-on-climate-change-figueres-says
“China is also able to implement policies because its political system avoids some of the legislative hurdles seen in countries including the U.S., Figueres said.”
Yes….communism is like that,…
30
Wind Power is having a day that is (slightly) above average, The total power delivery from EVERY wind plant in Australia is currently 1300MW, which gives a Capacity Factor (CF) of 33%.
Meanwhile back in the real World, we have a real power plant, which is ancient and slated for closure soon, the FIFTY THREE YEAR OLD Hazelwood power plant.
All eight of its units are currently (10.16AM Monday 6th March 2017) in operation and this Pensioner plant on its death bed is currently delivering 1374MW of power. Blood out of a dying stone!
So here we have a 53 year old plant and all eight of its units are currently delivering more power than 2,400 generators on poles across the whole of Australia.
So, we can close down that OAP and maybe, just maybe, on an above average day, EVERY wind plant in Australia could just replace that lost power.
At the moment, it must be pretty windy in Victoria, because the Victorian wind plants are delivering 500MW of power, (also at a CF of 33%) you know, the power delivery almost equal to THREE of those ancient units at Hazelwood.
Tony.
PostScript: I know some of you like to collect resources, so for verification of what I have above, there are another two resource links to add to your list. The first is the one at this link. It lists every power plant in Australia and gives their current output power. It’s updated every four to six minutes. Once at the link, scroll right to the bottom for the latest time link. Click on that link and a text box will open asking you to save the link, usually to the default of the Downloads folio. Once saved, then click on that file in your Downloads folio, and it will ask you to open the file in a spreadsheet format, and I have Excel. That file will then open up in the spreadsheet, and you can look at any power plant you wish.
Now, to decipher those power plants, as they are in a shortened title form, then you’ll need this second link, which is the list of registered power plants and their shortened title form list of names.
(Example: Hazelwood is listed as HWPS and shows all 8 units.)
131
I hope you can all see what is happening here with Hazelwood.
It’s scheduled for closure and the operators are running it into the ground. (That’s a bit axiomatic Tony, it is 53 years old)
You know, just run them all into the ground. No need to be careful about maintenance any more, just run ’em till they stop, and just keep feeding in the coal. No concerns about it being a supposedly dirty filthy disgusting emitter of that foul rotten CO2 poison. Just run the damned things into the ground. No calls from the Victorian Government to stop all that foul emission. No calls from the Victorian Government to stop generating such exorbitant costing power, and hey, running all eight units, doesn’t that indicate it must be pretty cheap power.
And hey, note especially, that even at 53 years old every single one of those units is still running hard, still delivering nearly all the power they can from clapped out units designed in the 1960s, four levels of technology lower than what is currently in use for coal fired power, and soon to be five levels lower than best technology, Advanced USC.
Those units still keep humming along, while those generators on poles have stopped and started and stopped and started ad infinitum.
This must surely be an insight, not into wind power, but just what coal fired power is actually capable of, that a plant designed so long ago can still deliver from all its eight units, even 25 plus years after every wind power plant ceases to work.
Tony.
180
My concern is that they won’t shut down the plant properly and mothball it but they will deliberately destroy it, possibly in a public ceremonial event like they did in SA when they blew up the chimneys, so it can never be restarted.
50
Go on, tell me the last time you saw an EH Holden on the road.
Tony.
50
We were at war with the air, alongside the US. Now the war is ending we can highlight the costs. It’s not a backdown, of course, it’s a new narrative to carry us forward.
10
The important question for those who push renewable, clean and green, is how do you dispose of the waste products from manufacturing these magnets and a long list of other things? And I haven’t heard an answer.
It’s hardly worth hearing that we need to assure ourselves that these things are being procured from sources with high environmental standards when the person saying that can’t begin to say how we can dispose of the toxic waste they generate.
I can live with some CO2 in my air. I can even live with some degree of air polution if it also gets me things that make life worth putting up with some pollution. But the stuff China is dumping out will go into the ground water if it’s not there already and then what? I can’t live with toxic water. And that’s where we’ve been headed for a long time.
70
Roy makes a good point here.
Not so long back now, there was the problem with another thing associated with electrical power generation and distribution, the humble Transformer, at every substation, used to convert the high transmission voltages back to the 415/240 Volts we use everywhere.
PCB (Polychlorinated biphenyl) was used as a coolant fluid in those transformers. There was the usual green scare when it came up.
Scares about electrical power come and go, but when it threatens the ability of power to come out of the hole in the wall, people sort of give it just a passing nod.
Tony.
50
Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB)
Toney, do you by chance remember someone who at every opportunity he got, drank a glass of what he said was PCB? It was a long time ago now but right in the middle of the scare. I had forgotten all about that until you reminded me. I always thought one of two things had to be true: 1) he wasn’t drinking PB; or 2) it isn’t nearly as dangerous as was claimed. And I couldn’t tell you which, then or now. The stuff was scheduled to be phased out if I remember accurately. Not sure on that last point.
As I understand it the low power handling transformers hanging from polls behind every few homes in the area do not need special cooling arrangements and are potted with something more solid to prevent movement of the windings against each other so as to prolong the life of the transformer. It’s probably a good thing it’s not PCB too because several around the neighborhood have whatever they were filled with leaking out under the cap and dripping down the side, very dark black and easy to spot against the light gray case.
30
There are some comments on PCB toxicity, or lack thereof, here.
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=HOpcT-KtkSwC&pg=PA138&lpg=PA138&dq=is+pcb+poisonous&source=bl&ots=YsOkDGpAX8&sig=FpvrWbT6XQ6hMVcV2a9ZjQfSJEw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiepe_Z38DSAhUHXrwKHX2sDfc4ChDoAQgYMAQ
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Well that confirms my suspicion. Not much real trouble can be laid at the feet of PCBs. But still, I would not drink the stuff in any concentration.
And the alarmist steamroller rolls on nevertheless. And with that I consigne the alarmists to their usual place, some deep hole in the ground where I wish they were all put so they could never sound another alarm. But when I open my eyes again they’re all still here.
And yet nature seems oblivious to the scare. This is beautiful 1920 X 1080 HD video and there’s a lot more there than this one flight around Colorado. It really needs a 1920 X 1080 monitor and adequate bandwidth but it’s still good stuff if you don’t have those requirements. It’s all taken from a Dji Phantom Quadcopter drone. Its specs are impressive.
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nice video. Try as I may I could not find any videos of stressed environments, pollution or anything dead at all. It is all lies and everything is beautiful. Thanks to the dear leader for calling out the fraud.
01
I have seen some still photos of local polluted areas from time to time. That’s all they have to show.
Life is very persistent and tough.
10
I know… pollution is just a myth. Never see it myself and I always drink the local water and swim in whatever river I am near. I’m still alive aren’t I?
01
At your own risk… pity this does not list the references
https://www-s.nist.gov/srmors/msds/3090-MSDS.pdf
and you might think that this paper supports a low toxicity view
but you’d be wrong as it is more about defining when and where things like the ones discussed in this paper kick in… (albeit I could have tried harder to find paper with “health” in its title)
dozens of specific tox papers and, of course, hundred of ecological papers looking at the authors’ favourite creature/ecosystem
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Don’t forget SF6.
Used as an insulator at indoor substations. Used to be cheaper than filtered and degasified oil, but the AGW scare has now seen the price skyrocket to the point it is being phased out (green taxes)
Why indoor substations? So the late sippers don’t have to look at the industrial ugliness required to provide the power running the capacino machine!
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I am going to go to the Hazelwood cooling pond on Wednesday to have a first and last swim in these tropical heated 26C waters before they shut down the power station and the waters become frigid and all the warm water fish in the pond die and tourism to the pond is extinguished.
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Come winter there will be a new environmental issue to deal with – tonnes of rotting fish lining the leeward shoreline.
I was once given the task of dosing a fresh water supply pond that had an algal bloom. A chemist, who sampled and tested the water, advised that 3ppm of added copper would not be enough to taste but would knock down the algae. I duly dosed the pond. Within a few days the algae was notably lower but over the course of the next week tonnes of fish started appearing on the shore. We quietly removed them before the stench became intolerable. We did not even realise there were such large fish in the pond, which was only a few acres in area and less the 6m deep.
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Rick Will,
There are hundreds of thousands of fish farms in China.
The ponds are relatively small, but each contains stacks of fish.
This ulta high tech, innovative initiative has only been going for the past 900 years.
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Don’t get yourself tangled in all the lines
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-07/hazelwood-pondage-short-lived-barramundi/8000988
http://agriculture.vic.gov.au/fisheries/recreational-fishing/target-one-million/towards-victorias-first-ever-barramundi-recreational-fishery
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ATTENTION MODS: I have had a comment stuck in moderation for many hours. Could you please check.
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me three
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Moderation might now be wind powered. You may have to wait a few days.
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first, the video is attributed to Today Tonight Adelaide.
can’t see it listed online for any other state. did it show nationally?
second, as a radio presenter (Mike Williams, from memory) said last week, we should stop calling it “renewable energy” (or clean, green energy, for that matter) and call it by its proper name INTERMITTENT ENERGY.
doubt if the public would be as keen on wind and solar, if it was named for what it is.
third, ABC, BBC & the rest of the FakeNewsMSM need to stop telling the public China is a renewable giant:
4 Feb: Reuters: Ryan Woo: China’s solar power capacity more than doubles in 2016
Installed PV capacity rose to 77.42 gigawatts at the end of 2016, with the addition of 34.54 gigawatts over the course of the year, data from the energy agency showed…
China will add more than 110 gigawatts of capacity in the 2016-2020 period, according to the NEA’s solar power development plan.
Solar plants generated 66.2 billion kilowatt-hours of power last year, accounting for ***1 percent of China’s total power generation, the NEA said.
The country aims to boost the mix of non-fossil fuel generated power to 20 percent by 2030 from 11 percent today.
China plans to plough 2.5 trillion yuan ($364 billion) into renewable power generation by 2020.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-solar-idUSKBN15J0G7?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=589663fb04d301059ff13d69&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter
listen from 26mins in: Trump first mentioned; Self-interested solar millionaire, Huang Ming, who thinks every building in China can power itself; also features Environmental Defense Fund, Clean Air Alliance, Greenpeace;
BBC presenter asks audience at end if they think China can be the leader on climate change. 35 in audience. 8 raise hands to say “yes”. panellist ends program with: Trump is dropping out of all this globalisation stuff, so China gains this opportunity to take the chance, which it demonstrated at COP21 in Paris – so I think China is able and willing to grab this opportunity to develop the global leadership:
AUDIO: 53mins11secs: 5 Mar: BBC WorldHacks: How China is Cleaning its Air
Air pollution is a huge problem for China, but did you know it’s actually getting better?…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04vd1xg
ABC likes the Solar King, Huang Ming, and
June 2016: ABC Science Show: China’s Solar Valley – ‘Solar everything’
It was set up ten years ago by Huang Ming, an entrepreneur and engineer, nicknamed ‘The Solar King’. Built as a model solar town in Dezhou, Shandong Province, 300km south of Beijing, it includes solar research labs, solar heater factories, a solar college, and a solar hotel and convention centre.
The concept coincides with a government policy turning China away from coal-fuelled energy towards renewable energy. China is now the biggest investor in renewable energy in the world (overtaking Germany in 2015), and in 2014 its coal consumption fell for the first time since its recent period of industrialization began.
The Australian government has often used China as an excuse for not taking strong action on climate change, but that argument is redundant now that China is taking up renewable energy faster than any other country. Peter Hadfield reports…
TRANSCRIPT:
Peter Hadfield: To everyone in Solar Valley, Huang Ming is a god…
And his timing couldn’t be better. Faced with crippling levels of urban smog, the Chinese government has started an ambitious program to replace many of its coal-fired power stations with renewable energy. The transformation has been so recent and so rapid that China has suddenly become the world’s biggest investor in renewable energy, and the largest producer of solar power…
Peter Hadfield: China now plans to triple solar power production to nearly 150 gigawatts a year by the year 2020…
Fergus Green, Australian climate policy consultant at the Grantham Institute in London: What China is doing is more giving western countries a needed kick. Because for too long countries like my native Australia and the United States have relied on what you might call the ‘China excuse’ for not doing anything on greenhouse gases and climate change and renewable energy. They’ve said, well, China’s coal use is growing so fast that whatever we do won’t matter. The whole premise of that argument has been removed by the fact that China’s coal consumption is now declining, and they’re the world’s largest investors in renewable energy. So this should really be a spur to the developed countries to recognise the climate-related necessity and the economic opportunity associated with rapidly shifting towards renewable energy…
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/china%E2%80%99s-solar-valley-lives-the-motto:-%E2%80%98solar-everything%E2%80%99/7475158
given BBC/ABC excitement over Dezhou, funny there’s nothing about it online in the last couple of years of any note, apart from the above.
02
From: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/dec/05/nuclear-greenpolitics
To produce the 25 tonnes or so of uranium fuel needed to keep your average reactor going for a year entails the extraction of half a million tonnes of waste rock and over 100,000 tonnes of mill tailings. These are toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. The conversion plant will generate another 144 tonnes of solid waste and 1343 cubic metres of liquid waste.
Contamination of local water supplies around uranium mines and processing plants has been documented in Brazil, Colorado, Texas, Australia, Namibia and many other sites. To supply even a fraction of the power stations the industry expects to be online worldwide in 2020 would mean generating 50 million tonnes of toxic radioactive residues every single year.
These tailings contain uranium, thorium, radium, polonium, and emit radon-222. In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency sets limits of emissions from the dumps and monitors them. This does not happen in many less developed areas.
The long-term management cost of these dumps is left out of the current market prices for nuclear fuel and may be as high as the uranium cost itself. The situation for the depleted uranium waste arising during enrichment even may be worse, says the World Information Service on Energy.
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From: http://www.wise-uranium.org/uwai.html
“URANIUM MILL TAILINGS DEPOSITS
Characteristics of uranium mill tailings
Uranium mill tailings are normally dumped as a sludge in special ponds or piles, where they are abandoned.. The largest such piles in the US and Canada contain up to 30 million tonnes of solid material. In Saxony, Germany the Helmsdorf pile near Zwickau contains 50 million tonnes, and in Thuringia the Culmitzsch pile near Seelingstädt 86 million tonnes of solids.”
“The amount of sludge produced is nearly the same as that of the ore milled. At a grade of 0.1% uranium, 99.9% of the material is left over.
Apart from the portion of the uranium removed, the sludge contains all the constituents of the ore. As long lived decay products such as thorium-230 and radium-226 are not removed, the sludge contains 85% of the initial radioactivity of the ore. Due to technical limitations, all of the uranium present in the ore can not be extracted. Therefore, the sludge also contains 5% to 10% of the uranium initially present in the ore.”
“In addition, the sludge contains heavy metals and other contaminants such as arsenic, as well as chemical reagents used during the milling process.
Mining and milling removes hazardous constituents in the ore from their relatively safe underground location and converts them to a fine sand, then sludge, whereby the hazardous materials become more susceptible to dispersion in the environment. Moreover, the constituents inside the tailings pile are in a geochemical disequilibrium that results in various reactions causing additional hazards to the environment. For example, in dry areas, salts containing contaminants can migrate to the surface of the pile, where they are subject to erosion. If the ore contains the mineral pyrite (FeS2), then sulfuric acid forms inside the deposit when accessed by precipitation and oxygen. This acid causes a continuous automatic leaching of contaminants.”
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All energy sources need to be audited for the toxic emissions/by-products they produce. Focusing on one or the other will only polarize and result in lop sidedness.
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“Out of sight, out of mind”.
Send all our environmentally “challenging” manufacturing to China (along with our jobs) and the Chinese will make cheaper, but in a much dirtier way. Anyone without a “green” brain knew this.
The fact that the greens are just noticing this shows what thick, blinkered ignoramuses they are.
10
So where do the metals come from for the generators in coal power stations? How much of these rare metals are going into wind turbines, and how much into your smartphones and computers that you are reading this on? Will stopping wind turbines suddenly stop this damage to the environment?
Of course, it would be great if China benefitted from better environmental legislation. And of course all kinds of mining can be damaging. But here’s the choice:
Wind farms: damage from making turbines
Coal-fired power: damage from making power stations PLUS damage from mining the coal that goes into them
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China has strong environmental legislation but they are in the process of shutting down factories over production of steel etc. I also suspect even though the comments about ‘rare earths’ in wind turbines are correct, that the doc is a bit of exaggerated disinformation about China and pollution. All people near any area like that would have been relocated by the govt.
00
Windy Clean Green Pollution indeed.
Wind power in South Australia is currently delivering 100MW into the South Australian Grid
So, of around nine hundred or so wind towers in the whole State, barely 60 of them are actually turning.
Current wholesale cost of power in SthAus is around $300/MWH, or more than two and a half times the cost in Victoria, NSW and Queensland.
Total wind power delivery for the whole of Australia is around 800MW at a Capacity Factor of 20%, and that total is just a little more than half of what is currently being generated by Hazelwood.
Tony.
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[…] – Windy Clean Green Pollution […]
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Amazing that the Greens MP and the ‘environmentalist’ democrat with the Prius didn’t know about this. It’s been public knowledge for a very long time. Just goes to show that these people never do any worthwhile research. They are beholden to the green scam. It (sustainability, climate change etc.) really is a religion.
01
About time Jo. This scandal reported in Daily Mail and UK Guardian Jan 2017
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“I didn’t know what was happening in China…”
How is this possible? *I* knew, and I’m not even in the greeny-politico racket!
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How pathetic, Australian Greens were actively campaigning a short tome ago against Lynas P/L, an Australian company that has led the world in environmentally sustainable rare earth production.
Such a poorly researched report, recycling 6yo data, then totally failing to recognise the leading role played by an Australia company value adding Australian resource in a totally responsible fashion.
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That report is badly out of date, because the Australian Lynas Corporation has for several years been mining the richest rare earth mine in the world at Mt Weld, north of Kalgoorlie – without any environmental problems. The product is then shipped to the Lynas chemical processing plant in Malaysia, the largest such facility in the world, where it is refined and shipped to specialised final processors. The Malaysian facility is so clean that its Government monitored recycled waste water ls discharged cleaner than it enters the facility
Lynas is now producing over 22,000 tonnes of rare earth products vital to all growing hi-tech consumer needs annually, all to full international environmental standards
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