freediver
Gold Member
Offline
www.ozpolitic.com
Posts: 47067
At my desk.
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Our net immigration rate more than makes up for our low birth rate, so our population will continue to increase.
I don't mind the look of wind farms. I've seen massive farms in California, up in the hills. I actually thought they looked pretty cool. There is also one on the North side of Newcastle which I used to drive past regularly.
From what I recall, clean coal would be almost as 'good' as natural gas, in terms of greenhouse emissions. It is a big improvement on what we have now.
Clean coal technology 'a furphy'
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Clean-coal-technology-a-furphy/2007/11/01/1193619020396.html
The major political parties have sold voters a furphy by claiming clean coal technology will be a reality in Australia one day, a well-known scientist says.
Scientific commentator and broadcaster Karl Kruszelnicki, who is running for the Senate on the Climate Change Coalition ticket, on Thursday said clean coal technology was physically impossible.
Dr Kruszelnicki said the major parties were lying to the Australian people when they claimed carbon dioxide could be removed from the burning of coal and then compressed and stored underground or underwater.
He said this would require one cubic kilometre of compressed carbon dioxide to be stored every day.
"It's just not technologically possible.
As well, any storage facility would eventually wear down and would release the stored carbon dioxide back into the environment, he said.
Underground thermal energy accessed in South Australia could provide 100 per cent of Australia's baseload electricity for the next 75 years and then be supplemented by other renewables, he told reporters.
Dr Karl admits mistake over clean coal
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Dr-Karl-admits-mistake-over-clean-coal/2007/11/08/1194329350399.html
Celebrity scientist and senate hopeful Dr Karl Kruszelnicki has admitted he was wrong to describe clean coal technology as a complete furphy.
Dr Kruszelnicki now admits clean coal is a worthwhile solution to climate change and not similar to National Socialist party propaganda, as he said on the campaign trail in Sydney last week.
The error comes from incorrect data found in the first edition of Australian of the year Tim Flannery's best-selling climate change book The Weather Makers, which has subsequently been corrected.
"We're stuck with the fact that we have still got to make electricity in the short term from carbon of some sort," he told the paper.
"Something is better than nothing, so sequestering carbon dioxide is better than just letting it go out.
"I see it as a stop-gap, short-term thing rather than a long-term solution because the more you store it away the more the chance that it will escape," he said.
Dr Kruszelnicki said clean coal technology was an interim technology that should be explored.
NSW govt faces clean coal dilemma
http://news.smh.com.au/nsw-govt-faces-clean-coal-dilemma/20080205-1q4j.html
The federal government is facing a dilemma over its funding of the world's leading clean coal experiment after the US ended its commitment.
The Bush administration blamed budget blow-outs for its decision to stop funding the $US1.8-billion ($2 billion) FutureGen project, Fairfax reports.
The US decision is a blow to the Australian coal industry's hopes that a commercially viable clean coal plant would be built in the foreseeable future.
Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and Xstrata have contributed more than $50 million to the project, which the former Howard government committed $15 million to before the election.
Energy and Resources Minister Martin Ferguson must now decide whether to fulfil the $15 million pledge, but refused to respond on Monday night to questions on the issue.
But Greens senator Christine Milne called on the Rudd government to pull taxpayers' money out of FutureGen and other projects, saying the Howard government's clean coal strategy had collapsed.
"All the government money in the project from the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund has all come to nothing," she said. "Government funding for FutureGen and any other clean coal pipedreams should be withdrawn in favour of renewable technologies that are up and running now."
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