Coral Reef Status

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by mochifanta

Renewables are great if you can afford them. Basic math shows they have a long way to go to even support basic transportation needs like your second car let alone the transportation needs of a mature or developing economy, not to mention manufacturing, etc

Yes but this argument should not prevent us converting as much as we can to renewables.

From my perspective it is not either or but both.

Keep drilling,

Drilling for even more hydrocarbons is both polluting and sustaining the wrong old system.

keep driving efficiency, keep developing solar and battery, figure out safe nuclear, maybe one day we will get fusion.

What the future “ might “ bring does not absolve us of the need to act today.

I am not anti regulation, but it needs to make sense. Clean Air and Water act here is the US has made a huge difference over the last 50 years. Nobody should be dumping their waste into the water or pumping it into the air.

The issue isn’t regulation it’s getting people to act and act now.

Is CO2 a pollutant? Convenient that it is labeled as such even though it is a direct input to photosynthesis and plant respiration.

a fourth grader can answer that question anything that’s produced in vast quantities is a pollutant

Lithium production is an environment disaster, but we don’t care. Why?

Thd major component of ev batteries is not lithium it’s nickel lithium can be and is responsibly mined or converted from seawater it’s not universally but it can be extracted in a proper manner the environmental damage in extracting and refining hydrocarbons is enormous by comparison

Any rate. Keep doing research. Keep developing new products and manufacturing techniques. Let the market place sort it out without carbon or green camps putting their finger on the scale too much to keep us out of that dark cave.

No one wants to be in a dark cave.

Sadly tech or human desire is not going to get us out of this. It’s going to need real difficult change due b change will discommode a lot of people no way around that. That’s what’s needs to be accepted that real change WILL disrupt the status wuo. Just like we can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs we can’t have real reduction in greenhouse emissions and Reduce our dependency on hydrocarbons without “ hurting “ sections of society.


Things can’t go on as before we need to accept real change , less cars , less travel , stalked beef herds , stoping pollution dumping everywhere ( by severe fines and active dumping )

At sea we will have to accept total bans on overboard waste discharge oe any form of biocides based anti fouling

Change will discomfort everyone. It’s needed and it’s needed soon

This is why I comment what you said was nonsense. The necessary change will be painful and unsettling

[RaymondR]

Australia will need tens of thousands if the stupid windmills sticking up everywhere, even in the sea, and millions of solar panels in giant solar farms. The city folk don't want the stupid windmills ruining their skylines or sea views so they will all be blighting the lives of country people.

Since historically practically all our population centres were situated in fertile areas thousands of acres of fertile land will be taken out of food production when covered in solar panels.

Tens of thousands of miles of landscape blighting and farmer inconvenience causing overhead transmission lines will be required to carry the power produced to the edge of the cities where it will be distributed to city dwellers via their underground transmission lines, nicely out of sight.

The city, country divide will be widened further and it's no wonder that country folks in Australia look upon city folks as "urban rabble".

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

Australia will need tens of thousands if the stupid windmills sticking up everywhere, even in the sea, and millions of solar panels in giant solar farms....

Why do you persist with this utterly false myth that ONLY windmills and solar are what's on offer as the only alternative? People DO approve of nuclear power, if it's responsibly done... but between cowardly and visionless governments, and fossil-fuel lobbies sh!t-disturbing, nuclear power projects are hard to start.

And a whole lot could be accomplished if people would simply be a bit more conservative of their energy use - fossil-fuel or otherwise. Why do we still develop suburbs where the only practical access is by personal vehicle?

[Gadagirl]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

Australia will need tens of thousands if the stupid windmills sticking up everywhere, even in the sea, and millions of solar panels in giant solar farms. The city folk don't want the stupid windmills ruining their skylines or sea views so they will all be blighting the lives of country people.

Since historically practically all our population centres were situated in fertile areas thousands of acres of fertile land will be taken out of food production when covered in solar panels.

Tens of thousands of miles of landscape blighting and farmer inconvenience causing overhead transmission lines will be required to carry the power produced to the edge of the cities where it will be distributed to city dwellers via their underground transmission lines, nicely out of sight.

The city, country divide will be widened further and it's no wonder that country folks in Australia look upon city folks as "urban rabble".

As compared to the blight produced through stip mining for coal, the sight of oil rigs on land and off coast are eyesores as well, and the smog that envelopes cities? If I were to pick one eyesore over another I'd pick green energy.

If we don't act now thousands of acres of fertile land will (some already has) be laid waste to floods and or drought.

And there's other technology coming online that is neither solar, wind, or nuclear.

Sand batteries

https://www.synergiafoundation.org/i...rgy-revolution

Thermal energy
https://inf.news/en/science/680f0a60...4302d8e39.html

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by Gadagirl

As compared to the blight produced through stip mining for coal, the sight of oil rigs on land and off coast are eyesores as well, and the smog that envelopes cities? If I were to pick one eyesore over another I'd pick green energy.

If we don't act now thousands of acres of fertile land will (some already has) be laid waste to floods and or drought.

And there's other technology coming online that is neither solar, wind, or nuclear.

Sand batteries

https://www.synergiafoundation.org/i...rgy-revolution

Thermal energy
https://inf.news/en/science/680f0a60...4302d8e39.html

The Nile valley was fertilized almost every year by the regular silt load of floods, they dammed it for electricity generation and now have to use industrial fertilizers. Damned renewables.

All the coal mines in Australia would only equal the land area of one large solar farm and most of them now are on grazing land and not agricultural land.

After it is drilled an oil or gas wellhead occupies a couple of square yards of land and the pipelines are all buried. The rigs and platforms are relatively few and removed once the oil or gas is removed unlike the forests of intermittent, low productivity wind generators.

A nuclear plant pumping electricity into the existing grid would occupy less than 1/10th the area of the coal fired plant it would replace, use the extant poles and wires, get rid of the thousands of miles of railway tracks many of the coal fired plants are fed by, and have a sixty to eighty year life spans instead of the tens to twenties of solar and wind.

Allowing politicians to design electricity grids and transportation systems from sales brochures instead of engineers from engineering textbooks is bound to end in tears, it's the march of folly on steroids.

I have no problem with transitioning from fossil fuels, we're going to run out of them eventually, to less polluting fuels but the rush to the so called "renewables" is pure unadulterated stupidity, but then politicians and zealots are really good at that.

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

........
All the coal mines in Australia would only equal the land area of one large solar farm and most of them now are on grazing land and not agricultural land.
........

Might want to fact check some of these claims Ray.

I dunno if the following is totally correct but it would suggest your claim would be way off the mark.

The proposed Western Downs solar farm (touted to Australia's biggest to date) will have about 1.5K hectares of solar panels so maybe the total area could be 3 times that , say 4.5 hectares. https://infrastructurepipeline.org/p...reen-power-hub

The Carmichael coal mine will have 279 km2 of surface mining and a total area of 447 km2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmichael_coal_mine

The 5 largest coal mines in Australia are all surface mining. I haven't run the numbers but it is safe bet that they are much bigger than the solar farms.

https://www.mining-technology.com/ma...ustralia-2021/

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by Wotname

Might want to fact check some of these claims Ray.

I dunno if the following is totally correct but it would suggest your claim would be way off the mark.

The proposed Western Downs solar farm (touted to Australia's biggest to date) will have about 1.5K hectares of solar panels so maybe the total area could be 3 times that , say 4.5 hectares. https://infrastructurepipeline.org/p...reen-power-hub

The Carmichael coal mine will have 279 km2 of surface mining and a total area of 447 km2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmichael_coal_mine

The 5 largest coal mines in Australia are all surface mining. I haven't run the numbers but it is safe bet that they are much bigger than the solar farms.

https://www.mining-technology.com/ma...ustralia-2021/

I was referring to the actual holes in the ground, the sites include surface facilities and, in some cases extensive buffer zones surrounding the holes and surface plant Alcoa alone has learned to buy ip every farm and hamlet within ten miles of their extraction facilities if they want to avoid living in the courts, they then run them as productive farms which will be sold off when they abandon the mine.

Eventually the mines will close and the surface facilities will either be salvaged for recyclable metals or bulldozed into the holes which will fill with water and become lakes, which I suspect in fertile areas will become reservoirs for irrigation water.

It is generally a condition of approval in Australia that topsoil be stockpiled and that the sites be rehabilitated on completion of mining operations. In the case of Veranus Island, where the company I worked for built a tank farm and administrative centre, we had to turn the stockpiled earth over every two years to allow the seed contained therein to re-germinate, grow and re-seed and thereby retain viable seed to allow regeneration of the natural flora when the site was rehabilitated.

Most, if not all, approvals these days also include the accrual funding or bank guarantees of the cost of reinstatement of mine sites so that in the event of bankruptcy of the operator funds are available for the restoration.

Unlike wind and solar development, which is entirely the wild west in development terms under the influence of the zealots and the subject of the most intense envy on the part of the participants in any minerals extraction venture, not only do the renewables cowboys get a free run at development they get assistance with bypassing or ignoring much of the development regulation practically all other industries are subjected to.

The renewables jolly is going to cause the greatest financial and possibly social disaster Australia has ever experienced.

If one wishes to see what is required to develop a renewables ie wind and solar powered grid visit the Tasmanian Hydro site and bring up the King Island network monitoring app. The details of the equipment installations required to service 1,300 human's and one small dairy products production facilities electricity needs are available. Multiply this by 25,000,000/1,300 = 19,231 times the King Island experience, and that does not include industry, commerce and transportation, and you have a ballpark figure for the national requirement (probably far superior than what is fed to us by the zealots)

I have no problem with electrifying our entire industrial, commercial, transportation and domestic power needs but we need to do it without venturing into the development expensive and wasteful dead end of renewables.

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

Australia will need tens of thousands if the stupid windmills sticking up everywhere, even in the sea, and millions of solar panels in giant solar farms. The city folk don't want the stupid windmills ruining their skylines or sea views so they will all be blighting the lives of country people.

Since historically practically all our population centres were situated in fertile areas thousands of acres of fertile land will be taken out of food production when covered in solar panels.

Tens of thousands of miles of landscape blighting and farmer inconvenience causing overhead transmission lines will be required to carry the power produced to the edge of the cities where it will be distributed to city dwellers via their underground transmission lines, nicely out of sight.

The city, country divide will be widened further and it's no wonder that country folks in Australia look upon city folks as "urban rabble".

They’ll get used to all those windmills in time.

Renewables is the only medium term solution enbrace thd change

Here most windmills will be 30’to 60km offshore around. 3000 are planned

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

I was referring to the actual holes in the ground, the sites include surface facilities and, in some cases extensive buffer zones surrounding the holes and surface plant Alcoa alone has learned to buy up every farm and hamlet within ten miles of their extraction facilities if they want to avoid living in the courts, they then run them as productive farms which will be sold off when they abandon the mine.

Eventually the mines will close and the surface facilities will either be salvaged for recyclable metals or bulldozed into the holes which will fill with water and become lakes, which I suspect in fertile areas will become reservoirs for irrigation water...

[the rest of your mining PR brochure omitted . Other sources are saying this. And as you know, there's more than you acknowledge.]

Unlike wind and solar development, which is entirely the wild west in development terms under the influence of the zealots and the subject of the most intense envy on the part of the participants in any minerals extraction venture, not only do the renewables cowboys get a free run at development they get assistance with bypassing or ignoring much of the development regulation practically all other industries are subjected to.

More fables. Of course a developing technology is going to get initial support, and it takes time to mature. The internal combustion engine took over 100 years to reach today's levels of efficiency and lower emissions. Fossil-fuel extraction has always been messy and environmentally destructive, and continues to be so, despite near on 300 years of practice. In a little over 30 years, wind and solar have quickly matured to already cost less per watt, all-in, than coal, and their land-footprints , and waste after decommissioning, are far smaller. How about deaths per watt, which probably undercounts deaths from air pollution.

I'll happily consider arguments about how wind/solar are messier that fossil fuels... just as soon as all the fossil fuel messes, and abandoned mines, wellheads and infrastructure have all been cleaned up.

Your King Island scaling exercise is patently bogus and misleading. Any engineer would blush at seeing that.

I have no problem with electrifying our entire industrial, commercial, transportation and domestic power needs but we need to do it without venturing into the development expensive and wasteful dead end of renewables.

We appreciate that you apparently have had a career in fossil fuels, and are justifiably proud of it. And of course it's inaccurate and uninformed for anyone to just bleat "FF baaad, wind/solar gooood!". But open your eyes, man. Transitioning away from our overdependence on and wasteful consumption of fossil fuels is overdue. It's fine to be critical and discerning about the specifics about rolling out renewables, but your blinkered jihad against renewables is political, not factual.

[Cyrus Safdari]

Denial is a coping mechanism for fear
Fear is not a rational reaction but a natural one upon confrontation with overwhelming threat that makes you feel powerless to fix, like global climate change.
There is no point trying to rationally argue over this.
People just dig in deeper, that's human nature
https://www.psypost.org/2022/10/new-...naticism-64121

When have humans ever gotten together, put aside their differences and cooperated to solve a collective problem? Ever? We're still monkeys beating each other over the head with fancier sticks

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Cyrus Safdari

Denial is a coping mechanism for fear
Fear is not a rational reaction but a natural one upon confrontation with overwhelming threat that makes you feel powerless to fix, like global climate change.
There is no point trying to rationally argue over this.
People just dig in deeper, that's human nature
https://www.psypost.org/2022/10/new-...naticism-64121

When have humans ever gotten together, put aside their differences and cooperated to solve a collective problem? Ever? We're still monkeys beating each other over the head with fancier sticks

Yup.. Climate, Covid, Economics, Territory, Politics, Bigger Dick.. Whatever..

[Bowdrie]

https://clintel.org/wp-content/uploa...6272215121.pdf

https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-ne...dangerous-myth

[Gadagirl]

Well thankfully (on this Thanksgiving day where us US citizens state things we're grateful for) the solar sector has surpassed coal. Financially and productively. Wind is coming up to do the same in the next year. People are investing and making money 💰 in spite of old (but slowly changing) policies favouring the oil industry. The world is changing, you can't stop it. People are investing in new cleaner technology and stand to make fortunes. You can join or literally hang onto a dinosaur economy, but you'll loose money. You've already lost billions trying to fight the change. Future fortunes are going to be built on clean energy. Geopolitics will be disrupted because many countries peg their wealth to oil resources and have little diversity in their exports to make up for that kind of loss. But that was the whole point of COP27 setting up a fund to assist transition. Hopefully the fund will help to tamp down transition insecurities and suffering. Yet to be seen. There's no doubt that in this century green energy will win world wide. You can cry in the dust of that train taking off without you or you can buy your ticket and board.

[mochifanta]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Yes but this argument should not prevent us converting as much as we can to renewables.



Drilling for even more hydrocarbons is both polluting and sustaining the wrong old system.



What the future “ might “ bring does not absolve us of the need to act today.



The issue isn’t regulation it’s getting people to act and act now.

a fourth grader can answer that question anything that’s produced in vast quantities is a pollutant




Thd major component of ev batteries is not lithium it’s nickel lithium can be and is responsibly mined or converted from seawater it’s not universally but it can be extracted in a proper manner the environmental damage in extracting and refining hydrocarbons is enormous by comparison




Sadly tech or human desire is not going to get us out of this. It’s going to need real difficult change due b change will discommode a lot of people no way around that. That’s what’s needs to be accepted that real change WILL disrupt the status wuo. Just like we can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs we can’t have real reduction in greenhouse emissions and Reduce our dependency on hydrocarbons without “ hurting “ sections of society.


Things can’t go on as before we need to accept real change , less cars , less travel , stalked beef herds , stoping pollution dumping everywhere ( by severe fines and active dumping )

At sea we will have to accept total bans on overboard waste discharge oe any form of biocides based anti fouling

Change will discomfort everyone. It’s needed and it’s needed soon

This is why I comment what you said was nonsense. The necessary change will be painful and unsettling

Getting solar on the house now. I am all for use of “solar”, but the energy needs of most modern economies are way beyond current technology or infrastructure.

Again, not either or, but both. It needs to be an intelligent transition that doesn’t penalize the weakest and the poor.

For example fracking and the transition from coal to natural gas has done to more reduce carbon emissions that anything else.

Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t insulate your house and switch to LED and install solar. Again, both makes the most sense.

Too much alarmism and bad policy making as a result.

Mandating car and home efficiency probably makes sense, but nuclear is probably necessary to deal with majority of energy use across an entire economy if you want to power any modern economy without carbon.

The sky is not falling, but I am very much in favor of making the planet healthier and more beautiful for everyone. Let’s just make sure that everyone, not just those with the means have as much opportunity as possible.

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

...........
It is generally a condition of approval in Australia that topsoil be stockpiled and that the sites be rehabilitated on completion of mining operations. In the case of Veranus Island, where the company I worked for built a tank farm and administrative centre, we had to turn the stockpiled earth over every two years to allow the seed contained therein to re-germinate, grow and re-seed and thereby retain viable seed to allow regeneration of the natural flora when the site was rehabilitated.
..............

Having worked on and off at Varanus Island from 1990 to 2013, I doubt very much if the island would ever be even halfway rehabilitated but to give them credit where credit is due, they do take care of the wildlife around the island very well these days. Lots of rules about lights at night not upsetting nesting turtles and the sea eagle that nests near the top of the Comms tower reigns supreme. No one is allowed up the tower when the eagle is actively nesting there. We replaced the tower and we had to wait for the non-nesting season before touching the old tower. The new tower had a special arm built into it for the nest to be relocated from the old tower to the new one. No sooner than the new tower was erected and the nest relocated, the sea eagle returned for a looksee and 'approved' the new tower by sitting in the relocated nest for a few days. The environmental guys were happy!

The island was named after the local lizards which are friendly and enjoy some crib.