The Global Warming Conflict

The current global warming issue is not being debated in the political spectrum.

The debate that is taking place there is one of values and conflicting interests.

The kyoto protocol and the Stern report are the two most visible indicators of various governments stances on Global Warming.
First of all John Howard said it wasn't going to work unless everyone was on board...somehow this was justification of his refusal to sign and instead come up with this gem..


Prime Minister John Howard will announce more Government funding for clean energy projects, valued at $60 million.



The Federal Government has been facing a barrage of questions this week about climate change, amid the dire prediction about global warming in a British report by economist Sir Nicholas Stern.

Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane says the timing of Government's funding boost this morning is just a coincidence.

This morning in Canberra, he and Mr Howard will unveil the funding for 42 projects aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane says one project is a mobile carbon catcher to help make coal-fired power stations less polluting.

"That is technology that is already on the back of a truck and ready to be rolled out and trialled in various power stations around Australia and ultimately overseas," he said.

Greens Senator Bob Brown has condemned the project and says the Government's priorities are wrong.

"It's pathetic when you see what ought to have been done," he said.

"The fact that the Government has taken much more money than that out of the solar industry, which is world's best technology, which can be implemented now - you see how lost the priorities of the Government are."


from the ABC

instead Johnny got on board with The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, also known as AP6, which is an international non-treaty agreement among Australia, India, Japan, the People's Republic of China, South Korea, and the United States, who together account for more than 50% of the worlds carbon emissions, announced July 28, 2005 at an Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum meeting and launched on January 12 2006 at the Partnership's inaugural Ministerial meeting in Sydney
this agreement allows member countries to set their goals for reducing emissions individually, with no mandatory enforcement mechanism...the Worldwide Fund for Nature stated that "a deal on climate change that doesn't limit pollution is the same as a peace plan that allows guns to be fired"

The Greens are calling for:
-A Climate Change Ministry
-The Prime Minister to take up Stern’s call for Australia to join Europe, California and Japan in a global emissions trading scheme
-Regulatory and financial mechanisms to impose a price on carbon, including a carbon tax
-An end to deforestation which, in Australia, causes huge greenhouse gas pollution
-A massive boost to Australia’s solar power technology which is being forced offshore

Now Johnny is aware Australia is very rich in uranium.
He is aware there is potentially a massive market for nuclear power and he is aware of the economic growth that would occur were we to take the nuclear option.
He is also aware of what that looks like on paper once he is gone.

This conflicting interest surrounding the growth of the nuclear energy industry, the idea of burying "clean" carbon emissions in the ground, the US Government and the world's big energy players such as American Electric Power, BHP Billiton and Peabody Energy plan to spend close to $US1 billion ($1.3 billion) to build FutureGen, a prototype of the fossil-fuelled power plant they hope will produce electricity and hydrogen with no emissions, including carbon dioxide.

As usual Johnny has his head firmly planted in the U.S tail
In Australia, a less ambitious but equally important project is under way (see graphic). Last week, researchers in Canberra announced plans to conduct the first CO2 geological storage demonstration project in Australia. At an as yet unnamed site in rural western Victoria, engineers will tap into a natural source of CO2 and methane, separate the CO2, compress it, then pipe it a couple of kilometres away to another site.

There, they will drill two kilometres into the Earth's surface and inject 100,000 tonnes of CO2 underground. The project is only small scale - you would need something 40 to 50 times bigger to cope with the CO2 emitted from a large coal-fired power station - but the team at the Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies hopes it will prove CO2 can be safely and securely stored underground for long periods.

Coal is mainly made up of carbon. When it is burned it combines with oxygen in the air to form CO2. Governments and businesses the world over now agree that we are injecting too much CO2 into the atmosphere. That, along with a number of other factors, has begun to heat up the Earth's temperature and change its weather patterns, leading to the phenomenon known as climate change.

Having rejected the Kyoto Protocol and its binding targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions like CO2, the US and Australian governments are pursuing a technological fix: carbon capture and storage (CCS).
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/coal-comfort/2006/01/10/1136863239625.html

"Nuclear not the answer" Brown tells Sydney rally

The Greens will introduce a climate change remedy bill to the Senate, setting a timetable and targets for greenhouse gas emissions, Greens Leader Bob Brown said in Sydney today. Senator Brown joined thousands of people at the city's Walk Against Warming.

This will be the Greens’ fourth climate change bill in a decade.

"Now even John Howard knows the urgency. The bill will have targets like those already set by Arnold Schwarzenegger in California (25% reduction by 2020), but with a 5 yearly review and an aim for 90% by 2050," Senator Brown said.

He called on both the government and opposition to adopt a carbon tax.

"However, there is now a double danger stalking Australia's next generation: climate change and nuclear power, which comes with enrichment, waste dumps and weapons proliferation. This is Mr Howard's double jeopardy solution. But nuclear cannot and will not address climate change - it would take 1 to 2 decades to get going, ensure a major waste dump in Australia and inevitably encourage proliferation in neighbouring countries," Senator Brown said.

Senator Brown called on John Howard to make at least a gesture towards renewable energy by having Greenpeace replace the solar panels it put on Kirribilli House a year ago. Mr Howard had the panels torn down. [/]

Why?
what possible motivation could he have for tearing down solar panels?
Im sensing some personal prejudices...
[i]An Inconvenient Truth, starring the former US vice-president Al Gore, "showed a degree of the peeved politician [with] the constant jibes at the Bush Administration," Mr Howard said yesterday. He urged Australians who think nuclear power is a "horrific thought" to consider the forthcoming report which is expected to find that nuclear power will become more economical as the cost of reducing greenhouse emissions makes coal-fired electricity more expensive.
doesn't that seem a little strange?
He's telling us to wait on a report because he is expecting certain results?
curious...

Now i could be wrong, but it seems Howard has adopted a particular political strategy..
When engaged in political discourse, conservatards change subjects often; preferring to point out unrelated (or even fabricated) examples of liberal folly from 20 years ago rather than directly addressing the topic at hand.
Some conservatards like to use large words like "misunderestimate" and "nukular" to impress others with their advanced grasp of English vocabulary, and by extension, their intelligence.
When cornered the conservatard will verbally attack their opposition, usually calling them a dirty, lazy environmental extremist pothead who has nothing better to do than protest.



The links between the energy industry and the economy are obvious...
the clutching onto the economic arguement for dear life position of the Government creates a small problem.

One option offers immediate economic growth...on offers long term solutions..

Mr Howard said "it is not going to overwhelm us tomorrow, we are not going to drown in the sea in a couple of weeks' time … we have to be sensible and measured and calm in our responses…"

His remarks came as an expert report on uranium found that ill-informed community suspicion of the radioactive mineral has added to the obstacles in development of Australia's uranium industry.

"The opposition, however, is mainly due to a significant misalignment between public concern and the objective risk. While risks from uranium are carefully measured and relatively low, the public perception of risk is relatively high," says the Government-commissioned report by the Uranium Industry Framework group, chaired by the Melbourne engineer and industrialist, Dr John White.

The report calls for a national "stewardship" plan to ensure Australia's huge uranium deposits - the world's largest - are developed to maximise value and minimise risks to safety, the environment and community.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/just-wait-for-a-more-convenient-truth-urges-pm/2006/11/13/1163266484014.html

The fact is there are numerous options to combat this issue...an unmodified diesel car can run on strained vegetable oil acquired from any fast food kitchen..

Biofuel, any fuel that is derived from biomass — recently living organisms or their metabolic byproducts, such as manure from cows. It is a renewable energy source, unlike other natural resources such as petroleum, coal and nuclear fuels.

Like coal and petroleum, biomass is a form of stored solar energy. The energy of the sun is "captured" through the process of photosynthesis in growing plants

Biologically produced alcohols, most commonly ethanol and methanol, and less commonly propanol and butanol produced by the action of bacteria — see alcohol fuel.

-Methanol, which is currently produced from natural gas, can also be produced from biomass — although this is not economically viable at present. The methanol economy is an interesting alternative to the hydrogen economy.
Biomass to liquid, synthetic fuels produced from syngas. Syngas in turn, is produced from biomass by gasification.

-Ethanol fuel produced from sugar cane is being used as automotive fuel in Brazil. Ethanol produced from corn is being used mostly as a gasoline additive (oxygenator) in the United States, but direct use as fuel is growing. Cellulosic ethanol is being manufactured from straw (an agricultural waste product) by Iogen Corporation of Ontario, Canada; and other companies are attempting to do the same. ETBE containing 47% Ethanol is currently the biggest biofuel contributor in Europe.

-Butanol is formed by A.B.E. fermentation (Acetone, Butanol, Ethanol) and experimental modifications of the ABE process show potentially high net energy gains with butanol being the only liquid product. Butanol can be burned "straight" in existing gasoline engines (without modification to the engine or car), produces more energy and is less corrosive and less water soluble than ethanol, and can be distributed via existing infrastructures.

-Mixed Alcohols (e.g., mixture of ethanol, propanol, butanol, pentanol, hexanol and heptanol, such as EcaleneTM), obtained either by biomass-to-liquid technology (namely gasification to produce syngas followed by catalytic synthesis) or by bioconversion of biomass to mixed alcohol fuels.

-GTL or BTL both produce synthetic fuels out of biomass in the so called Fischer Tropsch process. The synthetic biofuel containing oxygen is used as additive in high quality diesel and petrol.

Biologically produced gases

Biogas is produced by the process of anaerobic digestion of organic material by anaerobes.

Biogas can be produced either from biodegradable waste materials or by the use of energy crops fed into anaerobic digesters to supplement gas yields. The solid output, digestate, can also be used as a biofuel.

Biogas contains methane and can be recovered in industrial anaerobic digesters and mechanical biological treatment systems. Landfill gas is a less clean form of biogas which is produced in landfills through naturally occurring anaerobic digestion. Paradoxically if this gas is allowed to escape into the atmosphere it is a potent greenhouse gas.

-Biologically produced gases from wastes
Biologically produced oils and gases can be produced from various wastes:
Thermal depolymerization of waste can extract methane and other oils similar to petroleum.
Pyrolysis oil may be produced out of biomass, wood waste etc. using heat only in the flash pyrolysis process. The oil has to be treated before using in conventional fuel systems or internal combustion engines (water pH).
One company, GreenFuel Technologies Corporation, has developed a patented bioreactor system that utilizes nontoxic photosynthetic algae to take in smokestacks flue gases and produce biofuels such as biodiesel, biogas and a dry fuel comparable to coal [2].

Biologically produced oils
Biologically produced oils can be used in diesel engines:
Straight vegetable oil (SVO).
Waste vegetable oil (WVO) - waste cooking oils and greases produced in quantity mostly by commercial kitchens
Biodiesel obtained from transesterification of animal fats and vegetable oil, directly usable in petroleum diesel engines.

Hemp, wind, solar power, wave power, geothermal power, tidal power...It is a matter of generating awareness of the alternatives, utilizing the taxation system is also likely to influence energy choices, together with education and public awareness initiatives.

In 2005 the Swedish government announced their intention to become the first country to break their country's dependence on oil and other ‘fossil raw materials’ by 2020 [1]. As of 2005, oil supplies provided about 32% of the country's energy supply, with nuclear power and hydroelectricity providing much of the remainder.

http://www.sweden.gov.se/sb/d/2031/a/67096