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this guy takes on the baddest dragsters on the strip, and is the fastest!
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
During Fiery Heatwaves Australian PM Looks To Stall Thriving Clean Energy Sector | ThinkProgress
During Fiery Heatwaves Australian PM Looks To Stall Thriving Clean Energy Sector | ThinkProgress
A pattern is emerging in which Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott
chooses to ignore the prominent signs that climate change is severely
impacting Australia and instead focus on rapidly extracting more fossil
fuels from the ground. In December, his environmental minister, Greg
Hunt, approved
a massive coal mine in northeastern Australia that will produce up to
40 million tons of coal a year and emit as much CO2 as a small European
country. Abbott has also denied any link between harmful bushfires and a
changing climate — evidenced by Australia experiencing its hottest year on record in 2013.
During an especially dry start to the summer season this year a nasty spate of bushfires broke out around Sydney. After brushing off the idea that climate change could have anything to do with it, Abbott said “fire is part of the Australian experience … it has been since humans were on this continent.”
Now, amidst another round of smothering heatwaves and deadly bushfires, Abbott is focusing on a different element: wind. However, unlike with fires, he’s taking a more critical eye towards this eternal staple of Australian history.
Last week Abbott floated revisiting the possibility that wind farms might have a negative impact on health, suggesting that that National Health and Medical Research Council hadn’t looked into the subject in a while. The timing on this seems very odd, considering the NHMRC reviewed the issue in 2010, and in 2012 started another review, with the results scheduled for public consultation early this year.
According to the NHMRC website, possible impacts of wind farms on human health include audible and inaudible noise, shadow flicker and electromagnetic radiation.
“There have been no less than 19 reviews of the evidence on wind farms and health published since 2002,” Renew Economy reported regarding Abbott’s recent statements. “All have concluded that while sometimes a minority of people exposed report adverse health effects from living near turbines, there is no good evidence that these effects are directly attributable to the turbines.”
So why is Abbott calling for this redoubled effort to find negative health impacts associated with wind farms when it seems like ignoring climate change is the real danger? The recent weather has been so hot that thousands of bats are dropping dead from trees and kangaroos are struggling to stay upright. Even Australia’s native eucalyptus, around as long as fires have been burning them, are struggling with survival under the long-term stress of climate change. And it’s not just mother nature’s creations that are suffering — iPods don’t work under such conditions either.
Meanwhile, Australia has one of the lowest costs of wind energy anywhere, with the Bureau of Resource and Energy Economics recently saying that wind power is now competitive with fossil fuel plants. In fact, recent studies have found that Australia could have a 100 percent renewable electricity grid by 2040 and all the country would have to do is slightly increase solar and wind power deployment.
The main impediment to this at the moment would appear to be the Australian government itself, and Abbott’s anti-climate, anti-clean energy agenda. Abbott has already invested serious political capital in dismantling Australia’s internationally leading carbon emissions scheme. In November he cut the budget for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, which funds renewable energy projects and research. Then last week he announced that the Australian Cleantech Competition would be renamed the Australian Technologies Competition — so it would appear even uttering words like climate or clean energy isn’t in the cards anymore.
During Fiery Heatwaves Australian PM Looks To Stall Thriving Clean Energy Sector
By Ari Phillips
on
January 13, 2014 at 12:31 pm
on
January 13, 2014 at 12:31 pm
"During Fiery Heatwaves Australian PM Looks To Stall Thriving Clean Energy Sector"
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CREDIT: http://www.bom.gov.au
During an especially dry start to the summer season this year a nasty spate of bushfires broke out around Sydney. After brushing off the idea that climate change could have anything to do with it, Abbott said “fire is part of the Australian experience … it has been since humans were on this continent.”
Now, amidst another round of smothering heatwaves and deadly bushfires, Abbott is focusing on a different element: wind. However, unlike with fires, he’s taking a more critical eye towards this eternal staple of Australian history.
Last week Abbott floated revisiting the possibility that wind farms might have a negative impact on health, suggesting that that National Health and Medical Research Council hadn’t looked into the subject in a while. The timing on this seems very odd, considering the NHMRC reviewed the issue in 2010, and in 2012 started another review, with the results scheduled for public consultation early this year.
According to the NHMRC website, possible impacts of wind farms on human health include audible and inaudible noise, shadow flicker and electromagnetic radiation.
“There have been no less than 19 reviews of the evidence on wind farms and health published since 2002,” Renew Economy reported regarding Abbott’s recent statements. “All have concluded that while sometimes a minority of people exposed report adverse health effects from living near turbines, there is no good evidence that these effects are directly attributable to the turbines.”
So why is Abbott calling for this redoubled effort to find negative health impacts associated with wind farms when it seems like ignoring climate change is the real danger? The recent weather has been so hot that thousands of bats are dropping dead from trees and kangaroos are struggling to stay upright. Even Australia’s native eucalyptus, around as long as fires have been burning them, are struggling with survival under the long-term stress of climate change. And it’s not just mother nature’s creations that are suffering — iPods don’t work under such conditions either.
Meanwhile, Australia has one of the lowest costs of wind energy anywhere, with the Bureau of Resource and Energy Economics recently saying that wind power is now competitive with fossil fuel plants. In fact, recent studies have found that Australia could have a 100 percent renewable electricity grid by 2040 and all the country would have to do is slightly increase solar and wind power deployment.
The main impediment to this at the moment would appear to be the Australian government itself, and Abbott’s anti-climate, anti-clean energy agenda. Abbott has already invested serious political capital in dismantling Australia’s internationally leading carbon emissions scheme. In November he cut the budget for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, which funds renewable energy projects and research. Then last week he announced that the Australian Cleantech Competition would be renamed the Australian Technologies Competition — so it would appear even uttering words like climate or clean energy isn’t in the cards anymore.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Why Is British Columbia Pushing Fossil Fuels When green is competitive?..
The Disaffected Lib: Why Is British Columbia Pushing Fossil Fuels When ...: I sat in on a discussion presented by Canada's sole Green Party MLA in Port Alberni Tuesday night. The MLA for Victoria's toney Oak...
I sat in on a discussion presented by Canada's sole Green Party MLA in Port Alberni Tuesday night.
The MLA for Victoria's toney Oak Bay/Gordon Head riding and leading Canadian environmental scientist, Dr. Andrew Weaver touched on a lot of topics including British Columbia's unique alternative energy resources. Our province's capacity for generating clean, renewable energy is unlike any other.
B.C. has enormous resources from tidal energy, wind energy, ocean current and wave energy, hydro-electricity, solar and geo-thermal. It's all there and in huge abundance. Continental west coasts get westerly winds that build across the open ocean. We get wave energy that likewise builds across the ocean. Those winds bring rainfall that drives our hydro-electric system. The Pacific is wide which means high tides and plentiful tidal energy. Powerful ocean currents line the coasts. Being on the Pacific means being on the Ring of Fire which means strong, geo-thermal options. In fact, Weaver pointed out that Canada is the only Pacific Rim country that hasn't tapped its geo-thermal energy.
We have the ocean and we also have mountains. Mountains are ideal for placement of wind turbines. They're also great for energy storage. During peak energy production you can use the surplus to pump water into mountain reservoirs that can release the water for hydro-electric (turbine) generation as needed. Weaver pointed out that the desert of the Okanagan valley would be ideal for solar power generation on an industrial scale.
Properly developed, these resources could allow British Columbia to be the power plant for western Canada. As though we needed another reason to pry loose the cold, dead, boney fingers of the
I sat in on a discussion presented by Canada's sole Green Party MLA in Port Alberni Tuesday night.
The MLA for Victoria's toney Oak Bay/Gordon Head riding and leading Canadian environmental scientist, Dr. Andrew Weaver touched on a lot of topics including British Columbia's unique alternative energy resources. Our province's capacity for generating clean, renewable energy is unlike any other.
B.C. has enormous resources from tidal energy, wind energy, ocean current and wave energy, hydro-electricity, solar and geo-thermal. It's all there and in huge abundance. Continental west coasts get westerly winds that build across the open ocean. We get wave energy that likewise builds across the ocean. Those winds bring rainfall that drives our hydro-electric system. The Pacific is wide which means high tides and plentiful tidal energy. Powerful ocean currents line the coasts. Being on the Pacific means being on the Ring of Fire which means strong, geo-thermal options. In fact, Weaver pointed out that Canada is the only Pacific Rim country that hasn't tapped its geo-thermal energy.
We have the ocean and we also have mountains. Mountains are ideal for placement of wind turbines. They're also great for energy storage. During peak energy production you can use the surplus to pump water into mountain reservoirs that can release the water for hydro-electric (turbine) generation as needed. Weaver pointed out that the desert of the Okanagan valley would be ideal for solar power generation on an industrial scale.
Properly developed, these resources could allow British Columbia to be the power plant for western Canada. As though we needed another reason to pry loose the cold, dead, boney fingers of the
Sealevel rise is acutely felt in England recently with repeated storms, read Should coastal Britain surrender to the tides? | Environment | The Guardian
Should coastal Britain surrender to the tides? | Environment | The Guardian
New kinds of coastal adaptation must be judged when the going gets tough. The largest managed realignment scheme on the open coast in Europe was completed late last year at Medmerry, West Sussex. Like most locals, Alan Chamberlain, manager of Medmerry Park holiday village, was horrified when the Environment Agency proposed punching a hole in the sea defences and "letting the sea go". But it protected homes with four miles of new floodbanks inland and turned agricultural land into lakes and marshes. Locals scoffed that £28m was being spent on creating a bird reserve, but when it was hammered by the January storms, it worked. "It's really been tested. We're just amazed at how well we've come out of it," says Chamberlain. "Normally by now we would've had flooding, but we've had none at all."
Sometimes, there is no need to choose between protecting people or countryside: Medmerry's new wetlands have enabled the holiday village to revamp itself as an ecotourism destination. And realignment projects that help wildlife can tap into funding unavailable to conventional coastal defences. Orford Ness coped with the winter storms better than expected because of new ditches, sluices and lagoons created by a €1m wildlife project funded by EU LIFE+. Ironically, this was designed to help rare birds during droughts, but the measures have alleviated the floods.
New kinds of coastal adaptation must be judged when the going gets tough. The largest managed realignment scheme on the open coast in Europe was completed late last year at Medmerry, West Sussex. Like most locals, Alan Chamberlain, manager of Medmerry Park holiday village, was horrified when the Environment Agency proposed punching a hole in the sea defences and "letting the sea go". But it protected homes with four miles of new floodbanks inland and turned agricultural land into lakes and marshes. Locals scoffed that £28m was being spent on creating a bird reserve, but when it was hammered by the January storms, it worked. "It's really been tested. We're just amazed at how well we've come out of it," says Chamberlain. "Normally by now we would've had flooding, but we've had none at all."
Sometimes, there is no need to choose between protecting people or countryside: Medmerry's new wetlands have enabled the holiday village to revamp itself as an ecotourism destination. And realignment projects that help wildlife can tap into funding unavailable to conventional coastal defences. Orford Ness coped with the winter storms better than expected because of new ditches, sluices and lagoons created by a €1m wildlife project funded by EU LIFE+. Ironically, this was designed to help rare birds during droughts, but the measures have alleviated the floods.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
China's 12 GW Of New Solar: What's It Mean? | EarthTechling
China's 12 GW Of New Solar: What's It Mean? | EarthTechling
The 12 GW in 2013 was the most for any country ever in a single year (by a long shot; as far as we can tell, the old record was Germany’s 7.6 GW in 2012). And more is on the way, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said:
Still, the question persists: Is it enough? Or more to point, given its coal use, can China’s renewable efforts really make a difference in the long-term carbon-emissions trajectory of the country?
The question was quite correctly raised by Armond Cohen, in a blog post on the website of the Clean Air Task Force, where Cohen is executive director, and that was republished here on EarthTechling. I went in a similar direction myself last September when a report revealed that China was likely to add 38 gigawatts of coal capacity per year until 2022 before slowing down the pace.
Cohen makes a strong case that with so many new coal plants being built in China, it’s going to be very difficult for the country not to continue to burn large amounts of the stuff for many, many years in the future. That’s why he’s a big proponent of carbon capture and storage. As he wrote last October:
The 12 GW in 2013 was the most for any country ever in a single year (by a long shot; as far as we can tell, the old record was Germany’s 7.6 GW in 2012). And more is on the way, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said:
The Chinese government is targeting 14 GW of additional PV capacity in 2014. Transmission grid-connected projects were the vast majority of China’s solar market last year, but the government is aiming for at least 60 percen of this year’s installations to be rooftop capacity, which is connected to the distribution grid rather than the transmission grid. A shift to rooftops rather than remote deserts will bring additional legal and financial complications for developers and so Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects the target to be slightly undershot in 2014 – but with higher growth in 2015.China also had a solid year with wind, adding 14.92 GW last year; not its biggest year, but about 2 GW more than the U.S. has ever added in a single year.
Still, the question persists: Is it enough? Or more to point, given its coal use, can China’s renewable efforts really make a difference in the long-term carbon-emissions trajectory of the country?
The question was quite correctly raised by Armond Cohen, in a blog post on the website of the Clean Air Task Force, where Cohen is executive director, and that was republished here on EarthTechling. I went in a similar direction myself last September when a report revealed that China was likely to add 38 gigawatts of coal capacity per year until 2022 before slowing down the pace.
Cohen makes a strong case that with so many new coal plants being built in China, it’s going to be very difficult for the country not to continue to burn large amounts of the stuff for many, many years in the future. That’s why he’s a big proponent of carbon capture and storage. As he wrote last October:
Without CCS applied widely in China, the nation’s coal fleet will remain the largest global clustered source of carbon dioxide emissions, with a ‘long tail’ that could last for much of the 21st century – making most climate management plans, such as the “trillion ton cap” that was implied this month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, nearly impossible to reach.Still, after the 12 GW figure was reported, I couldn’t help but be in awe of China’s achievement, and, perhaps irrationally, begin to believe that it might be setting off on a miraculous solar adoption binge. I asked Cohen what he thought. In his post, he had mistakenly understated China’s 2013 solar growth, pegging it at 3.6 GW based on partial-year data (an error he told me he intends to correct). Does the fact that it was more than three times that, and that the wind addition was nearly twice as big as he originally thought, give him hope?
“I am hopeful on solar but more hopeful on nuclear (and maybe CCS)
due to high CFs!” he replied (CFs refers to capacity factors, which are
much higher for nuclear and coal with CCS than for solar). Alas, not
exactly a ringing endorsement. Drats.
Earthship in Argentina
Google Translate
A few months ago, our section of Cinema and Architecture showed us the story of Michael Reynolds, a visionary and rebel architect who has driven a number of pilot initiatives around the world, challenging the status quo and promoting a new kind of architecture based on recycling and self-sufficiency.
The "Tol-Haru, Spaceship Earth End of the World" project, located in Ushuaia, Argentina (in a central land donated by the Municipality) - has been completely built from recycled materials and have the ability to calefaccionarse and cooled through wind and solar energy, reuse rainwater and to recycle their own waste.
More details of the new venture Reynolds in South America, after the jump.
The proposal, dubbed "the first self-sustaining housing in Latin America" began its construction in the early days of January this year and has been driven by the actors Mariano Torre and his wife, Elena Roger, members of the NAT Foundation (Nature Applied of Technology), in addition to the backing of the Mayor of Ushuaia, Federico Sciurano.
Reynolds, who is part of Earthship Biotecture , an organization dedicated to fostering such buildings globally, chose this city in the "end of the world" as a symbol of "a new relationship between man and earth, not is so destructive, "says Mariano Torre.
As part of the project, the architect made the city the first
"International Training Academy for building self-sustaining", for 50
students selected by him and a group of 10 Fuegians interested.
The Project
The house was built by 60 people (from different parts of the world) through recycling of tires 333, 3000 aluminum cans, 5,000 plastic bottles and glass bottles 3000. The construction consists of two cylindrical volumes of 50 square meters of glass and a frame that allows the housing to maintain a constant temperature between 18 and 22 degrees, saving electricity.
The builders say that the sustainability of the project is defined
based on the cooling and heating by thermal mass (avoiding the use of
fossil fuels) and construction with natural and recycled materials, and
integrate the collection, filtering and cleaning water rain, sewage
treatment, sustainable production of fruits and vegetables, and energy
supply through wind and solar power.
The actress and singer Elena Roger-developer of the "Spaceship Earth" - said: "For
us it is more important to carry out this project because we see that
cities are completely saturated and I think Ushuaia is time to reverse
that. This construction shows that we can bring to the planet rather than saturate it ".
More details of sustainable experience in the following link.
References: Earthship / Rio Black / Nuevo Diario Web Santiago del Estero
Pictures © Earthship Biotecture
A few months ago, our section of Cinema and Architecture showed us the story of Michael Reynolds, a visionary and rebel architect who has driven a number of pilot initiatives around the world, challenging the status quo and promoting a new kind of architecture based on recycling and self-sufficiency.
The "Tol-Haru, Spaceship Earth End of the World" project, located in Ushuaia, Argentina (in a central land donated by the Municipality) - has been completely built from recycled materials and have the ability to calefaccionarse and cooled through wind and solar energy, reuse rainwater and to recycle their own waste.
More details of the new venture Reynolds in South America, after the jump.
The proposal, dubbed "the first self-sustaining housing in Latin America" began its construction in the early days of January this year and has been driven by the actors Mariano Torre and his wife, Elena Roger, members of the NAT Foundation (Nature Applied of Technology), in addition to the backing of the Mayor of Ushuaia, Federico Sciurano.
© Earthship Biotecture
© Earthship Biotecture
© Earthship Biotecture
The house was built by 60 people (from different parts of the world) through recycling of tires 333, 3000 aluminum cans, 5,000 plastic bottles and glass bottles 3000. The construction consists of two cylindrical volumes of 50 square meters of glass and a frame that allows the housing to maintain a constant temperature between 18 and 22 degrees, saving electricity.
© Earthship Biotecture
The actress and singer Elena Roger-developer of the "Spaceship Earth" - said: "For
us it is more important to carry out this project because we see that
cities are completely saturated and I think Ushuaia is time to reverse
that. This construction shows that we can bring to the planet rather than saturate it ". More details of sustainable experience in the following link.
References: Earthship / Rio Black / Nuevo Diario Web Santiago del Estero
Pictures © Earthship Biotecture
Sunday, February 2, 2014
America’s Fukushima? - Newsweek
America’s Fukushima? - Newsweek
A poster from the recent Occupy Portland protests called Hanford "North America's Fukushima." That isn't just left-wing, anti-corporate fear mongering - a catastrophic accident involving radioactive waste scares the two most prominent Hanford whistle-blowers, nuclear engineer Walter L. Tamosaitis, fired from the site last month, and Donna Busche, a nuclear safety compliance officer who remains employed by URS, a Hanford subcontractor, even as her legal complaints - which include allegations of everything from pressure to downplay safety concerns to sexual harassment - proceed. Unprompted, Busche told Newsweek she is worried about "when 'Fukushima Day' hits."
Last year, nuclear scientist Donald H. Alexander, formerly of the DOE, likened Hanford to the doomed 1986 Challenger mission, a disaster arising from an excess of confidence.
Speaking of the cosmos: Some have suggested we launch our nuclear waste into space, to be swallowed by the sun. That may sound insane, but spend a little time sorting through the Hanford morass, and just about anything other than the status quo will seem appealing.
A poster from the recent Occupy Portland protests called Hanford "North America's Fukushima." That isn't just left-wing, anti-corporate fear mongering - a catastrophic accident involving radioactive waste scares the two most prominent Hanford whistle-blowers, nuclear engineer Walter L. Tamosaitis, fired from the site last month, and Donna Busche, a nuclear safety compliance officer who remains employed by URS, a Hanford subcontractor, even as her legal complaints - which include allegations of everything from pressure to downplay safety concerns to sexual harassment - proceed. Unprompted, Busche told Newsweek she is worried about "when 'Fukushima Day' hits."
Last year, nuclear scientist Donald H. Alexander, formerly of the DOE, likened Hanford to the doomed 1986 Challenger mission, a disaster arising from an excess of confidence.
Speaking of the cosmos: Some have suggested we launch our nuclear waste into space, to be swallowed by the sun. That may sound insane, but spend a little time sorting through the Hanford morass, and just about anything other than the status quo will seem appealing.
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