Atheist knowledge

[Bruce]

The pumped water storage idea only goes to illustrate our failure to produce a cheap battery storage system.

 

There are many losses with the water storage setup, and you need the right geography. Compressing air would seem to be a good idea too until you look at the losses in detail. Here on the farm, wood-fired steam appears attractive for non solar/wind periods, but alas you need an attendant whose wages swamp any savings.

 

 

[onetrack]

pmccarthy - Coal is well and truly on the way out - the coal miners may fight it, but it's like the horse and carriage owners of 1899 saying these new fangled IC engines are just a flash in the pan.

 

It's time we turned to refining the techniques and the products used in renewable energy, and becoming a world leader in the field.

 

The CSIRO's UltraBattery is just the first step, we need to pour a heap of money into further research - because I can tell you, there's tens of dozens of corporations and probably the same number of universities around the world, going hell for leather on battery and renewable energy research - and we don't want to be the ones buying their technology at great expense - when we could be selling ours to them.

 

What is annoying, is every other nation and Govt (America, particularly) is throwing money at these type of researchers - while our Govt is cutting funding to the CSIRO and universities, and and also reducing private research grants. It's as short-sighted a policy as anyone could produce.

 

The investment of a few hundred million in this area would have a return in the multiple tens of billions. But pollies tell us there's no money. However, we always seem to be able to find billions in foreign aid, so the bottom feeders in 3rd world countries can keep reproducing like rabbits.

 

Do a check on the previous CSIRO inventions that are still bringing in big $$$'s in royalties. The AAS machine, WiFi, plastic banknotes, even Aeroguard. About 100 worthwhile CSIRO inventions in total, just from my faulty memory.

 

 

[Litespeed]

And do not forget we subsidize the fossil fuel industry billion dollars a year directly and indirectly. And they still rarely pay any tax when the make billions. It would often be cheaper for us to not mine it at all.

 

 

[Marty_d]

Back to coal for a moment, the following was released by Greg Evans today (my bolding):

Only the green movement and their mouthpieces such as the Australia Institute (TAI) would be able to contend shutting down Australia’s second largest export industry would have limited economic impact. Annual coal exports at $38 billion in 2014/15 are almost twice those of beef, wheat, wool and wine combined so under their logic eliminating those great industries would also have negligible consequences.

 

This is a nonsense, as the contribution to national income from coal exports improves the living standards of all Australians and the taxes and royalties contributed by the coal sector assist in the provision of vital economic and social infrastructure. There are also 44,000 direct jobs in the coal sector and including related jobs the number is around 150,000 and the majority of those are in regional areas. The TAI should travel to the Hunter Valley and Bowen basin coal towns and promote their economic thesis that the coal industry doesn’t matter.

Would that be Greg Evans the television presenter, who used to host Perfect Match, or Greg Evans from KPMG, who is their global mining Mergers & Aquisitions leader?

 

Yeah... he'd have no reason to support that particular industry, would he!

 

 

[bexrbetter]

And do not forget we subsidize the fossil fuel industry billion dollars a year directly and indirectly. And they still rarely pay any tax when the make billions. It would often be cheaper for us to not mine it at all.

... and yet here we are with citizens the second wealthiest in the world, and the bulk of that wealth coming from either subsidised mining or agriculture.

 

Seems they know what they are doing, despite all those experts on Facebook and their "World saving in 15 words" memes.

 

Yeah... he'd have no reason to support that particular industry, would he!

Is the article true or not?

 

 

[pmccarthy]

The facts are the facts, no good attacking the source.

 

Australia's standard of living is underpinned by mining, always has been and will be for the foreseeable future. It built our cities and many of our country towns, including all the ones around where I live.

 

We can dream of a different future including flying cars but we don't destroy the existing cars in the meantime. Metallurgical coal is used to make steel and cement, the two main inputs to civilised society. Without it we would be living in caves and using stone tools....but wait, they come from mining too, don't they?

 

 

[turboplanner]

Interesting that someone from Edison would be checking me out after my post #3567

 

 

[pmccarthy]

Probably that key word Tesla. The feud continues!

 

 

[Marty_d]

Is the article true or not?

The facts are the facts, no good attacking the source.

A better question would be "Does the article give ALL the facts?"

 

In fact an even better one would be "Given that coal WILL be phased out worldwide, what industries will be replacing coal mining?"

 

I don't know if the article is true, given I don't have the whole article or hours of free time to fact check every statement. However I do know it's incomplete.

 

For example, this quote: "Annual coal exports at $38 billion in 2014/15 are almost twice those of beef, wheat, wool and wine combined"

 

I would be asking the following questions:

 

• What are the costs to the entire planet, if coal use is not phased out, and AGW causes temperature rise of over 2 degrees?
   
  
• What were the total amount of subsidies, write-downs, government-funded supporting infrastructure, discounts and other benefits did the coal industry use in that year, compared with the other industries?
   
  
• What is the amount of carbon emitted, both in the extraction of the coal and its eventual burning, compared to the other industries?
   
  
• What tax, royalties, revenues and other income did the government receive from the coal industry, compared with the other industries?
   
  

 

There are probably a heap more questions but you get the gist. A cherry-picked article written by someone who has a vested interest in the continuation of the industry is not really a good recommendation for keeping on pulling it out of the ground.

 

 

[pmccarthy]

Coal cannot be "phased out" at least not in the lifetime of me or my grandchildren. It provides base load power around the world. One company in India mines more coal than all of Australia. The iron ore exported by Australia, Brazil and other countries, and produced domestically in other countries, is turned into steel using coal. We might wish otherwise, but it will be essential for a very long time.

 

 

[onetrack]

pmccarthy - The thing is, our resources in the ground are finite. You keep pulling them out, there's a point where there's very little of them left. What is more concerning, though, is man's ability to keep mining on a bigger and better scale every decade.

 

When W.A.'s hematite iron ore reserves were assessed by the Americans in the early 1960's, they deemed those Hematite reserves were enough to supply the whole world for over 300 years.

 

In the early 1960's, the biggest dumptruck was around 50-60 tonnes. Now, 400 tonners are de rigeur. The biggest trucks in the 1960's were loaded by the biggest front end loaders of the day - "monstrous" loaders weighing 80 tonnes

 

Today, 800 tonne hydraulic excavators loading trucks are all the go. The likes of Rio Tinto and BHP-Billiton quadrupled iron ore production in the early 2000's, then they have quadrupled production again.

 

They do that vastly-increased mining production today, with less employees than ever. Trucks and excavators and trains are all computer-controlled, they are operated from 2500kms away, with only a few maintenance people actually on site.

 

Now, there's talk about those massive Hematite reserves being totally mined out within 30 years, at the current rate of massive extraction.

 

The same thing happened in America. Massive WW2 demands for steel and iron, saw the Americans Hematite reserves almost totally exhausted. Hematite is the highly-sought-after iron ore, grading 65% iron.

 

The Americans went into panic mode in the late 1940's and the U.S. Govt offered huge rewards to anyone who could develop a new iron-supply source. America lived and died on iron and steel production in that era.

 

A clever American professor (Dr E.W. Davis) perfected a way of extracting iron from Taconite in 1955. Taconite contains only 25-30% iron and the iron is difficult to extract from the Taconite. Taconite was thrown aside as waste, for 80 or more years.

 

However, once Davis perfected an economic method of recovering the iron from the Taconite in 1955, the American steel industry breathed a sigh of relief, they weren't going to run out of iron after all.

 

The massive waste dumps that had already been mined, provided a cheap source of Taconite - but when they were all gone, the Americans had to mine Taconite in the ground.

 

As you could imagine, mining Taconite with 25% iron was a whole lot more costly, and involved mining 2.6 times the amount of rock, to get the same tonnage of iron, as BHP-Billiton and RioTinto got from the high grade West Australian iron ore.

 

Then, the next stage was, the clever Asians started installing lots of electric-arc mini furnaces. The EA furnace is much more efficient than a coal-fired blast furnace, and therefore much lower cost in operation.

 

In addition, the Asian steel mills started to use a lot of scrap steel. Scrap steel was cheap, and it is of a known quality. It's actually necessary to utilise a percentage of scrap steel with every smelt, to improve the end product..

 

What is rarely understood, is that iron and steel improves every time it's smelted, so using scrap steel really doesn't rate the big smear that many people give it. The old jibe about, "made out of scrap steel" is a jibe made from lack of knowledge.

 

The Asian steel mills started to kill the American steel mills. Cheap Asian labour helped. The massive American steel industry started to collapse. It's now only a quarter the size it was, and all the old huge American blast furnaces are virtually gone.

 

The Americans have now turned to mini electric furnaces and steel mills that utilise 100% scrap steel. They can take in a specialised steel order one week, and basically produce the specialised product, to order, the following week.

 

The coal industry is tied in with, and following the iron ore/steel industry lead. Underground Coal mining has always been hazardous, it has killed multiple tens of thousands of miners, due to gas explosions, gassing, rock falls, and lung diseases.

 

So the coal industry went over to low-cost, lower-health-risk, open-pit mining. They went over to massive mining shovels weighing thousands of tonnes that stripped back and destroyed thousands of hectares of land, on an annual basis.

 

It really is a very destructive industry. They try to reduce the huge areas mined by going underground again with mechanised equipment - but once again, going underground is costly, with the value of the equipment, and the distance to transport the product.

 

What I am trying to point out with this long-winded post, is that the day of coal is finished, because it's linked to dirty, inefficient blast furnaces and steel mills - and dirty, inefficient coal-fired power stations. We've all seen the pollution in Beijing, it's shocking.

 

Coal is slowly withering on the vine because it is opposed by a large percentage of people, and that percentage is increasing. Add in the opposition when coal mines want to destroy large areas of productive farmland, and the opposition increases.

 

Recent large natural gas discoveries in America (mostly from fracking) have nearly destroyed the American coal industry. The coal industry in America is only a shadow of what it once was.

 

Natural gas is clean, its efficient, it doesn't destroy huge areas of the countryside - and we have oodles of it, and we now have all the infrastructure in place, to produce it in vast quantities.

 

The only thing we haven't sorted properly is the right pricing structure, and the increased amount of the necessary piping required, to get it from where it's produced, to where it's needed.

 

I'm coming from the position where I have been a mining contractor, have owned an open-pit gold mine, have excavated a large number of open pits for various minerals, had a grandfather who was a coal miner (and who lost a leg in a rockfall), and who lost an uncle to gassing in a coal mine.

 

I don't have a "total snout" on mining, as the stupid Greens do, but we must balance our mining with the view to "whole-of-life-cycle" costs, and the need to balance the requirements of keeping good (food) productive land untouched by mining, and by ensuring our minerals aren't mined relentlessly, purely for fat shareholders benefit, and solely for corporate benefit, while our precious resources are mined at an astonishing rate - and in numerous cases, virtually given away, while the nation only gets a pittance in royalties and taxes. The corporations are masters at tax law manipulation, they can structure their corporate setups so they pay only a pittance in tax, as we have seen recently.

 

Coal mining is on the nose, the writing is on the wall for it, it is a dying industry, and the opposition to it, will only increase from here on in.

 

 

[Yenn]

Onetrack. No doubt you are correct, but our politicians havn't woken up to it yet. We still have to have Adani in Qld and everything you said at the end of your post applies directly to Adani.

 

 

[bexrbetter]

The thing is, our resources in the ground are finite. .

Well the whole planet is only so large of course, but fact is there's hundreds of generations of resources there yet. We were going to be out of oil by the year 2000, apparently. The only thing that happened was the price went up to slow down consumption ...

 

Coal mining is on the nose, the writing is on the wall for it, it is a dying industry, and the opposition to it, will only increase from here on in.

It will slow down some but will never be replaced in yours or your children's lifetimes, along with being a main source of much needed steel production and electricity.

 

Unless you are willing to take something along the line of a 50% cut in your current living standards, then you will not give up coal.

 

We've all seen the pollution in Beijing, it's shocking.

Gold mining you say? I wouldn't have a clue about it, and I wouldn't have a clue about places like Kalgoorlie or the the similar place you were probably established so i don't comment about those places. In return, please don't pretend you know about places like Beijing, 'cause you don't, thanks.

 

 

[onetrack]

Bex, I'm willing to take a bet, in the couple of decades I'm probably left with, I will see the day when coal mining will be relegated to an industry of no consequence - simply due to our world-class reserves of natural gas, the second largest in the world - and to a massive upsurge in solar power harvesting.

 

 

[onetrack]

Yenn, I personally don't believe the Adani mine will go ahead. For two reasons, the boss of Adani appears to be a bit of a corporate cowboy - and because a couple of local banks have stated point blank, they are refusing to bankroll the project.

 

Gina Rinehart has withdrawn her support and her money from the Adani project, she knows the writing is on the wall for coal.

 

In addition, there is a growing trend amongst financiers around the world to refuse finance to projects that have incurred serious amounts of opposition, both local and world opposition.

 

 

[2tonne]

I agree with onetrack, the pollution in Beijing is shocking. Don't know which Beijing you are talking about Bex, the mythical one with clean air maybe.

 

 

[onetrack]

Hey Bex - are you strictly following the Party line? - "Pollution? What pollution??"

 

Beijing air pollution | South China Morning Post

 

 

[turboplanner]

We were going to be out of oil by the year 2000, apparently. The only thing that happened was the price went up to slow down consumption ...

M. King Hubbard's 1954 was for oil production to PEAK in 2000; here's the bell curve from his notes. His prediction was remarkably accurate, missing by only a few years.

 

He predicted that prices would go up in cycles afeter peak oil, as it became more expensive to pump from deeper wells, and the increased technology required to extract the last reserves.

 

This still gives us a comfortable margin to come up with oil-free technology before oil runs out; in fact it's likely that a lot of oil, gas and coal will just be left in the ground as useless material.

 

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[M61A1]

The facts are the facts, no good attacking the source.

Australia's standard of living is underpinned by mining, always has been and will be for the foreseeable future. It built our cities and many of our country towns, including all the ones around where I live.

 

We can dream of a different future including flying cars but we don't destroy the existing cars in the meantime. Metallurgical coal is used to make steel and cement, the two main inputs to civilised society. Without it we would be living in caves and using stone tools....but wait, they come from mining too, don't they?

Not to mention all those nasty chemicals/minerals used in the manufacture of batteries and all the plastics (petroleum products) encasing almost everything we use.

 

I love the idea of renewables, but it's not renewable just because someone else made the battery and solar panel you're using.

 

 

[M61A1]

Yenn, I personally don't believe the Adani mine will go ahead. For two reasons, the boss of Adani appears to be a bit of a corporate cowboy - and because a couple of local banks have stated point blank, they are refusing to bankroll the project.Gina Rinehart has withdrawn her support and her money from the Adani project, she knows the writing is on the wall for coal.

 

In addition, there is a growing trend amongst financiers around the world to refuse finance to projects that have incurred serious amounts of opposition, both local and world opposition.

The "lawfare" tactics being used by the greens here ought to be considered criminal.

 

The hypocrisy and irony of these people using all the modern facilities provided by mining and the petroleum industry to shut down the industry that provides it, is just disturbing.

 

 

[Bruce]

Good point M6. I would like to see that principle widely applied. If only we could provide habitats suitable for groups based on their would-be policies , the greens would live in an uncomfortable place huh. And the creationists in the next habitat would even be worse off. Creationists couldn't even have round wheels because the Biblical value of Pi is wrong.

 

 

[Marty_d]

You can bash the Greens as much as you like, but the sad fact is that they're the only party who sees the environment as a priority.

 

Some of their ideas are crazy, but then again, look at the likes of Cory Bernardi, George Christensen and Peter Dutton in the LNP. Totally certifiable but yet in government.

 

 

[M61A1]

And do not forget we subsidize the fossil fuel industry billion dollars a year directly and indirectly. And they still rarely pay any tax when the make billions. It would often be cheaper for us to not mine it at all.

How about quoting some reliable facts and figures from some reputable sources......

 

 

[Bruce]

I think the Greens are the biggest threat to the environment ever. Their opposition to nuclear power AND their refusal to see population growth as a threat make them enemies of the environment.

 

Nuclear power sure has its problems, but it is better than coal and gas by a country mile. And it is a baseload source, which solar and wind are not.

 

And as for population growth, I am at a complete loss to understand why they are not against this. Maybe Marty you can help here, just to explain their thinking, I'm not asking you to defend it.

 

The Pauline Hanson party is more appealing to me than the Greens these days, but they have at least one climate-change denier in their ranks, so that qualifies as crazy too .

 

 

[facthunter]

Scarce items in todays world. M61A1

 

Bruce, I was pretty pro nuclear once and keep reviewing the latest "ideas"........... . The Sun is Nuclear and no one has a monopoly on it Right NOW you could go somewhere inland and be totally independent for an affordable amount of money and NO GRID. and it keeps getting better and cheaper. Batteries are a game changer and there are other ways , Pumping water. hot salt . Nuclear can't be turned up and down that quickly. Gas is probably quicker to fire up, but only a stop gap. Batteries are instant. Wave power ,Tidal You only need the will to do it .Nev