The climate change debate continues.

[Bruce Tuncks]

There has been a backlash against council amalgamations spacey. People have found they do nothing good despite the promises. Big councils are worse than small ones except for the big council CEO who makes obscene money.

I don't think they will succeed, but I support those WA separatists.

[spacesailor]

Dubbo has taken the Wellington council. 

BUT

will anything good come out of that amalgamation ? .

spacesailor

[old man emu]

9 hours ago, spacesailor said:

will anything good come out of that amalgamation

Not when you consider the traditional rivalry between Dubbo and Wellington.

[spacesailor]

They took the council hardware straight away !, will they sell off all the ex council land & buildings next.

They will strip and dump the remains of Wellington  !  WERE .

spacesailor

[Jerry_Atrick]

We had two councils merge here.. Instead of one solvent and one insolvent council, we now have one larger and insolvent council..

[Old Koreelah]

The NSW government has so many regulations and guidelines for local councils to follow that pretty much the only power they have is to hire a GM and to set the structure of staff that GM hires.
Councillors are restricted in what questions they can ask of candidates for GM and cannot insist they actually live in the shire. As a result, many council employees live outside the community they are well paid to serve- effectively taking local money and spending it somewhere else.

[Jerry_Atrick]

It is very similar here, with the exception being they are really poorly paid (except the management team, of course). The result is people live outside of your area, are paid a pittance and don't give a poop about things.

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

We had the highest-paid council CEO ever, about $360,000 plus a $140,000 car.

He did stupid things and then was charged with sexual offences against female staff. This has cost squillions in legal fees so far.

I think of him when I pass the big empty parking-building that council paid for, and when I get my $1200 rates bill.

[spacesailor]

IF that was a wage earner, on sexual charges, he would be in jail very quickly.

Two tier justice in Australia, & the rich just pay a small ( by their standards ) fine.

With perhaps community service fot the bad ones !.

spacesailor

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

Same in almost every country on earth, Spacey..  Its the golden rule - he who has the gold, rules...

 

Bruce, our new council has (inherited from both original councils) a £10m/year rent and maintenance bill of buildings it has leased and never have been occupied and never will. This was pre-pandemic, and I sent them a letter asking if they had thought about sub-letting the offices - even cheaply/at a loss - to both stimulate businesses to set up and employ local people as well as reduce their net outgoings at the same time (even by more, because the sub-letters would pay council tax - aka rates). I never got a response.

[Jerry_Atrick]

OK - back to climate change -  Financial services companies have taken notice, and now industry is:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/general-motors-to-stop-making-diesel-and-gas-vehicles-by-2035/ar-BB1dbif0 Note, they are also moving to renewables to power their factories.

 

Well, one obstacle to mass adoption of electric cars is the time to charge, right? I mean, to fill a tank with petrol/diesel takes what - 5 minutes and electric charging takes 40? Well, think again:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/19/electric-car-batteries-race-ahead-with-five-minute-charging-times

 

OK - this could be just herd mentality - enough people spout fear and scaremongering about the climate, and people will follow and buy stuff that is lower in its carbon footprint.. Well, even if that is the case, it can't be a bad thing, can it. Also, they get better performance, cheaper running costs and better tech..

 

Yes, there were some predictions that ice caps would already be melted. There are always going to be more fundamental calls to action in any camp. Look at how vegans storm farmers in Victoria. But the consensus of scientists were not so aggressive in their original expectations and gues what - they ice sheets are melting faster than they predicted: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/10/greenland-ice-sheet-melting-seven-times-faster-than-in-1990s

 

I haven't had time to go through pm's links, but there have been articles of the integrity of them, even to the point that they were not authorised to use the presidential seal (or a couple of them weren't).. Just because that may be the case of course does not mean their content is misinformed.. 

Anyway, ScoMo can build his coal/gas fired pants... Trump ended his presidency by openeing up an arctic wilderness to drilling, which in years gone by would have attracted all the oil majors and they could expect nice lease fees - not so now: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/us-holds-lease-sale-alaskas-arctic-refuge-75093399

 

The world is changing - people are voting with their wallets... If the existing industries had the evidence to debunk the claims, then they would be pushing hard as it wold be a lot chaper than all the investment in R&D and retooling/re-skilling, etc. I guess they can't debunk the science... Yes, the eath follows natural climate variations - the evidence is though, that human's contribution is tipping the scale to increase (or at least create sufficient divergence) to cause some real shorter-term problems.

Edited January 29, 2021 by Jerry_Atrick

[Yenn]

Electric vehicles do not necessarily mean less carbon. If the electricity is produced at a big power station and conducted a long distance, where is the saving, unless it is a solar or wind power station and we know that our pollies are not pushing that option enough.

I don't know if climate change is real, but every year seems to be getting drier and this year, which the Met office has called a La Nina year, is one of the driest Spring, Summers we have had. My records since 1988 show this Jan to be the fifth driest in that time and about 120mm less than average. All of last year was way below average. There may be a silver lining to the clouds. It is actually drizzling rain now and I can't see the sun, Whoopee.

My excuse for the met. office getting it wrong is that La Nina has turned out to be a lesbian.

[octave]

Just now, Yenn said:

Electric vehicles do not necessarily mean less carbon. If the electricity is produced at a big power station and conducted a long distance, where is the saving, unless it is a solar or wind power station and we know that our pollies are not pushing that option enough.

You have to compare the production of the fuel for EV vs ICE     An EV charged purely by a coal powered generator must of course account for the carbon production required to fuel it up.   What the fossil fuel advocates usually leave out is that the carbon produced by by burning a litre of fuel is only a part of the story.  The oil has to be drilled for and transported often considerable distances.   The fuel has to be distilled which I understand requires large amounts electricity.   I have read (but not fact checked) that if you took the amount of electricity required to refine 1 litre of fuel and used that to charge an EV, the EV would travel further than the car burning 1 litre of fuel. Of course it is also necessary to account for carbon inputs required to make an EV battery.

 

Here is an interesting video that analyzes the emissions of various vehicles it also considers the emissions created in different US states with greatly different power mixes. This video suggests that even an EV charged via coal power is still lower in emissions.

 

Are Electric Cars Worse For The Environment? Myth Busted

 

A point to be made is that in most parts of Australia there is a mix of energy sources.  In Tasmania you would be almost exclusively charging your EV from renewables. in other states there would be a range of generating methods but every state has some renewables and the proportion is growing and will continue to grow.      An ICE car is at its cleanest when you drive it out of the caryard and as it ages it gets less efficient and dirtier.  An EV will get cleaner as the grid continues to get cleaner.

[spacesailor]

And !.

Not an Uranium atom is to be used in Australia. 

Better not have an " impact " winter.

No sunlight, no crops ripening, and too cold to transport coal.

Leaving No electricity, to keep us warm.

spacesailor

[onetrack]

The Norwegians have an endless supply of hydroelectricity, with many landowners installing their own private hydro plants, powered by the copious amounts of water in their lands, falling from height.

As a result, they're in the box seat with EV's - and in addition, they get huge tax advantages when they buy EV's. So everything is in their favour as regards going over to 100% EV's.

[spacesailor]

BUT 

In a " contact winter " that lovely water will be ICE ,.

So No it won,t meet the criteria of survival for the Llong long winter of No sunlight.

Europe had one miner cold winter when volcanic ashh dimmed the sun for an extended period.

spacesailor

[onetrack]

The Norwegians aren't stupid, and they know their hydro-power systems can be badly affected by ice.

But they have installed major power transmission lines from other countries, whereby they can import power from those other countries - who are obviously still able to generate power via wind and unfrozen hydro systems - and probably even from nuclear, coal and gas - which possibly doesn't sit well with the greenie Norwegians. But hey, when you need power, you need power!

 

There's an interesting study in the link below, on the Norwegian hydro system industry. It's a very involved industry, and there's a huge number of factors to be considered before anyone builds one.

Unlike here - in Norway, you can own a river - or share river ownership with others.

The River Owners are a strong force in the hydro industry there, because they retain a lot of decision-making power, as to whether a hydro power system is installed.

And of course, they have to go through a very involved environmental approval system, which is probably more stringent than any enviro approval here.

 

https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/7/1117/pdf

 

Edited January 31, 2021 by onetrack

[red750]

I was watching Tucker Carlson on the Fox News (disinformation) channel on Foxtel. (Don't usually watch it but my wife is addicted.)

 

Talk about hypocrisy! He went on and on for more than 10 minutes about John Kerry using a private jet to go to Iceland. Not one mention of Trump's 757 with gold toilet fittings.

[pmccarthy]

Trump has never claimed to be an environmentalist, Kerry has. I saw today that Germany is back on coal and oil at present as weather conditions have shut down their renewables.

[nomadpete]

I've got no problem with that. Coal, gas and oil are sensible backups for occasional use.

 

All our present coal fired plants rely on other coal or gas fired backup when a coal fired plant somewhere is unable to supply the grid.

 

Whatever the main sources of power are, there must be some form of backup waiting in the wings, to fill those periods of shortfall.

It's not just renewables that sometimes have outages. Coal and gas plants often fail to supply, too.

 

[spacesailor]

  "  Kerry has. I saw today that Germany is back on coal and oil at present as weather conditions have shut down their renewables. "

Told you so. then comes the heavy snow, then Ice, and before you know it the rail, lines are blocked. 

so

No coal either !.

spacesailor

[Marty_d]

Germany sits on an average of 27% renewables with various peaks - first quarter of 2020 was 52%.  
The USA is around 11%.

Add to that the USA uses almost twice as much energy per capita than Germany, 12,154 KwH / person / year vs 6,306 KwH / person / year.

 

So it's going to take a bit more than temporary dependence on coal & oil for anyone in the US to be pointing fingers at Germany, or anywhere else for that matter.

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

Also, remember, in the wake of Fukishima, Germany started to decommission their nuclear power generation.. This was probably one of the worst knee-jerk reactions of the Merkel era, as Germany is both Seismically stable and has very little risk of a Tsunami. And it meant, they quilckly became dependent on coal again. If they kept their nuclear, they would have relaitvely safe and emission free power generation (of course, the waste is something that has to be dealt with, but we can reprocess it..).

 

This article sums it up: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/germany-wrong-to-ditch-nuclear-power-cqmdwj7n2

 

So, yes, Germany now does rely on coal/oils when things go awry.. but politics rather than science means it needs to.

[old man emu]

1.   Democracy - Majority makes the rules

2   Ycarcomed - Minority makes the rules.

 

It would seem that we are living in a Number 2, with all that implies.

 

 

[nomadpete]

It took me a while, scratching my head. Finally got it!