Environment problems

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Originally Posted by Big Shed

Even Kevin07 is not prepared to risk the Australian economy on their science, yet.

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What I heard was that Kev will use the information to decide on what and how much should be done, not whether to do something or not.

I just came from lunch with a couple of atmospheric scientists where I heard the following. Last year a very large mining/oil company concerned about the possible cost of increasingly wilder weather resulting from global warming on the effects of mining and oil rigs, commissioned an expensive ($50 million) international study on wild weather in north west WA. The study was run forwards and backwards for a number of years. In backwards mode the model predicted past weather severity with very high accuracy. The good news is that the long terms forecast is that there will be a few less wild weather events per year - the bad news is that during the next 20 years all the wild weather events ratchet up one level. Are they sitting around and waiting to decide if this is going to happen - no sir-ee - they are the process of rejigging all their plant designs so that they can still get insurance coverage for this eventuality. Likewise farmers are not talking about it or deciding, they are getting on with it and wondering why the rest of us sit in our city comfort and do nothing.

This is why all the financial organizations are getting into weather derivatives.....

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Originally Posted by BobL

What I heard was that Kev will use the information to decide on what and how much should be done, not whether to do something or not.

I just came from lunch with a couple of atmospheric scientists where I heard the following. Last year a very large mining/oil company concerned about the possible cost of increasingly wilder weather resulting from global warming on the effects of mining and oil rigs, commissioned an expensive ($50 million) international study on wild weather in north west WA. The study was run forwards and backwards for a number of years. In backwards mode the model predicted past weather severity with very high accuracy. The good news is that the long terms forecast is that there will be a few less wild weather events per year - the bad news is that during the next 20 years all the wild weather events ratchet up one level. Are they sitting around and waiting to decide if this is going to happen - no sir-ee - they are the process of rejigging all their plant designs so that they can still get insurance coverage for this eventuality. Likewise farmers are not talking about it or deciding, they are getting on with it and wondering why the rest of us sit in our city comfort and do nothing.

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Bob, isn't that what I said, Kevin is not prepared to do anything yet?

So, the oil & mining companies are preparing for a worst case scenario, prudent management practice.

Your last line confuses me a little, what are the farmers getting on with exactly? (apart from growing corn and canola for ethanol that is!)

I for one am not sitting in city comfort, I am actively involved in country life and probably have a reasonable understanding of farmers and their problems.
I have also planted more trees than I care to remember, both on my own property and on countless other properties. I, and my fellow Landcare members, actively collect seed, propagate trees and plant them as well as do lots of kilometers of direct seeding.
All this because I ignore the problem from my "city comfort", I don't think so!

And just for the record, I am not denigrating scientists or science (I might not have a PhD, but I do have a BSc, so not totally ignorant). I have also been involved with science and scientists long enough that I don't want to place my future, and the future of my children etc entirely in their hands.

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Originally Posted by Big Shed

Your last line confuses me a little, what are the farmers getting on with exactly? (apart from growing corn and canola for ethanol that is!)

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Farmers are amongst the most climate savy people in Australia and world and the know the effects of changes only too well. Many farmers and farming organizations realize the value of and use short and long term climate science in their operations and are also using it in ever increasing levels of sophistication. They generally accept global warming and are looking to manage and even profit from ever changing opportunities out there on the land. My understanding is that farming organizations are well informed about various scenarios and are working on what they can do - after all the north of Oz is predicted to get wetter as well as hotter so faming may have to look further north than it has in the past

That mallee (not acacia) Biofuels info I looked for on the we sure ws tricky to track down but here is something that should get you started
http://crcleme.org.au/Pubs/PubsOther/FOS_June06.pdf

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Originally Posted by Big Shed

Your last line confuses me a little, what are the farmers getting on with exactly? (apart from growing corn and canola for ethanol that is!)

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Farmers are amongst the most climate savy and practically scientific people on the planet. My dealing with Farming organizations is that they value and apply with increasing sophistication both short and long term scientific climate study results. My brief dealings with then is they accept climate change is here and get on with it and continually look for opportunities and to do what they can with what they have. Maybe we should be looking north as the predictions are it will get wetter and hotter.

Sorry I lumped you all in with the generic "us" city comfort people. I have a great deal of respect for country folk, having been one myself for 16 years.

In terms of Kev waiting, he used a term "Metrological" (in relation to the basis for making decisions about GW), which I'm sure 99% of people when they heard it, thought he said "Meteorological" - there is a serious difference between these two words (Google even thinks I mean Meteorological ) and gives me some confidence that whoever is advising him knows something about the right approach to this issue.

Thanks for the link to the mallee for biofuel Bob. I had actually already found it as your reference to acacias intrigued me. I have done a fair bit of reading in this area (not only junk science:D) and I was under the impression that both eucalypt and acacia created a problem where about 5o-60% of the energy produced as ethanol is used to get that ethanol. Not the most efficient way to get your energy, in contrast corn and canola sit around the 20%

One of the papers that discusses this is here if you are interested.

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Originally Posted by silentC

Who told you that? There must be hundreds of examples of man-made solutions to natural problems.
If you're going to take that line, we might as well just join Rod and pretend it's not happening.

Part of the problem I think is that people believe we can stop a natural process - or think that's what people want to try to do. I don't think that's what is being suggested. We can do things to stop making it worse. We may even reverse things a little. But I think most of the effort needs to go into preparing for what's to come, not trying to stop it, because I don't know if we can.

But I am delving a little bit into an area that I should stay away from, because as I've tried to point out to Rod, the whole field is so complicated that there's no way you or I can be across and understand all of the issues and the science involved. I really do believe it is a matter of trusting the scientific community as a whole to come up with solutions. Where else are you going to put your faith?

If they are lying to us for some so far undisclosed motive, well what can we do. The alternative is to do nothing just in case they are lying. But what if they're not?

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Silentc, I find your confidence in scientists touching in its' naivety.:rolleyes:

Let me give you a small example of what scientists are capable of.

I live in a small valley in Central Victoria which was given over to soldier settlers in 1952. The rules governing these soldier settlement blocks were set, amongst other bureaucrats, by the scientists of the Dept of Agriculture. Part of these rules, and they were complex, was that the land had to be cleared at a certain rate, else it would be forefeited. Also, these agricultural scientists (most of them straight of the boat from England:o) would tell them how much superphosphate to apply to this cleared land every year. All this was based on "science". Perhaps you should look at some of these areas now, I'm sure it happened around your GPS reference.
What we have now in this valley is extremely high salinity, they didn't understand the importance of native vegetation on granite soils, land poisoned by superphosphate that won't grow anything commercially. Those same scientists have washed their hands of these poor farmers and accuse them of "poor land management".
Those scientists weren't lying, they were very sincere in their beliefs (facts even), problem was their beliefs were wrong!.

The result is that most of it has been broken up in smaller parcels and non-farmers, city slickers, tree changers if you will, have moved on these smaller parcels. These people are now re-generating the land totally mucked by "science", getting rid of all their non-native pasture grasses, re-vegetating the land, reducing salinity and basically re-establishing a viable eco-system. All this without help from scientists from DPI DNRE or CMA.

So, excuse me if I am rather cynical about science and scientific "solutions.
History is littered with scientific disasters.

Wow.

I go away for a day, and look what happens :)

There's a mob working on solar power called Ausra, I heard about them here or someplace like here, that reckon they could supply the entire US Electricity demand, day and night, with a solar generating facility just 92 miles square:

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"We would have to cover too much land with solar power plants."
Solar is one the most land-efficient sources of clean power we have, using a fraction of the area needed by hydro or wind projects of comparable output. All of America's needs for electric power – the entire US grid, night and day – can be generated with Ausra's current technology using a square parcel of land 92 miles on a side. For comparison, this is less than 1% of America's deserts, less land than currently in use in the U.S. for coal mines, and a tiny fraction of the land currently in agricultural use.

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Why aren't we doing this? Are they liars or something?

http://www.ausra.com/

woodbe.

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I find your confidence in scientists touching in its' naivety

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Now don't go getting personal.

So who are you suggesting will come up with a solution? You? Rod? We really are in trouble if that's the case.

Also, bad decisions made in the past have nothing to do with decisions that are yet to be made. Do you say "well, last time I made a decision, it was the wrong one, so this time I'm not going to make one?" Hopefully they learned from their mistake so they make a better decision next time. I find your attitude that we should just dismiss them because they have been wrong in the past alarming and I'm glad it's not people who hold that view who are making the decisions. What about all the times they have got it right? Do you know anyone who has ever had a bypass, or a stent, or kidney dialysis or an appendectomy?

Have you bothered to take a look at those videos so that you know what you're arguing against? I doubt it. Watch some of them and then give us your appraisal. Explain to me how I'm being naively mislead by what appear to me to be logical and perfectly sound arguments. Tell me who is going to provide the solutions if not the nasty scientists.

All ears...

Just off the coast of Fremantle they're trialling a "tidal" generator. It looks promising. Of course this solution is not going to help countries in central Europe is it?... but then as mentioned before, there is no silver bullet that is going to fix this problem.
There are 3 things Aus has got plenty of; Sunshine, Wind, and Coastline.
There has got to be a solution there to help the planet.

By the way, lets not cross the lines between fuel and feed, because feed will lose out everytime.

Why do people keep ignoring the plain and simple fact we are overpopulating?

Can someone answer that? It does not matter how efficient we become, or how clean our fuels, unless we slow population growth, then reduce it, we are stuffed.

As for personal attacks, they will be removed, so please keep on the topic/s.

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Originally Posted by silentC

Now don't go getting personal.

So who are you suggesting will come up with a solution? You? Rod? We really are in trouble if that's the case.

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Ooh, don't go all sensitive on me now silentc. Who's getting personal now?:(

The expression about heat and kitchens springs to mind, perhaps you should re-read some of your posts to Rod?

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Originally Posted by silentC

Also, bad decisions made in the past have nothing to do with decisions that are yet to be made. Do you say "well, last time I made a decision, it was the wrong one, so this time I'm not going to make one?" Hopefully they learned from their mistake so they make a better decision next time. I find your attitude that we should just dismiss them because they have been wrong in the past alarming and I'm glad it's not people who hold that view who are making the decisions. What about all the times they have got it right? Do you know anyone who has ever had a bypass, or a stent, or kidney dialysis or an appendectomy?

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Bad decisions in the past have no bearing, please! Yes, I do have 2 stents, yes I did ask my cardiologist what his success rate was before I let him touch me. So, if he told me he'd stuffed up a few, I should say, bad decisions in the past don't count, have another go you mug?

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Originally Posted by silentC

Have you bothered to take a look at those videos so that you know what you're arguing against? I doubt it. Watch some of them and then give us your appraisal.

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You are making assumptions here, not very scientific...........

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Originally Posted by silentC

Explain to me how I'm being naively mislead by what appear to me to be logical and perfectly sound arguments. Tell me who is going to provide the solutions if not the nasty scientists.

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You really are a past master at twisting people's words around to suit your own argument. Tell me where I said where you are being mislead (naively or otherwise) by logical and sound arguments. I merely stated, as you quoted above, that "I find you confidence in scientists touching in its' naivety"

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Originally Posted by silentC

All ears...

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Tempting silentc, tempting.....................

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Originally Posted by Big Shed

Thanks for the link to the mallee for biofuel Bob. I had actually already found it as your reference to acacias intrigued me. I have done a fair bit of reading in this area (not only junk science:D) and I was under the impression that both eucalypt and acacia created a problem where about 5o-60% of the energy produced as ethanol is used to get that ethanol. Not the most efficient way to get your energy, in contrast corn and canola sit around the 20%

One of the papers that discusses this is here if you are interested.

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Yes that is a very interesting paper and agree that using today's technology - a lot of energy is needed to get energy out of eucalypt/mallee. The immediate difference is you don't need to use prime farming real estate or bucket loads of water to grow the crop. There is an anti-biofuels argument going around that eucalypts need a lot of water. Some do but many can grow on very little and what's more appealing still is that certain types can grow in brakkish/salty water. A lot of research is going into identifying the best type of mallee for specific conditions.

My understanding is that there are new (currently expensive) enzymes that can extract the energy from mallee to 8X the input energy . Research is needed to bring the enzyme cost down.

I may sound like a fan of biofuels but only see them as a minor player for use by trucks, planes and heavy equipment - every otehr short haul vehicle should be electric or H2 based.

Cheers

Thanks Bob, interesting.

I think we all have our own hobby horse re alternative energy sources. One of my favoutites and one that is sadly underexploited in OZ is geothermal energy. Not only the systems where you pump water down a hole in the earth on to hot rocks and the generated steam drives a turbine, but also the "backyard" systems with buried pipes and heat exchangers for heating and cooling houses. Much more popular in the States than here.