Fair Use Note

WARNING for European visitors: European Union laws require you to give European Union visitors information about cookies used on your blog. In many cases, these laws also require you to obtain consent. As a courtesy, we have added a notice on your blog to explain Google's use of certain Blogger and Google cookies, including use of Google Analytics and AdSense cookies. You are responsible for confirming this notice actually works for your blog, and that it displays. If you employ other cookies, for example by adding third party features, this notice may not work for you. Learn more about this notice and your responsibilities.

Thomas Paine

To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Energy

STUTTGART, GERMANY - MARCH 12: Anti-nuclear a...Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Because so much energy is spent combating 'Anthropogenic Global Warming' as opposed to dealing with 'Poisoning our World' and our immediate surroundings in air, water and soil, the Climate in Contention circus rules everyone's attention. Then there is the effect of taxation on the cost of energy - which I reduce to an insufferable and unworkable global control and tax on that most elemental of man's tools : Fire. The hubris is astonishing ; as is the potential for graft and corruption.

The carbon tax that ate Australia    Anthony Cox
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/113676.html
The carbon tax has inflamed the old conflicts between progressives and conservatives – between those who favour government-imposed solutions, and the free-market capitalists or those who simply mistrust big government.
“Every dollar raised by the carbon price will be dedicated to supporting households with any price impacts, and supporting businesses through the transition to a clean energy economy.”

This is impossible. Under the “Fast Start Finance” commitment from Cancun, which Combet announced, $599 million will be given to the IPCC under Australia’s combating AGW obligations. This $599 million is on top of the commitment made by Australia at Cancun to give 10% of revenue raised from a carbon tax to the IPCC. Then there will be the bureaucratic expansion to run the tax, checking compliance and eligibility criteria; these administration costs apparently run at 50% for the Australian government. All this probably explains why Combet’s boss, PM Gillard, is saying “more than 50 per cent of money raised [from the carbon pricing scheme] will go to assisting households.”
Spain’s experiment with a carbon tax and subsidisation of wind and solar resulted in 2.2 jobs lost for every green job bought by subsidies. Italy fared even worse with 4.8 jobs lost for every green job bought by subsidy. Similar results occurred in Germany and Denmark.

In 2009 the then NSW Labour government commissioned Frontier Modelling to analyse the effect the 5% ETS proposed by the then Rudd government would have on the Australian GDP. The modelling showed a $2 trillion reduction in the Australian economy directly linked to the effect of the ETS by 2050; that’s $50 billion per annum; enough to pay for the NBN.

The shrinkage occurs because green energy is both far more expensive than conventional energy and does not meet the society’s needs. California is the classic example of this. California’s sweet ride with green energy began in 1973-4 with the first oil shock; this experiment gained momentum in the 1980s when the US government offered big tax breaks for wind power. After 40 years of massive investment and cutting edge technology in wind and solar California today obtains only 2.4% and 0.4% from those 2 sources. As for moral leadership, despite banning coal mining California still receives nearly 10% of its power from coal, all imported. California’s dominant energy source is gas.( Obtaining a poisonous non-renewable fuel and destroying the aquifer simultaneously...in a desert. )
That proof that a carbon tax represents a massive shift towards big government lies in the already available details in the government’s National Greenhouse Emissions Reporting website [NGER].

NGER lists all the corporations currently obligated to report their emissions of CO2; this obligation is based on a threshold which only catches the largest of businesses; this threshold will be lowered or non-existent with the advent of a carbon tax after the Greens gain power on the 1st July 2011, so the total revenue collectable from a carbon tax will be much larger the NGER indicates at present.

But that's not all. The NGER structures the carbon tax as a DOUBLE tax applying both to the production of energy [Scope 1] and the use of that energy [Scope 2].

The figures are staggering. Scope 1 emissions are just under 341 million tonnes. Because the use in Scope 2 will approximate the emissions from Scope 1 another 341 million tonnes can be added for a total of 682 million tonnes of emissions. The Greens preferred CO2 tax rate is $45 per tonne; at that rate the carbon tax will extract $15 billion from the Australian economy per year. And that’s before agriculture and petrol are slugged.
                                                                                        Australian Unemployment Sept 2008 - Sept 2009

Beyond Zero Emissions
The Australian unemployment rate between Septe...Image via Wikipedia



Power Plant: One Small Leaf Could Electrify an Entire Home
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Power-Plant-One-Small-Leaf-Could-Electrify%20an-Entire-Home-72156.html?wlc=1308496391
Scientists at MIT have created what may be the first practical artificial leaf -- a device about the size of a playing card capable of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen and storing the energy in a fuel cell. Placing the leaf it in a single gallon of water in sunlight could produce enough electricity to supply a house in developing countries with its daily electricity requirement, according to researchers.

Kevin Rudd on screen in Federation Square, Mel...Image via Wikipedia
A Pelamis wave energy converter during the fin...Image via Wikipedia
Our global nuclear power system - including structures, financial investments, infrastructures, institutions, networks, jobs, dynamics, language, thought patterns, networks, and belief systems, has evolved from what Nobel physicist Murray Gell-Mann calls a Frozen Accident, which begins with an event, say the NPT organized around a central role for the IAEA. It generates widespread, diverse consequences, bifurcations, deviations and path-dependent processes that are reinforced through positive feedback and result in a “frozen lock-in state” which can dominate an entire system and shape history. The way a path develops is not inevitable and could have turned out differently.

The NPT is tightly organized around nuclear power, which is a TRAP –a Toxic RadioActive Proliferator. NPT Groupthink is still driven by archaic ideas, beliefs, interests, language, symbols and images that are frozen in consciousness and eclipse deeper understanding and constrain wiser actions. As the third pillar of nuclear energy keeps knocking down the other two pillars – non-proliferation and disarmament - might the system designed to prevent proliferation paradoxically provoke proliferation?

Whether we can collectively break out of these traps is a matter of consciousness and demystifying ourselves from nuclear myths and illusions. To free ourselves, we must recognize the ways in which we are trapped.

The Nuclear Power TRAP 
Framing nuclear energy as a right creates an artificial value and right to demand. It manipulates desire and seduces many leaders and citizens into a dangerous lifestyle, devoting precious resources to creating an infrastructure harmful to their financial, health, political and environmental interests.


Mendo Coast Current


Nuclear Information and Resource Service

NukeFree.org


Renewable Energy Syndicator

Repower America


Map shows nuclear power plants in GermanyImage via Wikipedia
New concept could harness the power of ocean waves

Reegle : Search Engine for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency 


Renewable Energy & Non Renewable Energy - Eco 20/20
HOME - the Movie


Out of options

A surprising culprit in the nuclear crisis


Japan’s reactors are “light water” reactors, whose safety depends on an uninterrupted power supply to circulate water quickly around the hot core. A light water system is not the only way to design a nuclear reactor. But because of the way the commercial nuclear power industry developed in its early years, it’s virtually the only type of reactor used in nuclear power plants today. Even though there might be better technologies out there, light water is the one that utility companies know how to build, and that governments have historically been willing to fund.
Economists call this problem “technological lock-in”: The term refers to the process by which one new technology can prevail over another for no good reason other than circumstance and inertia.

US Spent Nuclear Fuel Largest Concentration Of Radioactivity On Planet

US has 71,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel that is not properly protected

 
The CANDU Bruce Nuclear Generating Station is ...Image via Wikipedia

Enhanced by Zemanta

No comments:

Post a Comment