The Australian Parliament recently passed legislation giving ‘law enforcement’ agencies considerably greater powers that are claimed to be necessary to combat the ‘Islamic State’ terrorism threat. Prime Minister Abbott also addressed the United Nations General Assembly late in September on the threat to humanity posed by the rise of the group and pledged Australia’s assistance in a united effort to control the threat. Mark Kenny, reporting for Fairfax, reported Abbott’s speech, on how Australia would shoulder its proportion of the burden in these ‘darkening times’, as being ‘workman like’ and ‘
pedestrian’. This could be considered to be high praise for the organisational and communication abilities of a prime minister who flew to London to talk to his UK counterpart on the
phone, who mangled a set piece in a foreign language and invented a new name for a country while standing beside its
prime minister.
John Birmingham, writing on
The Brisbane Times website suggests the sudden and urgent need to pass legislation and deploy security forces is primarily ‘theatre’. Civil libertarian Bret Walker SC is reported in
The Saturday Paper as suggesting:
Indeed, by accepting the suggestion that terrorists are something other than ordinary murderers, we have “bought their propaganda” and given them the “glamour of being extraordinary”
While not minimising the inhumanity that the ‘Islamic State’ is reported to be capable of, could this action be seen to be an attempt to wrap Australia in khaki to distract us from other ‘elephants in the room’ — such as climate change perhaps?
The US Government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a
webpage that lists answers to a number of frequently asked questions in relation to climate change. It does acknowledge that temperatures on earth vary over time but points out the current rise is faster and more pronounced that what has occurred naturally in the past. It also suggests that the consensus of expert opinion is that human activities are actively contributing to the problem. The response to the question on potential effects of the global average temperature rising by 2° Fahrenheit gives some graphic examples, for the USA, on the extent of change to civilisation as we know it.
Changing the average global temperature by even a degree or two can lead to serious consequences around the globe. For about every 2°F of warming, we can expect to see:
- 5 ‒15% reductions in the yields of crops as currently grown
- 3 ‒10% increases in the amount of rain falling during the heaviest precipitation events, which can increase flooding risks
- 5 ‒10% decreases in stream flow in some river basins, including the Arkansas and the Rio Grande
- 200% ‒ 400% increases in the area burned by wildfire in parts of the western United States
As these effects are predicated on an average rise in
global temperature, it stands to reason that similar changes would be experienced worldwide.
The day before Abbott addressed the United Nations, he chose not to attend an
international conference on climate change — also held in New York. Abbott did, however, find the time while in New York to dine with
Rupert Murdoch.
The conference was ‘sponsored’ by the United Nations and the attendees included David Cameron (prime minister of the United Kingdom and the PM that Abbott flew to London to ring) and Barack Obama (president of the United States). To be fair, Foreign Minister Bishop did attend the conference and the leaders of China and India also chose to send an apology.
European Union commissioner for climate action, Connie Hegedaard,
commented:
I do not know what the reasons would be behind it, but, of course, the world will interpret who is showing up and who will not be showing up.
So that's for your Prime Minister and your government to decide, what kind of profile they want in this.
One of the outcomes of the conference was there seems to be a consensus that the use of coal for various industrial processes has a
limited future. The Australian Government and the International Energy Agency
disagree, stating that growth will come from newly industrialised countries such as China and India.
In fact:
the Pulitzer Prize-winning climate change news website Inside Climate News published a story about the "Canada-Australia axis of carbon". It suggested that not only were the two nations not willing to pull their weight, but that they were seeking to derail the binding agreement on emissions reductions at next year's talks in Paris that many view as the world's last best hope to prevent catastrophic climate change.
"Neither the prime ministers of Canada nor Australia will speak at the summit, and the subordinates they have sent will not be offering the kind of ‘bold’ new steps that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is seeking on the way to a treaty in Paris late next year," it reported.
China, the largest consumer of coal in the world has announced that it will use 50 million tonnes less coal annually in the near
future. China also is increasing the use of wind power technology in the next few years, to twice the capacity of the entire European Union.
The name Rockefeller has been associated with wealth, power and influence for decades. The ‘founder’ of the dynasty made a lot of his money in pumping oil out of the ground, processing it and selling the products. The Rockefeller family still has significant financial clout, with billions invested in industry. On the eve of the UN’s climate change conference the head of the family trust announced that it would be selling its USD56 billion of fossil fuel assets and reinvesting it into ‘
clean energy’. The Rockefeller Trust is a member of a group known as ‘Global Divest-Invest Coalition’. Other members include Stanford University who have announced its USD21 billion endowments will no longer be invested in coal assets.
The Australian Government commissioned a report this year into the renewable energy industry and its funding. In a classic example of not asking the question until you know the answer, the panel was led by Dick Warbuton who is reputably no friend of renewable energy. Abbott has also claimed in the past that renewables don’t work because there is no potential for 24 hours a day, seven days a week generation of electricity. A report in Crikey from early this year discusses Dick Warbuton’s contribution as well as
Abbott’s claims. The Crikey article also discusses the switch within Germany and South Australia to using considerable quantities of renewable power, refuting the argument that renewable power cannot be used as ‘baseload’ (generating the consistent demand for power day or night) as well as the experience in Germany where coal fired power stations are being mothballed as uneconomic soon after commissioning.
Spain has a reputation for bad waiters, economic problems and bull fighting. It also has a number of power plants that use renewable energy. At least one of the plants near
Seville can generate power from sunlight 24 hours a day as it stores some of the heat generated by the mirrors as molten salt — which is then returned to the system when the sun isn’t shining to generate steam and turn the power turbines. Another Spanish solar plant has been immortalised by James May (of
Topgear fame) in this
YouTube clip.
There are a number of large solar power generators located in the USA, some of which also store heat to allow generation when the sun isn’t shining. One of the largest, located at Ivanpah in California’s Mojave Desert covers 1600 hectares and will eliminate 13.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over the estimated 30 year lifespan of
the facility.
If, despite the large area of desert and abundant sunlight across Australia, there really are problems with generating baseload solar power in Australia, as claimed by Abbott and others with what seem to be vested interests in the status quo, there is also promising technology generating power from the waves on the seashore. The waves never stop. The big issue would be the engineering to ensure that the infrastructure is not sucked out to sea or washed up on the beach. This engineering problem has been looked at by a number of different researchers. One firm that is trying to commercialise its solution is Australian: Carnegie Wave Energy, based in
Fremantle. It has demonstration energy production plants in operation in Perth, Western Australia, and in Ireland. An added bonus is that they can operate a desalination plant, that doesn’t contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, using parts of the same infrastructure. While the Federal Government has provided a grant for the proving of the concept, the funding was provided in
May 2012 — and, in any event, the WA government provided a larger sum.
Worldometers is a free resource on the internet that has contributions from a number of experts that calculates various statistics including the volume of greenhouse gases emitted, the end of oil and the end of coal. As the numbers are constantly changing it is pointless listing their estimates here — however, the number is less than 40 years in the case of oil.
Abbott went to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly on a significant threat to our way of life. While the ‘Islamic State’ could conceivably be a threat to us, the end of fossil fuels and irreversible change to the environment is certainly a threat, caused by the continual pumping of carbon dioxide and other harmful chemicals into the air. Even if the Australian Government is correct that, as a nation, we are responsible for only 1.5% of the world’s total, Australia has the resources, technical capacity and ability to generate considerable quantities of power from either large solar plants or harnessing the energy of waves to again ‘lift above our weight’ and assist others. Currently we don’t — and our current leadership doesn’t seem to be inclined to acknowledge the problem.
Australia’s prime minister misrepresented an emissions trading scheme as a tax and didn’t have the courage to attend a climate change conference in New York the day prior to his address to the United Nations General Assembly (while finding the time to dine with Murdoch). His review of alternative energy solutions is led by a person who has a long history of denial of climate change. He has removed an emissions trading scheme that was showing positive benefits to both the environment and the
economy, all the time claiming that issues such as renewable energy have too many insurmountable problems to be considered as permanent solutions to energy supply. Clearly he is wrong but the recent actions by Abbott and his ministers would suggest that only some of the real problems facing humanity are important. The worst possible result of addressing climate change is that fossil fuels last considerably longer — which isn’t a bad alternative anyway.
While no one here is attempting to justify the actions of a small group that seemingly wish to inflict their fundamentalist views on others, which is worse, the ones that address an environmental problem that will affect everyone by doing nothing or the ones that address centuries of political unrest using an incorrect interpretation of a religious text?
Twenty-four hour a day, seven day a week generation of power can be achieved by use of solar, wind or wave power as well as coal and gas. The entire east coast of Australia is on the same electricity grid. Clearly technical or logistical issues aren’t the issue — what is?
What do you think?