rpg

Snide remarks about the character and motives of others does you no service and I would suggest that such remarks diminish the debate and have no place in OLO.

Your main points seem to be that it is going to be expensive to build a renewable energy infrastructure and that the current approach of letting "the market" solve the problem of energy will work quite well. You also imply that if the market does not solve the problem then it will have to be funded by taxes. You also say that burning fossil fuel is the only economically way at the moment to produce energy.

These are your assumptions - not tonykevin1 or leigh.

Your assumptions are correct - if we continue as we are and if we try to approach the problem through the manipulation of the price of energy. The point about tonykevin1 and leigh's ideas are that we need to break away from those assumptions and approaches because they are clearly not working.

There are other ways around encouraging investment than simply increasing the price of fossil fuels. These methods will use markets to distribute resources, will produce energy cheaper than burning fossil fuel and will not leave the nation in debt - and are practical. It does however, require a freeing up of the way our financial system is regulated - and that will require government intervention.

Rubbish!

Human caused climate change is by definition caused by increasing numbers of people.

The notion that stabilising populations for zero growth is not a magic bullet to halt climate change is just GREED infecting the ranks of the pollutical and business minority factions in our community. The majority suffer while the minorities garner riches from THEIR immigrated economic growth.

The magic bullet for Australia and other countries which wise-up is to legislate that immigration quotas be voted on by referendums.

The current ad-hoc immigration quotas to raise GST and property prices is pure insanity and defies logic in the quest for stabilising climate and ultimately in avioiding looming civil unrest and even civil war.

All the poisons that lurk in the RUDD .. are HATCHING out!

[part 2 of 2 parts] RPG as an ‘old engineer’’ should know that national electricical energy grids exist now. When I buy electricity in Canberra, it can come from anywhere on the Eastern Australian grid, between Adelaide and Cairns – ‘parcels’ of electricity are moving around the grid all the time to even out variations in local supply and demand. This is what network engineers do.

The sceptics who say ‘it can’t be done’ are like those who said the US could not put men on the moon – because it had not been done before; or that Britain could not match Nazi military might in time, when appeasement failed in 1938. Once great nations decide things have to be done urgently, they get on and do them.

Once we have decided that we need to cut GHG emissions, for the sake of our children's and grandchildren’s climate security, we will meet the engineering challenges involved.

This is simply an issue of linking existing technologies to scale. They already exist but have not yet been linked to scale in Australia. Our present national grid design was designed to link the old coal-based power infrastructure locations with the demand centres. Of course it will need to be modified, but a lot of it will still be useable.

Reverse cycle heat storage technologies include ammonia-based and molten salt solution heat exchange systems. This is what is going in in Colorado. Domestic systems of heat storage include offpeak heat banks and thermal underfloor and water heating. Car batteries will be charged at offpeak times. These technologies all exist. Geothermal technology - steam from pumping water through fractured hot rocks - is being tested now in Central Australia. Reverse cycle hydro generation systems exist already and the Snowy Mountains Scheme could inexpensively be modified to act as such a system.

And I’m 67. I do urge ROG and like-minded sceptics to read my book before pontificating further. They might be pleasantly surprised

Tony kevin;
I think you have gone off half cocked.
rpg did not say it could not be done, but that there will be major
changes in the grid network to make it possible to handle large amounts
of power over the country.

It is done now as you say, but not with widespread unreliable generators.
To cope with this will need very high voltage DC lines built and installed.
Basically a new network overlaid on the existing network.

It also needs a complete rehash of the control system.
Physically small countries have less of a problem but if you get the
control system wrong you have what happened in Germany, blackout.

Have a look around the internet for information on similar systems.

Bazz

Thabk you. Now at last OLO might begin a serious fact-based discussion, instead of abusive put-downs? You have conceded that a variable-source renewable energy-based national grid is possible, but you say it will involve a lot of costly new construction and new control systems grafted onto the present grid system.

I agree. My argument is that, if Australia accepts that we face a national and global climate change emergency which if left unaddressed will blight the lives of our children and grandchildren, we can find the money for those programs. Government has just funded over $50 billion for stimulus spending (mostly unproductive of new capital infrastructure) in a recession and has committed $43 billion to upgraded broadband. These sorts of sums would go a long way - maybe all the way - towards achieving the renewable energy system we are talking about. It is finally a question of our national priorities - upgraded broadband and redundant new school assembly halls, or safe renewable energy that will not add to the world's dangerous GHG emissions that will make much of Ausralia unliveable in 50-100 years? We cannot take back the billions already spent or committed, but we can ask government next time round to spend this sort of money on renewable energy infrastructure.

Legh's article and my book point the way towards a serious Australian anti-GW national strategy that would provide Keynesian stimulus to our still fragile economic 'animal spirits', and would inspire the world with the example of one country which had the courage to commit to the challenge of 100% energy decarbonisation by 2030. This is is an exciting and achievable engineering vision - unlike complicated ETS trading schemes or carbon taxes which inspire nobody and with all their exemptions and sharp-practice trading opportunities will achieve very little.

Now at last OLO might begin a serious fact-based discussion, about how I can get by and prosper without petrol&food&water.

Conceding that a variable-source renewable-food-energy-based dead skin & hair collection grid is possible is first. It will involve a lot of costly new weight-lifting to build my body like Schwartzenegger and new Einsteinian-control-systems grafted onto my brain using computer learning aids. PEAK oil won't matter. I can stay home so transport is no problem. Climate change won't matter. We eat all our wastes, tastefully processed with new Ziggy technologies, so there will be no more environmental degradation and no more climate change.

Why we can even eat our own children and grandchildren, that way we can get the thing our tiny apes brains are REALLY after .. wink wink. .. SEXual and gourmand pleasure. What a wonderful world we can make, no more oil no more coal no more cars just Girls, gold, gourmandian delights and the glory of knowing it was OUR idea.

Now We all agree that is possible. My argument is that, if Australians accept that we face a national and global climate change emergency which if left unaddressed will blight the lives of our children and grandchildren, we can find the ethical basis to eat them.

The money for those programs can come from increased GST and property prices from huge increase in immigration. These sorts of sums would go a long way - maybe all the way - towards achieving the renewable energy system we are talking about.

It is finally a question of our national priorities - safe renewable dead skin cell energy that will not add to the world's dangerous GHG emissions & that will make much of Ausralia unbelieveable in 50-100 years?

We cannot take back billions already spent or committed, but we can ask government next time round to stay in Canberra, live off their own crap and leave us the hell alone to get on with our new unbelievable, sexy, renewable energy lives.

We don't have the oil but who needs it, we have the women, we have the technologies