This is the most relevant statement posted, in this discussion.
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You're right for some it is a local "act". My neighbours have a large "Climate Action Now" sign in their front window, however they both drive ICE cars, but his parents have one maybe two electric ones, so he might think he can claim credit for that. They have no solar, although they put in a small rain water tank, but I think that was for a vegetable garden that turned into weeds.
Not in my case as I have solar hot water, 5kW of solar power (has generated 100MW/h), a rainwater and grey water system. I've had the green bin pretty much since it started at least 10 years ago, and feel vindicated that Brisbane is rolling it out to all residents to prevent lawn clippings, leaves, branches, etc going in the red bins to landfill a total waste.
I wish some of these systems were larger, and that I'd thought of some of this before building began. I only put the solar hot water on the house when it was being built, because I asked my engineer mate what would be easier to install then rather than later.
No this won't happen. by 2050, we won't really care about the mighty $$$C02$$$ and how many $$$ we can con out of people to "save the world". The biggest issue facing man kind will be our birthrate. Each generation is having less kids, once we start down this path it isn't linear. The population will drop off a cliff face. If the first generation has less kids, and the following generation has slightly less kids again. Its not a straight line in population reduction. As the 2nd ... 3rd ... 4th generation has less people in the first instance also having less kids. It will be a terrifying time for them. everything will be about encouraging people to have children again.
We will care about the massively aging population. I've read we are probably close to "peak" population right now. As soon as countries are lifted out of poverty they stop having kids at replacement rate. So as the 3rd world can feed itself ... suddenly the world population will plummet. The only reason we have population growth in australia is immigration (same for every 1st world country).
Net Zero is just lunacy ... insanity. Most of these nutters don't even know how much C02 is even in the air. Ask the next brainwashed fruitloop that goes on with it. You will get an answer like "maybe 30% of air is C02". To save the net zero lunies looking it up, it is 0.039% of the air. The loony net zero targets are almost meaningless when you look at the percentage of difference they are talking.
seeya
Shane L.
Ok.. I watched the video. He's a good speaker that's for sure. I wouldn't want to end up in a debate with him.
But he said straight up "I used to be a mechanic.. I like gas cars.. I don't like EV's". There were lots of "facts" which were at best dubious, and at worst deliberately deceptive.
And as per much in this thread it was a lot of "That's all just @#$T .. I don't like it. It's not going to work". But there are no actual answers or alternative plans. In summary, haters gonna hate. It's a democracy, and in the current climate in the US I suspect he's angling for a job. We must remember this is about the US, not Australia.Personally I think what the previous administration was doing was really going the right way. The US is going to regret the decision to pull out of the race to manufacture green tech. Even if they do realise it - catching up is going to be hard.
We have this dude right here in Australia, who unlike your speaker has had a really good go at thinking about the problem and coming up with solutions. He was an advisor to the Biden administration, and many other cool academic things in this space.
This is an older video, and a short one (note I didn't give you a 1 h video!).
We need solutions not just "it's @#$@ and it won't help".
https://youtu.be/QfAXbGInwno'si=HnaevvWp5hiUuEJd
Making green tech is not the only money spinner, but having cheap energy from wind and solar is a massive economic advantage.
I know that cars in the Challenger class in the Darwin to Adelaide World Solar Challenge are not practical vehicles, but the progress over the last decade or so is impressive.
The winning car averaged 86.6km/h. That is probably faster than I did in my Series III a couple of decades ago.
Bridgestone World Solar Challenge 2025
I don't think so. He appears to have spend years, decades studying this. He references studies to lookup in quite a few places. Like most, I don't think he is "anti" EV. He just has a brain, so doesn't want to see anything "forced" on people for no reason. I thought the cost of horses was fascinating. He would be right about the cost of electricity transmission lines. Interestingly, most of these types of people that are not green washed with stupidity, don't mention power generation. They seem to think that part can be done. Its the upgrading the existing power transmission infrastructure that is the insurmountable issue.
seeya
Shane L.
Nope, all wind farm contracts require the operators to remediate the land at the end of the lease. And I have actually seen it proposed that the farmer might get to keep the wind turbines if they want to.
Wind farms aren't built to generate subsidies - they are subsidised but banks don't give billions of dollars to 30 year investments on the basis of some subsidies: they either meet FID or they don't proceed. What a lot of people don't get is the essential difference between a renewables facility and a gas or coal power station is that once the renewables are actually built the inputs are free - they're not subject to the vagaries of input prices changes in the way that gas and coal powered plants are. That's why renewables are wildlly cheaper than gas or coal and it's why no-one in this country is building new coal power plants, even when the Coalition promised subsidies to do so. Look up the term "stranded asset" - it's how coal plants were being described in the project finance literature even 20 years ago.
FYI, having a wind farm on your land increases its value, even with the infrastructure, the most significant of which (in terms of impact on farming activities) is the access tracks.