Thread: Carbon Pollution? A Summary

Originally Posted by Hymie

The Latrobe Valley will become a ghetto in 5 years if it all happens.

You mean I'll have no neighbours? dreams do come true

Won't happen, people who think they can take near 5000MW base load generation from the grid, without a NUCLEAR base load supplement.............well, dey iz stoopid

Whats happening in vic to supplement? 1 470MW gasification unit, being built in the next few years............that might keep up with ever increasing demand, I bet well be whining about brown coal in 30 years

Oh with 500+ years of economically viable attainable coal...........

What's China doing about it all........building 350 Nuclear plants

Originally Posted by Lotz-A-Landies

with Australia's population of 20 million and the Worlds Population of almost 7 billion, if all human life in Australia was extinct, we would only reduce the World's total carbon by around 2% and that would be taken up in about 1 year by the birthrate in Asia.

I would rather pay a little more to buy electricity guaranteed to come from solar-photovoltaic, solar-thermal, geo-thermal, wind, wave or tidal flow, than to give coal producers 1 cent in tax breaks (or carbon offsets).

The government should be giving research incentives and tax breaks to new energy technologies rather than invest in old carbon consuming technologies, or the mythical "clean coal technology".

The reason we don't have clean technology power already is because, BHP-Billiton and Exxon-Mobil or Shell Oil can not find a way to take over ownership of the sun, the waves and hot rocks so they can sell us the proceeds of that ownership at vastly exaggerated prices. It is their lobbying power and the government's want of a new tax (call it carbon tax if you want) that we are having this debate today.

Diana

Check out Carbon Energy (Google it). I was lucky to check out this technology first hand early this year as a contractor & was blown away.
Take deep unproductive coal seams , bore down at one end with two consumable pipes (one introducing mix of oxygen /steam & the other extracting Syngas) and the other end the initial ignition well.
The whole process controlled by Gas Chromatograph. You can dial in what you want, be it ultra pure diesel to ferttiliser as end product. As high temperature combustion occurs underground virtually no CO2 is released to the atmosphere. As this underground combustion creates cavities from the burnt coal this is the perfect depository for Carbon Capture and Storage, which is the goal of the next project on this site producing clean electricity to the grid.
They have already passed the testing phase & are installing generators with guaranteed supply to Energex. I'm certain that this technology could not only supply all our carbon neutral energy needs, but also supply all our fuel &chemical needs well into the future.
Cheers..b

According to NASA sat observations there has not been any rise in average ocean or world air temp in the last 8 years, but we have definatly seen the climate changing round the world what is causing that we still need real convincing answers to what is happening. The ETS would have created a whole new economy in carbon trading that money had to come from someone US paying lots more with no garrentee that the money would be invested in new tech to help the situation

Originally Posted by JDNSW

According to a study published at Home, (surfacstationsreport_spring09.pdf) only about 10% of the US weather stations record temperatures reliably (within 1F), and most record temperatures higher than the actual ambient.

There are two reasons for this - probably the most important is the encroachment of civilisation on the stations, particularly artificial readily heated surfaces such as black car parks close to them, or airconditioning heat exchangers or other cooling systems blowing hot air on them.

The second reason is changes in the Stevenson screens which affect the temperature at the thermometer. There was a systematic change in the type of paint used in 1979 (measured effect + 0.3-0.8F), but in addition, many stations , when converted to remote reading, had heat generating electronics installed in the screen.

I have no reason to suppose weather stations anywhere else are on average better than US ones. Which raises some awkward questions about temperature trends as actually observed, particularly in the last thirty or forty years.

(Sorry about the use of Fahrenheit - the yanks haven't caught up yet!)

John

Interesting John - do you suspect that even the noted relative rise in temps over the recent past is not necessarily evidence of GW for these reasons?

Originally Posted by Scallops

Interesting John - do you suspect that even the noted relative rise in temps over the recent past is not necessarily evidence of GW for these reasons?

It is certainly a possibility. One of the major problems with actual temperature measurements over a long period is that old established measuring stations tend to be where there was civilisation when they were established - and in most cases, where there was civilisation a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago there is a lot more civilisation today, generating a lot of heat. A good example is the location in Melbourne - originally set up in a rural location on the edge of the planned village, it is now in a tiny triangle of open ground surrounded on two sides by wide bitumen roads with heavy traffic, mostly moving slowly, and on the third side there is a twenty storey office block.

And moving the measuring station is not useful either - in most places even small distances change the microclimate significantly.

John

Originally Posted by bruiser69

Check out Carbon Energy (Google it). I was lucky to check out this technology first hand early this year as a contractor & was blown away.
<snip>
As high temperature combustion occurs underground virtually no CO2 is released to the atmosphere.
<snip>
They have already passed the testing phase & are installing generators with guaranteed supply to Energex. I'm certain that this technology could not only supply all our carbon neutral energy needs, but also supply all our fuel &chemical needs well into the future.
Cheers..b

The problem with this scenario is that most of our current coal fired power stations are above ground and a long way away from unproductive coal seams. So for the foreseeable future our base load will be provided by above ground coal fired power stations where the combustion will occur above ground. Finding a way to capture and sequestrate the CO2 from these existant power stations and guarantee not have the CO2 leach back into the atmosphere is the mythical carbon capture technology I'm talking about.

Using underground technologies that don't vent CO2 to the atmosphere will require a lot of study. We all know of places like Burning Mountain, where coal seam fires have been burning underground for decades and the heat and smoke vents through small fissures in the earth's surface. Finding unproductive coal seams, that don't have these risks of fissures won't be as easy as some may think.

We already have technologies that we know can provide base load by geothermal and solar-thermal and yet we have only just started the planning for the building of them, yet at the same time the Chinese are commissioning a new coal fired power station every week. I don't know how our paying a carbon tax in Australia is going to off-set the new CO2 being produced in China.

Originally Posted by THE BOOGER

According to NASA sat observations there has not been any rise in average ocean or world air temp in the last 8 years, <snip>

Hmm

Which NASA were you talking about?



Data @ NASA GISS: GISS Surface Temperature Analysis: Graphs


ADDIT: Actually when you look at the rise in global surface temperatures above and look at World Tourism Figures, http://www.world-tourism.org/newsroo...004numbers.htm



We can see a correlation between similar rises. Therefore it is jet aircraft flying in the stratosphere that is causing all of the global warming.

Simple, let's just ban air travel, or maybe we could sequestre the CO2 produced by turbine engines under the ground!

Sorry Guys but ETS is just away for some friends of Mr Rudd to make a lot of money just as Al Gore is set to make a lot of money out of Mr Obamas plan.

Until somebody can explain to me how carbon is killing the planet I am going to remain sceptical.