Archived material from historical editions of The Generator
By Tim Hollo – Fourplay and Mark Wakeham – Greenpeace
Recent months have seen a new push from the coal and nuclear industries to discredit renewable energy. You will often hear people, from the Prime Minister down, claim that renewable energy cannot provide ‘baseload’ power and therefore cannot replace coal-fired power stations. This document tackles the renewables sceptics (who not so long ago were climate sceptics) and answers some common questions.
According to Rupert Posner, the Australian director of The Climate Group, if we ( the world) capture CO2 from power stations and pump it underground we need to do this for some 800 gigawatt of coal-fired power stations.
Dump as much CO2 as oil coming up: A "wedge" [of emissions reduction – ie one of seven ways to attack climate change] will require injecting a volume of CO2 equal to the amount of oil extracted every year. There are currently three storage projects that each inject one million tonnes of CO2 per year – by 2055 we’d need 3500, he wrote in The Australian Financial Review ( 5/12/2006, p.63).
Which technology? The Australian government says technology is the solution to addressing climate change. But which technology? A great way to work out what the question may be is to examine a study by Steve Pacala and Robert Socolow from Princeton University. They developed what is known as “the stabilisation triangle”. It examines the action needed to stabilise emissions at today’s level within 50 years. We currently emit about 7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, and this is forecast to double in 50 years so we need to cut emissions by about 7 billion tonnes each year by 2050.
Seven wedges of 1 billion tonnes: This 7 billion tonnes is divided into seven wedges of 1 billion tonnes. So what is needed to cut emissions by 1 billion tonnes?
• The best place for the first wedge is to reduce electricity demand, as this also saves money.
• Best practices in the design of all residential and commercial buildings by 2055 will give another wedge.
• What about electricity generation? We would need about 1400 natural gas electric plants to displace an equal number of coalfired facilities.
• One wedge would mean installing 2 million windmills, increasing current wind capacity by a factor of 50 (8.5 per cent annual growth).
• For solar electricity it means increasing capacity by 700 times, or an annual growth rate of 14.3 per cent.
• Biofuels deliver a wedge if global ethanol production increases by 50 times, but requires planting an area the size of India with biofuels crops – one-sixth of world crop land.
• Another wedge could be achieved by tripling the world’s nuclear electricity capacity, installed at a rate equal to the global rate of nuclear expansion from 1975 to 1990. And the phasing out of existing nuclear power stations would create the need for another half wedge.
Howard will appeal to the masses as a man of brave action, as he implements nuclear power. From a recent Morgan poll, the electorate is ready for nuclear: 49% vs. 37% against [1]. A quarter of Green voters are even worried enough about Global Warming that they are willing to overlook nuclear’s theoretical down-sides. It is only low income women (45+), who are demographically least likely to admit that nuclear is an option. [2]
Patrick Moore now loves nuclear [3]. He left Greenpeace because it is dominated by left wing extremists in pursuit of environmental purity [4]. James Lovelock, father of Gaia theory, thinks it’s odd that we don’t use nuclear waste to heat our houses already [5] .
Late converts to Global Warming will now laugh at nuclear scare campaigns (as they did at Global Warming). Howard and Murdoch are admitting that Global Warming is true. Howard’s strategy is to create consensus on Global Warming, knowing that hard-nosed late-comers will enjoy feeling superior to Greens, who are already being accused of destroying the planet by prominent "little-g" greens [6]. Nuclear fear can easily be replaced with bravado. [See Lovelock and Moore.]
By Charley Reese
Al-Jazeera, the Arab television network that the Bush administration hates so passionately, has launched its English-language service but is, of course, having trouble finding an American cable or satellite system willing to carry it.
The British Broadcasting Corp. had a man watch the first day’s broadcast (it’s being distributed in Europe) and gave it a rave review: accurate, but grim.
Since American politicians have involved us so deeply in the Middle East, the American public is entitled to see the truth of what’s going on over there. The public can’t get that from American television, which sanitizes its reports. Al-Jazeera shows you the grim reality. When the Israelis kill children, they show you the bodies and the weeping mothers. They show you all the ugly truth about Israeli and American policies and actions in the Middle East. They show you what war looks like.
So you don’t need an electronic bug in the offices of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee to know that AIPAC and the Bush administration are putting pressure on the distributors to shun Al-Jazeera. Denying Americans their First Amendment right to the truth, in regard to Israel, is always Job One with AIPAC. That is necessary because the truth about Israel’s actions toward the Palestinians and other Arab countries puts the lie to all of the Zionist propaganda.
Even before the recent massacre of an extended family asleep in its home by Israeli tank fire, the Israelis had killed 57 unarmed children in their current Gaza attacks. That number comes from Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper that publishes an English-language edition on the Internet. I heartily recommend it, because Israeli newspapers, unlike American newspapers, are not afraid to criticize the Israeli government.
Israel is, after all, a country like any other, and its population consists of decent people and indecent people, as does the population of every other country in the world. The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is the core problem in the Middle East. It drives everything else, and until that problem is resolved in a just manner, there will be no peace or stability in that region.
Recently, the U.S. again vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the murder of the extended family, using the same worn-out excuse that it was unbalanced. OK, the resolution could have said it condemned the sporadic firing of homemade rockets, which have killed one person in recent weeks, and the deaths of 18 innocent people, the latest of more than 150 who have been killed by the Israeli army. Even if it had said that, we still would have vetoed it. The Israelis — who, by the way, have the most high-tech military equipment in the region — said the deaths were a mistake. Yes, the death rate of Palestinians due to Israeli mistakes is very, very high.
The rest of the world is getting sick of watching us kowtow to the Israeli government. The U.S. is losing friends like a sycamore tree loses leaves in the cold blast of a November storm.
You should call your cable or satellite provider and request the English-language service of Al-Jazeera. In addition to Haaretz, you should also google the Angry Arab News Service, a Web site of an American college professor who isn’t afraid of the truth.
I wish American politicians had never gotten us involved in the Middle East, but since they have, you deserve to know the naked truth of what’s going on over there. Al-Jazeera will tell you. Fox News, whose employees act as if they are on Karl Rove’s payroll, won’t.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is calling for a total boycott of all Icelandic products and tourism to Iceland in protest to their contemptuous flaunting of international conservation law with their illegal whaling activities.
Despite the Federal Government’s assurances that only low- and medium-level nuclear waste would be stored at a possible nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory, French officials have said Australia would be receiving high-level waste, according to Labour Senator Trish Crossin.
Repeated requests on NT dump: "We have asked ANSTO (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation) and DEST (Department of Education, Science and Training) officials time and time again what the waste is that is going to be dumped in the Territory," said Crossin, senator for the Northern Territory.
No international definition: "But, of course, we keep getting told that it is only low-level and intermediate-level waste; that it is not high-level waste. How do we know that? If there is no internationally agreed definition on what waste can be classified as, how do we know that we are not getting high-level waste?
"All shipments high-level": "Northern Territory Minister Marion Scrymgour went to France in June or July this year, and the French told her that we are not going to get back anything other than high-level waste, that there is no waste that has been generated in France and Scotland going back to Australia on ships other than high-level waste.
Safe for 200,000 years: "The French are absolutely convinced that we will be getting back high-level waste. We had better have a damn good place to dump it because it is going to be there for at least 200,000 years."
Doubts remain on risk: Crossin said when she raised this report in estimates, DEST officials informed her that it did not apply to Australia because the UK had mainly high-level waste. "They are saying: ‘If we were going to get back high-level waste, we would consult with the community where we are going to dump it. But, because this is not high-level waste, we do not have to consult anyone.’ That is logical. But the UK, Scotland and France are telling us that it is high-level waste we are going to get back."
Points to UK practice: Crossin said she had recently learned that most of the waste that the UK wanted stored for many years was intermediate-level waste. She asked: "If it was good enough for the UK to consult communities and have a specific committee on radioactive waste management, why can we not do that in this country?
Govt urged to start again: "If the waste is going to be dumped in the Territory, the government should scrap the current plan, start again and start consulting the community. If the government wants to use international best practice, it should start with waste management 101, consult and have volunteer communities that are well-informed and would welcome the waste rather than dumping it on a community that does not want it."
Reference: Senate Hansard, Thursday, 31 November 2006. p.82. Document is available at: