I have something to confess. I am a huge fan of renewable energy, but I never paid much attention to science lessons in school.
That means I get awfully confused at the difference between MW and MWh. I develop a headache at discussion of the “capacity factor” of wind turbines. And I usually have to take a nap if someone starts explaining the market dynamics of “selling electricity to the frequency regulation segments of regional grid power markets”.
But here are a few things I do know:
The wind isn’t always blowing
The sun doesn’t always shine
Energy demand is not constant either
For many armchair critics of renewable energy, these three factors alone debunk the vision of a grid running largely or solely on clean, non-polluting sources of electricity. For others, they are simply a challenge that needs solving.
Now we can add to the roster of potential solutions a new wind turbine that generates more electricity at lower wind speeds, stores some excess energy for sale to the grid later (allowing owners to take advantage of higher prices), and also does a better job of analyzing and predicting the supply of wind energy too. In short, many clean energy advocates are pretty excited about GE’s 1.6-100 and 1.7-100 wind turbines and power management system.
Specifically, here are some of the features that clean tech geeks are getting excited about:
Improved blade designs resulting in a 47 percent increase in “swept area” (the square feet of the rotor) compared to previous models – meaning a 20-24 percent increase in power.
More energy harvested at lower wind speeds, resulting in a class-leading capacity factor of 54 percent. (Detail alert: the capacity factor is the actual power output over time, compared as a percentage to the theoretical power output of the turbine if it was producing at its maximum output at all times.)
A battery storage system that allows wind turbine operators to save excess electricity — either because they are producing more electricity than the grid needs at a given moment, or because they’ll get a better price for it later.
A sophisticated package of analytics equipment and software, which helps owners predict both when power will be needed and when the wind will be blowing, allowing communication between turbines in what’s been described as “an industrial Internet”.
A short ad from GE explains a little more:
Individually, each of the developments represented in the Brilliant turbines are a big deal. Collectively, says Andrew Burger of CleanTechnica, they have the potential to be game changing. In an enthusiastic, three-part series on the Brilliant turbines (see also part two, and part three), Burger explains why all this really matters to the rest of us – namely that the cost of wind energy has come down by 60 percent in recent years, making it competitive with new coal and natural gas plants. And that’s before you even start calculating all the hidden, but very real economic costs caused by our reliance on fossil fuels.
Thankfully, even without putting a price on carbon or forcing polluters to pay for the health problems they create, advancement’s like GE’s Brilliant wind turbines may be tipping the scales in the favor of clean energy anyway.
And that can only be a good thing.
Also on HuffPost:
Top U.S. Renewable Energy Sources – 2011 (MOST RECENT DATA)
We currently are living through one of the more interesting yet bizarre periods in the history of science. The interesting part is that the evidence continues to accumulate that there has indeed been a scientific discovery fully as significant as the steam engine, electricity, radio, atomic energy, or micro circuitry – perhaps even combined. The bizarre part is that 99+ percent of us have either no, or possibly a distorted idea, of what is happening. I am talking about the third window that nature left open for us into the energy locked inside atoms –popularly known as “cold fusion.”
The reason, of course, that most of us know little to nothing about it is that coverage in the mainstream media has been close to zero for the last 20 years. What little coverage there has been recently has been confined to obscure websites or cast in a skeptical light with each report of progress “balanced” by some eminent scientist saying it can’t be true.
The main reason for skepticism is that implications of cold fusion are simply too good to be true. When somebody says, “I have just made a discovery that will give the world all the cheap, clean energy it will ever need; that will solve the global warming problem and clean up the environment; that will do away with the need for fossil fuels; that will supply us all the clean water we can use; and that could even lift us all out of poverty,” obviously you are going to think him nuts, a fraud, or overly optimistic.
Keep in mind, however, from time to time major new technologies are discovered/developed – electricity, light bulbs, radio, internal combustion, atomic energy, computers – that do have a significant impact on human civilization. Why not another?
When the phenomenon widely known as “cold fusion” was announced 24 years ago, there was much enthusiasm in the media, which soon died away after the initial experiments turned out to be difficult to reproduce. The scientific establishment, for reasons too complicated to go into here, pronounced the idea of “cold fusion” as ridiculous, and the media dropped the subject altogether.
A handful of scientists, however, were able to detect anomalous heat in their laboratories and for the next 20 years these scientific “mavericks,” subjected to much opprobrium by their colleagues, continued to research the effect. Progress was made but largely ignored by the media as the heat produced was minimal – nothing like the atomic bomb which introduced the nuclear age.
About five years ago, however, Italian researchers discovered that by loading hydrogen into nickel a device could produce commercially significant amounts of heat. Two years ago, one researcher demonstrated a prototype heat-producing device to a selected group of scientists and members of the press. The demonstration was met with much derision as skeptics fell all over each other in attempting to explain how the “obviously fraudulent” demonstration was perpetrated.
There are several factors currently hindering general acknowledgement that cold fusion is real and that we are looking at a new paradigm-shifting technology. First, there is as yet no agreed-upon theory as to how the phenomenon, which many say must contravene the laws of known physics, works. Then there is the problem of proprietary information. There are currently at least a dozen companies attempting to develop and sell a heat-producing device based on cold fusion. As many countries still refuse to grant patents on what much of the scientific establishment considers fraudulent science, developers are obviously reluctant to share the detailed inner workings of their devices.
A key point in all this controversy, however, is that there have now been so many observations of anomalous heat by so many reputable scientists around the world that the chances that this phenomenon is not real are extremely remote. The question now becomes how long before “cold fusion” becomes a practical reality or at least it becomes generally accepted science so that governments will start spending on its further development and propagation – months, years, or decades?
There was an interesting development last winter when the Italian entrepreneur Rossi, who seems to be leading his competitors in developing a commercial heat-producing device, let a team of outside scientists come in and take measurements of his latest device in action. The team reported that the device worked as claimed, produced unprecedented amounts of heat, and that they were unable to detect any trickery. What was most notable about this report was that it received almost no coverage in the mainstream media.
Likewise, a successful video demonstration of a similar heat producing device by a Greek/Canadian company at a conference in Missouri last month elicited close to zero coverage in the media. This suggests that given the strength of current conventional wisdom about cold fusion, simple announcements and demonstrations are not enough to stir the media into recognizing what is happening. Only continuing media and their technical consultant access to working devices that produce large quantities of heat over an extended period would seem to be enough to overcome the legacy of prejudice.
Fortunately, that day may not be years away. There are currently three companies that have announced they are working on commercial “cold fusion” devices and that seem to be making progress on producing large amounts of heat from the hydrogen and nickel reaction.
The leader at the minute seems to be the Italian Rossi and his Leonardo Corporation. Rossi claims, and as yet there is not substantiation, that he has partnered with a major U.S. company, capable of producing cold fusion , and that they are currently completing the testing of a device which will be mass produced and marketed. A prototype has already been brought to the U.S. and will be installed as a source of heat for a new factory.
For now all we can do is wait for a credible announcement, demonstration, or other type of confirmation that a new age has arrived.
Tom Whipple is a retired government analyst and has been following the peak oil issue for several years.
(Senators elected November 2007, term commenced 1 July 2008, expires 30 June 2014)
Continuing Senators (Elected 2010)
Party
Senators
Labor (2)
John Faulkner plus one vacancy
Liberal (2)
Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, Bill Heffernan
National (1)
Fiona Nash
Greens (1)
Lee Rhiannon
(Senators elected August 2010, term commenced 1 July 2011, expires 30 June 2017)
Changes/Retirements
Labor Senator Mark Arbib resigned in February 2012 to be replaced by Bob Carr. Liberal Senator Helen Coonan resigned in August 2011 to be replaced by Arthur Sinodinos. Labor Senator Matt Thistlewaite has resigned to contested Kingsford Smith at the 2013 election. His seat is currently vacant.
Group Voting Tickets and Senate Calculator
Group voting tickets and Senate calculators will be available after they are released around 19 August.
Summary of Past Results
Election
Percentage of Vote
Seats Won
(Vacancies)
ALP
L/NP
DEM
GRN
ONP
OTH
ALP
L/NP
DEM
GRN
OTH
1977 (5)
40.1
43.3
8.3
..
..
8.3
2
2
1
..
..
1980 (5)
44.7
41.9
6.9
..
..
6.5
3
2
..
..
..
1983 (10)
47.4
38.1
8.6
..
..
5.9
5
4
1
..
..
1984 (7)
41.6
37.0
7.3
..
..
14.1
3
3
1
..
..
1987 (12)
42.4
40.4
9.1
1.0
..
7.1
5
5
1
..
1
1990 (6)
40.6
38.4
11.8
2.9
..
6.3
3
2
1
..
..
1993 (6)
46.9
38.9
4.9
3.4
..
5.9
3
3
..
..
..
1996 (6)
37.2
41.4
9.5
2.7
..
9.2
2
3
1
..
..
1998 (6)
38.7
36.6
7.3
2.2
9.6
5.6
3
2
1
..
..
2001 (6)
33.5
41.8
6.2
4.4
5.6
8.6
2
3
..
1
..
2004 (6)
36.4
44.1
2.2
7.3
1.9
8.1
3
3
..
..
..
2007 (6)
42.1
39.3
0.9
8.4
0.4
8.9
3
3
..
..
..
2010 (6)
36.5
39.0
0.7
10.7
0.6
12.6
2
3
..
1
..
Notes: In 1984, Peter Garrett for the Nuclear Disarmament Party recorded 9.7% of the vote. At the 1987 election, the Nuclear Disarmament Party won the 12th Senate vacancy, even though they recorded only 1.0% of the vote
The other day Greens leader Christine Milne noticed a tweet saying “Get out of the way Christine and leave it to the big boys”. “I just thought to myself, that is so symptomatic of the certain element of the Australian population that never accepted women in leadership positions and now feel comfortable…
The Greens are fighting to keep the sole balance of power in the Senate, this election.
The other day Greens leader Christine Milne noticed a tweet saying “Get out of the way Christine and leave it to the big boys”.
“I just thought to myself, that is so symptomatic of the certain element of the Australian population that never accepted women in leadership positions and now feel comfortable that they’ve got their two men back, and they’re happy with that.”
Milne had a mixed relationship with Julia Gillard. The Greens-Labor alliance (forged by former leader Bob Brown) delivered the minor party great power; in the end, however, Milne walked away from it and attacked Labor.
But in an interview with The Conversation she says: “I find it extraordinary that Kevin Rudd has come back and more or less pretended that nothing happened between him losing the prime ministership and taking it over again.
“He just never refers to prime minister Gillard, sometimes refers to some of the policies, education being one, but virtually none other than that, and pretends that the whole climate package wasn’t there.
“But more particularly, the whole issue of women in leadership has just disappeared, as if it never existed. And now you’ve got a certain sense across part of the Australian population that things are back as they ought to be – the two parties are led by two men and they’re out there contesting it.
“I just think there are women out there, people out there, who do want to see more women in politics, and more women in politics standing up for feminist ideals and the advancement of women in society generally. And that’s where the Greens offer them not only ethical leadership but actually a demonstration of what a strong female leader can do”.
If Milne’s Greens do poorly at this election, it will be a blow for another female leader, but a lot more is at stake than that. The Greens’ sole balance of power in the Senate is on the line. If the key players in the Senate become crossbenchers on the right of the political spectrum, the Greens will lose their parliamentary relevance (unless there was an unlikely fluke – a re-elected Adam Bandt as a player in another hung parliament).
Data courtesy of Nielsen
Click to enlarge
It’s hard going being a Green up for election in 2013. The party reached a high point in 2010, polling nearly 11.8% in the House and about 13% in the Senate. Its current level is 9% in both Nielsen and Newspoll.
There are nine Green senators (their largest number ever) and Bandt in the lower House.
Milne says: “We are obviously underdogs, because we came off a record high in 2010. People don’t realise that this was the highest for a minor party since the Second World War.”
The Greens are defending Senate seats in Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia. In the latter two states, their seats are at real risk. “In both cases we’ll be fighting out the last seat with the conservatives, so it is really there that we need to hold the seats to prevent an Abbott government getting control of the Senate”. She rates their chances of retaining the sole Senate balance of power as more than 50-50. Milne is hopeful that the Greens could pick up a Victorian Senate spot (their candidate is Janet Rice, a transport planner).
What about Bandt in his seat of Melbourne? “It’s gong to be a hard campaign” but “there’s a real buzz in Melbourne”.
Although the Greens have taken a lot of criticism for refusing to compromise on asylum policy, the prospects of Bandt and their Senate candidates have been helped by the Labor and Coalition hardline unity ticket on boat arrivals.
“Certainly [Bandt] is getting feedback – people are coming up to him and saying that’s reinforced their vote or that they’re changing their vote because of that. But even before that, the polling he’s had done recently is pretty encouraging, so I think he is going to do well in Melbourne”.
More generally “I think we’re well placed going into this election to hold our Senate seats, especially now that Kevin Rudd has moved so far to the right to join Tony Abbott. People who have a more progressive view – particularly on asylum seekers and also on climate – will see there is a very distinct choice between the major parties and us.”
Milne has found leadership has left her with less time to get into her beloved garden. sowingseedswithchristinemilne.wordpress.com
Click to enlarge
In the last few years “the whole country has become more conservative” – she points to the results in state elections. “It’s been a hard political climate for progressive ideas to take hold.
“When John Howard came out with the idea of excising the whole of Australia from the migration zone, people were outraged, people couldn’t believe it and of course [Chris] Bowen came out at the time and said it was a stain on the national character. Now Labor has done it themselves.
“But I think the pendulum has now gone so far and people have seen that it’s too extreme and we’re going to see people pull back, and I think people are going to see this as an election between compassion and cruelty.”
She says the issues playing for the Greens on September 7 will be climate change (“the Greens are seen as the party that you can absolutely trust to go out there hard on emissions reduction and to be internally consistent”), the major parties’ lurch to the right on refugees, and “the transition of the economy from the old resource-based economy to the new diverse knowledge and service and brains based economy.”
Rudd’s return has pluses and minuses for the Greens. He will bring back some disillusioned ALP supporters to Labor’s fold. But if he prevents a collapse of the Labor Senate vote, that helps the minor party.
Yet Milne has no relationship with Rudd, who’s had little time for the Greens. (She notes that Rudd during the last 12 months of his first prime ministership didn’t meet once with Brown.) “It is ironic people talked about who was the real Julia. I don’t think anyone in Australia has a real insight into who the real Kevin Rudd or the real Tony Abbott are”.
Months ago Milne was frank about the Gillard government being doomed. Now she says it’s very difficult to say who’ll win although she thinks Rudd was right when he said he was the underdog.
In that unlikely scenario of the Greens having a lower house seat in a hung parliament, Rudd would find a potential dancing partner in Milne (though they’d be an awkward couple, assuming he could even be got onto the floor). “I would do everything I can to advance Greens policy through negotiations with a governing party, including an agreement on certain policy positions. The advantages to a minority government when you have got an agreement is a higher level of predictability.”
Milne is well aware of the contempt for the Greens in sections of Labor, “particularly coming out of NSW”. She’s sceptical about Rudd’s NSW reforms. “When people talk about the NSW disease that’s how people see it and I don’t think Kevin Rudd’s attempt to suggest that he has moved in and fixed it up is going to convince anybody that there’s been wholesale reform. Nor do I think that anybody believes the changes will last beyond the ALP conference”.
Asked what she regrets doing or failing to do as leader, Milne suggests she should have walked away earlier from the agreement with the government. “Just thinking back on it, it was obvious to me, coming into this year, that the Labor party had decided to abandon the spirit of the agreement with the Greens. We continued to work within the context of delivering. But it was pretty obvious that Labor had no intention of delivering anything more. We probably should have dealt with that earlier [although] it probably wouldn’t have changed anything much from where it did end up” when she made her announcement in February.
Even if the party doesn’t do well at the election, Milne does not fear for its future – remember the Australian Democrats went remarkably quickly from a significant force to oblivion – “because this is the century of the environment, globally and for Australia as well. This is the century in which the whole focus is going to be how can we live sustainably on this planet.”
Milne has a rural background, and believes she is well placed to engage people from regional areas. sowingseedswithchristinemilne.wordpress.com
Click to enlarge
Indeed Milne clings to the Brown dream that some day the Greens will become a major party.
Asked about the challenges of leadership, Milne says it is “quite a different concept from management. So I think my job as leader of the party is to go out there and be able to articulate what the Greens stand for and what the Greens can be trusted to deliver on and to provide the vision for the Greens.”
She believes she has been able “to pick up a lot of credibility with rural and regional Australia and also with progressive business. When I set out with the leadership I said there were two areas where I thought we could add to the Green vote and that’s because I am from rural and regional Australia, have got a big commitment to the bush, and people know that.
“I’ve been out there campaigning hard on coal seam gas, and on looking after agricultural land and taking on the supermarkets and local food policies and the like”.
Milne says that “when you are leading a party it’s a 24 hours a day, seven days a week job … that constant responsibility and awareness of that responsibility is a big thing to carry, especially when you’re walking after someone like Bob Brown who had such a high profile and enormous respect, not just amongst Green voters but across the community more generally.
“So I knew that it would be a hard job to do that. I’d been through that once before so I was not unrealistic about what that is like. I took over from Bob as lead of the Greens in Tasmania when he left to contest Denison in 1993.
“So it took just over six months, nearly a year, after Bob left in Tasmania to establish myself as the leader and that’s the task I’ve got leading into the election, to build the profile for the Greens and build my own profile in a leadership sense.”
For better or worse, Milne will always be competing with people’s memory of the party’s iconic former leader.
The paper, published in the journal “Public Understanding of Science,” found that the key link between climate change denial and conservative outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh was an inherent distrust of scientists. “Conservative media use decreases trust in scientists which, in turn, decreases certainty that global warming is happening,” the study says.
Conversely, researchers found that consumption of nonconservative media (i.e. CNN, MSNBC and NPR) had the opposite effect.
Americans’ support for climate change is on the rise — nearly 60 percent of people said they worry a great deal or fair amount about the problem earlier this year, up from 51 percent in 2011. President Obama has also been more vocal about the warming planet in recent months, although Americans are split on their approval of his plans.
The paper isn’t the first to identify the connection between Fox and climate denial, but expands on earlier observations, particularly that “the more Americans use conservative media, the less certain they are that global warming is happening.”
The study was conducted in two phases, beginning with 2,497 respondents in 2008, of which 1,036 were reinterviewed in 2011. The study incorporated variables including political ideology, religiosity and certain demographics.
WASHINGTON — A new massive federal study says the world in 2012 sweltered with continued signs of climate change. Rising sea levels, snow melt, heat buildup in the oceans, and melting Arctic sea ice and Greenland ice sheets, all broke or nearly broke records, but temperatures only sneaked into the top 10.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday issued a peer-reviewed 260-page report, which agency chief Kathryn Sullivan calls its annual “checking on the pulse of the planet.” The report, written by 384 scientists around the world, compiles data already released, but it puts them in context of what’s been happening to Earth over decades.
“It’s critically important to compile a big picture,” National Climatic Data Center director Tom Karl says. “The signs that we see are of a warming world.”
Sullivan says what is noticeable “are remarkable changes in key climate indicators,” mentioning dramatic spikes in ocean heat content, a record melt of Arctic sea ice in the summer, and whopping temporary melts of ice in most of Greenland last year. The data also shows a record-high sea level.
The most noticeable and startling changes seen were in the Arctic, says report co-editor Deke Arndt, climate monitoring chief at the data center. Breaking records in the Arctic is so common that it is becoming the new normal, says study co-author Jackie Richter-Menge of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H.
Karl says when looked at together, all the indicators show a climate that is changing over the decades. Individually, however, the story isn’t as simple.
Karl says surface temperatures haven’t risen in the last 10 years, but he notes that is only a blip in time due to natural variability. When looking at more scientifically meaningful time frames of 30 years, 50 years and more than 100 years, temperatures are rising quite a bit, Karl said. Since records have been kept in 1880, all 10 of the warmest years ever have been in the past 15 years, NOAA records show.
Depending on which of four independent analyses are used, 2012 ranked the eighth or ninth warmest year on record, the report says. Last year was warmer than every year in the previous century, except for 1998 when a record El Nino spiked temperatures globally. NOAA ranks 2010 as the warmest year on record.
They don’t have to be records every year, Karl says.
Overall the climate indicators “are all singing the same song that we live in a warming world,” Arndt says. “Some indicators take a few years off from their increase. The system is telling us in more than one place we’re seeing rapid change.”
While the report purposely doesn’t address why the world is warming, “the causes are primarily greenhouse gases, the burning of fossil fuels,” Arndt says.
The study is being published in a special edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
