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  • Rees tries to take carbon credit

    Rees tries to take carbon credit   ( Source NSW Greens Media)

    “The bread and circuses approach to running the State has reached a new
    low with Premier Rees announcing a ban on bottled water in Government
    departments. As Minister for Water, Nathan Rees didn’t bat an eyelid
    when the community at Peat’s Ridge objected to Coca Cola/Amatil
    extracting 66 million litres of water from Mangrove Mountain. The
    company paid the NSW Goverment $200 for a water extraction licence and
    are now selling it in plastic bottles for more than $10 million a year.




     
    “We’ve sold a public asset, for a token amount and now the Premier
    has made a token gesture in response –  and it’s the public who has to
    pay for the mess, mostly through council rates. By jumping on the
    bandwagon being drawn by the sensible people of Bundanoon, Premier Rees
    is trying to score an environmental point – it would be funny if he
    wasn’t in such negative carbon credit,”
    “The Premier has responded – with about one minute’s thought –
    to the real public concern about the damage that drink bottles are doing
    to the environment and about the mountains of unnecessary waste.
    Australians spend roughly $385 million on 250 million litres of bottled
    water year and only a third of these get recycled. Every five bottles
    takes one litre of crude oil to make.”
    “Less than a month ago, both the Labor Government and the Opposition
    voted to oppose my Private Member’s Bill that would have given NSW a
    complete container recycling scheme – for all drink bottles and
    recyclable containers along the lines of South Australia’s scheme.”

    “The Government threw away a $33.8 million dollar income stream from
    the recycling market. They voted against reducing in fossil fuel
    consumption, substantially reducing rubbish on our streets, beaches and
    parks, slashing council rates, providing consumers with an easy
    incentive to recycle, and creating hundreds of green jobs.”


     “The Bill was a no-brainer for popular appeal and an easy fix for
    the environment. Consumers would get a 10 cent return on their
    containers. The Bundanoon ban shows that people are crying out for
    action on waste.”

    “We are five years away from the proposed NSW Waste Recovery target
    for a 66% increase in recycling by 2014. From 2002 -2008 in NSW it
    increased by only 2%. In South Australia the recycling rate is over 80%
    compared with the NSW rate of less than 40%.”
     
    “Premier Rees’ attention grabbing gesture makes a mockery of the
    people of Bundanoon who have taken decisive action against environmental
    degradation. As we can see from his recent actions, the Premier is not
    doing anything serious about water and waste or to curb the excesses of
    the bottling industry and their lobbyists.”

  • Why it would be naive to abandon emissions negotiations at Copenhagen

    Why it would be naive to abandon emissions negotiation at Copenhagen


    A new report advocates exclusive emphasis on clean technology – but rejecting emissions caps is simplistic and will not work






    A new breed of climate sceptic is becoming more common. This new breed is not sceptical of the science, but of the policy response. The latest example is a new report by a group of leading academics: How to get climate policy back on course. It questions the approach to climate change action within the United Nations negotiations. Rather than the current approach that emphasises targets for emissions reductions, the report advocates support for low-carbon and energy-efficient technologies (PDF).


     


     


    The frustration of the report’s authors is understandable. The negotiations since the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change entered into force in 1994 have been painfully slow. For too long some industrialised economies – particularly the US – were either lukewarm or hostile to the negotiating process. The emissions reductions targets announced for 2020 by leading developed countries such as the US and Japan are not sufficient – this is despite Japan’s commitment to exclusively domestic action. Furthermore, long promised finance and technological assistance for developing countries has yet to materialise.


     


    However, we shouldn’t take this frustration too far and make an idealised climate change policy the enemy of the good. As the authors of the report emphasise, there is considerable economic, political and psychological capital invested in the current policy approach. This means that the negotiations in Copenhagen are the only game in town. But none of the measures advocated in the report will add up unless they are implemented within an overall limit on emissions. Caps on emissions are required as part of what Anthony Giddens has recently called the “ensuring State”. We need to know that the actions of individuals, businesses and communities are sufficient to limit emissions in line with climate science.


     


    Caps on emissions are more effective where they are implemented alongside policies to price carbon emissions. The EU emissions trading scheme does this, and there are provisions in the US climate change bill for a similar scheme. There is huge room for improvement in the EU, for example, by tightening caps and reducing the number of get out clauses for industries with large lobbying budgets. But again this is no excuse to dismiss the whole idea. Pricing carbon is necessary (though not sufficient) to move economies towards a more low-carbon pathway.


     


    The report’s authors recognise the value of pricing carbon to some extent. They advocate a “low ring-fenced carbon tax” to fund low-carbon technologies. But a low tax is unlikely to make any real difference. Furthermore, their emphasis on funding for low-carbon technologies and energy efficiency is only a partial solution – and sets up a false dichotomy between emissions caps and support for technology and efficiency. It echoes the view of President Bush who rejected the Kyoto treaty. Having done so, he used his 2007 State of the Union address to offer the alternative view that “the way forward is through technology”.


     


    Simply supporting cleaner, low-carbon technologies is not enough and is naive. Experience shows that pushing technologies with funding is just one part of a complex picture. There also needs to be a market for these technologies so that businesses and individuals adopt them. Markets for low-carbon technologies need to be created through a combination of carbon prices and regulations. Without them, a lot of good technology investment will go to waste.


     


    The emphasis on energy efficiency in the report is welcome, but not thought through. Almost all assessments of climate mitigation pathways conclude that energy efficiency should be done first because it saves us money. However, making energy production and use more efficient is not as easy as it seems, and can have unintended consequences. The “rebound effect” happens because the savings are used for other energy-consuming activities. This seldom makes energy efficiency a waste of time, but emissions caps are needed to limit such rebounds.


     


    Caps on emissions are therefore a vital component of a successful deal at Copenhagen. Without this and action on other crucial issues such as finance and technology, leading developing countries will not sign up – and will refuse to make commitments of their own. There are some positive signs. Good progress is being made in bilateral talks between the US and China about the conditions under which China could be brought into a new deal. Gordon Brown’s recent proposals on finance and technology have been widely welcomed in the developing world. We should support these initiatives while being critical when progress is too slow or lacks ambition. Rejecting emissions caps in favour of an exclusive emphasis on cleaner technologies is simplistic and will not work.


     


    • Jim Watson is director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex

  • PM Kevin Rudd warns world on climate change

    PM Kevin Rudd warns world on climate change






    Lenore Taylor, National correspondent | July 10, 2009


    Article from:  The Australian


    KEVIN Rudd has warned world leaders they have 150 days to bite the bullet on climate change, after talks between environment ministers failed to break deadlocks threatening a global agreement at Copenhagen in December and G8 leaders managed only the vaguest consensus.


    Speaking as he prepared for critical climate change talks with leaders of 17 wealthy and developing countries on the sidelines of the G8 meeting in the Italian town of L’Aquila, the Prime Minister was blunt about the stalled negotiations and the urgent need for a breakthrough.


    On Wednesday, the G8 agreed to a long-term “goal” of reducing global emissions by 50 per cent by 2050, but Mr Rudd said that, if the Copenhagen negotiations were to succeed, there would have to be tough talk about the nearer term 2020 targets crucial to emissions trading schemes being developed around the world, including in Australia.


     


    “The key challenge is what can developed and developing nations do in terms of medium-term targets by 2020 and how can we reach agreement on that by the time we reach Copenhagen,” Mr Rudd said before attending the major economies forum meeting, to be chaired by US President Barack Obama.


    “That is the real challenge and when we get to L’Aquila later today I would hope to be having that level of discussion with our friends from around the world.


    “The clock is ticking on climate change and we can’t just shuffle around and hope that something falls out of trees. We have to actually land an outcome, our negotiators need fresh impetus, a fresh commissioning from their political leaders to try to forge an agreement.”


    The G8 leaders were putting a positive spin on their climate change communique, claiming it represented an agreement to stop global warming at 2C.


    In fact the communique said only that the leaders “recognised the broad scientific view” that global temperatures should not be allowed to climb more than 2C over pre-industrial levels and that rich countries could collectively reduce emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 as part of the global effort to achieve the 50 per cent cuts.


    A draft of the communique set to be issued by the major economies leaders – obtained by The Australian – contains even vaguer language. “We recognise the scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2C. We will work between now and Copenhagen to identify a global goal for substantially reducing global emissions by 2050.”


    British Prime Minister Gordon Brown hailed the deal as historic and claimed it laid the foundations for a successful Copenhagen deal. American officials called it a “step forward”.


    But G8 member Russia quickly undermined it when President Dmitry Medvedev’s economic adviser said the 80 per cent emissions reductions would be impossible for Russia to achieve.


    “For us, the 80 per cent figure is unacceptable and likely unattainable,” Arkady Dvorkovich said. “We won’t sacrifice economic growth for the sake of emission reduction.”


    And both China and India have insisted the developed countries need to put medium-term cuts on the table before the developing countries commit to anything. “There have to be credible mid-term goals in the range of 25-40 per cent,” said Dinesh Patnaik, an Indian negotiator.


    Both the Rudd government and the opposition have promised cuts of between 5 and 25 per cent by 2020, the higher targets conditional on the ambition of any global deal.


    Mr Rudd said distant 2050 targets should not be the main game for the major economies forum, which includes the G8 and other countries, including China, India, Brazil and Australia.


    Conservation groups said the aspiration to limit global warming was weakened by the absence of medium-term targets.

  • The Fireless Locomotive







    The Fireless Locomotive      






    Written by Hank Morris   

    The fireless locomotive is one of the most remarkable and foolproof locomotive designs devised. A locomotive equipped with a large tank or reservoir instead of a boiler and firebox, it carries no fire. This engine was essentially a giant thermos bottle lying on its side with wheels.




    This type of locomotive was very desirable for service in plants where cleanliness and the elimination of fire hazards and noise were important. They were quite popular in applications where smoke and cinders could ruin the product, as in textile mills or agricultural processing plants. In those applications where this type of locomotive fits, it was a reliable and economical unit of motive power. Fireless locomotives could be found working in chemical industries, powder plants, paper mills, food plants and electric power plants, wherever a reliable source of steam or compressed air was readily available.

    Before the perfection of electric street traction in the 1880s, American city railways tried many exotic forms of power in an effort to displace horse-propelled cars. In the 1870s the Crescent City Railway of New Orleans tried some steam storage motors built in Paterson, N.J., by Theodore Scheffler in 1876. These locomotives were fireless and obtained a “charge” of steam from a stationary boiler house. Fireless locomotives were extensively used In Europe long before their introduction in this country. The first European-built fireless was brought to the U.S. in 1913.


    Learn more at the National Railway Historical Society website. 

  • Solar Steam Train project announcement




    Solar Steam Train project announcement






    Written by Tim Castleman   

    Building on the Solar Steam Train concept, we are raising support for a demonstration project in Sacramento, California. Proposed is to use the existing rail yards to support a fireless locomotive that would be used in rotation on the tourist line in Old Sacramento .


     


    Sacramento Rail Yards
    Sacramento Rail Yards


    Once again the region will lead the world in developing a system for mass transportation using simple, well proven technology to provide high quality, clean, renewable energy more efficiently than any other by taking the shortest path from the sun to the drive wheels.

    Thermal solar energy collectors will be erected over portions of the site having deed restrictions for industrial use only, thus converting a toxic problem into a renewable energy production facility. This energy will be used to charge and recharge the fireless locomotive,which then has a very short distance to service on the popular tourist train.

     


    As part of a District Energy System , the PG&E steam plant on Jibboom Street can be re-used to support not only the Solar Train – it will also provide energy security for development of the River-front & Rail-yards area.


    1940 Heisler fireless locomotive
    1940 Heisler fireless locomotive
    We are approaching owners and stakeholders with this proposal. Upon approval from these, second round funding will be raised to purchase at least one fireless locomotive and for preparation of support facilities including construction of the Solar Steam Plant. With restoration of historic locomotive shops we will also be recycling a facility too long underused that at one time employed 7000 area residents and supported transportation to the entire region.

  • Study suggests dry spells here to stay

    Study suggests dry spells here to stay 


    The author of a new climate study commissioned by the Federal Government says people in southern parts of Australia can expect the dry weather in many areas to continue indefinitely.


    The study by Australian National University (ANU) professor Will Steffen looked at scientific papers published since the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change’s last major report in 2007.


    He found there is growing evidence that prolonged dry spells in certain parts of Australia are linked to climate change rather than nature.


     


    “The situation is becoming clear: I think we can say with some degree of confidence now that the drying in south-west Western Australia, the one in which Perth is suffering from, has a strong climate change signal so it’s going to be with us for some time,” he said.


    He says the situation is similar in south-east Australia.


    “We are also now starting to see a signal we think in the southern part of south-east Australia, that is the southern half of South Australia and Victoria,” he said.


    “The pronounced drying we have seen over the last decades appears to have a climate change signal in it as well, so there is a risk that that will continue for some time.”


    Tags: drought, environment, climate-change, science-and-technology, research, weather, australia, sa, vic, wa