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from the smoke-gets-in-your-eyes-and-lungs-and-clothes-and-environment dept.
Australia Doesn't Care to Break its Coal Habit in the Face of Climate Change:
Earlier this week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a dire warning about climate change: unless governments of the world coordinate to implement multiple long-term changes, we risk overshooting the 2°C warming scenario that countries strived to target in the Paris Agreement. This would lead to ecosystem damage, increasingly dramatic heat waves and previously-irregular weather patterns in different regions, and subsequent health impacts for humans.
Retiring coal-fired power plants is a significant action that could limit our race toward an unstable future. But Australia's officials don't quite care. According to The Guardian, the country's deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, said that Australia would "'absolutely' continue to use and exploit its coal reserves, despite the IPCC's dire warnings the world has just 12 years to avoid climate-change catastrophe."
McCormack also reportedly said that Australia would not change its coal policies "just because somebody might suggest that some sort of report is the way we need to follow and everything that we should do."
The country's previous prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, abandoned emissions reductions targets that the nation had agreed to, and Australia's renewable energy targets are set to expire in 2020. In September, government analysis showed that Australia's greenhouse-gas emissions increased last year, and independent analysts said the country would likely not meet the greenhouse-gas emissions reductions that it committed to under the Paris Agreement. Unlike the US, Australia has not exited the Paris Agreement, but the country's current prime minister has declined to add any more money to the global climate fund.
[...] Still, Australia ranks only fourth for economic coal resources, with the US, Russia, and China ahead of it. In the US, which has the world's largest economic coal resource, the Trump administration has had a difficult time fighting to save coal. On Wednesday, US coal supplier Westmoreland filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the face of $1.4 billion in debt. That makes the company the fourth major US coal supplier to file for bankruptcy in recent years due to the significant decline in coal use.
Internalize the profits, externalize the costs?
(Score: -1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @03:13PM (20 children)
It's certainly not settled science—there are respectable, qualified people who disagree vehemently with the "climate change" message, and who call into question the methodology and conclusions of research which supports it.
Folks, society should NOT spend trillions of dollars re-jiggering itself based on the nuttery of unhinged people chanting in the streets and hugging trees.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @04:33PM (16 children)
FTFY
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @04:41PM (15 children)
Ask the environmentalists of the Amazon, who have developed an amazing insight:
Should the Government be the owner? "No!", they say. The government is easily corrupted; it's much safer to put ownership in the hands of "private" individuals.
So, there you have it. You want to save the world? Privatize it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @04:49PM (2 children)
Bull.shit.
The way to save the Earth is to keep it out of the hands of people like you in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @05:44PM (1 child)
King Richard would like to disagree with you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @05:54PM
He can disagree all he wants - it's a free country - well, not his, but ours is.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RS3 on Thursday October 11 2018, @06:03PM (11 children)
I wish that was true. In my area there have been some infamous cases of 100% privately owned, beautiful healthy very very old trees which were cut down for stupid power lines. Could have moved the lines, including underground, but nope. Owners tried to fight it but "eminent domain", "right of way", "easement", "public good", etc.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @08:00PM
How is that "100% privately owned"? It sounds NOTHING Like "100% privately owned", unless you consider the government to be the private owner.
How do you people even tie your shoes? Seriously. It's like you don't even understand what you're saying.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @08:31PM
How is that "100% privately owned"? It sounds NOTHING Like "100% privately owned", unless you consider the government to be the private owner.
How do you people even tie your shoes? Seriously. It's like you don't even understand what you're saying.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @09:02PM
How is that "100% privately owned"? It sounds NOTHING Like "100% privately owned", unless you consider the government to be the private owner.
How do you people even tie your shoes? Seriously. It's like you don't even understand what you're saying.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @10:44PM
How is that "100% privately owned"? It sounds NOTHING Like "100% privately owned", unless you consider the government to be the private owner.
How do you people even tie your shoes? Seriously. It's like you don't even understand what you're saying.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @01:32AM
How is that "100% privately owned"? It sounds NOTHING Like "100% privately owned", unless you consider the government to be the private owner.
How do you people even tie your shoes? Seriously. It's like you don't even understand what you're saying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @01:45AM (2 children)
Putting power lines, especially high voltage AC lines underground, greatly increases the energy losses. Didn't you ever study the capacitance between a wire and a plane in high school physics class? The geometry and placement of power lines may look simply like some wires between towers, but it is highly engineered.
Example...follow the wires and you'll see the three phase lines are rotated every so often.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday October 12 2018, @02:27AM (1 child)
Okay smart guy, what's your solution? Before you pontificate some more, 1) you wrote AC, not me. No capacitive losses with DC. 2) I strongly advocate for local (everywhere possible) solar and wind generation with local distributed energy storage (PowerWall, etc.) which will reduce distribution loads and requirements, and 3) read this, remembering it's 8 years old and we've (engineering) gotten even better at efficient DC to AC conversion: https://www.puc.nh.gov/2008IceStorm/ST&E%20Presentations/NEI%20Underground%20Presentation%2006-09-09.pdf [nh.gov]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday October 12 2018, @09:13AM
AC is used because transformers are easy and cheap
There is a D.C. Line from the Columbia to LA. That's how long and how powerful it has to be to be economical
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @03:03AM (2 children)
How is that "100% privately owned"? It sounds NOTHING Like "100% privately owned", unless you consider the government to be the private owner.
How do you people even tie your shoes? Seriously. It's like you don't even understand what you're saying.
(Score: 3, Touché) by hendrikboom on Friday October 12 2018, @03:05PM (1 child)
Velcro.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 12 2018, @03:46PM
Please show us, on the picture, how to apply the velcro.
https://www.wolverine.com/US/en/slip-resistant-10-inch-wellington-work-boot/18405M.html [wolverine.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mykl on Friday October 12 2018, @05:25AM (2 children)
That's what they said about leaded petrol (gasoline).
They also said that about CFCs.
And DDT.
Let's also not forget that those who are warning of the dangers are not protecting any vested interests (other than perhaps tenure, but then they could get that studying other fields or even better being the ones that finally 'disprove' the claims). The ones telling us that warming is a hoax do have vested interests.
Can you name me one mass-warning in the past century heralded by the majority of scientists in their field that turned out to be nothing?
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Friday October 12 2018, @03:25PM
The internet, and all of its applications, would usher in a new Golden Age of information and efficiency?
(well, I guess that could be correct, since they technically did not consider to apply the adjectives 'correct' or 'useful' or 'fair moderation' or 'no spam' due to Academia being somewhat up in the clouds about what real people do with the stuff they give us...)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Friday October 12 2018, @03:26PM
With leaded gasoline, there was a world-wide reduction in violence about 20 years after it was banned. The exact dates varied around the world depending on when it was banned where, but whenever it was banned, violence declined about 20 years after,