In reply to Wesley Bruce's message of Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:31:44 +1000: Hi, [snip] >I'm an Aussy so D.C. is almost irrelevant and has been for some years
DC will likely never be irrelevant. The US still the worlds richest market, and most powerful nation. >now. We are looking at some major options including clean coal and were >in a good position in terms of solar, etc. We have even combined the two >solar coal gassification. The reason both the government and the opposition are jumping on the "clean coal" bandwagon is that coal is Australia's major export, and both sides of the house "know" that without it the Australian economy would go bust. This is typical of short sighted, ignorant politicians. Totally incapable of looking outside the box. "Clean coal", isn't and never will be. Fusion will displace it before it even gets off the ground, and Australia's coal industry is going to go bankrupt. I am going to do my level best to ensure that it happens. The fusion industry that grows up to replace it will usher in an age of prosperity such as the Earth has never seen. > >The Capitalisation of the green energy sector only requires someone with >a little brains to realise that a company that combines the emerging >household energy technologies and mortgage finance beats Government >subsidies hands down. In the ACT we have polititions writing legistation True, and with a little luck, one of those household technologies will be fusion based. Once it has been introduced, there will be no holding it back. >for green-energy buyback, running the meter backwards on solar, wind etc. Solar stands a chance in this regard, wind none. Wind is better suited to off shore wind farms (way, way off shore). >We have a sugar industry that makes ethanol using no fossil fuel input >at the factory and could do so at the farm level, ethanol powered >tractors. This remains to be seen. >We have one of the best wave power sites in the world at Bass >strait and we are laying the first cables on that sea bed. ...but as far as I know, those cables are to connect Tasmania to the mainland energy grid, not for the harnessing of wave power in particular (though I may be behind the times in this regard). > >If you look at Peswiki you see 3 to 5 new projects a day. Any one of >which if fully developed could produce 20-30% of the worlds fuel >requirments and 10% of its grid energy requirements. With 100+ projects >each with the potential of meeting 10% of the demand we dont have an >energy crisis were heading for a solutions glut. All of these are still in their infancy. It will take quite a while before they lead to a glut. That time will be shortened if the financial gradient is steep enough, IOW if both the initial investment cost is low, and the actual energy production cheap. > >We, here in Australia, have too many projects chasing the limited amount >of venture capital our economy produces. Contrary to popular belief >carbon taxes and carbon credits will not finance the key technologies. That will depend on where the ceiling is placed. Knowing our current government that will be so high as to be worthless, IOW whatever you do, "don't hurt the coal industry". >As government run programs they are risk averse lenders, And with many >solutions here now it is a higher risk game. > >World wide we now have 6 ethanol technologies as well as, Butanol, >methanol ~ dimethyle ether, biogas methane, Compressed air cars, a dozen >new electrics a month, Any/all of the gasoline replacements may yet prove viable. Compressed air cars won't. Electrics probably not, as the only good one rely on lithium batteries, and these will remain expensive until fusion is introduced. At that point it will be produced reasonably cheaply as a desalination byproduct from sea water. However by then we may be running cars on fusion power directly, and not need the Lithium anyway. >commercial solar cars hitting the roads. The This is a non starter. The surface area of a car just isn't big enough to collect enough solar power to be worth the effort, let alone the cost. >question realy is What Energy Crisis! Govenments rarely lead but often >follow when the time comes. We are in a R & D boom right now. True. Necessity is the mother of invention. [snip] >I agree the middle-east will be a nuclear war zone soon if the hard line >Mullahs in Iran get the bomb. If you had paid attention to what they say, rather than the garbage fed to you on a daily basis by the war mongering western media, you would know that the head Mullah in Iran has actually forbidden them to get the bomb. >Israel will not be the main target the >Sunni cities will be. No one is going to be the target, because there isn't going to be any bomb, and even if there were, it would not be used as an offensive weapon. Too much chance of shooting yourself in the foot. >Israel may need to strike first and soon. It wouldn't make any difference. In fact it would be counter productive, because such a strike would achieve absolutely nothing directly, yet would result in retaliatory strikes from all sides. This would be a severe case of Israel shooting itself in the foot. >Pakistan >already has a bomb and is visibly teatering. Imagine a nuclear armed >Pakistan run by President Osama Bin laden. A wild flight of fancy. Osama is and always has been a CIA stooge. Just check out the family connections, and why do you think he has never been captured? And have you noticed that he puts out nice little videos when Dubya's popularity is dropping in the poles? He is the mandatory foil, the "face of the enemy". If he didn't exist, they would have to, and did, invent him. That is not to say that he isn't a real person, of course he is, but he's a puppet. >He knows where the action is. No wonder. >If we see a real war in the middle-east oil will go to prices that will >be spectacular but we now have hundreds of companies ready to go with >solutions. Yet most of these are still lab solutions. Few have been tested on a sufficiently large scale to know whether or not they are going to be able to hack it in the real world. >If oil goes to $150 a barrel the debate about subidies would >be over; the rush to clear the red tape will be on and those that stand >in the way of the new green giant will be stomped on. Probably true. :) > >The real battlelines will not be about oil; it will be Coal verses the >hundreds of new energy technologies. The Coal miners will be a greater >threat than the industry. This won't necessarily be a problem. While the coal industry is dying, lots of other new industries will be starting up and hiring those who lose employment in the coal industry, so there will be a slide sideways rather than a dole queue. With plenty of work becoming available elsewhere, people won't mind leaving the coal industry. [snip] >In Order to defuse the coal/ greenhouse >problem it needs to be very cheep. No, it's not even a desirable "solution". The first time there's an earthquake where the CO2 is stored, the whole lot will return to the surface in one vast cloud, and being heavier than air it will settle across the surface of the ground in a layer meters deep, suffocating thousands in the process. Then it will slowly mix with the air, and we will be right back to square one. That's why there is no such thing as "clean coal", and why those who seek refuge in it are delusional. [snip] Regards, Robin van Spaandonk The shrub is a plant.
