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Chockstone Forum - General Discussion

General Climbing Discussion

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Author
OT: Skeptics vs Alarmist Cage Match unSpectacular!

Organ Pipe
25-May-2009
11:26:54 AM
I havn't read this whole thread - rather skimmed the odd post now and then - so apologies if the following has already been discussed:

On storeage - that is the ability to ensure that renewables can cope with the rise and fall in load across peak and non peak times etc - my father in law who works for a metering company, formally managing an energy retailer, mentioned the other night that the metering fraternaty are expecting (and therefore planning towards) a future state where all our electric cars act as the national storage sync.

The idea is that apart from peak hour each day, most cars will be either plugged in at home, or plugged in at work. Overnight they charge - buying off peak power at off peak rate, then selling power back into the grid while at work.

I know that's a overly simplistic way of detaling what is an extremely complex peak and trough demand model, but you get the general idea.

The common man can buy at overnight price, and sell at peak price. The metering guys are working on the early framework for legislation, governance, and grid models to support the principal. Even the not particularly green guys in the biz see this as inevitable apparently.

Interesting stuff I reccon.

evanbb
25-May-2009
11:55:26 AM
On 25/05/2009 Organ Pipe wrote:
>Interesting stuff I reccon.

Definitely is. And no, we haven't discussed it yet.

I'm extending the life of my current Subaru as long as possible, hoping the next car I buy will be electric.

I imagine a time when we'll have 2 cars; a little electric one for short trips around town, to the shops, to the pub etc. There's a few available now with a range of 160k, which would easily cover all of my weekday driving. Then, I'll have the Sube for climbing trips and longer holidays, or carrying heavy things. I often wonder what price of petrol people will tolerate before demand drops off steeply. No-one seems to care at the moment, but I reckon it's going to go higher...
psd
25-May-2009
12:16:07 PM
How many of you guys would support nuclear power?
devlin66
25-May-2009
12:19:14 PM
DA here. Where are you going to get electricity to charge up the batteries? My fear is that if everyone is driving electric then the demand on the system would be immense. Knowing how the governments of the day seem to lag infrastructure needs by a decade at least, then once the electric car is taken up on mass the power system would fall over. Are measures being put in place to cater for this part of future growth?
widewetandslippery
25-May-2009
12:25:31 PM
On 25/05/2009 psd wrote:
>How many of you guys would support nuclear power?

I'm all for the bomb
TonyB
25-May-2009
12:27:34 PM
On 25/05/2009 evanbb wrote:
>I am not a 'believer', that's what religion is for.

I've had another browse through your posts. Lots of babble but no evidence. I will repeat once again. Neither you nor anyone else has posted a single piece of evidence that man's CO2 is causing global warming or cooling !

The fact that the world has warmed 0.7 degrees since the Little Ice Age is not evidence that man had anything to do with it. This tiny increase is less than the accuracy with which temperatures are recored ( 1 degree ).

Perhaps you don't understand what evidence means ??? Is it Al Gore's ice cores perhaps ... nah, they just show that CO2 increases are a result of warming, not a cause. Is it Mann's 'hockey stick' perhaps ... nah, the Wegman report proved that was nonsense and even the IPCC dropped it in 2007.

Come on, give us your best shot. In your own words, why are you a believer in the CO2 nonsense ???

TonyB
25-May-2009
12:30:30 PM
On 25/05/2009 GravityHound wrote:

Great to see you are doing some of your own investigation, rather than being a blind believer in government reports.

What did source you use for your data ? Did you use monthly data ? What year range did you use ?

nmonteith
25-May-2009
12:30:53 PM
On 25/05/2009 psd wrote:
>How many of you guys would support nuclear power?

I would. I have the lucas heights reactor 20km from my home and i'd be happy to live near a bigger one. I think the chance of it all going pear-shaped is very small with all the right checks. For big bulk power it seems a great solution providing you can get rid of the small amount of waste in some sort of deep down bunker. Really the easiest way of getting rid of it would be to turf it into space where it can live with all its radioative friends - but having the rocket blow up in the launch pad with a few tonnes of radioactive material would be a bit sucky. That's why we need to build a space lift.
devlin66
25-May-2009
12:54:45 PM
Just use a big f*** off sling shot. Like the one where that chick gets flung from the back of the quad bike!
psd
25-May-2009
12:58:24 PM
On 25/05/2009 widewetandslippery wrote:
>On 25/05/2009 psd wrote:
>>How many of you guys would support nuclear power?
>
>I'm all for the bomb

That would certainly work from a demand side management perspective ;-)

ajfclark
25-May-2009
1:02:22 PM
On 25/05/2009 devlin66 wrote:
>Just use a big f*** off sling shot. Like the one where that chick gets flung from the back of the quad bike!

This one? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfcU_dL5YcQ
psd
25-May-2009
1:06:08 PM
On 25/05/2009 nmonteith wrote:
>
> For big bulk power it seems a
>great solution.

I think that's right - it's hard to imagine renewables providing reliable baseload power into the long-term. That said, who knows what someone clever type might come up with in the future particularly as fossil fuels and the electricity generated from them get super expensive - potentially some big rewards there.

evanbb
25-May-2009
1:15:51 PM
On 25/05/2009 psd wrote:
>How many of you guys would support nuclear power?

Yes, but no is my short answer.

(BTW, where's Mikl? I bet he's got some opinions on this. I'm hoping I don't get anything wrong here)

http://www.crikey.com.au/2006/11/21/switkowskis-nuclear-report-at-first-glance/
http://cpd.org.au/article/switkowski-report:-opportunity-knocks%3F

This was a report requested under Howard called the Switkowski report, where the aim was to determine the financial frameworks required to make nuclear power cost effective in Australia. The result was that, because we have no existing nuclear infrastructure; processing, transport, waste storage; it would be extroardinarily expensive to establish in Australia.

The criteria required to make it cost effective were:
Big Government subsidies
Wait to become 'late adopters of next-generation technology' (that's the fast breeder reactors that are just starting to be built now)
Rollout of about 15-25 power plants, to get some scaling benefits
Massive ramp up of uranium mining
Build a fuel processing industry
Then figure out what to do with the waste.

The result is a process that looks technically feasible, but difficult, but politically impossible. We complain pretty bitterly when someone installs a wind farm, which I consider pretty inoccuous, imagine the uproar of nuke plants being rolled out in say 5 electorates? A lot of MP's would be absolutely sweating.

The other problem is that it'll take too long to build them, in terms of addressing CO2 in the next 15 years. CO2 payback on a uranium plant is pretty long, because of all the emboddied carbon in the acres of concrete involved. But, as said, over the plant's life time the CO2/MWh energy is absurdly low, something like 6kg/MWh, compared to 1000kg/MWh for coal.

The waste storage is a prety big problem; plutonium is literally the most toxic thing known to man. Australia has some scope on this front, with huge areas to dump waste, we've even got areas that are radioactive now where no-one goes. Beyond here though, it becomes an ethical problem, and I doubt I would support it. Sure, we might find a way to store the waste now, but it's active for 100,000 years. Politics will change a lot over that time, and I suspect it would be better not to create the waste in the first place.

So, I think I'd support it, with some caveats. Got to solve the waste problem, and I believe that the Fast Breeders do address this in some way. And, it would have to replace coal plants, not renewables. Denmark has 30% renewables on the grid, and I think this would be a good aim. Will it happen? I sincerely doubt it. The political will would have to be very strong, and the protests against it will be unbelievable.


pmonks
25-May-2009
1:18:42 PM
Except that no one's figured out how to store the waste for the ****ing long time it takes to degrade into something "safe" (ie. "merely" toxic, rather than radioactive and toxic). Reprocessing can help, but it's not thought to be economically viable, so it's hard to see how that would ever happen on the same scale as nuclear power generation.

But then if we can build self-maintaining containment structures that can survive intact for 25,000 years without an ounce of manual maintenance, the space elevator should be trivial, right?

evanbb
25-May-2009
1:43:10 PM
On 25/05/2009 TonyB wrote:
>I've had another browse through your posts. Lots of babble but no evidence.
> I will repeat once again. Neither you nor anyone else has posted a single
>piece of evidence that man's CO2 is causing global warming or cooling !

What would you count as evidence Tony? You're in a pretty nicely contrived position at the moment that is very difficult to dislodge you from. Evidence from the IPCC and NASA is inadmissible, because the IPCC is run by a railway engineer. You don't read any links, think 7 years is a trend, and have no grasp of scientific proof. Seems to me, the only evidence you'll accept is someone standing around watching a thermometer.

With that in mind, I've plotted the temperature in Canberra for today:

As you can clearly see, temperatures were pretty stable during the "Early Morning Warm Period", which lasted up until about 5.30am. This matches NEM data on electricity use, and when there is less CO2 being put into the atmosphere. From 5.30 till 7.30 is what's commonly called the "Getting Out Of Bed Little Ice Age"; the calm before the storm, when energy use rises rapidly as people get out of bed and make a coffee, and the 7.30 aluminium smelter shift starts; these guys are known energy users. Then from 7.30 until now you can clearly see temperatures rising rapidly as CO2 concentrations rise. What happens after this I can only guess, but I bet it won't be good.

Convinced?

No, I didn't think so. Let's try something else then. I've provided lots of evidence, from a great variety of sources, and you've discarded every single one of them, for reasons best known to yourself. So, how about you tell me what single piece of evidence would convince you that man made emissions of CO2 are changing the climate, and I'll see if I can find it. Deal? Here's your chance Tony, stake your claim.

Wendy
25-May-2009
1:51:48 PM
I did a research piece on nuclear power in France last year, which as a side line address why the UK, US and Sweden bailed on nuclear power. In summary, everyone got excited about it in the late 60s, piled out a fair few of them, and everyone but France started to bail on them in the 70s. The reason France was actually successful (in a way) in establishing nuclear power was
a. big government - everyone was used to it and it enabled strict regulating and funding
b. state owned electricity - govt was able to control the roll out and as they were all under the one company, they were able to share resource/knowledge etc.
c. The decision to choose one sort of reactor and stick to it - much more cost effective and easy transference of knoweldge etc.
d. Going in whole hog - it's really not cost effective to dabble.
e. French lack of traditional energy resources and stubborn independence/nation pride - this won over the concerns people had about nuclear power. They were also very open about it and sold it to communities with tours/info etc.
f. Reprocessing - minimised waste for a while there.

Having done all that however, they came to a problem in the late 80s where they were actually starting to pile up waste and had no where to put it. When they tried to create a dump somewhere, they discovered that communitites quite happy to have reactors were not at all happy to have dumps. A few years later, some sensible politician did some consulting of people and discovered how to sell the dump to people - effectively call it a storage and research station - and they managed to get one approved. Unfortuneately, it was full before it was open and another couple failed to get off the ground. So they still have a waste problem that they haven't resolved yet and admit that if they can't resolve it, they are going to have to can the program. Also, most of their reactors are past their original lifepan so there's a whole stack more work there. France still has an antinuke movement as well.

I can't remember why Sweden canned nukes, but the major problems with the US and UK were from trying to develop nuke power in a less regulated, capitalist market. Generally involved more technical problems, accidents and expense as there was no overriding interest directing and funding the roll out. Presumeably we'd have similar problems here having more in common with uk/us govt and market than the french. Also, there was much more public objection and I think we'd have that too.

Then on top of that is whether it really does save an CO2 emmissions - the resources required in building, running, mining, transport etc are huge. Plus the expense. George Monbiot has a whole book about trying to work out if it is feasible to reduce emissions by 90% in the UK without extroardinary expense and loss of standard of living. In his chapter on nuclear power, he says after all his research (read the book Heat if you want the details) the only conclusion he can reach about the cost of nuclear power is that if you are for it, it's cheap and if you are against it, it's expensive. The other conclusion he reaches is that the opposers are probably more accurate in their costings, based purely on the fact that there are no private enterprises running nuclear plants without massive government subsidy and if it really was economic to do it, the market would demonstrate this with a flood of willing companies.

Then there is the problem of time - it would be 10-15 years to get one up and running, assuming all the other problems could be resolved. And also that we would one day run out of uranium. I still see nuclear as a non-option. It's too problematic in too many ways.
Wendy
25-May-2009
1:59:12 PM
Evan's turn to crack me up today ...
devlin66
25-May-2009
2:15:29 PM
Does economic feasability become redundant if the whole power generation industry was taken from the capitalist thugs and run by government as not for profit and purely for need basis. Seems to me that a lot of reasons why these things don't get off the ground is because someone won't make a bazillion dollars out of it. I really believe we have to get off the bandwagon of trying to treat essential services as commodities.

IdratherbeclimbingM9
25-May-2009
2:19:07 PM
The Russians did that. I think they called it Chernobyl?

HehXaglowinthedarkfew

evanbb
25-May-2009
2:33:43 PM
On 25/05/2009 devlin66 wrote:
>Does economic feasability become redundant if the whole power generation
>industry was taken from the capitalist thugs and run by government as not
>for profit and purely for need basis.

A little. There are still differences in the price of the electricity that come out of the end of the various technologies. Coal's cheap. It's virtually dirt FFS. So, the profit that they skim off the top will disappear, but the cost of generation will not.

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