"Scientists will loose their funding if climate change is false": firstly the consensus is getting there, has grown rapidly. It's about done. What is being debated is whether it's man-made and whether we can do something about it.

Overall, your statement could be true, but it's not a useful comment, as the converse is equally true: "scientists working for polluting industries stand to lose (their jobs, funding) if warming and its cause end up being generally agreed."

I would have thought that if the Gov. wants to reduce carbon emissions it needs to be done with a positive rather than a negative and people WILL change.

There are MANY examples.... like Digital / Analogue phones, how many people would go back to analogue and give up TXT messages, mobile Internet, cameras and music in the phone?
Who would want to go back to vinyl or cassettes for music rather than CD and MP3?
Would you buy an analogue TV with 4 channels on it or would you go for a digital with lots more for a similar price?
Anyone want to go back to floppy discs from USB storage?
How about the new LED torches, no globes to blow and 10 times the battery life.

If they want to reduce car usage build better and cheaper public transport, If you want people to use less electricity promote better house design, and more energy efficient products etc.

People will change when it is a positive for them .

pweedas said...

The problem with the present tax proposal is that most of the money is used to compensate people for the tax in the first place. That's hardly going to inspire them to reduce their co2 emissions.

Not really, but take a simple scenario where you own a Power generating company.

Carbon tax means that you've put your prices up because your coal power stations produce lots of carbon.
Your Solar and wind farms meanwhile have become cheaper to operate than coal because they don't generate carbon, which means they are also generating more money for you.

What happens next?

pweedas said...
...The problem with the present tax proposal is that most of the money is used to compensate people for the tax in the first place. That's hardly going to inspire them to reduce their co2 emissions. ..

Gizmo said...
...
People will change when it is a positive for them .

Taxing carbon and emissions trading and all that is not about forcing people to reduce carbon emissions.

The point is to create a level playing field so renewable energy can compete with fossil fuels.

All fossil fuel based industries get a free ride because they don't have to pay for the pollution they emit or environmental damage they do.

These mechanisms are capitalism at work. They introduce an economic stimulus that controls the supply and demand of energy and carbon.

It's starting to happen in all industries. Manufacturers are being required to build products that can be recycled and take products back at the end of their life.

pierrec45 said...
...

Anyways, he says all the time that people can kick and scream all they want, it's all going to be nuclear within 25 years, that renewable energy sources will never take off, and the various lobbies have succeeded in preventing useful research in those fields.

...

I can match your power expert with my own. They say that it is easy to cut carbon emissions from coal fired power stations. You simply convert them to run on natural gas. The only problem with that is you instantly put all the coal miners out of work.

I am curious about Thorium nuclear reactors. It all sounds too good to be true. Same power output. Safer. Readily available fuel. Waste only lasts a few hundred years. No weapons grade fuel produced.

I am curious about Thorium nuclear reactors. It all sounds too good to be true. Same power output. Safer. Readily available fuel. Waste only lasts a few hundred years. No weapons grade fuel produced.

Even better - it can be fed weapons grade (and other) radioactive waste and it'll consume it. No chance of a melt down because the reactor needs power to be able to continually bombard the thorium with neutrons otherwise the reaction stops. In other words, turn off the power and the reactor shuts itself down.

At least, that's the theory. It needs more research and development though. Apparently, this was happening back in the 40's-50's but was canned when all the money went to uranium reactor research because back then everyone wanted to make nuclear weapons and that required uranium reactors.

China and India are investing in this stuff. I guess (once again) Australia will buy it off them for big bickies while trying to make a little money digging it out of our back yard instead of getting to the forefront and actually developing the technology and selling it to everyone else.

Sure, go on... keep arguing about how climate change is cr@p and how you all know better than scientists.

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Gorgo said...
I am curious about Thorium nuclear reactors. It all sounds too good to be true. Same power output. Safer. Readily available fuel. Waste only lasts a few hundred years. No weapons grade fuel produced.

They can retro reactors to do thorium, the US is currently trialling it. The tech won't take off if the big oil doesn't back it..... what matters is return on investment to the major players, if they can't scope it to provide lasting returns, they won't back it, and will most likely bury the tech.

I'm very pessimistic with good new tech - too good to be true = better bury it so it doesn't cost returns....

SomeOtherGuy said...

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...and here I was thinkin' I was being gentle on 'em...

Simondo said...

Sorry, it's marginally more complex than that. Coal is actually an effective product to maintain balance in the system, so everyone has power whenever they want it.

Which is why a tax is needed to stimulate alternatives to coal. Coal is easy for energy suppliers to use

Several solar and wind farms with peaking gas power stations to 'fill in the gaps' would be better than the current system, as an example.

Best case would be the ability to store excess wind/solar power generated during peak times, but that may not be easy or particularly efficient. (I'm not talking about batteries, the classic solution is 'pumped storage' where water is elevated during times of excess energy and released through turbines during times of need
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity )

"Which is why a tax is needed to stimulate alternatives to coal."

"Thorium", "safe coal", "solar","Elvis", etc.

The tax is a show. You'z couldn't possibly think that Australia's peddly little tax, is going to make a dent in this field, at least not for another the first 25 years and it's too late.

The US, at least part of the establishment that is not trying to kill new sources, has given a shot since the oil went up in the 70s. Look where it's at now: a few wind towers here and there for perhaps 1% of the total grid consumption, and an ROI of about 20 years carbon-wise. Even that slim progress is coming at the end already. The only other advance is perhaps somewhat more efficient car engines, but car sales are going up all over (not only US, also China and Russia), so overall it's gotten worse really.

"There's this new this-that magic trick": very much a broken record, after solar energy, tidal machines, hydrogen engines, cold fusion and other dead-ends.

Not saying something won't be found, but it probably is not going to be in this generation's span. The climatic situation will have to be dire in the US and a few privileged countries for things to really happen.

^^^

Precisely, panda.

Except it won't be 100 years. It'll be somewhere between 30 and 50 years. Why? Well... the coal gets dug out of the ground by machines. And machines transport it from the coal face all the way to the railway to the port and on to the power station.

All those machines are powered by oil. And the oil will run out long before the coal does.

The industry reckons maybe 50 years of oil reserves tops but I reckon less given we're using more of the stuff every year. So we've got maybe 50 years at best but probably less.

How long will it take to develop new forms of energy?? It'll take 50 years for the whiners to stop whining about a carbon tax!

Simondo said...

Jeepers, pumped storage would cost loads to set up, let alone find a suitable location for it....
(I'm an infrastructure estimator, and pumped storage looks messy/costly)

Yeah you're probably right, but I felt that I had to give an example because everyone tends to think "batteries" whenever you talk about storing energy.
Hopefully there's a better and easier way.

+1