Climate Change in Australia (Part 2)

[andrewb]

I do share your lack of optimism

[Bomber1408]

@Humble_Minion

@DonAtBirth

We need to start investing in water security now.

We need to start doing EVERYTHING now.

We need to have a transition plan for when the Reef tourist trade dies. We need to be reinforcing buildings everywhere as far south as the Gold Coast to withstand tropical cyclones that used to be 1000 year events but will become routine. We badly need to be reinvesting land into wetlands etc to act as shock absorbers for riverine floods. We need to stop operating on the assumption that just because land has been usable farmland for the last couple of centuries, it will remain so for even another decade. We need to seriously address the looming crisis when the repair bills for climate disasters either drive the entire insurance industry to the wall, or make insurance unaffordable for all but a tiny few. We need to be prepared for massive abrupt disaster-driven homelessness events and the massed destruction of housing stocks. We need established, reliable legislation that allows the govt to override food export contracts in the event of shortages locally.

My entire adult life, governments have treated climate as a media annoyance to be spun rather than a serious issue to be addressed with policy. I mean, even the fkg ALP is still pinning their emissions policy on CCS, which has had enormous sums sunk into it for decades and has still never worked commercially, anywhere, ever. It’s just as bad as the phantom SMRs we mock the nuclear lobby about.

We are already out of time to avert climate change. Now we have to both adapt to climate change AND prevent it getting worse. And on both a global and national scale we are doing … neither of those things.

Cyclones have occurred multiple times on the Gold Coast in the past century … so a thousand year event LOL
The Great Gold Coast Cyclone, QLD, 1954 | Australian Disasters

Cyclone Glenda, QLD 1967 | Australian Disasters

Here is some pictures:
gold coast historical cyclones - Search Images

So please retract your out & out typical wokey exaggeration & stick to factual info without the hype

[Drapersmullet]

how do you still not understand what a 1 in 100/1,000/10,000 year event means lmao

[Albert_Thurgood]

@Humble_Minion

We need to stop operating on the assumption that just because land has been usable farmland for the last couple of centuries, it will remain so for even another decade.

Governments are addressing this problem by allowing developers to build energy-inefficient housing developments over some of the best farmland in the country.

[Loflyer]

@Bomber1408

Here is some pictures:
gold coast historical cyclones - Search Images

So please retract your out & out typical wokey exaggeration & stick to factual info without the hype

Here are some pictures. And take it to the Glorious Gold Coast thread you deeply silly person

[StabbytheRabbit]

New Oxfam Report recommend world richest 10% of population are responsible for almost half of emissions growth.

The new report states a few billionaires use more carbon in a few hours than most people use in their lifetime.

[Bomber1408]

@Loflyer

@Bomber1408

Here is some pictures:
gold coast historical cyclones - Search Images

So please retract your out & out typical wokey exaggeration & stick to factual info without the hype

Here are some pictures. And take it to the Glorious Gold Coast thread you deeply silly person

Why, just saying the next cyclone at the Gold Coast isn’t a thousand year event as there has been at least 2 in the last century already & proved it

[Loflyer]

Don’t care, you aren’t someone to take seriously. Good for a laugh though👍

[Bomber1408]

As usual leftie attack dog tactics … haha, I won’t respond in kind, have good day if you can

[Loflyer]

Boy who cried wolf gets sad about nobody taking his internet links seriously. Lefty mean. Boo lefty. Read more.

[benfti]

I’m convinced he’s Lovett_is_magic_like_stars with a different user name

[Shahid_Afridi]

@andrewb

it’s all downhill from 2030.

I love your optimism!

[Shahid_Afridi]

@stir_fried_ewok

I can only console you all by pointing out we were totally farked anyway.
this latest setback will only marginally push the clock forward as it only has a few seconds left until the dead of night for our species.

I have plastic in my testicles. Let that sink in.

[Glu]

Throwing a link here to a question I asked in the Twitter/Musk thread:

The Twit show Musk go on

While this may not be the right forum for it, what do people think about the EV market vs ICE market? The EV market is benefiting from renewable incentives, as are the solar and wind industries world-wide. Clearly, there are benefits to moving to renewables more quickly, but in the Australian car market, for example, I believe we traditionally turn over 8% of vehicles per year. At this turnover rate, and with current and projected EV production and sales rates, how long will it realistically…

[Benny40]

@Glu

While this may not be the right forum for it, what do people think about the EV market vs ICE market?

The EV market is benefiting from renewable incentives, as are the solar and wind industries world-wide.

Clearly, there are benefits to moving to renewables more quickly, but in the Australian car market, for example, I believe we traditionally turn over 8% of vehicles per year. At this turnover rate, and with current and projected EV production and sales rates, how long will it realistically take to move to an EV fleet Australia wide?

What challenges are we likely to face with a quick transition to EV’s? Are we going to be able to hit the climate change targets we need to within the time frames we’ve been told we need to? And if we do hit those targets, how much CO2 production comes from just the car industry? What do we have to do to transform other carbon producing industries like power, shipping, or even trucks/buses over?

EVs are simpler and cheaper to build than ICEs, but we’ll need to see near 100% sales for a decade or more to drastically shift the needle here. It has been done, Norway is up around 85% EV use now.

Currently EV sales are suppressed by fear of not having a charger, or simple lack of education around the running cost advantages of owning an EV. As people realise that cost of living is less with an EV, that will drive take up.

The big issue over the medium term is the energy demand for charging. We currently need more EVs to soak up the excess solar that’s being generated, but that’s good for 1 million cars. Beyond that we will need to add dedicated transmission and generation to feed into car batteries. The energy grid will be seriously strained with the intense demand, so upgrades will be needed.

I’m not a fan of the complaints about environmental impact of EVs as they are largely similar to the impact of making ICEs. As industry converts to green energy, the embodied carbon in EVs will drop. We need the cars to drive scale in that industry, in order for the green economy to scale up. We can’t wait for the coal to be retired before starting to build the fleet of cars, as we’d lose a decade of production.

So renewable electricity combined with EVs for private use gets us about 70% of the way there. Then we are looking at shipping, trucking, agriculture and heavy industry.

Ammonia made from solar will probably become the transport fuel. Hydrogen is likely going to do the industrial heating demand that has currently does. And there will be more inventions over the coming decade.

[Shahid_Afridi]

How are we going to replace all these EVs, solar panels etc. without burning fossils? Solar panels last like what, 12 years? Hundres of millions of them will need to be replaced fairly regularly. We need to replace 4 billion cars with electric ones? How are we going to do this without fossil fuels? Genuine question.

[Drapersmullet]

I dont really see them being taken up here (outside metro areas) at large scale until their retails drop further, people don’t get range/charger anxiety and we stop doing dumb ■■■■ like trying to slap an unconstitutional tax on EVs just to cover the fuel excise that ICEs cop

[Benny40]

Solar panels have a 25-30 year lifespan. I suspect that many will last longer, just at poorer performance.

By that point we should be 100% renewable, so energy use to make more panels would be green. We should also have a decent panel recycling industry by that point, so the energy required to make them should be reduced.

[Glu]

@Benny40

The energy grid will be seriously strained with the intense demand, so upgrades will be needed.

I read that that’s one of the biggest challenges for moving semi-trailers over to EVs. Some companies in US that have wanted to move their small 8-10 truck fleet to EVs in country towns have approached the local government for support in providing power sub-stations, only to be told that the power requirement for their small fleet is greater than the current supply for the entire town, and would simply not be possible.

I see many issues for hitting climate targets, not the least of which are the continued move of billions of people in poorer countries from very basic living, to becoming consumers, which will continue to require access to more power, currently being supplied mainly by fossil fuels.

But I’m also not a fatalist, and I believe we will continue to innovate to provide solutions to a very real problem that needs solving. I also wonder what options we have/will have for scrubbing carbon from the atmosphere if/when we fail to meet required targets, that might buy us more time to transition to renewables.

I have also seen several reports and papers saying that renewable power options simply won’t have the power density required to move away from fossil fuels, and that nuclear power plants are the only real option to meet demands in the timeframe required. And I note that Musk and Gates are pro-advanced nuclear plants. Advanced nuclear power plants could produce 1% the waste of legacy plants, and produce waste that decays to background levels in 400 years, rather than tens of thousands of years. The proponents of nuclear also point to the fact that even the worst disasters produced by legacy nuclear disasters have in reality resulted in very little loss of life or continued problems in survivors, and accidents like Chernobyl can’t happen in modern/advanced nuclear power plants.

[andrewb]

It already has

…

I’ll get my coat