DadAgain

Agreed - Why the f&&K isnt Australia investing billions and billions into solar energy I have no idea. We have stupid amounts of sun and with a bit of investment could become world leaders in what surely will become a massive growth industry worldwide...

Vash the Stampede

Nuclear energy. Now. That's the solution.

Oh, and...

Amazulu

Solar is a good choice for peak power in a country like ours - so is wave, wind and geothermal, but for base load for a modern industrialised country like Australia you need one, or all, of the following:
Coal
Gas (in certain applications)
Hydro-electric
Nuclear

Realistically, only 20-25% max of our energy requirements can be provided by renewables.

comet555

My husband sent this link to me a week or two ago from work. It's an interesting although I have no idea how true/untrue the facts and figures our. I imagine it would be fairly biased given the source, but I'd love to hear peoples thoughts.

http://co2isgreen.org/files/DDF2/Cli...esentation.pdf

If I had to choose I would say no to the ETS, but that's just me.

Amazulu

I reckon 8 big nukes would do the trick, one for every 2-3m people in densely populated areas (or within 100-150km radius), so:
2 in the Sydney/Newcastle/Wollongong area
2 in the Melbourne area
2 in SE Qld
1 in the Adelaide area
1 in the Perth area

8 nukes with some clean coal, hydro, gas, wind, solar and geothermal and we'd be set for 30 years.

Vash the Stampede

I say no to the ETS, even though I believe humans are a primary cause of global warming. The ETS is simply a bad way to tackle this problem. It'll shuffle a lot of money around without actually addressing the key issues.

That .pdf file contains a lot of junk science, misrepresentations and downright lies, by the way. A classic example is their reference to Spain: "Spain has been moving towards a renewable energy economy
and now has 19% unemployment." LOL! Take two completely unrelated issues and slap them together in the same sentence: bingo! The former must have caused the latter! Yeah, that makes sense.

Interesting that they never address the harmful effects of CO2 on human beings. Last time I checked, it's lethal to us. Not much point in boosting vegetable crops if we can't breath the air.

Swerv-o

Would take us that long to build them!

I'm a big fan of nuclear power - along with it comes a phenomenal knowledge based industry - one that we could really do with, and could potentially lead the world with. I've also never understood why we don't add value to the uranium we dig up by processing it and selling it at a premium, instead of just the raw material.


S

spartacus

But that's Australia all over . . .

Amazulu

If we decided to go ahead next year it would be 2020-25 before they were operational.
Agree, it would be a big boost for our top end scientific/engineering industry.
It would provide people like me with shitloads of work - with big money.
We should be doing everything we can with our uranium; mining, processing, power generation - even weapons.

comet555

Yes, agreed. I think there are far better ways to address the problem without just trying to throw money at it.

I had the same feel when I read that link. It seemed like they said just about everything needed to give a negative impression on the ETS, although that is to be expected from a climate change sceptic website.

Mipik

I agree with all except the last.
WTF we need nukes for?

NZ is getting ready to invade?

You can't sell them, costs a fortune to keep them and you will never use them anyway.

Centurion

Er - they meant nuclear power stations....

paddyo

Just point them at China and then say "now *****ing take the piss with our businesses...go on I dare ya!! You slag!!"

spartacus

Amazulu didn't . . . he wants to bomb the ****as . . .

paddyo

no......he was referring to the '....and weapons' bit of a previous poster!