BBC Climate Expert Explains How Australia Could Live Without Coal Exports
By Eric Worrall | Watts Up With That? | October 22, 2021
Coal is both Australia’s second largest export and something Australia could live without, according to the BBC:
Australia could end its literally toxic relationship with coal fairly quickly, experts say.
Its economy is stable and well-diversified to absorb the loss of coal exports. […]
This has frustrated those who say Australia should be investing to become a renewables superpower.
As one of the sunniest and windiest continents on Earth, Australia is “uniquely placed to benefit economically” from its abundant natural resources, says the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organisation.
The BBC economic analysis leaves out an important detail – the $55 billion / year annual coal export industry keeps the the Australian dollar afloat. Without that $55 billion annual influx of foreign currency, the value of the Aussie dollar would likely collapse.
What about Australia’s alleged opportunity to become a green energy superpower?
My question: Why are the experts who claim Australia could be a “renewables superpower” demanding government support, instead of putting their own money where their mouth is?
The reason, of course, is the numbers don’t add up.
Australia might be one of the sunniest and windiest continents on Earth, but it is also one of the driest and dustiest places on Earth.
The Australian outback is an incredibly hostile environment for machinery.
Even on the coast, where I live, everything gets covered with a thick layer of dust in days. Gearboxes and bearings fill with grit. Surfaces get abraded. Plastic and rubber rapidly disintegrates under our hot ultraviolet soaked sunlight.
If I park my automobile outside at night, by morning I need to wash my windscreen using the wipers.
Some of the dust contains salt and organic compounds, and picks up electrostatic charges as it is blown by the wind, so it sticks to surfaces like glue, and has to be washed off. You cannot just shake or brush it off.
In the desert, away from the coast, it is even worse.
Unless you have a good supply of fresh water and soap for washing dust off everything you care about, lubricating oil to clean out dust contaminated bearings, and maintenance people to fix all the stuff which breaks, no machinery installation in the Australian interior survives for long.
Vast supplies of fresh water are not easy to find in Australia. Where fresh water is available, it is mostly already claimed by others, who would have to be compensated for loss of access. Billions of dollars would be required, to buy out farmers and miners who are already using every scrap of fresh water which is available, assuming you could convince any of them to sell.
Why would the cleaning water have to be fresh? What about pumping salt water from the ocean?
Salt water would be a disaster for cleaning renewable energy installations. The water would leave a film of translucent salt on everything. Stalagmites and stalactites of electrically conductive salt would accumulate on the edges of solar panels and sensitive electric installations, creating short circuits and fires. Salt water is far more corrosive than fresh water, it would rapidly attack any alumina fittings and all but high grade stainless steel. Salt water use could even lead to accelerated structural failures if there were any significant earth leakages, by accelerating corrosion of any structural metal components in contact with the ground. The influx of salt would remain in the environment, causing a localised ecological disaster.
Remember, the interior of Australia is sunny AND windy. Those solar panels better be anchored to the ground with lots of concrete and structural steel, otherwise they will blow away. The UV gelcoat protection on wind turbine blades would have to be meticulously maintained, to prevent our harsh sunlight from wrecking the plastic. And lets not forget, the freak storms which occasionally sweep in from the coast can drop rock hard hailstones the size of baseballs – not a good thing for anything caught under the storm.
This in my opinion is why companies are demanding large infusions of government cash before they’ll touch our alleged amazing opportunity to become a “renewables superpower”. As with most renewable energy schemes, I believe people behind the Australian “renewables superpower” vision expect any profit will come from milking taxpayers, not from genuinely profitable commercial sales of their product.
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Israel’s military indoctrination of children
By Stephen Lendman | Al-Ahram | May 6, 2010
The modern roots of Zionism go back to its founding at the First Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, in 1897, its programme being the “establishing for the Jewish people of a publicly and legally assured home in Eretz Yisrael”. Five decades later, this was accomplished by dispossessing indigenous Palestinians, denying them the right to their land, creating a new Jewish identity, legitimising Jews as rightful owners, and using superior military force to support the state against defenceless civilians who were no match against their powerful adversary.
Leading up to and after its war of independence, Israel stayed politically and militarily hard line, negotiating from strength, choosing confrontation over diplomacy, and naked aggression as a form of self- defence and occupation in order to seize as much of historic Palestine as possible and secure an ethnically pure Jewish state. These policies were called “Israelification [and] De-Arabisation” to preserve a “Jewish character”.
In his book, The Making of Israeli Militarism, author Uri Ben-Eliezer says writing about Israeli militarism involves “ventur(ing) into an intellectual minefield”, given Jewish history under the Nazis and the perception of Israel as a safe haven. Yet, decades of Arab- Israeli conflict have produced seven full-scale wars, two Intifadas, and many hundreds of violent incidents.
Ben-Eliezer believes that, beginning in the 1930s, militarism “was gradually legitimized within the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, then within the new state [it was] crystallized into a value, a formula, and an ideology.” Over time, it acquired a dynamic of its own, and then, during the 1948 war, it “acquired full legitimacy” and became decisive in setting policy.
Politics and militarism were wedded to create a militaristic view of reality. Thereafter, it was institutionalised to the point that “the idea of implementing a military solution to [political problems] was not only enshrined as a value in its own right, but was also considered legitimate, desirable, and indeed the best option.” … continue
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“Australia could end its literally toxic relationship with coal fairly quickly experts say”. How many “Experts” say that?…… “ONE”?
Australia exports Coal, Lots of it, to countries that NEED it. Just like Saudi Arabia exports OIL to countries that need it(including the USA).
“If I park my automobile outside at night, by morning I need to wash my windscreen using the wipers”.
Australians NEVER use the term “Automobile”. We drive Cars, like England drives Cars.
How do the Chinese make STEEL without Coal?
“Vast supplies of fresh water are not easy to find in Australia”.
The Northern part of Australia is in the Tropics, and Massive amounts of water fall every year in the North, and It all runs out to sea. A resident of Darwin once said “we get 13 feet of rain here every year, how much do you want”?
If the right decisions were made by our IDIOT Politicians, we could divert ALL THE WATER from the North, and “GREEN” this Continent. But our Politician are PATHETIC, like England’s and America’s, only looking after the “1%” and enriching THEMSELVES…………
Bullshit is cheap, no matter where it comes from……….
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Continent spanning canals could perhaps be cost (and enviroment) justified for agriculture but not for any and all purposes.
What the author here didn’t touch on is that for the whole scheme of Australia exporting electricity to work you have to install a cable to Sumatra which all by itself makes the project uneconomic.
There’s a lot of sunshine in the Sahara also. And similarly it’s of no economic use.
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Point taken, but, Colonel Gadhafi famously build an “underground river” from an aquifer discovered by oil drillers. He was able to give a future to his people, as a result, until he was publicly slaughtered. WE have underground Gas Pipelines in Australia. Underground water pipelines would open up a lot of the country, now regarded as “barren”.
Maybe, one day, we will see it.
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