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Most informed commentators agree that Australia needs a better mix of energy sources.  We are too dependent on fossil fuel.  This results in a very high rate of carbon dioxide production per capita; and this has international and domestic implications in the context of concerns about climate change.

 

For a more in-depth discussion of climate change follow this link.

While we can increase the production of renewables the potential to significantly expand hydroelectricity (the largest renewable resource worldwide) is limited by:  

  • insufficient rainfall in populated areas;
  • the generally flat nature of the continent; and
  • strong public and political objections to further river diversions and/or dam construction on a scale that could make a significant contribution. 

Wind power is the next best option.  

After making an allowance for 'externalities' related to climate, and recent and expected fossil fuel price rises, wind is already economically competitive at around twice the price of fossil sourced electricity.  But there are serious limits to the contribution wind can make in Australia due to the fluctuating nature of the resource, and the shortage of good sites close enough to most mainland consumers on the to deliver the energy without unacceptable losses. 

 

Capitol Wind Farm Publicity Shot
Capitol Wind Farm NSW - Publicity Shot

 

Solar is effectively unlimited but despite declining Photovoltaic (PV) panel costs, still more costly to recover (per kWh).  It may become competitive if battery and other cost limitations can be overcome. But at the moment (despite a lot of small domestic units installed) it is making a very small contribution to total electricity generation.  For a more in-depth discussion follow this link.

Australia hopes to obtain up to 20% of our electricity (which in turn contributes about a fifth of our total energy consumed - mostly from fossil fuel) from renewables by 2020.  This is very much a 'stretch goal' and on present trends is unlikely to be achieved.

We could do much better and also dramatically decrease our transport and industrial dependence on fossil fuel if we had fossil-fuel-free electricity. For example then we could use rail electrification and electric vehicles to reduce (rather than increase - as at present) carbon dioxide production.  But we have chosen not to.  So unlike the thirty or so countries that employ nuclear power and/or have vastly more hydroelectricity, we are 'fighting with our hands tied behind our back'.

I have come to support a nuclear component in the Australian energy mix after looking at these facts.  I have no financial or personal investment in the technology.  Indeed, I have a small financial (pragmatic) interest in wind, gas and coal businesses that might be inferred as creating the opposite bias.  

In practical, if not political, terms it seems a relatively trivial matter to progressively replace existing coal and gas fired stations with larger advanced nuclear ones in the same locations as they reach their end of life.  Elements of the electricity grid and cooling facilities are already in place, as is a workforce experienced in running power stations.  Local communities would benefit.  Ionising radiation from a coal fired power station is significant and would be lowered substantially and other hazards such as coal transport, noise, dust and toxic oxides would be eliminated.

The US National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) estimates the average radioactivity of coal is 17,100 millicuries/4 million short tons.  This results in a radiation dose to the population from a 1GW coal fired plant of 490 person-rem/year; a hundred times more than from a comparable nuclear plant.

Notwithstanding the problems in Japan at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, caused by the unprecedented earthquake and tsunami on March 11 2011, it remains safer to live near a modern nuclear reactor than near a fossil fuel burning power plant.  

If you doubt this, a recent New Scientist article [open this link] quotes the Boston-based Clean Air Task Force (The Toll from Coal, 2010): that reports that fine particles from coal power plants presently kill an estimated 13,200 people each year in the US. 

 

 

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Travel

Israel

 

 

 

 

 

2024 Addendum

 

It's shocking that another Addendum to this article is necessary.

Yet, we are no nearer to a peaceful resolution like the, internationally called for, 'Two state solution', or some workable version thereof.

Indeed, the situation, particularly for Palestinians, has gone from bad to worse.

At the same time, Israeli losses are mounting as the war drags on.  Yet, Hamas remains undefeated and Bibi remains recalcitrant.

Comments:

 On Wed, 4 Sep 2024, at 1:23 PM, Barry Cross wrote:
> There seems to be no resolution to the problem of the disputed land of Israel. You consider Gaza to have been put under siege, but I wonder if that and the other Israeli acts you mention are themselves responses to a response by them of being under siege, or at least being seriously threatened, by hostile forces who do not recognise the legitimacy of the state of Israel? Hamas’s claim and stated intention of establishing a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea” and periodic acts of aggression need to be taken into account I suggest, when judging the actions of the Israeli’s. In addition, there is the menace coming from Iranian proxies in Southern Lebanon and Yemen, and from Iran itself.
>
> Whatever the merits of the respective claims to the contended territory might be, it seems reasonable to accept that Israeli’s to consider they are a constant threat to their very survival. Naturally, this must influence their actions, particularly in response to the many acts of aggression they have been subjected to over many decades. By way of contrast, how lucky are we!
>
> These are my off the cuff comments for what they are worth.
>
> Regards
> Barry Cross
>
> Sent from my iPhone

 

 

 

2023 Addendum

 

It's a decade since this visit to Israel in September 2014.

From July until just a month before we arrived, Israeli troops had been conducting an 'operation' against Hamas in the Gaza strip, in the course of which 469 Israeli soldiers lost their lives.  The country was still reeling. 

17,200 Garzan homes were totally destroyed and three times that number were seriously damaged.  An estimated 2,000 (who keeps count) civilians died in the destruction.  'Bibi' Netanyahu, who had ordered the Operation, declared it a victory.

This time it's on a grander scale: a 'War', and Bibi has vowed to wipe-out Hamas.

Pundits have been moved to speculate on the Hamas strategy, that was obviously premeditated. In addition to taking hostages, it involving sickening brutality against obvious innocents, with many of the worst images made and published by themselves. 

It seemed to be deliberate provocation, with a highly predictable outcome.

Martyrdom?  

Historically, Hamas have done Bibi no harm.  See: 'For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces' in the Israel Times.

Thinking about our visit, I've been moved to wonder how many of today's terrorists were children a decade ago?  How many saw their loved ones: buried alive; blown apart; maimed for life; then dismissed by Bibi as: 'collateral damage'? 

And how many of the children, now stumbling in the rubble, will, in their turn, become terrorists against the hated oppressor across the barrier?

Is Bibi's present purge a good strategy for assuring future harmony?

I commend my decade old analysis to you: A Brief Modern History and Is there a solution?

Comments: 
Since posting the above I've been sent the following article, implicating religious belief, with which I substantially agree, save for its disregarding the Jewish fundamentalists'/extremists' complicity; amplifying the present horrors: The Bright Line Between Good and Evil 

Another reader has provided a link to a perspective similar to my own by Australian 'Elder Statesman' John MenadueHamas, Gaza and the continuing Zionist project.  His Pearls and Irritations site provides a number of articles relating to the current Gaza situation. Worth a read.

The Economist has since reported and unusual spate of short-selling immediately preceding the attacks: Who made millions trading the October 7th attacks?  

Money-making by someone in the know? If so, it's beyond evil.

 

 

A Little Background

The land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea, known as Palestine, is one of the most fought over in human history.  Anthropologists believe that the first humans to leave Africa lived in and around this region and that all non-African humans are related to these common ancestors who lived perhaps 70,000 years ago.  At first glance this interest seems odd, because as bits of territory go it's nothing special.  These days it's mostly desert and semi-desert.  Somewhere back-o-Bourke might look similar, if a bit redder. 

Yet since humans have kept written records, Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, Ancient Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, early Muslims, Christian Crusaders, Ottomans (and other later Muslims), British and Zionists, have all fought to control this land.  This has sometimes been for strategic reasons alone but often partly for affairs of the heart, because this land is steeped in history and myth. 

Read more: Israel

Fiction, Recollections & News

Now I am seventy

 On the occasion of an afternoon tea to mark this significant milestone...

 

When I was one, I was just begun;
When I was two, I was nearly new;
When I was Three, I was hardly me;
*
*
*

But then I was sixty, and as clever as clever;
Wouldn't it be nice to stay sixty for ever and ever?

(With apologies to AA Milne)

 

Hang on!  Now I'm seventy?  How did that happen? 

Read more: Now I am seventy

Opinions and Philosophy

Luther - Father of the Modern World?

 

 

 

 

To celebrate or perhaps just to mark 500 years since Martin Luther nailed his '95 theses' to a church door in Wittenberg and set in motion the Protestant Revolution, the Australian Broadcasting Commission has been running a number of programs discussing the legacy of this complex man featuring leading thinkers and historians in the field. 

Much of the ABC debate has centred on Luther's impact on the modern world.  Was he responsible for today? Without him, might the world still be stuck in the 'Middle Ages' with each generation doing more or less what the previous one did, largely within the same medieval social structures?  In that case could those inhabitants of an alternative 21st century, obviously not us, as we would never have been born, still live in a world of less than a billion people, most of them working the land as their great grandparents had done, protected and governed by an hereditary aristocracy, their mundane lives punctuated only by variations in the weather; holy days; and occasional wars between those princes?

Read more: Luther - Father of the Modern World?

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