Tony Abbott’s ‘Green Army’ under attack as Coalition cuts budget by nearly half

Posted on January 16, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

Guardian item, linked below, is from 15 Dec 2015, after Paris. Question now is will our new  PM be able to walk it, to actually deliver on promises, rather than just talk-the-talk?

Until now, budget for Direct Action/Green Army tree planting has been $50M for 20M trees, which amounts to $2.50 per tree. When you consider just Free Market Economics procedures for tender bids, 6 month project small teams, managers, training, vehicles, uniforms, seed gathering, germinating, propagation, planting, stakes and shields, watering, weeding etc etc…surely it would cost more than $2.50 just for piece of Green Army provided BS wipe toilet paper?

Target for CO2 absorption for whole 20M trees is 85Mtonnes/year. With trees planted at 10m separation, you get 100 trees/hectare. Per Australia’s Chief Scientist, trees absorb 0.3 to 2tonnes/hectare/year, so for ease of arithmetic and considering other than high grade farmland, low fertility and rainfall, let’s work on 1 tonne/hectare/year. This means forest planting of 85Mhectares. Government web site shows current total forest cover is only 106Mhectares. 100Mhectares is 1,000 x 1,000km, sure is a big country but…how has Green Army lasted this long with numbers as rubbery as this?

>more> TheGuardian

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Confidence in renewable energy sector ‘evaporated’ after Abbott cut: Bloomberg

Posted on January 15, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

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Here’s looking forward to PM Turnbull starting to walk-the-talk:

Australia will need to triple <investment> to annual sum of $3.6 billion needed to meet even the lowered RET goal of 33,000 gigawatt-hours of clean energy a year by 2020…”The Liberal and Labor deal to cut RET has enabled the big three energy retailers [AGL, Origin and EnergyAustralia] to prolong uncertainty for this vital industry,”…”In absence of a strong RET, the [CEFC and ARENA] are even more important, but it’s still Liberal policy to abolish them both,” Senator Di Natale said, adding the Greens’ policy calls for 90 per cent of Australia’s electricity to come from renewables by 2030…Labor wants the renewable energy share to rise to 50 per cent by 2030…

>more> TheAge

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Germany wants to put 2 billion euros into encouraging electric cars

Posted on January 15, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

Jan 13 German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel wants to commit two billion euros ($2.17 billion) to encourage more people to buy electric cars, the newspaper Die Zeit reported on Wednesday. Buyers of electric cars would receive a subsidy from the government, the newspaper said, giving no further details. Gabriel also wants to expand charging stations and encourage federal offices to use electric cars – an initiative that will be funded under the current German budget without tax increases, he said.

>more> Reuters

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Australia isolated as developed nations cancel carryover credits from Kyoto

Posted on January 12, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Britain have announced they will cancel 634.6m tonnes of emission reduction credits they were technically able to count towards their targets for the second Kyoto period, in a bid to overcome what has been described as a giant “hot air” loophole…Australia, in stark contrast, is banking 128m tonnes of carryover from overshooting its lenient target in the first Kyoto commitment period and using it to be able to claim – as the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, did in his speech to the Paris summit – that it is already on track to meet its second pledge…“By cancelling surplus units we hope to send a strong positive signal of support for an ambitious global climate agreement here in Paris,” the European nations said in a joint statement…Unlike most developed countries, Australia was allowed to increase its emissions by 8% by that date(2012)…Most forecasts show Australia’s actual emissions will rise by 2020. The latest analysis by the research firm RepuTex shows they will rise 4% by 2020 compared with 2000 levels, and 6% compared with today.(just an update on our leaders just talking the talk in Paris, no care, no responsibility)

>more> TheGuardian

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Voters in Coalition seats back global ban on new coalmines, poll shows

Posted on January 12, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

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Voters were told a global moratorium would mean all countries would stop building new coalmines and expanding existing ones, but current mines would continue to operate. About 57.3% of respondents in Abbott’s Sydney seat of Warringah voiced support for the idea, while 23.4% said they were opposed. The support-to-opposition level was 50.5% to 33% in Joyce’s regional New South Wales seat of New England, 52.2% to 28.9% in Dutton’s south-east Queensland seat of Dickson, and 53.3% to 28.5% in Hogan’s northern NSW seat of Page. The remaining respondents were undecided.

>more> TheGuardian

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One Of The Largest Coal Companies In The United States Just Filed For Bankruptcy

Posted on January 12, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

…second-largest coal company in the United States is unable to pay its debts and provide any return at all to its shareholders….Wyoming has allowed Arch Coal to self-bond to cover its reclamation requirements, meaning that if the company is not financially healthy enough to cover those self-bonds, the government and taxpayers could be left shouldering the burden.

>more> ThinkProgress

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A Whole New World: Tracking the Renewables Boom from Copenhagen to Paris

Posted on January 9, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

The title speaks for itself, click to highlights and download:

>download report> ClimateCouncil

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Air pollution: Delhi is dirty, but how do other cities fare?

Posted on January 9, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

Untitled 2The WHO states that most health-damaging particles are those with a diameter of 10 microns or less. This is due to ability of smaller particles to travel deeper into the lungs and pass into blood stream. Sources of PM 10 particles, or coarse particles, can be dirt and dust stirred up on roads by vehicles, or crushing and grinding operations. Mould, dust and pollen are examples of the particles which are between 2.5 an 10 micrometers in size, or about 25 to 100 times thinner than a human hair. With so much suffering, from so much air pollution, in so many other cities in India, what sense does it make to even consider that Australia should supply them with even more coal, to support delusions with big centralised power stations and massive poles and wires?

>more> The Guardian

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CSP For 5.57 cents/kWh

Posted on January 9, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

SEGS-solar-thermal-california-270x202SEGS was put into service in the 1980s (yep, about 3 decades ago). With capital costs paid off and its initial power purchase agreement (PPA) over, owners of the project have been able to put in bids for new electricity sales agreements that outcompete its competitors. In fact, it is now selling electricity to Southern California Edison for a very low rate…electricity to SCE for about 5.57 cents/kWh. That’s a very, very low price.

Meanwhile, Australia, with so much sun and wind, is the only continent on the planet to not even have CSP plant, not even for evaluation. How sad is that?

>more> CleanTechnica

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Era of climate science denial is not over, study finds

Posted on January 9, 2016 by groundswellbasscoast

Conservative thinktanks in the US engaging in climate change have increased their attacks on science in recent years, a study of 16,000 documents finds…”While conservative thinktanks were involved in denial from the outset – 1989 at least – we have argued they really moved to the forefront in the late 90s when BP and then other companies pulled out of the industry-led Global Climate Coalition that had arguably been the most powerful force in denial. In fact, the conservative thinktanks were upset that oil companies were ‘caving in’ to the IPCC, and decided to take the lead. This also really shifted the basis of denial from economic self-interest to ideological opposition – the commitment to neoliberalism’s distaste for all government regulations.

>more> TheGuardian

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