Posts on aspects of climate science, climate action and climate policy & planning.
The latest Morgan Stanley report is bullish about the growth of battery storage in the Australian market. They think we’ll have 6.6GWh of battery storage in Australia by 2020, which is what the Australian Energy Market Operator last week predicted for 2035. Continue reading Climate clippings 176
In Climate clippings 175, Item 4, I made reference to the Bloomberg New energy outlook, 2016 report which identifies eight “massive” shifts coming soon to power markets. In this post I’d like to take a closer look.
The summary sentence tells us that “coal and gas will begin their terminal decline in less than a decade”. Frequently the title of an article and the summary lead-in sentence are not written by the authors. In this case the “terminal decline” of coal and gas is more than a little misleading. Continue reading Bloomberg’s New energy outlook, 2016
Carbon dioxide (CO₂) has been converted to rock and stored underground in a trial in Iceland.
To put it briefly, in the trial they dissolved CO₂ in water which then is acidic and attacks the rocks to form solid carbonate minerals. Continue reading Climate clippings 175
When he was here in April, Bill McKibben spelt it out for us:
“I saw [him]in Paris going on and on about his great, deep personal commitment to all of this, and how this was his most pressing personal thing you could ever imagine,” McKibben says. And then Hunt signed off on Adani’s Carmichael Mine, which would be the biggest mine in the Galilee Basin, and the entire Southern Hemisphere.
As far as McKibben’s concerned, “You don’t get to do both of those things.”
Crops affected include barley, maize or millet, cassava and sorghum.
Poisons include nitrates, “prussic acid” or hydrogen cyanide, and fungai. Continue reading Climate clippings 174
No doubt there has been wild weather before at this time of year, normally a drier time in Queensland. I took this screen shot of the BOM page just as the system had dumped its lot on us:
In spite of information that Turnbull had done a deal on climate with the denialist Nationals in return for their support of the Coalition, hopes lived on that the Government would begin to take climate change seriously. At the Paris conference last December Greg Hunt, says Bill McKibben, went “on and on about his great, deep personal commitment to all of this, and how this was his most pressing personal thing you could ever imagine” and Julie Bishop more than entered into the spirit of things. The photo shows her close and friendly with Tony de Brum of the Marshall Islands. Continue reading Mixed signals on renewable energy
What follows is a study I made some time ago into low cost ways of reducing congestion along Moggill Rd, a key through road that goes through Kenmore Brisbane near where I live. The study is of general interest because many of the identified problems and solutions are applicable for a wide range of urban situations. Continue reading Low Cost Ways of Reducing Congestion
This edition of Climate clippings is devoted to some random transport ideas that have come my way.
By the end of the year Singaporeans could be using driverless electric pod vehicles to get to and from school and work: Continue reading Climate clippings 173
Our government seems bent on saving the tourist industry by airbrushing the Great Barrier Reef out of UN reports. The report “World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate”, published jointly by UNESCO, the United Nations Environment Program and the Union of Concerned Scientists, initially had a key chapter on the Great Barrier Reef, as well as small sections on Kakadu and the Tasmanian forests.
The chapter was removed at the request of the Australian government. They were worried the tourists may not come. Continue reading Saving the Great Barrier Reef
RenewEconomy has a great post on pumped water storage to store electric power to complement solar. It talks about working heads of less than 200 metres and the use of “turkey nest” dams. Continue reading Climate clippings 172
April 2016 was the hottest April ever, making a run of 12 hottest months in a row. We are starting to flirt with the 1.5°C warming threshold. Here’s the global map, showing impressive warming in high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere. Australia is also noticeably warm: Continue reading Flirting with 1.5°C as we record 12 hottest months in a row
