[permaculture-oceania] Jedd's response - Permaculture, energy and the future for humans
Rosemary Morrow
rowe at lisp.com.au
Thu Jun 1 10:06:01 EST 2006
Thanks for this discussion. I always wonder whether the people who
dislike the wind turbines would prefer a coal-fired power station.
The problems of bird damage and noise are being worked on and I am
sure there will be solutions. I think they look quite lovely and the
two near me at Hampton are splendid and serve 500 households.
Warmly,
Rowe
On 30/05/2006, at 12:09 PM, Russ Grayson wrote:
> On 29/5/06 1:57 PM, "Gordon, Sue" <Sue.Gordon at det.nsw.edu.au> wrote:
>>
>> Can I ask a single question. With the amount of money it costs to
>> set up a nuclear power plant ... (I don't know how many millions
>> it would cost)
>>
> Don’t have an answer to this but there is a report on nuclear
> energy that has just gone before the federal government and it
> might have that data when it is released. ANSTO did release a five-
> page summary to the media a couple days ago.
>
> The Herald yesterday reported that an Australian nuclear power
> station would cost AU$400 million to insure, however. That takes
> into account its role as a terrorist target (and that is a real
> concern as breaching the reactor vessel and releasing radiological
> materials offers big return for small investment as well as great
> shock and fear value; that is why Sydney’s research reactor at
> Lucas Heights is well guarded – well, let’s hope is still is anyway).
>>
>> How much renewable energy would that buy instead...that is if we
>> bought solar panels or wind turbines
>>
> The problem facing renewables such as those you mention Sue is that
> they shut down at night or in periods of still winds. Thus there is
> insufficient of what is called “baseline capacity” in the system –
> what is constantly needed to power not only households but
> hospitals, public transport etc.
>
> I am certainly a long way from being an energy expert – others on
> this list might better advise on this – but tidal generators might
> offer a useful technology for a mix of energy sources. They are
> renewable and most of our population centres are on the coast, so
> perhaps they could be conveniently located. I know there is
> experimentation overseas but have no information on efficiency and
> viability.
>
> Wind turbines are already viable – witness the number along the
> southern coast – but I understand what holds them back is resident
> resistance (visual aesthetics and noise) and the failure of the
> federal government to increase the mandatory renewable energy
> target – the amount of energy that has to come from renewable
> sources. I understand the industry is pressuring Canberra to raise
> the level as they have aleady achieved the target.
>>
> ...Russ
>>
>> Sue
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: permaculture-oceania-bounces at lists.cat.org.au
>> [mailto:permaculture-oceania-bounces at lists.cat.org.au] On Behalf
>> Of brookman
>> Sent: Friday, 26 May 2006 11:34 PM
>> To: permaculture-oceania
>> Subject: [permaculture-oceania] Jedd's response -
>> Permaculture,energy and the future for humans
>>
>> Thanks for your exercise in philosophy Jedd. Its a long time since
>> I've had
>> the time to ruminate so fully over absolute logic, and I
>> appreciate the care
>> you've taken in working over my thoughts. Forgive me if I let the
>> trail go a
>> bit cold as we are getting into seeding time and there is so much
>> practical
>> stuff to do.
>> I've based my comments on uranium only on information that I've
>> been able to
>> get from references outside the employ of the nuclear industry
>> itself so
>> pehaps it is a pessimistic view. I have no doubt that the world's
>> uranium
>> will be used, so perhaps the more energy that can be derived from
>> it and the
>> shorter the half-life of the by-product the better. The uranium
>> energy
>> period will be brief if fast breeder reactors (or something more
>> energy
>> efficient) cannot be made to work reliably. Whilst I quoted only
>> one case of
>> the unfortunate fate of citizens' resources in the failed French
>> Superphénix
>> fast breeder reactor, the Americans have a number that were
>> commissioned and
>> as far as I know all have been shut down. It is quite fair for
>> citizens to
>> ask for current proof of the medium term energy effectiveness of
>> investing
>> resources in nuclear infrastructure rather than R&D into
>> sustainable energy
>> capture (in addition to rejecting uranium as the long term energy
>> solution
>> and on other grounds).
>>
>> I thought your lumping of the risks to the current global
>> ecosystem of
>> nuclear and fossil fuel based weapons in the same basket was
>> frivolous, if
>> logically correct.
>> I agree that anyone who discounts the capacity of humans for
>> technological
>> breakthroughs is as foolish as anyone who thinks we are not over-
>> extending
>> the planet's capacity to maintain its current ecosystem, but
>> currently the
>> technophiles have a lot of inventing to do if they are to
>> stabilise a system
>> that is into exponential decline.
>> The Swedes, who have had one of the most successful nuclear power
>> regimes,
>> are wanting to head toward a renewable energy system which
>> suggests that,
>> unlike adolescent countries such as the US and Australia, they can
>> see that
>> renewable power sources will be needed sooner rather than later.
>> As you
>> mentioned, India is into nuclear power and has also warned us that
>> its
>> citizens want to have their day as consumers like the USA and Oz
>> and are not
>> intending to keep greenhouse emissions to current levels. The
>> assurance of
>> 'fairness' is a strong facilitator of grassroots change
>> (eg..acceptance of
>> restraint). Ignoring fairness may be a costly bit of arrogance on
>> our part.
>>
>> I had a look at some population stats recently and the rate of
>> growth in the
>> world's population is slowing but even ticking away at 1.3 % we
>> need to
>> remember the rules of maths, as so frequently repeated by Prof Albert
>> Bartlett
>>
>> ' Let us consider a quantity that is experiencing steady growth at
>> a rate
>> such as 2% per year. First we note that this growing quantity
>> will double
>> in size in a fixed time. This doubling time is found by dividing
>> 70 by
>> the percent growth per year. For example, the doubling time for a
>> steady
>> growth rate of 2% per year is 70 / 2 = 35 years.
>>
>> Second, we note that a few doublings can give enormous numbers.
>> It is
>> convenient to remember that ten doublings causes the growing
>> quantity to
>> increase in size by a factor of approximately 1000: twenty
>> doublings will
>> cause an increase by a factor of 1,000,000, etc'
>>
>> If world population growth was simply exponential it would double
>> in 55
>> years to 13 billion. With assorted adjustments the United Nations
>> Population
>> Division projects a global population of 8.04 billion for the year
>> 2025 and
>> 9.37 billion for 2050.
>>
>> Professor Barlett's maths also reveals the absolute impossibility of
>> national economies and consumption continuing to grow at say 3% ad
>> infinitum, doubling every 23 years forever, with the attendant
>> damage to the
>> Earth.
>>
>> I am troubled by our state population plan in SA (at least we have
>> one) that
>> is aiming to increase our population to 2 million, amongst other
>> things, to
>> balance the ratio of older and younger South Australians, which is
>> evidently
>> 'vital' if older citizens are to be sustained in the manner to
>> which they
>> are accustomed.but without reference to any demonstration that the
>> place has
>> the (sustainable) carrying capacity for 2 million people. As a bit of
>> trivia, Today can be remembered as one of the first days that
>> Adelaide had
>> hardly a drop of diesel in storage other than that in the actual
>> tanks at
>> service stations.
>>
>>
>> In my email I mentioned the Milankovich cycles (which are caused
>> by the
>> complex changes of the orbiting of the Earth around the Sun)
>> because humans
>> have witnessed their influences before and they have influenced the
>> phenomena of ice ages and interglacial periods that have had massive
>> impacts on the ecosystems (including humans) of the northern
>> Hemisphere and
>> sea levels in the southern Hemisphere.
>>
>> Natural changes will occur again and whilst we may not have to
>> worry about influences in coming decades, we must bear in mind
>> that such
>> natural changes will cause more grief (loss of biodiversity) in an
>> ecosystem
>> that is stretched and unstable. Even in the last few hundred years
>> 'the
>> little ice age' caused dislocation and migration. The aboriginal
>> civilization has lived through a couple of major glacial periods.
>>
>> I believe you also under-estimate the culturally intrenched fertility
>> control methods used until recently by aboriginal people to tune
>> population
>> to carrying capacity of land on a seasonal basis. Now they, as
>> much as any
>> other Australians, can benefit from Permaculture Design skills in the
>> future.
>>
>>
>> Back to basics
>> Care of the planet
>> Care of others
>> Acceptance of personal responsibility for population and consumption
>>
>>
>>
>> I will fossick out some info on apple performance and chill hours
>> for you.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> graham
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "jedd" <jedd at progsoc.org>
>> To: "permaculture-oceania" <permaculture-oceania at lists.cat.org.au>
>> Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2006 5:26 PM
>> Subject: Re: [permaculture-oceania] Permaculture,energy and the
>> future for
>> humans
>>
>>
>> Hi Graham,
>>
>> ] We are also bent on convincing ourselves that the
>> ] tiny world reserves of Uranium and possibly Thorium will solve ...
>>
>> Let's not forget Plutonium.
>>
>> And the size of the reserves are hotly debated. There's a
>> bucketload
>> in seawater, for starters, and it'd be hubris to believe that we
>> won't develop an economical way of extracting it, if the need
>> arises.
>>
>> ] Taking the full life cycle of a nuclear
>> ] reactor into consideration it is now not worth building one,
>> for using
>> ] Uranium at current world levels we will run out of high grade
>> ore in
>> under
>> ] 20 years (before a reactor has paid itself off in energy terms
>> - in 35
>> ] years) (Van Leeuwin and Smith 2005, Diesendorf 2005).
>>
>> From my understanding, that figure was arrived at pretty casually,
>> and the pro-nuclear lobby certainly isn't happy with it. The Other
>> Side asserts between 300 and 10,000 years worth of supply, depending
>> on the technologies used (in discovery, extraction, and usage).
>>
>> Again, it'd be hubris to project the current technology forward,
>> without allowing, even modestly, for advances yet to be made.
>>
>> ] ... by the Chinese who hope to commission a 'fast breeder reactor'
>> ] by 2010, which they say will produce 60 times the energy a
>> ] normal reactor would from a kilogram of Uranium oxide; however
>> ] fast breeders use liquid sodium as a coolant and are more
>> dangerous
>> ] than ordinary nuclear reactors.
>>
>> Well, the Indians seem to be pretty keen on FBR's too, with some
>> pretty sizable prototypes being built.
>>
>> Not sure that FBR's are more dangerous, at least not while they're
>> operating normally. Certainly you could assert they have a higher
>> impact in the event of an incident, and possibly even that they are
>> a higher risk proposition.
>>
>> ] So far, fast breeders have all been technical and economic
>> failures.
>>
>> This kind of faulty logic (assuming an implication that future
>> plans for fast breeders should be discarded because of past
>> performance) should be avoided by any proponents of renewable
>> energy sources.*
>>
>> ] The largest was the French 1200 MW Superphénix, which commenced
>> ] operation in 1985 as a commercial industrial prototype. It
>> operated only
>> ] intermittently and was shut down in1998 after costing some A$15
>> billion.
>>
>> Again, citing a single instance, and ignoring the commercial
>> and operational imperatives that led to that single instance,
>> in favour of the argument du jour .. is dangerous logic.
>>
>> Russia has been happily running a 600MW FBR for some decades,
>> and is building newer, larger versions of same.
>>
>> FBR's typically become more attractive, from a fiscal point of view,
>> once uranium prices go up. Anti-FBR, anti-nuclear, types will often
>> ignore this as the primary reason behind the lack of popularity
>> for FBR's -- instead adopting a faulty syllogism based around their
>> current small number of operational reactors.
>>
>> And as fuel prices do go up, and FBR's become more $-feasible, then
>> you do end up getting much more power per unit of material input.
>>
>> ] Even if the fast breeder technology was mastered and the
>> general and long
>> ] term hazards of radioactivity and uranium's specific use in
>> acts of
>> ] aggression were ignored,
>>
>> Think how cumbersome it would be if every time we mentioned any
>> petroleum products, we had to make an en passant reference to their
>> use in acts of aggression. (Napalm, anyone?)
>>
>> Don't get me wrong -- I'm far from a nuclear apologist. I think
>> that
>> fission reactors are hugely contra-indicated, and there's any number
>> of perfectly sensible reasons why that's the case -- but going
>> with emotive arguments, non sequiturs, and dodgy math simply
>> weakens the argument against them. Stick with the major problems,
>> such as how to deal with waste over the span of millenia, the
>> necessarily stop-gap measure that any non-renewable power source
>> implies (regardless of time-frame), and maybe the operational risks
>> (though these are typically over-stated). High impact, low risk
>> scenarios are something humans generally have trouble getting their
>> heads around -- at least in my experience.
>>
>> ] ... ultimately warm up as the earth's wobble in orbit around the
>> ] sun increases world temperatures in the centuries to come (as
>> ] per the Milankovitch Cycles model).
>>
>> AFAIK these cycles operate at some dozens of thousands of years,
>> the effects are miniscule, and indeed the predicted historical
>> cycles conflict, in many cases, with the observed data (taken from
>> glacier cores, etc, I presume). At the very least, their impact
>> would be trivial in comparison to the influences generated from
>> within the biosphere over the past hundred years.
>>
>> ] ... in Australia ... where the indigenous human population had
>> ] more or less reached a steady state with the environment over a
>> ] period of some 60000 years.
>>
>> One theory behind that stasis is based on the lack of development
>> of any form of agriculture -- nomadic life enforced a fairly
>> restrained population growth elsewhere on the planet, too. Ie, it
>> wasn't through design or conscious decision, so much as by NOT
>> doing any of the kinds of things that permaculturalists would do.
>>
>> ] Without offending our increasingly mainstream
>> ] students we need to introduce this issue in our courses.
>>
>> Whereas I think they should be offended .. but perhaps not in the
>> way
>> that you're trying to avoid. I've bemoaned previously the lack of
>> interest in discussing population control -- apart from anything
>> else it's a fabulously entertaining subject.
>>
>> ] Incidentally Lloyd Evans (ex chief of Plant Industry in the
>> CSIRO),
>> ] in his book 'Feeding the Ten Billion' put a figure of about 3
>> billion on
>> a
>> ] world population sustainable without non-renewable fuels).
>>
>> I'd heard figures of around 700-800,000 -- but either would be a
>> laudable goal. I don't see it happening, though, as behind your
>> argument that reproduction is the core issue, lies, IMO, the other
>> core issue that for many people, an escape from having to
>> contemplate
>> the pointlessness of their own lives is found in having children.
>>
>> Yes yes .. a generalisation, of course, and I'm sure there are any
>> number of exceptions -- or maybe I just know [mostly] the wrong
>> kinds of people. In any event, I think the problem of telling
>> people
>> to stop spawning excessively will need to involve a substitution of
>> something else to do with their time and money.
>>
>> Good luck.
>>
>> ] I truly
>> ] thought the pistachio nut trees on our farm (our main crop)
>> would be a
>> ] resilient and relatively 'permanent' key component of our
>> property design
>> ] however the warming of Australian autumn and winter
>> temperatures last
>> year
>>
>> OOC, how many hours of chill did your varieties need, how many
>> hours does your region normally get, and how many did you get last
>> year? I'm looking at banging in a lot of apples in the next few
>> years, and I've put off the calculations and projections so far,
>> particularly since many of the 100 or so varieties that I want to
>> grow aren't well documented as far as their chill requirements go.
>> Plus I was hoping that I'd have a few decades left before there was
>> a sizable jump in the number of chill hours in my part of the world.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Jedd.
>>
>> * "It's a poor blaster that doesn't point both ways." -- Isaac
>> Asimov
>>
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>
>
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