# Australia leads the world.....



## Pyan (Nov 17, 2007)

...in CO² emissions per capita, suprisingly.....

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Australians named worst emitters




> *    Australians named worst emitters  *
> 
> *A study of the world's power stations has shown the extent to which developed countries produce more carbon dioxide per head than emerging economies.
> 
> * Australians were found to be the world's worst polluters per capita, producing five times as much CO2 from generating power as China.


Paradise at a price?


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## Majimaune (Nov 17, 2007)

Yeah thats right...I mean we do want to lead in this stuff don't we? No we don't.

I'll tell you why we are the worst, cause we have so little water in this dry uninhabitable place that we have to purify so much of it so we can drink.

We also have too much wasted space where green energy collectors, such as say windmills could go. Stupid government.


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## The Ace (Nov 17, 2007)

Methane, yes.  Co2 ?


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## gully_foyle (Nov 18, 2007)

We're in the midst of an election campaign as well, so we are officially contributing the most hot air. 

It's a bloody disgrace isn't it? We have so much coal in our ground that we just dig it up and burn it with wild abandon, and if the current bunch of conservatives get criticised for their atrocious record on environmental damage, they justify it with how many jobs they've created and how good our economy is. Australia is a fragile environment, and we just rape and pillage it. And there is no-one else to blame, but ourselves.


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## Wiglaf (Nov 18, 2007)

They beat us?  We must be slacking.  Darn windmills up north.  And the nuke plant...


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## Sephiroth (Nov 18, 2007)

You could nuke the nuke plant?


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## gully_foyle (Nov 18, 2007)

Well we do have a lot of Uranium that we can't sell to India fast enough, so soon reactors will be dotted around the landscape, ready to contaminate our massive ground water basins. Anyone know where we can get reactors on the cheap?

Funny, innit? With all this sunshine......


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## Wiglaf (Nov 18, 2007)

Oh yeah, you all worry about nuke plants. Ours is 45 miles north, I'm guessing. The nuclear aircraft carriers and nuclear subs with the nuclear missles are what, 20 miles away. The electricity shortage and state dependence on natural gas scare me more. Way more electricity without billions of tons of every emission conceiveable is kind of my goal. Of course, San Onofre didn't have someone trying to bring in a bomb like the nuke plant in Arizona; we just had pipe bombs on the freeway. Ain't terrorism great, a great pain in the you-know-what.


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## Sephiroth (Nov 18, 2007)

Ah, I saw a thing (what you've said there has just reminded me, Gully) about a uranium mine in Northern Territory.  The land had been 'taken' from Aboriginal people and was earmarked for mining (I can't remember exactly), but the natives challenged it in the courts, and won the rights to their land.  

And then, a couple of years later, they were told they could still keep the land, but that a big, nasty mining company would be coming to dig most of it up from under them.  

Probably to sell to India, then?



With all the sunshine, and all that 'empty' space........




I'm not anti-nuclear, though.  I believe nuclear power will be essential if we are to curb carbon emissions quickly enough.


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## Wiglaf (Nov 18, 2007)

Indians have their own thoughts on when and where they want windmills.  Aborigines probably do too.  Although, even if they can be difficult and want to be paid, I still rather negotiate than steal.  I don't like to think of myself as a piece of ____; I prefer to actually like myself.


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## Majimaune (Nov 19, 2007)

gully_foyle said:


> It's a bloody disgrace isn't it? We have so much coal in our ground that we just dig it up and burn it with wild abandon, and if the current bunch of conservatives get criticised for their atrocious record on environmental damage, they justify it with how many jobs they've created and how good our economy is. Australia is a fragile environment, and we just rape and pillage it. And there is no-one else to blame, but ourselves.


Lets hope Peter Garret gets in and does something then cause the current guy isn't doing much except denying that its even happening.


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## Cayal (Nov 19, 2007)

gully_foyle said:


> Australia is a fragile environment, and we just rape and pillage it. And there is no-one else to blame, but ourselves.




Sorry but I don't dig in the ground, or pollute our waters.

The government and big businesses are to blame because they are only concerned with the almighty dollar.


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## Wybren (Nov 19, 2007)

This is why this weekend us Aussies need to stick it to El Diablo Howard, we need a government who will act on reducing emissions and try to conserve our environment. Not one that doesn't believe in global warming and climate change


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## Redtail (Nov 19, 2007)

Hmm,  but who do we replace him with??
They all seem to be laying on the promises thickly, ie Labor will not allow Nuclear power plants, but I seem to remember someone saying a few years ago that he would never bring in a GST, are any of the others any different, I hope so, hey lets give them a chance!!


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## Urien (Nov 19, 2007)

Green house gases in Australia? It's all the beer drinking kangaroos with their morning after hangover methane emissions.


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## Wybren (Nov 19, 2007)

I dunno Red, but we need to do something about it. Hey isn't the one who said they'd never ever bring in GST the same one that is promising no change to workchoices?


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## Ursa major (Nov 19, 2007)

Wiglaf said:


> ...and state dependence on natural gas scare me more.


 
At least a lot of your continent's natural gas doesn't come courtesy of cuddly President Putin. (Or, as LNG, from that well-known haven or peace and tranquility, north Africa.)


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## Majimaune (Nov 20, 2007)

andrew.v.spencer said:


> Green house gases in Australia? It's all the beer drinking kangaroos with their morning after hangover methane emissions.


Damn straight. They wander into my backyard by mistake.


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## Redtail (Nov 20, 2007)

Ursa major said:


> At least a lot of your continent's natural gas doesn't come courtesy of cuddly President Putin. (Or, as LNG, from that well-known haven or peace and tranquility, north Africa.)


No we just sell it to Japan cheap, and sell it here at an outrageous price.


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## Cayal (Nov 20, 2007)

Redtail said:


> Hmm,  but who do we replace him with??
> They all seem to be laying on the promises thickly, ie Labor will not allow Nuclear power plants, but I seem to remember someone saying a few years ago that he would never bring in a GST, are any of the others any different, I hope so, hey lets give them a chance!!



Politicians make good liars.

However George W. Howard has overstayed his welcome. Good riddance.


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## Lith (Nov 21, 2007)

Wow, this _is_ surprising.  Please allow me about five minutes of gloating...

Okay.  I like Australians too much for any more.  



> The government and big businesses are to blame because they are only concerned with the almighty dollar.


Never mind that consumers everywhere appreciate the lower price of goods... making it everyone's problem.  

Are solar stills common in Australia?  Seems like they would go a way toward purifying water without using resources that could better be spent elsewhere.


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## Majimaune (Nov 21, 2007)

They finally announced all this in Australia today. Before today I hadn't heard anything on the news or something like that. You know what the politicians said? Absolute waffle.


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## The_Warrior (Nov 21, 2007)

Here's another article of it. It haves most of the things that the other one had.

By THOMAS WAGNER, Associated Press Writer Wed Nov 21, 7:54 AM ET 


LONDON - This was a bug you couldn't swat and definitely couldn't step on. British scientists have stumbled across a fossilized claw, part of an ancient sea scorpion, that is of such large proportion it would make the entire creature the biggest bug ever. 

How big? Bigger than you, and at 8 feet long as big as some Smart cars.
The discovery in 390-million-year-old rocks suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were far larger in the past than previously thought, said Simon Braddy, a University of Bristol paleontologist and one of the study's three authors.
"This is an amazing discovery," he said Tuesday.
"We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies. But we never realized until now just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were," he said.
The research found a type of sea scorpion that was almost half a yard longer than previous estimates and the largest one ever to have evolved.
The study, published online Tuesday in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters, means that before this sea scorpion became extinct it was much longer than today's average man is tall.
Prof. Jeorg W. Schneider, a paleontologist at Freiberg Mining Academy in southeastern Germany, said the study provides valuable new information about "the last of the giant scorpions."
Schneider, who was not involved in the study, said these scorpions "were dominant for millions of years because they didn't have natural enemies. Eventually they were wiped out by large fish with jaws and teeth."
Braddy's partner paleontologist Markus Poschmann found the claw fossil several years ago in a quarry near Prum, Germany, that probably had once been an ancient estuary or swamp.
"I was loosening pieces of rock with a hammer and chisel when I suddenly realized there was a dark patch of organic matter on a freshly removed slab. After some cleaning I could identify this as a small part of a large claw," said Poschmann, another author of the study.
"Although I did not know if it was more complete or not, I decided to try and get it out. The pieces had to be cleaned separately, dried, and then glued back together. It was then put into a white plaster jacket to stabilize it," he said.
Eurypterids, or ancient sea scorpions, are believed to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of today's scorpions and possibly all arachnids, a class of joint-legged, invertebrate animals, including spiders, scorpions, mites and ticks.
Braddy said the fossil was from a Jaekelopterus Rhenaniae, a kind of scorpion that lived only in Germany for about 10 million years, about 400 million years ago.
He said some geologists believe that gigantic sea scorpions evolved due to higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere in the past. Others suspect they evolved in an "arms race" alongside their likely prey, fish that had armor on their outer bodies.
Braddy said the sea scorpions also were cannibals that fought and ate one other, so it helped to be as big as they could be.
"The competition between this scorpion and its prey was probably like a nuclear standoff, an effort to have the biggest weapon," he said. "Hundreds of millions of years ago, these sea scorpions had the upper hand over vertebrates — backboned animals like ourselves."

That competition ended long ago. 
But the next time you swat a fly, or squish a spider at home, Braddy said, try to "think about the insects that lived long ago. You wouldn't want to swat one of those." ___


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## The_Warrior (Nov 21, 2007)

oops. Wrong place


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## Wiglaf (Nov 22, 2007)

Wrong place? I thought scorpion farts were the cause of greenhouse gases, how silly of me.

In Arizona their testing algae that live off of carbon dioxide and water and can be turned into biodiesel when they die.  We mandate alcohol in our gas; how long till we mandate biodiesel in our desiel?  We could use a way to manufacture some of our own fuel.  Besides, California is supposed to start all the trends.


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## Majimaune (Nov 22, 2007)

Yeah thats true, then about a year later it will start to come here.


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## gully_foyle (Nov 22, 2007)

Hmmm biodiesel. Great idea, lets turn our crops into fuel instead of food. The idea has merit as a long term prospect, and works with leftover sugar beet, but some morons are doing it now with perfectly good corn.


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## Majimaune (Nov 22, 2007)

Yes which is quite stupid if you ask me. Not that I like corn much but for all the people who do.


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## gully_foyle (Nov 22, 2007)

On the upside, there is less corn syrup to put in sickly sweet drinks, which is one driver of the obesity epidemic.


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## Majimaune (Nov 22, 2007)

Yes that always is a good thing to look at.


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## Wiglaf (Nov 24, 2007)

Actually, when a hydrocarbon is burned perfectly(no HC, CO, or NOx), it results in H2O and CO2, carbonic acid(carbonated water).  So in California where we burn natural gas for most of our power, you would collect the emissions and place them in clear tubes in a sunlit location.  You place the algae in these tubes, hook up a cooling system so the algae doesn't produce enough heat to kill themselves, and wait.  The algae uses the CO2 and water for photosynthesis.  Then you take the left over algae, which is chock full of hydrocarbons, and you use them to produce biodiesel and plastics.  
There is no corn involved.  First generation corn plastics still need more developement and ethanol is super expensive compared to gasoline(petrol). 
The idea is that since California is forced by the Fascist, oops, federal government to have stricter environmental laws than the rest of the nation, we could atleast reduce the flow of money to other states by producing our own biodiesel as part of our greenhouse gas reduction process, a twofer.  We pay a trmendous amount to other states for natural gas and ethanol.  The ethanol we have to add to our gas for emissions, the rest of the country does not.


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## Lith (Nov 25, 2007)

Oregon has to add ethanol to the gas too; it has for years (by law).  So that's two states.

The technology for alternative fuels is mostly in place; it's the economic factor that needs to change, and it will. 

But... biodiesel will still throw CO2 up into the atmosphere, won't it?


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## Majimaune (Nov 25, 2007)

Sure it will but not as much as standard diesel.


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## Wiglaf (Nov 25, 2007)

It throws up less apparently from what I've heard.  Even if it didn't, by making it from natural gas burning powerplant emissions, you cut emissions.  Instead of biodiesel, diesel, *and* powerplant emissions, you now have only biodiesel and diesel emissions.

note:  The most cost effective (dollars per ammount of total emissions reduction:  CO, CO2, HC, NOx) system is a mix, e.g. 20-80, 20% biodiesel/80% diesel.


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## Quokka (Nov 27, 2007)

It is a disgrace and I think Australia is missing out on what eventually is going to be a multi-billion dollar (plus) market, when with the proper research and development we are in a prime position to be leading the world in green energy. We have an affluent society, with plenty of cash and resources (comparitively), stable geology, plenty of room, decent enough universities and scientists and a high enough quality of life to make it possible to gain wide spread support for research and development. I mean what more could you ask for and instead we've got token programs and short term solutions that will in the end be part of the problem.

Still with the article it does need to be seen in context, we produce more per capita but that per capita is ~20 million compared to the US's ~300 million so in real terms we are producing about 8% as much CO2 as the US. China produces very nearly as much CO2 as the US but has a population 1,321 million (many of who probably don't benifit from it).

Shows you how far we have to go when we can reach our Kyoto targets and still be producing so much.


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## Rosemary (Nov 28, 2007)

Sephiroth said:


> Ah, I saw a thing (what you've said there has just reminded me, Gully) about a uranium mine in Northern Territory.  The land had been 'taken' from Aboriginal people and was earmarked for mining (I can't remember exactly), but the natives challenged it in the courts, and won the rights to their land.
> 
> And then, a couple of years later, they were told they could still keep the land, but that a big, nasty mining company would be coming to dig most of it up from under them.


I might be wrong but at one time the mining industry had the final say in where they were going to mine - be it in the middle of a National Park! 

We certainly do have enough room in this wide country for windmill farms and solar power, but nuclear plants?  They'd probably build it right over a fault line! 

Our latest attempt to help combat this world disaster is no stop making the plastic bottles that hold the water which people seem to carry everywhere (well I suppose we have to start somewhere).  I'm not sure what the figure is but the amount of plastic needed is phenomenal, as too the process which makes the plastic raises green house gas emissions at quite a high rate.


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## Majimaune (Dec 2, 2007)

Well Rudd apparently wont do the power plant thing.


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