For those that don't understand the size of Australia, it takes 4 hours 15 mins flying to get from one side to the other.
No-one cares about frakking here. Open google maps and go to "coober pedy" (pop 2,500). Zoom out a few clicks and turn on the satellite image. There is nothing, absolutely nothing in any direction but dry rock.
"Those fuels are mostly naturally formed, not fossilized." Oh FFS
"Okay, as PM of Australia, you can't really like this new discovery so what's your game plan?" Why not?? Australia imports most of its petroleum. Do you see an advantage for a country to be dependent on odious regimes in the middle east?
"I guess another fun question would be what do you predict Gillard is going to do?" Stupid question. If feasible , allow development , just like Australia's coal & gas resources. Or have you uncovered some socialist plot to block development?
"have imposed a large carbon tax on the people" which , as you know , is ********. The carbon tax (which as you know becomes an ETS in 2015) has have very little impact upon living costs
The headline says one thing but the reality is something different “It is likely however that just 3.5 billion barrels, worth almost $359 billion (￡227 billion) at today’s oil price, will be able to be recovered.”
If I was the PM of Australia I wouldn’t be impressed by this. Even if none of it is exported it amounts to less than ten years worth of oil for Australia. Instead of spending billions of dollars on the necessary infrastructure and investing in a very expensive, hazardous and damaging resource, I’d be looking to develop nuclear fusion, possibly as a joint venture with other countries.
Then, instead of a few years worth of oil for Australia, we could have enough cheap energy to power the whole world indefinitely.
I suppose she will leave it in the ground, right after she starts preventing the massive coal industry from digging up and exporting coal around the world since we are the world's leading exporter. So far she hasn't done anything about that, so I guess that will come first. Strangely, being someone who hates fossil fuels she has never mentioned any plans to reduce coal exports. Maybe she is a bit thick like Pindick and doesn't realise that coal is a fossil fuel!
Prime Ministers like Presidents are flashes in the pan, a brief sizzle and gone. Where trillions in economic plenty are concerned, economic development and the resultant prosperity will always triumph. The challenge is not how to do without oil (that will come later) but how to use oil cleanly and to the best advantage.
The game plan would be to recover the oil and use it for your own economy or exports and also fund/ introduce methods to extract CO2 from the air or sea and use that to produce carbon-negative or neutral biofuels as well.
"Joule’s renewable fuel platform will best the scale, productivities and costs of any known alternative to fossil fuel today, with no reliance on biomass feedstocks or precious natural resources. Our inputs are sunlight, waste CO2 and non-potable water. Our output? Millions of gallons of clean, renewable fuel that drops into existing infrastructure. Next step: change the world."
http://www.jouleunlimited.com/
"Naval scientists are turning seawater into biofuel. Besides using a readily available resource, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory thinks its special process could make seawater jet fuel as cheap as regular gasoline."
"The NRL's press release about their scientific process had echoes of an academic paper for a chemistry journal, but from what I gather they've got a portable prototype called a "carbon capture skid" that's about five feet tall. Inside are three chambers designed to produce hydrogen gas and capture carbon dioxide.
After the seawater goes through the skid, there'd be a two-step process to make liquid hydrocarbons ― proto-jet fuel if you will ― from the hydrogen gas and CO2. Then that liquid would just need to be converted using another reaction. We're not at a point where this all works smoothly, yet. The NRL is still developing all those steps."
"The economic advantages to this emerging tech might be more persuasive. The NRL's initial studies predict jetfuel could cost as little as $3 to $6 a gallon using this seawater process. That's a boatload of savings."
http://news.discovery.com/tech/navy-seaw...
http://inhabitat.com/us-navy-scientists-...
"Petrol from air at first glance from this week's headlines, claiming scientists have turned fresh air into petrol, looked as if this was yet another over the top claim about a killer solution to solve the environmental crisis and specter of global warming. Still, engineers in the UK believe a small UK company may be on to something real, a synthetic replacement for fossil fuel. A small company in the north of England, Air Fuel Synthesis (AFS), has developed air capture technology to create synthetic petrol. "
"We've taken carbon dioxide from air and hydrogen from water and turned these elements into petrol," said Peter Harrison, the company's chief executive. "The unit we have here is a demo facility to show the processes can work," he said. AFS expects to be in production by 2015. Tim Fox, the head of energy and the environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, underlined the significance of what he has seen of the AFS solution so far. "The innovation is that they have made it happen as a process. It's a small pilot plant capturing air and extracting CO2 from it based on well-known principles."
http://phys.org/news/2012-10-air-fuel-sy...
Synthetic trees/carbon scrubbers...capture CO2 1000 times faster than real trees
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/big-id...
http://io9.com/5950271/could-artificial-...
As PM of Australia she's there to promote her master's agenda to the derivation of the public interest, so she has no game plan except to wait for orders on the issue
fracking doesn't get in to ground water in less they do a poor job of cementing the casing been in oil feild 40 years and that is the only time
As an Australian I will tell the AGW advocates directly that Julia Gillard is simply another opportunistic/parasitic politician who spends other peoples money for political gain. Her Labour Party was only re-elected in a hung parliament with the 'Green' environmental party. So the carbon tax had to be implemented to appease the "Greens" despite the fact she very publicly stated over and over again during the previous election campaign that the carbon tax would not be implemented . So truth is she lied and is a fraud with false integrity. Polls have her deservedly getting the boot at the next election. The opposition Liberal Party have the pledge to remove the carbon tax, lock, stock and barrel.
The carbon tax has simply been a football tossed around for political purposes in Australia to attempt buying votes from the more socialist side of society (which is big).. It has high probability chance of removal after the next election unless circumstances change or further lies prevail. The carbon tax has increased energy bills greater than 30% and there is a direct flow on effect to virtually everything you buy. Absurd bureaucratic compliance and reporting is regulated and designed to greatly increase over time.
Australia is resource rich and the Labour Party has also introduced a mining tax that adopts a similar methodology just on a different product. So at whatever opportunity socialized Government can regulate industry they will do it to control and reap in revenue all in the name of "being fair", which is the most insidious lie of all. So the game plan is already set and fully capable of being applied to any shale oil extravaganza that comes about. Ms Gillard is well versed in spin so this is not a problem for her or her Labour Party spin doctoring machine as long as they can force their way into another term of Government.
Wherever money is made, socialist Government will work in this method and this is exactly the same situation with the almighty cry of 'Global Warming'. Depleting energy reserves and more people/economic growth makes energy progressively more expensive so it is lucrative and an essential service that Government seeks greater slice of the pie. Simple and as plain as that. How Australia is effected is how I have described for our socialized form of Government. There is limited difference between the major political parties in OZ these days unless an individual makes a stand. I am not certain a new Government will be much better but the pledge to remove the carbon tax is a big one and very difficult to lie about once again.
As far as the US is concerned I think it is a different story. A few ongoing billion dollar handouts printed from thin air courtesy of the Morgan's and Rockefeller's (Fed Reserve) provides the AGW research. This combines with the Government spin doctoring machine and the deal is done. The spin reaches Schools/Universities and a whole new generation marches to the call. It is one of the oldest games in the history books. Red or Blue politicians become merely puppets to the mysterious men behind the curtain (Federal Reserve) that perpetually call the shots despite never getting elected. The Fed likes socialism because it has greatest control, reaps in more tax, requires more Government debt to implement the controls, that all feeds back to the banks via interest payments that perpetually line pockets of the illustrious central bankers of the world. How far Australia is involved in this I do not know but it is very scary.
Financial markets will be the undoing of this socialised theft because after decades of Fed and Government props, markets have clearly identified they are on their last legs and destined to plunge greater than ever. So it is all a game that will come undone badly as the props fail. AGW is simply another tool for control and legalised theft by socialised bankstering across the globe. As markets crumble these banks will lose out and the world will finally have to fend for itself once again based on the old priciples of free enterprise (sound distantly familiar?).
I thnk the very vast majority of scientists are completely unaware of any socialised theft behind their work and simply enjoy having resereach funding to do their climate studies/earn a living. The AGW advocates simply need to focus totally on good research and completely avoid the spin associated with it. AGW advocates of Yahoo Answers take note.
Very few people actually it fossil fuels, but the question here comes down to what is best for the environment and for future generations. When you get right down to it, you can't eat money or drink oil.
Pretend for a moment you are Julia Gillard, PM of Australia. You are known to be an avid AGW believer and have imposed a large carbon tax on the people. You wake up this morning and read this:
"Up to 233 billion barrels of oil has been discovered in the Australian outback that could be worth trillions of dollars, in a find that could turn the region into a new Saudi Arabia." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/9822955/Trillions-of-dollars-worth-of-oil-found-in-Australian-outback.html
This is shale oil so fracking will likely be needed for extraction. There are arguments against fracking but this oil deposit is in a remote location so the usual arguments of local tremors or groundwater contamination will be difficult to sell.
Okay, as PM of Australia, you can't really like this new discovery so what's your game plan?
You extract every last drop cause' it's the easiest thing to do. Then in a couple hundred years after sea level is up 25 feet and all the continental interiors are deserts you say "Oops, oh well". But it doesn't matter because civilization already collapsed about a hundred years ago.
It's better to be natural. Safer to be natural. Gasoline emits a residue and gas that we don't want.
Scientific reality does not depend on anyone lying about others hating fossil fuels. Fossil fuels power the YA denier BS machine, but guns don't kill people, they just die in natural cycles when triggers are pulled by natural causes.
I think they can kiss their plan to reduce carbon emissions by 5% by 2020 (which will do absolutely zero to reduce global temps even if the alarmist were right) goodbye.
With the USA most likely to become energy independent in a few years oil prices will go down, usage will go up and alarmists will start crying themselves to sleep :-D
@JJ..."The carbon tax (which as you know becomes an ETS in 2015) has have very little impact upon living costs"
Really? Since it's an added cost to producers and manufacturers guess who they pass the cost of the extra tax to? The consumer.
What's this about hating? Hate is what denialists have towards climate scientists who tell the truth.
You have been on this site long enough to know that fossil fuels do have alternatives, such solar, wind and nuclear power.
Oh! Oh! Ms. Gillard has to come up with something quick. This is definitely not in their agenda.
Quote by Paul Ehrlich, professor, Stanford University: “Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
I think they will change their mind about fossil fuels when global temperatures are 1 - 3F below average by the middle of this century.
