My first job, out of high school, was as an apprentice Electrician at a coal mine. I can remember after maybe 12 months or so, after having gotten used to working with the dozen or so different tradesmen and knowing what to watch out for, a new electrician turned up to work at the coal mine one day. As it turned out, he wasn't a new guy, he'd been away on long service leave. In Australia we used to have available for many if not most employees a fully paid 3 month, 12 week break after you'd completed 10 full years service at that one employer. Our organization, the State Electricity Commission, had a really good program where if an employee wanted a 6 month break they could take this time off with 1/2 pay, or 12 months with 1/4 pay. For a lot of people they'd use this time taking their young families on holidays of a lifetime, or a young parent could help with the first 3, 6 or 12 months life raising a new baby, or some took the time and built or renovated their homes.
Of course that employer disbanded when the State of Victoria sold all its electricity assets so this Long Service Leave entitlement went with it.
Last November I completed an electrical contract helping to build a new process plant. Usually I'd have the next project lined up or have something in mind and have sown the seeds with the people I know to get a start there. But not this time. I'd had the subject of energy and climate disruption running through my head for all of the previous year if not last two years, and knew if I didn't try to make sense of what I thought was going on, where the truth lay, it was going to be on my mind distracting me wherever and whatever project I moved on to.
So I chose to take a break from work. Originally intended to be kind of like a 3 month long service break (except I was paying out of pocket for it), it has stretched into something much longer.
What prompted me to have a long service break from working was a conversation I had with a friend of mine, about 2 years ago, after reading a book called "Crimes Against Nature" written by Robert F Kennedy Junior, nephew of John F Kennedy, 35th President of the United States.
The book was a terrible story of out of control greed and deliberate government intervention which set policy in the United States allowing, without hardly any controls, oversight or accountability, companies to blast the tops off mountains and dump the slurry and waste rock into the creeks, rivers and valleys in the Appalachias. I have written of this most recently in this article.
Article 1 - High Country to Appalachia
Turning mountains like the first shot into the views on the right.
My friend suggested if I felt strongly about what I read in the book, I ought to write about it. He used the word thesis and although this was not really what I intentionally set out to do, it is close to what I have eventually written. Each article I have written in the last 12 or so months, has been constructed to close out my line of thinking in a particular area, providing a reference point to come back to if need be.
My working life for the past 18 years has been involved in the process automation area, mostly heavy industry. So because of what you hear in the engineering, maintenance and operational offices and meetings as well as what the talk is on the shop floor, you tend to pay little attention to the so called 'environmentalists', as to pay them too much notice supposedly goes against believing in that which you are doing as a job. That they threaten your industry and its right to dig stuff up and burn it, smelt it, process it, weld it or refine it.
That if they had their way we'd go back to living in the dark ages.
Avoiding the dark ages - Our pursuit of Energy
The second linked article I have written below details fairly closely our need for energy, how much we use on a daily basis and talks about where we get most of our energy from and a little on how it is created and why we use it the way we do.
Article 2 - The Grain Store Keepers
Daily recommended food calorie intake for:
Men = 2,500 calories
For Women = 2,000 calories
To demonstrate this, if we take an average Mars, Hersheys or other chocolate bar as being around 250 calories this equates to 10 or 8 chocolate bars worth of food calories per person, per day, to simply survive.
However the daily energy use per capita is around 80 - 100 times more than this at around 216,000 calories according to the figures Ethical Man uses which are validated in this review here.
216,000 kCal is equal to 251 kilowatt hours.
We need a lot of energy every single day to simply survive as we have become accustomed. Currently this comes in the form of electricity, petroleum and oil products for transportation and other uses, agricultural fertilzers - all mostly from equipment designed to combust or make use of fossil fuels.
I'd been taught that a kind of internal choice must be made that you are either for looking after the economy or for looking after the environment,the two were mutually exclusive and I worked on the economy side.
However the truth is they are not.
There can be no economy without a sustainable environment.
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Australia's Economy
Building an economy is a very difficult thing to do. Lifting people from a low standard of living, who have been doing the same things for a very long time at a subsistence level and bringing them the modern lifestyle we have come to believe is an improved life is an incredibly complex thing to contemplate and certainly above my pay grade. But fortunately I had the experience of working in Vietnam in about 1994/95 and again about 2000/2001 and was able to see first hand an emerging market economy develop remarkably in 6 short years.
One of the most obvious things back at the earlier time was lack of support infrastructure to homes and businesses, something we mostly take for granted back in Australia. That was access to Electricity, running water, sewage or waste treatment, gas for cooking and heating, even hot water systems for those who do have piped water. A lot of what was being built during my first trup was this and by the second trip 6 years later the improvements were incredible.
It helped me realize that it is access to cheap energy which enables all of the other industries and our modern lifestyles to function. Energy infrastructure is the base on which a modern economy can be built.
Following World War II with the world in shock at just how quickly a war machine could be built by industrialized nations, around the world building economies resilient enough to protect against rogue nations would have became something of a priority.
In Australia the build out of energy infrastructure saw a 6 times increase of electricity available per capita from 1950 at 3.6kW/hr per day to 18.27kWh by the end of the 1960's. 37.56kWh per capita by the 1970's and around 55kWh per day per capita by the start of the 1980's.
Australia's original endeavors to build major electricity capacity began with a government backed project called the Snowy River Scheme which eventually brought on line 3.756 Giga Watts of 24/7 hydro electric power available to 2 major populated states, Victoria and New South Wales.
Guthega (60MW) - completed in 1954
Tumut 1 (330MW) - completed in 1958
Tumut 2 (286MW) - completed in 1961
Blowering (80MW) - completed in 1967
Murray 1 (950MW) - completed in 1967
Murray 2 (550MW) - completed in 1969
Tumut 3 (1500MW) - completed in 1974
This was a remarkable achievement with the Snowy Mountain Scheme taking 25 years to build.
From 1949 to 1974, at the cost (at that time) of AUD$820 million; a dollar value equivalent in 1999 and 2004 to AUD$6 billion. It employed over 100,000 people from over 30 countries in its construction, providing valuable employment for a large number of recently arrived immigrants, and was important in Australia's post-war economic and social development. Seventy percent of all the workers were migrants.
The scheme interlocks seven power stations and 16 major dams through 145 kilometres of trans-mountain tunnels and 80 kilometres of aqueducts.
The project used Australia's first transistorised computer; one of the first in the world. Called 'Snowcom', the computer was used from 1960 to 1967.
The design of the scheme was modelled on the Tennessee Valley Authority.
A series on the Snowy Mountain Scheme can be found here in parts 1, 2, 3, 4 (quote: "They thought we were drunk because we were singing"), 5, 6.
The Snowy Mountain scheme, modelled on what the United States had in the TVA, kick started a country, one which would eventually become a major world economy. By bringing electricity to places it had not been available before as well as bringing new skills to a country without them and migrants from diverse backgrounds with those skills. In mining, explosives, engineering, hydraulics, management for massive workforces. It gave Australia the knowledge and skill base it needed to construct major infrastructure projects. As you can see from the chart below of Australian Electricity Generation capacity, the Snowy mountain scheme accounted for a good part of the new capacity bought on line in the 1950's and 1960's.
New Fossil fuel MW | New Total MW | Decade | Australian population | kW gen capacity per person | kW/hr per capita per day |
215MW | 1,227.7MW | 1950's | 8,178,000 | 0.15kW | 3.6kW/hr |
3,880MW | 6,594.5MW | 1960's | 10,275,000 | 0.76kW | 18.27kW/hr |
9,395MW | 11,752.6MW | 1970's | 12,507,300 | 1.56kW | 37.56kW/hr |
12,186MW | 13,227MW | 1980's | 14,695,400 | 2.23kW | 53.57kW/hr |
6,133MW | 6,371MW | 1990's | 17,065,100 | 2.29kW | 55.09kW/hr |
5,037MW | 5,124.1MW | 2000's | 19,157,000 | 2.31kW | 55.5kW/hr |
36,846MW (total) | 44,296.9MW (total) | | | | |
| 48,541 MW | 2009 | 22,031,000 | 2.20kW | 52.88kW/hr |
Table above showing the electricity generation capacity build by MW per decade in Australia
Although only a minor portion of the new electricity generation capacity was from fossil fuels in the 1950's, by the 1960's this had grown to over 1/2 of new power generation facilities. By the 1970's 9.4GW of 11.8GW of new electricity facilities were fossil fuel stations, the 1980's 12.2GW of 13.2GW was fossil fuels the 1990's 6.1GW. of 6.3GW and 2000's (so far) 5GW of 5.1GW. Hydro stations are limited as to their suitability as they need to be located near very large water reservoirs usually with significant elevation. In Australias case, the best reservoirs or areas which could be dammed are in the mountain areas a long way from population centers. Transmission construction, costs and distance becoming an issue. Fossil fuel stations were able to be built at scale where access to a regular coal supply and water for cooling the minimum pre-requisites. These stations are much easier to locate near population centers.
In Australia
black and brown coal-fired power plants accounted for 81 per cent of generation output
One thing of note in the figures above is the per capita electric power consumption leveling out at around 55kW per day since the 1980's. The total level of all energy consumption per capita can also be found in the Energy Information Agency figures from table E1 1980 to 2006 showing Quadrillion BTU's consumed. In this time the doubling of Australia's population occurred with energy consumption per capita per day only slightly increasing where it had done so exponentially prior to this.
The timing, the build out of the electrical grids in many developed countries including the US, occurred predominantly around this time frame 1970's - 1990's. Below are 3 countries which clearly show this pattern having been repeated elsewhere. Australia was not alone in following this infrastructure build model and energy consumption per day, per capita levelling out.
Scotland
UK
United States
To show this from another frame, what I have done below is convert per capita BTU consumption to daily kWh for the year 1980 and 2006 for a number of select countries. This includes ALL primary sources of energy consumed by a country.
What can be seen is this pattern of levelizing of energy consumption per head of population has occurred in many of the developed countries of the world.
Country | Population | 1980 | 2006 | Total MW | electricity kWh per day |
Australia | 22,031,000 | 152kWh | 222kWh | 48,000MW | 53kWh from electricity | +70kWh in 26 years |
UK | 60,943,912 | 126kWh | 130kWh | 74,000MW | 29kWh from electricity | +4kWh in 26 years |
US | 304,059,724 | 275kWh | 269kWh | 1,088,000MW | 86kWh from electricity | -6kWh in 26 years |
Canada | 33,212,696 | 317kWh | 343kWh | 126,000MW | 91kWh from electricity | +26kWh in 26 years |
Daily energy consumption kWh/day per capita in 1980 and 2006
In Australia's case the additional energy consumption can be explained by the major expansion in mining and other mobile equipment used in our ever expanding resources sector.
The advantages of fossil fuels for energy production was proven in multiple countries which had followed a relatively identical economic development model through to 1980. The ties and close relationships between companies developing fossil fuel reserves cannot be understated. In Australia we had established strong business, economic and technological relationships with many of the industrial majors of the United States - Exxon and BHP, Peabody Coal and Rio Tinto along with many of the international industrial engineering and equipment firms being contracted to provide the necessary expertise and plant to build our infrastructure up.
1962: Theiss Peabody Mitsui opens Moura mine, the first major Australian export coal mine in the Bowen Basin, Queensland.
'Theiss’. Theiss Brothers is an Australian firm that was awarded several contracts on the Scheme, including construction of the Snowy–Geehi tunnel in 1961
2001: Rio Tinto, has purchased the stock of the Peabody companies that owned interests in five coal mines in Australia as well as in Peabody Mining Services, but excluding Peabody Coal Trade
So you can see the initial development of the Snowy, led to companies such as Theiss becoming involved in future major mining operations partnering with international organizations. It is also worth pointing out that the boom time for the expansion of electricity producing assets, building of Australia's major power stations, happened from the 1970's through to the end of 1980. A total of almost 25 Gigawatts of our existing grid connected 48GW was built during this 20 year period. More than double what has been built in the 1990's and 2000's.
Also until the 1990's, the electricity sector of the time was an initiative in which the various state governments were very much involved. In fact the major states Victoria, New South Wales and even Queensland power industries were established by government owned, managed and operated enterprises. In the 1990's the Victorian government sold the entire Electrical industry to private organizations at the same time that the UK government was also divesting itself of these government assets.
1990 UK - Beginning of privatisation. The assets of the CEGB are broken up into three new companies: Powergen, National Power and National Grid Company.
1991 Scottish industry privatised
1992 Canada NSPI was privatized by the provincial government of Premier Donald Cameron in what was then the largest private equity transaction in Canadian history.
1993 Supply industry in Northern Ireland privatised
1994 Australia (Victoria) the Kennett government disaggregated the SECV into five distribution and retail companies (absorbing the MEUs in the process), five generation companies, and a transmission company. Along with other state-owned utilities (such as the Gas and Fuel Corporation of Victoria), these businesses were all corporatised, then privatised between 1995 and 1999.
1994 New Zealand - Transpower was separated from ECNZ and created as an SOE to own and operate the national grid.
Variations on this model appeared to be working somewhat in the US, in the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and starting to work in the South East Asian countries. The model consisting of:
Build up electrical generation capacity with government backing
Privatize the power industry
Once it has reached a certain level, keep energy consumption at a fairly stable level
When one considers the size of the markets we are talking about above, the US is a standout at 307,000,000 people. The others much smaller populations with Australia only standing at a little over 22,000,000 people.
Consider :
China has a population of 1,333,253,549
India has a population of 1,198,003,000
In effect you could exclude 1 billion of China's population and you'd have enough people left over to populate both the US and Australia and then some. Or combined China and India have EIGHT times the population of the United Stated of America. An absolutely huge market if you are a capitalist.
Rank | Country | Population | Share of world total |
1 | China | 1,333,253,549 | 19.67% |
2 | India | 1,198,003,000 | 17.64% |
3 | United States | 307,674,743 | 4.52% |
4 | Indonesia | 230,729,491 | 3.41% |
5 | Brazil | 191,466,483 | 2.83% |
6 | Pakistan | 166,962,000 | 2.47% |
7 | Bangladesh | 156,836,399 | 2.32% |
8 | Nigeria | 148,235,170 | 2.19% |
9 | Russia | 141,837,010 | 2.09% |
10 | Japan | 127,614,000 | 1.88% |
Above - Top 10 countries by Population
I've mentioned above that Australia has a total generation capacity of 48,000 Megawatts of base load power, the US 1,088,000 Megawatts, the UK 74,000 Megawatts. Respectively this equates to around 53kWh per capita for Australia per day, 86kWh per day in the US and 29kWh per day in the UK. Using these numbers this is what would need to be built in China and India to bring them up to the same level of power consumption.
Country | Same as Aus (53kWh) in MW | Same as UK (29kWh) in MW | Same as US (86kWh) in MW | Currently installed MW |
China | 3,082,893 | 1,618,878 | 4,770,707 | 623,600MW |
India | 2,770,152 | 1,454,652 | 4,286,747 | 143,000MW |
These numbers are huge. When you consider the time that it has taken Australia, UK and the US to get the installed generation capacity we have and the size of our industrial base, then look at the logistics or market opportunity in China and India, the mind boggles. Capital costs vary widely for power stations, but even at an almost impossible figure of $1,000,000 per megawatt, those numbers above look really quite staggering.
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Oil And Gas
The other part of the equation for energy consumption raising living standards and enabling the development of businesses and thus an economy, is in transportation and liquid fuels, lubricants and other oil based products. This time it was around the 1970's when the industry first began with a partnership between Exxon and Australia's eventual largest company, Broken Hill Proprietry Limited.
1969: Australias first oil and gas starts flowing. Gippsland Gas Processing and Crude OilStabilisation Plant officially opened by Sir Arthur Rylah,Deputy Premier of Victoria...
..the Longford gas plant was owned by a joint partnership between Esso and BHP. Esso was a wholly owned subsidiary of US based company Exxon
At the same time or thereabouts as the opening of Australias first offshore crude platforms and onshore refining plant, the domestic car industry was getting an adrenalin boost. Once again the industry in Australia was founded on the back of American vehicle manufacturers and thus we followed almost to the letter the energy and infrastructure and industry model which had worked elsewhere in the world. America rolling out its experience so other countries could benefit from a change, improvement in lifestyle.
GM Holden Ltd is an Australian automaker based in Port Melbourne, Victoria. The company was founded in 1856 as a saddlery business, but later moved into the automotive field, becoming a subsidiary of General Motors (GM) in 1931.
Holden launched the new HQ series in 1971...
the HQ range became the top-selling Holden of all time, with 485,650 units sold in three years.
Ford Australia is the Australian subsidiary of Ford Motor Company and was founded in Geelong, Victoria in 1925
Since the release of the XA model in 1972, Falcons have been fully Australian designed. Since its initial offerings the Falcon has proven to be Ford Australia's most popular car.
Whilst looking into the start of the dominance of oil and coal as our primary sources of energy, it is worthwhile noting a bit of even older history:
Standard Oil was a predominant American integrated oil producing, transporting, refining, and marketing company. Established in 1870 as an Ohio corporation, it was the largest oil refiner in the world and operated as a major company trust and was one of the world's first and largest multinational corporations until it was broken up by the United States Supreme Court in 1911. John D. Rockefeller was a founder, chairman and major shareholder, and the company made him a billionaire and eventually the richest man in history.
(Exxon was one of the offshoots)
Standard Oil's market position was initially established through an emphasis on efficiency and responsibility. While most companies dumped gasoline in rivers (this was before the automobile was popular), Standard used it to fuel its machines.
That Standard was using what the other oil companies were treating as a waste product as a liquid fuel seemed important as a process which has no waste per the energy diagram shown above, would not just reduce disposal and handling costs, but add to the bottom line.
Then I found this opinion:
One barrel (42 gallons) of crude oil, when refined, produces approximately 19.6 gallons of finished motor gasoline, as well as other petroleum products.
Approximately 20 gallons of gasoline is produced per barrel of oil. If the retail price of gasoline is about $3/gallon, the oil companies are getting $60 of revenue from a barrel of oil that costs $70. Somehow the economics do not make sense if gasoline is the major economic output of refined oil. The fact is that gasoline is a hazardous waste product that is a natural output of the oil refining process. Some of the other products that come from the refining process are asphalt, lubricating oils, paraffin wax, heating oil, tar, and other parts of industrial products.
While gasoline at most yields $60/barrel of crude oil, the remaining products yield thousands of dollars of retail value to the oil companies. Accordingly, the real money in refined oil is not gasoline. So why do the oil companies insist upon marketing gasoline so much and resisting the idea of alternative energy for automobiles? The answer is that gasoline is a hazardous waste in the oil refining process and if not consumed by the driving public would have to be disposed as a hazardous waste at a cost that would be prohibitive.
Essentially, gasoline is a waste product of the oil refining process and the oil companies get rid of their hazardous waste and charge the public to do that.
Well the author of that piece has a point with respect to the constitution of the products a barrel of oil produces. As far as thousands of dollars per barrel from refined products, more information would be appreciated from someone in the sector. But it is an interesting observation nonetheless that the oil industry worked on the science behind its products to create new formulations where even the pollution or waste would have intrinsic, marketable value.
With the advent of the Internal combustion engine and preference to combust this supposed waste product, the next smart move was to get as many people buying both personal vehicles and using Standard Oil's products.
The Great American streetcar scandal (also known as the General Motors streetcar conspiracy and the National City Lines conspiracy) is a conspiracy in which streetcar systems throughout the United States were dismantled and replaced with buses in the mid-20th century as a result of illegal actions by a number of prominent companies, acting through National City Lines (NCL), Pacific City Lines (on the West Coast, starting in 1938), and American City Lines (in large cities, starting in 1943).
Now having found this business model to work, consumption of as much energy as possible per capita, the organizations behind this would have been very conscious of undue government influence coming along to mess things up. Remember that once before in 1911 this had happened to Standard Oil. So building alliances which prevented government from 'interfering' with the extraction of public natural resources for private profit was needed to prevent any government action perceived to be detrimental to the business model.
Consider the following exerpts from Wikipedia on Rupert Murdoch:
In 1972, Murdoch acquired the Sydney morning tabloid The Daily Telegraph from Australian media mogul Sir Frank Packer, …
Murdoch threw his growing power behind the Australian Labor Party under the leadership of Gough Whitlam and duly saw it elected... in 1972 on a social platform that included universal free health care, free education for all Australians to tertiary level, recognition of the People's Republic of China, and public ownership of Australia's oil, gas and mineral resources.
Rupert Murdoch's flirtation with Whitlam turned out to be brief.
As the Whitlam government began to lose public support following its re-election in 1974, Murdoch turned against Whitlam and supported the Governor-General's dismissal of the Prime Minister.
In August I travelled through the United States for about a month. One of the things which flooded my thoughts for a large part of the time was just how destructive the media can be to the relationships between people in the States. It messed with my head in the short time I was there so I'd hate to imagine what it is like living with this form of intentionally divisive rhetoric blasting at you every day your whole life. And as is currently being discussed by both of the Kyoto hold-outs, reducing Carbon Dioxide Emissions and shifting to a more sustainable energy production system in both Australia and the US, would be giving those that are part of this business model, pause for concern. So it was no suprise to find Newscorp, Rupert Murdoch's distraction and deception factory, working overtime to prevent any discussion over energy.
You must remember that the energy companies have an energy model they were satisfied with in the US and Australia, which for a long time has made them enormous sums of money, so they are leaning on their 'partner' Fox/Newscorp to delay, prevent, distract ANY discussion about energy to which the public is witness.
I was so disappointed, outraged by what Mr Murdoch is doing in Australia and the US, I wrote 3 articles on his news organizations role in influencing public opinion, politics and the past.
Note for Australians, if you remember the 'Utegate' debacle it is worth noting how this was a co-ordinated political/Newscorp fabrication in order to distract from discussing anything to do with energy legislation. Read the article below and you'll soon see what I mean.
Article 3 - An Aussie Visiting America - Adrenalin Media
Article 4 - An Aussie Visiting America - Fox News
Article 5 - An Aussie Visiting Beckistan - Glenn's America
Whether you read that or not, it must be noted that twice now with the help of the Newscorp press machine in Australia, the current Australian opposition party has successfully distracted and prevented the Australian government from bringing a carbon pollution reduction scheme and emissions trading scheme up for discussion in parliament. Rather than discussing something as critical to Australia's future as where and how we obtain energy, Australia's opposition has thrown out 'wedge' issues, distractions and wasted our taxpayer dollars for months now.
The first time was Ute Gate which went nowhere. The second time, just the past few weeks, the opposition party, in power for 11 years, chose to throw out asylum seekers, boat people as being worthy of wasting parliaments time on above all other priorities including the economy, the health system, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a massive oil slick off Australia's coastline, our water woes, the danger of a drying continent in bush/wildfire risk and jobs. As it turns out, Asylum seekers are not really a major problem in Australia due to the vast distances involved travelling over the ocean, but have been turned into one by a media keen to latch onto something simple to sell outrage. People fleeing a country because of desperate circumstances makes up a tiny proportion when you consider we have over 50,000 TOURISTS who overstay their visas in Australia often for years at time.
"Question time is dominated by 78 people on a boat. We have around 50,000 visa overstayers every year"
Oh and lets not forget that Australia allows 142,800 immigrants each year. Starts to look a little like a minor issue when you consider the press saturation over 78 people fleeing distressing circumstances.
As in the US, Newscorp, or Fox and the opposition party in both countries right now are playing a game of obstruction, refusing to do anything but play up to the cameras, delay the discussion of anything meaningful, making mountains out of minor issues in order to prevent the people trying to govern from doing anything at all. They are endangering our economies and way of life by refusing to participate in governing by diverting attention away from issues of significance.
And as for Rupert Murdoch working with these fossil fuel organizations to prevent government becoming involved in managing their natural resources for the public good, it didn't quite work out that way in the countries with the greatest share.
Top ten world Petroleum companies
Saudi Aramco - State owned.
National Iranian Oil Company - State owned
Qatar Petroleum - State owned
Abu Dhabi National oil company - State owned
Iraq National oil company - State owned
Gazprom - Was private now State owned
Kuwait National oil company - State owned
Petroleus De Venezuela - State owned
National Oil Company of Libya - State owned
Just to show you just how poisonous the Murdoch News corporation has become in endeavoring to tear peoples respect for each other apart, please watch this video of the Fox 'News' channels latest up and coming prima donna, Glenn Beck.
Here he is selectively picking a letter to the editor of some publication from who knows where and passing one persons opinion off as representative of an entire generation of American Youth.
"We have raised a generation of would be killers. The 'ME' generation. A generation that only cares about Me Me Me Mine.
A generation that doesn't understand what it means to actually earn something. Because we've handed everything to them.
A generation too busy trying to get noticed on Youtube or facebook or Twitter to accomplish any thing of real lasting value make lasting value relationships.
...
This according to the Wall Street Journal (another Murdoch publication) the me generation enters the workforce demanding high salaries, corner offices, promotions, in the first few months.
Why? Because they feel entitled to the promotion, it needs to be handed to them."
This is an international program which Murdoch has managed to convince some Americans is the only news channel which tells the truth. Right here he is trying to make older people HATE younger people in the workforce. This is sickening TV for many reasons, but the hypocrisy of this on Murdoch's station is what stands out the most.
Why?
Rupert Murdoch was 21 when he inherited the reigns at Newscorp. So if he was able to make it work, who is he to say no-one else young deserves any chance at success?
In fact what was this segment intended to do? Turn older people against their own kids?
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Employment in Australia
Employment in the Australian mining industry at the end of June 2007 was estimated at 117,500 persons...
At the industry subdivision level, 23% of mining employment at the end of June 2007 was in Coal mining, 9% in Oil and gas extraction, 29% in Metal ore mining, 10% in Non-metallic mineral mining and quarrying, and 30% in Exploration and other mining support services.
23% in coal of 117,500 is 27,025 coal industry employees
About 480,000 people are directly employed in the tourism industry.
Australian employment % by sector
Electricity, gas and water supply 0.9%
Communication services 1.8%
Education 8.0%
Manufacturing 11.0%
Mining 1.5%
Finance and insurance 4.2%
Health and community services 11.2%
Cultural and recreational services 2.6%
Retail trade 15.0%
Accommodation, cafes and restaurants 5.1%
Property and business services 11.9%
The mining industry as of 2007 had 1/4 the employees of the tourism industry. Significant in that the tourism industry will be the first to suffer in event of climate disruption becoming a reality, as will the real estate sector as I will explain below.
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Where are the resources?
So built on the back of fossil fuels our economies around the world have managed to grow well with many countries witnessing higher standards of living today than in 1950 and predominantly because of the amount of energy per capita which is consumed. As the business model for the fossil fuel giants depends on depletable resources, continuous exploration programs need to always be underway, however with modern technology much of the guess work has been taken out of exploration and world resources able to be more accurately mapped.
In fact back in 1999, BHP (Australias major miner and business partner to Exxon) put into service a new technology called 'Falcon' which was able to detect via anomolies in gravity the ore and fossil fuel resources under the Earths surface by simply flying a small plane over the top and have this device record and analyze the data. Over the early 2000's this device mapped a large part, if not all of Australia looking for resources and has led to some significant discoveries of minerals.
BHP develops airborne gravity gradiometer for mineral exploration
How Falcon works
Falcon airborne gravity gradiometry technology, developed by the US military and BHP Billiton, is pivotal to many of Gippsland Offshore Petroleum’s exploration plays around the globe.
It not only makes high resolution rock density (and hence, maybe porosity) mapping possible, it also accelerates the exploration process, reducing costs and increasing the rate at which targets are identified, ranked and drilled.
Gippsland Offshore and BHP Billiton have made a landmark agreement in which Gippsland Offshore have rights to use the Falcon technology on a global basis for oil and gas exploration.
Likewise the oil companies know fairly precisely where the remaining world reserves are. It is interesting to note that of the major reserves, mostly in the Middle East, this does not correlate even remotely with the countries most dependent on oil to survive. China and the US have some of the smallest reserves remaining with the largest oil consumption habits.
Larger version of above map
Using Wikipedia for the figures on Coal, we have the following data set.
Country | 1980 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | Share | Reserve Life (years) |
China | 683.6 | 1722.0 | 1992.3 | 2204.7 | 2380.0 | 38.4 % | 48 |
USA | 829.7 | 972.3 | 1008.9 | 1026.5 | 1053.6 | 17.0 % | 234 |
India | 125.8 | 375.4 | 407.7 | 428.4 | 447.3 | 7.2 % | 207 |
Australia | 116.1 | 351.5 | 366.1 | 378.8 | 373.8 | 6.0 % | 210 |
Russia | ? | 276.7 | 281.7 | 298.5 | 309.2 | 5.0 % | 508 |
South Africa | 131.9 | 237.9 | 243.4 | 244.4 | 256.9 | 4.1 % | 190 |
Germany | 532.2 | 204.9 | 207.8 | 202.8 | 197.2 | 3.2 % | 34 |
Indonesia | ? | 114.3 | 132.4 | 146.9 | 195.0 | 3.1 % | 25 |
Above - World Coal Production in Millions of Tonnes and estimated remaining years of country reserves at these rates.
Country | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | Share |
Australia | 238.1 | 247.6 | 257.6 | 32.0% |
Indonesia | 107.8 | 131.4 | 147.6 | 13.4% |
China | 103.4 | 95.5 | 79.0 | 9.8% |
South Africa | 78.7 | 74.9 | 77.5 | 9.6% |
Russia | 41.0 | 55.7 | 62.3 | 7.7% |
USA | 43.0 | 48.0 | 49.9 | 6.2% |
Canada | 27.7 | 28.8 | 31.0 | 3.9% |
.
Poland | 16.4 | 16.3 | 16.4 | 2.0% |
Vietnam | N/A | 10.3 | 14.1 | 1.8% |
Above - Coal Exports in Millions of Tonnes
Country | Bituminous & anthracite | SubBituminous & lignite | TOTAL | Share |
USA | 111,338 | 135,305 | 246,643 | 27.1% |
Russia | 49,088 | 107,922 | 157,010 | 17.3% |
China | 62,200 | 52,300 | 114,500 | 12.6% |
India | 90,085 | 2,360 | 92,445 | 10.2% |
Australia | 38,600 | 39,900 | 78,500 | 8.6% |
South Africa | 48,750 | 0 | 48,750 | 5.4% |
Ukraine | 16,274 | 17,879 | 34,153 | 3.8% |
Kazakhstan | 28,151 | 3,128 | 31,279 | 3.4% |
Poland | 14,000 | 0 | 14,000 | 1.5% |
Above - Remaining reserves of coal in Millions of Tonnes
1980 figures
These numbers detail fairly convincingly the earlier argument I made about a developed economy using the same amount of energy per capita per day, whilst developing countries consumption grows considerably. From 1980 to 2006 China went from 683 Million tonnes to 2,380Mt, where the United States remained fairly static moving from 829 Mt to 1,053 Mt. Most of the US growth as almost all the growth in Australian coal production becoming export coal to countries such as Japan, China and India. (Read the Appalachia article)
Consider however what happens to remaining reserves if China and India build their grids to the capacity per kWh per capita the same as Australia, and you can see the figures for remaining years of coal will start to come down significantly.
Take for instance China using 2,380 Million Tonnes with a power base of 623 GW. If they ever get to the same installed electricity basis as Australia which allows 55kWh per day per person, this would mean a electricity capacity of 3,083GW or 5 times as large. In effect, if using the same fossil fuels, 5 times as much coal consumed per year. Now look at Chinas reserves of 114,500 Million tonnes, take 2,380Mt times 5 or 11,900 Million tonnes per year, and what happens to the number of years China has in reserves of coal? It drops the remaining reserve levels down to about 10 or so years.
Now look at India and their reserves of 20,000 Million Tonnes less and you see that we really don't have the massive resources we think we had to keep this model of increased economic expansion on the back of ever expanding consumption of fossil fuels.
Of the major coal miners in Australia today, there are a number which are foreign owned and or based. Including Peabody, Xtrata, Ensham resources, Anglo Coal. So the exploitation of Australia's natural resources, the importance of this particular industry which our previous administration put on the coal over environmental concern or consideration for our native tourist industry, was in large part for companies not being taxed on their profits in Australia.
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The organizations controlling our oil, coal and gas had their future mapped out for them. They knew by 1980 that doing things in this way has worked and were eyeing off India and China as the next areas for market expansion. But they wanted it to happen quicker in these countries as greed was playing a much bigger role back then than it did in the 1950, 60's and 70's when there was a little bit more of the social contract existing, it was more about building the countries they operated in futures. Back when building a country to pass onto your children, one better than the one you inherited, actually meant a great deal to a lot of people.
So in order for India and China to become 'customers' of the fuel and other products the fossil industry produces, as they did with the motor cars in the early 1900's, a new variation on the plan to roll this out needed to be developed and implemented. Plus people in India and China could not yet afford these products.
So maybe creating incentives to outsource existing manufacturing jobs to China seemed like a good idea, moving IT and telephony services to India. This had the effect of raising the disposable income in these countries and also created a need for people in these countries to travel much further and begin to consume products which were not provided through subsistence farming.
The fossil fuel organizations which began as a form of community partnership in many countries, with very strong collaborations between the industry and government, had shaken the shackles that come from accountability and regulation from the government, they'd pretty much gone out on their own and had media and political coverage to do as they pleased. The focus had shifted for these organizations from one where a win/win situation was able to exist for the citizens of the country they were extracting their resource, of helping a country develop, to a new model, one heavily biased in pursuit of profit only. The elimination of accountability through the influence of media, politicians on their payroll, meant nothing they did was wrong, as long as they could convince people there were lots of jobs at risk from doing business differently. With the help of media organizations like Fox/Newscorp, a different perception of these organizations could be created subtly over time - "Sure they did a little bit of harm, but it paled in comparison to importance of the profits they made. Are you against capitalism and profits?"
In the early 70's what appears to be a silent partnership was formed between an up and coming media magnate and these organizations in order to help shape public opinion in such a way that it would always benefit their business. Sometimes losing a few battles along the way, but important things like in 1974 when Murdoch ensured Gough Whitlam was thrown out of government because of proposing to regulate the mining and oil and gas sector.
These companies now even know where all the oil coal and gas can be easily extracted thanks to modern mapping techniques such as that developed by BHP and the US DOD. This makes it much harder of course for a small prospector to 'stumble' across the mother lode or 'Texas Tea', but also takes a lot of the guess work and cost out of the needle in a haystack exploration process. Oh and this also means fewer jobs (more hits less misses).
All their plans were becoming reality and all they had to do, as a friend of mine says, was 'smile and take the money'.
Then along comes a scientist, the first of thousands, who says all bets are off, we might have to stop burning fossil fuels as continuing to do so will change the climate. Changing it to a climate in which humanity has never before survived in.
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Ever heard of the expression "you don't need to be a rocket scientist"? This is a common expression which IMO, is suggesting that as far as intelligence goes, the smartest guys on the planet just happen to be rocket scientists.
I've written of the importance of America's innovation and science in shaping, improving and protecting our modern world here.
Article 7 - An Aussie Visiting America - American ingenuity
In fact if you look at this process flow diagram of an oil refinery, you will pretty soon figure out that the Oil industry itself (as does the coal industry) owe a great deal of gratitude to scientists for helping develop the processes to make their products.
Over 21 years ago, on June 23rd 1988, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a world renowned physicist, James Hansen, released a report on the predicted consequences to the climate if we continued to depend on high carbon emitting fuels to obtain our daily energy needs. NASA for those that are unaware, is America’s National Space Agency responsible for finding the necessary tools to allow space flight, exploration, communications satellites, and a whole raft of complex products to enable and sustain life in outer space. Their research and development alone has been instrumental in advances of such every day items as GPS, computers, Satellite communications, advanced medicine. These advances also means NASA must seek out the best and brightest and most dedicated individuals America has to offer to ensure the quality of their work is without question.
Robert H. Goddard for whom the division James Hansen was director of was named, was an American pioneer of.....Rocket Science.
Robert Hutchings Goddard (October 5, 1882 – August 10, 1945), U.S. professor of physics and scientist, was a pioneer of controlled, liquid-fueled rocketry. He launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket on March 16, 1926. From 1930 to 1935, he launched rockets that attained speeds of up to 885 km/h (550 mph). Though his work in the field was revolutionary, he was sometimes ridiculed for his theories.
So it is hard for me to understand, knowing full well that James Hansen must have been not only one of the best and brightest physicists at the time because he had managed to get a job at NASA, but even more so he was a Director at the time placing him in a more reputable position, why we did not listen.
And so he tries again and still silence from one side of politics, of those we have elected to lead, to do what is best for our countries.
You'd think that America would have figured out that when a scientist of James Hansen's calibre speaks about something which could potentially cause some grief in the business model America has been rolling out, from a body which receives all its funding from the government, that he is putting his career at incredible risk going out on a limb with something so challenging to the business as usual model.
James Hansen was of course warning of the consequences amongst a series of dangers, of increasing the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. This leads to an anticipated global rise in average temperature over time significantly impacting the delicate climate balance. Rather than go into this, please find a number of articles or diaries below.
Victorian heat wave in early 2009.
Article 8 - "Face global warming or lives will be at risk"
Article 9 - wooden power poles self-igniting
This article is on a freak few days of high wind along the South East Queensland coast line. The resulting erosion threatened some of the most expensive real estate in Australia. This is where a lot of Australians are contemplating retirement.
Article 10 - Climaticide - Black Sand Event
Article 11 - Wintersun - Photo diary
Freak weather in September of this year simultaneously affecting different areas of Australia in different ways.
Article 12 - Hail, thunderstorms, dust storms, floods, bushfires, tornado
This article below details the misinformation and deception campaign being waged through the media as discussed above. So many of the 'conventional wisdoms', so called facts which people repeat with respect to climate disruption not being a threat are simply not supported by the facts.
Article 13 - Drawing A Line in the Black Sand
An important article with a comparison of weather and other natural disasters comparing these up against those caused through the extraction or processing of fossil fuels. This also provides additional detail context of the history of oil and coal.
Article 14 - We knew how to profit, not how to protect
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Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate
But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.
“The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995.
The coalition was financed by fees from large corporations and trade groups representing the oil, coal and auto industries, among others.
EPA releases Bush-era global warming finding
A controversial e-mail message buried by the Bush administration because of its conclusions on global warming surfaced Tuesday, nearly two years after it was first sent to the White House and never opened.
The e-mail and the 28-page document attached to it, released Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency, show that back in December of 2007 the agency concluded that six gases linked to global warming pose dangers to public welfare, and wanted to take steps to regulate their release from automobiles and the burning of gasoline.
My interpretation of the above two reports is that the fossil fuel industry appears to have worked with the administrations of both John Howard in Australia, and George Bush in the United States to downplay and intentionally ignore the threat of climate disruption, despite knowing for a very long time the implications of not addressing this issue.
Article 15 - How can we trust a thing they say?
For the process engineering minded consider the implications of feedback loops. Out of control, hunting systems are something any power station, or refinery or any process plant operator endeavors to avoid at all costs. Our atmosphere is a balanced system and by extracting and re-releasing so much carbon back into the atmosphere, we are disrupting the tuned systems, creating an out of control process.
From an easy to understand analysis of our tuned climate systems, Without the Hot Air
“The burning of fossil fuels sends about seven gigatons of CO2 per year into the atmosphere, which sounds like a lot. Yet the biosphere and the oceans send about 1900 gigatons and 36000 gigatons of CO2 per year into the atmosphere – ... one reason why some of us are sceptical about the emphasis put on the role of human fuel-burning in the greenhouse gas effect. Reducing man-made CO 2 emissions is megalomania, exaggerating man’s significance. Politicians can’t change the weather.”
Now I have a lot of time for scepticism, and not everything that sceptics say is a crock of manure – but irresponsible journalism like Dominic Lawson’s deserves a good flushing. The first problem with Lawson’s offering is that all three numbers that he mentions (seven, 1900, and 36000) are wrong! The correct numbers are 26, 440, and 330. Leaving these errors to one side, let’s address Lawson’s main point, the relative smallness of man-made emissions.
The exhumation and combustion of 26 Gigatonnes of Carbon from a stored carbon sink each and every year and adding this to a balanced system which has only had around 770 Gt of carbon which has kept the climate stable enough for life to flourish, is bound to cause an upset.
To be continued....