Does anyone care that the Russkies nabbed Greenpeace?

I've never considered myself to be an environmentalist. It didn't even know that the term meant until later in life but I've always had a conservationist impulse. My dad used to take my sister and I into the bush for little picnics and he instilled into us that we should always leave a place as good as, if not better, than we found it. This sometimes meant picking up other people's litter and putting it in the bin before we left. He would show us things in nature but we had to leave them alone. There was no picking of wild flowers or collecting birds eggs allowed. He instilled in us the concept of common ownership of the bush and that we should all take care of it. We could enjoy, but not destroy.

It's not a huge leap to move from conservation of a piece of bushland to the whole planet. In my lifetime I've seen the results of some of the things humans have done, often with the best intentions, and have also seen that once a problem is identified it is usually possible to do something about it. Remember those foaming rivers in Europe caused by detergents that were not biodegradable? We have developed better detergents now. And DDT was an essential insecticide and a great boon to humanity in the immediate post war period until two things happened - the insects developed resistance and the chemical built up in the soils and in the food chains, threatening high order predators with extinction and concentrating in the tissues of humans and breast milk. We don't use DDT any more, and for good reason. Before we stopped, a battle was necessary against the industry that produced the stuff.

We aren't the only organisms on the planet, and if we were, we'd have to eat each other. In the web of life we need diversity. That's why I'm a conservationist at heart and that's why I support groups that sound warnings and those that stand against selfish over exploitation of natural resources.

Well said.
 

I have been up close to wind turbines on King island.
No problem that I could detect.
On the other hand, the wind was howling.
 

I would be for one. Have you heard/felt those things up close? I'd rather live next to a nice quiet nuke reactor than a row of those things rattling my head.

The difference is that when that nice quiet nuke reactor goes "BOOM", it will be game over for you and those for miles around. I agree that the windmills are noisy and they need to do more monitoring to determine the long term affects but holy moly, there is enough barren land on this planet that there should be room for thousands of them without being right next door to residential areas.

There is always two sides to the story though. In this province, a lot of permits for wind energy have been turned down as they believe some endangered birds might get caught up in them, so if you are in one of those areas where the birds hang out, they won't give you the permit. Some countries have come so far ahead of the rest of us in using solar power that I shake my head on why they aren't an example to the rest of the world. From what I have read, it takes a considerable amount of capital up front but in the long run, they save a ton of money and have done their part on cutting down on pollution.

As for the "greenies", I say good for them for bring attention to what the big corporations are doing to this planet for profit only. Do they take it too far - sure they do. Do I turn up the heat before I put on a sweater to keep warm - sure I do. As for the folks who donate to the cause, I don't think that's any of my business. If they have the money to give away, I'd rather see it go to Greenpeace versus another big oil giant who doesn't take responsibililty for their impact on ole mother earth.

No easy answers on this one but every time something is in the news that makes the population think about what we are doing, it is a help.
 
Yeeee-HAW! We're cookin' with gas now! :hair:


re: the birds flying into the windmills - I know it's anti-Green but I say the heck with the birds. No one is forcing them to fly into those blades - let them learn through evolution to avoid the Big Spinning Things. Better than falling into a cooling tower or a spent-fuel pond.

Tidal generators - very little has been looked at. Is it because the nuclear and coal lobbyists are burying their research?

tidal1.gif

Solar power - yes, the initial investment is steep, but not as steep as it used to be. The great minds that can put your entire life on an iPhone can and should be persuaded to apply their genius to improving solar cells and converters. It's already to the point where with a small residential set-up you can break-even in a dozen or so years - with a bit of a push that can be further reduced.

Geo-Thermal - the Earth is a hottie - why not take advantage of it? They already do in a little town in Oregon called Klamath Falls (pop. 20,000). Their sidewalks are clear in winter, their buildings and greenhouses heated and their local college campus supplied with electricity, all because the town was smart enough to tap underground hot springs back in the early '90's.

Nuclear power - yes, the engineering has improved but Mother nature is still as strong as ever. No amount of hardening is going to prevent another Fukushima. We also have to consider that atomic plant construction goes to the lowest bidder - NOT a reassuring thought. If the same bidder builds a wind turbine or a solar installation and it fails, no biggie. If they scrimp and save and take short cuts with a reactor you're going to be paying the price for decades to come.


Just my thoughts ...
 
re: the birds flying into the windmills - I know it's anti-Green but I say the heck with the birds. No one is forcing them to fly into those blades - let them learn through evolution to avoid the Big Spinning Things. Better than falling into a cooling tower or a spent-fuel pond
It's all a storm in a teacup, there are more birds killed through flying into buildings than there are getting killed by wind turbines.That figures.
 
Different options are suited to different places and what works in one place won't in another, or be cost effective to implement. One size won't fit all when it comes to new technology. I'm not getting into the global thing, too complicated, I'm only concerned with what would work, or not, here in OZ.

Tidal, Hydro and Geo Thermal are my faves. Where possible and viable. NZ has been powering on Geo Thermal for decades, the place is floating on it. Not so easily accessible here in OZ though

A wind turbine or 3 might suffice to power a small community in a remote area cost effectively because it would be autonomous and not necessary to be connected to the main grids. That option may work in central Australia, and by extension places like Africa. But as a replacement for what powers the industrial areas?? Forget it.

Hydro electricity is the way to go in Tasmania, plenty of running water and smallish population.
But again, As Tezza so kindly pointed out earlier, Greenpeace put on a massive tantrum to stop them damming a river to power a hydro electric power plant!

Got that? It wasn't mining magnates who stopped the clean green hydro electric option, it was Greenpeace!
And the people rejoiced that the pretty little river that no almost one ever saw, or even knew existed because, at least in those days, it was largely inaccessible to all but the fit and healthy. But hey! Wasn't it great that Greenpeace saved those pretty views of a few rapids for the people who would never go there to even look at them??

Yep, wonderful stuff. We were so proud. Of course it meant coal powered gens were spewing pollution for longer but it made heroes of a couple of creepy Greenies who have inflicted themselves on us in the political arena ever since on the strength of the tantrum.

Their platform is promoting clean green energy and stopping use of fossil fuels! WTF?
The colossal hypocrisy of their stance appears to have eluded everyone. (else :cool:)

The Hydro option on mainland OZ is approaching zero. We have the Snowy River Hydro scheme. That was our 'Boulder Dam', watershed infrastructure pinnacle of it's time. It was unbelievably expensive to build but it was and is a great piece of gear. Of course it doesn't come close to producing enough power for today's needs, but it's relatively clean and green.

Except..... yep, the Greenies have been whinging ever since because it killed the Snowy River. Not enough water getting into it to keep it flushed out and it's pretty much kaput. So there's another clean green option they're against.
(I have no idea where the water goes after it powers the turbines instead of back into the river so don't ask. They diverted it or something.)

That one Hydro power plant is it for OZ. There's nowhere else to build one. It's bone dry and flat as a pancake for the most part and anyone who whispers dam in anything approaching populated areas brings on an avalanche of Greenie protesters crusading to 'save' the views, or the river, or in the odd instance for the very good reason of saving the arable land it would cover, so write that option off.

Geo Thermal. well, we're the most stable, least geo-thermally active country on the planet so we'd need to go really deep to access that option and at far more expense than would seem sensible. Then of course we would need to have the water to heat to produce the steam to run the turbines and where ya gonna get the water? We're awfully short of it here.

It all comes back to water availability. We've built de-sal plants just to ensure a drinking water supply for the cities, not enough to waste on making steam.

Mirror arrays. Solar panels. Hell we've got room for them! We could put enough of 'em out there in the desert to burn a hole in the moon from the reflection off 'em. Fantastic idea!

Except..... nobody lives there. The sun doesn't shine 24hrs a day, and the cost of getting the power to where it's needed would bankrupt us.
Not to mention the maintenance problems. The only thing that moves out there are feral camels and dust storms. Hard to keep the windscreen of the ute clean enough to see through so how much effort would go into keeping a thousand square miles of solar panels dusted?? Without constant maintenance they'd be covered in dust in days and totally useless.

It doesn't rain out there more than a week or so a year. The wind brings dust in, it doesn't blow it off things. So how do you keep them clean enough to absorb enough energy to power a flashlight? Hire half of the world's refugees to sweep them? Build towns to house them in and somehow get enough water to them to sustain the workforce?? But most importantly, who the hell would want that job in that place??
I think we have to write that one off too, it's a logistical nightmare.

Those mirror arrays that focus a death ray at a zillion degrees C. onto a tower would take less room and offer easier maintenance but where are you going to put it? And again, you still need something, water? to heat to generate the electricity. (I'm not sure just how they work) They could fit them somewhere closer to where the power is needed and where there's less dust I guess but you can bet that wherever they want to build them Greenpeace will object that it's where the twelve toed squiggly frog lives or something.


Tidal generation would be the go, especially in the far North. They have huge tides up there. It hasn't been viable because of the sparse population and little industrial activity but we need to develop the region and that would seem the optimum energy generation option to power it. It doesn't need the sun, and it sure doesn't need precious drinking water. It doesn't even impede the view.
But of course it may endanger the odd shark running into it in the dark so someone will have to protest about that.:cool:

Our population lives around the coast and the Tidal option is a no brainer, but no mention is even made of it, in the media anyway.
Why?? No idea.

Well, a bit of a suspicion.... But it's just a conspiracy theory.... not enough profit in it for big biz to bother investing in it? Not enough kick backs to be made in constructing it and no ongoing excuse for massive 'production' profits? No staff to write off on tax, no fuel to make a dollar out of. Minimum maintenance and replacement write offs. All in all too short term a buck to be made?

If anyone is still awake after that sea of negativity, it wasn't written because I'm against cleaner alternative power sources, it's merely to point out that the 'promised land' isn't as easily attainable as simply stopping fossil fuel use NOW.

I'm just being Devil's Advocate to try and explain that merely wanting something won't make it happen. That it's nowhere near as simple as people like Greenpeace indicate.

We have an intricately complicated problem to solve, with a multiplicity of different solutions for different situations. It involves every level of civilization and society and requires that all work together to ensure viability into the future.

Simply stopping one thing without replacing it with another, better one, won't work. No one thing is the magic bullet.
Not even curtailing population numbers, although that is the primary cause imo.

Stopping magnates making a dollar won't make us any better off because we need to rely on them to fund and build that future we so desperately want. We need them to build it differently perhaps but they will still be the ones with the knowhow and money to do it so we must persuade them that there's still a dollar in it for them.
I don't know any protesting Greenies who have more than 2 bucks in their bank account or could build more than a bark hut, do you? (Other than Greenpeace head honchos and Greens politicians, they've got the bank account aspect covered at least. )

We will pay dearly for that cleaner future. Get used to the idea. No energy is ever going to be free. Neither are lunches.

Greenpeace are selling a dream, not a solution. They are selling snake oil. They are giving people the impression that energy generation is an easy problem to solve.

They give people false hope that they can have it all with no repercussions.
They have made people believe that Climate can be controlled by sacrificing tax money to it.
That just thinking and doing the 'right' thing is enough and that it will preserve our current lifestyle at no cost.
That violence and sabotage will persuade 'big money' to change it's ways.
That some heroic gesture means something. What exactly? Brings our attention to the problem? So what? Without the means to offer an alternative what is the point? To make us feel all smug that we want to 'save the planet'?
How are they going to do that again? I must have missed it.

They are selling a Green Utopian religion, and like religion while the premise it is based on may be a good and sensible rule to live by it's priests don't always do a great job of selling it. They tend to twist it to suit their own ends rather than follow the original tenets.

Greenpeace have become a symbol for a fantasy. They're not as good as we think they are. Their original intention to focus our attention on the mess we were making was fine. Their present actions are self aggrandizing and illogical. They have no viable long term plan. They stagger from stunt to stunt with no clear purpose except being anti everything.

They protest ruining a view on a small river for the sake of the green energy they purport to be promoting but are okay with vandalizing the landscape with windmills and mirror arrays, what's that about? What the hell exactly DO they want?! Other than donations?

My beef is with Greenpeace, and Green politicians, and their hypocrisy, not with cleaning up the environment, big difference.
My purpose in wasting an hour of my life writing this to hopefully induce people to think about the problem beyond the headline of Greenpeace's latest stunt. I mean, really think about all the aspects, not just the heroics and false hopes of easy solutions. Okay?

btw: anyone who got this far can expect a medal in the mail.
 
No medal for me. I skipped to the end because I wanted to tell you that there was a Greenie in CH 24 this morning advocating nuclear power stations. He was a scientist but I missed the introduction.

He stressed that he wasn't wedded to nuclear power generation but that it is one tool towards eliminating carbon emissions. One among many and he said that if we could do the trick with algae then he would push for that too. Use them all was his take.
 
Good, are you sure he was a Greenie? Seems too sensible. :cool: That's how they should be thinking if they are fair dinkum. Thanks for pointing that out, do you remember if it was on Big Ideas or similar or just part of a news cast?. They repeat everything on there so I'll probably come across it late tonight or in the early hours.

You're forgiven for not reading that, I write more for my own entertainment than in any hope that anyone else givesa what I think anyway.
 
After that short little paragraph you wrote I surrender - no way I can ever hope to match that.

I agree with your summation that we cannot just suddenly dump what we have - that would lead to mass panic and death. But humans being what they are I think they're a bit too comfortable with what they have.

'Stay hungry' is a phrase that was brought into popularity by Arnold Schwarzenegger and is I think applicable even today in regards to life. Yes, I enjoy the benefits and the ease of living but I never want to get SO comfortable, SO dependent upon something that its loss would mean my downfall. Part of the minimalist lifestyle that is so appealing to me is that you learn to make-do without something if need be. I walk when I could take a bus, I go without a shower if I don't absolutely need one (no close friends :p ), I don't eat until I'm really hungry.

Energy is the same way. I'm a demon when it comes to turning off lights and appliances, to the point where my martial arts "dark room" training kicks in and I navigate throughout the house without any lights at all. I will pile on sweaters and even jackets in the winter rather than turn up the thermostat; I'm not a huge fan of air conditioning, although I have to admit that as I'm getting older I appreciate it on extremely humid days. Still, I go as long as I can before I surrender - a tactic that works as well for energy conservation as it does for sex. :eek:

Some of what you mention Greenpeace doing IS rather counter-productive - I don't claim to understand their thinking on those items.

As for the unique problems of Oz when it comes to alternative energy I have to plead nolo contendere - I don't know enough about your land to give an educated opinion, although from your description it sounds like it would indeed be a challenge. I wish you and your mates well in the future, especially so that you don't go down the path we seem to be following here in the U.S. of rates constantly rising and the pollution levels from the production of that energy increasing geometrically (despite what the media would have you believe).

One final thought: you claim that Greenpeace is selling a dream, a fantasy, and that they are snake-oil salesmen. I believe that there is a place in the world for selling dreams - hell, Madison Avenue and Hollywood alone have a few hundred thousand folks that would agree - and there is no harm as long as those dreams remain dreams and don't try to become reality at the cost of logic and sanity.
 
One final thought: you claim that Greenpeace is selling a dream, a fantasy, and that they are snake-oil salesmen. I believe that there is a place in the world for selling dreams - hell, Madison Avenue and Hollywood alone have a few hundred thousand folks that would agree - and there is no harm as long as those dreams remain dreams and don't try to become reality at the cost of logic and sanity.

And that is the trick to it.

What that ramble should have mentioned is that the cons of green energy technology at it's present stage of development for use in OZ is good enough reason to at least consider nuclear energy as a short term alternative. We've been hamstrung by the scare campaigns into just throwing up the hands and trying any other hare-brained scheme instead.
 
Some of what you mention Greenpeace doing IS rather counter-productive - I don't claim to understand their thinking on those items.

But, but, but.... she's making a lot of it up in that she doesn't differentiate between Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd, the Wilderness Society, the Greens Political Party and farmers protesting against CSG. Well, maybe not the last one.

As to the scientist - it was in the morning news and he is out here on a speaking tour with a book so he might be featured on Big Ideas. Haven't looked yet at the ABC website. Is he a Greenie? I can't answer that. 'Greenie' is what mathematicians would refer to as an ill defined term. He said he was, though.

Sifuphil, I really admire your dedication to the ascetic lifestyle with regard to temperature levels in Winter.
I'm guilty of not walking enough and of using the car too readily and I have the gas fire on in Winter but I dry the washing on the clothesline and use woollen blankets instead of electric ones. We don't have air conditioning either but we do have a ducted water evaporation air cooling system.
 
Making what up Warri? Extrapolating, over alliterating, exaggerating or simplifying a point, and collectively bagging the environmentally obssessed into one group perhaps, yes, guilty. But that doesn't make it exactly fictional does it? It's just my writing style.

I don't write for PHDs nor can I possibly write things from their scientifically superior knowledge base. I don't have it. I write what views I personally have gleaned and formed as an interested layman. I write for others who operate on roughly the same level. I don't fill posts with lists of figures and charts because frankly, I and others, aren't that much into it.

I write to discuss and advance my particular theory, not to lecture students. I try to make my writing as entertainingly quirky as possible merely to hold interest. Both to me and to the reader.

I don't feel the need to be more than true to what I believe to be factual. It's up to those who disagree to expound their views and find the figures and charts to prove I've stuffed up the details. I'm more into overall understanding of how things fit together than the actual specifications of each piece. If my oversight blows my theory or belief apart, that's fine, that's yet more information to use in getting the 'big picture' right. Feel free to do that, but don't just nit pick the figures or semantics in the details, explain how the whole thing works as well.

Greenpeace were the first cab off the rank into kicking off the Green religion but they're not alone in perpetuating the scare tactics and misinformation so I see no problem in grouping the problems they cause under one 'Greenie' heading.

What 'lot of it' was I making up, I don't how you'd know if you didn't read it all anyway,
but if it was only lumping them all together....

... and yes, you know very well I won't be arguing with them over that other fracking little issue.
 
Making what up Warri? Extrapolating, over alliterating, exaggerating or simplifying a point, and collectively bagging the environmentally obssessed into one group perhaps, yes, guilty. But that doesn't make it exactly fictional does it? It's just my writing style.

Come in Spinner!


C'mon, givs a hug and let's make up


What 'lot of it' was I making up, I don't how you'd know if you didn't read it all anyway,
but if it was only lumping them all together....
You're right I didn't read it for the same reason I've stopped reading DB's climate (non) change links. My comment was, as you can see, pure stir. And I gotcha. :devilish:

:sorry: but don't claim that you're not a stirrer too.
 
Of course I admit to stirring! We have to stir in those spices of life don't we?

I suspected a stir when I saw the 'but but but.'
....but hey, had to use the opportunity to have a swat back at the 'teacher', NLACGB.
 
Oh Gasp Horror Shock and Tut Warrigal !

Fancy a dedicated environmentalist like you harboring a prohibited animal!!

Dya hear that knockin' on the door? That'll be the Feds.

Pack for a longish stayover.


... I can't stop watching that damned GIF !
 
btw: anyone who got this far can expect a medal in the mail.

I want my medal!!!!

You have some very good points and I can't comment on them as it appears your country does have some challenges. But - what is life without challenges? The thing is that there is lots of technology out there that could be further refined to make them even better. I remember when the US was on the news for months with everyone lined up at the pumps because there was an oil/gas shortage. Gimme a break!!! I believe it was just a ploy by the producers to scare the bejeezus out of everyone and then up the price. When that happened, there should have been some serious discussion on alternatives.

Right or wrong, I'll continue to do my part in reducing my usage and sleep a little easier at night. (Thinking as I sit here on the computer with the light on and the coffee machine plugged in that I could do more!.)
 


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