The oil companies want to make money period, if we increase tax on oil imports and subsidise ethanol, (whether that is the best soluion or not) business we react by buying into ethanol production. BP is the world largest solar producer (or one of the largest), why – they went green? No they see it as the next big thing when the oil stops and they want some else to do for work.

If we want to conserve oil ie make what we have last longer giving us more time to find and perfect alternatives and reduce CO2 consumption at the same time then the best way is the market.

From 2009 in Australia no electrical appliance (fridge, freezer, cooker etc) can be sold unless it has a minimum efficiency rating of 4 stars and this raises to 5 stars in 2011. In an instant the business world will push R&D to improve eficiency in it appliances.

Want to reduce fuel – (if ethanol is part of the answer even better) – as of 2011 all cars using over 12L/100km are subject to a pollution tax. This starts at $500 p.a. and increases to $2,000p.a. as the consumption of the vehicle decreases. All farmers and approved users that need 4×4 are exempt, but no office workers in the city centres.

All houses when renovating must was a minimum of R3.5 insulation in the walls and R7 in the ceiling. Any new house built after 2011 over 150 m2 is subject to a pollution tax, this is added to rates. Say the tax starts at $500 p.a. and increases to $2,000 p.a. OK there will be a flood of large houses to beat the exemption, but that will be only a small % of overall housing stock. Inside of 3-5 years house design will come up with ways to use the space much more efficiently.

The tax is then given 50% to industries as grants to improve energy eficiency and 50% for re-forestation, water tanks in houses (rates reduced $100 p.a. if have a tank), $100 p.a. if have full insulation and so on.

OK the car industry in Australia would cry, but they are over now. It is a shame, but China is cheaper and if it were not for Government sales they would be gone now. Australia has excellent engineers, we can use grants to re-employ the workers probably in engine manufacture, which are shipped to China and Thailand (Ford Mondeo factory there now) where the lower technology assemble can be done more cheaply. Australia then concentrate where it can compete in engineering anddesign, plus assembly of the high tech parts like engineer. The UK and Germany assemble the engines for the Ford Mondeo made in Thailand.

Housing will cry and so will the electrical retailers and distributors, but not for long. Then we will have to stop being hypocrits. How many sits in old trendy Footcray, with appalling insulation, eat out all the time from foods from all over the world – so we can have whatever we like rather than what is in season. Get taxis home from the city when we are drunk and then say we ride a bicycle, so it is all OK. It is as if the taxi and food from the other side of the word, like all our imported gadgets from Asia “flew to Australia on Angels wings without CO2″.

Want to stop CO2 stop buying gadgets, stop eating out so much, buy local food and products, only buy what you really need. My Tasmanian wife got me to come and visit, and meet her family five years ago from London and on the plane back form that holiday I asked her two things in Singapore – 1, would she marry me and 2. when are we coming to live in Australia – and I love Hobart and Melbourne where my trendy and even more hypocritical brother in law lives.(There are some real hypocrits in Sneddon and Footcray re-CO2 and business).

Australia has everything it could ever want. I don’t earn what I did in London, but I have learnt you don’t need much to be happy. I live like my Grandparents did in some ways, large veggie patch, walk the dog twice a day, have barbies in our or friends houses. Think what it would be like if we got the train to the coast or filled one or two cars(or walked 10 mins to the beach for me). Walked with family and/ or friends for a couple of hours, eat a picnic on the sand with a couple of bottles of wine, walked some more and then got the train home. Did that most saturdays, rather than driving round shops in the traffic buying things we don’t need.

Big business is not so evil, I worked as a Financial Analyst, I admit I hated it and did it only for the money. As I was not happy I blew it all on drinking too much on friday and saturday nights, shopping for clothes I hardly wore, gadgets I hardly used and holidays to exotic places that I shopped, drank and ate in all day. Then went to the gym three times a week to try to reverse the bad living. But I didn’t spend my time planning what third world baby to eat next, we had to make the maximum return on the resources we had. I teach business now and run a small company renovating and developing houses. I buy on projected profit , but I put in well above the minimum insulation, low water use shower heads, low water use tiolets etc and I get higher prices on re-sales or rents. Everyone wins, business just needs to have the guidelines altered.

Sorry for the rant, but I hear it so much in the college I work at “business bad; social work good”, then the first thing the same people do is buy the cheapest offering in the shop – well that is why business has to be so price conscious and wants to cut all costs it can. People say they want to reduce CO2, but then they buy the cheapest products and have more gadgets than they need.

I doubt if some aspects of the Swedish plan will work, like getting industry to use less energy…I know they are implying industries will use energy more efficiently and hence less of it for the same amount of value generated, but even then…

I think the Swedish plan looks mathematically nice on paper, but will face enormous difficulties in implementation. I think a more sensible approach would be to agree that energy conservation and efficiency can do only so much during the next 20-50 years and look for very efficient alternative energy sources.

To give an example of this approach: I co-ordinate Oilgae, a site that explores use of algae as a feedstock for biodiesel, and I can say with some amount of confidence based on my researches that algae appear to be one of the most qualified candidates for biodiesel production.

While the math certainly appears to favor algae as a highly efficient feedstock that has the theoretical possibility of providing us with fossil fuel independence, there are a number of issues to be overcome. These have to do with (1) choosing optimal algal strains, (2) issues faced in cultivation and harvesting (believe me there are some serious bottlenecks here), and (3) cost-effective methods to extract oil and transform it into biodiesel.

So yes, there is still a long way to go before it can be proven with certainty that algal biodiesel can be cost-effective on a large scale, but it is gratifying to see brilliant minds (not to forget VC money) getting into this field. And with institutes like MIT (Boston) getting into the act, I’m optimistic most of the above-mentioned issues will be overcome.

My take on the issue is, while countries stress on energy conservation and efficiency, they should pump in enough investments in researching these new possibilities – such as oil from algae, or wood-based ethanol etc…

Narsi from Oilgae – Oil from Algae

But he brought wanking into it.

I come here under my own name.

He comes here anonymously with his smug ignorance and he brings masturbation into it.

Either wipe his insult or let me through.

This is not acceptable. And the drip-feed censorship is not good either.

Half the time I come on with more abuse then I would if I knew I could get through with some sort of despatch.

This science-gone-bad is a serious subject. And people should know the truth of the matter.

For you only Mark. Check out this conversation I had with a famous scientist. And read between the lines here:

http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2006/12/arxived.html#comments

Now I’ve calmed down a little bit.

But I tell you the truth. If someone is coming in under their own name and is insulted it seems a violation of natural justice not to get quick access to a reply. And that strikes me as being doubly the case if the insulter is maligning the other person in a grubby way as well as just being ignorant and smug. And as well if that person is anonymous.

[abusive comments deleted]

And because you have so obviously tried to derail the truth of the matter with your smug dishonesty, ignorance and leftist projection I have not choice but to repeat the lecture.

This time you [deletion]. If you wish to criticise what I say act like the scientist you are pretending to be.

The fact is you don’t know anything about this.

OK. Here it goes again. This time don’t be so dishonest Nabakov:

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF CATASTROPHIC WARMING.

With the North Pole almost surrounded by land….

And North and South America fused cutting off the circulation from one ocean to the other. And with these two continents going most of the distance from Pole to Pole.

And with Antarctica being such a massive Continent and sitting right on top of the South Pole ensuring that this Pole is a long way from the water and almost none of the continent can ever hold water vapour….

With this continental arrangement we have a setup that is highly restrictive to the circulation of water.

No amount of CO2 or Methane that we puny humans could put out there could possibly hope to overcome this basic fact.

This poor oceanic circulation gives the planet a permanent one-way bias towards catastrophic COOLING.

And this realisation follows pretty much directly from taking a marginalist (like an ‘Austrian’ Economist) approach to the problem and combining this marginalist approach with the Stefan-Boltzmann law.

This whole AGW biznis is being sold completely the wrong way. Fuck the planet, would you as an energy-intensive operation like to cut your operating costs by up to a third? Bit of capital investment up front which will be amortised within 36 months through tax breaks and lower outgoings. And then it’s just extra profit.

Hey even the dim bulb scion of a major hydrocarbon clan, Dubya, is right into it personally and at the office.

Or maybe he knows something about peak oil we don’t.

And this would probably piss off folks of all political persuasions but I’d love to be there when Dudya falls off the wagon properly. Damn you’d see some serious Texas-sized drinking then. Speaking as another loudmouthed arrogant male drunk, I’d reckon he’d be a great drinking partner. Supersizedly appallingly lousy POTUS though. Even makes James Buchanan look good.

The trouble with our market based economy is that a need to conserve energy to reduce CO2 emissions represents a conflict of interest for the power generators and distributors. What business is going to attract shareholder support by saying “next year we will reduce our output by 30%”? How do you get around that one Johnnie?

.. and almost none of the continent can ever hold water vapour….

You see Birdy, this is one of the main reasons why you’re such a major laughing stock in the blogosphere. Not so much because of your appalling bad manners and amazingly low emotional IQ. But because mainly of your blithe disregard of reality in the service of your paranoid and self-stimulating theories.

If you’d announced the sun wouldn’t rise tomorrow, we’d shortly all be treated to several thousand words about how daylight is a commie/fascist conspiracy.

If only you’d entered the blogosphere making it it clear you were a crazed glittering poet first (which you are in a weird kinda way) and a deep thinker last – a la Ezra Pound, then you would have got much more of the kind of quality attention you really really crave.

But no. Now you’re a punchline. And other people are writing the jokes.

How many times does it take Graeme Bird to change a light bulb?
Always one more time than it takes others to point out it’s actually a leaky tap.