Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for May 14, 2008

The Day of the Electric Car Starts to Dawn

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I guess I was about 12 years old (1970) when I made a crude drawing of my design for an electric car. At school we had been told that oil was running out and I had been bought a new bicycle as a reward for passing the 11-plus exam, which allowed me to go to Grammer School. My bike was a ‘state of the art’ Raleigh RSW 16 in blue. It had 16 inch white ‘balloon’ tyres, 3 speed twist grip gears, a rear drum brake, and a front ‘dynohub‘ that powered the front and rear lights.

It was the dynohub that impressed me the most as it was a built it generator incorporated into the front wheel hub. This set me thinking – why couldn’t an electric car have something simiilar built into all four wheel hubs in order to generate electricity to help charge the batteries on the move? My next ‘innovation’ was to have solar panels incorporated into the bonnet, roof and boot. Thus my dynohubs, which would actually have been more efficient alternators rather than dynamos, and solar panels would help extend the range of the car, plus the solar panels would also help to re-charge the batteries when it was parked in daylight.

I wish I had kept the drawing, but it’s probaly just as well I didn’t go into the electric car business, as oil stubbornly refused to run out. However, clearly I was 40 years ahead of my time as oil has now reached $126 per barrel and the electric car is now looking much more like a vialble option for journeys of around 40 to 100 miles per day.

Way back in 1899, a French electric car named ‘La Jamais Contente,’ driven by Belgian Camille Jenatzy, reached the then record speed of 105.882 km/h (65.792 mph).

Jamais_contente.jpg
Photo from Wikimedia Commons

For the subsequent 100 years or so, the internal combustion engine has dominated car technology. However, this may be about to change. I’d certainly like to get my hands on a new Mitsubishi i MiEV to replace the small Peugeot 1007 I use on my 40 mile round trip to work and back.

mitsubishi-i.jpg
Photo from the GreenCarSite

The i MiEV is due in the UK around 2009/10 at an estimated cost of £15,000. The range will be up to 100 miles on a full charge, with a 0 to 60mph time of just 9.5 seconds and a top speed of 85mph. 10,000 miles should cost about £50 in electricity, compared to around £1000 in petrol for the internal combustion engined version.

For those with around $100,000 to spend, there are sports cars such as the Tesla Roadster available. No doubt as production numbers increase, prices of electric cars will become even more affordable. Personal mobility and climate concerns solved!?

Paul Biggs

The Wong Numbers

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As a result of the recent budget, the Rudd government will be spending $2.3 billion over five years to “tackle climate change by reducing emissions, adapting to change and helping Australia play a leadership role.”

An Australian climate realist recently remarked, “This represents a huge pitch by Kevin Rudd for the youth and environmental vote, and helps explain why our new government has determinedly resisted listening to any alternative, wiser voices on the issue of global warming.

Penny Wong’s new ministry (of Climate) is reputed to already have 124 staff, and that’s on top of an already established federal dept. of the environment, a national greenhouse office that gets a few hundred million dollars a year, eight states and territories with both DOEs and GOs, and several major university-CSIRO research centres. The cost of maintaining such an army of bureaucrats and (by Australian standards) regiment of scientists must be in the region of $2 billion, to which treasurer Swan is now adding another couple of billion.

The resulting Australian figure of $4 billion annually is similar to what USA is estimated to spend on greenhouse R&D each year (though the US figure probably doesn’t include all their climate bureaucracy). On a per capita basis, as for sport, Australia now appears to be ‘punching above our weight’.”

I think it’s worth posting the graphic below again:

China%20Emissions.png

Borrowing the phrase often attributed to UK Aussie Rolf Harris, ” Can you tell what it is yet!?”

Climate Tidbits

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The Amazon rainforest, so crucial to the Earth’s climate system, is coming under threat from cleaner air say prominent UK and Brazilian climate scientists in the journal Nature.

Science Daily: Amazon Under Threat From Cleaner Air

Report: CO2 from deforestation ‘far outstrip damage caused by planes and automobiles and factories’

Excerpt: The accelerating destruction of the rainforests that form a precious cooling band around the Earth’s equator, is now being recognised as one of the main causes of climate change. Carbon emissions from deforestation far outstrip damage caused by planes and automobiles and factories. The rampant slashing and burning of tropical forests is second only to the energy sector as a source of greenhouses gases according to report published today by the Oxford-based Global Canopy Programme, an alliance of leading rainforest scientists. Figures from the GCP, summarising the latest findings from the United Nations, and building on estimates contained in the Stern Report, show deforestation accounts for up to 25 per cent of global emissions of heat-trapping gases, while transport and industry account for 14 per cent each; and aviation makes up only 3 per cent of the total. “Tropical forests are the elephant in the living room of climate change,” said Andrew Mitchell, the head of the GCP.Scientists say one days’ deforestation is equivalent to the carbon footprint of eight million people flying to New York. Reducing those catastrophic emissions can be achieved most quickly and most cheaply by halting the destruction in Brazil, Indonesia, the Congo and elsewhere.No new technology is needed, says the GCP, just the political will and a system of enforcement and incentives that makes the trees worth more to governments and individuals standing than felled. “The focus on technological fixes for the emissions of rich nations while giving no incentive to poorer nations to stop burning the standing forest means we are putting the cart before the horse,” said Mr Mitchell.

The Independent: Deforestation: The hidden cause of global warming

KEVIN Rudd’s climate change guru Ross Garnaut has used his newly attained expertise in the field to argue heritage traditions, such as a slate roof, should not apply to a sleek, modern house he wants to build in inner suburban Melbourne.

The Australian: Garnaut heavies council over roof

WATER Commissioner Elizabeth Nosworthy says installing a pool at her home is sending “the right message” to Queenslanders coping with tough water restrictions.

couriermail.com.au: Water chief defends new pool

CLIMATE change could lead to “killer cornflakes” with the most potent liver toxin ever recorded, an environmental health conference has been told.

news.com.au: Cornflakes in cereal killer warning

A $34 million solar instrument package to be built by the University of Colorado at Boulder, considered a crucial tool to help monitor global climate change, has been restored to a U.S. government satellite mission slated for launch in 2013.

The data from these instruments will help scientists differentiate between natural and human-caused climate change, said Pilewskie.

CU Team To Build $34 Million Instrument Package For U.S. Environmental Satellite

Study: With locked crust, Earth could become another Venus

HOUSTON, May 12, 2008 — A new study of possible links between climate and geophysics on Earth and similar planets finds that prolonged heating of the atmosphere can shut down plate tectonics and cause a planet’s crust to become locked in place.

EurekAlert: Hot climate could shut down plate tectonics

Campaign Against ANZ Forest Policy Disingenuous – A Note from Alan Ashbarry

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The ANZ bank recently released it Forest and Biodiversity Policy as part of its corporate responsibility on the environment.

The bank developed the policy over the last few years in consultation with its customers and stakeholders.

The policy demands that its customers when engaged in the forest industry must meet extensive criteria including independent environmental certification and the protection of high conservation value forest. Forestry must be legal and not be undertaken in World Heritage Areas, National Parks and conservation reserves.

In terms of high conservation values the policy looks at international and national definitions. High conservation value forest is not defined by lobby groups such as the Wilderness Society or by the forest industry but by a fully open and transparent process. In Australian identifying HCV forest has its roots in the 1992 National Forest Policy Statement, defined in what is known as the JANIS criteria, and implemented by the Regional Forest and Community Forest Agreements.

In terms of sustainable practices, ANZ will engage customers involved in large scale forestry activities to advocate credible sustainable forest management (SFM) certification. However, the bank acknowledges it is the customer’s choice on which internationally recognised certification scheme is adopted.

Forest certification schemes provide a way of defining sustainable forest management as well as third party, independent verification that a timber source meets the definition of sustainability. Certification schemes include a mechanism for tracing products from the certified source forest to the end use.

A number of certification schemes operate throughout the world. Operating in Australia are:
• Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)
• Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC)

So it’s a bit surprising that our national broadcaster The ABC is running claims from the Australian Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) that ANZ’s new forest policy is too broad. And that “the bank’s new guidelines on providing funding for forestry and timber processing projects lacks detail.”

The FSC in Australia is run by a board of Directors including representatives from Timber Workers for Forests, Timber Communities Australia, The Wilderness Society, Australian Conservation Foundation, Friends of the Earth, Paperlinx, Timbercorp, Integrated Tree Cropping and one independent. It is chaired by Sean Cadman, the National Forest Campaigner of the Wilderness Society.

The other certification scheme is the Australian Forest Standard that is part of the PEFC. Its Board comprises 10 Directors, with representation being four from government, three from the Forestry and Wood Products Sector, one Employee Representative, one General and up to two Independent members, one of whom is the Chair of the company, currently Geoff Gorrie.

In light of these schemes it is difficult to understand the motive of such criticism by the FSC, perhaps it is due the inclusion of a competing scheme by the Bank or perhaps it is due to fact the Wilderness Society is currently targeting the ANZ bank about the Tasmanian Pulp Mill?

In Tasmania, Forestry Tasmania, Gunns Ltd and Forest Enterprises Australia have been externally certified as complying with the international standard for environmental management systems (ISO 14001) and have also been externally certified against the Australian Forestry Standard (AS 4708) rather than the FSC.

Gunns Ltd has received Commonwealth and Tasmanian approval to build a pulp mill to value add woodchips that would other wise be exported from forests covered by the Regional forest Agreement.

Alan Ashbarry
Website: http://www.tasmaniapulpmill.info/home
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