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Now I can get on my soapbox to rave about and give you links to other sites concerning renewable energy, environmental protection, and touring australia (especially Victoria), but I promise not to give any links to comedy sites.
 

If you don't believe in environmental protection, renewable energy, etc.click here
 

Some of the energy sources which we Aussie lunatics waste are:

The few renewable energy installations here which Australian governments haven't managed to stop being built have done extremely well (the liberal party is slightly worse than the labor party in this respect when they manage to lie their way to power, another reason they are often called the fascist party).

Wind Energy - 

(shown is the windturbine at breamlea in Victoria which we should have more of)

The Southern coastline and the island state of Tasmania are in the roaring forties where strong winds circle the earth so great candidates for wind generation can be found here

Solar Energy - 

(we should have installations as above instead we have some small private PV arrays)

There is a lot of land where there are few clouds to shade solar collectors (but in most of Australia there is no water available for use if water is needed), one solar application which we do use is domestic solar thermal (mainly domestic water heating), but Australia wastes it's plentiful solar energy resources, also we should use cars as below.

Tidal Energy - The NorthWest coast has tides over 10 meters in height (but the many cyclones there could destroy installations, and there are very few customers for the energy unless you could develop a way to transmit it to Indonesia approximately 500km away where the Indonesian government is always saying their people desperately need power and threatening to build nuclear reactors on geological faultlines where there are a lot of earthquakes)

Wave Energy - Australia doesn't use wave energy at all even though our extensive Southern coast borders a very rough sea that extends all the way to Antarctica (thousands of kilometers away), our Western coast borders the Indian Ocean with it's thousands of kilometers of water with many cyclones and other storms, and half of our Eastern coast which borders the Pacific Ocean

Hydroelectricity - Australia is not mountainous so hydro resources are limited and not utilized to any great extent except in the island state of Tasmania where all the grid electricity is generated from hydro, unfortunately this has led to drowning of some of the countries most beautiful landscape and to some great environmental disputes

Biomass - Australia being a major foodgrowing country (though we have difficulties such as very low rainfall and low-nutrient soils) and so should be well placed to but does not use this energy source mainly out of apathy

Geothermal - There are basically two methods of tapping Geothermal Energy a)Natural Hot groundwater and, b)Hot Dry rocks:

Natural Hot Groundwater

Where water is naturally heated by nearby hot rock bodies but Australia being geologically stable we don't have geysers or other readily accessible sources of geologically heated groundwater (unlike in nearby New Zealand at Rotorua) so we cannot use this source of energy.

Hot Dry rocks

Where water is injected underground near a hot rock body (about 200-250 degrees) then is extracted to generate electricity as is being worked on by the AGSO (Australian Geological Survey Organisation) and others have, this would in some ways be made easier by our very stable geology because whereas in Geologically active regions the joints (small cracks in the rocks) are vertical in Geologically stable areas are Horizontal (this greatly improves efficiency. For further information (largely directed at my country but not only so) go to Geothermal



Thermophotovoltaics
Directly convert heat energy to electrical energy in the same way photovoltaic cells directly convert light energy to electrical energy (incoming Infrared photons raise electrons to the conduction band so that they are mobile and that is an electric current). These devices could in future be used for cogeneration from waste heat from industry and perhaps as high efficiency generators (already at least one generator is already available which is nearly silent and because it has few moving parts is inherently low maintenance), these cells as yet have a low efficiency and need to run at a high operating because they are so new they have not been fully developed yet.


Fuel Cells
Tap the latent energy of a fluid (eg. methane) by chemically reacting this fluid with another.


What this means is that 80% of the energy can be released (compared to 30-35% when coal is burned to generate power or 35% when petrol or diesel is burned in any sort of engine). At the moment 60-65% efficiency is usual but when fuel cells are developed properly such as using waste heat to generate power 80% efficiencey is expected. Even at 65% this is twice the efficiency of internal combustion engines or coal combustion which have had trillions of dollars wasted on them.

NOTE : Only 6% of Australia's official energy (Official statistics ignore the Sun's role in heating and lighting) comes from renewable sources compared with a worldwide average of 12% (this is probably due to us not using fuelwood as biomass for heating to an apreciable extent, we send our trees to Japan for chopsticks or building frames, and as woodchips for packaging or papermaking feedstock), and the Federal Government (especially little Johnnie Howard, the PM) have decided renewable energy use must not increase and so have cut 80%-90% from the budgets of all energy efficiency programs in Australia and have used a study paid for by the Coal Industry to argue we cannot afford to cut greenhouse emissions (we all know jobs and other income would be increased if we cut greenhouse emissions).

For all non-Australians wondering at the Australian Government's refusal to cut greenhouse gases at all you must remember Australia's coal industry is very big and wealthy (money means political power and powerful political friends in this partially developed country).

Some Australians do realise that Australia would receive an economic boost from building a non-coal powered electricity system and the public transport system needed to meet greenhouse cuts which need to be made if man is not to follow all previously dominant creatures in the Earth's 4.6 billon year history into extiction.

At present there is some public transport in our cities (where nearly all of us live) but not much, even Melbourne which had one of the world's best public transport systems early this century with quite extensive tram and train systems now has a hopeless due to the massive growth of the area covered by the city since then combined with the system not being expanded (it has contracted quite a lot thanks to the rightwing politicians in the labor/liberal party).
 

The present Australian flag is rubbish, it says we are only a part of the UK and I am certainly not.
 

See what I mean? I prefer the flags below I copied from ausflag, please visit ausflag for further information and other flag designs

Australia has a very beautiful natural environment (or whats left of it), but the politicians and most bureaucrats are the worst and most stupid in the world (we looney voters did elect these idiots). These morons are so stupid they can't read or write longer words than "A".

These racist idiots and liars never do anything unless you pay them a financial undertaking (not a bribe) unless of course you want to build a casino, dig up the country for a mine or cut down the trees to sell them to anyone mad enough to pay.

Australia needs:

1. CIR (Citizens Initiated Referendums) in order to take real power out of the hands of politicians and the bureaucrats and put it back in the hands of the people.
2. A new type of economics - one which does not value useless things such as stockmarket speculation above useful things such as community service (or at the very least we should ignore the "economic rationalists" who are all idiots anyway and can go to the devil).

3. Politicians with some brains - for non-australians wondering at little Johnny Howard's (our Prime Monster) sanity in refusing to react to world pressure over the greenhouse effect you must remember nearly all aussie polly's are too stupid to understand what the greenhouse effect is and just want to continue business as usual (that's where the money comes from at the moment).
4. Proprtional Representation - PR is better than single member electoratea because in single member electorates unless you vote for the winning candidate your vote is useless (this is often 70% to 90% of voters), alternatives include the Hare-Clark system used for the Australian Senate or the MMP system used by Germany and New Zealand.

 Fuel cells

Geothermal energy

My environment

Our green future

Tourism

The Newstand

The rest
 

If you find links not working or have a CONSTRUCTIVE suggestion please 
Write to me or you will be doomed  to live your sorry life as it is.

If you want to search the aussie web why not use webwombat