Taller, faster, better, stronger: wind towers are only getting bigger

Former Australian Greens leader Bob Brown made headlines this week after he objected to a proposed wind farm on Tasmania’s Robbins Island. The development would see 200 towers built, each standing 270 metres from base to the tip of their blades. 

Wind towers are getting taller. 

Leaving aside the question of the Robbins Island development, these will be extraordinarily tall towers. However, they fit right in with the current trend for wind turbines. 

Wind turbines come in many designs, but the most common is the so-called “horizontal axis” kind, which look like giant fans on poles. This type of turbine is highly efficient at turning the energy in the wind into electrical energy.

Keen observers will have noticed that these turbines have been gaining in size over the years. In the 1990s, wind turbines typically had hub heights and rotor diameters of the order of 30m. Today, hub heights and rotor diameters are pushing well past 100m.

Read the story from The Conversation by a professor from the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University 0of New South Wales, Con Doolan -  “Taller, faster, better, stronger: wind towers are only getting bigger.”

Australia won’t meet the Paris targets despite what recent research claims.

The Australian National University has been making headlines for its analysis that, with the current rate of renewable energy growth, Australia will achieve its Paris agreement targets five years early – by 2025. Unfortunately, after a careful review, we find their analysis doesn’t stack up.

The government's policies are aimed at slowing renewable energy rollout.

The ANU briefing note has surprised, if not shocked, many in the expert and analytical community with detailed knowledge of Australia’s climate and energy policy.

Numerous international and national efforts to examine Australia’s climate and energy policy have all concluded that the government will not reach, on present policy settings, the 26-28% reduction from 2005 levels by 2030 it has put forward under the Paris agreement.

Read the story from The Guardian by Bill Hare - “Australia won’t meet the Paris targets despite what recent research claims.”

(Lead author of the ANU report, David Balkers, discusses his work on the "Climate Conversations" podcast - Robert McLean)

Is the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu growing, and not sinking, as Craig Kelly says?

Liberal MP and climate sceptic Craig Kelly made headlines in November when he was caught on tape mocking "lefties" for exaggerating the effects of climate change.

Coalition backbencher, Craig Kelly, says Pacific
island nations are growing rather than shrinking,

Speaking at a local party event, audio of which was leaked to the Guardian, Mr Kelly set out to debunk several justifications for climate change action, including the argument that Tuvalu, the Pacific island nation, was slipping beneath the sea.

Read the ABC News factcheck story - “Is the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu growing, and not sinking, as Craig Kelly says?”

Who’s to blame when driverless cars have an accident?

The news that an Uber self-driving vehicle has killed a pedestrian in the US has made headlines around the world.

Autonomous vehicles are information-rich platforms
thanks to the range of sensors on board that track,
monitor and measure everything.

It’s a reminder that the era of self-driving cars is fast approaching. Decades of research into advanced sensors, mapping, navigation and control methods have now come to fruition and autonomous cars are starting to hit the roads in pilot trials.

But partial or full autonomy raises the question of who is to blame in the case of an accident involving a self-driving car? In conventional (human-driven) cars, the answer is simple: the driver is responsible because they are in control. When it comes to autonomous vehicles, it isn’t so clear cut.

Read the CSIRO blog - “Who’s to blame when driverless cars have an accident?”

(We managed to resolve the legal intricacies surrounding the activities, and accidents, involving millions privately owned, individually driven cars and so a self-driving vehicle should not be too complex, just different - Robert McLean)

Away from the public gaze, serious threats to the environment keep rising

Threats to the Australian environment get reported in bursts – a contested development decision or a particular conservation campaign can thrust an issue into the headlines and on to the nightly news bulletins for weeks before a deal is crunched and a “solution” heralded.

Our environment is always under threat, especially when we divert our gaze.

But the “solutions” are often illusory and the actual threats keep rising, away from the scrutiny of the political and news cycles.

As the last five-yearly and independent “state of the environment report” found: “The main pressures facing the Australian environment today are the same as in 2011: climate change, land use change, habitat fragmentation and degradation, and invasive species,” with interactions between them amplifying the threats.

It noted that in a few cases (such as air quality and poor agricultural practices) the pressures had eased, but in most (such as grazing, invasive species, habitat destruction, coalmining and urban growth) they had worsened.

After 30 years of environment reporting, on and off, it’s evident that the “deals” to end headline-grabbing environmental battles often aren’t enduring solutions at all, with the scrapping continuing away from the national public gaze.

Read the story by Lenore Taylor from The Guardian  - “Away from the public gaze, serious threats to the environment keep rising.”