# Does anyone care that the Russkies nabbed Greenpeace?



## Diwundrin (Oct 4, 2013)

I don't.  Good on 'em.  Greenpeace have been conning the world for decades with their tree saving and whale hugging propaganda to hide their political aspirations.  Now they've got the hide to demand that our Government do something about getting the drongos out of jail there.  Not on my dollar boys.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-02/russia-charges-five-greenpeace-activists-with-piracy/4994922

 I'm over their antics and their pals Get-up vandalizing the Opera House and sabotaging coal loaders etc.  I don't want to ever hear again of one their idiot pawns driving steel spikes into trees in the hope that it will kill a logger trying to earn a living. 

 I'm particularly tired of carrying their lifestyle on my tax dollar.

If they want to want send their environment back a million years then they can go out to work, save up the money, and buy a patch of jungle to live in.

 I'm sick to death of the bleating of their political wing the Greens whining about anything that makes a buck.  Unless they own it of course.  
When did their agenda slip from hugging whales to hugging gays?  What the hell does gay marriage have to do with the environment?  That's all we hear from the fleas here.

Should have stuck this in Gripe of the Day... except it's a permanent year round gripe with me. 



Go Russkies!


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## Warrigal (Oct 4, 2013)

> except it's a permanent year round gripe with me.


We know. We all know.
:cheers1:


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## terra (Oct 4, 2013)

So.... we should let the Ruskys drill for oil in the Arctic.... maybe let the Japs run riot and slaughter our whales en masse ?.....   



C'mon.... as much as I dislike the Greenpeace idiots , if we let countries rape &  pillage our planet without so much as a "why", then it's a sad future for our children and grandchildren.


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## rkunsaw (Oct 4, 2013)

I agree Di. I hope the Russians keep them. I've been surprised for years that the Japs hadn't sunk their boat. It's about time somebody stood up to them.


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## Diwundrin (Oct 4, 2013)

terra said:


> So.... we should let the Ruskys drill for oil in the Arctic.... maybe let the Japs run riot and slaughter our whales en masse ?.....
> 
> 
> 
> C'mon.... as much as I dislike the Greenpeace idiots , if we let countries rape &  pillage our planet without so much as a "why", then it's a sad future for our children and grandchildren.



Tezza you know me well enough to know I'm taking your name in vain just make a smart-arse argument entertaining right?  It's my sarcy way of making a point and nothing personal.  Soooo.....  bwaahahahaha

[Ramble]
Wanna stop using oil Tezza?   Going to hang up the car keys, use a push mower and set us an example?  Contemplating a life with nothing manufactured and no processed food?  Won't be any without the machinery to make them. No oil = rusted machines.   
(... I heard that reply, so, how good is that silicon or whatever synthetic lubricant?  And can you run the car on it?)

What about coal, you'll be right in the winter, you have a wood fire, but those candles are going to be a bother because your power supply relies on coal. So just stop using that too?    Right now!!  Mmmmmm  ?  

That's what Greenpeace want.  They want the world to stop. Now.
Why?    Why can't they put their efforts into learning to count and go into research to invent something to replace gasolene and coal fired power stations that is actually efficient enough not to cost us more than we can ever afford to pay?

 Who knows?  Pick a conspiracy theorist of choice... but, why can't they wait until those replacements are viable??  

The fact remains that those grandstanding protests, and the continual carping from the Greens are to  stop oil and coal use NOW. 
 They either have an agenda to disrupt civilization to the point where it can no longer function or else they are too bloody stupid to have thought that far ahead.


Siiiighhhh.... just an OTT venting of a dark side mood tonight, I know that's all  pretty silly stuff.  It's really going to be much worse than that when  the oil and coal runs out. 


  But it won't be right NOW!  .... there I'm feeling much better already.




Oh, the Whales, let's not forget the poor ole whales.  They were the banner boys that kicked off Greenpeace's donation bonanza.  That was their reason for existing wasn't it?  If everyone had stopped whaling straight away they'd have fallen on their faces and never been heard of again. 

 But they had someone there with an IQ over 70 who invented a backup plan.  Nuclear energy.  Everyone's sh*t scared of anything nuclear so let's protest about that too, just to keep those bucks rolling in by scaling fences, doing stupidly dangerous sabotage and risking catastrophes just so they could go to jail looking like heroes and impress the hell out of the environmentally well intentioned gullible.

But that puts them in a bit of a bind now that they want coal and oil out of the picture, not to mention natural gas... (that's a whole different thing that burrs me up... but another argument. )

 If they hadn't already painted nuclear energy out of the picture it would have been the logical replacement for at the least the coal fired power plants right?     Whooops.  
So now they are trying to leave us with nothing but a couple of windmills and half the planet covered in mirrors.  
Gimme a break!

And those whales.  Other countries, like Norway I believe, hunt them. Presumably they eat them, I'd starve to death on Scandanavian food, they eat some weird stuff.  But it's Japan that gets the attention.  So why Japan?  

Because Greenpeace knew that the Japanese don't really eat that much of it any more, it was no longer profitable and it would be easy to bluff them out of a rapidly dying business and claim a great victory. 
 But either no one explained to them the power of 'face' in the Asian culture, or they didn't really want to stop the whale hugging bandwagon.  

The Western notion of Patriotic fervour doesn't hold a candle to the power of 'face'/honour/esteem/pride in the Asian national psyche. Especially in China and Japan.  ... and lately all too evident in N. Korea.  

Tell 'em they're doing something wrong and they will fight to the last breath to prove that you have no right to tell them so.  To give in to outside pressure is a form of death to them.  

They can't be seen as 'losers'.  It doesn't matter if everyone knows they didn't win, just as long as nobody says so. 
It's okay for them to *choose* to stop because secretly they know that they're wrong about something, or it's costing too much, but they won't allow anyone else to be seen as forcing them to stop.

And Greenpeace keeps pushing the issue!  It keeps insulting their right to appear to be *making their own choice* in stopping and saving 'face'.  Which makes them go and build bigger whalers to kill more whales to prove that they won't be bossed around.

It might be just my personal fantasy but I believe a lot less whales would have been killed if Greenpeace had never existed.

While I'm at it....  now their political branch, the Greens,  are getting into social engineering.  They just want it all don't they?? 
  Why?  [/ramble]  .. or was it [/rant]?


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## Warrigal (Oct 4, 2013)

A diatribe, I think. Believed by some to be therapeutic.

di·a·tribe /ˈdīəˌtrīb/

Noun

A forceful and bitter verbal attack against someone or something.


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## SifuPhil (Oct 4, 2013)

I cannot say that I agree with all of their efforts and the way they pull them off, but the message they carry is I think a valid one.

Nuclear power, Di? Really? Are you in favor only because you're _downwind_ of Fukushima? Have you ever lived near a nuclear plant, and been woken up in the middle of the night by their alarms? 

I have.

Have you visited Chernobyl recently? I understand that the tours, while brief because of the exposure levels, are to die for. 

Literally.

Three Mile Island ring a bell? I live 15 miles away, in the zone that is officially called "Kiss Your A** Goodbye When The Bell Rings". 

The whales ... I'm not sure that the whales are hunted for their food value as much as their ambergris and blubber. Stuff that you can't get anywhere else, but which could be replaced with something synthetic.

I know you're a political creature and you know I'm not, so I can't comment on their connection to the Green Party except to say that EVERY semi-revolutionary faction has its political agenda. Perhaps you just don't like that particular party, hence you despise their "action arm"?


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## Diwundrin (Oct 4, 2013)

I don't even know why Phil but it was instinctive and visceral reaction against the Greenies from when they first appeared decades ago.  Maybe I'm just a dinosaur, and maybe like the Asians I hate being lectured to by deadbeats.  It's a chink in the veneer of my usual don't really givva either way, fascinated spectator only, attitude to life.  But for some reason they really tick me off.

For every example I hear of nuclear power gone wrong there are hundreds of them that never give a hiccup.
The ones listed, the Chernobyls the 3 Mile Islands, even the Fukashima one are decades old in design and construction.  
New technology available today is Ferrari to T-Model Ford by comparison.  But people are so brainwashed to be scared of it that it's almost impossible to initiate it as a short term solution to the coal and oil crisis.
We need to weigh up the ever reducing risk from Nuclear catastrophies against the inevitability of eventually suffocating from oil and coal pollution.

There are no free lunches.


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## Diwundrin (Oct 4, 2013)

Warrigal said:


> A diatribe, I think. Believed by some to be therapeutic.
> 
> di·a·tribe /ˈdīəˌtrīb/
> 
> ...



Thanks Warri, I'll use that one next time I get stuck into them.


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## SifuPhil (Oct 4, 2013)

Warrigal said:


> A diatribe, I think. Believed by some to be therapeutic.
> 
> di·a·tribe /ˈdīəˌtrīb/
> 
> ...



I thought that was a primitive group of people that had trouble controlling their sugar levels ... 



Diwundrin said:


> I don't even know why Phil but it was instinctive and visceral reaction against the Greenies from when they first appeared decades ago.  Maybe I'm just a dinosaur, and maybe like the Asians I hate being lectured to by deadbeats.  It's a chink in the veneer of my usual don't really givva either way, fascinated spectator only, attitude to life.  But for some reason they really tick me off.



That's okay - I have the same visceral reaction to a few topics myself. layful:



> The ones listed, the Chernobyls the 3 Mile Islands, even the Fukashima one are decades old in design and construction.
> New technology available today is Ferrari to T-Model Ford by comparison.  But people are so brainwashed to be scared of it that it's almost impossible to initiate it as a short term solution to the coal and oil crisis.



That's a good point, one I hadn't really given much thought. Thank you!



> We need to weigh up the ever reducing risk from Nuclear catastrophies against the inevitability of eventually suffocating from oil and coal pollution.
> 
> There are no free lunches.



Oh, I don't know about that ... Mrs. Frisbee down the street always offers me a free lunch when I'm walking by.

Unfortunately all those freshly-dug holes in her backyard scare me off. :cower:


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## dbeyat45 (Oct 4, 2013)

To the original question:  No. 

On the remainder:  Read what Diwundrinatribe said.  Sorry I came in too late.

PS:  Anyone understand what base load electricity is all about?  Another thread maybe ????


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## Diwundrin (Oct 4, 2013)

> SifuPhil:  I thought that _[diatribe]_ was a primitive group of people that had trouble controlling their sugar levels ...



:lofl:



> DB: ...PS:  Anyone understand what base load electricity is all about?  Another thread maybe ????



I swear I've heard it mentioned before but it's venting and unburdening night so go for it.


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## That Guy (Oct 4, 2013)

I like trees and whales.


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## Diwundrin (Oct 4, 2013)

We all like 'em TG, just some of us not more than eating and driving.


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## That Guy (Oct 4, 2013)

I like sitting under trees and watching the whales.


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## Fern (Oct 4, 2013)

They brought their arrest on themselves. Trying to board another ship is courting trouble, and they have got it.


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## Sid (Oct 5, 2013)

That Guy said:


> I like trees and whales.





   I like peanut butter
   I like toast and jam


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## Sid (Oct 5, 2013)

Good golly, Diwundrin I had to go back and check, there for a minute I thought It was something I had written it and forgot that I had written it.


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## That Guy (Oct 5, 2013)

Sid said:


> I like peanut butter
> I like toast and jam



Wait a minute . . . you've got me searching my brain . . . wasn't there a song along those lines???


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## That Guy (Oct 5, 2013)

Thanks, Breezy.


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## terra (Oct 5, 2013)

Geez Diwundrin..... your original thread has turned into bread & butter.  



Knowing you as I do, I certainly don't have any fear of your posts,... truly magnificent and as I've mentioned in the past, I just love your story-telling abilities.

It's verbal jousting like this that keeps our brains young !...





cheers


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## Diwundrin (Oct 5, 2013)

We're only here to keep each other awake, aware, and most importantly entertained Tezza.


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## muckferret (Oct 5, 2013)

Now just hang on one cotton picking minute you old battle axe i'm standing with Sir Walter on this, i love trees, i love Whales, hemp is one product for making paper as an alternative to raping and plundering forests that gives life giving oxygen to inhabitants of this planet, multinational companies are reaping environmental damage on a alarming scale all for dammed profit, so bugger them, its about time we looked at the indigenous attitude towards the land and leave no footprints of where we have been. Technology already exists for running cars without petrol or oil, further Solar is being developed as a source of energy into the future on an enormous scale and in progress.
Di baby tell me something, we destroy this magnificent planet where the hell are we going to go....there's nothing habitable we will be doomed is that what your advocating aarrgghh.


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## terra (Oct 5, 2013)

Good onya Sir muckferret !... stick it to 'em !  



....oops, I should have said,  'er.  (the Iron Lady of the Coffs Coast)


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## Diwundrin (Oct 5, 2013)

> its about time we looked at the *indigenous attitude* towards the land and leave no footprints of where we have been.



Get a grip Dookey!



You mean set the place alight as their version of precooked take-away??  They burnt your precious trees so they wouldn't have to chase a Wallaby for Sunday lunch.  They preferred to sit and wait for them to come fleeing the flames or else wander in and pick up the cooked ones when the ground cooled off.

This country had a far greater variety of useful vegetation before their 'stewardship' was inflicted on it.
  What we have now, i.e., a 3 million square mile tinderbox, is because we are left with only plants which could survive, or regenerate from, fires.
It's why we have deserts, and if there had been more of them we'd be Easter bloody Island!

The myth of the Kooris being sainted environmentalists was started from the viewpoint of how OZ was 2 centuries ago when civilization found it.  It was good practice then, and now, to burn off regularly... but....  only because that is the 'environment' that *they had forced it to evolve into* thousands of years before.

Maybe if they'd gotten off their bums and chased those wallabies they'd have had an easier life in their later generations.  Hell they might even have had enough food from those trees that were exterminated by their fire stick 'technology' to have  been capable of forming their own civilization.  They had 40,000 years to build one, they should have been invading England not the other way round.

They love trees so much they kill them to dig a single grub out of one.  They ringbark a dozen to get one piece of usable bark to scribble and dot patterns on or to make a coolabah because it's easier than weaving a bag.

...So don't give me that claptrap about the Kooris.   They were survivalists, not environmentalists.

Next.
So, how many electric cars have you got and what do you use to recharge them? And how did you afford them on your pension??
 How many windmill generators do you have on your patch or are you totally self sufficient from a solar panel on the roof?
    How much did it cost?
How much did the carbon emissions that China used in manufacturing it weigh??
Your environmentally sweet solar panel is what made Beijing smoggy.

The coal we ship is going to nations who can't afford to pay their equivalent of 20 years wages  for a solar panel on the roof of their shanties to boil water for a cuppa, or to run a stove to cook their dinner on.  

Greenpeace and their cronies want to stop them  having relatively cheap coal without giving a thought to what they are expected to replace it with.   NOW. 
  Maybe in the far future the world will be the Utopia that Greenies imagine, but it isn't NOW.  

I know that you are for the common man, for helping the deprived, and that your heart is a good one, with good intentions for all mankind. But your head needs to have a yarn to it every now and then.  

Wishing things were better won't make them so.  Protesting about them without any viable alternative is worse than useless.  It gives people the impression that someone is doing 'good' when all they are doing is raising false hopes for the wrong reasons.  They are focusing the blame in the wrong direction and that isn't going to fix anything.
Ignoring the *why* of things being as they are is the reason so many stuff ups are made in trying to fix them.

Sure rich people run mines and oil companies.  Why are they getting rich from it?  Because we pay them for their product.
Want to stop them having a strangle-hold on the world?  Walk. Eat cold uncooked food you've grown yourself, and 'freeze in the dark.'  Simple.

Or build a few nuke power plants and put the coal miners out of business, but then you'd whinge about coal miners losing their jobs right?

Does it ever occur to you that it may very well be the big-oil and mining magnates who are secretly driving the terror of nuclear energy?  Nuke is their biggest competition. It is their nightmare.
  Do they fund those fence scaling Greenpeace and Get-up protestors at Nuclear Plants? 
 I would if I was one! 
Is Greenpeace against nuclear energy to 'save the planet', or to keep up their donation quotas?
 But then I'm just a cynical and devious old battle axe so wadda I know? 

Countries overseas are building nukes and getting power to their outlying villages, we are the only ones still too thick to see the benefits.  We'd rather prance about carrying banners and crying about saving whales, trees, and the whole bloody planet.  Tell that to people surviving meal by meal, it's really easy to do it from here.  We still use our own coal.

If flicking a few bucks to Get-up and their likes is your idea of a sufficient gesture toward saving the planet and salving your conscience then all I can say is that you are selling your conscience cheap. 

--------------------

[Relax folks, we two had a half hour phone chat this morning, we're old friends playing word games for the fun of it.]


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## terra (Oct 6, 2013)

C'mon muckferret... let's chip in and buy her a soap box !    




..... she sure does need it !.....


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## rkunsaw (Oct 6, 2013)

Don't let 'em get you down Di. I agree with you.

Those greenie types have a one track mind and don't consider the consequences of their actions.

I remember back in the sixties or early seventies some 'green' types got on a campaign against dyed fabric because they said colored dyes were bad fr the environment. They protested against clothing manufacturers and wore only white or natural clothing. 

What they failed to consider was that clothes are only colored once but whites are bleached every time they are washed and the bleach is much harder on the environment than the colored dyes. 

When will they ever learn? Probably never.


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## Diwundrin (Oct 6, 2013)

Onya Rky, knew I wasn't the only one onto them.


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## SifuPhil (Oct 6, 2013)

Diwundrin said:


> Onya Rky, knew I wasn't the only one onto them.



You can always tell who _else_ is onto them - they all glow in the dark from their nuclear reactors. 

Seriously - you're going to come down on groups that are trying to _preserve_ the world instead of strip-mine it to death? 

Painting "Greenies" with a broad brush misses the very point they're trying to get across. No, they aren't offering any valid alternatives, but that isn't their job. They're all about _awareness_. 

The fact that we're all here discussing it shows that they've succeeded.


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## Diwundrin (Oct 6, 2013)

Yeah whatever.  I just have a deep inate suspicion of do gooders.  Especially grandstanding ones with 'Donate here' buttons on them.


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## SeaBreeze (Oct 6, 2013)

SifuPhil said:


> Painting "Greenies" with a broad brush misses the very point they're trying to get across. No, they aren't offering any valid alternatives, but that isn't their job. They're all about _awareness_.
> 
> The fact that we're all here discussing it shows that they've succeeded.



Good point Phil!  I'm far from a greenie, but they do make us aware of the pollution and raping of the planet by careless humans...and that I give them credit for.  Look at the huge garbage dump in the oceans, not good for us, the fish or the plant life. http://www.natmedtalk.com/showthread.php?t=23508&highlight=ocean


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## dbeyat45 (Oct 6, 2013)

I came across this piece by Dr. Patrick Moore _who has been a leader in the international environmental field for over 40 years. He is a *co-founder of Greenpeace* and served for nine years as President of Greenpeace Canada and seven years as a Director of Greenpeace International_:
http://www.cfact.org/2013/10/05/has-greenpeace-lost-its-moral-compass/







The whole article is worth reading and finishes with ....


> *In my opinion Greenpeace has lost its moral compass*.


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## basefare (Oct 6, 2013)

About Greenpeace, Some places you go you have to behave yourself and obey the rules. Otherwise you might get your freedom confiscated.


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## Diwundrin (Oct 6, 2013)

> I  left Greenpeace determined to build an environmental policy that  balanced environmental, social, and economic needs, the definition of  sustainability. A sensible environmentalist bases their policies on  science and logic as opposed to sensationalism, misinformation and fear.  And* a sensible environmentalist recognizes the needs of over 7 billion  people for food, energy, and materials to build our civilization. *- See  more at:  http://www.cfact.org/2013/10/05/has-greenpeace-lost-its-moral-compass/#sthash.UzW4yKbv.dpuf



Excellent article, my sentiments exactly.  They are not what people perceive them to be, if they ever were.

They've become a cult with a  God complex.  They are not humanitarian as they put every other lifeform and even the inanimate rocks of the planet ahead of the human race's needs in general.  

While I agree that Humans are the greatest plague this planet has so far suffered, and that it, and everything else would no doubt get along better without us, I think it only fair that they prove their dedication to their cause and voluntarily exit first!


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## SifuPhil (Oct 6, 2013)

dbeyat45 said:


> I came across this piece by Dr. Patrick Moore _who has been a leader in the international environmental field for over 40 years. He is a *co-founder of Greenpeace* and served for nine years as President of Greenpeace Canada and seven years as a Director of Greenpeace International_:
> 
> http://www.cfact.org/2013/10/05/has-greenpeace-lost-its-moral-compass/
> 
> The whole article is worth reading and finishes with ....



He states that Vitamin A is not toxic, yet the symptoms of vitamin A _overdose_ (which needn't be an overdose of Vitamin A itself; merely a _lack_ of other vitamins) are very unpleasant:  bone fragility, hair loss, double vision, eye inflammation, erosion and  skin diseases, nervous disorders. An overdose of vitamin A can lead to  vomiting and other symptoms similar to poisoning symptoms.

He rants that Greenpeace opposes the scientists - hardly surprising that they do so, since science has been so often corrupted by big business to produce exactly the results that are desired. Twenty years down the road when those children start growing second heads no one will remember Greenpeace's warnings.


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## Warrigal (Oct 6, 2013)

basefare said:
			
		

> Some places you go you have to behave yourself and obey the rules. Otherwise you might get your freedom confiscated.


Yeah, like super powers that can ignore the rest of the world's protests. 
Russia, China and the USA.

Haven't visited Russia, but in China and the USA I was very careful not to offend the powers that be.


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## Diwundrin (Oct 6, 2013)

But Phil, the problem is too many people.  More people equals more problems keeping them healthy and feeding them.  Greenpeace are against doing that.  Sure GM food is risky, I don't like it either but what's the alternative?  Starvation in the short term?  Is treating diseases preventable by a water additive the preferred option?   siiigh. They are trumpeting about the symptoms, not the cause.  It's not that humanity has gotten more messy, it's just that there's more of them now.
The major risk to the planet is overpopulation.  All of these things they're protesting about are recent problems due to the massive increase in population.

If Greenpeace want to do something useful they should be sabotaging the Vatican, raiding Hindu temples, picketing day care centres and legislating for mandatory sterilization.

I don't see them doing that though do you?  Who's gonna donate for that cause??
Of course they, or at least their politically ensconced cronies, are pushing the joys and benefits of homosexualty so I guess that will go some small way in making a tiny dent in the numbers.


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## SifuPhil (Oct 6, 2013)

Diwundrin said:


> ... Of course they, or at least their politically ensconced cronies, are pushing the joys and benefits of homosexualty so I guess that will go some small way in making a tiny dent in the numbers.



Perhaps that is their bid at controlling population. 

As for specific problem-solving ... short-term starvation is preferable to long-term, wide-spread genetic malformation. One you can come back from; the other is pretty much a one-way street. 

Again, yes, they ARE trumpeting the symptoms - that's always the first step in a diagnosis and treatment plan. We as a species haven't even achieved THAT level yet - most of us spend our days with our heads in the sand, not knowing and not caring about the global problems. Greenpeace does what it does perhaps to raise the awareness levels of the world. Sometimes, when faced with an audience that is ignoring you, you have to do something outlandish to grab their attention. 

And also, maybe, just maybe, they are exercising their own version of voting. They turn down a GM program because of its dangers - that's a negative vote, and urges the PTB to try again. Like the U.S. throwing pennies at a trillion-dollar deficit these scientists are proposing _giving_ food to a population instead of teaching them to become more self-sufficient. They are exchanging food for alliance and obedience. 

To be totally transparent here I haven't really followed their antics since their whale-protecting and tree-spiking days, so I can't really comment on their more recent activities. Perhaps as Dr. Moore stated they HAVE lost their way ...


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## Warrigal (Oct 6, 2013)

I used to contribute to Greenpeace some 20 years ago mainly because they were harrowing the French over nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific, but the organisation splintered due to internal differences and I stopped my contributions.

I think the more radical adventurers formed Sea Shepherd and every time they challenge the Japanese commercial whaling in the Antarctic I cheer. I would very much like to know that there are less nuclear bombs and more whale pods on the planet.

I don't see what either of these issues has to do with either over population nor homosexuality.


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## Diwundrin (Oct 6, 2013)

No nor do Greenpeace, but overpopulation is the fundamental cause of all the problems that they are protesting about. 

 The fossil fuel pollution has been around as long as campfires,  it is the massive increase in it that is the problem.
Nuclear energy generation wouldn't be necessary if there were less need for power to support the existence of such a dense civilization.

Nuclear technology was initiated by scientists who saw that fossil fuels  wouldn't be enough, and a more efficient energy source would be  necessary.  
Bombs weren't their objective, they were just the product of  human nature's propensity to find the worst possible use for the best  inventions.  Bows and arrows sufficed when wars were tribal.  Nuclear bombs, and the funding to have researched building and delivering them would have been impossible and unnecessary without the growth in population in the last few hundred years.

Trees are cut down to fuel human consumer's needs.  Either by their wood products, or by their absence, which opens land to grow crops to feed the expanding amount of mouths.

Greenpeace are jumping about and pointing out the damage without looking at what is really causing it.


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## dbeyat45 (Oct 6, 2013)

> They are exchanging food for alliance and obedience.


Well, that's never worked - long term - in the past ....


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## Warrigal (Oct 6, 2013)

It was nuclear bombs, not nuclear technology that the French were testing and they didn't sink the Rainbow Warrior over fission generated power.

You seem to be more up to date with Greenpeace's current agenda than I am.
I haven't heard anything much about them in recent years.
Or are you just assuming things ? Again.


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## terra (Oct 7, 2013)

Let's not forget that "people power" or sometimes  known as "greenies", can actually make a difference.

The protesters on the Franklin River in Tasmania, Australia, stopped the construction of a proposed dam that would have destroyed the river as we know it.

"The *Franklin Dam* or *Gordon-below-Franklin Dam* project was a proposed dam on the Gordon River in Tasmania, Australia, that was never constructed. The movement that eventually led to the project's cancellation became one of most significant environmental campaigns in Australian history.
The dam was proposed for the purpose of generating hydroelectricity. The resulting new electricity generation capacity would have been 180MW.[SUP][1][/SUP] This would have subsequently impacted upon the environmentally sensitive Franklin River, which joins the Gordon nearby. During the campaign against the dam, both areas were World Heritage listed.
The campaign that followed led to the consolidation of the small green movement that had been born out of the non-violent protest campaign against the building of three dams on Lake Pedder in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Over the five years between the announcement of the dam proposal in 1978 and the axing of the plans in 1983, there was vigorous debate between the pro- and anti-dam lobbies, with large protests from both sides.
In December 1982, the dam site was occupied by protesters, leading to widespread arrests and greater publicity. The dispute became a federal issue the following March, when a campaign in the national print media, assisted by the pictures of photographer Peter Dombrovskis, helped bring down the government of Malcolm Fraser at the 1983 election. The new government, under Bob Hawke, had promised to stop the dam from being built. A legal battle between the federal government and Tasmanian state government followed, resulting in a landmark High Court ruling in the federal government's favour."

SOURCE:    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Dam_controversy


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## Diwundrin (Oct 7, 2013)

> Or are you just assuming things ? Again.



Who me Warri?  Assuming of course.

  If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then that's good enough  to suspect that it's cooked in Peking.

You know me, I don't take anything I'm told to believe at face value, hunting motives is my hobby and the motives behind what Greenies are  doing don't make sense above being a performance at the donation money level, so either I'm missing the point or they are.

They may well have started out to draw attention to a looming disaster, and with that I'm okay, it's when it started being politically targeted that my alarm bells rang.  It was taken over, long ago, by those with other than the original agenda in mind.  It's become yet another tool in socio-engineering us to accept any bullshit we hear as long as it's in the name of a good cause.  

As I'm trying to point out, there are too many people to make this planet Utopian.  No amount of protesting will ever accomplish that.  It never was Utopia! 

 This planet has been trying to kill us off for millions of years.  We've survived it by technological means.  Those means have repercussions, like pollution and overuse of natural resources.  We've survived it too well. We're now at the point of being unable to survive without that technology.  

Ask yourself this.    Are Greenpeace and for that matter all of us, intent on 'saving the planet'? Or are we really trying to   save humanity?  Because realistically the best thing we could do for this planet and for all other lifeforms on it would be to quietly vanish!

So just how dedicated are you to 'saving the planet?'

 Aren't we really trying to clean the joint up to make it more liveable for us?  To ensure our own survival into the future?  
Let's not kid ourselves that we give a toss beyond preserving our lifestyles.  That's what this is all about.  But we are missing the glaringly obvious that there are simply too many of us!


To get back to my initial point....   The Greenies insistence on depriving people of the energy that supports their existence (i.e. fossil fuels) immediately,  with no viable alternative is at best stupid and at worst malevolent.

Because painting signs and harassing boats is just pointing at the  problem. All this recycling and Pollyanna protesting is just putting a  bandaid on a gut shot.

Or, just to make my though processes even more confusing...  perhaps the collapse of humanity into the Mad Max scenario by way of 'stopping' fossil fuel use will accomplish that necessary decrease  in population? The hard way.   Could that be their ultimate agenda after all? 

Gets silly doesn't it?  Pick your conspiracy and chuck it in.  The more complications and red herrings the better.  I love thinking about the intricacies of this stuff.

At our age double thinking issues that seem obvious is the best fun we can have with our eyes shut.




Tezza, how much time do you spend on the Franklin??


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## SifuPhil (Oct 7, 2013)

Diwundrin said:


> Nuclear technology was initiated by scientists who saw that fossil fuels  wouldn't be enough, and a more efficient energy source would be  necessary.
> 
> Bombs weren't their objective, they were just the product of  human nature's propensity to find the worst possible use for the best  inventions.  Bows and arrows sufficed when wars were tribal.  Nuclear bombs, and the funding to have researched building and delivering them would have been impossible and unnecessary without the growth in population in the last few hundred years.



I think you have your timeline backwards.

- The neutron itself was only discovered in 1932.
- The Curies discovered radioactivity in 1934.
- Nuclear fission was confirmed in 1939.
- Chicago Pile - 1, the first nuclear reactor, achieved criticality in December 1942 and was used as part of the Manhattan Project.
- Electricity was generated for the first time by a reactor in 1952 - *10 years* after the first weaponized use.

Bombs were most assuredly their first objective.

Oh, and a by-the-way - after the uranium runs out in less than 100 years as has been calculated, what then? You've built a world based upon yet another limited resource. Why not invest in solar, geo-thermal, tidal and other unlimited resources?


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## Warrigal (Oct 7, 2013)

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.


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## Diwundrin (Oct 7, 2013)

I get a lot of stuff backwards Phil, that's why you and Warri are needed. 


I'm too lazy to study anything deeply, just use tidbits of info to see if they fit patterns.  If I get it wrong, fine, I'll change the 'theory'.  
I see the world as tiny pieces all building a bigger picture and when some don't fit I start to wonder why.  Just a hobby.

 I just seem to remember that scientists were aghast when they found out that nuclear energy research was being steered towards weaponry rather than power generation, so I won't argue that you're right that the bomb came before the power plants.  
But I don't believe they were the original intention of the scientists' initial research into nuclear energy potential.  That intention, as I remember reading of it, was the same as 'green' technology scientists are researching today. A viable alternative for increasing power demand into the future, with the knowledge that fossil fuels were finite. 

I'm not anti green technology per se.  Just green technology that is no better for reducing the 'emissions' in their production than what they are replacing is emitting.  I won't settle for pie in the sky, look good,  massively profitable to their manufacturers only,  white elephants.

I'll let DB carry the technicalities and figures, that's his area of expertise, but half of the country covered in windmills and mirrors would still produce only a fraction of the power that a couple of nuclear power plants could put out.  

They are a step on a long journey toward renewable power sources.  That 100 years of uranium should give us enough time to perfect green technology.  If not then we are even sillier  than we look and deserve to drown in our own garbage.  But we need time to replace what works now.  The world cannot be sustained without fossil fuels overnight. The Greens/Greenpeace demands of instant cessation of fossil fuel use is insanity.

Nuclear energy is a stop gap measure that relieves at least part of the pollution problem and 'saves' the planet from strip coal mining and maybe a few of those oil wells in inappropriate places that Greenpeace is in trouble over now. 
 That they've scared everyone so much that nuclear power has become an almost impossible alternative is why we have so much pollution from coal. 

We should have started building nuke plants years ago, as soon as the new better, safer, design technology was available but politicians were too afraid of the deadbeat banner wavers and the scared voters to start them.  
 The greatest percentage of the last decade of fossil fuel 'emissions' in this country, OZ, can be laid fair in the lap of the Greenie scare campaigns.  They are hoist by their petard.  I say again, no free lunches, even for Greenies.


Warri, you won't find as much as a potato peeling around my yard. You won't find an unwashed can in my recycle bin. We never left a picnic site showing sign that we'd been there.  We never kept undersized fish except poddy mullet for bait, and even that is legal. 
My family were both miners and farmers.  The mining part of their lives they had no control over, but as most farmers are, they were environmentalists.  They had to be to keep the farms sustainable.  Nothing was wasted, no tree was cut that didn't need to be, no creek was polluted because that was the most precious asset of the farm.  We were and are not planet trashers,  just realists. 
But we picked wildflowers, and the boys back in the 30s collected birds eggs.  But never more than one egg from a nest.  The eldest of them enforced that rule on them, he must have been a forerunner of the Greenies without even realizing it.  I remember his collection from when I was very young and he had only one egg of each species.  

 I've lost count of the spiders I've swept out rather than step on and of the lizards I've saved from the over enthusiastic dog.  
Just because I don't approve of the Green movement's motives doesn't mean I don't respect life and love nature. 
 It doesn't mean I approve of massive mining, just that is a necessary evil.
Nor does it mean that I want to see the planet trashed.  
It just means that I realise that we have to sacrifice some Utopian fantasies for the real immediate needs of supporting the society we've built.  And that the Greens are not the answer, their ideas are fantasies of what should be, not what realistically *can* be. 
Nor are they looking at the real underlying causes of why the planet's being trashed.

Why too many chemicals being used?  Why so much and many pollutants? Why so few trees, and whales? Because too much food and infrastructure is having to be produced for the planet to cope with,  for too many people needing it.

btw: one of those 'kinder' replacements for DDT is what's killing the bees.  no free lunches.


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## Warrigal (Oct 7, 2013)

> We should have started building nuke plants years ago, as soon as the new better, safer, design technology was available but politicians were too afraid of the deadbeat banner wavers and the scared voters to start them.
> The greatest percentage of the last decade of fossil fuel 'emissions' in this country, OZ, can be laid fair in the lap of the Greenie scare campaigns.  They are hoist by their petard.  I say again, no free lunches, even for Greenies.



How many years ago? Before Three Mile Island, or Chernobyl ? If we had we would have had the same unreliable plants.
After them ? Where? The NIMBY factor is a lot more powerful than any Greenie protestors. 

John Howard talked about something like 28 nuclear energy plants.
All would have had to be located near abundant supplies of water, which usually means a coastal area.
Nothing depreciates an ocean view like  a nearby nuclear power plant.
It would take a lot of political nerve to face the irate property owners.
A lot more nerve than any PM since Menzies.


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## Diwundrin (Oct 7, 2013)

No not that long ago, 2007 was the most recent example of short sighted, anti nuke re-election strategy.
Before that Howard, but then he didn't build much of anything.  
Before him, Keating, another anti nuke, Union puppet, government. 



You're getting a little more savvy of the situation I see, yes it's down to gutless politicians dodging the stampeding herd of voters spooked by the Greenies. 



But really only in the last 10 to 15 years have the better designs become available.  We could have had one or two half finished at least by now.


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## Warrigal (Oct 7, 2013)

Diwundrin said:


> You're getting a little more savvy of the situation I see, yes it's down to gutless politicians dodging the stampeding herd of voters spooked by the Greenies.



More savvy than you give me credit for. 

Who's spooking the property owners about wind turbines?
It's just pure NIMBYism at work IMO.

People also remember the British atomic testing programs in the desert 
and don't want anything even remotely atomic/nuclear close to their homes.
This, and the abundance of cheap coal in this country is why governments have avoided nuclear power generation.
As far as I know, not a single dollar has ever been allocated for a feasibility study.


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## Jackie22 (Oct 7, 2013)

Warrigal said:


> 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.


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## Diwundrin (Oct 7, 2013)

> Who's spooking the property owners about wind turbines?



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.


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## Warrigal (Oct 7, 2013)

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.


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## Diwundrin (Oct 7, 2013)

So you don't hear that 'thrumming' low droning noise?  Lucky you.


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## TICA (Oct 7, 2013)

Diwundrin said:


> 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.


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## SifuPhil (Oct 7, 2013)

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?  



*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 ...


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## Fern (Oct 7, 2013)

> 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.


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## Diwundrin (Oct 7, 2013)

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 )

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.

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.


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## Warrigal (Oct 7, 2013)

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.


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## Diwundrin (Oct 7, 2013)

Good, are you sure he was a Greenie?  Seems too sensible.   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.


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## SifuPhil (Oct 7, 2013)

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  ), 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. 

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.


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## Diwundrin (Oct 7, 2013)

> 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.


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## Warrigal (Oct 7, 2013)

> 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.


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## Diwundrin (Oct 7, 2013)

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.


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## Warrigal (Oct 7, 2013)

> 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. 

:sorry: but don't claim that you're not a stirrer too.


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## Diwundrin (Oct 7, 2013)

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.


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## Warrigal (Oct 7, 2013)

Fair 'nuff

:lol:


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## dbeyat45 (Oct 7, 2013)

> ..... but we do have a ducted water evaporation air cooling system.



And it's power source is ???  Do you and hubby pedal ?


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## Warrigal (Oct 8, 2013)

Would you believe wind generated?


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## Diwundrin (Oct 8, 2013)

You know I have to ask don't you. ?





Who's?


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## Warrigal (Oct 8, 2013)

:lofl:

You find that hard to believe?

Then would you believe mule power?


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## dbeyat45 (Oct 8, 2013)

Warrigal said:


> :lofl:
> 
> You find that hard to believe?
> 
> Then would you believe mule power?


Chapelle ??


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## Warrigal (Oct 8, 2013)

Well, would you believe 





a hamster on a treadmill?


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## Diwundrin (Oct 8, 2013)

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 !


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## TICA (Oct 8, 2013)

Diwundrin said:


> 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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