The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread

[Thryleon]

The advantage of Tesla is that its all American manufactured and owned. 

The rest are all reliant on Chinese manufacturing. 

[Baggers]

I haven’t driven an electric car.
I sat in an acquaintances Tesla last week and made “broom broom” noises.
It seemed pretty well built, it’s the second Tesla the guy has had, this one was the model Y (I think) it was a sort of suv looking one.
He’s got solar on his roof for recharging, loves the car.
It’s 12 months old with 14k km on it, still smells new.
I was surprised at how small the front boot was though.
If I had solar I’d look at buying one until I remembered what a toerag Mr Musk is.
On balance I think he’s got a pretty good product.

The Missus' company is transitioning to EVs and one of the chieftains already has a Tesla and one of the features he loves is the quietness which makes talking on the dogger and conversations within the car so much better.

Transitioning, dramatic transitioning, from one technology to another is always a challenge with its fair share of difficulties and troubles along the way before the kinks are ironed out and the benefits become apparent. Horses to cars, farmland to industry (industrial revolution), landline to mobile phones and so on. Along the way we have humans who fear/resist change, are suspicious and cynical about change, then those who do a wait and see (probably me), those who are happy to experiment with change and those who love it. Horses for courses.

[northernblue]

I’m with you Baggers ??
I am not a petrolhead, in fact read that as “not a car enthusiast”.
I don’t understand why boofheads like Clarkson rail so hard against the evil EV.
They go like the clappers, so if you like performance it’s there.
It seems like it’s the lack of sound pollution they don’t like but won’t say out loud… ?
I’ve read in the car thread here how much some of you like your noise, to me it’s baffling.

[ElwoodBlues1]

The advantage of Tesla is that its all American manufactured and owned. 

The rest are all reliant on Chinese manufacturing. 

I thought our Teslas in Aus are made in China?, batteries are also now made by BYD because they do them cheaper......

[ElwoodBlues1]

GWM have recalled their ORA's....they tended to electrocute the owner when the charging cable was connected and then removed with the power on....not good for business?
https://gizmodo.com.au/2023/12/gwm-ora-r...-of-death/
You buy Chinese junk and you get what you pay for......Id be more keen on a hybrid of the japanese origin.

[Thryleon]

I thought our Teslas in Aus are made in China?, batteries are also now made by BYD because they do them cheaper......

Factories owned and operated by Tesla with cheap chinese labour.

Ultimately, they are ensuring that they don't go Chinese and thats approach.  Even the factories in China are American Owned.

[LP]

I thought our Teslas in Aus are made in China?, batteries are also now made by BYD because they do them cheaper......

Tesla subcontract a lot of the manufacture, their setup is very similar to Apple, but you won't hear any speak out about it because the legal penalties are horrendous and they have reputation of stomping on suppliers.

In some cases the subcontractors are owned and licensed by the country the factory is built in, whether it be making bodies, batteries or other components. Quite similar to the situation we had here with GM and the Fed funding.

As I understand it, when you say a company in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, etc., etc., is foreign owned, what that tends to mean it is a minority foreign ownership. To get a slot / license you have to have a majority shareholder who is indigenous. Just like Foxconn with Apple.

A lot of people have been calling for similar regulations here in Oz, so at least some of the profit stays where it was made!

Media sometimes confuse Owners / Board Member / Director with being an Executive Director, in Oz you need a locally based Director, but that Director is not necessarily a shareholder, they are just a well paid Executive with all the mandatory liabilities attached.

[LP]

My heart goes out to those in the flood affected areas, some have only just returned or are still yet to get back to homes affected by 2022 and they are getting whacked again.

I was chatting to a resident of one of the country towns expected to be hit again and he's furious, he told me the same group of people that protest against CO2 emissions and warn them about the effects of climate change also rolled up to actively protest against the building of a flood levy for their town after the 2011 floods, on environmental grounds, and many of the protestors now don't even live there but return to local debates from the city!

All the metro left greeny types achieve is to push marginal / regional groups towards the hard right, and it's not going to end well! If the people in regional cities abandon the land and it's supporting industries good luck to the greenies getting their vegan low carbon locally sourced mung beans, instead they'll be flown in via a United Airlines 767, from a bean farm in Sth America formerly known as the Amazon, and relabelled a Aussie Made because they are repackaged here by a China owned conglomerate that pay suburban dwellers insufficient wages to rent a house! In the interim the metro greenies go back to Prahran and sip an ethically sourced coffee, not a single sandbagging shovel to be found between the lot of them!

[DJC]

A couple of points about levees.

First of all, levees don't prevent flooding.  They constrain river flows and cause more severe flooding where there aren't levees.  The recent Maribyrnong River floods and the Flemington race track levee is a classic example of that.  The water has to go somewhere.

Secondly, the Mitchell Shire Mayor was on the wireless this morning and was asked why the Shire decided not to proceed with the construction of more levees.  She explained that the Shire's cost-benefit analysis showed that the cost of constructing more levees far outweighed any benefits they may provide in the foreseeable future.  That is, the decision was made on purely financial grounds and not because of the bleating of the "metro left greeny types".  I reckon that the Mitchell Shire ratepayers who don't live on a floodplain would be pretty happy with the Shire's decision.

The bottom line is that infrastructure on flood plains will be subject to inundation regardless of how many dams and levees are constructed.  If stuff has to be built on floodplains, it should be flood-resilient at worst.  Retrofitting buildings to make them flood-resilient makes a lot more sense than building more and more levees.

[LP]

There seems to be a growing global anti-dam movement at the moment, I can't help but remain sceptical because it seems to be in direct response to vastly improving options for hydroelectric power generation, and of course some of the opposing groups are linked to renewable alternatives. Human social / political behaviours nearly always exposes vested interests.

Just as there is a lot of gibberish spoken about nuclear, gas and geothermal, a lot of gibberish is being spoken about dams. Especially regarding methane generation and release. The dumbed down claims are that dams increase methane production as they age, but it's a bogus claim built on a number of assumptions about anaerobic build up of bacteria in dams. To meet the numbers in the report the dams have to be located in very specific regions and have stable stagnant water levels for decades, typically tropical and full. The two main studies cited refer to dams (Actually in the study case old open cut mines from the 80s) in Malaysia and Brazil, the water in one wasn't even considered drinkable.

Almost three decades ago there was a major study in dam emissions, in particular looking into mitigation of anaerobic build up. The study found the solution was so simple, control the depth of water withdrawal giving the outflow some natural variability across the dam depth and greater than 90% of emissions cease because there will never be an anaerobic build up in the first place!