Reading Time: 6 mins1st June 2024
Author: Robert Watson

A WIN FOR US ALL - EXCEPT GLENCORE
The climate and Australia had a win this week. A proposal by the Glencore mining group to store liquified carbon dioxide (CO2) derived from a planned, but unproven, carbon capture process into subsurface sandstone beneath the Great Artesian Basin was rejected by the Queensland Government.

Reading Time: 11 mins7th May 2024
Author: Robert Watson

GLENCORE AND THE GREAT ARTESIAN BASIN
Despite unified and diverse opposition, Glencore, one of the world's largest miners is proposing to capture carbon dioxide from it's Moonie gas field, liquifying the waste and transporting it almost 200km to deposit in the largest artesian water body in the world, the Great Artesian Basin covering 22% of the Australian continent.

Reading Time: 20 mins26th January 2024
Author: Robert Watson

CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE - an expensive exercise in greenwashing
The effects of climate change and global warming are now being felt world wide. Respectable science is unanimous in acknowledging climate change, recognising that anthropogenic climate change – that caused by human impact – has quickly escalated the natural climate cycles that have occurred throughout Earth’s history.

COP28 all but failed to reach it's stated goals, settling for the lowest common denominator to pacify the growing fossil fuel lobby attending COP. The same board rooms of fossil fuel miners around the world have managed to elicit strong support for the carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology as a means of reducing CO₂. CCS has not been successfully utilised as a major carbon reduction technology anywhere in the world despite billions of dollars being spent ...

Reading Time: 9 mins23rd September 2022
Author: Robert Watson

CLIMATE - A NEW GOVERNMENT, THE MINERS & RENEWABLES
A big factor helping the Labor Party win government in May last year was their advocacy for improved policies to help relieve global warming and climate change in general. There were of course other reasons people voted for a change, including the establishment of an effective federal integrity commission, gender wage equality, fairer wages for low-paid workers, and, because they weren’t the Morrison government!

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has already served more than 10% of the electoral term, and from a rapid start, things might already be starting to ‘slow down’. There is more ‘political speak’ lately and less direct answers to difficult questions.

Reading Time: 8 mins21st February 2022
Author: Robert Watson

THE POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
The expense and difficulty in reaching a sustainable level of global temperature before 2050 was made more difficult by the inaction and neglect of the Morrison government and particularly the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Angus Taylor.

At the same time many industries were independently moving away from fossil fuel generated power Morrison, Taylor, Joyce, Pitt and many other conservative politicians were encouraging and promoting fossil fuel companies while almost completely ignoring renewables and the necessary infrastructure for transition ...

Reading Time: 8 mins30th October 2021
Author: Robert Watson

CARBON CAPTURE & STORAGE – FICTION OR FACT?
The anthropocentric process of carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been tried and tested for over 30 years. Until now, there has never been a CCS project that has sequestered any substantial amount of carbon.

The fossil fuel industry speaks of projected figures approaching 90% sequestration, when the best result is about 30% and the average only 12% of sequestered carbon, leaving 88% escaping to the atmosphere. Is CCS viable or an expensive greenwashing exercise?