Fully Electric Car on Western Australian Roads Within 18 Months

Mitsubishi will start selling the i MiEV electric car in Australia within eighteen months. It is expected that the car will be popular with early adopters and individuals and businesses looking to enhance their green images. Ultimately, the car will be superceeded by cheaper electric cars with better range that will appeal to the broader public. This car is really a pathfinder for the electric cars of the future.

Check it out in video at the Mitsubishi Australia Website


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Company: Noble & Associates
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Posted On: 1/1/0001
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Earth Hour in Perth, Western Australia

ROCK stars, sports legends and even parliamentarians are joining forces to kick-start Earth Hour - the day when Perth turns out its lights for climate change.

Parliament House today confirmed it would shutdown power for an hour as the government commits to Earth Hour .

If organisers get their way, not a bulb will be burning for 60 minutes on Saturday, March 29, at 8pm to raise awareness on the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions.

Adding their names to the cause are WA identities actor Hugh Jackman , Eagle Brent Staker and gymnast Allana Slater.

Rock bands and music icons Silverchair, Jimmy Barnes, Rolf Harris, Missy Higgins, Kate Cebrano, Natalie Imbruglia, Pete Murray, the Veronicas, Hanson, Katie Noonan, Ben Lee, Tex Perkins, Vanessa Amorosi and Nelly Furtado have also pledged to turn out their lights. Read on

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Western Australia Ideal for Nuclear Waste

John de Laeter, a Curtin University professor of Geology has said that Western Australia has the perfect stable geological formations necessary for storing nuclear waste. He's also suggested that we have some world leading technologies & mining practices that should allow us to develop and deploy 100% safe storage solutions for the waste.

WA's 2008 Scientist of the Year, Jorg Imberger has suggested that WA can make millions by acting as a nuclear waste disposal dump for the rest of the world.

 


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Company: Noble & Associates
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Posted On: 1/1/0001
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Wanneroo Megapolis Raceway

The warm dry air that greets me as I step out of the Perth Airport terminal is quite different to the wet & cold Tokyo that I'd just left behind. Ahead of me lay a 5-day holiday at the Wanneroo Megapolis Raceway, widely regarded as a 'must do' lifetime experience for every motor head on the planet. I'm buzzing with excitement as I climb onto the electric Toyota minibus bound for my Wanneroo hotel.   

The hotel staff are friendly and I'm amazed that I'm actually greeted in 'Japanese', but then I see that a good deal of the hotel guests are fellow countrymen.... speed addicts like myself. I don't waste any time in checking in before I'm off to look for a hire car. The hotel bus leaves every hour for the Megapolis Motor Complex, which is where I'll select a hire car. I'm looking for a 'variety experience' so I'll only hire the car for 24 hours; after all swapping out to a new machine every day is what this is all about for me.   

 I know enough about cars to be able to tell that the sales assistant knows what he is talking about; he suggests the newish 2010 GTR. As a 'first timer' I'm obliged to undergo a high-speed driver-training course before I can venture onto the core road down to the Wanneroo Megapolis Raceway so I set out on the well-marked spectator route. Unbelievably, the core road is accessible from just out of the town centre and runs next to the spectator route, which I use to get to the training centre out at the Wanneroo Megapolis Raceway. I've been made aware of how important it is to keep to the prescribed speed limits as I leave the hire shop and I will myself to treat the throttle gently.     

The core route is separated from the spectator route by wide, deep sand run offs and high barrier rails, supposedly recognised as a world first in the design of high speed public motorways.   

With it starting to get dark, the first of the high output halogen street lights light up, I flick my headlights on and its as bright as day as I hear the roar of a high output motor coming out of the distance. Lights grow rapidly bigger and I see the sleek red Ferrari coming over the horizon on the core road at what looks to be Mach1. The core road must be running "Plus 300"; I check this by calling out to my personal digital assistant who confirms what I'm thinking. All the Wanneroo Megapolis Raceway time schedules are easily accessible through the net, as are live video feeds and all other manner of electronic information regarding the venue and all the ancillary service providers who have set-up business in the warm commercial glow of this massive race complex that spans thirty square kilometres.  

My high-speed driver-training course is intensive and covers practical and theoretical knowledge necessary for driving at high speed in the designated zones of the Megapolis Raceway. Armed with an electronic Plus 200 licence, I head back to my car and query my digital assistant as to when the core road will be back to running plus200, the pleasant voice of my digital assistant answers that I have 40 minutes to wait and suggests that I grab a bite to eat at one of the many cafes that have set-up business at the raceway. From the cafe I've got a perfect view of the three burnout & drift pits. In the burnout pit, the first of the city kids have arrived after work and are relieving some frustration with nice doughnuts that raises plumes of white smoke. Wanneroo Sporting Car Club have managed to keep access prices to the burnout pits low enough that youngsters generally choose the safe environs of the burnout pits rather than their neighbourhood streets.   

After a pleasant feed of Sushi, I head out to my car and have my personal digital assistant load credit to my Plus 200 access licence. The Wanneroo Megapolis Raceway recognises the association between my car RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Device), my International drivers licence & my plus 200 licence and the boom gate at the access point rises silently, allowing me access to the drive of a lifetime. I push hard on the pedal and feel the surge of acceleration as I enter the core route. The first section is all curved and cambered blacktop. With well-disciplined, educated drivers, the line of plus200 cars flows smoothly, following the section maximum speed signs. Slower cars keep left and I quickly take the GTR up to the section max, finding the speed and curves exhilarating. Suddenly, I'm onto the long straight, now recognised as the longest straight section of racetrack in the world. I promise myself that I'll attempt to get the plus300 licence while I'm here and then hire the classic Diablo. The Lamborghini Diablo will make a meal of this section of road and I can imagine the spine tingling roar of its' engine at those speeds. After a full lap of the fifteen-kilometre road, I ease off the core route onto the spectator road, close to Wanneroo. I'm tired now after an international flight and the training course and I need an early night so I head back to the hotel. The following day is a Saturday and the core route will only be open until 10.00am for access up to and into the Wanneroo Megapolis Raceway after which it will be accessible only by the race cars running in the Australasian 24 hour Le Mans Endurance race.


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Company: Noble & Associates
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Posted On: 1/1/0001
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100 Months to Prepare Western Australia for Surviving Unprecedented Climate Change

 

The authors of the Copenhagen Report say that that within "the very real timeframe of 100 months" the world will reach the point where the risk of "runaway" climate change became unacceptably high. By all accounts, the probability of people & governments having the fortitude to make the necessary adaptations to our lifestyles is vanishingly small. For this reason, climate change survival strategies need to be implemented at regional levels.

Western Australia should take this timeframe as a period over which to build the necessary infrastructure to survive the expected climate changes.

 

 


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Company: Noble & Associates
Phone: 61894007400
Posted On: 1/1/0001
Contact via email: andrew@nobleaccounting.com.au
Categories: Climate Change
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Climate change already shaping society

Human society is already, in small but significant ways, being shaped by global warming. So said a climatologist at the climate change congress in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Thursday.

Jean Palutikof of the University of East Anglia, UK, pointed to numerous studies warning that climate change is going to deeply transform our society, by increasing the death rate, for example, or changing the way we grow food. If you look in the right places, says Palutikof, it is already possible to see our behaviour changing.

Models and observations tell us which parts of the planet are most likely to feel the heat of climate change – so these "hotspots" are a good place to start looking for such changes. Palutikof focused on two locations: the maize fields of the US Midwest, and south-east Australia. Read on


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Low Lying Areas of Western Australia to be Under Water by 2100

THE global sea level is rising faster than predicted, scientists warned yesterday.

Instead of a rise of between 18 and 59 centimetres by 2100, as forecast in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, seas could rise up to a metre or more.

The warning came from international experts attending a three-day conference in Copenhagen on climate research, called to underpin the world's response to climate change.

Speaking from the meeting, CSIRO scientist John Church, a Hobart-based oceans and climate change expert, told The Australian: "It's important to clearly understand sea level rise when deciding on our response to climate change." Read on

 


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Synergy Energy Electricity Prices on the Increase

For residential customers in Western Australia, buying power from Synergy is going to cost a lot more very soon -

A1 Tariff plan (most residential customers) currently $0.1394/KWhr, then in April $0.1532/KWhr and finally in July $0.1761/KWhr. A massive 26.32% increase in the space of a few months.

To give an idea of the new cost -

A 100Watt light bulb left on for a year -

.1KWx365daysx24hrsx$0.1761=$154

Use this online energy convertor tool

The cost benefit of solar power will soon start to look very attractive.

 


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The Economist slams “The illusion of clean coal”

In two must-read articles, the uber-sober Economist magazine slams “clean coal” — aka carbon capture and storage (CCS), or carbon sequestration — as an “illusion,” and an expensive and potentially dangerous one at that.

In an editorial, the Economist points out:

  • Tonne for tonne, CCS looks like an expensive way of cutting carbon. The cost of it may fall, but probably not by much, given the familiarity of the technologies it uses.
  • CCS is not just a potential waste of money. It might also create a false sense of security about climate change, while depriving potentially cheaper methods of cutting emissions of cash and attention–all for the sake of placating the coal lobby.

This is seriously bad news for Western Australia, as we have huge reserves of coal.


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Smart Grid prepares to Enter the Home

Attaching appliances to a power socket via a smart plug containing sensors and a ZigBee transceiver allows information about the appliances’ power consumption to be beamed automatically to a broadband router within the home, and thence to a web server located elsewhere. Consumers can interrogate this server from a PC or iPhone to see not only the consumption pattern of various appliances attached to smart plugs around the home, but also to send instructions back to switch them on or off.

“People make 10-20% savings when they get this kind of information,” says Adrian Tuck, Tendril’s chief executive. “And remember every kilowatt saved in the home saves three at the generating station.”

If half the households in America cut their power consumption by just 10%, it would be like taking 8m cars off the road. Or doubling the amount of energy produced from renewable sources, such as expensive, roof-top solar panels. Read the whole article


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