Sydney's second airport

My personal opinion is that we should hold off on a second airport. My reasons:
The price of oil, despite its current low, is set to rise and rise as oil becomes more and more scarce.

Sydney airport is operating at 84% capacity and is as I understand it requiring an extra 2% per year at the current rate of city growth/ travel demand. This gives another 8 years at the current growth rate before the airport reaches total capacity.

As far as the best studies note, we are either at peak oil, or have just passed peak oil. Very soon we will see production drop. The last time oil production dropped whilst demand was maintained, oil went up 400% (the decrease in production was only 5%).

At best case I would say that oil production will be forced to drop by at least 5% by 2015. The increased demand from developing nations for oil may quicken this figure. This means that we will see a massive increase in the price of jet fuel before we see Sydney airport reach 100% capacity.

This increase in jet fuel could well more than double the price of air travel, by simple supply and demand forcing travellers to limit overseas jet travel.

Hence, we wont need a second airport, because in the future we simply wont be travelling as much.

We all have visions of the future where we all zip around in jet cars but at this stage it simply isn't going to happen. At the moment the average person consumes the same amount of the worlds resources as a 35 tonne elephant would. The world simply cannot meet the energy needs of 6 billion 35 tonne elephants.

I know a lot of people will think that technology will save us. However, there simply is no technology on the horizon or otherwise that can replace the energy density/weight of jet fuel. Batteries in planes won't get off the ground, and methanol based fuels etc are made by felling the last of the worlds rainforests to grow palm oil. It simply wont work.

We better get good at cycling, because that my friends is our future....

Australia's erosion issue

Tonight: Beachside residents call for federal assistance in order to maintain their properties that are eroding into the sea.
So, basically the deal is, I live in the inner west of Sydney, and can't afford a beachside property, and now these people want to use federal funds to save theirs from falling into the sea? Have they heard of insurance? Did they ever think that when they bought the property that something like this could happen? Of course they did. But they still want bailing out.
No way am I going to pay tax only to have it go to prop up someones multi million dollar beachside place. Sure, I'd love to surf every day and live near the beach. But I don't expect someone else to pay for it.
Your property is falling into the ocean? Learn to swim.

The Great Biofuel Lie

I saw an orange handle for the biofuel pump (10% ethanol) today, and it reminded me of the biofuel issues:
A lot of people don't realise, that the ethanol is actually made from palm oil. Where does palm oil come from? Well most of it comes from Malaysia and Indonesia. The make it by first cutting down pristine tropical rainforest, home to some of the most diverse and exotic species in the world such as orang-utans, pygmy elephants, cats, bird eating spiders... once the forest is cleared, they plant palm oil trees.
Ironically once you add the carbon cost of clearing the original rainforest, then the carbon costs involved in extracting the palm oil and then synthesis into ethanol, the total carbon released by the ethanol is actually around three times that of the equivalent carbon cost for extracting,refining and burning the petroleum.
Hence, although it is called Biofuel, it actually means that you are releasing three times more carbon than had you filled up with just petrol, and you are destroying non-renewable rainforest.

The reason why the pump is orange? Thats the color of the orang-utans they had to kill to make the bio fuel, silly.