Fracking finance

Coal seam gas (CSG) is an unconventional gas source that often requires highly invasive extraction methods, including horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking). While CSG has made up a small part of Australia’s gas supply mix since the late 90s, production has increased drastically in the past few years, and with it the threat of many more CSG projects going ahead in the near future.   At the end of 2013, Queensland was home to approximately 5,500 CSG producing wells, however this number is projected to grow to over 14,000 by the end of 2020. Similarly, NSW CSG production is expected to increase dramatically if two major proposed projects go ahead. AGL’s Gloucester gas project is expected to produce up to 30 petajoules (PJ) per annum over its 30-year lifespan, and Santos’ Narrabri project up to 73PJ per annum over 25 years. Together, these two NSW projects’ annual production would amount to around 40% of the total CSG produced in Queensland during the 2013-14 financial year.   The massive increase in CSG production is largely due to the development of three liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities on Curtis Island in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area near Gladstone, Queensland, which are to be supplied with gas from unconventional sources in eastern Australia

Fueling the fire

Since the global financial crisis, tens of billions of dollars have been loaned to the Australian fossil fuel industry. Many of these projects have been responsible for horrific environmental damage, including the destruction of prime agricultural land and nature reserves, contamination of aquifers, declining air quality and the industrialisation of iconic sites including the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.   Fossil fuels are also the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. Fossil fuels make up over 85% of global energy consumption, producing more than 30 Gt CO2 (billion tonnes of carbon dioxide) each year. The increasing concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere is causing global warming, which is already delivering dangerous impacts that are set to become catastrophic without an urgent reduction in emissions.   Funding decisions made by banks to support fossil fuel projects have massive impacts on our climate, environment, health, communities and economy. It is incumbent on these institutions to withdraw their support for the destructive and dangerous activities of the fossil fuel industry

Financing reef destruction

The “big four” Australian banks—ANZ, Commonwealth, NAB and Westpac—have played an integral role, together lending almost $4 billion to coal and gas projects in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area since 2008.   Deals are becoming larger and more complex. While the role of Australian banks remains critical, projects now require a host of international lenders participating in a deal and support from government-backed institutions.   Australian and overseas banks alike are contravening principles and initiatives that promote environmentally responsible investment. Several major new fossil fuel export projects are seeking to meet investment deadlines in 2013.   Australians have a brief window of opportunity to intervene and prevent these projects securing the investment required to proceed

System measures unidirectional forces, excludes extraneous forces

System measures unidirectional force without interference from other directional forces. The measuring apparatus is mounted so that it only moves vertically and is constrained from horizontal and rotational movement. This system can be used to accurately measure small forces in one direction, or as an analytic balance

Confining forces

We discuss the forces on the internal constituents of the hadrons based on the bag model. The ground state of the hadrons forms a color singlet so that the effects of the colored internal states are neutralized. From the breaking of the dilatation and conformal symmetries under the strong interactions the corresponding currents are not conserved. These currents give rise to the forces changing the motion of the internal particles which causes confinement.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

Static intervortex forces

A point particle approximation to the classical dynamics of well separated vortices of the abelian Higgs model is developed. A static vortex is asymptotically identical to a solution of the linearized field theory (a Klein-Gordon/Proca theory) in the presence of a singular point source at the vortex centre. It is shown that this source is a composite scalar monopole and magnetic dipole, and the respective charges are determined numerically for various values of the coupling constant. The interaction potential of two well separated vortices is computed by calculating the interaction Lagrangian of two such point sources in the linear theory. The potential is used to model type II vortex scattering.Comment: Much shorter (10 pages) published version, new titl

Forces and Causation

This paper defends the view that Newtonian forces are real symmetrical and non-causal relations. In the first part, I argue that Newtonian forces are real; in the second part, that they are relations; in the third part, that they are symmetrical relations; in the fourth part, that they are not causal relations, (but causal relata) by which I mean that they are not species of causation. The overall picture is anti-humean to the extent that it defends the existence of forces, irreducible to spatio-temporal relations, but is still compatible with humean approaches to causation (and others) since it denies that forces are species of causation