Energy alternatives

A surprisingly subversive look at what the coming energy transformation will look like

hrynyshyn — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 10:18:23 +0000

A surprisingly subversive look at what the coming energy transformation will look like

The Conference Board of Canada, usually described as a business-friendly think tank, has come out with a report that is refreshingly honest, and even a bit subversive — especially if you pay extra attention to some sidebars, consider what the authors deliberately left out, and are at least a little familiar with the science of power consumption and generation.

The full report, which is behind a freewall — it is downloadable for the cost of supplying your contact information — concludes that converting Canada's economy to a carbon-free energy mix won't actually cost all that much. But what I find more interesting is that much of the report's details support the notion that even optimistic predictions are unnecessarily (small-c) conservative. This suggests the authors (Len Coad, Robyn Gibbard, Alicia Macdonald, and Matthew Stewart) are trying to serve two audiences: the captains of industry who are their patrons on the one hand, and the folks who will do the real heavy-lifting during the coming transition period on the other.

The report's main thrust is calculating the economic impact of impending carbon taxes, which are scheduled to come into effect next year. You don't need to worry about the precise numbers, which are all really not much more than barely educated guesses. The important part is even the more aggressive scenarios (like taxes rising to $200/tonne, several times even the highest of the carbon taxes now in effect) show that the country won't fall apart.

Overall, the economic impact of eliminating most fossil fuels from the power generation mix is significant—but not overwhelming. The total impact on GDP, at $7.2 billion, is comparable to the output of a relatively small Canadian industry.

So that's good news.

The even-better news is how much the authors of The Cost of a Cleaner Future: Examining the Economic Impacts of Reducing GHG Emission have managed to misrepresent about the likely future, either deliberately or disingenuously.

First, there is scant mention of the role of either energy efficiency or electrification on future power demand, even though both of these factors are critical to any useful understanding of what's to come. First, Moore's Law is pretty much still in effect and something similar continues to hold sway over how much energy we need to do most of what passes for work these days. Not to take into account expected declines in demand thanks to more efficient technology is bizarre to say the least.

Even more puzzling is the failure to address what happens when you switch from running your economy on fossil fuels to running on electricity. The bottom line is you lose a lot less energy to waste heat. Much effort has been made by others to anticipate this effect and the outcome of those calculations. As Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucci have demonstrated repeatedly, switching to an economy based on wind, water and solar will actually mean demand will fall, not rise, even when you take into account population and economic growth. The difference is actually about 30%. Some have taken issue with Jacobson's numbers, but even if he's missed something (which I doubt) and his estimates are off by a bit, the idea deserves at least some mention in a document that pretends to be running sophisticated model of future energy needs.

Instead we get lines like "To eliminate fossil fuels from the grid, over 20 gigawatts of installed generating capacity will need to be replaced." If Jacobson is right, we'll actually only need 14 GW. That's significant, and if you're a jurisdiction like Alberta or Saskatchewan, now relying on coal, oil and gas for 70-78% of your electricity, every gigawatt is going to count.

Coad et al. also seem to be stuck in old-school thinking when it comes to what generating electricity means from an industrial point of view. They write:

Acceptance of large-scale projects: Substantial investment in large-scale hydro, nuclear, wind, and transmission projects will be required in all parts of the country. Large-scale projects typically attract their share of controversy, and acceptance of these projects among environmentalists, Indigenous groups, and the public is necessary.

Yes, some large-scale projects will be built. Cities are hungry beasts. The controversial Site C hydro dam in northern B.C. will almost certainly overcome the opposition it now faces because there's just to much potential energy sitting there for it not to be used — mostly by Alberta, which will need something to replace all the coal it's now burning. But nuclear? Doubtful, unless we can come up with economical options for fancy new thorium reactors. The more problematic aspect of this vision is the idea that centralized electricity generation has a major role to play in the future. It probably does, but only to an extent. Decentralized, small-scale generation in the form of wind, solar, run-of-river hydro and geothermal are widely understood to be more likely candidates.

All of this means things will probably be even less disruptive, create even more jobs, and cost even less to the economy, than the report foresees. And what they foresee isn't that dark to begin with. There are hints that the authors know this. Sprinkled throughout are references and asides that cast doubt on the conventional thinking they ostensibly embrace. For example, there's a sidebar devoted to debunking (politely) the idea that closing the coal-fired power plants in Ontario is responsible for the recent hikes in electricity bills in the province. In reality, the causes are many and the situation is much more complicated than that. For one thing, "the province has ended up with far more generation capacity than it needs."

There's also a fair bit of speculation about the bigger picture, especially when the more dramatic scenarios are explored:

The fact that the GDP hit is so small relative to the lost investment in this pathway provides an interesting insight. It suggests that the investments being given up in this pathway were contributing relatively little to GDP in Canada, as most of the forgone investment would have been spent on imported goods and services.

...if we broaden the scope beyond just looking at the required investments and assess how behavioural and policy changes can impact the results, it is evident that deep emissions reductions are possible at a much smaller cost.

Indeed. Even the Conference Board of Canada is telling you to stop worrying so much about giving up fossil fuels. How about that?

hrynyshyn Thu, 09/07/2017 - 06:18

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Energy alternatives

fossil fuels

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The grid is smarter than you think

hrynyshyn — Thu, 24 Aug 2017 07:55:24 +0000

The grid is smarter than you think

The most charitable comment I can come up with for the just-released Department of Energy Staff Report to the Secretary on Electricity Markets and Reliability is the refusal of the authors to use what is surely a candidate for Most Overused Term of the Year: resilience. Not that resilience isn't important, but it's to their credit that the staffers responsible for telling Secretary Rick Perry sort-of what he wanted to hear understand that reliability is really what it's all about.

After all, if there's one thing that defenders of fossil fuels and nuclear power like to remind us more than anything else, it's that the sun only shines during the day and the wind only blows some of the time. It's a mantra meant to sear into our brains the idea that renewable electricity isn't reliable. And as much as the Staff Report tries to skirt the issue by eliminating the findings contained in a leaked earlier draft, it still manages to conclude that the nation's grid is more reliable now than ever:

Overall, at the end of 2016, the system had more dispatchable capacity capable of operating at high utilization rates than it did in 2002.

The New York Times put it this way:

The Energy Department report concedes that the nation’s electricity system remains reliable today, even with a sharp rise in intermittent wind and solar power, in part because natural gas generators and existing hydropower can easily fill any gaps in renewable generation.

Joe Romm has a good summary of how the authors "botched" their task of spinning the report in favor of fossil fuels, and how Perry manages to misrepresent the findings by recommending subsidies for coal and nuclear plants.

But none of this should come as a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to the evolution of grid management. The fact is that computational capacity to anticipate minute-by-minute power-load shifts has increased dramatically in recent years. Add to that relatively modest growth in demand and the move away from large, centralized sources of electricity in favor of smaller, distributed, local sources, and you have a grid that can easily handle whatever nature and humankind can throw at it. And this is all going to continue to be the case in the case in the future, only more so. Even during this week's total eclipse, the grid was easily able to accommodate the large drops in solar's contribution to the network by drawing on gas and hydro.

Technology has a way of creeping up on you if you're not paying attention. One day you're trying to unfold a road map, the next the car is driving itself across the state.

hrynyshyn Thu, 08/24/2017 - 03:55

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Energy alternatives

fossil fuels

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The "bridge" fuel that wasn't

hrynyshyn — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 07:50:44 +0000

The "bridge" fuel that wasn't

Among those who spend their working lives and/or spare time worrying about climate change, there are many subjects that still provoke heated debates, so to speak. Chief among them is the wisdom or folly of turning to natural gas as a "bridge" between the carbon-intensive oil- and coal-dominated present and the clean renewable future that we all know is coming sooner or later. The opponents just found their case a little bit stronger thanks to another controversial issue: nuclear power.

Natural gas is, as anyone with a basic grasp of the fundamentals of greenhouse gas forcings can tell you, only half as good at warming the atmosphere as coal. So replacing coal-fired plants with natural gas alternatives should get us half-way to cutting our emissions to zero. Right?

Well, not quite. Natural gas is almost entirely methane, which has 20 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over a century, and several times that in the near-term. And as all operations involving natural gas also involves some release of methane directly into the air, the effect of that methane has to be added to the calculations used to compare the emissions impact of each fuel.

Let's say for argument's sake an operator could get "fugitive" emissions of methane down to 1 or 2 percent, which is quite possible, though much lower than what is probably the industry norm these days. Consider also that gas-fired plants are more efficient than coal. So the best-case scenario is gas will cut the effective warming of gas by 30 to 40 percent. Whether that is sufficient given the amount of time we have left before triggering irrevocably serious climate change is also a matter of some debate. After all, we know we need to get to zero, so why pour scare resources into switching to one alternative only to spend even more in a decade or so to switch again?

But all this is only relevant when comparing gas with coal, which supplies only about 40% of the American electricity mix. What about nuclear power? Its carbon footprint is measurable, but tiny compared with coal. So if you replace a nuke with a gas-fired plant, you've increased your emissions budget from near-zero to 100% of whatever the non-nuclear alternative was.

Geoffrey Lean at the Telegraph asks "Is shale gas killing nuclear power?" Several nuclear power plants in the U.S. are being replaced by gas, undoing a significant portion of whatever minor advantage gas presents in the effort to reduce carbon emissions.

Add to this the complicating factors of the cooling aerosols associated with coal, and natural gas is starting to look more than a little problematic.

Yes, natural gas can provide real carbon-emissions reductions in some situations. It's relatively easy to install, the technology is well understood, and it's a fossil fuel, so the status quo doesn't feel so threatened. But the math suggests it isn't going to do the trick.

hrynyshyn Thu, 03/14/2013 - 03:50

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Consequences

Energy alternatives

Actually natural gas is better also because a new combined cycle plant is 50% more efficient at turning the energy in methane into electricity compared to coal (60%+ to at best 40% for coal). That is because a gas turbine has a higher combustion temp that the steam in an turbine in an external combustion coal plant, and Mr Carnot, says that higher top temps yields more efficiency in any mechanical process.
As to nuclear, the main issue is it takes to long to build and when you start you have no idea what power will cost or when the plant will be done, since an aweful lot of it is still custom building. A combined cycle plant is more standardized and takes a far shorter period to build, thus meaning better understood costs, and thus electric pricing.

Assume a de-regulated environment such as CA or TX has. You are an electric retailer and need more power to meet your customers demand, do you sign a contract for more power in 3 years at a fairly well constrained price, or in 10 years and a price that can vary widely? Going nuclear for these folks is a ticket to bankruptcy, thus in deregulated states no more nuclear will be build. A regulated state allows the utility to shove whatever costs it has onto the consumers of electricity. Thus the new plants are being built in areas where more traditional electric regulation still exists. Thus Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling with their emphasis on de-regulation killed off Nuclear in the US.

Fair points. Thanks for the numbers on the efficiency advantage of gas. And yes, nuclear does take too long. One could write volumes on the economic and practical problems with nuclear power. My point is simple that replacing a nuke with gas will lead to higher carbon emissions. -- jh

Now that wind and solar are approaching grid parity, and realistic energy storage and transmission technologies are becoming available, the world's economies need a strong price signal to release the grip of fossil fuel companies and their owned politicians.
Cautious optimism may be warranted, in that various blogs suggest that the current price of shale gas is held artificially low by an unsustainable influx of investor's money, and that in a couple of years this will run out, raising US gas and oil prices as the cost of solar becomes decisively cheaper.
Other analyses suggest that oil producing nations are keeping an increasing fraction of their production, leaving less for export, a situation that will again increase prices in importing nations.

Lyle, a solar power plant is infinity efficient in turning the energy in methane into power.

Oh, and you know all that whining about China building 1000 coal power stations? Remember your "Modern builds are more efficient" and remember to note when complaining about China about how many coal plants they are closing, m'kay?

" Mr Carnot, says that higher top temps yields more efficiency in any mechanical process."

Solar power turning photons at 6000K into energy.

Just saying.

“…the clean renewable future that we all know is coming sooner or later.” Erm, in what form, exactly?

Also, what do you mean by “clean”, bearing in mind that anything we do will have some negative impact upon the environment? What do you mean by “renewable”, bearing in mind that there is no such thing as perpetual motion?

Lyle presents a good argument; natural gas does seem to offer a viable solution for the foreseeable future, while nuclear keeps tantalising us, in much the same way as Tantalus was – nearly there, but never quite. However, the oil resources keep on growing; why give up on a proven winner?

In the form of renewables.

Duh.

Oh, and if you're now so worried about the environment, I would suggest you move to Africa and live off the land with minimal footprint.

Renewables… such as… wind turbines? Made from… well, lookee here, hydrocarbons! Oh, yes, and rare earth metals, the extraction of which is laying waste to square miles of land. But it is only in Mongolia and China, so no need to worry about that, then. When they break, they cannot be repaired and have to be discarded to a landfill, and replaced (perhaps that is what is meant by “renewable”?) – which handily keeps the jobs going… in China.

So, how reliable are wind turbines? Answer: not very. At their most productive, they are only about 30% efficient, however, their most frequent contribution is NIL. So, they cost more in energy to erect than they will ever return. Sounds wise to… well, you, for one, Wow. Duh.

Solar cells? Requiring rare earth metals, similar problems as above. I have a friend who asked about installation onto his house; cost: £15,000. How long would it take to return that investment? Probably never. Double duh.

Natural gas is a proven winner; it burns cleanly and efficiently, with minimal CO2 emissions, and there is rather a lot of it lying under our feet, almost begging to be released. So, what do we do? In the UK; nothing. We have centuries of inexpensive fuel under our feet, and we do nothing. Why? “Because it has not been tested…” or similar such excuses. But it has; the USA has been fracking shale for years, bringing fuel costs down 25% – that is £20 per month off an average UK home gas bill. Not forgetting the knock-on of cheaper gas also meaning cheaper electricity. Oooh, triple duh.

Of course, oil is about to run out. Experts have been predicting the demise of oil in about 30 years since, well, about 1860. So, about 150 years of “soon to run out”, yet we keep finding more: under Utah and Colorado, the Green River Formation holds at least as much oil as the entire world’s proven reserves; in the Black Sea, Romania and the Ukraine are quibbling over the territorial rights for another vast field; under the Aegean lies a field at least the size of the Saudi fields.

While I do agree that more education is needed for the preservation of species and environments, we do not need to worry about our energy reserves, or that its use will seriously affect the climate – remember, the CO2 levels are still rising, but the temperature has remained pretty steady for 16 years. Has it peaked or has it stalled? We can only wait and see. Need we be worried? No.

Renewables… such as… wind turbines? Made from… well, lookee here, hydrocarbons!

Well, I suppose this explains your lack of accuracy about renewables. Really. You think that the power source of wind power is the turbine?!?!?!?

ROFLMAO!

Answer: not very. At their most productive, they are only about 30% efficient

Get in the 21st Century, boy. 40% and growing. Meanwhile nuclear, for example, manages only about 60% efficiency.

Natural gas is a proven winner;

You misspelt "fossil fuel" and "non-renewable".

with minimal CO2 emissions

You mean "lots of CO2 emissions".

and there is rather a lot of it lying under our feet

So much, that is, until they start drilling for it, then the reserves drop 80%...

almost begging to be released

By which you mean "Needs forcing out of the rock with toxic chemicals and huge amounts of water". And you already whine and whinge about hosepipe bans...

We have centuries of inexpensive fuel under our feet

We have billions of years of inexpensive fuel running over our coastlines.

Experts have been predicting the demise of oil in about 30 years since, well, about 1860.

Only 100 years out of date!

ROFLMAO!!!

And the USA reached peak oil in the 1970's. As an example. We reached peak oil since some time in the 2000's worldwide. There's a reason why Saudi Arabia don't let anyone see their reports on their reserves.

remember, the CO2 levels are still rising, but the temperature has remained pretty steady for 16 years

Entirely and utterly false.

For example, from 2011-2012, the temperature trend was 0.6C per decade.

On the awards front, Alexander McQueen was named British Designer of the Year four times, a Most Excellent Commander of the British Empire (CBE for short) from the Queen and received a nod as GQ Menswear Designer of the Year for 2007.

The actress, who died in March at the age of 79, had seven husbands, countless admirers, and a passion for jewellery.

Republicans with cooler heads

hrynyshyn — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 07:06:50 +0000

Republicans with cooler heads

Barring a miraculous revival of the fortunes of Jon Huntsman, Republicans this year will, for the first time, elect a presidential nominee who does not believe that humans are responsible for global warming. How did things get this bad?

The Climate Desk team found a few of the last Republicans among the party's leadership who break with this new orthodoxy and spliced their heresies together in this video.

One can also dredge up a few brave souls who are trying to make difference at the GOP's grassroots, groups like Republicans for Environmental Responsibility. This particular collection of oddballs supports want:

Clean air and water

Food free from harmful chemicals

Clean, efficient businesses & industries

A high quality of life in our cities & rural communities

Strong, results-oriented enforcement of environmental laws

Economic development for communities without the ravages of sprawl

High priority for funding of natural resource stewardship & environmental protection

Protection for posterity of our national parks, forests, wildlife refuges, wild lands & waters

Effective legal protection for threatened & endangered plants & animals in their native habitats

There is some evidence that such beliefs aren't unusual among average Republicans. The latest Yale survey on the subject found that

90 percent of Americans say developing sources of clean energy should be a very high (30%), high (35%), or medium (25%) priority for the president and Congress, including 82 percent of registered Republicans, 91 percent of Independents, and 97 percent of Democrats.

Although from the same poll we learn that only 44 percent of registered Republicans say global warming should be a very high priority, it's still clear that opposition to reasonable, science-based policy is far from a fringe position in the GOP community at large.

The REP website says its members "support and vote for Republican elected officials and candidates who share these values and concerns." The near total absence of GOP candidate and opinion leaders who share those values and concerns should pose a problem for Republicans. At least among those who have made respect for science a higher priority than a candidate's position on gay marriage or abortion. But that doesn't appear to be the case. One it tempted to conclude that Republicans are just plain stupid.

But as Naomi Klein convincingly argues, the think tankers, pundits, and party leaders who carved out an anti-intellectual campaign plank on climate change didn't do so because they're too stupid to understand the implications of anthropogenic global warming. On the contrary, they did it because they understand all too well what forestalling dangerous changes to the planet's climate will require. And in that threat to unbridled capitalism they saw an an opportunity to galvanize an electorate for whom the free market is sacred.

Meanwhile, the polls tell us that, despite their reluctance to embrace the science behind climate change change, a significant number of Republican voters do understand the need to make the switch to clean, renewable power. They're not stupid, either.

And yet here we are facing an election in which it is virtually guaranteed that the nominee of one of the two major parties will deny the reality of the most serious public policy challenge of our time. So what GOP voters say they care about hasn't found a translation vector for the presidential nomination system.

A lot of teeth are gnashing over this incongruity. But I don't see it as all that unusual. The vast majority of Americans support health care insurance reform and a majority even want to see a public insurance option, but what emerged from Congress was more a sop to establishment private insurance corporations than anything else. It practically guarantees a collapse of the system within a decade or two as costs continue to spiral out of control. Half the states are challenging the constitutionality of the universal mandate without which the new law cannot function.

Most Americans support gay marriage and most are on the pro-choice side of the abortion debate, and yet most states are mired debates that see little to no progress on either issue and in some cases, rights are being whittle away.

Chris Mooney will have a lot say in a forthcoming book about just what has gone wrong. He calls it The Republican Brain. But I suspect the problem isn't restricted to climate change or science -- or Republicans, for that matter -- and if we focus on that particular problem, we'll fail. We have to look at the underlying cause, which probably has a lot more to do with election campaign financing and lobbying that any deep-seated hostility to the principles of Enlightenment thinking.

Yes, there is a significant minority of crazies out there and most members of that demographic slice seem to have registered as Republicans. But I remain hopeful that they are not the majority, and that if only we can turn our attention to the larger issues, the ones Klein talks about, there remains a chance of reviving a democratic system in which the leaders do actually represent the people.

Of course, by then, it will probably be too late to do much about the climate but sit around and wait for the Singularity to save us. Oh well.

hrynyshyn Fri, 01/06/2012 - 02:06

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Communication and Politics

"probably has a lot more to do with election campaign financing and lobbying"

Welcome to Occupy.

It seems impossible now to unravel political "conservatives" from their fundamentalist views of God and religion. For me they were integral growing up:

I am reminded of why I went from a Christian Republican as a young person to what is now at best a stance of agnosticism with a healthy dose of progressive political beliefs thrown in for good measure.

I kept asking myself how it could be that God (and conservatives) could be so wonderful and miraculous and yet so consistently require massive doses of ignorance of reality at so many levels from his believers.

So even today I take no position on the existence of God because his existence had nothing to do with why I didn't go that way--his followers however did: God can't be that great with followers like that, ditto the Republican party.

You are right. The problem is institutionalized politics. The so-called "national debate" is not the national debate. It's what the propaganda-blasters want us to see.

When I listen to everyday people discuss these things, it is so unbelievably different from what we are being told is the "national debate" on television. The level of disconnect between real life of real people and what the people who supposedly shape the "national debate" is profound. It's not nearly the same conversation, not topic-wise and certainly not opinion-wise.

It's a sign of how debilitated and unable to cope with the world our political process and public-square discourse has become.

We'll fail not because we are stupid, but because we have disabled the societal mechanisms by which we cope with adaptive challenges to successive generations of society.

You know, it doesn't have to be that way.

By the way, where did you get that great widget that shows the countdown to 1 trillion tonnes? I want one! I went to the website there, but didn't see any links to download the widgets.

Yogi-one: I stole the source code for the counter from trillionthtonne.org and did a little math to change the counter from going up to going down.

james

Change is the one constant

hrynyshyn — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 08:50:23 +0000

Change is the one constant

Fill in the blanks:

It is customary in the popular media and in many journal articles to cite a projected _________ figure as if it were a given, a figure so certain that it could virtually be used for long-range planning purposes. But we must carefully examine the assumptions behind such projections. And forecasts that ________ is going to level off or decline this century have been based on the assumption that the developing world will necessarily follow the path of the industrialized world. That is far from a sure bet.

That comes from an essay at Yale's e360.

Given that you're reading a blog concerned with climate change, you are excused if you slotted in "carbon emissions" or something similar. The correct answer is "population," but the author's argument is equally applicable to either issue. Carl Haub, senior demographer at the Population Reference Bureau, is simply pointing out that the experts on such matters are often wrong when they take current trendlines and extrapolate them decades into the future. And he writes that some of the assumptions built into the oft-cited UN estimates of a global population leveling off around 9.5 billion four decades from now are highly questionable.

The UN's middle-of-the-road assumption for sub-Saharan Africa -- that fertility rates will drop to 3.0 and population reach 2 billion by 2050 -- seem unrealistically low to me. More likely is the UN's high-end projection that sub-Saharan Africa's population will climb to 2.2 billion by 2050 and then continue to 4.8 billion by 2100. The dire consequences of such an increase are difficult to ponder. If sub-Saharan Africa is having trouble feeding and providing water to 880 million people today, what will the region be like in 90 years if the population increases five-fold -- particularly if, as projected, temperatures rise by 2 to 3 degrees C, worsening droughts?

Similarly, it is perhaps timely to point out that "business as usual" carbon emissions rates are almost certainly not going to continue for much longer. The cost of solar power and other clean renewables will almost certainly continue to fall (though not at current rates of more than 30% a year in the case of PV). But demand for power is continuing to rise (at less predictable rates thanks to economic instability). I just don't see how we can predict with any degree of confidence how many atoms of carbon we'll be spewing into the atmosphere 10 years from now let alone 50.

My point is, if we knew with a high degree of certainty what population or carbon emission trends were going to be, then we would be much better off, even if the trends were threatening and unavoidable. We could prepare and adapt. We'd know where to spend finite resources. The uncertainty matters almost as much as the trends themselves. From a political and business perspective, uncertainty is a bad thing. You don't want to spend billions on one technology unless you know the regulatory and financial context will support it.

We should do a better job emphasizing the monstrous amount of uncertainty that comes with such projections, and the climatological consequences of those figures.

Furthermore, surrendering control over how we respond to the threat of global warming (or population growth) to forces that are themselves unpredictable -- I'm talking about the free market if you hadn't figured it out -- doesn't make a whole lot of sense. It only multiplies the uncertainty. If, however, we can assemble a regulatory environment that takes advantage of those elements of the marketplace that do exhibit predictable behaviors, then we stand a fairly good chance of bending the curves that frighten us into something less fearsome.

This has bearing on the debate over cap-and-trade vs. taxes.

hrynyshyn Mon, 09/19/2011 - 04:50

Tags

Communication and Politics

If sub-Saharan Africa is having trouble feeding and providing water to 880 million people today

I would argue with this: sub-Saharan Africa is exporting large amounts of food, grown with vast amounts of water. They can probably support their own population, they just can't also support the exports needed to pay their national debts. The people sub-Saharan Africa is having trouble feeding are us.

And part of that debt is the debt to first-world agribusiness.

As long as the countless thousands of consensus climate change scientists are vastly outnumbering the climate change protesters in the streets and as long as they are not marching with us and acting like itâs the crisis they say it is, the court of reality declares the CO2 affair a tragic exploitation and exaggeration that needlessly condemned billions to catastrophic end.
Meanwhile, the UN had allowed carbon trading stock markets run by corporations and politicians to trump 3rd world fresh water relief, starvation rescue and 3rd world education for just over 25 years of climate CONTROL instead of the obviously needed POPULATION control. This wasnât about a climate change; it was about controlling a changing climate with taxes and sacrifice and we former believers promise you that history will call this a dark age for environmentalism. The end REALLY IS near, but not for the planet, but rather the entire climate change movement and criminal charges "will" come as a result. Politicians love to lay blame.
Climate change science has done to science what abusive priests did for the Catholic Church. You lab coat consultants abused our trust, exaggerated and exploited with 25 years of needless panic. Criminal charges can't help but be laid as we watch CO2 consensus governments start to fall and or be challenged.

teÅekkur teÅekkur Ä±yÄ± ve guzel bÄ±r site

"as long as they are not marching with us and acting like itâs the crisis they say it is"

Whu?

The doctor who tells a patient that they are in danger of dying of liver failure is acting like it's the only crisis, even if there are millions of people in danger of starving to death.

Why?

Because the doctor is concerned with the health of their patients.

Likewise, there is death, disease, famine and disaster all around, but since they have nothing to do with AGW, the climate scientists being asked about AGW won't mention them.

Not because they don't exist, but because it's irrelevant.

You are right at all of you say. Thank you for sharing this cool post.

I would agree with what you are saying. I do think that the climate is not constant and that we are uncertain of what it will be. We cannot say what the exact climate will be ten years from now. I do think that if we continue to treat the earth the way we are now though, we can say with a certainty that the climate will continue to get worse. That is why I agree with what you are saying of how we should prepare and adapt for the future. We have the resources to be greener; the cost of those products is the reason why more people are not using them though.

"We cannot say what the exact climate will be ten years from now"

Because we have human activities which are self-driving now making a viable impact on the climate.

"the cost of those products is the reason why more people are not using them though."

They're buying petrol despite a huge increase in prices. It's not cost that's stopping them, it's ideology. Even if of the "STOP BLAMING ME!!!" type.

Another blow to the natural gas alternative

hrynyshyn — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:33:35 +0000

Another blow to the natural gas alternative

A letter in Climatic Change looking at the life-cycle greenhouse warming potential of natural gas raised a lot of hackles a little while back. If, as the authors posit, replacing coal and oil combustion with gas-fired turbines could actually accelerate global warming rather than slow it down, then we have a serious problem, given the investments being made in gas.

Much the skepticism about that study could be traced to the background of the lead author, Robert Howarth, who happens to have a history of opposing gas fracking. Of course, Howarth's scientific credentials, or his activism, have no real bearing on the math that produces some very daunting numbers about the practical impact of drilling for gas and burning it. But it is unavoidable that any scientist who dallies even tangentially with political activism will run into problems convincing skeptics that he or she hasn't got some ulterior motive. So what this debate needed is an unimpeachable scientific authority to weigh in.

Enter Tom Wigley, senior research associate at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He's got a letter coming out in the same journal, Climatic Change, that reaches similar conclusions, although his research involves different approaches.

The basic idea is this: because burning coal releases lots of aerosols that hang about the atmosphere reflecting sunlight, a significant portion of the warming effect of the practice is masked by a cooling effect. If we stop burning coal in favor of technologies that don't involve aerosols, we lose that cooling effect. So, unless the alternative has a really, really low warming effect (something close to zero), we won't be accomplishing much.

The product of combustion of natural gas has only about half the global warming potential of coal's. If you take that into account, you find that

... a worldwide, partial shift from coal to natural gas would slightly accelerate climate change through at least 2050, even if no methane leaked from natural gas operations, and through as late as 2140 if there were substantial leaks. After that, the greater reliance on natural gas would begin to slow down the increase in global average temperature, but only by a few tenths of a degree.

That's from the NCAR press release. You can read the whole, relatively accessible paper. Here's the abstract:

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel combustion may be reduced by using natural gas rather than coal to produce energy. Gas produces approximately half the amount of CO2 per unit of primary energy compared with coal. Here we consider a scenario where a fraction of coal usage is replaced by natural gas (i.e., methane, CH4) over a given time period, and where a percentage of the gas production is assumed to leak into the atmosphere. The additional CH4 from leakage adds to the radiative forcing of the climate system, offsetting the reduction in CO2 forcing that accompanies the transition from coal to gas. We also consider the effects of: methane leakage from coal mining; changes in radiative forcing due to changes in the emissions of sulfur dioxide and carbonaceous aerosols; and differences in the efficiency of electricity production between coal- and gas-fired power generation. On balance, these factors more than offset the reduction in warming due to reduced CO2 emissions. When gas replaces coal there is additional warming out to 2050 with an assumed leakage rate of 0%, and out to 2140 if the leakage rate is as high as 10%. The overall effects on global-mean temperature over the 21st century, however, are small.

The interesting thing is that even without factoring in what are known as fugitive emissions, which is the subject of of Howarth's study, natural gas doesn't come out ahead. Natural gas is mostly methane, which has a much larger global warming potential than carbon dioxide. If you assume some leakage -- most estimates are between 2 and 10% -- things get worse. Here's Wigley's take-home-message graph, with avoided warming on the y axis:

So switching to natural gas accomplishes zero in the best-case, fantasy scenario (in which Howarth is totally wrong), until the mid-point of this century at the earliest. Given the need to get our emissions down way below current levels long before 2050 if we want to avoid serious problems adapting to the new climate, this would suggest that natural gas isn't even a useful bridge technology, as many have argued, but a complete non-starter. T. Boone Pickens, take note.

This line of thinking isn't just an indictment of just natural gas, but of all alternatives that aren't effectively zero-emissions. If getting off of coal (and oil to a similar but lesser degree) means we lose a significant cooling effect, then whatever new technologies we choose have to be squeaky clean, not just marginal improvements. Carbon capture and sequestration, for example, will have to function at near-perfect efficiencies of more than 90%, which is a bit higher than what some researchers say is realistic.

The same logic applies to any modest emissions-reduction strategy. If, as seems to be case, we only have a few decades to get with the program, then we don't have the luxury of time or physics to ease ourselves off fossil fuels. We have to go cold turkey.

--
Wigley, T. (2011). Coal to gas: the influence of methane leakage Climatic Change DOI: 10.1007/s10584-011-0217-3

hrynyshyn Fri, 09/09/2011 - 09:33

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Communication and Politics

Energy alternatives

fossil fuels

tom wigley

The narrow mind of Greenpeace

hrynyshyn — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 10:21:08 +0000

The narrow mind of Greenpeace

Way back when I was just a novice environmentalist, Greenpeace seemed like a good idea. It published a decent newsletter, was drawing attention to otherwise neglected issues, and, while understandably suspicious of technology, seemed to have more than a grudging respect for science as a tool to preserve those things worse preserving. It was one of the few NGOs that received what little I could afford to donate to charitable causes. I don't regret supporting them in the 80s, and not just because I shared the group's desire to save the whales.

I still want to save the whales. I no longer support Greenpeace.

It's one thing to present a reactionary response to anything that smacks of corporatism or lends itself to the centralization of power, seeing as any technology or plan so characterized tends to be bad for the health of ecosystems. But civilization long since passed the point of no return on the path to the Anthropocene. It's no longer about choosing between good and bad options. It's about minimizing the damage. This is something Greenpeace doesn't grok any more, if it ever did.

Take nuclear power. Greenpeace was built on an anti-nuke platform, although it was largely in response to nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific. Members quickly embraced an anti-nuclear power position, though, and today they're about as resolute on that one as anything else.

Greenpeace has always fought and will continue to fight vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. The only solution is to halt the expansion of all nuclear power, and for the shutdown of existing plants.

I, too, have problems with the nuclear power industry, mostly because its just too damn expensive and time-consuming to build, but also because of the political (as opposed to practical) challenges posed by waste disposal. But it's the height of folly to demand the dismantling of nuclear plants with years or decades of useful life left in them until there's enough renewable capacity to take up the slack, and/or we've made commensurate reductions in our consumption patterns. It's also foolish to oppose any efforts to look into safer, potentially cheaper variations on the nuclear theme, like liquid fluoride thorium reactors, that could offer acceptable options in decades to come.

The fact is, we're going to need every arrow in our quiver to address climate change, and there's little doubt that existing nuclear power reactors will have to play a role. We can debate the economics and regulatory burdens of expanding that role, but blanket opposition to any and all forms of nuclear fission is irresponsible given the threat posed by a warming planet.

Similarly, there's a long list of reasons why we shouldn't trust Monsanto and the rest of the agri-chemical transnationals who are responsible for pushing genetically modified crops on the world's farmers. So far, they have proven useful for the seed companies' bottom lines and precious little else. But given the fact we are headed for somewhere close to 10 billion humans by the end of the century, it is now abundantly clear that the first wave of the Green Revolution is maxed out and will not be up to the task of supplying enough food. Not without some help from GM crops tailored to grow in places that used to be unsuitable or are loaded with essential nutrients that evolution didn't manage to pack in on its own.

On this subject Greenpeace does not agree and has even gone to so far as to destroy research that might help get us closer to genuinely useful, as opposed to merely profitable, GM varieties of wheat. [UPDATE: In t his case, the variety being tested contained no foreign genes and offered a lower glycemic index and higher fiber content, both good ideas from a nutritional point of view and hardly worrisome from a health perspective.] Why? Because we don't know enough about the technology yet?

"GM has never been proven safe to eat and once released in open experiments, it will contaminate. This is about the protection of our health, the protection of our environment and the protection of our daily bread."

Just because history hasn't painted a rosy picture of GMOs or nuclear power thus far is no reason to reject it wholesale. Yes, we should be vigilant and skeptical very skeptical in many cases. But we just might need one or both of them in some form to survive the rest of the 21st century.

These sort of things are not self-evident. One needs to have done more than cursory research into the subject matter to get a grip on them. But we're not talking quantum chromodynamics. An organization such as Greenpeace has the resources to study them and figure out that the most responsible and reasonable approach is not binary. It's complicated. Sometimes the best response is "yes, but only if..." or "no, unless..." I know it's tough to launch a public relations campaign with sophisticated or complex messages. But opposing science and research is not the sort of strategy that will be useful in the coming years. And it's time more of us called them on it, publicly. It would nice if Greenpeace could be a force for good again. Saving the whales was great. But as they say: What have you done for me lately?

hrynyshyn Fri, 07/15/2011 - 06:21

Tags

I used to give about 5 dollars a month to them. I cancelled for the GMO reason.

Got any alternatives I can give my little contribution to?

great post I agree with most of what you say! I have but one minor quibble, you say:

"But given the fact we are headed for somewhere close to 10 billion humans by the end of the century,"

There is no such given, as a matter of fact it is becoming ever more likely that due to the simple fact that we are encountering real physical resource limits such numbers will probably not be attained.

To be clear, I am strongly in favor of finding ways to curtail and reverse population growth.

I'm currently taking part in a private discussion group about human population dynamics and the consensus, based on rather hard to refute science and data is that our planet can in no way sustainably support more than about a billion or so humans in a resource limited and ecologically impoverished future.

It appears there are a number of factors converging to create an almost perfect storm for a population crash in the not so distant future.

Granted that in no way invalidates any of your other points.

It seems that the times, though they may be a changing, we still haven't found a way around the second law of thermodynamics. We have only temporarily managed to stay some of natures regulatory mechanisms by harvesting fossil fuel energy to fuel our civilization.

As for nuclear energy it too depends on the existence of a highly complex industrial civilization for it to be built and maintained, it's looking more and more as if that will no longer be possible either... And I won't even get into the details of the EROEI of all the links in its entire supply chain.

Cheers!

Greenpeace is a bunch of clueless idiotic treehuggers. They do far more harm to the environment than help it.

For example, recent Germany ban on future nuclear was a reaction to Greenpeace demonstrations. They staged 'die-ins': http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/8472706/Anti-n… to show people that would die from radiation as a reaction to Fuchushima. Never mind, that so far Fuchushima has not caused any radiation-related deaths so far.

And as a result they got the ban on nuclear reactors in Germany. Only... There's nothing clean to replace them! New COAL and gas power plants are going to be built by 2020.

But that's OK. Germany will meet its obligation to lower CO2 emissions. Right? Yeah, sure.

Or another joke - Greenpeace plan to replace nuclear energy. It not only assumes 'pie-in-the-sky' scenarios with radically cheaper alternative energy technologies, but also requires us to actually _lower_ global electricity consumption. Yeah, that's gonna happen.

Don't sell yourself short douche boy. You're still a novice.

[Duplicate post with links removed as I've had other comments not get past moderation here when they contain links - Google the 'link redacted' text for source]

Disappointing to see you join the knee-jerk anti-Greenpeace hysteria. Regardless of the merits or otherwise of actions taken by one small group in one country, it is nonsense to now rubbish a global organisation that probably does more than any in providing protection to the environment that we so desperately need.

> ...it's the height of folly to demand the dismantling of nuclear plants with years or decades of useful life left in them ...

It's the height of folly to continue running nukes that are located in highly vulnerable locations or that are vulnerable to catastrophic failure. Also, dismantling nukes - regardless of if there is serviceable life left in them - can and should stimulate massive investment in renewables. That is now happening in Germany (even more than they already were).

* Germany says auf wiedersehen to nuclear power. Critics argue that Germany will hurt its economy by raising energy costs, replacing nuclear power with imports from France, and building more coal plants, thus increasing carbon emissions. The facts do not bear this out. [link redacted]

> Not without some help from GM crops tailored to grow in places that used to be unsuitable...

That's what the GMO lobby keeps telling us. Where's the *evidence*?

* Failure to yield. The promise of higher yields from GM crops has proven to be empty. [link redacted]

* Organic farming produces the same yields of corn and soybeans as does conventional farming, but uses 30 percent less energy, less water and no pesticides, a review of a 22-year farming trial study concludes. [link redacted]

Fact is, there is no shortage of food to feed all 7 billion of us. The only problem is that the top 1 billion scrape a lot of it in the trash because they have more than they need.

Disappointing response, James.

Neither this article nor the one linked to says what the damned genetic modification in question was.
Searching about, it seems to be "Round-up" resistance.

"Failure to yield": Heard about cotton with the Bt gene? I thought it was working out for the farmers. Whether the yield is higher depends on what I compare to. Comparing to folks flying planes to spray real Bt, perhaps little is gained. But if I compare to what the same field produced previously (there were no planes), perhaps a huge difference.

For example, recent Germany ban on future nuclear was a reaction to Greenpeace demonstrations.

Um, no, it was a reaction to the nuclear charlie-foxtrot at Fukushima. When a reactor threatens to melt down and is releasing radiation and they can't bring in enough water to keep it under control after being completely "shut down," that kinda looks bad regardless of what Greenpeace does. Also, the folks at TEPCO started acting just as incomptent and dishonest as any good ol' American nuclear bigwig, which only reinforced us "lefty treehuggers'" concerns about governments' and corporations' willingness to manage nuclear power the way it needs to be managed.

Greenpeace may be stupid, but blaming them for the obvious, sometimes tragi-farcical, problems of nuke-biz, is even stupider.

OK this is *Science*Blogs - yes? - so let's get evidence-based here!
I don't know what you've got over in the US of A where SB seems to be based but on this side of the pond we have a physicist - David MacKay - who has published[1] an analysis of UK energy consumption broken into categories: Cars, Planes, Heating and cooling, Light, Gadgets, Food and farming, Stuff and Public services, and non-fossil energy sources: Wind, Solar, Hydro, Offshore wind, Wave, Tide and Geothermal, and addresses the question "Can we live on renewables?". MacKay considers possible changes to transport, smarter heating, efficient electricity use, sustainable fossil fuels, nuclear, and living on other countries' renewables, and produces a handful of sample plans - including some with and some without nuclear.

MacKay states clearly that he is not proposing any particular plan, except the meta-plan that any plan one proposes should add up!

So rather than criticising Greenpeace (or anyone else) for flatly opposing all nuclear power, let us challenge them to show us their quantified plan for a nuclear-free and fossil-free energy system.

With bonus points for being remotely practicable. : - )

[1] http://www.withouthotair.com/

PS George Monbiot has also written quite outspokenly (for a renowned environmentalist) about nuclear power, e.g. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-f… and recently debated the topic with Greenpeace.

PPS with regard to GM and world food supplies I suspect that the world's poorest people who need better food supplies most are too poor to afford GM even if it would help them, and actually the problems include:

* poor agricultural practices, improvements to which would vastly improve production without any GM-type high-tech

* economic pressures: many third-world countries are saddled with huge international debts (often incurred by corrupt dictatorships) resulting in tax burdens on poor citizens who are obliged to grow cash-crops for export at the expense of food crops for themselves and their families and communities.

From the little I know the GM industry is targetting wealthier industrial agriculture which already spends huge amounts on fertilisers, weedkillers and pesticides.

Yeah, I have to say that the opposition to GM crops and nuclear isn't just knee-jerk stuff. There are (as you concede) very real concerns. But let me lay out a few:

-- Safety. In the US all I have to prove is that a given crop is equivalent to a current one. There is no precautionary principle here. I don't think that you're too likely to have a real issue myself, but given also that Monsanto et al are in this for the money, I wouldn't doubt that corners will be cut. If there were independent testing of foods (or at least double blinds) a la drugs that would go a long way.

-- Intellectual property. Farmers have saved seeds since there was farming. Now they aren't allowed to do it. Now, as it is, I can't patent a breed of dog and I can't patent genes (this was just decided in the courts here in the US) that I didn't invent. (This has more to do with testing for genetic disease in humans, however). In any case, the problem is that you have GM rapeseed/canola "volunteering" in various places and possibly getting all over the place. And given what we know now about gene transfer, and how it can be very hard to control in the wild, I am not sure that the current system of intellectual property law lends itself terribly well to agriculture. There are a couple of issues here around control of food supply and the like.

-- Supply. No modern (i.e. industrial age) famine has ever been caused by supply issues. (See: Amartya Sen). The problem is distribution and affordability. Even as far back as the Irish famine the problem was not that there was not enough food, the problem was that the Irish didn't have any money and you need money to buy food. (You can't instantly change crops and if you aren't paid enough for labor to buy food you starve). In Bangladesh something similar happened -- the food was there but it was much more profitable to sell it to people who had money. The Bangladeshis (a lot of them) had no money. To put it another way, if I can sell rice for $1 per bushel in the U.S. and make $1 billion I have zero incentive to sell it in Bangladesh for 50 cents per bushel and make only, say, $300 million. It is not clear to me that GM foods have anything to do with this.

-- Energy. The idea that we're stuck with using nuclear is, as they say, not necessarily so. We changed our whole consumption patterns in the US in short order after WW II, and we changed them in even shorter order leading up to the war. It is possible to have radical changes, if you can get people to sign on. It was patriotic duty in 1943 to recycle. It was your patriotic duty to save on gas by not driving, saving, and re-using stuff for several years. Now you're a freaky tree-hugger. The only difference is in the framing. (If anything the technological advances have made doing these things easier).

Getting functional nuclear power took the Manhattan project. (While the program was for bombs, the efficient reactor technologies emerged from there, partly so we could build more bombs). As a percentage of the economy that was actually larger than a similarly-sized project would be now, by an order of magnitude at least. For about the price of a current nuclear plant (say $10 billion+) I can launch, with current technology, a solar plant to freaking orbit and even with the power losses beam the energy via microwaves to earth and supply a small town. But there is no research funded at that scale to doing something like that, to increase it's efficiency. The Manhattan Project is why a goodly chunk of New Mexico has anyone living there at all. A similar project for solar -- or anything else-- could do wonders. Heck, the Iraq war has sunk enough money to build a megawatt-scale solar plant in space with current technology.

I don't think space-based solar is the answer, (it will be part of it I hope) but I also think it's important to remember just how far behind we are -- and it is manifestly not because of Greenpeace. Greenpeace didn't say we should protect fossil fuel supplies (including coal) and develop nothing else. Greenpeace didn't say that digging up coal was ever and always the answer. Greenpeace didn't ask Congress to cut funding for alternative transportation methods (some of which were relatively new technologies, some not). I think Greenpeace would be thrilled to death if someone said "I want to build an electric maglev from New York to Chicago."

I have my differences with Greenpeace on occasion. (I think they really have to re-think a lot of issues surrounding class and race, for instance). But I think there is a tendency to assume that a lot of them are anti-technology. I found that to not be the case-- they just aren't technophiles. Quite the contrary. Their technological optimism is just placed in things that don't have lobbying firms on the scale that exists for current players. But it isn't any more irrational than the "peaceful atom" movies I saw as a child.

John Stumbles:

> David MacKay ... www. withouthotair . com/

Despite his claims of impartiality, MacKay produced a very biased and unreliable screed that is strongly pro-nuke and anti-renewable. See http://thisbluerock.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/david-mackays-sustainable-…

> George Monbiot has also written quite outspokenly (for a renowned environmentalist) about nuclear power,

His output since Fukushima has been little more than a propaganda campaign for the nuke industry. There's a reason for that. He's being tutored on energy by his old school chemistry teacher, Malcolm Grimston, who subsequently moved on to become a booster for the British nuclear industry. The web is littered with articles that absolutely shred Monbiot's nonsense on nukes and radiation. He is not a credible commentator.

I was a supporter of GP during the 70's when they were fighting atmospheric testing and rainforest plunder. They lost my support 20yrs ago when they started campaigning against chlorine in the water, a public health mesure that has saved more lives than anything else I can think of.

GP have not been an environmental organisation for decades, they are a neo-luddite organisation. This doensn't mean that they are wrong about everything but I cannot support an organistion that threw out science and logic in favour of zealotry and dogma.

My two cents...

You know, nuclear radiation is bad. Clearly. I don't think anyone will dispute that (except Ann Coulter, but I don't consider her human for issues of personal sanity). However, it is a very reliable and powerful source of energy which, if harnessed correctly, can be very clean and safe. It's a lot like flying in an airplane: crunch the numbers and it's one of the best ways to travel... but if something goes wrong, you're screwed.

So, should we tear down all nuclear power plants? No. To do so would require replacements. And, there are alternatives, but each one has their downside: wind and solar take up a lot of space, are weather-dependent, and aren't as efficient when considering land area per output. Hydroelectric is crazy awesome, but it can't be applied everywhere, and usually demands restructuring the local environment (guess who doesn't like that? Greenpeace.) I think we can agree that coal and oil need to go away. So what are we left with? Precious few options, I'm afraid. Nuclear power really is the best. And if we spent real money trying to perfect the process, we could make it better. It'll last long enough to keep humanity going after our fossil fuels run out, until we can come up with something better (fusion? Oh, what a lovely day that would be...). And yes, I am all for something better.

As for the crops, I have nothing against those. Genetic engineering has such a stigma nowadays, but humanity has been artificially selecting plants and animals for thousands of years!! Genetic engineering is just a more precise way of doing it; fiddling with the genetic code rather than trying to select from phenotypes. And yes, the science and technology of genetics is still relatively young, but we are advancing rapidly. Does that mean I think all genetically modified foods are A-OK? Hell no! But I know that they -are- required to pass the same tests as any other foods, and I know that they can produce higher yields at a lower cost and still contain higher nutritional values. This technology will be vital as the population grows; there can be no argument otherwise.

I'd like to see alternatives to nuclear power and genetically modified foods.. but they are, far and above, the best options available until new science and technology appears. And if we accept them without stigma or bias, we can approach them boldly and fix the problems that they have. I respect the concept of defending the environment, but doing so without considering the consequences is, in my opinion, foolish. If Greenpeace wants to save the planet, they should put those donations toward scientific investigation and try to fix the problems that they find, not hinder the attempts of real scientists attempting to do just that.

Hi there,

Greenpeace webbie here. Just passing though. My own personal thoughts...

The case for shutting down nuclear power plants boils down to:

1. Every nuclear plant poses an unnecessary risk.

2. While operational, the plants continue to produce radioactive waste, which there is still no practical way of disposing of.

As for new reactor technology - better to invest in areas with more promise (renewable energy, efficiency).

The main point I'm making here is that Greenpeace is not against "technology".

We're against specific technologies and in favor of others. So while you're free to agree/disagree with any of the above, I hope we can agree that any difference of opinion is about what the best technology choices (and thus policy choices, investment choices, etc).

I think any real, substantial disagreement will be around the word "necessary". As you point out, the world population is growing, and in many countries (China, India, Brazil, etc) the standard of living is fast improving (that's a good thing).

Working with European Renewable Energy Council we've created a detailed practical blueprint for cutting carbon emissions while achieving economic growth by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and energy efficiency.

This blueprint shows we can get cut our CO2 emissions and get rid of nuclear power while continuing economic growth.

You can find this plan here...
http://www.energyblueprint.info

@rork: That's not correct on the modification--you can read up on the story here: http://www.biofortified.org/2011/07/greenpeace-destroy-gm-wheat-trial/

@Andrew Davies: Funny how this "The main point I'm making here is that Greenpeace is not against "technology". We're against specific technologies and in favor of others." sounds just like: "We're not anti-vaccine. We're pro-safe vaccine...."

And in general the lack of understanding of the plant science and all the academic and government projects around GMOs is disappointing. You all need to realize that the fog the word "Monsanto" creates in this arena clouds out your view of the field as a whole. And that's exactly what Greenpeace wants. Their product is doubt.

Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs)are hundreds of times safer than Fukishima and TMI Light Water Reactors (LWRs).

On '38 Degrees', the Campaigning Website, you can vote for UK Manufacture of LFTRs. Do this and we'll save Â£50 billion of the Â£110 billion of our hard-earned taxes that Chris Huhne is chucking away on inconsequential renewables and CC&S. Have a look at the arguments on '38 Degrees' and vote for LFTRs - nothing is more important to the future of the UK.

"1. Every nuclear plant poses an unnecessary risk.
2. While operational, the plants continue to produce radioactive waste, which there is still no practical way of disposing of.
As for new reactor technology - better to invest in areas with more promise (renewable energy, efficiency)."

What fucking promise? Barring breakthroughs in solar PV the current crop of alternative energy is many times more expensive than nuclear for baseload capacity.

And about "facts not bearing out". Germany is already planning to build more fossil fuel plants: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gnJH-sZ9D1lD39l-ekmB…

Let me quote: "The Bundesrat also approved measures to fill the gap left by nuclear power, on which Germany relies for about 22 percent of its energy needs.
These include building new coal and gas power plants, although Berlin is sticking to its target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels, and by 80-95 percent by 2050."

So how are they going to cut emissions by 40% by 2020? By using unicorn farts?

What is Greenpeace going to do when the clock chimes 00:00 Jan 1 2020? Are they going to stage die-ins near the coal plants that they themselves helped to build? No, I don't think so - that'd be a political suicide for them.

"This blueprint shows we can get cut our CO2 emissions and get rid of nuclear power while continuing economic growth.
You can find this plan here...
http://www.energyblueprint.info"

This is not a plan, this is a typical load of bullshit from Greanpeace. There's a good joke in Russian about this, it goes like this:

Hares come to a wise owl and ask: "Oh wise owl! Help us! Our lives are miserable, we are always on the run, we are hunted by wolves and foxes. Help us, please!". Wise owl thinks a bit and says: "Well, you can turn into hedgehogs, that should solve your problems". Hares walk away awed. Few days after they come back and ask owl again: "Oh wise owl! But how do we turn into hedgehogs?" and wise owl answers: "Stop bothering me with your stupid questions, I'm a strategist, not a tactician".

Greenpeace is like that. Their plan is formulate like: "Assume that we have replaced fossil-fuels with pie-in-the sky alternative generation. In this case we'll have low CO2 emissions! Yay, let's all hug trees!"

@BlueRock

Despite his claims of impartiality, MacKay produced a very biased and unreliable screed that is strongly pro-nuke and anti-renewable. See http://thisbluerock.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/david-mackays-sustainable-…

I came to MacKay with the opinion that nuclear power was unnecessary and undesirable, and I did not get the impression that he had a pro-nuke or anti-renewable bias, and I don't think any reasonable person reading his work would form that impression. If you think his figures are wrong have you written to him about it? And what was his response? If he refuses to engage in reasonable scientific discussion *then* you can call him out as 'biased'. If you refuse to engage in discussion then the shoe is on the other foot. That's how science works. And this is ScienceBlogs :-)

> George Monbiot has also written quite outspokenly (for a renowned environmentalist) about nuclear power,

His output since Fukushima has been little more than a propaganda campaign for the nuke industry. There's a reason for that. He's being tutored on energy by his old school chemistry teacher,...

Monbiot strikes me as a man who is quite capable of making up his own mind rather than a puppet for his former teachers. But in any case it is what he says that I am responding to, not who he is, and what he says makes sense. In a nutshell: the current state of the nuclear power industry is shoddy, penny-pinching and corner-cutting and quite inappropriate for handling a dangerous technology. And the particular current variants of the technology itself are poor choices for civil nuclear power. But to dismiss any and all nuclear power on the basis of flawed examples is irrational.

@Andrew Davies

Greenpeace webbie here. Just passing though. My own personal thoughts...

Hi Andrew - Greenpeace supporter here! :-)

Working with European Renewable Energy Council we've created a detailed practical blueprint for cutting carbon emissions while achieving economic growth by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and energy efficiency.

This blueprint shows we can get cut our CO2 emissions and get rid of nuclear power while continuing economic growth.

You can find this plan here...
http://www.energyblueprint.info

Wow that's a *BIG* document!

Now I'm reasonably familiar with MacKay's analysis: I'm sure the energy experts at Greenpeace must be too, and anybody who's put in as much effort as the "energy [r]evolution" document must have taken must be able to trivially easily tell me how Greenpeace's plan fits in with MacKay's analysis - in other words, how much energy does GP see being generated from the various renewable sources MacKay identifies, how much could be saved by what specific energy conservation measures, etc? From my (admittedly cursory) scan of the "energy [r]evolution" PDF I can't find that information.

Also, can you point me to Greenpeace's analysis of the various fourth-generation nuclear power technologies currently being proposed (MSRs, various breeders, Thorium, pebble-bed etc) and of course Fusion?

Population seems to be the elephant in the room. Why is parenthood sacrosanct?

One nitpick: it isn't quite true that the modern crop of GM crops have done nothing but pad Monsanto's coffers. It is pretty well accepted that the insect resistant ones have cut pesticide usage, and they've also increased yields, particularly in developing countries where they doesn't always have access to pesticides (in developed countries yields were already high because we use pesticides). The herbicide tolerant ones, for all the ill will directed toward them, have enabled a wider use of no-till agriculture, which has cut carbon emissions and reduced fertilizer runoff (and of course both make farmer's lives easier and their farms more profitable). Also, the GMO Rainbow Papaya in Hawaii, the only non-corporate GMO on the market (unfortunately) saved the Hawaiian papaya industry from the papaya ringspot virus.

By all means, but wary of Monsanto, but their products really have made the world a better place. I think of Monsanto the same why I do of pharma companies. Sure, they're occasionally untrustworthy jerks, and they've had more than their share issues, but many of their drugs and vaccines make people's lives better. Same thing here. I'm not saying Monsanto is your best friend (not saying they're the great evil they're made out to be either), but the GM seed they sell really does do more than make them money.

Apart from this thread having turned into the normal Alex B. 'nuclear is lovely...raditaion is magic moonbeams' stuff, I frankly found the original article to be pretty poor.

Nuclear doesn't make any money, and after Fukishima, you can see exactly why the German government thought twice about it. Remember, the average liablity cap on nuclear accident throughout the Western world in terms of the operator (private or otherwise) is usually about 1.5% (thats the cost TEPCO has to bear, the rest is the Japanese taxpayer). Considering decommissioning costs as well, and the problem of waste (anyone found the perfect dump for most of these countries yet? No), going for efficiency, improving the grid, better generation and renewables make good economic sense.
The coal stations are stupid, but are a feature for German politics (German miners like their jobs mining dirty coal, and politicians know it). Greenpeace basically had nothing to do with it.

Bluerock also points out Mackay's bias in his analysis of renewables v nuclear. He really does like nuclear, but his figures have been questioned. You have to wonder how unbiased a person is when they write that Britains nuclear waste problem is 'âa âbeautifully smallâ problem. It really isn't. Its held in decaying structures, increasing all the time, and the UK government has been trying to find a staorage site for at least 20 years. The people who want it (or have been bribed to have it) are geologically in the wrong place, and the geologically right places don't want it anywhere near them. Basically, he's ignoring political and financial reality.

And considering the cost curve for wind/PV, basically he seems to write them off, or worse assumes outdated or false figure to base his calculations on (which are bit back of the envelope anyway). Mckay does seem to be the Freaknomics of the energy world, in that he's loved by people who think he's on the money, so don't do any analysis. He might be right, but I'm not sure about his workings.

Can we power the UK/Germany without nuclear or fossil fuels - possibly,. and there are some pretty good studies. They are certainly more robust than some of the pro-nuke arguements. As for Monbiot, we see an honourable man tying himself in knots trying to defend his latest love (which is a blind madness, as we all know). If you want to see how Monbiot argues, look at his strawmen and appeals to 'Very Serious People' - his arguement is 'There is NO alternative', even when there patently are.
For him (and others like Stewart Brand), the one subject we will never bring up is money. becuase nuclear doesnt make any.

As for GM - GM is not a perfect technology, and even if you think it is fine to release such an organism into the natural world(which I'm still not sure about), the social and economic effects are likely to be huge,and may simply concentrate more power in the hands of Monsanto, Gargill, AMD, etc - who really wants that? Greenpeace actually are supported by mnay, if not most, people in Europe is this kind of action. and in retrospect, may have done the right thing.

If you think GM stories such as the golden rice are so good, think about how much rice someone would have to consume to make up for the Vitamin A deficiency caused by growing mono cultural crops instead of growing a few vegetables amoungst other crops. GM has often failed in the market, not least for its backers, and you have to wonder if, without its high level lobbying and PR, it would not have simply been written off as an expensive techno fix some time ago.

John Stumbles

> ...have you written to him about it?

MacKay is aware of my criticisms. He acknowledged some, ignored many others. But why don't you read what I've written and respond to any fact that I have asserted?

You've set up challenges that I'm unlikely to have considered taking. It's almost as if you want to avoid the facts.

> Monbiot strikes me as a man who...

Who was almost the only climate 'realist' who fell for the CRU stolen email scam. Monbiot was calling for resignation of scientists. The fool believed the propaganda.

He's done it again with nuclear.

@MikeB:
"Nuclear doesn't make any money[...] better generation and renewables make good economic sense."

Direct question: Can you compare the cost of electrical power generation from nuclear to generation from renewables? Conservation is an important thing, but it is separate from generation.

Nuclear may be expensive, but carbon emissions are a serious problem, and paying for a more expensive energy source to reduce CO2 seems like a worthwhile tradeoff.

"Greenpeace basically had nothing to do with it."

Do you believe that Greenpeace had anything to do with the decision to decommission Germany's nuclear plants? Do you believe that, if Germany had not opted for decommissioning, they would still be building these coal plants?

#26
'Direct question: Can you compare the cost of electrical power generation from nuclear to generation from renewables? Conservation is an important thing, but it is separate from generation.'

Answer - getting a drect comparison between different generation systems isn't easy (and since I'm supposed to be clearing up the house before my wife gets back and looking after the kids at the same time, I can't spend all day looking..). However, a report from last year from Duke reports that PV is being offered in North Carolina at 16 cents per KWH, which is the point at which it comes in below the cost of nuclear. PV seems to be falling even further in unit cost this year, and the trend is very positive. Wind also has dropped in price, and even in 2009, there was little difference between onshore wind and coal (Onshore wind $0.096/kWh (higher in marginal wind areas with greater capital and O&M costs, such as on ridge lines in New England), Conventional coal (base-loaded) $0.095/kWh). Coal might be cheap, but if carbon is taxed/capped (such as in the UK and possibly Australia) and carbon capture is used, then the added cost will make it much more expensive. CCGT is cheaper and can suply base load, but of course the cost of gas has gone up (I'm now paying close to 20% more for gas/electric from my supplier than a year ago).

And of course the estimated costs of future nuclear build per KWH seem to be climbing constantly. Two proposed Florida plants were estimated to have an overnight cost of $3,800 per kilowatt. But if you look at the general overuns and costs increases of nuclear construction (you may argue its going to be better this time, but its not looking good at the moment), its closer to $6,800 per kilowatt. Progress Energys as yet uncompleted plants are trending about 25-55% above estimated KW cost. And of course there will almost certainly be larger costs due to extra safety precautions after Fukishima. And this takes into account the very large direct and indirect subsidies nuclear gets. Remember that the german reactors have had 200 billion euros from the state in the last 40 years. Renewables had 4.8 billion in 2010, but its unlikely that that level of subsidy will stay for the next 40 years, and even if it did, they still have no decommissioning or storage costs.

'Nuclear may be expensive, but carbon emissions are a serious problem, and paying for a more expensive energy source to reduce CO2 seems like a worthwhile tradeoff.'

How about you change nuclear for 'other sources'? The same arguement applies (in fact the 'renewables are too expensive' is a hardy perential), yet these other sources have none of the downsides of nuclear, and are in many cases cheaper right now. PV alone is steaming along.

Nuclear loses in economic terms, which is why so few are being built. If Greepeace are 'luddites' for campaigning against them, then so is the City of London and Wall Street - they don't want to invest in them either. Its not that their deluded fools, its just that they can read a spreadsheet. Given the choice between coal and nuclear, I'd go with nuclear. But its between two evils, and who needs evil when there are so many good options?

'Conservation is an important thing, but it is separate from generation.'
Conservation is the flipside of production - the less you need, the less you need to produce. Efficency is a relatively cheap and quick way to decarbonise much of the energy mix. New grids in Europe are being built not only to replace ageing infrastructure, but also to reduce spinning capacity (and thus cost) and allow more effecient demad management. If you devolve the grid in the way the germans have been with local PV, you also increase security of supply.

Amory Lovins has long pointed out that the projections for energy demand in the early 1970's were massively overblown. We used more energy, but not nearly as much as we thought we would. During the past 34 years, US demand actually fell for 11 of them. California is the poster child of what you can do to restrict expensive increases in generating capacity, yet increase economic activity. Your fridge uses a lot less energy than it did 30 years ago, as does your new TV. You now have an Ipod, HDD recorder, mobile phones, etc, but even they are now more efficent than they were. The new electric/hybrid cars will use more, but they replace fossil fuels with other possible sources.

'Do you believe that Greenpeace had anything to do with the decision to decommission Germany's nuclear plants? Do you believe that, if Germany had not opted for decommissioning, they would still be building these coal plants?'

I'm not an expert on german politics, but the Green party and a long tradition of anti nuclear probably had more to do with it than one organisation. And when the average German saw the footage of Fukishima going bang, closing them down suddenly made a lot more sense. If you add to that the need to keep 22000 miners vaguely happy and the natural fear that without nuclear, then the lights would go out, building the coal plants makes some sort of sense, no matter how dumb it might actually be.

But again, your seeing this as a false choice between frying the planet with coal, or saving it with nukes. Nukes wont save it, but will hold up the technologies which might.

Right, I'm now going to do the things I should have done an hour ago.....

My final straw with Greenpeace is when they asked their member base to do what they could to get rid of any Chemical Plant in their hometown. While I agree that there are dangers(having worked at a few), it was the shortsightedness of "Just get it out of the US, it's not like China or India would make these problems worse." As a avid hater of NIMBY, it made me cringe.

@MikeB:
"However, a report from last year from Duke reports that PV is being offered in North Carolina at 16 cents per KWH,"

This statement makes me suspicious - why North Carolina specifically? Makes me suspect it relates to subsidies in some manner.

I'm interested in the total cost, including all subsidies, rather than the cost to consumers after tax breaks, etc. We're looking at global problems for resources that everybody uses. When everybody gets a subsidy paid for by taxes, nobody gets anything in the end. Zero sum game and all.

"If Greepeace are 'luddites' for campaigning against them, then so is the City of London and Wall Street - they don't want to invest in them either."

Over the last 5 years, Monsanto has outperformed the S&P and Dow Jones. I presume this makes Greenpeace neo-luddites regarding GMOs? :)

My concern here is that you seem to be using many unreliable markers and heuristics to try to guess which one is cheaper. Of course, if I were less lazy I would attempt to research this myself instead of asking you here.

My fundamental complaint re: Greenpeace et al's position: It seems like nuclear is the only time I see cost brought up. Many of the things that Greenpeace support require spending more money. Yet somehow only nuclear is brought up as costly.

I also gave up on greenpeace years ago and sierra club for similar reasons so largely agree with your article. one mistake though:

"So far, they have proven useful for the seed companies' bottom lines and precious little else."

In fact Ge cotton has dramatically reduced use of synthetic insecticides in every country that has planted in. In Arizona, farmers of GE cotton use half the amount of insecticide compared to their conventional neighbors and achieve the same yield with enhanced biodiversity.

In hawaii, farmers of GE papaya, see 20-fold increases in yield compared to nonGE papaya. This is well established in peer-reviewed literature over many, many years. Union of Concerned scientists knows this too but fails to yield this information in their "failure to yield" opinion piece. UCS also knows that yields of cotton have increased dramatically in India and china after planting of GE cotton. So sadly, the quality of UCS pronouncements about GE crops now approaches that of Greenpeace's non-science based rants.

http://deemable.com/world/2011/03/nuclear-insanity-is-the-world-were-li…

(I agree with Greenpeace on this one.)

Thanks for the pointer Mary, and to some other commenters too.

Thanks to those who reminded me that there has been some reduction in pesticide use thanks to GM technology. Indeed, the refusal of so many supporters of organic agriculture to embrace the possible benefits of GM on this specific issue drives me nuts.

I regret the oversight.

"But civilization long since passed the point of no return on the path to the Anthropocene."

Wow. I never knew that genetic modification by insertion of new genes into another organism was tens of thousands of years old!

On Organic farming:

http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~christos/articles/cv_organic_farming.html

Short version: highly intensive farming is damaging the ecosystem and reducing the ability of the ecosystem to produce the same output.

On GM crops working as advertised:
http://www.pan-uk.org/pestnews/Issue/pn44/pn44p6.htm

Part 2:

On it being great for farmers:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/farmersSuicidesBtCottonIndia.php

On the debate for GO safety:
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/antenna/futurefoods/debate/debateGM_CIP…

Thanks to those who reminded me that there has been some reduction in pesticide use thanks to GM technology. Indeed, the refusal of so many supporters of organic agriculture to embrace the possible benefits of GM on this specific issue drives me nuts.

There has been no 'reduction' in pesticide use thanks to GM. Rather the opposite: mutant GM crops kill pests by secreting their own pesticide in their leaves and fruits. The industrialists who call themselves 'farmers' don't have to pay as much up front, but the crops are soaked in toxin to an unprecedented degree.

(And name one natural plant that poisons the soil and air around it. Natural things grow in harmony with their surroundings. Creating plants that enforce their own monoculture is a sick perversion of nature.)

In a nutshell: the current state of the nuclear power industry is shoddy, penny-pinching and corner-cutting and quite inappropriate for handling a dangerous technology. And the particular current variants of the technology itself are poor choices for civil nuclear power. But to dismiss any and all nuclear power on the basis of flawed examples is irrational.

You remind me of the Marxist reading group on my local campus. "Communism works in theory! Just because every attempt at a communist government has failed doesn't mean we shouldn't try again!" You cannot have a nuclear power industry that is not "shoddy, penny-pinching and corner-cutting". That's how industry works. That's how human beings work. Technocratic fever dreams aside, there has never been any mechanism, built and operated by human beings, that was capable of running forever without breaking down. And the consequences of a breakdown when dealing with nuclear power are so great that the innate fallibility of human nature should militate against its utilization. We, as a species, cannot be trusted with the technology, period.

@mad the swine

You cannot have a nuclear power industry that is not "shoddy, penny-pinching and corner-cutting". That's how industry works.

We had steam engines that exploded, cars that were death traps, mines that exploded, slag heaps that engulfed schools, factories, construction sites, docks etc where people died needlessly. Public outcry and labour organisation lead to regulation, and regulation and improvements in technology (often largely driven by regulation) improved safety enormously. You could have a nuclear power industry that was a lot less shoddy (etc), and was based on inherently safer versions of the technology (reactors incapable of melting down, systems that don't produce large amounts of high-level waste. It'll never be perfectly safe but even with today's crap technology more people are killed in the wind power industry per unit power generated than in nuclear (including Chernobyl and likely worst-case Fukushima).

I think it'll come anyway: it's just a case of whether we in the West develop safer nuclear technologies ourselves or buy them from China in a few years' time.

James Hrynyshyn

> ...there has been some reduction in pesticide use thanks to GM technology.

* The rapid adoption by U.S. farmers of genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton has promoted increased use of pesticides, an epidemic of herbicide-resistant weeds and more chemical residues in foods. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5AG0QY20091117

* More herbicide use reported on genetically modified crops. http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2009/1221/More-herbicide-use-repor…

> Indeed, the refusal of so many supporters of organic agriculture to embrace the possible benefits of GM on this specific issue drives me nuts.

Imagine how frustrating it is for those of us who have seen past the lies and propaganda but still see that same propaganda being parroted by people who should know better....

"You could have a nuclear power industry that was a lot less shoddy (etc)"

However, that would ruin the profits, so won't be done.

Tell me, if we COULD have that, why haven't we got it despite 60 years of effort and government aid? Incompetence or malice?

"more people are killed in the wind power industry per unit power generated than in nuclear"

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Ah me.

So wind power deaths are counted as "people who fell off the building while constructing".

I guess that we should remove all buildings, since not only do a non-zero number of people die on construction, they actually produce NEGATIVE energy!

@Wow

"You could have a nuclear power industry that was a lot less shoddy (etc)"
However, that would ruin the profits, so won't be done.

Depends how the market is subsidised. Without FITs rooftop PV wouldn't be taking off the way it is now.

"more people are killed in the wind power industry per unit power generated than in nuclear"

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Ah me.

So wind power deaths are counted as "people who fell off the building while constructing".

You can place the goalposts so that you don't count the people killed and injured building wind generators so that wind appears almost 100% safe, but that seems dishonest to me.

Douche boy rides continues to ride on into the sunset of irrelevance.

Looks like someone is starting to realize how douche his life premise actually is. (aka when dumbass liberals "wake up")

Sucks when when your hard ground turns out to be quicksand.

Ain't it. douche boy?

... the political (as opposed to practical) challenges posed by waste disposal.

Oh? You've got some "practical" solutions to nuclear waste disposal?

Please share...

"You can place the goalposts so that you don't count the people killed and injured building wind generators so that wind appears almost 100% safe, but that seems dishonest to me."

People die and are injured in mines. Uranium mines, coal mines, whatever.

We don't mine the wind.

People die and are injured building nuclear power stations.

You're not counting them.

People died from Chernobyl, but not for years and for things that people die of anyway: cancers and the like. So you aren't counting them.

But all we need to do to make wind 100% safe is better security on the building stage. A building stage nuclear has to do too.

Yet once built, the deaths no longer happen, unlike nuclear.

And YOU think that I was being dishonest??!?!?

@wow

"You can place the goalposts so that you don't count the people killed and injured building wind generators so that wind appears almost 100% safe, but that seems dishonest to me."
People die and are injured in mines. Uranium mines, coal mines, whatever.
We don't mine the wind.
People die and are injured building nuclear power stations.
You're not counting them.

Of course one must count the people killed in mining uranium, and in building nuclear power stations as well as building wind turbines. And I guess we should count people killed in mining the materials used for building wind turbines too.

People died from Chernobyl, but not for years and for things that people die of anyway: cancers and the like. So you aren't counting them.

Deaths from Chernobyl *are* counted in estimates of deaths due to nuclear power. As you say, it can be impossible to attribute a cause to any individual death from a cancer which could be caused by Chernobyl or could equally well be caused by radiation from some other 'natural' source, or occur for some other reason, but one can estimate the number of extra deaths likely to occur worldwide due to radiation from Chernobyl (and Fukushima, and TMI; and for that matter from burning coal).

But all we need to do to make wind 100% safe is better security on the building stage. A building stage nuclear has to do too.

One can make construction safer but never 100% safe, and the closer we approach 100% the more expensive it gets, making the construction less economic.

The same argument applies to nuclear of course: one can make plants safer but never 100% safe. That's why it's not just the risk of something bad happening that's important but the consequences when it does. Which is why plants such as the early Fukushima reactors which (as we have seen) can and did melt down when the tiny risk of everything going wrong actually happened, are such a bad idea, and why the push in the so-called 4th generation is towards designs which are inherently safe even when the remote probability does occur.

Yet once built, the deaths no longer happen, unlike nuclear.

Wind turbines need no maintenance? Last forever? Never go wrong?

And YOU think that I was being dishonest??!?!?

I wasn't accusing you, personally, of being dishonest. I assume you are engaging in this discussion in good faith and are open to rational discussion of the pros and cons of the issues being considered here. Which is how I try to be, myself.

"Of course one must count the people killed in mining uranium"

Then the claim that Fukishama hasn't killed anyone is a lie.

And you've not included them in your count.

"Deaths from Chernobyl *are* counted in estimates of deaths due to nuclear power."

They aren't when the same thing happens at Fukijama. And there's a new lie popping round the 'tubes that those deaths were from chemicals released, not the nuclear fallout.

How's that for a laugh!

"One can make construction safer but never 100% safe"

You can make it as safe to build 100GW in wind turbines as building 100GW of nuclear.

"I wasn't accusing you, personally, of being dishonest."

OK, so it was dishonest of you to say:

"You can place the goalposts so that you don't count the people killed and injured building wind generators so that wind appears almost 100% safe, but that seems dishonest to me."

then, since you didn't mean to say I was being dishonest doing so.

@wow
I take back what I said.
You seem to to be more interested in scoring debating points than rational discussion.
I think that is intellectually dishonest.

And you seem to want to cast yourself as always the victim.

Rational discussion? You wouldn't know it if you found it sleeping with your wife in bed singing "Rational discussions are coming round the mountain when it comes" accompanied by a full brass brand and chorus line.

Your arrogant nonsense about wind power being more dangerous than nuclear is laughable. So you paint "I'm Being Oppressed" on yourself and run off.

Well piss of, then.

The problem with wind isn't that once in a while a turbine might throw a blade and kill someone, or even that a gigawatt of wind would cover half a state and use more steel and concrete than the Hoover Dam. It's not even that a 100 megawatt farm might average 30. The problem is that seventy percent of the time when you want power, you won't get it. If you could turn on your hydro plant, no worries, but most places will use gas, which means fossil fuel emissions continue.Only hydro, geothermal and nuclear give reliable full time power with minimal emissions. If Co2 has to be cut 100% to solve climate change, a solution which mandates 70% fossil fuel is no solution

"It's not even that a 100 megawatt farm might average 30."

It's just as well: a nuke gets around 60% of baseplate.

"The problem is that seventy percent of the time when you want power, you won't get it"

1) Nope, that 30% you came up with was pulled from your anus

2) That's only true in cases where demand is even

The same problem exists for all power production. Ask France. Nuclear goes offline and you're short. Nuclear CANNOT change quick enough to cover demand, so you get enough to run your fridge but when you want to put the kettle on, nuclear power isn't supplying it.

Guess what you do to solve this.

You use other forms of power.

Just like you can use other forms of power with wind.

Idiot.

"It's just as well: a nuke gets around 60% of baseplate."
Wrong. The real capacity factor is around 90%. It's lower than 100% because of refueling. Reactors routinely run at full power for months.

"Nuclear CANNOT change quick enough to cover demand"
It can. It's just not used. It's most profitable to run nuclear at 100% and provide peaking with sources that have more expensive fuel, such as natural gas. The EPR reactor can change output by 5% (80MW) per minute. A nuclear submarine can go from minimal power to full power in seconds.

"that 30% you came up with was pulled from your anus"
Search "wind capacity factor". 30% is in fact rather generous.

"Wrong. The real capacity factor is around 90%."

Mope, wrong yourself. It's 60%. The UK Energy industry DAWES report and your "capacity factor" is actually the load: how much power out was actually used. Not how much power output compared to nameplate, idiot.

For example, what has been the power output of Fukijama recently? Sellafield has been out for over 8 months, and so on.

""Nuclear CANNOT change quick enough to cover demand"
It can"

No, it can't.

""that 30% you came up with was pulled from your anus"
Search "wind capacity factor"."

Just did. It is more than 40% in every link I found, and the older reports were lower.

You know, all that "technological innovation" stuff producing a better product and all.

From the link you probably used (Wikipedia):

As of April 2011, the Danish wind farm Horns Rev 2[3](the world's largest when it was inaugurated in September 2009[4] comprising 91 Siemens SWT-2.3-93 wind turbines each of 2.3 MW) with a nominal total capacity of 209 MW, has the best capacity factor of any offshore wind farm at 46.7% having produced over 1.5 years 1,278 GWÂ·h.[5] The record for an onshore wind farm is held by Burradale, which reached an annual capacity factor of 57.9% for 2005.[6]

DUKES:

http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/statistics/publications/dukes/duk…

See Chapt 10.

Well this is The narrow mind of Greenpeace – Class M very useful . air jordan http://www.jordanssneakersmall.com/

The last word (for now) on shale gas

hrynyshyn — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:36:09 +0000

The last word (for now) on shale gas

Debating the merits and dangers of fracking shale gas has become a major obession of those who worry about energy and the climate. Yale's e360's latest contribution comes in the form a forum that includes a wide variety of perspectives pro and con.

For me, the wisest observation, and the one that really trumps all others, comes from Kevin Anderson, who directs the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research's energy program:

... the only responsible action with regard to shale gas, or any "new" unconventional fossil fuel, is to keep it in the ground -- at least until there is a meaningful global emissions cap forcing substitution. In the absence of such an emissions cap, and in our energy hungry world, shale gas will only be combusted in addition to coal -- not as a substitution, as many analysts have naively suggested.

It's hard to argue with that. The UK has emissions-reductions goals but no caps. The U.S. doesn't even have official targets, let alone caps. So even if shale gas doesn't turn out to threaten to accelerate global warming the jury is still out on just how much methane fracking will let escape into the atomsphere the political reality renders such arguments moot.

hrynyshyn Mon, 06/20/2011 - 10:36

Tags

Communication and Politics

" US President Obama's administration has sometimes promoted shale gas, in part because of their belief that it releases fewer greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than other fossil fuels. However, there is growing evidence that shale gas emits more greenhouse gases than does conventional natural gas, and may emit as much or more than oil or coal. In a May 2010 letter to US President Obama, the Council of Scientific Society Presidents[7] urged great caution against a national policy of developing shale gas without a better scientific basis for the policy."

I went to look something up about it (trying to find its earliest use, historically) and noticed this wording in Wikipedia. Just thought I'd throw it in.

"For me, the wisest observation, and the one that really trumps all others,"

Translation: "The opinion that most closely resembles my own,"

Well, Shane, if the opinion I have is that two plus two equals four, then the wisest observation that really trumps all others that says "2+2=4" is also the opinion that most closely resembles my own.

Your "comment" really doesn't say anything other than the observation by Kevin Anderson is one you have most trouble accepting.

Just looking at the U.S. shale gas does seem to be displacing coal to a degree, mainly because building a new gas plant makes more sense than having to spend equivalent money upgrading and old coal plant. Unfortunately, that seems to just free up more coal for export.

Extensive utilization of this new gas supply along with the tar sands oil is exactly the course of action that Jim Hansen warns about. Once again he was out in front, but it's good to see other scientists making the point too.

haha. Douche boy!!! Why do you continue with your pathetic irrelevance? Are you 'making a difference' in your mind? Or is there seriously just nothing worthwhile around to which you could apply your two brain cells?

Continue on douche boy. It's still fun observing your ongoing train wreck.

Yet another clean energy disinformation campaign

hrynyshyn — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 07:18:47 +0000

Yet another clean energy disinformation campaign

The flaws with Wednesday's anti-renewables op-ed in the New York Times begin with the headline and continue through just about every paragraph. On second thought, perhaps the problems begin with the decision of the New York Times to run "The Gas Is Greener" in the first place. But let's start with the headline.

"The Gas is Greener" may seem like a clever double entendre, referring as it does to wishful thinking and the alleged merits of natural gas as a relatively clean source of energy. But it fails on both counts. First, the entire essay is predicated on the notion that environmentalists are blind to the true costs of renewable energy, and Bryce promises to expose "deep contradictions in the renewable energy movement." But it is my experience that most environmentalists who have devoted any time to considering renewable energy have a much more sophisticated and honest take on the costs of each option -- on society, the ecosystem, and the economy -- than those who resist the necessary transition.

To be fair, Bryce writes not all greenies are naive:

Not all environmentalists ignore renewable energy's land requirements. The Nature Conservancy has coined the term "energy sprawl" to describe it.

But that's it. The rest of the essay implies naivte and ignorance. To wit:

Nearly four decades ago, the economist E. F. Schumacher distilled the essence of environmental protection down to three words: "Small is beautiful." In the rush to do something -- anything -- to deal with the intractable problem of greenhouse gas emissions, environmental groups and policy makers have determined that renewable energy is the answer. But in doing so they've tossed Schumacher's dictum into the ditch.

But as usual for this brand of argument, he offers no evidence for this generalization. For an accurate assessment, all one has to do is read climatologist James Hansen, or activist Bill McKibben, or any number of learned renewable energy advocates, who have clearly anguished over which technologies offer the best hope for forestalling climate change and threaten the least ecological damage.

Second, the jury on natural gas is most definitely still out. At the moment, I'd have to say the cautionary principle leans heavily against it. Indeed, it is not hard to come up with some very industry-friendly assumptions that nevertheless still leave one with the conclusion that widespread use of natural gas will actually exacerbate global warming rather than mitigate it.

Where was I? Oh yes. The meat of Bryce's argument.

Bryce contents that solar power takes up too much land. But he ignores the vast areas available on rooftops. Maybe California finds its deserts more attractive, but other countries, like Germany, understand that. He argues that wind turbines require too much steel, and insists that natural gas and nuclear power have smaller footprints. This ignores the environmental costs of mining uranium and the length of time it takes to bring a nuke online and or extract the gas without poisoning watersheds. In both cases, his analysis is flawed.

While it is true that wind and solar power will require resources, and extract a toll on the environment, it is just plain wrong to conclude that the total impact of widespread conversion to renewables would be anything near the existing impact of fossil fuels. Yes, there will be costs, but again, these are being considered. And yes, there are always those who haven't thought through the whole thing. It is important not to jump on bandwagons without due deliberation. But only someone unfamiliar with the vigorous debates within the community that cares about climate change would argue that these issues aren't getting the scrutiny they deserve. I suggest Bryce familiarize himself with the straw man fallacy before writing more on this subject.

And another thing: in his back-of-the-envelope calculation, Bryce assumes that renewable energy is no more efficient than that produced by fossil fuels. This is simply false. As many, including Delucchi and Jacobson, have written (in peer-reviewed journals, not just NYT op-ed pages), renewable-derived electricity is actually more efficient. As a result, conversion to renewables actually reduces the total demand. So you can't, as Bryce does, just write things like this:

The state's peak electricity demand is about 52,000 megawatts. Meeting the one-third target will require (if you oversimplify a bit) about 17,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity.

There's more to criticize. But I think I've made my point. All without even mentioning the market-oriented think thank that employs Bryce.

hrynyshyn Thu, 06/09/2011 - 03:18

Tags

So, if she weighs the same as a duck ...

hrynyshyn — Thu, 26 May 2011 07:57:30 +0000

So, if she weighs the same as a duck ...

OK. Taking on logical flaws in Wall Street Journal op-ed items is about as difficult as shooting fish in a barrel, but I can't let Matt Ridley's latest affront to common sense pass without firing off a few rounds for practice if nothing else.

Under a staggeringly unimaginative headline of "Inconvenient Truths About 'Renewable' Energy," Ridley argues that renewable energy isn't really renewable, or at least no more renewable that fossil fuels. How does he go about this without shattering his backbone? By pointing out that Haitians are destroying their half of their island home by cutting down supposedly renewable trees at an unsustainable rate, for starters.

Right. Wood isn't renewable because some of the poorest people on the planet can't afford to engage in responsible silviculture. But it gets worse:

The wind may never stop blowing, but the wind industry depends on steel, concrete and rare-earth metals (for the turbine magnets), none of which are renewable. Wind generates 0.2% of the world's energy at present. Assuming that energy needs double in coming decades, we would have to build 100 times as many wind farms as we have today just to get to a paltry 10% from wind. We'd run out of non-renewable places to put them.

You may think I'm splitting hairs. Iron ore for making steel is unlikely to run out any time soon. True, but you can say the same about fossil fuels. The hydrocarbons in the earth's crust amount to more than 500,000 exajoules of energy. (This includes methane clathrates--gas on the ocean floor in solid, ice-like form--which may or may not be accessible as fuel someday.) The whole planet uses about 500 exajoules a year, so there may be a millennium's worth of hydrocarbons left at current rates.

(And what do you burn apart from witches?)

Hmm. Maybe apples and oranges aren't the right metaphorical examples. More like apples and anvils.

The good news is that the comments that poured into the WSJ's servers pretty much tell the story. Some take the form of the usual uncritical fan mail. But enough readers have the brains to point out that there is a rather significant difference between capital and operating expenses, concepts that are probably relatively well understood among WSJ subscribers, I should think.

(But can you not also build bridges out of stone?)

But wait, there more of what Joe Romm might call head-vise-appropriate literature:

Contrast that with blue whales, cod and passenger pigeons, all of which plainly renew themselves by breeding. But exploiting them caused their populations to collapse or disappear in just a few short decades. It's a startling fact that such "renewable" resources keep running short, while no non-renewable resource has yet run out: not oil, gold, uranium or phosphate.

That's right. It hasn't happened yet, so it never will. Brilliant. Why didn't I think of that? The economics of past extinctions are irrelevant and so ... logically ... we don't ever have to worry about EROEI (energy returned on energy invested) either.

(But she's a witch. She turned me into a newt!)

Come to think of it, maybe the irony of an essay so completely bereft of an understanding of fundamental economic principles appearing in the country's leading business newspaper is remarkable after all. But wait. We're talking about a paper whose op-ed editors have already demonstrated an utter lack of respect for the physical sciences.

Never mind. I take that back.

hrynyshyn Thu, 05/26/2011 - 03:57

Tags

Communication and Politics

I love this comment that suggests that wind farms can somehow significantly affect weather patterns:

If the Coal and Oil use was responsible for Katrina, could the wind farms in Texas west to California be partially responsible for the severe increase in Tornados this year? Are those generators responsible for the damage to Joplin yesterday? Got a computer program to prove your point? I'd like to see it.....

Let me get this straight: oil, coal and uranium, though non-renewable, will never run out because they have not run out. But rare earth elements, though non-renewable, will run out if we build too many windmills. It's all so confusing...

Of course, windmill magnets aren't used up; a 100-year-old windmill magnet has just as many atoms of neodymium and dysprosium as a new one.

I know, right? There's no "faith" in the scientific community, or at least when there uis, it's the right kind!

And this type of attitude, and sneering against those who disagree with you, is likely to make more people come to your point of view!

Good point, guys!

If the Coal and Oil use was responsible for Katrina, could the wind farms in Texas west to California be partially responsible for the severe increase in Tornados this year?

WINDMILLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!

Kneel before Morbo, puny Earthlings.

Sunday Sacrilege pz's blaspheming head

debunkingskeptics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1756

Ridley mentioned guano, which is pretty much the word that came to mind when I read that dreck. His confusion about what is 'renewable' would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.

The really amazing thing is that serious people pay good money for the WSJ to stay informed, so what must they think when they read stuff like this? Stop getting the WSJ might be one of them...

"And this type of attitude, and sneering"

Is completely acceptable when the people you're responding to are idiots by their own words.

"against those who disagree with you"

No, only if the disagreement is stated by an idiotic statement.

i think we have to be careful about what we mean by sustainable. The cod fishery was, and could have remained,sustainable-but we we overfished to the extent that the ecology changed.

Sustainable does not mean "ok to rape".

"Sustainable does not mean 'ok to rape'."

Indeed: seems like some people think 'sustainable' is a quality intrinsic to certain things, that others lack - rather than a concept for defining whether people are using stuff in a way that will allow them to carry on doing so into the future.

Wow, that was a horrible sentence. Also: george w:

'Let me get this straight: oil, coal and uranium, though non-renewable, will never run out because they have not run out. But rare earth elements, though non-renewable, will run out if we build too many windmills.'

Genius.

"Wow, that was a horrible sentence."

Well, it really should have been a semicolon since I quoted in the middle, but what the heck. This isn't an Eng Lit class.

Anything other than horribleness wrong with it, though?

I mean, if some dumbass comes up with a dumbass statement, you CAN call them a dumbass and be 100% correct. You can even say their comment was dumbass and still be correct. Even though calling someone dumbass is sneering.

Thomas Jefferson : Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them;

If you prefer.