Monckton vs Brook debate – the video

Posted on 8 February 2010 by Barry Brook

I’m in Melbourne today with Tom Blees, and tomorrow we’re heading to Sydney to visit ANSTO. Whilst there, Tom will give a talk; I’m delighted to see that some of the regular commenters on BNC will be there (look forward to meeting you John D. Morgan, Ewen Laver and perhaps some others). Details here.

Whilst in Adelaide, Tom Blees gave two talks. His Q&A session at the Royal Institution of Australia was a great success. Head over here to listen to the audio of his chat with Prof. Mike Young, and the subsequent question time. The 2nd event was the ‘nuclear debate’, when Tom and I went head-to-head with Mark Diesendorf (UNSW) and David Noonan (ACF). We (the Environment Institute) recorded this debate in audio format, and Slow TV videoed it (although disappointingly, they missed most of the Q&A, which was where the sparks flew). I’ll post back here when the Slow TV video is up.

The nuclear debate was pretty entertaining, although the format really didn’t allow for many important issues to be thrashed out in convincing detail. As others have noted in comments on BNC, Diesendorf took to personally attacking my credentials, which I thought was unprofessional and totally uncalled for. I said as much on the night, but the crowd seemed to be predominantly anti-nuclear, so I guess they were willing to overlook this most dubious of debating ‘tactics’. Still, my opinion of Diesendorf has now hit rock bottom, and I want nothing more to do with him, professionally or otherwise. At least David Noonan stuck to the topic rather than playing the man, even if he basically ignored what Tom and I were saying on the matter of proliferation, availability of weapons-grade plutonium, etc. with IFRs, and instead hammered out his pre-prepared script. Read here for one independent write-up of the debate. If you find others, post links in the comments below.

Then there was the debate I had with Lord Monckton, in Brisbane on Friday 29 January. This was performed in front of 500 suits-and-ties at the Hilton Hotel; needless to say, I was up against a tough crowd! Ian Plimer was a panel member with Monckton, and Graham Readfearn (formerly of the Courier Mail) was my fellow panellist. I took the position of explaining how science deals with uncertainties, and why climate change was a serious risk management challenge (no, I wasn’t arguing for the precautionary principle, despite what Monckton concluded). Readfearn took the line of attacking the credentials of Monckton/Plimer, which was much the same tactic used by Diesendorf in the nuclear debate, and, quite rightly, it didn’t got down well.

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Filed under: Non-greenhouse theorists ('sceptics'), Nuclear Energy | 14 Comments »

Burning the biosphere, boverty blues (Part II)

Posted on 4 February 2010 by Barry Brook

This is the second of a two part post by Geoff Russell. Part I sketched the quantitative features of the global fire regime, biomass flows, while this part looks primarily at Africa.

Boverty was defined in the previous post as the human impact of too many bovines overwhelming the local biosphere’s ability to feed them … the bovines are usually cattle and more than a few African countries have boverty induced poverty. Their livestock is a millstone around their necks and helping to keep them poor.

Western aid organisations, particularly those run by BBQ obsessed Australians, seem dominated by people haven’t woken up to the simple fact that the foods they grew up on when the planet had half its present population haven’t been sustainable globally for a very long time. Even in Australia, with its vast landmass and small human population, the production of these foods has driven and continues to drive water shortages, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. Advocacy of such foods in Africa will benefit few and damage prospects of long term food security.

African reforestation

As outlined in the Part I, many grasslands on the planet are not the product of natural forces, but were cleared by people and kept as grasslands for livestock grazing by annual or occasional conflagrations. This is global burning on a massive scale as shown in the NASA firemaps presented in Part I. The continent with the most deliberate human burning is Africa. Over 200 million hectares and 2 billion tonnes of dry matter are burned annually in deliberately lit fires. Almost all of these fires are set by livestock herders to stop grasslands becoming forests. By comparison, burning by shifting cultivators for crops covered an area about 10 percent of this size. A recent study in Nature gives an idea of what could happen if the burning stopped. The reforestation potential is massive.

Consider the above image from the Nature article. The vertically hatched area has an average rainfall over 780mm and would, according to Sankaran and the large number of other authors, revert to some kind of forest if given half a chance. Its status as savanna is anthropogenic and not a product of natural attributes like soil type and climate.

How long can such regrowth go on adding carbon in the form of forests? Most additional carbon would be added during the first 3 decades but forests can go on adding smaller amounts for centuries. It’s worth noting that fire is probably always a suppressor of biomass production. The frequent claim that fire helps regeneration, making it some kind of friend of biodiversity, can be true but is highly misleading. I intend to do a post on this sometime in the future. But despite some plants benefitting from fire, the general impact is to reduce biomass production. Measurements under 2 rainfall regimes and 4 soil types in Africa always recorded higher biomass production in areas not burned.

One way of measuring a country’s fire intensity is to consider the ratio of biomass burned to biomass appropriated. We saw in Part I that Australia burns about 40 percent of what it appropriates. This ratio is the same as in South East Asia, but much higher than the 1 percent of Western Europe.

Both burn ratios pale beside the staggering 150 percent of sub-Saharan Africa where far more is burned than is otherwise appropriated. This is a stunning number. Corey Bradshaw recently wrote a piece on his blog where he summarised a recent paper on Australia’s mammal extinction crisis. His bottom line summary was that we should “Stop burning the shit out of our forests“. In sub-Saharan Africa, they are burning 12 times more biomass from an area 6 times bigger than the 37 million hectares we burn each year. If we are doing as Corey says, then what are the Africans doing? And for what? They reap far less than they burn.

Climate Change

How will global warming compound or alleviate Africa’s problems? The most critical impacts will be changes in rainfall regimes.

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Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Ecological impacts, Emissions reduction | 22 Comments »

Alternative to the CPRS (cap-and-trade)

Posted on 31 January 2010 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Peter Lang. Peter is a retired geologist and engineer with 40 years experience on a wide range of energy projects throughout the world, including managing energy R&D and providing policy advice for government and opposition. His experience includes: coal, oil, gas, hydro, geothermal, nuclear power plants, nuclear waste disposal, and a wide range of energy end use management projects.

Below are suggestions for an alternative policy to the CPRS (the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme – an emission cap-and-trade system proposed by the Australian Labor government). This is not a complete energy policy, but simply some fragments for possible inclusion in a complete policy.

Aim:

1.To reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions consistent with international efforts;

2.To increase, not decrease, Australia’s international competitiveness; this will result in:

a.more jobs and better remuneration for workers

b.more wealth and better standard of living for all; and

c.more revenue to support all the things we want; such as: better Health, Education, infrastructure and fixing our most pressing environmental problems such as the Murray Darling Basin.

Increasing the cost of energy has serious negative consequences for humanity, especially the poorest peoples on the planet. A policy such as the CPRS that sets out to increase electricity costs for little or no overall reduction in world GHG emissions is negligent.

The proposed alternative would help the world by supplying products and services with less embodied emissions than now. For example, the policy proposed here would maintain Australia’s aluminium industry and its jobs and provide the aluminium with less embodied emissions than other countries can. This is just one example to illustrate the benefits of this policy, but an important one.

We do not rule out an ETS or some alternative instrument in the future, but we will not impose an ETS on Australia before the USA and we will not impose an ETS that does not protect Australia’s industry and jobs to a similar extent as the USA’s legislation. (It is not clear that the USA will implement an ETS. There are signs the USA may not take this approach to cutting its GHG emissions).

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Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy | 152 Comments »

Tom Blees in Australia

Posted on 28 January 2010 by Barry Brook

As I discussed briefly here, author Tom Blees is visiting Australia in the first two weeks of February,  as reported on our Environment Institute blog.

Tom is the author of “Prescription for the Planet”, which presents a solution to the world’s energy and environmental crises (for reviews of the book on BNC, see here and here [scroll to bottom of the post for the links]). Tom is also the president of the Science Council for Global Initiatives, a new international Non-Governmental Organisation, creating the framework for the global energy revolution proposed in in his book. See here for more details.

For twenty years Tom skippered a seasonal fishing boat on the Bering Sea, and led a diverse and adventurous life. He then founded a charitable organisation with his wife, to provide safe water supplies to villagers in Central America. While fundraising to launch this project, Tom discovered some lesser known technologies that if properly used, could have a profound global impact. After nearly ten years of research and working hand in hand with scientists who helped develop the core concepts, Blees wrote ‘Prescription for the Planet’.

Throughout his stay in Australia, he will speak about his book at functions in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. He is also available for media interviews (television, radio and print) — please inquire here (see contact information).

Tom will speak at two functions in Adelaide, both open to the general public.

The first event, hosted by the Royal Institution of Australia, in association with The Environment Institute, will be a discussion with Tom as he explains his thinking and outlines how a trio of little-known yet profoundly revolutionary technologies (such as the Integral Fast Reactor), coupled with their judicious use in an atmosphere of global cooperation, can solve the power, pollution and resource problems facing the world today. For more information about this event and to register your interest in attending, please click here.

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Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy | 60 Comments »

Nuclear safeguards and Australian uranium export policy

Posted on 25 January 2010 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Dr Jim Green. Jim is the National nuclear campaigner for Friends of the Earth, Australia.

Thanks to Barry Brook for the opportunity to contribute a post on the topic of nuclear safeguards.

Why should nuclear power proponents involve themselves in advocacy to strengthen the safeguards system? Perhaps the strongest argument is that public concern about weapons proliferation shapes as a significant constraint on the expansion of nuclear power. Here are some relevant considerations:

– Opinion polls repeatedly demonstrate a high level of public concern about WMD proliferation and national governments routinely cite WMD non-proliferation as a top-shelf national priority.

– Daily media reports about the nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran reinforce public concerns about the links between the peaceful atom and WMD proliferation.

– A 2005 survey of 1000 Australians found that 56% believe that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections are not effective while barely half as many (29%) believe they are effective (1).

– A 2008 survey of 1200 Australians found 2:1 opposition to uranium exports to nuclear weapons states (2).

– The US National Intelligence Council argued in a 2008 report that:

The spread of nuclear technologies and expertise is generating concerns about the potential emergence of new nuclear weapon states and the acquisition of nuclear materials by terrorist groups.

The Council also warned of the possibility of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and noted that a number of states in the region…

are already thinking about developing or acquiring nuclear technology useful for development of nuclear weaponry. (3)

Nuclear power advocates who accept the need to strengthen safeguards can act individually by making submissions to relevant government inquiries, writing to government ministers, writing letters to newspapers, etc. Better still, a loose coalition of nuclear power advocates could be established to work on safeguards and related issues. It would also be welcome if the Science Council for Global Initiatives and other such organisations would take up these issues (Ed: we are, see here). Read more »

Filed under: Nuclear Energy | 78 Comments »

Real holes in science

Posted on 22 January 2010 by Barry Brook

I’m sometimes asked to describe what science is. Well, there are many definitions and philosophical positions which cover this question, but to me, as a working scientist, one stands out above all others as relevant to what I do. Science constrains uncertainty. Or, to put it in a slightly longer form, science is the method that allows humans to put realistic bounds on our understanding of how the world (the universe) works and the natural laws it obeys. Although there is almost no problem in science that can be explained fully, and few ideas can be proven absolutely, science is still among our most effective intellectual tools. From the technological sophistication of our modern society, to our appreciation of the hidden mechanisms of evolution or quantum mechanics, science tells us what is possible (and plausible), but not what is, or must be.

One scientific problem for which we can never have definitive proof is the cause of past extinctions. Such events can never be replayed or observed directly, and so cannot be tested or falsified; moreover, evidence from the past is inevitably sketchy and difficult to interpret. Yet, despite these inherent limitations, we can still assess how our available data stacks up against alternative ideas, and arrive at a probabilistic judgement on what is more or less likely. The extinction of the dinosaurs is the most famous example, but there are many others. In this week’s issue of Science, I have a co-authored paper “And then there were none?” with Bert Roberts on the extinction of Australia’s megafauna and the probable role of early modern people. There is a write-up of the story in The Australian, here.

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Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Ecological impacts | 60 Comments »

Hypocrisies of the antis

Posted on 17 January 2010 by Barry Brook

I was recently alerted to a brilliant post on the blog WAG. It’s called “Climate of Hypocrisy“. I’ll quote the lead in…

For what is the hope of the hypocrite, though he hath gained, when God taketh away his soul? Will God hear his cry when trouble cometh upon him?

-Job 27:8-9

Deniers of climate change like to castigate Al Gore and others for the supposed hypocrisy of preaching the benefits of CO2 reductions while flying on jets, living in big houses, etc. I won’t defend the big house (although Gore did respond to accusations by installing renewable energy onsite), but there’s no problem with jetting around to climate conferences, because those trips result in net CO2 reductions.

But those are technicalities. The real problem with gloating over climate activists’ small specks of hypocrisy is that it ignores the hypocritical planks inherent in the philosophical underpinnings of opposition to CO2 reductions. Here are some ways in which deniers are hypocritical (feel free to add suggestions in the comments):

1. They profess that markets can solve all problems while simultaneously preaching that businesses will never be able to adapt to higher energy prices.

2. They argue that siting problems (e.g. urban heat island) render temperature data useless, while simultaneously arguing that adjusting for those problems constitutes scientific fraud/ fudging the data.

…

Great concept! Head over to the WAG blog and contribute your own examples — their list is building (43 so far).

This also gave me an idea for a blog post here at BNC — why not do the same to reveal the hypocrisy of the anti-nuclear ‘environmentalists’? (Actually, it was my sister, Marion, who made the connection, and who came up with much of the below, to which I added a few extras. Thanks Mazz).

I’ve been thinking about this yin yang problem for a while. For instance, back in early November 2009 I wrote the following in the Adelaide Advertiser:

…Lazy, recycled objections to the UK nuclear plan come from the usual suspects – Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth.

I’ve been forced to conclude that these so-called environmental organisations are not actually interested in climate change mitigation or clean energy supply.

Their founding principles are to oppose nuclear technology in all forms. They are immune to arguments based on logic or scientific evidence.

They ignore technological developments that solve the long-lived nuclear waste problem (it is burned as energy in fast spectrum reactors).

They can’t seem to accept the fact that there is enough uranium to provide the whole world with zero-carbon power for millions of years.

All they care about is being anti-nuclear…

Tom Blees has tagged these people ‘environists‘, because they are environmentalists with the ‘mental’ part taken away. I say it’s time high time that their hypocrisy was exposed — in the same way that the hypocrisy of climate change denialists ought to be laid bare — for the good of human society and environmental sustainability. In that spirit, here’s a starting list. Please help me add to it — I might make up a poster of it one day.

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Hypocrisies of the anti- nuclear power/renewables advocates

1. They claim renewables can replace fossil fuels, then can’t see the problem with leaning on fossil fuel gas to back them up when they fail to do so.

Read more »

Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Nuclear Energy | 147 Comments »

From nuclear sceptic to convert

Posted on 13 January 2010 by Barry Brook

I’m delighted to reproduce an Op Ed written by my good friend Assoc. Prof. Haydon Manning, who is head of the Department of Politics and Public Policy at Flinders University in Adelaide. Haydon teaches Australian and environmental politics and is sufficiently influential (controversial) that he’s been bestowed the great honour of having a Friends of the Earth page dedicated to his writings! This piece was written for the SA Mines and Energy journal; you can read the original here.

(Note: It might seem like I’m outsourcing everything on BNC in 2010, but there’ll be plenty of new blog entries from me over the next few months. I’ve just been rather busy putting the finishing touches to my new book… and other miniutae like writing new grant applications and papers. Oh, and be sure to look out in the 22 January issue of Science — I have a new Perspective piece on the extinction of the Australian megafauna)

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“Spotting Rex Connor’s Ghost”

In the late 1970s, I marched through Adelaide streets shouting: “Uranium, leave it in the ground.” Teaching environmental politics over the last ten or so years saw me prepare lectures weighing up the pros and cons of the nuclear fuel cycle. The evidence slowly convince a nuclear skeptic of the errors of his ways.

Recently, I accepted an invitation from the WA Chamber of Mines and Energy to speak at a public forum in Kalgoorlie. I argued that the good citizens of WA ought to be proud once uranium oxide starts to pass through their township as they will join what I call “the main game” on the carbon emission reduction front.

In an effort to convey this point I often draw attention to the remarkable energy punch embedded in a drum of uranium oxide. One drum, once processed and fabricated into nuclear fuel rods, will generate the same amount of electricity as approximately 6,000 tonnes of coal. In a nutshell, about 5 drums of yellowcake equates to the electricity generating capacity of your average coal freighter!

Take this a step further and look ahead a couple of decades. A drum uranium oxide supplying a so-called 4th generation nuclear reactor would, according to data supplied to me by Adelaide University’s Professor Barry Brook, equate to about 1 million tonnes of coal burning foregone. If you like, that’s something like a briefcase of yellowcake compared to a ship of coal – now that truly evokes hope for a mid-century clean energy future.

In this State we appreciate that our uranium mining story is one of world’s best practice with regard to occupational health and safety and the transport of uranium oxide. Three decades without a ‘radiation scare’ sees the majority of South Australians well aware that there is nothing to fear from uranium mining, milling and transportation. This is clearly evident with opinion polls indicating that South Australians are more at ease with the industry than poll respondents in other states.

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Filed under: Nuclear Energy | 81 Comments »

Emission cuts realities for electricity generation – costs and CO2 emissions

Posted on 9 January 2010 by Barry Brook

“We must cut our carbon emissions immediately!“… “We have to transition rapidly to 100% renewable energy!“… “A massive nuclear build out is the only logical course of action!“… and so on. We get these well-meant but hand-waving arguments all the time, almost always bereft of real-world numbers — especially those with $$ attached. This greatly limits their utility and credibility. Without a practical, pragmatic plan, we aren’t going to get anywhere and the people in control of the purse strings will not pay them serious attention.

That’s why I’m so happy to present this new, clear-headed analysis by Peter Lang on BraveNewClimate (which was spawned by in the discussion threads of previous posts on wind and solar power — their costs and ability to mitigate carbon emissions). Using Australia as a case study (although the same principles would apply in almost any developed economy that is currently reliant on fossil fuel energy), Peter considers six electricity supply scenarios for the period 2010 to 2050 — a high-carbon business-as-usual projection as a reference, and five low(er) carbon alternatives. In each of the alternatives, coal-fired power stations are retired, and not replaced, such that by the period 2035 — 2040, the last few are closed.

These analysis are simple, clearly presented and easily understood. Yet they’re also realistic in the same way that David Mackay’s energy plans are realistic — they add up (although Mackay was concerned about whether the physics are right, Lang is concerned about whether the $$ and build rates are plausible). They are an apples and apples set of plans, in the sense that they represent reasonable relative comparisons which all aim to achieve the same goal, in different ways. Like any modelling exercise, the uncertainties lie in the quality of the input data and the acceptability of the assumptions made. Peter makes them quite explicit. If you wish to disagree and propose/source your own numbers, fine, but remember that the onus is then on you to justify your assumptions.

I’ll stop and this point and let you read the analysis. Get yourself a large mug of coffee or a tall glass of wine, and settle in for an interesting read. After that, let the comments fly. I certainly have my own points to make about where I think the analysis is most/least plausible, but that can come a little later…

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Emission Cuts Realities – Electricity Generation

Cost and CO2 emissions projections for different electricity generation options for Australia to 2050

By Peter Lang, January 2010

(Download the printable 32-page PDF version here, which also includes references and Appendices).

Peter Lang is a retired geologist and engineer with 40 years experience on a wide range of energy projects throughout the world, including managing energy R&D and providing policy advice for government and opposition. His experience includes: coal, oil, gas, hydro, geothermal, nuclear power plants, nuclear waste disposal, and a wide range of energy end use management projects.

Abstract

Five options for cutting CO2 emissions from electricity generation in Australia are compared with a ‘Business as Usual’ option over the period 2010 to 2050. The six options comprise combinations of coal, gas, nuclear, wind and solar thermal technologies.

The conclusions: The nuclear option reduces CO2 emissions the most, is the only option that can be built quickly enough to make the deep emissions cuts required, and is the least cost of the options that can cut emissions sustainably. Solar thermal and wind power are the highest cost of the options considered. The cost of avoiding emissions is lowest with nuclear and highest with solar and wind power.

Introduction

This paper presents a simple analysis of CO2 emissions, capital expenditure, electricity generation costs and the emissions avoidance cost for six options for supplying Australia’s electricity. The results are presented at five year intervals for the period 2010 to 2050.

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Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 194 Comments »

Burning the biosphere, boverty blues (Part I)

Posted on 5 January 2010 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Geoff Russell. Geoff is a mathematician and computer programmer and is a member of Animal Liberation SA. His recently published book is CSIRO Perfidy.

This is the first of two posts on some large issues connected with global fire regimes, biomass flows, and food security. Part II will be posted on BNC in a few weeks time.

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Boverty is the human impact of too many bovines overwhelming the local biosphere’s ability to feed them … the bovines are usually cattle and more than a few African countries have precisely this problem. Their livestock is a millstone around their necks and helping to keep them poor. Well-meaning aid organisations often contribute to the problem.

The ecosystem impacts of cattle spread far and wide but it may not be the owners of the animals who suffer the impacts. Indeed, the animals can buffer their owners against the worst impacts of boverty. This is analogous to the way that drivers of large SUVs do well in collisions with smaller vehicles. The entire community suffers from the presence of the vehicles, but the owners may be the least affected.

But these conclusions are just the end point of a longish discussion. We need to start at the beginning. But before we get to the beginning, here is a MODIS satellite firemap of the planet during the last days of December 2009. The sub-Saharan cattle countries are ablaze.

This post surveys the impacts of livestock, firstly at a very general level on the biosphere due to its domination of global biomass consumption, proceeding through the cattle-specific annual planetary conflagrations as people ignite the world’s grasslands to prevent reforestation. Lastly, we look at more intimate and sometimes more indirect bovine impacts, like the accelerated degradation of arable soil, the tens or hundreds of thousands of children killed by cooking with dung, and the global increase in respiratory and heart disease from ozone increases caused by rising methane levels.

Cattle are a major causal component in all these problems. The planet’s 1.4 billion cattle have a liveweight biomass exceeding that of humans and dominate many of our adverse impacts on planetary eco-systems.

Read more »

Filed under: Ecological impacts, Emissions reduction | 55 Comments »

The most important investment that we aren’t making to mitigate the climate crisis

Posted on 2 January 2010 by Barry Brook

Another crisp piece from Steve Kirsch on HuffPo that I’d like to reproduce on BNC, for completeness. (For his other posts on the IFR, click here).

If you want to get emissions reductions, you must make the alternatives for electric power generation cheaper than coal. It’s that simple. If you don’t do that, you lose.

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The US is making a huge mistake in the way we are dealing with global warming. Instead of following the old adage, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” we are doing the opposite: committing massive dollars for mitigation strategies while at the same time refusing to build the most promising new clean base-load power generation technologies developed by our nation’s top energy scientists.

The International Energy Agency tells us that every year of delay in action to tackle global warming costs $500 billion.

So what are doing about it?

Read more »

Filed under: Nuclear Energy | 105 Comments »

Energy and climate books I read in 2009

Posted on 31 December 2009 by Barry Brook

Here is an incomplete list of the sustainable energy and climate change books I read in 2009 (actually, a few also scraped in from late 2008). I’ve provided a 2 — 3 sentence summary of each book (from my perspective) and a Rating out of 5. Some books have been reviewed in more detail on BNC already — enter from the title of the book in this website’s search box to find the review.

Climate science

James Lovelock. The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning. Basic Books, 2009, 288 p. — Lovelock is a wise old man who’s seen it all, and he pulls no punches here. His ruthless pragmatism on nuclear energy and climate adaptation was what I most enjoyed about this book. Chapter 4, “Energy and Food Sources” is a wonderful summary of the energy problem and the rest of the book explores the many uncertainties in climate science, and why they’re generally pretty bad news. We’re not in for a smooth ride this century. Rating: 4

James Hansen. Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance To Save Humanity. Bloomsbury, 2009, 320 p. — For a scientist, Hansen has an exceptional knack at writing for a general audience. In exploring the climate’s sensitivity to human forces, he draws on three principle lines of evidence — Earth history, modern observational data, and models/physics (the latter as integrators and predictors, the first line of evidence he considers to be the most compelling). In Hansen’s exploration of solutions, he (rightly) derides cap-and-trade shell games and points towards a technological solution with a clear timetable for closing out coal by 2030. Rating: 4.5

David Archer. The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate. Princeton UP, 2009, 180 p. — Excellent summary of the study of palaeoclimates and why this field of science points to long residence times of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, with the implication that we are truly committing to change that will last ‘forever’ (hundreds of millennia). The right way to write popular science. Rating: 4

A. Barrie Pittock. Climate Change: The Science, Impacts and Solutions. CSIRO Publishing, 2009, 350 p. — Thorough, up-to-date review of climate science from a well-know Australian scientist. It examines whether things are worse now than we anticipated 5 to 10 years ago (answer = yes), and considers adaptation and mitigation solutions, with a focus on Australia. Barrie doesn’t think much about nuclear power; his dream is solar. Hmmm. Rating: 3.5

Edmond Mathez. Climate Change: The Science of Global Warming and Our Energy Future. Columbia UP, 2009, 318 p. Drawing its inspiration from a popular exhibition, curated by the author, at the American Museum of Natural History, the book surveys a broad and varied intellectual terrain. It covers everything from the basic chemistry and physics of the atmosphere, oceans and ice caps, to the functioning of the carbon cycle and its links with the geology in deep time, to the scientific method and a reflection on how it structures thinking within such a multidisciplinary arena, to the projected geophysical, biological, socioeconomic impacts of a future century of global warming, and finally to the raft of possible solutions on offer. Absolutely fantastic on the climate science, okay-to-weak on the energy aspects (they felt like a less-well-researched tack on). I reviewed this book for Quarterly Review of Biology. Rating: 4

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Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Ecological impacts, Emissions reduction, Future shock, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 26 Comments »

Open Thread 2

Posted on 28 December 2009 by Barry Brook

It’s the Christmas and New Year season, and that means general festivities, good food and drinks, and lots of time in the pool with the kids (remember, it’s the height of summer in Australia). I also make it a rule at this time of year to try to stay away from anything serious on the computer, at least for a week or so. (For those who care about my other life, I’ve been catching up on season 4 Doctor Who and old Poirot episodes, as well as leveling up to 70 in CoD:MW2 multiplayer).

But, as a hat tip to my mentally evolutionary year (in terms of my thinking on climate solutions), I’ve got one last post lined up to close out the Noughties. It’s a brief review of the sustainable energy and climate change books that I read in 2009 (…stacking them up on my table, there is a disturbingly large number). Expect that post to be up on 31 December.

Meanwhile, I’ll be in-and-out of BNC, keeping up with the comments. I really love the active community that’s built up here — it’s got a real life of its own. In that spirit, I thought it was probably time to post up another Open Thread.

Read more »

Filed under: Open Thread | 109 Comments »

Unnatural gas

Posted on 24 December 2009 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Tom Blees. Tom is author of Prescription for the Planet – The Painless Remedy for Our Energy & Environmental Crises. Tom is also the president of the Science Council for Global Initiatives.

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Last month Bobby Kennedy Jr., a tireless advocate for the environment, gave a talk in New York City to a packed house. He spoke about the devastation wrought by coal mining and argued that we must get away from fossil fuels if we’re to deal with climate change. He also, to my chagrin (since I know he’s got my book), threw in some tired clichés about how bad nuclear power is. He then waxed enthusiastic about wind and solar power, asserting that if we build a smart grid and pour enough resources into building a lot of wind and solar production, we can have “free energy forever.” The crowd ate it up. Bobby’s a very good speaker, he’s definitely got the Kennedy knack for that.

Later, as he expanded on the renewable energy topic, he pointed out that we have abundant natural gas in the USA that we can use to fill in when the wind and solar production is insufficient. Bobby is certainly not alone in having a huge blind spot in this regard. Virtually every prominent advocate for a renewables-only future includes natural gas as a big part of the mix. Though it’s usually de-emphasized by wind and solar promoters, this embrace of natural gas generation is a tacit admission of the logistical and economic impossibility of providing all the energy humanity needs from renewables alone.

The willing acceptance of increased natural gas use by so many who consider themselves environmentalists is stunningly inconsistent with the science of anthropogenic climate change. The nearly religious fervor of the windies and sunnies virtually ignores this devil in the details. The most classic example of such willful blindness is the elevation of T. Boone Pickens to the status of environmental hero because of his plans (since scrapped, ironically) to build a huge wind farm in Texas. Back in 2004, T. Boone was infamous among these same people as the nefarious money man behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the abominable smear campaign that helped keep George W. Bush in power for a second disastrous term. T. Boone’s transformation into a darling of environmentalists is reminiscent of the “rehabilitation” of political pariahs in Maoist China. How quickly we forget.

A cynic (or realist) might well observe that T. Boone Pickens is a gas guy. That’s his stock in trade, it’s what made him the billions that freed him to support arch-conservative interests until his recent foray into the world of lefties. His political chameleon act, though, is much easier to understand if one keeps in mind the fact that the more massive the deployment of wind turbines and solar farms the more dependent we will become upon natural gas. It’s telling that T. Boone eventually abandoned plans for his mega-wind farm, attesting to his recognition that the economics simply couldn’t justify it. Ironically, he’s still pals with the big shots on the left. Ah, sweet redemption!

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Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 81 Comments »

Temperature of science – never give up

Posted on 21 December 2009 by Barry Brook

As the end of 2009 approaches, I have many BraveNewClimate blog posts that are developing behind the scenes — more from the IFR FaD and TCASE series, a guest post by Tom Blees on the natural gas ‘game’, a guest post by a new BNC writer on wind farm planning problems, a report about my upcoming popular book on nuclear power (co-authored by Ian Lowe), and so on.

One of the most interesting things on the immediate horizon is a simple analysis to compare six options for reducing CO2 emissions from Australia’s electricity generation over the period 2010 and 2050, by Peter Lang. Peter has written a number of important posts on likely wind and solar energy costs and carbon abatement potential, as these technologies are taken to a large scale (search for ‘Peter Lang” on this page for a listing).

For now though, I want to take a bit of space to reflect on the global temperature record. With 2009 ranking among the hottest years on record [final data pending] and 2010 looking likely to be the hottest ever, it’s worth understanding where these data come from and why climate scientists consider them to be so robust. (Incidentally, on my research front, Corey Bradshaw and I are currently working on a new systematic analysis of the Australian temperature station data, to better contextualise extreme heat wave events).

So, below, I reproduce “The Temperature of Science” by Jim Hansen (arguably the world’s most famous climate scientist and a fellow SCGI member). Jim has perhaps the best understanding of this topic of anyone I know. This is a post everyone who wishes to make a comment in this area ought to read. I’ll be interested in the opinions of regular BNC readers.

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The Temperature of Science

James Hansen

Background

My experience with global temperature data over 30 years provides insight about how the science and its public perception have changed. In the late 1970s I became curious about well known analyses of global temperature change published by climatologist J. Murray Mitchell: why were his estimates for large-scale temperature change restricted to northern latitudes? As a planetary scientist, it seemed to me there were enough data points in the Southern Hemisphere to allow useful estimates both for that hemisphere and for the global average. So I requested a tape of meteorological station data from Roy Jenne of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who obtained the data from records of the World Meteorological Organization, and I made my own analysis.

Fast forward to December 2009, when I gave a talk at the Progressive Forum in Houston Texas. The organizers there felt it necessary that I have a police escort between my hotel and the forum where I spoke. Days earlier bloggers reported that I was probably the hacker who broke into East Anglia computers and stole e-mails. Their rationale: I was not implicated in any of the pirated e-mails, so I must have eliminated incriminating messages before releasing the hacked emails. The next day another popular blog concluded that I deserved capital punishment. Web chatter on this topic, including indignation that I was coming to Texas, led to a police escort.

How did we devolve to this state? Any useful lessons? Is there still interesting science in analyses of surface temperature change? Why spend time on it, if other groups are also doing it?

First I describe the current monthly updates of global surface temperature at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Then I show graphs illustrating scientific inferences and issues. Finally I respond to questions in the above paragraph.

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Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Hot news in climate science, Non-greenhouse theorists ('sceptics') | 38 Comments »

A LFTR deployment plan for Australia

Posted on 17 December 2009 by Barry Brook

Below is a guest post by Alex Goodwin, which canvasses the idea of a large-scale deployment of Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR) to clean up Australia’s power generation sector. On the Energy from Thorium forums, he’s known as fnord.

Alex refers to himself as “the finance grad they keep in a deep dark hole”, reflecting the master of business in applied finance he earned at QUT in 2007. Thus, although he’s often been mistaken for a nuclear engineer or other nuclear industry professional, in reality he’s merely an interested amateur and communicator [we need more people like this]. He joined Toastmasters (a public speaking club) in October 2008, completed a Competent Communicator course in November 2009, and most of his speeches promote the LFTR concept in one way or another.

In this post, Alex is being pragmatic. For instance, one may argue over whether his subplan to upgrade lignite using LFTR process heat and so add value to our exports is a good idea, from a climate change perspective, but ultimately we’ve got to have some transition plan, and at least the one he proposes is probably more realistic than the Government’s dreams of a world powered by coal with carbon capture and storage. In the end though, we, and other coal-rich nations, will just have to face the fact that most of the coal must be left in the ground.

You can download an 8-page printable PDF of Alex’s article here.

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Clean electricity, cheap electricity, safe electricity – pick any three

By Alex Goodwin

The federal government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme signals its desire for Australian carbon emissions (currently 28.3 tonnes per capita, yearly) to drop to 60% of 2000 levels by 2050, after allowing for population growth.

If it’s business as usual, I can see some difficulty meeting that goal.

However, we don’t have time for business as usual – climate change slowly parboils us all.  For those of you skeptical of global warming, there are still plenty of reasons to go full throttle nuclear – economic development, saving Australian lives from reduced air pollution, and energy/water security, to name three.  Energy and water security vastly reduces the need for Australia to undertake foreign policy adventures to secure oil and clean water supplies, saving yet more lives.

It makes sense to go after the biggest source of carbon emissions first – which, in Australia’s case, is the power generation industry.  Power generation emits nearly 14 tonnes per head, and it’s fairly concentrated, unlike agriculture (4.2 tonnes) and transport (3.8 tonnes).

Clean power generation up, and we can meet, and beat, the CPRS goal.  We can’t cut our own economic throats cleaning up our act, so we need reliable, emission-free power to avoid disrupting the Australian economy.

This can be done, for roughly the cost of Mr Rudd’s stimulus package, inside ten years, benefiting Australian national security, the power generation industry, the coal industry, and the Australian consumer.

Enter the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR).  As the name suggests, it is:

A liquid-fuelled nuclear reactor;

Running on thorium;

Toothpaste and table-salt safe;

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Filed under: Nuclear Energy | 58 Comments »

IFR FaD 2 – fuel use

Posted on 13 December 2009 by Barry Brook

With the Chinese announcing a projected 10-fold increase in their country’s uranium demand by 2030, some observers are worrying that we face a uranium supply crisis. In the short term, there may indeed be bottlenecks, if mining expansion fails to keep pace with escalating demand. (Frankly, I find this unlikely — price will dictate resource investment decisions over this 20 year time frame.) But what about the broader, long-term question that arises from this supply problem? How much uranium is out there, and accessible, and if the world was run entirely on IFRs (or thorium-based LFTRs), how long would we be able to do this before the ‘energy metal’ fuel supply ran out?

This is an interesting and important issue, but it’s also a little complex. So I’m going to need to devote a couple of posts to answer it properly. (Keeping in mind that I want each IFR FaD post to be concise and have a single main message). In this post, I consider how much fuel an IFR would use.

Coal, natural gas and oil, which are the feedstock used to run fossil-fuel-powered thermal generators, embody a convenient and concentrated store of ancient sunlight. But as was discovered in the 1940s, we can also unleash the vast energy contained within the atom. Indeed, splitting (‘fissioning’) the nucleus of a heavy atom like uranium, releases over a million times more energy than chemically adding oxygen atoms to carbon (which is what combustion really does). So, compared to fossil fuels, all forms of nuclear power are incredibly efficient in terms of power density.

It takes 160 — 220 tonnes of natural uranium to fuel a modern 1 gigawatt (GW) nuclear power plant for an entire year (the total energy produced is called a gigawatt year, or GWyr). One GWe of power (recall that the ‘e’ stands for electrical power rather than ‘t’ for thermal power, or heat) is a huge amount. It’s enough to run 65 million desk lamps (assuming they used 15 W compact fluorescent globes), or more practically, to satisfy today’s electricity demand of a typical Australian or US city of about half a million people. For comparison, to deliver a GWyr of energy using a coal-fired power station, about 3 — 7 million tonnes of coal must be burned (the amount can vary depending on the grade of coal).
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Filed under: IFR Facts and Discussion, Nuclear Energy | 33 Comments »

Mind the gap – distant climates and immediate budgets

Posted on 10 December 2009 by Barry Brook

Time for some updates from the world of climate science.

First up, the December issue of Nature Reports Climate Change is definitely worth checking out. (This spin-off internet magazine, produced by the Nature Publishing House, is always worth reading, and you can download a full-colour PDF if you prefer this format — good for printing).

Three articles, in particular, grabbed my attention this issue. The first revisited the premise of carbon budgets proposed by Allen et al. 2009 — a concept I covered in a BNC post back in May 2009. The conclusion was that to have a half-decent (50%) chance of keeping global temperature rise to <2°C below pre-industrial levels, given a climate sensitivity in the range of 2 — 4.5°C, humanity’s cumulative carbon budget between now and ‘forever’ (the next 100,000 years or so), is 1 trillion tonnes of carbon. We’ve burned 500 billion tonnes of fossil carbon and forests already, and on our current trajectory, we’ll break the global carbon bank within the next two to three decades.

In this latest paper, the authors suggest that in order  to better focus our attention to the immediate rather than perpetual task, we need a supplementary short-term budget for the period 2010 — 2030. They calculate that to avoid a rate of change of +0.2 per decade, the carbon ‘expense’ for the next 20 years must stay within 190 billion tonnes, or about 9.5 billion tonnes per year (for context, in 2008 global emissions were 9.8 billion tonnes). If we met this goal, we would then have a further 300 billion tonnes to spend for the period 2030 — 100,2030 AD (or thereabouts). Given the seeming inevitability of emissions growth for at least the next 5 — 10 years, we’ll have to have a serious turn around and decline in emissions in the period 2020 — 2030. Sobering thought. Massive deployment of nuclear and renewable power, anyone?

The second article worth reading is called “Mind the Gap”. Here, the question of novel and disappearing climates is considered (this problem has previously been addressed in the technical literature, here). Take a look at this grim figure: Read more »

Filed under: Emissions reduction, Future shock, Hot news in climate science | 21 Comments »

TCASE 7: Scaling up Andasol 1 to baseload

Posted on 6 December 2009 by Barry Brook

Andasol 1 is Europe’s first parabolic trough solar thermal power station, which went online in Nov 2008. It is located on a high desert site in Granada, Spain, which enjoys a high level of direct insolation – an average of 2,136 kWh / m2 / year. The mirror field — turbine infrastructure can yield a peak electricity generation capacity of 49.9 MWe (20 MWe average, see below). It also has a thermal storage system using molten salt.

The purpose of this post is to consider how one might scale up an Andasol 1 type plant in order to meet a rated power demand for 8,000 hours per year — thereby giving it a capacity factor of ~90%, similar to a baseload coal or nuclear power stations. This is a first attempt to improve the comparisons first given in TCASE 4.

But first, let’s look at the technology and current numbers. Here’s a good summary of its main features:

The Andasol 1 storage system absorbs part of the heat produced in the solar field during the day. A turbine produces electricity using this heat during the night, or when the sky is overcast. This process almost doubles the number of operational hours at the solar thermal power plant per year, the company said.

The heat generated in the solar field will be stored in a molten mixture of 60% sodium nitrate and 40% potassium nitrate. Both substances are used in food production as preservatives and are also used as fertilizer. The storage tank consists of two, 14-meter high tanks with a diameter of 36 meters and a capacity of 28,500 tons of molten salt. During the pumping process from the cold to the hot tank, the molten salt absorbs additional heat at an outlet temperature of approximately 280°C, reaching a temperature of 380°C.

A fully loaded storage system can keep the turbine in operation for 7.5 hours, which means almost 24-hour operation of the power plant in during high sunshine periods.

More technical details, including some useful illustrations of the storage system, can be found here and here. In summary, the solar collectors for the existing plant add up to a total of 510,120 square metres (0.51 km2), consisting of 209,664 mirrors along 312 rows with a total length of 24 km, with 90 kilometres of absorption pipes. The total physical area occupied by the plant (after appropriate collector spacing, and allowing for the storage and turbine housing, etc.) is 1.95 km2.  The estimated energy yield is 178 GWh / year (I haven’t seen reports of actual performance data), at a capacity factor of 40.7%, and an average power yield of 10.4 W/m2. It will use 560 million litres/year of fresh water, mostly for cooling the steam circuit, drawn from local ground water (a plant using air cooling would have a lower efficiency and would have to be larger to compensate).  The lifespan of the plant is estimated to be 30 — 40 years.

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Filed under: Renewable planet, TCASE Series | 115 Comments »

Clean future in nuclear power

Posted on 4 December 2009 by Barry Brook

Here is an editorial written by Martin Nicholson and me, which is published in today’s edition of The Australian newspaper. This is all pretty familiar fare for regular BNC readers, but I publish here for completeness, as I like to have my media articles collected together and archived in this central web repository.

I should point out that it’s deliberately pitched in a way to get the general public thinking more carefully about nuclear power and the alternatives. Although it’s not made abundantly clear in the article, I’m actually increasingly of the view that Gen III+ reactors will have a major role to play in large-scale nuclear deployment over the next two to three decades, to support the ramp up of the Gen IV fleet (more on this in later IFR FaD posts). But making this point credibly in a short Op Ed like this would have left room for nothing else, and also would have risked been seen as ’same old, same old’ by the nuclear power fence sitters (or those who are ‘weak antis’). Hence an emphasis on Gen IV, to try to hook the fresh fish.

I’d be interested to hear whether you think we’ve struck the right balance here.

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WE may not be getting an emissions trading scheme any time soon but the climate and energy crises still need fixing with real urgency.

For climate, the issue is excess greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. For energy, the crisis is dwindling supplies of those fuels and air pollution from coal combustion.

Replacement energy sources need to be reliable, plentiful and economic to deploy. They need to be low-carbon to minimise global warming. Business-as-usual or half measures risks saddling future generations with a climatically hostile planet and energy scarcity.

Nuclear power is one obvious replacement source, but typically raises five objections.

First, readily available uranium supplies are limited. If the world was wholly powered by present-style nuclear reactors there would be at most a few decades of energy before cheap uranium was exhausted.

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Filed under: Nuclear Energy | 47 Comments »

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