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About 1 year ago, I posted on BNC two important pieces by Peter Lang – “Does wind power reduce carbon emissions?” and a follow-up reply. Together, these stirred up considerable discussion (about 500 comments to date) and raised important questions about the ability of wind-energy to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels, when natural gas usage for [...]
Filed under: Emissions reduction, Renewable planet | 56 Comments »
Download the printable 13-page PDF (includes appendix) here. 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, [...]
Filed under: Emissions reduction, Renewable planet | 220 Comments »
On Friday night, 13th August, I was awarded the 2010 Community Science Educator of the Year. On September 8, 2010, I will be speaking on nuclear and solar energy at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. The BraveNewClimate.com blog is 2 years old! Details below… —————————- I got back from China at midday [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 18 Comments »
‘Zero Carbon Australia – Stationary Energy Plan’ – Critique Download the printable PDF here [An addendum on wind farm and solar construction rates, by Dave Burraston] ———————— Edit: Here are some media-suitable ‘sound bytes’ from the critique, prepared by Martin. Obviously, please read the whole critique below to understand the context: They assume we will [...]
Filed under: Renewable planet | 265 Comments »
I’m about to fly out for a 3-week trip to the US and China (24 July to 15 Aug). But fear not! The BNC blog will remain active over that time. Indeed, there are quite a number of new posts in the pipeline for this period, including guest pieces by Rob Parker (this Sunday), Geoff [...]
Filed under: Ecological impacts, Nuclear Energy | 11 Comments »
Guest post by John D. Morgan. John runs R&D programmes at a Sydney startup company. He has a PhD in physical chemistry, and research experience in chemical engineering in the US and at CSIRO. He is a regular commenter on BNC. A 10-page printable PDF version of this post can be downloaded here. ———————————– Beyond [...]
Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet, TCASE Series | 106 Comments »
In chapter 7 of his book “The Nuclear Energy Option“, Prof Bernard Cohen wrote the following provocative statement: It is very difficult to predict the future of scientific developments, and few would even dare to make predictions extending beyond the next 50 years. However, based on everything we know now, one can make a strong [...]
Filed under: Nuclear Energy | 167 Comments »
This post follows on directly from part 1, which you can read here. Here, a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) on climate change and nuclear energy are answered. These are quite deliberately not technical – you won’t find explanations of adiabatic lapse rates, actinide isotopes or Brayton cycle efficiency here! Nope… these are ‘big [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 281 Comments »
This is an update to alert readers that I’ve updated and expanded the ‘Top 10′ list of posts on BNC. Below are the listings, broken down by category. But before that, here are some general site statistics that regular readers might find interesting: ‘Birthday‘: 7 August 2008 (with Welcome to a Brave New Climate) Total [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | 41 Comments »
Guest Post by Rob Parker. Rob is a civil engineer with over 30 years experience in both design and engineering construction of dams, freeways, water treatment and general infrastructure. More recently, when confronted by the environmental impacts of our patterns of consumption and growth, he decided to look at ways to influence our political policies. [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Nuclear Energy | 231 Comments »
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 [...]
Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 100 Comments »
In TCASE (thinking critically about sustainable energy) #5, I analysed a currently deployed technology for harnessing wave energy – the Pelamis device. If you haven’t read TCASE 5 then please do so now, since it explains some of the basic physical properties of wave energy, the extend of the global resource, etc. In writing the [...]
Filed under: Renewable planet, TCASE Series | 34 Comments »
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 [...]
Filed under: Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 128 Comments »
The previous BNC post, a guest contribution by Douglas Wise, provided an excellent and thorough review of the political and technical issues facing the UK energy scene. Douglas’ post was also timely, because, last week, the esteemed Royal Academy of Engineering released a new 27-page report on this topic. Although useful as a crystal-ball-gazing exercise, the report has [...]
Filed under: Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 36 Comments »
If you ask Jim Hansen to name the single most important thing required to avert catastrophic climate change, he’ll say this: don’t burn all the coal (nor unconventional fossil fuels, such as tar sands and oil shales). Ideally, we would also prefer to leave some of the oil, and much of the natural gas, in [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Emissions reduction | 92 Comments »
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 [...]
Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy | 171 Comments »
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 [...]
Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy | 67 Comments »
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 [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Ecological impacts | 67 Comments »
“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 [...]
Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 337 Comments »
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 [...]
Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Ecological impacts, Emissions reduction, Future shock, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 27 Comments »
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![[1/5] Fitting the Steam Engine](http://static.flickr.com/4134/4947531347_120a565eaa_t.jpg "[1/5] Fitting the Steam Engine")
