21st century nuclear… for beginners

Posted on 28 August 2012 by Barry Brook

SACOME has put published a glossy portfolio edition of the 6-part series (9 pages in total) was done by me and Ben Heard for the SA Mines & Energy Journal – you may find this useful for family and friends! (some of these individual articles were already published on BNC and DecarboniseSA). Thanks to Megan Andrews and Dayne Eckermann for putting this together.

The aims were to be: (i) easy to understand, (ii) concise but accurate, (iii) attractively presented, and (iv) to tackle the most common objections raised by anti-nuclear folks.

Download the PDF here (5.5 MB) and distribute far and wide.

The content covers generation IV technology, safety, radioactive waste, sustainability and carbon emissions of uranium supplies, small modular reactors, and economic competitiveness compared to other low-carbon energy options. The overarching context is nuclear as a solution to climate change. That’s what Ben and I really care about, after all.

(Note that we offered this series gratis as a community service — we are educators, after all, and to us, dissemination of evidence-based knowledge is its own reward).

Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Nuclear | 1 Comment »

Is the Olympic Dam mine a special case?

Posted on 20 July 2012 by Barry Brook

Here is an Op Ed published by Geoff Russell and me in the The Adelaide Advertiser newspaper this week. It was in response to this piece by Jim Green.

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OLYMPIC Dam uranium can power Australia four times over and close all our coal mines, write Geoff Russell and Barry Brook.

FRIENDS of the Earth’s Jim Green makes important points on the Olympic Dam expansion (The Advertiser, 10/7/12).

Should BHP be given an easy ride on this project? If so, why?

Here’s some background people need before making a decision.

The expanded Olympic Dam will be a massive hole in the ground.

How big? About 12sq km in area and 1km deep.

For comparison, the proposed alpha coal mine in Queensland will be about 400sq km. The various coal mines in the Hunter Valley are also much bigger, not necessarily individually, but they are all big holes and they add up to a much bigger hole than the proposed Olympic Dam expansion.

An aerial view of BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam mining site at Roxby Downs, which could provide Australia with a new source of clean power. Picture: Matt Turner

The Canadian Athabasca oil sands cover 141,000sq km. These oil sands are not in a desert but under boreal forest. They currently produce 1.3 million barrels of oil a day from those deposits and, at current prices, there are reserves of about 170 billion barrels, which go under 14,000sq km of forest.

Yet Olympic Dam is different. Most of what comes out will be copper but, at peak production, it will also be producing 19,000 tonnes of uranium oxide annually.

How much is that? Enough to power the whole of Australia four times over. Enough to close all of Australia’s coal mines for domestic consumption. So here’s the first question for Jim Green.

We could have nuclear reactors, clean electricity and one mine, just one single mine. Or we could have the whole current nightmare of the Hunter Valley, Latrobe Valley and Bowen Basin disasters, gas fracking and every other filthy deadly fossil fuel industry in Australia.

What’s his choice?

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Nuclear | 1 Comment »

Radio debate on nuclear power for addressing climate change – Brook vs Ludlum

Posted on 10 July 2012 by Barry Brook

Scott Ludlum

Barry Brook

Yesterday I debated nuclear energy and climate change on 891 ABC radio with Greens Senator Scott Ludlum, on the afternoon show hosted by Sonya Feldhoff. (It was a studio interview, so the audio quality is quite good.) We had a decent amount of time to cover off on issues, including answering callers, but as always, there was much more that could have been said!

Download the audio file here (39 minutes, MP3)

Another item of interest are two new articles on the UK proposal to construct the first Integral Fast Reactor to dispose of its separated plutonium inventory (first discussed on BNC in Disposal of UK plutonium stocks with a climate change focus).

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 1 Comment »

Is pro-nuclear the best option for our make-or-break century?

Posted on 24 May 2012 by Barry Brook

Presented as part of World Environment Day 2012, Environment Institute members Professors Barry Brook and Corey Bradshaw (along with Ben Heard of DecarboniseSA.com and Geoff Russell [regular BNC commenter]) are taking part in an event on nuclear power and environmentalism, held by the Town of Walkerville on Saturday 9th June 2012.

We’ll come complete with some entertaining show pieces, including a geiger counter and various ‘radioactive’ samples – it should make for a highly entertaining and informative afternoon!

More details:

Mayor Heather Wright (Town of Walkerville) invites you to take part in a public conversation on the pro-nuclear power debate. Four scientific professionals and commentators offer four perspectives on a subject that still divides public opinion. Whether you are ‘for’ ‘against’ or ‘undecided’, this is your chance to hear why all these experts agree that nuclear power is not only the safest energy source but also the one with the lowest environmental footprint.

When: Saturday 9th June 2012
Time: 2pm – 4pm
Where: Walkerville Town Hall, 66 Walkerville Terrace, Gilberton SA

Tickets to this event are free, however registration by Monday 4th June are essential as seating is limited. To register go to: http://walkerville5081.eventbrite.com To submit questions before the event, please email Sonia DeNicola, sdenicola@walkerville.sa.gov.au

Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Hot News, Nuclear | 9 Comments »

The Nuclear Energy Solution

Posted on 12 April 2012 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Bill Sacks and Greg Meyerson. Bill is a physicist and a radiologist, and wrote Lessons about nuclear energy from the Japanese quake and tsunami about a  month into the Fukushima crisis. Greg is an English professor with specialization in critical theory. Both are based in the U.S. For further details about the authors, see the Endnote to this post.

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NUCLEAR ENERGY: THE ONLY SOLUTION TO THE ENERGY PROBLEM AND GLOBAL WARMING  By Bill Sacks and Greg Meyerson

The following is a brief rationale and outline of a much longer essay that is also available on bravenewclimate.com (CLICK HERE to download the printable PDF, 58 pages).

This essay unifies four critical contentions that the authors cannot find combined in any other of the many sources on nuclear energy.  Our four contentions are 1) fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) are now the main source of global warming; 2) they must be completely replaced with clean energy sources, chiefly nuclear energy since the inherent physical properties of wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal severely limit their use; 3) radiation at the dose ranges encountered in nature, as well as by the public in nuclear accidents, actually promotes, rather than destroys, health; and 4) the profit system presents an inherent obstacle to achieving the goal of clean, sustainable energy.

The authors hold the opinion that all four of these aspects are inseparable, and that a general understanding of all is necessary if any progress is to be made in solving the problems of inaccessibility of adequate electricity for much of humanity and anthropogenic global warming that is nearing tipping points that threaten to make self-amplifying and irreversible changes.  No one of these four, in our view, can be safely put aside as a distraction from some “main” point.

Recognition that the earth is warming and that human activity, rather than natural cycles, is now responsible is only the beginning of this solution — a necessary but not sufficient condition.  Similarly broad general understanding of the severe inherent limitations of all clean alternatives to nuclear energy is needed to hasten the building of nuclear plants world over, and to end the wasteful efforts to scale up wind and solar particularly, that profit a few but at the expense of rich governmental subsidies and higher energy costs that further restrict access to electricity.

Furthermore if nuclear energy is to gain the respect and advocacy of the public, the exaggerated fears of radiation have to be brought under rational control, which requires first that governmental regulatory agencies around the world be forced to admit that they have been basing their restrictions on an obsolete relic of the Cold War — one that falsely claims that all radiation is harmful to our health regardless of how low the dose, known as the linear-no-threshold (LNT) assumption.  However, the science of biological effects of ionizing radiation overwhelmingly points to an evolved response that protects against any harm from low levels of radiation, known as the hormetic effect, or hormesis, a very general biological response to all sorts of chemical and physical agents.

(more…)

Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Future, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 68 Comments »

Dietary Guidelines Committee ignores climate change

Posted on 24 March 2012 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. His previous article on BNC was: Feeding the billions on a hotter planet (Part III).

He also wrote a brilliant recent piece for The Punch: Fukushima was no disaster, no matter how you spin it

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IPCC calls to reduce meat consumption

Back in 2008, head of the IPCC Rajendra Pachauri told the world to eat less meat because of its large greenhouse footprint.

At about the same time the National Health and Medical Research Council appointed a committee to update Australia’s Dietary Guidelines … last issued in 2003. The preface from the 2003 document is clear:

“The Australian Food and Nutrition Policy is based on the principles of good nutrition, ecological sustainability and equity. This third edition of the Dietary Guidelines for Australian Adults is consistent with these principles. The food system must be economically viable and the quality and integrity of the environment must be maintained. In this context, among the important considerations are conservation of scarce resources such as topsoil, water and fossil fuel energy and problems such as salinity.”

The Terms of Reference give no instructions about what the committee should do other than to update the documents with the best available science. Environmental issues were clearly worthy of lip-service in 2003, if nothing else. Any reasonable update to the 2003 document should see those issues front and center.

Our impacts on the climate will flow on into most other environmental issues, whether we are concerned with other species, or more narrowly focused on the habitability of the planet for our own. If food choices have a significant impact on climate forcings, then documenting and explaining the extent of those impacts to the public should have been front and centre in the workings of this committee. In addition to the head of the IPCC, no lesser scientific authority than NASA climate scientist James Hansen said in 2009:

If you eat further down on the food chain rather than animals, which have produced many greenhouse gases, and used much energy in the process of growing that meat, you can actually make a bigger contribution in that way than just about anything. So that, in terms of individual action, is perhaps the best thing you can do.

He made an equivalent statement to me in 2008 and advised that he was changing his own diet and was “80-90% vegetarian“.

We shall see later that Hansen’s claim is easily supported.
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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Impacts | 48 Comments »

Purpose and target audience of BraveNewClimate.com

Posted on 7 March 2012 by Barry Brook

Before I write a scientific paper, I always try to identify: (1) my main message [MM], in 25 words or less, and (2) my target audience [TA]. Doing this helps focus the ‘story’ of the manuscript on a key point. Papers that try to present multiple messages are typically confusing and/or too long for busy researchers to read. It also dictates the background and specialist terminology that the reader might be safely assumed to understand, as well as guiding the choice of journal that I will submit to. For instance, a paper written for Nature requires more general context setting than one sent to Wildlife Research.

However, it occurred to me that I’ve never tried to define the main message of the BraveNewClimate.com blog, nor really reflected on who the chief audience is. So let’s try.

In reality, both have evolved over time. Back in late 2008 – early 2009, when the blog (and my thinking on climate change policy) was in its infancy, it would have read something this:

2009 MM: Communicate the scientific evidence for anthropogenic global warming to the general public and policy makers, and advocate the need for, and urgency of, effective mitigation.

2009 TA: People seeking understanding of past climate change, current/future impacts, and the basis of modelled forecasts – all explained in relatively straightforward terms. A secondary target audience was those who were confused by, or enamored of, the repeated assertions of ‘the sceptics’.

Although I was proud to have developed the website on this scientific and philosophical foundation, neither of the above MM or TA are appropriate to BNC’s central purpose in 2012. So let’s try again.

2012 MM: To advocate an evidence-based approach to eliminating global fossil fuel emissions, based on a pragmatic and rational mix of nuclear and other low-carbon energy sources.

2012 TA: Environmentalists who disregard or oppose nuclear energy, and instead believe that renewables are sufficient (or that continuing to rely on fossil fuels is a rational energy policy).

The main message changed because I became progressively more interested in educating people on practical solutions to the problems of global change, rather than preaching doom-and-gloom. This shift in purpose was not because I don’t still consider the impacts of climate change to be incredibly serious and the evidence (ever increasingly) compelling — I do! It’s rather that I found the generic message of: “This is really bad, we must do something!” to be ineffectual, unappealing, and frankly, depressing. Besides, there are other sites that do this very well, so I now tend to leave it in their capable hands.

Instead, I became interested (okay, obsessed is a better word) with grasping and communicating the high-level issues associated with which low-carbon energy solutions will work most effectively at displacing fossil fuels and thus ‘solving’ climate change, at scale, in time, and within reasonable costs.

(more…)

Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 45 Comments »

2011 on Brave New Climate

Posted on 31 December 2011 by Barry Brook

So the year 2011 draws to a close. What a tumultuous year it was, particularly for nuclear energy! For climate change, alas, the freight train just keeps gathering steam.

For 2012, I will expect the unexpected, but also hope to see some better signs of progress towards the downfall of fossil fuels. But really, let’s be honest, that is a decadal rather than year prospect.

Anyway, to the BNC year in review. Below I list some of the most read, most commented and most stimulating or controversial subjects of the past BNC year.

1. Fukushima nuclear crisis: This was the biggest story of the year for the blog. Read about the early diagnosis and explanation, ongoing reports, some technical speculation, an essay on what we can and can’t design for,  preliminary and considered lessons learned, what the INES 7 rating means, and the need to avoid radiophobia with some common sense (and data). Another highlight is Ben Heard in his pre-decarbonisesa.com days…

2. Renewables in the context of effective CO2 abatement. Some useful analyses on CO2 avoidance cost with wind, climatologist James Hansen admonishes use to get real about how effective (or ineffective) green energy has been to date at displacing fossil fuels, an adventure to energy debates in wonderland, a look at geographical smoothing, an argument that an energy strategy without nuclear does not have history on its side, Geoff Russell deconstructs the situation for India and Switzerland, and I do so for Germany.

3. More depressing climate trends. Sea ice declines and emissions rise, the cost of climate extremes, complications and realities, a plea to clean up the climate ‘debate’, why the argument of ‘no recent warming’ is statistically invalid, and a graphical review of the grim numbers. (more…)

Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A | 19 Comments »

CO2 is a trace gas, but what does that mean?

Posted on 23 November 2011 by Barry Brook

Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and most other long-lived greenhouse gases (i.e., barring short-lived water vapour), are considered ‘trace gases’ because their concentration in the atmosphere is so low. For instance, at a current level of 389 parts per million, CO2 represents just 0.0389% of the air, by volume. Tiny isn’t it? How could such a small amount of gas possibly be important?

This issue is often raised by media commentators like Alan Jones, Howard Sattler, Gary Hardgrave and others, when arguing that fossil fuel emissions are irrelevant for climate change. For instance, check out the Media Watch ABC TV story (11 minute video and transcript) called “Balancing a hot debate“.

I’ve seen lots of analogies drawn, in an attempt to explain the importance of trace greenhouse gases. One common one is to point out that a tiny amount of cynanide, if ingested, will kill you. Sometimes a little of a substance can have a big impact.  But actually, there’s a better way to get people to understand, and that’s to follow one of the guiding principles of this blog: “Show me the numbers!“.

In response to a recent post by John Cook on George Pell, religion and climate change, commenter Glenn Tamblyn pointed out an interesting fact: Every cubic metre of air contains roughly 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules of CO2. In scientific notation, this is 1022 — a rather large number.

(more…)

Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Sceptics | 53 Comments »

Feeding the billions in 2050′s sauna (Part I)

Posted on 20 November 2011 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. His previous article on BNC was: The Swiss army nuclear knife

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During the past few years, all the world’s major science journals have had a steady stream of papers on the challenge of feeding 9 to 10 billion people on a warming planet in 2050. They have been joined by reports from bodies with varying prestige and influence likeInternational Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), The World Bank and the Royal Society. CSIRO has a long history of interest in the issue and even billionaire packager Anthony Pratt is getting in on the act telling Australia that since it can produce food for 200 million people, it has a responsibility to do so.

All these reports pay swollen lip service to the food security issues of the poor. All rightly regard the current global levels of stunting and malnutrition … running at 30 percent or more in many poor populations … as unconscionable.

Do we simply need more of the same?

Most of these papers and reports fall into two groups. The first looks at population and food intake trends and guesstimates that adding 2 to 3 billion people by 2050 will require between 70 percent and 100 percent more food. They typically then suggest places where large buckets of money might be deposited to fund research directed at meeting these projections.

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Impacts | 41 Comments »

Depressing climate-related trends – but who gets it?

Posted on 6 November 2011 by Barry Brook

I saw two particularly depressing trend lines this week. Both were confronting enough to make me stop, sit back and just contemplate. It was not as though these came as a great surprise — I’d been following these data for years. But for some reason, the seriousness of them really struck home like never before.

The first was a report on Arctic sea ice volume. Here is the graph that shocked me:

It shows the minimum northern hemisphere sea ice volume yearly from 1979 to 2011, and a simple time-series forecast based on a fit of the exponential-decline model. You can read about the details here: PIOMAS September 2011 (volume record lower still), where various related charts are also shown. One can argue about the precision of the projection line, but the general fit is remarkably robust and, on this basis, it is reasonable to conclude that unless some remarkable turn around occurs, the Arctic summer ice volume will be near-zero by 2020. (more…)

Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Future, Hot News, Nuclear | 121 Comments »

Why population policy will not solve climate change

Posted on 19 September 2011 by Barry Brook

I have given lots of talks on climate change over the last few years. In these presentations, I typically focus on explaining the basis of the anthropogenic climate change problem, how it sits in the context of other human and natural changes, and then, how greenhouse gas emissions could be mitigated with the elimination of fossil fuels and substitution with low-carbon replacement technologies such as nuclear fission, renewables of various flavours, energy efficiency, and so on. When question time follows, I regularly get people standing up and saying something along the following lines:

It is all very well to focus on energy technology, and even to  mention behavioural changes, but the real problem — the elephant in the room that you’ve ignored — is the size of the human population. No one seems to want to talk about that! About population policy. If we concentrated seriously on ways to reduce population pressure, many other issues would be far easier to solve.

On the face of it, it is hard to disagree with such statements. The human population has growth exponentially from ~650 million in the year 1700 AD to almost 7 billion today. When coupled to our increasing economic expansion and concomitant rising demand for natural resources, this rapid expansion of the human enterprise has put a huge burden on the environment and demands an accelerating depletion of fossil fuels and various high-grade ores, etc. (the Anthropocence Epoch).  Obviously, to avoid exhaustion of accessible natural resources, degradation of ecosystems and to counter the need to seek increasingly low-grade mineral resources, large-scale recycling and sustainable use of biotic systems will need to be widely adopted. Of this there is little room for doubt.

So, the huge size of the present-day human population is clearly a major reason why we face so many mounting environmental problems. But does it also follow that population control via various policies is the answer – the best solution — to solving these global problems? It might surprise you to learn that I say NO (at least over meaningful time scales). But, it will take some time to explain why — to work through the nuances, assumptions, sensitivities and global versus region story. So, I’ll explain why I’ve reached this conclusion, and, as always, invite feedback!

Below, I outline some of the basic tools required to come up with some reasonable answers. A huge amount of relevant data on this topic (human demography) is available from the United Nations Population Division, the Human Life-Table Database, the Human Mortality Database, and the U.S. Census Bureau. That data and statistics I cite in these posts come from these sources.

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Future, Policy | 60 Comments »

Switching from coal to natural gas would do little for global climate

Posted on 11 September 2011 by Barry Brook

A common refrain from politicians and members of the business community is that moving from coal to natural gas is an effective way to cut carbon dioxide emissions and therefore address global warming. This argument is flawed, as I detailed last year in two posts, Santos Chief’s gassy vision (Parts I and II). Yet, gas is still often labelled a ‘transition fuel’ or ‘bridge technology’, even by groups that promote large-scale renewables such as the solar-thermal-focused DESERTEC (see here). So how useful is gas for climate change mitigation?

Below is a media release describing a new paper (published in the journal Climatic Change) by my colleague Dr. Tom Wigley (Adjunct Professor at the University of Adelaide) on the impact — expressed in terms of climate forcing — of a wholesale switch from coal to gas for electricity generation (i.e., a limit analysis). They key considerations to be modelled are the effects of methane leakage, the extraction method used to supply the gas (e.g., conventional versus shale gas), and the aerosol dimming effect of coal compared to gas (i.e., the story is more complicated than just the greenhouse gas forcing effects, especially on the decadal time scale). Some of you have already mentioned associated news stories on this paper  in the latest Open Thread, but I thought it would be good to present the media release (largely written by Tom), and have a focused post for discussing the paper and its implications.

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Coal to gas: the influence of methane leakage

Although the burning of natural gas emits far less carbon dioxide than coal, a new study concludes that a greater reliance on natural gas would fail to significantly slow down climate change.

The study by Tom Wigley, who is a senior research associate at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), underscores the complex and sometimes conflicting ways in which fossil fuel burning affects Earth’s climate. While coal use causes warming through emission of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, it also releases comparatively large amounts of sulfates and other particles that, although detrimental to the environment, cool the planet by blocking incoming sunlight.

The situation is further complicated by uncertainty over the amount of methane that leaks from natural gas operations. Methane is an especially potent greenhouse gas.

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Policy | 78 Comments »

Climate change update by the numbers

Posted on 13 July 2011 by Barry Brook

Here are some figures to illustrate the latest global data on global warming. Data are from NCDC and GISS.

First, a 12-month running mean of global surface temperature anomalies since 1980 (i.e. for each month, an average is taken of the previous 12-month period – ‘calendar year’ is irrelevant):

The IPCC AR4 model results track closely with observations:

The global temperature data can be smoothed by taking an 11-year running mean (which tends to average out ENSO and solar cycles). It shows a 0.2C rise over the last decade, and is now at record levels:

A further smoothing, by taking a 22-year running mean, shows how steady the rise has been in the last few decades, when averaged over a climatically relevant period: (more…)

Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Hot News | 51 Comments »

Sustainable energy choices for the 21st Century – the animated video

Posted on 27 June 2011 by Barry Brook

Climate change and sustainability of the global human enterprise are two of the most critical issues of the 21st Century. If we are to tackle these problems effectively, we need to make prudent, evidence-based choices about energy. This is the story told by this short (2 min, 35 sec) animated video:

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Please share the YouTube link on Twitter, Facebook, email, or whatever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98frSed0F5s

Or download the .MP4 file and put it on your smartphone or tablet, so you can show your friends: http://goo.gl/5oY7f

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Okay, some background.

Last year I was fortunate enough to be awarded the 2010 Science Communicator of the Year at the SA Science Excellence Awards; along with an elegant and unusually shaped glass trophy, this award also included some prize money to spend on my research communications. I wanted to do something practical and interesting with these funds, and so I hatched a plan to make a brief video, aimed at the general public, to introduce some of the general motivations behind BNC. The above animation is the result — and, I hope, the start of other big (audiovisual) things to come!

The script was written by me and my friend Ben Heard (of Decarbonise SA - Ben has more comments on the video here). We also mocked up the first ‘storyboard’ of the visuals (but the kudos for the form of the final sequences, and all the associated glitz, goes very much to Ron Furner and his team, see below). Ben and I wanted something that was accurate and evidence-based, but at the same time did not wade into too much technical detail. Our aim was to deliver a punchy message that also left the audience wanting to know a little more, and was not too preachy. Hence the theme about ‘choices’.

(more…)

Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Nuclear, Renewables | 61 Comments »

Clearing up the climate debate

Posted on 24 June 2011 by Barry Brook

The Conversation is a recently established website set up to provide an independent source of information, analysis and commentary from the Australian university and research sector. Over the last few weeks, a group of climate scientists and academics from other relevant disciplines, have been running a series at The Conversation on ‘climate change scepticism’. I’ve been involved with a group, lead by Steve Lewandowsky from UWA and Megan Clement from The Conversation, that initiated and organised the concept for this series, and the result has been some terrific articles published by folks like Karl Braganza (BoM), James Risbey (CSIRO), Ian Enting (Univ Melb) and many others. You can browse the full listing of 13 articles here.

I was a co-signatory of the lead article, Climate change is real: an open letter from the scientific community, and also the concluding piece. I reproduce the latter, below (for the original posting at The Conversation, click here).

The false, the confused and the mendacious: how the media gets it wrong on climate change

The Conversation wraps up Clearing up the Climate Debate with a statement from our authors: the debate is over. Let’s get on with it.

Over the past two weeks The Conservation has highlighted the consensus of experts that climate change caused by humans is both real and poses a serious risk for the future.

We have also revealed the deep flaws in the conduct of so-called climate “sceptics” who largely operate outside the scientific context.

But to what extent is the “science settled”? Is there any possibility that the experts are wrong and the deniers are right?

Certainty in science

If you ask a scientist whether something is “settled” beyond any doubt, they will almost always reply “no”.

Nothing is 100% certain in science.

So how certain is climate science? Is there a 50% chance that the experts are wrong and that the climate within our lifetimes will be just fine? Or is there a 10% chance that the experts are wrong? Or 1%, or only 0.0001%?

The answer to these questions is vital because if the experts are right, then we must act to avert a major risk.

Dropping your phone

Suppose that you lose your grip on your phone. Experience tells us that the phone will fall to the ground.

You drop a phone, it falls down.

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Sceptics | 92 Comments »

Open Thread 16

Posted on 7 June 2011 by Barry Brook

The Open Thread is a general discussion forum, where you can talk about whatever you like — there is nothing ‘off topic’ here — within reason. So get up on your soap box! The standard commenting rules of courtesy apply, and at the very least your chat should relate to the general content of this blog.

The sort of things that belong on this thread include general enquiries, soapbox philosophy, meandering trains of argument that move dynamically from one point of contention to another, and so on — as long as the comments adhere to the broad BNC themes of sustainable energy, climate change mitigation and policy, energy security, climate impacts, etc.

You can also find this thread by clicking on the Open Thread category on the cascading menu under the “Home” tab.

Note 1: For reference, the last general open thread (from 16 April 2011) was here.

Note 2: I’m currently inordinately busy (but also having a lot of fun!) at the Equinox Summit: Energy 2030 in Waterloo, Canada. Once I get a chance to draw breath, I’ll post more about the summit on BNC. But we’re currently working intense 14 hour days (I’m not kidding), so I’ve not got much physical or mental energy left in me by the time I get back to my hotel room at night!

However, if you want to follow some of the events, the Canadian television station TVO is covering the whole summit. I was on a panel session yesterday (Benchmarking our Energy Future: see the video here), which also featured four really interesting short animated videos on energy; I will also be part of a 1-hour episode of Steve Paikin’s The Agenda on Friday night (Canadian time — but also available on the TVO website — more details to follow).

More on the WGSI Equinox Summit: Energy 2030 in the next blog post.

Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Future, Hot News | 593 Comments »

Some other perspectives on Fukushima

Posted on 3 April 2011 by Barry Brook

Apart from getting on with my life (e.g., building a new computer, catching up with my backlog at work, spending time with the family, etc.), I’ve been spending the last few days reading widely on what other people have had to say, in reflection, on the Fukushima crisis. Here are some highlights:

1. Bill Tucker, author of the book “Terrestrial Energy” (which I discussed in detail in this post back in 2009, and reviewed here), wrote a piece for The Americal Spectator called “Pass the Plutonium“.  The leading paragraph:

People think that Fukushima will mean the end of nuclear power, but I’m convinced it’s the opposite. We’re going to lose our nuclear virginity over this accident and start seeing the world as adults. In fact it’s already happening.

2. The video linked to in the image below was mentioned in the BNC comments — an ABC (US) news feature called “Japan Nuke Crisis: American in Dead Zone“. It’s a perspective on local area an sea water radiation levels, from an American doctor Robert Gale (a radiation expert) sent by the US to advise the Japanese government on Fukushima, and has years of experience working around Chernobyl. He is definitely worth listening to…

3. Mark Lynas (author of the wonderful albeit troubling book Six Degrees) and Chris Goodall (author of Ten Technologies to Fix Energy and Climate) — two very serious and critical thinking environmentalists trying to tackle climate change — offer this excellent essay: The dangers of nuclear power in light of Fukushima. You really must read it all, but here, as a taster, is their final paragraph:

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Nuclear | 178 Comments »

It’s nuclear power or it’s climate change

Posted on 24 March 2011 by Barry Brook

I was asked to reflect very briefly (<400 words) on the implications of Fukushima Daiichi to my local city newspaper, The Adelaide Advertiser. The focus was on what it means for Australia, but the basic message resonates for any number of other countries.

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If you study the history of modern energy, there is only one conclusion you can reach. You can have fossil fuels, or two alternatives: nuclear power and hydroelectricity.

A number of countries in Europe rely almost exclusively on either nuclear power (France), hydro (Norway), or an even mix of the two (Sweden, Switzerland). These are truly low-carbon economies.

What of Denmark, which has taken the wind route? It only gets 20 per cent of its electricity from wind, but must also sell it cheaply to the rest of Scandinavia when production is higher than demand, and buy in coal-fired electricity when there is little wind.

Even with 20 per cent wind, Denmark has among the highest greenhouse gas emissions per person in Europe. France has among the lowest.

Australia has no access to large-scale hydro. We do have abundant uranium, and a high technology society in a geologically stable region, all perfect for the deployment of nuclear power.

Or, we can burn more coal and gas. It’s nuclear power, or it’s climate change.

What of the solar and wind dream? I sure hope they work out, and can provide a lot more energy for us in the future. But history is not on their side. No country has displaced its fossil fuel fleet in the past by using these energy sources, for a number of practical engineering and economic reasons.

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Nuclear | 133 Comments »

One Plus One – Fukushima’s legacy

Posted on 19 March 2011 by Barry Brook

There have been some slow but positive developments in Fukushima Daiichi today (Saturday 19th March), despite the ongoing seriousness of the situation. Engineers are now on the brink of getting external AC power restored to parts of the site, and water dousing operations on the spent fuel ponds continue, as does cooling by sea water at reactors 1 to 3. I will provide a full update on the situation at the end of today.

Meanwhile, follow the comments in this thread for the real-time updates by commenters.

Below is a 10 minute interview with me that was shown on ABC TV (Australia’s national television broadcaster) during the weekend, on the conversation magazine-style program “One Plus One“. I’m interviewed by Mike Sexton.

Please watch this if you really want to understand where I’m coming from on all of this (including my background and motivations), and for my speculation on what the legacy of Fukushima might be, if rational and logical heads are not kept.

For readers in Australia, you can also watch this on ABC iView.

For other videos on the BraveNewClimate YouTube channel, see here. For my 16 x 5-min audio podcasts (and ongoing), which cover nuclear power and climate change, see here. This one is a good starter: Integral Fast Reactor nuclear power – what is it and why should you care?

Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Nuclear | 104 Comments »

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