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 [...]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Future, Policy | 59 Comments »
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: Greenpeace’s Plan for India —————— Switzerland. It’s smaller than Tasmania, but rather more famous and never missing from maps of Europe. Cheese and chocolates, pocket knives and [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy | 28 Comments »
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 [...]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Policy | 78 Comments »
In the previous TCASE post, I considered how various low-carbon energy technologies meet the following criteria: commercial readiness, scalability, dispatchability, fuel constraints, load access, storage requirements, capacity factor and emissions intensity. Here I consider the next issue: cost of deployment, based on expert consensus. The primary data again come from the work I had published in 2011 [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables, TCASE | 91 Comments »
The problem of replacing our dependence on fossil fuels is complex. In Thinking Critically About Sustainable Energy (TCASE) #12, a checklist was provided to allow assessment of energy transition plans. The sort of questions listed in TCASE 12 are critical for evaluating the feasibility of future scenarios, like the ones from the recent IPCC report [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Renewables, TCASE | 85 Comments »
Regular readers of BNC would know that I’m hardly the only climate change researcher to recommend serious deployment of nuclear energy to displace fossil fuels. (Although I’m often portrayed as an isolated [and presumably therefore ignorant?] voice on this point). One very prominent example of a colleague in arms is my fellow SCGI member, Dr [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 88 Comments »
When it comes to energy and carbon emissions reduction, the devil is always in the detail. So too with Australia’s plans to cut its emissions by five per cent below year 2000 levels by 2020. But first, let’s look at the big picture. Why we need to do this As a scientist who researches the impacts [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Policy | 58 Comments »
Most readers of BNC know the story — after the Fukushima nuclear crisis, the German government announced that Germany would phase out all of its nuclear generation capacity by 2022. In almost the same period, Germany also aims to cut its national greenhouse gas emissions to 40% of 1990 levels (by 2020). Their emissions have [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 108 Comments »
[This is an abridged amalgam of writings by me on nuclear power and climate change that I've published on BNC and elsewhere over the last two years. It has been updated with some commentary on recent events - the Fukushima Daiichi crisis, Germany's announced withdrawal from nuclear energy, and so on. I hope you find [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy | 74 Comments »
With George Monbiot on the debating warpath against Greenpeace and in support of nuclear power as a serious mechanism for tackling climate change, and Mark Lynas’ new book on planetary boundaries and techno-fixes, “The God Species“, now out (despite some weird problems on the launch day), it really is time for environmentalists to get serious about starting [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Future, Nuclear | 135 Comments »
Australia is set to introduce a carbon tax (details to be released on Sunday 10 July 2011). This post is the place to discuss this policy — the good and the bad. A description, from the Australian Parliamentary Library: A carbon tax is a tax on energy sources which emit carbon dioxide. It is a [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Policy | 350 Comments »
A common lament of those analysts wishing to get to grips with the real-world performance of solar thermal power plants has been, well… an absence of data. Trainer noted, in ‘Solar Thermal Questions‘: It would be great to get some actual data on their year round performance. I have found it fiendishly difficult to get [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Renewables | 90 Comments »
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: ————————- Please share the [...]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Nuclear, Renewables | 61 Comments »
I’m currently developing a short (2 minute, 30 second) animated video on nuclear power and climate change, with help from friend Ben Heard and the skills of Ron Furner and his team at Fury Films. Near the end of the vid, we talk about the vast amount of energy embodied in so-called ‘nuclear waste’ (or [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Humour, Nuclear | 26 Comments »
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 article follows on from his previous: What price of Indian independence? Greenpeace under the spotlight —————— In my previous BNC piece I examined the feasibility of two ways of producing a per-capita electricity supply [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy | 97 Comments »
I’m currently on a 3-week trip to North America, and will be returning to Australia in mid-June. At the end of my travels I’ll be attending an energy futures conference in Waterloo, Canada (and will write more about that in an upcoming blog). But at present, I’m in Davis, California, and have been visiting Tom [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Future, IFR FaD, Nuclear | 127 Comments »
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. To see a list of other BNC posts by Geoff, click here. —————— India declared itself a republic in 1950 after more than a century of struggle against British Imperialism. Greenpeace India however, [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Future, Nuclear, Policy | 160 Comments »
The following post is intended as a working paper for discussion. (It builds on work started by Peter Lang back in 2009, Does wind power reduce carbon emissions?) This current work is based on the methods and conclusions from the recently published work by Herbert Inhaber in the peer-reviewed journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, entitled: [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Policy, Renewables | 355 Comments »
Time for a new Open Thread on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis. Please use this post to put any new comments about the situation (including technical information, situation updates, analysis, questions, reflections, etc.). Note that the Open Threads on BraveNewClimate.com are a general discussion forum; please follow the commenting rules, although the ‘stay on topic’ rule obviously does not apply [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear | 290 Comments »
Global warming can only be tackled seriously by a massive reduction in anthropogenic greenhouse gas production. It’s that simple. But just hoping for this to gradually happen — locally, regionally or globally — by tinkering at the edge of the problem (carbon prices, alternative energy subsidies, mandated targets and loan guarantees, “100 ways to be more [...]
Filed under: Emissions, Nuclear, Policy | 39 Comments »
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