This is a Discussion Thread, because I really want your feedback. But first, some context.
By late 2008, I was pretty stressed about climate change. Working on the science of climate (and other anthropogenic) impacts on natural systems, as I do, I could foresee potentially insurmountable problems for biodiversity and human civilisation this century. A time of consequences. Things looked grim, unless there was a massive change in attitudes towards energy supply and resource sustainability. This was exemplified by my post on the Olduvai Theory and Paul Gilding’s short essay on “The Great Disruption”. I got really annoyed by ‘climate change sceptics’ because I felt they were undermining our collective will (and political capital) to take effective action, using mostly recycled, pseudo-scientific distractions.
Then, I started to study the energy problem in detail. It was a Damascene conversion, as I came to realise, via the analysis of the real-world numbers rather than hype or spin: (a) the inadequacy of renewable energy as a complete (or even majority) solution to achieving low-carbon future (…and therefore avoiding the worst of climate change impacts), and (b) the comprehensive value of nuclear energy in solving the energy and climate challenges the world now faces, in the race to supplant our dependence on fossil fuels.
At this point, mid- to late-2009, I got really annoyed with anti-nuclear protesters, because I felt that, through their outdated ideology and inexcusable hypocrisy, they were undermining the collective will (and political capital) needed to pursue a future in sustainable atomic energy. What galled me the most about this was that I felt I was now fighting a war on two simultaneous anti-science fronts — against trenchant ‘fossil fuels forever’ interests (who ironically understood the need for energy security and technological prosperity) on one side, and hardline ‘nuclearphobes’ (who ironically understood the need for action to avoid serious climate change) on the other.
Now though, I’m much more relaxed about it all. In short, I’ve learned to stop worrying about ‘sceptics’ and ‘antis’ and love energy economics (the real-world outcome, not the academic discipline!). Let me explain briefly, prior to further elaboration in the comments section.
Historical emissions of fossil fuels have come largely from the developed world (US/Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia, etc.). In the 21st century, the growth in emissions, and quite soon the total mass of emissions, will come from the developing world (China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, etc.).
In the developed world, there is general recognition of the energy and climate problems, but little real political incentive to do anything meaningful about it (at least in the short term). There are, however, many minority (but influential) special-interest groups trying to block or stymie change. Now, environmental well-being is ultimately very important to these societies, as is steady economic growth and maintenance of high standards of living, but they also (think they) have the luxury of making choices that balance these priorities against more nebulous or philosophical concerns. This has, in turn, led to inaction, endless circular debates, media wars, unstrategic planning, and public policy that is guided by political points scoring and partisanship rather than rational analysis and long-term cost-benefit. In short, slow, suboptimal change.
In the developing world, there’s a race on. A race to higher standards of living and lots of energy, delivered as cheaply as possible. Environmental concerns have tended to take a back seat, although immediate, local problems, such as air and water pollution, are quickly rising to prominence. These nations represent an economic and demographic freight train, and nothing we ‘decide or advise’ in the developed world is going to slow it down. Anti-nuclear campaigners and climate change sceptics are both utterly irrelevant in these places. By the time the dust has settled, and these societies have the ‘luxury’ of paying any attention to special interest groups, it’ll already be game over — be it a ‘win’ or a ‘loss’.
Now, if the Chinas and Indias of this world do end up following a fossil-fuel-intensive pathway to development, we’re all stuffed — whether they manage to make it all the way up the development curve or fail in the attempt. It won’t matter at this point what gains the currently developed world might have managed to achieve. If, alternatively, these rapidly growing economies are able to develop and deploy non-fossil energy sources cheaply and on a massive scale, we all win. Whether the technology ends up being ‘proven up’ in China, the US, or wherever, the very fact that it will have proven cost-competitive with coal will mean that everyone has won. I return to my favourite quote from Steve Kirsch:
Pouring money into token mitigation strategies is a non-sustainable way to deal with climate change. That number will keep rising and rising every year without bound. The most effective way to deal with climate change is to seriously reduce our carbon emissions. We’ll never get the enormous emission reductions we need by treaty. Been there, done that. It’s not going to happen. 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.
Take a nation like Australia. It has very high per-capita carbon emissions. It currently has an anti-nuclear government. It has many noisy, influential climate change sceptics, including leading politicians. It makes token gestures towards subsidising renewable energy, but won’t commit to it seriously (for good reason, in my opinion). The upshot is that we’ll vacillate, debate and tinker with toy solutions for years. Then, when it makes economic sense to do so — when those places with the incentive to make things happen have done so and the cheaper-than-coal alternative energy is available — we’ll follow like sheep as the viable-clean-energy bell calls us home. As such, I see my role as a messenger, a public educator, a futurist, a facilitator (e.g. via SCGI). I won’t change what’s coming, but I might influence the timetable of events!
So, the debating point I open to BNC readers is this. Do climate sceptics and anti-nukes matter? My evolved position is that they don’t — at least not in any way that is meaningful — but I’m happy to debate it below. The floor is open…
(Acknowledgements to Dr Strangelove for the title of this thread. Also, regarding the topic of weapons proliferation and used nuclear fuel, I highly recommend the following essay that has just been posted on DepletedCranium, “Why You Can’t Build a Bomb From Spent Fuel“. It’s the best layman’s summary of the issue I’ve yet seen, bar none, with lots of useful diagrams too. Do yourself a favour and go read it.).
Brave New Climate 
456 replies on “Do climate sceptics and anti-nukes matter? or: How I learned to stop worrying and love energy economics”
@gregory meyerson – Please provide examples.
LikeLike
btw, DV, your response to me is intemperate.
99% of the focus of my post is on the lies and hyperbole coming from the renewables camp. and so you say the following:
“yet you are telling us the industry[nukes] are the ones telling lies.”
don’t you think your response is out of whack? cause it is.
g
LikeLike
eclipsenow asked:
Where with nuclear you have to build a “spare” reactor to cover every 5 or 6 reactors? Isn’t that what 85% capacity means?
Well, not quite. I see capacity figures misused and misunderstood, often by advocates of renewables. While 85% may be a correct capacitory factor for nuclear in certain countries (it is over 90% here in the USA), one must distiguish between planned and unplanned outages. Planned outages for refueling and maintance are done during times of the year when demand is low (typically spring and fall). That “one extra” power plant is not needed at that time because demand is low.
The outages during times of high demand, even if planned (e.g., wind stops blowing on a hot day) or unplanned are the ones that really hurt.
LikeLike
When you are forced to shut down some nukes you get in trouble rather quick and have to buy power from all over europe at a premium price…
You also start to fear rolling blackouts…just like France.
Ironicaly it is in winter when their rivers run low and the electric heating is running full trottle.
In January 2010 France was importing power in the magnitute of 4 reactors again…
The capacity was there….but it was not working.
France is importing power in winter …France is importing power in summer.
Great technology.
BTW you should visit more french forums to get a better picture of your paradise.
When you live in Germany it is not a very big problem if 2/3 of your nuclear capacity go offline due to technical problems and lack of cooling.
In 2007 17 nukes went offline or had to reduce capacity and Germany was still exporting power.
LikeLike
Marcus, the reason France had to import electricity is simple, strikes delayed maintenance work that was supposed to have been finished in summer.
LikeLike
marcus: france is the world’s largest net exporter of electricity.
Oh man: you want rolling blackouts, take a look at california. their solution to the rolling blackouts problem (see Tucker) was to build natural gas plants.
LikeLike
@Marcus: I think I have pointed out to you more than once on BNC that you keep on referring solely to private household power useage in your country and encouraging BNCers to save money by a decentral power supply. But annual statistics that I quoted you, with URL, on that other thread show that for example in 2007, household consumption was only 25 % of the total across the whole Austrian economy.
You apparently live in a rural setting and can instal microhydro of 9 kW. So I asked you before how you envisaged 1. the state of Austrian industry in 2040 if it were using the renewables you praise for households: do you want to deindustrialise your country? do you long for a bucolic village society across all of Austria? if so, please outline its modus operandi 2. what do you envisage for urban apartment dwellers in Vienna who have no waterfall for hydro or southern PV apartment frontage handy?
To date you have declined to answer me. Possibly you are not basically interested in what happens to your country as a whole. (Bis dato haben Sie davon abgesehn, mir überhaupt zu antworten, evtl. interessiert Sie im Grunde nicht, was Oesterreich als Ganzes widerfährt).
Another thing is that as isotherms have been moving polewards for decades, your country itself can possibly expect less rain and hence hydropower (hence recent power blackouts in Ecuador, which is 40% power-dependent on a hydro dam in the Costa which suffered from drought from late 2009 to just now). So it seems strange to me that you do not factor in global warming.
Lastly, what are you insinuating about Germany? that Germany is a clean power producer because it has only 17 nukes? and given that fossil fuels coal and natgas supplied 60% of power in 2007? are you not aware that German Greens refer constantly to “die fossil-atomare Lobby” in one breath?
“Germany’s electricity production in 2007 was 637 billion kWh gross, about 6300 kWh per capita. Coal provides about half of the country’s electricity. Gas supplied 12%, wind 6% in 2007. Electricity exports exceed imports by about 15 billion kWh, but Germany is one of the biggest importers of gas, coal and oil worldwide, and has few domestic resources apart from lignite and renewables.”
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf43.html
LikeLike
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilities/article6626811.ece
Maybe they could just use less air conditioning…about 8000MW…
Or they could just stop heating in winter…
otoh GB and Ger can export enough power even when Germany has to shut down some nukes in summer.
Since German utilities make more money every year…why not let them built much more renewable energy.
There is no need to save money when you are rich btw.
LikeLike
@Marcus: ich komme zu dem vorläufigen Schluss, das Einzige, was Sie interessiert ist Ihre persönliche Finanzen. Soll das eine grosse Volksweisheit sein: there is no need to save money when you are rich? Sie erinnern mich an den Unterschied zwischen neoliberalen Betriebswirten und sonstigen Volkswirten. / My provisional conclusion is that the only thing that interests you is your personal finances. Is that supposed to be a great bit of homespun wisdom: “there’s no need to save money when you are rich”? You remind me of the difference between neoliberal businness management graduates on the one hand and (other) Economics graduates on the other.
I said above that Germany’s power export is coming off 60% fossil fuel-based power production, in reply to your attempt to spin that export as an argument against having to spend money (the thing you seem to hate doing most) on power imports (but see below for your country, Austria)
You are a national of a country that turned a nuke into an investment ruin by a bare referendum majority in 1978 at Zwentendorf and met the demand that it had been meant to meet with a coal-fired station instead in 1987. Congratulations on the C02 it emits.
Your country had net power generation in 2000 of about 70% hydro, 30% fossil. And Austria has to import power in winter when the hydro is not flowing, does it not?
So never mind preaching about Germany, what about reducing that 30% for the sake of global warming?
I now rest my case, as you are seemingly incapable of raising your fascinated gaze from your wallet.
LikeLike
A few points in response:
1. I don’t represent the renewables industry: I’m not a scientist, let alone renewables specialist. I’m just another blogging trying to collect peer-reviewed executive summaries because I don’t have the time or training to run the figures myself. So convincing me of anything does not really *mean* anything, and the “Black Swans” could still be out there. They are, by definition, unpredictable.
2. I’m still concerned by the debating tactics of Blees when he points out *one* of the limitations of wind which is right on the verge of becoming irrelevant. The “no demand at night” routine discussed at length above, when EV’s will soon all be charging at night, and indeed, by the nature of being ‘plugged in’ 22 hours day, can help smooth the demand cycle greatly. When the wind blows, or any other intermittent renewables starts pushing down some serious juice, then there will soon be an *armarda* of EV’s ready to take that juice and use it.
3. Depending on cost, it’s not an either / or dichotomy. Baseload nuclear can fit nicely with the extra supply from renewables, especially as a whole range of ‘smart appliances’ start talking to the smart grid. Imagine the Diesendorf / Herman Scheer renewables super-grid backed by some nuclear. You guys would be able to sell nuclear waste as “providing fuel for the next 1000 to 1500 years!” based on the mix of renewables and nuclear available.
4. I’m still not sure why I saw SUCH strong hype around CETO’s baseload if it is only 45% capacity. Even the former Liberal resources minister (with the croaky voice… forgotten his name temporarily) said it was baseload! But at 45% capacity, the ONLY way it could be is if the price included a backup site somewhere else…. if they were making assumptions about the future Australian grid and supply situation. I mean, I’m no expert in ocean behaviour. While one side of Australia might have a lower swell, what is the other side doing? And is all this included in their budget forecasts? Only time and a huge degree of reading will tell.
5. Seawater greenhouses: They produce 5 times the water they require for the food inside the greenhouse. So fruit trees and permaculture farms and biomass energy farming schemes can spring up around them, in addition to the foods grown inside. That is roughly the plan as advertised.
6. Barry, if you are happy to quote the EIA they state wind as 55.8 dollars per mwh, while coal is at 53.1.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/archive/ieo06/special_topics.html
America seems to be at peak coal as your friend Michael explained recently: their energy produced remains stable but the tonnage burnt is increasing vastly. (Moving from an era of highly concentrated good coal to harder to extract, less energy dense “bad” coal).
I can only assume their wind subsidies are to get new companies started and running at scale faster, ultimately bringing the LONGER TERM costs down. There is a difference between having a good idea that might prove viable in the long term and actually getting a company and factory and workforce large enough and skilled enough to run at full efficiency to bring the cost-per-unit down.
The above EIA link also finishes with this very interesting paragraph:
“An illustration of levelized cost calculations for a typical coal plant, an advanced combined-cycle natural gas plant, a wind plant, and a nuclear plant to be built in the United States is shown in the table below. The cost estimates are based on assumptions used in EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2006, expressed in 2004 dollars per megawatthour. For U.S. plants that would begin operation in 2015, the combined-cycle plant is the least-cost option and the nuclear plant the most expensive.”
LikeLike
@ Peter Lalor is accusing Marcus of neo-primitivism again.
EG: “do you want to deindustrialise your country? do you long for a bucolic village society across all of Austria?”
When is this boring, and oh-so-predictable straw-man character attack going to stop? Drop the dramatics Peter, or you’ll soon be in the same books as Charles and DV8.
Marcus: re: air conditioning.
New office buildings are starting to be built with as much passive solar technology as they can cram into the building, and geothermal ground heat pump technology to moderate the interior temperature. As I said, my sister-in-law has a Phd in this stuff and hangs out with the crowd responsible for this quote:
“EcoCity Builders is advocating transformation of cities for radically lower energy use. We plan energy demand so low that transition strategies to environmentally benign renewable sources like solar and wind become not just practical but ample.”
http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/articles/394
They have elsewhere calculated that they can build cities that can run from 50% to 10% of modern requirements, and yet still be modern, comfortable places to live with the best of high technology, and yet cutting a lot of the crap.
If you want a REAL treat, watch this 15 minute video at the top of this page.
http://www.villageforum.com/ This is Claude Lewenz who developed the “Village Town” concept, where 20 villages of 500 people group around a central “town”. This is his presentation to the UNSW. If this idea takes off, I’ll be so jealous of the next generation as our rather bland suburbs are slowly rezoned around these principles. It seems like a very attractive way to live!
A “Village Town” is being built south of Sydney, and will ultimately house 10 thousand people. This is not for permaculture village hippies, but mainstream citizens. He’s part anthropologist (and came up with many of the core principles from a mate who is an anthropologist), part ecocity builder, part architect, part pragmatic developer who can get these passive solar homes built FAST when a critical mass of people commit. This is going to be a very interesting project! What is neo-primitivist about living “more European than the Europeans”?
LikeLike
Davod McKay’s excellent book has been quoted a number of times. Perhaps it is time to remind some of you of two quotations from that book:
“we live at a time when emotions and feelings count for more than truth and there is a vast ignorance of science.”
He then compares Lomborg and Goodstein’s analysis of the problems we are facing and asks:
“How could two smart people come to such different conclusions?”
Both these quotations are the basis for my continued opposition to nuclear notwithstanding what I have read in these posts.
The relevance of the first quotation is this. I think any reasonable person would have to concede that a properly designed, constructed , maintained and operated nuclear power plant does not present any risk – furthermore the capacity of IFR to process nuclear waste eliminates another problem.
So in theory nuclear is clean and safe so why oppose its implementation? Because of the widespread ignorance of science there is an unacceptable risk that the expansion of nuclear power will lead to major environmental problems. Problems that will make Bhopal seem like a sunday school picnic.
I simply do not have the confidence that nuclear reactors will be built in a safe manner – I have seen too many instances where builders have made minor adjustments to engineering specs just to save a little bit of money, where workers could not be bothered getting measurements just right . Once you shift to mass production of nuclear reactors as some seem to be advocating you will also increase the number of errors and cockups.
In terms of civil engineering the principle is that structures are over designed so that they can cope with events that may only occur once every 100 years – that principle cannot allow for human greed, or human incompetence – in most instances the risk of greed and incompetence is localised. As we saw with Chernobyl the consequences of incompetence and poor construction are not locaslised by affect people far and wide.
The nuclear power lobby is inviting me to accept the proposition that the people who will be building the nuclear reactors to combat climate change will not cut corners to make a few bucks extra, will be well trained in science so that they understand the importance of following the specifications to the letter, will religiously maintain the plant and finally operate the plant safely. (The last point is particularly problematic – most of the time there will be very little to do, so the temptation is to cut down on staff and equally staff who are employed will find it difficult to stave of boredom.) I remain sceptical.
The relevance of the second quotation is this. Anyone who bothers to read the various arguments for and against the capacity of renewables to deliver baseload power cannot help but ask the same question as McKay did.
He documents the impact of attempting to switch Britain to renewables and concludes that it cannot be done. Or more precisely it will require a huge amount of negawatts for it to be practicable. On the otherhand Amory Lovins has done a similar exercise and shown it can be done.
Two smart people coming up with different conclusions. So how does one decide?
Of course we can resort to the ad hominem arguments popular by some in this thread and dismiss Lovins’s conclusions on the grounds that he is anti nuclear and so has a vested interest in showing renewables can work. The problem is that same argument applies to the pro nuclear lobby – they have a vested interest in demonstrating that renewables will not do it .
Finally of course one cannot help but feel that emotions are getting in the way of reason.
LikeLike
accepting your argument for a moment (I DON’T accept it and think M is more persuasive than L), that Lovins is no more persuasive than mackay and vice versa, then there is no basis for deciding one way or another in the absence of better information.
so if neither position is rationally defensible, then what?
are there any demonstration projects that would convince you to change your mind about renewables?
question goes in the other direction to of course.
BUT, Mackay didn’t intend you to make the inference you do about those opening quotes. I think his point is that such differing assessments are based on the failure to do the numbers–relying on adjectives instead. THUS IT IS THE BOOK’S PURPOSE TO GET TO THE BOTTOM OF SUCH DISAGREEMENTS AND TO DISSOLVE THEM WITH BETTER NUMBERS–“comprehensible, comparable and memorable.”
LikeLike
Thank you for your links eclipsenow.
I am into architecture myself and was involved with “Energy Base”…the most efficient (passivhaus certified) office building in Vienna.
I like that earthship design…not really a solution for Austria but nice idea anyways. (Saw something about homes dug into the earth somewhere in GB once.)
We like to compaire houses with sleeping bags. The body heat, excess heat from appliances and sun have to be enough to heat your home.
You would not have a 1mm sleeping bag but drag some oil or gasbottles along. Just scale up your sleeping bag and that is your house without active heating.
People who built new houses sub this standard are plain stupid.
Austria will get laws in place that demand you to built and refit your existing buildings up to a standard.
You have to have an energycard (much like paperwork for your car) that shows how much energy your building uses when you sell, rent out, built or adapt a building.
We go from 200-250kWh/m²a (or 3000l oilequivalent) to <10kWh/m²a (200l).
Nuclear power is not going to be cheap. I only trust my friends from IAEO (nuclear engineer, proliferation expert…) when it comes to nuclear policy. Just built more nuclear sounds really easy….same line since the seventies…
The IEA once projectet 1400GW installed nuclear by 2000. What a joke. Nothing has changed since. Nuclear won`t make a difference (or dent like they call it around here) when it comes to burning fossile fuels. 2% primary energy….way to go.
German plants would not receive licensing today.
China does what the west has done before…paying with military money for developement of nuclear.
You wish wind or solar would receive that money…
I won`t make a difference for nuclear energy…but every passiv house I get built and every solar panel I get installed does make a difference.
LikeLike
@eclipsenow: I can safely assume that your personal knowledge of German-language renewables advocates, their sayings and writings is close to zero. The municipality of Schönau as the “shining German beacon” of decentral hydro generation, for example, means nothing to you, does it?
Close reading of your effusion incl. bewildering reference to your sister-in-law and mates – if I need your advice on dramatics, by the way, I’ll ask for it – reveals that like Marcus, you too imply that power generation happens only in places where people live, or in office buildings. Have you ever been inside a factory, by the way?
You write: “What is neo-primitivist about living “more European than the Europeans”? This is risible. Which of the several hundred million EU nationals in 20+ countries with differing power mixes are you on about? And I note your verbal sleight of hand: to “LIVE” can mean 1. dwell, reside and 2. conduct the whole of one’s existence in society, including consumption of goods and services no longer produced by human muscle power or animal traction. You are passing off 2. under the guise of 1.
So, as we are actually talking about meaning no. 2: are the 10,000 persons in the Village Town going to consume only self-or remotely-generated renewable power? And will they resolutely refuse to use any NSW physical asset or service e.g. an aluminium beer can, manufactured or run using coal-fired or natgas, directly or indirectly? Pull the other leg…
@John Tons: I share your concern about nukie bureaucratic malfeasance and cost-cutting plant safety/operation, see my conflict with DV8XL on this. Or
for the video interview with Vermont nuclear engineer-cum-whistleblower Arnie Gundersen:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/24/in_historic_vote_vermont_poised_to
LikeLike
peter: thanks for that interview. it’s interesting.
even if the problems are being blown out of proportion, it does show the nuclear authorities around vermont yankee in an unflattering light.
the idea that any corporate industry would be beyond lying is impossible for me to believe.
I’d be interested to know rod’s response to this interview.
LikeLike
gregory meyerson – I was not taking at shot at you, as much as I was reacting to what has become a throwaway remark against the nuclear industry. Almost all the accusations of lies and cover-ups, when examined in detail, turn out to be tempest-in-a-teapot events.
A release of tritium, equivalent to the amount in a self-illuminating exit sign, is blown out of proportion, with the media demanding to know why the state wasn’t evacuated, when in fact the amounts radiation were far below what would constitute a real danger.
Accusations of a facility trying to hide a problem, because they had some component failure that was at any rate redundant, and was detected and fixed. And so on.
Blithely accusing the industry of lying or covering-up, has been treated like a given by the antinukes, and they have repeated it so often I think they have begun to believe it themselves.
LikeLike
By the way, do any of you know just ho much tritiated water was released, at Vermont Yankee, and just how much of a hazard it is?
I thought not
LikeLike
I think I read that the radiation leak was in the area of 1.5 millirems.
That’s why I said “blown out of proportion.” The democracy now did not mention any numbers.
Run for your lives!!
Still: not honest on VY’s part and bad PR, as Gundersen noted.
LikeLike
As an assid, it is my suspicion that the owners of VY, want to close. It the citizens of this state want to pay a premium for imported power, who are they to stand in the way?
LikeLike
Rod writes: That is the way we will win, and the politics of the situation will support us as people recognize the truth of our statements about energy that really is cheap enough to sell on an “all you can eat” basis with a flat monthly rate.
Certainly that could be the case, but we’ll still have to charge on a consumption basis if only for the sake of behavioral engineering so people don’t leave their lights and A/C on all day while they’re at work, or similar foolish wastefulness. After all, we don’t want to have to build a bunch of extra power plants just for the sake of such foolishness. But the point is most certainly true that it will be too cheap to meter, as much as that quote has been maligned.
LikeLike
Everyone just ignored the EIA’s figures, so once again:
The EIA they state wind as 55.8 dollars per mwh, while coal is at 53.1.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/archive/ieo06/special_topics.html
America seems to be at peak coal as your friend Michael explained recently: their energy produced remains stable but the tonnage burnt is increasing vastly. (Moving from an era of highly concentrated good coal to harder to extract, less energy dense “bad” coal).
I can only assume their wind subsidies are to get new companies started and running at scale faster, ultimately bringing the LONGER TERM costs down. There is a difference between having a good idea that might prove viable in the long term and actually getting a company and factory and workforce large enough and skilled enough to run at full efficiency to bring the cost-per-unit down.
The above EIA link also finishes with this very interesting paragraph:
“An illustration of levelized cost calculations for a typical coal plant, an advanced combined-cycle natural gas plant, a wind plant, and a nuclear plant to be built in the United States is shown in the table below. The cost estimates are based on assumptions used in EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2006, expressed in 2004 dollars per megawatthour. For U.S. plants that would begin operation in 2015, the combined-cycle plant is the least-cost option and the nuclear plant the most expensive.”
LikeLike
Hi EN, the assumptions behind the EIA models are given in this document:
Click to access renewable.pdf
For wind, they assume a capacity factor of 45% – quite unrealistically high. They appear to not include any form of storage. There is no overbuild to compensate for intermittency. The assumed transmission costs appear to be far less than would be required for geographic dispersal to smooth supply fluctuations.
In other words, the cost seems to be that for adventitious wind power supplied directly to the grid – a situation that is possible for small wind penetrations, but not possible if you get up to any significant fraction of wind power. This cost is not the cost for a contribution from wind that displaces any amount of coal burning that matters. It is not the cost for wind as a useful generation system, just for every random joule that winds up on the grid.
By the way, I applaud your research into the CETO data and coming to conclusions that you can own – I don’t recall anyone else here digging into that data to produce that result. Bravo.
LikeLike
eclipsenow writes: If one is willing to sacrifice a bedroom or 2 on the size of the average oversized American **McMansion**, and will build a home with proper passive solar tecniques, then you can go off-grid economically.
This and many more of your posts betray a fantasy that won’t hold water: The idea that we can solve the world’s problems by changing human behavior to make everyone more virtuous. Good luck with that. What we have to do is to deploy/employ technologies that make people’s personal lifestyle decisions immaterial. Make everyone a passive environmentalist. The idea that we can solve our energy problems by people building houses of straw bales (or whatever is your flavor of the day) is ridiculous. We have a whole world full of homes/businesses that will last for half a century or more, with all their energy faults. We have to deal with that, not pretend that a magic wand will replace them all with cutting edge designs.
You’re blowing smoke. If you get called on it, please don’t play the injured party. One thing about Barry’s blog is it’s got plenty of people that call a spade a spade, and fanciful ideas about magic batteries and the like aren’t going to get you too far here.
LikeLike
eclipsenow the EIA table has ‘levelized costs’ but doesn’t explain how they were derived. That could be either
for backup or overbuilding. Thus for wind I’d
a) add capital and admin costs for a similar MW of gas fired and apply 75% of fuel costs. Wind is now about $95 per Mwh not $56 or
b) multiply wind costs X4 and add new transmission costs. Wind is now at least $220.
Strangely the EIA table seems to omit carbon taxes in fuel costs after 2015. Does that mean they don’t think Obama will bring in carbon pricing? This nitpicking game is wonderful.
LikeLike
John Newlands writes: 2) China and India need more coal, particularly hard coal, than the rest of the world can supply.
If either scenario eventuates we will get a bumpy and conflict ridden transition to lower carbon, along with decades more climate change.
China isn’t going to let that happen. They plan to deploy 1000GW of nuclear by mid-century. They understand the down side of coal as much as anybody. They’re nuclearizing like France decided to do a few decades ago. But meanwhile their continued use of coal (and still opening new coal plants) is bad news for all of us. Expect the transition to kick into high gear once their new nuclear plants get up and running and they start mass producing them.
LikeLike
@ Tom Blees: The average size of home is starting to change in Sydney, Australia. According to a Science Show interview, I believe with Robyn Williams interviewing public transport and New Urbanist expert Dr Peter Newman, people ARE starting to build slightly smaller homes, but it is a trend that can of course increase exponentially once the economic and lifestyle advantages become apparent.
I’m not talking about a tiny little eco-home but just returning to the average household size of maybe 30 years ago. We’ve become ridiculously bloated in our home designs, and are all working too hard to pay for space we don’t want or need. IN other words, people don’t have to become saints to want to live off grid (or “low grid”): this is about comfort, lifestyle, personal finances and ultimately, self interest.
Also, cities are always evolving over time. So just as starting a nuclear renaissance now might not solve things until 2050, starting to rezone our building codes and city designs can *mostly* solve it by 2030. Don’t trust that statement? Try this article at Worldchanging.com. These guys present talks at TED.com regularly, and are regarded by many as one of the most important sustainability blogs on the planet.
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007800.html
Compared to their outside the box thinking, which solves multiple problems at once, including traffic congestion, public health, social equity issues obtaining good food locally, etc, your comments *here* just sound like so much industrialist technocrat corporate BAU propaganda.
Now I’m not saying that IS your position, because I have not read your book yet and am fascinated by some of the other technologies you refer to in the book. I would love to know more about how we can reach a sustainable world in the face of peak phosphorus and many other challenges we face, and may just have to study your work (in a year or so, when I’ve finished my mid-life career change).
I’m not against nuclear power because of your and Barry’s arguments, I’m really not, not any more. But I’m not betting against renewables either. Only time will tell.
Magic batteries? We’ll, I was referring to Bill Gates TED wish for batteries 100 times more powerful, so we’ll see what the next generation’s tech comes up with. That was in the same talk where he praised the merits of TWL reactors by the way. But from what I saw of your debate with Diesendort you plain ignored the Better Place electric car scheme about to be unrolled in the 10’s of thousands of cars across the globe, growing exponentially over the next few years, when you charicatured European wind as blowing when no-one needed it. With a massive electric car grid, EV’s will be plugged in around 22 hours a day and that creates a market for renewables WHENEVER they are blowing or shining or pounding in the surf.
AND Better Place has Microsoft writing the smart grid technology that will enable the cars to talk to each other every 3 seconds and maximise the interactions with the grid, as these will be V2G compliant and able to sell back to the grid during peak demand, acting as a massive battery for renewables that utilities didn’t have to pay for and is covered by our 80cents/liter fuel equivalent electric charge price.
So keep up the good work on nuclear and explaining this OPTION to the public, but don’t make a caricature of yourself when explaining wind not blowing during times of peak demand, because when the EV’s arrive there will be a “smart grid market” that can use renewables whenever they’re sending juice down the wires. And then sell it back, should that grid need it.
LikeLike
@ John:
The EIA says they counted all that.
From my link:
“Levelized cost comparisons give investors one basis for choosing a technology. In addition, other factors are considered, such as the operating characteristics of different technologies. For example, intermittent technologies like wind and solar produce less power over time than do coal, nuclear, or combined-cycle natural gas plants. There may also be tradeoffs between capital costs and fuel costs. Nuclear generators are expensive to build, but their fuel and operating costs are low; combined-cycle plants are far less expensive to build, but their fuel and operating costs are much higher. “
LikeLike
Yes, I read that statement. Then I went and looked in their detailed assumptions. And, as I said, there is no accounting for anything other than the directly generated output of the installed turbines, and local transmission connections. ie. no storage, no capacity overbuild, no geographic dispersal. This is not the cost for wind as a generation system that can displace fossil fuels.
LikeLike
I fear that you may have fallen captive to the fixed prescription outlined by Tom Blees.
Barry, keep your eyes on the swinging watch. You are getting sleepy…sleeeeepy….
Svengali
Just for the record, Doug, I suggest in my book that we will want to build Gen III+ reactors for a while, but the clear advantages of Gen IV make it a goal worth shooting for, especially since we could start building the first one any time the political will is there.
LikeLike
Tom you made this comment
a fantasy that won’t hold water: The idea that we can solve the world’s problems by changing human behavior to make everyone more virtuous.
as well as this one:
but we’ll still have to charge on a consumption basis if only for the sake of behavioral engineering so people don’t leave their lights and A/C on all day while they’re at work, or similar foolish wastefulness
I agree with both those comments.
But neither of them is an effective rebuttal to switching to a low energy , renewable energy economy.
Rather taken together they acknowledge that if you want to change human behaviour you have to change the rules of the game.
This is why in the first instance, if we want to make meaningful changes, we need to change the assumptions that people operate on.
For example people assume that they can have as much power as they want if they are prepared to pay for it. We can start by rationing the amount of power households can access – how they use it is pretty much up to them but they have to learn to do with a certain amount of power.
Similarly businesses have to do with less – start by reducing the amount of power to which they have access by x% and keep it reducing their entitlements by increments of y% every year.
Individuals and businesses will respond by using energy more efficiently and by generating as much of their energy on power on site as they can.
Whilst this cannot go on ad infinitum it is an important first step in training people to think in terms of energy being a scarce commodity and valuing it appropriately.
I remain convinced that focussing on various technologies to solve a problem that still few people acknowledge as real is premature – instead by rationing people’s access to power you are creating an awareness that we need to work much smarter.
This will also lead to ensuring that products which are highly energy efficient will come to dominate the market.
Can governments change people’s attitudes by changing then rules of the game?
There is clear evidence that they can: just consider equality of opportunity and smoking as two major changes that governments have made about the way people think about their ‘rights’.
The one big difference between equality of opportunity, and the elimination of fossil fuels is that we have a cashed up business that is not going to go quietly – having a debate between renewables and nuclear plays in their hands for it means that we are not considering the root of the problem a society and economy that is addicted to cheap, unlimited energy.
Of course it could well be that there are those who are concerned about climate change and think we can solve it without making any changes to our lifestyles. It is they who are the real fantasists.
LikeLike
Hi Tom,
Is this the General Electric blueprint you refer to? I thought there were still significant materials improvements required to pull Gen4 off… something I seem to remember from a SCIAM article recently… but can’t seem to find the link.
Anyway, I should be studying.
LikeLike
eclispenow, you cited this:
But you misread it. The EIA were saying that they calculated the levelized cost ONLY. They IGNORED all the other factors, such as intermittency impacts, backup, HVDC to bring power from good resources to demand centres, etc. as John Morgan pointed out.
I was actually referring to this EIA data table:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html
This still leaves out intermittency etc. but is a forward projection to 2016. It has wind at $150/MWh, nuclear at $123/MWh and conventional coal at $100/MWh.
LikeLike
“How much does India or Canada want to do CANDUs overseas? Would it be cheaper than AP1000s?”
I just realised I was using idiomatic english, or perhaps englishish.
I wasn’t asking how much joy India or Canada would obtain, I meant how much do India and Canada want monetarily.
What price do India or Canada want for their CANDUs for doing turnkey overseas installations a la the Argentinian OPAL installation.
LikeLike
Tom Blees:
I was not attempting to hypnotise Barry – though I have to admit that, in the past, some of my students showed a remarkable tendency to go to sleep during my lectures. By the same token, I was in no way attempting to downplay your extremely important contributions in the field of global warming solutions.
I am not sure of the pressing need for an IFR commercial demonstration unit when the Russians and Chinese appear already to be building sodium cooled fast reactors. I can see that it would be in the national interests of the USA not to get left behind, but that is a different matter.
I suspect that my lack of technical knowledge may have led to an erroneous conclusion in the paragraph above. Otherwise, I can’t rationalise why it appears to be the case that the Russians are keen to collaborate with GE to the extent of being willing to build the reactor component of the IFR while leaving the Americans to build the pyroprocessing part. Is it because they really need to share access to the latter technology which GE wouldn’t otherwise release?
The main point of my comment to Barry, which may have been badly explained, was that we shouldn’t deploy Gen IV in too much of a hurry and without first having been satisfied that the basic Rand D had been undertaken. My reasons for suggesting this were twofold:
1) The International Gen IV Forum Roadmap, I think, lists about $700 million worth of Rand D necessary before the IFR could be deemed ready for demonstration. You suggest it is ready now. Whom am I to believe?
2) It has been pointed out here before that the best technology isn’t always the technology that is deployed on a large scale. Rather, it’s often the first that gets itself ready for roll out.
3) We’re apparently not going to run out of nuclear fuel any time soon, even if we massively expedite deployment Gen III or even Gen II in the medium term (as, I believe, we should).
I have one other question that I don’t think has been fully explained here. I can appreciate that Gen III nuclear has the potential to produce electricity somewhat more cheaply than even dirty coal. However, I am unsure why you think that the IFR will produce electricity that is too cheap to meter. I agree that it will have a phenomenal ERoEI but not necessarily an impressive $RoI. For the IFR, there will initially be no mining requirements and start charges will come from existing “waste” which might be cheap or free and which would remove the necessity for enrichment. However, there will presumably be additional reprocessing costs. At present, however, fuel costs are not a big component in nuclear electricity prices. On build costs, it has been suggested that secondary heat exchange loops more than offset the advantages accruing from lower pressure operation.
I would really appreciate an explanation as to why the IFR design is inherently better than a similar lead cooled reactor that might not need the secondary loops (I think I have learned that corrosion problems must first be solved) or an LFTR.
In summary, I consider that Gen IV , even at the commercial demonstrator stage, should work smoothly. Technical gremlins would be of huge PR value to antis. It is possible to envisage that more haste will result in less speed.
LikeLike
It’s amazing how projections for CETO or other renewables are laughed at, but paper-plans for nuclear are hailed as FACT. Gosh, after reading the above I’m starting to side with DV8 on something… the almost religious certainty some on this list have about GenIV’s deployability. Talk about counting chickens before they’re hatched!
Forget the $700 million in R&D, recent SCIAM articles repeatedly point out Fast Breeders are a more expensive than conventional nuclear reactors by a billion dollars each!
I’m becoming increasingly sceptical of believing *any* discussion about any new energy technology.
LikeLike
Barry, I’m aware of dozens of new wind technologies that could lower the price of wind. 50% extra cost on energy is not the end of the world, Japan pays double our cost of electricity. DON’T ask me to count how much it will cost to store the wind, as I don’t have to… EV’s can be the market, and nuclear / solar thermal / geothermal combinations can supply the baseload power for the grid, factories, industry, etc.
Indeed, there’s a mine in the Northern Territory that is building a solar thermal plant to run their mine. If a mining corporation thinks it’s an economical proposition to build solar thermal instead of paying for diesel & gas generators, then we’re at a market tipping point.
LikeLike
eclispenow: Which NT mine? What subsides are they getting for building it? (is it the $1 billion solar flagships?)
Dispersed wind with gas backup won’t be just 50% more. That was the LCOE for standard wind.
Who here is talking about certainties for costs of any given Gen IV design? I suggest you take the effort to read P4TP before you try to critique what Tom Blees is saying here. His assumptions are fully justified in his book. But I’ll admit you have to read the book to understand them. So, I suggest you do this if you wish to comment/critique this. It’s a simple proposition.
Anyway, in the immediate term, we’re talking about getting the commercial demonstration units built ASAP, whilst deploying Gen III units in large numbers to solve the immediate energy/climate problem.
LikeLike
Jon Tons
I think you took David MacKay out of context. He concluded that the UK (and many other parts of the world) could not achieve a secure (non imported) energy supply with a renewables only policy, regardless of cost. However, the USA and Australia, in theory, could.
As an agnostic, therefore, you have to weigh up the economic aspects of power generation against the risks you perceive arising from nuclear deployment. I would argue that renewables cannot be deployed in affordable amounts that will be anything like sufficient to offset the adverse effects of, first, peak oil and, next, global warming. I also judge that the types of nuclear accident that you anticipate will have consequences that pale into insignificance relative to the adverse effects of having inadequate energy. I am not a cornucopian or a fan of BAU but I would hope that my grandchild, currently aged one, has a better than 50% chance of living beyond forty – selfish of me, perhaps. Notwithstanding, for my hope to be fulfilled, I, personally, have come to the conclusion that rapid nuclear roll out will be a necessity. I do, however, live on a small overcrowded island and others might reasonably deem that it would be for the greater good if our population were to be drastically pruned. The case, in Australia, is obviously different.
LikeLike
Douglas I hope you are not saying that Australia does not have a population problem – we are already well and truly over populated – realistically Australia can comfortably sustain a population of 12 million we are sitting at 20 million and have a political consensus that more is better.
If you are from the UK then take a look at the transition town movement; I would have thought your grandchild would be far better off within that paradigm than investing more tax dollars in nuclear.
LikeLike
“realistically Australia can comfortably sustain a population of 12 million”
You’re sounding like some of my neo-primitivist doomers that I’ve met in the peak oil world. This is what gives us greenies a bad name.
Why 12 million when we currently feed something like 50 to 60 million, depending on how you count the calories?
Why when “all” we have to do is move transport to electricity, harvesters to alternatives (biochar syngas, hydrogen, take your pick), and a bunch of other substitutes for existing technologies?
I’m prepared to grant that peak oil will *probably* cause (without claiming any prescience in the matter, and just going off current trends) a Greater Depression of greater severity than 1929 as we have to ration & prioritise fuel to both run society AND build the next infrastructure. But Australia only support 12 million? Come on… we’ve already been down this doomer route with Mike Stasse.
I’d support 100% commitment of ALL energy funds to the R&D and rolling out of Gen4 nuclear before I’d support the “Australia can only support 12 million” meme. This pushes so many buttons in me I can’t begin to explain… suffice to say that I met up with the father of a 19 year old boy who committed suicide over this peak oil doomerism. There’s a whole world of pain out there for parents of young people that give up hope in the face of the challenges in the future. I TRIED to warn Mike Stasse’s cult of doom, but to no avail. And now this kid is gone, thanks to exactly the kind of rationale above.
Please reconsider *all* the data on new forms of agriculture, including experimental stuff like biochar, hydroponic and aquaculture syneries, Seawater Greenhouses etc before trotting out that 12 million line so… easily, OK?
LikeLike
Hi Barry,
I can’t find the link to the specific BZE podcast episode where I heard that sorry.
By the way, how good are the Life Cycle Analysis on solar thermal plants. This next piece seems to imply the solar thermal plants have a long time to pay for themselves, without the cost of fuel.
“Mr Ogge conceded the estimated investment was huge, but said it should not seen as just a cost.
All these power plants pay themselves off over their lifetime. When you finish we’ve got a brand new renewable energy system that is going to last 50 years at least and have no fuel costs,” he said.”
http://myresources.com.au/index.php/component/content/article/48-latest-news-2/1135-40bn-shift-to-renewable-energy-possible
I hope this has all had thorough LCA’s by dozens of peer reviewed studies from verifiable, independent agencies, because to the layman this stuff is starting to sound like arcane magiks mysterious to all but the elite initiates of some ancient cult. One “expert” says this, another that. Even the same agency will contradict itself: one EIA report says wind is cheaper than nuclear, another nuclear marginally cheaper than wind.
So I’m sure Blees makes a great argument, but… then would Mark Diesendorf and Matthew Wright and Dr Herman Scheer and Mike Stasse (if you’re kid had cancer 6 years ago, you were acutely sleep deprived, and it seemed like the end of the world anyway… winks).
LikeLike
You may be thinking of the Worley Parsons announcement in 2008:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/worleyparsons-billiondollar-solar-plan-20080812-3u3u.html
It sounds great it they’re really willing to invest in getting some built. Unfortunately nothing concrete has materialised. I suspect because they could (or haven’t yet) got enough co-investment from government.
Solar thermal systems pay their energy cost back, but it takes time, as they have higher material inputs per kWh delivered than other high density energy systems, as described in TCASE 4 and TCASE 7.
LikeLike
I may have spoken too soon… all seems to be in the “study phase”. Matthew Wright might remember the details better… I can’t find it on his site.
The pre-feasibility study is investigating a number of forms of concentrating solar thermal (CST) power including parabolic trough, power tower, Compact Linear Fresnel reflectors, and solar dish/engine. The study is also investigating the various thermal storage technologies that are being developed for CST technologies. Depending on the outcome of the investigation Newmont will potentially escalate this into a full feasibility study in 2009.
http://www.beyondthemine.com/2008/?l=3&pid=5&pt=150&parent=19&id=152
…and grant money seems involved…
The Solar Thermal Power PFS is scheduled to be completed by the end of May. The results of this PFS will form the basis of a submission to the Federal Government for a Renewable Energy Demonstration Program (REDP) grant that will facilitate a full feasibility study on the viability of the Solar Thermal Power option. The Pre-feasibility Study is expected to be completed in the June quarter. The draft Public Environmental Review document has been submitted to the Environmental Protection Authority for review. It is anticipated the final document will be available for public review mid-year.
http://www.infomine.com/index/properties/TROPICANA_EAST_%28JV%29.html
The mining industry seem to be listening to BZE!
http://www.austmine-event.com.au/news/february/february-18-10/other-top-stories/zero-emissions-electricity-by-2020-but-not-at-expense-of-coalminers-report
LikeLike
Eclipse now – I see you refer to Prof Newman above. If you are referring to him as a New Urbanism expert then I LOVE New Urbanism:) I’m not so sure he’d consider himself to be a New Urbanist as such (although I don’t know). I note that on the front page of your blog is a bit on Landmark Education… The New urbanism I’m not a fan of is the kind that is a bit like Landmark Education (and yes I talk from direct experience of both). FYI Prof Newman is pretty much why I do what I do – from sustainability to transport planning to being a local councillor.
LikeLike
All this talk of CETO, HDR geothermal, Kitegen and dare I say IFR reminds of the tale of when Ebeneezer Scrooge is taken to visit his grave by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
said Scrooge, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?”
LikeLike
Any ideas on Blacklight Power?
They are closing deal after deal and yet we only read about Bloom Boxes.
LikeLike
John Tons, on 27 February 2010 at 20.29 — Briefly please, how did you arrive at 12 million as the optimal number of Aussies? Just curious.
LikeLike
@ Matt re: Peter Newman,
yeah, I was really chuffed when he quoted a peak oil article I wrote back in 2005. There I was, basically having a nervous breakdown during my kid’s cancer treatment because I discovered I not only had to save him from cancer but Mad Max just around the corner! Such was the influence of Mike Stasse’s brand of doomerism on my thinking back then. I was sure by now half of Australia would have starved to death. Peter quoted my rambling, uninformed piece to demonstrate the level of stress that the subject can cause as a worst case scenario.
Peter’s also dones some great work in WA.
But on the broader topic of sustainable cities I think there are a number of different patterns we can develop as appropriate to each area, and I don’t want to rule any of them out as societies are flexible, have their own cultures, etc. Australian suburban life will adapt in ways different to the city of Manhattan, for example.
There are also New Urbanists that have an almost religious aversion to anything higher than 4 stories. They basically want to plan around maintaining buildings with “Middle-Ages” technology, as some of them see industrial civilisation inevitably collapsing. Blaargh! I’m so over that.
Check out my collection of New Urbanist / Ecocity links… everything’s derivative, nothing new to see here folks.
http://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/solutions/rezone/
LikeLike
@ John Newlands re: CETO & Scrooge’s “things that may be”. That’s exactly my point for *economical* Gen4 as well! SCIAM states that Fast Breeders are still a good billion dollars more than their regular nuclear counterpart.
At least CETO has been proven as a concept in pilot projects, now they’re running commercial demonstration tests that should be very revealing.
IFR’s have also been proven to work as a concept, but commercial demonstrated to be economically competitive? Forget about it.
Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?” equally applies.
I remain agnostic about whether or not CETO is baseload as I need to hear their response regarding only 45% capacity. Was the over-build cost of baseload built into their pricing projections? I don’t know for a *fact*, do you? In all this discussion about what is happening with one test plant and the costs of that, we don’t know what the *real* experts are saying about the longer term projections.
LikeLike
@ John Newlands again:
I would suggest they are drawing their baseload claims from the availability and predictability of the resource, not from any one unit or farm. Depending on the cost / unit at *full commercial scale* this may yet prove baseload.
“Wave Energy as a Base Load Power Resource
Unlike solar, hydro and wind energy which, due to their intermittent nature, are primarily suited to peak power supply, a number of factors contribute to making wave energy suitable for base load power supply. These include:
* the inherent reliability and predictability of wave activity;
* the fact that any variability in wave activity happens gradually and with significant warning, making issues of grid interfacing manageable; and
* the proximity of favourable wave energy sites to ultimate end users, thereby minimising transmission issues. Notably, approximately 60% of the world’s population lives within 60 kilometres of a coast.
In addition, CETO can operate efficiently in swell in the 1 to 2 metre wave height range, greatly increasing the number of potential base-load sites globally. For example, much of Southern Australia receives significant wave heights in excess of 1 metre 100% of the time.”
http://www.carnegiewave.com/index.php?url=/ceto/base-load-wave-power
In other words *it’s doable* and just like Gen4 it is a matter of price.
LikeLike
@Lawrence – The Qinshan NPP III CANDU-6 with an installed capacity of 2×728 MW. was built for $2.88 billion USD.
NPCIL, has yet to build a NPP outside India, so there are no hard numbers. I suspect it would be less expensive, but their reactors are smaller. However I am positive Australia could get a great price from them with a uranium deal held out as a carrot.
LikeLike
Eclipse Now it seems to me if the Federal govt can give dry rock geothermal nearly $300m perhaps they could do the same for CETO. If steady scalable electrical output doesn’t happen then the cash should dry up. That is cash for experimental purposes and then cash as feed-in tariffs later on. Carbon pricing should be the main long run form of economic assistance.
Personally I think it reeks of desperation to put all hopes on a particular salvation technology and that includes Gen IV. If it falls short ( seemingly the case with nonvolcanic geothermal) then we pin our hopes on something else. It’s doubly disappointing because in the meantime we burn as much coal as ever.
LikeLike
John Newland – this is precisely why I argue that the debate between nuclear and renewables is premature.
We have not begun to tap into the negawatts (at least not in Australia.) The Rudd government could, if it was serious about climate change initiate these changes immediatedly without going to Carbon Polution Reduction Tax (which is merekly another toy for the guys who caused the BFC to play with.) .
All comercial building in Australia to be retrofitted with the shaw airconditioning system or similar. (The Shaw system reduces energy costs by up to 60% – it averages out at around 45% – been tried is a South Australian invention that has now been sold to Johnson Electronics because of lack of interst in SA – the Chinese have takne it on and it is part of the Clinotn Climate Initiative.)
All new electrical appliances to meet at least a 5 star energy rating or whatever rating is currently the best available. Again we continue to allow the importation of cheap appliances that are horrendously wasteful to run – few people appreciate that a cheap inefficient airconditioner cost the community as much as the purchase price as we struggle to upgrade the system to meet the extra demands the system places on the grid.
Introduce energy audits for business and private individuals. I know that in Tito’s Yugoslavia this was something that was commonplace as early as 1990. The role of these energy audits was not merely to determine how much energy was used but to identify ways in which energy could be reduced. (Important for Tito to be able to supply reasonably cheap energy – the way to keep the costs down was to make sure that it was used efficiently.)
Such audits could produce a statement of how much energy is used and how much could be saved if some simple changes were made. To do this effectively the audit would basically come up with the amount of energy per quarter the business/ individual could use. Some sort of carrot and stick approach ought to be used so that people get a rebate for reductions they make.
Retrofit insulation to make buildings more efficient – we have had one disaster of rolling this out without making sure the appropriate infrastructure was in place – nothing wrong with the idea but a lot wrong with the quality of the implementation.
The second part of that strategy should be to undertake the necessary R & D to secure Australia’s energy supply without relying on coal or gas with the aim of being able to roll out the new technologies over a ten year period. (Again we should be pushing for governments to identify benchmark dates for without a sense of urgency the government (whatever its ideological flavour) will continue to procrastinate.
To get a switch to new technologies will be the hardest sell be it solar, wind, nuclear or whatever mix. The reason it is a hard sell is because the climate sceptics will remain unconvinced that it is necessary to make any switch and those who understand the need to make a switch will argue passionately for their own particular solution.
But if we start with energy efficiencies we have some chance of convincing people.
LikeLike
I did obtain some good replies from rod adams to my assertion that coal was cheaper than nuclear but I don’t think rod’s replies were conclusive or that he intended to show that nuclear was cheaper
Still not satisfied so I went looking on other thread comments and found some material from Peter Lang on this question which I’ll attempt to briefly summarise here:
Why do I beleive nuclear can be lower cost than coal?
1. Hanford B was built in 15 months in 1944. It ran until it was retired in 1968. During its life the original plant was progressively uprated from 250 MWth to 2250 MWth. If the first ever large nuclear power station could be built so quickly and be capable of a 9 times increase in its power output, and run for 24 years, and that was achieved 65 years ago, why cant we do far better now?
The answer is: of course we can do much better now. What is stopping us is politics and bureaucracy.
Peter Lang links to external costs study and argues that external cost of fuels should be internalised to their price
Click to access externpr.pdf
and later links to this summary of the same study:
http://lightbucket.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/the-external-costs-of-electricity-generation/
Barry Brook agrees with Lang about external costs
Peter Lang expands further providing 4 examples of why nuclear might be cheaper than coal
1) the first nuclear reactor was cheap
2) average build times around 4 years and less for GenIII, reference to another thread but not linked
3) China is building NPPs now at what they expect will be about $1400/kW. That is less than the cost of new coal fired generation in Australia
4. We have Russia building floating nuclear power stations to power aluminium smelters to sell aluminium on the international market. Those floating NPP’s are obviously expected to produce electricity at a cost competitive with the price the Australian aluminium smelters pay Australia’s cheapest coal fired power plants.
—-
I don’t think any of the points outlined by Peter are conclusive in showing that nuclear is cheaper or will soon be cheaper. They are interesting points and worth further discussion but I would argue not conclusive.
This is very relevant to this thread since Barry’s alternative title is: “How I learned to stop worrying and love energy economics?”
LikeLike
Talk about Negawatts, check this out.
Some of my favourite points about New Urbanism, in 3 minutes. The irony here? We bought in a Cul-De-Sac.
Check it out. It’s all good!
http://www.youtube.com/user/1standMain
LikeLike
Is Vermont going to revoke the licence?
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/02/27/1811219/Vermont-May-Revoke-Nuclear-Plant-License
LikeLike
For what’s it is worth, I also live in Austria. Perhaps unlike Marcus, I strongly support the expansion of nuclear power as part of a diverse strategy to ensure energy security while minimizing carbon emissions.
European power industry data are compiled by the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity. Annual statistics yearbooks are linked below (2008 is the most recent available).
http://www.entsoe.eu/index.php?id=55
Some of those statistics:
Austrian fossil generation increased by 73.7% 1998 – 2008. [No other generation sector experienced notable growth in Austria over the same period.]
In 2008 fossil accounted for 32.2% of all Austrian electricity generation, hydro for 55.2%.
Austria transitioned from a net electricity exporter (289 GWh in 1998) to a much larger net energy importer in 2007 and 2008 (6,618 and 4,879 GWh resp.)
Austria’s 2008 electricity imports originated from (in order from largest to smallest) Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Hungary, and Switzerland. – All relying on nuclear power.
In my opinion, Austria needs to do more to reduce its [growing] contribution to global carbon emissions. I would welcome a serious discussion of nuclear energy here.
LikeLike
The situation over Vermont Yankee is not that cut-and-dry. To start off with, the leader in the Vermont legislature’s upper house, is making a run at being governor, and this vote was a bit of grandstanding. This is because licensing nuclear plants in the US is a federal responsibility, and the feds have gone to court to establish that they are the ones calling the shots on nuclear issues, not the individual states.
Secondly VY is not in any major violation of its license, the bit of tritium released was insignificant. It is my understanding the the regulator must show cause before closing a plant, it is not something that can be done arbitrarily.
I have a feeling that VY will be operating well past 2012. What you are`seeing is US politics in action, and little else.
LikeLike
John Tons I agree that efficiency could be improved without the ‘hair shirt’ conditions some think would be needed. Shorter showers, microwave cooking, lower wattage appliances and so on could all help without being too onerous. I think more tightly stepped pricing of electricity and gas perhaps assisted by smart meters could achieve this. I believe at one time ETSA wanted to ration air conditioning via radio controllers.
I looked at a description of the Shaw air conditioning system. With an ageing population and summer temps approaching 50C efficiency will have to be improved. If the 2020 MRET can be regarded as equivalent to 5 GW new generation I wonder if we could save that amount by efficiency alone. I suggest to achieve low emissions the order of priority could be
1) NP 2) efficiency 3) renewables.
Yup that puts renewables 3rd not 1st.
LikeLike
John The Shaw system is suitable for commercial application only – however given that this is the case we should be asking the question why have neither the federal government nor the state governments mandated this system for all buildings overwhich they have control? The Art Gallery in SA reduced its energy bill but 50% and fully recovered the cost of the retrofit in a two year period from the savings alone.
In my own case being a business I was entitled to some stimulus money to buy new freezers etc. I spent a little more on the most efficient in the market as well as that made some minor changes as to the location of these various appliances – result I reduced my energy consumption by almost 2/3rds. Even if the best every consumer (ie both business and domestic) can do is to reduce their energy consumption by 30% we will already have exceeded the laughable target of 5% set by CPRS – whats more that target will have been achieved by providing a stimulus to the manufacturing industry for there will be an incentive in producing efficient products.
Whilst I agree that negwatts and efficiencies should be one and two – we need to aclnowledge that these alone will not be sufficient we will also need to develiop sustainable form of energy generation – ideally in a format that can be readily exported to developing countries so they too can improve the quality of their lifestyles. (The problem remains that with globalization there is a tendency for businesses to dump their environmentally unfriendly products on to the developing world markets.)
LikeLike
I also support the use of nuclear power however it will be difficult to obtain support (see point 4 towards the end of this post).
I am one of those classified as a ‘climate change sceptic’. This is an incorrect term. I am not sceptical about climate change. It exists and is always occurring. I am very very very very very sceptical that we are causing it. Nature is causing it.
The science is very very clear.
The biggest problem is there are many people who ‘believe’ we cause the problem and pretend there is science to show it. The science was taken from Dome C in concordia. 1000km inland in antarctica. The ice core samples were taken by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA).
People who complain about anthropomorphic or anthopogenic global warming (AGW) have usually never even observed the results of EPICA.
Very poor self-called ‘scientists’ took the data and put it into a computer model and said “oh no the world is ending”. They also look at satellite photos. Show me satellite photos of the same phenomenon from 50,000 years ago and I will stop trying to convert you to the truth. If we had the imagery it would show the opposite effect. I also program computers and will never trust fully a computer model as it only reacts the way it was programmed. A poor programmer or an error can create very poor results.
It is very difficult to explain science to the uneducated but I will try.
The EPICA results show clearly and without debate that co2 levels rise and fall approximately 800 to 1000 years AFTER temperature change NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND.
Universities and corporate institutions are competing for funding to investigate climate change. I have worked in Universities and related bodies and understand clearly the bias that is given. As an example, one ‘laboratory’ was funded to investigate a natural product (i think it was sunflower seed extract but the years have dimmed the memory). The investigations found that patient health would be worse if the product was taken. The report was never published! Yes, that may have nothing to do with climate change but it is just one of a plethora of examples of the effect of funding on results.
Satellite photos do show receeding patterns of ice. I would like to see the satellite photos from 100,000 years ago and it would show the same result. Show the ones 50,000 years later and the opposite effect will be seen.
Each day we have a period of warming and cooling.
Each year we have ‘seasons’ which are periods of warming and cooling.
Each 5,000 years we have periods of warming and cooling.
Each 100,000 years we have periods of warming and cooling.
The people who rant about AGW (the nature-sceptics or truth-sceptics), and who have usually never even looked at real results and data but jump on the wrong bandwagon, dont argue that each day we have a hot period (usually just after mid-day when the most photons of light are hitting the earths surface) and a cool period (most usually when our location on the earth has rotated away from the sun – we call this night). They also dont argue that we have a period called summer when the earths axis postions us relatively closer to the sun, or in a more direct path, so more photons of light hit us again. Then we have winter, the cooler period, when the opposite occurs. There is also a 100,000 year cycle. It is clear, it is well known and it is very very consistent with the data obtained by EPICA. Just because they didnt mention this 100,000 year cycle in school doesnt mean you should pretend it doesnt exist.
Please, please look at the EPICA data. It is the source of all the information. I have programmed computer models. I know quite well how information can be misconstrued. The raw data is the real data. EPICA have all data available in .csv format. You can download it (very large file) and run it through excel to view the data yourself. It is clear. They set out to study or prove AGW but insted just proved GW/GC periods.
There have been ice ages every 100,000 years for as far back as we can prove. The ice core samples go back approximately 900,000 years. the samples were taken down approximately 3km until they hit solid ground.
It would be interesting to see the ‘scientific’ opinion if someone started providing grants to universities to find the real reasons for GW / GC and prove AGW doesnt exist. We would then be given the alternative and truthful story.
Thousands of years ago, despite popular belief, people did NOT think the world was flat. They did, however have ‘theories’ that it was like a mound of dirt or a disc etc. We now think that those people are less intelligent and knowledgable than us. In 5,000 years from now I think people will look back and wonder how a population could ever think we cause climate change (or more importantly can change it). If we could change it, why cant we change it on a daily basis to make it perfect every day and rain when we want. The sun affects the hadley cell, not us. We can not alter the earths rotation, we can not make it rain, we can not heat the earth, we can not alter our elliptical path around the sun nor our interaction with other planetary bodies, we can not change nature.
Now for some subjective and objective thoughts…
1. We need day and night, summer and winter in order for nature as a whole to survive. Even if we could change the climate and weather, would we be killing the earth.
2. It has been estimated by the nature sceptics (those that believe the doom and gloom and incorrect AGW theories) that the earths temperature will increase by 4 degrees. The governments were attempting to get a 5% decrease in co2 levels. Even if we wrongly assume that co2 is the total contributor to climate change, and even if every country reduced co2 emmissions by 5%, it would be a change of 5% x 4 degrees = 0.2 degrees. So tomorrow, instead of 40 degrees celsius it would be 40.2. Great thinking guys!
3. Reducing co2 levels WILL have a positive effect on health. If nature-sceptics and truth-sceptics argued for co2 reductions for health reasons there would be very few, if any, arguments because real scientists dont argue against the truth. We will constantly argue AGW while the idiots(who wrongly call themselves scientists) refer to retreating ice and satellite images. Everyone has seen ice retreat. Lakes freeze in winter and the ice receeds in summer. But there has always been another winter. Its what nature does to continue the life cycle. Not all plants can survive in a cold climate, and not all in a warm one so the alternating nature of our earth is probably one of the reasons we have a living planet rather than all the others in the solar system.
4. The ‘green’ energy debate is being largely driven by those that have invested in ‘green’ energy. This is one of the reasons they dont support nuclear power. They cant invest in nuclear power.
Just please use fact not belief. EPICA data is the truth and fact that all wrong conclusions and manipulations were taken from. View it yourself, dont just open your mouths because you have an opinion. View evidence and fact first then have an opinion. I am certain your opinions will change drastically when you actually view the data and dont listen to the idiot-badwagon. If your information comes from television or radio then you are gullible. Read the truth from the source.
LikeLike
RealScientist, on 12 March 2010 at 12.00 — Here we see temperatures following CO2 downwards for the past 5 million years:
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change_Rev_png
Here we see CO2 and temperature going more-or-less hand-in-hand for the past 650,000 years (note reversed direction of time):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbon-dioxide-temperature-plot.svg
From the Arrhenius formula giving the change in temperature due to the change in CO2, we know that temperatures will now go way, up possibly to the temperatures of the mid-Miocene:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miocene
long before the lines leading to the central chimpanzees diverged from those leading to genus Homo, not to mention the much higher sea levels.
All told, this seems quite a bad prospect.
LikeLike
@ Realscientist,
I thought *I* was long-winded. Try to keep your posts much shorter. I saw your rambling introduction philosophising on how wonderful your ‘scepticism’ was, and splitting hairs to justify it, and immediately flicked on to the next post. I just couldn’t be bothered reading any more of the top 28 Denialist myths being re-packaged in a long, rambling lecture.
Yep, I just glanced up by mistake and saw something typical… “Please use fact not belief”. (Yawns) Typical of a Denialist believer!
The top 28 *myths* recycled by your lot were debunked here 3 years ago. Get a life.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11462
@ everyone else…
GE’s CEO had some interesting comments to make on nuclear power in the recent SCIAM short post. Another reason why I remain agnostic over cost.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=a-need-for-new-nukes-modular-reacto-2010-03-05&sc=CAT_ENGYSUS_20100311
or try
http://tinyurl.com/yacthom
****
“”Nuclear will still be a small portion based on what’s seen today,” said General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt at the ARPA-E summit, one of the would-be manufacturers of new nuclear power plants who notes that either new nuclear, coal with carbon capture and storage or both will be absolutely necessary going forward for reliable electricity with low greenhouse gas emissions. “Someday there’s going to be some CEO of GE that makes money on nuclear. I can tell you honestly the last two have not.”
LikeLike
Oh wow, I accidentally caught this bit when deleting your email from my in tray!
” If we could change it, why cant we change it on a daily basis to make it perfect every day and rain when we want.”
Mate, you *really* need to get a life and stop writing about this, because you’re bad for your team. If I was undecided, an unbalanced and dishonest argument like that would have me embracing climate science just to distance myself from the loonies! Look up 2 words in the dictionary:
1. Climate
2. Weather
Learn to tell the difference.
LikeLike
eclipsenow. before you criticise, read the post. I never said climate and weather were the same. Typical nature-sceptic. You dont read anything but jump at everything without getting the facts. Good effort. Look up two words in the dictionary
1. moron
2. you
I suggest you research micro-climate and learn some science.
LikeLike
and eclipsenow…
you say these points have been debunked. If you know what you are talking about they clearly havent. That is the problem. someone tells you science is wrong and we are actually heating the planet and you believe them. The main gist was evidenced by this quote
“This proves that rising CO2 was not the trigger that caused the initial warming at the end of these ice ages – but no climate scientist has ever made this claim. It certainly does not challenge the idea that more CO2 heats the planet.”
That statement is correct BUT I could change the last line to say It certainly does not challenge the idea that using photovoltaic cells to trap and convert cosmic radiation and thereby preventing the realease of terrestrial radiation heats the planet.”
Both statements are ludicrous however the first one is the worst. No-one has EVER proven human cause. The only thing we ever see is true science state evidence and fact but the nature sceptics jump on any small part that hasnt been commented on and say “well it doesnt prove human cause but you havent said it wasnt”.
Prove human cause. that is your challenge. To refer to your faulty article that you cling to, if co2 keeps temperature high and at the peak of every heat period the co2 is at its highest then why does the temperature fall? The co2 at that point is at its highest level. Go on ! Give a scientific reason! Even your unscientific article you refered me to as a poor attmept to debunk truth and science can not answer this questions.
Previously there has been a debate between science and religion. If something was unlnown, the religious population blame god while wannabe scientists blamed chaos theory (fractal theory). Real scientists just say we dont have enough information yet but when we get it then all will be clear. Now it seems we have replaced our answers for fear of the unknown from religion and fractal theory to “humans cause it”. We cause global warming, we cause earthquakes, we cause volcanoes. Please, your statement that the truth has been debunked is ridiculous if you quote one biased individual who writes an article in a magazine that rates lowly in the scientific world. Let him publish that article in a peer reviewed reputable magazine and see the responses. He may as well have put that in Womens Weekly or the tv guide.
LikeLike
“Prove human cause”…
1. Spectrometry of Co2
2. Radiative Forcing Equation of Co2 at 280ppm V today’s 385ppm
3. Count other forcings
4. Change = warming by human causes
Now I *know* sceptics will jump all over 3, but even sceptics are now trying to avoid the “cooling since 1998” myth, as came up at a recent Heartland Institute conference. (That “noble bastion of science” — ha ha ha!)
I’ll now hand over to Barry, who unlike you and I, actually *knows* what he is talking about in this regard.
Your science and religion paragraph oversimplifies the issues from *your warped perspective* and is as insulting to the history and philosophy of science as it is to the worldwide climate community. My suggestion to you? When you’re stuck in a hole, stop digging.
LikeLike
“Prove human cause. that is your challenge. To refer to your faulty article that you cling to, if co2 keeps temperature high and at the peak of every heat period the co2 is at its highest then why does the temperature fall? The co2 at that point is at its highest level. Go on ! Give a scientific reason! Even your unscientific article you refered me to as a poor attmept to debunk truth and science can not answer this questions.”
2 words…
Milankovitch cycles.
Co2 is not the only forcing on climate.
You NEED to read more!
Read EVERYTHING on the 28 myth New Scientist article, because right now every time you open your mouth your brains are on display.
LikeLike
Lastly, I said above that I’d hand over to Barry, but now it is becoming less about Barry interacting with you on the science and more about Barry protecting this blog from trolls. You repeatedly assert bizarre conspiracy theories and nasty allegations of professional misconduct (with all climatologists falling prey to jumping to conclusions without scientific evidence, and falling into a religious mode of thinking) while your OWN posts lack evidence, rationale, or links to peer reviewed literature.
In short, you’re coming across like every other Denialist internet troll I’ve ever met, not really interacting with the science and just using every post as an opportunity to SNEER! This is not debate, it’s just childish name calling and I’d ask you to stop it or I’m not going to bother with you again. Try posting with evidence to back up your nasty assertions, and we’ll see how that goes.
Barry, if you’re equally bored of this guy’s groundless character attacks then I for one would support you closing this thread and being done with it. But I’m not sure if you’re interested in seeing whether or not this contributor is actually going to try and back up his assertions? It’s up to you mate. I’ll but out for now as I’m in a career change and too busy to let myself get riled by these tinfoil hat wearing weirdos.
LikeLike
Best practice is to just stop feeding them, eclipsenow. I’d prefer to reserve the imposition of moderation of commenters to serial offenders, and the closing of comments on threads to extreme circumstances (such as the Heaven & Earth review).
LikeLike
RealScientist, on 12 March 2010 at 23.06 — Why WMO defines climate as 30 or more years of weather data:
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/30Years.html
LikeLike
RealScientist
I don’t understand your requirements for proof. What branch of science deals in proving things, other than mathematics? I have worked with research scientists and proving things has not been part of their role. In law there are different standards of proof from beyond reasonable doubt to who presents the better case. What standard do you require?
My understanding of science is that it is a discipline that relies on building theoretical explanations of the real world. There is never a point where a scientist knows enough to say all the variants are completely known and understood and that a case is proven.
Given what is understood about how greenhouse gasses work and about increasing levels of carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels, isn’t the conclusion inescapable that there must be some level of global warming from human activities? Aren’t computer models the best tool that we have to quantify the likely effects?
LikeLike
you are very obnoxious and rude eclipsenow. Fear not, I will no longer visit this poorly educated site. I make comments so that anyone who chooses to read the incorrect theories suggested may at least see reason to question the poor science.
I DO know what I am talking about. I work in the field every day and because of the profile of the IPCC, we find it increasingly harder to get the truth back out there. The profession did not appoint its best to the IPCC. There were other means. The data was scientifically raped long ago and current motion is fuelled by people who have an agenda. People like you will never listen to reason or truth. Fine but others reading this may want to.
FYI, comparing current atmospheric modern co2 levels with those obtained from ice core samples is ridiculous. If Barry is a scientist and does know what he is talking about as you suggest then he would agree.
I do have evidence. I already told you to read the raw source data from EPICA. You choose not to. Your choice but dont expect to get respect if you ignore the data and listen to conspiracy theorists.
Robert, I could gladly discuss issues with you as you question rather than criticise. I respect your views however people like eclipsenow prevent scientists like myself staying on sites like this to educate. I will leave this site realising it is just another backyard conspiracy blog however in respect to your question, we do create co2 plus a multitude of other gases however our input is insignificant compared to natures ability to regulate and also contribute itself. Also, computer models are okay however dealing with them each day I have never observed them to be accurate. They are programmed by people. People dont understand nature in depth enough to be able to program them. I could quite easily take the vostok data and manipulate it via a computer model to show humans prevent warming. We, as a profession, do not take this irresponsible action. I can not be bothered dealing with the insults from this site though.
As a leaving thought, what do the so called “climate change scpetics” have to gain from preventing action against global warming. The answer is nothing. We dont do it for an agenda. We do it because we have an obligation to prevent poor science. There is a large highly-funded movement by investors who have already invested in green technology and want us to all believe we need to buy it. There is no reason we cant adopt greener practices and in fact we all suggest strongly that we should. We just have to do it in the right way and without conspiracies driving us to it for an agenda. By all means, please go green. It is good for the environment and our health, it just wont change our climate. Remember, none of us are saying dont go green.
goodbye
LikeLike
@ RealScientist:
I have known a few scientists and academics in my time, and they certainly do not express themselves as you do. I don’t know what you are (a bored teenager, I suspect), but you are no scientist.
LikeLike
Farting against thunder is a phrase that comes to mind as I review these posts (and indeed those on New Matilda on a similar topic)
Barry by lumping climate sceptics with those opposed to nuclear power you have done those of us who oppose nuclear a serious disservice.
Looking through these posts I see little evidence of those on either side of the nuclear debate being scientifically illiterate – the disagreement is based on matters of public policy not on questions regarding the science or engineering (at least not in a way that betrays a misunderstanding of the scientific method)
The sceptics are another matter entirely. With rare exceptions they seem to be totally devoid of any understanding of how the scientific method works.
This is worrying given the importance that science has in our society. I know from my own teaching it is quite common for undergraduates to refer to something (eg evolution) as just a theory with the inference that one can choose to believe it or not. When you point out that there are very ‘facts’ in science (what happens to matter at absolute zero is one of these but that colud be regarded as more a matter of definition than of fact) That science is theory based and that those theories need to be continually re-inforced and vindicated by observation then it seems as if one is opening up a new universe.
The ignorance of science and the dearth of good quality science teaching is a major problem facing all of us.
Australian readers are invited to look at Page 20 of the Weekened Australian where you will find an article entitled: Texa Show Down over School Books – apparanetly Texas supplies 90% of America’s textbooks the chair of Texa Board of Education one Dr McLeroy is “a creationist who believes the world is 10,000 years old [and] who has said he believes humankind and dinosaurs once cohabited on Earth” is overseeing the complete review of all textbooks (apparently this happens every 10 years and McLeroy and his cohort hold an eight to two majority on the board.) If this gives us an indication of the way the USA is going with its science curriculum then we are in real trouble.
However, I believe it goes further than this. I have previously argued that one of the reasons one needs to be sceptical about the nuclear solution is that it requires a high level of expertise to ensure nuclear plants are built and managed safely.
To achieve that level of scientific expertise we would need a major revolution in the quality of the teaching of science and maths. When one considers that in Australia at least the teaching of maths and science is going backwards where is this expertise going to come from?
So Barry sceptics matter because they reinforce a scientific illiteracy. They also matter because a community that is scientifically illiterate is ill equipped to evaluate the arguments about nuclear energy.
LikeLike
Woah, yeah, RealScientist’s final post included *so* much reference to peer reviewed scientific material rebuffing all this climate foolishness! ;-)
Honestly, one of the paragraphs there it seems that he expected Barry to recant of all this climate foolishness, sit at his knees, and bow down to him as the new “resident Guru”.
“we do create co2 plus a multitude of other gases however our input is insignificant compared to natures ability to regulate and also contribute itself.”
He didn’t read all 28 myths did he?
Myth 8:
Climate myths: Human CO2 emissions are too tiny to matter
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11638-climate-myths-human-co2-emissions-are-too-tiny-to-matter.html
Pfffft! I find myself agreeing with Finrod! I’m not a scientist myself, or even very technical, but even I found the language uninformed and amateur, and I’ve met some very informed and technical sounding sceptics.
I find myself agreeing with your assessment that this was just another bored teenager thinking he could change the world by posting on a blog.
@ Barry: I find myself morbidly fascinated by trolls, especially of the Denialist flavour. I want to look away, but just can’t….
LikeLike
I suppose I should just stop this thread landing in my inbox but in response to John Tons decision to state that nuclear-sceptics are okay but anthropogenic global warming sceptics (yes i corrected your incorrect terminology) are illiterate and lacking knowledge… here is a precious IPCC quote from the third assessment report
“To a large degree the coupling between oceans and atmosphere determines the energy budget of the climate system. There have been difficulties modelling this coupling with enough accuracy to prevent the model climate unrealistically drifting away from the observed climate. Such climate drift may be avoided by adding an artificial correction to the coupling, the so-called “flux adjustment”. ”
In other words, the models are inaccurate so for the IPCC to try to prove their incorrect assumptions they add a ‘flux adjustment’ to prove AGW is real. Otherwise their own models disprove it or at the very least the models disagree with their published predictions.
Also, a graph from the IPCC also in their TAR can be seen at http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/fig11-4.htm
Notice approx 100,000 years ago. shock, horror, the same situation as today.
Heres the EPICA data if you want to run it through excel or other software of your choice.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/domec/domec_epica_data.html
Maybe you shouldnt criticise us. It is most probable we know more about climate change than you know about nuclear energy. Perhaps I should think lumping you ‘nuclear-sceptics’ with us is insulting.
The nature-sceptics and conspiracy theorists try to discredit anyone who suggests the models they use to prove AGW are inaccurate yet the IPCC admit it themselves. AGW-critics perhaps are the growing thunder. The IPCC and their sheep should stop farting. We were quiet too long and let the conspiracy theorists have their way for too long.
Try not to criticise others since you obviously dont like it yourself. Perhaps being called a sceptic you now understand a little more clearly about how the term is used as a childish defensive mechanism by those whose who feel threatened . Your respect for the labeller diminishes doesnt it.
So here is the deal; any time someone uses the incorrect phrase climate-change-sceptic (which any self-respecting scientist would realise is a wrong term and wouldnt use it unless they are content having a diminished reputation) or criticises anyone for their views against AGW, I will respond. If you dont want response, as Barry says, dont feed it! Debate is what science is about. Deconstructive criticism is not.
LikeLike
@self-styled Real Scientist: deals are off. Anybody comparing your denialist, repeat: denialist effusions with the writings of real scientists eg Gavin Schmidt or Mike Mann or Richard Alley at http://www.realclimate.org can literally smell the difference.
You should be grateful that anybody at BNC even bothers to wipe up your dribble.
Your joint and several AGW denialist pretense to scientific status is gainsaid by the documented death threats and hate mail received by climatologists from denialists. Or the fact that Jim Hansen needed police protection when speaking in the USA . Now since when do real as opposed to self-styled scientists issue death threats to those of different opinions on scientific issues?
In closing: as has been said many times for those able to read, the IPCC is merely a small coordinating body of thousands of climate scientists whose work has been in the public domain for years.
Over the last few years, IPCC forecasts based on the models you allege are fake underestimated the empirical reality of what is happening eg Arctic ice cover reduction.
Conspiracies in history got betrayed from inside even when the number of conspirators was very small. So the notion of a successful scam involving thousands of scientists working in many countries and with no oath of silence that any denialist has ever been able to furnish as evidence is as farcical as anything else you people exude.
LikeLike
eclipsenow. Catherine Brahic is a reporter..and worse, for new scientist. I, and other scientists, have never stated her biased views were accurate. that is just the way you want it to be. The world is round. If she wrote is was flat and you link to it then I am not sure who is the least intelligent. Just because she and others say its a myth doesnt make it so. The reason you keep hearing the same points is because its the truth. Get used to it. The world is round. Deal with it.
Peter Lalor, I see you didnt quote any peer-reviewed papers to dismis my claims. Good effort! Follow your own advice. Also are you seriously suggesting that because I say I am a real scientist that I therefore give death threats. This was supposed to be a scientific style forum. It isnt here for your childish taunts. You sound like finrod and eclipsenow.
eclipsenow wrote “I’m not a scientist myself, or even very technical”.
See we can agree on something. I didnt think you were either.
I will continue defending myself and the truth. I will respond each time however it would be hoped Barry will realise his threads are being diluted by those immature children trying to ridicule and criticise me. If he kicks you off then maybe we can get back to scientific debate like this is meant to be.
LikeLike
@ RealScientist… by all means attack me, I’m an easy target. By all means attack the *reporter* at New Scientist, because she’s an easy target. But whatever you do, do NOT address subjects like the Milancovitch cycles (which explains the 100 thousand year oscillations in climate), the natural variability with the La Nina / El Nino cycle which can disguise longer term warming trends, or any of these other things we call….
THE ISSUES!
See mate, when I link to something I’m working as a layperson saying: “This is what I think the experts say about that.” It’s up to you to prove otherwise. All you do is *state* otherwise, and that is mere assertion, also called your opinion, also called… NOT SCIENCE.
Your smug, groundless, nasty accusations about climate scientists like Barry got my heckles up from your first post… so stop trying to sound pious and hurt when people deal it back at ya mate.
LikeLike
Realscientist: how about you tell us what you want us to find as we run the EPICA data through our own software? What is *your* predetermined outcome? (winks)
You don’t even share what you think is wrong… and like a B-grade magician you say, “Here it is, TA-DA!” and the trick just falls flat and the audience shuffles with embarrassment.
In other words, just saying “Here it is… self explanatory folks” is not an argument.
Also: you asked why the climate has previously dropped even when the atmosphere was at relatively high Co2 levels, and I answered by mentioning Milankovitch cycles. You didn’t reply.
Do you even know what they are?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
See, even legitimate climate scientists like Barry will admit that there are times when Co2 is not the only climate driver, or even the *strongest* climate driver, right Barry?
Just because under the right circumstances a Milankovitch cycle might throw us into an ice age, even with high Co2 levels, doesn’t mean:
1. That we are due for a Milankovitch cycle any time soon (I thought we were 30 thousand years away from the next big one)
2. That Co2 is a *weak* forcing, just because a Milankovitch cycle is stronger. Co2 is one of the stronger forcings for the foreseeable future.
Yet Plimer and Monckton and others are want to point out these cycles as if Co2 plays no major feedback role, and they just embarrass themselves as the confuse the less-broadly read.
Even I can recognise their flimsy straw-man arguments, and as I keep telling you, not being technical myself, the fact that I can see the flaw so easily is really saying something about the likes of Plimer and Monckton!
LikeLike
you should be glad that I ignored your Milankovitch
cycle previously (or you would be if you realised the repercussion). So you agree that every 100,000 approx there is an ice age and this is followed 50,000 years later and every 100,000 years thereafter by a warm age.
Good! progress!
So if you think it is warm now, wait 50,000 years. Nature will adjust.
no-one embarasses themselves by suggesting co2 plays a minor role. you do by saying it does. Your suggestion is unfounded (except for your new scientist link).
I feel we are going in circles.
You said
“Just because under the right circumstances a Milankovitch cycle might throw us into an ice age”
Well it must be one hell of a coincidence that the ‘right circumstances’ are cyclical every 100,000 years…maybe day/night, summer/winter are coincidences too if the ‘right circumstances’ occur. You forgot to mention the 400,000 year cycle too. Maybe that is a coincidence too.
keep trying.
LikeLike
In terms of the epica data: download all data then overlap them on the same graph. co2 continues to rise while temperature drops. We just keep saying it and you keep denying it because otherwise your arguments are discredited. similarly, co2 continues to drop while temperature rises.
Would you now like to say that ice core samples can not be trusted. The IPCC trust them implicitly and they form part of the basis of the majority of models.
You havent mentioned the phytoplankton problem yet. I suggest you research the carbon isotope ratio before you comment.
Your arguments are without substance
LikeLike
Your post about the Milankovitch cycles was utterly unintelligible.
I’m pretty sure this climate crisis will have worked itself out in 50 thousand years… and how many species we lose with it, and how much damage we do to OUR civilisation and OUR grand-children’s lives, well, it’s unthinkable. But go ahead… talk about some problem that could be 10’s of thousands of years away!
Milankovitch cycles don’t explain what is happening now, do they?
You obviously have problems with your powers of comprehension. Where did I say it was a co-incidence? Milakovitch cycles are an incredibly powerful climate forcing!
I’m saying Milankovitch cycles were THE forcing, but that is more like a trigger, with Co2 as the gunpowder that amplified the climate effects. (EG: the more it cooled and the more Co2 got locked up under ice, the more it cooled. The more it warmed, the more it warmed… etc. This is from the peer-reviewed papers, not my own musings).
So try again… I’ve got *no* idea what you were actually trying to say. At the moment you’re coming across like a 14 year old Creationist?
“In terms of the epica data: download all data then overlap them on the same graph. co2 continues to rise while temperature drops. We just keep saying it and you keep denying it because otherwise your arguments are discredited. similarly, co2 continues to drop while temperature rises.”
1. I shouldn’t have to compile my own graphs, there’s enough already out there that cover this subject on any time-scale you’d like to discuss. Last 10 years through to last 10 million. What are you trying to say?
2. So define what you’re talking about… the post WW2 temperature Co2 discrepancy which is easily explained by global dimming, or some other time period?
3. Please, please, PLEASE be talking about the “cooling since 1998” myth… that would be a *WONDERFUL* example of non-scientific, trend ignoring, fanatical religious dogma. Even some of your own Denialists are warning not to go on about that one! (Such as at the recent Heartland Institute conference).
LikeLike
actually your response was unintelligible. What you suggest is the milankovitch cycles are the ‘trigger’ and play no further part. You suggest they start the increase in temperature after an ice age and then co2 takes over. Yet after a warm age, according to your theory, the milankovitch cycle ‘triggers’ temperature to decrease but the co2 that you previously blame is all of a sudden no longer able to trap the heat. Seriously? Is that what you want to say? Or maybe you are saying that the milankovitch cycles can cause cooling but not heating? I am not sure what you are dribbling, you obviously arent either. You understand eccentricity doesnt mean the sun leaves the system right?
Also, once again you refuse to look at the epica data. I realise you dont want to prove yourself wrong but until you accept the evidence you sound like a whinging 10 year old. “co2 causes global warming coz i sed it does”. Sorry, that argument will never get you respect.
– We are still evaulating the function of carbon sinks.
– As ice caps form, 016 is sequestered leaving behind higher concentrations of 018. Foraminifera calcium carbonate tests obtained from deep sea sedimentation confirms data obtained from ice-core sampling. Concomitantly, c12:c13 ratios give an indication to the extent of biomass supported by the oceans as plant life preferentially uses c12. All evidence shows an abundant buffering effect capable of sustained function throughout either warm or cold periods far in excess of what has been experienced previously.
– University of Leeds and the University of Kuopio have identified that wind speeds below the ozone layer are increased. the resultant sea spray changes cloud composition, incorporating salt, which now acts to reflect incoming radiation. As the earths temperature is increases, wind speeds will increase globally. This will result in the same phenomenon occuring globally not just under the ozone depleted area. This has not been taken into account in any modelling. similarly, as our planet warms further we enter into conditions not experienced since the last milankovitch cycle (100,000 years). no documentation or historical records exist. We are constantly discovering new geographical climate phenomenon and more will no doubt appear as conditions change. No computer models take any of these natural buffers into account.
Until you can provide a SCIENTIFIC reason for temperature decreasing when co2 levels continue to increase you cant be taken seriosly.
You said “but that is more like a trigger, with Co2 as the gunpowder that amplified the climate effects. (EG: the more it cooled and the more Co2 got locked up under ice, the more it cooled.”
but it cooled WHILE co2 kept increasing. It wasnt being trapped in ice it was still being realeased but it couldnt stop the cooling effect.
As long as scientists and reporters continually provide comment for cash, the repuatation of scientists will continue to be scrutinised. Respect will suffer. I am affected by their incompetent biased actions.
Here is the reporter you constantly link to trying to win a trip by demonstrating what a good girl she has been in writing losts of AGW propaganda
http://www.wfsj.org/resources/page.php?id=117
Cash-for-comment is heavily disrespected in the scientific community and yet funding fuels the AGW debate. AGW propaganda can not be trusted so long as funding occurs exclusively for it.
Perhaps you can link to a secondary school project that obviously proves that co2 is to blame for increased temperature but there is some magical reason that even though co2 continues to increase the temperature can decrease. You obviously cant explain it with science.
Nothing I have said is wrong or can be proven wrong. You however say plenty of things that you get off the conspiracy sites. you did keep trying for a while to link to newscientist’s reporters pages. Those attempted debunking theories were disproven numerous times and settled a long time ago. No scientist believes it except you 10 year old AGW conspiracy theorists
The new religion is AGW. Who is your god? Perhaps whoever pays the most cash-for-comment
LikeLike
eclipsenow, read the title and body of this thread — then relax, and stop worrying about what RealScientist says.
LikeLike
I wonder how “Real Scientist” will explain away the latest report from CSIRO and BOM.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/15/2845519.htm?site=news
Probably like the idiotic McGauran -according to him CSIRO scientists and BOM meteorologists are told what to say by the government! Another conspiracy I suppose!!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/16/2847627.htm
Maybe the butterflies are in on the conspiracy and also do as they are told by the government.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/17/2848242.htm
After all they seem to agree with the CSIRO that the temperature is getting hotter with more CO2 in the atmosphere, and not with Real Scientist who thinks otherwise. Call me crazy but I think I will go with the butterflies!
Sorry Barry – I couldn’t resist:)
LikeLike
@ Barry, yeah, true
@ Real Scientist: how’s the physics and spectrometry of Co2 mate? Seen the candle demonstration at 1 minute 30 seconds?
Global warming a conspiracy? Can someone please tell all physicists that the laws that govern the movement of planets down to the energy refracting off Co2 molecules are all wrong… Real Scientist says so! ;-)
Dude, your paragraph on Milankovitch didn’t actually engage with anything I wrote. It just came across that you couldn’t actually read what the real climatologists and ice-core experts have identified about how the Earth’s ‘wobbles’ and climate and Co2 all interact. It’s a complex dance I tried to spell out in a simple analogy of a “trigger”, but as always you dodge the evidence and just ASSERT stuff without linking to anything.
Here’s a link to a New Scientist report that links to the REAL science mate.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11659-climate-myths-ice-cores-show-co2-increases-lag-behind-temperature-rises-disproving-the-link-to-global-warming.html
Increased wind speed will increase global dimming? Sounds nice… got a link to a specific study, of which I require you to post the pertinent paragraph? (Rather than just saying “The vibe of the thing”). Get specific.
LikeLike
@Eclipse Now:
I admire your doggedness but you are dealing with a dead weight tied to your ankle, self-styled Real Scientist, who not only uses suspect or wrong English grammar and spelling but has not even realised how self-revealing the nonsense below is:
<>
Assuming only for the sake of argument that this allegation is well-founded:
Science citations never cite entire universities but only the persons or teams thereof who conducted the research. Any exchange between any two given climatologists is referenced by personal name and not by the name of their employers. This Denialist error is rather touching, actually. It shows that this AGW Denialist has the layman’s faith in Tertiary Institutions, not realising the controversies that go on within them.
Conversely, the error will be a deliberate attempt to sow confusion, in that anybody checking the nonsense would be required to waste time finding out which academics at those institutions are supposed to have worked on wind patterns.
Please remember that the habit of shooting the bearers of bad tidings has a long pedigree; this Denialist fits well into that. These people tend, statistically speaking, to have a set of other political beliefs the invalidation of which by AGW pushes them into Denial.
LikeLike
@ Peter, agreed. It’s a waste of time.
@ Real Scientist who wrote:
“Until you can provide a SCIENTIFIC reason for temperature decreasing when co2 levels continue to increase you cant be taken seriosly.”
Global Dimming from
* really dirty coal processes (before Co2 reached a certain critical mass of climate effects),
* Global Dimming from large volcanic eruptions,
* Global Dimming from large enough meteor strikes,
and of course,
* Milankovitch cycles which affect how much sunlight actually reaches the earth and at what angle. They’re still valid science and totally consistent with the climate picture, despite your incoherent 6th grader ramblings.
But until *you* can explain why the candle went invisible to the thermal camera, I think you’re the one that has a *real* problem with credibility.
Come on sunny, where’s ya spunk? Have a go at it.
(Oh, and try to use short sentences. Like this one. My 11 year old is practising complex sentences, but I don’t think it is for you, as you tend to wander off rambling and then contradict yourself. So write like this. Stick to the point. Say something substantial that is on topic.
Avoid anything with the word “conspiracy” in it. I’m constantly ducking to avoid having my eyes gouged out by all your pointy tinfoil hats, and it is getting tiresome.)
LikeLike
*yawn*
msperps – religious AGW fanatics are always saying ‘climate sceptics’ which as i have previously stated is an incorrect term and any self respecting scientist would not use it. We never said climate doesnt change. We say quite strongly it does change but we dont cause it and there is no evidence for us causing it. Get your facts straight.
Peter, at what the hell are you talking about. I never gave any “self-revealing” quote that you made up
eclipsenow – good one, not. so the volcanos and meteors strike at the peak of a warm period in a milankovitch cycle huh? hah ha ha ha ha . geez lucky they dont hit when we are in an ice age. We would never recover.
thanks for the youtube link. 2 points
1. you religious agw fanatics have now turned to using 1951 movie quotes to try to prove your religion
2. We never said carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas. We just say that nature has coping mechanisms and has demonstrated this every 100,000 years. Introduce an air filter into that tube and try it again.
Previously you said
“and like a B-grade magician you say, “Here it is, TA-DA!” and the trick just falls flat and the audience shuffles with embarrassment”
It isnt my fault if you dont know how to read a graph and need me to explain. I would suggest you everyone else applauded but you and other religious agw fanatics shuffled your feet with embarrassment because you didnt understand.
Your candle experiment is your magic act. there was no shuffling of feet because people have seen your acts before, know the incompetence and didnt turn up this time
LikeLike
oh and peter, that dead weight around my ankle is all you religious AGW fanatics that cannot swim in the oceans of science and are now drowning and trying to grab out for anything at the surface. Let go. Accept your fate.
LikeLike
so the conclusion to the question
“Do climate sceptics and anti-nukes matter? ”
Not sure about climate sceptics. I would think it would be very difficlut to find one. OH you meant to say anthropogenic global warming sceptics. Dont worry, that is a common error for those in the agw religion
AGW scpetics do matter as there are those that attempt to force a religion upon us. If people tried to force Islam or Christianity upon us the result would be the same. You can have your religion, but you pay for it not me.
Anti nuke opinions matter also. Many many years ago I did not welcome the use of nuclear energy until I learnt about the methodology. I can understand fully the concerns people have. There is much more we need to discuss about where and how to store the waste for example. Pushing ideals on people is never the right way. The fear factor is after all what caused us to rename nuclear magnetic resonance imaging to just MRI. I would bet the majority of the public would not realise the source of x-rays for their scans nor where the material is currently stored. By listening to their points of view we have an opportunity for forward progression, not by belittling them but by hearing their fears and overcoming them.
This thread has deteriorated to new lows due to the constant childish actions of those who constantly detach from intelligent conversation in order to attempt (albeit poorly) to belittle me and anyone else who tries to oppose their views. I have vowed to reflect every attempt with equal and opposite rhetoric. Hardly scientific and it largely devalues your site and labels it as just another backyard site with conspiracy theories for science so what do you say we close this thread. Start a new one if you want but this is getting very boring and I have better things to do with my time.
LikeLike
I have been surprised by the animosity expressed in the comments on this post recently. I see the value of blogs as a form of communication being that they enable people to express a view with the possibility of changing the view of others. In doing expressing views openly they can also be challenged and there should be an expansion in the thinking of all concerned. Patience is required between people with very different points of view. May I suggest that the overall aim in posting comments is to win support from those who differ?
RealScientist has been treated as an intruder into a territory where he does not belong. I think that those of us who are concerned about the threat of Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC) should encourage such people to be involved in discussions.
I have not been following all of the scientific discussion in this thread; I am interested in some of the broader questions. I am interested in the question of how a person not familiar with the specific arguments can make an informed decision.
Personally I can’t see any reason for questioning the concerns expressed by the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) except that they have not addressed the threat of tipping points. I understand that climate change and sea levels are tracking on the worst case for their projections. If there was something wrong then there should be a basic flaw in the IPCC approach to atmospheric physics.
Computer models are an easy target because they can be portrayed with the garbage-in/garbage-out approach to computers. I rely on computer models to predict weather and they have remarkable accuracy compared with a decade or two ago. Using mathematical calculations taking all of the factors into account is the best option we have. If the results of the IPCC were based on an incorrect approach then there should be dissenting models that show a lower sensitivity to Green House Gasses (GHG). If these exist, I am not aware of them. There should be a discussion of alternative safe levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It seems to be an all or nothing approach based on baseless statements such as “humans can not influence climate.”
Conspiracy theories are a convenient strategy. By claiming there is a conspiracy it is possible to attempt to discredit the IPCC. This avoids looking at the specifics of the case. This is science by innuendo. If there is a discussion of strategy of making public statements or corrections to data these are labelled as evidence for “ClimateGate.” This is simply unhelpful towards the aims of intelligent discussion. If there is a serious problem, it makes sense for there be an international approach.
Accusations of vested interest are not relevant. There are very obvious incentives for driving people to question the result and implications to the IPCC projections. Responding to them, or not responding, will affect all of us. We who are affluent (in the global perspective) want to continue to enjoy our consumer-driven lifestyle. I have a bit more trouble trying to identify the cause for support for the IPCC approach. There are people who make a living expressing alternative views, but this is to be expected.
Another strategy is to react to the worst projections. Somebody concerned about the future expresses the worst implications of projected climate change and others react by saying they don’t want to listen to things that are alarmist. This effectively rules out considering the future.
I have tried asking people who are sceptical of the IPCC approach, but I have not found any satisfactory answers. People seem to develop these opinions based on vague notions and by hearing the opinions of individuals who influence them.
I wonder if this is the basic question to ask those who question or oppose the IPCC is the reason for developing their opinion in the first place?
LikeLike
RealScientist has been treated as an intruder into a territory where he does not belong. I think that those of us who are concerned about the threat of Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC) should encourage such people to be involved in discussions.
I’m not sure that RealScientist is interested in having a discussion. Actually, I’m not even convinced that he holds the views he claims to hold.
LikeLike
Whether Real Scientist holds his views or not does not invalidate the burden of Robert Lawrence’s argument. In the various online fora where this topic is discussed it does not take long for it to degenerate into a slanging match.
The science of climate change does not readily lend itself to a sensible discussion outside of the area of peer reviewed literature. The role of the scientist when communicating their findings to the broader public is to describe their findings in a way that are readily comprehensible to a lay audience.
The problem that arises with those scientists who are sceptical about AGW is that generally they seem to think what they have to do is demonstrate that one can have legitimate doubts about all of the science and those doubts are sufficient by way of a rebuttal.
Yet in these public fora the issue is not so much about the science but about the appropriate public policy response to the findings of scientists.
If public policy can only be shaped once there is absolute certainty about the science then there is very little that can ever happen.
With respect to AGW we can argue that there is no absolute certainty; we can point to the fact that are scientists who reject AGW but neither of those facts is sufficient reason to argue that public policy should simply ignore the findings of those scientists that indicate that AGW may well be a reality.
The reason that there is such resistance to the proposition that AGW is a concern has little to do with the science but, I suspect, with the uncomfortable conclusion that it requires us to make a major shift in the way we source our energy. Government action on lead in petrol and asbestos removal was based(initially at least) on far more tentative science than is the science that supports the AGW hypothesis.
AGW is a hypothesis and it would not be the first hypothesis that was subsequently disproved as the forces under consideration become better understood. But it would be irresponsible to frame public policy on the basis that there is no absolute certainty that the hypothesis is right.
LikeLike
Well, I am happily unconflicted in this matter. It is my considered opinion that nuclear power is not just the only practical solution to CO2 emissions from the energy sector. It also happens to have such incredible properties that it is an excellent idea to implement it anyway, even if it somehow turns out that AGW is incorrect.
LikeLike
Finrod
Sorry if I am being pedantic here, but I don’t agree that AGW can be “incorrect.” It may be less of a concern than expected. Unless the basic concept of greenhouse gasses is wrong or they are not increasing due to human activities, then some effect is a logical consequence. It is a question of how much, not whether.
I entirely agree that even if AGW was not significant enough to be an issue of concern, there are enough other reasons to stop using coal and reducing other forms of CO2 emissions (and I would add, as a matter of urgency).
It is an interesting question as to why those concerned about AGW are not concerned about the other effects of CO2. This is a reason for seriously questioning their objectivity to science.
LikeLike
Sorry, I meant those not concerned about AGW in the last paragraph.
LikeLike
Sorry if I am being pedantic here, but I don’t agree that AGW can be “incorrect.”
I’m of the same view, but I would like to point out that even people who genuinely doubt AGW can still be recruited to the cause of nuclear power on other grounds… and if they support the solution to AGW, I’m not too concerned about their ‘skepticism’.
LikeLike
Jon Tons said:
Actually, it’s a lot more than a hypothesis. It is now an explanation for the climate anomaly for which there is experimental corroboration. Your broader point is right though. If you want absolute certainty, then you need not science, but religion.
Science is progressively revelatory. It provides the tools needed to probe the observable world and make sense of its behaviour. Sometimes, our inferences are inadequate, because our grasp of the data in context is flawed, or because the data is too spotty to make the kinds of inferences that would be useful in policy.
Accordingly, because one cannot ever be certain that one has all the data one needs, and interpreted it aptly in context, since this would imply final knowledge of the very thing we are probing, we must accept that we will be denied certainty. At best, we can make a very well tutored guess, based on our growing knowledge and the body of research that precedes us.
Yet is not fair to say that because we are denied certainty, all areas of uncertainty have the same value, or that all probability short of 100% is much of a muchness. No actuary or bookmaker would be in business doing that. When faced with the need to make decisions, we prefer greater confidence to less confidence, and we weigh the hazards of being wrong in deciding what to do. It is wise to allow good science to guide us in this. If we simply said we were untinterested in anything that did not offer certainty, public policy would be bankrupt and human welfare in a shambles. Of that we can be almost certain.
The logic of the view that some uncertainty vitiates a field of scientific inquiry is intellectually nihilistic and logically demands a reversal of civilisation in favour of a return to barbarism and fantasy. The deniers of science accuse “greenies” of seeking this lifestyle, but the reality is that is the deniers and dissemblers that deserve this brickbat.
Robert Lawrence says:
I don’t agree. “RealScientist” brings no new insight to this discussion. Like his fellow travellers, all he can do is recycle long debunked talking points in an attempt to give them status they ill deserve and to waste the time of serious people. Let him educate himself on the science he claims to know and publish contrary findings in journals of scientific record if he can, showing his methodology and data collection methods, and then let us explore whether he has a substantive point. Merely copying and pasting the latest drivel doesn’t qualify.
LikeLike
Ewen Laver, Said:
“I don’t agree. “RealScientist” brings no new insight to this discussion. Like his fellow travellers, all he can do is recycle long debunked talking points in an attempt to give them status they ill deserve and to waste the time of serious people. Let him educate himself on the science he claims to know and publish contrary findings in journals of scientific record if he can, showing his methodology and data collection methods, and then let us explore whether he has a substantive point. Merely copying and pasting the latest drivel doesn’t qualify”
Well said, and neatly underlines the whole point of this thread. If the likes of “RealScientist” are the best the deniers can throw at the topic, there is really no need to worry too much about their impact. In fact if Eclipsenow hadn’t kept rising to his bait, “RealScientist” would have faded away by now.
LikeLike
John, Robert and Finrod… thank you. Those responses were the type I expected to find on this site. (i am truly saying thanks, not being sarcastic just to clarify). The common gist is there is room for discussion. The abruptness and political push before the Copenhagen Summit is perhaps one of the largest reasons the previously quiet AGW sceptics have started raising their voices. It was handled very poorly from a political perspective. We had an impression of it being rammed down our throats whether we like it or not. There are scientists on both sides of the argument. We could start an International Panel Against Anthropogenic Global Warming (IPAAGW) however I would hope this never happens as I believe it would be counter-productive. We arent against reduction in emmissions but just a measured and considered approach. If IPCC acted a little less like greenpeace and more like an organisation that considers both sides then we would no doubt embrace it more.
Robert, you commented
“I entirely agree that even if AGW was not significant enough to be an issue of concern, there are enough other reasons to stop using coal and reducing other forms of CO2 emissions (and I would add, as a matter of urgency).”
Once again, I thank you for your comments and your consideration. We have differing views on AGW and yet we at least agree on the basics and the rest I guess we agree to disagree. I respect you and your views regardless. I have previously indicated that even though I doubt AGW I have absolutely no doubt that human emmissions should be reduced.
Perhaps the best way to make forward progress is to avoid the factors that create division and embrace those that unite. Health is one such thing. Barack Obama indicated he was going to Copenhagen with the view to decreasing co2 based on health. Perhaps he already realised the unifiying point that we have missed.
Anyway, long post and it is definitely my last. Barry, please remove my email from the database so I no longer get posts. To the latest two posts, I respect your right to comment but no-one will respect those comments (I would suspect not even those on your side of the argument).
Feel free to bait me further…I wont be here
LikeLike