The plot thickens:
White House aides Monday were mum about what would happen to the Office of Energy and Climate Change except to declare that Browner, a former Senate staffer to Al Gore, believed energy issues would remain front and center for the president.
One wonders now if Obama will even mention climate during the State of the Union Address Tuesday night. With jobs and economy taking front and center and Browner’s announcement right before SOTUA, government climate initiatives may be relegated to the back-burner. We’ll have to wait and see.
And it gets stranger, Haunting the Library writes:
Andy Revkin of the New York Times reported that Hansen was not happy with the current Obama administration, as despite offering his services “I never heard back anything from the White House”. This “lame” approach, he said could be seen in past Democrat administrations:
Nowhere is the lame middle-of-the-road go-slow compromise approach clearer than in the case of nuclear power. The [Obama] Administration has been reluctant to admit that the Carter and Clinton/Gore administrations made a huge mistake in pulling the U.S. back from development of advanced nuclear technology.
That is the way to make nuclear power safer (nuclear power already has the best safety record of any major industry in the United States) and resistant to weapons proliferation
New York Times. Dot Earth. NASA’s Hansen Pushes Obama for a Carbon Cost and a Nuclear Push.
Hansen also slammed President Obama for buckling to advocacy groups who impede progress on nuclear power, rather than being a “responsible leader” and authorizing a major new programme of building new nuclear power stations:
Nevertheless, the easiest thing that he could do, and perhaps the best that we can hope for, is for him to give a strong boost to nuclear power.
Unfortunately, he seems to fall prey to Democratic politics on this, rather than being a responsible leader.
New York Times. Dot Earth. NASA’s Hansen Pushes Obama for a Carbon Cost and a Nuclear Push.
Hansen’s comments may well be a dig at blogger Joe Romm (Climate Progress), formerly Acting Assistant Secretary at the Department of Energy for the Clinton administration. Despite frequently proclaiming global warming to be an existential threat to humanity, Romm has hindered the move to low emissions energy by waging a campaign against nuclear power, which – as Hansen notes – has “the best safety record of any major industry”. Why is Romm ignoring the advice of the scientists he himself champions? Is it science, or is it politics?
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Ouch, that’s gonna leave a mark.
Seems like the climate/green energy movement is self destructing on the eve of the SOTUA.
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People! Keep your eye on the ball. EPA is regulating GHGs and they no longer need Browner or the White House any more.
In case you can’t wait to see it, here’s the SOTU speech:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/25/obama-state-of-the-union-_1_n_813478.html
Unless I missed it, he does not utter the words ‘climate change.’
sHx @ur momisugly 3:30 PM
Right on Icarus; Hansen is a Greek Tragedy. He’s a very instructive man; I hope we remember him a long time.
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“”””” Roger Sowell says:
January 25, 2011 at 2:01 pm
@ur momisugly DD More January 25, 2011 at 11:19 am
The US legal system is designed to provide access to the courts for any legitimate plaintiff – including those who want to sue the owners or constructors of a nuclear power plant. If the nuclear power plant constructors would do everything correctly the first time, there would be no or very little reason for lawsuits. Sadly, the nuclear power construction industry has an abysmal record of doing anything correctly. “””””
It is instructive to compare the operations of businesses like Power engineering businesses; the sort that design and build all kinds of power stations, of different technologies; with another class of businesses that can be generally categorized as “Professions”; of which there are quite a few varieties; staffed of course by “Professionals”.
“Professionals” are not like other business persons; they don’t have a “job”; they have a “practice”, and they “Practice” their “profession” on their customers, or clients if you will. Often they are not very good at it; so no “professional” will ever give you a money back guarantee; you assume ALL of the risks of their “practising” on your behalf. Then there is the CYA factor; so ALL professionals carry malpractice insurance to protect their A**** when they screw up. So their insurance company will pick up the pieces for them.
And to limit the competition, so they don’t have to become very good at their “practice”, all “professionals” are protected by laws that prevent anybody else from horning in on their “professional operations”. You simply aren’t allowed to do your own brain transplant, even if you wanted to try it.
A good example is the tax lawyers, who will go to bat for you at the IRS, if you have failed to file a tax return for the last five years. Well you didn’t file, because you didn’t have any money left to pay what taxes you might owe. Not to worry; the tax lawyer will get you a deal for ten cents on the dollar. Of course before he will take your case, you will have to pay him his “one time fee” so you know ahead of time how much it is going to cost you to get a ten cent on the dollar deal from the IRS. If you don’t have the money to pay your taxes owed; how the heck are you going to pay the lawyer his up front retainer.
Of course the IRS really loves these tax lawyers. If the lawyer brings them another tax deadbeat or cheat, to get them back on the tax rolls, the IRS would be smart to let the taxpayer off for ten cents on the dollar; just this one time, to get him back on the tax rolls. Well the IRS agent would never say that; that would be improper; and the tax lawyer, would never make that suggestion to the IRS; that would be kinda like bribery. So the tax lawyer collects a fee that should have been paid to the IRS in taxes, and he doesn’t have to make an improper suggestion to the IRS, about going easy on his victim; scratch that; make that client; and the IRS collects something which is better than nothing and they get another tax payer’s vital statistics, and they didn’t have to grease anybody’s palm to bring the rascals in.
Yeah it’s great to have a “practice”; so that you don’t get fired when you screw up, and your product doesn’t work, like the engineer designing a power plant would. His work is expected to do what he says it will, or the customer demands their money back.
Yes the world needs better regulation of people who design and build stuff, to make sure it works, and the customer gets his money’s worth; and if it doesn’t then there is always a “Practitioner Professional” to stand up for the wronged customer of the incompetent engineer. Well once in a while; actually most of the time, what the engineer designed and built works exactly like it was supposed to, and everybody benefits from that. The “Practice” of the “Professional”, is like the bartender who skims from the till to line his own pocket, while the restaurateur has his back turned. Like the Mafia, it’s just another cost of doing business.
Based on whats happening in the Gulf of Mexico, I somehow think this administration would allow Venezuela to build a nuke plant in the U.S. before it let us build our own.
A measure a societies technical and engineering sophistication is how its power is derived from advanced sophisticated sources. Nuclear Power is the most advanced sophisticated power source there is. The size of a cell phone or PDA indicates nothing nor does the output from Hollywood or conspicuous consumption (maybe indicates decadence).
thanks for the replies and good info @ur momisugly starzmom and harrywr2
and thanks to Taphonomic for the good info on Yucca mtn…
“Hansen also slammed President Obama for buckling to advocacy groups”
Pot, Kettle, Black, spring to mind!
Hansen is going to jail, Hansen is going to jail, Hansen……
He’s done, put a fork in him.
It seems to me that nuclear energy is the only real source of alternative energy available right now.
It is used safely all over the world, in spite of some terrible fiascos due to poor maintenance or failure to close down obsolete facilities.
Wind turbines and solar panels are much worse than “pie in the sky”, in my opinion they are just highly polluting government-subsidized “green” scams. These two “cures” are worst than the sickness.
Browner wasn’t greener enough, or Obama has consigned to giving Green token lip service.
Now if he’s going nuclear, then he’s going to have to come to grips with the nuclear waste problem.
Hansen has already gone nuclear… in more ways than one.
“B ob Newhart says:
January 25, 2011 at 8:33 pm
Hansen is going to jail, Hansen is going to jail, Hansen……
He’s done, put a fork in him.”
Are you a mad or are you a troll?
The only ones who carry pitch-forks in this debate are the “97% of scientists agree” club, the 10:10 mob and other affiliated pot-garden bully society.
No other government employee enjoyed as much latitude to criticise his/her own bosses publicly as James Hansen did during his 30 year stint as the head of NASA GISS. Probably no one under Hansen’s own playground dared to criticise the boss.
As for Hansen going to jail, he was arrested twice for the same offence. He is lucky he didn’t spend a few days in jail. And he is very lucky that the world didn’t get to see the James Hansen mugshot.
Indeed, since James Hansen was arrested, the police must have taken his mugshot. I wonder if an inquisitive American mind can dig that out for us.
It was a Donald Trump moment: “Yer fired!”
*sigh* Be careful what you wish for, folks! As Frank Herbert said in “Dune,” we have “plots within plots….”
How can we have all of Hansen’s nice, new, advanced nuclear plants without any waste disposal/recycling option? Obama already killed Yucca Mountain off, and there is no other viable alternative. One very promising technology, the “Integral Fast Reactor,” was killed by Clinton/Gore.
Building up an advanced nuclear infrastructure will take decades, and in the meantime, Prof. Hansen desperately wants to reduce your carbon emissions (per his book “Storms of My Grandchildren”). Don’t cheer for this guy, but ask questions.
Also, speaking of “plots within plots,” this is a very interesting development = a union of GE and the Obama Administration:
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/560525/201101211832/Obama-And-GE-New-Industrial-Superstructure.aspx
Jeremy says:
” is it really reasonable for a taxpayer project the size of Yucca Mountain to be closed down on the whim of a new administration? ”
Good question.
Two points:
1 For the most part Yucca isn’t a taxpayer project. It is planned to dispose of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants, defense nuclear fuel from naval reactors, and defense high-level nuclear waste (from things like nuclear weapons development since the 1940s). About 80% of the funding is for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel from power plants and this is paid for by the customers using nuclear power (ratepayers) by a $0.001 per kilowatt-hour tax on power consumed. This money goes into the Nuclear Waste Fund which currently has more than 20 billion dollars and is still collecting money. Nuclear power plants are suing the government to try to stop them from collecting this (and even refund it) since the Obama administration has tried to squash Yucca. The other 20% of funding for defense waste disposal is planned to come from all USA taxpayers.
2 As I posted before, the attempt to close down the project is currently going to be adjudicated in the Circuit Court. It is probable that whichever side loses will appeal to the Supreme Court. As a guess, I would say that both courts will find that the administration’s actions violate the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA). NWPA was a law passed in the 1980s after years of legislative squabbling and it lays out all of the steps to develop and license a repository. It has been through court battles before, has been amended, but it has never been blatantly ignored and violated as the current administration is doing. Whichever way the courts rule on this case could set precedents on the powers of future administrations.
@Taphonomic says:
January 26, 2011 at 10:53 pm
——
Thanks, good stuff! There is a lot of legal action going on as you pointed out:
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2011/01/14/1326866/dc-appeals-court-sets-date-for.html
The trump card will be “environmental impact.” Yucca Mountain repository was extremely unpopular in Sen. Reid’s home state, and arguments about groundwater contamination etc. (bogus) will be used by Obama.
This will be interesting to watch. No matter what the environmental drawbacks, storing the waste in Yucca Mountain is far safer than stockpiling the stuff in cooling ponds near Lake Michigan or other water supplies. Really dumb.
CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
“The trump card will be “environmental impact.” Yucca Mountain repository was extremely unpopular in Sen. Reid’s home state, and arguments about groundwater contamination etc. (bogus) will be used by Obama.”
An environmenal impact staement has already been prepared. The License Application addresses the potential for ground-water contamination; it’s available for review at: http://www.nrc.gov/waste/hlw-disposal/yucca-lic-app.html
A little light reading, it’s a bit less than 10,000 pages.
Actually, not all of Nevada is totally opposed. The farther away from the site the more rabidly opposed. Yucca Mountain is in Nye County, and Nye County does not oppose the repository. They actually worked with the DOE to gather scientific data. The Nevada Test Site is located in Nye County and many of the residents either worked there or know someone who does. They aren’t that afraid of nukes.
New nuclear power plant projected cost to produce electricity is 50% greater than natural gas. It takes at least a decade to get one from initial planning to full power operation. In the meantime a breakthrough in biofuel from genetically engineered organisms could handily be less expensive than natural gas. At this point in time the rate of progress in synthetic biology looks like 10 years is more than enough time to git ‘er done. If/when that happens any new nuclear plant becomes a dinosaur overnight that would be operating at a loss. Serious investors know the risk of investing in nuclear and just won’t do it. If no one will put all that capital at risk then no new nuclear power plant will be built.
Nuclear power isn’t the panacea many seem to think it is. IMO the number of existing plants will decrease through attrition as their service life ends and they won’t be replaced.
Dave Springer says:
Those cost estimates appear to be off a bit. See:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html
Also “breakthoughs” always tend to be kind of, shall we say, speculative. First it has to happen in the lab and then it has to be enginnered in reality. If pigs had wings…
As for no new nuke plants being built, google “Vogtle”. They’re adding two new reactors to the site.
John Kehr says:
January 25, 2011 at 12:50 am
Any warmist that opposes nuclear power doesn’t deserve the time of day.
John Kehr”
Those of the “feral human”mentality want to go back to a world lit only by fire if that, a world living in caves, a world of creatures cowering before thunder and lightning storms, …
It is going to take much more for the Modern Liberal yuppies who support radical environmentalists to smarten up, so far they are too stupid to see that their comfort and health are in danger.
PS: Yes, “feral human”, the term used for themselves by environmentalist protesters at a road construction site in Langford BC Canada.