Greens want every possible intervention except one which “solves” their useful crisis
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
‘Drill Bit Dana’ has been at it again, trying to claim that we don’t “accept the science”, because we are ideologically opposed to their solution – massive government intervention.
There is just one problem with this argument – its an utter falsehood. The reason its a falsehood, is massive government intervention is not the only, or by any measure the best, route to reducing CO2 emissions. Most skeptics are supporters of power generation solutions which would, as a byproduct, significantly reduce CO2 emissions.
We have no reason to reject alarmist science, other than we think it is wrong.
Take the example of America. The USA has substantially reduced CO2 emissions over the last decade, because of fracking – the switch from coal to gas, even though energy use has gone up, has reduced the amount of carbon which is burned to produce that energy.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/02/us-co2-emissions-may-drop-to-1990-levels-this-year/
Of course, America’s coal producers are still mining as much coal as they ever did – and exporting it to Europe, whose disastrous policy failures have increased costs and CO2 emissions.
In the case of fracking, the reduction of CO2 emissions might have been incidental, but fracking has produced results. Surely when it comes to CO2, results are what count?
But the real elephant in the room, with regard to emissions reduction, is the nuclear option.
James Hansen likes nuclear power.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/03/world/nuclear-energy-climate-change-scientists-letter/index.html
George Monbiot likes nuclear power. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima
Anthony Watts likes nuclear power.
James Delingpole likes nuclear power.
Jo Nova likes nuclear power.
The Heartland Institute likes nuclear power.
http://blog.heartland.org/2013/11/global-warmings-mt-rushmore-wisely-embraces-nuclear-power/
So why isn’t nuclear power the main focus of everyone’s attention? Why do far too many alarmists persist with antagonising us, by pushing their absurd carbon taxes and government intervention, when they could be working with us? Why do alarmists keep trying to force us to accept solutions which we find utterly unacceptable, when there are obvious solutions which we could all embrace?
Perhaps some alarmists are worried about the risk of nuclear accidents – but, if climate change is as serious as they say, how can the risk of a nuclear meltdown or ten possibly compare to what alarmists claim is an imminent risk to the survival of all humanity?
Why do alarmists persist with pushing falsehoods about the motivation of their opponents, when they could, right now, be taking positive, substantial steps to promote policies which actually would reduce CO2 emissions?
What was the motivation of Phil Jones, Director of the CRU, when he wrote the following Climategate email:-
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=0837094033.txt
“Britain seems to have found it’s Pat Michaels/Fred Singer/Bob Balling/ Dick Lindzen. Our population is only 25 % of yours so we only get 1 for every 4 you have. His name in case you should come across him is Piers Corbyn. … He’s not all bad as he doesn’t have much confidence in nuclear-power safety.”
Does Phil Jones really think that nuclear safety is more of an issue than global warming?
The easy answer to this dilemma is that most alarmists are being dishonest – that they don’t really believe CO2 is an important issue, that its simply a convenient excuse to push their political agenda. But surely they can’t all be bent? Monbiot seems sincere about embracing nuclear power. Hansen, and the authors of the open letter, seem sincere about promoting nuclear power. Are they really the only honest participants on the alarmist side of the debate? Surely this can’t be the case.
What am I missing?
Steve P says:
August 10, 2014 at 6:30 pm
Gary Pearse says:
August 10, 2014 at 4:22 pm
“You’re dealing in hypotheticals, and dodging reality.”
Ah, I see now. You think I’m against fossil fuels. No. No. No. and I think CO2 is good for the planet. I was dealing with a small point of error in your mention of Fukushima. No one died of radiation, but many 10s of thousands were killed by a Tsunami and destruction of the cities were caused also by the Tsunami alone. There was a scare of course and a lot of press. If 47 people were killed by the worst nuclear accident in history and some 300 (they say) died over the following 20 years or so, you can be sure that if no one died of radiation poisoning at the time of the accident or since, then we can’t expect too many to die in the future from it. I’m okay to burn coal forever even though coal mining has killed 100,000 people or so globally over the past decade or so. This doesn’t mean I should tolerate hype about nuclear, which will eventually replace them all.
Some of you are under some misapprehension about the current state of nuclear technology, specifically thorium fuel. There already exists today a reactor technology capable of using thorium fuel without any change in reactor configuration. It’s the CANDU reactor, and it’s been in widespread use for more than 40 years. It’s precisely for this reason that India is expanding its heavy water reactor technology. The heavy water, fuel channel reactor using natural uranium fuel is easily converted to breeding Uranium 234 from Thorium 233. So there’s actually no immediate need to develop a new reactor technology; it already exists.
About the effects of Chernobyl, the definitive research on this was published by UNSCEAR (the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Efffects of Atomic Radiation) in 2000. Its findings were:
1 that the immediate deaths were 31, 30 by radiation exposure and 1 by building collapse with the deaths divided approximately evenly between station operating crew and the fire crews that night;
2. that the long term deaths from Chernobyl were an additional 25 premature deaths from cancers induced by radiation sickness. Again, nearly all of these were confined to the station crew and the fire crew that night;
3. that the total excess incidence of thyroid cancer was 1500 cases in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, which resulted in an excess death toll of 5 (yes, five) over what would have occurred naturally. It should be noted that the natural incidence of thyroid cancer in these regions is about 10 to 20 times that amount. It should be noted that thyroid cancer is readily susceptible to treatment, hence it’s very low fatality rate. UNSCEAR further noted in great detail the possibility of incidence of other forms of cancer, but, given the received radiation dose from the population, these were so small as to be undetectible, now or at any time in the future. The exposed population long ago passed the latency period for incidence of leukemia (about 10 years) with no detectible increase in leukemia or any other of the cancers known to be caused by radiation exposure.
In fact the total exposed dose received by the most exposed members of the public was roughly equivalent to about 18 months of natural radiation exposure, which is why there’s been no observed rise in cancer incidence for anything other than thyroid. By all means, read UNSCEAR’s report; it’s a massive document readily found on their website. And it’s definitive on this subject.
Dr. Strangelove, there is relatively little nuclear fuel waste, other than the fission fragments. What there is is used nuclear fuel waiting to be turned back into new nuclear fuel. Seems a waste to dispose permanently of used nuclear fuel that can be used again and again to produce at least 50 times as much energy as if it was just used once.
Gary Pearse, there were three Fukushima plant workers killed during the earthquake and tsunami. One was killed when a construction crane fell over at the time of the earthquake. Two were killed while they were out in the plant yard at the time the tsunami came over the sea wall. None of these of course are a consequence of radiation exposure. Approximately five plant workers exceeded their workplace dose allowances of 100 mSv permitted under emergency conditions. These radiation exposures resulted in no deaths.
The Fukushima nuclear accident is another example of scare mongering. Only 6 nuclear plant workers got the highest radiation dosage of 250 mSv. Over 30,000 Iranians living in Ramsar city get 260 mSv dosage of natural radiation every year. There is no epidemic of cancer and radiation sickness in Ramsar.
BTW I saw an interview of a Chernobyl plant worker who was ordered to crawl underneath the blown reactor with radioactive water dripping shortly after the accident. He said he thought he was going to die. Over 20 years later, he is alive and well and giving an interview. He doesn’t look like a mutant ninja turtle.
cgh, yes fast reactors use nuclear waste as fuel but they are more expensive and some worry that high enrichment will lead to nuclear weapons proliferation.
Steve Garcia says:
August 10, 2014 at 3:06 pm
The world has entered the Thorium age, whether you think so or not.
==================
If we are there, why are all your points about the future?
“…its an utter falsehood…”. Should be “it’s”.
Just to reiterate what I’ve already already stated above: The Fukushima crisis is not over. Far from it.
Groundwater continues to flow through the site and on into the ocean. TEPCO is working on an ice wall barrier around the damaged/destroyed reactors, but with unknown results. Presumably, some of the melted cores, or coriums, remain on the site in the vicinity of the ruined reactors, but read on.
Radioactive “black soil” has been found in many localities in eastern and central Japan.
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201206140067
Worse still, NHK announced on August 9th that tiny 2 micron sphere of radioactive material was found in Ibaraki prefecture Tsukuba city in mid-March 2011.
Nuke fuel in Tokyo suburbs
This is very bad news because such tiny particles could easily be borne aloft. Bear in mind that radioactive fallout from Fukushima was already detected in New Mexico in mid-March 2011, just a few days after the accident.
In my opinion, it will take decades to resolves this crisis. Until that time, it is impossible to calculate final costs, or health impacts, but already the news from Japan is not good:
Outbreak of cancer in Fukushima children
Finally, and most chillingly, hot particles from the Fukushima catastrophe have been found in Europe:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/nuclear-fuel-fragment-fukushima-found-europe.html
The reader is advised to do his own research on the fallout from Fukushima, and not accept the glib dismissals of the nuclear apologists.
But hot particles in the atmosphere?
That can’t be good.
Steve P:
There were over 500 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests conducted at various sites around the world from 1945 to 1980. I doubt if the contribution from Fukushima contributed more than a single percentage of radioactive material to the atmosphere than a single one of those tests.
Don’t sweat the small stuff. You likely get more exposure to radiation in the produce section of your grocery store than from anything Man has done.
I can’t understand the angst caused by Fukushima. We’ve exploded thousands of nuclear bombs and destroyed two cities, but a single leaking core from a power plant is a global disaster?
Wow!!
How low can one man get? Anyone who threatens with a defamation lawsuit on a BLOG…… I repeat a BLOG, where bloggers openly debate and give opinions about a particular subject; and I believe WE assume all conflict associated with that debate, as it comes with the territory- insults and all……
By the way,
who blogs in the capacity of “lawyer”?
Jtom says:
August 11, 2014 at 9:34 am
I’ll overlook your failure to provide a source for your claim, and acknowledge a certain kind of logic in your argument: we don’t need to worry about a little thing like a triple meltdown because the generals have already been blowing up cities and setting off 100s of nuke blasts in the atmosphere anyway.
But being an empiricist, I can’t help but wonder many meltdowns would it take to justify a little angst, or even simple concern? I guess three is not enough.
And speaking of those atmospheric tests, how about Starfish Prime back in 1962, part of the 32-shot Dominic series? After several flubs, they had a jolly good blast at 400 km altitude which managed to knock out Telstar, disrupt communications, create artificial radiation belts, and impressive atmospheric glows, among other effects. I don’t think they ever managed to disrupt the Van Allen belts in this particular series of tests, but they took several cracks at it.
Whatever the scientific or military results of these tests, the public at least cannot help but be reassured at the thoughtful and prudent actions of the men at the controls of these powerful weapons.
…
I can’t help but wonder
How many meltdowns would it take?
Roger Sowell says, in reply to:
Brian, saying:
“Ha ha ha! Mr. Sowell, with all due respect, the truth is that you know almost NOTHING about nuclear power.
I’m very familiar with your writings on this subject, and if you’ll forgive me for being blunt, you’re just an ignorant shill lawyer who is paid by fossil fuel companies to say this stuff (as you explain on your own web site) and who knows nearly next to nothing about what you are hired to be a mouthpiece against.
Your stupid talking points are cookie-cutter stuff that are taken straight from Greenpeace and similar organizations and that have been rebutted ad absurdum (even in the comments section here). You make claim after claim that you simply can’t back up. Even when it comes to arguing like a lawyer, you’re totally incompetent.”
You say
“Your libelous statement above is noted, saved, filed, and may be the subject of a defamation lawsuit.
Your identity will be found out”
I say you are trying to squelch protected speech. It is clearly a simple, if heated, opinion to which you reply with a ridiculous, childish threat of legal action. How quaint.
Will you sue me for ridicule?
Moving on – if anyone needs further evidence of the Greens’ irrational and inconsistent( in context with global warming hype of disasters to come) opposition to nuclear power as a cause, the following linked piece ends with:
,“Defeat the nuclear menace!”,
http://nuclearfreeplanet.org/thorium-not-green-not-viable-and-not-likely-oliver-tickell-june-2012-.html
I have every confidence that problems with nuclear energy can be resolved easily within the time frame which the real pace of any global warming allows us. And even if they couldn’t be resolved soon, the relative risk from nuclear power compared to that which Alarmists claim CO2 poses, should be tiny, if you accept their premise of coming catastrophe through AGW.
So many errors and misstatements from Steve P it’s hard to know where to start.
“The Nuclear Core Has Finally Been Found … Scattered All Over the World”
The usual hyperbole from antinukes. Of the material in the core, the vast bulk of the radioactive material, primarily uranium, remains within the core. Much less than 1/100th of one per cent of the inventory escaped containment, and nearly all of that fell out within the plant fence line. This was true at Chernobyl, much less Fukushima, which unlike Chernobyl did NOT have a 3 km high steam blast as the transport mechanism.
The claims about deposition of fission fragments are alarmist rubbish. Notably it does not provide the proportion of Cs claimed to have been found in Vilnius. This is important because I-131 can indeed be transported around the world but Cs cannot by atmospheric means. There are lots more sources in Russia for Cs than just Fukushima, so the researcher has simply assumed that any fresh Cs must have been delivered by Fukushima despite the impossibility of air transport over that distance.
The claim about increase in thyroid is similarly nonsense. It is utterly meaningless without knowing what the normal pre-accident incidence was. All areas of the world have high variations in thyroid cancer incidence, with high variances even between small areas close to one another.
Jtom, the natural background of tritium in water is about 10 bequerels/litre. At the peak of atmospheric weapons testing, it rose to about 200 B/l, and it’s been declining ever since (half life of tritium is about 12.4 years, so it’s gone through about six half lives since the atmospheric test ban took effect. Had this large surge in tritium resulted in excess cancers, these would have been seen as a subsequent rise and decline in the cancer rate after about five to 10 years.
There is no such rise and decline. Even this large radioactive inventory had no detectible biological effect.
Kenin, be glad that Sowell is as thin-skinned as he is. Threatening lawsuits means he got his ass kicked on this thread. In short, he lost the debate and saw no choice but to try throwing sand out of the sandbox.
mpainter says:
Come, come dbstealey, Sowell is entitled to serve notice when he feels that he has been slandered here. We all are. One can go too far and Sowell was attacked professionally.
I like Roger. I agree with him on most issues, but not on nuclear power. I am ambivalent; I would prefer coal power because it is cheap and we won’t run out. But nukes don’t scare me. And I agree that Roger was on the receiving end of some insulting comments that shouldn’t have been posted.
My problem is this: threatening to sue people because of stick and stones words? There is far too much litigation as it is. I am sure Michael Mann now regrets pulling the trigger on his lawsuit threat. Lawsuits should be a last resort. I agree that Roger was attacked unfairly, but anyone taking an unpopular position on a blog is bound to be attacked like that sooner or later. It comes with the territory. Try arguing for more coal power on SkepticalScience, and watch the personal flaming begin. I’ve been on the receiving end of that crowd. It’s worse than anything Roger has seen here.
I doubt that anyone here has been attacked as viciously as Anthony Watts. I have seen comments, cartoons, and entire articles on other blogs that would turn anyone’s stomach. But Anthony didn’t sue them. If Roger has cause to sue, Anthony has ten times as much cause.
Also, being a lawyer makes it too easy. The average guy doesn’t deal in lawsuits every day like lawyers do. Using your expertise to threaten someone seems heavy handed to me. It seems that asking them to stop should be the first step.
But it looks like Roger has calmed down. Good. This is a blog, after all, not the local TV news. I doubt anyone could hurt someone’s income prospects here, no matter how hard they tried.
I hope everyone calms down now. Both sides. None of us here are going to make any difference in government policy. That is decided by big money, and by the eco-lobby, and by big business. We’re just expressing our opinions here. People should absolutely not attack Roger for his beliefs, and Roger should use this as a means to learn all the arguments of the pro-nuke crowd, so he can counter them.
Remember the words of that great street philosopher, Rodney King, after he was viciously beaten by the L.A. cops: “Can’t we all just get along?”
Steve P.
If you are questioning my statement that there were over 500 atmospheric nuclear tests, I am surprised. Certainly, someone so concerned over radiation events would have read the history of such things before becoming hysterical over present day events. It’s really easy to Google.
http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datab15.asp
http://www.irsn.fr/EN/publications/thematic-radiation-protection/radiation-protection-stories/Pages/4-atmospheric-tests-nuclear-fallout.aspx
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/05/when-we-tested-nuclear-bombs/100061/ (No figures here, just some really interesting pictures)
The second half of the statement was obviously logical speculation. One can’t reasonably expect a non-violent ground event to throw as much radioactive material in the air as a deliberate air-born nuclear explosion.
How many meltdowns would it take to justify angst? Clearly, one if I am in the danger zone of radiation. Otherwise, thousands for me to worry about my personal health, since I have survived unscathed from the thousands of nuclear tests done during my lifetime. The number appears not to be very relevant, only the location.
CGH: interesting info, but I hope you didn’t interpret anything I wrote as being a concern over the atmospheric testing. I was trying to show how minimal Fukushima’s effect must be considering we did all that testing with NO global consequences.
[Snip. Bad email address. ~mod.]
Outbreak of cancer in Fukushima children? Fear mongering. Read this.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140313-fukushima-nuclear-accident-cancer-cluster-thyroid-chernobyl/
What is the radiation level in Fukushima’s dreaded 20-km exclusion zone? The highest level is 5.0 uSv per hour, or 44 mSv per year. Smoking gives you 160 mSv. Japanese government can save more people from cancer by banning smoking.
http://radioactivity.nsr.go.jp/en/contents/9000/8775/24/207_20140811.pdf
Steve P
… But being an empiricist, I can’t help but wonder many meltdowns would it take to justify a little angst, or even simple concern? I guess three is not enough. …
Remember the context Steve – greens like James Hansen assure us we face nothing less than an extinction event, which could sweep away the human race, because of CO2 emissions. Hansen thinks that if we don’t stop emitting CO2, the oceans will begin to boil, which will trigger a runaway greenhouse effect, ultimately making the Earth as uninhabitable as the planet Venus.
If James Hansen is right, 3 meltdowns and a handful of deaths does not seem such a big deal.
cgh says:
August 11, 2014 at 5:38 pm
Source?
Conspicuous by its absence in your post is any source or reference for your assertions.
Jtom says:
August 11, 2014 at 6:12 pm
Please re-read my post from August 11, 2014 at 4:03 pm, paying particular attention to my penultimate paragraph, which begins “Speaking of those atmospheric tests…” and read on to my final paragraph.
Dr. Strangelove says:
August 11, 2014 at 8:37 pm
The comments at the Nat’l Geo link make it a worthwhile read.
Eric Worrall says:
August 12, 2014 at 2:54 am
Eric, thanks for the article. I was tempted to let you have the last word here, but not with an alarmist video from James Hansen.
The runaway-global-warming-could-lead-to-Venus meme was my first whiff of the rat.
We’ve got plenty of coal and other fossil fuels to generate all the power we will need for a very long time. The Great Carbon Dioxide Scare is a scam. The only real justification for nuclear power plants is to create materials for nuclear weapons.
Steve P, If your so concerned, I would avoid eating bananas.
Louis says:
August 9, 2014 at 11:01 am
Greg says:
“… Because France’s nuclear program was driven by the desire for an independent nuclear arsenal, not civilian power generation.”
No other country has been driven by the desire for an independent nuclear arsenal? Sorry, but your answer doesn’t explain why France installed nuclear plants to provide 85 percent of the country’s power and other countries haven’t. Other countries also have nuclear arsenals but haven’t done what France has done. There must be other reasons.
France had a problem that it has very few sources of energy, and considering it would have to import from countries that it is not keen on (UK, Germany, etc), it pretty much had no other choice!
Unfortunately for them they seem to have now swallowed the green lies…
The UK unfortunately has had a problem with all political parties wanting the green vote (Dave cameramoron hugging huskies etc) which has meant we scrapped all our knowledge in building nuclear plants. (Cameramoron cancelled £100mil investment in specialized steel production for nuclear industry as soon as elected!!! What an Idiot!) So instead of building the cheaply about 20 years ago, We have now had to over pay the Chinese to build them, Privatization of the UK energy generation has been a complete disaster.
Now with recent problems with electric generators, we now have to hope we get a mild winter or the lights go out, people will freeze and Die (last bad cold snap caused 30,000+ extra winter deaths attributable to government policies!).
If you want to kill people, just keep talking the bullshit and not doing what is required (building nuclear if you want less Co2, or gas/coal if not bothered), our politicians should be in jail!.
Why do stupid people rise to the top of society? it makes no sense.
Why do stupid people rise to the top of society? it makes no sense.
It makes no sense if you assume the stupid ones are making it happen. But they aren’t.
The stupid ones are the lemmings who are along for the ride. They are aided by rent seeking reprobates who are happy to line their pockets by selling out their countrymen. When those groups are no longer useful, they are simply ‘liquidated’ in one way or another by the crooked ones who have taken over.
The stupid ones are manipulated to do the bidding of devious, intelligent, self-serving, corrupt conmen. Communists especialy have become adept at that kind of manipulation and power grabbing. That’s why they are such an existential threat.
Steve P
Complete blather. You start with an irrational hysteria over a ground-based event, and end up pointing to what was ultimately a non-event 250 miles in OUTER SPACE (the space/atmosphere boundary is considered to by 60 miles up, btw). Instead of a disasterous health problem, you point to leo satellite failures. You have shifted the goal post from a human health issue to completely off the planet. Health effects were your cause for panic, remember? Not equipment failures in space.
Can people screw things up? Sure. Can cost a lot of money when they do, too. But the safety margin given to nuclear power is so large that accidents are rare, localized, and result in fewer deaths than fossil fuel, hydro, or wind turbine power plants. It would take multiple large-scale nuclear disasters to cause the same number of deaths already seen in those other type facilities.
But getting back to the ORIGINAL issue, only an emotional, irrational, uninformed person would believe that the Fukushima incident presents a danger to anyone outside the immediate area.
Jtom says:
August 12, 2014 at 11:00 pm
It was you who first brought up the atmospheric tests to distract from Fukushima,
And the crisis there is most certainly not resolved; until it is, there can be no accounting of total costs.
Triple meltdown.
Jtom also says:
August 12, 2014 at 11:00 pm
Uninformed? Irrational? The pot calls the porcelain black. You’ve presented exactly zero to support your arm waving and assertions. Woodshop warning: Don’t wave arms near buzzsaw.
ENENews Article
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23989894
My emphasis. Your arms.
Steve P
If you don’t see the relevance of comparing the global atmospheric results of other nuclear events versus the hysteria you spout concerning Fukushima’s atmospheric impact, then you should not be weighing in on this at all. You seek only to stoke the fear and loathing of nuclear power through ignorance. One of your original remarks accused me of making I claims that could not be supported wrt atmospheric testing, and that I could not provide a link. That reveals not only your own ignorance, but your willingness to slur those who dare to deny you your soapbox, regardless of the truth, emphasized by the fact that you weren’t man enough to acknowedge that you were wrong. That you had never Googled for such basic information before making your apocalyptic diatribes shows that you WANT and HOPE for a disaster for whatever reason. You backed the wrong horse. Virtually everyone on this board recognizes that Fukushima and the other such incidences have had only relatively small, localized inpacts (ANYONE else on this board who agrees with Steve P on this, please respond).
You would gain more attention and support on boards participated by those uneducated in science. Huffington, KOS, and any board extolling Gore is where you should be commenting.
Steve p –
Oh, the stupidity must hurt. The paper you cite found a 1.3 micron particle that contained 1 +/- 0.1 Bq. That’s one-percent of what has been declared safe for human consumption. Extrapolating that particle to a one-kg mass along with the radioactivity it contained is a way to normalize the sample for other comparisons. It does not imply that such things exist in quantities large enough to pose a danger. That could be why there hasn’t been any scare stories in the news, ya’ think?