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?
Lee L:
China is a dictatorship and you espouse their policies as suitable here. Well, here the public has some say and note that we are not building nuclear power plants. Let’s see you tell John Q. Voter once again that we should as they do in China. Or perhaps you could get Mos by to tell them that they are “ignorant”.
“The Malthusia:n idea is wrong because it ignores basic economics and applies a wrong model; human population is NOT constrained by resources like the population of bacteria in a Petri dish. There is no existing or probable problem of overpopulation of the world by humans.”
__________
Richard, what hell are you talking about? I never mentioned Malthus, petri dishes, or overpopulation. Every species has a limit constrained by the dynamics of the carrying capacity of its environment: physical, ideological, sociological or biological. All you did was elaborate the sociological. The human curve will have a lot more noise in it than most vertebrate species, but it will approximate a plateau at some point. Note: I’m not talking about overpopulation – think homeostasis.
Col Mosby says: “There are NO govt subsidies for commercial nuclear power aside from some
(very few) guaranteed govt loans.”
The issue is that nuclear power liabilities fall within the scope of potentially unlimited liabilities.
Private business is based on limitation of liability.
A potentially unlimited liability on the balance sheet of a private company will immediately cause its value to drop to zero. The company would have no means to mitigate risk, giving it no credit rating and the private capital markets will not touch it. A private company with potentially unlimited liabilities would be starved of funding and would not survive.
The only thing that can balance potentially unlimited liabilities is an unlimited guarantee. You do not get these from the private sector because anybody giving such a guarantee will have a potentially unlimited liability (see above).
The only place you can get an unlimited guarantee is the public sector. The taxpayer dime.
The detail may be difficult to track down, but society ultimately bears the “potentially unlimited” part of nuclear risks and liabilities. There’s your subsidy.
Nuclear cannot exist in the private sector alone. It is absolutely dependent on pubic sector as the “insurer of last resort”.
You are not missing anything. You hit the nail on the head.
James Lovelock, the father of the Gaia hypothesis loves fracking and nuclear. When he used to worry about co2 I believe he was sincere. When he realized it was exaggerated, I believe he was still being sincere. That’s why he was baffled about nuclear opposition and fracking.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/james-lovelock-nuclear-power-is-the-only-green-solution-6169341.html
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jun/15/james-lovelock-interview-gaia-theory
Gamecock says @11:16 am:
It has not been developed yet
Referring to liquid fluoride thorium reactors.
Now I understand the push behind all nuclear power hurrah we have seen lately. They want public funding for design and development and of course that will be in the billions. They are trying to get their face stuck on the public teat and reap the ensuing benefits.
And people who do not swallow the bait are called ignorant by our would-be experts.
mpainter trolls: “Nor does he address the question ‘Who pays for the cleanup of a radiation disaster?.'”
In the case of the Three Mile Island “disaster” (and I use that term loosely), the insurance purchased by the owner of the plant paid for everything. This is not idle speculation, this is history.
Had the “disaster” been worse, the pooled insurance scheme that was set up by the Price-Anderson Act and is funded by all nuclear plant licensees would have paid for the “disaster.” Nevertheless, in spite of all of the hemming and hawing and gnashing of teeth by the likes of Greenpeace, the nuclear “disaster” was so meager that this additional insurance was simply not needed. It’s there, just in case, but in the 57 years since Price-Anderson was passed it has never been needed.
James Hansen likes nuclear power.
George Monbiot likes nuclear power.
Anthony Watts likes nuclear power.
James Delingpole likes nuclear power.
Jo Nova likes nuclear power.
The Heartland Institute likes nuclear power.
I used to fly B52’s, and I like nuclear power.
Brian@12:00pm sidesteps, as I expected, the question “Who pays for the cleanup in the event of a radiation disaster?”
Jordan, @11:47 provides the answer: the public pays, as the source of last resort.
I’m sure you know more about coal companies than me. I have just found something.
Forecast.
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/coal.cfm
Note also that Brian @12:00pm refers to me as a troll because I had raised the issue of “Who pays for the cleanup of a nuclear disaster?”.
I am no troll but a regular commenter here and a confirmed skeptic. What about you Brian? Do you dare repeat that I am a troll?
Paul Coppin:
Your post at August 9, 2014 at 11:45 am clearly demonstrates that you did not read my reply to you which is at August 9, 2014 at 11:03 am and is here.
Your response that I am replying asks
NO! My post you query explained that you assert a blatant falsehood when you say humans are “constrained by by the dynamics of the carrying capacity of its environment: physical, ideological, sociological or biological”.
The start of my post you query quoted your words and then said
The remainder of my post explained why there is no resource constraint or – as you choose to call it, “carrying capacity” – which applies to humanity.
I have provided a link back to my post you query to assist your finding it so you can read it.
Richard
Roger Sowell says:
August 9, 2014 at 6:29 am
Quite likely for many of the same reasons new internal combustion engine technologies are still being researched and developed. GE is spending huge amounts of money developing new turbofans for jetliners — their customers seem to think it’s important. And Westinghouse is still trying to improve on Tesla’s original designs for transformers, generators and AC motors, after more than 100 years.
The simple fact is in technology very few things are ever perfected to the point no more improvement is possible; it’s really just a matter of circumstances changing to the point “possible” becomes “necessary”.
I know 10 is a nice round number to have, but this is really unworthy of you. Find a replacement or cut your list down to 9. Besides if you really don’t like nuclear power for the other 9 reasons, how will you ever be satisfied except by new reactor technologies?
It is you, who is talking nonsense. Population explosion was over two decades ago, even if the mass media remained silent on this happy sequel for whatever reason. Check out World Population aged 0-14, you’ll see it is stable (well below 2 billion). World population is still increasing, but that’s because of increasing life expectancy (a good thing), which can’t be exponential (a young girl can never produce more than one hag by getting old).
The underlying cause is not resource depletion (it is not imposed by nature, the more resource a country has the more pronounced is this effect), but decreasing infant and child mortality along with formal education of girls (education of boys is insufficient in this respect). You can call it “internally sociological”, but the fact is, humans (especially women) are rational beings.
It has been said but it bears repeating: We do not need nuclear power and conventional power is both cheaper and safer.
And do you raise the bugaboo of CO2 on this skeptic’s blog? This makes me smile that you would come and try to pass the coin of the alarmists.
Alarmism about nuclear is similar in nature to CAGW alarmism. It is mostly based on emotionalism.
Having said that, we should not be shutting down coal in favor of nuclear. That is wrong-headed energy policy. We need both.
mpainter – Someone who keeps repeating the same question, taunting people to answer it, and ignoring when they actually do is simply trolling. It’s no more possible to engage in a debate with such as person than it is to debate with a brick wall. If that’s all you’ve got, then you’ve got nothing.
What you are missing, Mr. Worrall, is the same as what the greens are missing or what that incompetent propagandist that is Dana is missing, namely, the burden of responsibility. It simply means that you, they, and he can say whatever all of you please without any consequences. This is fine, of course. It frees us (me too) from needing to weight all the factors and then be held responsible for any of the consequences of our words and actions. We can remain ignorant and naive, we can continue to believe we are entitled to steal the attention of the room with our antics because, in the final analysis, we are children and it is the adults who will fix the problems in whatever magical way they do. Our job is to demand presents, theirs is to be Santa (“consensus expert” in this case).
mpainter says:
August 9, 2014 at 11:44 am
“China is a dictatorship and you espouse their policies as suitable here. Well, here the public has some say and note that we are not building nuclear power plants. ”
You don’t because you still get Oil imports for Dollars. That is about to change.
I started to read this…but…
We care about C02 why?…kinda makes reading the rest of it a waste of time.
Jim
Brian,
To the question ” Who pays for the cleanup in the event of a radiation disaster” Jordan @ur momisugly 11:47 gave the correct answer, and very authoritatively, too. This issue is most important and I am not surprised that you would eschew giving such an answer as “the public, as the source of last resort.”
It does not help your cause to call me a troll because I address this important issue. And Brian, please understand that I do not engage you for the same of debate, but rather to demonstrate to others the faults of the proponents of nuclear power.
More ignorance from the anti-nuclear crowd – many labor
under the misconception that there is no NRC presence
at nuclear plants. To the contrary, several NRC
inspectors are permanently assigned to each nuclear plant
site.
For those massively ignorant anti-nuclear folks out
there, I should also mention around-the-corner future
conventional nuclear plant designs. Specifically fast
reactors, often referred to as 4th Generation nuclear
plant designs. These types of reactors, several of
which have been operating for years around the world,
usually as experimental platforms, but often producing
commercial power to the grid. In terms of safety
considerations, there are none. It is impossible for
these reactors to experience a core meltdown. Of more
importance, since the current Gen3 designs make meltdowns
a non-issue,the fast reactors have the ability to burn
nuclear wastes, which typically still contain 98% of
their energy. In fact, the energy extractable from just our
current U.S nuclear wastes is sufficient to provide
all the power this country needs for the next 1000 years,
and in the process,enormously reduce the volume of that waste,
as well as its level of its radioactivity (to virtual
insignificance).
Mining uranium from ocean water thru extraction via filters
currently costs about 3 times as much as conventional mining.
But since fast reactors only need about 1/10th the supply
of fuel as conventional reactors, they can be fueled very
economically via ocean water extraction. And the oceans contain
so much uranium (and more every day) that the world could
totally depend upon just that source of energy for hundreds
of thousands of years. It is, for all intents and purposes,
an inexhaustible source of energy. Fast reactors have recently
been contracted from Russian companies, the world’s leader in
this advanced technology,and will be supplying commercial power
to several eastern European countries.
DirkH:
Your comment seemed as a non-sequitor to mine.
We do not burn oil in power plants.
So what do you know about oil and dollars that is about to change, pray share your information.
Col Mosby
If it can be argued that a nuclear design reduces the probability of uncapped liability is zero, the investment community might be persuaded to stand fully behind nuclear power stations and to underwrite ALL liability.
As a technologist myself, I don’t think there is an argument to say that nuclear technology can ever reduce the probability of nuclear liabilities to zero. It may be analogous to the concept of there being no absolute proof of a hypothesis in observational science.
There is one thing I can suggest which does reduce the risk of nuclear liability to zero: don’t use nuclear technology. And you can see many examples of wholly private sector investment in other power generating technologies.
There may be “massively ignorant anti-nuclear folks” out there, but right now this includes the entire global private sector community. That’s what you are up against. Sometimes it makes sense to kinda just accept the way it is.
Nuclear Energy sure brings out the opinions.
I shall surrender to the eco-nasties.. Nuclear energy is evil.. quick let us extinguish the sun.
Roger Sowell says:
August 9, 2014 at 6:29 am
If nuclear power was really as good as the advocates claim (i.e. cheap, safe, reliable, etc), then
1 Why has nuclear power achieved only 11 percent of world power production…
Right at this moment 69.1% for Ontario, Canada.
http://www.ieso.ca/