Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Al Gore has a problem. He seems to want people to believe that only climate skeptics oppose renewables. The truth is, a small but growing number of prominent greens, openly acknowledge that renewables in their current form are not a scalable replacement for fossil fuels.
In Al Gore’s announcement of a climate witch hunt, titled “AGs United for Clean Power”, Al Gore said the following;
I really believe that years from now, this convening by attorney general Eric Schneiderman and his colleagues today, may well be looked back upon as a real turning point, in the effort to hold to account those commercial interests that have been, according to the best available evidence, deceiving the American people, communicating in a fraudulent way, both about the reality of the climate crisis and the dangers it poses to all of us, and committing fraud in their communications about the viability of renewable energy and efficiency, and energy storage, that together are posing this great competitive challenge to the long reliance on carbon based fuels.
Does Al Gore plan to prosecute James Hansen, Kerry Emanuel, Ken Caldeira and Tom Wigley for Fraud?
To solve the climate problem, policy must be based on facts and not on prejudice. The climate system cares about greenhouse gas emissions – not about whether energy comes from renewable power or abundant nuclear power. Some have argued that it is feasible to meet all of our energy needs with renewables. The 100% renewable scenarios downplay or ignore the intermittency issue by making unrealistic technical assumptions, and can contain high levels of biomass and hydroelectric power at the expense of true sustainability. Large amounts of nuclear power would make it much easier for solar and wind to close the energy gap.
Will the green believers at Google Corporation join James Hansen in the dock, when Al Gore prosecutes people who think renewables are not up to the job?
At the start of RE<C, we had shared the attitude of many stalwart environmentalists: We felt that with steady improvements to today’s renewable energy technologies, our society could stave off catastrophic climate change. We now know that to be a false hope … Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.
Will Al Gore prosecute Rob Parker, president of the Australian Nuclear Association, for claiming renewables aren’t up to the job?
“My concern is that renewables won’t get us across the line in terms of emissions reduction,” said Rob Parker, the president of the ANA. “Nuclear is more reliable and it has a smaller resources footprint than renewables.
How about the British Government, whose relentless pursuit of renewables has utterly messed up the British energy market?
The second phase of modern energy policy began when Tony Blair signed the Renewable Energy Target in 2007.
What has this left us with?
We now have an electricity system where no form of power generation, not even gas-fired power stations, can be built without government intervention.
And a legacy of ageing, often unreliable plant.
Perversely, even with the huge growth in renewables, our dependence on coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, hasn’t been reduced.
Read more: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/amber-rudds-speech-on-a-new-direction-for-uk-energy-policy
If Al Gore succeeds in using government bullying, to silence critics of renewables, the same disaster could easily occur in the United States.
Perhaps Al Gore’s real target are the practitioners of the “strange new form of denial”, the growing green schism which opposes the push for 100% renewables, as vigorously as any climate skeptic.
There is no evidence that renewables in their current form are a viable replacement for fossil fuels. But there is plenty of evidence that nuclear power delivers results. Nuclear power, the zero emission alternative to renewables, has been economically supplying 75% of France’s power since the 1970s. Nuclear power works, and works well. France demonstrated by doing, that mass production and economies of scale makes nuclear power affordable.
If the whole world copied what France did in the 1970s, by 2030 the world could cut billions of tons of CO2 emissions, without destroying the global economy.
If you are someone who cares about CO2 reductions, you should listen to scientists like James Hansen, who plausibly claim that nuclear power is the route to decarbonisation, not to scientific illiterates like Al Gore.
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Current demand and production data from UK national grid watch – Current demand 35.215GW wind output 0.975GW – GOD help us, for sure wind generation will not.
UK national grid figs available here –
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
& here –
http://nationalgrid.stephenmorley.org/
The debate was alive and well (Skeptics and believers) in 1906 and the use of ‘wind chargers’. The then ‘expert’ conclusion – Do not use wind unless there is nothing else available. In 1905 if any dependence on electricity-wind were to be accepted, a ‘stand by gasoline generator’ was essential.
History of Wind Energy in America, Robert Righter
Sanity then and sanity now. Did you ever wonder why there were no wind generators at the beginning of the electricity era, even though windmills existed for millenia as prime movers?
They were tried and failed then, just as they failed now, to provide power at an economic price.
Authur
Your post is confusing. The NRC requires you show public safety not address irrational fear.
The two major points of ignorance embodied by green scenarios is 1) their belief in future warming catastrophe and 2) the means they chose to reduce carbon emissions.
The major failure of the “new nuclear greenies” is that they do not apparently keep up with new nuclear reactor designs, specifically, molten salt nuclear designs, which answer every conceivable (irrational) fear
people have about nuclear power :
1) meltdowns (can’t happen in a molten salt reactor
2) blasts of radioactive particles due to containment failure – can’t happen – nuclear material not under significant pressures and pressurized water/turbine system component is not radioactive
3) nuclear fuel of low grade and not a proliferation concern
4) reactor can “load follow” – meaning it can function not only as a base power provider (constant output) but can operate as a mid and peak load power plant, which currently is only possible with fossil fuel and hydro
5) costs roughly 2/3rds of the build costs of a current typical reactor,
6) can burn nuclear wastes and render them relatively harmless and easily stored : energy contained in nuclear wastes in this country can provide all of the energy required by this country for the next 1000 years
7) regardless of whether nuclear fuel comes from nuclear wastes or mines or extracted from the ocean, fuel costs are insignificant and the fuel eternally available.
8) can produce power cheaper than any other technology.
9) reactors can be located anywhere – in cities, etc.
10) terrorists could not use such a plant as a weapon – that would be impossible.
Terrorists could use an existing fission plant as a weapon?
Please explain.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a Liquid Thorium Salt reactor,except that they don’t exist, except as preliminary design ideas. Since they would contain massive tons of toxic Nucleides like all fission reactors, it would take a long time to get them certified for safety.
How long? Just recall that the AP1000 the Westinghouse Gen 3.5 reactor currently still being built, took more than 30 years of safety reviews before being approved. Yet they are simply a modification of a previous existing design Westinghouse PWR built in the 1970s and early 1980s and running today. Even though most of the modifications that resulted in the AP1000 design simply increased the safety considerations.
Lest you think there are no problems, I point out that several reactor problems with early weaponized molten salt reactors included eddy currents that accidentally increased the fissionable density concentration to large output chain reactions, that threatened runaway conditions. Analysis of the natural fission reactor found in African geological formations, includes signs of accidental density enhancement and chain reactions.
Proving such possibilities are not possible, is extremely hard which will engender massive and continuing safety concerns. That is turn will likely cause licensing issues even more severe, than the LWR 30 years safety licensing reviews, before approval.
As a scientist and engineer, I’ll bet that a Fusion reactor, just in a similar design state, the DEMO, will operate long before a commercial Liquid Thorium Salt Reactor is licensed for use, not yet even to be built. There is a massive difference with containing a quarter to a half a pound of mildly radioactive materials in a commercial fusion reactor, versus 100 tons of much more radioactive and much longer lived heavy metal, trans uranic actinides,that must be kept fro the biosphere.
In other words the Nuclear safety bureaucrats won’t approve it for safety concerns until mid century.
The spasm of words you uttered might have some purpose but clarity isn’t one.
You’re all over the place. There have been several Thorium Fluoride Molten Salts reactors built and run.
Others will do well to get some kind of outside understanding even if it’s just historically from a wiki type site.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor#Russian_MSR_research_program
“reactor can “load follow” – meaning it can function not only as a base power provider (constant output) but can operate as a mid and peak load power plant, which currently is only possible with fossil fuel and hydro”
BS and typical antinuc propaganda bullet point
Modern big reactors can and do load follow.
How do you imagine that French EDF could even manage 58 nuclear reactors running at full power, that is about 63 GW ? (minus those in refueling/maintenance)
Of course many reactors are used for base load only with they give best returns: the marginal cost of nuclear is low, running at low power makes no sense – unless there is no demand. With too many reactors for base load, EDF must do load following.
In some old reactors for plants, I believe that load following was an afterthought. It’s a basic design requirement of new reactors.
Reactors in boats can always load follow.
A massive leak of confidential documents has for the first time exposed the true extent of corruption within the oil industry, implicating dozens of leading companies, bureaucrats and politicians in a sophisticated global web of bribery and graft.
Corruption in oil production – one of the world’s richest industries and one that touches us all through our reliance on petrol – fuels inequality, robs people of their basic needs and causes social unrest in some of the world’s poorest countries.
http://www.theage.com.au/interactive/2016/the-bribe-factory/day-1/the-company-that-bribed-the-world.html
Al Gore professional oil man is front and center of the oil business trying to make the world panic, and pay for the oil business’ research into future energy markets: what they’re likely to be, which direction the oil companies will want to go.
Oil companies fund MOST environmental research. It’s a way to foist off onto taxpayers at large, the cost of the oil companies’ research into new niche energy markets.
This is well known to anyone around the environmental scene for very long.
International oil businesses practically FOUNDED the modern ecology movement when they were being sued in court over their polluting ways and ”Tricky Dick” Richard Nixon, California RINO and lawyer, told oil companies either found an environmental movement on the university campuses of the US or the people suing them would take their money in court, and found one.
Oil companies complained they’d never be taken as legit and Nixon told them: I can’t save you. Found an environmental research field in the United States or face the people whose environment you pollute, in court.
They did found one. In fact British Petroleum founded the Met Office’s C.R.U. where Phiddling Phil Jones fabricated every tenth warming he added to global databases for more than ten years, as he confessed in his notorious Feb 2010 BBC don’t-go-to-jail interview.
The operative words in ALGOREs statement “…according to the best available evidence”
In other words, “I don’t know what the hell I am talking about as we have no facts or real scientific data to back us up but this sounds good and should scare a voting majority of misinformed voters into doing what the government tells them to do.”
“according to the best available evidence ” … Al Gore is an absolute and complete waste of oxygen.
Non-renewable technologies that exploit renewable, irregular drivers only have value in limited contexts and applications.
Current demand here in the UK at 2200
37.2 GW
Contribution of wind
0.34 GW
And i’ve seen it even lower than that in the past six months.
Details here –
http://nationalgrid.stephenmorley.org/
& here –
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
“We had a local case where someone died because the contractor didn’t follow the engineer’s drawings.”
Bob I had good luck with all but two contractors. I got multiple bids and then listened to suggestions the contractors I hired made. I asked how much the change would cost and they said it would cost nothing because they wanted a better finished product. It did require the plans get revised and approved. I got right on that.
The roofer under bid the job so I was skeptical. The job got screwed up but he made it right. There was also beer drinking on the roof.
To get final occupancy approval, the county made me put in a propane heating system. I used on demand boiler from Europe to match the radiant hot wood boiler system. It had to be installed by a ‘qualified’ contractor. It was installed with the relief valve isolated and approved by the county. They went away and I fixed the problem.
Today, Sun Edison, SUNE, ended trading at $0.50, an astonishing, unprecedented, upward surge of $0.02 per stock share! Investors were clearly astonished on the NYSE trading floor with many waving their “Good Cheer” handkerchiefs from the balcony high above, and the dear traders on the floor wiping “Tears of Joy” from their eyes.
Ha ha
Very poorly written with an asinine headline, renewables are certainly not worthless, and to claim that in their current state they can’t replace fossil fuels , is stating nothing more than the obvious. They were never proposed to accomplish that , in their current technological state. The key word , so obviously I ignored by these naysayers is current.
qbagwell,
In reply to your very poorly written comment; (what does the last sentence mean??)
They (renewables) were always proposed to accomplish replacement of fossil fuels, it has been the political imperative for ~20 yrs as shown by the ill thought energy bills & statements by successive energy ministers & glorious leaders in many country’s.
What have renewables achieved in the last 20 yrs (for an eye watering amount of cash) ??
Look at the UK grid – http://nationalgrid.stephenmorley.org/ – currently <4%: Annually <10%.
We have ~13GW capacity of wind turbines giving just 0.7GW so wheres the other 12GW ??
The UK 'green fuel' levies have raised our electricity costs so we have lost our aluminum industry & are about to lose our steel industry.
Al Gore is hopeless, but these attorneys general are public officials and should not interefere with our free speech rights under color of federal or state authority or insofar as it goes his or her state’s law. By standing there and thus threatening us with violence for exercising our fundamental rights, each is shown to be unfit. Standing there constitutes a threat irrespective of any behind-the-scenes or later fudging about position or details. Each should be impeached and subject to civil liability for this egregious violation of our rights, whether we agree with the sentiments expressed or not.
Jimmy Swaggart was a paragon of virtue compared to Gore’ s fraud. The Elmer Gantry of Climatism.
Get your facts right nimbies. At this present time, renewables are not expected to replace fossil fuels. They are however helping to reduce pressure on conventional power stations and thereby helping to reduce carbon emissions. Renewable technology has come a long way over the last 30 or 40 years and is getting better, so the hope is that gradually they can replace fossil fuels altogether.
Like it or not fossil fuels are a finite resource, so like it or not, a time will come when we have no choice but to accept that renewables are the future, so it’s only wise and prudent to invest in that technology now, before it becomes a necessity.
Of course if you think we can go on burning fossil fuels indefinitely and ignore the impact of increasing carbon emissions, I suggest you lock yourself in your garage, switch on your car engine and leave it running. See how long you last. Effectively that’s what we’re doing right now on a planet-wide scale, and the clock is ticking.
And how intermittent and unpredictable wind could help big plants with huge inertia?
You don’t seem to understand anything about energy.
“prudent to invest in that technology now”
Which one?
Why not invest in fission now?
Smack ; you obviously know nothing about Power Engineering, Physics or Chemistry; go & troll elsewhere.
“Like it or not fossil fuels are a finite resource,…” Of course the material and labor to build and maintain wind and solar are finite. It takes relatively little to keep a nuke plant running.
Just for the record, carbon dioxide is not but carbon monoxide is. There is no discernible impact of CO2.
S MacK: “I suggest you lock yourself in your garage, switch on your car engine and leave it running.”
So you are unaware of the difference between carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, not to mention that the total increase in atmospheric CO2 caused by anthropogenic actions over the last 150 years has been about 3% of 120 parts per million, ie approximately 3.6 parts per million.
So your utterly uninformed opinion is of absolutely zero value.
“I suggest you lock yourself in your garage, switch on your car engine and leave it running”
Oh, I missed that one in your long paragraph. I thought you were a concerned but misinformed and misguided citizen, now, not so much.
You read like a n*z*.
“ I have PV generation as well as hot water generators installed and they are great, saving me money over the long term.”
@gareth
You would be the first I have found. Since you did not provide details, I am skeptical.
Kit, I have a 4kW pv on my roof & it has paid for it’s self in ~4 years !!
BUT not because of the energy it generates, that’s trifling, it’s the crazy rate I get paid (£0.48/kWh) & will continue to receive that + inflation for the next 19 years, [ current domestic rate is ~ £0.15/kWh ]
The Production/capacity factor over 4 yrs = 10.84%
It’s 4pm overcast & we are getting just 0.284kW ( glad I’m not on a life support system)
Last year it provided 3.897 kWh giving ~ £1,900 tax free & I get to use that 3.897kWhs,
all subsidized by my neighbors who didn’t put a pile of junk on their roofs.
It has been a very good fiscal investment. Though not very neighborly.
As a money machine very good….as a power supply its a pile of cr@p
What do the hedge fund $billionaires have over USA presidential want to be’s beside bags of cash ?
Has the price been bumped up so much that without at least one billionaire you are basically prohibited
from running for office ? Max $100 .00 donations and restore democracy would be a great step . No corporate ,no super pacs ,no lobbyists . Isn’t it time to put some credibility back into the political process ?
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” – Albert Einstein
Yeah, right…
http://i.imgur.com/FdH2klI.jpg
That looks like a Greenpeas photo of The Shengli open-cast coal mine in Xilinhot, Inner Mongolia,
Here’s a reclaimed open-cast mining area in Germany –
http://www.mining-technology.com/projects/rhineland/images/rhine8.jpg
There is only one sun in our immediate vicinity, it is burning out (albeit over a moderately long time) and because of this it is not sustainable, it is highly unlikely to be replaced. So how can solar power be “Renewable”??