Dr. James Hansen, writing about his 1988 senate testimony 30 years ago in an op-ed in the Boston Globe, said some very strong things when it comes to the pie-in-the-sky renewables schemes.
He starts off with:
THIRTY YEARS AGO, while the Midwest withered in massive drought and East Coast temperatures exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit, I testified to the Senate as a senior NASA scientist about climate change. I said that ongoing global warming was outside the range of natural variability and it could be attributed, with high confidence, to human activity — mainly from the spewing of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere. “It’s time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here,” I said.
This clear and strong message about the dangers of carbon emissions was heard. The next day, it led the front pages of newspapers across the country. Climate theory led to political action with remarkable speed. Within four years, almost all nations, including the United States, signed a Framework Convention in Rio de Janeiro, agreeing that the world must avoid dangerous human-made interference with climate.
Sadly, the principal follow-ups to Rio were the precatory Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement — wishful thinking, hoping that countries will make plans to reduce emissions and carry them out. In reality, most countries follow their self-interest, and global carbon emissions continue to climb (see graph at bottom).
But his finish is quite something, and is sure to raise some eyebrows in the green sector:
The notion that renewable energies and batteries alone will provide all needed energy is fantastical. It is also a grotesque idea, because of the staggering environmental pollution from mining and material disposal, if all energy was derived from renewables and batteries. Worse, tricking the public to accept the fantasy of 100 percent renewables means that, in reality, fossil fuels reign and climate change grows.
BOOM!
Would love to see the calculation for the number of Solar panels, Wind turbines, Hydro dams and Batteries to supply the portion of the energy not created by the tiny sliver of renewables shown in the chart above for “Global Energy Consumption.” And after that how much environmental damage that proposed disaster will cause.
Worse, tricking the public to accept the fantasy of 100 percent renewables means that, in reality, fossil fuels reign and climate change grows.
Left unsaid is who did the tricking. The list of those culpable is essentially the same as those pushing CAGW. I hold the mainstream media in special contempt.
And he follows with:
“Young people are puzzled that, 25 years ago, President Clinton terminated R&D on next-generation safe nuclear power, the principal alternative to fossil fuel electricity. It is not too late. My advice to young people is to cast off the old politics and fight for their future on technological, political, and legal fronts.”
Most of the money going into nuclear research these days is Chinese. In the US, we have token projects like the DOE support of Nuscale, ARPA-e support for a Molten Chloride Fast Reactor, and a handful of privately funded fusion and fission reactors.
Bill Gates is having to work with China to get funding and testing of his novel nuclear project. https://www.smh.com.au/business/bill-gates-and-china-partner-on-worldfirst-nuclear-technology-20171106-gzfrf0.html
And there’s something in the London ‘Daily Telegraph’, yesterday or today, about UK Government money going to ‘mini-reactors’.
Welcome – but a bit delayed.
And I imagine the money’ll get cut back to help support an unreformed National Health Service as soon as the next inefficient-spending induced budget shortfall arises.
Yes, health is expensive – but the NHS does waste a lot of money [as well as spend shed-loads more well, with dedicated staff].
But why let the Doctors’ Trade Union dictate how many doctors are trained in the UK [as it has done for many years, or decades??], so wages are kept high.
Off thread, much of the above – so apologies.
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Sounds like if Sagan were around it would be a great MMA wrestling match on how to save the World. Hanson is saying — “Build Nukes,.. many and now!”,… or he is echoing Ehrlich machinations of limiting humans in living, breathing, birthing and eating. Dictatorship of the Gaia?
He’s still the same ol’ loony-tunes Coal-trains-of-death Hansen, spouting lies and nonsense. I don’t give a flying fig if he favors nuclear, because he wants to do it at the expense of fossil fuels, especially his true-hate, coal.
Yawn. Who cares what this loser has to say.
Amazing what slips out before the royal dictate becomes policy
In the past Hansen pushed for nuclear power as the only solution. I assume that hasn’t changed
Hansen fostered a left turn into climate psychosis that has cost 10s of trillions. The iдео1оgцеs were waiting just for such a perfect gift with a prominent scientist to deliver it to promote their gлобаl gov. Yet, he is more honest than virtually all academics, gov researchers…that promote and emote CC (itself an egregiously dishonest appelation).
I have to say that his support for nuclear and hydro, which are the only non carbon forms of reliable energy we know about, should have been promoted, accepted and initiated vigorously in a way to replace coal fired plants in an orderly fashion without panic and hysteria if the concern of sensible, apolitical scientists was truly real. Natural gas would have been a transitional tech to smooth the transition. What WAS done was so nakedly, old European магху-sparxy that only those wanting destruction of Western Civilization and thoughtless useful tools were taken in. If we later were to discover that CO2 was relatively benign, the least harm would have been done.
Clearly, Hansen wasnt taken in and clearly he is embarrassed by the turn he has wrought. I dont think he wants his granchildren to be the new proletariat.
Given the watermelons’ target of a global population of 500-750 million, it is likely that his grandchildren – like mine – will not be allowed exist – certainly not subsist.
If they do, they will most likely be concubines or labourers for the true global elite, who will seek to maintain plutocratic lifestyles.
And this is what those duped by socialist/communist/global government/EU encroachment are voting for.
And they all hope that their offspring will be amongst the favoured few [probably less than five] million.
And yet Corbyn alone get 12,878,460 votes last year [per the ineffable Wiki, that I can edit] when the Great Mis-Communicator, May [with Hammond, in the Top Gear Bottom Outcome], dished her own majority.
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It’s now the Rosanne-level climate commentary.
The real question is that absent the presence of hydro power, can a society operate on 100% nuclear?
France came close to it ~80%?
Fuel for air travel and rocketry is a challenge, as chemical energy is denser than other forms, at least those we are willing to share in the air space. Nuclear power can be the source energy to store chemical energy, though I imagine society will tolerate very high prices for petroleum and natural gas sources for air travel.
Solar power would work, but we need to get off this rock.
I think Hansen believes only answer is nuclear power, and nuclear has worked and would work in terms lowering CO2 and other pollution. But the long term answer would be harvesting solar energy from the space environment [not on a planet surface with a thick atmosphere and clouds].
And if you believe the fantasy that Earth will have more extreme weather, using solar and wind power makes even less sense.
Getting off this rock will not be easy, but much cheaper than the money already spent on solar and wind energy. What is needed is exploration.
And important direction of exploration, should be exploring the Moon to determine if and where there is minable water at the lunar poles.
The lunar poles are small area, much smaller than Earth’s poles. Moon is smaller and has axis tilt of 1 1/2 degrees, unlike Earth’s 23.5 degrees.
So fairly small area, and only interested in water at or near the surface.
If minable lunar water is found, then perhaps investment dollar will be spent to mine the water. It does not really matter who spend the money, because if minable, that means it is assumed to be profitable to mine.
Or who might make money, doesn’t matter much, the point is that any money is made attempting to do this. But you don’t want NASA mining the water. As NASA job is to explore, not mine.
So NASA can explore the Moon, and focus on the lunar region and seeing if can find minable lunar water, and should be able to do this in less than 10 years. Or it didn’t take 10 years for NASA to start Apollo and go to the Moon decades ago, and launch cost are cheaper, now. And adjusted for inflation, even cheaper.
And private sector is building big rockets, and you don’t even need large Saturn V type rockets to explore the Moon, with rockets we have [which very cheap] we can explore the moon, and can start with robotic exploration, and finish with few crew landing which bring back lunar samples to Earth.
After this, NASA should explore Mars.
And NASA should explore Mars to determine if and where human settlements on Mars could viable or the most viable. Mars has large area to explore, it’s land area is 144.8 million square km.
Earth surface area is 510 million square km, but it’s land area is about 148 million square km. And with Mars all surface area is land area.
And in terms of human settlement on Mars one looking for thousands of square km of where to have a settlement or settlements.
And again, NASA job is not settlement, but exploration. So NASA job is finding better area for settlement, and investment dollars might then be spent to create towns on Mars.
Now, there is no shortage of stuff to explore in space, the issue is what to explore first, which should be first Moon, and then Mars, and with Mars that will take decades.
If there is minable lunar water, then more things can done on the Moon.
The moon is a great place to harvest solar energy. And if you want nuclear power, the Moon is also a good place to use nuclear energy. It is also a good place to store nuclear waste which is made on Earth- pick any spot on Moon and it better place than any possible spot on Earth.
If lunar water is minable, one needs electrical energy to use the water to make rocket fuel. So one will start and electrical market of electrical power on the Moon. And the beginning of any electrical market, anywhere is space, is the beginning of having an electrical market in space, which can evenually transfer that energy to Earth surface. And earth is a trillion dollar electrical market, and once one begins economically to supply the Earth electrical market with electrical power, you started on pathway of getting basically unlimited electricity for Earth.
All that could require 50 to 100 years. It might take 10 to 20 years to get an electrical market on the Moon, and this would support any Mars settlement, and so get electrical market on Mars and might get hundreds of people going to and living on Mars, which is ever growing electrical market in space. And 40 year after lunar growth in it’s electrical market, one might really to tap into the Earth electrical market.
Or electrical power on the Moon would start at about $75 per Kw watt, and Earth is about 1 cent per Kw watt. So time is required to lower cost of electrical cost in space. Or $75 per Kw hour is cheap for purposes of making rocket fuel on the Moon, but with competition, the price will lower over time. Or there will be demand for more and cheaper electrical power on the Moon, assuming there is enough demand for lunar rocket fuel- and mars settlements would be part of this demand.
Hansen today-
“The notion that renewable energies and batteries alone will provide all needed energy is fantastical.”
Hansen in 2013-
dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/jim-hansen-presses-the-climate-case-for-nuclear-energy/
“But suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.”
I will be interested to read Stanford Professor Mark Jacobson’s response to Hansen’s statements.
Let’s just get rid of all the humans then! (Cue “Far Side” meme of fat ladies in cat glasses running off cliff), GAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!
Jim Hansen wrote:
“The notion that renewable energies and batteries alone will provide all needed energy is fantastical. It is also a grotesque idea, because of the staggering environmental pollution from mining and material disposal, if all energy was derived from renewables and batteries.”
Mercy – is the World coming to an End? Hansen and I agree on something!
Perhaps we agree for different reasons:
I contend that green energy schemes are fatally flawed due to intermittency and the lack of practical, cost-effective grid-scale storage of electricity. Green schemes such as grid-connected wind and solar power require almost 100% conventional spinning reserve (back-up) generation.
It would be much less costly, much more reliable and much more environmentally friendly to not build the wind and solar power schemes and just operate the reserve units full-time.
One advantage of solar power from space is it is a system of global distribution and would be used to balance a grid, rather than imbalance a grid.
He, Hansen, was so wrong 30 years ago. He completely ignored what was happening with the Sun right there and then, he completely ignored the range of natural weather and climate variability, neither of which have been exceeded then or since.
If the great nations of the world, China, India, Russia, Brazil, others… ignore Hansen’s preaching, it’s because they have their own scientists, mostly better than Hansen, which frankly is no big deal, who told their governments in clear terms that Hansen’s pronouncements were superstitious baloney.
The rest is just political posturing and superpower competition.
Renewable stuff is inherently FREE, UNLIMITED, INUSABLE.
Like solar rays in summer in a sunny place. (For the limited number of people who can live in that place, actually.)
Anything you have to pay for, you pay because there is need to access limited resources, actually deplete a mine somewhere (but if it isn’t “carbon”, some people don’t care), pay for food made using tractors, insecticide, herbicides, pay for “organic food” made using even more fuel to run tractors more often to destroy weed without herbicides, pay for “local food” made with organic pesticides made from plants produced in another continent using herbicides, pay for the food of the people who make tractors, pay for the tractors for the production of the food of the production of the tractors…