Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Forbes contributor Steve Denning, the best hope of finding a solution to climate change is to commit the global economy to discovering an entirely novel source of energy.
The One Viable Solution To Climate Change
Jul 12, 2019, 06:37pm
Steve Denning Senior Contributor
Leadership Strategy I write about Agile management, leadership, innovation & narrative.…
Something has to be done. But what? The problem is that none of the paths presently under consideration are viable, except one.
The Limits Of Wind, Solar And Batteries
As explained in a paper from the Manhattan Institute, we are near the theoretical limits of what is possible from efficiency improvements in existing hydrocarbon technology or from wind, and solar energy and battery storage: those technologies are radically inadequate to handle the challenge of climate change.
…
Nuclear Power
Other experts push for greater investment in nuclear power, which is the second largest low-carbon power source after hydroelectricity. It supplies about 10% of global electricity generation. While these experts push for nuclear power as “the answer”, disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima dominate the popular imagination about nuclear power and make wider implementation politically difficult.…
More Regulatory Action And Voluntary Efforts
Meanwhile, regulatory action or voluntary efforts will be utterly insufficient to make a difference. The 2015 Paris Agreement called on countries to individually make their best efforts to contain the damage. This was perceived as a positive step, but it was not enough to stay climate change, even if the Agreement were to be fully implemented.
…
A New Manhattan Project
So what if a massive effort in basic research with the best minds and adequate funding was undertaken to find new technology for creating non-polluting energy for the planet?
What if it was launched by one country to get it started and then other countries were invited to join it so as to make it a multinational effort.
Is there any real alternative, except denial?
When do we stop our magical thinking and work on the one thing that will sustain the human race? Is there anything more urgent or important?
When do we start?
Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2019/07/12/the-one-viable-solution-to-climate-change/
Has anyone else noticed how weak green excuses for not embracing nuclear power are? I mean, on one hand greens tell us the world will end in 12 years or by 2050 or whatever, yet in the same breath they tell us nuclear power is too dangerous because there might be a few meltdowns.
How could the risk of a few meltdowns possibly be worse than the end of the world?
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Natural Gas + Nuclear = Done –> Fake Climate Crisis: QED
But that leaves freedom and liberty fully intact…
That’s not “magical thinking” David. No fair sustaining the human race on common sense!
The best example of his “magical thinking” is idea that CO2 is the control knob for global temperature.
“Agile leadership” would get on top of the problem that we have been ploughing massive resources into fake science for 40 years, paying political activist pseudo-scientists to attempt to prove their pre-established bias instead of trying to truly understand how the climate works.
The idea that there is an undiscovered source of energy that can replace fossil fuels, economically and practically, has got to come a close second.
I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been told that the only reason why we don’t have magic batteries for electric cars is because the battery companies don’t want to spend the research dollars to look for them.
MarkW; All you need to say is that anyone who can invent a method (chemist or physicist), or anyone who can invent the battery, would be rich beyond their wildest dreams. It sure isn’t apathy that prevents it.
Remember the Myth that “Big Oil hides the 100 MPG Carburetor” ? Laughable. The idea that the Communists, the Military, or just about anybody that wants to win the Nobel Prize (and get fabulously wealthy!) would hide “Super Batteries” is … asinine.
Physics and chemistry B Hard.
Greg you have no idea how science works. But sure, impugn the integrity of thousands of scientists whoae entire lives are devoted to discovering the truth, but trust the money fossil fuel industry who are devoted to nothing but their quarterly profits.
Yes, Gas and MSRs for cheaper safer nuclear. No need for 150-atmosphere plumbing, no water, no need for 2,000-atmosphere steam bomb containment domes Check out Seaborg.co; a 20′ 30-ton molten salt reactor with 250 MWs thermal outpout.
I want all of you to Stop your Magical Thinking, and give me my Harry Potter Wand to make everything better right now!!!
Actually, there is a simple and cheap – very cheap – solution for just USD 1-10 bill/ year, by spraying aerosols into the lower troposphere.
Who says that?
The IPCC:
“There is high agreement that cost of SAI …may be in range of 1–10 billion USD yr–1…to achieve cooling of 1–2 W m–2”
in SR1.5, chapter 4.3.8.2
https://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_chapter4.pdf
Green trillion dollar lobby may not like a simple, cheap and quick solution. Perhaps that is the reason, why they now want to transfer control over geo-engineering from the IPCC to (very very green) UN Environment Assembly:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-blocks-u-n-resolution-on-geoengineering/?redirect=1
“Steve Denning Senior Contributor Leadership Strategy I write about Agile management, leadership, innovation & narrative.”
And this guy is going to lead me into “work on the one thing that will sustain the human race?” B.S. Forbes has turned to yellow journalism.
The difference between agile and fragile is only two letters. So small in fact that in practice ‘agile’ thingies are mostly very fragile.
Should that new source be red, green, blue, or yellow?
(Apologies to Douglas Adams)
Actually learning something besides the spin from anti-nuke groups would help. As a journalist, actually being able to judge the validity of claims gets in the way of a scary story.
Most journalists rely on the opinions of their friends, who are just as technically ignorant as themselves. My uncle was a senior journalist in California, and Leigh was great at following trends.
There is indeed a trend, and thousands of people are working on solutions that have little to do with climate change. Better energy sources are just a good idea, independent of politics, climate, and nuclear issues. Advances in electromagnetic theory offer some really interesting possibilities. The magnetic “A Field” being one of them. This isn’t the forum for the discussion, but there ARE things happening. One would be wise not to dismiss the possibilities.
There is no need for a Manhattan Project, it is happening in garages all over the planet. Most of the “inventors” are not qualified or educated to do the work, but sometimes get lucky. Some funds and better research staff could really help. Lots of qualified scientists are interested in this and open to possibilities.
Any idea what a magnetic “A Field”is, google is not my friend today.
The “curl” of the A field is the definition of the B field, normal magnetic fields. For about a hundred years it was considered purely a mathematical construct. Look up “Aharonov Bohm effect”, demonstrates that it is a real thing. Completely ignored in most electrical engineering, using B instead. The fundamental equations used for electrical power generation need to be revised, and with that comes the opportunity to do a better job of power generation. A field penetrates shielding, B does not.
It must something new, perhaps a magnetic mAgical Field. More to the point, I’m not sure I want anyone to get fusion going in a garage.
The author did not even use the actual possibility of a “few meltdowns” to discard nuclear as an option; rather it was “popular imagination” that he cited.
So why not use your “power of the pen” to modify “popular imagination” against nuclear rather than advocating the start of a new Manhattan Project that would be extraordinarily expensive and for which there is currently no defined concept to develop? (The Manhattan scientists were pretty clear about the specific technology they were advancing.)
Well said George. Journalists as a group are very lazy and don’t take the time to inform themselves and develop a train a thought. These days they just have a conditioned reflex to the word warming. They think they are contributing but most of the time they are parrots or pixies.
12 Years?
Prince Chuck reckon 18 months now. The senile old buffoon Sir Rabbitburrow reckons it’s all over now.
The more bombshell papers that are published, the more ridiculous these clowns and buffoons become.
“Doombombing”, I think I saw coined somewhere. The ultimate Debby Downer SNL episode in auto-repeat.
If the world stopped giving the UN money….the UN couldn’t give it to developing countries to help them find ways to increase their emissions
…that’s the fastest cheapest way
100% Latitude
Yes the UN is using the worlds money to screw the world .
The forming of the UN was a noble idea to stop a third world war but like many other institutions the management of the UN has been taken over by socialists.
Climate Change has been used to try and take control of the world by using the fear of a rapidly warming climate ,sea level rise and weather bombs.
The IPCC has become a cesspit where most of the reports and written by politicians and no dissent is allowed .
The IPCC is driven by ideology and science was left behind years ago .
Graham
“Pournelle’s iron law of bureaucracy”: In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.
Spot on, Stevens.
Bureaucracies are as the weeds in our garden; if we do not prune them and direct their growth for good, they will overwhelm the productive growth and choke out that witch they were formed to protect.
While the UN was set up to prevent WWIII. I’ve never seen written anywhere how that was supposed to happen. I’ve seen many comments over the years that the UN has never prevented a ware anywhere. And now of course, they have no intention of ever preventing a war. It’s conflict that makes them money.
Question; What is the difference between Climate Change and Global Warming? Answer; One is a fence post, the other is barbed wire.
UN Sustainable Development
Topic: Green economy
Webpage has history of the Green Economy back to 1992 and also has links to more information on this topic.
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/topics/greeneconomy
If the world stopped giving the UN money….the UN couldn’t give it to dictators of developing countries to help them fund whatever they might desire. 😉
Pop how do you know the dictators and the UN aren’t working together?
Alternative energies will come online in due course.
Far better than spending public monies to facilitate their arrival would be to encourage them via R&D tax incentives.
Some would consider these as the same things, but a discount on your tax would be far better than being given a bag of someone else’s.
It would also likely mean that subsidy intensive operations (the green ones that run at a loss) could not access this incentive, as they pay little to no tax.
re: “Alternative energies will come online in due course.”
True that. Progress continues apace on the Hydrino-based reactor and associated energy extraction techniques (a steam generator/heat source and an MHD-based electricity generator.)
“BREAKTHROUGH OXYGEN AND SILVER NANOPARTICLE AEROSOL MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC POWER CYCLE”
https://brilliantlightpower.com/breakthrough-oxygen-and-silver-nanoparticle-aerosol-magnetohydrodynamic-power-cycle/
I find calls to redo the Manhattan project or the Apollo project in connection with energy supplies to be terminally annoying.
We had a Manhattan project, it was a success, it created new carbon dioxide free form of energy. Nuclear fission.
The article says that isn’t good enough because “disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima dominate the popular imagination about nuclear power and make wider implementation politically difficult.”
First. What makes you think the results of your new Manhattan project are going to be any better that the results of the last one.
Second, when the Manhattan project was begun in 1939, the underlying physics was less than 50 years old. Henri Becquerel had discovered that radioactivity in 1896. Einstein postulated E=MC^2 in 1905. It was on 12 September 1933 that Leo Szilard imagined the possibility of a chain reaction:
“In London, where Southampton Row passes Russell Square, across from the British Museum in Bloomsbury, Leo Szilard waited irritably one gray Depression morning for the stoplight to change. A trace of rain had fallen during the night; Tuesday, September 12, 1933, dawned cool, humid and dull. Drizzling rain would begin again in early afternoon. When Szilard told the story later he never mentioned his destination that morning. He may have had none; he often walked to think. In any case another destination intervened. The stoplight changed to green. Szilard stepped off the curb. As he crossed the street time cracked open before him and he saw a way to the future, death into the world and all our woes, the shape of things to come.”
Nuclear fusion was a brand, spanking new idea in 1939.
Can anyone point to any similar new ideas on which a Manhattan project could be built in 2019?
Anyone? Anyone, Bueller?
That would be Fission ? as opposed to Fusion ? As for Szilard he gets a shed load of coverage in Rhodes’ book, rather more than Otto Hahn who made the discovery in late December 38.
Sorry Fusion is still 50 years in the future. The quote was from the Rhodes book. I love the allusion to Milton.
The point here isn’t who should receive credit for what, it is that fission was brand new in the decade before the Manhattan project began.
There is no new physics available for another Manhattan project. Calling for one won’t make it so.
I love it. For 50 years they’ve been saying that fusion was “50 years in the future.” Thanks for carrying on that proud tradition.
What you are highlighting there, is that the the late 19th and early 20th century were a great period of innovation in thinking …. which puts the current lemming link “consensus” attitude of academia into sharp contrast.
When people were willing to challenge prevailing views … we saw huge progress in science and technology.
When people are condemned for challenging prevailing views …. the world gets run by the Climate Cult and in many sense science and technology are going backward.
“A New Manhattan Project
So what if a massive effort in basic research with the best minds and adequate funding was undertaken to find new technology for creating non-polluting energy for the planet?”
The Manhattan Project wasn’t instituted to find a new “technology” for creating energy. It was instituted to develop technology to utilize a known (but untapped) source of energy. This proposed “effort” is aimed at “creating non-polluting energy,” or in other words, finding a new source of energy that is not only untapped, but unknown at present.
That isn’t a parallel to either the Manhattan project, or the Apollo program. Both started with defined goals reachable by implementing known physical principles. Neither required, as an enabling step, the discovery of the one thing without which no other step was possible.
This is complete bullshit.
Agreed, MSK.
I was about to write when I saw your words, more eloquent than mine.
The present generation of scientists near their peaks seems not to realise that the physicists, mathematicians and spectroscopists of the late 19th to early 20th centuries were creating new paradigms, demonstrating new concepts that in analogy are akin to the unmatched classicism in music of the Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin etc era.
One does not progress global understanding with analogies of “Puff the Magic Dragon” or the childish Beatles mush.
Geoff S
You said it Mr. Kelly. Nothing to add.
“First. What makes you think the results of your new Manhattan project are going to be any better that the results of the last one.” Manhattan success led to the National Science Foundation. Didn’t get much support until the “Space Race.”
Agreed, most promising title + moat disappointing ‘somebody outa do aomething’ article ever.
The last Manhatten Project was sufficient.
The Chinese are using that knowledge and building 100 reactors, Canada needs about another 10, the U.S. could probably use 100 too.
re: “Can anyone point to any similar new ideas on which a Manhattan project could be built in 2019?
Anyone? Anyone, Bueller?”
Ahh … yes.
There is a little capital-starved project in New Jersey I would cite. They have been involved in their particular branch of research for several decades now, and have in the past few years gotten reaction rates up to the point that utility-scale power generation is the next goal.
No more is power (thermal) output limited and on the order of 5 Watts ( 5 Joules/sec) but rather on the order of >250,000 Watts (>250 kJ/sec) from a roughly basket-ball sized reactor …
Reactor in water bath undergoing run-up tests:
They could apparently use some magic in NYC tonight.
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-manhattan-blackout-20190713-6vaqoxut6zhfnpdtzwsekx4zra-story.html
This site is inaccessible from Europe. Anyone an idea to circumvent the restriction?
Use a proxy service. I tried (from the UK) and found this one allowed me to view the link you are having trouble with: http://webproxy.to/
Tor?
“..So what if a massive effort in basic research with the best minds and adequate funding was undertaken to find new technology for creating non-polluting energy for the planet?…”
Oh yes, and what if the mainstream media in this country (including Forbes) end up looking like complete idiots 10 years from now if and when the Earth is cooler?
They can’t recognise idiocy now, they won’t recognise their own in 10 years time.
To quote the perennial heckler at the back of the political meeting-
“Where’s the money coming from ?”
( Yes, I know Sun Moon once answered, “Wherever it is now”!)
As pointed out in the essay the magic power already exists. It is called nuclear power and if we use thorium we could have energy until the Sun enveloped the earth – there is so much of it. But alas – the environmentalists don’t want this. Probably because they realize man was put on Earth to correct the CO2 balance which was getting dangerously low for life?
Nuclear – so “last century”.
In search of the Holy Grail…………………………..
As if there is no economic incentive here for a possible solution to a perceived problem.
I grow weary of this crap.
You’re right. The person that discovers the magic new energy source will become the richest person the planet. Seems like plenty of incentive to me, no Manhattan project needed.
How many times has LFTR been mentioned on this blog and You Tube? Small, walk away safe, plenty of fuel for thousands of years, AND they can burn up the waste from earlier reactors AND one was built decades ago, so we know it works. No magic required, just a little common sense. But then “common sense” is extremely uncommon these days, possibly more uncommon than magic.
Yeah, and ITER and all the other fusion experiments. These guys are really uninformed.
Uninformed on the progress of the Hydrino-based SunCell ™ too. In some cases badly misinformed …
The tremendous environmental destruction that comes with hydroelectricity and commercial solar heat and wind power projects seem to always get a free pass.
Resolved: All future energy schemes shall be subject to equivalent review processes.
I’m sorry but I’ve lost track. Is this now the third or fourth time a climate Manhattan Project has been proposed?
From the article: “So what if a massive effort in basic research with the best minds and adequate funding was undertaken to find new technology for creating non-polluting energy for the planet?”
It would be much easier and cheaper to educate the public as to the viablity of using nuclear energy. If your aim is to reduce CO2, nuclear is your only option. Get used to it.
It’s not that nuclear powerplants are particulary dangerous, it is that the public has been sadly misinformed about the technology with the aim of making them fear it.
Can I get an injection of reality, along with the hyper ventilating AGW emotional angst urgently advocating nonexistent solutions for a nonexistent problem? Please???
Steve Denning appears not to know that were this done and it was successful, he would be no hero for suggesting it. He’d be tarred and feathered by the totalitarians. They don’t want a successful substitute that provides abundant, reliable, affordsble energy. They want to throw money away, bring down the economy and strength of the United States and let the poor countries die off.
Anyway , Eric you are right. Steve wouldn’t want 6 dozen people to die from nuclear accidents over the nexr couple of centuries, even to save the planet. Sheesh. All the information for an education one needs to assess nuclear energy benefits and its safety record could be dug up on the internet in 30 minutes by a jr. highschool student.
Here. Let me help. Check out nuclear accidents in electric generating plants and nuclear research facilities since 1950 in Wiki, even. 79 have died 90% of them in just the horribly poorly designed Chernobyl project. The biggest nuclear based power country France at 75% of its electrical output had only a single death in a spent fuel processing plant and it may have been a forklift accident.
Ever ask yourself why Hiroshima was rebuilt so soon after the devastation? They found after the Hiroshima bombing, radioactivity fell back to background levels before a year had elapsed and they rebuilt. This is probably why, despite the “progressive” hype, lies and fake news that polute internet info on such sensitive topics, the same thing happened in Ukraine and the “exclusion zone” has become Europe’s Serengeti-type thriving wild game park. Surely it must have occurred to some honest scientists that after the much worse Hiroshima event no exclusion zone was needed. I’m convinced these incidents will one day soon be held up as excellent scientific proof that nuclear is the safest energy route for the future.
The don’t have any idea of what this new form of energy is supposed to be but they want the world’s economy to be dedicated to finding it. Intelligent. Very intelligent. For a certain interpretation of intelligent, that is.
Steve Denning sounds like one of those people who consider themselves to be an ideas man. His idea that there might be a market for another source of cheap, reliable power has been on the minds of a few billion people. But with the profound insight of a guppy our friend Steve has come to the same conclusion all on his own. Good for one “attaboy Steve”.
Nuclear sounds like a reasonable answer. Problem, as I see it, is the time required from concept to generation. Not going to be done in 18 months nor 18 years. Fast track? Yeah…
Our current nuclear plants are near end of life.
The way the Warmists treat nuclear power is how you know they don’t believe the catastrophic claims of Climate change any more than we do. If they did they could have stopped lying about nuclear power 30 years ago and the problem would have taken care of itself by now.
+10
15,897 deaths, 6,157 injured, and 2,533 people missing, that was the quake that caused the Fukushima meltdowns. No nuclear deaths. Chernobyl was an obsolete and poorly built reactor doing a test that was unauthorized and poorly planned. Likely the power it produced during its lifetime saved net lives with reduced pollution.
Just adding some perspective.