Essay by Eric Worrall
“… we know they don’t have a clue how they’re going to get there. And most of them are not on track to get there. …”
John Kerry Lays It All Out on Climate Change
Biden’s envoy calls for a World War II-like mobilization.
By The Editorial Board
…
The world needs to treat climate change like World War II when “in order to win the war that we had to organize ourselves to take control of the skies and take control of the seas and be able to smash the battlements that had been built along the coastline of France and Belgium and the Netherlands,” Mr. Kerry said.
…
“Let’s face it, a whole bunch of companies in the world have chosen to say, ‘I’m going to be net zero by 2050,’” he said. “And you and I, we know they don’t have a clue how they’re going to get there. And most of them are not on track to get there.”
Maybe that’s because no one else knows either because with current technology it isn’t possible. That’s certainly true of governments in the U.S. and Europe, which have committed to zeroing out their CO2 emissions by 2050 but haven’t implemented the policies or developed the technologies to get there. Not that it would make much difference if they did as long as China and India continue to build coal plants to fuel their economic growth.
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Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-kerry-lays-it-all-out-on-climate-davos-11674170143
Utility scale nuclear power could get the world to Net Zero, though as our Willis pointed out in 2021, the 2050 target verges on impossible, even with nuclear power. Most greens seem to hate nuclear power more than they hate CO2.
To his credit Kerry is not one of those greens. Kerry helped shut down US advanced nuclear reactor research in 1994, during the Clinton Administration, but since then, Kerry admitted he was wrong. In recent times he has said some nice things about nuclear power.
Nevertheless, despite the recent talk of supporting nuclear, we’re not exactly seeing a nuclear renaissance in Western countries, including the USA.
So here’s a challenge Kerry. If you want companies to go zero emissions, and you truly support nuclear power, let American businesses install their own small campus scale nuclear reactors.
There is already cautious industry support for campus scale nuclear. Omdia, a major tech research company, recently advocated campus scale nuclear reactors for data centres.
Small scale nuclear is much safer than big reactors, because small scale fission reactions are self quenching. Basic physics, surface area to volume ratio means neutrons escape small cores much more easily than large cores.
Unlike big cores like Chernobyl, which continued fissioning even after it slumped into a puddle, the physical shape of a small core has to be perfect to sustain the fission reaction.
Even if a small core meltdown occurs, the moment the meltdown causes the core material to deform, and the core loses its optimum shape, the surface area of the core material rises (puddles have a large surface area, compared to a cube or sphere), more neutrons escape through the larger surface area, and the fission reaction stops, because the small core can no longer trap enough neutrons for a sustained fission reaction.
I’m sure loads of American companies would quietly love to embrace the predictable low cost energy and reliability a campus scale nuclear reactor could provide. Onsite campus scale nuclear would give a massive boost to companies seeking to answer Kerry’s call to Net Zero. If the cost of modular, campus scale reactors could be kept reasonable, there would be an absolute rush of private companies seeking their own cheap nuclear power, investing vast amounts of private capital into zero carbon nuclear energy, to stay competitive with early adopters.
A great idea. Replace campuses with nuclear reactors.
Not quite what I meant 🙂
But you didn’t disagree.
He he 🙂
Yes but it is a win-win scenario. Less CO2 and less woke nonsense.
No, just a win (less woke nonsense). Less CO2 is not a “win” except in the minds of the deluded.
When I started at Univ of Washington in Seattle in 1970, they had a nuclear reactor on site.
Same at McMaster U in Hamilton, Ontario – though they downgraded the 25% enriched U to 5% due to “proliferation concerns” – as if terrorists are going to bust in an steal it.
However, it was for research only – they looked at using it for central heating many times but the economics never worked out, even though the campus already was setup for centralized hot water and the existing gas-fired boiler was nearby.
It would have interfered with reactor experiments anyway.
I still remember foundly my first neutron exposure photograph of the inside of a briefcase full of various devices (like at the airport these days), oh and the beautiful blue glow from the reactor core in its pool.
Great idea! Once the campus is cleared of all the Bolshvikium radicalactivism, we can continue onto rebuilding the Nuclear Family?
Power to the People!
They would at least produce something useful, unlike the so-called “education” being done on most “campuses.”
Smash the battlements of Belgium and the Netherlands? What’s he talking about? We didn’t invade the Low Countries from the sea. The Canadian Army swung east from France — we got blamed for not trapping the Germans in the Falaise Pocket who then escaped and Patton wanted us out of the way — and entered Holland though the Scheldt estuary.
But nuclear power won’t get us to Net Zero unless somebody invents a way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere at scale and the process is powered by more nuclear electricity than anyone can ever dream of. There is no Net Zero. It’s all Gross Zero….and we all know what that means.
Field Marshall Kerry lives in an alternate universe.
I’m not sure what his military rank would be in the ‘War on Carbon’.
Private ‘Parts’ Kerry
Major ‘Blunder’ Kerry
General ‘Confusion’ Kerry
Kitchen Hand Kerry.
Rear Echelon rat scratched my finger peeling potatoes give me a purple heart Kerry.
Major Bullet-In-His-Own-Butt Kerry
Or
Captain Wasn’t-In-Country-Long-Enough-To-Get-Fragged Kerry
G’Day PCman999
“Wasn’t-In-Country-Long-Enough”
Correct me if my memory is off. Three (3) Purple Hearts in five (5) months – and he had his ticket home.
(Yes, I’ve seen some discussion on the seriousness of the “wounds” he suffered.)
Three wounds in five months sounds less like heroism and more like carelessness.
In the Royal Air Force the lowest rank was AC1 – or, as they were always called, AC Plonks. I always think of Kerry as a plonker.
He’d be Schultz’s batboy!
Alternative.
The Canadians didn’t deserve any blame for not closing the Argentan-Falaise pocket and neither did the Poles. Monty and Bradley share the blame for that one. Monty was still the overall commander and should have made the shift. Bradley assumed that Monty understood the situation and did not shift the boundaries because he had other plans and so did not ask for the boundaries to be shifted.
The excuses are many. That the fighter bombers had dropped delayed a action fused bombs. Which was BS because the longest delayed fuse dropped was 12 hours allowing plenty of time to stop the use of those weapons and still close the gap.
That it was feared there would be a blue on blue incident when the forces met. But the fact is they actually did meet after the fact with no problem. Bradely himself later offered two solutions that could have been used to prevent the artillery of each side firing into each other.
That it was too dangerous because close air support area would become ever more constricted endangering the ground troops. But when the door finally closed no such problem occurred.
That the 3rd Army did not have the strength available to seal it off even if it they did close the gap. But Bradley had the forces to reinforce the XV Corp with two Infantry Divisions if he had so desired.
To me, the litany of excuses rings hollow. It was clearly a command failure shared by Monty and Bradley.
Thanks for that. I know it was complex and I appreciate your elaboration. As a Canadian I didn’t want to speak about Holland in a way that appeared to minimize or ignore mistakes that our guys might have made.
I should be clear though that the failure to close the gap was not really that disastrous. The Allied artillery and British Typhoons and American P-47s did such a job that artillery spotter plane pilots flying low over the devastation would puke because the smell of death was so strong.
Pursuit of a defeated enemy is chaotic by its very nature and in such a phase of combat, command and control is difficult in the extreme. It was nearly impossible to maintain effective communications during the most dynamic movements and thus decisions on decisive actions having potential longer range effects necessarily devolve to the local commanders on the spot that cannot get command guidance from above but must seize the opportunities only they can see when they see them.
In the final analysis the allied pursuit after the break through was magnificent.
In the final analysis the allied pursuit after the break through was magnificent.
Here’s one for you – Name a major battle in France after the Normandy Breakout.
You can’t?
EXACTLY.
Stop moaning about Falaise and start respecting the massive advances that followed. If anyone is to blame for Falaise it is the Germans. How DARE they fight a tenacious rearguard!
Uh, Lorraine/Metz.
Colmar pocket and ‘Nordwind,’ the diversionary attack by the Germans at the end of 1944/early1945 too. But none of the significance of the disastrous Market Garden (Belgium and Holland) or the Battle of the Bulge (Belgium and Luxembourg).
I will argue that wind and solar are the equivalent of WWI mass infantry charges into machine gun fire, but our fearless leaders insist that is the only possible tactic.
There is a strain of Cloward-Piven nihilism among greens, that destroying the current system is needed to reach social justice. The theme is that patriarchal capitalists need to be destroyed first, and then we can worry about keeping the lights on. If that comes across as an exaggeration, read some Naomi Oreskes.
Nukes, of whatever type, are the only proven technology to approach Net Zero, but the greens hate technology.
“…read some Naomi Oreskes.”
Oh no. Anything but that. Please!
The best thing Kerry can do is a mea culpa about his 1994 decision and start calling out the anti-nuclear folks.
Not holding my breath as he is a good example of someone talking about a climate crisis but not acting as if it was a crisis.
He did do a mea culpa in the video I linked, he admitted he was wrong.
All the Marxist cabal talking heads are dangerous. If this weren’t Kerry they would have someone else carry the message. It seems finding useful idiots is easy these days.
You have to go some to find a bigger idiot than Kerry.
Biden ? 🙂
Well, everyone realises that Kerry’s grasp of Science, like 97% of GangGreen, is absolutely lamentable.
Seems like his grasp of History isn’t great, either,
But maybe his talk about “smashing the battlements…” actually refers to recent explosions in the Baltic?
Personally, I think Kerry and his former Boss should be given a nice padded cell somewhere and never heard of again.
But although I am more than happy with oil, gas, coal; by all means lets have more nuclear. There are a few countries in the world that I’d be concerned about going nuclear, Iran most obviously, but thanks largely to the West’s cowardice in keeping throwing buns to crocodiles, we’re probably nearly there, anyway.
Just one other thing, it would be helpful if safety standards for nuclear were rational. Linear, No Threshold should go straight in the bin, for starters.
Kerry is a disgrace.
And that’s putting it lightly.
I’m all for eliminating fascism. But I’m pretty sure that’s not what Kerry is talking about.
Kerry is into instituting fascism.
No matter what the “ism” is called, there will always be those “elites” that promote some form of totalitarianism that puts them at the top of the food chain.
Mr. Kerry:
WW2 existence was never in doubt when it started in 1939 while the absurd climate crisis nonsense isn’t real at all as there are no signs of it now and certainly less over time into the now and the future as the main indicators show a DECLINE in the bad side of weather events.
There is NO Tropospheric Hot Spot developing after 30 years! LINK
There is no developing Positive Feedback Loop after 30 years!!!
The RATE of warming is around 50% LESS than predicted/projected from 1990 onwards.
It takes a special kind of STUPID to continue running on a CC delusion paradigm when it doesn’t exist.
WW2 started in 1933. 1933. Never forget, 1933…
Go see the front page of the March 24 issue of Daily Express. Most every major newspaper in the world ran some form of that story…
“Judea declares war on Germany”? Do you think Hitler and co. were doing nothing to deserve such hyperbole?
Think of all “death to America” types – are they just harmless? There are not going to do anything if and when they get the means?
If we are to take control of the skies then we need to rid the skies of private jet transportation the is turning the atmosphere into a “sewer”.
Start with Kerry’s.
“Climate Change” is just an excuse for grabbing power, asserting control over the hoi polloi and acquiring vast sums of money. The “elite” don’t believe Climate is a real problem either, or they would change their own behavior.
Given that their real goal isn’t minimizing warming, but minimizing prosperity, it isn’t just stupid, but rather evil.
Are there any of these small scale reactors in operation? The large ones can take 10 years to get trough licensing, design and build. It may take much longer if the greens start complaining. So if you want to do this the time to start is now.
Russia has small civilian nuclear reactors, portable floating power stations and nuclear powered ice breakers. So it’s definitely doable.
They have nuclear powered drones…
We have portable power stations but we call them submarines. Many times they have been used to supply “shore” power.
See www nuscalepower dot com
They have several projects in development.
Ontario is building a small modular nuclear reactor in the Darlington nuclear complex just along the Lake from Toronto. Under construction now, projected 300 MW. There is also a company that hasn’t given up on molten salt reactors. I got talking to one of their guys in the grocery store. He liked my “I love Canadian oil and gas” T-shirt and struck up a conversation while we were picking through the broccoli.
The argument given for safety of small reactors is so full of holes that even the dumbest anti-nuke could shoot it down – and be perfectly right. A nuclear core meltdown doesn’t have anything to do with continued fission reactions, whether in Three Mile Island, Fukushima, or (especially) Chernobyl. Of the three, Chernobyl would be the least capable of having uncontrolled fission in a meltdown, since it used natural uranium fuel. Meltdowns are the result of the heat released by the radioactive decay of fission products generated during normal reactor operation. They constitute a maximum of about 6% of the design fission power output of the reactor. In a western reactor, if coolant is lost, no further fission reaction is possible because the coolant serves as a neutron moderator, without which no fission reaction is possible. But the remaining core still generates decay heat from its load of fission products, and if no coolant is reintroduced, it will melt. But the heat energy is rapidly declining as the short-lived fission products decay. If coolant can be restored, it is only needed for about a month. After that, the mechanical pump power contributes more heat to the coolant than the core fission products. Chernobyl’s situation is considerably more complicated to describe, but the bottom line is that post-accident, no fission reaction could possibly take place. It simply had a buildup of fission products, but they decayed quickly.
There is no nuclear power reactor accident scenario involving fission reactions after whatever accident occurs. Anti-nuke people know this, so any proposal for a “safer” nuclear technology based on the idea that it can’t continue a fission chain reaction after an accident is one they can easily swat aside; every single nuclear power technology to date shares that feature. That isn’t the problem, they would argue, and they’d be right. Their boogeyman problem scenarios are the ones that need to be (and can easily be) shot down.
Chernobyl continued fissioning after it melted, that’s why the helicopters dumped sand and boron on it.
In any case, even residual decay is less of a problem with small cores – more surface area to dump the heat.
https://www.livescience.com/65515-chernobyl-in-modern-times-nuclear-emergency.html
Thorium Liquid Salts Cooled Reactors are a better mousetrap….a plug will melt if overheating occurs and gravity will empty the reactor contents into an empty concrete reservoir. https://thorconpower.com https://copenhagenatomics.com
MK,
At last, an informed comment. Thank you.
Geoff S
Yes.
An analogy might be air travel, sea travel, railroad travel, road travel or even bicycle travel.
If we convinced ourselves that because of observed fatal equipment failures, these forms of travel were inherently unsafe, nobody would go anywhere by any other means than walking.
(Oh wait – that’s what green grinches want us all to do . . . )
Walking to where you go may cause increased fitness and health, which smacks of conservative supremacism, racism and patriarchal suppression, don’tcherknow?
You’re over-generalizing. Some reactors, especially the small ones, use graphite as the moderator, and some will actually be of a heat-pipe design (solid core, heat removed by conduction only) to make it a “bullet-proof” design. Fuel incased and heat resistant (Triso for example) will make melt-down impossible.
Michael, Please say more about, ‘Their boogeyman problem scenarios are the ones that need to be (and can easily be) shot down.”
It’s safe to say that I know less than 1% about nuclear safety compared to you, so I don’t know if this statement from the NuScale Website is significant, but it sounds good to me:
copy
The NuScale Power Module™ and power plant design incorporates several simple, redundant, and independent safety features — setting a new standard for nuclear safety performance.
The Decay Heat Removal System (DHRS) provides secondary side reactor cooling for non-Loss of Coolant Accident (LOCA) events when normal feed water is not available. The system is a closed loop, two-phase natural circulation cooling system. Redundant trains of decay heat removal equipment are provided, one attached to each steam generator loop.
We have so much nuclear technology of all types and sizes just sitting on the shelf. Remember we have and have had nuclear subs running around the oceans for 60 +years and the military had and used campus size portable power and heating plants for as long. They used some of these portable plants at “ice stations”
Not only submarines, but small “cities” of aircraft carriers. And no problems, it seems.
So, since the Chinese, Indians and most of the 3rd world have no intention of following the Paris Accord, let’s not cripples our economy, take the risk of climate Armageddon and laissez le bon temps rouler!
Good for you Kerry, now that you admit nuclear is needed to “decarbonize” help push through legislation that provides for small scale modular nuclear reactors the same tax credits, mandates, grid priority, low interest loans, accelerated depreciation allowances and more that without wind and solar would not exist.(Better still would be to end the 40-year long failed W&S experiment and move all the support to small and micro nuclear.(<100 mW).
http://www.energy.gov › ne › articlesThe BIG Potential for Nuclear Microreactors | Department of …
Aug 7, 2019 · More than 20 U.S. companies are working on designs that are smaller, scalable, versatile and even mobile—providing far greater access to nuclear power than ever before.
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/small-nuclear-power-reactors.aspx
NuScale
The NuScale Power Module is a 250 MWt, 77 MWe gross integral PWR with natural circulation.* In December 2013 the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it would support accelerated development of the design for early deployment on a 50-50 cost share basis. An agreement for $217 million over five years was signed in May 2014 by NuScale Power. In September 2017, following acceptance of the company’s design certification application (DCA) by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) earlier in the year, NuScale applied for the second part of its loan guarantee with the US DOE.
With the unit power to increase to 77 MWe, the overnight capital cost of a six-module plant would be about $3 billion, hence $6500/kW. UAMPS has 27 public utilities participating in the project. UAMPS is targeting $58/MWh generation cost (LCOE) for a six-module plant. The first unit is expected to be online in 2029.
Kerry, deep-throat of the CAGW grift.
“… we know they don’t have a clue how they’re going to get there.”
and neither does Kerry.
This actually represents a major breakthrough for us realists.
Here we have the Climate Tsar telling his flock of energy destroying maniacs, nuclear is the way forward. He is admitting he was wrong to cancel the research into safe scale nuclear and he has said (about nuclear) “go for it”
Now we, who have been banging on about the lunacy of the green movement and its unhinged position on clean nuclear, should encourage the ‘sinner’ Kerry and do as they do in Heaven, rejoice at the his repentance.
This may actually be the speech that either destroys Kerry, by getting him a ‘How Dare You’ from St Greta. Or, it is the speech that finally points the Greens in an energy policy direction that works.
Either way, a win for common sense and realists.
Rod, Agree. We need to support Kerry for his awakening. There, I said it. Never thought I would ever agree with Kerry about anything ever, but he’s the best thing we have going for us Realists in the current Administration. Blow The Trumpets!
Let’s not forget that through all this jabber that CO2 does not control the weather
If people like Kerry really want to use the WW2 metaphor then it needs to be pointed out that the ‘West’ is currently tackling the big CO2 producers in a way that would be similar to fighting Germany by glaring harshly at Franco’s Spain while also simultaneously arresting everyone in England and American who have ever eaten mettwurst.
You really honestly believe CO2 behaves the way you claim then you need to deal with China.
May Contain,
China needs to keep producing the energy intensive products every modern society requires. Shaming them for providing what we in The West are too dumb or lazy to do is without merit. The liberal/progressive/democrat business model that saves energy and reduces emissions by transferring manufacturing to China leaves us with under employment, lack of tax base and an increasing National Debt. China gets jobs, tax base and profits, we get made in China virtue signaling flags to wave;
We need nuclear, not because of CO2 (plant food), but as an alternative to wind and solar for the low information voters who are convinced it’s a “catastrophic anthropogenic existential climate crisis”. Wasting hundreds of $billions on wind and solar is destroying our economy..
“Net zero, build back better, just transition, decarbonization, great reset,” are all code phrases calling for the destruction of society as we now know it.
Somehow they hope to imply that you will be better off surrounded by a smoking ruin.
All the while they pretend that it is change they are trying to prevent.
They pretend that the imagined threat of a tiny increase in the planet’s temperature is a worse threat to you and civilization than what they propose.
Of course, there will be winners. Otherwise the push would falter to nothing. You can be certain that the winners will not be us poor peasants but rather those that already control the vast majority of the world’s wealth.
There are very good indications that increased CO2 and some warming of the planet will be beneficial to most of us and perhaps even the natural world. There is no chance at all that this so called war will benefit or protect the vast majority of us. We can only be hurt. In fact, it would appear that we are actually the target of attack.
Don’t pay much attention to what pompous fools say. The real stuff is never discussed in public. That’s why they have to fly their jets to Davos instead of a Zoom meeting.
Funny that John Kerry didn’t talk about organizing like the Vietnam war instead, you know, the one he fought in.
I think “appeared in for a while” is more correct than “fought in.”
Was your point that politicians screwed it up? 😎
No matter he says, this is what he wants for the US to solve a nonproblem.
https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/this-day-history-jan-18-1943-government-bans-sliced-bread-wwii-rationing
john ketchup kerry’s golden goose , heinz , produces somewhere north of 1 billion tons of co2 a year making ketchup .
pounds , not tons , sorry
Hasn’t this grifter made enough money out of this scam yet ?
For the 3rd time in the past month- this site didn’t automatically log me in. Any idea what the problem is?
So, regarding Kerry, my former state Senator here in Wokeachusetts- I’ll start to take him seriously when he lowers his standard of living to the average American.
A wild guess.
I use a PC and run privacy/security stuff that will clean out my cookies. Even if I told a site to remember me or keep me logged on, once the the sites cookies are removed, it doesn’t.
I don’t know what the equivalent of “cookies” are on a cell phone or where they might be stored.
If you run such a program periodically, that would do it.
Most such programs allow you exempt certain cookies from the cleaning (if you can figure out which cookies go with the sites you want to keep).
Am I the only person who recognises that people like John Kerry, Klaus Schwab and all those other nutcases seen at climate conferences and WEF meetings at Davos are totally delusional? They live in a mixed up world of make believe.