Whoever turns out to be right on the subject of climate change (and, for what it’s worth, I hope against hope it’s the defiant “skeptics”), what’s with the gloating from people like tim Blair?
Sweet, sweet misery from George Monbiot:
There is no point in denying it: we’re losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease.
Talk about schadenfreude. Talk about revelling in something for no reason other than it makes your perceived enemies unhappy.
And the thing is, there’s no rational basis I can see for tim’s staggering faith in the impossibility of industrial activity at all affecting what he apparently optimistically believes is our magically impervious atmosphere – certainly not to the level of laughing derisively at those who’ve studied the issue and expressed concern. Like me, and probably you, Blair is not an expert in climate or weather systems or chemistry or in fact any sort of science whatsoever. He’s got no ability to debate the specifics, so it’s bizarre that he feels he has to personalise the different sides of the debate.
Although, that probably explains the cheerleading.
I can understand being joyful if Monbiot turns out to be wrong – I’d be celebrating too. But that’s not the same as him merely losing political support.
Tim’s aware of what a pyrrhic victory is, right?
77 Comments
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Chistery
Nice try, but that sort of argument really isn’t going to get you anywhere, yes nature works (or should work) as a balanced closed system, unfortunatly we came along and we have invented ways of unbalancing the system, thats the whole F&(KING point!
“THE key, is energy efficiency.”
Hear hear…
Surely, Chistery, you understand that the CO2 that is a problem was CO2 that was being inhaled and exhaled millions of years ago, was out of circulation until we dug it up and burnt it?
I am amused to note that all the obfuscators are staying silent on the fact that the Danish Government which is driving the Copenhagen agreement is a Right wing Government. Or are Danish rightwingers really lefties?
The real problem, Jeremy, is “What do we do while we wait for one side or the other to be proved right or wrong?”
Are you quite sure you can muster the equanimity to sit still while the scientific evidence for AGW piles up, and the evidence against it continually proves to be non-evidence at best, or outright lying at worst? I’m afraid “hoping the skeptics are right” reads like a bit of a cop-out.
“Or are Danish rightwingers really lefties?”
Anyone left of John Howard or Andrew Bolt is considered a Lefty by the wing nuts, as are Obama and Rudd who are both definitely right of centre.
Chistery,
#42: The court case is fairly irrelevant. And anyway, I’m not claiming that “climate skepticism is a religion”. My point is that those who loudly accuse us of being religious are usually the ones who are unable to argue on logical or scientific grounds.
BTW, on another thread you made the claim that 1934 had replaced 1998 as the hottest year on record after an error correction. I pointed out that this was only for the US, not worldwide. Did you see that?
#49: “We breath in O2 and exhale C02. Plants breath in C02 and exhale O2. Nice circle.”
Then add: “We dig up fossil fuels which have been underground for millions of years and burn them, releasing large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere”. What happens than? Plants can only take in the excess if CO2 is the only factor limiting their growth.
I am tempted to respond to some foolishness about clear life giving C02 but people who think that clearly “exists in a sphere which cannot be reached by evidence or reasoned argument” so whats the point?
Most real people understand that too high a concentration of clear life giving C02 can kill higher order mammals and has a nasty acidifying effect upon water. I wish the sceptics would test these “theory’s” on themselves.
#54
Surly,
The ultimate in obfuscation is the ETS. No ordinary citizen understands how it will work or what it will cost. I bet our government doesn’t either. Charging more for stuff so that people will use less is a great way to stick it to the poor people and run an economy into the ground. Big polluters are being compensated for their pollution or buying credits from the suckers that install solar panels. Who can accurately forecast our carbon output 5 or 10 years after inception?
If I’m going along for the ride because, hey, that’s democracy, then sign me up for rolling programme to replace coal with nuclear. Build a nuclear energy capability here and call it ‘green jobs’. At least there are demonstrable carbon reductions, it’s currently the only viable zero emission base load power source, you can more accurately estimate when you will reach your target and the cost of doing so, and it wouldn’t require a bloated bureaucracy and a million lawyers to administer. None of which is possible with the ETS.
#58
>Most real people understand that too high a concentration of clear life giving C02 can kill higher order mammals. I wish the sceptics would test these “theory’s” on themselves.
As it so happens I already have and call ‘bullshit’ on your assertion.
What concentration of C02 in the atmosphere would cause mammal death to happen? We are at 387ppm now. I am pretty sure that when I’ve gone to bed with the doors and windows shut, I still wake up in the morning and the C02 concentrations are much much higher than the global warming argument considers.
Lets check Wiki..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide
“Amounts above 5,000 ppm are considered very unhealthy, and those above about 50,000 ppm (equal to 5% by volume) are considered dangerous to animal life.[4]”
So are we talking about a 12,900% increase in C02?
Also
“Plants can grow up to 50 percent faster in concentrations of 1,000 ppm CO2 when compared with ambient conditions”
I can quote wikipedia too…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system
Another point about tim and AGW shadenfruede, for weeks he’s been telling his readers that the coaltion’s poor polling is because of Turnbull’s willingness to negotiate with the government over the CPRS bill. He’s practically been gloating about Turnbull’s approval numbers, and begging for some AGW denialist to take the leadership.
Now we have a newspoll that comes on the back of 2 solid weeks of nothing in the media but asylum seekers and the Oceanic Viking debacle that shows a sharp decline in labor’s primary vote, and corresponding same jump in pirmary for the libs. Suddenly tim’s predictions about the Liberals fortunes in coming to the party on the ETS seems more prophecy than psephology.
Chistery
@59
So what you are saying is that the ETS is just like the GST a tax for the poor? I thought you righties like that. In fact an ETS would hit the richer parts of society hardest because they use more energy, not many poor people have AirCon in a MacMansion.
For the last time nuclear is not a viable solution, even howard had to admit that, it is expensive, short term and has risks associated which are unacceptable.
What we need to do is change the building code so new houses are built with regard to the environment. Builders who build houses with no eaves and therefor require constant energy input should be locked up.
There are a huge range of simple steps which could be made to reduce out energy need, and like water tanks they are incredibly effective.
The ETS is no an end in itself, it is the first step in changing the way we live and any one who can’t see the pressing need to change are obfuscating and no amount of graphs waved about are going to change the facts.
Chistery
Posted November 5, 2009 at 2:28 pm
#9
>If you look at nature, practically everything in nature is a circle.
True. We breath in O2 and exhale C02. Plants breath in C02 and exhale O2. Nice circle.
What Chistery left (sorry, that’s a rooly naughty word) left of his equation was the other word, ‘jerk’.
He said he had tried to set up a carbon management system for the company, but was unable to work out its carbon footprint because staff had refused to give him the necessary data.
Mr Nicholson also accused the chief executive, Rupert Dickinson, of showing “contempt” for his concerns and claimed he once flew a member of staff to Ireland to deliver his Blackberry which he had left in London.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/oxfordshire/8339652.stm
It’s the managers who are the religious fanatics in this case. They are worshiping at the altar of The Almighty Dollar. Wasting resources is the new sacrament.
Chistery –
referring to nuclear power you said “ …it’s currently the only viable zero emission base load power source.. “ in California they have been using geothermal power for more than 40 years if you don’t believe me click on the link http://www.energy.ca.gov/geothermal/
Australia has very large reserves of potential geothermal power it would be the perfect zero emissions base load power.
I just lost a huge post debunking a lot of the supposedly environmental friendly aspects to nuclear power championed by nuclear power lobbyists like Brook so I’ll provide a quite basic link for people to look at and if you still think NP is even remotely environmentally friendly I suggest typing “environmental concerns questions nuclear power” into Google. There is no need for enemies when the climate change/environmental movements have friends like Brook & Clive Hamilton.
http://www.answerbag.com/articles/How-Does-Nuclear-Energy-Affect-the-Environment/5d01e826-9bba-a988-d7a2-62ec44b3da6f
The main reasons why nuclear power won’t be an option in our lifetimes aside from the environmental (I’m not going to pretend governments give a shit about the environment) are their lack of efficiency and the big one, cost. Nuclear power plants are not economically viable.
Bertus, Surlysimon:
I don’t know why there isn’t a huge rush to implement it but I can take a wild guess and say that an energy source that could be run on material currently considered radioactive waste for hundreds of years is not a friend of the current energy heavyweights…and we all know how much political sway they hold! It’s not even going to be a friend of the uranium miners, who I’m sure would much prefer that reactors continued to need fresh shipments of uranium. I agree that it is an important question and indeed when I have more time (post exams) I’ll probably ask for clarification on Barry’s understanding of it via his blog (which he tends to respond to pretty quickly from what I’ve seen).
On the issue of proliferation, he claims that an IFR is not capable of producing weapons grade plutonium, meaning that in order to a country would need an obviously purpose built reactor.
I don’t think anyone disagrees that energy efficiency is of vital importance in the effort to reduce emissions, least of all Barry Brook, who is strongly in favour of Australia pursuing both that and renewable technologies. The difference is in the belief that these measures will be sufficient for the whole world in a time where electricity demand is increasing exponentially and will continue to do so if we are to adopt technologies such as the electric car. The is some quite detailed analysis of the merits and deficiencies of various renewable technologies on his site and once again I encourage every one to check them out.
Big Val:
I’m not sure if your post was going to be substantially different from the info at the link but I can assure that it has very little relevance to the kind of nuclear energy being proposed by Barry Brook. Once again I feel the need to ask, have you read any of the article on his page (bravenewclimate.com/integral-fast-reactor-ifr-nuclear-power/)?
I’m so obviously not an expert but I’ll try to briefly explain how some of the points on that page are disputed by Prof Brook:
1. What is important in the analysis of the carbon cycle an energy source is not just the amount of co2 emitted in it’s construction and life cycle but the ratio of co2 emitted to energy produced. If you analyse the amount of energy produced by a windfarm in it’s lifetime to the amount of energy expended in creating it may not end up looking so great. Check out this interview he did for a much better explanation: http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/10/07/backstory-barry-brook-on-4th-generation-nuclear-power/
2. On dangers of radiation see here for an interesting discussion: http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/09/19/radiation-facts-fallacies-and-phobias/
3. The issue of radioactive waste is probably the biggest concern for me and the reason I felt so strongly against nuclear in the past. How selfish must we be to reap the benefits of nulcear energy for a few short years only to leave the burden of radioactive waste to future generations for thousands of years!…However, the exciting thing about the 4th Gen nuclear being proposed by Barry and others is that these reactors will actually consume the vast majority of waste that currently exists! And what waste they do leave will have a half life of a few hundred years as opposed to multiple thousands.
4. The IFRs are cooled with liquid Sodium
etc etc etc
I do not claim to be any kind of expert on this at all. My intention in posting these refutations is to prompt you to go to the source and do your own research. I do not consider myself sold on the idea of 4th gen nuclear but it really adds nothing to the debate to have people parrot arguments that apply to the gen 2 light water reactors we built 40 years. What strikes me most about this and the reason I am bothering to waste so much time writing about it is that, if it the potential this technology holds turns out to be true, and I’m not saying it is or will be, but if it is, environmentalists need to get educated and get behind it urgently.
Sorry for coming late to the party, I’m also very excited by what I’ve read about 4th generation nuclear reactors. My personal fear is that we will start to feel the consequences of Peak Oil and climate change at around the same time, effectively taking our current fossil fuel mix out of the energy equation all at once. In this scenario we’re going to need to find a way to move to a low emissions way of producing a lot more electricity than we previously dreamed of, and I think that nuclear will have to be a part of that.
Arlen@68
Can you give us some ideas about the cost of decommissioning 4th gen reactors? One assumes that when the brave new world of 5th gen reactors is being proposed, someone will have to mop up the wreckage of the 4th gen ones as they are doing with the current obsolete reactors in the UK. One also assumes that, as with all these glistening new technologies, the cost of decommission is (a) a damn sight more than the industry officially quotes, and (b) never factored in to the plans the average nuclear blogfan trots out as “proof” that nuclear is worthwhile.
Arlen
Saying that IFR isn’t being developed because of some sort of conspiricy by the “energy cartels” is a crock. If IFR was as good as it’s painted by some then it would be hard to kill, first it would offer current nuclear operators a way to reuse waste rather than find expensive ways to store it, so why would they oppose it? As for the miners surely it would mean the market for uranium would become bigger and if it is as safe as you suggest then it would make mining uranium more attractive to the poulation in general. So don’t try the conspiricy line because it doesn’t work.
And you mention the Sodium cooling, lets remember that this is because these reactors operate at very high tempratures which means that the chance of a melt down is that much greater, and the cost of building enclosures and cooling systems are going to be much greater as well.
A further question is how long will it take to develop this technology, refine the fuel and build the plant? Do we have that long?
The horrible truth for us all is there are no simple solutions out there to allow us to keep using energy in the way we have been. Our only hope is to develop sustanable power sources and more importantly to reduce our base load requirements, it’s not hard.
Yes, the IFR research programme was killed in 1994 for silly and false political reasons, but the question of why it’s not being built now is a good one. It’s not due to any grand conspiracy.
Currently, it’s about economics and economic risk. If we are going to make it through the current and looming energy crunch then fuel recycling and breeding must be economic at some point, just as offshore oil has become economic now that the most easily accessible onshore oil has been tapped.
Recycling and breeding are at the heart of what I like to call ’sustainable nuclear’ — the millennial-scale energy supply. What’s stopping it now? Uranium is cheap and folks are happy to defer decisions on spend fuel disposal by keeping it on site at the reactors, so it certainly is largely economics. If pyroprocessing (electrorefining) is expensive, it doesn’t mean pyro won’t happen. It simply means the decision on when to go for breeders is deferred until it’s cheaper than once-through. The alternative, renewable energy — wind, water and sunlight — are not and cannot ever be economically competitive or logistically feasible as a means of supplying 100% of our power (perhaps 15-20% is closer), even if pyro was as expensive as PUREX (the current method for chemical recycling of plutonium). However, if pyro can be demonstrated to be cheap(ish), then we have a great chance to hasten the commercial deployment of fast reactors.
Response to 2 further questions:
“And you mention the Sodium cooling, lets remember that this is because these reactors operate at very high tempratures which means that the chance of a melt down is that much greater, and the cost of building enclosures and cooling systems are going to be much greater as well.”
Sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs) operate at about 550C, which is the temperature of supercritical coal burners. But you haven’t understood the issue with temperature. The only way a reactor fuel can ‘melt down’ in an SFR is if the coolant is lost (either by a vessel rupture or because it boils). Yet because they operate at atmospheric pressure rather than at 3000 psi like a pressurised light water reactor, the rupturing is not a credible issue. Nor is boiling – as the temperature climbs, the metal fuel expands and the reactor loses criticality, well before the boiling point of Na (883C) is reached.
surlysimon, before you theorise further I suggest you educate yourself on the matter.
“A further question is how long will it take to develop this technology, refine the fuel and build the plant? Do we have that long?”
Time to refine the fuel is irrelevant, it is a matter of days, but time to get the first commercial IFR operational is. If built in the US, 10 years perhaps. If built in China or Russia, 5 years. From them on, they could be built quickly. More details on my blog, http://bravenewclimate.com
Chistery (60): Also “Plants can grow up to 50 percent faster in concentrations of 1,000 ppm CO2 when compared with ambient conditions”
Oddly, in your quote above you forgot the rest of the para to which that sentence belongs – I’m sure it must’ve accidentally fallen off, because to deliberately leave it out would be quote-mining and I’m sure you’d never think of doing that.
Quote: “Plants can grow up to 50 percent faster in concentrations of 1,000 ppm CO2 when compared with ambient conditions, though this assumes no change in climate and no limitation on other nutrients. Some people (for example David Bellamy) believe that as the concentration of CO2 rises in the atmosphere that it will lead to faster plant growth and therefore increase food production. Such views are too simplistic; studies have shown that increased CO2 leads to fewer stomata developing on plants which leads to reduced water usage. Studies using FACE have shown that increases in CO2 lead to decreased concentration of micronutrients in crop plants. This may have knock-on effects on other parts of ecosystems as herbivores will need to eat more food to gain the same amount of protein.” (emphases mine).
Note the above applies to greenhouse trials conducted mostly on crop species, or in the few FACE experiments so far conducted, on a few selected tree species. The effects of alterations to the C:N ratio in plant tissues and soils in complex ecosystems remain largely unknown. Ecosystems are complex non-linear systems characterized by flows (nutrients, water, energy) which themselves are non-linear (and in many cases largely poorly known and poorly studied).
Anyone who claims to be able to predict an effect Y as a result of an extrapolation of an increase in parameter X is spouting simplistic specious shite, and that this CO2 fertilisation effect “fact” is nearly always quoted on denialist blogs and by wilfully ignorant “trollumnists” is statistically significant…
Barry
Thank you I take your point on cooling. I still have the same reservations with regard to saftey, there is still the matter of sodium coming into contact with water, and at some point the pipe work carrying sodium has to pass through water to create steam?
You say it would take 5-10 years to develop an IFR in countries who have nuclear plant, but here we are starting from scratch so surely the time frame is going to be much longer? And what is the cost likely to be in comparison to current technology?
The bigger question is as to wether we simply try to find replacments for our current energy supplies and continue to use energy in such a profligate way, or do we accept that the model we have for energy makes absolutly no sense. If we want to cut CO2 without increasing cost exponetialy we need to act at the consumer level. If you can show people how they can spend a little extra up front to save long term you will draw them in and the change becomes much easier.
By and large most people think water tanks on domestic houses are a good thing, this should be the model for energy change, even if it means using legislation or rationing energy.
hmm does sound a bit like I was suggesting a conspiracy theory…for the record that wasn’t my intention. What I was trying to say is that saying well, there’s no readily apparent reason for these not being pursued therefore I can only conclude they are no good, without even trying to find out for your self is a bit of a cop out. I mean, why aren’t we driving electric cars yet? Is it just economics? Practicality? Or something else? (not suggesting a conspiracy, I really don’t know)
monkeywrench
I am no nuclear power “blogfan”. I’ve made it clear that the information on Gen 4 nuclear is new to me and challenges much of my previous understanding of nuclear energy.
surlysimon
I think you’ll find that there’s some pretty detailed stuff about the economics of it over at Barry’s site.
I hope that the people who’ve raised questions here will take the time to have a look at the information available on bravenewclimate.com and ask some questions over there. It’s really too important to ignore.
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