I know I'm late to the party, but I was on the beach this weekend with a malfunctioning wireless broadband modem, and by the time I was ready to make fun of Al Gore, Andy Revkin had done it for me. Don't get me wrong, I think that Al Gore has a hobby. I just think it's a pity that hobby is making a fool of himself in public. His speech on global warming is full of misstatements, exaggerations, and outright untruths. What's worse is that I'm sure he believes every word of it.
I'll add only one thing to Revkin's critique, which is that Al Gore's program for energy is not merely costly, it's impossible. Electric power needs several different sources: baseload generation, and peak capacity generation. Alternative energy sources are iffy for this. Wind is not reliable, and the places where it is more reliable tend to be either rather far from where the power is needed, or smack in the middle of the view from Robert F. Kennedy's vacation home. Solar requires vast land area to work, which is its own sort of environmental problem, and again, the best sites tend to be in the middle of the Arizona desert, which means large new investments in transmission. To replace our current, mostly coal fired, fossil baseload generation would involve the construction of massive new nuclear capability. This is a) blocked by Al Gore's friends in the environmental movement b) going to get you into a nasty fight with Harry Reid and c) not feasible in a decade in the current regulatory environment. Forget the price. Where are you going to put hundreds of new nuclear plants?
I understand the strategic value of setting bold goals. But when bold passes into lunatic, I think most sensible people just stop listening.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Also, for what it's worth, there's currently only one factory in the world (!), in Japan, that can cast the gigantic steel domes used as the inner shell in current reactor designs - I understand they're already booked for the next several years.
(And yes, you could build more casting plants, or go to new designs, but half your decade is gone already at that point.)
And the Dems go right to work demonstrating why they won't be any better at governing the country than the Republicans have been...
Thank you for stating the obvious. Too many are too willing to make him a God (Peace prize, Oscar) just because he went one step further than recognizing the problem. To me his policy is of the 60s' Peace Movement caliber; Of course everyone agrees with the existence of a potential problem; you just can't get there from here without a realistic plan. In the sixties, we all expected everyone to drop our arms and pick up a daisy and hug somebody. Fine, if everyone agrees to do it simultaneously.
Yes, Megan, but he cares. A lot. And it's that that keeps him oh so fashionable among the self-congratulatory limousine liberal set. It doesn't matter how wrong he is, or how self-contradictory his behavior is.
Global warming has the lead spokesperson it deserves. Because whether or not the problem is real, whether or not the problem is a big one or a small one, it's mostly about showing you care, rather than actually caring. Expressing the desire to do something meaningful, rather than actually doing something meaningful. From governments on down to activists.
Alternatively, from the Oil Drum blog here (with, like, facts and figures and science-type stuff missing from Megan's post):
The short answer is: while 100% is probably unrealistic, it's not unreasonable to expect to be able to get pretty close to that number (say, in the 50-90% range) in that timeframe, and it is very likely that it makes a LOT of sense economically.
The author asserts he is an investment banker for the energy sector.
But when bold passes into lunatic, I think most sensible people just stop listening.
Megan, as it related to the environmental movement, I think we passed that point long ago.
Wouldn't we also need massive breakthroughs in battery technology to store that energy for when it wasn't sunny or windy?
That leaves the questions of whether any of our policy makers are sensible people, and if sensible, whether or not they give a hoot about the rest of us.
@Bergamot
Wouldn't we also need massive breakthroughs in battery technology..
IIRC, one way that's proposed (may be in use) is to pump water uphill into reservoirs in daytime, and run it out through turbines at night.
Unfortunately, most people, sensible or not, don't know enough about this to appreciate his plan's lunacy.
Wouldn't we also need massive breakthroughs in battery technology to store that energy for when it wasn't sunny or windy?
I've got a better idea. We'll spend the money on buying every American a pony that eats nuclear waste and pisses crude oil. Where's my Nobel Prize?
Here is Revkin on Gore since Megan forgot to link to it.
The short answer is: while 100% is probably unrealistic, it's not unreasonable to expect to be able to get pretty close to that number (say, in the 50-90% range) in that timeframe, and it is very likely that it makes a LOT of sense economically.
The author asserts he is an investment banker for the energy sector.
Ah yes, an investment banker. The ones who conjured up all these financial instruments that have worked so well of late. I have worked with investment banker creations for 20 years, often picking up the pieces long after the bankers have taken their fee and moved on. They are frequently wrong, rarely in doubt, and never without fancy charts and power point presentations to dazzle us with their brilliance.
The point is not whether some I banker can come up with a way to finance a plan like this (an investment banker will always find a way and an economic rationale to justify it ... for a fee) but whether the plan will actually work from an engineering standpoint, or whether the current environmental insanity (find more energy but don't build anything that generates energy or drill anywhere to find it!)will permit such a plan to even get off the ground.
I am not convinced the regulatory approvals could be obtained, the lawsuits litigated through the appeals process and the permits granted in 10 years.
Not sure if you do edits but I think you left some words out of this sentence: "Don't get me wrong, I think that Al Gore has a hobby."
Perhaps you meant that you think it's great that Al Gore has a hobby? Because right now you're just saying you think he has a hobby. Which he probably does.
I'm guessing it's life-size model railroading, judging by the size of his home power consumption.
Al Gorer, I would like to present you with that prize.
Alternatively, we could just mandate that Detroit make cars that use those ponies as engines. Problem solved.
So let me get this straight. Drilling on a small amount of square footage across thousands of acres, in a freezing area of the country, where the supreme court wouldn't even let us send prisoners as it would be labled cruel and unusual punishment, is out of the question.
But we should cover the landscape with bird killing windmills in places where humans want to live. Cover thousands of acres of landscape in bright sunny climates with solar panels. Or build more nuclear plants which produces the deadliest by product of any energy source, that we're not able to store effectively because (depending on who you believe) we can't store it safely or the place where you want to store it is loaded with people who don't want it there.
Hmmmm.... Drilling off the coastline, far beyond the line of site or drilling in the middle of nowhere in a place pretty much no one has ever been to seem like pretty intelligent alternatives to me.
Thanks, yancey, I was looking for that.
Megan, what makes you talk about Obama's ideal VP candidate like that. Where is your interest in a democratic and moral victory!!!
I am not convinced the regulatory approvals could be obtained, the lawsuits litigated through the appeals process and the permits granted in 10 years.
It's never too late to poke fun at Al Gore - the Greenhouse Gashog! http://americandreamcoalition.org/adcblog2/?p=714
Sam:
How is Yucca Mountain in anyone's backyard? Seems to me that NIMBYism shouldn't be allowed to work there. BTW geologically speaking the Southwest has lots of such mountains for safe storage of nuclear waste.
I am not convinced the regulatory approvals could be obtained, the lawsuits litigated through the appeals process and the permits granted in 10 years.
I know Gore-bashing is your favorite hobby, Megan, but whether you think his vision is feasible or not, you should be a fan of his rhyming Pigou Club slogan: "Tax what we burn, not what we earn."
"IIRC, one way that's proposed (may be in use) is to pump water uphill into reservoirs in daytime, and run it out through turbines at night."
You may have just mis-typed but the way pumped storage is used is to pump at night and run during the day. There is much higher demand during the day.
Besides its highly inefficient anyway. I used to work for a company that owned a pumped storage facility and you only got about 60% of the power that you pumped up hill back when you ran the water the other way.
And there is not enough potential hydro capacity for most of it has already been tapped and is in use. The rest is either un usable or off limits for environmental reasons (Salmon and all).
Anythihg over about 10-15% for wind power is a total joke and solar is even worse. Just getting to 20% renewable (not including the 10% from hydro) would be a huge acheivment unless you count burning wood, grass, hog waste, and trash. But those sources are not exactly environmentally friendly. Curently evern with subsidies wind power represents less than 1% of total US generation.
re: the oildrum's blogpost.
I see two major problems with his numbers.
One, he assumes approximately a 28% capacity replacement rate. That is, 1 Watt of wind capacity can replace .28 Watts of conventional capacity. This 4:1 ratio is required because the wind doesn't blow constantly, so any given wind farm can only produce 28% (in this case) of its rated capacity in the long term. The super-duper electric grid does not change this fact, it just means that it doesn't matter which 28% of the time your local wind farm happens to be generating.
I believe this number (28%) is ridiculously high. Germany, the world leader in installed wind power (in 2004), gets slightly better than 8% (in 2003), and predicts that as their system expands, they will be getting 4%. That would imply that oildrum's cost and capacity numbers are anywhere from 1/4 to 1/7 or more of the required amounts. When 100-150 billion becomes something between $400 billion and $1 trillion annually, that's a huge economic problem.
Oildrum also implies that you can mitigate this problem somewhat by keeping the current plant capacity 'in reserve', only turning the plants on when necessary. I'm an engineer, but not a power engineer, but I know that one cannot turn a coal-fired power plant on and off as if it were a light switch. I don't know how difficult and detailed shut-down and start-up procedures are, but I imagine they are quite onerous. (if someone with better knowledge wants to correct me, please do so).
German wind power generation data comes from here by way of the coyote blog.
Tax what we burn, not what we earn
...Which, by itself, is regressive. Replacing the income tax with carbon taxes is unmitigated stupidity. By design either you have a rapidly escalating tax on carbon emission energy or decreasing revenue. If you go for the former, you're strangling the life out of the poor, if you rely on the former, you're strangling the life out of the budget.
IIRC, one way that's proposed (may be in use) is to pump water uphill into reservoirs in daytime, and run it out through turbines at night.
As ecodog points out, this is also stupidity and ignorance. There aren't anywhere near enough places to store the pumped water.
Just think about it. Look at the Hoover dam, it generates only 2 GW from the differential created by lake Meade. You are right, pumped storage is used, but there are only so many places you can put lakes of sufficient size. We already use a lot of them.
This is the fatal flaw of the majority of renewable energy solutions: scalability. Wishful-thinking doesn't make it disappear.
Tax what we burn, not what we earn
...Which, by itself, is regressive. Replacing the income tax with carbon taxes is unmitigated stupidity. By design either you have a rapidly escalating tax on carbon emission energy or decreasing revenue. If you go for the former, you're strangling the life out of the poor, if you rely on the former, you're strangling the life out of the budget.
IIRC, one way that's proposed (may be in use) is to pump water uphill into reservoirs in daytime, and run it out through turbines at night.
As ecodog points out, this is also stupidity and ignorance. There aren't anywhere near enough places to store the pumped water.
Just think about it. Look at the Hoover dam, it generates only 2 GW from the differential created by lake Meade. You are right, pumped storage is used, but there are only so many places you can put lakes of sufficient size. We already use a lot of them.
This is the fatal flaw of the majority of renewable energy solutions: scalability. Wishful-thinking doesn't make it disappear.
I can't help but wonder what "Jane Galt" said about Gore's position on the Iraq Invasion and Bush's tax cuts. She's come around since then. Was Gore right all along? Was "Galt" making a fool of herself? Yes and yes. Will history repeat itself?
Megan, I'm not sure what your argument is here. I read Revkin's annotations, and they mostly seem pretty inconsequential and/or trivial.
Like, ok, maybe it's unrealistic to think we can completely replace all carbon-emitting sources of power generation by 2020. But it's obviously a worthy goal (despite the tenor of Revkin's comments, and most of those here). And pretty much nobody with any scientific credibility disagrees with that.
Maybe Gore does exaggerate slightly about certain dangers (I say "maybe" because I'm not an expert and have no desire to delve into the Talmudic readings necessary to become one for this post). But again, um, who the hell cares?
If the choice is between a regime that actively and aggressively obstructs pretty much every attempt to achieve a sensible energy profile, and one that aims for the ideal profile, how is that even a debate? All the nitpicking and sniping does is distract from the real issue at hand, which I doubt you really disagree with.
It basically comes off as petty and small. You, and most of your commenters, are smarter than you appear in this post.
Abe:
Bravo!!
Just getting to 20% renewable (not including the 10% from hydro) would be a huge acheivment
And would probably result in some pretty serious grid instability as peaking plants struggled to keep up with the oscillations caused by the interaction of daily usage variation and the less-predictable variation in renewable output. Aside from which, you still need 100% redundancy unless the population at large is willing tolerate rolling blackouts in the event of renewable failure.
Absent efficient storage with very short cycle times, we can't allow renewables to rise too much above the noise in the system.
Kind of reminds me of when someone asked Will Rogers what to do about the U-boat menace during World War I. He said, “Boil the oceans. That’ll force all the subs to the surface.” Asked just exactly how to boil oceans, Rogers dismissed the question as mere detail.
Like, ok, maybe it's unrealistic to think we can completely replace all carbon-emitting sources of power generation by 2020. But it's obviously a worthy goal
You mock Megan's approach, but you argue like this?
You're literally saying "Hey, who cares if we can actually do it, it's a good thing." That's completely backwards. There are innumerable "worthy goals." The only useful question is whether or not we can actually attain them.
The attitude that a "worthy goal" is more important than reality is disasterous. The only reason we avoid disaster is because such attitudes and opinions are completely ignored. Your determination of practicality is the desirability of dreams. That's folly.
The fact that you dismiss those who try to inject reality into the discussion, such as revkin and megan, as the ones who are "inconsequential," "petty," and "trivial" is surreal.
Oh man, this deserves a comment as well.
If the choice is between a regime that actively and aggressively obstructs pretty much every attempt to achieve a sensible energy profile, and one that aims for the ideal profile, how is that even a debate? All the nitpicking and sniping does is distract from the real issue at hand, which I doubt you really disagree with.
Which choice is this? The one you got from "Strawmans 'R Us?"
Because what "regime" are you referring to? Bush's? That choice is almost 4 years past man, and it was before Gore anointed himself as GW's premier prophet. This "choice" of yours is completely fictitious and an obvious strawman.
I've notice that, for all your dismissal of nitpicking, you haven't responded on any level when it comes to discussions of physics and engineering or even economics and legality. You simply ignore all that. It seems that real dialogue about real things is trivial and inconsequential when compared to misleading rhetoric and big dreams.
Gore keeps saying "listen to Scientists." Well, ok. I charge him to listen to the engineers.
I read Revkin's annotations; he's not making fun of Al Gore. I think, he basically agrees with Al, but thinks the problems are harder to solve than Al says and quibbles with some of Al's statements.
You, on the other hand, write, "Electric power needs several different sources: baseload generation, and peak capacity generation," which is just nonsense. What, were you so eager to trash Al Gore that you didn't take the time to proof read your sentences for meaning?
And you settle for the standard do nothing answer because the Democrats won't let you do what you want even though, you suggest, there is nothing effective to be done.
Climate change, peak oil, destroyed fisheries, destroyed forests, droughts are serious issues to one extent or another. Serious people can disagree about these issues and their solutions.
And, yes, I know it's tough to be a libertarian when faced with these difficult issues that seem to demand collective action if they are ever to be resolved. But making fun of Al Gore, a man who has accomplished more than most of us can even dream, is no substitute for real analysis and debate.
In retrospect, Mr. Gore would have been a better president than Mr. Bush, though, I admit, I did not vote for Gore in 2000. The bright side is that the opposition to Mr. Gore's ideas is much weaker today after our eight years of experience with the Bush administration, whose only skill appears to be not opening emails.
You, on the other hand, write, "Electric power needs several different sources: baseload generation, and peak capacity generation," which is just nonsense. What, were you so eager to trash Al Gore that you didn't take the time to proof read your sentences for meaning?
Wow. If you don't understand even the barest basics of electricity generation, lxm, you probably should be a little more careful before accusing other people of spewing nonsense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseload
You call for "real analysis and debate" but you don't know enough about the subject to understand it when it's right in front of your face.
Like I said, these apologies for Al Gore would be a lot more effective if the people making them actually understood the critiques.
On the issues of peak energy useage, some musings:
An old engineer told me during the great Midwestern power outage that those huge generators take days to bring up to speed. Purely anecdote, you might want to research it yourself, but the sentiment that they cannot just be turned on and off seems true.
As far as using water pumps to store energy, it is already being done:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludington_Pumped_Storage_Power_Plant
Again, goes with that peak usage stuff etc etc etc. More of these might be useful? Who knows, I'm not expert.
But it's obviously a worthy goal (despite the tenor of Revkin's comments, and most of those here). And pretty much nobody with any scientific credibility disagrees with that.
What on earth does scientific credibility have to do with deciding what is or is not a worthy goal?
"An old engineer told me during the great Midwestern power outage that those huge generators take days to bring up to speed. Purely anecdote, you might want to research it yourself, but the sentiment that they cannot just be turned on and off seems true."
Yes they do. You don't just throw a bunch of coal in a furnace and light a match. The furnaces have to be brought up to tempature. It takes a while. I don't know about days, but it is not like flipping a switch.
"An old engineer told me during the great Midwestern power outage that those huge generators take days to bring up to speed. Purely anecdote, you might want to research it yourself, but the sentiment that they cannot just be turned on and off seems true."
Yes they do. You don't just throw a bunch of coal in a furnace and light a match. The furnaces have to be brought up to tempature. It takes a while. I don't know about days, but it is not like flipping a switch.
While it is true that coal and particularly nuclear plants are very slow (days) to bring on and off line. There are natural gas plants that can be started and stoped very quickly and can be ramped up and down within a certain range within seconds.
These plants however tend to be the most polluting type of natural gas plant. The trade off is efficiency for flexibility.
Regardless, the intermitency of wind is a huge problem and it will never be able to serve as a base load power source.
"An old engineer told me during the great Midwestern power outage that those huge generators take days to bring up to speed. Purely anecdote, you might want to research it yourself, but the sentiment that they cannot just be turned on and off seems true."
Yes they do. You don't just throw a bunch of coal in a furnace and light a match. The furnaces have to be brought up to tempature. It takes a while. I don't know about days, but it is not like flipping a switch.
I'm trying to nail down where we stand on this issue.
Are we saying that:
(a) The IPCC's findings are right. However, it's impossible to act on their recommendations becasue of the scale of the changes required.
...or...
(b) The IPCC's findings are wrong, and there's no need to undertake this.
We seem to be skirting the issue of necessity by attacking Gore's proposed solutions. That feels dishonest to me.
If it's critical that we change our energy model, but it's too late to do it, then let's just admit it.
The oil drum article points out that for the US currently, already 1 of 4 total TWh generated in the US is nuclear and hydro. That's 25% for a start.
If the US were to take up a challenge like this, part of the taking up that challenge would be changing the legal landscape in regard to regulations and law suits, so I think the 'it'll take 10 years just to get started' notion is somewhat unfair to the proposal.
In regard to 'peak demand' issues, technologies like solar tend to work in favor of that - peak demand is in the day, when solar is available. So it isn't all working against us.
Furthermore, using convention power at peak demand isn't about restarting a coal plant, it's about ramping a gas powered plant, at least that's what the link on the Oil Drum notes.
A grid manager in France, who didn't like wind (France is nuclear) said, "The second point is about wind's contribution to peak demand: despite wind's intermittency, wind farms reduce the need in thermal power plants to ensure the requisite level of supply security. One can speak of substituted capacity. The capacity substitution rate (ratio of thermal capacity replaced to installed wind capacity) is close to the average capacity factor of wind farms in winter (around 30%) for a small proportion of wind in the system (a few GW). It goes down as that proportion increases, but remains above 20% with around 15GW of wind power."
In regard to power storage, while pumping water into a reservoir might not be practical in any case, the point remains that there are many ways to store power that don't require batteries. You could simply heat water, for example, or make hydrogen and oxygen gas.
In regard to Germany's results with wind power vs. the Oil Drum posters projections, it is important to consider what the average wind speed is at the proposed wind site. In Germany, the capacity replacement rate of 8% will drop to 4% as the project expands presumably because they will be using less well suited sites for wind generation. Given the much greater area of the US and our diverse climates (desert, coastline, etc) I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that we've got some areas that are considerably more windy than tiny Germany. (For comparison, the US has 25 times the area and cover 17 degress of latitude vs. 6 degress for Germany.)
Also note that the report from France is a 30% substitution rate.
The department of energy has a very informative link: http://www.20percentwind.org/default.aspx
An old engineer told me during the great Midwestern power outage that those huge generators take days to bring up to speed. Purely anecdote, you might want to research it yourself, but the sentiment that they cannot just be turned on and off seems true.
Depends on the source. For coal or nuclear baseload, that sounds about right. For example, a typical coal-fired plant has to be brought up to full heat gradually to avoid stressing the boiler; each boiler's firehouse (up to three or four per site) is something like 150+ feet in height and suspended from the ceiling of the boiler room to allow for metal expansion, which is on the order of several feet between the steady-state cold and operational temperatures. Power output is usually in the range of 200-400MW per boiler depending on the age and physical size.
For peaking generation, turbines are typically used (basically a large jet engine, but designed to drive a generator rather than produce thrust). Each turbine may be anywhere up to around 70MW and designed to run on natural gas, fuel oil, or both, often with an intake water sprayer to humidify the intake charge and increase mass flow. There is no practical limit other than space and fuel availability for how many may be installed on a site. For the largest turbine generators, the preheat to full-load generation time is about ten minutes.
(b) The IPCC's findings are wrong.
Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have no effect on global temperature. Don't take my word for it, take the word of "the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector."
"I am shocked, shocked" that Al Gore would propose that the US take unilateral action to eliminate fossil fuel use. Where is the coalition?
Even eliminating US fossil fuel use in 10 years would not reduce global annual CO2 emissions, since China's emissions are increasing more rapidly than we would be reducing ours. Global emissions would be lower than they would have been if we hadn't stopped emitting, but still higher than they are now.
The only way to come close to Gore's goal in the US is to make a big investment in nuclear power.
You could probably replace the 50% of generation coal plants produce with nuclear plants. Right there you would cut your carbon emissions from the power sector by 60-70%. This would take a lot of time but probably could be done in 20 years.
Any unexploited hydro should also be used. But available sites are limited.
Nuclear plants are not well suited to cycle so you would still need gas plants for load following but combined cycle gas plants have a lower carbon footprint than coal so they would still be better.
Wind power could then be exploited where feasible to make up what it could.
To me this is the most reasonable plan for carbon reduction given available technologies. The problem is the hostility of some (not the majority) to nuclear power.
As someone with an engineering degree, I think Gore's plan is feasible only if:
- you junk environmental impact processes
- give the power companies eminent domain ability that makes the Kelo case look like a fight over a crack house
- throw huge amounts of money into expanding production of solar cells, wind turbines and the like
- accept a huge toxic waste problem (mass production of highly efficient solar cells will have lots of nasty byproducts, they tend to use a lot of toxic rare earth metals.)
There are also a few technical issues:
- the best places for solar and wind power are mostly not located near the demand areas. Despite much research into high temperature semiconductors, there aren't any available to be used for power transmission. And the line losses in lines from Az to NY would be .... large.
- solar systems are about a factor of four away in cost and a factor of two away in efficiency before they can be cost effective. Wind has similar problems.
- much of the wind power potential is available in winter, when demand is lower. Most is offshore, so take the NIMBY problems of Cape Cod and spread them along most of the US coastline. And there are problems with hurricanes in some of the best areas, though clever design might mitigate this.
A few technologies that could be used instead or might help Gore's scheme:
- there are lots of research teams attacking solar cell efficiency and cost. Breakthoughs are possible, but not predictable.
- LEDs could become the light source of choice, cutting total demand for electricity by 8-10% as they get adopted. Great progress in production of white light LEDs that aren't too blue and harsh has been made. They will be at least twice as efficient as CFLs, without the toxic material problems.
Nuclear is the only near-term technology that can be considered ready for large scale deployment. Standardizing plant designs could streamline the permit process and allow production lines to run, lowering costs. Waste disposal is a solved problem - glassification of the most dangerous wastes has been demonstrated, and the resulting blocks can be dropped into subduction zones in the oceans or stacked in Yucca Mountain. (Isn't it easier to tell Nevada to STFU about Yucca Mountain than pave over Arizona, Utah, and Nevada and plop windmills in front of all our tourist beaches and across the Great Plains?)
While I don't think Gore's goal is feasible in 10 years, or 20, for that matter; I do think we ought to be moving that way. For a somewhat more feasible approach, Scientific American did a cover story on a plan to replace all imported oil with solar power by 2050. They figured it would take 40+ years and over $400 billion. At completion, solar would provide 35% of total energy use and 69% of electricity use.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
They correctly point out that this would have to include building a new transmission system, as well as power storage facilities (they suggest compressed air instead of pumped water). The cost is impressive, but remember that it would be spread over 40 years. We have managed to spend well over $400 billion over the last 5 years on the GWOT, without crippling our economy, so $400 billion over 40 years should scare us.
For that matter, we need a new power grid anyway, because the current one is obsolescent at best. Our existing grid is at increasing risk of major blackouts due to the lack of adequate computer monitoring. A new grid would be designed for real-time monitoring from the beginning.
Also, if people are disturbed by the thought of covering 30,000+ square miles with solar cells, think about just how much of this country we have covered with asphalt. Also consider how much area we use mining coal and other energy generation.
Oops,
that should have been
$400 billion over 40 years should not scare us.
right. al gore is making up climate change.
thats why the ice cap is going to completely disappear this summer for the first time ever in human history.
so we'll just do nothing. and when sea levels rise and there are billions of refugees with no where to go and there's no food because we won't have the resources to plant and grow them...
well...at least you'll have made fun of al gore. and won't that be worth it?
Amen Megan. Join the consensus.
'...take the word of "the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model'
An interesting article. Thanks very much.
Is there a clear consensus among climatologists about this, or are his opinions an outlier? It makes all the difference...
In regard to 'peak demand' issues, technologies like solar tend to work in favor of that - peak demand is in the day, when solar is available. So it isn't all working against us.
That's a bit simplistic, peak demand is different depending on region, and different within region depending on the year. You can't simply say peak demand and solar output are going to match up.
In regard to power storage, while pumping water into a reservoir might not be practical in any case, the point remains that there are many ways to store power that don't require batteries. You could simply heat water, for example, or make hydrogen and oxygen gas
Pumping water is likely the best solution. The other two you mention are ridiculously inefficient. Hydrogen particularly, hydrolysis is extremely inefficient, and then you have to compress the resulting gas with even more energy. Heating water isn't much better, you have to heat the water into steam with electricity, and then turn that steam back into electricity. You also have yield loss from storing the steam, which isn't a trivial issue either.
Given the much greater area of the US and our diverse climates (desert, coastline, etc) I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that we've got some areas that are considerably more windy than tiny Germany. (For comparison, the US has 25 times the area and cover 17 degress of latitude vs. 6 degress for Germany.)
The size of the US works against us! You have to build dozens of thousand-mile long transmission lines to reach the areas that have sufficient wind from the areas that have sufficient demand. You can't even use traditional AC transmission, we'd need to use extremely high voltage DC or the capacitive power losses would kill you, not to mention the herculean task of synchronizing such a thing.
JB,
Even if anthropogenic carbon emissions were causing global climate change, Al Gore's "crash program" would not stop global climate change, unless every nation on the globe signed on and actually executed the program.
Dream on!
JB, Price of MAYBE cooling the planet a degree...$300,000,000,000,
Making fun of a fear mongering hypocrite... Priceless
JB, Price of MAYBE cooling the planet a degree...$300,000,000,000,
Making fun of a fear mongering hypocrite... Priceless
JB, Price of MAYBE cooling the planet a degree...$300,000,000,000,
Making fun of a fear mongering hypocrite... Priceless
This just feeds into my peak oil apocalypse paranoia. Global warming seems like a walk in the mark compared to running out of oil. I'm completely convinced we will run out of oil at some point (hopefully not in my lifetime) and if there isn't an alternative, things will be pretty shitty. People in western democracies live in a remarkable golden age and history suggests these things don't last forever. Pessimism is not really an option because it carries with it a lot of risk. People don't like pessimists and if pessimist predictions turn out to be true (to the point of catastrophe), there is no guarantee they will be able to cash out their bets. Just look at what happens to people who try and make money off catastrophes: at best they get prosecuted under some quickly enacted proscription against price gouging; at worst they get strung up.
Meagan - To replace our current, mostly coal fired, fossil baseload generation would involve the construction of massive new nuclear capability.
1. Not necessarily replace coal plants and abandon the ratepayer investment for the huge capital cost it took to construct dozens of modern, low-polluting coal-electric units.
Talk is that in a 40-year transition vs, Gores silly "dire, 10-year is all the time humanity has left!!!" window of transition, many of the coal plants can have their coal boiler ripped out and replaced by just a couple of load following Pebble bed nuclear reactors that you cannot melt down.
2. This (nukes) is a) blocked by Al Gore's friends in the environmental movement b) going to get you into a nasty fight with Harry Reid and c) not feasible in a decade in the current regulatory environment.
Harry Reid, if he has any brains, ought to have fears he is history if Las Vegas tourism is wrecked by high travel and energy prices.
And we can predict that the current regulatory climate that has blocked nukes, refineries, drilling for oil and gas, locking up oil shale is about to collapse in a pile of screaming lawyers in Armani suits if gas stays where it is, then slowly starts doubling again, along with electric and nat gas bills.
Forget the price. Where are you going to put hundreds of new nuclear plants?
They take up less land than a solar farm producing 0.03% as much as a nuke plant, erratically, and at 60 times the cost of nuke or coal electricity.
They can be cooled by ocean water or waste water from sewage (Phoenix wastewater was enough to plan 12 1250MW units 50b miles away at Palo Verde Nuke Station. 3 were built. Densely populated, small states like Connecticut (5544 sq miles, 0.2% of America's landmass less Alaska) sported numerous nuke plants before environmentalists succeeded in shutting half of them down. Connecticut had 4 running in the mid-90s. Now it has two. Once CT was a 90% CO2-free generator of electricity, beating even France..
Also, for what it's worth, there's currently only one factory in the world (!), in Japan, that can cast the gigantic steel domes used as the inner shell in current reactor designs - I understand they're already booked for the next several years.
(And yes, you could build more casting plants, or go to new designs, but half your decade is gone already at that point.)
Posted by Mike Earl
Eliminate the ability of environmentalist lawyers to block construction, and you could have reactor vessel foundries built and running in a year. Though investors would prefer putting those jobs in Asia away from the risk of America's capricious and uncertain legal and government systems. Better all the high tech jobs for that go to Europe or Asia or Canada.
*********************
I am not convinced the regulatory approvals could be obtained, the lawsuits litigated through the appeals process and the permits granted in 10 years.
Posted by Ed Reid
You are thinking of this as status quo, business as usual, the all-mighty courts will decide all matters when their majesties and highnesses deign to...
It's not gonna be that way as the energy crisis intensifies into a national emergency based on energy shortages as Open Borders grow US population of energy users from 300 million to 434 million in 2050 - and as losing 700 billion a year in national wealth to foreign energy producers produces a dramatic drop in standard of living and stagflation worse that what Carter bungled...
Lawyer and courts will not stand up to an enraged American public that blames them and the environmentalists for 30 years of blockage dealing with problems that slowly grew into crisis, and a lost American high quality of life - if they seek to continue to block the public Will to fix things.
Two simple proofs that Al Gore isn't serious, and that he knows it:
1) His proposal effectively was to exterminate the United Mine Workers union (not to mention the rest of the coal industry) as coal produces 50% of the electric power in the US.
Yet the UMW was not bothered at all. No reaction. Perhaps this is because Al proposes to exterminate the UMW using windmills, instead of nuclear?
I understand the UMW is even sending him a check to further "windmill research". Hey, it's green too!
Now if Al had said something like...
"France is effectively fully nuclear powered, safe, economical and CO2-free. That proves it CAN be done for a modern economy. I propose that it BE done here with nuclear, starting NOW, and that Democratic interest groups like the the UMW will just have to get out of the way for the good of the nation and the world."
... that would have been interesting. How would the UMW, Harry and Nancy have reponded to that, eh?
Instead ... windmills! How many unionized mine workers are going to be unemployed by windmills?
2) The US govt has just frozen development of all solar energy projects on federal land in the sun states -- Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah, "119 million surface acres
of federally administered land in the West ideal for solar energy ... where sunlight drenches vast, flat desert tracts" -- for TWO YEARS.
More than 130 solar power development projects are now on hold as a result.
Why? Envronmentalists complained, of course. So there is going to be an environmental impact study.
"The manager of the Bureau of Land Management’s environmental impact study, Linda Resseguie, said that many factors must be considered when deciding whether to allow solar projects on the scale being proposed, among them the impact of construction and transmission lines on native vegetation."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/us/27solar.html
So Al's URGENT plan to save the world in 10 years is set back by a good two years, 2 of 10, to study if saving the world may be harmful to desert vegetation.
You'd think Al maybe would be angered by this? Concerned? Have some comment on priorities?
"..... silence ....."
Saving the world seems of secondary importance to pandering to Democratic interest groups.
I can't help but think that Megan makes fun of Gore simply because she's a Republican (which she is, come on). How many times does Gore have to get [stuff] right before Republicans like Megan gives him the benefit of the doubt (as she did, say, George Bush, Jr.)? The answer, of course, is infinity. Because Megan is a Republican.
Global warming seems like a walk in the mark compared to running out of oil. I'm completely convinced we will run out of oil at some point (hopefully not in my lifetime) ...
Remember that "oil" as we use it comes not out of the ground but from a factory, it is manufactured.
The raw material feedstock for this product exists in vast quantities ... heavy oil, coal, tar sands, etc. (even garbage). Without even being surveyed there is enough for a thousand-plus years, it is impossible that we will ever "run out".
This is not theoretical -- Germany during World War II ran its economy on oil-from-coal, as did South Africa during the embargo years, two modern economies that did fine as far as that went.(Well, until the USAAF bombed the German oil factories.)
The issue is not "running out", the issue is price. At today's oil prices these alternatives are fully viable and are ramping up fast. But it takes time ... and the time is lengthened by the risk of lower prices returning -- remember that only nine (9) years ago oil produced in the US was selling for $8 a barrel. Nine years ago wasn't so long ago! Oil, being inelastic on both the production and demand side, has a price that whipsaws -- down as well as up. That gives investors in new expensive alternatives pause.
But in the long run manufacturing productivity improves by about 3% a year -- which means that 100 years from now oil from such alternative sources that would cost us $1,000 a barrel today would cost the equivalent of about $50 (actually much less considering rises in income) ... so there is no chance that we will actually "run out".
Hugely more likely is that by that time we will "move on" -- to solar, nuclear, zero-point, "Mr Fusion" garbage recyclers, whatever, driven by global warming concerns or not. And all that oil product feedstock will be left in the ground forever.
A close comparison is the late 1800s Britain, where there was a serious "Peak Coal" concern. Top flight economists (like Jevons) made all the arguments heard today about Peak Oil -- coal existed only in a finite amount ... the entire economy depended on it ... demand for it was compounding upward indefinitely ... the best and cheapest coal was going first and in fact was already gone ... the inevitable result was ... QED.
Today there is more coal sitting in the ground over there than they ever knew they had back then, literally worthless. It doesn't pay to dig it out.
Think about it: Coal has been used in huge quantities far longer than oil. Why isn't anybody worried about running out of coal?
lxm you said,
It would be good for you and other supporters of the gore plan to remember that the first collective action technology approach to carbon emissions was biofuels.
This collective action designed to reduce carbon emissions actually substantially increased carbon emissions. In the process it caused massive environmental destruction and did not replace a useful amount of petroleum transport fuel.
I would hope the biofuel disaster would teach people that slowing down and paying attention to the engineers is a good thing.
Especially before implementing new government energy policies designed to replace traditional carbon based fuels.
chris ford,
Puppies roll over on their backs when you scratch their bellies. I'll believe regulators, environmentalists, lawyers, judges and city councils will do the same when I see it happen. I hope you're right, but I don't believe.
Jim,
I completely agree with what you say. We will have carbon based fuels for a long time. It's just that price does matter. It indicates scarcity and people fight of scarce things (especially where the demand for those things is inelastic). Supply scarcity leads (and I concede to knowing very little about the complexities of economics) intuitively to a drag on growth and all sorts of bad things. Demand scarcity doesn't seem so bad because SOMEONE is theoretically making stuff, it's just not you, but maybe that isn't a bad thing because maybe you are more productive making other stuff anyway. When I say run out of oil, what I mean is very pricey oil and significant supply shock constraints on growth. I have no idea what the future will bring, but I figure a 10-20 year really crappy period not unlike the Great Depression while the world works things out not an unlikely scenario. My nightmare is for the bad times to hit when I'm between 50 and 60. It would suck to lose 10-20 years of earning potential and end up poor at 70 in a mean world. Kind of like being 65 when the USSR collapsed except multiplied by some X factor.
So what is the time frame for complete replacement? From a pure construction if-the-survival-of-the-human-race-depended-on-it standpoint, it could be done in ten years. As someone as pointed out, the next-gen pebble bed reactors are looking really good. They are also relatively easily scalable. If just one design was approved, finalized, and mass-produced, this time frame (by 2020) wouldn't be a problem.
So if this is such a ridiculous goal, what's everyone's best estimate? I'm curious as to who merely wants to bash Gore, and who is serious, and what they think the difficulties would be (and how to get around them.)
chris ford,
Puppies roll over on their backs when you scratch their bellies. I'll believe regulators, environmentalists, lawyers, judges and city councils will do the same when I see it happen. I hope you're right, but I don't believe.
Posted by Ed Reid
Puppies also roll over on their backs when you shoot them, gas them, or they sense an Alpha dog and roll over on their backs and submit to the pecking order.
Now, no one is talking shooting or gassing the lawyers and environmentalists or local political obstructionists - but the public is getting pretty infuriated at them and at government no longer working, us pissing away a trillion in long-worked for wealth every year to foreigners that either out-compete us or sell us our energy.
They are sick of lawyer-judge-special interest group (the corporatists and environmentalists maimly)- imposed Gridlock on energy, immigration, education reform, trade deficits, our rotting infrastructure, trashed financial system, Globalist outsourcing and other disasters the public doesn't have a real vote or say in.
Lets admit we are just a few more years away from true emergency conditions on energy prices, food prices, and currency collapse.
We are basically becoming the Alpha dog and if the puppy lawyers, judges, and special interest groups cannot understand the palpible scent of frustration and ugly mood on the wind and submit and roll on their backs...they may face an enraged Alpha dog in the mood to do some chewing and casting bad puppies out of the pack.
They are sick of lawyer-judge-special interest group (the corporatists and environmentalists maimly)- imposed Gridlock on energy,
Mm-hm. Google " 'grandma millie' enron" for a different perspective.
We are basically becoming the Alpha dog and if the puppy lawyers, judges, and special interest groups cannot understand the palpible scent of frustration and ugly mood on the wind and submit and roll on their backs...they may face an enraged Alpha dog in the mood to do some chewing and casting bad puppies out of the pack.
Please tell us more about how tough you are, Mr. Ford. Thanks again for being so awesome.
ScentOfViolets,
I don't think people would be bashing gore if he had pushed for the construction of more nuclear power.
What he is getting bashed over is the idea that we could get a 100 percent of our energy from renewable resources (wind and solar) in ten years.
If you know anything about wind, or solar, or the amount of energy used in this country gore's proposal is the height of ignorant grand standing.
Given that government action produced the biofuels debacle and given the stupendous amount of ignorance the political class in DC has on energy related issues I'm pretty sure the safest and most productive thing to do (from a political action standpoint) is nothing.
The $100 plus price per barrel of oil is doing more to drive development of sustainable renewable sources of energy than any government policy could.
This same price is driving conservation efforts on a scale that would be impossible for the government to mandate.
More speeches and less action from the politicians is the safest and most effective approach to the energy situation at this point.
But doesn't the quote say:
That doesn't suggest limiting the alternatives to wind, solar, hydro and the like. He's right on the amount of energy available from wind and solar, btw. But the technology that could make effective use of those sources is, shall we say, just a little premature.
I don't think people would be bashing gore if he had pushed for the construction of more nuclear power.
They sure as hell would be -- and they'd be his people, not us, doing it, which he can't afford to happen. That's why he can't say the word "nuclear".
Forget the anti-nuclear greens, say "United Mine Workers". Coal fuels 50% of the electricity in the US.
If Gore said: "We're putting the UMW out of business starting now, we're going to do it with nuclear, and it CAN be done! France has already done it! The UMW and the coal industry are going to take the hit to save the planet. I publicly call on Obama and Harry and Nancy to endorse this ..."
... the UMW would go nuts, into a stark rage. Them and the enitre coal industry and Sen Byrd and all the other political leaders of the coal states would go mad. Obama and Harry and Nancy would run away from Al as fast as they could. End of the free ride for Al!
So instead Al says: "We are going to get the US off of coal ... with windmills." Then looks over to the UMW people and mouths silently, "So not in any of our lifetimes! Heh, Heh!"
The UMW then sends him a contribution for "windmill research", Obama, Harry and Nancy all embrace him, and everybody loves Al!
He does a Hollywood movie sequel, gets a whole 'nother bunch of money and awards for it ... and the left continues to marvel at what a warrior for the environment he's become!
I know we can't use plutonium as a fuel because Carter banned it out of fear it might be stolen and it would be pretty easy to make into a nuclear weapon. But is the danger really that great? We still have nuclear missles, after all. It seems like we're just throwing fuel away for no good reason. Recycling what is now nuclear waste should both reduce waste and also decrease the cost of nuclear power.
Also, why aren't we doing something to harvest the helium produced by the nuclear waste we put in glass. It's my understanding that currently our helium comes from oil wells and is a result of nuclear degradation. If oil runs low, helium should too. And since helium is an inert element that can't be held by the earth's atmosphere, we can't really make more, except as a result of nuclear processes.
... Plutonium ... proliferation risk
There's actually an interesting technical point here.
If you have a breeder reacter or ordinary spent fuel, some of the U238 will have turned into Pu239 [the weapon isotope] but then a substantial portion will absorb another neutron but will not fission and will become Pu240. Pu240 is a bad thing to have in a plutonium bomb because it fissions spontaneously. This will cause premature detonation during that instant when the weapon is just barely supercritical, leading to a bad fizzle.
In a power reactor substantial Pu240 is created. In a reactor designed to make bomb-grade meterial, not much of the U235 is burned so very few U239 nucleii get that second neutron.
See the wikipedia article on Plutonium.
So the proliferation problem is not that there is material lying around just waiting to be made into weapons. It's the "if the US does it, how can they tell US not to", combined with the fact that a nation with a fuel recovery program can start cycling uranium when it is only a few percent burned -- a lousy way to run a power reactor but a great way to make bomb-grade Plutonium.
-dk
The US rejection of Nuclear Energy made perfect sense in a world of cheap oil. The interesting (for me--who isn't a "thinker") question is whether markets open up opportunities for alternative strategies or plunge headlong into a super efficient but highly risky system where one ring rules them all. The intuitive fear of the layman (me) is that we achieve efficiency at the cost of redundancy to the point where the sigma of a catastrophic event drops to an almost predictable level. I suppose the orthodox libertarian view is that people are always going to be dumber than markets regardless of the circumstances. This may be true but it require a bit of a leap of faith. I realize that my instincts might be wrong but my instincts suggest that putting all our eggs in the "market" basket might expose us to doom. On the other hand, I realize that not putting all our eggs in the "market" basket might provide pointless good feelings but expose us to more doom. Even Reagan understood that when a bullet is heading your way, you should duck.
The interesting (for me--who isn't a "thinker") question is whether markets open up opportunities for alternative strategies or plunge headlong into a super efficient but highly risky system where one ring rules them all.
They open up opportunities for alternative strategies. People always have different opinions about what's the right answer. Under a market economy, they can pursue those different strategies. Under central planning, what we get is some mishmash of the few people entrusted with making the central plan.
The intuitive fear of the layman (me) is that we achieve efficiency at the cost of redundancy to the point where the sigma of a catastrophic event drops to an almost predictable level.
This doesn't make sense. Efficiency and redundancy are not opposites. It is efficient to invest in redundancy up to the point where the costs of further reducing the risk of a catastrophic event outweighs the benefits. So we see stockbrokers investing in backup generators because to them it is more efficient overall to spend money on redundancy to reduce the risk of not being able to access the markets.
By the way, this trade-off in risk management is inherent. Regardless of your economic system, you can't eliminate all risk of a catastrophic event.
We have a power storage plant in town. Built 43 years ago. It works as advertised.
Of course, you can see the large pipe from miles away, running up the side of the mountain.
So you just have to give up a little bit of the unobstructed, natural view. I'm sure Ted Kennedy wouldn't mind that.
We have a power storage plant in town. Built 43 years ago. It works as advertised.
Of course, you can see the large pipe from miles away, running up the side of the mountain.
So you just have to give up a little bit of the unobstructed, natural view. I'm sure Ted Kennedy wouldn't mind that.
So the proliferation problem is not that there is material lying around just waiting to be made into weapons. It's the "if the US does it, how can they tell US not to", combined with the fact that a nation with a fuel recovery program can start cycling uranium when it is only a few percent burned -- a lousy way to run a power reactor but a great way to make bomb-grade Plutonium.
Posted by Dick King
Good post. I'll add a few things.
1. All reactors of nuclear NPT signatories are monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to ensure tracking of each new fuel rod assembly of 2-3% enriched uranium is stored securely. And no one can steal new fuel rods and make a bomb out of it because you cannot separate out the U-235 to enrich it to bomb-levels of purity because it is mixed with chemically identical U-238 - not without a national calutron, laser diffraction, gaseous diffusion, centrifuge program beyond the limits of anyone who would steal the stuff.
2. All reactors are monitored to ensure each fuel rod gets 7,000 effective full power hours fissioning away. That is long enough to degrade the plutonium to less than 80% PU-239, which makes it reactor grade, fine for MOX fuel that we run in Japanese, Korean, Euro, and some American reactors, but as King said above, not for bombs because too much spontaneously fissioning PU-240 exists to hold a critical assembly together long enough to get a bomb yield.
3. Jimmy Carter, the idiot, said he didn't want fuel reprocessed because it sent "the wrong message" to other nations about reprocessing. Ignoring that we had military plutonium reprocessing facilities since 1942, and when the fool made his "statement of conscience" - France, Russia, the Benelux Consortium, China, UK, Canada, and Japan were all reprocessing plutonium - which somehow didn't stimulate an orgy of people rushing to bomb build from "US hypocrisy". Nor were later violators like N Korea, Israel, S Africa, Pakistan at all motivated in their bomb-building by "rage" against French, Benelux, Japanese, or Russian "hypocrisy" but by strategic considerations.
4. What Jimmy Carter did was stop recycling and reducing the volume of a renewable resource (waste volume decreases 95% when U-238 and the PU-isotopes are recovered for reuse in reactor cycle after cycle) that the idiot then said was a huge problem because we were creating lots of waste running nuke plants.
5. And Carter further compounded his folly by not separating out and burning the transuranics (Plutonium) as MOX. Which is why he and other anti-nukes could then say instead of being 99.2% non-radioactive by half-life decay of fission products, which only amount to a few cubic feet of waste in a reactor run - radioactive waste with each unprocessed fuel stick containing "deadly plutonium" was toxic and radioactive forever", thanks to the PU-239 and other transuranics being discarded as waste rather than reburned in a reactor to make tens of thousands of MW-hours from the MOX fuel part that could be recovered and from making more fuel from neutron capture of recycled U-238.
6. Carter and others like him characterized Plutonium as the most deadly radioactive and toxic stuff known to man. Not even close on toxicity, which is analogous to other heavy metals that some "dosed" adults have no health effects from and a normal lifespan. We know this because, as we suspected, the Soviets were rather sloppy with plutonium processing and had hundreds of workers with huge plutonium ingestion accidents, some at the grams level - and the Russians monitored those guys and few died earlier than non-exposed people. Same with the radioactivity, since X amount of isotope, bioabsorption, type of rad emitted, and half-life length define how "deadly dangerous it is". By the gram, common fission and neutraon activation products like tritium, iodine-131, cesium-138, cobalt 60 are immensely deadlier as radioactive contamination.
And when the idiot President was doing his "most deadly substance known to man" observations on plutonium - thousands of people were wearing implanted American PU-238 powered pacemakers. Hundreds are still in people, because they keep working and many people don't want minor surgery to get replacement higher tech lithium batteries.
7. Carter was a disaster. He screwed America in so many ways his nuclear idiocy was only a bit contribution in the collection of his major fuck-up. Dubya can rest easy. Thanks to Carter, he cannot be the worst modern President ever.
Ryan W - Also, why aren't we doing something to harvest the helium produced by the nuclear waste we put in glass.
You only get a few pounds of short-lived intensely radioactive fission products and micrograms at best of helium from 60 or so tons of old fuel assemblies removed from a reactor after 36 months to 72 months depending on the nuclear physics of the core loads you use, if you are burning up the waste plutonium as MOX, location of the fuel assembly in a core, and what the neutron flux shape is.
Not only are a few micrograms not in any way economical to go after, but noble gases like helium and krypton escape reprocessing collection devices completely because they don't react with anything. They couldn't collect it if they wanted to.
We have a power storage plant in town. Built 43 years ago. It works as advertised.
Of course, you can see the large pipe from miles away, running up the side of the mountain.
So you just have to give up a little bit of the unobstructed, natural view. I'm sure Ted Kennedy wouldn't mind that.
Tracy W,
I admit I'm just jazz riffing on this stuff. I do see an efficiency/redundancy tradeoff--and I suppose I out myself as risk averse in thinking that the market underprices risk on the tail. Having said that, I can't imagine a central planner pricing risk any better. Still, just look at how many people refuse to take the leap of faith in markets. Think about global warming. We see this bullet heading toward us in a kind of colossal game of chicken. A) trust the market or B) come up with a collective plan? In a global referendum, which gets more votes?
These comments are a great read.
Someone mentioned the German experience with their mandated "conversion" from real to "free" energy in the form of renewables: The former red-green coalition there introduced a phase-out of nuclear power and boosted cross-subsidies for wind and solar. Windmills and solar panels have proliferated.
But then again, so have electric bills, thanks to the cross subsidy (due to run out soon, IIRC). Meanwhile, the Russians, who deliver much oil to Germany, have announced plans to add coal-fired electric plants (as have several Gulf oil producers) to power their own nations.
By rushing to set up "green electric" schemes by government force in Germany -- in the name of energy independence, no less -- the Germans have actually managed to make themselves even more beholden to foreign energy sources while helping expand the use of carbon-sinning coal power in developing countries. The Russians and Gulf states would rather save their oil reserves to sell outside their countries than follow some politically correct assumptions Good and Evil energy.
Worst yet, the envisioned improvements in green energy technologies in Germany have yet to materialize. So all the forced investments by electric rate-payers have had Gore-ific effects on consumers while enriching antagonistic foreign governments.
For those enjoying sneering at wind power because offshore turbines have in some cases been opposed by people with beach houses jealous of their views who for inexplicable reasons find windmills unattractive, you will be pleased to hear that floating wind-power platforms similar to oil-drilling platforms are at the prototype stage, and will be providing over-the-horizon power generation within three to five years. Well, I'm sure you'll say, thank goodness that objection was solved!
Alternatively, you might consider spending your energies persuading people with beach houses that they should revisit their aesthetics, rather than making fun of Al Gore for failing to understand the absolute and immutable power of people with beach houses over our national energy choices.
Chris Ford,
You seem to know a lot about reprocessing so correct me if I am wrong. But from my memory working with the nuclear power industry Carter's ban was not the only reason that we did not reprocess in the US.
My understanding was with world prices for nuclear fuel where they were it was cheaper to buy standard nuclear fuel than to reprocess. For this reason the Nuclear industry itself has never pushed too hard on reprocessing.
Reprocessing is done in other countries (France) because it is subsidized (possibly to reduce waste).
Also, can't the used fuel currently stored at nuclear facilities still be reprocessed. One thing I often heard was that even with Yucca Mtn. You could dig bring back the fuel and reprocess it.
Tracy,
More (lousy) jazz riffing. Thinking about central planners overpricing risk: national security. Clearly no one wants to make the market leap of faith there and so we impose redundancy that the market would surely prune away (think of the bloated military or the bizarre rituals involved in taking a commercial flight). It seems to me that people are happy to abstractly believe in markets, but the minute they can conceptualize a threat they throw that abstract thinking out the window in favor of "a plan". Al Gore is just yelling a version of "Munich '38 Hitler Hitler Hitler" and all the right can do is say "there actually was a Hitler and global warming is just a theory". People don't really care once you reach a certain perceived threat level. Hell, even Megan admits that she voted for Bush in 2004 in large part due to her 9/11 experiences. A Freudian (are there still Freudians?) might think that what appears to be her visceral animus toward Gore and his "the sky is falling" rhetoric is rooted in her "I voted for Bush because he said the sky was falling" shame.
People bash Gore for a lot of reasons, some of them extremely unfair, but in this thread people are bashing him for proposing an implausible idea.
On this issue, it is impossible to take him seriously until the phrase "including nuclear power" comes out of his mouth. Some environmentalists have bitten the bullet and uttered this phrase, and have been castigated by other environmentalists for doing so, and I don't doubt that Gore fears such a fate himself. However, replacing fossil fuel power generation with wind, solar, and hydroelectric is not feasible now, in ten years, or in fifty years. Each has their place, but for the forseeable future, only nuclear power can provide baseline generation equal to that of gas and coal fired plants.
So, no one has any objections of force to Gore's proposal, I see. Thought so. I suspect that themightpuck has got most of the answer, although I think it's more along the lines that Gore is a Democrat.
Once the price of per cord rises enough, I might consider becoming a fellow traveler. I've got some timber acreage that would work nicely in any old-fashioned wood stove.
MarkG, I used to have to cut cords and cords of wood by hand for our house. No gas or electricity. Hand -drawn water, and two wood stoves, one for cooking, one for heating water. We also had a fireplace that didn't work very well and two Franklin stoves, that did.
I do _not_ want to go back to those times. They are not romantic, not picaresque, and not easy on the soul or body, multitudes of paeans from the left and right to the contrary. I'll also put in that opposition to nuclear power isn't the evil work of evil environmentalists with evil ends in mind. It's because the Good People of the heartland object to giant radioactive spiders roaming the countryside, and their fear of radioactive electricity.
SOV, you're wrong. Yancey has it correct. The technology to replace coal and gas power with carbon free sources in the short or medium term does not exist without using nuclear power.
Any discussion of a significant drop in US power generation carbon emissions, in the time frame that is being discussed, is simply not credible if one does not discuss nuclear power.
It is not worthwhile to set what you call an ambitious goal when it is so obviously unattainable. If he had talked about a more realistic goal, he wouldn't be as easy to bash or laugh off. If he had talked about a more realistic goal, then someone might have to respond with more than 'that's clearly impossible'. Make no mistake, 100% carbon free power generation in 10 years is impossible, short of simply turning off all the carbon generating power plants and deciding to get by on some small fraction of the power we currently consume.
If I believed in conspiracies, I would think that Gore was secretly in the pay of oil companies. Albert Gore is a living breathing straw man. His rhetoric goes so far beyond the currently evolving science that he is laughably easy for AGW skeptics to refute.
This isn't a proposal - this is a pipedream. Let me see how he plans to do it with current (or slightly next gen) technology - assuming he can remove the regulatory frameworks. Until then, he might as well propose unicorns replace cars for travel and laughter fuel our power generation (even a Pixar tie-in).
Dubya can rest easy. Thanks to Carter, he cannot be the worst modern President ever.
Seems debatable at the very least.
How about as Former President? How do you think Bush will perform? Carter, for the vast majority of his post-presidency, has actively participated in worthwhile causes like HfH, promoted democracy, and settled into the role of respected elder statesman. I think Dubya and his smiling wife will go back to Texas and drink themselves into oblivion.
Dubya:
Quite possibly the worst President ever (well, worst administration, Cheney and Rove were really in charge).
A dead certainty for Worst Ex-President Ever.
SOV,
There were plenty of well-supported and logical objections above on the plausibility of Gore's proposal, almost none of which were really countered by anyone in this thread. Few climatologists themselves spout Gore's apocalyptic predictions regarding climate change.
I have a hard time deciding if Gore has gone off the deep end and believes all of what he says, or he is using hyperbole to spur action. If the latter, then it isn't working, and it is rapidly ruining his credibility as people like me start concluding that it is really the former.
Here is what Gore should have said:
"Human induced climate change is a long term threat, and we need to transition away from fossil fuels. To do this, we need to rethink our opposition of nuclear power- we need to streamline the process for approving and building these new plants. In addition, we need to streamline the process for approving energy generation via wind and solar, but we need to recognize the limitations that both of these methods have with regards to availibility and capacity."
He could have easily thrown in teaser phrases like "greater energy independence", and even pointed out that we will have to move away from fossil fuels eventually anyway, so why not start now. If he had done this, the objections would have at least had to deal with the fact that his proposals were plausible. He very well may not have an objection to more nuclear power, but he needs to actually say this, or at least say that the option should be on the table.
SoV, I don't think you typed picaresque when you meant picturesque.
Or perhaps I've misunderstood your point.
(I certainly don't want to go back to splitting wood like I did as a boy.)
--CF
picaresque:
Main Entry:
1pi·ca·resque Listen to the pronunciation of 1picaresque
Pronunciation:
\ˌpi-kə-ˈresk, ˌpē-\
Function:
adjective
Etymology:
Spanish picaresco, from pícaro
Date:
1810
: of or relating to rogues or rascals; also : of, relating to, suggesting, or being a type of fiction dealing with the episodic adventures of a usually roguish protagonist
CF, I think you typed "don't think" when you meant "think".
Weird.
I'm sorry, but Yancey has it wrong again. Look at the specific quote I gave:
Last time I looked, nuclear was relatively carbon-free :-) I'm guessing that what these rather mischievous detractors of Gore want (the same ones who won't say they won't be satisfied that he's authentic unless he crosses the land on foot dressed in home-spun fiber, otherwise he's completely insincere) is for him to outright say the dreaded word 'nuclear'. Iow, they say they won't be content unless he deliberately makes a political gaffe. That's some reasonable objection, as I have already noted.
But I'm wondering for all those who profess to be sincere, how is nuclear _not_ a carbon-free source?
It's clear that what Megan really likes is parasite capitalism - the sort that lets libertarians behave in a selfish and dishonest way, while ducking the consequences of their poisonous views. Of course, when the disaster hits, they'll whine about how unfair life is, rather than offering any sort of constructive solution. What else can you expect from people who take Ayn Rand seriously?
So his politically expedient spinelessness is now supposed to be a virtue. *snort*
From SOV:
Wow! And I thought you were being serious when you were upbraiding poor Rob Lyman the other day for not correcting the behavior of those whose politics he agreed with.
Saying the words, nuclear power, requires some courage from people of Gore's political party, and Gore isn't running for any office the last time I looked, so his lack of courage, if it is that, is pretty damning. All I want from him is some clarification. Either nuclear power is an option or it isn't, in Gore's mind, and that he didn't state one way or the other in this seemingly landmark speech on transitioning away from fossil fuels is confusing, and that is putting it in the most favorable light.
SOV,
There were plenty of well-supported and logical objections above on the plausibility of Gore's proposal, almost none of which were really countered by anyone in this thread. Few climatologists themselves spout Gore's apocalyptic predictions regarding climate change.
I have a hard time deciding if Gore has gone off the deep end and believes all of what he says, or he is using hyperbole to spur action. If the latter, then it isn't working, and it is rapidly ruining his credibility as people like me start concluding that it is really the former.
Here is what Gore should have said:
"Human induced climate change is a long term threat, and we need to transition away from fossil fuels. To do this, we need to rethink our opposition of nuclear power- we need to streamline the process for approving and building these new plants. In addition, we need to streamline the process for approving energy generation via wind and solar, but we need to recognize the limitations that both of these methods have with regards to availibility and capacity."
He could have easily thrown in teaser phrases like "greater energy independence", and even pointed out that we will have to move away from fossil fuels eventually anyway, so why not start now. If he had done this, the objections would have at least had to deal with the fact that his proposals were plausible. He very well may not have an objection to more nuclear power, but he needs to actually say this, or at least say that the option should be on the table.
SoV: You're putting words in his mouth.
Your quote is indeed accurate. However, it is quite clear from the rest of his speech that nuclear was not something to which he was referring. Surrounding the quote above, he spoke of alternate sources of power. He referred to solar power 9 times, geothermal power 6 times, and wind power 6 times. He used the word nuclear 0 times. He does not obliquely reference it, he does not use any code words for nuclear. This speech is not in any way an endorsement of nuclear power.
The software on this site needs to be worked on, I definitely did not repost that last comment.
t Yancey:
I wonder if Bush pronounces "nuclear power" as nu-cle-ar instead of his traditional nuke-u-lar when talking about big bada boom thingys.
Puck,
I think Bush calls them "big bada boom thingys" these days.
So, RMH, what would be a carbon-free source of electricity that was not solar, wind, hydro, or geothermal? And how could Gore make a reference to nuclear energy without specifically referring to it? Like it or not, Gore specifically mentioning nuclear energy is just the sort of political bonanza his detractors would love to get hold of. Remember how Gore was excoriated for 'inventing' the internet? When I see those same people - the same people who also say that Gore isn't serious about global warming because he flies and has a big fancy house - fiddling about, I am very leery of what their purported intentions really are. Doubtless, this goes ever so much more so for Gore, the "serial exaggerater".
So, are we agreed then that nuclear power is a carbon-free source of energy?
And can we get back to the the bigger thread of what it would take, and how long to transition to a non-fossil fuel economy?[1]
[1]Coal is nice, since it's go god-awful cheap, and there's so much of it. The only problem is that it's so dirty, and so unsuitable for any but the larger installations. I wouldn't mind having a coal-burning furnace, like my grandparents used to have, but I have the impression that they would be considered unacceptable in terms of emissions these days.
Yancey,
One more reason to hate FDR. If it wasn't for him we wouldn't have the damn 22nd Amendment.
ScentOfViolets,
You mean that we are supposed to believe that Gore thinks of nuclear power as a "truly clean carbon-free" source? Or is the idea that nuclear-power supporters believe nuclear to be "truly clean," nuclear-power detractors don't, and therefore Gore can say incompatible things to different groups of people simultaneously while hoping no one notices?
And people like Michelle aptly illustrate my point. She won't be happy unless Gore makes some sort of gaffe that will drive away some of his supporters . . . and take away some of his clout.
Using the words he did gives him plausible deniability if he is cornered by a hostile interlocutor. Remember when he was confronted by that 'average citizen' who asked, since Gore's kids are going to private school, why is he denying hers the opportunity? The obvious answer, looming unsaid in the air like a chrome-plated fart was that Gore could afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on private schooling, and this woman very obviously couldn't. But if he had given such an answer, he would have been crucified in the media for being 'elitist'.
Thanks a lot guys - you know who you are - for making this sort of tap dancing a necessity.
Reality Check
1)Eliminating US fossil fuel use for electric power generation, over whatever period, would not stop AGW.
2)Eliminating US use of gasoline and diesel fuel for mobile applications would not stop AGW.
3)Discontinuing the use of functioning fossil-fueled power generation facilities before the ends of their useful lives would result in an economic "dead loss" of ~$500 billion.
4)Replacing the electricity produced by 1 GW of fossil-fueled generation with solar and wind would require the installation of ~4 GW of a combination of solar and wind generation, ignoring the issues of timing and load matching. (The US has ~700 GW of fossil-fueled generation capacity.)
Conceptualizing grand schemes are easy. Executing grand schemes is hard. Affording grand schemes is also hard.
The discussions of how expensive new technologies would be tends to ignore the reality of how expensive existing technologies *are*, on an everyday basis. Oil exploration and drilling are insanely expensive, as are new refineries. Why should I balk at the cost of distributing Arizona's solar power from scratch (infrastructure-wise), while the huge costs of shipping globby liquid-to-sludge from the Arctic Circle is just a cost of doing business?
We should do some genuinely zero-based budgeting about all energy options, new and continuing, so we don't get into the ridiculous trap of pricing the new ones but treating continuing ones as if they're free.
"And can we get back to the the bigger thread of what it would take, and how long to transition to a non-fossil fuel economy?"
In about 30 years US nuclear capscity went from zero to 100k MW. So that would be about 30k MW per year. Lets say we could do 50k MW per decade.
A huge number of narural gas plants also came online in the early 2000's so lets say you could add another 50k per year of those. Thes plants emit about half the carbon as a coal plant.
Current coal capacity is probably somewhere around 300k MW so to replace Coal with nuclear and natural gas would likely take about 30 years IMO. Maybe you could get to 20years if you really pushed it.
But that does not make up for any growth in demand. But lets say that conservation and rewables provide enough to cover the growth.
With this scenario you could probably cut your emissions from the power sector by over 50% in 30 years.
That still does nothing for the transport sector which is even larger.
Well, we're going to do something because the people are restless. I only hope we don't do something stupid. One thing about solar power (wind, photovo) is that we don't know what the externalities are. It isn't like the sunlight isn't already hitting the earth. Damming rivers isn't "free" in an environmental sense and I doubt solar will be free either (unless the amount we need to power the economy only impacts a small portion of the environment--I admit to knowing nothing about how much space we would need to supply our t+20 electrical needs with t+20 technology). Pricing externalities is one of those really challenging things even with technology we are very familiar with (oil, coal). My sister lives in Montana and there is a massive copper mine there that later became a massive cleanup project. The cleanup cost is alleged to have exceeded every dollar made by the mine. That said, how do you price in the fact that when we needed copper to wire the nation we had copper? The knock on effects seem to make this an intractable problem.
SoV,
But it isn't a "gaffe" to say "nuclear" if your plan is a physical impossibility without nuclear power. What is supposed to happen if someone takes Gore seriously and tries to implement this? What do we call that item on the pie chart? "Other"? "That Which Must Not Be Named"?
Your private schooling anecdote doesn't seem to me especially relevant. If Gore's objection to school vouchers were primarily that the nation can't afford to give every child the same education that he can afford to give his own, he should have said that. Most parents can understand the idea of striving for the best education you can possibly give your kids, whether or not it can scale to everybody's kids.
(The trouble is that the biggest anti-voucher argument hasn't been about costs; it's been that if everyone with the determination or even the inclination to leave bad public schools actually left, the kids remaining would be even more certainly doomed than they are now. IOW, even if the nation could afford to put your kids in private school, they ought to stay there For The Common Good. I think people who make that argument do deserve to be asked why the contributors to The Common Good oughtn't to include their own children. And maybe the above answer will still be good enough; but if it isn't, they ought to consider the resultant heat part of the cost of making the argument, not some sort of unfair "gotcha.")
SoV wrote: And people like Michelle aptly illustrate my point. She won't be happy unless Gore makes some sort of gaffe that will drive away some of his supporters . . . and take away some of his clout.
You are quite a piece of (sloppy) work. Al Gore is not strictly opposed to nuclear power, but he has made plain statements in the past that he does not consider it to be a mainstream option for future energy needs.
This chap here has archived a couple of the relevant quotes:
http://dean2004.blogspot.com/2007/08/al-gore-on-nuclear-power.html
Note that the SMH link is still active if you want the broader context of that story.
Unless Mssr. Gore has substantially changed his position in the last 18 months, which is that nuclear takes too long to build and has proliferation issues, his speech was NOT about nuclear power, certainly not within any ten year time frame. He was literally tilting at windmills.
Your willingness to give Mssr. Gore an indefinite benefit of the doubt -- He meant everything he didn't say, no really! -- reeks of either a schoolgirl crush or undisguised partisanship, unless perhaps you've been witholding the citations where Al Gore has tempered his position on nuclear in recent months, in which case the credibility of your argument would benefit from releasing them.
People are waiting for Al Gore to say "More nuclear power is needed". If that is true, and I think it is, then the next sentence has to be "We need to activate the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility immediately and began construction of at least 10 more without delay."
When pigs fly.
We can't fight global warming with hot air.
Even with nuclear power, we couldn't eliminate fossil-fueled electricity in ten years.
Fossil fuels generated 2,794 TW-hr in 2005, while nuclear generated 782, hydropower generated 267, and other renewables generated 46.
Figures from Annual Energy Outlook 2008 (2.8MB PDF)
Show of hands: Of the people who are going off on Gore's proposal as entirely loony and categorically unworkable, how many roundly criticized his position on the Iraq Invasion in November of 2002 (how'd that work out, anyway?). Besides Megan, I mean. How many repeated the "Gore said he invented the internet" meme? Just curious, that's all.
"A goal without a plan is just a wish.", Antoine de St. Exupery
The "wish" to replace fossil-fueled generation in the US with renewable generation in 10 years, while arguably not impossible, is at the very least wildly implausible, no matter who makes the "wish", what we may think of them or what positions they may have taken on unrelated issues in the past.
More important, in my view, is the fact that realizing the "wish", implausible as that might be, would not accomplish the major plausible goal for attempting to realize the wish in the first place - ending or slowing anthropogenic global warming.
I do not understand the enthusiasm for pursuing "solutions" which would not actually solve the "problem".
ed,
Are my options to decide that Gore is ALWAYS right or ALWAYS wrong? Could this position be loony and the previous one be sensible? sensible but wrong? Can I use his decision to hire Naomi Wolf in these calculations? Can I use his Buddhist fund-raiser idea?
Point being, Gore can be wrong and right on the merits without appeal to previous decisions. Especially ones he had no full knowledge of and no power over.
Also, as for the Iraq Invasion, it hasn't "worked out" since it isn't "over" and should be discussed in the present tense - where it looks to be positive. And I'm willing to give it some time before declaring it a failure.
Listen, if gore had used a realistic timetable or included realistic energy sources, and not just grandstanded about his pipedream of a plan - he could be taken seriously here. I seriously wish he would, since I think we need to be working in those directions - we have much better things to do with fossil fuels than make electricity and propel cars. As long as Gore is unwilling to engage in constructive debate, he will be mocked and marginalized.
Megan, you say:
His speech on global warming is full of misstatements, exaggerations, and outright untruths.
Care to elaborate? I agree that the goal itself is unrealistic, but I disagree with you about Gore's intent.
This speech is about shifting the collective dialog from "Why bother expanding renewables? Drill moar!" to "How much growth of renewable energy is possible in the next decade?"
I don't know whether or not this gambit will pay off, but at least among those in the energy sector, it has so far proven quite effective in advancing the dialog.
Replace fossil fuel generation with renewable generation within 10 years? Flat out impossible. Don't try to sugarcoat this.
And barring some exponential increase in energy storage technology, flat out impossible within 50 years.
Unless you consider nuclear generation as a subcategory of renewable generation.
BTW, nukes put out 150 tons of radioactive waste per year. That's not much waste at all. (And evidently it wouldn't be that much except for Jimmy Carter.)
Yucca Mountain is not a proposal because of a NEED to store the stuff there, but because it would provide added security to the waste that's already out there. At present, it's all being stored on site at each plant.
Shorter Skullberg: Al Gore so-totally said he invented the Internets, infinity. Also, the Iraq Invasion continues to be awesome.
Two points to be made.
The first is that wind in urban areas, close to the end user, is not impossible. Hull,a suburban town on the South Shore of Massachusetts, has, through its municipal power company,erected 2 windmills ,at the shore and in the water, and has applications in for 2 more. One of the operating windmills sits immediately adjacent to the town's high school , providing an ideal site for examining impacts on individuals and communities. The installations have shaved the electricity costs for Hull residents and businesses.
But Hull has been able to do this because it has a municipal power company and a form of government that has allowed public consensus on these projects to emerge quickly. No other communities along the Massachusetts coast line have followed Hull's lead,as far as I am aware. Two reasons have been suggested for this. One is that there are many in these communities that object to the intrusive aesthetics of wind power. The other is that the existing power suppliers are not going to end up with dead iron in their generating plants without a fight. How would Mr. Gore deal with these issues?
And, apropos of the intrusion question, as one who looks across Boston Harbor at them from a distance of several miles, they aren't really that noticeable or objectionable.
But it is the community consensus and permitting processes that doom the Gore proposals to missing the ten year deadline. Mr. Gore calls for a Manhattan project,forgetting conveniently how much environmental damage was done in the haste to perfect the art of nuclear material preparation and bomb making and in his Space Race analogate. Those NEPA processes will cover every aspect of his program, and the program doesn't work unless they are all synchronized,including the interfaces with the existing grid . And then,having gotten through the NEPA process, there comes the land acquisition and material acquisition process for all parts of the system,because no one will stock parts and machines for this project without payment up front and a reasonable chance for permitting success.
Windmills that generate power are tall and disrupt birds. Fish and Wildlife has already put a damper on a signature cable stayed bridge to replace the Peace Bridge between Buffalo and Ontario because its pylons were too high and would disrupt the migratory birds. How would they react to Mr. Gore's windmills, which depend on the very winds that attract the migratory birds?
Mr, Gore should begin with an assault on the time it takes to do reviews, not the principles of review. If he can achieve that, then his next projects will have a chance of success.
I know we can't use plutonium as a fuel because Carter banned it out of fear it might be stolen and it would be pretty easy to make into a nuclear weapon. But is the danger really that great? We still have nuclear missles, after all. It seems like we're just throwing fuel away for no good reason. Recycling what is now nuclear waste should both reduce waste and also decrease the cost of nuclear power.
Also, why aren't we doing something to harvest the helium produced by the nuclear waste we put in glass. It's my understanding that currently our helium comes from oil wells and is a result of nuclear degradation. If oil runs low, helium should too. And since helium is an inert element that can't be held by the earth's atmosphere, we can't really make more, except as a result of nuclear processes.
Ed,
Faced with the fact that Gore is not infallible - you resort to inane characterizations to deflect he weakness of your point.
Gore is both right and wrong, probably multiple times a day - like EVERYONE. You think he was right about Iraq and you think he is right now, good for you. I think it is still too early, from a strategic sense, to pass judgment on the longterm success or failure of the overthrow of Saddam. And his opinions on geopolitics don't translate in any authoritative way to climatology or energy production.
Show me 1 engineer - not politician or investor - that thinks his 10 year timetable is anything but impossible (especially without nukes) and we can talk.
Tangential to all of that, I would love to switch to renewable and Nuke energy as soon as possible, but I hold no reservations about the speed at which that can happen: slow. Mainly due to regulatory hurdles and transmission construction.
Thanks for the interesting post, Chris.
... I didn't double post, though. Odd.
How about we go with 'carbon-free sources'? Like what he said in his speech? Tell me, Michelle, if Gore had explicitly said 'nuclear', would he have lost some of his base and thus some of his influence? Would his opponents have tried to capitalize on this with 'Even Al Gore . . . ' statements?
Yes or no? One answer brands you as not being serious at all. At least in my book.
Why should he have said that? Let me ask another question: suppose Gore had told the plain and simple truth. Do you think the media would have been all over that statement the next day - in fact, 24/7 - as 'proof' that Gore is elitist?
Yes or no? Again, only one answer marks you as being serious. But I can't believe that you really have such a tin ear.
Skullberg,
There is no reason in the world why we can't increase the amount of renewable energy we use. The problem is that it is impossible (not unlikely, or improbable, but impossible) to scale up renewable energy sources to completely replace fossil fuels and/or nuclear power.
Every engineer that has looked into the problem knows this.
Got it in one, ed. There's a lot of people here who aren't interested in being serious; only mischievous. If they want to convince me that they really are serious, they would say that no, Gore never said he 'invented' the internet, that yes, he was instrumental in creating it, that one of the characters in Love Story was modeled in part on him, that the Love Canal flap was bogus, as was the pearl-clutching about the Buddhist fund-raiser affair (a 'controversy' generated out of whole cloth), that Gore was right about the 'lock-box' and Bushes tax cuts, that Gore was right about Iraq, etc.
But these people don't and won't, for the most part. And they'll insist that he commit hari-kari to prove to them that he's 'sincere' and 'serious'. Nothing to see here, move along.
Now, as to the subject at hand: it looks as if the non-partisans for the most part say that the major roadblock is regulatory, not engineering. Is this where Bush has again expended an important government resource? After all these years of being pushed around by this administration, will the People (as represented by our national media, who are only humble servants, of course) rise up and say that the government is over-reaching if they try to move aggressively on licensing nuclear plants, windmills, solar farms, etc?
SOV - I defended Gore on "invented the internet" and defended him when he was in office.
But if he isn't willing to explicitly endorse nuclear power then he's doing more harm than good for his supposedly adopted cause. Obama, Bush and McCain have all come out clearly in favor of nuclear power. Gore hasn't. That effectively debunks the idea that supporting nuclear energy is some kind of "hari kari" or even a brave stance.
Gore's plan requires nuclear power in order to have the slightest chance of succeeding. Nuclear power can only win support from environmentalists if people like Gore explain that it's necessary and that the risks are hugely exaggerated. They're not going to listen to us conservatives and libertarians, since we're obviously in the pocket of Big Atom and would gladly poison children to make a buck. So yes, if Gore actually wants to accomplish this goal, he needs to use the n-word. On the other hand, if he just wants to grandstand he's doing fine.
Out of curiosity, would this include people who build arguments over the course of more than a dozen posts on the foundation of a simple composition fallacy, and are smug enough to upbraid the other posters for being unwilling to engage it? Or just other people who aren't part of your sycophantic Gore claque?
It's especially funny that you singled out ed's crack as an example of the clarity you seek. His contributions all week have been a veritable literary Louvre of unserious mischievousness.
SOV - I defended Gore on "invented the internet" and defended him when he was in office.
But if he isn't willing to explicitly endorse nuclear power then he's doing more harm than good for his supposedly adopted cause. Obama, Bush and McCain have all come out clearly in favor of nuclear power. Gore hasn't. That effectively debunks the idea that supporting nuclear energy is some kind of "hari kari" or even a brave stance.
Peter,
It's the source that annotates the speech and criticizes it. I'm not sure why Megan doesn't link much these days. Maybe her paymasters don't want people leaving the site. I don't know if this is appropriate but I'll assume that which hasn't been proscribed directly or by accepted cultural norms is by default OK: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/the-annotated-gore-climate-speech/
I'm biased since I've been a global warming pales compared to running out of oil as an existential threat nutcase for a number of years (Revkin calls it the "energy gap") but I think Gore can be accused of being in the grips of a theory. On the other hand, it is absolutely true that practical politics tends to require the sort of relentless focus that Gore seems to be advocating. As has been stated a number of times, his failure to mention nuclear power seems odd in a grand scheme of things sense, but it doesn't seem that odd if you consider his base. We don't need ONE BIG PLAN and we won't (unless some real catastophe befalls us) get one. That doesn't mean politicians aren't going to "stay on (simple) message". I get a personal icky vibe from Gore that is probably irrational and I am no fan of his fearmongering, but you have to give him some props for recognizing and evangelizing an important issue.
"Hull,a suburban town on the South Shore of Massachusetts, has, through its municipal power company,erected 2 windmills ,at the shore and in the water, and has applications in for 2 more."
fxm:
1) What is the annual energy use of Hull?
2) How much energy do these two windmills generate?
3) As a result, how many windmills would Hull need?
I don't want to split hairs over whether they should be expected to generate for 8% or 30% of the time. But show me you've thought about the issue a little before implying Hull is a successful demonstration that windmills were an effective choice.
His contributions all week have been a veritable literary Louvre of unserious mischievousness.
Indeed, that must be it. Care to give one specific?
Easy clutching your pearls there, aMouseforallSeasons, you may harm them.
SoV,
I see you've stopped your self-imposed gag order... unfortunately for the rest of us.
So using a realistic timetable or supporting nuclear energy is 'hari-kari'? That's a pretty scathing critique of the environmentalism movement.
I want someone to move this debate forward, in a manner that puts possibilities ahead of fantasy. Al Gore could be that person if he wanted to, but he has chosen the Malthusian route of preaching 20ft sea level risings and impossible solutions. This way he can chide everyone else (much like ed and you here) as being narrow minded and not wanted to REALLY solve the problem.
So people who say the engineering isn't feasible in 10 years are partisans - the people who say the problem is regulation are not... interesting. The problem BOTH - and neither looks to be solvable in the short to medium term.
There are NO plans to scale back environmental protections, local input or impact studies. No one is proposing them, especially congress, as it would take power away from them.
There are NO technological solutions for building out the facilities to generate 100% of our electricity from 'carbon friendly' sources - even Nukes - by 2019. The generation, storage and transmission hurdles are huge, and should not be dismissed as mere details.
There are NO plans to deal with all of the displaced workers resulting from such a massive infrastructure shift. Operators, Miners, Pipe-fitters, and Roughnecks will all need to be addressed proactively - if only to blunt their political movements.
These are REAL issues - not just stuff you can waive away as details. Pointing them out is not to deny AGW, GCC or to say we should do nothing. That is a false dichotomy, but it is your favorite tactic Dwight.
That's nice. What about the rest of it?
I didn't say it was political suicide for everyone. Care to point out where I did? Now, would you care to speculate how much influence Gore would lose if he were to explicitly call for the use of nuclear power, rather than the euphemism 'cabon-free source of energy'?
If you claim it wouldn't hurt him at all, then, I'm afraid, you're not being serious. If, otoh, you're willing to admit that saying this would come with a price tag, why don't you explain why this would be a good thing for Gore?
Name: I don't want to split hairs over whether they should be expected to generate for 8% or 30% of the time. But show me you've thought about the issue a little before implying Hull is a successful demonstration that windmills were an effective choice.
"Winds Shift in Energy Debate" (originally in the WSJ).
So... better for the environment but worse for Gore. And you're defending this as a principled stand? If the vanguard of reigning in Climate Change can't say 'Nuclear' for fear that his movement is too weak to take it, maybe I need to stock up on shotguns and canned goods.
Who are the environmentalists? By the lights of some people here, me and many quite conservative people I know are environmentalists. And we're pretty reliably pro-nuclear. Iow, the definition of environmentalist can't be allowed to expand and contract as convenient to the argument. However, I'm guessing that Gore has a few highly influential, very wealthy and very generous contributors who do fall into the narrow form of the definition, the Jane Fonda Three Mile Island types (generic, I really don't know her personal politics) who probably would sharply curtail their contributions should Gore just come out and say it. I imagine there is a certain set, of whom there is a fair representation here, who would be all too happy to see Gore lose influence. So there is a concern troll contingent who chides Gore for being a political animal who knows which side of his bread is buttered, and for not being 'pure' enough.
Also - and I know, it's a shock - but most people don't trust libertarians and 'conservatives' these days on much of anything. Tell the public that the occupation of Iraq is just peachy, that there is nothing really wrong with the economy (and that those who disagree are 'whiners' per Phil Graham), and that nuclear energy is fabu, well, the public is not exactly going to buy this sort of endorsement of nuclear.
Yeah, Ed, Mousie is one of those people who Rob Lyman likes to call an 'irreverent kidder'. Like this laff riot post:
I knew he had to be kidding, because I learned how to do problems like this in my econ courses:
I figured he would snap the answer back to me whip-smart and fast; it's an easy question. But, strangely, I never heard back from him. So I wouldn't waste time thinking overmuch about Mousies 'contributions', he's one of those people Rob says I should just ignore. One of those people who intentionally set out to generate more heat than light. You're not going to get much in the way of straight talk there.
Got it in one. Note, btw, that Gore is by no means a Greenpeace anti-nuke type. He doesn't rend his garments and wail lamentations about the evils of the Atom Scientists whose evil plans (can I work 'evil' in a few more times) are to reduce Earth to a blasted landscape populated by evil mutants. He just doesn't mention nuclear power by name, preferring to cough into his hand when he says 'carbon-free source of energy'.
Notice, btw, that the one person we all know who is arguably 'purer' than Al Gore was straight and up front with the American people about energy issues. _He_ didn't get reelected, losing to a buffoon who campaigned on 'Its Morning Again in America.'
Wacky stuff, SoV -- and precisely why neither I, nor anyone else in this thread, is wasting much effort engaging you seriously. I already pointed out the fatal flaw in this reasoning: Gore has publicly and repeatedly stated his position regarding nuclear power, and unless he has changed it very recently, he is not using 'carbon-free source of energy' as a euphemism to include broad adoption of nuclear energy, and certainly not within ten years. Again, this is based on Gore's own statements, for which you have been given the requisite cite. Therefore, the rest of Gore's speech was a pipedream, because nuclear is the only available-now technology that can substantially replace the majority portion of US baseload generation. Even T. Boone Picken's $10Bn wind dream won't do that, and unlike Gore, he's actually threatening to put his own money into it.
Hence, if Gore isn't willing to place nuclear on the table and say "this is what we need", then he isn't being serious when he speaks of converting 100% of US power infrastructure in ten years. End of argument. I'll be charitable and grant that perhaps he knows this and is trying to use hyperbole to preach, as someone else in the thread posited. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the charisma for it -- maybe he could start passing his speeches to Obama?
All of the supply and demand equations in the world won't save you if you can't parse basic logic like this. And I still think you were that guy in my econ class. The explanatory power is just too compelling! By the way, is dredging up old posts by one's interlocutors a fight you really want to start? Think about it.
Sigh. Mousie, I'm documenting precisely why I don't consider you someone with much of anything worthwhile to say(you're braying about someone not understanding economics, and you can't even answer an extremely easy econ 101 question that has numbers in it? And you're supposed to be 'serious'? You don't say.) As you've demonstrated again in your interactions with Ed. Really, admitting that there are people here who are doing precisely what he's claiming; is that hard to admit when it's so obvious? Credibility or indiscriminate sniping - your call. You can't have both.
So a)I'm explaining to Ed what you're all about, that this is not an unrepresentative sample of your behaviour, and why he can't expect a serious answer from you anytime soon and b)why I don't bother anymore with replying to 99% of your stuff (per Rob.)
Nothing more.
According to these guys (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan&page=2), "the land required for each gigawatt-hour of solar energy produced in the Southwest is less than that needed for a coal-powered plant when factoring in land for coal mining."
Just FYI.
Bill Woods,
I distrust those numbers. I think they are using peak numbers, or that Hull has abnormally low power usage. Please consider this data.
Per capita electricity use in Massachusetts (Statemaster website): 0.823 Million kWH/100 people
Adjust units: 0.00823 Million kWH/ person
Adjust units: 8230 kWH kWH/ person
Population of Hull, Massachusetts (Wikipedia): 11,000
Electricity use in Hull Massachusetts if they were average for Massachusetts: 90.53 Million kWH
Power generated by first two hull windmills (pretend its continuous): 2.46 Million W
Converting power (Watts) to energy (Watt-Hours): 21,550 Million WH
Adjust units: 21.55 Million kWH
Add 30% capacity factor (account for available wind): 6.465 Million kWH
Percent of energy supplied by first two windmills: 7.1%/ 2 windmills
Adjust units: 3.57% per windmill
Windmills (of Hull average size) required to power Hull: 2,800
Census estimated population of Massachusetts: 6,449,755
Windmills (of Hull average size) required to power Massachusetts: 1,642,149
An easier way to quantify it is windmills per capita: 3.93 windmills per resident.
Kevin
Bill Woods,
I distrust those numbers. I think they are using peak numbers, or that Hull has abnormally low power usage. Please consider this data.
Per capita electricity use in Massachusetts (Statemaster website): 0.823 Million kWH/100 people
Adjust units: 0.00823 Million kWH/ person
Adjust units: 8230 kWH kWH/ person
Population of Hull, Massachusetts (Wikipedia): 11,000
Electricity use in Hull Massachusetts if they were average for Massachusetts: 90.53 Million kWH
Power generated by first two hull windmills (pretend its continuous): 2.46 Million W
Converting power (Watts) to energy (Watt-Hours): 21,550 Million WH
Adjust units: 21.55 Million kWH
Add 30% capacity factor (account for available wind): 6.465 Million kWH
Percent of energy supplied by first two windmills: 7.1%/ 2 windmills
Adjust units: 3.57% per windmill
Windmills (of Hull average size) required to power Hull: 2,800
Census estimated population of Massachusetts: 6,449,755
Windmills (of Hull average size) required to power Massachusetts: 1,642,149
An easier way to quantify it is windmills per capita: 3.93 windmills per resident.
Kevin
Bill,
Wait, there has been a spreadsheet error!
CORRECTION
CORRECTION
CORRECTION
CORRECTION
CORRECTION
Sorry, percentage number format issue in Excel!
Per capita electricity use in Massachusetts (Statemaster website): 0.823 Million kWH/100 people
Adjust units: 0.00823 Million kWH/ person
Adjust units: 8230 kWH/ person
Population of Hull, Massachusetts (Wikipedia): 11,000
Electricity use in Hull Massachusetts if they were average for Massachusetts: 90.53 Million kWH
Power generated by first two hull windmills (pretend its continuous): 2.46 Million W
Converting power (Watts) to energy (Watt-Hours): 21,550 Million WH
Adjust units: 21.55 Million kWH
Add 30% capacity factor (account for available wind): 6.465 Million kWH
Percent of energy supplied by first two windmills: 7.1%/ 2 windmills
Adjust units: 3.57% per windmill
Windmills (of Hull average size) required to power Hull: 28
Census estimated population of Massachusetts: 6,449,755
Windmills (of Hull average size) required to power Massachusetts: 16,418
An easier way to quantify it is windmills per person: about 1 per 400 people
Still a large number.
If we build anywhere near the number of giant windmills that Mr. Gore and Mr. Pickens want, in the places where the wind blows a lot (on mountain ridges in particular), I think you can kiss goodbye to most of the migratory birds in North America, and most of the raptors as well (they tend to like the updrafts along those ridges). Oh well.
My prediction: In ten years, we will look back and laugh at Mr. Gore and his phantasms about anthropogenic climate change.
That's nice. What about the rest of it?
I'm trying to keep this point focused on the nuclear issue. I'm willing to support a person when I think that they're right. My first question is; "what is right?" My second question is; "who best supports it?" You seem to be following a different pattern.
We agree that nuclear power is crucial. We agree that Gore and his supporters are unwilling to give
firm support to nuclear. We agree that Gore is unwilling to try and convince them to change their minds when other people with more to risk are willing to do so. So what good is he or his base to me or the environmental movement? I've met a lot of people who are pushing to solve our energy problems with windmills yet oppose nuclear.
That's a big problem. Who will solve it? Not Gore, apparently. If Gore's base doesn't support measures which are good for the environment and nation, and Gore will do nothing more than pander to them then what good is there in supporting him on this issue? That's an honest question.
If Gore won't clearly support the solutions that are needed on this issue then he's a distraction on this issue at best, not a leader and I see no good in supporting him.
I don't understand why you're more attached to "what's good for Gore?" rather than "What's good for the environment or nation?" The anti-nuclear crowd is the biggest roadblock to protecting the environment and moving off fossil fuels.
There cannot be an effective solution to this problem without opposing them. If Gore won't take them on, I'll support some leader who will.
If you claim it wouldn't hurt him at all, then, I'm afraid, you're not being serious.
I honestly don't care if it would hurt Gore or not. Why should I? I'm going to support those leaders who strongly and effectively advocate what I believe in. Hopefully, if I and other people do this enough, Gore's lack of explicit support for nuclear power will hurt him, as it should, and he'll change his tune. That, as I understand it, is how political movements work. It's not like Gore is the best advocate for this issue, that I have to stand behind him, warts and all. The only issue in terms of energy independence that really needs political support anyways is nuclear power. The rest can be handled more or less by the free market.
_He_ didn't get reelected, losing to a buffoon who campaigned on 'Its Morning Again in America.'
I'd hardly call Jimmy Carter pro-nuke. Chris nicely critiqued Carter's move to prevent the use of plutonium in reactors.
I'd hardly refer to Ronald Wilson Reagan as a "buffoon". I seriously doubt Mikhail Sergevich Gorbachev would have referred to him that way either.
However, Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. might have earned the epithet with the ill-conceived Gore Plan.
Thanks for reading the annotated Gore speech. I couldn't find a link in your post, Megan (but I'm back seat of a car on bumpy road). Here it is, for those who want to read, or help deconstruct it: "The Annotated Gore Climate Speech."
Well, what is this 'different pattern'? Be explicit.
We agree that Gore is unwilling to give explicit support support.
No, we do _not_ agree on this. And, in fact, you contradict yourself on this point later on, ergo, you don't really believe it either.
And the honest answer is that windmills, solar cells etc. are still good to have in an alternative energy economy. All other things being equal, for example, windmills and solar cells are less complex. They have less of an up-front capital investment. They are also far more scalable than nuclear. The option isn't nuclear vs everything else, which seems to be what you're implying, but nuclear as well as other things. The other answer is politics. Gore is a pretty good buffer between those who oppose nuclear power on principle, and those who are, shall we say, more pragmatic. The way things get done, ideally, is through coalition building. The people who say that nuclear is the only viable way to go are not going to make as much headway as those who make common cause with another powerful constituency.
Really, this is quite simple. And very obvious.
I am _not_ attached to "What's good for Gore"; _Gore_ is attached to what's good for Gore. Yes, I know, how dare he not commit political suicide, but that's just the sort of hard-hearted uncaring guy that he is. Sarcasm aside, what's good for the environment and what's good for the nation is a mix of nuclear and renewables. What's weird is that you seem to think that it's one vs the other, that the forces are opposed. They aren't. There is no reason not to support leaders of both programs, and again, they can get more done working together than working apart.
But earlier, you said he wouldn't be hurt, that he has 'less to lose'. Now you're changing your tune. Which, in the light of your earlier refusal to admit that other slights against Gore were simply, objectively wrong makes me think that really, you won't be satisfied unless he commits political suicide.
And why on earth that free market boilerplate at the very end? It makes you look ideologically impaired.
I think you would do well to listen less to Chris, and more to doing a little research of your own. You could, for example look at Carter's own position papers:
Etc. Next time, do your own research. Also, yes, I know, history didn't really begin until after you were born, but there was episodic concern about terrorism back then too, for example when terrorists disrupted the Munich Olympic Games.
Wanting to keep plutonium out of the hands of unfriendlies wasn't just some sort of fiendish cover story, it was an idea that had broad support at the time.
ScentOfViolets,
Without increased nuclear power generation carbon emissions can't be reduced.
If the environmental movement is not willing to look at nuclear and if gore is not willing to advocate for increased nuclear power generation neither are to be taken seriously on the issue of global warming.
Your thought that gore would be committing political suicide by mentioning nuclear power is further evidence of just how unserious the environmental community is about the issue.
ScentOfViolets isn't serious about any of this. He just wants to make pedantic arguments and hijack the thread so mean people stop saying mean things about Big Al.
It's the whole Democratic party and environmentalist strategy. Obfuscate. Misdirect. Confuse. But never ever, under any circumstances, produce more energy. Never try to solve the problems. Just keep running out the clock. Drive up the price and people will have to conserve.
They just hope to deflect the blame.
Nobody who advocates local solutions to global problems should be taken seriously.
Riiiight. So the options are: Gore doesn't say anything about nukes explicitly, and he's an idiot. Gore doesn't say anything about nukes explicitly, and he's a self-aggrandizing coward. Or Gore does explicitly promote nuclear power, and he loses his influence. Gee, if only you held other politicians to that standard.
In fact, of course, Gore _does_ think nuclear power has a place:
Or let's see what the man himself has to say:
Gee, he seems to be saying that he's _not_ against that evil nuclear power. Read the rest about concerns for nuclear weapons proliferation as well. That seems to get overlooked a lot by those who promote nuclear power, myself included.
So can we dispel this myth once and for all about that out-of-touch Gore? It was never true in the past, and it's certainly not true now, know-nothing Gore-bashers to the contrary. In fact, I'll make a prediction: Gore and his explicit call for more solar, wind, hydro, etc will see more real development and more new power generated in the next five years than even the most ambitious program to ramp up nuclear power generation. That's not to say that nuclear is not needed, of course, that's just making a comment about realistic goals.
Oh, and btw, whatever happened to Bush and his Manned Mission to Mars? I haven't seen anyone here taking him to task for that bit of unrealism :-)
So hydroelectric, wind, solar, all of those generate carbon emissions? News to me. Sure you didn't mean to say something else?
You mistake the 'environmental movement' for one monolithic organization, although why you do this, I don't know. I've already pointed out that 'environmentalists' seems to be an expandable, elastic definition, depending the convenience for the current point being debated. Am I an 'environmentalist' because I do curbside recycling, grow my own tomatoes, believe that we no choice but to turn to alternative means of generating energy? Am I an 'environmentalist' because I believe in AGW, and that Something Should Be Done? Congratulations, you've just painted a huge percentage of people - probably a majority - as 'environmentalists'. And put yourself on the fringe. But no matter. The point is, many so-called 'environmentalists' really are pro-nuke. And, I hate to break it to you, but most of the people who are anti-nuke are the sort of people you like to hold up as having 'heart-land' values. You know, the Real Americans. The ones who are afraid of giant mutant spiders taking over the world, or three-eyed evil mutants. The morons. Sorry, but them's the facts.
I think you make the mistake of conflating - what are they called these days? - deep Greens with the 'environmental' movement, and then claim that these fringe types are the dominant force. No, they're not. But the ones who write the checks that cover expenses of Gore's organization are probably very solidly anti-nuke - the hippy-dippy Three Mile Island Jane Fonda types.
Riiiight. So the options are: Gore doesn't say anything about nukes explicitly, and he's an idiot. Gore doesn't say anything about nukes explicitly, and he's a self-aggrandizing coward. Or Gore does explicitly promote nuclear power, and he loses his influence. Gee, if only you held other politicians to that standard.
In fact, of course, Gore _does_ think nuclear power has a place:
Or let's see what the man himself has to say:
Gee, he seems to be saying that he's _not_ against that evil nuclear power. Read the rest about concerns for nuclear weapons proliferation as well. That seems to get overlooked a lot by those who promote nuclear power, myself included.
So can we dispel this myth once and for all about that out-of-touch Gore? It was never true in the past, and it's certainly not true now, know-nothing Gore-bashers to the contrary. In fact, I'll make a prediction: Gore and his explicit call for more solar, wind, hydro, etc will see more real development and more new power generated in the next five years than even the most ambitious program to ramp up nuclear power generation. That's not to say that nuclear is not needed, of course, that's just making a comment about realistic goals.
Oh, and btw, whatever happened to Bush and his Manned Mission to Mars? I haven't seen anyone here taking him to task for that bit of unrealism :-)
As has been stated a number of times, his failure to mention nuclear power seems odd in a grand scheme of things sense, but it doesn't seem that odd if you consider his base.
IOW, the guy won't mention inconvenient truths.
;-)
Chuckle. Good one Jim. Yep, most of the time, it's not a good idea to antagonize the people paying the bills. That seems to be a universal truth, whether it's a newspaper with a big ad account, or a semi-pro politician with an agenda to push. Or as my canonical mama used to say: Don't bit the hand that feeds you.
The piece by David Evans that Gooch linked to displays one of the major problems of those who deny AGW. They pass around articles by people who inflate their credentials that are published by ideological media outlets with all of the credibility of Fox News writing on the Democratic Party. Evans in fact has no real expertise on climatology. His doctorate is in electrical engineering and his only relationship to the issue was writing a computer program (His day job is sometimes as a programmer.) for an Australian government project on carbon accounting. His opinion has no more weight than any other technical person who looks at the issue, and actually even less because if there is anything he has done is let his opinion alter his willingness to look at the science. Look at what he proposes as a viable alternative explanation. Just search on the name of the astrophysicist (Not climatologist.) whose proposal he considers to be a viable alternative to AGW. You'll find that mainstream scientists of many fields don't buy it and it considered a discredited theory.
And I also notice that many of the people writing here haven't paid a lot of attention to the latest technology. Do the research. Pay attention to the dates of the articles you find if you search the internet.
And why on earth that free market boilerplate at the very end? It makes you look ideologically impaired.
Government takes care of what the free market cannot. You seem to think people who disagree with you are stupid, apparently. It's already prevented you from processing quite a bit of what's been said.
You could, for example look at Carter's own position papers:
You haven't really countered anything here. Carter prevented recycling of nuclear fuel. That's plain and simple established fact. The increase in nuclear waste is now harped on incessantly as a drawback of nuclear power, slowing its increased adpotion. That fact also seems beyond debate. It also made the technology needlessly less efficient.
Did Carter ban nuclear power? No, of course not. Noone claimed he did. So what are you hoping to prove? You don't seem very good at parsing political statements. Politicians often derail measures, but not by opposing them directly. A common technique used is supporting some less effective alternative plan.
If you'd really like to counter Chris's arguments, you could give me some evidence that the US refusal to recycle nuclear fuel influenced the political actions of other nations. Granted, that's hard to do, even if true.
But otherwise, Chris's analysis of why fuel should be recycled seems pretty effectively damning of Carter's actions.
but there was episodic concern about terrorism back then too, for example when terrorists disrupted the Munich Olympic Games.
And we ended up funding it via our purchase of foreign oil not to mention and poisoning our own people on a massive scale via gasoline and coal byproducts.
I know about the Munich games and German's complicity in freeing those terrorists. Your point? That olympic atheletes in front of a crowd are about as safe as nuclear fuel inside a reactor? We recently had a plane with nuclear warheads fly across the country unauthorized, but we still have nuclear warheads. Why? Presumably because the benefit from keeping such warheads was worth the risk.
To put it simply; the risks vs benefits from recycling fuel favors recycling of fuel and noone's made a good case otherwise, though I'll keep asking in case someone can. Fuel in reactors are not the weakest link in the security chain.
Gee, he seems to be saying that he's _not_ against that evil nuclear power.
You have to be kidding me. Does the phrase "damning with faint praise" mean nothing to you? Not to mention the
numerous falsehoods he's repeated.
Oh, and btw, whatever happened to Bush and his Manned Mission to Mars? I haven't seen anyone here taking him to task for that bit of unrealism :-)
If he isn't still pushing it, I'm happy.
In fact, I'll make a prediction: Gore and his explicit call for more solar, wind, hydro, etc will see more real development and more new power generated in the next five years than even the most ambitious program to ramp up nuclear power generation
Via what mechanism would Gore do this? How do we measure Gore's impact? Why not compare the increase in energy generation and cost of power for the past decade with what could have been acheived with nuclear power plants that were recycling spent fuel. Shall we?
The logic of the Carter decision to ban reprocessing has been proven false time after time. The argument was that the US had to set an example to the rest of the world so that no one else would be tempted to use commercial reprocessing facilities to separate weapons-grade plutonium for nuclear weapons.
First, consider the situation pre-Carter:
1. The US developed nuclear weapons without commercial re-processing capability. (1940s)
2. The USSR developed nuclear weapons without commercial reprocessing capability. (1940s)
3. The UK developed nuclear weapons without commercial re-processing capability. (1950s)
4. The French developed nuclear weapons without commercial re-processing capability. (1950s)
5. The Chinese developed nuclear weapons without commercial re-processing capability. (1960s)
6. The Israelis developed nuclear weapons without commercial re-processing capability. (1960s)
7. The Indians developed nuclear weapons without commercial re-processing capability. (1970s)
Carter institutes the re-processing ban (1979?)
Then, after Carter leave office:
8. The South Africans developed nuclear weapons without commercial re-processing capability. (1990s?)
9. The Pakastanis developed nuclear weapons without commercial re-processing capability. (1990s)
10. The North Koreans developed nuclear weapons without commercial re-processing capability. (2000s)
11. The Iraqis try to develop nuclear weapons without commercial re-processing capability. (1980s)
12. The Iranians try to develop nuclear weapons without commercial re-processing capability. (2000s)
Overall, moral suasion does not seem to work very well, and it is clear that if a country wants nuclear weapons strongly enough, they are going to get them, no matter whether we re-process or not.
The counter-argument is that there are other countries that might have gone nuclear with this technology, who have not, because it is not available. I would say, in response: Who? The Germans and the Japanese and the South Koreans all have sufficient technical capability to develop weapons if they wanted, but they have not, and not because they don't re-process. Both Germany and Japan have their fuel re-processed, and South Korea wants to.
No country has ever used commercial re-processing tehnology to build weapons. None. And they would not, because it is not as efficient as other methods.
And building more nukes in the US is about to happen, but it will be very interesting to see how it proceeds, as local interest groups and Greens try to stand in the way. I have seen a senior nuclear policy analyst from Greenpeace at numerous NRC meetings to discuss new nuclear plants, and it is clear that he and his cohorts are not going to let the nuclear genie out of the bottle again, not if they have anything to say about it. The reason the plants were so expensive in the 1980s was the delays imposed by people who were imposed. They would not allow CWIP, they intervened to slow down construction and operation, they flogged allegations of poor construction to make the NRC conduct additional inspections, and in general they tried their best to drag the process out to make the utilities give up. The TMI accident
was a godsend for them, because it caused the imposition of all sorts of new technical requirements that cost a lot of money. I am sure that they will trot out the same tactics during the next round of nuclear construction. And there are very few people left at NRC from that era, who remember the first round of licensing wars - they are about to get an education from the lawyers and the courts...
Decommissioning ~700 GW of fossil-fueled power generation leaves ~ 800 Watts of reliable generation capacity (nuclear and hydro) for each current resident of the US, or ~2.4 kW per family. That is the design load on one 20 amp, 120 volt wall outlet.
Replacing ~700 GW of reliable generation with intermittent generation (solar and wind) would require the installation of a minimum of 2800 GW of capacity (25% capacity factor). For illustrative purposes only, that would be almost one million 3 MW wind turbines nationwide. That would also require quite a few pumped storage hydro dams or compressed air storage caverns to assure power system reliability, at least until some other high capacity storage technologies become available.
The only challenge then is to get it all permitted, constructed and operating in 10 years. In a world without regulators and intervenors, environmental activists and NIMBY/BANANA citizens groups, courts and lawyers, legislators and lobbyists it might even be plausible.
R:We agree that Gore is unwilling to try and convince them to change their minds when other people with more to risk are willing to do so.
S:No, we do _not_ agree on this. And, in fact, you contradict yourself on this point later on, ergo, you don't really believe it either.
Care to point out where? Currently he is unwilling to try and persuade them. You haven't contested this.
If I seem to contradict myself, please consider that you might not have understood what I was saying.
Might he change later? Possibly. Though I doubt it. He also actively contributes to people's misunderstandings, as I detail later.
Well, what is this 'different pattern'? Be explicit.
You are willing to support those who disagree with your beliefs since you seem to think they're useful, and then assert they silently agree with your beliefs when you've been given (what I consider) sufficient evidence that they don't.
They are also far more scalable than nuclear.
How do you mean the word?
It is possible to build multiple large nuke plants and have them work together.
The number of places and times where solar and wind are cost effective are more limited than nuclear, which makes these
technologies lessscalable. In that sense of the word, nuclear is more scalable. Too much energy at night is far less of a problem, for a variety of reasons, than the possibility of too little energy at peak demand.
If you mean that it's hard to run a nuclear power plant at less than full capacity, that's true to an extent. And in the end, this is just a transmission and storage problem. Eventually better flywheels will be built for energy storage (they're pretty good now) or people will charge their electric cars at night or a new superconducting grid will allow energy to be more effectivly moved through the grid or the capacity to generate petroleum products from electricity or fresh water using electric power
will ensure that the power generated at night is well used. Given the right infrastructure, all this is an effective solution.
The option isn't nuclear vs everything else, which seems to be what you're implying
I'm saying (have said) that political support for wind power coupled with opposition to nuclear power will fail, but the reverse isn't true. Can wind and solar power help? Yes, especially in other countries. They can also serve as distractions for the U.S. if viewed as viable alternatives to significant use of nuclear power, which many people do. And ultimately, wind power doesn't require the same level of national political support to remove many of the regulatory hurdles that nuclear does. Solar water heating can increase easily due to fairly short term market fluctuations.
I am saying that those who politically support the notion; "Wind and solar vs nuclear"
are far far more of a barrier than a help, probably the primary political barrier to energy independance. And Gore lends them more support than he takes from them.
They (wind and solar) have less of an up-front capital investment.
My point exactly. My dad installed solar water heating on his house. No changes in federal regulations were required.
No political process. No nothing. People in the Chinese countryside, where coal is abundant and environmental concers nonexistant and where electricity is available have solar water heaters installed, despite these facts. Nuclear power is potentially far cheaper and environmentally friendly than solar or wind, but cannot succeed without political support.
Okay, here's a speech by Gore;
Lets break it down;
1. Okay, I can buy that nuclear power in a few countries might possibly not be as effective for the reasons mentioned. Granted.
2. He has explicitly opposed strong support of nuclear power in the United States. He's done about as much damage as he could hope to do without insisting on a freeze in nuclear power, which would damage him.
3. He brings up a number of supposed problems which aren't really problems; the waste generated from nuclear power (potentially small and contained, especially if the nuke fuel can be recycled) vs. the waste generated from solar cells (inevitably massive and uncontained.) There hasn't been a single death in the US due to nuclear power. Operator error is not a problem, period. Chernobyl could not happen in the US due to much safer reactor designs, not to mention far far far stricter safety measures. But Gore posits it as "a problem that may be solvable" and then goes on to make his next point.
The effect is to try and maintain that these things are actually problems, which is misleading at best.
4. The first is economics; the current generation of reactors is expensive, take a long time to build, and only come in one size — extra large. Extra large? Tell it to the guys on nuclear submarines. Granted, smaller reactors are less efficient. But more importantly, nuclear power is cheaper than wind, particularly when all the resources and allowances required for wind in most situations are taken into account. So Gore's statement is outright dishonest. Affordability is not the problem.
5. Predicting future needs is not a big problem since the extra cheap energy could find a market, at least near large cities, if it was reliable.
People could charge their cars at night or wash clothes at night. Flywheel energy storage will advance, allowing increasingly efficient storage during trough energy usage. Desalination plants could run at night. Heavy industry could staff more night shifts and pay extra. Power could be used for processing organic material into liquid fuel. If the power is there and reliable and cheap enough, a market can be found for it.
6. Today, the dangerous weapons programs in both Iran and North Korea are linked to their civilian reactor programs.
Iran was offered the opportunity for a nuclear plant on foreign soil supplying them power.
They declined the offer. It's pretty transparent that most nations looking for nuclear weapons are not going to be deterred by foreign opposition to recycling of nuclear fuel, As rxc has effectively illustrated.
And why on earth that free market boilerplate at the very end? It makes you look ideologically impaired.
Government takes care of what the free market cannot. You seem to think people who disagree with you are stupid, apparently. It's already prevented you from processing quite a bit of what's been said.
You could, for example look at Carter's own position papers:
You haven't really countered anything here. Carter prevented recycling of nuclear fuel. That's plain and simple established fact. The increase in nuclear waste is now harped on incessantly as a drawback of nuclear power, slowing its increased adpotion. That fact also seems beyond debate. It also made the technology needlessly less efficient.
Did Carter ban nuclear power? No, of course not. Noone claimed he did. So what are you hoping to prove? You don't seem very good at parsing political statements. Politicians often derail measures, but not by opposing them directly. A common technique used is supporting some less effective alternative plan.
If you'd really like to counter Chris's arguments, you could give me some evidence that the US refusal to recycle nuclear fuel influenced the political actions of other nations. Granted, that's hard to do, even if true.
But otherwise, Chris's analysis of why fuel should be recycled seems pretty effectively damning of Carter's actions.
but there was episodic concern about terrorism back then too, for example when terrorists disrupted the Munich Olympic Games.
And we ended up funding it via our purchase of foreign oil not to mention and poisoning our own people on a massive scale via gasoline and coal byproducts.
I know about the Munich games and German's complicity in freeing those terrorists. Your point? That olympic atheletes in front of a crowd are about as safe as nuclear fuel inside a reactor? We recently had a plane with nuclear warheads fly across the country unauthorized, but we still have nuclear warheads. Why? Presumably because the benefit from keeping such warheads was worth the risk.
To put it simply; the risks vs benefits from recycling fuel favors recycling of fuel and noone's made a good case otherwise, though I'll keep asking in case someone can. Fuel in reactors are not the weakest link in the security chain.
Gee, he seems to be saying that he's _not_ against that evil nuclear power.
You have to be kidding me. Does the phrase "damning with faint praise" mean nothing to you? Not to mention the
numerous falsehoods he's repeated.
Oh, and btw, whatever happened to Bush and his Manned Mission to Mars? I haven't seen anyone here taking him to task for that bit of unrealism :-)
If he isn't still pushing it, I'm happy.
In fact, I'll make a prediction: Gore and his explicit call for more solar, wind, hydro, etc will see more real development and more new power generated in the next five years than even the most ambitious program to ramp up nuclear power generation
Via what mechanism would Gore do this? How do we measure Gore's impact? Why not compare the increase in energy generation and cost of power for the past decade with what could have been acheived with nuclear power plants that were recycling spent fuel. Shall we?
ScentOfViolets you said
Well if you did more research and less cheerleading it probably would not be news.
Lets look at dams first.
As others above have pointed out there is a limited amount of sites in the US suitable for hydroelectric power generation and most of these sites already have hydroelectric power installed. Furthermore hydroelectric projects have a substantial impact on river and wetland ecology and because of this many environmental groups are opposed to the construction of additional hydroelectric power projects.
When it comes to global warming the negative environmental impact of dams extends into areas most alternative energy enthusiasts such as yourself ignore.
World's dams are 'contributing to global warming'
ScentOfViolets you said
Continuing the above post lets look at wind power. Once again more research and less cheerleading would be helpfulResearch: Wind power pricier, emits more CO2 than thought
ScentOfViolets you said
Solar cells have generated emissions of substances that are slightly more "interesting" than carbon.
Solar Energy Firms Leave Waste Behind in China
ScentOfViolets,
It is quite simple.
Nukes are the only technology capable of reducing carbon emissions while generating energy on the scale required to replace the current carbon emitting sources of power.
If global warming related to carbon emissions is the existential crisis to humanity that gore says it is his failure to mention nukes is gross incompetence.
In the face of these simple facts you have posted reams of text defending gore's failure to explicitly mention the only technology capable of meeting the goals he set.
Your comment
illustrates just how indefensible gore's failure to explicitly advocate for nukes is.
geothermal.
geothermal.
geothermal.
Can't repeat it enough. Geothermal power. With new techniques (being explored, but they look pretty solid) geothermal can work almost anywhere and provide reliable, baseline power.
The installations will have negligible environmental impact. After all, most of the structure is buried.
I expect we'll be hearing a lot more about geothermal, once all the other options have been exhausted.
Alan,
Do you have any links to some of the newer geothermal power technologies? Everything I'm aware of has required geography that isn't very commonplace.