Slashdot Mirror
4 Prominent Scientists Say Renewables Aren't Enough, Urge Support For Nuclear
First time accepted submitter Paddy_O'Furniture writes "Four prominent scientists have penned a letter urging those concerned about climate change to support nuclear energy, saying that renewables such as wind and solar will not be sufficient to meet the world's energy needs. Among the authors is James Hansen, a former top NASA scientist, whose 1988 testimony before the United States Congress helped launch discussions of global warming into the mainstream."
Logic is a wonderful thing and we need more critical thinking and less hyperbole with regards to green energy. Strident hyperbole with regards to the anti-nuclear energy has resulted in the real world build of coal power plants as renewals simply are suitable for baseline power. Coal power plants also release far more pollution and for the ignorant they also result in a lot of radiation being released into the air.
Nuclear energy is proven, has the lowest pollution, best carbon footprint of anything we have (it's largest footprint comes from the concrete used in it's construction) and could be far cheaper if it wasn't severely over-regulated. Thorium reactors are also starting to get planned for production and deserve a good look (and if fact a proof of concept plant was built in the past). Thorium reactors have the green advantages of nuclear reactors and should be included.
It's time to get real about getting green and put the likes of Greenpeace out to pasture. They have done far more harm to the environment than just about anyone short of the Koch brothers.
That's kind of my point.
If the country that helped defeat but the Nazis and the Soviets can't be trusted with nuclear weapons, why the fuck would we insist that all 54 African countries, everyone in Latin America, Asia, etc. has to build reactors capable of producing those weapons? Hell if the Japanese, who aren't known for inferior engineering, can't keep a non-weapons producing facility safe what are the odds that everyone else can pull that shit off?
Global warming is bad, but if it's a choice between moving all NYC residents to Detroit (we'd actually have room for a quarter of them within the Detroit city limits, the D' population has fallen that much since it's peak in '55), and giving all 192 countries in the world nuclear power then I'm gonna go with moving everyone to fucking Detroit.
This's one of the dumbest proposals ever.
You only need to cover a half a percent of the Earth's surface with off-the-shelf 15% efficient PV panels to provide all of humanity all of its energy needs. If we covered all residential rooftops in the States with PV panels, we'd generate about as much electricity as the industrialized world needs -- and that's just residential rooftops just in the US.
To suggest that solar somehow isn't enough is just laughable. Hell, with the kind of abundance that solar offers, we've got far more than enough available to distill CO2 out of the atmosphere and turn it into hydrocarbons -- an incredibly energy-intensive process -- and use those hydrocarbons as our storage and transportation mechanisms just as we do today.
What we don't have is the willingness to invest our hydrocarbon inheritance in bootstrapping ourselves into such an energy-wealthy society. Instead, we'd rather squander our inheritance on monster SUVs and petroleum-based fertilizer to feed dozens of billions of people.
Here's some perspective from somebody who can actually do the math:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/02/the-alternative-energy-matrix/
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
This is not politically viable in the US. A large percentage of the population has no problem with the government giving free stuff to companies but then get all up in arms when it gives stuff to the people.
Didn't take long for "shiver in the dark" environmentalism to raise its ugly head.
I'm not anti-nuke, I'm anti-greed.
I have no (ZERO, None, nada, zilch) issues with nuclear energy as long as it's done properly.
I have major issues with letting companies like ConEd run anything dangerous. They will cut corners to make more money, they will leak radioactive waste into the groundwater, they will eventually cause a disaster. It's in their nature. They need to earn a never ending growing profit, the quick way to that is to cut corners.
So, YES, we must invest in nuclear, but must do it properly.
The world is not binary: there's a vast range of possibilities between leaving heating on the entire year and opening the windows when you get too hot to never turning it on.
Raising the price of energy would help push people away from the stupidity of the first of those (yes, some do), to be just as comfortable and healthy on much less. I've easily managed to halve my energy use while adding two children to my household: it is depressing that some will not even try at the risk of damning their successors...
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
IAAESS (I am an energy system scientist).
These are four of the most prominent *climate* scientists in the world. But not one of them has published a single paper on energy systems (as far as I can see in their online lists of publications). There is a whole field of science concerning integration of intermittent renewables, and these guys have never demonstrated any expertise in this area.
I'm sure all four of them get extremely annoyed when scientists in fields completely unrelated to climate change spout climate skeptic nonsense all over the media (I do too). Now they are guilty of the exact same sin.
I live in the most energy efficient house in my county, based on good insulation, solar heating, and thermal mass. We just retrofitted my daughter's house (built in 1968) with insulation in attic, walls and crawl space. Nobody is wearing thermal underwear. Nobody is uncomfortable. And we are saving lots of money by NOT using energy. But "cheap" energy undercuts such efforts. The payback time is too long for most folks if energy stays cheap. But energy is only cheap if you ignore the cost of environmental damage. If that damage were included on your power bill each monty, insulation and solar power would look pretty good.
From the article: "Those energy sources cannot scale up fast enough" to deliver the amount of cheap and reliable power the world needs, "
But nuclear power is neither cheap nor reliable. So why do they suggest that as a replacement for renewables. As to the "fast enough" part of that, solar and wind can be ramped up much faster than nuclear. The rationale of the article is not logical.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Renewables absolutely have the capability to meet out energy needs. Solar alone has reached to point where a sub-$10k installation can power a reasonably efficient house, even in the Northern US; in places that get enough wind (a lot more places than you might expect), a single small turbine can power a house, or a modest sized tower can power an entire neighborhood.
No, renewables can't meet the demand today, and possibly never will. You have made the classic mistake of assuming your experience is typical of everything everywhere. A typical solar installation is capable only of meeting a normal households power needs part of the time. Even with neighborhood wind turbines, you will not cover 100% of the power needs. Now consider that household power only accounts for 21% of the U.S. energy consumption. The overwhelming majority comes from industrial and commercial power use which has a much higher land density, and simply cannot be covered in any meaningful way with solar or wind power. Now you're back to needing industrial scale power generation which requires massive amounts of land for the scale required by industry and you're back to needing big again. If you covered the entire island of Manhattan (every square inch of exposed surface) with solar panels, you would only add up to about 1/4 of the total power demand. Sure you have lots of open space in Arizona, but you have to get the power from Arizona to Manhattan and its just not that simple. Also, how much deforestation are you willing to undertake to supply the energy needs of industrialized nations?
You are a very large part of the problem. Your arguments are bunk and fail to stand up to the realities of the world, and yet on the surface sound plausible enough to convince at least three moderators to mod you up on Slashdot (which I like to think has a smarter than average population). You and your ilk will have us so paralyzed following dead end projects that we'll all end up cooked thoroughly from global warming before any one of you will even be willing to concede that you're not half as smart as you think you are.
A group of very intelligent individuals from some of the most highly recognized institutions of the world tells you that renewables cannot be made sufficient to stop global warming, and you are going to tell the rest of us that they are wrong because of your own anecdotal experience? I think its high time we started calling your type out for the BS you're spewing.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
I'm throwing a flag, bullshit on the field. The ones using the most wasteful energy can WELL afford any bullshit price hikes you an come up with, won't stop Rev Al Gore from farting around in a one man lear jet or having a fleet of SUVs like he's El Presidente, the ONLY ONES that price hikes hurt are the ones who can least afford it and who AL.READY CONSERVE and that is of course the poor.
I've said it before and I'll say it again the answer is NOT price hikes, just the opposite in fact, its making better choices cheap enough the masses can easily afford it. Why does the USA use so much gas? Because the average MPG is just 14 here, but why? Because the poor can only afford used cars for the most part and the cheapest ones are also piggies. What you need is a "people's car/truck" that runs on diesel so you can switch to biofuels when they are viable, gets a minimum of 40MPG and cots no more than $20K and then use "cash for clunkers" style program along with subsidies to get the poor out of the old gas hogs.
But I just love how the greenies want to fuck everybody with price hikes because THEY can afford them while ignoring that even a 40c a gallon gas hike raises the cost of food enough that more Americans will be going hungry. When you add to that a right wing owned by the "let 'em die!" teabaggers trying to gut food stamps and any other aid to the poor a price hike is the LAST fucking thing we need, too many are already going hungry as it is.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Thorium is pretty abundant, so its probably not worth figthing over. Most countries have access to enough of the stuff.
Furthermore, you don't need much thorium. Uranium is only 0.7% U235. The other 99.3% is U238, which is mostly removed in the enrichment process. But with thorium, you can use all of it as fuel, and it is four times as abundant as uranium to start with. The biggest problem with thorium, is a lack of experience with the reactors. Several small research reactors have been built, but there are no existing, proven designs for big plants. Fortunately, both India and China appear to be getting behind the technology. Lots more info here.