Climate Scientist: Climate Engineering Might Be the Answer To Warming

Lasrick (2629253) writes "Tom Wigley is one of the world's top climate scientists, and in this interview he explains his outspoken support for both nuclear energy and research into climate engineering. Wigley was one of the first scientists to break the taboo on public discussion of climate engineering as a possible response to global warming; in a 2006 paper in the journal Science, he proposed a combined geoengineering-mitigation strategy that would address the problem of increasing ocean acidity, as well as the problem of climate change. In this interview, he argues that renewable energy alone will not be sufficient to address the climate challenge, because it cannot be scaled up quickly and cheaply enough, and that opposition to nuclear power 'threatens humanity's ability to avoid dangerous climate change.'"

Comments

Incorrect Analysis

[WillAffleckUW]

Look, real climate change impacts are cradle to grave for power sources.

When done that way, nuclear fission causes water to heat, the mining process is extremely impactful, and the amount of risk and capital required make it no more efficient than reducing the impact of existing coal power plants by converting them to more efficient (as in double the output per ton of coal) by cogeneration.

The problem is really one of massive subsidies for wrong-headed energy sources.

Coal, oil, and natural gas.

Get rid of the tax exemptions for those and the below-market rate leases for drilling and exploitation and shipping and the market self-corrects.

Take the money saved by removing those exemptions and put it into low-cost 1 percent capital loans to build solar, wind, and micro-hydro power sources instead. The problem with those sources is coming up with the capital to switch, not the cost to operate (solar is already cheaper than everything except coal, for example, and that's with massive coal subsidies and tax exemptions).