More recently one should not ignore (but many false skeptics do) there was a very important test done in the 60s-80s, back then there was a pause and an apparent slowdown and cool down, even the popular press reported then that an ice age was coming. Only that a super majority of scientific papers then reported that warming was coming. (if by now you are not aware how often the popular press -or blogs- get science wrong you need to calibrate your skeptical radar.)
And so it was, from the 80s on the warming came, just as the scientists that predicted an increase of CO2 would do. And so it goes for the so called current “pause” that has many contrarians declaring that we should expect cooling now.
I think you missed the point. Nuclear doesn’t scale purely due to man-made barriers. Many renewable technologies don’t scale because of natural limitations. For example, large scale hydroelectric power is only really feasible where there’s a lot of fast-flowing water, and those places are few and far between, and more importantly, those dams have already been built for the most part. Solar takes a LOT of area. Wind and solar are dependent on weather- if a place is too cloudy or not windy enough, you can’t use it.
And on top of that, if you do have a suitable site, you can’t just necessarily add more to generate more power; at some point it becomes counterproductive.
I don’t think that is quite accurate nowadays, Germany has less sun that the USA and yet their solar power output is increasing, of course what is going on is that a lot of the mainstream media in the USA is not talking much about it or misrepresenting what is going on.
first off, the idea that getting of the carbon standard is the cheapest solution is unfounded. It doesn’t take into account our ability to add objects to the atmosphere to reflect solar energy back toward the sun.
Second, we’re on the brink of rapidly changing energy consumption. That hinges on battery technology. There are already market forces demanding quick charging batteries. It’s GOING to happen and when it does we will switch over to battery powered cars quickly and naturally. $1/gallon equivalent fuel consumption versus $4/gallon fuel consumption will make that change without any outside intervention.
My point was that the vast majority of hurdles to implementing nuclear power are regulatory and political, while most renewable energy sources are somewhat geographically limited- you can’t just throw down a productive wind farm or hydroelectric plant anywhere, you know. And even when there’s a suitable area, there are usually limitations on how much energy can be extracted at that one site.
Solar is hideously inefficient- a 500 acre solar park in Germany (Solarpark Meuro) puts out 186 mw, while a garden-variety nuclear plant in Texas (Comanche Peak) puts out nearly 1100 mw per reactor (2 online, 2 planned) rain or shine, 24/7 for decades.
If energy usage is to continue growing, and we want to stave off global warming and be environmentally friendly, renewables are good, but nuclear power is literally the “nuclear option”- it has larger capacities than fossil fuels and a smaller waste problem (scientifically speaking, not politically).
I’m not against nuclear power BTW, but I think your post can lead many to think that you are still ignoring a lot of what solar is doing in places like Germany were a concerted effort has been made to make solar work.
Perhaps the problem of calling it inefficient is based on information that was accurate until recently.
IMHO the biggest problem for nuclear will be NIMBY, and to counteract that I think we need to have standards, and giving the people that live close to the plant or disposal units a stake, or part ownership and to get profits for the energy or hefty subsides for the energy used, like they do in France as the way to get rid of NIMBY. (Not surprisingly it is in great part tanks to that shared ownership and subsidies that France did not call off their nuclear program as many other nations did after Chernobyl and Fukishima)
Unfortunately many conservatives have an even bigger problem with things that smell of socialism.
Solar energy “works” in Germany because of enormous subsidies paid by the taxpayers. Along with high electric rates, the taxpayers of Germany subsidize the purchase of the solar panels, the upkeep and repair, and the (eventual scrapping fees). It all amounts to a big tax. had Germany built (instead) efficient 5th generation nuclear plants, they would be much better off…
Like France and England with nuclear power subsidies? Sure nuclear is doing better there thanks to that too, but now you see how silly is to use this argument. More silly when one notices that many of the ones calling for change on our CO2 emissions are not opposed to nuclear power. With German solar power plants producing 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour - equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity, it means that many of the silly arguments from contrarians that claim that the ones proposing change are also demanding the end of modern society do not hold.
Well, I think that also going for simple solutions on the other extreme is wrong, dropping nuclear power is not a good idea now.
I still think nuclear has its uses when Solar and wind are less active. Although I have to say that when better batteries are developed even the off peak issues that solar and wind have will be reduced so much that nuclear will also hit problems justifying their existence on environmental and economical grounds.
Lest people accuse me of threadshitting, let me add that the nuclear option is unfeasible for many reasons.
Nuclear fuel is a finite resource, and every year we are mining lower grade uranium than we did the year before.
Going “full-bore nuclear” now will deplete those fuel sources incredibly quicker. What do we do then?
Are you aware of how much nuclear energy costs? If you still think nuclear energy is feasible, I’ll bet you aren’t factoring in the costs to contain the spend fuel for upwards of 10,000 years.
Storing anything safely for 10,000 years is just not going to happen. Why? Because the longest any continuous government has operated on this earth, ever, is measured in the hundreds of years not thousands (and certainly not 10,000). Also, earthquakes.
Thinking that nuclear power will save us from climate change is an absurd dream.
Nuclear power is the most complex of the solutions. It’s those who think we can answer all our needs from wind and solar who aren’t thinking it all out.
We can answer 100% of our needs with straight solar. The trick is that it requires storage.
Hypothetically, if we had a storage technology that was about 4 to 8 times cheaper than it currently costs on the open market ( $1100 to store 3.75 kWh available here : http://www.balqon.com/balqon-battery-cells/ ), we’d not even be having this discussion. Can it get 4 to 8 times cheaper? I’m reasonably certain that $1100 battery does not have more than a few dollars worth of lithium and iron in it, so, yes.
For Europe, they could put an array large enough to power the entire place in the Sahara desert. There are vast tracts of it that are uninhibited, and they do have the military force to seize it if they couldn’t get the current landowners to come to an agreement.
For the USA, it would take a chunk of Arizona about 100 x 100 miles, give or take a bit. That desert is currently unused land.
What will be the pain of not mitigating? Building seawalls or something? I’m still waiting for what, exactly, will be the proximate catastrophe for which we should all give up Stuff.
The pain of mitigating effectively is to live dirt poor until we figure out cleaner energy. No one–except that Begley jr fellow–is gonna do that. Too painful. Not gonna happen, sir. Not. Gonna. Happen.
We have no real clue how painful high CO2 levels are going to be. No idea if it will be all good because of CO2 fertilization, or all bad 'cuz the polar bears croaked, or somewhere in between. And no window beyond a hundred years is going to be cared about by anybody. None of us are willing to give anything up now for a perspective that far in the future.
In the meantime: Stuff. Stuff for me and Al Gore. Stuff for GigoBuster, too. Vacations that mean flying. New golf clubs that are made in China. Better hotels that need Stuff to be better hotels.
Not a single person I personally know wants to give up Item One for the sake of the future.
If we perfected Green Energy tomorrow, all we would do is doom the planet anyway. It would just give us that much more excuse to be successful, get more Stuff, and consume the planet in other ways.
It’s just ridiculous and naive to think that “no mitigation is more painful than with mitigation.” On what grounds, and to whom?
Do you see Mr Gore “mitigating”? Did you give up your last chance at a private jet to take a bicycle? Neither did I.
The only reason AGW gets any traction at all is recreational outrage and a sense of Doing Something for a Great Cause. Very intoxicating. But not intoxicating enough to actuallly…er, ummm…be poor.
Aaaand it is clear Chief Pedant did not read the thread… he needs to go back and read, we are figuring out that bit of the clean energy.
Otherwise it is back to the strawman points like the endless ones claiming that the ones looking to control emissions are proposing to stop the progress of humanity, there is also once again the silly attempt at a personification fallacies by using Gore and even me, sad really.
Well, I think I did…which important point did I miss, and which strawman did I advance?
The OP wants to know if there is any realistic way to fight global warming. I assume what he’s really asking is to win the fight against global warming.
I’m waiting for some numbers from you and other AGW enthusiasts on how we are going to win. Not reassurances on how well we can solve problems if we all try, and how promising are this that and the other. Numbers.
Currently, about 3% of world energy is derived from newer renewables (newer hydro; solar; biomass…). World energy consumption is galloping along, with downturns only when we get poorer (aka “economic downturns”). A bunch of people are still poor, and a bunch have yet to be born. Countries that have tackled poverty successfully have a pretty good track record of two things: First, prosperity takes precedence over total energy consumption and emissions; and second, total energy consumption rises to generate the the wealth that gets rid of poverty.
So you have to get that graph fixed. And you aren’t going to be able to fix it in time.
What will happen instead is that any new energy we bring online will also be maximally consumed to help in the grand fight against poverty, and the total amount of polluting energy will continue to expand. And if I understand the AGW alarmists correctly, that total amount of AGW-promoting gasses has to decline precipitously because it’s already to high.
Do you have some numbers with which to reassure me that my pessimism is misplaced or that my fundamental analysis of human nature is incorrect?
(And for the zillionth time, I am not villifying Al Gore. I am Al Gore (figuratively), and so is the rest of the world. We are all inclined to live as comfortably as possible despite our reservations about the environmental consequences in the same way that we may preach against sin but personally elect to sin ourselves…) Mr Gore is simply an easy way to get the point across.
One more question, GIGObuster: Can you help me understand from the graph I linked above how much the rise in newer renewables (the green line at the bottom) was able to reduce the consumption of coal and oil (the red and black lines)?
Look at the far right of the graph to understand my confusion here about your optimism. It does not look to me like rising new renewables is resulting in diminished coal/oil.
Is it the case that the folks in China, India and most of africa will be putting their get-less-poor dreams on hold until we first sort out how to add only clean energy?
You might think that nobody, anywhere, ever willingly gives up anything. That’s not true, though. Entire nations have given up, say, leaded gasoline. I gave up gasoline altogether for personal use. It hasn’t made me poor, not if by poor you mean short on cash. It saves me money that I can then spend on, as it turns out, my wife’s hobbies and my daughters’ toys. Such is life.
Of course, no one here has advocated that you should give things up. That’s one of your strawmen. I will now, though. You should give up thinking about climate change. No good will come of it. Your non-ideas are particularly bad non-ideas. Not only do you repeat the obvious falsehood that there are only two choices, you can’t even see that mitigation is not an all or nothing concept. There are many methods available, and a nigh-infinite number of combinations and intensities of which those methods might be applied. This has already been addressed but your non-ideas are impervious to information. Very sturdy stuff, your little anti-thoughts. If I could, I’d insulate my house with them, though I’d be worried about the smell. At the very least, one could use them to wrap garbage. Then they’d be useful.
Sorry I couldn’t work in a pirate or duck. What’s made of gibberish and quacks?
