111 comments on Climate Code Red: The Case for a Sustainability Emergency
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I guess as an astronomer I can say that the Sun's luminosity is not changing at the level that greenhouse gas forcing is changing owing the carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, land use changes, and the beginning of saturation of some carbon dioxide uptake mechanisims as a result of warming. Theories to do with the solar cycle are not so much about a change in the energy input from the Sun but rather the effect of the Sun's magnetic field on the ability of cosmic rays to penetrate into the inner solar system, the effect of those cosmic rays on cloud formation and a consequent change in the Earth's albedo. Since the amplitude of the solar cycle has not changed during the recent warming, this is not explanatory for the recent warming. The Sun seems to be doing what it does still: http://www.ias.u-psud.fr/website/modules/news2/article.php?storyid=34
The recent warming is best explained by the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is not a complicated thing as you seem to think but rather pretty straight forward radiative transfer. This sort of thing explains pulsations in stars, the effects of abundances on the colors and luminosities of stars, the warmth of the surfaces of planets with atmospheres an the like. Changing the opacity changes the energy balance. This can have a big effect. I even got away with using and exclamation point in a recent scientific paper because the effect can be so large: http://arxiv.org/abs/0802.1666
I think you can have very strong confidence that the recent warming is real and pretty strong confidence that we are causing it. If we are not the cause, then the excursion in temperature over several decades is a bigger fluke than credulity would normally tolerate. With a fundemental physical explanation at hand, doubt would seem to be less and less productive at this point.
On the other hand, I obviously approach the issue from a philisophical point of view: we should unmake our waste as a matter of principle. That we happen to be in the midst of an emergency on account of that waste does focus my attention on it, but I feel the same about trash on the side of the road or plutonium. In fact, I don't think we should be making waste at all. If you get a chance today, you might want to listen to William McDonough to get more of a sense of where I'm coming from on that: http://www.newdimensions.org/ndir.php
Chris
Chris,my understanding was that the rise in temperature could not be explained directly by the rise in GW gasses, as they were far too small to do the job directly.
I thought that it was assumed that there were very large multiplier effects through feed-back mechanisms causing the present rise in temperature, and it is only then that you get this best fit to climate data.
Greenhouse gasses remain the best explanation for rises, but I thought, perhaps mistakenly, that it was a much more remote argument than a straight forward one-for-one correlation, and hence a weaker case and one more prone to error?
As regards cleaning up, I'd like to make two points, the first is that nature in fact is inherently messy, and often acts with vast apparent inefficiencies, salmon spawning and most of the off-spring dying and so on, and as a matter of pure engineering 100% solutions are not cost effective - 80% or so are effective, you pick the low hanging fruit.
Many advocates of renewables seem to have got themselves into a bind over this, and end up calling for vastly complicated, costly and in my view wholly impractical schemes such as the one Stuart suggested here recently for a world grid, simply because they are refusing to use nuclear where for all but some very theoretical considerations it is the best engineering option.
The second point would be that further development of the nuclear program should enable with some small technical progress the elimination of darn near all of the perceived problem with nuclear waste and safety.
I think that many have ended up for reasons of philosophy in an untenable position from an engineering POV.
If one wants to look at things philosophically, it is perhaps difficult to see, as Fred Hoyle argued, how a advanced technological society can be maintained without access to highly concentrated forms of energy such as nuclear.
On top of that, I want it for spaceships! :-)
When the concentration of carbon dioxide is raise in the atmosphere, that altitude at which the Earth radiates energy from the Sun back to space is increased. The temperature of this layer is fixed by the distance of the Earth from the Sun. All the temperature profile below this layer is determined by hydrostatic equilibrum plus the energy inputs all the way down. When you lift up the top, this essentially raises the bottom as well so that a profile that terminates at the bottom of Death Valley now terminates above the valley. It is true that there are follow-on effects. Warm air also hold more moisture which means that the tropsphere can hold heat closer to the surface These kinds of effect are called feedbacks and the debate now is centering on the feedback response rate and what the ultimate climate sensitivity is. For a doubling of carbon dioxide it could be 3, 6 or 10 C. Some of that debate is reviewed in the Climate Code Red report.
It is too bad you couldn't listen to William McDonough yesterday. The program schedule has moved on now. In ecosystems there is no waste. Every output is also an input. Salmon spawn are food. The carbon dioxide salmon emit feeds plankton. Your picture of nature is too narrow just now to see this I think.
I also think you have a misconception about engineering. Engineering is done to tolerances so it is alway over 100% during the design lifetime. If a bridge fails before it is old, this is considered a grave engineering error. Oft times it is not the engineering but coruption that causes the failure. A part is certified to meet spec by someone who knows that it does not for personal gain. We can see this happening now with relicencing of nuclear power plants in the US. The plants were designed with a safety factor and the corrupt NRC is now eating into that safety factor with relicencing. The regulators know they won't keep their jobs if they don't because accommodating the industry is required owing to the campaign contributions that got their bosses elected. What McDonough is advocating is essentially an extention of the concept of design lifetime. When designing, one should know how the materials will be food for new design once they have served their intended purpose. This is most of the cradle-to-cradle concept. Another part is that the process of manufacturing should include such considerations. In the case of a nuclear reactor core, we can see that there nothing that a used core can feed into so nuclear power is fundementally bad design. It turns out that McDonough's approach is very cost effective and he is quite successful in his endevours.
You might want to think a little harder about the cost of what Stuart is looking at. 30 GW capacity transmission lines are a bit more robust that 3 GW capacity lines. Their design lifetimes will likely be set to centuries rather than decades. So, you would want to look closely at the prorated cost. It seems clear that transmission lines in the GW capacity range are considered cost effective so the same may be true of higher capacity lines. The stumbling block seems to me more that our finacial instruments do not extend over century time-scales except for accumulation such as university endowments. Taking out a 200 year loan to finance a Sahara to New York transmission line which might substantially reduce the cost of energy for North America, Europe and Africa over that period seems a little hard to concieve. But, there are physical reasons to think that scale in transmission brings cost savings: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/03/coast-to-coast.html
Fission for space seems like a loser to me. Matter-anti-matter has a much better power to weight ratio and, with a renewable grid, would be much less expensive. For the inner solar system, solar power seems cheaper still. Fred Hoyle has argued quite a lot of things and I have to admit that I've gotten quite a lot of milage out of the 3.4 um absorption feature. But, I doubt it is biological in orgin. UV treated ice residues seem to capture much of its shape. The universe is not always according to Hoyle....
Chris
I understand what you are saying about carbon dioxide, but that just means that the situation is by no means as straightforward as a one-for-one mechanical link against carbon dioxide, but is instead dependent on complex feedback mechanisms to multiply the strength many times.
Most of those links are hypothesised to be positive, and so you end up with the current levels they are projecting for GW.
However, at any level other forces could come into play, on the downside leading to some of the 'trigger points' hypothesised by many, which would lead to much more severe, sudden effects, and on the upside to negative feedbacks which might counteract some or all of the results.
I would agree that man-made anthropogenic warming is the best hypothesis we have, but the whole subject seems to me to have been over-simplified, and some of the pronouncements of certainty(on both sides) seem at best premature.
Of course I am aware that nature often uses resources which would otherwise go to waste.
However this is often on such a vast time-scale that the statement becomes meaningless.
You could just litter everywhere, including dropping plutonium about, and for those who choose to anthromorphosise then bountiful nature in its all seeing wisdom, or some such, will ensure that it does not go to waste, just as the photons from a sun somewhere far away with no planets revolving around it do not go to waste - but of course in any human sense they do.
I am also of course aware that engineering is done allowing safety margins.
It sounds as though McDonough has interesting and often applicable ideas, but they are not the only ones about and should not be used as holy writ.
However, the critique of reactor core design is a good one and one I will study further.
If that is the only major problem it might be worth putting up with though - regardless of what some think, life is not perfect.
The suggestion that power lines should be amortised over a period of centuries sounds incredible stretched to me - anything looks good if you squint hard enough.
It's not really necessary when we have alternatives which will do the job just fine at a tiny fraction of the cost - although of course if you applied the same criteria to nuclear and wanted your pay-back over the full 60 years lifetime not 20 you would find that it was vastly cheaper than any fossil fuel alternative.
Your last comment on fission for space suffers from the weakness that we have fission power, we don't have an anti-matter drive.
I think it really comes back to the subject of philosophy - supposing that your point about reactor cores could be answered, not perfectly but well, would that satisfy you, or is this essentially a cover, as your objections go deeper and under no circumstances would you consider it?
Anyway, a stimulating discussion, for which I thank you!
Your suggestion to have a pay-back time for power grids of 200 years merits further discussion.
Of course, the answer from classical economics would be to compare that to investing the same money in the market, and give that a growth rate, of, say 2%, and add that up over the 200 years.
The figure you would come out with then would be vastly more than the already high cost of financing in the normal way, and your original costing, which for the sake of argument is $1,000 trillion (figures by K. Levin, not disputed by Stuart, but anyways the sum is big) would increase to an even more fantastic amount.
Of course, the counter argument is that this is based on an economy which is growing, and does not apply to a static economy.
On the contrary, what those figures really show even in a static economy is that the money could be better spent, so lets look at real physical alternatives, and leave out nuclear as clearly on any rational costings this would out-perform this by a factor of twenty or so, but try to make the harder case to show that you could do better even without nuclear.
One alternative might be to put your $1,000 trn into developing lift systems for the exploitation of space resources, and also mining the moon or asteroids to build space mirror systems to provide power on earth.
The same kind of money spent that way would then not only provide energy but would provide a huge range of additional capabilities, including the ability to deliver rare minerals back to earth, overcoming shortages of indium and so on.
If you didn't fancy that, you could develop hot-rock geothermal energy, and I would guess still have plenty of change.
To go back to the nuclear alternative, you could use the price difference to perhaps provide sanitation and clean drinking water to everyone on earth, or maybe to greatly extend lifespans.
A few radioactive cores which are resistant to re-cycling seems a manageable problem when you look at the benefits you could get.
The basic point is that in the process of trying to weight things to favour the preferred alternative, you have lost any rational method of comparing benefits.
Stuart has done a very valuable service by showing that we aren't going to run out of energy, and that at costs which are still only a fraction of production you can adequately provide energy.
In my view though he has equally conclusively proved that the means chosen are vastly more expensive than alternatives.
Regarding McDonough, I am afraid I don't really 'do' philosophy, or more accurately am firmly in the tradition of British empiricism, and certainly would not use his ideas or anyone else's to evaluate and discard an alternative if it was cost effective and relatively benign.
When the application of his ideas leads to good cost effective solutions, fine, but as metaphysics it would leave me cold!
Dave,
I think you mean reductionism rather than empiricism. As C. S. Lewis has so gently shown in his character MacPhee, empiricism leads to very strong ethical convictions. Empericist would, for example, be able to recognize the Yes Men's Vivloeum presentation as a satire. I think that if you look more closely at what McDonough is saying you'll find it quite empirically based. Where you are having difficulty is more in the level of (non-Hegelian) synthesis you are willing to appreciate. Reductionism, lacking synthesis, leads to a view of nature that holds the observer separate. I think you will find as you explore McDonough's work more thoroughly that while he relies on inspiration to move forward, his empirical groundwork is extremely sound.
The subject of Climate Code Red pretty much shows that unsynthesized reductionism leads to catastrophe. The observer, being biological, is not separate from nature and may not act as though that were the case without extreme consequences. The core problem with reductionism is that it attempts to legislate the value of pi. It attempts to take an intellectual stance that is useful for the purpose of study, a fictional stance, and act as though it were reality. Empericism does not attempt such foolishness.
Chris
Philosophy is a method for very clever people to end up in very stupid positions.
It's application in this particular instance seems to have resulted in a preference for a solution costing around 20 times more than a viable alternative.
That is plain silly.
We can see this happening now with relicencing of nuclear power plants in the US. The plants were designed with a safety factor and the corrupt NRC is now eating into that safety factor with relicencing. The regulators know they won't keep their jobs if they don't because accommodating the industry is required owing to the campaign contributions that got their bosses elected. What McDonough is advocating is essentially an extention of the concept of design lifetime. When designing, one should know how the materials will be food for new design once they have served their intended purpose. This is most of the cradle-to-cradle concept. Another part is that the process of manufacturing should include such considerations. In the case of a nuclear reactor core, we can see that there nothing that a used core can feed into so nuclear power is fundementally bad design. - Chris
Chris, This is absurd. You make the most wild eyed hysterical allegations about the NRC and its employees, without the slightest shred of proof. Where is your evidence that the NRC compromises of safety? Where is your proof? What you have written here appears to be the ravings of a Green fanatic.
William McDonough appears to not understand materials use in modern society, which is not analogous to organic processes in nature. The problem of disposal is endemic to modern industrial society, and not just characteristic of reactors. Most of our machines are not designed for post use use, but parts get recycled. They get taken apart. Metals are are usually sorted out and recycled in one way or another.
Nuclear cores can be reconditioned or rebuilt. The Canadians are rebuilding the cores of old CANDU reactors. Plans are now being developed to extend the life of American LWRs to 80 years. After a reactor is retired its fuel is removed. It then begins to loose its residual radioactivity. Most of the radioactive materials associated with reactor cores are either short lived or low level. Low level radioactive materials are easily disposed of. Short lived materials quickly loose their radioactivity. Once the reactor core has reached a safe radiation level, it can be disassembled. Since it is mostly metal, the metals can be separated and reused. Why complain about reactors when the computer you write with poses a disposal problem.
I think that Vermont Yankee is presently showing that, despite protestations on the part of the NRC, the lessons of Maine Yankee have not been learnded except in a very negative sense. The solution for safety issues is not to terminate operations at the end of a plant's design lifetime but rather to sit idly by while the industry attempts to use PR firms to counter legitimate concerns. Even the concerns of Sandia, Idaho and the DHS go unadressed because the NRC does not want to burden licencees: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/us/12nuclear.html
Who is telling them not to burden licencees? The nuclear power industry, through its huge campaign contributions. This is corrupt.
I think you need to pay closer attention to what McDonough is saying. He has a very clear understanding of how materials are used. It is just his critique that failing to emulate nature leads to severe difficulties which he is able to demostrate owing to a rather deep expertise on these matters.
I would note that the efforts of Greenpeace to make consumer electronics more and more recyclable are meeting with success because the problem is tractable. This is not the case for nuclear power.
Chris
You don't seem to have addressed the key point of Charles' critique.
You can indeed recycle reactor cores.
Your point that recycling cannot be done for nuclear power is entirely unsubstantiated.
I am not really interested in studying deeply a philosophy which leads to a preference for ridiculously expensive solutions.
Systems of metaphysics are of interest only to those who hold them, and the application of normal rational criteria is quite sufficient in this case.
If you want to take part in debate then instead of requiring others to study some abstract thesis, rather as the Marxists demanded before their theories blew up in their faces, then perhaps you could translate however you see things through the goggles you have chosen to more normal terms.
In essence, you appear to be concerned with recycling, and yet appear to be completely disinterested when it is pointed out that it may be possible to recycle more of nuclear reactors than you had assumed.
I can only conclude that in fact your objections, as we discussed up thread, are in fact red herrings, and no conceivable answer would satisfy you as you have prejudged the issue.
You have also been cherry-picking your responses, and not dealing with substantial objections, such as how weak your proposal for 200year amortisation is.
This is not the technique of someone who is seeking to clarify, and in a meeting with others sort out which bits all our ideas are right, but of someone who is seeking to obfusticate.
I think you have already decided that you don't like nuclear power, and will sort out any grounds convenient later.
This is not rational debate, but a religious conviction.
I don't mean in any way to be rude to you, but I do think you should recognise that you are rationalising rather than being rational on this issue - in fact I am sorry to say that it rather reminds me of the creationists, using selected bits of science fact to bolster an entirely emotional and irrational assumption.
Dave,
In the US, reactor cores are quite hot and are put in long term storage, not recycled.
You should remember that I have not said that a worldwide grid should be built. I think that storage is going to be largely free and we may never need the transmission. But, I think that your discounting argument is more a part of the problem that leads to short-termism and poor decision making. You can read more here: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/11/reprise.html
Chris
Chris, if we are to have any sort of a rational discussion you really need to address the points that are raised, as they are raised.
I have attempted to address the issues you have raised, but you go off tangentally.
I do not want to 'read more here' I want you to answer the criticisms that have been made of what you have to say.
Recently I accepted that some of the critiques I made of wind-power in the UK were overdrawn, as new data of load following came to light.
I was able to do so because I had an essentially rational position, which was dependent on the information I had, and if the information I had changed, my position did.
It seems to me that you have created a position which is not falsifiable, dependent on some weird set of assumptions.
I knew you were an astronomer, but it seems to me you have already left planet earth, and are in danger of ending up as an astrologer! :-)
So answer the criticisms you have received of the points you raised if you are genuinely interested in rational discussion.
Actually, thinking about it, I would ask you to be really specific in justifying what you are talking about:
You said:
Charles called you on that, and you answered with something wholly irrelevant about allegations of malfeasance in research reactors.
So can you substantiate the specific allegations you have made, or not?
You said:
Charles answered that cores were indeed recyclable. You did not reply. Do you wish to rebut?
In fact, I am sorry to say that you have evaded every challenge to your position.
Can you substantiate anything at all?
Start with those two points, if you would, then we will work down the list.
Dave,
I think I have been specific. Publically funded election is the US would end the relicensing of nuclear power plants.
Charles is proposing recycling metal from reactor cores. This is not done. The are simply stored.
Chris
You made allegations of corruption in the licensing process, and have still provided no evidence.
Your critique of re-cycling was surely based on potential, rather than actual rates as many things are not re-cycled enough now.
In the particular case of reactor cores though, Charles has already indicated that some of the CANDU ones have been recycled.
Therefore it is clear that the two issues we are discussing have not been adequately addressed by yourself.
I really don't wish to upset you Chris, but if discussions are to have any meaning they absolutely have to have clarity and precision, it is no use skipping on from argument to argument.
I think you need to reread what Charles wrote. He said refurbished I think. That is not recycled. You can rebiuld an engine, but eventually the block is going to crack. When this happens to a reactor you are left with a hot hunk of metal that cannot be reused.
You seem to have difficulty with the concept of systemic corruption. This is actually the most pernicious kind. Everyone feels they are just doing their job but in fact they are doing much more damage than a single intentionally corrupt official could do alone. In the case of Vermont Yankee, we are hearing that there is no need for an independent safety review from both Entergy and the NRC, on the same script, because the leasons have been learned from the review of Maine Yankee. At the same time the NRC is defending their staff for cutting and pasting material from relicensing applications into their reviews saying that their staff are not "creative writers." There has been no independent varification of safety if the NRC is just repeating what Entergy is saying. No leason has been learned. The NRC is incapable of regulating. They may feel that they are doing their job with integrity, but it is obvious that they are not. Things are entirely too cosy between the industry and the regualtor. Does a $96,000 fine for losing three 18 inch sections of spent fuel rods really count as regualtion or is this just a fig leaf? That is enough material for a dirty bomb that could put billions of dollars of real estate out of service for decades. Not wanting to burden licensees is not regulation. It is the precursor to a major disaster.
Chris
Chris, You have referred me to a New York time article about a dispute concerning the safety of small research reactors. The article talks about a dispute, but does not offer a convincing case that the NRC was wrong. Since the vase involved research reactors, it does not support the you contintion that the NRC has compromised safety on civilian reactors, Indeed the so called "experts" who the NRC disagreed with apear to have argued a very impobably case about the theft of enriched uranium from inside highly radioactive reactors.
The story mentioned only the licenses of research reactors. You comment:
Who is telling them not to burden licencees? The nuclear power industry, through its huge campaign contributions. This is corrupt.
There is in fact no evidence in the story of nuclear power industry involvement in the dispute, no mention of campaign contributions, and no suggestion of any corruption on the part of the NRC, all of this exist only in your mind.
Although you tell me how deep McDonoug is, you have yet to provide any links to his deep thoughts. Mo own attempt to Google him brought no insights. I wonder though if he picked out nuclear power for special attention, since recycling waste goods from our society as a whole is cery problematic, and fat mor plastic bags than reactore cores get thrown in the dump.
Did you not notice the whiny tone about not sharing intelligence? If they were sincere in their efforts to see to the safety of reactors they would surely not have said such a thing since it is no secret that reactors are targets: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/03/15/europe/EU-GEN-France-Terror-Tr...
Chris
Chris, as usual you raise interesting issues.
Although you don't explicitly say so here I take it that your objection to nuclear power is also philosophical rather than a matter of engineering.
This is a interesting distinction, if I am correct as it simplifies the debate considerably.
One of our frustrations on the pro-nuclear side of the debate is that we have to deal with a lot of essentially disingenuous arguments.
Someone raises, say, the issue of waste disposal, and we answer it, setting out what measures are currently being taken and how that can be improved in the future. Presumably this is a successful rebuttal, as the dialogue normally stops at that point or changes to some other issue.
There is one other response though, which is relevant, and that is the demand for 100% engineering - ie that there should not remain any risk or any waste whatsoever.
The weakness of this position is that of course we can't engineer anything at all to 100% standards, and that certainly includes renewables - people will always die mining the ore for windmills, and so on.
I think that what these people have done is revealed that their concern is at root not about waste, but is philosophical, and that there is no argument at all which will give them a satisfactory reply, as their objection lies deeper.
So if I have read you correctly the distinction into philosophical objection is a useful one, as it saves everyone time.
I have no objection at all to someone questioning, for instance, the cost of nuclear power, or to looking at it's costs relative to renewables, or discussing how a carbon tax would alter it's competitiveness relative to fossil fuels.
There is no point though if the objection is essentially a red herring, and there is no possibility that any answer will be deemed satisfactory.