One of the most persistent lines of misinformation about climate science has to do with how long the field has existed. In the interest of repeating accurate information and NOT repeating lies, the clearest”father” of climate science is Joseph Fourier, mostly for his work in the 1820s.
The chief rebuttal to this particular line of propaganda is simple and compelling. The theory of man-made global warming is, and always has been a predictive hypothesis based on hard data. Our understanding of the physics driving global warming predates the idea that our own activities could increase the planet’s temperature by 40 years or so (Tyndall’s work in the 1860s), and the idea that our activities could increase the temperature predates the detectable rise in temperature by around 90 years.
Today is the 30th anniversary of James Hansen’s 1988 testimony before Congress about global warming due to human activities. Peter Sinclair and Yale Climate Connections have put together a retrospective with a number of the world’s leading active climate scientists, and the verdict is clear – James Hansen was right. His warnings were accurate and supported by real data. His approach was straightforward and productive, and we should pay attention to the predictions that are being made by his successors.
For more information, check out the YCC article that goes with the video.
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I’d like to publicize this post on Mastodon. That okay with you? Do you have a Mastodon account you want me to reference?
Help yourself, and no I do not yet. I’ll be getting one soon, it’s just low on a to-do list that got a lot longer at the end of last week 😛
Thanks for sharing it!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/03/nuclear-power-paves-the-only-viable-path-forward-on-climate-change
Title: Nuclear power paves the only viable path forward on climate change
Authors: James Hansen, Kerry Emanuel, Ken Caldeira and Tom Wigley
Convenient how you only listen to the expert when he says stuff that you agree with.
His expertise is in atmospheric physics, which is what this is about. Being an expert in one field does not mean one is an expert in another. Hansen is a conservative, and always has been, and that means that I have different views on policy than him. Disagreeing with his opinions about how to respond the problem is not incompatible with accepting his scientific work.
The two are not the same thing.
And so instead you listen to professional liars and frauds that lead the green energy movement, like poster-boy Mark Jacobson? Wonderful.
I listen to lots of people, and when someone tells me to take a more skeptical look at someone I do. The problem is that you seem to define ANYONE who disagrees with you on this issue as a liar or a dupe, and you seem to have adopted the tactic of always going on the offensive. It’s a rhetorical tactic that’s OK for putting others on the defensive, but it’s also blatantly dishonest – you’re framing everything as “either you agree with me on this issue, or you agree with this other person, and there is no alternative”.
It’s a false dichotomy, and a deliberate re- or pre-framing of the issue in a way that stifles any legitimate discussion. Remember – if the glove does not fit, you must acquit! If you think American capitalism is causing problems, you’re clearly a Marxist who wants a one-world government!
You’re in bad company with your approach to this, and it’s not making it easier to take you seriously.
Not define. Not assert by fiat. Rather, I assert that on the basis of evidence and reason.
I fail to see how this is dishonest, especially when I really believe it. You might think that I’m wrong, but you must think that I’m a paid shill (or something) to think that I’m being dishonest. Dishonesty requires a particular kind of intent, and I don’t think you really mean to go that far. Do you? Do you really think I’m a shill? On what basis do you believe that I’m being dishonest?
I note that you seem to regularly cite videos which depends heavily on the work of the well-known liar and fraud Mark Jacobson. You could go a long way to making me not question your competence and integrity by apologizing for that right now, condemning Mark Jacobson as a liar and fraud, and promising to never knowingly cite his work again, directly or indirectly. Am I going to get that from you? Or are you going to affirm your knowing, willful commitment to liars and frauds?
You just lay down “Nuclear Good, Non-Nuclear Bad”.
You don’t address the “human error” concern that has led to a long string of close calls for nuclear power.
You also don’t bring up things like non-fission power generation options that could be used to consume spent fuel, or LFTR systems that don’t have a meltdown risk.
Instead you pretend that ANYONE who has a concern about the safety of nuclear power is irrational and unreasonable, and so on.
There are legitimate concerns, and legitimate answers to many of those concerns, but your rhetorical framing is not an honest one, even if it’s not intentional. It’s a good tactic for getting people to decide it’s not worth trying to argue with you, so they just shut up and move on to more productive conversations. It’s less of a good tactic for actually persuading anyone or correcting misconceptions.
I live in the real world, where coal power worldwide kills more people every hour from just premature deaths from airborne particulate pollution than have ever died from radiation poisoning from nuclear power plant accidents in the entire history of mankind. IIRC, the W.H.O. estimates that around 3 million people die premature deaths every year from coal, and the W.H.O. also gives estimates of like 300 to 3000 total excess cancer deaths from Chernobyl. The total excess deaths from Fukushima and Three Mile Island are about zero. 3 million / 365 / 24 = 342 people dead from coal every hour. And that’s before we consider the harmful effects of global warming, ocean acidification, etc.
I’m unaware of such magic. Could you please explain more? I’m pretty sure that you are wrong, and you don’t know what you’re talking about. I am aware of highly experimental fusion technologies, tokamak and others, and I’m aware of certain kinds of fission technologies which could use current “spent nuclear fuel” e.g. certain kinds of “nuclear waste” as fuel. However, there does not exist a non-fission technology that can be used to consume spent nuclear fuel.
I might normally be generous and assume that this was just a typo, but due to our past interactions, instead I suspect this is indicative of a complete lack of understanding of the topic.
I’m trying to keep it short. I don’t want to write a full essay in a blog comment post, and you wouldn’t read to one if I linked to it anyway. One of the technologies that I believe should be getting large amounts of R&D right now for commercial prototypes is the ThorCon company, which is a technological descedent of the historical ORNL MSR project. I am particularly impressed by their claimed ability to be built in shipyards and therefore at large scale and at low cost, and I am particularly impressed by the passive safety of their system, e.g. a total power loss, with no operator intervention, and it goes into a safe state on its own. I am very very much impressed by their claim that it’s also safe from operator fuck-ups – there is no valve that they can forget to open or close, and there is no valve that they can open or close to break the safety. Even if the prime minister calls and orders the operator to not let the plant shut down, the operator has no control over the safety systems of the reactor.
Because they are irrational, unreasonable, and/or grossly ignorant, and obviously and patently so. Anyone concerned about cancer from cell phones, or toxins from chemtrails, is also on the same level of wrongness and level of misinformed.
Yes, but you’ve raised none of them thus far.
I speak English. What language do you speak? In particular, could you please translate your word “dishonest” into Earth American English? Perhaps you mean to use the phrase “intellectually honest”? That phrase has a substantially different meaning.
Bullshit. No one got anywhere by being nice. How is this any different than telling Jews to be nice to Nazis? I know that this is an extreme comparison, but when has “being nice” ever worked in terms of public advocacy? It’s just a kind of tone policing to control the conversation in order to seek an unfair advantage.
PS:
Am I going to get that apology for citing Mark Jacobson, and condemnation of Mark Jacobson, and promise to never knowingly cite Mark Jacobson again?
“Spent” fuel rods can still heat water, just not AS hot. The basic concept is to use the heat they naturally generate when not immersed to heat water and power generators. Doing that would also require that we keep an active eye on the material in question, which would work against the politically convenient option of shoving it underground and hope that doesn’t come back to bite us.
Again – concern about radiation from power plants is not equivalent to concern about cancer from cell phones. Do you HONESTLY think they’re the same thing? Radiation exposure IS harmful. Meltdowns and other accidents DO happen.
Likewise, we’re not going to see coal replaced by nuclear power any time soon. It would be at LEAST as big a logistical problem as an equivalent scale-up in renewable energy. Framing it as “nuclear or coal” is a false dichotomy. Even if there WERE no significant logistical concerns, public opinion is a very real problem, and again – it’s not entirely unfounded. The low deaths from Chernobyl area don’t account for birth defects and non-lethal cancers, AND they’re partly because the entire city was abandoned.
You know, like with the Fukushima Daichi meltdown.
I mean – I’m assuming you’re not taking the stance that radiation exposure isn’t dangerous, right?
Yes, I think they’re on comparable levels of pseudoscience. Low-rate radiation exposure is probably not harmful. There probably is a threshold. These are scientific claims which are supported by a wide variety of scientific evidence, including
1- Ecological studies such as Mark Cohen’s radon study which says that radon in homes and lung cancer cannot have a linear no-threshold relationship.
2- Experimental studies such as MIT’s recent experiment where they exposed mice to constant ionizing radiation levels equal to 400x background for a month and found zero evidence of any genetic abnormalities.
3- Advances in understanding of biological response mechanisms to ionizing radiation, which strongly suggest that cancer rates should not be proportional to amount of ionizing radiation for low-level exposure.
Most people have an almost completely wrong understanding of the actual dangers of radiation. Yes, acute radiation doses raise the odds drastically that you will get cancer, and so will extremely elevated background levels. Bioaccumulation can increase the effective dose and effective dose rate by focusing the exposure on smallet sets of tissues. However, Green Peace et al use flagrantly wrong numbers, like millions of people dead from Chernobyl, which is based on the linear no-threshold model, and their spokespersons such as Helen Caldicot claim a worldwide conspiracy of health scientists at the W.H.O. and elsewhere. Just more evidence that the entire green energy movement is an intellectual sham, a religious cult.
Because of people like you, I completely agree. But not because of any economic feasability reasons.
I can tell you a plan right now that will replace 100% of current electricity production with nuclear, which can be done easily within 40 years, at a modest price. It requires no new technology. You cannot tell me the same plan for non-nuclear renewables. The technology simply does not exist, and there are deep physics and engineering reasons why it will probably not exist in the foreseeable future, and maybe never.
Nope. It’s entirely accurate. Well, I suppose I should include “natural gas”, “fracking”, etc., but that’s not what you’re talking about.
I mean, I’m not opposed to using hydro dams, in spite of their environmental impact, and relatively large safety concern (the Banqiao Dam accident killed approx 171,000 people and displaced another 11 million), but there’s just not enough spots where we can put dams to make a big enough dent. Some countries with small population densities and excellent geography for hydro can make it happen, but most of the world cannot.
Non-nuclear renewables is simply not an option, and Mark Jacobson is the leading charlatan who spreads the lie that non-nuclear renewables are an option.
It’s easier to change public opinion than it is to change the laws of physics, or to conjure forth some unspecified radical technological breakthrough.
Pseudoscience conspiracy nonsense. A lot of the so-called studies of elevated rates of cancers and such around nuclear power plants is being pushed by known liars who fraudulently manipulate the data to reach their desired conclusions. I’m pretty sure that there is not a shred of reliable evidence to indicate an increase in birth defects from radiation release from Chernobyl.
That’s correct. The given estimate assumes that almost all of the excess cancer cases will be thyroid cancer, but thankfully thyroid cancer is very treatable, with a survival rate of 99% or something. I’m also not taking into account all of the non-lethal health problems of airborne particulates. You’re not going to win if you play this game.
This is correct. You’re finally getting close to what I think is one of the major concerns with nuclear. Even then, I think the harms, while serious, are misunderstand exaggerated. According to the live radiation detectors on the internet right now in areas of Fukushima, the ionizing radiation dose rate in Fukushima right now is less than the same rate in Denver. While I won’t say that this fact alone means that it’s totally safe to move back, or that it’s safe to farm or graze there, it should give persons like you pause that the measured radiation levels are already to known safe levels.
PS:
Am I going to get that apology for citing Mark Jacobson, and condemnation of Mark Jacobson, and promise to never knowingly cite Mark Jacobson again?
Apologies – wrong name. I meant Bernard Cohen.
I can tell you a plan right now that will replace 100% of fossil fuels with renewable energy, or with a combination of renewable and nuclear.
Again, you keep going at this like nobody is considering nuclear power, and that’s just not the case.
So, are you actually going to say what your plan is? Forcing me to ask is just being needlessly difficult.
Am I supposed to dignify this with a coherent reply with citations? The fuck. Seriously. Here, let me give the pithy reply that this asinine remark deserves.
Germany phasing out nuclear and pursuing the non-nuclear renewable pipedream.
California shutting down its nuclear plants because of its regulations that require a certain percentage of electricity to be non-nuclear renewables.
The almost complete lack of substantial nuclear building or R&D in the western world, and the widespread dismissal of nuclear as “too dangerous, too expensive” by most of the environmental movement of the west.
PS: #3
Am I going to get that apology for citing Mark Jacobson, and condemnation of Mark Jacobson, and promise to never knowingly cite Mark Jacobson again?
What is with you and Mark Jacobson? I didn’t mention him. It’s not relevant. Take your obsession and fuck off with it, will you?
As to the rest, I didn’t say nobody was against nuclear, just that plenty of people ARE considering it.
Yes, people aren’t developing it because the result of a catastrophe is turning the area around the plant into a zone of exclusion. If you stopped jumping up and down on “everybody who hates nuclear is insane” and started talking about the new developments that could make their fears irrelevant, then you might get somewhere.
But instead you come in here with the same rant you had years ago, bringing up someone who’s not mentioned in ANY of the materials on this post, and then demand that I apologize for “citing” him? Fuck off with that too. If you have a problem with something I post, bring it up IN THAT POST.
You came here looking for a fight. You got it, and now I’m done.
Not in this post, no, but you did cite him in one the few posts on this blog that I have commented on. See here:
https://proxy.freethought.online/oceanoxia/2017/05/05/climate-teach-in-videos-from-350-org/
I assume that you at least watched the videos that you linked, which include a direct mention of Mark Jacobson as the leading expert in how to transition away from fossil fuels.
I also expect someone in your position to not be grossly ignorant about your own movement, and to know that Mark Jacobson is considered by your side to be the foremost expert in the technical feasibility and technical planning on how to transition away from fossil fuels. Perhaps I expected too much of you there.
I am now bringing these points to your attention. Again, if you have a shred of decency, I expect you do to some basic research on the people that you’re citing, on the people that you’re saying we should put our trust into, on one of the most important topics that is facing the human species. I expect to be sorely disappointed.
This is correct. I came in here with the expectation and desire for a “fight”, because you are my political enemy on this issue which is one of the most important issues facing mankind. I care deeply about global warming, and I am convinced that green liars an/or dupes, such as yourself, the rabidly pseudo-scientific anti-nuclear kind, are the biggest worldwide reason why humanity won’t fix global warming, ocean acidification, etc. That is deeply concerning and upsetting to me. It is deeply concerning and upsetting that we won’t fix global warming, ocean acidification, etc., and I blame you, and people like you, as the primary cause and the people most responsible for this unfortunately-likely outcome.
I’m not done. As long as you continue to post nonsense, and selectively cite experts when it suits you, and unrepentantly cite well known liars and frauds i.e. Mark Jacobson, or cite those who cite Mark Jacobson as the foremost expert, then I’m going to have a problem with you, and I will continue to post my corrections and challenges. If you don’t like that, then ban me, because otherwise I am not backing down. The fate of the biosphere and the human species matters too much to me.
Mark Jacobson isn’t perfect, and I wouldn’t pretend his is. Neither is he somebody I feel a need to denounce. You have not succeeded in convincing me otherwise.
If you think my ilk are the primary reason we haven’t gotten off of fossil fuels, then you haven’t been paying attention.
You want to convince me? Give me a set of links summarizing why you don’t like Jacobson, and I’ll read the articles and chase down their sources.
You want me to push nuclear power? Convince me that there’s no meltdown risk if the plant runs out of water, or gets flooded, or is staffed by incompetents half-trained by their profiteer employers. Tell me how the “spent” fuel will be dealt with in a way that won’t risk it leaking into water supplies, or creating a chain reaction when the water keeping it cool evaporates away.
As it stands, it looks more like you’re nursing a vendetta than actually trying to change minds.
Would it convince you if every time you brought up climate change someone demand that you denounce Katherine Hayhoe, in conversations that don’t mention her, without any actual rebuttal, or reference to other people in the same field?
Would you approach a climate science “skeptic” by demanding that they first denounce Lindzen?
You think that I’m being irrational. Fine. That’s your right. If you want me to change my understanding of the world, you need to give me a convincing reason to do so.
Or, I don’t know, make your own blog and write your own posts to convince people there.
Oh, and one last thing – you would earn goodwill by posting those on something both relevant (talking about energy sources) and recent (your next predictable window will be whatever Sunday follows when you’ve got something to post.
Mark Jacobson co-wrote a non-peer-reviewed article in the magazine Scientific American. In that magazine article, he dismissed nuclear with basically one sentence, saying that nuclear produces 25x as much CO2 as wind.
> An article in the popular magazine “Scientific American”
> Article title “A PATH TO SUSTAINABLE ENERGY BY 2030”
> November 2009
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/sad1109Jaco5p.indd.pdf
This is based on some of Mark Jacobson’s peer reviewed work. First let’s look at this paper.
> Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I: Technologies, energy resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure, and materials
> Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A. Delucchi
> Available online 30 December 2010
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/JDEnPolicyPt1.pdf
In the paper, Jacobson cites another paper of his own (and the work of others which is also bad) to justify this claim. In this paper, it’s “9 to 25x” as much CO2.
Annoying that it became “25x” as much in the Scientific American article, but it gets much, much worse.
In the above quote, he cites one of his earlier papers. This is that paper.
> Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security
> Mark Z. Jacobson
> First published as an Advance Article on the web 1st December 2008
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/ReviewSolGW09.pdf
(I know that the year is off, 2009 vs 2008, but the hyperlinks and content of the paper make it clear that this is the paper that he’s citing.)
In this peer reviewed paper, Jacobson shows his work for how he gets that nuclear produces 9x to 25x as much CO2 as wind.
First, Jacobson includes substantial amounts of CO2 emissions from coal in the nuclear column. In short, he’s considering the problem with a very short time horizon, and assumes that we’ll burn coal until the nuclear power plant is built. In context, it’s not really dishonest, but he’s clearly setting up the ability to quote-mine his own paper, which he does in the first paper, and in the Scientific American article, and those quote-mines of his own paper are dishonest. When he quote-mines himself, he does it so that the reader will naturally understand the claim to mean that “nuclear power in steady-state operation produces (9x to) 25x as much CO2 as wind”. Any reader who later learns that they’ve been mislead, and that it includes substantial amounts of coal burning, is going to be understandably upset.
It gets worse. In this paper, Jacobson assumes that there will be a regular, periodic, recurring nuclear war, with a certain amount of certain sized cities that burn in each war. He calculates the CO2 emissions from these burning cities, and puts it under the “nuclear” column.
Now, imagine a reader of the Scientific American article, and imagine finding out that the given “25x” number, which was clearly portrayed as a description of the steady state of nuclear power emissions, actually includes large amounts of CO2 from burning cities from nuclear war. This sort of thing is beyond the pale. There is no possible excuse for this. This is dishonesty of the highest order. For this alone, for his later paper and his Scientific American article which dishonestly quote-mine his earlier paper, Jacobson should be called a liar and fraud and shunned from the movement. This is possibly the most damning thing, but of course, there’s still a lot more of Jacobson’s incompetence and dishonesty.
…
Jacobson is most famous for his “100% Wind, Water Solar” paper, commonly known as “100% WWS”, which purports to show how the United States could replace practically all fossil fuel usage, including non-electricity sectors, by 2050. (For context, the 100% WWS paper was first published in 2015.)
The paper contains several highly implausible assumptions, and worse, several gross modeling errors. These issues were described in another paper published in the same journal by Christopher T. M. Clack, with 20 other authors in the “authored by” line.
Let me give a brief description of what may be the most egregious modeling error. Jacobson assumes roughly 90 GW capacity hydro. Based on other communications (I’ll provide links at the end), this is meant to be the currently available hydro capacity of the United States plus Canada. Now, we wouldn’t even know about the gross modeling error, if not for a chance of fortune – Jacobson did not supply the full modeling data in the publication, but he did provide several days of simulation results as examples, and it just so happens that on one of the provided days, hydro capacity was at 1,300 GW for at least 8 hours straight.
How does Jacobson respond to this obvious modeling error? Jacobson says that his plan involved the construction of additional turbines at existing hydro installations to increase the instantaneous capacity by 15x. This assumption was mentioned nowhere in the original paper. It was not mentioned. It was not costed either, even though Jacobson costed many other things.
Note that such a plan is really silly on many levels. Some problems include: There isn’t enough reservoir capacity at many sites to sustain 15x normal max flow rate for 8+ hours. At 15x max flow rates, many reservoirs would be emptied in mere hours, which would be almost indistinguishable from a breaking dam, which would flood and destroy everything downstream.
I believe that Jacobson’s response is an ad-hoc lie that he invented after-the-fact to save face, rather than admit what actually happened. The obvious answer to what actually happened was that Jacobson’s model was simply too simple, and it assumes that hydro could produce a given amount of energy per year, but that this energy was entirely fungible and could be consumed at any rate, with no regard to downstream flooding by increasing the flow rate to 15x normal max, and with no regard to the fact that all of the energy isn’t available at any one point because the existing reservoirs cannot hold all of the water that passes through the dam in a year – instead, water is let through regularly, and the capacity of the reservoirs is less than the total water throughput for a year.
The journal editors and Clack et al refused to buy Jacbonson’s piss-poor excuse. Clack et al slightly rewrote their own paper submission based on Jacobson’s feedack, but it was published anyway.
Jacobson, like the true petulant man-child that he is, issued a civil lawsuit for defamation, claiming 10 million USD in damages, issued against Clack et al and the journal itself (the same journal that he published the 100% WWS paper). The text of the lawsuit is actually quite funny. Jacobson goes on for a while about whether Clack et al’s paper should have been published in a “letter” format or some other format, which has nothing to do with the defamation lawsuit. He includes this grievance and other grievances which has nothing to do with the legal issue at hand. In that way, it reminds me of the antics of far-right incompetent lawyers like Larry Klayman (and thanks to Ed Brayton for always bringing up his lawsuits for the enjoyment of his readers).
After it became clear that Clack et al, and the journal, were not going to come to a settlement for this outrageous lawsuit, and given that there was practically zero chance that Jacobson could win this lawsuit in court, he retracted the lawsuit.
For filing such an outrageous defamation lawsuit against other scientists and the very journal that he himself published in, over stuff like this, is also beyond the pale. Jacobson is an immature and petulant man-child who tried to silence his scientific critics using a wholly unethical defamation lawsuit.
And I call him a liar and a fraud knowing this, and if he wants to sue me, I won’t settle either. I know my American law – Jacobson counts as a public figure due to his various public debate appearances, public TV show appearances, and other public advocacy, which means that he has basically no chance in winning a defamation lawsuit against Clack et al, or the journal, or me.
These legal antics are not the actions of an honest scientist. They’re the actions of a huckster, a charlatan, a con-man. And yet, you cited him, and more importantly, Jacobson continues to occupy the spot of “most respected expert” in your movement even to this day, which is more than enough evidence to conclude that your movement, the anti-nuclear green energy movement, is rotten to the core, and it’s an intellectual sham, no better than a religious cult. It resembles a religious cult in many ways, with liars and dupes at the top, with some people who profit personally from their lies, and others who are just “liars for Jesus” who believe that their goal is worthy enough to lie for, and underneath the leaders, the movement consists mostly of dupes.
Citations and links!
Jacobson’s 100 WWS paper:
http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/112/49/15060.full.pdf?with-ds=yes
Clack et al published response paper:
http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2017/06/16/1610381114.full.pdf?with-ds=yes
Jacobson’s reply:
http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/CombiningRenew/PNASReplyClack.pdf
Another reply from Clack et al (which itself includes handy hyperlinks to these texts)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/n8oxg2xykc8j3dx/ReplyResponse.pdf?dl=0
The text of the filing of Jacobson’s lawsuit (included for any person with some legal background to laugh at Jacobson for including irrelevant grievances in legal paperwork)
http://www.hi-izuru.org/wp_blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/MZJ-Complaint.pdf
http://www.hi-izuru.org/wp_blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/MZJ-Exhibits.pdf
There’s more, and I might get to some of it in a later post, but that’s enough for now – I don’t feel like doing more research for you right now.
So. None of that is new to me, mostly because of your apparent obsession, so congratulations! You led me down a path that has convinced me not to cite him!
That does not, however, mean I’m going to give up on renewables or commit to nuclear power as the “only option”. My opposition to use of conventional fission power has nothing to do with any supply-line CO2 emissions, or Jacobson’s throw-away “hydro will make up the difference” claim.
As I’ve mentioned, my dislike of nuclear as it exists has to do with meltdown risk in an unstable and rapidly warming climate. Give me nuclear power that doesn’t rely on water to keep from melting down, and I’m on board. That’s easy to sell, and people LIKE new tech that promises to save the world. But until we have that, replacing our power generation with fission power seems like a good way to make climate disasters and wars worse anywhere that has a nearby power plant.
None of this? I think you need to clarify that statement. You wrote this up-thread:
When you are the one who fucked up by citing a con-man in a call to action, I would expect some actual contriteness from someone with integrity, probably even an apology to me and your other readers. I wouldn’t expect this not-apology and seeming refusal to accept responsibility for your fuck-up and for your contribution to the spread of misinformation.
You seem to be laboring under many misapprehensions. Hypothetically, if I could show that you were wrong on every single one of the following points, would you change your mind then? Which of the following do you think is the most important stumbling block for you?
You seem to think that solar and wind can replace fossil fuels with current tech. They cannot.
You seem to think that other green sources can sufficiently supplement solar and wind to replace fossil fuels. They cannot. You can find a few countries with ideal geography and low population density where hydro is a majority of the electricity generation, but hydro cannot substantially expand worldwide because all of the good dam spots have been taken. The remaining motley collection of green tech, i.e. tidal, wave, burning wood, etc., just cannot scale to appreciable values to change the problem with wind and solar.
You may(?) think that we have time to wait for an unspecified technological breakthrough that will allow green energy to replace fossil fuels. For example, the discovery of a sufficiently scalable and cheap chemical battery to handle the intermittency problems of solar and wind. Actually – and you may agree with me here – we’re out of time, and we have been out of time for a while now. The problems of global warming, ocean acidification, et al, are a near and present threat, and we no longer have any time to waste to fix the problem. We need to go with what we have now, and not with what we wish we had. I’m not saying that you are doing it, but many so-called green environmentalists that I talk to want to wait on the misinformed hopes that we’ll get that radical technological breakthrough that will make their pipedream work. I think this is the most irresponsible thing that I’ve ever heard – again, because we don’t have the time to wait on an unsubstantiated hope.
You probably think that elevated radiation levels are harmful. They’re not. Allow me to qualify and quantify. Normal background ionizing radiation levels are about 5 mSv / year. There’s good reason to think that you could increase that by at least 20x times, and maybe much higher, and still have it be just as harmful to human health, e.g. not harmful at all. In particular, let me again cite the Bernard Cohen radon study, and the MIT 400x background level radiation on mice study, and also obliquely cite modern knowledge of biological repair mechanisms which also strongly suggest that there is a threshold in the radiation rate – human health response curve.
You seem to think that convention nuclear fission power plants are especially dangers. They’re not. Conventional nuclear fission power plants, over their whole lifecycle, including the long-lived nuclear waste, are environmentally cleaner and safer for human life compared to everything else – coal, nat gas, hydro, solar, and wind. And that’s even before we take into account the harms from global warming, ocean acidification, et al. For example, a single dam accident at Banqiao Dam killed approximately 100x times more people than nuclear fission power has ever killed. Either you are irrationally analyzing the risks across all technologies (e.g. applying double standards for no reason), or you are operating on gross misunderstandings of the actual risks of nuclear power.