Over the past year, hope has been a bit hard for me to find. One climate report after another came out, like the slow tolling of a Doomsday bell, ringing out across the world, only to be swallowed by the howling chaos of rising authoritarianism in the United States, and around the world. Things are not good, and try though I might, I can’t find any clear signs that they’re going to get better any time soon. It feels like we’re headed for a confrontation between a global civilization falling off a cliff, while a tiny handful of people claim the billions of parachutes they control belong to them, and them alone.
The one sliver of hope I can see for humanity is the fact that we have all the tools we need to make planet-wide progress on both adapting to the warming climate, and ending our contribution to the problem. In the coming year, I’m planning to spend a lot more time adding my voice to the many who have already made the case for that claim. We, and most of the rest of multicellular life on this planet, are headed for extinction right now, but we don’t have to suffer through that horror. We could build a better world, we’re just not doing it nearly fast enough.
Case in point: Georgetown, Texas; population somewhere over 70,600, and the largest city in the U.S. to be run on 100% renewable energy. The Republican mayor of the town is enthusiastic about the change, not just because it’s the right thing to do for the future of our species, but also because it’s the smart thing to do from the oft-touted “fiscal conservative” perspective:
Ross, a certified public accountant, moved to Georgetown in 2004 and became mayor in 2014. He has expanded the city’s park system, begun composting fruits in local schools, and installed nine charging stations for electric vehicles. This year, Georgetown won a Bloomberg Mayor’s Challenge grant to create a virtual solar plant by renting out space for panels on the city’s businesses and homes.
[…]
Start from the beginning. How did Georgetown become the first city in Texas—and the largest in the country—to go 100-percent renewable?
Well, back in 2008, when I was on city council as a council member, Georgetown had a provider called LCRA, which was managing the city’s energy portfolio. We asked them, would it be possible for y’all to have 30 percent renewables in our product mix by the year 2030? And they gave us a bunch of resistance to that. So then you move forward to 2010, and a bunch of students from Southwestern University wanted to know if we could make it so that their campus was 100-percent renewable, and we were able to do that for them in 2010. And then in 2012, we were looking at the very real prospect that by 2016 we wouldn’t have any energy purchasing contracts, because we decided we weren’t going to renew our contract with LCRA.So what we did is we put together requests for proposals. We sent it out to fossil-fuel people; we also sent out to the wind and solar people. And when they came back, what was interesting was that natural gas was very competitive to wind and solar—but we had two requirements.First and foremost, we wanted to mitigate price volatility on the short term. How do you do that? Long-term contracts that create cost certainty. So we asked that everybody give us 20-to-25-year contracts. Natural gas would only give us seven years, and the pricing came back the same.The second requirement was that it had to be an electricity source that mitigated regulatory and governmental risk. And that really only applied to fossil fuels, because there’s a lot of regulations in the production of electricity, while there were hardly any for green energy—so truly it came back as a no-brainer. And then in 2016 we started getting our wind and solar delivered. That first year, we were 100 percent because of favorable weather conditions; in 2017 we were 90 percent; and then 2018 and going forward, we’ll be 100 percent, all the way to 2041.
This is a massive step in the right direction. Moving more to renewable energy where people live and work doesn’t just clean our air and stabilize our power grid, it also will make it easier to move that conversion up the supply chain to manufacturing and on to resource extraction.
In Terry Pratchett’s novel “Jingo”, Vimes is given a glimpse down the metaphorical trousers of time, Where Man Was Not Meant To Gaze (Spoilers ahead). His imp-operated PDA remains connected to one timeline while he lives through another. During a last-ditch attempt to stop a pointless war, the time-addled imp interrupts:
He could feel events racing toward a distant wall. Sweat filled his eyes. He couldn’t remember when he’d last had a proper sleep. His legs twinged. His arms ached, pulled down by the heavy bow.
“…bingeley… Eight oh two eh em, Death of Corporal Littlebottombottom…Eight oh three eh em…Death of Sergeant Detritus…Eight oh threethreethree eh em and seven second…Death of Constable Visit…Eight oh three eh em and nineninenine seconds…death of death of death of…”
“They say that in Ankh-Morpork one of your ancestors killed a king,” said the Prince. “And he also came to no good end.”
Vimes wasn’t listening.
“…Death of Constable Dorfl…Eight oh three eh em and fourteenteenteen seconds…”
The figure on the throne seemed to take up the whole world.
“…Death of Captain Carrot Ironfounderson…beep…”
And Vimes thought: I nearly didn’t come. I nearly stayed in Ankh-Morpork.
He had always wondered how Old Stoneface had felt, that frosty morning when he picked up the axe that had no legal blessing because the King wouldn’t recognize a court even if a jury could be found, that frosty morning when he prepared to sever what people thought was the link between man and deity-
“…beep…Things To Do Today Today Today: Die…”
In Discworld, the rules are different from here on Earth, but while we don’t have magic to give a glimpse of our possible futures, we do have science, which yields more consistent results. We know what’s coming, even though we don’t know how it will unfold year to year. We know that one year, maybe a decade from now, but probably less, heat-amplified droughts, floods, and storms will cause serious damage to most or all major food producing regions on the planet. We know that as the temperature rises, faster and faster, the pollution we’re pouring into the air now will become more toxic, making lives shorter and more painful.
We also know how to create farms that are immune to droughts, floods, and storms. We know how to reduce the pollution we pour into the atmosphere, and we know how to use plants to pull pollutants out of the atmosphere. We still have the ability to make this a greener, cleaner world, and make a more just world as we do it.
If you found this post useful or enjoyable, please share it! If you want to help me make more like it, please consider becoming a patron over at my Patreon page. Your donations make this blog possible, and even as little as one or two dollars per month adds up to make a difference. If you feel you can afford more than that, you can get access to all sorts of other content and perks! Your patronage allows me to put more of my time and energy into making this blog a useful resource. Thanks for reading!
They accept reality; they’ve just been pretending all along.
That’s why they always had such a “hard time understanding” something that a reasonably educated 12-year-old has no problem with. All the well-intentioned people who argued with them were just getting played by ruthless lying assholes who were laughing up their sleeves the whole time.
I feel very confident that the “case in point” is meant as an example of the earlier broader claim that I quoted.
Without even looking up this claim about this one Texas town, I was already 99% confident that the claim was false. (I also looked up the claim as a matter of good faith and cover-my-ass, but it just confirmed what I already knew.) This town of about 70,000 people does not have their electricity produced by 100% renewables. Instead, they’re lying about that through the bog-standard usage of a certain accounting trick (practically, they assume the existence of a free battery with infinite storage, infinite charge rate, infinite discharge rate, with no conversion losses, etc.). Consequently, this is not an example of a town that has 100% renewable electricity, and in particular, this town is not an example that shows that the nation could easily go 100% solar and wind, which is one of your primary points of this post.
I know this, and I know that you know that this town is not evidence for your claim, and I know that you know that this town is powered in huge part by nat gas and coal, and yet you posted this anyway.
Why? I want to know “why?”. Why did you lie like this? Are you being paid by fossil fuel money like a large bit of the large Green non-profits? Or are you just that committed to your preconceived faith belief that solar and wind work, and all of this other Gaia worship-Earth bullshit? What do you care more about? Being green e.g. non-nuclear? Or stopping global warming and actually saving the goddamned environment?
I could argue the facts with you, but like many others in the Green cult, you seem very resistant to facts. Recently, I’ve been trying to argue from authority instead, in the hope that it will work better.
One of the only proper surveys of scientist opinions I can find on this topic is this one:
http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/29/public-and-scientists-views-on-science-and-society/That’s a majority of scientists of this one certain collection, and 20 percentage points higher than the general population. (If you know of any better surveys of scientific opinion, please let me know.)
There are also several open letters from prominent climate scientists asking the Green non-profits to change their position on nuclear.
https://plus.google.com/104173268819779064135/posts/Vs6Csiv1xYrBy Ken Caldeira, Kerry Emanuel, James Hansen, Tom Wigley
https://bravenewclimate.com/2014/12/15/an-open-letter-to-environmentalists-on-nuclear-energy/By an assorted 75 climate scientists.
There are also several additional public articles from James Hansen which makes the case even more forcefully:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110729_BabyLauren.pdf
Also from James Hansen:
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/iowa-view/2014/10/11/james-hansen-climate-change-speaking-truth-power/17118625/Finally, not sure how well this ranks as evidence, but here’s someone taking an assessment the the views of nuclear power of 35 (arbitrarily) chosen “very prominent” climate scientists:
http://sparkoffreedomfoundation.org/2018/01/17/climate-scientists-support-oppose-nuclear-power-reduce-emissions/And one of those who expressed an opinion against nuclear power is the well known academic liar Mark Jacobson, whom you have previously cited in other blog posts, and I believe that you still have not made an apology to me or your readers for that mistake yet, even though I have pressed you several times on this matter.
Can you at least accept that their power supply comes far more from renewables than the U.S. at large? Like – there’s ZERO question that we could be using a fraction of the fossil fuels we’re using right now, with current technology. I believe that if we were to take it seriously, that could be greatly extended.
I also think it would be a better solution than hundreds of new conventional nuclear plants, hastily thrown together. As I’ve said before, conventional nuclear power is not safe in an unstable climate. Unless you can guarantee that they won’t need water in a drought, and won’t get flooded out like Fukushima, you’re creating a massive risk for our now-endangered resources of farmable land and drinkable water.
The planet’s ecosystems are going to be placed under tremendous strain over the coming decades, and adding more radiation to that would not be a good thing. As I’ve said in the past, I’m open to nuclear power if it can be done safely (which includes accounting for the rising temperature we’re going to have either way), but the way things are run right now, I’m not convinced that’ll happen.
Solar and wind are predictable, and when they fail, the damage is minimal to nonexistent.
How much are you being paid by the uranium industry to go around denigrating renewable energy and touting nuclear? Your relentless obsession with Jacobson reminds me of the climate deniers’ fascination with Cook’s “scientific consensus” paper. My case doesn’t rest on Jacobson, and never has. Yours has a slightly script-like feeling, right down to the accusations of being a paid shill.
Let me start with this:
Fuck me. Is James Hansen and the other 75 climate scientists I mentioned also on the payroll of the uranium industry? Why kind of childish name-calling of this?
Whereas, I have evidence that a lot of the funding of the green non-profits used to and to some extent still come from fossil fuel sources, although I suspect the anti-nuclear identity has taken on a life of its own since then. Thus, the partial accusation to you is based on the historical evidence that many of the anti-nuke greens are in some way and some part funded by fossil fuels.
Also, if your case for renewables doesn’t rely on Jacobson, then why did you post a video that explicitly cited Jacobson which said that he’s done the most work out of anyone to show that it’s doable? And why have you still not apologized for citing that 10 minute video which directly cites a con-man as “scientific expert”? If you want me to have the slightest shred of respect for you, it’s going to start with you apologizing for citing that video that cites Mark Jacobson as an expert.
This is my typical tactic when I deal with people that I expect to be unreasonable. I focus on their first mistake, and when I find that first mistake, then I hound them on it, to prevent gish gallops, and I continue until they convince me that it’s not necessarily an error, or they apologize. Thus far, you have been reacting exceptionally badly, doing all of the sorts of evasive and dishonest tactics that I see from other kinds of liars like creationists. You made a mistake. You cited a con-man. Admit that you cited the person, and admit that the person is a con-man, and then we can move on. If that happens, and if you don’t cite Jacobson again, then I probably won’t have the need to mention him either (except as way to show that the entire green energy movement is not to be trusted because they cannot vet their experts as show by elevating a con-man to the level of their most respected expert, e.g. I won’t just accept appeals to authority to green energy sources).
No. They’re playing accounting games. From what I can tell from my research, that city makes that claim entirely by the use of green energy credits, and that has zero effect on where their electricity actually comes from. It would be the same as any other city on the same grid. All of their power comes from the same generators for the relevant section of the electricity grid.
At best, these accounting games will increase demand for green energy credits, which will lead to increased construction of green energy to meet the demand of green energy credits. However, by itself, in the short term, one outlier buying a bunch of green energy credits off the market doesn’t do anything to affect the real sources of their electricity.
You should know this, especially after what I already posted. I currently refuse to believe that you did not already know this. I currently believe that you’re taking the piss with me. The alternative to dishonesty is even a higher degree of incompetence that I thought possible.
Take the worst case scenario. What’s worse? One Fukushima every 20 years, or reaching irreversible tipping points in climate change? The answer is obvious to me.
Except for the potential loss of farmland and grazing land, Fukushima was mostly a non-event, and Chernobyl is greatly exaggerated, according to the idea of what these things are in the popular consensus. For Fukushima, except for the crews that went into the reactor area immediately after the accident, no one is going to die from radiation. For Chernobyl, most of the exclusion zone is safe to live in, and hundreds of people have been living in it for most of the time too, and the total number of people killed worldwide from Chernobyl was at most 4000, and that’s according to the World Health Organization.
https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/
The harms of nuclear power are real, but exaggerated, and except for accidents of running reactors, the dangers of nuclear power are almost entirely fictional. I appreciate that you focused on the real danger, instead of potential harms from waste disposal which are almost entirely mythical (at least compared to how it’s treated in typical public discussion). You need to do research on the real health effects and real dangers of radiation and nuclear accidents. You will find that they’re greatly exaggerated, in part because of the fossil fuel lobby, and in part because the first medical working group (Committees on Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation) to address this issue bullshitted the evidence, and the probable reason that they bullshitted the evidence was in order to create motivation to ban (above-ground) nuclear weapon testing in order to stop weapons proliferation.
Again, what’s worse, Fukushima every 20 years, an event where no one has died yet, and the total death count is probably going to be very close to 0 i.e. less than 10, or the effects of reaching some of the irreversible tipping points of climate change.
You literally just accused me of supporting the fossil fuel industry for favoring renewable energy. Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it. Though I should say it’s more likely that you’re in the pay of fossil fuel companies, given that their pet think tanks have been consistently pro-Nuclear. Your claims about how safe nuclear power are exactly the same as those made by people who think that cigarettes don’t cause cancer.
Or, you know, you could stop with the bullshit namecalling and I will too. I’ve been working under the assumption that you’re NOT a shill, because I don’t have a clear objection to every single point you make, so I want to keep hearing your case. Shit like this doesn’t help you.
Your response to my concerns about nuclear power is basically the assertion that if we massively scale up nuclear across the world, we’ll have maybe one meltdown every 20 years, and they’re not that bad anyway.
I find that unconvincing. We’re talking five times the number of reactors in the U.S. alone, and we keep having near misses from the ones we already have.
Telling me that the areas around Chernobyl and Fukushima are just fine (other than, you know, the parts right near the plants that aren’t fine) doesn’t really help. My problem is that you want to massively increase the number of plants being operated, and the amount of waste being generated, in a world with a rapidly warming climate.
That means many, many more plants that are in the path of warming-amplified disasters, the danger of which is already being multiplied by our inability to handle toxic material safely.
Floods are going to be more frequent, and more dangerous as the planet warms. I’ve seen nothing to convince me that that’s somehow not a problem for nuclear plants and the waste they create.
Likewise, we’re going to see more frequent and stronger heat waves, which will both threaten water supplies, and make the cooling of fission reactors less efficient. Not cooling a nuclear plant is not an option, particularly for the pools they keep “spent” fuel in.
That means that with hundreds more nuclear plants, the odds are pretty good that we’re going to have a drought somewhere that shares a water source with a nuclear plant. What happens then? You have to focus not just on keeping people and crops alive, but on preventing the nuclear plant from making the whole area uninhabitable.
Let’s say your “one every 20 years” spitball is spot on. That means four in the U.S. by the end of the century. If we assume that most of the radiation is absorbed by the surrounding area, that’s still going to leave us with several more spots around the country where a flood or a fire becomes a radiation risk for a much larger area. And those dangers will not just continue for decades into the future as the temperature continues to rise, but they’ll get WORSE as the amount of waste in storage increases.
And all of these scenarios happen when people are already scrambling to cope with the disasters that cause the radiation problems in the first place. It’s not just a fire that burns crops and homes, it’s a fire that’s going to cause thousands of cases of cancer in a few years.
If it was 50 years ago, I would be more excited about nuclear power, because it would be a means to prevent the warming that we now face. Nuclear power on a planet with a stable climate is very different, from where I’m standing, from nuclear power on a planet that’s warming faster than any warming event we know of in the history of life.
The permafrost is already melting and gassing off, and the fossil fuel industry is doing everything they can to ensure that we burn every last ounce of the stuff. Preventing dramatic warming is no longer an option, which means we need to be developing infrastructure that can handle the temperature rise without increasing the dangers.
Your vague hand-waving about Chernobyl and Fukushima don’t actually address my objections to nuclear power.
I’ll continue listening to your case, but I’d appreciate it if you’d stop with the “childish name-calling.”
You still have not apologized for citing the fraud and charlatan Mark Jacobson. Until that time, you deserve no respect from me, and you will get only my scorn.
You also have not apologized for the blatantly obvious and gross error in the OP post here, which is that this city is practically lying. It is simply false that this city gets their electricity 100% from renewables, or even moreso from renewables than the street down the road. It’s real CO2 emissions are the same as the city down the road.
According to some estimates, the use of nuclear power has saved approx 1.8 million lives by displacing coal and other fossil fuels. Specifically, by reducing the reducing airborne particulate pollution that would have been emitted by coal or other fossil fuels.
This is asinine. Stopping CO2 emissions in the near future is still way better than not doing anything at all.
You should be ashamed of yourself. Have you no shame?
PS:
It did address your concerns about nuclear power. Your seeming understanding of nuclear power is mostly a fiction, concocted by lying asshats in the Sierra Club and Friends Of The Earth, supported in part by fossil fuel money.