Climate change

[onoway]

Yet another example of how we are being stampeded into the ground...

 

The Canadian Press

 

TORONTO - The governing Liberals' green energy policies are in the opposition's crosshairs today following a critical report from Ontario's auditor general.

 

Watchdog Jim McCarter found that the government fast-tracked billions of dollars of wind and solar energy projects with little oversight, which will drive up electricity bills.

 

Opposition Leader Tim Hudak says the government has created a gold rush in the green energy sector that's ripping off families.

 

But the Liberals say they're creating jobs and pursuing clean-air projects that will reduce health-care costs.

 

The New Democrats piled on, asking why the Liberals created an energy planning agency when they simply ignore its advice on green projects.

 

The debate in the legislature reached a boiling point when Hudak told the Liberals they were "giving the finger" to the auditor general.

 

Premier Dalton McGuinty was at a wind turbine component factory in Windsor, where he delivered an impassioned defence of his green energy policies.

 

McCarter's annual report found that the government's push for green energy would add $220 million a year to the cost of electricity.

 

He also complained that the government had signed a $7-billion deal with Korean giant Samsung without consulting its key energy agencies or doing any formal economic analysis.

 

McCarter pointed out that consumers are less protected from rising electricity costs because the Ontario Energy Board has no say over charges that comprise half of a hydro bill.

 

 

What seems to have happened in Ontario is an example of a little knowlege being a dangerous thing. Politicians are like anyone else in that they get caught up in hype but they can do a lot of damage when they do. McGuinty will likely not only be tossed out on his ear next chance voters get but a lot of the program scrapped. This is nothing new for politicians, but sorta tough for people in Ontario and has likely sent a lot of otherwise worthwhile projects into the role of villain through no fault of their own. Bad planning all the way down the line. Sorta like the gun registry. Too bad politicians don't seem to have any sense of responsibility when dealing with taxpayer money.

 

It's not as though Ontario energy is dependent on oil or gas, most of the energy comes from nuclear.

 

Seems as though sometimes these guys get in and figure they had better railroad their agendas through fast before they get turfed out and don't realize that a little less arbitrary haste might yield a whole lot better outcome for everyone.

[PassedOut]

why by completely doing away with all internal combustion engines and coal- and/or other fossil fuel-burning processes, of course

Seems to me your earlier idea was a lot more practical.

[Al_U_Card]

More grist for the mill. From the Chinese peer-review comes a study of....wait for it...tree rings! Tibetan to be exact. Showing Roman and Medieval warm periods as well as the LIA.

 

They have produced a projection for the next 100 years as well. Cooling until 2068? Well, maybe all those climatocrats will be able to switch bandwagons in time.

 

From JoNova in Oz.

 

http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/china/liu-2011-predictions-web.gif

[Gerben42]

I haven't been following this issue for some time. Have the reported statistics of such things as cancers, birth defects and other problems stopped being more of an issue in more or less direct relationship with the proximity of homes to the power plants?

 

This has never been a serious issue. As far as I can judge this, all such studies are hoaxes. The most recent one in Germany for example, surprisingly disappears if you take into account the correlation between wealth and leukaemia rate. I don't know WHY that correlation is there, but it tells you that PERHAPS your data is biased and you are working like a Texas sharpshooter (i.e. shooting first and then say what you were aiming at). If you look at radiation levels near nuclear power plants you will measure nothing. I've been in many German NPP and if you even so much as have one radioactive dust particle on you it will be noticed and gotten rid of.

 

Just a comparison: When I visit a plant in N.Germany I will take a 700 km flight and then visit the plant. For such visits, I always carry a film badge dosimeter as we go into the control area, but usually the highest radiation exposure is from the flight (you can check this since you get another dosimeter when you enter the plant).

 

And have people figured out what to do with nuclear waste? Every time I hear about the places that are "safe" to dispose of it

 

The REAL question is: Do we really want to tuck it away extremely far away? With a new technology called transmutation, one can get rid of the nasty long-living radioactive products and in 200-300 years, the little waste that is left (simple comparison: if a Western European citizen takes 100% of his electricity from nuclear power, the amount of waste he is responsible for is about half an ounce) will no longer be dangerous and be worth one hell of a lot (it contains precious metals).

 

I think of things like the Titanic and the BP Oil spill

 

Accidents happen. Pumps fail. Ships run into icebergs, pipes break. This is the way of the world. Now what's different with nuclear power plants? In modern plants, all parts are available three or four times, and in at least two different ways, so that a systemic failure doesn't fail all alternatives. NPP are designed such that every part may fail without endangering the whole.

 

This is a different philosophy than that of the Oil industry. They also do probabilistic safety analysis, but their unit is not "amount of severe accidents" but Dollars. They accept big accidents and just try to minimize the cost. The nuclear industry does not accept accidents. Fukushima would have been shut off in Europe decades ago because of the lacking protection against tsunami.

 

Such risks are evaluated systemically and both in a deterministic and probabilistic way. And if it's above an extremely remote level of risk (similar to the risk of being killed by asteroid crash), something is changed.

 

What have we learned from Fukushima? When you deal with nuclear power, a safety culture is a MUST. That includes the regulatory body. In fact I would hope that finally the IAEA will watch the national regulators more strictly. It's like the Euro crisis: International regulations should not allow countries to mess up.

 

and people moving to the Falkland Islands as the place least likely to be involved in a war and other such ... "oops".

 

Natural events are unpredictable, but their probabilities can be calculated. You can calculate that there won't be a "big one" in Finland (Olkiluoto EPR), but your water intake might be frozen. In southern China (Taishan EPR) there is no risk of a frozen intake, but you might get a tsunami. The design is adapted to take that into account. And of course, mitigation of a severe accident, no matter how remote, is foreseen in the design.

[Al_U_Card]

The REAL question is: Do we really want to tuck it away extremely far away? With a new technology called transmutation, one can get rid of the nasty long-living radioactive products and in 200-300 years, the little waste that is left (simple comparison: if a Western European citizen takes 100% of his electricity from nuclear power, the amount of waste he is responsible for is about half an ounce) will no longer be dangerous and be worth one hell of a lot (it contains precious metals).

 

 

Hey Gerben, thanks for the insight. Nuclear has always seemed (to me) to be the way to go (hydro being much more restricted in its location re: end-users). I have heard quite a bit about new technologies that make nuclear even safer and more efficient. Energy is what it is all about, after all. Any contribution to make in this area?

[Gerben42]

Hey Gerben, thanks for the insight. Nuclear has always seemed (to me) to be the way to go (hydro being much more restricted in its location re: end-users). I have heard quite a bit about new technologies that make nuclear even safer and more efficient. Energy is what it is all about, after all. Any contribution to make in this area?

 

Generation III nuclear power plants deal with severe accidents as part of their design. For the EPR it is the core catcher (retains and cools the melt after the impossible happens), for the AP1000 (from Westinghouse, our biggest competitor in EU / USA) it is the passive core cooling system. The German boiling water reactor KERENA is even fully passive (which means only physics will keep the reactor safe, even if there is Armageddon outside).

 

In Generation IV, breeder reactors may do the transmutation (i.e. consume other actinides like thorium-232. Then there is the high-temperature reactor, which has, well, such a high temperature steam output that it can be used to produce Hydrogen (which can then be used to extract oil from oil sands, or to run your car with, etc.) And finally, there's the fusion reactor (the most promising is ITER, currently under construction in S. France).

 

This is just one road that must be taken. Another one is the "renewables" road. Solar, wind, etc. All in all, I am in favour of all low-CO2 power generation methods. There is just no way we can afford to leave one of them out. For Germany, the nuclear exit strategy is really silly, because it takes money away from the energy giants, who would have needed the money for investments in solar and wind. As Germany now imports electricity, someone else makes money from it. And Germany won't have a say about what their plans are. But one thing is sure: In Poland and France, wind and solar are not as subsidized as in Germany, so don't expect as many investments there as would have been possible in Germany. The so-called "Energiewende" which supposedly is the government's goal is blocked by the same government.

[cherdano]

What we don't want to do is anything drastic to try to "fix" the climate until we're sure we understand what is going on, and what our "fixes" will do.

Do you also not go to the doctor and let him treat your cancer until they are sure they understand cancer? In that case, I hope you wait another 200 years or so.

I would bet any amount of money that there are a lot more papers in medicine that are non-sense than in climate science.

[PassedOut]

What we don't want to do is anything drastic to try to "fix" the climate until we're sure we understand what is going on, and what our "fixes" will do.

Do you also not go to the doctor and let him treat your cancer until they are sure they understand cancer? In that case, I hope you wait another 200 years or so.

I would bet any amount of money that there are a lot more papers in medicine that are non-sense than in climate science.

By continuing to discharge ever-increasing amounts of CO2 into our atmosphere, mankind is doing just what Blackshoe opposes: "fixing" the climate without being sure of the exact consequences. That's why all true conservatives support cutting down those emissions.

 

As Gerben said, we still need to prepare to handle the climate change mankind has already caused. Seems to me that nuclear power has to play a significant role as we adjust to that necessity.

[cherdano]

Yes, I guess the right analogy would be not going to the doctor and continuing to chain-smoke.

[blackshoe]

As it happens, I have cancer, a relatively mild form of bladder cancer. Yes, I get it treated. No, I don't smoke (quit in 1968). I do track what's going on in oncology, and if my doctor proposes a treatment that looks "iffy" to me, I'll damn sure get a second opinion.

[kenberg]

First on the list, I am sorry to hear about your cancer. Smoking is truly crazy (my last cig was about 30 years ago) but probably that was not the cause here. Anyway, good luck.

 

 

There is a Damon Runyon quote that is something like "The race may not always go to the strong and the swift, but that's the way to bet it". This is the way I feel about science. Of course scientists make mistakes. Most unfortunately, some of them also have blind spots or self interest that keeps them from seeing theses errors as quickly as they should. But the long term success of the scientific approach is beyond question. When major scientific bodies tell me the Earth revolves around the Sun, I figure it probably does. I have never checked the data. So it is with global warming. Yes, they could be wrong. In an imperfect world we have to place our bets hoping we have chosen correctly. The truth may not always be with the National Academy of Science, but that's the way to bet it.

[blackshoe]

Good point, Ken.

[Al_U_Card]

CAGW can only remind one of Bernie Madoff. Are those people that were duped by Madoff still wondering how to make good his investment "advice"?

 

The entire scheme has nothing to do with cleaning up this earth and ensuring a vital and vibrant future for our progeny. It has everything to do with stealing us blind. I am four square behind the reduction of pollution because that is something that we can do something about and that we can measure its presence AND its effects.

 

[CO2] was latched on to as the easy to blame but hard to exculpate villain. Using all of the techniques of scammers and propagandists to ensure compliance with the edicts of that scholarly priesthood, it has worked for quite some time. It was not generally accepted initially, (the uninitiated but skeptical saw the holes in the argument from authority) but all their hard work and dirty tricks (just read those climategate I and II e-mails to see how low they can go...) eventually got the whole mess generally accepted and then the rest was easy.

 

You don't have to be more than well-read and reasonably educated to see what is actually the state of that "settled" science. Our money needs to be used wisely and not to balance banker's books or to inflate an already bloated UN bureaucracy.

[luke warm]

In an imperfect world we have to place our bets hoping we have chosen correctly. The truth may not always be with the National Academy of Science, but that's the way to bet it.

that's true, but if co2 is the culprit what should be done about it, and when, and how? right now, the environmental whackos are strong enough (when they have political backing) to stop nuclear energy being used, not to mention oil pipelines being built

[luke warm]

that's true, but if co2 is the culprit what should be done about it, and when, and how? right now, the environmental wackos are strong enough (when they have political backing) to stop nuclear energy being used, not to mention oil pipelines being built

[luke warm]

pardon double post

[blackshoe]

You exhale CO₂. We all do. So to reduce it, we all need to stop breathing.

[PassedOut]

You exhale CO₂. We all do. So to reduce it, we all need to stop breathing.

Not 100% sure that is the only solution.

[luke warm]

Not 100% sure that is the only solution.

oh that would solve it, for sure, but it does seem a tad extreme... of course, only a little more extreme than some of the "solutions" i've read, such as taxing everyone until the earth's fever drops

[PassedOut]

oh that would solve it, for sure, but it does seem a tad extreme... of course, only a little more extreme than some of the "solutions" i've read, such as taxing everyone until the earth's fever drops

:D

[Al_U_Card]

oh that would solve it, for sure, but it does seem a tad extreme... of course, only a little more extreme than some of the "solutions" i've read, such as taxing everyone until the earth's fever drops

 

The AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) having gone negative for the first time since 1996 heralds the "cold regime" of global climate. A cold PDO and being in a La Nina cycle, we can expect cooling as the AMO finishes off its warm cycle and plunges us into colder (NA) winters.

 

Isn't Nature grand? (And cheaper than taxation without reservation...)

[mwalimu02]

I'm sorry but this discussion is much too reasonable and articulate to be included in the water cooler.

 

I agree!

[Al_U_Card]

I agree!

 

Likely because, as Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming errr Climate Change errr Climate Disruption became less of a religious dogma and more of an open subject, it ejected all of the zealots (or is in the process of ejecting them back to their other nefarious but hopefully less pernicious pursuits) and opened the discourse, as real science does.

 

With Durban becoming yet another CoP-out, the UN bloatocrats will have to go back to bilking the medical and charity industries for their tithe. Hopefully, at some point, we can spend some of our tax dollars on making sure that what energy we do use comes to us as cleanly and as equitably as possible. You never know, miracles do happen!

[hrothgar]

Likely because, as Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming errr Climate Change errr Climate Disruption became less of a religious dogma and more of an open subject, it ejected all of the zealots (or is in the process of ejecting them back to their other nefarious but hopefully less pernicious pursuits) and opened the discourse, as real science does.

 

[ed, rain]

 

You are seriously detached from reality if you think that the endless lines of bullshit that get spewed by Watt, the Manhattan Institute, what-have you bear any relationship to actual science.

 

The (near) consensus around anthropomorphic global climate change is becoming much stronger over time.

 

For what its worth, I had dinner on Monday with one of my old college housemates who now works down at the South Pole.

 

She gave us a fun little talk regarding how King Crabs have crossed over to the South Pole for the first time in recorded history and the sheer amount of heat that was required to make this happen...

[Daniel1960]

Could everyone please refrain from provocative language.

 

As global warming has entered into the mainstream of science, it has undergone the long, established, protocol that all science must undergo. The fact that some of the doctrine has been attacked, is normal scientific procedure; as the unsubstantiated claims get removed from the core science. Science also does not use the term 'consensus.' That is more of a political or bureaucratic term, and had arisen largely due to that nature of the debate. While a majority beleive that global warming is happening, it is no where near a consensus regarding the cause or effects. Those that use such a term are merely attempting to sway public opinion into their own court. Science does not work by consensus, but rather by hard research.