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TechnoratiObama's Energy Secretary Outlines Dire Climate Change Scenario
Steve Chu's warning the clearest sign to date of the greening of America's political class under Obama
Unless there is timely action on climate change, California's agricultural bounty could be reduced to a dust bowl and its cities disappear, Barack Obama's energy secretary said yesterday.
![[Obama wants Chu to review the US climate change policy and end the nation's "addiction" to foreign oil. (AFP/File/Nicholas Kamm)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/chu_obama.jpg "chu_obama.jpg")
The apocalyptic scenario sketched out by Steven Chu, the Nobel laureate appointed as energy secretary, was the clearest sign to date of the greening of America's political class under the new president.
In blunt language, Chu said Americans had yet to fully understand the urgency of dealing with climate change. "I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen," he told the Los Angeles Times in his first interview since taking the post. "We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California. I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going."
Chu's doomsday descriptions were seen yesterday as further evidence that, after eight years of denial under George Bush, the Obama White House recognises the severity of climate change.
Chu is not a climate scientist, and won his Nobel for his work on lasers. But he was well-known at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for his outspoken concern about climate change and his commitment to developing clean energy long before Obama appointed him.
The language he used yesterday, though stark, was in step with a co-ordinated effort by Obama's officials and Democrats in Congress to project an image of consensus among policy makers in Washington on the need to move America away from fossil fuels and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
In the interview, Chu said raising public awareness was crucial to that transformation. "I'm hoping that the American people will wake up."
He blamed warmer temperatures for the acceleration in California's cycle of droughts. Global warming had caused a decline and evaporation of the Sierra mountains snow-pack, which had served as a natural storage system for the spring run-off that helped irrigate California's valleys and provided water to its cities.
Chu said up to 90% of the Sierra snow-pack could disappear, eliminating those sources of water.
Scientists have long cited the declining spring run-off as a contributing cause of California's wildfires. California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has blamed climate change for making forest fires a year-round threat.
California's department of water resources said last week that the state's snow-pack was at 61% of normal levels. The reduction is especially worrying because of the severely dry spring of 2008, leaving the state with little water in reserve. Two dozen local water agencies have already imposed rationing.
There are heightened concerns about water shortages in the west and upper midwest as well. Earlier this year, the journal Science warned of worldwide crop shortages because of rising temperatures.
Obama ran a presidential campaign pledging to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by the middle of the century. He made his first move to redeeming that promise last week when he ordered the environmental protection agency to reconsider its refusal, when Bush was president, to allow California and 13 other states regulate car exhaust emissions.
He also directed the car industry to produce cars that can achieve 35 miles per gallon by 2020.
In the two weeks since Obama's inauguration, there have been almost daily meetings and conferences on the environment on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. After the Bush era, when science and concern about the environment took a back seat to business interests, administration officials have taken it almost as their mantra that they put science first in dealing with climate change.
They also say they will press hard to retain green measures in the economic rescue package now before Congress, and for legislation regulating greenhouse gas emissions this year.
Barbara Boxer, the chair of the Senate's environment and public works committee, said on Tuesday she hoped to produce a draft bill reducing greenhouse gas emissions by the end of this year. Henry Waxman, her counterpart in the House of Representatives, has set an even more ambitious target, saying he aims to have a draft out of the committee by the end of May.
But the extent of public support is less clear, and a number of leading Republicans remain implacably opposed to the idea that global warming exists. Recent opinion polls suggest that the economic recession has eclipsed concern about the environment.
Democrats insist that the downturn should not prevent action on greenhouse gas emissions. "If you want to fight this recession, do it by mobilising to become energy independent with clean energy and really save this planet," said Boxer.
But America's credit crisis appears to have stopped the growth of the wind and solar power industries in their tracks. Factories building components for wind turbines and solar panels have been letting staff go.
61 Comments so far
Show All"a co-ordinated effort by Obama's officials and Democrats in Congress to project an image of consensus among policy makers in Washington on the need to move America away from fossil fuels and cut greenhouse gas emissions."
This is SO refreshing to hear!
The US is finally just beginning to wake up to the implications of Climate Change and Peak Oil.
But as in all previous matters contaminated by the Bush neo-cons and Corporate America, it is coming a day late and billions of dollars short.
Autralia is undergoing extreme heat and brief punishing rains that have no chance to soak into the now stone hard ground. It's power plants are failing in the heat.
And now Ireland is looking at severe oil shortages:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article5627926.ece
Some of you will bitch 'what does Peak Oil have to do with climate change?' Peak Oil is one of the shadow parents of climate change. Prolifragrate use of fossil fuels (especially oil) by humans is THE major source of the gasses responsible for global warming.
Besides a changing climate, use of petrochemical derived fertilizers and pesticides for industrial farming is about to undergo a catastrophic collapse.
No oil, no chemicals. It is that simple.
And with the collapse of the California economy (they have stopped issuing student loans, welfare cheques and even paycheques for the celebrated CHP, and are now sending out IOU's in place of tax rebate cheques, as well as IOU's to pay for state purchases), California will be unable to afford any programs to irrigate the fields or pay for the work to harvest the crops.
This means much of the green produce the rest of the nation enjoys in the winter months will rapidly disappear.
My suggestion? Learn to garden and how to do home canning and preserving.
Walk in peace.
Don't forget that, like the rest of the world's scientific community, Chu is pro nuclear.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10787_3-9888608-60.html
That's a good article.
It sums up Chu's position as well as my own.
But I would hardly call it 'pro-nuclear' as much as 'anti-coal'.
It never ceases to amaze me the blind fear nuclear power instills compared to coal fired plants. Indeed, we have seen the worst that nuclear plants can do. Chernobyl was the worst possible accident that can happen.
We have yet to meet the full measure of the damage coal plants will mete out to our planet and ourselves.
If every single currently operational nuclear plant were to turn like a chernobyl today (actually a physical impossibility) you would have a VERY BAD situation. Thousands would die right away, then a million or so would get cancer in 20 years.
Guess what though, this is PEANUTS compared to what ordinary operation of coal and oil fired plants are doing just by running normally and calmly and quietly making our planet a difficult place in which to live and grow food. How about hundreds of millions of lives?
It's a funny and typically human thing. We focus on Chernobyl's but largely ignore the really BIG problem generating your electricity right down the road. We focus on hurricanes when, in fact, it is floods that kill far far more people per year. We worry about lions on safari when the largest killer in Africa is the Hippo.
I am NOT pro-nuclear. But I AM pro-human and I do like the fact that electricity does a lot more than just make my live comfortable, it saves a hell of a lot of lives. I, like most scientists, am pragmatic and recognize that nuclear has something far above the other technologies....it exists and there is already an infrastructure to support it. It is the stop-gap we need on our way to truly renewable power and then ultimately to Fusion power....the ONLY reasonably clean source of power that stands ANY chance of saving humanity for tens of thousands of years...not just 10, not just 100.
You SHOULD not stop your protest and disgust with Nuclear power though. We will need an active protest movement to keep nuclear power as the choice of last resort. Otherwise the natural human tendency would be to end up with vested interests. Neither I nor I suspect Chu is unaware of this. But you must recognize that IF we start shutting the coal and oil plants down we WILL be replacing them with a lot of nuclear plants because it is already here.
Obama is earmarking a LOT of money toward alternative energy research and this is very good. But you've then got a 10-20 year gap. Too bad we didn't have a head start 8-years ago eh? too bad Reagan decided Carter's energy plan was just a political ploy and ditched it eh? Guess what...nuclear power is part of THAT legacy too.
Clearly Chernobyl was NOT the worst that can happen to a nuke--not even close. Accidents are inevitable in every field of human endeavor; the more nukes we build the more we increase the odds of something even worse happening in that particular field. When the consequences of accidents can be as serious as a nuclear meltdown that increasing risk is simply unacceptable. When there are such good alternatives as conservation, solar and wind, it is criminally insane as well.
We absolutely do need to virtually eliminate burning coal and oil within a decade or so in order to have a chance of surviving. Since the lead time for nuclear construction is decades longer than conservation, wind and solar that is yet another reason to move towards those ecological means.
Research is great and we should put far more money into it than we are. But solar and wind are technically, economically and in every other way feasible RIGHT NOW. They are cheaper, faster, more economically democratic and far better ecologically than the fossil and nuclear alternatives. Millions of solar houses are in use in the world and wind power provides a significant and rapidly growing part of our energy--right now.
Fusion, on the other hand, is only theoretically possible and may never be actually possible, let alone economical. Since wind and sun can provide many times more energy than we need, we have no use for anything but those 2, a few small local sources like geothermal, tidal and others--and to get there, conservation, which is the fastest and cheapest of all sources of energy.
Nuclear need not be and must not be resorted to at all.
genicon
A movie called the Power Of Community, shows what happened in Cuba when the Soviet Union collapsed and could no longer provide Cuba with oil.
The people came together, plowed up all available land, even their front yards,and planted gardens, unable to get fertilizer they gardened organically.
As a result of this and importing 2 million bicycles from China, the people were healthier and the average person lost 20 lbs.
At the end of this movie it made a point of showing the free education and health care for everyone. How do you judge who is "THE GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD"
And how many people were in danger of freezing to death in Cuba?
Well, yeah, but it's still a reminder of what can be done. Even amidst devastating hurricanes!
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
None. But they DID have to learn to get along without air conditioning. And Europeans and North Americans in earlier centuries DID have to get along without (much) heating.
I'm with Madcow.
This IS refreshing to hear!
Actually there have been quite a lot of refreshing things happening.
Not all, and there's a lot that isn't perfect. But certainly not more of McSame.
I'm not looking forward to the usual posts of the deniers again. While I sit here in the UK in the most snowfall in 20 years....at least Australia is having record hot weather so that we can use these effects to once again try to explain the difference between 'weather' and 'climate'.
Heat equals energy, and this translates into harsher winters as well as hotter summers. It's all about energy in the system.
I hear the deniers bitching and moaning about how 'global warming can't be happening because look at all the SNOW!'
MiMiccs and the rest of you dipshit deniers... PAY ATTENTION!
There is more snow because more water has evaporated from the oceans due to a GLOBAL increase in mean temperatures. More moisture from the oceans meeting cold air from the Arctic = MORE SNOW! This is grade school science. Maybe you were absent during those classes...
You can't blame the sun or some arcane positioning of the solar system in the galaxy this time. Or blame it on increased vulcanism.
HUMANS are the cause of this particular warming event, and if we raise the GLOBAL MEAN temperature, life as we know it will be under dire threat from a variety of sources, including but not limited to: loss of arable land, water shortages, methane release and ocaen acidification.
Walk in peace.
Good points.
Much of the northern US is under a blanket of snow and ice. We have had sub-zero (F) temps for many days. Yet I still remind people that we are experiencing GLOBAL warming - not what the weather is like in their backyards on the coldest day of the winter.
Just an indication of how most people think. Very narrowly.
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
timely action on climate change,
should have started in 1984.
And as we enter another Maudner Minnimum, and keep cooling as we have for the past 10 years, people will think they have been lied to again.
The fear that this op-ed piece illustrates is so out there that once again credibility is gone. Why not be honest about all of this. Fossil fuels are finite....and because of that THAT, is the reason to conserve. I sense a big battle coming that conservationists will once again lose to the detriment of all.
The heat in Aussie is weather, the snow in Britian is weather. We have been cooling as a climate for 8,000 years and that is a fact. I challenge anyone to dispute this? The main reason for wind turbines, nuclear, tidal, solar steam is common sense.
Why do you say temperatures have been cooling? The past 10 years have been the hottest on record. You are spreading lies and misinformation. Why not say the Earth is flat while you're at it? Get with it man, this ain't 1600 anymore!
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/instrumental.html
They have certainly not been the highest temperatures. The world was just as warm 1000 years ago and there have been many other periods warmer over the past 2 million years between persistent and frequent ice ages.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/jones-mann.html
Presently, we are in an interglacial, between ice ages. Over the last 600,000 years, we have had 1/2 dozen ice ages broken up by interglacials that average 12,000 years in duration. We are 12,000 years into the current interglacial. The biggest concern should be the next ice age which would kill billions and render much of the Northern Hemisphere, which contains 70% of the land, uninhabitable.
The idea that earth has a stable climate being destabilized by man is yet another myth. Chu of course is not a climate scientist, just like me, and his predictions are not backed up by good science. But there is money to be made, and tax payer dollars to be doled out,carbon cap and trading schemes to be implemented which will be run by the same SOB's that run Wall Street and Big Oil, both of whom are linked at the hip, and will mean a higher cost of living for people on stagnant or declining wages.
Exactly. I remember, before the whole global warming fearmongering, that scientists were predicting a coming ice age. The current inactivity of sunspots indicates that they were correct and we are at the beginning of another Maunder Minimum. In a few years, folks are gonna be praying for warmer temperatures since most crops don't do so well during ice ages.
BTW, I'm about as green as it gets. We need to focus on reducing the toxins we dump into the environment and overpopulation, which are the real threats to our existence.
"The heat in Aussie is weather, the snow in Britian is weather. We have been cooling as a climate for 8,000 years and that is a fact. I challenge anyone to dispute this?"
NOAA, NASA, the US EPA, the IPCC, Stanford Solar Center and many others dispute this.
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
10 years does not a trend make. While it is true that 1998 was the hottest year on record, and 2000 was a relatively cool year, 2005 was almost as hot as 1998. This is not a cooling trend.
There had been a significant cooling trend since the Middle Ages, but this was abruptly reversed by the 1980s and the trajectory thereafter is terrifyingly steep.
As for your sunspots, even if this is true and is resulting in some cooling, what happens when the "Maudner Minimum" is over?
snydly
Seen that chart, yet?
It's good to hear a Federal official is finally concerned with global warming. This OTOH is extremely weak:
"He also directed the car industry to produce cars that can achieve 35 miles per gallon by 2020."
My 1990 Toyota Corolla already gets that sort of gas mileage. By 2020 that will be 30 year old technology, if we aren't on solar and wind powered electric buses, trains, and cars by 2020 our future is going to be pretty bleak IMO.
Refreshing to hear, but depressing to hear the pro-nuke voices who have no solution to radwaste disposal, no insurance against radgas and radwater leaks and want to profit by spreading cancer forever on earth with public funding when geothermal, wind, solar, tidal and other green alternatives can give us the energy we need if only we would fund them directly, bypassing the banks, corporations, Republican and Democrat conservatives who caused global warming and our economic debacle in the first place
My 85 Tercel is parked out front. It has a carburetor, just like they used in the Stone Age. Nevertheless, when I bought it new a quarter CENTURY ago, it got about 35 MPG. A quarter century ago, that is BEFORE the explosion in technical improvements in automobile efficiency.
Due to slow degradation over the decades, I'm down to about 29 MPG these days, although part of the decline of 6 MPG is due to the use of ethanol. (back in 85, ethanol was not "common"). In other words, not my fault.
So, the amazing EFFICIENT technology was there a quarter century ago, even with carburetors (ever seen one of those?).
Guess what? Our problems have nothing to do with improving the technical efficiency of utilization of anything. In fact, the data establish that we are efficiencyizing ourselves to death and Obama will accelerate the process. He wants more efficiency, so we can get more stuff, just like George Carlin said.
Our problems are MOSTLY attributable to the fact that a huge swath of the population are Class A certifiable morons and couldn't untangle even a minor moral dilemma if you gave them a thousand years. Thus, with regard to energy, the climate, and economic "growth" (the latter AKA, "CANCEROUS TUMOR") among the witticisms you need to start verbally bludgeoning people with is this gem: "The solution to profligacy is not ALTERNATIVE profligacy". That latter statement embodies it all...if you can get that, you got all the info you need going forward.
Next question, please.
"Thus, with regard to energy, the climate, and economic "growth" (the latter AKA, "CANCEROUS TUMOR") among the witticisms you need to start verbally bludgeoning people with is this gem: "The solution to profligacy is not ALTERNATIVE profligacy". That latter statement embodies it all...if you can get that, you got all the info you need going forward."
Amen. Just be prepared for the common answer: What, me change?
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
I don't know about you but I did like the phrase about most of our particular problems can be attributed to the fact that a good swath of the population are class A certifiable morons.
It's nice to see someone else has realized technology is not energy.
A scientist who understands global warming. Good start. But let's take some simple steps.
"Factories building components for wind turbines and solar panels have been letting staff go." Incontheivable! This can be fixed immediately if Congress and the President actually do something concrete to support "Green Jobs": allocate some of the bailout money to existing projects in green technology, or place orders for this technology.
Joe
STOP THE TOXIC TERRORISM ! http://www.wisecountyissues.com
Just to provide some context, I'm probably as, if not more so, environmentally conscious than most. I compost everything, including human waste. I've installed and utilized solar energy systems, including a solar powered ventilation system that cools the whole house. I built a pedal powered washing maching. I don't own a car. I strongly advocate, and participate in, renewable energy technology.
I look at most things scientifically, as well as philosophically. The problem I have with Anthropomorphic Global Warming is that the scientists involved in many studies have often been caught using fraudulent data, manipulating the models and tweaking the numbers to support their hypothesis. There is abundant evidence proving that throughout history, the climate changes in conjunction with the output of energy from the Sun. Climate change is just a natural cycle.
Our greatest threat is the poisoning of our environment with chemicals dumped into the water, ground and air. While focusing on AGW, we're mostly ignoring the real problem. Yes, there is a large amount of pollution created by the fossil fuel industry, but, honestly, there is also abundant pollution created during the resource extraction and manufacturing of alternative energy systems too. We need a comprehensive approach that includes cleaner, renewable energy systems, a massive reduction of our waste stream, the elimination of toxic chemicals and the implementation of sustainable systems.
Yes, the frauds are on the industry side, not on the 'damn, global warming is real and now' side. It's a good thing 'Anthropomorphic' GW doesn't exist, because real global warming is as big a threat as unrestrained pollution. In theory it is possible to stop pollution, but right now, it is no longer possible to stop global warming.
The sun has already put a stop to "global warming", which was a result of increased solar energy output in the first place. Of course we need to stop polluting the environment, but fear mongering with global warming just might turn out to be counterproductive in that regard, once the fraud is unequivocally exposed. Meaning that our other environmental efforts might be equated with fraud as well.
solrey:
Most people who read this site think the sun has nothing to do with climate. You are 100% correct in your post tho.
For those who are cooling deniers, just search solar cycle 24....and the implications of it very very slow start.
Yeah, I've noticed that many folks don't see the connection with solar cycles. It's like a heating element on an electric stove. It takes a few minutes for the element to heat up once it's turned on and it takes a few minutes to cool down after the power is turned off. Same with solar cycles, it takes a few years for the Earth to warm up when the solar energy increases, then it takes a few years to cool down after the solar energy decreases.
I agree, this current solar cycle, with virtually no sunspots, is just the beginning of a serious cooling period, of which we're just now beginning to feel the effects. I predict that in five to ten years, average temps will be cooler than any period during the 20th century.
This is a very informative site:
http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html
WE have already been dropping quit rapidly. Climate year 2008 was only above the mean by .32....and the oceans have been cooling for the past 7 years now. I have confidence in our leaders that they can see through the smoke and mirrors and will prepare for the hardship that the cooling will bring to people.
This is very serious business.
Svante Arrhenius, an early 20th century Nobel prize winner in chemistry, published a paper in 1895 that estimated how much earth would warm by putting a given amount of CO2 from burning fossil fuels into the atmosphere. His numbers agreed with those of the Nobel winning IPCC report.
The predictions for California becoming a dust bowl are inline with what Peter Ward wrote in Under a Green Sky. His estimate is that we are headed for another Plaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximun event.
Stopping the addition of CO2 to the atmosphere may have worked a few years ago.
Now the Artic tundra and Artic Ocrean are releasing methane and the northern forests are dying so they are releasing CO2 rather than absorbing it. The ocean may also have reached its capacity for absorbing CO2. Only the atmosphere is left for now to hold CO2. The construction of nuclear power plants releases lots of CO2. Lovelock in Revenge of Gaia calls for closing all coal fired power plants immediately and halting all logging and land clearing worldwide.
While Obama talks about acknowledging Global Warming, the military is doubling its training exercises. And the bombing continues. Five years ago I wrote to my congressman urging planting trees in Iraq rather than bombing Iraq and the bombing continues.
Lovelock hopes that at best humanity will not continue to destroy the commons after California and the rest of similar parts of the globe have been laid to waste.
Proposing to increase gasoline mileage to 35 mpg is a mockery of the crisis.
As Hildegard of Bingen said over 900 years ago, "Nature will not be mocked".
Consider: all nuclear power does is start a "controlled" explosion for the purpose of heating water into steam. That steam is then used to spin a magnet within a coil and generate electicity. The downside? Contaminated water, and an entire installation that will eventually have to be carted off to a storage zone where it must be kept for...oh...about 10,000 years. The average predicted life of a nuclear power plant is 40 years. Last time I looked the global average was 17 years. So...how much do suppose all that costs, including the chain link fence and guards? (Not to mention that really efficient power plants generate plutonium, the stuff that makes bombs go boom.)
Coal and petroleum are used to start a controlled burn to heat water to generate steam to spin a magnet. The downside is global warming, toxins in the air and water and the problem of limited resources.
There are some really great windmills now that look more like egg-beaters than fans. The wind spins them, spinning a magnet that...well, by now you get the idea. No plutonium. No storage. No global warming, or mercury in the water.
There are more ways of generating electricity than using a magnet...tides, geothermal, photovoltaic...let's put them all on the table and see how they compare.
Burning coal and oil is a controlled explosion too by the way.
And the waste volume produced by a nuclear plant for the energy you get out of it is tiny compared to a coal plant....remember the breakage of the slag pond?
The waste is a serious problem. That is the main reason I do not like nuclear power plants and I ONLY advocate them as a stop-gap because it is the length of time the waste stays around, not its volume, that bothers me.
Oh and anyone who thinks that renewables are going to save the planet are absolute dreamers unless they also advocate massive and well-funded birth control programmes.
The earth's increasing population WILL swamp ALL gains within 100 years no matter WHAT you do (unless we get fusion power).
This is the most important part of the global warming equation that no one ever seems to want to talk about and Republicans continually want to de-fund.
Hi. Funny how the temps charts have changed over the past 20 years when it comes to early Halocene temps.
Some have cited NOAA data. Do a google on early Halocene period charts, and you will see that we are not as warm as 8,000 years ago.
Irregardless of that tho, conservation is very important. Fossil fuels are finite. Peak oil is here.
The solution is not more solar panels, as the production of said panels creates huge amounts of toxic waste similiar to nuclear if not worse. WE need to be developing solar steam, tidal, wind, and geothermal.
As far as car propulsion, hydrogen is getting closer to being practical. The oil co's keep telling us that the distribution system would be so hard to do. WEll, generate hydrogen ON SITE.......as the Icelanders do.
In answer to the Maudner minn, the last one lasted 300 years and was the cause of the cooling during the Dark Ages. The sun is way behind starting cycle 24, the solar winds have diminished 23% in the past 10 years, all signs now seem to be pointing to another minimmum.
Don't take Dr. Chu so seriously. He's an optimist. I'm hearing worse from the runaway Arctic methane release people. Maybe if they just move the worst case projections farther...
Australia has been cooking and running out of water for about the past 12 years. They kind of get it. The Antarctic peninsula sticking up toward the tip of Chile is melting away like crazy. The local scientists get it. The Alaskan natives know that their state is melting and it all smells like methane in the summer.
- - - -
As for the nuclear industry's boiler room bloggers who crowd this turf and who diss fairly sensitive people, meh. They are non-people.
Also, their power scheme from mining to waste is almost an energy Ponzi scheme where the system needs more energy in than it gives out. Researchers' assertions of 400,000 dead from Chernobyl and maybe 50,000 extra cancers from Three Mile Island are ignored by these pro bloggers faster than you can say "Phillip Morris".
Can you point to the source?
The information I've seen, from a researcher I know in my lab who is certainly NOT funded by any nuclear power concerns indicate that the actual losses from Chernobyl are very low. And that the incidence of genetic defects within the natural community that has moved in to take over (as well as the few people who simply refused to move) is unmeasurable.
But fine, let's take those numbers.
They will honestly pale to nothingness when sea level rises by 3 meters and large areas of farm-land dry out.
Additionally, I can guarantee you that a reactor can be made safer a lot more easily than you think. It's an engineering problem and can be solved. Pebble-bed reactors are being designed right now and tried out (not in the USA...the USA is rather technologically backward compared to other places in the world I'm afraid). These things are so inherently idiot proof in their operation. They use physical laws to maintain their safety and do not rely on human intervention.
As for the assertion about the energy of extraction and disposal compared to release. That I also find hard to believe because the energy stored up in Nuclear fuel is over a million times more than in an equivalent weight of coal. Even if the extraction, disposal, and use processes are horribly inefficient it would be very hard to end up negative. And also, this too is an engineering problem. Improvements in the efficiency of the process are certainly known and can be improved.
My point is that nuclear power is less dangerous than coal, gas, and oil by nearly any measure. But coal, gas, and oil just do not seem to generate even the same level of outrage.
Renewables are great things too. And we should be expending a great deal of effort developing them. But they suffer from a very serious problem...one of control. It isn't enough to simply say the energy is out there....it needs to be delivered and then used on demand where and when it is needed. The wind and the sun do not do this.
So the REAL research there much go into efficient, compact, lightweight storage....that's one place where hydrogen might actually come in. Would be better though if we could figure out how to store the hydrogen as ammonia and use it in that form. Ammonia is compact, easier to store, and far less dangerous than hydrogen.
You can say that renewable energy is the key to the people's independence, and this will cause them to embrace it with all of its perceived limitations. But its limitations are not real, so it's even easier to embrace than it appears. We only need about 1/4 of the energy we pig out on today. The availability of fossil/nuke fuels at current volumes was created out of thin air - through the creation of funny money by the bankers, and channeled to the fossil/nuke barons. Every lump of funny money created costs the people, which is why the people work 50 hour a week today when they only need to work 15. So the change is we work less, we produce less, we consume less, we enjoy more. It's easy if we stop ding business with the elites. Value your local production and you will be happy with it.
Much of California naturally IS a desert. The only reason that there is a huge agricultural industry and large cities is because water is brought in via aquaducts from the Rockies, the Sierra's and the Cascades. Much of Australia is naturally a desert as well. No surprise that droughts occur in areas that naturally receive little rain anyway. These droughts are nothing new, they occur cyclically whether humans are here or not. The past thirty or so years of strong solar activity has warmed the Earth slightly but now that we're into a period of minimum activity the temps have been cooling a bit. The arctic tundra will become permafrost again and methane release will eventually taper off. AGW is nothing but fear mongering.
The real issue is the toxification of our environment, which is not being discussed much because Global Warming hogs all environmental discussions these days. We can't do a thing about natural cycles of warming and cooling. We CAN put a stop to all of the pollution we're dumping into the environment and on ourselves. Reducing fossil fuel emissions is a good thing, but it's just a relatively small part of a much larger problem and it's not going to change the overall toxicity of our environment if cutting CO2 is all that we do.
Hockey stick!
The problem with windfarms are that they kill birds.
Until they can solve that it isnt a green technology.
"To be humane is to be cruel, vicious and unrestrained, like humans.
To be inhumane is to be compassionate, restrained, moderate, like non humans."
The problem with life is that it kills things. But ad hominem attacks in the name of wrong ideology are eternal. Show me some hard evidence of those dying birds.
Just like windmills are 'ugly' right? Coal plants and asthma are beautiful though, right? Nothing says 'modern culture' like a nuclear safety accident, but clean is the new 'ugly.' Yeah.
Let the imaginary birds die. The emissions from fossils fuels will wipe out species rather than individuals if the oceans and atmosphere get too dirty. By the bye, birds dying at windfarms is a big lie.
Webber:
Windfarms kill fewer birds than auto mobliles and windows in houses.
I live 10 miles away from a 167 turbine farm. I also live in a major pathway for ducks, geese etc. This past fall there was not one dead duck, goose etc under the turbines.
That arguement is silly and just not true.
solrey: Well written and very truthful.
Carbon 14 is great stuff. It is radioactive with a 1/2 life of about 5k years. Consequently, there is none of this isotope of carbon in the ancient repositories of coal, oil, and gas.
We burn these ancient sources and then throw Carbon into the air that does not have any Carbon 14.
Carbon 14 is manufactured in the air as cosmic rays strike carbon atoms and change some of them to this isotope.
There is a record of changes in the base level of carbon 14 starting from the industrial revolution. This change matches the increasing human activity and energy consumption very well. It does not match (as far as I am aware) changes in the rates of cosmic rays (though that record does not go back as far).
The hockey-stick increase in C02 concentration is therefore unlikely to be any sort of natural release. It is rather due to human beings.
We are indeed effecting our climate.
The solar arguments are laughable. 4 years ago they tried that claim the measured warming trend was increased solar output until it was pointed out that the sunspot cycle was still causing the sun to cool...not to warm. Soon after that we see the arguments that we are in a "cooling cycle" despite the evidence and certainly despite all the credible climate models. Now I notice from MiMiCcs that despite the fact that we really do not have a solar model we are destined for another sun-spotless period like occurred in the Maunder minimum??? On what data/theory is that being based? Is it the usual dollop of wishful thinking and conservative obstructionism with some propaganda as the cherry on top? Or trundling out the string of quotes from 'experts' who actually know nothing about solar physics? In another 3 years, when it becomes clear that the sunspot cycle is starting up again as usual I can just hear the new arguments...."All the warming is from increased solar output!!!" (because the sun's output WILL increase...something that IS already in the climate models by the way)
I tire of the people who really think they know better than the scientists who study these things.
Still it would appear we have room for agreement, at least with Sigdur_2.
Despite his denial of man-made sources of global warming he is not denying that our ancient repositories of carbon are indeed finite, and therefore we need to seek alternatives. This is an important point that essentially accomplishes the same goal (reducing carbon emissions) even if the reasoning is different.
So I am encouraged.
Pan
Thanks to all comments on this ship planet earth, about the sails ,leaks and ???
Not to worry , like a friend said about the Ozone Hole, you need it like a chimney to let the dirty air out.
Another man said Leaded Gas will destroy ALL the motors,,and yet another said unleaded gas wil be so expensive that the economy will collapse also you can`t get rid of flourocarbons there is no economical alternative.
Thank our God , as Jerry Falwell said GOD would never allow the ? Earth to be ?? Damaged as they! [claim beyond repair] So carry in mankind.
Here's what you get when you triangulate like the Demoks with their evil twins, the Repuks: You get to watch the Repuks, the instigators of multiple simultaneous mega-catastrophes pick and choose which they will fix and which they will simply throw "off the table"! So they will throw the climate concerns off the table. They will throw the war crimes off the table. They will throw the whole mountain of destruction off the table so they can focus on fixing the economy. The lesson is clear: All these chimps have to do is keep multiple chronic catastrophes roaring along in perpetuity and pick their favorite to "fix" and let the other fires blaze! This is the product of Demok triangulation! Nurturing their evil twins! There is only one sustainable political platform - TRUE LEFT!
The wind energy industry is not collapsing because of the credit crisis. They are collapsing because electricity consumption is not growing, and utilities are not placing orders. Wind has so far made no contribution to reducing global warming emissions, because it has not replaced fossil fuel electric generation, merely supplemented it. Restarting production depends on requiring utilities to shut down fossil plants as fast as they can be replaced by wind.
Wind energy is collapsing because the utilities are building out their new coal generation capacity as fast as they possibly can, and so wind will only generate needless extra megawatts.
theinitiate
To JerryinPhila
You are so right. It seems to me that giving up our most luxury oriented electricity uses-which would be huge- will help to reduce greenhouse gas.Like all those useless lights in Las Vegas. Just think how much electric we coould save if we got rid of commercial lighting... YOu just leave enough lights on for safety. Only necessary (yeah who decides, I know) uses would be allowed. I'll bet people are saying
what, you want a dictator telling us what to do,how much electricity we can use? Well, from what's being said, it really looks like we don't have a choice-if we want a planet left. Say I'm crazy, go ahead. But peopole are really just afraid of roughing it. Well, I'd rather do a little roughing now, than experiance what will result down the road if we don't take DRASTIC STEPS-NOW. REDUCE THE NEED!!!!!!!
Here is something new: an energy secretary whose opinions are based on observation and science. These clowns we have seen lately have been reminiscent of the idiot who said trashing the environment didn't matter because Jesus was returning soon---James Watt I believe.
Ihave noticed that in almost allthe photos I have seen of Obama presenting his cabiinet picks he has the same fatuous expression that Bush had when hepresented his.
I see this as a very bad sign.
So many people are afraid of nuclear and haven't gotten the news on nuclear waste. I'm writing from Chicago, an area that gets 67% of its electricity from nuclear generators, 30% from coal, and 3% outside purchases. In Illinois, half the energy is nuclear. In the country as a whole, that number falls to about 20%. If we go to electric cars in a big way, we'll definitely need more power. Nuclear plants are also probably the best way to produce hydrogen, if we go to hydrogen.
All our nuclear plants are at least 25 years old and beginning to show their age. These plants are expensive to build, but cheap to operate, so their prices are competitive. There haven't been any accidents with these plants in 30 years. (Chernobyl doesn't count, because the U.S. would never use the kind of technology used there.)
The carbon footprint of nuclear is about the same as solar or wind, if you include all the carbon costs of mining, manufacturing, transport, and decommissioning. See http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/postpn268.pdf/
To run a nuclear generator, you may need to get uranium or thorium from a mine and refine it, but it's also possible to use material from weapons. The U.S. has a post-Cold War surplus of uranium and plutonium bombs-about 70,000 by one account. If we could spare a few, they could produce gigawatts of electricity, and never tempt terrorists again. We wouldn't even need to mine or refine the fuel.
Of course, with nuclear generators, you get nuclear waste--a mixture of radioactive materials, some much more dangerous than others. In the U.S., it is mostly sitting around in barrels near the generating plants. These barrels are said to last as long as 200 years. Of course, the dangerous material, if left untreated, will remain dangerous for tens of thousands of years. No human culture has lasted that long, and it's a stretch to hope that people will remember how to take care of it if we do not demonstrate a little more responsibility now. The material is supposed to be shipped to Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for a safe burial. Trouble is, Harry Reid does not want it there, and other states will not permit the stuff to be shipped across their boundaries.
But yes, there is a way of treating the nuclear waste, in a process called transmutation. It involves chemical separation of the various components of the waste, then bombardment with subatomic particles from either a linear accelerator or a breeder reactor. As a result, the material becomes much less dangerous-and, as an extra bonus, the process generates electricity. Some theorists believe the linear accelerator (linac) option is best in the long run, but linac models at this point are experimental.
General Electric and Argonne National Lab have designed a device called the S-PRISM that effectively treats nuclear waste by using a breeder reactor. It was designed with U.S. money, and has been tested at several sites. It works. Since the beginning of the Bush Administration, however, activity along this line has virtually come to a halt.
How much nuclear waste do you suppose is sitting around the country, waiting for transmutation or underground storage? Would you believe 48,000 tons of this highly radioactive material? ( See www.sustainablenuclearar.org/PADs/pad0305dubberly.pdf)
The French example points to what might be done. In France, more than 75% of power is nuclear. The French recycle their nuclear waste to make more electricity, thus increasing productivity by about 30%. The recycling process uses up 99.9% of the plutonium and uranium but they still have some radioactive waste left (about 3% of the total);this material won't work in weapons. The French are working at attaining still better recycling and are on track to bury the remaining waste by 2025. (See www.nap.edu/catalog/11998.html/ and www.world-nuclear.org/iinfo/inf40html .)
There is an international association working on safe processing of nuclear waste, but the U.S. has done little to cooperate. The U.S. also withdrew from other important international scientific efforts during the Bush Administration.
It's important to increase power from wind and solar, but today these produce about 2.5% of the country's power, so if we double that we still have to get 95% from somewhere else. That does not have to mean imported fuel, or dirty fuel.
It's time to pay attention to the role of nuclear energy, and to set our priorities with realism and deliberation.
Cheap to operate? if you don't take into account building them in the first place and the carbon generated for it, decommissioning, waste disposal, plant security, non-existent insurance, destroyed property values for miles around, cancer treatments, costs of genetic diseases to children, sick leaves, costs of contamination of food, land, air, water and people, funding by taxpayers, guarding nuke waste forever, impossible costs of trying to find a way to get rid of them, costs of nuclear industry propaganda on the media and on sites like this one, costs of protecting plants from a 9/11 style attack, and so on.
"It's important to increase power from wind and solar, but today these produce about 2.5% of the country's power, so if we double that we still have to get 95% from somewhere else."
If the subsidies given to nukes were given to green alternatives like geothermal, solar, wind and tides, we would have energy to spare.
Allisbright:
What a refreshing post. Hats off to you sir.
ezflyer:
"If the subsidies given to nukes were given to green alternatives like geothermal, solar, wind and tides, we would have energy to spare."
Care to post facts of said subsidies sir?
Allisbright
Of course the DOE spends money on nuclear energy, though perhaps not so much as one might think, since no new nuclear plants have been constructed in more than 25 years, and it is clear that little is being spent on recycling nuclear waste.
I am all for expanding wind and solar energy, but I question whether we can do enough soon enough without nuclear. At present about 70% of electrical energy in the U.S. is generated by burning fossil fuels, mainly coal and natural gas but also including petroleum products. To deal with this on any reasonable time scale we need to use all the options--solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, and hydro. Thousands of windmills would be needed to do the job, and each windmill costs over a million dollars. But more than that, putting up that many windmills on our hilltops and mountaintops and shorelines would run into a lot of political opposition; getting the power to the cities from the Great Plains requires construction of a huge set of transmission lines. Unless special engineering is used, a great deal of power is lost when electricity is sent over distances of hundreds of miles.I haven't researched the chemistry of solar panels but know that their manufacturing and transport also require energy.
Every solution has its drawbacks, but all are necessary. Nuclear must be part of the solution, and all of us need to become better informed about it, especially about the treatment of nuclear waste. France treats waste economically enough so that they export electricity to neighboring countries; we should treat our waste as well.
As we cool more and more California and the SW of the USA will become more arid. This trend may be broken by short term El Nino's, but when the sun goes blank for long periods of time, it seems the La Nina is prevelant during those minimums.
It is time for a migration out of the dessert area to the more habital area. The cost of pumping water 100's and 1,000s of miles is just stupid.