Well, what is oil, coal, and gas anyway? Also, what is limestone? There are many, many minerals that have been formed as a result of life. As to their purpose, well, as long as we are fair in sharing these things out and don’t do too much damage to the environment I see no problem in using resources fairly. And responsibly. And that’s the great question isn’t it?
If the Lord doesn’t return for thousands of years yet, then our fossil fuel deposits have far more value as chemical feedstocks than energy. They are unique long chain molecules that appear ready made to turn into Kevlar and other cool materials. We could power a first world civilisation for millions of years on GenIV nukes (that eat nuclear waste! — I have to insert that every time I type it) and save the coal oil and gas for the materials and chemicals industry. Instead we break these valuable long chain molecules down to short chains and BURN THEM! Barring some enormous catastrophe (like WW3), all categories of fossil fuel will peak in output this century and decline to a fraction of their former production. There simply isn’t enough fossil fuels for the worst climate scenarios of the IPCC to happen! So while the physics of climate change are true, some of the underlying assumptions about ‘business as usual’ fossil fuel growth to 2100 are physically impossible. And there are so many people like Kevin that don’t want to accept the physics of climate change anyway. It’s a lost cause.
So… it seems we have to argue the case from a depletionist point of view.
What do ya reckon Kev? Seen enough evidence of depletion? If the Joint Forces Command foresee annual oil production down 1/8th in just 5 years, is that good enough reason to have our government invest in electric cars? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkRIu5a6Sb0
(And ecocities and walkability and .... )
No arguments on the need for nuclear from me Dave. As I have said many times before, I have been a promoter of nuclear energy since back in the 60’s. I have always seen it as part of God’s providence for mankind - but, in man’s sinful nature, it has been largely ignored by most governments ( especially our own ). Yet we all see other countries safely embracing nuclear energy as part of their energy solutions.
In order to have electric cars, we’ll definitely need to generate more electricity ( or whatever ).
And there are still other ‘new technologies’ yet to be discovered and utilised in the 21st century - and beyond if necessary.
From correspondents in Beijing From: AFP January 03, 2011 6:11PM
CHINESE scientists have made a breakthrough in nuclear fuel reprocessing technology that could effectively end any uranium supply concerns, state media reported.
The technology developed by state-run China National Nuclear Corp enables the country to re-use irradiated nuclear fuel, China Central Television said on Monday.
“China’s proven uranium sources will last only 50 to 70 years, but this now changes to 3000 years,” said the report.
The development would be an important step forward in China’s plans to increase the share of alternative power sources in its energy mix to reduce pollution and achieve energy security.
It has stepped up investment in nuclear power in an effort to slash carbon emissions and reduce the nation’s heavy reliance on polluting coal, which accounts for 70 per cent of its power needs.
China, now the world’s second-largest economy after surpassing Japan in 2010, aims to get 15 per cent of its power from renewable sources by 2020.
China aims to increase nuclear power capacity to 70-80 gigawatts by 2020, accounting for about five per cent of the country’s total installed power capacity, state press reports have said.
The Government said previously the target was 40 gigawatts.
China currently produces around 750 tonnes of uranium a year but annual demand could rise to 20,000 tonnes a year by 2020 as it boosts nuclear power output, the China Daily newspaper has said.
YES! We currently only use .06% of the energy in the uranium! It is because we are not allowed to breed it into plutonium because of proliferation concerns. However, the plutonium is ‘dirty’ — not pure enough to sustain a chain-reaction, but pure enough fissile material to sustain a fission reaction that will produce energy.
You know how I always say GenIV reactors ‘eat’ nuclear waste?
It’s actually better than that — for quite a few generations the waste is BRED! We already have about 300 reactor years experience with so called “Breeder reactors”. The uranium goes in and eventually plutonium comes out, and there is a doubling time. So one reactor runs of waste for about 7 years, and then it can feed 2 reactors, and then 4, until all the plutonium is finally used up and we have the REAL waste which only has to be stored for 300 years.
The Chinese article above is a bit of propaganda. They might have cracked one part of the quest in a more economical way, but basically we’ve known how to breed fuel for a while. Just look up the wiki on Breeder Reactors and the Integral Fast Reactor.
But the problem is if we get GenIV reactors coming off a production line any time soon, there may not be enough fuel to run them in the FIRST generation. It will take a few decades to breed up the waste we have. So the answer? Build lots of Gen3 reactors that can produce the depleted uranium waste ready for the GenIV’s when they come off the line.
Are you implying that we might miss the boat? That all that lovely Uranium we have been keeping in the ground will lose its market value, and we may have to buy nuclear waste to run GenIV nuclear plants? Once everyone else has GenIV, I’d think it would be difficult to start building Uranium-run plants.
The range of Gaia hypotheses, copied from the wiki referenced above:
According to James Kirchner there is a spectrum of Gaia hypotheses, ranging from the undeniable to radical.
At one end is the undeniable statement that the organisms on the Earth have radically altered its composition.
A stronger position is that the Earth’s biosphere effectively acts as if it is a self-organizing system which works in such a way as to keep its systems in some kind of equilibrium that is conducive to life. Biologists usually view this activity as an undirected emergent property of the ecosystem; as each individual species pursues its own self-interest, their combined actions tend to have counterbalancing effects on environmental change. Proponents of this view sometimes point to examples of life’s actions in the past that have resulted in dramatic change rather than stable equilibrium, such as the conversion of the Earth’s atmosphere from a reducing environment to an oxygen-rich one.
An even stronger claim is that all lifeforms are part of a single planetary being, called Gaia. In this view, the atmosphere, the seas, the terrestrial crust would be the result of interventions carried out by Gaia, through the coevolving diversity of living organisms. Many scientists deny the possibility of this view[citation needed]; however, such a view is considered within scientific possibility.
The most extreme form of Gaia theory is that the entire Earth is a single unified organism; in this view the Earth’s biosphere is consciously manipulating the climate in order to make conditions more conducive to life. Scientists contend that there is no evidence - in the way evidence is conceived in the natural sciences - at all to support this last point of view, and it has come about because many people do not understand the concept of homeostasis. Many non-scientists instinctively and incorrectly see homeostasis as a process that requires conscious control.
The more speculative versions of Gaia, including versions in which it is believed that the Earth is actually conscious, sentient, and highly intelligent, are usually considered outside the bounds of what is usually considered science.
ISTM when Flannery says
“Once that occurs, then the Gaia of the ancient Greeks really will exist,” exulted Flannery. “This planet, this Gaia, will have acquired a brain and a nervous system. That will make it act as a living animal, a living organism, at some sort of level.”....
and
“It’s life that makes the atmosphere what it is. That’s a very important aspect of Gaia, you know,” the bearded Gaia-whisperer said. “Gaia is life working as a whole to maintain the atmosphere as it is, so that life can go on. So Gaia, I think, is saying to us: ‘It’s time that you took control.”’ ...
Are you implying that we might miss the boat? That all that lovely Uranium we have been keeping in the ground will lose its market value, and we may have to buy nuclear waste to run GenIV nuclear plants? Once everyone else has GenIV, I’d think it would be difficult to start building Uranium-run plants.
Well, we could offer to store the world’s waste in our ‘stable geological deposits’ and pretend to be preparing to store it for 20 years (like the delays at Yucca Mountain in the USA) and then, “Oh, yeah, now we’re finally building GE’s S-PRISM IFR reactor, we won’t store that thanks”. ;)
The big difference with the Integral Fast Reactor is that they are smaller and Modular. That is, you make parts on a factory assembly line and then ‘clip them together’ on site, almost like lego. Or prefab homes you might have seen on Grand Designs.
Making them Modular and putting them on the Assembly line is one of the main strategies to get the cost down. Each nuclear plant built in the USA over the last few decades has been an individual project. Think of the difference between hand-crafting a Rolls Royce and getting a factory built Hyundai! However, it could take another 10 or 15 or 20 years for Integral Fast Reactors like the S-PRISM to start coming off the production line.
And yes, if the world moves to IFR’s fast then after a few generations of fuel-cycle there will be so much reactor grade plutonium that we’ll close uranium mining for 500 years! That’s how long just today’s waste could run the world.
BTW, what is a Gen3 reactor?
From the conversations I’ve been reading over at Professor Barry Brook’s blog, it has better performance than an old Gen2 reactor, and is several orders of magnitude safer.
Try these guys, now being built in China. I’d be much happier living next door to one of these than say the coal plants out in the Hunter Valley, where the beautiful wine-growing district suffers lung cancer rates 3 times that of us Sydney folk living in the ‘big smoke’. Apparently the Hunter is the ‘big smoke’ after all!
“Once that occurs, then the Gaia of the ancient Greeks really will exist,” exulted Flannery. “This planet, this Gaia, will have acquired a brain and a nervous system. That will make it act as a living animal, a living organism, at some sort of level.”....
and
“It’s life that makes the atmosphere what it is. That’s a very important aspect of Gaia, you know,” the bearded Gaia-whisperer said. “Gaia is life working as a whole to maintain the atmosphere as it is, so that life can go on. So Gaia, I think, is saying to us: ‘It’s time that you took control.”’ ...
he’s using ideas from the extreme forms.
I don’t know about that Ros. Having debated Revelation heatedly on another forum the past month, I’m convinced us human animals love to speak in picture language. I’ve read Flannery’s “Weather makers” and a few of his essays, and I think he’s a solid scientist.
But climate is often a freaky, counter-intuitive science precisely because of the interactions of life with the larger system.
He briefly mentions it in “Weather Makers” and so I’m pretty sure he is just being provocative. He’s talking about strong feed-back loops and using strong metaphor’s to do so. Remember he has the role of a science communicator, and so he’s speaking to lay people who would be provoked to question such strong statements and maybe look it up. “The planet has a brain… is he really saying Earth is like Pandora, out of Jame’s Cameron’s Avatar? What is he on about?” No, he’s not talking Pandora.
And as I’ve mentioned Avatar, this wiki looks interesting.
Israel’s terrible fires last month were blamed by Greenpeace on ... you guessed it:
Greenpeace wishes to emphasize that this fire is a direct expression of the effects of climate change and global warming which threaten us all. Climate change is already here and it is taking a heavy human toll!
Israel must take this warning sign seriously and take immediate measures in order to eradicate the effects of climate change. Israel must cancel its plans to construct another coal plant, reduce use of fossil fuels, and realize that we are dealing with an international struggle.
Oops. Trouble is the fires weren’t caused by global warming but a green activist:
The cause of this particular fire was, sadly enough, the good intentions of a participant in the Rainbow Festival that was being held at the site. For ecological reasons, she burned toilet paper she had used so as not to leave it in nature, and in normal circumstances, that would have been the thing to do. However, due to the strong winds and the unseasonable hot air, the dry grasses caught on fire immediately, and the fire spread in four different directions simultaneously.
Green-behind-the-ears leader Bob CLOWN is at it again :
THE federal government has warned Greens leader Bob Brown that now is not the time to be “pointing the finger” after he accused coal companies of helping to cause the Queensland floods.
Senator Brown says the coal-mining industry should foot the bill for the Queensland reconstruction efforts, claiming their operations are partly responsible for the floods.
“It’s the single biggest cause, burning coal, for climate change and it must take its major share of responsibility for the weather events we are seeing unfolding now,” he said…......
Pressing on… I see that Patrick Moore ( co-founder of Greenpeace ) now sharply and publicly differs with many policies of major environmental groups, such as Greenpeace, on other issues including forestry, biotechnology, aquaculture, and the use of chemicals for flame retardants. He is an outspoken proponent of nuclear energy and sceptical of human responsibility for climate change.
Pffffft. (Trying to spell the sound-effect that comes to mind as one of Kevin’s spurious arguments splutters, stalls, fizzles out and dies with a whimper before ever properly starting).
1. Patrick Moore is an ecologist, not a climatologist or even an atmospheric physicist.
Early life
Moore was born in 1947, in Port Alice, British Columbia and raised in Winter Harbour, on Vancouver Island. He is the third generation of a British Columbian family with a long history in logging and fishing. His father, W. D. Moore, was the president of the B.C. Truck Loggers Association and past president of the Pacific Logging Congress.[4] Moore obtained a Ph.D. in ecology from the Institute of Animal Resource Ecology, University of British Columbia under the direction of Dr. C.S. Holling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Moore_(environmentalist)
2. He throws around some big statements without really explaining that the CLIMATOLOGISTS ALREADY KNOW ABOUT ALL THIS! He presents this data as if it is some sort of secret. (Nudge nudge wink wink to all the delusional conspiracy theorists out there! The Moon Landing was faked as well, tonight at 9!)
3. It’s been warmer in the deep deep past. D’uh! Moron! OF COURSE IT HAS — the CO2 levels were MUCH HIGHER BACK THEN DUE TO MUCH HIGHER LEVELS OF VOLCANISM! Patrick, Oh Paaaaatrick, that’s EVIDENCE of global warming ain’t it there buddy pal?
(Smacks hand to forehead wondering how stuff like this is allowed on TV, it only confuses the Sheeple following their Sceptical Shepherds. If I were to reply in kind, I might cast a story as follows; “Shocking news tonight — ‘foolproof’ evidence that most Global Warming Sceptics have actually been implanted with alien-mind probe devices”. But I wouldn’t dream of it — I’m above that sort of thing. ;-)
Sounds like you need a good dose of Lord Monckton to set you right ...
Earth’s climate crisis ain’t necessarily so
Christopher Monckton From:The Australian January 22, 2011
WHILE the Gillard government’s climate-change parliamentary committee plots to wreck Australia’s economy with a rigged market to make motoring and electricity unaffordable as soon as the new Greens-infected Senate starts work in July, thoughtful pollies are at last - privately, quietly - beginning to ask the Gershwin question.
What if it ain’t necessarily so? Suppose there’s no climate crisis?...........
...... Suppose the Australian committee’s aim is to cut emissions by 20 per cent by 2050….
A 20 per cent cut by 2050 is an average 10 per cent cut from now until then. Carbon dioxide concentration by 2050 probably won’t exceed 506 parts per million by volume, from which we deduct today’s concentration of 390 ppmv. So humankind might add 116 ppmv from now until then.
The CO2 concentration increase forestalled by 40 years of cap-and-tax in Australia would be 10 per cent of 1.5 per cent of that 116 ppmv, or just 0.174 ppmv. So in 2050 CO2 concentration would be - tell it not in Gath and Ashkelon - 505.826 ppmv, not 506.
Thus what we maths wonks call the proportionate change in CO2 concentration if the committee got its way would be 505.826 divided by 506, or 0.9997. The UN says warming or cooling, in Celsius degrees, is 3.7 to 5.7 times the logarithm of the proportionate change.
It expects only 57 per cent of manmade warming to occur by 2100: the rest would happen slowly and harmlessly across 1000-3000 years.
To be charitable to the committee, let us take the UN’s high-end estimate. The warming forestalled by cutting Australia’s emissions would be very unlikely to exceed 57 per cent of 5.7 times the logarithm of 0.9997: that is - wait for it - a dizzying one-thousandth of a degree by 2050.
I have set out this calculation to show how certainly it is known that all attempts to cut CO2 emissions will expensively fail ......
Kevin,
you need to go wash your hands after posting something by ‘that fellow’. Seriously, if you want to be taken seriously, you’ll seriously reconsider what you take seriously. Seriously.
Prof Barry Brook explains the cheap new nukes that burn nuclear *waste*. They are so cheap they could work without a carbon tax, and power the world for 1000 years on today’s ‘waste’. Who says there is no such thing as silver bullets?
18 minute Counterpoint http://abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2011/3129888.htm
Isn’t it great that we are being ruled by such ‘wise’ stewards ? Of course they would never stay employed in the private sector - or be elected to a local church parish council, where wiser heads run things. But if it’s not coming out of their own pockets, “who cares” says the misled ideologues !
Cost shadow falls on solar savings plan for federal parliament
by Siobhain Ryan From:The Australian February 21, 2011 12:47PM
TAXPAYERS will soon be spending several hundred thousand dollars on rooftop solar at Parliament House in Canberra to save just $9500 a year in electricity costs.
Alan Thompson, secretary of the Department of Parliamentary Services, told a Senate estimates hearing the agency was trying to find ways to limit its electricity bills by installing solar cells on the Senate wing rooftops and landscaped areas.
“We currently pay well over $3 million a year for electricity and that is going up quite rapidly and we’re just looking at ways to mitigate that,” he said.
The department expects to finalise evaluation of the tenders this week. It put the estimated cost at several hundred thousand dollars for a return of $9500 in reduced electricity costs.
When challenged over the size of the outlay, Mr Thompson said the department had opted for the initial trial ” to see whether solar can be a viable part of our energy mix in the future”.
“At this stage I don’t think we know,” he said.
Liberal senator Helen Kroger told the hearing it didn’t appear to be value for the taxpayer dollar. “I find it interesting we are advancing this project at a time where there is significant concern about implementing a flood levy and we are looking at a trial program of possible savings of $9500 a year,” she said.
“Energy would have to increase absolutely astronomically to get some return on your investment.”
We really are being run by a bunch of clowns. The Circus is back in town.
This is where we agree Kevin. Solar PV has to be one of THE most expensive alternatives to fossil fuels just to get a power source that works about a quarter or third of a day! What a joke.
Unless solar PV costs come down 10 fold and batteries come down 100 fold while rising in power storage 100 fold, all quite MAGICAL wishes really, I don’t see solar PV happening. And if you get a super volcano, there goes your power source.
If only we had some sort of magic reactor that could run the world for hundreds of millions of years supplying reliable power whatever the time of night or day or weather or season. Oh wait, we do.
PS: The only other way I can see solar PV working is from space where it can be baseload. However, launch costs are prohibitive. It would take huge AI-robotic manufacturing ships on the moon or in the asteroid field shooting Solar PV into our orbit from low or zero G to make solar PV economical.
There’s a fascinating 2 page article ( pp39. ) in the latest “Time” magazine ( 28 Feb 2011 ) about nuclear batteries : link
Nuclear-powered cars! airplanes! Fridges and freezers! In the heady days of the early 1950s — at the dawn of the civilian nuclear power age and President Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program — nuclear optimists imagined a world powered by tiny nuclear reactors. Today, in an era of climate change and energy insecurity, the nuclear industry is dusting off some of those old dreams. That includes the nuclear battery.
Designed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory spin-off Hyperion Power Generation Inc., the nuclear battery — so called because it is cheap, small and easily transportable — is about the size of a refrigerator, compared with a 50-ft.-tall traditional reactor. It produces 25 megawatts of electricity — approximately a fortieth the output of a large atomic power-plant reactor. While not quite compact enough for cars, the battery, known as the Hyperion Power Module, has been designed to power subdivisions or towns with fewer than 20,000 homes, as well as military bases, mining operations, desalination plants and even commercial ships, including cruise liners.
“Think of us as the iPhone of nuclear reactors,” Hyperion Power’s tanned and enthusiastic Denver-based CEO, John “Grizz” Deal, says. “Our technology is a game changer. There are so many exciting applications.”
Some high-powered energy experts share that excitement .........
Australia paving way for uranium sales to UAE
From: AAP March 09, 2011 2.42pm
AUSTRALIA will negotiate a nuclear safeguards agreement with the United Arab Emirates to pave the way for uranium sales. Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said the UAE is planning to begin using nuclear power for electricity by 2017.
“The UAE is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has an Additional Protocol on strengthened safeguards with the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Mr Rudd said.
“A bilateral safeguards agreement with Australia is a further strict non-proliferation condition that Australia requires for supplying uranium.” Mr Rudd said the agreement would open up an important additional market for Australian uranium producers.
”Australia welcomes the UAE’s efforts to establish a responsible approach to nuclear power generation and hopes that it will serve as a model for other countries in the Middle East.”
I haven’t seen any other media interest in this story yet ? They’re either STUPID - or trying to COVER UP what I consider THE news story of the day. Obviously, I’m more observant ( and intelligent ) than them ;)
On reflection, it IS a giant cover up ! Hypocrital LEFT biased media ? Surely not ;)
An open letter to the Aust Labor govt :
Dear Kevin and Julia,
As it’s so safe and responsible to use nuclear power for electricity , WHY NOT IN AUSTRALIA THEN ?
If we had CLEAN NUCLEAR REACTORS providing our power then we wouldn’t need a BIG CARBON TAX - but that would mean LESS TAX in the LABOR govt coffers - and we couldn’t do that. And Australia’s power supply would be assured !
Boy the clowns really are running this circus ! Or is it “RUINING” ?
Personally I’m ambivalent about the Carbon Tax. What good can it possibly do when they’ve banned the true solution!
More… I finally found a quote which explains the most fundamental physics in the ‘passive safety’ of today’s nuclear reactors. And we’ve had this passive safety technology for about 25 years!
If an accident situation occurs that would cause the core to overheat, such as a loss of coolant flow accident, the metal fuel itself will expand, causing neutron leakage to terminate the chain reaction, relying on nothing but the laws of physics.
The passive safety characteristics of the IFR were tested in EBR-II on April 3, 1986, against two of the most severe accident events postulated for nuclear power plants. The first test (the Loss of Flow Test) simulated a complete station blackout, so that power was lost to all cooling systems. The second test (the Loss of Heat Sink Test) simulated the loss of ability to remove heat from the plant by shutting off power to the secondary cooling system. In both of these tests, the normal safety systems were not allowed to function and the operators did not interfere. The tests were run with the reactor initially at full power.
In both tests, the passive safety features simply shut down the reactor with no damage. The fuel and coolant remained within safe temperature limits as the reactor quickly shut itself down in both cases. Relying only on passive characteristics, EBR-II smoothly returned to a safe condition without activation of any control rods and without action by the reactor operators. The same features responsible for this remarkable performance in EBR-II will be incorporated into the design of future IFR plants, regardless of how large they may be [xi]. http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/24/advanced-nuclear-power-systems-to-mitigate-climate-change/
[null]Jean Pakter Dies at 101; Women's Health AdvocateNew York Times[{}]Abortion was still illegal during Dr. Pakter's early years in public health, and she had the task of compiling reports about the commerce in abortion. These reports provided some of the few reliable estimates in the country about the number of women ...
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