Bypassing the Climate Divide
Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute advance their argument for a “third pathway” in the energy/climate debate.
The two dominant sides, they assert, have
constructed increasingly baroque fantasies of the other. To partisan greens, skeptics are fossil fuel-funded and brainwashed planet killers too stingy to spend a postage stamp a day to save the world from imminent apocalypse. To the partisan skeptic, greens seeking emissions caps are crypto-socialist watermelons whose policies would destroy the global economy and rapidly goosestep us into U.N. governance. Those who fit into neither frame are squeezed in one camp or the other by those who believe that if you are not with us, then you must be against us. The result? A Manichean debate with essentially no room for a third view.
The authors make a forceful pitch for nuclear power as the bridge technology that can unite disparate forces to the cause of fossil-fuel free energy–if only the main antagonists could get past their dark suspicions and sweeping rejection of each other:
Nuclear power is today being embraced by individuals such as Stewart Brand, who holds an apocalyptic view of global warming, as well as by George Will, who doubts anthropogenic global warming is in fact occurring. Must their motivations align before we make the necessary investments to make nuclear power cheaper, safer and cleaner?
It’s going to take a lot more than a few uncommon bedfellows to overcome the deeply ingrained opposition to nuclear power by greens. On that note, consider this passage in the Shellenberger & Nordhaus essay:
Many of the climate scientists most alarmed by global warming were making the case to their friends in the green movement that scaling up nuclear power was critical to reducing emissions, since renewables remain expensive and difficult to scale. “One of the greatest dangers the world faces,” NASA climate scientist James Hansen said, “is the possibility that a vocal minority of antinuclear activists could prevent phase-out of coal emissions.”
I’d like to know who “many of these climate scientists” are other than Hansen. Because I have to wonder: if there were a good number of prominent climate scientists as vocally supportive of nuclear power as Hansen, I bet the anti-nuclear stance by many greens would melt away as fast as some of the world’s glaciers are now melting.
Here’s a third way. Google ‘Livingston and Penn’ and learn about the oncoming Eddy Minimum, which may cool the earth for a century and make even ‘denialists’ wish that anthropogenic carbon dioxide was powerful enough to keep us warm.
If the alarmists wrong foot us into mitigating a warming that isn’t happening instead of adapting to a cooling that is happening, there’ll be Hell to pay, and ponies of the Apocalypse will ride.
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The argument against nuclear is an economic and security one. The greens have very little say in this. The question is about the security threat the “waste” supposes and whether the price of the uranium commodity will remain stable enough to make it feasible to the market without government intervention. Starting within the next two decades the next generation of nuclear plants will begin to be built, and this will help both of these problems. The problem is that R&D on 4th generation nuclear has not caught up with the amount of demand that will be needed to replace coal/shale/natural gas in the western world and growing India China.
So the nuclear option embraced by Hansen and Breakthrough et al and the opposition to it cited by them is a red herring?
Not sure. I’ve never seen evidence that the environmental lobby holds that kind of sway. I do find it very credible that the environmental lobby would play on people’s fears of meltdowns and the human/environmental damage caused afterward. So indirectly, I can see their cite as a real concern.
Nuclear is the way to go.
It is baseload power, 24 hours a day 365 days a year, so not subject to either the sun or wind, it is carbon free (at least compared to coal), and while the waste is a problem, there is so much less of it than other fuel sources.
Not only that, but the waste can be recycled with the proper nuclear power plant, which extracts even more power, and has the added benefit that it lowers the radioactivity of the waste.
I will wager that the US will be building 50 to 100 new nuclear power plants within 30 years.
RickA:
I wouldn’t take your wager. 🙂
Esp if the continuing NIMBY/env opposition to wind and solar snowballs in the U.S. I can see climate hawks throwing up their hands in frustration at some point, saying, “nukes, baby, nukes.”
Keith I don’t understand why you think climate scientists have influence over anti-nuclear greens? The anti-nuclears have been so for decades, predating Chernobyl and all climate related issues. Atomkraft nein danke and all that. Can you expand on why they would listen to Hans von Storch or Michael Mann or Phil Jones or Hansen? I don’t see it.
Also a key argument against nuclear has been economic – coal and gas have been very cheap for decades, no-one’s been pushing to build new ones, so the greens have had little to object to. A main issue preventing the building of new ones right now in the UK is that they need subsidy (which doesn’t stop stupid windmills being built).
Keith:
I’ll take the other side of your bet. Echo-wackos are wackos. The are not susceptible to reasoning or even authority. Once they decided on something that’s it.
However, I’ll join Keith wagering against RickA.
50-100 new ones, hmmmm. How many do you guys have now? about 100+ old ones? ;o)
People who believe in rapid build-up of massive nuclear capacity are completely out of touch with the political, regulatory and economic reality.
Well, they sure are expensive and take long to build:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/02/obama-says-safe-nuclear-power-plants-are-a-necessary-investment.html
Did the “breakthrough” boys get around to explaining how this clean energy renaissance gets funded in the face of fossil fuel energy without a substantial carbon cost?
The hippie-punching is practically required in their articles, but where is the discussion of how the current Congress will be persuaded to accept incredibly expensive government subsidies while they’re whinging about government spending? Name-checking a single Senator and George Will isn’t a sufficient demonstration that the current Congress will act in opposition to what it is explicitly claiming it will do.
Sashka:
I agree that to build a bunch of nuclear plants will require regulatory change, and a major change in political thinking.
I think that as policy makers cast about for solutions they will find Nuclear more and more attractive.
Right now, none of the “green” alternatives are economic compared to nuclear and certainly none of the green alternatives are baseload.
Everytime a utility adds a bunch of wind, they need to allocate baseload power to cover for the drop in power when there is no wind – so you end up building twice as much capacity as you really need.
Unless someone cracks the problem of storing power, it is far cheaper to build baseload power than green power plus baseload power capacity.
So I think you have the economics wrong.
This is pretty much the nut of the debate. We’ve known since Hansen first testified in congress in 1988 that nuclear power is the only viable option for reducing emissions. France proved it and the UK’s massive fubar with windmills is reinforcing it.
The only thing standing in the way is green politics- this group simply refuses to admit the obvious because of what that means politically. How can you claim that the GOP is “holding up action” to reduce emissions, when the GOP has supported nukes for decades? How do you admit that your preferred solution- the only one on the table for the last 20 years – was an ineffective pipe dream? How do you claim that it’s “out of touch with reality” to build nukes when this country went from zero to 20% nuclear without a carbon tax (and the nukes are money-makers) and France went to over 80%?
Hansen was right- you’re either interested in reducing emissions or something else.
Keith,
Why do you keep plugging the BTI fluff? If you want information on energy technologies, talk to energy experts. If you want suggestions on climate policy, talk to climate policy experts. If you want information on public opions about environmental issues then by all means talk to S&N. But when they continue to spout the same old fluff about a subject in which they have zero expertise why bother paying any attention at all? Is your attachment to the ‘3rd way’ slogan that strong?
Maybe it’s a byproduct of the dualism in American politics….
p.s. Hansen is a great climate scientist but is pretty clueless when it comes to mitigation policy…same goes for Stewart Brand.
As others have pointed out, the obstacles to scaling up nuclear power in North America are significant, with NIMBYism being one of the smaller ones IMO and financing the elephant.
Rick,
I mostly agree with your logic. But logic is not what they do in Congress. They do circus.
Re economics, I’m afraid you don’t appreciate the scale of necessary investment.
Sashka #17:
Maybe I don’t appreciate the scale of necessary investment.
I assume we are talking trillions.
But, green energy provides maybe 5-10% of current power in the US.
So, whether we build 80% nuclear (nuclear is currently providing 20% of power in the US), or we build a whole bunch more wind, solar . . .”green” power, I think the amount we are talking about is trillions to replace coal.
In other words, why is it cheaper to replace coal with wind and solar versus Nuclear – I don’t think the dollars are going to be that much different.
The scale of investment is huge either way – isn’t it?
I would rather spend the trillions, get baseload Nuclear power, than to spend trillions for wind and solar or other green power, and then more trillions for coal baseload power back-up, which would then run more than 1/2 the time anyway, and not really solve the CO2 problem.
I don’t have a preconceived notion regarding the eventual winner. Therefore I would vote for “all of the above” approach.
@Rick,
Nat Gas + intermittent renewables + solar thermal seems to be the most scalable combination to me at the moment given the timeframe you’re looking at to replace the aging coal fleet in the u.s.
Nuclear plant construction in the US has been faltering recently. A couple years ago projections were really optimistic, and while those numbers still get cited construction (or pre-construction) has stalled in recent months for economic reasons.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/nuclear-builders-keep-their-options-open/
http://cenvironment.blogspot.com/2010/10/us-nuclear-renaissance-stalling.html
Keith said, “I bet the anti-nuclear stance by many greens would melt away as fast as some of the world’s glaciers are now melting.”
I think you would be wrong.
Just listen to Ed Begley babble on about ‘going off the grid’.
Part of what motivates him is a genuine desire to be environmentally responsible, but another part of what motivates him is to free himself from the control of giant corporations that control energy and as a result, his life.
Wind farms and Roof Top Solar panels don’t evoke visions of Big Corporations. Nuclear Power Plants do.
I would be seriously surprised if a strong correlation didn’t exist between attitudes about corporations and attitudes about nuclear power.
With the greenies an irrational phobia about nuclear meets an irrational phobia about CO2. No point talking about facts and figures with these people.
Enter windmills as a way to quickly change the subject…
“Hey look at that shiny thing spinning over there and generating electricity at the same time.”
I’ve done a little digging on this issue semi-professionally (ie, I didnt’ get paid, it was a loss leader). There are some simple truths on this issue that most people ignore. 1. Until the disposal issue is resolved, no utility is going to build a nuke plant. The contingent liability is enormous. 2. The wacky enviros have made a very useful target to divert attention away from the fact that nuke power is, especially considering the contingent liabilities, much more expensive than coal or natural gas. 3. There’s a really unpleasant story involving Native American tribes behind the history of uranium mining in this country that many people want to leave buried. But a massive expansion of uranium mining would bring that issue back. 4. 4th gen. nuke plants are way overbudget. Areva is about at double the initial cost of the new plant in Finland, for a total of about 6 billion euros.
Getting nuke power built in this country will require deep bipartisan support on financing, liability insurance, remediation of past environmental harm, expedited review at NRC, waste storage and a host of other issues. Best of luck.
What Marlowe said.
FWIW Barry Brook at Brave New Climate has been seriously blogging on nuclear and only nuclear for about two years now. Much better than what you link to.
Eli has been pointing out that <a href=”http://rabett.blogspot.com/search?q=baseload”>nuclear is an important part of the answer for lo these many years</a> Pay attention
Michael Tobis on Dr. Judy’s blog has seemed to back nuclear.
But really, this is the future of nuclear, almost bullet proof.
http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/
I always have wondered why the bitimus sands in Alberta never tried to use nuke energy for the processing of the sands. Perfect match load wise and not wasting nat. gas, nor pumping all that CO2 into the atmosphere.
Speaking of the bitimus sands, Keith, have you heard Ezra Levant’s take on this? He cals it Ethical Oil. You may be interested in this, or not.
http://ezralevant.com/2011/01/do-you-want-your-oil-from-fort.html
@ DeNihilist #26 “I always have wondered why the bitimus sands in Alberta never tried to use nuke energy for the processing of the sands. Perfect match load wise and not wasting nat. gas, nor pumping all that CO2 into the atmosphere.”
Hey, not only are they considering nuclear power, they’ve even contemplated using nuclear bombs…
One fascinating aspect of energy debates for me is how people can be technological optimists for the technology they favor and such technological pessimists for other technologies. This applies equally to both sides. I can’t remember when nuclear advocates weren’t crowing about the next generation of reactor development, and of course wind and solar hope for storage technologies, efficiencies, and other things.
There certainly are people who are pure optimists or pessimists across all technologies, but they don’t seem to have as much of a horn these days.
The way I see it, the biggest impediment to solar and wind is transmission. The most realistic of the optimistic viewpoints for them require vast transmission to effectively balance out the variability. The wind tends to blow when the sun doesn’t shine, and it is usually windy somewhere in this large country.
There was an article in Sci Am a year ago or so that estimated how much transmission would be required – it was vast. Of course there are almost no technological barriers for this, though it would cost a lot. But the political barriers to that kind of transmission seem almost insurmountable.