Over the past nine days, a group known as Extinction Rebellion has been blockading central London to highlight the problem of climate change and to protest lack of action on it. They just ended the protest.
Extinction Rebellion, which has been backed by senior academics, politicians and scientists during nine days of peaceful mass civil disobedience, said it would leave its remaining blockades, but added: “The world has changed … A space for truth-telling has been opened up.
“Now it is time to bring this telling of the truth to communities around London, the regions and nations of the UK, and internationally. In this age of misinformation, there is power in telling the truth.”
The group said it would like to “thank Londoners for opening their hearts and demonstrating their willingness to act on that truth”.
The statement added: “We know we have disrupted your lives. We do not do this lightly. We only do this because this is an emergency.”
The activists said protesters had “taken to the streets and raised the alarm” in more than 80 cities in 33 countries. “People are talking about the climate and ecological emergency in ways that we never imagined,” they said.
Jonathan Pie weighs in on the protest. (Language advisory)
Ironic that there’s probably substantial overlap between this group and the groups that fight against nuclear power which is the best and only way to combat climate change.
EL:
We’ve interacted for years now, and something seems different to me. I don’t mean to be too harsh, but the content does seem more mindless and repetitive, often barely relevant to the threads in question, compared to what I remember from you in the past. So I just have to ask… Was your account taken over by a bot controlled by the nuclear industry? Bleep once for “yes” and twice for “no.”
If you really knew the “only way” to solve an extremely complex and major crisis that the entire world is facing, then in your own words and in the space of a few sentences, how do you think you got that information? Or is that not supposed to be an honest, factual statement about something you actually know? If it’s just supposed to be a declaration of faith or some kind of performance art piece or whatever, then I’m willing to accept that you do that sort of thing from time to time.
Anyway, assuming you do know it, why would this be your method of revealing it? Why not, for instance, stand on a busy street corner with a sandwich board and evangelize to the people there? Maybe you just lack imagination, but that could also be true of your statements promoting nuclear energy and criticizing every other alternative, no?
EL, you’re speculating.
I think that phrasing such as “the best and only way” is indicative of your demagogy.
(I can see how you preferred it to “the worst and only way”, but 🙂 )
“Patchouli” oil, JP.
#2
I’ve noticed something similar, but in reverse. In the early days of his pro-nuclear stance, he engaged with a lot of people, and was engaged with in return. Now the people that used to discuss this and crunch numbers with him no longer do so, calling him wrong and obsessed and etc., but also consistently failing to make any kind of case that he is wrong. My perception has been that the numbers support his pro-nuclear stance (which I share), but those that argued against it simply became angry at their own ‘wind+solar+hydro storage will save everything’ stance being debunked.
#3
He is wrong to call it the only way, as there certainly are numerous bad options. But he is correct in calling it the best way.
Well, I can’t speak for anybody else, but I stopped engaging with him when he told me to “go die in a fire” (with bonus graphic descriptions of the levels of pain this would involve) for pointing out that even the South Koreans were walking away from fully government-backed, pre-approved projects in the UK, with 30-year strike price guarantees at 3 times the current market rate, because they couldn’t find a cost-effective way of securing the necessary project funding. That particular discussion made it abundantly clear that he’s far more interested in hippy-punching than anything else.
My position has always been that the primary roadblock to widespread nuclear adoption is not the environmentalists, it’s the capitalists, but that’s not a message he’s interested in hearing, and he always insists on dragging it back to lunatic conspiracy theories about how “the federal government, and in particular the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is controlled by leftists” (that particular quote is from just last year -- i.e. when the Republicans had control of both houses). If he can’t even contemplate the real issues (principally “how much will this cost?” and “where’s the money coming from?”, but with a side-order of “how long will it take?” and “who’s going to build it?”) then what’s the point?
He also continually insisted on mischaracterising my stance -- that he was hopelessly wrong about the real difficulties with nuclear power plant construction under the current political and economic climate -- as my being unreasonably opposed to the technology itself, and further insisted that I was deliberately lying about my actual position (i.e. that I’m a dirty fucking hippy who just hates progress and humanity, and am probably in the pay of Big Oil to boot). How do you have a reasonable discussion on that sort of basis?
You don’t. I cannot speak further to that interaction, except that it is unlike what I have seen.
He’s generally not too bad (if somewhat tedious, repetitive, and long-winded) as long as people stick to arguments that he’s got a script for. It’s only if you go persistently off-script that he completely loses his shit.
Indeed, if you suggest, for instance, that the technical problems around nuclear are relatively easy to solve, but that the human behaviour problems around climate change are rather more difficult to solve, and that it doesn’t matter what your technical solution is if you don’t pay attention to solving the human behaviour problems EL has absolutely nothing to offer.
Go Jonathon Pie!!!
I have often joked that I need to buy up land in the Yukon that is about 200 ft. above sea level. That way, in a few years I will own nice temperate zone beach front property.
Bleep bleep
By listening to the scientific experts, like leading climate scientists, including James Hansen, Kerry Emanuel, and the dozens of other climate scientists that have written open letters to environmental organizations and governments. The scientific consensus, as best as I can determine, is with me, and against the Greens. James Hansen says that the Green movement is quasi-religious. Kerry Emanuel says that history may record that the Greens and not climate change denial was the single biggest impediment to fighting climate change.
By looking at the fucking real world, where France has half the CO2 emissions per capita of Germany, and drastically lesser electricity prices too.
Every attempt at a Green New Deal has failed miserably. See Germany. For another example, the US tried a Green New Deal already in recent memory, except it was called “The New Apollo Project”.
I care deeply about this. Climate change and ocean acidication and overpopulation are together the biggest threats facing human civilization today, and if we don’t fix them, we’re looking at the very real possibility of the deaths of billions and the end of human civilization as we know it, combined with making large swathes of the planet uninhabitable for human life that once were. This is the single biggest issue facing humanity today, and the single biggest impediment to fixing this issue are the Greens.
…
To Dunc
I don’t remember the exact context in which it was said. It was probably because you were being especially dishonest, or because you were promoting genocide or something. If anything, I’m waiting for an apology from you to me for your behavior.
I don’t need that apology to engage civilly with you going forward, but right now I have no intention to apologize.
PS: You missed the best part where I also mentioned that I’m a survivor of near third-degree burns, and so I know how horrible a death that is. It’s one of my favorite insults, which I reserve for only the most deserving.
…
To Jazzlet
There’s no technical problem to solve. That’s a Green lie. The only problems to solve to really start fighting climate change right now are political, and specifically the many lies promoted by the cult-like Green movement.
PPS:
James Hansen has also said that believing that renewables can power the US, India, or China, is like believing in the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. I find it deeply ironic that many of the Greens are quick to cite him as a hero for warning the world about climate change, but then quick to dismiss his scientific expertise and informed opinion on what to do about it.
The Green movement is a religious cult who care more about their anarcho-capitalist anti-corporation anti-capitalism goals and their Gaia-worship goals than they do about actually fixing the environment.
I have had with the Greens. My personal hero, the greatest person to ever live, Norman Borlaug, says that he honestly believes that the Greens are the biggest factor today contributing to global hunger, and specifically in Africa, because of their resistance to using inorganic fertilizer and the other techniques that Borlaug used to save a billion lives. Billion with a “B”. This sickens me beyond compare to know the true horrific almost unimaginable crimes against humanity that the Green ideology has caused, and they’re trying to outdo themselves by making sure that runaway global warming and ocean acidification is going to happen.
This is simply contradicted by the facts. Only recently did I come into possession of the necessary facts and citations to show this. Here they are.
Leading climate scientist Kerry Emanuel has said “The anti-nuclear bias of this latest IPCC release is rather blatant, and reflects the ideology of the environmental movement. History may record that this was more of an impediment to decarbonization than climate denial”.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/10/29/top-climate-scientists-warn-governments-of-blatant-anti-nuclear-bias-in-latest-ipcc-climate-report/Greens are the cause of nuclear being expensive and nuclear being in decline.
http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/3/28/why-the-war-on-nuclear-threatens-us-allhttps://www.ohio.com/akron/editorial/michael-shellenberger-end-the-discrimination-against-nuclear-powerhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Masses:_Opposition_to_Nuclear_Power_in_California,_1958%E2%80%931978Nuclear costs so much in the west in large part because of the needless safety regulations. Here, Rod Adams is a fabulous source of specifics. Rod Adams is a former US Navy chief engineer of a nuclear submarine. He’s also a nuclear power advocate. His website is an invaluable resource for specifics in this discussion. The following sources give many examples of the needless safety regulations and how they drive up costs, plus circumstantial evidence that a lot of this is due to the Greens and their fossil fuel funders.
https://atomicinsights.com/evidence-suggesting-lnt-fabricated-purposeful-effort-hamstring-nuclear-technology-development/https://atomicinsights.com/petition-stop-wasteful-practice-of-using-lnt-as-basis-for-illogical-regulations/https://atomicinsights.com/opportunity-use-science-establish-radiation-standards/https://atomicinsights.com/reducing-nuclear-operational-and-capital-costs-by-improved-technology/https://atomicinsights.com/cost-increasing-results-of-accepting-the-linear-no-threshold-lnt-assumption-of-radiation-health-effects/Nuclear is also expensive because of legal delaying tactics by Greens also drive up nuclear costs.
https://atomicinsights.com/foes-manipulative-legal-strategy-closing-nuclear-reactors/Nuclear is also less profitable in many current western countries because the markets have been carefully regulated in order to favor solar and wind and natural gas.
https://atomicinsights.com/why-cant-existing-nuclear-plants-make-money-in-todays-electricity-markets/The net result? Nuclear is expensive in countries that choose to make it expensive. In South Korea, nuclear is 4x to 8x cheaper than in the west.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516300106There’s a few other reasons why nuclear is cheaper there, including: Building the same design over and over again by the same people to gain learning curve cost reductions, as opposed to the expected cost overruns of a first-of-a-kind construction.
Also consider the effect that the climate goals have on the market. Many US states and other countries have laws that say X percentage of their electricity must come from Green sources and the laws often explicitly exclude nuclear. How is nuclear supposed to compete when the laws say that it cannot?
Regarding the nuclear regulatory commision in particular, let me just leave this here.
https://atomicinsights.com/jaczko-comes-out-as-avowed-antinuclear-activist/
PS:
I am a leftist. I am a card-carrying Marxist. I regularly call for 99% inheritance taxes on the filthy rich, and similarly high asset taxes and income taxes on the filthy rich.
PPS:
After doing some googling, I assume that you’re referring to here:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2018/11/08/jordan-peterson-is-a-fool-part-ive-lost-track-of-the-number/
“Because the leftists control the federal government and specifically the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and they get to set the rules, and those rules make it very, very hard for nuclear power.”
If you are going to quote me like that, please make sure that you get the quote exactly correct. If you’re going to paraphrase me, then please mark it clearly as a paraphrase instead of presenting it as an exact quote.
In context, what I wrote is a little less bad because I was responding to a quote about “right-wing” state legislatures. However, broadly speaking, “Green” would be a more accurate label. There are plenty of leftists that are not Greens, such as myself, James Hansen, Michael Shellenberger, etc. Not all leftists are regressive Luddites. Not all Greens are regressive Luddites, but in my experience, most of them are, and “Green” is the most convenient and accurate label that I know to describe the problem.
From Hansen’s wikipedia page:
He does not believe nuclear is the “only way.”
I see that Emanuel is a meterologist, while Hansen is a climate scientist. Both are important forms of expertise, but not in relation to economics or international policy. The ways we may combat climate change (or the “only way” we may do so if that were our situation) is the subject of the latter fields, not of the former. Not that it makes much difference, since their statements run contrary to yours anyway … but do you recognize that their expertise only extends so far?
From a quick search, I found CNN published this in 2013, presumably one of the open letters you’re referring to:
That’s signed by both Emanuel and Hansen, as well as two other scientists.
This is substantially different from the claims you’ve made. Do you agree with it now?
It’s never clear who you’re referring to when you say “the Greens.” So there’s no way to tell whether or not the statement above is accurate.
The natural interpretation to me is people who support “green energy.” That includes wind, solar, etc. Renewables. Is that what it means? (If so, Hansen and Emanuel themselves are some of these “scum of the Earth,” as you described Greens recently.)
Does it somehow mean people who flatly reject nuclear energy altogether? Or maybe it’s people who demand that it needs to be used in a safe or restricted fashion, if it’s going to be part of the plan? If the term means any of these, it fails as a descriptive term. But in any case, we should know how you’re using it.
Right now, I have no way of knowing whether you’re using it in a consistent or meaningful way. It is just an amorphous boogeyman that you don’t like, and you say all your big scientific buddies don’t like it either. I have no idea what to make of that.
Sorry, I borked the CNN link above:
https://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/03/world/nuclear-energy-climate-change-scientists-letter/index.html
Regarding your quotes of James Hansen, they’re a little old. Look at some newer quotes. For example:
James Hansen said that believing that renewables could replace fossil fuels is like believing in the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy.
https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/jim-hansen-presses-the-climate-case-for-nuclear-energy/James Hansen has also said that the Green movement is quasi-religious and won’t give him any more money for traveling or speaking because he’s pro-nuclear.
https://youtu.be/KnN328eD-sA?t=2041…
Simply false. The foremost field that is relevant is that of engineering. The field of engineering can identify the technologies that could possibly solve the problem, and they are the ones that give the cost estimates that the economists use to develop broad cost models. It’s the engineers and related disciplines that are telling us that Green (i.e. without nuclear and fossil fuels) won’t work. No amount of economic games and international policy can change the underlying reality of physics and engineering. I say again, to almost directly quote James Hansen, believing that renewables can power the US, India, or China is like believing in the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. It’s nonsense to anyone with a background in engineering and in possession of the relevant facts.
…
My major problem is with the religious-like opposition to nuclear power from the Greens. If you approach the problem without that baggage -- if you approach the problem already accepting that nuclear needs to be a large portion of the solution -- then I am pretty sure that you will quickly find that the best and cheapest solution is going to be like 80%+ nuclear. So, yes, I am quite happy if you accept that nuclear needs to be a large portion of the solution, because I believe that’s the biggest hurdle that needs to be overcome to reach a conclusion for climate change and ocean acidification.
Regarding the youtube link that I provided above, I think that’s a press conference for the open letter that you found and which I cited, which includes the 4 authors. I suspect that the paper was a compromise position between the 4 authors, and several of the authors believe more strongly like I do that we don’t need renewables, and I also suspect that the paper contained that bit about renewables as a fig leaf to the Green movement. If you listen to the youtube link, I think you will find this -- I am not entirely sure. If it matters enough to you, I can listen to it again and write down relevant timestamps and quotes. Would you like that? Would that matter for this discussion?
…
The Green movement is not that nebulous. They often self-identify. Look at their names “Green Peace”, “Green New Deal”, and their frequent usage of the word “Green” to describe a certain class of energy technologies.
I’m not sure what you’re driving at here considering that the experts that I’ve cited see the same loosely affiliated worldwide movement that I see, including James Hansen (calling the movement “quasi-religious”), or Kerry Emanuel saying that this movement may possibly be the biggest obstacle to solving climate change, or Norman Borlaug saying that this same movement is / was the biggest obstacle to feeding Africa.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/01/forgotten-benefactor-of-humanity/306101/For example, see the Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_politicsIn my own words, the Green movement is loosely-affiliated global movement with a shared set of values and beliefs. These are broad-strokes, and not all Greens fit exactly.
* Technologically regressive; views advances in technology as inherently morally bad
* Believes in a neo-Malthusian view of the world where giving people more food and more energy means that they will populate more quickly and destroy the environment more quickly.
* Views natural technologies as solar and wind as inherently morally good
* Environmentalists, and fights against climate change and ocean acidification.
* Has an anarcho-capitalist, anti-corporatist, anti-consumerist agenda (views nuclear power as very bad because it’s controlled by corporations instead of decentralized like a personal roof covered in solar cells)
* Believes that the best way to save nature is to make humans use less energy and less materials, and to live “in harmony” with nature.
* Above all else, anti-nuclear. Would rather replace nuclear with a coal plant.
You can compare this to eco-modernists like myself and Michael Shellenberger, who have the following shared set of values.
* Technologically progressive; believes that technology advances can solve our poblems
* Believes that Malthus was wrong, and that the best way to stop overpopulation is to raise poor people to the western standard of living
* Is neutral on “naturalness” and solar and wind, but has run the numbers and sees that they don’t make sense except in corner cases (i.e. off-grid scenarios).
* Movement has no position regarding the anarcho-capitalist, anti-corporatist, anti-consumerist agenda, but accepts corporate control of the means of production as a lesser evil compared to climate change, ocean acidification, and destruction of the environment
* Believes that you cannot make humanity live “in harmony” with nature, and instead the best way to protect nature is to remove humanity from it and move them into cities, and to reduce land usage for food by using high yield farming techniques (see Norman Borlaug).
* Notices that rich countries can protect the environment better than poor countries; it’s rich countries that can afford to have a Clean Water Act, a Clean Air Act, an Endangered Species Act, etc.
* Believes that high energy usage is often required for recycling in order to reduce material usage, and reducing material usage in conjunction with nuclear power is how you reduce environment destruction ala mining
* Is initially neutral regarding nuclear power, but has run the numbers and sees that nuclear power is the best and only way forward.
IMO, the Green movement seems to be filled with regressive Luddites who believe that technology and progress is the problem, and in particular the Greens believe that nuclear is the biggest enemy of all for a variety of reasons (including that it represents the height of technological progress, and fear of nuclear weapons, and fear of nuclear power plant accidents and nuclear waste, etc etc.), and they believe that nature has all of the answers, and they fetichize “natural”, including “natural” solar and wind, to the extreme extent that they’re the prime force responsible for world hunger. In this matter, I quote a person who has first-hand and unquestionable expertise in this particular matter of world hunger; my personal hero, and the greatest person to ever live, the person who saved a billion lives by improving farming techniques around the world, Norman Borlaug:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/01/forgotten-benefactor-of-humanity/306101/
Not that odd, just readily available, literally the first things I came across from their wikipedia pages, since I don’t have time for a deep dive into the intertubes just to make sense of your quote and respond to it.
I do take a set of formal recommendations to Obama pretty seriously, much more so than a sneering comment about some hypothetical person believing in the Easter Bunny.
But even this is radically different from your claim that only nuclear will do it. There’s no way you can’t see this, but let’s break it down just to be abundantly clear:
-- Somebody out there says “only R” and Hansen says bullshit, along with the both of us.
-- You say “only N.” You’re the only person I’ve ever encountered who said this. And I do call bullshit on it, along with Hansen (unless he has explicitly said somewhere that his views have changed in this respect).
So, it looks like you’re not in agreement with Hansen in both cases. You apparently think you need to attack renewables, but there is really no good reason to do that, as Hansen seems to understand. He’s not alone; that’s my impression of the consensus (among the experts, and in general for anybody who’s not some kind of climate change denialist, perpetual motion fanatic or what have you).
Make sense of this for me. If we “don’t need” ~20% of our energy somehow (since 80% is not 100%), then explain how I combine these statements into something coherent. Consumption will be reduced by that amount? Or you don’t mean what you’re saying in either statement or both? Perhaps when you said “80%+” you’re just a little cautious about saying “100%”?
I just know that you only have to apply basic arithmetic to see that there’s an issue with things like that. No need for any of the technical stuff. Just simple things like this, the way that you communicate one idea, then (seem to) contradict yourself, then shift it again later on, all the while saying you’ve got the support of an expert consensus…. It’s one of the things which makes your comments hard to digest at times.
To consciousness razor
Please point out where I ever said literally that. Pretty sure that I have not, and on the off chance that I have, I’ll take it back right now.
I am trying to solve a problem here. I am not here to engage in an esoteric debate. That problem is climate change, ocean acidification, and perhaps we’ll also touch on the problems of overpopulation, poverty, hunger, and the incredible damage done by airborne particulate pollution.
I’m pretty sure that I have never represented that “use nuclear” is literally the entire description of a solution for climate change. I have been consistent in saying that we also need something for transport, and that solution for transport is almost certainly going to depend on nuclear electricity, and with that, that gets us to about 85% of all human CO2 emissions, and even that might not be enough, and we might need to start looking at the remaining 15%, and/or we might need to do negative emissions ala the brute force limestone+basalt solution.
https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/carbonate-solution-part-1-brute-force
If we look at the target that we need to meet ASAP, which is something like 10 TW or 20 TW electric worldwide, then a vast majority must be nuclear. There is simply no other option. For example, there is just not enough hydro and geothermal to make a sizeable dent in that number: worldwide, hydro production is less than half a terawatt, and geothermal is even smaller still. It is a necessary conclusion that a vast majority of electricity production is going to be nuclear, and the Greens are fighting against conclusion, and that is why they are the primary problem.
I don’t know why you’re focusing on what must be truly minor quibbles with me about what is going to be the remaining 10% or 20%. Use nuclear, hydro, geothermal, or whatever else to fill in the gap. The ideal solution may differ depending on location, and I’m not here to spell out the exact solution for every country. These are easily solvable problems. I’m here to point out that the Greens are the primary obstacle to any solution at all because of their opposition to nuclear.
In particular, I don’t know why you think nuclear cannot fill the remaining 20%. It can. Because nuclear fuel is a very small portion of the overall electricity cost, it’s going to be more expensive to use 100% nuclear compared to using 80% nuclear and 20% hydro, but not that much more expensive.
In other words, I am not, in principle, opposed to solar and wind. I just don’t think that they make any sense for 99% of the worldwide grids compared to nuclear and hydro. I’m pretty sure that haven’t said “it must be all nuclear”. Whereas, the Greens regularly say “it must be all Green, no nuclear allowed”, and when they gain power, they shut down nuclear power plants and replace them primarily with coal power plants and natural gas power plants, with token amounts of renewables.
Now, occasionally, I might say blithely “the solution is nuclear”, but as such an obviously pithy statement, this is assuredly allowed as an opening salvo in a debate. I cannot be expected to write out entire essays in many contexts, and saying “nuclear is the solution” is honest and accurate enough in many contexts.
In other words, I feel like I am being strawmanned, or I feel like you need to slow down and read better what I’m saying, instead of the fictitious me in your mind.
This is just logic, EL. It’s not like casting a spell at Hogwarts. It isn’t an exact sequence of utterances that must be just so for the magic to happen. What you said entails that, which is even better than magical incantations because it’s not bullshit.
I think “only” means “nothing other than that.” And if we “don’t need” something, that says it is unnecessary. You can think that what we need to do is R and N, but you cannot place an “or” in there to express the same thing. Nuclear may well be necessary, but that is not to say it is sufficient.
If that’s not clear to you, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
I won’t even ask you to admit it, but this looks like the place where you took it back, as promised.
You seem to have no trouble writing a whole lot, so you’re giving an odd complaint here. But I wasn’t actually asking for entire essays. This should save you lots of time writing the wrong thing, pretending like it didn’t happen, restating it the wrong way again, quoting people saying something else and not noticing the difference, maybe eventually saying what you really meant all along, and trying to blame people for coming away with the wrong idea.
Instead of bullshitty “only nuclear” types of statements, I don’t think it will be too exhausting for you to write things like “lots of nuclear, together with renewables,” if that is what you mean. And if you mean only nuclear, say it and be prepared to defend it.
Either way, if you think you can’t put something like that into your opening salvos, with relative ease, then you should ask yourself why you can’t start your arguments honestly. Or it may be one of those cases where you’ve changed your mind.
Getting to a bit of substance, 20% of global energy production is nothing to sneeze at. All I can say is that it’s pretty bizarre that you think you have to bite that bullet, given the alternatives. That does not seem like the path of least resistance, EL.
That text you quoted actually undermines your point. In plain text, he stated that nuclear energy is one of the five things he considered necessary.
Oops, that was directed at #15 cr.
To consciousness razor
I honestly have no idea what you’re on about. No really. Honestly. I don’t have any idea what sort of wrong-headed ideas that you have that would lead to you think that this is somehow a “gotcha!” counter to my position. I explained myself at length above, trying to preemptively cover all possible angles. If you’re not going to explain yourself more clearly, I don’t know what else to do.
If my plan is not the plan of least resistance, then what is? In my world, to make the claim that you just made, that must mean that you must have some idea that there is a better plan (or you must have it on a very good and trusted authority that there is a better plan without knowing what the plan is). I assume that you know what that better plan is. Out with it. What is it?
EL: No bones to pick or points to argue here. Just curious if you’ve heard of Environmentalists for Nuclear. If not, it might interest you.
To Rob
Nope. Never heard of that particular organization. The site doesn’t immediately mention who runs it, and the web page style seems amateurish.
I poked a little more, and I found a book reading list,
http://ecolo.org/base/baseus.htm
It includes a lot of random and sketchy stuff, and then I saw a book description that more or less asserts that HIV/AIDS is caused by bad nutrition. Yeah. I am going to dismiss this site now.
Holms:
No, you misunderstand. It’s one of the five things which is necessary. That does not mean it’s sufficient — those terms aren’t interchangeable. There are five (at least) which are necessary, not just that one. It’s not the only one, because there are others.
Similarly, water is necessary for life on Earth, but it’s not sufficient. Lots of other ingredients and conditions are also necessary.
Sorry, what I said was ambiguous, although I think the context should have helped you. I wasn’t referring to “your plan,” as in the strategies you propose for combating climate change, but to your approach at that point in the argument we were having.
It’s easier (the path of least resistance) to admit you were bullshitting in your opening salvos which neglect that 20%. You don’t have to double-down on it, acting like it’s no big deal (and it certainly isn’t). All you would get from that is a dubious claim that your statements were never mistaken or misleading, which isn’t worth it…. I think it’s easier to take this as a valid, constructive criticism, which should help you in the end to produce arguments that ought to be taken more seriously by your opponents, because they are more serious. Then simply move on.
So, if I understand you correctly, your entire problem is that when I say “nuclear is the answer”, you claim that the only reasonable interpretation of that one-liner opening is the claim that “the whole solution to climate change and ocean acidification can be solved by building more nuclear power plants and literally nothing else”? God damn. I thank you for your concern, but I believe that most people will not interpret a pithy one-off line like that so uncharitably, and its unreasonable to write essays when opening lines like “we can solve it with nuclear” are quite sufficient, clear, and accurate. You’re being needlessly pedantic and obtuse, and strawmanning me into a position that I never endorsed except in your head.
EL, it is nice to see you implicitly assert that it is not the case that “the whole solution to climate change and ocean acidification can be solved by building more nuclear power plants and literally nothing else”.
Not just implicit. I was quite explicit today, and I’ve been quite explicit in the past. This is just sheet dishonesty at this point, caused in large part, I suspect, by animus.
Well CR and John Morales are not the only ones who interpreted “nuclear is the answer” to mean “the whole solution to climate change and ocean acidification can be solved by building more nuclear power plants and literally nothing else” as I did too. The impression is reinforced by your dismissal of all other methods of generation. Perhaps you might consider that we got that impression because of what you wrote although I’ll be surprised if you do.
Let’s stop there. I’m quoting you:
“nuclear power which is the best and only way to combat climate change.”
“I suspect that the paper was a compromise position between the 4 authors, and several of the authors believe more strongly like I do that we don’t need renewables,”
This isn’t about a single opening statement, which you could later retract or clarify. You’ve said similar things, various times in various comments, in the beginnings and middles and conclusions of your thoughts. This is not what I would expect, if it were a simple misinterpretation on my part, or a misstatement on yours, or something like that.
Sometimes, when pressed, you do try to walk it back a little bit. I won’t dispute that your statements inconsistent about this point, so you may cite places where you say something else if you like. But I think you do this because it’s more convenient for you to offer no defense. The simplest explanation, because it’s such a common tactic, is that you’re just being slippery. As long as you think it will slide without a defense, you will say it … or it’s part of the copypasta that you’re willing to copy again, whichever is more accurate. Whether or not this is based on animus (although I don’t think it is), you at least should care that you say what you actually mean.
Excepting hydro, I have consistently dismissed green tech, ie solar and wind, as either outliers or unnecessary. I have consistently said that hydro is useful, but it cannot scale to more than a small portion of total grid demand. I have consistently said that most of the electricity generation needs to be nuclear. I have also consistently said that you cannot have nuclear powered cars or aircraft, and so we need a separate solution for transport, which will almost certainly utilize nuclear electricity or heat. I have also consistently said that this alone might not be enough, and we might need to look at the remaining approx 15% and or do negative emissions which would almost certainly depend on nuclear electricity or heat.
Can you do it without nuclear? No. Will most of electricity production be nuclear? Yes. Is there more to this problem besides clean electricity and direct electrification? Yes. However, that extra stuff beyond electricity will almost certainly depend indirectly on nuclear heat or nuclear electricity.
I have challenged the Green Creed “a mix of Green tech can do it”, and I suspect that this has been misinterpreted as a ridiculous position of mine being “we literally have to do nothing beyond building lots of nuclear plants”, which is clearly wrong. No one is giving me the principle of charity, and I suspect many are trying to interpret my position through the faulty Green dogmatic vision of reality.