About a hundred Internet years ago in 1988 I posted this comment on Usenet:
Waste heat does not contribute significantly to global warming. It is all
(if it's really happening - we probably won't be sure until it's too late)
caused by the greenhouse effect. I agree with Brad - burning fossil fuels
could well be more harmful to the environment than nuclear power.
An op-ed by Patrick co-founder of Greenpeace (his middle name is "Moore") has ignited more discussion on global warming and nuclear power. Kevin Drum and Mark Kleiman agree with Mr co-founder of Greenpeace, while David Roberts disagrees and says that Moore is a shill. Then we have Kleiman arguing that the critics of Moore are acting like Bush supporters with slime-and-defend.
All right, my two cents.
Moore is not an environmentalist who is supporting nuclear power because he thinks it is the best way to prevent global warming. On his web site he recites the usual skeptic talking points (the "18,000 scientists" thing is a reference to the Oregon Petition):
- The global climate is warming. A large number of scientists claim there is a "consensus" that our greenhouse gas emissions are the cause of global warming. Yet there can be no proof either way, and more than 18,000 scientists and experts have signed a petition opposed to Kyoto.
- The world's climate has always been changing; it is impossible to tell if our activities are responsible for global warming.
- Global warming will not be all bad; northern countries like Canada, northern Europe and Russia will benefit from milder winters and longer growing seasons.
The reason why he supports nuclear power doesn't seem to be global warming, does it?
And it's not just global warming, Moore takes an anti-environmentalist line on just about every issue. For example, here he is on DDT:
Just one example is the DDT ban in 1972 which withheld one of best weapons against malaria, yellow fever, and other mosquito-borne diseases largely in the 3rd world. This has led to the malaria deaths of 1-2 million people annually since 1972 and the non-fatal debilitation of hundreds of millions of others. Yes, [environmentalists] are very harmful to humans.
(See DDT ban myth bingo if you don't know what is wrong with his claims.) Moore even signed a pro-DDT petition advocating policies that would cripple the United States' fight against malaria.
More like this
You make some interesting points. So what do you think the real reason is for Mr. co-founder of Greenpeace's support of nuclear power? You don't actually say.
Myself, I think his position is basically a reflection of his own arrogance, as I say in only slightly more detail here:
http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/2006/04/economists_view.html
This article:
http://tinyurl.com/jzbe4
argues differently.
In Summary:
1. 1,000 to 2,000 new plants won't REDUCE GHG emission, just slows the growth
2. Amount of waste every fours years would = the size of Yucca mountain
3. Takes a long time to build plants
4. Uranium is a finite resource; uranium prices will probably rise; we will run out. 'Peak uranium'
5. Mining and enrichment very polluting.
At best, nuke power is a stop-gap measure, using up yet another non-renewable resource.
Nuke power plants have a life, and once expired, have to be taken apart and have all kinds of radioactivity in them.
It isn't affodable to many countries, yet many of the same countries need more power to fuel growth. We all know what they will burn to get it.
It adds to the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, even if just by encouraging some of an economy to deal with the implications of muclear power.
We have, or nearly have, all of the technology we need to generate clean power. Instead of spending trillions on nuke plants worldwide, we should push wind, solar, geothermal, and tide power wherever possible. Barring that, biomass may work well as long long as the carbon cycle is respected.
Don't mean to troll, but I've always wanted to get a rational answer to this.
If nuclear and fossil fuel are both out, then *what* exactly is going to provide the massive quantities of constant baseline power needed by large urban areas.
You know, the kinds of hip, liberal, productive, culturally interesting urban areas that most of you guys (and myself of course) like so much?
Wind? Solar? Biomass? Search Google images for images of the skylines of Boston, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. and you'll realize what pure fantasy this is.
So what's it gonna be? As far as I can see with my reality-oriented glasses the choice is either a) nuclear power, b) fossil fuel, or c) de-urbanization.
De-urbanization would be a very bad thing IMHO. It would mean a large increase in land use for one, but more importantly it would mean cultural implosion. There's a reason that rural and light surburban areas are cultural wastelands compared to cities. The likely cultural result of large-scale deurbanization would be theocracy.
I don't know what Patrick's reasons are, but my reasons for being a moderate supporter of nuclear power are outlined in what I just wrote. I just don't see any reasonable or practical alternative to fossil fuels other than nuclear energy, except for the few areas where large scale hydro is available.
That is, unless someone can make one of those zero-point energy boxes work. :)
"So what's it gonna be? As far as I can see with my reality-oriented glasses the choice is either a) nuclear power, b) fossil fuel, or c) de-urbanization."
Do a) + b) then. In 100 years -- or less -- we'll be killing each other fighting for the last drops of oil and ingots of uranium, and will still have the same questions in front of us.
Sorry... forgot to add that your option c) 'de-urbanization' doesn't pan out as some logical consequence or not doing a) + b). We can use renewables, conservation plus lifestyle changes to meet out needs. Urbanization is actually very efficient if done properly.
On the other hand, the more urbanized we get, the less motor vehicle emissions there will be.
In the meantime, there are enormous opportunities for simple conservation and efficiency. Solar panels for heating water, rainwater collection for landscape irrigation, air conditioning systems that use groundwater, gray water recycling, for instance. All of which I got off the list of conservation/efficiency features GWBush has at his ranch.
"Do a) + b) then. In 100 years -- or less -- we'll be killing each other fighting for the last drops of oil and ingots of uranium, and will still have the same questions in front of us."
Nuclear fuel can be recycled. It's a rather expensive process, but it works. As far as I understand the reason it's not being done on a large scale at the moment is that virgin uranium is so cheap that doing so it's economically justifiable.
...and the last part of this statement I think exposes the philosophical difference that we have...
"and will still have the same questions in front of us."
We will always have hard questions in front of us. There is no panacea or utopia. Never has been, never will be. You seem to be looking for some kind of permanent stable utopian solution, which does not exist.
The question is: how do we deal with the hard questions in front of us now so that we can make it to the future. When we get to the future of course we'll have more hard questions to deal with, but we'll deal with those then.
I see the following choice given current technology: a) use nuclear power, possibly with recycling of fuel when it becomes necessary or b) use the immense amounts of coal that we have and plan for the inevitability of global warming and sea level rise.
Personally I lean toward option B, not because I think it's the best of the two options but because it's probably how things are going to turn out. Even if we cut our fossil fuel use with nuclear and renewable energy, as other posters have mentioned the rest of the world will just use that fossil fuel instead. Why are China, India, or the third world going to spend enormous amounts of money to convert? So the only option that I see is for us to plan for inevitable global warming. We should start asking questions like "what can we do now to begin preparing for sea level rise?"
2000 new 1000 MW nuclear plants would put out 2 TW of power; this is higher than the current world electricity consumption.
Alternatively there's currently about 400 nuclear plants producing about 15% of the world's electricity (many of these small). 2000 would seem to cover the world's electricity nicely.
Current uranium production seems to be about 40000 tons a year. I'd guess therefore that 200,000 tons is enough for world electricity, which would give us 800,000 tons of waste in four years. A (small) mountain 500 metres high with a base 500 metres square made of basalt will weigh about 125,000,000 tons (assuming a specific gravity of 3). Note uranium is (far) more dense than basalt, but I guess you need containers and whatnot. I'd be surprised if the density of stored uranium was less than that of rock.
It apparently takes 5 years to build a nuclear power plant - a bit longer than a coal plant.
I really don't trust that article's numbers.
>If nuclear and fossil fuel are both out, then *what* exactly is going to provide the massive quantities of constant baseline power needed by large urban areas.
Large-scale hydro?
I think your framing of the question is unfortunate.
Scienitsts are urging a 60-70% reduction in human CO2 emissions. That implies we can continue to use fossil fuels indefinitely but at a lower rate.
"I really don't trust that article's numbers."
Nuclear power is interesting in that it's an issue that splits the green movement into the religious camp vs. the practical camp.
There's another issue like that up here where I live; Google for 'Cape Wind'. Go to www.bluemassgroup.com and scroll down and you'll see some good posts on it too. The division between the practical-minded progressives and the "no growth under any circumstances" crowd is really enlightening.
The religious greens are as delusional and ideology-driven as the Christian religious right, and some of their propaganda is as fact-challenged and convoluted as intelligent design propaganda.
A philosophical tangent that explains my comments here...
I really really despise utopian ideology, and see utopianism in general as pure unadulterated evil. It's a real hot-button thing for me. Utopianism sounds good to the naive, but when you scratch the surface you always find smug elitism and hate. Utopia could be defined as "the condition in which all those who aren't like me are gone." That's why all utopian ideologies have either passive (the Christian armageddon, green large-scale depopulation scenarios, etc.) or active genocidal fantasies. Utopia smells like a gas chamber.
Embrace diversity, chaos, and the fact that the universe will *never* do what you want it to do. Learn to like noise, disagreement, hearing things you don't like, and people living in ways you don't approve of. All these things are almost synonymous with life.
Utopia is quiet, orderly, balanced death.
Do a) + b) then. In 100 years -- or less -- we'll be killing each other fighting for the last drops of oil and ingots of uranium, and will still have the same questions in front of us.
In 100 years we will rely on fusion. Duh. It is the panacea, as far as I can tell.
In 100 years, won't fusion still be 20 years in the future?
"You seem to be looking for some kind of permanent stable utopian solution, which does not exist."
Harldly. It's just counter-productive and destructive to avoid a problem that's right in our laps to which we have a better answer than this option.
"Nuclear power is interesting in that it's an issue that splits the green movement into the religious camp vs. the practical camp."
Um, no.
In the province of Ontario, Canada, I am paying off the huge fiscal debt ($20 billion) left by a previous generation, largely as a result of them building nuclear plants. Our recent experience refurbishing plants on Ontario has not been positive either. They are far more expensive than alternative means, and have only something like a 65% up time.
I should mention that several million other Ontarians are paying too. It's not just me. ;)
The nuclear industry has been heavily subsidized historically -- they claim differently -- and continues to have little hidden perks, like liability caps on accidents.
I'm hardly a 'religious green'. I am a green party member, though. Many of us so-called 'practical greens' find nuclear power impractical, expensive and an unnecessary hazard.
Since much of the world's uranium comes from Canada, we also are worried that we'll have even more of a mess to deal with from the mining end of things, which is quite messy.
The entire cycle of generating nuclear energy is not actually all that efficient, and adding recycling sepnt fuel rods into the system just makes it worse. As uranium ore becomes harder to find and refine, the efficiency of the whole system goes way down, and the expense way up. I'm not aware of a similar problem with renewables.
I was quick in my presentation above, I had assumed the article would get read.
-- That's 1000-2000 new nuclear plants by mid-century (all of the ones in Canada will be worn out by about 2020)
-- A waste _dump_ the size of Yucca mountain. I figure that's area, not volume, of what the article refers to as a finished waste site.
Some misc notes:
Consumption of uranium is 60,000 tonnes/year, but we only mine half that for now. The rest is from stockpiles and other sources.
There's a significant relationship between re-processing spent fuel and the building of nuclear weapons. It's not a process that will get spread around because we don't want that, do we? The current nuclear club will want to keep it to themselves. Reprocessing produces very toxic residues. It may become cheaper as uranium gets used up, but has anyone ever considered how much energy this entire system uses? From building the plant, to mining the uranium, to processing it, transporting it, using it, removing it, storing it, reprocessing it....
Poorer ores are not worth mining as the whole process uses far too much energy to be worth it.
A lot of fossil fuel is used is this process as well.
In other news, someone has taken a far smarter approach, and may have invented a better light bulb:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4906188.stm
Far more light, far less energy....
Be that as it may, I think his argument is basically sound. Nuclear when compared to coal is far superior environmentally speaking. "Renewables" and whatnot can pick up some of the slack, but the idea that they'll be producing the majority of our electricity is a pipe dream.
In 100 years, won't fusion still be 20 years in the future?
Well, that's true, but we don't have to worry about it till after we're dead.
"Well, that's true, but we don't have to worry about it till after we're dead."
As for my three children? And their children to come...
" Nuclear when compared to coal is far superior environmentally speaking."
So-called 'clean coal' people disagree. I think it's all bad.
""Renewables" and whatnot can pick up some of the slack, but the idea that they'll be producing the majority of our electricity is a pipe dream."
Pipe dream? Hardly. The pipe dream is what we're living now.
Solar + wind + biomass + hydro + tidal/wave + heat pumps + conservation + better urban planning
And we're there.
Anti-nuke people have been saying that for over 20 years. The result? Greater reliance on fossil fuels.
Er, make that for over 30 years.
In my brief stint as a NukeEng, I was taught that fuel waste wasn't much of an issue if (a) we used breeder reactor programs to generate plutonium, and (b) re-process to recover and use the plutonium in more traditional reactors. The waste was reduced in volume and "intensity" on the order of a hundred-fold [as well as using the more plentiful U238 (if I got that right) rather than the much less plentiful U235, extending the amount of fuel available]...BUT...
...then the problem becomes the decommissioned plants - which themselves become essentially radioactive waste - lower level, but higher volume....
...as well as protection the plutonium recovery chain, for obvious reasons...
...and as said before, fusion looks like it will still be 20 years out, a hundred years from now...
"Anti-nuke people have been saying that for over 20 years. The result? Greater reliance on fossil fuels."
We're not the decision-makers. We aren't listened to.
We didn't make the Darlington nuclear plant go over budget from 2.5 billion to... 14.4 billion. I was still in high school then, and I'm still paying for it and other utility misadventures on my hydro bill in easy monthly payments of $10 (only a few thousand months to go!).
After Darlington, nuclear power was dead in Ontario, and Canada, for that matter.
A few years back, the recosntruction of the Unit 1 reactor at the Pickering plant went way overbudget as well, delaying that reactor coming online, and visibly opushed up our electrical costs:
http://tinyurl.com/s9bwz
(Which would bring me into another area if I had the time: Highly centralized power production can really cost when it goes astray.)
Of course, other jurisdictions ARE moving heavily into renewables, and aren't suffering. Germany is well on its way to getting rid of its nukes.
Progress is being made, but institutions are prone to conservatism. We're building some wind farms in Ontario and have some biomass generators and ethanol plants up, but no where near to what our government is planning to put into nukes. The board that made that decision, the OPA, did a sham of a few days of public consultation and then announced what we already knew was decided: More nukes!
Meanwhile, a union is petitioning to kept coal plants open which we badly want closed, and which the government has actually agreed to do. We worry that the government will reverse its position, due to union pressure.
Which is, of course, how the wheels turn: Slowly, sometimes in reverse, and they're not all that round.
Which is why it can take generations to make important changes.
Which is why greens fight for considerable change NOW. We know it can take generations for anything significant to happen.
""Solar + wind + biomass + hydro + tidal/wave + heat pumps + conservation + better urban planning
And we're there."
Anti-nuke people have been saying that for over 20 years. The result? Greater reliance on fossil fuels."
Because the fossil fuels are cheaper (if you ignore their environmental effect).
As long as everyone acts purely in self interest by using the cheapest (to them) energy source, large scale fossil fuel consumption could well continue for many, many years. Global warming is a classic tragedy of the commons, i.e. everyone acting purely in self interest produces an outcome that is worse for everyone. Within a country, tragedies of the commons can be dealt with by that country making laws. However, when the problem affects the whole world (such as it does with global warming) there must be co-operation between countries. Without this co-operation, further global warming is inevitable.
Chris, I agree; if the environmental costs of fossil fuels were fully internalized, they'd be very expensive indeed. But while nuclear has been a cost-competitive alternative, most environmentalists rejected this in favor of "renewables" that were not cost-competitive, and hence have had very little commercial development over the last 30 years.
Wind power has recently come down in price enough to be cost-competitive, but it's not feasible for an intermittant source of energy to produce more than about 20% of the total grid capacity. So even if we develop wind to its fullest (which we should), we still have a huge amount of energy that needs to come from somewhere. Other such alternatives are either still too pricey (like solar), foolishly inefficient (like ethanol), or geographically limited (like geothermal).
So anyway, just saying "renewables!" puts us in the same situation we were in back in the early 70s. It sounded like a good idea at the time, but the renewables didn't get developed because they weren't commercially feasible; meanwhile nuclear power lagged due to political opposition, though it could have feasibly displaced most of our coal plants. If we do the same thing today, we'll spend the next 20-30 years building more and more coal plants, with all of the pollution and greenhouse gas emissions that entails.
The issue on reprocessing is not cost but proliferation. It is relatively easy to divert some of the plutonium generated in the reactors. The French reprocess, the Amis do not. http://www.ieer.org/ensec/no-2/france.html
However, when the problem affects the whole world (such as it does with global warming) there must be co-operation between countries. Without this co-operation, further global warming is inevitable.
Excellent point. This cooperation is one of the benefits of Kyoto the ululators always "forget" to mention [perhaps because it cannot or will not be monetized].
Strength in numbers vs divide and conquer and all that.
Best,
D
"But while nuclear has been a cost-competitive alternative"
Whoa! Not in Ontario. Not in Canada. Nuke power has a very expensive history here, especially when you add up all of the subsidies and externalities.
Fact is, what happened in North America is that we actually had an over-capacity of power for a very long time. Investing in new tech wasn't going to happen, and nuke power was too expensive and unpopular. Far easier when looking for some capacity to add, to either build something fairly low-tech, or to turn on someone old lying around.
That, and, as I stated, a lack of political courage.
Only recently we've realized that we need more capacity. Meanwhile, we had a serious grid failure in 2003, right on top of the SARS crisis in Toronto (where I live), and those nukes were an achilles heel. They took days to restart. The continental grid was also a problem, obviously, as the failure didn't even happen in Canada
Local grids, local generation, as much as possible.
Conservation is part of the key. Heat pumps, more efficient lights, newer appliances... A condo development down the street from me is using heat pump tech. Ontario is now implementing a policy which allows homes and farms to get compensated for putting power onto the grid. So a farmer can erect a wind turbine, dump what he wants onto the grid, and get paid for it. The pay is quite generous (there are all kinds of limits though, too much for a comment). Office towers in the city core are now starting to have their air conditioning done by lake water, on a central system. Immense power savings there. A company in BC which has long produced hydrogen as a industrial byproduct is tanking it for use in hydrogen cars (some pilot program). Screw that! They should burn it in a turbine, and dump to the grid!
Solar is starting to really pick up in demand. Prices will come down. And the external costs of solar are.. well what? Aside from the components themselves...
Biomass also has a future. A study recently pointed out that biomass reactors in Ontario could completely eliminate our need for the old coal plants which muck up my air every summer. They could be in place in just a few years, far faster than nuclear.
"we'll spend the next 20-30 years building more and more coal plants, with all of the pollution and greenhouse gas emissions that entails."
Of course we won't. Renewable tech is in much better shape this time around, and more readily accepted. Still, they're likely going to go nuclear, and renewables will perhaps die off, until uranium is to expensive, or if nukes are unpopular again, or if cost overuns on nuke plants drive up the cost of electricity causing people to turn to feeding their own grids with cheaper, cleaner power.
And I emphasize again: In Canada anyway, there is a lot that can be done to conserve power. We use more energy per person in Canada than any other country in the world. There must be room to reduce consumption.
"Global warming is a classic tragedy of the commons, i.e. everyone acting purely in self interest produces an outcome that is worse for everyone."
I find it interesting that it is usually the people complaining about the "tragedy of the commons" who are calling for the government to add even more things into the commons, thereby adding to the tragedy. The solution to the "tragedy of the commons" is private property ownership, not socialized government ownership of everything. Let property be owned privately, then let people try and prove harm from CO2 emissions in a court of law and gain reparations from emitters the civilized way.
Adam wrote: "There's a reason that rural and light surburban areas are cultural wastelands compared to cities."
Is there? I'm living in a rather small community (8000 inhabitants), and I bet cultural production per capita can match New York. Sure, you might not have heard of any of it, because it usually stays local or national, with one or two minor international artists (one in jazz, one in pop and one in the same category as Florence Foster Jenkins and Wing) . Moving here made me se urban prejudice for what it is. We don't need malls here. Crime is insignificant, because people know each other (and notice when strangers are around!). It's easy to make friends. And we have good net connection. What more do we need?
So anyway, just saying "renewables!" puts us in the same situation we were in back in the early 70s.
Steve Reuland
What remote otherworldy cave have you been living for the last 30 years? Renewable technology has advanced enormously over that time, both technically and economically. The only basic reason why it isn't directly economically competitive (yet) on a large scale is because conventional sources of energy are heavily entrenched and subsidised, one way or another. I can almost guarantee that you don't pay the full economic and ecological cost of your energy, (or water, food, clothing, transport, etc), and neither do most other people in affluent countries.
The real story here is that we in the affluent countries are going to have to learn to live with about 1/3-1/2 of the per capita energy we currently use. This is a very achievable goal with current technology, at little long term cost to individuals or society, and with very considerable benefits to all.
At best nuclear is just an avoidable and very problematic stop-gap measure while we wean ourselves onto clean energy generation technologies and lower energy budgets.
And, dude, I practice what I preach: I recently finished fitting my entire house with very high grade insulation, with no legal obligation to do so, nor any subsidy from the government.
Go and do your research properly, SR.
"The solution to the "tragedy of the commons" is private property ownership"
So how do you set up private ownership of the atmosphere?
>Anti-nuke people have been saying that for over 20 years. The result? Greater reliance on fossil fuels.
Renewables are growing much faster than any other energy source (check the IEA website for details) so how are they contributing to "greater relaicne on fossil fuels"?
For that matter, where's your evidence that we have "greater reliance on fossil fuels"?
The percentage of energy derived from fossil fuels is goign down slowly but it is going down.
Steve: Wind power has recently come down in price enough to be cost-competitive, but it's not feasible for an intermittant source of energy to produce more than about 20% of the total grid capacity.
There's a lot of interesting work under way in efficient large-scale electricity storage using, for example, vandium redox batteris and ultracapacitors.
This would make feasible a much larger element of wind in the mix.
There are also promising rotor technologies which woudl let wind turbiens operate at a much wider range of wind speeds making them even more competitite and making their output much more reliable.
"The solution to the "tragedy of the commons" is private property ownership"
What you have is a solution looking for a problem. The "Tragedy of the Commons" is a contrarian myth. It is more properly the "Tragedy of Enclosure".
Nukes may be far, far from perfect, but the challenge *right now* is CO2. As more and more "alternative" energy sources become viable then most nukes will go offline due to cost, pollution, etc., but let's get off the fossil fuel teat ASAP.
Utopia is quiet, orderly, balanced death.
Yep.
"The solution to the "tragedy of the commons" is private property ownership, not socialized government ownership of everything. Let property be owned privately, then let people try and prove harm from CO2 emissions in a court of law and gain reparations from emitters the civilized way."
Okay! Here goes little old me to take on those responsible for global warming.... which means I have to sue EVERYBODY...
Which is why this most certainly is a SOCIAL and GLOBAL issue.
"There's a lot of interesting work under way in efficient large-scale electricity storage using, for example, vandium redox batteris and ultracapacitors."
I've read of many plots, such as using wind farms to produce and tank hydrogen, the hydrogen then used in a gas-fired turbine. The concept being that you meter the whole process to be able to produce power at peak usage times, regardless of the wind status.
Sounds elaborate. Obviously an economy of scale would be required.
Mark:
Whatever you guys did to screw things up in Canada, this is not the experience of the rest of the world. France, Japan, and to a lesser extent, Britain rely primarily on nuclear, and are able to do so at low cost.
Rational Greenie:
Well, the otherworldly cave I live in is still powered by coal, like most people's caves. Renewables have advanced over the last 30 years, it's true, but are still not to the point of making up more than a tiny fraction of our energy production. In other words, they still haven't advanced enough. How much longer do we wait till that magical date at which renewables suddenly capture majority market share? No one other than hardcore environmentalists thinks it can happen in the forseeable future.
If that's what you believe then make that argument. It's much different than saying that renewables will provide all our energy needs plus the 50% more energy we'll need in the next few decades.
Ian Gould:
Renewables are growing faster as a percentage of current use, not in absolute terms. When you start close to zero, it's easy to double or triple your capacity without affecting total production very much.
The EIA says that coal will continue to grow at a brisk pace and its share of the market is expected to remain stable. In the US, I believe there are something like 40 new coal plants being built right now; that's easily more electricity than all renewables combined.
Yes, but this kind of thing adds considerably to the cost, which negates wind power's advantage. And it's still decades away from utilization, even if it's cost-effective.
If you start large-scale conversion to nuke power now, it will be 10 years before we're switched over. So if we want to start mitigating AGW now, it's useless. If you can afford to wait 10 years to start mitigating AGW, then by that time you will have advances in wind, solar, tide, geothermal, cogeneration, conservation, efficiency, etc. so as to make the nuclear plant an expensive white elephant. Witness the improvements in automotive fuel efficiency alone during the period when it was mandated by the US government, and the backsliding since.
"So how do you set up private ownership of the atmosphere?"
The same way it is done over airports and sensitive government facilities today.
"France, Japan, and to a lesser extent, Britain rely primarily on nuclear, and are able to do so at low cost."
Which is why France has electricity prices two-three times higher than in the US.
Japan's aren't much lower and the prospects for nuclear power there have been seriously harmed by a series of accidents and safety scandals (including falsifyign data on how reactors sitting on fault lines would stand up to an earthquake.)
Britain's nuclear output will probabyl start to decline in the next decade as the old magnox reactors go off-line.
"Renewables are growing faster as a percentage of current use, not in absolute terms."
Ever hear of exponential growth rates.
Those new US coal-fired plants will be much more efficient than current ones - supporting my premise that we can continue to source a signifcant part of our energy needs (say 50%) from fossil sources for as long as they remain available.
"Yes, but this kind of thing adds considerably to the cost, which negates wind power's advantage. And it's still decades away from utilization, even if it's cost-effective."
Actually, these systems would generate dramatic savings because they would reduce the need for peaking-power plants.
A full-scale redox plant has been running in Japan for abotu two years.
The same way it is done over airports and sensitive government facilities today.
The atmosphere is private, and advects, say, northwestward and remains private even over, say, National Parks?
Wow.
Do the trees that respire the private air become partially privatized? Do we charge people a fee for breathing the private air? Who collects? Can I write off air as if I breathe more while exercising (volume discount)?
Yer a hoot.
Best,
D
"If you start large-scale conversion to nuke power now, it will be 10 years before we're switched over."
That's assuming the world could scale-up overnight from one new reactor per year to around 20+ (since a lot of the existing reactors will start to reach the end of their operating lives over the next decade).
Not to mention the new uranium mines that'd be needed.
NGS:
I'd like to find out what your opinion of the Bhopal disaster is, given that the atmosphere over the Union Carbide plant was theoretically "theirs".
A tragedy of the privates, surely.
D
"I'd like to find out what your opinion of the Bhopal disaster is, given that the atmosphere over the Union Carbide plant was theoretically "theirs"."
How was it "theoretically theirs"? As far as I'm aware it was part of the "commons", and like many other "commons" it was abused. Had Union Carbide understood that they were not allowed to pollute the private airspace downwind from them, the tragedy might have been averted.
"Do the trees that respire the private air become partially privatized? "
The concept is private airspace, not private air. Airspace (and waterspace) can be owned just like land. If you don't think so, try flying your Cessna airplane over LAX or the White House, or try taking your speedboat through a kelp forest reserve.
NGT:
You responded to the question, "so how do you set up private ownership of the atmosphere?", with a description of private airspace. It should be obvious that O'Neill was referring to air and not airspace, so the question is repeated here.
The notion that you can 'own' the atmosphere (the air) is so bizarre I don't even know what to say.
Don't you see NGS is right?
Just think - we could abolish all traffic laws in favor of a system based on private torts.
I'm sure if his child was killed in an road accident he'd be more than happy to accept an unenforcable court judgement against an underage drunk driver as compensation.
"The notion that you can 'own' the atmosphere (the air) is so bizarre I don't even know what to say."
The notion of "restricted airspace" is commonplace.
Nanny,
The idea put forward endlessly by generally right wing think tanks and lobbying groups is that privatizing the biosphere is a step towards protecting it. Let's examine why this is nothing more than another myth. First, let's say I own a large wetland, which provides clean water to the local community, wildlife habitat and has other ecological functions (such as water purification) which at present don't carry prices. Along comes a developer and he offers me big bucks to buy the wetland for a development scheme he is planning which entails draining the wetland. The benefits of the wetland are diffused over a large number of people, whereas the developer has a huge personal financial incentive to buy me out and to drain and fill in the wetland. This is known as 'mobilization bias', and its one major reason why private ownership of habitats and ecosystems doesn't work. The benefits of retaining the wetland - or any ecosystem for that matter - are diffused over a large populaton but the benefits of destroying it are concentrated on the buyer and the seller.
One of the most contentious areas in ecological economics today concerns whether or not ecosystem services should be valued on the marketplace. Several academics whom I describe as 'progressive' economists - people like Herman Daly, John Gowdy, Stephen Viedermann and Geoffrey Heal argue persuavively to this effect, along with ecologists like Brian Czech and Gretchen Daily. However, it should be pointed out that transnational corporations have for years fought tooth and nail to prevent the implementation of 'full cost pricing', in which the environmental costs of economic activity and development are internalized. The reasoning is simple - they can foist these costs off onto the public who have little choice but to accept them. I'd like to hear your take on 'full-cost pricing'. After all, if you are advocating private ownership of airspace, then you ought to be encouraging economic valuation for ecological services that are critical for human survival, as I have said many times before on this and other blogs.
Nanny:
In case you missed Brokenlibrarian's comment above, while there are areas of restricted airspace I believe that the air itself is free to move through the space without tariff.
What Jeff Harvey said. And nice point John Cross.
"private ownership of the atmosphere"
There was a time when people would joke about the future, when you'd have to buy clean drinking water....
"France, Japan, and to a lesser extent, Britain rely primarily on nuclear, and are able to do so at low cost."
Well...
"The UK has no plans to replace the current generation of nuclear power stations." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3177360.stm
"France is now seen to be retreating slowly from its staunchly pro-nuclear position. Previously, the government planned to have nuclear power reach 100% of electricity generation. Environmental objections have increased in recent years, however. Germany's decision to phase out nuclear power started a public debate within France about the future of its own industry, and public opinion polls showed that a growing percentage of the public favors an end to nuclear power." http://greennature.com/article744.html
"Public support for nuclear power in Japan has been eroded in the last few years due to a series of accidents and scandals. The accidents were the sodium leak at the Monju FBR, a fire at the JNC waste bituminisation facility connected with its reprocessing plant at Tokai, and the 1999 criticality accident at a small fuel fabrication plant at Tokai. The criticality accident, which claimed two lives, happened as a result of workers following an unauthorised procedures manual. None of these accidents were in mainstream civil nuclear fuel cycle facilities." http://www.uic.com.au/nip79.htm
"The Japanese Government is committed to nuclear power development, but several accidents in recent years have aroused public concern. During the past few years, public opposition to Japan's nuclear power program has increased in reaction to a series of accidents at Japanese nuclear plants, including a March 1997 fire and explosion at the Tokai-mura reprocessing plant. Other problems for Japan's nuclear power program have included rising costs of nuclear reactors and fuel, the huge investments necessary for fuel enrichment and reprocessing plants, several reactor failures, and the question of nuclear waste disposal." http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/japan/nuke/
"INTRO: The Japanese government says it may cut the number of nuclear power plants to be built over the next decade. Karrin Amodeo in Tokyo reports Japan is undertaking a sweeping review of its energy policy.
"TEXT: Growing public mistrust of nuclear power, coupled with a decrease in national energy consumption led to Friday's announcement. The government says it is questioning its plans to build 20 more nuclear power stations over the next 10 years.
"Trade Minister Takashi Fukaya acknowledged that among the reasons is the growing opposition to nuclear energy in Japan. It is the first time the government has publicly stated that popular sentiment could curb the expansion of nuclear power here.
"The question of how many atomic plants Japan needs is a sensitive one. Because it is poor in natural resources, Japan relies heavily on nuclear energy. Fifty one atomic plants provide one third of the country's electricity. In some areas of the country, nearly everyone has a friend or relative who works at a nuclear plant.
"But along with the economic benefits of jobs have come the series of accidents and scandals that have continually plagued the industry here. Public suspicion of atomic energy reached new heights after Japan saw its worst-ever nuclear accident last September. One worker was killed and more than 400 local residents were exposed to radiation following an explosion at the Tokaimura processing plant.
"Friday's decision echoes what energy experts and anti-nuclear activists have long said -- that Japan's target for nuclear expansion is too ambitious.
"Figures from the Ministry of Trade and Industry show that Japan is using less electricity for the first time in 16 years. The decline is attributed to the economic slowdown here.
"The overhaul of Japan's energy policy - starting in April - will take one year to complete.
"But a key question remains: how Japan can keep its promise to cut greenhouse gases if it decides to use less nuclear power. The government had planned to reach its target of a six per cent drop in emissions through the construction of atomic plants.
"Source: Voice of America" http://www.fas.org/news/japan/000310-japan1.htm
And now:
Three Reasons Why Nuclear Power is More Feasible in France than in the US:
(1) "The capacity of the French to carry out projects of colossal proportion is often attributed to the centralized, not-so-democratic power structure - the 'technology structure' - dating back to Napoleon, if not to pre- revolutionary eras.
...
(2) "When the French realised in 1973 that the OPEC, a foreign hand, had the power to turn off the oil tap that was so crucial to their well-being, that oil together with other primary energy imports, made up 76% of their energy needs and that there were no other cheap and abundant domestic energy resources to turn to, there was a quick consensus that something had to be done." http://www.npcil.nic.in/nupower_vol13_2/npfr_.htm
(3) "Part of their popularity comes from the fact that scientists and engineers have a much higher status in France than in America. Many high ranking civil servants and government officials trained as scientists and engineers (rather than lawyers, as in the United States), and, unlike in the U.S. where federal administrators are often looked down upon, these technocrats form a special elite. Many have graduated from a few elite schools such as the Ecole Polytechnic. According to Mandil, respect and trust in technocrats is widespread. 'For a long time, in families, the good thing for a child to become was an engineer or a scientist, not a lawyer. We like our engineers and our scientists and we are confident in them.'" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french…
And a Bonus Reason why Nuclear Waste is Less of a Problem in France than it would be in the US:
"But for the rural French says Bataille, 'the idea of burying the waste awoke the most profound human myths. In France we bury the dead, we don't bury nuclear waste...there was an idea of profanation of the soil, desecration of the Earth.'
"Bataille discovered that the rural populations had an idea of 'Parisians, the consumers of electricity, coming to the countryside, going to the bottom of your garden with a spade, digging a hole and burying nuclear waste, permanently.' Using the word permanently was especially clumsy says Bataille because it left the impression that the authorities were abandoning the waste forever and would never come back to take care of it.
"Fighting the objections of technical experts who argued it would increase costs, Bataille introduced the notions of reversibility and stocking. Waste should not be buried permanently but rather stocked in a way that made it accessible at some time in the future. People felt much happier with the idea of a 'stocking center' than a 'nuclear graveyard'. Was this just a semantic difference? No, says Bataille. Stocking waste and watching it involves a commitment to the future. It implies that the waste will not be forgotten. It implies that the authorities will continue to be responsible. And, says Bataille, it offers some possibility of future advances. 'Today we stock containers of waste because currently scientists don't know how to reduce or eliminate the toxicity, but maybe in 100 years perhaps scientists will.'
...
"Nuclear waste is an enormously difficult political problem which to date no country has solved. It is, in a sense, the Achilles heel of the nuclear industry. Could this issue strike down France's uniquely successful nuclear program? France's politicians and technocrats are in no doubt. If France is unable to solve this issue, says Mandil, then 'I do not see how we can continue our nuclear program.'" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french…
Is nuclear power the answer? I'm not sure, but it seems a promising candidate. Yet we've seen little concerted research in it since the early 80's. And so I'd like to see the U.S. government subsidising the development and construction of a limited series of commercial nuclear reactors. Essentially, even if we don't adopt wide-scale nuclear power, it's worth taking a twenty-first century exploration of the safety and economy of nuclear power.
Solar + wind + biomass + nuclear + carbon-tax... and we're there.
Your scenario is too simplistic.
In the real world what will happen is the price of water in the local community will rise because of scarcity once your wetland is drained. Entrepreneurs in a free society will see an opportunity to supply water to the community for less money and will either build canals, or pipelines from other wetlands or offer you even more money for your land than the developer did so they can return the new construction back to a water-filtering wetland in order to meet the demand.
Air passing through your airspace is yours as much as water passing through a river on your property.
If someone pollutes your water from upstream and causes you harm, don't you have a case against him? Of course you do. It would be the same with the air passing through your airspace. It is ALREADY the case since the airspace around your home is considered "yours" and if someone pollutes upwind from you and causes you harm you can sue.
'
Sounds like Nanny is a shill for the lawyer lobby.
Why do you like ambulance chasers so much, nanny? Are you a lawyer looking for lawsuits all over the place?
F all these lawyers running around looking for lawsuits.
Best,
D
Dano, perhaps you would prefer not to assert your rights, or to just accept the harm that others would do to you?
na_g_s:
I don't need lawyers to sue everybody over every little thing, which is what you propose to assert my rights, creating a miserable c_s*cking every-man-is-an-island society. F that.
95% of people in Murrica reject your lawyer-lovin' model, despite the no more than 442 big L people cloggin' up th' Internets with'n their tiresome daily bandwidth-eating screeds.
Best,
D
nanny_govt_sucks wrote, The concept is private airspace, not private air. Airspace (and waterspace) can be owned just like land.
Private ownership of natural resources, as commonly construed, is evil.
Are you a Real Libertarian, or a ROYAL Libertarian?
NGS:
The ignorance of basic ecology demonstrated here is absolutely astounding. I can only assume that NGS is attempting to discredit his "side" by posting laughable scenarios as if they were something an actual libertarian might say, because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate.
So now pollution and Global Warming are "little things"?
Where are you taking this argument, Dano? If you don't want to protect your rights, then you give free reign for anyone or any politician to walk all over you. At the end of that road is despotism, and totalitarianism. I'm sure that's not what you want, is it? The only alternative is to get up, stand up, stand up for your rights as Bob Marley said. If you don't stand up for YOU, who will?
na_g_s:
It's not too late to stop before you look like a 100% fool. Right now it is ~99.88828282»%, so there's still some time left.
Best,
D
""The solution to the "tragedy of the commons" is private property ownership, not socialized government ownership of everything. Let property be owned privately, then let people try and prove harm from CO2 emissions in a court of law and gain reparations from emitters the civilized way.""
The libertarians who make this argument leave out the other half of their point. See, to sue someone, you have to prove that a specific act by a specific person caused a specific thing to happen that harmed specifically me.
In other words, externalities from diffuse actors who each contribute under some personally assignable thhreshold (uhhh.... pollutants, anyone?) can't be sued. In fact, the more... uhhh - rigorous? of the libertarians go so far as to argue that if direct intended causality for direct personal harm can't be personally assigned and proven in court, then notonly is ther no legal responsibility, there IS no responsibility AT ALL, either legtal, moral or practical, and the result is just a natural consequence of the market, and no one can do anything about it. If the result is 100 millin coastal-lowland-refugees, well, that;s just what happened. Professor Reisman even argues it should properly be regarded as a natural disaaster outside human control. I just got banned from the von Mises Institute blog in part for posts on an article arguing precisely this.
So, the "civilized" way to respond is to sue, they say, but you cant sue (they often DONT say), so -sticking thumbs in ears and wagging fingers- you can't do anything.
Glenn: Is nuclear power the answer? I'm not sure, but it seems a promising candidate. Yet we've seen little concerted research in it since the early 80's. And so I'd like to see the U.S. government subsidising the development and construction of a limited series of commercial nuclear reactors.
Actually the US government already spends more on nuclear energy research than on all forms of renewables and I'm not a great fan of government subsidies to industry.
Intenralise the cost of pollution into fossil-fuel electricity and let the markets take it from there.
I don;t rule out the possiblity that a future energy mix will incldue a nuclear component - just the idea that its a cheap painless fix to our current problem.
Where I would liek to see more government going is into real alternatives to current reactor designs - like the Rubbiatron or Thorium reactors. There's three times as much Thorium as Uranium in the world and you can run a reactor on non-enriched Thorium which is so low in radioactivity you can safely hold it in your hand.
>The ignorance of basic ecology demonstrated here is absolutely astounding
No more so than the ignorance of basic economics.
Tell me NGS, are you aware that wetlands provide a complex range of ecosystem services such as floood mitigation as well as water filtration and that these services depend on a more or less intact ecosystem?
I spent a couple of years looking at the US wetland banking system and looking at its potential application in Australia. (See I'm a real economist I don't just play one on the internet).
Most assessments show nthat reconstructed wetlands provide only about 10% of the services of natural wetlands per hectare. (Due in large part to the difficulty of re-establishing the ecosystems.)
Tell me, in your "the developer drains the wetland than the shining knight entrepeneur rides in and armed only with his instinctive understanding of free-market economics and a copy of Atlas Shrugged to jerk off to" model what happens to the wetland-endemic species in the interim?
Do they stay in a hotel?
Ian G:
do you mind if I plagiarize/borrow liberally from/appropriate your penultimate paragraph? Thank you in advance.
BTW, ~1/3 of my billable work is in ecosystem services stuff, and the work we have in the Pacific Northwest show that ~70-90% of our constructed wetlands fail [depending upon your def. of 'fail']. As a result, sales of frog hotels have tripled in the last 4 years ;o) .
Best,
D
"In 100 years, won't fusion still be 20 years in the future?"
I predict that a non-tokamak fusion setup will reach break-even (more power out than power in) by 2020 at the latest. And there will be commercial fusion plants within a decade of that.
http://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/2006/04/alternatives_to.h…
I would not be at all surprised if fusion produces 10 percent or more of the world's energy (not just electrical energy) by 2050.
In fact, I don't understand at all why Japan hasn't *already* produced breakeven non-tokamak fusion power.
The U.S. government should offer technological prizes for non-tokamak power, along the lines of the Ansari X-Prize, e.g.:
http://www.xprizefoundation.com/index.asp
1) $20 million apiece to the first 5 non-tokamak systems that produce 100 Watts for an hour, within a factor of 100 of breakeven.
2) $100 million apiece to the first 5 non-tokamak systems that produce 1000 Watts for an hour, within a factor of 10 of breakeven.
3) $200 million to the first 3 that generate 10 kW for an hour, within a factor of 2 of breakeven.
4) $1 billion to the first 3 that generate at least 10 kilowatt-hour in excess of breakeven every hour for one week.
5) $1 billion to the first 3 that generate 1 megawatt in excess of breakeven for a year, with at least a 50% capacity factor.
The total potential prize money would be $100M + $500M + $600M + $3B + $3B = $7.2B. If the U.S. government offered such rewards tomorrow, I predict that there would be commercial fusion power in the U.S. by 2020 (not 2030). It would be the best spending on energy technology that the U.S. government (or any other government) has ever made.
And the best thing about it is that all the risk is taken by private entities. The government only pays if they succeed...not if they fail.
Dano,
Feel free.
Mark, I'd suggest a couple of minor alterations to your proposal:
1. I don;t see why the US taxpayer shoudl be onyl ones to foot the bill, I'd rather see it internationalised with the other major developed governments contributing ot the pot as well;
2. I'd argue that there should be a requirwment that the data from the winning models at each stage be put in the public domain.
3. A better approach might be to offer tradable contracts to sell to the government a specified quantity of power from "nonconventional sources" at a large premium to the market price. (E.g. an extra $100 per megawatt hour for the first one million megawatt hours of non-conventional power delivered in 2015.)
The Economist had an article a week or two back about the various prizes being offered for new drugs and vaccines and raised several points about potential problems with the approach most of which I can't remember.
Nanny who-hates-government (except I presume for the military which I suggest you believe must always be under state control to wage wars that benefit the privileged few).
As Ian said (excellent response).
Moreover, Nanny, it is your answer that is too simplistic, not mine. First of all, your are intimating that water prices reflect abundance - this is not the case. The overuse of water resources is another example of a perverse subsidy; there are many other examples that I could give here. One excellent one is the puny cost of grazing cattle on public lands in the western US; the tariff has remained at about 50 cents a cow per acre for over a century. The costs have been rapacious overgrazing of native grasslands in New Mexico and other states and the wholesale destruction on native grasslands, which have been replaced by mesquite and other desert vegetation that is unsuitable for grazing or wildlife habitat. Furthermore, a number of fish species native to Arizona have become extinct because cattle have trampled vegetation adjacent to water courses (streams, rivers) which used to provide shade under which the fish sought shelter. Now the shade has gone as a result of overgrazing and trampling, the water has heated and there has been a significant decrease in oxygen diffusion into the water, leading to the collapse of the fish populations. Of course, another example is the environmental costs of extracting, processing and using fossil fuels (the latter producing greenhouse gases that are driving climate change) which are externalized. Once they are captured in prices, then you'd be paying at least ten times as much to fill your car up at the pump as you are now. Internalizing these environmental costs is being heavily resisted by the fossil fuel lobby and other big businesses (see below). How will you rectify this? These examples gives you some idea of the cost of perverse subsidies.
The Oglalla aquifer, which underlies the great plains and supplies critically important water to crops, is being pumped at rates far exceeding recharge. The latest estimates project that it will be effectively pumped to recharge rate by 2030. The costs to agriculture in the US will be stupendous. Drinking water in Arizona is still cheap even though that state's aquifers are being drained, as is the Colorado River, which doesn't even drain into the Pacific Ocean anymore because of overextraction.
Moreover, the value of wetlands goes far beyond simply providing water to local communities. Without answering my question, you appeared to vaguely suggest that critical ecosystem services should be given some sort of economic valuation. If this is true, then please tell me how you intend to valuate the following services: pollination, seed dispersal, maintenance and renewal of soil fertility, nutrient cycling, climate control, stablization of coastlines, maintenance of watersheds and aquifers etc. Please also explain how we can implement laws internalizing the environmental costs of production and consumption, which are currently externlizied, given the unrepentent opposition of corporations and the Bush regime to internalization and 'full-cost pricing'.
Nanny, the thrust of the argument is this: you provide a simple answer to a politically and economically complex problem.
I, of course, bow to Mr Harvey's superior knowledge in my (narrower) field, but if I may adjust his [na_g_s], the thrust of the argument is this: you provide a simple answer to a politically and economically complex problem.
to:
na_g_s, you provide a simplistic, unworkable answer to a politically and economically complex problem.
:o)
_______________
Thank you Ian G. The muse visited on that one.
Best,
D
"1. I don;t see why the US taxpayer shoudl be onyl ones to foot the bill, I'd rather see it internationalised with the other major developed governments contributing ot the pot as well;"
There are several reasons not to do this:
a) Bringing in other major developed countries would take time.
b) The amount of money is, practically speaking, trivial. If ALL rewards are collected, it's only $7.2 billion. I'll bet that's less than the U.S. Department of Energy will spend on coal programs alone in the next decade.
c) If other countries put money in the pot, they would (of course) demand that their own projects could collect the rewards (and that's perfectly reasonable). We in the United States want the projects to be done in the United States. If all the rewards are actually handed out--or even one or two of the "Stage 5" rewards--that means that non-tokamak fusion is practical. If non-tokamak fusion is practical, it will be a world-changing technology. It will very rapidly displace virtually all other forms of energy production (e.g. electricity from coal and fission...and enable rapid electrification of automobiles). We in the U.S. don't want another country to be leading in such a major technology.
"2. I'd argue that there should be a requirwment that the data from the winning models at each stage be put in the public domain."
As long as you're not talking about the *patents* that support the reward winners, I doubt there will be any problems. If you're talking about the patents, I doubt many people would be interested. A patent for a commercially viable fusion technology--such as if "focus fusion" becomes commercial--would be an *extremely* valuable patent. The patent holder probably wouldn't be interested in putting that in the public domain...unless he or she doesn't care about making hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.
"3. A better approach might be to offer tradable contracts to sell to the government a specified quantity of power from "nonconventional sources" at a large premium to the market price. (E.g. an extra $100 per megawatt hour for the first one million megawatt hours of non-conventional power delivered in 2015.)"
Well, I'd definitely support some sort of reward for photovoltaics. But if we're talking about wind-power or biomass-to-energy, or any number of other "non-conventional power," I wouldn't support that.
A key thing about fusion that is almost mind-boggling is its power. And hydrogen-boron fusion (ala "focus fusion") is even more incredible.
A 1000 megawatt electrical power plant would burn approximately 2.2 million tons of oil in a year, or approximately 4 million tons of coal. The same 1000 megawatt plant, using hydrogen-boron fusion, uses approximately TWO tons of hydrogen and boron in a year.
To put it another way, a container ship going across the ocean uses about 11 tons of fuel oil per hour, to go at 25 nautical miles per hour. A comparable ship, powered by hydrogen-boron fusion, would use a couple POUNDS of hydrogen and boron per hour.
Plus, with "focus fusion" or other "aneutronic" fusion, there are not even any neutons to worry about. The only thing produced is helium. And the amounts are so tiny, they could easily be captured for use in...childrens' balloons, or whatever.
Hydrogen-boron fusion is simply so radically different from (i.e., better than) wind power or biomass-to-electricity (or even photovoltaics), that it doesn't make sense to give them the same reward.
I think the U.S. government should keep the awards only for non-tokamak fusion. Again, if non-tokamak fusion isn't developed, no one will win the awards anyway, so the U.S. taxpayer doesn't pay anything. But if the awards are won, that means non-tokamak fusion is practical...and that is a world-changing event.
P.S. One thing that scares me to death is that I think development of non-tokamak fusion as an energy source will make it *possible* for just about anyone to make a fusion bomb. That is, someone will figure out how to take what is an inherently very safe and non-polluting technology, and use it for tremendous destruction. But even though I think that is so, I support the awards. Like I wrote before, I don't know why Japan hasn't already developed this technology. (And if they don't, I doubt it will take China and India more than 3-5 decades to do it themselves.)
- Clarence Darrow
D
Tim, I don't think you should be talking about DDT anymore given how successful it has been in S. Africa.
jet, you are off topic and not making sense. There are plenty of DDT posts you can comment on if you wish to embarrass yourself further.
To "anonymous" (presumably Mark Bahner):
1. Restricting such a competition to only US entities is simply a form of protectionism. It never works and it never has (one of the great "Ah hah" moments of my education was learnign that the first Australian uniform external tariffs had been impsoed on cars, textiles and footwear in around 1915 and justified on the grounds that these were "infant industries" -90-some years later those infants remain the msot highly protected industries in the ocuntry.)
2. Regarding patents, I'd argue that the fairly substantial prizes you propose would offfset a lot of the usual rationale for patent protection;
3. I agonsied for quite a while before using the words "non-conventional" but what I had in mind was stuff liek the Rubbiatron or various other exotic technologies. Space-based power-sats woudl be antoher example.
Yes, the successful use of DDT in South Africa is GREAT evidence in favor of the alleged ban on such use.
My point in response to the wetlands comment was simply to show that there are ECONOMIC reasons why someone would want to preserve/maintain a wetland property as well as ecological ones. Picking appart trivial aspects of my scenario does not alter that main point.
If I'm a fool for encouraging others to stand up for individual rights, then so be it.
It may depend on how good your attorney is, but obviously if someone is to blame for pollution in your airspace, there's pretty much a way to find out who it is and how much they are responsible. Look at wind diretions, trace particles, etc... and a good case could be built.
Like most libertarians, I believe in a strong national DEFENSE, and do not support offensive wars of agression like those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Additionally I have publicly called for the closing of over 49 US Milatary bases overseas (see http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance9.html) and the withdrawal of US Troops from over 135 countries and territories around the world (see http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance8.html). So suggest away ...
But that is only because of the interference of government - a nanny-government, that thinks it knows best how to supply water to people.
An EXCELLENT example of the "tragedy of the commons"! The land in government hands is not watched over too closely and is subject to abuse, pollution, strip-mining, and overgrazing. Private owners are better caretakers.
The environmental costs you are referrring to are occuring on government ("commons") land! And you didn't even mention $7 billion in royalty relief that is going to the fossil fuel industry (see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1578337/posts). To rectify, take the land out of the "commons" and put it in the hands of people who care about it.
I don't intend to valuate them, that's what a free society is for! Are you saying clean water is not valuable? Fertile soil is not valuable? Pollination of crops on nearby land is not valuable?
Sell off nanny-government lands or give them away by lottery to private owners who will take better care of them and will at least charge royalties for oil drilling and a market price for grazing.
Well, forgive me! :-)
Nanny,
Thanks for your detailed reply. I actually agree with some of your points - particularly with respect to defence. However, you still haven't answered my point: how can we implement all of the points you raised in the face of stiff opposition by TNC's and far right governments like the current DC incumbents who are fighting tooth and nail against internalizing the environmental costs of economic activities? Go back to Rio, 1992, and you can find that even so-called 'progressive' organizations like the "Business Council for Sustainable Development" did everything they could to keep full cost pricing off the agenda.
May I ask you a question? What do you think about US stule 'democracy'? Assuming you are an American citizen, did you vote for Bush and his gang of corporate cronies? Far from being against big government, Bush II, like his recent Republican predecessors, oversees a massive government beaurocracy which wields its power to pursue economic and military strategies which certainly do not reflect your point of view (not to say that the impotent, useless Democrats are any better). Their primary aim is ot to eliminate big governemnt, but to ensure that big government works to support the right 'priorities' (like the redistribtion of wealth to the political and corporate establishment).
Moreover, what if the selling of public lands to the 'highest bidder' results in some crackpot like James Watt investing his millions in turning Yosemite or Yellowstone National Parks into 'wilderness Disneyland' style theme parks which wreak havoc on the environment? Again, the value of the land externalizes the costs of this rapacious conversion on critical ecosystem services. Those with most incentive to buy public lands will be rich entrepeneurs who don't care about the long term impacts of development on natural systems. Their motive is short-term profit maximization. Look at how many private landowners have been fighting the US government for years to sell their land to greedy developers in spite of the fact that their land has been designated important because it contains an endangered species or a assemblage of unique species. One great example is the Red Cockaded Woodpecker, whose populations are now at about 2% of historical numbers because humans destoyed vast tracts of their pine forest habitat (it is on CITES Appendix 3). Many of the remaining relic populations of the bird are on private land, and as you may be aware there have been bitter battles waged between landowners and what you would term the 'nanny government' over the right of landowners to destroy woodpecker habitat for development projects. Again, there is mobilization bias. Perhaps most of the people in the community would hardly notice if the woodpecker were to become extinct (I had the privilidge of seeing several of them in Noxubi Wildlife Refuge in Mississippi in 2001, and for me it was a wonderful moment in my life), but is this ethically and morally prudent behavior? Humans are nickel and diming the planet to death, and with your arguments implemented that nickel and diming would be accelerated. You probably believe that no species - barring humans, and even that might be debatable in your eyes - has any right to exist, and thus they must all 'pay their way'. If this is the case, then we reduce the value of life to being a mere untilitarian commodity' to be bought, sold, and perhaps extirpated depending on its market value. In my view, this is obscene, and dangerous. Obscene because it eliminates the sanctity of life, and dangerous because it assumes that species have no value beyond that which is based on moral and ethical grounds or consumptive value. Althugh these are important, they ignore the contribution that a species or population of a species makes within a broader ecological framework, as part of an integrated, functioning system. I have explained the value of indirect (provisioning) ecosystem servcies ad nauseum here before and it should be clear to you now what I mean. Every ecological system worldwide is in decline. There is not a peer-reviewed study published in the past 25 years which contradicts this conclusion. Turning the biosphere into a private domain, a corporate playground, patenting life iteself, selling genes and genomes to the highest bidder, is not the way to deal with the bottleneck in which humanity now funds itself. Nanny, you need a serious rethink on the consequences of your perspectives.
""So how do you set up private ownership of the atmosphere?"
The same way it is done over airports and sensitive government facilities today."
Incredible naivity. Tell me, who is going to have ownership of the atmosphere over the oceans that no-one asserts territorial rights to? Most global warming comes from the air over the oceans, BTW. And tell me, what jurisdiction do I get in touch with when I want to stop CO2 that originates in the USA from sitting over Australia?
Tim Lambert's mate John Quiggin has sponsored a new Blog "RSMG" staffed by his statraps.His "New" SRMG posting on the Allen report was 100%
polemical. But RSMG is actually a sub-blog of JQ!! So my error is not
entirely sinful, as clearly he is hosting, managing, and refereeing SRMG.
I have always wanted to be prosecutor, judge, and jury, but never made it. But alas! The Allen "Report" is wholly a creature of its sponsors; I have
written/contributed to a few commissioned reports in my time (IMF, World
Bank, EU, UN ECA, UNCTAD, Japan's OECF, ZAPU in Zimbabwe, etc) but NEVER kowtowed to my
sponsors, more fool me. Allen's effort is the worst I have ever read. Watch
this space (until JQ censors it!). If he only wants supportive comments then
JQ should say so on his/RSMG masthead.
Best
Tim
www.timcurtin.com
"It may depend on how good your attorney is, but obviously if someone is to blame for pollution in your airspace, there's pretty much a way to find out who it is and how much they are responsible. Look at wind diretions, trace particles, etc... and a good case could be built."
I'm sorry but this is simply not true.
>Incredible naivity. Tell me, who is going to have ownership of the atmosphere over the oceans that no-one asserts territorial rights to?
Furthermore, can I charge a toll on any aircraft that fly over my land.
If they refuse to pay, can I shoot them down for their trespass?
The previous two posts were mine. For soem reason this computer keeps forggetting my personal details.
nanny_govt_sucks wrote, Sell off nanny-government lands or give them away by lottery to private owners who will take better care of them and will at least charge royalties for oil drilling and a market price for grazing.
I can't think of a greater evil than putting even more land into private ownership.
The problem is that most libertarians, yourself included, despise freedom (see post and ensuing thread).
Mark Bahner wrote, I predict that a non-tokamak fusion setup will reach break-even (more power out than power in) by 2020 at the latest. And there will be commercial fusion plants within a decade of that.
How are you going to deal with the neutron flux that's thrown off?
Forget environmental hazzards; it will wreck the fusion apparatus itself.
Tim, I'm off topic? You say this "Moore even signed a pro-DDT petition advocating policies that would cripple the United States' fight against malaria." in your post, and yet DDT isn't pertinent? The petition that would "cripple" the US fight against malaria simply says that DDT should be used unless something else is proven better. And I've followed your anti-DDT threads and you've never once shown why indoor spraying of DDT is a bad thing, even where mosquitoes have developed immunity. When it is brought up, you just ignore it.
My bad, jet: after 80 comments on nuclear power I'd forgotten about the DDT reference at the end of my post.
The rules proposed in the petition would make funding bednets almost impossible: the required level of proof is quite high. Why not let the malariologists decide what the best method is?
Spraying DDT where the mosquitoes are immune is a bad thing because it is a waste of money and resources. Instead you could be using a different insecticide that is actually effective against the mosquitoes.
I wrote, "I predict that a non-tokamak fusion setup will reach break-even (more power out than power in) by 2020 at the latest. And there will be commercial fusion plants within a decade of that."
"liberal" asked, "How are you going to deal with the neutron flux that's thrown off? Forget environmental hazzards; it will wreck the fusion apparatus itself."
I particularly like hydrogen-boron fusion as a potential non-tokamak candidate. That process is "aneutronic" (the principal product is helium):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion
Considering the fact that we've had commercial fission reactors producing much larger quantities of neutrons for 30+ years, I don't see how fusion presents any extraordinary problem regarding neutrons. In fact, with hydrogen-boron fusion, the problem is vastly reduced compared to fission.
"Spraying DDT where the mosquitoes are immune is a bad thing because it is a waste of money and resources." This is not so. Even where mosquitoes have developed immunity, DDT is still an effective repellent and keeps mosquitoes out of houses. While South Africa did use another insecticide mixed with DDT it has apparently seen great results in reducing Malaria cases in an area designated to be DDT resistant.
And I followed your links and can't see how the rules would make funding bednets impossible (unless it is implied that using DDT inside a home is always supior to putting a bednet over someone's bed which lets them get bit in the ass when they get out of bed).
jet, so with half million case of malaria in Sri Lanka in 1975 despite extensive DDT spraying, you think they should have kept using DDT instead of switching to something that killed the mosquitoes?
South Africa is not using DDT in DDT resistant areas.
If you require that the money be spent on DDT spraying, you can't spend it on bednets.
Mark Bahner wrote, Considering the fact that we've had commercial fission reactors producing much larger quantities of neutrons for 30+ years, I don't see how fusion presents any extraordinary problem regarding neutrons.
Depends on the kind of fusion you're doing, how much control you have over the actual reactions taking place in the reactor, etc.
In fact, with hydrogen-boron fusion, the problem is vastly reduced compared to fission.
IF you can actually get the reaction working, ercoming the attendant technical difficulties.
If you read the entire article you linked to, you'll see there are large technological barriers to p-11B fusion. In particular, the article concludes:
Vote the bastards out!
Replace them with others, like Libertarians, who would internalize environmental costs by taking property out of the "commons" where it is abused and putting it in the hands of those who would care for it and would charge at least market prices for its use, if they would allow its use at all.
More: http://www.lp.org/issues/printer_environment.shtml
I don't know what you mean by that. The US is not a democracy, it is a constitutional republic with democratically elected representatives. I like that concept a lot, but in current practice we don't follow our Constitution very closely and we basically have a theocratic ogliarcy here.
Nope. I voted Libertarian.
Why sell it to the highest bidder? From the link above:
"Wouldn't we be better served if naturalist organizations, such as the Audubon Society or Nature Conservancy, took over the management of our precious parks? The Audubon Society's Rainey Wildlife Sanctuary partially supports itself with natural gas wells operated in an ecologically sound manner. In addition to preserving the sensitive habitat, the Society shows how technology and ecology can co-exist peacefully and profitably."
The Endangered Species Act sets up some unfortunately perverse incentives for those involved that don't always benefit the species. See:
http://www.hoover.org/pubaffairs/we/current/anderson_0400.html
"Even worse than the dismal recovery rates [for species on the endangered list] is the fact that regulation under the ESA can actually exacerbate extinction. In an effort to protect endangered species, the ESA makes it illegal to "take" a listed species, meaning "to harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct." In other words, if a landowner's actions are interpreted as a "take," land uses may be strictly regulated. This might encourage landowners to "shoot, shovel, and shut up."
But landowners don't have to go this far; they can take perfectly legal preemptive action to keep the species off private property. A famous North Carolina case shows how this worked with the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker (RCW), which lives in old-growth pines. After Ben Cone was prevented from harvesting 1,500 acres of his 7,200-acre property because it was home to RCWs, he started cutting his trees at forty years of age instead of eighty, thus eliminating the old-growth trees in which RCWs might live."
I would hope so. Earlier you were talking about internalizing the environmental costs. I'm talking about doing that too via privatization. What are environmental costs but nickels and dimes added up? I would hope the nickels and dimes of cost that the government charges for use of "commons" property are accelerated into $10's and $20's of cost that private owners would charge for use of private property.
What about:
The Specter of Species Extinction: Will Global Warming Decimate Earth's Biosphere?
http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/150.pdf
"Over the past century and a half of increasing air temperature and CO2 concentration, many species of animals have significantly extended the cold-limited boundaries of their ranges, both poleward in latitude and upward in elevation, while they have maintained the locations of the heat-limited boundaries of their ranges. Consequently, individual animal species, like individual plant species, have measurably increased the areas of the planet's surface that they occupy, creating more overlapping of ranges, greater local species richness, and an improved ability to avoid extinction."
Global Warming Sparks Increased Plant Production in Arctic Lakes
http://www.livescience.com/environment/051024_arctic_lakes.html
"Biological activity in some Arctic lakes has ratcheted up dramatically over the past 150 years as a result of global warming, according to a new study."
Earth is becoming a greener greenhouse
http://cliveg.bu.edu/greenergh/nontechsum.html
"Our results ... indicate that the April to October average greenness level increased by about 8% in North America and 12% in Eurasia during the period 1981 to 1999."
"the growing season is now about 12 ± 5 days longer in North America and 18 ± 4 days in Eurasia"
Greening of arctic Alaska, 1981-2001
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2003GL018268.shtml
"Here we analyzed a time series of 21-yr satellite data for three bioclimate subzones in northern Alaska and confirmed a long-term trend of increase in vegetation greenness for the Alaskan tundra that has been detected globally for the northern latitudes."
na_g_s:
You are a Googler. That is different than someone who understands an issue such that they can speak to it. Many here appreciate the fact that you have to Google Marshall and Hoover to find pre-chewed stuff that fits your preconceived worldview.
Best,
D
'"Spraying DDT where the mosquitoes are immune is a bad thing because it is a waste of money and resources." This is not so. Even where mosquitoes have developed immunity, DDT is still an effective repellent and keeps mosquitoes out of houses.'
Haven't we been over this once? IIRC, the rebuttals were that
1) there is no reason that, if the mosquito population can become resistant to the killing effect of DDT, it cannot become resistant to the irritant effect, particularly when said effect is preventing feeding (a fairly effective selective pressure)
2) it is not clear that if they are irritated enough to go outside and therefore not get killed and therefore feed outside, that is an improvement over the situation where they are resistant and so remain indoors, alive, but do not feed, due to bednets.
No data/studies casting any light on either of this was provided, IIRC again.
"And I've followed your anti-DDT threads and you've never once shown why indoor spraying of DDT is a bad thing, even where mosquitoes have developed immunity."
??? Shouldn't the question be "Why in the world would you want to spray DDT where the mosquitos are immune, unless you had stock in the manufacturer?"
"jet, so with half million case of malaria in Sri Lanka in 1975 despite extensive DDT spraying, you think they should have kept using DDT instead of switching to something that killed the mosquitoes?"
Well, it depends on whether your goal is to kill the mosquitos, or spray with DDT.
As I'm sure many here will appreciate that you will ignore the substance of a post in order to shoot the messenger.
As I'm sure many here will appreciate that you will ignore the substance of a post in order to shoot the messenger.
The 'substance' of the post is based on false premises containing incomplete, cherry-picked or mendacicized findings.
Just because something is greening doesn't mean it's positive, despite what GES touts. But Google doesn't have a 'context' or 'wisdom' button to interpret returns for you. Hint: greenness in the Arctic (NVDI +ing) means a darker albedo, which ain't too good up there.
That's kinda inconvenient, but don't shoot the messenger.
Best,
D
You lost me there Dano. That would seem to refute much of environmentalism.
ngs:
No, just your strawman version of it.
na_g_s wrote:
You lost me there Dano.
Sorry. That can be disconcerting to some.
Yes, just because GES touts it doesn't mean it's true.
Hint: greenness in the Arctic (NVDI +ing) means a darker albedo, which ain't too good up there.
Best,
D
"Wouldn't we be better served if naturalist organizations, such as the Audubon Society or Nature Conservancy, took over the management of our precious parks?"
No because nature conservation is just one of a range of compatible overlapping land-uses (along with recreation, for example).
Yes, that's the second time you've hand-waved about this Dano. Care to offer any specifics?
God forbid that forests should creep over ice, that animal habitats should expand poleward and that the Inuit may someday have a more varied diet.
"the Inuit may someday have a more varied diet"
The Inuit don't want a more varied diet, or they'd have already moved to Tahiti.
It's bad because low albedo mens high reflection - including heat reflection.
Reducing ice cover creates a positive feedback which leads to further warming.
You may not have noticed but there are ALREADY animals living on the ice. When the forest line moves north where exactly are they supposed to move to?
The Inuit, strangely enough, are actually quite upset at their homes being destroyed along with the animals they and their ancestors have lived on for millenia, why don't you go explain to them how foolish and primitive they are and how in the decades to come they'll have exciting new careers as janitors and street-sweepers in the new boom-towns of the far north.
Oh, by the way, you do realise of course that in many areas of the arctic warming will result not in uncovering land but in coverting ice-floes used by animals and inuit alike into open sea?
na_g_s:
Yes, that's the second time you've hand-waved about this Dano. Care to offer any specifics?
God forbid that forests should creep over ice, that animal habitats should expand poleward and that the Inuit may someday have a more varied diet.
If you knew anything about the issue you'd know ice loss is bad. Since you don't know anything about the issue, your repeated attempts at arguing your flawed view are merely amusing and do nothing for your position but erode it.
Best,
D
I wrote, "Considering the fact that we've had commercial fission reactors producing much larger quantities of neutrons for 30+ years, I don't see how fusion presents any extraordinary problem regarding neutrons."
"liberal" responded, "Depends on the kind of fusion you're doing, how much control you have over the actual reactions taking place in the reactor, etc."
I'm thinking of the fusion concepts described on my blog:
http://markbahner.typepad.com/random_thoughts/2006/04/alternatives_to.h…
"liberal" refers to the conclusion of the Wikipedia article:
"There have been some ingenious attempts to circumvent this restriction with non-equilibrium plasmas, but as it stands now, it does not seem possible for a p-11B reactor to produce net power, independent of the properties of the confinement scheme used."
This is typical of Wikipedia. It gives a very broad and definitive conclusion, without providing a single reference to support how that conclusion was derived.
Suffice it to say that there are knowledgeable people who disagree with this assessment (see page 7 of a presentation by Vincent Page, a technology officer at General Electric, discussing alternatives to tokamak fusion):
http://www.physicsessays.com/doc/s2005/page_fusion051.pdf
The ice is being "lost" to forest, so it must follow that you believe that forest expansion, and expanded animal habitat is "bad". That part I just don't get.
And if ice "loss" is bad, then is ice "gain" good? If we re-entered another ice age and thick sheets of ice covered the great lakes, would that be a good thing for plants, animals, and diversity of life on this planet?
Or perhaps you expect the ice, the climate, and global average temperatures to always remain the same?
No, the ice is quite frequently being lost to the sea. Which reduces the animal habitat. And as have already been pointed out to you, the ice is also animal habitat - animal habitat that is being lost at a historical rate.
Mark:
So fix it and provide cites. That's what it's there for.
I reiterate:
na_g_s: your ignernt questions erode your position.
You cannot speak to the issue if you do not know that ice loss will further increase warming thru albedo changes, not to mention melting permafrost will release CH4 into the atmosohere and pose human infrastructure challenges that must cost money to overcome.
Sheesh. This is the most basic knowledge. Basic. Would that Google had a 'knowledge' button.
Basic knowledge. Utterly basic.
Best,
D
"The ice is being "lost" to forest, so it must follow that you believe that forest expansion, and expanded animal habitat is "bad". That part I just don't get."
It's because we're terrorist sympathizers.
Well, since we've benefitted from the last 100 or so years of warming, what is the problem with a little more?
What do you have against increased habitats for plants and animals?
LOL!!
Now you are all for "human infrastructure"! Where has the environmentalist agenda gone? Save the Alaskan pipeline Dano! Save the Alaskan pipeline!!
I ask the forum:
Is it comment spam to continue to yank the chain of poor hapless na_g_s?
D
I wrote, "This is typical of Wikipedia. It gives a very broad and definitive conclusion, without providing a single reference to support how that conclusion was derived."
brokenlibrarian responded, "So fix it and provide cites. That's what it's there for."
I'm not really interested in engaging in an editing battle with the article's primary author, Art Carlson.
I *could* do an edit, and cite either Vincent Page's presentation (see my previous link) or this presentation by Eric Lerner and Robert Terry:
http://www.physicsessays.com/doc/s2005/Lerner_Transparencies.pdf
Then Art Carlson could reverse my edit. There's no Editorial Board or Review Committee at Wikipedia to which edits (and reverses of edits) can be appealed, so it's not worth my time to do a revision, unless I can be fairly confident Art Carlson won't simply reverse it at some later time.
It's exactly like my dealings with you on on probability distributions, brokenlibrarian, or my dealings with Tim Lambert and Eli Rabett on the relationship between heat (enthalpy) and temperature in the atmosphere.
I prefer to offer you (and Tim Lambert and Eli Rabett) money to show me what y'all know. If y'all don't take me up on my offers, I know y'all are clueless and/or lying. It's much preferable to me to do that, than to waste my time arguing. If you don't take me up on my offer, it costs me no money or time. And if you do take me up on my offer...well, I might just learn something. (In the case of Tim Lambert and Eli Rabett, I'd learn that the way mechanical engineers have been designing and analyzing air conditioning systems for the last ~100 years has been wrong! Or to use Tim Lambert's exact words, "Well, I guess we'll just have to ditch the entire field of thermodynamics then." That's definitely something worth knowing! ;-))
http://timlambert.org/2004/05/georgia/
http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2005/07/18/what-does-moist-enthal…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychrometrics
Have you noticed that when nanny posts on this topic the recent comments box says: nanny govt sucks on Patrick co-founder of Greenpeace. Beyond Clintonian.
na_g_s in a blue dress. Stylllllin'!
D
Srry Mrk, bsng bg f wnd s nt m stl, bsds whch nlk y w dn't cmmnt whr w dn't knw nthng.
Mark:
Or maybe we have better things to do than teach basic reading comprehension and/or thermodynamics to cranks.
brokenlibrarian writes, "Or maybe we have better things to do than teach basic reading comprehension and/or thermodynamics..."
Bwahahahaahaha! In order to *teach* a subject, brokenlibrarian, it helps if you've actually *learned* the subject!
When I learned thermodynamics, I spent 5 hours per week in class for one trimester, and 3 hours per week in class for two trimesters. That's a full year of thermodynamics at an accredited university. (And perhaps even more important to the subject of the relationship between heat and temperature of air, I also had a 3-hour-per-week course in Air Conditioning.)
Now...let's compare that to Tim Lambert. Tim, why don't you tell everyone how many university courses you've taken in thermodynamics?
Crickets chirping.
The answer is "zero," isn't it, Tim? So why don't you admit it? Is it because you lack the honesty, and instead pretend to understand subjects in which you have neither education nor experience?
Crickets chirping.
And you, brokenlibrarian...what is your education and experience in thermodynamics?
Are you like Eli Rabett, a self-described "techno-bunny" who hilariously bloviated about the relationship between heat and temperature of the atmosphere to Roger Pielke Sr...a professor of atmospheric science at the Colorado State University?
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/moveabletype/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id…
http://blue.atmos.colostate.edu/aboutus.shtml
How about it, brokenlibrarian?
"...to cranks."
Let's see...I've got a BS in Mechanical Engineering, an MS in Environmental Engineering (Air Pollution Option) and about 20 years combined experience in performing air pollution analyses and designing/analyzing energy systems. I'm curious...what are your qualifications, "brokenlibrarian," such that you think you are qualified to judge whether or not I'm a "crank?" What degree(s) do you have, and what experience?
Mark, I don't think that people need an advanced course in quantum crankodynamics to judge whether someone is a crank.
"Mark, I don't think that people need an advanced course in quantum crankodynamics to judge whether someone is a crank."
Did anyone (besides you) mention a course in "quantum crankodynamics," Tim? Of course not.
What *was* mentioned was the fact that you have been pretending (polite word for "lying") for several years that you have either education or experience in thermodynamics.
But the truth is, you've never taken a single course in thermodynamics, have you?
Crickets chirping.
You're one major hypocrite, Tim. You constantly criticize others for not admitting their mistakes, but you yourself don't have the honesty to admit your mistakes...or even to admit your ignorance.
It's empty credentialism Mark; nobody cares that you took uni courses in something. You must be at other times aware that some of the people reading here write the kinds of textbooks you would have studied at uni. They don't get uncritical deference to their authority in debates which they may or may not wish to enter into, here in the blogosphere, either.
Nanny had it right in his original comment, but didn't take it far enough. If you will permit me the liberty, Nanny, let me make it complete:
Well actually Mark (blush, blush), I merely explained to Prof. Pielke the difference between energy and enthalpy, and the relation of both to temperature, something you are also clueless about. We bunnies chat about that endlessly while munching grass and have an excellent grasp of the situation.