Imagine a group of 100 fisherman faced with declining stocks and worried about the sustainability of their resource and their livelihoods. One of them works out that the total sustainable catch is about 20% of what everyone is catching now (with some uncertainty of course) but that if current trends of increasing catches (about 2% a year) continue the resource would be depleted in short order. Faced with that prospect, the fishermen gather to decide what to do. The problem is made more complicated because some groups of fishermen are much more efficient than the others. The top 5 catchers, catch 20% of the fish, and the top 20 catch almost 75% of the fish. Meanwhile the least efficient 50 catch only 10% of the fish and barely subsist. Clearly, fairness demands that the top catchers lead the way in moving towards a more sustainable future.
The top 5 do start discussing how to manage the transition. They realise that the continued growth in catches – driven by improved technology and increasing effort – is not sustainable, and make a plan to reduce their catch by 80% over a number of years. But there is opposition – manufacturers of fishing boats, tackle and fish processing plants are worried that this would imply less sales for them in the short term. Strangely, they don’t seem worried that a complete collapse of the fishery would mean no sales at all – preferring to think that the science can’t possibly be correct and that everything will be fine. These manufacturers set up a number of organisations to advocate against any decreases in catch sizes – with catchy names like the Fisherfolk for Sound Science, and Friends of Fish. They then hire people who own an Excel spreadsheet program do “science” for them – and why not? They live after all in a free society.
After spending much energy and money on trying to undermine the science – with claims that the pond is much deeper than it looks, that the fish are just hiding, that the records of fish catches were contaminated by being done near a supermarket – the continued declining stocks and smaller and smaller fish make it harder and harder to sound convincing. So, in a switch of tactics so fast it would impress Najinsky, the manufacturers’ lobby suddenly decides to accept all that science and declares that the ‘fish are hiding’ crowd are just fringe elements. No, they said, we want to help with this transition, but …. we need to be sure that the plans will make sense. So they ask their spreadsheet-wielding “advocacy scientists” to calculate exactly what would happen if the top 5 (and only the top 5) did cut their catches by 80%, but meanwhile everyone else kept increasing their catch at the current (unsustainable rate). Well, the answers were shocking – the total catch would be initially still be 84% of what it is now and would soon catch up with current levels. In fact, the exact same techniques that were used to project the fishery collapse imply that this would only delay the collapse by a few years! and what would be the point of that?
The fact that the other top fishermen are discussing very similar cuts and that the fisherfolk council was trying to coordinate these actions to minimise the problems that might emerge, are of course ignored and the cry goes out that nothing can be done. In reality of course, the correct lesson to draw is that everything must be done.
In case you think that no-one would be so stupid as to think this kind of analysis has any validity, I would ask that you look up the history of the Newfoundland cod fishery. It is indeed a tragedy.
And the connection to climate? Here.
I’ll finish with a quotation attributed to Edmund Burke, one the founders of the original conservative movement:
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”
See here for a much better picture of what coordinated action could achieve.
Something more general on how some of you react to political decisions: Has it ever even occured to you, that investment in something like nuclear is on a higher priority (if that is even true) than solar or wind, because they did the math and came to the conclusion that this is the way to go? I mean apart from all conspiracy theories about big oil money and the coal lobby – there are some pretty basic arguments which cannot be dismissed lightly (like the simple fact that the wind doesn’t always blow, that the sun doesn’t always shine and that energy storage on a large scale is a non-trivial challenge – you know all the arguments but the mere fact that you can somehow imagine possible solutions to those issues doesn’t automatically mean that polticians would bet their jobs and their countries on them once they listened to – and weighed – both sides).
Anne van der Bom Says (31 mai 2009 at 5:53 AM):
“What’s the use of all those electric cars if we don’t have clean energy?”
Lots of uses, from lower cost per mile to reduced emissions to lessened dependence on foreign oil. Which is part of the reason EV & PHEV cars make sense regardless of the generation mix. Then once there’s a substantial penetration, reducing transportation CO2 emissions becomes a matter of replacing a few hundred generation plants rather than millions of cars.
Ike Solem Says (31 mai 2009 at 10:45 AM):
“James, show me a single solar research institute in the United States.”
For starters:
http://www.nrel.gov/overview/
http://www.fsec.ucf.edu/en/
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~ciotola/solar/
http://www.nmsu.edu/~ucomm/Releases/2007/april/solarenergy.htm
http://azrise.org/
http://www.anl.gov/ese/Research/anser.html
Enough?
PS, a particularly quotable bit from Catton,
op. cit. — read it all the way to the last line, folks. Ding!
—-excerpt—-
Freese (1985) provides a clear definition of a serial trap, further elucidating issues raised by the now famous description of the commons dilemma by Hardin (1968). A serial trap exists when resources required by a user population are replaced over time at a more or less constant rate; replacement rate is exceeded by use rate; resources depletion cumulatively affects further availability, so that relative scarcity intensifies exponentially; and as time passes, system degradation becomes less and less reversible. As Freese notes, serial traps clearly do occur in natural ecosystems not under human domination. Various species in Various ecosystems have experienced the cycle or irruption and crash (e.g., birds, caribou; see Remmert 1980, Welty 1982). But he seeks to persuade sociologists that serial traps also occur in human-dominated ecosystems (Whittaker 1975), and that the dependence of industrial societies on nonrenewable resources must be seen as an example. (By definition, the replacement rate for nonrenewable resources must be effectively constant, i.e., zero, and any nonzero rate of use must exceed it.) Modern societies have consistently mistaken rates of discovery for rates of replacement (Pratt 1952, Simon and Kahn 1984), entrapment being the result of the illusion that all is well if use rates are just not yet in excess of recent discovery rates.
What political and economic decision makers and their constituents most need to learn from an ecosocial theory is the idea that cumulative effects of ecosystem use can make it progressively less feasible to retreat from an accustomed use pattern back to an earlier one after the newer pattern belatedly comes to be seen for the trap it is (Costanza 1987).
Quite recently, man-machine combinations enlarged the effective environment, but precariously so. Between 1930 and 1960, most draft animals on US farms were replaced by tractors. According to the Office of Technology Assessment (1985), this released some 20% of US cropland from raising feed for animals and made it available for growing crops for human consumption. Conventional wisdom accepts this as unmitigated progress. It is not seen as a trap. Ecologists may astutely ask, however, what is to happen after humans have expanded their numbers or their appetites in response to the 20% capacity increment? If the fossil fuels for tractors become depleted and too costly, some land may need again be devoted to producing biomass fuel (either for the tractors or as feed for a new generation of draft animals)…..
http://dieoff.org/page81.htm
I forget —
The concept of a “marginal generation mix” assumes that the power is going to be produced at the margins, rather than by an increase in the base. One of the areas where there is significant invention taking place is with electric vehicle charger scheduling, as well as demand response for environmental controls. The basic idea is that electric vehicle chargers don’t just “turn on”, they tell the electric utility how much of a charge they require, then the utility tells them when to turn on. That would allow the utility to have either pre-planned a block of generation using higher efficiency sources, or bid for a new block of generation once all the night’s requests have come in.
In the area of environmental controls, there is significant work being done with “pre-cooling” where facilities are cooled below the normal setting using power before peak demand, then allowed to rise to the normal setting during peak demand times. Other work involves temporarily turning off environmental controls when clouds pass overhead for builds which make use of solar power.
There is definitely work being done to reduce marginal power generation.
re 1051. If that were true, where are the figures that convinced them?
“Trust me” is the first recourse of a liar.
JAmes 1039, the “nuclear mythos” is the nuclear winter. Was Chernobyl THAT big?
NO!!!
Sheesh, where do you throw all those cherry stones after you’ve picked them???
Ike (1045), a clarification: BP claims to be one of the largest producers/installers, and commercial users of photovoltaic equipment in addition to being heavy in wind power and biofuel research. Even if their claims are somewhat boastful (it looks like they account for 1%+ of the total 2008 investment in solar energy — I might be reading this wrong, though), they are none-the-less a major player here. You should be more temperate in spreading your venom.
I tend toward your attitude about CSS, but if the government is required to invest in potential future technologies that private enterprises shun, CSS would fit very well here — private business can see nil return on its investment here as opposed to solar and wind, even biofuel. It still may be throwing away good money, but might partially explain their investment in CSS versus solar/wind/etc. Plus I see nothing untoward or wrong with the coal and rail industries wanting to stay in business rather than go bankrupt so Obama, along with the unions, can run and own these industry too.
James, duck! Captcha says “James target”
RodB, BP is a fossil fuel corporation pursuing hugely dirty syncrude oil projects in the Canadian tar sand regions. Their involvement in biofuel programs is usually couched as “alternative fuel development” which, surprise, also applies to coal-to-gasoline projects and tar-sand-to-gasoline projects.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-biggest-environmental-crime-in-history-764102.html
Their chief scientist during the rush to the tar sands (which was driven by skyrocketing oil prices, and visions of sugarplums) was Steve Koonin of Caltech, now the second-in-command at the DOE.
Notice that the Council on Foreign Relations article, not written by anyone with scientific knowledge of the issue (Michael A. Levi), has been widely circulated to the press:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=canada-tar-sands-oil-global-climate
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/05/22/22greenwire-tar-sands-climate-threat-security-promise-both-12208.html
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/05/22/oil-sands-energy-security-outweighs-environmental-harm-report-says/
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090522/oilsands_report_090522/20090522?hub=SciTech
Here’s the best one, the above are just parroting the CFR ‘study’:
http://solveclimate.com/blog/20090524/65-canada-s-clean-energy-fund-goes-tar-sands-greenwashing
Your comments do clarify a key point about global warming – renewable energy development only works for solving the fossil CO2 problem if it used to replace fossil energy sources. If we see BP and Exxon and Shell buying up renewable energy patents but not developing technologies based on those patents, it is pretty obvious what is going on.
Secondly, you don’t really see government backing such initiatives – instead, we have support for DOE coal-to-gasoline projects. They spend as much on that as they do on renewables, right? More than they spend on solar photovoltaic research, at least:
http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/fuels/emerging_coal_liquids_what_is.html
That’s from the “Alternative and Advanced Fuels” section of DOE.
So, yes, keep the pressure on. The fossil fuel lobby is spending like never before, after all – and Exxon and Canada’s Imperial Oil just made an $8 billion investment in new tar sand development.
However, they have to spend millions to suppress and distort information, while renewable energy proponents simply have to point to the facts. Nevertheless, this episode is very clear example of how a single think tank-funded study, with no scientific basis in fact, can be spun out to the press and treated as seriously as the IPCC climate reports. Here is the report in question, commissioned by ???
http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Oil_Sands_CSR47.pdf
The central climate arguments put forth by Michael Levi (an author of two books on nuclear terrorism with no apparent knowledge of climate science) in favor of tar sand imports, consist of variations on this theme:
The oil sands, even after robust expansion, would comprise a relatively small fraction of global oil supply (perhaps 5 percent)
Thus, halting oil sand expansion would do little to change future CO2 projections. Where else did this notion pop up, recently? Let’s see… Chip K. said:
My analysis, using accepted emissions scenarios and accepted modeling tools, shows that Waxman-Markey will not address the issue of mitigating projected climate change.
Yes… and neither will halting the expansion of Canadian tar sands. Closing any one coal-fired plant in the U.S. and replacing it with wind and solar won’t change the climate trajectory, either.
Therefore, doing nothing is best. That is the fossil fuel lobby argument, I think, somewhat cunningly presented.
James, do you realize that your list of solar research centers is laughably small, and includes no real ‘centers’, which is what I said? Also, see the following reports:
http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php/fuseaction/nb.story/story_id/5945
http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/1998/44mri.html
Notice the lead contractor at both of these labs is Battelle, who is also the largest proponent of the FutureGen coal project, as well as the owner of the “intellectual property” involved – which is private, so no peeking? No prototypes, but trust us, it’s worth $2.4 billion upfront. That’s who we trust to manage the National Renewable Energy Lab, to set research priorities, etc.? They’ve been a nuclear contractor (among other things) for the U.S. ever since the Manhattan Project, more or less.
It’s not really very defensible, and proves my point about serious problems at the DOE related to gigantic conflicts-of-interest, especially related to all of their ‘public-private initiatives’.
In any case, thanks for the great examples. Now, what needs to be done is to establish a truly independent energy grant agency with divisions with titles like “solar”, “wind”, “advanced biofuels” and so on – and their first job should be to evaluate the plausibility of carbon capture schemes. We might not even have to wait for that – perhaps the President could direct the National Academy of Sciences to prepare a report on the effectiveness of carbon capture. That would be interesting reading, I think… recall when Bush directed the NAS to conduct a similar analysis of climate?
That might be a good way to put and end to the coal-carbon-capture nonsense. I’m sure the NAS could produce an independent unbiased study – that’s what their reputation hangs on, anyway.
Mark Says (31 mai 2009 at 2:03 PM):
“JAmes 1039, the “nuclear mythos” is the nuclear winter. Was Chernobyl THAT big?”
It is? You make the rules, eh?
You know, if your idea of the mythos being referred to obviously doesn’t fit, perhaps it’s because you’re using the wrong one? The mythos I MEANT was the common one among the anti-nuclear community, loosely expressed as “Omigawd, it’s radioactive! We’re all gonna DIE!” – handily disproved by Chernobyl, as well as such naturally-occuring sites as Ramsar, Iran: http://www.angelfire.com/mo/radioadaptive/ramsar.html
(Note to self: while in foxhole, revise estimate of reading comprehension downwards, yet again.)
James, you’re bringing your own strawmen to do battle with here.
Others sometimes get hooked. Is this what you want to accomplish?
Ike Solem Says (31 mai 2009 at 3:45 PM):
“James, do you realize that your list of solar research centers is laughably small, and includes no real ‘centers’, which is what I said?”
It’s not my list, it’s Google’s: the result of searching for “solar research center” and taking the first half-dozen US ones. Remember that back in message 1045, you asked me to show you just a SINGLE solar research center? Not to give you a long list, not to judge their quality. You’re moving the goalposts there :-)
“Notice the lead contractor at both of these labs is Battelle…”
And so? Management of research on that scale is a business, no? Then there are all those other labs…
Note to bobb, who says People worrying more about themselves than about somebody else they don’t even know IS human.
The point was that people may indeed worry more about their own families than those of people they don’t know, but if they make well-intentioned decisions based on bad information, disaster will ensue. Without good information, good intentions can be even more disastrous than bad intentions – because “do-gooders” are so often spurred on by a sense of moral righteousness or the desire to protect those they are close to, even if what they are doing is making the problem far worse.
We can also assume it is normal for people to not have any ill wishes towards people they don’t know, and also for people to understand that some big problems require a coordinated response. Since humans are a very social species, this is also part of “human nature” – coordinated responses to large threats. Is that always the best choice? What if the the threat is non-existent, or even manufactured for economic or political purposes? Reliable information is the critical factor that distinguishes the real from the imaginary.
Similarly, people also invest a lot of time and effort in their children, which you can portray as benevolent self-interest if you like. This doesn’t always mean that their well-intentioned plans for the future benefit of their children are always wise.
Another example: if a child ingests gasoline by accident, the right thing to do is to rush to the hospital – treatment for hydrocarbon poisoning is complicated. Inducing the child to vomit risks aspirating the fluid into the lungs, which can causing serious permanent scarring. The well-intentioned but uninformed parent who doesn’t know that can thus do more harm than good – and ethanol poisoning must be treated differently, and so on.
That analogy isn’t really appropriate for global warming, but it might work for many geoengineering schemes. The nuclear weapons theme is closer but misses some features of the global warming phenomenon, like the difficulty in reversing it – technically, it is far easier to dismantle weapons than it is to pull 100 years of fossil CO2 additions out of the atmosphere.
A good analogy might be the century-long struggle against infectious disease, which began with the discovery of vaccines and antibiotics at a time when the leading causes of death were all infectious diseases.
#1043 Anne van der Bom
You showed us the Dutch cogenreration system which is at least on the right track. However, whether it works to get the ‘best and highest’ use of natural gas depends on how it operates. Operation of the machine needs to be contingent on whether heat is truly needed, such that there is displaceable heat that would otherwise be produced by burning natural gas in the household. If electricity generation is limited to such times as remnant heat from the cogeneration system is less than or equal to that displaceable heat, then near perfect use of energy can be achieved. If that remnant heat goes up an exhaust pipe or some other waste method, then the system fails to get that ‘best and highest’ use of natural gas. And it is no fair deciding you want to be warmer than you otherwise expected to be.
The accounting is favorable because you require only the extra amount of heat energy that will be 100% converted to electricity. All the discharged remnant heat simply displaces heat that would otherwise have been produced by ordinary burning of natural gas. An electric generating maching that is thus made 100% efficient sounds like a good thing.
With this approach there will be times when you do not produce electricity. Get it from the grid in that case. Just do not let the call for electricity drive the operation of the cogen machine. There have been other systems discussed that fail to achieve this efficiency because they let electricity be the driving need.
There is a transitional case where some but not all of the heat is used. The question that would need to be considered would be whether your little cogen system beat the efficiency of the relevant central power plant. This of course gets us to that tired subject of ‘marginal response.’
EPRI-NRDC, Argonne, and everyone here have their unique interpretation of this term. When I use ther term I mean something like when you ask what your ‘marginal tax rate’ is. That refers to the rate that would apply if you earned an additional ‘dollar’ meaning it would be the percent of that last dollar that would be taken away. As I read it, the EPRI statement, though vague, is like my interpretation, though they made that definition moot by breaking out each power source possibility (not cherries to pick). Argonne came up with (in that report you linked) their own interpretation that it meant the “last generation system to come on line.” But Argonne ignored even that strange definition and did their analysis using the “mix” for CA, Il, NY, and the USA as a whole. ( Surely these folks must know that electrons do not have social security numbers.) It matters very little where an electron gets scooted along due to a delta magnetic flux / delta time. State boundaries have very little effect.
But according to my definition and EPRI’s, although each incremental new load due to plugging in a car will be filled by a call to burn coal, each incremental new source will result in turning off a natural gas burning plant.
I see you used the term “marginal generation mix.” This might or might not mean the same thing as my term “marginal response,” but I would try to persuade you that the “generation mix” in operation at any given time, is not just massively oomphed up as a whole, when loads change. My term “marginal response” is intended to mean which of the various resources would be selected. And then I would remind you that $1 is less than $4 and that fact has a powerful influence on how the selections would be made.
In the end I must reiterate that I am all for plugging in cars when it makes sense to do so.
The right answer in my opinion is to make cars very efficient so that plugging them in does not force excessive fuel use by power plants of any kind. Then I would include hybrid equipment, including motors and generators, and even a very small engine. Now park that car next to your house, connect it appropriately, and run the small car engine and generator as the cogeneration system, sending the heat to the house. Now we do not have to come up with extra money for the cogeneration system.
Even the car should not be a cost since it would replace an existing car. Plumbing stuff is cheap.
Getting people interested in a strange but innovative car concept will not happen as long as car companies keep the status quo rolling along with conversions to plug-in systems that serve to shift from oil to coal. Check out the 100mpg Hummer, the 100mpg Fisker, and the 100mpg Bright van to see how things are shaping up.
Jim Bullis, Miastrada Co. Says (31 mai 2009 at 9:14 PM):
“Now park that car next to your house, connect it appropriately, and run the small car engine and generator as the cogeneration system, sending the heat to the house. Now we do not have to come up with extra money for the cogeneration system.”
No? What happens to your house when you take its heating system on a two week ski vacation?
And suppose your house happens to be located in that part of the country in which most if not all heating could be done with solar. Hasn’t your cogen/car system incentivized people away from solar heat, since they’ve already paid for the natural gas burning cogen system?
Jim Bullis,
31 May 2009 at 9:01 PM
Yes, that’s exactly how it will work. It heats the house and generates electricity as a by-product. Since home heating and residential electricity consumption are tightly correlated, it helps the utility to shave the peaks and since the electricity is generated very,very close to where its needed, there are less transmission losses and lower grid utilisation. Almost perfect, except for one pesky detail: it still burns fossil fuels.
Null_Hypothesis
31 May 2009 at 11:01 AM
Perhaps I can help you with a simpler calculation to get a ballpark figure. Start off by taking the yearly average production of a solar panel in a given location. This might need some googling around to get the figure for your area, but you will find it. The figure for The Netherlands is 800 – 1000 Wh per Watt peak per year. More sunny locations can reach 2000 Wh/Wp/year, I believe.
Assume a solar installation with a bit of diy costs $5/Wp. Then assume 10% depreciation + interest per year. So the yearly cost of solar is $0.50 per Wp and that will generate between 0.8 and 2 kWh. A drop of that cost to $1/Wp is widely expected and that would bring the kWh price to well below $0.10/kWh.
James writes:
You’re deeply nuts.
1061: “The mythos I MEANT was the common one among the anti-nuclear community, loosely expressed as “Omigawd, it’s radioactive! We’re all gonna DIE!””
Odd. I don’t see that one occur with any frequency at all.
You’re the only one saying it, and the only one I’ve heard use it.
PS why do the doctors and nurses run out of the room and hide behind a lead sheet when they X-Ray you? After all, you’re OK being zapped by it when looking for a broken bone…
bobberger writes:
Answered, in this very forum, again and again. Have you been paying attention?
Nuclear is too expensive and getting more so. Private industry refuses to invest in it without massive subsidies, even after 50+ years of industry experience. Meanwhile, solar and wind are steadily getting cheaper, and the fact of variable availability only means we need smart grids.
Further to my posts at #1012 & #1013. First, I’ll respond to some of the comments: Mark (#1014) I note you don’t give a cite for your assertion and point out that my cite stated that vole populations were thriving despite mutagenetic effects. Kevin (#1016) I was not particularly interested in the ‘better than’ argument, just whether James’ assertion that Chernobyl was a thriving ecosystem, or Hank’s that it wasn’t was closest to what the research was saying. Hank (#1020) I think it’s quite specious to suggest I’d been swallowing anything from other blogsters, particularly as, if you look back through my posting history on this site I take care to go to the primary source material in most instances. All the cites I gave above came direct from google scholar not via secondary sources. I note that, like Mark, you choose to pooh-pooh the findings without backing up your assertions with any sources other than telling me to “Check the citing papers to see the subsequent history” – a perfect opportunity to link to said citing papers I would have thought. I expected better from you, seriously.
Now the snarking is out of the way I’ll move on to the promised results of my search of ISI WoS. As most veiwers will not be able to access the links I’ll just post the title, authors, journal & date and give the pertinent extracts from the abstracts.
To be clear, I Searched under Chernobyl in the subject field, and 2007-2009 in the year field. Having generated something in the region of 700 results I then filtered by subject area to find those that related to ecology, ecological genetics and similar. I present some highlights of the results in no particular order:
Adaptation and impairment of DNA repair function in pollen of Betula verrucosa and seeds of Oenothera biennis from differently radionuclide-contaminated sites of Chernobyl.
Boubriak, I. I.; Grodzinsky, D. M.; Polischuk, V. P.; Naumenko, V. D.; Gushcha, N. P.; Micheev, A. N.; McCready, S. J.; Osborne, D. J.
Annals of Botany Volume: 101 2008
“Key Results: Birch pollen collected in 1987 failed to perform unscheduled DNA synthesis, but pollen at gamma/beta-emitter sites has now recovered this ability. At a site with high levels of combined alpha- and γ/beta-emitters, pollen still exhibits hidden damage, as shown by reduced unscheduled DNA synthesis and failure to repair lesions in rDNA repeats properly. Evening primrose seed embryos generated on plants at the same gamma/beta-emitter sites now show an improved DNA repair capacity and ability to germinate under abiotic stresses (salinity and accelerated ageing). Again those from combined alpha- and gamma/beta-contaminated site do not show this improvement. Conclusions: Chronic irradiation at γ/beta-emitter sites has provided opportunities for plant cells (both pollen and embryo cells) to adapt to ionizing irradiation and other environmental stresses. This may be explained by facilitation of DNA repair function.”
Mutation processes in the natural populations of Drosophila and Hirundo rustica from Ukrainian radiation contaminated territories
Kozeretskaia, I A; Protsenko, A V; Afanas’eva, E S; Rushkovskii, S R; Chuba, A I; Miusse, T A; Meller, A P
Tsitol Genet Volume: 42 2008
“The results point out to possible reverse dependence among the level of chromoso-mal instability of birds, the rate of lethal mutations in sex chromosome of Drosophila and the density of radioactive pollution.”
Cytogenetic Effects in Scots Pine Populations from the Bryansk Region Radioactively Contaminated As a Result of the Chernobyl NPP Accident
Geraskin, S. A.; Dikareva, N. S.; Oudalova, A. A.; Spiridonov, S. I.; Dikarev, V. G.
Radiatsionnaya Biologiya Radioekologiya Volume: 48 2008
“Aberrant cell frequency in root meristem of germinated seeds collected from four populations of Scots pine in the Bryansk Region that was radioactively contaminated as a result of the accident at the Chernobyl NPP in 1986 significantly exceeded the control level durring all three years of study (2003-2005). An analysis of cytogenetic disturbances occurrence in dependence on radiation situation characteristics such as Cs-137 and Sr-90 content in pine cones, (CS)-C-137 specific activity in soil, and calculated doses absorbed by pine tree generative organs shows an increase in biological effect with dose burden increasing.”
The state of the reproductive system of several fish species from water bodies polluted with radionuclides during the Chernobyl catastrophe.
Belova, N. V.; Emel’yanova, N. G.; Makeeva, A. P.; Ryabov, I. N.
Journal of Ichthyology Volume: 47 2007
” It was shown that the total number and the degree of disturbances in gonads of the studied fish species were positively correlated with the levels of pollution of water bodies: in the cleanest water body, Teterev River, the proportion of fish with gonads without considerable deviations was about 78%; in the Kiev Reservoir, 67%; in the water cooler, 51%; and in Lake Glubokoe, 45%. By the number and pattern of gonad anomalies, species specificity in their response to the radiation background was revealed. A smaller degree of damage of sexual cells and gonads in unisexual (triploid) populations of goldfish Carassius auratus reproducing gynogenetically, as compared to bisexual (diploid) populations, was detected. Among postemergency generations of the studied fish species, in all water bodies the number and degree of gonad disturbances were in F2-4, in Kiev Reservoir and Teterev River, this was most likely accounted for by the phenomenon of prolonged mutagenesis.”
Antioxidants in eggs of great tits Parus major from Chernobyl and hatching success
Moller AP (Moller, Anders Pape)1, Karadas F (Karadas, Filis)2, Mousseau TA (Mousseau, Timothy A.)
JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY B-BIOCHEMICAL SYSTEMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL PHYSIOLOGY Volume: 178 2008
“Concentrations of total yolk carotenoids and vitamins A and E were depressed near Chernobyl compared to concentrations in a less contaminated Ukrainian study area and a French control study area, and all antioxidants showed dose-dependent relationships with all three dietary antioxidants decreasing with increasing level of radiation at nest boxes. These effects held even when controlling statistically for potentially confounding habitat variables and covariation among antioxidants. Laying date was advanced and clutch size increased at nest boxes with high dose rates. Hatching success increased with increasing concentration of vitamin E, implying that hatching success decreased at boxes with high levels of radiation, eventually eliminating and even reversing the higher potential reproductive output associated with early reproduction and large clutch size.”
Birds prefer to breed in sites with low radioactivity in Chernobyl
Moller AP (Moller, A. P.), Mousseau TA (Mousseau, T. A.) 2007
“Great tit Parus major and pied flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca significantly avoided nest boxes in heavily contaminated areas, with a stronger effect in flycatchers than in tits. These preferences could not be attributed to variation in habitat quality or resource abundance, as determined by analyses of habitat use and the relationship between radiation and life-history characters. Likewise, none of these effects could be attributed to individuals of a specific age breeding in the most contaminated areas.”
I could go on, but it seems that as more work has been done on the ecological effects of Chernobyl, the more the evidence points towards Hank’s POV than James’. I find it interesting that google scholar failed to pick up on any of these references when I was doing my initial search, in fact I struggled to find anything written before 2000 on this subject there. Makes me wonder whether there is more to this story than I gave it credit for at the time: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=216412
Hey Chris, thanks for doing the legwork! I’m keeping this list of cites.
“First, I’ll respond to some of the comments: Mark (#1014) I note you don’t give a cite for your assertion and point out that my cite stated that vole populations were thriving despite mutagenetic effects.”
Uh, how do you find a vole in nature that has not been carried to term? It’s hard enough to do for humans, where we have them going to hospital…
So how should there be a cite?
Unless voles work and play and live in a way that means we can and will watch each of them all day every day (or a significantly large fraction of it) how can we see the rate at which voles get eaten
Maybe you should give a citation that shows that DNA damage from radiation is benign at worst, then maybe your thesis that the voles are A-OK may have some traction.
As it is, we KNOW radioactive fallout is deleterious to organic life forms. It’s when we put all that radioactive waste in big barrels and hide them far from people. The deleterious effects are well studied.
YOU are now asserting that this is not the case with voles and other animals. What is the mechanism that removes the effects (yet is not seen in human studies) and how effective is it?
Chris, thank you for a lesson in how unreliable Google and Scholar can be. I knew you were away from the research tools, but expected others to leap into the discussion without looking that paper up — as happened — and meant to snark that tendency, figuring anyone who bothered to try would find the retraction of the paper:
I found the paper I hinted at above really easily — last week. I thought, aha, this is an easy one to leave for others to do, they will find this easily and realize they _had_ to check the citing papers or their comments will be pointless.
So I thought, hey, by the time you (Chris) get to your library, it’ll have settled out.
At that point, RC’s server crashed (sigh).
Today it took fifteen minutes of searches within results to find it with Scholar and regular Google. I missed breakfast ….
You’ve taught me a lesson, and I thank you. On this medium, asking others to do the work is a mistake; being coy or snarky is self-indulgence that an amateur like me can’t afford.
Petard, bang, hoist again ….
Here’s the point:
The “voles” paper was both widely blogged and widely cited — 52 cites in Scholar today.
It’s been retracted.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v390/n6655/full/390100b0.html
As I said, last week this was easy to find. Today it took ten minutes and searches within searches.
Ironically, today, a “lessons learned” paper popped to the top of the search results for me:
http://www.nsrl.ttu.edu/personnel/RJBaker/Publications
PDF] ►Working in a radioactive zone, two scientists learn tough lessons about politics, bias and …
RK Chesser, RJ Baker – nsrl.ttu.edu
This is a heartfelt piece, which I seriously recommend to all interested in any of the subjects touched on here
Mark, I don’t want to argue with you as I know how much you love it ;)
I’ll just note that it’s very easy to prove what we “KNOW” – all you need is to provide a reference, something lacking again in your reply. I thought baseless assertions were the province of the denialsphere, like Hank you can do better then this.
I’ll also point out that it wasn’t my thesis, it was that of Baker et al. in Nature, as they said: “Despite these DNA changes, vole populations thrive and reproduce in the radioactive regions around the Chernobyl reactor”. It has to be said though, that paper was retracted 10 issues later. The reason? The levels of genetic change weren’t as high as they stated ( http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v390/n6655/full/390100b0.html )
I followed Hank’s advice on tracking the citations of that reference & found the likes of these from ISI WoS (my emphasis):
Effects of chronic radiation exposure on small mammals in the Chernobyl exclusion zone
Jackson D, Copplestone D, Stone DM
NUCLEAR ENERGY-JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH NUCLEAR ENERGY SOCIETY Volume: 43 2004
“Field sites investigated in this study, during 2001 2003, exhibited external gamma dose rates varying from 0.1 muSv h(-1) to 140 muSv h(-1). Corresponding mean concentrations of (CS)-C-137 in the top 20 cm of soil varied from about 6 x 10(2) to 3 x 10(6) Bq kg(-1) dw (dry weight). Little impact is evident on populations of small mammals in these areas, either for species diversity or overall abundance, although there is a slight (not statistically significant) trend for increasing spleen weight in the bank vole with increasing levels of contamination. Previous suggestions that populations contain a preponderance of juveniles and sub-adults at the highest contaminated sites are not supported.”
Exposure to chronic, low-dose rate gamma-radiation at chornobyl does not induce point mutations in Big Blue (R) mice
Wickliffe JK, Bickham AM, Rodgers BE, Chesser RK, Phillips CJ, Gaschak SP, Goryanaya JA, Chizhevsky I, Baker RJ
NUCLEAR ENERGY-JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH NUCLEAR ENERGY SOCIETY Volume: 43 2004
“Mutant frequencies and the mutation spectra were examined in exposed and reference samples of Big Blue(R) mice following 90 days exposure (cumulative absorbed dose = 3 Gy) to the Chornobyl environment. No significant increase in the mutant frequency or bias in the mutational spectrum was observed in exposed individuals. This finding suggests that low-dose rate γ-irradiation at Chornobyl does not induce point mutations and that cumulative, chronically absorbed doses do not induce the some genetic effects as acute doses of the same magnitude.”
Assessing the genotoxicity of chronic environmental irradiation by using mitochondrial DNA heteroplasmy in the bank vole (Clethrionomys glareolus) at Chornobyl, Ukraine
Wickliffe JK, Chesser RK, Rodgers BE, Baker RJ
ENVIRONMENTAL TOXICOLOGY AND CHEMISTRY Volume: 21 2002
” Our results, in conjunction with previous molecular genetic research on small mammals from Chornobyl, suggest that chronic exposure to environmental ionizing radiation does not increase the number of nucleotide substitutions, as predicted by studies using acute or subacute exposures. Thus, cumulative models of radiation risk would not appear to follow simple linear functions derived from high doses and dose rates… examination of these data does not indicate that a significant risk to mtDNA exists in native rodents chronically exposed to both internal and external radiation.”
And, away from rodents:
Lack of demonstratable effects of pollutants on cyt b sequences in wood ducks from a contaminated nuclear reactor cooling pond
Johnson KP, Stout J, Brisbin IL, Zink RM, Burger J
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH Volume: 81 1999
“Very low haplotype diversity was observed overall, and no case of mutation between female and offspring could be satisfactorily documented. This suggests that the levels of radioactive contamination in these cooling ponds have little effect on the mutation rate of mitochondrial DNA in these waterfowl and that mitochondrial DNA may not be as sensitive an indicator as previously anticipated.”
“I’ll just note that it’s very easy to prove what we “KNOW” – all you need is to provide a reference, something lacking again in your reply.”
OK, so why are radioactive substances kept away from human habitation?
Any ideas?
Toxicity, maybe?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_contamination
http://www.springerlink.com/content/n14n8u456285427q/
http://www.angelfire.com/nb/hazsub/safrad.html
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/NRBE/NRadBioEffects.html
OK?
I swear, that link worked just a few minutes ago, I checked it in Preview. Let me see if I can find an alternate. Try one of these; verified in Preview as of the moment I post this:
Growing Up with Chernobyl » American Scientist
Working in a radioactive zone, two scientists learn tough lessons about politics, bias and the challenges of doing good science …
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/growing-up-with-chernobyl/1
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~dmo2/Chesser%20Baker%2006%20Chernobyl.pdf
Hank,
My post (#1076) was being written as you wrote yours it seems. As you can see I had noted the retraction but the reasons for it are…surprising… given the context of your earlier hints.
I read the article by Chesser & Baker with interest (the link doesn’t work but cutting the segment of title from there into google scholar finds it). As an insect ecologist I am very used to counter-intuitive results and also the pitfalls of working with more than one (virtually indistinguishable) species.
What lead me into this quagmire of seemingly contradictory results was the seemingly constant back-and-forth between yourself, James & others that lacked any hard evidence to back up claims. Given this is a science site I thought this a bit off and hope that I’ve altered that balance somewhat. What is clear is that (unsuprisingly after only 22 years) the science remains unsettled and that (again unsuprising to any ecologist) lab-based studies often miss things that fieldwork shows up (and vice versa).
The take-home message (for me at least) is that whilst there is good evidence that the exclusion zone has become a haven for wildlife there is evidence that the residual radiation is harmful in some respects to some, but seemingly not all, species and that it is not (yet) clear that said radiation effects are wholly deleterious.
That being said, I’d rather this “experiment” is not repeated on a greater scale than we have seen so far.
A secondary message is never trust others to do your work for you! ;)
(Captcha – wrong cunard, I think the oracle has spelling problems…)
Getting beyond the bickering, the question comes down to: Is it better to fund innovation (e.g. NASA-style moon-landing for green tech) or is it better to forcefully change the economy with a purported minimal global impact (for moral principles and setting an example for the world)?
I think that the latter is perfectly valid, but it seems like the former *may* be better.
Instead of attacking each other, please debate this question.
Once again — for emphasis.
The original “voles” paper was retracted — because of errors in their assumptions, method, and analysis, which they detail in the American Scientist paper linked above.
Check what you’ve written and consider the exercise that scientists who wrote and published papers based on the original “vole” paper have to go through.
It’s good practice in saying “I was wrong because I based my conclusion on a paper that’s been retracted.”
Check for subsequent corrections and retractions in the fifty-plus papers that cited the original and drew conclusions based on the erroneous information; see how they do it, or how they discuss it if their conclusions have other bases sufficient for support.
This is how science works. Painfully at times.
Barton Paul Levenson Says (1 juin 2009 at 5:00 AM):
“Answered, in this very forum, again and again. Have you been paying attention?”
You do realize that while just repeating something over and over may convince the hard of thinking that it’s so, it doesn’t actually change reality?
“Nuclear is too expensive and getting more so. Private industry refuses to invest in it without massive subsidies, even after 50+ years of industry experience.”
But by reasonable estimates of actual construction costs, solar appears to cost as much or more. (If you dispute that, let’s see your figures. Your might start by looking up current prices for solar panels, and doing the multiplication.) Furthermore, if nuclear gets massive subsidies, they’re fairly well hidden. What it gets in this country is a massive anti-subsidy of legal & bureaucratic delay that’s intended to make nuclear impossible in practice.
Meanwhile all the alternative technologies get a lot of their subsidies right out in the open. Tax breaks for wind & solar, anyone? Hydroelectric power built & run by the government?
Radiation effects are like climate change — small effects emerging from a noisy background. We know the basic physics involved, we know the damage caused. Demonstrating a particular kind of damage in any particular study requires a long timeline or a huge population. That, really, is what I tried to say.
Like climate, radiation effects probably wouldn’t even be noticed by a prescientific culture, in the background noise. Regrettably, such low rates of change are sufficient to explain the Fermi paradox
For Zirb’s question — so far nobody has managed to change an economy from the top down, successfully, for very long. Changing individual transactions to limit particular forcings — like chlorofluorocarbons or DDT or salmonella — works across different economies, when the public health people cooperate.
James, your statement ““Nuclear is too expensive and getting more so. Private industry refuses to invest in it without massive subsidies, even after 50+ years of industry experience.”
But by reasonable estimates of actual construction costs, solar appears to cost as much or more. ”
Is not bourn out by the real world.
The nuclear power lobby have repeatedly demanded that the public pick up the tab for insurance of their power stations. They say that the insurance industry won’t insure them. But that surely means that insuring such buildings is either not a reasonable risk or that they don’t want to pay that much for insurance.
This is not the case with solar or wind power.
>> “… there are some pretty basic arguments which cannot be dismissed lightly (like the simple fact that the wind doesn’t always blow, that the sun doesn’t always shine and that energy storage on a large scale is a non-trivial challenge”
> “Answered, in this very forum, again and again. Have you been paying attention?”
I must have missed that one. Let me guess: the answer was 42?
Sorry – but that claim is so utterly bizarre, that I almost fell off my chair laughing. I’m sure this has been discussed here over and over like it has been in just about any forum even remotely related to environmental and energy issues for decades… but “answered”? Come on now. Proving that you can run the entire electricity demand for whole economies on nuclear is easy because it’s been done. All you have to show for wind and solar plus storage is ideas. It is (or will be) possible, no doubt, but is it the right (fastest, cheapest, most reliable) way to go? If there is an unequivocal answer to that, I’m sure I can find it by simply using the search function up there in the right corner on realclimate, correct?
Re Chesser & Baker, voles, &c:
I too found that paper interesting, when I finally got to it – non-working links, paywalls, and a pdf that only displays every other page notwithstanding – but I have to say that it seems to support my point of view more than it does Hank’s. (But of course I’m biased :-))
One thing that seems to have been overlooked in this barrage of cites and counter-cites is that all the papers look at details. They’re not just not seeing the forest for the trees, they’re looking at genetic differences in one tree species without evaluating the tree. Or the vole paper: sure, their conclusions were wrong because they didn’t realize that they were looking at four different species, but we can still take home the fact that voles were there to be examined. (Aside for urbanites: how many voles do you think you could find in your neighborhood?)
So how do we get past that multiplicity of details, and look at the health of an ecosystem? I don’t have an answer that’s much better that just living with it & looking at it over a long time. I do think a long view, maybe one longer than a human lifetime, is needed: if we go back to the fishery example, and just take snapshots each year, could we say from any one year that there was a problem?
Nor can we use the health of individuals as a good proxy for ecosystem health. Does it matter to the ecosystem if the voles around Chernobyl have a higher miscarriage rate than elsewhere, so long as the remaining birth rate is high enough to produce a self-sustaining population? All living things produce more offspring than are needed to replace themselves (cite Darwin, Charles: “The Origin of Species &c”). Isn’t a higher mutation rate due to increased radiation just another aspect of that “From the war of Nature, from famine and death…” that makes the whole thing work?
#1066 James
Whatever wins, wins. Do that.
If the car is gone, you still have the natural gas system you had before.
You own the engine-generator system because you own the car. Use it for cogen if it works. And you can run airconditioners from the heat also, though these would need to be produced in a size suitable for household needs. There is no science needed for this stuff; it has all been known in the industrial world for a long time.
James wrote: “But by reasonable estimates of actual construction costs, solar appears to cost as much or more [than nuclear].”
That is flatly wrong. As has been repeatedly documented on this very thread.
James wrote: “If you dispute that, let’s see your figures.”
Such figures have been repeatedly posted, and you ignore them because they contradict your pre-existing beliefs.
James wrote: “Your might start by looking up current prices for solar panels, and doing the multiplication.”
You might start by looking at the actual costs of actual utility-scale solar projects that are currently under development, both photovoltaic and solar thermal. Unless of course you prefer back-of-the-envelope figgerin’ based on made-up assumptions that can be made to favor nuclear power no matter what.
James wrote: “Furthermore, if nuclear gets massive subsidies, they’re fairly well hidden.”
Federal subsidies for nuclear power are not at all “hidden” and are well-documented, as you can easily find for yourself if you bother to look.
James wrote: “What it gets in this country is a massive anti-subsidy of legal & bureaucratic delay that’s intended to make nuclear impossible in practice.”
The idea that the US nuclear regulatory system is “intended to make nuclear impossible” is absurd, laughable rubbish.
With all due respect, I once thought that you were a serious person interested in a serious discussion.
But since you have taken to describing the Chernobyl disaster as a “net improvement”, and have described the idea of supplying 100 percent of the USA’s electricity from CSP power plants on ONE PERCENT of the USA’s desert lands as reducing the country to nothing “cities surrounded by endless solar panels” and have said that a large-scale nuclear war would be preferable, and have now claimed that the NRC exists to “make nuclear impossible”, and have posted various other absurdities while ignoring substantive information presented about these matters in favor of obstinate repetition of your own ill-founded beliefs, I have come to realize that you are basically just goofing around here.
#1067
Right you are about the pesky detail.
But if you get twice as much electricity or more out of the natural gas that should make whatever reserves that exist last a long time.
But lets weigh the details:
Getting twice as much electricity from natural gas as you can get from the very best combined cycle generators seems like a good thing. I had originally thought it would displace coal plants, but according to my oft stated rule of the market, the new source would displace the most expensive of the options open to the utilities. Maybe it would be politically possible to enforce other actions, where the economic penalty was pallatable. Otherwise power from cogen would naturally be accepted by the utilities much in the same way they now accept solar, wind, and hydro. (Note in passing that even these perfect sources do not get into reducing coal use.)
So on with the weighing:
Cogen of the sort I describe is almost free. Perhaps the fraction of this power that exceeds what otherwise would be produced by central power plants should be ranked with solar and wind as ‘equivalent renewables’.
Solar and wind are not free. In fact, solar is so costly that we have to offer 30% of the cost back to the homeowner as a federal tax credit. (That is not free money from the sky. It is money that some others will have to make up for by paying more in taxes, now or later.) In California there is an additional 20% depending on some stuff about size of the PV panels said to be coming from the “utility and the state.” What comes from the utility comes from the rate paying customers (us) and state money is not growing on trees in California anymore. (Have you heard?) I keep saying that when everyone is getting a regbate, we might as well just pay them to ourselves and cut out the paperwork. And wind seems to be similarly in need of public money to make it viable as a business.
So we have competing options (1) an imperfect system of generating electricity at almost zero capital cost and (2) perfect? systems of generating electricity at very high capital cost.
The high cost options will fade rapidly as soon as we USA folks figure out that our government’s line of credit is maxed out.
#1067 Anne van der Bom
#1085 was responding to you.
Note to James, Hank Roberts & SecularAnimist:
Chernobyl was largely the result of Soviet industrial-military design practices, which included the provision that in case of war, the entire industrial infrastructure should be capable of rapid conversion to military production. Perhaps excusable, based on prior history with Germany, etc., perhaps not. Regardless, that design (RBMK) was intended for maximizing plutonium production, or electricity, at low cost. To quote from Richard Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly:
That’s another example of how short-term decisions based on bad information can lead to preventable disasters. No doubt the people responsible thought, at the time, that they were doing good by providing both economic and military “security”.
Much of the worst pollution from nuclear energy came from the secret weapons production areas, in both Britain (Sellafield), the US (Hanford) and the Soviet Union (the Tomsk etc. complex in the Urals). There was no need for it, and it still has to be cleaned up – but there is no reason for well-run nuclear plants would ever generate waste on that scale. That doesn’t mean that disposing of the ~200 tons of “spent” hot fuel rods that a nuclear power plant generates each year isn’t a problem. (By comparison, a similar size coal plant might produce close to 30 million tons of CO2 per year).
No question about those points, Ike.
Barry Brooks is doing a good job with this issue; GenIV reactors can burn the current waste, if built.
And coal plants also pollute with uranium and thorium in coal smoke — I recall reading that with really efficient capture of everything being carried off in smoke, coal ash can be richer in fissionables than much of the ore being mined. Bioaccumulation at work.
James says: Meanwhile all the alternative technologies get a lot of their subsidies right out in the open.
Someone is misinformed on the topic of subsidies for fossil fuels and coal – like the $2.4 billion for “clean coal” at the DOE, or the “Alternative Fuels Program” for supporting coal-to-gasoline projects? The DOE subsidies for oil shale plans in Utah and Colorado?
Indeed, if you add up just the direct subsidies to fossil fuels from the federal government, it adds up to over $30 billion a year – for example, the $18 billion Congressional package to boost a natural gas pipeline from Alaska to tar sands in Canada. Indirect subsidies related to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, etc., are even larger. That category also includes the recent $700 billion bailout of investment banks who are heavily involved in fossil fuel trading, from Goldman Sachs to Morgan Stanley. Instead of billion dollar investments in renewables, a good chunk of that money was used to buy up existing petroleum storage and fill it to capacity, and also to place bets on oil futures markets.
However, anyone who attacks those subsidies is also portrayed as attacking national security, because maintaining access to foreign oil supplies as well as to domestic fossil fuel reserves is critical to the defense of the nation – that’s a nice PR line. See the Council on Foreign Relations disinformation on tar sands, for more examples.
Following such advice would lead to many problems in the Canadian Northwest, despite the apparent economical gains – which, for the region, only consist of jobs. The long-term pollution of the watershed will cost far more than that to clean up – for the locals, the result is a long-term economic and ecological disaster.
Similarly, instead of investing in electric vehicles (far more efficient than any internal combustion vehicle), the investments would continue to go to fossil fuels, just because it is cheaper and more profitable – thanks in large part to the massive government subsidies for fossil fuels. This government-industrial alliance is a large part of the reason that renewable energy costs are still higher than fossil fuel costs.
Notice here that our trade agreements with Canada mostly forbade U.S. states from banning or even regulating tar sand oil imports on the basis of ecological or economic concerns. In reality, such trade agreements are simply a method of evading the democratic decision-making process. As a result, decisions get made by small groups of people, who often rely on bad information – i.e. buying into Conoco tar sand projects when oil was at $140 a barrel. “It will rise forever”, said the fossil fuel PR folks…
Looking at all that, it’s not so hard to agree that good decisions must be based on good information, is it? If so, then people should base energy-related decisions on answers to the following questions:
1) Are climate change projections based on long-lived greenhouse gas levels reliable, as in the IPCC reports, and more recent research and reviews?
2) Are the economic & ecological projections based on climate projections also reliable, at least roughly?
3) Is renewable energy (solar, wind, and advanced biofuels) technically and economically capable of replacing current global fossil fuel energy demand?
I don’t see how you can argue that the answers are not all yes, over the multi-decade timescale. However, the particular renewable energy mix needed to replace fossil fuel sources will vary widely from region to region – no cookie-cutter type top-down approach will work, which rules out Marxist and neoclassical solutions.
Instead, regional planners should rely on ecological-economic analysis, and definitely not on World Bank/IMF economic advice. That goes for U.S. state governors as well as for Third World leaders.
It’s pretty obvious; look at the results in Chad (Exxon-World Bank) and Ecuador (Chevron-Texaco), after they followed that same economically sanctioned advice and took those fossil fuel subsidies: warfare and ecological devastation.
Chad-Sudan is a perfect example – the neoclassically-inspired World Bank dumped $4 billion into Exxon’s Cameroon-Chad pipeline (easily extendable to nearby Darfur) – it was supposed to bring peace and plenty, instead a civil war broke out. On the other side of Sudan, the Marxist-inspired Chinese government built their own pipeline into southern Sudan, where civil war has raged ever since oil was discovered in the late 1970s-early 1980s (by Chevron).
What if the World Bank had instead given $4 billion to a solar photovoltaic program for Chad and Sudan? They are ideally located, after all. The economic arguments in favor of that approach are a lot more solid than those in favor of more taxpayer-financed fossil fuel subsidies.
Mark et al, legislating away otherwise potentially costly possible liabilities is not the same as a subsidy.
[Response: Of course it is. It avoids the need to take out insurance for those potential liabilities and therefore saves the companies the equivalent of the fair price of that insurance policy. – gavin]
Mark Says (1 juin 2009 at 1:28 PM):
“James, your statement… Is not bourn out by the real world.”
OK, where’s your evidence? I have in the past posted links to actual costs for wind power construction on a scale similar to a nuclear plant. I’ve posted links to actual price quotes (which I think are pretty low-ball teaser rates, but I’m bending over backwards to be fair). They come out higher than the cost of nuclear plant construction in an environment free of artificial legal & bureaucratic delays. I don’t make up those figures, and I’ve yet to see anyone really challenge any of the assumptions except by hand-waving on the order of “Oh, the price is sure to come down”.
“The nuclear power lobby have repeatedly demanded that the public pick up the tab for insurance of their power stations.”
Now here you have the situation almost exactly backwards. The public isn’t picking up the tab: the operators of nuclear power plants are required by law to pay into a fund (see Price-Anderson act) to cover insurance. This might be considered a subsidy if the rates were less than what’s needed to cover losses, if it weren’t for one inconvenient fact: no other form of power generation is required to carry similar coverage. Fossil-fueled plants aren’t required to insure against environmental & health damage – the government or the affected individuals pick up the tab. Hydroelectric dams (most owned by the government) don’t (as far as I’ve been able to discover, at least) carry coverage against catastrophic failure – if one failed, the government would declare a disaster – as it did in this much smaller local case http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,321029,00.html – and the taxpayers would be left footing the bill. So why should nuclear power be treated differently?
SecularAnimist Says (1 juin 2009 at 2:17 PM):
“You might start by looking at the actual costs of actual utility-scale solar projects that are currently under development, both photovoltaic and solar thermal.”
OK, let’s take Nevada Solar One. According to this article
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2007/0903/082.html it cost $266 million, and produces 64 MW of power at peak. That works out to about $4.1 billion per GW. But don’t forget that that’s PEAK power. Allowing for nights, cloudy days, and occlusion when the sun’s near the horizon, the long-term average might be say 40% of that (if you don’t like that number, justify another), which puts the cost at a bit over $9 billion per GW of 90% availability generation.
Against that you can put this list of actual & projected costs for nuclear power plants: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_new_nuclear_power_plants Or, of course, you can come up with your own sources. Just make sure you’re counting the cost of building & running separately from the cost of delays due to opposition from anti-nuclear advocates.
#1092 Hank Roberts
Who is Barry Brooks and is it really true that GenIV reactors can burn the waste from the old ones?
Presumably, the Gen IV reactors do not make another kind of waste.
How fast can they be built?
How do these relate to the technology used in France?
Can you provide references?
Ike Solem Says (1 juin 2009 at 4:54 PM):
“Someone is misinformed on the topic of subsidies for fossil fuels and coal – like the $2.4 billion for “clean coal” at the DOE, or the “Alternative Fuels Program” for supporting coal-to-gasoline projects?”
Now how can research into ANY not yet commercially implemented technology be considered a subsidy? Maybe after the technology is commercially implemented, the research could arguably be back-loaded as support for R&D, but it’s hardly a subsidy up front. By the same token, there’s also research funding for all sorts of different technology. For instance, here’s http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/solar_america/funding_opportunities.html $350 million for solar.
In addition, it’s not that great a stretch to see that in addition to direct funding, a lot of basic materials research in semiconductors, nanotechnology, and similar spills over into PV. If someone is investigating say carbon nanotube-based solar cells (and people are: http://www.greenoptimistic.com/2008/06/19/nanotube-solar-cells-improve-efficiency-10-times/ ), what’s their funding listed under?
Ike, you left off the exemptions that I and every individual take on their income tax return that allows us to buy a little more gasoline as more subsidy. Throwing everything into the pile including the kitchen sink seriously detracts from your point. In your list there is one (and notable it is) that could be construed as a subsidy to the fossil fuel industry.
I hate to break it to you, but presently fossil fuel is an absolute necessity for any level of our national security. That’s prima facie obvious given even cursory thought. And tar sands is relevant only in a teensy degree.
This does not detract from your general questions, which are quite good. Though I might not agree entirely with your answers which tend to simplicity. What rational do you have for assuming those African civil wars would not have broken out if only someone would have installed a pile of PV panels?
Gavin, so how much of the subsidy is realized and felt by the millions of entrepeneurs who incorporate — the sole potential benefit of which is limited liability? How about tort damages limited by the court to that which would not bankrupt the defendent corporation? Strikes me as one helluva of a “subsidy,” though I’m sure the corporation would think that crazy — correctly in my view.