Are people with serious interest in green power really anti nuclear power? (I don’t keep up to date on these things). I thought everybody with a brain agreed that it was one of the best options, but the general public NIMBY’s it to death because it’s “icky”.
It’s complicated. Most of the people who get paid to talk about this sort of thing for a living prefer not to even mention it. See, people think that nuclear power creates nuclear waste, which is, like, super bad, or something, right? It’s like a landfill but instead of just making an Indian cry, it makes him grow a second head. There are a lot of far-left environmentalist whack jobs that would prefer, instead of nuclear, to use the following:
Wind - Problem here is that it’s simply not efficient enough to power the United States by itself. In terms of space consumption, it loses to nuclear in a big way.
Solar - This had efficiency and space problems for a while too. We can check with Case to see how useful putting panels on your house are, but I don’t think there’s any question that, from a cost perspective, this tech hasn’t hit the sweet spot yet.
OTEC - Okay - we’re getting into the weeds now. OTEC stands for Oceanic Thermal Energy Converter. Basically you take cold water from maybe half a mile down in the ocean and warm water from the top of the ocean. Pass the warm water through a vacuum chamber surrounded and cooled by the cold water, causing it to effervesce. The gas in the low pressure chamber turns a turbine, generating energy. Then, you flow the water back out together. There’s an annual conference on these things - or there was, anyway - and this is a favorite of space loony Marshall Savage, but as far as I know nobody has as yet figured out anything even as simple as what in the chuffing hell lowering the surface temperature of the entire water mass of the planet Earth would do.
SPS - Solar Power Satellites. I ran this affirmative. You put satellites with big arrays of solar receiver panels in orbit and send all the energy they collect back to the Earth in the form of microwaves. You get more energy out of your collectors (because they’re outside the atmosphere) and you save on ground space, since you just have to build a microwave receiver. If this wasn’t so science fiction, I happen to think it would be one hell of a good idea, but it’s, you know, fiction.
De-development - Ted Trainer’s pet. These are people who think that we should eliminate fossil fuel energy and not replace it and instead revert back to society circa the Civil War. Seriously. There are people that argue that. I have seen rounds won on that claim.
Biomass - You take all the crap that you don’t use from all the things that you grow, set it on fire, and use that to make power. Would almost be a good idea were it not for the fact that that stuff is one hell of a lot dirtier than what you’re already burning.
Landfill Caps - You capture the gas that comes out of landfills and burn that. Well, problems. First off, you’re still burning greenhouse gases - you’re just not burning the stuff from these rocks over here, but instead the junk from this pile of crap over there. Either way, you’re keeping the carbon in the air and in circulation. There’s an argument that you’re cutting down on overall carbon circulation into the environment, but it’s pretty weak, and you could never get enough power this way anyway.
Hydro - Hydroelectric dams. This totally works. If you’ve got the geography for it. Which a lot of places don’t. It’s also expensive to set up and involves adjusting the landscape, which the more Sierra Club types tend to get a little itchy over. If Africa weren’t a festering ungoverned hellhole, they would have long since ascended to dominance of the world economy on the basis of their incredible potential for hydro power (Africa is basically a big flat table with water falling off on all sides). As it stands, this is a limited solution at best.
Geothermal - Take the heat from inside the Earth, turn a turbine. Unfortunately, this is even more geographically locked than hydropower (I’m pretty sure we’ve never successfully drilled through even a reasonably thick segment of the Earth’s crust).
Fusion - If you believe Pons and Fleishman, which you shouldn’t, fusion is the answer. Truth be told, it might very well be the answer for a thousand years from now. Right now, though, it’s impossible to start a fusion reaction and sustain it and exploit it for an economical amount of energy.
That’s all the stuff I remember from the topic. My research is about ten years dated at this point, though, but this was the topic that we beat the B-team from the best school in the nation on back when I was in high school. In front of Bill Shanahan. On a statism kritik. But nobody cares about that but me. Anyway, out of all of those, the position that makes the most economic sense is far and away nuclear power, but a lot of green types reject it because they perceive the waste as being some kind of threat, which it isn’t.
Thanks Brian, that’s a pretty nice breakdown of the various options I’ve heard of, and some I hadn’t. I know there’s been some developments here and there, but nothing that resolves the major criticisms you’ve listed.
“I ran this affirmative” didn’t make sense to me until I realized you were talking about a specific debate though.
My penultimate and triumphant year of high school CX debate back in 1998. The resolution that year was:
“Resolved that the federal government should establish a program to significantly increase the use of renewable energy in the U.S.”
To give you an idea of how hard it is to win the basic climate debate on the merits, I don’t think anybody on our entire squad (and we were good at that time - this was the last year one of the Tiffees was with us and I want to say we won state) actually tried to claim climate as an advantage. The procurement aff - which was “have the government put panels on federal buildings” - claimed oil shocks, as did the hydrogen aff. My SPS case built itself entirely off of an extra-topical space advantage. Tiffee ran Chesapeake Bay, which involved promoting organic farming in Massacusets and made every round burn down to a topicality debate that he routinely won. While it’s an indisputable fact that the average temperature of the Earth is increasing (contrary to what any number of right wing nutjobs will try and tell you), there’s actually not much agreement about what’s to be done about it at all (contrary to what Al Gore and the environmental lobby will tell you). That’s actually one of the biggest problem with Gore and his ilk - they’re basically jumping up and down on stage and hooting like agitated chimps and making a big deal out of how there’s a problem without providing an effective and practical solution. It’s the difference between giving a presentation on “Climate change is bad” and giving one on “this hyrdogen fuel technology will be economically competitive with fossil fuels for vehicular transport with a little bit of government help, which, when you factor in the approximate cost of the environmental impact of current energy consumption, actually turns out to be a net gain.” The latter is a policy presentation that can inform action in public and private sectors while the former is just a politician netting himself more speaking gigs.
One note on hydro.
I’m not sure if Africa can reasonably be described as a “big flat table with water falling off on all sides”, but if so, then hydro wouldn’t work well.
For hydro, you need a decent volume of water (Africa presumably has this), but you also need significant grade changes that you can readily capture.
IIUC, the power by turbines and such is generated as water descends. If the water only descends 2 feet, then you won’t get much power.
So the way you deal with this is by finding a location where there is a natural bottleneck of some sort (i.e. a narrow valley), building a dam, letting the water level rise to near the top of the dam, and then capturing power as the water descends through the dam innards.
But when you build a high dam, the water backs up behind it. If you do this in a valley, you only flood the valley behind the dam. If you tried this in a relatively flat (non-valley) area, you’d need a tremendously wide dam and you’d flood a very large area to get a significant height differential from the top to the bottom of the dam.
Bottom line, hydro is only reasonably cost-effective and otherwise practical (not flooding too much land) in certain geographic settings. Africa may have some of those - I don’t know. But a flat wide area would not be a very good setting. And in general, the potential of hydro is limited by the number of reasonable geographic settings.
Yuck, we’d have a lot fewer trees.
Okay, I exaggerate using a term that my college Geography professor did. It’s not actually flat - but it DOES take the form of a massive plateau with lots of big rivers running off of it toward the sea. Just counting the natural waterfalls on the continent, they’ve got some of the best prospects in the world. I forget what the numbers are precisely, but it works out to be a pretty ridiculous hydro advantage for the continent. The problem, of course, is it’s mostly the political equivalent of a cross between a Keystone Kops short and The Holocaust, so big social projects like that just don’t happen.
I agree with your general assertion, though, that hydro is only of limited use because of the ancillary concerns associated with building a gargantuan concrete roadblock in the way of a massive river.
There’s a pretty good solution - charge enough for CO2 emissions such that the market responds, in whatever manner the market (broadly) sees best fit.
Note that a carbon tax and cap and trade COULD, in theory, be rather similar - a carbon tax just makes the charges somewhat more transparent. However, in reality, cap and trade’s problem is that it is more subject to political tinkering, and the little bit that I’ve read suggests that the current bill is far too riddled with free handouts and/or exemptions.
But in any case, the issue CAN be addressed by economics - charge people the “true” cost of CO2 emissions, and let individuals and corporations adjust. This would probably come down to a combination of reductions in CO2 generating activity (driving, especially with big vehicles, reduction in certain usage of heavy CO2 practices in industry and agriculture), implementation of existing methods for doing certain things in a lower-CO2 way (i.e. more nuclear, wind, solar, etc), and a push for innovation. I don’t think many folks could agree on which innovations are likely to be successful, but if there are big dollar rewards for successful innovations, then more stuff would be tried, and at least some of it would likely be successful and practical.
Unfortunately, some greens are reluctant to push carbon taxes or a really effective cap and trade system, because it would make the costs of the endeavor relatively transparent. Folks are reasonably happy to support green initiatives, up until the point that the pocketbook impact becomes obvious.
Lower CO2 emissions? Sure.
$5/gallon gasoline to achieve it? Hmm, maybe not.
FWIW, I’m not terribly happy about the opposition to carbon taxes/cap and trade from some corners on the right. But that’s a longer subject for a different post, perhaps.
Strictly speaking, I think it’s dishonest to complain that environmental / climate protection would negatively impact the economy. It’s not like you’re introducing arbitrary costs, you’re capturing costs that already exist but aren’t properly accounted for in the current system. You’re fixing broken incentives, not breaking them further.
I know this concept is foreign to the “all growth all the time” mentality of American economics and consumerism, but it always bothers me when people bring out economic impact as some sort of bogeyman (I’m not saying you’re doing this, just in general).
It’s a real and valid concern though. I understand your argument that it’s just capturing an externality that previously had been slipping through the caps but it’s a very real fact that additional costs will be imposed and the same old things we’ve always done will suddenly cost more.
It’s also why polluting developing nations are allowed to grow with less regard to the environment (like America did) while the focus for global control is on the rich nations that can “afford it.” There’s definitely money involved.
CLWheeljack - on a global, long-term basis, I think you’re right.
But that’s hard to convey.
The benefits of reduced CO2 emissions are global, the costs are local (albeit local within each nook and cranny of the globe).
i.e. If I dump my trashcans on my neighbor’s lawn, the negative effects are immediate and easy to see, and can be readily dealt with at the level of existing political structures (I’d presumably be violating a local ordinance, and various local entities can deal with this).
But the benefits of the U.S. reducing CO2 emissions by, say, 20% from trendline are only partially realized in the U.S. - much of the benefit goes to the rest of the world. But the costs of the reduction are primarily borne in the U.S. The same applies if Russia reduces emissions. If EVERYONE reduces emissions, then all realize a benefit (we hope), but basically, we’re dealing with a case of tragedy of the commons here.
It’s further complicated by the fact that much of the benefit is realized at a potentially distant future date, and that the science is murky to an extent. (I’m not denying human-caused global warming - just saying that it’s somewhat poorly understood and accurate laboratory tests are difficult).
The problem with this approach is that you’re basically committing a hidden equivocation on the term value. We know the economic value of a thing by looking at how much people are willing to pay for it. By that metric, the current economic value of a greener planet is pretty damn small, all things considered. In its place, you’re replacing an arbitrary conception of value, which is all well and good, but it makes the idea of constructing an economic argument on that basis a little bit suspect. Everything gets even more complicated when you consider the fact that we have only a very loose notion of how much impact all of the stuff that we could control (like carbon emissions) actually has.
Unfortunately, the fact is that, from an economic scenario, you ARE introducing arbitrary costs, in much the same way as a sin tax on cigarettes and alcohol introduces an arbitrary cost on those items. What you’re trying to do, of course, is accurately value and capture “the environment” and inject it into the market, but because the process is necessarily arbitrary, you’re probably doomed to some amount of failure.
I’ll go all the way with this one - the economic impact of any governmental legislation with respect to climate change should be the primary and preeminent concern for lawmakers, because there is no tax you can enact that won’t function like a shotgun going off in a room full of people. Everybody will take some of the shot, and the burden is going to fall more on the consuming populace. If the tax is too big, you’ll tank your economy and nobody will have the money to pay for energy in the first place. If there’s no efficient, at least close-to-competitive alternative to fossil fuels, we’re screwed. We’re just done. It makes no sense to torpedo the economy on the way to being screwed, because we’ll eventually end up back on the stuff whether we want to or not because it’s what people can afford.
Fortunately, I think there’s a reasonable compromise that allows for development of cleaner energy without completely demolishing the economy. I think any solution is going to be hard on the public, but nuclear power options are already competitive to an extent (it’s how France runs) and would require the least stimulus to implement.
I’m not going to go over the pre-2006 climate change debate with you. You’re wrong on this. I can’t exactly make out what your argument is but do you not agree that anthropogenic climate change is taking place? Because if so, you just lost the argument, hard. This is a debate with science one one side and bloggers, politicians and Fox News on the other.
They’ve been wrong on every issue except, you know, when they were the only ones who even believed that climate change was occurring. Ten points. Ethanol is a political problem; both parties trade lies for votes in Iowa. It’s not like liberal pressure caused the ethanol industry - the evidence of climate change drove both parties to greenwashing as a way to get votes. Greenpeace, for example, is anti-ethanol. I agree with you on nuclear power, and I don’t know what you mean specifically by global cooling.
None of this matters though because I asked for an example of what SpoofyChop was claiming, that liberals are not cautious and conservatives are. Liberals are wrong about lots and lots of things (though not as many as conservatives ;) but I was looking for some kind of backup for Spoofy’s armchair psychology.
But why is it crap? Because you know more about the environment than hundreds of Nobel laureates or the UN or the Department of Energy or the IPCC or the European Environment Agency? I agree that health care and regulation are very important, but so are having arable land and stable weather. It would be awesome to be able to ignore all that Green crap and just focus on fixing the economy, but then what do we do when all the empirical evidence we have for climate change bears out? Can we just ask the planet nicely to go back to normal because Huzurdaddi and Michelle Malkin said it’s all good?
My post originally had a lot of swear words in it but who can curse at a dude who says ‘putz’? Darn you!
This is one of those areas they end up being right by accident - there’s nowhere near enough uranium around to replace oil. There’s theoretical options to work around that, but they’re all incredibly expensive research products sold by the congenital liars of the nuclear power industry. I’m not buying it.
It’s not an ecological disaster, but it doesn’t solve the problem either. For the general problem of solving climate change, I think Romm’s wedges concept is useful - nuclear is in there, but it’s only a fraction.
Actually, the costs are hidden and wildly distributed, so people have no idea what they’re paying for it, and even if they do the costs are borne almost entirely by other people; it’s a tragedy of the commons. “Every time I start my car a Bangladeshi kid will die 20 years from now” captures the problem concisely. The way to see how much people are really willing to pay for environmental destruction would be to actually assign the costs to them and see what happens.
Yeah, I’m a huge fan of Fox News. You have me nailed.
I argue against ‘overwhelming evidence.’ What do we have? We have ice core samples that say that CO2 going up and global temperatures are correlated, however correlation is not causation. Ah ha you say: We have blackbody radiation! Yes, I agree if, ceteris paribus, we increase CO2 to 700 ppm in our atmosphere, given our understanding of its dynamics, we will have an increase of 0.5 degrees. Note that is way lower than than environmentalists say would happen if we go to 700 ppm (Jason’s link says, and this is common with environmental tards that the costs are infinite! at that level). To get much larger numbers you need complicated feedback mechanisms. Further, we love to model the feedback mechanisms which amplify and aren’t as interested in those that dampen.
In short, we don’t have anywhere near enough research. More importantly, we don’t have enough research done by people that do not have a horse in the race. I’m a huge fan of a very large, potentially multi-nation, centralized, exceptionally well funded, project to get a close as is humanly possible to what the heck is going on. While I worry about such a project, since the environmental community loves to cry wolf, there has been considerable research so far and it seems to warrant further investigation. I would sign on, in a heart beat, for an outlandish amount of spending to go towards environmental research to nail this down (I am also for huge outlays from the federal government on alternative power research, since the private sector does a shitty job at basic research).
This question is very technical, bleating tards trying to make money off of it does not help one itoa.
The environmental movement is crap because it is the left’s answer to the religious right, except that the left got a raw deal. Both love to preach at the non-believers, both deal in credence goods, both employ the concept of infinite costs if their practices are not followed. However the right got a way better deal. They got a huge voting block and that voting block demands polices which are simply not that expensive (look I am pro abortion, but its just is not that big of an issue … and they haven’t even gotten that yet!). The left OTOH got a much smaller voting block and they demand policies which can be exceptionally costly, with global warming being the most costly one so far.
Now, on a per capita basis the greens are, I think (but I don’t have stats for this so I could be wrong) richer, so maybe the Left’s deal is better than I am portraying, but then again there are so many more religious wackjobs that they may contribute more financially than the greens. No idea.
Assign what costs? Sure pollution is an externality and thus a classic market failure. The question is what cost to you assign to CO2 emissions? Cap and Trade doesn’t really assign a cost since, in the final analysis all it is doing is given an arbitrary cap determine the costs, but how do you come up with the arbitrary cap, and if you have a good model for the arbitrary cap, which not then simply assign the cost and tax?
We need excellent, really excellent, government funded climate models. We need fine grained, government financed, economic models into which we can plug the climate models to calculate the impact and then we need to take that final result and tax carbon at that rate. It will take time and money to do this but it is the rational course (heck it may turn out that, in the end, we will have wasted the money since the final figure turns out to be tiny, but hey, at least we were prudent).
I was going to be snarky, but I’ll be fair instead since I could be missing something:
What are some examples of long-term government/scientist models that work well enough and are similar enough to this situation that would cause one to put any faith in them creating a global climate model that can spit out an arbitrary tax for one or many nations that is anywhere close to “efficient” (in the government-intrusion sense)?
From where I’m sitting, that question sounds like it would make a religious agnostic blush, but I’m open to ideas.
In defense of models in general, the machines you are sending this message though prove that models, at a minimum in some cases, can have extraordinary predictive power. You could reply that the models used to make those machines were far less complicated than those which are necessary to model climate and even worse (maybe?) the economy, and I agree that modeling these things with some level of accuracy will be technically daunting.
However, like many engineering problems, I think that it is a matter of dollars. If we dump enough dollars into the research then I think we will get some kind of solution and that solution, on the economics side, will produce better results than the one model made by the club of rome simply due to far more effort being applied to the problem.
Now it is possible it is not an engineering problem, that it is a basic science problem and we just don’t have the science, yet, to sufficiently describe this problem. Maybe, but we won’t know if we don’t try and if we don’t try we will make policy decisions based upon how sad polar bears swimming makes people.
PS: The tax would not be arbitrary, it would be based upon models, that is the whole idea!
I was referring to the environment in general. There’s well established methods for estimating the damages of polluting a river, or the impact of particulate emissions on death rates, or even stuff like the impact of driving a car to work on everyone else’s commute times, but we pretty uniformally don’t impose that cost back on the people producing it. So we really don’t know what the pricing preferences of people look like here, other than guessing based on election results. Maybe I’m not up to speed here, though.
Yes certainly, I must be getting dyslexic because I am failing at really obvious word choice lately. Have to give credit for at least trying to get beyond arbitrary bureaucratic numbers.