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Comments 105601 to 105650:

  1. Skeptical Science Firefox Add-on: Send and receive climate info while you browse
    I think this is great ... but have a problem. After installing (Firefox 3.6.12 in Ubuntu 10.10), my firefox tab freeze for extended period and it all becomes unusable. Disabling the add-on, all works fine again. :(
  2. What should we do about climate change?
    I like this as a summary. Got to page 7-8 and check out the estimates on geothermal and solar. Compare to the estimates in the upper section of p7. http://www.abare.gov.au/publications_html/energy/energy_10/ch_1.pdf
  3. What should we do about climate change?
    #79 lin How long will the uranium last? Try here: are uranium resources sufficient? The answer is, at the very least more than long enough until the next generation of reactors with advanced fuel cycles dramatically reduce the need for mined uranium. A recent MIT study came to the same conclusion. As for thorium, there is substantially more thorium than uranium available.
  4. Richard Treadgold at 16:05 PM on 28 October 2010
    Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
    scaddenp, The assertion was straightforward, as I quoted it:
    the additional CO2 is being produced by burning fossil fuels
    Land use change wasn't mentioned. No, I can't supply a reference for what you ask. But I didn't mention it either. You forgot my question: What is the evidence for an acceleration in the rising atmospheric level of CO2? When you say "temperature-induced rises in CO2 are feedbacks, not forcings", does that mean they don't form part of the increased amount in the atmosphere? But of course they do, and they are not anthropogenic, so they ought to be deducted from the anthro emissions budget. That's all I meant. Cheers.
  5. Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
    Richard Treadgold writes: It's incorrect to assert that the whole increase comes from fossil fuel use. For there are other sources, too, such as outgassing from warming oceans Richard, there are two problems with this. First of all, the oceans are a net sink of CO2. That is, the net flux of CO2 is from the atmosphere to the ocean, not the reverse. See lots of papers on the subject, including Takahashi 2009 and Sabine 2004. Secondly, we know the total fossil fuel flux to the atmosphere quite well, and it's clearly larger than the annual increase in atmospheric CO2. In other words, fossil fuels account for more than 100% of the atmospheric increase (with the excess being taken up by oceans and the biosphere). Richard also writes: It's also incorrect to assert that the increase in atmospheric concentration is accelerating. The Mauna Loa record shows no sign of that. In fact, graphing the yearly change (the data given at the Mauna Loa site) shows that since about 1998, the rate of increase has actually slowed. So would you cite your source for the acceleration, please? From the Mauna Loa data, the linear trend in CO2 for each of the past decades is as follows: 1960-1969: +0.8 ppmv/year 1970-1979: +1.2 1980-1989: +1.6 1990-1999: +1.6 2000-2009: +2.0 That is a very clear acceleration. It's a bit disturbing that someone acting as "Convenor, Climate Conversation Group" would be so seriously mistaken on multiple basic facts about CO2 in the Earth system. What kind of "climate conversations" are you having, and who are you having them with? Somehow, you seem to have picked up a lot of misinformation.
  6. What should we do about climate change?
    If we start building a lot of uranium powered stations, how long until we start running out of uranium? How long would thorium last if we started building them?
  7. What should we do about climate change?
    #74 lin
    Can anyone tell me if a nuclear power station anywhere in the world has been successfully decommissioned yet? If so, how much did it cost?
    Yes. Nuclear decommissioning It's also important to understand that a lot of consideration is given in the design stage to decommissioning for modern nuclear power plants and they will be much cheaper to decommission than for example, the old Magnox reactors in the UK.
  8. What should we do about climate change?
    This compares six options for cutting Australia's CO2 emissions from electricity generation. http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/01/09/emission-cuts-realities/ The six options compared are: 1. Business as usual Replace coal in the BAU case with 2. Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGT) 3. CCGT and nuclear 4. Wind, CCGT and Open Cycle Gas Turbines (OCGT) 5. Solar Thermal and CCGT 6. Solar Thermal, Wind, CCGT and OCGT The options are compared on the basis of: a) CO2 emissions avoided compared with BAU, b) capital expenditure c) electricity cost (for the replacement technologies) d) avoidance cost (cost per tonne of CO2 avoided) Nuclear is by far the least cost option. All Australia's coal fired power stations could be replaced with nuclear by about 2035 to 2040. Then we'd be replacing gas power stations. If we want to make substantial cuts to CO2 emissions from electricity generation, want security of supply, want low cost electricity so electricity can displace fossil fuels used in heat and transport, then we need to embrace nuclear power.
  9. What should we do about climate change?
    Re: lin Big Rock Point Nuclear Power Plant at Charlevoix, Michigan (USA) was decommissioned, starting in 1997 and ending about 2003. Costs were $390,000,000. See quokka's link above for some valuable info as well. The Yooper
  10. Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
    Richard, I believe the assertion is that the cause of CO2 rise is anthropogenic. That's fossil fuel and land use change. Temperature-induced rises in CO2 are feedbacks, not forcings. Now can you please supply a reference for the relative percentage of CO2e (not CO2 as that doesnt tell the whole story) that comes from fossil use, agriculture, and feedbacks? I would be very surprised if feedbacks are much of a issue yet.
  11. What should we do about climate change?
    @Peter Lang, you're forgetting an advantage Solar has over Nuclear: its scalability. It's easy to envision a large number of private utility clients generating power through local PV installations with the possibility of selling excess power. It's a lot harder to envision people having miniature nuclear reactors in their backyard... That said, Nuclear Power is safer than it used to be, and we shouldn't necessarily shun it (as long as stringent safety protocols are followed and proper disposal is carefully monitored). It should be part of a mixed energy strategy that needs to continue promoting renewables (which will push the technology further and drive down costs).
  12. What should we do about climate change?
    #51 Marcus
    like it or not, many of the life-time electricity costs for nuclear power are based off the assumed capital cost of $1,990/KWe-which comes directly from the World Nuclear Federation.
    I'm assuming that you are referring to the World Nuclear Association. You can read what they actually have to say here, and it is not what you are claiming: The Economics of Nuclear Power This piece draws heavily on the IEA 2010 Projection of Electricity Costs report. One thing is very clear is that the cost is highly dependent on region and that China and Sth Korea are doing it at low cost - from around $1.4 to $2.0 billion max per GWe. This in itself raises interesting questions. As the piece states, cost is a complex issue. In particular it is misleading to quote cost for first of a kind projects such as the Finnish EPR and claim they representative. The experience gained with first of a kind will most likely result in more efficient subsequent builds. This is not unique to nuclear. Finally, if a project is poorly executed or delayed, costs will blow out. Again, this is not unique to nuclear and can apply to any large civil engineering project. A representative view on cost is essential, and we have to look to authorities such as the IEA. By all means criticize their figures from an informed basis if you wish, but let's try to stick to the facts.
  13. What should we do about climate change?
    Can anyone tell me if a nuclear power station anywhere in the world has been successfully decommissioned yet? If so, how much did it cost? And how much to permanently store the high level waste?
  14. Richard Treadgold at 14:55 PM on 28 October 2010
    Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
    The level of atmospheric CO2 is building up, the additional CO2 is being produced by burning fossil fuels, and that build up is accelerating.
    Yes, the atmospheric level is rising. To say it is "building up" could be an emotive way of saying the same thing. It's certainly a slow rise, at an average over 51 years of about 1.43 ppmv per year. It's incorrect to assert that the whole increase comes from fossil fuel use. For there are other sources, too, such as outgassing from warming oceans and variable (unknown) outputs from various sources, such as wetlands. It's also incorrect to assert that the increase in atmospheric concentration is accelerating. The Mauna Loa record shows no sign of that. In fact, graphing the yearly change (the data given at the Mauna Loa site) shows that since about 1998, the rate of increase has actually slowed. So would you cite your source for the acceleration, please? Cheers, Richard Treadgold, Convenor, Climate Conversation Group.
    Moderator Response: See the post CO2 is not increasing
  15. What should we do about climate change?
    Re: daisym (69) OK, I'll take a crack at this:
    "Why won't government and scientists prepare estimates of global temperature reductions to be expected by replacing SOME of our carbon fuels energy sources with power from windmills and solar panels?"
    The rise in temperatures seen is driven by an energy imbalance. Due to the rise in human-emitted CO2 (a greenhouse gas), more energy is being retained in the lower troposphere than before the extra CO2 was released; this extra energy retained mostly (93% or so) has gone into the oceans, the rest into the air. Due to the immense thermal mass of the oceans, heating has been unequal. If no more extra CO2 were injected into the carbon cycle, the temperatures would eventually stabilize (after about 30 years or so). It's kind of like eating an extra 100 calories a day. Doesn't seem like much, eh? An extra pound or two a year, who cares? Work it off next year or two...but after 20 or 30 years, you have an extra 40-60 pounds, much tougher to lose. Until the calorie budget gets balanced, either by eating less, exercising more or a combination of both, none of the extra weight will be lost. CO2 and temperatures work much the same way. As long as humans inject extra CO2 into the carbon cycle, the energy imbalance continues, the climate warms, the weather patterns destabilize, Arctic ice melts, glaciers melt, more moisture enters the air (about 4% extra [the equivalent of the volume of Lake Erie] moisture is now carried in the atmosphere due to the warming of 0.8 C), etc. So the short answer is: temperatures will not start to plateau and then go down. Not until the extra CO2 causing the rise in temps gets removed through natural processes. Which takes time: Centuries to Millenia time; effectively, we have wrought a permanent change on our world. But if we don't stop emitting fossil fuel derived CO2, temps will continue to rise...
    "Carbon fuels have been laid to blame by scientists for causing global warming, yet government has yet to unveil a plan to show a timeline for how and when we can effectively discontinue their use."
    Fossil fuel derived CO2 emissions are indeed to blame for the warming seen. Government has been dragging its heels as few in power have the political spine to walk away from the enormous dollars the fossil fuel industries represent. And then there is the potential damage to the economy it is felt will result without a viable replacement alternative. Business As Usual in Washington is safest, politically. The rest of your comment addresses why governments do or don't do things and energy alternatives; areas in which I typically don't delve. Hope what I did offer made some sense. The Yooper
  16. What should we do about climate change?
    Regarding solar PV, the pannels are only part of the cost. The total cost of average power for the new PV poewer stations (just commissioned) at Windora, Queensland is $110,000/kWy/y. Compared with $4,400/kWy/y for nuclear (based on the recently signed UAE contract). [Windora cost $4.5 million for 130kW, expected generation = 360MWh/y, = 32% capacity factor. Cost per average power = $109,500/kWy/y.]
  17. What should we do about climate change?
    Marcus@29, you said: "By contrast, Andasol-in Spain-has an installed capacity of 100MW & cost US$380 million-or a cost of $3800 per MW of installed capacity." There severl inaccuricies in this statement. Firstly, Andasol does not have a capacity of 100 MW. It has a capacity of 50MW. It has only just been completed. They recently started development of a second plant of 50MW. So to say it 'has' a capacity of 100MW is false. Secondly, the cost of Andasol 1 was 300 million Euro (US$400 million) (50MW) or $8,000/kW, not $3,800/kW. http://www.nrel.gov/csp/solarpaces/project_detail.cfm/projectID=3 Thirdly, it is wrong to compare capacity of solar and nuclear. Nuclear provides power whenever the demand calls for it, 24/7/365. Solar provides power when the sun shines, in the day time and mostly in summer. Without storage it has a capacity factor of about 13% to 20%. With storage, at huge cost, this can be increased somewhat. The claim that solar thermal with energy storage is a baseload power station is not correct. Therefore, nuclear and solar must be compared on a properly comparable basis. The proper way to do this is with levelised cost of electricity (LCOE). However, that is complicated. For simplicity, let's compare Andasol 1 with a nuclear plant on the basis of the average energy they can supply per year. I'll use the contracted cost for the new nuclear plants being built in the UAE because it is from a recently signed contract, and the power station is the 'first in country' (which is higher cost than the 'settled down cost'). The cost is $20.4 billion for 5,400 MW, or $3,800/kW. Based on experience with the units in Korea they expect a capacity factor of about 90% (use 85% to be conservative). The cost of average power is $4,400/kWy/y. What about Andasol 1? 50MW (rated peak capacity), $8,000/kW capacity factor = 36% ('expected' but will no doubt be much lower in practice) cost of average power = $22,000/kWy/y On the basis of that rough calculation, the cost of electricity from solar (unreliable electricity at that) is 5 times the cost of reliable electricity from nuclear. Levelised cost of electricity: nuclear = $60-$100/MWh (of electricity that is always available) Andasol 1 = $400/MWh (for electricity that is available part time) On this more accurate basis, the cost of electricity from solar is 4-7 times the cost of solar. If we want to cut CO2 emissions, we must embrace nuclear - like France has. France has about the lowest cost electricity in Europe, by far the lowest CO2 emissions from electricity of any major country, exports more electricity than any other country (which demonstrates it is cheap and reliable). 76% of France's electricity is generated by nuclear power.
  18. What should we do about climate change?
    The article tells us that: "Firstly, we should either use less energy, or use renewable energy sources, like solar-thermal generators..." What comes after that? While “Firstly” has a ring of common sense, I wonder what effect this will have on reducing global temperatures. Why won't government and scientists prepare estimates of global temperature reductions to be expected by replacing SOME of our carbon fuels energy sources with power from windmills and solar panels? If worthwhile temperature reductions from these actions can be shown to consumers, it would go a long way to enhance public support. Of course, if estimates of temperature reductions are disappointingly low, that would explain why we’re not being told. Carbon fuels have been laid to blame by scientists for causing global warming, yet government has yet to unveil a plan to show a timeline for how and when we can effectively discontinue their use. Government hasn't seriously funded R&D to find a full time replacement for carbon fuels. Wouldn’t this be the cornerstone of a comprehensive national energy policy? Given government’s “solutions”, why isn’t the public being told where this is taking us? Government tries repeatedly to pass Cap and Trade. If it comes to pass, carbon trading will create a $10 trillion per year industry, depending where government sets the threshold to require use of carbon credits. One may argue the money involved, but how can such an industry reduce carbon fuel dependency? Obviously, the carbon trading industry would become too big to fail. The carbon trading industry would require continued use of large quantities of carbon fuels to survive. To me, it seems that the money from carbon trading will come from the pockets of consumers (through higher prices on all commodities), and do so without reducing global temperatures in any meaningful way. This is only a guess, since we haven’t been told. Government has surely calculated the tax revenues to be derived from, say, a 30% tax on Cap and Trade revenues. Given this, why would government WANT to replace carbon fuels? What would happen to the trading value of carbon credits if someone actually discovered the Holy Grail of energy that gives us a full time replacement for carbon fuels? It seems that government is betting the farm on wind and solar to save humanity from the threat of carbon fuels. But nobody will tell us how much of a temperature reduction to expect from government’s solutions. Why is this so? Why are scientists silent on this?
  19. Extreme weather isn't caused by global warming
    Welcome to the future... Strongest storm ever recorded in the Midwest smashes all-time pressure records Since winter storms form in response to the atmosphere's need to transport heat from the Equator to the poles, this reduced [due to global warming] temperature difference reduces the need for winter storms, and thus the models predict fewer storms will form. However, since a warmer world increases the amount of evaporation from the surface and puts more moisture in the air, these future storms drop more precipitation. During the process of creating that precipitation, the water vapor in the storm must condense into liquid or frozen water, liberating "latent heat"--the extra heat that was originally added to the water vapor to evaporate it in the first place. This latent heat intensifies the winter storm, lowering the central pressure and making the winds increase.
  20. Rebutting skeptic arguments in a single line
    Hi John, the one-liner for "Hide the decline" (#78) says that Mike Mann was quoted out of context. But isn't it Phil Jones's email that's being quoted?
    Response: Yes, thanks for pointing that out. Have fixed the line.
  21. Isn't global warming just 2 °C and isn't that really small?
    #28: "If we assume that the temperature varies linearly with latitude," Unfortunately, I don't think that's a safe assumption due to Arctic amplification. Figure 2 in Graverson 2008 shows that for 1 degree of Northern hemisphere temperature increase, north of 65N there's a 2.5 degree increase. It is also notable that during the same period observations solely from Arctic land stations reveal an amplification of the temperature trend during the dark months, November–February (Fig. 2). This amplification cannot be explained by snow-cover changes, as the albedo effect is practically absent during this dark period. Moreover, the heat flux from the ground is very small. So 2 degrees bad... 6 degrees worse.
  22. What should we do about climate change?
    Marcus, More misrepresentation. You say: "Peter Lang, if "Renewables are Unproven" is your only criteria for dismissing it, ..." No, I did not say that. The reasons renewables are uneconomic and cannot meet our requirementsd are many: 1. they are very costly - far more coslty tnan uuclear 2. cannot provide reliable power 3. do not avoid much if any emisisons (so why do it) 4. require hufe subsidies per MWh (unlike nuclear which has to subsidises renewables 5. require far more mining, materials processing, manufacturing, fabricating, construction, decomissioning and waste disposal than nuclear 6. require far more land area In short, there really are no advantages of renewables over nuclear. The point about renewables are umnproven related to the cost projections. Nuclear is proven so the cost projections are based on actual costs over a long period of time. Non-hydro renewables are un-proven so the costs are little better than a guess. Over the past 20+ years the projecxtions of the cost of renewables, and when they would be economic, have been completely wrong - always!. So why would we expect that to change in the future. Google "Zero Carbon Australia - Stationary Energy Plan - Critique" to see just how ridiculous are the whishes, hopes and claims of the rnewable energy advocates.
  23. What should we do about climate change?
    If this was a science question, we would be looking for peer-reviewed papers on the relative economics, which would in turn point to auditable, verifiable data. We'd be discussing relative merits of methodology and assumption and proposing way to settle discrepancies with empirical experiments. As it is, we have a whole lot of contradictory information being presented and little way of doing verification. I'd like to see economics done like science. I was persuaded from reading MacKay's Sustainable energy without all the hot air that some countries would find it very tough to meet energy needs (especially to power transport too) without nuclear, though I strongly doubt Australia would be one of them.
  24. What should we do about climate change?
    Marcus, Nuclear plants in the US and Sth Korea currently operate at over 90% capacity factor. There has been a steady increase in nuclear capacity factor over the last three decades as a result of the increased operational experience. And importantly, much of the downtime for refueling and scheduled maintenance can be planned for. You are whistling in the wind if you wish to dispute this. "I'd agree that nuclear power *is* proven-a proven WHITE ELEPHANT!" Let's have a look at what this white elephant has done for CO2 emissions in some selected European countries: Per Capita CO2 Emissions France has mostly nuclear, Sweden and Switzerland have a mix of hydro and nuclear and the rest are principally fossil fueled. The message is crystal clear - you cannot make meaningful reductions in CO2 emissions without displacing fossil fuels from base load electricity generation. And that includes Denmark despite the considerable effort put into wind power.
  25. What should we do about climate change?
    Joe Blog-from what I've read, even a gas-cooled nuclear reactor (the best design currently available) still only has thermal efficiencies of about 50%. Good, but hardly great (Coal & regular water-cooled reactors have a thermal efficiency of around 35% to 40%). Like I said, these efficiency gains have taken 60 years of intensive research & development to achieve, & come at a significant dollar cost for construction compared to lower tech reactors, whereas the achievements of photovoltaics have been done whilst simultaneously lowering the unit cost of the cells-& has been done on the funding equivalent of "the smell of an oily rag"!
  26. What should we do about climate change?
    A couple of points Quokka. Number 1, we're not talking about replacing coal-fired electricity in the next 5 years. I'm an optimist, & even I recognize that a switch to a 100%low-carbon, decentralized electricity grid will probably take on the order of 20-30 years to achieve, possibly longer. In the meantime, however, a reduction in our dependence on coal from 80% to around 60% is entirely achievable within the next 10-15 years *if* the political will exists. Number 2, there are currently half a dozen sites in the world where Vanadium Redox Batteries are being used to supply a regular source of electricity-with another one on the drawing board in Ireland. Its worth noting that a lot of the whizz-bang technology cited by pro-nuclear advocates has still not seen the light of day-in spite of being patented more than 30 years ago (Gas Cooling & Pebble-Bed come to mind). Number 3-even if you ignore Redox Batteries, other sources of rechargeable storage have come a *very* long way in the last decade-in terms of both energy density & price.
  27. What should we do about climate change?
    Marcus says & average efficiencies are pushing 20% (with efficiencies in the lab of around 42%). Can nuclear power make the same claims? Yes, well over the 90% range for turbine efficiency, yah can run the turbines at 1800C(big difference between that and 15C), the 95% figure, is a lower end estimate of mass converted to energy(E=MC^2 n all eh)... there is no comparison. The old nuclear plants, were, are designed for the purpose of producing nuclear weapons, electricity was the bi product. And whats more... they(fast breeders) can theoretically be built small enough to power aircraft... think o the GHG savings there;-) that may be pushing it.
  28. What should we do about climate change?
    So quokka, do you *really* believe that coal & nuclear are as reliable as you'd have us believe? Centralized power plants are subject to all kinds of faults between the point of production & the point of consumption. Also, do you *honestly* believe Coal Power stations don't have to be shadowed to some extent, in case of breakdowns? Like I said before-but you've chosen to ignore-claims about variability are usually made by those living in a TIME WARP. Massive improvements in relatively cheap storage technology has made the issue of variability in renewable energy practically moot. Also, how does your argument stack up when looking at energy sources like Tidal Streams, Run-of-River Hydro-electricity or Landfill Gas, which are completely capable of supplying reliable base-load power *without* the need for additional back-up?
  29. What should we do about climate change?
    #53 Marcus, "quokka, have you not heard of Vanadium Flow Batteries". Apparently these were first patented in 1986. One has to ask why it is 24 years later that there is no significant deployment of these things anywhere in any grid. Everybody would love inexpensive storage, not just to support renewables, but to deal with peak load requirements in existing grids. I'm as much for the next big thing as the next person, but if it cannot feasibly be used as a substitute for the next coal fired plant to be built in the next five years, then that next big thing is something to keep an eye on but no more than that. Remember that those new coal fired plants will have a life of several decades and once built, they will be very hard to get rid of. It is imperative that we do not fall into the really dangerous trap of mistaking our wishes for the engineering and economic realities of what can actually be done. This has been referred to with some justification as a "technological cargo cult".
  30. What should we do about climate change?
    Peter Lang, if "Renewables are Unproven" is your only criteria for dismissing it, then why in the *hell* did any country ever embrace nuclear power? In 1950, that technology was "unproven" too. As I recall, the proponents of nuclear power claimed it would be "too cheap to meter", yet it still remains one of the *highest* cost sources of electricity after *sixty years* of intensive public & private funding. The only reason France differs is because the French Government heavily subsidized the nuclear industry when Electricitie de France was was publicly owned. These days, EdF is one of the most heavily indebted companies in Europe-hardly a great advertisement for nuclear power. As I said above, take a look at the *real* costs of nuclear power, compared to those quoted by the WNF, & tell me that the nuclear industry isn't being over-optimistic in their calculations. Also, cost & time overruns are the *norm* in the nuclear power industry-not the exception, whereas the bulk of the renewable energy projects I've read about were completed ON TIME & ON BUDGET. Indeed, based on the examples I've given above, I'd agree that nuclear power *is* proven-a proven WHITE ELEPHANT! By contrast, have a look at photovoltaics. In 1982, the year the sine-wave inverter was invented, the average price of a solar cell was US$25 per watt & had an average efficiency of barely 5%. Just 28 years later, & the cost is currently $3 to $4 per watt, & average efficiencies are pushing 20% (with efficiencies in the lab of around 42%). Can nuclear power make the same claims?
    Moderator Response: Please don't use all caps.
  31. What should we do about climate change?
    "short o vaporizing a plant, the dangers are greatly reduced from the traditional nuclear plants." this sentence reads wrong, What i mean is, for you to get the same kinda disaster as at say Chernobyl, would require you to drop a Daisey cutter on the plant, and atomize the coolant/plant in general. Not that the plant can vaporize itself, passive safeties n all, even if all people suddenly turned in zombies and eat our selves into extinction, the plants would simply shut themselves down. As a result of time.
  32. What should we do about climate change?
    Argus, "And, also, thank you Marcus, for debating with these nuclear power proponents with their overoptimistic calculations! What is the basis for implying that the nuclear figures are over-optimistic but the renewable figures are not? Nuclear is proven technology. Renewables are not. Whereas the nuclear figures are based on 50 years of actual recorded history, the renewables projections are based on hope and wishful thinking. So which is optimistic? France, 80% nucelar, lowest emissions from electricity of any major country, least cost electricity, and it is reliable! What is the goal? Cut emissions or promote ideological beliefs?
  33. What should we do about climate change?
    Marcus, Price per name plate capacity quoted in MWe as an indicator of the cost of generating electricity is extremely misleading. We can see how misleading this can be by considering the capacity factor. For on-shore wind this is in the range 25-30%, for solar PV in for example Germany it is no more than 12%, for solar thermal with storage it varies but there are no existing plants than come anywhere near the 90% or so typical of coal and nuclear. A starting point for discussions of costs needs to be LCOE per kWh. But that is not the end of the story. What really matters is the overall system cost. Variable sources of electricity whose variability cannot be controlled must be backed up or shadowed by something that can be controlled. It could be done with storage eg pumped hydro, partially by extra transmission capacity to geographically distant sources or extra generation capacity - possibly gas. Whatever it is, it also costs money and makes the true system costs of solar and wind higher than the LCOE figure would suggest. It is time to stop playing games with the issues of energy and demand the same sort of rigor that is rightfully demanded in discussions of climate.
  34. What should we do about climate change?
    Thank you Tarcisio José D'Avila (#48)! You did a lot better in your four lines than this Kevin Judd figure. And, also, thank you Marcus, for debating with these nuclear power proponents with their overoptimistic calculations!
  35. What should we do about climate change?
    Re: michael sweet (53) Uhmmm, Pakistan is already nuclear. That ship has sailed, as they say. The Yooper
  36. What should we do about climate change?
    michael sweet The breeder reactors are a lot safer than the water reactors.. They use the liquid fluoride(thorium salt) as the coolant, which has a very high boiling T(off top o my head around1600-1800C) But its also part of the reactant, so you can basically just run frost plugs in your reactor chamber, that will drop the coolant into a separate chamber, stopping the reaction in the case of over heating. The thorium salt absorbs the radiation, and is stable/ it wont burn, or dissolve in water etc.. The premise i believe is to run processing plants that process the coolant into fissionable fuel, which is a result of the atomic breakdown from absorption of the radiation... so they make their own fuel(uranium), from thorium. They also can use nuclear waste from the old plants as fuel. Now they actually convert OVER 95% of the fissionable material into energy(as opposed to the couple o percent of water reactors) The reason why they havnt been heavily developed, is mostly because the water reactors are better for getting the materials for nuclear weapons. The japanese have some. They have huge potential, and can operate with passive safties... short o vaporizing a plant, the dangers are greatly reduced from the traditional nuclear plants.
  37. Isn't global warming just 2 °C and isn't that really small?
    Re: mfripp (28) While not Minnesota, Illinois (depending upon the emission scenario) gets a lot hotter, too: The rest of the Midwest will follow along similarly. Source here. The Yooper
  38. The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
    @nealjking In no way am i saying the greenhouse effect is a contradiction of the second law... but i think the example of the net flow of heat being from hotter to colder, should be seen as a result of the second law, not the second law... Entropy increases or stays the same, is the second law. And its simply stating the behavior of energy. That chaos increases, a body with a high T has confined chaos, and it will increase, the hotter the body, the more confined the chaos, the more efficiently that chaos increases. It behaves the opposite to matter/gravity basically. So as a result of this, a hotter object will have greater increasing chaos than a colder object, put simply. To test if the earth has decreasing entropy, switch off the sun, if it heats, its in violation o the second law;-) And energy locked in chemical bonds entropy stays the same... till yah burn it, then its chaos increases. Decreasing entropy implies the clumping together of energy from lower to higher concentrations.
  39. What should we do about climate change?
    I am agnostic about nuclear power, but I think we need to consider that any solution must work for the entire world. Do we really want Pakistan and Nigeria to build a bunch of thorium reactors? Will those reactors really be terrorist proof? (Claims about "fanciful" worries seem to pale when we talk about Nigeria and Zimbabwe building reactors). Solutions must work for everyone, not just the developed world. I do not mind if Pakistan builds a bunch of wind generators, but I have my doubts about thorium reactor safety in the third world.
  40. Skeptical Science Firefox Add-on: Send and receive climate info while you browse
    I used Opera for my browser in lieu of IE...until Firefox 3 came out. Made the jump without regret. Still use Opera on my cellphone, but has limited commenting functionality there for SkS. With my Internet access being down for now (just moved to a different house and work has yet to have the 3rd party vendor implement the change), I'm reduced to phone browsing and various hotspots (not many in this rural area). The Yooper
  41. Phil Jones says no global warming since 1995
    Late to the party here, but first time poster and all that... There is some very interesting background to that BBC interview of Phil Jones. The Beeb were trying to be 'balanced', and so invited (some) questions from prominent climate skeptics. That "Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?" question in particular was in fact carefully crafted by Lubos Motl (and Steve McIntyre may have had a hand in there too, not sure) to paint Dr. Jones in a bad light. They knew he had to answer it honestly, but it was a loaded question. If you go back even *one year* to 1994, or in fact any year before that, then the warming is statistically significant to the 95% confidence level. As most of you know, you really can't consider periods shorter than 22 years because of the influence of solar cycles. 15 years is not nearly long enough. Motl and McIntyre know this, of course. So this is what climate science is up against: clever little deceptions and spin to score cheap points in the eyes of the public.
  42. What should we do about climate change?
    quokka, have you not heard of Vanadium Flow Batteries? If these were built (& I see no reason why they haven't, as they wouldn't add significantly to the cost of a wind power project), you'd be able to store several hundred megawatts of excess Wind Power for release when there is no wind power to be had. The fact is that storage & good placement of wind turbines can remove pretty much *all* of the variability experienced by wind power-yet funny how that argument is still bandied about by the anti-renewable squad!
  43. What should we do about climate change?
    Peter Lang, like it or not, many of the life-time electricity costs for nuclear power are based off the assumed capital cost of $1,990/KWe-which comes directly from the World Nuclear Federation. Experience over the last 3 years, though, shows a very different cost for nuclear power. Florida Power & Light estimated the cost of 2 AP1000 reactors in 2008 to come in at around $3100/KWe to $4500/KWe ($6,000 to $8,000 when finance charges were added in). Duke Energy Carolinas is building two AP1000 reactors for a total cost of $11 billion-or around $5,500/KWe. Georgia Power Company is contracted to build 2 AP1000 reactors for a total cost of $17 billion (including $3 billion for transmission upgrades). Excluding transmission upgrades, this gives a cost of around $7,000 per KWe. Then you have the Olkiluoto Power station, which is already costing EU$3,800/KWe, but hasn't even been completed yet. This cost is in *spite* of SIXTY YEARS of Research, Development & Construction of Nuclear Power Stations-not to mention significant public & private investment-compared to the relatively short life span of the Concentrated Solar Power industry (SEGS only went online in 1991). It really does show up the weakness of the pro-nuclear argument!
  44. What should we do about climate change?
    #36 Alexandre You can see the wind output from South Australian wind farms, together with demand and price charted nicely here: http://www.oz-energy-analysis.org/data_viewer/dv1a.php . Scroll over the data to get a general sense of variability. Note that in May, there were two weeks with almost no electricity generated.
  45. What should we do about climate change?
    #49. Have the decommissioning costs been factored into the price of nuclear generated electricity as well? I'm not anti-nuclear, but I don't want to fix one problem (AGW), just to replace it with another.
  46. Skeptical Science Firefox Add-on: Send and receive climate info while you browse
    Awesome! This might actually make me consider Firefox....I'm a Chrome die-hard. Maybe it could be my backup browser (for when CSS issues come up) and I could uninstall IE, that would make me happy. Shine Tech sounds like a great company. Will there be app updates when the beginner-intermediate-advanced rebuttals are complete?
    Response: When the beginner/intermediate/advanced idea was first suggested to me, the first thing I did was ask Shine whether it was feasible to include it in the iPhone app (and my not-so-secret hope, an iPad app). They said yes - I don't know when it would happen, keeping in mind Shine are doing this all for free and thus have limited resources to devote to the iPhone app.
  47. Skeptical Science Firefox Add-on: Send and receive climate info while you browse
    Great add-on. Already installed. I wonder if there's some policy about submitting articles in other languages?
    Response: Hmm, hadn't really thought about it. I suppose a language drop down could be a future feature if there's much call for it.
  48. Tarcisio José D at 08:35 AM on 28 October 2010
    What should we do about climate change?
    Argus #45 "How about telling us more about what we really can and should do about climate change, in stead of this constant complaining about how skeptics ruin everything?" My answer: 1 - Spreading water in the Sahara desert. 2 - To preserve the forests. 3 - Reforest the deforested areas. 4 - Promote the research of soil that is waterproof. See Thermodinamics......
  49. Skeptical Science Firefox Add-on: Send and receive climate info while you browse
    Actually tried the same thing again and no side window appeared at all!??! I think you need a quick fix and release a new version (1.1).
  50. Skeptical Science Firefox Add-on: Send and receive climate info while you browse
    Slight niggle (actually a big one). I searched for CO2, then clicked on the first subject. The side window popped up with the skeptic argument, I clicked on the SkS link and the page appeared in the tiny side window! pretty much undreadable unless you like side scrolling a lot. Would be better if it created a tab in Firefox and displayed the page in a full size window.
    Response: Okay, I've worked out what you mean and I hacked a solution (although Shine are working on a more robust solution for the next version of the Plugin). Thanks for the report.

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