Researchers say an area the size of the US is available for planting trees around the world, and this could have a dramatic impact on climate change.
The study shows that the space available for trees is far greater than previously thought, and would reduce CO2 in the atmosphere by 25%.
…”Our study shows clearly that forest restoration is the best climate change solution available today and it provides hard evidence to justify investment,” said Prof Tom Crowther, the senior author on the study.
“If we act now, this could cut carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by up to 25%, to levels last seen almost a century ago.”
The researchers identify six countries where the bulk of the forest restoration could occur: Russia (151m hectares), US (103m), Canada (78m), Australia (58m), Brazil (50m) and China (40m) [Matt McGrath, “Climate Change: Trees ‘Most Effective Solution’ for Warming,” BBC, 2019.07.04].
That potential benefit comes without taking a single hectare of land out of farming or plowing up any of Mayor Schaunaman’s precious parking lots.
The study calculated that over the decades, those new trees could suck up nearly 830 billion tons (750 billion metric tons) of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That’s about as much carbon pollution as humans have spewed in the past 25 years. Much of that benefit will come quickly because trees remove more carbon from the air when they are younger, the study authors said. The potential for removing the most carbon is in the tropics [Seth Borenstein, “Planting a Trillion Trees May Be the Best Way to Fight Climate Change, Study Says,” Time, 2019.07.04].
So what’s harder, Mayor Schaunaman: rendering your parking lots completely obsolete by requiring everyone to commute to work on electric buses (Aberdeen had trolleys a century ago), or taking up a few parking spots in every lot by planting some lovely, planet-saving trees?
Challenge for commenters: give one good reason not to plant a trillion new trees.
Neal
2019-07-05 09:54
Expensive and nearly impossible from an organizational/logistical perspective.
Porter Lansing
2019-07-05 10:20
Neal … stay away from children. You’re a lazy thinker.
Nick Nemec
2019-07-05 11:12
If you ever have to park in a parking lot with shade trees in the medians or boulevard you soon learn that the shady spots near the trees are always taken first. The smart people who get there first park in the shade or where the shade will be and enjoy a cooler car when the head home.
Kinda funny story. My ex-FIL and I fenced off a section of tile fed creek immediately west of building site. The ground was clay/gumbo and awful wet. I spent several days with a tile spade digging in nearly 150 hybrid willow saplings to help stabilize that creek bank. After a month or so, the FIL went in there with Round Up and proceeded to kill all but three of those saplings in the name of thistle control.
Porter Lansing
2019-07-05 11:47
mfi – Some memories just won’t go away, huh? Sad story, sir.
Donald Pay
2019-07-05 11:49
I have no problem in restoring deforested areas, but prairies and wetlands are better sinks for carbon, particularly in the Midwest and West. When forests burn, much of the carbon goes up in smoke. Prairies and wetland plants store most of the carbon underground. Even when prairies burn, which naturally occurs every two to four years, most of the biomass is below ground. A good wetland will sequester nearly all the carbon, either in roots and rhizomes or in dead material that rarely, if ever burns. I have seen wetlands burn, however.
If we are talking about urban areas, yeah, plant trees.
Porter you should stay away from the internet, you’re a lazy debater.
Cory asked for a reason and I gave him two. I didn’t say I agreed with them, but you didn’t hesitate to assume that I did and then draw conclusions about my character.
And instead of responding to them in substance, you immediately jump to ad hominem personal attacks, with a creepy reference to children?
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-05 16:25
Cory,
Besides taking up the land space you could be using for solar or wind or agriculture, you will have to deliver all those trees with a vehicle that burns fossil fuel.
Using nuclear energy by the way avoids the emissions equivalent to 117 million passenger vehicles every single year. So plant trees, but deliver them with electric vehicles powered by clean energy.
And if those trillion trees are mostly the same, or they are invasive, that will be a problem as well.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-05 17:12
There are roughly 3 trillion trees on the planet at the moment.
Another study says that ecosystems could support another 500 billion trees on land outside existing forests, agriculture, and urban land.
I read the article about 1 trillion trees a couple days ago. I could see a Paris Accord type of agreement in which nations commit to plant and protect X number of trees.
Don Pay brings up an excellent point about prairies and wetlands. Part of the accord could include X acres of those = X number of trees.
It’s definitely doable and possibly less disruptive than major changes to energy systems. Of course, if we did both, rather than stopping global warming from getting worse, perhaps we could reverse it. I don’t know because I’m not a scientist or environmental expert.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-05 17:39
Younger trees take up more carbon than older trees. So essentially you need to cut them down after a while and replenish them to max out the carbon removal from trees.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-05 18:47
If the nursery is 5 miles away, so a round trip is 10 miles, that is 10 trillion miles of driving (assuming one trip, one tree). In 2017 it was estimated that there were a total of 3.22 trillion miles driven in the United States.
If we do this ourselves, everyone in the United States needs to plant more than 3050 trees. That should take us about 8.5 years of planting one tree per day. Globally, with 7.7 billion people, everybody needs to plant 130 trees. So 2.5 years of everyone in the world planting a new tree every weekend should do it.
So go ahead and plant trees individually, but this sort of has to be done industrially.
Porter Lansing
2019-07-05 19:19
All respect to your position, Dr. McTaggart but a tree seedling is 15″ tall and you can probably get 500 in the back of a pickup and personally plant about 250 a day.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-05 19:23
If we do this ourselves and spread those 10 trillion extra miles over 8 years, that is 1.25 trillion extra miles driven per year (and since the Green New Dealers say we only have 10 years, 8 is a good number).
So we would need to increase the gasoline supply by ~ 1.25/3.22 * 100 = 38.8% for tree delivery. Hopefully you can get that done with electric vehicles or biofuels and not mention the p-i-p-e-l-i-n-e word ;^).
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-05 19:32
The calculations simply show the scale of the problem: I am showing that doing this one by one is simply not going to be feasible, and there is a carbon footprint that is not being accounted for.
If you want to plant 250 per day, you will get to your personal 3050 number in just over 12 plantings. But I think you and I would have a hard time finding locations which are not already being used for agriculture around here (particularly when everybody else has to do the same thing).
jerry
2019-07-05 20:25
Nukes cause cancer, trees don’t. Planting shelter belts would be a whole lot better than trapping. Look how simple it is, county’s used to do this a few years ago, but budget’s always get chopped on the stuff that make the most sense. Check this out, see how much enjoyment these young folks have in doing something way cool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI946kIA27M
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-05 20:43
Sorry jerry. It is not like we don’t know how radiation works.
Breaking news…brought to you by DakotaFreePress Blueberry Pancakes (I betcha can’t eat just one!)…we can use this thing called science to protect people.
Oh by the way, inhaling a lot of soot from burning trees probably isn’t good for you.
I agree that planting shelter belts is a good thing, as long as it is not a strong source of tree pollen. Or as long it is not a row of female Ginkgo trees with the stinky, messy fruit.
Planting shelter belts and trees in general around the public roads would help keep the snow off. As a bonus, hunters could hunt in areas without paying fees, how about those apples? Get good runoff as well for the creeks and small stock dams. All good for carbon removal.
Neal
2019-07-05 21:27
Cory, I wrote a civil response to Porter’s personal attack toward me, which is “awaiting moderation.” Is there any reason in particular you haven’t approved the comment?
Porter Lansing
2019-07-05 22:17
I’m right here, Neal. Are you butt hurt because I called out your negativity bias and it’s detrimental effect on children’s learning habits? Hmmmm?
Porter Lansing
2019-07-05 22:23
Prof. McTaggart … Why haven’t you convinced the legislators in SD to build one of the boutique nuclear power generators you promote? It’s a 90% Republican run state and Republicans, like yourself, must be the best shot at getting one built, right? Conservatives don’t hold the outdated ideas about cancer that we liberals cling too, right?
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-06 12:18
Many Democrats support nuclear power, particularly if they want to deliver the energy that people use while addressing climate change. There are many Republicans who favor wind and solar energy because it can be made in America and has a self-reliance aspect to it.
Cancer is not a partisan issue, my friend. We know that too much radiation in a short amount of time is linked to cancer. We also know that nuclear science can monitor radioactivity and protect people from high doses of radiation. And cancer is linked to other chemicals and heavy metals found in waste streams of other energy sources too. I wonder if science could deal with those eventually too?
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-06 12:48
Sad to say, but I don’t have the superpowers you speak of to convince legislators of any political persuasion of anything. All I can do is provide support for a future workforce. Developing or attracting companies that enhance the safe operations of power plants and/or boost their efficiency is going to be easier than getting a new power plant approved. For me that is health physics or engineering physics that I can incorporate into the BS in Physics.
Would small modular reactors make sense for South Dakota? Yes. Both to complement wind, solar, hydro (and maybe geothermal at some point), but also to generate process heat for various industries that will need it in the future. That includes the processing of biofuels and/or the generation of hydrogen from biomass. And we could export electricity to our next-door neighbors. Access to on-demand clean energy would also help to diversify the economic portfolio of South Dakota.
But I don’t think that will be possible until we finally have a way to successfully navigate consent at the community, state, and national levels. There is some consideration of allowing Nevada to have the same consent-based processes for Yucca Mountain as any other future waste facility. Having more than one site (not just Yucca Mountain) may make it more politically feasible for consent to be granted for both permanent and temporary storage. But if everybody has a veto, and everybody says no, that is also a problem…so we’ll see what happens.
It does make sense to extract available energy from spent nuclear fuel before it is buried (be that from reprocessing or a new reactor that consumes waste for fuel). That reduces the volume, radioactivity, and heat that a storage facility would need to deal with. Because that is expensive today…but maybe not as expensive tomorrow…it makes sense to allow such waste to be retrievable. After you’ve gotten all the value out of it, then vitrify it in glass and store it deep underground permanently.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-06 13:11
And yes, you could plant a lot of trees and wildflowers around a small modular nuclear power plant :^).
Porter Lansing
2019-07-06 13:19
I know all that, Doc. I’m just being nice to you by giving you a question to answer. Keeps you off the streets and out of the bars. lol
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-06 13:32
The City of Sturgis and its upcoming visitors thank you for your public service :^).
Debbo
2019-07-06 15:57
This is a house in Minnesota on Lake Minnetonka, a western and expensive suburb. Beyond what I’ve copied here, there’s not a lot more about it’s energy management systems.
“The result is a net-zero lakeside abode nestled on a narrow deep lot. It produces more energy than it consumes, thanks to a geothermal heating-and-cooling system and photovoltaic solar panels spanning a south-facing gable.
“The couple installed four Tesla Power Wall units to store excess electricity. The stormwater is absorbed and filtered through two green roofs, rain gardens and a water-retention area below the deck.”
It can’t produce more than they need all the time…probably averaged over a time period is achievable. Some of the electricity produced has to be wasted as heat…batteries and PV are never 100% efficient. 20% for a PV is a highly efficient solar cell today.
Nevertheless, these systems make the most of what is available. It is just too expensive for most people to do (…right now). Energy efficiency and some demand management is the better route for most today. And I guess people could also plant a tree to provide some natural cooling (keeping with the theme here).
Bill Capehart
2019-07-07 06:08
As interesting as the Science Bastin et al 2019 (they paper that sparked these news stories) may be, just planing 21st-century trees to mitigate climate change is not sufficient if we continue to dig up primeval trees and set them on fire. The IPCC SR15 report makes it clear that while CO₂ uptake is key to avoiding the worst case scenarios, greatly reducing our CO₂ emissions to near zero is essential to meeting those goals and reducing the impact from hitting the ditch into which we’re steering. But planting trees is easy. The latter and more critical requirement is “dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-07 14:04
Heyyyyyy Bill,
I know there is also a lot of interest in pulling carbon out of the air via different technologies. That would be something to do when there is too much energy on the grid. Baseload plants could keep running at a constant power and then just switch off to collecting carbon as needed.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-07 14:31
I doubt that China or India will avoid cheaper fossil fuels or their own economic expansion because we would like them to, so we may have to do some form of carbon capture regardless.
But yes, the far better approach is simply not to emit the carbon in the first place as we deliver the energy people use, instead of trying to get the carbon toothpaste back into the carbon toothpaste tube.
mike from iowa
2019-07-07 15:38
Back in the day when I still walked beans four rows at a time, the neighbor had a shelter/windbreak in the NW corner of his quarter section. It ran about a quarter mile east to west and north to south on the fence line.
Every second year when we put beans in that field there would literally be thousands of new cottonwood seedlings sprouted all along the field. Imagine if even a small fraction of those ever matured. I see dozens of new seedling trees along side the yard when I mow every summer.
jerry
2019-07-07 17:56
China, always one step ahead of the United States.
“China has reportedly reassigned over 60,000 soldiers to plant trees in a bid to combat pollution by increasing the country’s forest coverage.
Just because you plant trees at a site doesn’t mean they will succeed there. You have to manage your shelter belt/forest to promote the best outcomes. Planting is the easy part.
From 2018:
“Trees that helped save America’s farms during the Dust Bowl are now under threat”
The tree planting will cover an area the size of Ireland, says the link. That’s a lot of trees, now if we could do that sort of thing, that would be great. I did it when I was a kid, in those days of old, we called it Arbor Day. It was kind of a big deal.
grudznick
2019-07-07 21:32
we will plant a trillion trees, and then they will all die for lack of attention as nobody can pay $15 an hour for tree babysitters.
But again reimagining our energy portfolio away from fossil fuels is a nonstarter as we both agree.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-08 12:03
It looks like direct air carbon capture has a higher cost in looking at that link. Soil carbon sequestration and reforestation are cheaper, but burying the carbon geologically is more permanent.
Regardless, we will likely need some type of carbon collection portfolio with different approaches in addition to carbon-free production of energy.
I don’t think there will be one form of energy storage either…we need more choices to cover the short-term, medium-term, and long-term storage needs.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-09 19:42
AOC and Bernie push to declare a climate emergency.
If it is indeed an emergency, then nuclear energy should play a vital role. But so far there isn’t a whole lot of interest in nuclear from the AOC/Sanders wing of the Democratic Party.
I guess it doesn’t really matter until they transition from a campaign bumper sticker to actual policy-making that must deliver clean energy while balancing supply with demand.
And I guess the timeline is now 12 years, not 10 years.
Porter Lansing
2019-07-09 20:13
Bernie Sanders wants an emergency declaration in order to help his dying campaign not to help the world. The Democrats centrist position is to first put back the regulations and research models Trump has dismantled. Nuclear energy expansion is not within the centrist corral until Trump’s gone and science has resumed. #4Science
*It’s comically entertaining how AOC gets Republican’s goats so easily. Ride ‘em hard, ma’am.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-09 20:35
The hurdle for Bernie is that he isn’t the only messenger of his messages right now that is running for President. Plus I think the Democratic electorate is looking for something new…Clinton wouldn’t win this time around either.
Porter Lansing
2019-07-09 22:30
The Democratic Party electorate is looking for something calm. 70% of registered Democrats self identify as moderate and centrist. We’re done fighting with Republicans over insignificant addendums to the solution. Platform planks that have nothing to do with settling America back into normalcy mean nothing. You have your Trump, Mr. McTaggart. No benefit in us demeaning him. He beats himself without our help, every day. We have one job.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-10 11:41
Harding (R) apparently did not invent the word normalcy, but we have used the word the same way he did since 1920. Not sure what a true state of normalcy is today however.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-10 18:14
Uh-oh sports fans…Minnesota wants more energy storage to help displace natural gas peaking plants. A report shows that it can help displace some natural gas peaking plants, but will not solve intermittency.
“…the report warns that energy storage has limitations in a system with much greater variability due to renewable generation. The answer to the problem of intermittency in renewable energy will not be energy storage.”
Back to trees. 1 trillion trees at $10 each (which is actually a good deal at the local nursery) is $10 trillion. $1 trillion per year for 10 years is a big lift considering our federal budget is something like $4.5 trillion.
jerry
2019-07-10 18:39
1 trillion trees at $.10 per tree is a bargain. Hell, even if they are $10 bucks a tree is a good deal. I like the dime per tree though. Budgets don’t mean anything to republicans doc, you should know that. How much was the last grant you applied for? Minnesota has a nuke plant, so they have already gone down that trail. Maybe making homes more energy efficient would solve their problem ten fold.
jerry
2019-07-10 18:55
Our economy is on the ropes, we need to have jobs like planting trees in order for people to have a real job they can count on.
“Promises to save US manufacturing and prevent American jobs moving abroad were a key part of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. But since Trump took office in January 2017, nearly 200,000 jobs have been moved overseas, based on Trade Adjustment Assistance certified petitions.”https://news.yahoo.com/pulled-wool-over-eyes-workers-060017069.html
Put people to work on infrastructure programs that make homes more energy efficient with better insulation along with windows and doors.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-10 19:01
While dime trees would be nice, I suspect that it will cost more than $10 per tree, not less.
Minnesota has two nuclear plants, and they intend to keep them operational for this very reason. Replacing them means more coal or natural gas unless we build the smaller nuclear plants.
Efficiency has its limits. Once that plateaus, we must make more energy. I’d rather just make all of the energy without the carbon from the get-go.
Speaking of intermittency, sounds like a new wind farm got approved near Watertown. The 300 MW wind farm will generate about 100 MW on average.
“Among the conditions the PUC placed on the permit are addressing sound levels and shadow flicker experienced by nearby residents, detecting ice on turbine blades, and monitoring grouse mating areas within the wind farm area once construction is complete.”
Libbies generally say that each tree requires at least 5 minutes of uninterrupted loving each day. You fellows can do the math, but trees times 5 minutes times $15 and hour sounds expensive.
grudzshark … I can personally meditate over a half million baby trees per hour. That’s a lotta lovin’. “tu fais les calculs. C’est français.”
Porter Lansing
2019-07-10 19:30
Jerry … For a self identified “physicist” this McTaggert is wrong more and has a higher opinion of himself than anyone I’d want employed as a teacher. Every physicist I’ve ever been acquainted with envisions themselves a genius but most get scammed by shysters regularly. e.g. One bought $10,000 in gold coins on late night radio and lost it all.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-10 19:32
How does $.10 per tree square with a minimum of $15 per hour for the people planting the trees? Good luck with that.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-10 19:44
That’s what I get for listening to late night radio I guess….I knew I shouldn’t have called in….
Porter Lansing
2019-07-10 19:57
There’s a wise adage in business that says, “Hire people good at math to do your busy work but don’t take advice from them.” It means they have a limited view of the big picture. If you can’t find out the price of a tree any closer than that, you’re looking for evidence to support an unsubstantiated opinion instead of doing honest, unbiased, research. Same with labor costing.
Porter Lansing
2019-07-10 20:02
Dunno … might be why liberals make better professors.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-10 20:06
Wanting the price of the tree plus installation to be low so that a trillion trees is viable is one thing. How do you get the plants planted for that low a cost and still pay the $15 per hour?
You don’t need math, you need mathematical gymnastics.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-10 20:12
Please plant more trees. I like the shade in the summer and the display of color in the fall. But a dime per tree is not going to be sustainable. People are not going to work for the wages that are possible, and your trees will go unplanted.
mike from iowa
2019-07-10 20:18
Doc, had you listened to Uncle Larry Lujack and his “Animal Stories” on late night WLS Chicago, back in the 70’s, you’d be a wiser man.
PORTER LANSING
2019-07-10 20:56
In Colorado reforestation costs $80 an acre.
Worldwide labor costs are much less and planting a trillion trees would run approximately $650 billion.
Now, you’d have found that out, if you didn’t just make things up, Professor.
grudznick
2019-07-10 21:19
So for the price of Mr. Lansing’s daily latte, he could plant an acre a week. I look forward to the grasslands of the great plains becoming the Mr. Lansing National Woods.
Porter Lansing
2019-07-10 21:42
Mr. shark … Cory’s article says there are six countries where the bulk of the trees would be planted. Last time I counted Colorado already has 830 million trees. The grasslands aren’t suitable for trees or they’d already be there. Better suited for the goats you’ve lost to my wranglers. 🐐🐐🐐
Donald Pay
2019-07-10 22:04
Let’s talk ecology. I don’t think forest management should necessarily be bent toward maximum carbon capture.
The decline in productivity of forest stands with age applies to managed even-age forest stands. Such stands are common in, for example, Ponderosa Pine forests, and other forests that are logged for timber production. There is no doubt that in an industrial forest, you can maximize carbon uptake by cutting out the old trees, thinning young trees and managing for replacement by younger trees cohorts. That requires intensive methods dependent on oil and gas, and there can be a lot of waste involved in the process, so not all of that carbon is actually harvested. But what you are left with is an unnatural forest.
In the natural world, Ponderosa Pine forests, and forests with other coniferous species occur in landscapes of various sized patches of even-aged stands, some in savanna, some in various age stages. Areas protected from fire often grow into dog-hair stands, which, though young in age, are very unproductive. And, of course, bugs attack trees in cycles, reducing productivity. Ponderosa Pine has evolved with bugs and fire. Burning emits carbon.
Other forests, many in the Eastern US, often grow in uneven-aged forests with a mix of hardwoods. Some of these hardwood species are more shade tolerant, and grow slowly until a gap opens up through wind throw, insect attack on the canopy species, or other smaller scale disturbances. Then these shade tolerant species grow rapidly to fill the gap. Gradually, if there is no large-scale wind or fire events over several centuries the shade tolerant plants become dominant, and productivity slows.
The key to high productivity and maximum carbon capture is what ecologists call “perturbation,” natural creative destruction that keeps the forest in a constant flux with a mix of species in various ages over a landscape.
Just planting trees is not the answer, though there’s nothing wrong with planting more trees in urban lawns. If you want to make a real difference, reduce the need to mow lawns. Now there’s a huge source of carbon emission.
grudznick
2019-07-10 22:11
I have seen a number of fellows, self-professed recent immigrants, who are quite good at the tree planting. grudznick was good at it years back, but now could only buy you other fellows a shelterbelt or two of these seedlings you are lining up. I would, however, enjoy sitting in a shade chair after breakfast watching them all go in.
grudznick
2019-07-10 22:16
grudznick agrees with Mr. Pay on the perturbation part. That’s just the way it should be, as a scientist I know this. If we could erase a bunch of big giant cities. #4Science
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-10 22:44
How many acres are necessary? There are about 3 trillion trees on the planet, so you are talking about finding 1/3 of the area now occupied by trees. This either needs to displace land use by other things (people, agriculture, industry), or use new areas that are not currently being used or not going to be used by agriculture.
Sorry, we do not have a trillion seedlings ready to go. Supply and demand mean the costs must increase. So if you believe Porter’s numbers … then you still need $65 billion per year over the decade that we supposedly have just for planting (before contemplating any forest management costs….including forest fires that could increase carbon emissions). I guess South Dakota can go without federal dollars for the next 300 years to pay for it.
I agree with Donald that we can and should replace lawns with grasses, flowers, shrubs that do not require a lot of fertilizer or water and reduce the carbon needed to maintain our landscapes. And use an electric lawn mower for the rest.
Clyde
2019-07-10 23:18
It should happen but it won’t. No one can make a buck off a growing tree. In farming country I see just the opposite. Shelter belts taken out and abandoned building site’s being bull dozed.
jerry
2019-07-10 23:31
Clyde is correct, we’re too damn lazy to plant a tree, to easy just to get rid of them and plant something toxic like corn or beans. In the meantime, Louisiana braces itself for a category 1 hurricane. Not to bad a category 1? True that, but remember, the Mississippi River is still at flood stage. Buh bye New Orleans, been good to know ye or can we save her and ourselves by becoming our own masters? Spend a couple of bucks and dig some holes to put in a tree or 30. https://www.treesisters.org/2017-10-04-18-28-09/blog/27-about-treesisters/245-much-cost-plant-tree
mike from iowa
2019-07-11 07:26
How many acres gained by banning wingnuts and replacing them with something useful, like trees?
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-11 13:27
We will see if there is a push to pay people to sequester carbon in different ways…be that with trees, or in the soil through agricultural techniques, or by direct air carbon capture, or at the source of the pollution itself.
But the key item will be what the price of carbon needs to be for that to happen.
I’m not such a big fan of burying carbon. I’d rather find a way to recycle it or downcycle it into another purpose. For example, use the carbon to make wind turbine blades, and then find something else to do with the wind turbine blades when they are replaced (or make the wind turbine blades more biodegradable to begin with).
Debbo
2019-07-11 13:28
That’s a good plan Mike. Or we could try planting wingnut leaders … headfirst, of course. That’s where all the built in fertilizer is.
Corey Klatt
2019-07-11 13:38
I would give up a tree or two just so i could drive through the parking lot the abysmal Aberdeen Mall.
Porter Lansing
2019-07-11 13:38
McTaggert – Then you still need $65 billion per year over the decade that we supposedly have just for planting (before contemplating any forest management costs….including forest fires that could increase carbon emissions). I guess South Dakota can go without federal dollars for the next 300 years to pay for it.
Rebuttal – Trump’s tax cut was $1.5 trillion. Rededicate half that money to begin the project.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-11 13:40
Touche’ Mr. Lensing.
jerry
2019-07-11 13:45
Oh, Ms. Debbo, that comment was devilish. Heads full of fertilizer.
Debbo
2019-07-11 13:47
I just calls ’em as I sees ’em, Jerry. 😆
Porter Lansing
2019-07-11 13:51
Before we proceed, McTaggart. What you display is classic negativity bias. It’s why South Dakota is rated among the bottom five states in innovation. Now, go ahead and use three times as much mental calculation to guess why something won’t work as I do thinking about how to devise, develop, and make something work.
The floor is yours …
“If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break
When the levee breaks I’ll have no place to stay
Mean old levee taught me to weep and moan
Lord mean old levee taught me to weep and moan
It’s got what it takes to make a mountain man leave his home
Oh well, oh well, oh well” Led Zeppelin
Porter Lansing
2019-07-11 14:42
Professor McTaggart … I apologize for being crass and disrespectful towards you. You’re a renowned physicist which is so far above my pay grade it’s not even comparable. Physics is hard science. It has laws and rules that must be applied. Innovation is the opposite of science. It’s more gut reaction to a need with necessity as the catalyst. That’s why it can’t be taught. Innovation only improves with trial, error, and practice. Once again, I respect your skills and your dedication to carbon mitigation. A combination of safer nukes and natural gas with an emphasis on nuclear development is what America and the world needs. Thank you, sir.
Porter Lansing
2019-07-11 14:45
Jerry … I could see this flooding when CO snowmelt was 175% of normal over all six basins. We didn’t even begin to melt till six weeks ago. And, they were snow skiing on Independence Day which means flood waters in the Missouri and Mississippi won’t recede at all this year. Another similar winter and the middle of America will be coastal.
Or, Corey, how about we tear up 80% of the pavement around the Aberdeen Mall, plant that all to trees, and save money by paving just the 20% that we actually need for parking there?
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-11 15:34
Thanks.
Sometimes politics does not obey any rules, and it does not operate under the constraints of physical laws or even finance sometimes. There is something to be said for not worrying about the rules and charging forward (get elected first, then worry about policy I guess).
However, there are both physical constraints (like you cannot have 100% efficiency) and financial constraints (like paying for a trillion trees right now) that can lead to people losing elections.
We need to solve climate change and pay for it. In my opinion, it will not be possible politically if we cannot get power whenever we want it, nor if we continue to emit carbon while delivering that power. I don’t see how we do that without growing nuclear and renewables, and using our fossil fuel resources wisely (hopefully with carbon capture).
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-11 16:18
Or build something that protects vehicles from hail but also could provide power for the Mall or to recharge electric cars. Probably not as cheap as just paving the parking lot.
jerry
2019-07-11 16:56
And the rain. “Mickey Scott was canoeing at Bde Maka Ska in Minneapolis Wednesday. But when asked whether she would take a swim, she expressed concern about water quality.
“The lakes aren’t a choice to come to as often for swimming,” Scott said. “When I bring my granddaughter swimming somewhere I don’t choose to come to the lakes. We go to a pool or go somewhere else where I think the water’s safer.”
“While we can celebrate the fact that renewables are growing, it’s important to keep in mind that they aren’t growing rapidly enough to stop the growth of power produced from fossil fuels. Further, these sources don’t represent firm power that can be called upon on demand.”
“Thus, whether you like it or not, absolute rejection of nuclear power almost certainly means higher global carbon dioxide emissions.”
Solar powered overhangs in parking lots are a thing. They can even have high-speed and level-2 car chargers. And they CAN be made to look better than what they have at Legoland Florida.
Heat-related issues affect all water-cooled power plants, whether they are nuclear or fossil fuel power plants.
Since nobody seems to like the idea of pre-cooling the water when said heat waves occur (which would be a fine use of intermittent energy or energy storage), the alternative is to build the power plants that do not require water. For nuclear those are the molten salt reactors or the ones that are gas cooled.
Or we learn to go without air conditioning and refrigeration during a heat wave when renewables do not deliver enough energy. I don’t think we want to do that.
jerry
2019-07-11 21:29
Great link Mr. Capehart, nukes cause cancer and they can’t even deal with the heat. Maybe put some wind chargers by the nuke plants to cool those babies down so they don’t meltdown. What a dilemma. As was suggested, plant more trees to shade those reactors as well, tall ones of course.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-12 10:33
Doesn’t the sun cause cancer Jerry? The answer is yes. Can we use solar power without getting cancer? Yes. Can we use nuclear power so that we do not get cancer? Yes. There is a lot of steel and concrete between people and radiation.
Does reducing emissions and particulate matter reduce cancer? Yes. Nuclear and solar have that in common. Currently nuclear, wind, and geothermal have the lowest emissions per kilowatt-hour over their life cycles (and we do have to generate a lot of kilowatt-hours). Solar is 4 times as much as those, but almost one-fourth that of natural gas.
I agree with you that intermittent cooling from wind/sun to cool the water would be OK. But we do have to find a way to pay for it all on a bipartisan basis. That can’t be done if we leave out either renewables or nuclear. I suspect that will also demand some carbon capture in the political calculus.
jerry
2019-07-12 11:41
The answer is no, skin causes cancer on some people, whereas, nukes cause cancer period on all people.
If you plant a trillion or more trees, you will not only get the cleansing action (think Mr. Clean), but you will also get the shade to protect the skin from the sun. Pretty cool, actually.
Nukes cause cancer, always have and always will.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-12 11:59
I think you want to use cancer as a means to prevent the growth of nuclear power, while ignoring other cancer pathways that exist elsewhere. But doing so prevents us from addressing climate change, and prevents the growth of renewables as well.
If fossil fuels grow with renewables, at some point you have to stop fossil fuels by stopping renewables. Having carbon-free nuclear backup energy removes that ceiling.
But let’s check out other sources of radiation that you encounter every day.
Facts:
You get more radiation from one airplane flight than from any nuclear power.
You get more radiation from breathing Radon every day than you do from any nuclear power.
You get more radiation from eating food every day than you do from any nuclear power.
If those three items above deliver more radiation to you than even working inside a nuclear power plant, you should stop flying, stop breathing, and stop eating. But fortunately there is this thing called science, which shows you do not have to stop doing any of those things because of radiation.
#4Science
jerry
2019-07-12 12:06
Facts: Couples with uranium can cause cancer and rattlesnake bites. Not eating or breathing, but drinking Kentucky Deluxe.
“GUTHRIE, Okla. – Two people were arrested after a traffic stop of a stolen car revealed the two had a rattlesnake, radioactive uranium, and an open bottle of Kentucky Deluxe.
There ya have it doc, having nukes just makes uranium that much more accessible to the damnedest folks. I think we can do without either. What we can now do is have these two knuckleheads plant some trees.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-12 13:42
Your article says the police has not made any charges with respect to the uranium, or even for the rattlesnake! I mean they got caught with uranium, and no arrest.
I will agree with you that they are knuckleheads, but they don’t have access to anything that could enrich the uranium. It sounds like the uranium can be purchased legally in some states.
“It was nothing we were concerned of as far as him using it as a weapon of mass destruction,” Gibbs said. “It’s very low radioactivity.”
Meanwhile…solar panels are becoming less attractive to recycle because they are getting rid of the need for silver. It is cheaper to send the panels to the landfill.
You would think that there would be a plan to extract value and isolate any cancer-causing toxic elements or chemicals, and those toxic elements don’t decay…so they stay toxic. But that is not going to stop us from installing a lot of solar panels, using them for 30 years, and tossing them away.
Or maybe we should plan for this before we really ramp things up. Unfortunately the goals for solar cell development today are a low upfront cost and a high efficiency, not the end of the life cycle. That won’t change until the latter is included in the cost structure.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-12 15:28
O Snap!
“Exaggerating how much carbon dioxide can be absorbed by tree planting risks deterring crucial climate action”
Basically depending on just planting trees as the easy fix risks not getting the public behind the larger efforts that will be required.
When trees do not deliver on the promised carbon capture (particularly when stressed in the new climate), we will have wasted several decades.
Planting trees as carbon offsets also allows the polluter to continue to emit carbon. Moreover, the imperative to reduce carbon (or face the hard choices that are really necessary) goes away.
Debbo
2019-07-12 15:34
This comes from MIT’s young innovators. It will make fusion reactors much smaller, cheaper and easier to build.
“A fusion reactor that can deliver energy to the grid is more than a decade away at best. But developing such a reactor is a worthy goal because fusion has the potential to offer almost limitless zero-carbon energy, with low radioactive waste and safety risks.”
I don’t think waste is the primary hurdle for fusion, as the final isotopes tend to be more short-lived than what nuclear power generates. The larger hurdle is developing materials that can withstand much greater temperatures and radiation fluxes than are seen in nuclear power.
You need those high temperatures because you are trying to force a positively charged particle inside the nucleus of another positively charged particle (like charges repel). Sustaining access to fuel and removing waste products can also be a big challenge for fusion.
Maybe with some advanced nuclear you get up to 1000 Celsius. For fusion you need to reach 15 million degrees Celsius at the point of the reaction (probably a little cooler where the structural materials are). The good news is that if materials are suitable for fusion, they will be fine for advanced nuclear.
Debbo
2019-07-12 15:44
Same source, coming down the pike:
“Gu envisions materials that can be used for lighter and stronger body armors, 3D-printed and customizable medical implants, and tunable solar cell materials that push the boundaries of the renewable energy technology.”
“So Popescu developed algorithms that automatically translate an architectural design into a textile-based mold that can be knitted by industrial machines in mere hours. The resulting mold is lightweight and flexible. Popescu, with the rest of her team, developed a system that uses steel cables to hold the mold in place while concrete is poured over it.
“Popescu’s innovation is an efficient and ecologically conscious way of building complex structures with a minimal ecological footprint, in record time, and at low cost. It also has the potential to speed up construction of low-cost, sturdy, lightweight structures in settings like refugee camps, war zones, and sites of natural disasters.”
The initial range for electric vehicles is suitable for many drivers today and may be better in the future. In about a decade we will see a lot more electric and hybrid vehicles than today.
However, the larger issues are the supply of the critical elements (like lithium) and the wear and tear on the battery after many cycles and in a range of temperatures. Like the solar cells, we are pushing ahead without setting up a robust recycling regime for electric car batteries.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-12 15:54
Overall 3d-printing has the promise of reducing costs for a lot of endeavors, from solar to nuclear. Because they have 3d-printed a naval submarine, they can do the same for a reactor core if they want to. If you can do that with biodegradable or bio-based polymers and materials, all the better.
I don’t do the 3d-printing, but I work with the engineers that do.
leslie england
2019-07-12 17:54
haha, Doc, like “without setting up a robust recycling regime for” high hazard nuke waste, decades and decades and decades ago. harvest profits but ignore costs to the environment and inhabitants. Carbon capture. CO2, methane? What, you worry? Too expensive. let’em eat cake. corporate corrupt crony capitalism. 1,735,350 new cases of US cancer last year will be diagnosed, 610,000 will die.
“…Basically depending on just planting trees as the easy fix risks not getting the public behind the larger efforts that will be required….”
We in the climate community has been making this clear since the Bastin et al hit the news cycle. No amount of feasible carbon capture or sequestration can be done without major diversification of our energy portfolio away from fossil fuels..The fine print in Bastin likewise makes that clear. And the sequestration/capture of carbon is only a small part any of the of the SR15 pathways. Anyone presenting this as a shortcut to the hard work ahead are fooling themselves and any reader who buys into it.
leslie england
2019-07-12 18:17
…Clinton wouldn’t win this time around either.
well, Russian propaganda sunk that ship. thx apple, ect. mcconnell sealed the escape hatches.
it is indisputable the world would not be foundering in autocracies if HRC had a fair election. GOP cheats in every way possible to hold on to billionaire power. pretty simple. climate change action would be well underway, and Iran, Putin and Un would be controlled. life would be different and income inequality. the only remaining catastrophic issue now facing every one of us except the 1%, would now be in HRC’s cross-hairs.
thx stupid republican ideologues. it is so simple when rush Limbaugh ect wraps it up with a simple red bow, isn’t it?!
Porter Lansing
2019-07-12 19:10
Mr. McTaggart – Your “facts” about how much radiation we are around (e.g. airplane rides, Radon, various irradiated foods) aren’t a testimony to nuclear safety. No. They’re a testimony of how much nuclear is detested by the vast majority of Americans and how scarce we’ve made it. The public wants it eliminated and is well on the way to that goal.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-12 19:40
Leslie England…We should be recycling our nuclear waste too. The current plans are to bury the waste as is and leave 95% of the usable energy in the spent fuel…which is crazy.
Why should we bury a waste form that is much larger in volume, stays hot for longer, and has more radioactivity? Because like wastes from renewables it is cheaper today to simply throw it away.
And there are a lot of useful elements in the solar cells and wind turbine motors that we should be extracting to reduce the need for mining.
The primary renewable waste issues are (a.) toxic elements, and (b.) larger volumes that are not being recycled. It does have radioactivity in it, but that is a minor aspect. Broken wind turbines are a lot of carbon fiber. I am afraid that we will burn the turbine blades for energy to reduce the volume. There go our carbon savings up in smoke.
It should be renewables and nuclear working together. A nuclear reactor is the only place today where brand new rare earth elements are being made. Those could be extracted in the recycling process. So yes, I am in favor of a robust recycling regime for all forms of energy, where one form of energy helps the other.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-12 20:00
Actually, it is testimony to how safe nuclear power is today. We get more radiation dose from medical use than we do from nuclear power, and nobody wants to go without access to radiation therapy if it will help kill cancer, and nobody wants unnecessary invasive procedures if we forego medical imaging.
I am not talking about irradiated foods, Porter. I am just talking about food. Everything has trace amounts of potassium, thorium, uranium, and their various decay products. By the way, the process of irradiating food does not make it radioactive. It simply breaks chemical bonds that lead to killing various microbes, fungi, viruses, etc.
The focus has been on perceived risk and little on actual benefits. The public has not yet been confronted with the following choices:
1. You can have an all renewable energy grid with whatever batteries can help with, but you cannot have power whenever you want it.
2. You can have power whenever you want it with more renewables, but you must also have a lot more fossil fuels if you avoid nuclear (this is the status quo, just without the nuclear we enjoy today).
3. You can have all the power you want whenever you want it and reduce carbon emissions as much as possible with nuclear in the mix.
Which one would you pick if your principles lead you to fixing climate change and not just talking about it?
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-12 20:14
Clinton had some flaws as a candidate, and needed a different set of tactics for the Rust Belt and Appalachia in particular. She just needed one of those states to flip and she didn’t get there. At the time nobody in Appalachia believed they would make more money in the new economy…but the message to destroy the coal economy came through pretty clearly.
It isn’t that Appalachia wouldn’t like to convert its economy to a more diversified portfolio, but it was a lost opportunity for the Democrats not to find a way to deliver that to them….and still is a lost opportunity.
Porter Lansing
2019-07-12 20:14
Your argument is invalid, sir. You’re assuming a tragedy doesn’t happen. Nuclear tragedies have happened and that removes 99.9% of the assumption of safety. Nuclear power plants are safe until they’re not and that must be factored into any safety rating.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-12 20:30
I beg your pardon, but the occupational death rates and accident rates are higher for solar and wind.
If you like the carbon savings you get from today’s nuclear power plants, then keep them going, because they will be replaced by gas or coal. And if you don’t like the current power plants but want carbon-free power, then shut them down and build the newer versions. If you want even more clean power, then build more of them. Pretty simple. They will work with renewables, so go ahead and build those too.
So I welcome your new interest in nuclear safety, and hope that you will oppose a greater influence by Russia and China in the global nuclear marketplace by supporting new American reactors that satisfy 100% of your objections to nuclear today.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-12 20:53
The issue with Three Mile Island I would say were human factors combined with instrumentation. It had the smallest release of any of the three incidents, but had the largest political impact. The production of power from coal skyrocketed after this incident.
The issue with Chernobyl was a design that should not have been built, and a politics that resulted in the careless testing of the reactor. The wildlife around Chernobyl is doing much better than it ever has been, largely due to the lack of people.
The issue with Fukushima was basically that they did not secure their backup energy source from the flooding. It wasn’t the direct shaking of the earthquake, it was the tsunami. It was exacerbated by a culture of not speaking up to authorities and not having enough staff on-site in case of an emergency.
And by the way, even with Fukushima, Japan will be generating more nuclear energy. They were not able to meet their carbon targets since 2011 without nuclear. The percentage of nuclear in the mix will be less than what it was before Fukushima for the foreseeable future.
Nuclear plants should follow NRC guidelines. NRC officers have the freedom to shut down operations at any time if they see anything.
I’m glad you are concerned about safety, and hope that you will require the same due diligence in solar and wind safety. That is something that solar and wind can learn from nuclear.
This is also why nuclear energy appreciates a diverse workforce, because seeing problems from different approaches is beneficial to the nuclear safety culture.
You won’t believe volumes of scientific data and uber-regulations on nuclear safety, but you will believe everything that occurs on the Simpson’s. Great.
jerry
2019-07-12 21:14
Just showing what you said there doc, humans caused the problems so why would that change? Do you think of yourself as being that guy who could make all the problems go away?
If all of this is so safe, why are we being such a pain in the arse to Iran over them wanting nuke power and cool with Saudi Arabia, the country that already attacked us a couple of times. If you’re willing to put one in South Dakota, why not put them in Iran? Then we can all plant trees to help prevent heart disease.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-12 21:22
Humans produce wind and solar energy too, and energy storage, and the energy grid, etc. That is not a nuclear thing, that is a people thing.
Saudi Arabia is using its oil money to invest in nuclear and solar. That tells you something. Neither should have a nuclear weapon, so we should be playing a role in overseeing any nuclear fuel cycle and the waste products or enrichment.
If and only if Iran will play nice, then they will need power to have any kind of economy. They could have nuclear generated electricity imported instead of being built in the country initially from nations that agree to our safety oversight. But if you think oil and gas and coal are OK for them, then why not more oil and gas and coal in South Dakota?
jerry
2019-07-12 21:31
Each day we do equations or use a computer, we are practicing what the Persians taught the western world 1500 years ago. We could put the nuke plants in Syria, or maybe Iraq or neighboring Afghanistan, yeah there is the place for sure.
Porter Lansing
2019-07-12 22:26
“I beg your pardon, but the occupational death rates and accident rates are higher for solar and wind.”
Not a valid rating. Those ratings don’t consider when things go bad and radiation leaks kill people. Your logic kills people, Dr. McTaggart!
Case in point. The safety ratings on Tanaka air bags were within range because millions had them and only a few users were killed. Finally, as with nuclear generators, wise minds intervened and said that every death mattered even though Tanaka’s overall rating was good.
Nuclear’s safety rating may be good but its tragedy rating is deadly.
Bill, by no means do I suggest we just plant trees and forget all the technological and social revolution necessary to restore the planet’s livable future. If the Legislature told me they were willing to spend $100 million dollars to fight climate change, I’d tell them to cut that pie into many slices: refit state buildings for energy efficiency, add some fuel-efficient cars to the state motor pool… and put five million into planting more trees—either restoring shelterbelts or building that great bicycle-tourist greenbelt I envision sheltering a bicycle trail from Pierre to Watertown
jerry
2019-07-13 08:03
And the fantastic bicycle-tour de badlands between Kadoka and Rapid City that already has some set aside money “Meanwhile, a small portion of the project is scheduled to be built in 2016 in Rapid City. The city has a $206,837 grant that will be paired with $193,000 of city money for an eastward extension of the Leonard Swanson Memorial Pathway, which runs along Rapid Creek through much of the city.” Rapid City Journal 2.22.2015
The Mako Sica Trail could be a great place for a shelter belt along a beautiful recreation trail that would also provide part of the trillion trees project.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-13 12:07
Your logic is doing people harm Porter. If we forego nuclear energy, people will still demand energy when they want to use it, not when you deem they are worthy enough to have it (We deny you energy for the good of the planet…good luck winning an election).
Renewables do not deliver energy in response to a demand. Without nuclear that energy must be delivered by consuming fossil fuels that emit carbon, SOx, NOx, and other particulate matter because we don’t have energy storage or carbon capture.
The only radiation leaks that killed people from those 3 incidents were when people were on-site in or around the open reactor core at Chernobyl. And by getting the U.S. out of nuclear, you are allowing those same Russians to take over the global nuclear marketplace with China. Thanks a lot.
Nobody died from radiation at Three Mile Island. Japan has said in 2018 that one person who was on the Fukushima site had his death attributed to lung cancer, which was diagnosed 5 years after Fukushima. A dose of 100 milliSievert is the current threshold for any distinguishable cancer risk, and that worker was documented to have received 195 milliSievert (which frankly is a failure of the company to monitor those dose readings, or to have enough people on-site to swap out as necessary to mitigate doses). Our annual dose from nature and everything but medicine is about 3 milliSievert.
Interesting that you minimize the fewer workplace deaths from nuclear, and do not acknowledge the far greater deaths from particulate matter. In 2018 a study by the EPA declared that particulate matter contributed to the death of 9 million people worldwide each year. So that could be 90 million in the last 10 years.
Can you provide evidence that the use of nuclear power in the last 60 years has generated more deaths than that? Or has it actually saved millions of lives by avoiding the emission of even more particulate matter?
The world’s energy use is growing, and fossil fuel use is increasing faster than renewables to meet the demand. And you would rather continue that rate of 9 million deaths per year (or even increase it) than eliminate it with the help of nuclear energy. Wow.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-13 12:20
Cory,
I think I would also consider helping school districts replace school buses. Building better schools that may have geothermal heating or solar for heating/cooling would also be on the list. All of those items would have long term benefits, but have a high upfront cost that is a hurdle for communities and school districts.
Porter Lansing
2019-07-13 12:47
Robert McTaggart rambles on like a drunk trying to talk his way out of a DUI. His claim that nuclear energy is safe is invalid. I’ll exhibit a case a family member helped to litigate.
“A $375 million class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of property owners who lived downwind from the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant has yielded more than 10,000 claims, and so far about half “appear to be valid,” the attorney overseeing the case said Wednesday. “That’s a very high claim percentage,” he said, noting that many potential claimants have died or didn’t receive notice of the settlement in the 27 years that have passed since the suit was filed. “I would anticipate several hundred more claims will come in.”
Davidoff said checks could go out as soon as this fall for those who ultimately qualify. Dollar amounts for claimants haven’t been determined yet, but he said individual payouts would like reach at least several thousand dollars.
Nuclear energy is not safe and McTaggart’s assurance that it is borders negligence.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-13 13:01
“Former employees sue blade maker for ‘severe injuries'”
“Green alleges that she became sick after applying epoxy resin inside blades in the moulding department at TPI’s plant in Newton, Iowa.
She says TPI did issue gloves, paper masks and paper suits, but that the equipment was inadequate and resin would sometimes soak through to her own clothes.
The 36-year old alleges that the same day her skin injuries were diagnosed, TPI fired her, saying it could no longer accommodate her health needs.
Her complaint, filed at Iowa district court in Jasper County, accused TPI of a “systematic practice of hiring healthy employees and then terminating them from employment after their employees sustained a chemical injury.”
“
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-13 13:05
And by the way, I am talking about nuclear power, not nuclear weapons. I know it is the weekend…but wake up :^).
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-13 13:09
And what say you on the 9 million deaths every year from particulate matter?
Do we need to address that, or is it better to make more renewable energy regardless of how much fossil fuel we must consume to balance supply and demand?
Porter Lansing
2019-07-13 13:24
Particulate matter is a false equivalency and an example of what-aboutism, thus irrelevant. Nuclear energy is nuclear energy. It’s causes cancer whether it’s a reactor or a weapons plant. Rockwell stalled employee lawsuits for 27 years until every worker who could beat them in court died of cancer. Over 250 died.
-You’re trying to escape culpability for proclaiming nuclear energy to be safer that eating vegetables by distracting the conversation. That’s conclusive that you’re in the corner with your face to the wall.
Enough. America agrees with me.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-13 16:06
Last time I checked, cancer was cancer regardless of the cause, and a death was a death. I apparently need to remind you that chemicals used in solar and wind manufacturing can have an impact in that regard. The wind and the sunshine are pure. The means to convert them into energy are not as pure as a Colorado spring (I mean the water source…not the season, although the season is probably nice in Colorado).
We can eliminate far more cancers and premature deaths by generating more nuclear energy with renewables instead of pairing renewables with fossil fuels. No carbon taxes, no carbon offsets, just produce clean energy from the get-go.
If we eliminate nuclear, then fossil fuels must do two jobs…make up for the intermittency of renewables (while emitting carbon), and generate the extra bulk energy when renewables are not enough (while emitting more carbon). And as we convert to electric vehicles and the third world discovers air conditioning and refrigeration, the growth rate of fossil fuels will continue to outpace renewables.
The lawsuit you are continuing to talk about regards the production of nuclear weapons, not nuclear energy. The real FALSE EQUIVALENCY (to coin a phrase) is to equate the manufacturing, machining, chemical processing, and use of specialized solvents in nuclear weapons production run by the government with what occurs for the commercial production of nuclear energy. Do you really think that the emissions and environmental impact of nuclear weapons production are the same as what occurs near a nuclear power plant?
Porter Lansing
2019-07-13 17:10
My late wife died of breast cancer and I find your cavalier, public, attitude offensive. Just stop!
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-13 18:01
Then you should support efforts to achieve the greatest reduction in the numbers of cancers as possible.
You want more renewables regardless of whether fossil fuels increase. Or more likely, you are pinning your hopes on energy storage technologies that have not materialized yet. I am fine with more renewables as long as we don’t emit carbon along with them, and we can do that with nuclear.
It is clear that nuclear energy and renewables working together would deliver a significant reduction in the generation of particulate matter and carbon dioxide.
For some reason you are opposed to a solution in which we both win and the problem of climate change actually gets solved. Sometimes in politics if a problem gets solved, people cannot get paid to complain about it any more.
jerry
2019-07-13 18:31
Plant trees, they are so cool. Nukes kill. “The waste generated by nuclear reactors remains radioactive for tens to hundreds of thousands of years. Currently, there are no long-term storage solutions for radioactive waste, and most is stored in temporary, above-ground facilities. These facilities are running out of storage space, so the nuclear industry is turning to other types of storage that are more costly and potentially less safe.”
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-13 18:57
The waste does not have to remain radioactive for tens to hundreds of thousands of years if we recycle it. If we build the more efficient reactors, less waste can be generated as well. We should be doing things to reduce the volume of waste that requires permanent isolation from the biosphere for all sources of energy, not just for nuclear. A couple hundred years to background levels is possible.
There are long-term solutions for nuclear waste storage, but opponents do not want to say yes. Basically they think that allowing a solution to proceed means a renewed growth of nuclear will occur. Opponents seem to think this will mean less renewables, but I don’t believe it. Renewables are too popular, and more nuclear will provide the needed growth in carbon-free backup power for those renewables.
Cost is an issue. We are paying $2 million per day to store nuclear waste at the power plants, and the related liability also increases with the volume. Recent testimony on Capitol Hill shows that we do not have a crisis in the storage of nuclear waste.
We do have a crisis with regard to establishing a consent-based process. Nobody wants to allow progress, and there are communities with shut-down power plants that are now de facto storage sites as a result.
I think the way forward is to have more than one permanent storage site. Even the congressional delegation from Nevada agrees that a solution is required…they would just rather be given the same abilities for consent as other potential sites for interim storage.
By the way, there is no half-life on things like cadmium or arsenic. They are always toxic. That is a primary issue for renewable wastes. Of course you could bust up cadmium and arsenic into smaller nuclei that are not as toxic, but you would have to permit nuclear to help solar and wind with its waste problem. And likewise, rare earths found in nuclear waste would help wind/solar/energy storage as well.
jerry
2019-07-13 19:21
“There is great concern that the development of nuclear energy programs increases the likelihood of proliferation of nuclear weapons. As nuclear fuel and technologies become globally available, the risk of these falling into the wrong hands is increasingly present. To avoid weapons proliferation, it is important that countries with high levels of corruption and instability be discouraged from creating nuclear programs, and the US should be a leader in nonproliferation by not pushing for more nuclear power at home.”
When bozo heads like those two honyockers in Oklahoma carry uranium around, we are not a safe country.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-13 19:52
Apparently the knuckleheads had a legally obtained amount of uranium they wanted to use to test a geiger counter. Go figure. The police had the uranium and the knuckleheads, and didn’t charge them regarding the uranium. If it were an issue, federal and state charges would have occurred.
The key item for nuclear nonproliferation is to prevent the enrichment of nuclear material above 90%. If you are enriching to 3-5% and are open to monitoring and inspection, no problem.
Canada has shown that you can have nuclear power without any enrichment of the fuel (the CANDU reactors). That means 0.72% of the uranium is U-235. However, you have to make other choices if you go that direction. CANDU reactors use water enriched in deuterium instead (heavy water), but they could use something else. Each engineering choice has a consequence…and CANDUs must be larger to allow for the fission reaction to continue.
Our rules for governing nuclear energy programs should be implemented. We have more weight in that discussion when we provide more of the nuclear tech in the marketplace. That means expanding our role in nuclear power to compete with Russia and China, not reducing it. We have a national security interest in making sure that the safest and most secure designs are built, and that protocols for assuring nonproliferation are followed.
jerry
2019-07-13 20:06
“Nuclear power plants are a potential target for terrorist operations. An attack could cause major explosions, putting population centers at risk, as well as ejecting dangerous radioactive material into the atmosphere and surrounding region. Nuclear research facilities, uranium enrichment plants, and uranium mines are also potentially at risk for attacks that could cause widespread contamination with radioactive material”
That’s why we can never ever ever allow nukes to be stored in South Dakota or have those cancer killers here in our world. It’s gonna be bad enough with these bombers coming to Ellsworth for security stuff, but to add more nukes, bad mojo.
grudznick
2019-07-13 20:28
grudznick had to have a really hairy, somewhat interestingly-shaped mole removed from the top of my noggin’ because the photons from solar power were pounding down on it. Hundreds of thousands of Americans get harmed from solar power every year.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-13 20:36
They could do the same thing for areas that hold toxic waste from solar and wind waste. That would release toxic chemicals into our air and water. Coal mines and coal fly ash storage ponds would be targets for the same reason. Nuclear waste and nuclear fuel are protected by steel and concrete. We have no such protection regime for solar waste, wind waste, or coal waste.
Thanks to opposition of nuclear power and use of the LNT hypothesis, nuclear power plants have way more concrete than is necessary to contain the radiation. You can fly a plane into those things…no problem. The concrete and steel casks used to hold nuclear waste are thoroughly tested against all kinds of kinetic impacts.
We should be building the new power plants that are walk-away safe. They will cool down without the need for external power that was needed at Fukushima, and the fuel is designed to withstand temperatures beyond what the reactor can produce for much longer than the cool-down time.
Probably if there were ever a dirty bomb, the best thing to do is to stay away from downtown while they clean things up. Basically the dirty bomb is little more than a bomb.
Studies show that the largest radiation doses occur in a general nuclear incident when people panic, try to escape, and get stuck in traffic…resulting in longer exposures and more inhalation. If you wait, our friend the wind moves a lot of that away, and the isotopes decay.
The greatest risk of injury or death occurs via both panic and stress about radiation, not the radiation itself. So this thing that you guys do to instill fear about nuclear is actually quite counterproductive if you are truly interested in public safety.
jerry
2019-07-13 21:12
Studies as you note, “In addition to the risks posed by terrorist attacks, human error and natural disasters can lead to dangerous and costly accidents. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine led to the deaths of 30 employees in the initial explosion and has has had a variety of negative health effects on thousands across Russia and Eastern Europe. A massive tsunami bypassed the safety mechanisms of several power plants in 2011, causing three nuclear meltdowns at a power plant in Fukushima, Japan, resulting in the release of radioactive materials into the surrounding area. In both disasters, hundreds of thousands were relocated, millions of dollars spent, and the radiation-related deaths are being evaluated to this day. Cancer rates among populations living in proximity to Chernobyl and Fukushima, especially among children, rose significantly in the years after the accidents”
Cancer rates skyrocketed, who would’ve thunk it?
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-13 21:15
Big power failure in New York City at the moment.
Good luck solar power and energy storage. Oh wait a minute…it is dark and they have no energy storage.
jerry
2019-07-13 21:19
Indeed, ya should’ve been warned and protected Mr. grudznick. Perhaps you were and you were just simply ignorant of your skin exposure. Here we are discussing planting trees to post shade upon the land and to help cleanse it.
Use that noggin and plant a tree or ten, get back at the bright orange ball and seek shade. Pale faces should be always on the alert for their skin issues with the sun. Sombrero comes from the Spanish root word meaning shade or shadow. A trillion trees will provide a whole lot of sombre and a whole lot of cleaning.
jerry
2019-07-13 21:23
Nukes wouldn’t have solved that power outage. If the grid system won’t allow it, you could have 14,000 nuke power plants and it would still be dark. See it runs on the same pretense as a light switch, on and off. Go plant some trees to do some good for the planet.
Side note, it the lights are off, that is how those babies are made… Check it out in 9 months and see.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-13 21:30
A variety of negative health effects include those related to fear, not radiation.
“But now, eight years after Fukushima, the best-available science clearly shows that Caldicott’s estimate of the number of people killed by nuclear accidents was off by one million. Radiation from Chernobyl will kill, at most, 200 people, while the radiation from Fukushima and Three Mile Island will kill zero people.”
“What about cancer [from Chernobyl] ? By 2065 there may be 16,000 thyroid cancers; to date there have been 6,000. Since thyroid cancer has a mortality rate of just one percent — it is an easy cancer to treat — expected deaths may be 160.”
“Cancer rates were just 10 percent higher among atomic blast survivors, most of whom never got cancer. Even those who received a dose 1,000 times higher than today’s safety limit saw their lives cut short by an average of 16 months.”
“About 2,000 people died from the evacuation [from Fukushima], while others who were displaced suffered from loneliness, depression, suicide, bullying at school, and anxiety. ”
“Every scientist and radiation expert in the world who comes here [Fukushima] says the same thing,” he said. “We know we don’t need to reduce radiation levels for public health. We’re doing it because the people want us to.”
Time to end the fear and build a carbon-free economy.
#4Science
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-13 21:37
The grid itself in NYC needs to be more resilient and upgraded. In general the northeast is also lacking in natural gas infrastructure.
But solar is not going to help them tonight. Sleep well solar cells…we’ll see you in the morning.
jerry
2019-07-13 22:25
Cancer of course, for the workers and neighboring folks, like children. “In addition to the significant risk of cancer associated with fallout from nuclear disasters, studies also show increased risk for those who reside near a nuclear power plant, especially for childhood cancers such as leukemia . Workers in the nuclear industry are also exposed to higher than normal levels of radiation, and as a result are at a higher risk of death from cancer at a rate similar to the that of Japanese nuclear bomb survivors.”
We all know the dangers, we have footage of it in the historical context with some of it being not that long ago. Nukes are a bummer. Plant trees, and lots of them. Get the shade and the benefit of shelter belts and what those bring. Oh how I remember the shelter belts and the soil banks, clean water and clean air, what a concept.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-14 13:16
You are noting projections of cancer based upon the LNT model of risk assessment for radiation.
Last time I checked…”risk of cancer” is not cancer. Your favorite risk model outputs a probability of getting cancer, but that is different than accounting for the actual cancers. Swing and a miss…
The evidence is that you have to get above 100 milliSieverts of dose to see any statistical significance. Below that, current data is consistent with more than one model, so we need more statistics and better experiements. Radiation safety thresholds for nuclear workers (the people who deal with the fuel and machinery, etc.) is set lower than the 100 mSv. That threshold is science based!
Above 100 milliSieverts, the relationship is indeed linearly related to the dose. Nobody wants to do the necessary studies for effects below 100 mSv because then the LNT could be called into question, and nuclear would not be as expensive.
So if you are indeed a science supporter, then support the funding of several thorough investigations (not just one) to investigate the relationship between radiation dose and different cancers below 100 mSv. If you have a political reason to sustain the LNT, then you will work to avoid such studies and/or completely dismiss their results.
It is an interesting conundrum for you. On one hand, if you question LNT (linear no-threshold model) or gather data which is inconsistent with the LNT, you become pro-nuclear all of a sudden to many on this blog. But if you are a science denier, then you share something in common with those who deny that climate change is occurring and man has something to do with it.
I hope you will choose science and then make an evidence-based decision.
jerry
2019-07-14 13:35
A farm in Portugal is showing how the ancient art of silvopasture – combining livestock with productive trees – may offer some real answers to the climate crisis
Animals farmed is supported by
Animals farmedAbout this content
John Vidal in Foros de Vale Figueira
Sat 13 Jul 2019 09.01 BST Last modified on Sat 13 Jul 2019 11.15 BST
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Animals are free to roam under the shade of trees and shrubs at a co-operative farm in Portugal.
Animals are free to roam under the shade of trees and shrubs at a co-operative farm in Portugal. All photographs by Ricardo Lopes/The Guardian
The land to the north of the village of Foros de Vale Figueira in southern Portugal has been owned and farmed through the centuries by Romans, Moors, Christians, capitalists, far rightists, even the military. It has been part of a private fiefdom, worked by slaves as well as communists.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/13/pigs-radical-farming-system-trees-climate-crisis
For those of us who argue for shelter belts, it’s a proven fact that farming and ranching depend on cooling animals so they can forage. Standing in the hot sun does not put meat on those bones. Shelter belts also drift the snow so you get the runoff in the stock dams to provide even more opportunities for livestock to cool.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-14 13:42
You betcha all of that snow sure does keep them cool in the winter…
There are a few farms that are doing the same thing, but produce power from solar on top of the shading structure. Basically like what is also done at parking lots.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-14 13:46
A better idea would be to use the electricity from solar on top to chill the water that the animals drink, or generate a cooling mist for them in the shade. That would get around the need to match supply with demand or store any energy.
jerry
2019-07-14 13:51
With these inefficient dinosaurs, please. The 444 nuclear power plants currently in existence provide about 11% of the world’s energy. Studies show that in order to meet current and future energy needs, the nuclear sector would have to scale up to around 14,500 plants. Uranium, the fuel for nuclear reactors, is energy-intensive to mine, and deposits discovered in the future are likely to be harder to get to to. As a result, much of the net energy created would be offset by the energy input required to build and decommission plants and to mine and process uranium ore. The same is true for any reduction in greenhouse gas emissions brought about by switching from coal to nuclear”
Nukes cause cancer, cause more problems to the environment than they solve. Let them die the death of Westinghouse. 15,000 of these cancer causing money sucking behemoth’s, naw. Plant trees and lots of them. Fruit trees and flowering trees for the bees.
jerry
2019-07-14 13:54
I’m anxious to see what other commenters say about the other issues Cory shows on his blog site. So, I am gonna hang up now. Feel free to argue with yourself doc.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-14 14:26
Trees only won’t work. And the time spent planting them and waiting for results is time better spent on other action items. If you don’t manage them (which takes energy by the way), they will decay and microbes will release both methane and CO2 from their decay.
If we reprocessed our nuclear waste, there would not have to be as much mining.
Our choice of reactor can also reduce the need for mining. We could convert U-238 into Pu-239, then less uranium has to be mined. We could also develop the thorium-based reactors. Thorium is 100% Th-232, which can be converted into U-233, and it is more abundant than uranium. And then there is the extraction of uranium or thorium from seawater (which is being studied, but not ready yet).
So you have some options to reduce the mining we will need and still have nuclear power.
I like the way you think about going all-in on nuclear. But for a variety of reasons, it will be better that our energy portfolio is neither all-nuclear nor all-renewables. We will however need to have more nuclear power than today to support renewables and deliver the total amount of energy we demand.
Cancer is not a good argument for not doing nuclear. I know it is your favorite phrase, but nuclear actually does far more to reduce potential cancers than other energy sources. Moreover, there are chemical pathways for cancer via the mining and manufacturing of solar and wind as well that you ignore.
Mining is not a good argument for not doing nuclear. To have more renewables and energy storage, we will need to do even more mining (sorry) because wind and solar are not as intense an energy source. Lithium and cobalt are not being mined in pro-labor environments either.
Thus we should support across-the-board recycling efforts, and find ways to for wind, solar, and nuclear (and hydro and geothermal,etc.) to help reduce carbon in those processes. I am all in favor of reducing the mining that is required. But more energy demand will require more mining at some point.
There is also probably a way to integrate more technologies that are bio-based or bio-degradable, which would also help to reduce waste streams.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-14 14:44
I should have added we could build more efficient reactors (i.e. that run at higher temperatures). If you could boost the thermal efficiency from around 33-35% today to 50% tomorrow, that would also help reduce the mining that is required.
We also stop using nuclear fuel well before any potential degradation can occur, so being able to use the same fuel for longer would reduce the requisite input as well (This would reduce the 95% of the usable energy that we currently are throwing away).
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-14 17:34
The Trump Administration has found a tariff it doesn’t like — on uranium.
There was talk of increasing the domestic content of the uranium we use from 7% to 25%. Most of our uranium comes from Canada and Australia, with the rest from Russia, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere (including China).
Domestic uranium producers and John Barrasso (R – Wyoming) have opposed the decision. Nuclear utilities have supported the decision, as fuel costs will stay low to help them compete with natural gas.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-15 12:07
Trees can also be used for the phytoremediation of the soil. Willow and poplars tend to be used in this regard.
“Familiar plants such as alfalfa, sunflower, corn, date palms, certain mustards, even willow and poplar trees can be used to reclaim contaminated soil – a cheap, clean and sustainable process. ”
“Some species work best for organics such as petroleum hydrocarbons, others take up metals such as cadmium and chromium. Of the more than 100,000 varieties of poplars developed since the 1950s, about 300 can serve as green tools.”
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-17 18:09
From NPR no less….
“When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rolled out her “Green New Deal,” calling for clean energy, universal health care and guaranteed jobs, one of the first questions she got was: How do you plan to pay for it?
The New York Democrat argued that ambitious programs can easily be financed through deficit spending.”
from CBS News…. In a typically blunt display, the New York property tycoon told an inquiry into renewable energy to stop the wind power efforts in the country’s north.
“Scotland, if you pursue this policy of these monstrous turbines, Scotland will go broke,” he said. “They are ugly, they are noisy and they are dangerous. If Scotland does this, Scotland will be in serious trouble and will lose tourism to places like Ireland, and they are laughing at us.”
Members of the committee are looking at how achievable the Scottish government’s green targets for 2020 are. The plans for 11 200-foot tall wind turbines are part of the government’s goal of positioning itself as a leader in renewable energy.
When challenged to produce hard evidence about his claims on the negative impact of turbines, Trump said: “I am the evidence, I am a world class expert in tourism.”
The public gallery burst into laughter.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-19 13:53
Scotland will have the same problem that all renewables have today…what to do when there isn’t enough energy, and what to do when there is too much energy. I suspect that like California, they will try to export that excess energy. If the demand is not there they lose money, unless somebody checks a box to subsidize them.
In other news, Germany says that they will consider putting a price on carbon emissions as soon as September 20. But Merkel is meeting resistance from German automakers and those in rural areas (that have to drive more). Do you know of any rural areas where people have to drive more?
Iceland tries to bring back trees razed by the Vikings
“The young trees are cultivated indoors for three months before being moved outside.
But since Icelandic soil is low in nitrogen, the maturation process is slow and the average growth rate is only about one tenth of that observed in the Amazon rainforest. “
Debbo
2019-07-19 14:24
Mike, that’s funny. I don’t know how well Rancid Racist gets it that he’s being laughed AT because he’s an idiot.
jerry
2019-07-19 15:26
Ruh oh, brace yourselves, 2008 revisited with a vengeance.
“The diminishing value of coal draws ominous parallels to the subprime mortgage bubble that precipitated the Great Recession of 2008. But the coal free-fall is likely to be even worse than the housing market crash, because houses always retained some value, while coal mines could end up worthless if investors see costs that outstrip potential income, said energy analyst Clark Williams-Derry of the Sightline Institute, a sustainability think tank.
With mines likely to close, Wyoming is entering a new and untested paradigm for coal — reclamation without production. Typically, mines clean up their mess as they go; if they don’t, then the state can shut down operations until they do. But once a company goes broke and the mine shuts down, the only funds for cleanup are reclamation bonds, which critics say are inadequate in Wyoming.[…]
Meanwhile, coal’s collapse is delivering a one-two punch of unemployment and unpaid taxes to Campbell County, where more than one-third of all coal in the U.S. is mined from the Powder River Basin. The Blackjewel bankruptcy put nearly 600 miners out of work, and the county may never get $37 million in taxes owed by the company, which was run by Appalachian coal executive Jeff Hoops. This is partly because of the county’s lenient approach to collecting back taxes.” https://www.hcn.org/articles/coal-with-coal-in-free-fall-wyoming-faces-an-uncertain-future
When the housing bubble burst, it was bad news for sure. We may long for those days when this crap hits the fan. Turnip soup..yummy.
Debbo
2019-07-19 15:32
Typical Wyoming. Flying high, followed by crashing and burning.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-19 15:42
It sounds like you’re going to have to find something else to do at the coal mine besides coal mining.
Do you put something industrial on the site (maybe recycling solar panels and batteries)? Do you pursue carbon storage there? Do you drill for geothermal energy?
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-19 15:45
Debbo, it sounds like the burning came first…
jerry
2019-07-19 16:35
Wyoming did some great things with the revenue from those coal mines. They sure paid there teachers a substantial difference than we see here in South Dakota for the same work. Better pay and better benefits, I hope that’s not the first thing felt from this wreck. Environmental issues will also be a problem when these mines go broke and they leave.
jerry
2019-07-19 16:48
I saw a wooden bicycle in Europe and now Japan is working on this. Reduce carbon and get a cool ride like the one pictured.
“Researchers in Japan are working to create a strong material out of wood pulp that could replace steel parts in vehicles within a decade.
Work is also charging ahead in the country to develop plastics that can withstand high temperatures, to replace metal for parts near the engine.
These innovations are part of a wider industry push to make cars lighter.
“There is a rush to try and cut as much weight as possible, especially on cars which will pollute more, like SUVs [sports utility vehicles] or pick-up trucks,” says Paolo Martino, principal automotive components analyst at IHS Markit.” https://www.bbc.com/news/business-41145744
jerry
2019-07-19 16:56
The great green wall, a couple billion trees across Africa. It’s a beautiful thing.
Jerry, I saw from your link that the Japanese company is working on a bioplastic. That’s important, I think, because otherwise they’re just using oil.
The first mentioned business didn’t mention what type of plastic, so I assume it’s conventional. That’s a problem.
Using more plastic than steel, hence increasing the vehicle’s fuel efficiency is a plus, but let’s not substitute problems.
Your Green Wall link is outstanding and hopeful. Thanks. (Robert, don’t tell me why it’s not going to work. I need a little hope, okay?)
jerry
2019-07-19 18:20
Thanks Ms. Debbo, check this out regarding using goats instead of the poison insecticide to control the weeds that decimate the prairie grass. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJBtmSR7Nnc If some ranchers would pull their heads out, maybe we could actually do something about that beautiful yellow weed that will soon dry out and burn like kerosene. Put goats on it to work with the cattle. How about that? Here is how you can actually plant trees along with chokecherry bushes along with other brush trees to hold back erosion on the creek banks that help to purify the water that runs off into stock dams without spray. As a bonus, when there are floods, keeping your acreage from going down river by planting trees. Work with the land rather than killing it.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-19 18:32
Plastics from bio-based sources are the way to go. The questions are whether you can obtain the necessary strength, and whether you can recycle it. Carbon fiber is very strong, but we don’t really recycle it. That is a problem for our wind turbines at the end of their life cycle.
If you can just wait a few thousand years, the tilt of the earth’s orbit will allow northern Africa to be green again without human intervention. You know what they have found in the Sahara? Fossils of whales.
Debbo, go ahead and plant more trees. And grasses. And flowers. And shrubs. There are many other advantages to trees besides their ability to capture carbon. They may help us with our carbon problem…I just wouldn’t rely on them as the only solution.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-19 20:46
“Hungry Elephants fight climate change one mouthful at a time”
Elephants munch on plants with smaller stem diameters. The forest that results has fewer tall trees and more with much denser wood. And it is the denser wood that will store more carbon. The elephant-grazed forest also has a greater total mass of plants.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-20 16:53
The massive heat wave is creating a spike in fossil fuel usage, as people turn on the air conditioners. Not only is the total energy demand greater, but it occurs whether enough renewable energy is available or not. They need that air conditioning now.
“A lot of Americans don’t really have a deep understanding of the energy they are using and the fact that time of the day and peak energy is peak fossil fuel use. It’s a double whammy in terms of climate,” said Kiran Bhatraju, CEO of Arcadia Power.
A more extreme climate leads to stronger cold periods and stronger warm periods, which means even more energy for heating and cooling. In addition, we will need to add even more electricity with a conversion to more electric vehicles. And by the way, the third world wants to consume as much energy as we do.
Get ready for this to accelerate as we grow renewables without enough energy storage, without enough carbon capture, and without enough nuclear energy. Have no doubt that we will keep those air conditioners going by burning natural gas, if not coal.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-20 17:53
Cities are losing trees.
So beyond any carbon sequestration, trees are important for reducing temperatures (by up to 10 degrees F), removing pollutants, reducing noise, enhancing wildlife, and reducing runoff.
To hot for nukes, hey, let’s try insulation on our homes and offices. Turn down that thermostat in the winter (Jimmy Carter) and turn that baby up in the summer to 75 or even higher for the air conditioning. Use pasteurized milk or shelf soy milk. Use political clout to rid ourselves of dinosaur republicans and start to live right. https://www.npr.org/2018/07/27/632988813/hot-weather-spells-trouble-for-nuclear-power-plants
Hot weather spells trouble for any thermal power plant that uses water for cooling…even the natural gas plants you rely upon to make up for renewables.
So by avoiding nuclear, not only are we going to burn more natural gas and coal to deliver air conditioning where and when it is needed, the natural gas plants are less efficient due to the higher temperatures. Thus even more gas will need to be consumed.
In addition, the batteries we will use for electric vehicles are also less efficient at higher temperatures, so they will need even more electricity to get the same charge, which means more carbon. A hearty Professor Farnsworth “Good News”: Those higher temperatures are going to happen more frequently.
So we can continue to pile on the carbon by being penny-wise and pound-foolish, or we can work to avoid it in the first place.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-21 17:38
I believe I will be losing a beloved tree of my own due to the winds that came through this weekend. Great shrub, about 8 feet tall, full and green during the summer, gorgeous fall colors, but it literally broke in half at the central core of the tree.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-22 13:07
Investors are pressuring cement manufacturers to reduce their emissions.
Several things could happen. The first is that we actually emit more from making cement because our infrastructure will require it (if you are going to consume fossil fuels, make sure it is worthwhile to do so). The second is that less energy-intensive cement alternatives enter the marketplace. The third is that we generate cement without emitting carbon (a good niche for small nuclear). The fourth is that we use cement as a means to sequester carbon.
Clyde
2019-07-24 07:31
Robert continues to push his nuclear power. The fact is that nuclear power uses and produces a deadly poison that will remain deadly to all life for thousands of years. Potential accidents not being considered. Nuclear power may become necessary but should remain the power of last resort.
Whats really needed is common sense and justice. Justice first rather than only the power of the almighty dollar in the hands of the few.
Along the lines of justice I’d like to relate a little history.
If you dig out your auto map’s and take a look at the cities and town’s that are located on rivers and streams in the mid west you will see that they are many. In most cases they were located there because the site was deemed to be a good water power source. Those cities and towns first produced electric power for their citizens from the river and in the better sites produced that power until the 1960’s when the big power monopoly scheme’s put them out of business. Those sites then sat unused till the 1970’s so called “energy crisis” hit. Desperate times and the law makers said that anyone willing to put a power source on line was guaranteed a market for that power.
Over night the power monopolies managed to scrap out nearly all the generating equipment in nearly all the municipal hydro plants in the mid west.
Not good enough…. So called environmentally friendly group’s with funding from places I can guess at have been getting municipal dams removed at a prodigious rate because of course the rivers should be “free”.
Justice!
Warren Buffets Berkshire Hathaway Energy has filled Iowa up with giant wind turbines but if you are a homeowner that wants to sell back a little power from your wind turbine or solar panels they want to pay you practically nothing for that power and charge you for using their power lines.
Justice…..and common sense.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-24 11:54
The opportunity exists today to show that renewables (including hydro) plus batteries can deliver all of our power needs. So far they have not.
And as seen with the heat waves, when the demand for air conditioning and refrigeration exceeds what renewables can provide, we burn fossil fuels instead of doing more nuclear. When it is hot, hydro is often less available.
It is true that water-cooled power plants are less efficient at higher temperatures, as are batteries. But with nuclear power we would at least not be emitting the extra carbon arising from those inefficiencies.
The current plans for storing nuclear waste demand that the waste stay in its current form and isolated for hundreds of thousands of years. That does not mean alternative approaches do not exist. Today that would include reprocessing, the consuming the wastes in a different type of reactor, or new reactors that generate less waste in the first place.
Being pro-nuclear is not the same as being anti-renewable. The only place where brand new rare earth elements are being produced today are in the core of a nuclear power plant. A reprocessing regime would allow access to those elements, help renewable and battery technologies, and reduce the need to mine said elements. We could also be using process heat from nuclear in the manufacture and waste management of renewables, as well as breaking up the toxic chemicals into less toxic varieties.
Having too much power at times is an issue. We have to sell that power cheaply to get someone else to use it, because we cannot store it! Wind and solar farms only accrue income when they generate power. Often when it is in demand it is not available, and when it is not in demand it is cheap. To be fair, we have not done a good enough job at shifting enough applications to operate when these power sources tend to be more available.
I’m all for making the most of what we have, which means building renewables and addressing their impacts now, not 50 years from now! But it also means using the tools we have available too, which means nuclear energy (i.e. both process heat and electricity).
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-24 12:05
I don’t think the goal of home solar or home wind should be to make money off the utility (which ultimately means making money off of your neighbors).
In my opinion it is better to right-size a home renewable system so that you pull less energy from the grid, instead of incurring costs associated with intermittent power that you pass onto the grid. Then add more when demand increases or your local storage capacity increases (which could be done on a neighborhood basis, not just in single homes). This may improve a bit as we have more electric vehicles and more secondary heating and cooling in the home.
Clyde
2019-07-24 15:09
Robert, I see you have jumped on the “making money off your neighbor” bandwagon. That is the latest big power monopolies mantra. They of course aren’t mentioning that THEY are making their money off of your neighbors and you and apparently that is OK.
If nothing much is happening in the way of renewable’s taking over a large part of that can be blamed on the power monopolies like Berkshire Hathaway Energy doing everything in their power to prevent true competition in the power industry.
It is my belief that if a true cost were put on the power we get from carbon based fuels and a true cost of dealing with nuclear waste from nuclear plants were assessed to those power producers we would have a revolution of renewable energy.
If we removed the impediments from small independent producers it would happen overnight!
Clyde
2019-07-24 15:22
I believe that I have read somewhere that at times in the southwest solar power is in excess and at that time the utility isn’t paying independents for that power. I may be wrong on that and maybe that is just anticipated down the road but when the power is free they are miraculously going to find a way to store it. Electrolysis to hydrogen and storing it in old salt mines. Lots of ways to handle the storage problem if you try.
I guess that a German company has come up with a way to double the efficiency of home air conditioning. When its hot that would sure help out the demand situation.
Lots of ways forward if we just get the monopolies out of the way.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-24 15:31
But if you set up your system properly, you are not making money off of your neighbors. You may be taking a loss, but you are not forcing others to pay for your losses. Your neighbors who share your utility have to pay for the effects of intermittency that you push onto the grid.
You are paying your electric bill for services rendered. For the investment that utilities make, they get some level of profit. The alternative is to build your own electric grid and maintain the power plants and transmission wires. You have heard the refrain that you didn’t build that highway, but you didn’t pay for the electricity highway by yourself either.
The costs of nuclear waste management have already been passed along to consumers. That had been incorporated into the cost structure until the utilities sued to stop collecting those fees when the US Government was not using them to store the nuclear waste.
If you want to voluntarily pay more for renewable energy to offset these various costs, go right ahead. If you want to invest in stocks that support renewable energy (whether they make a profit or not), go right ahead. But neither has little to do with whether renewable energy can match supply with demand.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-24 16:36
I understand that the hope is that batteries will work, and that many prefer a renewables-only approach. My point is that we already know how to do nuclear. It is off-the-shelf technology that generates bulk amounts of carbon-free power. If the right battery technologies come along…then there will be some good competition.
There are ways to boost home heating/cooling efficiency and reduce home heating costs. Better insulation is part of that, but we can be doing more geothermal. Systems with fewer mechanical parts that fail (or systems that take longer to fail) also help. I have been suggesting secondary heating and cooling from home renewable systems to work in parallel with existing systems.
Clyde
2019-07-24 22:39
What I’m saying, Robert, is that all efforts to use non polluting and renewable power ought to be addressed first. With the current power monopoly system’s that we have I see that as impossible. The only systems that will continue to be promoted will be those that benefit big business. A real revolution in this country in not just energy needs to take place. If we can’t make big electric monopolies fly right the whole system needs to be nationalized. Either that or put into place a government with back bone. Put a huge tax on carbon emissions and on nuclear power to pay for the waste. Suddenly renewable’s would look affordable as they do in Germany. Conserving power would also look more attractive. If you wanted to go electric for commuter vehicles I could see a car with a plug in battery. One battery pack could be charging during the day while one other pack was in your commuter. Switch them out for the next day and use them as power supply in the evening for your house. All kinds of possibility’s that need to be addressed but will not with the current environment.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-25 12:27
Utilities have been building more natural gas and wind of late because they are cheaper up front and receive less push back for siting than other energy sources. We do not have the intermittency issue as long as we burn natural gas and do not care about carbon.
There are now four sources of carbon that the left must address. Otherwise the green new deal is just another new deal.
The first is extra heating and cooling due to extreme weather events (which we cover with more coal and gas). The second is the transition to electric vehicles (which requires more electricity than we are generating today). The third is the growth of the third world and their desire to have a similar standard of living (with air conditioning and refrigeration).
The fourth is the shutting down of nuclear plants advocated by the left. Ironically this has been shown to increase carbon, not reduce it. Those carbon savings go away when you replace clean baseload energy with natural gas.
A fifth is really related to the other four. We will soon have 10 billion people on the planet, and these four issues above only generate more carbon from the demand of more people.
Let’s continue to develop energy storage and carbon capture. If they become feasible we can accelerate our response to climate change. Let’s build renewables with a long-term plan for real sustainability. But we also have the ability to solve the problem in the near term with nuclear.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-25 12:34
The primary issue with carbon taxes or carbon offsets is that the carbon still gets emitted: You just feel like you are doing something. The other issue is that there is no guarantee that carbon taxes will go to building energy infrastructure.
Gas vehicles will stay cheaper, so the middle to lower classes are more likely to buy gas vehicles. In the cities public transportation will be available, but that is not always possible. Moreover, those carbon taxes will be applied to gas vehicles that the lower classes purchase…so carbon taxes can be regressive.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-25 12:45
Nuclear power and electricity customers have been paying for the storage. The government didn’t deliver. In theory, there are existing funds that could help with building waste storage facilities, if a solution to the current impasse can be formulated.
And where is the fee proposed to address wastes from renewables?
I understand why that fee is not being championed by the left today. It would make “cheap renewables” more expensive.
And let’s be honest, the recycling of those materials is not easy, for example carbon fiber in wind turbine blades. But these things need to be done and they need to be paid for.
Clyde
2019-07-26 12:37
Robert, I haven’t the time to argue ad infinitum but I think that most Americans agree with me. We only need nuclear as a last resort. Lets plant tree’s!
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-26 13:26
We should be doing nuclear and renewables together and not wait to deal with carbon.
The worst possible outcome is that we spend 50 years building out renewables without nuclear or a suitable form of energy storage, and we have higher carbon emissions than today because of our reliance on natural gas. Is that a good outcome?
I would agree with you that many Democrats want the all-renewable approach. It must be nice to ignore economics and physics.
leslie
2019-07-26 16:42
The best approach is NOW. Doc’s continuing fusillade to support his nuke industry is like Bernie sidelining HRC allowing Trumps debacle. We will work out your concerns Doc. Pivot 1st. The “moonshot” will be intensely, intelligently debated.
Koch Brothers Republican ect tactics are “treasonous”. Fatal to all but the billionaires jetting to Davos and wringing their hands with fake angst and manipulating their field sowing their next billions, like mining the moon and mars and screwing them up too. Nukes got prematurely marketed, to the damager to the many, benefitting the very few.
Btw, Doc arguing Consent with “far leftist” Don P.– come on, he works within the system and works against stupid Republican environmental politics and lying DOE nuke water carriers. Hardly far left labeling propaganda fodder.
Fmr FBI dir Andrew is ” ‘baffled’ there is resistance to begin impeachment. McCabe further noted it may not lead to Trump being removed from office or that he would eventually be impeached at all, but the evidence of obstruction is so strong, Congress should act.” interview on CNN’s New Day with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.
Consent just gets you the “plant trees” apology for Kochs to run out the clock with. Or the “no colledshun” b.s. from trump again running out the clock.
“Fool just enough of the people some of the time” is not the way to run the country and the world
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-26 17:14
If we push ahead with more renewables as they are now…we will burn more natural gas.
I don’t know what battle we are fighting if we end up emitting more carbon in the process, but we are not going to solve climate change that way.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-26 17:31
With regard to consent…a consent-based process only works if it solves the problem. DFP NEWS FLASH: The DOE also works on renewable energy as well. Perhaps investment by some of the savings into renewable energy will show up in the horsetrading that is necessary to get a consent-based process going.
In the meantime we are paying more than we should to store wastes on-site, and communities near shut-down nuclear plants don’t have any consent while the impasse continues. And we merrily emit more carbon as long as there is growth in renewables.
You are treating the carbon surplus like the federal deficit. Deficits apparently don’t matter as long as your stuff is in the budget. Carbon levels don’t matter apparently as long as we build more renewables.
jerry
2019-07-26 17:47
Carbon is the least of our problems. We sure as hell can’t build more nukers, to hot for them. The only thing that will work are renewables as it is too late for anything else. So plant trees and lots of them. Hey wasn’t that the point of this post in the first place. You had one go down doc, tomorrow is Saturday, pull that bad boy up and plant another or two. Trees eat carbon and there is plenty of that to be eaten.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-26 18:08
I would agree with you that the current design of a nuclear power plant is not as efficient as the new ones would be at higher temperatures. So if we have to shut one down, replace it with a better nuclear power plant instead of a fossil fuel plant, and perhaps avoid water for cooling too.
After talking with the greenhouse/nursery folks I think we are going to eventually stump it and let it grow back from the base. We are planting some other flowers later in the fall, but I won’t get to see that color display until next year.
My yard is not a mono-culture and I do not treat the yard with chemicals. I will water flowers and trees if it is really dry, but otherwise I just mow and do not bag the clippings. I try to plant flowers that are drought-tolerant and that butterflies or hummingbirds will like. I endeavor to get rabbit-resistant plants, but rabbits will eat just about anything if they are hungry. But they have left my helenium alone.
leslie
2019-07-26 19:01
The sudden collapse of thawing soils in the Arctic might double the warming from greenhouse gases released from tundra, warn Merritt R. Turetsky and colleagues.
Doc I have a hard enough time understanding your posts as a lay person, but, how I could be perceived as happy with increased carbon levels, as long as favored billionaire projects (new nuke energy plants wouldn’t have to deal with the 50 year waste management problem 1st, or Canadian tar sands mined and piped for eternal refinement without subsidies, eminent domain, and without environmental protections) is specious.
We can talk about the budget deficit Republicans have manipulated for decades.
Renewables pivot from carbon rich fossil fuel policy. Yes carbon fiber fan blade recycling, wind farm concrete foundations and roads, and unconsented boreholes with high hazard nuke waste and Yucca Mountain sites the states do not want, is unfairly frustrating to hopes the nuke industry is desperate to provide some salvation to the monkey on the back of current mass corporate for profit$$ energy production. The Indian former BHE CEO was earning nearly $700K in RC. They just built a $70B office building on a ridge blocking out Black Elk Peak. Does SDSU have any new $70B buildings on campus?
Then the whole bit bemoaning how bad the mining industry is treated and we all drive gas cars to protests and use phones with special materials, is not even in the same league as DERAILING THE INCESSANT BILLIONAIRE PLOYS TO DENY CLIMATE CHANGE AND CONTINUE USING FOSSIL FUELS.
Scientists who sell out to the mining industry are a dime a dozen in SD and Don P. was one of the very few capable of standing up to industry under a Janklow and subsequent DENR/WMB pro-industry regulation staff. Pirner may have been at least a scientist as opposed to the previous crony. But Pirner knew who signed his pay check. SD envtl regulation is much more like a Trump/Rounds EPA.
Republican energy policy is just like Republican health care policy. Billionaire privatization oriented–screw the public it supposedly protects. Screw science. But Einstein stayed on the good side of science. So can you!
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-26 19:19
Well…if what you promote results in more carbon than today, and you are not happy with that, and your goal is to reduce carbon, then it is finally time to do something different.
How does the all-in renewable approach pivot us away from fossil fuels when we will burn more natural gas than we do today to match supply and demand?
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-26 19:27
We are certainly pivoting away from one fossil fuel called coal, but not all fossil fuels. So you get partial credit I guess?
And I am on the good side of science. I’m trying to deliver carbon-free energy to 10 billion people whenever they want it. And they will need it.
And I’m doing this with available technologies…we can’t wait for the year 3000.
jerry
2019-07-29 17:34
Bah Zing!! New world’s record shattered in Ethiopia.
“About 350m trees have been planted in a single day in Ethiopia, according to a government minister.
Can you imagine the russian traitor allowing civil servants to plant trees to save the planet? Me either.
Porter Lansing
2019-07-29 17:37
McTaggart! McTaggart! Buehler! …
Debbo
2019-07-29 17:38
I heard about this elsewhere too, Jerry. Respect to Ethiopians!
Porter Lansing
2019-07-29 17:53
Note to White Supremacista’s – All human DNA can be traced back to it’s origin in Ethiopia. Sorry honkys. You still can’t use the N word around black males without takin’ a cap to the dome.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-29 18:13
Am I supposed to run across the quad in slow motion or something…?
What is the success rate of a seedling getting to year 30 in that environment?
In some sense you could make a prediction based upon what has happened with our own shelter belts planted in the dust bowl era. Has that population of trees grown or diminished?
Porter Lansing
2019-07-29 18:19
Negativity bias, again? Consistently on the wrong side of history.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-29 19:06
Are you are saying that it does not matter how many of them survive to capture carbon? Wow. I mean, you just torpedoed the whole raison d’etre for planting lots of trees.
Porter Lansing
2019-07-29 19:22
Let me help you research, Doctor. Ethiopia is some of the most fertile land on Earth. It’s commonly referred to as the site of The Garden of Eden because it’s where all human DNA can be traced to. Chances are quite favorable for the majority of trees planted to see 30 years and then on to a full, long, life of carbon mitigation.
~ Principal crops include coffee, pulses (e.g., beans), oilseeds, cereals, potatoes, sugarcane, and vegetables. Exports are almost entirely agricultural commodities, and coffee is the largest foreign exchange earner. Ethiopia is also Africa’s second biggest maize producer. Ethiopia’s livestock population is believed to be the largest in Africa, and in 2006/2007 livestock accounted for 10.6% of Ethiopia’s export income, with leather and leather products making up 7.5% and live animals 3.1%.
You seem to have taken the easy way out, again. i.e. Imagining what can go wrong without considering what can go right, thinking about ways to make things go right, and tweaking the process along the way to assure things go right. That’s negativity bias. It’s not complimentary to a professor.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-29 19:33
It sounds like you believe the more trees you plant the better. In general I like more trees than fewer trees, but there are physical constraints….so having a long-term plan matters if the goal is carbon reduction.
Hey Porter, renewables are good, so let’s just keep building more of them. Nothing bad could ever happen by building something good.
However…there is no carbon capture or battery technology ready to go, and you do not want to do nuclear.
Any positive growth in our energy demand means the carbon from the natural gas we burn (to match supply with demand) must grow like compound interest. And we are about to demand a lot more electricity as we electrify our transportation sector.
So let’s plant trees and build renewables. But have a plan for sustainable afforestation that takes into account what trees need and what they can do for you. And don’t emit carbon in the name of not emitting carbon.
Porter Lansing
2019-07-29 19:40
McTaggart is backstroking like the Olympics are coming to Brookings. Cut the lecture and face the fact that you said (without research to back it up) that “In some sense you could make a prediction based upon what has happened with our own shelter belts planted in the dust bowl era. Has that population of trees grown or diminished?” What does the dust bowl have to do with Ethiopia? Apologize for your negativity bias or know your credibility and reputation has hit rock bottom.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-29 20:06
It is called critical thinking.
Do you think renewable energy will be better or worse if they deal with their waste management issues? Will the world be better off if we do not emit carbon when renewables are not enough? The answer to both questions is yes, but these are precisely the issues that are ignored.
I have offered a positive solution to power a world of 10 billion people. One day you will hopefully find that nuclear and renewables have much to offer each other.
Porter Lansing
2019-07-29 20:11
Even Bill Gates has dumped the nukes.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-29 20:13
The shelter belts that we planted are in disrepair, and are being taken down for farming or other uses. Those trees are going away. If they are not there, they do not capture carbon. So there is a lot we can learn about what happens over time as populations grow and uses of land change.
Both areas have promise for fertility, and both lands have been abused, and both are subject to the effects of climate change. There is quite a lot in common between the two in fact.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-29 20:17
Bill Gates has been trying to build a new reactor from scratch apparently. Others are modeling the small reactors off of existing technology.
How is Tesla doing? Not well, but that is research. Research is hard, and it is not 100% efficient. It will take a while to get a suitable battery technology.
We need both Bill Gates and Elon Musk to pursue the research that others can not. Others will improve upon what they have done.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-30 13:59
“A hundred billion trees is good, it buys us some time and it’s a good thing to do, but if we don’t stop emitting CO2, then we aren’t going to win the battle.”
“Wind and solar farms permanently remove CO2 from the air in larger volumes than trees do.
This means we should be doing both, but trees are not a magic bullet. We need a lot of solutions to get over the line. ”
I wouldn’t agree with the author that wind turbines remove CO2 from the air. It can help avoid carbon emissions in the first place. Right now the gas + renewable combo emits less than an all-coal grid would, and avoids several other emissions besides CO2 (like NOx and SOx). But compound interest means in a couple of decades we will exceed our present carbon emissions if we get rid of coal altogether.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-30 18:52
Commentary: Is nuclear power too radioactive for Democrats?
From the Chicago Tribune, July 30:
“If the candidates are unwilling to bring nuclear power into the national conversation, then they’re not taking seriously their party’s requests for decarbonization. Conversation is the key word here, because the greatest obstacle blocking nuclear power isn’t safety issues or technological shortcomings — it’s bad PR and political grandstanding. ”
The article notes that Cory Booker is one of the few candidates that has shown some leadership in trying to promote advanced nuclear. We’ll see if he uses that in the debate he is on….he needs to distinguish himself or he will get left behind.
leslie
2019-07-30 20:10
Geeze Doc, on the Republican spin wagon eh…No facts, no law, argue SQUIRRELL!
Crooked….
Infested….
Sheithole country….
“… too radioactive for Democrats (not DemocRAT Party?”)
Do you think nuclear energy industry will be better or worse if it deals with the waste management issues?
“…estimates of methane leakage rates from natural gas drilling, replacing coal with natural gas provides little in the way of climate benefits. Though it’s been touted as a ‘bridge fuel’ to span the gap between coal and renewables…. The costs of renewable energy and battery storage have fallen so fast that the clean alternatives might now be cheaper than gas….The decisions we make for today’s grid are long-lasting. That’s why there are similar pushes from groups in Michigan, Oregon, Connecticut, North Carolina, and South Carolina for utilities to scrap plans for new natural gas plants and instead consider cleaner and potentially cheaper renewable alternatives….Of course, were there a national price on carbon pollution, renewables and battery storage would win in the marketplace even sooner. As it stands, natural gas prices don’t reflect the costs that we incur from the climate change caused by their greenhouse gas emissions. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jan/29/natural-gas-killed-coal-now-renewables-and-batteries-are-taking-over
leslie
2019-07-30 20:40
sorry…$70M
Clyde
2019-07-30 21:16
Leslie, the ponzi scheme of capitalism demands that the population must continually grow….that is till it all collapse’s. As I tell my wife…..just put me in charge and no third world country will get most favored nation status unless they control their population.
In this country we can cut social security incrementally according to how many children you have. My wife can give you my plan! After all, that is one of the third world’s excuse’s for large families….need lots of children to take care of the folks when they get old. Cutting social security is already on the GOP’s list…they ought to love the idea.
Seems like no one has mentioned population control since the ” population bomb” brought the subject up in the 70’s.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-30 21:19
I get it. You don’t like Trump. I take your question.
Population growth rates in industrialized societies are generally lower. You need to improve the economic conditions in areas of the world that do not enjoy our standard of living to curb population growth. And you also need economies that require the education and employment of women. You will need an abundance of clean power to do that. Welcome to the nuclear party leslie!
Yes, the nuclear industry will be better if everyone can agree on a solution for the nuclear waste impasse. We would generate more nuclear energy as a result. Utilities would incorporate the small reactors in the mix with renewables. That means at least removing current nuclear wastes from sites of shutdown nuclear power plants to one or more interim sites.
I welcome the day when we can truly deal with waste management across the board for all sources of energy. But for now, instead of recycling and generating less waste we will do things as cheaply as possible, until that bites us in the rear end.
You note the extra carbon that methane leaks and backup energy from natural gas can contribute, but that isn’t enough to do more nuclear??? The hope is that batteries will come around, but until then, let’s not emit carbon in the first place.
I welcome future Democratic policy that leads to true decarbonization, not replacement of the fossil fuel lobby with the wind and solar lobby.
“In the end, we must each accept personal accountability for enriching our legacy and ask ourselves: “What can I do to help our world rely less on a level of economic growth that harms the environment and society, and encourage a path toward sustainability?” ”
Is it sustainable to generate more renewables without dealing with the wastes for wind, solar and batteries, all while emitting more carbon from natural gas? Or can we generate all the energy we need without carbon if nuclear is in the mix?
“Over the last 55 years, more than 2,500 cask shipments of used fuel have been transported across the United States without any radiological releases to the environment or harm to the public.”
Clyde
2019-07-31 19:18
Improving the economic conditions of other country’s so they will control their birth rates is a globalist talking point. We raise their standard of living while we lower ours. Our life expectancy falls while theirs increases. Of course our middle men globalists standard of living increases exponentially as well. I think there are better ways.
Robert McTaggart
2019-07-31 19:40
We have to bring their standard of living up to ours. It is in our national security interest to do so. Wars over resources are destructive on many different levels including on the environment.
It is also in our economic interest to do so, so that they will buy our products.
Our standard of living has room to grow, but theirs will likely have the larger percentage increase because they are starting from the smaller number.
Debbo
2019-07-31 22:58
Clyde, it’s not our bottom 75% v. theirs. Those struggling people in other nations are not the ones doing us harm. It’s the top 25% or less v. all the rest of us. If the starving Bangladeshis are raised up to a decent standard of living, the only way it will make our lives worse is if the people at the top skim off the majority of the $ as they usually do.
The enemy is not other struggling people. It’s the greedy bastards at the top who exploit us, charge us every cent they can for everything, invent new ways to rip us off, pay a tiny percentage back into the common fund and fight to do little to nothing to contribute to the common welfare.
Those poor people escaping murderous gangs in Honduras or coming here without visas in search of a better life are just poor saps like the rest of us.
Clyde
2019-08-01 08:43
Debbo, I don’t disagree with you at all but what Dr McT alluded to that raising the standard of living of other countries is the way to control population is a globalist talking point. The income from the “Great and Glorious FREE trade” has all ended up in the hands of the one percent. While it has raised the standard of living slightly in some of these country’s there would be other ways to help them and one of those ways would be strong encouragement to control their population up front.
Meanwhile our standard of living has declined. The incentive of the globalist’s isn’t to help the world but rather to line their pockets.
We have plenty of blame for the mess in central America but at least some of that blame should be put on the fact that they have limited resources with too many people demanding of them. They, in the end are raising children to be “cannon fodder”.
jerry
2019-08-01 08:48
“The Great Reforestation Project has begun in patches here and there. The quest is to have a trillion trees planted and flourishing by 2030.
While we are waiting for the 2020 elections and the election of sane leaders to coordinate the United States National Reforestation Program, we, as individuals, can and need to start now. Every month of growth from seedling to mature tree is too valuable to be lost and we should get started today.
There ya go, kick trump/republicans in the pills and plant trees to spite them and to save this place.
Robert McTaggart
2019-08-01 10:40
So you think free trade is actually free? We spend a lot on our military to keep free trade possible, and there are various costs of business that occur in the process. Likewise, the sun and the wind are free, but converting that into electricity and sending it to the consumer is not free either. Let’s have trade and let’s have renewables, but let’s work to make them better than they are today.
A lot of the world does not even have access to electricity, nutrition is a problem, and not educating girls is a problem. Throwing up your hands is not going to solve those problems. Trade is one of the tools in the toolkit, and you do have to understand and work with other people and other cultures in the process.
And now water is a problem. The water isn’t leaving the planet so it has to go somewhere, but it is being redistributed away from being stored in snowpack on the tops of mountains. I guess we could use some nuclear energy to desalinate seawater and deliver it by pipeline to afflicted regions….and water all those trees…but then nuclear would be seen as doing something good for the planet, and jerry will not stand for it ;^).
What planting trees, building renewables, and generating nuclear power have in common is that they are all off-the-shelf technologies we can use to help us decarbonize. We could use carbon capture and batteries, but we need to fight the battle with the tools we have today.
There is one way to not support corporate interests and not emit carbon. That is to not generate energy at all, which may be what you are driving at. If you are complaining about our standard of living now…just wait for that to happen! That isn’t going to win any elections…I’d rather just generate all the energy we need as clean energy.
Clyde
2019-08-01 15:16
R McT, I don’t think that our overbloated military exists to insure free trade.
Robert McTaggart
2019-08-01 15:18
No, but it sure hasn’t hurt to keep the flow of oil going through the Persian Gulf so jerry can drive that truck he is getting with 0% interest :^).
Robert McTaggart
2019-08-01 15:24
Democrat Chris Coons (Delaware) and Republican Martha McSally (Arizona) have introduced legislation to keep and improve our current nuclear power plants. Ultimately this would result in more carbon-free power from the same plants.
“Climate change poses an existential threat to our economy, our environment, and our national security,” Coons said. “I’m proud that this legislation will allow the Department of Energy to provide nuclear power plants with the requisite tools and research to increase their cost-competitiveness and develop the new technologies they require to operate efficiently.”
Challenge for commenters: give one good reason not to plant a trillion new trees.
Expensive and nearly impossible from an organizational/logistical perspective.
Neal … stay away from children. You’re a lazy thinker.
If you ever have to park in a parking lot with shade trees in the medians or boulevard you soon learn that the shady spots near the trees are always taken first. The smart people who get there first park in the shade or where the shade will be and enjoy a cooler car when the head home.
The hottest lots I’ve ever experienced are in DisneyWorld. They caused the invention of those fold up cardboard windshield screens in the 70’s. Disney has the money and does the research to know how best to proceed. Disney is pro parking lot trees and does the science on how to take care of the precious commodity.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/250231413_Soil_Volume_and_Tree_Condition_in_Walt_Disney_World_Parking_Lots
June of 2019 was the hottest month on record.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/june-hottest-month-ever-earth-2019-weather-heatwave-hot-a8984691.html
Kinda funny story. My ex-FIL and I fenced off a section of tile fed creek immediately west of building site. The ground was clay/gumbo and awful wet. I spent several days with a tile spade digging in nearly 150 hybrid willow saplings to help stabilize that creek bank. After a month or so, the FIL went in there with Round Up and proceeded to kill all but three of those saplings in the name of thistle control.
mfi – Some memories just won’t go away, huh? Sad story, sir.
I have no problem in restoring deforested areas, but prairies and wetlands are better sinks for carbon, particularly in the Midwest and West. When forests burn, much of the carbon goes up in smoke. Prairies and wetland plants store most of the carbon underground. Even when prairies burn, which naturally occurs every two to four years, most of the biomass is below ground. A good wetland will sequester nearly all the carbon, either in roots and rhizomes or in dead material that rarely, if ever burns. I have seen wetlands burn, however.
If we are talking about urban areas, yeah, plant trees.
Need to plant even more trees to offset this:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-environment/brazil-deforestation-exceeds-88-in-june-under-right-wing-bolsonaro-idUSKCN1TY1VU
Porter you should stay away from the internet, you’re a lazy debater.
Cory asked for a reason and I gave him two. I didn’t say I agreed with them, but you didn’t hesitate to assume that I did and then draw conclusions about my character.
And instead of responding to them in substance, you immediately jump to ad hominem personal attacks, with a creepy reference to children?
Cory,
Besides taking up the land space you could be using for solar or wind or agriculture, you will have to deliver all those trees with a vehicle that burns fossil fuel.
Using nuclear energy by the way avoids the emissions equivalent to 117 million passenger vehicles every single year. So plant trees, but deliver them with electric vehicles powered by clean energy.
And if those trillion trees are mostly the same, or they are invasive, that will be a problem as well.
There are roughly 3 trillion trees on the planet at the moment.
Another study says that ecosystems could support another 500 billion trees on land outside existing forests, agriculture, and urban land.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6448/76
“The global tree restoration potential”
I read the article about 1 trillion trees a couple days ago. I could see a Paris Accord type of agreement in which nations commit to plant and protect X number of trees.
Don Pay brings up an excellent point about prairies and wetlands. Part of the accord could include X acres of those = X number of trees.
It’s definitely doable and possibly less disruptive than major changes to energy systems. Of course, if we did both, rather than stopping global warming from getting worse, perhaps we could reverse it. I don’t know because I’m not a scientist or environmental expert.
Younger trees take up more carbon than older trees. So essentially you need to cut them down after a while and replenish them to max out the carbon removal from trees.
If the nursery is 5 miles away, so a round trip is 10 miles, that is 10 trillion miles of driving (assuming one trip, one tree). In 2017 it was estimated that there were a total of 3.22 trillion miles driven in the United States.
If we do this ourselves, everyone in the United States needs to plant more than 3050 trees. That should take us about 8.5 years of planting one tree per day. Globally, with 7.7 billion people, everybody needs to plant 130 trees. So 2.5 years of everyone in the world planting a new tree every weekend should do it.
So go ahead and plant trees individually, but this sort of has to be done industrially.
All respect to your position, Dr. McTaggart but a tree seedling is 15″ tall and you can probably get 500 in the back of a pickup and personally plant about 250 a day.
If we do this ourselves and spread those 10 trillion extra miles over 8 years, that is 1.25 trillion extra miles driven per year (and since the Green New Dealers say we only have 10 years, 8 is a good number).
So we would need to increase the gasoline supply by ~ 1.25/3.22 * 100 = 38.8% for tree delivery. Hopefully you can get that done with electric vehicles or biofuels and not mention the p-i-p-e-l-i-n-e word ;^).
The calculations simply show the scale of the problem: I am showing that doing this one by one is simply not going to be feasible, and there is a carbon footprint that is not being accounted for.
If you want to plant 250 per day, you will get to your personal 3050 number in just over 12 plantings. But I think you and I would have a hard time finding locations which are not already being used for agriculture around here (particularly when everybody else has to do the same thing).
Nukes cause cancer, trees don’t. Planting shelter belts would be a whole lot better than trapping. Look how simple it is, county’s used to do this a few years ago, but budget’s always get chopped on the stuff that make the most sense. Check this out, see how much enjoyment these young folks have in doing something way cool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI946kIA27M
Sorry jerry. It is not like we don’t know how radiation works.
Breaking news…brought to you by DakotaFreePress Blueberry Pancakes (I betcha can’t eat just one!)…we can use this thing called science to protect people.
Oh by the way, inhaling a lot of soot from burning trees probably isn’t good for you.
I agree that planting shelter belts is a good thing, as long as it is not a strong source of tree pollen. Or as long it is not a row of female Ginkgo trees with the stinky, messy fruit.
Here is what those crazy folks in Iowa do. http://www.iowapf.net/shelter-windbreaks/
they plant trees, or so I thought until mfi, clued me in on something else.
Planting shelter belts and trees in general around the public roads would help keep the snow off. As a bonus, hunters could hunt in areas without paying fees, how about those apples? Get good runoff as well for the creeks and small stock dams. All good for carbon removal.
Cory, I wrote a civil response to Porter’s personal attack toward me, which is “awaiting moderation.” Is there any reason in particular you haven’t approved the comment?
I’m right here, Neal. Are you butt hurt because I called out your negativity bias and it’s detrimental effect on children’s learning habits? Hmmmm?
Prof. McTaggart … Why haven’t you convinced the legislators in SD to build one of the boutique nuclear power generators you promote? It’s a 90% Republican run state and Republicans, like yourself, must be the best shot at getting one built, right? Conservatives don’t hold the outdated ideas about cancer that we liberals cling too, right?
Many Democrats support nuclear power, particularly if they want to deliver the energy that people use while addressing climate change. There are many Republicans who favor wind and solar energy because it can be made in America and has a self-reliance aspect to it.
Cancer is not a partisan issue, my friend. We know that too much radiation in a short amount of time is linked to cancer. We also know that nuclear science can monitor radioactivity and protect people from high doses of radiation. And cancer is linked to other chemicals and heavy metals found in waste streams of other energy sources too. I wonder if science could deal with those eventually too?
Sad to say, but I don’t have the superpowers you speak of to convince legislators of any political persuasion of anything. All I can do is provide support for a future workforce. Developing or attracting companies that enhance the safe operations of power plants and/or boost their efficiency is going to be easier than getting a new power plant approved. For me that is health physics or engineering physics that I can incorporate into the BS in Physics.
Would small modular reactors make sense for South Dakota? Yes. Both to complement wind, solar, hydro (and maybe geothermal at some point), but also to generate process heat for various industries that will need it in the future. That includes the processing of biofuels and/or the generation of hydrogen from biomass. And we could export electricity to our next-door neighbors. Access to on-demand clean energy would also help to diversify the economic portfolio of South Dakota.
But I don’t think that will be possible until we finally have a way to successfully navigate consent at the community, state, and national levels. There is some consideration of allowing Nevada to have the same consent-based processes for Yucca Mountain as any other future waste facility. Having more than one site (not just Yucca Mountain) may make it more politically feasible for consent to be granted for both permanent and temporary storage. But if everybody has a veto, and everybody says no, that is also a problem…so we’ll see what happens.
It does make sense to extract available energy from spent nuclear fuel before it is buried (be that from reprocessing or a new reactor that consumes waste for fuel). That reduces the volume, radioactivity, and heat that a storage facility would need to deal with. Because that is expensive today…but maybe not as expensive tomorrow…it makes sense to allow such waste to be retrievable. After you’ve gotten all the value out of it, then vitrify it in glass and store it deep underground permanently.
And yes, you could plant a lot of trees and wildflowers around a small modular nuclear power plant :^).
I know all that, Doc. I’m just being nice to you by giving you a question to answer. Keeps you off the streets and out of the bars. lol
The City of Sturgis and its upcoming visitors thank you for your public service :^).
This is a house in Minnesota on Lake Minnetonka, a western and expensive suburb. Beyond what I’ve copied here, there’s not a lot more about it’s energy management systems.
“The result is a net-zero lakeside abode nestled on a narrow deep lot. It produces more energy than it consumes, thanks to a geothermal heating-and-cooling system and photovoltaic solar panels spanning a south-facing gable.
“The couple installed four Tesla Power Wall units to store excess electricity. The stormwater is absorbed and filtered through two green roofs, rain gardens and a water-retention area below the deck.”
http://strib.mn/30eZUIk
It can’t produce more than they need all the time…probably averaged over a time period is achievable. Some of the electricity produced has to be wasted as heat…batteries and PV are never 100% efficient. 20% for a PV is a highly efficient solar cell today.
Nevertheless, these systems make the most of what is available. It is just too expensive for most people to do (…right now). Energy efficiency and some demand management is the better route for most today. And I guess people could also plant a tree to provide some natural cooling (keeping with the theme here).
As interesting as the Science Bastin et al 2019 (they paper that sparked these news stories) may be, just planing 21st-century trees to mitigate climate change is not sufficient if we continue to dig up primeval trees and set them on fire. The IPCC SR15 report makes it clear that while CO₂ uptake is key to avoiding the worst case scenarios, greatly reducing our CO₂ emissions to near zero is essential to meeting those goals and reducing the impact from hitting the ditch into which we’re steering. But planting trees is easy. The latter and more critical requirement is “dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
Heyyyyyy Bill,
I know there is also a lot of interest in pulling carbon out of the air via different technologies. That would be something to do when there is too much energy on the grid. Baseload plants could keep running at a constant power and then just switch off to collecting carbon as needed.
I doubt that China or India will avoid cheaper fossil fuels or their own economic expansion because we would like them to, so we may have to do some form of carbon capture regardless.
But yes, the far better approach is simply not to emit the carbon in the first place as we deliver the energy people use, instead of trying to get the carbon toothpaste back into the carbon toothpaste tube.
Back in the day when I still walked beans four rows at a time, the neighbor had a shelter/windbreak in the NW corner of his quarter section. It ran about a quarter mile east to west and north to south on the fence line.
Every second year when we put beans in that field there would literally be thousands of new cottonwood seedlings sprouted all along the field. Imagine if even a small fraction of those ever matured. I see dozens of new seedling trees along side the yard when I mow every summer.
China, always one step ahead of the United States.
“China has reportedly reassigned over 60,000 soldiers to plant trees in a bid to combat pollution by increasing the country’s forest coverage.
A large regiment from the People’s Liberation Army, along with some of the nation’s armed police force, have been withdrawn from their posts on the northern border to work on non-military tasks inland.” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-tree-plant-soldiers-reassign-climate-change-global-warming-deforestation-a8208836.html
Just because you plant trees at a site doesn’t mean they will succeed there. You have to manage your shelter belt/forest to promote the best outcomes. Planting is the easy part.
From 2018:
“Trees that helped save America’s farms during the Dust Bowl are now under threat”
https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-02-03/trees-helped-save-americas-farms-during-dust-bowl-are-now-under-threat
From 2017:
“How China’s Growing Deserts Are Choking The Country”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielrechtschaffen/2017/09/18/how-chinas-growing-deserts-are-choking-the-country/
“Around 27% of China is covered in desert.”
The tree planting will cover an area the size of Ireland, says the link. That’s a lot of trees, now if we could do that sort of thing, that would be great. I did it when I was a kid, in those days of old, we called it Arbor Day. It was kind of a big deal.
we will plant a trillion trees, and then they will all die for lack of attention as nobody can pay $15 an hour for tree babysitters.
Hey Rob. [yes, other people, we know each other pre-PhDs]
CO₂ Removal is definitely in all of the [likewise oft-misrepresented] SR15 report strategies.
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/05/SR15_Chapter4_Low_Res.pdf
But again reimagining our energy portfolio away from fossil fuels is a nonstarter as we both agree.
It looks like direct air carbon capture has a higher cost in looking at that link. Soil carbon sequestration and reforestation are cheaper, but burying the carbon geologically is more permanent.
Regardless, we will likely need some type of carbon collection portfolio with different approaches in addition to carbon-free production of energy.
I don’t think there will be one form of energy storage either…we need more choices to cover the short-term, medium-term, and long-term storage needs.
AOC and Bernie push to declare a climate emergency.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/452214-aoc-sanders-lead-call-for-a-climate-emergency-declaration
If it is indeed an emergency, then nuclear energy should play a vital role. But so far there isn’t a whole lot of interest in nuclear from the AOC/Sanders wing of the Democratic Party.
I guess it doesn’t really matter until they transition from a campaign bumper sticker to actual policy-making that must deliver clean energy while balancing supply with demand.
And I guess the timeline is now 12 years, not 10 years.
Bernie Sanders wants an emergency declaration in order to help his dying campaign not to help the world. The Democrats centrist position is to first put back the regulations and research models Trump has dismantled. Nuclear energy expansion is not within the centrist corral until Trump’s gone and science has resumed. #4Science
*It’s comically entertaining how AOC gets Republican’s goats so easily. Ride ‘em hard, ma’am.
The hurdle for Bernie is that he isn’t the only messenger of his messages right now that is running for President. Plus I think the Democratic electorate is looking for something new…Clinton wouldn’t win this time around either.
The Democratic Party electorate is looking for something calm. 70% of registered Democrats self identify as moderate and centrist. We’re done fighting with Republicans over insignificant addendums to the solution. Platform planks that have nothing to do with settling America back into normalcy mean nothing. You have your Trump, Mr. McTaggart. No benefit in us demeaning him. He beats himself without our help, every day. We have one job.
Harding (R) apparently did not invent the word normalcy, but we have used the word the same way he did since 1920. Not sure what a true state of normalcy is today however.
Uh-oh sports fans…Minnesota wants more energy storage to help displace natural gas peaking plants. A report shows that it can help displace some natural gas peaking plants, but will not solve intermittency.
https://energynews.us/2019/07/09/midwest/minnesota-utilities-weigh-energy-storage-as-substitute-for-peaker-plants/
“…the report warns that energy storage has limitations in a system with much greater variability due to renewable generation. The answer to the problem of intermittency in renewable energy will not be energy storage.”
Back to trees. 1 trillion trees at $10 each (which is actually a good deal at the local nursery) is $10 trillion. $1 trillion per year for 10 years is a big lift considering our federal budget is something like $4.5 trillion.
1 trillion trees at $.10 per tree is a bargain. Hell, even if they are $10 bucks a tree is a good deal. I like the dime per tree though. Budgets don’t mean anything to republicans doc, you should know that. How much was the last grant you applied for? Minnesota has a nuke plant, so they have already gone down that trail. Maybe making homes more energy efficient would solve their problem ten fold.
Our economy is on the ropes, we need to have jobs like planting trees in order for people to have a real job they can count on.
“Promises to save US manufacturing and prevent American jobs moving abroad were a key part of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. But since Trump took office in January 2017, nearly 200,000 jobs have been moved overseas, based on Trade Adjustment Assistance certified petitions.”https://news.yahoo.com/pulled-wool-over-eyes-workers-060017069.html
Put people to work on infrastructure programs that make homes more energy efficient with better insulation along with windows and doors.
While dime trees would be nice, I suspect that it will cost more than $10 per tree, not less.
Minnesota has two nuclear plants, and they intend to keep them operational for this very reason. Replacing them means more coal or natural gas unless we build the smaller nuclear plants.
Efficiency has its limits. Once that plateaus, we must make more energy. I’d rather just make all of the energy without the carbon from the get-go.
Speaking of intermittency, sounds like a new wind farm got approved near Watertown. The 300 MW wind farm will generate about 100 MW on average.
“Among the conditions the PUC placed on the permit are addressing sound levels and shadow flicker experienced by nearby residents, detecting ice on turbine blades, and monitoring grouse mating areas within the wind farm area once construction is complete.”
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/south-dakota/articles/2019-07-09/south-dakota-regulators-ok-permit-for-wind-farm-construction
Libbies generally say that each tree requires at least 5 minutes of uninterrupted loving each day. You fellows can do the math, but trees times 5 minutes times $15 and hour sounds expensive.
Proven numbers doc, $.10 per tree. If it says libby libby libby on the label label label, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcaIMF_-1J4
Fact checked myself doc, yep, $.10 per tree https://www.treesisters.org/2017-10-04-18-28-09/blog/27-about-treesisters/245-much-cost-plant-tree
grudzshark … I can personally meditate over a half million baby trees per hour. That’s a lotta lovin’. “tu fais les calculs. C’est français.”
Jerry … For a self identified “physicist” this McTaggert is wrong more and has a higher opinion of himself than anyone I’d want employed as a teacher. Every physicist I’ve ever been acquainted with envisions themselves a genius but most get scammed by shysters regularly. e.g. One bought $10,000 in gold coins on late night radio and lost it all.
How does $.10 per tree square with a minimum of $15 per hour for the people planting the trees? Good luck with that.
That’s what I get for listening to late night radio I guess….I knew I shouldn’t have called in….
There’s a wise adage in business that says, “Hire people good at math to do your busy work but don’t take advice from them.” It means they have a limited view of the big picture. If you can’t find out the price of a tree any closer than that, you’re looking for evidence to support an unsubstantiated opinion instead of doing honest, unbiased, research. Same with labor costing.
Dunno … might be why liberals make better professors.
Wanting the price of the tree plus installation to be low so that a trillion trees is viable is one thing. How do you get the plants planted for that low a cost and still pay the $15 per hour?
You don’t need math, you need mathematical gymnastics.
Please plant more trees. I like the shade in the summer and the display of color in the fall. But a dime per tree is not going to be sustainable. People are not going to work for the wages that are possible, and your trees will go unplanted.
Doc, had you listened to Uncle Larry Lujack and his “Animal Stories” on late night WLS Chicago, back in the 70’s, you’d be a wiser man.
In Colorado reforestation costs $80 an acre.
Worldwide labor costs are much less and planting a trillion trees would run approximately $650 billion.
Now, you’d have found that out, if you didn’t just make things up, Professor.
So for the price of Mr. Lansing’s daily latte, he could plant an acre a week. I look forward to the grasslands of the great plains becoming the Mr. Lansing National Woods.
Mr. shark … Cory’s article says there are six countries where the bulk of the trees would be planted. Last time I counted Colorado already has 830 million trees. The grasslands aren’t suitable for trees or they’d already be there. Better suited for the goats you’ve lost to my wranglers. 🐐🐐🐐
Let’s talk ecology. I don’t think forest management should necessarily be bent toward maximum carbon capture.
The decline in productivity of forest stands with age applies to managed even-age forest stands. Such stands are common in, for example, Ponderosa Pine forests, and other forests that are logged for timber production. There is no doubt that in an industrial forest, you can maximize carbon uptake by cutting out the old trees, thinning young trees and managing for replacement by younger trees cohorts. That requires intensive methods dependent on oil and gas, and there can be a lot of waste involved in the process, so not all of that carbon is actually harvested. But what you are left with is an unnatural forest.
In the natural world, Ponderosa Pine forests, and forests with other coniferous species occur in landscapes of various sized patches of even-aged stands, some in savanna, some in various age stages. Areas protected from fire often grow into dog-hair stands, which, though young in age, are very unproductive. And, of course, bugs attack trees in cycles, reducing productivity. Ponderosa Pine has evolved with bugs and fire. Burning emits carbon.
Other forests, many in the Eastern US, often grow in uneven-aged forests with a mix of hardwoods. Some of these hardwood species are more shade tolerant, and grow slowly until a gap opens up through wind throw, insect attack on the canopy species, or other smaller scale disturbances. Then these shade tolerant species grow rapidly to fill the gap. Gradually, if there is no large-scale wind or fire events over several centuries the shade tolerant plants become dominant, and productivity slows.
The key to high productivity and maximum carbon capture is what ecologists call “perturbation,” natural creative destruction that keeps the forest in a constant flux with a mix of species in various ages over a landscape.
Just planting trees is not the answer, though there’s nothing wrong with planting more trees in urban lawns. If you want to make a real difference, reduce the need to mow lawns. Now there’s a huge source of carbon emission.
I have seen a number of fellows, self-professed recent immigrants, who are quite good at the tree planting. grudznick was good at it years back, but now could only buy you other fellows a shelterbelt or two of these seedlings you are lining up. I would, however, enjoy sitting in a shade chair after breakfast watching them all go in.
grudznick agrees with Mr. Pay on the perturbation part. That’s just the way it should be, as a scientist I know this. If we could erase a bunch of big giant cities. #4Science
How many acres are necessary? There are about 3 trillion trees on the planet, so you are talking about finding 1/3 of the area now occupied by trees. This either needs to displace land use by other things (people, agriculture, industry), or use new areas that are not currently being used or not going to be used by agriculture.
Sorry, we do not have a trillion seedlings ready to go. Supply and demand mean the costs must increase. So if you believe Porter’s numbers … then you still need $65 billion per year over the decade that we supposedly have just for planting (before contemplating any forest management costs….including forest fires that could increase carbon emissions). I guess South Dakota can go without federal dollars for the next 300 years to pay for it.
I agree with Donald that we can and should replace lawns with grasses, flowers, shrubs that do not require a lot of fertilizer or water and reduce the carbon needed to maintain our landscapes. And use an electric lawn mower for the rest.
It should happen but it won’t. No one can make a buck off a growing tree. In farming country I see just the opposite. Shelter belts taken out and abandoned building site’s being bull dozed.
Clyde is correct, we’re too damn lazy to plant a tree, to easy just to get rid of them and plant something toxic like corn or beans. In the meantime, Louisiana braces itself for a category 1 hurricane. Not to bad a category 1? True that, but remember, the Mississippi River is still at flood stage. Buh bye New Orleans, been good to know ye or can we save her and ourselves by becoming our own masters? Spend a couple of bucks and dig some holes to put in a tree or 30. https://www.treesisters.org/2017-10-04-18-28-09/blog/27-about-treesisters/245-much-cost-plant-tree
How many acres gained by banning wingnuts and replacing them with something useful, like trees?
We will see if there is a push to pay people to sequester carbon in different ways…be that with trees, or in the soil through agricultural techniques, or by direct air carbon capture, or at the source of the pollution itself.
But the key item will be what the price of carbon needs to be for that to happen.
I’m not such a big fan of burying carbon. I’d rather find a way to recycle it or downcycle it into another purpose. For example, use the carbon to make wind turbine blades, and then find something else to do with the wind turbine blades when they are replaced (or make the wind turbine blades more biodegradable to begin with).
That’s a good plan Mike. Or we could try planting wingnut leaders … headfirst, of course. That’s where all the built in fertilizer is.
I would give up a tree or two just so i could drive through the parking lot the abysmal Aberdeen Mall.
McTaggert – Then you still need $65 billion per year over the decade that we supposedly have just for planting (before contemplating any forest management costs….including forest fires that could increase carbon emissions). I guess South Dakota can go without federal dollars for the next 300 years to pay for it.
Rebuttal – Trump’s tax cut was $1.5 trillion. Rededicate half that money to begin the project.
Touche’ Mr. Lensing.
Oh, Ms. Debbo, that comment was devilish. Heads full of fertilizer.
I just calls ’em as I sees ’em, Jerry. 😆
Before we proceed, McTaggart. What you display is classic negativity bias. It’s why South Dakota is rated among the bottom five states in innovation. Now, go ahead and use three times as much mental calculation to guess why something won’t work as I do thinking about how to devise, develop, and make something work.
The floor is yours …
New Orleans boat traffic on city streets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=71&v=tk90NFN-ndo
“If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break
When the levee breaks I’ll have no place to stay
Mean old levee taught me to weep and moan
Lord mean old levee taught me to weep and moan
It’s got what it takes to make a mountain man leave his home
Oh well, oh well, oh well” Led Zeppelin
Professor McTaggart … I apologize for being crass and disrespectful towards you. You’re a renowned physicist which is so far above my pay grade it’s not even comparable. Physics is hard science. It has laws and rules that must be applied. Innovation is the opposite of science. It’s more gut reaction to a need with necessity as the catalyst. That’s why it can’t be taught. Innovation only improves with trial, error, and practice. Once again, I respect your skills and your dedication to carbon mitigation. A combination of safer nukes and natural gas with an emphasis on nuclear development is what America and the world needs. Thank you, sir.
Jerry … I could see this flooding when CO snowmelt was 175% of normal over all six basins. We didn’t even begin to melt till six weeks ago. And, they were snow skiing on Independence Day which means flood waters in the Missouri and Mississippi won’t recede at all this year. Another similar winter and the middle of America will be coastal.
Or, Corey, how about we tear up 80% of the pavement around the Aberdeen Mall, plant that all to trees, and save money by paving just the 20% that we actually need for parking there?
Thanks.
Sometimes politics does not obey any rules, and it does not operate under the constraints of physical laws or even finance sometimes. There is something to be said for not worrying about the rules and charging forward (get elected first, then worry about policy I guess).
However, there are both physical constraints (like you cannot have 100% efficiency) and financial constraints (like paying for a trillion trees right now) that can lead to people losing elections.
We need to solve climate change and pay for it. In my opinion, it will not be possible politically if we cannot get power whenever we want it, nor if we continue to emit carbon while delivering that power. I don’t see how we do that without growing nuclear and renewables, and using our fossil fuel resources wisely (hopefully with carbon capture).
Or build something that protects vehicles from hail but also could provide power for the Mall or to recharge electric cars. Probably not as cheap as just paving the parking lot.
And the rain. “Mickey Scott was canoeing at Bde Maka Ska in Minneapolis Wednesday. But when asked whether she would take a swim, she expressed concern about water quality.
“The lakes aren’t a choice to come to as often for swimming,” Scott said. “When I bring my granddaughter swimming somewhere I don’t choose to come to the lakes. We go to a pool or go somewhere else where I think the water’s safer.”
Three beaches in Minneapolis — Lake Hiawatha Beach and Bde Maka Ska’s 32nd Street Beach and Thomas Beach — and one in Chaska — Clayhole Swim Beach — have been closed in the past few days after routine testing found high levels of E. coli bacteria.”
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/07/10/beach-closed-in-twin-cities-blame-it-on-the-rain
Climate emergency is what we are facing. While vulture capitalists wreck another state https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/7/9/20684815/coal-wyoming-bankruptcy-blackjewel-appalachia
Watch the CAFO’s destroy the state while the same vulture capitalists move away after the fact.
Renewables are indeed growing, but fossil fuels are growing even faster.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2019/07/11/why-the-world-needs-nuclear-power/
“While we can celebrate the fact that renewables are growing, it’s important to keep in mind that they aren’t growing rapidly enough to stop the growth of power produced from fossil fuels. Further, these sources don’t represent firm power that can be called upon on demand.”
“Thus, whether you like it or not, absolute rejection of nuclear power almost certainly means higher global carbon dioxide emissions.”
Solar powered overhangs in parking lots are a thing. They can even have high-speed and level-2 car chargers. And they CAN be made to look better than what they have at Legoland Florida.
Wrt nuclear, while not a “cure all,” it’s *part* of a solution as part of a diverse and therefore resilient energy portfolio. That said care needs to go into not just basic resiliency but also adapting cooling strategies for a warming and more humid world. (I’m talking about you, France, which has happened before with their infrastructure when under prolonged heat waves). https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-nuclearpower-weather/frances-edf-may-halt-four-nuclear-reactors-due-to-heatwave-statement-idUSKBN1KM56C
Heat-related issues affect all water-cooled power plants, whether they are nuclear or fossil fuel power plants.
Since nobody seems to like the idea of pre-cooling the water when said heat waves occur (which would be a fine use of intermittent energy or energy storage), the alternative is to build the power plants that do not require water. For nuclear those are the molten salt reactors or the ones that are gas cooled.
Or we learn to go without air conditioning and refrigeration during a heat wave when renewables do not deliver enough energy. I don’t think we want to do that.
Great link Mr. Capehart, nukes cause cancer and they can’t even deal with the heat. Maybe put some wind chargers by the nuke plants to cool those babies down so they don’t meltdown. What a dilemma. As was suggested, plant more trees to shade those reactors as well, tall ones of course.
Doesn’t the sun cause cancer Jerry? The answer is yes. Can we use solar power without getting cancer? Yes. Can we use nuclear power so that we do not get cancer? Yes. There is a lot of steel and concrete between people and radiation.
Does reducing emissions and particulate matter reduce cancer? Yes. Nuclear and solar have that in common. Currently nuclear, wind, and geothermal have the lowest emissions per kilowatt-hour over their life cycles (and we do have to generate a lot of kilowatt-hours). Solar is 4 times as much as those, but almost one-fourth that of natural gas.
I agree with you that intermittent cooling from wind/sun to cool the water would be OK. But we do have to find a way to pay for it all on a bipartisan basis. That can’t be done if we leave out either renewables or nuclear. I suspect that will also demand some carbon capture in the political calculus.
The answer is no, skin causes cancer on some people, whereas, nukes cause cancer period on all people.
If you plant a trillion or more trees, you will not only get the cleansing action (think Mr. Clean), but you will also get the shade to protect the skin from the sun. Pretty cool, actually.
Nukes cause cancer, always have and always will.
I think you want to use cancer as a means to prevent the growth of nuclear power, while ignoring other cancer pathways that exist elsewhere. But doing so prevents us from addressing climate change, and prevents the growth of renewables as well.
If fossil fuels grow with renewables, at some point you have to stop fossil fuels by stopping renewables. Having carbon-free nuclear backup energy removes that ceiling.
But let’s check out other sources of radiation that you encounter every day.
Facts:
You get more radiation from one airplane flight than from any nuclear power.
You get more radiation from breathing Radon every day than you do from any nuclear power.
You get more radiation from eating food every day than you do from any nuclear power.
If those three items above deliver more radiation to you than even working inside a nuclear power plant, you should stop flying, stop breathing, and stop eating. But fortunately there is this thing called science, which shows you do not have to stop doing any of those things because of radiation.
#4Science
Facts: Couples with uranium can cause cancer and rattlesnake bites. Not eating or breathing, but drinking Kentucky Deluxe.
“GUTHRIE, Okla. – Two people were arrested after a traffic stop of a stolen car revealed the two had a rattlesnake, radioactive uranium, and an open bottle of Kentucky Deluxe.
Stephen Jennings is charged with possession of a stolen vehicle, transporting an open container of liquor, operating a vehicle with a suspended license, and failure to carry security verification form. Rachael Rivera is charged with possession of a firearm after a former felony conviction.” https://kfor.com/2019/07/10/logan-co-man-allegedly-driving-stolen-vehicle-filled-with-uranium-a-rattlesnake-and-kentucky-deluxe/
There ya have it doc, having nukes just makes uranium that much more accessible to the damnedest folks. I think we can do without either. What we can now do is have these two knuckleheads plant some trees.
Your article says the police has not made any charges with respect to the uranium, or even for the rattlesnake! I mean they got caught with uranium, and no arrest.
I will agree with you that they are knuckleheads, but they don’t have access to anything that could enrich the uranium. It sounds like the uranium can be purchased legally in some states.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/uranium-rattlesnake-whiskey-found-during-oklahoma-traffic-stop-n1028956
“It was nothing we were concerned of as far as him using it as a weapon of mass destruction,” Gibbs said. “It’s very low radioactivity.”
Meanwhile…solar panels are becoming less attractive to recycle because they are getting rid of the need for silver. It is cheaper to send the panels to the landfill.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2018/09/04/innovation-is-making-solar-panels-harder-to-recycle/
You would think that there would be a plan to extract value and isolate any cancer-causing toxic elements or chemicals, and those toxic elements don’t decay…so they stay toxic. But that is not going to stop us from installing a lot of solar panels, using them for 30 years, and tossing them away.
Or maybe we should plan for this before we really ramp things up. Unfortunately the goals for solar cell development today are a low upfront cost and a high efficiency, not the end of the life cycle. That won’t change until the latter is included in the cost structure.
O Snap!
“Exaggerating how much carbon dioxide can be absorbed by tree planting risks deterring crucial climate action”
https://phys.org/news/2019-07-exaggerating-carbon-dioxide-absorbed-tree.html
Basically depending on just planting trees as the easy fix risks not getting the public behind the larger efforts that will be required.
When trees do not deliver on the promised carbon capture (particularly when stressed in the new climate), we will have wasted several decades.
Planting trees as carbon offsets also allows the polluter to continue to emit carbon. Moreover, the imperative to reduce carbon (or face the hard choices that are really necessary) goes away.
This comes from MIT’s young innovators. It will make fusion reactors much smaller, cheaper and easier to build.
“A fusion reactor that can deliver energy to the grid is more than a decade away at best. But developing such a reactor is a worthy goal because fusion has the potential to offer almost limitless zero-carbon energy, with low radioactive waste and safety risks.”
http://flip.it/XGsT5L
From the same source:
“The boost in energy density offered by lithium metal batteries could effectively double the range of an electric vehicle.”
http://flip.it/onnrcM
Fusion would be desirable as part of the mix.
I don’t think waste is the primary hurdle for fusion, as the final isotopes tend to be more short-lived than what nuclear power generates. The larger hurdle is developing materials that can withstand much greater temperatures and radiation fluxes than are seen in nuclear power.
You need those high temperatures because you are trying to force a positively charged particle inside the nucleus of another positively charged particle (like charges repel). Sustaining access to fuel and removing waste products can also be a big challenge for fusion.
Maybe with some advanced nuclear you get up to 1000 Celsius. For fusion you need to reach 15 million degrees Celsius at the point of the reaction (probably a little cooler where the structural materials are). The good news is that if materials are suitable for fusion, they will be fine for advanced nuclear.
Same source, coming down the pike:
“Gu envisions materials that can be used for lighter and stronger body armors, 3D-printed and customizable medical implants, and tunable solar cell materials that push the boundaries of the renewable energy technology.”
http://flip.it/L413h5
Last one:
“So Popescu developed algorithms that automatically translate an architectural design into a textile-based mold that can be knitted by industrial machines in mere hours. The resulting mold is lightweight and flexible. Popescu, with the rest of her team, developed a system that uses steel cables to hold the mold in place while concrete is poured over it.
“Popescu’s innovation is an efficient and ecologically conscious way of building complex structures with a minimal ecological footprint, in record time, and at low cost. It also has the potential to speed up construction of low-cost, sturdy, lightweight structures in settings like refugee camps, war zones, and sites of natural disasters.”
http://flip.it/2wEtx-
The initial range for electric vehicles is suitable for many drivers today and may be better in the future. In about a decade we will see a lot more electric and hybrid vehicles than today.
However, the larger issues are the supply of the critical elements (like lithium) and the wear and tear on the battery after many cycles and in a range of temperatures. Like the solar cells, we are pushing ahead without setting up a robust recycling regime for electric car batteries.
Overall 3d-printing has the promise of reducing costs for a lot of endeavors, from solar to nuclear. Because they have 3d-printed a naval submarine, they can do the same for a reactor core if they want to. If you can do that with biodegradable or bio-based polymers and materials, all the better.
I don’t do the 3d-printing, but I work with the engineers that do.
haha, Doc, like “without setting up a robust recycling regime for” high hazard nuke waste, decades and decades and decades ago. harvest profits but ignore costs to the environment and inhabitants. Carbon capture. CO2, methane? What, you worry? Too expensive. let’em eat cake. corporate corrupt crony capitalism. 1,735,350 new cases of US cancer last year will be diagnosed, 610,000 will die.
“…Basically depending on just planting trees as the easy fix risks not getting the public behind the larger efforts that will be required….”
We in the climate community has been making this clear since the Bastin et al hit the news cycle. No amount of feasible carbon capture or sequestration can be done without major diversification of our energy portfolio away from fossil fuels..The fine print in Bastin likewise makes that clear. And the sequestration/capture of carbon is only a small part any of the of the SR15 pathways. Anyone presenting this as a shortcut to the hard work ahead are fooling themselves and any reader who buys into it.
…Clinton wouldn’t win this time around either.
well, Russian propaganda sunk that ship. thx apple, ect. mcconnell sealed the escape hatches.
it is indisputable the world would not be foundering in autocracies if HRC had a fair election. GOP cheats in every way possible to hold on to billionaire power. pretty simple. climate change action would be well underway, and Iran, Putin and Un would be controlled. life would be different and income inequality. the only remaining catastrophic issue now facing every one of us except the 1%, would now be in HRC’s cross-hairs.
thx stupid republican ideologues. it is so simple when rush Limbaugh ect wraps it up with a simple red bow, isn’t it?!
Mr. McTaggart – Your “facts” about how much radiation we are around (e.g. airplane rides, Radon, various irradiated foods) aren’t a testimony to nuclear safety. No. They’re a testimony of how much nuclear is detested by the vast majority of Americans and how scarce we’ve made it. The public wants it eliminated and is well on the way to that goal.
Leslie England…We should be recycling our nuclear waste too. The current plans are to bury the waste as is and leave 95% of the usable energy in the spent fuel…which is crazy.
Why should we bury a waste form that is much larger in volume, stays hot for longer, and has more radioactivity? Because like wastes from renewables it is cheaper today to simply throw it away.
And there are a lot of useful elements in the solar cells and wind turbine motors that we should be extracting to reduce the need for mining.
The primary renewable waste issues are (a.) toxic elements, and (b.) larger volumes that are not being recycled. It does have radioactivity in it, but that is a minor aspect. Broken wind turbines are a lot of carbon fiber. I am afraid that we will burn the turbine blades for energy to reduce the volume. There go our carbon savings up in smoke.
It should be renewables and nuclear working together. A nuclear reactor is the only place today where brand new rare earth elements are being made. Those could be extracted in the recycling process. So yes, I am in favor of a robust recycling regime for all forms of energy, where one form of energy helps the other.
Actually, it is testimony to how safe nuclear power is today. We get more radiation dose from medical use than we do from nuclear power, and nobody wants to go without access to radiation therapy if it will help kill cancer, and nobody wants unnecessary invasive procedures if we forego medical imaging.
I am not talking about irradiated foods, Porter. I am just talking about food. Everything has trace amounts of potassium, thorium, uranium, and their various decay products. By the way, the process of irradiating food does not make it radioactive. It simply breaks chemical bonds that lead to killing various microbes, fungi, viruses, etc.
The focus has been on perceived risk and little on actual benefits. The public has not yet been confronted with the following choices:
1. You can have an all renewable energy grid with whatever batteries can help with, but you cannot have power whenever you want it.
2. You can have power whenever you want it with more renewables, but you must also have a lot more fossil fuels if you avoid nuclear (this is the status quo, just without the nuclear we enjoy today).
3. You can have all the power you want whenever you want it and reduce carbon emissions as much as possible with nuclear in the mix.
Which one would you pick if your principles lead you to fixing climate change and not just talking about it?
Clinton had some flaws as a candidate, and needed a different set of tactics for the Rust Belt and Appalachia in particular. She just needed one of those states to flip and she didn’t get there. At the time nobody in Appalachia believed they would make more money in the new economy…but the message to destroy the coal economy came through pretty clearly.
It isn’t that Appalachia wouldn’t like to convert its economy to a more diversified portfolio, but it was a lost opportunity for the Democrats not to find a way to deliver that to them….and still is a lost opportunity.
Your argument is invalid, sir. You’re assuming a tragedy doesn’t happen. Nuclear tragedies have happened and that removes 99.9% of the assumption of safety. Nuclear power plants are safe until they’re not and that must be factored into any safety rating.
I beg your pardon, but the occupational death rates and accident rates are higher for solar and wind.
If you like the carbon savings you get from today’s nuclear power plants, then keep them going, because they will be replaced by gas or coal. And if you don’t like the current power plants but want carbon-free power, then shut them down and build the newer versions. If you want even more clean power, then build more of them. Pretty simple. They will work with renewables, so go ahead and build those too.
So I welcome your new interest in nuclear safety, and hope that you will oppose a greater influence by Russia and China in the global nuclear marketplace by supporting new American reactors that satisfy 100% of your objections to nuclear today.
The issue with Three Mile Island I would say were human factors combined with instrumentation. It had the smallest release of any of the three incidents, but had the largest political impact. The production of power from coal skyrocketed after this incident.
The issue with Chernobyl was a design that should not have been built, and a politics that resulted in the careless testing of the reactor. The wildlife around Chernobyl is doing much better than it ever has been, largely due to the lack of people.
The issue with Fukushima was basically that they did not secure their backup energy source from the flooding. It wasn’t the direct shaking of the earthquake, it was the tsunami. It was exacerbated by a culture of not speaking up to authorities and not having enough staff on-site in case of an emergency.
And by the way, even with Fukushima, Japan will be generating more nuclear energy. They were not able to meet their carbon targets since 2011 without nuclear. The percentage of nuclear in the mix will be less than what it was before Fukushima for the foreseeable future.
The issue is nukes are not safe, humans run the damn things so think Homer Simpson, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6GuEswXOXo
Nuclear plants should follow NRC guidelines. NRC officers have the freedom to shut down operations at any time if they see anything.
I’m glad you are concerned about safety, and hope that you will require the same due diligence in solar and wind safety. That is something that solar and wind can learn from nuclear.
This is also why nuclear energy appreciates a diverse workforce, because seeing problems from different approaches is beneficial to the nuclear safety culture.
You won’t believe volumes of scientific data and uber-regulations on nuclear safety, but you will believe everything that occurs on the Simpson’s. Great.
Just showing what you said there doc, humans caused the problems so why would that change? Do you think of yourself as being that guy who could make all the problems go away?
If all of this is so safe, why are we being such a pain in the arse to Iran over them wanting nuke power and cool with Saudi Arabia, the country that already attacked us a couple of times. If you’re willing to put one in South Dakota, why not put them in Iran? Then we can all plant trees to help prevent heart disease.
Humans produce wind and solar energy too, and energy storage, and the energy grid, etc. That is not a nuclear thing, that is a people thing.
Saudi Arabia is using its oil money to invest in nuclear and solar. That tells you something. Neither should have a nuclear weapon, so we should be playing a role in overseeing any nuclear fuel cycle and the waste products or enrichment.
If and only if Iran will play nice, then they will need power to have any kind of economy. They could have nuclear generated electricity imported instead of being built in the country initially from nations that agree to our safety oversight. But if you think oil and gas and coal are OK for them, then why not more oil and gas and coal in South Dakota?
Each day we do equations or use a computer, we are practicing what the Persians taught the western world 1500 years ago. We could put the nuke plants in Syria, or maybe Iraq or neighboring Afghanistan, yeah there is the place for sure.
“I beg your pardon, but the occupational death rates and accident rates are higher for solar and wind.”
Not a valid rating. Those ratings don’t consider when things go bad and radiation leaks kill people. Your logic kills people, Dr. McTaggart!
Case in point. The safety ratings on Tanaka air bags were within range because millions had them and only a few users were killed. Finally, as with nuclear generators, wise minds intervened and said that every death mattered even though Tanaka’s overall rating was good.
Nuclear’s safety rating may be good but its tragedy rating is deadly.
Bill, by no means do I suggest we just plant trees and forget all the technological and social revolution necessary to restore the planet’s livable future. If the Legislature told me they were willing to spend $100 million dollars to fight climate change, I’d tell them to cut that pie into many slices: refit state buildings for energy efficiency, add some fuel-efficient cars to the state motor pool… and put five million into planting more trees—either restoring shelterbelts or building that great bicycle-tourist greenbelt I envision sheltering a bicycle trail from Pierre to Watertown
And the fantastic bicycle-tour de badlands between Kadoka and Rapid City that already has some set aside money “Meanwhile, a small portion of the project is scheduled to be built in 2016 in Rapid City. The city has a $206,837 grant that will be paired with $193,000 of city money for an eastward extension of the Leonard Swanson Memorial Pathway, which runs along Rapid Creek through much of the city.” Rapid City Journal 2.22.2015
The Mako Sica Trail could be a great place for a shelter belt along a beautiful recreation trail that would also provide part of the trillion trees project.
Your logic is doing people harm Porter. If we forego nuclear energy, people will still demand energy when they want to use it, not when you deem they are worthy enough to have it (We deny you energy for the good of the planet…good luck winning an election).
Renewables do not deliver energy in response to a demand. Without nuclear that energy must be delivered by consuming fossil fuels that emit carbon, SOx, NOx, and other particulate matter because we don’t have energy storage or carbon capture.
The only radiation leaks that killed people from those 3 incidents were when people were on-site in or around the open reactor core at Chernobyl. And by getting the U.S. out of nuclear, you are allowing those same Russians to take over the global nuclear marketplace with China. Thanks a lot.
Nobody died from radiation at Three Mile Island. Japan has said in 2018 that one person who was on the Fukushima site had his death attributed to lung cancer, which was diagnosed 5 years after Fukushima. A dose of 100 milliSievert is the current threshold for any distinguishable cancer risk, and that worker was documented to have received 195 milliSievert (which frankly is a failure of the company to monitor those dose readings, or to have enough people on-site to swap out as necessary to mitigate doses). Our annual dose from nature and everything but medicine is about 3 milliSievert.
Interesting that you minimize the fewer workplace deaths from nuclear, and do not acknowledge the far greater deaths from particulate matter. In 2018 a study by the EPA declared that particulate matter contributed to the death of 9 million people worldwide each year. So that could be 90 million in the last 10 years.
Can you provide evidence that the use of nuclear power in the last 60 years has generated more deaths than that? Or has it actually saved millions of lives by avoiding the emission of even more particulate matter?
The world’s energy use is growing, and fossil fuel use is increasing faster than renewables to meet the demand. And you would rather continue that rate of 9 million deaths per year (or even increase it) than eliminate it with the help of nuclear energy. Wow.
Cory,
I think I would also consider helping school districts replace school buses. Building better schools that may have geothermal heating or solar for heating/cooling would also be on the list. All of those items would have long term benefits, but have a high upfront cost that is a hurdle for communities and school districts.
Robert McTaggart rambles on like a drunk trying to talk his way out of a DUI. His claim that nuclear energy is safe is invalid. I’ll exhibit a case a family member helped to litigate.
“A $375 million class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of property owners who lived downwind from the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant has yielded more than 10,000 claims, and so far about half “appear to be valid,” the attorney overseeing the case said Wednesday. “That’s a very high claim percentage,” he said, noting that many potential claimants have died or didn’t receive notice of the settlement in the 27 years that have passed since the suit was filed. “I would anticipate several hundred more claims will come in.”
Davidoff said checks could go out as soon as this fall for those who ultimately qualify. Dollar amounts for claimants haven’t been determined yet, but he said individual payouts would like reach at least several thousand dollars.
Nuclear energy is not safe and McTaggart’s assurance that it is borders negligence.
“Former employees sue blade maker for ‘severe injuries'”
https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1488997/former-employees-sue-blade-maker-severe-injuries
“Green alleges that she became sick after applying epoxy resin inside blades in the moulding department at TPI’s plant in Newton, Iowa.
She says TPI did issue gloves, paper masks and paper suits, but that the equipment was inadequate and resin would sometimes soak through to her own clothes.
The 36-year old alleges that the same day her skin injuries were diagnosed, TPI fired her, saying it could no longer accommodate her health needs.
Her complaint, filed at Iowa district court in Jasper County, accused TPI of a “systematic practice of hiring healthy employees and then terminating them from employment after their employees sustained a chemical injury.”
“
And by the way, I am talking about nuclear power, not nuclear weapons. I know it is the weekend…but wake up :^).
And what say you on the 9 million deaths every year from particulate matter?
Do we need to address that, or is it better to make more renewable energy regardless of how much fossil fuel we must consume to balance supply and demand?
Particulate matter is a false equivalency and an example of what-aboutism, thus irrelevant. Nuclear energy is nuclear energy. It’s causes cancer whether it’s a reactor or a weapons plant. Rockwell stalled employee lawsuits for 27 years until every worker who could beat them in court died of cancer. Over 250 died.
-You’re trying to escape culpability for proclaiming nuclear energy to be safer that eating vegetables by distracting the conversation. That’s conclusive that you’re in the corner with your face to the wall.
Enough. America agrees with me.
Last time I checked, cancer was cancer regardless of the cause, and a death was a death. I apparently need to remind you that chemicals used in solar and wind manufacturing can have an impact in that regard. The wind and the sunshine are pure. The means to convert them into energy are not as pure as a Colorado spring (I mean the water source…not the season, although the season is probably nice in Colorado).
We can eliminate far more cancers and premature deaths by generating more nuclear energy with renewables instead of pairing renewables with fossil fuels. No carbon taxes, no carbon offsets, just produce clean energy from the get-go.
If we eliminate nuclear, then fossil fuels must do two jobs…make up for the intermittency of renewables (while emitting carbon), and generate the extra bulk energy when renewables are not enough (while emitting more carbon). And as we convert to electric vehicles and the third world discovers air conditioning and refrigeration, the growth rate of fossil fuels will continue to outpace renewables.
The lawsuit you are continuing to talk about regards the production of nuclear weapons, not nuclear energy. The real FALSE EQUIVALENCY (to coin a phrase) is to equate the manufacturing, machining, chemical processing, and use of specialized solvents in nuclear weapons production run by the government with what occurs for the commercial production of nuclear energy. Do you really think that the emissions and environmental impact of nuclear weapons production are the same as what occurs near a nuclear power plant?
My late wife died of breast cancer and I find your cavalier, public, attitude offensive. Just stop!
Then you should support efforts to achieve the greatest reduction in the numbers of cancers as possible.
You want more renewables regardless of whether fossil fuels increase. Or more likely, you are pinning your hopes on energy storage technologies that have not materialized yet. I am fine with more renewables as long as we don’t emit carbon along with them, and we can do that with nuclear.
It is clear that nuclear energy and renewables working together would deliver a significant reduction in the generation of particulate matter and carbon dioxide.
For some reason you are opposed to a solution in which we both win and the problem of climate change actually gets solved. Sometimes in politics if a problem gets solved, people cannot get paid to complain about it any more.
Plant trees, they are so cool. Nukes kill. “The waste generated by nuclear reactors remains radioactive for tens to hundreds of thousands of years. Currently, there are no long-term storage solutions for radioactive waste, and most is stored in temporary, above-ground facilities. These facilities are running out of storage space, so the nuclear industry is turning to other types of storage that are more costly and potentially less safe.”
The waste does not have to remain radioactive for tens to hundreds of thousands of years if we recycle it. If we build the more efficient reactors, less waste can be generated as well. We should be doing things to reduce the volume of waste that requires permanent isolation from the biosphere for all sources of energy, not just for nuclear. A couple hundred years to background levels is possible.
There are long-term solutions for nuclear waste storage, but opponents do not want to say yes. Basically they think that allowing a solution to proceed means a renewed growth of nuclear will occur. Opponents seem to think this will mean less renewables, but I don’t believe it. Renewables are too popular, and more nuclear will provide the needed growth in carbon-free backup power for those renewables.
Cost is an issue. We are paying $2 million per day to store nuclear waste at the power plants, and the related liability also increases with the volume. Recent testimony on Capitol Hill shows that we do not have a crisis in the storage of nuclear waste.
We do have a crisis with regard to establishing a consent-based process. Nobody wants to allow progress, and there are communities with shut-down power plants that are now de facto storage sites as a result.
I think the way forward is to have more than one permanent storage site. Even the congressional delegation from Nevada agrees that a solution is required…they would just rather be given the same abilities for consent as other potential sites for interim storage.
By the way, there is no half-life on things like cadmium or arsenic. They are always toxic. That is a primary issue for renewable wastes. Of course you could bust up cadmium and arsenic into smaller nuclei that are not as toxic, but you would have to permit nuclear to help solar and wind with its waste problem. And likewise, rare earths found in nuclear waste would help wind/solar/energy storage as well.
“There is great concern that the development of nuclear energy programs increases the likelihood of proliferation of nuclear weapons. As nuclear fuel and technologies become globally available, the risk of these falling into the wrong hands is increasingly present. To avoid weapons proliferation, it is important that countries with high levels of corruption and instability be discouraged from creating nuclear programs, and the US should be a leader in nonproliferation by not pushing for more nuclear power at home.”
When bozo heads like those two honyockers in Oklahoma carry uranium around, we are not a safe country.
Apparently the knuckleheads had a legally obtained amount of uranium they wanted to use to test a geiger counter. Go figure. The police had the uranium and the knuckleheads, and didn’t charge them regarding the uranium. If it were an issue, federal and state charges would have occurred.
The key item for nuclear nonproliferation is to prevent the enrichment of nuclear material above 90%. If you are enriching to 3-5% and are open to monitoring and inspection, no problem.
Canada has shown that you can have nuclear power without any enrichment of the fuel (the CANDU reactors). That means 0.72% of the uranium is U-235. However, you have to make other choices if you go that direction. CANDU reactors use water enriched in deuterium instead (heavy water), but they could use something else. Each engineering choice has a consequence…and CANDUs must be larger to allow for the fission reaction to continue.
Our rules for governing nuclear energy programs should be implemented. We have more weight in that discussion when we provide more of the nuclear tech in the marketplace. That means expanding our role in nuclear power to compete with Russia and China, not reducing it. We have a national security interest in making sure that the safest and most secure designs are built, and that protocols for assuring nonproliferation are followed.
“Nuclear power plants are a potential target for terrorist operations. An attack could cause major explosions, putting population centers at risk, as well as ejecting dangerous radioactive material into the atmosphere and surrounding region. Nuclear research facilities, uranium enrichment plants, and uranium mines are also potentially at risk for attacks that could cause widespread contamination with radioactive material”
That’s why we can never ever ever allow nukes to be stored in South Dakota or have those cancer killers here in our world. It’s gonna be bad enough with these bombers coming to Ellsworth for security stuff, but to add more nukes, bad mojo.
grudznick had to have a really hairy, somewhat interestingly-shaped mole removed from the top of my noggin’ because the photons from solar power were pounding down on it. Hundreds of thousands of Americans get harmed from solar power every year.
They could do the same thing for areas that hold toxic waste from solar and wind waste. That would release toxic chemicals into our air and water. Coal mines and coal fly ash storage ponds would be targets for the same reason. Nuclear waste and nuclear fuel are protected by steel and concrete. We have no such protection regime for solar waste, wind waste, or coal waste.
Thanks to opposition of nuclear power and use of the LNT hypothesis, nuclear power plants have way more concrete than is necessary to contain the radiation. You can fly a plane into those things…no problem. The concrete and steel casks used to hold nuclear waste are thoroughly tested against all kinds of kinetic impacts.
We should be building the new power plants that are walk-away safe. They will cool down without the need for external power that was needed at Fukushima, and the fuel is designed to withstand temperatures beyond what the reactor can produce for much longer than the cool-down time.
Probably if there were ever a dirty bomb, the best thing to do is to stay away from downtown while they clean things up. Basically the dirty bomb is little more than a bomb.
Studies show that the largest radiation doses occur in a general nuclear incident when people panic, try to escape, and get stuck in traffic…resulting in longer exposures and more inhalation. If you wait, our friend the wind moves a lot of that away, and the isotopes decay.
The greatest risk of injury or death occurs via both panic and stress about radiation, not the radiation itself. So this thing that you guys do to instill fear about nuclear is actually quite counterproductive if you are truly interested in public safety.
Studies as you note, “In addition to the risks posed by terrorist attacks, human error and natural disasters can lead to dangerous and costly accidents. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine led to the deaths of 30 employees in the initial explosion and has has had a variety of negative health effects on thousands across Russia and Eastern Europe. A massive tsunami bypassed the safety mechanisms of several power plants in 2011, causing three nuclear meltdowns at a power plant in Fukushima, Japan, resulting in the release of radioactive materials into the surrounding area. In both disasters, hundreds of thousands were relocated, millions of dollars spent, and the radiation-related deaths are being evaluated to this day. Cancer rates among populations living in proximity to Chernobyl and Fukushima, especially among children, rose significantly in the years after the accidents”
Cancer rates skyrocketed, who would’ve thunk it?
Big power failure in New York City at the moment.
Good luck solar power and energy storage. Oh wait a minute…it is dark and they have no energy storage.
Indeed, ya should’ve been warned and protected Mr. grudznick. Perhaps you were and you were just simply ignorant of your skin exposure. Here we are discussing planting trees to post shade upon the land and to help cleanse it.
Use that noggin and plant a tree or ten, get back at the bright orange ball and seek shade. Pale faces should be always on the alert for their skin issues with the sun. Sombrero comes from the Spanish root word meaning shade or shadow. A trillion trees will provide a whole lot of sombre and a whole lot of cleaning.
Nukes wouldn’t have solved that power outage. If the grid system won’t allow it, you could have 14,000 nuke power plants and it would still be dark. See it runs on the same pretense as a light switch, on and off. Go plant some trees to do some good for the planet.
Side note, it the lights are off, that is how those babies are made… Check it out in 9 months and see.
A variety of negative health effects include those related to fear, not radiation.
Now for the science!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/03/11/it-sounds-crazy-but-fukushima-chernobyl-and-three-mile-island-show-why-nuclear-is-inherently-safe/
“But now, eight years after Fukushima, the best-available science clearly shows that Caldicott’s estimate of the number of people killed by nuclear accidents was off by one million. Radiation from Chernobyl will kill, at most, 200 people, while the radiation from Fukushima and Three Mile Island will kill zero people.”
“What about cancer [from Chernobyl] ? By 2065 there may be 16,000 thyroid cancers; to date there have been 6,000. Since thyroid cancer has a mortality rate of just one percent — it is an easy cancer to treat — expected deaths may be 160.”
“Cancer rates were just 10 percent higher among atomic blast survivors, most of whom never got cancer. Even those who received a dose 1,000 times higher than today’s safety limit saw their lives cut short by an average of 16 months.”
“About 2,000 people died from the evacuation [from Fukushima], while others who were displaced suffered from loneliness, depression, suicide, bullying at school, and anxiety. ”
“Every scientist and radiation expert in the world who comes here [Fukushima] says the same thing,” he said. “We know we don’t need to reduce radiation levels for public health. We’re doing it because the people want us to.”
Time to end the fear and build a carbon-free economy.
#4Science
The grid itself in NYC needs to be more resilient and upgraded. In general the northeast is also lacking in natural gas infrastructure.
But solar is not going to help them tonight. Sleep well solar cells…we’ll see you in the morning.
Cancer of course, for the workers and neighboring folks, like children. “In addition to the significant risk of cancer associated with fallout from nuclear disasters, studies also show increased risk for those who reside near a nuclear power plant, especially for childhood cancers such as leukemia . Workers in the nuclear industry are also exposed to higher than normal levels of radiation, and as a result are at a higher risk of death from cancer at a rate similar to the that of Japanese nuclear bomb survivors.”
We all know the dangers, we have footage of it in the historical context with some of it being not that long ago. Nukes are a bummer. Plant trees, and lots of them. Get the shade and the benefit of shelter belts and what those bring. Oh how I remember the shelter belts and the soil banks, clean water and clean air, what a concept.
You are noting projections of cancer based upon the LNT model of risk assessment for radiation.
Last time I checked…”risk of cancer” is not cancer. Your favorite risk model outputs a probability of getting cancer, but that is different than accounting for the actual cancers. Swing and a miss…
The evidence is that you have to get above 100 milliSieverts of dose to see any statistical significance. Below that, current data is consistent with more than one model, so we need more statistics and better experiements. Radiation safety thresholds for nuclear workers (the people who deal with the fuel and machinery, etc.) is set lower than the 100 mSv. That threshold is science based!
Above 100 milliSieverts, the relationship is indeed linearly related to the dose. Nobody wants to do the necessary studies for effects below 100 mSv because then the LNT could be called into question, and nuclear would not be as expensive.
So if you are indeed a science supporter, then support the funding of several thorough investigations (not just one) to investigate the relationship between radiation dose and different cancers below 100 mSv. If you have a political reason to sustain the LNT, then you will work to avoid such studies and/or completely dismiss their results.
It is an interesting conundrum for you. On one hand, if you question LNT (linear no-threshold model) or gather data which is inconsistent with the LNT, you become pro-nuclear all of a sudden to many on this blog. But if you are a science denier, then you share something in common with those who deny that climate change is occurring and man has something to do with it.
I hope you will choose science and then make an evidence-based decision.
A farm in Portugal is showing how the ancient art of silvopasture – combining livestock with productive trees – may offer some real answers to the climate crisis
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John Vidal in Foros de Vale Figueira
Sat 13 Jul 2019 09.01 BST Last modified on Sat 13 Jul 2019 11.15 BST
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Animals are free to roam under the shade of trees and shrubs at a co-operative farm in Portugal.
Animals are free to roam under the shade of trees and shrubs at a co-operative farm in Portugal. All photographs by Ricardo Lopes/The Guardian
The land to the north of the village of Foros de Vale Figueira in southern Portugal has been owned and farmed through the centuries by Romans, Moors, Christians, capitalists, far rightists, even the military. It has been part of a private fiefdom, worked by slaves as well as communists.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/13/pigs-radical-farming-system-trees-climate-crisis
For those of us who argue for shelter belts, it’s a proven fact that farming and ranching depend on cooling animals so they can forage. Standing in the hot sun does not put meat on those bones. Shelter belts also drift the snow so you get the runoff in the stock dams to provide even more opportunities for livestock to cool.
You betcha all of that snow sure does keep them cool in the winter…
There are a few farms that are doing the same thing, but produce power from solar on top of the shading structure. Basically like what is also done at parking lots.
A better idea would be to use the electricity from solar on top to chill the water that the animals drink, or generate a cooling mist for them in the shade. That would get around the need to match supply with demand or store any energy.
With these inefficient dinosaurs, please. The 444 nuclear power plants currently in existence provide about 11% of the world’s energy. Studies show that in order to meet current and future energy needs, the nuclear sector would have to scale up to around 14,500 plants. Uranium, the fuel for nuclear reactors, is energy-intensive to mine, and deposits discovered in the future are likely to be harder to get to to. As a result, much of the net energy created would be offset by the energy input required to build and decommission plants and to mine and process uranium ore. The same is true for any reduction in greenhouse gas emissions brought about by switching from coal to nuclear”
Nukes cause cancer, cause more problems to the environment than they solve. Let them die the death of Westinghouse. 15,000 of these cancer causing money sucking behemoth’s, naw. Plant trees and lots of them. Fruit trees and flowering trees for the bees.
I’m anxious to see what other commenters say about the other issues Cory shows on his blog site. So, I am gonna hang up now. Feel free to argue with yourself doc.
Trees only won’t work. And the time spent planting them and waiting for results is time better spent on other action items. If you don’t manage them (which takes energy by the way), they will decay and microbes will release both methane and CO2 from their decay.
If we reprocessed our nuclear waste, there would not have to be as much mining.
Our choice of reactor can also reduce the need for mining. We could convert U-238 into Pu-239, then less uranium has to be mined. We could also develop the thorium-based reactors. Thorium is 100% Th-232, which can be converted into U-233, and it is more abundant than uranium. And then there is the extraction of uranium or thorium from seawater (which is being studied, but not ready yet).
So you have some options to reduce the mining we will need and still have nuclear power.
I like the way you think about going all-in on nuclear. But for a variety of reasons, it will be better that our energy portfolio is neither all-nuclear nor all-renewables. We will however need to have more nuclear power than today to support renewables and deliver the total amount of energy we demand.
Cancer is not a good argument for not doing nuclear. I know it is your favorite phrase, but nuclear actually does far more to reduce potential cancers than other energy sources. Moreover, there are chemical pathways for cancer via the mining and manufacturing of solar and wind as well that you ignore.
Mining is not a good argument for not doing nuclear. To have more renewables and energy storage, we will need to do even more mining (sorry) because wind and solar are not as intense an energy source. Lithium and cobalt are not being mined in pro-labor environments either.
Thus we should support across-the-board recycling efforts, and find ways to for wind, solar, and nuclear (and hydro and geothermal,etc.) to help reduce carbon in those processes. I am all in favor of reducing the mining that is required. But more energy demand will require more mining at some point.
There is also probably a way to integrate more technologies that are bio-based or bio-degradable, which would also help to reduce waste streams.
I should have added we could build more efficient reactors (i.e. that run at higher temperatures). If you could boost the thermal efficiency from around 33-35% today to 50% tomorrow, that would also help reduce the mining that is required.
We also stop using nuclear fuel well before any potential degradation can occur, so being able to use the same fuel for longer would reduce the requisite input as well (This would reduce the 95% of the usable energy that we currently are throwing away).
The Trump Administration has found a tariff it doesn’t like — on uranium.
There was talk of increasing the domestic content of the uranium we use from 7% to 25%. Most of our uranium comes from Canada and Australia, with the rest from Russia, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere (including China).
Domestic uranium producers and John Barrasso (R – Wyoming) have opposed the decision. Nuclear utilities have supported the decision, as fuel costs will stay low to help them compete with natural gas.
Trees can also be used for the phytoremediation of the soil. Willow and poplars tend to be used in this regard.
https://iamcountryside.com/growing/phytoremediation-plants-clean-contaminated-soil/
“Familiar plants such as alfalfa, sunflower, corn, date palms, certain mustards, even willow and poplar trees can be used to reclaim contaminated soil – a cheap, clean and sustainable process. ”
https://www.fs.fed.us/features/great-lakes-region-special-trees-have-absorbing-role
“Some species work best for organics such as petroleum hydrocarbons, others take up metals such as cadmium and chromium. Of the more than 100,000 varieties of poplars developed since the 1950s, about 300 can serve as green tools.”
From NPR no less….
“When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rolled out her “Green New Deal,” calling for clean energy, universal health care and guaranteed jobs, one of the first questions she got was: How do you plan to pay for it?
The New York Democrat argued that ambitious programs can easily be financed through deficit spending.”
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/17/742255158/this-economic-theory-could-be-used-to-pay-for-the-green-new-deal
Uh-oh.
https://the-immoral-minority.com/scotland-is-now-producing-so-much-energy-from-wind-that-it-could-power-two-scotlands/
from CBS News…. In a typically blunt display, the New York property tycoon told an inquiry into renewable energy to stop the wind power efforts in the country’s north.
“Scotland, if you pursue this policy of these monstrous turbines, Scotland will go broke,” he said. “They are ugly, they are noisy and they are dangerous. If Scotland does this, Scotland will be in serious trouble and will lose tourism to places like Ireland, and they are laughing at us.”
Members of the committee are looking at how achievable the Scottish government’s green targets for 2020 are. The plans for 11 200-foot tall wind turbines are part of the government’s goal of positioning itself as a leader in renewable energy.
When challenged to produce hard evidence about his claims on the negative impact of turbines, Trump said: “I am the evidence, I am a world class expert in tourism.”
The public gallery burst into laughter.
Scotland will have the same problem that all renewables have today…what to do when there isn’t enough energy, and what to do when there is too much energy. I suspect that like California, they will try to export that excess energy. If the demand is not there they lose money, unless somebody checks a box to subsidize them.
In other news, Germany says that they will consider putting a price on carbon emissions as soon as September 20. But Merkel is meeting resistance from German automakers and those in rural areas (that have to drive more). Do you know of any rural areas where people have to drive more?
Getting back to trees….
https://www.yahoo.com/news/iceland-tries-bring-back-trees-razed-vikings-235902996.html
Iceland tries to bring back trees razed by the Vikings
“The young trees are cultivated indoors for three months before being moved outside.
But since Icelandic soil is low in nitrogen, the maturation process is slow and the average growth rate is only about one tenth of that observed in the Amazon rainforest. “
Mike, that’s funny. I don’t know how well Rancid Racist gets it that he’s being laughed AT because he’s an idiot.
Ruh oh, brace yourselves, 2008 revisited with a vengeance.
“The diminishing value of coal draws ominous parallels to the subprime mortgage bubble that precipitated the Great Recession of 2008. But the coal free-fall is likely to be even worse than the housing market crash, because houses always retained some value, while coal mines could end up worthless if investors see costs that outstrip potential income, said energy analyst Clark Williams-Derry of the Sightline Institute, a sustainability think tank.
With mines likely to close, Wyoming is entering a new and untested paradigm for coal — reclamation without production. Typically, mines clean up their mess as they go; if they don’t, then the state can shut down operations until they do. But once a company goes broke and the mine shuts down, the only funds for cleanup are reclamation bonds, which critics say are inadequate in Wyoming.[…]
Meanwhile, coal’s collapse is delivering a one-two punch of unemployment and unpaid taxes to Campbell County, where more than one-third of all coal in the U.S. is mined from the Powder River Basin. The Blackjewel bankruptcy put nearly 600 miners out of work, and the county may never get $37 million in taxes owed by the company, which was run by Appalachian coal executive Jeff Hoops. This is partly because of the county’s lenient approach to collecting back taxes.” https://www.hcn.org/articles/coal-with-coal-in-free-fall-wyoming-faces-an-uncertain-future
When the housing bubble burst, it was bad news for sure. We may long for those days when this crap hits the fan. Turnip soup..yummy.
Typical Wyoming. Flying high, followed by crashing and burning.
It sounds like you’re going to have to find something else to do at the coal mine besides coal mining.
Do you put something industrial on the site (maybe recycling solar panels and batteries)? Do you pursue carbon storage there? Do you drill for geothermal energy?
Debbo, it sounds like the burning came first…
Wyoming did some great things with the revenue from those coal mines. They sure paid there teachers a substantial difference than we see here in South Dakota for the same work. Better pay and better benefits, I hope that’s not the first thing felt from this wreck. Environmental issues will also be a problem when these mines go broke and they leave.
I saw a wooden bicycle in Europe and now Japan is working on this. Reduce carbon and get a cool ride like the one pictured.
“Researchers in Japan are working to create a strong material out of wood pulp that could replace steel parts in vehicles within a decade.
Work is also charging ahead in the country to develop plastics that can withstand high temperatures, to replace metal for parts near the engine.
These innovations are part of a wider industry push to make cars lighter.
“There is a rush to try and cut as much weight as possible, especially on cars which will pollute more, like SUVs [sports utility vehicles] or pick-up trucks,” says Paolo Martino, principal automotive components analyst at IHS Markit.” https://www.bbc.com/news/business-41145744
The great green wall, a couple billion trees across Africa. It’s a beautiful thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmgrwW5fQ5E
Jerry, I saw from your link that the Japanese company is working on a bioplastic. That’s important, I think, because otherwise they’re just using oil.
The first mentioned business didn’t mention what type of plastic, so I assume it’s conventional. That’s a problem.
Using more plastic than steel, hence increasing the vehicle’s fuel efficiency is a plus, but let’s not substitute problems.
Your Green Wall link is outstanding and hopeful. Thanks. (Robert, don’t tell me why it’s not going to work. I need a little hope, okay?)
Thanks Ms. Debbo, check this out regarding using goats instead of the poison insecticide to control the weeds that decimate the prairie grass. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJBtmSR7Nnc If some ranchers would pull their heads out, maybe we could actually do something about that beautiful yellow weed that will soon dry out and burn like kerosene. Put goats on it to work with the cattle. How about that? Here is how you can actually plant trees along with chokecherry bushes along with other brush trees to hold back erosion on the creek banks that help to purify the water that runs off into stock dams without spray. As a bonus, when there are floods, keeping your acreage from going down river by planting trees. Work with the land rather than killing it.
Plastics from bio-based sources are the way to go. The questions are whether you can obtain the necessary strength, and whether you can recycle it. Carbon fiber is very strong, but we don’t really recycle it. That is a problem for our wind turbines at the end of their life cycle.
If you can just wait a few thousand years, the tilt of the earth’s orbit will allow northern Africa to be green again without human intervention. You know what they have found in the Sahara? Fossils of whales.
Debbo, go ahead and plant more trees. And grasses. And flowers. And shrubs. There are many other advantages to trees besides their ability to capture carbon. They may help us with our carbon problem…I just wouldn’t rely on them as the only solution.
“Hungry Elephants fight climate change one mouthful at a time”
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/hungry-elephants-fight-climate-change-one-mouthful-time
Elephants munch on plants with smaller stem diameters. The forest that results has fewer tall trees and more with much denser wood. And it is the denser wood that will store more carbon. The elephant-grazed forest also has a greater total mass of plants.
The massive heat wave is creating a spike in fossil fuel usage, as people turn on the air conditioners. Not only is the total energy demand greater, but it occurs whether enough renewable energy is available or not. They need that air conditioning now.
“A lot of Americans don’t really have a deep understanding of the energy they are using and the fact that time of the day and peak energy is peak fossil fuel use. It’s a double whammy in terms of climate,” said Kiran Bhatraju, CEO of Arcadia Power.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/453942-historic-heat-wave-puts-pressure-on-fossil-fuel-reliant-electric
A more extreme climate leads to stronger cold periods and stronger warm periods, which means even more energy for heating and cooling. In addition, we will need to add even more electricity with a conversion to more electric vehicles. And by the way, the third world wants to consume as much energy as we do.
Get ready for this to accelerate as we grow renewables without enough energy storage, without enough carbon capture, and without enough nuclear energy. Have no doubt that we will keep those air conditioners going by burning natural gas, if not coal.
Cities are losing trees.
So beyond any carbon sequestration, trees are important for reducing temperatures (by up to 10 degrees F), removing pollutants, reducing noise, enhancing wildlife, and reducing runoff.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/20/health/iyw-cities-losing-36-million-trees-how-to-help-trnd/index.html
To hot for nukes, hey, let’s try insulation on our homes and offices. Turn down that thermostat in the winter (Jimmy Carter) and turn that baby up in the summer to 75 or even higher for the air conditioning. Use pasteurized milk or shelf soy milk. Use political clout to rid ourselves of dinosaur republicans and start to live right. https://www.npr.org/2018/07/27/632988813/hot-weather-spells-trouble-for-nuclear-power-plants
Mike Rounds, John Thune and little Dirty and big Dirty trump, are doing their level best to clear cut the Black Hills and every other place that can grow a tree. Gots to make room for mining and for something that isn’t a damn tree. Soon there will be a tree in the Smithsonian…the last one…until Rounds gets his chainsaw out and whips that baby into firewood for his castle on the river. http://www.kyheartwood.org/forest-blog/forest-service-and-trump-administration-propose-eliminating-public-disclosure-input-and-environmental-review-comments-urgently-needed-by-august-12-2019?
republicans want to destroy America.
Hot weather spells trouble for any thermal power plant that uses water for cooling…even the natural gas plants you rely upon to make up for renewables.
So by avoiding nuclear, not only are we going to burn more natural gas and coal to deliver air conditioning where and when it is needed, the natural gas plants are less efficient due to the higher temperatures. Thus even more gas will need to be consumed.
In addition, the batteries we will use for electric vehicles are also less efficient at higher temperatures, so they will need even more electricity to get the same charge, which means more carbon. A hearty Professor Farnsworth “Good News”: Those higher temperatures are going to happen more frequently.
So we can continue to pile on the carbon by being penny-wise and pound-foolish, or we can work to avoid it in the first place.
I believe I will be losing a beloved tree of my own due to the winds that came through this weekend. Great shrub, about 8 feet tall, full and green during the summer, gorgeous fall colors, but it literally broke in half at the central core of the tree.
Investors are pressuring cement manufacturers to reduce their emissions.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/22/investing/cement-climate-change/index.html
Cement is responsible for 7% of global emissions.
Several things could happen. The first is that we actually emit more from making cement because our infrastructure will require it (if you are going to consume fossil fuels, make sure it is worthwhile to do so). The second is that less energy-intensive cement alternatives enter the marketplace. The third is that we generate cement without emitting carbon (a good niche for small nuclear). The fourth is that we use cement as a means to sequester carbon.
Robert continues to push his nuclear power. The fact is that nuclear power uses and produces a deadly poison that will remain deadly to all life for thousands of years. Potential accidents not being considered. Nuclear power may become necessary but should remain the power of last resort.
Whats really needed is common sense and justice. Justice first rather than only the power of the almighty dollar in the hands of the few.
Along the lines of justice I’d like to relate a little history.
If you dig out your auto map’s and take a look at the cities and town’s that are located on rivers and streams in the mid west you will see that they are many. In most cases they were located there because the site was deemed to be a good water power source. Those cities and towns first produced electric power for their citizens from the river and in the better sites produced that power until the 1960’s when the big power monopoly scheme’s put them out of business. Those sites then sat unused till the 1970’s so called “energy crisis” hit. Desperate times and the law makers said that anyone willing to put a power source on line was guaranteed a market for that power.
Over night the power monopolies managed to scrap out nearly all the generating equipment in nearly all the municipal hydro plants in the mid west.
Not good enough…. So called environmentally friendly group’s with funding from places I can guess at have been getting municipal dams removed at a prodigious rate because of course the rivers should be “free”.
Justice!
Warren Buffets Berkshire Hathaway Energy has filled Iowa up with giant wind turbines but if you are a homeowner that wants to sell back a little power from your wind turbine or solar panels they want to pay you practically nothing for that power and charge you for using their power lines.
Justice…..and common sense.
The opportunity exists today to show that renewables (including hydro) plus batteries can deliver all of our power needs. So far they have not.
And as seen with the heat waves, when the demand for air conditioning and refrigeration exceeds what renewables can provide, we burn fossil fuels instead of doing more nuclear. When it is hot, hydro is often less available.
It is true that water-cooled power plants are less efficient at higher temperatures, as are batteries. But with nuclear power we would at least not be emitting the extra carbon arising from those inefficiencies.
The current plans for storing nuclear waste demand that the waste stay in its current form and isolated for hundreds of thousands of years. That does not mean alternative approaches do not exist. Today that would include reprocessing, the consuming the wastes in a different type of reactor, or new reactors that generate less waste in the first place.
Being pro-nuclear is not the same as being anti-renewable. The only place where brand new rare earth elements are being produced today are in the core of a nuclear power plant. A reprocessing regime would allow access to those elements, help renewable and battery technologies, and reduce the need to mine said elements. We could also be using process heat from nuclear in the manufacture and waste management of renewables, as well as breaking up the toxic chemicals into less toxic varieties.
Having too much power at times is an issue. We have to sell that power cheaply to get someone else to use it, because we cannot store it! Wind and solar farms only accrue income when they generate power. Often when it is in demand it is not available, and when it is not in demand it is cheap. To be fair, we have not done a good enough job at shifting enough applications to operate when these power sources tend to be more available.
I’m all for making the most of what we have, which means building renewables and addressing their impacts now, not 50 years from now! But it also means using the tools we have available too, which means nuclear energy (i.e. both process heat and electricity).
I don’t think the goal of home solar or home wind should be to make money off the utility (which ultimately means making money off of your neighbors).
In my opinion it is better to right-size a home renewable system so that you pull less energy from the grid, instead of incurring costs associated with intermittent power that you pass onto the grid. Then add more when demand increases or your local storage capacity increases (which could be done on a neighborhood basis, not just in single homes). This may improve a bit as we have more electric vehicles and more secondary heating and cooling in the home.
Robert, I see you have jumped on the “making money off your neighbor” bandwagon. That is the latest big power monopolies mantra. They of course aren’t mentioning that THEY are making their money off of your neighbors and you and apparently that is OK.
If nothing much is happening in the way of renewable’s taking over a large part of that can be blamed on the power monopolies like Berkshire Hathaway Energy doing everything in their power to prevent true competition in the power industry.
It is my belief that if a true cost were put on the power we get from carbon based fuels and a true cost of dealing with nuclear waste from nuclear plants were assessed to those power producers we would have a revolution of renewable energy.
If we removed the impediments from small independent producers it would happen overnight!
I believe that I have read somewhere that at times in the southwest solar power is in excess and at that time the utility isn’t paying independents for that power. I may be wrong on that and maybe that is just anticipated down the road but when the power is free they are miraculously going to find a way to store it. Electrolysis to hydrogen and storing it in old salt mines. Lots of ways to handle the storage problem if you try.
I guess that a German company has come up with a way to double the efficiency of home air conditioning. When its hot that would sure help out the demand situation.
Lots of ways forward if we just get the monopolies out of the way.
But if you set up your system properly, you are not making money off of your neighbors. You may be taking a loss, but you are not forcing others to pay for your losses. Your neighbors who share your utility have to pay for the effects of intermittency that you push onto the grid.
You are paying your electric bill for services rendered. For the investment that utilities make, they get some level of profit. The alternative is to build your own electric grid and maintain the power plants and transmission wires. You have heard the refrain that you didn’t build that highway, but you didn’t pay for the electricity highway by yourself either.
The costs of nuclear waste management have already been passed along to consumers. That had been incorporated into the cost structure until the utilities sued to stop collecting those fees when the US Government was not using them to store the nuclear waste.
If you want to voluntarily pay more for renewable energy to offset these various costs, go right ahead. If you want to invest in stocks that support renewable energy (whether they make a profit or not), go right ahead. But neither has little to do with whether renewable energy can match supply with demand.
I understand that the hope is that batteries will work, and that many prefer a renewables-only approach. My point is that we already know how to do nuclear. It is off-the-shelf technology that generates bulk amounts of carbon-free power. If the right battery technologies come along…then there will be some good competition.
There are ways to boost home heating/cooling efficiency and reduce home heating costs. Better insulation is part of that, but we can be doing more geothermal. Systems with fewer mechanical parts that fail (or systems that take longer to fail) also help. I have been suggesting secondary heating and cooling from home renewable systems to work in parallel with existing systems.
What I’m saying, Robert, is that all efforts to use non polluting and renewable power ought to be addressed first. With the current power monopoly system’s that we have I see that as impossible. The only systems that will continue to be promoted will be those that benefit big business. A real revolution in this country in not just energy needs to take place. If we can’t make big electric monopolies fly right the whole system needs to be nationalized. Either that or put into place a government with back bone. Put a huge tax on carbon emissions and on nuclear power to pay for the waste. Suddenly renewable’s would look affordable as they do in Germany. Conserving power would also look more attractive. If you wanted to go electric for commuter vehicles I could see a car with a plug in battery. One battery pack could be charging during the day while one other pack was in your commuter. Switch them out for the next day and use them as power supply in the evening for your house. All kinds of possibility’s that need to be addressed but will not with the current environment.
Utilities have been building more natural gas and wind of late because they are cheaper up front and receive less push back for siting than other energy sources. We do not have the intermittency issue as long as we burn natural gas and do not care about carbon.
There are now four sources of carbon that the left must address. Otherwise the green new deal is just another new deal.
The first is extra heating and cooling due to extreme weather events (which we cover with more coal and gas). The second is the transition to electric vehicles (which requires more electricity than we are generating today). The third is the growth of the third world and their desire to have a similar standard of living (with air conditioning and refrigeration).
The fourth is the shutting down of nuclear plants advocated by the left. Ironically this has been shown to increase carbon, not reduce it. Those carbon savings go away when you replace clean baseload energy with natural gas.
A fifth is really related to the other four. We will soon have 10 billion people on the planet, and these four issues above only generate more carbon from the demand of more people.
Let’s continue to develop energy storage and carbon capture. If they become feasible we can accelerate our response to climate change. Let’s build renewables with a long-term plan for real sustainability. But we also have the ability to solve the problem in the near term with nuclear.
The primary issue with carbon taxes or carbon offsets is that the carbon still gets emitted: You just feel like you are doing something. The other issue is that there is no guarantee that carbon taxes will go to building energy infrastructure.
Gas vehicles will stay cheaper, so the middle to lower classes are more likely to buy gas vehicles. In the cities public transportation will be available, but that is not always possible. Moreover, those carbon taxes will be applied to gas vehicles that the lower classes purchase…so carbon taxes can be regressive.
Nuclear power and electricity customers have been paying for the storage. The government didn’t deliver. In theory, there are existing funds that could help with building waste storage facilities, if a solution to the current impasse can be formulated.
And where is the fee proposed to address wastes from renewables?
I understand why that fee is not being championed by the left today. It would make “cheap renewables” more expensive.
And let’s be honest, the recycling of those materials is not easy, for example carbon fiber in wind turbine blades. But these things need to be done and they need to be paid for.
Robert, I haven’t the time to argue ad infinitum but I think that most Americans agree with me. We only need nuclear as a last resort. Lets plant tree’s!
We should be doing nuclear and renewables together and not wait to deal with carbon.
The worst possible outcome is that we spend 50 years building out renewables without nuclear or a suitable form of energy storage, and we have higher carbon emissions than today because of our reliance on natural gas. Is that a good outcome?
I would agree with you that many Democrats want the all-renewable approach. It must be nice to ignore economics and physics.
The best approach is NOW. Doc’s continuing fusillade to support his nuke industry is like Bernie sidelining HRC allowing Trumps debacle. We will work out your concerns Doc. Pivot 1st. The “moonshot” will be intensely, intelligently debated.
Koch Brothers Republican ect tactics are “treasonous”. Fatal to all but the billionaires jetting to Davos and wringing their hands with fake angst and manipulating their field sowing their next billions, like mining the moon and mars and screwing them up too. Nukes got prematurely marketed, to the damager to the many, benefitting the very few.
Btw, Doc arguing Consent with “far leftist” Don P.– come on, he works within the system and works against stupid Republican environmental politics and lying DOE nuke water carriers. Hardly far left labeling propaganda fodder.
Fmr FBI dir Andrew is ” ‘baffled’ there is resistance to begin impeachment. McCabe further noted it may not lead to Trump being removed from office or that he would eventually be impeached at all, but the evidence of obstruction is so strong, Congress should act.” interview on CNN’s New Day with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.
Consent just gets you the “plant trees” apology for Kochs to run out the clock with. Or the “no colledshun” b.s. from trump again running out the clock.
“Fool just enough of the people some of the time” is not the way to run the country and the world
If we push ahead with more renewables as they are now…we will burn more natural gas.
I don’t know what battle we are fighting if we end up emitting more carbon in the process, but we are not going to solve climate change that way.
With regard to consent…a consent-based process only works if it solves the problem. DFP NEWS FLASH: The DOE also works on renewable energy as well. Perhaps investment by some of the savings into renewable energy will show up in the horsetrading that is necessary to get a consent-based process going.
In the meantime we are paying more than we should to store wastes on-site, and communities near shut-down nuclear plants don’t have any consent while the impasse continues. And we merrily emit more carbon as long as there is growth in renewables.
Carbon emissions are burning in the Arctic tundra so that ship has sailed in the high tide of sea rise. But good news, better late than never. Democrats will address the climate crisis in debate!!! woo woo https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/25/politics/cnn-climate-crisis-town-hall/index.html
You are treating the carbon surplus like the federal deficit. Deficits apparently don’t matter as long as your stuff is in the budget. Carbon levels don’t matter apparently as long as we build more renewables.
Carbon is the least of our problems. We sure as hell can’t build more nukers, to hot for them. The only thing that will work are renewables as it is too late for anything else. So plant trees and lots of them. Hey wasn’t that the point of this post in the first place. You had one go down doc, tomorrow is Saturday, pull that bad boy up and plant another or two. Trees eat carbon and there is plenty of that to be eaten.
I would agree with you that the current design of a nuclear power plant is not as efficient as the new ones would be at higher temperatures. So if we have to shut one down, replace it with a better nuclear power plant instead of a fossil fuel plant, and perhaps avoid water for cooling too.
After talking with the greenhouse/nursery folks I think we are going to eventually stump it and let it grow back from the base. We are planting some other flowers later in the fall, but I won’t get to see that color display until next year.
My yard is not a mono-culture and I do not treat the yard with chemicals. I will water flowers and trees if it is really dry, but otherwise I just mow and do not bag the clippings. I try to plant flowers that are drought-tolerant and that butterflies or hummingbirds will like. I endeavor to get rabbit-resistant plants, but rabbits will eat just about anything if they are hungry. But they have left my helenium alone.
The sudden collapse of thawing soils in the Arctic might double the warming from greenhouse gases released from tundra, warn Merritt R. Turetsky and colleagues.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01313-4
Doc I have a hard enough time understanding your posts as a lay person, but, how I could be perceived as happy with increased carbon levels, as long as favored billionaire projects (new nuke energy plants wouldn’t have to deal with the 50 year waste management problem 1st, or Canadian tar sands mined and piped for eternal refinement without subsidies, eminent domain, and without environmental protections) is specious.
We can talk about the budget deficit Republicans have manipulated for decades.
Renewables pivot from carbon rich fossil fuel policy. Yes carbon fiber fan blade recycling, wind farm concrete foundations and roads, and unconsented boreholes with high hazard nuke waste and Yucca Mountain sites the states do not want, is unfairly frustrating to hopes the nuke industry is desperate to provide some salvation to the monkey on the back of current mass corporate for profit$$ energy production. The Indian former BHE CEO was earning nearly $700K in RC. They just built a $70B office building on a ridge blocking out Black Elk Peak. Does SDSU have any new $70B buildings on campus?
Then the whole bit bemoaning how bad the mining industry is treated and we all drive gas cars to protests and use phones with special materials, is not even in the same league as DERAILING THE INCESSANT BILLIONAIRE PLOYS TO DENY CLIMATE CHANGE AND CONTINUE USING FOSSIL FUELS.
Scientists who sell out to the mining industry are a dime a dozen in SD and Don P. was one of the very few capable of standing up to industry under a Janklow and subsequent DENR/WMB pro-industry regulation staff. Pirner may have been at least a scientist as opposed to the previous crony. But Pirner knew who signed his pay check. SD envtl regulation is much more like a Trump/Rounds EPA.
Republican energy policy is just like Republican health care policy. Billionaire privatization oriented–screw the public it supposedly protects. Screw science. But Einstein stayed on the good side of science. So can you!
Well…if what you promote results in more carbon than today, and you are not happy with that, and your goal is to reduce carbon, then it is finally time to do something different.
How does the all-in renewable approach pivot us away from fossil fuels when we will burn more natural gas than we do today to match supply and demand?
We are certainly pivoting away from one fossil fuel called coal, but not all fossil fuels. So you get partial credit I guess?
And I am on the good side of science. I’m trying to deliver carbon-free energy to 10 billion people whenever they want it. And they will need it.
And I’m doing this with available technologies…we can’t wait for the year 3000.
Bah Zing!! New world’s record shattered in Ethiopia.
“About 350m trees have been planted in a single day in Ethiopia, according to a government minister.
The planting is part of a national “green legacy” initiative to grow 4bn trees in the country this summer by encouraging every citizen to plant at least 40 seedlings. Public offices have reportedly been shut down in order for civil servants to take part.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/29/ethiopia-plants-250m-trees-in-a-day-to-help-tackle-climate-crisis
Can you imagine the russian traitor allowing civil servants to plant trees to save the planet? Me either.
McTaggart! McTaggart! Buehler! …
I heard about this elsewhere too, Jerry. Respect to Ethiopians!
Note to White Supremacista’s – All human DNA can be traced back to it’s origin in Ethiopia. Sorry honkys. You still can’t use the N word around black males without takin’ a cap to the dome.
Am I supposed to run across the quad in slow motion or something…?
What is the success rate of a seedling getting to year 30 in that environment?
In some sense you could make a prediction based upon what has happened with our own shelter belts planted in the dust bowl era. Has that population of trees grown or diminished?
Negativity bias, again? Consistently on the wrong side of history.
Are you are saying that it does not matter how many of them survive to capture carbon? Wow. I mean, you just torpedoed the whole raison d’etre for planting lots of trees.
Let me help you research, Doctor. Ethiopia is some of the most fertile land on Earth. It’s commonly referred to as the site of The Garden of Eden because it’s where all human DNA can be traced to. Chances are quite favorable for the majority of trees planted to see 30 years and then on to a full, long, life of carbon mitigation.
~ Principal crops include coffee, pulses (e.g., beans), oilseeds, cereals, potatoes, sugarcane, and vegetables. Exports are almost entirely agricultural commodities, and coffee is the largest foreign exchange earner. Ethiopia is also Africa’s second biggest maize producer. Ethiopia’s livestock population is believed to be the largest in Africa, and in 2006/2007 livestock accounted for 10.6% of Ethiopia’s export income, with leather and leather products making up 7.5% and live animals 3.1%.
You seem to have taken the easy way out, again. i.e. Imagining what can go wrong without considering what can go right, thinking about ways to make things go right, and tweaking the process along the way to assure things go right. That’s negativity bias. It’s not complimentary to a professor.
It sounds like you believe the more trees you plant the better. In general I like more trees than fewer trees, but there are physical constraints….so having a long-term plan matters if the goal is carbon reduction.
Hey Porter, renewables are good, so let’s just keep building more of them. Nothing bad could ever happen by building something good.
However…there is no carbon capture or battery technology ready to go, and you do not want to do nuclear.
Any positive growth in our energy demand means the carbon from the natural gas we burn (to match supply with demand) must grow like compound interest. And we are about to demand a lot more electricity as we electrify our transportation sector.
So let’s plant trees and build renewables. But have a plan for sustainable afforestation that takes into account what trees need and what they can do for you. And don’t emit carbon in the name of not emitting carbon.
McTaggart is backstroking like the Olympics are coming to Brookings. Cut the lecture and face the fact that you said (without research to back it up) that “In some sense you could make a prediction based upon what has happened with our own shelter belts planted in the dust bowl era. Has that population of trees grown or diminished?” What does the dust bowl have to do with Ethiopia? Apologize for your negativity bias or know your credibility and reputation has hit rock bottom.
It is called critical thinking.
Do you think renewable energy will be better or worse if they deal with their waste management issues? Will the world be better off if we do not emit carbon when renewables are not enough? The answer to both questions is yes, but these are precisely the issues that are ignored.
I have offered a positive solution to power a world of 10 billion people. One day you will hopefully find that nuclear and renewables have much to offer each other.
Even Bill Gates has dumped the nukes.
The shelter belts that we planted are in disrepair, and are being taken down for farming or other uses. Those trees are going away. If they are not there, they do not capture carbon. So there is a lot we can learn about what happens over time as populations grow and uses of land change.
Both areas have promise for fertility, and both lands have been abused, and both are subject to the effects of climate change. There is quite a lot in common between the two in fact.
Bill Gates has been trying to build a new reactor from scratch apparently. Others are modeling the small reactors off of existing technology.
How is Tesla doing? Not well, but that is research. Research is hard, and it is not 100% efficient. It will take a while to get a suitable battery technology.
We need both Bill Gates and Elon Musk to pursue the research that others can not. Others will improve upon what they have done.
“A hundred billion trees is good, it buys us some time and it’s a good thing to do, but if we don’t stop emitting CO2, then we aren’t going to win the battle.”
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/07/30/planting-a-trillion-trees-is-a-nice-thought-but-an-unlikely-reality/
“Wind and solar farms permanently remove CO2 from the air in larger volumes than trees do.
This means we should be doing both, but trees are not a magic bullet. We need a lot of solutions to get over the line. ”
I wouldn’t agree with the author that wind turbines remove CO2 from the air. It can help avoid carbon emissions in the first place. Right now the gas + renewable combo emits less than an all-coal grid would, and avoids several other emissions besides CO2 (like NOx and SOx). But compound interest means in a couple of decades we will exceed our present carbon emissions if we get rid of coal altogether.
Commentary: Is nuclear power too radioactive for Democrats?
From the Chicago Tribune, July 30:
“If the candidates are unwilling to bring nuclear power into the national conversation, then they’re not taking seriously their party’s requests for decarbonization. Conversation is the key word here, because the greatest obstacle blocking nuclear power isn’t safety issues or technological shortcomings — it’s bad PR and political grandstanding. ”
The article notes that Cory Booker is one of the few candidates that has shown some leadership in trying to promote advanced nuclear. We’ll see if he uses that in the debate he is on….he needs to distinguish himself or he will get left behind.
Geeze Doc, on the Republican spin wagon eh…No facts, no law, argue SQUIRRELL!
Crooked….
Infested….
Sheithole country….
“… too radioactive for Democrats (not DemocRAT Party?”)
Do you think nuclear energy industry will be better or worse if it deals with the waste management issues?
lets plan for a reduction to 7 Billion people. https://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/content/overpopulation-solvable
Donald Trump’s leases of public lands and waters for oil and gas drilling could lead to the production of more climate-warming pollution than the entire European Union contributes in a year, according to a new report. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/16/trump-drilling-leases-pollution-eu-climate-change
“…estimates of methane leakage rates from natural gas drilling, replacing coal with natural gas provides little in the way of climate benefits. Though it’s been touted as a ‘bridge fuel’ to span the gap between coal and renewables…. The costs of renewable energy and battery storage have fallen so fast that the clean alternatives might now be cheaper than gas….The decisions we make for today’s grid are long-lasting. That’s why there are similar pushes from groups in Michigan, Oregon, Connecticut, North Carolina, and South Carolina for utilities to scrap plans for new natural gas plants and instead consider cleaner and potentially cheaper renewable alternatives….Of course, were there a national price on carbon pollution, renewables and battery storage would win in the marketplace even sooner. As it stands, natural gas prices don’t reflect the costs that we incur from the climate change caused by their greenhouse gas emissions. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jan/29/natural-gas-killed-coal-now-renewables-and-batteries-are-taking-over
sorry…$70M
Leslie, the ponzi scheme of capitalism demands that the population must continually grow….that is till it all collapse’s. As I tell my wife…..just put me in charge and no third world country will get most favored nation status unless they control their population.
In this country we can cut social security incrementally according to how many children you have. My wife can give you my plan! After all, that is one of the third world’s excuse’s for large families….need lots of children to take care of the folks when they get old. Cutting social security is already on the GOP’s list…they ought to love the idea.
Seems like no one has mentioned population control since the ” population bomb” brought the subject up in the 70’s.
I get it. You don’t like Trump. I take your question.
Population growth rates in industrialized societies are generally lower. You need to improve the economic conditions in areas of the world that do not enjoy our standard of living to curb population growth. And you also need economies that require the education and employment of women. You will need an abundance of clean power to do that. Welcome to the nuclear party leslie!
Yes, the nuclear industry will be better if everyone can agree on a solution for the nuclear waste impasse. We would generate more nuclear energy as a result. Utilities would incorporate the small reactors in the mix with renewables. That means at least removing current nuclear wastes from sites of shutdown nuclear power plants to one or more interim sites.
I welcome the day when we can truly deal with waste management across the board for all sources of energy. But for now, instead of recycling and generating less waste we will do things as cheaply as possible, until that bites us in the rear end.
You note the extra carbon that methane leaks and backup energy from natural gas can contribute, but that isn’t enough to do more nuclear??? The hope is that batteries will come around, but until then, let’s not emit carbon in the first place.
I welcome future Democratic policy that leads to true decarbonization, not replacement of the fossil fuel lobby with the wind and solar lobby.
https://www.elsevier.com/connect/economic-growth-and-sustainability-are-they-mutually-exclusive
From your article…
“In the end, we must each accept personal accountability for enriching our legacy and ask ourselves: “What can I do to help our world rely less on a level of economic growth that harms the environment and society, and encourage a path toward sustainability?” ”
Is it sustainable to generate more renewables without dealing with the wastes for wind, solar and batteries, all while emitting more carbon from natural gas? Or can we generate all the energy we need without carbon if nuclear is in the mix?
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-nuclear-waste
“Over the last 55 years, more than 2,500 cask shipments of used fuel have been transported across the United States without any radiological releases to the environment or harm to the public.”
Improving the economic conditions of other country’s so they will control their birth rates is a globalist talking point. We raise their standard of living while we lower ours. Our life expectancy falls while theirs increases. Of course our middle men globalists standard of living increases exponentially as well. I think there are better ways.
We have to bring their standard of living up to ours. It is in our national security interest to do so. Wars over resources are destructive on many different levels including on the environment.
It is also in our economic interest to do so, so that they will buy our products.
Our standard of living has room to grow, but theirs will likely have the larger percentage increase because they are starting from the smaller number.
Clyde, it’s not our bottom 75% v. theirs. Those struggling people in other nations are not the ones doing us harm. It’s the top 25% or less v. all the rest of us. If the starving Bangladeshis are raised up to a decent standard of living, the only way it will make our lives worse is if the people at the top skim off the majority of the $ as they usually do.
The enemy is not other struggling people. It’s the greedy bastards at the top who exploit us, charge us every cent they can for everything, invent new ways to rip us off, pay a tiny percentage back into the common fund and fight to do little to nothing to contribute to the common welfare.
Those poor people escaping murderous gangs in Honduras or coming here without visas in search of a better life are just poor saps like the rest of us.
Debbo, I don’t disagree with you at all but what Dr McT alluded to that raising the standard of living of other countries is the way to control population is a globalist talking point. The income from the “Great and Glorious FREE trade” has all ended up in the hands of the one percent. While it has raised the standard of living slightly in some of these country’s there would be other ways to help them and one of those ways would be strong encouragement to control their population up front.
Meanwhile our standard of living has declined. The incentive of the globalist’s isn’t to help the world but rather to line their pockets.
We have plenty of blame for the mess in central America but at least some of that blame should be put on the fact that they have limited resources with too many people demanding of them. They, in the end are raising children to be “cannon fodder”.
“The Great Reforestation Project has begun in patches here and there. The quest is to have a trillion trees planted and flourishing by 2030.
While we are waiting for the 2020 elections and the election of sane leaders to coordinate the United States National Reforestation Program, we, as individuals, can and need to start now. Every month of growth from seedling to mature tree is too valuable to be lost and we should get started today.
Planting trees is a simple, reasonable and profitable action that will, in the years to come, help reduce the carbon cycling through the planet’s atmosphere. Such a passive system is an important tool in returning the world to a new and safer balance in the planet’s daily manifestation of climate.” https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/7/31/1874919/-Participating-in-the-Great-Reforestation-Project?utm_campaign=trending
There ya go, kick trump/republicans in the pills and plant trees to spite them and to save this place.
So you think free trade is actually free? We spend a lot on our military to keep free trade possible, and there are various costs of business that occur in the process. Likewise, the sun and the wind are free, but converting that into electricity and sending it to the consumer is not free either. Let’s have trade and let’s have renewables, but let’s work to make them better than they are today.
A lot of the world does not even have access to electricity, nutrition is a problem, and not educating girls is a problem. Throwing up your hands is not going to solve those problems. Trade is one of the tools in the toolkit, and you do have to understand and work with other people and other cultures in the process.
And now water is a problem. The water isn’t leaving the planet so it has to go somewhere, but it is being redistributed away from being stored in snowpack on the tops of mountains. I guess we could use some nuclear energy to desalinate seawater and deliver it by pipeline to afflicted regions….and water all those trees…but then nuclear would be seen as doing something good for the planet, and jerry will not stand for it ;^).
What planting trees, building renewables, and generating nuclear power have in common is that they are all off-the-shelf technologies we can use to help us decarbonize. We could use carbon capture and batteries, but we need to fight the battle with the tools we have today.
There is one way to not support corporate interests and not emit carbon. That is to not generate energy at all, which may be what you are driving at. If you are complaining about our standard of living now…just wait for that to happen! That isn’t going to win any elections…I’d rather just generate all the energy we need as clean energy.
R McT, I don’t think that our overbloated military exists to insure free trade.
No, but it sure hasn’t hurt to keep the flow of oil going through the Persian Gulf so jerry can drive that truck he is getting with 0% interest :^).
Democrat Chris Coons (Delaware) and Republican Martha McSally (Arizona) have introduced legislation to keep and improve our current nuclear power plants. Ultimately this would result in more carbon-free power from the same plants.
https://www.rollcall.com/news/nuclear-power-would-get-support-in-bipartisan-senate-bill
From the Democrat….
“Climate change poses an existential threat to our economy, our environment, and our national security,” Coons said. “I’m proud that this legislation will allow the Department of Energy to provide nuclear power plants with the requisite tools and research to increase their cost-competitiveness and develop the new technologies they require to operate efficiently.”
Will this work/help? https://www.nwestiowa.com/scnews/sioux-county-s-first-bioreactor-installed/article_4cd7790c-b2fe-11e9-8921-c747d30baa32.html