4 ms·

If only humanity had discovered an energy source which was safer and cleaner than everything that came before, and produced no GHGs. Oh, and that we hadn't spe

by xrange 11y ago

If only humanity had discovered an energy source which was safer and cleaner than everything that came before, and produced no GHGs. Oh, and that we hadn't spent the last 60 years irrationally demonizing it.

elinchrome 11y ago
The response to wind power never ceases to amaze me either.
- TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
  The problem with wind power is that in many places it makes no sense. It changes too quickly - faster than most other electricity production sources can cope. If you have hydro or something that can ramp up and down production as quickly as wind does - and the grid stability to be able to do so - wind could be great. But if you don't, it's not so great. And unfortunately far too often wind gets put in places that don't have that ability for political reasons. Grid-scale energy storage would be great - if we actually had it in any meaningful amount.
  - ZeroGravitas 11y ago
    There's very boring technologies to mitigate these problems and buy us enough time to figure out something better. Bigger grids, lots more wind turbines geographically distributed, pumped hydro, demand management, smart grids. These are all being rolled out right now in various places and we've not exploited these to anywhere near their full potential so we'd be best to do so before calling a halt to expanding wind (or solar, which has similar issues and solutions). In the short term gas burning plants that we only turn on when we actually need to is a stop gap measure that isn't perfect, but is better than just running them (or worse coal) all the time.
    - TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
      Unfortunately, all of those mitigation techniques have problems of their own. (Not to mention that you glossed right over the politics.) With AC power, bigger grids can create instabilities. Look at the 2005 Java–Bali blackout, for instance. Cascading failure. Or the Northeast blackout. Cascading failure. Etc.(With DC power, you have the same thing, but to a lesser extent. Among other things, you need less failsafes for DC than with AC, and it's easier to bootstrap the grid.) You can avoid this by... making grids less interdependent. Which you cannot do if you're tying them together for purposes of keeping them running. (And smart grids mean that things go wrong more badly when they do go bad.) Lots of wind turbines geographically distributed would be great - except, of course, that wind power isn't available everywhere. Remember, the power carried by wind scales roughly as the cube of the windspeed. There's a relatively small window of "enough, but not too much" where wind power makes sense. Ditto - pumped hydro I talked about, but again, you have to have a watershed with enough capacity. Which isn't the case everywhere. Demand management... Good luck with that. That's politics, as much as anything. We have come to expect reliable power, and trying to convince people otherwise is an uphill battle, as it is very much a regression. And as for small-scale gas-burning plants... Two things. First, by the time you've added up the wind turbines (again, wind turbines are hideous for the environment to make!), the additional infrastructure required to be able to inject power safely at distributed points, the additional infrastructure for a smart grid, and the gas-burning plants, things look much less obvious. And secondly, gas-burning plants are either inefficient or don't scale fast enough to be worth it. Oh, and they are expensive. It may be better to sink the absurd amounts of money that is required for wind (especially when you realize that gas-burning plants are really expensive for their energy output) elsewhere.
      - ZeroGravitas 11y ago
        Everything has got problems. The first person to suggest building the electrical grids we already have would have seemed a bit of a visionary, because they are truly epic bits of engineering but lots of problems have been solved along the way and continue to need solved as thing evolve. Throwing your hands up at the first hint of potential problems is basically a variant on the FUD we know so well in computing, as is claiming wind turbines are "hideous" for the environment. People love that old switcheroo, "electric cars are worse for the environment than ICE cars", "Solar panels use more carbon than they will ever save" etc. except when you look at the serious studies done by actual experts you find these questions were dealt with thoroughly years before, and the people who keep repeating them aren't interested in facts. Wind turbines aren't magic fairy dust, they're technology. They can be used well, they can be used badly, they can get better. One of the big changes is that larger turbines can be deployed successfully in lots more places and take advantage of slower average windspeeds. That's not revolutionary, but that and thousands of other improvements are making wind and solar cheaper every day. The problems that remain are far more solvable, and cost-efficient to deal with, than dealing with the consequences of continuing to pump carbon into the atmosphere. Many nations are already building/converting gas generators just to avoid using coal, an on balance this is a good thing from a pollution and carbon perspective. Making use of stuff that already exists to plug gaps as we go forward really isn't that radical a suggestion.
a3n 11y ago
If you're talking about nuclear power, it was our sloppy implementation, obscene cost overruns (WPPSS[1] anyone?) utter disregard of storage and disposal, and a small handful of spectacular disasters that was demonized. You know, nuclear power as practiced. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Northwest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Northwest
- jessaustin 11y ago
  It's better understood as a technology for separating the public from tax dollars, than for producing energy.
  - xrange 11y ago
    http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generation/Nuclear-Power-in-the-World-Today/ http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generat...
  - a3n 11y ago
    Yeah, if we're going to have a boondoggle, I'd rather it be one that we can just let sink into the ground and crumble, instead of having to guard it for centuries. Nuclear power in theory (like communism in theory) may be great, but as practiced and paid for, I'm not impressed. But as I've harped on, it'll be great for employment long after the plants are defunct.
- xrange 11y ago
  Deaths from nuclear power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_... Deaths from coal mining: http://www.msha.gov/stats/centurystats/coalstats.asp http://www.msha.gov/stats/centurystats/coalstats.asp
  - protomyth 11y ago
    Deer kill more people than sharks, but one is more fearsome. Jaws and The China Syndrome have served the same purpose. It wouldn't hurt for some folks to start making some pro-nuclear movies.
waterlesscloud 11y ago
They're literally saying civilization itself is at stake. "It is not difficult to imagine that conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization." Whatever has happened in the past, this calls for all possible steps to be taken ASAP.
- justizin 11y ago
  > Whatever has happened in the past, this calls for all possible steps to be taken ASAP. That sort of thinking has never led to irreversible disaster! ;)
- pbreit 11y ago
  A 10 foot rise in sea levels wouldn't even put a dent in civilization.
  - elinchrome 11y ago
    Cities full of millions of people being forced to move counts as a dent to me.
sien 11y ago
James Hansen is strongly pro-nuclear power. http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/03/world/nuclear-energy-climate-change-scientists-letter/ http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/03/world/nuclear-energy-clima...

by xrange 11y ago

elinchrome 11y ago

The response to wind power never ceases to amaze me either.

TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
The problem with wind power is that in many places it makes no sense. It changes too quickly - faster than most other electricity production sources can cope. If you have hydro or something that can ramp up and down production as quickly as wind does - and the grid stability to be able to do so - wind could be great. But if you don't, it's not so great. And unfortunately far too often wind gets put in places that don't have that ability for political reasons. Grid-scale energy storage would be great - if we actually had it in any meaningful amount.
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  There's very boring technologies to mitigate these problems and buy us enough time to figure out something better. Bigger grids, lots more wind turbines geographically distributed, pumped hydro, demand management, smart grids. These are all being rolled out right now in various places and we've not exploited these to anywhere near their full potential so we'd be best to do so before calling a halt to expanding wind (or solar, which has similar issues and solutions). In the short term gas burning plants that we only turn on when we actually need to is a stop gap measure that isn't perfect, but is better than just running them (or worse coal) all the time.
  - TheLoneWolfling 11y ago
    Unfortunately, all of those mitigation techniques have problems of their own. (Not to mention that you glossed right over the politics.) With AC power, bigger grids can create instabilities. Look at the 2005 Java–Bali blackout, for instance. Cascading failure. Or the Northeast blackout. Cascading failure. Etc.(With DC power, you have the same thing, but to a lesser extent. Among other things, you need less failsafes for DC than with AC, and it's easier to bootstrap the grid.) You can avoid this by... making grids less interdependent. Which you cannot do if you're tying them together for purposes of keeping them running. (And smart grids mean that things go wrong more badly when they do go bad.) Lots of wind turbines geographically distributed would be great - except, of course, that wind power isn't available everywhere. Remember, the power carried by wind scales roughly as the cube of the windspeed. There's a relatively small window of "enough, but not too much" where wind power makes sense. Ditto - pumped hydro I talked about, but again, you have to have a watershed with enough capacity. Which isn't the case everywhere. Demand management... Good luck with that. That's politics, as much as anything. We have come to expect reliable power, and trying to convince people otherwise is an uphill battle, as it is very much a regression. And as for small-scale gas-burning plants... Two things. First, by the time you've added up the wind turbines (again, wind turbines are hideous for the environment to make!), the additional infrastructure required to be able to inject power safely at distributed points, the additional infrastructure for a smart grid, and the gas-burning plants, things look much less obvious. And secondly, gas-burning plants are either inefficient or don't scale fast enough to be worth it. Oh, and they are expensive. It may be better to sink the absurd amounts of money that is required for wind (especially when you realize that gas-burning plants are really expensive for their energy output) elsewhere.
    - ZeroGravitas 11y ago
      Everything has got problems. The first person to suggest building the electrical grids we already have would have seemed a bit of a visionary, because they are truly epic bits of engineering but lots of problems have been solved along the way and continue to need solved as thing evolve. Throwing your hands up at the first hint of potential problems is basically a variant on the FUD we know so well in computing, as is claiming wind turbines are "hideous" for the environment. People love that old switcheroo, "electric cars are worse for the environment than ICE cars", "Solar panels use more carbon than they will ever save" etc. except when you look at the serious studies done by actual experts you find these questions were dealt with thoroughly years before, and the people who keep repeating them aren't interested in facts. Wind turbines aren't magic fairy dust, they're technology. They can be used well, they can be used badly, they can get better. One of the big changes is that larger turbines can be deployed successfully in lots more places and take advantage of slower average windspeeds. That's not revolutionary, but that and thousands of other improvements are making wind and solar cheaper every day. The problems that remain are far more solvable, and cost-efficient to deal with, than dealing with the consequences of continuing to pump carbon into the atmosphere. Many nations are already building/converting gas generators just to avoid using coal, an on balance this is a good thing from a pollution and carbon perspective. Making use of stuff that already exists to plug gaps as we go forward really isn't that radical a suggestion.

a3n 11y ago

If you're talking about nuclear power, it was our sloppy implementation, obscene cost overruns (WPPSS[1] anyone?) utter disregard of storage and disposal, and a small handful of spectacular disasters that was demonized. You know, nuclear power as practiced. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Northwest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Northwest

jessaustin 11y ago
It's better understood as a technology for separating the public from tax dollars, than for producing energy.
- xrange 11y ago
  http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generation/Nuclear-Power-in-the-World-Today/ http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Current-and-Future-Generat...
- a3n 11y ago
  Yeah, if we're going to have a boondoggle, I'd rather it be one that we can just let sink into the ground and crumble, instead of having to guard it for centuries. Nuclear power in theory (like communism in theory) may be great, but as practiced and paid for, I'm not impressed. But as I've harped on, it'll be great for employment long after the plants are defunct.
xrange 11y ago
Deaths from nuclear power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_... Deaths from coal mining: http://www.msha.gov/stats/centurystats/coalstats.asp http://www.msha.gov/stats/centurystats/coalstats.asp
- protomyth 11y ago
  Deer kill more people than sharks, but one is more fearsome. Jaws and The China Syndrome have served the same purpose. It wouldn't hurt for some folks to start making some pro-nuclear movies.

waterlesscloud 11y ago

They're literally saying civilization itself is at stake. "It is not difficult to imagine that conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization." Whatever has happened in the past, this calls for all possible steps to be taken ASAP.

justizin 11y ago
> Whatever has happened in the past, this calls for all possible steps to be taken ASAP. That sort of thinking has never led to irreversible disaster! ;)
pbreit 11y ago
A 10 foot rise in sea levels wouldn't even put a dent in civilization.
- elinchrome 11y ago
  Cities full of millions of people being forced to move counts as a dent to me.

sien 11y ago

James Hansen is strongly pro-nuclear power. http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/03/world/nuclear-energy-climate-change-scientists-letter/ http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/03/world/nuclear-energy-clima...