Climate Climate & Energy

The Kittens Are Next …

Global warming is bad news for baby walruses It seems global warming is now separating babies from their mothers. Heartless bastard. The cute and bristly walrus makes its home on Arctic ice shelves, which are melting rapidly as unusually warm water flows in from the Bering Sea. As their happy walrus home melts and collapses, […]

Nuclear energy and power devolution

I just got done watching Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight, a documentary on the American military-industrial complex (a term coined by Dwight D. Eisenhower in his extraordinary farewell address) and the enormous influence in exerts over our foreign policy. It's depressing, but still, I can't recommend it highly enough.

It got me thinking about the nuclear question again, and a post I wrote almost a year ago -- one of my favorites -- called "Renewable energy and the devolution of power." The idea was basically this: The kind of distributed-energy/smart-grid future greens envision would, if implemented, devolve political power outward from Washington. It would substantially increase regional self-sufficiency. This, as much as any technical debate, explains why the power elite has neglected to pursue it, and even fought against it.

It also, I think, explains Washington's love of nuclear energy. Nuclear is a familiar template for them: a large industry with one or two dominant corporations, with lobbyists that move in and out of government positions -- the usual chummy arrangement. It's something they can understand and control.

If regions create their own energy, they have much less need for, and are much less in thrall to, D.C. That has enormous implications. I'm not sure renewable-energy advocates have really thought it through.

Kevin Drum blows it by repeating the conventional wisdom

Kevin Drum, whose judgment and writing I very much admire, has made a rare lapse.

He points to this Washington Post editorial from Patrick Moore -- deceptively described only as a "co-founder of Greenpeace" -- and sighs that although he struggled with the decision, he's come to the conclusion that aside from nuclear power, "there aren't any other realistic alternatives for replacing coal-fired facilities."

Rather than repeat myself, I'll just reprint two comments I left on Kevin's site (slightly edited), in reverse order.

On Patrick Moore:

Patrick Moore did not just now "change his mind" about nuclear. He's been advocating for it for years.

And describing him only as "one of the founders of Greenpeace" is extraordinarily misleading. He's a notorious crank and industry shill.

And on nuclear power:

Ethanol dreams and ethanol realities

Christopher Cook has a piece in the American Prospect identifying my central concern about the ethanol boom.

To wit, here are the sustainability advocates:

An array of ideas are afloat to encourage a more sustainable biofuels expansion: a diversified renewable energy policy that, rather than expanding corn crops, promotes more wind power and cellulosic energy from switchgrass and crop residues (which may favor localized, small-scale production); a federal version of Minnesota's model, creating targeted incentives for farmer co-ops; and increased research spending by the USDA and Department of Energy to develop smaller-scale biofuels processing plants.

Sounds great, huh?

Here's the reality:

Where Are We Supposed to Move Now?

Canada plans cuts to climate programs and backs further away from Kyoto Do you hear that? The mild harrumphing? That’s the sound of disgruntled Canadian enviros. They’re unhappy with the new Conservative government’s reported plans to slash funding for programs to fight climate change, despite a recent federal review that found most such programs to […]

Coal gasification: “clean coal” or subsidy-hungry boondoggle?

Governing magazine has an excellent, compact overview of current developments in coal. If you're hazy on gasification this, coal-to-liquid that, and Fischer-Tropsch the other, I recommend it.

With oil and natural-gas prices rising and coal in plentiful supply, it's more or less inevitable that coal's going to get used, so it makes sense that (some) enviro organizations are biting the bullet and joining the push for the cleanest possible applications.

There is reason for cautious optimism. Coal mining is destructive as hell, but in places like northeastern Pennsylvania -- where the article focuses, and where the first U.S. coal-to-liquid plant will be built starting this Spring -- there's waste coal laying all over the place, leaching acid into groundwater (the legacy of pre-regulatory coal mining). The plant will gather that coal as feedstock and replace it with solid waste covered in soil, thereby creating farmland or forest.

Pistil Whipped

Plants don’t absorb as much CO2 as expected, study finds Those who tout tree-planting as the answer to all the earth’s problems may have to go back to the drawing board (the planting board?): A new study in Nature finds that carbon dioxide-absorbing plants can’t hoover up quite as much of the greenhouse gas as […]

Umbra on climate-change patterns

While I am in no doubt about the effect of human activity on climate change, I have a friend who is convinced that even if we weren’t destroying the earth, the earth’s own weather patterns would be in global-warming stage anyway. How do we know the current climate change isn’t just an inevitable part of […]

Oh No He Didn’t

Chrysler official takes public potshot at oil companies What’s more fun than a quiet, simmering feud between Big Auto and Big Oil? A public catfight! Chief Chrysler spokesflack Jason Vines minced no words on a company blog Monday: “Despite a documented history of … hoarding their bounty by avoiding technologies, policies, and legislation that would […]

Europe should push U.S. to more fully fund the Global Environment Facility

Recently, in Moscow, at the meeting of G8 Finance Ministers, the Europeans gave us a repeat performance of an all-too-familiar pattern: they appeased George Bush at the expense of the global environment. Show us the money. Photo: iStockphoto. At last year’s Gleneagles summit of the G8 industrialized nations, the G8 leaders, led by the Europeans, […]