Dr. Jeff Masters: Don't shoot the messenger (climate change)

[teach1st]

Don't shoot the messenger
From Dr. Jeff Masters' Wunderblog on Weather Underground:

Monday, December 7, marks the opening of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. At that meeting, the leaders of the world will gather to negotiate an agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The new agreement will be the world's road map for dealing with climate change, and the stakes are huge. It is fitting that the conference begins on the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, for the Copenhagen conference is sure to be an epic political battle. Indeed, the battle has already been underway for several weeks, with most of the action centering on a PR assault launched by the anti-CO2 regulation forces that sensationalized the contents of the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia. The Wall Street Journal has long been at the forefront of the battle to discredit the science of climate change and the scientists involved, and last week they launched a major offensive, publishing multiple opinion pieces. I'll critique one of these, a December 1 editorial by Bret Stephens which accuses climate scientists of having a vested interest in promoting alarmist views of the climate in order to get research funding. "All of them have been on the receiving end of climate change-related funding, so all of them must believe in the reality (and catastrophic imminence) of global warming just as a priest must believe in the existence of God", Stephens wrote.

More

[lapfog_1]

1. Junk Cap and Trade.

Most people don't understand it.

Calculate the TRUE COST of each energy source by calculating the environmental impact of each, impose this cost as part of a international tax.

Over the next 15 years (by 2025) commit to 0 fossil fuels with a 7 percent decrease in CO2 pollution each year.

Use the money collected in the tax system (it's going to hurt and hurt bad) to fund green energy development. Use more of the money to push HARD into fusion nuclear power for electric power.

[izquierdista]

2. Ain't gonna happen

Your plan is the sensible scientific solution to the problem -- that's why it can't happen. One hundred years in the future, people who are in a lot worse shape are going to look back and ask "why didn't they do that then?"

[csziggy]

6. I keep looking back 30 years and wonder why we did not do the things Carter proposed

Which would have cut our foreign energy costs by 1985 and probably have us independent from fossil fuels by now. But stupid people elected Reagan and he dismantled everything Carter tried to do, including the solar panels on the White House.

[lapfog_1]

12. We already are. - n/t

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

3. Many here are adamantly opposed to nuclear power.

[caraher]

5. and fusion is perpetually 20 years away

By all means fusion research needs to happen, but it's not something we can bank on. The technical challenge is at least as daunting as the further challenge of clarifying for the public how it's different from fission.

[izquierdista]

7. Because of the (justifiable) waste problem

Now if someone would adopt the abandon-in-place solution with underground installations, maybe nuclear could be considered again.

[lapfog_1]

9. Note that I said fusion.

not fission.

And there aren't the waste issues or the radiation issues that fission has.

Of course, nobody has made a working sustainable fusion reactor yet.

But I suspect that if we poured as much money into green technology AND fusion research that we do into the war machine that protects and secures our access to fossil fuels, we might NOT be "perpetually 20 years away" from either sustainable green technology (I think a lot of the answers are here and affordable already for wind, solar, some biofuels, geothermal, and tidal/wave generation)... but we should double (triple) down on fusion as well, just in case. Not to mention that if WE had it first, we would be energy independent in about 5 to 10 years. Not to mention meeting any goal for CO2 emissions that we might set.

[izquierdista]

13. "no waste issues"

Except for a little tritium spilling all over the place. It's already an environmental problem with a plume that's headed for the Savannah river, and that's just from H-bomb production. Any fusion reactor is going to need gobs of tritium to get going. So much for no radiation issues.

[lapfog_1]

14. Uh, that depends completely on how fusion is achieved.

Nobody is proposing (to my knowledge) using H-bomb technology to build fusion power plants.

[izquierdista]

15. IF

IF, and it is a big "IF", fusion is achieved, it will be done first with D-T fusion, as that is the easiest reaction to get to go. That's what powers the H-bomb, but 60 years later, containment of D-T reactions on a small scale still eludes us. So if tritium is needed to get this fusion going, who is going to supply all that tritium, and how is it going to be contained without crapping up everything it touches?

[lapfog_1]

10. I don't care for fission reactors.

However, I can be convinced to add fission as a stop-gap for 40 more years.

[MH1]

4. "international tax"

while that might make perfect theoretical sense, how in the hell could it be implemented?

We can't even get the world to agree that women shouldn't be treated as someone's property. (for just one grating example)

[lapfog_1]

11. Well, it would have to be a country by country tax

scaled to each economy, collect by each nation.

There could be treaties to enforce this.

We live in a global world. CO2 from China or India or Australia still warms the earth as much as CO2 from the US or Canada. We have to have a global solution.

Even Cap and Trade is just a series of interlocking treaties (and not everyone is committed to signing it yet).

[malaise]

8. Bravo Jeff

We ignore climate change to our own peril. Fuck WSJ.