Greta Thunberg - brave campaigner or deeply disturbed? Part II.

[angrysoba]

I fully get the whole think positively, always look on the bright side of life approach even up to and including the whole sending out positive vibes to help Gaia heal Herself but unfortunately reality often resembles the cartoon Bambi Meets Godzilla.

Cynically speaking I'd say that a bit of the ole greenwashing coming out of BP and I'll check Thunberg's Twitter in a few days to see if she calls it out as such.

This is the thing. It is of course perfectly cool to be cynical about everything, but it is not that useful.

It is completely possible, and I would say essential, to take a non-hippy approach to environmentalism, which means eschewing silly strawmen about "Gaia" that idiots like Jordan Twatterson whine about, and making sensible decisions about where to take the worst fossil fuel uses out of the equation.

What I find irritating is that many critics of environmentalists use a range of often contradictory arguments to deliberately roadblock any proposals.

1.) a denial that climate change is happening
2.) a denial that climate change is man-made
3.) a denial that there is anything that can be done to stop man-made climate change
4.) a denial that people in poor countries will do anything to stop it, so why should we?
5.) a denial that anyone can ever be super-pure in their commitment to mitigate or prevent climate change, so why bother?

and now....

6.) life is harsh and Bambi gets eaten by Godzilla.

The last one is just pure fatalism or give-upism. What is the point in that?

Personally, I would prefer a campaign to resume nuclear power investment. It definitely has been stymied by the hippy contingent of the green movement.

There are other sensible suggestions that have been made here and they have been greeted with knee-jerk dismissals from people who apparently have no ideas of their own. This kind of thing really serves no purpose.

 

[Stout]

What I find irritating is that many critics of environmentalists use a range of often contradictory arguments to deliberately roadblock any proposals.

I'm not seeing much in the way of blocking proposals outside of these whale people demanding a halt to seismic surveying of the sea floor in preparation of building a wind farm. Mostly it's outright denial that people can affect the atmosphere and the weather has always been changing.

The idea, and I know it's a tough sell, is to get people to acknowledge the cuts that would actually, really be necessary to avert 1.5C warming with most people preferring to bury their heads in the sand and figure that raising awareness, signal boosting, big upping Greta Thunberg or sending good vibes to Gaia is "doing their part". I'm also trying to do it without calling for bans on anything which I'll admit is easier, but it's way less interesting.

Maybe give up those propane patio heaters willingly in the name of reducing GHGs rather than calling for the government to ban them.

Yes, 1.5C is Bambi and global CO2 emissions are Godzilla.

I agree, nuclear is the way to go but, thanks hippies.

Drive through windows. Wonderful modern conveniences that let you get your coffee etc without interrupting your podcast of exposing yourself to a bunch of coughing covid carriers? Or a line of card idling, motionless because the drivers would rather not think about the planet and simply emit for convenience?

 

[The Don]

There are other sensible suggestions that have been made here and they have been greeted with knee-jerk dismissals from people who apparently have no ideas of their own. This kind of thing really serves no purpose.

An impending crisis is scary.

Admitting what you're been doing is wrong is scary.

Change is scary.

On a completely unrelated matter, it has come to my attention that I have a poor relationship with alcohol and that it would be much better if I never drank alcohol again. Like the current climate crisis is for most people in the West, the negative consequences aren't currently that bad for me. That said, fixing the problem when the consequences are worse will be far, far more difficult and more damage will have been done. It's hard for me to admit that what I've been doing (to myself) for the last 35 years or more is wrong and even harder to actually make real change.

W.r.t. tackling climate change, the steps Mrs Don and I have taken to date have been much less profound and as a consequence have been much less challenging for us.

• Travelling less has been fine, that's a compromise we're willing to make but it would be a big step to never use carbon emitting transport for leisure ever again - one we're unwilling to make and fortunately one we're not being asked to take. Our 90%+ reduction is sufficient.
• Cutting our household emissions by 30%+ by turning down the thermostat, carefully monitoring and controlling usage and installing and using solar has been straightforward. We wouldn't however be prepared to sit in the cold and dark, store all food at ambient temperature and otherwise live a fourteenth century lifestyle.
• Changing to a vegan (Mrs Don) or vegetarian (me) diet has so far been fairly easy but we are availing ourselves of the full first world supply chain safe in the knowledge that tomatoes from Spain or Morocco are still orders of magnitude lower in emissions than locally sourced beef. That said we're not prepared only to eat what we can grow in the garden or forage in the hedgerows. In my case I'm also not prepared to give up dairy or eggs.

We've made the changes we're prepared to make, but we're not perfect. Overall we've probably reduced our carbon footprint by 50% which IMO is fine for now. Maybe we'll be willing to go further in the near future.

 

[bobdroege7]

I agree, nuclear is the way to go but, thanks hippies.

I am all for punching hippies, but then I punch back.

The demise of nuclear had nothing to do with hippies, it was all about the changing regulatory environment due to the nuclear industry's own incompetence with regard to 3 mile island and other locations.

And the unknown time frame between when you make an investment and when you start to get a return on that investment.

And now, nuclear can't compete with battery backed up solar and wind on price.

 

[lomiller]

I am all for punching hippies, but then I punch back.

The demise of nuclear had nothing to do with hippies, it was all about the changing regulatory environment due to the nuclear industry's own incompetence with regard to 3 mile island and other locations.

And the unknown time frame between when you make an investment and when you start to get a return on that investment.

And now, nuclear can't compete with battery backed up solar and wind on price.

There is also the fact that with current technologies there simply isn't enough nuclear fuel to replace fossil energy sources. If we tried to replace oil and natural gas with Nuclear energy we'd use up the planets proved Uranium reserves in under a decade. Nuclear won't be a viable option until we have a commercially viable fast reactor design.

Another common misconception is that Nuclear doesn't need energy storage capacity built into the grid. In fact Nuclear does need storage capacity because Nuclear plants can't basically scale their energy output up and down to match supply so you still need either natural gas plants or storage capacity built into the power grid.

 

[Lplus]

There is also the fact that with current technologies there simply isn't enough nuclear fuel to replace fossil energy sources. If we tried to replace oil and natural gas with Nuclear energy we'd use up the planets proved Uranium reserves in under a decade. Nuclear won't be a viable option until we have a commercially viable fast reactor design.

Another common misconception is that Nuclear doesn't need energy storage capacity built into the grid. In fact Nuclear does need storage capacity because Nuclear plants can't basically scale their energy output up and down to match supply so you still need either natural gas plants or storage capacity built into the power grid.

That said, the baseline power output is far more reliable than wind or solar.

 

[wobs]

There is also the fact that with current technologies there simply isn't enough nuclear fuel to replace fossil energy sources. If we tried to replace oil and natural gas with Nuclear energy we'd use up the planets proved Uranium reserves in under a decade. Nuclear won't be a viable option until we have a commercially viable fast reactor design.

There are a number of issues with this:
1. We cannot assume that we can only rely on what we currently mine, as a measure of what is available. Mining companies do not look for more reserves if the demand does not warrant it. So given the lead time in building a plant, an expansion of power plants could easily be accommodated by further exploration of uranium by mining companies.

2. There are alternatives to fast reactors. Several countries have re-processed fuel already, so its hardly an unknown. There are also new systems already developed.

3. There are also alternative sources, such as nuclear weapons, civil stockpiles of used fuel, coal ash, and sea water. The latter would last rather longer but at a cost of course.

Another common misconception is that Nuclear doesn't need energy storage capacity built into the grid. In fact Nuclear does need storage capacity because Nuclear plants can't basically scale their energy output up and down to match supply so you still need either natural gas plants or storage capacity built into the power grid.

This is a strawman argument, as nuclear is not designed to match demand, but provide a baseload supply. This is a standard way to run grid: have different supplies to provide different functions. We used to use coal for baseload, but of course nuclear is a far better option.

No one is suggesting nuclear supplies everything.

I should point out that nuclear can in match supply on a technical level (and does in some places around the world), but is uneconomic to do so generally.

Basically, nuclear does not need storage. Where renewables need storage, there is an addition to the cost that isn't usually factored in, meaning that claims that wind is really cheap, is often overblown.

 

[bobdroege7]

One thing to note is nuclear can be designed to follow load, as in fact the US Navy operates a number of load following nuclear power plants of several different designs.

Where did all the can-do engineers go?

 

[ahhell]

One thing to note is nuclear can be designed to follow load, as in fact the US Navy operates a number of load following nuclear power plants of several different designs.

Where did all the can-do engineers go?

I imagine there is some limit to that flexibility but it is relatively easy to idle a reactor relative to fossile fuel or most renewable sources of electricity. That makes it relatively perfect to fill in for when wind dies down or its cloudy out.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Back on topic..

Is Greta OK with Nuclear?

 

[gnome]

Back on topic..

Is Greta OK with Nuclear?

Doesn't seem to be a dealbreaker.

Greta Thunberg says it would be "a mistake" for Germany to switch off its nuclear power plants if that means the country must burn more climate-wrecking coal. The German government is still debating the future of its nuclear plants, long set to be shut down this year, given the spectre of a looming energy crisis due to the war in Ukraine. The climate activist told German public broadcaster ARD that it was “a very bad idea to focus on coal when this [nuclear power] is already in place.” But she acknowledged in the interview, aired today, that there was a strong debate over the issue in Germany.

Asked whether it would be better for the planet if Germany keeps its three remaining nuclear plants going, Thunberg responded: “If we have them already running, I feel that it’s a mistake to close them down in order to focus on coal.”

Euronews.com: Greta Thunberg on nuclear and why it’s ‘completely insane’ we aren’t talking about energy saving

These are not the words of someone who is excessively unbalanced towards ideology over practicality.

 

[Stout]

These are not the words of someone who is excessively unbalanced towards ideology over practicality.

I posted that article before, it's memorable in that it states conservatives are with her on this and it also exposes Swedes as energy hogs. Thunberg has to tiptoe around the nuclear issue lest she alienate too many of her supporters. Sure she can say "keep them on for a little while longer" but if she starts touting nuclear as a planet saver, she's going to run into significant pushback.

Here's a recent in favor of ideology over practicality article, just for balance. I don't think I've posted this one before, it was in might-need-this-later folder.

And today, we have this article that appeared in the NYT archive link because **** paywalls. Greta Thunberg: ‘The World Is Getting More Grim by the Day’ in which she fails to mention that, during the pandemic, climate change activism got completely wiped off the face of the Earth by Black Lives Matter.

She's also shifting her focus from the children in the developed world having to cope with the effects of climate change to the people of the global south having to deal with those effects. And then says that very few people in the developed world don't really give a rip.

I still think that we have to hope for the best in people. And if there’s one thing that I’ve learned from being an activist these last five years now, it’s that many, many people want to do good. Most people want to do good. But in “our society” or whatever — Our Society™ — people don’t know how to do that. We don’t know how to do good because we are raised with a sense of needing to make a career, needing to achieve this and that. And under those circumstances, of course, people are going to fight for themselves, they’re not going to strive for the common good, especially not for people living on the other side of the world, unfortunately.

 

[theprestige]

Greta's problem is that as a child her parents never taught her about nuclear power as a comprehensive and sufficient solution to the problem of the emissions that were troubling her so.

Now, as a newly minted grown up, she must navigate somehow between the extremism of her naive youth and the practical reality the rest of us adults must confront.

It would be better if she navigated these tumultuous waters outside of the public eye, as most of us have done. But her parents have made sure to foreclose that option.

Is Greta Thunberg deeply disturbed? It's hard to imagine a more precision engineered scenario for answering yes.

 

[lomiller]

That said, the baseline power output is far more reliable than wind or solar.

Solar output typically achieves it's peak production at periods when the load is the highest so it potentially requires less storage than nuclear.

 

[lomiller]

There are a number of issues with this:
1. We cannot assume that we can only rely on what we currently mine, as a measure of what is available. Mining companies do not look for more reserves if the demand does not warrant it. So given the lead time in building a plant, an expansion of power plants could easily be accommodated by further exploration of uranium by mining companies.

But even using estimated reserves there is 20-50 times as much energy available from fossil sources as there is nuclear fuel. You could probably expand nuclear production 2X - 3X using current tech but you'd still only be filling ~15% of the worlds energy needs.

A 2X - 3X increase in Nuclear isn't nothing and may have been feasible if we started 20 years ago, but as of today it's really to late to bring enough nuclear online before we start to run into climate tipping points.

2. There are alternatives to fast reactors. Several countries have re-processed fuel already, so its hardly an unknown. There are also new systems already developed.

In the absence of breeder reactors, reprocessing provides only a relatively small extension of your fuel. All reprocessing does is raise concentration of U235 back to the point where you can use the materiel as fuel. The majority of the fuel is still U238, which can't be used as fuel.

Fast reactors on the other hand breed new fissile material from the U238

3. There are also alternative sources, such as nuclear weapons, civil stockpiles of used fuel, coal ash, and sea water. The latter would last rather longer but at a cost of course.

Recycling nuclear weapons don't touch the surface wrt to satisfying the need for nuclear fuel. While coal ash and sea water do contain uranium, there is no industrial scale process for extracting it, so you are still talking about developing a whole new technology in order to make Nuclear viable as a significant contributor to our energy needs.

This is a strawman argument, as nuclear is not designed to match demand, but provide a baseload supply. This is a standard way to run grid: have different supplies to provide different functions. We used to use coal for baseload, but of course nuclear is a far better option.

When both are available there is no compelling reason to use the power from the nuclear plant and discard\store the power from the wind plant. Baseload" is really an artificial distinction inherited from the days when coal fired plants were the norm. In that case you'd use the energy from the coal plant and scale back your use of gas and hydroelectric because coal was cheap and couldn't be take offline and online as easily. Unlike coal, nuclear is your most expensive source of electricity, so it's not a functional equivalent.

In a modern grid you use your fixed generating capacity first, this power is going to be generated anyway so you use it all and supplement it with power from natural gas, hydroelectric, grid storage and eventually available power on a national HVDC grid. Nuclear, Wind and Solar are all equivalent under this system even without the grid storage or HVDC grid.

 

[lomiller]

Here's a recent in favor of ideology over practicality article, just for balance. I don't think I've posted this one before, it was in might-need-this-later folder.

What part of that do you find ideological rather than practical?

As things stand, 10% of the worlds population are responsible for ~70 of new emissions and up to 90% of the fossil CO2 that has already been emitted. Addressing this isn't ideology, rather it's something that any practical solution to climate change needs to address.

First of all it's obvious that real change needs to start with the largest emitters. More importantly the 90% of the world that isn't at the high end of per-capital CO2 emissions simply won't accept restrictions targeting them unless the developed world cuts back first. All to often however, people in developed countries either don't care or deny that they are the ones with the responsibility and resources to change first.

 

[Lplus]

Solar output typically achieves it's peak production at periods when the load is the highest so it potentially requires less storage than nuclear.

Where do you live? You may well be right in a hot country when the highest power load is for air conditioners but in the UK the greatest need is for heating and the sun has little power in winter when it shines at all.

Or are you talking about industrial requirements?

 

[The Don]

Where do you live? You may well be right in a hot country when the highest power load is for air conditioners but in the UK the greatest need is for heating and the sun has little power in winter when it shines at all.

Or are you talking about industrial requirements?

This data is 10 years out of date but it shows that winter demand for electricity is 36% higher than it is in the summer but that the intra-day variation is much greater than the variation season on season.

https://assets.publishing.service.g...Seasonal_variations_in_electricity_demand.pdf

 

[Lplus]

This data is 10 years out of date but it shows that winter demand for electricity is 36% higher than it is in the summer but that the intra-day variation is much greater than the variation season on season.

https://assets.publishing.service.g...Seasonal_variations_in_electricity_demand.pdf

Thanks. Notably the winter peak is late afternoon/evening when solar can be discounted completely.

 

[ahhell]

There is also the fact that with current technologies there simply isn't enough nuclear fuel to replace fossil energy sources. If we tried to replace oil and natural gas with Nuclear energy we'd use up the planets proved Uranium reserves in under a decade. Nuclear won't be a viable option until we have a commercially viable fast reactor design.

Another common misconception is that Nuclear doesn't need energy storage capacity built into the grid. In fact Nuclear does need storage capacity because Nuclear plants can't basically scale their energy output up and down to match supply so you still need either natural gas plants or storage capacity built into the power grid.

As a former nuclear reactor operator, that is simply false. Boiling water and pressurized water reactors routinely and easily scale out put up and down, in Navy Reactor's they are designed to do without intervention by the operator.

Fully starting up and shutting down is not easy but the can be kept operating at a relatively low output and quite quickly ramp up production from there.

And yes, bad publicity really did have an impact on acceptance of nuclear power, at least in the US, it wasn't just three mile island it was conflation of weapons with power(basically what hippies do) and the China Syndrome as well.

With current technology we can't replace fossile fuels with renewalbes either. We need a mix that includes pretty much everything available.