Archive for July, 2018

Skepticism and Evident climate change

July 30, 2018

I guess everyone interested in climate change will have encountered people who state three things. One; that climate change is not evident, Two; that climate change has happened in the past and is part of the natural cycles, and Three; that we cannot predict exactly what will happen…

Changes that happen slowly are rarely evident to bare human sensory apparatus. We acclimatize, and declare it has always been this way – despite the record of above average temperatures we have been registering (and of course averages are undermined by people’s experience of variations, and by their desires to keep seeing normality and experience tranquility) People who move from cold countries to hot countries may soon feel that temperatures which would have once been ‘hot’ feel ‘cold’. Unaided senses may not always be accurate enough to detect climate change, that does not mean it is not happening. When we can detect climate change with unaided senses it will probably be too late.

After saying that Climate change is not evident, then people may point to previous incidents of climate change and imply it is relatively harmless, or that we cannot do anything about it, and it has nothing to do with us. While I think the idea that climate change has happened in the past is probably correct, the rest may not be.

I particularly have no idea how the concept that “the planet has been going through heating and cooling waves for millions of years” can be considered ‘evident’ in itself – especially if contemporary climate change is not evident. The concept of previous climate change is based on a whole lot of theory, interpretation and data gathering.

Most of that theory is part of the web of theory which also suggests that the current climate change (even if natural) will be rapid (in geological terms) and devastating for ecologies and human civilization.

Current climate change is also compounded with widespread ecological devastation from human sources (deforestation, over-fishing, chemical pollution, depletion of phosphorus etc.), all of which are likely to make the change even more violent and which were not present in previous ‘natural’ periods of change.

The further assertions that because the planet has had changes of climate many times before we should not be worried about it this time, do not seem evident at all to me. Especially as rapid climate change in the past does seem to have been harmful for species.

The third point about uncertainty of what will happen is true; the future is always uncertain. However, because the future is uncertain does not give us the right to assume that the least unpleasant events are the most likely. That is actually a refusal to accept uncertainty.

So what is evident? To me it is evident that we depend on ecologies, and creatures depend on each other (I do not live alone in a vacuum) – this is also backed up by many studies, which give what I would call evidence. Other people may deny this for whatever reasons. But if you accept that some kind of mutual dependence is evident, then continually messing up, destroying and injecting waste into these ecologies is evidently harmful to us all, and likely to result in catastrophic change past a certain point. So its probably best to stop doing it, and try something else. Harm may also result from these remedial actions, but that harm is not evident – it is supposition.

Is it evident that a bullet through the chest will kill me? No, not until it happens – and if it is evident, then there will probably be no me for it to be evident to. There is a level at which it may be best to work with some supposition.

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Nuclear Energy

July 18, 2018

People keep praising nuclear as the way out of out climate and energy problems but I’m not convinced. So this is a quick list of well known problems, which I will expand as more come to mind.

a) Expense. The new cheap small reactors which people talk about, don’t seem to have been built yet in anything resembling commercial operational conditions. Real reactors which are under construction appear to keep going up in price. They also regularly have price blowouts, and require taxpayer subsidy.

b) Finding a location. Few people want them built near them or, if they are neutral, near cities where they are vaguely economical. If we put them in the desolate outback, hardly anyone will voluntarily go to work there, and the power loss through cables may become significant. Reactors also need water for cooling, so we are not going to put them in the outback, probably on the coast, which may significantly change coastal ecologies.

c) They seem to take a long time to build, although there are massive divergences in the figures people give (5 to 25 years!). Certainly anyone who says they can be built quickly and safely is probably being optimistic. Hinkley Point in the UK which is probably a fair comparison with anything that would be built here in Australia, is both massively over budget, and quite late.

d) Accidents may be rare but when they happen can be catastrophic. Insurance companies will not cover them, because of this unlimited risk. So taxpayers are up for even more expense, and may have little input into safety when they are built by private companies using cost cutting to make money (as they won’t be responsible for insurance).

e) Disposing of waste. No one has yet solved that problem, for all time, yet.

f) Expensive electricity. The promised price of electricity from the UK’s yet to be built reactors is far greater than that of renewables or coal now.

g) When a reactor gets old, it has to be decommissioned. This can be a very expensive and dangerous process, with large amounts of radioactive waste. It is rarely added to the cost of use, because the cost is most likely borne by taxpayers. As usual costs are socialized and profits privatized.

h) They require massive amounts of concrete which is currently a source of greenhouse gases. There are reputed to be new concretes, but I’ve no idea how good they are at supporting this kind of use.

i) Thorium reactors. Nice idea but it has apparently failed once before i Germany, and does not currently seem to be in use anywhere. So we are probably looking at 20 to 30 years before they become commercially available, even if we were doing any research into them – which we don’t seem to be.

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The National Energy Guarantee

July 17, 2018

[further comments in square brackets from 5 June 2020]

The Australian Federal government is pressuring States to sign the National Energy Guarantee (NEG) by August 10. Many people are saying the States should sign because it is the only offer there will be [with the benefit of hindsight we know this to be true]. The Labor party is looking friendly towards the NEG on the grounds it is better than nothing.

The question is, “Is it better than nothing?” That was the subject of a business seminar run by the Smart Energy Council, that I attended this morning. https://www.smartenergy.org.au/

The NEG sets an unchangeable emissions reduction target in the energy sector of 26% by 2030. One problem is that this reduction will already be achieved by 2020, factoring in current renewables development, so the NEG effectively sets a target of no further emissions reduction for 12 years. There is no formal requirement to build any renewable energy between 2020 and 2030. It seems to be expected that reductions to meet Australia’s promises under the Paris agreement, will have to come from farming, transport and mining which are much harder to reduce, although they should be reducing as well. The probability is that the Government will simply abandon the targets altogether [This again with hindsight is what happened].

We have no explanation or comparative analysis from the government as to why the NEG is good policy. At one stage the emissions reduction target was changeable over time, now it is not and we do not know why. The NEG is also not finalised. It could be changed in the Government’s party rooms after the States have agreed, so the States are signing blind. Of course the short period for consideration is also a way of avoiding good policy and good discussion – which does not suggest the government is interested in the best policy.

We are told the NEG will fix reliability. However, despite political and Murdoch Empire based assertions to the contrary, the energy supply is well over 99% reliable, and faults so far have resulted from distribution not generation (except when the coal stations fall over because it was too hot).

Our government is a proclaimer of the virtues of free markets, so of course they say the NEG is not regulatory. However, the speakers from the industry this morning, thought the NEG as it stands was highly regulatory, and indeed the points about ensuring possibly unnecessary reliability for everything, means that people have to go through all kinds of hoops they don’t have to at the moment – but it looks like fossil fuels don’t have to, not because they are more reliable, but because they are defined as reliable. So it regulates one part of the industry and not another part.

The Government also says the NEG is technology neutral, but as already implied it is not, it is biased. Because it set extremely low levels of emissions reduction for 2030 – which will by most accounts be achieved by 2020 – it is not technology neutral, as it favours greenhouse gas emitting energy sources. It continues the Government’s ideal of apparently sacrificing the environment and climate for fossil fuels.

The view of the speakers at the forum was that the NEG is worse than nothing. It would be better not to have it. Consequently, they advised that even if the government offers nothing else it should be rejected, unless it has a decent emissions reduction target.

At the same time as all this the ACCC is recommending the end of the small scale feed in tariff scheme. This along with other recommendations will massively increase the price of household solar which has so far been very popular. While the parliament had previously agreed this scheme would last until 2030, the government is now refusing to deny that it will end the scheme very soon.

What the NEG does do is probably increase the price of food if targets are imposed on agriculture, and destroy jobs in the renewables business, which have been amongst the growth areas of the economy. It also over regulates the industry. The NEG attempts to lock in a particular market which allows high levels of emissions. This benefits high polluting power companies.

If the NEG gets through we are left with three options.

  • 1) Hope that despite all the subsidy losses, and subsidies already present for fossil fuels, people will want to build renewable power,
  • 2) Find that people won’t build any power at all and when the coal stations close in 15 or so years, find we are without power, or
  • 3) use taxpayers’ money to refurbish or build new coal stations.

    • The technology neutral position seems to prefer option 3. The government voted for something like this in the Senate recently, so we can assume that is the aim.

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