Just got this from James Hansen
Sleepless in Ningbo
The city we visited that day, with population at least comparable to New York City, was bustling in development and construction. The mayor described numerous programs to improve efficiency and impressive environmental requirements on new buildings including extensive use of renewable energies. When I asked about the energy source for their power, I learned that it was 78% coal, 12% gas, 7% oil and 3% renewable. They were making a major effort to increase the portion from renewables, striving for a goal of 6% within a few more years. However, because of their rapid development, their power use had increased 8.8% in the past year and would be continuing to surge. Thus efficiency and renewables are not causing carbon emissions to decline – on the contrary, emissions are growing rapidly.
This situation was predictable. It is not difficult to understand. But it is exceedingly difficult to communicate. Foundations and major environmental organizations (“greens”) are pretty much on the same page, so don’t expect to get support if you question their position. Instead, expect to be attacked. These groups have scientists on their staffs, but they do not act like scientists, continually questioning their own position with an open mind. Instead, like scientist-deniers, renewables-can-do-all scientists act like talking-head lawyers hired to defend a predetermined position. I used to think that they would change their tune as a little more empirical data on energy use accumulated. Instead, like climate-deniers, they cherry-pick data, concluding that we are on the verge of renewables providing all of our energy.
The Koch brothers could not purchase such powerful support for their enterprise. The renewables-can-do-all greens are combining with the fossil industry to lock-in widespread expansion of fracking. Courageous actions to block mountaintop removal, tar sands pipelines, destructive long-wall mining and all such things will be in vain without adequate energy alternatives. Obama is not supporting fossil fuels because he loves them. He does not have adequate alternatives.
Greens fanatically support an anti-nuclear-power agenda, asserting that even low level radiation is harmful to human health, an assertion that is not supported unequivocally by scientific evidence. Meanwhile the evidence of far more harmful fossil fuel pollution surrounds me, whether I look forward, backward, right, left. Over 1,000,000 Chinese citizens die from the pollution each year.
While I think Hansen's support for nuclear power is an insanity born of desperation, his underlying thrust is valid IMO. Fossil fuels are killing the biosphere, and nothing we are doing at the moment seems likely to break their stranglehold before we hit +2C and have +4 locked in.
