Posts by Moz
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Sorry, let me correct the "cost of renewables" point and make it clearer. According to this study Australia could transition to 100% renewable electricity by 2020 and do so at a (long-term) profit. What is missing is the political will to override the vested interested who don't want that to happen. Some of those vested interests are in government (broadly defined as not just MPs but public servants).
NZ could switch to 100% renewable electricity very easily, and the reasons for not doing so are as much about language as anything else. Maybe a bit of sunk costs fallacy.
In other countries it's harder to know. One point that is worth noting is that nuclear power plants need a lot of water - a chunk of France's nuclear plants cut back in the heatwave (peak demand!) because they couldn't cool the plants enough to run them at full power. CSP, on the other hand, requires very little water while PV and wind require none.
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Tom Semmens,
“we” means “we, the people of earth”
If you focus on the experimental nature of the reactors that you're proposing and think about the timeframe I beleive my objections still apply. The optimistic views that I've seen suggest we might have a fourth gen reactor working by 2030, and an experimental thorium one about the same time. If the global "we" pushes the point.
But if the global "we" just keeps building CSP, PV and wind generation at the current rate, by 2030 we'll be meeting half our electricity needs from renewable sources. If the build rate was kicked up by adding even half the required nuclear budget we could be 100% renewable by 2050. Australia could do that at a profit, I assume NZ could if we stopped trying to lower the the renewable fraction. Possibly other countries are in similar positions, but for some reason there's a lot of nonsense being talked about renewables not being able to provide baseload power. How that objection flies is the topic Russel was addressing in the post, I beleive.
If nuclear is the lesser of the evils
That's a really big, really important question. To date it's been very mixed, but the greater evil appears to be in the long-term pollution. Which currently we're addressing much in the same way as we address the long-term aspect of CO2 pollution from burning stuff. ie, by pretending its not really a problem at all. The answer might be to just declare some part of the planet permanently off limits and dump all the nuclear waste there. Maralinga, perhaps, or Chernobyl.
Hopefully Russell will remove the abuse from your post and let the rest stand.
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Bart Janssen,
. I mean yes by all means build a safe stable reactor, although the need in NZ is dubious, but please don't reinvent the wheel. Other people have worked out all that stuff elsewhere - to pretend we need to do it ourselves is just all kinds of stupid.
If you could link to performance figures on a proven design for a thorium reactor or 4th gen uranium-plutonium reactor I'd be much obliged. Cost to build, reliability in operation, decommissioning costs, that sort of thing.
My point is that if NZ is going to participate in an experimental program with new reactor designs, we really need to be able to participate in the research part rather than just funding it.
I actually object because the competition for nuclear is something we already have and have been building for a long time now, while nuclear remains theoretical. We don't even really talk about "thrid generation" hydroelectric stations, because the technology is so mature now that it's just "which proven design would best suit this location". With wind power, it's "which supplier do we buy from". With nuclear it's "of the few builders who will sell to us, which is closest to having a fourth generation design ready to build". Ooops, sounds experimental again. Maybe we could build a few of the least unreliable third generation designs? Plus we would have to seriously compromise what's left of our national security to be allowed to build one.
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Bart Janssen,
For those abandoning air travel perhaps it might be worth considering the cultural and social value of travel.
But to work in that application, does air travel have to be cheap and frequent? Is it necessary for the cultural benefits that a lot of people travel to Bali to get drunk for a couple of weeks every year? Especially when it's easier to download foreign video than ever, or even replace the old "pen pal" with video chats?
I think on a personal level that just making the diversity we already have more visible does wonders. You don't have to see starving children in third world countries to realise that not everyone is just like you, you could instead talk to someone with a disability or from a different race or culture. Which we do have in NZ.
It might even be the case that we're better off having a diverse refugee and immigration program (by reversing the "prefer white people from rich english speaking countries" bias), and funding overseas cultural things to come here. Is it better for (say) 30,000 people to see a touring production of Manon, or for 1,000 people to fly to Sydney to see it? (I happened to run into a couple of retired dairy farmers wives from Ashburton at Manon last week)
Personally, I prefer to travel infrequently and stay for extended periods. Obviously I think everyone should do that :)
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Let’s work on finding alternatives to coal fueled thermal power stations (i.e. safe nuclear technologies like Thorium)
Yes, this! If NZ devoted a significant proportion of GDP to training a generation of nuclear scientists and engineers, then once they graduated embarked on a crash program of reactor design, within a couple of generations of reactor build and test we could have safe, secure, reliable nuclear power for all.
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Moz,
In their attempts for balance they end up distorting the picture
And they only do it sometimes. You don't see "balance" about car crashes, for example, where they interview the grieving relatives then for balance they find someone to say "good riddance, I'm glad they're dead". Or even on less controversial things, like the Royal Visit. Wouldn't it be great if every single mention had a republican slot as well?
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"What are you, personally, doing about it?" the doubters ask us, "And how much quality of life are you prepared to give up?"
Being a bike riding vegetarian doesn't really stand out the way that, say, chaining myself to the gates of a concentration camp does. But it does more to reduce AGW than most things, even buying 100% wind power (which we do). And despite saving frantically to buy said house, we donate about 5% of our pre-tax income to various environmental groups every year. Many are tax deductable, but also some that are not (somehow every year I donate to NZ deductable groups and every year can't find anyone in NZ willing to claim the deductions).
What I don't do is "anything I can". Starting, most obviously, by reducing my consumption to zero by killing myself. I'm also not, for example, going to blow up a coal export ship in the channel at Newcastle, even though that would significantly reduce Australi's coal exports. Nor will I kill John Key, even if it seems likely to be dramatically effective.
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Che Tibby,
and most importantly. when that day comes that an angry young tibby stands up in front of me and demands to know, "WHAT DID YOU DO?!" while the world was being poisoned, i can look him in the eye and say, everything i could.
I'm inclined to accept your quiet (conditions apply) there, but it would be nice to acknowledge it.
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Hard News: A Big Thing, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
It's very gender subversive to give a huge piece of boring machinery a female name.
It'd be more subversive if it was a large piece of interesting machinery :)
Do they call the tunnel Fred?
Nah, Trev. Trev's are useful but not all there.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Electric Dreams, in reply to Sacha,
You might like (grey parade) lyrical gentle track as well:
Oh yeah, I have a few albums and like a few tracks, they're just not right up my personal list. The way, say, Era or Shona Laing are. I mean, "White Colonial Middle-Class Anarchist" as a wee hint to, well, us? There's bands where I don't really have a favorite track because I like so much of their work, and there's bands that are (for me) one hit wonders. Like Guns'n'Roses... there's "Patience" and there's a bunch of stuff that impels me to hit the "shuffle" button.
Russel's Friday listen list often annoys me because there's one good track, but it's from an artist whose entire output is five tracks. I'm much happier finding a great new artist and being able to grab a couple of hours worth of their music. All that waiting to see whether they keep producing good music, it's just not right in the internet age!