[Note: This is the fifty-eighth sample from my rough draft of
a far from finished new book, Wild, Free, & Happy. The Search field on the right side will find
words in the full contents of all rants and reviews. These samples are not freestanding
pieces. They will be easier to
understand if you start with sample 01, and follow the sequence listed HERE —
if you happen to have some free time. If
you prefer audiobooks, Michael Dowd is in the process of reading and recording
my book HERE.
[Continued from Climate Crisis 03 Sample
57]
Peter
Wadhams, the melting Arctic expert, is totally freaked out by the expected
impacts of the approaching climate catastrophe.
He notes that there are a number of proposed techno-responses, but none
of them provide an effective cure for the nightmare we’ve created. An effective cure, if there is one, will be
something that has not yet been invented.
Meanwhile, he thought that we should desperately throw all
caution to the wind, and do whatever we can that might slightly slow the
disaster down a wee bit, until the miracles arrive. He even suggested building more nuclear power
plants. I disagree. Let’s take a peek at a few of the proposed
“solutions.”
Nuclear
Power
Some folks advocate for nuclear energy because reactors emit
no greenhouse gases while they operate.
Like solar panels, wind turbines, and hydroelectric dams, reactors also
have a limited lifespan. Building new
nuke plants requires large quantities of materials that require fossil energy
for their production — cement and steel for example. Like coal and oil, uranium is not a renewable
resource. Like coal and oil, the use of
uranium has serious long-term negative impacts.
If the objective is to reduce current carbon emissions,
building numerous new nuke plants is not the most effective approach. Every power switch has an OFF position. Satellite photos of the Earth at night reveal
tremendous amounts of wasted energy, and this waste is just the tip of the
iceberg. [LOOK] My grandparents and mother were born in homes
without electricity, as were 300,000 years of their ancestors.
The expiration date for our maximum impact lifestyle is
approaching, as we smack into more and more immovable limits. Even if we immediately and permanently turned
OFF industrial civilization, the ice would keep melting, the Arctic would keep
warming, the permafrost would keep melting, atmospheric carbon would continue
increasing, etc., etc. Do we need
electric cars? Can we live without cars?
Paul
Dorfman pointed out the embarrassing fact that climate change is leading to
rising sea levels. The Greenland ice
sheet is approaching a tipping point that would make accelerated melting
inevitable. If miracles don’t rescue us,
we’re going to see more coastal and inland flooding. “With 41 percent of all nuclear plants
world-wide operating on the coast, nuclear may prove an important risk.” May?
At least 100 of these plants are just a few meters above sea level.
“The near-term effect of rising mean sea-levels at coastal
nuclear installations will be felt most profoundly during extreme storm
conditions when strong winds and low atmospheric pressure bring about a
localised increase in sea-level known as a ‘storm surge.’” Inland plants also face warming-related risks
— wildfires, river floods, low river levels.
If river temperatures get too warm, their ability to properly cool
reactors is diminished. Worldwide, more
than a half billion people live within 50 miles (80 km) of a nuke plant.
William
and Rosemarie Alley wrote the book on nuclear waste storage. In 2012, the U.S. had generated lots of
high-level radioactive wastes — 70,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, and 20,000
giant canisters of military material.
Waste was stored at 121 sites in 39 states. William worked for the U.S. Geological Survey
(USGS), and it was his job to find a secure place to safely store this stuff
forever.
At first, folks thought it would become harmless in 600 years
or so. Eventually, they realized that
some of the waste would be dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. It needed to be stored in a geologic
repository, in strong deep bedrock that would not collapse if a future ice age
put a mile thick ice sheet above it. It
had to be dry, seismically stable, accessible to transport, and inaccessible to
terrorists.
After 25 years of research, costing $10 billion, Alley
recommended the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, which was as close to perfect as
possible. President Obama got elected,
and promptly rejected the site, for political reasons. President Trump tried to revive the project,
but failed. Now it’s 2021, and there is
far more high-level waste sitting around.
The U.S. has 60 nuclear power plants, and there are 443 in the
world. Guess how many nations are using
geologic repositories. Zero. One in Finland might open in 2023. People like using electricity, but few fully
trust the honesty of corporate interests, and the integrity of their government
servants.
Edwin
Lyman wrote a 148 page report on the new generation of “advanced” reactors
that may be put into commercial use at some point in the future. He works for the Union of Concerned
Scientists, an organization dedicated to objective analysis. It is financially and politically independent
of the nuclear power industry’s interests.
The industry makes a number of impressive claims about the technological
advances of the new reactors. Lyman has
reservations. Different is not the same
as better. He labels ten claims,
including improved safety and security, to be “misleading.” The report is a free download. Enjoy!
Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Sequestration (BECCS)
BECCSs was another big idea.
Instead of burning filthy coal, we could grow, gather, and burn lots of
“replaceable” biomass fuel — grasses, trees, crop residues, etc. These fuels would absorb CO2 as
they grew, and then we could burn this renewable resource to make happy green
electricity. The chimney smoke from the
burning would be processed to remove the CO2, which could then be
safely stored underground forever in some way.
The technology for capturing the CO2 is expensive, guzzles
lots of energy, and is not yet feasible for full scale deployment.
Net
Zero
James Dyke, Robert Watson, and Wolfgang Knorr are three
venerable climate science elders who have been watching the clan of eco-wizards
contemplate possible solutions to the climate crisis for many years. They wrote, “It has been estimated that BECCS
would demand between 0.4 and 1.2 billion hectares of land. That’s 25% to 80% of all the land currently
under cultivation.” (Land now used to produce food.)
The three lads wrote a fascinating and heartbreaking essay on
the elusive goal of net zero emissions.
[HERE] The climate crisis is a consequence of having
way too much CO2 in the atmosphere, and adding more and more every
day. So, the apparent solution involved
extracting the excess CO2 from the air, while also sharply reducing
the rate of current emissions. The Holy
Grail was “net zero” — extracting as much carbon as we emit, creating a healthy
balance. In maybe 30 years of net zero,
bye-bye climate crisis, hello happy days!
Until 2021, the three professors kept their opinions to
themselves. The technosphere is a sacred
realm of miracles. Expressing doubts is
heresy. Heresy can rubbish your
reputation, and jeopardize future research grants. They understood that the notion of net zero
was daffy — “burn now, pay later.”
If we plant a bunch of trees, they’ll sequester carbon as
they grow, and we can continue living recklessly. This encourages blind faith in future
techno-miracles, and it discourages everyone from making big changes in the
here and now. Consequently, carbon in
the atmosphere keeps increasing. The
professors finally came out of the closet, and shared their pain. Hooray!
Bonnie
Waring laments humankind’s hallucination that, with a bit of encouragement,
the world’s forests can absorb enough carbon to end the climate crisis. “But the fact is that there aren’t enough
trees in the world to offset society’s carbon emissions — and there never will
be.”
Solar
Radiation Management (SRM)
The goal of SRM is to artificially increase albedo by
frequently dispersing tons reflective substances high in the sky, year after
year, forever. McKenzie Funk
wrote about Microsoft billionaire Nathan Myhrvold, who was working on a planet
saving miracle. His StratoShield project
would spray 2 to 5 million metric tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere
every year. This would make the sunlight
one percent dimmer, and enable life as we know it to continue a bit longer,
maybe.
While this might deflect some incoming heat, ongoing CO2
emissions would continue building up in the atmosphere and oceans. Will vegetation be OK with reduced
sunlight? Will precipitation patterns
change? Apparently the hallucination is
that by reducing incoming heat, the Artic would quit melting, and humankind
could live happily ever after. Another
variant is cirrus cloud thinning — modifying high-altitude clouds to make them
thinner, less of an insulating blanket.
This would allow the planet to release more heat from the atmosphere.
Direct
Air Capture (DAC)
Direct air capture (DAC) is an experimental technology that
removes CO2 (but not methane) from the atmosphere. The captured carbon can be permanently stored
in the ground, at significant expense, or sold for commercial uses. For example, it could be pumped into active
oil wells to enhance oil recovery, or converted into a synthetic fuel, or used
to carbonate bubbly beverages, etc.
Alister
Doyle reported on a radical DAC experiment.
Climeworks, a Swiss business, is developing a DAC facility in
Iceland. Big fans suck in air, the CO2
is removed, mixed with water to form a mild acid, and then pumped into basaltic
rock that is 2,600 to 6,500 feet (800 to 2,000 meters) below ground. Two years later, 95 percent of what was CO2
is petrified, turned to stone, where it will safely remain for millions of
years. The basaltic formations suitable
for these operations are only found under about 5 percent of the world’s dry
land, but more are available underwater.
This is an energy-intensive process, and Iceland was chosen
because it produces cheap and abundant zero carbon geothermal energy. In 2020, there were 15 DAC plants in
operation around the world, capturing more than 9,000 tons of CO2
per year, which was “the equivalent of the annual emissions of just 600
Americans, each producing about 15 tonnes of climate-changing pollution.”
Robert
Hunziker wrote about a DAC plant in the southwest U.S. that will begin
operation in 2024. Powered by natural
gas, it will capture one million tons of CO2 per year. Meanwhile, worldwide human activities are
emitting 4.2 million tons every hour. In
this plant, air is sucked in, CO2 is extracted by a chemical
solution (like potassium hydroxide), more chemicals then transform it into
pellets of 50 percent CO2, the pellets are heated to 900°C,
producing a gas that can be stored underground forever.
By building a global system of 100 million of these
processing units (as soon as possible), enough CO2 could be
extracted from the air to keep up with global emissions (but not the carbon
already in the atmosphere). Extraction
could be done at the bargain price of $330 to $800 per ton. DAC is not used for high concentration point
source emissions, like those from the worlds many cement factories, or biomass
power plants. These operations can use
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) systems.
Carbon
Capture and Storage (CCS)
Jorgen
Randers believed that the excess carbon in the atmosphere could be
successfully extracted by building 33,000 large Carbon Capture and Storage
(CCS) plants, and keeping them running forever.
Permanently storing huge amounts of a gaseous compound is far more challenging
than storing gold or diamonds. Also
challenging is finding enormous amounts of money to build 33,000 plants. CCS was a super-delicious fantasy. We could keep burning coal, remove the carbon
from the smoke, and avoid the dreadful need to sharply cut other forms of
carbon emissions. Not one coal plant got
a CCS system. It was too expensive, and
it was not mandatory.
Carbon
Dioxide Removal (CDR)
CDR is also intended to remove CO2 from the
atmosphere. It uses different methods
than DAC. Plant more trees. Encourage agriculture to sequester more
carbon in the soil. Restore
wetlands. Spread nutrients on the ocean
surface to stimulate blooms of phytoplankton (tiny plants) to increase their
intake of CO2. One study
found that oceanic phytoplankton declined about 40 percent between 1950 and
2008. The prime suspect is rising
surface temperatures.
Geoengineering
(Climate Engineering)
Geoengineering is a word used to describe large scale
interventions like SRM and CDR. If one
or both turn out to be miraculously successful, humans could, in their wildest
dreams, continue burning fossil energy, and living like there’s no
tomorrow. In reality, neither is a
proven success, nor cheap, easy, or sustainable. Both ideas make lots of people nervous, for a
wide variety of intelligent reasons, including expense. Unintended consequences are guaranteed.
Green
New Deal (GND)
Every day our minds are blasted with misinformation. Humans have created a way of life that is so
complicated that it’s impossible for anyone to understand more than a tiny bit of
it. Most folks are clueless about
sustainability. This is why U.S.
legislators promoting the Green New Deal program are not laughed off the stage. It sounds like a sweet dream.
The GND became a trendy idea around 2018, but legislation to
pursue it was defeated a year later. Its
primary objective was to eliminate global warming by rapidly moving away from
fossil energy, and replacing it with clean, green, zero-carbon renewable
energy. Believers shouted with joy and
celebration. It’s not too late. We can save the world, and still enjoy our
modern consumer lifestyle in an advanced society. Let’s do it!
Mining.com is a news source for the mining industry. Its editor, Frik
Els, praised the efforts of frontline GND proponents Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez and Greta Thunberg — “mining’s unlikely heroines.” Why?
Because the Green New Deal would be a multi-trillion dollar godsend for
mining and manufacturing corporations.
The nation’s power system would require massive changes, and lots of new
high-tech infrastructure.
Moving from unsustainable fossil energy to unsustainable
“carbon-free” energy would require enormous amounts of minerals to make the
needed steel, concrete, copper, lithium, silicon, etc. Mining operations and industrial centers
primarily run on fossil energy, not breezes and sunbeams. Fossil fuel is the primary energy source for
making solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars, and high capacity batteries.
These “green” devices have limited lifespans, and must be
replaced periodically. This regular
maintenance requires ongoing fossil energy inputs, and carbon emission outputs,
until civilization moves off the stage.
Like Siamese twins, industrial civilization and the climate crisis are
inseparable components of the same unsustainable monstrosity.
In 2019, Jeff Gibbs produced the documentary Planet of the Humans,
which put a spotlight on the GND’s heavy dependence on magical thinking. Powerful corporate interests are dedicated to
keeping consumer society on life support for as long as humanly possible,
because it is the engine of their growth and profits. They generously fund celebrities that preach
the GND gospel of a limitless beautiful future, 100% clean energy, net zero
emissions, sustainable growth, and jobs, jobs, jobs!
Max
Blumenthal described what happened next.
Immediately following the release of Gibbs’ film, a mob of well-known
eco-celebrities exploded with bloodthirsty rage, loudly denounced the demonic
film, and demanded that it be suppressed.
This explosion of hysterical fury had the unintended consequence of
stimulating a tidal wave of publicity for the film. On YouTube, it got millions of views in a
month. The intense drama also tarnished
the reputations of the noisy ultra-righteous (well paid) censors.
In March 2021, Derrick Jensen and team published Bright
Green Lies, and Julia
Barnes released the Bright Green Lies documentary, based on that
book. Having learned their embarrassing
lesson, celebrity critics largely took this as an opportunity to quietly go
fishing in North Dakota. Both the Planet
of the Humans and Bright Green Lies devoted significant effort to
describing the dodgy performance of mainstream environmentalism, and its big
money supporters.
In May 2021, Alice Friedemann published Life
After Fossil Fuels, which filled in important missing pieces. She didn’t spank eco-celebrities, or provide
a “solutions” chapter. She directed her
full attention to simply explaining, in great detail, exactly why the bright green
vision was irrational, impossible, nonsensical, and unaffordable (the inconvenient
truth). Her readers are better able to
see through the fog of misinformation, and keep both feet firmly planted in
reality, where they belong.
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