Lincoln Fung,

Thank you for your interesting and informative two comments.

I’d suggest an alternative approach to the international binding agreement: you advocate in your last paragraph
"The current difficulties in reaching an international binding agreement can only be overcome if a deal is fair and effective that requires per capita emissions have to be used as the basis for a deal."

I suggest trying to force countries into a binding agreement has blocked progress for over twenty years. Why are we still pursuing that clearly failed strategy. I believe there is a much better way

I don't believe an international deal is essential or possibly even reasonable to expect. I believe the rich countries have the power to enable global emission to be cut. The USA has the capability to make that happen.

The alternative approach is to remove the impediments we’ve imposed on nuclear power. Allow it to compete. Allow nuclear to be cheaper than fossil fuels. Remove the impediments that are preventing the world from having low-cost nuclear power. The rich countries imposed the impediments. We can remove them. They are legislation and regulations, not laws of physics.

I’ve just posted this comment on Judith Curry’s site. It is relevant to the discussion here.

[Harrwwr2]:
>“One of the things in the US regulatory process that has changed is the rigorousness of the design license process.. We spend a lot more time ‘up front’ on the design license than ever before. That makes the design license costs enormous.

I personally see this as a feature…thoroughly evaluate every objection some anti-nuke crackpot might have before the first unit starts nuclear construction.”<

[PL]: I agree that this is a feature. It is often stated it is far cheaper to design quality in from the start rather than try to fix problems later. So the NRC design reviews are good – in a way.

However, I’d point out that the nuclear industry is treated differently than any other industry. By so doing it is costing the world massive delays in cutting global emissions and is causing avoidable fatalities. To put a number on this: 650,000 fatalities per year could be avoided if coal was replaced with nuclear, globally (overnight).

No other electricity generator has its designs reviewed by a government body like the NRC, yet other industries are far more dangerous.

Another industry that has high profile accidents is the aircraft industry. Passenger aircraft designs are not subject to government design reviews of the type and rigour that NRC has to do on every reactor design. The passenger aircraft industry has hundreds of fatalities at a time and hundreds of fatalities per year – perhaps more per year than the total number of fatalities civil nuclear industry has caused in 57 years. Yet, the aircraft manufacturers are responsible for their own designs. They have to ensure safety or they go broke. The same should be the case with nuclear reactors. Small Modular Reactors (SMR) would be better suited than the large nuclear plants for this because they will be produced more quickly, lessons learned will be built into the next versions more quickly, and competition will improve the breed. I think we need to get responsibility for design out of the hands of the government and into the commercial world just like it is for the aircraft industry and most other industries.

[Harrywr2]:
> “The SMR design license cost share has been part of US DOE plans for a number of years. Unfortunately, because of the rigorous nature of the US NRC design licensing the NRC would not have been able to take them up anyway. They just don’t have the staff to evaluate more then one or two designs at a time. It’s an extremely time consuming and rigorous process.

The plan since 2005 has been to license 2 or 3 big reactors, then 2 or 3 small reactors, then move on to the next gen stuff.”<

The NRC approvals process is holding up the world. The blame for the delay cannot be attributed to the NRC or the politicians. The blame must be put squarely on the anti-nukes and the environmental NGOs. They are the people and organisations that have opposed the development of nuclear power every step of the way. Therefore, IMO, they should be held accountable for in the order of a million avoidable fatalities so far, for global CO2 emissions being 10% to 20% higher now than they would have been, and decades of delay in rollout rate from here on.

[Harrwwr2]:
>”All the SMR’s won’t be ‘made in america’. The Russian SBR-100 reactor(fast breeder) seems promising, construction begins on the full scale demonstrator in 2013 and I expect they will sell a bunch of them.”<

I agree. And that is great. I’d like to see many competitors in many of the large industrial countries manufacturing and competing to produce SMR’s. The competition will improve the breed and bring costs down. I’d like to see companies like the equivalent of the passenger aircraft industry competing and with a sort of equivalent regulation. And an equivalent ‘no blame’ approach for accident investigations. Countries that could manufacture SMRs include: USA, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Japan, Korea, China, India, Brazil.

I say: if we unleash the competition the world could cut global CO2 emissions very significantly by 2050, and save a million avoidable fatalities a year by 2050.

Barney, where are your numbers coming from?

Barney Foran,

You make an excellent point that the CO2 emisisons embodied in imports and exports should be included in a country's net emissions and in emissions per capita. This article form a year or so ago apeard in 'the Australian' said Australia ranks 10th of the 35 developed countries in emissions per capita:
http://www.ipa.org.au/news/2364/we-emit-less-co2-than-combet-gives-us-credit-for

I'd also like to know the source for the figures you quoted.

Good points Geoff.

The termination of the near complete IFR program was certainly one of those "WTF" events. If I were an American tax payer I would be quite irate (and confused!)

A per capita deal is not aimed at achieving equal per capita consumption or emissions, it is to use per capita emissions as a key variable in determining which countries should pay to the international community and by how much for each and which countries should be paid and by how much for each.
This approach will focus on the current consumptions/emissions and will not look back at histories of emissions.
It should be based on the user pay concept on a global scale.

Here is another one. For those that choose to ignore the science, maybe you would be interested in the stool metaphor. I would add that those that wish to agree with amateur stats applied to the climate, the pigeons:

http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/a69221tx2685q728/

"Nature Climate Change", spreading anti-epistemiological dogma and climate alarmism since 2007. Peer reviewed by like-minded alarmists.

Not a conspiracy, just weak science.

"just weak science"

That's a bit of a come down from "spreading anti-epistemiological dogma and climate alarmism since 2007. Peer reviewed by like-minded alarmists." Whatever happened to the "green trojan horse" that is "full with red Marxist socioeconomic doctrine" whose goal is "global wealth redistribution"?: http://www.thenation.com/article/164497/capitalism-vs-climate?page=0,0

Not to mention the irony of someone who cites Energy and Environment complaining about weak science.

Not much to add there do you Chris?

I wonder whose testimony was seen as credible?

http://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/documents/hearings/Report%20for%20Congressional%20hearing-R14%20%282%29%20armstrong%20update.pdf

Thanks Spiro, here's some science might help.

Observation 1. Sun irradiates earth with short-wave energy.

Observation 2. Earth re-radiates long-wave energy.

Observation 3. Greenhouse gases retard transmission of long-wave energy, not short-wave energy.

Observation 4. Satellite observations show decreasing emission to space of this long-wave energy, at EXACTLY THE SAME WAVELENGTHS as CO2 absorbs long-wave energy.

Observation 5. Arctic sea ice is melting, so that summertime sunlight is being absorped in exposed ocean rather than reflected off ice.

Observation 6. Greenland and Antarctic ice is melting, increasing the rate of sea level rise. The rate of ice melt is accelerating as atmospheric greenhouse gases increase.

Observation 7. In the Arctic, tipping points have been crossed. Permafrost is thawing, releasing stored methane and carbon dioxide, and warming Siberian continental shelf is causing release of methane from submarine methane clathrates.

Inference 1, drawn from observations 1, 2 and 3. Greenhouse gases thus regulate earth's temperature. Altering atmospheric greenhouse gas content therefore alters earth's temperature.

Inference 2, (drawn from inference 1 and observations 4, 5 and 6). Ocean is thermally coupled with atmosphere, and transfers a lot of heat to both Arctic and Antarctic.

Root cause analysis 1. Historic fossil fuel use and cement production data (Oak Ridge National (US) Laboratory Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center) shows sufficient CO2 emission from 1800 to 2007 to raise atmospheric CO2 from 280 ppm to 430 ppm. Dissolution of CO2 in oceans has limited atmospheric CO2 to about 390 ppm, and decreased ocean pH.

Thanks David, but the dodgy forecasts have no external validity. That is, external to a climate scientists imagination.

Spiro, you write: "Thanks David, but the dodgy forecasts have no external validity. That is, external to a climate scientists (sic) imagination."

Spiro, you are pathetically mistaken if you cling to describing projections of observed processes as "dodgy forecasts".

The thing about you econometricians is, anything you don't understand, you exclude from your calculations, and thereafter from your mind. A classic case is Beenstock et al, "Polynomial cointegration tests of anthropogenic impact on global warming", Earth Syst. Dynam., 3, 173–188, 2012 (www.earth-syst-dynam.net/3/173/2012/), who performed some numerology on time series of greenhouse gas, solar irradiance and aerosol forcings and "global temperature" (annual global average surface air temperature).

In the light of melting icecaps and thawing permafrost, Beenstock et al's results are comical.

A scientist, on the other hand, sets about trying to understand any such factors.

David you are just pathetic. Climate scientists must comply with the standards of ALL the scientific fields that they employ.

The US has sidelined the UN:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/world-climate-pact-to-bypass-un/story-e6frg6xf-1226530838558

and the powers that be have ditched the idea:

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/c-i-a-closes-its-climate-change-office/

Thanks Mr Vlachos, who writes: "Climate scientists must comply with the standards of ALL the scientific fields that they employ."

Quite right, Mr Vlachos, and for the most part they succeed to the best extent possible.

Econometricians Beenstock et al, on the other hand, do not consider themselves bound by any such obligation.

David, its obvious you don't understand what a standard forecasting methodology is.

Read the testimony. Climate scientists don't follow strict standards of objectivity in the evidence if rather than using standard methodology, they devise their own amateur forecasting methods. This is why the UN IPCC is now being sidelined. If climate scientists use statistical methods, then they must comply with the methods that have been devised by the statistical sciences. It is well known temperature series are non stationary. So why do climate scientists use linear projections?

Mr Vlachos, climate science is far, far more than forecasting.

I suggest you start reading and learning some actual physics and chemistry; you read my description of the processes driving climate change, and how humans are contributing to it, and most of it passed you be, didn't it?

Here's a more detailed explanation of how and why we are creating a major problem for ourselves. You'll note that it is completely free of quantitative forecasting.

Earth is warmed by absorption of short wave sunlight. Because of this, Earth's temperature can remain unchanged by returning the same amount of energy to space. That is, solar shortwave energy is balanced by the earth re-radiating to space as a 'black body' radiator with a characteristic temperature of ~255K; that is, from space the earth's spectrum is roughly that of a radiating body with an optical surface temperature of around 255K.

Earth's surface cools by evaporation of excited water molecules, heat transfer to deeper sea and to polar ice caps and by convection and radiation back into and through the atmosphere. At higher altitudes, where the atmosphere gets less dense, the proportion of energy (heat) transfer by long wave 'thermal' (microwave) radiation increases. Observing earth's spectrum from space has big absorption bands due to greenhouse gases in the upper atmosphere. Prominent among these is carbon dioxide (CO2).

Greenhouse gases such as H2O, CO2, methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), CFC's, and ozone (O3) absorp, then re-emit, some longwave wavelengths. About half of the re-emitted radiation is diverted back down toward the surface, as confirmed by radiation measurements at both surface and satellite observatories. This discrepancy increases with atmospheric CO2 concentration.

Historic fossil fuel use and cement production data (Oak Ridge National (US) Laboratory Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center) shows sufficient CO2 emission from 1800 to 2007 to raise atmospheric CO2 from 280 ppm to 430 ppm. Dissolution of CO2 in oceans has limited atmospheric CO2 to about 390 ppm, and decreased ocean pH.

Heat thus accumulates at the surface. About 90% of retained heat warms oceans, accelerating ice melting (sea level rise) and water evaporation (increasing rain and storms).

Warming feedbacks already initiated (ie tipping points already being crossed) are loss of Arctic sea ice, so that boreal summer sunlight absorption in the Arctic Ocean is increasing (less sunlight reflection), the aforementioned sublimation of offshore Siberian methane clathrates, and methane outgassing from thawing permafrost.

Deforestation limits biosequestration of atmospheric CO2 so that reversion to glacial conditions is not presently possible, even when earth's orbital precession minimises intensity of sunlight on Arctic terrestrial icecaps (ie right now).

So you see, Mr Vlachos, we don't even need forecasting to know that we have a large problem, for which a solution requires the total cessation of fossil fuel use. Because upper CO2 limit for climate stability has already been passed (350 ppm, first exceeded in 1988), I don't even need to set a target date for elimination of fossil fuel use; we are already well into the danger zone on that, so we need to eliminate fossil fuel use as rapidly as we can economically manage.

The issue is finding the optimal economic strategy to achieve this ... and hope that we can cope with the changes we've unleashed to date.

David, I have no interest in what you are writing. I was writing about the dodgy forecasts. If they dont stack up, the whole story falls in a heap.

Spiro Vlachos

"The US has sidelined the UN."

Yes. Furthermore, if the article you referred to on the front page of yesterday's 'the Australian' turns out to be correct it is the best news on climate policy in two decades, IMO.

"World climate pact 'to bypass UN'

THE world's major economies are moving towards a climate change deal that will bypass the existing UN framework, says one of the nation's most senior former trade diplomats.

Alan Oxley, former ambassador to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, said the US would lead the withdrawal, with negotiations to take place in the Major Economies Forum established by John Howard and former president George W. Bush.

Mr Oxley said recent comments by US President Barack Obama and the looming failure to get Canada, Japan and other major economies to participate in the next round of the Kyoto climate change protocol - despite Australia's agreement to join - were key to the new framework.

Mr Oxley, who now heads World Growth, the free-market, non-government organisation he founded, said the deal had not yet been done but it was inevitable that when the world got serious about climate change, the UN would be sidelined."

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/world-climate-pact-to-bypass-un/story-e6frg6xf-1226530838558

It is inevitable this is the route the world will take. 20 years of failures under UN leadership demonstrates the UN approach wont work in the real world.

Coincidentally, I've been advocating this in a series of comment on Climate Etc. over the past few days starting here: http://judithcurry.com/2012/12/01/open-thread-weekend-4/ Notice especially the discussion between Harrywr2 and me on section 1.4.1.

Mr Vlachos writes: "I have no interest in what you are writing. I was writing about the dodgy forecasts."

What I am writing, Mr Vlachos, is a summary of the science - the physics, the chemistry, the earth system dynamics, that we have been destabilising for several centuries.

I now see that your understanding of the term "science" is statistics, econometrics and game theory; on this basis, you object to climate projecting methodologies, adding that "If they dont stack up, the whole story falls in a heap."

Sadly, Mr Vlachos, it is not an issue of whole stories falling into heaps: it is an issue being in an accelerating car in a fog that is starting to disperse, and trying to explain to the driver that we need to stop, whereas the driver insists on accelerating because he can't yet see the edge of the cliff.

David, don't you get it? Climate forecasts use statistics. Statistical methods were developed by statisticians and mathematicians, not climate scientists!

You can write about theory all you like, but if it does not stand up to scrutiny when applied to data, it is only a story. I bet you would not want the truth to get in the way of your story?

"linear projections" ... who the hell uses those for climate forecasts? Certainly not climate scientists (except in glossy stuff for the general public perhaps). They mainly use models which are basically a whole bunch of physics. Others use paleoclimate data to tackle the problem from another angle.

I'd suggest Spiro that you dig up your 1988 forecasts and compare them with those of James Hansen.

Thanks Mr Vlachos, who writes: "David, don't you get it? Climate forecasts use statistics. Statistical methods were developed by statisticians and mathematicians, not climate scientists!

Mr Vlachos goes on: "You can write about theory all you like, but if it does not stand up to scrutiny when applied to data, it is only a story. I bet you would not want the truth to get in the way of your story."

What you call "theory" is, in fact, observations and knowledge from atmospheric physics - an area of science in which you proclaim you absence of interest. The climate observations which I report are just that - observations. In what way are observations not the truth, Mr Vlachos?

"They mainly use models which are basically a whole bunch of physics." Whole bunch of nonsense is what I call the forecasts. Hansen 1988 uses a simultaneous equations method from which to make a linear projection.

David, the forecasts are dodgy. They don't comply with standard forecasting methodology. Climate scientists choose to use poor practice because its fits with their story. Whatever you say cannot make them true.

Here if it had begun then, we have done well in the last 24 years.

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/24/us/global-warming-has-begun-expert-tells-senate.html?src=pm

The less the area of ice sheets on Earth the more stable is the climate.

The warmer the better for life (up to a point, which seems to be a lot warmer than now).

Therefore, to justify high cost mitigation policies, there needs to be strong evidence of the supposed catastrophic impacts of warming. After 20 years of scaremongering, we still cannot get clear, well quantified, scientific, definition of the impacts.

Uncertainty about the problem is a given; uncertainty about the chosen solution is inexcusable. This is to say, we should be confident that our solutions are going to be effective, and the more expensive the solution the more confident we should be.

@Peter Lang, who writes:"The less the area of ice sheets on Earth the more stable is the climate." That's as may be, Mr Lang, but in order to achieve this happy stability, all built infrastructure at less that ~80m altitude must be abandoned and submerged.

Perhaps Mr Vlachos could conduct a loss distribution of sea level rise.

@Spiro Vlachos, your criticisms of the state of climate forecasting as of 24 years ago may be apposite. Since then, however, the state of knowledge has improved substantially.

If you wish to criticise current climate science, perhaps you could at least stay apprised of progress in the field? Have you noticed the editor's note following Pep Canadell's article? "Editor’s note: we welcome comments below. However, please keep them on topic – what is the best way to reduce emissions to meet the 2 degree target? Or, if the target is unreachable, what are our alternatives?"

Perhaps you would be so good as to, not just apprise yourself of current climate science (it is developing faster even than econometrics), but to comment as the editor suggests.

Rising sea level is most certainly not a catastrophic event.. It is simply a cost item - and a very small one at that!. In fact the cost is insignificant. It is about 0.006% to 0.03% of global GDP (discounted) to 2100.

If that's the biggest scare you can come up with, forget it. I am not interested in wasting money on mitigation policies that will not work - like carbon pricing and renewable energy schemes - when they will do nothing to make the climate better.

Only a fool would advocate such silliness.

The thread is about
"The widening gap between present emissions and the two-degree target"

That is, it's about policy.

Therefore, it is relevant to point out that the so called 'Progressives" have been preventing progress for 50 years.

And these people can't face up to their culpability, so they try to make silly statements to try to diver the arguments to some down in the weeds, irrelevant nonsense about photons and the like.

@Peter Lang, who writes: "Rising sea level is most certainly not a catastrophic event.. It is simply a cost item - and a very small one at that!. In fact the cost is insignificant. It is about 0.006% to 0.03% of global GDP (discounted) to 2100."

Why stop at 2100? 2100 is only the start. How about projections to 2200 and 2300? Cost items include relocation of residents and writing off of capital infrastructure investment of most river deltas, London, Manhattan, Shanghai, well, most coastal cities really, most coral islands.

To that, we need to add losses due to agricultural disruption, as existing rural lands are rendered inappropriate for present uses, losses due to medical costs from disease translocation.

Your argument amounts to, "what has the future ever done for me?"

Mr Lang points out that this discussion is about "The widening gap between present emissions and the two-degree target", and goes on to note that "so called 'Progressives' have been preventing progress for 50 years."

I think Mr Lang is according "Progressives" rather more power than history suggests; they have not been preventing progress in Anglosphere nations for three decades or so, as outlined by Justin O'Brien's "Back to the Future: how global financial regulation has failed" ( http://theconversation.edu.au/back-to-the-future-how-global-financial-regulation-has-failed-11168), and "Reinventing the rationale for market intervention" (http://theconversation.edu.au/reinventing-the-rationale-for-market-intervention-11191).

That said, I am strongly critical of the "cap-and-trade" mechanisms for emission reduction that "progressives" seek through their global talkfests.

Clearly, what the world needs is wholesale replacement of fossil fuel use with alternative power generation (if this means Iran has nuclear power, then so be it).

The Kyoto mess and various emission trading schemes are all about discouraging production of CO2 emissions. The reason this doesn't work is, it's intrinsically unfair. Better by far to tax fossil fuel consumption (FFCT), then steadily increase the tax until fossil fuel consumption has ceased, and the entire world is using non-fossil alternatives.

International talks are a waste of time and money. Each nation is quite capable of taking its own action on climate change, by introducing its own consumption tax on on fossil fuel (FFCT). Recalcitrant nations that don't start cutting their emissions will find that their exports are penalised by border adjustment taxes for the carbon embodied in their manufacture, and for the carbon emissions of shipping them.
Ref 1) http://www.ceda.com.au/media/121695/a%20taxing%20debate%20%20the%20forgotten%20issues%20of%20climate%20policy.pdf
Ref 2) http://e360.yale.edu/feature/forget_kyoto_putting_a_tax_on_carbon_consumption/2590/
Ref 3) Dieter Helm, Economics, Oxford University "The Carbon Crunch: How We're Getting Climate Change Wrong--and How to Fix It"

... and yet the "progressive" side of politics remains wedded to the notion that the world's ecological future will be assured by letting derivative market participants extract more wealth from productive sectors of economies courtesy of emission trading schemes.

@Spiro Vlachos: Mr Vlachos, I note that your criticism of modelling in climate science seems based around James Hansen's 1988 endeavours. That was a quarter of a century ago.

There's a list of papers based on the CMIP5 generation of models, which will be feeding into IPCC AR5, at http://andyrussell.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/papers-based-on-cmip5-data/

Perhaps you'd like to cast your eye over one or two of them, and comment?

Cost competitive alternative to fossil fuels is achievable as a 'No regrets' policy.

By far the least cost way to reduce global emissions would be with a cost competitive alternative to fossil fuels. Just replacing coal fired electricity would avoid 20 Gt/a in 2035: http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/tablebrowser/#release=IEO2011&subject=3-IEO2011&table=13-IEO2011&region=0-0&cases=Reference-0504a_1630 That’s nearly half the global emissions from fossil fuels. True it is not feasible to do this by 2035, but it shows the magnitude of the saving that nuclear could provide, and would have done if development hadn’t been thwarted so badly for the past 50 years.

If nuclear power is allowed to be significantly cheaper than fossil fuels, then low emissions electricity will substitute for some gas for heating and some oil for land transport. That would mean nuclear power would displace more fossil fuels (and the associated fugitive emissions).

To make this possible we need small nuclear power plants. Large plants like the ones being built now are too expensive and there is too much investor risk in building them. They are also not suitable for small grids, like Australia’s. We need small plants that can be implemented incrementally.

In February 2012, President Obama approved funding for small, modular, factory-built, nuclear power plants. In November 2012, Department of Energy selected the first design to be supported through to commercialisation: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/26/nuclear-small-modular-reactors/1727001/ .

Once in commercial production, small, modular nuclear power plants could be built as fast as global demand dictates. And costs will come down – perhaps 20% per doubling of capacity (according to Rod Adams). That is, the price would be halved by the time 1.5 GW is commissioned and would continuing down to perhaps 25% of first unit cost by the time12 GW are commissioned (I accept this may be optimistic, I am trying to get the big picture concepts across).

There are 43 small nuclear power plant designs described here: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf33.html . The more that are commercialised the better. Competition improves the breed and reduces costs – just like it has done with commercial aircraft and air fares over the past 50 years.

To give a perspective of how fast production could be ramped up to meet demand, consider the case of another large and complex production. During WWII, the USA ramped up in just 18 months (1942-1943) to produce aircraft carriers in just 100 days. That is from first laying of the keel to the aircraft carrier being complete and fully loaded with weapons and aircraft: http://navalhistory.flixco.info/G/269245x269223/8330/a0.htm

Given that rate of production was achieved 70 years ago, small modular, factory built nuclear power plants like the first one approved for support by DOE http://www.uxc.com/smr/Library/Design%20Specific/mPower/Presentations/2012%20-%20Reactor%20Design%20Overview.pdf we can envisage that they could be produced at the rate required to meet demand. The cheaper they are the more the demand, and the more are produced the cheaper they will become.

If we want low emissions, I’d suggest this is where the rich world should be focusing its efforts.

"If nuclear power is allowed to be significantly cheaper than fossil fuels, then low emissions electricity will substitute for some gas for heating "

It should easily substitute for gas heating as long as heat-pumps achieve their reputed performance: http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/gas-industry-admits-electricity-cheaper

Peter Lang: "Hard to argue with facts ...". Even harder to argue with history.

Well, all nuclear plants are outgrowths of centralized governments and centralized thinking. Myself I'm no fan of centralization, as in international mega companies, 'owning' our common natural resources, and our politicians, in the end owning ourselves.

Their mode of solutions are exploiting, for shortsighted profits. That sort of thinking will lead to strife in all countries, at least where you still have people allowed to read and think.

But I also think we need bureaucracies to stabilize us as nations, presenting us incentives and ideas. But, they have to stay uncorrupted by power and greed to work as I see it.

And they will always use 'work' as the stick, and carrot, putting you into line. But we will need energy, and maybe molten salt reactors could work from a short time perspective, as some centuries? We need time now, and that time will come with a cost.

Regarding water and nuclear power: Almost all the water required for a nuclear plant is NOT required because it is nuclear. It's required because nuclear power generates steam to run a steam turbine ... just like a coal plant. And its the steam turbines that need the water regardless of whether the steam is being generated from solar thermal, coal or nuclear. And you can run ALL of these without cooling water at all if you are prepared to wear the lower efficiency of air cooling (about 1.5% of plant output is lost to drive fans).

David Arthur: "On that basis, what are we to make of dead certain, extreme severity risk? After all, continued fossil fuel use renders ecological disruption a dead certainty, to be avoided if at all possible."

Indeed, no-one ever bothers getting insurance to cover the risks of damage caused by emissions from fossil fuel burning power stations. It's only when the damage is blatantly obvious that anyone ever considers insurance. People might complain that the cost of insurance for nuclear power stations is fobbed off onto the government (no-one is stopping governments from charging for this insurance BTW) but then the cost of insurance for damage caused by fossil fuel burning is just fobbed off onto the rest of the world.

It's fair enough to consider the insurance issue but let's have some consistency.

Here's an insurance proposal you may like to consider. Let's suppose the renewable electricity industries guaranteed to displace coal fired power stations in 20 years ... completely. We could draw up a contract with huge penalty clauses for failure and the renewable industries would be wise to take out some insurance against the possibility. Who'd insure them?

Nobody.

If the insurance mechanism had a mechanism for credits, then
nuclear would be laughing. It saves many, many lives on a daily basis. Consider the ~1000 people working at the 4 plants (with 10 reactors) along the Japanese coast that got hit by the tsunami last year. Unlike many, many other people along the coast, those people didn't die (except for 3). Why doesn't the industry get an insurance credit of 1000 people? Similarly why doesn't the industry get a "clean air" credit of the many thousands of lives saved from coal pollution? and a medical credit for lives saved with cancer treatment? With diagnostic procedures?

And WTF have renewables done? France gets its electricity for 90 grams of CO2/kWh and Germany generates about 440 grams of CO2/kWh. This has been the case for a couple of decades and quite clearly, if other countries had followed the French lead, we wouldn't have quite the level of climate urgency we currently face. The anti-nuclear movement has cost us about 3 decades.

@Geoff Russell, who points out that it is entirely practical to operate thermal power stations without any external cooling water. Thanks for this, Geoff, a good point.

They've got air cooling at Kogan Creek on the Darling Downs; I'd have more confidence if I saw Australian authorities implementing air cooling more widely.

"I'd have more confidence if I saw Australian authorities implementing air cooling more widely."

I wouldn't imagine technical difficulty would be the problem.

David Boxall,

You said: “You might have more success denying history after those who've lived the history of nuclear power pass on. Given that Fukushima's so recent, that should be a half-century or so. By then, I trust that the obsolescence of nuclear will be so clear that nobody's foolish enough to advocate it.”

David, can you tell me how many fatalities so far are attributable to radiation or radioactive contamination from Fukushima? (hint: 0)

Can you tell me how many latent fatalities (i.e. in the future) are projected as a result of the Fukushima accident? (you can get these projections; have a go; you might learn something).

Now, to provide some context, can you tell me what are the equivalent figures (fatalities per TWh) for other electricity generation technologies? (Yes, for renewables too)?

You say “With nuclear, we dig stuff up, transport it somewhere for processing, then transport it somewhere else to generate power.”

Don’t you think the same applies for renewables? Don’t you realise the amount dug up, processed, manufactured, fabricated, constructed and transported between all these stages is an order of magnitude more for renewables than for nuclear? If not, why not? I’ve told you this in several previous comments? If you don’t believe me why don’t you look it up? Are you frightened by facts?

You say: “Extract, exploit and profit, that's what got us where we are today. Nice and familiar; no wonder conservatives are so comfortable with it.”

Oh yea. A loony Left rant. Why don’t you move to Russia, Cuba or North Korea if you think capitalism is so bad and communism is so much better?

You say: “With renewables, we build something and collect the energy that's already there.”

The energy density is very low. So the costs are high. Furthermore, the energy supply is intermittent and unreliable. We have no practical method of storing energy, so we need fossil fuel back up. That’s extra cost. The costs are huge. The capital cost of trunk transmission lines is around $1500/MW.km. I suspect that probably means nothing to you.

David Boxall,

"With nuclear, we dig stuff up, transport it somewhere for processing, then transport it somewhere else to generate power."

Peter Lang has indicated renewables use far more materials and involve far more transport of stuff around the place, but you might like to consider some actual numbers.

Ben Heard's recent report (with James Pang) is now available:

http://decarbonisesa.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/zco-final-report-21112012.pdf

It compares the Beyond Zero Emissions plan for Port Augusta with a nuclear option. Both plans (p.12) require about 600,000 tonnes of concrete, but the nuclear option only requires 35,000 tonnes of steel compared to 375,000 tonnes of steel for the renewables plan along with 85,000 tonnes of glass.

"it should level off at close to 9 billion in about 2050."

Which is an extrapolation and we should all know about the accuracy of extrapolations.

"This is a stunning achievement thanks to hard work by many people."

which doesn't include throwback conservative governments like the ones Australia had until at least 2007 with their bizarre "baby bonus".

"extrapolations (both linear and non-linear) are wonderful"

With words like that, smileys are not necessary.

Nope, that's just importing locust to new territories. We better fix it here and now first. don't expect our kind to be welcomed anywhere if we can't do that.

Why do people keep saying this (35 year doubling)? No longer true.

The number of children per woman has been dropping from a high of 4.9 in the 60s to about 2.3 now ... so it should level off at close to 9 billion in about 2050. This is a stunning achievement thanks to hard work by many people.

Thanks Yoron, you make an excellent point about the desirability of distributed rather than centralised power generation; as well as vastly increased flexibility, distributed power generation facilitates self-reliance and self-dependence, and limits access to the democracy-perverting rentier class that would otherwise directly follow from ownership of centralised generation.

Jane Manifold,

"What would it take on a global basis to limit warming to just 2 degrees?"

According to William Nordhaus (2008) “A Question of Balance” using a carbon pricing approach it would cost about $11.3 trillion (US 2005 $). Even on his figures that is more than the damages that would be avoided (Table 5-1 http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf ) .

However, in reality, the damages would not be avoided, because carbon pricing cannot work in the real world. Professor Ricahrd Tol acknowledged that here: http://judithcurry.com/2012/09/12/the-costs-of-tackling-or-not-tackling-anthropogenic-global-warming/#comment-239101 That was to my question here:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/09/12/the-costs-of-tackling-or-not-tackling-anthropogenic-global-warming/#comment-239089

“Here are some of the assumptions that underpin the carbon price cost-benefit analyses (grossly simplified):

• Negligible leakage (of emissions between countries)
• All emission sources are included (all countries and all emissions in each country)
• Negligible compliance cost
• Negligible fraud
• An optimal carbon price
• The whole world implements the optimal carbon price in unison
• The whole world acts in unison to increase the optimal carbon price periodically
• The whole world continues to maintain the carbon price at the optimal level for all of this century (and thereafter).

If these assumptions are not met, the net benefits estimated by Nordhaus cannot be achieved. As Nordhaus says, p198http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf :

“Moreover, the results here incorporate an estimate of the importance of participation for economic efficiency. Complete participation is important because the cost function for abatement appears to be highly convex. We preliminarily estimate that a participation rate of 50 percent instead of 100 percent will impose a cost penalty on abatement of 250 percent.”

In other words, if only 50% of emissions are captured in the carbon pricing scheme, the cost penalty for the participants would be 250%. The 50% participation could be achieved by, for example, 100% of countries participating in the scheme but only 50% of the emissions in total from within the countries are caught, or 50% of countries participate and 100% of the emissions within those countries are caught in the scheme (i.e. taxed or traded).

Given the above, we can see that the assumptions are theoretical and impracticable in the real world. To recognize this point, try to envisage how we could capture 100% of emissions from 100% of emitters in Australia (every cow, sheep, goat) in the CO2 pricing scheme, let alone expecting the same to be done across the whole world; e.g. China, India, Eretria, Ethiopia, Mogadishu and Somalia.

Therefore, we should be asking: what will be the cost of complying with the requirements when they are fully implemented to the standard that will eventually be required?

Given the above, why do you advocate a carbon price?

My suggested alternative to carbon pricing is what I believe is a ‘No regrets’ policy that could achieve the CO2 emissions reductions with net economic benefits rather than costs. The proposal is to remove the impediments that are preventing the world from having low-cost nuclear power. This approach would allow us to achieve greater CO2 emissions reductions, greater benefits and at lower cost.

Jane

You don't spell exactly what the 'what' you refer to is. What economic policy? what political response? what level of CO2 in the atmosphere?

Let me address the what level of CO2 in the atmosphere question first. The 2 DegC target has typically been linked to stabilising CO2 levels at 450ppm. Firstly this is a rather arbitrary figure scientifically. It assumes that futue temperatures are just driven by our CO2 emissions, and that other environmental factors won't kick in and drive further changes, out of our control.

What can deeper time science tell us?

Looking back to the peak of the ice age before this one, the Eemian. Temps were maybe 1/2 a degree warmer than today - but not what we expect a century or so from now. Sea level was 6-8 meters higher. Denmark didn't exist. Scandinavia was an island.

Looking back over the last 5 million years, CO2 levels, on average, of around 400ppm (roughly where we are today) corresponded to the complete melting of the West Antrarctic Ice Sheet.

If we go back 30 million years, CO2 levels of around 600 ppm corresponded with a world where there was no land ice - not even East Antarctica. Adjusting for the slow warming of the Sun over deep time, the corresponding CO2 level today that would produce the same result is around 520 ppm.

So the changes in human emissions needed to limit to 450 ppm if we are the only source of extra CO2 say that emissions have to start falling within a few years, and they need to be down to 20% or so of current levels by mid-century.

However, if some of the feedbacks that are a starting to emerge - rapid melting of the Arctic Sea Ice, declining snow cover, accelerating permafrost melt releasing CO2 & Methane - keep growing, then our actions need to become even more radical to counter these factors. And it will be time to consider Geo-Engineering answers as well.

And limiting to 2 Deg may still be bad - ask the citizens of Denmark how they feel about losing their country.

So what Economic Policy? Well we can do Carbon Taxes, and Cap & Trade etc. And they will be useful to some extent. But only so far. The hard thing we have to consider is that Economics simply won't be a sufficient tool to solve the problem. This is the paradigm that much of the world's leaders are stuck in. That ouractions can only ocur within economic boundaries.

Imagine.Winston Churchill is confronting not just the threat of a German Invasion. They actually invaded. Should he have restricted his actions to those that fit within economic parameters? If the treasury can afford itwe ill order more Spitfires from Submarine. What if Treasury can't afford it. What if Whitehall has been captured by the Germans. Does Winston say 'Sorry. No money left. We Surrender'?

Or does he say. 'I need to save the Nation. So sorry. Economics as usual is suspended. Submarine is nationalised and Spitfire production continues until we defeat the Nazi's or they destroy the Sitfire factory'

If economics can't solve the problem, do we need to push economics to one side for the duration of the crisis, until we have solved the problem.

So what do we need to do? Declare a planet-wide state of emergency. Institute a crash program that suspends markets, introduces some rationing and restrictions, warp-speeds the transition to a decarbonised economy, ensures that the weak and the poor are protected during the transition, if needed curtails the freedom of the afluent to hold ontotheir affluence. Then when the transitionhas been completed, begin the restarting of a new, transformed economy. Carbon free and sustainable.

Do I think that is likely. Lets not be foolish here. Of course it isn't. So instead we will stumble along, do a bit here and there and wait till the crisis really hits. Then we will panic and start blaming each other.

That won't be pretty..

1 High-cost GHG mitigation polices are not justified – there is a better way

1.1 Man-made catastrophic climate change is very unlikely
Because:
1.1.1 Earth has been much warmer in the past, and life thrived
1.1.2 Life thrives when warmer, struggles when colder (AR4 Chapter 6)
1.1.3 The planet has been warmer for most of the time multi-cell life has thrived on Earth (past 550 million years). There has been no ice at the poles for 75% of this time.
1.1.4 Sea level rise is not catastrophic. It is a trivial cost over 90 years. It is estimated at less than 0.03% of global GDP over that time.
1.1.5 The biosphere can accommodate rapid global warming.
1.1.6 Rapid geological global warming & cooling was not due to CO2.

1.2 High-cost mitigation policies – such as carbon pricing and renewable energy - will not be sustainable politically
Because:
1.2.1 Risk of CO2 causing catastrophe is no greater than other risks that are not being mitigated
1.2.2 High-cost mitigation policies will harm world economy – i.e., harm human wellbeing
1.2.3 Benefits of the policies are uncertain / not demonstrable
1.2.4 Not a robust solution
1.2.5 Subject to political interference

1.3 Cost competitive alternative to fossil fuels, i.e. ‘No Regrets’ policies, are best way to cut CO2 emissions
Because:
1.3.1 Smallest temperature increase, lowest damage cost, lowest abatement cost
1.3.2 Global decarbonisation rate, required verses current
1.3.3 Decarbonisation rate requires substitution for fossil fuels

1.4 ‘No Regrets’ policies are achievable and can do the job
Because:
1.4.1 Cost competitive alternative to fossil fuels is achievable as a 'No regrets' policy

See some info at the next level here:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/12/01/open-thread-weekend-4/#comment-273006

'No Regret's' policy justification starts here:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/12/01/open-thread-weekend-4/#comment-273006

Description of an major component of 'No regrets' policy starts here:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/12/01/open-thread-weekend-4/#comment-273009