The false dichotomy of climate change remediation
The false dichotomy of climate change remediation
Years ago, I had a Facebook friend from my hometown who was a big enthusiast of molten salt nuclear reactor technology. He wasn’t a scientist or engineer, but his dad had worked on MSRs in the ‘60s, and he fetishized his dad’s memory. As some point, I mentioned that we had installed rooftop solar on our house, and he began attacking me. Rather than see MSRs and solar as two parallel paths towards decarbonization, he was convinced that solar was the enemy of MSR technology–a false dichotomy. Needless to say, his personal attacks ended our friendship.
Nowadays, it looks like carbon capture/geoengineering is being vilified as the enemy of conservation/renewable energy on the path to reducing atmospheric CO2. This is both absurd and dangerous.
Look, the world is in no danger of ending its addiction to fossil fuels any time soon. To do so would mean (1) the loss of wealth in industrialized economies and (2) that industrialized national economies would have to commit to long-term second-class status.
“. . . net zero and even the Paris agreement have been built around the perceived need to keep burning fossil fuels, at least in the short term. Not do so would threaten economic growth, given that fossil fuels still supply over 80% of total global energy. The trillions of dollars of fossil fuel assets at risk with rapid decarbonisation have also served as powerful brakes on climate action.
“The way to understand this doublethink: that we can avoid dangerous climate change while continuing to burn fossil fuels – is that it relies on the concept of overshoot. The promise is that we can overshoot past any amount of warming, with the deployment of planetary-scale carbon dioxide removal dragging temperatures back down by the end of the century.
“This not only cripples any attempt to limit warming to 1.5°C but risks catastrophic levels of climate change as it locks us into energy and material-intensive solutions which for the most part exist only on paper.”
By this reasoning, carbon capture/geoengineering technology is the wishful justification for doing nothing to reduce fossil fuel consumption. I’ve lived long enough to see wishful thinking transformed to reality by science and technology. I was born before Sputnik and Telstar and lived to see men walk on the moon. I grew up reading about a 2-way wrist radio-TV in Dick Tracy comics and now carry around a cell phone that does all that and more. I grew up reading maps to get around in unfamiliar places and now use GPS. My fellow grad students and I speculated about a time in the distant future when the human genome might be sequenced; six years ago, I got my own genome sequenced for $200. Just because something seems far-fetched now doesn’t mean it can’t become commonplace.
Experience teaches me not to sneer at technology. Yes, Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima serve as warning for how technology can be dangerous. But technology is our only hope to avert climate change: technology to replace fossil fuel with renewables and technology to remove the CO2 already in the air with a half-life of 120 years if nothing is done. Let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. It’s too late for false dichotomies. We need *both* more conservations/green energy and more carbon capture/geoengineering if we are to succeed against a short timeline.
many technological fixes for climate change
Another particularly instructive example is the other Amazon, the Amazon Rain Forest. When reforestation surpasses deforestation… Well I will be long dead by then, but one can only hope we learn something along the way. All of the above goes far beyond unproven technology and even beyond proven technology. The simple arithmetic violates our priors and most of all the interests of the ownership class. Unfortunately failing forwards may mean the death of billions before the end of this century. The risk of tipping points that cascade into sudden catastrophic climate change are understood from the past buried within geological formations yet inconceivable in our future as a matter of preferences rather than science.
@rc,
Yep. Reforestation is another form of carbon capture. The problem is political will, not technology.
The lack of Manhattan Project-level global investment in nuclear power is exhibit A in the case that humanity is not serious about tackling carbon emissions.
De-carbonizing base load utility power is extremely low hanging fruit that offers radical reductions in emissions without de-industrialization, lifestyle changes, or (proportionately) large investments by individuals in new equipment.
Converting base load to nuclear also means that carbon recapture only needs to be implemented for emissions from peaking plants and difficult-to-convert sources, such as transportation. This is much less of a moonshot than doing carbon capture for all existing emissions.
Despite the advantages, no country is willing to take nuclear conversion as seriously as it should.
@nobody,
” . . . carbon recapture only needs to be implemented for emissions from peaking plants and difficult-to-convert sources, such as transportation.”
There’s a company that’s targeted over-the-road trucking for carbon capture:
I am oft reminded of the conclusion of one the books of Isaac Asimov’s original robot series: the robots opening the valves that so irradiate the Earth as to drive mankind to the stars, leaving the planet of origin an uninhabitable wasteland ~ the stuff of myth and middle-class pontification over port wine
We’ve had this conversation before, right here: who’s going to take care of the toxic waste for the 250,000 or so years it takes to deteriorate … ?
@Ten,
Storage and Disposal of Radioactive Waste
TB,
The disposal problem is much larger without the use of breeder reactors to recycle spent fuel. The problem with breeder reactors is that they create weapons grade fissionable Pu and U-235 isotopes in private hands that lack the military apparatus to safeguard transportation and storage. What we really need to do to make nuclear power safe and effective is to nationalize the program under a federal agency in collaboration with research university oversight. The for-profit system makes everything more dangerous, especially in the consolidation driven anti-competitive corporate environment facilitated by the investors capital gains tax preference. Power generation and distribution is a natural monopoly due to infrastructure costs at least in its regionally aggregated form (e.g., other than small scale private solar or wind). Without competition then for-profit seeks margins via cost cutting; a very poor incentive for R&D investment along with insufficient scale for security.
rc weakley:
It has been a long time since I have read you at AB.
The likelihood of federalization of nuclear energy production is not so good. The same old and stale arguments over costs and efficiency will arise with a claim of private enterprise being better at it due to profitability, etc. I agree with you on a federal agency being in charge. They would be more reactive to the needs of the nation as opposed to profitability.