Today is World Environment Day, and it’s a good day to celebrate past achievements and point out the errors of the doomsayers who’ve long been over-represented in the environment debate. The central message of the doomsday school is simple:
we can’t protect the environment unless we are willing to accept a radical reduction in our standard of living.
Although they agree on this point, they disagree radically about its implications, dividing into two opposed groups[1]
* Deep Greens who say that we should radically reduce our standard of living and protect the environment
* Dark Browns who say that we should do nothing to protect the environment because to do so will wreck our standards of living
Experience since the first World Environment Day in 1972 suggests that neither of these positions is true.
On the one hand, claims that we are bound to run out of resources, made most vigorously by the Club of Rome in the 1970s, have repeatedly been refuted by experience. Most natural resources have actually become cheaper, but even in cases where prices have risen, such as that of oil, the economic impact has been marginal, relative to the long-run trend of increasing income. The recent increase in the price of oil, for example, might, if sustained, reduce income by about 1 per cent, or around 4 months of economic growth.
At this point, doomsayers usually point to a growing world population and the increased demands on resources that will arise when people in China and India aspire to Western living standards. The tone isn’t quite as apocalyptic as in the 1970s, when the Paddock brothers were advocating letting Bangladesh starve, but the analysis often hasn’t caught up with the data. Population growth peaked (in absolute terms – the percentage growth rate has been declining for decades) around 1990. Current UN estimates have a population of 9 billion in 2050, but if the declining fertility in wealthy countries is followed elsewhere this will probably turn out to be an overestimate.
In most respects, economic growth is consistent with improvements in the environment rather than degradation. Wealthy countries are unwilling to put up with polluted air and water and have the technical and scientific resources to fix them.
On the other hand, the Brown doomsayers have an equally bad record. Time after time, they’ve opposed environmental improvements as too costly, repeatedly overestimating the costs and underestimating the benefits. The debate over CFCs and the ozone layer provides a good example, since it was one of the first issues to be addressed on a global scale. The doomsayers repeatedly attacked both the science behind the ban on CFCs and the economics of the policy, claiming it would cause massive economic damage. In reality, even without taking account of health benefits, it seems likely that the CFC ban yielded positive net economic benefits. Most of the leading participants in this debate (Fred Singer, Sallie Baliunas, Julian Simon, Tom DeLay, the Marshall and Oregon Institutes) are familiar to anyone who’s followed the global warming debate, except that Bjorn Lomborg has taken Simon’s place.
All of this leads up to the one big remaining problem that of global warming (and the inter-related debate about Peak Oil). The doomsayers on both sides are out in force on this one. For the Deep Greens, it’s the one remaining chance to achieve support for radical change. For the Dark Browns, this is the real fight, for which the CFC debate was just a rehearsal.
All the evidence, though, is that we can reduce emissions to levels consistent with stabilising global CO2 levels over the next few decades at a cost of around 5 per cent of GDP – a few years worth of economic growth at the most. Quite possibly, as in previous cases, this wll turn out to be an overestimate.
fn1. Both groups engage in a fair bit of wishful thinking about their position, the Greens arguing that we’ll all be happier in the long run and the Browns claiming that the environmental problems will solve themselves if we ignore them.
John Quiggin 
Damien said – “arguably Kyoto was the global warming equivalent of the Montreal accord for ozone, until the US president pulled us out of it.”
Bil Clinton signed the bloody thing. He nor GWB didn’t pull the US out. The Congress and Senate didn’t ratify the damn thing – big difference.
Gordon, it’s pretty simple. Energy is like most products; it’s cheaper if you make it in bulk. By the way, this applies to wind power as well; most of the reduction in wind power cost is simply through building bigger turbines.
“Energy is like most products; it’s cheaper if you make it in bulk.”
Exactly. If you think otherwise, try running your house off a diesel generator or two and compare your fuel bill with your normal mains electric bill.
I think PV is less affected by bulk benefits than many other sources. Heat engines in particular probably work better at a large scale; easier to not lose heat, and to use a large temperature gradient. And distributed solar has some robustness: if we turn Arizona into a solar plant, and then there’s a rare statewide storm, well, oops.
But the distributed PVs would still need a grid to be really useful. Clouds in one place? Get your electricity from somewhere else, and trade yours some other day when they’re cloudy and you’re not. People talk about wind and solar being good for Third Worlders who don’t have grids, and that’s true, but in the long run they’ll want/need grids, or else lots of power storage at various places. Grids basically allow easy trading of electricity and trade is good, unless externalities are being dumped out somewhere.
Oh, and hydrogen isn’t an energy source (unless you mean as used by fusion.) “The hydrogen economy” sould use hydrogen as an energy carrier, for trade or transportation.
Robert Merkel – “Gordon, it’s pretty simple. Energy is like most products; it’s cheaper if you make it in bulk. By the way, this applies to wind power as well; most of the reduction in wind power cost is simply through building bigger turbines.”
This is true up to a point. Thermal power stations are a mature technology that benefits from 200 years of learning and are better big. Nuclear power is much the same. Gas turbines are just as efficient whether they are 100Kw or 400MW. The drop in prices of wind is more that the technology is maturing rather than bigger. The push for large wind turbines is so that for a given area more power can be put in with fewer wind turbines minimising the footprint. It is not necessarily cheaper to install 10 5MW turbines over 100 500kW turbines as the smaller turbines will be much cheaper to put in however the wind farm will be smaller and easier get past authorities.
Renewable power is very useful in small installations. I would never run a diesel generator for all my power. I would have solar PV and wind with generator backup. This way my electricity bills would be nearly zero once I had amortised the purchase price. The PV panels will last a minimum of 25 years and more realisically 50 or 60 years so there will be plenty of payback.
For 3rd world installations a grid would be useful however that is just wishing for the moon. The difficulties of maintaining a large scale power grid in some areas is just so great that it is much better just to put up with occasional blackouts.
Energy from PV is also cheaper if you make it in bulk, but in this case it is bulk manufacturing of the panels that brings the cost down. Actually installing all the panels at one site makes relatively little difference.
I don’t have the reference to hand, but I recall hearing something recently about the Chinese setting up some very big PV panel production plants to gain economies of scale.
Robert Merkel Says:
Robert, this simply isn’t true. Manufacturing costs may fall as a technology matures and the scale of the manufacturing increases, but this doesn’t tell us anything useful about electricity costs.
Take another form of energy for example: the hot water that we use in our kitchens and bathrooms. Is it cheaper to make it in bulk? Or is it cheaper to make it locally?
The answer in Australia is that it’s cheaper to make it locally. In some overseas cities, though, they do have centrally produced hot water (because it’s a byproduct from thermal power stations).
In short, your generalisation about scale is incorrect when applied to energy.
Damien writes, “Even if breakeven is achieved, there’s no guarantee that fusion would be competitive with the modern grid. The fuel is cheap, but the capital cost is high — even if the fuel is free, if it cost $10 billion to build a gigawatt plant then it wouldn’t be competitive (with solar, let alone coal).”
You’re right that if the capital cost is too high, fusion technology will not be competitive, even if fuel costs are essentially zero. And you’re right that $10 billion for a gigawatt plant would be too expensive. That works out to $10,000 per kilowatt. In fact, Vincent Page of GE calculated that fusion will not be cost competitive if the capital cost is above $6,000 per kilowatt.
But where I think you’re very wrong is when you say, “…the capital cost is high.” I think it will be possible to build certain fusion plants at much less than the $6,000 per kilowatt that’s needed to make it competitive with coal-fired and natural gas-fired plants.
I’m particularly impressed with the concept of dense plasma focus fusion. It fuses hydrogen and boron to helium. This eliminates the production of radioactive byproducts, and even (essentially) neutrons. It also produces a charged particle stream that can be run through a particle “decelerator” to produce electricity directly…without need of a steam turbine and generator.
I wouldn’t be surprised if fully mature dense plasma focus fusion plants could be built at a capital cost of under $2000/kW. The electricity costs of such a plant would be well under any existing method of electrical generation.
“Proponents of fusion, hydrogen and indeed nuclear as the only viable low-pollution future sources of energy seem to be limiting their thinking to the current pattern of a small number of very large power generators linked by large grids.”
That is completely false. Alternatives to tokamak fusion (e.g., dense plasma focus fusion) are attractive specifically because they can get completely AWAY from the need for a centralized grid. (In contrast, wind power needs a tremendously robust grid system to carry the electrical energy from remote locations to large cities.)
I live in Durham, NC. I’d guess the electrical needs of Durham to be on the order of 50 – 100 megaWatts (year-round average). That need could easily be supplied by 2-10 focus fusion plants operating right in the middle of the city or its neighborhoods. A 20 MW dense plasma fusion plant would be approximately the size of a 2-car garage:
http://www.focusfusion.org/now.html#fre
In contrast, supplying Durham with wind power would require close to 100 wind turbines like this one:
You’re dreaming if you think such a turbine could be sited anywhere in Durham or its suburbs.
Mark – “You’re right that if the capital cost is too high, fusion technology will not be competitive, even if fuel costs are essentially zero.”
Hang on a bit here that is a pretty big assumption. We are not talking proton – proton fusion here where the fuel would essentially be water. This is, as far as I know, a pretty specialised fuel that would have to be processed like any other. Boron fuel pellets do not grow on trees.
Mark – “That is completely false. Alternatives to tokamak fusion (e.g., dense plasma focus fusion) are attractive specifically because they can get completely AWAY from the need for a centralized grid. (In contrast, wind power needs a tremendously robust grid system to carry the electrical energy from remote locations to large cities.)”
This is not completely true. Esperance in Western Australia gets 22% of its power from wind in concert with a gas turbine power plant. Esperance is completely isolated from the greater WA grid. Also wind power is not the only form of renewable. A combination of wind, solar thermal, home solar PV and storage in transport can provide the same power NOW as the promise of dense fusion later.
Nuclear power alone does not give any answers to the problem of transport emissions that account for 50 or 60% of all greenhouse emissions. An integrated energy plan including replacing fossil fuel cars with electric transport that acts as peak storage eliminates transport emissions along with electricity generation emissions.
Thanks for reply, JQ. As I acknowledged, air quality is one of the v.few improving (well, mostly improving) envirnmental indicators. A very few of the many other measures in the 2001 SoE report that give less support for apathy-inducing-optimism include..
—
Secondary salinity
“The NLWRA review concludes that Australia has a continuing and increasing dryland salinity problem because of the scale of land use changes needed, the lag time between implementation and resulting environmental change, and the lack of viable options for farmers to implement recommended land use changes. This last point is predicated on the assumption that landholders will bear the major cost of implementing the needed change, and that the speed of change will be governed by consultative and voluntary actions.” ..
http://www.deh.gov.au/soe/2001/land/land04-2.html#areaaffected
Inland waters
The turbidity of many inland waters regularly exceeds guidelines for the protection of ecosystems. This includes the following areas: in all catchments of the Murray-Darling Basin except the Condamine in Queensland; coastal catchments of Melbourne and those immediately west to the Victoria-South Australia border; Sydney and surrounding catchments; central and mid-north Queensland coastal catchments; and Brisbane region. ..
The riparian vegetation of many inland waters has been cleared or is degraded. As riparian vegetation plays an important role in filtering catchment run-off and maintaining stream bank stability (i.e. reducing soil erosion), its poor health in many areas is contributing to nutrient enrichment. ..
http://www.deh.gov.au/soe/2001/inland/water02-2a.html#fig15
Soil eroision
Approximately 1.6 billion tonnes of soil are lost to wind and water erosion every year in Australia. The land use with the highest rate of soil erosion is intensive cropping such as vegetables, flowers and tobacco cultivation. However, they only contribute less than 5% of total soil loss. Native pasture lands are the source of 60% of the total soil loss.
http://www.deh.gov.au/soe/2001/inland/water02-2a.html#fig13
http://www.deh.gov.au/soe/2001/land/land03-1.html#numberofnew
—
This in five minutes of cut’n’paste, and we both know i could bust your comments page buffers with evidence of our worsening situation. We have been able to evade paying for our damages for decades thanks to cheap oil energy (fertilise more, plough more, move west, add NPK, etc etc), sadly we can bludge no longer as oil supply has peaked and is declining (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t14.xls ), and a monsterous flock of angry chickens is heading for our roost. Delusions of good stewardship are luxuries we can no longer afford.
Hi Ender,
You wrote, “Hang on a bit here that is a pretty big assumption. We are not talking proton – proton fusion here where the fuel would essentially be water. This is, as far as I know, a pretty specialised fuel that would have to be processed like any other. Boron fuel pellets do not grow on trees.”
One thing that needs to be considered is the mind-bogglingly smaller mass requirements of fusion, versus conventional chemical reactions. I always forget the exact numbers (and they depend on some assumptions, like conversion efficiencies), but a reasonable approximation is that fusion requires a million times less mass than conventional chemical reactions. So while a 1000 MW coal-fired plant might require 3 million tons of coal annually, a 1000 MW hydrogen-boron plant would require only 3 tons (3,000 kg) of hydrogen and boron in an entire year of operation.
In short, even if boron is very expensive, the fuel cost (compared to natural gas or coal) should be very small. Here’s a paper on production of decaborane, which is the final fuel that will be used in the dense plasma focus fusion experiments planned in Chile. (Chile! A country with less than 5% of the U.S. population, and less than half the income per capita. Unbelievable!)
Less expensive production of decaborane
Ummm … who’s dreaming here? Wind turbines exist, fusion doesn’t.
Hi Ender,
You wrote, concerning my comment that wind power requires a robust electrical grid, “This is not completely true. Esperance in Western Australia gets 22% of its power from wind in concert with a gas turbine power plant. Esperance is completely isolated from the greater WA grid.”
Heh, heh, heh! You Aussies need to get out more! 😉
In case you hadn’t noticed, Australia is a phenomenally sparsely populated country. I was thinking of the United States (which is itself not very densely populated, compared to India, China, or Western Europe).
In the United States, virtually all the demand is on the East and West coasts. In order for wind to supply any significant portion of U.S. electrical power, the electricity would have to be pumped to the coasts from the central part of the country. Or perhaps from the oceans offshore.
But the simple fact is that no medium-sized city (e.g. Durham, NC, population approximately 200,000) can be supplied with all–or even a substantial fraction–of its electrical power needs from wind power located within the city or even county in which its located. And don’t even think about a really big city like New York or Los Angeles.
In contrast, focus fusion plants that could supply ALL the electrical power of Durham, or even New York or Los Angeles, could be located entirely within the cities.
Regarding transport emissions…fusion is also the best way to meet that problem. The fusion plants can be located within the cities, and provide the hydrogen or natural gas right in the cities. There would be no need for nationwide distribution systems.
Mark
From the Focus Fusion website:
“Decaborane presently costs $10 per gram which translates to 0.06 cents/kWh…”
http://www.bigbangneverhappened.org/BusPlanrev.doc
Mark
Mark – “In the United States, virtually all the demand is on the East and West coasts. In order for wind to supply any significant portion of U.S. electrical power, the electricity would have to be pumped to the coasts from the central part of the country. Or perhaps from the oceans offshore.”
I do not really see the problem here – there are already huge distributers in place shipping electricity all over your country. Linking up to these would be trivial. Your Midwest is the Saudi Arabia of wind energy.
“In contrast, focus fusion plants that could supply ALL the electrical power of Durham, or even New York or Los Angeles, could be located entirely within the cities.”
You are perhaps forgetting that fusion power is very likely to be a base load supplier. Given the nature of confinement and thermal power output it is unlikely that it will be a quick reacting power source. In this case it cannot supply all the power. You would still need a peaking power source. In this cars with batteries are your best bet.
So how about this. Start now with PVs, wind,solar thermal and transport storage and continue the excellent research into fusion. When fusion is ready it can be integrated into the smart grid as baseload with renewables and cars/trucks supplying the peak needs. This way you have your peaking power in place and a smart grid to interact with.
Remember also only a functioning economy can possibly afford the cost of fusion research. If the worst case scenerios of peak oil and climate change happen and major economies suffer then fusion research will collapse with them. To ensure the future of fusion research you must ensure that these problems are dealt with now and not left. 50 years or even 20 years when the most optimistic pundits think fusion reactors might be commercial may be to late for the world’s economy.
Liam, I think it’s fair to assume that I know a good deal more about salinity and land degradation than you, having worked and published on these topics for the last 25 years. While there are serious problems (as the SoE Report points out) they are being addressed, and the result is not one of uniform decline by any means.
Erosion is probably better controlled now than at any time in the last 100 years or so. Extractions from the Great Artesian Basin have been controlled. Most importantly, extractions from the Murray-Darling Basin were capped a decade ago, and are likely to be reduced once the government gets serious about that National Water Initiative. Salinity in the Murray has been stabilised and again, is likely to be reduced once the NWI is made to work properly.
Some problems, like dryland salinity and soil acidification are more intractable. But there are management responses available, and we are getting better at working out what to do.
These things didn’t happen by magic, and I’m not advocating complacency. But the kind of doomsayer mentality that asserts that, despite all we’ve done, everything is getting worse all the time is, in the end, an invitation to despair.
Interesting bit on Radio National this morning. Apparently, in the US the popularity of nuclear power rises the closer you move to a plant, even amongst those not working there. Over 80% of the people living within 10 miles of a plant support it being there.
I wonder if this is adverse selection (those approving of plants move towards them) or some other effect. Comments?
.
On other points – Ender, there is a reasonable loss of power for every kilometre that power is transmitted. I will not dredge out my old physics text to get the exact formula, but the losses moving the variable and unreliable power from a wind or solar plant to a city possibly thousands of kilometres away would be considerable. Until we get economical, environmentally sound room temperature superconducters these losses must be factored in to the cost of having your power plants that far away.
.
Mark,
Until someone (anyone) manages to get a stable fusion reaction up and running we cannot seriously consider it as a feasible power source. A good target of research dollars yes, but not a saviour (yet).
People might be interested in the World Alliance for Distributed Energy (WADE) site here.
The Rocky Mountain Institute library of energy-related downloads is here.
“I wonder if this is adverse selection (those approving of plants move towards them) or some other effect. Comments?”
Perhaps the converse: those disapproving of nuclear plants move away.
Andrew – “On other points – Ender, there is a reasonable loss of power for every kilometre that power is transmitted. I will not dredge out my old physics text to get the exact formula, but the losses moving the variable and unreliable power from a wind or solar plant to a city possibly thousands of kilometres away would be considerable.”
What do you think the recently completed trans Bass Strait power line is for. http://www.nationalgrid.com.au/document.php?objectID=125
How about some offshore or floating wind farms feeding power into this line. Bass Strait is about the best wind resource in the world.
We already transport electricity thousands of kilometers without a second thought. Wind/solar is not unreliable as you insinuate. It just has different parameters that need to be taken into account. Coal plants and even nuclear plants need spinning reserves in case a generator drops out without warning as does happen. In this sense they are as unreliable as renewable power. With advanced weather prediction software, renewable power becomes reasonably predictable and can be bought quite easlily on a half hour quoting system.
http://www.djc.com/news/en/11146933.html
A combination of solar thermal and wind power makes it less and less likely that there will not be some renewable power available.
SJ,
Empirically, it is cheaper to buy electricity off the grid than make your own in pretty much every densely populated area of the world.
While gas turbines may be around the same efficiency above a certain minimum size, the capital cost goes down for big plants over small ones.
Ender makes some interesting points regarding the optimal sizing of wind turbines, but if you look at the figures large grid-connected wind turbines beat the pants off small microturbines for cost – not to mention that large-scale turbines are optimally sited, locally based microturbines may not necessarily be. His correction on the optimal sizing of turbines appears to be correct, though; it’s not a simple case of bigger=better, but the optimal size still appears to be much bigger than that desirable for an individual house.
PV solar is about the only technology where the benefits of scale do not really apply. But that’s so expensive as to not be worth taking seriously, particularly as a replacement for baseload power.
It’s not an ironclad rule. But it’s close enough for the purposes of argument.
Ender,
290 km is not the same as 2900km. They are also transporting fairly stable baseload hydro sourced power that does not vary as much.
AFAIK, there are not many powerlines of any type transporting power thousands of kilometres (I am not claiming to be an expert so feel free to provide examples where I am wrong). Where the lines are very long it is normally in a grid with multiple power stations feeding into the grid.
.
All I am saying is that these have to be calculated and allowed for, not that this stops the whole thing dead.
Andrew – “Where the lines are very long it is normally in a grid with multiple power stations feeding into the grid.”
But that is exactly the configuration that renewable power stations would have.
“All I am saying is that these have to be calculated and allowed for, not that this stops the whole thing dead.”
Yes this is correct and is where storage comes in to stabilise the power fluctuations. The massive storage potential of parked cars with large batteries means that any grid will have a large store of power to draw on to stablise it. This is good news for renewables. This tends to mitigate somewhat the potential instability of long power lines. A lot of power however will be generated locally from home and business PV panels.
Back to Doomsayer v. Doomsayer (or was that Spy v. Spy (or Kramer v. Kramer?)?).
I have a new (for me) conclusion. This whole thing comes down to collectivists vs individualists.
The individualists do treat global warming as an “inconvenient truth” as Mr Gore likes to describe it, but like any “inconvenience”, they just want a quick fix and be done with it. Hence the attraction of nuclear – it is probably the easiest solution that fits in with current infrastructure.
The collectivists treat global warming as proof that they have been right all along: humanity can’t be left to its own devices otherwise it will screw up. We must put the brakes on now, all pull together, and control those free markets that so unjustly (to the collectivists) bestow wealth disproportionately on those who drive improvements in our living standards.
Nothing riles an individualist more than a collectivist who has never achieved anything more than a well-paying government job telling him what to do. And nothing riles a collectivist more than an individualist getting rich and enjoying himself.
We’ll never agree with one another, but I know what I’d rather be.
That’s an easy game Dogz.
Nothing annoys a collectivist more than an individualist chucking his crap over the neighbour’s fence and then sending the neighbour the bill for rubbish removal.
And further, nothing annoys a real individualist more than a pseudo-individualist getting the local council to chuck his crap over the neighbour’s fence. And when the neighbour complains, the pseudo-individualist accuses the neighbour of hating private enterprise.
The real individualist is the victim here.
I don’t think you are a real individualist Dogz.
“Nothing riles an individualist more than a collectivist who has never achieved anything more than a well-paying government job telling him what to do. And nothing riles a collectivist more than an individualist getting rich and enjoying himself.” Dogz
A grossly simplistic and false dichotomy, straight out of Hardcore Ideology Central.
Try again.
Someone should do a study: what percentage of lefties work for the government? What’s the corresponding figure for right-wingers? I suspect the right is heavily subsidizing the left.
Someone should do a study: what percentage of righties are selfish, off-the-chart crazy ****ers? What’s the corresponding figure for people who manage to hold down steady jobs in government?
Mark Bahner: I finally got around to reading the report you linked to (‘Focus Fusion: 2 MW Electricity Generation Facility Development), and I grant you that this is a very exciting development, quite possibly the big breakthrough that fusion has been looking for. If it works then our energy problems are over, and possibly quite soon.
I hope they get all the funding they need.
Thanks for the info, it made my day.
Seeker writes,
“Mark Bahner: I finally got around to reading the report you linked to (’Focus Fusion: 2 MW Electricity Generation Facility Development), and I grant you that this is a very exciting development, quite possibly the big breakthrough that fusion has been looking for. If it works then our energy problems are over, and possibly quite soon.
I hope they get all the funding they need.
Thanks for the info, it made my day.”
🙂 You’re welcome. But a few comments:
1) I used to work for a small firm selling their inventions (this was air pollution control equipment). From that experience, I can guarantee you that inventions always look exciting, before one actually collects data on them. 😉 When the data are actually collected, one sees what a bloody slog it’s going to be, getting from the dream to an actual commercial piece of equipment.
2) I do *not* want the Focus Fusion or any of the fusion people to get “all the funding they need,” if that means funding to study their devices. Many others here have commented that fusion “research” should be funded. I strongly disagree. That’s been a large part of the problem with fusion to this point, in my opinion. Research has been funded; *results* have not been funded.
What I’d like to see are a set of fusion “technology prizes,” similar to the Ansari Space Prize. I previously gave a top-of-the-head example:
a) Five prizes of $10 million each for generating 10 fusion watts for 1 hour, within a factor of 10 of breakeven.
b) Five prizes of $50 million each for generating 100 fusion watts for 1 day, within a factor of 4 of breakeven.
c) Three prizes of $100 million each for generating 1000 fusion watts for 1 week, within a factor of 2 of breakeven.
d) Three prizes of $1 billion each for generating 1 megaWatt by fusion, for one year, at at least 10 percent greater than breakeven.
Such prizes are far superior, in my mind, to merely funding fusion research. For one thing, they are open to anyone. They also force researchers to focus on important issues. (Few people will fund $200 million in research to obtain a $100 million prize.) Finally, they reward ***results***. That’s the key.
I don’t know whether focus fusion will work (i.e., achieve breakeven, and produce electricity less expensively than other technologies). Even Eric Learner, the head of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics admits he doesn’t know.
If he DOES get focus fusion to work, and produce electricity much less expensively than other technologies, I want him to be rewarded. If he can’t get it to work, as a taxpayer, I don’t want to pay him anything. That’s the beauty of technology prizes. If the goals can’t be achieved, the government pays nothing.
3) I do agree that if focus fusion works at a level even close to what Eric Lerner thinks it’s capable of, it is the biggest invention in energy since…well, fire, basically.
4) One thing that I find immensely troubling, is that I’m virtually certain that there will be a way to make focus fusion into a bomb. And if Eric Lerner is right, the cost will be such that even a rich individual (e.g. Osama bin Laden) will be able to afford to make some bombs. There are currently more than 6.5 billion people on earth. Suppose the richest 65 million–or even 6.5 million, or even 6,500–of them can afford a fusion bomb. I can easily envision how that might make inexpensive fusion more a nightmare than a dream.
Mark
P.S. On the other hand, as an engineer, my mind is simply boggled at the coolness of the possibility of terraforming Mars, or Jupiter’s or Saturn’s moons. Such terraforming will *only* be possible with inexpensive controlled fusion.
Casting things as “individualist vs. collectivist” fails immediately; that’s only two categories and jquiggin correctly identified three: the Deep Greens, Dark Browns, and concerned optimists.
Pure individualism works best when individuals have the option to not affect each other. That doesn’t work well anymore. I think “individualists” (I consider myself one, but am not so dogmatic as to deny evidence) like to deny that humans are big enough to affect the Earth because they recognize that would force more collective choices. If we can affect the climate, one way or another, that raises the question of whether we should, and in what direction. Pure individualism wouldn’t work on a spaceship, which has to go in some direction, or a building with central air, and we’re turning Earth from a frame we happen to live in into a spaceship or big building with central air.
As far as right/left smugness, behold:
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2004/09/red_states_feed.html
The Democratic US states tend to pay taxes, the Republican ones tend to collect government handouts.
As far as right/left smugness, behold:
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2004/09/red_states_feed.html
The Democratic US states tend to pay taxes, the Republican ones tend to collect government handouts.
Ho hum, that also reads as a list of rich urban states vs poor rural states. The poor farmers vote republican (god is a republican), and the poor blacks just don’t vote.
BTW, I’m an individualist but I wouldn’t vote republican in the US. Your Democrats are already well to the right of our conservative party – I’d be satisfied with them. We don’t have the god problem in Australia.
Dogz – “I have a new (for me) conclusion. This whole thing comes down to collectivists vs individualists.”
This sort if thing is a very cultural idea. The rugged individualist is an idea beloved of American movies and advertising but really is a myth. No human being can exist soley as an individual – we are a social animal and have been from year 1. In Australia we have, I think, a sensible blend of personal freedom and social systems. I am pretty sure that when you go to hospital you do not insist on paying the entire cost yourself from your ideals of individualism but like the rest of use use the excellent public health system – Medicare. Please correct me if I am wrong.
I would not like to see Australia either going more toward the American model or the Scandinavian cradle to grave socialism. Even in the US there are extensive social systems in place to help people left out by the individualist ideals. People who through no fault of their own cannot exist without help should not just be left to die – that is that actions of some animals and we like to think that we have progressed a bit further than this.
Tying this rant to the above thread there is nothing in energy conservation that impinges on your individualism. Sure you should be able to drive a 20l/100km V8 down the road to the tunes of “I’m an asshole” however that is taking my share of the petrol and my share of the electricity. When supplies are plentiful then this sort of behaviour can be tolerated. Now when supplies become tight everyone has to share a bit. It is no good strip mining the entire Earth just so you as a rugged individual can have a 20l/100km V8 ie: increasing supply at any cost to meet your demands. The Earth is starting to sort of run out of supplies. It is now imperative to start working together and sharing the resources a bit better in a more civilised way. This way China and India can have their share as well as the 80% of worlds population that gets by with 20% of the worlds resources. It is now time to reduce demand and we can do this in a way, if we are smart,that maintains our standard of living.
We however have to supply the model. At the moment the only model other nations have is our one of conspicious consumption. This is what they are aspiring to. To get them to be different we have to be different.
“Sure you should be able to drive a 20l/100km V8 down the road to the tunes of “I’m an assholeâ€?”
Man, how’d you guess? That’s my favourite passtime. Particularly in a V8 convertible Ferrari.
…however that is taking my share of the petrol and my share of the electricity.
No, you can drive a V8 just as easily as me (maybe not a Ferrari but payments on a V8 Holden are within the reach of anyone on AWE + welfare handouts).
When supplies are plentiful then this sort of behaviour can be tolerated. Now when supplies become tight everyone has to share a bit.
Supplies are only tight because you want to rule out the alternatives. Nuclear for electricity, cute little electric cars for all the leftie hand-wringers in government – would leave plenty of gas for us V8 drivers. And when that runs out, ethanol.
Hell, Costello should mandate that the Future Fund invest in electric car research – it would have a direct return for the government drones who’s luxurious retirement is is designed to support.
JQ, You undoubtedly have more experience in salinity remediation projects, where I understand you worked as an economist? Obviously there are many individuals and groups working on thousands of properties, to slow or halt saliity, acidity etc, and some of them are succeeding – more power (and support) to them/us.
But you surely have to admit that there are no solutions from within the economic rationalist world view, only ‘agrarian socialism’ (NHT 1&2, NAPSWQ, Bush Tender, etc) can support even the small repairs being attempted, and reviews of e.g. NHT (such as Dames and Moore 1999) say efforts are not enough. Yet you remain resolutely optimistic.
“But the kind of doomsayer mentality that asserts that, despite all we’ve done, everything is getting worse all the time is, in the end, an invitation to despair.”
Putting aside your exageration of my position (commonly applied to anyone who doubts the wisdom of infinite growth), I think your bias to compulsory optimism is plain: Because you fear despair, I am not allowed to question the grounds for your optimism. Wish I could use that logic on my bank manager… do you really think arguments like that should decide what we are allowed to see/know/consider? I guess religion will never go out of fashion, it just changes wrappers.
Incidentally, a depletionist like myself is different from your “Deep Greens who say that we should radically reduce our standard of living and protect the environment” in that I think we should radically reduce our resource consumption (NOT the same as standard of living) to save western civilisation (the planet, and bios, can look after itself just fine).
Also, given declining oil production, sky rocketing mineral & food production costs and the food-to-fuel fashion, I feel under no pressure to convice anyone, as the real limits now reaching even Australians are far better convincers than i could ever be. Wake me when you can admit modern economics is a big part of the problem (for externalising so many costs, for ignoring emergy, society, and ecology, and for providing rationalisations for greed and exploitation).
“If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst. “
Dogz – “Supplies are only tight because you want to rule out the alternatives. Nuclear for electricity, cute little electric cars for all the leftie hand-wringers in government – would leave plenty of gas for us V8 drivers. And when that runs out, ethanol.”
No it is you that want to keep consuming no matter what the cost. Where does it end? What happens when the last bit of oil is gone, the last bit of coal, the last gram of uranium and the Earth is a wasteland of mines? Would that be enough for the distant future Dogz to think maybe we could just conserve resources a bit?
I am not ruling out alternatives at all. The alternatives are clear, available and quite cheap. They just involve compromises that you are unable or unwilling to make. They cannot support conspicious consumption so you of course only support alternatives that do support short term high consumption in exchange for long term problems that have not been solved. You, and Browns like you, are also fully aware that there is a really good chance that you will be safely dead when these long term problems have to be solved therefore, for you, it is not a problem. Which also happens to be the current nuclear waste disposal scheme – store it cheaply above the ground until I die – then it is not a problem for me. Someone else will solve the storage problem. However the ‘someone else’ is not using the energy!!!
“What happens when the last bit of oil is gone, the last bit of coal, the last gram of uranium and the Earth is a wasteland of mines? Would that be enough for the distant future Dogz to think maybe we could just conserve resources a bit?”
Sure, but it ain’t gonna happen. The leftie doomsayers have bean bleating for almost a century now about diminishing resources and impending doom. It never happened. Instead, the world ignored you and by doing so advanced technologically to the point where we can pretty much deal with anything, either with today’s technology or with the technology of the forseeable future.
By all means conserve if it makes you feel better. But it is entirely unnecessary.
Dogz – “By all means conserve if it makes you feel better. But it is entirely unnecessary.”
So what you are saying is that the Earths resources are infinite.
No, I am saying humans are infinitely resourceful.
If we start to run out of something, we’ll find a substitute, or recycle if the economics make sense. If we run out of space, we’ll stop breeding or terraform another planet.
> the world ignored you
Actually prices for things like oil went up, and we got better at using oil. That seems to be happening again, as oil goes up and the Prius sells as fast as it can be made.
> infinitely resourceful, find a substitute, recycle
The amount of matter and energy within a volume of spacetime is finite. Recycling allows continued existence but not continued exponential growth, and will run out when the energy does. Barring really exotic physics, limits and then an ultimate heat death of one sort or another awaits us. Of course, on that scale coal wouldn’t even be a blip, and uranium decays anyway so there’s some optimal rate of consumption (possibly conserving it for space travel or far-from-stars colonization.)
An optimistic growth scenario is turning most of the solar system into life-friendly habitats, or computronium, using most of the power of the Sun. But what then? Yeah, seeds could be sent to other stars, but most of the life in this system would have to live in a more static style.
Personally I hope that I, or some robot with my personality and memories, will be around to have to deal with any nuclear waste problems.
Dogz – “If we start to run out of something, we’ll find a substitute, or recycle if the economics make sense. If we run out of space, we’ll stop breeding or terraform another planet.”
So for your scheme to work we need another planet and/or stop breeding? Wouldn’t it just be more sensible to accept that there are limits and work within them?
We’re way off meeing the limits at present. Human population looks like leveling out at 9B. The Earth has plenty of spare carrying capacity at that level.
Dogz – “We’re way off meeing the limits at present. Human population looks like leveling out at 9B. The Earth has plenty of spare carrying capacity at that level.”
Only if 80% of the population stays poor. If the Chinese and Indians want to follow your path of conspicuous consumption then we will need another couple of Earths. Are you going to tell the Chinese and Indians they cannot have our lifestyle?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060530/sc_afp/chinaenvironment_060530175508
“Are you going to tell the Chinese and Indians they cannot have our lifestyle?”
Nope. They seem to doing just fine.
FTA:
“Brown, in Beijing to promote the Chinese edition of his new book, “Plan B 2.0, Rescuing a Planet Under Stress”
Yep, we’ve heard it all before. The same stuff from the Club of Rome in the 1970s. According to them, we’re shold all be dead by now. Apparently they were a little overly pessimistic. So you’ll forgive me if I adopt a “wait and see” attitude.
Ever heard the parable of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”? Should be compulsory reading for Environment 101 students.
Dogz – “Yep, we’ve heard it all before. The same stuff from the Club of Rome in the 1970s. According to them, we’re shold all be dead by now. Apparently they were a little overly pessimistic. So you’ll forgive me if I adopt a “wait and seeâ€? attitude.”
Pessimistic but not necessarily wrong. So where is the 99 + 83 million barrels per day of oil going to come from?
“So you’ll forgive me if I adopt a “wait and seeâ€? attitude.”
So while you wait and see and consume, the earth goes to hell in a handcart and then what? Rewind back to 1990 and have another go?
You seem to want it both ways.
a). Society is doomed because we will run out of oil.
b). Society is doomed because we will burn too much oil.
Mark Bahner, to respond to 3 of your points:
Point 1) I have built experimental prototypes of electronic devices that were great on paper but failed to deliver in the real world, so I understand what you are saying and broadly agree. But no risk no gain, and there is an awful lot of potential gain with fusion, and a pressing need for high quality energy sources.
Point 2) The prizes are a good idea but they won’t work on their own, the initial research funds still have to come from somewhere, otherwise they will never be able to experimentally verify the concept and claim the prize(s).
I don’t care where the initial research funds come from, private or public is fine by me. Even if it is public (government) money, so what? The amount the researchers are asking for is trivial, relative to the technical feasibility, possible gains, importance of energy, and the size of government budgets.
Not quite sure what your point is here.
Point 4) Any weapons potential of fusion power is very troubling, and it would be a real shame if that turned out to be the major limiting factor in the use of this technology. I should point out that the report you linked to didn’t mention this problem.
And Dogz, ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’ argument ain’t the smartest one you could have chosen, because if I recall the ending and the moral of that story correctly, the wolf ended up being real. Perhaps you were thinking of Chicken Little and the falling sky that never fell?
More seriously, you are getting butt kicked from all sides by the technical, economic and ethical arguments in favour of efficiency and conservation. You haven’t produced a single compelling counter argument. It is all just rhetoric to the effect of ‘living standards will collapse’ and ‘I couldn’t be bothered making the effort’ and ‘individualism rules’. Hmmm.