Your claim that wind and solar are cheaper than fossil fuels in almost every part of the world is demonstrable nonsense. We have hard data on wind and solar costs in the UK. LCOE of offshore wind is around £100/MWh. Onshore perhaps £90, solar perhaps £80. CCGT running in baseload is around £50. Market prices (fossil fuels plus carbon tax) around £80.
I have written to you more than once about using the ridiculous LCOE numbers from Lazard (and others) and pointing you to the hard data available from the UK. Perhaps you missed these missives?
So Andy, are you admitting that you were wrong, cherry picking, outright lying and that solar and wind are the cheapest sources of energy or should I continue posting from my long long list of proofs?
The energy tracking experts of the world—IEA, EIA, Bloomberg, Wood McKenzie, and yes, Lazard, agree. Actual facts agree; reports of amounts bid and paid agree. Wind and solar are the cheapest sources of energy in virtually the entire world (besides efficiency and wiser lives.) While subject to disruptive price spikes and craters, the cost of fossil fuels inevitably rises, while wind, solar and batteries rapidly decrease in price—each more than 90% just in the last decade.
Financial accounts of UK windfarms disagree. As I pointed out, Lazard's numbers are junk. They are wildly different to reported costs of extant US and UK offshore windfarms. So what are they basing their numbers on?
In the UK, the cost of offshore wind has fallen somewhat, but remains above £100/MWh and is rising. The cost of onshore has not fallen at all.
It hardly matters what renewable energy costs; we absolutely must switch from fossils to renewables as fast as possible for civilization and millions of species to survive.
But Lazard’s numbers and the numbers of all the other sources are in fact accurate. If some costs differ so what? That’s what’s included in all the calculations of AVERAGES like LCOE. Lazard and all the other sources all over the world are correct and I can only conclude you are either lying, delusional, or are remarkably gullible and placing your trust in the wrong people, who are lying to you. Otherwise you are either straight out lying (you’ve provided no source for your extraordinary claim) or you’re cherry picking. Whatever it is, you should stop.
“I’ve lost track of the number of times clean energy has been accused of being incapable of performing a certain task, but then does it anyway.” Julian Spector
The changes included gutting energy-efficiency subsidies, effectively banning onshore wind in England and scrapping the zero-carbon homes standard. They were introduced after a November 2013 Sun frontpage reported that then-prime minister David Cameron’s answer to rising energy bills was to “get rid of the green crap”, meaning to cut climate policies.
Between 2010 and 2019, unit costs of solar energy decreased by 85%, wind energy by 55% and lithium-ion batteries by 85%. Latest International Renewable Energy Agency report May 29, 2022
John Ketchum, the chief executive of NextEra Energy, one of the country’s largest power producers, said in an interview. “If you take renewables and storage off the table, we’re going to force electricity prices to the moon.” THINC blog, 3/19/2025
LEVELIZED COST OF BUILDING AND RUNNING A NEW POWER PLANT IN DOLLARS PER MEGAWATT HOUR
SOLAR: $60
WIND: $50
GAS: $70
COAL: $117
NUCLEAR: $180
(2023 FIGURES BY LAZARD)
According to IRENA and Lazard, wind and solar are the two cheapest forms of energy, even without subsidies. Oil industry subsidies last year added up to $7 trillion, according to the International Monetary Fund. See FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDIES. See RENEWABLE ENERGY IS NOW THE CHEAPEST OPTION---EVEN WITHOUT SUBSIDIES, Forbes, Jun 15, 2019
Historically, fossil fuels have gotten more than 100 times the subsidies renewables have gotten. Fossil fuel externalities also dwarf renewables’. Renewables are so much more efficient, and prevent the need for vast amounts of shipping, rail and road transport, oil refining, etc. that switching to renewable energy will reduce global energy use by at least half, providing even more savings.
What that means is that 100MW of gas generation doesn’t need to be replaced by 100MW of wind, solar, and batteries; 50 MW of renewables are all that’s needed; it will accomplish the same end-tasks. And some uses are far, far beyond that:
solar PV provides 80-100 times more vehicle miles per acre than corn ethanol, a money- and energy-laundering scam run by the us oil industry and its government lackeys.
I only have about a hundred such citations in my notes because after a while the truth is obvious to all sane people and it’s pointless to continue collecting redundant data.
My main gripe of the lcoe is that does not consider value of energy , fission produces energy 92- 98% of the time while solar produces between 18%-25 % of it and it competes with itself ( the duck curve).
Mixing fission geothermal hydro with wind solar and batteries will lead to a lower grid cost and rate cost than by simply following lcoe
While I have you on the line, however, nukes do not ever have a long term capacity factor of 98%. That’s ridiculous. us nukes have a cf of about 90, like geothermal, but nukes have it because they’re inflexible and mostly losing money, even with massive subsidies (50 times what renewables have gotten, historically) so they have to run all out all the time to try to minimize that. Still lose money.
Nukes in the rest of the world average under 80 because although they’re still not flexible, they’re a little better at ramping up and down. Because of their inflexibility, they have trouble being more than the nadir demand amount on any grid. That’s assuming you don’t count the yeeeears they’re not available because of immense delays; even at best they’re the slowest to build.
Someone who’s honest and knows what he’s talking about, providing contrast to the right wing climate denying delayalist fascist extremists. David needs to address that disabling paranoia in psychotherapy.
Looks awesome Hannah. Weird question if I may. This could be a great "reference" book for places like schools or workplaces. When someone asks one of these questions the book can be used to answer it. I don't think an eBook can be easily shared with DRM in place.. Is a PDF version possible, even if much more expensive?
https://www.withouthotair.com is the best reference to start looking for energy/sustainable issues with numbers in mind. And it is free, with physics based thinking that didn't change all that much since it was written. I think Hannah book(s) are "standing on the shoulder of prof. Mackay work".
I found your Substack a few months ago after a referral from Dr Julio Friedmann, and looking at your new book’s Table of Contents in ‘Clearing the Air’ this sounds great!
Is there a section of the book where we could see how to pivot our energy pathway’s and strategy at scale? With America forced on a ‘radical push-back’, how can our state government now make a stair-step pivot of readjusting our carbon capture, green energy, and grid reliability needs.
I hope you reach a very large audience with this book. The questions are all so very relevant to the issues we face. A TV series should be based on this information. It should be compulsory viewing/ reading fr all politicians
The question you don't appear to have even considered is "What if my premise is wrong!".
You won't even state your argument in clear terms, instead dressing it up as 'Climate Change' as though the climate should be somehow kept in a static condition, a condition that it has never been in history.
The hubris and conceit of thinking humans should and can maintain just the right conditions to support the current lifestyle of humans is staggering.
Just like the leading scientific beliefs of the past are now seen to be crazy ideas, the notion that Co² causes climate change, that the change is negative and that we tried to remove and not add Co² to the atmosphere to promote plant life will be seen just as mad as the practice of rectal insufflation.
Unfortunately, once people get an idea, however mad that idea may be, it takes a long time for it to be commonly accepted as discredited. After all, they were seriously blowing smoke up rectums as a bona fide medical practice for over 150 years and up to the 1850s!
Really, you still cling to peer review as though it has not been totally corrupted! How quaint that you 'Trust the Science'!
Do you pay no attention to what is going on around you? Don't forget that the 1000s of scientists trope is meaningless, as they don't agree on one thing, and there are more eminent scientists pointing out the flaws in the AGW claim. Plus, I can think for myself and apply logic and reason and not just rely on an appeal to authority argument as you appear to do. Hence why I can answer for myself and not have to rely on 'Scientists"!
First, you need to define the issue. Having to change from Global Warming to Climate Change is a big giveaway that the claim is false.
Then, one needs to determine if AGW is actually detrimental to life on Earth. It isn't, and the most prolific explosion of life on earth was at a time far warmer and with much higher levels of Co². If we still decide it is detrimental, then can we and should we start to interfere with the climate? No.
After all that, to then land on Co², a trace gas, as being the sole or main driver of Climate Change is a ludicrous conclusion based on flawed thinking and faith. Climate change is a quasi-religious belief.
As my post, which you responded to, states, a little over 150 years ago, serious scientific people thought blowing tobacco smoke up patients' anases was scientifically sound practice! In much less than 150 years, people will wonder at the madness that overcame mankind to think we should be reducing a trace gas that is essential for life on earth and not actually pumping it into the atmosphere to help repair the damage of pollution.
Finally, I offer you a bit of assistance. If you are at all curious as to how the peer review system has been totally corrupted, search for Peter Boghossian, James A. Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose, with their Dog Park Paper being the most egregious example of the corruption in the peer review process.
While off topic, another recent example of corruption in the system, which is still being suppressed, is the finding that Statins reduce the level of GLP-1 [a bad thing] within days of starting to take them. There is a peer-reviewed paper, but because this is detrimental to the $20 billion annual income for big pharma, it gets no attention! The widespread prescribing of statins is going to become a huge scandal in the next decade, but the unquestioning "trust the science" belief will have already done the damage by then.
Please start to think for yourself and stop relying on people you assume to be cleverer and better qualified than yourself to provide your received opinions. And you really ought to desist from believing they are acting in good faith.
Look, it's very easy to tear stuff down and produce nothing. This is your approach so if you wanna do that, that's up to you. What I ask you is to stop wasting our time here with it. You're not going to suddenly convince anyone with it, so just don't.
You don't have an argument of your own; all you have are received opinions of people you think are cleverer than yourself. So basically, you have an 'appeal to authority' stance but are unable to understand the flaws in the argument you have chosen to believe. Do some reading.
You did not ask for me to provide examples. All you said was 1000s of peer-reviewed papers, as though that is somehow an argument. What examples are you requesting?
The notion that Co² is causing climate change is so ludicrous I don't know where to start, but Co² saturation is a good place and the bandwidth in which absorption can take place.
As for wasting your time. You are the one who chose to engage with me! If you think it is a waste of time, I rather think it is you who is wasting it.
No, I doubt you are going to be convinced, as the old saying goes
"You can't reason someone out of an opinion they didn't reason themselves into."
Peer reviewed science is not opinion, a distinction that right wing lunatic climate denying delayalists so often fail to make.
David continues in his or her meta-gish gallop, refusing to take advantage of the resources offered, preferring to remain intentionally dense and ignorant, trying to deflect legitimate criticism by ignoring it and projecting a lot of what s/he does onto people trying to debunk his or her nonsense.
The only people denying climate catastrophe are not scientists, or are disgraced scientists who ignore the evidence to make provably wrong claims. They are almost all paid directly or indirectly by fossil fuel and related corporations, the far right, and dark money donors. They have zero credibility.
You can look most of them up at Desmog and find out that almost all of them are paid to lie by fossil fuel and other corporations and the far right in the us.
The premise is correct. The evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible. Your intentional ignorance of it is a sign of nothing but your own need for psychotherapy, for help in figuring out why you seek out and believe the lies of psychopaths rather than diligent scientists, journalists and activists.
YOUR premises are incorrect according to the evidence; you’re projecting repeatedly onto the people who accept overwhelming science.
Name 1 example of a large body of science being wrong on anything. Not single examples of papers or people, which you know about because the peer reviewed system works. And not non-scientists using quack medicine. Non-science is not science. It has nothing to do with climate science, or this discussion. You’re using straw person arguments, disrepresenting scientists’ positions to attack things they haven’t said and don’t believe. Look up your beliefs about this at Skeptical Science.
“They didn't change the name from 'global warming' to 'climate change’"
"Climate change" or "climatic change" has been used since the 1950s. The IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on CLIMATE CHANGE, was established in 1988. "Global warming" has become more or less standard although both were used, "global warming" obviously referring to the WARMING of Earth by greenhouse gases, "climate/ic change" referring to all the varied effects the warming causes—droughts, floods, fires, storms, ecosystem disruptions...
But it was a Republican operative who encouraged everybody to call it what he thought was a less threatening term.
"The premise is correct. The evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible. "
What evidence?
In 1976 the consensus was that we were heading back into the ice age.
You mistake models for reality. You have no idea, because no one can have any idea of what is going on based on a few years of data.
You have chosen to believe the official Western narrative for reasons known to yourself.
Meanwhile, the climate will follow the cycle it is on.
Stomach ulcers were universally thought to be caused by stress, and that was the consensus position until two Australian scientists destroyed the consensus by demonstrating it was a bacterial infection. But even then, it took many years for the truth to be accepted. Look it up if you are not aware of this.
If you live long enough, you will one day realise just how mad your belief was that a trace gas of 425 ppm or 0.0425%. the atmosphere causes climate change! This is a belief bordering on homoeopathy.
That was absolutely not the consensus in 1976. That’s a far right corporate lie you’re spreading, just like everything else you’ve said.
Extremely reliable temperature data goes back to 1880; years before that in proxies and less systematic reconstructed records. The Earth is warming.
The science showing it’s caused by human greenhouse gases is in many forms, lines, and scientific fields—convergent evidence that is overwhelming and incontrovertible. (You’d know that if you paid any attention to the science, or to the Skeptical Science website, run by scientists and based on and constantly referencing the science. You refuse to. You prefer the right wing lunatic science denial narrative.)
Climate science has nothing to do with ulcers, or believing the Earth is flat, or the sun revolves around it. Another attempt to distract with irrelevant nonsense. In fact, stress-caused ulcers is partly true, was not supported by overwhelming science, and once the bacterial cause was demonstrated scientifically, the medical community came around in a couple of years. So like everything else you said, all that turned out to be false. Why keep embarrassing yourself? Why are you insisting on nonsense and being a jerk about it as you are?
All decent scientists—and Hannah Ritchie is an excellent one—consider whether their premise is wrong. That’s what training, observation, experimentation, and peer review are for. There is no perfect human system; peer-reviewed science is an excellent system that has questioned everything for more than 150 years to come to the conclusions you treat so cavalierly, without knowing anything, and with most of what you think—or at least claim—being wrong.
It’s not just thousands of papers as BZ said. Climate science now consists of more than 350,000 peer-reviewed papers in scores of scientific fields, and hundreds of thousands of scientists who wrote them over nearly 2 centuries, and more than 99% agree that
climate change is happening, caused by human greenhouse gases, and
threatens civilization and millions of species.
That’s been shown by at least 11 peer reviewed studies looking at different groups of papers and scientists using different methods; the latest is a Cornell review of more than 88,000 peer reviewed papers between 2012 and 2021. It found a 99.9% consensus.
"A physical greenhouse traps heat primarily through convection suppression. Glass or plastic walls prevent warm air inside from escaping and mixing with cooler outside air. Solar radiation enters, warms the interior, and the trapped air retains that heat."
You have also misunderstood the 99% consensus,
No one claims there is no climate change or that there has ever been a time without climate change. Just that this change works on cycles that are thousands of years, tens of thousands of years and hundreds of thousands of years, so to try to take 40 years of data and claim the climate is heating is simply ludicrous. We need a proper period of time to elapse to see the trend.
As late as 1976 the big fear was global cooling, which really would be a disaster, and the consensus at that time was to support this claim.
But remember, consensus is not science. In fact, before every scientific breakthrough, there is a consensus that is in opposition to the new discovery.
I really do struggle with people like you who don't do any of their own thinking and just contract it out to others.
As for a threat to species, you must know that at the Cambrian Explosion, an explosion of species, the temperature of Earth was much warmer than today, and the level of Co² was far greater. The conceit needed to think we should control the climate to support just human life is staggering.
I do understand how a greenhouse works, and if you’re talking to me you’re making a completely irrelevant claim with absolutely no evidence to try to distract from the fact that you’re ass is being kicked here by several people, because it’s so obvious everything you claim is utter bullshit.
I also understand how scientific consensus works. You clearly do not, and have ignored my suggestion to read the entries at Skeptical Science on it:
“The 97% consensus on global warming”
“Explainer: Scientific Consensus”
Consensus is a consequence of the scientific method not a part it.
“At a glance - Human fingerprints on climate change rule out natural cycles” Skeptical Science, 26 March 2024
“Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming”
What the science says...
Skeptical Science
A few scientists thought for a short time in the 70s that cooling aerosols released by burning fossil fuels would cool the Earth. Aerosols do have a powerful short-term cooling effect but fall out of the atmosphere in days or weeks. CO2, also released by burning fossil fuels, begins heating immediately and soon overwhelms the aerosols, but it takes about 40 years to reach its full warming effect. So when there’s a sudden increase in industrial activity or war (the 1940s with WWII, the 1960s with industrial expansion in the developing world…) there’s a slight cooling that is soon overwhelmed by warming from CO2 (and other GHGs). The British and us Clean Air Acts (1950s, 1970) reduced aerosols but not CO2 and other GHGs so warming has accelerated quickly since then. The cooling-hypothesis scientists were never anything but a tiny minority with an idea that was soon shown to be wrong. About 20(?) years ago climate denying delayalists created a fake magazine cover to fool people into thinking it was more than that. Apparently it still works.
Your acceptance of this tiny minority viewpoint but rejection of literally a hundred thousand times more papers accepting the consensus that climate catastrophe is happening, human-caused, and a threat to civilization and nature, reveals that you care nothing for science or evidence, just are susceptible to the lies of nihilistic narcissistic psychotic psychopaths, and gullibly and maliciously accept their nonsensical arguments for political, ultimately psychological reasons. You accept the paleo-climate science about long-term changes but buy the psychopaths’ crap denying the overwhelming science that climate catastrophe is happening, human-caused, and an existential threat. Why?
More from Skeptical Science:
“The 1970s Global Cooling Zombie Myth and the Tricks Some People Use to Keep it Alive, Part I”
“CO2 lags temperature - what does it mean?”
Past climate shifts have taken tens of thousands to millions of years, yet have wiped out most life on Earth 5 times. See “Milankovitch cycles” and “CO2 lags temperature - what does it mean?” at Skeptical Science.
The current heating is hundreds to thousands of times faster, according to more than 26,500 data sets (atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe). Several known extinctions and many devastating ecological effects have already happened or are happening. Probably many other extinctions have been caused by the current climate catastrophe unobserved, as most species—maybe 80%—are still undescribed by science.
“A history of FLICC: the 5 techniques of science denial” Skeptical Science, 31 March 2020
Consensus is a result of science, not part of it. The climate science consensus is the result of nearly 2 centuries of investigation, observation, debate, and the piling up of overwhelming evidence. All other potential explanations of the data have been thoroughly vetted and rejected because they turned out to be false. The conclusions have been undeniable for 40 years. It’s quite insane to deny it at this point. The conceit that you know more than hundreds of thousands of scientists is staggering.
I understand you’re passionate about this subject, but your overblown language doesn’t help your case—it muddies the waters, trading reason for emotion. Labelling people who question the prevailing narrative as “psychotic psychopaths” is pure ad hominem and makes your entire argument less credible.
Worse, your use of the term “denial” is a cheap shot, not science. It’s an offensive nod to Holocaust denial, demeaning the memory of millions, mostly Jews, murdered by the Nazis, and it’s designed purely to shut down legitimate debate rather than engage with it. Science thrives on questioning, not name-calling.
Your claims wildly exaggerate the evidence. Declaring an “existential threat” or that we’ve “wiped out most life” is pure speculation, not settled science. You cannot claim to know about “unobserved extinctions” of species that are still “undescribed”; by definition, we can’t know that.
You present the science as a closed book, “undeniable for 40 years,” but this ignores the inherent uncertainties in modelling complex systems and the ongoing debate about the precise pace, impacts, and tipping points. Pushing CO2 as the sole driver and dismissing natural factors out of hand is not the balanced view you claim to hold. Science doesn’t work by just shouting “consensus” or dismissing questions as “insane.”
Drop the drama and the offensive rhetoric. If your evidence is as solid as you say, focus on that for a stronger, more credible case.
People can either criticize for high emissions or they can spread deceptive fallacies that slow the building of renewables—the only clean energy mix that has any chance of succeeding—but those who do both are among the worst criminal psychopaths in history, risking the survival of civilization and millions of species for money, ideology, and ultimately, entirely because of the mental illness shared across the far right.
No it won’t. Nukes, especially new nukes which are the only kind you can be advocating for, produce very expensive energy. The only more expensive energy is burning $100 bills. Solar, wind, efficiency, and wiser lives are the cheapest energy almost everywhere in the world, and getting cheaper at an incredible rate, so batteries, also getting cheaper at least as fast, can make them both cheap and virtually dispatchable. (That includes EV batteries with V2E. And distributed generation and demand response strategies help a lot.)
Solar PV and onshore wind peak at opposite times of day and year, complementing each other and providing energy as it’s needed almost all the time, including 2 of the 3 peaks in demand. Offshore and near-shore wind, solar with a few hours battery storage combine with dispatchable hydro, geothermal, and small amounts of tidal to meet the duck curve. PHS helps meet longer term peaks in demand.
Overproduction is used in every grid everywhere, for backup and stability. Overproduction of solar and wind can be stored and/or used for non time-dependent tasks like desalination, water pumping, etc. at essentially no additional cost, still available at a moment’s notice and when combined with batteries and PHS, ready to step in at a millisecond’s notice.
Well I mostly think about countries which have winters , during which solar is at its minimum capacity and energy demand is at its highest , having fission electricity would cost less than having enough solar for that kind of energy ( once all heating is electrified).
In country which have enough hydro and geothermal fission is not needed but as of now it is the only one clean baseload which can be scale, even if it takes between 5 and seven years when all goes well ( france in the 70 korea and china now).
Yeah it is more expansive but it is also long lasting and once its capital cost has been paid up its operating cost vs its output is really competitive.
Thanks to pumped hydro and batteries its inflexibility ( it can modulate but it is not preferred) it play better with renewables needing less of both.
The more we overbuild ( yes a bit more is normal due too cover for incidente ad manteinance) the more grid cost baloon and more energy is wasted.
Rhink about how many solar panels and how many batteries would be needed to give power to germany in winter and those cost vs a mix of them plus fission.
My final point is that countries which integrate nuclear lile france and sweden have less co2 intensive electricity than countries like germany or denmark and that reduction has cost less.
Wind, solar, efficiency, and wiser lives are the cheapest energy sources of all. (And not just cheap but damned near free once they’re built.) Every significant energy tracking and investment firm agrees. You wanna argue that point? Go talk to IEA, EIA, Lazard, BNEF, Wood McKenzie, Ember, and the hundreds of people who have done peer-reviewed studies confirming it. Wind and solar—and batteries—are getting even cheaper very fast, typically at at least 1-2% a year, which is phenomenal. The combination (which does not have to be in the same place; there are these newfangled things called wires) is still cheaper than any other source, especially new nukes, the most expensive source. Your claim otherwise is ridiculous. Nukes plus batteries? Even more expensive than just nukes, the. most. expensive. energy. source. of. all.
Hinky Point is likely to never be built; it’s a passed-around hot potato years behind schedule and billions over budget with a contract to sell electricity at nearly twice the rate UK wind and solar are already producing energy for. IF it’s ever built, how many times more than those will its leccy cost? That’s insane.
Baseload is poison. Look it up.
Consciously or not I don’t know, but you are using what I think of as the hyena fallacy, when a pack of scavenging predators singles out 1 victim from the herd and attacks it relentlessly. STOP DOING THAT!
Yes, duh, some places solar is not the most abundant renewable resource. In deserts, hydro is often not the most abundant (although Morocco, Chile, Arizona, Utah and the us SW in general do pretty well with it.) Some places geothermal is harder & deeper to get than others; some places have less wind; some places have no tidal power potential at all. (But Scotland could produce half its electricity just from the tides in Pentland Firth; Alaska, e. Canada, other places could get huge amounts, or are already.)
NO PLACE ON EARTH has nothing; most places have several complementary RE sources; many have an astounding abundance. (The us is the Saudi Arabia of diverse, distributed RE resources, eg.) And as I pointed out, there are things called wires. Almost every country on Earth buys some or most of its energy from others now; with renewables that will be far less, reducing shipping by 40%; rail, & trucking by similar amounts, increasing security and price stability as well as decreasing prices period. Most places would continue to buy some energy, although far less; and it will cost less because wind and solar are the cheapest energy sources of all and electricity is amazingly efficient in transmission (losses of 2% or less per thousand miles). The principle of distributed generation is bedrock for cheap, stable, reliable power.
I don’t know why you’re only talking about geothermal’s—no, wait, yes of course I know why you’re cherry picking that. Solar, wind and batteries are built in a tiny fraction of the time nukes are. Solar is typically a few years, then paying back its carbon cost of construction in 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 years; wind is similar, paying it back in 2-6 months. Often, parts of wind farms are operating while the rest is being built; paying a big part of its carbon back before it’s even finished. Nukes’ payback is measured in decades; even though time, money, security issues and ecological damage for nuke fuel and the reactors themselves as waste are never accounted for in the money or carbon cost. Add nuclear’s huge externalities, subsidies, the Nuclear Unholy Twinity’s enabling of weapons at every level and stage, and to even discuss building more is insane.
China gave its nuke program a 10 year head start, now wind and solar add vastly more GWh to its grid every year than nukes do. Wind, solar and storage are increasing there as everywhere.
Korea’s nuke program, like pretty much every country’s, was/is beset by corruption, incompetence, and lying. It’s the last industry in the world I would trust with necessary tasks or dangerous substances, but there they are…
Well, last except for the fossil fuel industry.
France’s nuke program took 32 years, not the usual claim of ~15. Each reactor took 15-19 years.
The average nuke build time in the West is 14 years. It’s not shortening; if anything it’s lengthening, and since Flamingville, Hinky Point and others haven’t been built (many never will be) their build times and massive cost overruns aren’t even counted in that. Bent Flyvbjerg has written a fascinating and insightful book about the success and failure of big projects; nukes are 1 of the most likely to be disasters—not even including the, you know, disasters. Michael Barnard has reported on his work in various contexts at CleanTechnica.
We cannot afford either the time or money nukes take. Even if they weren’t a disaster in every other way, either of those issues alone eliminate them from consideration by any sane person.
You cite no source for your claim that France and Sweden’s nukes cost less than Germany’s and Denmark’s wind. In Carbon Tracker’s “The Sky’s the Limit” study, Germany was judged the 3rd hardest country in the world to renewablize because of its population, resource potential, energy use… Yet there it is, 2/3 renewable grid and rapidly increasing that even as it rapidly electrifies its primary energy. The 2 countries’ grids are the most reliable and democratic in the world; wholesale prices are at or below the EU average. (IIRC, Denmark 64% RE grid incl. 52% wind; Germany 66% RE, incl. 35% S&W.)
Largest 10-Year Deployments of Low-Carbon Electricity Generation
This graphic obviously doesn’t include the current exponential growth of solar, wind, and batteries.
[Note: No country on Earth is doing this as fast as it could or needs to to prevent catastrophic climate change. That is obviously a problem.* It’s caused mostly by lies, manipulation, destruction of democracy, bribery, intimidation, smear tactics, murders, and more, engaged in by both fossil and fissile fuel fanatics.]
Sweden’s grid is 28% nuke, 69% renewable! How dare you attribute its low emissions to nukes!
Nook boosters use France as an example for everything… but it’s because it’s their only example. And it’s a terrible one!
3 countries get more than 50% of their electricity from nukes; the industrial powerhouse Slovakia, everybody’s current favorite poster child for No Nukes, Ukraine—both barely at 50–and France, at 60-something %, still recovering from its shameful massive emergency safety shutdown…in the middle of a global energy crisis! 23 of its 56 reactors were shut down at about age 40; 5 more should have been shut down to prevent destruction of aquatic ecosystems but who cares about that really? It’s only the ecological basis on which all our lives depend.
SEVENTY countries have mostly renewable grids, and that’s increasing so fast all over the world I’m not sure that number is up to date. At least 23 are at or near 100% renewable electricity; 40 have more RE than any country has ever had nuke e.
2 are very close to 100% renewable total energy; others not far behind are catching up.
The fastest biggest and I believe cheapest buildout of energy in history is going on right now and it’s overwhelmingly wind, solar, and batteries. Nukes are barely hanging on to their share because of closures; more are coming up. There is no commercial nuke operating anywhere in the world over 60, only the rusty radioactive hulks of past, closed ones; some of which are being weaponized by a psychopathic dictator, who also happens to control a dangerously large portion of the world’s nuclear fuel. (HALEU, eg.)
Some of the earliest and least well-built solar panels are still operating at a high efficiency at 60 years old. Those built now may last 100. Wind turbines built now will typically last 35 years. Both W&S can then be virtually 100% recycled, saving materials and energy, and hugely reducing the need for mining, already vastly less with renewables; where they’re not recycled it’s because the insane far right opposes it.
4th biggest economy in the world, a long-time leader in the transition to renewable energy, so, naturally, relentlessly attacked with lies created by the fossil-fueled far right jackalpack of PR and lobbying firms masquerading as think tanks, Germany’s emissions are high because
1) it’s a very industrial country. France produces wine and cheese.
2) Germany gots lotsnlotsa dirty coal, which it still uses because of us-like coal-state politics and because the previous, conservative federal government slow-walked renewable construction for years despite clear popular desire for more speed. If progressives had been elected sooner, the country would likely be almost entirely run by renewable energy by now.
There is never a need to waste electricity through curtailment. It reflects poor planning, and rotten thinking, and if people act even remotely rationally it will soon be fixed everywhere it’s happening, through distributed generation grid connections, time-shifting through storage, and non-time-dependent use of the essentially FREE energy. Unless you’re recommending incompetence and corruption—on the scale of, say… the nuclear industry, drop it.
*Just watched a new video, “The New Denialism: Climate Change—from the Paris Agreement to Sweden” by Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Center. His London School of Economics talk was better I think but this 1 is very relevant.
If you want some sources I would point you to ourworld in data and checking co2 per electricity generated and see who emits more .
About the role of fission you can check the ipcc.
I cited batteries not because they are necessary for fission but because we already have them and they make sense in the grid regardless of other factors.
About proliferation please remember that making bombs came before and that for making plutonium you have to make different reactors from those that make electricity and use very different level of enrichment.
Fission reactors have so much international control that are one of the most difficult places to be corrupt in .
I have those sources and all I need, thanks. Since everything you think is wrong, whatever sources you use are not helping you.
Did you even read what I wrote? Either you didn’t read it or didn’t understand it so go back and try again, because I already explained about emissions, and everything you’ve said has turned out to be wrong.
The IPCC is constrained by every member nation, which includes many petrostates and several uraninations including Russia, all the other mentioned ones, and formerly the us, which has impeded progress since before Rio (the UNFCCC), and the Kyoto Protocol while working frantically to appear to be helping, even leading. It’s a con.
There are 3 IPCC working groups: I and II do physical science, impacts, vulnerability, and do a decent though almost pathologically conservative job; III does mitigation policy and pretty much sucks. Did you watch Kevin Anderson? No, I thought not. Do.
The IPCC is wrong about nukes. It’s insane to think nukes will do anything but slow progress, distract from the real solutions, and cause problems. There are only 3 things compelling and allowing that belief:
Denial of the speed and direness of climate catastrophe;
Denial that renewable energy can quickly and completely provide all the energy the world needs;
Denial that the deep intractable problems with the nuclear industry and the technology itself mean nukes can’t.
“What Lies Beneath: The scientific understatement of climate risks”
“CoP28 in Dubai demonstrated beyond any remaining doubt that this UN (“consensus-based”) process has become the creature of today’s dominant petrostates, of Big Oil, of Big Ag and of Big Chem. What once might have been construed as deeply problematic but not yet terminal co-option was revealed, in Dubai, as the fully corrupt shit-show that it really is.
The likelihood that such a process will ever get anywhere near the kind of agreement that would make any real impact, within the timeframes still available to us, is preposterous.”
That there was a subsequent COP in Baku, the world capital of oil corruption, proves it yet again. See Greg Palast on the subject.
When the control is corrupt it’s no help in keeping the industry honest. Military, civilian, and regulators are all so incestuous the control is not control at all; it’s boosterism and enabling. Areva, NRC, Korean, Russian agencies… they’re all dominated by the corrupt, arrogant, insular, self-righteous, and superior.
Military and civilian nukes are intertwined from basic research and training/inculcation to political policymaking; in the us, UK, and I’m absolutely sure, Russia, China, and Korea civilian nukes were adopted and are still used partly because of the needs of nuclear weapons programs, and partly out of pro-nuclear bias because the conservative mind-set is compelled by the symbolism of domination of nature through smashing atoms (and burning things) for energy. The nihilism of the current far right, terminally infected by Wetiko, reinforces it.
"Seeing Wetiko: on Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition” Alnoor Ladha, Martin Kirk.
And see process therapist Paul Levy’s writings on Wetiko, aka malignant egophrenia. Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil, by process therapist Paul Levy
Well I tried engaging and responding with arguments , but It seems to me that you are giving standard responses instead of doing the same back to me. I may very well be wrong but I try to better my ideas trhough discussion .
I can state without being wrong that the most decarbonized countries are not those heavely invested in renewables but those that are in clean stable electricity like hydro geothermal and fission with solar wind and batteries , while thise countries that reject incorporating fission in their grids see spikes in co2 emissions in winter .
As you already know because as you say you have all those sources.
Renewable energy is the only way to eliminate fossil fuels in time to prevent catastrophic climate chaos.
So what is Ciurra talking about? Geothermal, hydro, solar, wind ARE renewable energy. The only source s/he missed both including and rejecting is tidal, a locally important but much smaller solution. And ooooh, so close, but then s/he added the psychopathic mistake of nukes.
(In fact, conventional hydro is a much less effective and desirable action, a bargain with Satan that many climate activists are willing to make out of desperation, as the lunatic far right has done everything it could to stop cheaper, less destructive and compromised, compromising renewable energy sources. New nukes are a concession to the dark lord we should avoid. It shouldn’t be too hard; those proposing nukes mostly propose nukes that don’t exist. But there’s that symbolism that conservatives have no resistance to.
Dave Barry once wrote about an imagined ad for Frosted Sugar Bombs cereal, that said “Frosted Sugar Bombs, as part of this nutritious breakfast, [showing juice, fruit, milk, toast…] provides [blah blah] % of daily vitamin and mineral needs”. Barry pointed out the ad could just as well have said “Frosted Sugar Bombs, adjacent to this nutritious breakfast…”or “in the general vicinity of this nutritious breakfast…”, because the FSB provided only a tiny part of the nutrients and fiber. That’s Ciurra’s argument for Sweden (an egregious attempt at deceptive manipulation s/he hasn’t apologized for or retracted) and oh yeah, the rest of the world. “Nuclear reactors, in the general vicinity of renewable energy, the climate solution…”
As solar and wind continue to be deployed, growing exponentially as they are despite the efforts of lunatics who rule too much of the world, fossil fuels will be abandoned, faster and faster. The doubling times of their exponential growth tell the story. Renewable sources already supply more electricity than coal in the us, UK, and many other countries, more than nukes in almost every country in the world, more than fossil fuels in more than 75 countries, a quick check tells me. And wind and solar are expected to double again by 2030.
People interested in the truth can read for example the recent Ember report, Jacobson 2021, Li and Wang 2023*, and many other peer reviewed and expert papers.
AS I SAID, if one both condemns too-high emissions and spreads anti-renewable fanatics’ lies, s/he is trying to worsen the problem s/he claims to be against. Being against renewables because there aren’t enough renewables because the lies one’s spreading have slowed their deployment is insane, but that’s Ciurra’s position. Given the stakes, and the methods used by the far right to endlessly delay renewable energy, it is criminally insane.
*Li & Wang: 130 countries; a non-linear relationship as renewables replace fossil fuels. [The more renewables are used, the more are used to build renewables, the cleaner the air gets (improving solar output), the cheaper they get and the more they’re seen as the first and best choice.]
In fact, since people building renewables often like renewables, building renewables is 1 of the first uses of renewables, so the per KWh emissions gap between FFs and RE grows. IOW, renewables make renewables (and EVs, heat pumps, etc) even cleaner.
I don’t pay attention to Lovins and Jacobson because they’re charming but because they tell the truth with insight and caring concern beyond any industry. Your irrational attachment to nukes may make you blind to those facts but go ahead, prove them wrong.
I have no idea what you’re talking about—well about many things, also a lot like David—but about the price thing right now.
Solar and wind are the cheapest sources of energy almost everywhere in the world and are getting cheaper at nearly 2% per year.
Fossil fuel prices crater and spike, and nuclear fuels are available sometimes, sometimes not (Russia’s HALEU, eg.)
Solar and wind are the cheapest sources of energy almost everywhere in the world and are getting cheaper at nearly 2% per year. They are far more stable than fossil fuels and probably more stable than nuclear fuel prices, certainly more stable than nuclear fuels. You provide no evidence whatever to the contrary.
Finland’s grid is 44% RE, 35% nuke.
Sweden’s is 66% RE, 30% nuke.
The Nordic grid is more than 2/3 RE, the 4 countries’ primary energy is more than 1/3 RE; both are increasing fast. France’s grid is 28% RE and has reduced its nuclear share considerably since before the nuclear safety disaster. Now it’s 60-something % nuke, with renewables growing and a plan to continue that. Even they know they can’t do it with nukes.
3 countries with more than 50% nuke electricity. At least 70 with mostly renewable electricity.
If your ‘Germany 1/3 of the way’ thing refers to total energy I’d remind you that France and all other countries are subject to the same math. Primary energy (direct use of fuel in buildings, industry and transport) is typically 4-5 times more than electricity; globally, leccy is 18% (except for the enormous amount of renewable clothesline paradox energy). Renewables provide a considerable amount of primary energy; nukes don’t. By definition.
Iceland’s grid is 100% RE, primary energy is 82% RE. Norway’s grid, 1/2 its energy, is 98% RE, primary is about 50% RE. Nicaragua is 66% RE grid, 75% RE primary. Iberia: 58.5% RE grid. And so on.
Scotland, Paraguay, Ethiopia, Costa Rica, Belize, Uruguay and 17 others at, near, or above 100% RE grids. Uganda, Kenya, Laos and others more than 90%. Georgia, Brazil, Colombia, New Zealand and others more than 80%. Austria, Ghana, N. Korea and others more than 70%. Pretty much all the rest of Central and South America more than 60% RE, along with most of Africa, Switzerland, Canada, UK… with Ireland, Morocco, Turkey, and many other countries closing in on or just past half. Remember I left more than FIFTY countries over half RE off this list.
Including primary energy shows the numbers are waaaaaay in favor of renewables. And everything else is, too. Renewable energy is better in every way.
[Some of these figures are understatements of renewables, as they’re from my research notes and it’s hard to keep up, since renewables are growing so fast.]
I‘m already reading and passing the book through the family. The clarity of your voice as you let the facts speak is exactly what is needed in this urgent matter.
David needs to read the science; read Skeptical Science. Any sane person would by now have given up and just read the things I’ve repeatedly implored him or her to, since that’s where all the information is that debunks his or her bullshit. David? Either hasn’t, or is lying about it to keep spewing bullshit s/he knows is bullshit. Has to know by now that that’s what would happen and refuses to face the reality—just like everything else in his or her life?
David makes assumptions not supported by fact, about climate and me and others, distorts and disrepresents almost everything I say and assumes—or claims, as a way to distract and attack—that I think things I don’t. Projects. Lies. Trusts psychotic psychopaths rather than scientists. Everything s/he says is false. Any sane person… but we’re clearly dealing with either a professional climate denying delayalist, a person so addled by delusion s/he relentlessly seeks out confirmation of his or her delusions, or a psychopathic disruptive troll. In the end, it hardly matters which; the only effective response is to ban and delete them, give them no outlet, and eventually convince them to seek psychotherapy.
CONGRATS!!!!
Your claim that wind and solar are cheaper than fossil fuels in almost every part of the world is demonstrable nonsense. We have hard data on wind and solar costs in the UK. LCOE of offshore wind is around £100/MWh. Onshore perhaps £90, solar perhaps £80. CCGT running in baseload is around £50. Market prices (fossil fuels plus carbon tax) around £80.
I have written to you more than once about using the ridiculous LCOE numbers from Lazard (and others) and pointing you to the hard data available from the UK. Perhaps you missed these missives?
So Andy, are you admitting that you were wrong, cherry picking, outright lying and that solar and wind are the cheapest sources of energy or should I continue posting from my long long list of proofs?
The energy tracking experts of the world—IEA, EIA, Bloomberg, Wood McKenzie, and yes, Lazard, agree. Actual facts agree; reports of amounts bid and paid agree. Wind and solar are the cheapest sources of energy in virtually the entire world (besides efficiency and wiser lives.) While subject to disruptive price spikes and craters, the cost of fossil fuels inevitably rises, while wind, solar and batteries rapidly decrease in price—each more than 90% just in the last decade.
Financial accounts of UK windfarms disagree. As I pointed out, Lazard's numbers are junk. They are wildly different to reported costs of extant US and UK offshore windfarms. So what are they basing their numbers on?
In the UK, the cost of offshore wind has fallen somewhat, but remains above £100/MWh and is rising. The cost of onshore has not fallen at all.
It hardly matters what renewable energy costs; we absolutely must switch from fossils to renewables as fast as possible for civilization and millions of species to survive.
But Lazard’s numbers and the numbers of all the other sources are in fact accurate. If some costs differ so what? That’s what’s included in all the calculations of AVERAGES like LCOE. Lazard and all the other sources all over the world are correct and I can only conclude you are either lying, delusional, or are remarkably gullible and placing your trust in the wrong people, who are lying to you. Otherwise you are either straight out lying (you’ve provided no source for your extraordinary claim) or you’re cherry picking. Whatever it is, you should stop.
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/0219_KK_LCOE_graph.jpg
“I’ve lost track of the number of times clean energy has been accused of being incapable of performing a certain task, but then does it anyway.” Julian Spector
As of April, 2020:
BloombergNEF says wind or solar are cheapest new power for ⅔ of the world, including US, EU, India, Latin America, SA [South Australia?]… Battery costs have halved since 2018. They’re now cheaper than gas peakers in EU, Canada, Japan. Ketan Joshi, April 29, 2020. https://ketanjoshi.co/2020/04/29/this-is-where-hard-work-got-us-another-post-about-the-bad-film/
Analysis: Cutting the ‘green crap’ has added £2.5bn to UK energy bills
Resilience, 1/20/2022 https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-01-20/analysis-cutting-the-green-crap-has-added-2-5bn-to-uk-energy-bills/?mc_cid=b97a4348db&mc_eid=1c895367dd
The changes included gutting energy-efficiency subsidies, effectively banning onshore wind in England and scrapping the zero-carbon homes standard. They were introduced after a November 2013 Sun frontpage reported that then-prime minister David Cameron’s answer to rising energy bills was to “get rid of the green crap”, meaning to cut climate policies.
Between 2010 and 2019, unit costs of solar energy decreased by 85%, wind energy by 55% and lithium-ion batteries by 85%. Latest International Renewable Energy Agency report May 29, 2022
2019: “solar and wind plants now significantly cheaper than coal.”https://thinkprogress.org/renewable-energy-coal-natural-gas-a3828fd843cb/
John Ketchum, the chief executive of NextEra Energy, one of the country’s largest power producers, said in an interview. “If you take renewables and storage off the table, we’re going to force electricity prices to the moon.” THINC blog, 3/19/2025
LEVELIZED COST OF BUILDING AND RUNNING A NEW POWER PLANT IN DOLLARS PER MEGAWATT HOUR
SOLAR: $60
WIND: $50
GAS: $70
COAL: $117
NUCLEAR: $180
(2023 FIGURES BY LAZARD)
According to IRENA and Lazard, wind and solar are the two cheapest forms of energy, even without subsidies. Oil industry subsidies last year added up to $7 trillion, according to the International Monetary Fund. See FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDIES. See RENEWABLE ENERGY IS NOW THE CHEAPEST OPTION---EVEN WITHOUT SUBSIDIES, Forbes, Jun 15, 2019
Historically, fossil fuels have gotten more than 100 times the subsidies renewables have gotten. Fossil fuel externalities also dwarf renewables’. Renewables are so much more efficient, and prevent the need for vast amounts of shipping, rail and road transport, oil refining, etc. that switching to renewable energy will reduce global energy use by at least half, providing even more savings.
What that means is that 100MW of gas generation doesn’t need to be replaced by 100MW of wind, solar, and batteries; 50 MW of renewables are all that’s needed; it will accomplish the same end-tasks. And some uses are far, far beyond that:
solar PV provides 80-100 times more vehicle miles per acre than corn ethanol, a money- and energy-laundering scam run by the us oil industry and its government lackeys.
I only have about a hundred such citations in my notes because after a while the truth is obvious to all sane people and it’s pointless to continue collecting redundant data.
My main gripe of the lcoe is that does not consider value of energy , fission produces energy 92- 98% of the time while solar produces between 18%-25 % of it and it competes with itself ( the duck curve).
Mixing fission geothermal hydro with wind solar and batteries will lead to a lower grid cost and rate cost than by simply following lcoe
My reply seems to be located elsewhere.
While I have you on the line, however, nukes do not ever have a long term capacity factor of 98%. That’s ridiculous. us nukes have a cf of about 90, like geothermal, but nukes have it because they’re inflexible and mostly losing money, even with massive subsidies (50 times what renewables have gotten, historically) so they have to run all out all the time to try to minimize that. Still lose money.
Nukes in the rest of the world average under 80 because although they’re still not flexible, they’re a little better at ramping up and down. Because of their inflexibility, they have trouble being more than the nadir demand amount on any grid. That’s assuming you don’t count the yeeeears they’re not available because of immense delays; even at best they’re the slowest to build.
Renewable energy is better in every way.
A bot not to be engaged with
Someone who’s honest and knows what he’s talking about, providing contrast to the right wing climate denying delayalist fascist extremists. David needs to address that disabling paranoia in psychotherapy.
Looking forward to this book! Any idea why such a lengthy delay for the US version? …reminds me of movie releases in the 80s
This looks fantastic! Thanks so much, Hannah. And congratulations!
Congratulations Hannah!
Congratulations
Looks awesome Hannah. Weird question if I may. This could be a great "reference" book for places like schools or workplaces. When someone asks one of these questions the book can be used to answer it. I don't think an eBook can be easily shared with DRM in place.. Is a PDF version possible, even if much more expensive?
https://www.withouthotair.com is the best reference to start looking for energy/sustainable issues with numbers in mind. And it is free, with physics based thinking that didn't change all that much since it was written. I think Hannah book(s) are "standing on the shoulder of prof. Mackay work".
I found your Substack a few months ago after a referral from Dr Julio Friedmann, and looking at your new book’s Table of Contents in ‘Clearing the Air’ this sounds great!
Is there a section of the book where we could see how to pivot our energy pathway’s and strategy at scale? With America forced on a ‘radical push-back’, how can our state government now make a stair-step pivot of readjusting our carbon capture, green energy, and grid reliability needs.
Congratulations, Dr. Ritchie!!
I hope you reach a very large audience with this book. The questions are all so very relevant to the issues we face. A TV series should be based on this information. It should be compulsory viewing/ reading fr all politicians
The question you don't appear to have even considered is "What if my premise is wrong!".
You won't even state your argument in clear terms, instead dressing it up as 'Climate Change' as though the climate should be somehow kept in a static condition, a condition that it has never been in history.
The hubris and conceit of thinking humans should and can maintain just the right conditions to support the current lifestyle of humans is staggering.
Just like the leading scientific beliefs of the past are now seen to be crazy ideas, the notion that Co² causes climate change, that the change is negative and that we tried to remove and not add Co² to the atmosphere to promote plant life will be seen just as mad as the practice of rectal insufflation.
Unfortunately, once people get an idea, however mad that idea may be, it takes a long time for it to be commonly accepted as discredited. After all, they were seriously blowing smoke up rectums as a bona fide medical practice for over 150 years and up to the 1850s!
Really? What did modern peer reviewed science get wrong about writing 1000s of papers proving that it is a thing?
And why do you know better than 1000s of scientists David?
Really, you still cling to peer review as though it has not been totally corrupted! How quaint that you 'Trust the Science'!
Do you pay no attention to what is going on around you? Don't forget that the 1000s of scientists trope is meaningless, as they don't agree on one thing, and there are more eminent scientists pointing out the flaws in the AGW claim. Plus, I can think for myself and apply logic and reason and not just rely on an appeal to authority argument as you appear to do. Hence why I can answer for myself and not have to rely on 'Scientists"!
First, you need to define the issue. Having to change from Global Warming to Climate Change is a big giveaway that the claim is false.
Then, one needs to determine if AGW is actually detrimental to life on Earth. It isn't, and the most prolific explosion of life on earth was at a time far warmer and with much higher levels of Co². If we still decide it is detrimental, then can we and should we start to interfere with the climate? No.
After all that, to then land on Co², a trace gas, as being the sole or main driver of Climate Change is a ludicrous conclusion based on flawed thinking and faith. Climate change is a quasi-religious belief.
As my post, which you responded to, states, a little over 150 years ago, serious scientific people thought blowing tobacco smoke up patients' anases was scientifically sound practice! In much less than 150 years, people will wonder at the madness that overcame mankind to think we should be reducing a trace gas that is essential for life on earth and not actually pumping it into the atmosphere to help repair the damage of pollution.
Finally, I offer you a bit of assistance. If you are at all curious as to how the peer review system has been totally corrupted, search for Peter Boghossian, James A. Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose, with their Dog Park Paper being the most egregious example of the corruption in the peer review process.
While off topic, another recent example of corruption in the system, which is still being suppressed, is the finding that Statins reduce the level of GLP-1 [a bad thing] within days of starting to take them. There is a peer-reviewed paper, but because this is detrimental to the $20 billion annual income for big pharma, it gets no attention! The widespread prescribing of statins is going to become a huge scandal in the next decade, but the unquestioning "trust the science" belief will have already done the damage by then.
Please start to think for yourself and stop relying on people you assume to be cleverer and better qualified than yourself to provide your received opinions. And you really ought to desist from believing they are acting in good faith.
Ok so you didn't provide a single example.
Look, it's very easy to tear stuff down and produce nothing. This is your approach so if you wanna do that, that's up to you. What I ask you is to stop wasting our time here with it. You're not going to suddenly convince anyone with it, so just don't.
Thanks
You don't have an argument of your own; all you have are received opinions of people you think are cleverer than yourself. So basically, you have an 'appeal to authority' stance but are unable to understand the flaws in the argument you have chosen to believe. Do some reading.
You did not ask for me to provide examples. All you said was 1000s of peer-reviewed papers, as though that is somehow an argument. What examples are you requesting?
The notion that Co² is causing climate change is so ludicrous I don't know where to start, but Co² saturation is a good place and the bandwidth in which absorption can take place.
As for wasting your time. You are the one who chose to engage with me! If you think it is a waste of time, I rather think it is you who is wasting it.
No, I doubt you are going to be convinced, as the old saying goes
"You can't reason someone out of an opinion they didn't reason themselves into."
Peer reviewed science is not opinion, a distinction that right wing lunatic climate denying delayalists so often fail to make.
David continues in his or her meta-gish gallop, refusing to take advantage of the resources offered, preferring to remain intentionally dense and ignorant, trying to deflect legitimate criticism by ignoring it and projecting a lot of what s/he does onto people trying to debunk his or her nonsense.
Off the rails with a tin hat 🤣
Do you have any evidence to support your asinine claim?
From that lame response, I suspect you are an ultra normy NPC.
That’s hilarious—without actually being funny at all. David, queen of baseless idiotic anti-scientific claims here, demanding evidence.
The only people denying climate catastrophe are not scientists, or are disgraced scientists who ignore the evidence to make provably wrong claims. They are almost all paid directly or indirectly by fossil fuel and related corporations, the far right, and dark money donors. They have zero credibility.
You can look most of them up at Desmog and find out that almost all of them are paid to lie by fossil fuel and other corporations and the far right in the us.
The premise is correct. The evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible. Your intentional ignorance of it is a sign of nothing but your own need for psychotherapy, for help in figuring out why you seek out and believe the lies of psychopaths rather than diligent scientists, journalists and activists.
YOUR premises are incorrect according to the evidence; you’re projecting repeatedly onto the people who accept overwhelming science.
“Lil NAS Express RealClimate https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/09/lil-nas-express/
Name 1 example of a large body of science being wrong on anything. Not single examples of papers or people, which you know about because the peer reviewed system works. And not non-scientists using quack medicine. Non-science is not science. It has nothing to do with climate science, or this discussion. You’re using straw person arguments, disrepresenting scientists’ positions to attack things they haven’t said and don’t believe. Look up your beliefs about this at Skeptical Science.
“They didn't change the name from 'global warming' to 'climate change’"
Skeptical Science, 16 July 2013 https://skepticalscience.com/climate-change-global-warming-basic.html
“Truth Squadding Ted Cruz's Climate Denial” video
"Climate change" or "climatic change" has been used since the 1950s. The IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on CLIMATE CHANGE, was established in 1988. "Global warming" has become more or less standard although both were used, "global warming" obviously referring to the WARMING of Earth by greenhouse gases, "climate/ic change" referring to all the varied effects the warming causes—droughts, floods, fires, storms, ecosystem disruptions...
But it was a Republican operative who encouraged everybody to call it what he thought was a less threatening term.
"The premise is correct. The evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible. "
What evidence?
In 1976 the consensus was that we were heading back into the ice age.
You mistake models for reality. You have no idea, because no one can have any idea of what is going on based on a few years of data.
You have chosen to believe the official Western narrative for reasons known to yourself.
Meanwhile, the climate will follow the cycle it is on.
Stomach ulcers were universally thought to be caused by stress, and that was the consensus position until two Australian scientists destroyed the consensus by demonstrating it was a bacterial infection. But even then, it took many years for the truth to be accepted. Look it up if you are not aware of this.
If you live long enough, you will one day realise just how mad your belief was that a trace gas of 425 ppm or 0.0425%. the atmosphere causes climate change! This is a belief bordering on homoeopathy.
That was absolutely not the consensus in 1976. That’s a far right corporate lie you’re spreading, just like everything else you’ve said.
Extremely reliable temperature data goes back to 1880; years before that in proxies and less systematic reconstructed records. The Earth is warming.
The science showing it’s caused by human greenhouse gases is in many forms, lines, and scientific fields—convergent evidence that is overwhelming and incontrovertible. (You’d know that if you paid any attention to the science, or to the Skeptical Science website, run by scientists and based on and constantly referencing the science. You refuse to. You prefer the right wing lunatic science denial narrative.)
Climate science has nothing to do with ulcers, or believing the Earth is flat, or the sun revolves around it. Another attempt to distract with irrelevant nonsense. In fact, stress-caused ulcers is partly true, was not supported by overwhelming science, and once the bacterial cause was demonstrated scientifically, the medical community came around in a couple of years. So like everything else you said, all that turned out to be false. Why keep embarrassing yourself? Why are you insisting on nonsense and being a jerk about it as you are?
All decent scientists—and Hannah Ritchie is an excellent one—consider whether their premise is wrong. That’s what training, observation, experimentation, and peer review are for. There is no perfect human system; peer-reviewed science is an excellent system that has questioned everything for more than 150 years to come to the conclusions you treat so cavalierly, without knowing anything, and with most of what you think—or at least claim—being wrong.
It’s not just thousands of papers as BZ said. Climate science now consists of more than 350,000 peer-reviewed papers in scores of scientific fields, and hundreds of thousands of scientists who wrote them over nearly 2 centuries, and more than 99% agree that
climate change is happening, caused by human greenhouse gases, and
threatens civilization and millions of species.
That’s been shown by at least 11 peer reviewed studies looking at different groups of papers and scientists using different methods; the latest is a Cornell review of more than 88,000 peer reviewed papers between 2012 and 2021. It found a 99.9% consensus.
Look up consensus at Skeptical Science.
You don't even know how a greenhouse works!
"A physical greenhouse traps heat primarily through convection suppression. Glass or plastic walls prevent warm air inside from escaping and mixing with cooler outside air. Solar radiation enters, warms the interior, and the trapped air retains that heat."
You have also misunderstood the 99% consensus,
No one claims there is no climate change or that there has ever been a time without climate change. Just that this change works on cycles that are thousands of years, tens of thousands of years and hundreds of thousands of years, so to try to take 40 years of data and claim the climate is heating is simply ludicrous. We need a proper period of time to elapse to see the trend.
As late as 1976 the big fear was global cooling, which really would be a disaster, and the consensus at that time was to support this claim.
But remember, consensus is not science. In fact, before every scientific breakthrough, there is a consensus that is in opposition to the new discovery.
I really do struggle with people like you who don't do any of their own thinking and just contract it out to others.
As for a threat to species, you must know that at the Cambrian Explosion, an explosion of species, the temperature of Earth was much warmer than today, and the level of Co² was far greater. The conceit needed to think we should control the climate to support just human life is staggering.
I do understand how a greenhouse works, and if you’re talking to me you’re making a completely irrelevant claim with absolutely no evidence to try to distract from the fact that you’re ass is being kicked here by several people, because it’s so obvious everything you claim is utter bullshit.
I also understand how scientific consensus works. You clearly do not, and have ignored my suggestion to read the entries at Skeptical Science on it:
“The 97% consensus on global warming”
“Explainer: Scientific Consensus”
Consensus is a consequence of the scientific method not a part it.
“At a glance - Human fingerprints on climate change rule out natural cycles” Skeptical Science, 26 March 2024
“Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming”
What the science says...
Skeptical Science
A few scientists thought for a short time in the 70s that cooling aerosols released by burning fossil fuels would cool the Earth. Aerosols do have a powerful short-term cooling effect but fall out of the atmosphere in days or weeks. CO2, also released by burning fossil fuels, begins heating immediately and soon overwhelms the aerosols, but it takes about 40 years to reach its full warming effect. So when there’s a sudden increase in industrial activity or war (the 1940s with WWII, the 1960s with industrial expansion in the developing world…) there’s a slight cooling that is soon overwhelmed by warming from CO2 (and other GHGs). The British and us Clean Air Acts (1950s, 1970) reduced aerosols but not CO2 and other GHGs so warming has accelerated quickly since then. The cooling-hypothesis scientists were never anything but a tiny minority with an idea that was soon shown to be wrong. About 20(?) years ago climate denying delayalists created a fake magazine cover to fool people into thinking it was more than that. Apparently it still works.
Your acceptance of this tiny minority viewpoint but rejection of literally a hundred thousand times more papers accepting the consensus that climate catastrophe is happening, human-caused, and a threat to civilization and nature, reveals that you care nothing for science or evidence, just are susceptible to the lies of nihilistic narcissistic psychotic psychopaths, and gullibly and maliciously accept their nonsensical arguments for political, ultimately psychological reasons. You accept the paleo-climate science about long-term changes but buy the psychopaths’ crap denying the overwhelming science that climate catastrophe is happening, human-caused, and an existential threat. Why?
More from Skeptical Science:
“The 1970s Global Cooling Zombie Myth and the Tricks Some People Use to Keep it Alive, Part I”
“CO2 lags temperature - what does it mean?”
Past climate shifts have taken tens of thousands to millions of years, yet have wiped out most life on Earth 5 times. See “Milankovitch cycles” and “CO2 lags temperature - what does it mean?” at Skeptical Science.
The current heating is hundreds to thousands of times faster, according to more than 26,500 data sets (atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe). Several known extinctions and many devastating ecological effects have already happened or are happening. Probably many other extinctions have been caused by the current climate catastrophe unobserved, as most species—maybe 80%—are still undescribed by science.
“A history of FLICC: the 5 techniques of science denial” Skeptical Science, 31 March 2020
Consensus is a result of science, not part of it. The climate science consensus is the result of nearly 2 centuries of investigation, observation, debate, and the piling up of overwhelming evidence. All other potential explanations of the data have been thoroughly vetted and rejected because they turned out to be false. The conclusions have been undeniable for 40 years. It’s quite insane to deny it at this point. The conceit that you know more than hundreds of thousands of scientists is staggering.
I understand you’re passionate about this subject, but your overblown language doesn’t help your case—it muddies the waters, trading reason for emotion. Labelling people who question the prevailing narrative as “psychotic psychopaths” is pure ad hominem and makes your entire argument less credible.
Worse, your use of the term “denial” is a cheap shot, not science. It’s an offensive nod to Holocaust denial, demeaning the memory of millions, mostly Jews, murdered by the Nazis, and it’s designed purely to shut down legitimate debate rather than engage with it. Science thrives on questioning, not name-calling.
Your claims wildly exaggerate the evidence. Declaring an “existential threat” or that we’ve “wiped out most life” is pure speculation, not settled science. You cannot claim to know about “unobserved extinctions” of species that are still “undescribed”; by definition, we can’t know that.
You present the science as a closed book, “undeniable for 40 years,” but this ignores the inherent uncertainties in modelling complex systems and the ongoing debate about the precise pace, impacts, and tipping points. Pushing CO2 as the sole driver and dismissing natural factors out of hand is not the balanced view you claim to hold. Science doesn’t work by just shouting “consensus” or dismissing questions as “insane.”
Drop the drama and the offensive rhetoric. If your evidence is as solid as you say, focus on that for a stronger, more credible case.
People can either criticize for high emissions or they can spread deceptive fallacies that slow the building of renewables—the only clean energy mix that has any chance of succeeding—but those who do both are among the worst criminal psychopaths in history, risking the survival of civilization and millions of species for money, ideology, and ultimately, entirely because of the mental illness shared across the far right.
Ciurra,
No it won’t. Nukes, especially new nukes which are the only kind you can be advocating for, produce very expensive energy. The only more expensive energy is burning $100 bills. Solar, wind, efficiency, and wiser lives are the cheapest energy almost everywhere in the world, and getting cheaper at an incredible rate, so batteries, also getting cheaper at least as fast, can make them both cheap and virtually dispatchable. (That includes EV batteries with V2E. And distributed generation and demand response strategies help a lot.)
Solar PV and onshore wind peak at opposite times of day and year, complementing each other and providing energy as it’s needed almost all the time, including 2 of the 3 peaks in demand. Offshore and near-shore wind, solar with a few hours battery storage combine with dispatchable hydro, geothermal, and small amounts of tidal to meet the duck curve. PHS helps meet longer term peaks in demand.
Overproduction is used in every grid everywhere, for backup and stability. Overproduction of solar and wind can be stored and/or used for non time-dependent tasks like desalination, water pumping, etc. at essentially no additional cost, still available at a moment’s notice and when combined with batteries and PHS, ready to step in at a millisecond’s notice.
Renewables are better in every way.
Well I mostly think about countries which have winters , during which solar is at its minimum capacity and energy demand is at its highest , having fission electricity would cost less than having enough solar for that kind of energy ( once all heating is electrified).
In country which have enough hydro and geothermal fission is not needed but as of now it is the only one clean baseload which can be scale, even if it takes between 5 and seven years when all goes well ( france in the 70 korea and china now).
Yeah it is more expansive but it is also long lasting and once its capital cost has been paid up its operating cost vs its output is really competitive.
Thanks to pumped hydro and batteries its inflexibility ( it can modulate but it is not preferred) it play better with renewables needing less of both.
The more we overbuild ( yes a bit more is normal due too cover for incidente ad manteinance) the more grid cost baloon and more energy is wasted.
Rhink about how many solar panels and how many batteries would be needed to give power to germany in winter and those cost vs a mix of them plus fission.
My final point is that countries which integrate nuclear lile france and sweden have less co2 intensive electricity than countries like germany or denmark and that reduction has cost less.
Wind, solar, efficiency, and wiser lives are the cheapest energy sources of all. (And not just cheap but damned near free once they’re built.) Every significant energy tracking and investment firm agrees. You wanna argue that point? Go talk to IEA, EIA, Lazard, BNEF, Wood McKenzie, Ember, and the hundreds of people who have done peer-reviewed studies confirming it. Wind and solar—and batteries—are getting even cheaper very fast, typically at at least 1-2% a year, which is phenomenal. The combination (which does not have to be in the same place; there are these newfangled things called wires) is still cheaper than any other source, especially new nukes, the most expensive source. Your claim otherwise is ridiculous. Nukes plus batteries? Even more expensive than just nukes, the. most. expensive. energy. source. of. all.
Hinky Point is likely to never be built; it’s a passed-around hot potato years behind schedule and billions over budget with a contract to sell electricity at nearly twice the rate UK wind and solar are already producing energy for. IF it’s ever built, how many times more than those will its leccy cost? That’s insane.
Baseload is poison. Look it up.
Consciously or not I don’t know, but you are using what I think of as the hyena fallacy, when a pack of scavenging predators singles out 1 victim from the herd and attacks it relentlessly. STOP DOING THAT!
Yes, duh, some places solar is not the most abundant renewable resource. In deserts, hydro is often not the most abundant (although Morocco, Chile, Arizona, Utah and the us SW in general do pretty well with it.) Some places geothermal is harder & deeper to get than others; some places have less wind; some places have no tidal power potential at all. (But Scotland could produce half its electricity just from the tides in Pentland Firth; Alaska, e. Canada, other places could get huge amounts, or are already.)
NO PLACE ON EARTH has nothing; most places have several complementary RE sources; many have an astounding abundance. (The us is the Saudi Arabia of diverse, distributed RE resources, eg.) And as I pointed out, there are things called wires. Almost every country on Earth buys some or most of its energy from others now; with renewables that will be far less, reducing shipping by 40%; rail, & trucking by similar amounts, increasing security and price stability as well as decreasing prices period. Most places would continue to buy some energy, although far less; and it will cost less because wind and solar are the cheapest energy sources of all and electricity is amazingly efficient in transmission (losses of 2% or less per thousand miles). The principle of distributed generation is bedrock for cheap, stable, reliable power.
I don’t know why you’re only talking about geothermal’s—no, wait, yes of course I know why you’re cherry picking that. Solar, wind and batteries are built in a tiny fraction of the time nukes are. Solar is typically a few years, then paying back its carbon cost of construction in 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 years; wind is similar, paying it back in 2-6 months. Often, parts of wind farms are operating while the rest is being built; paying a big part of its carbon back before it’s even finished. Nukes’ payback is measured in decades; even though time, money, security issues and ecological damage for nuke fuel and the reactors themselves as waste are never accounted for in the money or carbon cost. Add nuclear’s huge externalities, subsidies, the Nuclear Unholy Twinity’s enabling of weapons at every level and stage, and to even discuss building more is insane.
China gave its nuke program a 10 year head start, now wind and solar add vastly more GWh to its grid every year than nukes do. Wind, solar and storage are increasing there as everywhere.
Korea’s nuke program, like pretty much every country’s, was/is beset by corruption, incompetence, and lying. It’s the last industry in the world I would trust with necessary tasks or dangerous substances, but there they are…
Well, last except for the fossil fuel industry.
France’s nuke program took 32 years, not the usual claim of ~15. Each reactor took 15-19 years.
https://eu.boell.org/en/2021/04/26/7-reasons-why-nuclear-energy-not-answer-solve-climate-change
The average nuke build time in the West is 14 years. It’s not shortening; if anything it’s lengthening, and since Flamingville, Hinky Point and others haven’t been built (many never will be) their build times and massive cost overruns aren’t even counted in that. Bent Flyvbjerg has written a fascinating and insightful book about the success and failure of big projects; nukes are 1 of the most likely to be disasters—not even including the, you know, disasters. Michael Barnard has reported on his work in various contexts at CleanTechnica.
We cannot afford either the time or money nukes take. Even if they weren’t a disaster in every other way, either of those issues alone eliminate them from consideration by any sane person.
You cite no source for your claim that France and Sweden’s nukes cost less than Germany’s and Denmark’s wind. In Carbon Tracker’s “The Sky’s the Limit” study, Germany was judged the 3rd hardest country in the world to renewablize because of its population, resource potential, energy use… Yet there it is, 2/3 renewable grid and rapidly increasing that even as it rapidly electrifies its primary energy. The 2 countries’ grids are the most reliable and democratic in the world; wholesale prices are at or below the EU average. (IIRC, Denmark 64% RE grid incl. 52% wind; Germany 66% RE, incl. 35% S&W.)
Largest 10-Year Deployments of Low-Carbon Electricity Generation
https://i-cdn.embed.ly/1/display?key=fd92ebbc52fc43fb98f69e50e7893c13&url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fxjbte1ao5jw31.jpg
This graphic obviously doesn’t include the current exponential growth of solar, wind, and batteries.
[Note: No country on Earth is doing this as fast as it could or needs to to prevent catastrophic climate change. That is obviously a problem.* It’s caused mostly by lies, manipulation, destruction of democracy, bribery, intimidation, smear tactics, murders, and more, engaged in by both fossil and fissile fuel fanatics.]
Sweden’s grid is 28% nuke, 69% renewable! How dare you attribute its low emissions to nukes!
Nook boosters use France as an example for everything… but it’s because it’s their only example. And it’s a terrible one!
3 countries get more than 50% of their electricity from nukes; the industrial powerhouse Slovakia, everybody’s current favorite poster child for No Nukes, Ukraine—both barely at 50–and France, at 60-something %, still recovering from its shameful massive emergency safety shutdown…in the middle of a global energy crisis! 23 of its 56 reactors were shut down at about age 40; 5 more should have been shut down to prevent destruction of aquatic ecosystems but who cares about that really? It’s only the ecological basis on which all our lives depend.
SEVENTY countries have mostly renewable grids, and that’s increasing so fast all over the world I’m not sure that number is up to date. At least 23 are at or near 100% renewable electricity; 40 have more RE than any country has ever had nuke e.
2 are very close to 100% renewable total energy; others not far behind are catching up.
The fastest biggest and I believe cheapest buildout of energy in history is going on right now and it’s overwhelmingly wind, solar, and batteries. Nukes are barely hanging on to their share because of closures; more are coming up. There is no commercial nuke operating anywhere in the world over 60, only the rusty radioactive hulks of past, closed ones; some of which are being weaponized by a psychopathic dictator, who also happens to control a dangerously large portion of the world’s nuclear fuel. (HALEU, eg.)
Some of the earliest and least well-built solar panels are still operating at a high efficiency at 60 years old. Those built now may last 100. Wind turbines built now will typically last 35 years. Both W&S can then be virtually 100% recycled, saving materials and energy, and hugely reducing the need for mining, already vastly less with renewables; where they’re not recycled it’s because the insane far right opposes it.
4th biggest economy in the world, a long-time leader in the transition to renewable energy, so, naturally, relentlessly attacked with lies created by the fossil-fueled far right jackalpack of PR and lobbying firms masquerading as think tanks, Germany’s emissions are high because
1) it’s a very industrial country. France produces wine and cheese.
2) Germany gots lotsnlotsa dirty coal, which it still uses because of us-like coal-state politics and because the previous, conservative federal government slow-walked renewable construction for years despite clear popular desire for more speed. If progressives had been elected sooner, the country would likely be almost entirely run by renewable energy by now.
There is never a need to waste electricity through curtailment. It reflects poor planning, and rotten thinking, and if people act even remotely rationally it will soon be fixed everywhere it’s happening, through distributed generation grid connections, time-shifting through storage, and non-time-dependent use of the essentially FREE energy. Unless you’re recommending incompetence and corruption—on the scale of, say… the nuclear industry, drop it.
*Just watched a new video, “The New Denialism: Climate Change—from the Paris Agreement to Sweden” by Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Center. His London School of Economics talk was better I think but this 1 is very relevant.
If you want some sources I would point you to ourworld in data and checking co2 per electricity generated and see who emits more .
About the role of fission you can check the ipcc.
I cited batteries not because they are necessary for fission but because we already have them and they make sense in the grid regardless of other factors.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Electricity_price_statistics this link for final price of electricity to the consumer.
About proliferation please remember that making bombs came before and that for making plutonium you have to make different reactors from those that make electricity and use very different level of enrichment.
Fission reactors have so much international control that are one of the most difficult places to be corrupt in .
I have those sources and all I need, thanks. Since everything you think is wrong, whatever sources you use are not helping you.
Did you even read what I wrote? Either you didn’t read it or didn’t understand it so go back and try again, because I already explained about emissions, and everything you’ve said has turned out to be wrong.
The IPCC is constrained by every member nation, which includes many petrostates and several uraninations including Russia, all the other mentioned ones, and formerly the us, which has impeded progress since before Rio (the UNFCCC), and the Kyoto Protocol while working frantically to appear to be helping, even leading. It’s a con.
There are 3 IPCC working groups: I and II do physical science, impacts, vulnerability, and do a decent though almost pathologically conservative job; III does mitigation policy and pretty much sucks. Did you watch Kevin Anderson? No, I thought not. Do.
The IPCC is wrong about nukes. It’s insane to think nukes will do anything but slow progress, distract from the real solutions, and cause problems. There are only 3 things compelling and allowing that belief:
Denial of the speed and direness of climate catastrophe;
Denial that renewable energy can quickly and completely provide all the energy the world needs;
Denial that the deep intractable problems with the nuclear industry and the technology itself mean nukes can’t.
“What Lies Beneath: The scientific understatement of climate risks”
David Spratt, Ian Dunlop, 7 September, 2017
“Mainstream Climate Science: The New Denialism?”
Jonathan Porritt, March 7, 2024
https://www.jonathonporritt.com/mainstream-climate-science-the-new-denialism/
“CoP28 in Dubai demonstrated beyond any remaining doubt that this UN (“consensus-based”) process has become the creature of today’s dominant petrostates, of Big Oil, of Big Ag and of Big Chem. What once might have been construed as deeply problematic but not yet terminal co-option was revealed, in Dubai, as the fully corrupt shit-show that it really is.
The likelihood that such a process will ever get anywhere near the kind of agreement that would make any real impact, within the timeframes still available to us, is preposterous.”
That there was a subsequent COP in Baku, the world capital of oil corruption, proves it yet again. See Greg Palast on the subject.
When the control is corrupt it’s no help in keeping the industry honest. Military, civilian, and regulators are all so incestuous the control is not control at all; it’s boosterism and enabling. Areva, NRC, Korean, Russian agencies… they’re all dominated by the corrupt, arrogant, insular, self-righteous, and superior.
Military and civilian nukes are intertwined from basic research and training/inculcation to political policymaking; in the us, UK, and I’m absolutely sure, Russia, China, and Korea civilian nukes were adopted and are still used partly because of the needs of nuclear weapons programs, and partly out of pro-nuclear bias because the conservative mind-set is compelled by the symbolism of domination of nature through smashing atoms (and burning things) for energy. The nihilism of the current far right, terminally infected by Wetiko, reinforces it.
"Seeing Wetiko: on Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition” Alnoor Ladha, Martin Kirk.
https://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/seeing-wetiko-on-capitalism-mind-viruses-and-antidotes-for-a-world-in-transition/
And see process therapist Paul Levy’s writings on Wetiko, aka malignant egophrenia. Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil, by process therapist Paul Levy
Well I tried engaging and responding with arguments , but It seems to me that you are giving standard responses instead of doing the same back to me. I may very well be wrong but I try to better my ideas trhough discussion .
I can state without being wrong that the most decarbonized countries are not those heavely invested in renewables but those that are in clean stable electricity like hydro geothermal and fission with solar wind and batteries , while thise countries that reject incorporating fission in their grids see spikes in co2 emissions in winter .
As you already know because as you say you have all those sources.
Renewable energy is the only way to eliminate fossil fuels in time to prevent catastrophic climate chaos.
So what is Ciurra talking about? Geothermal, hydro, solar, wind ARE renewable energy. The only source s/he missed both including and rejecting is tidal, a locally important but much smaller solution. And ooooh, so close, but then s/he added the psychopathic mistake of nukes.
(In fact, conventional hydro is a much less effective and desirable action, a bargain with Satan that many climate activists are willing to make out of desperation, as the lunatic far right has done everything it could to stop cheaper, less destructive and compromised, compromising renewable energy sources. New nukes are a concession to the dark lord we should avoid. It shouldn’t be too hard; those proposing nukes mostly propose nukes that don’t exist. But there’s that symbolism that conservatives have no resistance to.
Dave Barry once wrote about an imagined ad for Frosted Sugar Bombs cereal, that said “Frosted Sugar Bombs, as part of this nutritious breakfast, [showing juice, fruit, milk, toast…] provides [blah blah] % of daily vitamin and mineral needs”. Barry pointed out the ad could just as well have said “Frosted Sugar Bombs, adjacent to this nutritious breakfast…”or “in the general vicinity of this nutritious breakfast…”, because the FSB provided only a tiny part of the nutrients and fiber. That’s Ciurra’s argument for Sweden (an egregious attempt at deceptive manipulation s/he hasn’t apologized for or retracted) and oh yeah, the rest of the world. “Nuclear reactors, in the general vicinity of renewable energy, the climate solution…”
As solar and wind continue to be deployed, growing exponentially as they are despite the efforts of lunatics who rule too much of the world, fossil fuels will be abandoned, faster and faster. The doubling times of their exponential growth tell the story. Renewable sources already supply more electricity than coal in the us, UK, and many other countries, more than nukes in almost every country in the world, more than fossil fuels in more than 75 countries, a quick check tells me. And wind and solar are expected to double again by 2030.
People interested in the truth can read for example the recent Ember report, Jacobson 2021, Li and Wang 2023*, and many other peer reviewed and expert papers.
AS I SAID, if one both condemns too-high emissions and spreads anti-renewable fanatics’ lies, s/he is trying to worsen the problem s/he claims to be against. Being against renewables because there aren’t enough renewables because the lies one’s spreading have slowed their deployment is insane, but that’s Ciurra’s position. Given the stakes, and the methods used by the far right to endlessly delay renewable energy, it is criminally insane.
*Li & Wang: 130 countries; a non-linear relationship as renewables replace fossil fuels. [The more renewables are used, the more are used to build renewables, the cleaner the air gets (improving solar output), the cheaper they get and the more they’re seen as the first and best choice.]
In fact, since people building renewables often like renewables, building renewables is 1 of the first uses of renewables, so the per KWh emissions gap between FFs and RE grows. IOW, renewables make renewables (and EVs, heat pumps, etc) even cleaner.
Everything I said is factual.
I don’t pay attention to Lovins and Jacobson because they’re charming but because they tell the truth with insight and caring concern beyond any industry. Your irrational attachment to nukes may make you blind to those facts but go ahead, prove them wrong.
I have no idea what you’re talking about—well about many things, also a lot like David—but about the price thing right now.
Solar and wind are the cheapest sources of energy almost everywhere in the world and are getting cheaper at nearly 2% per year.
Fossil fuel prices crater and spike, and nuclear fuels are available sometimes, sometimes not (Russia’s HALEU, eg.)
Solar and wind are the cheapest sources of energy almost everywhere in the world and are getting cheaper at nearly 2% per year. They are far more stable than fossil fuels and probably more stable than nuclear fuel prices, certainly more stable than nuclear fuels. You provide no evidence whatever to the contrary.
Finland’s grid is 44% RE, 35% nuke.
Sweden’s is 66% RE, 30% nuke.
The Nordic grid is more than 2/3 RE, the 4 countries’ primary energy is more than 1/3 RE; both are increasing fast. France’s grid is 28% RE and has reduced its nuclear share considerably since before the nuclear safety disaster. Now it’s 60-something % nuke, with renewables growing and a plan to continue that. Even they know they can’t do it with nukes.
3 countries with more than 50% nuke electricity. At least 70 with mostly renewable electricity.
If your ‘Germany 1/3 of the way’ thing refers to total energy I’d remind you that France and all other countries are subject to the same math. Primary energy (direct use of fuel in buildings, industry and transport) is typically 4-5 times more than electricity; globally, leccy is 18% (except for the enormous amount of renewable clothesline paradox energy). Renewables provide a considerable amount of primary energy; nukes don’t. By definition.
Iceland’s grid is 100% RE, primary energy is 82% RE. Norway’s grid, 1/2 its energy, is 98% RE, primary is about 50% RE. Nicaragua is 66% RE grid, 75% RE primary. Iberia: 58.5% RE grid. And so on.
Scotland, Paraguay, Ethiopia, Costa Rica, Belize, Uruguay and 17 others at, near, or above 100% RE grids. Uganda, Kenya, Laos and others more than 90%. Georgia, Brazil, Colombia, New Zealand and others more than 80%. Austria, Ghana, N. Korea and others more than 70%. Pretty much all the rest of Central and South America more than 60% RE, along with most of Africa, Switzerland, Canada, UK… with Ireland, Morocco, Turkey, and many other countries closing in on or just past half. Remember I left more than FIFTY countries over half RE off this list.
Including primary energy shows the numbers are waaaaaay in favor of renewables. And everything else is, too. Renewable energy is better in every way.
[Some of these figures are understatements of renewables, as they’re from my research notes and it’s hard to keep up, since renewables are growing so fast.]
I‘m already reading and passing the book through the family. The clarity of your voice as you let the facts speak is exactly what is needed in this urgent matter.
Nope. Wrong on every count.
David needs to read the science; read Skeptical Science. Any sane person would by now have given up and just read the things I’ve repeatedly implored him or her to, since that’s where all the information is that debunks his or her bullshit. David? Either hasn’t, or is lying about it to keep spewing bullshit s/he knows is bullshit. Has to know by now that that’s what would happen and refuses to face the reality—just like everything else in his or her life?
David makes assumptions not supported by fact, about climate and me and others, distorts and disrepresents almost everything I say and assumes—or claims, as a way to distract and attack—that I think things I don’t. Projects. Lies. Trusts psychotic psychopaths rather than scientists. Everything s/he says is false. Any sane person… but we’re clearly dealing with either a professional climate denying delayalist, a person so addled by delusion s/he relentlessly seeks out confirmation of his or her delusions, or a psychopathic disruptive troll. In the end, it hardly matters which; the only effective response is to ban and delete them, give them no outlet, and eventually convince them to seek psychotherapy.