Mark Z. Jacobson is Credible as a Scientist?

I have criticized Mark Z, Jacobon's research in the past. Other critics, including Barry Brook, Brian Wang and Bill Hannahan have pointed to numerous and serious flaws in Jacobson's research. In addition a series of critical comments on one of Jacobson's papers appeared in the December 2008 in response to a publication by Renewable Energy World.com of a Stanford press release on Mark Z. Jacobson's paper, "Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security." Jacobson failed to respond to those comments. Again following the publication of a Jacobson coauthored paper in the January 2009 Scientific American, numerous critical online comments were offered by Scientific American readers. Again Jacobson failed to respond. Further, when Bill Hannahan charges that when he attempted to publish a critical review of a Jacobson paper, Jaconson blocked its publication by failure to cooperate with the vetting process. Jacobson has not responded to any of my critical posts, nor did he responds to Brian Wang. Jacobson offered one response to Barry Brook, but failed to defend his response when critics pointed out numerous flaws in it.

Criticism is normal in science, and scientists must be prepared to defend their work from criticism. If scientists are unwilling or unable to defend their work, then they have limited recourse. They must retract undefended or indefensible statements or be discredited as scientists. To date Jacobson has failed to retract numerous statements and claims that have received unanswered criticisms. Yet he continues to claim their truth. While he is free to do so as a human being, he damages his credibility as a scientist if he brings his scientific cradentials to the table.

Jacobson published a comment on nuclear power recently on the CNN Opinion page. In his comment Jacobson made a number of questionable comments. First he claims,

First, it's not carbon-free, no matter what the advocates tell you. Vast amounts of fossil fuels must be burned to mine, transport and enrich uranium and to build the nuclear plant.

In fact many researchers have concluded that the lifecycle CO2 emissions from nuclear power and wind are both quite small compared to CO2 emissions from any form of electrical generation from fossil fuel, and most research suggests that CO2 emissions from wind and nuclear are about the same. So ambiguous words like "vast amounts" are in fact ambiguous and are not used in scientific reports, and hide from readers the fact that nuclear is a reliable source of low carbon electricity.

Jascobson claims that it takes

"10 to 19 years . . . to plan and build a nuclear plant. (A wind farm typically takes two to five years.

In fact, it takes far less, although in the United States far more time is devoted to the licensing process than to actual nuclear plant construction. Asian nuclear plants require far less time, for example Chines reactors are expected to take about 5 years to build. However Nuclear manufacturers such as Babcock & Wilcox expect shorten reactor construction time to only 2 years, by building reactors in factories rather than on site.

Jacobson claims

The on-the-ground footprint of nuclear power, through its plants and uranium mines, is about 1,000 times larger than it is for wind.

This claim has been questions. First, Jacobson only considered the size of wind generator base in estimated the land, but wind mills are built from materials that come from mines, and were he to be consistent, he would also include the size of those mines in his estimate. Secondly Jaconson failed to consider the visual impact of wind generators, and that the visually impacted area would easily cover tens of thousands of square miles. Jacobson further neglected to consider the environmental impact of wind related construction and service roads, which are by now thousands of miles long. Finally Jacobson failed to consider the environmental impact of thousands of miles of power lines, which must be built in order to transmit electricity from wind generators to electrical customers.

Jacobson correctly acknowledges that the world has abundant renewable energy resources, but what he fails to add is that it is more expensive to supply a given amount of power for a year from wind and solar power generating facilities than it is to supply that power from nuclear power plants.

Jacobson states,

Nuclear proponents also argue that nuclear energy production is constant, unlike fickle winds and sunshine. But worldwide, nuclear plants are down 15 percent of the time, and when a plant goes down, so does a large fraction of the grid.

But nuclear plants in the United States are only down 8% of the time and most of that time is for refueling and repairs that have been planned in advance. Since nuclear plant operators can control the time of the shut down, they often take advantage of predictable periods of low power demand for their shutdowns. In contrast, wind generators produce little electricity during periods of maximim consumer demand, such as hot summer days. Solar generators, of course shut down at twilight, and don't start generating again until after dawn no matter how much consumers demand electricity. The shutdowns of nuclear plants are simply not comprable.

Jacobson claims,

Connecting wind farms over large areas through transmission lines smoothes power supply.

In fact, this system requires the building of many thousands of miles of expensive electrical transmission lines to connect widely dispersed wind generators, and requires the building of wind generators with five times the generation capacity of a nuclear power plant to even begin to approach the reliability of nuclear power plants. Even then in Texas the system that Jacobson describes is expected to deliver no more than 10% of its rated capacity on hot summer days, and sometimes it will deliver much less. The gap is expected to be filled by burning fossil fuels. Such smoothness comes at a very steep price.

So what would Jacobson do about all of those Texas air conditioners that are demanding power on hot summer days." He tells us,

storing energy (with concentrated solar) and giving people incentives to reduce demand. It is not rocket science to match power demand. It merely requires thinking out of the box.

Storing energy is another expensive solution to the problems of wind and solar. Incentive to reduce demand means high energy price, which of ourse you will have if you are dependent on expensive wind generators, and the wond stops blowing in Texas on hot summer days. People, even Texans, can always be forced to turn off their airconditioners, if the electricity costs too much. Thinking out of the box may cost people, it may hurt people, it may even kill them, but it does not solve the probl;em of wind and solar unreliability.

Finally Jacobson claims,

Combining geothermal with wind (whose power potential often peaks at night) and solar (which peaks by day), and using hydroelectricity to fill in gaps, would almost always match demand.

In the United States right now, hydro provides 6% of the electricity, and most cost effective hydro dams have already been built. So Hydro is not going to fill in the gap on windless nights. Geothermal power plants are typically built in volcanic areas, and while they are reliable, there are not enough volcanic areas in California to provide night time power to that state, and California has more volcanos than most of the country. A recent attempt to build a geothermal plant in a none volcanic area of Europe is believed to have cause an earth quake. Surely Jacobson knows about the earthquake problem. If he doesn't he is a very bad researcher. If he does, he is hiding it from his readers as he makes the highly unlikely suggestion that hydro and geothermal can make up for the failures of wind and solar.

Thus we see that only a few of Mark Jacobson's statements about nuclear power and renewables are true. We also see that he hides information, if it does not support the case he is arguing. That he uses ambiguous, unscientific language, and that he suggests unrealistic solutions to the problem of living without nuclear power if we run out of fossil fuels or choose to dispence with them. We also see that Jacobson has repeatedly avoided answer criticisms of his work, and even has blocked the publication of a critical review of one of his papers. Thus it is legitimate to as the question is Mark Jacobson credible as a scientist?