Monbiot: "We have no idea what to do next."

This post went up yesterday, but due to problems with Blogger, Google took it down, along with all of the other blogger posts. Fortunately I was able to recover the text. Here it is.

So how do we break this system? How do we pursue happiness and well-being rather than growth? I came back from the climate talks in Copenhagen depressed for several reasons, but above all because, listening to the discussions at the citizens’ summit, it struck me that we no longer have movements; we have thousands of people each clamouring to have their own visions adopted. We might come together for occasional rallies and marches, but as soon as we start discussing alternatives, solidarity is shattered by possessive individualism. Consumerism has changed all of us. Our challenge is now to fight a system we have internalized. - George Monbiot

For one thing, environmentalism is a luxury. Just like being a vegetarian is a luxury. When you have to worry about eating - you're not going to be worried about where the food's coming from, or who made your shoes. Poverty, whether planned or not planned, is a way of making environmentalism moot. Even this discussion is a luxury. - Sherman Alexie

I have no doubt that George Monbiot is a brilliant iconoclast. The Icons that he is destroying at the moment are primarily those of the Green Movement. Environmentalists, as a group, do not think things out. Monbiot is a capable and passionate thinker. Yet given what he has seen, Monbiot acknowledges,

We have no idea what to do next.

Some 35 years ago, I briefly became active in the an environmental organization, only to discover, to my amusement, what I called REI consumerism. There are deep paradoxes in the environmentalist movement, and perhaps the deepest paradox is the claim by mainstream environmentalists to be progressive. A progressive wishes to improve the material lot of everyone, but most especially the poor. Mainstream environmentalists see wealth to be evil, and believe that the road to environmental salvation is nearly impoverishment. This is of course nonsense. Monbiot has seen the nonsense, and doesn't like it one bit.

Green environmentalism is about a quest for righteousness, both personal and social. When i was younger, on the roads of the American South, i saw signs that read, Get right with God. The goal of the Green movement is similar, to get right with nature. Social justice demands that the poor get a greater share of wealth, not that the wealthy be reduced to poverty. Thus if getting right with nature means decreasing human wealth, the goals of environmentalism are incompatible with social justice.

George Monbiot understands the paradox. Monbiot tells us,

You think you’re discussing technologies, you quickly discover that you’re discussing belief systems. The battle among environmentalists over how or whether our future energy is supplied is a cipher for something much bigger: who we are, who we want to be, how we want society to evolve. Beside these concerns, technical matters – parts per million, costs per megawatt hour, cancers per sievert – carry little weight. We choose our technology – or absence of technology – according to a set of deep beliefs; beliefs which in some cases remain unexamined.

Monbiot adds,

What the nuclear question does is to concentrate the mind about the electricity question. Decarbonising the economy involves an increase in infrastructure. Infrastructure is ugly, destructive and controlled by remote governments and corporations. These questions are so divisive because the same worldview tells us that we must reduce emissions, defend our landscapes and resist both the state and big business. The four objectives are at odds.

But even if we can accept an expansion of infrastructure, the technocentric, carbon-counting vision I’ve favoured runs into trouble. The problem is that it seeks to accommodate a system that cannot be accommodated: a system which demands perpetual economic growth. We could, as Zero Carbon Britain envisages, become carbon-free by 2030. Growth then ensures that we have to address the problem all over again by 2050, 2070 and thereon after.

Monbiot notes that the effects of an anti-growth approach would be disasterous both for society, and in the long run for the environment itself.

The Lost World
May 2, 2011

Where is the environmental vision that can resist the planet-wrecking project?

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 3rd May 2011

You think you’re discussing technologies, you quickly discover that you’re discussing belief systems. The battle among environmentalists over how or whether our future energy is supplied is a cipher for something much bigger: who we are, who we want to be, how we want society to evolve. Beside these concerns, technical matters – parts per million, costs per megawatt hour, cancers per sievert – carry little weight. We choose our technology – or absence of technology – according to a set of deep beliefs; beliefs which in some cases remain unexamined.

The case against abandoning nuclear power, for example, is a simple one: it will be replaced either by fossil fuels or by renewables which would otherwise have replaced fossil fuels. In either circumstance, greenhouse gases, other forms of destruction and human deaths and injuries all rise.

The case against reducing electricity supplies is just as clear. For example, the Zero Carbon Britain report published by the Centre for Alternative Technology urges a 55% cut in overall energy demand by 2030: a goal I strongly support. It also envisages a near-doubling of electricity production(1). The reason is that the most viable means of decarbonising both transport and heating is to replace the fuels they use with low-carbon electricity. Cut the electricity supply and we’re stuck with oil and gas. If we close down nuclear plants, we must accept an even greater expansion of renewables than currently proposed. Given the tremendous public resistance to even a modest increase in wind farms and new power lines, that’s going to be tough.

What the nuclear question does is to concentrate the mind about the electricity question. Decarbonising the economy involves an increase in infrastructure. Infrastructure is ugly, destructive and controlled by remote governments and corporations. These questions are so divisive because the same worldview tells us that we must reduce emissions, defend our landscapes and resist both the state and big business. The four objectives are at odds.

But even if we ca

n accept an expansion of infrastructure, the technocentric, carbon-counting vision I’ve favoured runs into trouble. The problem is that it seeks to accommodate a system that cannot be accommodated: a system which demands perpetual economic growth. We could, as Zero Carbon Britain envisages, become carbon-free by 2030. Growth then ensures that we have to address the problem all over again by 2050, 2070 and thereon after.

Accommodation makes sense only if the economy is reaching a steady state. But the clearer the vision becomes, the further away it seems. A steady state economy will be politically possible only if we can be persuaded to stop grabbing. This in turn will be feasible only if we feel more secure. But the global race to the bottom and its destruction of pensions, welfare, public services and stable employment make people less secure, encouraging us to grasp as much for ourselves as we can.

If this vision looks implausible, consider the alternatives. In the latest edition of his excellent magazine The Land, Simon Fairlie responds furiously to my suggestion that we should take industry into account when choosing our energy sources(2). His article exposes a remarkable but seldom-noticed problem: that most of those who advocate an off-grid, land-based economy have made no provision for manufactures. I’m not talking about the pointless rubbish in the FT’s How to Spend It supplement. I’m talking about the energy required to make bricks, glass, metal tools and utensils, textiles (except the hand-loomed tweed Fairlie suggests we wear), ceramics and soap: commodities which almost everyone sees as the barest possible requirements.

social collapse in the face of fossil fuel resource depletion does not solve environmental problems,

In east Africa, for example, I’ve seen how, when supplies of paraffin or kerosene are disrupted, people don’t give up cooking; they cut down more trees.

Monbiot thus points to the dilemmas that Greens face.

Let me begin by spelling out, at greater length, the dilemmas we face.

1. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions means increasing electricity production. It is hard to see a way around this. Because low-carbon electricity is the best means of replacing the fossil fuels used for heating and transport, electricity generation will rise, even if we manage to engineer a massive reduction in overall energy consumption. The Zero Carbon Britain report published by the Centre for Alternative Technology envisages a 55% cut in overall energy demand by 2030 – and a near-doubling of electricity production.

2. Low carbon electricity means, to most greens, renewables. They were never well-loved, but now, in the places in which major deployment is taking place, they are provoking something approaching a full-scale revolt. Here in mid-Wales, for example, and in the Highlands of Scotland, public anger towards wind farms and the power lines and hubs required to serve them is coming to dominate local politics. While there are plenty of stupid myths circulating about the inability of wind turbines to produce electricity and about the greenhouse gases released in constructing them, in other respects the opposition to them is not irrational. People love their landscapes, and so they should.

Those of us who support renewables find ourselves in a difficult position: demanding the industrialisation of the countryside, supporting new power stations, new power lines and (for the electricity storage required) new reservoirs. Even offshore power, whose landscape impacts are much smaller, means more grid connections and more storage.

3. The only viable low-carbon alternative we have at the moment is nuclear power. This has the advantage of being confined to compact industrial sites, rather than sprawling over the countryside, and of requiring fewer new grid connections (especially if new plants are built next to the old ones). It has the following disadvantages:

a. The current generation of power stations require uranium mining, which destroys habitats and pollutes land and water. Though its global impacts are much smaller than the global impacts of coal, the damage it causes cannot be overlooked.

b. The waste it produces must be stored for long enough to be rendered safe. It is not technically difficult to do this, with vitrification, encasement and deep burial, but governments keep delaying their decisions as a result of public opposition.

Both these issues (as well as concerns about proliferation and security) could be addressed through the replacement of conventional nuclear power with thorium or integral fast reactors but, partly as a result of public resistance to atomic energy, neither technology has yet been developed. (I’ll explore the potential of both approaches in a later column).

c. Nuclear power divides our movements. Some of the most effective environmental organisations – Greenpeace for example – could not drop their opposition without falling apart.

4. Whichever low-carbon technology we embrace, we help to provide the means by which the industrial economy can keep expanding, even if it does so without a major release of greenhouse gases. This threatens to exacerbate all the other issues that concern us. To prevent this from happening, the replacement of fossil fuels should be accompanied by a transition to a steady-state economy. Herman Daly and Tim Jackson have shown us how this can be done technically. How it can be done politically is, at present, quite another matter.

5. Those who, on the other hand, advocate a return to a land-based economy and the abandonment of industrial society find themselves in conflict with the desires of most of humanity, in both rich and poor nations. They have produced no convincing account of how people could be persuaded to turn their backs on manufactured products, advanced infrastructure and public services.

6. Our reliance on the mineral crunch, which was supposed to have brought the economic engine of destruction to a grinding halt, appears to have been misplaced. The collapse of accessible mineral reserves has not occurred, and shows little sign of occurring within our lifetimes. Capitalism has proved adept at finding new reserves or (in the case of fossil fuels) substitutes for those that are depleting. This takes place at a massive cost to the environment, as exploitation intrudes into an ever wider range of habitats and involves ever more destructive processes. New mineral reserves allow us to continue waging war against biodiversity, habitats, soil, fresh water supplies and the climate.

7. We have no idea what to do next.

8. Partly as a result, we have started tearing each other apart. This is an understandable but unnecessary reaction. Those seeking to protect the landscape are not our enemies; nor are those advocating that renewables should replace fossil fuel; nor are those promoting nuclear power as the answer; nor are those opposing nuclear power. We are all struggling with the same problem, all bumping up against atmospheric chemistry and physical constraints.

We must face up, Monbiot tells us, to the failure of Green narratives,

Green narratives have collapsed precisely because they were unable to withstand the steely quantification demanded by an attempt to get to grips with problems like climate change. Or they have been struck down by circumstance: such as the inconvenient non-appearance of the commodities crunch they predicted. If a new poetic narrative is no better able to answer questions such as how a steady-state economy can be achieved, how low-carbon electricity will be produced, how the Common Fisheries Policy can be reformed or how, in a land-based economy, bricks and glass will be made, it too will collapse. In fact, it will never get off the ground as these questions, once formulated, won’t go away.

The trouble then is the bankruptcy of Green solutions.

Part of the Green dilemma is the failure to think through the issues and opportunities posed by nuclear power. There is an alternative, which might be called the Oak Ridge Paradigm or the Oak Ridge Way. Oak Ridge development of nuclear power was during the 1950's, 60's and 70's far in advance of anywhere else in the world. The Oak Ridge Scientific community took the opportunity to reflect on the human and environmental consequences of those advanced developments. The Oak Ridge paradigm grew out of those reflections. It was my good fortune to encounter the emerging Oak Ridge Paradigm during my year with ORNL-NSF Environmental Studies Program during 1970-1971.

Nuclear Green is no small measure focuses on exploring the Oak Ridge Way. I would invite George Monbiot to join in that exploration.

Dick Smyser told the Oak Ridge Story, and Environmental concerns were a part of it

I found two unpublished posts related to Thomas Pigford today in a search of my old posts. I thought these were to good to leave under raps

One of the things that happened to me while growing up in Oak Ridge, is that I managed to assimulate the viewpoint of the atomic pioneers. I had no idea at the time of the importance of Eugene Wigner to the shaping of the ORNL/Oak Ridge mentality. In fact Wigner was often in the background and his thinking was communicated to Oak Ridge in ways we little suspected. Dick Smyser had a lot to do with the communications of the ORNL View to the community. Smyser was the editor and later the publisher of the Oak Ridger. Smyser was more than a jurnalist. His Brother-in-Law, Thomas H. Pigford, who was a former ORNL engineer, a Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkele, and the only nuclear scientist to serve on the Three Mile Island Commission. The Pigford connection gave Smyser an added in with the ORNL staff, On addition Smyser had an "in house" expert he could turn to for insight, when he did not understand something. As a consequence Smyser not only kept Oak Ridgers well informed anout developments at the lab, but he helped to make Oak Ridge a uniquely nuclear literate community, I have little doubt that Weinberg sharred his thoughts with Smyser on more than one occasion, and Smyser had a social relationship with many ORNL scientists, and would have at leasst meet Wigner and been aware of his importance in creating in Oak Ridge a high level of nuclear literacy that extended beyond the scientific community. I am sure that I picked up terms like neutron economy and breeder blanket from the Oak Ridger, although I did not fully understand what they meant until I began to look closely ate the MSR in 2007. The MSR came well before the current energy crisis, but it was understood in Oak Ridge that the thorium fuel cycle MSR had the potential to provide all of the nation's energy in the future. By the 1960's the vision of a high tec future that would benefit not only the United States, but the world's poorest people, had taken hold in Oak Ridge, and the Oak Ridger reported on it.

Pigford was an expert on both the Uranium andthe thorium fuel cycle, and no doubt Dick Smyser learned something about those subjects from his brother-in-law.

So I grew up nuclear literate and exposed to the world view that lay behind the most daring scientific projects of Oak Ridge scientists. In addition Oak Ridge carried with it the Manhatten Project legacy. The story of K-25 particularly informed the Oak Ridge view of the world. K-25 was huge. It had been the world's largest building under one roof when it was completed during World War II. The isotope separation process used at K-25 was not perfected until construction was well underway. That sort of experience engenders a measure of self confidence. Oak Ridgers had considerable confidence in the power of their technology. They knew that a business as unusual sometimes needed to be set aside and that a great deal could be accomplished by people who were hard working and intelligent. The first atomic bomb that was dropped on Japan used uranium that was processed at Oak Ridge. From 8 tons of Uranium K-25 and Y-12 produced 64 kg of U-235. When the Little Boy bomb went critical, a little more than 1% of the U-235 in the bomb fissioned and about 0.6 g of that mass was transformed into energy. That bomb exploded with the energy equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT. Most energy writers are unaware of the enormous amount of energy that can be extracted from tiny amounts of matter.

Oak Ridge Scientists conceived of the The Light Water Reactor and made major contributions towards its development, but Oak Ridge scientists knew that the LWR is a very inefficient means of turning matter into energy in a nuclear process. The Light Water Reactir core has to be far larger than a Molten Salt Reactor core. Small cores requite less material and labor to build. They are not necessicarily less safe.

The Oak Ridge vision was in no small measure formed by the natural setting of the city. Oak Ridge has a beautiful setting, and few places where the human species has found itself living can rivaled East Tennessee for natural beauty. Between 1942 and the present many people have lived in Oak Ridge for a short time, but those who tendede to stay, were people who enjoyed the natural setting. As a result Oak Ridge was a city of unusual environmental awareness.

ORNL uses the beauty of the Oak Ridge area as a selling point for employee recruitment.

It was inevitable that ORNL was to become a center of environmental research and from the 1970's onward took the scientific lead in pointing to potential environmental problems caused by CO2 emissions. Oak Ridge scientist understood that burning fossil fuels represented a long term threat to humanity and believed that nuclear power could make an important contribution to the successful prevention of that threat.

Is a high energy, nuclear powered future incompatible with environmental values?

The mainstream of the environmentalist movement has repeatedly disgraced itself with a well nigh fanatic anti-nuclear stance. John McClaughry commented a couple of years ago,

Over Vermont's 230 years several strange political movements persisted long enough to enter the history books. Among them, anti-Masonry, the anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant Know Nothing movement, and the Prohibition crusade all fizzled after initial successes.

The most notable fringe movement still alive today is the crusade against nuclear energy. It is, naturally, focused on Vermont's lone nuclear reactor, Vermont Yankee, that went on line in 1972.

In the face of all science, reason, and experience, the anti-nuclear zealots fiercely maintain that the Vernon nuclear power plant is a standing death threat against the population for miles around, that its pall of radiation will produce deformed children, and that the plant's present owner, Entergy, is a reckless and sinister enterprise making enormous profits while scornfully dismissing the concerns of its likely Vermont victims.

It should be noted that self-styled environmentalists are in the forefront of of the present Quixotic anti-Vermont Yankee crusade. Not long ago, I pointed to anti-nuclear fanaticism as a major cause of an impending breakdown of the Copenhagen climate change conference, which I correctly predicted.

The environmental community has promoted the view that nuclear power is unnecessary and dangerous, and even has called for the replacement of nuclear power plants with CO2 emitting natural gas fired power plants despite the fact that the natural gas extraction process as well as the use of natural gas in the home and in power plants is responsible for the emission of an enormous amount of dangerously radioactive radon gas. Indeed people are exposed to many times more radiation from natural gas than from nuclear power generation.

Environmentalists have repeatedly attacked nuclear power as too expensive, while disguising the fact that their own favored alternatives, including on shore wind, off shore wind, solar thermal and solar photovoltaic are more expensive than nuclear, and pose major reliability problems for a non-nuclear post-carbon the grid.

The purpose of Nuclear Green is not to attack environmentalism. Rather it is to recapture it from the horde of misanthropes, grafters, and ignoramuses, who currently lead most environmental organizations, and their brain dead followers, who recite 40 year old bumper sticker slogans , as if they were the last word on reality. Not only does these people misrepresent environmentalism, but their insane ideology is leading us into a major environmental disaster that could kill millions and perhaps billions of people while damaging the environment they tell us they want to save.

The most significant environmental problem we face in the 21st century is caused by the emission of carbon dioxide gas, a basic waste product of the present carbon based energy technology of the 20th century. Scientists have long known that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and that continued and rising amounts of Greenhouse emissions will inevitably lead to a significant climate change that would adversely effect global climate. By 1976 Oak Ridge scientists were predicting rising temperatures with greater temperature increases at higher latitudes. Among the accurate predictions that Oak Ridge scientist offered was decreased (global) ice and snow cover, changing cloud cover, localized droughts, with dropping lake levels, melting glaciers, and a long term potential for rising sea levels. I heard all of these long term treats discussed at ORNL in 1971. The Oak Ridge scientists forecast ed a global temperature rise of from 1 to 5 degrees K with each doubling of global temperature. Since that 1976 global atmospheric CO2 emissions have increased by 16% with a and there has been an increase in global temperatures that fall within that range.

None of these predictions have proven false. These ORNL global warming predictions were made at the time of the famous Newsweek Global cooling story. By the way the the environmentalists got things every bit as wrong as Newsweek did, In 1968, Paul Ehrlich wrote

The greenhouse effect is being enhanced now by the greatly increased level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In the last century our burning of fossil fuels raised the level some 15%. The greenhouse effect today is being countered by low-level clouds generated by contrails, dust, and other contaminants that tend to keep the energy of the sun from warming the Earth in the first place.

At the moment we cannot predict what the overall climatic results will be of our using the atmosphere as a garbage dump.

Other environmentalists were equally as clueless about the threat posed by CO2. In a 1976 review of Amory Lovins' (with John H. Price) book, "NON-NUCLEAR FUTURES : The case for an ethicaI energy strategy." Alvin Weinberg chided Lovins for failing to consider the value of nuclear power as a CO2 mitigation tool.

energy itself is a villain: less energy is better than more energy, not merely because the environment can absorb only a limited energy load, but also because (p xxi), 'Low-energy futures can (but need not) be normative and pluralistic, whereas high-energy futures are bound to be coercive and to offer less scope for social diversity and individual freedom.' High-energy futures mean centralised futures, and this is anathema to the authors (p ll0): an 'energy-intensive society' leads .to a highly centralized, highly bureaucratized, high technology society, very vulnerable to internal as well as external disruptions . . .'. . . . since nuclear energy is primarily a source of centralized electricity generation, the authors dislike of energy, electricity, and centralization merge in their dislike of nuclear energy, quite apart from whatever technical and social shortcomings it might have.

Weinberg was especially critical of Lovins attack on nuclear power for its waste heat, and pointed out the heat problem stemming from the discharge of 30 times more CO2 from the coal fuel cycle.

Lovins proposed the use of coal as a fission-free bridge to his soft-energy solutions, and Weinberg asked

Can we really ignore CO2 during the coal burning fission free bridge?

Lovins responded to Weinberg's point that

Dr Weinberg and I both worry about the climatic effects of CO2 more than about those of heat release (which I nowhere claim is'an imminent danger'). Indeed, his group's recent studies show that rapid growth in energy (especially electricity) use means such a large coal burn that COz limits arrive discouragingly soon whether we use fission or not.

Yet despite his worry, Lovins seems not to have found a viable solution to the coal/CO2 problem during the next generation, when America and indeed the world, came increasingly to rely on the coal burning bridge while soft path electrical solutions were deployed much more slowly than Lovins had anticipated. Thus Weinberg's 1976 nuclear path would have undoubtedly lead to lower CO2 emissions that Lovins soft path did. Despite his mid 1970;s forecast that by 2010 CO2 emissions would be rapidly becoming a thing of the past, Lovins's soft path solution has so far failed to control CO2 emissions globally. Indeed in Europe the highest per capita CO2 emissions as well as the most expensive electricity is found in Denmark which has adopted Lovins soft path, while France, which has adopted Weinberg's nuclear path has far lower cost electricity and the lowest per capita CO2 emissions rates in Europe.

Thus we see that during the 1960's and 1970's Environmentalists greatly underestimated the CO2 problem while Oak Ridge scientists, including long time ORNL Director Alvin Weinberg did not. The anti-nuclear stance of self styled environmentalist was in fact far more damaging to the environment, via the CO2 and chemical emissions of fossil fuel burning energy technology, than the high nuclear energy option would have been. In practice Alvin Weinberg, was a far better environmentalist than Amory Lovins or Paul Ehrlich.

It is thus a huge environmental blunder to juxtapose nuclear power to environmental well being. Yet mainstream environmentalist continue to do make this mistake, much to the detriment of the environment, and further jeopardizing future success in the war against climate change. It is my view that environmentalism is a vitally important path to the human future, but that environmentalism has been hijacked by self styled environmentalists who are more interested in their own quixotic anti-nuclear agenda, than they are in dealing with major environmental issues like global climate change. Mainstream environmental groups like the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund, and Friends of the Earth, by their repeated attacks on nuclear power are placing the future of the environment as well as the future of the people who make the Earth their home in jeopardy.

Clean Energy from Wind?

Greens rave on and on about how clean wind power is. 

This rosy picture has no basis in reality. As T. Boone Pickens once remarked Wind towers are ugly and degrade the quality of life experienced by people who live in their vecinity. 

On Friday, Rod Adams posted an interesting little essay

questioning the logic of considering industrial scale wind energy as a "soft" or "clean" energy path . . .

Rod pointed to a wind project at Cefn Croes, Wales. This project was from the start so incredibly obnoxious that even the UK Green Party objected to it.  The above picture amply demonstrates the rape of the once beautiful Cambrian Mountain countryside, by this environmentally insensitive wind project.  

Critics of the Cefn Croes project point out numerous examples of environmental damage inflicted on the Welch landscape and environment by this project.  

!. From construction of new access roads. Because of the climb from the A44 to the plateau, the 1.7km of new road has three hairpin bends, and because of the size of the low-loaders (42m long, 5m wide), those bends are enormously wide, resulting in heavy and irreparable landscape scarring, made all the more obvious by wide swathes of clear-felling, and by opportunistic quarrying from the adjacent hillside.

2. From widening of pre-existing forest roads. First there was clear-felling, then banks were ripped up and drainage ditches dug, then roadstone was dumped and levelled. Familiar tracks quickly became unrecognisable, and landmarks were lost.

3. Habitat loss. Not just little mossy banks with heather, lichens, mosses and saplings, but moorland habitat and grassland.

4. Peat disturbance and destruction. Peat is one of the world's rarest habitats. One foot depth of it takes one thousand years to develop; peat sequesters within it many millions of tons of CO2, which is released as it is cut and dumped to dry out.  Adjacent to turbine 37 is a 2m bank of peat; no amount of restoration can reverse damage on this scale.

5. Hydrology disturbance. Streams blocked, polluted and diverted. The run-off from workings drained into previously pristine streams and rivers.

6. Wildlife disturbance. Especially to birds, due to noise and pollution close to nesting sites during the breeding season.

7. Peripheral damage.
Off-site, due to:
Vehicle emissions, pollution, noise, dust and vibration from thousands of HGV movements, bringing in aggregates, site cabins, cranes, and cement; and from enormous low-loaders bringing the turbine components themselves, with police escorts and queues of slow traffic;
Physical damage from passing heavy traffic, to buildings, bridges and drains, road surfaces;
Economic damage through disruption of commercial and tourist traffic, and the communities through which they passed.

It should be noted that many wind projects have the potential to cause similar environmental damage, but thatr supposibly pro-environmental "Greens" are utterly indifferent to the environmental problems created by wind energy projects.

Many of the problems of the Cefn Croes project are common to all upland wind projects, as this Indian report suggests:

To set up a windmill in hilly areas, a minimum of 50-metre long and wide concrete platforms were needed.

The towers, generators and the machines with gearboxes would have to be lifted with the help of trawlers.

To shift this, roads with a width of 10 to 12 metres had to be laid.

The boulders and stones on the way would have to be blasted with dynamite.

Apart from this, a substation building, permanent quarters for staff and guesthouses had to be built.

Trees would have to be felled to draw high-tension wire to transmit 66 kV or 110 kV power.

Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., has recently expressed concerns about the environmental and social impact of large scale wind farming in his state.

“With regard to wind energy, the prospects are that West Virginia will be relegated to something of a colonial status,” he said, “with its resources being exploited by and for the benefit of outsiders, and with West Virginians being left with a legacy of environmental damage.

“If this set of circumstances sounds familiar to West Virginians, that’s readily understandable, because it’s happened here before.

“Up to now, the environmental damage suffered by this state has taken such forms as past, unregulated mountaintop mining and acid mine drainage,” Mollohan said. “This time, the prospect is for destruction of wildlife and scenic views from a proliferation of industrial wind turbines on the state’s mountain ridges.”

where the environmental intrusions of windmills. Burning windmills are not environmentally cool. And wind projects are huge.

Kurt Cobb, who is pro wind calculated 500 MW coal-fired power plant occupied about 300 acres. Only 30 acres. one tenth of the total area is actually used. Kobb referenced 5 MW windmills and calculated that in order to match the 70% capacity factor of the coal fired power plant, with 30% capacity factor windmills, 233 windmills would need to be erected.

The spacing between towers is typically at least five diameters of the rotor. That doesn't sound like much. But for the 5-megawatt towers in this example, the spacing would be 2,065 feet times 232--we don't need to separate the last tower from another tower beyond it. Then we'd add the diameter of the rotors--413 feet times 233--and we get a distance equivalent to about 110 miles.

Cobb adds,

The power density problem for solar energy is no less daunting. . .

When we contemplate renewable energy sources, we rarely contemplate the land area required to deploy them. Just the problems involved in obtaining rights-of-way alone are beyond anything we've ever experienced. And, the enormous scale of manufacturing required to produce the panels and wind towers would dwarf our current energy industries. The coal-fired power plant by comparison seems like a wonder of compact energy generation.

This is not to make a case against renewable energy. We will need it and deploy it because we must--either because of the dangers that burning fossil fuels pose to the climate or because of increasing fossil fuel scarcity, or both. The real case to be made here is against business-as-usual. It is hard to see how a transition to a renewable energy society, however rapid and earnest, will give us all the energy we want at prices we will like.

. . . it is glaringly obvious that the energy sources we rely on now are one to two orders of magnitude smaller by land area per unit of energy produced than the industries and buildings they service are per unit of energy consumed. That means it takes a relatively small land area to service the enormous area devoted to commercial, residential and industrial buildings. Just the opposite will become the case using renewable energy sources. We will be obliged to devote vast tracts of space--far more vast than the buildings they serve--to support the energy use of our current infrastructure.

Cobb's conclusions reflect his personal anti-nuclear fanaticism, but reflect on the burden which he and his fellow renewable advocates will impose on our country.

This may not be impossible, but it will certainly be costly and socially disruptive. And, that brings us back to the windmills now increasingly dotting our landscape. We can certainly look forward to many more of them. But if we choose to oppose them on the grounds that they are "ugly" or "disruptive," then we will essentially be choosing a much lower energy future, far below what we've come to expect from fossil fuels.

Cobb deploys the usual repertory of anti-nuclear arguments, starting with the usual we are running out of uranium ploy.  Cobb does not rely on peer reviews studies for this contention, rather he refers to a study paid for by the by the anti-nuclear German Green Party.   Needless to say, Cobb does not even hint that a case could be made for the opposing view.   Cobb next deploys arguments against breeder reactors.  He demonstrates a typical Green lack of knowledge by ignoring Thorium technology completely, which allows him to dispatch breeder reactors with the nuclear proliferation fallacy.   Next Cobb argues that it would be impossible to build enough nuclear power plants to replace existing fossil fuel power plants.  

Of course with nuclear power we can have our energy cake and eat it too. But Cobb would rather sacrifice the benefits of a high energy civilization that to acknowledge the possibility that nuclear generating facilities can be built at a sufficient rate to replace fossil fuel generating plants.  Astonishingly Cobb maintains

Nuclear plants require vast amounts of fossil fuels to build and then maintain.

 This is, of course, absurd. Nuclear plants require no more fossil fuels in their construction and operation than renewables do. We don't have enough energy to build new nuclear plants Cobb maintains.   Cobb is closer than most Greens to knowing the score on renewables, but he still maintains the party line against nuclear power.  

Utne Reader's Romantic anti-Nuclear Dream

Faced with the prospects of global warming, a number of environmentalist leaders have increasingly acknowledged that their previous opposition to nuclear power was a mistake and that in fact, nuclear power is far more environment friendly than fossil fuels, and in fact more environment friendly than so called renewable power sources. Figures such as Greenpeace founder, Patrick Moore, Friends of the Earth founder Bishop Hugh Montefiore, Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand, and Gaia-theorist James Lovelock, have all decided, in the face of global warming, that nuclear power is consistant with environmental values. Like other environmentalists, they reject the use of fossil fuels because of global warming. Unlike some other environmentalist, they have not jumped on the renewable power band wagon.

There is in fact in the environmentalist community a deep and bitter devision, about environmentally sound responses to global warming. Lovelock observes, "Agriculture already uses too much of the land needed by the Earth to regulate its climate and chemistry." Thus devoting more land to the production of energy is counter-productive to the fight against global warming.

Lovecock called "Greens" to task for their opposition to nuclear power:

Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media. These fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. We must stop fretting over the minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. Nearly one third of us will die of cancer anyway, mainly because we breathe air laden with that all pervasive carcinogen, oxygen. If we fail to concentrate our minds on the real danger, which is global warming, we may die even sooner, as did more than 20,000 unfortunates from overheating in Europe last summer.

Stewart Brand observed that environmentalism has two sources, science and romanticism. Brand observes, "The romantics are moralistic, rebellious against the perceived dominant power, and combative against any who appear to stray from the true path." He adds, "There are a great many more environmental romantics than there are scientists." He also notes that among Greens, "scientific perceptions are always a minority view, easily ignored, suppressed, or demonized if they don't fit the consensus story line." Brand observes, "The environmental movement has a quasi-religious aversion to nuclear energy."

Brand argues, The only technology ready to fill the gap and stop the carbon dioxide loading of the atmosphere is nuclear power.

Nuclear certainly has problems -- accidents, waste storage, high construction costs, and the possible use of its fuel in weapons. It also has advantages besides the overwhelming one of being atmospherically clean. The industry is mature, with a half-century of experience and ever improved engineering behind it. Problematic early reactors like the ones at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl can be supplanted by new, smaller-scale, meltdown-proof reactors like the ones that use the pebble-bed design. Nuclear power plants are very high yield, with low-cost fuel. Finally, they offer the best avenue to a "hydrogen economy," combining high energy and high heat in one place for optimal hydrogen generation.

Hugh Montefiore, a founder of Friends of the Earth, argued:
As a theologian, I believe that we have a duty to play our full part in safeguarding the future of our planet, and I have been a committed environmentalist for many years. It is because of this commitment and the graveness of the consequences of global warming for the planet that I have now come to the conclusion that the solution is to make more use of nuclear energy.

Before his death, dogmatic anti-nuclear activists expelled Montefiore from "Friends of the Earth," because of his advocacy of nuclear energy. "The future of the planet is more important than membership of Friends of the Earth," Montefiore observed.

Patrick Moore argues that The Environmental Movement Has Lost Its Way. After a 15 year involvement with environmental activism, Moore found himself increasingly at odds with a disturbing trend, "By the mid-1980s, the environmental movement had abandoned science and logic in favor of emotion and sensationalism. . . . The environmental movement has lost its way, favoring political correctness over factual accuracy, stooping to scare tactics to garner support."

Moore concludes that "Nuclear energy is the only nongreenhouse gas-emitting power source that can effectively replace fossil fuels and satisfy global demand."

Faced with this rebellion of powerful voices within the environmental movement, anti-nuclear true believers have reacted with attacks on the pro-nuclear heretics, and a recitation of the old litany of the supposed sins of nuclear power. Jason Mark in an article published in the environmentalist Earth Island Journal laid out the case of environmental orthodoxy, against the pro-nuclear heretics.

What all of the heretics have in comman, is that they are liberals environmentalist, rather than anti-progressive environmental radicals. The ultra-leftist, Utne Reader, ever eager to strike a blow aginst progressive liberals, has reprinted Mark's essay, in its January edition.

For Mark Patrick Moore is the most dangerous of the heretics. According to Mark, Moore is "a paid flack for the nuclear industry," an “eco-Judas,” and a former Greenpeace rabble-rouser. According to Mark, Moore has pretensions to high-mindedness, but in Mark's view no truely high minded person could possible accept money from the nuclear industry.

Marks acknowledges,"Moore has been an especially effective voice for the nuclear industry." But Mark dismisses Moore's arguments as "little more than sophisticated greenwashing" On the other hand "Brand's carefully considered arguments" are "more difficult to dismiss."

In fact Mark does not address Brand's arguments. Rather he brings out a prade of witness from he National Wildlife Federation, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). This is most interesting because last year the National Wildlife Federation received a grant from the pro-coal industry Joyce Foundation. The purpose of the $122,000 grant is "to build support in Indiana and Michigan for coal gasification as an alternative to conventional coal-burning power plants. Indiana Wildlife Federation and Michigan United Conservation Clubs would be partners in this effort."

The Union of Concerned Scientists, also received grants from the Joyce Foundation, including one "To promote new policies supporting coal gasification and carbon sequestration for new electric generation in Illinois." National Resources Defense Council is another recypiant of Joyce Foundation largess. It has received "a $437,500 grant from the Joyce Foundation to promote carbon sequestration on coal industry’s behalf." "There is, Mark tells us, "a striking amount of unanimity among the leading environmental organizations that nuclear power is not a smart way to address climate change. The National Wildlife Federation, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) are among the many groups arguing that there are quicker and cheaper ways to reduce greenhouse gases." Yes indeed, and coal sequestering appears to be that way.

In addition to calling on the witness of recipiants of Joyce foundation money to promost the coal industry, Mark rounds up the usual anti-nuclear suspects to tell us what a terrible, evil thing nuclear power is. It is, horror of horrors, expensive. Thus we have arguments that are made up of the appeal to the authority of people we never heard of, and have no cradentials other than their organization associations.

Thus we are introduced to Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Who without evidence or any further explanation tells us, “Nuclear power is the most expensive way to make minor emissions cuts.” It is hard to offer a refutation to something so vague, and lacking as it is even the slightest evidence.

Josh Dorner, who has no idenitry other than that of spokesman for the Sierra Club is quotede as saying, “The industry is putting lipstick on a pig here. Solving one problem and creating another isn’t a durable solution. It doesn’t make sense to solve global warming by creating a ton of nuclear waste that we don’t know what to do with.”

We other that his insubstantual idenity with an organization called the Sierra Club, we have not the sluightest idea what he is talking about, and it is not clear that he has the skughtest idea either. It appears that he bellieves himself to be putting down something called "the industry, but exactly what does he have in mind. Dorner appears to be talking in code wqith no clear referrant, but perhaps members of the Sierra Club receive mystic revelations that que them in to what he is talking about. We have assertions without tangible objects, evidence or facts.

Mark offers an interpretation for Dorner:

More than 50 years after the establishment of the civilian atomic energy program, the country still lacks a safe way to handle the radioactive waste formed during the fission process. Waste is stored at the individual power stations, an arrangement that no one—including the nuclear plant operators—believes is a long-term solution. “Long term” in this case means 10,000 years, the time the government says a waste repository needs to contain spent nuclear fuel. Many environmentalists say even that mind-boggling time frame is too short, since some waste will be dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.

It is not clear how much of this Mark or his environmentalist friends understand, since after 10,000 years, most of the most highly radioactive isotopes have become stable, and the radio-isotopes that are still active are increasingly less active. Perhaps 92% of what comes out of a reactor can go by in. Of the rest, much will be stable within a few years. Stable isotopes can be used as raw material in industrial processes, while radoactive isotopes, can be used in medicine, industry and agriculture. Only a few long lasting radio isotopes do not have some balid use, and should be disposed of in some stable environment, but in the short run, they can be left on the grounds of nuclear power plant. The problem of disposal is far far smaller, than Mark immagins. No one has ever died, or sustained serious injury because of an exposure to "reactor waste."

Mark next exposes a truely incxredible ignorance of the constituency of "spent" reactor fuel"

Nuclear plants could reduce the need for waste storage by “reprocessing” the fuel, but that would create weapons-grade radioactive material. While the industry has improved plant management and design since the Three Mile Island near-meltdown, post-9/11 fears have created new safety worries, including the possibility that terrorists could attack a plant or obtain nuclear materials to make “dirty bombs” or atomic weapons.

The claim that reprocessing reactor fuel produces "weapons-grade" radioactive material represents a serious misundestanding of nuclear power. Weapons grade plutonium is produced from two spacific types of reactors, neither of which is used to produce power. The plutonium that comes out of civilian power reactors, is "reactor grade plutonium." It is both highly radioactive, and highly unstable in bomb size amounts. These two qualities taken together make weapons production highly unlikely with reactor grade plutonium. No nation has ever attempted to build a nuclear weapon using reactor grade plutonium. Handling a weapon made from this material would probably be far beyond the skills of terrorist, and probably would constitute an insurmountable challenge to nations like North Korea.

Mark's argument also contains a seeming contradiction. On one hand spent reactor fuel is so dangerous, and difficult to handle that American scientist don't know what to do with it. On the other hand, handling post-reactor radio-isotopes presents an almost insignificant challenge for terrorist. Perhaps, the United States should send its scientists to terrorist training schools to lear the art of safely handling radio-isotopes. Thus the dirty bomb argument is inconsistant and highly unlikely.

Mark goes through a song and dance about reactor costs. In the first place this is an issue for utility executives rather than environmentalist to deal with. Electric utility executives make decisions based on detailed information about the costs of reactors. Mark points to one very expensive reactor, and says, you see there reactors are too expensive. It never occurs to Mark that other reactors might not have been nearly as expensive.

Mark's discussion of reactor costs demonstrates the remarkably weakness of his case. He trots out all the old Green anti-nuclear arguments, for the edification of the faithful, but his essay is remarkable short on facts, and riddled with inconsistancies, and bereft of logic. Mark's repeatedly relies on the fallacy of hasty generalization to make his case. Thus he uses the very atypical construction costs of Watts Bar Unit 1, as typical of the nuclear power industry. In fact, while Watts Bar construction was poorly managed and ended up being extremely expensive, Watts Bar is hardly a typical case of nuclear power plant construction. Today, 34 years after its construction began, Watts Bar Unit 2 is still under construction. Most reactor are built in a much shorter time period. In the last 30 years, many French and Japanese nuclear power plants have been built on time and for reasonable costs. Electrical costs from France and Japanese nuclear plants are reasonable.

Mark makes the point that mayy reactors would have to be built to make a dent on global CO2 emissions. Yet the same problem would confront plans to produce large amounts of electricity from solar or wind power. In both cases economist have raised doubts about the ability of the American Economy to produce enough solar or wind generating units to satisfy American power needs by 2050. One advantage of nuclare power is that large components and even whole reactors can be mass produced in factories and transported to their long term location by water. Indeed the Russians plan to build reactors on barges, and then float them to their long term location. This plan would allow for the relatively quick production of even several thousand reactors.

Among the unknowns Mark quotes is Matt Reitman of the Energy Justice Network, who tells us what opposition to nuclear power is about:

“We are going to have to face some kind of cultural shift,” Reitman says.

“The culture we have created for ourselves, a society based on a lot of excess and consumerism, really has let a lot of people down. The prospect of getting together in a serious way as a country [to stop climate change] is a great opportunity to get back to the roots of what it means to be an American, which is to be neighborly. It’s a great way to reenergize our culture, as well as our economy and our power grid.”

Reitman is oppod then to consumer culture. He thinks that buying, having and using material possessions has let people down. We must ask Mr. Reitman if he thinks that poverty is a good thing. We must ask him if at the heart of the opposition to nuclear power is the notion that poverty is a good thing.

Jason Mark argues, "If we can reach a societal consensus that what we desire is a slower and smaller way of living, a reconceived notion of success, then we can fundamentally reformulate our energy system. In any discussion involving a redefinition of “progress,” nuclear power is not simply dangerous or dirty—it’s pointless."

Mark, Reitman, and many of the unknown talking heads who Mark quoted are what Stewart Brand described as romantic environmentalist. They are not interested in facts. They are not interested in science. They believe that shopping in REI is somehow not consumerism, but shopping in Walmart is. It is their intention to save environmentalist from the terrible heresy of thinking that nuclear power might actually help the environment, while also helping us preserve a way of life most of us enjoy. That would be progress, the sort of progress Mark thinks is pointless.

Update: I have posted in my other blog, bartoncii, more information on the Joyce Foundation service to the coal industry as a front, and evidence of the corruption of numerous Green organizations by Joyce Foundation money. I have also discussed the utterly insane attachment of the Anti-nuk German Greens to coal and CO2 sequestration. It is very strange that Greens seem to believe that hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 can be sucessgully sequestered annually, while a few hundred tons of radio-isotopes from reactors cannot be safely sequestered.