The party is over

ICF expects the U.S. power sector will add 340 gigawatts of new generation by 2030, not only to meet growing demand, but to replace 75 GW of coal-fired generation that will be forced to shut due to stricter air, water and waste regulation

ANALYSIS - U.S. power supply inadequate for economic recovery


There is a battle brewing among conservationist and environmentalists concerning nuclear power. I challenge the reader to find up to date comparisons on the relative costs of wind, solar, nuclear and fossil fuel power generation.
This is kind of old
Load-Resource Balance in
the Western Interconnection:
Towards 2020 page 21.
Also, I don't know if anybody has calculated the true costs (cradle to cradle) of any of them. We may not know how.


And finally, an excellent article that speaks of the coming permanent recession (no growth).

So, while Obama talked climate change in Copenhagen, he pushed for accelerated growth and consumption, emphasising such climate-deadly industries as private automobile production, new road construction, nuclear power generation, and continued coal extraction (including horrendous "mountain top removal") while extolling an entirely theoretical "clean coal". He was also for expanding manufacture of heavy industrial equipment, and for more export-oriented industrial agriculture, as well as "new housing starts", increased oil drilling in deepwater zones – such as BP's – and for deadly tar sands development, all in hopes of growth, profit and jobs.


Watching his performance from a distance, we really don't know if he understands the contradictions in this pattern, how one goal cancels the other, or if he has simply made a "safer" political choice. If so, it's safer only in the very short run, as the entire economic system, and possibly industrial-consumer society itself, face intrinsic systemic problems, which may not be solvable. Trying to save an old economic model that is near collapse, he may sacrifice the opportunity to mitigate climate change and save the world.
...


But the conclusion is clear. From here on, no one gets off easy. Everyone's in the same boat, caught in the same systemic conflict. The conundrums apply as much to Morales as to Cameron and Obama. Growth is over, and they need a real, clear vision of a way forward. That's true for all of us. Surely it's time to agree that the first step is to start drawing curtains on an obsolete, out-of-date system that could kill us all, and to shape a new one. Which brings us to the good news.

Climate change v capitalism: the feast is almost over


This is the first I've seen that outlines steps we can take to transition to a sustainable economic model. It will require that mankind understands that Mother Nature has veto power.


My other concern about the above article is it seems to think capitalism is the cause of our problems.

Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for a private profit; decisions regarding supply, demand, price, distribution, and investments are made by private actors in the market rather than by central planning by the government; profit is distributed to owners who invest in businesses, and wages are paid to workers employed by businesses and companies.

Capitalism


But I think the main problem isn't the private enterprise, free market model that is capitalism, but is the fact that we the people have allowed private ownership (or pollution) of resources that are "held in common", stuff like air and water that belongs to us all. Also, when the Supreme Court grants a corporation "person hood", even though it has no conscience and takes no personal responsibility for its actions, that is a real problem. So it's not the model, it's the execution. In the end the US will have to accept a more European model... one that recognizes that our government needs to protect us from greedy sociopathic corporations.

Wish I understood this better

This paper will make the rounds again on all the blogs trying to diss global climate disruption. The work has been out for a couple of years... so it's not exactly breaking news.

A new version of the paper gets a big boost from a small but influential science journalism publisher today – the AAAS’s ScienceNow. Reporter Phil Berardelli doesn’t write it long, but long enough to get outside astronomers saying that the paper is legit. At issue, as he writes, is whether the extrapolation showing magnetic fields dropping in about 2015 below the minimum needed for sunspots reflects a very likely scenario. His hook is an update of the thesis, for an international virtual symposium, on line at the preprint site arXiv astro-ph.



This is a legitimate news topic. A decent chance that the Sun will moderate its overall output (which overall has positive correlation with sunspot number despite intuition that proliferation of big cool dark spots ought to dim a star), and thus counteract to some small or large extent the current warming driven by fossil carbon burning, merits full public airing. It sure would complicate efforts to get the world’s nations to drastically change their energy policies. A Maunder Minimum II could chill any chance for a carbon tax even if, when the minimum wanes, the climate-forcing rebound would cook us for sure. And anyway, ocean acidification would proceed apace.

...

The new paper, from a quick read, sees the anemic rise in sunspot number during the first phases of the 11-year solar cycle’s current iteration as evidence that whatever the trend’s fate, it’s not showing signs of stopping now. As it says, “It is important to note that it is always risky to extrapolate linear trends; but the importance of the implications from making such an assumption justify its mention.” That’s a heavily nuanced, if perhaps true, sentence. A reporter who sits down with, or just spends some time on the phone with these two to ask how they regard their paper’s role in political and ideological debates over global warming might get a terrific story.

One prediction seems safe: this series of ever-updated papers will get more press.
- Charlie Petit

AAAS ScienceNow: The way things are going, sunspots will disappear in five years and Earth might cool off.

Related post
Need Something Else to Worry About?

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I will say this again... the Republicans in congress are a single organism. An X files fungus of immense proportions suffocating the democratic process. If they don't wake up and smell the climate change, they'll smother life on this planet as well.


Reaching at all
No, liberals did not ‘overreach’ on climate -David Roberts

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Prop 23 and the Oil Companies (Legal Planet)

.It is frequently said that “the oil companies” are financing Prop 23. This turns out to be a bit of an overgeneralization. According to Greenwire,

While some companies are supporting Proposition 23, Shell Oil Co. opposes it, Chevron Corp. is officially neutral, Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP PLC have decided not to get involved and ConocoPhillips has yet to contribute. Three oil refiners — Valero Energy Corp., Tesoro Corp. and Koch Industries — have contributed most of the $8.2 million raised to support Proposition 23.

Shell Oil, in particular, deserves praise for its position. Shell’s climate change adviser has posted a lengthy critique of Prop 23. (As an aside, it was pretty cool to find out that Shell even has a climate change advisor who maintains a blog). He makes a very cogent point about the impact of Prop 23 on business:

Related posts:
Must defeat CA's Prop 23
Shell Oil (Tuesday)