Nuclear Power?

[DaggerDigwillow]

I like his thesis concept "spend where it will do the most good". I ear-mark my charity that way, and I try to be dispassionate. If I'm wrong, I pivot. Iterative wisdom.
Lomborg's major mistake is that (a) he doesn't really account for percentage risks (how do you calculate an '80% chance, things get worse; 20% chance things get terrible'?) and (b) he treats the game as a charity rather than a moral obligation. And (c) he continues to use the polar bear hunting as if it means something. That one really is problematic, because not only does he not recognize that it's dumb but also biases audiences away from how dumb it is.

The thesis itself isn't the worst. You can grow out of a crisis. If my credit card is 19% but I'm expecting a salary raise and benefits, it might make sense to delay a dentist visit. The math won't be easy, but it really could be true. So, I do not have the right to erode Bangledeshi shoreline with my emissions, but it is reasonable to offset that by helping them grow faster than the damage I cause. The problem is if I am not motivated, where I am somehow convinced that I'm allowed to kick the can down the road.
I really recommend everyone here listen to Jordan Peterson's interview with Lomborg. Nor for any science aspect, but you need to know what they're saying to each other. Peterson's bought Lomborg's story completely. It's 100 minutes of your time on a global crisis, so do it. However, we still know that it's being used as a salve rather than a solution.

Everyone knows that the solution isn't 'poor people stay poor'. And we fight around this truth with different models but also with a ginormous bias towards self-interest and 'not losing what you have acclimated to'.

"Cheap energy is necessary for poor people to grow their economy"
- yes! now tell me how wealthy Westerners bidding up the price of energy to drive SUVs and to heat their homes to 'don't need socks' temperatures helps. You'll note how rarely does 'Free Market Peterson' acknowledge that demand brings up prices. He'll tell a room full of McMansion SUVs that 'there is a problem, but the liberals don't have a real solution'. But, he'll not motivate three Christian principles: self-denial, limiting harms, and aggressive charity. Turn down your thermostat if you know that poor people need cheap energy, it's the first obvious thing you can do with an immediate impact. After that, read about Jevon's Paradox. But after that, because you only get to help fix Jevon's Paradox if you're not bidding up the price keeping the poor, poor.

"The needed solution is technological innovation"
- yes! So, if people actually believed this rather than having a salve they would have a pro-active platform to put money into this and be supporting it. There would be an R&D charity. There would be purchases that spurred R&D infrastructure. Conservatives would have real platforms on this concept. But they don't. It's because Lomborg doesn't actually motivate action on the very front his thesis supports.

"You can grow out of the crisis"
- sure! And you can aggravate the crisis but not bear the consequences. If someone accepts the extremely conservative "I'm not allowed to erode Bangledeshi shoreline for my own pleasure", then step 2 is offsetting that damage. If someone believed that simple truth, then calculate your externality cost roughly and fricken donate to pro-growth Bangledeshi (or wherever!) efforts. If someone isn't, they don't believe the thesis, they're just allowing two talking heads talk them into doing nothing.

I was a 'libertarian' while I was learning about AGW and making all my money in the stock market. "Don't cause damage you can't recompense" and "deny yourself luxuries to compensate your victims" and "doing it personally will be better than waiting for the government to figure out how to bungle it" are all normal libertarian talking points. So, I use less energy than my peers and I ear-mark some of the profits from my fossil carbon production into offsetting my damage through pro-growth charities. And then I look to see if the mainstream conservative also understands offsetting negative externalities and assisting in macro-economic growth and "DoN't ShOoT pOlAaR bEaRs If YoU cArE!" is used an example of 'liberal illogic'

Great response
(a) I believe Lomborg does address percentage risks but makes the same point you do in the problem of calculating that risk. (b) what is the moral obligation? If my value structure supports warmer earth does that mean I have a moral obligation to accelerate the warming of the earth? (c) The polar bear example was used to illustrate the repeated pattern of duplicity, misinformation, and deception from global climate alarmists. His point IS exactly how dumb it was among a slew of other examples provided.

I also highly recommend the interview as well as Jordan Peterson's work in The report of the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Global Sustainability I don't believe either is a "salve" and both aim for realistic solutions over unrealistic platitudes.

I do worry that the research on diminishing poverty leading to diminishing CO2 emissions is our generations free markets leading to democracy. The last thing we need is a future Chinese profitability model based on CO2 emissions which is the current reality.

Regarding cheap energy, I think the nuclear power solution, until fusion is viable, is the correct and obvious elephant-in-the-room solution. The expletive response of individuals turning up their thermostats in response to an authoritarian and hypocritical demand for it to be turned down is probably the likely and morally justified correct response.

Regarding technological responses and solutions, I don't understand why telling people this is desirable would lessen their desire for it or aim to achieve it. You've lost me here.

You can certainly grow out of a crisis but more importantly, there are steps that can be taken today without growth that would be far more significant in reducing CO2 than current expenditures that achieve nothing or are actually harmful. Bangladesh is no more likely than the Netherlands to be underwater due to global warming. Bjorn Addresses this repeatedly throughout both his books that I've read.

I don't disagree with those talking about I just don't believe in them as strongly as libertarians. Again the polar bear should used as an example of "liberal illogic" but rather one example of misinformation among a pattern that should be viewed with concern.

 

[Senethro]

Maybe libertarians should offer reasonably priced flood insurance to low lying pacific nations.

 

[DaggerDigwillow]

Maybe libertarians should offer reasonably priced flood insurance to low lying pacific nations.

I bet they'd do that if liberals offered short sells on their temperature predictions for climate change. They'd probably throw in the Nile floodplains as well for free.

 

[Senethro]

I bet they'd do that if liberals offered short sells on their temperature predictions for climate change. They'd probably throw in the Nile floodplains as well for free.

You couldn't do this reasonably as the outcome is dependent upon the behaviour of involved parties. Definite hazards and perverse incentives. I mean, even more so than there is already.

Do you think vanished nations will be able to claim reparations from the primary carbon emitters? I strongly suspect your ideological descendants will be mysteriously weak on the property rights of others.

 

[DaggerDigwillow]

You couldn't do this reasonably as the outcome is dependent upon the behaviour of involved parties. Definite hazards and perverse incentives. I mean, even more so than there is already.

Do you think vanished nations will be able to claim reparations from the primary carbon emitters? I strongly suspect your ideological descendants will be mysteriously weak on the property rights of others.

Assuming you are correct, if they stand rooted to the spot waiting to drown probably not but I've yet to travel to the land of statues were this would be the case.

 

[Senethro]

Assuming you are correct, if they stand rooted to the spot waiting to drown probably not but I've yet to travel to the land of statues were this would be the case.

Dang thats cold.

 

[Arwon]

Here's a great example of the sort of silliness he engages in.

Surface level spurious stuff that's actually misleading as hell.

He needs to deny that things like the Black Summer bushfires are unprecedented and severe and the product of worsening heat and dryness. So he goes looking for data to cherry pick and make simplistic charts which lie about the situation through misrepresentation and omission. The most credulous people on the internet look at it and go hmm yes very interesting and don't dig any further.

At surface level this looks reasonable yeah?

But the lie is that "area burnt" tells you very little about severity and climate impacts. That's because Australia has different kinds of fires.

The catastrophes of the summer of 2019-20 were fires of nearly unseen spread and ferocity in the bushland of south east. This is the forested areas, which that year burned regardless of whether they'd been load-reduced by burning off designed to mitigate spread. The sheer dryness also saw fire hit terrains that aren't normally fire-prone, like alpine bogs, cool high altitude forests, remnant Gondwanan forests, and temperate rainforests. Unfortunately a lot of those ecosystems won't come back the same, they'll be colonised by more fire resistant biomes instead.

It's part of a pattern of increased severe bushfire frequency, earlier and longer fire seasons, and more mega fires in the last few decades, all driven by hotter and drier weather occurring more often.

By contrast, the biggest years for pure national hectares burnt are actually associated with wet years. 2011 and 2012 spikes in that chart are a good example as compared to the Millennium Drought from 2002 to 2010. Those were La Niña years, 2011 was Australia's wettest September on record, and the years saw intense rainfall and flooding in Queensland and elsewhere. Those big hectares are low intensity fires that happen in the months after the arid north and centre of Australia bloom in the high rainfall. More water means more vegetation grows in the scrubby arid stretches of the north and centre, which then dries out, and then burns.

If there's a trend to less total hectares burned, and I'm not 100% sure that's even the case, because it's driven by irregular multi year climate cycles, it's a product of the hotter and drier climate reducing the scope for vast wet year fires in the arid interior parts of the country.

But guys like Lomborg don't care about any of that, they're just looking to deny and minimise any link between global warming and natural disasters in service of a very lucrative and popular climate skeptic grift. It doesn't have to stand up to detailed scrutiny, it just has to look shallowly plausible to its audience, while forcing the refutations to be longer and more technical and lower profile.

Anyways here is an explainer of worsening bush fire conditions by some actual scientists at the CSIRO if anyone is keen. The upshot is more extreme heat more often means worse fire seasons.

 

[innonimatu]

- sure! And you can aggravate the crisis but not bear the consequences. If someone accepts the extremely conservative "I'm not allowed to erode Bangledeshi shoreline for my own pleasure", then step 2 is offsetting that damage. If someone believed that simple truth, then calculate your externality cost roughly and fricken donate to pro-growth Bangledeshi (or wherever!) efforts. If someone isn't, they don't believe the thesis, they're just allowing two talking heads talk them into doing nothing.

That puts me in mind of the old utilitarianism versus deontology debate. I'm on the deontological side. If something is wrong, do not do it. Don't pretend to offset a wrong. Do not pretend that you can say uproot a village to build a dam and "compensate" them with some money or a new village elsewhere. "We" do this stuff all the time sure, but let's not pretend that it's fine. It's not. We should instead avoid further "growth" except where necessary for survival and maintenance. My environmentalism is skeptical of escaping through growth...

In the climate change thing all the "net zero" talk is obfuscation. A market of selling and buying excuses to pollute. We have countries selling "carbon credits" for stuff that was always there (Gabon and its forests) and wasteful businesses spending energy needlessly and excusing themselves as green by buying said credits. It's a scam to pretend to be environmentalist and at the same time make some profit in yet another trade on virtual stuff.

For the record, I still think that there is excessive alarmist over climate change, as it is called now. But If i did believe that the end was night, I would not use planes, avoid use of individual car, etc.

 

[Angst]

oh god, lomborg.

ok, so.

bjørn lomborg was basically artificially elevated into legitimacy in environmental science, under anders fogh rasmussen, former danish prime minister. before that, he did work and was controversial, i guess, but he only had prominence of controversy. his legitimacy was solely enshrined by fogh. this is important.

before his political position in EAI, lomborg did academic work and wrote academic books, as one does. he does not have an actual background in climate science, but political science, and his work has had a buckload of scientific flaws. his used data just doesn't reflect the reality of things. it's been thoroughly scrutinized by the scientific community and is at best "meh" and at worst just outright wrong. whether his data is malicious cherrypicking or accidental is another story. to me, it's mostly someone who is not intentionally wrong, but have stepped into a field without much understanding of it, and his usage in climate issues is a wrong one. this happens a lot when you impose your political views on things you don't have expertise in. again, this is important.

so, lomborg's legitimacy is pretty much just foghs fault. (we call anders fogh rasmussen "fogh" for short in denmark.) before fogh, lomborg was just controversial. y'know, an obscure academic that could be picked up by clueless people.

fogh's whole shpiel was a couple of things. first off, he wanted to attain a minarchist state in denmark, and like, sure.
but secondly, fogh was intent on ending academic influence on the government. fogh wanted to remove "smagsdommerne", the "tasting judges", from the danish government, ie remove experts from their fields of expertise in the government. this pretty much nuked the scrutiny of procedures within the danish state, deliberately blinding the efficiency of the danish government because the practical application and understanding of expertize was likened to elite rule. as such, fogh completely dismantled a number of state organizations that have traditionally guided the hand of the danish government, creating a few others that served his position rather than being aware of the world.

and no, you're not crazy to hear alarm bells here. think trump. except that fogh was cool and collected. because if fogh did anything right, he was controlled and charismatic. it's been a few years, but i'd probably be able to pick up the equivalent of installing coal magnates in environmental organizations here. if anything, that's basically what lomborg was. in denmark, we don't have coal, but we have oil and farming, and danish liberals (our right) don't like dying wrecks of industry naturally dying out, so they make the political equivalent of clawing their way out of the situation with any means possible.

i mean, it's denmark, right? the green, progressive, democratic technocracy, making bank on no real industrial output. denmark installed lomborg, so lomborg has to be doing something right. right? legitimacy.

lomborg's position on the climate was served to fogh on a silver platter, since lomborg was making headlines at the time, and with lomborg's installation, fogh could both destroy the organizations that advised the government while appointing yes-men that supported his views. in the end, as always, the anti-elitism was actually about power. in denmark, beyond lomborg, we currently have a real issue with this, since fogh's actions means that the government's efficient rule through a guiding hand has been kneecapped. there's an aftermath of behavior, where inconvenient experts (ie, inconvenient reflections of the real world) are just fired at will if they note "i mean ok, but this doesn't actually work". it's also why our universities are ever so slowly getting dismantled (outside of stuff like finance and engineering). fogh created a zeitgeist where knowledge wasn't useful.

lomborg's primary point of "it's ideal to pay where it works" is not a bad one, but this is kind of missing the point of what i'm saying. lomborg doesn't understand what works. his ideas on renewable energy does not actually reflect what renewable energy can do. we're already at the point in technology where it's both possible and affordable to invest in renewable energy sources. the problem is not the tech. the problem is political will. all while still mass investing into obsolete (and dangerous) technologies like coal and oil, keeping it artificially alive where the free market would otherwise have intervened and destroyed those industries.

 

[El_Machinae]

That puts me in mind of the old utilitarianism versus deontology debate. I'm on the deontological side. If something is wrong, do not do it. Don't pretend to offset a wrong.

In general, this is reasonable. Especially if the offset isn't the person who was victimized. Upthread someone said "turn up the thermostat to teach the moralists a lesson!", which is a deeply evil take considering the moralists aren't the victims of that action. I might as well step up my roofie game at the bar after attending a training session at work about sexism - the victim of my reactance isn't the person who's offended me.

The 'problem' with carbon is that the damage and benefits are intensely fungible. As well, we still have no choice but to spend fossil carbon to build the future we want. So yeah, you don't have permission to create downstream victims, but you'll make them. The best you can do is spend the carbon in ways such that they never want to mimic your behavior. I'm a strong advocate of cutting back the leisure consumption and investing in creating the future we need, mind. But the only solution, long-term, is to mitigate the problem. We can't solve it by cutting back, only by improving human well-being with alternatives that haven't been created yet. The only solution is 'compensate'. It doesn't matter how much I reduce my footprint by foregoing leisure, because I cannot turn it negative to offset what I've done without investment.

There's no global mechanism to get consent. My local region has rules about how much noxious emissions I'm allowed to put from my tailpipe. I'm allowed to do X but I'm not allowed to do Y. And I'm expected to contribute taxes along sustainable dimensions that make my emissions 'tolerable'. But these mechanisms don't exist for people outside my borders. It never will be, because the rich have nukes and make the rules.


I do think that conservative willingness to destroy the wealth and well-being of poor people (who live far away). I can think of no good reason why a person who's income is higher than mine should have a higher leisure footprint than I do. Nicer stuff? sure. I get that. Higher negative externalities? Nope, it makes no real sense. The ability to not foist rises with income, it doesn't fall.

 

[Lexicus]

I do think that conservative willingness to destroy the wealth and well-being of poor people (who live far away). I can think of no good reason why a person who's income is higher than mine should have a higher leisure footprint than I do. Nicer stuff? sure. I get that. Higher negative externalities? Nope, it makes no real sense. The ability to not foist rises with income, it doesn't fall.

It's almost like capital is a relationship of domination between persons...nevermind

 

[El_Machinae]

Hmmmmn, no not really. It's because we can hurt each other for our own benefit, and we will because we're selfish. It's not really about 'capital'.

 

[Lexicus]

Hmmmmn, no not really. It's because we can hurt each other for our own benefit, and we will because we're selfish. It's not really about 'capital'.

I'm aware that this is the liberal view of things.

 

[El_Machinae]

The actual answer is that the various moral philosophies, political views, and religions are unable to be sufficiently compelling to both propagate and motivate sufficiently good behavior.
Wealth allows people to foist negative externalities because that's what we do whenever we can. There is no fundamental reason why a rich person should be worse, other than the failures in my first sentence. Wealth =/= capital except from the most strained definitions.

You also need wealth in order to reduce or offset your damages, and you cannot sufficiently do so without it. But getting it is no guarantee that a society will. They probably won't, or at least not as quickly as they could.

 

[Lexicus]

The fundamental reason why a rich person will be worse is capital, though, the logic of the capitalist mode of production and the fact that this logic operates regardless of how selfish or altruistic the individuals within the system are.

 

[El_Machinae]

Oh, that will be true. Wealth will allow someone to foist.
That will be going back to the paragraph, since I was specially targeting conservatives - somehow the 'right' to foist grows with wealth, which is the opposite of reasonable. We will all foist, especially out of desperation. But dissonance kicks in when we somehow think we have the right to.


And I guess under a capitalist mode of product, it will be the reason 'why' the foisting is done. Under a socialist mode of production, democratic selfishness would be the reason why. Under faux-communist authoritarianism, that would be the reason why. It's not so much the 'capital', it's the wealth. I don't like systems where 'people have to remain poor' is the solution.

On the climate front, I don't think there's any real long-term solution other than the invention of lower-carbon alternatives to what people want today. Whether it's 'wanting lower carbon products/services' or 'having lower-carbon inputs', the math works out the same. Getting someone to want less meat is the same as insulating their home differently when it comes to measuring the damage. After that, it's the ease of the change.

 

[amadeus]

I haven’t followed anything so I’m coming in green.

Based on the trajectory I’ve seen, it looks like other sources are increasing in cost performance and nuclear isn’t keeping up; I don’t know if that’s from a lack of interest, funding, or scientific possibility, but I would say just as a general proposition that I support it if it’s the best available option.

I’d sooner fund research into new possibilities than build more plants with existing technology. Keep in mind I got a C- (the lowest passing grade) in my college science courses so I’m not the one to ask.

 

[Arwon]

Keep in mind I got a C- (the lowest passing grade) in my college science courses so I’m not the one to ask.

The funny thing here is the STEM weirdos are often the ones with the worst, most naive, most unrealistic takes on this topic. The question at this point is not really about science but rather it's about policy and economics, and support for nuclear power is often just a form of social signalling from the "I f***ing love science" crowd, rather than a serious energy transition plan.

 

[stfoskey12]

Enforcing the social change (on the rich) is one mechanism by which the alternatives would be created. There are a few ways of getting innovation going. The first is to create rules of what people cannot do, they will work around it (let's hope your rules are good!). The 2nd is to harness market forces. The 3rd is to democratically purchase the production of those innovations.
You'd need to use all 3, because each is insufficient. As well, because of the timeline pressures, you need to adopt each iterative improvement as fast as possible. If a regulation works faster than a tax, you need to consider the regulation (even if it's 'worse' in some dimension) because there's a clock ticking.

This is why I support nuclear, because there are regions in which where nuclear will be adopted more quickly than alternatives. The only long-term hope is to create alternatives that beat coal, which means that we need to be investing sufficiently in the creation of those alternatives OR buying time. One or the other. Or both.

Natural gas has already beaten coal in the US. Coal has fallen from 50% of the US electricity production in 2000 to 20% today. Most of that has been replaced by natural gas, with renewables taking up a smaller portion. However, wind is growing fast and beat hydropower as the largest source of renewables for the first time in 2019. But, it started from such a low value that it will take a while before it starts beating out the main fossil sources of energy. Right now it's only at 1/3 coal generation and 1/9 natural gas generation.

The funny thing here is the STEM weirdos are often the ones with the worst, most naive, most unrealistic takes on this topic. The question at this point is not really about science but rather it's about policy and economics, and support for nuclear power is often just a form of social signalling from the "I f***ing love science" crowd, rather than a serious energy transition plan.

This is something I'm legitimately curious about. What does adding one GW of power look like for wind vs. solar vs. nuclear, in terms of cost, area taken up by the new power source, effects of mining, etc.? How do the environmental effects battery storage compare to nuclear when it comes to reliable power?

 

[Arwon]

There's a reason virtually all the new build happening now is solar and wind now. The IEA expects it to constitute 95% of new electricity generation over the next few years. The world added 19% to solar capacity and 13% to wind in 2021 alone, rates that are projected to accelerate. In a few years we will have over a third of world electricity being renewable:

In most of the world, utility scale solar is now the cheapest way to get new electricity. Nuclear power by contrast is at 10% of global electricity production and steady or declining. It sits at about the same level, in absolute terms, that it was at in 2000.

That's where the market is at these days. A very rapid expansion of renewable electricity generation is already underway, we're not talking about some hypothetical planning scenario. where the world is paused and waiting to decide whether to have solar panels or nuclear reactors.

To be clear, it's still not going fast enough for net zero quick enough to keep under 2 degrees warming. Not unless acceleration increases more than projected (we probably need to be adding about triple current annual additions by 2030), while electrification of things like transport also intensifies. But it's still going pretty damn fast and it's the only game in town as far as even approaching enough decarbonisation goes.