Some time ago I found papers about a climate congress in Essen/Germany this year. You may read the papers on this website:

http://www.greattransformation.eu/index.php/program

The PDF-file from DR. David Held is especially interesting, because it touches our social and political basis – our democracy. Cite:

“Thus the argument is that democracies are unable to formulate policies to overcome global collective action problems and serious global risks, given their tendency to focus on the short term, the immediate issues concerning their electorates, and the preoccupation of politicians with their own re-election. Accordingly, the implication is that they are unable to meet the scale of the challenge posed by climate change, and a more authoritarian approach is required.”

No matter, if one is a left wing or a right wing fellow, this is really hard stuff! It shows, how far the political discussion about climate change goes. It is not very hard to find similar statements from other people like Maurice Joung (CAN), formely the highest UNO-official behind Kofi Anan. He says:

“Our concepts of ballot-box democracy may need to be modified to produce strong governments capable of making difficult decisions.”

From Australia you can also read astonishing statements from an IPCC-official, named Dr. David Shearman. He wrote the book:

“The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy”

On http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6878 you can read more about his way of thinking about democracy and climate change. It’s even more worse!

Now, what is this all about? I think that – without any public notice – there is an emerging political force behind the sceene, that forces parts of the IPCC-discussion in a very dangerous direction.

I don’t know, how the greens in the USA argue in discussions with other opinions. In Germany I can say that many of them are rather furious. They have no doubt, that everything they believe in, is totally correct and they also believe, that every other person should think and act like them. Personally, they are mostly very kind people, but from a political point of view I would call them as “strange religious”.

I would be interested, if you – as Americans – also have noticed this kind of new “movement” or “arguing” against democracy.

As to Arctic methane release, sediment cores from southern Siberia and northern Canada show that around 900 years ago these regions were around 3 deg C warmer than they are now for a period of a couple of centuries. Presumably a good deal of methane was released. This was immediately followed by the Little Ice Age. What’s the evidence for the peril of runaway warming?

There is not now and never has been any actual evidence at all for any measurable degree of anthropogenic global warming, much less for any with catastrophic consequences. This is why the “Hockey Team” and CRU were so desperate to hide data and control the debate.

I have added a comment to the post titled “What’s the price of nuclear. . .” Funny thing about that one, the one historical cost that can actually be researched is only off by a factor of ten. All of the other costs mentioned in the post are projections and estimates without any listing of assumptions used to make those estimates. There is a lot of room for competent managers and engineers to vigorously attack cost problems and provide far better than projected performance. Of course, there is also the possibility that the project will not be managed competently and that it might run into unexpected delays that add cost. The estimates that are publicly available are generally still under negotiation – the vendor has a strong incentive to get the customer to agree to as high a price as possible. That is where they make their money.

I checked out the “Micro-Nuclear No Panacea” post and realized that I made an unanswered comment on that one back in July when it was first published.

Claims that nuclear is too expensive have been around since the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 was first passed to allow commercialization of atomic energy. They are often made by people who are far more interested in maintaining market share for their fossil fuel products than in telling the truth or doing hard nosed cost accounting and project management. Here is a quote from Robert Peltier’s post that I think needs to be digested by critical thinkers looking for a good long term investment:

“The New York Times reported on January 18, 1984: “3/4 of [U.S.] reactors cost consumers at least double what was promised,” and “in 28% of cases, final cost was more than four times the estimate.” The developers of those plants were heavily criticized a quarter-century ago for their steeply rising cost of construction.

Today, the final construction costs are all but forgotten because of our fleet of 104 nuclear plants produce electricity for less than 2 cents/kWh and are this country’s most reliable electricity generators.”

Not only are the the “most reliable” electricity generators, but in a market where electricity sells for an average of about 8 cents per kilowatt hour wholesale, they are enormously profitable. Producing vast quantities of a highly desirable product like electricity with a 300% margin is a pretty sweet business. (A 1000 MWe nuclear plant operating at a CF of 92% will produce about $500 million in profits every year when there is a 6 cent per kilowatt hour difference between cost and sales price.)

Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights

Robert Peltier has blogged on the cost of new nuclear capacity at MasterResource for large units (http://www.masterresource.org/2009/07/whats-the-price-of-nuclear-power-probably-higher-than-you-think/) and micro-nuclear (http://www.masterresource.org/2009/07/micro-nuclear-no-panacea/).

Please comment there with your thoughts.

In your list of reasons why “even the Environmental Left” should stop engaging in climate alarmism (I certainly do not believe that anyone should engage in alarmism of any kind unless there really is a train bearing down on an innocent bystander) is the following sentence:

“Resurrection of (highly uneconomic) nuclear power.”

What makes you state that nuclear power is uneconomic? There must be some basic assumptions there that do not match reality – our currently operating nuclear plants are generating electricity for a total production cost of just 1.87 cents per kilowatt hour. Even “cheap” coal cost 2.75 cents per kilowatt hour in 2008.

Of course, some will point to the enormous capital cost projections being bandied about, but many of those very same people used exactly the same arguments to try to stop our existing plants from being built. Funny thing is that essentially all of our plants are now paid off and they still have 20 or more years left to operate and generate “windfall” profits for their owners and/or low electricity prices for their customers. (The “and/or” in the previous sentence depends on whether the plant is owned by a merchant generator like Exelon or a cost of service generator like FPL or Southern Company.)

Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights

There is an outlier for the benefit side of the equation that under anyone’s math needs to be compared to the scary stuff.

Thanks for the thoughtful comments.

Yes there are risks involved with climate change. Greenhouse gases are in integral part of the earth’s atmosphere/climate system. So by altering their concentrations, you alter the climate. The question becomes how and how much. As with most change, there are going to be winners and losers. So the larger question needs to be are the climate changes/impacts in net worth what we get for them. The answer to this question is far from being well-known, in my opinion at least, either climatologically, or economically, or and other “-lly.”

From the best that I can gather from permafrost research, I think that if all the permafrost suddenly thawed and released a huge cloud of methane, that it might be an issue. But given how gradual the warming/thawing process appears to be, that it’s more an interesting research question—and that nothing catastrophic is likely ever happen. And, at the very least, the latest research on atmospheric methane concentration does not indicate that a large-scale sustained release from thawing permafrost is occurring (see here ) despite the arctic warming that has taken place.

-Chip

You raise some on-the-edge scenarios that I would invite Chip Knappenberger to briefly address. But ask yourself: can just a little action increasing energy prices a little or “some” arrest the alleged “problem.” I believe when you do the math, and take into account ‘political failure’ relative to ‘market failure,’ there is a case for wealth-is-health (adaptation over mitigation).