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Is Gore a Loon?
Jul. 19th, 2008 01:26 pmIn general, for this piece my numbers come from "the internet". I have not scrutinized them and fact-checked them to within an inch of their lives, but they pass the test of a reader who has a solid knowledge of basic science, and who knows how to read web-pages with a critical eye. This is an LJ post, not a government document or grant proposal.
On Thursday, July 17, Al Gore proposed that the United States move to eliminate all carbon emissions from our electrical energy production in the next ten years. A great many folks are calling him crazy and stupid. The problem with that suggestion is that, for all his flaws, one thing Al Gore has never been is outright stupid. Idealistic, perhaps, and one can always argue over details of numbers and research, but the man's not dumb.
He's got an estimate that the 30-year cost of this plan is $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion. My basic naive math takes that to be, on average, $100 billion per year. By way of comparison, the major news services report that the Iraq War is costing something like $200 million per day (about $73 billion a year), and is looking to cost us a total of about $1 trillion to $2 trillion if we leave the country in the next three years.
So, assuming for a moment that the his estimate is of the right order of magnitude, it isn't outright crazy - the United States regularly spends money on this order on individual projects. When you say it in one lump, the scale sounds massive, but we forget that we do massive things routinely these days. So, if any politico tells you it is impossible, he or she is telling an outright lie - the thing is possible, merely extremely difficult.
The issue at hand is political will, and it seems to me that Gore was playing the Kennedy card. Back in 1961, JFK said, "First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him back safely to the earth." Now, the Apollo Program came in at the equivalent of something like $135 billion, so it was only a tenth the size of what Gore's proposing. But the first step of planting the flag for a decade-long goal seems pretty obvious to me.
So, let's take at least a cursory look at his idea - "Gore told the AP that his plan counts on nuclear power plants still providing about a fifth of the nation's electricity while the U.S. dramatically increases it's use of solar, wind, geothermal energy and clean coal technology. He said one of the largest obstacles will be updating the nation's electricity grid to harness power from solar panels, windmills and dams and transport it to cities."
I see a couple issues here - one is the reliance on clean coal. For the most part, clean coal amounts to burninig coal like we do now, capturing the CO2, and burying it back in the ground. A fair enough concept, but it has a major weakness in that it still depends on burning a fossil fuel - a non-renewable resource. Coal supplies are finite - current estimates I can find say that at current rates of use, if we include all types of coal (some of which make lousy fuel), we have maybe 300 years worth worldwide. If we increase our use, the time horizon comes closer. And, we are again talking about worldwide reserves - being the largest energy consumers around, we are apt to burn through our own reserves most quickly, leaving us again in the position of having to buy the stuff from someone else.
I strongly suspect there's a better plan that Mr. Gore could not mention - because it raises the specter of the Nuclear Boogeyman. World reserves of Uranium, recoverable at $130 per kilogram, would be enough to last "a century" at current rates of use. If you double the amount you are willing to spend to recover the metal, the available reserve increases by a factor of ten.
This doesn't sound so good, until you take the technology into account - the cost of fuel is a major part of a hydrocarbon-burning plant. Doubling the price of natural gas adds about 70% to the price of the electricity it produces. Most of the cost of nuclear energy is in the reactor itself - double the price of uranium, and the price of the electricity goes up by about 7%. In addition, the greatest known reserves of Uranium are in Canada and Australia, which are far more acceptable economic partners than the Middle East.
Yes, nuclear energy has its own waste problems. And there are safety concerns. With the political will to set irrational fears aside, these are reasonably manageable. There are several countries that have demonstrated how to do nuclear power safely. If we allow recycling, we deal with much of the fuel-waste issue at the same time that we reduce our need to mine more fuel.
So, a solution that'll last for longer than the nation's been around is available with current technology, and has already been implemented by other nations. It can be done, if you want it bad enough. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
On Thursday, July 17, Al Gore proposed that the United States move to eliminate all carbon emissions from our electrical energy production in the next ten years. A great many folks are calling him crazy and stupid. The problem with that suggestion is that, for all his flaws, one thing Al Gore has never been is outright stupid. Idealistic, perhaps, and one can always argue over details of numbers and research, but the man's not dumb.
He's got an estimate that the 30-year cost of this plan is $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion. My basic naive math takes that to be, on average, $100 billion per year. By way of comparison, the major news services report that the Iraq War is costing something like $200 million per day (about $73 billion a year), and is looking to cost us a total of about $1 trillion to $2 trillion if we leave the country in the next three years.
So, assuming for a moment that the his estimate is of the right order of magnitude, it isn't outright crazy - the United States regularly spends money on this order on individual projects. When you say it in one lump, the scale sounds massive, but we forget that we do massive things routinely these days. So, if any politico tells you it is impossible, he or she is telling an outright lie - the thing is possible, merely extremely difficult.
The issue at hand is political will, and it seems to me that Gore was playing the Kennedy card. Back in 1961, JFK said, "First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him back safely to the earth." Now, the Apollo Program came in at the equivalent of something like $135 billion, so it was only a tenth the size of what Gore's proposing. But the first step of planting the flag for a decade-long goal seems pretty obvious to me.
So, let's take at least a cursory look at his idea - "Gore told the AP that his plan counts on nuclear power plants still providing about a fifth of the nation's electricity while the U.S. dramatically increases it's use of solar, wind, geothermal energy and clean coal technology. He said one of the largest obstacles will be updating the nation's electricity grid to harness power from solar panels, windmills and dams and transport it to cities."
I see a couple issues here - one is the reliance on clean coal. For the most part, clean coal amounts to burninig coal like we do now, capturing the CO2, and burying it back in the ground. A fair enough concept, but it has a major weakness in that it still depends on burning a fossil fuel - a non-renewable resource. Coal supplies are finite - current estimates I can find say that at current rates of use, if we include all types of coal (some of which make lousy fuel), we have maybe 300 years worth worldwide. If we increase our use, the time horizon comes closer. And, we are again talking about worldwide reserves - being the largest energy consumers around, we are apt to burn through our own reserves most quickly, leaving us again in the position of having to buy the stuff from someone else.
I strongly suspect there's a better plan that Mr. Gore could not mention - because it raises the specter of the Nuclear Boogeyman. World reserves of Uranium, recoverable at $130 per kilogram, would be enough to last "a century" at current rates of use. If you double the amount you are willing to spend to recover the metal, the available reserve increases by a factor of ten.
This doesn't sound so good, until you take the technology into account - the cost of fuel is a major part of a hydrocarbon-burning plant. Doubling the price of natural gas adds about 70% to the price of the electricity it produces. Most of the cost of nuclear energy is in the reactor itself - double the price of uranium, and the price of the electricity goes up by about 7%. In addition, the greatest known reserves of Uranium are in Canada and Australia, which are far more acceptable economic partners than the Middle East.
Yes, nuclear energy has its own waste problems. And there are safety concerns. With the political will to set irrational fears aside, these are reasonably manageable. There are several countries that have demonstrated how to do nuclear power safely. If we allow recycling, we deal with much of the fuel-waste issue at the same time that we reduce our need to mine more fuel.
So, a solution that'll last for longer than the nation's been around is available with current technology, and has already been implemented by other nations. It can be done, if you want it bad enough. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
