Day: October 27, 2023

You Are the Carbon They Want to Reduce

The latest edition of the State of the Climate Report is only communist propaganda. These messages are most prevalent in the part of the report titled “Scientists’ warning recommendations,” which includes “coordinated efforts” intended to “support a broader agenda focused on holistic and equitable climate policy.” You cannot immediately eliminate CO2 and let the human population survive. It can’t be done.

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

Chris Talgo writes at American Thinker The actual ‘climate change’ agenda.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The latest edition of the State of the Climate Report, published this week in the journal BioScience, begins rather ominously: “Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory.” These sentences are meant to instill abject fear and evoke a sense of doom in the general public. However, they are patently absurd and ought to be disregarded outright.

Like almost every climate change report I’ve come across, the 2023 State of the Climate Report is full of red herrings and bombastic assertions that are intended to alarm the public into believing that climate change is an existential threat that must be stopped at all costs, regardless of the collateral damage and unintended consequences that their so-called solutions would inevitably bring to bear.

But what I find most alarming about this particular report, which 15,000 scientists signed, is the anti-human and anti-progress message that lies at the heart of it.

These messages are most prevalent in the part of the report titled “Scientists’ warning recommendations,” which includes “coordinated efforts” intended to “support a broader agenda focused on holistic and equitable climate policy.”

The authors erroneously claim that “economic growth” is the driver of the climate crisis and that it prevents them from achieving their “social, climate, and biodiversity goals.” Unsurprisingly, they lay the blame on the world’s most prosperous nations, particularly those located in the “global north,” which they argue are preventing the need for “decoupling economic growth from harmful environmental impacts.” As such, they suggest we “change our economy to a system that supports meeting basic needs for all people instead of excessive consumption by the wealthy.”

As it turns out, this type of economic system has been implemented
many times over, most notably in the Soviet Union.
The results, in every single case, were downright dreadful.

In other words, these scientists dismiss the fact that economic growth under a free-market capitalist system, which has produced myriad technological advancements and innovations that have significantly improved the human experience in recent centuries, is a net positive. Casting economic growth and free enterprise in a mostly negative light is ludicrous. Thanks to economic growth over the past few decades alone, humans are living longer than ever before, in less poverty than ever before, are able to communicate across the world in the blink of an eye, and live more comfortably than ever before.

In their misguided worldview, economic growth is a net harm because it does not automatically allocate resources in an equitable manner. Spoiler alert: neither does socialism. Apparently, these scientists are unaware that as President John F. Kennedy famously put it, “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

Aside from their anti-economic growth stance, the authors also recommend “eliminating” “fossil fuels” and “transitioning away from coal” while calling for “funding to build out renewable energy capacity.” Based on statements like these, I wonder if the scientists who produce these types of reports are delusional.

If we were to eliminate fossil fuels and stop using coal as a fuel source,
the entire global economy would grind to a halt,
billions of people would suffer, and millions would die.

But maybe that is the point, or at least a part of it. One of the last recommendations the scientists make is downright chilling: “gradually decrease the human population.”

Make no mistake, for decades, climate-change zealots have been calling for degrowth and depopulation. From Paul Ehrlich to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the list is too long to catalogue. For some strange reason, this call for depopulation and degrowth is resonating across academia and the illiberal Left. Even worse, it seems to be in vogue among today’s youth.

Across the West or “global north,” birth rates have been declining precipitously. In many countries, including the United States, the birth rate has dropped below the level of replacement.

Sadly, the climate change-industrial complex, a multi-trillion-dollar money machine, has irrevocably corrupted the once-hallowed scientific community. As most scientists know, though are probably less-than-willing to go on record for fear of cancelation and loss of grants and such, climate change is not an existential threat. However, if we unflinchingly take their recommendations as gospel, and plow forward with their idiotic degrowth and depopulation agenda, you better believe humanity will face an existential crisis like none before: the possible extinction of the human species.

Addendum: Zero CO2 is a Suicide Pact (Dr. Happer)

Biznews published excerpts from an interview with Dr. William Happer Sign  Elimination of CO2 is a suicide pact.  Text below in italiics with my bolds and added images.

Overview

It’s safe to assume no one consciously sets out to challenge a narrative as deeply entrenched and emotionally charged as climate change. Dr William Happer, an American physicist and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Physics at Princeton University, certainly didn’t. It was only in 1991, upon Happer’s appointment by President George W Bush as director of Energy Research in the US Department of Energy, that his interaction with climate change authorities – and their refusal to engage in customary scientific debate on climate change – piqued his interest.

Thereafter, Happer was dismissed for his contrarian views and ‘head butting’ with climate change luminary Al Gore, only to be brought back to Washington by former president Donald Trump in 2018. BizNews spoke to Happer about his prodigious career and discovery that the burgeoning climate change hysteria had no scientific basis. Happer meticulously detailed why and how CO2, the “demon gas”, is not a pollutant but is essential to mankind’s prosperity.

Professor William Happer on the effect of carbon dioxide on planet Earth

Carbon dioxide is what drives life on Earth. The growth of plants depends on carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide in the air diffuses into the leaves of plants through little holes, and the plants combine this with water and it requires energy. This energy comes from sunlight. So, the combination of carbon dioxide, the so-called pollutant, water and sunlight is what makes life. You know, that’s what we live on. And carbon dioxide at the present time is much lower [in] concentration than has prevailed over most of geological history. [During] most of geological history, it’s pretty clear from proxy records, CO2 levels have been two or three times greater than they are now.

It’s true. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and it warms the Earth,
but the warming isn’t enough to matter.

It’s very small. And so, it’s probably beneficial on balance. If you double CO2, it seems like a lot, that’s a 100% increase of CO2. How much does that affect the cooling radiation that goes off to space? That sounds like a lot, but in effect it only decreases the radiation to space by 1%. So, 100% increase of CO2, 1% decrease in radiation to space. It’s a very small effect, and you don’t have to change the Earth’s temperature very much or cloudiness very much to bring it back into equilibrium with the situation before you increase the CO2.

On climate change activism having become like a religious cult

It is a religious cult for many people. Many people have stopped believing in traditional religions, you know? So, they don’t believe in God, but they need something beyond themselves to believe in. What could be more noble than saving the planet? “The planet is threatened by the demon gas CO2, so we’re going to save it.” The fact that it means essentially suicide for the human race doesn’t get into their brains. But that is what it means.

You cannot immediately eliminate CO2 and let the human population survive.
It can’t be done. So, it’s a suicide pact, you know, what is being proposed.

The movement is a joke – a little bit – but it’s not so different from a coalition of organised crime and religious fanaticism. And the religious fanatics … You know, you don’t argue with someone about their religion. This is not a joking matter. It brings crusades and religious wars and God knows what. So, that’s a big problem. There is this religious aspect; so many people now have been brainwashed into thinking there really is an emergency. And anyone who stands in the way of saving the planet is Satan incarnate. They are sincere people but they’re just badly misled.

Many of the most vociferous climate emergency folks; if you press them, they say, “Yes, the real problem is not fossil fuels, it’s human beings. You know, there are just too many people. We should not have more than a billion people.” We’re roughly eight billion now, so that means seven out of eight of us should disappear from the planet. This is extremely dangerous. It’s an evil cult.

On what has been lost owing to climate hysteria

The alarmist community recognised 20 years ago that the warming is a lot less than their models had predicted. “Just you wait,” they’d say, “Sooner or later it will warm. But in the meantime, we need something else to keep the alarm going.” And they seized on extreme weather and rising sea levels and ocean acidification… Things that really were not warming. And they changed the name from global warming to climate change because warming wasn’t going to cut it. There wasn’t enough warming.

Earth has an unstable climate which isn’t very well understood to this day, and it would be wonderful if we understood it better. But I think our ability to understand it has been set back very badly by the climate hysteria. So, what could’ve been 20, 30 years of good, basic research and real understanding of the climate has been wasted with hysteria about this false climate emergency, which does not exist. In the meantime, the real parts of the climate – which would be good to understand – have been ignored.

Living Off-Grid Has Shown Me That Modern Society Cannot Function on Renewable Energy

Both house systems are close to as optimised as we can get them and represent a total investment of around $160,000. Renewable energy systems should more honestly be called replaceable energy systems. None of the components can be expected to work for more than 25 years and often a much shorter time than that.

From The Daily Sceptic

BY PSEUDONAJA TEXTILIS

When we moved to our farm on the coast in Victoria Australia over 20 years ago our mains power was delivered by a single wire earth return (SWER) power line and we were the second to last house connected to it. This was just after the misguided privatisation of the power grid delivered this lifeline of civilised existence into the greedy hands of ‘competing’ power companies.

The previously state owned ‘Gold Plated’ system now had to turn a profit for investors so preventative maintenance services were cut.

We began to experience power outages, these were usually brief but occurred at least weekly. They would sometimes extend for hours and more than once for more than a day. With rainwater tanks and an electric pressure supply we couldn’t fill a kettle or flush a toilet. 

The first response to this was to install a 5,000 litre tank on a hill 15 metres above the house with a 40 mm pipe to the house. We kept it full and only used it when we had to. One problem solved, but we were still sometimes reduced to kerosene lamps and candles after dark and couldn’t reliably run a freezer to store the food we produced.

So we decided to go off grid. It was a few years before we were fully independent of mains power.

Our system grew over time as finances permitted, technology improved and our experience and knowledge grew.

Now we have two three-bedroom houses 800 metres apart. One is 35 years old and only moderately energy efficient the other is eight years old and optimised for passive solar with excellent insulation, double glazing etc.

Both homes have wood-burning kitchen stoves with boilers for hot water in winter and for hydronic heating. They also have bottled gas stoves and solar hot water with instantaneous gas boost, which is almost never required because the heat exchanger on-stove boiler keeps the tank hot all winter. When the stove is not in use the solar hot water system with its heat exchanger does the job.

We grow all our own firewood. Providing around 100 kg of seasoned hardwood per house per week for the colder months is labour intensive and requires petrol powered chainsaws and a wood splitter.

Each house has its own completely separate power system, each with 30 solar panels of 300-440W capacity, MPPT solar controllers and a 1 kW wind turbine on a 19 metre mast of 80 mm diameter steel tube, stabilised by about 100m of 10mm steel cables and 3.6 cubic metres of concrete.  

Running 24 hours a day the wind generators can sometimes equal the total daily solar input.

The power storage systems consist of a total of 60 German made lead acid gel 2V 600 amp hr batteries, shared between the houses (24 and 36). Each of these batteries weighs 48 kg and currently retails for $474 (AUD). They are rigged in series to provide 24 V power to a  computer controlled DC linked inverter/charger.  Each house also has an interconnected AC linked inverter/charger that sends 240 V AC power from part of the solar array directly to the house switchboard and also contributes DC charge to the battery bank.

In theory we have three to four days of zero input power supply if we were to flatten the batteries, but in practice we don’t let the batteries drop below 70% capacity in order to protect them and make them last as long as possible. So we are limited to about one day of stored capacity.

Both house systems are close to as optimised as we can get them and represent a total investment of around $160,000.

So how do they perform?

In summer perfectly. We don’t have to do much other than check in with the laptop once a week to monitor the system, and we often take the wind generators offline for extended periods.

In winter, when solar energy input per square metre drops to about 30% of peak summer level and then for only a few hours a day, the systems still work pretty well but require more monitoring involvement.

To some extent power usage can be matched to storage levels and fluctuating input from the wind generator. However, the total renewable input is just too patchy and unreliable so petrol or diesel powered generator backup is absolutely required.

It’s not just in winter, but in autumn especially and sometimes in springtime too. When cloudy skies and windless days persist we need to make recourse to our petrol generators, sometimes everyday for a week at a time to keep the batteries charged and provide peak load supply. The inverters are linked to auto-start the generators as required when the battery voltage drops below a set level or demand rises too high. They often come on in the evenings and have to be sited to minimise noise.

In the early days it was a case of dishwasher now, washing machine later, maybe tomorrow etc. and minimal use of electricity to heat things. Nowadays such restrictions on usage are limited to days when the generator starts to automatically kick in – we take that as a signal to check the system and ease off to save on fuel.

The generators have to be looked after and kept fuelled-up ready to go at all times. We have several of them, including a 70-year-old Lister JP 1/9 Startomatic – a 9 hp single cylinder water-cooled diesel running a 1,500 rpm 6.25 kVA generator that was retrieved from a sheep station in NSW. I recently substantially rebuilt it in my workshop with original spare parts. It is a magnificent 1.4 tonnes of the best of British engineering; it works perfectly and will soon be connected. The other repurposed diesel generator I’m working on is a solid old 1,500 rpm ST-6 designed for nonstop use in a commercial fishing boat. It will be driven by a 10hp air-cooled Yanmar L100N until I can find another auto-start Lister diesel for it. These will both soon take over from two two Honda 6kVA petrol gensets currently connected to the systems and will be about half the cost to run. Most years the annual generator run time is around 60-100 hours at each house but it’s as unpredictable as the weather.

After 20 years the first of our solar panels have started to fail and have been replaced. Rather than dump them into landfill because they can’t be recycled, I’m planning on using them to make north-facing sun traps for heat loving plants in our big vegetable garden.

Renewable energy systems should more honestly be called replaceable energy systems. None of the components can be expected to work for more than 25 years and often a much shorter time than that.

It is the journey as much as the destination. Producing our own power fits with our overall ethos of self reliance. We produce our own free range poultry and eggs and, in a good year, most of our fruit and vegetables. We breed Wiltshire sheep and buy in beef weaners, then we butcher, pack and freeze our own meat supply which we can supplement with hunting and offshore fishing.

Extrapolating from our renewable energy experience, anyone who thinks that a modern society can function with a power grid that runs on just solar and wind power without fossil fuel or nuclear backup that’s able to immediately provide up to 100% of power needs on cloudy, still days and dark, windless nights, is totally deluded! 

And getting grid-scale lithium ion battery storage to provide the sort of supply time that we have on our farm would cost trillions of dollars, deplete the planet’s non-renewable resources to the point of imminent exhaustion and then it would have to be done all over again in 10 years.

It matters nought that you have massive renewable generation capacity if you can’t store power for extended periods.

So you can have all the wind and solar farms you want, but without fossil fuel or nuclear back up you’ll need to buy a good supply of warm blankets and candles if you don’t want to be spending a lot of time shivering in the dark.

The author was a part-time specialist medical practitioner until he refused to be injected with the experimental gene-based Covid vaccines just over two years ago and was sacked. Now he’s a fulltime peasant farmer who values his privacy and prefers to remain anonymous.

1.5C – “Unfortunately, Time is Up”

The 2023 state of the climate report is only communist propaganda. That is junk science masquerading as a climate warning.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

But eco-communism can save us, according to “The 2023 state of the climate report“.

Earth’s vital signs have never been worse, as climate scientists warn of ‘unbearable heat and shortages of food and freshwater’

By Mark Saunokonoko • Senior Journalist

“Unfortunately, time is up.”

That’s the bleak warning headlining a concerning new report where climate scientists conclude Earth’s vital signs are now worse than anything humans have seen.

The climate situation is now so bad that life on Earth is imperilled, the scientists said, pointing to 20 of 35 identified planetary vital signs that are teetering at record extremes.

Those red-lining vital signs meant “profoundly distressing scenes of suffering” will unfold on the planet’s population, the report published today in Bioscience declared.

…Read more:

 https://www.9news.com.au/national/earth-vital-signs-now-worse-than-ever-been-before-climate-scientists-warn/fb978b1c-7b97-45ae-a1f9-6321a8ee3ef7

The report referenced by the press story above;

The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory 

William J Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Jillian W Gregg, Johan Rockström, Thomas M Newsome, Beverly E Law, Luiz Marques, Timothy M Lenton, Chi Xu, Saleemul Huq, Leon Simons, Sir David Anthony King

BioScience, biad080, https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad080

Published: 24 October 2023

Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory. For several decades, scientists have consistently warned of a future marked by extreme climatic conditions because of escalating global temperatures caused by ongoing human activities that release harmful greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, time is up. We are seeing the manifestation of those predictions as an alarming and unprecedented succession of climate records are broken, causing profoundly distressing scenes of suffering to unfold. We are entering an unfamiliar domain regarding our climate crisis, a situation no one has ever witnessed firsthand in the history of humanity.

…

Climate-related all-time records

In 2023, we witnessed an extraordinary series of climate-related records being broken around the world. The rapid pace of change has surprised scientists and caused concern about the dangers of extreme weather, risky climate feedback loops, and the approach of damaging tipping points sooner than expected (Armstrong McKay et al. 2022, Ripple et al. 2023). … possibly the warmest temperature on Earth over the past 100,000 years (figure 1e). It is a sign that we are pushing our planetary systems into dangerous instability.

…

Energy

It appears the green recovery following COVID-19 that many had hoped for has largely failed to materialize (Zhang et al. 2023). Instead, carbon emissions have continued soaring, and fossil fuels remain dominant, with annual coal consumption reaching a near all-time high of 161.5 exajoules in 2022 (figure 2h). 

…

Economics

Economic growth, as it is conventionally pursued, is unlikely to allow us to achieve our social, climate, and biodiversity goals. … We therefore need to change our economy to a system that supports meeting basic needs for all people instead of excessive consumption by the wealthy (O’Neill et al. 2018).

…

Food security and undernourishment

After declining for many years, the prevalence of undernourishment is now on the rise (figure 5e). In 2022, an estimated 735 million people faced chronic hunger—an increase of roughly 122 million since 2019 (FAO et al. 2023). 

…Read more: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biad080/7319571?login=false

The report claims extreme weather is worse, but we’ve all heard this nonsense before.

The only significant bad identified, food security and undernourishment, is more likely the consequences of the Ukraine war, and high energy prices driving up the cost of fertiliser. The ongoing high level political attacks on the use of fertiliser and agricultural chemicals, and insane agriculture policies such as buying out farmers and requiring they never farm again, as part of the settlement, are probably contributing to disruption in the agricultural sector. The push for “rewilding“, destroying farmland and giving it over to the weeds, is probably also contributing. Greens are responsible for creating a food crisis we don’t have to have.

As for the claims of climate instability, there is no paleo climate evidence that a warmer climate is less productive. Quite the opposite.

How could our monkey ancestors have colonised much of the world during the hothouse world of the PETM, if all that global warming damaged their food supply?

Last time the world was really hot, The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 5-8C hotter than today, the species which did really well was monkeys. Our monkey ancestors colonised much of Eurasia and North America, feasting on the abundance which the PETM warmth delivered. The monkeys passed through the warm temperate forests of Greenland on their journey. Our monkey ancestors only retreated when the warm age ended, because they were driven out of their new homes by the encroaching cold.

The biggest problem with the report though, is they simply ignored some options for addressing what they claim is a crisis.

Why do we “need to change our economy to a system that supports meeting basic needs for all people instead of excessive consumption”? Why can’t we just build a bunch of nuclear reactors, like France did in the 70s?

The report only contains one mention of nuclear energy that I could find, and that mention was not in the context of a potential climate solution – even though the French experience proves that nuclear power is a scalable and affordable path to reducing CO2 emissions.

The failure to even mention the nuclear solution to the alleged climate crisis in the context of a possible solution, let alone discuss the pros and cons of nuclear energy, along with the report’s emphasis on renewable energy and economic transformation, in my opinion betrays the true nature of this document – transparently politicised academic communist propaganda, masquerading as a climate warning.

Debunking Way-out Climate Alarmism Videos

The Heartland Institute

This week on Climate Change Roundtable, host Anthony Watts and panelists Linnea Lueken and H. Sterling Burnett debunk a video taking the corporate position on climate change. The video, titled “Climate Change” from the Sci Show features the host on screen alternating between ill-informed science takes and ad hominin attacks.

Join us on Climate Change Roundtable while we dismantle the video thoroughly. We’ll also have time for this week’s crazy climate news of the week.

Climate Change Roundtable is live every Friday at 12pm CT. Make sure to join the live show and leave your questions for our panelists. And if you want to be sure your question is answered, leave your question as a super chat and we’ll guarantee we will cover your question.

Offshore Wind Demands £95/MWh

Warning from UK’s biggest energy generator comes after latest bidding round received no offers to build new farms. He said: “We need to see a materially higher price. 

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Philip Bratby

So now we get an actual figure on it!!

From the Telegraph:

No new wind farms will be built off Britain’s shores unless the Government lets operators earn more money from the electricity they produce, the chief of the nation’s biggest generator has said.

Tom Glover, country chair of RWE’s UK arm, said the price offered by the Government to wind farm operators must rise by as much as 70pc to entice companies to build.

Developers must be offered between £65 and £75 per megawatt hour (MwH) for the power generated from wind farms, Mr Glover said.

That compares to the £44 offered in the most recent government-run auction.

His warning follows the disastrous result of the last offshore wind allocation round in September, which ended in a humiliation for ministers with not one company offering to build new offshore wind farms.

Mr Glover called the incident “clumsy” and said a failure to increase the price offered to developers risked a repeat.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/10/25/electricity-prices-rise-70pc-pay-wind-farms-energy/

A number of commentators have rightly criticised this article as being pro-renewables, putting the blame on government. All they did, of course, was to believe the wind industry’s own propaganda about rapidly falling costs.

In particular, the article fails to point out that the prices mentioned are at 2012 prices, which incidentally should be dropped entirely in future auctions, as they are of no relevance and are highly misleading.

£75/MWh, for instance, equates to £95/MWh at current prices. This is an important omission by the Telegraph, because one commenter pointed out that since the current market prices is £100/MWh, offshore wind must still be a bargain!!

The whining of the wind lobby about inflation is also not really valid.

At last year’s auction, offshore wind projects such as Dogger Bank won contracts at £39.65/MWh. This year the govt set the bar at £44/MWh, thus handing a 10% price increase straightaway. And in the year just gone, about another 10% has been added on via RPI indexation.

So RWE and co are already being offered 20% more than projects were signing up for last year.

It may be that some of their costs are rising faster than general inflation, but any competent business builds in contingencies for things like that.

Also with inflation seemingly remaining stubbornly high, the index linked price will be much higher still by the time these projects are commissioned in a few years time.

The undeniable reality is that offshore wind never was viable at the fanciful prices signed up for last year and before. The cheapest offshore wind being sold via CfD is from Triton Knoll, which is being paid £97.82/MWh.

There never was any intention trigger those contracts, instead wind farm owners always planned to sell at much higher prices on the open market.

In the latest auction, this loophole was closed by the govt, leaving the wind industry between a rock and a hard place, with their bluff having been well and truly called.

Hydrogen – Will this Green dream prove an expensive nightmare?

The green dreamers have a fantasy that we can make “green” hydrogen from the part-time, undependable wind and solar electricity. This is an expensive, energy-intensive process.

From CFACT

The White House has awarded $7 billion dollars of tax money for the first seven U.S. hydrogen hubs. They say it will leverage six times as much in private money. Yet, the rules only require a 50/50 match. So, $7 billion in private money is far more likely. Why risk more than you have to?

Green hydrogen is risky because it costs at least five to seven times more to make than the methane reforming method, which makes nearly all hydrogen today. That is $5 to $7 versus $1 for a kilogram.

Hydrogen infrastructure and demand doesn’t exist. It will need to be created, and because it is far more costly, it will require taxpayer money, too. Green hydrogen costs more, even with all the aggressive taxpayers giveaways.

All of these billions are added to our unprecedented $33 trillion dollar debt. Because we are spending money we don’t have, and more inflation is caused. This year, we have crossed a line where interest payments are more than our national defense budget. And there is a lot of need for a strong military right now.

Debt interest is projected to be more than a trillion dollars a year by the end of the decade. And Washington, led by Biden, wants to spend even more money we don’t have. Trillions, in fact. Leading to even more inflation.

The green dreamers have a fantasy that we can make “green” hydrogen from the part-time, undependable wind and solar electricity. They produce little or no electricity 70% of the time. When the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining, there isn’t any electricity to run the industrial processes needed to make lots of hydrogen.

Hydrogen must be made; it is not a fuel. It is a storage device, like a battery. If not handled properly, it can go boom! In a great big ball fire.

Photo Wikimedia

Remember the Hindenburg.

And it embrittles nearly every metal it comes in contact with. And it will go right through glass and plastic.   

It needs 13 times more water than hydrogen made. And 40 times more water to cool it. So, it is a pretty dumb idea to give a billion to California. Which is chronically short of water and doesn’t want to desalinate oceans at an additional cost. It is a good idea to locate hydrogen facilities near abundant water, not in chronically short of water Utah.

Then, the water must be heated to 2,000 degrees and electrocuted. Then, the hydrogen must be super chilled to near absolute zero. Then it’s compressed to 10,000 psi, three times the pressure of an average scuba tank. Then you have usable, super-cold, compressed liquid hydrogen. 

This is an expensive, energy-intensive process. It isn’t a process that can be turned off when the wind stops and the sun sets and be easily turned back on. Making hydrogen the green way can take as much as 40 to 60% of the energy the hydrogen will provide. So, it is costly and inefficient. Just to store electricity.

Green hydrogen sounds good. Proponents cover up the facts and mislead people to get the government and investor gravy train flowing to keep them in business. 

Back in 2004, Bush spent $1.7 billion on hydrogen. That is about $2.8 billion in today’s dollars. We don’t have much to show for this.

The hydrogen lobby duped Congress into $9.5 billion for hydrogen hubs and $100s of billions more for subsidies to make it. These hydrogen jobs will last only as long as the subsidies do. Then, like the Obama U.S. solar revolution, they will go bankrupt.  

New Reconstructions From Brazil, China, Europe Indicate No Net Warming In Recent Centuries

Understanding past climates relies on gathering climatic data from natural archives, including glacial deposits, river terraces, ice cores, varve sediments (annual layers of sedimentary rocks), corals, and tree growth rings.

From NoTricksZone

By Kenneth Richard on 26. October 2023

Paleoclimate studies continue to undermine claims of “unprecedented” global warming in the modern era.

A new temperature reconstruction (Oliveira Silva Muraja et al., 2023) for Brazil reveals there has been no net modern warming since the 1400s.

Image Source: Oliveira Silva Muraja et al., 2023

Another new temperature reconstruction (Yue et al., 2023) indicates there has been no net modern warming in Central China since the 1400s.

Image Source: Yue et al., 2023

The Romanian National Meteorological Administration indicates the Danube region cooled from 1961-2013 (Viorica et al., 2023). The driest intervals of the last 250 years include 1949-1960, 1986-1993, and 2015-present. Dry periods coincide with relatively cold North Atlantic sea surface temperatures.

Image Source: Viorica et al., 2023
1-s2.0-S0022169423000926-mainHerunterladen

Country On Green Transition’s Leading Edge Will Fire Up Coal Plants To Meet Demand This Winter

A country on the forefront of the green transition will put several mothballed coal-fired power plants back online ahead of the upcoming winter, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday, says The Daily Caller.

(Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

By NICK POPE

Germany, which has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to enact the green energy transition, will reactivate several coal-fired units in order to meet peak demand and keep the lights on this winter, Bloomberg reported. The country has experienced elevated and inconsistent energy prices since Russia invaded Ukraine, impacting both German customers and companies.

The German government opted to go ahead with its plans to phase out its last nuclear reactors in April, and the war in Ukraine has resulted in diminished flow of relatively inexpensive natural gas from Russia, according to Bloomberg. German officials have cited safety concerns and a desire to focus on developing green energy as their rationale for shuttering the remaining reactors. (RELATED: ‘Political Suicide’: Germany Will Shutter Nuclear Plants Despite Looming Winter Shortages)

The country needed to rely on coal last winter once the flow of Russian gas had slowed, and supply is likely to be even tighter this winter now that the nuclear reactors are out of the picture, Bloomberg reported. The energy crisis and inconsistencies in the power market have contributed to the decisions of many companies to scale down their operations in Germany and look for more stable, affordable business environments in North America and Asia, according to Politico.

In June, German Economy and Energy Minister Robert Habeck warned that a future energy shortage could produce conditions in which “there is no secure scenario for how things will turn out” for the German economy. Habeck issued his warning ahead of the December 2024 expiration of a natural gas deal between Russia and Ukraine, which allows for Russian gas to flow into Western Europe.

Germany aims to achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2045, and the country relied on wind and solar power to provide about 32% of its energy in 2022, according to Statista.

The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Windpower Noise vs. Farmers and Livestock: The View from Australia (Queensland)

“Exposure to [low frequency noise] from wind turbines results in headaches, difficulty concentrating, irritability, fatigue, dizziness, tinnitus, aural pain sleep disturbances, and annoyance. Clinically, exposure … may cause increased risk of epilepsy, cardiovascular effects, and coronary artery disease.”

Darrell Hoemann/Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting Wind turbines north of Fifthian, Illinois on Wednesday, July 24, 2013.

From Master Resource.

By Robert Bradley Jr.

“AgForce is aware of excessive noise complaints at both Mt Emerald and Coopers Gap Wind Farm with a court case on noise nuisance still in progress against the Mt Emerald Wind Farm5…. Noise pollution can cause … fatigue, headaches, elevated blood pressure, irritability, digestive disorders and increased susceptibility to cold and other minor infections.”

“AgForce also has concerns about the impact of wind farms on livestock…. The British Horse Society Advisory Statement recommends a setback of at least 4 times the overall height away from the path of horses to minimise safety risk.”

MasterResource has long reported on the health and nuisance problems of industrial wind turbines on residents and wildlife. There is a reason why such turbines are built remotely and need so much transmission, adding more cost to the high costs of dilute, intermittent, uneconomic energy.

I was reminded of this by recent publicity regarding a major farm group challenging lax requirements on wind industrialization in Queensland (Australia’s second biggest state). The debate has significant implications for the long-term expansion of wind-generated electricity in places where there are people and animals (both wild and domesticated).

Note the the farmers and livestock were there first, giving them a homestead right against nuisance and harms. Also note that the wind projects receive special government favor, typically at the expense of taxpayers, which puts the onus on the projects that otherwise would not occur.

AgForce Queensland Farmers Limited describes itself as follows:

A peak organisation representing Queensland’s cane, cattle, grain and sheep, wool & goat producers…. AgForce’s purpose is to advance sustainable agribusiness and strives to ensure the long-term growth, viability, competitiveness and profitability of these industries. Over 6,000 farmers, individuals and businesses provide support to AgForce through membership. Our members own and manage around 55 million hectares, or a third of the state’s land area. Queensland producers provide high-quality food and fibre to Australian and overseas consumers, contribute significantly to the social fabric of regional, rural and remote communities, as well as deliver stewardship of the state’s natural environment.

Excerpts follow of a submission to Deputy Premier Steven Miles (September 4, 2023) regarding Review of the Wind Farm Code (State Code 23) & Accompanying Guidelines.

Acoustic Amenity

AgForce sees that the acoustic criteria contained in State Code 23 (‘Code 23’) is contrary to best practice approaches. The World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines for community noise recommends that during the night, bedrooms should have less than 30 dB(A) indoors to allow for good quality sleep.

Noise pollution can cause significant short and long-term health consequences including fatigue, headaches, elevated blood pressure, irritability, digestive disorders and increased susceptibility to cold and other minor infections. However, under Code 23 the permitted maximum noise level from wind turbines on a host property at nighttime is the greater of 45dB(A) outdoors, or the background noise (LA90) plus 5dB(A). On non-host lots the permitted maximum outdoor noise level is the greater of 35dB(A) or the background noise plus 5dB(A).

Ordinarily noise is regulated by the Department of Environment & Heritage Protection (DEHP), however, wind farms are not subject to the same noise regulations that are prescribed by the Environmental Protection Act 1994 (EP Act)/Environmental Protection (Noise) Policy 2019. This is because wind farms are not considered an Environmentally Relevant Activity (ERA) as they do not burn fuel, which AgForce sees to be at odds with the objective of Queensland’s environmental protection framework.

Ultimately, this means that the DEHP has no statutory powers in assessing the noise pollution emitted by wind farms and the regulation of wind farms is done solely through Code 23. AgForce has serious concerns about the integrity of the guidelines adopted by Code 23. In a series of emails exchanged within the DEHP it has evidently ignored concerns from its own staff. In summary:

• On 24 August 2015, Paul Roff emailed David Cook regarding an enquiry received from the Deputy Premier of the Department of State Development, Infrastructure, Government & Planning (DSDILGP), explaining that the reply letter to the Deputy Premier needs to restate the DEHP’s opposition to wind farms being classified as an Environmentally Relevant Activity (ERA).

• On 26 August 2015, Dr Antoine David (Technical Specialist (Noise)) from the DEHP, provided to Paul Roff (Manager Environmental Planning at the Department of Environment & Heritage Protection), a bullet point list of technical points on the Draft Wind Farm State Code after his review, which was prompted by a letter from the Deputy Premier. Dr David’s concerns are attached as Appendix 2. Dr David’s conclusion is that the Code 23 acoustic criteria will not protect residents or animals.

• On 7 September 2015, Tony Roberts, Deputy Director-General Environmental Policy & Planning replied to Greg Chemello, (Deputy Director-General, Planning and Property Group, Department of State Development, Infrastructure & Planning) that the draft code is based on independent technical advice and has no concerns.

AgForce sees that the DEHP should have informed DSDILGP of Dr David’s concerns however, this did not occur and instead, Tony Roberts advised Greg Chemello that there are no concerns with the acoustic guidelines as they were based on independent technical advice.

AgForce takes issues with this as the acoustic consultant engaged by DSDILGP, John Savery, had no known previous experience with wind farm noise other than at the same time being engaged to provide acoustic advice for the proposed Rabbit Ridge Wind Farm at Dalveen. The Rabbit Ridge wind farm was refused by Southern Downs Regional Council in the first instance because it could not meet the requirements set by the former Noise Policy (2008) however, was later approved under the acoustic guidelines in Code 23, which were advised by John Savery.

Evidently, Mr Savery had a conflict between his duty to the State of Queensland in setting the acoustic criteria in Code 23 to protect residents and animals and his duty to his client, the Rabbit Ridge Wind Farm, at the time of advising on the acoustic criteria in Code 23 and favoured his duty to his client and set acoustic criteria so that Rabbit Ridge would be approved. It is clear that the interpretation of acoustic data would have been manipulated in such a way to allow wind farms to generate greater noise levels at the cost of human and animal health and well-being.

AgForce is aware that Bryan Lyons, on behalf of Wind Energy Queensland, advised DSDILGP of this serious lack of impartiality in writing on 13 May 2014. DSDILGP chose to accept the conflicted advice from John Savery over the independent advice of its own noise expert.

It is bewildering that no response has been provided or no real review of the merits of the acoustic advice informing Code 23 has been performed, even with the conflict of duty and interest of John Savery being raised to Greg Chemello by Wind Energy Queensland.

Dr Antoine David, in his list of concerns, has also noted that the 1.5km buffer zone from the wind turbine is insufficient as this figure was based on much smaller turbines. With larger turbines being used today it would be apt that the guidelines reflect these changes through the recommended buffer distance. Dr David has also highlighted that the concept of wind masking has been erroneously applied in Code 23 to justify increasing noise limits at the residences (background noise plus 5 dBA) with increased wind speeds at the wind turbine (at least 1.5km away).

There is no guarantee that the same wind speed will be occurring at the receptor to create background noise at the receptor sufficient to mask the noise from the wind turbine. This again undermines the reasoning behind making wind turbines exempt from acoustic quality objectives set in the Environmental Protection (Noise) Policy 2008 (now repealed) and 2019.

Additionally, Code 23 does not consider the cumulative impacts of existing wind turbines to new or expanded wind farm development. Appendix 2 of Code 23 states that the noise criteria is based on the background noise level without the contribution of existing wind farms. This is extremely unacceptable and AgForce sees that the cumulative noise impact should be considered with any application made to the State Assessment Referral Agency (SARA).

AgForce also has issue with the reference to approved sensitive land use receptors with the requirement to include noise modelling and predictions of free-field acoustic levels. Appendix 2 of the Code explicitly states that temporary or mobile habitable building structures on land are not included as sensitive land use receptors. This is a particular issue to AgForce members as often mustering or harvesting contractors will bring their own accommodation with them, either as a caravan or gooseneck, and AgForce is concerned that noise levels at these sites should be included otherwise landholders may lose the ability to easily engage contractors.

Furthermore, even where projects are approved, there is little onus placed upon the proponent to perform acoustic monitoring after the initial requirement placed upon approved developments by SARA to undertake operational noise monitoring within the first 12 months of the wind farm being fully operational.

This is unacceptable as the project could be emitting much greater amounts of noise than what has been approved. It is a flaw of the system that under the Planning Act 2016 (Qld), SARA is charged with enforcement of the acoustic conditions of approval but SARA is set up to carry out assessment of developments, it is not set up to carry out enforcement and it does not have the noise expertise to measure compliance.

Proponents should be cautious following the precedent set by Uren v Bald Hills Wind Farm Pty Ltd4 as compliance with Code 23 may not be sufficient to defend a claim in common law nuisance by neighbouring landholders. If anything, the Victorian matter should serve as an incentive for proponents to undertake proper noise monitoring throughout the course of the project’s life. AgForce is aware of excessive noise complaints at both Mt Emerald and Coopers Gap Wind Farm with a court case on noise nuisance still in progress against the Mt Emerald Wind Farm5 .

Complaints are being made to the wind farm company and are being investigated by the wind farm company. In all cases the wind farms have said the noise is compliant with their permit conditions. These complaints support Dr David’s comments that the Wind Farm Code and permit conditions based on the Code would not adequately protect the community from excessive wind turbine noise.

Noise on Livestock

AgForce also has concerns about the impact of wind farms on livestock and the lack of consideration given to this in Code 23. There is little to no evidence rebutting the possibility of impacts to livestock production and the safety of producers using horses to shift stock. Animal behaviour expert from the University of Queensland, Andrew Tribe, stated in a report that both cattle and horses would take time to get used to the noise and movement of a wind turbine and that he would expect greater risk to horse and rider safety near the turbines.

The British Horse Society Advisory Statement recommends a setback of at least 4 times the overall height away from the path of horses to minimise safety risk. This means that producers will be at greater risk when mustering on horseback near wind turbines, which is not contemplated anywhere within the code.

1.1 Recommendations in Response to Acoustic Amenity

• That a maximum of 30 dB(A) indoors (with windows open) be the permissible nighttime noise limit averaged over 10-minute intervals as to obtain an accurate average measurement.

• Ongoing requirement of noise compliance monitoring, recording and reporting. • The low frequency noise and infrasound should be assessed as part of the wind farm assessment.

• An adequate buffer distance that reflects the size of current wind turbines should be included in the guidelines based upon advice from a more appropriate and impartial acoustician. Dr David presented a paper to the 20th International Congress on Sound and Vibration held 7 – 11 July 2013, titled ‘An Underpinning Methodology To Derive Stand-Off Distances From A Wind Farm’, on this issue.

• A review by an independent acoustician should be obtained to inform the guidelines.

• Further research as to the effects on livestock be conducted as to allow for adequate and appropriate compensation on impacted businesses.

• Cumulative noise should be considered when further turbines are built on an existing wind farm.

• The concept of wind masking should not be used in the Code.

• AgForce has received information from Les Huson, acoustician, who recommends that the acoustic assessment should be performed on acoustically hard ground, as is the preferred method in South Australia and New South Wales.

• Ultimately, wind farms should achieve the objectives set out in the Environment Protection (Noise) Policy 2019.

The Energy Future we need to have a Future worth having.

The cost of making renewable power sources, wind and solar, will go up in tandem with the coal price because they are made with energy from coal. 

From Watts Up With That?

David Archibald

The peak month of world oil production was back in October 2018 and production has declined slightly from then. The first signs that the oil production decline is accelerating are now apparent with the oil price rising a third from its low midyear. With peak oil now in the rear vision mirror, the decades of declining production are now upon us.

This won’t mean that solar power and wind power become more competitive. Solar and wind facilities are manufactured and installed using energy from coal and oil. In a tight energy market in which different sources of energy are semi-substitutable for each other, the coal price and the natural gas price will rise to the oil price in energy-equivalent terms.

The significance of that for solar power is that most solar panels are currently made in China using power from coal-fired power stations at about $0.05/kWh. Under ideal conditions in the Australian desert, solar panels produce power equivalent to the cost of power from diesel at $0.20/kWh. If you used power from solar panels to produce more solar panels, the cost of the power they produced would be about $1.00/kWh.  Furthermore, solar panels aren’t recycled – they are once-through to landfill. They are not a renewable energy source in any sense. Solar panels are artefacts of a millenarian/apocalyptic/pagan cult in which the adherents signal their virtue by the display of their panels.

The economics of wind farms are slightly better than solar panels but still well short of what is required to sustain civilisation. Wind turbines are built to a price to satisfy availability requirements over a contract. The fact that some of the turbine towers end up bent means that they are designed with only a little margin above the failure mode. The current fad of installing them out at sea, because voters don’t want them anywhere near them, simply means higher capital and operating costs and much more expensive electricity, plus some dead whales.

It is also not a choice between wind and solar on one side and coal on the other. As the oil price rises through US$110/barrel, coal liquefaction plants become viable to supply the liquid transport fuels we need. At the moment coal consumpion and oil consumption are close to the same level in energy content terms. To fully replace oil production as it declines with coal liquefaction will require a doubling of the coal consumption rate. It follows that the life of our remaining coal reserves will halve.

So deciding between the so-called renewables and coal for power generation is a false choice. Because coal isn’t a long-term option. There are babies being born now who will see the end of coal. There is not much point agonising about coal-fired power stations. The better use for coal is producing liquid fuels for transport applications. There is only one source of energy that can replace coal for power generation and that is nuclear. The sooner we replace coal with nuclear for power generation, the longer our coal reserves will last and the higher the standard of living our children will have.

Figure 1: Figure 30 from King Hubbert’s 1956 paper Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels showing our civilisational switch from fossil fuels to nuclear. In effect, fossil fuels got civilisation started and U235 is the match that allowed humanity to light the nuclear fire that will maintain civilisation at a high level until the end of time.

The cost of making renewable power sources, wind and solar, will go up in tandem with the coal price because they are made with energy from coal. The solar panels and wind turbines we are installing at the moment will be carted off to landfill at the end of their lives and replaced by nuclear power. This is because the cost of nuclear power should remain at about the price it is currently while the prices of all other forms of energy go up with the oil price. And there will be no point in using power from nuclear reactors to provide the energy to make solar panels and wind turbines as the price of the power produced will be at least five times that produced by the nuclear reactors in the first place.

That said, there are three major problems with nuclear power as we currently practice it. Firstly, at a steady power output, seven percent of the energy from a nuclear reactor comes from delayed fission reactions. That will decline within a day to about one percent but it can take months to decline to a level at which the reactor doesn’t need external power for cooling.

To put that into context, the dominant nuclear technology used around the world at the moment is the U235-burning light water reactor. What might cause the reactor to fail would be an accident which stopped the coolant water from circulating. Then it would be a race to restart the coolant circulation before the system was overwhelmed by the heat from the delayed fission reactions. If that race is lost, the cooling water boils off and the reactor core heats and starts melting. The mass of molten steel and fuel rods becomes a substance called corium which can melt through the floor of the reactor chamber. The French nuclear plant builder Areva has, in its current designs, a subfloor below the reactor chamber to catch the corium.

The fuel rods consist of fuel pellets in a zirconium tube. At 1,250°C the zirconium reacts with water to produce hydrogen. The hydrogen accumulates in the top of the reactor chamber until it eventually explodes. All three of the operating reactors at Fukushima in 2011 had a hydrogen explosion.

To mitigate the risk that ultimately comes from the portion of energy produced by delayed fission, reactor designers responded by adding more concrete and steel to contain the potential release of radioactive material from a reactor excursion. This increased the capital cost per MW produced. This in turn prompted a trend to make the reactors much larger, up to the 1,600 MWe level, in order to gain economies of scale. And because the volume of a container goes up faster than its surface area, this meant that the bigger reactors are more difficult to cool and thus are inherently more dangerous than the designs they replaced.

So to make reactors safer again there is now a trend to what are called small modular reactors with power outputs in the range of 100 to 300 MWe. They will be safer because it will be easier for the reactor core to shed heat but if too small the capital cost per MW rises.  There is also the problem of staffing. A fleet of small modular reactors might require three times as many staff as one made up of normally sized reactors.

Delayed fission is the biggest problem with nuclear power and it is a problem that almost nobody is aware of.

The second problem with nuclear power is the production of high level waste. A 1,000 MWe reactor will produce three tonnes of high level waste, basically the used fuel rods, per annum. A reactor’s fuel rods are changed out every three years or so. By the time the rods are pulled about half the energy produced is from plutonium created from irradiated U238. The rods are pulled because of radiation damage to the zirconium cladding which could cause the rods to warp and not be able to be extracted. Current practice is to not process the spent fuel rods but to leave them in long term storage where they will be a radiological hazard for millions of years, literally. The cost of reproccessing spent fuel rods equates to a uranium price of about US$250/lb while the current spot price is US$44/lb. Our civilisation is kicking the can down the road on reprocessing, requiring a future generation to bear part of the cost of generating power now. This is an unsatisfactory state of affairs.

The third problem with light water reactors is that they are extremely wasteful with the planet’s uranium endowment. Uranium as it comes out of the ground is 99.3% U238 and 0.7% U235. To be used in light water reactors, the U235 is enriched five-fold to 3.5% and 80% of the U238 is thrown out. Well some of that U238 is used to make depleted uranium antitank projectiles which in battle ends up as uranium oxide spread to the winds. Depleted uranium antitank rounds contain four kilograms of U238 which would have produced the energy equivalent of 19,000 barrels of oil if processed through a plutonium breeder reactor. And to put that number into context, a car being driven 20,000 km per annum at a fuel consumption rate of 10 km to the litre will burn 34 barrels each year. So the energy inherent in a depleted uranium antitank round is equivalent to powering a car for 558 years.

Problems two and three can be solved, and need to be solved, by fully developing the plutonium breeder technology. Plutonium breeder reactors operate by irradiating U238 with high energy (fast) neutrons to produce Pu239. There have been plutonium breeder reactors that operated happily for decades, all in Russia. France also successfully operated a plutonium breeder reactor, at least until it was shut down as part of a political deal with the French green party.  The best existing Western design for a plutonium breeder reactor is considered to be the GE-Hitachi PRISM reactor. This is set up to reprocess the fuel onsite using a pyrometallurgical process in a closed fuel cycle.

Figure 2: GE-Hitachi PRISM reactor cross-section

The first problem is also solved because plutonium breeder reactors operate at atmospheric pressure with no water used in the reactor core ready to react with the fuel rods. They are inherently much safer than U235-burning light water reactors which only use one percent of our uranium endowment. Plutonium breeder reactors will utilise all 100 percent of our uranium endowment and thus will give us 100 times the energy of the technology we are currently using.

Plutonium breeder reactors can produce 30 percent more fuel than they consume. They operate in the fast neutron spectrum and thus need to use sodium as the coolant. Reactors breeding thorium to U233 have an eight percent breeding margin and operate in the thermal (low energy) neutron spectrum. Eight percent is not much margin to play with, the necessary technology is still at the conceptual stage and our civilisation is running out of time. On the other hand there is four times as much thorium as uranium in the Earth’s surface. So if the excess neutrons from plutonium breeding could be applied to getting thorium breeding over the line, this would, in effect, increase the life of our uranium endowment four-fold.

If our civilisation is going to have a future worth having, it will be powered by plutonium breeder reactors. The only alternative to nuclear power is to revert to wood and horses which will result in an 18th century standard of living. It will easier to get that nuclear future while we still have some oil and coal to burn. It will be hard to build nuclear reactors if you are using energy from horses, so the sooner we start down the right path, the safer we will be, and the happier we will be.

It seems that Bill Gates’ nuclear effort has come to the same conclusion. Terrapower was started in 2008 to promote the Travelling Wave Reactor, essentially a sausage-shaped lump of fuel that was lit at one end and burnt to the other. This was an idiotic concept and Terrapower eventually switched to a molten salt design. They are now partnered GE-Hitachi and using a sodium-cooled reactor with heat transfer to a molten salt circuit. Power output will be 345 MWe.

Theoretically it would be possible for Mr Gates to make weapons-grade plutonium in his reactor. Weapons grade plutonium has less than 7% Pu240 with the rest being Pu239. To achieve that would require rapid exchange and reprocessing of the fuel rods. Too high a Pu240 content will make a nuclear weapon detonate prematurely in the implosion and produce a fizzle.

We need to make up for a lot of lost time. The first sodium-cooled breeder reactor in the US, Experimental Breeder Reactor-1 at the Idaho National Laboratory, went critical in 1951. It was followed by EBR-2 in 1964 which sold power into the grid.

Right now, coal and oil and natural gas make all the things we need, either by providing the energy to make them or the materials they are made from. When the fossil fuels run out, how will power from nuclear reactors be transformed into the physical things we use? The five pillars of civilisation are diesel, cement, steel, plastics and ammonia.

The production of diesel (and petrol and aviation fuels) will use the Bergius process to hydrogenate biomass. The process will start with power from nuclear reactors applied to the electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen. Power at $0.05 per kWh produces hydrogen at $7.00 per kg. In energy content terms, this translates to a diesel price of $2.59 per litre which is less than most people around the world are paying at the pump.

The following diagram is from Friedrich Bergius’ speech at his Nobel Prize for Chemistry acceptance in 1931:

Figure 3: Mass balance for the Bergius Processs

What this figure shows is that the addition of only another 5% by weight of hydrogen converts a near-useless solid fuel into a liquid with a high energy density and ideal handling properties. Only a little smaller than the diesel molecule is heptane, C7H16, which is the ideal base for a thermobaric bomb.

Coal comes in from the top left and is combined with hydrogen and recycled oil to make it a liquid. The hydrogen is produced by steam reforming of the light ends of the process. If the power from nuclear reactors was cheap enough then that, via electrolysis, could be the source of the hydrogen with a saving in capital costs and operating complexity.

The conversion takes place at 400°C and 200 bars of pressure. The hydrogen content of diesel is 14% by weight. The hydrogen content of coal can range up to 8%. From that level it only takes another 6% hydrogen to make diesel. The last experiment in converting coal to diesel in Australia was conducted by the Japanese Government in the Latrobe Valley in 1991. As as result of that research it was calculated that the oil price necessary for commercialisation was then US$40 per barrel; equivalent to US$110 today. Australians are currently paying A$349 per barrel for diesel at the pump, equating to US$230 per barrel. So we are already paying a high-enough price to start the coal liquefaction industry.

With the appropriate tax structure, making our own diesel from our own coal is commercial now. When the coal runs out the feedstock will switch to wood.

While there is currently a lot of enthusiasm for the concept of using hydrogen directly as a transport fuel, the physics and chemistry of hydrogen preclude its adoption to that end as it combines a low energy density, transmission losses and leakage with a wide explosive range. To understand the limitations of hydrogen there is nothing better than the experience of playing with it as a child:

After my experience playing with hydrogen as a kid, I have zero doubt that parking 40-50Kg of compressed hydrogen next to anything you care about, or inside anything you care about, would be the definition of insanity.

That said, hydrogen will be a big part of our energy future. Just a little bit of hydrogen added to a near useless, low-value carbon source turns it into a precious liquid fuel with a high energy density and optimum handling characteristics. The future will be short of carbon because its availability will depend upon how fast biomass can be grown.

Diesel is a hydrogen fuel with over one third of its contained energy coming from the 23 hydrogen atoms in each diesel molecule:

Figure 4: Diesel by composition and energy contribution

The relative market share of diesel and electric vehicles in the passenger car market will depend upon the cost of growing biomass for the former and cost of power from nuclear reactors for the electric option. Some sectors of the economy including agriculture, aviation and marine can’t be electrified and will be the first call on the output of the Bergius plants via the price mechanism.

It is likely that at some point recycling of all metals will be required instead of sending them to landfill. Then electric vehicle operators will be paying for their batteries twice – in the making of them and secondly for dissolving them in acid to recover the metals at the end of their 10 year life. Electric vehicles are expensive now but the owners are yet to pay for the full cost of ownership. Recycling of all metals will certainly be the end of solar panels.

Under optimum growing conditions in Brazil, eucalypt plantations produce 40 cubic metres/hectare per annum, which becomes 20 tonnes of dried wood. This in turn converts to 10 tonnes of lignin, which would yield 10,000 litres of liquid fuel. Assuming in Australian conditions that the yield per hectare is 25 cubic metres per hectare, one hectare would produce 39 barrels of diesel per annum. To supply Australia’s requirement of one million barrels per day would require close to 10 million hectares of plantation forests — about 8% of Australia’s forested area – so it is quite achievable.

The second pillar of civilisation, cement, is made using 200 kg of coal to produce one tonne of cement. In the post-coal world, energy for cement-making will come from charcoal produced from plantation eucalypts. The yield from wood to charcoal is 35% so Australian annual consumption of nine million tonnes of cement will be made using charcoal from 5.4 million tonnes of wood produced from 200,000 hectares of plantation eucalypts.

To make steel after metallurgical coal runs out will likely use electric arc furnaces to provide the power for the reduction of iron ore in a liquid iron bath. As long as there is free carbon in liquid iron, it will reduce carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide which in turn reduces the iron oxides. The heat necessary to drive these reactions will come from the electric arc. In essence this is similar to how aluminium is smelted now.

Plastics, the fourth pillar, are mostly a combination of carbon and hydrogen. Industrial chemists can make every type of plastic using carbon monoxide and hydrogen as the initial starting materials. It will just be more expensive than if you started with a larger molecule first such as naptha from oil refining.

Ammonia is the fifth pillar of civilisation. Half of the world’s population is alive due to protein that had its origin in the energy contained in coal and natural gas. That energy is used to combine nitrogen from the atmosphere with hydrogen from steam reforming of natural gas to produce ammonia. Which in turn is used to make urea and ammonium nitrate fertilisers. The whole process is easily converted to be powered by nuclear reactors. It is the cost of nuclear power in the post-fossil fuel era which will determine the cost of food.

Lastly, what is happening in China is instructive. China is the second biggest oil consumer on the planet at 14 million barrels per day, of which 4 million barrels is produced domestically. President Xi wants to have a war and a consequence of that is that 90% of oil imports will be cut off. In preparation for that China has built a strategic stockpile of 1,200 million barrels. China has also encouraged adoption of electric vehicles which are now 29% of cars sold in China. Which may explain why Chinese coal consumption in the last couple of years has jumped from 4.0 billion tonnes per annum to 4.5 billion tonnes, despite a lacklustre economy. Switching to electric vehicles would mean that China will be more likely to survive a maritime blockade. Bear in mind that when Japan faced a similar situation in WW2 they sent boys out into the forests to dig up pine roots to provide the fuel for their fighter aircraft.

The Chinese switch to electric vehicles will deplete their coal reserves faster which in turn will mean that the prices for solar panels and wind turbines for the rest of the world will rise faster as a consequence. Chinese polysilicon production, used for making solar panels, has moved 3,000 km in from the coast to the province of Xinjiang where Disney makes movies and China now has its cheapest coal.

David Archibald is the author of The Anticancer Garden in Australia