James Hansen and Pushker Kharecha - The Acid Test: Global Temperature in 2025

[NNadir]

5. Spoken like a true "I'm not an antinuke" antinuke. QED. One might ask how long it will take the useless solar....

Last edited Thu Feb 27, 2025, 11:58 AM - Edit history (2)

…and wind industry to grow as fast as dangerous coal's grown since 2010, or how long it will take the useless solar and wind industry to grow as fast as the dangerous gas industry, or how long it will take the useless solar and wind industry to grow as fast as the dangerous petroleum industry, or how long it will take the useless solar and wind industry to grow as fast as the dangerous natural gas industry, but this of course, would not appeal to any of the "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes. Clearly, they don't give a rat's ass about extreme global heating, nor have they ever in general been interested in attacking fossil fuels.

From my previous post:

"I'm not an antinuke" antinukes drag out every "..objection to nuclear power, "too expensive," "too slow," too dangerous," "Fukushima," "Chernobyl" "radiation leak at Hanford" blah, blah, blah, blah, blah ad nauseum."

Again. QED, current case bolded.

I note that the example given in this thread, is bad thinking that can only be considered as notorious and classic, cherry picking by choosing an arbitrarily small period of time, while ignoring, say, the period in which nuclear power - not a reactionary scam like the useless solar and wind industry - was growing before being arrested by appeals to fear and ignorance.

Now I'm not particularly simple minded person, but if I were, I might characterize a question as :"simple" requiring deep analysis of the type that populates some very serious issues. One such issue would be the address of the fear and ignorance of "honest to god" antinukes as well as "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes and their successful appeal to poor thinking and emotionalism so aptly described in a reference to a scientific paper in a recent post of mine: Radiophobia: Useful concept, or ostracising term?

To be honest, the gentle rhetoric in the cited paper doesn't appeal to me. I regard both classes of antinukes, honest and dishonest, as pernicious fools, since they appeal to the useless solar and wind industry for the only purpose this 8 trillion dollar miserable failure has ever been about, attacking nuclear power while ignoring the fact that planet is in flames as a result of these attacks.

As an advocate for the only sustainable form of infinitely expandable form of energy that can function without fossil fuel access, nuclear energy, I might ask the following question:

How long would it take the useless oodles of trillions of dollar soaking up but useless solar and wind scam to produce as much energy on average, that the nuclear industry has been producing since the early 1990's at a fraction of the cost?

Of course, the question could never be characterized as "simple" unless I wanted to be simple minded. It would involve understanding how much virgin land would need to be bulldozed, how many mines would need to be dug, and whence the trillions of dollars that history would suggest this useless exercise would take might come. It would of course, be a waste of time to even bother, since antinukes lack the intellectual capacity to understand the complexity of these sorts of issues. I doubt the solar and wind industries could ever get to 30 Exajoules per year, since they are approaching Bateman equilibrium, the rate at which they are needing replacement as fast as they can be built.

The numbers, once again, even though it's clear that antinukes have problems with numbers and show no evidence of an ability to understand them:



IEA World Energy Outlook 2024
Table A.1a: World energy supply Page 296.

I've entered the data into an Excel spreadsheet for calculation purposes.

From 2010 to 2023, dangerous natural gas use rose by 30 Exajoules, to a total of 153 Exajoules, not that "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes give a fuck about dangerous natural gas. Clearly they don't.

In the same period, the combined solar and wind industry, at a cost of 8 trillion dollars for wires to connect all the wrecked landscapes, the Don Quixote search for the thermodynamic nightmare of energy storage, wind turbines, and solar cells, grew by 14 Exajoules to a total of 16 exajoules.

Should we take this as evidence that gas is superior to solar and wind, since stupid rhetoric about growth rates is the fools point being raised?

From 2010 to 2023, dangerous petroleum use rose by 19 Exajoules, to a total of 192 Exajoules, not that "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes give a fuck about dangerous petroleum. Clearly they don't.

In the same period, the combined solar and wind industry, at a cost of 8 trillion dollars for wires to connect all the wrecked landscapes, the Don Quixote search for the thermodynamic nightmare of energy storage, wind turbines, and solar cells, grew by 14 Exajoules to a total of 16 exajoules.

Should we take this as evidence that gas is superior to solar and wind, since stupid rhetoric about growth rates is the fools point being raised?

From 2010 to 2023, dangerous coal use rose by 22 Exajoules, to a total of 175 Exajoules, not that "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes give a fuck about dangerous petroleum. Clearly they don't.

Here's a "question" that may or may not be simple. Is the rate of growth of a form of energy, with all the complexities it involves, the social, economic, environmental and intellectual milieu in which they exist the only meaningful measure of its worth? If this were true - and I personally believe that it isn't - then natural gas is the best form of energy, as demonstrated in the period between 2010 and 2023, followed by coal and then by petroleum.

One would need to be simple minded to answer the question in the affirmative.

The issue is obviously not being raised in a void. It's being raised in an environment suffering through half a century of attacks on nuclear energy - successful attacks - that were based on fear mongering driven by idiot emotions with no appeal to numbers.

Two years from now, no one will give a shit that Canada burned last summer, leaving a pale of smoke over the Northeastern United States, or that huge stretches Los Angeles County burned a month ago, but people will still be chanting about Fukushima, while ignoring those killed by seawater even though there is zero evidence over the last 12 years that Fukushima killed as many people as will die in the next hour from the fossil fuel waste "air pollution" about which both classes of antinukes, honest and dishonest, couldn't care less. That death toll, the death toll associated with air pollution, will be about 800 to 900 people.

In this century, China built 52 nuclear reactors in 25 years, not quite matching what the United States did in a 25 year period beginning about 50 years ago, over a period of 25 years, this while providing the cheapest electricity prices in the world. Regrettably, that huge technical, economic and environmental success was stopped again, not because nuclear energy hadn't provided the safest energy system ever developed, but rather because of the kind of dangerous thinking analyzed in this paper, cited in the post I linked above:

John C.H. Lindberg, Denali Archer, Radiophobia: Useful concept, or ostracising term?, Progress in Nuclear Energy, Volume 149, 2022, 104280.

This article will explore these factors, mostly sociopsychological in nature, and conclude that the powerful affective imagery associated with radiation, compounded by various heuristics and biases, renders public discomfort with ionising radiation from nuclear power plants rational – despite the actuarial safety record of nuclear energy globally."

The word actuarial refers to something called numbers." My experience with honest antinukes and less than honest "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes indicates that any hope of getting these sorts of awful, destructive people to grasp numbers is as useless as the reactionary effort to return the world's energy supplies to depend on the weather, as they did centuries ago. The latter hasn't worked, isn't working and won't work.

Achieving a high rate of growth of nuclear energy is technically feasible. Hell, my son's Ph.D. thesis in nuclear engineering will be involved with the processes of 3D printing (additive manufacture) of nuclear reactor cores. However it is not practically feasible in a world where ignorance prevails, as antinuclear sentiment is exactly and precisely equivalent to the type of ignorance that put a venal, amoral, ignorant, vindictive, and self serving idiot in the White House. Ignorance is That's my opinion, and it's not subject to change by any stupid rhetoric either from honest antinukes and less than honest "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes.

So there's that, ignorance. There's a huge myth going on that there's some kind of "energy transition" going on. This is nonsensical garbage equivalent to the big lie that solar and wind energy matter. They don't. The only way they matter is that the achieved the goal that their advocates pushed, destroying nuclear manufacturing infrastructure.

Many American antinukes, including "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes here, are provincials. They cannot grasp that there is a world beyond the United States. However, one can indulge them, by utilizing the effects of their success is employing fear and ignorance by assuming, without justification, by assuming that the United States is the only place that matters. As a result of their disastrous success in destroying nuclear infrastructure in the United States, building the two Vogtle reactors cost roughly $34 billion dollars. The costs were not symmetric between the two. There are a lot of fucking morons who whine about their cost as they continue to trash nuclear energy with selective attention. (Notably they don't give a fuck about the cost of the collapse of the planetary atmosphere.) Since the reactors were built on a single site, and FOAKE costs (first of a kind engineering) were partially ameliorated in the construction of the second, the first reactor cost around 23 billion dollars, the second around 11 billion dollars. They will operate until the dawn of the 21st century, for more than half a century after all existing so called "renewable energy" facilities represented by landfill will be landfill. For 8 trillion dollars, the money squandered on solar and wind in since 2015 for no result, at 11 billion dollars each, the world could have therefore built close to 800 nuclear reactors, more if they were to be built where power lines exist and are connected to dangerous fossil fuel plants today, the coal and gas plants about which antinukes and "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes couldn't care less.

The world produces 30 Exajoules of primary nuclear energy as of now using 439 nuclear reactors. It follows that for 8 trillion dollars, we could as a crude BOE calculation, suggest that nuclear energy at a cost of 8 trillion dollars at Vogtle 4 costs - which are a function of the triumph of antinuke ignorance - we would be producing around 55 Exajoules of nuclear primary energy. Since the plants are designed to have high capacity utilization, they would displace coal plants, not useless solar and wind garbage.

China built the Fuqing 5 nuclear reactor in about five years. China has a strong and highly functional nuclear construction infrastructure and supply chain. They lead the world.

It stands to reason therefore, if that practice were achieved elsewhere, we could get that additional 25 Exajoules every five years or so by not squandering trillions on useless so called "renewable energy." This would not undo the damage already done by antinukes; it is too late to restore much of what has been destroyed because of the success of their idiot rhetoric. But in theory, I could arrest the growth of coal, about which antinukes couldn't care less.

Thanks for your question. Understanding as I do that antinukes and "I'm not antinukes" can't think very well I've put this response at a very low level. A more detailed discussion would involve a knowledge base, a moral structure, and an educational level most antinukes clearly lack and would therefore be as useless as solar and wind are.

Have a nice day tomorrow.