Friday, December 11, 2009

Nuclear Power and Climate Change


I'm definitely going to discuss nuclear power more in the future and in much greater detail, but for now I just want to share this excellent article from the Economist about the next generation of nuclear power plants. The advantages nuclear holds over not just renewables but also conventional fossil fuel power plants are legion. They are expensive to build, but once up and running their variable cost of electricity generation is almost zero. Their only emissions are water vapor, the uranium fuel is sourced chiefly from Australia and Canada, and the next generation of reactors now on the drawing board will be able to produce hydrogen for free as a byproduct of electricity generation. And best of all, they keep chugging along even when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.

But go ahead, read the article. It provides a detailed overview of all the different technologies under consideration for the 4th generation of reactors, and each technology's pros and cons.

European Union to fork over $10 billion for Climate Change

One of the wrong impressions that climate change 'sceptics' generally have about the whole global warming scam is that it is partly designed to hold poor countries back. Personally, I wish that was the case-hey, I'm all for staying on top for as long as possible, and there is no better way to doing that than holding back your competition. Unfortunately, a lot of the measures ostensibly designed to fight Climate Change will just accelerate the transfer of wealth from the West to the developing world. This latest news is just one example of what I fear will be a long series of misguided measures the effects of which will be not so much to save the planet as to take money out of our pockets and put it in other people's pockets. After all, what's a few trillion dollars when you're saving the world?

EU leaders have agreed to pay 7.2bn euros (£6.5bn; $10.6bn) over the next three years to help developing nations adapt to climate change.

Announcing the deal, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said all 27 EU member nations would contribute and that the EU was doing its "fair share".

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the UK's promise, at £500m ($800m; 553m euros) a year was the highest.


I doubt $800 million is going to affect the climate of the planet much, but I'm sure it's going to affect the living standards of a few people who are intimately involved in the deal.

Speaking at the end of the two-day EU summit in Brussels, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said he was confident the agreement could kick-start the final negotiations in Denmark.


But BBC environment correspondent Richard Black says that although EU leaders believe they have a credible finance proposal, it is by no means certain that all developing countries will see it as enough, even if the EU figures are matched by countries such as Japan and the US.


So let me get this straight, the fear is that developing countries will find the gift of $10 billion too small and reject it? So how will that message be relayed?

"We're sorry, but $10 billion over three years is not good enough. Unless you give us $10 billion every year we have no choice but to reject your offer of free money."

Yeah, that makes about as much sense as anthropomorphic global warming.

Bruno Tseliso Sekoli, chairman of the Least Developed Countries bloc, told the BBC that the money being pledged was not enough.

"Any money that would flow from the developed to developing worlds would be welcome but these numbers are very, very low," he said.

Well of course he's going to say that. Haggling is how they do things in the third world







Thursday, December 10, 2009

Climate Change posting..Not exactly

Yes, I know, this isn't really related to Climate Change, but I have to start building up traffic on this site, and one way to do this is to link this site to others. I've begun messing around with HTML and have put up a very primitive site on my university's server, so I'll link to it here.


Sunday, December 6, 2009

Climategate

There is certainly one thing to be said for Climategate: it has come at the most inopportune time for the climate charlatans. Copenhagen Summit anyone?