So anyway, as the science shows, global warming is real. The question is, what are we to do about it? Now, as an Amil I'm not caught up in silly, unbiblical date-setting schemes for the Lord's return. He could return tonight, or in 50,000 years. We just don't know. Our ethical responsibility as Christians is to participate in the society discussion about what to DO about global warming, out of the ethic of 'love your neighbour'. We must love both our poorer neighbours in countries already affected by first world overuse of carbon energy, and also love our 'neighbours' in generations not yet born, and leave a planet inhabitable for them as well.
But there are problems with the hyped up 'solutions' of renewable energy. I think renewables are great, and can be PART of the solution. But I really don't think they can be 100% of the solution. They are unreliable, and as a result are far, far too expensive to backup or 'store' energy for night time or winter.
There are other renewable limits as well. A big one is GEOPOLITICAL. (I love renewables and this is painful to admit). Many smaller countries with large populations simply *cannot* power themselves. When one considers how diffuse wind and solar are, there is simply NOT ENOUGH LAND for smaller countries! Australia is fine with all our deserts and our (comparatively) low population. But the UK could not power itself without nuclear. This is simply the laws of physics of scattered, diffuse renewable energy supplied in a small area with a larger population like the UK. In today's economic and geopolitical environment when many nations are starting to reconsider globalisation and are trying to invent more home-grown solutions to energy security, renewables simply cannot cut it for large populations in small lands. Such countries simply demand too much power for each scrap of land! Let me hand you over to David MacKay.
"David John Cameron MacKay, FRS (born April 22, 1967), is the professor of natural philosophy in the department of Physics at the University of Cambridge[4] and chief scientific adviser to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).[5] Before being appointed to the DECC, MacKay was most well known as author of the book Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air.[2][6][7]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._C._MacKay
David gives the following example in his famous TED talk.
You have a road with a 60 mile an hour (100kmph) speed limit. The cars on the road burn fuel at around 30 miles per gallon (which is the European average car efficiency, and why we are using imperial measurements). Along the side of the road is a ribbon of biofuel fields to fuel this particular road. The cars are about 80 meters apart. Now, the question is, how WIDE would the biofuel strip be to fuel this road of 60mh, 30 mpg, 80 meter apart cars, 24/7? (Length doesn't matter really because we're talking about average WIDTH to fuel these cars and if the length of the road extends, so does the biofuel strip along side it.)
It's a strange example, but physicist David MacKay wants us to think about renewable energy in a new way. If the biofuels grow 1200 litres of biofuel per hectare per year, then the strip along side this one, busy road would need to be 8km wide to fuel this one road!
Please watch David Mackay's TED talk here.
TEDxWarwick - David MacKay - How the Laws of Physics Constrain Our Sustainable Energy Options - YouTube
Bottom line? When today's Gen3.5 nukes would have easily withstood Fukushima's tidal wave, and when they supply abundant baseload reliable power at an affordable price, and when they can work so well *with* renewables (at maybe a 60% nuclear, 40% renewable grid), and when their waste provides the PERFECT FUEL for tomorrow's Gen4 reactors which will gobble all that FUEL up, maybe we all need to have an adult conversation about energy systems, but without all the hype and emotion that is often attached to these quite complex systems?
