Is this analysis of the probable long term effects of climate change logical?

[eclipsenow]

Canadian agriculture may also gain, while American agriculture — one of the world's largest food baskets — takes a massive hit. Sea rise is an important side effect, but so slow that cities will gradually adapt. To be honest, it's not my biggest fear. If the politics and economics of a country like Bangladesh with subsistence agricultural peasants can modernise, more of them will live in cities. New Urbanism can be built on safe ground faster than the seas will rise — if the economy can do it!

But my greatest concern with climate change is twofold: unfair consequences and war. The consequences will be unfair because the scientists have modelled future weather patterns that indicate it will hurt poor nations more than us rich, industrialised, high CO2 emitting nations that dumped most of the CO2 into the atmosphere in the first place. We may has well have been tipping arsenic into their water supply! It's that bad! Failed crops = no economy, no civilisation, internal warfare and ganglands, Somalia like failed states spreading across sub-saharan Africa. We're a fine mob aren't we, doing that to them?

Then war. Whether it's water stress across Asia, or some agricultural crisis in another part of the world, or a new super-virus spreading through new disease vectors that would not have existed had climate change not happened, the world will be under increased stress from it all.

So what to do about it?

Nuclear is the quickest way to solve climate change. That's an established fact of history. In one decade (1977–1987), France increased its nuclear power production 15-fold, with the nuclear portion of its electricity increasing from 8% to 70% baseload. (The other quarter is hydro). Can you show me a single nation that rose 63% in solar or wind in one decade? It's not 75% on a few freak hours of the year, it's 75% each and every day. It's reliable. It turns up to work any time of day or night, which is a completely different kind of power than solar, which only turns up when it's in the mood. It's the kind of power you can rely on, can build a civilisation on, can run a country on without disappointment, as demonstrated by France.

In one decade (2001–2011) Germany increased the non-hydroelectric renewable energy portion of its electricity from 4% to 19%, with fossil fuels decreasing from 63% to 61% (hydroelectric decreased from 4% to 3% and nuclear power decreased from 29% to 18%). Oh, and don't quote the one day of the year the renewables might have super-spiked, because that's cheating. I'm talking about France getting an extra 63% reliable baseload grid that delivers 24/7 most of the year power, apart from pre-planned servicing. But how about that German performance? Renewables at 19% of the grid, but it only lowers fossil fuels 2%. Awesome performance! (NOT!) How much money has Germany put into renewables, especially solar? Over to Tom Blees, the author Dr James Hansen recommends. You'll need to pay attention, there are important figures here!

So by 2013, Germany will have committed to spending €77 billion (that’s over $113 billion USD) for solar capacity equivalent to less than 2% of their 2006 electrical demand.

Now let’s look at the cost of nuclear power plants. Setting aside the legalistic and political quagmire that characterizes the nuclear power industry in America, we can look at the cost of the Advanced Boiling Water Reactors (ABWRs) that were built in Japan in the late 90’s at a cost of about $1.4 billion/GW, and the Chinese’ recent estimates for the final cost of their first two AP-1000s ($1.76 billion/GW), and come to the reasonable conclusion that Germany could build Gen III+ reactors for $2 billion/GW, especially modular units in the dozens.

At the moment, Germany’s Gen II nuclear plants have strong capacity factors, including probably the best one in the world with about a 94% CF. So let’s assume that Germany’s brand new Gen III plants could average a 90% CF. For $112 billion, they could build 56GW of new nuclear capacity, for an effective capacity at a 90% CF of about 48GW. Those plants would thus produce about 421,000 GWh annually, which is approximately 68% of Germany’s electrical needs in 2006 (I keep using 2006 figures to be consistent here because that’s the latest IEA data I can find for Germany’s energy stats). Compare that with the <2% expected from solar, and of course unlike solar, nuclear runs 24/7. Now figure in the expected lifespan of the systems: Nuclear: about 60 years. Solar PV: 20-30 years. Being generous and saying 30, that means you’ll get twice as much as the already astounding 34 times the energy that nuclear will produce compared to the same solar investment.

So Germany’s ill-considered (and, amazingly, continuing) national experiment with solar power is costing them roughly 70 times (in costs/kWh) what it would have cost them to build top-notch nuclear power plants, disregarding the intermittency problem with solar, which is no small matter. In other words, Germany could have gone France one better and gone 100% nuclear and saved a ton of Euros in the process. Instead, we have the example of environmental ideology run amok, with very real and seriously negative economic and environmental ramifications. Solar PV​

 

[DennisTate]

Canadian agriculture may also gain, while American agriculture — one of the world's largest food baskets — takes a massive hit. Sea rise is an important side effect, but so slow that cities will gradually adapt. To be honest, it's not my biggest fear. If the politics and economics of a country like Bangladesh with subsistence agricultural peasants can modernise, more of them will live in cities. New Urbanism can be built on safe ground faster than the seas will rise — if the economy can do it!

But my greatest concern with climate change is twofold: unfair consequences and war. The consequences will be unfair because the scientists have modelled future weather patterns that indicate it will hurt poor nations more than us rich, industrialised, high CO2 emitting nations that dumped most of the CO2 into the atmosphere in the first place. We may has well have been tipping arsenic into their water supply! It's that bad! Failed crops = no economy, no civilisation, internal warfare and ganglands, Somalia like failed states spreading across sub-saharan Africa. We're a fine mob aren't we, doing that to them?

Then war. Whether it's water stress across Asia, or some agricultural crisis in another part of the world, or a new super-virus spreading through new disease vectors that would not have existed had climate change not happened, the world will be under increased stress from it all.

So what to do about it?

Nuclear is the quickest way to solve climate change. That's an established fact of history. In one decade (1977–1987), France increased its nuclear power production 15-fold, with the nuclear portion of its electricity increasing from 8% to 70% baseload. (The other quarter is hydro). Can you show me a single nation that rose 63% in solar or wind in one decade? It's not 75% on a few freak hours of the year, it's 75% each and every day. It's reliable. It turns up to work any time of day or night, which is a completely different kind of power than solar, which only turns up when it's in the mood. It's the kind of power you can rely on, can build a civilisation on, can run a country on without disappointment, as demonstrated by France.

In one decade (2001–2011) Germany increased the non-hydroelectric renewable energy portion of its electricity from 4% to 19%, with fossil fuels decreasing from 63% to 61% (hydroelectric decreased from 4% to 3% and nuclear power decreased from 29% to 18%). Oh, and don't quote the one day of the year the renewables might have super-spiked, because that's cheating. I'm talking about France getting an extra 63% reliable baseload grid that delivers 24/7 most of the year power, apart from pre-planned servicing. But how about that German performance? Renewables at 19% of the grid, but it only lowers fossil fuels 2%. Awesome performance! (NOT!) How much money has Germany put into renewables, especially solar? Over to Tom Blees, the author Dr James Hansen recommends. You'll need to pay attention, there are important figures here!

So by 2013, Germany will have committed to spending €77 billion (that’s over $113 billion USD) for solar capacity equivalent to less than 2% of their 2006 electrical demand.

Now let’s look at the cost of nuclear power plants. Setting aside the legalistic and political quagmire that characterizes the nuclear power industry in America, we can look at the cost of the Advanced Boiling Water Reactors (ABWRs) that were built in Japan in the late 90’s at a cost of about $1.4 billion/GW, and the Chinese’ recent estimates for the final cost of their first two AP-1000s ($1.76 billion/GW), and come to the reasonable conclusion that Germany could build Gen III+ reactors for $2 billion/GW, especially modular units in the dozens.

At the moment, Germany’s Gen II nuclear plants have strong capacity factors, including probably the best one in the world with about a 94% CF. So let’s assume that Germany’s brand new Gen III plants could average a 90% CF. For $112 billion, they could build 56GW of new nuclear capacity, for an effective capacity at a 90% CF of about 48GW. Those plants would thus produce about 421,000 GWh annually, which is approximately 68% of Germany’s electrical needs in 2006 (I keep using 2006 figures to be consistent here because that’s the latest IEA data I can find for Germany’s energy stats). Compare that with the <2% expected from solar, and of course unlike solar, nuclear runs 24/7. Now figure in the expected lifespan of the systems: Nuclear: about 60 years. Solar PV: 20-30 years. Being generous and saying 30, that means you’ll get twice as much as the already astounding 34 times the energy that nuclear will produce compared to the same solar investment.

So Germany’s ill-considered (and, amazingly, continuing) national experiment with solar power is costing them roughly 70 times (in costs/kWh) what it would have cost them to build top-notch nuclear power plants, disregarding the intermittency problem with solar, which is no small matter. In other words, Germany could have gone France one better and gone 100% nuclear and saved a ton of Euros in the process. Instead, we have the example of environmental ideology run amok, with very real and seriously negative economic and environmental ramifications. Solar PV​

Strangely enough... one way that American agriculture could greatly benefit......
would be to bring back the buffalo.......
at least that is my opinion on the Tony Lovell research......