Thanks for your reply on Germany. I didn't mean to imply the Germans hurt us on purpose, sorry about that. Global demand is fungible, and slow demand growth in the eurozone was a drag on our exports.
I once read an FOMC transcript (I think it was from 2012) where a Fed delegation to Germany reported back on their lack of success in convincing the Germans to coordinate policy. The delegation officials were surprised at how economically illiterate Schauble and his ministry were.
The EU is an enormous economy--what happens there matters for U.S. growth and prosperity, not just in terms of economics but politically as well. Political instability in Europe can and does spill over into U.S. politics.
The idea of global warming as a problem proceeds from a number of misapprehensions.
One is that atmospheric CO2 is a pollutant. That the pseudo-science of the EPA pronounced it so doesn't make it so. ACO2 was a pollutant to the extent its generation contributed to acid rain, a problem long since solved.
Further, the geological planetary temperature record and ACO2 concentration record strongly indicate that there is no correlation between the planet's temperature and the atmosphere's CO2 content. Contradictorily, 400,000 year ice cores from opposite ends of the planet indicate that rises in ACO2 lags, not precedes, rises in planetary temperatures.
For all that, Earth has been heating up--for nearly all of its ~4 billion years of existence: the sun has been heating up ever since it collapsed and lit off. Yet, here we are, 11,000 years after the last ice age, and we're still some degrees cooler than the period preceding that ice age and some degrees cooler than the geologic trend line of planetary warming.
Land being flooded by rising seas? Maybe, but it seems exaggerated. Some of the islands supposedly being flooded actually are sinking into the sea as burgeoning populations draw ground water out of aquifers, and the islands subside into the emptying spaces.
Climate persons also ignore the so what of either planetary warming or the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. In all the periods of higher planetary temperatures, life was lush--for plants, for animals that ate plants, and for animals that ate plant-eaters. In all the periods of higher concentrations of ACO2, life was lush--for plants, for animals that ate plants, and for animals that ate plant-eaters.
At worst, it seems that coastal populations will be inconvenienced by having to follow the coastlines.
From a technological perspective, I'm...impressed...by the idea that batteries--Li-ion or NiCad or other--can somehow support a carbon-free economy. Especially with the energy demands of mining and processing the lithium, et al., assembling the batteries and the devices they're intended to support, mining and processing the materials required to make those devices, and on and on.
And that doesn't address the very real pollution threat of that mining and the ultimate disposal of toxins like lithium, nickel, cadmium, etc of all those spent batteries.
Just one personal note and possible green shoot about nuclear power. I live now and grew-up about 30 minutes away from the somewhat famous Seabrook Nuclear Power plant whose construction was hotly opposed in the 1970s and 1980s. I don't have great memories from when I was 7 years old in 1990 at which time it opened but I can tell you that Seabrook in the local area around me was a far bigger deal back in 1990 when it officially opened than it is today. If anything most people I think have just forgotten that the plant even exists all the while it pumps out a clean, reliable source of electricity 24/7 and has done so since 1990. Now does these mean construction will break ground anytime soon on the originally intended second unit of Seabrook? No, but I can imagine a town meeting today in the local area on Seabrook and nuclear power as being far more rational, calm, and informed. While a previous generation of politicians in Massachusetts especially, less so in New Hampshire where the plant is actually located made their political careers opposing nuclear power like Ed Markey the current US House Rep that represents the most affected areas of Massachusetts, Seth Moulton is actually now quite pro nuclea(although I am not sure how well known that is by his constituents at large of which I am one).
Thank you for your thoughtful and detailed reply re global warming.
If global warming is indeed a crisis, then you present a cogent approach to it. Some things I would like to add.
I agree with your view of the debacle in Texas. It was the incompetence and parochialism of the administrators who believed Texas could ignore the Federal guidelines for all-weather gas pipelines and gas plants. We have both windmills and gas heating in Canada, by all reports a chilly place.
The French nuclear experience is interesting. France has virtually no oil, coal, gas or hydro. Nuclear was a no brainer. Areva or Framatone or Orano, depending which corporate restructured name you wish to consider, built the French nuclear industry and exported that technology for a plant in Finland. Its been twenty years and its not finished yet. Areva is majority owned by the French govt (or was before the French govt took the debt off their hands). No private corporation could have sustained the losses Areva has. Being government owned did not help its efficiency.
Germany took fright after Fukushima and decided to shun nuclear and go solar and wind power, and buy gas from the Russians. What could go wrong?
I support nuclear power, but I am not blind to its weakness, which is capital cost. From my experience, the regulators have much to answer for. The regulatory landscape in both the US and Canada is an abortion. Confusing, contradictory and overlapping. It takes decades to update regulatory guides. Yes, an accident is unacceptable, but at the rate the West is going, the only safe thing will be to leave uranium in the ground. My employer supplied millions of dollars worth of nuclear equipment to the only two new plants built in the US since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Both of these new plants were so badly over budget and delayed that they cancelled one of them (VC Summer). The other (Vogtle) continues only because they have deeper pockets. By comparison the Chinese built a plant from the same Westinghouse design, without delays and I suspect under budget. We can argue they are more efficient or they cut corners. They are probably both true.
So the dysfunction in getting things done is deeper than town halls or our democratic institutions (US or Canadian).
I agree the Chinese are committed to nuclear power but they continue to build coal fired plants.
I am familiar with the SMRs (Small Modular Reactors) you refer to and I am part of a team working on them for Canada. The construction of them is advanced and challenging.
Exporting nuclear technology to developing countries is problematic. There are technology issues, safety issues, security issues, the link to nuclear weapons and mostly, the cost. Those countries will opt for cheaper fossil fuels to gain the prosperity we enjoy.
And while we fiddle and lecture, the Chinese will sell them what they want.
You point out the environmental impacts of solar and windmills but it does not seem to disturb you. I agree an economic battery would solve so many problems. I am not sure we have one yet.
So nuclear is unlikely to provide power to the developing world for the foreseeable future. And my real question is, what could be the unintended consequences of our doomed efforts to control the climate.
> Germany and France—both of which are full of anti-vax lunatics—are wobbling about this for fear it would create a de facto mandate to be vaccinated and discriminate against those who refuse.
There is some reason to that argument (I personally agree that vaccination passports have a major fairness problem until and unless everyone has received an opportunity to vaccinate) -- but we're talking specifically about cross-border travel, even cross-continental travel -- surely the fairness requirements here are less stringent?
This answer has also made me realize I haven't thought of France as a major touristic destination before -- I've thought of Paris as one. At the very least, the tourism typical for France is of a rather different nature than that in Norway, Switzerland or Austria. I'm afraid reopening Paris will be on a wholly different difficulty level than reopening the Alps...
Thanks for your reply on Germany. I didn't mean to imply the Germans hurt us on purpose, sorry about that. Global demand is fungible, and slow demand growth in the eurozone was a drag on our exports.
I once read an FOMC transcript (I think it was from 2012) where a Fed delegation to Germany reported back on their lack of success in convincing the Germans to coordinate policy. The delegation officials were surprised at how economically illiterate Schauble and his ministry were.
The EU is an enormous economy--what happens there matters for U.S. growth and prosperity, not just in terms of economics but politically as well. Political instability in Europe can and does spill over into U.S. politics.
The idea of global warming as a problem proceeds from a number of misapprehensions.
One is that atmospheric CO2 is a pollutant. That the pseudo-science of the EPA pronounced it so doesn't make it so. ACO2 was a pollutant to the extent its generation contributed to acid rain, a problem long since solved.
Further, the geological planetary temperature record and ACO2 concentration record strongly indicate that there is no correlation between the planet's temperature and the atmosphere's CO2 content. Contradictorily, 400,000 year ice cores from opposite ends of the planet indicate that rises in ACO2 lags, not precedes, rises in planetary temperatures.
For all that, Earth has been heating up--for nearly all of its ~4 billion years of existence: the sun has been heating up ever since it collapsed and lit off. Yet, here we are, 11,000 years after the last ice age, and we're still some degrees cooler than the period preceding that ice age and some degrees cooler than the geologic trend line of planetary warming.
Land being flooded by rising seas? Maybe, but it seems exaggerated. Some of the islands supposedly being flooded actually are sinking into the sea as burgeoning populations draw ground water out of aquifers, and the islands subside into the emptying spaces.
Climate persons also ignore the so what of either planetary warming or the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. In all the periods of higher planetary temperatures, life was lush--for plants, for animals that ate plants, and for animals that ate plant-eaters. In all the periods of higher concentrations of ACO2, life was lush--for plants, for animals that ate plants, and for animals that ate plant-eaters.
At worst, it seems that coastal populations will be inconvenienced by having to follow the coastlines.
From a technological perspective, I'm...impressed...by the idea that batteries--Li-ion or NiCad or other--can somehow support a carbon-free economy. Especially with the energy demands of mining and processing the lithium, et al., assembling the batteries and the devices they're intended to support, mining and processing the materials required to make those devices, and on and on.
And that doesn't address the very real pollution threat of that mining and the ultimate disposal of toxins like lithium, nickel, cadmium, etc of all those spent batteries.
Eric Hines
Just one personal note and possible green shoot about nuclear power. I live now and grew-up about 30 minutes away from the somewhat famous Seabrook Nuclear Power plant whose construction was hotly opposed in the 1970s and 1980s. I don't have great memories from when I was 7 years old in 1990 at which time it opened but I can tell you that Seabrook in the local area around me was a far bigger deal back in 1990 when it officially opened than it is today. If anything most people I think have just forgotten that the plant even exists all the while it pumps out a clean, reliable source of electricity 24/7 and has done so since 1990. Now does these mean construction will break ground anytime soon on the originally intended second unit of Seabrook? No, but I can imagine a town meeting today in the local area on Seabrook and nuclear power as being far more rational, calm, and informed. While a previous generation of politicians in Massachusetts especially, less so in New Hampshire where the plant is actually located made their political careers opposing nuclear power like Ed Markey the current US House Rep that represents the most affected areas of Massachusetts, Seth Moulton is actually now quite pro nuclea(although I am not sure how well known that is by his constituents at large of which I am one).
Thank you for your thoughtful and detailed reply re global warming.
If global warming is indeed a crisis, then you present a cogent approach to it. Some things I would like to add.
I agree with your view of the debacle in Texas. It was the incompetence and parochialism of the administrators who believed Texas could ignore the Federal guidelines for all-weather gas pipelines and gas plants. We have both windmills and gas heating in Canada, by all reports a chilly place.
The French nuclear experience is interesting. France has virtually no oil, coal, gas or hydro. Nuclear was a no brainer. Areva or Framatone or Orano, depending which corporate restructured name you wish to consider, built the French nuclear industry and exported that technology for a plant in Finland. Its been twenty years and its not finished yet. Areva is majority owned by the French govt (or was before the French govt took the debt off their hands). No private corporation could have sustained the losses Areva has. Being government owned did not help its efficiency.
Germany took fright after Fukushima and decided to shun nuclear and go solar and wind power, and buy gas from the Russians. What could go wrong?
I support nuclear power, but I am not blind to its weakness, which is capital cost. From my experience, the regulators have much to answer for. The regulatory landscape in both the US and Canada is an abortion. Confusing, contradictory and overlapping. It takes decades to update regulatory guides. Yes, an accident is unacceptable, but at the rate the West is going, the only safe thing will be to leave uranium in the ground. My employer supplied millions of dollars worth of nuclear equipment to the only two new plants built in the US since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Both of these new plants were so badly over budget and delayed that they cancelled one of them (VC Summer). The other (Vogtle) continues only because they have deeper pockets. By comparison the Chinese built a plant from the same Westinghouse design, without delays and I suspect under budget. We can argue they are more efficient or they cut corners. They are probably both true.
So the dysfunction in getting things done is deeper than town halls or our democratic institutions (US or Canadian).
I agree the Chinese are committed to nuclear power but they continue to build coal fired plants.
I am familiar with the SMRs (Small Modular Reactors) you refer to and I am part of a team working on them for Canada. The construction of them is advanced and challenging.
Exporting nuclear technology to developing countries is problematic. There are technology issues, safety issues, security issues, the link to nuclear weapons and mostly, the cost. Those countries will opt for cheaper fossil fuels to gain the prosperity we enjoy.
And while we fiddle and lecture, the Chinese will sell them what they want.
You point out the environmental impacts of solar and windmills but it does not seem to disturb you. I agree an economic battery would solve so many problems. I am not sure we have one yet.
So nuclear is unlikely to provide power to the developing world for the foreseeable future. And my real question is, what could be the unintended consequences of our doomed efforts to control the climate.
Frankly, I think we should prepare to adapt.
About vaccination passports for EU travel:
> Germany and France—both of which are full of anti-vax lunatics—are wobbling about this for fear it would create a de facto mandate to be vaccinated and discriminate against those who refuse.
There is some reason to that argument (I personally agree that vaccination passports have a major fairness problem until and unless everyone has received an opportunity to vaccinate) -- but we're talking specifically about cross-border travel, even cross-continental travel -- surely the fairness requirements here are less stringent?
This answer has also made me realize I haven't thought of France as a major touristic destination before -- I've thought of Paris as one. At the very least, the tourism typical for France is of a rather different nature than that in Norway, Switzerland or Austria. I'm afraid reopening Paris will be on a wholly different difficulty level than reopening the Alps...