By Andy May
Clintel has just put out a new publication, We Can Still Avoid the Net Zero Trap, by Kees de Lange and Guus Berkhout.
Climate models – constructed by governmental organizations – predict a climate catastrophe caused by greenhouse gases, primarily CO2. This is even though water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas. The model-inspired narrative is that human CO2-emissions poses a fundamental threat to the survival of humanity, therefore, all fossil fuels must be banned.
Fortunately, this doom story is not consistent with the facts. Establishing cause and effect is the most difficult subject in science. After all, correlation is different from causation! This certainly applies to the behavior of our climate. After all, Earth’s climate is extremely complex. Climate processes take place in four-dimensional space: three spatial coordinates and one time coordinate. We know little about it and this is why Earth’s climate behavior is difficult to capture in models.
Experience shows that climate science should not start with complex models, but with reliable observations. The limitations of current climate models, partly due to numerous ungrounded assumptions and numerical limitations, are such that they do not yet properly emulate the climate system, thus they do not form a serious basis for forming climate policy. In particular, the premise that the human contribution to CO2 production can cause a future climate disaster is not supported by observations.
The geological archive tells us that there is no correlation, and therefore no causal link, between CO2 and temperature. Studies of ice cores show that warming precedes an increase in atmospheric CO2 content. The recent past points out that the natural variability of temperature is considerably greater than human influence on it. In the wake of the unreliable predictions of climate models, energy supply on a global scale has become a topic of heated debate. Due to the dubious conclusions of climate models about the role of CO2, fossil fuels have been condemned. The Net Zero approach has become, at least in the West, the political Holy Grail. The reliability of demand-driven fossil energy is sacrificed for supply-driven alternative energy illusions. The West is apparently prepared to risk prosperity for this. The rest of the world watches in amazement and, sometimes, delight.
The report argues for the further development of nuclear energy, with special attention given to the thorium reactor option and its associated advantages. In the long term, this is the only rational way to adequately supply the world with energy. There is therefore no reason to swim further into the Net Zero trap. We can still go back.
In summary, there is climate warming, but there is no climate crisis. Unfortunately, we are at the beginning of a self-made energy crisis. That is very bad news. A rapid and dramatic change in climate and energy policy, by all western governments, is required.
One minor correction to the report, Climate: The Movie was written, directed and edited by Martin Durkin, as well as produced by Tom Nelson.
My take, that takes full advantage of some of the points that you have made above.
Without energy there is no economy. Arguably, the West is expressing a death wish.
The geological archive tells us that there is no correlation, and therefore no causal link, between CO2 and temperature. Studies of ice cores show that warming precedes an increase in atmospheric CO2 content.
CO2 is plant food. The planet is greening. That means more food. We do need greener cities to ameliorate the urban heat sink effect in summer.
Globally the current warmer temperature in higher latitudes assists plant productivity because photosynthesis depends on temperature and the bulk of the planet experiences sub optimal temperatures over most of its surface, outside urban areas, most of the time.
The West is apparently prepared to risk its prosperity by insisting on the use of ruinously expensive and intermittently available sources of energy. And to deny prosperity for the bulk of humanity in the East.
The East is aware of the inordinate privilege (a rort) that is afforded to those whose fiat currencies are adopted as a medium of international exchange. That rug is now being pulled from under their feet. This means that the West will need to start paying for its ‘forever wars’ by taxing its own citizens. And it’s already broke.
It’s instructive to listen to Tucker Carlson’s interview of Geoffrey Sachs and to John Mearsheimer the American political scientist, both of whom have a grasp on the geopolitical realities.
Andy, you say that thorium reactors need to be given special attention. As you know, thorium reactors do not exist. This closest to one that has actually operated is the Light Water Breeder Reactor tested in the Shippingport Atomic Power Station from 1977 to 1982. It was fueled with a U233 core and fitted with thorium breeder rods which, in the end, contained about 3% more fuel than was burned in the core. As you know the so-called thorium reactors are fast reactors that must be cooled by something that does not slow down neutrons generated by fission. In practice this means either molten salt which has substantial materials compatibility problems, molten lead-bismuth which performed poorly in Soviet submarines, and liquid sodium which has performed poorly in the Russian BN-350 reactor and a US Navy reactor. I recommend that remedial actions to correct the growing mess with our electric power system focus on technologies that have been proven to work, not mythical technologies that have serious known problems. Of course, one could count on Distributed Emissions Free Resources (DEFRs) as New York is but then, the only such technology that exists and has been proven are pressurized water and boiling water reactors which New York and many others reject.
Good points. There are definitely technical challenges with thorium molten salt reactors, but I still think more work on them is justified. Either way nuclear, whether Uranium or Thorium, is a better candidate to replace fossil fuels, if that is even necessary than wind and solar.