1. Nuclear – update
Some outrage followed Bob Carr’s suggestion we should debate nuclear power as an energy option.
The Australian today has a piece by Amanda Hodge that includes:
“It’s an attempt to make the argument a coal versus nuclear debate to soften people’s resistance to another coal-fired power station, when the debate should be about coal versus renewable options,” one observer says. Clive Hamilton from the Australia Institute agrees.
As executive director of the independent think tank, Hamilton is a keen observer of social and environmental public policy and says Carr’s record on the environment is mixed. While he has gained significant ground on the traditional “green” environmental issues, such as forests and national parks, he has had little success on the “brown” issues: industrial environmental concerns, such as air pollution and climate change.
The Australian also has an opinion piece on the virtues of nuclear energy by Leslie Kemeny with the comment that:
For many countries the reliability, safety, economy and greenhouse gas-free operation of nuclear plants has made nuclear energy inevitable. Unfortunately for Australia, which supplies 13 countries with uranium fuel, the technology has not been properly considered.
The paradox of a nation endowed with more than 40 per cent of the world’s economically recoverable uranium fuel but which strenuously resists its use in its domestic energy policies bemuses the global community. This is especially true of countries such as France and Japan, who manage to minimise their own greenhouse emissions through the use of Australian uranium.
And also an opinion piece by Bill Kininmonth that begins:
AS Australia develops policies for its diverse energy resources there is a need to ensure that the policies are based on sound economics, technologies and science.
Unfortunately, it is representation of the science of climate change where there is most uncertainty, including a fair degree of misrepresentation.
2. Pilliga-Goonoo – Update
According to Farm Online:
The NSW Government has offered timber mills in north-western NSW access to a further 15,000 hectares of high quality cypress forest.
This is a result of protests against its decision to lock up 350,000 ha of the Brigalow Belt South Bioregion.
I wrote about these forests, and environmentalism as a faith, for Online Opinion for World Environment Day. My piece included the comment:
We live in a secular society and value evidence. Yet it is the naive and romantic concept of nature that very often underpins public policy decision making on environmental issues in Australia. For example, when the NSW government announced a ban on logging in the Pilliga-Goonoo forests it described the decision as achieving “permanent conservation” of these iconic forests. In reality without active management there can be no conservation of these forests. The forests are less than 150-years-old and have grown-up with a timber industry that has tended the cypress and Eucalyptus creating tall trees and also habitat for iconic species such as koalas and barking owls.
3. Information Request
Jennifer, I need information on the transpiration rate of native grass and the depth that native grass would draw water from. Regards Gary
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Re Clive Hamilton and friends at the AI: Hamilton was little respected in his profession as an economist. I first crossed swords with him 20 years ago, on the issue of Strategic Trade Theory v free trade. Paul Krugman, mystified by support for STT,wrote a seminal paper in which he found that STT could deliver benefits, but only in circumstances which were extremely unlikely to occur. Hamilton ignored the caveats, and argued that Australia should pursue Strategic Trade Theory initiatives – promoting with government subsidies industries which prima facie had no hope of success here. The only example he could find to support his view was Airbus v Boeing. This was hardly applicable to Australia, given the scale of the industry and the resources of the parties involved, and at the time the OECD estimated that the EC had subsidised Airbus by around $US20 billion, with the benefits not accruing to EC citizens but to international air travellers. Similarly, at my first public meetings with the AI’s Ian Lowe around 1989-90, when I proposed a role for economists in investigating environmental issues such as global warming, Lowe vilified me and economomists generally; he now supports IPCC scenarios based on deeply-flawed economic modelling. I advise caution re anything emanating from the AI.
Leslie did not mention waste disposal or the massive subsidies that nuclear power needs to be viable.
Bill Kinninmonth is not a authority on climate change. He is one of the skeptics that are trying to scuttle action on climate change.
Waste disposal is a political problem (thanks to fear-mongering greenies) not a scientific problem. I would be happy to have a nuclear “dump” (a greenie term of disaprobation) in the ACT.
If all subsidies to the energy sector (and I am against them all) were dropped, wind and solar would be the first to collapse.
Nuclear is perfectly afordable, especially if we do not have ridiculous regulations to artificially inflate the cost.
Waste disposal is a scientific problem which is why not one kilo of radioactive waste is in a long term geological storage facility despite 40 years of trying. Look at the problems with Yucca Mountain – still not going despite the billions spent.
The nuclear sector is the most heavily subsidised of the lot. Without huge subsidies the nuclear power industry would collapse first followed by the coal and oil and then maybe by the renewables. Wind power does not need fuel and needs very little maintenance so the established wind farms would continue long after the last coal plant was shut down due to lack of spare parts and fuel.
How about the 2 billion subsidy to the oil industry that is the Diesel Fuel Rebate scheme. Don’t single out the renewable sector because in the subsidy game they are far behind the fossil fuel and nuclear sector.
Ender,
The diesel fuel rebate system is for the pastoral and mining industtries, not the oil companies.
Yes but who benefits? The Oil companies make more money and does the few cents that the farmers and miners save really make a huge difference?
What it really does is make alternatives more expensive in relation to cheaper subsidised oil. So much so that a community recently installed diesel generators instead of a combined renewable/diesel solution that would have saved thousands of litres of fuel. It is not worth saving the fuel if it is artifically cheap. It is worth saving if the fuel comes from the middle east and will get more and more expensive.
It is amusing to listen to the depth or indeed lack of it in the understanding of the economics involved in the respective energy sectors. And while everyone argues on which energy should be used in the future, we waste more and more oil and gas on stationary energy needs which could be easily satisfied by nuclear power and more cheaply.
Greenies, and I happen to be one of them, only one who is factually not emotionally informed, will often argue that nuclear is expensive in real terms. What people fail to account for is that whilst this maybe true, given the massive outlay required for developing nuclear infrastructure, the cost of all energy commodities is increasing and will continue to do so. So if the price of gas doubles and it is likely to in the coming years, you could expect a 60-80% increase in the cost of that electricity. In the case of uranium, since the price of this commodity only accounts for 5% of the variable cost of nuclear energy, a doubling of the price of yellowcake would have little effect on the cost of nuclear energy.
I get sick of putting nuclear’s case forward as I see a very dangerous world if oil and gas get too expensive. Time is running short. Anti nuclear campaigners ask questions like what do we do with nuclear waste? I ask at price of oil does your neighbour become your enemy and how safe will the world be for my unborn children with oilover $60/barrel. I know how much energy goes into producing food and I already see the current price reducing my ability as a farmer to produce the food volumes I used to.
For the uninformed, the diesel fuel rebate scheme is not a subsidy. It merely means those users of diesel within the mining and agricultural industries get the tax proportion back which is in the initial price per litre Joe Blo would pay at any bowser across the country. The fossil fuel sector is taxed quite heavily in Australia so if those taxes were removed renewables such as solar and wind would definately have no chance of competing. Rebates exist for solar and unfortunately it is still very expensive to convert home across.