How To Solve Global Warming

Two words: Nuclear Energy.

The more complete answer: The global warming hypothesis is that man-made CO2, mostly created by burning fossil fuels, is increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and those increases are impacting the climate. Before the industrial age, CO2 was at 270ppm (parts-per-million) and is now at 380ppm and rising by about 1.5 ppm per year. The scarmongering scenarios in the media assume this trend will not only continue, but accelerate to the point where CO2 concentrations double. There are many assumptions in climate change models (some of which may be questionable), but they all are driven by a main assumption that man-made CO2 generation leads to a warmer climate, with IPCC estimates of 2 degress C increase expected by 2100 under a 'baseline' scenario.

Since fossil fuel burning is the main 'culprit' in this drama, the clear and obvious solution is to find substitutes for fossil fuels that do not add CO2 to the air. There are two options: Less energy use total or non-fossil-fuel energy. The environmentalists tout renewables and energy conservation, but all such solution run into a wall of economic reality - their solutions are not more widely used because they are not economical; it take subsidies and massive Government programs, regulations and interference to force the economy to use these solution. Even modest reductions (a la Kyoto Treaty) would be hugely expensive and ruinous to the economy.

None of that is strictly required to solve global warming, because the most cost-effective non-fossil-fuel alternative is avaialable: Nuclear power. Nuclear energy today is the most used and most cost-effective non-fossil-fuel source of electricity in the world - 20% of the US and 16% of the world electricity generation is based on nuclear power. Nuclear energy accounted for about 73 percent of U.S. emission-free generation in 2005. Nuclear power's operating costs are below every other alternative, including coal.

As
Marvin Fertel, NEI's vice president noted: "Nuclear energy has been the dominant factor in avoiding greenhouse gases for more than 20 years. It is responsible for 89 percent of all CO2 emission reductions realized in the electric utility sector since 1973."

So why aren't we simply agreeing to go nuclear and calming down from the global warming hysteria?
Because even with the 'threat' of gobal warming uppermost in their minds, many of the same environmentalists who act like global warming means the end of the planet continue to
spurn nuclear power:

Two implicit but flawed assumptions underlie most claims about the significance of nuclear energy for the climate-change issue. The first is that climate change can be tackled without confronting and changing Western, especially American, patterns of energy consumption – the primary causes and continuing drivers for unsustainable increases in carbon emissions and global warming. This is plain impossible; there is simply no way global warming can be stopped without significant reductions in the current energy consumption levels of Western/developed countries.

Plainly speaking, to say something is "plain impossible" when it has already happened is not convincing. Is it impossible to have Western-style energy consumption without massive CO2 generation? Definitely. In France today over 70% of electricity generation is nuclear-based. As a result, France has one of the lowest CO2 generation/Kwh and CO2 generation/GDP ratios of any country. If the US followed suit, our current 5 billion tons of CO2 generation would be reduced by 50%. If the world followed suit, and raised the world's generation of electricity from 16% to over 70%, the world's generation of CO2 would be cut in half. The result? The lower rate of CO2 generation would avert most worst-case situations touted as a reason for panic.

The environmentalist assertion is that somehow nuclear energy translates into other use of energy:

The best case study is Japan, a strongly pro-nuclear energy country. As Japanese nuclear chemist and winner of the 1997 Right Livelihood Award, Jinzaburo Takagi pointed out, from 1965 to 1995 Japan’s nuclear plant capacity went from zero to over 40,000 MW. During the same period, carbon dioxide emissions went up from about 400 million tonnes to about 1200 million tonnes.

The illogic of this is manifest. Japan was the fastest growing OECD economy for much of that 30 year period from 1965 to 1995. As this chart shows, Japan used nuclear energy for about 12% of its total energy supply and 35% of Japan's electric power. Japan is third in the world following the United States and France in nuclear power generation. As Japan's economy grew, the other parts of Japan's energy mix grew as well. The real question to be asked is how much CO2 was reduced due to the current contribution of nuclear energy, and also how much CO2 could be further reduced if nuclear power was applied more extensively. The answer is significant on both - Japan needs Nuclear Power to Reduce CO2 Emissions.

The anti-nuclear environmentalists point out that nuclear energy addresses only electricity generation and not the massive CO2 generation from transportation: "Other sectors of the economy where carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are emitted, such as transportation, cannot be operated using electricity from nuclear reactors. This situation is unlikely to change anytime in the near future."

That assumption misses opportunities for change. First, cars could be migrated to 'plug-in' hybrids that get their electricity from nuclear generation, using new battery technology. Second, many industrial processes, including biofuels production, require the kind of heat that nuclear power plants produce as a byproduct of electrical generation. If transport energy inputs are shifted to nuclear-based electricity and biofuels, then the 'carbon footprint' of transportation would be dramatically reduced, by at least 75% over the long term.

What would the nuclear solution look like? In the United States, about 40% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions can be attributed to the combustion of fossil fuels for the generation of electricity (source EIA). Replace 80% of that with nuclear energy and we can reduced CO2 emissions in this esctor commensurately. Transportation (in particular, oil in gasoline and jet fuel) accounts for another 40% of CO2 emissions. This can be further reduced (i.e., by 75%) by moving to plug-in hybrids, use of electric for trains, and replacing crude oil-based gasoline with biofuels and alternatives such as natural gas. The rest is heat generation, and if much of that was migrated to nuclear or non-fossil alternatives (e.g. biomass) the net result is commensurate CO2 reduction. Over all sectors, this reduction adds up to a 2/3rds reduction in total U.S. CO2 emissions. We would require 1000GW in capacity, 10 times our current nuclear rated capacity; this would cost about $1.2 trillion in capital costs over 40 years, or $30 billion per year. This very manageable cost would be borne mostly by the private utilities, with the only Government cost being sufficient subsidies and support to get plants built, which could be nothing more than tax breaks to ensure that nuclear maintain cost-leader status. This could be done for much less than our current ethanol subsidy costs, for example.

With a phased build-out of added capacity, this solution would require no draconian impositions on the economy while dramatically reducing CO2 emissions long-term. US CO2 emissions were 7,074 million metric tons in 2004, and the 98GWe rate capacity nuclear reduced emissions by 700 million metric tons. This added capacity would reduce emissions equivalent to our full current level of CO2 emissions of 7 Gigatonnes. Intead of seeing emissions increase to over 10 Giga-tonnes, they would be reduced by 2/3rds to around 3 Gigatonnes by 2050.

This solution, if applied globally in the U.S. and the other large CO2 emissions countries, would completely and dramatically make obsolete CO2 emissions scenarios that lead to drastic climate change. It would become a non-threat and it can be done without CO2 trading credits or dramatic changes in energy consumption. You don't even need to ride your bicycle to work.

Game Over. Go nuclear.