What an incredible mistake Greenpeace made when it took the government to
court in an attempt to delay the building of new nuclear power stations. By
so doing it increases the burden of carbon dioxide (C02) the Earth has to
bear; nuclear is the only large-scale energy source that is emissions free.
Why don’t we wake up and emulate the French, who make almost all their
electricity from nuclear energy? French trains are legendary, especially the
TGV. One of these bound for Marseilles was standing at the Gare de Lyon; it
seemed like any other train except that it was double decked. We climbed
aboard and took our seats on the upper tier and sat back as it travelled
from Paris to Marseilles at 200mph.
No wonder the French are building an even faster train track from Paris to
Germany. Best of all, this form of intercity travel is the world’s only
wholly carbon-free nonpolluting way of travelling, because the trains are
powered by nuclear electricity. Soon our cars and trucks will be powered by
batteries charged from the electricity supply. What a wonderful way to avoid
C02 emissions, but only if we make nuclear our source of electricity.
I am a green and I have been one for most of my life, but I am also a
scientist and my main contribution has been to show that the planet actively
sustains its climate and chemistry so as to keep itself habitable. We have
disabled this wonderful capacity by taking its natural forests for farmland
and by burning fossil fuels.
Doing this has driven the Earth to a state profoundly dangerous to all of us
and to our civilisation. I am deeply concerned that public opinion and
consequently the government listen less to scientists than they do to the
green lobbies. I know that these lobbies mean well, but this time their good
intentions are truly the road to a hell of a climate.
They understand people better than they do their world and recommend
inappropriate remedies and action. The outcome is as if the medieval plague
had returned in deadly form and we were earnestly advised to stop it with
alternative not scientific medicine.
Now that we have made the planet sick, it will not be cured by green remedies
such as wind turbines and biofuels. This is why I recommend instead the
appropriate medicine of nuclear energy. After all, the whole universe runs
on nuclear energy, so why not us?
Today humanity faces its greatest trial. The acceleration of the climate
change now under way will sweep aside the comfortable environment to which
we have adapted. Change is a normal part of geological history. The most
recent was the move from the long period of glaciation to the warmish
interglacial period we presently enjoy.
What is unusual about the coming crisis is that we are the cause of it and
nothing so severe has happened since the long hot period at the start of the
Eocene epoch 55m years ago. The planet, when in an interglacial period as it
is now, is trapped in a vicious cycle of positive feedback, and this is what
makes global heating so serious and so urgent. Extra heat from any source,
whether from greenhouse gases, the disappearance of Arctic ice and the
changing structure of the ocean, or the destruction of tropical forests, is
amplified.
It is almost as if we had lit a fire to keep warm and failed to notice, as we
piled on fuel, that the fire was out of control and the furniture had
ignited. When that happens there is little time left to put out the fire
before it consumes the house itself. Global heating, like a fire, is
accelerating and there is almost no time left to act.
This year, perhaps more thanany other in the two decades since the first
alarms were sounded, marks a shock of recognition: global warming isn’t
conjecture, alarmism or partisan overstatement, but rather a clear and very
present danger.
I am old enough to notice a marked similarity between attitudes more than 60
years ago towards the threat of war and those now towards the threat of
global heating. Most of us think that something unpleasant may soon happen,
but we are as confused now as we were in 1938 as to what form it will take
and what to do about it.
The Kyoto agreement was uncannily like the Munich pact, with politicians out
to show their eagerness to respond while in reality merely playing for time.
Because we are tribal animals the tribe does not act in unison until a
danger is perceived. This has not yet happened. Consequently we individuals
go our separate wayswhile the ineluctable forces of the Earth marshal
against us.
The prospects are grim and even if we act successfully in amelioration there
will still be hard times that will stretch us to the limit. We are tough and
it would take more than climatic catastrophe to eliminate all breeding pairs
of humans. What is at risk is civilisation.
There is a small chance that the sceptics are right, or that we might be saved
by an unexpected event such as a series of volcanic eruptions severe enough
to block out sunlight and so cool the planet. But only losers would bet
their lives on such poor odds.
Whatever doubts there may be about future climates, there is no doubt that
both greenhouse gases and temperatures are rising.
Predictions of climate change do not depend only on theoretical models in the
form of computer simulations. There is now a vast array of monitoring
activitiessustained globally. Air and sea temperatures are continuously
measured, as are the gases of the atmosphere, the cloud cover, the floating
ice, glaciers and the health of the ecosystems in the ocean and on the land.
Satellites monitor the Earth’s ever changing scene. The more subtle
instruments aboard these spacecraft record temperatures at different levels
in the atmosphere and the concentrations of many different gases.
Another important source of information about the cause of climate change is
the long-term geological record. We have learnt an immense amount about the
history of the climate and the composition of the atmosphere from the
analysis of ice taken from the depths of glaciers in Greenland and
Antarctica.
In 2004 Jonathan Gregory and his colleagues at Reading University reported
that if global temperatures rise by more than 2.7C the Greenland glacier
will no longer be stable. It will melt and will continue melting until most
of it has gone, even if the temperatures subsequently fall below the
threshold temperature.
Because temperature and C02 abundance appear to be closely correlated, the
threshold can be expressed in terms of either of these quantities.
Scientists Richard Betts and Peter Cox at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre
have concluded that a rise in global temperature of 4C would be enough to
destabilise the tropical rainforests and cause them, like the Greenland ice,
to melt away and be replaced by scrub or desert. Once this happens the Earth
will lose another cooling mechanism and the rate of temperature rise will
accelerate.
The floating ice of the Arctic serves as a white reflector of the summer
sunlight that falls upon it and helps to keep the world cool. When that ice
melts, as soon it may, the dark sea that replaces it will absorb the sun’s
heat and as it warms accelerate the melting of the Greenland ice.
While we cannot go back to the world of 1800, when there were only 1 billion
of us, we may not be incapable of lessening the consequences of global
heating. If there is a threshold and if we pass it, the nations of the world
could limit the damage by stoppingand methane. The temperature rise would
then be slower, as would the rise of sea levels, and it would take longer to
reach the final steady hot state than it would if we continued business as
usual. Even so, enormous damage would still have been done.
I am not recommending nuclear fission as the long-term panacea for our ailing
planet or as the answer to all our problems. I merely see it as the only
effective medicine we have now. But we will have to do much more than turn
to nuclear energy if we are to avoid a new Dark Age later in this century.
We must follow the good green advice to save energy and we must all do this
whenever we can, but I suspect that, like losing weight, this is easier said
than done.
We have to take global change seriously straightaway and do our best to lessen
the footprint of humans on the planet. Our goal should be the cessation of
fossil-fuel consumption as quickly as possible and there must be no more
natural-habitat destruction anywhere.
When I use the term “natural” I am not thinking only of primeval forests. I
also include the forests that have grown back after farmland has been
abandoned. These reestablished forests probably perform their services as
well as the original forests did, but the vast open stretches of monoculture
farmland are no substitute for natural ecosystems.
We are already farming more than the Earth can afford and if we attempt to
farm the whole planet to feed people it will make us like sailors who burn
the timbers of their ship to keep warm. The natural ecosystems are not there
for us to take as farmland; they are there to sustain the climate and the
chemistry of the planet itself.
Astronauts who have had the chance to look at our world from space have seen
what a beautiful planet it is. I ask that we put aside our fears and our
obsession with personal and tribal rights, and be brave enough to see that
the real threat comes from the harm we ourselves do to the living Earth.
The Revenge of Gaia, by James Lovelock, is out in paperback this week.
Penguin, £8.99
I have been a fan of James Lovelock for many years and trust his accumulated knowledge and wisdom. I fear for the lonely planet we are creating. Nasty ill-informed bickering is not helping. Let us get serious before we all have to live in deserts and fight over dirt.
Dr Lovelock if you read this I wonder if you know of the solar slither technology (invented by an Australian who had to go to California to get anywhere with it) which is much cheaper and much more efficient than ever. Using the sun alone, an area 50kmx50km in the desert areas of Australia would supply all of Australia’s power including base power for industry (source: PhysicsToday.org).
And do you know of the hotrocks project in South Australia's north? Where 240 degrees Celsius can be found at a depth of 5,000 metres (source: ABC NatureNews), which is well above the temperatures being used for geothermal power in Europe.
I myself would like to think that we can muster our collective wills and help Gaia save itself.
Meg Rowse, Portland, Victoria
Solar while small now, has tremendous capacity, 6,000 times our needs. At the rate it is growing now, 40% a year, it will go from providing half a percent of our energy to 80% of our energy in only 18 years. Fusion is the answer, but only if it is located a safe distance from major population centers, say about 93 million miles, in the Sun. Pumped storage, solar panels, and electric vehicles are the solution, although we in the west can reduce our energy consumption by a lot through conservation and efficiency improvements. We need to redesign our living centers to allow walking instead of driving, and insulate our houses so that they are not so energy inefficient to heat and cool. Nuclear? No way.
chris, new england, usa
Lovelock is completely right. The amount of waste generated by the nuclear industry is tiny compared to the pollution caused by fossil fuels. The amount of rad waste is so small that it has been possible to contain and manage 100% of it, unlike the fossil fuel industry which vents its pollution into the atmosphere.
The pollutants from fossil fuel kill millions every year. There are over 300,000 premature deaths from fossil fuel pollutants in Europe alone. In contrast nobody has ever been killed by nuclear waste (nor from radiation from any civil nuclear power station apart from Chernobyl). The health effect of fossil fuel pollution is equivalent to a Chernobyl accident every single day. It is quite feasible to build geological disposal sites that would allow permanent disposal of rad waste, which would pose no danger to the biosphere forever.
What we will have to explain to our great grandchildren is why we were so slow to expand our use of nuclear power and kept burning fossil fuel!
Colin, Glasgow, Scotland
Just when you though you had had enough of all the Lovelocks,
another comes along.
'Go nuclear, save the planet'... buy the book (that last bit was mine)
I have been erring on agreeing with Mr. Lovelock's analysis of late,
whilst wishing that such contentious, though sincerely meant as
thought-provoking, opinion pieces did not seem to always end with
"The book/TV series/movie is out now, priced £/$x, and the author
is on a tour of the planet to promote it now... but probably not on his
bike"
However, the value of blog post from those who care and know stuff
is clearly evidenced here.
I will need to ponder more, it seems.
I only hope those who can judge, and act, better than I can with my
small efforts, will get on and decide and DO PDQ!
Peter 'Junkkdotcom' Martin, Ross on Wye, UK
If we consider the problem of carbon dioxide (CO2) as waste from industries, well, we have to admit that nuclear waste is far more dangerous a threat than CO2, Mr Lovelock. Humanity will adapt better to a rise in temperature than to nuclear waste stricken land. How will our grand-grandchildren deal with our nuclear waste? You boast a similarity between the 'threat posed now and that of the war 60 years ago'. If that is the case I would suggest an "eco curfew" whereby we are all to switch everything off at certain times of day or night. I bet we would survive it, might find some enjoyement in it and even reminisce about it when it's over. Energy saving measures and renewable energy are the ony sustainable solutions. Cheerio from healthy Switzerland Mr Lovelock
Tony Carbonara, Lausanne, Switzerland
Another very simple "quick fix" which would run about $300 million English pounds Sterling and take a year or two only, even including permit clearances, would be to run a Prysmian high voltage direct current bundle of 9-inch harnesses from the French mainland to Folkstone through the as-yet-unused 10 x 10-foot service corridor in the Chunnel. It's a Gig per 9-inch harness in the layout used by the Neptune project at http://www.neptunerts.com, and as your shortfall in power needs is about 40 Gig's through 2050, this would work quite nicely. There's no field effect EMF gene mutations with HVDC, and the power patch-in to the Eurogrid can take its power from the Eastern Europe hydro complex, built by Stalin and now being upgraded by the EU and us perfidious Yanks.
It's not hands across the water, but under it. Tried, simple, non-polluting. Europower's cheaper by 10-15%, too. http://www.prysmian.com is the vendor of choice, to my mind. God save the Queen, and all of us.
Walt O'Brien, Binghamton, NY USA
Ireland has a 292 MW pumped storage facility at Turlough Hill, County Wicklow, which has been in place since 1968. It is a type of hydroelectric power generation where one pumps water up to a reservoir during off-peak hours, and uses that water for power generation during on-peak. Owing to water's incompressibility, these projects always seem to be nicely economic.
Scotland's a good candidate for large ones on this order, as are the Pennines. Pumped storage would also be a good way to pay for stabilizing the Thames' flow during the annual spring thaw. Costs as much to clean up every years' flooding as it would be to build one of these in the 200-300 MWe range. UK's already importing electricity from France, so a big subsea cable will work, too.
There's no need for nukes. It's all a bit of a kickback-happy, uneconomic contractors' dream and self-feeding hog trough. Iran will find out the hard way when they get their plants up and running: should have run wire to the Eurogrid.
Walt O'Brien, Binghamton, NY USA
Lovelock writes, "I am a green and I have been one for most of my life...Now that we have made the planet sick, it will not be cured by green remedies such as wind turbines and biofuels." Mr. Lovelock you are most certainly not a green, or you would not be disparagng green remedies while offering no evidence for why they won't help "cure" the planet. Solar power shines on this planet in abundance and can and must be harnessed if we have the will. The insurmountable obstacle of nuclear waste (which Lovelock avoids) nullifies atomic energy as any sort of solution to environmental crises. We have not yet cleaned up Chernobyl and we are supposed to sign on for more of the same?
Michael Hoffman, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho USA
If nuclear is CO2 free, what were the 3 tons of CO2 Hinkley Point nuclear operators admitted they accidentally released into the atmosphere in 2006?
J Brown, Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, UK
When considering the dangers of nuclear energy generation lets consider a couple of positives and negatives. On the positive side by using nuclear power as opposed to fossil fuel we would not contribute to global warming. On the negative side if there was a nuclear accident we would have radiation contamination with the resultant deaths and injuries. How bad would it be? I refer to the two most notable accidents, 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl. What were the results of these accidents? Some thousands of people died or were injured from radiation poisoning. I also assume that as a result of these accidents greater safety was introduced and safer nuclear power plants have been designed. Wind, sun, wave or any other "green' source has no chance whatsoever of filling the void left by the abandonment of fossil fuels. The alternative is to continue burning fossil fuels and killing millions if not billions of people.
Alastair MacGregor, Dubai, UAE
The uncomfortable problems of current and future human population are frequently mentioned but never seriously addressed in climate change theory. We are a plague on the earth and until something is done to limit our growth all other measures are pointless. It is like borrowing more to service an out of control spending spree. How this is to be achieved I cannot easily imagine - I will not be the first volunteer to be euthanised ! For example the Ugandan population is expected to treble in the next 30 years. How are they to be fed, what energy will they require where will the clean water come from in a drying world ? Will somebody please get to grips with the real issues rather than the endless Munich bits of paper approach with its inevitable consequences..
Merv Thompson, Scarborough, Yorks
As a mechanical cost estimator (you call them, I think, quantity surveyors) who has obtained licences for specialty machine shops to work on repairing nuclear facilities' steam turbines, no power generation process, not coal combustion, not gas turbines, and not Diesel or natural-gas-fired reciprocating engines, reject more heat to atmosphere than nuclear reactor complexes: that's what those big gizmos which look like thread spools sitting on their side are for. Thy're called sinusoidal cooling towers, and in them are heat exchangers for dumping excess reactor heat to atmosphere. It's steam coming out the tops of them. They're hot inside, very hot. Cycle efficiencies overall are less than 25%
If over the past fifty years, those towers had vented waste heat to huge greenhouses--which was tried, but for some reason, no one would buy them--for growing tomatoes and whatnot, then an argument could be made for them being a greener option. Instead of carbon, they are rejecting heat directly.
Walt O'Brien, Binghamton, NY, USA
Lest one presume that hydroelectric or pumped storage hydro are a waste of time and energy and tough on the environment, I humbly submit the fact that fully 48% of the USA's water extraction and pumping goes toward the cooling of electrical power generation facilities of all varieties, including nuclear.
I'm also paying a bounty of a Bass Ale each to anyone who brings me the head of any person who pronounces the word "nuclear" as "nukular." Polish Magyars please take note. Nostrovia!!!
Walt O'Brien, Binghamton, NY, USA
Problem: all use of energy results in heat.
The only cure to global warning is to reduce the use of energy. Which likely demands a reduction in world population. Ummmm!
Maybe Iran and Israel will solve the problem - with nuclear winter.
DavidN, Melbourne, Australia
Save the planet? Surely the best way to do that is to exterminate the human race. And the quickest way to do that (in the absence of major epidemics) would appear to be to carry on burning hydrocarbons. Maybe Greenpeace are smarter than they themselves realise....
Ian Kemmish, Biggleswade, UK
Not sure what Steve Moxon is quite trying to say in his rather self-contradictory comment. The Gaia theory is not pseudo-scientific but well accepted and more or less the basis of earth sciences in the 21st century. The risk of destablising Gaia on a massive scale does not disprove Gaia. As Lovelock points out in his books, Gaia has been very sick several times in its couple billion years of life, it does bounce back like someone recovering from a severe illness, but in its own time scale - a time scale that is meaningless to civilization including Mr Moxon's part of Sheffield.
As to nuclear power, it is like taking chemotherapy for a malignancy, lets hope the side-effects of proliferation and waste are not too severe. Lovelock could stress the very good medicine in new wind turbine and photovoltaic technology plus the "Concentrating (mirrors) Solar Power" stations that could power much of the world day and night is sitting there on the shelf - for cost of a gulf war in subsidies.
Peter Parry, Adelaide, Australia
James Lovelock's fears for the future in themselves disprove his pseudo-scientific gaia theory. Humans are part of the biosphere, and if all is self-regulatory then all should be well!
The earth is not self-regulatory: it is constantly losing its core heat, and eventually it will lose it entirely. Yes, ecosystems are to an extent homeostatic, but they can and do break down, and they may interact to cause overall great change in the whole global environment.
The long-term answer is nuclear fusion -- not fission. This may be commercially practicable in 50 years.
steve moxon, sheffield,