George Carty said:

Do you think that a lot of the people who are hyping the “green jobs” that renewable energy will supposedly bring are the same people who earlier supported coal in order to protect the jobs of miners, but who were forced to change tack because of fears about man-made global warming?

I think there is a significant intersection of the two sets. The Social Democratic Party is to mention here, who have been the traditional party of the coal miners.

Best regards, Daddeldu

Do you think that a lot of the people who are hyping the “green jobs” that renewable energy will supposedly bring are the same people who earlier supported coal in order to protect the jobs of miners, but who were forced to change tack because of fears about man-made global warming?

        Daddeldu said:

I more and more subscribe to the Rod Adams-thesis, that the whole antinuclear movement was discretely started by the fossil fuel industry in its very own economic interest. First in the US, then in Europe, with particularly great success in Germany. (Any and every US debate is repeated here anyway.)

Not quite the same thing – Rod Adams thinks nuclear power in the United States has been suppressed because oil companies and private coal owners have bribed politicians to restrict nuclear energy.

In Germany (and Britain) any such bribery would have to be on the part of unions not capitalists, because the coal mines required subsidies to stay in business — in Britain they were actually owned by the state. It’s more likely in my view that nuclear power was opposed not by corrupt politicians but by left-wing activists, who revered coal miners (because of their historic role as the spearhead of the labour movement) and didn’t want to see them thrown on the dole.

That’s Luddism in the true sense of the word — people opposing a new technology which threatens their jobs, as opposed to people who are just hostile to technology period.

        Daddeldu said:

I more and more subscribe to the Rod Adams-thesis, that the whole antinuclear movement was discretely started by the fossil fuel industry in its very own economic interest. First in the US, then in Europe, with particularly great success in Germany. (Any and every US debate is repeated here anyway.)

For further reading: http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/search/label/smoking%20gun

Grüße, Daddeldu

But of course. Just look at the countries with a big coal sector and you will also see the countries with the most active antinuclear movements. The correspondence is one-to-one.

        kalahari said:

The green movement in Germany and the party “Die Grünen” are a child of the anti nuclear power movement of the 1970ies and 1980ies.
At that time the government and the industry tried to create facts before a political discussion could happen. That misfired badly and gave birth to the anti nuclear power movement

That’s nonsense. Nuclear development began in Germany with the ‘Atoms for peace’-program, so in the late 1950s. From Wikpedia (sorry folks, I won’t translate it, it is about the first German reactors):

In Deutschland wurde 1957 mit dem Forschungsreaktor München in Garching der erste Forschungsreaktor in Betrieb genommen. 1961 folgte auf der Gemarkung der Gemeinde Karlstein am Main als erstes deutsches Kernkraftwerk das Kernkraftwerk Kahl mit einer Leistung von 15 MW.

In den 1960er Jahren wurden zahlreiche weitere Kernkraftwerke gebaut, wobei deren Leistung deutlich erhöht wurde. So hatte das Kernkraftwerk Gundremmingen, welches 1966 in Betrieb ging, eine Leistung von 250 MW. 1968 wurde der Erzfrachter „Otto Hahn“ als nuklear betriebenes Forschungsfrachtschiff in Betrieb genommen; nach dem Ende des nuklearen Betriebs 1979 wurde der Frachter wieder auf Dieselantrieb umgerüstet.

In den 1970er Jahren wurde insbesondere nach der ersten Ölkrise 1973 der Bau von Kernkraftwerken forciert. Die Leistung dieser Kraftwerke, wie etwa des Blocks B des Kernkraftwerks Biblis, lag bei 1,3 GW. Mit dem Protest der Anti-Atomkraft-Bewegung gegen den Bau des Kernkraftwerks Wyhl 1975 in Deutschland entstand eine größere Opposition gegen die zivile Nutzung der Kernenergie.

So the political discussion could have taken place since 1957, but started in 1975, 18 years later. There was enough time and room and opportunity to start a debate. In fact, until that time people where were widely enthusiastic about nuclear power.

I more and more subscribe to the Rod Adams-thesis, that the whole antinuclear movement was discretely started by the fossil fuel industry in its very own economic interest. First in the US, then in Europe, with particularly great success in Germany. (Any and every US debate is repeated here anyway.)

For further reading: http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/search/label/smoking%20gun

Grüße, Daddeldu

        kalahari said:

The second base assumption (of the green movement), which seems to go especially bad with a lot of Americans is, that
a) resources are limited.
b) when resources are limited it is a good idea, to use up these resources as slow as possible.
c) to have energy last longer, it is a good idea, to make energy more expensive over time, to encourage
d) reduce energy usage with better engineering / isolation / …
e) each person to use less energy over time, as they can not afford it any more.

Regards

You can’t use less energy than a subsistence farmer – do you think the Morgenthau Plan would have been a good thing for Germany?

The green movement in Germany and the party “Die Grünen” are a child of the anti nuclear power movement of the 1970ies and 1980ies.
At that time the government and the industry tried to create facts before a political discussion could happen. That misfired badly and gave birth to the anti nuclear power movement, which was a conglomeration of lots of different political groups whose only common ground was to be anti nuclear. This movement couldn’t stay together because of difference of opinion, but a major core was left, which formed the green movement in Germany. So they can’t become pro nuclear, because that would go against their base assumptions.

The second base assumption (of the green movement), which seems to go especially bad with a lot of Americans is, that
a) resources are limited.
b) when resources are limited it is a good idea, to use up these resources as slow as possible.
c) to have energy last longer, it is a good idea, to make energy more expensive over time, to encourage
d) reduce energy usage with better engineering / isolation / …
e) each person to use less energy over time, as they can not afford it any more.

Regards

        An Informed Person said:

I have an enviornmental ethics professor who has always said that Germany is the prime example of what good enviornmental policy is and has said that it is embarrassing that we do not keep up with them.

Your professor is misinformed, and I would say that so are you, despite the title you have chosen for yourself.

Of course I brought this to his attention and he told me that this is not correct.

Of course he did. What did you expect him to do? Just keel over and say “Oops, guess I was wrong”? There is a alot of prestige and pride involved in these matters.

He said that they are only using coal until they can get enough wind turbines and solar panels up to stop, which will be in a few years. He said they already shut down nuclear and when that is done they’ll work on shutting down coal and going 100% renewable most of the time.

This statement is not connected to any kind of reality as we know it. Let me show you why. This is the energy production of Germany:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electricity_production_in_Germany.PNG

The energy consumption is as follows: Germany is one of the largest consumers of energy in the world. In 2008, it consumed energy from the following sources: oil (34.8%), coal including lignite (24.2%), natural gas (22.1%), nuclear (11.6%), renewables (1.6%), and other (5.8%).

Quoted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany

Not only that… but the relatively small amount of windpower there is is already starting to muck up the power grids… as demonstrated by this article.

He said that wind is alaways blowing somewhere but on unusual occasions there might be too much still air to power everything and so coal power is only as last chance backup that they will use only a few times a year, but it is backup power.

That is hogwash. Wind fluctuates very much. Depending on the migration of pressure areas, you can get virtual standstills in the entire country. And using coal for backup is just plain silly. Why? Because coal is about 100 times as dirty as nuclear power and wind power. Which means that if you have to use coal as little as one day out of a hundred, you will already have lost the advantage of wind. And wind goes down alot more than that.

He also said that they know coal is bad for the enviornment so all the new coal plants will replace their carbon back into the ground.

Carbon dioxide… not carbon. A gas. And you think that just shoving gas right into the ground will make it stay there forever?

Not perfect now, but in a few years it will be all wind and solar 95% of the time and coal only every once in a while.

That statement has absolutely no truth behind it. I cannot even begin do describe out laughable it is. Germany is currently getting less than 1/20 of their energy from renewables and already the grids cannot take it. Saying that wind and sun can provide 99% of the time is utterly ludicrous because sun, as we know, shines only 50% of the time, at best, and wind is fell known to fluctuate with variations of up to 3000%.

Also nuclear he said is the worst kind of power because even coal polution eventually gets taken up by trees, but nuclear waste is forever.

Wrong… that is just plain opposite of reality. Coal ash has no half-life. Ash dumps are toxic and contains pollutants and heavy metals. There are enormous volumes of it produced each year. Huge dumps of ash that lasts forever. Did you know for instance that the uranium content in coal is such that coal plants account for a much higher release of uranium into the environment than does nuclear power?

Nuclear waste on the other hand has a half-life and decays into harmlessness. The volumes of nuclear waste are incredibly small in comparison to coal. An amount of uranium that is equivalent in volume of 7 lumps of sugar in a BWR/PWR reactor has enough energy to last you your lifetime. With a closed fuel-cycle and modern reactors, the equivalent volume is one half lump of sugar. and with modern reactors, the storage time needed until teh waste is completely harmless is a measly 500 years.

You can’t get the permission of the next thousadn generations to trash their planet with deadly waste so you can’t impose it on them.

Yes you can…. since mother nature has already demonstrated that deep geological repositories are perfectly safe. The Swedish KBS-3 method is up for review next year. It builds on the methods that nature itself has used for billions of years to contain nuclear materials.

All in all… your professor in “environmental ethics” is talking out of his ass because his arguments have no founding in reality. He is wrong. He is feeding you false information.

        An Informed Person said:

I have an enviornmental ethics professor who has always said that Germany is the prime example of what good enviornmental policy is and has said that it is embarrassing that we do not keep up with them.

He wrote a big article in a magazine about how Germany got it right and we need to start to follow them.

Of course I brought this to his attention and he told me that this is not correct.

He said that they are only using coal until they can get enough wind turbines and solar panels up to stop, which will be in a few years. He said they already shut down nuclear and when that is done they’ll work on shutting down coal and going 100% renewable most of the time.

That is why he said there are coal plants to last a long time, because they may need them sometimes but not most of the time.

He said that wind is alaways blowing somewhere but on unusual occasions there might be too much still air to power everything and so coal power is only as last chance backup that they will use only a few times a year, but it is backup power.

He also said that they know coal is bad for the enviornment so all the new coal plants will replace their carbon back into the ground.

So that is how Germany is working to do it. Not perfect now, but in a few years it will be all wind and solar 95% of the time and coal only every once in a while.

Also nuclear he said is the worst kind of power because even coal polution eventually gets taken up by trees, but nuclear waste is forever.

You can’t get the permission of the next thousadn generations to trash their planet with deadly waste so you can’t impose it on them.

Your ‘Environmental Ethics’ professor is either a liar, or a complete idiot. Probably, he’s a bit of both.

Germany is the premier example of awful environmental policy, phasing out clean, carbon-free energy plants and encouraging people to invest in useless low-grade power sources while building a huge coal-burning infrastructure which is intended to be used for centuries to come.

Does your idiotic, mendacious professor know any physics at all, or did he study up on ‘environmental ethics’ to obtain tenure? Which unfortunate institution is blighted by his presence?

Of course I brought this to his attention and he told me that this is not correct. He said that they are only using coal until they can get enough wind turbines and solar panels up to stop, which will be in a few years. He said they already shut down nuclear and when that is done they’ll work on shutting down coal and going 100% renewable most of the time.

That is why he said there are coal plants to last a long time, because they may need them sometimes but not most of the time. He said that wind is alaways blowing somewhere but on unusual occasions there might be too much still air to power everything and so coal power is only as last chance backup that they will use only a few times a year, but it is backup power.

He also said that they know coal is bad for the enviornment so all the new coal plants will replace their carbon back into the ground.

So that is how Germany is working to do it. Not perfect now, but in a few years it will be all wind and solar 95% of the time and coal only every once in a while.

Also nuclear he said is the worst kind of power because even coal polution eventually gets taken up by trees, but nuclear waste is forever. You can’t get the permission of the next thousadn generations to trash their planet with deadly waste so you can’t impose it on them.