You cite the IPCC quite often.
Your main point in the past has been drawn from
one paragraph in the 4th IPCC report:
Given costs relative to other supply options, nuclear power, which accounted for 16% of the electricity supply in 2005, can have an 18% share of the total electricity supply in 2030 at carbon prices up to 50 US$/tCO2-eq, but safety, weapons proliferation and waste remain as constraints.
You seem to only see
"nuclear power ... 16% ... in 2005 ... 18% ... in 2030". That may be an unfair amount of redaction on my part, but you wrote
"Here's some science for you: the IPCC has concluded that global warming will be solved primarily through efficiency and renewables, that nuclear won't be much more of a percentage than it is now." Here is the part you
forgot: "at carbon prices up to 50 US$/tCO2-eq". Or simply, "below fifty bucks a ton".
Since you are intent on schooling me in science, perhaps you can explain to me what happens when the price of carbon dioxide increases
over fifty bucks a ton. It's under $12/tCO2-eq now, and it has doubled in price in the last two years (and see below).
Why, at that rate, in 2030, carbon will be trading at $24,000 per ton, not fifty. As if!
And why are they projecting such meager growth for nuclear energy in the same context they project vigorous growth for other low-carbon technologies? It's an
economic model, not a
political one, and it's primary independent variable appears to be the price of carbon, not the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. I have yet to find the reasoning in the main body of the report, but I will post what I find.
Commoditizing and trading in carbon -- "carbon credits" in its most popularly-acceptable form -- has been widely criticized as a scam.
The IPCC report depends on commodity carbon trading as its econometric foundation. All of the economic reasoning in the report is rationalized in the context of a carbon commodity market. Although most of the criticism of the report has been aimed at their climate change models, their economic models are the ones that are the least persuasive, whether they concern nuclear energy or not.
Establishing carbon markets in anticipation of public panic is a financially "wise" decision. After the first few climate disasters, the price of commodity carbon will skyrocket in response to sudden governmental and treaty restrictions. And the "green" entrepreneurs --
Mitsubishi,
GE,
Toko,
Mitsui,
Royal Dutch Shell -- will clean up! Buy it low (<$12/t) and sell it high (>$500/t).
Cheneyan genius!
But let's move on.
Here is what you characterize as
"global warming will be solved":
In 2030 macro-economic costs for multi-gas mitigation, consistent with emissions trajectories toward stabilization between 445 and 710 ppm CO2-eq, are estimated at between a 3% decrease of global GDP and a small increase, compared to the baseline (see Table SPM.4).
The oft-discussed climate "tipping point" has been cited at around 500 ppm CO2. Above that point, we have to go back to the Miocene (55 MYA) to find comparable numbers.
I will also assume that the IPCC authors mean that there will be a 3% decrease in global GDP
relative to projected growth. Their term "the baseline" is ambiguous in this context. Otherwise, they are saying that economic growth will come to an inglorious end and plunge the world into a global superdepression in the next 23 years.
Even that is still not encouraging. Solving global warming (in your words) is going to be expensive and not real effective. And we're still on target for twice the greenhouse gas. "Global warming will be solved" this way -- not.
That's for a plan that the IPCC thinks is realistic, and will hold construction of those dreaded nuclear demonboxes to 18% overall, which is still a greater-than-doubling in total numbers by 2030, requiring a construction program bringing a new nuclear reactor online every 17 days. (Assuming about 500 reactors over 23 years.)
I appreciate the work of the IPCC, too, but there is only so much they could do. Their policy recommendations are tepid, arbitrary, and certainly skewed by politics. Nuclear development figures only fractionally into that weakness. That's the heartbreak of the UN -- it just can't win for losing. It is the voice of reason and principled debate, but a paragon of scientific authority it ain't. We should be thrilled that they hit a home run with the greenhouse gas assessments. But the policy implications are up to the rest of us.
And
none of this has a thing to do with the tobacco lobby, GW1 baby-killer propaganda stories, or the administration's lies. Your assertions sound more like opposition to vaccination than opposition to smoking. So you'd better start praying that Al Gore makes a big anti-nuclear speech soon.
--p!