Climate change gets worse

by Tom Maertens

After recent record high temperatures, unprecedented wildfires, and multiple “1,000-year floods” in Europe and the U.S., the Guardian headline (July 30) seems less surprising: “Total climate meltdown cannot be stopped.”

The source is emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, Bill McGuire, in his new book, Hothouse Earth. He believes we have passed the point of no return and can expect a future of intense summer heat, extreme drought, devastating floods, reduced crop yields, rapidly melting ice sheets, and surging sea levels; scientists are currently forecasting U.S. sea levels could rise a foot by 2050 (Wall Street Journal).

The Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius showed already in the 1890s that burning fossil fuels would lead to a warmer planet.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is wrestling with “the worst energy crisis in nearly five decades” (Wall Street Journal). This followed more than a decade of cheap, abundant energy created by fracking (extracting oil and gas from shale), during which the U.S. became the world’s largest producer of oil and gas.

The consequences of the fracking boom, however, which The New York Times labeled a “money-losing boondoggle” propped up by a continuing investment of hundreds of billions from Wall Street, slowed the transition to green energy; from 2010 to 2020, the U.S. shale industry lost $300 billion, it reported.

Solar energy nonetheless grew 23-fold and wind energy nearly tripled from 2011 to 2020, according to the Environment America Research and Policy Center. Between 2010 and 2020, the cost of solar power fell 90 percent, and the cost of wind and battery power fell nearly as much. The International Energy Agency has declared solar photovoltaic power “the cheapest electricity in history.”

The Inflation Reduction Act Congress just passed will accelerate the transition to green energy and cause prices of fossil fuels to fall.

Some people believe that renewables are unreliable. Amory Lovins debunked those claims, noting in “Yale Environment 360” that the expansion of renewables and new methods of energy management and storage can lead to a grid that is reliable and clean.

In addition, he pointed out the reality that all power plants have down time, including nuclear plants: “Every French nuclear plant was, on average, shut down for 96.2 days in 2019 due to “planned” or “forced unavailability.” That rose to 115.5 days in 2020, when French nuclear plants generated less than 65 percent of their nominal capacity.

Despite that, renewables still account for only 12 percent of energy consumption in the United States, compared with 32 percent for natural gas and 36 percent for petroleum.

There is another problem with fossil fuels. According to the Harvard School of Public Health, air pollution from fossil fuels is responsible for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine complicates the energy problem; Putin responded to western sanctions by reducing gas shipments to Europe. The U.S. then doubled its shipments of LNG to Europe, but winter is approaching and European consumption will increase.

There are other consequences of global warming: the World Bank predicts that by 2050, over 140 million “climate migrants” will likely flee Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Any guesses as to where they will be heading?

Some think that “non-polluting” nuclear power is the answer. The problem is disposing of the high-level radioactive waste contained in spent fuel assemblies which produces fatal radiation doses (exceeding 10,000 rem/hour) during even brief direct exposure; that’s far greater than the fatal whole-body dose for humans of about 500 rem received all at once.

Spent nuclear fuel remains a radiation hazard for thousands of years.

As the Nuclear Regulatory Commission noted, “At this time there are no facilities for permanent disposal of high-level waste.” The Department of Energy spent many billion dollars on developing the Yucca Mountain waste repository in Nevada, but political opposition and technical considerations killed it.

Paul Dorfman, founder of the Nuclear Consulting Group — 120 experts in radiation waste, nuclear policy and environmental risk — has said “there is no scientifically proven way of disposing of the existential problem of high- and intermediate-level waste.”

Spent fuel can be reprocessed to remove the usable nuclear material and recycle it, but that is expensive and produces more waste. It also produces more weapons grade plutonium that increases the world risk. Several countries nonetheless reprocess spent fuel; the U.S. does not.

There are other dangers of nuclear power, as the accidents at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima Daiichi demonstrated. Scientists estimate that the area around Chernobyl will be uninhabitable for 20,000 years.

Tom Maertens coordinated U.S. nuclear policy in the White House under two presidents.