Greg Laden: Please bend over while I kick your freakin ass

What does this video have to do with global warming, nuclear energy, or Greg Laden? I'll get to that later and my apologies up front for that title. I adapted it from an old 2007 blog article by Laden titled:

"James Watson:Please bend over while I kick your freakin [80-year-old] ass" [words in brackets are my own and ah, were added for clarity].

...which, admittedly, I found while doing a Google search on the text string: greg laden pompous a**. I was doing that search because Laden had been calling his readers names again in the comment field of his blog at ScienceBlogs.com.

As I mentioned in a previous article, Laden often turns his spot at ScienceBlogs over to a third party (29 times and counting) to dump their collection of lay press news articles about the damaged Fukushima power station. Following is a very recent quote from chemical engineer and (liquid) energy expert, Robert Rapier about the lay press (unrelated to nuclear energy):

Many politicians lie, pander, and promote misinformation to get elected. I have come to the conclusion that many media outlets do the same to sell papers. The casualty in both cases is a citizenry whose views on energy are perpetually distorted, and that leads to a perpetually dysfunctional energy policy.

In general, you can't rely on the lay press for accurate information about anything more complex than sports scores (just ask Arianna Huffington) but apparently Laden hasn't quite figured that out yet.

You also can't rely on the anti-nuclear activists to tell the truth (just ask environmental journalist, George Monbiot):

The unpalatable truth is that the anti-nuclear lobby has misled us all

The double standards of green anti-nuclear opponents

While doing that Google search I also stumbled upon an article by Laden plugging Jim Hansen's book Storms of My Grandchildren. I also read it and learned that Hansen is a huge proponent of using nuclear energy to fight global warming. Here is what Laden said about the book:

James Hansen is probably the world's best known climate scientist, partly because of his own work and his testimony before Congress, and partly because he has become a target of Global Warming denialists who seem to revel in every opportunity to accuse him of fraud, deceit, or incompetence.

...

This is "An Inconvenient Truth" on steroids. The book is well written, well presented, captivating, and depressing. The perfect Christmas gift for your favorite climate geek, or even your favorite denialist!

So ...go figure. The roads to hell are many and well-paved.

Oh, and about the video. After watching it, what would you say the odds are that the majority of American citizens will ever be convinced that global warming is anything more than just another liberal "belief?"

Reducing GHG emissions will only be accomplished as a side effect of eliminating the combustion of organic materials, be they ancient fossil versions or the modern biofuel version. They will not be reduced by convincing the majority of Americans that global warming is real (or by calling proponents of nuclear energy names and cobbling up excuses for banning them from commenting on your blog).

Here are the three comments leading up to the expulsion of that reader:

HP, sorry, your very informative comment was held in moderation until just now.

Looking at your comment and my post, though, I think you failed to answer Andrew's question. I'd love to know what I got wrong so I can fix it. Or are you just going to continue to be a self congratulating undocumented (as in, we really have no idea who you are) obnoxious shit, as usual?

Posted by: Greg Laden Author Profile Page | June 23, 2011 10:21 PM

Self congratulating obnoxious shit ...says the pot to the kettle. Note that Laden is one of the few (if not the only) person at ScienceBlogs to name his blog after himself.

Comment fields are a new phenomenon. It always amuses me to watch male hominids say (from behind the safety of their firewalls) things they would never say to another male hominid sitting within arm's reach on an adjacent bar stool, who might reach over, put you in a head lock and buff a shine on top of your head with their sweater sleeve. Any student of human nature knows what will happen when one upright walking male hominid disses another. The retaliation instinct kicks in:

Greg -

Why does it matter to you who I am? Are you a sucker for Argument From Authority? My comments are scientifically sound, though that may be obnoxious shit for you. Too fucking bad. Defend your arguments against my arguments, not who I am.

I fully answered Andrew's question, but I will provide an analogy for the Landenites.

Suppose I put you in a room with 100 malaria-Laden mosquitos for an hour. Your Exposure is 100 mosquito-hours.

But if only three mosquitos bite you, then your Dose is 3 mosquito-hours.

Exposure is different than dose.

I don't expect too many people reading this blog to understand the difference. Hopefully there is one or two.

Posted by: healthphysicist | June 23, 2011 10:33 PM

Laden closes the trap and gives another critic the boot:

HP: Again, you are being obnoxious. You are abusing the privilege of anonymity by acting in a way no one would (usually, normally) act if we knew your name, but for no good. You're not using your anonymity for an good purpose here. I am not a sucker for argument from authority, but you have made the argument from authority, and have not seen fit to back up what your qualifications are.

I may be wrong about what Andrew was asking, but I think he was asking you not to blather on about exposure and dose, but to point out where in this post it was wrong. Which you have not done.

I don't expect too many people reading this blog to understand the difference. Hopefully there is one or two.

Oh. You just insulted my readers.

Bye.

How noble, protecting his readers in this fashion.

I was once accused by a commenter of not being a PZ Meyers. I was honored that anyone would even compare me to Meyers, who I have tremendous respect for. I often read his blog Pharyngula (note that he did not name his blog after himself). The comments are the best part. Because he is so well-informed, smart and witty, he attracts an army of really well-informed, smart, witty people there. Just last week one of his minions touched my forehead with her noodly appendage at a the Fremont Solstice parade.

Meyers can afford to be cocky. Landen, not so much, particularly when he strays outside of his field of expertise.

Electric Car Purchase Update

Just got an email from Nissan:

Hi Russ, congratulations! Your vehicle is scheduled to arrive at your Nissan Dealer in the month of September 2011.

As your Nissan LEAF™ is being built and shipped, we will continue to update your vehicle's status. So make sure to sign in to "my account" to stay current with your estimated delivery date.

Please be aware that it is normal for delivery dates to fluctuate by a few days as production is finalized. Should your delivery date change by more than two weeks, we will send you an email to notify you of the change.

In an earlier post I was pondering which electric car to buy. I have not heard back from Mitsubishi after plunking down (a refundable) $299 dollars to reserve a place in line.

My neighbor just bought a brand new diesel Jetta wagon. These cars get far better mileage than the American average. Three months from now there may be a Prius, Jetta, and Leaf parked in front of my house representing the most efficient car technology available. The Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid will be missing but not for long I suspect.

The Nuclear Debate Argument

Environmentalists are squaring off over the use of nuclear generated electricity to fight global warming. I recently concluded a "debate" with a guy in the comment field that followed an anti-nuclear article at an environmental website.



In the course of the discussion he called me naive, childish, pathetic, petulant, stupid, weak-minded, a shill, a zealot, a fool, an ideologue, and an intellectually dishonest troll. There is a word for this kind of behavior. From Wikipedia:

A bigot is a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices, especially one exhibiting intolerance, and animosity toward those of differing beliefs.

Note that bigotry can be left wing or right wing, and granted, I did egg him on just a little. Does that make me ...evil? For many, an anti-nuclear stance has become a tribal marker and most were imprinted with it (like the music they prefer) in their youth by others who had in turn been imprinted in their youth.

For this person, nuclear energy is evil and no amount of evidence was going to dissuade him of that fact, which is common and predictable, like trying to persuade a devout Christian or Muslim that they have picked the wrong religion.

But that isn't what debate is about. Debate is about informing an audience. That's why I resist debate one on one, like in an email exchange. It's pointless. There is no audience to be informed and even if you could change your partner's perspective (which is very unlikely), would it be worth all of that time and energy for one person?

About a month ago I was banned from commenting on a Science blog website. I often read ScienceBlogs because they tend to be more accurate and better informed than the general lay press and environmental websites. A few weeks ago I was disappointed to find that one of the writers had turned his blog over to another person to use as a news feed about the damaged Fukushima reactors long after the crisis had been averted and clean up efforts had ensued. It was his opinion that the crisis wasn't over and that the lay press was dropping the ball (after grossly over-sensationalizing it).

That seemed to me to be an inappropriate use of this coveted blog space meant for science writing. I don't know about you, but an anthropologist's opinion on nuclear energy carries little weight with me.

I finally vented my frustration in the comment field (complete with a typo) by pointing attempting to point readers to the Brave New Climate website that is devoted to fighting global warming with help from nuclear energy, but as shown below, the link was deleted:



In addition to the above link I also highly recommend part 2 as well. My comment (sans link) was then followed up with the following comment from the Science Blog writer:



Riiight. You can go here to see the aforementioned about page.

Compare the Brave New Climate articles above to the nuclear power articles written by Laden (an anthropologist) then go read about the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Dirty, Baseload, Centralized, Renewable Energy

Update: This is an older article that I have slightly edited. It wasn't my intent to republish it, so my apologies to anyone who got an alert who read this when it was originally written.

Below I Fisk an article titled How to get to a fully renewable power system. It's largely an anti-nuclear article in sheep's clothing.

Anti-nuclear environmentalists are becoming as much of a stumbling block to low carbon energy as the head-in-the-hole conservatives. They were taught as impressionable adolescents that nuclear energy was evil and they just can't unlearn it. As a father of two, it pisses me off frustrates me that attempts to protect our children from the ravages of a warmed world are being hampered by adolescent imprinting--on two fronts. Predictably I suppose, tribe identity (and the defense of the markers that define your tribe) tends to trump rational thought.

Thanks to the Internet, the old anti-nuclear arguments are in a shambles. It's interesting to watch new ones trying to evolve. The very latest is to claim that the world's power grids don't need baseload power ...plants (or something fuzzy like that).

Admittedly, Dave does a pretty thorough job of laying out what it would take to get a fully renewable power system. First, you have to temporarily increase the number of natural gas power plants (and hope those who invested in them will later give them up peacefully and in a timely manner).

Next, you have to build ...

...the crap out of renewables. The more renewable sources there are on the grid, the wider the geographic area they cover, the more every region has maximized its local, distributed resources, the steadier the total supply is. That's especially true if you ramp up hydro, geothermal, and biomass, i.e., non-intermittent renewables.

...you can shrink the peaks (nerdspeak: "peak leveling") by moving demand around (nerdspeak: "demand response"), either by persuading people to spread their consumption out by charging more during peak hours (nerdspeak: "variable pricing"), or by building appliances that can cut back automatically.

Second -- another species of peak leveling -- there's energy storage. Stored energy is dispatchable: you can send it where you need it when you need it. "Pumpspeicher" on the chart above is pumped storage, which today is one of the few cost-effective, large-scale storage technologies in common use, though others are coming online. There are also batteries, ultracapacitors, compressed air, flywheels, fuel cells, and the distributed storage ...

Oh, and one more thing. You have to get rid of "nukes." As a thought exercise about how to get to all renewable energy it makes sense you would exclude nuclear power simply because it is not renewable (although natural gas isn't renewable either). He dropped the ball (and raised my ire) when he suggested that we should drop nuclear because it is centralized and provides baseload.

But there is nothing inherently wrong with centralized baseload power plants.

So, summing it all up, what he's actually saying in a very roundabout way is that we must stop using nuclear because it will reduce how much renewable energy we will need. If we really knew for sure that we could replace all electricity production with renewables I'd have no quibble. But we don't know that, not by a long shot.

He wants us to dump a known economically feasible zero carbon energy source and bet our children's futures on an untested hypothesis (of unknown cost) that we can keep the lights on coast to coast, rain or shine, day and night by stringing together a Rube Goldberg collection of variable, intermittent and/or non-dispatchable renewable sources without any help from "nukes."

This argument might carry more weight if the overarching priority is to use only renewable energy. But that isn't the overarching priority. Eliminating the burning of fossil fuels is the overarching priority (because they are the main source of green house gases). Renewable may be the ultimate goal but it is not the more immediate one.

The lion's share of renewable energy is either centralized (wind and solar farms, hydro, etc) and/or baseload (hydroelectric, geothermal, biogas, biomass, solar thermal with storage). For example, burning biomass in place of or along with coal is centralized baseload power (that may be partially renewable, but is probably not low carbon and certainly is not clean).

Read the following to see how convoluted the reasoning can get.

So you've got your baseload plants and your peaker plants

Wrong.

From the Wikipedia article on load following:

“…A load following power plant is a power plant that adjusts its power output as demand for electricity fluctuates throughout the day. Load following plants are typically in-between base load and peaking power plants in efficiency, speed of startup and shutdown, construction cost, cost of electricity and capacity factor…”

There are three basic power generation modes: baseload (full throttle all the time), load following (variable output), and peaking (off or on—binary). Some gas fired power plants may turn off some of their turbines instead of all of them to provide a measure of load following as well (throttle back).

One out of three of the main modes of power generation is missing from Dave’s plan to get to “a fully renewable power system.” What are the odds of getting an accurate answer when a third of your input data is missing?

“…Once they're built [“baseload” power plants] they're pretty cheap to operate and you can run them around the clock…”

He got that right.

“…The idea, in a nutshell, is to reduce and eventually eliminate the need for baseload power plants (the big polluters) …”

Wrong.

The goal is to eliminate coal, period. Unlike coal, nuclear baseload power produces no emissions, levels no mountain tops, has no railroad tracks jammed with thousands of carloads of coal, and fills in no river valleys with mine tailings (i.e., coal and nuclear share almost nothing in common other than economics).

Most renewable energy produced today is coming from centralized baseload power sources (hydroelectric, geothermal, biogas, biomass, solar thermal with storage). And although wind and solar photovoltaic farms are not baseload, they most certainly are centralized power plants. Confused? I don’t blame you.

Dave states that we must “eliminate the need for baseload power plants.” However, he acknowledges the need for baseload power when he points out in a chart that “…renewables are providing, in effect, baseload power.”

He appears to be saying that we must eliminate power sources that run continually (baseload) unless they are renewable (hydroelectric, geothermal, biogas, biomass, solar thermal with storage) or made to act like a single baseload power plant by stringing together a conglomeration of intermittent sources with a hypothetical, untested, super smart grid of unknown configuration and cost (HVDC, superconducting, conventional high voltage wire).

There is a propensity for us enviro types to favor distributed energy even though most renewable energy comes from centralized power plants. We don't like the term "power plant" because they are run by the man. But like it or not the man is in charge of solar and wind farms as well. And even though the one main advantage of distributed is that you don't need a gargantuan coast to coast grid, we acknowledge the need for some kind of new coast to coast grid to tie it all together. Contradictory and schizophrenic are two words that come to mind.

In the comment field of the article I'm critiquing you will find those who have not only confused baseload with centralized power but have also been convinced that both are bad, even though wind and solar farms are both examples of centralized power and to ice the cake, both can (as Dave points out in his chart) serve as baseload if enough can be strung together with tens of thousands of miles of power lines.

“…However, they're not well suited to ramping up and down in response to short-term fluctuations. (It takes days to turn a nuke plant off and back on.)…”

Here he suggests to readers that a nuclear plant can only alter power output (“ramping up and down”) by turning off and on. Imagine if cars had only two modes like a rocket ship—full throttle and off.

Nuclear plants can’t be used as peaking power plants like the gas fired variety that often actually do turn on and off. However, some nuclear designs (like those in France) can ramp up and down like your car engine does and are often used for load following.

Although it tends to be more economical to design nuclear power plants for baseload, some designs are capable of load following as well and if there is enough economic incentive to do so (to support renewables for example) they can be designed specifically for that purpose.

“…They [wind and solar] are variable and intermittent, with low capacity factors, so they can't satisfy baseload demand. But the wind and sun are not dispatchable, so they can't reliably satisfy peak demand either…”

The above sentences are accurate once you remove his suggestion that this is false conventional wisdom and that the problem is with the peg board filled with round holes, not the square pegs (wind and solar) you are trying to jam into it.

“…When I was in Germany recently, though, the reaction among folks I talked to was, 'Yes, that is a problem. We are going to solve it!'..."

You would of course get the same reactions here as well depending on how selective you are about who you talk to. There are lots of ways to solve the problem, like burn fossil fuel gas in peaker plants and nuclear in baseload and load following plants to maximize how much wind and solar you can effectively use. And yes, you could also try to string together a gargantuan super grid from sea to shining sea but that isn’t likely to be the highest probability for success.

In a nutshell, Dave is biasing the data to get the result he wants, which is that we don’t need “nukes” as he calls nuclear power plants (a term originally used to denote nuclear weapons, which have nothing to do with nuclear generated electricity).

The conflation of thermonuclear devices with peaceful electricity generation is as manipulative as it is disingenuous. I try to point this out every time I see it no matter how subtle the conflation.

Just last night I watched the documentary Trinity and Beyond (narrated by former Starship captain, William Shatner). It was unsettling to watch the detonation of one thermonuclear weapon after another. The sight of the Russian 57 megaton thermonuclear device going off raised the hair on the back of my neck.

The United States alone detonated over 330 nuclear weapons (submerged in the ocean, buried underground, shot from canons, launched into space, you name it). The realization that all of the nuclear powers were repeatedly releasing all of that radiation into the environment is sobering but at the same time it puts into perspective just how out of perspective the public’s concerns are over radiation from nuclear power plants.

“…In Germany, on the other hand, they get it. That's why they are eschewing nukes and going all out on renewables. They are leading. Remember leading? Seems like America used to do more of it…”

Ironically, Germany also features very prominently in the film Trinity and Beyond. Nuclear weapons were developed as a result of Germany leading the world into the worst conflagration in all of human history.

Maybe this “eschewing of nukes” is a form of subconscious societal guilt relief for the sins of their fathers. Time will tell how successful they will be. Odds are good that they will end up burning more fossil fuels as well as importing more energy (which is actually fine as long as it is low carbon energy). Certainly, George Monbiot sees their solar program as a form of robbing the poor to subsidize the rich.

I also find it ironic that their neighbor, France, gets almost 80 percent of their electricity from nuclear. Such a stark contrast this will be.

Update 5/29/2011: From an article at the Energy Collective:

...none of these scenarios discussed in the previous section would result in any net reduction in carbon emissions, as each would simply see renewables and/or efficiency displace Germany's existing nuclear plants, a zero-carbon energy source, rather than coal or natural gas-fired power plants.

...as Germany contemplates simultaneously phasing out it's nuclear fleet and meeting ambitious goals for carbon reductions, the country is actually poised to dig itself an even deeper hole, as the country is in the process of building 10 coal-fired power plants, which would add 11,311 MW to the country's installed capacity. These plants would emit 69.4Mt of C02 annually, over a quarter of the Germany electricity sector's 2008 total carbon dioxide emissions...

Click here--to see a list of articles and to subscribe to future posts or subscribe by email:

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

Cool Kids use Apple Laptops

I spied a couple of Apple computer ad placements last week. One was in the movie The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (on Netflicks) and the other in a 30 Rock rerun. A few days ago I spotted DotEarth blogger, Andy Revkin with a Mac computer in his lap.

In the first two cases, the video producers were being paid to prominently, yet subtly, display the Apple logo.

Not the case with Andy's display of the logo. It was this marketing that successfully convinced him to pay significantly more for a laptop that not only does not perform any better than any number of its competitors, but also has access to less third party software.

Of course, we are all manipulated in this way to one degree or another every time we buy a car or any appliance for that matter. Is there really any difference between a Chevy and Ford pickup? Suggest that to an F-150 owner and you will be told otherwise in great detail.

Ironically, six minutes into this video of the Wrigley Lecture Series you will find the not-so-subtle original ad for the Macintosh computer.

What do Apple placements have to do with environmental issues? Revkin is shown above attending a seminar about human behavior as it relates to acceptance of climate change. One of the presenters insists that we have to understand how easy it is to manipulate our subconscious and even presents two ads to make his case, all the while Andy is sitting on stage with his Apple logo ablaze.

I'm old enough to remember when the Macs first arrived. As an engineer I had been using personal computers at work to crunch numbers. They required the user to type in commands to tell it what to do. The idea of clicking on icons had not arrived yet.

For example, if you wanted to save a file you had to type in the correct code to tell the computer what you wanted to name your file and where you wanted to store it (C drive, floppy drive, etc). These commands were translated into actions by the disc operating system (DOS), which was originally developed by IBM but was eventually bought by Bill gates and marketed by his company, Microsoft.

A friend of mine bought one of the first Macs because she (to this day and just recently) describes herself as a technophobe. Typing in DOS commands was not her cup of tea. There was no internet, and like most early personal computer owners, she really didn't have a use for it other than as a word processor. However, before they became ubiquitous, owning a personal computer was a status symbol. Having one you could actually operate was icing on the cake.

The early success of the first Macs was based on their ease of use (icons that you could click instead of typing cryptic computer language commands).

When Microsoft copied the icon idea the Mac quickly lost its advantage although the myth that they are easier to operate (even though they no longer are) persists to this day. I know two grandmothers who bought Macs for that reason but later bought PCs after dealing with the myriad problems that crop up from the lack of compatible software.

For a while Macs were being looked upon by many as over-priced computers for retirees and other technophobes still thinking they're easier to use, which was only true for a short time, long ago. Macs had become the PC of choice for dummies the technically challenged.

I could predict pretty accurately who owned Macs by how technically challenged they tended to be. But that's changing fast.

Apple has been working hard to overcome that image by promoting them as status symbols this time around. You can hardly buy a more expensive laptop. Surely you must be getting something for all of that money, and if you haven't noticed, all the cool kids (like Tina Fey) use Macs. Macs are transforming into the PC of choice for the cool kids. Witness the adds where the cool guy (the Mac) makes fun of the nerd (the PC). The nerds are getting the tables turned on them by the cool kids ...as always.

I was recently chatting with a guy who actually programs for a living. I was taken aback when instead of telling me that he's a Unix user and that he wrote his own browser code, he told me that he owns a Mac. This guy was a stereotypical computer nerd--pear-shaped, pony tailed, wearing black t-shirt, pants, socks, and shoes. The shirt even said "I'm not slacking off. My codes compiling." Maybe he was a poseur, or maybe Apple's efforts are paying off.

We are wired to want to be like the cool kids, and marketers know it.



Update: Recently ran into this one while watching Kick-Ass on Netflicks. Maybe Apple placements have become a fad among film makers?

Update: Read this well-written blog article on the passing of Steve Jobs:

It’s not worth getting all hot under the collar about how closed down and un-hackable modern Apple hardware is, but it is worth noting those attributes: they’re simply a consequence of the purpose of modern Apple hardware, which is not for you to learn how electronics work or learn how to write programs or come up with interesting new ways of doing things (or even interesting new things), but simply for you to play around. They’re toys. No-one ever got hot under the collar because their Barbie Doll wasn’t fully user-serviceable; it’s a toy. If you want a toy, by all means, buy one. If you don’t want a toy, buy something else. (Again, Apple computers are still quite usable as computers, and I understand those who find Apple computers meet their practical computing needs, but throughout Apple Phase 2, they’ve only ever gone in a more toy-like direction, never back the other way.)

Click here--to see a list of articles and to subscribe to future posts or subscribe by email:

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner