I am forever flabbergasted by those who think we can remove Saddam Hussein and replace him with a morally-neutral inoffensive grey-colored nothing. Judging the removal of Saddam on only his actions is moronic; the cost of removal and what/who replaces him never seems to enter these minds at all.
Early last century there was a Russian tyrant that was removed; there were even elections afterwards. Was this a good thing?
Currently re-reading Winning the Oil Endgame by Lovins et al. (in paper this time.)
From which I discovered this quote:
"One reason we use energy so lavishly today is that the price of energy does not include all the social costs of producing it. The costs incurred in protecting the environment and the health and safety of workers, for example, are part of the real costs of producing energy—but they are not now all included in the price of the product."
R. M. Nixon to Congress, June 1971
Last fiction I read was re-reading The Dragon Society by Lawrence Watt-Evans
With apologies to Patrick and Rivka, I am going to reply to David Bell here (when was the last open thread?)
Actually, if you have a community where power generation about equals demand the cheapest way to provide power for growth is energy efficiency, not any method of power generation. The recent Economist has an article on green buildings and points out a office tower using 1/2 the electricity of a normal tower; they also point out that the payback time for the additional cost was ~2 years. (A NY project RMI was involved with was the Condé Nast building at 4 Times Square.)
(The three "sources" RMI believes are cheaper than Nuclear are: wind, gas co-/tri-generation and energy efficiency)
An example of gas tri-generation:
Caltech's Central Plant. They use gas turbines to generate electricity for the campus, they also use the waste heat to produce steam (for heating and hot water) and to produce chilled water (for air conditioning and lab use). Somewhere in there they also produce deionized water - but I forget exactly how.
The key is that while the small turbines are less efficient in making electricity, by using the waste heat (as opposed to dumping it, as is the case for most large power plants) you do better financially.
Patrick N H wrote:
"Well, I myself have a hard time seeing a path out of the current tangle of energy-supply and climate-change problems that doesn't involve some use of nuclear power."
I disagree - but that is probably since much of my energy thoughts have been influenced by the Rocky Mountain Institute. RMI has a page on Nuclear Power which boils down to: Nuclear is too expensive; there are cheaper ways of reaching the same goals.
Other work they have done is summarize in several books:
Natural Capitalism
Small is Profitable (about the electrical system)
Winning the Oil Endgame (avail in PDF, free) (about oil independence)
RMI also helped set up the
National Energy Policy Initiative. "NEP Initiative is a non-governmental, non-partisan, foundation-funded project designed to support the development of a stakeholder-based national energy policy."
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