From the Daily Skeptic
Author: David Trevor
Over the weekend I attended the War of Ideas festival in London. It's a fascinating event with interesting debates around a variety of topics including free speech, culture wars, economics, education and women's freedom.
I was there mainly for the energy discussion. Unfortunately, I missed Saturday's book launch on nuclear power, but I did attend two energy debates on Sunday in the Science Dilemmas section.
First up was a lunchtime debate entitled ‘Is nuclear the future of energy again?’ Unfortunately the speaker who was supposed to speak on behalf of the post was unable to attend due to transport issues. I don't know the name of the man who replaced her, but considering he was drafted at the last minute, he certainly made a valiant effort. Alba Party policy development officer Robert Reid, who is mourning the late Alec Salmond, opposes the idea of a nuclear resurgence. We can therefore be forgiven to some extent for proposing the platitude that offshore wind is cheap: £41 per megawatt hour, he claims, without citing any source. Of course, existing CfD-funded offshore wind farms have cost over £150/MWh so far this financial year, while new AR6-awarded projects will cost us over £82/MWh at today’s prices Watt hour, and the new projects awarded by AR6 would cost us more than £82/MWh at today's prices, more than double what Robert claimed. Emma Bateman, an environmental activist and founding member of Together Against Sizewell C, unsurprisingly opposes the idea of nuclear power and has raised concerns about safety Made false claims that if nuclear power were a person it would have resulted in defamation lawyers being summoned on Monday. The gist of her substantive argument is that nuclear power is too expensive and takes too long, so we should invest more in wind and solar.
In the ensuing debate I managed to correct Robert Reed's “facts” and stated that if your primary concern is the environment, then you should be an advocate of nuclear power as it has the smallest overall environmental impact of all energy sources footprint because it doesn't take up much land and the mineral intensity is very low. I also made a point about the chocolate teapot fallacy. Arguing about wind and solar replacing nuclear power is like arguing about a chocolate teapot because you can't wait for a ceramic teapot. No matter how many chocolate teapots you buy, you can't make tea; just like no matter how many wind turbines and solar panels you install, you can't run a modern economy on intermittent electricity.
The physics of nuclear power are far superior to any other energy source because its energy return on investment is extremely high, meaning we get far more energy than it takes to build a power plant, and the output is reliable. There are even designs already on the drawing board and beginning construction that would allow nuclear power plants to track fluctuations in demand. The obstacles to nuclear power are all political: Western countries overregulate nuclear power, so it's no wonder it takes so long because of all the paperwork that must be completed before a new reactor can be built. We can solve man-made political and regulatory problems, but mortals can’t change the faulty physics of intermittent renewable energy any more than you can make tea in a chocolate teapot.
It would be much better if we committed to a major nuclear power program so that we could provide reliable electricity. If we amend regulations, invest in rebuilding our skills base and supply chains, and choose the right reactor design, we can even achieve cheap, reliable energy with minimal environmental impact. That's what France did in the 1970s and 1980s, and now they get about 70% of their electricity from nuclear energy.
The topic of the next debate is “British Energy Crisis”. Encouragingly, three of the five panelists are subscribers to this substack (you know who you are, thank you). Two of the speakers, James Woudhuysen and Lord David Frost, both launched eloquent attacks on net zero and its consequences. Professor Michaela Kendall, UK Hydrogen Innovation Mission Champion, said we need more facts to inform the energy debate but managed to sidestep the fact that the green hydrogen contract price agreed by the government was £241/MWh, around seven times UK gas currently costs more than five times as much as US gas.
Dr Shahlal Ali is a former spokesman for the Green Party, who recently won a discrimination case in court against the party after it fired him because of his gender-critical beliefs. It is a pity that Dr Ali was unable to apply his critical thinking skills to net zero. The gist of his argument is that the world is warming, it's going to be a disaster, it's all our fault, so build more windmills.
In the ensuing debate, I successfully rebuked him by pointing out that even if you believe CO2 leads to warming, it's a big leap to conclude that building windmills will change the weather. This is a so-called mitigation strategy and will only work if the following conditions are met: 1) CO2 is the only climate control knob (which we know from paleoclimate records is untrue), 2) everyone else follows this strategy (you only have to look at a chart of global greenhouse gas emissions to see that this is also untrue). A better strategy is adaptation, which has the advantage of being cheaper and working regardless of the behavior of others and regardless of the causes of global warming. The mitigation strategy we are pursuing is one-sided economic impoverishment, and the net-zero “cure” is far worse than the so-called climate change “disease”.
Encouragingly, my remarks were met with rapturous applause, a testament to the growing public skepticism about net zero emissions. It seems to me that there are cracks in the comfortable green consensus at Westminster and if we get our arguments right we can win this debate.
All in all, War of Ideas was a very enjoyable event and I highly recommend everyone attend next year, whatever your beliefs. Only through free and open debate can we know the truth.
Written by David Turver own values Substack, where this article first appeared.
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