Climate Transition, Fossil Fuels and Nuclear (Stephan Savarese)

Climate Transition Stephan Savarese June 14, 2017 Whatever the reasons for climate change, it's here and it's big. I name it Climate Transition because Climate Change has become a political issue. I prefer to focus on the scientific, objective aspects of a Climate Transition and its consequences in terms of the driving engines of our civilization: demography, energy, security & freedom, social & economic progress.

Showing pictures of isolated cold episodes in narrow regions of the world is picturesque, but cannot change the accurate, revised, precise statistics, which show that global warming has accelerated (at least) fourfold within the past fifty years, at a rate surprisingly fast and chaotic. As a consequence, ocean level rise, which had stabilized over the past five millennia at 1 mm/year, is on the verge of crossing the 5 mm/year mark, due to accelerated sea water thermal expansion, plus continental glacier and inlands is melting. This global trend cannot be denied just because we had seasonable temperatures last may in northern Europe. And we've just beaten century-old heat records during the first weekend of June, so what would that prove ?

What is going on at the global level ?

We have just crossed a threshold last year, which is the +1°C heating mark worldwide, see https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/. This means that monthly temperature averages have been consistently +1 to +2°C higher than the monthly 1880-1980, 100year average. This global warming rate is unprecedented in the past 100,000 years, the last known fast global warming episode having happened during the Remain circa 130,000 BPD. The main cause at that time was astronomical, but astronomical parameters show that we should still be in a relatively stable interglacial cycle for the next 20,000 years, with a slight cooling trend, but nowhere near a new glaciation for the next 50,000 years (and maybe much longer, the next true glaciation era occurring around year 150,000). So, we need to keep as much fossil fuel for then, not burn it all now.

In fact, recent studies have shown that human activity is a plausible cause of natural warming amplification and natural cooling reversal since we developed agriculture and burned sizeable areas of natural forests. So AGW started not in the 1850s, but several thousand years ago. This warming amplification probably cost us the loss of coastal cities and densely populated neighborhoods, like Alexandria or the Rhine estuary in the Netherlands.

But now, AGW is threatening almost all coastal areas, because just a few extra centimeters of sea level rise amplifies local erosion rates in a non-linear way.

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Naming that a scam, denying the observed facts, may be reassuring. It won't save coastal cities. We need to adapt, and if scientific evidence continues to mount as it does, dramatically reduce GHG emissions, including fossil energy usage, as fast as possible. In fact, stopping coal power plants within 20 years is almost impossible. But there are several reasons to do so: 1. It is the most GHG-emitting form of energy (50-80% more CO2 per unit energy output than gas or oil power plants) 2. Particle emissions from coal power plants is responsible for 400 deaths by respiratory disease per year 3. All accidents included, coal power plants kill twice more people than other fossil fuel power plants and 40 times more than nuclear power.

Why should we act?

This deserves some thought, not just dismissal because CAGW remains hypothetic.

CAGW would kick in if large continental ice sheets were destabilized by ice shelf dislocation, which is indeed occurring now everywhere in the Arctic and Antarctic, when it was supposed to take centuries to initiate. But we do not yet know whether the observed phenomena are the premises of still hypothetic CAGW. However, the CAGW hypothesis cannot be ruled out, since observed phenomena are consistent with a premature onset of CAGW. The fact that it's faster than anticipated just shows that climate models are conservative, not the other way around! There is nothing to celebrate here. Calling "alarmists" people alerting that the premises of CAGW are indeed observed in the field is simply not helpful. It hides the fact that climate science has been conservative and that models had to be revised in order to account for real-time field observations which cannot be explained by models which consider CAGW as impossible.

Not preparing for the worst is never a best option: if civilization were your own business, wouldn't you buy insurance for a flood or fire, even though it is higly unlikely that such events would occur at your office, because you are a conscious, professional business and office owner? Would you not buy, install and maintain warning sensors and firefight equipment? Would you deem fire squads as too expensive or pointless? Would you blame fire victims as bad landlords or neglectful renters?

No, ignoring field measurements from countless science missions, satellite measurements and scientific data processing will shelter no one from the facts that early signals of CAGW have been observed and are being ignored. Let alone some messages in this email thread, which is symptomatic of science denial as it has spread now to the entire USA and other countries. Questioning science models and analysis is a safe reaction. Denying the facts is just a waste of time, money and ultimately human lives.

How can we act?

Adaptation is going to be costly. The problem is that there is no realistic adaptation plan beyond 2°C of global warming. So mitigation under 2°C warning is an obligation. Please Page 2

remember that we just crossed the +1°C mark. This shows how little time is left to mitigate the Climate Transition to levels and rates that the global economy can adapt to.

In fact, to keep global temperature from increasing beyond the estimated +1.5-2°C safe range, we would need to decrease GHG emissions by 5 to 7% per year starting next year, see attached picture. Assuming that coal power plants might be phased out within 20 years, that would make it almost impossible to stop conventional forms of fossil energy (nor industrial use of coal), something which should be considered as an asset by the oil and gas industry.

So the choice is not between stopping fossil fuels or going on with the fossil fuel industry. It's not even about stopping coal at all. It's about just replacing coal power plants with low-GHG power plants.

And here is China's response: turning CPPs into NPPs https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/239588-starting-2018-china-will-beginturning-coal-plants-nuclear-reactors The last argument, is that NPPs have economical problems, not because new power plants are too expensive to build, but because of the low price of coal and shale gas. even though GEN III and GEN IV new builds have had their share of industrial problems, some models (from KEPCO and EDF) are now ready to start production at reasonable costs (about 60-80 USD per MWh). Phasing out coal power plants and low-EROEI unconventional oil & gas would solve the problem within months, thereby restoring economic profitability of conventional oil & gas and nuclear power.

This is a low price to pay to stay on the safe side of the Climate Transition and provide our children and grandchildren with safer, cleaner and more resilient nuclear reactors.

CPP = Coal Power Plant NPP = Nuclear Power Plant CAGW = Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming AGW = Anthropogenic Global Warming

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