…. and you’ll see a picture of Japan Steel Works Ltd — “the only plant in the world … capable of producing the central part of a nuclear reactor’s containment vessel in a single piece, reducing the risk of a radiation leak.”

The bottleneck: In a single year, they can currently only make “four of the steel forgings that contain the radioactivity in a nuclear reactor.” They may double capacity over the next two years, but that won’t allow the huge ramp up in nuclear power that some are projecting for the industry.

Given Japan Steel’s limited capacity, the math just doesn’t work, said Mycle Schneider, an independent nuclear industry consultant near Paris. Japan Steel caters to all nuclear reactor makers except in Russia, which makes its own heavy forgings.

“I find it just amazing that so many people jumped on the bandwagon of this renaissance without ever looking at the industrial side of it,” Schneider said.

At the same time, that capacity increase represents a gamble that the nuclear renaissance is here to stay, even in the face of a US recession, safety concerns, and a historically volatile industry.

Bloomberg has a very thorough article on the company, its potential competition, and “the precision and patience required to fashion a 600-ton steel ingot into a tube with walls 30 centimeters (12 inches) thick”:

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Seriously! In a post ironically titled “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” (actually you can — that’s what most deniers do), Roger Pielke, Jr. responds to my last post (that challenged his absurd defense of the “Earth is cooling” nonsense) as follows:

And people wonder why some people see the more enthusiastic climate advocates akin to religious zealots.

Who are these “some people” Pielke cites? Go to his link — why, “some people” is none other than NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who became famous in the climate arena for saying:

To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change. First of all, I don’t think it’s within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown. And second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.

That would seem to be “making it up” for the head of NASA, and it put Griffin square in the middle of the denier camp and makes him a major delayer. As I blogged at the time:

So it is arrogant to want to preserve the climate that gave us human civilization, to avoid 80 feet of sea level rise, mass desertification, and the like. He really needs to talk to one of his employees about just what dangerous climate change means for this planet.

So Pielke cites denier/delayer Griffin his defense. And yet Pielke’s upset I called him a delayer. I realize rereading it that one could perhaps read my post to say I called him a denier, but I merely meant to call him a delayer. Note to Pielke — if you aren’t a delayer, I’d love to hear your answer to the key question:

“If you were running national and global climate policy, what level of global CO2 concentrations would be your goal and how would you achieve it?”

But it is absurd for Pielke to naively write on his blog:

Now according to Grist Magazine’s Joe Romm I am a “delayer/denier” because I’ve asked what data would be inconsistent with IPCC predictions. Revealed truths are not to be questioned lest we take you to the gallows.

No, you aren’t a delayer because you’ve “asked what data would be inconsistent with IPCC predictions.” You are because you wrote a long post giving credence to the notion — which is clearly at odds with the data — that the climate is in a cooling trend. In fact, you begin with a graph that implies we’ve been in a major cooling trend since 2001 and you yourself write of “the recent cooling in the primary datasets of global temperature.”

Roger, do you think the data shows it has been cooling since 2001? If so, then I don’t know what to call you but “delayer” is the mildest thing I can think of. Denier of science would be fair, I think — since that ain’t what the data shows, as the Hadley Center (and NASA) folks I cite explain.

If you don’t think the data shows it has been cooling since 2001, then why not say so in your post — rather than titling it “Update on Falsification of Climate Predictions,” which, given the graph and your comments, sounds like you are saying recent data has falsified climate predictions, which they have not.

So I stand by my comments — Shame on you!

The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility — an organization that has done yeoman’s work exposing the Bush administration’s political manipulation, corruption, and stifling of the thousands of scientists who attempt to serve the public interest with integrity — today highlighted the ethical conundrum facing scientists currently serving under Fish & Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall.

The Fish & Wildlife Service Scientific Code of Professional Responsibility states:

Disseminate scientific information to the scientific community and the public to promote understanding and appreciation for fish and wildlife and their habitats.

Compare that to Director Hall’s internal “guidance” to employees:

[I]t is imperative that all documents, assessments and drafts remain inside the Service, except for discussions as appropriate with recognized federal and state peers.

Hall is now under investigation by the Interior Inspector General for possibly violating the Scientific Code by repeatedly missing Endangered Species Act deadlines to list the polar bear, despite clear scientific guidance.

PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch asks: “How can we expect scientists to obey a code of conduct that their director ignores?”

The deniers/delayer-1000s cite recent UK Hadley Center data to promote their “climate is cooling” disinformation. Even Roger Pielke, Jr. is peddling this nonsense with his recent inanely titled post, “Update on Falsification of Climate Predictions.” Falsification? Gimme a break!

The 8 warmest years in the 150 global temperature record are, according to the Hadley Center, in order, 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2007 – those are also the 8 warmest years in the NASA record, in a different order, starting with 2005, then 2007 tied with 1998). Where the heck is the cooling trend? Shame on you, Pielke for lending your name and website to this delayer-1000 nonsense.

It is only fair to ask what the Hadley Center thinks its data shows (much as we’ve heard NASA explain that its data shows unequivocal warming). Answer: they believe it unequivocally shows we are in a warming trend, including this decade. They make one of the best analytical points I have seen in the whole discussion of this cooling nonsense:

Another way of looking at the warming trend is that 1999 was a similar year to 2007 as far the cooling effects of La Ni±a are concerned. The 1999 global temperature was 0.26 °C above the 1961-90 average, whereas 2007 is expected to be 0.41 °C above this average, 0.15 °C warmer than 1999.

[And this explanation doesn't even note that total solar irradiance in 1999 was 0.3 W/m2 higher than in 2007, which might actually reduce 2007's temperature relative to 1999 by some 0.1°C!]

This comes from a terrific page titled, “Climate Change Myths” by Prof. John Mitchell, Chief Scientist at the Met Office. One of the myths he debunks is “Myth 6 — 1998 was the warmest year in the global annual temperature record and this has led some to claim that temperatures have been decreasing ever since.” Here is his reply — it is worth reprinting and reading in its entirety:

1998 saw an exceptional El Ni±o event which contributed strongly to that record-breaking year. Research shows that an exceptional El Ni±o can warm global temperatures by about 0.2 °C in a single year, affecting both the ocean surface and the land air temperatures. It is therefore not surprising that 1998 appears as a warm outlier. Had any recent years experienced such an El-Ni±o, it is very likely that this record would have been broken. More recently, 2005 was also an unusually warm year, the second highest in the global record, but was not boosted by the El Ni±o conditions that augmented the warmth of 1998.

The fact remains that the rise in underlying surface temperature has averaged in excess of 0.15 °C per decade since the mid-1970s. A simple mathematical calculation of the temperature change over the latest decade (1998-2007) alone shows a continued warming of 0.1 °C per decade. The warming trend can be seen in the graph (right, top) of observed global temperatures. The red bars show the global annual surface temperature, which exhibit year-to-year variability. The blue line clearly shows the upward trend, far greater than the uncertainties which are shown as thin black bars. Recent slight slowing of the warming is due to a shift towards more-frequent La Ni±a conditions in the Pacific since 1998. These bring cool water up from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, cooling global temperatures.

Prof. Mitchell then makes the comparison that 2007 was 0.15 °C warmer than 1999. Finally, he writes:

The diagram [below] ranks global temperatures for the last 150 years. It can be seen that the 17 warmest years all occur in the last 20 years.

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Skyrocketing gas prices are crippling the budgets of Americans, as Bush has newly discovered. But he doesn’t have a solution. Nor does Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Bush’s every response to energy problems is to drill for more oil and blame China. McCain has a more evolved position: his solution is to drill for more oil and build nuclear power plants, and blame China and terrorists. But neither will address a major culprit in the recent shocking spike in oil futures and gas prices – the collapse of the American dollar due to a vicious circle of shortsighted right-wing economic policies.

When asked if OPEC followed his call to increase production, how much oil prices would fall, Bush replied: “I’m just a simple president. But I really don’t know what it would do.” McCain was baffled when asked on 60 Minutes what he would do for the person facing rising gas prices: “I would love to tell you that I have an immediate answer for that. And I don’t.”

Watch it:

The popular explanation of increasing world demand and constrained oil supply is certainly behind much of oil’s long rise, exacerbated by the chaos in Iraq. But a myopic focus on oil prices doesn’t explain the whole picture.

Since 2000, the dollar has fallen 40% against the world’s currencies, Monday reaching “new lows against the euro and a basket of six major currencies.” Dr. A.F. Alhajji, an Ohio economics professor, outlined to CNBC the vicious circle that ties the dollar’s fall to oil’s rise:

The lower dollar reduces supply and increases demand, thus raising oil prices. As a result, the value of US oil imports increases, which in turn widens the trade deficit, which weakens the dollar further.

This cycle is worsened by the right-wing economic policies of this administration. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and Bush created the mortgage bubble by keeping interest rates at historic lows and failing to regulate questionable practices in the financial sector. As the curtain is pulled back, and the “securities” turn out to be junk, investors have been pulling money out of mortgage instruments and putting them into safe hedges like gold and, again, oil.

Now Ben Bernanke, Greenspan’s successor, is propping up failed hedge funds and financial institutions – despite not having regulatory oversight over them. And he’s cutting interest rates in desperation, which is, in the words of Hale Stewart of Bonddad Blog, “stoking energy inflation and encouraging the migration away from the dollar.”

Bush and Bernanke’s policies are creating inflationary pressure on the U.S. economy and making our financial markets riskier. This one-two punch drives the flight from the dollar into stable foreign economies and commodities like oil. Democratic attempts to fix the systemic problems and buffer American citizens from the whiplash on the job and at the pump are being stonewalled by Senate Republicans, Bush vetoes, and corruption in the executive branch.

John McCain, who happily admitted in December that “the issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should,” followed up with a troubling preview of how he would guide the American economy through these troubled waters:

“I’ve got Greenspan’s book.”

As if we didn’t have enough reasons to dislike corn ethanol (and here).

Some aquatic dead zones are primarily due to global warming, and some are due to fertilizer runoff. In the future the two will combine with acidification to wipe out most ocean life if we don’t change course soon. Now a new study says U.S. corn ethanol policy will aggravate the New Jersey-size (!) area of hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico.

As Scientific American explains:

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