On why he invests so much in nuke R&D: “The good news about nuclear is that there has hardly been any innovation.”

Is there any super-rich tech geek who knows less about WTF he is talking about than Bill Gates?  Bizarrely, he keeps dissing technology deployment as a source of innovation, even though that’s how he innovated and got rich (see below).

Even more bizarrely, Gates loves nuclear power because … wait for it … there’s been no innovation.  He just said at the Wired business conference:

“The good news about nuclear is that there has hardly been any innovation. The room to do things differently is quite dramatic”

Seriously.  That must hold the record for trying to make lemonade out of lemons. It is certainly possible to believe that the lack of innovation in nuclear power is due to, oh, I don’t know, businesses simply sleeping on the job for the past 30 years.

Or perhaps there is another reason, as a 2010 paper argued (see Does nuclear power have a negative learning curve? ‘Forgetting by doing’? Real escalation in reactor investment costs):  “It may be more productive to start asking whether these trends are not intrinsic to the very nature of the technology itself: large-scale, lumpy, and requiring a formidable ability to manage complexity in both construction and operation.”

But it isn’t enough for Gates to tout his big brilliant bet on nukes — “In recent years [Gates] has invested hundreds of millions in nuclear energy start-ups” – or for him to bet big on geo-engineering.  No, he has to attack energy efficiency and solar PV:

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Part 1: “You can’t just have an adaptation strategy. There’s no chance of that working.”

You can see Paul Gilding in DC Saturday at 5:30 pm — and Portland tonight and Seattle Friday (details here).

You may remember Paul Gilding, former executive director of Greenpeace International, from Tom Friedman’s column on how the global economy is a Ponzi scheme.  I was quoted in that column, too, and as a result, I have gotten to know him.

On a visit from down-under, he came by my house a while back for a chat.  I taped some “Lip camera” video interviews of him about his new book, The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring on the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World, which I highly recommend,.  As you can see from the sub-title, Gilding is an optimist, though a certain kind of optimist.

He doesn’t think averting catastrophic global warming will be easy, but he believes we will do it through a World-War-II-scale effort, since the alternative is almost beyond imagining and certainly beyond what people euphemistically call “adaptation.”

In this first video, he talks about the unbelievable drought and then equally unbelievable flooding that hit his home country of Australia, and why he remains optimistic in spite of that:

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After voting to maintain subsidies to Big Oil twice this year, many Republican congressmen got an earful from their constituents when they went home for the recess. When asked if they supported ending subsidies to oil companies reporting over $30 billion in profits in just the first three months of this year, some signaled they’d consider it. But when faced with an opportunity to follow through and stand up for their constituents, they voted today to do exactly the opposite:

House Republicans rejected an effort by Democrats Thursday to use a procedural maneuver to force a vote on a bill to repeal a key oil industry tax break. Democrats sought to defeat a procedural motion to move forward on two GOP-backed offshore drilling bills. If the motion had been defeated, Democrats would have brought up a bill authored by Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.) to repeal the Section 199 domestic manufacturing tax deduction for the largest oil companies.

Think Progress captured Congressmen Reps. Denny Rehberg (R-MT), Joe Walsh (R-IL), Paul Ryan (R-WI), Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), Tom Graves (R-GA), and Dan Webster (R-FL) telling their constituents they’d consider ending these subsidies. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) called for ending them in a March congressional hearing. And National Journal reported this morning that Reps. Randy Hultgren (R-IL), Raul Labrador (R-ID), Tom Marino (R-PA), and Michael Grimm (R-NY) “signaled flexibility” on ending the subsidies.

Instead of listening to the 74 percent of Americans who support ending taxpayer handouts to Big Oil, Republicans in the House stood strong with these companies. All of these members voted to block consideration of the bill. Not surprisingly, all of them raked in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry:

These oil subsidies are wasteful, unaffordable and unfair. Each vote to protect them makes it ever more clear who stands with Big Oil instead of American families.

Greenland ice mass anomaly – deviation from the average ice mass over the 2002 to 2010 period. Note: this doesn’t mean the ice sheet was gaining ice before 2006 but that ice mass was above the 2002 to 2010 average.

The satellite data make clear “The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating pace” — putting us on pace for 1 foot sea level rise by 2050 and 3 to 5 times that by 2100.   A comprehensive multi-nation assessment of the science finds the “the observed changes” in the Arctic and Greenland Ice Sheet “over the past ten years are dramatic and represent an obvious departure from the long-term patterns.”

A widely reported journal study found that 2010 set a “New melt record for Greenland ice sheet.” Lead author Dr. Marco Tedesco, director of the Cryospheric Processes Laboratory at CCNY explained, “This past melt season was exceptional, with melting in some areas stretching up to 50 days longer than average.”

Greenland melting index anomaly (Tedesco and Fettweiss (2011).  Click to enlarge

So if you were writing a journal article aiming to reconstruct annual Greenland ice melt extent and one of your reviewers told you about the 2010 data and why it was important to include, would you include it?  What would it mean if doing so would have affected some of your conclusions — and you decided not to?

What follows is an excellent Skeptical Science piece looking at those questions and Greenland in general.

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And U.S. electricity prices are relatively low

Richard W. Caperton

We often talk about electric rates as if the only thing that goes into determining them is the power source.  In some sense, this is right:  If a utility’s power costs go up, and nothing else changes, the price they charge consumers will likely eventually go up.

But, this understanding doesn’t fully appreciate the role of rate design in determining what the rate will be.  When utilities – and utility regulators – design an electricity rate, they make numerous decisions that impact the price that consumers will ultimately pay, regardless of power source.  Ignoring these other decisions can lead to lazy thinking about rate impacts, which can ultimately lead to poor decision making.

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“The judicial role is to compel the political branches to meet their fiduciary obligation through whatever measures and policies they choose, as long as such measures sufficiently reduce carbon emissions within the required time frame.  The courts’ role is not to supplant a judge’s wisdom for a legislature’s approach, but rather to police the other branches to ensure fulfillment of their trust responsibility in accordance with the climate imperatives of nature.”

This is part two in our series from guest blogger Bill Becker, Executive Director, the Presidential Climate Action Project.  Part one is here.

In response to a lawsuit that argues greenhouse gas emissions are a “public nuisance”, three of Congress’s most active opponents of responsible climate policy filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court last February. Rep. Fred Upton, Rep. Ed Whitfield and Sen. James Inhofe told the Justices it is inappropriate and unnecessary for courts to get involved in America’s climate policy.

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“With $55 oil we don’t need incentives to the oil and gas companies to explore,” said President George W. Bush in 2005. “There are plenty of incentives.”

CAP’s Seth Hanlon explains in this repost why Big Oil companies don’t need $70 billion in tax subsidies (over the next decade) at a time of record profits and prices double what they were when Bush made his remarks.

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UN Renewables ‘Bible’ Says Clean Energy Can Outstrip Demand

Wind and solar power are among six renewable energy options that have the potential to outstrip total world energy needs and may grow as much as 20-fold over the next four decades, a draft United Nations report said.

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Conservative members of Congress have been feeling the heat all over the country, as a Main Street Movement of everyday Americans have been protesting their efforts to cut crucial services and public investment, including their vote to effectively end Medicare.

Last week, during a town hall in Schaumburg, Illinois, Walsh came face to face with this public anger.  Think Progress has the story and video.

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