Highly Unusual And Unexpected

This is not about some decline in an economic indicator especially not about the latest trends in unemployment claims. It is about the coming of a quiet sun.

A missing jet stream, fading spots, and slower activity near the poles say that our Sun is heading for a rest period even as it is acting up for the first time in years, according to scientists at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).

As the current sunspot cycle, Cycle 24, begins to ramp up toward maximum, independent studies of the solar interior, visible surface, and the corona indicate that the next 11-year solar sunspot cycle, Cycle 25, will be greatly reduced or may not happen at all.

Will we be heading for a period of cooling as we have seen in other periods of a dormant sun such as the Maunder Minimum? No one knows. But it does seem stupid to be shutting down coal fired power plants in the face of that possibility.

Nuclear Is Safer

When a coal plant blows up you do not have to evacuate 140,000 people (currently - the numbers may go up). You do not have to stop drinking the water. You don't have to stop eating the vegetables. You don't have to divert trucking around exclusion zones. You don't have to test everything for radiation.

Other than that nuclear is safer.

The Anti Nuclear Conspiracy

I found this interesting quote at IntelliBriefs which claims it came from the January 22, 2010 issue of Executive Intelligence Review which is a Lyndon LaRouche property. So take it with a grain of salt. Or half a ton. But the pattern seems to fit.

What was promised by the Atoms for Peace process of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy—access to the virtually unlimited power potential of nuclear energy, to escape from the colonial legacy of backwardness and poverty—was abruptly sabotaged in the 1970s. This was done under the cover of the anti-nuclear hysteria fostered by Prince Philip's environmentalist movement, and the fraudulent argument that non-proliferation of nuclear weapons required a halt to peaceful uses of nuclear power. Now, the nations of Asia have definitively rejected British imperial dictates, asserting their long-term development to be centered, necessarily, upon expanded nuclear power capacities.

Unfortunately, the West is still mired in the British Empire's muck. While Asian nations are currently engaged in the construction of 43 nuclear plants, the entire rest of the world is constructing only 12. The United States, once the unquestioned leader in nuclear power development, is now constructing but one facility—and that is simply the completion of a mothballed TVA plant, suspended in the 1980s. All of Western Europe is constructing only two plants, while Germany and Sweden have determined to phase out all their nuclear power plants—although the global economic collapse is forcing a reconsideration of that lunacy.

In the United States, 224 nuclear scientists, engineers, and others issued a public letter this week to President Obama's Science Advisor John Holdren, himself an anti-nuclear, anti-science zero-growther, warning that "the world is leaving us behind." The letter reads in part: "Our nation needs to proceed quickly—not twenty or fifty years from now—while the people who pioneered this science and engineering can still provide guidance to a new generation of scientists and engineers. There is no political, economic, or technical justification for delaying the benefits that nuclear power will bring to the United States, while the rest of the world forges ahead."

It does seem to me that nuclear can help bridge the gap over the next 50 or 100 years until we get workable fusion or renewables plus storage become economically viable. Of course there is always coal. The USA has lots of it.

Going Green

The Green movement really has nothing to worry about.

If coal is shut down and electricity prices spike or the grid becomes unreliable the people who voted against coal will be out of office. For decades.

The only way to get off coal is to find a cheaper alternative.

Keep up with just say no and the reaction will be - no way.

The success of the Green movement will lead to its failure because instead of putting the money into research it has put the money into politics.

And worse - if we are headed into a little ice age because of PDO reversal and the 300 year solar cycle which is past its peak, it will take 50 to 75 years for any one to listen to Greens again.

Politics is about putting guns to people's heads. The tricky thing is the guns you once held can be turned on you.

The only sustainable Green movement is one that is profitable: go Green and get richer. No guns required.

Inspired by Coal Is My Worst Nightmare.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

British Losing Their Power

It looks like Britain will be losing its electrical supply before too long.

It was in July of this year that the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee - prop. Tim Yeo - told the government that it must set a deadline for coal-fired power stations to install technology massively to cut their emissions, or they must be shut down.

In so doing, the committee sought to add to the burden on an industry which is already, for diverse reasons, failing to get to grips with the looming electricity shortage – offering a strategy which would make it near certain that the lights went out in 2012 or sooner.

Now, from the same House of Commons which brought you this lunacy, we have the Business and Enterprise Committee, headed by another Conservative MP – this time Peter Luff. His committee is warning that Britain is threatened by an "energy crunch" with disastrous social and economic consequences.

And we are going to be repeating the experiment here in the good old US of A. Because our President Elect, the Smartest President Elect Ever™, is planning to severely curtail coal fired electrical power plants.

Included in President-elect Barack Obama’s energy plan, “New Energy for America,” is a requirement that utilities generate at least 25% of the country’s electricity from renewable sources of energy like solar and wind power by 2025.

Last year, CEI published a report, Gone with the Wind, explaining why such a requirement, known as a renewable portfolio standard, is unfair to states in the southeast, where electricity is cheap and the potential for renewables is low.

Yesterday, the Cato Institute published a report that asks how policymakers could favor a policy so politically correct and so economically suspect.

So how about this New Energy for America? What is the plan that will lead us to a glorious future?

In a January 17, 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Senator Obamasaidthat “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” under his plan to fight global warming. He also said that under his plan, “if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them.”

I think this is a great opportunity for Obama. He can have his bankruptcy plan for the coal fired electrical energy industry ready well in advance. He had better start now.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

McCain Is Against Coal

You know. That looks to me like a McCain dirty trick. Bringing out the charge with barely enough time for Obama to respond.

London We have A Nuclear Problem

It seems the Brits have built a number of shoddy nuclear plants. The results may be electrical shortages this winter.

In theory, at least, Britain now has 10 operating nuclear power stations, stretching from Torness on the Firth of Forth to Dungeness on the south Kent coast. Each has two reactors, and ministers boast that they supply about one-fifth of the power that keeps the lights on.

The reality, as an Independent on Sunday investigation shows today, is very different. The majority of the power stations are in dire trouble, and their failure is leading to the most acute concern in years that the country may run short of electricity this winter.

Two of the 10 have been idle for almost a year, with both reactors out of action due to corrosion. Another two have had one of their reactors closed down for months. And yet another two are having to run both their reactors at less than three-quarters of their normal power for safety reasons.

And even that is not the end of it. Of the four that are still in good working condition, one is due to shut down permanently in two years' time, a second is partially closed for routine maintenance, and a third is facing safety questions following the discovery of flaws in similar reactors in Japan.

The meltdown of Britain's nuclear capacity is largely responsible for an alarming tightening of electricity supplies that is forecast to start at the beginning of November, as demand rises sharply for the winter, and to continue until at least the end of the month.

An independent nuclear analyst, John Large, said last night: "It's all in a pretty sad state. The reactors are starting to break up; they are becoming knackered. There comes a point when you simply have to turn the things off.

"We have been lucky for two years with mild winters, but if we have a cold snap then I can see the lights blinking off."

How did things get so bad over there? This is just a guess, but I think the environmentalists have had a ten year head start. Not to worry. Power blackouts are coming to America thanks to the Governor of Kansas.

TOPEKA, Kansas, May 1, 2008 (ENS) - Kansas will not have two new coal-fired power plants at Holcomb in the western part of the state. Late Thursday night, the Kansas House narrowly sustained the third veto of a bill to allow the plants by Governor Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat.

The vote in the House was 80-45, four votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to override the governor's veto.

Closely watched as an indicator of the mood of the Midwest on coal power, the battle between the governor and the Republican controlled Statehouse over Sunflower Electric's bid to expand its Holcomb Generating Station has absorbed much of this legislative session.

The fight began last October when Kansas Secretary of Health and Environment Rod Bremby denied an air quality permit needed to proceed with construction because the two proposed 700 megawatt units would emit too much of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

It was the first denial of a coal power plant permit in the country based on climate change concerns.

Supporters of the new power plants in the Legislature passed a bill to allow the plants and strip the state agency of its power to block them. Governor Sebelius vetoed that bill and two more similar attempts.

Given the happenings in America it might very well be that my guess about Europe is not far from the mark. Of course there is a consolation prize in all of this. Things are worse in California.

H/T EU Referendum

Obama Gives McCain Some Help

The Obama camp has a new blog up The Low Road Express, which discusses McCain's "distortions" of Obama's words. This is the print version of WORM which stands for What Obama Really Meant. Here is one of my favorites from Cincinnati Enquirer.

The McCain ad’s claim that Obama says ‘he’ll raise taxes on electricity’ is based on an interview Obama gave to a San Antonio newspaper in February in which he said ‘what we ought to tax is a dirty energy like coal, and, to a lesser extent, natural gas.’

And raising taxes on our two chief sources of electrical energy won't raise prices?

So what is the paper's answer to this? They say McCain is for the same cap and trade tax raising policies Obama supports. Evidently they have not been keeping up. McCain Is Taking Economics Lessons.

...on deep background, this senior McCain advisor told me I was correct: no cap-and-trade. In other words, this central-planning, regulatory, tax-and-spend disaster, which did not appear in Mac’s two recent speeches, has been eradicated entirely — even from the detailed policy document that hardly anybody will ever read.

Evidently the advisor was right. None of our betters in the press have read it. Nor has any one from the Obama camp.

Fortunately you have me to help you keep an eye on things.

Did I mention McCain was looking into the near term prospects (good) for fusion a year ago? That is something else the press is unaware of.

Cross Posted at Classical Values