Washington University: Researchers create novel electro-biodiesel more efficient, cleaner than alternatives

[NNadir]

9. Um no. What stopped nuclear power was selective attention driven by deliberate ignorance driven by propaganda.

Last edited Mon Nov 18, 2024, 08:43 PM - Edit history (1)

I don't live all that far from Three Mile Island. I've traveled through Harrisburg many times. There are about 50,000 people living there now, healthy and useful lives.

In the week of March 1978, when the Three Mile Island unit 2 melted, shortly before President Carter visited it, according to the data provided by the Mauna Loa CO₂ Observatory's Data Pages, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide was 337.29 ppm.

Now clearly, anyone still carrying on about Three Mile Island 46 years, and 7 months and 21 days after the event, obviously doesn't give a shit about the readings at Mauna Loa today, but I do, because I'm fucking paying attention. Although this will no more distract anyone who spent more than four and a half decades carrying on with obsessive tripe, here are the numbers as of this week:

Week beginning on November 10, 2024: 423.60 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 421.00 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 397.33 ppm
Last updated: November 18, 2024

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

Let me see if numbers get any attention, not that I expect that certain parties who would rather google their way to opinion pieces from dumb journalists at popular science websites (as opposed to the primary scientific literature) to give a shit - clearly they don't - in the last 46 and a half plus years with continual whining about TMI, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide has risen by 86.31 ppm. In the "percent talk" used by apologists for squandering trillion dollar sums, the concentration of fossil fuels, we've added another 26% to the already unacceptable levels of CO₂ that were present in 1978.

Anyone carrying on about TMI, I repeat, clearly doesn't give a shit. I'll add to that a remark about whining about a policy from the 1950's is even worse, more reflective of cultish indifference than even whining about TMI does. The fucking planet is in flames.

Now, I frequently post reference to the primary scientific literature, to a Lancet paper, giving the deaths from air pollution, about which people whining about TMI couldn't care less about.

It is here: Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249). This study is a huge undertaking and the list of authors from around the world is rather long.

In 1978, when nuclear plants were replacing coal plants, the plants did not have scrubbers to remove sulfur oxides or particulates; presumably they were even more deadly than the coal plants operating today about which antinukes couldn't care less. The modern paper gives a death toll of roughly 19,000 human beings a day, but let's round down to a 15,000 deaths a day to reflect the smaller population in 1978. With 17,037 days since March 28, 1978, this represents (conservatively) 255,600,000 million deaths.

Again, in the primary scientific literature, and not some idiotic opinion piece from a nominal "science journalist" at a website.

One of the world's most prominent climate scientists, with a colleague, calculated how much the maligned nuclear industry saved in terms of carbon dioxide, 61 billion tons.

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

Now, the scientific literature is not monolithic, nor should it be; it is not even free of fraud, although scientific fraud has never killed as many people as have died from the fraudulent carrying on about TMI for more than 46 and a half years.

As I read the scientific literature daily, seven days a week, probably at least 350 days a year, if not more, I can claim a modicum of critical thinking, which is why I understand that electricity to drive an electrochemical cell to carry out one of thousands upon thousands of papers on electrochemical cells to reduce CO₂ to make C₂ compounds, in this case, for bugs to eat to make biodiesel isn't about so called "renewable energy" at all. It's about electricity, a thermodynamically degraded form of energy most of which is generated by combusting fossil fuels.

Now.

Here's an opinion piece from a Taiwanese scientist and a Hong Kong scientist, open sourced, from Joule out of the Cell Press:

A Reliability Look at Energy Development Kuo, Way et al. Joule, Volume 2, Issue 1, 5 - 9

I'll quote liberally from it.

It refers to "Atoms from Peace."

...US President Dwight D. Eisenhower's speech “Atoms for Peace” to the UN General Assembly on December 8, 1953, initiated the commercialization of nuclear power plants in the 1970s, mainly in North America, Europe, and East Asia. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), currently 446 nuclear power units operate around the world, providing about 12% of the world's electricity.3 The operation of these nuclear units has dramatically affected the greenhouse gas problem. Nuclear power plants were responsible for removing around 64 Gt of CO2-equivalent from the atmosphere from 1971 to 2009.4 Climate change would have been worse otherwise...

I know...I know...I know...TMI!!!!!, TMI!!!! Much much worse than climate change and the deaths of a quarter of a billion people.

... One-third of the world's 7.5 billion people live barely above the poverty line, without or with extremely limited electricity resources, clean water, uncontaminated food, basic education, and medical services. As a result, these 2.5 billion people usually live shorter lives, about 50 years on average. But they are the ones who have to bear the consequences of air pollution created by the other 5 billion relatively affluent people on the planet.
These poverty-stricken and energy-deficient regions are plagued by diseases such as AIDS, SARS, Ebola, and Zika as well as other rarer viruses, which in turn spread to the other 5 billion residents who generated the air pollution in the first place. Human beings living in a contemporary environment behave in just the same satirical manner as the two giants in Rabelais' The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel, don't they?...

Fear of radiation killed people, radiation itself didn't at the big bogeyman at Fukushima:

... Since 2016, Taiwan's drive to abandon nuclear power, being forced to rely heavily on fossil fuels, has left Taiwan barely able to meet its electricity needs. On August 15, 2017, Taiwan suffered its worst blackout in nearly two decades. Around 6.8 million households and business users were affected for several hours. The power cut, which was due to a flawed supply replacement process, amounted to a 10% loss in Taiwan's generation capacity, far exceeding Taiwan's dangerously low backup power supply, which is only 4% of capacity that day.

Before the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident triggered by an earthquake on March 11, 2011, nuclear power accounted for more than one-quarter of Japan's power consumption. But after the accident, Japan decided to suspend operations so that safety inspections could take place. The country officially entered the “no nuclear power” stage on May 5, 2012, only to see smog return in Tokyo. At the same time, not a single person has died of radiation sickness from the Fukushima accident according to the latest UN report and the World Nuclear Association, updated in 2017. But carbon dioxide emission targets for 2011 have been missed, and a trade deficit has been reported for the first time in 30 years. Japan restarted some of its nuclear power plants in July 2015 because of need and in an effort to confront air pollution. Currently, there are five units in commercial operation. By 2030, the share of nuclear power in electricity is targeted to return to 20%–22%...

And then, a quasi moral statement with which I couldn't fucking agree more, including some words about thermodynamic reality in the face of the hydrogen idiots who've been prattling on even longer than the TMI obsessives:

...The biggest crisis we face today is the risk of misusing data. For example, long-term ignorance about air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions owing to the use of fossil fuels leads to more deaths and global warming. Similarly, effects may result from ignorance of the fact that water splitting into hydrogen requires more energy from the hydrogen carried, ignorance of the limitation of renewables with intermittent nature, such as solar and wind power, before the availability of viable energy storage techniques for very large capacity, and overexaggeration of the impact of nuclear accidents and waste.

It is true with the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the 3/11 Fukushima nuclear accident, as well as smog, environmental protection, national security, and so forth, that unreliable “human beings” are the source of most problems. The majority of disasters today are the result of self-packaged decisions. Honey-tongued decision makers quickly shrug off responsibility even if they are clearly accountable.

The challenge today is how to prevent the misuse of data and how to manage slogan-slinging politicians. Only then will we cease to see progress as double edged. Energy transition is not possible without global cooperation and international policy on decreasing the use of fossil fuels in both electricity generation and other types of energy consumption.

Truer words than the part I've bolded have seldom been spoken. I underlined the thermodynamic truth for the people around here and elsewhere, people who don't give a flying squirrel's ass about extreme global heating, who are working here and elsewhere to rebrand fossil fuels as "hydrogen," and just as contemptible, electricity as "renewable energy." Electricity isn't "green;" hydrogen isn't "green;" and tearing the shit out of the wilderness that remains for wind turbines and solar cells isn't "green" either.

The fucking planet's on fire, continents strain alternately under extreme droughts, extreme heat, and extreme floods, and still we hear the same fucking chanting I've heard, with ever growing disgust, TMI! TMI! Fukushima!!!!!! Chernobyl!!!

The world is falling apart, and one reason for it is a complete lack of sense or decency, and as the authors of the Joule paper point out, misusing data.

Have a wonderful day tomorrow.