There was a scene in the ABC documentary titled I Can Convince You About … Climate” that featured Bjorn Lomborg, the self proclaimed “Skeptical Environmentalist”. Lomborg acknowledges that human activity is causing the climate to change due to changing atmospheric chemistry, but he thinks that the proposed solutions are either too expensive, not effective, or…
I just spent a fascinating couple of hours watching an ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company) documentary titled I Can Change Your Mind About..Climate. Aside: Before that turns you off by making you think that the documentary lasts for hours, please understand that it can take me a long time to watch a show while preparing a…
Barry Brook and Cory Bradshaw are the co-directors of the Global Ecology Lab. In less than three minutes, they provide an understandable picture of the lab’s mission and it’s scientific challenges. In the above video, Dr. Brook and Dr. Bradshaw explain the complexity of the systems they model along with the importance of using accurate…
On April 22, 2012, the Christian Science Monitor published a lengthy feature article titled With all this natural gas, who needs oil? that helps illustrate the extent of America’s current love affair with methane, a fuel that we have been using commercially for about 150 years. According to some of the people quoted in the…
During my recent low production periods for new posts on Atomic Insights, I received some well intentioned advice from a frequent commenter – he told me that it would be less frustrating for me to maintain Atomic Insights if I focused more on innovations in nuclear energy than on the efforts of competitive energy suppliers…
Ben Heard at DecarboniseSA.com posted a thought-provoking question on April 4, 2012 – Why Gas? Good Question… Here is the introduction of Ben’s post. “Why gas?” Good question… It was meant to be a jingle, not a prophecy… In Australia back in 1990, we were subjected to a saccharine , family friendly bit of advertising…
Kevan Crawford has published well-written op-ed titled Nuclear power answer to clean energy. He described some nuclear energy’s impressive benefits and compared them to the available alternative power sources, which were exposed as being vastly inferior based on an objective evaluation of their characteristics and limitations. Here is the disclaimer associated with Kevan’s opinion piece….
Both John Rowe, the retired chief executive at Exelon, and Aubrey McClendon, the current chief executive at Chesapeake Energy, would love to create a situation where “everyone” believed that cheap natural gas is going to last for a long time. My assertion is that “cheap” natural gas – which is actually only available in North…
The US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held a hearing on March 15, 2012 titled “Lessons from Fukushima One Year Later: NRC’s Implementation of Recommendations for Enhancing Nuclear Reactor Safety in the 21st Century.” The following video clip included some key points that bear repeating to all who wail and gnash their teeth about…
As a South Central Virginia resident, I have something in common with the people in the Pacific Northwest who are concerned about the impact of coal exports from the US. Numerous coal laden trains pass through Lynchburg every day, many of them headed to the large coal terminal in Newport News. I can hear the…
The world would be a better place if more people thoroughly understood how the balance between supply of a commodity and demand for that commodity worked to establish market prices. The improvement would be even more impressive if customers learned how to take action to shift the balance into their favor instead of allowing the…
As a lazy man who likes to repurpose his work whenever possible, I want to share a note that I just sent to some of my nuclear friends who question my analysis about the actions of fossil fuel interests to restrain the growth of nuclear energy. Rod, I have never been a big fan of…