Some years ago, founder of the Gaia theory, James Lovelock, predicted that Tasmania and south New Zealand will, in time, become overrun with hoards of refugees as climate change shifts from chronic to calamitous around the world.
We aren’t seeing this trend yet in burgeoning population, but it appears that climate science people are becoming alarmed enough to take heed and get here before the hoards. Tasmania has seen a number of climate aware people shift to our relatively benign state as they come to terms with the hard, scary data they see before them.
The latest is Professor Barry Brook – a world expert in nuclear energy technology and Australia’s most vigorous advocate of the nuclear ‘solution’ to climate change. Brook has just announced his impending shift to Hobart. His popular website, Brave New Climate ( HERE ), has for years been championing the Integrated Fast Reactor (IFR), a small sized nuclear reactor that is able to gobble up the world’s spent nuclear waste and is purportedly safe and has almost no proliferation risk.
Brook’s worldview lies in stark contrast to the ebullient renewable energy lobby, fostered by Giles Parkinson’s website Renew Economy ( HERE ). This hugely popular site runs a strong line that renewables can not only totally take over from fossil fuels, but that it is already doing so in leaps and bounds. Parkinson recently visited Hobart, hosted by Paul Gilding ( HERE ), another recognized expert who moved home to southern Tasmania a year ago.
There’s been a rather hostile war of words going on for years between these two stridently different responses to the climate dilemma. Enthusiasts for each side often lock horns quite viciously on blog sites, both convinced that their side of the debate is bomb proof. There’s not a lot of respect between the two groups. Who wins and who loses in the energy field is a fiercely competitive business.
Competitors they may be, but Brook and Parkinson can both be described as earnest, likeable, softly spoken look-alikes – both exuding an air of quiet authority and composure. It’s hard to tell them apart.
Brook
Parkinson
I often go to two respective advocacy sites Renew Economy and Brave New Climate and muse at how these two tribal groups of enthusiasts (who in an ideal world should be pooling their talents and ideas and undoubted expertise) are mortal enemies trading blows with each other, when it comes to their worldviews on solutions to climate change. Both groups offer good insights and an unbiased avid reader could be persuaded to go down either path, or both.
Though the nuclear lobby has yet to claim victory on any nuclear power station within Australia, it has been wildly successful in promoting uranium sales. Australia, with its huge uranium reserves, has cornered a major slice of the world uranium market. But it’s sights are set on establishing a first nuclear go ahead in Australia within the coming decade ( HERE ).
From my perspective, the main weakness in the nuclear argument is that the promised new, safe nuclear technologies seem to be forever on a tantalizingly close horizon, but never quite in commercial production. The main weakness in the renewables argument is its rather reckless claim that dilute energy forms (having low energy return on investment) can totally replicate what thermal power does now, powering a consumer based industrial society – an impossible dream being projected everywhere and getting millions of ‘likes’.
There’s one area where I consider both the nukes folks and the solar folks to be soulmates. Though both project a boundlessly optimistic view that electric transport is the solution to oil depletion (powered, of course, by the respective endless power source) neither advocacy group comes to terms with the hard reality that oil is the raw resource for much more than transport – nor that the transport transition would have to take place in a very short amount of time, whereas the emergency response time has to be very short if we are to avert climate change overshoot.
Most importantly, both camps tend to ignore (or sideline) the fact that choice of energy supply is a relatively minor factor in the human predicament. It’s a peculiarly blokey, geeky way of thinking that the world will be saved principally via choice of technology rather than by a change of core values.
This debate aside, not much will rock Tasmania’s status as the renewable energy state, but it is on the cards that as we go forward and as climate change bites the nuclear prospect will get a foot in the door. Brook’s dream is of small IFR reactors that will be soon become economically viable down to 50 megawatt in size – smaller than the output of medium scale hydro or wind projects.
Meanwhile, the Tasmanian Department of State Growth seems to be backing the case that Tasmania has enough surplus electrical power in reserve to see Tasmania through to 2030 without the need for augmentation. Good on them, but who knows?I do know that the energy debate will go through many twists and turns before the year 2030.
AND, as more climate refugees arrive …
• Antarctic sea ice cover hits new recorded maximum Sea ice researcher at the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (ACE CRC) Dr Jan Lieser said new satellite data today showed the extent was continuing to increase, with a peak expected within the next fortnight. Dr Lieser said about 150 days this year have been new daily records. “It might seem surprising that the extent of sea ice around Antarctica is growing, even as the globe warms and as the massive ice sheet that covers the continent itself is shrinking,” Dr Lieser said. “This phenomenon does not in any way negate the reality of the global warming. Rather, it is one of the many surprising and paradoxical effects of changes in the Earth’s climate over recent decades.” “To understand why this is happening, we need to keep in mind that temperature is not the only factor in the formation and distribution of sea ice.”
• TT MEDIA HERE … … as Tas farmers welcome new forest body – and the prospect of change, says Jan Davis, as Nick McKim says Parks are unsafe in Liberal hands, and Andrew Wilkie fears the implications of The withdrawal of the Australian Federal Police from Hobart Airport etc etc etc
