Daily Telegraph / Shell Age of Energy Debates

Have a look at the material on the UK’s Daily Telegraph website on their Shell sponsored Age of Energy Debate series:

http://bit.ly/a1172l

and

http://t.co/vyvl3rk

I attended the debate held in September 2010 and can be spotted in the video proposing (albeit without the soundtrack) a model for solving climate change using an environmentally-neutral energy pricing basis.

At the September 2010 debate, it suggested to me that some of the scientific advice was being tailored to reflect what was considered to be politically achievable (probably within a single term of Parliament), not necessarily the actual core issue, which inevitably would take a longer to reach fruition.  If real, this is worrying.  It links to Sir Paul Nurse’s conclusions, in the January 24^th 2011 BBC Horizon programme, about the poor level of scientific communication and understanding.

One of my objectives is to highlight the need to build consensus that all energy policies should be environmentally neutral, which means the cost of pollution is calculated and added to the cost of the energy.

What arguments are there to counter this?

This approach is valid for all countries, consequently global alignment, in theory, should be achievable.

By calculating the full cost of each form of energy, it will be possible to identify the most cost-effective and therefore most efficient forms.

By including the cost of pollution into the product cost, the pollution cost element must be used to actually remove the pollution caused by using the energy, in order to maintain the environment in a stable condition. Dealing with pollution in this way is a new business model.

Pollution, through being ignored in economic terms has effectively been “free” up until now.

Economists should have been banging the drum about this big anomaly, because in reality, anthropogenic pollution has never been and never will be “free”.

It’s not unequivocal, but the probability is fairly high, that the world’s climate and oceans are starting to react to anthropogenic effects.

Personally I don’t need irrefutable, or even strong evidence that man is changing the climate, because it is blatantly visible what we are doing to the planet as a result of:

·        Not implementing environmentally neutral policies and

·        Failing to account for the real, full cost of pollution

I don’t see much benefit in science trying to prove anthropogenic climate change. This is more of a distraction from the relatively simple scientific and economics-based principles for actually dealing with human pollution.

This is where a national, followed by an international consensus is required. Subsequently, an internationally agreed programme to independently-derive full cost estimates for all major sources of energy, is required.

Step-1 is to get political alignment that we need an environmentally neutral energy basis both nationally and internationally.

Step-2 is to calculate the full costs of all major energy sources that include the cost of removing pollution.

Step-3 is to implement the environmentally neutral energy policy using the most economic and efficient energy sources.

Many will say this cannot be achieved. I disagree.

If you don’t think this is achievable, you’re welcome to say so, but you also need to provide a different basis and better solution.

Who can argue against the validity of an environmentally-neutral energy policy and therefore the need for costing the removal of pollutants, followed by actually removing them?

BBC Horizon: Science Under Attack – Sir Paul Nurse, 24th January 2011

Nobel Prize winner Sir Paul Nurse examines why science appears to be under attack, and why public trust in key scientific theories has been eroded.

In my view this was a worthy programme that diplomatically tried to illustrate the problems communicating scientific topics to others.  Nurse’s conclusion that the scientific community is not very good at communicating, is actually well known in the scientific community.

There’s little to be gained from blaming the media for this situation; they will always have some form of agenda as was beautifully illustrated by Nurse’s discussion with the Daily Telegraph’s James Delingpole.  I highly recommend you watch the programme to see this particular section.  Apparently Mr Delingpole felt “intellectually raped” by Nurse; see:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/jan/24/james-delingpole-tv-interview

And a certain viewer certainly didn’t end up with the same assessment of Nurse’s conclusions, that I did, see:

http://mikephilbin.blogspot.com/2011/01/bbc-horizon-science-under-attack.html

It’s great that we’re able to voice such opinions as included in the link immediately above.  The irony is that Nurses’ point is brilliantly illustrated by said opinion.

Aside from the science community’s poor communication with the outside world; this issue also has a serious impact on government policies.  It’s been commented on, by several other senior scientific people, at the low level of scientific experience in the UK’s Politicians and Civil Servants.

So, the probability is that the UK Government does not have sufficient independently-derived, accurate scientific knowledge, to be able to design policies that directly address the principal issues.  More often than not, the Government creates policies that address lower order issues, rather than the actual causation; perhaps because they don’t have the complete, un-biased, scientific foundation and therefore understanding?

I experienced a version of this at the Daily Telegraph / Shell Age of Energy Debate in September 2010. See my separate comment on this.

Interesting Debate in Economist (Jan11) - But Missing The Main Issue

At the end of January 2011 The Economist ran a debate on:

Will natural gas do more than renewables to limit the world's carbon emissions?

An interesting discussion, but one which misses the fundamental starting point for our current global situation.

The following was my contribution on the 27th January, 2011:

Dear Sir,

An interesting debate, but one that is missing the actual nub of the energy use & environmental impact issue.

It's a fact that natural gas is less polluting than oil or coal. Whether it's less polluting than renewable energy sources, is somewhat academic if you agree that it's not possible to compare these without factoring in the total cost of pollution generated by each source of energy.

Put simply, if we are to address the issue of energy usage and environmental impact, the sole mechanism is to agree that the cost of any energy source has to include the cost of dealing with pollution caused by using said energy.

So we need a consensus that the full costs of energy (including the cost of dealing with it's pollution) is essential in order to start dealing with the environmental impact.  Without this we won't come anywhere near addressing it.

Many people will say this cannot be achieved.

It can.

I challenge all scientists, economists or politicians to disagree with the statement:

"All energy usage should be environmentally neutral, so the costs of dealing with energy pollution are included in the cost of the energy itself"

This could be a more interesting debate than whether natural gas is better than renewables!

If we can agree that the world needs a consistent basis for costing energy sources and this basis includes the cost of dealing with pollution, then simple economics will demonstrate which types of energy have the lowest total costs.

Without knowing the full costs for each type of energy, it is not possible to construct an environmentally neutral energy policy.

The good news is that the science and economics are pretty much unequivocal, which should mean this is politically straight-forward. But, of course this isn't the case.

Just imagine politicians seeing and more importantly understanding the simplicity of this and instigating, perhaps via an international organization (for example the yet to be formed International Energy Commision), the full cost of all major energy sources, which would show the actual cost of using coal, oil, gas, nuclear, geothermal, hydro, wind, wave and solar, in an environmentally neutral mode.