Bill Gates drops the nuclear option on environmental extremists | Mulshine
Updated Mar 28, 2021; Posted Mar 28, 2021
Bill Gates: He's good at software designing but in physics he'd have to yield to a true expert, Will Happer from Princeton. (Saeed Adyani/Netflix via AP)AP
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By Paul Mulshine | Star-Ledger Columnist
I just read the new book by Bill Gates on climate change, and it inspired me to take action.
I headed to the local butcher shop and bought some ground beef. When I got home, I fired up the barbecue and grilled up some burgers. With some lettuce and tomato on top, the medium-rare meat tasted just great.
I got the idea after reading this sentence in “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster:”
“I’ll admit that veggie burgers haven’t always tasted great,” he writes, adding, “Buying these products sends a clear message that making them is a wise investment,”
Maybe for you, Bill. I’ll stick to investing in beef.
The book, which is subtitled “The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need,” is jam-packed with such suggestions. I got interested in reading it after I was driving along listening to an interview with the Microsoft co-founder on National Public Radio.
Gates ran through a list of predictable suggestions for cutting carbon-dioxide emissions. Then he said something unpredictable: If we’re serious about cutting carbon emissions to net-zero by 2050, the only way to do so is with a massive investment in nuclear power.
This seemed to shock the host, who made the usual objection that nuclear is too dangerous. Nope, said Gates. Nuclear energy “has caused far, far less deaths than coal or natural gas,” he said.
That made me want to read the book. When I did, I found Gates making a number of points that seem to elude the alternative-energy crowd.
On wind and solar, for example, Gates writes that they are nice but limited by both space and consistency constraints.
“Tip: If someone tells you that some source (wind, solar, nuclear, whatever) can supply all the energy the world needs, find out how much space will be required to produce that much energy,” he writes.
As for consistency, “the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine,” he writes.
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Optimists say you could store that energy in batteries. Gates – who said “I’ve lost more money on battery companies than anyone” - writes that batteries are already a mature technology and can’t be greatly improved.
“Inventors have studied all the metals we could use in batteries, and it seems unlikely that there are materials that will make for vastly better batteries than the ones we’re already building,” he writes.
That leaves us with the nukes: “Here’s the one-sentence case for nuclear power: It’s the only carbon-free energy source that can reliably deliver power day and night, through every season, almost anywhere on earth, that has been proven to work on a large scale.”
And the world is going to need lots of power.
“The world will be building the equivalent of another New York City every month for the next 40 years,” he writes.
But if the world is really going to add 8 million people a month – most of them in the developing world – it’s hard to imagine any strategy, even including lots of nukes, that will bring us down to net-zero CO-2 emissions by 2050. But we must get there, Gates writes.
“That’s the first part of the answer to the question ‘Why do we have to get to zero?’—because every bit of carbon we put into the atmosphere adds to the greenhouse effect. There’s no getting around physics,” he writes.
No, there’s not. But Gates is not a physicist.
Will Happer is. Happer is an emeritus professor of physics at Princeton University who recently served as an advisor to the Trump administration.
When I called him, Happer said the physics shows the atmosphere is already near its saturation point for CO-2. His calculations show the greenhouse effect of doubling CO-2 would likely cause global temperatures to rise by no more than 1 degree centigrade. (This becomes very complicated very quickly because of the role greenhouses gases may play in cloud formation.)
Meanwhile CO-2 has a positive effect on plant growth, he said. That’s why it’s pumped into literal greenhouses.
But Gates is right about the need for nuclear power, he said.
“Germany is burning a lot more coal because of shutting down nuclear plants,” Happer said. “It’s dirty coal from East Germany that emits real pollutants like fly ash.”
Neighboring France wisely kept its nukes, he said.
“France is about 75 percent nuclear and they’re extending the life of their nuclear plants,” he said. “They have a self-confidence we lack, ‘We discovered radiation, Madame Curie and all that.’ They have a different view.”
It’s a view that American environmentalists will have to accept if they’re serious about reducing CO-2 emissions.
With this book, Gates has made a major contribution toward getting that debate started.
BELOW - BILL GATES EXPAINS HIS VIEWS:
(Above that is environmentalist Michael Shellenberger explaining why renewables won’t work.)
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