The End of Doom (49 page)

The National Academy of Sciences:
Committee on Geoengineering Climate: National Research Council,
Climate Intervention: Reflecting Sunlight to Cool the Earth,
February 2015, National Academy of Sciences Press, 234 pp.
www.nap.edu/catalog/18988/climate-intervention-reflecting-sunlight-to-cool-earth
; and Committee on Geoengineering Climate: National Research Council,
Climate Intervention: Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration,
National Academy of Science Press, February 2015, 140 pp.
www.nap.edu./catalog/18805/climate-intervention-carbon-dioxide-removal-and-reliable-sequestration
.

bioenergy carbon capture and storage:
Elmar Kriegler et al., “Is Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Removal a Game Changer for Climate Change Mitigation?”
Climatic Change
118.1 (May 2013): 45–57.
link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-012-0681-4
.

Another proposal is direct air capture:
Klaus Lackner et al., “The Urgency of the Development of CO
2
Capture from Ambient Air.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
109.33 (June 28, 2012): 13156–13162.
www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/07/26/1108765109
; and Robert Kunzig, “Scrubbing the Skies,”
National Geographic,
ngm.nationalgeographic.com/big-idea/13/carbon-capture-pg2

“such research is a dangerous distraction”:
Hands Off Mother Earth. Letter in opposition to the Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) project. Sent to Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, September 26, 2011.
www.handsoffmotherearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/SPICE-Opposition-Letter.pdf
.

“If humans perceive an easy technological fix”:
Alan Robock, “20 Reasons Why Geoengineering May Be a Bad Idea.”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
64.2 (May/June 2008): 14–18.
climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/20Reasons.pdf

geoengineering would likely shift rainfall patterns:
Scott Barrett et al., “Climate Engineering Reconsidered.”
Nature Climate Change
4 (June 25, 2014): 527–529.
www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n7/full/nclimate2278.html
; and also Daniela F. Cusack et al., “An Interdisciplinary Assessment of Climate Engineering Strategies.”
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment
12.5 (June 2014): 280–287.
www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/130030
.

cost-benefit analysis should not apply:
Martin Weitzman, “On Modeling and Interpreting the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change.”
Review of Economics and Statistics
91.1 (February 2009): 1–19.
www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/rest.91.1.1#.U7HYa6goxyg
.

a persuasive critique of Weitzman's dismal conclusions:
William Nordhaus, “An Analysis of the Dismal Theorem,” Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper No. 1686, January 16, 2009.
cowles.econ.yale.edu/P/cd/d16b/d1686.pdf
; and William Nordhaus, “Economic Policy in the Face of Severe Tail Events.”
Journal of Public Economic Theory,
14.2 (2012): 197–219,
www.econ.yale.edu/~nordhaus/homepage/documents/Nordhaus_TailEvents_JPET_2012.pdf
.

the more scientifically literate:
Dan M. Kahan et al., “The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change” (2011). Temple University Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2011-26; Cultural Cognition Project Working Paper No. 89; Yale Law and Economics Research Paper No. 435; Yale Law School, Public Law Working Paper No. 230. Available at SSRN:
ssrn.com/abstract=1871503
or
dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1871503
.

stop the development:
James Gustave Speth,
Red Sky at Morning: America and the Global Environmental Crisis
. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004; and
Ronald Bailey
, “The Cultural Contradictions of Environmentalism: Fast Breeder Reactor Edition.”
Reason,
October 7, 2009.

coal generation kills about 4,000 times:
Jerome Roos, “Coal Kills 4,000 Times More People Per Unit of Energy Than Does Nuclear.” Breakthrough Institute, April 11, 2011.
thebreakthrough.org/archive/coal_kills_4000_times_more_peo
.

nuclear power avoided:
Pushker A. Kharecha and James E. Hansen, “Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power.”
Environmental Science and Technology
47 (March 15, 2013): 4889–4895.
pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es3051197
.

“would decay to background levels”:
Albert J. Juhasz, Richard A. Rarick, and Rajmohan Rangarajan, “High Efficiency Nuclear Power Plants Using Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor Technology.” Seventh International Energy Conversion Engineering Conference, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, August 2–5, 2009, Denver, Colorado,
enu.kz/repository/2009/AIAA-2009-4565.pdf
.

China is working on a project:
Jennifer Duggan, “China Working on Uranium-Free Nuclear Plants in Attempt to Combat Smog.”
The Guardian,
March 19, 2014.
www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/19/china-uranium-nuclear-plants-smog-thorium
.

traveling wave reactors are designed:
Tyler Ellis, “Traveling-Wave Reactors: A Truly Sustainable and Full-Scale Resource for Global Energy Needs,” Paper 10189, Proceedings of ICAPP 2010, San Diego, CA, USA, June 13–17, 2010.
large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph241/levin2/docs/ICAPP_2010_Paper_10189.pdf
.

supply enough electricity to run a small city:
Guy Norris, “Skunk Works Reveals Compact Nuclear Fusion Reactor Details,”
Aviation Week & Space Technology,
October 15, 2014.
aviationweek.com/technology/skunk-works-reveals-compact-fusion-reactor-details
.

solar, geothermal, and wind energy:
Energy Information Administration
, Monthly Energy Review: December 2014,
Electricity Net Generation: Total (All Sectors), Table 7.2a,
www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/mer.pdf
.

“large-scale moon colonization”:
Megan Nicholson and Matthew Stepp, “Challenging the Clean Energy Deployment Consensus.” Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, October 23, 2013.
www2.itif.org/2013-challenging-clean-energy-deployment-consensus.pdf
.

In a 2011 paper, the Stanford engineer Mark Jacobson:
Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark A Delucchi, “Providing All Global Energy with Wind, Water, and Solar Power, Part 1: Technologies, Energy Resources, Quantities and Areas of Infrastructure, and Materials.”
Energy Policy
39 (2011): 1154–1169; see especially 1160.
old.rgo.ru/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/JDEnPolicyPt1.pdf
.

some way to store electricity:
Annual Energy Outlook 2014,
Energy Information Administration, “Levelized Cost and Levelized Avoided Cost of New Generation Resources in the Annual Energy Outlook 2014,” April 17, 2014,
www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm
.

two to three times more generating capacity:
Cory Budischak et al., “Cost-Minimized Combinations of Wind Power, Solar Power, and Electrochemical Storage, Powering the Grid Up to 99.9% of the Time.”
Journal of Power Sources
225 (March 1, 2013): 60–74.
www.ceoe.udel.edu/windpower/resources/BudischakEtAl-AsPublished-Corrected.pdf
.

Americans were willing to pay just under $10 per month:
Ed Crooks, “Voters Put $10 Limit on Green Energy Cost.”
The Financial Times,
June 17, 2011.
www.financialexpress.com/news/Voters-put-10-limit-on-green-energy-cost/804824
.

“Despite the skepticism of experts”:
Vivek Wadhwa, “The Coming Era of Unlimited—and Free—Clean Energy.”
Washington Post,
September 19, 2014.
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/09/19/the-coming-era-of-unlimited-and-free-clean-energy/
.

levelized unsubsidized cost of utility-scale solar PV:
Lazard,
Lazard's Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis—Version 8.0,
September 2014,
www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf
.

“still require conventional technologies”:
George Bilicic cited in press release, “Lazard Releases New Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis,” September 18, 2014.
www.marketwatch.com/story/lazard-releases-new-levelized-cost-of-energy-analysis-2014-09-18
.

low-end levelized cost for solar PV:
Electric Power Research Institute,
Integrated Generation Technology Options 2012,
February 19, 2013.
www.epri.com/abstracts/Pages/ProductAbstract.aspx?productId=000000000001026656
.

solar PV will be $101 per megawatt-hour:
Energy Information Administration,
Annual Energy Outlook 2014,
May 7, 2014.
www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm
.

figure is already 15.9 gigawatts:
Solar Energy Industries Association, “Over Half a Million Solar Installations Now Online in the U.S.,”
Solar Energy Facts: Q2 2014
.
www.seia.org/sites/default/files/Q2%202014%20SMI%20Fact%20Sheet_0.pdf
.

global production capacity of solar cells/modules:
Selya Price and Robert Margolis, “2008 Solar Technologies Market Report,” National Renewal Energy Laboratory, US Department of Energy, January 2010, 17.
www.nrel.gov/tech_deployment/pdfs/2008_solar_market_report.pdf
.

85 gigawatts in 2016:
Mike Munsell, “Polysilicon Capacity Growth to Accelerate, Enabling 85GW of Solar Panel Production in 2016.” GreenTechMedia, October 14, 2014.
www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Polysilicon-Capacity-Growth-to-Accelerate-Enabling-85-GW-of-Solar-Panel-Pr
.

That would not be too cheap:
Lewis L. Strauss, speech at National Association of Science Writers, September 16, 1954,
www.thisdayinquotes.com/2009/09/too-cheap-to-meter-nuclear-quote-debate.html
.

disruptive new innovations:
Seth Fletcher, “Secretive Company Claims Battery Breakthrough.”
Scientific American,
August 20, 2014.
www.scientificamerican.com/article/secretive-company-claims-battery-breakthrough/
.

There will be no further global treaties:
Ronald Bailey
, “The Kyoto Protocol Is Dead.”
Reason,
December 17, 2004.
reason.com/archives/2004/12/17/the-kyoto-protocol-is-dead
.

“the international community should stop chasing the chimera”:
Timothy Wirth and Thomas Daschle, “A Blueprint to End Paralysis Over Global Action on Climate.” Y
ale Environment 360,
May 19, 2014.
e360.yale.edu/feature/a_blueprint_to_end_paralysis_over_global_action_on_climate/2766/
.

“when policies focused on economic growth”:
Roger Pielke Jr.,
The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell You About Global Warming
.
New York:
Basic Books, 2010, 272.

“The paramount goal of climate policy”:
Matthew Stepp and Megan Nicholson,
Beyond 2015: An Innovation-Based Framework for Global Climate Policy
. Center for Clean Energy Innovation, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, May 2014.

“Social and environmental hazards like climate change”:
Mark Caine et al.,
Our High Energy Planet—A Climate Pragmatism Project
. Breakthrough Institute, April 2014; and Charles R. Frank Jr.,
The Net Benefits of Low and No-Carbon Electricity Technologies
. Working Paper 73, Brookings Institution, May 2014.

“Societies that are able to meet their energy needs”:
Mark Caine et al.,
Our High Energy Planet: A Climate Pragmatism Project.
April 2014.
thebreakthrough.org/images/pdfs/Our-High-Energy-Planet.pdf
.

a system of electricity regulation:
R. Richard Geddes, “A Historical Perspective on Electric Utility Regulation.”
Regulation,
Winter 1992.

have amounted to more than $837 billion:
60 Years of Energy Incentives: An Analysis of Federal Expenditures for Energy Development,
Management Information Services, October 2011.

7. Is the Ark Sinking?

“A large fraction of both”:
Summary for Policymakers,
Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability,
IPCC March 31, 2014, 15.

“Current rates of extinction”:
S. L. Pimm et al. “The Biodiversity of Species and Their Rates of Extinction, Distribution, and Protection.”
Science
344.6187 (May 30, 2014).
www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6187/1246752
.

“It could be a scary future”:
Center for Biological Diversity, “The Extinction Crisis,” accessed May 30, 2014.
www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/
.

“We're destroying the rest of life”:
E. O. Wilson, April 30, 2012. “E. O. Wilson wants to know why you're not protesting in the streets.” Interview with Lisa Hymas,
Grist
.

“We're destroying the rest of life”:
Barnosky cited in “World's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway—Study.”
The Independent,
March 7, 2011,
www.independent.co.uk/environment/worlds-sixth-mass-extinction-may-be-underway—study-2234388.html
; see also Anthony Barnosky et al., “Has the Sixth Mass Extinction Already Arrived?”
Nature
471 (March 3, 2011): 51–57.
ib.berkeley.edu/labs/barnosky/Barnosky%20et%20al%20Sixth%20Extinction%20Nature.pdf
.