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Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Bill McKibben May Disappoint

Bill McKibben gets much press in the U.S. for promoting global warming awareness.  He is to be highly commended.
But this article (poorly written, for every point there's a counter-point so the average person learns nothing) leads me to believe Bill may be disappointing.

First, is the title of his talk, "Keep the Faith and Do the Math".  The word "faith" has been so hijacked by religious folks that I avoid it.  I recently had a proselytizer visit my house and he said he believed what he believes in based on faith.  In other words, he held a non-evidence based belief but he made it sound haughty by using the word "faith".

Faith used to mean that given a history of repeatable evidence, one has confidence (faith) that given similar future circumstances a particular future outcome is highly likely.  Maybe that's what Bill means and maybe not. His talk is sponsored by a church, maybe that matters and maybe not.

Second, the article says that last year (what about now?) McKibben thought nuclear power was too expensive.  It is very expensive to build a plant (initial construction), and that's very important to investors making the investment.  But what's really important to everyone else is what those investors charge for power delivery.

This table (looking under the "Total" header), from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, shows that nuclear power has been less expensive than fossil fuels and gas turbine & small scale (which includes renewables).  Only hydro-electric has been less expensive.

Maybe Bill will discuss these facts in context in his talk.  Maybe not.

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