Stephan: Today's email included a note from a man who identified himself as a Trump supporter. After objecting to my "biased coverage of the best president in American history," he admonished me about my criticism of nuclear power. Just a few days before I had exchanged several emails with a friend who supported my objections, and so this issue, increasingly being debated as climate change becomes an ever-present reality, has been on my mind. So I want to lay out a factual report on this issue. To do that in a fact-based way, I have chosen a report that is, as it explains "an adapted version of a Nature.com blog by Prof Benjamin K. Sovacool and Prof Andy Stirling, to accompany the publication of their paper “Differences in carbon emissions reduction between countries pursuing renewable electricity versus nuclear power” in Nature Energy." (For the primary paper see: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-00696-3) But, before that I will share a little noticed at the time and now forgotten story that I personally witnessed, and discussed with the principal.
Civilian nuclear power began because Westinghouse and GE needed to have a pathway to create a nuclear-trained workforce. Enough engineers, welders (nuclear qualified welder is still a work category) etc., and a way to make enough profit to justify the investment required to create the nuclear-powered ships, particularly the original deep ocean Polaris missile submarines that Hyman Rickover designed for the Navy and that were a key part of America's Trident Strategy (the other two being B-52 bombers and ground-based missiles). This was the dominant geopolitical strategy of the Cold War. That's why nuclear power was sold to America in the first place.
Rickover understood nuclear power better than anyone, both its positives and its negatives. He was so important to the strategy that even though the Navy hierarchy did not like him, did not like the idea of a Jew being in charge of the most important part of the Navy, they could not replace him. When the Navy would not promote him to flag rank the Congress did it by fiat and eventually promoted him to four stars.
When Rickover finally decided to retire he went to Rep. Eddie Hebert, 18-term Congressman from Louisiana, then chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, and requested that he convene a special hearing and invite Rickover to testify. I had met Rickover (I was then Special Assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations) and went to the hearing. Rickover testified to Congress that civilian nuclear power was a bad idea. To run it safely, he said, would require a military authority structure, and no one had any idea what to do with the waste, and he doubted anyone ever would.
Windmills and Sailboats on the Ocean Credit: CGP Grey/Flickr
The role of nuclear power in a low-carbon future has been subject to a long and contentious debate. Is a nuclear or a renewables pathway the best way forward, or do we need a “do everything” approach where every deployable technology is rolled out to decarbonise our electricity supply as soon as possible?
Many influential climate scientists and international organisations argue that a global shift towards nuclear power offers the best pathway to tackling the climate emergency and meeting the world’s increasing demands for electricity.
Others argue that renewable sources of energy are the best pathway towards a low-carbon electricity system and assert that they are cleaner, safer and more economically sustainable than nuclear.
In an attempt to negotiate these contending positions, a frequent mantra is that energy strategies should “do everything” in order to address the climate emergency. But – as a number of commentators have noted (for example, here and here) – this would actually be a highly irrational course of action.
Where “doing everything” involves making investments that are slower or less […]
Stephan: In a society in which profit is the first social priority, greed is seen as a virtue. This truth becomes clearer and clearer as the carbon industries are threatened. This is how they are responding. Wellbeing? A healthy environment? Not of interest.
A coal burning plant near Cheshire, Ohio Credit: Benjamin Lowy/Getty
As a huge winter storm knocked out power for millions of people in Texas, a group representing the coal industry saw an opportunity. “Houston, we have a problem,” the organization Friends of Coal wrote on Facebook. “Coal is the solution.” Another post showed a solar panel covered in snow. “You are warm today because of a coal miner and a pipeline,” it read.
The posts are part of a torrent of conservative statements blaming renewable energy failures for the Texas blackouts. And though such attacks can be easily debunked (the main source of the energy shortfall is natural gas) they serve a larger political purpose: rally a political base that can take back Congress from the Democrats in next year’s midterm elections.
“Everyone must help all across America within the industry,” the coal publication Coal Zoom wrote earlier this year. “The majority of the House must be won back in 2022.”News
The U.S. coal industry is in financial freefall due to competition from natural gas and renewables, as well as the economic shock […]
Dr. Sandro Galea, - Mailman School of Public Health - Columbia University
Stephan: As I listened to the discussion in the Congress on C-Span, MSNBC, and CNN concerning raising the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour, I was struck by how the whole business was couched in the abstract. What does $15 a hour really mean in a living human's life, a family's?
Well for starters $15 an hour is $600 a week, or $31,200 a year. But then, of course, there is federal income tax, Social Security deduction and medicare dues, which would leave you with $25,729.85. There may also be state tax, and then there is rent, food, electricity, water, and if you have children, well... like 40% of American families you couldn't write a $400 check in a crisis because you have no reserves you live paycheck to paycheck. And just to be clear, many of the people at this income level are the one's on the front line of dealing with this pandemic.
As I was doing this research an old friend sent me an email with this paper. It is 10 years old, but the reality it describes has actually gotten worse, much worse, particularly in the last four years, and most notably the last year. But this paper makes the point that I came away with. Given the level of poverty in the U.S., the lack of educational opportunities, our absurd healthcare system, our growing racial animosity, police violence against people of color, for many Americans we are in many ways more like a third-world country than the highly developed exceptional nation we tell ourselves we are. Am I exaggerating? Let's look at some actual facts
Child poverty Credit: Stephen Shames
How researchers classify and quantify causes of death across a population has evolved in recent decades. In addition to long-recognized physiological causes such as heart attack and cancer, the role of behavioral factors—including smoking, dietary patterns and inactivity—began to be quantified in the 1990s.
More recent research has begun to look at the contribution of social factors to U.S. mortality. In the first comprehensive analysis of such studies, researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health found that poverty, low levels of education, poor social support and other social factors contribute about as many deaths in the U.S. as such familiar causes as heart attacks, strokes and lung cancer.
The research team, led by Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH, chair of Epidemiology, estimated the number of U.S. deaths attributable to social factors using a systematic review of the available literature combined with vital statistics data. They conducted a MEDLINE search for all English-language articles […]
Stephan: I only eat meat about once every five weeks, and my wife quit eating mammals decades ago. Increasingly, I have been researching laboratory-grown meat for my monthly meal because it is clear to me that commercial animal husbandry for the purpose of killing those animals so we can eat their bodies is not sustainable in an age of climate change. if humanity wants to eat meat we must find another way. This may be the answer.
A little over two years after Israel-based start-up Aleph Farms unveiled the world’s first lab-grown steak, the company has now revealed a much more complex, thick-cut rib-eye steak. Cultivated using a novel 3D bioprinting technology, the company suggests it now has the ability to produce lab-grown iterations of any type of steak.
This rib-eye steak was produced using a new 3D bioprinting technology Credit: Aleph Farms
Lab-grown meat, also known as cultured meat or clean meat, has been rapidly evolving over the past few years. Across a decade scientists moved from producing a “soggy form of pork” in a laboratory to cultured chicken nuggets hitting Singapore market shelves in a world-first regulatory approval. One of the bigger challenges scientists face in creating slaughter-free meat products is replicating the numerous cuts of meat consumers are used to eating.
In 2018 Aleph Farms revealed the world’s first lab-grown steak imitating the cellular structures of a thin minute steak. Now, the company has revealed the creation of a more complex, thick rib-eye steak produced using a new 3D bioprinting technology.
“Unlike 3D printing technology, our 3D bioprinting technology […]
Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg, Postdoctoral Fellow at Concordia University in Montreal and a Visiting Fellow in the Animal Law and Policy Program at Harvard University | Faculty at Duke University and Duke Endowment Fellow of the National Humanities Center. - The New Republic
Stephan: And here is the argument for laboratory-grown chicken and meat. I predict this is the beginning of a trend that is going to grow month by month until it becomes the norm. Humans have been eating meat since there were humans, we are programmed for it, so we have to find a new form that does not involve the sadism of the present system.
A lab-grown chicken nugget Credit: Nicholas Yeo/AFP/Getty
Consider a steak. When it hits the hot oil in the pan, your mouth can’t help but water at the aroma. That familiar crackle of fat beginning to fry and render is the sound of the maillard reaction: that wondrous molecular dance of the steak’s amino acids and sugars as they caramelize during the searing process. When you pull it from the pan—it’s only a few moments away now—and your teeth sink into the medium-rare flesh, you will experience the textural contrast of the unctuous interior and the crispy crust. But you won’t be thinking about chemistry. With the aroma, the texture, and the savory juices coating your tongue, you will be absorbed. This is what it feels like to eat a perfect steak, and it feels good.
Now imagine that no animal suffered and died to provide you with this pleasure. In early February, the Israeli company Aleph Farms announcedthat it had 3-D printed a steak from live animal-cell cultures. The approach simulates the vascular system of […]
