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Peter Forsythe in Hong Kong
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Ivanpah Solar. This is only one-third of it. Then you need 5x the area for same capacity as Diablo Canyon and then 4x that to get to equivalent electricity production per year |
South China Morning Post fact-checker is Charmaine. (I’m sure not the only one, just the one I’ve dealt with a few times. Very decent and conscientious).
She had a couple of questions about the letter I submitted (questions I’ve only just got to, three days late)
1. Subsidies. I’d said that our electricity provider, China Light and Power (CLP) pays us for the solar power that we put into its grid via our rooftop solar panels — the Feed in Tariff — an amount five times more than the going rate for the grid power delivered by CLP. This was subsidised by the HK taxpayer, I said.
Charmaine said it was not “the HK taxpayer”, but that costs to CLP were offset by selling Renewable Energy Certificates. I agreed I was wrong in saying it’s “the Hong Kong taxpayer” subsidies, so agreed with her edit to simply refer to “subsidies “.
In deep recesses of my mind I knew something about RECs, which are part of the whole carbon trading thing. It’s still a subsidy, of sorts, to CLP, and to us, as we would not have installed solar panels without it. At list price for electricity — the price we pay to CLP — it makes no economic sense at all to install rooftop solar panels, no matter how concerned one may be about climate change.
2. Area of land needed for solar power vs nuclear power. Charmaine said she couldn’t find a reference to my figure of 450 times as much land used in the Ivanpah Solar station vs the Diablo Canyon nuclear station. (Which I had got from EnvironmentalProgress.org/California via Michael Shellenberger, Apocalypse Never, p.188).
She points out Ivanpah Solar, capacity 380 Mw, is on 3,500 acres. Diablo Canyon Nuclear, capacity 2.2 Gw, is on 750 acres. Like for like in capacity — one Gw is 1,000 Mw — Ivanpah Solar needs 27 times the Diablo Canyon Nuclear area. [(2200/380 x 3500)/750].
Of course there are other factors involved and we agreed to a Nuclear industry figure of 75 times the land area requirement, Solar vs Nuclear.
Since then, I’ve looked into it a bit more and I can justify the 450 times figure, because:
A. There is a 4-fold difference in annual electricity production between Solar and Nuclear for any given capacity. Ivanpah Solar net production p.a. is 21% of its capacity. Diablo Canyon Nuclear net production is 88% of its capacity. Therefore the land use figures have to be adjusted to take account of that to compare like for like in terms of actual electricity production. You need to create approx 4 times the Solar capacity to get the same amount of net electricity per year as Nuclear. 88/21 = 4 times the 27 from above = 113 the land area needed, Ivanpah Solar vs Diablo Nuclear.
But there’s more!
B. The stated 750 acres for Diablo is way too much: When I thought about it, it seemed excessive. I have visited the Daya Bay Nuclear power station in China, which the same capacity as Diablo Canyon. I’ve also owned farm acres in Australia; I know what 40 acres looks like; I know what 100 acres looks like. 750 acres is a block 1.75 km by 1.75 km. This is huge! Quite simply, it is a gross overestimate of the land needed for an equivalent sized nuclear station. At a guess Daya is on ~40 acres. Certainly nowhere near 750 acres, which is simply incredible. As in not credible.
Then: Look more closely at the Wikipedia entry in Diablo Canyon and you find that the power facility is on just 12 acres! And that the owner of Diablo Canyon, Pacific Gas & Electric owns owns over 12,000 acres surrounding Diablo. At a guess, I’d say the 750 figure is just notional, plucked from the air. Perhaps the area that PG&E has notionally allocated to Diablo Canyon, though not the area needed to generate the power.
Now, it doesn’t need to be in just 12 acres. Allow for lawns and buffer area and say 40 acres. Then you get to 500 times the area of land needed for equivalent Solar to Nuclear [(2200/380)*3500/40]. To get exactly to the 450 x figure you need to allow 45 acres for Diablo Canyon. Looks about right to me! More than enough, from my eyeballing of Daya Bay. And eyeballing Diablo Canyon, below:
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Diablo Canyon Nuclear station. No way that’s 750 acres! |
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From the Megyn Kelly show notes:
“YouTubers Winston Sterzel and Matthew Tye join to discuss the toll of China’s Zero Covid lockdown policies, the rare protests late last year and China’s response, American media not understanding the China reality, how China tries to control the message and silence criticism, the nationalist movement in China., how China became more authoritarian in recent years, their personal experiences living in China as foreigners, and more”.
I agree with them this hyper-nationalist anti-foreign stuff began with Xi Jinping. I’ve said that for years. There’s his infamous “Document Nine” which kicked it all along.
I’d note too that this anti-foreigner wave is just the latest in a cycle that has repeated over the centuries, millennia, even. Examples: the Boxer Rebellion at the beginning of the 20th century, the Taiping Rebellion in the century before; even the wonderful Ming Dynasty cut itself off from foreign influence. So today is a bit of Plus ça change.…
This interview is well worth a watch. Especially if you’ve an interest in China. And who shouldn’t have, in these interconnected days? These guys know whereof they speak, at least from the POV of foreigners in China. Which will always be me. No matter what I do. No matter how much Chinese I know, just as it was for these lads. (And eventually their Chinese wives too, as they describe).
ADDED: I just realised that I’d come across their YouTube vids before this one. I’ve watched some of their stuff in the weirdest foods they’ve eaten in China. Which are weirder even than my weirdest ones which include Bull Penis and Live Fish. Oh, and Civet cat. And of course that western bête noire, Dog, aka “fragrant meat”.
ADDED II: Their comments in the Chinese education system, from the POV of teaching in it, are particularly interesting. Towards the end
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Shellenberger describes himself as an “environmental humanist”. As such, we must “ground ourselves first in our commitment to the transcendent moral purpose of universal human flourishing and environmental progress, then in rationality.”
Facing climate change is a challenge, but not an existential one. We are not about to go extinct.
The best tools to slow the change are nuclear and natural gas. Renewables like solar and wind have a place but are limited in various ways. The main thing is energy density — wind and solar are very energy dilute.
I must say it’s refreshing to see someone like Yergin talking some hard realities, other than non-stop climate catastrophism that I’m seeing in all the MSM. Catastrophism that tells us the only solution to the “emergency” is to drop everything, to go “Net Zero” immediately, shift everything to solar and wind (no No nuclear! No Hydro power!) and to do so no matter the cost. Oh, and go Vegan.
Neither Yergin nor Shellenberger is a “climate denier”. They both accept — as pretty much everyone does now — that climate change is real and man-made. They both accept we must tackle it. The question is to weigh the costs of climate change as well as the climate change mitigation costs and get the best balance. Shellenberger argues that the catastrophists only look at the costs of climate change not at the costs of what they demand we do to stop it. (“Nothing is too costly if an asteroid is hurtling to earth”).
For Shellenberger emission reductions are best achieved with nuclear and natural gas, with some renewables like solar and wind. Also more HEP. For Yergin I’m not sure what his solution is, TBF. Except he’s pointing out that the “transition” — away from fossil fuels — will be longer and more difficult than many expect. True ‘dat. Especially since he doesn’t even mention nuclear, which is rather odd. I don’t get it.
The “body positivity” movement is bad for America. By normalising fatness it makes America even fatter and less healthy. And I say this as a person of girth myself. We need to be telling overweight people: “eat less; exercise more”, not feel-good incantations — outgrowths of the woke movement. Do feel bad about being fat. Because it’s not good for you. And it’s not good for society.
Another case of an American university bending at the knee to radical Islam. It strikes me that it would have been easy for these Academic Administrators — aka bureaucrats, aka apparatchiks — to say “no” to these Muslim Brotherhood bullies demanding the sacking of a long-time professor for showing paintings of Mohammad in her Art History class.
All the apparatchiks had to do was weigh up Sharia law vs the American Constitution. Hmm…. Tough one. Not. There might have been a bit of blow back. Or not. But with just a touch of backbone, a firm and robust response from the bureaucrats this whole kerfuffle need not have happened. To the Muslim Brotherhood: “Sorry, if you don’t like what’s being taught in Art History class, then don’t attend. We have open enquiry and freedom of expression, here in America.” Done. But not on today’s woke campuses.
The prolific, the robust, the insightful Andrew McCarthy:
Trigger alert: I couldn’t care less if there is an Islamic consensus on the question ofwhether it is halal or haram for Mohammed to be depicted in visual art. In this, I am confident that I am expressing the American consensus — although, admittedly, not the consensus of university administrators and managers, who now outnumber both academics and students. [Read on…]
Not only front page, this nonsense also features in the editorial -- the main editorial! -- praises the “lucky joy stick” drawn out by a “Feng shui master” as a good guide to this year’s government policies! And not with a nod and a wink. Quite seriously. Quite depressing.
Previously we’ve had the promotion of nonsense Traditional Chinese Medicine as Covid cure. The government even sent out care packages to every single resident with packs of TCM. Nonsense and misinformation as formal government health policy.
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“Following the science” by masking outdoors. Riiight… Click above for SCMP Letters |
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As Paul Moreland says:
China is the world’s great population behemoth: what happens to the nation’s demography has significant ramifications for the rest of the world. As Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan pointed out in their book, The Great Demographic Reversal, the tremendous flow of subsistence peasants into the factories of China’s coastal plain not only fuelled the country’s stratospheric economic growth but also provided the developed world with a vast pool of cheap labour. Manufacturing transitioned out of Europe and North America to the PRC, where there was an endless supply of cheap labour. Now this era has ended. As this vast labour reservoir dries up, expect to pay more for everything from toys to tablets.
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The idea is to join up these islands with reclamation, build masses of apartment blocks and join up to Lantau by bridge We live up there on the top left of the photo, in Discovery Bay |
A HK$580 billion (US$74 billion) plan to create three artificial islands off Lantau despite a population decline was on Friday defended by Hong Kong’s planning authority on the grounds a land bank had to be created to avoid the problem of supply shortages in the future. More…
This is how they see the above islands in a decade or so. “Lantau Tomorrow” they call it:
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Lantau at top, and Discovery Bay at top left |
But that won't be the case for long, if one is to believe EU Commissioner for Values and Transparency Věra Jourová's bold prediction voiced during a World Economic Forum (WEF) event in Davos this week. With a chuckle, and addressing a Democratic congressman also participating in a panel hosted by none other than Brian Stelter, formerly of CNN, Jourová spoke about "illegal hate speech," adding, as a side note, that this is something "which you will have soon, also in the US." Not if the First Amendment has anything to say about it. |
SCMP EDITORS: "Exemplary compliance with the mask rule, and hand sanitation, have not only played an incalculable part in the fight against Covid-19,…".
Dear Editors. Please show me one piece of evidence -- just one -- for this statement. I won't hold my breath!
(The "hand sanitation" comment is particularly troubling. It was stressed at the *beginning of the pandemic*, when we thought Covid was transmitted by droplets. We now know -- though SCMP editors apparently don't -- that it's transmitted by aerosols).
LETTER TO SCMP:
As we have solar panels on our rooftop here in Discovery Bay, I’d like to comment on "Solar power needs a bigger push” (19 January). [Which quotes the many more houses in Australia that have Rooftop Solar]
These are opposite takes, drawing on some of the same data; but conclusions diametrically opposite. One view is more correct than the other. By definition: because they can’t both be true.
But which one is more correct? I know my views. You do yours.
A highlight from Shellenberger, a map of how Europe has re-forested in the last century. Because increased agricultural yields have allowed land to be given back to “rewilding”. IOW, increased yields are a key to providing more habitat for endangered species. And increased yields are achieved by modern farming methods, not by reverting to traditional or organic farming.
I also have a question about Paul Ehrlich, quoted in the Shellenberger article. Why is the man who has been so wrong, so often, so dramatically, so profoundly, so catastrophically, over fifty years, still on shows like “60 Minutes”? I don’t get it. He has precisely zero credibility.
ADDED: Our World in Data on countries which have reversed de-forestation (ie. “re-forested”). Note China and India in there:
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Births in China dropped 10% in 2022, to 9.56 million |
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said that a CDC vaccine database had uncovered a possible safety issue in which people 65 and older were more likely to have an ischemic stroke 21 days after receiving the Pfizer/BioNTech bivalent shot, compared with days 22-44.
An ischemic stroke, also known as brain ischemia, is caused by blockages in arteries that carry blood to the brain.
A monitoring system flagged that US drug maker Pfizer and German partner BioNTech’s updated Covid-19 shot could be linked to a type of brain stroke in older adults, according to preliminary data analysed by US health authorities.
Hong Kong’s mask mandate is an international embarrassment and should be scrapped immediately. A recent trip to the United Kingdom revealed in glaring detail just how nonsensical the present arrangements are and how they are undermining our prospects for economic recovery.
Hong Kong is the only city in the world with mask mandates for both indoors and outdoors.
ADDED: An interesting wrap up of mask efficacy.
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German Greens turning off its energy future |
And we read that they will not change their minds, no matter the science, because they want to “remain consistent”. Imagine, that they consider not any science. But consider only … their face. Like Chinese, really. But also shocking. Because the consequences are so great.