Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop “old-fashioned” stance
theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/29/young...
theguardian.comPosted Aug 30, 2023, 10:53 AM UTC
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theguardian.comWho funds Greenpeace becomes obvious when one of the founders comes before donors to speak about how CO2 can not be source of global warming ever, that there is "no evidence", despite the definitive scientific debate about it ended in the era of 1898-1902. 120 Years Ago.
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Patrick Moore? Yeah, don't trust a single thing that dude says. Joined the crackpot ranks decades ago, hasn't been part of Greenpeace since the very early days.
Greenpeace is also very transparent about it's funding, it's publicly available.
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But see who is posting him onto the social media, and how they do it.
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What about the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner for Physics? The IPCC cancelled a speech he was invited to give on climate change also when they found out his stance is Human Climate Change is it is a hoax, there is no climate emergency and that the entire claim by the UN's IPCC is based on "bad science" and he was very willing to spell out and demonstrate exactly why the science is not only incorrect, but scientifically impossible also while showing how their actions will do nothing but harm Billions of people who live in 3rd world countries. When he was asked why they cancelled he showed the email he got from the IPCC, stated in the email from the IPCC why they were cancelling the Nobel Laurett's speech is that they feared he would discuss the topic in a matter above the level of understanding of its panel members. If your job is climate change as a climatologist, sitting on the UN's IPCC, I would hope you are capable of following along with science presentations on your field of expertise, even from the perspective of one of the most intelligent men on this planet and top scientists in the world, but apparently not. Or you didn't want to risk this man's words being captured and spread to others.
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LOL. So, he thinks 10,000's of global scientists are wrong, and just his math is right.
Wow, that's some "No, I didn't make a mistake in my math." Hubris. And sticking with it. There may be a brain aneurysm involved too.
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Um nearly all physicalist and astrophysicists don’t adhere to the consensus because you have to ignore scientific laws to believe the consensus. And hint a consensus is not science, science needs to consensus and why no climate change papers have or will ever pass peer review, they all denote the consensus as evidence which is not a scientific approach, science is provable, replicable and explainable and human climate change is not any of these and why the “consensus” (which is actually 97%, or 1/3rd of Climatologists studying climate change in 2014 took a stance humans might impact climate on earth” this fact turned into 97% of climatologists agree that humans cause climate change…. Notice a difference in those statements?
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Where's you get that load of malarkey?
Fox "News", or Putins Pravada?
With the new vast scope of visible, economically destructive, and record heat events Globally, no one with a degree in any science is doubting anything.
Now you have your unqualified and nuts, but you always have those.
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John Clauser won that Nobel prize for work done in the 1970’s on quantum entanglement. He doesn’t think climate modeling is legitimate science but does not propose another prediction method. Probably doesn’t know anything about modern biomedical research either.
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More at 11PM on "Things That Never Happened"!
I have seen the thousands of pages of IPCC reports, unlike you. The fraud here is you, sorry.
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There really isn't any need to oppose nuclear at this point. It is dying on its own.
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A death rattle from the nuclear industry.
Nuclear is dead. It's expensive and late. No-one wants to pay for the (very late, very expensive) existing Hinckley Point C capacity, let alone build more.
This "activist" may want more nuclear power, but I bet she doesn't want to pay for it. Not when wind, solar and residential storage is not only 5x cheaper but also getting cheaper at an absolutely insane rate.
Stick with you guns Greenpeace.
Fuck nuclear, but because it's late and expensive, not because of the 10,000 years of radioactive waste that it produces.
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Not expensive.
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Genuinely expensive.
Higher levelized cost than any other mainstream generation so it's not really arguable.
Nuclear needs to make its case on something that isn't cost.
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This is a serious misunderstanding of how large the economy is and what it is capable of supporting.
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This comment is word salad.
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Transmission maybe since it involves so much land. If local governments want to build their own generation that is their business. As a California voter I would approve of any state owned solar, wind, battery, or in state transmission projects but I would not vote for any nuclear. But private, particularly household generation is going to be so big that it likely would not matter.
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Not expensive.
Yes it is, even storage is factored in:
https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost-of-energyplus/
If you're going to try to claim French nuclear power is cheap
A prior assessment using data from the year 2000 estimated levelized costs at $35 per MWh. The French audit report then set out in 2012 to reassess historical costs of the fleet. The updated audit costs per MWh are 2.5x the original number, as shown by the middle bar in the chart. The primary reasons for the upward revisions: a higher cost of capital (the original assessment used a heavily subsidized 4.5% instead of a market-based 10%); a 4-fold increase in operating and maintenance costs which were underestimated in the original study
And if you want to bring up the non existent SMRs
https://www.theenergymix.com/2022/11/18/costs-skyrocket-at-u-s-small-modular-reactor-project/
Higher steel costs and rising interest rates are taking the blame after a small modular nuclear reactor project in Utah reported a cost increase from US$58 to $90 or $100 per megawatt-hour for the electricity it’s meant to produce.
Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems is planning to bring the six NuScale reactors online in 2029 with combined output of 462 megawatts. But “the rise in prices likely means the UAMPS project will not hit certain engineering, procurement, and construction benchmarks, allowing participants to renegotiate the price they pay or abandon the project,”
Without the IRA, the cost per megawatt-hour would be closer to $120. Utility Dive and IEEFA both say any price above $58/MWh could allow the utilities to renegotiate their contracts or leave the project with no financial penalty.
That's if they even have a fuel source
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/nuclear/how-did-the-us-nuclear-industry-fare-in-2022
TerraPower and dozens of other advanced nuclear startups require a concentrated form of fuel — HALEU. But the only current commercial supplier of HALEU is Tenex, a Russian state-owned company. That wasn’t a great situation even before Russia invaded Ukraine.
In mid-December, TerraPower announced that it has pushed back the planned start date for its reactor because depending on HALEU sourced from Russia had become an unworkable business plan. “Given the lack of fuel availability now, and that there has been no construction started on new fuel enrichment facilities, TerraPower is anticipating a minimum of a two-year delay to being able to bring the Natrium reactor into operation,” said CEO Chris Levesque.
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You should go convince some investors to build one then, rather than a solar farm or offshore wind.
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Investors are the last people who should own energy.
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So this group is run by the ecomodernist outfit RePlanet, which is 90% funded by the Quadrature foundation, which itself is funded by a hedge fund that makes profits off fossil fuel investments. Not exclusively given its trading strategy, but still... pretty indefensible.
They claim to have big vision, but the only thing they ever seem to talk about or get coverage for is.... very pro nuclear commentary and nothing else.
Also funny how this volunteer activist, face of the campaign, has the same last name as RePlanet board member Take Aanstoot. What a coincidence!
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I knew it was trash propaganda when they quoted the idiot who repeated the nonsense claim that Germany had increased coal. Like, the Guardian didn't even bother to do the slighest bit of fact checking for what is an easily disproven lie.
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To your point, Germany consumption of coal dropped substantially since their decision to reduce nuclear, yet the myth you note keeps getting propagated.
There's still a good case that they should have kept existing nuclear running until end of life (could have theoretically reduced coal consumption faster but unclear if renewable growth would have continued at the same pace without the same demand urgency), but the fact they lie about the data badly undermines that case. They can't stand to admit how effective renewables have been in decarbonizing.
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Ia Aanstoot is just a plucky teenagers, just like Greta Thunberg, who just wants to make the world a better place using a plastic grass roots campaign to energize the people in daring support of the status quo!
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which itself is funded by a hedge fund that makes profits off fossil fuel investments.
This is really not meaningful in any way. $170M is a rather small portion of a hedge fund worth many billions, and these things are usually run independently. If you trace back almost any foundation funding you're going to find investments that include fossil fuel companies or utilities. For that matter, one of Greenpeace's major funders was founding on Tobacco company wealth. Shit, one of the largest climate philanthropies if the Rockefeller Foundation.
I can tell you first hand that Quadrature is very allergic and careful about working on anything fossil fuel-related.
Regardless, this kind of ad hominem is annoying and useless. Better to address the argument, or else it's a never-ending rabbit hole of "whose funders are the most moral".
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170 million isn't huge in the grand scheme of things, but you can't hand waive away profit being made off fossil fuels as "meaningless in aggregate". It is meaningful, and not suddenly ok because it's being invested in groups fighting the problem the investments created/are perpetuating.
This isn't "historical wealth being used for good" either, like the Greenpeace examples you mention (never heard of the tobacco one, link?). It's current.
If Quadrature is that allergic to fossil-fuel connections, maybe it should stop making money off fossil fuel investment strategies? This is what is indefensible, and I have not seen any evidence that they are moving away from this. There are many ways to make clean, green investments and make money.
Overall I agree that one should address the issue, but this is not an ad hominem. This is a look at transparency and motivations. If I was to play the ball i'd ask:
- Will including nuclear in the taxonomy actually lead to more plants being built on a 1.5DegC compliant timeline? Because the answer on that is already clear: No, it wont.
It's also strange that this activist implies that Greenpeace is still focused intently on anti-nuclear pushes, and not fighting fossil fuels, when this is patently untrue and pretty absurd? GP runs major campaigns against fossil fuels all over the world, and has done for decades. This work is way larger than its anti nuclear work, but we're supposed to believe that it's stuck in the past? Give me a break.
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Sorry to derail, I appreciate the response, but I don’t understand why mine was removed? It’s not your fault. But I’m not sure how I can engage in the discourse if my replies get removed.
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Yeah it was a good comment that added to the discussion, IDK why it was removed either 🤷♂️
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It's his daughter. It's not like they are trying to hide it. I know Take and he is a great man, highly engaged in wanting to solve the climate crisis and making the planet better.
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They're not exactly upfront about it either. They are making this look like a grassroots campaign, which, scratching the surface, it doesn't seem to be. It looks like an attempt for publicity, which, admittedly, is working well.
Take may be very engaged and genuine, I'm sure they all are. Doesn't mean this isn't misguided. The Greenpeace EU spokesperson in the article is on point as to why.
Picking a fight with what are essentially allies in the climate fight is not a good strategy, and wastes everyone's time and resources.
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Brand new account, somehow associated with the organization behind this marketing campaign, happens to find this subreddit discussion.
With numerous other zero post history commenters appearing here. We had our suspicions about astroturfing this post, but thanks for the confirmation.
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Fossil polluters like competing against nukes because they are slow and expensive. Fossil will always beat them in cost and availability. So they fund this.
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The fifteen years to build a nuke is fifteen years of guaranteed natural gas sales because the money that could have gone to solar/wind/storage isn't doing anything to produce cheaper power in that period.
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Ah, finally the REAL Reason gas is pushing Nuclear. My guess is they'll build it for 9 years, and then abandon it with an "Accounting Audit", that it's now too expensive.
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Nuclear takes 10 years, to build and will be 2x to 3x more expensive than the initial estimate. Also, with growing heat in rivers and streams, you CAN NOT COOL a reactor in a Heat Wave. So, it will shut down.
Plus, the built in Catastrophic Risk of Terrorism, or Accident, like 100 mile radius of Catastrophic Economic Damage.
Nuclear has high running costs, which will be passed on to you, the rate payer.
Solar, Wind and Battery Storage are the cheapest energy sources on the planet and can be built quicker, and run safer, with almost no inputs.
You can get a Wind contract now for 1-4 cents per kWh. Nothing touches that.
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Unless our rivers are boiling they'll be enough to cool a reactor. As far as the 100 miles zone everything around Three Mile Island seems fine. As for the operating costs once people realize that fresh water isn't an infinite resource and demand for desalinization spikes then nuke plants can be a centralized producer of fresh water and electricity, hook up an additional N2, H2 plant and you can diversify enough to make it profitable.
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If you build the systems needed you can cool it. French plants mainly shut down because of regulations regarding water temperature.
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Ah yes, who should build these new nuclear reactors? What design?
How will any of this get built in the next 15 years?
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Demand for nukes will rise with the next ecological disaster which is the dwindling fresh water reserves. When you build a nuke plant + desalinization plant combo the efficiency jumps up and you're producing two of the most important needs for human life currently.
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France is doing it, as is the USA.
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Doing what? Half of france's nuclear reactors broke down for a year. All attempts at nuclear in US failed, with only built 2 reactors, the one who made them Westinghouse had to file bankruptcy. In all cases, the reactors are overpriced and over budget and took longer to build then planned
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How are we doing it? Vogtle 3 and 4 have been total cluster fucks that have come in at over double their original estimated cost and are years behind schedule. If they are the best case scenario for nuclear then nuclear is absolutely not worth doing in the US. Take the same money you would pay for nuclear, and buy some mix of solar, wind, renewables, and transmission and you will have a far more productive and resilient asset.
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if generating power with nuclear was economically viable, it wouldn't need redditors to defend it
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So you don't defend renewables on reddit?
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Greenpeace is utterly irrelevant these days.
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Pro nuclear is old fashioned. Nuclear can't compete with solar at all and I'm sick of people pretending our archaic methods of delivering power are in any way viable.
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Go visit Fukushima, honey. You'll see why.
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The global effects of climate change will be dramatically worse then a thousand Fukushimas (which,by the way, was an entirely preventable disaster).
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This!!!
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And had zero radiation deaths. All of them were related to the tsunami
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Lots of zero post history commenters showing up here, including one that admits being affiliated with RePlanet, the fossil fuel funded lobby body behind this effort.
Closed for brigading
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And this kind of argument by people pro-nuclear is all bullshit. They claim it's "identity politics", but the start of Greenpeace's response sums it up nicely as anything but:
Nuclear is safe, green, but too slow and too expensive. Investing in nuclear is an opportunity cost, when we could decarbonize faster and cheaper by investing in renewables.
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That's a pretty fair, realistic summary.
Nuclear isn't just slow an expensive because of regulation. Its complicated. It takes a LOT of resources to plan, design, build, commission and maintain a plant. They generate a large amount of power BUT... you're talking bare minimum 10 years to build one. On top of that, not only can is be a massive liability of things go wrong, someday it will need to be decommissioned and retired. That's no small endeavor either.
I'm 100% in favor of keeping the ones we have running and maintained, even maybe major maintenance ops like entirely replacing reactors and the end of service life as part of our generation mix.
But Solar/Wind have a tremendous advantage in being incremental. You don't have to make a massive commitment to a singular large source. Construction and planning are distributed through many smaller projects, so not only is it less up front cost, you can build capacity out incrementally and it comes online as each project is completed. Its way more appealing to potential investors.
True. You could spread the solar load across the bottom 20 US States, and get it done quick. This is a great jobs program too.
Why do Repubs Hate Jobs and Business?
Electricity will still be needed in 10 years. Even 100 years. That it takes a long time is completely irrelevant. Electricity demands will go up. All kinds of fossil free electricity will be needed.
Yes. But what is being discussed here is nuclear contributing to decarbonisation in a Paris-compliant timeframe, eg: a completely fossil-free European power sector by 2035 to stay under 1.5 DegC of warming, and funding allocation via the taxonomy to make it happen.
That's 12 years. Nuclear cannot meaningfully contribute to this goal.
Net zero 2050? Maybe it can contribute more, but there is a limited number of plants that can be built simultaneously in that time due to the lack of skilled engineering workforce and critical equipment, such as forges to churn out enough containment chambers etc. The scaleup is virtually impossible in that time.
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So, does carbon capture, Fail.
Better to growth those Billion Trees, the Repubs were talking about.
Hey, why didn't they fund that already?
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