From: "Alastair" <[email protected]> Newsgroups: gmane.science.general.global-change To: "globalchange" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, December 21, 2009 5:48 PM Subject: [Global Change: 3314] Re: Positive externalities
On Dec 20, 7:08 pm, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote: >> I find it much better to make a positive case, not one grounded in >> "sin". >The only answer is for us to reduce our profligate life style to that >which would be sustainable world wide, and allow the developing world >to rise to that standard. This is a particularly narrow-minded and highly judgemental opinion, and not rational - it does not even admit any of the possibilities for reduced emissions with high and rising global standards of living that have been devised as the IPCC emissions scenarios for stabilization. It is not rational for us to reduce our standard of living in the strict sense of rationality being to act in one's own self-interest - the "ratio" of rationality being the ratio of benefit to cost. There is not one "only" answer, there are several, which are rational, and they involve the construction of thousands of new nuclear reactors, as in A1T, or B1. The international questions that matter are who will build reactors, who will finance their construction, who will receive emissions credits from them, and who will prosper from the sale of electricity. *Re-post* IPCC SRES Emissions Scenarios - Version 1.1 World - A1T AIM Primary Energy 2000 2100 Nuclear 11 EJ 112 EJ http://www.unep.no/climate/ipcc/emission/data/allscen.htm Currently the world is building about 150 new coal-fired power base-load power plants per year. If we build 80 new nuclear plants per year we'd reach a stable global inventory of about 4,000 plants in about 50 years, 10 times higher than today's roughly 400 plants world-wide. A1T and B1 are two scenarios that stabilize atmospheric CO2 concentrations by 2100. http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/figspm-5.htm Good solstice, many happy returns of the season, and a glorious new year to all. -dl -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange
