Nuclear Power Needs to Be a Significant Part of our Energy Production

National Geographic's article is titled "The controversial future of nuclear power in the U.S. As the climate crisis worsens, the discussion intensifies over what role nuclear power should play in fighting it." Here's an excerpt:

The status of existing [nuclear] plants has big implications: Including Indian Point, seven gigawatts of nuclear power are in danger of going offline before 2026 due to depressed electricity prices.

“Taking out nuclear power plants completely destroys gains with renewables,” Buongiorno says. When the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which produced about 8 percent of California’s electricity, closed in 2013, the local cost of electricity increased, and carbon dioxide emissions in California increased by 9.2 million tons the following year.

The MIT report found that in the next decade, the most cost-efficient, reliable grid comes from an energy mix. “Our analysis shows a big share of nuclear, a big share of renewables, and some storage is the best mix that is low-carbon, reliable, and at the lowest cost,” Buongiorno says."

For a related recent post discussing the views of Mike Shellenberger, see here.

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Facebook Again Censors Accurate Information – This Time on Deficiencies of Renewable Energy

Michael Shellenberger has made a serious claim that renewables cannot get us where we need to go. For that, he argues, we need to invest in nuclear power. Facebook censored Shellenberger even though he was deemed correct by researchers at Princeton and Bloomberg news. FB shut down the conversation on yet another critically important national issue. Shellenberger's article is titled "Finally They Admit Renewables Are Terrible For The Environment: New research from Princeton University and Bloomberg confirms that renewables require 300 - 400 times more land than natural gas and nuclear plants."

Over the last few years, I have been pushing back against the idea that renewables are good for the environment. In 2019 I published, “Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet,” which was the most-read article of the year at Quillette, and gave a TEDx talk by the same name, which today has 2.5 million views. And last year, in Apocalypse Never, I pointed out that wind and solar projects require 300 to 400 times more land than nuclear or natural gas plants, and that 100% renewables would require increasing land used for energy from 0.5% today to 25% to 50%.

Needless to say, the renewable energy industry and its boosters haven’t liked what I’ve written, and have sought to cancel me. Last year, a group of activist scientists denounced me as factually wrong, and demanded that I be censored by Facebook. They drew on junk science to claim that solar required just 3.6 times more land and wind just 5.8 times more than nuclear and natural gas plants. In response, Facebook censored me and denied me the right to appeal their verdict.

But now researchers at Princeton University and Bloomberg News have admitted that I was right and my critics were wrong.

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The Food We Waste

I learned this about the food Americans waste from this article in The Atlantic: "Your Diet Is Cooking the Planet: But two simple changes can help."

Let’s begin with the role of food waste. Americans waste a lot of food. Nearly one-third of it, in fact. More than 130 billion pounds a year, worth roughly $160 billion. We throw away enough food to close our own “meal gap” eight times over. Food is the single biggest component of our country’s landfills, and the average American sends more than 200 pounds of food there every year. More than 1,250 calories per person a day, or more than 140 trillion calories a year, get tossed in the garbage.

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Making Farming a Reality in Rose Bud, Arkansas

I met Steve Grappe ten years ago in St. Louis when I was attending a Lightroom course he was teaching. Back then, Steve was an excellent photographer who eventually became my photography mentor. He taught many other people too. He was the center of vibrant photography community. I quickly learned that Steve was an indefatigable man with an expansive skillset and nonstop creativity. A few years ago Steve left St. Louis to reconnect with Kelly, his prom date from many years earlier when they attended high school together in Arkansas. They were married in May 2018. He took a day gig as a car mechanic and she continued her job as a telecom executive. They settled down and lived happily ever after. The End.

Actually, that's not quite the end of the story. A few months later, they bought a dilapidated old farm in Rose Bud, Arkansas. It was actually much worse than dilapidated. I think Steve said he bought it for a bag of acorns. They worked around the clock to fix up the place and this took an enormous amount of sweat equity. Steve and Kelly were helped considerably in this project by Kelly's teenage daughter, Grace.

Steve and Kelly were still most definitely not farmers, but at about this same time they decided they needed to learn how to run a farm, so they attended one of the best farm schools available: Youtube. They also asked lots of questions and listened to others in the business. They jumped right in and brought in some livestock, including chickens, pigs, turkeys, rabbits and pigs. They named their special place "Forevermost Farms," a name based upon a syrupy romantic encounter that I don't have time for right now. All of that was such long time ago . . . To recap, Steve and Kelly got married all the way back in May of 2018. They then bought a run-down farm, turned it into a really cool place where some of the animals wear clothes and sometimes sing in little animal quartets. Steve and Kelly went to YouTube University in order to learn how to humanely and organically raise these eccentric critters. Their work has become their passion and I now realize that they were just getting started.

Fast forword: In the past couple weeks, Steve and Kelly said goodbye to their latest batch of 3,000 chickens that they raised over the past few months. They also recently said goodbye to 300 turkeys, 60 pigs and, if I'm remembering correctly, a partridge in a pear tree. Most recently, they announced that one of their dogs is pregnant, which will provide them with more dogs to help them raise their livestock. Things are always happening at Forevermost.

The above numbers boggle my mind, but I've visited Steve and Kelly and I've seen their beautiful place. I've seen many of their animals and I know that many of those animals have both personalities and names. Steve has also become an expert in the mating habits of their animals. He carefully (some would say voyeuristically) observes the animals to see who is doing what to whom. Beware. If you ask Steve a question about animal sex, he will speak to you much more directly than your parents ever did when they gave you the "sex talk."

As Forevermost Farms has become a reality, I've seen a special glow in the eyes of Steve and Kelly. They have accomplished something I would have thought impossible until I saw it with my own eyes, especially in that short time frame, and it was all done on a limited budget. But guess what? My two wonderful upbeat hard-working friends have now most definitely become farmers.

If you'd like to know more about the story of Forevermost Farms, you are invited to follow Steve and Kelly on Facebook or at the Forevermost Farms Website. Please do visit their website so that you can take in some of this celebration that has become their lives.

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It’s Time to Reevaluate Solar Power, Wind Power and Nuclear Power

Michael Schellenberger, a well-credentialed environmentalist, argues that we should be moving away from most solar and wind-power, and toward nuclear energy. I've read Schellenberger's 2019 article at Quillette, I've listened to an hour-long podcast in which Schellenberger outlined his concerns, and I'm 1/4 into his new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All." I'm reevaluating my love for renewables and my concern about nuclear, fact by fact.  See also, "We Need a Nuclear New Deal, Not a Green New Deal."

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