Sierra Club loves turbines not whales, Oklo rejection, John Constable, Cooper’s Hawk
Sierra Club's hypocrisy on right whales, Oklo application rejected by NRC, John Constable on energy and wealth, Cooper's Hawk in the yard
The cold snap that hit Austin and the rest of Texas on Wednesday night has lots of people sweating over the ERCOT grid. But there hasn’t been a crisis. Today is cold and sunny and it appears we have passed the most dangerous part of the weather with the grid intact and only a few isolated power outages. Of course, none of this means that ERCOT’s grid is fixed. It’s not. A huge influx of wind and solar capacity, totaling tens of thousands of megawatts, is expected to be added to the ERCOT grid by the end of next year. But almost no new thermal generation. There’s plenty more to write about those issues, including the fact that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke is making the Texas grid a central part of his campaign against the incumbent, Greg Abbott, but I will cut to the chase and focus on four items today:
Sierra Club loves wind turbines not whales
NRC’s rejection of Oklo shows US is miles behind China
John Constable talks entropy, energy, and society
“Blue Darters” aka, Cooper’s and Sharp-Shinned Hawks
The Cooper’s Hawk photo above was taken by Mikola Swarnyk in 2020.
Last Sunday, I published a piece in Real Clear Energy on the issue of Vineyard Wind and North Atlantic right whales. I began:
Imagine for a moment what might happen if an oil company – say, Exxon Mobil or Chevron – announced plans to put dozens of offshore drilling platforms on the Eastern Seaboard, smack in the middle of where endangered North Atlantic right whales congregate. If that were to happen, it’s easy to imagine that America’s biggest environmental groups would express their outrage and immediately begin filing lawsuits under the Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, and other federal rules to protect the whales and stop the industrialization of their habitat. Enough for the imagining. Let’s cut to the reality of the proposed 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project, which aims to do just this: put dozens of offshore wind platforms smack in the middle of where endangered North Atlantic right whales congregate. As I reported last month, Vineyard Wind is now the focus of at least two federal lawsuits, with plaintiffs claiming that the project violates the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.
I continued:
The Sierra Club has not filed any lawsuits against Vineyard Wind even though that project will be situated atop a known right whale habitat. Furthermore, the Sierra Club is ignoring a remarkable report published last July by the National Marine Fisheries Service, an office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The agency’s findings deserve full quotation: “Right whales are increasing their use of southern New England waters, including regions slated for offshore wind energy development, according to aerial survey data collected during the last decade. . . . Construction and operation of hundreds of wind turbines is likely to introduce increased ocean noise, vessel traffic and possibly habitat alteration. All of these factors have the potential to affect right whales. Increased vessel traffic in the region will bring with it a greater risk of vessel strikes, one of the leading causes of serious injury and death of right whales. Increased noise from wind turbine construction and operations and vessels could also directly impact important whale behaviors and interfere with the detection of critical acoustic cues. These types of impacts may also be associated with physiological stress and could affect the whales’ use of the region.” (Emphasis added).
For a moment, imagine if that same federal agency were talking about the potential impacts that would be caused by offshore oil and gas development, instead of wind energy. The hue and cry would be audible from here to Nantucket. In short, it appears that the Sierra Club wants to protect right whales, unless, of course, they happen to be swimming in the way of offshore wind development. In that case, well, never mind.
Again, here’s a link.
On Monday, I published a piece in Forbes about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s rejection of an application submitted by Oklo. I wrote:
China is beating the pants off the United States in the race to deploy next-generation nuclear reactors. Wait. That’s not quite true. To have a race, the competitors have to be assembled at a starting line. The hard truth for the U.S. nuclear sector is that bureaucratic inertia is preventing it from even approaching the starting line. Proof of that came earlier this month when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission rejected Oklo Power LLC’s application to build and operate a 1.5-megawatt fast reactor in Idaho. Oklo is among a group of American startups that are hoping to get permits for new small modular reactors (SMRs) that could replace the large light-water reactors that dominate the existing domestic nuclear fleet. Many of those reactors are being prematurely shuttered (including the Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, N.Y., which was closed last year) and others are reaching the end of their expected lives...
The NRC’s rejection of Oklo’s application came less than three weeks after a consortium of Chinese companies announced that their high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) in Shandong Province had been connected to the electric grid and was producing commercial quantities of juice...HTGRs are among the next-generation of high-efficiency reactors that could provide an alternative to coal-fired power plants in China and many other countries. Chinese companies have been working on HTGRs for more than two decades. According to World Nuclear News, one of the two reactors at the site in Shandong reached first criticality in September and the second hit that milestone in November. Electricity production from the plant began flowing onto the electric grid on December 20.
I concluded:
Put short, while the U.S. dithers on regulatory matters, China is racing ahead with cutting-edge reactor designs that are safer and more flexible than the reactors now in use. According to Bloomberg, China now has 46 reactors planned or under construction. Meanwhile, here in the U.S., exactly two reactors are under construction.
I have said many times that if the U.S. is serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it must get serious about nuclear energy. Alas, that isn’t happening. Furthermore, it’s readily apparent that despite never-ending claims from top officials in the Biden Administration about the urgency of the need to address climate change, nuclear energy is not a priority. Need proof of that? Today, more than a year after President Biden was sworn into office, two of the five commission seats at the NRC, spots that are supposed to be filled by presidential appointees, are still vacant.
Again, here’s a link.
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John Constable of the Renewable Energy Foundation on energy, entropy, and why renewables are "a land play"
John Constable is the director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, a British public charity. In this episode, Constable discusses the ongoing energy crisis in Europe, misconceptions about the Industrial Revolution, offshore wind, why “renewables are a land play,” how increasing energy use leads to greater liberty and freedom, and why “solar and wind energy are a mirage.”
I really like how Constable approaches energy. He is a heterodox thinker and has an important take on how we should be approaching the issues of energy and power. This 2016 essay on energy, entropy, and wealth, which was recommended to me by my friend Mark Nelson, is excellent. (Nelson was on the podcast last October. Here's the YouTube link.)
I also really like this passage from a paper that Constable wrote last year for the Mont Pelerin Society. It's a longish essay, but this passage in particular, is provocative and reflects Constable's sharp thinking about energy. He wrote:
it is the introduction of a superior fuel, and resulting wealth, that liberated human beings, expanding their niche, increasing the diversity of employment types, reducing inter-individual competition, creating the institutions that make contactless exchange possible, and thus resulting in autocatalytic growth. It was wealth that made people free, not the other way around, as we find in the usual history, accepted by most liberal economic historians, that there was institutional change, property rights, societal liberalisation, even a change of heart of the kind described by McCloskey, which permits intellectual activity and trade, and then as a result there is growth. On that view, and in essence, it is freedom which leads to growth. But such a view is inconsistent with the observed facts of British economic history, to cite only one example. There was growth before liberalisation, in the Tudor period for example, and in the later 17th Century. What we in fact see is the expansion of a high-quality energy supply from coal that broke the constricting socio-political and power of the landowner, creating a diversity of employment types independent of the land, that is to say a large non-energy sector economy. It was expansion of energy supply that created great wealth and then freedom, first in Europe and then elsewhere. It is no accident that the liberal polity of the Netherlands and the two great liberal democracies, Britain and the United States, emerged from economies that first expanded their energy supply through the addition of superior fuels…
Again, here’s a link to the podcast, it is a bit longer than usual, about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Please share it. And don’t forget, the video of the episode is on my YouTube channel.
A "Blue Darter" in the yard, comparing Cooper's Hawk with the Sharp-shinned
About two weeks ago, Lorin saw a Cooper’s Hawk (Accipiter cooperii) in our yard. I was sorry not to see it. We have a Red-Shouldered Hawk that lurks around the property and in particular, near the small pond in the backyard. In fact, I saw the Red-Shouldered last night and again this morning. But I don’t recall seeing a Cooper’s in our yard and I don’t think I’d be able to identify because it’s still an unfamiliar bird. I bring this up because last night I was talking to my pal, Chris Cauthon, who lives in Tulsa. We were talking about the winter weather and how it had increased the number of birds that were gathering at our feeders. He then mentioned that the passerine birds at his place were skittish and always on the lookout for “Blue Darters.” When I expressed my ignorance of that term, he explained that his late father-in-law, Milton Jarrett, who was also an avid birder, had introduced him to that name, which is used for two very similar species: the Cooper’s and Sharp-shinned Hawk. The moniker comes from their most distinctive marking which is their slate-blue backs.
You can see how similar they are in the chromolithograph illustration above, which shows both of the “Blue Darters.” It was done by the American ornithologist and artist, Louis Agassiz Fuertes. (Fuertes was a major influence on Roger Tory Peterson.) The Cooper's Hawk is on the left and the Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus) on the right.
Wikipedia has a very long entry on the Cooper's Hawk, including these details:
a medium-sized hawk native to the North American continent and found from southern Canada to Mexico. This species is a member of the genus Accipiter, sometimes referred to as true hawks, which are famously agile, relatively small hawks common to wooded habitats around the world and also the most diverse of all diurnal raptor general. As in many birds of prey, the male is smaller than the female... This species tends to be active earlier in the morning than sharp-shinned hawks... During daylight hours, they tend to preen while sitting on a perch about 11 times a day, and may take about 1–20 minutes to do so. When attaining water to drink, Cooper's hawks appear to prefer to come to relatively secluded waterways. In more arid regions, Cooper's hawks may seek out artificial bodies of water to drink from (especially in passage). Although a rare behavior, there are now several records of juvenile hawks of the species proning wherein they lie on their backs along a branch (or rarely the ground), apparently as a form of sunning... Cooper's hawks are known as bold and aggressive predators. Given their dietary habits, these hawks bore a poor reputation well into the 20th century, with one account describing the species as "noxious," an "avian outlaw" and "a relentless tyrant and murderer of small birds." Another describes the species as "bloodthirsty" and a "villain... Cooper's hawk may consume well over 300 prey species from across the range. This predator is known to consume vertebrate prey almost exclusively.
Have a good (and warm) weekend.
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