Climate warming is happening faster than I ever thought it would. Carbon emissions are not slowing, the glaciers and ice caps are melting, permafrost areas are releasing more methane, and air temperatures are becoming lethal. I don’t see how we can stop the warming but we can slow it by burning less fossil fuels, electrifying everything, reforestation, regenerative agriculture and others methods.
My father, Stuart McLain, was a nuclear engineer so I grew up hearing about nuclear power. Nuclear fuels are extremely energy dense so they require only small amounts of land and materials. In contrast, renewables such as hydro, solar and wind are weak and unreliable energy sources. They require large amounts of land and materials and thus have large environmental impacts. Their disposal at the end of their lives creates large amounts of waste materials.
Even though the environmentalists talk about the decreasing cost of renewables, the cost of electricity keeps rising. This is because the cost of making 24/7 reliable power greatly outweighs the cost of generation. Even if renewables were free, the cost of their electricity would still be high.
So one of my pet peeves is closing nuclear power plants (San Onofre a few years ago and Diablo Canyon in the future) and saying we can rely on wind and solar power. When a big high pressure system like this one moves in, air temperatures rise, the wind calms and the turbines stop. People turn on their air conditioners, the sun starts to set, the power from the solar panels drops, people turn on their TVs and stoves to cook dinner and electrical demand sours. To keep the grid stable, we have rotating blackouts like the one a couple days ago.
Henry's boys 