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Good place for a climate-change rally
By adamg on Sun, 03/04/2018 - 5:21pm
Adam Castiglioni watched members of the Boston Climate Action Network hold a rally to demand Boston do more about rising seas outside the Aquarium T stop, a couple days after the T sandbagged the entrance and closed the station because of the once-in-a-generation flooding that has now happened twice in two months.
Meanwhile, over at the Aquarium itself:
Today's #hightide looked a lot like yesterday's on Boston Harbor. pic.twitter.com/lBYKY3IyPM
— New England Aquarium (@NEAQ) March 3, 2018
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Comments
Saw This Today
The crowds of onlookers were, well, not there. It was the faux kayak crowd and I guess the guy who posted this to twitter. That's it. No one else with a few tourists walking by.
I wished one or two of them would have gone down a few blocks to the intersection of Seaport and Atlantic and maybe use their smugginess to help the guy out begging for a few bucks on the corner. I gave him some money and told him to have a good week. He was very grateful despite his condition, which included an arm that looked like Marlon Wayans' in Requiem For A Dream. His condition by the way that Marty Walsh and others can help a lot more than the thinking that the mayor can affect global climate change from City Hall by these people.
Yes, there is climate change going on, I was without power for two days. C'mon people, all growns up puppet shows on a Sunday is not going effect change. Showing up a congressional hearing on a Tuesday on the deregulation on the restrictions of the solar industry in the country will.
They perhaps did a poor job of explaining themselves, then
This particular group specifically focuses on local issues, from all those leaks in National Grid's Boston gas mains to the effects of rising sea levels and climate change on vulnerable areas (which extend far beyond the harbor - they call it Back Bay for a reason). Especially with what's going on in Washington now, we're kind of on our own, and while City Hall has begun planning to deal with rising sea levels, the two most recent big storms suggest it needs to be moving even faster, which I guess was the point of the protest.
There's a city-sponsored meeting Tuesday night on possible plans for South Boston, for what it's worth.
As for poor people a block away, I have to ask: How do you know that nobody in the kayak costumes ever helps poor people?
My question is
What are they going to keep Pilgrim open. You know, the power plant that produces zero greenhouse gases but is being closed so that we can have more electricity produced from that natural gas they are so opposed to.
You can't be serious
Put down the idiotic talking points and read about the problems at Pilgrim - overstocked fuel pool, ancient design, way beyond design life, etc.
Or just go take your Edsel for a sunday drive. I hear that is a very efficient car.
Okay, you win
Let's take the 25% void in electricity production coming from the decommissioning of nuclear power plants and fill it with the burning of fossil fuels. I'm sure the protestors will appreciate that.
Strawman
Pilgrim isn't all plants.
Sorry dude, but nice try. We need to close the dangerous ones that should never have been relicensed. Do you realize what had to be excluded from the risk assessments to justify keeping these disasters open?
Omit terrorism risk
Omit existing weather risks
Change design basis standards
etc.
Of course you don't. You don't have any facts to bring to this conversation whatsoever.
What strawman?
Yankee Rowe has been offline for decades, recently joined by its sister Vermont Yankee. That leaves us with Seabrook and???
But it's not like this is bad for our attempts to cut carbon pollution.
The Pilgrim = All Nukes Strawman
Blinded by radioactive propaganda are you?
Pilgrim is done. It needs to be closed.
Still confused
Unless you are claiming either that this group loves Seabrook Station or that they are advocating a new nuclear plant to replace Pilgrim.
No need
Forget fossil fuels. Nowadays solar is cheaper than gas, and doesn't contribute any CO2 at all.
Nuclear is itself a fossil. Now if somebody would just come up with a way to dispose of nuclear power poop. The spent fuel is currently being stored on-site, not just at Plymouth, but at defunct Vermont Yankee and at the long-decommissioned Rowe Yankee. The costs of dealing with those leavings are not included in nuclear advocates' financial claims.
duplicate
I wanted to make a point, but not that much.
Where do you think nuclear
Where do you think nuclear fuel comes from? Producing it is seriously carbon-intensive.
The nuclear industry would not exist without massive government subsidies propping it up.
"smugginess"?
Congratulations! You got whataboutism and virtue signaling in a single paragraph! I'm afraid we can't count your invention of "smugginess" towards a trifecta, but I'm sure you'll come up with something.
Thanks
Some of us have different priorities about making the world a better place than your worldview.
I will stand by my comment that protesting on a blustery Sunday by the arts and crafts crew is less effective than direct action to the authorities.
Also, if I come off as a jackass to the ones who are hashtagging the night away to the wrong actors is the way to go, so be it.
Right
Because only your priorities are the RIGHT ones and the only possible ones.
Climate change will injure the poor more than the rich.
Simple fact for a simple guy.
https://gizmodo.com/trumps-war-on-climate-science-is-a-war-on-the-poor-a...
whataboutism is a logical
whataboutism is a logical fallacy - the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation.
this post also seems to misrepresent your prior comment. Also "Showing up at hearing" is not necessarily a more direct action.
I disagree that art, doesn't help. A creative presentation is more likely to remembered according to the study of cognitive psychology.
What I am saying is that unless you plan to paint a picture (or a kayak), then don't bother going to the hearing.
Here's where I get in trouble
Back in the 1990s when I was hearing about global temperatures rising, I worried, especially since real, tangible results were mentioned- changes in growing season, which is kind of a big thing.
Then, in the 2000s, when all of this became very political I got skeptical. Not of the data, since that is cold and hard, but because of groups like this I ponder the true effects of things. I remember back in about 2003, they marched from Amherst to Boston to call attention to "global warming" around this time of year, perhaps more towards the middle of the month. Well, they faced snow and cold temperatures the whole week.
Were I a city planner, I'd be very, very concerned about rising sea levels and its effect on the cityscape. That said, we've had 2 instances of very high tides in Boston this year, with the other 3 on the top 5 list coming, in height order, in 1978 (#2), 1987 (#4), and 1991 (#5). Silly kayak theatre will not change the years of the top 5 list. They only look silly and detract from looking at the real effects of what is going on with the global climate.
You're concerned about rising sea levels ...
and record high tides, which is perfectly reasonable. Yet you bemoan the closing of a nuclear power plant situated on the seashore. A power plant that exceeded it design life decades ago. One that shares a design and an operator with the defunct Vermont Yankee power plant, which was found to have contaminated ground water with radioactive agents in excess of Federal standards. If I'm not mistaken, it's also the design used at Fukushima.
Nuclear power is not a good option, and natural gas is not the only alternative.
Why are the sea levels rising?
From what I've heard, the seas are rising because the average sea temperatures are rising. This is believed to be because of an increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The burning of natural gas produces greenhouse gases, which, as noted above, is tied to the rising of sea levels. Perhaps if more faith was put in the humble atom, we would be worrying less about the sea levels.
Also, Pilgrim survived February 1978, which at least in Boston had what is now the second highest recorded high tide, along with the two high tides this year, so I think Pilgrim, given proper maintenance and oversight, can handle this.
Quick reality check
The fuel rods for that plant were enriched at Fernald in Ohio, a very uncontrolled coal-fired power supply system.
Nuclear power is a dinosaur. It is also a joke. A lot of the energy is now spent cooling spent rods because the pool at Plymouth is triple-packed, vulnerable to terrorism, and the company won't create the dry cask system that it needs to store them because they want the government to pay for it.
Nuclear power is not the answer to any sensible question. If we are going to subsidize power technologies, this is the wrong one by a long shot when it comes to any rational valuation. Especially these older plants that are decades beyond their design life and in highly vulnerable areas.
February 1978
That was forty years ago, dear.
At least a half foot of sea level rise.
Pilgrim has a fuel pool kept cool by lots of circulating water. That eats a lot of electricity. It contains 3-4 times as much spent fuel as it was designed for. If a terrorist takes out a wall or it loses power, it will make New England uninhabitable and probably kill you and your whole family.
And January 2018 was 2 months ago
And last Friday was last Friday. Yet Pilgrim survived them all.
But sure, let's shut down all nuclear power plants. That will stave off the rise in sea levels. Good idea.
Do your homework
You are playing that "splitting hairs" and "generalizing" game again.
Very much like a child who thinks that his tactics make nonsense into facts because he is "clever", but doesn't realize that grownups don't discuss things that way.
Do tell me
How did Pilgrim deal with the most recent storm?
Do your homework
Add three feet of sea level rise to that storm (or two feet of surge for a hurricane this year) and try again.
On top of the fact that it has been shut down for YEARS in the past after such storms.
I'll take that as
Nothing happened to Pilgrim after the past 2 major storms.
I mean, unless you have something that shows otherwise.
Also, you get the roundabout logic you are giving, right? Sea levels are rising due to the increased burning of fossil fuels, so we need to close a power plant that does not burn fossil fuels and replace it with, um, something else.
It was already shut down
Valve problems. Again. Because it is old and decrepit.
While all the available electricity for the region was funneled into keeping the fuel pool from exploding.
Doing Some Research >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> talking points blather
http://www.patriotledger.com/news/20180112/more-valve-problems-at-pilgri...
Old. Breaking down. Beyond Design life, Perilous fuel storage. Not efficient. Not zero carbon. Enough.
I Live Near The 10 Mile Zone
Hate to disagree on Pilgrim with you Waquoit, but it is time for it to close.
Those warning sirens in the 10 mile zone, by the way some of which were getting washed by those waves in Brant Rock on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, are not the most pleasant things in the world to see.
I know some people who worked on Seabrook and they were raging drunks at the time, god knows if Pilgrim was built the same way.
We need more solar and more wind.
Oil is dying and nuclear is unsafe.
Nuclear can be safe.
But Pilgrim is not doing the things necessary.
How much solar is there?
I think we need to concede that wind will lever be a part of New England's energy portfolio, since the simple plan of putting a wind farm on the Nantucket Sound was so strongly opposed would you have thought they were building a coal plant in the same place.
The reality is that people like using electricity, and as Germany is finding out, simply shutting down nuclear power plants and hoping that renewables will take their place is a bad bet.
There would be far more
If we stopped subsidizing dangerous and ancient technologies that are flat out worn out and started subsidizing clean technologies instead.
Jesus on a pogo stick you are a dense one.
More all the time
I have pretty much all I need, thanks to the panels I had put on my roof in 2010. If I put in a system to melt the heavy snows that stop production for a couple of weeks a year, I would never give the electric company any money at all.
The power companies are terrified, which is why they bribe legislatures in places like Arizona and Hawaii to discourage and punish homeowners who want to install solar. Also why they are increasingly installing their own solar arrays instead of fossil-burning power plants.
Not quite answering the question
Which specifically is, can solar truly displace electricity productions from fossil fuels and the humble atom.
do your homework
You are the one who wants to know this - LOOK IT UP.
Okay
The answer is no. This has been proven in Europe, so we would be going down the same path in the US. Until someone can show me otherwise, I'm going with that as an answer.
Any thoughts?
Europe
Check latitude and try again.
Hint: Most of Europe is north of 50 N
Most of the US population is south of 40N
Proven in Europe?
Show your proof.
Probably Koch funded think tank "proof".
I already did
Either click on my link elsewhere about Germany's embrace of coal or just research the topic yourself.
BZZT
A bunch of kids writing for a college newspaper isn't proof of anything.
The fact is that Germany is using coal to export power, not for its own needs.
Um
That was a Bloomberg article I linked to further up that talks about the messy coal situation in Germany.
But I love the idea that Germany is so sufficient in their energy needs without fossil fuels that they have been using coal to produce energy to export. Fascinating idea.
The answer is yes
Renewable solar and wind are fully capable of generating all the electrical power we need. You can indeed look it up.
By the way, that was not the specific question you asked. You asked how much solar there is, not whether there can be enough to replace fossil and nuclear power. In either case, solar is going to provide most of our future's power.
If this is the case
Why is it that certain countries who have decided to get rid of their nuclear energy generation sources are becoming more and more reliant on natural gas and coal? And why is it that most estimates of New England's electricity production mix has us relying more and more on natural gas while renewables remain relatively flat.
Look, I'd love for solar to provide the lion's share of our electricity portfolio, just like I'd love for it to be cost efficient to install panels on my house. But I'm on the north side of a hill, so as of a few years ago 20% of my electricity comes from nuclear power. In a few years some of that generation power will go away, to be replaced by fossil fuels. These are the facts.
Not facts
Opinions and innuendo about why Germany is using as much coal as it is. How much solar is available?
You don't bother to link to any of those predictions of our needing to use more gas, so I can't tell how many of them are products of the gas industry lobby. So far, all you've given us is a Bloomberg article about Germany.
Sorry
I hid my link a bit further up the chain.
Theories are great, but then there are the conditions on the ground.
Journalism students
I'm not impressed. Conditions on the ground, indeed.
So
You are saying that their data on the region's power generation mix is wrong? If so, please provide data projections other than what is "possible."