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Pinning down climate change’s role in extreme weather
In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or any other disaster, because weather variability always plays a primary role in the genesis of the events.
However, climate change can make these events more intense and, given the non-linearities in the damages, this can vastly increase the damage and misery from extreme weather. So quantifying the role of climate change is therefore of great interest.
To do this, scientists turn to extreme event attribution studies. These rely on three separate lines of evidence. The first is the observational record: If you have good observations of the climate over a long enough period, the data set can be statistically analyzed to determine whether the event in question is becoming more frequent as the climate warms.
But correlation does not prove causality, so you need the second line of evidence: a physical understanding of why a particular extreme is getting worse as the climate warms. It should be obvious to readers of this substack why, in a warmer world, we expect to get more frequent heat waves. This physical understanding adds to our confidence that climate change is a factor in the occurrence of heat waves.
Finally, we look to computer simulations of the climate. The most common approach is to produce two different simulations of the climate: One simulation is of the real world, so it includes increasing greenhouse gases and a warming climate…
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Is nuclear energy the answer?
Is nuclear energy the answer?
probably not
Nuclear power is one of the most polarizing topics in any discussion of our energy future. As someone who appreciates the potential of nuclear energy, I am torn about its prospects. On one hand, nuclear energy offers an always-on, low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels. On the other, its cost remains a significant hurdle, deterring new developments in this sector.
The central issue with nuclear power is its cost. Constructing nuclear power costs approximately $10,000 per kilowatt of capacity. This is ten times as expensive as solar and wind, which cost around $1,000 per kW. See this plot, from Lazard:
Critics of renewable energy often point to solar and wind’s intermittency — the fact that the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. You can, of course, add storage to solar, which increases the cost to $1,600 per kW, still much cheaper than nuclear.
To the power plant operator, though, intermittency is completely irrelevant. They don’t care if they only get power 6 hours one day, zero the next, and 12 the next. What they care about is how they get on average, which determines their annual revenue. From the operators perspective, solar and wind and wind get the W, which is why the market is building so much solar and wind.
Why is nuclear power so expensive? A significant factor is the lack of scale. In most industries, costs decrease as production increases, benefiting from what experts call “learning by doing”: the more of a product you build, the cheaper and higher quality the products are.
The very first flat-screen TVs were very expensive. But, as we made gazillions of them, the price plummeted, so now you can get a ridiculous 86″ TV with WiFi and built-in Netflix for under $1,000 with which to watch important and educational shows like this.
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