Lying for a Good Cause
People have called technocrat-turned-martyr-of-the-left Al Gore many things, but few (if any) would call him stupid. So when he says that in a mere ten years the government can wave its magic government wand and an end of fossil fuels into place, the only possible conclusion is that he is lying. Given his failure to mention the only possible replacement of fossil fuel that provides as much energy (viz., nuclear), that he is lying becomes an absolute certainty.
Now then, I can appreciate why he would tell what he doubtless thinks of as a mild fib. For one thing, it gets him more of the Hollywood and Media accolades that he's come to expect. He probably even has selfless reasons for this untruth. I am sure that he figures that by calling for something that is patently impossible, he is raising consciousness about the problems associated with fossil fuel. I'm sure that he figures that if the government embarks upon a quest for the impossible, then when we fall short, we'll still have accomplished more than if we had simply tried for the possible. But then, these are merely guesses on my part.
The thing is, I can certainly understand why he would make such bold statements, especially as there's no real consequence for him. But it amounts to the idea that sometimes it's necessary to lie for the greater good. And while I accept the notion that politicians lying is something that is a fact of life in the modern democratic state, I find it discomforting. There's an element of implicit elitism, a distrust of The People to deal with issues as they are that I find deeply unsettling.
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References -
According to this analysis Gore is calling for a very aggressive timetable but not an impossible one.
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)The prevailing narrative is that we don't have a choice. We have to use fossil fuels in order to meet our electricity needs. Gore is trying to change that narrative by letting people know that it is entirely possible, although highly unlikely, that we could transfer to non-fossil fuels for electricity production within a ten year period.
If you can get the other side of this argument to stop lying I would be happy to have an honest national/global discussion about this issue. Until that happens maybe you should stop hating the player and start hating the game.
Also, if you are going to have such high standards then I suspect that you will never be comfortable discussing the things that politicians say. They all lie like rugs when it suits them, no exceptions. As a result, any politician's trustworthiness is relative to that of his peers not Mother Teresa. You are holding Al Gore to a standard that no politician will meet.
--But she's a queen, and such are queens
that your laughter is sucked in their brains. -D. Bowie
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)That I accept that politicians lie, but that I don't have to like it.
If you can get the other side of this argument to stop lying I would be happy to have an honest national/global discussion about this issue.
Any "honest discussion" is going to deal with the fact that we use *a lot* of energy in the U.S./Western Europe today, and that solar and wind simply cannot supply the amount of energy that we need. Go, for example, to something like Wikipedia and look up how much electricity gets produced by a wind farm, a solar power plant, and a nuclear power plant. Hell, I'll do it. Let's take a wind farm.
The Lake Bonney Wind Farm in Australia is a 239 Megawatt facility, and that's one of the largest on the planet. Go to this handy list of nuclear reactors. Just about any single reactor produces three to six times that amount. And compared to either of the two, solar power is just about worthless.
Even Germany only estimates 50% of its energy will come from "renewables" by 2050.
There is a way to wean the country off of fossil-fuel generated electricity. But as long as people who claim that they want more than anything to have CO2 free energy production pretend that it can all come from solar and wind, they're not interested in having an honest discussion. When people like Gore say that we can have energy generation that doesn't use CO2 *and* that we can also not have to build any of those scary-looking nuclear power plants, then I'm sorry, they're doing the equivalent of saying that you can cut taxes *and* eliminate the deficit.
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| parent )You are only concentrating on supply. Every megawatt of demand we reduce is a megawatt of electricity we won't have to supply.
Solar powered water heaters, geothermal heating and cooling, recycling more and more and more, compact fluorescent bulbs, timers on bathroom lights, etc, etc, etc. There are many ways to reduce demand by quite a lot.
On the supply side, if we can figure out how to make hot dry rock power production work on a large scale then we can turn into Iceland in 10 years. There is a lot to figure out but with enough money and will you can do just about anything.
--But she's a queen, and such are queens
that your laughter is sucked in their brains. -D. Bowie
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| parent )Okay, I should by now that Blogging While Irritated makes for sloppy posting and reading. Noting that he said he wanted fossil-fuel free electricity generation is a bit less preposterous than going off of fossil fuels altogether. It's still pretty darned impossible, though. Even Germany, one of the few countries where the Green Party isn't a joke, is going to miss its Kyoto targets because of those same Greens' work to put an end to nuclear power.
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)Andrew,
--I think Al Gore is putting forth untruths, but I don't know for sure. His op-ed challenged our government "to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years." That's not an untruth, it's a goal. An aspiration. The questionable or untruthful part is that making such a change in 10 years is "achievable" and "affordable" ("transformative" is a given). It all rests on whether Gore considers nuclear power to be a "truly clean carbon-free source." If nuclear power doesn't fall under that category, then yes, I'd say he is lying, because there's no way that other renewable resources could take up the slack. But as it stands, his editorial is too vague to know one way or the other.
"I want America to know that I'm, like, totally ready to lead." -- Paris Hilton
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). . .that the only way to get that many nuclear plants built in ten years even if Gore *does* favor it will be to bulldoze a lot of roadblocks that would inevitably be placed in their path--such as bogus lawsuits and regulatory challenges. If Gore is serious, he'll challenge his own party's majority in Congress to pass laws to get government and the courts out of the way of nuclear development (and do the same to Obama if he's elected in November). I don't expect it to happen.
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| parent )This would be considerably less of a shift than the one from peacetime to wartime production during World War II. Gore would argue that the stakes are at least as high.
Current power plants cost about half a trillion dollars. Let's say that replacing the half of those that are carbon-burning costs four times as much as the old ones... let's say this is a trillion dollar investment we're talking about -- ballpark. We are a $14 trillion economy! This amount is far less than the cost of the Iraq war, once forward costs are accounted for. Compare it to World War 2... by 1945, more than a third of GDP was spent on the military each year.
But ultimately, I agree... it's unlikely. Our politics would not allow that kind of commitment. Ultimately, what holds us back is the din of skeptics like you.
--More Wagster!
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)I'd agree that you can get more electricity from non-carbon sources if you're going to use nukes. But Gore studiously avoided use of nuclear power and instead used feel-good clichés about "renewable energy." The folks who act as though wind and solar alone can replace fossil fuel are ultimately responsible for increases in global warming, because they're just powerful enough to stop new nuclear power plants from getting built, but not quite powerful enough to stop coal plants from getting built.
I'd like to keep seals and polar bears. But it's not going to happen if folks like Gore keep ignoring an obvious solution to getting power without fossil fuel.
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| parent )How many nuclear power plants would it take to put a serious dent in fossil fuel power generation -- say, 30% of what we currently generate?
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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)Can someone here answer the question? I'm getting a lot of opinions regarding the disinterest of conservatives in facts in favor of rhetoric confirmed here.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )There are many other conclusions far more likely. However, that *anyone* would jump to that particular conclusion, from this trifle?
Talk about a tell.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )The AGW diary above is a far better example.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )...the one quickly updated to reflect the facts? That diary?
There was an interesting turn of phrase in the comments:
"Way to believe absolutely anything that conforms with your biases without performing even the most cursory of checks."
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )So, what's the over/under on all the nuclear experts in this forum bothering to answer my BotE request? I seriously know almost nothing about individual power plant output, and my experience with nuclear is with Illinois' ComEd, which regularly fails safety checks and costs about twice as much per kwh than comparable coal plants.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )the US currently has 104 nuclear plants in operation (the highest number in the world, BTW) producing about 20% of our electricity. Thus each nuclear plant produces about .2% of our electricity (a gross simplification, but I'm not going into details for every reactor). Using the second link, you can figure out how to replace coal plants (about 50% of the total electricity generated) or natural gas (about 20%).
BTW, Google is your friend.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )So we'd need about 300 plants to make a serious dent, at a cost of $5 billion each. And nowhere near enough trained engineers, fuel rods, etc. to do it just yet.
I dunno, once we're in the $1.5 trillion range (and it's not being spent to feather the nests of war profiteers), I think pretty much anything is possible.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )Gore said "truly clean" carbon-free sources. He has said in the past that he isn't oppposed to nuclear power, but he could de facto oppose it by saying nuclear power isn't truly clean.
--"I want America to know that I'm, like, totally ready to lead." -- Paris Hilton
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| parent )until he actually says it to criticize him.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )It's verboten to note that a politician is being too vague?
--"I want America to know that I'm, like, totally ready to lead." -- Paris Hilton
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| parent )but you're assuming what he might say, which seems pretty weak grounds when there are serious political, financial and resource issues with what he's actually proposing.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )I'm going by the actual words he's spoken, and "truly clean" is too vague for you know whether or not nuclear power is under that category. The person who's the making the assumptions around here is you, that it's unfair to say that a politician is being too vague.
--"I want America to know that I'm, like, totally ready to lead." -- Paris Hilton
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| parent )why criticize vagueness when there are specific issues with what he actually said. Criticize him for what he actually said, not for what he didn't say. You're imagining half of a conversation which hasn't yet taken place.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )Anyway, Gore's position on nuclear power is well known. From an interview in Grist
I'm pro-nuclear myself, but there are serious, practical issues with nukes that go well beyond loony scaremongering. If nothing else, nuclear power plants are tremendously expensive. The large capital investment required for a new nuke plant makes it doubtful that we're going to start churning them out like Starbucks.
--Guard, protect and cherish your land, for there is no afterlife for a place that started out as Heaven.
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| parent )is where the uranium for all the new reactors going to come from. This page is pretty sobering (especially the chart at the bottom of the page). I think that's a better argument for renewables than anything else.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )It's about as common as tin in the earth's crust.
Problem with our current reactor model is this: we're only burning the bark off the log in the fireplace of our current reactors. We could easily produce enough reactor-grade uranium for thousands of years if we made one of two adjustments: either go to a US Navy reactor model, which I advocate, or go to advanced breeder reactors.
Breeder reactors are a security problem, but then again, as I've said, we want an excellent best-of-breed organization consisting of a consortium of US Navy, Russians, French, Japanese, Chinese and all serious signatories to the nuclear nnon-proliferation treaties involved in standardizing and regulating the industry. Every sane human being knows perfectly well we are all in this thing together. Our energy problems are not unique. There is also the problem of the disposal of plutonium weapons: only a breeder reactor can effectively utilize plutonium.
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| parent )The abundance of Uranium is irrelevant. What matters is the the cost (both in energy and dollar terms) to concentrate it to useful levels from it's ores.
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| parent )that solve a lot of the problems with uranium supply. But here's the problem I have with a lot of these world-changing approaches - the raw materials required aren't available in sufficient quantities, the engineering hasn't been done and tested, and there isn't enough technical staff to build and maintain an increase of the type that's being proposed here. In other words, work towards it, do your best, but don't expect to be able to triple or quadruple the number of nuclear reactors worldwide in the kind of time frames we're talking about here. I think people underestimate how expensive and difficult it is to go from a formula on a whiteboard to a 1000 Mw reactor, especially if it's a new design or technology.
I've said it repeatedly - we will wind up using every single type of energy generating technology we can think of, and the transition will still be extremely expensive and painful. We simply are not going to live in a cheap energy future.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )The solution is a standardized reactor design, like the US Navy's reactors.
Look, the problem isn't design, it isn't even cost. It's the NIMBYs all screaming about their kids glowing in the dark, even though a coal-fired plant craps out more radioactive waste than any nuclear power plant.
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| parent )even though a coal-fired plant craps out more radioactive waste than any nuclear power plant.
Coal fired plants can't have catastrophic failures that release large quantities of radioactivity in a short period of time. Nuclear plants do have such failure modes and such accidents have occurred. That sort of thing gets peoples attention in a way that continuous (but much lower levels) does not.
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| parent )and their reactors are still doing just fine on the bottom of the ocean. When Hyman Rickover got the Navy's socks pulled up, he created an organization capable of running a nuclear reactor.
If only to utilize the fissile materials in existing nuclear weapons, we need more breeder reactors. You can't put plutonium in anything but a breeder reactor. That's the Mount Doom into which we're going to have to put all that plutonium, folks.
Coal fired plants are the worst of all possible solutions. Yeah, people are afraid, but it's sorta like that exchange between Kay and Jay in Men in Black:
Why the big secret? People are smart. They can handle it.
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
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| parent )is rather pointless. It's not going to change. The vast majority of people place emotional reasons ahead of intellectual reasons when judging something like the relative risks of coal and nuclear. I agree that an expanded nuclear program would be beneficial. I just don't think it's going to happen because people are too scared of it in this country.
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| parent )The most powerful nuclear power plant in the USA produces 1,335 megawatts.
Nuclear power plants generate just about 20% of our electricity.
Coal is about 50%
Natural gas is about 20%
Petroleum fired plants, about 2%
A nuclear power plant can be set up to generate prodigious amounts of cheap power, but it's expensive to build under the best of circumstances. There is a way out of this high overhead: use the US Navy reactor technology. They run the most reactors in the world. The Navy reactors are powerful and efficient. The Navy has the rigor and discipline to run a reactor properly and securely. Lots of small, standardized reactors, just like the ones the Navy uses. Also cuts way down on training: thousands of Navy-trained reactor techs are in the civilian world.
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| parent )Using 2007 numbers from here, it appears the 104 plants had an average capacity of about 950 MW and produced in total about 800,000,000 MW hrs, or about 5% of the total electricity consumption quoted above. So figure we'd need roughly 20 times the 100 we have, or 2000 with established technology.
--Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
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| parent )and the discrepancy seems to be total electricity consumption. Going off google, 3.717 trillion KWh gives about 22% produced by nuclear, which would mean only ~450-500 needed. I guess I misunderstood the number in BlaiseP's title.
Edit: sigh, corrected for my dyslexic misreading of google number.
--Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
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| parent )You might call it a lofty or ambitious goal. We'll put a man on the moon in this decade.
Just for clarification, he's talking about electricity power generation, correct? Not replacing gasoline cars with no-hydrogen designs. I have trouble believing all those coal and gas-fired plants could be brought offline & replaced with alternative energy in that amount of time, but it *could* be done with enough political will, i.e. political will similar to the post Pearl Harbor war effort.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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)We could in fact end our fossil fuel energy generation if we were to use nuclear power. But fare too many people are still pretending that wind and solar are going to be the solution to all of our problems. Wind farms are fantastic, but even if we get to 20% of our energy from wind in another ten years, that still leaves a whole lot that isn't wind and solar.
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| parent )I'm not sure I understand either the characterization of this as a lie or an over-promise? Why isn't it a probability whose merits/de-merits are due inspection? Or is it because it's Al Gore the Lightning Rod who said it?
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| parent )Here's the NY Times article, here's the text of the speech and here's the money quote:
So it's not about "ending fossil fuels" completely (which is impossible at this point), it's about moving our electric generation to non fossil fuel sources. It's still a very ambitious goal. The technology to do this exists now or is in the development pipeline. All it will take is money and the will to get it done. Yes, it strains credulity to think that the necessary political will to achieve it will materialize, but it's not out and out impossible.
It's frankly dishonest to characterize Gore's challenge as a lie. Moreover, calling him a martyr is just plain stupid. The hatred for Al Gore on the right is out of proportion to any reasonable objection that anyone might have about him or his work.
--Guard, protect and cherish your land, for there is no afterlife for a place that started out as Heaven.
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)Moreover, calling him a martyr is just plain stupid.
You can't possibly deny that, after a decent interval, he embraced that role with relish. And it was a clearly definable moment. He went from being a plodding centrist technocrat to deciding that he was going to do Angry and Indignant. I'm sorry, but I very much preferred Gore the technocrat who helped preside over eight years of peace and prosperity to Gore who took up the mantle of wronged victim of the villainous right.
I will grant that he waited a decent interval before taking up his new role, which was good of him. But you can't possibly deny that he's been spending the last five-ish years politically hamming it up.
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| parent )If you think angry and indignant makes a martyr.
He has embraced and marketed the role of advocate
for the issues, but a martyr he is not... unless
somone is planning to throw him to lions, crucify
or burn him for his advocacy, ok given his reception
by certain elements of the press and the political
community in the USA he may well be on his way to
martyrdoom.
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| parent )is reasonable, except to say that if you had asked my MIT-schooled civil engineer grandfather in 1960 whether or not we'd get a man on the moon by 1969, he probably would have laughed.
But before we accuse Al Gore of lying yet again, let's all go back and read what he actually said:
I hope the bold and italics help everyone here understand that Gore was talking about carbon-free electricity production, not a completely carbon-free energy infrastructure. You might have guessed that's not an insignificant difference.
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). . .if the trend towards hybrids and fully electric vehicles accelerates, our need for generated electricity is going to be going up even faster than the historical increase while this magical transformation is supposed to be taking place.
Color me extremely skeptical, and the Apollo program--as much of a magnificent accomplishment as it was--wasn't make or break for the US economy.
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| parent )to start now on weaning ourselves off oil.
You may be right to be skeptical about the chances of Gore's goal being met, and you are absolutely right that this is make or break for the US economy. We'd better be deadly serious about trying to solve the problem.
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| parent ). . .jetpacks are cool, but there's no need to start sawing through the lines on our parachute before we've finished inventing them. Drilling for oil will not cause alternate fuels researchers to suffer brain damage--fire up the drills *and* the big tax credits for next generation energy research, and let's get going.
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| parent )I never understand why many people, and not just politicians, will lie about things that are as unimportant as they are easily uncovered. The most recent instance:
Two summer jobs in 7 years doesn't come close to "worked his way through" (full disclosure, I admit to perhaps being more susceptible to seeing this as egregious, because I worked full time during my entire college tenure so it might color my thinking). However, why even lie about such a small detail? The folksy glow attempted doesn't come close to countering the loss of credibility risk entailed.
As I said, it isn't just politicians who do this, but when they do, they open up a huge can of worms. It's one of those lies that gives rise to 'if he'll lie about small things, he'll lie about anything'. It's similar to when I found out Barry Bonds was systematically cheating on his wife; once I knew he'd cheat there, he'd definitely cheat elsewhere. He lost the benefit of the doubt regarding steroids and HGH. Yes, it's possible he didn't knowingly juice, but I wouldn't any longer extend the benefit of a doubt.
I'm actually more sympathetic to this particular omission on Gore's part because he's trying to frame an argument rather than just needless self-aggrandizement.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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)What's the definition of "worked his way through;" does it mean, "Got through via a combination of loans and work such that he paid off the loans afterward," or does it mean, "took out no loans," or is there a reasonable percentage?
Separately did he do any work which got him scholarships? Because that would not necessarily show up as a "job" but would have contributed thousands toward his ability to do well there.
I'm just musing; I don't know any answers here.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )why lie?
--"I want America to know that I'm, like, totally ready to lead." -- Paris Hilton
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)There are two technologies which are capable of making fossil fuels massively less important -- nigh irrelevant in developed countries. The first is steadily improving solar technology. The second is steadily improving battery technology.
The first would allow us to convert current solar power into energy, rather than taking previous solar power (biogenetic fossil fuels). The second allows us to use that power in a compact form, in automobiles.
If they come about, then usage of fossil fuels will become a choice due to their relative lack of expense for certain applications, rather than a necessity for the function of civilized society. And that's pretty awesome.
(I dunno if 10 years is realistic, but hey, optimism. He's been right about important things before.)
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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)Still got some serious issues. Fuel cell technology is much, much better than it's been, but it's still not very good for getting the amount of energy we want.
We may eventually get to the point where a combination of wind, solar, batteries, and nuclear can wean us completely off of fossil fuel, but there's no way it will be possible in ten years. We've got an entire infrastructure that's been built up over the last hundred years that presupposes fossil fuel.
Which is why I'd prefer that he say that we need to conserve now and work on solutions that will be implementable rather than saying that something that is pretty much not possible should be done.
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| parent )"Al Gore, Energy Czar"? Right. But he's a lot closer to the answer than he was a year ago because he's starting to see that coordination of all energy production methods is the only path towards effective control of carbon emissions. He still needs to realize that only fossil fuel is truly a fuel, while hydrogen, ethanol and other synthetics are just energy transfer media, as is electricity for cars.
When will Gore understand that that people will work towards a common goal if you tell them what it will do for them and for the country, but that they will ignore him if he says we should do it to set an example for furriners and to please the residents of Kyoto?
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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)Linkee no workee, and there's some typos in the same sentence as the link, that you might want to look at.
Cheers.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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)And fixed one or two of them after getting back to my computer several hours later.
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| parent )Link.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )I kinda liked magic government want
--Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. - W. Somerset Maugham
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| parent )I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )as much as an error (and I agree it's unlikely to the point of ridiculousness). Making too many overly simplifying assumptions can do that. We went through this a couple months back when I ran the numbers and showed that world production of key minerals and ores was orders of magnitude too low to accomplish some technical solutions.
In general, I have a problem with lying even in a good cause. One practical problem is that people will start using your lie as a justification for things you didn't anticipate.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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)I'll add another practical problem. Loss of credibility. And not just for the individual, but for other advocates of the same cause or even for others of the same general ideology.
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| parent )Cough, cough.
"we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
"we can drill our way out of the gas price crisis."
"tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts."
At least Gore has optimism on his side and not just naked deception.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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)http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/artfuldodger.htm
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )the naked deception standard for evaluating claims and counter claims of politicians lying in pursuit of policy.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )If you accept the idea of
"Well, we obviously can't go completely off of fossil fuels in ten or even twenty years, but let's say we can to get things moving."
Then you've essentially accepted the line of thinking that leads to:
"The Ba'ath party is a horrible thing whose removal would be useful, and we probably have evidence of WMD, so let's play it up to get things moving."
Once you've accepted the principle of Lying for Good, you've started down a dark road.
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| parent )Getting the US economy off of fossil fuels and onto something more sustainable is magnitudes more useful than getting rid of the Bhath party, and there's no potential downside to incorporate into the equation.
Lying for the good of all might be acceptable under certain circumstances. But lying for the good of a few at the expense of the many as in the examples I quoted, is off the charts bad.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )to expect politicians to be strict Kantians.
The limit case isn't really even an interesting starting pt.
The question is what level of deception + for what means.
By both metrics Gore's remarks don't particularly bother me.
Certainly not b/c they violate one of the 25 Commandments or whatever.
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| parent )Ignoring the particulars of this instance, the basis of our government is an attempt to balance distrust of the common man against distrust of the powerful. Fully trusting either group has yet to bring heaven to earth.
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)If so excellent comment and feel free to chime in more.
--"That Sam-I-am! That Sam-I-am! I do not like that Sam-I-am!"- Dr. Seuss
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| parent )