Suspended disbelief

I tried to upload a comment to the interesting post the cost of electricity of the blog “Think Through” of Gianluca Carrera but its scripts required to be logged in to comment, so I post my opinion here.

The post refers to a paper of 2004 by the Royal Academy of Engineering. Surprisingly, the only costs of the generation and distribution of electricity mentioned in the report are:

• Capital expenditure, i.e. the initial level of investment required to engineer, procure and construct the plant itself.
• Fixed costs of operation and maintenance, e.g. staff salaries, insurance, rates and other
costs, which remain constant irrespective of the actual quantum of electricity generated;
• Variable costs of operation and maintenance, e.g. lubricating oil and chemicals, which
are consumed in proportion to the actual quantum of electricity generated; and
• The cost of fuel (if applicable) consumed in generating electricity.

I did not find in the original paper any calculation of the cost of management of the nuclear waste for generations, which incidentally is and will be paid for by the taxpayers. In fact, it does not include the managament of the waste of any power generation in its four categories, nor the risk of the dependency of a few fuel providers worldwide for any of the types of power generation.

Global dimming is the reduction of +4% in the amount of global direct irradiance at the planet’s surface from the sixties to the end of last century. It is caused by aerosol particles released by human activities.

The global dimming has been so far understimated by scientists. The cooling of air pollution has masked the real dimension of the warming of CO2. The practical effect is that their predictions of the raise of temperatures.

Global dimming is beneficial for public health but it is declining since the nineties so we should brace ourselves for yet more surprises in the scale and immediacy of global warming and its effects.

These are definetively not good times for simple minds. The old masters used to paint scenes of the Bible to explain the religious misteries to the people who could read. How should the elite explain now the complexity and subtleties of our environmental challenges to us Internet users and television watchers?