October - ITER Forum News Log October 2010

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					ITER Forum News Log October 2010

  1. OPINION NOVEMBER 30, 2009, 7:44 P.M. ET The Climate Science Isn't Settled
  2. MIT Climatologist Richard Lindzen on the Politics of Global Warming
  3. Top science body cools on global warming
  4. Fusion Provides Answers
  6. The future is fusion
  7. Sustainable biochar to mitigate global climate change
  8. Julian Hunt: Stay local to beat global warming
  9. Thorium a strong rival
  10. Experts Meet for Largest Ever IAEA Fusion Conference
  11. First do the research, then make deep carbon cuts
  12. No consensus among climate scientists after all

.1.The Climate Science Isn't Settled

OPINION NOVEMBER 30, 2009, 7:44 P.M. ET
Confident predictions of catastrophe are unwarranted.
of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate
maximize apparent changes.
thermal radiation and leads to some warming.
That said, the main greenhouse substances in the earth's atmosphere are water vapor and high clouds.
outgoing radiation by about 2%. This is essentially what is called "climate forcing."
gases can be established. Nevertheless, the most publicized claims of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental
tends to be characterized by a single iconic claim.
Multidecadal Oscillation, etc.
change was shown to be false.
This is unlikely to be much to worry about.
Yet current climate models predict much higher sensitivities. They do so because in these models, the
they are more confident about water vapor is quite implausible.
negative feedbacks.
as the "Early Faint Sun Paradox."
enhance the impact of CO2.
designed to nudge temperatures a few tenths of a degree.
are dependent on the confluence of many factors.
Consider the following example. Suppose that I leave a box on the floor, and my wife trips on it, falling

2. MIT Climatologist Richard Lindzen on the Politics of Global Warming

Sunday, 3rd October 2010

MIT’s Richard Lindzen, one of the most-respected climatologists on the planet, speaks to the second
embrace global warming alarmism are not necessarily good researchers. And that skeptics of global
warming are not necessarily good researchers either. The point, he argues, is to stay focused on the
facts as they can be determined and to follow the science, not the political debate.

3. Top science body cools on global warming

  Graham Lloyd and Matthew Franklin From: The Australian October 02, 2010 12:00AM
sea level rises impossible.
scandal that engulfed the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
combat it.
to gain public support for political action.
change differ.
people who have the audacity to disagree with her views.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said the Royal Society's switch would not have any influence on
the government's push to put a price on carbon.
"The government accepts the climate science," Mr Combet said.
"The debate has moved on.
"We must now get on with the job of reducing carbon pollution and reforming our economy."
The society's report was written by a panel of prominent scientists chaired by professor John Pethica.
The reworking was in response to pressure from 43 fellows who argued the society had gone too far.
Ian Plimer, professor of mining geology at Adelaide University, said the society's statement was a
"wonderful breath of honesty and fresh air from an organisation that has been politicised".
"Science is always uncertain," Professor Plimer said.
"Science doesn't work by voting.
"It is not a democracy, it works on evidence."
Despite the uncertainties, the Royal Society concludes that there is strong evidence that changes in
greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activity are the dominant cause of global warming over
the past half-century.
made," Professor Plimer said.
than those projected."
On sea level change, the society said it was likely that, for many centuries, the rate of global sea-level
rise would be at least as large as the rate of 20cm per century that has been observed.
However, it said there was insufficient understanding of the melting of the ice sheets in Greenland and
West Antarctica to predict how much the sea level will rise above that observed in the past century.
The society's cautious approach is in contrast to the UN's 2007 IPCC report.
The report said that "many millions more people are projected to be flooded every year due to sea-level
rise by the 2080s".
Or predictions by former US president Al Gore in his documentary An Inconvenient Truth that the
collapse of a major ice sheet in Greenland or West Antarctica could raise global sea levels by six
metres, flooding coasts and creating 100 million refugees.
The Royal Society says the greatest gap in understanding is being able to accurately model clouds and
their impact on reflecting heat.
The strength of the uptake of CO2 by the land and oceans, which take up about half the emissions from
human activity, is poorly understood, it says.
And there is little confidence in specific projections of future regional climate change, except at
continental scales.
The Royal Society says that high-performance computers are expected to improve confidence in
regional predictions.
There is also a possibility that unknown aspects of climate change could emerge and lead to significant
modifications in our understanding.

4. Fusion Provides Answers

  Last modified on Saturday, 04 September 2010 17:09
The confluence of rising C02 emissions with the recent oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico is a poignant
reminder of the damage our exploitation of fossil fuels are doing to our planet, both in their extraction
and their combustion. Fossil fuels are only finite resources, and their cost will only rise over the long
Rather than focus the debate on managing dwindling fossil fuels, politicians of all flavours could simply
accept there are no long term energy solutions, and look to social policy measures to modify behaviour,
and global science quests to develop long term sustainable technological solutions.
On the policy side, we could implement a whole raft of measures: from increasing the rebate on hybrid
cars to improving public transport and its utilisation, and encouraging the greater use of bicycles and
indeed, our own two feet.
Increased energy research funding could target replacing our fossil economy, for example, by
improving fuel cells efficiency and taming new sustainable energy sources such as fusion and solar to
power a hydrogen economy.
One of these sustainable energy technology, fusion, is being “fast-tracked” by an international
consortium of partners building the world’s first “burning plasma” fusion experiment, ITER (International
Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), which is designed to test the scientific feasibility of fusion
Fusion is the process whereby lower atomic weight elements join to form a heavier element. This is the
fundamental process that powers the Sun and the stars. Fusion energy promises millions of years of
baseload energy generation, with almost no greenhouse gas emissions and no long-lived radioactive
waste compared to coal and nuclear fission. Development of this energy technology requires committed
multilateral programs, and ITER is the only viable global program to achieve this objective.
ITER is funded by a consortium comprising the EU, Japan, the USA, Russia, India, China and Korea. At
a cost of US$18 billion, ITER is also the world’s largest science experiment. The host for the ITER
experiment is the EU, with the host site in France.
Australia has an opportunity to engage in the ITER project through the construction of a targeted
machine contribution, most likely a plasma diagnostic. This would realise objectives of the Australian
science and engineering community in its 2007 strategic plan (www.ainse.edu.au/fusion.html), and build
on opportunities provided by the 2009 $7m federal research infrastructure investment in the Australian
Plasma Fusion Research Facility at the ANU. The major benefits to Australia from engagement with
ITER include participation in the global development of a long-term energy solution, capability
development in the research phase leading up to commercial realisation and engagement with world’s
largest science project. Wider benefits include fostering international research linkages, skills and
training, supporting other power technologies (e.g. fission, solar) and the promotion of Australia’s
minerals and high-tech industry.
Participating in global efforts to find alternate solutions to fossil fuel won’t plug the leak in the Gulf of
Mexico, but it might eliminate the need of our species to drill in the first place.
Dr Matthew Hole, is an ARC Future Fellow from the Research School of Physical Sciences and
Engineering at the ANU, and Chair of the Australian ITER Forum.


Aug. 17, 2009
Dr Dennis JENSEN MP» (Federal member for Tangney) (7:10 PM) —I rise to support the Renewable
legislation which benefits their industry.

your hands in a period of 300 years.
us more energy independent.
this bill, albeit with the reservations that I have mentioned.

6. The future is fusion

By Don Allan - posted Tuesday, 7 September 2010
If the IPCC scientists who predict CO2 emissions cause climate change, and talk of the new technology
being developed to combat it, never seem to mention nuclear fusion why should I be surprised that
economist Professor Lord Stern, also famous for climate change predictions didn’t mention fusion in his
speech to the National Press Club last Wednesday?
During his speech Lord Stern alluded to new technology but not to fusion, nor did journalists raise the
question at the end of his speech. Just in case they didn’t ask because they were shy, let me mention it.
Fusion energy is limitless and waste free. But more to the point, when it becomes commercially viable
not only will it solve nearly all of earth’s energy problems, it will also combat CO2 emissions and make
redundant the wave energy, solar panel and windpower installations that currently pollute the landscape
and will do so for years to come. However, geo-thermal energy will be useful.

7. Sustainable biochar to mitigate global climate change

Dominic Woolf, James E. Amonette, F. Alayne Street-Perrott, Johannes Lehmann & Stephen Joseph
  Nature Communications 1 , Article number: 56 doi:10.1038/ncomms1053
Received 29 October 2009 Accepted 14 July 2010 Published 10 August 2010
have been suggested as a means of abating climate change by sequestering carbon, while
simultaneously providing energy and increasing crop yields. Substantial uncertainties exist, however,
regarding the impact, capacity and sustainability of biochar at the global level. In this paper we estimate
the maximum sustainable technical potential of biochar to mitigate climate change. Annual net
endangering food security, habitat or soil conservation. Biochar has a larger climate-change mitigation
potential than combustion of the same sustainably procured biomass for bioenergy, except when fertile
soils are amended while coal is the fuel being offset.

8. Julian Hunt: Stay local to beat global warming

The Independent on Sunday Commentators
It is not hard to see why pessimism over climate change has been growing. But I believe we are
reaching the point when the tide will decisively turn
Thursday, 5 August 2010
Since the collapse of the landmark Copenhagen Summit last December, there has appeared to be
setback after setback for those who, like me, believe climate change is the most serious problem facing
Most recently, the US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this week decided to withdraw a landmark
cap-and-trade bill in recognition of its lack of support in the chamber. This effectively means that there
will be no major US federal climate change initiative until at least after the 2012 presidential election.
This follows the confused misrepresentation of climate trends, especially by the Republicans and some
British politicians, which appears to have sown further confusion among international publics about
global warming complexity; this misunderstanding accounts, in part, for some global warming
scepticism and indeed some of the confusion of "Climategate".
Meanwhile, evidence continues to mount that our planet is heating up, including the authoritative State
of the Climate Report 2009 released this week by the US National Oceanic and Atmosphere Office
(featuring data from the British Met Office). This shows, for the first time, multiple observational records
from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the ocean and concludes that "global warming is
Given this backdrop, it is not hard to see why pessimism has grown this year about the future of
international efforts to tackle climate change. However, far from this being the disaster that some
assert, I believe that we are rapidly reaching the point when the tide will decisively turn. Why the
reasons for such optimism amid so much apparent gloom?
First, there is now a much underappreciated movement towards the adoption of nuclear energy across
the world. Despite the lack of recognition in the final Copenhagen communiqué, it is estimated by the
International Atomic Agency that some 50 countries will have built nuclear reactors by 2030. This will
result in a significant shift in the global energy mix and, while nuclear will continue to have vociferous
critics, its virtue in the battle against climate change is as unquestionable as renewables such as wind
and solar.
Second, in the absence of both a new global climate change deal to replace Kyoto, and more decisive
national action by preponderant countries such as the United States, it is now much clearer than even a
few months ago at Copenhagen that the centre of gravity of decision-making on how we respond to
climate change must move towards the sub-national level, including to those many US cities which are
leading the battle against global warming in North America.
The need for such a paradigm shift from a "top-down" to a "bottom-up" approach is becoming clearer by
the day. For instance, over the last decade, while the earth's land and sea surface has been warming
overall, trends of weather and climate records reveal larger and more unusual local variations – some
unprecedented since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. What these data patterns underline
is that, while climate change is a reality, it is impacting regions and indeed sub-regions of the world in
very different ways. More openness and clarity is needed about this huge complexity as it accounts, in
part, for some global warming scepticism.
It is within this crucial context that sub-national governments across the world, including cities, are
putting into practice the fact that adaptation needs to build on existing knowledge and infrastructures in
local settings. Forming loose collaborative networks is enabling regional facilitation centres, their
experts and decision-makers to learn from one another and also draw upon the resources of existing
and the private sector.
Experience shows that this bottom-up approach works very effectively as it is only generally when sub-
national areas, such as cities, learn how they will be specifically affected by climate change that
widespread, grassroots political action can be aroused.
I am therefore delighted at the increasing numbers of regional monitoring centres across the world,
which are contributing towards local adaptation plans. In China, where provinces require targets for
In the US, reports have highlighted the value of non-official centres, such as a severe storm centre in
government programmes for much of the data. In Brazil, regional centres are providing data and
predictions about agriculture and deforestation, and inform legislation about policy options.
What this activity points to is the need for a broader global network of such centres to support national
information to the right place at the right time.
involved (as the Danes show, for instance, by their community investment in wind power).
Taken overall, and despite recent setbacks such as the demise of the US cap-and-trade bill, I am
therefore increasingly optimistic that the tide is turning decisively in favour of tackling climate change,
but that it will be the cumulative effect of sub-national actions which will prove crucial in determining the
speed and effectiveness of responses to climate change. While international and national policy will still
have a key role to play, the message is nonetheless clear: "localisation of action and data" must and
will increasingly be the priority in tackling the global warming menace.
Lord Hunt is Visiting Professor at Delft University and former director-general of the UK Met Office

9. Thorium a strong rival

Robin Bromby From: The Australian October 07, 2010 5:27PM
Uranium may be tainted by politics, but an alternative has no such stigma
BULGARIA is building a 1000 megawatt nuclear power station. Last month, Egypt announced it was
opening international bidding for a 1200MW nuclear plant on its Mediterranean coast.
The connection between these two events -- apart from the fact that they are new nuclear plants -- is
that the head office of the company providing the engineering expertise is based in North Sydney.
WorleyParsons has been involved in the design and construction of 18 nuclear generating plants and
has a large nuclear branch in Sofia to work on such projects anywhere in the world. However, not in
Egypt plans to build four such plants by 2025, adding another 4000MW to the country's generating
capacity, at breaking point in the hottest months of the year.
But, in Australia, nuclear power is a dead issue.
It was not featured in the recent federal election campaign, although other aspects of energy and
climate were.
Yet while the Greens abhor it (and uranium mining), the British climate lobbyist Lord Stern told the
National Press Club in Canberra last month that Australia should not rule out nuclear power while
addressing the question of greenhouse gas emissions.
The use of nuclear power for power generation has grown worldwide. Even the German government,
which had been planning to phase out its old nuclear plants, is now talking about extending their
operating lives by a further 15 years.
So, too, has the case for nuclear being a very low greenhouse gas emitter.
But the ground is also changing, with new technologies possibly leading to a reassessment of nuclear
as a clean and efficient form of electricity generation.
In a recent issue of the Washington-based journal Science, two British academics proposed that
concerns about climate change, security of supply, and depleting fossil fuel reserves have spurred a
revival of interest in nuclear power generation in Europe and North America, while other regions
continue or initiate an expansion.
They argued this would be a two-staged process. Robin Grimes, materials researcher at Imperial
said the first stage would include replacing or extending the life of existing power plants.
But, from 2030, "a large-scale second period of construction would allow nuclear energy to contribute
substantially to the decarbonisation of electricity generation".
And there would be ways to avoid expanding power grids. Grimes and Nuttall said that floating plants
near large cities could be one such development, already a significant factor in developing countries
that had inadequate national grid systems.
By 2030, too, it may be possible to use uranium as much as 15 times more efficiently, the authors said.
And there's an alternative to uranium - it's called thorium.
Its use for power generation is now being proposed by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia, of the European
Organisation for Nuclear Research.
Rubbia was reported saying that a tonne of the silvery metal produces as much energy as 200 tonnes
of uranium, or 3.5 million tonnes of coal.
Back in 2007, the House of Representatives industry and resources committee published a report much
talked about at the time but quickly forgotten. It was called Australia's Uranium: Greenhouse Friendly
Apart from recommending an end to bans on new uranium mines, the committee of six Coalition and
three Labor MPs along with independent Bob Katter drew attention to the country's thorium capacity.
It reported that Australia then possessed the world's largest quantity of economically recoverable
thorium resources, more than the US and Canada combined.
However, the committee report said the official figures for world thorium resources are considered
conservative. Geoscience Australia had separately stressed that the Australian figure was based on
assumptions rather than direct geological data. The parliamentary report noted that, like uranium,
thorium can be used as a nuclear fuel (which is why the former West Australian Labor government
banned mining of thorium as well as uranium) but, from an efficiency point of view, almost all the
mineable thorium is usable in a reactor compared with only 0.7 per cent of natural uranium. "Thus,
thorium may contain some 40 times the amount of energy per unit mass than uranium without recourse
to fast breeders," the report continued.
Prescient - if ignored - words in light of the Rubbia comments.
But thorium also has another advantage for those worried about nuclear proliferation.
According to another scientist at the Geneva-based nuclear research organisation, it's difficult to make
nuclear weapons using thorium because it emits too many gamma rays.
India is in the forefront of work on building thorium-fuelled reactors for generating electricity.
Last month the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. released a paper on India's future issues with
nuclear power.
It concluded that nuclear offered the country long-term energy security, but this entailed tapping into the
country's vast thorium resource, one of the biggest in the world and not far behind Australia's.
The problem identified by the Brookings paper is that India is forced to use uranium mined at grades as
low as 0.1 per cent, making it two to three times more costly than uranium mined elsewhere.
Hence the appeal of thorium - using far less for the same output would constitute a significant cost
saving. India is addressing the issue. But in Australia?

10. Experts Meet for Largest Ever IAEA Fusion Conference

11 October 2010
International Atomic Energy Agency
The ITER Tokamak will be nearly 30 metres tall, and weigh 23 000 tons. The Tokamak is a doughnut-
shaped vessel surrounded by coils that produce an intense magnetic field — in which the conditions
needed for fusion are created and maintained.

More than 1000 scientific experts meet this week, to discuss nuclear fusion as a source of energy. The
gathering opened 11 October in Daejeon, the Republic of Korea.
The five-day 23rd biennial Fusion Energy Conference is organized by the IAEA and hosted by Korea's
National Fusion Research Institute.
As the search for greener forms of electricity production intensifies, the pursuit of peaceful nuclear
fusion has received growing attention in the scientific community.
This year's Fusion Energy Conference brings together the largest group of physicists working in the
field to date.
"For the world at large, fusion energy remains a distant dream but the large group of distinguished
scientists gathering in Deajeon recently made important headway to move the dream closer to reality,"
said Werner Burkart, Head of the IAEA's Nuclear Sciences and Applications Department, who opened
the Conference on behalf of IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano.
See Story Resources for more information.

11. First do the research, then make deep carbon cuts

Bjorn Lomborg From: The Australian October 14, 2010 12:00AM
climate change summit last December, and the revelation of mistakes in the UN climate panel's work,
Although some activists still rely on scare tactics - witness the launch of an advertisement depicting the
bombing of anybody who is hesitant to embrace carbon cuts - many activists now spend more time
highlighting the "benefits" of their policy prescription. They no longer dwell on impending climate doom
but on the economic windfall that will result from embracing the "green" economy.
country could go it alone and become "fossil fuel-free" in 40 years. The goal is breathtaking: more than
80 per cent of Denmark's energy supply comes from fossil fuels, which are dramatically cheaper and
more reliable than any green energy source.
I attended the committee's launch and was startled that Denmark's Climate Commission barely
mentioned climate change. This omission is understandable since one country acting alone cannot do
much to stop global warming. If Denmark were indeed to become 100 per cent fossil-free by 2050, and
temperature by just two weeks.
total energy supply.
power. The results are hardly inspiring. Denmark's wind industry is almost completely dependent on
studies suggest that claims that one-fifth of Denmark's electricity demand is met by wind are an
sold to other countries.
today's technology competitive and efficient. Direct-current lines need to be constructed to carry solar
Proponents of carbon cuts argue that green-energy technologies only seem more expensive because
climate impacts would justify a tax of around E0.01 per litre of petrol ($0.06 per gallon in the US) an
amount dwarfed by the taxes already imposed by most European countries.
Denmark's Climate Commission claimed that the price tag would be next to nothing. The commission
non-conventional sources such as tar sands.
cent of gross domestic product a year.
The shift away from fossil fuels will not be easy. Policy-makers must prioritise investment in green-
Kyoto Protocol, participating countries' investment in R&D as a percentage of GDP did not increase.
global warming no matter how they are packaged.
Bjorn Lomborg is the director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre and adjunct professor at
Copenhagen Business School.

12. No consensus among climate scientists after all

Des Moore From:The Australian October 14, 2010 12:00AM 21 comments
THE Royal Society's report coincides with dissidence at the American Physical Society.
from a large number of members.
the society had changed its position on climate change.
What Pethica said in responding to coverage in The Australian was: "There is no greater uncertainty
about future temperature increases now than . . . previously indicated [and] the science remains the
same, as do the uncertainties". He also refers to the report's conclusion that "There is strong evidence
that changes in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activity are the main cause of the global
warming that has taken place over the past half-century".
What Pethica did not mention, however, is the report's statement that climate change "continues to be
the subject of intensive scientific research and public debate" and that it divides the existing state of
knowledge into three parts: science that is well established, where there is wide consensus but
continuing debate, and where there remains substantial uncertainty. In fact it also states that "some
uncertainties are unlikely ever to be significantly reduced". Beyond this, the report acknowledges "it is
in the future".
Other important attitudinal changes reflected in the report include the absence of any explanations of
why, despite CO2 concentrations increasing over the course of the century, temperatures increased
during only two periods: from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to about 2000; of why the report suggests
projected increases in sea levels by 2100 that are lower than the upper estimate of the IPCC, 20cm
compared with 59cm; and of why the report accords greater uncertainty to the causes of warming than
does the IPCC in its 2007 report, where it is claimed as "very likely" due to human activity (which
suggests a 90 per cent certainty). In fact, the Royal Society report offers no temperature ranges, no
tipping point beyond which temperature increases are (supposedly) irreversible and (as noted) is
uncertain about the possible extent of increases in temperatures.
Any careful reader of the report will acknowledge that it reflects the views of both sides of the debate on
the science of climate change. Indeed, within the Royal Society a group of scientists during the past two
years or so has been complaining to the executive that the society's claim of a consensus was
untenable and contrary to science itself. The executive was eventually persuaded to undertake a review
of the Royal Society's public position and representatives of the dissenting group were involved in the
Those representatives drew on exchanges with scientists in Australia and other parts of the world, and
these are reflected in various parts of the report.
The challenge to the executive of the American Physical Society is to rescind its 2007 declaration that
global warming represents "a dire international emergency". The large dissenting group there circulated
a letter saying Climategate has revealed "an international fraud, the worst any of us have seen" and
asking for the society's position to be put on ice until the extent of concern expressed at the
Climategate revelations is clarified.
This dispute displays every sign of being ongoing.
With the increased problems with interpreting the science, it is not surprising that reports indicate the
slow progress of climate change discussions in China and a dismal outlook for next month's
international leaders' meeting at Cancun. This poses a serious risk that essential electricity investment
here will not occur in time to prevent further precautionary price rises (on top of the already very large
recent increases) and possible blackouts. In these circumstances, Australian governments need to
provide a guarantee that investors in electricity generation will be compensated if generators or retailers
are forced in the future to increase their prices because of carbon pricing policies. This is a matter that
requires a decision at the Council of Australian Governments before the Gillard committee reports at
the end of next year.
Des Moore, director of the Institute for Private Enterprise, is a former Treasury deputy secretary.

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