July 31, 2016: Mauna Loa carbon dioxide levels 5.04 ppm higher than one year ago.

[kristopher]

1. More nuclear hogswallop?

Last edited Tue Aug 9, 2016, 09:13 AM - Edit history (1)

You write, "The world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free primary energy is nuclear energy."

When you write "primary energy" you do so in order to use an irrelevant measure that creates the false impression that nuclear derived energy is anything but a trivial contributor to global energy use.

The graphic below is from 2014. It excludes the energy embodied in fuels that is wasted as heat during the process of generating electricity. Primary energy is the energy embodied in a fuel and includes an accounting of the wasted energy. So, in point of fact, most of the energy from nuclear power (70%+?) is expelled as heat and is actually a contributor to the warming of the planet.

Final energy or energy consumed is a far more revealing metric.

To Slash CO2 And Air Pollution, China’s Coal Use Peaks
BY JOE ROMM JUL 26, 2016 2:45 PM
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/07/26/3802017/china-peaked-coal-use-study/

And in a recent investors report on the future of energy Goldman Sachs, agreeing with Bloomberg New Energy Finance and the International Energy Agency writes,

“On our wind and solar numbers, emissions in IEA scenarios could peak as early as c.2020, rather than 2030.”

Nuclear Power Advocates Claim Cheap Renewable Energy Is A Bad Thing
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/07/28/3802326/nuclear-power-renewables-cheap/

We need to ramp up, that is undoubtedly true, but the key factor is restructuring the grid away from large scale centralized generation in order to incentivize the distributed structure which maximizes the opportunities for renewable energy's operational profile.

Jul 22, 2016
China installed 20 GW of solar power in first-half; triple from a year ago

China installed 20 gigawatts (GW) of solar power capacity in the first half of 2016, three times as much as during the same period a year ago, state news agency Xinhua reported late on Thursday citing the country's largest solar industry lobby.

The surge in capacity extended China's lead over Germany as the top solar generator, said Wang Bohua, General Secretary of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association (CPIA), according to Xinhua.

<snip>

Production of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules also increased to 27 GW, up by 37.8 percent in the first half of the year, the CPIA said in a report on its website, adding that the profit margins of the major manufacturers improved to an average of 5 percent from 4.85 percent last year...

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-solar-idUSKCN1020P7