Climate Scientist: Climate Engineering Might Be the Answer To Warming 343
Lasrick (2629253) writes "Tom Wigley is one of the world's top climate scientists, and in this interview he explains his outspoken support for both nuclear energy and research into climate engineering. Wigley was one of the first scientists to break the taboo on public discussion of climate engineering as a possible response to global warming; in a 2006 paper in the journal Science, he proposed a combined geoengineering-mitigation strategy that would address the problem of increasing ocean acidity, as well as the problem of climate change. In this interview, he argues that renewable energy alone will not be sufficient to address the climate challenge, because it cannot be scaled up quickly and cheaply enough, and that opposition to nuclear power 'threatens humanity's ability to avoid dangerous climate change.'"
What if we overcorrect? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be leary of either overcorrecting for climate change or having massive unpredicted effects. I'm all for trying to fix the problem. I just don't think our climate modelling is yet good enough.
Re:What if we overcorrect? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What if we overcorrect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people still try to debate things that are already settled and others look for solutions before everything becomes a problem. Mankind has a huge list of fuckups to fix - but we either continue as is or we continue to try to improve things. Your viewpoint is incredibly pessimistic. Very few people would say life was better 200 years ago than it is today. Let's take that viewpoint and move forward with it.. We need more Star Trek and less Water World.
Either way, we should be investigating options like these.. You're being pessimistic during the initial stages of discussion - so it brings very little to the table.
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...that are already settled...
So, before we make that pronouncement stand as incontrovertible fact, two things are needed...
1) where can we find a completely accurate (or even reasonably accurate) climate model? Even pro-AGW climatologists would shy away from claiming that they have one. Point is, the science is not "settled", unless everyone is agreeing on the mere fact that climate does change over time (which, seriously, no one credibly argues against).
2) what is the rate of change, and is is accurate enough to take action against?
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... trying to keep everything just like it is in the 1980s (or whenever) may do more damage than just letting it cycle naturally.
Oh yea, we want to go back to 1980? Shesh, does ANYBODY here remember what LA looked like in the 80's? Apart from all the women in big hair and the plaid suits going out of style? No, don't want to go back to the orange brown haze myself.
It's like all the environmentalists who want us to go back to horse and buggy days..... They are NUTS! Does anybody remember how many people DIED from preventable illness and substandard sanitation? From starvation? There are a LOT more people on this earth now days and
Re:What if we overcorrect? LA comparison (Score:2)
... trying to keep everything just like it is in the 1980s (or whenever) may do more damage than just letting it cycle naturally.
Oh yea, we want to go back to 1980? Shesh, does ANYBODY here remember what LA looked like in the 80's? Apart from all the women in big hair and the plaid suits going out of style? No, don't want to go back to the orange brown haze myself.
I remember, as a kid, flying into LA and seeing that thick brown layer over the entire valley.
Look, we had the Clean Air Act and it worked. The same goes for switching from tax-subsidized and tax-exempted Coal, Oil, and Gas to cleaner fuels. Get rid of the tax exemptions and remove the "grandfather" permits for inefficient old power plants. The market will self-correct to cheaper Solar fairly quickly, if you can provide low-cost capital in low-interest loans from part of the money we save by removing those
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The market will self-correct to cheaper Solar fairly quickly, if you can provide low-cost capital in low-interest loans from part of the money we save by removing those inefficient tax subsidies for coal, oil, and gas.
Shesh, nope. First, what tax subsidies are you talking about? There is no way Coal is subsidized, nor is oil and gas. There ARE significant subsidies and tax abatements for renewable energy already. Second, The problem is the huge drop in natural gas prices due to fracking and the increased production it has made possible. Projections are clear, we will have at least a decade of natural gas prices in the current range. It is what is driving old (and newer) nuclear plants out of business and it is driv
The fossil fuel "subsidies" are a lie. (Score:4, Informative)
First, what tax subsidies are you talking about? There is no way Coal is subsidized, nor is oil and gas..
The fossil fuel "subsidies" they speak of are nothing but specious reasoning. Seriously: all but an irrelevant fraction of the "subsidies" amount to "we don't believe fossil fuels are being taxed punitively enough, therefore the absence of those punitive taxes means they are receiving a subsidy".
It's a basic begging the question fallacy.
Look at this link: Global fossil fuel subsidies amount to $1.9 trillion – IMF [ewea.org]
Today, in advanced economies, fossil fuels do not get much the way of direct subsidies – although they do still exist, for example Germany spends 0.07% of its GDP supporting coal and the US spends 0.05% of its GDP on petroleum. But fossil fuels do continue to benefit from subsidies in those economies in the form of mispriced taxation levels.
In advanced economies, “subsidies often take the form of taxes that are too low to capture the true costs to society of energy use, including pollution and road congestion,” the IMF said. “Taxes imposed on energy are not high enough to account for all the adverse effects of excessive energy consumption, including on the environment,” says the David Lipton, First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF."
Even the Iraq war is literally a fossil fuel tax subsidy in their mind. Don't debate these people: either their logic is broken so there's no point in trying to use reason, or they are being deliberately disingenuous so there is no way to engage in an honest debate.
Either way, it's a good idea to know where their talking points are coming from.
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The IMF opinion is indeed nonsensical, but fossil fuels are subsidized.
Fair enough; I will revise my statements in the future. I noticed that your initial examples seem to have an "energy independence" or "green" (carbon capture?) flavor, but whatever. Notwithstanding that, these do appear to represent substantial direct subsidies for fossil fuels.
The problem is that trying to find the real stats on direct subsidies for fossil fuels is difficult because opponents are willfully misrepresenting the situation. I gave up trying to find real stats (as yours seem to be) after findin
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Shesh, nope. First, what tax subsidies are you talking about? There is no way Coal is subsidized, nor is oil and gas.
Do a little research. Here's a starting point. [priceofoil.org]
So the IMF calculated the "subsidies" they found to be $500 Million in the US http://www.imf.org/external/np... [imf.org] and the site *you* send me to is claiming BILLIONS? Something is amiss here. I smell a rat, so lets ask some questions.
WHAT is a subsidy to you? A "special" tax break? A check that gets issued from the government directly to a producer? Neither of these exist. What we have is a bunch of people (like the authors of pricefoil.org) who are not above misleading people to trick them into believin
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The most important part would be to use remediation technology which has a physical timescale of persistence substantially shorter than the effective residence time of the longest-living and most significant greenhouse gas, namely CO2, which is in the hundreds-to-thousands of years.
If you're using aerosols which have a residence time of a few years, th
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Water vapor is vastly more significant than CO2
CO2 is more significant to the current climate change because it is a long-lived greenhouse gas, so its increase in concentration increases the radiative forcing for many decades or centuries. Increasing the water vapour only increases rainfall over the following week.
and they both have far less effect than the nitrogen and oxygen.
Nitrogen and Oxygen aren't significantly greenhouse or anti-greenhouse.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What if we overcorrect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets be clear here. "Pro-AGW climatologists" is a redundant phrase. In the *scientific* community (Ie not in the blogger peanut gallery), theres no more "ANTI-AGW" climatologists then there are "Creationist biologists". A very very tiny minority of mostly unqualified right-wing think tank employees at best. But actually nobody is "Pro AGW". Nobody wants this. My sister has been working on the hydrological parts of the modelling for the past decade and she utterly hates the science because the implications are so dismal. But its what needs to be done. Its like saying Oncologists are "pro cancer".
That humans are causing climate change isn't a debate anymore. Hasn't been for a long time, the science is fundamental and would require major revisions to fundamental science that we'd have to throw away 50+ years of scientific progress across the board. A whole new system of chemistry, a whole new physics going back to the 1800s (When scientists first started warning about the 'greenhouse effect' after discovering CO2's infra-red properties in the lab) , a whole new system of optics to account for why CO2 appears to be creating banding in the infra-red spectrum, it just goes on and on.
There are two things required for AGW to be false.
1) A mechanism that is stopping the CO2 humans are putting in from following the laws of physics by trapping IR light and introducing energy into the atmosphere.
2) A mechanism that is making measuring devices pretend that physics is still working as expected.
Perhaps when man makes CO2 its different to natural CO2 and instead of creating heat it creates some sort of strange particle that causes physicsts to lie, like orgone energy.
Does this sound strange? Well it exactly how strange science needs to get for AGW to be false. At this stage, scientists are happy to use the standard scientific model that says if you have a theory that predicts an effect and then the effect turns up in the observation, its a good bet the effect is true.
As for models, well yes, they are not without peril, however certain things can be predicted with certainty.Namely If you introduce x amount of CO2, it will trap in y percent of Infra red (and certain other spectra) light that is passing throught the atmosphere at the time. Since we have a good understanding of how much CO2 is in the air (We've more or less doubled it), we can do a back of the napkin calculation to work out how much energy is being added to the climate system. Remember, this is 1870s science here, nothing is controversial about this, and it can be verified in a high school laboratory.
The question then is how this energy manifests. The options are by heat (Warming) , by kinetic manifestations such as increased winds, cyclones, hurricanes, etc, by increased pressure gradients, such as the one that caused the huge chill over winter in the US, and so on.
Thats what the models are trying to work out. Whatever the case is, we know that the very minimal baseline is still pretty bad.
More to the point, the state of the art in modelling is that our models can attach error bands to the predictions. So "We think this is 80% likely to happen, give or take 5-10%" Currently we're pushing close to 100% certainty give or take a few percent. Not quite the sigma-5 type certainty of 'we've proven it" (Although we *HAVE* proven AGW), but pretty damn close.
At this stage its highly unlikely that the least-bad models will turn out over-done, and we can safely say with certainty that SOMETHING is going to happen.
Thus the precautionary principle states that even taking into account the small likelyhood we are wrong about it, we've g
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No climate model of note considers CO2 to be the only variable of note. However variations in solar output are very well understood and no, they are not particularly significant at all. Yes, there is broad consensus on this.
Well we know it certainly is possible because we have previous examples of it, including the
Re:What if we overcorrect? (Score:4, Insightful)
Very few of the people you'd ask were alive 200 years ago.
Irrelevant. The lifestyle available 200 years ago is still available today. Yet practically no one voluntarily chooses to live that way. You can go out in the woods, build a cabin, and live without electricity or indoor plumbing. You can grow potatoes or mill your own wheat, and learn to shoe a horse. The only thing you can't have is the smallpox.
Re:What if we overcorrect? (Score:4, Interesting)
The only thing you can't have is the smallpox.
...and slavery, and lack of medical care, the lack of a civilized global society...
Sure, you can go out into the woods and live 'off the grid', as it were, but you do so while being completely protected from invasion, wars, raids, and etc - about the only thing you have to worry about is the occasional criminal or two. You can also do so knowing that if you get an infection or suchlike, modern medical help help is not really that far away. Finally, you do it with a huge advantage in knowledge that the 200-years-gone man never had, or could have even if he wanted it.
It's a far cry from the life of a typical family trying to settle, say, Western Kentucky in 1814, where dying young (if you were lucky enough to make it to adulthood in the first place) was pretty damned common. ...they did get to see more stars at night, though.
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It's a far cry from the life of a typical family trying to settle, say, Western Kentucky in 1814, where dying young (if you were lucky enough to make it to adulthood in the first place) was pretty damned common. ...they did get to see more stars at night, though.
Try going to some old cemetery in the plains states and look at how many gravestones mark children under 5. I was tracking my family history and found the family site. Early 1900s, there were a number of children with headstones.
Civilization is a fine thing.
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You'd be lucky to see a star. Wood burning was the main energy source. Together with pine tar cooking you could barely see your hand in front of your face. People really don't understand how much their environment has improved.
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The only thing you can't have is the smallpox.
Perhaps not, but we have some pretty nasty things you CAN catch that where not a serious problem 200 years ago. Some will kill you for sure..
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I would agree that people died on average a lot sooner than we do now. We have advanced in our ability to treat illnesses that used to kill folks much younger, we eat much better and live longer, fuller lives. Now we die from things that where unheard of 200 years ago, but on average decades later than our forefathers.
Technology has it's advantages.
On that, I rest my case.
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The stock market will keep going up in the long term, right? What it does tomorrow doesn't affect the long-term trend.
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I recently read that at the same time light bulbs have gotten more efficient, total lighting power expenditure has gone up! Evidently, it's a combination of people using a lot more light when lighting gets cheaper to operate, and more ligthing being installed in general.
I can imagine if we start offsetting global warming we will produce more of its anthropogenic causes.
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Nothing should be implemented that can be quickly stopped.
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Nothing should be implemented that can be quickly stopped.
That's a bit of a problem with slow-changing things like climate... a high amount of effort is required for even a short-term budge, and when you found out you gave it too much gas, it's too late to stop it, even if you let your foot off the accelerator.
Think of it like trying to drive a supertanker or uber-sized cruise ship down a very narrow channel... it takes a very experienced person to steer and accelerate the things safely through tight quarters (and they don't really come with brakes per se).
Carryin
Re:What if we overcorrect? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a bit of a problem with slow-changing things like climate... a high amount of effort is required for even a short-term budge, and when you found out you gave it too much gas, it's too late to stop it
This is not true for some proposals. For instance, fertilizing the oceans with trace amounts of iron can drastically increase the amount of CO2 taken up by phytoplankton. But if you stop spraying the fertilizer, the phytoplankton will absorb all the available iron within a few weeks, and then the process will stop. The iron will not only reduce CO2, but will also cause big increases in fish populations, thus relieving pressure from overfishing. Some may say we should leave the oceans alone, but that is silly considering what we are already doing to the oceans today. This could balance out some of the other harm.
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For instance, fertilizing the oceans with trace amounts of iron can drastically increase the amount of CO2 taken up by phytoplankton. But if you stop spraying the fertilizer, the phytoplankton will absorb all the available iron within a few weeks, and then the process will stop.
Honest question - would doing this induce a population crash [wikipedia.org]? If so, then the results could cause more harm than good (or would the recovery cycle be too fast to have an impact?)
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Fertilizing the ocean with iron will not increase the fish population, it will rather kill it off.
Obvious solution: don't over do it. Some nutrients will increase both plankton and fish. Too much will cause problems. We should run some small scale test projects, and then scale them up as we learn.
Re:What if we overcorrect? (Score:5, Interesting)
As opposed...say...to people who live near the ocean....
Re:What if we overcorrect? (Score:4, Funny)
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syfy movie of the week
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Exactly. The only problem is we only have access to one habitable planet to toy with. I think it makes more sense to just adapt to the changes that will happen rather than try to manipulate a system we don't understand and can't afford to completely destroy.
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Let's go to Mars. The technology is available, only the will is lacking.
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Climate engineering? (Score:2)
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Considering this is a non-problem to start with, we'd absolutely be doing more harm than good. This was the most brutal winter I've seen in over 20 years. It seems like every other day I was plowing more global warming off my driveway and we just got another 5" of global warming last night that I had to shovel off my walk.
Why do so many people confuse [nasa.gov] weather with climate?
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Considering this is a non-problem to start with, we'd absolutely be doing more harm than good. This was the most brutal winter I've seen in over 20 years. It seems like every other day I was plowing more global warming off my driveway and we just got another 5" of global warming last night that I had to shovel off my walk.
Why do so many people confuse [nasa.gov] weather with climate?
Because they are related... And all the yahoos who stared talking about "Global Warning" messed up when they picked the terms they used. Plus Al Gore's movie was horrible....
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Arizona, southern California set record highs over the same winter. Nebraska has had a multi-year drought. So your local weather has been canceled out in the averaging.
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This was the most brutal winter I've seen in over 20 years. It seems like every other day I was plowing more global warming off my driveway and we just got another 5" of global warming last night that I had to shovel off my walk.
(sarc on) Um... the correct term is "climate change" or didn't you get the memo?
It's been a decade of "the sky is falling" predictions from the environmentalists and because the gloom and doom from the likes of Al Gore, the "Global Warming" term has to be replaced due to the obvious bad press and lack of creditable observations from folks like you.
So it's "CLIMATE CHANGE" to you, and don't forget to use the correct terms... In the mean time, keep the walk clean. (sarc off)
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the upper atmosphere is not getting warmer. Only the lower atmosphere is warming. In fact, the upper atmosphere is cooling.
Clouds generally appear below 18 kilometers.
.
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You're pulling those figures out of your lower orifice.
Sulfuric Acid. (Score:2)
the 70's called (Score:4, Interesting)
good thing we didn't cover the poles with dark soot, like they were calling for in the 70's to stop the impending ice age.
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We're just getting rid of one of them, instead.
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Well, I've been warning against any mitigation of gw -- moving inland slowly over 100-300 years is a minor hassle (buildings get old anyway).
But accidentally overshooting and inducing an ice age (which can start in as little as 1-2 years) will actually and rapidly kill billions.
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No one called for that, and when ever someone brings up global cooling, it's guaranteed they don't know what global climate change is.
Hint: There is more particulate matter in the air; which reflects some sunlight. There is also CO2(and other) green house gasses that traps the energy.
The energy trapped is greater the the energy lost from sun lighting reflection
Also, we are in an ice age.
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Your comparison is rather meaningless.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2)
Watch Snowpiercer - good movie.
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Maybe if Clinton... (Score:5, Interesting)
Then again AlGore would not have a job being a global alarmist alarmist either...
"BAS: Are you surprised that so many environmental groups remain vehemently opposed to nuclear power?
Wigley: “Saddened” would be a better word. Often the main concern of those groups is proliferation—the use or theft of nuclear material to make weapons. I think that that is a misrepresented issue as well. One of the saddest things was when the Clinton administration shut down the program on fast reactors.1 Clinton, [Al] Gore, and John Kerry are to blame there. If that program had not been shut down, and fast reactors had continued to develop, within maybe three years we could have started building Integral Fast Reactor systems with the whole nuclear cycle on one site—reprocessing waste materials onsite and having very little residual waste to deal with. If that had happened, I don’t think we would have a global warming problem now at all. We could have started on a pathway of rapid introduction of fourth-generation nuclear technology, and we would have gained 20 years in solving the climate problem
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There is no social issue (Score:2)
we have to get over the social issue first.
There is no social issue, there is only a propaganda issue. People have been told over and over that nuclear is the ultimate evil thing. They just need some counterbalancing facts about how it can be safe and that in fact it's safer than coal... then start by replacing coal plants with small really well contained nuclear plants, and expand from there.
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I told you so (Score:3, Insightful)
If anthropogenic global warming is not only real but as apocalyptic as its proponents claim, we will not only have to go nuclear but we will have to geoengineer our way out of it. None of the processes outlined in this article, like spraying high-albedo compounds into the upper atmosphere, can run away. We can implement a method to the point where we start to get observable effects, and then back off if problems develop. In other words, we need to be as adventurous and willing to assume large-scale risk now as we were when we ran the Manhattan Project.
To put it another way: the greenhouse effect, if it is actually happening, is already a form of geoengineering. It is making cold countries warm. If it's going too far, the geoengineering steps in this article are what it might take to arrive at the stable, human-based optimum we want for our long-term survival.
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I'd mod you up, but the ifs are out of place.
There's no "if", it's happening right now.
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I would prefer we built giant 'shields' be tween us and the sun so that we can move them if need be.
I don't want to spray anything into the atmosphere.
Really, if we could figure out how plants work so efficiently on a the molecular level to get CO2 and convert it to sugar, O, and H we could solve this issue..
But, yeah 4 Gen nuclear plants need to be built, and ran by the government, not private industry.
Remove the profit and bonus motivation, and people won't try to find ways to skirt, or delay on m
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So you want to reduce the amount of growth in plants by reducing the amount of sunlight they get?
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Although growing plants take CO2 out of the atmosphere, Warmists believe that this is not happening fast enough to overcome the new carbon we're belching into the atmosphere. Hence, the need for non-natural sequestratiopn and/or screening technology.
No, you don't get to have it both ways.
Are we so in thrall to our fossil fuel overlords (Score:2)
that we can't just end the carbon binge we are on?
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Just think about how it will be if you are drinking your starbucks that was heated by burning cow dung...
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Well, it might taste better. :)
I love good coffee. Therefore I can't stand Starbucks.
What? (Score:2)
Didn't any of you people watch "The Time Machine"?!
Taboo?? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think there is much of a taboo on discussing climate engineering. It's just that all of the proposals I have heard about are just stupid / won't work / would screw up things more, etc. Then there is the "what could possibly go wrong" factor.
It's fine to discuss climate engineering but they'll have to come up with something much better than anything now out there.
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My problem with it is that in general people aren't as smart as we believe we are. We keep coming up with new things that have terrible side effects but when something new comes along we don't possibly believe that anything could go wrong with it. Maybe we are just hopelessly optimistic.
Climate lobby won't accept this as an answer (Score:4, Insightful)
What they want is control over global industry, insane amounts of unaudited "international aid money" and absolute moral authority.
Solve the problem and you take away their power, their money, and their claims to moral superiority.
This is something they will never let die.
If we fixed the climate tomorrow they'd still be harping about it.
i know how to cool the planet off (Score:2, Funny)
wheres my Nobel Prize? if obama can get one for making stupid comments then so can I
Turns out he is wrong about nuclear power (Score:2)
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So you would need a way to lock up the wood after the tree is cut down.
Where do you think coal comes from?
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millions of years, pressure, and plate tectonics.
.
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Where do you think coal comes from?
From the Carboniferous.
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They are a carbon sync, but no so much a carbon sink.
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Besides being a carbon sink, trees also scrub pollution and hold groundwater, working to prevent landslides.
"Although forests do release some CO2 from natural processes such as decay and respiration, a healthy forest typically stores carbon at a greater rate than it releases carbon."
http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/47... [ny.gov]
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I think you're wrong:
"To grow a pound of wood, a tree uses 1.47 pounds of carbon dioxide and gives off 1.07 pounds of oxygen. An acre of trees might grow 4,000 pounds of wood in a year, using 5,880 pounds of carbon dioxide and giving off 4,280 pounds of oxygen in the process."
http://www.forestecologynetwor... [forestecologynetwork.org]
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yes.
One was random ignorant circumstance, the other a planned way to go forward and start correcting it.
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yes. One was random ignorant circumstance, the other a planned way to go forward and start correcting it.
Correcting is only a good idea if you know what actually caused the issue and you *know* how to fix it. As it stands, the answer is we don't know on both preconditions so it is crazy to attempt a "fix" right now.
Re:nuclear power means unintended geoengineering (Score:4, Informative)
Even wind, hydro and solar are more dangerous.
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You say 90 people per year die from Wind energy, I call BS.
How does wind energy kill people ?
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actually it wasnt per year, its per trillion kWh, still my question is the same, how does wind energy kill people.
Re:nuclear power means unintended geoengineering (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.caithnesswindfarms.... [caithnesswindfarms.co.uk]
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It would be easier to accept if the numbers where not coming from an anti-wind farm group, but to answer my own question, deaths can occure from wind power from
- Transport/Construction
- Structual failure (from storms)
- Ice throw (impact within 140m)
- Turbine failure (anti-wind farm group says turbines need to be 2km away to be safe)
It looks like a large chunk of the 146 deaths in the history of Wind Power are attributable to transport and consturction. Which i think should be
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Umm, a TWhr (TeraWattHour) is NOT the same as
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Duoh, my mistake, so 270 deaths per year should be expected based on 2008 wind power generation, and the anti-wind farm site documents 11 deaths in 2008.
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If you take 2008 figures, 11 Deaths and 1.798TkWh (PetaWh) that means it is almsot 20 deaths per PWh, nuclear is 90 according to that forbes article (not that it has any credibility)
So Wind is much safer than nuclear.
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Construction and maintenance deaths. Wind requires far more individual generators than nuclear or any of the fossil fuel plants which means a greater level of maintenance and construction time for the same generation capacity. They are also high up in the air, which means higher risk.
Construction and maintenance always has a % chance risk of death or serious injury. Add height to that and the outcomes get worse. This isn't exclusive to wind farms.
Basically people fall while working on the wind farms and
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there were 145 wind farm fatalities in the UK alone from 2009 - 2013 145 people died working on wind turbines
From your link, "17 bus passengers were killed in one single incident in Brazil in March 2012", is there a Brazil in the UK ?
Dont get sucked in by prooganda.
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You say 90 people per year die from Wind energy, I call BS.
How does wind energy kill people ?
I rescue people caught in a Windmill on a weekly basis. You'd be amazed at how many drunks want to ride it to the top.
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If we were *completely* incompetent, every one we've ever made would have melted down. As it stands, I can only name 3.
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Well, no.
Whether there are too many of us is debatable, but it is NOT debatable that the rate of population increase has been decreasing steadily for decades.
Current projections show population peaking under 12 billion, and declining thereafter.
So, no, we're not continuing to multiply "at a obscenely accelerating rate".
So, I'll assume the rest of your rant is as devoid of fact as the part I quoted, and not
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I suppose when you talk of "material expectations" you are thinking of North Americans and their rampant
Re:The Chinese could pull this off (Score:5, Informative)
So does the US. The Constitution gives the government the power to coin money. The Fed gives the government zero cost borrowing. The Modigliani-Miller theorem of finance shows that how you finance a good idea doesn't matter. If climate engineering is a good idea, we can finance it.
Finance should never be used as an excuse not to carry out a good idea.
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The value is unaffected by finance. If it's a good idea, how you finance it does not matter. Fear of debt should not be used as a reason not to finance a good idea.
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Which ignores the fact that both solar and nuclear have had recent explosive growth
Due to HUGE tax subsidies and regulation that attempted to make the ROI on "renewables" good enough that they made sense, some sense. Most of these technologies are not viable in today's market on an even playing field. Not to mention the fact that most of these are actually stability issues for the grid, horrible on the environment and of dubious utility over the long term.
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Tom Wigley is one of the world's top climate scientists
That's damning with faint praise. It's springtime. The climate ninnies are out in full force.
I thought that the ninnies where only out in force when they where flying out to attend their "global warming" conferences, usually during an unusually cold snap.