UN: Renewables, Nuclear Must Triple To Save Climate 433
An anonymous reader writes "On the heels of a study that concluded there was less than a 1% chance that current global warming could be simple fluctuations, U.N. scientists say energy from renewables, nuclear reactors and power plants that use emissions-capture technology needs to triple in order keep climate change within safe limits. From The Washington Post: 'During a news conference Sunday, another co-chair, Rajendra K. Pachauri of India, said the goal of limiting a rise in global temperatures "cannot be achieved without cooperation." He added, "What comes out very clearly from this report is that the high-speed mitigation train needs to leave the station soon, and all of global society needs to get on board."'"
Nuclear is obvious, an energy surplus is desired (Score:5, Insightful)
A lesser known situation is if you actually create an energy surplus, food costs, logistic costs, and transportation costs get cheaper. So if we ramped our energy production up by 2-8x what we got now, people could charge their hybrid car at home for even less than they do now. I think this dream is often grouped up with a superconductor power grid idea which is unrealistic for the short term. I think for a better world, we should be aiming to create energy surpluses.
Sometimes I even have the strange thought that energy conservation ideas hurt society's growth. It would be almost better if we used more power in the short term so energy could invest in itself and provide more power at lower costs down the road. I mean it is better to conserve electricity, but I don't hear people championing the idea of creating a global energy surplus.
Re:Nuclear is obvious, an energy surplus is desire (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear is cleaner than any fossil fuel, properly managed. Overall, despite the accidents, nuclear's impact has been a lot smaller than that of fossil fuels.
Unfortunately, accidents aren't seen as an opportunity to learn and eliminate old flaws, but to halfheartedly dump the whole thing, leaving behind ancient designs with known flaws instead of new, safer designs.
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Re:Nuclear is obvious, an energy surplus is desire (Score:5, Informative)
France imports electricity from Germany whenever it's too hot or too cold. In either case, limited cooling is available. In the winter, this is exacerbated by the enormous consumption due to the French preference for electrical heating combined with a lack of insulation, because electricity is cheap for consumers in France. Besides, the argument that stopping construction of new nuclear power plants is the reason for older designs remaining in service is bogus: Older designs remain in service no matter what (except for a total ban, which is happening in Germany). Keeping old plants online is simply the capitalist thing to do: They're bought and paid for and still work. Why would you shut them down?
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Re:Nuclear is obvious, an energy surplus is desire (Score:5, Insightful)
Old stuff. Pebble bed reactors have their own problems. This one had atmospheric releases of radioactive material, contaminated the ground and groundwater below it (complete with increased Leukemia rates in the vicinity) and is currently much more radioactive than planned so that deconstruction can't begin: AVR Jülich [wikipedia.org]. This one was decommissioned after just six years due to the continuous repairs driving the costs up: Thorium High Temperature Reactor 300MW [wikipedia.org].
The nuclear industry will always try to convince you that the solution to all nuclear power problems is waiting right around the corner, to convince the public that nuclear is still an option. Whenever and wherever they're allowed to continue, not only do they keep the old designs online, the "new" designs never deliver on the promises either. They keep covering up accidents, they keep playing down potential risks, they keep deferring risk to the public (nuclear power plants are uninsurable: if - when - the shit hits the fan, everybody pays the price, in more than one way.)
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Old stuff. Pebble bed reactors have their own problems.
There is no power supply that doesn't have problems.
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Nuclear reactors aren't nuclear bombs. You need to refine the fission material very well in said reactors and then re-refine it in more specialized reactors to get a material that has the potential of wiping a large area. Even then, the offensive material degrades very quickly to manageable levels, Hiroshima or even the Nevada desert is far from uninhabitable, Chernobyl even continued generating electricity in it's other reactors for 20 years after the disaster. Even Three Mile Island, which was in a relati
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In the winter, this is exacerbated by the enormous consumption due to the French preference for electrical heating combined with a lack of insulation
That's why it's good that there's a EU directive that by the end of 2020, all new constructions will be required to be low-energy or passive houses.
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And they are 'silently' switching to renewables, like the rest of the world, oops: the rest of Europe, Asia and Africa.
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, like the rest of the world, oops: the rest of Europe, Asia and Africa.
that's.....basically you showing you know nothing about the topic. How many new nuclear plants is China building? Do you know? Your comment shows you don't.
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It does not matter how many nuclear plants China is building.
The parent claimed that overpopulation is the problem. He seem not to realize that 5% of the world population holds the rest (95%) hostage. That 5% are the USA.
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Guess why it is silent? Because it is so quiet as to not significantly increase the % of energy derived from renewables.
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Which explains why France is the 12th largest oil user in the world?
And why Électricité de France gets 74% of their energy from Nuclear?
16% from Hydro, and a whopping 0.1% from wind and other renewables?
For 0.1% they might as well not even bothered with it.
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Wrong. The US isn't the biggest wind energy producer, it's the biggest producer of hot air. China is the single country with the highest amount of energy extracted from wind. The EU combined produces twice as much electricity from wind as the USA, and also more than all of Asia. Germany alone accounts for more than a quarter of the EU's electricity from wind. http://www.gwec.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/GWEC-PRstats-2013_EN.pdf
Re:Nuclear is obvious, an energy surplus is desire (Score:4, Interesting)
Nuclear waste disposal from conventional fission reactors is a solved problem. Unfortunately, the storage of said waste kicks the NIMBY crowd into high gear. Here's an idea...how about converting it to relatively inert ceramic blocks (already available tech) and sink it at some remote subduction zone fault where it gradually gets folded back into the mantle? That ought to suffice until the perpetually "50 years from now" fusion energy generation crowd catches up.
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No, usual figures from the ANTI-nuke hysterics is in the millions of years.
I'm assuming that by HLW you mean Pu-239 (which isn't really very high level - not like, say, Strontium-90).
On that basis, if you started with a mass of HLW the size of the planet (~6E24 kg), you'll be down to ra
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And nuclear waste is not pollution.
Actually, that is correct. Nuclear waste is not pollution - until such time as a third party or the environment is exposed to it. Nuclear waste in a cooling pond is not pollution. Nuclear waste in your ground water is pollution.
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Energy conservation doesn't need to equal depraving ourselves of something. The usual tips about not leaving the lights on in empty rooms are fine, but you can apply the same reasoning for more modern things.
A small example would be Netflix. You can use a small box like an Apple TV [apple.com], which has a 6W power supply, or something like an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 and use from 10 to 20 times more power for absolutely no reason.
Try to reduce your daily energy usage whenever possible. The first one to benefit is you
Adding yet another box (Score:2)
You can use a small box like an Apple TV, which has a 6W power supply, or something like an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 and use from 10 to 20 times more power for absolutely no reason.
If you happen to already own the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 console, how much energy does it take to manufacture and ship an Apple TV box and an automatic HDMI switch box?
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The "embodied energy" of a laptop is about 1500MJ, so let's call the Apple TV+HDMI a generous total of 2000MJ. Shipping energy is relatively low and fits easily in the 2000MJ upper bound.
The Xbox360 uses ~120W to watch a movie, while according to ArcadeMan the Apple TV uses 6W. Thus you make up the embodied energy in about 2000000000/114 seconds, or about 200 days.
The Xbox One is a bit more efficient, using ~75W, for a makeup time of about 335 days.
Either one is less than a year, so if you want to minimize
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Each time I watch a two-hour movie on the 6W device, it uses around 43 kJ. On the 120W device a two-hour movie uses 864 kJ - a delta of 821 kJ per movie. Given the 2000MJ number you provide, that's over 2400 2-hour movies until break-even... might be my lifetime total.
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Ah, yeah, fair enough, though the standby consumption of an xbox is also much, much higher than an appletv. The arithmetic is trivial, but I won't bother with it since I have neither.
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Or depriving!
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You never know. He may have meant "I'm a profligate user of energy resources and I need a spanking" whereby his original phrasing is entirely appropriate.
I've learned not to second-guess some of these folks ...
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Sorry, english is not my primary language. I did mean depriving.
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Try to reduce your daily energy usage whenever possible.
I would suggest doing a modest cost/benefit analysis first. Energy usage reduction is not that valuable for most people outside of a few big things. And who's going to consider the more ludicrous optimizations like changing your sex to male just so they can save a little energy usage?
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A lesser known situation is if you actually create an energy surplus, food costs, logistic costs, and transportation costs get cheaper. So if we ramped our energy production up by 2-8x what we got now, people could charge their hybrid car at home for even less than they do now. I think this dream is often grouped up with a superconductor power grid idea which is unrealistic for the short term. I think for a better world, we should be aiming to create energy surpluses.
Uh, that's what's getting us into trouble with Hydro-fracking across the US in terms of going back to "burning stuff" vs. Nuclear. Natural Gas doesn't pollute like Coal but the production side of the equation destroys watersheds, releases more GHGs and has pushed energy prices down in the US. Nuclear is an unpopular scenario for a lot of people because of Fukishima, Three Mile Island and Chernoble. All you have to do is look at San Onofre in California to see how political wrangling has killed Nuclear en
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A lesser known situation is if you actually create an energy surplus, food costs, logistic costs, and transportation costs get cheaper. So if we ramped our energy production up by 2-8x what we got now, people could charge their hybrid car at home for even less than they do now. I think this dream is often grouped up with a superconductor power grid idea which is unrealistic for the short term. I think for a better world, we should be aiming to create energy surpluses.
The more cheap energy you can get, the more cool stuff we can do.
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Sometimes I even have the strange thought that energy conservation ideas hurt society's growth. It would be almost better if we used more power in the short term so energy could invest in itself and provide more power at lower costs down the road. I mean it is better to conserve electricity, but I don't hear people championing the idea of creating a global energy surplus.
The nations with the highest power consumption have ceased excessive breeding. They're all near or below replacement population growth among their indigenous population.
That right there is an outstanding argument for surplus energy.
A degree of conservation is a fine thing, but it's also a cop-out and a means of comfortable people to pull up the ladder behind themselves. Our millions of elite Al Gores will always live comfortably regardless of how hungry and cold they make you. Thousands of elderly Briton
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Even the third world has mostly ceased excessive breeding. The fertility rate in Bangladesh has fallen from over 6 in the 1960s to 2.2 today, and the same is true in other countries. Contraception and family planning schemes have worked pretty well. The focus is now on Africa, and a lot of progress is being made.
The world population will continue to rise due to the large number of children and child-baring age people we have now, but is looking like it will level off at about 11 billion later this century.
Re:Nuclear is obvious, an energy surplus is desire (Score:5, Informative)
Nuclear is cleaner than coal barring an accident. Coal is guaranteed to kill and hurt people. With Nuclear you at least have a chance of everyone being healthy.
I beg to differ [nextbigfuture.com]: nuclear is cleaner than coal even if you include accidents. The calculations on that page are admittedly from early 2011, but it accounts for 4,000 deaths from Chernobyl. I could add up a bunch more from Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], but screw that, lets just throw in Hiroshima and Nagasaki into the mix - about 250,000 deaths. And then let's round that to an even one million for the heck of it.
The death rate is still lower than coal by an order of magnitude. Nuclear is cleaner than coal even if you include 4x the deaths of atomic acts of war.
That whole piece is fascinating, especially for insights such as
Coal and fossil fuel deaths usually do not include deaths caused during transportation. The more trucking and rail transport is used then the more deaths there are. The transportation deaths are a larger component of the deaths in the USA than direct industry deaths. Moving 1.2 billion tons of coal takes up 40% of the freight rail traffic and a few percent of the trucking in the USA.
and
Those who talk about PV solar power (millions of roofs) need to consider roof worker safety. About 1000 construction fatalities per year in the US alone. 33% from working at heights. Falls are the leading cause of fatalities in the construction industry. An average of 362 fatal falls occurred each year from 1995 to 1999, with the trend on the increase.
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A lesser known situation is if you actually create an energy surplus, food costs, logistic costs, and transportation costs get cheaper.
I think a lot of people have been talking about this recently. The US economy in particular is heavily dependent on energy costs. So, a lot of what has been floating Midwestern states is the fact that energy companies are hiring like mad and putting in oil/gas wells pretty much as fast as they can. This drives unemployment down, while helping to lower energy costs, all whil
Nope. (Score:4, Insightful)
Humans are too greedy and too unreliable for nuclear to be the safest option.
Fix humans? That's way too hard.
Use something else? Doable.
Unless we just really have no problem with every X years some spot on earth becomes uninhabitable for the next 50,000 years...
Re:Nope. (Score:4, Informative)
Unless we just really have no problem with every X years some spot on earth becomes uninhabitable for the next 50,000 years...
More like 300 years at most, with most of the affected area clear in under 100. The offending isotope is Cs-137, which has a half life of about 30 years. The long lived stuff isn't volatile enough to be released in significant quantity.
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Unless we just really have no problem with every X years some spot on earth becomes uninhabitable for the next 50,000 years...
If X is big (like say greater than 50,000 years, for example), then it's not that big a deal. Chernobyl and Fukushima won't be considered uninhabitable for that long.
Plus, you can always put another nuclear plant in that spot.
Renewables (Score:5, Insightful)
The long and short of it..we're buggered. Thankfully, we will all be dead when it gets really shitty. If you think that the countries of the world can band together to reduce emissions and turn to renewables, you are smoking the funny tobacco. I install solar in countries that have the highest electricity prices and the most sun, but they refuse to implement renewables, preferring that good old diesel products. People are inherently stupid, short sighted and greedy. Nothing but war and pestilence will cause change. Nothing else ever has.
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The long and short of it..we're buggered.
It's not much of a buggering to be honest. I'm more concerned about poverty, overpopulation, and desertification. Some of these can be made worse through extreme global warming, but they are major problems, bigger than global warming even in the complete absence of global warming.
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Nothing but war and pestilence will cause change. Nothing else ever has.
And Occupy Wall Street. We changed the world.
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The long and the short of it is that humans cope just fine with change; on the scale of decades, we don't even notice it.
That's because politicians and even dictators around the world actually understand what an economic disaster it would be to adopt climate change legislation and that they'd get lynched if they tried. So, they
Nothing will happen (Score:5, Informative)
Human minds just aren't made to react to something so abstract, so distant, so far away. Look at the crisis building up with the US economy, national debt, and so on - something that could cause a whole generation to undergo a great depression yet nary a thought is given to it.
For example, on the economic situation, this guy was made the US's top accountant for over a decade, and appointed to posts by both R and D presidents and yet he makes videos that can barely garner 2k views about the situation (since September):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]
I guess if there was a girl twerking in it, it might work.
Anyway, that's how it is. We react, many don't think too far ahead. Both situations are basically simple concepts in theory (global warming is built on the green house effect which is simple to demonstrate, the economy on interest and other high school math), but so many interests go in and muddle issues, that the average guy doesn't know what to believe, so even those with a modicum of forethought are stymied by special interests.
And the special interests want status quo. Nothing will happen. That's the tragedy of democracy and why it never really lasts long. Power and money is like water, it always gathers and concentrates.
Ah, the joys of getting old (Score:4, Interesting)
Any other old geezers remember just *who* it was that put the kibosh on the general use of nuclear power in the US?
Are we ever going to get an "oopsie, so sorry" from all the environmentalists who squashed the US nuclear power industry? Who have fought fracking tooth and nail, while it has been the prime enabler of decreasing US carbon emissions?
Re: Ah, the joys of getting old (Score:5, Informative)
except i'd rather have todays nuclear power plants then those from 30 years ago.
You might not have noticed, but today's nuclear plants in the US are from 30 years ago.
Debate... Debate... Debate... (Score:3, Insightful)
To paraphrase a movie: "Climate Change is People!" There's too many people on this world, all wanting the same thing and that's what's causing this. Depletion of our resources is occurring at an accelerated rate all because of more and more people and the rush for economic expansion. Fundamentally there will be two paths ahead, one which means controlling population growth and the second the upheaval of the worldwide economic engines both of which are driving the higher CO2 levels. Of course if a volcano or two erupt here and there it won't help but neither is allowing for commercial deforestation and destroying watersheds. Well before we all burn up, we'll have wars over water and other key strategic resources. We know it's on the horizon because we all can't get along on this planet and we'll never come to a consensus on wealthier nations changing their ways while allowing less developed nations a chance at economic growth. We're about due for another World War aren't we?
My suggestion is to invest in Mountain-top real estate in a Northern latitude and live like Euell Gibbons. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Debate... Debate... Debate... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the climate in Russia, Canada and Northern Europe will be more suitable for crops, but their soil won't be. Canada's topsoil in the places you are talking about have been scraped away by glaciation, meaning they are next to useless for growing crops. Russia's permafrost will release massive amounts of methane when they melt, exacerbating the problem. Oceans will rise, swamping trillions of dollars' worth of city property (including many capital cities, and New York, for example). If you think it's not a big deal to have tens of millions of refugees, then you might need to re-evaluate your definition of "big deal", as that will cause untold pressure on infrastructure.
I guess if you don't actually look into what you claim, it all sounds peachy. It's once you actually do, and realise you are painting a rosy future not based on any actual science, do we realise we're in for quite a bumpy ride, to put it lightly. But you've already made up your mind, so this will fall on deaf ears.
NIMBY rules (Score:3)
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What we really need is for the federal government to step up buy the land put its foot down and say protest all you want we are building this fucker one way or the other. Anyone caught on the construction site will be shot for for trespassing in a secure location.
Re:NIMBY rules (Score:4, Interesting)
Most people will agree that Nuclear is a very cost effective and efficient means of power generations but mention building it anywhere near their zip code and they go ballistic.
I live 15 miles from a nuclear plant. I am pleased about this, but I wish they would tear it down and build a replacement plant with at least twice the generating capacity and a Gen 3.5 (or Gen 4, since I'm wishing) design.
But, barring that, yay... I have locally-produced nuclear power at home!
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When is the "UN" not the United Nations? (Score:3, Insightful)
When it's the "UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change". Here's the BBC's description of IPCC: "The IPCC itself is a small organisation, run from Geneva with a full time staff of 12. All the scientists who are involved with it do so on a voluntary basis." http://www.bbc.com/news/scienc... [bbc.com]
Relax, people. There's no U.N resolution here; there's no consensus of nations here recognizing the urgency that requires this "tripling" of non-carbon-based energy. It's easy for the press to say this is the report from the U.N., when it's not.
If you get 12 scientists in a room that have volunteered to produce a report on global warming, what would you expect them to produce? Something that says everything's peachy?
You won't see this old boy freaking out over something dumb like this.
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Relax, people. There's no U.N resolution here
When was the last time a UN resolution made a difference in the world?
RK-9000 is banned in Illinois. (Score:5, Interesting)
The RK-9000 is a mechanical keyboard made by Rosewill which is the inhouse manufacturer for NewEgg. What does a keyboard have to do with anything?
You cannot find a more "green" keyboard then a mechanical keyboard. Each keyswitch is rated at 50 milliion keypresses. If a letter foes buy a new keyswitch. ( Though I would buy a whole bunch of them ).Desolder the old switch solder in the new. My miniUSB port just broke and I wil be soldering in a new one as soon as it arrives. If the controller goes I can get a new one. I can probably get a new PCB if I have to. They are made to last and when any part breaks, it can be repaired or replaced.
So why are they banned in Illinois. Thanks to our idiot of a governor. ( Second only to Gov Moonbeam ). He created a law regulating e-waste. The law says that for a manufacturer to sell their product, they have to register and certify that they recycle a certain amount of their products. [1] So for this reason, instead of being able to buy a long lasting green keyboard, you have to buy a cheap will fall apart soon keyboard.
More and more the wacked out conservationalists ae acting like this,.
[1] In fact when you sto[p and think about it, many electronics products can last forever,so companies may never even get the chance to recycle a large percentage.
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get stuffed (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, that's the only way it can be achieved: "without cooperation", through markets. Economic development both makes it easy for individuals and nations to cope with the effects of climate change, such as they are, and to develop and switch to other forms of energy.
The "cooperation" people like you propose are going to keep global economic development back by decades, hinder the development and deployment of more efficient energy sources and technologies, and worst of all form the basis for massive corruption and rent seeking as big corporations and their political cronies write huge handouts into the regulations.
What we should do, however, is stop subsidizing fossil fuels and stop propping up regimes in the Middle East that give us cheap fossil fuels. We should also stop subsidizing energy-inefficient industries like agriculture. Having to bear the true cost of fossil fuels would do wonders for the adoption of renewable energies. But, of course, cutting subsidies is not on the table, which already tells you that all this bloviating about the apocalypse isn't about saving the planet, it's about adding even more crony capitalism to the crony capitalism we already have, now courtesy of the UN.
Thanks, but get stuffed Mr. Pachauri.
Don't use climate change denial to stigmatize (Score:3, Insightful)
Cooperation (Score:2)
Cooperation is the key word.
The world currently operates primarily on competition. Competition between companies, workers and nations. But since there is only a single ecosystem that makes human life sustainable, that means there is a general interest for humankind, and cooperation is needed to enforce it.
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Mr. Burns?
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Would that be like the no more snow in the UK, or there won't be any glaciers in the Himalayas? Or they'll all be gone in Greenland in the next 10 years(as said in 2000ish). Don't worry I'm sure it can be blamed on everything. [numberwatch.co.uk]
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What model predicted the current and ongoing pause in warming?
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Considering that a third of the worlds CO2 exhaust comes from the USA and that 'country' only has about 5% of the world population I'm at your side: it will work great! Ah, well, I'm not that good at math. Hm, you wanted to release ebola in Africa only, great plan, I guess we can settle there later!
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Greenpeace lets people die in Africa?
How retarded is that oppinion? Over which lie, btw?
Re:The Real Solution (Score:4, Informative)
I guess I need to draw you a picture. [nationalpost.com]
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So linking to a newspaper article qualifies now as 'drawing a picture', I guess you are not good at drawing?
Well, continue to practice and you will improve!
Oh I see. It's a classic case of, it doesn't fit my tidy little view of the world therefore I won't read it. After all it might shatter my fragile ego and endanger my strongly held viewpoint that an environmental organization is responsible for killing people by starving them to death.
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Re:Nuclear? (Score:5, Informative)
You need to look no further than Germany renewables plan, flush with hundreds of billions of euro in funding has stalled. They can't add more wind or solar panels to the Germany grid. The problem isn't money. Every extra solar panel and wind turbine added to the grid increases grid instability a little more.
When are you environmentalist nuts start studying how the electrical grid actually works instead of having fantasies about how it should work.
If solar and wind were so great, Hawaii would have shutdown its oil based thermal plants already. They have very expensive electricity, making renewables cheap, yet it doesn't quite work, cause it's just not that simple.
Get a grip. Without nuclear, there's no hope to solve climate change. And nuclear is not the boogeyman your environmentalist friends have convinced you it is. Zero Fukushima deaths, zero confirmed radiation related cancers. Its been three years. It's already becoming another Chernobyl (as in the environmentalists overblow the problem about a thousand times).
Until the environmentalists show they understand the actual impact of nuclear accidents, accurately predicting the effects of nuclear accidents, in my view they are a bunch of looney tunes alarmists that should be given ZERO credit when the subject in nuclear power.
Re:Nuclear? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not even all of the environmentalists, check out Patrick Moore:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
He used to be the President of Greenpeace and was *ahem* asked to leave, primarily due to his advocacy of Nuclear Energy
At this point Greenpeace is as stuck in its position of advocating against Nuclear Energy as the NRA is against gun control, and they are both looking like obstacles to any positive change in the status quo
By working against Nuclear Energy, Greenpeace has managed to be as big a supporter of continued fossil fuel dependence as the Koch bros.
There are plenty of smart environmentalists out there, and the uninformed ones should be donating their money somewhere besides Greenpeace
yes, and when the wind blows, windmills etc. (Score:3)
You're right, only fossil fuels or nuclear have the capacity to provide the majority of our energy needs. Nuclear is historically the safest energy source as well - hydro has had quite a few disasters, for example. ALSO, we should acknowledge that the greenies have a good idea - use wind power when the wind happens to be blowing at the proper speed. If you happen to live on a fault line, geothermal is pretty good. For the 80% of of our energy needs that can't met by "alternatives" sources, we can choose n
Re:Nuclear? (Score:4, Insightful)
If solar and wind were so great, Hawaii would have shutdown its oil based thermal plants already. They have very expensive electricity, making renewables cheap, yet it doesn't quite work, cause it's just not that simple.
How ironic that you point out Hawaii. Hawaii exemplifies the political problems moving away from oil, not the technical problems. Our PUC is utterly impotent and lets our electric utility (HECO) get away with whatever they want. For example, if you want grid-tie solar HECO charges you $3,000 for an "interconnect study" which is complete and utter bullshit. They claim to the politicians that the grid can't handle more solar or wind with no technical basis whatsoever. Why? Because of the way they've got the PUC to structure they rates, they make more than double the profit from burning oil than from anything else, because they get to "pass-through" the cost of the oil, which amounts to more profit and the customer getting screwed.
Here's essentially how it works:
Generation from oil costs them 6.5 cents/kWh, plus the cost of oil.
They are allowed to charge 16-18 cents/kWh -ish (sorry, I don't remember the exact number offhand) PLUS the cost of the oil.
They buy wind power for 13 cents/kWh.
Customer cost per kWh of oil generated power = 40 cents, consisting 18 cents allowed rate + 22 cents for fuel , of which 11.5 cents is profit (18cents allowed - 6.5 cost not including oil).
Customer cost per kWh of wind power = 18 cents, of which 5 cents is profit (18cents allowed - 13 cents they buy it for)
Customer cost per kWh of home grid tie solar = 0 cents / kWh, so they manage to charge $3,000 upfront for the privilege even though there's already a base monthly charge for being connected to the grid.
HELLO, of course they are going to lobby (or bribe or give blow jobs or whatever it takes) the politicians. The PUC has got to be so utterly corrupt, and HECO so entrenched with the legislators to allow this to happen, but that's exactly why this is a political problem and not a technical problem.
Don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you on the nuke subject, just pointing out how you don't know wtf you're talking about with Hawaii and solar+wind power. What's ironic is that people here are so utterly scared of nuclear just saying the word is worse than saying the other 'N' word, yet they revere the Navy's presence here and apparently don't realize what "Nuclear Submarine" means...there's at least 15 nuclear reactors running around the islands right now.
Re:Nuclear? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the rate is less than 1% more cancers than normal, then you just proven my point.
It will be really proven by the time Fukushima is some 10 years old, and we can show with statistics that cancers among even those most affected by the accidents radiation caused a small extra cancer and a tiny extra death rate. Like Chernobyl, the nuclear community learned very little from Fukushima, cause the mistake was disregard to common nuclear safety knowledge, rather than the need for fundamental redesign of state of the art reactors. The real problem is the reluctance of replacing all Gen II reactors with Gen III+ or Gen IV reactors. Not that I'm a big fan of AP1000 and similar designs, but they are safe enough to have two miles from my home.
Such a finding would both show that the anti nuclear community are very wrong on all of their predictions and should be ignored.
Most people are unaware that there are 435 operational nuclear reactors in the world with an output around 400GW electrical.
My contention is that if nuclear fission were really that unsafe, we would have many more accidents over the decades.
If France and USA can do safe nuclear for 30 years (top 2 users of nuclear fission today) why can't the whole world do safe nuclear ?
Re:Apply critical thinking (Score:4, Interesting)
I am thinking for myself. I have college level physics education (engineering basic curriculum), and I have friends and relatives that are accomplished electrical engineers in transmission, industrial electricity consumption (MW+ levels) and some generation experience.
You seem to ignore that the grid has ZERO energy storage characteristics. Ohms law isn't the issue. It's that electricity flows at the speed of light, use it or it overloads the grid (too much electricity = high voltage, too little = low voltage).
Load following sources can't shift production like 1% up or down every sub second period.
So I don't see you showing how I'm wrong to say that specially too many wind turbines on the grid with their power output from 0 - 35Km/h winds proportional to wind speed cubed, a mere drop from 35Km/h to 30Km/h reduces production by 1/3. The theory that having thousands of turbines linked up smooths that is certainly true when looking at 15+ minute power production intervals, but electricity is nanosecond by nanosecond !
The solution is technically simple, but economically daunting which is having gigantic electrical battery storage systems to smooth out the oscilations. To date it's still acknowledged as uneconomical. Huge capacitors would be much better (very fast charge/discharge, even though they have low energy density).
Bottom line, I'm yet to see a self contained grid operating on at least 2/3 wind + solar year round. The case in point isn't Germany, it's the whole European grid, with nuclear + hydro + baseload fossil + peaking fossil producing well over 3/4 total electricity production, in that scenario, wind has plenty of buffer in the rest of the grid.
That's why I insist on something like Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Bahamas, Bermuda that is big enough to become an energy storage challenge to run without fossil or nuclear sources. Show just one of those running on solar+wind+geothermal+biomass+hydro alone... Make it happen. I'm indifferent to being proven wrong or not. I'm not cheering against renewables. I'm just posing the challenge hoping some of you is an accomplished transmission and generation electrical engineer that shows me with solid arguments I'm wrong (that I will run by my buddies, on of which is my dad, to verify it, BTW most of them are retired, they have zero vested interest in renewables failing).
Re: (Score:2)
Here is the ironic thing: Both the hippies and the Tea Party people I know are all over solar, wind, and other alternative energy.
I just wonder when the tipping point happens where people and businesses stop wanting to be beholden to Middle Eastern oil and dirty coal, and move onto nuclear [1]. With more energy than what we have now, we can easily use thermal depolymerization to toss waste plastic and usable crude oil.
[1]: Thorium reactors show great promise.
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Re:Nuclear? (Score:4, Interesting)
+1.
We have 50-60 years of technology advancements. Look how cars have advanced. Had there not been such a strong oil/coal lobby, there would be advancements that would be impossible in today's political climate:
1: Thermal depolymerization -- turn waste products back into crude ready for use again.
2: Droughts would be mitigated as issue with desalination plants combined with the infrastructure to pump it inland.
3: More technologies would be possible to reclaim used components. Waste can be recycled cleanly.
4: More expensive (expensive as in energy) chemical processes can be used to reclaim toxic sites.
I think future generations will think we are dolts as not to have moved to nuclear sooner, because more energy available per person can mean a lot more advances and a better quality of life.
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We are definitely not taking advantage of advances in nuclear energy. The basic principles of a PWR were established when nuclear power was only a few years old. It was chosen for simplicity and speed to market, not inspired holistic life cycle efficiency. There was an urgency to get those turbines turning. Unfortunately now we have all this spent fuel, which has enough energy in it to provide 100x all the nuclear power ever generated before we ever need to mine another gram of fuel. If we don't burn i
Hydroelectric Banqiao killed 160,000. Coal similar (Score:3)
Fukushima was nasty. It killed about two people. Hydroelectric killed 160,000 when Banqiao failed. When the original Niagra Falls dam failed, it wiped out a couple of towns. I don't know the inflation-adjusted cost off hand, but it wasn't minor. Coal mining accidents have killed thousands. There's liability risk for any workable option. For some reason , the safest option (by several orders of magnitude) is the one the government wants billions in liability reserve for.
Have you ever heard of a hydroelectri
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't matter, petroleum and natural gas will eventually run out, whether it's 30 years or 300 years. We need to build nukes that can handle Uranium and Thorium and Plutonium for fuels, and breeder reactors to create more fuel and reprocess old fuel. Keep working on fusion, and someday fusion will be practical and our energy source will then be virtually inexhaustible.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
WikiPedia may be the wrong thing to point to if you want "scientific journals".
Nor are the real "scientific" journals doing such a wonderful job, either. "Peer review" is a joke, and the track record of scientific journals retracting controversial articles is too long to put much faith in it. The mathematical models cannot predict the present by using inputs from the past. Contra Michael "Chicken Little" Mann, the "Medieval Warm Period _DID_ exist, and his own emails (leaked as part of the HadCRUT archive
Re:Fuck this shit! (Score:5, Insightful)
1970's? Global cooling? Are you serious? The prevailing opinion at the time was 'we don't know', that is the science available at the time was not capable of modelling the effect of man's activities on climate.
In this [io9.com] essay written by Carl Sagan in 1980 he expresses exactly this and makes a plea for support for such work.
The idea that there was a 'global cooling' consensus in the 1970's is the sheerest poppycock. Complete wishful thinking by people with a political agenda back by no rigorous assessment of the situation.
If you really are interested in just facts, you have failed to accumulate many.
Re:Fuck this shit! (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the problem with people who get their science from the front page of Time magazine and such. They confuse journalists with actual scientists. Actual scientists have known for a long, long time that the earth is warming and will continue to warm. Journalists continue to get it wrong.
Only less than 1% (Score:5, Insightful)
On the heels of a study that concluded there was less than a 1% chance that current global warming could be simple fluctuations...
Now "less that 1%" sounds low but is less than a 3-standard deviation (or 3 sigma) signal. In physics 3 sigma is generally the level at which you can claim "evidence for" a given effect and to prove it to others you need a 5-sigma signal which is less than a 1 in ~1.7 million chance.
The reason that we use these levels is because it is next to impossible to remove all human bias from an experiment. Hence you have to accept that there will always be some and it has been found from experience that these levels of proof tend to be ones which, once reached, are rarely found to be wrong. Although 3 sigma is just at the level where you can say "this is something likely to be true".
While I think it likely that humans have caused some degree of global warming it is a little worrying that the evidence for it is still so flimsy. If we then ask say whether more than 50% of global warming is due to humans I expect that the probability becomes even less certain. So to start motivating a major change in direction from fossil to nuclear (which has its own but different problems) we need a 3-sigma signal (less than 0.27%) that mankind is responsible for at least 50% of the current warming.
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I find it equally interesting that "less than a 1% chance that current global warming could be simple fluctuations" is somehow being translated as "less than a 1% chance that current global warming could be natural". The two statements are not equal. The possibility still exists that the cause of global warming is something we don't understand yet. All they actually did is prove that global warming is happening, they failed to prove that it is caused by man.
Re:Only less than 1% (Score:4, Insightful)
Where it gets "religious" is where researchers amongst themselves discuss the uncertainties in carefully considered scientific language, and then decide that these nuances are too complex for the public to understand, so they decide that the public message needs to simplify the message because otherwise, the public might fail to act, so they figure, if they lead the public to failing to act, they would be "unethical", likewise, letting any "denier" get access to data which they might seize upon to highlight uncertainty, thus leading the public to ignore the problem would also be "unethical", so they opt to promote an image of ever greater confidence, ever increasing certainty, worse than we thought, a science field that is always improving, always painting a clearer and clearer picture, where there are no "paradigms", just ever-building on more and more knowledge.
But the problem is, ethics is not a science topic. If you are making an ethical decision on behalf of others, there is some ethical imperative that you ask them whether __they__ think it is ethical. It isn't just about democracy, but about an OPEN society where we know all views are fallible, all views are limited by our own perceptual ability and bias, so we don't go round making decisions for others without them knowing, because it is quite likely that despite our own best intentions, our purest and smartest of ideals and knowledge, our perceptions are in error, and hiding those decisions and ethical judgments from the public only means it takes far longer for the problems to be corrected.
We trust science because it is self correcting. If it stops being self correcting, or that self correction is delayed by say, 50 years, there is no reason to trust it. The AGW stuff is doing some rather extensive damage, unfortunately.
Re:Fuck this shit! (Score:5, Insightful)
You are clearly an intelligent person, which is what makes this so sad. Your post is full of errors which the actual facts you claim to believe have proven to be false.
1. The medieval warm period affected just the northern Atlantic area - it was not global, and so is rather irrelevant in this discussion without you also discussing the rest of the world's climate during this period. It was also colder then than now, so it's rather pointless to even bring it up in discussion.
2. The Himalayan glaciers *are* receding. It sounds like you are paraphrasing Christopher Monckton's claims that they are not, which is strange, as the man himself has recanted that particular belief in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In fact, they've been receding constantly, at least since satellite data has been available to demonstrate that fact.
3. Global cooling was not a scientifically-accepted hypothesis in the 1970s. It was, however, trotted around in the media for sensationalism, which is where this idea comes from that it was the scientific consensus at the time, when that is demonstrably nonsense.
4. Since the early 1900s, 80% of the ice on Kilimanjaro has disappeared. 80%. To say that the ice (which, colloquially, is what "Kilimanjaro's Snow" refers to) has not receded is patently false.
The source for your facts clearly needs some adjustment, as you are parroting the same debunked nonsense the anti-AGW crowd has been trotting around for years now. The facts are there - you don't seem to be wanting to look for them.
Canada's topsoil in the areas which will warm up were scraped away by glaciation, meaning those areas will be next to useless for crops. Siberia's permafrost contains a lot of methane, which will be released into the atmosphere if it melts, which is a potent greenhouse gas, which will cause even more warming. Its topsoil also isn't great for farming, plus the industry, skills, and workers required to farm Canada and Siberia's non-existent suitable farmland isn't in either Canada or Siberia, which is a bit of a problem for your notion. That spreading north of suitable climate for growing crops means that huge swathes of the US will no longer be able to produce crops, which doesn't sound like a good situation for the US to be in.
But whatever - you have your "facts", so I guess we can just ignore this stuff forever, with no ill-effects. Right?
Re:Fuck this shit! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear power on the other hand scares the hell out of me.
Learn about it. I've found that in doing so, I have become far less frightened of it.
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If you look at countries like Germany and India who are becoming less and less dependant on fossil fuels, it's because of solar, not nuclear and in fact the trend is to get away from nuclear. They're always way over budget to build, way more expensive to run and in some cases cost too much to decommission so they sit there. .
The nuclear phase out in Germany has actually increased their dependance on fossil fuels. Coal burning has shot up. Germany has a huge energy cost problem coming if they continue down the no nuke path. Nuclear helped pay for a large portion of the solar/wind buildup. As nukes are shut down, that money source goes away. Much higher energy bill and/or taxes will be needed to offset the lost generation, not to mention the ever increasing cost of wind turbine overhauls and even replacement of first generation s
Re:I wish I'd saved that link (Score:4, Informative)
Portugal’s electricity network operator announced that renewable energy supplied 70 percent of total consumption in the first quarter of this year.
http://thinkprogress.org/clima... [thinkprogress.org]
I somehow doubt what you are saying.
If one panel provides all you need during daylight hours you use 2 or 3 or 4 and store it in a battery.
This, and not nuclear it undisputably the way of the future. There is no such thing as a safe nuclear plant. I'm sure the people that had to leave Fukushima prefecture would disagree about the lack of danger to public health. Would you live there now?
Germany will be 100% renewable by 5050. Portugal is already 75%.
We can not afford, on many levels, and do not need: nukes. This has been shown.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
Germany is the world's top photovoltaics (PV) installer, with a solar PV capacity of 35.996 gigawatts (GW) at the end of February 2014.[2] The German new solar PV installations increased by about 7.6 GW in 2012, and solar PV provided 18 TWh (billion kilowatt-hours) of electricity in 2011, about 3% of total electricity.[3] Some market analysts expect this could reach 25 percent by 2050.[4] Germany has a goal of producing 35% of electricity from renewable sources by 2020 and 100% by 2050.[5]
"In July 2009, India unveiled a US$19 billion plan to produce 20 GW of solar power by 2020.[2] Under the plan, the use of solar-powered equipment and applications would be made compulsory in all government buildings, as well as hospitals and hotels.[3] On 18 November 2009, it was reported that India was ready to launch its National Solar Mission under the National Action Plan on Climate Change, with plans to generate 1,000 MW of power by 2013.[4] From August 2011 to July 2012, India went from 2.5 MW of grid connected photovoltaics to over 1,000 MW."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
" In 2012 China installed 5.0 GW of solar panel capacity. As of 2012, about 8.3 GW of photovoltaics contribute towards power generation in China.[1] Solar water heating is extensively implemented as well.[2]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
And we're not even trying hard. Hopefully soon, well. Anything to avoid those damn dirty dangerous nuclear disaster that endanger countless future generations.
Re: (Score:3)
I somehow doubt what you are saying.
If one panel provides all you need during daylight hours you use 2 or 3 or 4 and store it in a battery.
This, and not nuclear it undisputably the way of the future. There is no such thing as a safe nuclear plant. I'm sure the people that had to leave Fukushima prefecture would disagree about the lack of danger to public health. Would you live there now?
Convenient to just blow it off. Germany is already seeing grid problems, and are destined to buy their power from nuclear plants in France and those that Poland is likely to build.
Solar is costly without the battery. Adding batteries increases cost tremendously and reduces efficiency. Seems that you like to ignore the cost part. Cost factors heavily into any viable solution. Solar does look very attractive when you ignore the details.
There is no safe anything. Its a matter of risk vs benefit. No airpl
Re: (Score:3)
the WTO has legal protection for polluters in developing nations the prevents other nations from raising trade barriers to using their goods
We need to reevaluate the designations that were made in the mid-nineties and make them relevant in a world where China and India are economic powers
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody is suggesting that people use nuclear energy in their homes... Nuclear works best with large reactors in isolated areas that rely on the power grid to get electricity to customers
The electricity from that source is great for generating hydrogen for fuel cells and powering manufacturing that is required for building components of 'clean' energy projects
We really need to get off of using fossil fuels, and no industry will do that with a solution that is more expensive like solar, wind, etc... nuclear i
Re: (Score:3)