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Climate: Il fait VRAIMENT CHAUD (fka un petit)


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23 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

I would like to understand, however, the thought that development of the nuclear power at the scale your suggesting is possible without exacerbating climate impacts, for one, and how civilized society breaking down isn’t counterproductive to the continued distribution of the energy.

That's a perfectly reasonable stance. I continue to fancy the idea of starting up a thread on these issues (potential radiological consequences of a state actor using a nuclear power plant or reprocessing facility as a military target, etc.)

In brief, all existing major power plants are Gen 2 reactors, most of which were commissioned nearly half a century or more ago. Most of them have undergone extensive safety upgrades, but their inherit design puts them more at risk. Modern reactor designs have passive safety features that comprehensively address problems of potential radiological fallout, nuclear proliferation, and the consequences and risks of reactor failure. It is completely unrealistic to use something like Chernobyl as a reference for what could go wrong, or the likelihood of things going wrong with a reactor. That would be akin to using the Hindenberg as a reference for why modern flight travel is unsafe and inefficient.

Things could go wrong. In fact, with a wide infrastructure there will almost assuredly be criticality events. However, the risk to the public is very minimal. But yes, there's always risk, no matter what you do. 

But it's far, far riskier to play the game we're playing now. You know how many people died as a result of TMI? No one. What about Fukushima Daiichi? Exactly zero people died due to radiation. And these were very old reactors. You know how many people die from the effects of climate change right now? The WHO estimates it to be over 150,000 annually.

Edited by IFR
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I guess for me the nuclear escalation idea is something of a red herring, in that if we had the political will and economic push to add hundreds of nuke plants we would also have the will to do all sorts of other things which are as good or better than nuke plants.

But we don't have that, so decrying lack of people wanting nuclear plants in their neighborhoods is not particularly useful. It's just another action that we aren't going to take, with the added bonus that doing it quickly will likely result in different ecological calamities, though the good news is that they will be only in a smallish area.

The other issue is that even if you went 100% nuclear power, today, it STILL wouldn't solve the problem. It'd be a lot better than we are! But it wouldn't change mass transit or deforestation trends or permafrost cycles.

My view is that we are at the point where there are two feasible options that humans might consider doing. The first is mitigation. We may change to a disaster level world where things are cheap, people move around a lot, unemployment is super high and scarcity is common. We will fight local disasters with relief and possibly do things like sea walls and levees and work on cheaper food, but things will just be net worse. The other possibility is some kind of technical moonshot, which will likely have its own problems and be absurdly over optimistic, and will be funded by some super rich people when governments simply aren't doing anything. It'll likely fail too, but I would suspect that the rich simply won't care to even try.

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1 hour ago, JEORDHl said:

Mmn. Which is the main reason I’m against increasing nuclear energy. If we don’t decommission them in time for whatever reason, significantly irradiated areas of the world aren’t going to help future generations either.

That's exactly the kind of thing we should be discussing.
On the one hand, we do need a minimum amount of power to survive: to access and distribute water, as well as for heating in the (potentially very cold) winter. On the other hand, nuclear plants are a huge liability in times of strife.

That's why I mentioned identifying "local sources of (...) energy and how they work": it might be very useful to know how to shut a nuclear reactor down.
In my own personal case, France having 56 reactors, "might" may be too prudent.

48 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

It really doesn’t feel like most people are getting how disruptive, and violent, the eventual breakdown of civil society will be.

That's the "other" major problem.
Surviving a catastrophic collapse of our climate and ecosystem is bad enough, but surviving other humans may prove at least as difficult.

There's even the possibility of some wildly irrational movements appearing, due to psychological factors: hedonistic doosmday cults (why does my mind make me think of Tywin and Chataya?), ultra-violent far-right groups (neo-nazis on steroids, basically), or doomsday nihilists seeking to kill (or eat) everyone... Various forms of terrorism (eco-terrorists, vengeful southerners, religious end-of-times-ers... )... etc.
Loss aversion and inequality aversion could easily lead us to nuclear war and nuclear winter, ironically making "global warming" moot.

The cosmic irony being that... it's still not too late to get our shit together, and it wouldn't even cost us much (there are even wild benefits to get from the Transition).

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40 minutes ago, IFR said:

But it's far, far riskier to play the game we're playing now. You know how many people died as a result of TMI? No one. What about Fukushima Daiichi? Exactly zero people died due to radiation. And these were very old reactors. You know how many people die from the effects of climate change right now? The WHO estimates it to be over 150,000 annually.

Sure, although I'm not sure what you're referencing, re: TMI.

My last post wasn't very rigorous, I was griefing the girls about how long they were taking and had to fire my post off my phone before taking them to school.

I wasn't trying to imply that a preponderance of nuclear facilities would be ripe military targets [though they would be, and in fact are] but rather that even modern sites still require power, a steady source of water, maintenance, and that eventually none of these will be readily at hand. I don't say any of this to be dismissive, I'm just not sure one can accurately say contamination or critical events won't be disastrous when there could potentially be a lot of both.  Then, as Kal has said, the approval isn't there. Totally down to learn more about it though, revising with new information is kind of my bag. Never been a closed system myself.

 

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19 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

The cosmic irony being that... it's still not too late to get our shit together, and it wouldn't even cost us much (there are even wild benefits to get from the Transition).

Like, I don't expect to see a lot of what's coming myself, but my daughters definitely will and I fucking hate that for them. Whenever the IPCC releases a new report it grinds me down, man. The summaries are often much rosier than the data further in suggests, and I could use some optimism to ward off despair. Tell me more.

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9 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

Like, I don't expect to see a lot of what's coming myself, but my daughters definitely will and I fucking hate that for them. Whenever the IPCC releases a new report it grinds me down, man. The summaries are often much rosier than the data further in suggests, and I could use some optimism to ward off despair. Tell me more.

Humans' basic necessities are not that hard to meet. We need food, water, shelter, and a bit of energy. If you get rid of all the noise and focus on producing as much as possible of food, water, and -green- energy (developed societies already have more shelter than they can use imho), you'll realize that the problem is far less insurmountable than it seems.

It's a small mind trick, and I'm not saying it works every day, but if you focus on what the problems actually are, you'll quickly realize that most of our societies (I'm assuming most of us here live in developed societies in the "North") are well-equiped to deal with the crisis. We generally have easy access to drinkable water, we know how to mass-produce food (we even produce too much) and we can stock large amounts of it, and we already produce the minimum amounts of green energy necessary for survival (though a bit more wouldn't hurt).
The real challenge is to get and keep our priorities straight. Not to panic, not to despair, but think about how to be rational and efficient in times of crisis.

It's really not the end of the world, it's first and foremost the end of consumerism and neo-liberalism. Not much of a loss, right? And if we don't lose our minds and act rationally, we're only turning back the clock to the early 20th century, but with far better medecine and technology.

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3 hours ago, Kalibuster said:

But we don't have that, so decrying lack of people wanting nuclear plants in their neighborhoods is not particularly useful.

It's as useful as any discussion in this thread. None of these debates are going to lead to a realistic plan of action. But there's an unbelievable amount of misinformation regarding nuclear energy and energy production in general. For me, it's worthwhile to correct this misinformation when I see it.

3 hours ago, Kalibuster said:

The other issue is that even if you went 100% nuclear power, today, it STILL wouldn't solve the problem. It'd be a lot better than we are! But it wouldn't change mass transit or deforestation trends or permafrost cycles.

This is true, and why I was careful to say that nuclear energy is one of the few methods that could make a significant difference in addressing climate change. And it is.

But no, it will not address deforestation, the production of hydrocarbons which touches on nearly every aspect of modern life, or the massive amount of carbon dioxide gas equivalents generated from agriculture, etc. It will address nearly half the greenhouse gas emissions, including if we fully covert to electric vehicles (an ideal scenario).

I emphasize again that anyone who believes we can practically do more than mitigate is almost assuredly in a state of hopeful optimism. We are simply not going to avoid many of the major effects of global warming. It's not going happen.

3 hours ago, Kalibuster said:

My view is that we are at the point where there are two feasible options that humans might consider doing. The first is mitigation. We may change to a disaster level world where things are cheap, people move around a lot, unemployment is super high and scarcity is common. We will fight local disasters with relief and possibly do things like sea walls and levees and work on cheaper food, but things will just be net worse. The other possibility is some kind of technical moonshot, which will likely have its own problems and be absurdly over optimistic, and will be funded by some super rich people when governments simply aren't doing anything. It'll likely fail too, but I would suspect that the rich simply won't care to even try.

I won't address the miracle scenario because it's beyond any kind of reasonable debate, but I agree mitigation is what we are left with. 

There are three general approaches to mitigation we can consider (or some combination of them).

Energy austerity is one approach, and undoubtedly the most effective. It's simply not going to happen though. A global effort to effectively curb increasing energy demand will not occur, not to the degree required (not even close). 

Renewables is another approach. Renewables is better than nothing, for sure, and it will mitigate a lot of the anticipated disasters far better than doing nothing. It's not going to meet energy demands by itself, and will require decades in which it is coupled to fossil fuels as a baseline for power delivery.

Nuclear is another path of mitigation. It would take a large investment and certainly several years to establish the infrastructure necessary, but it would be a clear winner of rapidly decoupling from fossil fuels.

A combination of all of these approaches would be best. Austerity is improbable to any real extent, but tightening regulations on corporations and severe penalties for violations would help. While a nuclear infrastructure is being developed, concurrently go heavy on renewables too. Nuclear could then serve as a baseline, and renewables could complement it.

However, the mitigating scenario that will almost certainly occur is the renewable approach. It's better than nothing, but it's still a loser scenario. This is speculative, of course, but this is a good way to go over 3C. We may be able to avoid 4C by this route.

2 hours ago, JEORDHl said:

I don't say any of this to be dismissive, I'm just not sure one can accurately say contamination or critical events won't be disastrous when there could potentially be a lot of both.

You can't prove a negative, and you can't assert there is zero risk. One can only say that the way modern reactors are designed makes these scenarios highly unlikely. There was a test reactor called the EBR-II, a salt cooled reactor. Around the time of the Chernobyl RBMK reactor accident, the EBR-II was put under very similar conditions. While failsafes were obviously in place in case some outside of design basis event occurred, the reactor was essentially left to deal with itself under those conditions. What happened? Nothing. It passively lost reactivity and went subcritical on its own.

There are many modern reactors that are gas cooled or salt cooled, that are not highly pressurized, etc. If loss of control occurred, you would not need to keep the pumps going. It would be a physical impossibility for something like Chernobyl to occur with these reactors. Take the NuScale Small Modular Reactor. There's complete loss of power and no one can operate it or get near it for whatever reason. What happens? Nothing. It automatically scrams and since it's modular, the decay heat is so low that it can be cooled by natural convection. Etc.

While one can never say anything with absolute certainty, one can reasonably give a risk and probability assessment of a system.

The problem with the public understanding of nuclear energy is that there's a profound lack of understanding risks when it comes to the nuclear industry, and the magnitude of the effects if something goes wrong. In both instances there's a highly distorted view that is far removed from reality.

Edited by IFR
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1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Humans' basic necessities are not that hard to meet. We need food, water, shelter, and a bit of energy. If you get rid of all the noise and focus on producing as much as possible of food, water, and -green- energy (developed societies already have more shelter than they can use imho), you'll realize that the problem is far less insurmountable than it seems.

It's a small mind trick, and I'm not saying it works every day, but if you focus on what the problems actually are, you'll quickly realize that most of our societies (I'm assuming most of us here live in developed societies in the "North") are well-equiped to deal with the crisis. We generally have easy access to drinkable water, we know how to mass-produce food (we even produce too much) and we can stock large amounts of it, and we already produce the minimum amounts of green energy necessary for survival (though a bit more wouldn't hurt).
The real challenge is to get and keep our priorities straight. Not to panic, not to despair, but think about how to be rational and efficient in times of crisis.

It's really not the end of the world, it's first and foremost the end of consumerism and neo-liberalism. Not much of a loss, right? And if we don't lose our minds and act rationally, we're only turning back the clock to the early 20th century, but with far better medecine and technology.

That's more positive than I was expecting, been thinking about it for a bit.

I hope you're right.

Feels like cities might become overgrown curiosities for a while. Communities eventually leading back to City-States seems most likely, from there depends. And, if wisdom's been cottoned, I almost kind of envy the period of a world that won't be under the threat of nuclear war, and which has limited flight and shipping capabilities. With a more holistic approach to medicine because mass production and distribution will be off the table for a while. A significant decrease in life expectancy for a span, but we've been spoiled.

If I could ignore the generations of pain to get there, almost sounds idyllic.  

 

 

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13 minutes ago, IFR said:

You can't prove a negative, and you can't assert there is zero risk. One can only say that the way modern reactors are designed makes these scenarios highly unlikely. There was a test reactor called the EBR-II, a salt cooled reactor. Around the time of the Chernobyl RBMK reactor accident, the EBR-II was put under very similar conditions. While failsafes were obviously in place in case some outside of design basis event occurred, the reactor was essentially left to deal with itself under those conditions. What happened? Nothing. It passively lost reactivity and went subcritical on its own.

There are many modern reactors that are gas cooled or salt cooled, that are not highly pressurized, etc. If loss of control occurred, you would not need to keep the pumps going. It would be a physical impossibility for something like Chernobyl to occur with these reactors. Take the NuScale Small Modular Reactor. There's complete loss of power and no one can operate it or get near it for whatever reason. What happens? Nothing. It automatically scrams and since it's modular, the decay heat is so low that it can be cooled by natural convection. Etc.

While one can never say anything with absolute certainty, one can reasonably give a risk and probability assessment of a system.

The problem with the public understanding of nuclear energy is that there's a profound lack of understanding risks when it comes to the nuclear industry, and the magnitude of the effects if something goes wrong. In both instances there's a highly distorted view that is far removed from reality.

A heartening summation. Thanks, yo.

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1 hour ago, IFR said:

It's as useful as any discussion in this thread. None of these debates are going to lead to a realistic plan of action. But there's an unbelievable amount of misinformation regarding nuclear energy and energy production in general. For me, it's worthwhile to correct this misinformation when I see it.

I think there's a difference between correcting misinformation about nuclear energy and advocating it as a solution. 

1 hour ago, IFR said:

This is true, and why I was careful to say that nuclear energy is one of the few methods that could make a significant difference in addressing climate change. And it is.

No more than going full renewables, austerity, or fusion. 

1 hour ago, IFR said:

There are three general approaches to mitigation we can consider (or some combination of them).

Energy austerity is one approach, and undoubtedly the most effective. It's simply not going to happen though. A global effort to effectively curb increasing energy demand will not occur, not to the degree required (not even close). 

Energy austerity isn't a mitigation. It's a solution. 

It isn't going to happen, but that's not what I'm talking about when I'm talking mitigation. Point of fact, all three of your points are talking about mitigation in a way I don't mean.

What I mean when I say propose a mitigation strategy is that assume we are not going to remotely hit any kind of curbing environmental change. In that case, our solutions don't really matter around reducing carbon emissions - while things will make things a bit less severe, they won't really matter. Instead, what we'll have is a culture of dealing with small and large disasters. We won't reduce carbon emissions; we'll instead deal with the outcomes and mitigate the problem. 

So how does mitigation look there? It looks like changing our crop patterns and our crops to grow in worse climates. It means dealing with desalinity. It means dealing with forest fires as a major system. It means dealing with rising sea levels via engineering or abandonment. It means having heavier refugee/immigration policies in place. It means being more nationalistic and insular.

It means a lot of developing nations are going to die.

1 hour ago, IFR said:

While one can never say anything with absolute certainty, one can reasonably give a risk and probability assessment of a system.

As I've said to you before, you're assuming the kinds of accidents that have happened previously. Nuclear plants have to deal with the new normals that we haven't really encountered. Fukushima is a kind of example, but think bigger. What happens when the ambient temperature of the environment is 45 C or higher for multiple days? How can you deal with electrical failures for long periods of time? How can you deal with flooding in areas that almost never flood? How do you deal with massive forest fires on the plant? These are contingencies that current nuke plants aren't designed around because no one has really started thinking about them, and as a result they will end up failing in novel and horrible ways. The problem isn't what happens when a chain reaction occurs - as you say, those aren't likely. What the problems we need to look at are things like, say, what happens when a once in a millenium flood hits a system that never expected to flood, causing massive power failures and backup generators to fail AND to irradiate the flooding water? What happens when backup generators are designed with ambient temps to not go above 50 C, and they end up doing that?

 

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6 minutes ago, Kalibuster said:

I think there's a difference between correcting misinformation about nuclear energy and advocating it as a solution. 

The public has a distorted view of nuclear energy. In advocating for it, and expressing why I advocate for it, it provides a way to correct this view.

That's sufficient enough for me to make my comments.

9 minutes ago, Kalibuster said:

No more than going full renewables, austerity, or fusion. 

As I pointed out in my last post, there is a distinction in how meaningful each of these approaches is in addressing climate change. 

The limitation of cold fusion is that the technology to even use that approach does not exist.

The limitation of renewables is that the technology for them to comprehensively replace fossil fuels does not exist.

The limitation of austerity and nuclear energy is public resistance.

I think it's worth pointing out these differences.

15 minutes ago, Kalibuster said:

Energy austerity isn't a mitigation. It's a solution. 

I don't agree with your use of a "solution", but I'm glad you clarified your meaning.

I use mitigate in the sense of avoid going too far over 1.5C. I don't think there is such a thing as a "solution" to climate change. We are well past that point.

18 minutes ago, Kalibuster said:

As I've said to you before, you're assuming the kinds of accidents that have happened previously. Nuclear plants have to deal with the new normals that we haven't really encountered. Fukushima is a kind of example, but think bigger. What happens when the ambient temperature of the environment is 45 C or higher for multiple days? How can you deal with electrical failures for long periods of time? How can you deal with flooding in areas that almost never flood? How do you deal with massive forest fires on the plant? These are contingencies that current nuke plants aren't designed around because no one has really started thinking about them, and as a result they will end up failing in novel and horrible ways. The problem isn't what happens when a chain reaction occurs - as you say, those aren't likely. What the problems we need to look at are things like, say, what happens when a once in a millenium flood hits a system that never expected to flood, causing massive power failures and backup generators to fail AND to irradiate the flooding water? What happens when backup generators are designed with ambient temps to not go above 50 C, and they end up doing that

All of these contingencies and double contingencies are considered in the design of modern reactors. I'm not going to address them one by one, since it is an entire subject matter unto itself. But this is part of a large field called criticality safety, where credible safety issues are quantified and considered in the design of reactors. It's not simply addressing events that have happened, but what can occur, then running neutronic and other simulations, doing tests for validation purposes, and continue to ensure that multiple contingencies will not result in radiological events.

Can we say that every event is going to be considered, and there's no way that anything can go wrong? No. There's a non-zero possibility that a radiological event could occur. But it's a mistake to treat this as though it is a probable outcome. It is an unlikely outcome.

Put it this way. An absolute worst case scenario with nuke would be a major fallout event that contaminates several square miles. Could it happen? It's a non-zero possibility. Is it likely to happen? No, and we shouldn't treat it like it would.

An absolutely worst case scenario with going with renewables is that we rely too much on fossil fuels and we end up going past 4C and the world becomes uninhabitable. Could it happen? There's a non-zero possibility. Is it likely to happen? No, and we shouldn't treat it like it would.

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6 hours ago, IFR said:

:lol:

Fusion is the elusive carrot of hope constantly being dangled though. I see frequent news of the latest fusion breakthroughs. If only it were an option, life would be so much easier. At least in some respects.

This is precisely what I'm driving at. We are not going to avoid many of the problems climate change will bring.

I share a lot of Rippounet's pessimism.

I would go so far as to say the belief that we can avoid going over 1.5C is delusional. It's possible in theory, but only if you are working outside our current global sociopolitical framework. Avoiding 2C is wildly optimistic.

I think under 2.5C is feasible in the timeline that the world performs a 180 turn and embraces nuclear energy. But this won't happen.

From an Occidental point of view, the environmentalists treating renewables as some magic bullet that will somehow solve our problems is highly damaging. There will be a continuous tug-of-war as we ineptly attempt to transition into renewables, but find ourselves clinging to fossil fuels as a baseline means of energy production.

This attitude will percolate into developing countries, which will continue to increase in their energy demands, while also using fossil fuels as a baseline. A large infrastructure of renewables will be established, but we'll find that it isn't nearly enough. It's a fig leaf, something to allow people to pretend that they are addressing the problem.

At some point the public may realize that nuclear is the way to go. But then 3C or higher may be unavoidable no matter what we do.

From a New Zealand point of view we have fanatically held on to a nuclear free policy, which had its origins in the 1980s, I skipped schools to go on a protest in 1984, as a movement to keep nuclear armed ships out of NZ waters. Given the US and UK had a neither confirm nor deny policy on nuclear weapons on warships that meant a ban on those ships visiting. Somehow that anti nuclear weapons motivation got mutated into an anti nuclear power policy (also probably thanks to Chernobyl). We are a 80% non-emitting electricity generation, so on current demand we don't really need nuclear. However, if we are to grow in any substantial way in population or economy significant demand growth is going to be hard to meet with the generation methods we currently use aside form taking some gas/coal generation plants out of mothballs.

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5 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

From a New Zealand point of view we have fanatically held on to a nuclear free policy, which had its origins in the 1980s, I skipped schools to go on a protest in 1984, as a movement to keep nuclear armed ships out of NZ waters. Given the US and UK had a neither confirm nor deny policy on nuclear weapons on warships that meant a ban on those ships visiting. Somehow that anti nuclear weapons motivation got mutated into an anti nuclear power policy (also probably thanks to Chernobyl). We are a 80% non-emitting electricity generation, so on current demand we don't really need nuclear. However, if we are to grow in any substantial way in population or economy significant demand growth is going to be hard to meet with the generation methods we currently use aside form taking some gas/coal generation plants out of mothballs.

Wouldn't earthquakes (and possibly volcanos) be a risk factor for nuclear energy in NZ?

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1 hour ago, Wall Flower said:

Wouldn't earthquakes (and possibly volcanos) be a risk factor for nuclear energy in NZ?

No more than in Japan, which has not had a failure due to earthquakes, only a tsunami that arose from an earthquake. We should be able to locate a plant in a location that's safe from tsunami damage. We are not littered with volcanoes so there would be locations that are safe from that risk. I think siting a nuclear plant somewhat north of Auckland to service as base load for our largest population centre would be viable. If we have an earthquake there large enough to cause severe damage and major radiation contamination to a well constructed thorium molten salt reactor plant in that part of the country then we will probably have bigger problems than a nuclear plant failure. 

The geological question is kind of a moot point anyway. No political party with a realistic chance of governing has any intention on changing our nuclear free legislation. And the one party that might have adopted nuclear energy is the one that ideologically is less likely to be interested in doing anything about climate change, except what is necessary to win elections. Their propagandists in the media spin the line that nothing NZ does re climate change makes a blind bit of difference to the global picture because we are too small to have an effect. So there is no way we should be doing anything that causes any kind of negative economic effect and we should let the market steer the course. Though they would still get up in international fora and tell the govts of the big countries to do the right thing. 

Edited by The Anti-Targ
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In counterpoint to the doom and gloom

Hopeless optimism? It's an attempt at a glass half full perspective. It's good to know that the predictions are we won't be overseers of our own extinction. But it's still not great news that we are still headed for a 3o world without drastic change. I guess the most important message is not to let the doom and gloom prevent us from demanding action.

We've been discussing climate change ever since I signed up to this forum. It is good to know that things have happened in that ~14 years that has presented us with options despite the best efforts of some of the worlds most powerful people and governments.

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7 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

In counterpoint to the doom and gloom

Hopeless optimism? It's an attempt at a glass half full perspective. It's good to know that the predictions are we won't be overseers of our own extinction. But it's still not great news that we are still headed for a 3o world without drastic change. I guess the most important message is not to let the doom and gloom prevent us from demanding action.

We've been discussing climate change ever since I signed up to this forum. It is good to know that things have happened in that ~14 years that has presented us with options despite the best efforts of some of the worlds most powerful people and governments.

We are on the worst case track and there is really no evidence that it will change. 

The responses to current fuel price spikes has ended most attempts at making fusil fueled vehicles less attractive and many countries have plans to subsidize cars massively again.

The pandemic has also shown that cutting back on unnecessary consumerism for the greater good is not something that has support of a large enough part of the population.

I do believe optimism is a mistake.

But as I don't plan to have kids I have no need to believe in a positive trend. People who decide to have kids nowadays (the vast majority) need comfortable lies and that will be our doom in the end imho.

Edited by Luzifer's right hand
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10 hours ago, Wall Flower said:

Wouldn't earthquakes (and possibly volcanos) be a risk factor for nuclear energy in NZ?

Just to add to Anti-Targ's comment, about 20% of reactors in the world are subject to seismic activity. Volcanic activity is also a contingency considered in reactor designs (including older reactors). The IAEA has guidelines for both scenarios.

7 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

In counterpoint to the doom and gloom

Hopeless optimism? It's an attempt at a glass half full perspective. It's good to know that the predictions are we won't be overseers of our own extinction. But it's still not great news that we are still headed for a 3o world without drastic change. I guess the most important message is not to let the doom and gloom prevent us from demanding action.

We've been discussing climate change ever since I signed up to this forum. It is good to know that things have happened in that ~14 years that has presented us with options despite the best efforts of some of the worlds most powerful people and governments.

That's a good video. And I agree with some of the optimism. I highly doubt we will go over 4C, and in fact used it as an example of an absurdly unlikely event in my discussion with Kalibuster.

According to the latest IPCC report, our current policies have us reaching between 3 and 4 degrees C.

However, if you review the IPCC proposed methods for keeping under 2C, and have observed world energy policies in the last few decades even with the urgency of climate change, keeping the mean global temperature from rising 2C above preindustrial is very unlikely,  in my opinion.

When I hypothesize in this thread, it is with my built-in expectations of human behavior.

We saw a significant decrease in the rate of increase of GHG emissions in the last couple of years due to Covid (wrap your head around that rather awkward sentence :lol:).

We are likely going to see an increase in GHG in the coming years as countries increase their coal and petroleum use due to the strategic demands of the crisis with Russia.

I do disagree with how optimistic that video is on the merits of carbon capture technology. It will have to be employed, but the advanced technology is still uncertain. And there's a lot of skepticism as far as how effective planting a bunch of trees is. They take years to grow, and when they die they release all the carbon they've captured.

Anyway, observing historical and modern energy policies and recognizing the limitations of what can be achieved by technology (renewables, proposed methods of carbon capture) prompt me to assert that the scenario where we keep mean temperatures under 2C is extremely optimistic. This is not a conservative scientific assessment like the IPCC; it's a perception based on my understanding of current technological capabilities and human behavior.

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13 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

In counterpoint to the doom and gloom

Hopeless optimism? It's an attempt at a glass half full perspective.

It's a lot of bullcrap I'm afraid (no offense intended).
Altherion posted that very same video in one of these threads. Here are a few major problems with it:
- +3° is far more dreadful than the video implies.
- "Humanity" will endure, indeed (I'm fairly confident about that). All humans won't. The main problem of climate change remains the slight risk of... ehm, suffering and death, that it entails.
- "We have found a way to have growth without increasing emissions": nah, that's bullshit. We've just outsourced our emissions.
- Mining enough raw materials to build (and replace) solar panels and wind turbines is a huge problem.
The good news? Yeah, we should have carbon capture technology, eventually. And yes, hopelessness is not helpful... But then, neither is an excess of optimism.

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10 hours ago, IFR said:

 

I do disagree with how optimistic that video is on the merits of carbon capture technology. It will have to be employed, but the advanced technology is still uncertain. And there's a lot of skepticism as far as how effective planting a bunch of trees is. They take years to grow, and when they die they release all the carbon they've captured.

 

 

4 hours ago, Rippounet said:

It's a lot of bullcrap I'm afraid (no offense intended).
Altherion posted that very same video in one of these threads. Here are a few major problems with it:
- +3° is far more dreadful than the video implies.
- "Humanity" will endure, indeed (I'm fairly confident about that). All humans won't. The main problem of climate change remains the slight risk of... ehm, suffering and death, that it entails.
- "We have found a way to have growth without increasing emissions": nah, that's bullshit. We've just outsourced our emissions.
- Mining enough raw materials to build (and replace) solar panels and wind turbines is a huge problem.
The good news? Yeah, we should have carbon capture technology, eventually. And yes, hopelessness is not helpful... But then, neither is an excess of optimism.

Here's a very...ummmm...informative video about carbon capture that some people might enjoy. it may have been posted before, but it is worth revisiting*.

*some language may offend.

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