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The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 dictated that the federal government would identify a permanent geological repository—a long-term storage site—and begin transferring waste from nuclear power plants to that repository by 1998. A decade and a half after that deadline, the search for a repository site has stalled, with no resolution likely in the near future.

These people would love to hear from you.

2.2 kTons of waste a year!!! Scary. Meanwhile a single coal plant averages something like 200k tons of sludge waste a year. 125ktons of ash.

"Spent nuclear fuel is about 95% uranium" - This means it's still 95% fuel. Reprocess the sucker! That would reduce your high level waste down to about 110 tons a year.

"extremely long half-life" = it's not very radioactive. Seriously, a substance with a halflife of half an hour might be able to cook you alive with a few grams. A substance with a half-life 100k times longer = 100k less energy during a given period of time*. It wouldn't even be 'hot' enough to kill tumors if implanted into them, like the radioactive seeds they stuck in my grandfather's prostate to kill his cancer.

If we started reprocessing we'd have enough fuel for a couple centuries without further mining.

*It's a little more complicated, but accurate within around an OOM.

2.2 kTons of waste a year!!! Scary. Meanwhile a single coal plant averages something like 200k tons of sludge waste a year. 125ktons of ash.

"Spent nuclear fuel is about 95% uranium" - This means it's still 95% fuel. Reprocess the sucker! That would reduce your high level waste down to about 110 tons a year.

"extremely long half-life" = it's not very radioactive. Seriously, a substance with a halflife of half an hour might be able to cook you alive with a few grams. A substance with a half-life 100k times longer = 100k less energy during a given period of time*. It wouldn't even be 'hot' enough to kill tumors if implanted into them, like the radioactive seeds they stuck in my grandfather's prostate to kill his cancer.

If we started reprocessing we'd have enough fuel for a couple centuries without further mining.

*It's a little more complicated, but accurate within around an OOM.

Meanwhile, each of the USA's hundreds of coal plants are producing over 100 ktons of ash each year. Source.

There are uses for some of that coal ash, but much of it needs to be stored in (often unlined) ponds and landfills. I know, the nuclear stuff is much, much, much nastier, but in absolute terms, there's not really a lot of it. With its high density, that ~70 ktons of waste would fit neatly piled a few meters deep in the footprint of a football field. I know there are technical issues with storing it, but let's not pretend that 70 ktons is some unmanageable amount of anything.

Lets see if we can hold a rational discussion without the bullshit. Since the sock puppets are out censoring everything not proGMO and bolstering everything proGMO I'm not confident, but lets give it a try.

Problem with your statement: Invalid generalization. Centuries of study show us that many homeopathic cures do work. As an example, I have a medical doctor who suggested drinking camomile tea to help me sleep, and it works. He could have prescribed a man made chemical to do the same thing with much worse side effects, but he's a great doctor. As another example, Willow bark is a known pain reliever and anti inflammation herb. It's so good in fact that we created a mimic called Aspirin. Scientists look to nature all the time and try to mimic properties we find naturally, and try to synthesize those natural things. So yeah, homeopathic cures are very well proven in the general sense. Natural remedies and poisons are so good that we try very hard to synthesize them for mass consumption and use as well as monetize them.

At the same time, your generalization attempts to claim that GMO foods are proven to be perfectly safe, and we have no equivalent studies compared to homeopathic remedies. Hybridization is not the same thing as Genetically modified where foreign genes are spliced into seeds and foods. People constantly try to claim that because we have hybridized for thousands of years, we know and understand the impact of splicing fungus genes into corn, or insect genes into tomatoes. Which is wrong, the latter techniques are very new and we don't have long term studies. We do know that sometimes things go terribly wrong (and if you don't like that one there are plenty).

People want to know where GMO in terms of these odd gene splices happen, and quite frankly if there is no proven harm there should be no harm in a label. At the same time, since society has become the lab experiment with many of these modifications it should be made easy to track where things go wrong.

Lets not forget that a large reason for GMO seeds is to increase yields by protecting plants from pests. We are already seeing super pests that can bypass the built in GMO protection and creating a much larger threat to agriculture than existed previously.

The way to adapt is by retiring the internal combustion engine.

People driving around in cars is only a tiny part of it. You could stop everyone from driving a petroleum fueled car right now, and it would make little or no difference. Heavy industry, HVAC in homes and businesses - that's what does it. The solution is nukes or one form or another. Solar and wind can't put a dent in it, and China's not going to stop putting a new coal-fired power plant online EVERY WEEK any time soon. Cars have got almost nothing to do with it.

Sorry, I don't think that is right. See this link. From the article:

Our cars and trucks are a major cause of global warming. Collectively, they account for nearly one-fifth of all U.S. emissions, emitting around 24 pounds of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases for every gallon of gas. About 5 pounds comes from the extraction, production, and delivery of the fuel, while the great bulk of heat-trapping emissions—more than 19 pounds per gallon—comes right out of a car’s tailpipe.

How about a whole union of them?

It really harms the credibility of the NRC when their risk calculation come to a accident every ten thousand years while the real world rate is one every 18 years. There are ten or more near misses each year http://www.ucsusa.org/news/pre... so nuclear plants are operating far outside the claimed safety envelope.

"What "real facts" are those? There has not been a single climate model put out by anyone ever that has predicted Earth's climate with any degree of accuracy for any decent amount of time. "
that's blatantly false. they temperature hav all been with in reasonable error bars. You should learn how science works.

Even iof they where broken, that would IN NO ONE show the the climate isn't changing.

Please stop flinging shit and act like a human for a moment.
AGW is based on solid, basic, science. It's science that could trivially be proved false.
SO if you don't think climate change is happening, you must show us why adding energy to a system won't change the system

http://www.ucsusa.org/publicat...

NASA's mission statement no longer mentions Earth.

You hinged your response on NASA's official mission. So, since Earth is no longer part of NASA's mission, does that mean you are convinced by my argument? If not, then the official mission must not be your real objection, in which case what is?

No it's not. It used to be, but it hasn't been since the Bush days.

So, with that objection neutralized, are you swayed?

No extra cost to warming [...] Sea level is rising as we warm up from the little ice age, and much land is subsiding.

Whatever the cause, we would need to mitigate sea level rises with measures such as relocation or sea walls, all of which are costly. The best available science points to AGW as the cause of the rise, and therefore it makes sense to pay for the mitigation with AGW sources.

it benefits agriculture and humans do well in warmth, much better than cold.

The problem is that the "warming" is an average of far wilder fluctuations in weather. The earth doesn't just get uniformly a bit warmer, and the localized effects can be devastating. More importantly, even if a bit of warming is beneficial on the average, continuing the trend - especially past a certain threshold into a feedback loop of uncontrollable warming - is obviously foolish. Unless you claim to know exactly how much greenhouse gasses we can release into the atmosphere for best effect, it would be prudent to not find out the hard way.

Pollution from cars--hmm, not much lately since the advent of catalytic converters.

"Today’s on-road vehicles produce over a third of the carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides in our atmosphere", says the Union of Concerned Scientists. The bottom of that article discusses the pollution's effects on public health.

This is the same mindset automakers had back in 1994, when the California (CARB) emissions standards were going to (eventually) require a tiny percentage of all cars sold had to be zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs).

Ford's Th!nk and Chrysler's EPIC were piles of crap ("compliance cars") produced just to minimally meet the regulations. GM thought they could one-up them, and produce an actually NICE ZEV that people would WANT, which would then allow them to sell MORE conventional vehicles, which is where the infamous EV1 came from. Toyota had a similar mindset as GM, but couldn't compete on ZEVs, and invented their Prius as an alternative to meet the standards.

The successful court challenges to the CARB rules set back ZEVs by two decades, and we're repeating history again, today. GM makes a nice ZEV (with some inspiration from Tesla and Toyota this time), while Ford and Chrysler sell crap ZEVs they have to give away, and Toyota doubles-down on their Prius with longer range and plug-in capabilities.

Nissan is the only surprise, being quite competitive this time around, while their previous Altra attempt, despite pioneering lithium-ion battery EVs, wasn't noteworthy at the time.

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_ve...

Precisely, and the summary is still propagating their bullshit. Researches did not change the terms, it was yet another false debate, both terms had been in use for decades, there was (and still is) a journal called "climatic change" that was established in the 70's, around the same time the term "global warming" started appearing in the literature to describe the current direction of change. The term "climatic change" goes way back, it was in the title of a 1950's paper and probably goes back further than that.

The entire "scientists changed the name" meme was the brain fart of a PR advisor to GWB ( Frank Luntz) who suggested in a memo to Bush that the government change the phrase in it's communications to the public in an attempt to "challenge the science" (ie: shameless propaganda)

From the link: In a 2002 memo to President George W. Bush titled "The Environment: A Cleaner, Safer, Healthier America", obtained by the Environmental Working Group, Luntz wrote: "The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science.... Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to scientists and other experts in the field."

They did a similar thing to James Hansen, he gave a talk on his work and was told he couldn't talk about it in public without permission from NASA's political minders. Hansen went to the NYT and the courts to protest and get the censorship lifted, the government complied but then changed the wording of NASA's mission statement, removing the "to understand and protect the home planet" words that justified Hansen's budget.

"The Near-Miss

The NRC sent an SIT to the plant in response to the potential tampering of a fuel oil line for an emergency diesel generator that was discovered on May 26, 2013. Reflecting the NRC’s post-9/11 procedures, the SIT report on the problems and their remedies is not publicly available. However, the cover letter sent to the plant owner with the SIT report is publicly available, and indicates that the agency identified one violation it classified as Severity Level IV (Reis 2013a)." http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/d...

Yeah, right, yet, show me cancer cases from Cs137 and Sr90 outside of Chernobyl.

This is what freaks me out about the pro-nuclear lobby. When caught in one lie (that the risk is ambient radiation not radioactive particles), they answer with another. If you don't know about this then you shouldn't be commenting. If you do then you know that cancer is a probabilitic disease and that it is mostly impossible to link a specific cancer case to a specific cause. There have been a number of studies that show hundreds to thousands of additional deaths, hower none of them can be 100% watertight in either direction (things could just as easily be worse as better) because you can't control for all other factors that might be involved.

Until you start giving coal power the treatment it DESERVES by killing about 200,000 people/year worldwide and 13,000 people/year in the USA alone, you have ZERO moral authority to try to destroy nuclear power for its most remote risks.
Either you are a fossil fuel shill that is being paid to do your best to destroy nuclear power, or you have been brainwashed into believing that nuclear is two orders of magnitude riskier than it is.

Why choose coal to discuss? The power source you need to compare against is wind energy which is now cheaper than coa in many situations. No energy source is entirely safe, however problems caused by Wind are small, local and reversible. There is no justification for spending vast amounts more money on nuclear (which is one of the most expensive energy sources available) when spending the same money on wind or water based energy generation could have a much bigger effect.

The realities is nuclear power is worst case the 3 safest power sources in use, if the the safest.
We need more nuclear lots of more nuclear.

That's nice, but you've pulled your stats out of your ass.

Here's one map:
http://www.nytimes.com/interac...

Try this one on page 18 that says the same thing:
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/d...

In short, you're completely wrong, you made up your numbers, and you are, at best, uninformed.

Nuclear power has a larger carbon footprint than you might think: from the concrete used to build the stations, to the energy used in the mining, extraction and refining processes to produce the fuel. It can take more than 6 years to mitigate the energy used in building of the facility, let alone the actual construction costs.

On account of the fact that every utility scale fission reactor design is really nuclear steam power, every watt of power it produces requires two watts of heat dissipation using water. Of course this means the plants have to shut down if it's too hot, and that source of fresh water you were drawing on is not as cool as it was when the plant was built (eg, due to climate change).

It's also super expensive, because risks must be mitigated; some have pointed out this has led to a negative learning curve of nuclear power.

Much as it is kind of cool that people are using nuclear physics to make power, it really is very dated technology. Phasing it out in favor of cheaper, safer alternatives is a much better idea: with the advent of flow batteries, liquid metal batteries, you don't need to have peaking power plants paired with the renewables. You just need more renewables.

And the guilt isn't even necessary. When I look at the ways to reduce greenhouse has emissions, I don't see a single item that calls for self sacrifice.

And yet, no one would say the same of breeding for higher yield or disease resistance, but suddenly when you use technology, it is wrong.

Not "wrong". Untested, unproven, with insufficient research on safety. Also, GM crops have thus far failed to deliver on the higher yield claims: http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/genetic-engineering/failure-to-yield.html

And the farmers, and the people, and the environment.

Well, let's see. Your first link leads to a German academic paper that would cost me 40 bucks in PDF to debunk. But the summary provides a few bar graphs which immediately give the lie to the text -- at best, pesticide use is only *slightly* reduced on Bt cotton.

The third link is an advertisement, full of lies, damned lies, statistics, and weasel language. Its authors, Graham Brookes and Peter Barfoot of
PG Economics Ltd., Dorchester, UK, trace back to here -- http://www.pgeconomics.co.uk/who-we-are.php -- where it says things like: "PG Economics Limited is a specialist provider of advisory and consultancy services to agriculture and other natural resource-based industries. Our specific areas of specialisation are plant biotechnology, agricultural production systems, agricultural markets and policy." and "...on-going management consultancy and advice in the following core areas: Commercialisation of new technology/biotechnology". Translation, in case you didn't catch it: they're selling something.

The advertisement's premise is that chemical use is reduced because of herbicide-tolerant GM crops. Sounds great. Except, well... it's bullshit. A quick Google search kicks out 14 million results for "pesticide use up", this one from Reuters at the top: Pesticide use ramping up as GMO crop technology backfires: study The chemical companies are selling more herbicide than ever, because farmers didn't used to spray herbicide on crops because it would fucking kill them! Topping that off, the weeds are developing herbicide resistance... so... now what?

Things look pretty grim when you ignore a lot of facts.

Try harder next time; I've got plenty more ammo.

Untrue.

In places where coal is used heavily in grid power (say, Oklahoma), a car that gets about 34! miles per gallon compares with a Leaf or Tesla for emissions, once you factor in overhead for battery production and disposal.

In places like the California or the Pacific Northwest, you'd need a car that gets 78! MPG to compete with electric cars powered by the grid and built with "dirty" batteries.

Page 12 has a nice map.
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_vehicles/electric-car-global-warming-emissions-report.pdf

I've seen a few other reports, all which include different values for battery production/disposal overhead and a few that rank the pacific northwest higher than California, but the one linked above is pretty "middle of the road" with regard to their values.

From the Center for Disease Control.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpKZvnJwicA

It wasn't profitable to continue research ahead of disaster. Shareholders demanded a better return. (Though Pfizer felt obligated to their history in this area did maintain a small program.)
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-03-19/health/ct-met-antibiotics-pipeline-20130319_1_drug-resistant-tuberculosis-resistant-bacteria-ketek

How did we get here?
It's likely that we wern't careful to preserve the efficacy of antibiotics. Using wide spectrum antibiotics instead of $$ testing and treating for a specific organism. Surely livestock didn't need it for faster weight gain.

http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/industrial-agriculture/prescription-for-trouble.html

Bacteria have "learned" to share resistance thus increasing the threat to us.

http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/antibiotic-resistance-mutation-rates-and-mrsa-28360

Er, no. Fukushima alone has put out about order of magnitude more radiation than every coal plant in the history of the world ever. This response completely debunks the article you linked to, and this chart shows how what was released from Chernobyl compares to all coal and nuclear emissions ever combined.

Ok, lets use the information from stack exchange. They quote the uranium limits from coal plants as being less than 10 parts per million. Lets use 10% of that as the baseline. 1 part per million. The annual coal emissions are on the order of 1.7 billion *tons* of CO2 per year. 1 part per million would be on the order of 1700 tons of uranium per year. By contrast, Chernobyl had about 180 tons of nuclear material, and blew up once... Fukushima had about 10 times that much at the facility, the vast majority of which never left the facility. Three mile island contained all but trace amounts of the core material.

So in the history of nuclear power, coal has released somewhere in the neighborhood of 85,000 tons of uranium into the atmosphere, and all of the nuclear accidents combined have released... wait for it... less than 300 tons.

Wow, just wow.

It's not that simple mate. Gas-powered cars are just a small part of the problem, they impact mainly large cities.

No, the CO2 in the atmosphere is more or less homogenised. It doesn't matter where it's emitted.

There's also planes and container ships (look at the drop in pollution during the flight ban post 9/11), they impact the higher atmosphere and the seas respectively. These two areas each are bigger than the earth's landmass, plus they move around the planet and spread pollution much more quickly, yet they are largely unseen by the average city-dweller.

As to whether planes are worse than cars:

For the US, about 28% of total CO2 emission comes from transport, 33% from electricity generation and 20% from industry.
http://climate.dot.gov/about/transportations-role/overview.html

Of the CO2 from transport about 61% is from "cars and light trucks", 18% from big trucks and busses, 10% from aircraft, 4% from ships and 2% from rail.
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/why-clean-cars/global-warming/

So you are simply wrong. Cars are a part of the problem, much worse than planes or ships.

Dealing with your 'blockquote' style is way too hard. I suspect this is a rathole, and nobody else is reading it, and that you know what you said, so I'll omit the quotes.

So, your assertion is that changes in CO2 levels is NOT caused by human activity, or that the contribution by humans is negligible. Sadly, most authorities disagree with you. I have no way of measuring the effect, so I can't weigh in, other than to mention that I trust folks who do this for a living far more than I trust you. Here are a few links:

EPA
IPCC
NOAA
More IPCC
RealClimate

According to folks that study this, the sea level is rising. Here are some links:

Union of Concerned Scientists
National Geographic
EPA
NASA, scroll down.

The ice core mystery has been explained in such a way that the time differences are in the noise. Here is a link that attempts to explain it: arstechnica. However, one obvious reason why CO2 might follow temperature rises is that lots of CO2 is released in the arctic tundra when the permafrost melts. As solar cycles cause warming CO2 is released. However, it could easily be a situation where small changes in temperature cause CO2 spikes, which then contribute to a feedback loop. Since nobody was there, nobody really knows for sure. However, this article describes a paper in Nature 2012 that describes the feedback loop. Note the paper assumes that excess CO2 causes temperature rises. That is pretty much not contested at this point, I believe, due to a strong theoretical understanding of the interactions. Since there were no excess sources of CO2 in the Pleistocene, the temperature rise precedes the CO2 rise. Since we are artificially increasing CO2, we trigger the warming effect without a requirement for excess solar radiation.

I have read 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' by Taubes. The book is very convincing. The view of nutrition as a power game, with no real science behind it is quite interesting. Sadly for your case, there is LOTS of science to back up the assertions of Global Warming caused by human activity. Too many to simply dismiss.

If there is no problem with CO2 causing global warming, and we are going to be ok despite these emissions, well, that would be wonderful. Due to lobbying by Koch and friends, that is probably what we are going to end up with anyway. However, if there is only a 1% possibility that the worst will happen, and hundreds of millions of people will die because of it, I will still support doing whatever we can to prevent it. Can you really be so sure of your facts, many of which are supported by papers paid for by Koch subsidiaries who have a real financial interest in stopping any action on climate change?

I wish critical thinking were taught in schools, with a special emphasis on finding logical fallacies in things politicians say.

I wish more people understood why we have so few choices in elections.

And I wish the Union of Concerned Scientists had a political party arm so I could vote for them.

"At the end of the experiment they were recalled and scrapped."

In reality, they scrapped them as soon as they won their lawsuit against CARB. That ruling effectively reversed state law that required electric vehicles--the entire time GM was leasing electric vehicles, their lawyers were fighting to overturn laws that required electric vehicles be sold. The EV-1 was GM's response to those requirements, and when the requirements were reversed they repossessed all the EV-1s and crushed them.

Citation:
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/smart-transportation-solutions/advanced-vehicle-technologies/electric-cars/californias-zero-emission-1.html

Studies show even taking antibiotics as a kid can make you fatter as an adult. You ever wonder why they give cattle antibiotics? I always thought it was to keep the cows from getting sick in the sorry conditions (factory farmed) cattle have to live in. May be some part of the equation, but they also do it to fatten them up:

The nontherapeutic use of antibiotics is ingrained in livestock and poultry operations because producers believe that chickens, cows, and pigs—particularly those that are not healthy to begin with—gain weight faster when these drugs are added to their feed.*

Some parents of kids -- especially those not healthy to begin with -- insist that the doctor give their kids antibiotics. A very large percentage of doctors will, even though they know they aren't needed.

* http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/industrial-agriculture/prescription-for-trouble.html

Politicians and others can be effective communicators of climate science and guide us toward policy action, but they risk creating confusion and eroding public confidence in science when they make misrepresentative statements.

Are you joking? Nuclear gets the biggest subsidies of all:
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_and_global_warming/nuclear-power-subsidies-report.html
The insurance is cappedat at ridiculously low value, meaning if there is an accident the taxpayer will have to pay.
Without the insurance cap nuclear power would not exist.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has a good guide on this; also distinguishing between water withdrawal and water consumption.

Not quite. First, "EVs produce lower global warming emissions ... even when the electricity is produced primarily from coal in regions with the “dirtiest” electricity grids."
Next, most EVs are sold in California, state in which only 8% of electricity comes from coal. Furthermore, 39% of plug-in drivers have solar panels on their home/garage.

A new nuclear plant costs billions of dollars, and the only way they ever get built at all is if the government guarantees to backstop disaster liability with taxpayer dollars. Otherwise private investors would never touch them.

That doesn't sound particularly cheap to me. And in fact it isn't.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
http://www.iaea.org/

Union of Concerned Scientists
http://www.ucsusa.org/
The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety
2012 Report.

World Nuclear News
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/

NPUA.org: Nuclear Professionals Union of America
http://www.npua.org/

Canada Nuclear Power Industry Safety
http://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/

Motor vehicles are behind about 15% all CO2 emissions.

True on a world-wide scale. However, in the US, 32% of CO2 emissions is from transportation. It's harder to find numbers on motor vehicles in the US, but the closest I get within 3 minutes of Google is almost a quarter of annual US emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). (...) The US transportation sector emits more CO2 than all but three other countries' emissions from all sources combined.

Unfortunately, it looks like there is no simple way to reduce CO2 emissions. Just saying "just cut all the CO2 sources except the my car, my airconditioning, and my incandescent bulbs" is a bit too easy.

Of course, we haven't seen an increase in such warming-caused warping.

Are you in a position to know if we did? I'm not and I'm doubt the people who are (railway operators) have a compelling reason to publish that data.

Back in the heat wave of 2010, the German ICE system had to cancel some trips because heat warped the tracks...

It seems like your first and second statements may not be based on the same set of facts.

When I looked for information on whether there was an increase, I did find a blog post about speeds being dropped near Washington in March of last year due to unseasonable weather related to an effect of global warming (the blocking pattern in the Arctic). It is an expected effect of gobal warming. I'm just not sure if anyone is actively monitoring that effect.

http://www.ucsusa.org/ssi/climate-change/scientific-consensus-on.html

Wrong..again.

They cost more.
They have lower Cost-effectiveness for oil reduction
Worse in tailpipe pollution

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/smart-transportation-solutions/cleaner_fuels/cleaner-diesel/the-diesel-dilemma-diesels.html

Tailpipe emissions:
Gasoline emissions: 8887 grams CO2 per gallon
Diesel Emissions: 10180 grams per gallon.

The Eco Cruze gets 42 MPG
8887/42 = ~211 grams of CO2 per mile.

The Cruze Diesel gets 42 MPG.
10180/42= ~242 grams of CO2 per mile.

I choose the cruse becasue there are very close in shape.

And this doesn't even get into to particulate matter and carcinogens emitted by diesel.

Like I said, I'm not a climatologist, so I can't know how "settled" the AGW question is.

It's not hard to Google for authoritative sources.
"Authoritative sources" means not blogs, not activist websites set up to propagandize one side or the other of the issue, it means any respected scientific body that existed before Climate Change ever became an issue, and which has issued an "Oh by the way here is our official statement on the subject". You'll find that most science academies on the planet have issued such a statement.

These odd surveys and polls of "scientists

You mean the supposed "scientists" at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the US National Academy of Sciences, the Joint Science Academies', the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Medical Association, the American Meteorological Society, the American Physical Society, the Geological Society of America, and on and on and on.

Here's one statement released by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and co-signed by the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, and 13 others, which states in part:
Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science.

I bolded that last part because I wanted to point out that "inconsistent with an objective assessment" and "inconsistent with... the vast body of peer-reviewed science" are overly polite phrases for "crackpot".

These odd surveys and polls of "scientists" claiming to "prove" this and that seem so artificial and so obviously manipulated.

The NASA website says "Consensus: 97% of climate scientists agree" and they provide three sources for that figure:
W. R. L. Anderegg, âoeExpert Credibility in Climate Change,â Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 107 No. 27, 12107-12109 (21 June 2010); DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1003187107.
P. T. Doran & M. K. Zimmerman, "Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change," Eos Transactions American Geophysical Union Vol. 90 Issue 3 (2009), 22; DOI: 10.1029/2009EO030002.
N. Oreskes, âoeBeyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,â Science Vol. 306 no. 5702, p. 1686 (3 December 2004); DOI: 10.1126/science.1103618.
It's perfectly understandable for the general public to have the impression that there is raging scientific controversy over the issue. The TV news networks will take any issue and apply the asinine technique of grabbing one person for each side and presenting them as if they are equally credible and represent equal positions. And there's massive propaganda being funded by the fossil fuel industry. And politicians have latched onto this as a partisan issue, with almost half of them making claims for each side of the issue. There is a public controversy, and there is a wide public perception of there being a raging scientific controversy. However if you look at the statement from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and from virtually every other National Academy of Science, and dismiss them, they are heading deep into conspiracy theory territory. And if you specifically look at the NASA page and their 97% figure backed up by three sources, and if you continue to put "scientist" in quotes and continue to put "prove" in quotes and di

Especially if we consider that "over the average lifespan of a vehicle, owners will spend about $20,000 in fuel during its 15-year run on the road" - http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/smart-transportation-solutions/better-fuel-efficiency/where-your-gas-money-goes.html

Renewable power does not run at peak all the time. It's the old forms of power - coal especially - that runs flat out 24/7 because throttling those kinds of powerplants is incredibly costly, inefficient and slow to react. It's called "spinning reserve" because the only reasonably way to reduce the output of a coal powerplant is to de-energize the generators and let the turbines keep spinning. If they turn off the furnaces it would take hours to get running again. Throttling a coal powerplant means complete waste of money and resources.

Electrical generation capacity is critically underutilized at night. You need generating capacity to handle peak demand, but most of the time you are running nowhere near peak demand. The reason why many people in CA are eligible for Time-Of-use metering is because increasing off-peak use actually reduces costs. Many utility providers desperately want people to plug in electric cars at night to "fill the tub" and level out the 24-hour demand curve, allowing more efficient and less costly operation.

Also, there's that lie again. See my other post in reply to you. But even if that were the case and electric vehicles were actually "coal powered" like you want to believe it's still cleaner than the typical gasoline engine. There are no areas of the country where electric vehicles have higher global warming emissions than the average new gasoline vehicle. (PDF warning, quote from page 11)
=Smidge=

If you've eaten industrial meat, you've eaten something fed by crap (literally or otherwise):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-greger-md/mad-cow-disease-california_b_1450994.html
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/impacts_industrial_agriculture/they-eat-what-the-reality-of.html
http://www.treehugger.com/health/chickens-fed-caffeine-banned-antibiotics-and-prozac-often-without-the-farmers-knowledge.html


Yummy!

For those interested there is a report from a few months ago on the same topic with a US centric view (PDF warning) that comes to a similar conclusion. The main difference is Europe has much higher standards for fuel efficiency (both in legislation and public preference) so there is less potential gain for GHG emissions reduction to start with. For example:

Use phase energy requirements were assumed to be 0.623 megajoules/kilometer (MJ/km) for the EV, 68.5 milliliter/kilometer (mL/km) for the gasoline ICEV, and 53.5 mL/km for the diesel ICEV

To break this down into units most of us are more familiar with:

Electric: 3.591 miles per Kilowatt-hour
Gasoline: 34.34 miles per US gallon
Diesel: 43.97 miles per US gallon

Anyone in the US driving a vehicle made for the US market and getting those MPG figures would be justified in being a tad smug about it. Electric efficiency also seems generously high - I usually figure 3.2 mi/kWh, or pessimistically 3.0 to make the math easier, which correlates fairly well with anecdotal "real-world" reports from EV owners across the country. (5, 6 or even 7 mi/kWh is not unheard of, though these are usually your hyper-miler type drivers.)

Notable omissions from this report are include the energy and environmental impacts of obtaining the fossil fuels for either case. For example there is mention of the energy required to refine and process the metals used in battery production but no mention of the energy required to extract, refine and transport petroleum fuels. There is no mention of extraction costs for coal and natural gas for electrical production either.

There are several mentions of aluminum costs for production of EV components but having worked with both EVs and ICEVs I'm fairly confident there is more aluminum in an ICEV. Most of the engine block, come of the internal engine components, and most or the transmission body are aluminum. They are correct that there is more copper in an EV however.

Fossil depletion potential (FDP)may be decreased by 25% to 36% with electric transportation relying on average European electricity. EVs with natural gas or coal electricity, however, do not lead to significant reductions.

Nobody sensible has been arguing that EVs are magical. However, they are even at worst equivalent to what we are doing now but with the added benefit of future-proofing. A diesel engine will always need diesel, bio- or otherwise. It will always need a carbon based fuel. Always. An electric vehicle can get its electricity from carbon and non-carbon based sources alike. This means the bar to reducing fossil fuel use is dramatically lowered with the electrification of our vehicles.

tl:dr; Electrified vehicles are still a winning proposition despite not being perfect.
=Smidge=

Since over 50% of US electrical production is from coal

False. Not just false but so false you have no excuse for saying it. The amount of electricity produced in the US on average is currently under 40%. It's been in steady decline for at least five years now, being displaced by natural gas for the most part and is in rapid decline... so much so that the assholes in DC are running in circles trying to ban "coal killing" regulations that nobody ever proposed in the first place. You can argue that Natural Gas still releases CO2 - and that's true. But it produces less CO2 per MW-Hour generated than coal, and a lot less other pollution as well. US GHG emissions have been declining dramatically as a result.

But let's assume you weren't outright lying and half our electricity came from coal. Let's assume you live in Colorado, which has the highest proportion of coal power in the US and is consequentially the dirtiest electricity in the country. In terms of CO2 emissions your typical EV is still getting the equivalent of 33 miles per gallon or better (PDF warning).

So even if your EV is 100% coal powered, it is still an improvement over gasoline power. Since it is unlikely that any EV is 100% coal powered, that just amplifies the environmental benefit. Any "greening" of the electrical grid is automatically amplified by every plug-in hybrid and battery EV on the road.
=Smidge=

I think Science Debate is the greatest thing to happen to those of interested in science and politics. When they got Obama and McCain to answer science questions in the 2008 election, I immediately cancelled my membership to the Union of Concerned Scientists and started donating to this grassroots organization.

I have one issue that I vote on, and that's science. It's the only issue I understand well enough to evaluate the candidates on. If they know their science or have advisors that understand science, then I will trust them with most everything else. I summarized Obama's 2008 responses here, McCain's here, and my calls for who won on each issue. Obama's responses won on most issues, but McCain did not do poorly. Since Obama has taken office, he has impressed me with his support of science with Data.gov, Science.gov, a Memorandum on Scientific Integrity, proposed major increases in science funding, and put the Office of Science and Technology Policy back in the Whitehouse.

These might seem like small accomplishments, but compared to the Dark Ages of the Bush Administration they were a breath of fresh air. Unless Romney answers the science debate questions this election cycle, I won't even consider him.

There is so much disinformation about the drop yield of GMOs (from both sides) that I have given up trying to figure out the truth

There are no crops modified to increase intrinsic yield, just for traits that contribute to yield, so yield improvements depend on the trait and the situation. In the case of insect resistant crops, the gain is fairly modest in developed countries, something like 3-4% I think, however, this is because developed countries were already spraying pesticides. Obviously, replacing one pesticide for another, if they both work about as well, will not increase yield much. The situation is different in developing countries like South Africa, India, China, Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil, where they might not have those pesticides to add. There they increase yields a good bit more, up to 30-40$. What the authors of studies like Failure to Yield don't get (well, judging by their very careful wording, I think the authors did get this, but tried to put a negative spin on things) is that GE crops, in developed countries anyway, are not actually meant to increase yield, they are meant to be useful in other ways, and that the modest increase in yield is just a benefit, though to be fair I'm not sure how Monsanto markets that though. They also don't get that the benefits of a GE crop in one place will be different than the benefits somewhere else.

The second type of GE crop is the herbicide tolerant ones. I'm not really certain off the top of my head how much those have contributed to yield, but again, that is not what they are meant to do anyway. They are meant to make weed control easier, although they have had some environmental benefits through promoting no-till agriculture, which prevents soil degradation and fertilizer runoff (which leads to unsophistication in aquatic environments and eventually dead zones, like the massive one in the Gulf of Mexico due to agricultural runoff), and reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

The last type of GE crop currently used virus resistance (well, there is another type, since Monsanto recently got its DroughtGard corn approved, but that one is not grown yet since they just got approval).. If you read up on the story of the Rainbow papaya (pdf), you will find that it saved the Hawaiian papaya industry. The papaya ringspot virus was threatening to wipe out all papaya production on the islands until the University of Hawaii developed the Rainbow papaya. Yields then increased. In terms of increasing yield, that is a very clear success story, although is often ignored by the anti-GMO groups, and when they do talk about it they consider it a failure because as a result of anti-GE fearmongering it has export issues (might makes right I guess), although those restrictions were recently lifted. And the GMO papayas have a new type of pest the non-GMO ones don't have: people with machetes.

I get how it can seem like both sides are full of it (zealous ignorant activists on one hand and a corporation with a profit motive on the other, both obviously biased and not to be fully trusted), but the general scientific consensus is that they do, in general, increase yields, at least for the insect resistant and virus resistant ones anyway.

Since coal and gas powered plants are the number one cause of pollution and greenhouse gases, this is a pretty big oversight.

Last I knew, it was still heavily debated exactly how much of an effect humans have had on global warming compared to natural causes (IE: volcanic eruptions).

Well, according to the USGS man made CO2 levels for 2010 were 35 billion metric tons while all volcanic activity was estimated at 0.26 billion metric tons. So keep spreading your lies and uncertainty about climate science. Your cheap rhetoric designed to protect your lifestyle is surprisingly effective against individuals who spend their lives studying this stuff and publishing in peer reviewed journals, NASA, etc.

Does it have an effect? Sure. Does it have a noticeable effect? Probably. Does it have a significant effect? Maybe. There's way too many variables to really be sure if humans are speeding up natural global warming by a significant amount (IE: accelerating it from millennia to centuries or centuries to decades).

All that bullshit peppered with weasel words like "probably" and "maybe" without a single citation. Well done. The concensus from the scientific community has been made, the burden of proof is now on you to refute their findings. Not vice versa. Not "probably" or "maybe."

But the problem is not only the plants that cause pollution..... The majority of 'instant' death's related to coal-power is at the coal-plants...

A few references related to coal-power...
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c01.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

Nuclear power is not unsafe... It's just the idiotic laws that are being passed that are blocking the construction of new and safer plants...
Just look at the Chinese... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8393984/Safe-nuclear-does-exist-and-China-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium.html

Problem with nuclear power is not it's safety but the craze the media has put all the voters in about anything 'atomic' and then the politicians that then don't try to explain what is happening but just goes straight with the idiot-voters that don't have a clue about what is actually a danger...

Just look at why an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) was named that instead of NMRI (nuclear magnetic resonance imaging).. People are stupid and afraid of anything 'nuclear'... Just hope no one tells them they have about seven billion billion billion atoms inside their person...

The real problems are smaller but still important like the desertification that is currently happening in places like Texas, Global warming increases average rainfall but also makes it more "patchy" and increases evaporation. Also how do you like hurricanes? Because increased surface temperature and sea level moisture directly drive stronger storms in the American "hurricane ally" http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/hurricanes-and-climate-change.html. How a bout a bit of malaria or Lyme disease ect, as increase temperatures will drive the movement of biting insects. Note that none of these are a global doom scenario but go tell a Texan farmer the drought was not important, even if they do not believe in global warming reality is not a matter of opinion and the pain it has caused them is very real.

Did you see my handle before choosing Texas? Yep, last years drought was bad. Very bad. And the wild fires were worse. At one point more land in Texas was on fire than the total amount of land in several north-eastern states. And it has happened before. And Ike was bad. Almost the same as Alicia in 1983. And we had a bunch of tropical storms for about 2 years... And the timing was dead on with El Nino... See, having actually lived in Texas for over 40 years, I know that the cycles we are in now are not outside the range of normal. For Texas... And this means absolutely nothing in relation to Global Climate Change. It is just Texas.