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Earth's Period of Habitability Is Nearly Over
xp65 writes "Scientists at this year's XXVIIth General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil agree that we do not yet know how ubiquitous or how fragile life is, but that: 'The Earth's period of habitability is nearly over on a cosmological timescale. In a half to one billion years the Sun will start to be too luminous and warm for water to exist in liquid form on Earth, leading to a runaway greenhouse effect in less than 2 billion years.' Other surprising claims from this conference: that the Sun may not be the ideal kind of star to nurture life, and that the Earth may not be the ideal size."
Remember the comet cult that thought the world was going to end in 2000 and castrated themselves before committing suicide?
How are they going to handle the 72 virgins if they cut off their equipme.... wait n/m, that's a different cult ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I didn't see him as trollish. Just as a person who is extremely angry at DIPSHITS! I have to say. I am not so far behind him on this one. It is so fucking stupid as to completely dumbfound me.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
LOL blaming 'socialism'. Hows capitalism doing at developing new energy resources and a sustainable planet, eh? Your grinding of a dated ideological axe isn't going to help anyone.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
A breeder reactor is a plutonium factory. Really want to sprinkle them all over the planet? The security, safety, and proliferation challenge would be insolvable.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
in 500 million years there will still be religious idiots around to tell us "I told you so!"
Scientist 1: "They're poking holes in our Anthropogenic Global Warming sca...er, I mean 'theory'...stop laughing, this is serious guys! They're figuring out that we didn't really have any evidence that global warming was mankind's fault! Just like they figured out that the whole 'over-population' and 'New Ice Age' thing was all bupkus! We need a new great big scare, something that will secure the 'scientific' community the nearly unlimited funds we've been enjoying since we convinced the world we were killing each other just by driving our cars!"
Scientist 2: "Well...I've got this interstellar space flight project, but the technology is still a few centuries off from being mature enough to do any real-world tests..."
Scientist 3: "Hey, the sun's been warming the system up by a degree or two, right? People are starting to notice that..."
Scientist 1: "Wait...wait! I got it! We'll release new data that says that the SUN will kill us all after a long time frame! That will GUARANTEE that not only will WE be rolling in cash, but scientists for hundreds of years to come will be filthy rich, too!"
Scientists 2 & 3: "GENIUS!"
*beers are passed all around*
I have no tag line
The rest of the world stores the byproducts safely on site, and there's no reason we can't do the same.
In one year your typical US nuclear power plant produces about 20 metric tons of nuclear waste. They typically store this on site already, however once they run out of capacity to store the waste, they either have to shut down, or ship it out to some storage facility. Since there is currently not enough room to store all the waste that is generated, some plants have had to shut down prematurely.
There is a storage facility that in yucca mountain that has been in legal/political limbo for decades that was supposed to be used to store nuclear waste from civil power plants. Since the government entered into contracts with plant operators to store waste there, and cannot, the taxpayer is now, in addition to paying for the storage facility which is not being used, paying nuclear plant operators to hold on to their waste. Furthermore, because the facility isn't projected to be accepting waste for at least another ten years, waste will become an even bigger problem than it is now.
Individual plant operators are going to be responsible for storing and dispoing of their waste. Because of past bottom line oriented behavior demonstrated by some power companies, watchdog groups are concerned that the power companies will not honor their responsibilities to safely decommission the plants. Power companies aren't allowed to reprocess any of their nuclear waste either, for fear that byproducts might be sold to terrorists.
Don't get to thinking that the new reactor designs are going to save us either. Breeder reactor's aren't really used in the US because of problems encountered when they were initially run, and because they are viewed by nuclear power providers as being too expensive in comparision to traditional PWR reactors. If you look at the reactors that GE wants to build with stimulus funds, you'll find they are mearly improvements on existing tech.
Burning coal (the only practical alternative to nuclear)...
That's BS. There are a number of practical alternatives emerging in the marketplace, including natural gas, biofuels, and wind and solar (depending on where you live). Even burning coal doesn't have to be dirty.
"because, as I understand it, anything that comes out of secured areas is labeled "nuclear waste" and disposed of.'
Well, yeah - because it's radioactive. That's why it's waste.
"So used radiation suits and other such _harmless_ things are part of the total."
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
This article says nothing about wastes. It said it is currently being used in the USA. If that is true, why do we have hundreds of thousands of barrels of waste sitting around? I'm all for nuclear as well, but from what I gather off the National Geographic channel, Science channel, and other assorted channels is that it is far too wasteful for use yet. Having an armored transport car cracking open and leaking in the middle of the city would make the city uninhabitable for a quarter of a million years. You can tell me all these science channels are totally wrong, but I'd like to see some links that explain it.