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US Secretary of State Calls Climate Change 'Weapon of Mass Destruction'
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Arshad Mohammed reports on Reuters from Jakarta that US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Indonesians that man-made climate change could threaten their entire way of life, deriding those who doubted the existence of 'perhaps the world's most fearsome weapon of mass destruction' and describing those who do not accept that human activity causes global warming as 'shoddy scientists' and 'extreme ideologues'. 'Because of climate change, it's no secret that today Indonesia is ... one of the most vulnerable countries on Earth. It's not an exaggeration to say that the entire way of life that you live and love is at risk,' said Kerry. 'In a sense, climate change can now be considered another weapon of mass destruction, perhaps even the world's most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.' In Beijing on Friday, Kerry announced that China and the United States had agreed to intensify information-sharing and policy discussions on their plans to limit greenhouse gas emissions after 2020. At home, Kerry faces a politically tricky decision on whether to allow the Keystone XL pipeline after a State Department report played down the impact the Keystone pipeline would have on climate change. However Kerry showed little patience for skeptics in his speech. 'We just don't have time to let a few loud interest groups hijack the climate conversation,' said Kerry. 'I'm talking about big companies that like it the way it is, that don't want to change, and spend a lot of money to keep you and me and everybody from doing what we know we need to do.'"
We probably could consider climate change of any significant degree to be a weapon of mass destruction, if only due to foodchain collapses that would trickle down the line and proceed to kill many many many things. But, that said, it is a rather hyperbolic statement.
As a michigan resident I discovered this year that the Democrats have no interest in saving the environment. they wont even shut off the chicago river to keep the damn china carp from infesting the great lakes. Obama himself refuses to let the scientists and the Civil engineers shut it off. by the time they stop their stupid posturing it will be too late.
"by 2020" is too late, way too late to begin to start to talk about things. they need to be talking now not at a date set so that none of the current leaders have to bother with it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yes, apparently he's Secretary of State.
Now we're all terrorists.
It's not a weapon if it cannot be wielded. If it is just lashing about indiscriminately then it's not a weapon.
His botox injections have crept into the neocortex.
So, the US's Sec of State is self-admitting guilt of committing crimes against the entire planet, leaving the USA now liable in international court for the costs of AGW? I knew the US liberals were self-destructive, but this takes the cake.
Impetuous! Homeric!
there must be a catch... http://www.globalresearch.ca/weather-warfare-beware-the-us-military-s-experiments-with-climatic-warfare/7561
Sorry, good science requires skepticism.
We know the previous "best" models are flawed/incomplete.
AFAIK none of them predicted a decade+ flatline in global temps.
The pro and anti groups are both religiously attached to their views.
Makes VI/EMACS looks like a pragmatic debate.
In my imagination I've just hear words like "It's our duty to stop country X to stop their horrible acts of mass destruction, they refuse to shut down their coal/oil/atom/water/wind/whatever-suits-the-situation power plants so we'll invade them!". Sounds really dangerous and creepy to call various things "a weapon".
It's not an exaggeration to say that the entire way of life that you live and love is at risk,' said Kerry.
What is this fetish for people keeping their "way of life"? If all of us kept our "way of life", we'd still be hunter gatherers. Changing ones way of life is a good thing.
I am actively changing my way of life to reduce my consumerism, eat a more vegetarian diet, reduce clutter, turn off most of the electronic media (no cable), drive less - basically, I'm working on not having an American way of life and I'm feeling better and better.
Well given that the Chinese carp situation in Michigan probably should be a more important priority for the US than hamstringing human civilization in the name of global warming, I really don't see the stupidity.
The US has no interest in saving the environment. Neither is (really) any of the other first world nations. Like Europe, the US will not get the worst of climate change, and in any case, there is no place better prepared to deal with the consequences.
It is however a real problem for almost all other countries. I guess Kerry's message is really "Friendly warning guys: you better care about the environment, because we don't give a fuck and you will get the sharp end of the stick."
Just wanted to point out to everyone that technocrat is coming back due to popular backlash from slashdot beta... Opening up February 17!:
http://technocrat.net/
If you don't care about global warming, why are you concerned about some overgrown goldfish?
if Climate Change hadn't been hijacked by wild-eyed hippies who insisted on pushing it in a way that turned off the people they needed to convince.
The "jump the shark" moment for "WMD" was when the surviving Boston bomber was charged with using a WMD. Horrible, yes. Evil, yes. However, it's not a nuclear, chemical, or biological weapon. I'm wondering how long it will before assault rifles or 3d printed handguns will be labeled "WMDs."
Indonesia is a country largely populated by members of a certain religion. Some members of that religion want to kill us. Maybe this is strategic...
George W. Bush: "My boys at the oil and coal companies will give you the best kind of start, and you sure as hell won't stop them now. So let's get going, there's no other choice. God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear, and in true health, through the purity and essence of our natural... fluids. God bless you all."
As a Earth resident I discover I don't really care about your local enviromental issues being used to derail a global conversation.
Haha, it takes a special type of person to fall for such obvious smears, when they are so obviously made up whole cloth.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
So global warming is real, scientists agree.
What to do about it? Please show me the scientific and engineering studies that prove a particular course of action is appropriate. I am tired of the knee-jerk reaction that blithely assumes reducing carbon emissions is the way to go. There are many possible alternatives, including doing nothing at all. A proper cost/benefit analysis is needed, before we decide to forcibly relocate everyone back to caves.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
the USA now liable in international court for the costs of AGW?
1. What "International court"?
2. Since when does the US do what any international authority says when it doesn't want to?
This fear of the US being liable for AGW or being taxed higher for it is complete and utter bullshit invented by Rush, Hannity and the liars on Fox News to scare people into thinking US sovereignty will be compromised.
Mike Hunt?
You missing Amanda Jamitinya badly, aren't ya?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
That is just simply wrong. There are powerful intrenched interests with their misinformation campaign, and a bunch of sheep who think they're rebels for repeating the tortured logic of others, but that is really the sum total of the opposition to change.
And make no mistake, change is coming. The USA, Germany and China are leading the way in creating alternative sources of energy. The Germans and northern Europeans in particular are figuring out the engineering problems of using renewables on the grid. And the price of renewables is decreasing exponentially. Wind is now cheaper than every fossil fuel save gas, and will be cheaper than gas in five or so years. Solar is a little behind, but exponential is exponential.
Sure there are problems left to solve, but don't let anyone fool you into thinking that nobody cares. In fact, some of the smartest engineers and scientists in the world are figuring this out, and there is plenty of government and industry money to do "right" by the next generation.
If there's one major problem, its that the issue is a political football, but in the end, the smart money will move on, and the fluff heads will be left with wild conspiracy theories about how coal/oil was better all along, and a bunch of communists destroyed a perfectly good industry.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Don't forget they're terrorists too. You can't have people deploying climate weapons of mass destruction without dying as well. So obviously they're martyrs ergo terrorists!
Now for the real question, how do we tell if she is made of wood?
- Vladimir of Camelot
Is relative competition that important then?
Surely some of us will have some consequences and it will still cost us?
Norway seemed to get by easily though (at least if you only look at the costal lines.)
I guess we now have solid proof that Rush Limbaugh is a Slashdotter.
Regardless of whether or not mankind is fully, partially, or trivially responsible for climate change. Calling it a weapon of mass destruction is fully moronic. It's a distortion of reality for the sole sake of sensationalizing the issue. It's not worth tainting the argument for the sake of getting the point across.
/tongueincheek
Now it's just a matter of time before we start arresting people for starting bonfires or driving to work. Gas guzzler, hybrid, or all electric you'll all be terrorists wielding WMDs!
Is any more proof needed that John Kerry is a twat. He is certain to be the next president of the United States of America. We have, in Britain, a labour politician who is on record stating that she wanted to see 'a limpet mine put on every pumping station.’ She was referring to the pumping stations in the Somerset levels and was head of the Environment Agency at the time, responsible for the policies that have led to the appalling flooding in Somerset, see http://www.spectator.co.uk/fea... If that had been said by a person with olive skin and a foreign accent they would have 'disappeared' as a potential terrorist. These people are eco-terrorists, nothing more. We also have a member of the Green Party calling for everyone in a government position who doesn't believe in AGW to be removed, the sort of political purgess that the Communists favored; clearly living up to the 'Water Mellon' name.
They're already there. You have no point.
Turns out it is a weapon because mother nature is wielding it. (2nd amendment rights protects her). Russia took a gamble that the mountains would have good snow because the Caucuses mountains use to have good snow. Mother nature can be a bitch. Today, it's evident that some parts of the world is warmer during winter and even mountain snow packs are hit hard. The US froze it gas off this year due to the energy now shifting the polar climate system. We tend to ignore the climate change more when we are getting hit hard with winters that freeze the lakes. The planet still has some cold spots and some places are collecting more snow like Antarctica. We can't ignore that too many places are now getting baked while we are shoveling snow and crashing cars in the "icerstates". For the conspiracist, does anyone know if HARP was fired up to spoil the Olympics? (J/K)
If the US used the weather patterns as a weapon then it's pointed at the US West coast also as we are taking a dry beating there where our vegetable and fruit basket is. Florida may pick up some of the slack since I did not hear about orange groves getting wiped out this season. It's about time the US took the posture it should have 14 years ago and did more. At least the energy companies are taking action but at a cost with the environmental damage it is causing. Why are we bitching at China when we have a mess in the US. List the problems we had. Oil spills, train derailments, fracking and other chemical spills, ask pit dam breaks (and the Governors slap them on the proverbial wrist with cheap fine while their citizens suffer and pay for the cleanup).
Why don't we pump some effort into solar steam generators so we can at least pick up some energy. It works best in the summer but if done correctly it could warm up winters too. Even at 40F sunlight striking a back tube inside a vacummed glass vessel is capable of generating steam. What happened to geothermal, we have a few places we could drop in a few systems.
We are in China to negotiate restrictions on cheap exports of solar panels which we lost tax dollars through the DOE and Solyndra et-al. We have to step up what we started and use what all countries are producing to solve the problem. Convince China to start using all those panels it makes at home for it's own people. They would benefit from it and we could produce more so we have more money to buy their mobile gadgets.
...now in the axis of evil.
I suspect this means that the US will soon wield a nuclear or biological weapon of mass destruction, and there will be five or six decades of research and 'debate' before it's even acknowledged, must less any responsibility is assigned or measures taken to undo the damage.
you clearly have no idea what carp do to a water system. Where I live they took over in the past 30 years, 90% of the normal fish are gone, It really is a major problem and here we have a simple way to keep them from in essence destroying all the fish in our biggest natural waterways. I was actually unaware of the issue in the OPs area but as someone who knows first hand how damaging carp can be, I have to side with him. Why should we focus on the large picture when we cant even focus on the small (comparatively speaking)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Obama's administration doesn't approve the pipeline. We already have virtually no control over our corrupt, anti-democratic politicians and their oil-industry masters. The last thing we need is to see billions of dollars and even more power dropped into their hands.
.... fired. Read the Declaration of Independence and know we have very little legitimate government left, as teh rest have been fired via Declaration of Independence. But for reasons that can only be thuggary, they are still taking money from the people, and to do what? Preform criminal acts.
They don't work for the people.... they need to be removed and charged with impersonating government and charged also with theft.
AGW that old saw wielded by people that are looking for funding or power or both. Sadly science gets lost with this type of hysteria and our planet's history is cherry picked depending which side of the religious argument you inhabit. (MCO anyone, or LIA)?
If everyone stopped farting tomorrow and we cut our emissions by 50% we'd barely move the needle based on peer reviewed climate models (all of them). There would be a massive world wide depression and you could expect food shortages but you wouldn't change the climate much. So instead of screaming about weapons of mass destruction, perhaps folks should start looking at the cost of mitigating potential issues created by a warmer earth. The Dutch have done a great job with dealing with a rising sea over the last 2500 years.
Looking at solutions that work instead of creating bigger problems would be a healthy start to a constructive debate. It would also be a nice change from the demagoguery.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Everybody can agree the climate is changing, in a warming trend. However, the breakdown in logic is the immediate correlation that it must be human caused. The fact of the matter is the world's climate changes all the time, in massive geological cycles.
We must be good stewards of our planet, this is also undeniable.
The problem I have with "Global Warming" fanatics, is they have flawed logic (human caused) an then go into bizarre, egregious means to deal with it like carbon credits, and whatnot. The fact of the matter is we should definitely work to be more responsible for our world--but NOT because it is in a warming trend. We should do it simply because IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO. By disassociating the reason from morality, and tying it to a flawed premise (human caused) we are hurting the entire effort--and meanwhile corporations and the government continue to act irresponsibly.
I'm for rational, logical use of our planet. We are creatures of this planet, just like every other creature. We should treat it carefully, only using our share. We are not here to "preserve" the planet, as it is here to be used. But we should use it properly, wisely, and in a manner that helps future generations of all planetary denizens (human and all others).
tora
"We have investigated US and allied European factories and found that they constituted weapons of mass desctruction posing a threat the security and safety of the world.
"We have declared war on these rogue factories, drones will be sent to all related company towns, and blackops have been deployed to known CEOs mountain hideaways in the Alps."
...one mused.
-- "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." --Dijkstra
"Give me my $1 billion slush fund"
Full-court press at 11.
-Styopa
However Kerry showed little patience for skeptics in his speech. 'We just don't have time to let a few loud interest groups hijack the climate conversation,' said Kerry. 'I'm talking about big companies that like it the way it is, that don't want to change, and spend a lot of money to keep you and me and everybody from doing what we know we need to do.'
The first step of solving the problem is to admit the existence of it. Go democracy!
... of a new war on climate?
Ok. the carp can be a problem, but the OP is whining about how the politicians in Michigan aren't doing anything about a river that is in Illinois.
Thanks Kerry! Now we can show the world we truly are as stupid as they think we are!
The Germans and northern Europeans in particular are figuring out the engineering problems of using renewables on the grid.
Use nuclear. Problem solved.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I dont agree with AGW, but using only rush limbaugh as your source even makes me cringe
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
It's not just a WMD, global warming causes child porn too, because... think of the children! We must give trillions to our cronies in industry in order to combat this menace!
weather control makes for B movies just need a real weather man (not jim cantore) how much will it cost to get tom skilling (can even work his brother into the plot line)
Then why does it cost more to the consumer? if it is cheaper? Should it not be more friendly in price. Why do you need the same amount in backup power if it is so effective, or batteries, to sustain the bridge in generation? But I will give you this, it's neat in someone elses back yard. Windmills are cool. They slow the wind, they create a turbulence where there was laminare airflow before, okay how about solar, creates a hotspot changing the wind pattern, needs batteries, not as effective at night when the wind usually calms down, need a backup generation facility, just as wind, usually powered by natural gas, or coal, or the stuff none but the navy love. but they use oils, also, to feed the bearings, lube the axles, ect. etc.
global issue is my local issue, being usurped by the government, where I will no longer have a say.
"Never let a good crisis go to waste".
Then push through a plan that's poorly thought out and politically expedient.
Translation: "We prefer our own interest groups, the ones who got us elected! We need to pay them off with trillions of dollars of tax payer money."
Mr. Kerry, you have no credible plan to stop climate change. The reductions you propose are laughable and utterly inadequate. If you proposed effective reductions, you'd face a rebellion from voters. Your administration hasn't even been able to produce a balanced budget, let alone reduce the national debt, something that even European social welfare states have done. The economic forecasts that got you elected turned out to be b.s., as did the predicted economic effects of your stimulus programs. Your administration's promises on ACA have turned out to be bald faced lies, and you haven't been able to even produce a working web site on time.
I'm not a skeptic on climate change; CO2 is rising and it's getting warmer. I simply don't believe that anything can realistically be done.
And even if something could be done, your administration is too incompetent, corrupt, and dishonest to be trusted with doing it.
The sad thing is that we know it isn't that special. There isn't a rare mentality that goes with that "credulous about attacks on those I disagree with". At worst it's slightly more pronounced on the political right-wing(though it's very very pronounced among those that hit "high-RWA" characteristics).
In your life nothing will change, and also not during your grandchildren's life, life is too short to notice.
'I'm talking about big FEDERAL AGENCIES that like it the way it is, that don't want to change, and spend a lot of money to keep you and me and everybody from doing what we know we need to do.'"
there, fixed that.
If climate change is now a weapon of mass destruction and the US and the West are the predominate causes of it, does that mean they are guilty of war crimes (related to the WMDs)?
You'll have to excuse the great unwashed masses (sometime called "the middle class") for being a bit skeptical after being told by our Dear Leader that with a cap and trade system, electricity prices would "necessarily skyrocket". Every cost for the transition from coal and oil is being dropped on the (former) middle class in every scenario.
Let's try doing the hard thing, putting the greatest minds to work figuring out how to do this without violating the civil rights of the people, instead of coming up with half-asses "solutions" and imposing them at the point of a gun.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Michigan, you know that state which borders 4 out of 5 great lakes? Of course their politicians should be the most vocal when they've done the research to protect against infestation, pin-pointed the entry point which it occurs, and developed multiple viable solutions for prevention. Would it hurt business a little for Chicago, one city out of thousands in this nation for the sake of preserving a national treasure the great lakes are? Of course. Guess where Obama came from and why he's not helping the rest of us.. that's right, Chicago.
No, he said "the Democrats" and included the President, implying a federal intervention.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
No one is proposing hamstringing human civilization that I can see. We're talking about moving into the 21st century by shifting to energy production that is based on sources that will last far longer than fossil fuels will last. By reducing the amount of warming and ocean acidification, we're helping ensure future economic prosperity. I suppose change is just scary to some people.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
So any research in climate change is now grounds to be bombed back into stone age by the US?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Cows ... methane ... end of the world?
OMG, Eat mor chikin is a secret plot to poison the environment!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Weird how those in charge claim the Declaration has no force in law, isn't it? It seems that most everyone wants a system that forces others to succomb to their particular view of things over others.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
And Republican politicians have no interest in an actual free market or personal rights. Welcome to American politics, where politicians say they are for something, but are really just out for their own self interest.
So, Kerry was implying federal intervention in international affairs.
The original poster was saying the Feds wouldn't intervene in a situation involving purely national affairs.
It sounds to me like they have a solution that involves restricting the river technologically, but the Democrats don't like technological solutions, they prefer regulatory solutions and taxes.
It's said that the rabbit proof fence had the hidden purpose of segregating aboriginals to the west, it certainly screwed with their traditional movements, perhaps there's more than just misguided efforts to control carp motivating some of the people who want to construct the dam. The dam may well be a worthy project, but from the POV of stopping carp from spreading it simply won't work. All it takes is for some well meaning parent to tell their kid it's time to release the "wild gold fish" he caught, back into the wild.
"by 2020" is too late, way too late to begin to start to talk about things.
Now is also way too late, invasive species are a different kind of problem to AGW, "the fish has already bolted" so to speak, you're past the point of no return, the disaster happened decades/centuries ago and you are now into damage control.
Disclaimer: Science based tree-hugger since the 70's, neither for or against a dam I know very little about, just saying that it probably wont work as you hope even if it was built yesterday, this is because the time for action was in the distant past when people released the species into N.American waterways.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
seems like a perfectly useful way to drown poor brown people while getting government assistance to build a shiny new beach house.
No one is proposing hamstringing human civilization that I can see. We're talking about moving into the 21st century by shifting to energy production that is based on sources that will last far longer than fossil fuels will last. By reducing the amount of warming and ocean acidification, we're helping ensure future economic prosperity. I suppose change is just scary to some people.
The ongoing holocene extinction event (of which climate change is a part) is one of the few changes that scares the shit out of me. Strangely enough it seems to be the only change that does not scare the crap out of conservatives.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
No longer content with foisting off blame and fear on terror groups, politicians, in the search for more money, begin converting climate science into the next big terror threat.
*Facepalm*
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
If Kerry can be taken in by climate change, there can't be much to it,
WTF, man. Hugh Pickens dot COM is the troll of flamebaiters. Everything subject is highly polarizing while simultaneously being largely irrelevant. Enough already.
Unfortunately, having a Northeast liberal mocking everyone that doesn't agree with him isn't the best way to sell the theory on the undecided or uninformed. In fact, having John "Lurch" Kerry do it is just about the worst person to be sending this message.
If we can depopulate the Georges Bank of Atlantic cod, a fish of questionable deliciousness, we can depopulate a few narrow rivers any fish that is even remotely tasty.
The problem with many environmentalists isn't so much that they are identifying problems that we all wish weren't, but that they often propose outrageous and ineffective remedies, sometimes to the point of opposing real solutions in favor of their half-baked fantasy plans.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
When "science" is determined by popularism (what else do you call that Al Gore movie) instead of rational thought, then you know that somebody's getting rich on our backs.
Now, it could very well be that Al Gore got it right. But I'd be very careful about conducting science this way. It's a very slippery slope for tomorrow's "facts".
Just curious, is that cheaper with subsidies, or without subsidies?
Where I live solar is easily worth it after the 80% subsidies by the Federal and State governments. Not so much if you have to pay full price....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Hahaha, ah. I can just about stop laughing at the story. Mr Kerry, does this mean if Earth's weather is a weapon of mass destruction, do the storms on planet Jupiter make it the Death Star? :D
The US Army Corp of Engineers is working on that. They came up with 4 or 6 possible solutions I think.
Now, getting people to agree to do any of them is another story.
The simplest is probably just to put a $10-$20 bounty out on every one someone catches, a free fishing license for a few other fish too. Make a TV show about it, and watch the river get taken over by amateur fishermen. After this harsh winter, the population would probably be decimated in a few months.
But, it doesn't mean that we can't deal with other pollution and CO2 emissions.
Sounds like you are falling for an obvious diversionary tactic. Kerry is in Indonesia. Indonesians are pissed at the USA for spying on them. Kerry decides to talk about climate change and lobs around hyperbola like "weapon of mass destructions threating your way of life!!11ONE!!!1"
"I did not see them myself but I heard about them."
Kerry's response to whether he witness something like, "We had to destroy the village to save it." This guy was the face of the congressional hearings on Vietnam after his discharged from his brief tour in the Navy. Then in 2004, he ran as a "war vet".
- Anonymous Lazy Slacker. Too lazy to sign in.
They taste like carp.
Least he wasn't lobbing around ebola.
I comment occasionally so that I can mod others -1 overrated or -1 offtopic.
Seriously.
At what point will people stop going on about this so called global warming. Nobody without an agenda to push believes in it any more. It should be a crime to scaremonger like this,.
If there's one major problem, its that the issue is a political football, but in the end, the smart money will move on, and the fluff heads will be left with wild conspiracy theories about how coal/oil was better all along, and a bunch of communists destroyed a perfectly good industry.
Disinformation can be no information. The real problem is that weather no longer comes solely from mother nature, and man is obviously fucking up the planet with chemical aerosols of metals and radionuclides. dispersing high in the atmosphere rising into the ionosphere with pulsed HAARP ultra low radio waves boiling, creating cataclysmic storms, death, property damage even destroying entire economies and with total disregard for the environment while everyone sits around reading non information [disinformation] by those who may know, but probably don't realize what a disservice they are coordinating around the planet. That is the weapon of mass distruction of choice by smart money. That is real fake posturing.
His improvised kitchen device should have been termed a weapon of mass carnage. Note how the official term focuses more on loss of structure than on human life.
Why the present example jumps the shark is that while global warming might be a supreme menace, it has not yet to my knowledge been successfully weaponized.
In this case, we're really dealing with an Apocalyptic Horseman of Mass Resettlement, if there's a need to be operatic.
And I guess you have a clear and viable plan on what to to with the waste?
And the price of renewables is decreasing exponentially.
I don't think you know what "exponential" means.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
By definition, weapons of mass destruction are rather indiscriminate in their effects, killing innocent civilians. They're can only be aimed approximately. AGW of course is only a WMD metaphorically, not literally, as it didn't arise with the intent to kill, even if it does.
"If you're not passionate about your operating system, you're married to the wrong one."
Reprocess it?
Waste isn't the issue, it's the cost. Look at the problems the UK has had with trying to get a new nuclear plant built. Unless you're willing to let the handful of companies with the expertise to build a safe modern nuclear plant rip you the fuck off then you can't have one.
The British government had to agree to let them double the already insanely high energy price per kilowatt in the UK to get a part Chinese bid to agree to build the plant after all the other bidders such as France's EDF dropped out. So for a doubling of the cost of energy generated by the plant, a government subsidy, and allowing the Chinese government to have power over a major British energy source we were able to get ourselves a new nuclear plant. Is it worth it? I don't think so for a second.
There seems not to be a functioning nuclear power plant market and if the price per kilowatt they're demanding is legit then it's too prohibitively expensive compared to just using genuine renewables.
This said I figured out for the price of the pointless HS2 rail project in the UK that no one with any sense wants we could build two new nuclear power plants and still have change left over to literally pay for solar panels to be installed on every single house in the country. So even though it's all insanely expensive it's still not retardedly expensive as some pet projects I suppose.
I want my science back!!!!
[Carp] should be a more important priority for the US than hamstringing human civilization in the name of global warming
There are sound reasons why AGW is high on the Pentagon's threat list
, where as carp are not even listed, despite the political will of a number of anti-carp politicians. Sure there's politics behind the wording and positioning of threats on the pentagons list too, but that doesn't mean AGW not a serious threat to all modern civilization(s) in the form of mass migrations, water wars, global crop failures, collapse of fisheries due to coral beaching, etc, etc
A current example: If you get your news from the mass media (particularly the US branch), you can be forgiven for not noticing that the Syrian civil war was triggered by internal mass migrations. In 2009-2011, 2M people in a country of 20M abandon their farms and headed to the cites putting strain of infrastructure and employment. The cause was not some madman dictator's attempt at social engineering, nor had people suddenly work out said dictator was mad because face book had arrived. It was triggered by the worst drought ever recorded in the "fertile crescent" (historical records span several millennia in Syria since this is the same region humans invented agriculture). A US diplomat stationed in Syria at the time went so far in his warnings as to correctly predict the city where the war would start (source: Snowden cables). It's no coincidence that many of the nations who experienced "the Arab spring" had previously been experiencing high food prices and in some major cities, large food riots. The mass media story was "Facebook done it".
As to hamstrings - Did building the hoover dam "hamstring the US". If not, then why do you think this will "hamstring the US".
Every coal plant on the planet was built and sometimes re-built within my 54yr lifetime, and they will all need to be re-built in the next 50yrs. Replacing them with modern renewable plants (be they rooftop or centralised) in a similar timeframe is a no-brainer as far as the environment and public health are concerned. If not for the novelty of the "renewables" most people wouldn't really notice the transition (same as I didn't really notice them building all those power plant until the early 90's) . The people with billions invested in coal mines have seen the writing on the wall and are running the same good old fashioned anti-science propaganda techniques that the gas light companies used on Edison and Edison in turn used on Telsa. That very human behaviour is not going away any day soon.
The other side of that human behaviour is that every adult on the planet (including me) is granted to fall for propaganda, education helps, particularly in the philosophies of Science and Epistemology but as we've seen with AGW, a good education and above average intelligence do not add up to a bullshit proof suit
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
... I waiting for it to be blamed on Iraq....
Build costs of long term management into contracts and use proven low-waste technology. Next!
[FUCK BETA]
Nuclear is, and always has been, an economic failure. No one ever built and operated a nuclear plant without one form or another for government subsidies (such as Price-Anderson in the US). The gargantuan investment costs have always offset the cheap running costs. That's why no one ever built nuclear on its own money—but it's a great way to suck money out of the government for gigantic projects.
New nuclear power plants are insanely expensive, look at Finland's Olkiluoto that now is expected to cost 8.5 billion euros from an initial estimate of 3 billions (and it's not finished yet).
That, and we in Europe have decided we don't like nuclear. Even if the fable that nuclear is cheap were true, I'd rather spend double my energy bills to avoid nuclear, thanks; my energy bill is not so high anyway.
Finally: nuclear power can only provide base load anyway. You can't ramp it up and down to follow demand.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
"but the Democrats don't like technological solutions, they prefer regulatory solutions and taxes."
logical fallacy: genetic. Also, assholism. I'm sure the Democrats also eat babies. It's lazy thinking. I'm quite sure that if you invented a fix for the CO2 problem, Democrats would be quite happy.
I will also say that we've HAD technological fixes for the problem for around 30 years now. The problem is people, not tech. So, perhaps regulation and taxes to force behavior change isn't really that bad an idea now that you mention it.
That's the trouble with politics. People know what's coming, and the scientists are saying very clearly what needs to be done. However, when you're in politics, you can't usually do what needs to be done. You have to balance it with what's politically viable. When your counter-party is selling a lie of cheap energy forever, it's hard to tell the voting public that they need to make serious sacrifices in their lives or the world as we know it is going to come to an end. Especially since the changes are so slow that it makes you look like a chicken little to say anything bad might happen at all. I would argue that it's already too late and it's time to stop talking about reducing greenhouse gases and start talking about engineering the climate. There's a few plausible solutions being batted around, none of them seem all that great given that we have no idea what the repercussions will be of, for example, tossing a bunch of chemicals into the stratosphere. At this point though, anything short of global annihilation of our food chain is probably going to be considered a "win." http://www.npr.org/2013/10/20/...
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Democrats don't like technological solutions
Sure about that?
Actually the major push is for taxes to "punish" people for "bad" behavior. I've heard that we will have windmills and solar panels to fix all the problems but that money just keeps flushing down a hole that never fills up. I'm all for fixing problems with the environment, even a dog knows better than to shit where he eats. All the craziness coming from D.C. though seems to be let's kill the patient to cure him.
And you thought that I was going to say something vulgar and metaphorical about Mr. Kerry....
No, I'm reminded of the atomic-pile simulation that used to be taught to kids. You remember, the one where there is a big floor filled with set mousetraps. And each trap has two ping-pong balls ~gently~ placed on the spring. A single ball is tossed in, and ~zap!~ a trap goes off, more balls are released, more traps go off, a few here and there, and then the big crescendo... balls flying everywhere.
Climate change is like that. We are just seeing the beginning now. It's small enough that stupid people can convince themselves that it's not happening. But as the Siberian tundra melts, and the 100,000,000 year old methane stored there gets released, and the polar ice caps melt, and the changing salinity alters the north-south oceanic current flows, and the mean temperature of the tropic regions rises to 140 degrees F for an average day.... well, balls flying everywhere.
A billion dollars here and there tossed at a global problem of this magnitude of problem is nothing. A billion dollars is about the size of the heavy-metal music industry, a heaping spoonful of the toilet paper industry, and most of the "Hello Kitty" trinket industry.
National Geographic recently published a series of maps of what the Earth would look like in 100 or so years from now when the ice caps have melted. Indonesia was gone. John Kerry is just giving them a 'head's up" warning.
NG also missed out on the fact that most of the earth except for the polar regions will be bright yellow instead of green. Yellow as in areas where nothing will grow and nothing will live. You probable live in one of these regions now. Best to spend the next decade ignoring the bozospeak coming from corporate and governmental entities. Instead find a place on those maps that presently has temperate weather, internet access, indoor plumbing, and civilized people.
Move there; move your family there. And as the decades go by and all the billions of doomed people start to realize that they deserve to be in that place instead of you, well, prepare yourself to have to deal with them like they are all one big surplus giraffe.
Gnome Sane?
Kerry knows something we don't. Perhaps climate change is real but just not in the way the media plays it up as. Think HAARP. All the climate change hoopla provides perfect plausible deniability for the ability to disrupt your enemies weather.
I think the problem is the push for "cap and trade." That should just about finish off US productivity. Problem solved.
Sounds like you are falling for an obvious diversionary tactic. Kerry is in Indonesia. Indonesians are pissed at the USA for spying on them. Kerry decides to talk about climate change and lobs around hyperbola like "weapon of mass destructions threating your way of life!!11ONE!!!1"
Indeed!
We should all take action for climate change. Don't let the horrible practices of the nations of the world interrupt it.
Do what you can for climate change!
(I recommend igniting your nearby forests. After all the forests are gone there will be plenty of evidence for climate change.)
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
I'm all for Solar power, in fact I've often wondered why every Federal building in the US isn't covered with them. I like the idea of clean power, moving away from coal and nukes. The problem is programs like "cap and trade" designed to punish companies that are productive thus destroying industry and jobs. Crazy programs like that are what conservatives oppose. By all means lets build some damn solar power stations!
I should have elaborated, but my point was that if the poster can't see the urgency or validity of global climate change, it's unlikely he can understand the issue with non-native fish species. However in thinking about it more I guess it is easier to understand an issue with a fish that you can see and catch. Understanding global climate change requires much more thinking.
You cant read.
Or you are simply a complete moron, I'm betting on the latter.
Note: he said, "president Obama" or do you think that is the name of the Governor of Michigan? I'm thinking you really are that stupid. but lets look at how stupid you really are as you equate the Great Lakes to "michigan" yeah.... You are a fucking moron.
Did he speak in English or French?
Conservative, mod down for violating
Wait until Harry Reid leaves office, then bury it in Nevada.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
We don't have to live in caves. That's a line that's been fed to you, by big interests, to delegitimize the voices speaking up. Just stop consuming so much, ride your bike to work, use LED lighting... There are a LOT of little steps that make the world better, and incidentally make you healthier. It's not hard at all, and there's no reduction in quality of life.
That some people drive to work, and then maintain gym memberships where they sit inside and pedal a stationary bike, is really really weird to me....
Haha, it takes a special type of person to fall for such obvious smears, when they are so obviously made up whole cloth.
How on Earth did "Slashdot, News for Nerds" turn into this? Maybe I'm getting old, but I used to remember Slashdot being the place to go to find interesting and insightful information about science. The comments used to be the best part of Slashdot. They almost always provided interesting additional information on a topic above and beyond what was provided by the articles.
But now we get childish anti-science potshots making it up to score 5, Informative? What the heck happened? Has Slashdot been taken over by commenting shrills paid by the Koch brothers? Or did all the intelligent Slashdotters simply leave long ago? If so, could someone please tell me where they went?
Some states already have "cap and trade" and it's been a success, no industry killed off.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You forgot to mention that the cost of having the Civil engineers shut it off is more than $18 billion... compare that to the alternative of, oh, allowing fisherman to catch and sell the "damn China carp", a delicacy in most countries. The Michigan state government would earn revenue instead of spending gobs of money. If only we Americans weren't so picky about what we eat...
The only change that scares the crap out of conservatives is a tax increase or any change proposed by a black president.
As a michigan resident I discovered this year that the Democrats have no interest in saving the environment.
If you want something done, you've got to do it yourself. You talk as if politicians of any party in any country ever have interests that are not 1. Staying in power 2. Money or 3. The interests of their supporters as it relates to 1 or 2. That's naive or lazy. Politicians aren't going to do the legwork for you. It's not because political minded people are inherently evil, politicians who DO spend political capitol on things their constituents don't care about get voted out quickly and replaced by politicians who pander to the voters rather than lead.
Get enough voters motivated about it to threaten the incumbents and the politicians will MAGICALLY obey. Fortunately, the politicians are SO concerned with keeping power that you don't actually need to convince most voters, you just need to convince enough to make the politicians think it's a trend. Which by that point it likely will be.
I sympathize that it's incredibly frustrating to see such obvious warning signs and see people who took oaths to protect the country flagrantly ignore it, but hey, that's how it's always been and always will be.
Guess the US will finally declare war on Earth now for harboring those nasty WMDs they provided. Or will Mars get randomly invaded instead? :-P
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Written by a man with a truckload of Obama's Green money?
http://news.investors.com/ibd-...
Environmental special interests managed to dismantle the system by diverting water meant for farms to pet projects, such as saving delta smelt, a baitfish. That move forced the flushing of 3 million acre-feet of water originally slated for the Central Valley into the ocean over the past five years.
I'm in Europe and I do like nuclear, so speak for yourself.
Finally: nuclear power can only provide base load anyway. You can't ramp it up and down to follow demand.
Ha ha!! It can "only" provide base load? So what other green tech is gonna provide base load then, pixie dust? We NEED a huge amount of base load electricity and wind/solar can't provide it, and it's too unreliable. We don't have anywhere near enough hydro, either.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
1. The Science is Settled
2. Any changes in the Settled Science will always be "Worse than we expected!"
3. All adjustments to data, whether they are made in the past, present or future, must adhere to rule #2
4. All weather events are evidence for the Settled Science
5. Any deviation from the first three rules will automatically make you ineligible to continue playing
Science Bitches!
Kerry is just posturing for the DNC election in August 2016 for Prez.
Climate Change as WMD will be his party plank to counter Hilly-Billy Clinton. Kerry has yet to discover how ridiculous his logic, but that is Kerry. So Hilly-Billy will counter that Kerry's WMD means that Kerry is Saddam. And, ironically Kerry's WMD will be as illusive to capture as Saddam's WMD, i.e. both are figments of deranged imaginations and do not exist in physical form.
Please list these states.
And that doesn't include Chinese subsidies on the panels to begin with.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Criminalizing individual sovereignty, private property and voluntary exchange, eh? I thought that was all put to rest at the end of the Cold War.
IIRC, Arizona worked very hard to eliminate crawfish from the local environment, several years ago as they aren't natural and actually highly destructive here... Maybe some fishing efforts could help here.. not sure how edible the breeds of carp in question are, but I would like to think it's a problem that could be dealt with... Carp fish sticks anyone? Beer battered carp?
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
It is quite difficult to figure out the true cost of energy, and subsidies are only part of the problem. Consider the cost of building a coal power-plant. It will be used for 50 years. So... what's the price of coal in 50 years? Not so easy.
Engineers, town planers, investors, and other technocrats follow levelized cost of energy, which attempts to find the fundemental cost of a particular energy source.
Wind is cheaper without subsidies -- and part of what makes it cheap is that you only need to price in spare parts and maintenance teams for 20-odd years.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The USA has implemented cap and trade over 20% of its economy. Energy prices have come down in this part of the USA relative to the rest of the country, for both factories and consumers. Furthermore, the part of the USA has seen relative economic growth compared to the rest of the USA. It is because of RGGI, similar carbon regulations in other parts of the world, and the history of such programs, that economists think that the cost of climate action will be negligible. The true alarmists are the ones preaching economic Armageddon.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
and my point was that if the people cant focus on a small issue with a known solution, why should we focus on the unknown, with no known solutions?*
* If we all do just the small things, it adds up to the big things i guess is what I am trying to say
solutions that dont involve everyone living in huts.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
http://youtu.be/eGOBm2J4tn0
A buddy and I made a few shirts. On the front, "Mike Digsmol" and on the back "Yell my name, loud and proud!" -- It's pretty funny...
By definition, if we have fewer comforts, our quality of life will be lower.
Riding a bike to work sounds nice, if you live close to work, the weather is nice, etc. for many people, that just isn't an option. LED lights are a fine idea, that one works well enough.
Here you go:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
See also: sulfur dioxide cap-and-trade - again, successful, with no industries killed.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Is there any reason why one might obscure the phrase "Anthropogenic Global Warming" within the acronym "AGW", without properly defining the meaning behind such a non-obvious acronym?
Anything to get you to hand over your wallet, your freedom and anything else the elite can get their hands on while they live their larger than life lifestyles.
They want you in a cardboard box, while they get to live in mansions the size of small townships.
They have changed the name of this policy no less than 3 times, from Global Warming, which there is no data to fit that.
Then they changed it to Anthropogenic Climate Change, and after FIXING papers and fabricating evidence under that title, and ruining it they changed it AGAIN.
Now, they changed the whole discussion to Climate Change, because no matter how they fix the data, or fabricate their research, you can't argue that climate changes.
If you follow the money, this is a very open ended idea to fund world government by using a carbon credit tax, on every nation to fund the mischief of a few technocrats and elite.
Notice how they propose changes by seriously proposing we alter the climate and natural processes through damaging geoengineering projects like putting aluminium oxides in the atmopshere, for example and other nonsense.
If we were serious about reducing our impact on the environment we would do exactly opposite to what Nature, IMF and UN are proposing. Which would be to create arcologies and new sources of power for agriculture..
More crap science by politicians who couldn't give a damn about climate and only want your wallet, and more importantly to fund a large army to destroy humanities future and to enforce their tyranny.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
WE are heading into an ice age. The warmer ocean temperatures are moving toward the poles and displacing the polar vortex. The polar vortex is moving and taking the path of least resistance and stabilizing over the lower land masses. So shut the fuck up and pay attention to the 500mb northern hemisphere charts. The polar vortex was ripped in half this year. Simplified version, Ocean surface temperatures increases and moves north displacing polar vortex.
But now we get childish anti-science potshots making it up to score 5, Informative? What the heck happened? Has Slashdot been taken over by commenting shrills paid by the Koch brothers? Or did all the intelligent Slashdotters simply leave long ago? If so, could someone please tell me where they went?
Natural ebb and flow.
Site is new and has mostly insiders. SNR is high. Site gets popular. Hordes arrive. SNR drops. Signal moves to clearer channels.
It is often mentioned that the Slashdot heyday ended around 2006. Much of the signal moved over to reddit. Observe that reddit went from a great ratio of insightful stories and insightful comments in the past to having today's home page mostly filled with meme-style images but occasionally containing intellectual content, very much like modern slashdot. Some of the individual moderated sub-reddits maintain a high SNR on a single topic, but the broader intelligent community vanished a few years back.
These days go for industry-based and credential-based discussion boards. IEEE and ACM both offer fairly broad geek news coverage with open discussion after the stories.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
Indonesians aren't the biggest source of the problem here, we are. All the Indonesians can do is get mad about it. So what's the point? Do Indonesians really have any sway over the US House of Representatives?
The Hoover Dam cost $824 million in 2013 dollars to build and averages 4,200,000 mWhs of electricity per year.
The Ivanpah Solar Plant cost $2,200 million and may generate 493,110 mWhs of electricity per year.
So, this plant cost nearly three times as much in constant dollars while generating one tenth as much energy. To get to Hoover Dam scales, we need to build another 29 Ivanpahs at a cost of $63.8 billion dollars. Which gives us one more Hoover Dam worth of energy, which is 1/1000th of total US energy use (Hoover Dam is about 4.2 billion kWhs while the US used about 4,095 billion kWhs last year.)
So, for the low, low price of $68.8 trillion , we can supply the electricity for the US via Ivanpah style power. That just might hamstring our economy...
What about economies of scale and the more appliance like, smaller scale fission reactor developed by Taylor Wilson? Wikipedia repeatedly has nuclear power as one of the cheapest sources available in different locations, if not the cheapest. For instance, in UK, the median price for onshore wind looks to be about 30% higher than nuclear, and offshore wind is 2-3x the price (original reports here.
Based on the first numbers I found on Google, it would cost about £120+ billion to install panels on the 25 million homes in the UK (assuming economies of scale offset the huge change in demand). The HS2 rail project is reported to cost anywhere from £28 billion (with less tunneling) to £80 billion. Did you leave out the price of labor to have the panels installed?
The US has no interest in saving the environment. Neither is (really) any of the other first world nations. Like Europe, the US will not get the worst of climate change, and in any case, there is no place better prepared to deal with the consequences
That may be true in a literal sense, and a lot of people think this, but what they often fail to acknowledge is that the first world also has the most to lose. The US, for example, is the world's largest food exporter, something most Americans don't fully appreciate. Climate change is going to change things in many places in many difficult to predict ways, but there's no change possible that will improve America's food production situation. As the big winner, it can only get worse.
I think too many people believe that America is in the good position its in because of some innate greatness of the country that won't change, but the truth is that America was also dealt a great hand and any reshuffling of the deck is far more likely to generate a worse position than a better one. The First World were the big winners in the rule-the-planet lottery. If they were smart, they would do everything possible to help the rest of the world maintain that status quo. If they were smart.
Ha ha. The RGGI states just get their power from non-RGGI states and Canada.
...for invading China and ridding them of their weapons of mass destruction called "coal-fired plants"?
Kerry is being brilliantly violent, stupid, and jingoistic all at once.
Kerry is just a tool of the Rothschilds, just like every other major US politician.
In fact the entire concept of making money off global warming was devised by Rothschild bankers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdqNds9pNuI
You see people, there always has to be a generic conflict to enrich bankers and industrialists. Whether it be the 9/11 inside job to create a terror boogyman, or "The Cold War" farce created by the bankers with the US and Russia actually allies, or this new "Weapon of mass destruction" Global warming - the endgame is to line the bankers pockets , taxing everyone on Earth for their "carbon footprint".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_cycle
Ha ha. The RGGI states just get their power from non-RGGI states and Canada.
Question: How CO2 is produced out-of-state to support RGGI states??
Answer: of course you don't know what you are talking about
And Eastern Canada is doing the same thing as RGGI. Heard of Dunning-Kruger?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
If Climate Change is a weapon of Mass Destruction, then the US is part of the so called Axis of Evil of Climate Change.
Top offenders of Global Warming - http://guardianlv.com/2014/01/global-warming-has-top-six-offenders/
Not knowing anything about carp in the great lakes, I automatically think that one hydro dam on the chicago river would fix the problem wouldn't it? That way the water could still flow, but upstream fish migration would be blocked.
Dams blocking fish migration is seen as a negative effect elsewhere but in this case it sounds like a positive. Plus you get electricity too.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
That is almost entirely a benefit of much lower natural gas prices. I might add that environmentalists are currently screaming about new methods of obtaining those products which have enabled the sudden increase in cheap natural gas supply.
Fake posturing == PR == politics
Why are people continually surprised by this?
Calling them WMD is another PR tactic. But is it justified?
I always find it amusing when people discuss global warming as if it is the only major threat we have to worry about.
Superficially he is incorrect about it being the greatest WMD. Every major super power in the world has the ability to initiate a mass extinction event within hours/minutes and has done for some decades now.
But on a deeper level the instantaneous nature of said weapons and the losses the initiator would suffer themselves helps ensure that they are never used. Although this is not 100% guaranteed it has worked so far.
Global warming on the other hand appears to have already been initiated. It will require a huge effort (increasing exponentially every day) to reverse or even significantly mitigate it. By some counts it is already "too late" to stop the worst of it.
Add to that we have already demonstrated time and again that our socio-political structures cannot and will not deal with this issue in any significant way. In fact we spent decades in denial and for some of us we still are - such is the power of PR, primal fear and irrational thought.
Even our current pie in the sky promises and future initiatives (i.e. never going to happen) fall FAR short of having any significant impact.
We have to face it: As a species we just suck at this stuff.
On a "history of the earth" based time scale the difference between one day and on hundred years is irrelevant - so the immediacy of nuclear weapons is not really a factor.
The only positive thing you say is that global warming will give us more time to adapt and while our society and population will be absolutely devastated and severely reduced we will still continue to survive. With nuclear weapons this may not be the case. Life will almost certainly go on, we may very well not.
And in the end, for those of us who are brave enough to accept it, society MUST be reduced and diminished in some way in the long term future. Our current population and way of life is not sustainable by any measure and its exponential growth rate just makes the idea of sustainable living ridiculous - even with "green" initiatives.
Add to this the fact that even whispering about population control is political suicide and you can see that, yet again, the human race is completely incapable of defending itself against large scale, global threats.
Even more so while the minority like to talk about being "green", the majority live in exceptionally wasteful ways and could not care one iota for the concept - many become rabid animals at the mere mention of green initiatives. (which I actually agree are ridiculous if you don't address population)
So in the end our current society must fall and fall it will. But it most likely wont be the end and things will continue in some other form. And we will have a lot more science and technology under our belt to help us through this period when it comes.
Call me an idealistic optimist if you must.
But what will that society look like? Who will be running it? What will the average person's quality of life be like? How skewed will the distribution of wealth in this resource-limited world?
These things I am less optimistic about. Hell, I am already cynical about these things now.....
This may be off topic but you struck a nerve. I was involved in a project to place an electric barrier on this canal to prevent the spread of these fish. Our barrier has a 98% success rate when used properly, which is only a delaying tactic I know. As we were testing the barrier, a friend of mine watched a hawk grab one of these carp from below our barrier where they were massing, fly upstream of our barrier and then loose the fish back into the water. It was very discouraging. Nature finds a way!
Nuclear is economically superior to nearly every other form of power when you consider both its actual costs (not the inflated costs of lawsuits and regulatory hurdles erected by anti-nuke activists and the people they dupe into helping them) and the capabilities it brings (many other power sources cannot perform as large sources of standby power to fill-in the gaps and unpredictability in sources like wind and solar and also adapt to fast changes in demand on the grid). If you engineer the other systems to make them as capable as nuclear and then burden them with artificial legal hurdles they too look insanely expensive; this is a propaganda tactic of the anti-science left: use government and lawsuits to make the things you hate artificially expensive, then argue that they are bad because they are so expensive...
No, you in Europe have NOT decided you do not like nuclear. Yes, SOME of you (the children of the European "greenies" of the 80's who confused nuclear power with nuclear war) ran away from it, but France, for example, gets most of its power from nuclear reactors
everything becomes a nail
Post 9-11 we passed laws giving government the power to take actions it previously could not take if "weapons of mass destruction" were involved. Theis term USED to apply only to weapons the military used to label as used in "NBC Warfare" (NBC = Nuclear, Biological, Chemical). These weapons were considered unique primarily because they caused large-scale damage that could not be controlled by the people who deploy them (Germs, Gasses, and fallout blow with the wind and can kill huge numbers of innocent civilians, even completely unintentionally). Indeed, when Bush used "weapons of mass destruction" as one of several justifications for invading Iraq (citing reports of yellowcake uranium and of chemical weapons capabilities) he was still within this defintion. By the end of the Bush administration, however, Governments at all levels have found that if they label something a "weapon of mass destruction" they get money and power - so they have started labelling everything they can "WMD".
There's a cautionary lesson here for those who care to hear it... and those who fail to learn it now will probably learn it later (or their children will) as freedom and liberty are eroded by growing, power-hungry, control-freak government.
NOTE: The Obama administration has actually officially charged the surviving "Boston Bomber" with deploying WMDs (typical kitchen pressure cookers) - so I guess the proof is now in: Obama has effectively certified in court that Bush/Cheney were correct that Saddam Husseign DID have WMDs.... (and so do millions of average Americans)
If climate change is now a weapon of mass destruction and the US and the West are the predominate causes of it, does that mean they are guilty of war crimes (related to the WMDs)?
Since the US actually met its 2012 Kyoto target (coincidentally, of course, since the US didn't actually ratify the treaty), and many other "western" countries did not, perhaps we turns states evidence** and get a reduced sentence?
**Of course, the economic crash, accounted for about 1/2 of it, but as the economy rebounded, US switched coal to natural gas (more efficient) for the other 1/2. Europe switch nuclear to coal (more dirty) because they don't have big natural gas reserves to fall back on (and politicians don't apparently count in Kyoto accounting)...
The Hoover Dam was built during the Great Depression when labour and material costs were at a particularly low ebb and 100 people died in building it - health and safety was fairly lax. So the Hoover Dam build cost is artificially low. A better comparison would be a solar plant against the current cost of building a similar dam.
A rough estimate might be gained from scaling the Three Gorges Damn build costs from $26 billion to $2.6 billion based on relative sizes, although that would underestimate things a bit based on relative labour costs and the cost of the water disruption the Hoover Dam created, so $5 billion might be nearer the mark.
Hydroelectricity is an old technology and the low hanging fruit have been picked so there are not so many places to put cost effective installations.
If it is only costs, so what you are going to do with the waste?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
There is no prooven low waste technology.
There is only the strange US fallacy about spend fuel == waste (hint: that is not the same thing)!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I mean, Kerry's the guy who as Senator led the charge to kill the Integral Fast Reactor back in '94, easily making him one of the 100 people alive in the world today who are personally most responsible for carbon emissions. So, when the fucking asshole talks about the threat of climate change, is he bragging about his role in causing it?
There is a difference between something that "only can provide baseload" like old fashioned nuclear plants (slashdotters keep claiming modern nuclear plants can also follow load) and something like wind that ALSO ONLY CAN PROVIDE BASELOAD ... but costs nothing.
Oh yeah, you now scream wind and solar can not provide base load: because you don't actually know what the term 'base load' means. Hint: it does not mean what you think and another hint, the american wikipedia page is wrong, too!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"UK to get a part Chinese bid to agree to build the plant after all the other bidders such as France's EDF dropped out"
It's being built by EDF with a small amount of additional Chinese funding.
but my point was that if the poster can't see the urgency or validity of global climate change, it's unlikely he can understand the issue with non-native fish species
Maybe you ought to come up with new points then? It's quite disingenuous to compare an opinion with the concrete observable of depopulation of native species by an invasive species.
No one is proposing hamstringing human civilization that I can see.
It's just a natural consequence of inhibiting human activities on the basis of poorly supported science.
We're talking about moving into the 21st century by shifting to energy production that is based on sources that will last far longer than fossil fuels will last.
A move that would be even better later on in the 21st Century.
By reducing the amount of warming and ocean acidification, we're helping ensure future economic prosperity.
And by forcing ourselves to enduring huge costs now rather than later, we'll be helping to ensure future poverty.
I suppose change is just scary to some people.
Change for change's sake.
"Wind is now cheaper than every fossil fuel save gas, and will be cheaper than gas in five or so years. "
What? How come to get electricity from wind farms COSTS MORE?? Get a grip!
"US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Indonesians that man-made climate change could threaten their entire way of life,"
Does this bone head really think people in the U.S. are going to buy this cr@p - seriously? How about man made FREEZING! In the upper mid west where we have more average low temperatures BELOW ZERO than in the last 10 years. And are being buried in snow.And how about the south were they are seeing freezing temperatures and snow and ice like crazy. What about those in the east - freezing temperatures, snow, ice...
Yeah man made global warming sure... All those people continually pushing this BS should be arrested and locked up in prison for the rest of their lives for pushing obvious LIES LIES LIES!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
This is more dangerous than anything "man made global warming" could ever be! Why is John Kerry not waring the Indonesians about this danger?
Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) is a colorless and odorless chemical compound, also referred to by some as Dihydrogen Oxide, Hydrogen Hydroxide, Hydronium Hydroxide, or simply Hydric acid. Its basis is the highly reactive hydroxyl radical, a species shown to mutate DNA, denature proteins, disrupt cell membranes, and chemically alter critical neurotransmitters. The atomic components of DHMO are found in a number of caustic, explosive and poisonous compounds such as Sulfuric Acid, Nitroglycerine and Ethyl Alcohol.
Ref:
http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
Even Californians know this is a dangerous item - they are even signing petitions to BAN it!
http://www.infowars.com/califo...
The Truth is a Virus!!!
As to hamstrings - Did building the hoover dam "hamstring the US". If not, then why do you think this [youtube.com] will "hamstring the US".
Build enough of them and yes, it will hamstring the US. I can't imagine why anyone would think that relying on a $5.60 per watt generating facility (especially when solar cells already can do $2 per watt for the same thing) or allowing the people who made that decision to continue to make such costly and irresponsible decisions, will do otherwise.
Note that the facility only went through due to a loan guarantee from the US government for about 70% of the total investment. My view is that these things will probably buy capital equipment and services from the parent company, and then go belly up once the subsidiary can no longer make loan payments. So most of that loan will end up in the hands of the instigators while the debt will go to the public.
Because "AGW" is a well known acronym in online discussion of climate.
HAARP was shutdown in May of 2013 and gee all the high heat, tornadoes, hurricanes and hash weather seemed to just STOP or was VERY minimal this year and the colder temperatures moved in. So this makes one wonder how much of the activities of HAARP were causing the issues. Even the program director on the project had said in an interview that when they fire up HAARP, they literally set the sky on fire.
Ref:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Interview with Dr. Paul Kossey, HAARP Program Director
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The father of weather weapons - Ben Livingston's interview is rather interesting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Just stop consuming so much, ride your bike to work, use LED lighting...
And there's the usual cave-speak. What is with this obsession with consumption? You know, if a resource is overconsumed, then the price of it goes up and people consume less of it. Markets have solved consumption.
and there's no reduction in quality of life
What are you going to put on the line, if you're wrong?
That some people drive to work, and then maintain gym memberships where they sit inside and pedal a stationary bike, is really really weird to me....
Their time is worth more to them than your perception of the value of the resources they consume as a result.
What? How come to get electricity from wind farms COSTS MORE?? Get a grip!
Ever heard of levelized energy costs. (Of course not.) Look it up. Cost of electricity by source.
Where I live there are no state subsidies, and the only Federal subsidy I get is a tax break, so I paid out of pocket for my solar setup. It paid for itself in six months though, and now it's actually making me money. It's so nice getting a check from the electric company :)
I just wonder what would happen if all my neighbors got solar power, and optimized it the way I did. The electric company can't possibly pay all of us for the power we produce, so they would necessarily scale down operations immensely, perhaps becoming only maintainers of grid infrastructure?
But now we get childish anti-science potshots making it up to score 5, Informative? What the heck happened? Has Slashdot been taken over by commenting shrills paid by the Koch brothers? Or did all the intelligent Slashdotters simply leave long ago? If so, could someone please tell me where they went?
As always, post moderations swing wildly at first, but then even out over time. It might have been +5 when you saw it, but by the time ran across it it had dropped to -1. These things usually sort themselves out, but it takes time.
Do more reading on the subject of the cost of the cost of electricity from wind power... Like the subsidies that are used to try to bring the cost down, higher grid level costs like Europe found out 10 years ago. There are LOTS of "hidden" costs in Wind power...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ch...
http://www.atinstitute.org/wp-...
The Truth is a Virus!!!
When it comes to greenhouse gaz emissions, US is the worst offender. Why does he has to convince future victims that there is a problem on which they have no influence?
you can be forgiven for not noticing that the Syrian civil war was triggered by internal mass migrations. In 2009-2011, 2M people in a country of 20M abandon their farms and headed to the cites putting strain of infrastructure and employment. The cause was not some madman dictator's attempt at social engineering, nor had people suddenly work out said dictator was mad because face book had arrived. It was triggered by the worst drought ever recorded in the "fertile crescent" (historical records span several millennia in Syria since this is the same region humans invented agriculture).
That would be "climate change" of the desertification sort, not "climate change" of the anthropogenic global warming sort. Syria is notorious for mismanaging its water resources and its neighbors aren't much better. And droughts happen in the Middle East. Combine the two and you get "worst drought ever recorded".
A similar thing happened in the US in the 1930s with a period of drought in the midwest almost a decade long. Yet it never got blamed on "climate change", but rather on "bad farming practices".
Wind can't provide base load by itself because it is variable, out of the control of the generator. I gather that's what the original poster was going on about.
But a mix of wind and any peaking load or load following plant (which includes hydro and as you note modern nuclear) can provide base load.
It is because of RGGI, similar carbon regulations in other parts of the world, and the history of such programs, that economists think that the cost of climate action will be negligible.
Let's not listen to the retarded economists please. Cap and trade is cheap when the cap is well above the level of actual generation of CO2. When it is the other way around, then things get expensive.
If you're always going to set cap levels above actual emissions of CO2, then you might as well not have it in the first place.
Eh, solar actually is following something of an exponential decay curve at the moment. We'll see if that extrapolates.
fyi, the RGGI carbon targets are decreased each year. RGGI has been around for a long time (before the gas boom), and successfully reducing the carbon footprint of NE USA. The gas boom has lead to an unforeseen reduction in CO2 emissions, which have left the projected caps too high. The RGGI is working to develop revised targets.
These people aren't idiots.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
These people aren't idiots.
That breezy assertion will be proven false when the condition I specified happens. It probably won't be California electricity crisis bad, but hard caps are idiotic, and you'll see why.
That breezy assertion will be proven false when the condition I specified happens. It probably won't be California electricity crisis bad, but hard caps are idiotic, and you'll see why.
Your assertion has *already* happened, and it is *already* being dealt with. You can read, right? right?? (face-palm.)
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Sure thing. Let's start by removing the $70 trillion in subsidies provided to oil companies; then we can do exactly that while letting The Market sort out the winners from the losers.
Your assertion has *already* happened
In Europe, it happened. It wasn't the worse thing ever, but it did create a mess.
looks like you'll have to get fishing in a big way
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I don;t understand why the solar farms have to be built. If the solar panels were installed on every building and they initially powered that building and any excess is sent to the grid. All the engineers/designers seem to want to build as few power generators to serve as many as possible thereby creating a weak link if one giant power station goes off line. If they built more smaller power stations, there would be more jobs.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Start out with being not-stupid about reusing some of the waste (Nuclear reprocessing).
Then at least, you have a lot less waste.
Welcome to American politics, where politicians say they are for something, but are really just out for their own self interest.
Curious: Why did you include the word "American" in that sentence?
Put it back where you found the elements in the first place?
If we're okay to have them buried deep underground in their unspent pre-mined state then why care about having them there in their spent post-fuel state?
If you have an irrational fear of buried nuclear isotopes then you should probably be more scared about the unspent versions that occur naturally.
Yeah sorry, just had a look to refresh my memory. EDF dropped their originally bid as a single entity, and Fujitsu dropped out completely as did the others.
The Chinese stake is 40% though, I wouldn't call that small by any measure. They're also free to take up to 100% eventually.
"What about economies of scale and the more appliance like, smaller scale fission reactor developed by Taylor Wilson? Wikipedia repeatedly has nuclear power as one of the cheapest sources available in different locations, if not the cheapest."
Right, naturally it is, but the problem is that we're not paying the price nowadays of nuclear power plants in a competitive market because the remaining firms that can and will do the projects are able to price gouge due to lack of competition. That drastically increases the real actual price - as I pointed out the cost of the UK's new nuclear will be double what we currently pay which makes it drastically more expensive than any current power generation option.
The UK doesn't have the in-house nuclear power plant building skills anymore so it can never ever access that theoretical cheap rate of nuclear power in practice because to have nuclear it's at the whim of foreign companies as to how much they want to charge.
"The HS2 rail project is reported to cost anywhere from £28 billion (with less tunneling) to £80 billion."
No one seriously thinks it'll cost £28 billion, I'm not even sure where that figure is from. The budget is £50bn and such projects are never, ever on or below budget.
"Did you leave out the price of labor to have the panels installed?"
I'm assuming you used headline numbers for a private installation or some such but a large percentage of those numbers consists of tax - the labourers alone will be taxed at least 20% on their income through income tax alone, and then there's NI, and most of what's left will be spent and incur VAT. There's corporation tax for the company involved, and import tariffs on panels if bought outside the EU and so on and so forth. There's also profit for the installation company itself. There's also a return on power sold back to industry and possibly even overseas as it would generate a surplus which can reasonably be included as it's not as if this is something that could be done overnight.
I'm not saying we should go down this route, I'm actually personally a fan of nuclear so if your key point is that, that I shouldn't hate on nuclear then hey, I'm completely with you. But without spending even more to build up a new indigenous nuclear power plant building industry than we're just never going to see that cheap nuclear, it's always going to be more expensive as we're held to ransom over it. It's cheap if you can do it yourself and tell predatory overseas companies to go fuck themselves, but the UK stupidly threw away that option in the past. It's just not open to us anymore.
Use nuclear. Problem solved.
Try to find insurance for your nuclear plant. You can't.
And if you can't insure it, there's obviously something very wrong with the associated risks.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Unless you are implying a shift to nuclear power this shift to energy production that will last longer than fossil fuels will hamstring society.
The technologies we have available to us right now make nuclear, coal, natural gas, and hydro the cheapest energy production we have. Those energy sources are roughly the same cost per kWh. Everything else, wind, solar, geothermal, cost at least twice as much. Doubling the price of electricity would have a disastrous effect on the economy and our standard of living. The price of everything would go up since everything relies on energy.
As of right now the only option we have that would reduce carbon output, provide reliable energy production, and do so at a price on parity with coal, is nuclear power.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Yes, let's remove the subsidies to oil companies. I completely agree. We should not subsidize oil, coal, or natural gas. Let these people pay their own costs for once.
Now, with that out of the way I will say that we should also remove subsidies for ethanol, wind, solar, and geothermal. Let them pay their own costs for R&D. Let the market sort them out. These energy sources need to sink or swim on their own. We cannot afford to subsidize them forever.
It annoys me to no end how people will bring up oil subsidies as somehow keeping wind and solar from taking over the market. Here's a clue about wind and solar, you can't pour that stuff into an airplane and expect it to fly. We will be burning oil until it takes more energy to pump it out of the ground then what we get from burning it, and we will still be pumping it out of the ground for years after that. We burn oil because it has properties that no other energy source has, we can pour it into a tank and expect it to stay there.
Do I think that we should subsidize oil because it has these wonderful properties? No. What I do think is that the federal government realizes that current battleships, bombers, and jeeps run on oil. To keep them running means making sure the infrastructure for that oil exists and has sufficient capacity. An easy way to do that is to give them money. That does not make it right, it's just how the world works right now.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Yes. It's called the waste annihilating molten salt reactor, look it up.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The federal government is not taking climate change seriously. As much as these politicians bitch and moan about how nothing is done about it they have no one to blame but themselves.
As I see it the federal government regulations are preventing research into alternative energy. There's so many regulations that if someone so much as sneezes a dozens forms have to be filled out. I'm not suggesting that the government allow people to pollute rivers in the name of scientific advancement. I'm saying the government is taking safety above all else, to the point they will allow our house to burn down so as not to create a tripping hazard with the water hose.
One example is that I believe Prohibition set back bio-fuel development at least fifty years. Prior to Prohibition it was not uncommon for farmers to turn a portion of their crop into alcohol for their tractors. While Prohibition no longer exists the regulations on alcohol production are such that anyone that wants to do research on it will have to have a full time lawyer to keep the BATFE from throwing them all in prison.
Even though we have seen considerable advances in nuclear power there is only so much that can be simulated. The simulation is only as good as the data provided to it. If we want to see cheap safe and reliable nuclear power then we will need actual production size reactors built. They will not be perfect, there is always the possibility of something going terribly wrong. This gets to my earlier analogy, nuclear power is the water hose that can put out the climate change fire. Yes, we might trip over it and bust our heads on the ground. We have to do something, the house is burning.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Because I am an American and I don't have experience with the politics of the rest of the world. While I would be surprised if the rest of the world was any different, I didn't want to be presumptuous.
Bang!
What the fuck happened to you, man? Shit, your ass used to be beautiful!
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The problem is programs like "cap and trade" designed to punish companies that are productive thus destroying industry and jobs. Crazy programs like that are what conservatives oppose.
Cap and trade isn't designed to "punish companies".
Its designed, by conservative economists, to let companies make money by doing the right thing.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The Hoover Dam cost $824 million in 2013 dollars to build and averages 4,200,000 mWhs of electricity per year.
Zow, $824 million for something that only makes 4.2 killowatt hours a year! What a rip-off.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Finally: nuclear power can only provide base load anyway. You can't ramp it up and down to follow demand.
Because in your version of Europe France doesn't exist.
Yes, you can run load-following nuclear. France does.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Because where we digged them out they where in low concentration and usually low radioactive.
The waste is usually highly radioactive, often solve able in water, and in high amounts and high concentrations.
Perhaps you should read up how your country handles waste and educate yourself.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
slashdotters keep claiming modern nuclear plants can also follow load
For versions of "modern" than mean "built since the 1980's".
And there is no "claim", other than in the sense that some slashdotters claim that "the earth orbits the sun". It's observation. Yes, nukes can load follow, France runs some of it's reactor fleet in load following mode. It has to - 80% of French generating capacity is nuclear.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
And what you're claiming about nuclear there is dispatchable power, where wind and solar together have the BEST dispatchable power curves, fitting the demand curves far better NATURALLY as consequence of how they work.
You have some problem with taking free money from the chinese?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Wind can ofc. provide base load by itself. Again: you as well don't know what base load actually is. ... how you fill it is up to you. In the near future that will be wind.
If wind can not provide base load, why does Denmark get 90% of its base load from wind? And Germany roughly 10%?
Base load: the amount of load you always feed into the grid, regardless of demand. In Germany roughly 40% of the peakload, lowest demand at night, roughly 25%.
Wow, why do they still pump 40% into the grid when the demand is lower? To fill pumped storages.
Base load is a flat line on your fancy load curve
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
But go ahead, tell me where the words "living in a cave" are in
"Just stop consuming so much, ride your bike to work, use LED lighting..."
We shall wait.
Or are you being alarmist here and making up a scary scenario nowhere apparent merely to get the fear response to bludgeon people over to "your side"?
But france plants are *older*. ... it is just a thought. France nuclear percentage btw. is some where at 70% (73% I believe) ... you know: they build wind and solar plants, too.
And they have so many of them that they actually don't need to load follow in the strict sense. They can divide the reactor fleet into groups, one that stays constant, one that is ramped down when demand lowers, one that is ramped up when demand increases.
The one that got ramped down can be further ramped down, but need a 6h-8h rasting time till they can be ramped up again.
Note: I don't know if France is doing that
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
And they have so many of them that they actually don't need to load follow in the strict sense. They can divide the reactor fleet into groups, one that stays constant, one that is ramped down when demand lowers, one that is ramped up when demand increases.
The one that got ramped down can be further ramped down, but need a 6h-8h rasting time till they can be ramped up again.
You don't know what you are talking about, so you invent theories instead of searching for facts. Strange.
Just a couple of seconds googling comes up with, on Wikipedia of all difficult to find places:
In France, however, nuclear power plants use load following. French PWRs use "grey" control rods, in order to replace chemical shim, without introducing a large perturbation of the power distribution. These plants have the capability to make power changes between 30% and 100% of rated power, with a slope of 5% of rated power per minute. Their licensing permits them to respond very quickly to the grid requirements.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
My answer is to electrify the whole river to kill the damn things. Why are we not trapping and eradicating them?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
D'oh! I meant MWh... That's what you get when you're trying to normalize between TWhs, MWhs and kWhs. Stupid IEEE case inconsistency....
You're not making any sense, why would the stuff we mine be "low radioactive" as you illiterately put it. If it was it'd be no use, the whole point in nuclear energy is we use the highly radioactive properties to generate energy as a result of the reactions triggered. If the resultant waste was more radioactive then we wouldn't need to pursue fusion because our existing fission would be churning out constantly more energetic materials forever but that's not how it works. The materials become depleted as we produce energy with them which means they're less radioactive than they were to start with.
So never mind you telling me to learn how my country handles waste to educate myself, perhaps instead you should learn at least 3rd grade English and Science before mouthing off like an idiot.
Because I am an American [...], I didn't want to be presumptuous.
So much ... this is ... words ... brain ... that ...
As I said, I have no idea how the frensh run their nuclear plants. Nevertheless you demand links and fail to bring your own ... allas I have to google myself.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
As I said, I have no idea how the frensh run their nuclear plants. Nevertheless you demand links and fail to bring your own ... allas I have to google myself.
You have no idea, but you tell us how they might do it.
Supprisingly, you are wrong.
I never asked you for links. I don't need your links. I already know how the French do load following, that's why I find it so strange that you, who admit you don't know, are so ready to come up with bizzare theories rather than searching (or even just asking) for information.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
" 'shoddy scientists' and 'extreme ideologues'"
Name calling and ridicule are the tools of desperate bureaucrats who have little faith in the empirical evidence that supports their cause. Fomenting hate and fear of those who espouse ideologies that differ from that which serves their purpose is that old and trusted tool of the political bully.
What a joke. All based on predictions from models that have never been correct.
To everyone who thinks that CO2 controls the climate I would ask that you answer the following question:
How long with rising CO2 and flat or falling temperatures before you admit CO2 does not control the climate? 20 years? 30? 50? Never?
The most ACCURATE and longest running prediction of climate was done by Dr Libby & Dr Pandolfi in the 1970s.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/1979-before-the-hockey-team-destroyed-climate-science/
Others like Dr Easterbrook accurately called the current warming peak in 1999 and now says we have 20 more years of cold weather coming:
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/climate-scientist-who-got-it-right-predicts-20-more-years-global
In the ground, it's very slightly radioactive. The half-life of U-235 is about seven hundred million years, and it's mixed with U-238 with a half-life of over four billion years. Then we refine it to have more U-235 (we don't want to get even close to weapons-grade usually) and stick it in a reactor.
Once in a reactor, in sufficient quantity, we hit it with neutrons to get it started. The neutrons, when they hit the nuclei, cause them to split up, which releases more neutrons. These neutrons can also cause U-235 nuclei to fission, and so keep the reaction going. This has nothing to do with natural radioactivity, but rather a chain reaction that almost never occurs in nature. This is how we get energy out of uranium.
The power is mostly provided by the heat of the fission. The radioactive by-products are far more dangerous to handle, and don't provide the same amount of energy. We could design reactors to use more of the waste, but so far that hasn't been done, for political (we do not want it to be easy to create Pu-239 in quantity.) and economic reasons.
This leaves us with spent fuel rods. These are highly radioactive and dangerous. The most radioactive isotopes decay the fastest, of course, and so it will become less radioactive fairly fast. However, something can be very radioactive and have a half-life measured in years, so it won't decay that fast. The radioactive iodine released at Fukushima is all gone*, but most of the radioactive cesium is still there and still dangerous. Radium, with its half-life of about 1600 years, is quite dangerous.
So, we're left with highly radioactive isotopes in quantity, which are usually kept in pools (which keep them cool and provide good shielding) to cool down, either for long-term storage or to make them somewhat less dangerous to transport and safer for long-term storage.
*A mole of I-131 is 6.23x10^23 atoms, and masses 131 grams. Rounding up, 10^24 atoms is about 2^80, which means that 80 half-lives reduce that to an expectation of 1 atom, and more half-lives reduce the expectation lower. 80 half-lives is a little more than 640 days, which is considerably less than two years. There's been a lot of extra half-lives since then. I don't know how much was released initially, but assuming it was less than 131 tons we're adding on no more than 20 extra half-lives to get it all, or less than six additional months.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If climate change is WMD, it must be wielded by a certain faction
The most potent element in climate change is methane gas.
The greatest living producers of methane gas are bovines, (cattle) on its own, contributing up to 30% of world greenhouse gas emissions [EPA report
The number of bovines in captivity (in US, Europe and Asia, excluding India) tend to outnumber those in the wild
For the captive cattle population in the US, roughly 1/3 are converted to foodstuffs each year [source: "download fact sheet"]
We've got them right where we want them, but somehow they still manage to execute their global-climate attacks. Time for a diplomatic solution?
(j/k ... this is 'Murica, we don't do diplomatic solutions.)
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
Thing is, fossil fuels have other costs that renewable power sources don't. If you don't take those into account somehow, either by slapping taxes on them or subsidizing other sources, you get a distorted marketplace.
Government is about the only sort of entity that can deal with costs that are hard to internalize.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
S'okay, I grokked what you meant anyway :)
Now here's some more math for ya to do: to supply the country with solar power, how many square miles need be covered by such facilities?
And as to environmental hypocrisy... where I used to live in the high desert, woe unto the landowner who reported seeing an 'endangered' kangaroo rat; your property would be essentially 'frozen' and you couldn't do anything with it. But the same PTB had no trouble handing over a couple thousand acres of the same habitat to solar energy companies... and solar as it's being done in that area is very much scorched-earth.
[Incidentally, to see kangaroo rats, one need merely go out into the brush at night. In Real Life, they're nearly as thick as rabbits. Endangered by what standard??]
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
That's actually a problem. Where are the Constitution's teeth, in the event that those charged with upholding it decide to do the opposite??
I think the Founders' assumption was that all three branches of gov't wouldn't go bad at once, because, checks and balances. Optimists, they were. :(
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Nuclear is, and always has been, an economic failure. No one ever built and operated a nuclear plant without one form or another for government subsidies
This can also be stated as:
Solar, Wind, and Geothermal is, and always has been, an economic failure. No one ever built and operated a solar, wind, or geothermal plant without one form or another for government subsidies
So, what's your point exactly?
And I guess you have a clear and viable plan on what to to with the waste?
Reprocess it into more fuel, like France does?
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
If you think a mere 3 million acre-feet of water is enough to cure California's drought problems you must be smoking some of that fine Humboldt County weed.
If wind can not provide base load, why does Denmark get 90% of its base load from wind?
Because it has Scandinavian hydroelectric power to smooth out supply.
Wow, why do they still pump 40% into the grid when the demand is lower? To fill pumped storages.
Oh look, load following power as I claimed.
In the near future that will be wind.
Except when there isn't enough wind. Then it'll be filled by the peaking load/load following that I mentioned.
These alarmist scientists are so committed to frightening everyone into believing that global warming is a man made threat that they had to go and weaponize it. Just like Oppenheimer. Too focused on what they can do to consider if they should do it. When will we learn!
The US really dodged a bullet there in 2004. G.W. Bush is a genius compared to the Ketckup King.
There's nothing irrational about it, given that the post-fuel isotopes are millions of times more concentrated, and hence more dangerous, than the ones in the ground.
You clearly have zero knowledge of how uranium ore is processed into usable fuel.
Only an time fraction of the original ore is uranium.
Even then, the radiation level from an entire ton from of freshly-processed and purified U3O8 is about half that of what you will experience on a commercial jet flight.
Even after the fuel has been used in a reactor, it is still produces millions of times more radiation than the original ore.
Second line should have been "Only a tiny fraction of the original ore is uranium".
ROTFLMAO @ "Chumpy" -> http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
(You sure "talk a good game" -> http://games.slashdot.org/comm... but you can't even produce a MERE SCRIPT!, windbag...)
You aren't even on the leve of a "script kiddie", & full of HOT AIR!
You certainly won't reply there in that 2nd link I posted either, as that would remove your downmods to my posts like this one you can't validly disprove or justify your downmod on -> http://games.slashdot.org/comm...
Oh, I suspect that IS the case here (simply logging out of a registered account & trolling by ac is a common troll trick around here OR using alternate registered 'luser' accounts sockpuppets to do the job will also, & Lumpy is LOADED with those & trolling - which doesn't matter: He PROVES he's all talk, no action (or skills, OR brains, lol))
(You're all TALK, & NO action "CHUMPY!)
* :)
(You know it, I know it, & so does anyone reading AND laughing their asses off @ you now... lol!)
APK
P.S.=> Answer the question in the subject-line Lumpy - since you had to "eat your wrods" in the 1st link above flavored with your FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH + the "bitter taste of SELF-defeat", lol...
... apk
One can dream.
ROTFLMAO @ "Chumpy" -> http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
(You sure "talk a good game" -> http://games.slashdot.org/comm... but you can't even produce a MERE SCRIPT!, windbag...)
You aren't even on the leve of a "script kiddie", & full of HOT AIR!
You certainly won't reply there in that 2nd link I posted either, as that would remove your downmods to my posts like this one you can't validly disprove or justify your downmod on -> http://games.slashdot.org/comm...
Oh, I suspect that IS the case here (simply logging out of a registered account & trolling by ac is a common troll trick around here OR using alternate registered 'luser' accounts sockpuppets to do the job will also, & Lumpy is LOADED with those & trolling - which doesn't matter: He PROVES he's all talk, no action (or skills, OR brains, lol))
(You're all TALK, & NO action "CHUMPY!)
* :)
(You know it, I know it, & so does anyone reading AND laughing their asses off @ you now... lol!)
APK
P.S.=> Answer the question in the subject-line Lumpy - since you had to "eat your wrods" in the 1st link above flavored with your FOOT IN YOUR MOUTH + the "bitter taste of SELF-defeat", lol...
... apk
Jesus, what an idiot.
What is happening right now in the upper midwest is called "weather" not "climate".
Climate is a large-scale phenomenon (e.g. hemispheres) averaged over a long time (years or decades)
while weather is a small-scale phenomenon (e.g. "upper midwest") measured over a short time (weeks or months).
Looking at world climate, eight of the ten hottest years in history have occurred since 2000. The other two were in the late 90's.
I will agree for the moment that only government can internalize the externalities because it has little relevance to my argument. Who does it is irrelevant as the result is the same.
First we need to define the externalities. It can be defined as the CO2 output itself, or the net effect on the atmosphere. If we define it as the CO2 output then we'd internalize it by building systems that can reverse the process. This system must be able to draw the CO2 out of the air without adding more or causing some other economic or environmental hazard. The treatment of the net effect on the atmosphere can be done in a number of ways such as using taxation to divert funds from those burning the oil to those affected so that they can perform the tasks needed to reverse or minimize the effects.
One way these people can minimize the CO2 damage is to build dikes to hold back the rising sea levels, develop machines to spread water vapor or particulates into the air to reflect back solar rays. Or these people can take the money to implement the first solution, pull CO2 out of the air. Which ever means they decide upon will require power. Using oil, coal, or natural gas to power this will only make the problem worse. These processes will take, barring some very interesting physics, more energy than that produced from the carbon producing energy sources. The laws of thermodynamics are against us.
So we will need an energy source that consumes CO2 and produces nothing that would be detrimental to society or the environment, and do so at a cost on par with burning that oil. I believe we have such a technology by pairing up waste annihilating molten salt reactors and jet fuel from seawater converters. As these two technologies together we can build an infrastructure that produces energy in a form that we can use to power our battleships, bombers, and battle tanks. By products include pure oxygen, fresh water, helium, and radioactive isotopes needed for medicine and space exploration. Inputs to the system includes seawater, municipal waste water, spent nuclear fuel from LWR power plants, and thorium. We have plenty of these and they cost next to nothing.
Do we internalize the externalities by taxing oil? No. We must continue the subsidies to make sure our ability to defend our nation continues. What we can do is shift the subsidies from the oil taken out of the ground to the oil we can create from seawater. After enough time passes we won't need to drill for oil, it will be cheaper to produce it. Any CO2 produced from burning it goes into the environment where it gets collected again for producing more jet fuel.
Only nuclear power can do this. We don't have the technology to make solar or wind produce the heat needed to make it work, or with the reliability to make it cheap. I've been assured by some very smart people that this technology works and can be done cheaply enough to compete with current oil, coal, and nuclear. The problem is that the federal government does not see this the same way. They've been doing energy the same way for fifty years. To change their mind will take education and a desire to act. The government talks a lot about acting but they don't seem to have the desire.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
gosgog:
Its not just Power plants (tho' a major contributor), in many cases has to do with manufacturing, & in many parts of the world...emissions from all types of vehicles.
Look at the traffic problems in many of the worlds major cities...so why the hell are we continuing to to put more & more vehicles on the road, without a major effort to remove older ones? Transportation needs CONTROL for Environment problems too. Here in Southeast Asia, case in point Major Chinese Cities, a few years ago, workers left for work on Bicycles...now look! Aviation, years back in the U.S. one in every 20 actually Flew...now look, Asia same! Plastic Bags now actually clogging some areas of Oceans, etc., etc., Big Business runs Politicians in every country and the end result is what we live with! So we want CLIMATE CHANGE? We need major Business overhaul to do it!
I used to live and still work in Mass.
Now the rest of you know why we were trying to get rid of this guy.
What an a-hole.
WMD? Seriously?
flamebait
is plenty of government and industry money to do "right" by the next generation
Government and Industry may have the money, but they sure aren't spending it like they are concerned about the environment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies#Allocation_of_subsidies_in_the_United_States
economists think that the cost of climate action will be negligible. The true alarmists are the ones preaching economic Armageddon.
I don't understand why more people don't get that the effect on the economy is only about rate of change. If we mandate zero carbon tomorrow, of course the world is going to blow up. The arguments should be about the rate of change (away CO2 pollution), not whether we should change at all. Obviously non-renewables are, by definition, going to run out.
You still don't get what base load actually is?
And sorry: a country like Denmark or for that matter Germany always has enough wind. (* facepalm *) You never actually checked what wind is where it comes from where it goes to etc? I mean: read something about 'weather' or for that matter 'climate'?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Sorry, my you was perhaps inapropriated, I meant the general you of /. ;)
But if you, that means you in person, have a link about the Frensh plants, especially HOW they manage to get rid of excess Xenon, I would be grateful.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I don't understand why more people don't get that the effect on the economy is only about rate of change.
The answer is really quite simple: a vocal minority believe that government intervention in a free market is immoral and counter-productive. There are some very good arguments for this, but the idea has been reduced to absurdity, in part, because it is a useful meme for entrenched interests who want to preserve their "right" to pollute. The motives are more complicated than merely money -- there is huge institutional pressure to protect the status quo, and so denial of the polluting effect of CO2 is cognitively easy, and so is claiming that any action will blow up the world economy.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Alcola called--they want their tin foil hats back.
You still don't get what base load actually is?
Why do you keep asking that question? You can answer it yourself though I notice you never do.
And sorry: a country like Denmark or for that matter Germany always has enough wind.
Which is simply wrong. When Denmark or Germany generate less wind power than their minimum base load need, then they don't have enough wind.
As far as I know (just based on general reading) it's not a big problem - the plants used for load following are the ones more recently fuelled so they have enough ooomph to deal with any xenon poisoning. See http://www.claverton-energy.com/is-nuclear-power-flexible-does-it-have-load-following-capability.html
EDF do seem to sponsor research into this, e.g. http://researchers.edf.com/publications/theses/data-assimilation-for-xenon-dynamics-in-nuclear-plants-44311.html&return=44296%2526page%253D16
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Sorry or not, you aren't old enough to be part of this conversation.
I read up on it.
And surprise surprise, they use exactly the schema 'I envisioned' a few posts pack.
Google for: "french nuclear plant xenon poisoning"
Every Pdf (surprisingly top hits are nearly all PDFs ) comes to the conclusion that the plants can only be limited ramped up and dow.
If a plants is ramped down it needs to be ramped up again during a 45 minutes time frame (or faster, depending on exact configuration, fuel etc. of the plant). If that can not be done the plant has a 6h to 9h time frame in which it is either bound at its current output, or can only be ramped down further, but not up again.
Hence they try to avoid that the 45minutes limit hits by shuffling around production between plants.
In other words: if they had less plants and therefor bigger ones, it would not work.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Which is simply wrong. When Denmark or Germany generate less wind power than their minimum base load need, then they don't have enough wind.
And how should that happen in Denmark?
And again you prove: you don't know what base load actually is: there is no 'minimum base load'. There is only 'base load'. But perhaps you only are bad in choosing words.
Germany needs a few more years then all our base load comes from wind.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You're using a false dichotomy to derail conversation. Anthropogenic change can be addressed with or without the carp concern. It's not an "either, or" situation.
First misinform, then disrupt, huh? And do your kind always have to rely upon feeble minded fallacies to do that? You might as well change your name to something with the word "shill" in it because nobody is so obtuse that they can't see through your ridiculous distractions and manufactured disagreements.