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We Stopped At Two Nuclear Bombs; We Can Stop At Two Degrees.
Lasrick writes Dawn Stover writes in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that climate change is irreversible but not unstoppable. She describes the changes that are happening already and also those likely to happen, and compares what is coming to the climate of the Pliocene: 'Even if countries reduce emissions enough to keep temperatures from rising much above the internationally agreed-upon "danger" threshold of 2 degrees Celsius (which seems increasingly unlikely), we can still look forward to conditions similar to those of the mid-Pliocene epoch of 3 million years ago. At that time, the continents were in much the same positions that they are today, carbon dioxide levels ranged between 350 and 400 ppm, the global average temperature was 2 to 3 degrees Celsius higher than it is today (but up to 20 degrees higher than today at the northernmost latitudes), the global sea level was about 25 meters higher, and most of today's North American forests were grasslands and savanna.' Stover agrees with two scientists published in Nature Geoscience that 'Future warming is therefore driven by socio-economic inertia," and points the way toward changing a Pliocene future.
Considering there have been over 2000 nuclear tests
and "we" can do the stopping? George Carlin reference here.
We didn't stop at 2 nuclear bombs. We exploded them and exploded them like they were goddamn tic-tacs. We didn't even do that safely -- we exploded them near our own civilian populations, telling the people that it was harmless and not to worry about that fallout. Judging from our track record with the things, some politician in Washington had read too many comic books and was hoping that some of the civilians would develop super powers. Instead, they just got lymphoma and birth defects. We made those goddamn things and put them in the hands of the least responsible people on the planet and stopped only after irreparable harm was done to thousands of lives. So yeah, you can draw that analogy if you want to but I don't think it points to as rosy a future as you might think it does.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Some individuals are sensitive to CO2 levels as low as 600 ppm.
It's clear there too much political indifference to reduce emissions, so instead of trying to force skeptics/deniers/unbelievers into towing the line, why not a contract with them. You're choose to be on the bus and help reduce the problem, or stick to your guns and face consequences if it turns out the science was right. I imagine you'd start by laying down a set of climate benchmarks, agree on what is an acceptable variation under normal conditions, then should the averages begin to venture beyond those on the regular basis, and cause significant economic damage, the public (govt) confiscates all the assets of the entity, the directors, the board, and any previous board members/directors and anyone they gifted or passe don wealth to, from now on. Seems like a fair way to deal with the problem, since if you firmly believe things won't change you have nothing to lose. Sure we end up in the shit, but it's clear we end up in the shit anyway, at least this way we eventually there's some risk to be taken on-board and we save all the pointless arguments. Right now the carbon industry has nothing to lose by blocking their ears, and this is this problem
Where do you find that reference in this article? It references a number of studies from different sources, which one is "the nuclear power industry"?
And... where did the click-bait headline "we stopped at two bombs" come from!? Who's "we", and W(here)TF was it "stopped" at two bombs. Certainly not Alaska, Muaroa... Japan?
I'm guessing it's a missprint. Should of been "we (cant' handle our drugs/inner realities) stopped at two bongs . Which is where they stopped reading. What were they smoking? Not the kind herb.
Should of stopped about two metres from the keyboard. And had twenty bongs of the kind.
... I call BS on your report.
Increased CO2 emissions are actually greening the planet.
Frankly, what are people so concerned about? Climate's gonna change, people gonna die or relocate, society will have to adapt, animals will die out... But nature will adapt qnd so will we. It's gonna suck a lot but it's not gonna be a tangible end to anything.
It's about time I got my metapsychic powers and ramapithecus servants.
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And much of the now-occupied hinterlands of Europe and the USA were underwater... not so bad. Flag as Inappropriate
Butttt... the water was nice and warm. Of course it was relatively non-toxic then - won't be next time.
In Eurasia rodents did well, while primate distribution declined. But wait... there's more! Fucking big lava lamps (it was cool kids. You call them volcanoes now).
Your semi-literacy must be an embarrassment to you.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
because on average it causes bigger areas to live for larger amounts of species - ice age doing the opposite.
besides than that.. the mass extinction events don't seem to have occurred on high temperature averages?
doom and gloom, doom and gloom. and not going to affect anything unless you can stop china from using coal as far as emissions go.
it's just a feelie piece of writing, indicated by the "two atomic bombs" shit line. exploding of bombs happend for a long time after that, even bombs far, far bigger than the initial few. joke continues by that there was a nuke explosion before those two he was referring to as well..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I don't think we'll go extinct but our civilization might collapse which would be a terrible waste.
You're right, temperatures have not gone up. The ten warmest years since 1901 are not all in the last two decades, and the last 38 years have not all been above the 20th century average. It's all a hoax, North-East America is experiencing harsh winters so there can be no global warming.
Go take your conspiracy nonsense somewhere else.
Should of been "we stopped at two bongs . Which is where they stopped reading. What were they smoking? Not the kind herb.
I'm guessing that is was Two Atomic Bongs
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Nah, it's never been more easy to shill than today.
In the old days, publishing was something reserved for those that had anything to say, well, at least for the most part. Publishers didn't just print any kind of crap for it easily tarnishes your reputation if you do. And soon people who not have some reputation and hence reach high volumes because other people want to read what they have to say (read: those that you WANT to publish) don't want to publish their serious and scientifically sound facts with you if your house is known to print stories about how ancient alien astronauts built the Pyramids.
Today, editors are hard pressed to publish. Publish or perish. Even reputable houses resort to printing pretty much anything that doesn't immediately cause a "c'mooooooon" reaction in people who don't send money to their televangelists. Plus the internet that made it possible for every idiot to present his "findings" in ways that look serious and sensible on the outside.
Now add that people have learned to take anything and everything printed in a "scientific" book by an "expert" as gospel without even bothering to try to question it and it becomes immediately obvious why you can shill today way easier than you could ever before. Need "proof" for your harebrained idea? Google will help you find an "expert" that agrees with you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Look around yourself. I don't know about you, but I can't say that losing this failed system we call civilization sounds more like a chance for a reboot than anything else.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hush! I have real estate at 1000+m above sea level, once the coasts are flooded I get to cash in!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There is only one party which is completely ignoring all of Earth's history, and selectively cherry-picking convenient data. There is only one party inferring that climate change is man-made and not the obvious natural phenomenon that *scientists* know it is. There is only one party ignoring the fact that this is the least warm of the warm periods in the last 10,000 years. There is only one party who has consistently misrepresented data, and been caught outright not only misrepresenting data but discussing the intended further misrepresentation of data.
That party is indeed composed of faux-scientists. And that party is the one crying "global warming"... I mean... "climate change"
You are the one who should pay more attention to science.
Really. I can't help but laugh every time there's a climate change bickering here on /.
It's absolutely stunningly awesome. You have two sides, zealous in their quest to convince everyone and their dog that they're right. Both sides have various "studies", produced more likely than not in a dark, rather warm but also quite smelly place and pulled out of there with little ceremony. Both sides accusing the other side of shilling, resorting to name calling and whatnot.
And neither side has any idea what to DO if they're right.
That's the actual joke here. Let's say, just for argument's sake, that there is global warming and that the whole sky-is-falling scenario will happen (which, I will freely admit, I think actually will happen). What now? Does anyone where really think there will be anything REMOTELY close to global consent on laws to lower the impact? Seriously? Fuck, we can't even get international consensus on stuff that presents an immediate and direct danger rather than a maybe-kinda-could-be-sorta danger in half a century. Even if we DID know for a fact, no doubt about it, 100% sure, proven FACT, that in 50 years life on earth as we know it would be impossible, you would NOT get any kind of international law going. No chance, no way.
But hey, keep talking. If nothing else, it's entertaining.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you look at the data you will find we have been flat for the last 20 years
Bullshit. The temperatures have not deviated from the same trend established in the decades before that.
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2...
thanks.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I wouldn't be so sure... http://www.sciencemag.org/cont...
http://www.pnas.org/content/99...
http://journals.plos.org/plosb...
http://rspb.royalsocietypublis...
http://www.esajournals.org/doi...
http://www.pnas.org/content/10...
lol @ wordpress link.
Lol @ attacking the messenger. Here's the source:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist...
That wasn't so hard. The graphs even say "NASA".
Leela: Actually, it did. But thank God nuclear winter canceled it out.
Not only (as others have pointed out) did we not stop at two, but setting off nuclear bombs is just a thing you can decide not to do. We may well be past the point of climate runaway, and if that's so then we would have to engage in concerted effort to prevent the imminent demise of the relative condition of biostasis we've enjoyed all the time.
Or hell, maybe the next ice age cycle will solve the problem, through some as-yet-unimagined mechanism. The question then becomes whether we'll survive that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
since stopping global warming costs way too much, let us nuke a few more cities!
You have your grimy, bridge-girder-mangled finger on the reason why climate activists are doomed, I say, doomed.
When scientists render their final verdict on the carbon warming hypothesis, it will be one of these alternatives:
1. Manmade warming is somewhere in the range of nonexistent to exaggerated. Activists' heads explode.
2. Manmade warning is some value of significant to apocalyptic. If we need to immediately stop emitting carbon, we will have to nuclear. If there is already too much carbon in the atmosphere, we will have to geoengineer. The activists' heads explode.
No need for lithium batteries of that size. Just settle down politics (that's fantasy part of the plan, I know) and build power line across continents, crossing that tiny Bering StraiÐ and connecting all solar plants around the world. Then shuffle electricity around the globe as needed. It's quite doable today, with today tech and moderate expenses.
What are you talking about? We just saw a U.S. Senator, the Chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, throw a snowball on the Senate floor, proving conclusively that global warming doesn't exist. Also, the Earth is only 6000 years old. You need to get your unscientific facts straight!
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Look around yourself! This failed system has harnessed quantum mechanics to preserve your apathy in a massive disaster proof building somewhere on the micron scale yet makes it available for most of society to see in an instant! We've come so far and may well be on the verge of taking the next great leap in understanding the universe (or finding out if the universe even allows that leap to be taken) and you just want to throw it all away because there are a bunch of jerks mixed in.
Nice nickname btw. There is a hell of a lot more opportunity today than after your societal collapse when you're spending all your time scrounging for roots to eat.
No need for lithium batteries of that size. Just settle down politics (that's fantasy part of the plan, I know) and build power line across continents, crossing that tiny Bering Strait and connecting all solar plants around the world. Then shuffle electricity around the globe as needed. It's quite doable today, with today tech and moderate expenses.
I like the way you think... it's a beautiful dream and I'm right there with you, except for the 'doable' part. See this great Megastructures documentary, Bridging The Bering Strait. So many great things to accomplish. If more than ~19.6% of engineers receiving a Bachelors in engineering were women I think we would be much better off. (Not what you said, just thinking that because my daughter is choosing a major.)
There is such an expanse between things that are good ideas and those that are practical --- that is, practical in the sense that you can imagine them happening in your own lifetime or would bet on them. As opposed to merely being able to imagine them. Unless mankind blows a stinky one and goes tits-up, a global power grid is desirable, inevitable and necessary. But when? And what first?
Presently deployed technology principally uses resonant AC generated mechanically.
A inter-continental or global grid MUST be spanned with high voltage direct current.
The converters that render DC to properly synchronized AC (and back) are not perfected and are expensive.
A series of overlapping HVDC loops within a continent is a good start.
Presently North America utilizes three grids with no appreciable energy connection between.
This is ridiculous. A country should be able to pool electrical energy as necessary coast to coast.
We did it with railroads and then highways.
Sometimes positive change requires reasons beyond corporate interests.
The US was once spanned by crappy roads.
The Interstate Highway System was Eisenhower's way to insure that the US could move troops quickly if invaded.
From awful scenarios and bad times, good things may arise.
Likewise with nuclear energy.
BUT.
Grid rebuilding does not 'create' new energy.
The politics of spanning the globe with cable are insurmountable.
Because an idiot with a hacksaw just cut off Northern Arizona.
There are a lot of idiots out there with hacksaws and explosives.
Therefore, any single globe-spanning initiative is actually a single point of failure.
In engineering, despite the beauty of this planet-spanning solar dream, it is a bad idea.
I don't like it, you don't like it, but could we bet our future, our childrens' future, that it would never happen?
SO.
What is the next step?
Some form of wealth creation.
Energy is wealth, so let's create energy.
Something that requires a few hundred somethings, not tens of thousands or millions of something.
A few hundred somethings that are weatherproof, self-contained concrete fortresses that just output energy.
Something we can build, not just (for example) borrow money to have the Chinese build for us.
We can defend hundreds of things located in our back yard. We must.
DO IT! Let's Get Off Our Buts.
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Well I'm sure they can afford you, your nuclear shilling and your sockpuppets to mod you up. C'mon slashdot this is so fucking obvious. As for the other guy you were responding to, that's probably you too.
In fact... I'M SOOO CLEVER I even wrote your comment too! Bwaa-haa-haaa!
you bable A-lot!
Thank you. Feel free to sample our other fine products.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Far left continues to blame the west while ignoring the fact that china's production is more than the entire west. see for yourself.
As long as everybody points elsewhere and screams about per capita while ignoring the bulk of CO2, we have no chance.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I just don't get the big rush. I understand that green house gases are rising temperatures. I understand the possible impacts of rising water levels, more chaotic weather, changing farm lands...
But lets be clear. This polluting has been going on for the industrial revolution. Over two hundred years.
We're already getting fairly competitive hybrid and electric cars. Most car companies have decent models. Revolutionary firms like Tesla are there. Who knows what Google and Apple will do.
We already have a fair amount of renewables and it is continuing to increase. Even coal and other polluting fuels can be improved with better technology.
Much of the world is industrializing and this has lifting millions and billions of out poverty. Better still, this means stabilizing or even declining birth rates. People like to think of the world is getting overpopulated. But the pattern has been pretty consistent with much of the world getting down to a fertility rate around 2. If this is the case, that alone should massively reduce green house consumption in the next 100-200 years or so.
We have the technology and skill to avert much of the impacts of global warming. We can build levies and other flood protection measures. Maybe some regions are moved. Maybe we start different form of controlled farming. Global supply chains can move goods around the world pretty rapidly. If one region suffers a drought, things can be brought it from elsewhere.
And I am really skeptical if our leaders, even the ones championing global warming, actually see it as a great thread, instead of a means of political power.
Simple case. Obama spent his terms pushing through ObamaCare. Maybe worthy on its on right. But if we were truly facing a global disaster of global warming that threatened our existence, maybe... just maybe... he should have used his political capital and resources on that instead of healthcare.
And it's not just Obama. How many politicians or even scientists are willing to sacrifice for the anti-global warming effort?
Much like war, we get pretty cynical when they don't appear to make any sacrifices or when they don't demand sacrifices of everyone. Hey Bush, why don't you send your daughters to war in Iraq or why didn't you volunteer to go into actual war. Yet you seem pretty giddy about going to war in Iraq and other places.
The public's reaction is no different when facing politicians/scientists/academics who push for more power/taxes for 'global warming'. Are they willing to take a 30% paycut that would go to anti-global warming efforts? No... can't have that! Matter of fact, they really want to have increased funding!
Again, I'm not saying it is wrong. I am talking about perception here. Much like to win a war, maybe you need to pay your military contractors good money so they make really good weapons. But let's not pretend it doesn't create a high degree of cynicism about the true motivations.
In the end, maybe I'm just a bit positive, but I see the Earth warming a bit. We get through this. The technology is there. Our capabilities to fight the bad affects are there.
Maybe some parts of the world are hurt by it. But is global warming really the top concern for every part of the world. Turn on the news people. Thousands upon thousands are dying every day in a brutal civil war in Syria and the ME. Problems like this happen throughout the world.
Successful at identifying it as rhetorical fluff.
But it's pretty amusing to the rest of us.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"[one] of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas." - Freeman Dyson
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Plan B is significantly less storage, not much more than what's needed to keep the grid up, and prices set at market equilibrium. This will prevent blackouts even at night when the wind isn't blowing, unless you think that demand for electricity is perfectly inelastic?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
It's hard to take the "facts" seriously when there appears to be obvious fraud involved. Climategate continues as temperature data seem to be systematically falsified:
https://notalotofpeopleknowtha... (Yes, it's a wordpress site, but data is from nasa.)
How can you take scientists seriously when being "right" becomes the agenda instead of pursuit of the truth? Critiques should be embraced to ensure we didn't miss something instead of being quickly dismissed as ignorant "deniers". Present ALL the facts transparently and truthfully - including funding - and let the scientific community draw the conclusions. Chips and heads fall where they may.
Fear of losing credibility, reputation, and funding is corrupting scientists and ruining science.
We didn't stop at 2 nuclear bombs, we stopped at 2053. If you haven't seen it yet this video illustrates the history of atomic bomb detonations perfectly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Presumably, they are trying to separate dropping nukes on people from dropping them elsewhere. The key difference here is that for every kiloton of carbon released into the air there is a quantifiable economic benefit, and that same carbon "hits" everyone with its negative effects as it circulates through the atmosphere for many years later. I will agree that both are discussed as human actions that could harm the entire world. Beyond that, the differences in time scales, deployment scale, costs, and benefits of releasing compounds that cause climate change versus detonating nuclear bombs and are so dramatic that the comment isn't useful at any level beyond a nice sounding catch phrase.
Convenient for him that his graph started in 1970, but that's a subtle form of dishonesty since it's been warming since at least 1890.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl...
The difference between nukes and fossil fuels is, nobody realistically gains anything by setting off a nuke. Fossil fuels trade short-term gains against long-term losses; with nukes, everybody loses: the only hope is that your enemy might lose more than you.
Who is NASA shilling for when they say "there has been no warming this century" ?
Who was NASA shilling for when the pointed out in 2010 the IPCC model was indeed broken in the exact same way Freeman Dyson said it was?
Who was James "Gaia theory" Lovelock shilling for when he said "I was wrong, and being alarmist . CO2 has gone up but the temperature hasn't risen this century. But them I'm not getting a climate grant so I can say that".
Who is the national snow and ice center shilling for when they point out the arctic ice as grown steadily for three years?
If you're so sure it's warming, how much warmer has it been each year compare to the previous? Why don't you know this? Why have all the graphs in the press shtoped showing up?
Because the temperature had flatlined that's why. Only the Daily Mail got this right. Imagine a world where out of all the newspaper only the Daily Mail had data that aligned with NASA and CERN, the rest misinterpreted it.
Don' t give me that "hottest year" crap, the 2014 data won't be qualified until march 2015. Not that one year indicated a trend.
At some point the math will run out. "Truthout" printed this:
"The last time we had this discussion was 2013, remember? Before that it was 2010. Before that it was 2005, and everything started with the Super El Nino in 1998. Statistically, saying that 2014 was the hottest year ever is a very valid thing, and if you understand statistics, I am envious of you."
Maybe if you hadn't skipped grade 10 stats you wouldn't be so confuzzled.
"But the global average temperature for these years, and every year since 1998 except 1999 and 2000, have all been virtually tied, if one is a casual civilian statistician watching or reading reporting on television or other media. But a few things have been overlooked in this and the periodic media outbursts that have preceded this event."
Look, I'm no math major... oh wait, yes, yes I am a math major. Not that that matters, "stats for the humanities" will also learn 'ya that when a record is tied for sixteen years that sorta mean it's NOT GOING UP. How many math classes do you have to skip to write something that fucking stupid? All of them?
http://www.truth-out.org/news/...
When did the US become such a fact free zone?
The fact that The Guardian just got popped for publishing ghostwritten climate article as stories when they're ads may not help.
As a liberal I'm just revolted at this dumbing down. What the hell kind of world has a Comedian pretend to be a "science guy" with no science degree but who contradicts the guy that took over Einstein's job? And secretly influences media because of his "fame". Blinky the science clown strikes again.
Facts used to matter it he US.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Get your stupid ass off of my global communications network. I suggest hiding in the goddamned woods until your prepper jackoff fantasy comes a-knockin'.
Your problem is that your are using facts and reason to try to make a point. That is just not done today. Today, a well reasoned argument should go like this.
side a) I heard you want to use carcinogenic coal dust to pollute the planet and increase your corporate profits.
side b) No I don't. I heard you want to rape little children and turn all black people into slaves
side a) No I don't, I heard your a faggot
side b) No, your the faggot.
This is a well reasoned argument. In the future please refrain from using excessive logic. If you do not follow this simple rule. We will be forced to dig into our archives and show that your great great grandparents (and hence you) were slave owners and pedophiles
-Sincerely member in good standing of the lying mainstream manipulative media.
Literally every nuclear plant in construction throughout the entire world is way overbudget, even the ones in China. They also take decades to complete a buildout, which no private bank is willing to fund. So they're entirely reliant on government funding. Which itself may not be a bad thing, but the final cost of building and then later decommissioning the plant (which is also extremely expensive and difficult) is just way too high.
The rest was rubbish. To say we can only accomplish a goal via one single method is obviously wrong. Also, care to explain the DC thing? Are you Edison, back to try electrocuting elephants again?
Since you mention DC I guess this is a reply to this message and this one.
Sometimes one can come to the conclusion that we can only accomplish a goal one way when one is presented with a clear winner and a bunch of sorry-ass alternatives, such as... nuclear versus 'solutions' that require imaginary infrastructure and imaginary storage technology that (nevertheless) will shut down in cold or cloudy weather. Despite anything I may have believed once upon a time, or just not thought about, I am now being drawn kicking and screaming to advocate nuclear energy. Because the alternatives suck because extinction sucks. And about the DC thing.
Eh, everything you wrote in your first post.
Eh. Actually my first post was a short essay inspired by the Clock of the Long Now.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
"We stopped at two nuclear bombs"
That is the most optimistic thing I've read all week. It hasn't been a century yet, the time for the third bomb is coming.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Great post.
Literally every nuclear plant in construction throughout the entire world is way overbudget, even the ones in China.
You're right... but China aims to change that. China is cool with the delays in AP1000 construction... why? Because Westinghouse is refining the pump design.
China is much more than a happy customer experiencing some delays in delivery and construction. They have a plan in place to build the CAP1400, their own proprietary version of the Westinghouse AP1000.
If you're a flag-waving American who believes that we're still in the race to help develop and industrialize the world, this August 2014 slide show from China's SNPTC (State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation) is worth a look. "China has basically established the 3rd generation nuclear power industrial system, built up the complete equipment supplied chain, completed the standard design of localized AP1000, and prepared for mass construction of the localized AP1000."
And that is merely to ensure its entry into the market as a supplier of AP1000-compatible reactors in the short term. Their CAP1400 project promises to build on the AP1000 concept while scaling up the output by half (to 1530MWe). They are also suggesting an actual four-year construction cycle.
So if Westinghouse (majority owner: Toshiba) wishes to delay construction today in order to improve the design of coolant pumps --- I'm sure China is amenable. They will note the improvements and incorporate them.
While the United States feeds Africa for a day and attempts to impose unworkable energy solutions, Japan and China will build its coal plants today and become its infrastructure partners. Then with the same steadfast determination with which the USA built out railroads, the Chinese will lay high speed rail, energize itself and New Africa with grids and mature PWR nuclear energy tomorrow. And on the third day, Thorium reactors using liquid fuel. Ultimately a quadrillion dollars of infrastructure... financed and built without the US dollar, perhaps.
So if China supplies nuclear reactors to the world --- and ultimately also the United States for a hefty price, when natural gas declines and we shake ourselves awake from this renewables nightmare, what a pity. We could have done it first and we could have done it better.
___
"Oh dear! We're late!" Down the nuclear rabbit hole we go.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Sounds bad for rich people with beach houses. Won't somebody think of the rich people with beach houses?!!
If a technological change in our way of life can release the carbon, then why does everyone insist that there is not technological change which can reduce the carbon? And I don't mean stop the release through alternative energy sources. I mean reduce. Mind you, I am not accepting or denying the premise of AGW. I am asking a different question.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
It doesn't have to be perfectly inelastic for that to be a problem, it has to be sufficiently inelastic.
A lot of power drain is inelastic, eg. refrigeration.
Ignoring alll the test bombs is ridiculous. We're still dealing with the fallout from all those open-air bomb tests. Plutonium tends to stick around for a long time.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"when a record is tied for sixteen years that sorta mean it's NOT GOING UP."
The implication "If A then B" can be true when both A and B are false.
The record has not been tied for 16 years: it has not been exceed for 16 years, which only tells you that records are set by outliers, not trends.
sign me up!
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Same BS just change the terms.. My ears no longer hear the yammering of those whose only motive is to steal more money from us with some new scheme called "global warming" or "climate change".
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Inelastic demand will pay for storage as long as energy prices are not below market equilibrium. So there's still no problem.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
We stopped at 2 lol. Oh if only they were as good at research as they are at FUD.
And... where did the click-bait headline "we stopped at two bombs" come from!?
That would be... from the last two lines of TFA.
>> So if China supplies nuclear reactors to the world --- and ultimately also the United States for a hefty price, when natural gas declines and we shake ourselves awake from this renewables nightmare
You're funny. By the time that happens solar will supply the majority of the power and energy storage will have advanced enough to spread it out. Gas will do the rest. Nuclear will be useful but just an expensive backup.
True, that. Except for the part where other uneducated morons might agree and be motivated to act accordingly.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I've said it before, I'll say it again...
All this talk is just a bunch of hot air going back and fourth... unless you get the whole planet on board, nothing we do will make any difference...
Oil and coal are easy to move around, if we don't burn them, someone else will... the US could cut all emissions to nothing tomorrow, it would make no difference.
China, India, Russian, and Brazil will replace everything the US produces today within 20 years...
Unless we plan to go to war over this, we as a human race are going to burn all of it, that's all there is to it.
Everything else is just happy, happy talk.
That would be... from the last two lines of TFA.
Noted (now) - thanks
Sigh - even thinking I read the TFA didn't help.
Clearly the "science writer" should have put that into a context - i.e. against Japan.
sign me up!
I would - if I could still see.
The light1 - it's like, um, fried my fucking eyeballs.
Hey cool! The bong water glows in the dark. Heav-ee (water).
Look around yourself. I don't know about you, but I can't say that losing this failed system we call civilization sounds more like a chance for a reboot than anything else.
Maybe so but that reboot process is going to take a while and be unpleasant for everybody (except maybe masochists). It might also mean a significant drop in world population.
Facts mattered? Must've been a long time ago.
Money matters. And I don't even want to solve whether the money from those industries that don't want to face expenses to deal with stricter environment laws matters more than that from industries that want to sell the stuff that makes the former compliant with stricter environment laws.
In the old days there may have been some scientific process to determine who's right. You know, with thesis, antithesis and discussion. Today it's way easier: Whoever contributes the most campaign money is right.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why do you write nonsense like this?
Every single sentence is wrong, and you easily google for your claimes and figure yourself that you are wrong.
If you read newspapers where the 'warming graph' flattended, perhaps you should switch to newspapers that don't lie to you and that are more reliable?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
In addition to evidence of more tactical nukes being used in combat elsewhere and much later in history than WW2, there were also more than a thousand tests of nuclear bombs, some done underwater and leaving their highly radioactive byproducts in the sea. If we only take our information from video games, we can see that nuclear detonations cause global warming. (Sid Meyer's Civilization 2). If we examine it with careful thought and actual science, we can see that the nuclear bomb releases heat and greenhouse gases orders of magnitude higher than most anything else on the planet, excepting perhaps volcanoes, the other elephant in the room with regards to global warming. So. Before we start talking about goals and fantasies where we reverse global warming and recycle every plastic bag that comes with our shiny new computer components, let's think about whether those two degrees are because of nuclear testing and detonations.
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.
First of all, "reducing" carbon emissions by political means - a carbon tax, etc, won't work. You just get more expensive fuel, with more widespread poverty amongst those that can't afford the more expensive fuel, and you get a marginal reduction built upon the bodies of the poor that die in subzero weather trying to sleep under a bridge, or the bodies of the kids whose parents can't afford to take them to the doctor for some preventive care.
No, the strategy that works is to give the world's manufacturing back to the USA. We can now do all our manufacturing power including heating with natural gas, which is 80% of the vaunted "hydrogen economy" since methane, the main ingredient of natural gas, is 4 parts hydrogen and 1 part carbon which we burn very, very cleanly.
And to get the world's manufacturing back to the USA, the USA must pass the Fair Tax. Understanding this requires understanding that the US income taxes are what have been sabotaging US business for decades. They are the reason that manufacturing shuts down in the USA and pops up in Canada, Mexico, Southeast Asia, Russia, anywhere but the USA.
The Fair Tax abolishes absolutely all the income taxes, as well as the IRS, and does not tax business at all. Bill Archer, a former head of the House Ways and Means committee, commissioned a survey of 500 foreign CEO's and asked them, "What would you do if the USA passed the Fair Tax?" 400 of them said that they would build their next factory in the USA. The other 100 said that they would move their company's headquarters to the USA.
Doing the world's manufacturing in the USA would go a long way toward combatting the injection of further CO2 into the atmosphere.
Other than that, we need to get some smart physicists who know electrochemistry to invent for us the magic (cheap, high capacity, cheap, lightweight, cheap, physically small, and cheap) battery so that we can use it in electric cars and power our transportation. It does no go to generate TeraWattHours of electricity with natural gas, wind, solar, and so forth if we can't use it to get from point A to point B via cars, trucks, ships, boats, and airplanes. Converting transportation to electricity is the next big challenge. Do that, and the reason for whining about a global warming crisis will disappear. Whether it is real or it is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated upon mankind, achieving electric cars and natural gas fired electricity with as much wind and solar as we can afford to build, and taking manufacturing away from everyone else that can't do it as cleanly (virtually everyone) will be the ultimate solution.
Actually the next ice age is indefinitely postponed until CO2 levels drop below about 250 ppm again.
I'm talking about converting desert into productive Hydroponics farms.
Today the most critical aspect is producing freshwater to get it done.
The most interesting way to do it is high temperature nuclear.
The heat cycle to generate electricity with high temp source involves cooling down water from well over boiling point down to temps lower than boiling. That means free heat to boil water in huge scale, no penalty for doing so. The cooling is needed anyways.
But the vast majority of current nuclear operates at 350C coolant temps, not high temperature.
Several proposed reactors run anywhere from 450C to 700C, all of them able to dessalinate sea water.
High temp nuclear is also got enough to make hydrogen, amonia, even synthetic methane (natural gas).
When will we study nuclear facts and understand that nuclear kills / hurts orders of magnitude less people than coal, natural gas or oil.
Deepwater horizon killed dozens of people and took the livelyhood of millions of fisherman and tourist industry professionals. Still nuclear gets the bad rap, while oil/gas drilling still allowed.
Coal is estimated to kill about 200k yearly worldwide and 13k yearly in the USA alone.
Natural gas and oil each is estimated to kill over 10k people yearly worldwide.
The whole nuclear power supply chain killed one person in the last few decades, with total cummulative nuclear deaths for all nuclear related accidents of just a few hundred people, while coal is allowed to kill 13000 people EVERY YEAR.
If coal power stations were regulated for their radioactivity emissions like nuclear reactors, they would all be shutdown imediately.
The coal lobby was very forceful to keep its freedom to release deadly toxics and radioactivity almost freely, while nuclear reactors are burdened with insane regulatory costs.
Nuclear doesn't have to be too expensive. It was made too expensive to prevent it from destroying the coal/gas industry.
Besides the geopolitical fantasy required in your fairy tale solution is the requirement to have unlimited availability of non existent superconducting transmission lines.
Big copper cables have electrical resistance which results in line losses. In the winter in much of the world peak power usage happens after sunset, which often is the calmest time of day too. That means power woulf have to be transmitted across the continent, or even from another continent. The line losses would be tremendous...most of the power would be lost to heat and RF emissions.
It is far more efficient to have highly distributed generation AND storage than to have an intercontinental power grid of supersized transmission lines. Skyscraper sized batteries ate stupid too, but to make solar and wind work you probably would need every household to have a refrigerator sized battery permanently plugged into the grid, and for all users connections to the grid to be bidirectional.
The Chinese are supposedly going to build a nuclear power plant for EDF in the UK so that day may be a lot closer than you think.
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The line losses would be tremendous...most of the power would be lost to heat and RF emissions.
Can you prove that with math instead of just assuming abstract losses? How much real power line looses per 1000km for example? Soviet Union moved electricity around its vast spaces, using its non-high-tech united electric grid. Without any superconductors.
It is far more efficient to have highly distributed generation AND storage than to have an intercontinental power grid of supersized transmission lines.
Yes, it is. But it's much more expensive than global transmission grid.
Anyway, my point was not that we must concentrate on single solution, but rather that solutions exist in many ways, I just suggestged simpliest one (except that political fantasy part of couse).
Hey, you know what didn't cause the Pliocene extinction event? High global temperatures. Know what hasn't caused any extinction event in the history of the world? High global temperatures.
You know what you are? Wrong. http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/275/1630/47.full / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
up to 20 degrees higher than today at the northernmost latitudes... the global sea level was about 25 meters higher
I bet some inland Canadians/Scandinavian countries wouldn't mind, and they're not the only ones. There's lots of money to be made by letting climate change create havoc: insurance companies get more business when there's uncertainty; uncertainty gives speculators more volatility to work with; defense contractors have more food riots to quell; politicians get to make more promises to solve the new problems; and corporations get more grants, bailouts and subsidies to help solve them. First-world politicians get to use FUD to gain a bit more control over the populace, and the harsher climates help them avoid that dreaded post-scarcity economy just a little bit longer. Break enough windows and people won't be able to buy a society that no longer 'needs' the robber barons and demagogues.
So your point is that the evil cabal out to control the world is going to win either way, and doing nothing will make it cheaper for those who live now?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
The CO2 levels on the earth just 100,000 years ago are 3x what they are now
Errm, sure about that?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
The summary is written as if human co2 emissions are the ONLY thing that influence climate change.
No, it's written like it's the only thing significantly influencing climate change. Care to name any other significant influences (preferably anything not also man-made - and no, methane produced by intensive animal farming is also man-made).
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Per the logic in this article headline, humanity is DOOMED!!!
The article stipulates that we stopped at 2 bombs, we can stop at 2 degrees.
Well, we didn't...in fact humans have droped 2,119 bombs (+ or - a few)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
By this logic, expect the average global temperature to go from a cozy cool 57.2F to a sunlike 2,176.2 degrees (+ or - a degree or two) ;-)