Slashdot Mirror
We Had All Better Hope These Scientists Are Wrong About the Planet's Future (washingtonpost.com)
Less than 24 hours since we read this dire climate study, an anonymous reader writes from a Washington Post report about several more concerning things: James Hansen, a former NASA scientist, says his new study suggests the impact of global warming will be quicker and more catastrophic than generally envisioned. The research invokes collapsing ice sheets, violent megastorms and even the hurling of boulders by giant waves in its quest to suggest that even 2 degrees Celsius of global warming above pre-industrial levels would be far too much. Hansen has called it the most important work he has ever done. "I think almost everybody who is really familiar with both paleo and modern is now very concerned that we are approaching, if we have not passed, the points at which we have locked in really big changes for young people and future generations," Hansen said.
I tend to be a skeptic myself, so my reaction is far from panic, but this seems like something we should be studying very objectively. It's a shame so few people are capable of doing it.
Seriously. If Slashdot, of all places, can't have a reasonable conversation about the science behind this topic without the deniers dominating the discussion then there really is no hope. We should just defund any climate research and put all that money into coal and oil discovery and extraction research. Game over. Why delay the end point? It's not like there's any political will to do anything serious about it anyway.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
This always hurts my head, when people point out the change from "Global Warming" to "climate change". Do you know WHY it was changed? Because virtually no one understands the term "Global Warming". Everyone assumes it means everywhere is getting hotter, so *any* weather event short of a drought is used to refute the problem.
"Global Warming" is still an apt term, if one understands that it implies that more energy is being put into the system ( or perhaps being retained ). I far prefer that phrase to "Climate Change" for no other reason than it's more accurate.
Pedantics aside, it'd be helpful if these folks would stop running around claiming the sky is falling unless/until it actually IS falling. I distinctly remember seeing videos in school about how new york would be under water by 2015. What struck me was the imagery of the torch on the Statue of Liberty peeking out from the ocean. All these predictions about how horrible the world would be by this point, yet here we are; no flying cars, no coastal apocalypses ( Katrina...maybe ), and yet another presidential election where the choices are a Douchebag or Turd Sandwich.
Just once I'd like for climate scientists to hold a press conference to admit they don't really know what they're doing yet. That climate science is *hard*. But here's a list of things that are never the less good ideas ( reducing/removing air pollution sources, keeping our water ways clean, ect... ).
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
We need nuclear power. We, as Americans need to be building a new nuclear power plant (with about 1GW capacity) every week. We, as humans, need to be building a nuclear power plant every day. We need to do this from now until we replace all coal and natural gas power plants, and then keep going to replace the nuclear power plants that we'd retire in 40 years. At some point we'd likely have to build them at an even faster pace to account for an increasing population and/or an improved standard of living.
To those of you that think we could never build such complex machines at such a pace I say look at the numbers of commercial jet aircraft or oil tankers built in a year, they are comparable to a nuclear power plant in size, cost, and complexity and we mass produce them. To those that think we'd create some sort of radiation hazard, well we can address the comparatively small problem of disposing of radioactive waste or we can deal with the problem of oceans rising, super storms, and so on. I'd also maintain that the problem of nuclear waste has been solved already, we'd just need to build reactors that can both produce power and consume the waste we have now.
To those that believe we can solve this problem with wind and solar I say these technologies produce less than 5% of grid power now after decades of government subsidized research and development. Nuclear power now produces 20% of our grid power and we've not built a new nuclear power plant in 40 years. Even if we built those same 50 year old designs today then we'd still be a century ahead of what wind and solar can do. If we build truly modern nuclear power plants, and mass assemble them, then we'd be able to bring costs down below that of any other power source based on economies of scale alone.
To those that think nuclear power is the path to nuclear annihilation I say there is no better way to make nuclear weapons worthless than to make them more valuable as fuel than as a weapon of war. A large problem of dismantling these nuclear warheads is that we'd have to find a way to make the nuclear fuel inert. We can make it inert by neutron bombardment in a reactor, and we'd get effectively free energy from it. The cost of mining and refining this uranium and plutonium is a sunk cost, we can power the world for a very long time on these warheads alone and in the mean time go out and dig up some more fuel in the form of uranium and thorium. With breeder reactors we'd have an effectively limitless supply of fuel.
Don't build the reactors on fault lines, or places known to have tsunamis, but put them on solid bedrock in the middle of a desert and use high temperature air cooled reactors so the lack of water is not only not a problem but makes containment in the case of a spill or leak much easier. In a dry place the radioactive material is much less likely to wash away, contaminate drinking water, or irradiate crops.
If this doomsday scenario is true, and I DO NOT believe that it is, then we need to do something about it now and quickly. We can hope these scientists are wrong and keep burning coal and oil, we can continue to maintain our standard of living free of global warming with nuclear power, or we can revert to a life of subsistence farming and beasts of burden where life is poor, brutal, and short.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Eliminating carbon as a fuel source world wide is not. There is nothing really different now about people in this regard.
Once upon a time, Republicans believed that CO2 was an energy retaining gas. Now? Denial of science is a party platform.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I disagree, we can easily replace a large part of our carbon output by switching from coal power to nuclear power. We can make a further dent in this by using electric and natural gas for transportation. Only then does the problem become hard and returns diminish.
The hard part would be the relatively minor carbon output from aircraft and watercraft. Large ships could be powered from nuclear power plants on board like military ships are now. Smaller ships and aircraft could be powered by synthesized fuel (ammonia, liquid hydrogen, synthetic hydrocarbons, etc.) or we merely agree that the carbon output from these is worth the cost to the environment.
If natural gas is problematic in the long run then at least we can used natural gas as a transition and compromise since the carbon output compared to oil and coal is preferable to the status quo. The US Navy has shown that we can close the carbon loop with nuclear power and synthesizing aviation fuel (also suitable for turbine engines and diesel cycle engines) from sea water. When the fuel is burned it enters the atmosphere as CO2 and H2O, the same molecules from which the fuel was derived. No net carbon added.
Just like the transition away from CFCs and acid rain producing power plants this will take a long time. I suggest we start this transition with a speed and determination like we've never seen before. This nonsense of subsidies for ethanol, wind power, and solar panels is just feel good greenwashing, they don't hit the heart of the matter with any real results.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Ignore peak oil, you've hit the real problem: large intelligent, underemployed, and underfunded populations.
Thanks to basic math, it's happening already with the royal family in Saudi Arabia. Up to a point, populations grow exponentially (S-curves rather than real exponential curves). When the Sauds took over, they were essentially a small tribe with a leader and a few princes. Fast forward a number of generations, and guess what, now you still have one leader but tens of thousands of princes (ever wonder why so many people have met Saudi princes? there happen to be many of them).
I had the privilege of working with a prince during a stint in the Kingdom. This was his biggest concern for their future: the royal family was too large and budget could not keep up with the cost of the entitlements. And, unlike welfare recipients in America, these really were entitled people. They all saw the previous generations living like, well, kings. They still do OK, but must live more modestly and are encouraged to work to supplement their income.
My friend was very concerned that most of the other princes would have difficulty transitioning and that the next generations (which, thanks again math, will be even larger) will have no social or economic system to fall back on.
Regardless of when peak oil happens, peak prince has already occurred.
-Chris
You will see for gas and oil, there is a bit more than half century of oil and gas left in proven reserves. Yes, there is still new oil and gas to discover, however, these reserves are expensive, difficult, not energy efficient to exploit.
Achille Talon
Hop!
I suspect that most others on the right also cringe at these remarks.
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, are you kidding? Everyone on the right believes what that guy said. It's not just some small portion of the American population that believes in climate change denialism, it's probably about half, maybe more.
One of the big problems I see with liberals (and I say this as someone who generally agrees with most liberal ideas) is that they frequently refuse to see and believe just how prevalent certain beliefs are among certain populations. They have an almost religious belief that most people are good, peaceful people who are interested in the welfare of all, and they tend to ignore humanity's darker sides, and not see how many people really aren't good or peaceful and who are entirely selfish, sociopathic, or intent on doing harm.