UK Steps Towards Zero-Carbon Economy (bbc.com)

The UK is taking a tentative step towards a radical "green" future with zero emissions of greenhouse gases. From a report: The government is formally seeking Climate Change Committee (CCC) guidance about how and when to make this leap. If it happens it would mark an extraordinary transformation of an economy built on burning fossil fuels. The decision was prompted by last week's UN report warning that CO2 emissions must be stopped completely to avoid dangerous climate disruption.

Climate minister Claire Perry told BBC News: "The report was a really stark and sober piece of work -- a good piece of work. "Now we know what the goal is and we know what some of the levers are. But for me, the constant question is what is the cost and who's going to bear that, both in the UK and in the global economy. The question is: what does government need to do, where can the private sector come in, and what technologies will come through?"

Ms Perry has declared this week to be Green GB Week, which aims to raise debate in society about how to tackle climate change while also growing the economy. The UK's current target is a reduction of 80% of emissions by 2050 based on 1990 levels. But the CCC is warning that the UK will drift further away from this goal unless new policies are introduced.

Comments

Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw another article that said we're past the point of no return, so there is no use trying at this point. There is a hurricane heading for Spain right now for god's sake. The planet is headed for Venusian climate conditions, I'm not going out like a sucker trying to solar and wind power all my shit. I'll be rollin' coal into that blinding sunset.

Re:Too late

[Joce640k]

But for me, the constant question is what is the cost and who's going to bear that

Wrong question. The correct question is how much will it cost if you don't do anything. These violent storms that cost you hundreds of millions of pounds every time they hit are just the beginning.

Re: Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Ill chip in! How do we completely stop these storms? Im all in! I wont stop until the last hurriane is but a sprinkle.

Re: Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like typical scaremongering. Or religious fervor. Better pay now. The environmental Gawd is watching.

Re: Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

The correct question is what the hell people committing to things 30+ years out are actually committing to. The answer is nothing. They are making a feel-good point and doing nothing.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

enjoy your horrible painfull black lung death may it last 20 years.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you need to ask both of these questions and then look at the delta between them.

Say we spend $1 trillion and prevent $10 trillion in damage over 100 years. 10% return per year. Good, let's do that.

Say we spend $10 trillion and prevent $50 trillion in damage. Only half as good, but still worthwhile.

Say we can spend $100 trillion and prevent $100 trillion in damage. Umm... not so good. Given the inherent uncertainties in forecasting, let's not bother with that one.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad:
>It's snowing therefore global warming is a lie!
Good:
>It's raining therefore global warming is true!

Okay.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Unironically this. Warmer, more storms (which I love), massive global catastrophe in my lifetime, and a much-overdue culling of the human species. Bring it on. If the human race outlives me I'm going to be pissed.

Less long-term damage will be done to the environment with a full-blown catastrophe than if humanity figures out how to be just sustainable enough that the planet doesn't literally melt and clings to Apex Predator status for another 100,000 years.

Re:Too late

[Crashmarik]

But for me, the constant question is what is the cost and who's going to bear that

Wrong question. The correct question is how much will it cost if you don't do anything. These violent storms that cost you hundreds of millions of pounds every time they hit are just the beginning.

Gee if only people hadn't of built in places that always got hit by hurricanes. Here's a prediction for you, in the future they will do still more damage. Because there will be even more people living in their paths and the property will be even more valuable.

Re:Too late

[DNS-and-BIND]

The answer to the question is always "America should pay for it all." You'll notice this happens every single time the issue is raised. Remember the Paris agreement? It was a gigantic bill for the American taxpayers. And why not? The world agrees that the Americans should pay. Democracy in action.

Re:Too late

[the_povinator]

All this story says to me is that the UK's climate minister is a little green. Firstly, she's confused if she thinks the science tells us "what the goal is". The 1.5 degrees C goal is an arbitrary line that humans drew, it doesn't come from any science. And surely she must know that the first rule of commissions and inquiries is, don't ask a question unless you want to know what the answer is? Because if she is leaving herself open to committing the UK to a vastly expensive transition to non-fossil fuels at the same time as Brexit, she obviously doesn't value her job very much.

Re: Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Lmao violent storms. Keep drinking the Kool-Aid. You libtards are so god damn stupid.

Re:Too late

[angel'o'sphere]

The BREXIT will leave the UK in poverty.
Just like south Italy, parts of Portugal or Greece.

They won't be in any position to work on CO2 emissions.

They simply will be another poor neighbour of the EU wanting to be dragged around and spoon fed.

Sad, sad, Sad!

Re:Too late

[robsku]

I see, you're stupid.

Re:Too late

[robsku]

Let me quess: Trump said it's so.

Re:Too late

[Crashmarik]

I see, you're stupid.

Neat trick. Do you do animal impressions as well ?

Re: Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because Switzerland and Norway are such poverty-stricken counties...

Greece, Italy and Portugal were still in the EU last time I checked.

But otherwise - a sound argument. Thanks, Jean-Claude!

Re: Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

So the UK is going for a Norwegian or Switzerland agreement now? Last I checked that crossed to many red lines taking rules from the EU looks more like a no deal. Norway have their oil and are willing to pump alot of money on to the EU. Switzerland have a rich population that moved there to hid their assets, and are happy to pay alot in to the EU. What does the UK have and what are they willing to pay?

Re:Too late

[DNS-and-BIND]

Did anyone actually look at the Paris agreement? It was a gigantic scam. America pays a huge amount of taxpayer money and gets nothing in return. The whole world agrees this is a fine state of affairs. Why do you think they screamed so much when Trump pulled out of it?

Re: Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

We have spam fritters... a vast and mostly untapped resource of culinary delight.

Re:Too late

[dunkelfalke]

If anyone should have pulled out, then Trump Sr.

Re:Too late

[Kiuas]

The 1.5 degrees C goal is an arbitrary line that humans drew

Yes.

it doesn't come from any science.

Wrong. The limit was chosen based on modelling climate change and estimating its effects with different amounts of warming. We know for a fact thanks to climate related sciences that 1,5 degrees of warming is better for us and the planetary ecosystem as whole than say 2 or more degrees, and we also know that if rapid action is taken, the 1,5 degrees is still attainable.

That's why it was chosen. It represents the best-case scenario with the data we currently have. It's still not great, but it's the least bad alternative going forwards, and that's an estimate based entirely on science(s) and what we know 2+ degrees will do to the planet/us.

Re:Too late

[Joce640k]

Does the trillions spent by the USA on "defense" prevent trillions in damage? No, but they still do it.

How about for just one year they use the money to install renewable energy instead? See what happens.

Re:Too late

[Joce640k]

Gee if only people hadn't of built in places that always got hit by hurricanes. Here's a prediction for you, in the future they will do still more damage. Because there will be even more people living in their paths and the property will be even more valuable.

They have pretty scenery. And a neat government insurance plan that means the taxpayers buy the people brand new houses every time theirs is wrecked.

Take away that insurance and they'll soon move out.

Re:Too late

[Joce640k]

Nothing ... except a future.

To be fair, they are the biggest polluters and their crap affects the entire world.

Re: Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Who knows what agreement they will get. But they will surely be better off than south Italy. They have a lot more industry than southern Italy, and a lot less mafia ruining things.

After pulling out, they are not guaranteed unhindered access to the EU market. But then, any blocks the EU throws up can be countered by EU not getting unhindered access to the UK market.

If they loose market access, stopping EU products will be easy. Competition from German mass-production & cheap labor in southern EU was some of the reasons for pulling out.

Re: Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Say we spend $100 trillion and save no damage at all.

Bad choice.

Re:Too late

[Barsteward]

oh yeah.. helping the poorer countries to modernise is so UnChristian.

Re: Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah because we can totally know what long term effects the climate will have.

Wake up! We can't even reliably predict the f*king weather two weeks out, let alone the climate 30-100 years out. And since we can't do that there is NO way of knowing what anything climate will cause in the future.

Besides all these calculations do not take into account the technology and societal avances but assume ceterus paribus on all things except CO2 emissions & climate (read: temperature). That's hilarious as it is but even more so since CO2 is not a leading indicator of temperature.

Of course that's not surprising as the IPCC's task is to search for "evidence" on human induced climate change. The body as it stands is incaoable of stating any other than adverse effects of human activity. We can reduce emissions to the max all we want, the IPCC will keep asking for more.

Don't believe me. Just read up on it and you will see.

Re: Too late

[Kiuas]

Yeah, because Switzerland and Norway are such poverty-stricken counties...

The problem is, the UK (at the moment at least) doesn't seem to want either of those models either. Norway has adopted about 75 % of EU regulations as part of its trade agreements with the EU, maintains an open border and pays about 2/3rds of what the UK does no to the Union.

In essence, Norway (and Switzlerland) are basically pretty much quasi-members of the EU: the pay slightly less than they would were they full members but that comes at the cost of them not having any say in EU policies.

The UK is trying to have their cake and eat it too, by maintaining access to the single market without having to follow any of the rules or paying anything for that benefit. It makes zero sense for the Union to give any kind of special treatment to the UK, because that'd be unfair to both Norway and Switzerland (and others), but the UK still does not seem to get this.

Re: Too late

[Type44Q]

The value goes "up," huh.

Re: Too late

[Type44Q]

We can't do shit to help the rest of the world if we're racing them to the bottom...

Re: Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

>We can't even reliably predict the f*king weather t climate science 101 fail. climate != weather.

Re:Too late

[SCVonSteroids]

These violent storms that cost you hundreds of millions of pounds every time they hit are just the beginning.

And this is why so many people end up being skeptical. Fear-mongering.
The worst storm I've witnessed in my life was during the 90s. Most people around here would agree with me.

I'm not a denier, at all. But telling all of us "do this or else it'll get worse!" when nobody truly knows for sure, is why there are still a lot of people who dismiss climate change.

Average people are really fucking sick of the whole "the sky is falling!"

Re:Too late

[Cmdln Daco]

I live in a sensible part of the country that isn't hit with those storms.

My house is over 100 years old. It isn't just 'part of the country' it's also where you build. The crappy land is the open land that nobody has built on, or is 'cleared' by nature every decade or so. Nobody should build there.

If you want a 'scenic' dwelling right adjacent to the ocean, you should pay the penalty for living there, not the entire rest of us.

Re:Too late

[DNS-and-BIND]

Who's Christian here? Why is it that when our own people are suffering at home, we send money away to hostile countries that despise us? Let's fix our own problems first. Then, after that's done we can turn to the rest of the world and start solving their problems for them. Although, do we really have something to lose as Americans if we pull back our external activity? It seems the more fingers we have in pies like NATO, the Middle Eastern countries, and so forth, the more problems we create.

World leadership does not employ or feed your starved citizens. It's a white elephant. Any country looks after own interest first and then only other countries. If anyone has problem with that, they can go fuck themselves. American president puts America first. Rest can go and fuck themselves. Same goes with China. Chinese put China first. Others can ... you know what.

Re:Too late

[AmiMoJo]

Only because the US is the worst major developed nation by far for per-capita emissions. It's not like the EU isn't paying anything either, look at how much money Germany has put in to mitigating climate change. Of course Germany is also reaping the rewards of having pioneered a lot of that technology.

Re: Too late

[DontBeAMoran]

The same reasoning could be used to never get insurance.
The same reasoning could be used to never get vaccinated.
The same reasoning could be used to never wear a condom.
The list goes on...

Re:Too late

[Crashmarik]

Gee if only people hadn't of built in places that always got hit by hurricanes. Here's a prediction for you, in the future they will do still more damage. Because there will be even more people living in their paths and the property will be even more valuable.

They have pretty scenery. And a neat government insurance plan that means the taxpayers buy the people brand new houses every time theirs is wrecked.

Take away that insurance and they'll soon move out.

This is very true. I just wouldn't hold my breath, seeing as beachfront property and a property on the water in general is something that only the wealthier parts of the population can afford, and they are more politically connected than ever.

Re:Too late

[fish_in_the_c]

Does the trillions spent by the USA on "defense" prevent trillions in damage? Yes it does. Can you make the estimate of how much the united states of america is worth. Without sufficient defense spending the united states will cease to exist aka total loss and I suspect the country and it's security is 'worth' a lot more the $10 trillion dollars.
Even if you simply count the GDP over the next 20 years ;)

Mind you, I'm not really an advocate of increased defense spending. I tend to think we spend to much, but I'd rather have people making arguments against defense spending that make good sense rather then this kind of messy thinking.

Re: Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah the UK did so well before the EU. The English always think that trade is the objective for the EU. But for the EU trade has always been a means to an end. Guessing that's why negotiations goes so poorly and the UK representatives act so surprised.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

"Without sufficient defense spending the united states will cease to exist aka total loss and I suspect the country and it's security is 'worth' a lot more the $10 trillion dollars.
Even if you simply count the GDP over the next 20 years ;)

Mind you, I'm not really an advocate of increased defense spending. I tend to think we spend to much, but I'd rather have people making arguments against defense spending that make good sense rather then this kind of messy thinking"

When talking about "defense spending" make sure to include that bloated tick called Homeland Security.
How much less safe would America be if spending were cut back to pre-2001 levels?
A LOT of defense spending is just a welfare program for defense contractors.
USA has 6000+ aircraft across several branches of the military and now there's going to be Space Force, FFS???

Re:Too late

[LynnwoodRooster]

The US spends about $700 billion a year on defense. Clearly not all of that is spent on oil and the Middle East, but let's say it is. The EU gets about 20% of its petroleum from the Middle East, and the US gets about 16% from the Middle East. Assuming that oil runs about 30% of the economy of a region (transport, pharma, power, manufacturing, plastics, etc) that means about $7 trillion in annual economic activity is dependent upon the US military in the Middle East. And assuming that all US military spending is in the Middle East, that would be about a 10X return.

Now, we could always slash all our involvement in the Middle East, and turn off the spigots. The US currently has a net import of oil around 30% of its consumption (we do produce a massive amount domestically), and most of our imports are from Canada and Mexico. The EU has a net import of oil around 85% of its consumption - meaning it would have essentially no way of replacing oil (at least for now). So, ultimately, we're spending those hundreds of billions of dollars to protect and ensure the delivery of power predominantly for our allies in the EU. And that's generating around 10-15X returns in terms of economic activity. Is that worth the cost?

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee if only people hadn't of built in places that always got hit by hurricanes. Here's a prediction for you, in the future they will do still more damage. Because there will be even more people living in their paths and the property will be even more valuable.

Like the Caribbean?

Re:Too late

[LynnwoodRooster]

Accumulated cyclone energy has been trending down since 1992. So the "energy" of storms has been decreasing, even though costs from storm damage have been increasing. Construction costs have roughly doubled in the last 25 years, meaning you can do half the damage and end up with the same total cost.

Re:Too late

[LynnwoodRooster]

To be fair, they are the biggest polluters and their crap affects the entire world.

You mean China? China was essentially exempted from the Paris Accord until 2030. They can continue to be the worst polluter for another 14 years, that was all A-OK. In fact, the US was supposed to pay China to continue polluting...

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Nations, countries, America, China... how quaint... Man, you are barking up a tree without a paddle! You really like being the businessman's boy-toy? Assume the position!

Re:Too late

[LynnwoodRooster]

Only because the US is the worst major developed nation by far for per-capita emissions.

Does the climate depend upon "per capita" or does it depend upon total emissions? If the former - then go ahead, beat up the US. If it is the latter (and you know it is), then China is the biggest offender by far - but somehow they are given a pass on all things CO2-related...

It's not like the EU isn't paying anything either, look at how much money Germany has put in to mitigating climate change. Of course Germany is also reaping the rewards of having pioneered a lot of that technology.

Germany also pays about the highest price in the EU per kWh for electricity, nearly double most of its neighbors and quadruple that of the US. That new technology certainly is extremely expensive, and with increasing CO2 emissions for Germany (as opposed to falling CO2 for the US), it's not doing much to lower their impact.

Re: Too late

[LynnwoodRooster]

Perhaps the UK could join the new US-Mexico-Canada Agreement? Who says they have to stand alone, they could join the biggest trading bloc out there - and we'd welcome them.

Re:Too late

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I saw another article that said we're past the point of no return, so there is no use trying at this point.

So it's straight to point 13 these days?

Re:Too late

[angel'o'sphere]

Fear-mongering.
The worst storm I've witnessed in my life was during the 90s
Define "witness"?

You mean caught into it, or saw on news?

The biggest storm in mankind's recorded history was January/February 2016. It spanned more or less the whole north atlantic. Obviously it was not in the news in the US. Perhaps because it only made partial landfall in north UK?

Anyway, thousands of ships got rerouted, hence we had no losses.

Average people are really fucking sick of the whole "the sky is falling!"
It is just water ... I'm sure you will be able to weather it out the next decades just you did right now ...

Ignorance is a bliss.

Re:Too late

[angel'o'sphere]

If it is the latter (and you know it is)
No it is not ... and we all know that except you.

As you are the 3rd or 4th worst polluter in total, who cares anyway? You have a long way to go ... but you don't want to admit it.

Germany also pays about the highest price in the EU per kWh for electricity, nearly double most of its neighbors and quadruple that of the US.
No, not double of it as it neighbours, only France is "cheaper" but electricity there is heavily subsidized.
Considering that a German only needs a 6th or less the electricity an american needs, obviously our rate per kWh is higher. Infrastructure costs the same, regardless how much power you consume.
And: power prices here are 50% taxes. To encourage people to use less power. So no idea what you find wrong with it. As long as my power bill is only half of what a typical american pays: why would I care about cent / kWh?

Re:Too late

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Does the climate depend upon "per capita" or does it depend upon total emissions?

No, which is why the US is bad because it's both wasteful AND large. However, the population of Earth between the alternatives is fixed. If you covered the Earth with Chinas to match the current population, it would better emissions-wise than covering it with USes.

Germany also pays about the highest price in the EU per kWh for electricity, nearly double most of its neighbors and quadruple that of the US. That new technology certainly is extremely expensive

Germany's high prices are caused by paying for OLD technology. Costs of future installations CAN'T be extrapolated from German payments to operators of OLD equipment with grandfathered feed-in tariffs.

Re: Too late

[angel'o'sphere]

You simplify quite a bit.

Norway is a full EU member, it is just not part of the Euro Zone.

Switzerland is no EU member at all. The businesses there mostly accept Euro, but only to treat it as a 1 : 1 currency ratio and hand back change in Franks and shrive on the exchange rate.

The only thing Switzerland has "in common" with the EU is that they either joined or associated somehow to the Schengen Treaties, that means an EU wide "Schengen" visa is valid for Switzerland, too.

Re:Too late

[LynnwoodRooster]

So the climate only worries about who emits the most per capita, not the most overall? Great to know! So why not rail against Luxembourg with higher emissions per capita than the US? Hey, it's even part of the EU! Luxembourg is much worse for the environment than the US - their CO2 emissions are higher per capita, after all...

Re:Too late

[LynnwoodRooster]

Huh - an either/or question and you answer "no"?

Re:Too late

[SCVonSteroids]

You skipped the part where I said I wasn't a denier.
I just understand lay-people apparently.

Re: Too late

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Wake up! We can't even reliably predict the f*king weather two weeks out, let alone the climate 30-100 years out.

If I'm filling a pool with a hose, and I know that the average water surface is rising by a millimeter per minute, I won't know any better how high a wind-induced wave is going to be in a given place at a given time, but I will *still* know that the average will be six centimeters higher an hour from now.

Re: Too late

[illiac_1962]

Listen to yourself. I better quit farting if we want these storms to subside. What a bitch.

Re:Too late

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Luxembourg is much worse for the environment than the US - their CO2 emissions are higher per capita, after all...

Luxembourg actually has 39% lower emissions per unit of GDP than the United States.

Re:Too late

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

Space Force, FFS

That's their motto, you know. "Space Force, For Free Space!"

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the climate depend upon "per capita" or does it depend upon total emissions? If the former - then go ahead, beat up the US. If it is the latter (and you know it is), then China is the biggest offender by far - but somehow they are given a pass on all things CO2-related...

Getting tired of this excuse. Stop worrying about who is the worst and clean up your shit. When you're 50th on the list then you can whine - it still won't help anyone, but at least you won't sound so fucking entitled.

Re:Too late

[LynnwoodRooster]

Oh, so it's not CO2 per country, nor CO2 per capita, it's now CO2 per unit GDP? Is the actual goal to always find a way to paint the US as "bad"?

Re:Too late

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It's simple. Given a fixed population of Earth, CO2 per capita needs to be below a certain level to prevent adverse consequences. Given the resulting permissible CO2 per capita, CO2 per unit of GDP *also* needs to be low enough to ensure a decent standard of living. So both need to satisfy certain limits. US fares badly at both, Luxembourg fares badly at CO2 per capita but less so at CO2 per unit of GDP. Some other countries have the opposite problem of Luxembourg.

Re:Too late

[LynnwoodRooster]

So now we must require that countries reign in their population growth to stabilize the population? Take a look at where the population is growing - it's not the 1st world. We started with "CO2 is bad for the Earth" and now we've reached eugenics.

If CO2 is bad, it doesn't matter where it comes from, or who generates it - it should be limited. Calling out a country that is reducing its CO2 - and is half as much as the leader - seems petty and done from spite. If you want to solve the CO2 issue, focus on the big source of CO2 - China.

Re:Too late

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Calling out a country that is reducing its CO2 - and is half as much as the leader - seems petty and done from spite. If you want to solve the CO2 issue, focus on the big source of CO2 - China.

Given that China is the one emitting half as much CO2 per inhabitant as the US, why are you being petty?

Re: Too late

[robsku]

I have read, and you are an idiot who doesn't know weather from climate.

Re:Too late

[angel'o'sphere]

Luxembourg has less population than NYC ...

The parent is just an idiot.

Re: Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a moran sounds like more fun!

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

But an equally unsupported argument, and maybe even better one, can be made that things would be better if the US wasn't involved in the middle east.

Re:Too late

[LynnwoodRooster]

Because the climate cares not one whit about how much each person emits - it cares about the TOTAL emissions. If you want to solve CO2 emissions, you have to start with the biggest out there - China. They cannot be left alone, like the Paris Accord and most other climate treaties do. Of course, China's not going to give hundreds of billions of dollars to other nations, so that's the real reason they are ignored - they are not a source of money. Only the biggest (twice the US) source of CO2.

Re:Too late

[strikethree]

per-capita emissions? Really?

People, including myself, have already explained to you that individuals are a blip in greenhouse gas emissions. The vast majority of emissions comes from industry. For myself and 99.9% of the rest of the people on this planet, we do not get to share in the wealth that industry creates, so why would you put the onus of climate change on those same people with "per-capita emissions".

You are intellectually dishonest in your thinking and in your arguments. Furthermore, I don't like you as a person. All of that said, I still modded something you said in another "article" in a positive manner because what you had said there was positive.

TL;DR, stop talking about climate change and emissions until you are honest with yourself. The individual has close to zero influence or control over emissions. Even the dumbasses who "roll coal" don't make a difference.

Re:Too late

[AmiMoJo]

Per capita doesn't mean the emissions of actual people individually, it means the amount the whole country including industry produces divided by population. It's a useful metric because it allows us to compare countries directly despite their differing size, and is fair because we all have to share this planet.

Re:Too late

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno about that dude, but you're doing an AWESOME jackass impression.

Re:Too late

[Crashmarik]

I dunno about that dude, but you're doing an AWESOME jackass impression.

Oh man I've got nothing on AC's when it comes to that.

Re:Too late

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Because the climate cares not one whit about how much each person emits - it cares about the TOTAL emissions.

If you want to solve CO2 emissions, you have to start with the biggest out there - China.

Oh, if *that* is how you reason, then the solution is simple - split China into smaller countries and the problem is solved!

Re:Too late

[K. S. Kyosuke]

People, including myself, have already explained to you that individuals are a blip in greenhouse gas emissions. The vast majority of emissions comes from industry.

A small hint: "Per-capita emissions" don't mean breathing and farting of individuals.

Re:Too late

[robsku]

Maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with the gigantic amounts of crap you've put in atmosphere?

UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[hcs_$reboot]

Oh sorry, we're not talking about Brexit.

Re:UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[MrL0G1C]

It's not a step anyway, this is what the UK does went they don't want to do anything, they deflect criticism and say we're studying it, we're commissioning a report, which is nice for their think-tank friends who they pay millions for some report to get mostly written by some intern, whilst their school friend chum pockets some nice wedge, nudge nudge wink wink.

"But the CCC is warning that the UK will drift further away from this goal unless new policies are introduced." AKA they're not actually doing anything meaningful.

Re:UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[b0s0z0ku]

At least the UK is studying it, not claiming that global warming is a Chinese conspiracy.

Re:UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[110010001000]

Not sure what you are talking about. The UK has been decreasing emissions since 2012, while the EU has been increasing theirs: https://www.reuters.com/articl...

Re:UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[mikael]

At least knowing the things you can do and can't do is one step.. For the record, everyone used to be able to afford to live in a city, take a bus or walk to work and not need a car... but when the universities expanded to take in more international students, all those apartments and houses that used to go to first time buyers and young couples have gone to buy-to-let landlords instead. The most desirable properties are the Victorian townhouses in the cities which usually sell for around £50K per bedroom, because they are priced at the business rate of one working person or couple per room. Now employers are only interested in you if you are willing to share a room through AirBnB

Then those young families have been forced to move into overspill housing estates, where everything is a car journey away. Buses only run every every two hours or only at the morning or evening. Streets don't have sidewalks on either side and the roads often form a maze of inter-exchange roundabouts and desolate rat runs that go past forests and fields. No one wants to travel alone by foot on those roads, so car travel is the only option.

With buses, it costs £2.50 for a long distance journey per person. A similar taxi cab journey costs £10. It's cheaper for five people to take a taxi than a bus.

Re:UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[110010001000]

50k per bedroom? Employers want you to share a room through AirBnB? What planet do you live on? 50k per bedroom would be very cheap.

Re:UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[rtb61]

As in this is a political stunt for the UK after having horrifically tarnishing their reputation with the white helmets charity scam and trying to frame a couple of happy chappies who like tall spires, blew up all over them. Also when it comes to fossil fuels they only have coal as the north sea is drying up, well, the oil.

The reason why it is only bullshit politics for the next election because they will have fuck all money to spend on anything because those tax havens they manage, that funnel funds to the organised crime gang that is London finance is going to get cut off. Tax havens are coming under a real spotlight and computers are great at tracking cash flows.

Basically an empty appeal to voters prior to the UK economy imploding, the problem with being rich on other people's money, especially the money of criminals, it always inevitably comes to and end. The UK might not be the UK for that much longer, it is in real trouble as it's psychopathic games around the world are exposed.

Hence expect more feel good empty bullshit from the UK, otherwise the corbynistas will hang em high, em in this case the establishment and the monarchy (those silly psychos who only differ from nuts in insane asylums as a result of being able to scam enough gullible people, yeah you worthless fuckers you are king and queens and princes and princesses et at, fuck off, why would anyone still buy into that silly shit).

Re: UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[Anonymous Coward]

Or for that matter fracking. The UK seems to be going big on that terrible idea lately. Locking up peaceful protestors and overruling local planning decisions to enable this carbon guzzling, ground water polluting, earthquake causing technology.

Re:UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[AmiMoJo]

The UK has just reduced the tax break on electric cars by £1000 and removed it entirely for lower range plug-in hybrids. It's not serious about this.

Re:UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[MrL0G1C]

"Two-thirds of British people think the government should ditch the policies that have all but killed off the UK's onshore wind industry, according to a new poll.

Since new rules governing the construction of onshore turbines were introduced following the election in 2015, planning applications for new wind farms have plummeted by 94 per cent."

They actively stopped new on-shore wind farms. A very bad step.

"Fracking opponents have reacted with anger after ministers unveiled measures to help projects through the planning system in England, which campaigners said would make drilling a shale well as easy as building a conservatory.

Shale gas explorers will be able to drill test sites in England without applying for planning permission and fracking sites could be classed as nationally significant infrastructure, meaning approval would come at a national rather than local level."

Communities OTOH don't want any fracking, they know about the leaks, the use of toxic chemicals, the use of extremely large amounts of water and the earth quakes that result. The gov't has had to over-ride planning permission and write new rules to ignore earth-quakes and other environmental issues. The government is actively ignoring their own reports that warn about the dangers of fracking. Another very bad step in the wrong direction.

"And large-scale solar has been excluded from Government auctions of contracts to supply electricity to the grid for the lowest guaranteed price"

= a de facto subsidy for fossil fuels.

And the gov't has introduced a whole bunch of taxes and rules to destroy solar from rooftop solar to large scale solar. For instance, if public schools want solar panels then they would have to pay business rates - like WTF?

So, in summary lots of new rules to decimate solar and on-shore wind at the same time as new rules to make fracking easier and more tax brakes and subsidies for fossil fuels. So, what's this right step in the right direction?

Re:UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[Barsteward]

yeah, but with the Tories in power, it'll just be lip service to make it look like they are doing something

Re:UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[Barsteward]

the UK is currently in the EU

Re: UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[Type44Q]

So they can't be compared?

Re: UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[Type44Q]

That could be annual rent...

Re: UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[Anonymous Coward]

No because it highlights the fallacy of the argument being pushed.

Essentially his agenda is the EU is evil because it's emissions grew for a year, even though the overall trend is downwards, yet he then points out that that's not true in at least part of the EU, so a sweeping statement like "the EU is increasing emissions" is at best, a half-truth.

But given the EU's long term trend is downwards, given that it's still, with 600million people generating almost a half of the amount of CO2 that the US is producing with only 330million people, then his whole premise about the EU being an evil polluter and the US not that he keeps pushing in every Slashdot story is entirely farcical and frankly an outright lie anyway.

It's a prime example of cherry picking a single data point to push an agenda and completely ignore both absolute figures and the overall trend.

At the end of the day, the EU's overall emissions are 3.6kt vs. the US' 5.4kt, and China's 10.5kt. Per capita the EU does even better, at only 6.9t vs. the US' horrifying 16.1t and China's 7.7t.

The UK for comparison pushes out 6.2t per capita which is worse than comparable EU counterparts like Spain, France, and Italy, but much better than Germany. So relative to the EU, the UK is at best fairly middle of the road, but every EU member state does better than the US, and in fact the only developed economy that really does worse than the US is Australia, which is ironic, because it's about the best country in the world for widespread solar, and also has the world's largest Uranium reserves for cheap nuclear.

Re:UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[Anonymous Coward]

makes no sense.
electrical vehicules [sic] are electricity CONSUMERS. they need to get their electricity from somewhere. you can burn something personally in your car or you can pay someone else to do it for you then go about and buy the transformed fossile fuel (or broken atoms) for your "clean" electrical car.
and here we can go on a tangent on why centrally burning fossile fuels is more efficient then burning it in efficiently in your electrical vehicule.

in any case, clubberment subsidiaries should go to decentralized (and using renewables) electricity PRODUCERS! anything serving the public, be it schools, hospitals, local clubberment representative offices (prisons, police statiosn etc), even the tiny roofed bus stop should be covered by solar panels by now!

Re: UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[LynnwoodRooster]

So they can't be compared?

He needs to keep the UK in the EU totals to make the EU totals look better...

Re:UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[LynnwoodRooster]

If electric cars are not cost-competitive without large subsidies, then wouldn't it be prudent to not subsidize them and spend the money on better things, such as more nuclear? Why should we subsidize uncompetitive vehicles for the rich?

Re:UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[K. S. Kyosuke]

ICE cars are not cost-competitive either without large subsidies in form of ignored negative externalities.

Re:UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[AmiMoJo]

The subsidies are to help the bottom end of the market. Someone buying a £80k Tesla won't care, but someone buying a £20k Zoe will.

When you look at how much it adds to finance deals on sub £35k cars like the recently released Kona it's quite a significant hit for people.

And the reason to subsidise them is that it's worked to drive the cost down quickly and get demand up, which increases the roll out of infrastructure etc. We need to get rid of most of the fossil vehicles as soon as possible, because they pollute and damage people's health.

Re:UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[LynnwoodRooster]

And guess what - those same externalities apply to renewables! Pretty much all renewable systems require non-renewable backups to be viable, meaning they also have to share in that same externality cost. If the renewable requires an alternate supply to cover when it cannot supply, then it must include the costs of that backup. Which means the externalities as well as the up-front cost of the power generation and fuel.

Re:UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Large fleets of BEVs don't require non-renewable backups, since they are their own energy buffers.

Re: UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[illiac_1962]

Sharing a house with other people gives me the fucking Willie's. What is wrong with you people?

Re: UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[illiac_1962]

You can't just roll out renewables without cutting back dramatically. Cutting back is not a politically viable message. This is lip service.

Re:UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose it is foolish human nature to think we can "correct" everything in the world -
even climate!

Foolish and arrogant. . . .

Glad to hear it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the fluff from the climate minister that is, rather that Gove The Flower Pot Man isn't in charge of this.

Can't trust this Govt

[UpnAtom]

The Tories reversed the law on new homes needing to be zero carbon three years ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/en...

Re:Can't trust this Govt

[DarkLordBelial]

And announced cut to grants on Electric and Hybrid vehicles a few days ago.

Not to mention recent budget changes to remove any tax benefits of zero and low emission vehicles.

Re: Can't trust this Govt

[Type44Q]

Can't trust this Govt

So they're a government?

Re:Can't trust this Govt

[Anonymous Coward]

Subsidies for zero-emission cars are a middle-class welfare scheme. They need to cut them entirely.

Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[blindseer]

The means to get to a zero carbon economy exists today, nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I keep hearing about how if we don't reduce our CO2 immediately then we will create runaway global warming. We have a technology that can provide energy that is zero carbon (or rather closer to zero than wind and solar), plentiful, inexpensive (again compared to wind and solar), reliable, domestically sourced (no matter how you define "domestic"), and exists today.

Why don't we have more nuclear power? Because some nuclear waste is "scary"? You want me to believe that some nuclear waste is a greater threat to humanity than global warming? I'm not convinced. You want me to believe that "any day now" wind and solar will displace coal, oil, and natural gas? Well, we've been trying to do that for decades now and it's not happening very quickly. For an island nation like the UK the ability to meet their energy needs from wind and solar is likely impossible. Maybe they have enough friendly neighbors across the channel to get more wind and sun. What of Japan? They don't have any friendly neighbors, what should they do?

Again, which am I to fear more, nuclear power or global warming? Pick one, because we are running out of time for wind and sun to save us.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[olsmeister]

The Mad Max series of documentaries provides a stark picture of what could happen to us if we wait too long to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels.

Re: Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem isn't whether wind and solar can save us - it's big oil buying politicians. Take a look at the list of politicians that take $$$ from the fossil fuel industry and guess what you find? Climate change deniers. Big oil would not let nuclear power happen either.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[AHuxley]

Re Why don't we have more nuclear power?
The UK did a lot of that for it nuclear mil projects and for power generation.
Worked well while been supported with tax funded projects.
Then the real cost of keeping up with investing in new nuclear tech and later decommissioning gat factored in.
Low cost power from nuclear could not cover the build cost, the working costs, the later support cost and finally the decommissioning.
The only "win" in funds was the design and material needed for nuclear weapons production lines.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[bzipitidoo]

Both. At this point, nuclear power is better than fossil fuel power.

But nuclear power is still plenty dangerous. The first problem is that it can provide the material to make nuclear weapons. Won't do us much good to avert Global Warming if some rogue nation starts World War III with nukes. The second, more insidious problem is that human corruption and incompetence is scarily likely to lead to another major accident such as Fukushima. We know how to operate nuclear power with reasonable safety, but can we do so, for all nuclear power plants, for decades? Fukushima showed that moronic cronies may end up in charge, and start making foolish decisions, taking gambles that they have little idea are extremely reckless.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[blindseer]

Both.

That's a non-answer as it tells me nothing on how to act. If this means we can't have nuclear power then you are by default kicking the problem down the path hoping for a solution to present itself before the problems of global warming are upon us. We can continue down this path, keep looking for a non-nuclear solution, but that is waiting for a ship that may never come to port.

But nuclear power is still plenty dangerous. The first problem is that it can provide the material to make nuclear weapons. Won't do us much good to avert Global Warming if some rogue nation starts World War III with nukes.

The material to make nuclear weapons is in the dirt and dissolved in seawater. Where do you think that the U-235 for the first nuclear weapons came from? They didn't need a reactor to make it, they just "distilled" it from the dirt. This was done with 1940s technology, repeating this with modern materials and equipment is becoming nearly trivial any more. The limitation is primarily the energy needed to enrich the U-235.

The second, more insidious problem is that human corruption and incompetence is scarily likely to lead to another major accident such as Fukushima.

This again? All a bunch of bullshit based on 50 year old nuclear technology. Nobody builds reactors like those any more.

We know how to operate nuclear power with reasonable safety, but can we do so, for all nuclear power plants, for decades?

Yes, we do in fact know how to operate nuclear power plants safely for decades. There are over 400 operating commercial nuclear power reactors on this planet. There's at least 100 military nuclear power plants in ships at sea as well. We know how to make this work. Bringing this up as scaremongering for not implementing what is demonstrably the safest energy source we have today is unbelievable.

You want me to fear nuclear power more than global warming? Really? Then tell me that global warming isn't the threat it's been made out to be, because I'm really thinking that we are running out of options right now and nuclear power it looking really nice by comparison.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

The first problem is that it can provide the material to make nuclear weapons.

Which the UK already has.

The second, more insidious problem is that human corruption and incompetence is scarily likely to lead to another major accident such as Fukushima.

Not many typhoons in the UK...

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

The first problem is that it can provide the material to make nuclear weapons.

Sure it could, but it's horribly inefficient and could be traced by nations which have the capability to make nukes. Second, maximizing yields for your NPP won't give any usable fissile material.

Fukushima showed that moronic cronies may end up in charge, and start making foolish decisions, taking gambles that they have little idea are extremely reckless.

From what I remember, Fukushima showed that 1) the wall design didn't take the engineering maximum into account (the walls were supposed to be higher) and 2) safety procedures didn't take into account flooding the generator basement room, and 3) the people on-site did their best to handle the situation, but a lot of mistakes happened due to panic and lack of experience for contingency. TEPCO's attitude during the entire ordeal didn't help.

If memory serves me right, Fukushima was scheduled to be shut down in prep for decommissioning in March of 2011, the same month that the earthquake struck.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that nuclear power is less scary than global warming, but I think you missed the mark when discussing wind and solar displacing fossil fuels.

IMHO either nuclear or wind/solar/batteries could be used to displace fossil fuels. The question in my mind is how fast? I think its clear that nuclear needs some level of regulation to keep it safe (perhaps not as much as we have now, but at least some) which will always lead to some finite cost per GWh. Its also clear that even modern reactors take finite time to commission (as do wind turbines and solar panel arrays). So can you build a GW of wind faster than a GW of nuclear? How about 100GW of wind verses 100GW of nuclear? I wonder if its possible to make 3d plot of time to install verses total capacity verses dollars spent?

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[angel'o'sphere]

There are over 400 operating commercial nuclear power reactors on this planet.
And 3 of those 400 went boom. Several others nearly went boom.

what is demonstrably the safest energy source we have today is unbelievable.
Obviously it is not the safest. Not even if you use your idiotic "death per TWh" metric.

Or when did you actually hear a solar plant go boom? Or a coal pant for that matter? How often do or did dams break?

If you want to build nuclear plants, do it in your country. Or try to convince China or India to do it. Or do all together. In west Europe, nuklear is dead. For many reasons. Two reactors are still under construction (in europe) with time and cost overruns ... lets see if they ever get online. I doubt anyone will attempt to build another one here.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[blindseer]

Obviously it is not the safest. Not even if you use your idiotic "death per TWh" metric.

Then what metric would you like to use? If we want to establish the safest energy source then we need something on which to make this decision, no? Tell me how to make that decision and then let's go about collecting data.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

In what sense is nuclear power "domestically sourced"? The UK does not have extensive deposits of uranium.

And as for "inexpensive" - the UK already has three generations of nuclear reactors (Magnox, AGR, PWR), each sold on the promise of being better and cheaper than the last, and each time that promise has been broken in outstandingly spectacular fashion, even before "decommissioning" rolled around. Why should anyone believe this next version will be different?

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[blindseer]

Why should anyone believe this next version will be different?

You are absolutely right, why should I believe the next version will be cheaper? We've dumped all kinds of money into research and development for decades, and for what? It's still more expensive than coal, less reliable than natural gas, uses all kinds of resources with the mining for ores and such. Why should I believe the next version of wind and solar should be cheaper than the last?

Oh, wait. You were asking about nuclear power? My mistake.

I guess we assume the next version of nuclear will be different for the same reasons we expect wind and solar to be different on the next version. As I recall the theory with wind and solar was that we'd "bootstrap" the industry with all kinds of government subsidies and legal protections with the promise that they'd be viable on their own in the future. Here's where nuclear is different than wind and solar, we've already proven nuclear power to be competitive because we use it for 10% of our electricity worldwide and have been doing so for many years. The problem we are having now is that since the nuclear power industry has been coasting downhill for the last 40 years many of the people that knew how to build reactors are retired, senile, or dead. Now we have to start nearly from nothing, but what we have is decades of proof that nuclear power is safe, low CO2, inexpensive, and reliable. We figure out what was lost and then we can learn on how to make it even better. We aren't going to make it better until we start building them again.

If we had the same attitude for wind and solar as you expressed for nuclear then we'd have abandoned them a long time ago.

Re: Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

Something to do with the huge amount of nuclear waste that the UK already has to store till end of civilization and beyond.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Jane Q. Public]

All old plants, old designs, and in every case used outside of spec guidelines.

Fukushima's biggest problem, for example, was that they stored 20 years of spent fuel rods in a "temporary" holding area that was only designed to hold a few month's worth.

Thorium is plentiful, has been used for decades, and with newer designs is impossible to melt down.

It also has the advantage that it produces far less waste, with greatly reduced half-life.

Further yet, it can use long half-life waste as part of its fuel cycle.

Nuclear is the answer. Any country that isn't pursuing it is stupid.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[DavidMZ]

Or when did you actually hear a solar plant go boom? Or a coal pant for that matter? How often do or did dams break?

Dam breaking: August 1975: The Banqiao Dam flooded in the Henan Province of China due to heavy rains and poor construction quality of the dam, which was built during Great Leap Forward. The flood immediately killed over 100,000 people, and another 150,000 died of subsequent epidemic diseases and famine, bringing the total death toll to around 250,000—making it the worst technical disaster ever. In addition, about 5,960,000 buildings collapsed, and 11 million residents were made homeless

Coal plant: not a lot of coal plant accidents indeed, but coal mines have been killing flocks for centuries. For example, 13 May 2014 The Soma coal mine disaster was an explosion at a coal mine in Turkey that killed ~301 and trapped a further 600 underground.And that's without the indirect deaths by air pollution

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[angel'o'sphere]

We are talking about the safety of power plants.
Not about the safety of MINES!!!

So: Coal plants according to you seem to be much safer than nuclear plants, right?

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Jane Q. Public]

Slight correction: the 3 Mile Island incident was a case of operating out of spec guidelines, but that's because a problem wasn't recognized by the crew as what it actually was.

Due to inadequate training.

The point is: in every case of nuclear accident on this scale, it was invariably due to human error.

Every damned time.

Newer designs, with redundant systems that eliminate such errors, are nothing like those old piles of crap.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[angel'o'sphere]

Fukushima's biggest problem, for example, was that they stored 20 years of spent fuel rods in a "temporary" holding area that was only designed to hold a few month's worth.
No it was not. The fuel storage had nothing to do with the initial disaster nor with the later core melt downs.
https://www.nap.edu/read/21874...

The spent fuel only contributed to the spread of contamination.

Nuclear is the answer. Any country that isn't pursuing it is stupid.
Countries are not stupid. People are.

E.g. people like you.

Who had two thorium reactors running? I mean "which country"? You don't know? Does not matter. Guess what: both reactors _failed_ and showed that the initial idea at that time (that was in the 1980s), how to run them was not feasible.

Your other claims are simply: all wrong!

So lets see if one is either building a thorium molten salt reactor, or uses a CANDU design with Thorium.
 

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[angel'o'sphere]

Death by accident, would be a starter.
Death by waste, would be another one.

And again: mining is dangerous. Does not matter if you mine diamonds, gold, iron or ... coal!
Most mining accidents can be prevented, by simply having security standards. I don't remember if we ever had a coaling mine accident in Germany during my lifetime ... we probably had, but no one took the time to make a wikipedia page :D

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

Banqiao Dam death toll: 230,000 estimated
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam#Casualties

Fukushima Daiichi death toll: 50 estimated
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster_casualties

Clearly we can never build another hydroelectric dam with deaths per accident like this.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[ljw1004]

Because some nuclear waste is "scary"?

Yes, precisely because it's "scary" -- in financial terms. The free market has pretty much definitively said that a financial investment in nuclear power has too low a rate of return. I think that's because the cost to build a plant is so great that it spends too much of its operating lifetime servicing its debt, and then the decommissioning costs are uncertain but large. That's why we've only seen nuclear power used when supported by large government subsidies.

Re: Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would they store something after civilization ends?

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

Death by accident, would be a starter.
Death by waste, would be another one.

Those are stupid metrics. I think we should look at deaths per TWh to determine the safest sources of energy.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[cheekyboy]

Global Cooling is more harmful.

If you over compensate and cause cooling, thats worse.

You can grow food if its sub zero C. Its frozen solid.

Short term frost can kill plants.

In all history, short term cooling has been a real bad things for human populations, causing massive dissease and crop losses. Heat has been a positive to cause great thriving populations.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why we've only seen nuclear power used when supported by large government subsidies.

We've only seen wind and solar power used when supported by large government subsidies. So, what's your point again?

Re: Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

Try getting to know some miners with black lung or one's who had all their mates crushed in a cave in before you claim coal is safe.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[serviscope_minor]

But nuclear power is still plenty dangerous. The first problem is that it can provide the material to make nuclear weapons. Won't do us much good to avert Global Warming if some rogue nation starts World War III with nukes.

Given this is an article bout the UK: that's not relly much of a problem since the has at the best estimate a few hundred warheads already.

The second, more insidious problem is that human corruption and incompetence is scarily likely to lead to another major accident such as Fukushima.

That is a problem except it was corruption and incompetence combined with a massive natural disaster (nuclear powerplants are well built). The UK is on the whole geologiclly stable and just doesn't have natural disasters of that scale.

The UK also has a good record on nuclear power safety. The biggest incident relted to nuclear power was the 2005 leak at the reprocessing plant where a 20 tons of nuclear fuel disolved in acid leaked out of a pipe and into a containment vessel. None leaked into the environment, and no one was injured.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Harlequin80]

Ok.... In the US there are about 35 coal miners killed each year.

Wikipedia lists total nuclear accidents deaths at around ~90-120 depending on the counter. So 3-5 years of coal.... And thats worldwide nuclear vs US coal.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[blindseer]

Give me some numbers to convince me of what energy source we should be using then. Pick a metric to rate the danger of each energy source and then put numbers to them. Imagine I'm the government regulator that will be issuing permits to allow these energy sources to put energy to the electrical grid. Convince me that nuclear power is dangerous. Show me how dangerous nuclear power is to society and how much safer the alternatives are by comparison. Give some numbers and cite some sources.

Certainly you must have seen such numbers in order to decide that nuclear power is so dangerous. Share them with me.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[AmiMoJo]

That's a non-answer as it tells me nothing on how to act. If this means we can't have nuclear power then you are by default kicking the problem down the path hoping for a solution to present itself before the problems of global warming are upon us.

Surely it's the exact opposite. Nuclear takes so long to build, and you have to dedicate yourself to maintaining the supply of fuel and the processing of waste for many decades, it's a long term commitment to emit more CO2. Depending on where you get your fuel from nuclear can be up to 110g/kWh.

On the other hand we have proven low emission technologies that can be built up much faster than nuclear. Best of all they provide a decent return on that investment, rather than being a money sink. People are lining up to build them, unlike nuclear where the UK has to pay the Chinese and French to do it for us.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[religionofpeas]

All old plants, old designs, and in every case used outside of spec guidelines.

And how can we guarantee that people will never again run old plants, old designs, or outside of spec guidelines ? Japan is a modern industrialized country, so how come they were running an unsafe plant ?

The reality of human nature is that every year without an accident leads to slight less safety awareness. All existing plants get older and worn down, but few people want to shut down old plants that are still working without issues and generating a steady stream of profit.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[angel'o'sphere]

Chernobyl killed about a million people.
There is a long time to catch up with that due to "coal mining".

Ok.... In the US there are about 35 coal miners killed each year.
That is a shame for US safety standards, or how they are enforced.

Don't you think so?

You pay the price for "cheap coal" with the deaths of your miners and want to use that as an argument for other power sources?

Wow ...

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Barsteward]

The Uk government subsidises nuclear power to enable it to be competitive in price on the open market

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Bongo]

George Monbiot, in a column in The Guardian, some years ago, wrote about his debate with Caroline Lucas (I think, then leader of the Greens), about her rejection of nuclear.

He'd realised himself that nuclear was the only solution to the sheer scale of the problem, and yet all along, Lucas would insist that the alternatives would continue to develop and advance and improve etc., yet she rejected the notion that nuclear could develop and advance and improve. I don't think he managed to get to the bottom of why she was so biased against the most likely technology to be capable of stopping climate change.

I think there's actually two currents here, ethical and technological. The ethical side gets into the view that humans are greedy and exploitative, therefore MORE energy is merely license to exploit more. So wind and solar are sustainable in the sense of forcing us to live a more, ahem, quiet life.

Meanwhile the technology current, which just looks at climate as a simple matter of science and solutions, makes kinda clear what the numbers are and what the options are.

The trouble is, these two currents get smooshed together, and then people end up feeling like, why is this technology problem turning into a religious argument? It doesn't have to, as there is nothing wrong with asking, how shall we humans live? Is there really a fulfilling life in the rat race? Can we be happy with a simple life?

Another reason why confusing the technical and the ethical is so bad is that the ethical side is extremely complex. We in the West have inherited a set of religions which emphasise austerity, but in the East this whole category is simply called "sutra style" and it is only one of three major approaches to life.

So the Western ethical arguments can go down this austerity approach, and meanwhile in the East they are going along a creativity and play approach, which is far less life-denying, and if anything, is a wide field of creative play and chaos and development.

So the ethics have to be discussed and made explicit, rather than hidden and implicit within a science narrative. And the technology needs to be given its own fair and unbiased space to research and solve problems.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Barsteward]

"The point is: in every case of nuclear accident on this scale, it was invariably due to human error. Every damned time. "

A great reason for not having nuclear, human fallibility.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Barsteward]

" Why should I believe the next version of wind and solar should be cheaper than the last?" just look at all the graphs of costs for renewable costs,, cheaper and cheaper with improving tech every year as technology improves.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Harlequin80]

Chernobyl killing a million people is a totally unsupported claim. No one anywhere claims that. The WHO estimates a total of 4000 extra cancers using a method that provably over estimates the impact.

Also I'm not an american, and germany has the grand total of 6 coal mines. A quick search also turned up 57 miners dying in a german coal mine in '88. So it depends how old you are....

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[amorsen]

I'm all for nuclear power. Build away!

But damnit, don't make me pay £0.092 per kWh at 3 am in the morning for electricity I don't need or want. Wind and solar can do it for less than half the price. And if you order a new off-shore wind farm today, it'll be installed in 3 years. If you order a new nuclear reactor today, it might be installed in 10 years, if you're lucky.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody builds reactors like those any more.

Except maybe the UK? Isn't the big new nuclear plant the worst option they could have chosen for new nuclear? Still better than none.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[CrimsonAvenger]

Where do you think that the U-235 for the first nuclear weapons came from?

First nuclear weapon. Only one (1) nuclear weapon has ever been made using U235. That was the Hiroshima bomb. The rest have been made with Plutonium, which requires a specially designed reactor to make. Which is why there are so few countries with nukes. Civilian reactors won't get you there....

likely to lead to another major accident such as Fukushima.

Yeah, Fukushima was such a major accident that it killed almost as many people as died on the morning commute in most any major city today. Even Chernobyl didn't kill as many people as died in traffic on any average day in the USA....

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[CrimsonAvenger]

And 3 of those 400 went boom. Several others nearly went boom.

Umm, no. None of them "went boom". No, there have been no nuclear explosions in any nuclear power plants, ever.

Note that of the three, one had no (zero) casualties, one had one (1) casualty, and the third had a hundred or so (mostly firefighters).

Note that the one that had a hundred or so casualties was a result of a deliberate attempt to simulate a meltdown. So they tried really hard to get to a condition that acted like a meltdown, succeeded in getting a real meltdown, and still had casualties that make any particular day's traffic fatalities look good (note that the world loses three thousand people DAILY in traffic accidents - we haven't had three hundred deaths as a result of nuclear power in all the time we've had nuclear power (70 years or so)....

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

Chernobyl killed about a million people.

When you invent fake news, it is essential to make your story at least as believable as if you were putting it in a novel. If your 'news' includes figures, extrapolate from someone else's widely published figures in some way that superficially appears plausible to your target audience, rather than just pulling as many zeroes from your colon as you can.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[blindseer]

just look at all the graphs of costs for renewable costs,, cheaper and cheaper with improving tech every year as technology improves.

How did that happen? I have a good idea. We saw governments dump all kinds of money into research and development. Governments encouraged private investment through tax breaks and laws preferential to their use. Governments bought energy from these sources, often at prices far higher than market rates. Most importantly the government issued permits for the construction of facilities producing power using these technologies.

How is nuclear power treated by comparison? Few to zero permits issued for construction of a new nuclear reactor for 40 years. Nuclear power did get tax breaks but not near the same as wind and solar on a per MWh basis. If there was power produced by wind or solar then the utilities were legally required to buy it, whether they needed it or not. This meant other plants, such as nuclear and coal, were forced to idle if there was a surplus of capacity.

Tell me something, how long can this price reduction over time for wind and solar continue? Wind and solar simply cannot be priced to zero with continued development, there will be a bottom. I'm guessing that they are real close to that bottom now if they haven't hit it already. On the other hand nuclear barely got started to figure out how to reduce their costs. Again, no new nuclear power plant got permission to build for 40 years. During that time people didn't stop thinking of new ways to lower costs. If the US government starts issuing licenses for some of this new technology that people thought up then maybe we could see nuclear power costs drop just as quickly as wind and solar. What do we have to lose by trying?

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[fish_in_the_c]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Why don't we have more nuclear power? because no matter how well you build a nuclear reactors you can know 100% for certain that you will have planned for accidents and what percentage of them will make large area's of the earth uninhabitable. over enough time ( 1000, 10000, etc. years is hard to say) you virtually guaranteed to make large parts planet uninhabitable and poison significant portions of the rest. How many more area's the size of small states do you want to be utterly uninhabitable until you recognize that any of catastrophic failure is too high. Unless you can prove your chance of catastrophic failure is less then 1 in 1000000 years then nuclear is poor choice. That includes accidents caused by leaking of nuclear waste, which is also toxic for thousands or millions of years and no one has any idea how to properly store it for that amount of time because it is not natural for people to think it time spans that long.

Global warming is going to be bad as well, maybe worse , so that might still make nuclear a option to think about, however, I would not be cavalier about it , because it is probably not a good long term ( aka 5000 year) solution to the problem. It might make a reasonable stop gap while we figure out something better.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[fish_in_the_c]

And how EXACTLY do you propose to eliminate human error? or worse yet intentional Destruction?
Also , we have already had these serious problems in less then 200 years. How many 'unexpected' things can happen in 10,000 years. Wars, governments collapsing, famines, etc, this stuff, and it's waste last a LONG LONG time and when it poisons an area it is on that kind of time scale.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[fish_in_the_c]

yep, and exactly how many acres of the earth were poisoned or made permanently uninhabitable for 5000 or more years by those accidents?
Zero.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[fish_in_the_c]

how many natural disasters do you suppose there will be in the next 500 - 1000 years, how much human incompetence. It is utterly unpredictable, with the exception that there will certainly be some. The consequences of which, when mixed with nuclear power, will be horrendous. The reality is that as long as we keep creating nuclear fuel it is only a matter of time before something worse then Chernobyl happens either through accident, or by human malice.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[fish_in_the_c]

it's not the number of people killed it's the territory made uninhabitable for 10000 years. Let's just say we have 2 Chernobyl every century.
The habitable area of the earth is around 900000 sq/m and the area poisoned is around 10000 sq/ miles, however , the are where radiation is elevated in quite a bit larger area, and when you count radiation poisoning if there was two areas near each other things would get considerably worse so if you figure half the livable land was poisoned that would probably be enough to kill everyone.

so with continued uses of nuclear fuel and those criteria, you can expect the earth to uninhabitable in about 20000 years give or take. Maybe we can get it down to 1 and destroy the earth in 40000 years. if you can get the number of accidents down to say 1 every 10000 to 100000 years, they you are safe, but how do you prove you have done that?

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[DavidMZ]

Not necessarily due to accidents, but if you look at the whole of chain of energy production:

for coal: by-products storage and disposal - https://content.sierraclub.org...

for dams: large populations have been moved, and agricultural lands are now underwater so the impact is not exactly 0.

Look, I am not saying that nuclear energy is the cleanest, but if you take into account externalities the picture for nuclear is less dark than what people think. The problem with nuclear accidents is that they are dramatic, they are very heavily reported and so we have a large psychological bias against them that other energy sources have not (even though they may be more dangerous or polluting).

The problem with energy is that renewable (solar, polar, wind) is far from covering all our needs. I hope it will someday, and I have opted with my energy provider to pay more and have some of my electricity sourced from renewable. Still, we need either gas, coal, or nuclear to fill the gap. Personally, I'd rather leave 50miles from a nuclear plant than from a coal plant.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear takes so long to build

The USA was able to go from near 0% nuclear in 1970 to 20% nuclear in 1990.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/US_Electrical_Generation_1950-2016.png

That was a time when we didn't have the industrial capacity we have now, the computer aided design tools we have now, the automated manufacturing we have now, the knowledge of 50 years of operating nuclear power plants we have now. If the USA wanted to replace all the coal power we have now with a zero carbon energy source then there is nothing stopping them but this unfounded fear of nuclear power.

The USA was able to build 100 GW of nuclear power generating capacity in 20 years. That's 5 GW per year, or 4 reactors like the AP1000. That's four reactors coming online per year 30 to 50 years ago. We were able to do it then, why can't we do the same today? I'm guessing that not only can we do the same today but we can build reactors 2 or 3 times that rate now. That would be as many as 12 nuclear reactors per year, and I think we can do that if we wanted.

How has wind and solar done by comparison? In 30 years of subsidies and preferential treatment they were unable to reach even 10%. That's with tying a millstone around the neck of nuclear power to keep it from competing.

Nuclear "takes too long to build" only because no one has been allowed to even try to build a plant for 40 years. It takes effectively infinite time to build if no permits are issued. Start issuing permits and see them pop up like dandelions.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[LynnwoodRooster]

And the UK Government subsidizes offshore wind to undercut the price of nuclear as well. Have to make it attractive for the French and Chinese companies to come and install those turbines after all...

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[angel'o'sphere]

Chernobyl killing a million people is a totally unsupported claim. No one anywhere claims that.
It is not.

Chernobyl was "contained" by 600,000 recruits, so called "liquidators". 450,000 are meanwhile confirmed dead.

The wikipedia article talks about 25,000 dead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The WHO itself talked a few years ago about up to 2,000,000 dead, why they (as you claim) now talk about 4k, I don't know.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[angel'o'sphere]

"went boom" is figurative speak, idiot.

If I had wanted to say: "they exploded" I had said so.

And strictly speaking: Chernobyl did explode, idiot.

we haven't had three hundred deaths as a result of nuclear power in all the time we've had nuclear power (70 years or so)....

Because Ukraine does not belong to your world? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The wiki article speaks about 25,000 dead. German reports about the 600,000 liquidators speak about 450,000 confirmed dead. The death toll estimated to "civilian population" is over a million, that puts us into 1,000,000 - 2,000,000 range.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

Before you shill for additional nuclear installations, show your true support by spending a few years working at the Hanford Site. If you do, I will take you seriously. Until then, I have to believe you are not properly committed to your cause.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[angel'o'sphere]

The biggest incident relted to nuclear power was the 2005 leak at the reprocessing plant where a 20 tons of nuclear fuel disolved in acid leaked out of a pipe and into a containment vessel.
You must be very young ...

The biggest incident was Sellafield/Windscale, which nearly lead to a Chernobyl like disaster.

https://www.theguardian.com/en...

You can google easily for more about this incident ... youtube is full with videos about it.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

"The point is: in every case of nuclear accident on this scale, it was invariably due to human error.

Every damned time. "

  A great reason for not having nuclear, human fallibility.

Even with all that human fallibility happening all over nuclear power it is still far safer than wind, solar, or hydro.

If we can't have nuclear power because of human fallibility then we cannot have any energy.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[bzipitidoo]

Number of deaths doesn't tell the whole story. By that measure, a bad bus accident or a plane crash can be a bigger disaster than a major hurricane. A better measure could be total damages. Hurricane Andrew: 65 dead, $27.3 billion in damage, Air France flight 447: 228 dead, about $2.53 billion in damage (using $250 million for the aircraft, $10 million per life lost). Which is the worse disaster?

Damage estimates for Fukushima vary wildly, perhaps as low as $100 billion, or perhaps over $1 trillion. Banqiao Dam is the worst dam failure I've heard of, with an incredible 230,000 dead, however, in only a few years, most of the devastation was cleaned up. One of the troubles with nuclear power is of course radiation, which can make land uninhabitable and even unvisitable for centuries. No dam failure can do that. Like Fukushima, Banqaio was caused by recklessly inadequate engineering in combination with a natural disaster. They were warned by competent engineers that the engineering wasn't good enough, but they ignored the engineers and went ahead anyway. It is that human factor that makes nuclear power so worrisome. I don't trust that we can keep all nuclear power plants safe from such reckless mismanagement. The human factor is also why offshore oil drilling is so controversial. Been plenty of bad accidents with that, and in most every case, such as Deepwater Horizon, someone got greedy and tried to cut corners.

We should use nuclear energy if the only alternative is coal. But we should use neither so long as it's economical to increase renewables. We should not bias the costs in any technique's favor by externalizing costs of pollution. For nuclear power, waste storage is an additional big and growing problem. Are you volunteering your back yard for storage of nuclear waste?

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[hey!]

You want me to believe that "any day now" wind and solar will displace coal, oil, and natural gas? Well, we've been trying to do that for decades now and it's not happening very quickly.

Last year Scotland generated more than 2/3 of its electricity from renewables. Across the UK the share of renewables in electricity generation has increased exponentially since around 2000. In 2013 that amounted to about 14.9% across the entire UK; in the last quarter of data available for the UK as a whole in 2017, that figure was 29.8%. Meanwhile coal's share has plummeted from about 45% in 2012 to less than 10% last year, in part because of natural gas, but also because of the sharp rise in renewables.

Now there's a huge gulf between generating 68.1% of your electricity from renewables, as Scotland just did, and 100%. And electricity is just one form of energy distribution; there's vehicles and heating to be considered. But what seems intuitively credible to you isn't really a good guide to what is possible.

That's the main reason most of us chose to work in technology, not just to bang out minor variations of what's been done in the past, but to be part of achieving extraordinary things.

Renewables are a tremendous economic opportunity, which is why a Tory government is onboard. Some people are going to make a lot of money, if they can get their head out of the sand. Meanwhile we're getting rumblings of energy retaliation from the Saudis if western government sanction them for murdering journalist Jamal Khashoggi. You can talk all you want about sovereignty, but if a kingdom of 32 million people controls the lifeblood of your economy, your sovereignty is just flags and martial music and parades.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[serviscope_minor]

We are talking about nuclear power are we not?

So why bring up an irrelevant point about a very early nuclear weapons program?

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[serviscope_minor]

And meanwhile including Chernobyl, nuclear power has fewer deaths per twh than any other form of power. Nuclear power has a tiny number of very high profile incidents versus vastly more lower profile incidents.

I refuse to let emotion override hard statistics, personally.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[squiggleslash]

Not the GP, but: I'm guessing you stopped at the sentence that said "the people who worked there were expected to keep quiet and carry on making plutonium for the bomb", and noticed a lot of other military references in the article, which is understandable, but...

Windscale is/was a "civilian" Nuclear reactor. An early justification for the British nuclear power programme was to create Plutonium (as a by-product) for the UK nuclear weapons programme. Hence the sentence in the article, which pointed out that people were scared to speak out and had to continue working in post-accident terrible conditions for military reasons.

So while there were military aspects that made the situation worse, that was a Nuclear Power related accident, not a Nuclear Weapons thing.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

Chernobyl was "contained" by 600,000 recruits, so called "liquidators". 450,000 are meanwhile confirmed dead.

There's probably 450,000 dead today of the original 600,000 because the Chernobyl accident was 30+ years ago in an area of the world where few men live to see their 70th birthday. Blaming their deaths on the radiation they were exposed to at the time will be difficult in a population known for cancers from smoking, industrial pollution, drug and alcohol abuse, and generally poor standards of life.

The wikipedia article talks about 25,000 dead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The WHO itself talked a few years ago about up to 2,000,000 dead, why they (as you claim) now talk about 4k, I don't know.

They talk about 4000 possible deaths now because they have 30+ years of observations to show how radiation has effected the population. Up to now there was not a lot of data from the levels of exposures seen in situations like this. They only saw extremes from low levels of exposure, with people just living in different areas with different levels of background radiation, and in high doses from accidents. People know radiation is deadly but just how much is how deadly was left to speculation until the liquidators were examined over time.

I'd think that getting down modded as much as yourself that you'd learn something once in a while. Maybe instead of telling people to go read Wikipedia that you should do so yourself once in a while. Much of your confusion would be clarified if you had actually read the page you linked to.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power still sounds better than global warming.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

That still sounds better than global warming.

Your scenario requires a few things to happen. First, people would have to be idiots to build a reactor in a place that is pristine when they know it has the potential for failure and contaminating that area. If you already have a "no go zone" from radiation contamination then build the next reactor in that same place. If it blows then it's only contaminating an already contaminated area. I'm sure that some of these dangerous isotopes will creep out of this area from wind, rain, and wildlife movement but if they built some walls around the area to minimize wildlife coming and going, and put in similar barriers to water movement, then contamination would be largely contained.

Second, it requires that they learn nothing on how to keep nuclear reactors from blowing up in their face. There were lots of steam engine failures long ago, creating lots of death and destruction, but we learned how to make safe steam power to the point that it is the basis of nearly all the electricity we produce, including nuclear power. That gets to my next point.

You ask how do we prove we've made nuclear power safe? Well, for one we can take one measurement, energy produced, and another, deaths caused, and divide one by the other. If deaths per terawatt-hour is smaller than the alternatives then we've proven nuclear power safe. It turns out people have done just that and as nuclear power is done today it is exceedingly safe.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll take your Fukushima, and raise you one Banqiao Dam.

Banqiao Dam showed that moronic cronies may end up in charge, and start making foolish decisions, taking gambles that they have little idea are extremely reckless.

FTFY

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the use of nuclear power reduce CO2 output? Does continued CO2 emissions pose a threat to the environment? I'm guessing both are true. Therefore, I don't care if the government has to subsidize nuclear power.

I don't care about any problems of disposing of nuclear waste either. Sell the waste as ice cream topping for all I care. Given the scenarios shown on what global warming can bring we can manage any problems that nuclear power might bring. I include any problems of a nuclear power plant blowing up and spreading radioactive cesium over 10,000 square miles. That's not saying we need to be haphazard about building these nuclear reactors, only that if we must take on the small risk of another large nuclear accident to the certainty of global warming then let's go with that small risk.

Build those windmills, put up some solar panels, and build some nuclear power plants.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, let's go with that the number of deaths don't tell the whole story.

How many people will be displaced from rising ocean waters and more powerful storms if we don't lower our CO2 emissions? How much property damage will there be from global warming? Will that rise to trillions of dollars? You talk of land lost to another nuclear power accident, but how much land will be lost to desertification? Rising sea levels? Mudslides and floods as ice caps melt?

We saw less than 3 GW of renewable energy capacity come online in the USA. In 2016 a single nuclear reactor brought 1.1 GW of capacity online. There's a difference though, nuclear power has a history of 90%+ of capacity factor while wind and solar reach less than 30%, with rare exceptions. That single reactor will likely produce more actual "zero carbon" power than all wind and solar energy installed all over the nation in 2017. You want to tell me we can't keep doing both because there is a teeny tiny chance this reactor might cause a lot of damage? Won't global warming cause far more?

Imagine the CO2 reductions we could have seen if we had continued building nuclear power for the last 40 years. Would we even be talking about it today if we had? Perhaps there might have been another Chernobyl, but Chernobyl was built by the best drunken politicians that the Soviet Union could afford. The engineers were ignored when problems of safety were brought up because the politicians could not have their vodka drinking interrupted by such trivial matters. Is that how nuclear power is run in the USA? I'm quite certain it is not. Even if so we'd still be seeing the benefits of stopping, or at least slowing down, global warming. That might mean turning Tennessee into a radioactive no-go zone in the future from Watts Bar blowing its top but that's far less damage that is predicted from global warming.

Threats of putting nuclear waste in my backyard is meaningless. We know how to store that waste safely. Dig a big hole in a mountainside, stack it in there nice and neat, then seal it up. Would you rather I put some global warming in your backyard? Because we'll all have some global warming in our backyards if we don't build some nuclear power plants.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[olau]

The thing is that Caroline Lucas is right. Wind and solar are in fact falling in price so rapidly that you have to be extremely biased towards a particular tech to not notice it.

There's a lot of hype going on in nuclear land. The tech itself is appealing to some. But it's just not very practical.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[serviscope_minor]

Windscale is/was a "civilian" Nuclear reactor.

No, that's not correct. The ne that caught fire, the windscale pile, was a very low burnup plutonium cooker specifically for making nuclear bombs. In fact the fire was caused by it being pushed way beyond both its deisgn remit and limits in order to meet a very tight deadline for a bomb test.

Re:Nuclear power and hydrocarbon synthesis

[Bongo]

The thing is that Caroline Lucas is right. Wind and solar are in fact falling in price so rapidly that you have to be extremely biased towards a particular tech to not notice it.

There's a lot of hype going on in nuclear land. The tech itself is appealing to some. But it's just not very practical.

Ok, so at what point will my electricity bill stop going up?

When subsidies are no longer needed?

Or is it a case of, ban coal and oil and gas and then let wind and solar stabilise at whatever their natural price is?

I think a lot of people are under the illusion that energy should be cheap, whereas there's a broader issue of how much of industrialised life is pure waste. And whether there are simply too many people (one billion rather than seven or ten).

But what about exhaling humans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Carbon emissions are not the problem. That we're not recycling them back, is.
Because that's the difference between running out of food at one side and drowning in shit at the other, and survival.

But hey, not like this was about any of that. ;)

Re:But what about exhaling humans?

[blindseer]

The US Navy figured this out. All we have to do is scale it up and deploy it widely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Problem solved!

Re:But what about exhaling humans?

[dohzer]

And here I was thinking I was about to watch a Trident II SSBN launch video.

Re:But what about exhaling humans?

[AmiMoJo]

Nice idea but let's look at the reality of commercial SMRs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Lots of paper designs ranging from concept to detailed plans, that for some reason were all abandoned. A couple of Russian ones actually entered service, but proved to be extremely expensive.

Re:But what about exhaling humans?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because why scale up when it's far easier to scale down the population! *troll face*

aka zero job economy

[Anonymous Coward]

hope you uk people like being poor and unimployed because thats what your libtard ideas are getting you

UK emissions

[110010001000]

The UK has done a good job reducing emissions since 2012. Unfortunately the EU has not, and has been increasing their emissions.

Re:UK emissions

[angel'o'sphere]

The UK has done a good job reducing emissions since 2012. Unfortunately the EU has not, and has been increasing their emissions.
Nitpicking very mich?

We had a bad winter, idiot. So we used more oil and gas and coal to heat houses. And that was in a single year: 2017. Before that the EU just did reduce as much as the UK did.

And in the year 2017, the UK increased their CO2 emissions, just like the rest of the EU did.

And: UK are still in the EU ... which makes comparisons a bit more complicated. Especially if so many people proudly write since 2012. Which makes no sense. The EU is reducing CO2 emissions since roughly 1995. And Germany since roughly 1980. What is so special about 2012? The UK joined late, but not that late.

Re:UK emissions

[Anonymous Coward]

We had a bad winter, idiot. So we used more oil and gas and coal to heat houses. And that was in a single year: 2017. Before that the EU just did reduce as much as the UK did.

Wait, the EU missed their carbon emission goals because the winter was cold? That's grade A bullshit right there. You didn't know that winter was going to be cold? Oh, but it was really cold, you say? Well, that's a pretty lame CO2 reduction effort if "bad winter" can make your reduction efforts be reversed.

Here's an idea, stop buying natural gas from Russia and build some nuclear power plants. Then replace those old oil and gas furnaces with some heat pumps and resistance heaters. You'd not only reduce your CO2 but you quite likely reduce your electricity costs as well.

Here's my theory on why the EU has seen increases in their CO2 emissions. The use of unreliable energy from wind and solar means relying on inefficient natural gas turbines to make up for when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. Instead of 60% efficient boilers the need to back up wind and solar means needing 30% efficient turbines. As the wind and solar use grows so does the need for more turbines. You see reductions of CO2 until you hit the point that turbines are displacing natural gas boilers instead of coal. As you get more and more wind and solar the need for turbines keeps going up and so does your CO2 emissions for the same "real" energy produced.

This isn't just my theory, lot's of people that study things like this came up with this theory. Wind and solar only work as energy sources so long as there is natural gas to back them up. Relying too heavily on wind and solar means CO2 emissions start to go up instead of down.

The EU has been going wild building out wind and solar (mostly wind though) and they've now met the max they can deploy this and see a reduction in CO2. Going from 0% wind to 10% wind is easy. Going from 10% to 20% is also trivial. Going from 20% to 30% is going to get a bit difficult. Getting from 30% to 40% will be nearly impossible. Well, impossible in that you'll see any reduction in CO2 as a result.

I predict another "bad winter" for the EU, with plenty more to come. At some point people will have to question the sanity of deploying so much wind power and/or the validity of global warming scares. If it keeps getting so cold there that you need to burn so much coal to stay warm then maybe you should just keep burning that coal, global warming would be a bit helpful.

Muslim time in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon the Muslims will be able to fuck goats and sheep in the dark, just like the 6th century, piss be upon him.

UK Steps Towards Zero- Economy

[Anonymous Coward]

More scaremongering that will cost billions and achieve very little...?

The Great Global Warming Swindle - Full Documentary HD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYhCQv5tNsQ

What you call "economy", is not a good thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

That it took a bunch of apparently (I only get EU propaganda here) Nazi morons, to throw out the EU neocon-fascists, is hilarious. But even if morons did it, it isn't wrong, just because morons did it. Otherwise you have to stop breathing right now. Because Hitler thought that's a good choice too, "and you don't want to be Hitler, right? (TM)" ;)

The fact still stands, and as a Luxemburgish citizen with half his family working in the innards of the EU government institutions (like is normal for pretty much everyone here), I have first-hand sources, ... that the EU's founding intentions and spirit are the exact same ones as that of TTIP/CETA (or TPP, NAFTA, those African ones, and whatever else there is):
To elevate corporate agents ("lobbyist politicians") above the sovereignty of people (like YOU) over their home.
Just like the EG/EWG, BeNeLux and Luxemburg itself, before that. (We literally were prevented from joining Germany, so we could stay a tax haven, back when all those tiny countries formed Germany.)

The vast majority who opposed TTIP/CETA/EU, are FOR cooperating with other countries wherever it serves the people of both countries. They are just against some psychopathic corporate assholes putting themselves above worker's rights, nature’s rights, and even state sovereignty and human rights!

Frankly, I would not be surprised at all, if the GHCQ deliberately injected some Nazi agent provocateur moles into the Brexit movement, just to poison any opposition to the EU neocon-fascists. German politician Schäuble (basically our Darth Cheney) was officially caught doing literally exactly that to an organization he assumed was Nazi, but in the end, was nothing compared to what his own agents did. And the Snowden leaks listed 43 organizations that the NSA did this to, in just a single year. With the NSA and GHCQ both being members of Five Eyes.
(That strategy was what the Nazis did to try to ruin the French resistance. Hence "agents provocateurs" being French words. But I'm sure Stalin used it too.)
So it would take quite the anticonspiracy theorist nutjob, to act like this was unrealistic.

Conclusion: Keep your nutjob theories to yourself, you hopeless blackeyer.

GOLDEN SHOWERS fill your EYES...apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Once there was a WAY to get back homeward. Sleep little darling do NOT CRY and I will sing you a lullaby (lol)
 
Only a CONSPIRACY THEORY retard would put up with the level of propaganda by ARAB INTEREST BizX. Al Gore "DECLARES WAR" on carbon, too STUPID to realize he is MADE of carbon. APK
 
P.S. I defecated in msmash's Impostor Cornflakes this morning..apk

Re: GOLDEN SHOWERS fill your EYES...apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Why u not show up for fight?

Re: GOLDEN SHOWERS fill your EYES...apk

[Anonymous Coward]

In this post, APK is revealing his favorite activities for him and his ex-marine "roommate". You guys have some disgusting fetishes.

Re: GOLDEN SHOWERS fill your EYES...apk

[Type44Q]

We're Haole, bro; we don't speak Moke.

General Solution For Global Warming

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO, general solution for Global Warming, is definitely NOT, carbon tax nor drastic (& extremely risky & costly!) global geoengineering attempts, etc!

What is really most effective against Global Warming (and by far!) is forests!
So, what is really needed is a global UN agreement about which country must increase their forests, by how much, by when?!
(But, obviously, all new forests need to be created in a well planned way that cannot be burned all down easily/completely!)

Of course, increasing solar & wind power plants, increasing efficiency of all kinds of vehicles, etc would also help greatly!

It would be great if the US would do the same.

[EzInKy]

Even if you don't believe in climate change wouldn't it be nice to enjoy cleaner air and purer water? It sure would make those hunting and fishing trips much more enjoyable now wouldn't it? No matter which side of the great "climate debate" you fall on, it makes no sense to be against improving the environment we all have to live in.

Re:It would be great if the US would do the same.

[religionofpeas]

Also, fossil fuels are not forever. The best time to switch to alternatives is when they are still cheap and reliable.

Re:It would be great if the US would do the same.

[totallyarb]

Even if you don't believe in climate change wouldn't it be nice to enjoy cleaner air and purer water?

Yes, it would. It would also be nice to own a Rolls Royce. The question isn't "is it nice?", it's "is it nice enough that it's worth the cost?"

Get this straight: there is nobody who is against improving the environment. There are simply those who believe it's worth the cost, and those who don't. Which group you're in seems to be largely a matter of...
a) How high you think the cost will be to actually fix the problem
b) Whether or not you consider yourself to be part of the group that will end up actually footing the bill

Re:It would be great if the US would do the same.

[totallyarb]

Also, fossil fuels are not forever. The best time to switch to alternatives is when they are still cheap and reliable.

How do you figure? Surely logic dictates that as fossil fuels become more scarce, their price will rise; and as alternatives continue to be developed, their price will fall; therefore the BEST time to switch is the time when the cost of the alternatives is less than the cost of the fossil fuels?

Re:It would be great if the US would do the same.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is about 10 years ago if you stop letting fossil fuels externalise their costs whilst refusing to let green energy sources do the same.

The actual costs of increased healthcare from harm caused by fossil fuels puts the cost of them way above almost any other power source including nuclear, but for some reason the fossil fuel industry is allowed to offload this cost onto the tax payer/health insurance payer, whereas other sources like nuclear are expected to deal with cleanup costs as part of the cost of the overall offering directly.

This in itself grossly distorts the cheapness of fossil fuels, in reality they're way too expensive and we need to stop letting them distort the energy market this way.

An Enemy Not Seen

[JimSadler]

To be for CO2 control while wanting economic growth is simply not possible. We must have CO2 control but we must resist all growth. That includes population growth. Pollution is a consequence of human activity. The more humans we have the more pollution we must have. So yes, we must totally change all of our economic policies and habits. And yes, wealthier people will take a harder hit than the poor. In my area it would help to freeze new construction including not allowing new rooms to be added to homes or businesses. We also need to get gas and diesel cars and trucks reduced in number quite quickly. We are left with electric vehicles or hydrogen using vehicles as a consequence. We also need to consider limiting travel and tourism to reduce emissions. We then might want to look at how close a person would be required to live to their place of employment. It will be shocking but there really is zero choice if we wish human life to survive.

Re:An Enemy Not Seen

[Anonymous Coward]

To be for CO2 control while wanting economic growth is simply not possible.

If I must choose between economic depression and global warming then I choose global warming.

If we see sea level rising then we will build sea walls. If we see more hurricanes then we will build stronger buildings. If we see colder winters and hotter summers then we will build bigger furnaces and air conditioners. Whatever global warming brings we can adapt to with enough money and effort. You say we need to reduce our CO2 and I'll be chanting, "Drill, baby, drill!"

It will be shocking but there really is zero choice if we wish human life to survive.

No, we have a choice. We can choose to ignore such nonsense. Humanity survived far worse climate changes in the past, we are simply far better equipped now to deal with what might come in the future precisely because we've grown our population and economy to this point. We'd be better equipped with even more such growth.

Here's another choice, we can choose to develop technologies that both allow for economic growth and CO2 reductions. There's lots of them in development now and I believe they will prove successful.

Re:An Enemy Not Seen

[serviscope_minor]

To be for CO2 control while wanting economic growth is simply not possible.

Don't worry, we have Brexit, so the latter won't be a problem.

Re:An Enemy Not Seen

[Attila Dimedici]

And yes, wealthier people will take a harder hit than the poor.

And this is why any plan you have for doing so will fail, because the opposite is true. While the wealthy may lose MORE wealth in such a plan, the poor will lose enough wealth to go from "poor" to "subsistence", and those who are already at "subsistence" will die.

The other thing worth noting is that the greater wealth, the slower population growth. Also, the greater wealth, the more people work to reduce pollution.

Re:An Enemy Not Seen

[fish_in_the_c]

population decrease? whom do you wish to kill ? You first , then well talk ;)

Re:An Enemy Not Seen

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds logical, but it's not necessarily true. US carbon emissions have been about constant for the last 20 years even as the economy has grown.

(Posting anonymously because I already modded.)

Solars cheaper than Coal

[Anonymous Coward]

Except solar is a damn site cheaper than coal if you take into account the capital costs spent on coal. (3 cents a kilowatt hour). It's only because you've already SPENT that capital on profits to Murray Energy that Murray is able to undermine solar capital spends with propaganda.

And that's not counting the costs of the pollution from the coal*.

* And if Murray Energy gets their way and the head of the EPA (a former Murray Energy lobbyist) eliminates the mercury limit, the cost of pollution will be a lot higher.

Re: Solars cheaper than Coal

[Anonymous Coward]

OK sweetie, go back to your room now. The nurse will be right there to give you your medication.

Re:Solars cheaper than Coal

[Anonymous Coward]

Except solar is a damn site cheaper than coal if you take into account the capital costs spent on coal. (3 cents a kilowatt hour). It's only because you've already SPENT that capital on profits to Murray Energy that Murray is able to undermine solar capital spends with propaganda.

And that's not counting the costs of the pollution from the coal*.

* And if Murray Energy gets their way and the head of the EPA (a former Murray Energy lobbyist) eliminates the mercury limit, the cost of pollution will be a lot higher.

Commercially, you are totally wrong, solar is much MORE expensive than coal which is more expensive than Natural Gas when you look at total cost from build, through operation (including fuel costs) to decommissioning, at least in North America. In fact, photovotaic solar, is the absolute highest priced option out there..

The cheapest electricity source going is Natural Gas right now.

Re:Solars cheaper than Coal

[LynnwoodRooster]

Did you include the mandatory backup energy source for solar? Or are you going with 100% solar only, and accepting the issues of no storage and no contingency. Most of those "solar/wind are cheaper!" studies assume the existing power infrastructure will always be available to "back up" the renewable source as needed - but do not include the costs of that backup source. The reality is that renewables are very expensive because it is a redundant system - the renewable sources, and a completely redundant secondary non-renewable power generation grid.

Re:Solars cheaper than Coal

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Most of those "solar/wind are cheaper!" studies assume the existing power infrastructure will always be available to "back up" the renewable source as needed - but do not include the costs of that backup source.

"Most don't include"? You must be reading some crappy studies. Not to mention the fact that most grids are overprovisioned with generator capacity. My country already has generator capacity equal to around 200% of the average consumption. I'd be surprised to see a stable large grid that is significantly less provisioned.

Re:Solars cheaper than Coal

[K. S. Kyosuke]

In fact, photovotaic solar, is the absolute highest priced option out there.

That "highest price" is getting pretty low these days.

Re:Solars cheaper than Coal

[angel'o'sphere]

Most of those "solar/wind are cheaper!" studies assume the existing power infrastructure will always be available to "back up"
Ha ha ha.
There are no such "studies". We perfectly know what a wind mill costs. Hint: google General Electric or Siemens or Vestas. Some of them publish the prices in the web site.
So we perfectly know how much $ / kWh you have to pay.

"Back up" is a stupid american conception. At night you only need about 50% of the power as during day time: so you don't need back up for solar, idiot.

Europe is in an interconnected grid. You don't need "back up" coal plants in Denmark to power it if the wind "is gone" ... they simply get water power from Norway ... etc. p.p. Idiot.

Re:Solars cheaper than Coal

[LynnwoodRooster]

And all those externalities apply to renewables as well. So here's a simple math example:

In general, the cost of generation can be defined as Cost = plants + fuel + externalities

Cost(nr) = plants(nr) + fuel(nr) + externalities(nr)

Cost(r) = plants(r) + externalities(r) + plants(nr) + fuel(nr) + externalities(nr)

Under what set of numbers does Costs(r) become lower than Costs(nr)?

Re:Solars cheaper than Coal

[K. S. Kyosuke]

In my country's case, apparently under *any* set of conceivable numbers. Using the *lowest* current estimate of carbon price adds $0.15 to price of most of our conventional generation. That basically doubles the average retail price of our electricity.

Re:Solars cheaper than Coal

[LynnwoodRooster]

So you have zero non-renewable backup systems? That is the fallacy of the claim - if you rely upon existing non-renewable backup systems to make renewables viable, then you also have to accept their costs including all externalities. And that includes coal plants in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, and other countries.

Re:Solars cheaper than Coal

[LynnwoodRooster]

So then - renewables are not cheaper than non-renewables?

Re:Solars cheaper than Coal

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Exactly the opposite.

Re:Solars cheaper than Coal

[LynnwoodRooster]

What country is that?

Re:Solars cheaper than Coal

[K. S. Kyosuke]

One powered to a significant extent by lignite at ~1000 g CO2/kWh.

Re:Solars cheaper than Coal

[LynnwoodRooster]

So any renewables there are also using that lignite to provide a backup - and thus the cost of renewables is actually higher than the backup (since the renewables are in addition to the backup).

Re:Solars cheaper than Coal

[K. S. Kyosuke]

That's an obvious fallacy. In the absence of renewables covering a part of the demand, the *same* demand (which is not being changed by adding or removing generators) would have to be covered with extra lignite burned - at an extra cost, as per your own reasoning above. If you had "extra" renewables, what would you be doing with them? Shunting them uselessly? No, they allow you to burn *less* coal, which comes at $0.15/kWh of externality cost (at least!) plus the fuel price - around $0.04-$0.05/kWh.

Re:Solars cheaper than Coal

[angel'o'sphere]

Renewables don't have "back up systems".
When whole Europe is 100% renewable you probably will grasp it ... but I doubt it.

Re:Solars cheaper than Coal

[LynnwoodRooster]

And when will that happen? Until then - they have backups, it's why Germany is still building coal power plants.

Re:Solars cheaper than Coal

[angel'o'sphere]

Germany is not building coal powered plants.

The last ones went online 5 years ago, replacing less efficient units.

And two of the "new coal plants" are already offline again because they can not compete with renewables, idiot.

Zero-Carbon Economy

[Anonymous Coward]

Get woke, go broke.

The Waste isn't what's scary

[rsilvergun]

at least not in the United States. Here we're afraid of private businesses operating unsafe reactors to save a buck. Worst case with a natural gas plant is a big explosion. With a nuke plant you're talking decades of contamination.

What you need to do to get folks like me to buy into nuclear is convince me it's cheaper to run a safe plant than an unsafe one. And not just because "We'll be sued". Fukushima has more or less proved that there's no real consequences for the folks in charge. They'll be dead before the wheels of justice turn if they ever do. No, we need plants who's day to day operations are cheaper to run safe. Safety is always an option when you need to save money now.

Re:The Waste isn't what's scary

[Anonymous Coward]

It's cheaper to run an unsafe nuclear power plant than deal with the costs from the effects of global warming.

We can build solar collectors and wind farms only so quickly because of the constraints of industrial capacity. We could go faster in building more zero carbon energy if the federal government simply started issuing permits to build some nuclear power plants. That doesn't mean we can be stupid on building these reactors, like not putting a containment dome over them like at Chernobyl. What it does mean is that we can take advantage of the industrial capacity we are using in pouring concrete and welding steel that is currently being used for coal and natural gas power plants and use them to build zero carbon energy in the form of nuclear power.

You don't want a nuclear power plant in your backyard? Well, it's going to be nuclear power in your backyard or global warming in your backyard. Pick one. Don't tell me that there is another choice because we're all out of other choices, we're already building wind and solar power as fast as we can.

Makes it harder on the rest of us

[Anonymous Coward]

Now everyone else will have to pick up the slack in production of waste and green house gasses to make up for these losses.

Nuclear fuel will be gone before fossil fuel!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power is yet another idiotic non-renewable trick from those who forever will not get, that non-renewable inevitably means it will run out, resulting in death. And non-renewable waste. So drowning in our own shit.

Although the latter will not happen, because nuclear fuels will be used up, way before even fossil fuels.

Making it a *really* Trump-level stupid "solution".

Nuclear power is a shell game, been done before

[DanDD]

Again, which am I to fear more, nuclear power or global warming? Pick one, because we are running out of time for wind and sun to save us.

Nice job with the scare tactic - nuclear power or we all die! The sky is falling! And nice try in your post below, in using the very specialized case of the US Navy in their attempt to project power around the globe with boats. Fortunately US consumers have a few more choices and a little more flexibility than the Navy.

Scare tactics and false dichotomies aside, there's a long history behind the two old arguments you are making, now cleverly rolled into one. And they're both a shell game. Where's the pea, quick, follow my hands! There is no pea. And there is no argument for nuclear saving us, or that the sky is falling. We have work to do, but we're not all gonna die. Unless you make me spill my drink, or cheat me in a card game, or look at my woman... except I don't drink or gamble, and my woman is fiercely independent and loyal, and I am unnaturally studly... so, we're probably not all gonna die. Not even from global warming. There are many potential solutions, and we're just getting started.

First, big nuclear has been living on life support from the government tit from day one. The full-cycle economics have always been questionable, but the lure of 'more funding!' and 'more research, we're almost there!' have kept that ball rolling. Niche markets for nuclear will continue on - like aircraft carriers and submarines. For civilian energy, pick a fission design - the latest and greatest is just around the corner, if we just try that, then we're saved! Except, human error. Hey, we can design that out. Great! Except, tidal wave. Damn, we can fix that too. What next? Sabotage? Meteorite? Rapid disruptive innovation making massive, nation-state enterprise level energy projects obsolete? Don't laugh.

Fission, the neglected ugly stepchild of Nuclear, is even more interesting. Always 30 years away with the promise of 'saving the world' with abundant, clean energy. That only a nation-state can build, maintain, and provide. For which you will pay taxes. For energy. And protection. And god knows what else. Just give us more research money. Any day now. For what, 40 years now? Great, no thanks.

When nuclear is discussed, why is so little mentioned about the promising young upstarts - the Filo T. Farnsworth inspired (yep, the guy that invented the television picture tube while trying to make a fusion reactor new designs, such as the Polywell? Or something really new, like Helion's Magneto-inertial fusion reactor, or even Lockheed Martin's Compact Fusion Reactor?

They aren't mentioned because there's no Westinghouse behind them to buy publicity. Or is it Toshiba now, no, wait, it's Brookfield Business Partners". Just follow the money and the claims of saving the world (and corporate desperation) - they will both lead to a special interest group somewhere, with their own little Buddy Jesus bobble head and claims of salvation.

The same goes for the fossil fuel shell games. If we can just keep the promise of abundant ,cheap fossil fuels alive, we'll keep our increasingly monopolistic empire alive! Look, we can make fossil fuels, sans new carbon, and it will save the world! Everybody will be happy! Especially the status quo.

Back in the 1970's the US ran out of oil because it was controlled by a few who didn't see eye to eye with the US, and your grandparents had to wait in line at the gas station due to federally mandated rationing.

You are a moron.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because nuclear has not yet been safely applied.

Dont Believe a word of it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The #tory commitment to climate change consists of giving up plastic bags for a month and getting ones picture in the local rag. The UK Government has given the go ahead to pursue fracking and we have a minister for the environment who couldnt be bothered to go to the climate change summit. Those are facts , probably wont be reported by the BBC / Ministry of Propaganda.

The cost? Who knows. Who bears it? I can guess...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am guessing it will be straight white males who will have to shoulder the burden.

As always.

After all, it's the only group that is both capable of the empathy required to motivate them, and skilled enough to actually doing anything.

A noble goal.

[biggaijin]

Once they get rid of all those troublesome people and animals exhaling carbon dioxide, the goal will be reached. Soon after that, all the plans will be gone too.

Uh... seriously?

[Mike Van Pelt]

The decision was prompted by last week's UN report warning that CO2 emissions must be stopped completely to avoid dangerous climate disruption.

Don't exhale!!

UK Steps Towards Zero-Carbon Economy

[wiretrip]

"UK Steps Towards Zero-Carbon Economy" - ha they've just restarted fracking in the North West! Against the wishes of everyone in the area :-(

Lying by hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

You said "went boom" because you wanted to say "they exploded" but didn't have the facts to back it up. Using a synonym lets the reader insert the phrase you actually wanted them to hear while you get to feign ignorance like you just did. It's a common psychological method employed by advertisers, politicians, and psyops.