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deptstoremook posted:In fact, nuclear is a bromide, which may silence this very discussion we're trying to have now. deptstoremook posted:As though there isn't infinite pain, suffering, and death under global capitalism? Since it's possible to advocate for both nuclear energy and be a political activist, I think people should try to be both. Better yet, try and convince environmentalists and other left groups that nuclear is a good idea. It won't be easy, obviously, but getting the left to be pro-nuclear is definitely not going to happen if no one is advocating for it. (This all isn't just directed at deptstoremook, by the way, it was just convenient to quote some of his stuff). Another thing is that I think people can maintain their standard of living with less energy and less resources. What I mean by that is, we can still have technology like smartphones, healthcare, and electricity for appliances, but do it with less. If we increase our energy efficiency and design products to last longer (rather than being cheap poo poo we throw away every few years), and recycle our resources better, we can maintain a comfortable lifestyle without sacrificing the planet. That takes care of the consumption part. As for population, birth rates go down if women are given a good education and equal rights, so I think that's the best way to solve that. A lot of people recognize that we need system change, but it's possible to advocate for good programs (women's rights, less consumption, nuclear power) and for system change at the same time. I think that doing those things actually helps build toward system change. Maybe you win a small victory for a wage increase for workers, but that small victory gets more people on board with ending capitalism, which can make the next fight bigger and more meaningful, and so forth.
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Sep 16, 2013 03:39
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What we need is to convince a philanthropist to invest in cleaner energy research. Imagine the traction you'd have with the hipster crowd if you managed to convince Steve Jobs to invest in Thorium instead of Homeopathic medicine.
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Sep 16, 2013 03:47
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deptstoremook posted:
I don't even... Yes, everyone is perfectly willing to have no luxuries, despite the last two millenia being based on the accumulation of said luxuries. I don't want to live in a socialist society where everyone is equal and has equally nothing (and we know from history how 'equal' they pan out to be). If you come into my house and try and take my stuff in the name of 'common good' I'm going to beat the crap out of you. That would be a huge step backward for our society. Once again, without a global implementation of nuclear power, massive climate changes are going to make any kind of 'socialist revolution' irrelevant, because most of the planet will be fubar.
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Sep 16, 2013 04:33
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deptstoremook posted:Negative behavior due to surplus energy is the whole issue, it's been the issue for hundreds of years. Hundreds? Since 1882 is not "hundreds". Or are you reaching back further and talking about human tendency to manipulate the environment and the surplus generated from doing so? deptstoremook posted:I do see nuclear power as a detriment to behavioral change. Funny, because I don't see many other people sharing this belief, and you've given no ground to the idea besides "reasons". A few more intelligent posters than I have already gone over why nuclear power and the reductions in energy disparity may in fact enable social change rather than retard it. deptstoremook posted:Finally, we can reverse the argument in your third post: "discussion of actual solutions" at the expense of assessing bases, principles, and social problems can lead to misguided, incomplete solutions. Since nobody in this thread is going to actually implement a plan of global action, this is already a theoretical discussion. It's disingenuous to say only you are focusing social solutions in this thread, especially your continued insistence that nuclear energy+social change are incompatible. The nuclear side of the argument is to implement both, with the realization that actual social change can take decades, while the nuclear energy option gives us those decades. It is not "nuclear, and then we'll talk!". Mere social change is not an actual solution that is workable in the context of now. Maybe if we were having this discussion in the 1960s your stance would be more feasible. deptstoremook posted:Edit: I guess since you all are clamoring for an alternative, I can put out my ideal plan. Other than the complete extinction of humans--which on the balance of preserving life and biodiversity, is probably the most desired outcome--here's what might be nice: Oh a misanthrope, I guess that explains some things. deptstoremook posted:1. Ban or heavily disincentivize the luxury products (broadly construed) that flow disproportionately to first world countries. This entire plan ignores reality for the most part because it simply cannot be done, no one will agree to this, and those nations which do would severely impact the safety and well being of their people. But that seems to be okay with you because not accepting your plan and preventing nuclear power as an option actually simply leads to your "best case" scenario in which nothing is done and everyone dies.
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Sep 16, 2013 04:37
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Uranium Pheonix posted:Another thing is that I think people can maintain their standard of living with less energy and less resources. What I mean by that is, we can still have technology like smartphones, healthcare, and electricity for appliances, but do it with less. If we increase our energy efficiency and design products to last longer (rather than being cheap poo poo we throw away every few years), and recycle our resources better, we can maintain a comfortable lifestyle without sacrificing the planet. Can you spell out the details a little more on how exactly this would work? Because I don't find this line of reasoning convincing at all. Not trying to be a dick, I really think the thread would benefit from a more detailed explanation. Scald posted:...instead of wishfully thinking of the death of billions. Can all of us in the thread agree that tired, lowest-common-denominator bullshit sniping like this serves absolutely no purpose and seriously degrades the level of discourse? I mean, I know this is just an Internet discussion and all, but every time someone so much as makes a peep about radical environmentalism, they immediately get accused of being genocidal. It's getting really old and the only people who are going to be swayed by such petty insults are morons anyway, so can we please just cut it out?
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Sep 16, 2013 04:38
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Your Sledgehammer posted:Can you spell out the details a little more on how exactly this would work? Because I don't find this line of reasoning convincing at all. Not trying to be a dick, I really think the thread would benefit from a more detailed explanation. I'd second this, although I think most of the information might already be buried in the thread; it might be prudent to aide the current discussion if it were relinked. Your Sledgehammer posted:Can all of us in the thread agree that tired, lowest-common-denominator bullshit sniping like this serves absolutely no purpose and seriously degrades the level of discourse? I mean, I know this is just an Internet discussion and all, but every time someone so much as makes a peep about radical environmentalism, they immediately get accused of being genocidal. It's getting really old and the only people who are going to be swayed by such petty insults are morons anyway, so can we please just cut it out? The nuclear side of the argument really can't help what deptstoremook posts, sorry if it inconveniences the radical environmentalist side of the argument. deptstoremook posted:Edit: I guess since you all are clamoring for an alternative, I can put out my ideal plan. Other than the complete extinction of humans--which on the balance of preserving life and biodiversity, is probably the most desired outcome--here's what might be nice:
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Sep 16, 2013 04:54
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity And then there's this informal rule of debate, which has been a part of philosophical discourse for the last 50 years or so. I think some folks are applying it pretty selectively in this thread. Deptstoremook may have chose his words poorly when making that particular statement, but I think it is abundantly clear what he meant, and it has nothing to do with "wishfully thinking of the death of billions." Let's really tease out what is being said here, shall we? I think it'd be interesting at the very least. Here is a paraphrased version of what deptstoremook was arguing: For the greatest amount of life and greatest amount of biodiversity to exist on this planet, homo sapiens would probably have to go extinct. Unless I am totally misreading the argument, he says nothing in there about wanting human extinction to take place, or human extinction being the most desirable outcome in general. Just that for there to exist the greatest amount of life and biodiversity, human extinction would probably be necessary. For the sake of argument, let's set aside human concerns and just consider pure logic here. Do you agree that this is the case? I don't and have never hoped that humans go extinct. In fact, I hope we stick around this place long enough to evolve further and hopefully someday sire a whole new branch of the evolutionary tree. But can I agree on a purely factual/logical basis that considering the current position that we find the planet in, more biodiversity would be possible if humans were to go the way of the dinosaur? You betcha, because it is totally obvious. Admitting that fact is not harboring a desire for genocide, and interpreting it as such is an ad hominem. What that admission should evoke, however, is shame at how poorly we have done as neighbors in the community of life and a desire to change our behavior for the benefit of every creature we share the planet with. Your Sledgehammer fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 05:29
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Your Sledgehammer posted:Can you spell out the details a little more on how exactly this would work? Because I don't find this line of reasoning convincing at all. Not trying to be a dick, I really think the thread would benefit from a more detailed explanation. Over-consumption Our society is currently structured in a way where resources are harvested, consumed and then tossed in a landfill. An excellent example of this is smartphones, but it applies to most electronics, appliances, toys, and even furniture. Smartphones require a lot of resources to make including minerals like coltan or metals like mercury. This means it takes a lot of mining to make one, and then it's thrown away (often improperly) after a few years (if that) where it has the potential to poison the environment with heavy metals (or just take up landfill space). They can be recycled, but that only partially mitigates the problem. Why are we mass producing expensive, resource-intensive electronics that may not even last a year? Money, obviously. There's a huge amount of profit to be made, and the more smartphones you sell, the more money you make. If you make a device that last for a decade or even a lifetime, you sell far less than if you have people buy the newest fad every year. Since taking in profit is a necessary part of operating in a capitalist society (and money accumulation the goal of the economic system), everyone prioritizes it. The same is true for other objects, from toasters to tables. If you change the economic system so that people's needs and the environment are prioritized over profit, you can still have a toaster and a smartphone. However, you can design one that lasts a lifetime, or for a phone, focus on a modular design that's easy to upgrade. It's anecdotal evidence, I know, but my mom still has a sewing machine that she got several decades ago. Still works fine. I've had friends who got a new sewing machine and it broke within the month. Recycling can often be so expensive that it's cost-prohibitive to do. But if you value the environment over profit, cost isn't as big a problem. Look at packaging waste, too, for example. This 2011 report by the EPA shows that packaging accounts for 30% of municipal solid waste (MSW). Packaging is important in capitalism because it's part of how you market your product, make it look snazzy, or convince someone to buy something they otherwise don't need. If we make it less important, or eliminate it (through changing our economic system or societal values), that's huge. Non-durable goods made up 21% of MSW. A focus on resource-efficient or lasting goods helps eliminate another huge chunk of waste. Continuing on that line of thought, there's a ton of products people buy but don't need, and therefore I'm not going to say are part of the "standard of living." Children's toys are a great example. They're cheap, last a few years, and then are chucked. Marketing convinces children they need an entire new set of shiny toys with every new fad, series, movie, or whatever. Toys for adults could take a similar hit. We can also end the inefficiency of markets. For example, take cars. Not only can we make them longer lasting, ending competition means ending repetition. Instead of Ford, Toyota, Honda, Chevrolet, GM, Audi, Oldsmobile, Volvo, Mazda, and Volkswagon all trying to maximize their share of a finite market and overproducing a shitton of cars (many of which never get bought and are subsequently destroyed), we produce only as many as society needs. People still get cars, but that reduces the waste. Actually, cars are kind of a lovely example, because we'd be better off with a mass-transit system, but you get the idea. Finally, let's target the excesses of the capitalist class, like yachts, private jets, or absurd mansions and fleets of cars. I don't think anyone here would have a problem with cutting that excess consumption in society. That .01% of the world can take a hit to their "standard of living." This article claims 20% of the world's population consumes 76.6% of the world's goods. This isn't a problem of population. This is is a problem of a fifth of the world over-consuming, and that can be addressed without sacrificing important aspects of the standard of living: time saving devices (washers, driers, dish machines, ovens, transportation), communication (phones, computers), and medicine immediately come to mind as things that don't need to go on the cutting board. Energy Use The same kind of dynamic is true for energy use. Currently, profit is valued over efficiency, and the true costs of power (coal especially) are placed on society. If we end the profit motive (and the inefficient markets), we can retrofit millions of homes to be more energy efficient. We can upgrade our grids, switch to mass transit, redesign our cities (I can go more into this if you want), and so forth. This can lead to massive reduced energy consumption for the same standard of living. Finally, I want to emphasize what I mean when I say "standard of living": I mean people will still be able to get the standard of healthcare they're used to. Really, it would be better, since more people would have access to it for cheaper, and preventative healthcare and more resources devoted to health research would help (never-mind the reduction of pollution that would come from all of the above). I mean people will still have their time-saving appliances like washers, driers, ovens, and toasters. People will still have access to transportation, though it may be a short walk in an urban area or a quick train ride, rather than a drive. People will even still have entertainment (TV, movies, games, toys), though the way resources are distributed there will likely be drastically different. There's no need to go the route of painful austerity (that sure as hell isn't going to attract a mass movement) or revert to primitivism (which will lead to the death of billions). Of course, all of this requires an end to the wasteful capitalist society that is at the root of so many of the problems we have today, so we need system change. Obviously that's not easy, but it's something we can build towards as we fight for incremental demands that will lead to it and, hopefully, revolution and a better world.
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Sep 16, 2013 05:32
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FaustianQ posted:I'd second this, although I think most of the information might already be buried in the thread; it might be prudent to aide the current discussion if it were relinked. If you click my post history, I've got some sweet wall of text about building for mass movements and socialist revolution (and some fun stuff on climate, too). Some of them touch on the issue of standard of living, consumption, and overpopulation, though the above post I just made is probably where I've gone into most detail about how addressing over-consumption and restructuring society can allow people to still maintain a good standard of living. If any of my points are unclear (in the above post or any post) or you think need more evidence to back them up, please do let me know and I'll see if I can clarify, expand on, or show what evidence led to my ideas.
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Sep 16, 2013 05:38
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computer parts posted:Then I'm confused as to why we would need substantially more power plants to make batteries. Unless you have an article saying otherwise, battery creation is probably not any more energy intensive than what we already do to survey for oil, and what we do for uranium mining is probably far below that and even below coal mining. Because gas/oil comes pre-made and is energy dense so we don't have to have (electrical) power plants to fuel our cars with. If we stop using fossil fuels and have electric cars or hydrogen cars or whatever, we need to fuel the cars with electricity instead (directly or via a proxy like hydrogen) which is electricity we didn't previously need to produce. By the way, when making hydrogen with electricity and burning it in an engine, you've got an amazing energy efficiency of like 30% which can't be improved very much because physics says so. Therefore, we need more powerplants once electric transportation really takes off and way more powerplants if it's going to be hydrogen/synthetic gasoline etc cars. e: language e2: "Uranium mining + battery making < coal mining + oil surveying+making" is probably true, but it's actually "Uranium mining + battery making + extra electricity generation for the oil we're not burning > coal mining + oil surveying+making" suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 06:05
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Wow...a lot of stuff going on here..I'm posting from my phone so I have to make this relatively short. Addressing the go full nuclear asap vs. Global social change first argument. I can see good points being made on both sides. Yes, by all means, "buy time" with nuclear if you can manage it. It is desperately needed (yet not exactly feasible under the current market system as ill talk about below). Yes, like dept. storemook said, however that does raise a psychological question to do with conveniently pushing the impending crisis out of our lifetimes and ignoring the underlying illness. For those of you advocating going full nuclear, have you considered why this hasn't been or isn't being done right now? It's because fossil fuel companies can still turn a profit, even with the rapidly declining quality of available resources. Of course some of this has to do with government policies and the subsidization of a happy motoring society. Do you see implementation of nuclear power as remotely feasible (in any way really, politically, economically) before it's even too late to be effective as a stopgap measure? I don't. Especially given, as said before, how long it takes to build the drat things and how much energy generation you'd have to fill with them. I'm going to suggest that due to (at least Americas) our crumbling public infrastructure and government and/or private entities being either unwilling or unable to do anything about it, the massive cost of these projects makes them unrealistic, barring a massive social and political revolution and the socialization to a certain extent of personal and corporate assets (mostly among the rich). In which case, perhaps we could take a stab at building the drat things. But by then it may be too late and the world might be fubar, as some have said, due to climate change and its symptoms, the events of which would need to pass to precipitate the necessary structural change. Crises precipitate change. So, after all, unless it turns out you're bill gates or some rich or powerful figure going incognito or at least an engineer or someone who knows the full scale of building these things (not that I do), I'm inclined to agree that saying "gently caress it, let's just go full nuclear" on an internet discussion board amounts to saying "just make this problem go away so I dont have to think about it right now", which is actually very understandable. No judgment there that I don't readily heap on myself as well. It's a big big loving problem that involves so many different dimensions that it is truly very distressing to try and wrap your head around it, and its much easier to say..but, but..nuclear?? 
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Sep 16, 2013 06:06
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Your Sledgehammer posted:/how I'm wrong I can accept that I misread/read too much into the statement, and it was unfair of me to come to that conclusion. I've been a nuclear proponent for quite some time now so I've tended to deal with the more rabid environmentalists and misanthropes on how terrible humanity is and really, global warming is fine because it'll remove our horribleness from the planet. If I may be so bold, most pro-nuclear proponents are thinking within the context of human survival while trying to do what is best ecologically. Deptstore and his supporters are primarily concerned with ecological health first, human survival second. Deptstore seems to be asking for radical social change which can't happen in enough time to make a real ecological difference, while pro-nuclear arguments are for a more achievable nuclear energy stopgap to allow social change to happen. Deptstore raises concern that no social change would happen because [fill in the blank], while others and I reply that without a stopgap measure in lieu of magical social change, there won't be a tomorrow for social change to make a difference. Pro-nuclear posters are concerned with the looming climate change crises, while Deptstore is more concerned with longterm ecological health. My issue is that solving the climate/energy crisis seems to be a separate but equal issue to solving our social issues, and I personally believe that they can be solved in parallel, and we shouldn't prioritize one to the detriment of the other. Is this a fair assessment? What do I have wrong?
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Sep 16, 2013 06:13
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As primitivist as I might be accused of being all the drat time, I see no problem with holding back the most dire consequences of our economy with nuclear energy if it buys us more time to solve the core issues. Whether we actually solve them or not in the long run isn't that relevant, considering we're talking about the potential deaths of billions. Yes, capitalism is causing a great deal of our environmental problems. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool socialist who lives in Kentucky and works for a conservation non-profit where we deal with the hardest impacts of coal extraction. I loving get it. The trick is, we'd have to have enough time to transition to something else in order to solve said problem. I understand the argument "splitting the atom won't save you from the almighty dollar." But do we really have any alternative at this point other than to put in a stop-gap measure? I'm as skeptical as anyone about the idea of new technology saving our asses, but we have the technology for widespread and safe nuclear energy today. The extraction process for uranium and thorium are just as bad as with coal, but the effects of generation of energy with them are night and day apart. FaustianQ posted:...sorry if it inconveniences the radical environmentalist side of the argument. Can we cut this stuff out before we tempt Dusz to come back and take another massive, stinking poo poo in the middle of this thread again? This crap was old and played out in this thread three months ago.
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Sep 16, 2013 06:31
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FaustianQ posted:I can accept that I misread/read too much into the statement, and it was unfair of me to come to that conclusion. I've been a nuclear proponent for quite some time now so I've tended to deal with the more rabid environmentalists and misanthropes on how terrible humanity is and really, global warming is fine because it'll remove our horribleness from the planet. I was with you until you said the climate/energy crisis and solving our social issues are separate. The two are interrelated, but on a global scale, if you want to try and think on that large a level of system. The way I see it, post ww2 at least, north America/western Europe has made itself the global bourgeoisie, exporting much of the dirty energy generation involving mostly manufacturing (and the consequences of such) to developing countries. The problem here is oversimplication of extremely complex issues. But I'm not going to pretend I can convey or even know the full depth and breadth of them. Let's say you go full nuclear in the developed world. Climate problem solved? What do you do about all the manufactured goods that China, India, etc. make through burning coal, as well as their development regimes? Do you tell them to build expensive nuclear plants when fossil fuels are cheaper and more suited to the kind of rapid development they are pursuing? What do you do about a system in which people demand the lowest cost items and price undercutting rules business practices (which makes the cheapest energy generation paramount)? How do you propose to enforce nuclear power development across the globe or at least disincentivize companies manufacturing overseas? Needless to say, this whole thing is very complex. Dengue_Fever fucked around with this message at 07:01 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 06:53
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So, how are we going to be implementing this stopgap rapid global shift to nuclear power? Right now, more people favour stopping nuclear power generation entirely than favour increasing it. Somehow you've got to overcome that. Then, if you're working in a capitalist framework you need to either offer enormous subsidies to nuclear energy or implement an equally huge carbon tax to incentivise the switch. Or, if the nuclear revolutionary vanguard somehow takes power, you're looking at massive tax increases and/or spending cuts to fund a government nuclear grid. Any of these options is going to devastate any economy that tries to carry them out (e: in the short run), and probably wouldn't be very popular, and thats only in one country. How are you going to stop countries free riding? If you're doing technology transfer, how are coal burning poor countries going to afford it? Or are you going to pay for them too? I want to make it clear this is not an anti-nuclear argument. I think the development of nuclear power capability and capacity is important, I just feel that some have been glossing over how monumental a challenge something on that scale in the required time frame would be. Is this in fact more likely than radical social change? Is it even possible without it?
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Sep 16, 2013 08:39
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Yes and no. Nuclear technology is EXTREMELY profitable, just look at the UK deal that the French nuclear industry managed to seal: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-2324435/EDF-UK-closing-nuclear-deal.html Keep in mind that EDF, the French power company, is confident enough of turning a profit to invest nearly 14 billion pounds. The first country to successfully develop thorium reactors are going to get an order of magnitude more than that. The idea that nuclear is somehow unprofitable comes from some strange place, but there's certainly very little information that supports that viewpoint.
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Sep 16, 2013 11:39
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Dengue_Fever posted:I was with you until you said the climate/energy crisis and solving our social issues are separate. The two are interrelated, but on a global scale, if you want to try and think on that large a level of system. Obviously terrible wording on my part. I don't mean that they are not interrelated, but that accomplishing one shouldn't be to the exclusion of the other; social change and nuclear power should be championed equally but as separate issues so neither hurts the other. If you wrap them together one or the other will be resisted much more strongly at a political and cultural level. Dengue_Fever posted:Let's say you go full nuclear in the developed world. Climate problem solved? What do you do about all the manufactured goods that China, India, etc. make through burning coal, as well as their development regimes? Do you tell them to build expensive nuclear plants when fossil fuels are cheaper and more suited to the kind of rapid development they are pursuing? What do you do about a system in which people demand the lowest cost items and price undercutting rules business practices (which makes the cheapest energy generation paramount)? How do you propose to enforce nuclear power development across the globe or at least disincentivize companies manufacturing overseas? Needless to say, this whole thing is very complex. That's the thing China has plenty of nuclear power and is already investing heavily into it, so it'd be a bit of a nonissue to convince them. Because of this, and the fact China wants to export nuclear power, supporting developing countries with building nuclear power plants maybe a "thing" - I'm being nebulous here because I'm personally terrible at finance, but I could see nuclear power in developing countries being used to curb or gain influence in the country it's built in. From my understanding, things are not exactly as cheap as you think, there is apparently a huge mark up on a lot of consumer goods. They could keep relatively the same price as they do now, the "problem" being that companies would make less insane profit. This would require intervention at the government level, but no I don't have an answer specifically to disincentivize companies from overseas manufacturing, the issue may handle itself when developing countries don't have an easy labor market to exploit, China is starting to have issues with this as an example.
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Sep 16, 2013 12:34
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Barnsy posted:Yes and no. Let's recognise that the strike prices EDF are negotiating there are in effect subsidies. But anyway, I'm not saying it's unprofitable, I'm saying that the initial cost required to build a nuclear infrastructure to replace fossil fuels will be large. Let's take EDF's number. Right now fossil fuels are about 70% of UK electricity generation. That EDF plan is expected to provide about 7% of UK electricity. OK, so maybe there are economies of scale, but equally there could be diseconomies of scale if you're trying to get it done quickly. If we discount those, you're looking at 140 billion in investment to replace that 70%. And if we're switching to electric vehicles charged by nuclear, you're going to have to significantly increase electricity generation. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying fully transitioning to nuclear is going to have a very significant upfront cost. It's hard to say how much of that will have to come from the public, because we don't know their costs or margins, only the strike prices they're willing to accept. Again, I'm all for nuclear (or renewables in general), but I believe that it can only form part of a solution that also includes big contributions from energy efficiency and, yes, use reduction (and not just in the long term).
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Sep 16, 2013 13:48
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The New Black posted:So, how are we going to be implementing this stopgap rapid global shift to nuclear power? Quite frankly, when looking at the rate we'd need to build nuclear power plants at to actually meet a 2°C warming target (more than one per week), the only thing I think is "not going to happen". However, building sufficient quantities of solar panels or wind turbines or whatnot is an even larger investment because we would need to build even more of them using several times the resources and land area, which isn't going to be affordable either. However, keeping in mind the above, building as many nuclear plants as possible (constrained by politics or budget) has a higher chance of improving our situation from "completely hosed" to "only mostly hosed". suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 15:26
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^^The two-degrees target is basically unreachable by now. We hosed up by not massively investing in nuclear in the nineties or in the early 2000's at the latest, rather hoping that technology would save us from the mean atoms and the terrible CO2. At this point, we're reduced to damage control. Yeah, you'd require to set up a national energy corporation with a pretty huge initial budget to make nuclear work. It wouldn't be the first time we've done something like that, though - the national oil companies are pretty much the same (Statoil, Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum, Petrobras etc). Of course, once they're made stably profitable they're generally privatised, but even so.
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Sep 16, 2013 15:27
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I'm not sure building nuclear would replace other forms of energy generation, chiefly fossil fuels. According to Jevons paradox, since energy (in its many forms) naturally is a resource,quote:"technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource" Even if we can produce the energy more efficiently with nuclear, i.e. with fewer CO2 emissions, most likely the energy will simply be added on top of other production (oil, coal) methods. In fact building more nuclear will probably allow continued extraction of fossil fuels by making the extraction cheap enough to be energy efficient (=more energy extracted than used for extraction). Also a mandatory TL;DR - Twenty (Important ) Concepts I Wasn't Taught in Business School - Part I. The author talks about what $ and debt really are: quote:Quite simply, money is a claim on a certain amount of energy. Edit: Another hard-to-measure subject is what is the purpose of humankind on this planet? How many people should be allowed to live? What should be their standard of living? Should the standard be same for everyone, or can others live in luxury while some can barely get food to eat? In the socialist model what would motivate people to strive for better? Rewards have traditionally been measured by power and wealth, and if neither are available, would some intangible pleasure be enough? I admit my limited knowledge and I don't know any examples of such working systems, and I doubt it is possible to transform humanity into one, until a society like The Culture is possible. Ihmemies fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 18:11
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Ihmemies posted:Even if we can produce the energy more efficiently with nuclear, i.e. with fewer CO2 emissions, most likely the energy will simply be added on top of other production (oil, coal) methods. In fact building more nuclear will probably allow continued extraction of fossil fuels by making the extraction cheap enough to be energy efficient (=more energy extracted than used for extraction). From the same wikipedia article: quote:As the Jevons paradox applies only to technological improvements that increase fuel efficiency, policies that impose conservation standards and increase costs do not display the paradox. This is why I'm in favour of a great big carbon tax with a progressive dividend. That way you should be able to reduce carbon emissions while making nuclear and other renewables relatively more profitable. The dividend helps avoid hitting the poor too hard with increased energy prices.
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Sep 16, 2013 19:48
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Ihmemies posted:
This is assuming demand is consistent when we are already seeing a shift toward electric cars and hybrids. Also you're ignoring basic economics. The only reason current reserves are exploited (ie, fracking) is because they are expensive. We already drilled the cheap stuff years ago. If oil doesn't cost a certain amount it isn't worth it to drill. Now, can oil companies use electric vehicles/etc to lower the cost of extraction? Maybe, but probably not to the extent you're thinking of. computer parts fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 20:09
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computer parts posted:This is assuming demand is consistent when we are already seeing a shift toward electric cars and hybrids. I assume that the graph in TOD's article is realistic, so according to that, gas, oil and coal usage keeps on increasing:  Production of nuclear plants, electric cars and hybrids require lots of energy. I assume there are then enough resources for making batteries in large enough quantities to replace significant amounts of combustion engines, and that all of this results in ghg reductions. That alone won't be enough at all though, since most emissions don't come from cars. computer parts posted:Also you're ignoring basic economics. The only reason current reserves are exploited (ie, fracking) is because they are expensive. We already drilled the cheap stuff years ago. If oil doesn't cost a certain amount it isn't worth it to drill. I said that reserves are exploited because it results in more energy (=money) generated than it is used for extraction. You assume that it's possible to lower the price of oil enough by providing so much more, even cheaper energy (=nuclear?), that fossil resources will be left untapped. Is that even possible? How many thousands of nuclear power plants has to be built? Where the expertise, suitable places, capacity to build and staff those are found? What about mining of uranium in general, current designs require an awful lot of that stuff. I assume that in this case move to thorium reactors should happen relatively quickly. Ihmemies fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 20:31
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Obviously a nuclear shift would require an actual *shift* or you'd just see electricity becoming really cheap and businesses caring *much* less about wasting it in power-intensive processes. The point is just, we can't realistically just shut down coal with heavy fees/regulations/whatevz, we also need something to replace it.
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Sep 16, 2013 20:34
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Well the point about fossil fuel power is the fuel itself is the bulk of their cost. Things like nuclear and wind have high capital costs, in terms of building them in the first place, but once they're going the actual fuel is much cheaper, or free. And those capital costs will come down as development and production improves, so the price of nuclear- and renewable-sourced electricity will come down. Power from fossil fuel plants, on the other hand, will be comparatively more expensive. It's not a case of a giant bucket of power that everything's piled into, and more in the bucket means more to go around - power from different sources costs different amounts, and sourcing cheaper power instead of using fossil sources will still be preferable. The difficulty is knowing how much a shift away from fossil power will affect the price of fossil fuels, since they'll get cheaper when there's less demand, but they're obviously used outside of national power generation. Stole this from the UK thread, it's an interactive set of power and emissions graphs, where you can alter various future parameters and see how they're projected to affect things. Now you can solve the problem of hitting the 2050 reduction targets! http://2050-calculator-tool.decc.gov.uk/
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Sep 16, 2013 21:50
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baka kaba posted:Stole this from the UK thread, it's an interactive set of power and emissions graphs, where you can alter various future parameters and see how they're projected to affect things. Now you can solve the problem of hitting the 2050 reduction targets! Find out just how politically unfeasible your strategy for achieving sustainable emissions levels is!
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Sep 16, 2013 22:28
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Lawman 0 posted:Except that same article shreds your point. I don't disagree that slowing population growth will hopefully eventually level off the growth of energy usage. My point is that it's really important that it actually level off eventually. It's going to take a long time for rural Africa and China to industrialize, and then slow their population growth. Let's call it a minimum of 50 years to industrialize to a reasonable standard and then another generation or two for population to fully level off. That's not a hugely long time, given our timeframe of "about 150 years before our energy usage alone, no global warming, becomes a problem". We can't really allow first-world energy usage to increase any further. I realize it's coming down a bit at present, but it's not going to come down orders of magnitude, and I don't know if that stagnation will persist once we're no longer in a rolling recession. Also Jevon's paradox states that if we did have all the cheap energy we could consume then our usage will probably start climbing right back up again, in the absence of a countervailing force. baka kaba posted:Well the point about fossil fuel power is the fuel itself is the bulk of their cost. Things like nuclear and wind have high capital costs, in terms of building them in the first place, but once they're going the actual fuel is much cheaper, or free. And those capital costs will come down as development and production improves, so the price of nuclear- and renewable-sourced electricity will come down. Power from fossil fuel plants, on the other hand, will be comparatively more expensive. Also we can significantly reduce those costs by various means that don't affect safety - for example, by approving models of reactors as safe so that we don't have to treat every new reactor as a one-off design.
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Sep 16, 2013 22:44
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baka kaba posted:
The interesting thing: the ONLY way to achieve a reduction to 80% of 1990 levels is to go full nuclear. Also shows how pathetic a full renewable energy system (i.e. solar cells on every home, wind and tide turbines) are in the larger scale.
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Sep 17, 2013 02:22
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That's not actually true, click on the 'example pathways' thing at the top-right and they have a few configurations - like the Friends of the Earth one hits the target around 2037, and that's with no new nuclear (and all the remaining plants shut down at end-of-life by 2035). That's with a lot of efficiency and renewable things cranked to gently caress, but interestingly without lowering industrial output (you can actually let it double and still hit the target a couple of years later). Also if you do the High Renewables configuration you can see they have nuclear at 1.4... and I just now realised you can click a selected button and it will give you fine-grained control, nice. It's worth looking at which scenarios rely heavily on energy efficiency gains, and bioenergy too
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Sep 17, 2013 02:43
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Ihmemies posted:I'm not sure building nuclear would replace other forms of energy generation, chiefly fossil fuels. According to Jevons paradox, since energy (in its many forms) naturally is a resource, Perhaps more important, though, usage of it here is incoherent, since it refers specifically to efficiency in resource utilization. If "energy" is the resource in question, then Jevon's paradox might apply to, say, more advanced electric motors, or air conditioning, or LCD screens, things which use electric energy. Nuclear reactors are producers of energy, and while a greater abundance of energy on the market due to a building boom could indeed have implications for usage patterns, Jevon's paradox is not implicated in this.
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Sep 17, 2013 07:52
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Uranium Phoenix posted:If you click my post history, I've got some sweet wall of text about building for mass movements and socialist revolution (and some fun stuff on climate, too). Some of them touch on the issue of standard of living, consumption, and overpopulation, though the above post I just made is probably where I've gone into most detail about how addressing over-consumption and restructuring society can allow people to still maintain a good standard of living. I went back and read through all your posts ITT, which are great and very informative by the way, but I'm wondering if you can elaborate more or maybe recommend some reading material on how to build durable, effective mass movements. I study climate change, environmental sustainability and the like in school as part of an International Relations program and honestly it's depressing to see just how little is being done or even widely discussed in regards to actually dealing with these issues in a way that doesn't gently caress over half the planet. And I'm extremely tired of seeing slacktivism and social media-centric campaigns to try to accomplish anything, none of which seem to actually DO anything. I guess what it boils down to is what would be the best way to get people informed (including dispelling damaging popular beliefs), fired up, and actually motivated to do more than just recycle or use low energy light bulbs in their homes? I know those things are feel good, micro level efforts that are accessible to most people, but the smug sense of accomplishment that comes with it is astounding to me and such efforts are effectively useless in the long run. Mat Cauthon fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Sep 17, 2013 |
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Sep 17, 2013 15:37
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MatCauthon posted:I went back and read through all your posts ITT, which are great and very informative by the way, but I'm wondering if you can elaborate more or maybe recommend some reading material on how to build durable, effective mass movements. I study climate change, environmental sustainability and the like in school as part of an International Relations program and honestly it's depressing to see just how little is being done or even widely discussed in regards to actually dealing with these issues in a way that doesn't gently caress over half the planet. And I'm extremely tired of seeing slacktivism and social media-centric campaigns to try to accomplish anything, none of which seem to actually DO anything. I guess what it boils down to is what would be the best way to get people informed (including dispelling damaging popular beliefs), fired up, and actually motivated to do more than just recycle or use low energy light bulbs in their homes? I know those things are feel good, micro level efforts that are accessible to most people, but the smug sense of accomplishment that comes with it is astounding to me and such efforts are effectively useless in the long run. Personally I am a huge proponent of localized action. Many approaches to mass movements are based in the same set of assumptions about economy of scale and efficiency that are producing the monolithic structures with which we are now struggling. This is often based in an attempt to respond to the monolithic hierarchies of authority by creating a like model. Personally, I don't feel this works and even worsens conditions. I advocate for immediately local action and community that is then broadly networked in an economy of scope, rather than one of scale. This is in part based on an assumption of collapse already occurring. One theory (Holling & Gundersen) about such dynamics is that resilience is accomplished by many localized, diverse examples in the footprint of the monolithic collapse, rather than immediately attemtping to replace the monolithic structure with another, based on the same assumptions that lead to collapse and attendant consequences. For me, the first step in this is to foster and participate in local community, in the face of an infrasucture that has eroded and even prevents such localization. This is challenging but can be done in a variety of ways. One way is to begin to organize around localizing the means of production, to the greatest extent possible, around major 'supply chains' such as: water; energy; food; transportation; built environment; etc. That effort gets directly at the infrastructure and habits of 'consumerism'. The work is to build capacity in these areas at individual, collective and systemic levels. This begins with awareness, but any reflective practice must be cyclically integrated with robust change practice in the local footprint. I have found food to be one of the easiest places to start, since it involves shared meals which foster community. This opens up almost immediately onto local food insecurity and resource distribution. The question we are asking is not one of deprivation, but rather 'how can we locally enrich our community life together'? Or something along these lines. Over time it is relatively natural for such communities to reach out to one another in a way that creates a base for effecting larger systemic issues. At the beginning it is not fast. It is not efficient. This is not what we are seeking to 'optimize'. The experience must relationally enrich people's lives and have a real element of 'joy' involved or it simply will not work. It must be 'attractive' in these ways, rather than using fear as an extrinsic motivator. At the same time it must involve an often very uncomfortable and emotional confrontation with the realities of our current condition. Obviously education and system of education becomes of critical import in this sort of process. One of the interesting things about such community level action is that it often (though not always) creates a space in which people with very different political views can come together, in part because the shared politics of the immediately local, without necessitating solving issues of ideological domination. For instance, our food group includes people from across a very wide political spectrum. There is debate about process, underlying assumptions and implications, but we are in meaningful, locally collaborative action together through which aspects of inequitable source distribution are effectively addressed. It is not perfect or idealized. It is living. There are very humble, but effective examples of this, mostly invisible because we tend to look for things that are consistent with the same sorts of models producing the 'problem'. We want to 'organize' in ways that are based on and visible to the existing models of 'organization' that produce many of the problematized phenomena. The belief is often that if we do not do this we will not be effective. No consideration is given to what is prevented by such an approach or what action and change might become available through alternative approaches that are quite literal invisible to us in this moment. On a slightly larger scale the networked collaboration and learning between US cities like Boston, Minneapolis and Seatle as they worked through creating a baseline and setting up actionable strategies is an interesting example. They were not acting in some centralized, lock step fashion, but were all trying different things and then learning from one another when no one had really done what they were doing yet. This is very distinct from the sort of approach used in Masdar or village approaches such as Huang Bai Yu, which tend to become in service of profit, often undermining the benevolent intent even in the infrastructure and supply chains for the basic construction. Another interesting 'larger' example is the Re-Amp energy network in the US Midwest. This is specifically an approach that discarded typical metaphors and models of 'organization' in favor of networks. Of course it is not perfect, but it is interspersing. There are a few surprisingly conservative papers on shifting from organizational approaches to networked approaches from people like Monitor. I can link these if there is interest. http://www.reamp.org/ The Sustainable Food Lab is another interesting example. Initially they had some real success working with disintermediation on a local scale through capacity building with farmers and local food systems in South America. As they have grown they have begun to attract and include globalized food interests (e.g. Unilever) and this seems to have really changed the dynamic. They seem to be working through this, though for me the jury is still out. http://www.sustainablefoodlab.org/ Both of these examples include the interaction between localization of means of production through community action and globalized interests it seems to me.
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Sep 17, 2013 18:38
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Sorry to interrupt another nuclear circular argument, but my local rag (seattletimes.com) is running stories this week about ocean acidification. Should help raise awareness a bit.
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Sep 17, 2013 19:07
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Has anyone else taken a look at the leaked draft of AR5? I'm not really seeing anything unexpected in it, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Skeptical Science has a nice overview of the current denialist platform, with links to the more high-profile rebuttals to the report that have surfaced thus far. I especially liked this from Matt Ridley's WSJ piece: quote:Warming of up to 1.2 degrees Celsius over the next 70 years (0.8 degrees have already occurred), most of which is predicted to happen in cold areas in winter and at night, would extend the range of farming further north, improve crop yields, slightly increase rainfall (especially in arid areas), enhance forest growth and cut winter deaths (which far exceed summer deaths in most places). Increased carbon dioxide levels also have caused and will continue to cause an increase in the growth rates of crops and the greening of the Earth—because plants grow faster and need less water when carbon dioxide concentrations are higher. 
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Sep 17, 2013 19:15
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rivetz posted:Has anyone else taken a look at the leaked draft of AR5? I'm not really seeing anything unexpected in it, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Skeptical Science has a nice overview of the current denialist platform, with links to the more high-profile rebuttals to the report that have surfaced thus far. In that quote he suggests that rainfall will increase in arid areas? How does that work? I thought net effect was moisture stays airborne for shorter periods of time, increasing both flood risk and desertification? Am I misunderstanding?
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Sep 17, 2013 19:22
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Viscount Ridley believes that Hayekian market solutions will solve our climate problems. He might be crazy or a liar but he is not offering an alternative to conventionally understood models of hydrogeological change.
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Sep 17, 2013 19:27
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Sogol posted:In that quote he suggests that rainfall will increase in arid areas? How does that work? I thought net effect was moisture stays airborne for shorter periods of time, increasing both flood risk and desertification? Am I misunderstanding? quote:would extend the range of farming further north, improve crop yields  . Also "extend further north" implies "retracting further south"; he should check in with the grain belt on how a couple extra degrees would work out for them
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Sep 17, 2013 22:14
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Sogol posted:In that quote he suggests that rainfall will increase in arid areas? How does that work? I thought net effect was moisture stays airborne for shorter periods of time, increasing both flood risk and desertification? Am I misunderstanding? Even if it is true it doesn't necessarily mean there will be an increase in water available for agriculture/ecosystems, because there will be a concomitant increase in evaporation.
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Sep 18, 2013 00:17
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Squalid posted:Even if it is true it doesn't necessarily mean there will be an increase in water available for agriculture/ecosystems, because there will be a concomitant increase in evaporation. There's also the big problem of the intensity of rainfall. This is frequently the situation on the prairies, where the rain can either come in a nice, steady way throughout the spring, or it can come in a massive dump that can obliterate crops and infrastructure. The extension of the potential "agricultural zone" northwards is also of limited benefit, given that there's nowhere near the developed infrastructure that actually makes large scale agricultural farming worthwhile. There might also be a fertilizer issue (and phosphorous/nitrogen stocks are another big agricultural bugbear no one seems to be talking about), but I'm not well-read enough on sub-arctic soils to comment thoroughly.
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Sep 18, 2013 02:34
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