rscott posted:Billions of people dying aside, the problem is anthropogenic warming is causing climate shifts much much faster than would otherwise be indicated. Species don't evolve over the course of a hundred years. In the end this leads to reduced biodiversity. Right but the data doesn't indicate that the temperature change rate is greater or lesser than previous events because that's not how the data works. Look at the K/T boundary which likely had much much much greater rates of change than now and yeah, there's a mass extinction event, but it didn't mean all life died off. That which survived, evolved.
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Dec 8, 2011 18:53
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Deleuzionist posted:This must be very comforting to the yet-to-be methane breathing post-humans. What is this how do you even think this?
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Dec 8, 2011 20:37
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Desmond posted:This is what I was going to reply with. However, "climate change" sounds un-daunting. I think we need a new term like "man-made fuckery that will ruin the earth". (I would be terrible as an ad copy writer.) Good science doesn't need alarmist rhetoric.
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Dec 8, 2011 23:53
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As someone with a background in the field that sounds preferable to me.
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Dec 9, 2011 01:04
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Which field? There are a few relevant to this issue. climate buddy
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Dec 9, 2011 01:58
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err posted:Are there any theorized deadlines that we could see that would make us say, "we done hosed up"? This is stupid alarmism the way it's phrased, "we done hosed up" is a very narrow-minded view of things. McDowell posted:In the US Northeast it's obvious already. Season changes are getting increasingly uneven (October 29th snowstorm, anyone?). I know I'm just being anecdotal, having lived here all my life. But I think the data will bear me out (just too cheap/lazy to buy it from NOAA) Erratic weather patterns and October snowstorms don't have much to do with climate change, you can't look at details like that in isolation, you need to look at a much larger trend. VideoTapir posted:That which survived was significantly less than before. With huge chunks of the food web removed, not just biodiversity, but biomass may have declined. That's what I meant by "it'll be one hell of a party after life recovers." Not that all life will die off, but that an awful lot will, and it will be rough going for a while...but once life can do something with all that extra CO2 (and has altered biomes that were useless at their particular temperature/ph conditions, with the organisms available to colonize them) things will be pretty active. This is just reaching, a mass extinction event is the definition of what is going on now, a hell of a lot of the life on this planet will die. That which survives will be quite comfortable, and it's not like we've actually hosed humanity any time particularly soon. There's a hell of a lot of lovely science on both side and that's because people have mistaken reality with loving faith. This thread is just an example of it in many cases. Those of us who work in related fields want to put a bullet in our heads when people go "OH NO WE'VE hosed HUMANITY THE WORLD IS OVER" as when people go "THERE'S NO GLOBAL WARMING HEH LOOKIT THAT EARLY SNOW". Seriously, it's really trendy to accept absolute worst case models which require a hell of a lot of variables and catastrophic thinkink involved. The earth gets warm every now and then, a shitload of stuff dies and things get kinda lovely for a while. It happens when ice ages end. That's been happening longer than we've been industrialized. That's not to say we're not contributing, that's not to say we're not releasing way too much CO2 into the atomosphere, that's not to say we shouldn't clamp down hard on the royal dickbags who keep curtailing regulation to gently caress up our planet. But to imagine that this is drastically different from any other warming event other than that we're here to witness it is scientifically ignorant. Stephen Harper posted:"Canada only emits 1% of emissions. China emits way more! Therefore we should do nothing." gently caress I hate that line of logic. We should emit Harper from our fine country.
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Dec 9, 2011 04:43
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VideoTapir posted:I also didn't say it would be different from other warming events. Those were also pretty disastrous in terms of extinction. Right, but they happened anyways. err posted:I was being sarcastic, but thanks for sperging out. As has been pointed out, "global warming" is a misleading term and most scientists prefer climate change for the sake of accuracy. Also, there probably won't be a single big event. By the very nature of what we're looking at we're seeing gradual change. All that stuff about methane belching in to the atomosphere talked about recently isn't going to suddenly happen one day all around the world, it's just going to slowly bubble out. There may be big individual events tangentially related, but nothing that people are going to point to and say "Well gently caress, if only we'd listened to politicians interpreting science when we had the chance! Oh the humanity!" Sarcastic or not, so many people think that way that it's getting hard to tell.
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Dec 9, 2011 05:11
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Desmond posted:The shift will be gradual as we see more and more consequences from climate change on our doorstep. Many will deny these changes are resulting from climate change, though, with the current corporate messaging being so prominent in media. The problem isn't just that the media is bought and paid for (though it is), but that the message from both sides is poo poo. It's become a black and white religious issue, and people on both sides are making equally stupid claims and making it incredibly easy for opposite sides to ignore eachother. In the long run, those aware of climate change are closer to the truth than those saying nothing is wrong, but the sheer amount of catastrophism that goes on just leads to bad scientific journalism. I've been called clueless for saying maybe humanity's involvement isn't as huge as we think it is if we contrast it to other ice-age-ending and mass extinction events not by people who have the slightest loving idea how to look at the science, but by people who read a few articles or listened to some bloggers or loving Al Gore.
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Dec 9, 2011 06:39
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VideoTapir posted:Or are you suggesting that the fact that they happened means that this warming event was inevitable and no matter what humans do it was going to happen? This is absolutely the case. What is the issue is our impact on an already changing climate. There's no question we're loving up a lot of things with pollution and our carbon dioxide output, and I strongly advocate for strong environmental regulations, but scientific ignorance is becoming the norm on both sides of the debate and that is not okay. VideoTapir posted:Is there some third, not-stupid point you could be trying to make here? Please, tell me about your background in biostratigraphy and geology in general. You know, the science that does all the figuring out about historical climates.  Desmond posted:Climate change as a process is inevitable in time, but humans are not only moving it along faster than it should be going but destroying the planet in the meantime by extracting resources and polluting--this is loving important that we recognize this. If there's any hope for our future it's that survivors of this era aren't so stupid. We don't know poo poo about the rate of change relative to previous change events, and this is one of the areas there's a lot of misunderstanding. Outside of meteoric events, the assumptions on time of climate change are largely "It happened around here". The argument we're seeing is that relative to previously recorded rates, climate change is accelerating as time goes on. This line of thinking operates on the idea that the rate of change is linear with time, which isn't the case. Our contribution is to compound an already occurring situation, and if you think us coming out of an ice age is an occurrence of the most recent era of industrialized human history then I hate to tell you this but you're wrong. WanderingKid posted:I wish I could participate in this debate on a scientific level but I don't have the specialized knowledge to do so. On the subject of mass extinctions though - isn't this already happening? It's definitely already happening and nothing is really going to stop it, but what you're describing is more likely the effect of urbanization and memory bias.
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Dec 9, 2011 15:28
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Desmond posted:I hate when interesting threads like this devolve into petty debates over issues of semantics and misunderstanding or reading comprehension problems when it's clear that we're already on the same side here, at least I think. Unless you think anthropogenic climate change is not real and we would be experiencing the same rate of modern day climate changes without it? I think it's real, I also think it's vastly overblown and is being used by both sides of the political spectrum as a boogieman to implament/fight changes in environmental standards, ignoring the fact that there are very good reasons to start clamping down on CO2 output and pretty much everything else that don't involve using lovely science. Pellisworth posted:Bioturbation stuff and: Speaking in geologic timescales, you've got it backwards. We've been coming out of an ice age for a while now, and we're still coming out of it. This is why I was saying earlier it's stupid to think we can reverse any warming trend, because it's not like overarching warming has been a recent event in human lifetimes. As for the problems with paleoclimates, we can really only get certain information from sedimentary layers, and a lot of what people assume scientists have isn't there. For example, we don't know the exact dates on various strata, as you pointed out carbon dating only works to within a time period relatively nonexistant in geologic terms (60,000 years). The point I was making is that we don't have any loving idea at all about how fast these changes happened, so we have no way of knowing if what's going on now is being made massively worse by us or not. We're certainly not helping it, but climatologists are awful at writing their own PR and are pretty bad at looking at paleoclimates. Of course there's a lot of life dying off right now. Going into and coming out of an ice age is historically one of the biggest indicators for a mass extinction event, and right now there's greater marine biodiversity than at any other point in the history of the planet, and considering previous thawing event mass extinctions are around between 35%-45% of species die off, yeah, big loving shock. But the most important thing to remember is that paleoclimatology is often restricted to "in this period of a few hundred/thousand years (depending on dating method and resolution), it was generally warm/generally cool." Everyone seems to be thinking that well of course the warming trend would be linear if it weren't for us without really thinking about it. toy posted:Finally, why is your ice-age view not more widely accepted and transmitted, if it reflects the actual "in the know" science? It's very widely accepted, it's just that that particular piece of data is more the realm of geologists than climatologists and people often go "Well who the gently caress would listen to some rock guy for information about climates?" The other problem is there is a bit of a PR disaster with the right and while there are a lot of really loving good reasons to be for legislating carbon restrictions and environmental protections, and people see anything as "Well maybe this is a bit overblown" to be an attack on environmental policy. Basically it's kind of hard these days to take an issue people care so much about and go "Well, you're right, but for the completely wrong reasons." Ignatius M. Meen posted:At this point I'm really hoping that the oil runs out. This won't happen any time in a long long long long time. Nobody alive today will have a tombstone with readable text on it when oil finally does run out. What may run out sometime in the next century or two is oil that is profitable to extract at the current standards of profitability.
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Dec 12, 2011 01:35
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eh4 posted:Back to the real world What part of what I posted is not in relation to the real world? Or is it that I disagreed with your preconceived worldview?
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Dec 12, 2011 01:51
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McDowell posted:But the ultimate elephant in the room is the massive amount of $$$ spent by fossil fuel industries to obfuscate the problem and the science. Correct. The problem is the issue and the politics have become entangled to the point of stupidity, and now you can't say "Wait, the science here isn't so great" without being in the pocket of Big Oil. Like I said, there are some really goddamn compelling reasons for a lot of the legislation that is getting put forward to clamp down on emissions. There's also some really stupid pseudoscience getting flown under the same banner by people who will latch onto anything that could possibly gain oil companies profit as inherently evil, like Fracking. In other words, there's this awesome situation where scientists are inherently helping the enemy by attempting to clarify things. Ignatius M. Meen posted:That's kind of what I meant. Sorry I didn't say it exactly like that? Looking back up I still didn't get this from what you said. Sorry, could just be lovely reading on my part.
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Dec 12, 2011 02:07
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Ignatius M. Meen posted:I really should avoid assuming certain science facts are obvious enough everyone knows everyone knows them and won't say dumb things that sound like they don't. Welcome to my world. Sorry I misunderstood that, I'm really used to people literally thinking all oil will be gone in a few decades.
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Dec 12, 2011 02:17
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duck monster posted:Wait slow down. What pseudoscience? Fracking, so far, has had a history nothing short of total environmental vandalism. Or are you saying that fracking itself is pseudoscience? There's no groundwater contamination from fracking at all. Every single instance of gas in groundwater and other contamination is in areas that have had a long history of that exact contaminant in the groundwater. It seems people really only seem to pay attention to contaminants after someone fracks in the area. There was a documentary on fracking in the US which while interesting, completely ignored records from the loving 1800s of gas in drinking water. In fact, the groundwater fracturing isn't even massive enough to cause the kind of contamination people accuse it of. Ever drank water from a well? Good chance that well was fracked for permeability. It's become the ultimate boogieman that ignores science for the sake of blind environmentalism while every single loving structural geologist on the planet sits there pointing at old records of the exact same problems going on for a loving century yelling "THIS ISN'T A NEW THING YOU IDIOTS" Of all the anti-oil company causes, many of which are completely and thoroughly valid, none has less of a basis in reality and yet more traction in society than the anti-fracking movement. e. To be more specific, the hydrostatic pressure that fracking puts on the rock around the pipe isn't great enough to cause leakage into the groundwater and aquifers that people are saying are getting contaminated. It simply doesn't work that way. You're fracking rock in the first place because it has poor permiability and it's not like areas that get fracked have incredibly nonuniform deposition with surrounding high-permeability rock that would allow contamination in the first place. If it did, you wouldn't need to frack it. WAFFLEHOUND fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Dec 12, 2011 |
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Dec 12, 2011 02:28
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I read that entire paper and it doesn't conclude the way you think it does. It basically says "If any man-made fracturing is responsible for methane leakages, it has more to do with a century of unregulated extraction activites in the area" and concludes by saying fracking has bad PR but none of the evidence really supports the notion that fracking is responsible for increased concentrations. Particularly with that region, I encourage you to go look at methane being reported in wells a century ago. e. Also by quoting the section that you did as some kind of proof you've shown a profound ignorance in sedimentology since "similar geological formations away from extraction sites" doesn't imply there's gas to be found in those sites, just that the host rock is similar. In this case there is oil bearing shale in those areas, but that just means the sedimentological layer part of the same unit, not necessarily that the hydrocarbon concentration is the same. WAFFLEHOUND fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Dec 12, 2011 |
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Dec 12, 2011 03:27
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It's worth noting that there are several responses to that abstract discussing the fact I discussed before, about the range of the fractures caused by fracking (a max of around 20m) not being great enough to reach through the buffer layers on the aquifers. Also: quote:Methane migration through the 1- to 2-km-thick geological formations that overlie the Marcellus and Utica shales is less likely as a mechanism for methane contamination than leaky well casings, but might be possible due to both the extensive fracture systems reported for these formations and the many older, uncased wells drilled and abandoned over the last century and a half in Pennsylvania and New York. The hydraulic conductivity in the overlying Catskill and Lockhaven aquifers is controlled by a secondary fracture system (30), with several major faults and lineaments in the research area Note that fracture systems in this case can be tectonic, and outside of a 20m radius from sites of fracking, that's likely what they are. You simply can't get enough hydrostatic pressure to crack the rock outside that area. Claverjoe posted:The biggest problem is improper disposal of the fracking fluids. Here in Texas people pay ~35k for a guy to haul it away, and it costs ~25k to dispose of it in a salt dome. A whole lot of folk will just dump it on some quiet road in the middle of nowhere, and pocket that extra 25k... and that stuff is nasty. The people who did this should be forced to decontaminate the areas they did this by hand, with supervision.
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Dec 12, 2011 04:02
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For what it's worth, I will concede that some methods of fracking lead to initial contamination. I say initial because this is the method used to frack a lot of the reserves that Russia is now pumping to Europe.
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Dec 12, 2011 04:07
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BobTheFerret posted:You're opening yourself up to criticism for making a conclusion which is absolutely not true. Yes, the contaminants may be pre-existing, but changes in their concentration could certainly be due to fracking. I would also agree with you that the fracking procedure is harmless if the formulations used in fracturing were readily available for public scrutiny - but I don't think we can conclude that to be the case with formulations kept a secret as they are now. They're not some huge industry secret, several studies talked about/linked on this page discuss exactly what they are. What do you think the PR would be like if they started putting radiotags in fracking fluid? Organics (such a fuels) pick up radiation really easily and you know someone would run with a sensationalist headline. Also, no, fracking can't be responsible because a twenty meter fracture radius is well within the area where there isn't any increased permiability to aquifers which are often hundreds of meters away. Deleuzionist posted:The EPA doesn't agree. Actually, the EPA does agree. Read the article you yourself linked, and you'll find that the migration they're discussing isn't from fracking, but is from disposal pits: quote:Detection of high concentrations of benzene, xylenes, gasoline range organics, diesel range organics, and total purgeable hydrocarbons in ground water samples from shallow monitoring wells near pits indicates that pits are a source of shallow ground water contamination in the area of investigation. Pits were used for disposal of drilling cuttings, flowback, and produced water. There are at least 33 pits in the area of investigation. When considered separately, pits represent potential source terms for localized ground water plumes of unknown extent. When considered as whole they represent potential broader contamination of shallow ground water. As for the deep water contaminents: quote:Using this approach, the explanation best fitting the data for the deep monitoring wells is that constituents associated with hydraulic fracturing have been released into the Wind River drinking water aquifer at depths above the current production zone. In other words: Claverjoe posted:The biggest problem is improper disposal of the fracking fluids. In fact, the EPA also points out what I say (note that this explanation was provided by the EPA): quote:An alternate explanation provided and considered by EPA is that other residents in the Pavillion area have always had gas in their wells. Unfortunately, no baseline data exists to verify past levels of gas flux to the surface or domestic wells.
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Dec 12, 2011 15:20
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duck monster posted:Wrong We've been discussing this for quite a while, welcome to the party, you're interpreting it wrong. duck monster posted:Of course what would geologists know, this isn't science! Yeah, I mean, what kind of idiot would ignore a geologist about an issue that is purely geological because they disagree with a preconceived worldview? e. Also, the linked article is from Pennsylvania, which is the poster child for gas in the water pre-dating fracking. WAFFLEHOUND fucked around with this message at 15:25 on Dec 12, 2011 |
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Dec 12, 2011 15:22
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Deleuzionist posted:Can I get a recap on this? Sure! What you're seeing is "fracking fluids may be involved in the contamination" and what I'm pointing out is that the reason for that is improper disposal of said fluids after fracking. Not "as a result of fracking" but "as a result of some chucklefucks disposing of waste in the groundwater lens." duck monster posted:The paper was written by scientists working for the company. I can't understand how you can dismiss that. Cognitive bias is a hell of a thing dude. I'm not dismissing it, I'm saying that the conclusion it draws doesn't seem to be the one you think it does. Also that they missed an important piece of data, as has been pointed out in much of the academic responses to that article (namely the limited radius of fracturing). Deleuzionist posted:This paragraph is right down from what you quoted: Holy gently caress, fracking improves gas migration? Well that's news! Of course, that is a discussion of "at depth" and not "outside of the fracking radius and directly into the aquifer." In fact, that very same paragraph contains this line: quote:However, further investigation would be needed to determine if organic compounds associated with hydraulic fracturing have migrated to domestic wells in the area of investigation. Organic compounds in this case being the contaminants. Also, since you bolded it for some reason: quote:the existing data at this time do not establish a definitive link between deep and shallow contamination of the aquifer. This line backs up my statements regarding contamination being from disposal and not deep fracturing. Hope that helps.
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Dec 12, 2011 18:33
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Deleuzionist posted:How exactly? Please elaborate. If no definitive link is established, yet you establish one without batting an eyelash by stating that it's all because of disposal, then your statements are not exactly backed up. There are two different stages of contamination being discussed. I repeatedly have tried to distinguish them, but there is the upper contamination phase near the groundwater lens (which the EPA study indicated is from disposal) and there's the lower potential phase of contamination, for which there is no indication of fracking being at fault. Seriously, there is not one continuous phase of contamination and you can't point to the upper lensing and say "See! It's all fracking's fault!" This is a science, not a religion. You can have faith in your answer, but I am a scientist and this is my field. I know more about this matter than you no matter how much you want to believe otherwise, unless you're a secret geologist and not telling any of us. I think you'll find my stance pretty universal among geologists and the only reason anyone gives a poo poo about fracking is because a bunch of people got the idea that correlation = causation firmly wedged up their butt until their congressmen started taking a look, at which point the oil companies did some studies (along with numerous academic institutions) and people started screaming that big oil is lying to us. Here, listen to this starting at about 3:30, the guy giving the interview is a fantastic structural geologists and explains this all in very easy to understand terms.
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Dec 12, 2011 19:51
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Orbital Sapling posted:This kind of poo poo is always nice to see. I guess I take my clean Canadian air for granted. I'd love to see a Chinese government reading from the same time.
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Dec 12, 2011 21:37
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Deleuzionist posted:So there's no contamination from fracking? What then are these multiple stages of contamination if fracking is not one? Well, there's one that exists and one that doesn't. Deep groundwater contamination from fracking being the latter kind of contamination. Deleuzionist posted:I listened a little further and the only thing I can say is that the mechanical process is not under review. The effects are, and some of the discussion regarding that by your fantastic structural geologist, especially the part around 13 minutes where he describes fracking as a possible source of groundwater contamination even when done right, is directly at odds with your statement that fracking does not cause it. Should I believe you as an expert or him? "If it's done safely, the biggest risk is that the fracturing puts a shale gas or hydrocarbon bearing rock in communication with a groundwater aquifer." Of course the next sentence makes it clear by clarifying if you're not being a stupid gently caress and fracking right beside an aquifer it isn't really an issue. Admittedly it is possible for contamination to occur if you're loving retarded about it. Deleuzionist posted:This paragraph could have been a link or something but instead it's just a long "I know more than you do." Demonstrate it. I have been.
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Dec 12, 2011 21:45
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Deleuzionist posted:"There's no groundwater contamination from fracking at all. Every single instance of gas in groundwater and other contamination is in areas that have had a long history of that exact contaminant in the groundwater." Right, and if you frack close to an aquifer, there will still have already been containment leakage by virtue of proximity. Therefore, contamination is not the fault of fracking. Deleuzionist posted:No. What are the multiple stages of contamination that you refer to? You insinuated there are more than dumping. Which is it, only dumping or other sources as well, and if the latter, which? There is contamination of the aquifer lens and contamination caused by deep reservoirs. The former is caused by disposal, the latter doesn't happen. The latter is also fracking. Cefte posted:There was a point a while back when the automatic tweets from the Embassy reported the levels as 'crazy bad', as it went off the scale and into a programmer's easter egg. It's all fun and games. I really hope the USGS earthquake systems have a similar easter egg. Deleuzionist posted:No not really. That's just your word. I want some sources on your assertions because you haven't been providing any. An expert would probably have some handy. This is a stupid statement. It's not like I have a stack of fracking research papers handy but it's still very well known within geology and very well understood. I've already told you where to find papers that back up what I say.
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Dec 12, 2011 22:13
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Desmond posted:Wafflehound, I have trouble regarding you as the scientist you claim you are. Your arguments make no sense. Do you or do you not believe in anthropogenic-caused climate change? Yes, there is absolutely and undeniably an element of antrhopogenesis in current climate change. Desmond posted:Can you at least accept that the for-profit resource extraction industry does not have the environment in mind, and that very often they are the chuckleheads that lack the responsibility to do things without polluting--and this in and of itself is a huge problem? Yes, which is why I've pointed out PA is kinda hosed and I've repeatedly stated I'm all for massive sweeping "gently caress you oil company" legislation. Desmond posted:You seem to go against modern scientists and accepted data and results, meanwhile trying to make other posters feel stupid. You'll find my positions are generally the majority within geology. Desmond posted:I'm sorry, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand some very basic ideas grounded in geology. Geochronology and paleoclimatology are hardly basic areas of geology. Desmond posted:Geology is not the only science involved with climate change nor pollution. There's a much larger holistic approach to understanding climate change than what you're offering up. Right, and I'm accusing the general body of activists of ignoring that there are more sciences involved in this than just climatology. WAFFLEHOUND fucked around with this message at 22:19 on Dec 12, 2011 |
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Dec 12, 2011 22:16
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BobTheFerret posted:You're so concerned with PR and conduct your defense of fracking with industry research, it makes me wonder if you might not have some sort of undisclosed financial interest. This is just retarded. I can't both know what I'm talking about and not agree with your worldview without being a shill for big oil? I'm a loving igneous petrologist, not an oil guy. I'm just familiar with this area of geology. I've been backing out of this because it's clear people don't want to do anything more than yell at me about how wrong I am, since people were just fine making appeals to authority wrt geologists until they realized I am one and now I'm a shill. BobTheFerret posted:"Organics...pick up radiation really easily"? What kind of blanket statement is that? A fairly good one, geologically speaking. BobTheFerret posted:"20 meter fracture radius" won't possibly cause problems in aquifers "a few hundred meters away" (where do you get these numbers?) The equipment is fairly standard and the hydrostatic pressure required to frack more than a 20 meter radius is not really realistic. Groundwater exists as a lens usually well away from the deep reservoirs of fracking. But seriously, you're the second person to imply that I'm an industry shill so I'm out because that's just dumb as poo poo.
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Dec 13, 2011 04:49
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Pellisworth posted:An "element?" It's predominantly anthropogenic. Unless you're still arguing that Earth is undergoing significant natural warming, you seemed to be hinting that earlier. Which is patently false. We are presently at the warmest part of an interglacial period and relative to previous interglacial periods we're due "any time" (probably sometime in the next several thousand years) to cool back into a glacial period. Last post on the topic from me since this one keeps popping up, but interglacial periods aren't periods between ice ages, they're periods within an ice age where there is glacial retreat. Look up the quaternary ice age.
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Dec 13, 2011 06:12
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PBlueKan posted:And 3 mile island is attributed partially to human error/lack of training. And Fukushima was the result of a major seismic anomaly which really should have been planned for. As far as I remember the plant was built to handle an earthquake just under what did happen, which for the tectonic setting that exists under Japan is pretty inexcusable. It'd be fairly easy to build a plant in one of the geologically dead areas of the U.S. and only have to worry about equipment malfunction or user error.
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Apr 9, 2012 13:05
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Dreylad posted:Honestly it seems to me that part of the reason these accidents occur is because there's a reluctance to spend more money on nuclear energy for fear of public backlash, even though this money is necessary to build new plants or maintain the reactors that have been built. Part of the problem from the construction side of things is that if you're building a nuclear power plant in a subduction zone, you need to plan for a geological worst case scenario. The problem is that building for dep earthquakes in those settings hasn't really been done before, and saying "Well, we know this happened once 2000 years ago so we're going to prepare for it again" can't be too politically popular when you're basically looking at spending millions of dollars engineering for something that happens say, once every 20,000 years.
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Apr 9, 2012 16:45
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Yes, but if you're building in that kind of environment then the proofing needs to factor in all the obvious variables.
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Apr 9, 2012 19:45
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Corrupt Politician posted:Sure, until excessive fracking causes a major earthquake anyway. Then all the natural gas lobbyists can say "see, we TOLD you nuclear was dangerous!" Nah, this is insanely easy to prevent, just do more seismic testing on the periphery and watch for faulting. If a fault bisects the aquifer, frack further way. Problem solved. Of course you need to regulate that the testing be done in the first place otherwise they'll just cut corners anyways. Squalid posted:Oh dear, try not to have an aneurism WAFFLEHOUND. Uhhh... I just don't think fracking is terrible. I do think oil companies are terrible, so I'm not sure why I'd have an aneurysm here? 
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Apr 9, 2012 22:24
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the kawaiiest posted:You should look at Earthships too since they even include indoor vegetable gardens. I'd have bought one years ago if not for my husband who very much enjoys his midtown apartment living. They're incredibly environmentally friendly and actually quite comfortable to be in, though their use depends on your location on the planet. You don't want to be super far north or south or in a completely arid place and try and build one. They need enough light/water to function considering they're off-grid.
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Jun 9, 2012 16:40
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