Salt Fish posted:

Instead of insisting people don't talk about A you should say something interesting about B, for example answering my earlier question about climate change blogs.

El Perkele posted:

Trabisnikof posted:

US regulations on fraced wells has significantly improved since the practice started, "green completions" is the law now, which means dealing with methane among other things.

Still way way better than coal.

Shayu posted:

I thought we were to stop climate change? It is the only solution. You cannot live the Western life but save the Earth, this is truth I have discovered. We must all relinquish our decadent life styles, return to proper life, eat rice and drink water. Use the toilet in the grass.

Anosmoman posted:

We're producing energy in a way that's harmful to the environment but that doesn't mean we have to stop producing energy. In the 1980s we were using CFCs for refrigeration and it was depleting the ozone layer. Now we don't anymore - and yet we still somehow have refrigerators.

Shayu posted:

Why you want people to die so much?


Yes I agree we should increase arable lands. When we do that people can make their own food and not need to drive because food right there, no need to drive to the store. People don't need too much variety, just some rice and bean maybe a little spice for flavor, it's simple earth life, don't you know?


No because we will eat from the earth not create pollution. Farms now make a lot of poison foods that will kill when eaten. Why burn things? No need, we live in world without need of electric.

Lotka Volterra posted:

This is true, but we do produce a large amount of the world's food and for that reason any declines with an increasing population are troublesome. Even then, it's not clear where the yield gains would come. If it's in areas with sensitive habitat, we've traded one problem for another. 9.6 to 12.3 billion is still a major concern even if it has leveled out by the end of the century.

Mystic_Shadow posted:

Now that 2015 seems to have broken all the records, they're going to ditch the "no warming since 1998" and will instead use "no warming since 2015" as their go-to phrase.

onepixeljumpman posted:

Having my fourth "descend into a shaking mess over climate issues" moment was enough to make me come back to the forums. At least the thread's palatable. Thanks, UP, for reminding me that I can marry all this to my social concerns as well instead of convincing myself I need to divide my attention.

That's all besides the point. I'm brainstorming concrete ways to actually act. It's hard in my local area because of the few organizations there are (first hit when looking them up was a Free Republic article!) and my lack of transportation. Yelling at individuals on the internet all day is basically meaningless on my own or as a faceless letter writer even in conjunction with larger organizations, so I've been thinking of where to start and came up with this:

Would it be worth our time to create something like a budget for adoption of new energy forms on a mass scale? I mean along the lines of "We're going to build these things in these places on this time table for this amount of money. This is completely possible with current resources. We just need to start." We'd need to use energy forms that already exist and that can be built now. The purpose of this is not to say we have the one true vision of how to apply new energy forms but more to launch the idea of using them into the public consciousness with something more concrete than "Wind/solar power exists!" "Iceland's doing it!" or nebulous things like the CPP or the Paris accord. All of those things need to come together because the more concrete it is in those areas, the less time wasting small scale arguments will arise. It's my hope that showing that such a thing is makeable for the scale we would do it at would, on top of maybe giving people something to back or just something to encourage them to be more active, give people the initiative to do it on different scales like the local one.

And if it's not worth our time specifically, is it worth anyone's time to do?

Trabisnikof posted:

There seems to be this idea that somehow it is better to do X first and then handle climate change in our post-X world. I dont think there is time for such delays. We have to address climate change within the existing frameworks.

El Grillo posted:

I've always thought we need nuclear to get through this as renewables' intermittency and the cost of storage solutions is too big a hurdle to get over without backup. Guardian just released a report on storage developments in the UK and globally and it looks interesting Not sure what it means regarding the cost vs. nuclear debate though: http://www.theguardian.com/environm...9581&CMP=ema-60
Can anyone tell me what they mean when they say 'a 10MW storage facility'? Is that 10MWh or what?

quote:

e: hot drat, world's largest windfarm off Yorkshire coast: http://www.theguardian.com/environm...9581&CMP=ema-60
Anyone have a good article or two on the criticisms of offshore wind? It's all over the press here but hard to find a balanced view.

Trabisnikof posted:

Xenon poisoning is a big reason why most nuclear plants can't throttle like that. No plant in the US is load following afaik.

Also designing power plants that work equally efficiently across their power range means it won't be as efficient at 100% power. Nuclear plants are so expensive they only make sense if you can operate at 100% as much as possible.

Trabisnikof posted:

You're right that all modern designs can, I'm just not sure about if older designs can within their licensing requirements.

edit: in the US that is

Evil_Greven posted:

Oh, Australia...

gently caress everything.

quote:

Marshall, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, became CSIRO’s CEO in Jan. 2015 and immediately announced that CSIRO would focus on innovation over basic science.

Hello Sailor posted:

Climbate Change: Are We Headed for an Insurmountable Cliff?

Potato Salad posted:

Scalia died today.

This is the most significant turn off events for climate change policy in easily twenty years.

Potato Salad posted:

The poles are, in addition to reflectors, massive heat radiators.

Potato Salad posted:

Pro nuke here: I don't see how we can continue to expand our nuclear program without an operational long-term repository a la Yucca Mountain.

Unless one slipped past my radar?

Massasoit posted:

I hold a MS in Environmental Science, and I challenged students on why they didn't like nuclear energy (since I'm pro nuke) and it all comes down to lack of any information/anti bomb.

It was pretty annoying and I got into some heated exchanges. I was able to convert a few people/have them do additional research and look into it themselves. loving hippies.

Potential BFF posted:

Given their safety record and USA! USA! USA! military-wank why not push to have new nuke plants built, run, and overseen by the US Navy.

Potato Salad posted:

drat, that's...convincing in ways I have not consisted.

I'm deeply confirmation biased but drat.

Trabisnikof posted:

I don't understand how the investment in those sorts of "farming" projects will actually be better for the climate than traditional ag can be. Like sure, LEDs use less electricity to grow plants than other lights, but traditional farms use the sun for free.

They've spent $1.2M on 6,000 sq ft of growing space. For that much money you could negate the carbon impact of a larger amount of traditional ag land.

That's assuming you get the underground tunnel for free of course. As soon as you start considering opportunity costs it becomes an even worse proposition for the environment.

Wanderer posted:

One of the big reasons why this kind of farm appeals to me is that a lot of modern cities have a bunch of spaces like London's WWII bomb bunkers that are currently unused. Manhattan is famously as deep as it is tall, with tunnels a thousand feet below ground level, and a lot of other cities have something like it, e.g. the Seattle Underground or Los Angeles's several half-finished subway stations. Right now, they're doing nothing except occasionally serving as a historical attraction.

It also has the benefit of turning an unused city space into a carbon consumer, and as was said, expanding the amount of land used to produce food. With an aquaculture setup, and ideally running the power off of a solar grid or some other renewable source (you could probably power a good piece of it with a hand crank if you really had to), it's a good example of a possible, sustainable way to deal with several different problems.

Wanderer posted:

The whole thing is blips. Every running combustion engine is a blip; every moron who throws a plastic bag out the window is a blip. This is about making enough small gestures at once, not making two or three big ones, and it always was.

It's not the single solution to one thing; it's a partial solution to several things.

Radbot posted:

Maybe we can see a single example of a proposed carbon sequestration project that, even in someone's wildest dreams, would capture a gigaton of carbon a year. Of course, that's nowhere near where we'd need to be, but let's start there.

Gammymajams posted:

Uh, who the gently caress thought fracking would save the climate?

Batham posted:

Meanwhile, in Germany (because nuclear energy is EVIL) ...

blowfish posted:

Oh and Germany because gas can in principle buffer out spikes in electricity demand or supply in our badly organised renewable rollout (except it turns out gas plants running solely to fix cloud and wind and consumer randomness are money pits and utilities are fighting to get rid of the things again)

Rime posted:

Climate models have underestimated Earth’s sensitivity to CO2 changes, study finds


I can't wait to experience the end-permian extinction, without the hassle of building a time machine.

Grouchio posted:

Since the media tends to focus coverage on climate skeptics and deniers far more than the scientific community, what can stop them from doing so? Why do these deniers have so much power over the US sheeple?

And is it mainly old media that perpetuates this? Hopefully fewer people are falling for this bullshit.

Grouchio posted:

Which translates into less people than necessary believing that climate change is serious/a thing because...?

Grouchio posted:

Our lack of restrictions on Freedom of the Press (like the ones Canada or the UK has) is seriously going to be the end of US someday.

Isaac0105 posted:

Don't be so optimistic about nuclear. I can understand why people would be so sympathetic towards it- it's not oil, it's not coal, the idea of nuclear tickles the mind about its possibilities (especially in light of possible tech improvements, like breeder reactors or fusion). But I'd really like to emphasize that as a solution it is not permanent. Even if we manage to make a global nuclear transition (a gargantuan if) then uranium is still a non-renewable resource and we would just be kicking the ball down the road, pushing forward the inevitable collapse and downsizing that our civilization needs to undergo. Possible tech advances are not a way out of this because they don't exist right now - believing that they will be around to bail us out seems just a form of faith to me. And further, I suspect that even if these fusion/thorium/breeder reactors come around, there will be some other resource limit that will knock them on their rear end anyway later down the road. Remember that even if the fuel for something like fusion is insanely abundant, what might not be so abundant are the rare metals and minerals that will be required to construct these new reactors (and maintain them).

quote:

Safety is also an issue. I think people in this thread feel a bit smug with regard to the question of nuclear safety, because this question tends to attract a lot of irrational panic and religious doomsday beliefs. So indeed I agree that the people who claimed Fukushima would wipe out all life around the Pacific in a year were a bit silly to say the least, but that doesn't mean that nuclear is safe. Chernobyl was bad enough in my opinion - the figures of excess deaths range between thousands and hundreds of thousands (a few say millions). I am not trying to say that this is guaranteed to wipe us all out or something but it is very likely that at the very least, nuclearization of world energy means the permanent risk of Chernobyls and Fukushimas, constituting a massive safety risk, meaning nuclear is not safe.

quote:

Finally gently caress electric cars. The only solution to cars is "into the landfill" I would say. A big problem a lot of green types seem to have is the idea that we can have the society we have right now, except everything will be run using green energy sources. It really is an adorably naive idea. What is far more likely is that before the end of the century, the personal car will be dead, along with every social configuration depending on it (such as suburbia)

Isaac0105 posted:

"A given?" Please. Right now even human survival over the next century isn't a given, let alone an unprecedented shift in energy production which (according to you) is a given because of a pilot project and an underdeveloped technology. All I am calling for is realism. Even if something like fusion was already well developed (say we had a few relatively safe working reactors that are producing more energy than it takes to run them) I would say that the transition would be very far from a given. Let alone in our actual situation.

quote:

I'm not sure what connotation "looking forward to collapse" is supposed to have. Rest assured I meant that we should look forward to it in the sense that one looks forward to a big disaster that it might be a good idea to prepare for, not as some kind of fun adventure that we should embrace because it will take us back to the golden age of hunter-gatherer tribes.

And finally, the rise and fall of civilization is not a morality play. What causes a fall is not "good people" "loving up badly" but a set of systemic factors which sweep away all the people caught up in it. The fall of civilization will not be prevented by "good people who do what is necessary". Maybe delayed, maybe softened, but not prevented, trust me.

quote:

My specific take on safety is this - supposing that I did agree with you and blowfish on the necessity and the inevitability of a global transition to nuclear, I would still highly prefer if there existed this swarm of highly agitated nuclear pessimists who yell "safety" into the ears of everyone responsible for the construction and maintenance of nuclear reactors. To pressurize them into keeping to their safety standards, you see. Failing this, please don't expect nuclear to actually be the "safest method of power generation".

Isaac0105 posted:

If we build breeders, if we do thorium, if this and if that (and if some more) and then it's also an if that it will "power our current civilization for long enough". Reactors require plenty of rare resources to construct, what if we run out of those, even if we have enough reactor fuel? What if "we" (whoever we is supposed to be) cannot ensure a global scale transition to nuclear? It's not like "we" are living under some kind of highly organized and socially responsible world government, you know.

quote:

If you look at history, civilizations have a habit of falling. I already posted about this once - it can take many forms. I think it would be extreme to say they are all destined to fall all the way back to the stone age, but that's not really what I am arguing. I am saying that progress doesn't last forever, that some kind of fall will take place. The fall will be towards a society with a lower degree of complexity, what exactly it will be, I don't know (there's different scenarios and endpoints).

quote:

And about the last thing you said - when are you expecting this consciousness change towards a new nuclear age to take place? Techno-optimists like you always seem to be banking on some decisive moment when civilization will suddenly see the light and undergo some epic scale transformation to a bright new tomorrow. Maybe 20 years for now we will have even more run down cold war leftover reactors and still no fusion in sight? Do you really think that is less likely than a world dotted with fusion and breeder reactors? Civilizations really don't have these kinds of unprovoked transformative moments - the only time they transform at all is when they get a kick in the balls so fierce that the sheer pain shatters its delusions, making it scramble to adapt in chaotic and unpredictable ways.

Cranappleberry posted:

There are absolutely changes that can be made to mitigate climate change and environmental damage, even at this late stage. However, most of these changes have to occur on a large scale.

Individual attitudes and cultural attitudes can definitely make a difference but if you're looking at individual contributions to CO2 output, you're missing the forest for dirt under the trees. An individual is the end-user and does not control most of their own carbon footprint or, assuming they do, anywhere near a statistically significant amount of greenhouse gas production.

In this case we have a person who wants to shame other people who want to travel and be green. For a variety of reasons that is ridiculous. To pretend to be superior, or indeed, not hypocritical because of contributions that amount to a number so close to zero that no one would make the reasonable distinction, is the definition of frivolous bimbo.

Radbot posted:

Don't blame Greenpeace for using modern marketing tactics.

Wanderer posted:

I'd go so far as to say that it's the single thing keeping what passes for the American progressive movement from getting too much done.

It doesn't matter that this person agrees with you about 75% or 80% or 99% of the issues you could hope to name; there's a point of disagreement somewhere and that makes that person the enemy.

i am harry posted:

You know that thing that god people say when they try to come up with a reason to have a religion: "but......what if you're wrong?" It sort of works if you apply it to climate change deniers, skeptics, lukewarmist, lutefisks and whatever other categories there were in that list.

Placid Marmot posted:

Each reporting station produces its own data. The thermometers that you observed (now they've increased to 51 degrees!) were not inside standardized Stevenson-screened boxes (unless you were finding weather stations and cracking them open!), so their measurements will always be higher than the true shade temperature.
The highest temperature in Hasenkeyf last year was 44C on the 30th of July...
http://m.accuweather.com/en/tr/hasankeyf/320662/month/320662?monyr=7/01/2015
...in line with this claim that "highest average temperature varies between 40 – 43° C"
http://www.posetitursku.com/eng/2009/05/hasankeyf-batman/