CO2 capture? Though I’m not sure what you do with it after you capture it…
ShivaX
4514
Toss it in the old coal mines.
Timex
4515
Or we could burn it again!
People in the desert might want to think about getting out of the desert. It’s only going to be desert times desert in the future.
It’s like they need to import the Sardukur from Dune to run the oil refineries. Everyone else needs to vacate.
That article is not at all concerning in its details or implications and does nothing to entrench my sense that we’re looking at a full collapse within 15-20 years.
“We’re going to have to make our recycling cleaner. That means either less single-stream recycling or more public education and more stringent use of single-stream systems. Either way, you can expect recycling to get at least a little less convenient.”
Menzo
4520
Well this is going to confuse those guy who keep blocking electric vehicle charging stations!
Nesrie
4521
I remember when I was a kid we put everything in separate bins, and that was fine. As an adult I went from hey you can throw glass in the giant everything bin, to we won’t even accept office or brown paper anymore to… I think i need a bigger garbage bin because all they’ll take now are my Amazon boxes and water jugs.
There’s got to be something we can do.
So much this. Except it’s not limited just to climate-related refugees and migrants.
None
4523
Heh, I didn’t even know that was a thing but of course it is.
George Romero’s Land of the Dead shows us how that will go.
Key quote:
“Can be solved”…I don’t doubt it, if we’re willing to put in the time and resources to do it. Gates’ billion is good and all, but is it everything needed? Doubt it. Oh, and there could be some accidents along the way. Sounds like a “what could possibly go wrong” moment.
Having said all that, I’m actually for innovation in energy production. Even risky kinds. We need to go into it with eyes open, though, to those risks. Both the will-to-proceed kind of risk, and the straight up disaster risks.
Yeah, there certainly could be accidents along the way. I’d think the slim risk would yield fewer overall deaths than the poisons spit into the environment via non-nuclear energy production and environmental change being spurred on by it. Of course, any event would be much more visible than the slow deaths we’re otherwise experiencing, and therefore receive disproportionate concern.
JonRowe
4528
Nuclear power is a huge step forward in reducing carbon emissions, and I think that some of the accidents and issues with the older plants have caused the public to turn against it as a viable energy source. There has been a lot of work done in new reactor styles which reduce waste and lower the chance of meltdown risks greatly.
But, there just isn’t any funding for the projects. Maybe the Gates foundation can help that, but I don’t know if our science averse public will be able to swallow the idea of “nuclear power is good for the environment”. Because it just sounds so wrong.
The biggest issue with nuclear power is the waste. It just doesn’t go away, and there isn’t a perfect solution for this problem. But it is very clear the the alternatives of coal or natural gas are worse. For every cask of spent fuel put into a mountain for storage, hundreds of thousands of tons of poisonous climate changing CO2 is released into the air.
Green power technologies are also a good area for investment, but they just don’t have the power output needed to supply the world as of yet. Nuclear could be a bridge to that technology.
One intersting fact, coal burning plants actually release more radioactive materials into the atmosphere than nuclear ones.
Timex
4529
Yeah, all the nuclear waste that’s ever been produced by every reactor, ever, only amounts to a block that’s about as wide as a football field, going from the endzone to the 10 yard line, ten feet high.
The stuff isn’t pleasant, but the amount of water is also extremely small. Even if you didn’t contain it at all, you’re talking about irradiating and polluting a very small area, versus carbon emissions which are immense… And really, things like fly ash ponds are just as terrible as anything nuclear plant produce.
The nuclear power companies just gotta figure shit out like Duke Progress Energy of NC: pollute the fuck out of the local environment with sloppy practices and outright malice, then bribe the literally racially gerrymandered Republican state government into absolving you of any wrongdoing and actually putting the taxpayers on the hook for the entire cleanup process. . . which you also subsequently mismanage and leave more or less incomplete while still pocketing millions.
Sounds like some graveshitting incoming there…
