1901

Here’s a graph of human impact:

All that since 1950! I can’t see how that’s sustainable.

Oh and for once … it’s safe to read the comments.

1902

Well, in theory, there is fusion, but waiting for that is a pretty silly “plan” to deal with anything. Despite what Civilization games have taught us, it isn’t something you knock out in a few years.

1903

British Columbia seems to have pulled it off. By law, proceeds from their carbon tax must be revenue neutral. They are used to reduce other taxes or otherwise returned to taxpayers as a “carbon dividend”.

Six years later, and even the Wall Street Journal and The Economist are impressed.

Because the tax must, by law in BC, be revenue-neutral, the province has cut income and corporate taxes to offset the revenue it gets from taxing carbon. BC now has the lowest personal income tax rate in Canada and one of the lowest corporate rates in North America, too.

BC’s fuel consumption is also down. Over the past six years, the per-person consumption of fuels has dropped by 16% (although declines levelled off after the last tax increase in 2012). During that same period, per-person consumption in the rest of Canada rose by 3%. “Each year the evidence becomes stronger and stronger that the carbon tax is driving environmental gains,” says Stewart Elgie, an economics professor at University of Ottawa and head of Sustainable Prosperity, a pro-green think-tank. At the same time, BC’s economy has kept pace with the rest of the country.

1904

I’m not anti-nuclear (which i’ve mentioned before) i just know that there are issues with it, examples as mentioned just picked out the air from the many more that have happened over the ‘life-time’ of the technology so far, nuclear waste and what to do with it was also part of what i was talking about (but didn’t think i need mention specificially, obviously i do), as we might not always have handy ‘failed states’ in Africa to dump in or lots of space in our own countries for burying it (the usa has losts of space, the uk does not, for example). I am not ‘ignorant’ of the issues around Nuclear energy, i’m just not a shill fan-boi that thinks it is all roses all the way, as it is not.

As part of a cleaner energy production program it has it’s place, but these issues mean it probably should not be the only ‘cleaner’ energy we are relying on. All the info that companies like BP have on green energy (that they refuse to share, after promising to do so), our current actual ability with technology and the obvious critical need for CO2-lite forms of energy production should be an obvious pointer to fast tracking real green, safe, energy production systmes that don’t leave longterm toxic issues to deal with or are ‘dangerous’ enough to need very careful control and monitoring. Radiation IS a big deal (don’t let a game like Fallout 3 fool you otherwise ;) ) in terms of human health. So Nuclear is an option, where it is safe to consider (geographically and security-wise), where the waste disposal issue is not a problem (the USA and Australia have lots of empty space etc) and the companies running and building things are not likely to cut corners (if this is possible to mitigate against).

‘Vast Antarctic ice shelf a few years from disintegration, says Nasa’:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/15/antarctic-ice-shelf-larsen-b-disintegration-nasa

The last intact section of one of Antarctica’s mammoth ice shelves is weakening fast and will likely disintegrate completely in the next few years, contributing further to rising sea levels, according to a Nasa study released on Thursday.

The research focused on a remnant of the so-called Larsen B Ice Shelf, which has existed for at least 10,000 years but partially collapsed in 2002. What is left covers about 625 square miles (1,600 square kilometres), about half the size of Rhode Island.

Antarctica has dozens of ice shelves - massive, glacier-fed floating platforms of ice that hang over the sea at the edge of the continent’s coast line. The largest is roughly the size of France.

1905

What are these “many” examples of accidents that have happened over the lifetime of nuclear technology?
You named 3 that could be easily discounted as irrelevant to modern nuclear technology. What others do you have up your sleeve?

1906

Timex I come down on the side of nuclear power, as does George Monbiot. But I encourage you to read this very thoughtful exchange between Monbiot and an anti-nuclear campaigner in the U.K. http://www.monbiot.com/2012/10/09/the-heart-of-the-matter/

I think it really shows that unequivocal support brings with it a lot of danger.

Also US Energy use per capita has been steady or going down for decades. Total energy use in the US is less today than in the year 2000. For awhile we were able to say it was the recession that was lowering our energy use, but that argument is holding less weight as time goes by. And it might start to tick up again. But it looks like never-ending growth in energy use just won’t happen. I personally want more nuclear as base load, but we have work to do to justify and build them.

1907

In the US it has stabalized per capita, but still increased as our population has grown.

But the bigger issue is developing countries, who have seen MASSIVE increases in their energy consumption, and will continue to see them. India, for instance, has seen basically a 100% increase in per capita energy consumption since 1992. And even now, it’s still at only 6% of what we use per capita. While our usage per person may go down ever so slightly, there’s no way that India is going to continue to use an order of magnitude less energy per person than we do as they become a fully industrialized nation.

The world isn’t going to ever need less energy than we need today… Before things finally level out, it’s gonna need way, way more than we use today.

1908

Part of the problem is that humans in general can’t separate the risk of the event and the magnitude of it. Some interesting research on it, but worse some one perceives something, the more likely that are to think the event will occur.

Likewise, people who look at the benefits of an event are likely to under value the chance of something happening.

So, people who focus on the scale of a nuclear disaster are more likely to believe that the chance of the event is greater, while people who focus on benefits, will usually rate the chance of the event as less.

I’m a fan of nuclear power, but that is mostly because I believe that the fear mongering around Nuclear power would mean tight regulations and safety procedures.

1909

This is totally true, although at the same time, even the perception of magnitude from a nuclear accident is essentially wrong for most of the population.

For instance, China Syndrome presented a suggestion that something like 3mi having a meltdown would render the entire state of PA permanently uninhabitable… that the core would sink down into the earth and vaporize the entire water table and cause radioactive steam geysers and everything all over the place.

But this isn’t really even remotely close what would actually happen, in even the worst possible scenario for a modern reactor.

So, not only are people incapable of separating magnitude from risk, but they also have a totally fictionalized perception of what can actually happen with nuclear reactors.

1910

It’s still not ‘good’ when/if their is a problem though, and in a growing less stable world Nuclear Reactors are prime targets (just to add some Fox News jibe in here). Nuclear waste is a problem, nuclear is not clean in that sense, but is great in the CO2 stakes which is where the main big problem is currently, so it can be part of the solution.

1911

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=Nuclear+accidents+global+count

10 seconds search. Are you being deliberately blind here? Shares in the Nuclear Industry perhaps? Seriously Timex, erm do live near a Nuclear Plant, would you want to, or maybe a burial facility? If YOU are cool with that, that is your call, but yours is not the ONLY opinion, and neither is it ‘right’. If Nuclear is so fantastic why not visit Chernobyl/Fukishima just to prove how safe and wonderful it is? If radiation is so safe…erm how come it is not.

1912

Did you follow any of those links? They basically prove Timex’s point that there really haven’t been any huge nuclear reactor incidents. If you go to that Wikipedia link on “nuclear accidents”, you’ll find that outside of Chernobyl, the death toll is… 14. If you add in the worst nuclear incident ever, it rockets up to 70.

Of course, the knee-jerk response is “yeah, but cancers and sickness from the incidents may number in the hundreds of thousands!” To which, the rejoinder is “OK, but then you have to look at all the sickness caused by fossil fuel pollution in order to get some perspective.” Basically, you’d have to have a Chernobyl-sized nuclear accident every month to come close to the damage that burning coal does each year.

Timex will probably chime in to tell you why the waste is not really a factor anymore.

Luckily, I live closer to a nuke plant than a coal plant, and I would fight to keep it that way. My parents’ retirement house is on the shores of the cooling pond (a large lake) of the Lake Anna nuclear plant, and I swim in the water that has been used to regulate the plant’s cooling system. It is in fact cleaner than most other Virginia lakes, is tested daily for radioactivity, and the fish from the lake are delicious.

1913

So you just proved my point that there is no list of many nuclear accidents, and the only ones that have really had any significant impact on anyone at all are Fukushima and Chernobyl, neither of which could possibly happen with modern reactors.

Oh, and yes, I grew up within the evacuation radius of the limerick nuclear power plant. I would always choose, without question, to live near a nuclear plant rather than a coal plant.

1914

Although I think generally nuclear is safe, the problem is that despite the risks being VERY small, the potential downside is VERY bad. You have to take both sides of the equation into account. The other problem is that the history of the nuclear lobby regarding predicting safety is hilariously bad. After 3 mile island, everyone said that could never happen with any other reactor. After Chernobyl everyone said it could never happen in the rich developed world. After fukashima we are assured that could never happen anywhere else… and so it goes on.
Obviously if people KNEW that there was a risk with a reactor somewhere, they would fix it, but when chernobyl happened, nobody in japan piped up with a ‘hey, we better check this thing survives a tsunami don’t ya think’? When the next nuclear accident happens (and it will) people will assure us whatever goes wrong that time is a one off…

1915

I dont think anyone sensible who is concerned about nuclear power really expects one to blow up and KILL millions of people. The downside is mostly economic. The full effect of fukashima isn’t deaths, but the economic damage caused by so many people having to permanently relocate, the destruction of various fishing businesses, the destruction of tourism, and god knows how much of a reduction in real estate values for some huge radius around the plant.
Plus of course the actual clean-up costs are stratospheric.
Nuclear plants are very good at not killing people. They are economic time bombs, that have such a huge downside, that the fact they are 99.99999% safe still means no insurance company can realistically insure the things.

1916

Even strictly economically they have a huge initial up front cost relative to other sources of power, and are completely inflexible with no ability to ramp up and down like Natural Gas for example. So if you misjudge the market in that area, or the market changes 5 years on, the economics of the investment can get completely out of whack. So it’s really hard to convince any business to invest.

What would help every source of power is long distance transmission markets. For solar and wind the benefits are obvious. For nuclear it means that you can build them in safer places rather than near population centers, and if the local market changes you can still sell the power to other people.

1917

As well, it isn’t something until it is actually something. Progress has been made. But it’s nothing to hang our hopes on, at all right now. I am also a proponent for nuclear. Done safely it’s the right thing to do.

1918

Well, Lockheed seems to think they have a reasonable shot at actually making a fusion reactor in the next few years.

And it’s freaking Lockheed, not some crank in his garage.

1919

That is all i’ve been saying. When it goes wrong it is not good, and it can go wrong, even in terms of freak chances. Nuclear Power is dangerous by it’s very nature or else we’d all be never wearing sun protection, happily eating those multiple-eyed fish from the Simpsons, and Nagasaki would have been ‘not that bad’, and food from Chernobyl or Fukashima would be in high demand. Nuclear Power and Radiation IS dangerous to our health. This is why i felt Timex’s response was being obtuse, an inability to aknowledge the obvious real world dangers…is just wierd imho. And still no response to the Nuclear waste issue.

I’m not being anti-nuclear here, just realistic based on the acutal scientific evidence of what Nuclear Power does and means to our health and security concerns (and i guess the environment when it goes wrong like in Fukishima). Anyway this is a little boring now, i can’t make it any more clear than i have. And a bit of fun:

‘Charlize Theron: Mad Max landscape awaits unless we tackle climate change’:

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/14/charlize-theron-mad-max-landscape-awaits-unless-we-tackle-climate-change

A Puff piece mostly selling Mad Max, but she does have a point.

1920

Enough fun.

We recently passed 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere; the status quo will take us up to 1,000 ppm, raising global average temperature (from a pre-industrial baseline) between 3.2 and 5.4 degrees Celsius. That will mean, according to a 2012 World Bank report, “extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise,” the effects of which will be “tilted against many of the world’s poorest regions,” stalling or reversing decades of development work. “A 4°C warmer world can, and must be, avoided,” said the World Bank president.

But that’s where we’re headed. It will take enormous effort just to avoid that fate. Holding temperature down under 2°C — the widely agreed upon target — would require an utterly unprecedented level of global mobilization and coordination, sustained over decades. There’s no sign of that happening, or reason to think it’s plausible anytime soon. And so, awful shit it is.

Now policymakers are being told that emissions can peak in 2030 and still keep temperature rise under 2°C. To get that result in a modeling scenario, emissions have to fall 6 percent a year, even with large amounts of BECCS thrown in. To find that plausible, one has to imagine all of human society turning on a dime, beginning in 2030, deploying massive amounts of nuclear, bioenergy, wind, and solar, and doing so every year for decades.

It’s “possible,” yes, but at a certain point that term loses much meaning. Something that would require human beings to quickly and fundamentally change their collective behavior may not violate the laws of physics, but it is unlikely, given what we know about human beings, path dependence, and political dysfunction. This is what I once called the “brutal logic of climate change.”