Climate Change

[old goat]

https://wapo.st/3KSgQxx

Fusion by 2028? Utter bullshit. While people buy electric cars and do the laundry in cold water, AI and crypto overwhelm our meager efforts to use less fossil fuel while making a few people rich(er) and providing zero benefit to humanity. It's enough to make one annoyed.

[pfluffenmeister]

Fusion by 2028? Utter bullshit. While people buy electric cars and do the laundry in cold water, AI and crypto overwhelm our meager efforts to use less fossil fuel while making a few people rich(er) and providing zero benefit to humanity. It's enough to make one annoyed.

I heard an estimate that AI would "need" ~9% of total world electricity.
Add in another 9%? for crypto currency and there's not much left over for thumb loving primates.

[fomofo]

... and providing zero benefit to humanity.

Hey now, we got a "crotcheted" elephant. That's ... something.

[Dantheman]

I think it is going to be one of those things where we look back 100 years from now and realize just how fucking dirty/wasteful/awful the early technology was, and regret being scared away and not pushing the technology forward faster.

Even the early tech has proven to be very safe and reliable when viewed as a whole. But, you can understand why Chernobyl freaked people out.

On the waste issue, there's like 70,000 tons of high level waste. That certainly sounds like a lot, but it's so dense that the actual volume isn't really that much. It's a solveable problem. Yucca Mountain should have been built. I understand Harry Reid's opposition to it but he should have conceded for the good of the country.

God forsaken desert? The Sonoran and Mojave Deserts are beautiful and incredibly diverse ecosystems. Large portions are already have Federal protections.

Much of it is beautiful but there's definitely some wasteland-y parts too.

I'd always thought the worst landscapes are the suburbs where every construct should have a solar panel on it and damn the aesthetics.

Plus, rooftop solar is perfect for summer peak loads from AC use since those days are always sunny. Building solar farms instead of using all that roof space is crazy. But, power companies don't want to deal with the public for anything but a meter and a bill, and enough members of the public are crazy assholes that you kind of can't fault them for it.

[old goat]

Even the early tech has proven to be very safe and reliable when viewed as a whole. But, you can understand why Chernobyl freaked people out.

On the waste issue, there's like 70,000 tons of high level waste. That certainly sounds like a lot, but it's so dense that the actual volume isn't really that much. It's a solveable problem. Yucca Mountain should have been built. I understand Harry Reid's opposition to it but he should have conceded for the good of the country.



Much of it is beautiful but there's definitely some wasteland-y parts too.



.

The problem with nuclear is the risk of very rare but catastrophic accidents. It's hard to figure the odds and risk/benefit ratio on stuff like that but the problem is that build enough nukes and operate them long enough and the risk of catastrophe becomes non-neglible. The appeal of nukes is the prospect of continuing our current US lifestyle without inconvenience. If we want our grandchildren to have decent lives we can't continue. And the cost of our lifestyle is not just energy. Suppose we stop making and using forever chemicals. Feeding 8 billion people takes some nasty chemicals. Things like lithium, and if we go to nukes, uranium have to be mined. Etc etc.

[old goat]

Even the early tech has proven to be very safe and reliable when viewed as a whole. But, you can understand why Chernobyl freaked people out.

On the waste issue, there's like 70,000 tons of high level waste. That certainly sounds like a lot, but it's so dense that the actual volume isn't really that much. It's a solveable problem. Yucca Mountain should have been built. I understand Harry Reid's opposition to it but he should have conceded for the good of the country.



Much of it is beautiful but there's definitely some wasteland-y parts too.



.

The problem with nuclear is the risk of very rare but catastrophic accidents. It's hard to figure the odds and risk/benefit ratio on stuff like that but the problem is that build enough nukes and operate them long enough and the risk of catastrophe becomes non-neglible. The appeal of nukes is the prospect of continuing our current US lifestyle without inconvenience. If we want our grandchildren to have decent lives we can't continue. And the cost of our lifestyle is not just energy. Suppose we stop making and using forever chemicals. Feeding 8 billion people takes some nasty chemicals. Things like lithium, and if we go to nukes, uranium have to be mined. Etc etc.

As far as wasteland in the Mojave--there is Las Vegas. (But seriously, the value of an ecosystem is not whether humans find it appealing.)

[neufox47]

Plus, rooftop solar is perfect for summer peak loads from AC use since those days are always sunny. Building solar farms instead of using all that roof space is crazy. But, power companies don't want to deal with the public for anything but a meter and a bill, and enough members of the public are crazy assholes that you kind of can't fault them for it.

Rooftop is always going to be significantly more expensive to install. Frankly it makes more sense to only do utility scale solar farms, except the utility companies haven’t been willing to Acton their own, hence rooftop.

[Buster Highmen]

The inference from the research on rooftop and other instantiations that sit perpendicular to sun rays indicates that fences or vertical mounts may be more efficient.

[californiagrown]

On the waste issue, there's like 70,000 tons of high level waste. That certainly sounds like a lot, but it's so dense that the actual volume isn't really that much. It's a solveable problem. Yucca Mountain should have been built. I understand Harry Reid's opposition to it but he should have conceded for the good of the country.

If i am not mistaken you are a literal expert in an adjacent field, right? So i would assume you know better than most on here. But...

My concerns about waste storage are more along the lines of the high level wastes staying highly radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years- we have no idea what hidden seismic faults, climate changes etc will take place in the next 200,000 years. Yucca mountain may have a gnarly deep fault underneath it that is undiscovered, or climate change may turn that area into a rainforest in 50,000 years, or both, and then we have polluted an aquifer, or fertile land that we currently have no idea will even exist. The timescale for high/medium level radioactive waste is so long that we are taking a fairly uneducated guess as to where its safe to store it... we only "know" its safe in the short term. And there is only a finite capacity at each storage site with huge opposition to building new storage sites, so you end up storing waste in substandard containment vessels on the site of the reactor facitilites, which then leak and pollute the area (this is currently happening at numerous facilities across the country)

And then there is the interesting challenge of labeling the waste so that future humans/beings, who do not know of any current languages or symbols and who may be more or less advanced than we are now, will know that the stuff is toxic AF and to stay away. Actually fairly interesting linguistics/symbology problem.



All of that to say that if we can reuse/recycle spent fuel, and/or solve the "radioactive waste" problem, then its a no-brainer to utilize nuclear energy. And it sounds like new tech is very promising on this front.

[neufox47]

In case anyone was wondering June 24 was the hottest June on record, extending the streak to over 1 yr.


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

[old goat]

Donner Lake is comfortable for swimming. Normally that's in late August, if at all. And that;s despite a snowy winter.

[Bunion 2020]

One solution to one very specific problem. And fuck everyone else.

PLAQUEMINES PARISH, La. —

The marshes that blanket this pancake-flat parish south of New Orleans stretch for miles, strewn with small streams that flow into the Gulf of Mexico. A lone four-lane road goes south past a Navy air base, an idle industrial site, a coal export terminal and a handful of small storm-battered communities.

Then, suddenly, a gigantic facility rises from the wetlands. Cranes dot the skyline. They hover over crews that are installing a jumble of pipes, pumps, storage tanks and two 720-megawatt power plants — equipment needed to freeze natural gas into a liquid form so it can be shipped around the world.

It might seem like a risky location for a $21 billion liquefied natural gas plant, given this region’s ferocious hurricanes and sea levels that are rising faster than almost anywhere else on the planet. But the company building this plant, Arlington, Va.-based Venture Global, says it has an answer to these threats: a 26-f00t-high steel sea wall that surrounds the 632-acre site, twice the size of Washington’s National Mall.

The fortress highlights a crucial tension for this region of the country. The sea is rising here and the land is rapidly sinking, in large part driven by decades of oil and gas drilling and the planet-warming emissions that come from the burning of those fossil fuels. That is accelerating the destruction of wetlands, which serve as a critical barrier, and speeding up flooding across the coast, often with less advantaged communities most vulnerable.

https://wapo.st/3zq8niG

[The SnowShow]

Donner Lake is comfortable for swimming. Normally that's in late August, if at all. And that;s despite a snowy winter.

The signs are everywhere. Yet we ain’t doing shit and are barreling towards having another 4 year massive setback if Trump is elected.

[AirheadD8]

Don’t worry Nuclear winter will kick in before January.

[Summer]

That’s 107 in freedom units. In winter. New high score.

Season’s gone to complete shit. August is historically the peak snow depth month but most everything is closing down. New normal they say. Great.

Epic pass sales numbers for 2025 are gonna be interesting. Rumour has it they were down 22% for 2024. Vail being Vail, they jacked the pre-sale price up by $50 to $999 for 2025. Slow learners or see the writing on the wall, anyone’s guess.

[MultiVerse]

Saving Private Earth:

https://x.com/MakeSunsets/status/1828653512814891516

[fomofo]

The signs are everywhere. Yet we ain’t doing shit and are barreling towards having another 4 year massive setback if Trump is elected.

Dems should just make this an issue of self-interest, i.e., how does this impact you and your pocketbook?

A discussion focusing on home insurance policy costs/availability would be a good start. Clearly the insurance industry doesn't think climate change is a hoax.

https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com...er-462752.aspx

[Core Shot]

Saving Private Earth:

https://x.com/MakeSunsets/status/1828653512814891516

https://makesunsets.com/

Let’s go geoengineering!!!

Sadly nuclear power was the first victim in the saving private earth video

[old goat]

"Buy cooling credits"
I knew there had to be a catch.

[MultiVerse]

Let’s go geoengineering!!!

We're already doing geoengineering. Manmade, or “anthropogenic” CO2 and other greenhouse atmospheric gases—additional and apart from natural carbon cycle greenhouse gas sources—exceeds 50 billion tons. So the question is should we do other kinds of geoengineering too?

Sadly nuclear power was the first victim in the saving private earth video

"Buy cooling credits"
I knew there had to be a catch.

heh. Nuclear power the first victim, voluntary carbon market the second.

[raisingarizona13]

Dems should just make this an issue of self-interest, i.e., how does this impact you and your pocketbook?

A discussion focusing on home insurance policy costs/availability would be a good start. Clearly the insurance industry doesn't think climate change is a hoax.

https://www.insurancebusinessmag.com...er-462752.aspx

I can't afford to vote Democrat anymore. THEY affect our pocket book.

Seriously though, there's millions of poor people that are trying to figure out how to feed their kids this week, I doubt they are really worried about the climate 100+ years from now.

[interloper]

[MultiVerse]

Past global climate change, not regional variation, took place over tens-of-thousands, hundreds-of-thousands, or millions of years. Now, the rate of warming in recent decades is unprecedented. That's because the earth hadn't seen CO2 above 300 PPM (parts per million) for over a million years up until the early 1900s. We're now above 420 PPM, a greater than 50% increase since the pre-industrial era.

[The AD]

It’s always hot this time of year in central Arizona, but 2024 is proving to be an endless summer with especially high temperatures in Phoenix. On Tuesday, the city hit its 100th straight day with at least 100 degree temperatures. That’s long since shattered the record of 76 days in a row set back in 1993, according to data from the National Weather Service.

Well, it is a dry heat...

[old goat]

Past global climate change, not regional variation, took place over tens-of-thousands, hundreds-of-thousands, or millions of years. Now, the rate of warming in recent decades is unprecedented. That's because the earth hadn't seen CO2 above 300 PPM (parts per million) for over a million years up until the early 1900s. We're now above 420 PPM, a greater than 50% increase since the pre-industrial era.

Not sure why you replied. He's obviously making fun of the deniers. No one on this forum could possibly be that dumb. ?