Am I still allowed to question climate change?

[Robin-H]

This is all consistent with what I have been trying to say, but you worry about different unknowns from me.

What I always come back to is that there is a real human cost to reducing CO2 aggressively, which we're supposed to neglect.

 

I have never understood why we don't take the French approach and decarbonise through nuclear. I've looked into this in great detail and I can only conclude than a great many commentators and green politicians want to preserve the issue to push their wider agenda rather than simply solving it (which is what nuclear does).

 

I admit I haven't read through all 190 pages or so of this thread so I'm not entirely sure what your position is.

 

If however you agree with the IPCC reports, and also agree that we could potentially see 2°C of warming before letting CO2 concentrations double, then we are on the same page (hence why I think letting CO2 double would be very risky, as could cause warming far in excess of 2°C).

 

I do agree with your nuclear argument - I don't think the apparent dislike for nuclear is at all rational in this day and age.

[El Cid]

Finally somebody who cares about the facts and what the scientists actually say. Thank you.

 

 

Really

 

http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/

[flamingjimmy]

I have never understood why we don't take the French approach and decarbonise through nuclear. I've looked into this in great detail and I can only conclude than a great many commentators and green politicians want to preserve the issue to push their wider agenda rather than simply solving it (which is what nuclear does).

 

I don't think that's it at all, I think it's a widespread ignorance about the risk benefit ratio of nuclear power. They genuinely don't think nuclear will solve it they think that nuclear is evil and will destroy the world.

 

EDIT: Or more generally, don't assume conspiracy when stupidity can explain it.

Edited January 8, 2017 by flamingjimmy

[petemcewan]

The role of the oceans in the global carbon cycle as the major sink for the

emissions of CO2 by human activities is crucial in the present study of climate change. Apparently ,there is about 50 times more carbon diss-

olved in the oceans than there is at present in the atmosphere today ( Changing Climates, Bert Bolin. Climate changes in the past. The Fragile Environment. New Approaches to Global Problems. Edited by Laurie Friday and Ronald Laskey.Cambridge University Press. ISBN,0-521-42266-3.p 135, Fig 7.7 .

 

If Bolin was correct what impact would it have on photosynthesis ?

 

If photosynthesis was to cease what impact would it have on CO2 to the

atmosphere ?

 

Anybody ?

[Robin-H]

The role of the oceans in the global carbon cycle as the major sink for the

emissions of CO2 by human activities is crucial in the present study of climate change. Apparently ,there is about 50 times more carbon diss-

olved in the oceans than there is at present in the atmosphere today ( Changing Climates, Bert Bolin. Climate changes in the past. The Fragile Environment. New Approaches to Global Problems. Edited by Laurie Friday and Ronald Laskey.Cambridge University Press. ISBN,0-521-42266-3.p 135, Fig 7.7 .

 

If Bolin was correct what impact would it have on photosynthesis ?

 

If photosynthesis was to cease what impact would it have on CO2 to the

atmosphere ?

 

Anybody ?

 

If photosynthesis was to cease I think we'd have bigger problems than the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere..

 

(well technically that would be one of our problems, but the lack of oxygen might what be makes the papers)

Edited January 8, 2017 by Robin-H

[El Cid]

I don't think that's it at all, I think it's a widespread ignorance about the risk benefit ratio of nuclear power. They genuinely don't think nuclear will solve it they think that nuclear is evil and will destroy the world.

 

A little like our problem with soot etc from diesel cars, should people change to petrol cars, they might be better on one thing, but worse on another.

[sgtkate]

I don't think that's it at all, I think it's a widespread ignorance about the risk benefit ratio of nuclear power. They genuinely don't think nuclear will solve it they think that nuclear is evil and will destroy the world.

 

EDIT: Or more generally, don't assume conspiracy when stupidity can explain it.

 

Yep this. There is no perfect producer of power. At least not until we can get cold fusion and even then...humans require power, we just do, unless we want to go back to the caves. Be as green and eco friendly as you like, but you cannot get away that we need power so the aim should be the reduce the impact of that generation as much as we can. Nuclear is so obviously the solution that sometimes I honestly want to chuck things at the Green party, who I support on pretty much every other policy. It's infuriating. Of cause the risks to nuclear are staggering if it goes wrong, but it goes wrong so rarely that the risk is infinitesimally small. And the gains are almost pollution free power generation. At least pollution in the terms most people view it. Nuclear waste is a problem that was solved well enough a long time ago.

[unbeliever]

Yep this. There is no perfect producer of power. At least not until we can get cold fusion and even then...humans require power, we just do, unless we want to go back to the caves. Be as green and eco friendly as you like, but you cannot get away that we need power so the aim should be the reduce the impact of that generation as much as we can. Nuclear is so obviously the solution that sometimes I honestly want to chuck things at the Green party, who I support on pretty much every other policy. It's infuriating. Of cause the risks to nuclear are staggering if it goes wrong, but it goes wrong so rarely that the risk is infinitesimally small. And the gains are almost pollution free power generation. At least pollution in the terms most people view it. Nuclear waste is a problem that was solved well enough a long time ago.

 

Cold fusion is fundamentally impossible.

Regular fusion (>>1millionºC) is under active development but is still some decades off commercial viability.

There is also a new generation of fission power generation systems on the way which do not produce long-lived waste (and in fact can consume the existing stockpile of long-lived waste if we haven't done the sensible thing and buried it by then). These are likely to be ready earlier.

 

Other than that I emphatically agree with you.

The greens don't want the solution, they want the issue. They want de-industrialisation and they don't care about the billions of people who will die because of it.

They know nuclear solves the CO2 issue but they fight against it because without the CO2 issue they'd become less powerful.

[sgtkate]

Cold fusion is fundamentally impossible.

Regular fusion (>>1millionºC) is under active development but is still some decades off commercial viability.

There is also a new generation of fission power generation systems on the way which do not produce long-lived waste (and in fact can consume the existing stockpile of long-lived waste if we haven't done the sensible thing and buried it by then). These are likely to be ready earlier.

 

Other than that I emphatically agree with you.

The greens don't want the solution, they want the issue. They want de-industrialisation and they don't care about the billions of people who will die because of it.

They know nuclear solves the CO2 issue but they fight against it because without the CO2 issue they'd become less powerful.

 

The cold fusion line was a bit tongue in cheek

[El Cid]

They know nuclear solves the CO2 issue but they fight against it because without the CO2 issue they'd become less powerful.

 

You give them too much credit, few politicians look that far into the future.