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MS-06FZ Zaku II Kai

Your opinion on nuclear power?

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In my opinion I divide power sources into these groups:
Very bad: biomass
Bad: windmills, solar plates
Better: hydroelectrics
Good: coal, gas and nuclear thingy
Unseen in action but promising to be effective: fusion thingy

 

Why: burning biomass is like burning organics: the products of combustion will not be only CO2 and H2O because usually that combustion is partial, and roughly speaking, the side effects of this kind of thing is release of many kinds of toxic organics that leads to local pollutions, while the products of combustion of coal and gas can be described in a few non-organic compounds: C, CO, CO2 and H2O.

 

Windmills and solar plates require a lot of care, you constantly need to change the blades, clean the plates from snow in winter; the energy output is quite low to be on a par with fossils and atom, it needs large areas to be covered with these in order to compete. This all leads to expensive (read: green (in other words, money money money)) electricity.

 

Hydroelectrics are ok because of decent energy output and higher trustworthness.

 

Coal and gas: it's cheaper than "green" energy, and the side products are mostly pure CO2 and H2O.

 

Nuclear: grants slightly more energy output than all sources listed above. I heard that Rosatom in 2018 managed to find out how to use nuclear waste as fuel, that made me feel that nuclear thingy becomes even better than it was lol. I know no popular alternative to nuclear thingy but the fusion thingy is very promising and maybe is even more effective and clean way to get energy.

 

 

 

offtopic but why not:

Also I believe that the "Nuclear Winter" is like a very hot summer rather than something cold

What I think about "greenhouse effect theory"
- water vapors are the main "greenhouse" gases, not even CO2. It makes no sense to fight with carbons when you have the most Earth's area covered in water that is the main emitter of the water vapor. If you lessen the amounts of other gases, the water will just replace them with vapor lol. Moreover that, CO2 is more like a thing that protects the planet from incoming sun energy and if we lose it*, we will get somewhat fry(it plays into the hands of green guys who will be increasing the carbon tax each time when the planet's temperature grows, and they'll make more money)

* we'll never lose it entirely because the world's ocean also emits CO2, and will always help the planet to stabilize its temperature(make us colder)

- so greenhouse effect theory is invented to impose unconditional taxes on the whole world heh

 

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13 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

Uranium mining is an extremely dirty business that releases large amounts of radioactivity into the environment.

Uranium enrichment is also a very dirty business it deals with extremely toxic substances that often get left behind because proper disposal is too costly.

in my opinion, thorium would be a much better alternative. it would also be ideal for these reactors to be built with a safety, and with proper materials.

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51 minutes ago, SilverMiner said:

Coal and gas: it's cheaper than "green" energy, and the side products are mostly pure CO2 and H2O.

Coal's byproducts are definitely not pure CO2 and H2O. You get tons of particulate matter, some of which are even radioactive. Coal is pretty much the worst energy source available.

 

58 minutes ago, SilverMiner said:

- water vapors are the main "greenhouse" gases, not even CO2. It makes no sense to fight with carbons when you have the most Earth's area covered in water that is the main emitter of the water vapor. If you lessen the amounts of other gases, the water will just replace them with vapor lol. Moreover that, CO2 is more like a thing that protects the planet from incoming sun energy and if we lose it*, we will get somewhat fry(it plays into the hands of green guys who will be increasing the carbon tax each time when the planet's temperature grows, and they'll make more money)

Complete rubbish.

 

Yes, water vapor has a greenhouse gas effect. But here's the thing, water vapor is accounted for in the environmental equilibrium. Water vapor hasn't spent the last half century accumulating in the atmosphere in an acceleratingly greater and greater concentration. Turns out that water vapor in the atmosphere tends to fall back down eventually: there's that thing called "rain" which happens quite often actually...

 

But you know what can increase the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere? It's more evaporation caused by global warming caused by greenhouse effects.

 

As for CO2 being a shield protecting us from the sun, lol, just lol.

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I'm a huge fan of nuclear, particularly due to the cost/benefit difference over any other mainstream form of fuel. I live in the midwest (north central US, for those outside), so I'm witness to the kinds of territory destruction and environmental impact caused by the shift to wind and solar, and I find it a bit tragic, personally, how much land has to be converted to fuel even small areas with that form. Though alot of that is a new opinion. Ten years ago I would have been all for it, now I struggle to see how it improves on Oil or Coal in any meaningful way.

One I also like is Water/hydroelectric, but the impact is still huge, and I don't really know how to solve that one. The flipside is that its both reliable and permanent, so I figure at least we have time on that one. All in all, it seems Nuclear is the cleanest way to go for the time being, though certainly not without its own costs.

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3 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

Uh, sorry, but no. Fission does not work like that. Size of the fragments is random and no matter what you use as your fuel, you'll always end up with a mixture of the same longer lived nuclides. You may get less of some of them, but you'll still get them.

 

I'm not a nuclear physicist, but all 3 articles were in broad agreement that while it's true that there is some longer-lived material, it is vanishingly small because, whereas fuel rods for extant reactors only use about 2% of the rod's material, Thorium Molten Salt Reactors use nearly 100% of the material in producing energy. This is from the long article I linked;

 

"Of the MSR’s waste, 99,99% is stable within 300 years, instead of the controversial tens of thousands of years for conventional nuclear waste. The remaining 0,01% has no significant impact on the overall radiotoxicity. 

To put these numbers into perspective: the yearly consumption of electricity of the average affluent person (western standards of living) requires one gram of thorium per year. This thorium will be turned into one gram of fission products. Of this gram, about 83% only requires storage for 10 years. The remaining 17% needs storage for about 300 years, after which the radiotoxicity of this fraction is lower than that of uranium ore."

 

So 83% of the waste is safe within 10 years. Not bad. 'ey?

 

Skeptoid had this to say;

 

"True or False? Thorium reactors produce hardly any waste at all, and the waste they do produce is much safer.

True. This is mainly because of the inefficiency of uranium fuel rods. They are done being used when they're about 2% spent. A lot of material goes into uranium reactors, and a lot comes out, and it's still highly radioactive.

In a LFTR, what goes in also comes out, but it's completely burned rather than only 2% burned. So in total, far less material goes through the system, and what does come out has had almost all its radioactivity already spent; and the majority of that can be recycled into useful industrial products."

 

To be fair, there is no such thing as a Thorium Molten Salt Breeder Reactor in commercial use anywhere in the world. Therefore, seeing is believing when it comes to the claims of safety and reduced waste. China is taking the lead in developing this technology, but it will be years before it's used commercially. 

 

In the interest of further fairness, anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott wrote The Delusion of Thorium a few years ago. However, her article seems to take liberty with the truth, claiming that the USA tried and failed for 50 years to develop Thorium reactors. This is factually incorrect, if this article from The World Nuclear Association is accurate. Of course, they have their biases as well, so there's a lot of research remaining to be done. The World Nuclear Association article gives an interesting history of Thorium research, including the many types of reactors where Thorium has been used. India, for example, plans to use Thorium in Heavy Water Reactors, which presumably have different types of waste than Molten Salt Reactors.

 

One way or another, it seems unlikely that this technology will proliferate in the near future, as it seems that 20 years may pass before it's in widespread commercial use . . . assuming everything goes well with China's pilot plant, as I hope it does. 

Edited by Steve D

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3 hours ago, ChopBlock223 said:

Though some global cooling would probably happen, nuclear winter is a rather exaggerated concept, instead nuclear autumn is a more apt name.

 

I looked into that and it seems you're right. It appears that the nuclear winter concept was generated by one team of researchers whose data failed to convince other scientists.

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21 minutes ago, Naarok0fkor said:

Chernobyl will remain uninhabitable for 20000 years...

I hope you are joking

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23 minutes ago, INfront95 said:

I hope you are joking

No...You can go to Chernobyl for a short time, but cancer is going to get you if you stay. I don't know how long Fukushima will remain hot & how Three-mile-island is doing, but nuclear power is so much more dangerous than human error can cope with that I have nightmares about it all the time. Nuclear war is always a reality too. I deeply favor hydroelectricity because of the safety & reliability. Solar power is coming to a great maturity when you consider NASA's use of it, but with all the nuclear powerplants around, another big accident is always to be feared. I know that we are getting better & better at dealing with nuclear waste but radiation poisoning is beacoming an important factor to consider in the global pollution problem. I do believe in putting a lot of money in nuclear research because of the unlimited possibilities though...

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2 hours ago, Naarok0fkor said:

No...You can go to Chernobyl for a short time, but cancer is going to get you if you stay. I don't know how long Fukushima will remain hot & how Three-mile-island is doing, but nuclear power is so much more dangerous than human error can cope with that I have nightmares about it all the time. Nuclear war is always a reality too. I deeply favor hydroelectricity because of the safety & reliability. Solar power is coming to a great maturity when you consider NASA's use of it, but with all the nuclear powerplants around, another big accident is always to be feared. I know that we are getting better & better at dealing with nuclear waste but radiation poisoning is beacoming an important factor to consider in the global pollution problem. I do believe in putting a lot of money in nuclear research because of the unlimited possibilities though...

 

Few problems:

Solar and wind power at their peak can not even cover one fifth of modern human demand, plus because of the cicumstances and overall shape of earth you can't use it in particular places.


Hydropower has similar problems with new one's. You need water, moving water and a lot of it. When hydro plant is constructed a lot of ground is flooded and you basically kill all bioshpere for few kilometers, not to mention of the drougth's and changing course of rivers. Plus they also have devastating catastrophes.

 

There are 2 nuclear power accidents in the history of the mankind. Chernobyl was because of human stupidity, Fukushima becasue of cutting loses while constructing.

All of it can be avoided. There is 4-5 stage defence systems in the modern plants to prevent new disasters. And the leaders in the field like "Rosatom" develop new ways to make it safer.

 

All this hate for nuclear energy are mostly funded by fossil fuel companies and by overall fear that something like Chernobyl will happen.

Do not fear the atom. You will likely catch cancer from smoking and eating processed food than from local power plant.


On the topic of Chernobyl situation: I fucking hate when fiction collide with reality. 1st there was no nuclear blast. Exploded lid of the reactor and scattered graphite in the air and local territory. 2nd half-life of the nuclear elements is 30 years, which we kinda pass already. The period of complete disintegration is 300y. All this stuff about 20000 years is lie.

 

And what pollution? Nuclear power plant is basically a giand kettle! If you are saying that radioactive elements pollue the earth. I have one question for you. Did we create this elements? or we dig it up?  There is a different ways to recycle these elements to put it again in the plant or make nuclear weapons of it. Funny really when nuclear plant is made right and proper. it is THE most ecological and eficcient source of energy right now.

 

Edited by INfront95

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9 hours ago, Steve D said:

 

I'm not a nuclear physicist, but all 3 articles were in broad agreement that while it's true that there is some longer-lived material, it is vanishingly small because, whereas fuel rods for extant reactors only use about 2% of the rod's material, Thorium Molten Salt Reactors use nearly 100% of the material in producing energy. This is from the long article I linked;

...

 

You know, much of this reads "too good to be true". There's so many 'if's involved here that the ultimate outcome is highly uncertain.

In any case, most of the values mentioned here are purely theoretical, we'll have to see if they can manage this kind of efficiency.

 

6 hours ago, INfront95 said:

All this hate for nuclear energy are mostly funded by fossil fuel companies and by overall fear that something like Chernobyl will happen.

Do not fear the atom. You will likely catch cancer from smoking and eating processed food than from local power plant.

 

Actually, no. Most of the hate is fueled by activists with a diffuse fear of radioactivity and often little knowledge of what it is really about. Here in Germany these have such widespread support that even engaging in a reasonable discussion about better ways to use nuclear power has become impossible. That includes Thorium and fusion reactors.

 

I agree with one of their views, though: The current Uranium fuel cycle is not future proof. It creates way too much dangerous waste and requires resources with limited supply, which would last for decades rather than centuries if current rate of consumption continues, and on top of that is accident-prone with catastrophic worst-case scenarios. But with all that justified criticism, these people have all but managed to prevent research into better alternatives here.

 

 

6 hours ago, INfront95 said:

On the topic of Chernobyl situation: I fucking hate when fiction collide with reality. 1st there was no nuclear blast. Exploded lid of the reactor and scattered graphite in the air and local territory. 2nd half-life of the nuclear elements is 30 years, which we kinda pass already. The period of complete disintegration is 300y. All this stuff about 20000 years is lie.

 

 

Actually, the next longer lived relevant isotope with a relevant fission yield is technetium-99 with a half-life of roughly 200000 years. But since the half life is 10000 longer the activity is 10000 times less and with the amounts released into the environment not a major issue. It's also an element that has no biological role and is therefore less dangerous than the two main contributors of radioactive pollution with a half life of roughly 30 years each.

 

So yeah, the 20000 year thing is a lie. But you know, it's easy to lie about things where 99% of Humanity has no deeper knowledge about the subject matter.

 

 

6 hours ago, INfront95 said:

 

And what pollution? Nuclear power plant is basically a giand kettle! If you are saying that radioactive elements pollue the earth. I have one question for you. Did we create this elements? or we dig it up?  There is a different ways to recycle these elements to put it again in the plant or make nuclear weapons of it. Funny really when nuclear plant is made right and proper. it is THE most ecological and eficcient source of energy right now.

 

 

Like I said before, a lot of the pollution here is generated long before the fuel is put in a reactor.

Mining, in particular when done in less developed countries, often does not properly dispose of this waste so a large part of it enters the environment.
For Uranium 238, the longest lived products aside from Uranium 234, which won't be separated by purification, have half lives of 70000 or 1600 years. Equally bad is that one of the decay products, Radon-222, is a gas which can diffuse into the atmosphere and spread radiation into other areas. For Uranium 235 things do not look much better as its longest lived decay product has a half life of 30000 years.

Oops. This waste will be toxic and extremely dangerous for a very, very long time.
 

For comparison, the longest lived decay product of Thorium only has a half-life of 5 years, meaning that this waste would be safe within a century.

Which brings us back to my earlier "too good to be true" statement about using Thorium for energy generation.

 

 

 

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7 hours ago, INfront95 said:

 

Few problems:

Solar and wind power at their peak can not even cover one fifth of modern human demand, plus because of the cicumstances and overall shape of earth you can't use it in particular places.


Hydropower has similar problems with new one's. You need water, moving water and a lot of it. When hydro plant is constructed a lot of ground is flooded and you basically kill all bioshpere for few kilometers, not to mention of the drougth's and changing course of rivers. Plus they also have devastating catastrophes.

 

There are 2 nuclear power accidents in the history of the mankind. Chernobyl was because of human stupidity, Fukushima becasue of cutting loses while constructing.

All of it can be avoided. There is 4-5 stage defence systems in the modern plants to prevent new disasters. And the leaders in the field like "Rosatom" develop new ways to make it safer.

 

All this hate for nuclear energy are mostly funded by fossil fuel companies and by overall fear that something like Chernobyl will happen.

Do not fear the atom. You will likely catch cancer from smoking and eating processed food than from local power plant.


On the topic of Chernobyl situation: I fucking hate when fiction collide with reality. 1st there was no nuclear blast. Exploded lid of the reactor and scattered graphite in the air and local territory. 2nd half-life of the nuclear elements is 30 years, which we kinda pass already. The period of complete disintegration is 300y. All this stuff about 20000 years is lie.

 

And what pollution? Nuclear power plant is basically a giand kettle! If you are saying that radioactive elements pollue the earth. I have one question for you. Did we create this elements? or we dig it up?  There is a different ways to recycle these elements to put it again in the plant or make nuclear weapons of it. Funny really when nuclear plant is made right and proper. it is THE most ecological and eficcient source of energy right now.

 

Nuclear power gives us about 10% of the power overall. Read about Three-mile island & the other russian disasters too. The problem with nuclear is that we're facing thousands of years of death when something happens & something happens every single day with it. My town is using hydro power all the time without destroying the environment. Our hydro projects up north have affected the ecosystem by modifying the shape of lakes, not poisoning us with radioactivity for thousands of years if not millions. Ever since the 1970's the amount of nuclear powerplants has risen & the overall amount of cancer has gone up with it. Wind & the sun's rays are present everywhere on earth. The machinery to harness those two things are not polluting compared with nuclear waste. In fact scientists have created some very radioactive elements & made some other found in nature much more radioactive. Take a physics class in university before having an opinion on nuclear power. A nuclear powerplant is not just a giant kettle. It uses large amounts of water that gets radioactive for long centuries. Nobody can get into the Chernobyl exclusion zone without dying. It is 2600 square km large...

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13 minutes ago, Naarok0fkor said:

poisoning us with radioactivity for thousands of years if not millions. [...] It uses large amounts of water that gets radioactive for long centuries

You misunderstand how nuclear reactors work. They don't emit radiation into the environment or create radioactive water unless the reactor has a catastrophic breakdown. They don't just sit there and pump out radiation, you know.

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2 minutes ago, RDETalus said:

You misunderstand how nuclear reactors work. They don't emit radiation into the environment or create radioactive water unless the reactor has a catastrophic breakdown. They don't just sit there and pump out radiation, you know.

Physics classes for you...

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Just now, Naarok0fkor said:

Physics classes for you...

Already had them, I'm a degree holding mechanical engineer. The water used in nuclear reactors doesn't come into direct contact with the nuclear rods.

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31 minutes ago, Naarok0fkor said:

 Ever since the 1970's the amount of nuclear powerplants has risen & the overall amount of cancer has gone up with it. Wind & the sun's rays are present everywhere on earth. The machinery to harness those two things are not polluting compared with nuclear waste. In fact scientists have created some very radioactive elements & made some other found in nature much more radioactive. Take a physics class in university before having an opinion on nuclear power. A nuclear powerplant is not just a giant kettle. It uses large amounts of water that gets radioactive for long centuries.

 

You sound like a typical anti-nuclear activist who does not know how things work.

While there are legitimate reasons to be concerned, none of what you say is true but is commonly used by activists to spread FUD.

 

 

31 minutes ago, Naarok0fkor said:

Nobody can get into the Chernobyl exclusion zone without dying. It is 2600 square km large...

 

Tell that to all the people who work there or the tourists who routinely make a visit. And all the wild animals that are thriving in the area.

It's only the immediate vicinity of the reactor that's sufficiently contaminated that prolonged exposure is immediately hazardous.

The operative term is "prolonged exposure". You can spend some time there and not risk your health - what is not advisable is to continuously live there.

 

Let's also not forget that more than 30 years have passed since the accident - the two most significant contaminants have decayed by half already in that time.

 

BTW:

https://allthatsinteresting.com/chernobyl-atomik-vodka

 

 

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nuclear energy is great and all, but i'd rather not have it considering the fact that 1.) those who own it, whether it be a government or corporation, tend to cut corners at every available turn (let's be real, higher-ups don't like to listen to people who actually know what they're talking about), which will obviously lead to disastrous effects considering it's nuclear energy. if we could trust institutions to actually give a shit about safety and learn from past mistakes, then i'd be a bit more for it...but i don't see that happening anytime soon. and the more important reason, 2.), is that it takes wayyy too long to set up, and we don't have a whole lot of time before shit gets real.

 

15 hours ago, SilverMiner said:

- water vapors are the main "greenhouse" gases, not even CO2. It makes no sense to fight with carbons when you have the most Earth's area covered in water that is the main emitter of the water vapor. If you lessen the amounts of other gases, the water will just replace them with vapor lol. Moreover that, CO2 is more like a thing that protects the planet from incoming sun energy and if we lose it*, we will get somewhat fry(it plays into the hands of green guys who will be increasing the carbon tax each time when the planet's temperature grows, and they'll make more money)

* we'll never lose it entirely because the world's ocean also emits CO2, and will always help the planet to stabilize its temperature(make us colder)

- so greenhouse effect theory is invented to impose unconditional taxes on the whole world heh

 

this is very easily disproven by the simple fact that venus's atmosphere, which is made up primarily of co2, traps far more heat than earth's does

Edited by roadworx

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19 hours ago, SilverMiner said:

What I think about "greenhouse effect theory"
- water vapors are the main "greenhouse" gases, not even CO2. It makes no sense to fight with carbons when you have the most Earth's area covered in water that is the main emitter of the water vapor. If you lessen the amounts of other gases, the water will just replace them with vapor lol. Moreover that, CO2 is more like a thing that protects the planet from incoming sun energy and if we lose it*, we will get somewhat fry(it plays into the hands of green guys who will be increasing the carbon tax each time when the planet's temperature grows, and they'll make more money)

* we'll never lose it entirely because the world's ocean also emits CO2, and will always help the planet to stabilize its temperature(make us colder)

- so greenhouse effect theory is invented to impose unconditional taxes on the whole world heh

 

There's a lot to unpack here.

  • Your discussion of carbon/water vapour doesn't really make any scientific sense. You appear to be saying that water vapour would replace CO2 in the atmosphere somehow if CO2 levels dropped
  • It's not actually possible for us to lessen the quantity of gases in the earth's atmosphere and we wouldn't want to. We would instead want to change the balance
    • Chemically-speaking, we want a higher balance of O2 to CO2 and the only difference between those molecules is that a Carbon is bonded to the O2 in CO2; same number of molecules either way
    • Which means that the atmospheric pressure is roughly equal either way and certainly wouldn't change enough to promote vaporisation of the oceans with a higher O2 balance
    • So you don't really get to compare specific heat capacity of water vapour and CO2 and claim that the temperature rises when CO2 levels lower.
  • Your biggest protector from sun's rays is Ozone -- O3 -- in the upper atmosphere. It absorbs high-energy UV rays and re-emits lower-energy IR rays.
  • We wouldn't fry without CO2. We'd freeze.
  • most confusing of all is how you appear to think "green guys" are collecting the tax/controlling the narrative somehow.


None of the above really matters, though, because the biggest refutation of this in terms of Earth's own history comes from Genghis Khan, oddly enough.

His armies killed enough people between Eastern Europe and China that the forests regrew and CO2 levels measurably dropped (we can measure historic CO2 levels by drilling in arctic ice). Earth's average global temperature lowered by half a degree thanks to all the forests that regrew over the no-longer-cultivated farmland (consuming the CO2).

Honestly, at this point it's not even in serious question amongst the scientific community. There's no debate to be had. It's straight-up observable and provable science. We've watched the march of deserts and observed the reduction in glaciers. The freakin' northwest passage is opening, and that's supposed to be iced up completely.

 

Here's an accurate timeline of Earth's temperature:
https://xkcd.com/1732/

 

If that's not scary, I don't know what is.

And back on topic with nuclear power:

 

Until fusion arrives (and the most likely fusion reactors we'd maintain would fuse deuterium found in water into helium), nuclear power is likely our best answer to climate change.

 

A disaster like Chernobyl won't happen in a properly built nuclear plant. A disaster like Fukushima seriously sucks but honestly doesn't outweigh the damage fossil fuels are doing to the environment.

 

And neither do the nasty by-products if handled properly.

 

Not gonna lie, I really don't like nuclear power. It's pretty horrible. But it's a hell of a lot less scary than the climate change we can see happening right now and in most places the only viable alternative.

I hope fusion can come quickly enough.

 

 

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23 minutes ago, LordEntr0py said:

Here's an accurate timeline of Earth's temperature:
https://xkcd.com/1732/

That chart only begins at 20,000 years ago though. What about the previous interglacial warming event 125,000 years ago? Or the other 6 interglacial warming events before that? Humans and high CO2 weren’t around then, and it got +3 Celsius hotter than it is now. I haven’t heard a convincing argument for that yet.

 

Another thing I wonder about is how do we know whether or not our past century of temperature change is “temperature noise” or not, since modern thermometers and global temperature records were only invented recently. Your chart is as smooth as a baby’s butt, and I don’t know if that is actually the case or not. We have evidence from things like the younger dryas that temperature can change FAST in a single century for natural reasons, are we sure that’s not happening now?

Edited by RDETalus

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12 minutes ago, RDETalus said:

That chart only begins at 20,000 years ago though. What about the previous interglacial warming event 125,000 years ago? Or the other 6 interglacial warming events before that? Humans and high CO2 weren’t around then, and it got +3 Celsius hotter than it is now. I haven’t heard a convincing argument for that yet.

 

Point of the chart isn't that it got there, it's the rate at which it's now changing. And, as I pointed out above, we already have correlation post-Genghis-Khan between CO2 levels and global temperature.

 

12 minutes ago, RDETalus said:

 I wonder about is how do we know whether or not our past century of temperature change is “temperature noise” or not, since modern thermometers and global temperature records were only invented recently. Your chart is as smooth as a baby’s butt, and I don’t know if that is actually the case or not. We have evidence from things like the younger dryas that temperature can change FAST in a single century for natural reasons, are we sure that’s not happening now?

As far as younger dryas is concerned, I probably don't need to tell you we're not sure, but a huge impact is likely. It's all just speculation, though.

 

And are you seriously advocating ignoring climate change "because it might just be noise on the graph"? Even if that was probable, a simple risk assessment shows that we stand to lose a lot more than we'd gain by doing nothing.

 

It's a no-brainer.

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2 hours ago, RDETalus said:

That chart only begins at 20,000 years ago though. What about the previous interglacial warming event 125,000 years ago? Or the other 6 interglacial warming events before that? Humans and high CO2 weren’t around then, and it got +3 Celsius hotter than it is now. I haven’t heard a convincing argument for that yet.

At some point the Earth looked like that:

 

bgWQOmz.png

 

Does that mean it'd be fine if it started looking like that again? It's been like this before, no big deal.

 

Yeah, humans weren't around back then and it turns out humans are around now. Perhaps that's something we, as humans being around, should be concerned about.

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7 hours ago, LordEntr0py said:

Are you seriously advocating ignoring climate change "because it might just be noise on the graph"?

No, I'm wondering if we're chasing after a solution to the wrong problem. If you look at the hockey stick graph, the reconstructed temperature data is quite noisy and has a massive uncertainty band. It's also on a very short timeframe, geologically speaking. What if sudden temperature spikes like the one we are measuring now have always been a feature of the planet, especially since we only gained the capability to measure global temperatures within the last century?

The 8.2 kiloyear event is the strongest piece of evidence I will use for my argument. During this event, global temperatures rapidly dropped by -3C in less than a century then just as rapidly went back up +3C. That's just absolutely nuts, especially since this event happened without the involvement of humans or CO2.

I'm probably wrong, but I would want a clear answer, and finding it isn't easy.

 

6 hours ago, Gez said:

At some point the Earth looked like that:

We don't need to go back that far, I'm only concerned with the current ice age and the interglacial cycles within it. The previous interglacial cycle was way hotter than the current one we find ourselves in. Looking at this chart, you'll also see that the next step for humans is a plunge into the deep ice age, probably within the next 5,000 years.

temperature_data-02.png

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43 minutes ago, RDETalus said:

No, I'm wondering if we're chasing after a solution to the wrong problem. If you look at the hockey stick graph, the reconstructed temperature data is quite noisy and has a massive uncertainty band. It's also on a very short timeframe, geologically speaking. What if sudden temperature spikes like the one we are measuring now have always been a feature of the planet, especially since we only gained the capability to measure global temperatures within the last century?

The 8.2 kiloyear event is the strongest piece of evidence I will use for my argument. During this event, global temperatures rapidly dropped by -3C in less than a century then just as rapidly went back up +3C. That's just absolutely nuts, especially since this event happened without the involvement of humans or CO2.

I'm probably wrong, but I would want a clear answer, and finding it isn't easy.

 

We don't need to go back that far, I'm only concerned with the current ice age and the interglacial cycles within it. The previous interglacial cycle was way hotter than the current one we find ourselves in. Looking at this chart, you'll also see that the next step for humans is a plunge into the deep ice age, probably within the next 5,000 years.

temperature_data-02.png

The problem being, we had a massive spike in global temperature change, co2 increases, and a decrease in the ozone in 300 hundred years, since the industrial revolution started. That graph covers 450,000 years. Yes the Sun goes through periods of hot and cool periods, and the Earth responds to it. But we managed to do what the Sun does in tens of thousands of years within three hundred years. This is a problem, and we need to fix it if we want humans to remain on this planet.

 

The Earth will survive if we die off, the plants and animals will return, the Sun will be just fine, but humans will die. And maybe that's fine, we're overpopulated as it is; but to pretend like our consumption of fossil fuels has no effect on the ability for humans to survive is absolute nonsense. And that's my concern; humans can't survive if we keep increasing the temperature due to our overconsumption of fossil fuels. The Earth will survive, the plants and animals will survive, but humans will be fucked. At least at our current numbers. I would say the Earth, at best, can handle four billion humans and our garbage output, sustainably. We're getting close to eight billion, and it's unsustainable. 

 

Yes the Earth goes through massive periods of heating and cooling due to Sun cycles, but we've never seen it happen this fast. Usually it takes place over hundreds of thousands of years. To see it happen this quickly points to another cause; and since it correlates to the Industrial Revolution, we can get to a conclusion pretty damn quick.

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23 minutes ago, Jello said:

but we've never seen it happen this fast. Usually it takes place over hundreds of thousands of years

But that is why I bring up the 8.2 kiloyear event. It is an event where the temperatures does change just as fast as we see now. The temperature goes down -3C in a century, then suddenly goes up +3C in a century.

Either way, I am not opposed to pollution reduction and CO2 reduction. It does seem to be the most likely explanation. But the existence of other recent climate events that defy the CO2 explanation is something I am very interested in.

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While I have little doubt that there is a correlation between CO2 and global temperature changes I surely have my issues with the climate change activists. Like everybody pursuing a specific agenda these people will conveniently ignore everything that may harm their cause and overemphasize the effects of what they want to be changed.

 

Of course the global change of temperature was not such a smooth curve as being presented in that cartoon. That's simply not how things work. Logically this also means we cannot conclusively tell whether the current spike is an aberration or something normal. The actual problem is that once we *can* tell, it'd be too late to change course.

 

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Give me sanely-designed nuclear with an effective plan for used rod storage any day. I was in the "No Nukes" camp in the '70s, and for the reactor-storage life cycle they had in the '70s, I was probably in the right camp. No longer. Granted, used rod storage is still a very weak point, but at least they're working on it. I think.

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Waiting for these new fast neutron reactors (they use nuclear waste as fuel and they can't explode) and thorium reactors.

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I'm all for it. I wrote my capstone paper in freshman composition (lol) on the subject. All nuclear power disasters have been the result of gross negligence or human error iirc. I'm far from an expert in anything nuclear power related, but modern breeder style reactors drastically cut down the problems associated with fuel consumption and waste. It's been a long time since I wrote that paper so I can't explain in detail, and the science has likely changed since then, but this is what I remember. I could most definitely be wrong.

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