In the real world, fission is not economical. When we have fusion then yeah, that can be because the risks should be so much lower, but just like we were 20 years ago, we are 20 years from practical fusion reactors.
Without externalizing the costs of liability insurance and dealing with the waste to the tax payers you would not get anyone willing to finance a fission reactor.
In my lifetime we as a species have had 3 significant accidents: TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima. That is about one every 20 years with the number of plants we have now. Increasing the number only increases the rate of accidents.
Tax payers are not willing to shoulder the costs of the plant when they do not get the profit the plant produces. So either they need to be full on Sooshulist or full on Capitalist and the later will not result in plants being built becase no one will be willing to risk their capital.
It appears that the days of Napa Valley wineries are pretty much over. .With all of the California wildfires and drought, it's becoming impossible to insure the grape-growing areas. I'm not sure what can be done with the land except reforesting it with native species and leave it the fuck alone let it absorb some carbon.
In the town just south of mine, A 25-year-old village cop rolled his police SUV by taking the left turn onto the uphill access road to a gated community for the rich and apparently a few super-rich as well. He was killed, of course, and now they have a yearly golf tournament in his name, as if he was some kind of hero instead of an asshole kid with a badge.. This is in a town that has had one violent crime that I can remember, where a schizophrenic guy killed his mother. (There may be some domestic stuff or teenage fistfights that I haven't heard about, but that's still all that there has been in the newspapers.)
not to mention the likely hood of the bears coming down to human inhabited areas to seek food (including humans in that category) and the inevitable 'kill the bearz' backlash of that
Kim Stanley Robinson, a highly-regarded hard sci-fi writer, released a novel called The Ministry For The Future about a possible coming future. (Much of the plot hinges on the US rejoining the Paris Accords.) The world keeps sort of fumfering around making nice statements and doing the absolute minimum regarding the biosphere. A United Nations Agency, The Ministry For The Future, is set up with experts in everything from economists, psychologists, and lawyers to glaciologists, biologists, and engineers. At first they're underfunded and mostly patted on the head for yearly reports. Around 2025 or 2026, a massive heat dome sets up over north central India (the Uttar Pradesh region). By the time it dissipates two weeks later, 20 million Indians died - not just the elderly and the young, but almost everyone in the affected area. This galvanizes India into a true nation instead of a collection of ethnic communities and castes, who then organize politically and form a party that forces out both the BJP (Hindu nationalist Modi who is currently the leader of India) and the old Congress Party, which was the old ruling party going back to the Nehru. India unilaterally releases large amounts of SO2 into the atmosphere, creating what is referred to as a Double Pinatubo - increasing the Earth's albedo to reduce the amount of sunlight falling directly on India and eventually the whole world. They also intensively start using experimental regenerative agriculture technology that have been used in the state of Sikkim for a few decades. They also took to heart experiments in Kerala with various economic programs, almost all which involve forms of communal ownership of assets. The MFTF takes every victory like this to use as a ratchet to another smallish victory, which tend to lead to larger small victories in other fields like computer technology. At each step, the bad guys lose a little or sometimes a lot, and the good guys usually use both their losses to leverage their defeats, largely due through overwhelming people power.The book presents a possible future where people act in their enlightened self-interests, although sometimes dragging kicking and screaming.
The future is unwritten. For those of you who think there is absolutely no hope, I suggest that that you find either a quarter acre of local grassland or a newly-planted tree and then rent a woodchipper that you can use to add to the soil around that grassland or tree. Have the courage of your convictions and stop using precious resources.
It is possible to make a forest grow while still harvesting wood from it.
If you then use that wood for longer term construction, you can tie up the carbon for decades, extending the carbon sinking of that forest by quite a bit while making a little money.
Of course, if you really want to long term carbon sink you also need to harvest the wood (to give the forest more room to grow new wood from all that carbon in the air), and then you need to store it indefinitely. Sinking it in a bog is the traditional method, though if you manage to make the wood sink, why not dump it in the ocean along the more ecologically damaged coasts to create artificial reefs?
You're confusing nihilists with pessimists and then pessimists with defeatists.
Nihilists believe that everything is meaningless, this does not mean they never try anything, it just means they have pre-emptively accepted that their attempts will have no results.
It is possible to be an upbeat, nihilist activist.
Pessimists believe that the worst will happen, this does not mean they never try anything, it just means that they pre-emptively accepted that if failure is possible, that they will fail.
It is possible to be a pessimist that creates situations where the failure mode is not that bad. A smart pessimist is constantly creating Xanathos gambits, not because they want to always win, but because they want to lose in specific ways.
Defeatists believe that nothing can be done, they might occasionally try something but they won't put a lot of effort into it.
It is already happening due to the fires...bears, wolves, cougars, bobcat, fox, those poor wolverines they released in the North Cascades...anyway, people are already seeing the bears and cougars during the day coming for food and water due to the fires and they are freaking the fork out and I just want to scream, THEY WERE HERE FIRST YOU SHITS!
Yes, and we absolutely should do what we can. I know it sounds like I think we should just throw in the towel but I'd rather eat salmon and not watch the oceans boil away.
I just saw somewhere that a species of flesh-eating bacteria is spreading throughout the Chesapeake Bay.
In the real world, fission is not economical. When we have fusion then yeah, that can be because the risks should be so much lower, but just like we were 20 years ago, we are 20 years from practical fusion reactors.
Without externalizing the costs of liability insurance and dealing with the waste to the tax payers you would not get anyone willing to finance a fission reactor.
In my lifetime we as a species have had 3 significant accidents: TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima. That is about one every 20 years with the number of plants we have now. Increasing the number only increases the rate of accidents.
Tax payers are not willing to shoulder the costs of the plant when they do not get the profit the plant produces. So either they need to be full on Sooshulist or full on Capitalist and the later will not result in plants being built becase no one will be willing to risk their capital.
It appears that the days of Napa Valley wineries are pretty much over. .With all of the California wildfires and drought, it's becoming impossible to insure the grape-growing areas. I'm not sure what can be done with the land except reforesting it with native species and leave it the fuck alone let it absorb some carbon.
In the town just south of mine, A 25-year-old village cop rolled his police SUV by taking the left turn onto the uphill access road to a gated community for the rich and apparently a few super-rich as well. He was killed, of course, and now they have a yearly golf tournament in his name, as if he was some kind of hero instead of an asshole kid with a badge.. This is in a town that has had one violent crime that I can remember, where a schizophrenic guy killed his mother. (There may be some domestic stuff or teenage fistfights that I haven't heard about, but that's still all that there has been in the newspapers.)
Last week I finished reading Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish. I hate to think my inner fish is fried.
"building a green energy economy can also be the driver for creating a fairer, more equitable economy"
That alone will ensure that no conservative will EVER support green energy.
not to mention the likely hood of the bears coming down to human inhabited areas to seek food (including humans in that category) and the inevitable 'kill the bearz' backlash of that
Kim Stanley Robinson, a highly-regarded hard sci-fi writer, released a novel called The Ministry For The Future about a possible coming future. (Much of the plot hinges on the US rejoining the Paris Accords.) The world keeps sort of fumfering around making nice statements and doing the absolute minimum regarding the biosphere. A United Nations Agency, The Ministry For The Future, is set up with experts in everything from economists, psychologists, and lawyers to glaciologists, biologists, and engineers. At first they're underfunded and mostly patted on the head for yearly reports. Around 2025 or 2026, a massive heat dome sets up over north central India (the Uttar Pradesh region). By the time it dissipates two weeks later, 20 million Indians died - not just the elderly and the young, but almost everyone in the affected area. This galvanizes India into a true nation instead of a collection of ethnic communities and castes, who then organize politically and form a party that forces out both the BJP (Hindu nationalist Modi who is currently the leader of India) and the old Congress Party, which was the old ruling party going back to the Nehru. India unilaterally releases large amounts of SO2 into the atmosphere, creating what is referred to as a Double Pinatubo - increasing the Earth's albedo to reduce the amount of sunlight falling directly on India and eventually the whole world. They also intensively start using experimental regenerative agriculture technology that have been used in the state of Sikkim for a few decades. They also took to heart experiments in Kerala with various economic programs, almost all which involve forms of communal ownership of assets. The MFTF takes every victory like this to use as a ratchet to another smallish victory, which tend to lead to larger small victories in other fields like computer technology. At each step, the bad guys lose a little or sometimes a lot, and the good guys usually use both their losses to leverage their defeats, largely due through overwhelming people power.The book presents a possible future where people act in their enlightened self-interests, although sometimes dragging kicking and screaming.
The future is unwritten. For those of you who think there is absolutely no hope, I suggest that that you find either a quarter acre of local grassland or a newly-planted tree and then rent a woodchipper that you can use to add to the soil around that grassland or tree. Have the courage of your convictions and stop using precious resources.
It is possible to make a forest grow while still harvesting wood from it.
If you then use that wood for longer term construction, you can tie up the carbon for decades, extending the carbon sinking of that forest by quite a bit while making a little money.
Of course, if you really want to long term carbon sink you also need to harvest the wood (to give the forest more room to grow new wood from all that carbon in the air), and then you need to store it indefinitely. Sinking it in a bog is the traditional method, though if you manage to make the wood sink, why not dump it in the ocean along the more ecologically damaged coasts to create artificial reefs?
You might enjoy re-reading the Cassandea myths, they're good stories relevant to this thread.
You're confusing nihilists with pessimists and then pessimists with defeatists.
Nihilists believe that everything is meaningless, this does not mean they never try anything, it just means they have pre-emptively accepted that their attempts will have no results.
It is possible to be an upbeat, nihilist activist.
Pessimists believe that the worst will happen, this does not mean they never try anything, it just means that they pre-emptively accepted that if failure is possible, that they will fail.
It is possible to be a pessimist that creates situations where the failure mode is not that bad. A smart pessimist is constantly creating Xanathos gambits, not because they want to always win, but because they want to lose in specific ways.
Defeatists believe that nothing can be done, they might occasionally try something but they won't put a lot of effort into it.
It is already happening due to the fires...bears, wolves, cougars, bobcat, fox, those poor wolverines they released in the North Cascades...anyway, people are already seeing the bears and cougars during the day coming for food and water due to the fires and they are freaking the fork out and I just want to scream, THEY WERE HERE FIRST YOU SHITS!
If you're fighting, you're not a nihilist, so go for it!
Yes, and we absolutely should do what we can. I know it sounds like I think we should just throw in the towel but I'd rather eat salmon and not watch the oceans boil away.
Current trajectory 19% of the world will be uninhabitable by 2070.
Too bad CA isn't the utopia you wish it to be.