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living sounds said:
JohnRoberts said:
How is the price of electricity in Germany these days?

It's high, but no longer climbing as it was a few years ago.  Weighed against the cost of catastrophic climate change it's probably pretty cheap.

China produces more crap in the air than the rest of the world combined.  Maybe you should be writing to them to prevent "catastrophic climate change"............
Best,
Bruno2000
 
bruno2000 said:
living sounds said:
JohnRoberts said:
How is the price of electricity in Germany these days?

It's high, but no longer climbing as it was a few years ago.  Weighed against the cost of catastrophic climate change it's probably pretty cheap.

China produces more crap in the air than the rest of the world combined.  Maybe you should be writing to them to prevent "catastrophic climate change"............
Best,
Bruno2000
Maybe if most of the rest of the world didn't so love to buy cheap Chinese goods...
 
Burying our problems under the sand, or the tectonic plates, or under the ocean, is  never a good plan. Too many variables, too long a half-life for the stuff to become un-dangerous. In the meantime there are alternatives to nuclear that are either suppressed, underfunded, or simply not explored. Solar in fact can be made to yield much higher percentages through special lenses and other technologies. Even coal is cleaner than you might think, although better can be had.

To opt for a solution that has inherent disaster waiting to happen is just silly. Haven't we learned from Chernobyl or Fukushima? Chernobyl is still polluting the world and is still dangerous.

We love our science and our toys, but just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. Sustainable, safe energy is available, some of it as yet to be discovered. But to put such powerful and dangerous techologies to work without adequate neutralization plans or long-term safety is foolhardy.

But we "must" have energy some proclaim. According to whom? Why? We also "must" reduce the earth's population, and we "must" DIY, but none of those are good arguments.
 
[quote author=JohnRoberts]I am not sure what/who you are contradicting. [/quote]
Let's call it a rhetorical stunt. It's the kind of thing politicians use -- not very honorable. I (have to) apologize. Still it's good to read (in this entire thread) that there is little contradicting going on.

The drag on the economy from using conventional (NG? Oil?) energy sources had to be significant.
Yes, but luckily price for oil has been/is dropping. Yet electric bills in Japan got more expensive, still affordable though. Price for gas (cooking, heating water, gas heater) has gone up a lot (different reason though). And we pay about $1 extra per bill for the cleanup in Fukushima (literally 'the island of happiness').

In hindsight we can point to many flaws in the design and management of Fukushima.
Design, I don't know. State-of-the-art at the time, I guess. Built by Toshiba and General Electric. Maintenance, absolutely. It had been criminally neglected!

The problem with too much reliance on wind/solar is that the wind doesn't always blow, and the sun doesn't always shine, so conventional power plants must be used to keep the grid up.
...
We should not discount how much energy we still waste.
Absolutely. Saving energy (much like environmental friendliness and concerns about climate change) and I hate to say it, is a luxury. But one that we should indulge -- not because somebody says so, but to do ourselves a favour (starting with electric bills).

As for wind/solar: I agree, and the emphasis is on "too much". I propagate a healthy mix -- the more renewable, the better, and sure it depends on geography etc etc. Surprisingly, Japan has not had power shortages for the last three years at all. Mainly due to burning coal/oil, of course. However, what's not generally reported on is this:
- Today, solar has become ten time more widespread in Japan since 2011. Very useful, especially in summer when people tend to crank up their aircons to preceived fridge-freezer temperatures.
- In the summers of 2011 and 2012 people were asked to cool to no lower than 27 degrees Celcius. Works fine, even in offices. Impossible to wear a tie though -- how cool is that!
- In Tokyo they switched off every second underground lamp in 2011. Today, every third lamp is still not used, yet it's bright enough, so that you no longer need to wear sunglasses when riding on the subway -- how (un)cool is that!
- Street lighting is going LED nationwide
- Since 2011 private consumer energy usage went down 10%.
- Japan also switched back on old thermal plants after 2011 (if Japan has one ressource in abundance, it's hot water, much like Iceland) -- BUT they are not considering building new plants.

More safety is always good, but a purely emotional response like we get from politicians is not always the best path.
Yeah, and more importantly, from the media. The psychological effects of megafear-inducing coverage (mainly by nuclear skeptics and opponents) is so much more damaging psychologically than direct exposure to radiation due to nuclear accidents has ever been. Ingestion of radioactive substances is different though. In Japan it has been minimal cos legal standards for food are among the strictest in the world. Actually so strict that Japan was pressured to raise domestic limits in 2011 so that "contaminated" food -- food that was illegal to sell in Japan, but could be exported and sold legally in other countries -- would disappear at the source.

... serious solar collector in orbit
I like the idea -- but maintenance might be difficult/expensive. A lot of man-made debris up there that needs clean-up first, I guess, or meticulous orbit planning. And what about rock flying towards earth? Maybe we could build (General Dynamics and others, listen up!) a solar-powered search-and-destroy laser defense mechanism to pulverize it before impact. Let's start with automatic detection/activation, remote control capability and medium-distance reach.
 
Script said:
Design, I don't know. State-of-the-art at the time, I guess. Built by Toshiba and General Electric. Maintenance, absolutely. It had been criminally neglected!

From what I understand it was the typical failed prior risk assessment. They looked only at the biggest recorded tsunami and build to withstand that, instead of a bigger one that eventually will always come (and then did come).
 
living sounds said:
Script said:
Design, I don't know. State-of-the-art at the time, I guess. Built by Toshiba and General Electric. Maintenance, absolutely. It had been criminally neglected!

From what I understand it was the typical failed prior risk assessment. They looked only at the biggest recorded tsunami and build to withstand that, instead of a bigger one that eventually will always come (and then did come).
Fukushima has been pretty well inspected and in hindsight there is a list of things that could have been improved upon.

The one I was focussed on was the need for external power to run the cooling pumps. I believe there are newer reactor designs that are passively quenching so can shut down harmlessly without power.

Of course natural disasters occur so the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglay.

JR
 
Script said:
... serious solar collector in orbit
I like the idea -- but maintenance might be difficult/expensive. A lot of man-made debris up there that needs clean-up first, I guess, or meticulous orbit planning. And what about rock flying towards earth? Maybe we could build (General Dynamics and others, listen up!) a solar-powered search-and-destroy laser defense mechanism to pulverize it before impact. Let's start with automatic detection/activation, remote control capability and medium-distance reach.

Even though I said "serious" I wasn't really. Looking at it systemically that would literally pump heat into the global environment, which if we are to believe our politicians is the worst thing we could do.  There are huge amounts of solar and tidal (gravity) energy we currently do not capture, that we should look at before messing up space.
=======
I am not a climate scientist but it appears that ice ages occur on a roughly 100,000 year repetition rate with roughly 10,000 year inter-glacials or periods of warming.  We are near 11,000 years of this current 10,000 year inter glacial so a betting man would be predicting the next ice age  coming sooner rather than later.  (I bet the politicians try to take credit for that... at first.) :eek:

1_Timeline_TemperatureVsCivilization.jpg


Like I've said a number of times this is complicated.  The conceit that the globe should be at a constant temperature sounds like a  government regulator came up with it.  :eek: :eek:  "Hey stop messing with the thermostat." 8)

14nziq1.jpg


JR
 
Let me correct that for you.  8)

JohnRoberts said:
Looking at it systemically that would literally pump heat into the global environment, which if we are to believe the overhelming majority of expert scientists is the worst thing we could do. 
 
living sounds said:
Let me correct that for you.  8)

JohnRoberts said:
Looking at it systemically that would literally pump heat into the global environment, which if we are to believe the overhelming majority of expert scientists is the worst thing we could do. 

NO you do not get to change my quotes.  :mad:

The majority of voters elected Pres Obama (twice) and they were wrong (IMO).  ;D ;D ;D

At one point the overwhelming majority of experts thought the world was flat.

As I've said before the actual science involved is complex, so anyone saying it is simple and obvious is ignorant or not being honest.

JR

PS: I saw a fair response to the ice age meme.  Yes the ice ages have cycled and repeated before, but not since humans have been around (we've been here just during this last interglacial period), so this is a new deal for us. 
 
living sounds said:
JohnRoberts said:
At one point the overwhelming majority of experts thought the world was flat.

No, they didn't:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth

And that was before the scientific method was invented.
I don't recall qualifying my comment with a when...  How about before they postulated that the earth was round?  Did the cavemen intuitively know that the world was a sphere?  I doubt that.

Sometime between 3rd and 6th century BC... the understanding of a spherical earth became accepted.  If we are to believe wiki,,,

That's before my time.  Just like the last ice age.  8)

JR
 
JohnRoberts said:
I don't recall qualifying my comment with a when...  How about before they postulated that the earth was round?  Did the cavemen intuitively know that the world was a sphere?  I doubt that.

Sometime between 3rd and 6th century BC... the understanding of a spherical earth became accepted.  If we are to believe wiki,,,

That's before my time.  Just like the last ice age.  8)

JR


It's a non sequitor nevertheless.

There are spikes in temperature and atmospheric dust at the end of each cycle, maybe there's a feedback mechanism that triggers the cooling period once a certain temperature is reached. So we might ultimately contribute to the initiation of a new ice age...
 
living sounds said:
JohnRoberts said:
I don't recall qualifying my comment with a when...  How about before they postulated that the earth was round?  Did the cavemen intuitively know that the world was a sphere?  I doubt that.

Sometime between 3rd and 6th century BC... the understanding of a spherical earth became accepted.  If we are to believe wiki,,,

That's before my time.  Just like the last ice age.  8)

JR


It's a non sequitor nevertheless.
It seems on point to me... Just because it is popular or common wisdom does not make it right.
There are spikes in temperature and atmospheric dust at the end of each cycle, maybe there's a feedback mechanism that triggers the cooling period once a certain temperature is reached. So we might ultimately contribute to the initiation of a new ice age...
Might?? I thought this was simple settled science?

I suspect there are multiple interdependent mechanisms. That chart  suggests a strong temperature oscillation that I doubt we will overpower with our human activity.

More scary would be if we actually tried something substantive like altering cloud cover, or ocean surface absorption. Then  we could get more than we bargained for.    :eek:

The government's "feel good" interventions will do nothing for the climate, but will consume limited resources that could be much better spent.

JR
 
JohnRoberts said:
Might?? I thought this was simple settled science?

No idea, that's just what I imagined looking at the charts. 

More scary would be if we actually tried something substantive like altering cloud cover, or ocean surface absorption. Then  we could get more than we bargained for.

Cutting consumption of climate-change inducing fossile fuels is the wiser course of action, obviously. But we might get to a point where desperate measures are needed.

Coastal regions below water, desertification, hurricanes etc. would present a much bigger problem for the global economy than temporarily increased energy prices.
 
living sounds said:
JohnRoberts said:
Might?? I thought this was simple settled science?

No idea, that's just what I imagined looking at the charts. 

More scary would be if we actually tried something substantive like altering cloud cover, or ocean surface absorption. Then  we could get more than we bargained for.

Cutting consumption of climate-change inducing fossile fuels is the wiser course of action, obviously. But we might get to a point where desperate measures are needed.

Coastal regions below water, desertification, hurricanes etc. would present a much bigger problem for the global economy than temporarily increased energy prices.

I think it is the height of human arrogance to think we can stop a warming and cooling pattern that has been going on for millennia. Yes we are likely to experience oceans rising and severe weather pattern shifts. 

I think it would be more credible to recognize the nature of what we are experiencing and use human ingenuity to reduce the pain from geographic/economic displacements.

Carbon taxes and the like are window dressing and yet another excuse for the politician control freaks to gain even more control over the private economy and will have no impact other than to make us all poorer.

This is the first time for the human race to experience the end of an interglacial period so strap in for a wild ride.  The last place I will look to for help is the politicians, and climate scientists seem tragically distracted by lame "are human's to blame?" arguments. 

Of course just one man's opinion...  8)

JR
 
Opinions, yea we all have them. There is always tremendous finger pointing at the politicians the government, crony capitalism, big business, unions, people who text and drive, etc.

But heres the thing, politicians are us. So is the government. They are expressions of our collective everyday actions. All of us. Someone might hate a presidents politics but that person put him there at this time in history. If they drive a car, shop at the grocery store, or poop in a toilet, they are entangled in society and are directly responsible for the way that society behaves. No matter who you vote for or how you act personally, you have to accept responsibility for the whole because you are inescapably linked to the whole.

I mean, I think everyone knows this right? We are all just shooting our mouths off for fun. All this for and against so and so and this and that is meaningless. Little intellect battles. Nobody can do anything about anything. Perhaps just exchange one thing for another.

But thats just my opinion.
 
bluebird said:
No matter who you vote for or how you act personally, you have to accept responsibility for the whole because you are inescapably linked to the whole.

Voters suffer from many, many biases and misconceptions, that's the way the human brain operates. They also have hardly any skin in the game in an election - every vote counts, but for the individual voting that's just theory. So people generally already externalize their vote to address what what they think would be best for society as a whole. And that's part of the problem. ;-)

This is a pretty good book about the issue:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter

 

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