Originally Posted by
135tankerdriver
When you say things like climate clowns you sound extremely unintelligent. In case Fox News didn’t tell you not everyone who is environmentally conscious is against nuclear power. I personally think people in general are afraid of nuclear power on both sides of the isle, which is unfortunate especially with the technological advances that have been made in recent years.
I'm an environmentalist. I almost never look at FNC, although they very occasionally cover legit news that everybody else is ignoring (ex Cuomo brothers).
By "climate clowns" I'm referring to the people who approach the problem with feel-good sound-bite policies which look good to the base (almost none of whom are scientists or engineers), but have no practical basis in reality. One big reality: people (worldwide, especially third world) will not give up their lifestyle until the climate problem affects them personally and painfully. Even if a developmentally impaired child tells them to. You can't make them do it either, except possibly in North Korea. Swap out their 100W bulbs for 12W LED's? Sure, no problem. Give up driving to work, recreational travel, and general consumerism? No. Even if you could enforce that, it would lead to global economic collapse, war, famine, genocide, etc. Most likely worse than climate change, and sooner.
And yes I'm old enough to remember when the forecast was actually an ice age, then global warming, then climate change... I guess they needed a brand that could blow whichever way the wind goes (pun intended).
We absolutely don't know the pace or ultimate result of climate change. We do know what the CO2 levels are, and if we choose to assume that correlates in some fashion to a certain amount of climate change, then CO2 emissions have to be reduced, and we may even need pull some back out of the atmosphere and put it back where we found it (underground). The math on that does not work without nuclear, at least for the timelines being assumed. There's just not enough solar, geo, hydro, wind available... especially if you need more power to extract carbon from the atmosphere.
To say nothing of inevitable population growth... the carbon problem is TOTAL, not per capita.
It's a hard problem... SOMEBODY needs to man up and tell people the hard truth, even if they don't want to hear it. FFS even China gets it... 150 new nuke plants are currently planned.
Someday fusion and/or space-based solar should offer essentially unlimited energy, but fission power is probably needed to bridge the gap. Use thorium fuel if you're worried about long-term waste... it actually should have a lower cost/kW hour anyway.