AGW & The People Responsible For It

a reply to: TKDRL

Oh I am sorry, I don't want his kids to glow in the dark because of "Chernobl" and "Fukushima". LOL!

a reply to: Grimpachi

Totes magotes.

I forgot that nuclear didn't take off because of that. Totes bro.

a reply to: Euphem
Fossil fuels are currently the least expensive option for energy production. Our infrastructure being based upon them being one of the major reasons. Switching to other options isn't cheap.

Geothermal is good, but requires high initial capital investment.
PV is improving but is still damned expensive.
Nukes produce a lot of power, along with some other nasty stuff. It's a nice ride for a while but eventually becomes a real problem that someone is going to have to deal with.

Trouble is, us humans are silly creatures. We tend to go for what's easiest, no matter how much trouble it leads to in the long term. Put off change until you really, really have to do something about it. Thing is, in some systems you reach a point where it's too late.

It's too late. Except for the very long term, our use of fossil fuels has cooked our goose. Nothing short of a cessation of artificial production of CO2 would help the short term. And there ain't no way that's going to happen.

a reply to: Euphem
Are you implying meltdowns are not as bad as people make them out to be? They are not good, and neither is burying waste, or re-purposing it into ammo for war IMO. I sure am happy to not be in the fallout range of any nuclear plants, that is for sure.

a reply to: Phage

You provided the most intelligent response so far Phage, but you are still incorrect.

I appreciate the common sense, but you did not address what I was focusing on.

You are a big backer of AGW. I have debated with you in other threads before. You are a die-hard IPCC, main stream climate scientist groupie. I have no problem with that.

You believe that CO2 is by far the biggest contributor to AGW. So my main focus of this thread was, what group(regardless of your bias for nuclear waste) prevented the nuclear energy proliferation in the US, thus INCREASING the amount of fossil fuels burned over the last 50 years?

Seriously just answer the damn question.

a reply to: TKDRL

Maybe supporting these extremely bright scientists, instead of fighting them tooth and nail along the way would have allowed them to show you the much more efficient and ever reducing nuclear waste models of current nuclear power plants?

Ever think of that?

No you didn't. You fight what you don't know and cannot comprehend. This is what causes things like Chernobyl, and Fukushima.

Worldwide nuclear energy efforts would be so far beyond anything we have today. This of course can never happen with the ignorant misinformation propaganda of the past 50 years.

a reply to: Euphem

You are a big backer of AGW.

No. I am not in favor of AGW.

Seriously just answer the damn question.

I did. People, as a group, are the cause. Fossil fuels are the cheapest short term source of energy. People do what is easiest, what is less painful in the short term.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Goes way back.

Have you done the math on what the cost of converting to nukes would be? And what about the depleted fuel? Just bury it and be done with it? Thing is, not a lot of it is being buried, is it? Costs a bunch to do that, doesn't it?


If you expect me to say that that nukes are horrible and should not be considered you're mistaken. You're also mistaken in your premise that anti-nuclear politics are the cause of warming.

originally posted by: TKDRL
a reply to: Euphem
Are you implying meltdowns are not as bad as people make them out to be? They are not good, and neither is burying waste, or re-purposing it into ammo for war IMO. I sure am happy to not be in the fallout range of any nuclear plants, that is for sure.

there has only been 2 that were a problem.

france gets 80% of it's power from nuke plants.

if the US had built nuke plants, the infrastructure would be there for upgrades and newer types of reactors.

fossil fuel based accidents have killed more than nuke meltdowns.

there will still be a need for FF's for a long time, even with new energy sources.

a reply to: tsingtao

there has only been 2 that were a problem.

Are you sure?

france gets 80% of it's power from nuke plants.

Closer to 75%. But I just visited Paris. Saw a lot of wind generators to the south. They're moving away from fission.
www.bbc.com...

if the US had built nuke plants, the infrastructure would be there for upgrades and newer types of reactors.

Not really. You don't really upgrade fission plants, you build new ones.

fossil fuel based accidents have killed more than nuke meltdowns.

Interesting. How much land have fossil fuel power plants rendered unihabitiable? How dangerous are the residues of fossil fuel plants?

a reply to: Euphem

Use your gravy bud..

You are not going to freeze to death if you reduce your energy consumption unless you are some kind of dang moron. Go and have a look at how much energy goes on domestic heating.

Now listen drop your argument it is rubbish..

Look at what Germany is doing closing down all its nuclear power stations and reducing its consumption of fossil fuels.

You told me to prove you wrong. Well I have just done.

Good Day...

a reply to: oblvion


Thank you for your reply..

Germany is managing to close its nuclear power stations and to reduce its fossil fuel consumption. If they can do it so can you..

a reply to: purplemer

I'm a little curious about the idea that Germany is reducing both it's nuclear and it's fossil fuel energy use. I haven't found anything like that yet. Care to help?

In fact, what I have found is that Germany can't find an alternative energy source to fossil fuels, resulting in increasing fossil fuel pollution over the last few years.

it is also being reported that the conversion from nuclear to renewable will cost close to a trillion euros, a big bite out of the leg of German taxpayers. Companies are considering locating because of what is anticipated to be very large increases in energy prices. Predictions of costs after that conversion are, of course, a little vague.

This was from about 6 months ago:
www.businessweek.com...

a reply to: charles1952

Hello charles..

this is what I was reading from...



bongorama.com...

a reply to: Euphem

Should you

1) Stop blaming
2) Drop the attitude towards other people and their opinions
3) Enlighten yourself about Nuclear

Yes, perhaps?

a reply to: Euphem

(Facepalm) AGW has been happening for more than a hundred years, as we steadily industrialised. The biggest threat is the number of factories that China's been building.
As for nuclear, I have three names for you. Three Mile Island. Chernobyl. Fukushima. Those three incidents have scared the crap out of people when it comes to nuclear energy.

a reply to: purplemer

Dear purplemer,

Thanks, that's a pretty thought-provoking chart. After a while, though, I wondered why two winter months were compared. Is electricity usage different in the winter? There's no air-conditioning demand and wood is used for fireplace heat, maybe?

So, thanks to you, my interest remained and I kept looking. Here's some of what I found.

(From an article dated June 20, 2014)

The European Union’s attempt to cap greenhouse-gas emissions over the next 16 years is threatened again as rising pollution from the bloc’s biggest economies shows even developed nations want to burn cheap coal.

Germany, Europe’s largest economy, boosted consumption of the fuel by 13 percent in the past four years . . . .

Germany’s emissions rose even as its production of intermittent wind and solar power climbed fivefold in the past decade. Utilities boosted production from profitable coal-fired plants after Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to close all 17 of the country’s nuclear plants by 2022 in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.

German fossil-fuel emissions climbed 5.5 percent to 843 million tons in the four years through 2013, the BP data show. (Emphasis added)

environment.einnews.com...

One of the other things I'm finding out is that wind and solar are very prone to fluctuations. One of those fluctuations shut down the grid for one millisecond causing about $12,000 of damage to some heavy manufacturing equipment.

The current German law calls for renewable energy to be given preference. That means that coal and gas plants just generate enough electricity to try to fill in the gaps left by renewables. Unfortunately, that means that the plant gets less revenue than it used to, and some have closed down because of the energy laws. It has other unfortunate side effects as well, but it will be well worth watching to see if Germany survives this. (I think they will, but they'll lose a lot of money over it.)

With respect,
Charles1952

I realized that rather than fighting over whether AGW is real, we can prove who is responsible for it, and that is clearly environmentalists/liberals/democrats.

a reply to: Euphem

This passes for logic in the crowd you run with? LOL.

a reply to: Euphem

Even though it took them 50+ years, most environmentalists/democrats/liberals are starting to actually understand the science, and that nuclear is the ANSWER not the PROBLEM.

Nuclear is the answer... And the question is; How do humans accelerate their extinction faster than simple chemical pollution would?

Solar, wind, tidal, Geothermal and better battery technology is all we need. These options would all dramatically lower the probability that humans will destroy their sole means of survival (e.g. the Earth's biosphere).

You can't possibly trust corporations or sovereign states to operate Nuclear technology safely, without accidents. FFS, one hard power grid failure and you could have nukes melting down across large geographical areas. Maybe in your backyard? The government and corporations have your back though. LOL

Phage, I have to agree with you on the costs being one of the biggest issues against new nuclear technology. The newer generation IV technologies would reduce nuclear waste greatly, yet few hear about it, since they have fearful perceptions and associations about anything to do with 'nukes'. I would have to agree somewhat with the OP though I believe that blaming AGW is too limiting.

Individuals who are against nuclear energy, really should narrow down their reasoning. Is their opinion based on researched facts or environmentalist proproganda?

For those interested in the newest facts about nuclear energy, you can start At this link.

Deny ignorance. There is already technology available to greatly reduce nuclear waste, but it is up to the world to decide if they want to pay for it, or just accept the Walmart version for their future.

Edit add: Nuclear energy is sustainable.

Conventional nuclear power reactors do use a mineral fuel and demonstrably deplete the available resources of that fuel. In such a reactor, the input fuel is uranium-235 (U-235), which is part of a much larger mass of uranium – mostly U-238. This U-235 is progressively 'burned' to yield heat. But about one-third of the energy yield comes from something which is not initially loaded in: plutonium-239 (Pu-239), which behaves almost identically to U-235. Some of the U-238 turns into Pu-239 through the capture of neutron particles, which are released when the U-235 is 'burned'. So the U-235 used actually renews itself to some extent by producing Pu-239 from the otherwise waste material U-238. This process can be optimised in fast neutron reactors, which are likely to be extensively deployed in the next generation of nuclear power reactors. A fast neutron reactor can be configured to 'breed' more Pu-239 than it consumes (by way of U-235 + Pu-239), so that the system can run indefinitely. While it can produce more fuel than it uses, there does need to be a steady input of reprocessing activity to separate the fissile plutonium from the uranium and other materials discharged from the reactors. This is fairly capital-intensive but well-proven and straightforward. The used fuel from the whole process is recycled and the usable part of it increases incrementally.

As well as utilizing about 60 times the amount of energy from uranium, fast neutron reactors will unlock the potential of using even more abundant thorium as a fuel (see information page on Thorium). Using a fast neutron reactor, thorium produces U-233, which is fissile. This process is not yet commercialised, but it works and if there were ever a pressing need for it, development would be accelerated. India is the only country concentrating on this now, since in a world context uranium is so abundant and relatively cheap. In addition, some 1.5 million tonnes of depleted uranium now seen by some people as little more than a waste, becomes a fuel resource. The consequence of this is that the available resource of fuel for fast neutron reactors is so plentiful that under no practical terms would the fuel source be significantly depleted.

Regardless of the various definitions of 'renewable', nuclear power therefore meets every reasonable criterion for sustainability, which is the prime concern.

originally posted by: Euphem
a reply to: oblvion

LOL!! Well for one it is spelled Chernobyl.

I thought I could have a serious intelligent conversation here, but I was wrong.

Mods feel free to close this. Thanks.

Sorry I misspelled this, this obviously means there cant ever be any intelligent converse on this subject, I mean imagine a world where intelligent discourse doesnt depend solely on perfect spelling and grammar, what is even the point at that point?.

You are obviously either out of your depth, thus unable to articulate a decent response, or your mentally handicapped if this is your arguement.

I wont make this judgement, but maybe you should either not make these kinds of posts if you only want to hear your own thoughts repeated to you, or learn how to discuss things where others disagree.

Honestly, your Op was weak, all your posts to this point were sorry, and I have lost respect for you here.