McDowell posted:

Space and Nuclear Power are the only things that can save us.

The US has been running modular nuclear reactors for the past 50 years, with our nuclear navy. But this kind of tech is very had to develop for civilian uses because of general apathy about nuclear, and the fear of losing a national secret.

Sorry environmentalists, we've really screwed up the planet at this point, and Nuclear is the most immediate solution we have. If we put our best minds to it we can make it safer, cheaper, and better in a few years (Moon shot anyone?)

B.b.b.but McDowell! Uranium is a scarce resource too!


This leads to part two:

SPACE EXPLOITATION

With a new "cheap modular nuclear" bubble we can build cheap modular nuclear energy modules for stations and spacecraft. China, the EU, and Russia are all digging space, too. We open source our life support, docking systems; anything that is peaceful and should be cross compatible. Space tech is a great place to establish diplomatic ties and stabilize the global system (as the economy expands its resource base outwards)

I consider this to be a continuation of Atoms for Peace; gently caress the haters, I'm an Eisenhower Conservative

Spazzle posted:

Its probably likely that we'll mostly all survive, just in an increasingly polluted and unstable world.

PainterofCrap posted:

Jesus. Now I actually know how it feels to be a moron, but I feel slightly better listening to the two of you hash this out.

sanchez posted:

As the impacts of climate change hit, particularly talking about food supply but weather too, hundreds of millions of people will die. This means hundreds of millions of people will stop consuming fossil fuels etc, reducing carbon emissions. How many people have to die before the climate stabilizes? Assume the poor ones who use little energy go first.

This is exactly what is going to happen, so I hope someone has done some research.

WAFFLEHOUND posted:

I read that entire paper and it doesn't conclude the way you think it does. It basically says "If any man-made fracturing is responsible for methane leakages, it has more to do with a century of unregulated extraction activites in the area" and concludes by saying fracking has bad PR but none of the evidence really supports the notion that fracking is responsible for increased concentrations.

Particularly with that region, I encourage you to go look at methane being reported in wells a century ago.

e. Also by quoting the section that you did as some kind of proof you've shown a profound ignorance in sedimentology since "similar geological formations away from extraction sites" doesn't imply there's gas to be found in those sites, just that the host rock is similar. In this case there is oil bearing shale in those areas, but that just means the sedimentological layer part of the same unit, not necessarily that the hydrocarbon concentration is the same.

WAFFLEHOUND posted:

The people who did this should be forced to decontaminate the areas they did this by hand, with supervision.

duck monster posted:

Or I guess geo-stationary space-station habitats. We can probably do those pretty soon. its the getting on and off the planet thats the problem, and the only feasible way I can see that working without enacting carnage on the atmosphere involves space elevators, an option that might actually be impossible if we dont have some serious advances in material physics.

DerDestroyer posted:

What are some things we can start doing right now to prevent the situation from getting any worse? Are we already sitting on a ticking time bomb that will end our existence a few decades from now regardless of what we do?

How do we save the environment while maintaining technological civilization?

Alctel posted:

If we stopped all emissions tomorrow it may actually make things worse. We need someway to get the carbon out of the atmosphere that is already in there, in conjunction with moving to non-fossil fuels. Sorting out the ocean at the same time would help as well.

Also bribe/pay/buy whoever you need to to stop deforestation in the amazon.

I'm gonna go play 'Fate of the World' again now

Paper Mac posted:

By devastated, I mean, 60-70% of the breadbasket no longer being arable.

Paper Mac posted:

For those who genuinely believe that the first world will be relatively unaffected by climate change, I have a couple of maps for you! Here's a map of agricultural production worldwide:



Here's a map showing NCAR's predictions for drought (using some fairly conservative assumptions re: emissions) in 2030-2040:



The Oklahoma dustbowl would have shown up as a change of -3 to -5 on that scale. Have a look at the Mississipi basin, and then the drought map.

McDowell posted:

If this is accurate:


Russia 2050

gently caress You And Diebold posted:

duck monster posted:

The boffins really need to hurry the gently caress up and work out a sustainable and cheap way of desalinating water that wont turn a water crisis into an energy crisis.

Actually thats the whole chinese-finger-trap nature of this fucker. A lot of these problems are only solvable by expending more energy, and "more energy" is what got us into this fix in the first place

duck monster posted:

Right or wrong though, theres fairly obvious political problems with putting Atomz near drinking water. poo poo, if dipshits can bitch and moan to the point of getting loving fluride taken out of water in some places because of EVIL CHEMICALS, good luck getting political support for allowing nuclear reactors anywhere loving near peoples drinking water.

I mean gently caress, I have a friend in mid-western america terrified she is going to get cancer because of Fukiyama, and nothing I can say to her will convince her otherwise, because she read a scary article on the internet.

Strudel Man posted:

A regular tree offers only short-term CO₂ storage - once it dies and decays/burns, the stored carbon will be re-released into the atmosphere, barring weird plans I've heard people mention about doing things like burying logs in the desert. Artificial trees at least have the potential to yield carbon in a form that can be efficiently sequestered.

Strudel Man posted:

That's fine. The point is, though, that the carbon sequestration ability of trees is pretty much determined by the amount of land area you're willing and able to permanently give over to real/artificial forest.

Strudel Man posted:

I don't know, I suppose we could try to have a 'wooden revolution,' store carbon by intensive growth of trees to make into everything that can be possibly made out of wood. More wood in houses, et cetera. Flammability could then be a potential problem, of course.

Shipon posted:

Solyndra's technology was very promising, and given enough investment could have easily come down in cost. The biggest reason they collapsed is because Chinese firms dumped lovely (as is the case with all Chinese-manufactured goods) solar panels on our market thanks to their government's heavy subsidization of their solar industry. There can be no free market when different countries subsidize their own industries, so it's best to stop deluding one's self into thinking the government "can't pick winners or losers".

deptstoremook posted:

It can't happen, at least not in the foreseeable future. The seldom-spoken (for rhetorical reasons) truth of the sustainability movement is that these alternative energies (with the possible exception of nuclear) will all have a much smaller output than the current structure. Thus, we will be required to reduce our consumption one way or another. Barring some sort of fantasy science discovery, "green" energy will mean less energy.

PUNCHITCHEWIE posted:

Uh no, the vast majority of water in India comes from groundwater that came from normal rain. Have you ever been to India in July? Where are you getting this claim from?

Devoyniche posted:

What would be the outcome of switching full scale to solar energy, hypothetically? As I understand it, at a kindergarten level, the sun's energy is being trapped in by greenhouse gasses, right? I have no idea how solar panels work other than "sunlight becomes energy" and sunlight is basically just energy itself; could you not just use the energy being beamed down and the suns energy that is getting trapped, and would doing so have a cooling effect? What would be the effect on flora, who use that energy from the sun to photosynthesize? I imagine that this is something people have already looked at, but I was just wondering.

EDIT: Actually I ask this as a resident of the sun-parched south, most days where I live are mostly clear with few clouds so it seems like something that might make sense here but may not work on a large scale, although I am still curious.

Kafka Esq. posted:

What I wish for is an unbiased assessment of how long it would take to replace fossil fuels with nuclear, with appropriate deregulation steps and standardized machines, and what the trade off would be in safety, if there is one.

Office Thug posted:

The emissions make sense for nuclear right now. The issue with nuclear is that we're using uranium-235 as the fuel, which is 0.7% of all natural uranium, so you need a lot of mined ore/rock to produce enough of it by mass. If we ever decide to go full-nuclear, the best way to reduce emissions from mining operations would be to switch to more common isotopes such as Uranium-238 (142 times more abundant in nature) or thorium-232 (~500 times more abundant), which would require over 2 magnitudes less mining to produce the same amount of fuel by mass/energy. There's also a lot of room for improvement in terms of fuel-efficiency in reactors which could lead to less fuel needed there too, with current reactors hovering between 0.5 and 1.2% total efficiency (10 to 24% when only considering Uranium-235 mass consumption).

Of course, the same could be said for solar in terms of cost-effectiveness and the elimination of rare-earth elements in their production with organic semiconductors and dyes. The question is which method of energy production stands to make the most gains in the end.

Your Sledgehammer posted:

TheFuglyStik, if the discussion in this thread and on the forums at large (which themselves are vastly more intelligent than what you'll see the media spewing) are any indication, then the human race is already ten ways to hosed.

Between the news about the permafrost and the European debt crisis that appears poised to become a global debt crisis, I think we've moved beyond the "What can we do to solve the problem?" stage to the "Holy poo poo, batten down the hatches!" stage. I'm no 2012 doomsday theorist by any means, but based on even the limited observations I am making, things seem very fragile right now and it is easy to imagine that they could unravel very rapidly.

Office Thug posted:

People are saying the problem is right now, and this is true. But, it's only going to get worse here on out the more we ignore it. Our options are switching to clean sources of energy, diminishing our energy consumption, or doing nothing. The path of least resistance, of course, is doing nothing, which is what we're doing right now. But that path is unacceptable. In my view, switching to full-scale nuclear would be the second path of least resistance due to cost advantages, and it would coincide with an even greater goal of securing enough energy to hammer down a number of other world problems, such as food and water scarcity, phosphorous peak, environmental cleanup efforts, and pollution. 30-40 trillion dollars over four decades for total replacement of all emitting energy sources with something that is secure and cheap over the long-run is pretty reasonable.

Arkane posted:

Without really touching on the whole socialist ranting direction this thread has taken, please realize that there is a massive, massive, massive flaw in your worrying, and it is a failure to account for technological advancement.

You cannot just assume the status quo when our technological horizons are being expanded at an incredibly rapid pace. There are decades before any of these adverse effects will take hold, if they ever do. The world will be UNRECOGNIZABLY and UNFATHOMABLY more advanced and better equipped to deal with problems that may arise.

Aufzug Taube! posted:

Don't we have the ability now to just recycle nuclear waste, and then re-use it, or at least most of it?

Amamake posted:

So if we ignore all that Tom Clancy conspiracy theory squabble bullshit, what you are basically saying, is that Russia stands to benefit enormously?

There are some obvious military and demographical concerns, but that's not even remotely as worrisome to me as the ability of the government to react to rapidly changing environment, taking advantage of whatever benefits and mitigating whatever challenges.

XakEp posted:

Pick up a copy of "The Bear and the Dragon".

Paper Mac posted:

Another common concern is the uneven cooling effect. There have been a couple of recent papers published w/ respect to this as I think there are some pretty serious equity concerns in that the equitorial regions don't get much cooling while the temperate zones get much more (IIRC).

Deuce posted:

The fact that people can figure this poo poo out is mind boggling.

Peven Stan posted:

Another day another lovely SilentD post. Perhaps you could be bothered to learn some actual science behind climate change and mitigation and not resort to your usual tactic of hippie bashing and braying loudly about "social engineering," as if our ape ancestors stepped out of eden to have an entire petrochemical supply chain and freeways waiting for them.

As for your incessant posting about how climate change fixes amount to social engineering, you might be amused to learn that America is the most heavily socially engineered nation on earth due to our lavish car based infrastructure. For example, almost every major global city follows a pattern where wealth is concentrated in the city center and as you fan out from the center you hit poorer and poorer neighborhoods. Only in America are cities doughnut holes of wealth where the money is concentrated around the outside and the inner city devoid of a fixed population except for office buildings. All of this requires exorbitant expenditures in fossil fuel and highway construction subsidies.

Additionally, whether or not a green fringe is opposed to nuclear is almost entirely immaterial to the costs involved in bringing a nuclear power plant inline. We really don't have the industrial capacity (sold out by your warm and generous pals in finance!) to forge the kind of containment shields needed for reactor construction. Additionally, many utilities adamantly refuse to build nuclear even when prodded to by state governments because of the huge costs and risk involved. Given that, why not have an easier and cheaper time blanketing parts of the US with solar?

edit: I'm not sure if you think banning meat mitigates climate change like you think it does. Outside of additional greenhouse gasses generated in the industrial supply chain, carbon in the biosphere cycles so rapidly it has almost no bearing on climate, especially when you contrast a long time on the geologic scale vs. a long time on ours. Almost nobody I've talked to, be it Ma Sierra, Greenpeace or otherwise has seriously suggested banning meat.

Divine Disclaimer posted:

I don't know how retarded/not retarded your post history has been here, but that lash out seems particularly poorly informed. Solar is nowhere near potential to meet demand, Nuclear could literally meet demand alone - if we had a more efficient way to store and distribute electricity.

So, yeah. Not sure why you would choose one or the other, in real life you're just going to develop both in parallel anyway.

Also, the dangers of nuclear power are overstated.

blowfish posted:

Gas is still bad. As in, still terribly bad because we don't need to cut CO2 emissions by like 50%, but by like 90%.
Of course, if you're using carbon neutral electricity to get Hydrogen or whatever, it's fine. I'd even argue it's superior to battery powered electric cars because rare earths are, uh, rare and you probably won't be able to power all the world's cars and ships with lithium ion batteries for long.

With regards to getting on the green track... cutting CO2 emissions as quickly as possible is what we should be focusing on. If we manage to do that, a large part of our sustainability problems is taken care of for the foreseeable future (i.e. centuries) and we have breathing room to worry about (and spend money on) everything else.

e: Regarding electric car subsidies: we'll have to do it one way or the other soon (via better batteries or via electricity->fuel conversion), so while it's not exactly low hanging fruit I'm cautiously pro-subsidies and would generally support funding R&D for both options though I think it's going to be the latter.

Also, "green" living at a standard of living close to current first world levels will probably be more energy intensive rather than less so since that would mean replacing lots of area intensive low energy farming with energy intensive low area farming (i.e. vertical farming) and replacing fossil fuels with electricity or synthetic fuel (with substantial losses of energy when converting water to hydrogen/CO2 to fuel, since thermodynamics is a bitch).