As Governments Miss Climate Goals, Drought is Already Devastating Parts of Africa (msn.com) 165
This week the United Nations chastised "woefully inadequate" plans to cut carbon from world governments, reported the BBC, announcing the UN's findings that current carbon-cutting efforts "would see global emissions fall by less than 1% by 2030, when according to scientists, reductions of 45% are needed" to keep global warming below a key threshhold of 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
The Washington Post notes that our current trajectory would lead to "a dangerous future of extreme weather, rising sea levels and 'endless suffering,' as the United Nations put it itself."
But then they bring more bad news: Two other reports this week from U.N. agencies compounded these woes. An analysis by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change found that few countries had adjusted their climate pledges since a major U.N. climate conference last year held in Glasgow, Scotland. This year's conference is set to be hosted in Egypt next month. Another study by the World Meteorological Organization found that methane emissions are rising faster than ever. The evidence raises "questions about humanity's ability to limit the greenhouse gas that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the near term," my colleagues reported.
Advances have been made — the world is weaning itself off coal, while the governments of major emitters Australia and United States have recently enacted significant legislation to reduce emissions. But it's not happening fast enough. "Global and national climate commitments are falling pitifully short," U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said in a video message this week. "We must close the emissions gap before climate catastrophe closes in on us all." No matter Guterres's constant entreaties, the necessary political urgency is not on show in much of the world.... And so, my colleagues wrote, "the world is barreling toward a future of unbearable heat, escalating weather disasters, collapsing ecosystems and widespread hunger and disease."
In some places, that future is now. The Horn of Africa and many parts of East Africa are in the midst of a devastating drought. A fifth consecutive rainy season has failed and analysts expect the sixth — starting next March — to also be a dud. As fields go fallow and millions of livestock die of thirst, there is a staggering crisis of hunger in countries throughout the region. According to the U.N.'s World Food Program, some 22 million people in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya are at risk of starvation.... Close to 8 million people — roughly half [Somalia's] population — have been impacted by drought. Up to 6.7 million people across the country may face food insecurity by the end of the year.
"It's not about the climate changing — the climate has changed," the East Africa regional director for the UN's World Food Program told the Washington Post. "And we are not going back even once the rains start. This is a crisis that we are well and truly in the middle of and I don't know where the bottom is."
The Post notes what it calls "the further tragedy of the situation": that the regions most imperiled "played little to no role in creating the conditions stoking global warming now."
The Washington Post notes that our current trajectory would lead to "a dangerous future of extreme weather, rising sea levels and 'endless suffering,' as the United Nations put it itself."
But then they bring more bad news: Two other reports this week from U.N. agencies compounded these woes. An analysis by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change found that few countries had adjusted their climate pledges since a major U.N. climate conference last year held in Glasgow, Scotland. This year's conference is set to be hosted in Egypt next month. Another study by the World Meteorological Organization found that methane emissions are rising faster than ever. The evidence raises "questions about humanity's ability to limit the greenhouse gas that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the near term," my colleagues reported.
Advances have been made — the world is weaning itself off coal, while the governments of major emitters Australia and United States have recently enacted significant legislation to reduce emissions. But it's not happening fast enough. "Global and national climate commitments are falling pitifully short," U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said in a video message this week. "We must close the emissions gap before climate catastrophe closes in on us all." No matter Guterres's constant entreaties, the necessary political urgency is not on show in much of the world.... And so, my colleagues wrote, "the world is barreling toward a future of unbearable heat, escalating weather disasters, collapsing ecosystems and widespread hunger and disease."
In some places, that future is now. The Horn of Africa and many parts of East Africa are in the midst of a devastating drought. A fifth consecutive rainy season has failed and analysts expect the sixth — starting next March — to also be a dud. As fields go fallow and millions of livestock die of thirst, there is a staggering crisis of hunger in countries throughout the region. According to the U.N.'s World Food Program, some 22 million people in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya are at risk of starvation.... Close to 8 million people — roughly half [Somalia's] population — have been impacted by drought. Up to 6.7 million people across the country may face food insecurity by the end of the year.
"It's not about the climate changing — the climate has changed," the East Africa regional director for the UN's World Food Program told the Washington Post. "And we are not going back even once the rains start. This is a crisis that we are well and truly in the middle of and I don't know where the bottom is."
The Post notes what it calls "the further tragedy of the situation": that the regions most imperiled "played little to no role in creating the conditions stoking global warming now."
Oopsies! (Score:5, Insightful)
The rollercoaster ride has started. Stay hydrated, my friends!
Re: Oopsies! (Score:3)
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There is always drought and famine in the horn of Africa.
There is always drought somewhere. What I said is that at this point, we are going on a nice little roller coaster ride, no matter what we do.
Drought may or may not be related to the energy retention characteristics of an atmosphere based upon it's gaseous composition. We gonna find out.
Meanwhile, I gotta say my buying a snowblower was kind of a waste of money - less than a tank of gas every two years now.
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This is the new reality, and it is the propaganda of death.
Re:Yeah, yeah... Who gives a flying f---? (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from breathing, I'm not emitting any CO2.
If you're participating in the modern world, driving on the roads, eating the food, using the internet, you most certainly are. You're just doing it by proxy, and pretending that means it's not happening. You are barely different from anyone else who is not wealthy enough to engage in substantial activity.
Re:Yeah, yeah... Who gives a flying f---? (Score:5, Insightful)
No matter how much "green" crap anyone does, leftist pukes will continue to point their accusatory fingers and claim, "You're fucking up the planet!"
I didn't say that. What I said was that what he described barely makes any difference. But since you bring it back up, cutting down trees and burying them is stupid and counterproductive. Older trees sequester more carbon than young ones, until they approach the end of their natural lifecycle, and anaerobic decomposition produces methane. You don't bury the fucking trees, you make shit out of them. For fuck's sake. If you want to be green, first you have to have some clue what actually is that.
The real upshot though is that if we want real change, we have to go after the top, not the bottom. We have little power to change carbon release through our individual actions, unless we want to cut ourselves off from modern society.
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No matter how much "green" crap anyone does, leftist pukes will continue to point their accusatory fingers and claim, "You're fucking up the planet!"
I didn't say that. What I said was that what he described barely makes any difference. But since you bring it back up, cutting down trees and burying them is stupid and counterproductive. Older trees sequester more carbon than young ones, until they approach the end of their natural lifecycle, and anaerobic decomposition produces methane.
Exactly - I've been saying that for years. We can very temporarily absorb carbon, but in the end vegetation is pretty darn neutral as far as carbon goes.
You don't bury the fucking trees, you make shit out of them. For fuck's sake. If you want to be green, first you have to have some clue what actually is that.
The real upshot though is that if we want real change, we have to go after the top, not the bottom. We have little power to change carbon release through our individual actions, unless we want to cut ourselves off from modern society.
Look at us agreeing on something! 8^)
The trick is to not release sequestered carbon or sequestered methane (not often possible - just puttin it out there) . Trying to plant trees to sequester carbon isn't going to gain us much.
Coal is largely sequestered carbon, and oil is too. If we burn Natgas, it's better, still not perfect though.
Now it is a w
Re: Yeah, yeah... Who gives a flying f---? (Score:3)
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I did rough calculations for the USA a while back. You'd have to increase planting and logging by an amount roughly equivalent to the current USA lumber industry and sequester all of it to cover USA emissions . Given that digging holes to bury trees takes energy, slightly more. The USA has low population density and space but it still requires doubling the number of trees. Many countries don't have the space to do this. Other vegetation options are possible, but once you get them going you can let trees do their thing without needing irrigation or fertiliser and NIMBYs don't tend to object to woods. As I said before, we might need to find new routes to sequester, so replace plastic on mice with nice walnut and bring back clogs.
A walnut mouse body sounds tremendous, imagine a walnut keyboard with maple keys. I'm into woodworking as a hobby, and that sounds like a steampunk-ish project.
Anyhow, here's a link to a paper on degradeable wood-based plastic https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com] It's a bit of a slog - I I had to look up some of the words they use, it's outside my area.
But as drinkypoo noted, one way to sequester wood based carbon is to make stuff from it. It's not forever, but if taken care of, not all that far from it.
Re: Yeah, yeah... Who gives a flying f---? (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, yeah... Who gives a flying f---? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not everybody. Some of us still remember when nuclear power was a Good Thing, and we could expect to have effectively unlimited free power once they came on line. The idea of nuclear power being an unmitigated EVIL didn't come around until I was an adult, so I never bought into it.
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A recent short little video to help understand the current state of SMR. This is where the future of nuclear power is going to be. Not in the huge power plants but in small module reactors that can be mass produced and delivered on the back of a truck.
Now I figure drinkpoo is going to open his uneducated gobb and say something bad about SMR. I won't know I still have his dumb ass blocked at the browser level. I think everyone knows by now to safely ignore his prattle on t
Re: Yeah, yeah... Who gives a flying f---? (Score:2)
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That is the whole idea behind the SMR designs. Depending on the manufacturer A SMR can produce between 30K to 400M watts of power. They are designed to scale. You bring them in on the back of a big truck and put them in place like batteries. Need more power, bring in another reactor. When a reactor needs to be refueled you just take that reactor offline, load it into a truck and drop in a replacement. Down time a few hours.
It is still a new technology and it still in the design stage but there a
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Whats going to be easier and safer to build - 28 turbines (established clean technology) or 1 SMR (untried tech that will need security)
The nuclear industry has hardly ever been able to get the final cost and time of build correct in all the years they have been under
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Re:Yeah, yeah... Who gives a flying f---? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuclear is not too slow to help with AGW. You can build a 1GW nuclear power station in 5 years (or less). Heck, most developed countries could build 10GW capacity easily in 10 years.
South Korea and Japan were able to build them in less than 5 years' _on_ _average_.
There are not technical reasons not to build nuclear power plants that quickly - only political ones.
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Let's look how this goes in practice: In Europe, there are two plants under construction:
Flamanville 3 in France. First concrete poured in 2007. Planned to be finished in 2012. Now fuel loading is anticipated for 2023. You can do the math. Cost increase from 3.3 to 12.7 billion Euro (Court of Audit estimate: 19.1 billion). And no, it was not primarily political reason for the delay: quality issues of the welds in the containment, cracks in the concrete, more welding problems, delays in the delivery of compo
Re: Yeah, yeah... Who gives a flying f---? (Score:3)
Re: Yeah, yeah... Who gives a flying f---? (Score:2)
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Clearly not an emergency.
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Yes I am.
At one point I tried to do the right thing. You know, avoid one-time use stuff, and recycle the one you can't avoid, and use less resources, and not dump garbage everywhere, and ...
And then I noticed, hey, nobody else is doing it. And unlike me, these people are young and they do have kids, i.e. unlike me, they would have a reason to want a working planet 30 years down the road.
And then I said "screw that". I only need this planet another 30 years or so. Then I'm dead. And I don't have kids. If you
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Re: Yeah, yeah... Who gives a flying f---? (Score:4, Interesting)
Total lifetime emissions for electric vehichles, even if your entire grid is coal powered is less than ICE vehichles to say nothing of a grid supported partially with renewables.
Of course the most envrionmental is the car you already own but if emissions are a concern when purchasing a new vehichles EV's are the clear winner on every metric.
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Of course the most envrionmental is the car you already own but if emissions are a concern when purchasing a new vehichles EV's are the clear winner on every metric.
The most environmental is a car that doesn't exist.
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That's not semantics, I was suggesting to walk/use public transport
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Any responsible person really trying to save the planet is having many babies, inspiring them so they become awesome engineers and with care for the planet that would actually help and above all, ensuring a quality education so they never become anti-human greeniac radial useless carbon emitters.
Or they might produce someone like you?
Drought (Score:4, Funny)
This is the first time there has been a drought anywhere in Africa.
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Therefore, governments missing climate goals is the only possible cause.
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Freeze and starve for Africa! And Ukraine!
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It seems like drought, war, and famine have been ravaging Africa for decades. It's almost as if it might not be a great place to raise a family...
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Therefore they can't be getting worse and more frequent.
I'm very smart.
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5 year drought? In a single region?
But... but... Chernobyl!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry to break this to you but we are all going to have to make a choice, nuclear power or global warming. I can hear it now, "But Chernobyl!" Yep, Chernobyl happened. That's what happens when you put incompetent people in charge of nuclear power. So don't do that.
People are not going to go without heat, light, refrigeration, and transportation. These things take energy. They take more energy than we can get from wind, water, and sunlight. So, we burn fossil fuels or we use nuclear fission. Sitting in the dark while cold and hungry is not an option people are going to take. There's not going to be any effective ban on the burning of fossil fuels if there isn't an alternative that is equally reliable and plentiful.
I'll believe governments are taking global warming seriously when they are building nuclear power plants at least as quickly as they were 50 or so years ago, back when power plants like those at Fukushima, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl were built. Those were second generation nuclear power plants, we don't build plants like those any more. We can build them safer than that now.
Concern about global warming is a luxury, something people can worry about only after they have their basic needs met. If people are barred from having their needs met by energy from nuclear fission then they will turn to fossil fuels. If they can't have either of those then expect people to cut down trees for firewood. Then what does your environment look like?
There's no good option here, we can only pick the least bad. Nuclear fission looks like a great option given the alternatives. If we remove nuclear fission as an option then be prepared for more human misery.
Re:But... but... Chernobyl!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll believe governments are taking global warming seriously when they are building nuclear power plants at least as quickly as they were 50 or so years ago
And there's the key to the whole thing but a lot of people i talk to who are pro nuclear are at the same time voting for people who don't believe in having the government do not just nuclear but most things and fact is the free market is not going to deliver nuclear plants, it just doesn't make sense for them to.
Nuclear is infrastructure and from an investment and profit perspective it doesnt make a lot of financial sense, especially comapred to wind and solar. It makes a ton of sense from an infrastructure and national security perspective though.
Being actually pro nuclear means supporting it's decommodification and likely nationalization, otherwise it's just being used as a political football to have a convienent yet fundamentally dishonest argument against the "greenies".
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I'll believe governments are taking global warming seriously when they are building nuclear power plants at least as quickly as they were 50 or so years ago
Nuclear is infrastructure and from an investment and profit perspective it doesnt make a lot of financial sense, especially comapred to wind and solar. It makes a ton of sense from an infrastructure and national security perspective though.
Really? From a military point of view nuclear is a liability. Drop a few bombs on a nuclear facility, you black out a huge region and irradiated an enormous tract of land. Try to knock out enough of the thousands of wind and solar installations to achieve the same effect, be it through missile strikes or sabotage, and you have your work cut out for you. From a military/security standpoint distributed systems are always better than a centralised network with a big mission critical spider like asset in the mi
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There's far, far, far more to national security than "what if bomb". Having a stable backbone of grid stability for industry and domestic operations and decreasing reliance on foriegn energy sources are all important concerns, especially for a nation like america which has very very low risk of forgeign bombings of domestic infrastructure.
Refineries and ammonia plants are all similar critical pieces of infratrueture that carry huge risks if damaged are as much if not more vulnerable to bombings also and nu
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Nuclear is infrastructure and from an investment and profit perspective it doesnt make a lot of financial sense, especially comapred to wind and solar. It makes a ton of sense from an infrastructure and national security perspective though.
Every nuclear plant is both a potential dirty bomb if struck with a sufficient conventional warhead, and a massive target in its own right, and therefore fundamentally terrible from a national security perspective.
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Maybe but fact is the worst industrial disasters in terms of human casualties and environmental destruction have been decidedly non-nuclear. Bhopal was far worse than Chernobyl. Banqiao too.
I can encase a nuclear reactor in 10ft of reinforced concrete, they can take a direct hit from a jet collision. An oil refinery is nowhere near as able to be protected. If bombers are flying over America they are bombing Port Arthur way before any nuke plants and it is way more fragile.
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I can encase a nuclear reactor in 10ft of reinforced concrete, they can take a direct hit from a jet collision.
Even WWII-era bomb tech will blow through that like it's tissue paper.
An oil refinery is nowhere near as able to be protected.
Fossil fuel false dichotomy
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I'm gonna need you to back that up with which WWII era bombs would rip through an American style reactor containment vessel like "tissue paper".
You can say it's a false dichotomy all you want but if we are really in a case where there are air raid sirens going off and bombs are being dropped on american soil all infrastructure is at risk, wind turbines and solar plants are also extremely vulterbale to even smaller bombs or explosives or really they are all vulnerable to just attacking the interconnects rath
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I'm gonna need you to back that up with which WWII era bombs would rip through an American style reactor containment vessel like "tissue paper".
Even then there were bombs that could crack bunkers, it's not rocket surgery (as we're talking bombs and not rockets, ha ha.) They're designed for nuclear containment, not to be impervious to bombs.
wind turbines and solar plants are also extremely vulterbale to even smaller bombs or explosives or really they are all vulnerable to just attacking the interconnects rather than the generation.
The point is that suggesting that nuclear plants are somehow superior from a national security standpoint is really unwarranted. They have serious problems. People keep saying that we can have smaller ones that somewhat mitigate these problems, and when someone has actually demonstrated a viable one then I'll be
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That's because they aren't interested in actually solving any problem whether or not you believe there is or isn't a problem.
All they care about is being in charge and never having their power or their actions called into question. If there isn't a problem, they will create one in order to use it to acquire more power.
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"They take more energy than we can get from wind, water,"
Hmmm,.... I dunno about that. Did you see the record-setter wind turbine last week? Impressed me that it has a swept area almost the same size as a 10 acre field. They just keep building them bigger, and if they just keep building them, there will be "enough" capacity at some point in time.
I think, just my opinion, but I think the energy storage solution is in raising great weights to altitude. But instead of building towers, get Musk to poi
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How much land does that windmill occupy? The support post may be small but the area around that windmill has to be free of obstacles, such as other windmills, or it doesn't produce anywhere near the rated power.
I've seen the math on this, and it's been done hundreds of times, each time getting the same result. Here's one exmple:
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/0... [nytimes.com]
We need nuclear fission power plants or we won't be able to sustain our economy. Buying wind and solar power from foreign nations to sustain an ec
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as for the rest of your diatribe thinking just because people know nuclear is over-priced, late and frowned upon there no other solutions are in play and being installed. A new paradigm for energy generation/storage/distribution is beyond your blinkers.
Redundant SEO space filler from Yahoodot (Score:2)
Not news for techies. Not useful to the reader, just infotainment.
So... nobody's... (Score:2)
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...taking this existential emergency seriously.
The engineers and pro-nuclear folks are. The Sierra Club, activists, other environmental groups, and the politicians are not. For them this is about control and political power (and tax write-offs). We won't be able to move forward until the boomers are dead I fear. I just don't see them ever admitting they are wrong (which we don't care about, we just want them to stop suing and interfering). For many people knowing something isn't important, they feel they are right and won't ever bother to check fa
Re: So... nobody's... (Score:2)
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Replace coal, oil and gas with nuclear power.
No? Then not an emergency.
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Replace coal, oil and gas with nuclear power.
No? Then not an emergency.
And if that were possible, it would surely be considered. It is not. The emergency is people like you _still_ not getting what is going on and trying to push their fetish instead. Despicable.
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Replace coal, oil and gas with nuclear power.
No? Then not an emergency.
And if that were possible, it would surely be considered.
And it is.
Yes, there's a lot of work going on in next-generation nuclear. The entire world does not consist of nothing but black and white zealots like you see on slashdot shouting "nuclear is wonderful, greens are evil" or "green means no nukes".
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So, "a lot of work". Which may or may not produce results in a few decades. When it will be too late. And in an area where it is likely that thing will be even more expensive. Betting of that having good results is beyond stupid.
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And in an area where it is likely that thing will be even more expensive.
But I thought it was a climate emergency. And the potential damage to our economy pursuing the "green solutions" was not a factor any longer. So the cost of nukes, plain old technology nukes if the next generation stuff isn't ready yet, is also not a factor. Build them. Save the world. Chase the nickels later.
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Are you somehow mentally challenged?
If you have an urgent emergency, the absolutely last thing to do is to try to address it with a "solution" that does not even exist yet or stuff that is known to take forever to build and is excessively expensive. Also, you _cannot_ build a lot of nukes fast. Completely impossible. You cannot even build the critical components fast, like the pressure vessels. These takes several years to make and there are only very few facilities that _can_ make them in the first place.
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Are you somehow mentally challenged?
We managed to build reactors for the Manhattan project in only a few years. We have designs that date back decades. And uranium is plentiful in places other than Russia. Australia, Canada and Africa to name a few.
Look, if you don't want to do something, just don't act like a child and make excuses. If it's really a climate emergency, we can make another Manhattan project. And charge people who interfere with subversion. That will take most of the delays out of the proce
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We managed to build reactors for the Manhattan project in only a few years.
Those reactors were built for producing weapons material, not for making power. Look at Hanford to see what half-assing that kind of reactor results in.
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You can build renewable solutions in less time it takes for a nuclear plant to be commissioned, built and working
Well then, do it. Stop screaming about missing climate goals. It's like a little kid that can't tie their shoes because they don't want to go to the dentist.
Nobody cares what things will cost if it's an emergency. Safe reactor designs exist. The lessons have been learned. Reactor production should commence and look like this [absolutemichigan.com]. Declare a war on global warming. Invoke martial law. Use the defense production act. Anyone who interferes gets sent to an internment camp. I bet we could build them pretty cheap and
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So, "a lot of work". Which may or may not produce results in a few decades.
You said it was "not being considered."
You are wrong.
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It is not considered as a main part of the solution, because it cannot be and actual experts can see that. I am not wrong here, no matter hat nil-whit fanatics want for their fetish. Sure, there are some political statements by people who just want to cater to those fanatics, but they are meaningless.
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Nice try but no, you are still wrong.
Yes Nuclear is being considered. Here, for example, are four articles consiering it.
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/30... [npr.org]
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/30... [npr.org]
https://www.oecd-forum.org/pos... [oecd-forum.org]
https://blogs.scientificameric... [scientificamerican.com]
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Not really. But I see you fall for the deception.
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"When it comes to new nuclear technology, the industry has "a tendency to overpromise and underdeliver," said John Hopkins, president and CEO of NuScale Power/NuScale Corp, a publicly traded company working on advanced nuclear technology. His company was the first to receive federal approval for a small modular reactor design, but the first plant is not expected to be up and running until 2029. "I want to get one module in the gro
Re: So... nobody's... (Score:2)
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That's not a shock. COP26 was a joke -- just a bunch of political lip-service. No one in power is actually willing to make the changes need. At the rate they want to work at, we wont have even formed a concrete plan of action before we're already over two degrees.
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Correct. Nobody is taking it seriously.
Not the politicians, not the business poeple, certainly. But most of all - not the electorate (i.e. us).
This is an issue which is really only solvable by government action (likely international government action). Politicians are driven by self-interest, that is a given. Their main concern is doing whatever keeps them in their job or gets them one rung up the ladder. Whatever you or I might think of that morally it is nonetheless a necessity in a democray - a politicia
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Not only Africa (Score:5, Interesting)
In case anyone happens to look out the window, the US has been having a drought as well, its not just Africa. And if anyone can remember as far back as last summer, there was a bit of a heatwave that compromised air travel. Not only were the cheap asphalt runways getting sticky but airplanes don't get as much lift in hot air. This will impact travel plans. And for comic relief, just look around at how passenger trains have fared in North America. Folks can scoff all they want, but the times they are a changing. The economic cost of recent heatwaves is in the trillions. And the longer we collectively wait before trying to adapt, the more expensive it becomes. And change mitigation? That train left the station some time ago -- no one noticed.
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the US has been having a drought as well, its not just Africa
And Europe had this summer its worst drought in over 5 centuries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The data: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu... [unl.edu]
Notice how the drought that started out west has now advanced across the Mississippi, which, by the way, is drying up. So much for the dead hand of the free market to solve problems.
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In case anyone happens to look out the window, the US has been having a drought as well, its not just Africa. And if anyone can remember as far back as last summer, there was a bit of a heatwave that compromised air travel. Not only were the cheap asphalt runways getting sticky but airplanes don't get as much lift in hot air. This will impact travel plans. And for comic relief, just look around at how passenger trains have fared in North America. Folks can scoff all they want, but the times they are a changing. The economic cost of recent heatwaves is in the trillions. And the longer we collectively wait before trying to adapt, the more expensive it becomes. And change mitigation? That train left the station some time ago -- no one noticed.
I really hate when people "discuss" the issue of climate change. Everyone just spewing anecdotes. Nobody ever bothers to suggest any rational solutions.
The people who pretend to care are too self absorbed with counterproductive shit like ESG and pissing all over nuclear.
It's a toxic stew of dogma devoid of any useful content.
stop fighting and plenty of money to go around (Score:2)
https://howmuch.net/articles/h... [howmuch.net]
Of course this logic is faulty in that foreign aid would decrease dramatically if there were no conflicts going on.
Oh well (Score:2)
Thanks simpsons
La Nina not gerbil warming (Score:2)
Droughts in East Africa are often the result of La Nina conditions in the Pacific. We have had 2 La Nina years in a row.Ironically La Nina is also the cause of the flooding down the eastern coast of Australia.
https://www.climatelinks.org/b... [climatelinks.org]
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/elni... [noaa.gov]
Re: La Nina not gerbil warming (Score:2)
I guess ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I guess we need to work on technological solutions then, like sequestering carbon. Because hectoring people and countries isn't working. and can't work.
That, and nuclear. But I won't hold my breath ... because the people who post these stories as a form of porn don't actually want to solve the problem.
Re: always (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not this bad, not this widespread, not for this long. Grow a brain, think, it is good for you.
Re: (Score:3)
So you are willing to base all diplomatic, economic and environmental policy for an entire continent off one report you are conveying about one village in either a semi-industrialized nation (Kenya) or one that has been in political turmoil for pretty much the last 3 decades (Somalia) and the report may have either come from a somewaht reputable news org or maybe it was a right wing tabloid that regularly engages in half truths and has a clear admitted political bias and whose business model is based on c
Re: I saw something on BBC or DW recently (Score:2)
I'm willing to double down on the statement that a billion dollars spent installing irrigation wells in shitholefuckistan is going to do more good in the world than a billion dollars spent subsidizing the Tesla in your garage and the solar panels on your roof.
Re: I saw something on BBC or DW recently (Score:5, Insightful)
Good idea in theory, tricky in practice.
Let's say you try to spend a billion dollars installing wells in Somalia. This immediately creates a bunch of issues:
1. The central govt. (at least, what passes for it) will try to get some of that money.
2. The local powers (governers, warlords, etc.) will try to go the same.
3. Your plan involved several thousand western engineers going in and doing the installing. Will they be safe? (probably not). WIll they require security? (probably) How will that go down with the local population? Who is providing that? How well woudl armed US / UN troop go down in Somalia?
4. Once you have created the well, it become a vital and expensive ecomonic resource that can be used to control the local population. With no real rule of law or functioning local police, these wells will be under the control of the local /regional power (or warlord) and will be used to exert control rather than improve the welfare of the local population.
Fundamentally, for your plan to work it would requiring a funcitoning government that is in control of the country enough to impose rule of law. But if they had that already they likely wouldn't be in the position they're in.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly exactly exactly.
The hard work for a developing nation is building public trust with strong institutions. All the water wells in the world don't make up for the lack of a trusted system of justice, functioning democracy and rules based capital markets.
Re: (Score:3)
entail giving out well pumps and drilling equipment
And what would power those pumps and drilling equipment? That's the problem in remote African villages, not lack of pumps or water. Also, Africans are perfectly capable of getting water on their own. What they need is infrastructure including energy infrastructure. Specifically infrastructure that connects their cities, not just their mines to their ports and their capitals to their airstrips (how else could the dictator escape to Switzerland).
Re: I saw something on BBC or DW recently (Score:2)
Re: I saw something on BBC or DW recently (Score:2)
Re: Australia is a major emitter? (Score:2)
Re: Australia is a major emitter? (Score:2)