Scariest Stuff About Global Warming?

[Eclipse Now]

What particular impacts of climate change concern you the most? What papers or soundbytes or video's demonstrate them the best? Please provide links: I'm trying to write a summary page that demonstrates the top 10 reasons why we should care.

[HydrogenBond]

I look at it this way; change is natural. Trying to stop time, to preserve today, forever, is unnatural. I believe in historical preservation, but as a museum and as a salute to the past, but not as the final state of things. The earth goes through changes, with evolution benefitting by changes, since it stresses the status quo, separating the men from the boys, with future belonging to the selected. The museum approach force the unfit for tomorrow, to remain in charge of tomorrow. 

 

One side of the political spectrum wants to force the museum of today to become the forever. The other side welcomes the change. It may have to do with each side looking at their glory days, as now and as the future; respectively. Liberalism is a dinosaur fighting the dying of its light reacting blinding with fear. While conservatives are welcoming the dawning of the new day since they feel better equipped for the changes; chosen and selected if the deck is not stacked. 

 

The way you phased the survey of opinions was using the operative word "care", which is emotion, not reason, with the operating emotion based on fear; what 10 things scares you the most. See yourself as a survivor, with nature not an enemy, but a trainer who is making you better so you will be part of the selected. 

[Buffy]

 

One side of the political spectrum wants to force the museum of today to become the forever. The other side welcomes the change. It may have to do with each side looking at their glory days, as now and as the future; respectively. 

 

You betcha! The fossil fuels industry is fighting mightily against change, spending billions of dollars trying to prevent the inexorable forward movement into cleaner and renewable fuels that will destroy our eco-systems, so that they can maintain their hefty profits in the short-term.

 

Liberalism is a dinosaur fighting the dying of its light reacting blinding with fear. While conservatives are welcoming the dawning of the new day since they feel better equipped for the changes; chosen and selected if the deck is not stacked.

 

Um, what?

 

OH! Yah! You're talking about Islamic State and how liberals want to avoid fighting them and let them take over the middle east, while conservatives want to send wave after wave of 18 year olds into the meat grinder to preserve the national borders that have historical precedent going back a century to colonial times which must not be changed no matter what!

 

Oh, um, wait....

 

Shorter HB: "Liberals hate change, conservatives want change like crazy!"

 

I somehow think most folks watching this thread don't need to actually look in a dictionary to parse the rationality of that statement.

 

The way you phased the survey of opinions was using the operative word "care", which is emotion, not reason, with the operating emotion based on fear; what 10 things scares you the most. See yourself as a survivor, with nature not an enemy, but a trainer who is making you better so you will be part of the selected. 

 

Shorter HB: "That which does not kill you makes you stronger, or to be clearer, you should go play on a freeway, it's great training and can only make you a better runner. Only fools would fear it."

 

That would certainly be an method to effect change.

 

 

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them, :phones:

Buffy

[Eclipse Now]

I look at it this way; change is natural. Trying to stop time, to preserve today, forever, is unnatural. I believe in historical preservation, but as a museum and as a salute to the past, but not as the final state of things. The earth goes through changes, with evolution benefitting by changes, since it stresses the status quo, separating the men from the boys, with future belonging to the selected. The museum approach force the unfit for tomorrow, to remain in charge of tomorrow. 

 

One side of the political spectrum wants to force the museum of today to become the forever. The other side welcomes the change. It may have to do with each side looking at their glory days, as now and as the future; respectively. Liberalism is a dinosaur fighting the dying of its light reacting blinding with fear. While conservatives are welcoming the dawning of the new day since they feel better equipped for the changes; chosen and selected if the deck is not stacked. 

 

The way you phased the survey of opinions was using the operative word "care", which is emotion, not reason, with the operating emotion based on fear; what 10 things scares you the most. See yourself as a survivor, with nature not an enemy, but a trainer who is making you better so you will be part of the selected. 

 

I look at it this way. You're selfish and short sighted, and also rather ignorant about the alternative energy sources. You want the cheapest energy in your car and running down your lines. You fear paying a little bit more right now so that future generations will not have to pay 20 times as much to fix the mess your lifestyle will leave behind. You fear Buffy and I and others like us that take the climate data seriously.

 

You think we are radicals because we're asking you to change? 

 

But the true radicals are the ones like yourself that think they have the right to alter the chemical composition of the atmosphere of the planet for profit. You think you have the right to wreck the fine balance the climate has had for the last 10,000 years: just for short term profit. You're a dangerous radical, and my job as a 'conservative' is to be a conservationist: to save the climate that civilisation developed in and flourishes under. I care about stopping people like you. This is an action of my whole person, not just my emotions. It involves my intellect which evaluates the climate science and the dangerous consequences of climate change. It involves my ethical thinking and frameworks, and my heart as I ponder my children and potential grandchildren, and what people like you are doing to them. 

 

So I have some advice for you my friend. When you lose your stocks (because they are no doubt invested in fossil fuel companies) because everyone around you is divesting from fossil fuels, and when governments pass laws that appear 'radical' to you because they ban the mining of 4/5ths of the coal and oil and gas under the ground — because we simply cannot mine that stuff and stay under 2 degrees — and when the companies you worship go bankrupt because 4/5ths of their 'reserves' are now illegal: then it's simple. It's as you told me. Think of yourself as a survivor, with the economy not an enemy, but a trainer who is making you better so you will be part of the selected. This is after your immoral and illogical fossil fuel stocks are obliterated. Good luck with all that! In the meantime, I'll be congratulating myself that I divested and my superannuation is sitting pretty in a fund that will be immune to these asset over-actualised funds. 

Edited October 8, 2014 by Eclipse Now

[HydrogenBond]

There was an alternative energy source, that could have prevented manmade global warming, that is now being marketed as the more nebulous climate change. This was called nuclear power. The same liberal book of scare tactics was used to undermine the very industry that could have minimized carbon emissions over the past 50 years.

 

If we had been using nuclear from the 1960's until now, allowing the free market competition to constantly improve the systems for efficiency and safety, the dependence on fossil fuel would be minimal today. The global scare of carbon would not be there, or could be delayed for centuries. 

 

The way the budding nuclear industry was addressed, by the liberals, was scenarios of doom and boom of their projected fears; liberalism 1.0. They were afraid of their own devious shadow since the liberals lack the ability to extrapolate into the future beyond their immediate fears. The fear and obstructionism made it too expensive to invest in new nuclear plants, resulting on older plants being maintained beyond their years, thereby increasing the odds of accidents. If you can't buy a new car but are forced to rehab the old cars for 20 years, problems become the way, for a self fore filling prophesy. But even with this obstruction, the number and extent of nuclear accidents was small fries over 50 years, compared to the current doom and gloom scenarios for global warming. The liberals traded potential local disaster for their assumed definite global disaster. 

 

The problems with liberals is they allow their emotions to get the better of reason. With nuclear, it was the liberals, trying to fix a broken wire and burning down the house, because they lack practical thinking skills of what may happen if. They did not have a clue what they had been fighting was the lessor of two evils, but sided with the worse evil because politics conned them. The heart is in the right place but they do not have a brain that can extrapolate the future consequences. 

 

Say the liberals had been ignored and the nuclear industry had been allow to grow organically. Oil would not have been able to compete. Within the nuclear industry any  accident would be enough to put a competitor out of business until all that is left standing is the best of the best. Even with accidents it is not global in nature, but localized. The green house gases would be low and oil would be mostly used for auto and plastics industries, allowing poor countries a cheap way to power budding economies, while protection the earth for another century. Instead ,the same short sighted boneheads are at it again. I can only imagine the next disaster they will create, if allowed to play the scare game, while not thinking beyond current politics. The liberals saved big oil in the 1960's; good job. 

 

Let me try something different. Let us assume, for the sake of argument ,we go along with the global warming scare and make the adjustments that are requested? The main adjustment is you can't use fossil fuel but have to substitute solar and green power, which currently costs double. Or else you have to pay Al Gore to generate carbon. The second does not solve the carbon problem, but is only a money extortion scam. Al is not worried about carbon, but making money off the fear. 

 

The fossil fuel prohibition will cause the price of everything to sky rocket with double or triple digit inflation. This will impact all countries, but will hit the poorest countries the worse, killing any economic growth leading to wide scale food shortages. Even the riches countries will see costs rise so much, there goes the middle class ,and therefore the tax revenues, so you can't even afford to feed the poor whose numbers are getting even larger than under Obama.

 

In a figurative sense, there is no new "green" house to move into, since that is under construction and will require a huge long term sacrifices in a diminishing economy. All that will be left is the traditional or old time Democratic party of the south based on slave owners (rich) and slaves (poor).

 

I predict the earth will go on, as normal, regardless of the sacrifice illusion, but it will be too late to go back to a world that has opportunity for more people. It will be like the liberal anti-nukes not thinking ahead and not seeing how population and world wide growth without a carbon alternative like nuclear, will lead to a world wide disaster that they helped to architect. The answer came before the problem, but liberals could not see the future out of induced immediate fear. 

 

How about others, project beyond their immediate fears of carbon doom and gloom, and tell us what you see happening if the change is made to fossil fuels. This is the real scary stuff because this has precedent in economics and socio-political changes. 

Edited October 8, 2014 by HydrogenBond

[Eclipse Now]

There was an alternative energy source, that could have prevented manmade global warming, that is now being marketed as the more nebulous climate change. This was called nuclear power. The same liberal book of scare tactics was used to undermine the very industry that could have minimized carbon emissions over the past 50 years.

 

If we had been using nuclear from the 1960's until now, allowing the free market competition to constantly improve the systems for efficiency and safety, the dependence on fossil fuel would be minimal today. The global scare of carbon would not be there, or could be delayed for centuries. 

 

The way the budding nuclear industry was addressed, by the liberals, was scenarios of doom and boom of their projected fears; liberalism 1.0. They were afraid of their own devious shadow since the liberals lack the ability to extrapolate into the future beyond their immediate fears. The fear and obstructionism made it too expensive to invest in new nuclear plants, resulting on older plants being maintained beyond their years, thereby increasing the odds of accidents. If you can't buy a new car but are forced to rehab the old cars for 20 years, problems become the way, for a self fore filling prophesy. But even with this obstruction, the number and extent of nuclear accidents was small fries over 50 years, compared to the current doom and gloom scenarios for global warming. The liberals traded potential local disaster for their assumed definite global disaster. 

 

The problems with liberals is they allow their emotions to get the better of reason. With nuclear, it was the liberals, trying to fix a broken wire and burning down the house, because they lack practical thinking skills of what may happen if. They did not have a clue what they had been fighting was the lessor of two evils, but sided with the worse evil because politics conned them. The heart is in the right place but they do not have a brain that can extrapolate the future consequences. 

 

Say the liberals had been ignored and the nuclear industry had been allow to grow organically. Oil would not have been able to compete. Within the nuclear industry any  accident would be enough to put a competitor out of business until all that is left standing is the best of the best. Even with accidents it is not global in nature, but localized. The green house gases would be low and oil would be mostly used for auto and plastics industries, allowing poor countries a cheap way to power budding economies, while protection the earth for another century. Instead ,the same short sighted boneheads are at it again. I can only imagine the next disaster they will create, if allowed to play the scare game, while not thinking beyond current politics. The liberals saved big oil in the 1960's; good job. 

 

Let me try something different. Let us assume, for the sake of argument ,we go along with the global warming scare and make the adjustments that are requested? The main adjustment is you can't use fossil fuel but have to substitute solar and green power, which currently costs double. Or else you have to pay Al Gore to generate carbon. The second does not solve the carbon problem, but is only a money extortion scam. Al is not worried about carbon, but making money off the fear. 

 

The fossil fuel prohibition will cause the price of everything to sky rocket with double or triple digit inflation. This will impact all countries, but will hit the poorest countries the worse, killing any economic growth leading to wide scale food shortages. Even the riches countries will see costs rise so much, there goes the middle class ,and therefore the tax revenues, so you can't even afford to feed the poor whose numbers are getting even larger than under Obama.

 

In a figurative sense, there is no new "green" house to move into, since that is under construction and will require a huge long term sacrifices in a diminishing economy. All that will be left is the traditional or old time Democratic party of the south based on slave owners (rich) and slaves (poor).

 

I predict the earth will go on, as normal, regardless of the sacrifice illusion, but it will be too late to go back to a world that has opportunity for more people. It will be like the liberal anti-nukes not thinking ahead and not seeing how population and world wide growth without a carbon alternative like nuclear, will lead to a world wide disaster that they helped to architect. The answer came before the problem, but liberals could not see the future out of induced immediate fear. 

 

How about others, project beyond their immediate fears of carbon doom and gloom, and tell us what you see happening if the change is made to fossil fuels. This is the real scary stuff because this has precedent in economics and socio-political changes. 

 

 

I actually have a lot of sympathy for what you are saying. The same physics and peer-reviewed science that convinces me that global warming is a clear and present danger to society also convinces me we have the answer in nuclear energy. 4 years ago I would have been horrified at that last sentence: then I met an online bunch of nuclear-greenies, including Dr Hansen himself. Great quote below from him! This is my usual copy and paste on other pro-windie and sunnie renewable fan pages.

 

1. From the very *early* days of nuclear power they had a plan for the waste. Breeder reactors. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes and BURN NUCLEAR WASTE! 

2. Indeed, nuclear 'waste' is fuel: it's only had 0.6% of the energy extracted from it. Breeder reactors fission away 90% of this FUEL. Today's nuclear 'waste' could run the UK for 500 years, and America has enough to run her for 1000 years without mining any new uranium!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

http://bravenewclimate.com/integral-fast-reactor-ifr-nuclear-power/

3. Trying to store today's nuclear waste is like digging up and refining your best petroleum, and then worrying about burying it for 100,000 years!

4. The FINAL waste product is so 'hot' it burns itself out in 300 years. The Romans built structures that have lasted 2000 years.

5. James Hansen runs the Science Council for Global Initiatives and backs the Integral Fast Reactor. Free book by his friend Tom Blees here.

http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/index.php/prescription-for-the-planet

6. James Hansen said:

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/08/05/hansen-energy-kool-aid/

[sanctus]

Back to topic:

 

I am not really scared for us humans, humanity will survive. But I am scared for the big loss in biodiversity which might follow, eg. extinction of many arctic species.

[HydrogenBond]

Back to topic:

 

I am not really scared for us humans, humanity will survive. But I am scared for the big loss in biodiversity which might follow, eg. extinction of many arctic species.

 

Again the same people who scared everyone away the nuclear industry, into the hands of big oil, which is now the industry claimed to be the main source of greenhouse gases, in now in charge of a new and improved round of scare tactics. I was young back then and liked nuclear. However, being a teen who was going into science, but living in liberal Massachusetts, it was not easy to stand apart without being impacted by the lure of youth rebellion. There was a fear that did not trust the "man" and the industrial machine. Short term thinking, although energizing and exciting, turned out to be the modern source of a worse problem. My contemporaries, now in charge, came up with the scam of revisionists history instead of learn from history. 

 

The same politics, which is leading today, does not have a good track record when choices reach cross roads. The liberal template create scenarios of victims and hypothetical disaster, blame others to start a fight, and then leads the emotional mob, into the next cross roads, opposite the other guy. Look at the middle east and ISIS and how the template of opposing US stabilization, has led to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. The reason this template works, is fear sparks the troops, preventing calm long term reason. It is about the battle or immediate goal, but not about winning war; way down the line. Nuclear won a battle but lost the war to global warming. The next generation of kids were not there and learn revisionists history so the other guy did it. 

 

Say the liberal fear template works again, because the reasonable can't reach the young irrationally motivated, since is easy to scare the masses and youth in rebellion against the man, The solution offered is to get away from fossil fuel in favor of alternate energy that is "green", with green meaning its in its elementary state of development and therefore overpriced; costs a lot of green.

 

This will wipe out the middle class with higher costs. If the government allows tax write offs to offset the higher cost to everyone, this will lower their tax revenue, so they need to borrow from the future even more. That is not good, Or they may need to tax business, at a higher rate, who in order to survive and keeps jobs from being lost, have to raise prices. This further erodes the middle class, as well as makes it harder for the poor to survive at current welfare levels. It is a snowball effect that leads to the Old Democratic party model of slaveowner and slaves/serfs. This power grab is the scariest stuff about global warming, since incompetence will lead, like in the middle east scam. These leaders are experts a smoke and mirror manipulation, but lack practical skills. 

 

If you are Al Gore, who will be part of the new ruling class, he will need to be protected by the military  to prevent the poor from taking his stuff, just to survive, with revolution the inevitable course to balance things out. The poor by choice may acquiesce, but the poor by treacherous design will rise up to restore balance. 

 

I would prefer take my chances with mother nature, since she will adapt, like she always has over her long history. The rich and the poor end in the same boat. It the coast floods, this is a tax on the rich, since poor can;t afford to live there. I think, that the liberals think, they will be placed in the ark of the elite, when the crash begins, due to services rendered. You guys are also pawns and will be sacrificed like big oil, since you will be a burden and threat to the ruling elite. Then you will change sides and join those who had it right. Will it be too late? 

Edited October 9, 2014 by HydrogenBond

[sanctus]

HB, wonder why you quoted me there...

Anyway:

 you say:

 

with green meaning its in its elementary state of development and therefore overpriced; costs a lot of green.

Might be true, but it is thanks to guys like you that it still is in children shoes. Support it now, then it will get down to the same price as fossil fuel and then you do away with fossil fuels. I means it is just wlike with any new tech-gadget, only the tech-freaks bought eg. projectors 20 years ago (when they were way worse than nowadays and waaaay more expensive), now everyone does. Why being against a similar approach to green? Just because you have always been is not enough...or because you are disillusioned with what happened to nuclear.

 

Which brings me to your point on nuclear energy: you assume that I/we are not happy about having fossil instead of nuclear. This is just wrong, I would play (again if I were old enough) away from nuclear into fossil fuel. The risk and consequences of nuclear are just soo much worse...yeah, the reactors are safe today (fukushima) and we have safe deposits for the radioactive waste. Think again. Take europe for instance and say that the human error risk is literally zero here (which I might agree on), so stuff like tchernobyl is not gonna happen. But remember also that the European and African continental plate touch under Europe, just because in the last few hundred years there was no big earthquake here does not mean it is not gonna happen. And if it is a big one what then? Whole Europe a radioactive wasteland? This is why I still prefer oceans to rise and other global warming effects.

 

Like your argument though that if oceans rise it is the rich who pay, although that holds only the western world. Whole polynesia pays and countries like bangladesh, etc.

[Buffy]

... lure of youth rebellion....fear....politics...emotional mob...revisionists history...liberal fear template...irrationally motivated..."green"...wipe out the middle class...Old Democratic party model of slaveowner and slaves/serfs...power grab...Al Gore...liberals...pawns...sacrificed...ruling elite... 

 

Hey, did you hear that noise? Really? No? Huh, I swore I heard something.

 

Must be that big uptick in wind strength from all that hot air generated by Climate Change.

 

 

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more, :phones:

Buffy

[Eclipse Now]

 

Hey, did you hear that noise? Really? No? Huh, I swore I heard something.

 

Must be that big uptick in wind strength from all that hot air generated by Climate Change.

 

 

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more, :phones:

Buffy

 

I like how you can laugh it off. 

 

Anyway, about that OP.  :vava:

 

If anyone is interested, could they share their favourite well-produced short-youtube videos that explain the various possible impacts of AGW? Thanks all.

[Alpine]

The scariest stuff? Here, it's a video which was published last year. It shows a glacier, about the size of Manhattan, going down and it's all thanks to Climate Change.

 

 

P.S: HB, do you know that you bring in Al Gore up nearly every post you make about Climate Change? I think you need help bud, that kind of obsession isn't healthy.

Edited October 12, 2014 by Alpine

[HydrogenBond]

Again, the same crowd who disrupted the organic growth of the nuclear industry, and funneled the unavoidable need  for energy ,down the logical alternative of fossil fuel, now blames the oil industry, for their next round of fears. These young fanatics, turned older, accept no responsibility. Rather, they hope nobody will learn from history if it is revised.  Are there any students, in this forums, who were taught how the nuclear alternative was disrupted by the liberals, thereby defaulting the world need for energy, to big oil, as the world's population exploded?  

 

It is hard to reason, with there is a good fairy tale of fear, in an entertainment based culture. But let me try to go back to the original liberal doom and gloom of nuclear power; 

 

As of 1993, worldwide, 520 atmospheric nuclear explosions (including 8 underwater) have been conducted with a total yield of 545 Megaton(mt): 217 Mt from fission and 328 Mt from fusion, while the estimated number of underground nuclear tests conducted in the period from 1957 to 1992 is 1,352 explosions.....

 

Each of these explosions were  worse than a worse case nuclear reactor "disaster". Reactors do not blow up like a bomb seeing they use low enrichment materials, These explosions were not  fire and radioactive smoke, with natures regrowing after a few years, with only humans remaining afraid due to hypersensitive standards set by the liberal EPA. If you go to Chernobyl nature has grow back and taking over the place. Wolves are not aware of the EPA standards and don't wear badges. 

 

 At least 520 of these nuke bombs vaporized the areas, and/or directly contaminated the ocean waters, with those cool looking mushroom clouds, all emitting emissions into the atmosphere. These were also worse case tests of the impact of nuclear on the climate and the atmosphere; using 20/20 hindsight. The world is still here with none of the doom and gloom sales pitch quite panned out. Las Vegas is going strong with a major building boom that was squashed by weak economy. This common sense data was there, at the time of the nuke scam, but it was ignored. 

 

Would anyone be willing to consider an accountability clause, to any new laws of control, where if the doom and gloom, does not pan out, but a worse path is created, jails and fines will be metered out to all who benefit. Or should the same scammer get three strikes? 

[Eclipse Now]

Again, 

No, not again. We've moved on to the actual topic of this thread thanks.

For instance, did Al Gore put a bunch of hydrogen bombs under the ice in that video to make them calve early? Did he accelerate the ice melting trend? Did he melt half the ice over the previous 100 years, and the other half of the ice in an accelerating trend over the last ten years?

 

Seeing as you love nuclear bombs so much maybe this will help. You know the maths behind the radiative forcing equation (as based on how CO2 behaves in a fourier device) says we're trapping a lot of extra heat. A lot. It's equivalent to 4 Hiroshima sized bombs a second. You knew that didn't you? Do the math on how many a day, and then watch the ice melting. All that extra heat has got to do something, hey?

 

Get on board the science train with the rest of the peer-reviewed mob: it's a wild ride.

Edited October 11, 2014 by Eclipse Now

[Eclipse Now]

Hi all,
does this TED talk represent the peer-reviewed papers?
It basically argues, towards the end, that if we go to above 4 degrees, say 5 or 6, natural feedback loops will push the earth through to 12 degrees.

In that scenario, forget sea level rise: half the planet will be too hot for humans to live on!
Climate Change is Simple: David Roberts TED talk remixed with some music and video footage

Edited October 13, 2014 by Eclipse Now

[AnssiH]

Which brings me to your point on nuclear energy: you assume that I/we are not happy about having fossil instead of nuclear. This is just wrong, I would play (again if I were old enough) away from nuclear into fossil fuel. The risk and consequences of nuclear are just soo much worse...

Wait, what? How can this really be defended, when coal power kills tens of thousands of people yearly; many times more than nuclear power has killed over all of its existence? Direct deaths from nuclear power plant accidents are somewhere in the order of 30-40 deaths, and indirect death estimates somewhere in the thousands. Not yearly, but ever in the history of nuclear power.

 

And coal appears to kill that many people every month. According to our best research (as far as I can tell).

 

And factor in how many people it has potential to kill via global warming?

 

According to "Pandora's Promise" (a pro-nuclear documentary), solar power kills more people per energy unit than nuclear power, and I wouldn't be least bit surprised if it's actually true.

 

And this is with half a century old nuclear technology. The real question is, can we design nuclear power plants to be small enough to not yield a global threat, and can we design them so that they simply cannot melt no matter what the operators do?

 

According to that same documentary, yes, we can. I would like to research more about that argument, but I have not really found much info. Anyone else knows anything about that?

 

Another really important argument is that our quality of living really is strongly tied to our ability to produce a lot of energy with as little effort as possible. Yeah, we live in nice warm (or cool) houses. Most of the world does not. Maybe they would like to?

 

H-bond often says the darnest things but I think he has a case with this one.

 

Some references;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/07/01/nuclear-power-has-saved-the-lives-of-many-more-people-than-it-has-killed/

http://thebreakthrough.org/archive/coal_kills_4000_times_more_peo

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1992193/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 (availabe on Netflix)

Edited October 14, 2014 by AnssiH

[Buffy]

Pandora's Promise is interesting, but it's not unbiased. Smart people involved, but it is advertising. Nothing wrong with that, just that it's better to look elsewhere to justify the data.

 

I'm on the fence in terms of future of nuke power, and a lot of that ambivalence has to do with what's going to be done about moving to passive safety systems (ones that are stable and don't melt down when all cooling mechanisms are lost). 

 

But where I think Sanctus and a whole lot of others get justification for their arguments--and having looked at some of the back and forth about the data referred to by Pandora's Promise which I'm too lazy to look up--the comparison of carbon vs. nuclear "costs" suffers from the same shortsightedness that has plagued defenders of carbon: there's a tendency to ignore the long-term costs.

 

In the case of carbon, it's not so much the direct detrimental medical effects of poisonous combustion byproducts, it's the global warming caused by the medically benign CO2. Similarly for nuclear power, counting up the deaths from Chernobyl and Fukushima sure don't sound too bad over the 60 years of nuke power we've had, but the problem is having a gigantic pile of unbelievably poisonous plutonium that has to be locked up for a quarter of a million years, which even experts say is not really solvable.

 

In order to say nuclear power is safe you can't just consider our own life spans, and betting that our great-grandkids will figure out a way to solve this is neither a safe bet nor one I want them cursing us for, since it's obvious that not only "should we have known how dangerous the stuff is" it's provable that we DO.

 

 

The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance, be thine in great revenue, :phones:

Buffy