Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Coal is cheap if we socialize the environmental costs, otherwise, not so much. Likewise, coal is easy if we ignore the things we need to address just to make it suitable in the 21st century.

Fission is much less daunting than you assume. There are new technologies, like modular reactors, that lower the inital and decommissioning costs dramatically.

I'm well aware of fission's potential. But, that still doesn't address the sheer scale of the problem. Do you know how many coal powered plants ther currently are? Is a modular reactor easier and cheaper to install than a coal plant? What about the generated waste?

i like fission as part of the solution, but to pretend that it is all rainbows and kittens is not being realistic. That type of attitude is just as useless as the fake global warming skeptics.

Fusion is a long term effort, but the forecast for the ITER project is still moving on the original timeline. Commercial power is expected in 2045.

So your prediction is that fusion will be commercial in several decades? What was my original statement again?

The answer will be all of the above. We should be trying everything. Some ideas won't work well; others will. We won't know which are which until we give them a go. With new technology, failure is an option. In fact, it's expected at some level ... hopefully low and inexpensive.

I agree that a solution is likely to be a mix of various technologies. However, none of those technologies will be inexpensive. Implementing them at the scale necessary will be a monumental undertaking. Integrating all of them together will be tremendously complicated and costly as well. Don't kid yourself into thinking all it will take is the decision to do it. It will be long arduous and costly in the short term.

Not everything is hard or complicated

Only reality.

Fusion is already underway, hiding under the radar in the south of France. I agree, it's not possible here.

Great. Liberal conspiracy theories. Just what our political process was in desperate need of!

ITER's goal is 500 MW sustained for 1000 seconds. And they hope to achieve that as "early" as 2027.

Originally Posted by Odin

Here is an article Bob will like:

The Republican Brain: Why Even Educated Conservatives Deny Science — and Reality

So do I.

And here’s the mind-blowing surprise: For Republicans, having a college degree didn’t appear to make one any more open to what scientists have to say. On the contrary, better-educated Republicans were more skeptical of modern climate science than their less educated brethren. Only 19 percent of college-educated Republicans agreed that the planet is warming due to human actions, versus 31 percent of non-college-educated Republicans.

For Democrats and Independents, the opposite was the case. More education correlated with being more accepting of climate science—among Democrats, dramatically so. The difference in acceptance between more and less educated Democrats was 23 percentage points.

This was my first encounter with what I now like to call the “smart idiots” effect: The fact that politically sophisticated or knowledgeable people are often more biased, and less persuadable, than the ignorant. It’s a reality that generates endless frustration for many scientists—and indeed, for many well-educated, reasonable people.

And most of all, for many liberals.

Let’s face it: We liberals and progressives are absolutely outraged by partisan misinformation. Lies about “death panels.” People seriously thinking that President Obama is a Muslim, not born in the United States. Climate-change denial. Debt ceiling denial. These things drive us crazy, in large part because we can’t comprehend how such intellectual abominations could possibly exist.

And not only are we enraged by lies and misinformation; we want to refute them—to argue, argue, argue about why we’re right and Republicans are wrong. Indeed, we often act as though right-wing misinformation’s defeat is nigh, if we could only make people wiser and more educated (just like us) and get them the medicine that is correct information.

It could be that being a highly-educated conservative means having sold out, lock, stock and barrel, to one's employers. Most of Big Business seems to circle the wagons against any calumny against any part of Big Business. Thus an educated Republican in the restaurant business defends Big Oil against attacks upon its environmental record and cozy relationships with vile dictators while oil executives defend the often-horrible treatment of workers in the retail and restaurant industries. Bankers defend the cost-loading 'principles' behind for-profit medicine and those in Big Pharma defend sleazy lending practices. Perhaps to succeed in Big Business beyond the level of a clerk one had better toe the line on politics and economics, which is easily done if one is brainwashed. That is easy if one's educational foundation is strictly technical and devoid of such 'fluff' as philosophy, literature, and cultural appreciation.

Whoever can defend the worst can apparently protect anyone from any radical reformer or outright revolutionary. As humanity as a whole becomes increasingly hostile to arrogant, selfish power-brokers those who seek to curry their favor know enough to follow the company and Party line.

That said, it is possible to have a rigorous education and graduate with a view that nothing more exists to life than sex, booze, hedonism, and material indulgence. Taxes, unions, regulations, and moralizers get in the way of some narrowed 'good life'.

I agree with you on Nuclear power, Vandal, but after Fukushima good luck selling nuclear to the average person. I fear the hysterical anti-nuclear people are on the ascendant. I know how they think because my mom is one of them, she thinks radiation from Chernobyl is the cause of me being born prematurely. *rolls eyes* (I was born 2 days after Chernobyl melted down, I don't think the radiation got to the US in only 2 days, LOL)

World's fish to get smaller as oceans warm

I'm not saying that this is the major cause of the smaller fish already being observed, but as we were talking about fish sizes a few days ago, I thought I'd throw this up. For discussion purposes...

Originally Posted by Daniel Pauly

“A warmer and less-oxygenated ocean, as predicted under climate change, would make it more difficult for bigger fish to get enough oxygen, which means they will stop growing sooner,” Daniel Pauly, lead investigator in the University of British Columbia's Sea Around Us Project and co-author of the study, said in a statement.

The researchers looked at more than 600 species of fish around the world and used computer modeling to determine how the lower availability of oxygen would affect them. More than 75% of the species are expected to see a loss in size.

Originally Posted by Vandal-72

Did you just ignore the following sentence that pointed out that getting the resources will cost more fossil fuel use? Or do you imagine that dredges, freighters, processing plants and shipping systems run on pink fairy farts?

Second, to say that those resources are just there implies that strip mining the ocean bottom is somehow easy and not an environmental catastrophe in its own right.

Jeesh! I thought I was a pessimist. Yes, there are costs. The real question, which you don't know and neither do I, is how much pain for how much gain? Seabed mining is mostly an unknown at the moment, but we do know that there is a lot of readily available deposits there for the taking. What does it cost to extract a billion kilos of mineral-rich nodules just sitting on the sea floor? We know where they easy pickings lie, and the mineral content is high value.

Originally Posted by Vandal-72

I'm well aware of fission's potential. But, that still doesn't address the sheer scale of the problem. Do you know how many coal powered plants ther currently are? Is a modular reactor easier and cheaper to install than a coal plant? What about the generated waste?

Modulars are designed to be built in a factory and moved by rail. Just that alone cuts deployment and decommissioning costs by 30-75%. If new Mexico gets its way, and provides a home for waste disposal in its salt domes, this may get even better.

Originally Posted by Vandal-72 ...

i like fission as part of the solution, but to pretend that it is all rainbows and kittens is not being realistic. That type of attitude is just as useless as the fake global warming skeptics.

If fission picks up 20-25%, is that insignificant? I thnk that is a low-end estimate, frankly. If we permit Breeders, the percentage could rise ... a lot.

Originally Posted by Vandal-72 ...

So your prediction is that fusion will be commercial in several decades? What was my original statement again?

These dates were set ~20 years ago, and haven't changed much at all. Funding is always an issue, of course, since the global warming denialist crowd also thinks oil is limitless. 2045 still seems achievable, if little benefit to me personally.

Originally Posted by Vandal-72 ...

I agree that a solution is likely to be a mix of various technologies. However, none of those technologies will be inexpensive. Implementing them at the scale necessary will be a monumental undertaking. Integrating all of them together will be tremendously complicated and costly as well. Don't kid yourself into thinking all it will take is the decision to do it. It will be long arduous and costly in the short term.

World War Two cost approximately $14Trillion in 2012 dollars. The debt we created to pay for it was insignificant by the mid-1960s.

Originally Posted by Vandal-72 ...

Only reality (is complicated).

Conservation is not complicated. It only needs to be encouraged in a more vigorous way. If every cardboard box and aluminum can had a deposit on it, the recycling effort would mushroom. Encouraging the insulating of homes can be either carrot or stick ... or both, for that matter. We just need to secide to do it, and execute.

Originally Posted by Vandal-72 ...

Great. Liberal conspiracy theories. Just what our political process was in desperate need of!

ITER's goal is 500 MW sustained for 1000 seconds. And they hope to achieve that as "early" as 2027.

Plasma management is not trivial. There are many models that already exist, but they need to be tested in a real-world environment and refined.

At one time, we thought von Neumann machines were complicated and limited to doing serial calculations. How's that concept working for you now?

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

This is unnecessary. We can have a vibrant economy with diverse goods and services, and do it in a low impact manner. Instead of coal-fired electricity, we can have nuclear (fission now and fusion later). Automobiles can be electric or hybrids at the very least. And the greatest source of enegy with no carbon foot print and very low cost: conservation.

Are these anathema to the right? If so, why?

They are anathema because they do not work. Get real. Do you drive a Chevy volt?

Originally Posted by Vandal-72

Year to year increases are due to human activity. The changing isotope ratios of atmospheric carbon demonstrate that. I did mention that occasionally huge natural events will add small bumps to a particular year's change. But, prior to industrialization, carbon entering the atmosphere was typically balanced out by carbon leaving it. That balance no longer exists and the excess carbon entering the atmosphere is "old" carbon from fossil fuels. We can measure it!



In other words, you have no idea what sacrifices we might want to make to deal with the problem but you are totally against them none the less. Sounds legit.

The point is that climate has changed independent of carbon.

WE know the sacrifices. Energy prices will skyrocket. Even the president gets that.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

And since we have solar and wind, we don't even need nuclear. But what we lack is the renewable resource of political will. But, at least if the Republicans don't get let back in the big white house, fuel standards are high enough that eventually the cars will go electric and to other alternatives.

They are anathema to the right, because anything that challenges business and its money, or anything else of the status quo, is anathema to the right.

solar and wind at a 100,000 dollar a year subsidy.

Originally Posted by Vandal-72

No. Carbon dioxide is about heat. Heat and temperature are not the same thing. The sooner you understand the difference, the sooner we can have an informed discussion about heat redistribution and its affects on different regions.



It's not "what I think", it's what the data shows.



Temperature? You don't really understand what the word climate means, do you?

Heat has something to do with temperature. Don't be a pedantic jerk.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Conservative libertarians are only concerned about the "freedom" of "free" enterprise; "freedom" for businessmen to screw the rest of us without "interference in their lives."

Businessmen can't "screw" anybody outside of force (which they don't have in a libertarian society) or fraud (which is stil against the law, even in a libertarian society).

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

They are anathema because they do not work. Get real. Do you drive a Chevy volt?

I own a Prius, and it works just fine. In fact, an owner of an older Prius noted that his has just under 200,000 miles on it, and still has the original brakes. Regnerative braking saves energy too.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Heat has something to do with temperature. Don't be a pedantic jerk.

1) Heat is one form of energy. One might meditate on the equation associated with specific heat.

2) I'm not sure if he can help it.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Businessmen can't "screw" anybody outside of force (which they don't have in a libertarian society) or fraud (which is still against the law, even in a libertarian society).

Then businessmen should give up government protection of their money and property rights, given by the government and enforced by government force.

They should turn over all hiring and firing rights to workers and unions, and in fact should all become employee owned. All wages and working conditions should be made extremely fair, as decided by the workers, with no need for government oversight.

They should never pollute or cause environmental damage in any way. They should make products and services that harm no-one and nothing, and always do what they promise; and if they don't, should immediately and voluntarily give all requested refunds and compensation without any need for legal intervention.

They should forthwith give up all attempts to lobby the government to make it do their bidding.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Businessmen can't "screw" anybody outside of force (which they don't have in a libertarian society) or fraud (which is stil against the law, even in a libertarian society).

Abject need, especially when used for the manipulation of people, is force.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

The point is that climate has changed independent of carbon.

WE know the sacrifices. Energy prices will skyrocket. Even the president gets that.

Are you saying that the climate has changed, but carbon had nothing to do with it, or that you don't know what caused it and don't care?

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

The point is that climate has changed independent of carbon.

The facts are that fossil fuel use has caused climate change to skyrocket much more than before.

WE know the sacrifices. Energy prices will skyrocket. Even the president gets that.

The prices could hardly be worse than what the oil and gasoline companies are charging us now, or should I say gouging us. The thing they need is some competition from alternatives.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

solar and wind at a 100,000 dollar a year subsidy.

What do you think we have paid to subsidize oil and gas over the 100+ years we've been extracting them? How much would that be in 2012 dollars?

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Businessmen can't "screw" anybody outside of force (which they don't have in a libertarian society) or fraud (which is stil against the law, even in a libertarian society).

Cartels and monopolies are not disallowed by libertarianism, and both create environments where extortion is possible. Of course, you are free to starve if the price of food is higher than you wish to pay.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

What do you think we have paid to subsidize oil and gas over the 100+ years we've been extracting them? How much would that be in 2012 dollars?

Some of the wars and intrigues of the Twentieth Century have been over oil. The Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in WWII was for oil. The German invasion of the USSR had the motivation of seizing the oil fields of Azerbaijan and Nazi diplomacy attempted to align Iran and Iraq as partners in crime to deny oil to Britain. The Allies made numerous air raids on Ploiesti, center of the Romanian oil industry. Both Gulf wars were over the oil and the economic activity that the oil could underpin. War machines run on oil.

The oil companies promoted the car-based commuting which built the suburbs that replaced the farms surrounding the great cities. Such replaced one set of inexpensive infrastructure (rail lines and trolleys) with something much more expensive.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Are you saying that the climate has changed, but carbon had nothing to do with it, or that you don't know what caused it and don't care?

Yes, and while we here in the Midwest haven't noticed that much difference except for the radially warm March we had this year which brought out the leaves and blossoms a month ahead of schedule, one could look to the desert southwest for proof. A few days ago when I was browsing the weather archives for Phoenix, a half-century ago their 100 degree temps were pretty much over by mid-September, with nights falling into the 60's. Now you don't see that happening until mid-October. It was still 104 for the high there yesterday.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Cartels and monopolies are not disallowed by libertarianism, and both create environments where extortion is possible. Of course, you are free to starve if the price of food is higher than you wish to pay.

You sound like a man who has invented a new system where cartels and monopolies are disallowed. So let's hear it.

Originally Posted by B Butler

World's fish to get smaller as oceans warm

I'm not saying that this is the major cause of the smaller fish already being observed, but as we were talking about fish sizes a few days ago, I thought I'd throw this up. For discussion purposes...

Interesting. I'll have to look at what levels of oxygenation they were modeling and see what max size reductions they predict.

Of course, as you said none of this has anything to do with the original claim.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Jeesh! I thought I was a pessimist. Yes, there are costs. The real question, which you don't know and neither do I, is how much pain for how much gain? Seabed mining is mostly an unknown at the moment, but we do know that there is a lot of readily available deposits there for the taking. What does it cost to extract a billion kilos of mineral-rich nodules just sitting on the sea floor? We know where they easy pickings lie, and the mineral content is high value.

You said it was just "there" and implied that it would be a simple process of signing a treaty before we just go get it.

I simply pointed out that there is nothing "simple" about it. I'm not a pessimist, rather a realist.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Modulars are designed to be built in a factory and moved by rail. Just that alone cuts deployment and decommissioning costs by 30-75%. If new Mexico gets its way, and provides a home for waste disposal in its salt domes, this may get even better.

That's a mighty big "if" in the current political climate.

If fission picks up 20-25%, is that insignificant? I thnk that is a low-end estimate, frankly. If we permit Breeders, the percentage could rise ... a lot.

25% of our current demand or 25% of the projected demand? 25% of current demand only covers the projected increase in demand over the next few decades. That wouldn't be enough to take a single current coal plant offline at all. We would continue to emit carbon at our current rate!

These dates were set ~20 years ago, and haven't changed much at all. Funding is always an issue, of course, since the global warming denialist crowd also thinks oil is limitless. 2045 still seems achievable, if little benefit to me personally.

And how long before it is scalable enough to make an impact? Like I said, fusion is not relevant to our current energy dilemma.

World War Two cost approximately $14Trillion in 2012 dollars. The debt we created to pay for it was insignificant by the mid-1960s.

I think a low-carbon energy system would also be capable of returning huge on initial costs as well. But, look what kind of crisis it took to create that WWII industrial juggernaut. Will climate change be the issue that begins the regeneracy or is it the crisis event at the end of the turning?

Conservation is not complicated. It only needs to be encouraged in a more vigorous way. If every cardboard box and aluminum can had a deposit on it, the recycling effort would mushroom. Encouraging the insulating of homes can be either carrot or stick ... or both, for that matter. We just need to secide to do it, and execute.

Conservation, while important, is at best a way to extend our current energy system. The problem is that our current energy system is already too much for the climate to absorb. Conservation must be combined with alternative technology that significantly reduces emissions.

Plasma management is not trivial. There are many models that already exist, but they need to be tested in a real-world environment and refined.

At one time, we thought von Neumann machines were complicated and limited to doing serial calculations. How's that concept working for you now?

Ironic choice for an analogy. Von Neumann engines were worked out theoretically at the same time as fusion! Eighty years later Von Neumann tech is everywhere but fusion is not. That's the problem with only understanding through analogy. The details are important. The basic principles involved in controlled fusion are fundamentally much, much more difficult to achieve.

Stars make use of fusion because they are capable of harnessing the weakest fundamental force, gravity, by virtue of scale. Humans, by virtue of our own scale, can not use the same force. We must make due with electromagnetism instead of gravity. That requires that we expend a great deal of energy ourselves just to contain the fusion reaction let alone maintain it.

Fission is fundamentally self-sustaining, if set up correctly. Fusion is fundamentally self-quenching, no matter how you set it up. Controlled fission is child's play when compared to controlled fusion.