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I've never understood why people wouldn't just figure something out as global warming gets worse. There's lots of nuclear power plants out there, shut down for

I've never understood why people wouldn't just figure something out as global warming gets worse. There's lots of nuclear power plants out there, shut down for political reasons, that'd be ready to go in weeks if you didn't have all the anti-nuclear protests, for starters. There's also geo-engineering and such - spraying black stuff in the atmosphere to reduce the amount of incoming sunlight. The idea that humanity couldn't deal with this situation if it spent anywhere in the ballpark of 100% of its resources on it seems to me frankly laughable.

sellyme 5y ago
> I've never understood why people wouldn't just figure something out as global warming gets worse. We've just seen first-hand evidence that millions of people could be dying and some would find it politically expedient to pretend that it wasn't actually occurring. We absolutely have the resources and capability to solve these problems. We just don't have the will or the policy.
- heartbeats 5y ago
  > We've just seen first-hand evidence that millions of people could be dying and some would find it politically expedient to pretend that it wasn't actually occurring. I'm sorry, I don't follow, who do you mean? Colonialism? The Uighurs in China? People in India/Pakistan? Possible victims of global warming? The Holocaust? >We just don't have the will or the policy. Right, that's what I mean. The minute things get anywhere near serious, people are gonna figure something out real quick. Restarting the nuclear power plants and closing the coal plants would take weeks, be profitable in economic terms, and hugely reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The fact that nobody's done this means we aren't serious about it. I mean, if you were really serious, you would just deregulate nuclear power totally. If the estimates of the harms of global warming are true, you could take 1 Chernobyl-scale incident per year and still come out on top. The fact that nobody's done this means we aren't serious about it. The combination of facts that (1) we aren't serious about this and (2) there's plenty of low-hanging fruit we could reap if we were, leads me to believe this will not really be a problem, as soon as we do get serious about it.
  - ix101 5y ago
    Maybe he's referring to what has been dominating news headlines for the past 14 months.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    Can we really stop a planet sized chain reaction? We can’t even pass carbon taxes, there are many many climate change deniers, so unfortunately I can’t see a too bright future ahead. Sure, human technology is super advanced, but we are no play for the elements.
  - elproxy 5y ago
    Nuclear’s problem is not regulation, it’s that it is relatively slow to come online with large upfront investments. It’s simply not well aligned with the current financial world. The “fix” for this within the neoliberal paradigm would be to do the same as with renewables: have the state put long term price guarantees and subsidies for it. Alas, unlike renewables, this doesn’t also create a market for gas producers, so very little chance for it to happen magically if you ask me.
gbrown 5y ago
That’s a very common line of reasoning which I would call magical thinking. Sure, there’s not really any risk that humans will go extinct in the near future, but our technological global civilization is much more fragile. First, we look at the numbers concerning best case scenarios and see that a few degrees of warming is basically inevitable. Then, we ask how likely it is that well make rapid corrections now - personally I see little evidence of that, but I hope I’m wrong. Next, try to remember that nothing in the world is disconnected. There’s a long scholarship concerning resource conflict and the destabilizing effects of mass migration. We don’t have a good track record of dealing with this, and I see little reason to expect us to become better at it soon. The geoengineering idea is especially ludicrous to me - what we’re really talking about are emergency uncontrolled experiments to stave off a worse disaster. We’ve organized our entire global economic system around carbon - any geoengineering project has to not only compete with that, but actively remove more carbon from the atmosphere, which is a problem you’re underestimating the difficulty of. Meanwhile, we need to worry about positive feedback cycles from various sources of methane, and the rest of the related threats to our biosphere (ocean acidification, wildfire, extreme weather). To close, what has humanity done to convince you that we’ll 100% restructure our society to collaboratively solve this crisis “once it gets bad enough”?
- heartbeats 5y ago
  > our technological global civilization Good riddance. If our technological global civilization results in conditions that make technological global civilization impossible, then so be it. It wasn't fit to exist to begin with. It's a self-regulating problem. > There’s a long scholarship concerning resource conflict and the destabilizing effects of mass migration. We don’t have a good track record of dealing with this, and I see little reason to expect us to become better at it soon. I don't know what you mean here - are you suggesting mass migration is inevitable? > The geoengineering idea is especially ludicrous to me - what we’re really talking about are emergency uncontrolled experiments to stave off a worse disaster. We’ve organized our entire global economic system around carbon - any geoengineering project has to not only compete with that, but actively remove more carbon from the atmosphere, which is a problem you’re underestimating the difficulty of. No, I mean spraying dust into the atmosphere to make it darker, so less sunlight comes in. It's not just a matter of economy - people aren't even picking the low-hanging fruit. If any country wanted to severely cut CO2 emissions, there's a simple thing they could do: 1) reopen all the closed nuclear plants 2) deregulate nuclear power plant construction, focus on mass producing cheap power plants with no regard for safety 3) shut down the coal plants 4) throw everyone who protests in prison Obviously, this isn't done because all of these steps are politically impossible. But it just goes to show - if we were serious about this, we'd have picked the low-hanging fruit already. If we haven't even picked the low-hanging fruit yet, how can you say it's impossible? > To close, what has humanity done to convince you that we’ll 100% restructure our society to collaboratively solve this crisis “once it gets bad enough”? It's like people procrastinating their homework until 5 minutes before the deadline. Eventually they'll get it done.

sellyme 5y ago

> I've never understood why people wouldn't just figure something out as global warming gets worse. We've just seen first-hand evidence that millions of people could be dying and some would find it politically expedient to pretend that it wasn't actually occurring. We absolutely have the resources and capability to solve these problems. We just don't have the will or the policy.

heartbeats 5y ago
> We've just seen first-hand evidence that millions of people could be dying and some would find it politically expedient to pretend that it wasn't actually occurring. I'm sorry, I don't follow, who do you mean? Colonialism? The Uighurs in China? People in India/Pakistan? Possible victims of global warming? The Holocaust? >We just don't have the will or the policy. Right, that's what I mean. The minute things get anywhere near serious, people are gonna figure something out real quick. Restarting the nuclear power plants and closing the coal plants would take weeks, be profitable in economic terms, and hugely reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The fact that nobody's done this means we aren't serious about it. I mean, if you were really serious, you would just deregulate nuclear power totally. If the estimates of the harms of global warming are true, you could take 1 Chernobyl-scale incident per year and still come out on top. The fact that nobody's done this means we aren't serious about it. The combination of facts that (1) we aren't serious about this and (2) there's plenty of low-hanging fruit we could reap if we were, leads me to believe this will not really be a problem, as soon as we do get serious about it.
- ix101 5y ago
  Maybe he's referring to what has been dominating news headlines for the past 14 months.
- kaba0 5y ago
  Can we really stop a planet sized chain reaction? We can’t even pass carbon taxes, there are many many climate change deniers, so unfortunately I can’t see a too bright future ahead. Sure, human technology is super advanced, but we are no play for the elements.
- elproxy 5y ago
  Nuclear’s problem is not regulation, it’s that it is relatively slow to come online with large upfront investments. It’s simply not well aligned with the current financial world. The “fix” for this within the neoliberal paradigm would be to do the same as with renewables: have the state put long term price guarantees and subsidies for it. Alas, unlike renewables, this doesn’t also create a market for gas producers, so very little chance for it to happen magically if you ask me.

gbrown 5y ago

That’s a very common line of reasoning which I would call magical thinking. Sure, there’s not really any risk that humans will go extinct in the near future, but our technological global civilization is much more fragile. First, we look at the numbers concerning best case scenarios and see that a few degrees of warming is basically inevitable. Then, we ask how likely it is that well make rapid corrections now - personally I see little evidence of that, but I hope I’m wrong. Next, try to remember that nothing in the world is disconnected. There’s a long scholarship concerning resource conflict and the destabilizing effects of mass migration. We don’t have a good track record of dealing with this, and I see little reason to expect us to become better at it soon. The geoengineering idea is especially ludicrous to me - what we’re really talking about are emergency uncontrolled experiments to stave off a worse disaster. We’ve organized our entire global economic system around carbon - any geoengineering project has to not only compete with that, but actively remove more carbon from the atmosphere, which is a problem you’re underestimating the difficulty of. Meanwhile, we need to worry about positive feedback cycles from various sources of methane, and the rest of the related threats to our biosphere (ocean acidification, wildfire, extreme weather). To close, what has humanity done to convince you that we’ll 100% restructure our society to collaboratively solve this crisis “once it gets bad enough”?

heartbeats 5y ago
> our technological global civilization Good riddance. If our technological global civilization results in conditions that make technological global civilization impossible, then so be it. It wasn't fit to exist to begin with. It's a self-regulating problem. > There’s a long scholarship concerning resource conflict and the destabilizing effects of mass migration. We don’t have a good track record of dealing with this, and I see little reason to expect us to become better at it soon. I don't know what you mean here - are you suggesting mass migration is inevitable? > The geoengineering idea is especially ludicrous to me - what we’re really talking about are emergency uncontrolled experiments to stave off a worse disaster. We’ve organized our entire global economic system around carbon - any geoengineering project has to not only compete with that, but actively remove more carbon from the atmosphere, which is a problem you’re underestimating the difficulty of. No, I mean spraying dust into the atmosphere to make it darker, so less sunlight comes in. It's not just a matter of economy - people aren't even picking the low-hanging fruit. If any country wanted to severely cut CO2 emissions, there's a simple thing they could do: 1) reopen all the closed nuclear plants 2) deregulate nuclear power plant construction, focus on mass producing cheap power plants with no regard for safety 3) shut down the coal plants 4) throw everyone who protests in prison Obviously, this isn't done because all of these steps are politically impossible. But it just goes to show - if we were serious about this, we'd have picked the low-hanging fruit already. If we haven't even picked the low-hanging fruit yet, how can you say it's impossible? > To close, what has humanity done to convince you that we’ll 100% restructure our society to collaboratively solve this crisis “once it gets bad enough”? It's like people procrastinating their homework until 5 minutes before the deadline. Eventually they'll get it done.