4 ms·

While I agree Nuclear is the most probable solution it's not easy to build and fuel is very sparse. France who is leading the way is 100% depend on other countr

by h1fra 5y ago

While I agree Nuclear is the most probable solution it's not easy to build and fuel is very sparse. France who is leading the way is 100% depend on other countries, I'm not sure it will play well in the coming years > 85% of uranium is produced in six countries: Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia, Namibia, Niger, and Russia. And the second issue is to focus on electricity production, while there is a ton a other things creating pollution. You won't save the planet if you still have thousands of ships on the sea and planes in the air; meat and clothes production too... There are a dozen of topics to be addressed, with multiple solutions and I would say none of them are being really tackled. (except energy in the less efficient way = no green worldwide grid)

FabHK 5y ago
> You won't save the planet if you still have thousands of ships on the sea and planes in the air Aviation contributes only 2% of global air pollution, though maybe 5% of global greenhouse effect (due to the high altitudes airplanes operate at). Textile production, indeed, contributes more to climate change than aviation and maritime shipping combined [1]. However, with abundant electricity you can switch many transportation modes to electric, and (where technical constraints don't allow that yet, eg intercontinental aviation) maybe utilise synthetic fuels. > I would say none of them are being really tackled I would say many challenges are being tackled, and the intensity will increase even further. [1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20201208STO93327/the-impact-of-textile-production-and-waste-on-the-environment-infographic https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/202...
- m4rtink 5y ago
  Synthetic aviation fuels are effectively a fuel-air battery as long as you pull in CO2 from the air making it.
  - bertil 5y ago
    The altitude thing makes it a little more complicated than that, but… yes, essentially: 1. any flight that could be a train journey, make it so; if anything, luxury high-speed train is so much more enjoyable that whatever flying allows at the same cost; there will be electric short-distance planes soon, but we probably want to use those for over-seas journeys; 2. no matter what source of CO2 will remain after we address ICE cars, coal, red meat, dairy, cement and much more, we will need to go negative to restore sanity to the climate, so pulling CO2 will be essential. The message is: all hands on deck, starting by the big stuff. Flying isn’t huge, but it needs addressing.
    - m4rtink 5y ago
      BTW, there are already quite a few electric planes in "production" use in the form of electric self-starting gliders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_glider#Electric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_glider#Electric Basically, some gliders do have an auxiliary engine they can use to avoid ditching it the fields or possibly even to self launch from an airfield without the need for another place to tow them aloft or a glider winch. Traditionally this engine used to be petrol powered and most still are, but electric ones are proliferating quickly as they have quite a few advantages. For one they are much more likely to actually start if needed during flight, as there is much less moving pieces and oil/fuel that can go bad during prolonged periods of not being used. The startup is basically instant so you can keep lower margin before deciding you will not find that next thermal and engine power is needed. The limited range is not much of an issue for a glider as its build to fly between thermals without an engine anyway, this being very efficient with insane glide ratios. The online just needs to compensate the few meters per second of height lost before you find the next upwards going column of air or to reach the next airport, so that your friends don't have to fetch your from the middle of the field + you can avoid the field disassembly of the plane to a the trailer. For self-starting gliders electrical power also makes sense, as they really need a lot of power for just a few minutes to get to height and can then shut the engine down. A compact battery & electric motor provides just that.
      - bertil 5y ago
        I know, it’s awesome. The best part is that they are trialling the commercial options where I am (Northern Sweden) so I should be able to fly soon in one of those and go to Stockholm under one hour without polluting.
    - elproxy 5y ago
      A lot more complicated than that in fact [0]. CO2 is only causing 1/3 of the radiative forcing. High atmosphere chemical interactions and contrails have a massive impact. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231020305689 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135223102...
- lutorm 5y ago
  According to these guys, industrial process heat accounts for larger emissions than electricity and transportation: https://www.absolicon.com/ https://www.absolicon.com/ The nice thing is that it's easy to make heat with higher efficiency than going through electricity.
- elproxy 5y ago
  > Aviation contributes only 2% of global air pollution Whataboutism, one of the identified discourses of climate delay [0]. Besides, the proportion of radiative forcing (what actually matters) caused by aviation is more than twice that [1]. [0]https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainability/article/discourses-of-climate-delay/7B11B722E3E3454BB6212378E32985A7 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainabilit... [1]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231020305689 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135223102...
  - FabHK 5y ago
    0. It's not Whataboutism, though. I don't point to an entirely different problem and say, what about that. I say, if we want to tackle climate change, we ought to target the most effective and cost efficient reductions in order to get the most results with the least cost. And there I say that aviation is just a small part of the problem, so, say, even entirely dismantling aviation would not solve the problem. 1. Yes, as I said immediately following the part you quoted: > though maybe 5% of global greenhouse effect
    - elproxy 5y ago
      From the article linked above: "(...) We call this whataboutism. Actors advancing this discourse often deploy statistics demonstrating their own small contribution to global emissions, or they point to large emitters such as China – “We are a nation that produces 1.8 per cent of global carbon dioxide, so I do not get closing down our aluminium smelters, most of our steel production, and now our refining industry …” " Either we start giving get out of jail free cards to specific sectors and so on or we agree that everything needs to reduce its emissions by ~8%/year from now on, regardless of their share in total emissions, and of how hard it is technically to decarbonize.
xkjkls 5y ago
Third is the political problem. The international community has some tight limitations on who can refine Uranium. That's reasonable in a lot of ways as an effort to limit nuclear proliferation, but countries don't exactly like being put in the position that they can produce nuclear energy but only if 100% of their supply chain is outsourced to current Western powers.
jandrewrogers 5y ago
Greatly reducing meat production, particularly beef and other ruminants, will have a smaller effect than many people expect. Even if we don't eat them, vast numbers of ruminants will still need to exist because they are a critical part of natural ecosystems. Humans made space for their preferred ruminants, like beef, by displacing vast populations of other ruminants which have similar climate impact. I don't think most people fully appreciate just how large the natural population was before we started raising beef at scale. Even if we eliminated the beef herds, other ruminant species would immediately start filling the vacuum.
- GVIrish 5y ago
  > Humans made space for their preferred ruminants, like beef, by displacing vast populations of other ruminants which have similar climate impact. I don't think most people fully appreciate just how large the natural population was before we started raising beef at scale. Even if we eliminated the beef herds, other ruminant species would immediately start filling the vacuum. The problem with beef farming is that vast amounts of forest are burned or clear cut to allow cattle to graze. That alone raises the carbon footprint of beef. Grass on the pasture definitely doesn't sequester much carbon. When we talk about wild ruminants, some regions that are used for cattle didn't have a bunch of ungulates on it before. South America for example didn't have huge herds of llamas roaming the lands. In North America Bison herds were estimated to number about 10 million, but right now there's somewhere around 90 million cattle in the US. Even if cattle farming was drastically reduced, it's unlikely Bison numbers would return to their historic amount. Deer are the other part of the picture, and their numbers would sky rocket, given the opportunity. But that's where managing their numbers and reintroducing predators comes in.
  - jandrewrogers 5y ago
    I don’t know where you are getting data for ruminants in North America. Historical estimates for bison are 60 million prior to systematic extermination, at least 10 million for elk, 50-100 million for deer, plus pronghorn, moose, etc in the many millions each. Bison may not rebound very quickly but something needs to fill the bison niche in the ecosystem. It is well-understood that several other native species undergo population declines and reducing biodiversity when beef herds are moved out of a region long-term. Cattle and bison are very substitutable for this purpose (and are related species). Deer fill in much faster than most other species of ruminants in North America, usually detrimentally.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
> 85% of uranium is produced in six countries: Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia, Namibia, Niger, and Russia. So there is a major uranium producer in every corner of the world? That's better than oil and many elements critical in electronic. Like whats your benchmark" it cant be as common as dirt.
- m4rtink 5y ago
  This is definitely a non-exhaustive list - for example a lot of initial Soviet Uranium stock was mined in the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia) and contributed to it being forced to the Soviet sphere of influence. Some references: https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/servlets/purl/20224726 https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/servlets/purl/20224726 https://www.suro.cz/cz/vyzkum/vysledky/strategie-rizeni-napravy-uzemi-po-radiacni-havarii/iaea-workshop-for-the-fukushima-prefecture/Uranium%20mining%20history%20in%20Czech%20Republic.pdf https://www.suro.cz/cz/vyzkum/vysledky/strategie-rizeni-napr... While most of the mines are no longer active I'm sure there are still reserves that could be mined by modern methods (ideally without political prisoners doing the mining this time) and I'm sure there are more places like this.
outworlder 5y ago
> > 85% of uranium is produced in six countries: Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia, Namibia, Niger, and Russia. What about thorium? Other elements?

by h1fra 5y ago

FabHK 5y ago

> You won't save the planet if you still have thousands of ships on the sea and planes in the air Aviation contributes only 2% of global air pollution, though maybe 5% of global greenhouse effect (due to the high altitudes airplanes operate at). Textile production, indeed, contributes more to climate change than aviation and maritime shipping combined [1]. However, with abundant electricity you can switch many transportation modes to electric, and (where technical constraints don't allow that yet, eg intercontinental aviation) maybe utilise synthetic fuels. > I would say none of them are being really tackled I would say many challenges are being tackled, and the intensity will increase even further. [1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20201208STO93327/the-impact-of-textile-production-and-waste-on-the-environment-infographic https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/202...

m4rtink 5y ago
Synthetic aviation fuels are effectively a fuel-air battery as long as you pull in CO2 from the air making it.
- bertil 5y ago
  The altitude thing makes it a little more complicated than that, but… yes, essentially: 1. any flight that could be a train journey, make it so; if anything, luxury high-speed train is so much more enjoyable that whatever flying allows at the same cost; there will be electric short-distance planes soon, but we probably want to use those for over-seas journeys; 2. no matter what source of CO2 will remain after we address ICE cars, coal, red meat, dairy, cement and much more, we will need to go negative to restore sanity to the climate, so pulling CO2 will be essential. The message is: all hands on deck, starting by the big stuff. Flying isn’t huge, but it needs addressing.
  - m4rtink 5y ago
    BTW, there are already quite a few electric planes in "production" use in the form of electric self-starting gliders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_glider#Electric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_glider#Electric Basically, some gliders do have an auxiliary engine they can use to avoid ditching it the fields or possibly even to self launch from an airfield without the need for another place to tow them aloft or a glider winch. Traditionally this engine used to be petrol powered and most still are, but electric ones are proliferating quickly as they have quite a few advantages. For one they are much more likely to actually start if needed during flight, as there is much less moving pieces and oil/fuel that can go bad during prolonged periods of not being used. The startup is basically instant so you can keep lower margin before deciding you will not find that next thermal and engine power is needed. The limited range is not much of an issue for a glider as its build to fly between thermals without an engine anyway, this being very efficient with insane glide ratios. The online just needs to compensate the few meters per second of height lost before you find the next upwards going column of air or to reach the next airport, so that your friends don't have to fetch your from the middle of the field + you can avoid the field disassembly of the plane to a the trailer. For self-starting gliders electrical power also makes sense, as they really need a lot of power for just a few minutes to get to height and can then shut the engine down. A compact battery & electric motor provides just that.
    - bertil 5y ago
      I know, it’s awesome. The best part is that they are trialling the commercial options where I am (Northern Sweden) so I should be able to fly soon in one of those and go to Stockholm under one hour without polluting.
  - elproxy 5y ago
    A lot more complicated than that in fact [0]. CO2 is only causing 1/3 of the radiative forcing. High atmosphere chemical interactions and contrails have a massive impact. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231020305689 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135223102...
lutorm 5y ago
According to these guys, industrial process heat accounts for larger emissions than electricity and transportation: https://www.absolicon.com/ https://www.absolicon.com/ The nice thing is that it's easy to make heat with higher efficiency than going through electricity.
elproxy 5y ago
> Aviation contributes only 2% of global air pollution Whataboutism, one of the identified discourses of climate delay [0]. Besides, the proportion of radiative forcing (what actually matters) caused by aviation is more than twice that [1]. [0]https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainability/article/discourses-of-climate-delay/7B11B722E3E3454BB6212378E32985A7 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainabilit... [1]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231020305689 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135223102...
- FabHK 5y ago
  0. It's not Whataboutism, though. I don't point to an entirely different problem and say, what about that. I say, if we want to tackle climate change, we ought to target the most effective and cost efficient reductions in order to get the most results with the least cost. And there I say that aviation is just a small part of the problem, so, say, even entirely dismantling aviation would not solve the problem. 1. Yes, as I said immediately following the part you quoted: > though maybe 5% of global greenhouse effect
  - elproxy 5y ago
    From the article linked above: "(...) We call this whataboutism. Actors advancing this discourse often deploy statistics demonstrating their own small contribution to global emissions, or they point to large emitters such as China – “We are a nation that produces 1.8 per cent of global carbon dioxide, so I do not get closing down our aluminium smelters, most of our steel production, and now our refining industry …” " Either we start giving get out of jail free cards to specific sectors and so on or we agree that everything needs to reduce its emissions by ~8%/year from now on, regardless of their share in total emissions, and of how hard it is technically to decarbonize.

xkjkls 5y ago

Third is the political problem. The international community has some tight limitations on who can refine Uranium. That's reasonable in a lot of ways as an effort to limit nuclear proliferation, but countries don't exactly like being put in the position that they can produce nuclear energy but only if 100% of their supply chain is outsourced to current Western powers.

jandrewrogers 5y ago

Greatly reducing meat production, particularly beef and other ruminants, will have a smaller effect than many people expect. Even if we don't eat them, vast numbers of ruminants will still need to exist because they are a critical part of natural ecosystems. Humans made space for their preferred ruminants, like beef, by displacing vast populations of other ruminants which have similar climate impact. I don't think most people fully appreciate just how large the natural population was before we started raising beef at scale. Even if we eliminated the beef herds, other ruminant species would immediately start filling the vacuum.

GVIrish 5y ago
> Humans made space for their preferred ruminants, like beef, by displacing vast populations of other ruminants which have similar climate impact. I don't think most people fully appreciate just how large the natural population was before we started raising beef at scale. Even if we eliminated the beef herds, other ruminant species would immediately start filling the vacuum. The problem with beef farming is that vast amounts of forest are burned or clear cut to allow cattle to graze. That alone raises the carbon footprint of beef. Grass on the pasture definitely doesn't sequester much carbon. When we talk about wild ruminants, some regions that are used for cattle didn't have a bunch of ungulates on it before. South America for example didn't have huge herds of llamas roaming the lands. In North America Bison herds were estimated to number about 10 million, but right now there's somewhere around 90 million cattle in the US. Even if cattle farming was drastically reduced, it's unlikely Bison numbers would return to their historic amount. Deer are the other part of the picture, and their numbers would sky rocket, given the opportunity. But that's where managing their numbers and reintroducing predators comes in.
- jandrewrogers 5y ago
  I don’t know where you are getting data for ruminants in North America. Historical estimates for bison are 60 million prior to systematic extermination, at least 10 million for elk, 50-100 million for deer, plus pronghorn, moose, etc in the many millions each. Bison may not rebound very quickly but something needs to fill the bison niche in the ecosystem. It is well-understood that several other native species undergo population declines and reducing biodiversity when beef herds are moved out of a region long-term. Cattle and bison are very substitutable for this purpose (and are related species). Deer fill in much faster than most other species of ruminants in North America, usually detrimentally.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

> 85% of uranium is produced in six countries: Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia, Namibia, Niger, and Russia. So there is a major uranium producer in every corner of the world? That's better than oil and many elements critical in electronic. Like whats your benchmark" it cant be as common as dirt.

m4rtink 5y ago
This is definitely a non-exhaustive list - for example a lot of initial Soviet Uranium stock was mined in the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia) and contributed to it being forced to the Soviet sphere of influence. Some references: https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/servlets/purl/20224726 https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/servlets/purl/20224726 https://www.suro.cz/cz/vyzkum/vysledky/strategie-rizeni-napravy-uzemi-po-radiacni-havarii/iaea-workshop-for-the-fukushima-prefecture/Uranium%20mining%20history%20in%20Czech%20Republic.pdf https://www.suro.cz/cz/vyzkum/vysledky/strategie-rizeni-napr... While most of the mines are no longer active I'm sure there are still reserves that could be mined by modern methods (ideally without political prisoners doing the mining this time) and I'm sure there are more places like this.

outworlder 5y ago

> > 85% of uranium is produced in six countries: Kazakhstan, Canada, Australia, Namibia, Niger, and Russia. What about thorium? Other elements?