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Every evidence I have seen so far points to the conclusion that it indeed might not happen as fast as we think: it might happen faster.
by atoav 3y ago
Every evidence I have seen so far points to the conclusion that it indeed might not happen as fast as we think: it might happen faster.
- addicted 3y agoYeah, there’s a lot of evidence that we may have grossly underestimated the feedback effects. On the flip side, we also underestimated the ability to switch to renewable sources (predictions of the cost and spread of renewable energy have been far too pessimistic going back 2 decades even though these estimates over the past decade or so adjusted for the fact that they were too pessimistic). Further, we’ve already started showing growth without using more energy which shows the tremendous efficiency improvements we’ve been able to make, and was something that wasn’t even considered possible. IOW, global warming is likely worse than we thought, but our ability to fight global warming and the actions we’ve already taken are also much better than most imagined. Which is why it’s so frustrating that we continue to not go big on many of the options to fight global warming that we have available to us.
- acdha 3y agoI’d also add that many of the changes have enormous clear wins for other reasons: fossil fuels are nasty, so even if global warming just disappeared in some sci-fi miracle we’d still save millions of lives annually and improve quality of life by not having internal combustion engines or methane gas appliances. Improving bike & transit infrastructure would make large populations healthier and save everyone a ton of money, etc.
- proc0 3y agoWell it's not happening fast enough for most climate change alarmists to consider building nuclear power. If it's such a threat surely we would trade nuclear waste problems for climate change.
- amanaplanacanal 3y agoNuclear appears to have two problems: it takes so long to build reactors that their solution comes too late, and they are way more expensive than renewables. I don’t have a problem with nuclear, but if wind (or solar) and storage is faster and cheaper, why bother?
- proc0 3y ago> I don’t have a problem with nuclear, but if wind (or solar) and storage is faster and cheaper, why bother? My understanding is that once nuclear plant is built the capacity vastly exceeds renewables my several orders of magnitude. A coordinated effort to build multiple power plants could probably get a large country to net zero in decades.
- igor47 3y ago> A coordinated effort This is begging the question. A coordinated effort will solve all our problems in many ways, and is exactly the hard thing about problems like climate change.
- Turskarama 3y agoPeople aren't interested in building nuclear because it's slower and more expensive than building renewables + storage.
- proc0 3y agoIs this per unit of power produced, and is it taking into consideration the maintenance costs? I don't know the answers but it seems we could be net zero if we had invested in nuclear for more than four decades since climate change was widely accepted. Renewables are great but until battery tech becomes good enough it is not as viable as current nuclear tech.
- weard_beard 3y agoA nuclear world is a world without the possibility of war. I’m not ready to live in a globally “average” culture. That’s a dictatorship where I have few rights, minorities are jailed or mass murdered, and there is very little economic mobility. A global nuclear society requires a global cultural utopia.
- proc0 3y agoI'm not sure that follows. Some countries would reach that goal first and then the others could get the technology eventually, or even if they don't if most of the large countries switch to nuclear it seems it would take care of the main problem.