The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[RustyLugNut]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

We know that carbon dioxide is driving climate change. It is never a good thing to ignore facts. The tobacco industry denied that nicotine was addictive, and that smoking causes cancer and many other harmful things. That denial of facts was very harmful to a lot of people, and a few people profited by ignoring that harm.

Same thing for leaded gasoline - it needed "more study" they said. Then we got MBTE, which is also quite harmful.

But, along the corollary to the increase in CO2 has been the increase in human affects to the biosphere. Huge increases in city-scapes that change the albedo severely. Huge swaths of land changed over from grass and forest to farm or housing and roads. The minuscule addition of coal and other particulates to the albedo of the icecaps drastically changes the melt rate. The health of the oceans' abilities to absorb and buffer changes in CO2. These and other factors are poorly studied, but combined could affect global warming more strategically than CO2 alone. A more all encompassing climate model that can delineate from various factors is needed. Leaders are making a multi-trillion dollar bet that they have the solutions in hand by signing agreements which only restrict a portion of the worlds population ( the most wealthy ) to a single factor ( CO2 ) leaving the rest to function freely and erode many of the gains hoped for in the agreement.

And the use of tobacco as a parallel to climate change is a common but erroneous practice by climate change supporters. You cannot adequately disengage the other factors affecting climate change from those caused by CO2 alone. With tobacco, you can take millions of data points and create a vector path that is clear and concise. We have but one world data point. We have to get this right.

I am not against renewable energy, I just am a realist when it comes to the actual implementation of such diffuse power. I have a business that uses electricity and natural gas to machine and fabricate. I cannot use renewables as a sole source of power for such concentrated power needs. And I am a small business. Yes, I benefit from the low cost of the excess wind and solar generated electricity, but those are huge farms that you cannot get in other regions of the world.

Nuclear power is the obvious answer to the need for distributed and dense power. Economic pressures will change the views of the masses as all other energy sources will be unable to provide for a world population that is projected to grow another 40% in the course of the Paris Agreements. Nuclear, coupled with judicious use of renewables will allow the world population to stabilize and find an elevated standard of living.

I would much rather put my trillions of dollars into modular nuclear reactors and advanced climate models than tie myself to a poorly structured agreement that will hamper economies and the ability truly affect the climate effectively.

[freebeard]

I agree with your conclusion, for certain values of 'nuclear' (helium3). Cigarettes were called 'coffin nails' from 1910.

I have a business that uses electricity and natural gas to machine and fabricate.

The reason additive manufacturing will eat your lunch is because it saves 95% on energy and materials. The 'advanced climate models' you ask for are here now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSKIqe8muXs

[RustyLugNut]

Originally Posted by freebeard

I agree with your conclusion, for certain values of 'nuclear' (helium3). Cigarettes were called 'coffin nails' from 1910.



The reason additive manufacturing will eat your lunch is because it saves 95% on energy and materials. The 'advanced climate models' you ask for are here now:

Link Cut

It has it's place, but it will need very expensive energy inputs and far greater rapidity of production to replace even the smallest of what I do. People often tout their 3D printers and yet you are limited by the materials that printer can use and the speed you can produce that printed part. I use 3D printers to make a master model that is used to produce a wax part to be used in the thousands of year old art of lost wax molding. I can produce hundreds of parts in hundreds of metal alloys in the fraction of time a room full of 3D printers would need currently. Yes, there are sintering metal printers. But have you seen the cost and energy consumption of some of those printers? Go out to Westec or some such manufacturing convention and somebody will sell you a system for the price of your house. If you live along the beach in California. If not, you will need a loan.

Though interesting, that video is hardly a "climate model". It is applicable to climatology but certainly not a model.

And advanced nuclear fission can bridge us to the fusion age without resorting to having to collect or produce such a diffuse material such as Helium3.

[oil pan 4]

Commercial nuclear fusion could still be 50 years away.
Thorium was tested in the 1960s or 1970s and it doesn't produce the long lived radioactive byproducts that comes with uranium and plutonium fission. By long lived I mean 99.9% of the radioactivity has burned it's self out in 40 years, when the waste is separated from the fuel. Typically no more than 10% of the nuclear fuel is consumed before it's too unstable for continued use.
When you leave the waste and the fuel together, it it becomes more unstabile as it sits, lasts thousands of years and the raw waste will melt down if cooling water circulation is stopped.

[RustyLugNut]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Commercial nuclear fusion could still be 50 years away.
Thorium was tested in the 1960s or 1970s and it doesn't produce the long lived radioactive byproducts that comes with uranium and plutonium fission. By long lived I mean 99.9% of the radioactivity has burned it's self out in 40 years, when the waste is separated from the fuel. Typically no more than 10% of the nuclear fuel is consumed before it's too unstable for continued use.
When you leave the waste and the fuel together, it it becomes more unstabile as it sits, lasts thousands of years and the raw waste will melt down if cooling water circulation is stopped.

The ignorant, fear-mongering crowd has so poisoned the masses that moving forward with advanced fission reactors is prohibitively expensive and time consuming. It is going to happen, but more than likely in China or India as the West has lost its initiative due to our lack of political will.

[freebeard]

I highly doubt additive manufacturing will "eat my lunch".
...
Though interesting, that video is hardly a "climate model".

Atomic diffusion printing allows differing alloys in different areas of the same part. To sub-micron scale. A big part of it is the ability to include voids to reduce weight and materials without loss of strength.

The video is the tip of an iceberg; I'll refer you to Permalink #81 and #86.

https://earth.nullschool.net/about.html

I was kidding about Helium3. I'm skeptical of fusion power schemes; they are all premised on the Sun being driven by a fusion reaction. And that's wrong.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by RustyLugNut

The ignorant, fear-mongering crowd has so poisoned the masses that moving forward with advanced fission reactors is prohibitively expensive and time consuming. It is going to happen, but more than likely in China or India as the West has lost its initiative due to our lack of political will.

Because of hollywood movies people think fusion reactors blow up too.

[RustyLugNut]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Atomic diffusion printing allows differing alloys in different areas of the same part. To sub-micron scale. A big part of it is the ability to include voids to reduce weight and materials without loss of strength.

The video is the tip of an iceberg; I'll refer you to Permalink #81 and #86.

https://earth.nullschool.net/about.html

I was kidding about Helium3. I'm skeptical of fusion power schemes; they are all premised on the Sun being driven by a fusion reaction. And that's wrong.

What you speak of is plausible but not anywhere near production level and won't be for some time, and when it is, are you telling me you require such technology to make a simple machine component? I see additive metal printing being used in aerospace and certain biomedical applications, but I highly doubt it will penetrate the everyday as the material and design needs of the common consumer market hardly needs such specifications and electronics fabrication is already approaching the molecular limits.

If you think the sun runs on other than a fusion reaction, then pray tell, what does run the sun? If you are saying there are no fusion reactions then you are on a different astral plane than the rest of us. If you are saying there are no possibilities for a practical fusion power base, I think that is a question the next generation will grapple with, but as I end my life here in this century there is certainly more than enough fissionable material to bridge us through more than a thousand years of human civilization and the very plausible ability to make fusion a common tool.

[NeilBlanchard]

Anybody can put solar panels up, or install a wind turbine, or make biogas digester, etc. There are no oil companies that I know of that are building their own panel;s or turbines.

No military is needed to defend renewable energy - unlike oil and gas.

Climate AFFECTS the weather patterns and extremes.

And since when does weather cause the tundra to melt? The thing we USED to call permafrost - is now melting.

[oil pan 4]

BP makes solar panels.
The difference between BP and the $1 per watt Chinese panels is BP will still actually be around in 20 years.
If anyone bought Chinese solar panels in 2010 chances are the company you bought them from is no longer around.

The nearest permafrost is at least 3,000 miles away and that's to close as far as I'm concerned.
I hope it melts. Make the land usable for farming, mining, oil, gas coal recovery.