Quote:
Lorien Lowe wrote:
'The scientists' aren't saying anything about Gaia, because Gaia is a religious concept. Tenyu is accurate, however, in that the vast, vast majority of climate scientists are in a total frothing panic about climate change, and the fact that there's even a semblance of a 'debate' about it is testimony to the power and wealth of the fossil fuel industries. Researchers do not have the personalities to advocate their points of view in the emotional ways that win arguments in our current semblance of a national dialog, and most people cannot see the drama and fear inherent in the conclusions of report after report after report by ecologists, climate scientists, epidemiologists, and others. Sometimes, fear is useful; sometimes, telling oneself that one is imagining things and that everything will be ok just leads to a really, really bad outcome.
I was reluctantly pro-nuclear before the tsunami, and based on what I know about the danger of carbon use I am still reluctantly pro-nuclear (with the caveat that we also invest in real long-term solutions like solar and wind, and regulate the hell out of nuclear). It is a question of which options cause the most total pain and suffering; nuclear seems awful right now because the problems come all at once, but very few people look at the total deaths of coal miners, rig workers, and asthma patients caused annually by fossil fuel energy, much less at the death and suffering that will happen with global climate change and/or the problems that will happen if our civilization collapses due to climate change or lack of energy.
As for what is 'natural,' fission of naturally occurring uranium is no more unnatural the conversion of billions of years of stored carbon into gasses that change the entire global climate.
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Hi Lorien,
Nice to see you here. Oil is still the overwhelming forefront factor of Liebig's Law. Since there's no replacement for the cheap 3.6 billion gallons of oil required to power civilization every day, if we're lucky collapse will happen before new carbon inputs irrevocably impact the dynamic positive feedback already in play. Oil's the biggest industry in the world but contrary to media-induced public opinion, they also have one of the lowest profit margins of any major industry due to declining finite reserves and non-linearly declining EROEI. The oil production plateau is precariously approaching the cliff or series of cliffs. There's good reason Saudi Arabia's true reserves are classified information. What will happen with the hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive nuclear fuel as collapse progresses? What will happen when rolling or permanent blackouts arrive in areas with nuclear reactors? How many Chernobyls and Fukushimas can the world handle of the 443 reactors currently in use? Even if a Yucca mountain were approved, a significant amount of fuel at every plant is too hot to be transported, they're basically stuck in huge pools for years until they're cool enough to be dry casked. How many decades to decommission? The entire life cycle of nuclear energy isn't accounted for in its government subsidized EROEI and safety considerations, nor do I see these issues being addressed by the nuclear lobby or pro-nuclear people.
The media's doing a good public relations job of obfuscating the health risks of Fukushima. Many comparisons to dental x-rays, but they never state that being a one time radiation exposure of a few milliseconds. The fallout from Fukushima both into the atmosphere and the sea consists of radioactive particles that continually release radiation 24/7 for the duration of their half-lives.