‘We should have better answers by now’: climate scientists baffled by unexpected pace of heating
areyouevenreal @ areyouevenreal @lemm.ee Posts 9Comments 976Joined 2 yr. ago
areyouevenreal @ areyouevenreal @lemm.ee
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At our current rate of usage, we will run out of viable uranium sources within 80 years. If we switched the worlds energy to nuclear, it wouldn't last 5.
This is completely absurd as I keep telling you. The vast majority of the uranium in "spent" nuclear fuel is untouched. Current reactors are a joke compared to what even the Soviet Union could come up with in 1980. Imagine leaving over 90% of your meal on the table and calling it spent.
You don't need any of those things....well other than the nickel in the coils I specificallymention and the other components that I clearly know nothing about......
Nickel in generator coils? What? They are mode from copper. Sometimes aluminum because it's cheaper than copper. The majority of nickel isn't even used in things like batteries, it's used to make steel alloys like stainless steel and heat resistant alloys used for engine parts. Also you keep pretending all of these material aren't recyclable. Metals can be reshaped an indefinite number of times. It's like arguing you can only use water once.
Pipe dreams are lovely and all that but until we have something more solid, its best to dismiss the use of other isotopes as it'll take a decade just to build the power station needed to make the energy. That's before we get to the time it will actually take to fully research it all.
I am not talking about a pipedream. I am talking about something that was actually implemented in the soviet union. This isn't Thorium that has never had a commerical implementation that was successful. Both of these reactors are still operational:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-600_reactor
There is even a third one that has now been decommissioned, but still operated for around 20 years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-350_reactor
You're attempting to argue that I don't know about renewables or the technology necessary to go green and you're talking about mining THE MOON in order to, wait for it, lower carbon emissions of all things.
The fucking moon
You're lost again. I am talking about doing that in the long term after we have decarbonized.
No wonder you found it so funny. I never said "the rich elite are the only people consuming things at an unsustainable rate." Honestly, you're hilarious for attempting to twist what was said into that. Have some intellectual integrity please.
Given you kept talking about the elite and how they can't exist in your degrowth scenario, it seemed to me that blame was implied. I am not being dishonest here. If anything you are the one changing goal posts by doing the whole I didn't say that routine when it's clearly implied.
You've failed so hard at an "akshually" but please do carry on. As I guessed, you're against degrowth as anything but a temporary measure and rather than having the spine to come out and stand for it, you try waffle instead.
Yes. Did I not say it isn't necessary in the long term? I thought I stated it pretty clearly. I don't support long term degrowth anymore than I support shrinking the human population long term. Maybe the population of earth specifically, but not the population of all humanity.
I am still waiting for a response to that last quote. I think you've found something you can't dispute.
Unless you are legitimately an alien or a cat or something that somehow got on Lemmy (and I apologize if this is the case), then you are a human. You can't identify your way out of being a member of this species.
The fact my fellow autistic people are disidentifying from humanity is extremely concerning. Even worse I can understand why given the behaviour of so many humans being what it is. Plus constantly being marginalized in human societies doesn't help.
The solution though isn't to stop identifying as being human and pretend to be something else. The solution is to re-evaluate what being human is. Too much emphasis in popular culture is placed on humanity or being human as some positive thing where someone who is truly human couldn't be the villain or the mass murderer. The reality is the human race is broad and doing a genocide is just as human as inventing the vaccine for TB. Those things we can do because we are human, with human capabilities. Another animal wouldn't think to make a vaccine, or to do a genocide, they do what they because of instincts, learned behavior, and survival.
Since when do you need either of those to build a wind turbine? We are talking about very simple machines here, plenty of ways to build one.
It's gotten to the point though that it actually works better on older hardware as the system can't actually fully utilise the new hardware because it's not programmed to do that. It's actually such a sad state of affairs. I don't know how the Windows devs can cope anymore. If I worked on that product I would hate my life.
I mean writing systems are not a part of the real spoken language and how it evolved. I think it's fine to be prescriptivist about writing systems as many did not evolve naturally anyway, and many could be made far easier to learn and use. You shouldn't mess with spoken language as that's the part that did evolve naturally and is still subject to evolution. The focus though should always be on making these writing systems simpler and a better reflection of the spoken language. Hangul is a great example of prescriptivism over writing systems.
Go read my other comment. Batteries don't need rare materials for grid scale storage. It's the small ones in phones that need things like Nickel, Cobalt, and Lithium to be as energy dense as possible. Grid storage began phasing out Nickel and Cobalt a while ago and will eventually phase out Lithium as Sodium batteries get better and cheaper.
Current nuclear is a sad joke compared to what we learned we could do even 50 years ago. The initial investment for nuclear is always expensive, but the pay off is cheap energy for like 40 or 50 years. While it does release CO2 to make new reactors there are ways around even that. Using less or no concrete would be a great start. Making iron is kind of hard though, I will give you that. Maybe we will have to switch to aluminum or something.
Consumer electronics are probably the biggest problem we can't solve right now. That's why we need devices made to last and things like the right to repair. Getting rid of individual vehicles would really help too, as trains can accept power straight from the grid without needing huge batteries.
Most of the big generators on the grid don't even have permanent magnets. They use electromagnets. This means they need some electricity to be added to get them started up, but once they are running they are self-sustaining. Normally that initial jolt is provided by backup generator or by battery.
What about the energy transition materials like lithium, nickel and cobalt? We don't have enough of those. All the windmills in the world won't help, if you can't convert motion into electricity.
We literally don't need any of those. Grid scale storage I don't think has used Nickel and Cobalt for some time, as the best way is to use Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries which need fewer replacements (longer cycle life) and are less volatile (explosive). Sodium batteries remove the need for even Lithium. Sodium is many times more abundant btw. As bad as they are Lead Acid batteries are also an option, as well as many other battery technologies made with less rare earth materials. Heck you could just do pumped hydro and not worry about batteries at all.
You also don't need any of those materials to make electricity from motion. A generator is a fairly simple device needing only coils of wire and a few moving parts. Some need permanent magnets but even that isn't hard really. Storing power was always the problem, not making it.
Likewise current reactors are a joke in terms of fuel efficiency. Basing any estimate on current reactor technology being used is kind of silly, as we already know we can do so much better. The majority of earth's nuclear fuel is in fertile materials, not fissile materials. We have known this for a long time by the way. Decades ago countries like the USA and Japan were doing research into reactors using U-238, more than 100 times as abundant as U-235. It has been demonstrated that breeder reactors for Plutonium from U-238 are feasible even 50 or 60 years ago. The reason we don't do this is because U-235 reactors were determined to be cheaper, and probably safer. I think sacrificing some safety and cost is necessary when up against something like climate change. With modern technology I am sure safety issues could be reduced or eliminated. Likewise Thorium is a thing, but that's more experimental than U-238 to Plutonium technology.
If we are talking about solar panels: just don't. Solar panels are mostly glass and silicon. I believe some rarer materials are needed to make them as efficient as they are now, but that doesn't mean they are actually needed. In fact why bother with solar panels at all? They aren't even the most efficient way of turning solar power into useful energy. Solar systems that work using mirrors to heat molten salt have their own energy storage built-in, and don't require exotic materials, and are more efficient anyway. They might require more investment, or be more complex to deploy, but overall they are a great option.
Degrowth might be necessary in the short term. Long term wise though humanity very much has room to grow further. We haven't even talked about mining the moon yet, and if we can't do that we are very much screwed anyway. Being dependant on one planet is horrifically bad for long term survivability. You think climate change is an extinction level event? Try a gamma ray blast from a pulsar.
All you've really demonstrated is that you don't understand technology specifically renewables and nuclear. There is a real concern with lack of rare materials, but not for renewables. The real issue is computers. Modern computers and especially smartphones need a lot of rare things. So constantly replacing your smartphone might not be practical anymore, and things like battery life and processing speed might actually get worse for a while as we are forced to use alternative materials. Not really a huge deal in the scheme of things though.
Also thinking the rich elite are the only people consuming things at an unsustainable rate is hilarious. They use more resources per person obviously, but the number of them is also really small. If you actually looked into it you would probably find that lost of the consuming of resources is to support the lower and middle classes. Don't get me wrong oil executives are a real issue because of how they effect government policy and the behaviour of the rest of society. They do deserve a significant share of the blame. Not every rich person is an oil executive though. Having ultra rich people around is bad but this isn't the reason why.
Yes you were, just take the loss
Most countries don't have colleges like the American ones. It's called University and you only do things related to your degree. We also don't normally do the whole major and minor thing. It's very weird that you have people in who aren't doing a chemistry course and take chemistry classes in degree level education. Instead in most places you do college or sixth form before starting University, that's a separate institution. College and sixth form does some of what high schools do in America (starting at 16), but are also just a general educational institution that anybody can attend to do any number of different qualifications. Some even offer courses that form part of a degree where you spend your last year at University.
Again I am not a trans person. I didn't make this comic or anything like it. What I am doing is pointing out the reality as I see it. This comic is trying to portray that reality in a non-serious way.
A lot of this is the same kind of things amazon do to make purchase suggestions. It is fairly invasive but also effective. There are even some customers who appreciate this kind of thing. I will say though that the name is misleading. It dosen't just spot fakes, it seems to be designed as a shopping assitant or search engine who's stand out feature is pointing out fakes. I think there is a place in the market for such a thing, but they need to be careful of how they market that and what data is actually needed to be collected. Ideally they should put in a system where you can opt in to personalised recommendations and collect data for only those people who require that feature. It also needs to be spelled out clearly what this involves in terms of data collected and who sees the data. Regardless I don't think it should be enabled by default in Firefox. Including it in the browser isn't so bad provided they don't get up to microsoft-like shenanigans pushing people to use it.
Is that actually what you want though? Or do you actually want to hate on trans people while pretending to be impartial? I would love a society where largeley socially constructed concepts like gender norms and race didn't exist, yet I don't go around being combative towards minorities like you do. Think about this.
My type? I am a cis man
You still don't get it. If they actually had equality comics like this wouldn't need to be made. Are you going to start complaining whenever women mention sexism or black people mention racism?
You seem to have completeley missed the fact that there are real life people who are against trans people, you seem to be one of them which kind of makes me wonder how you missed this fact
You're the one who came here being combative over things that probably never happened. Someone matched or exceeded you're level of combativeness and now you're pissed?! Meanwhile people regularly say trans people aren't real, or shouldn't exist, and you completeley ignore that.
Yeah it's really annoying. We need more browser engines and alternatives to the current web standards. The current way these things is not fit for purpose, and is making it easy for google to establish a monopoly on the web. I think wasm helps with this somewhat, but it isn't popular enough yet nor is it a complete solution.
Humanity is a species. Homo sapiens. Anyone claiming otherwise has fallen into the trap set by movies and popular culture about inhumane actions, dehumanizing the other, and every other time people who are homo sapiens are not teated as humans.
There is no single moral standard for our entire species. In fact while I am here I will say there is no proof for any kind of morality even existing in the objective universe. It's an entirely made up concept. If we ever encounter aliens of what have you there is a good chance they have radically different behavioral standards for their species than ours.
Well that escalated quickly. You went from plausible science to making up bullshit very quickly.
Yeah you apparently don't know much about modern physics.
Weather or not aliens do exist changes nothing about the fact you are human. You can't escape that incontrovertible biological fact. Don't even try. Stop listening to society cry "oh the humanity" and actually look at the facts. Humanity is just an intelligent species, not a moral standard to cling to or something to turn around and reject.