Trump Administration foresees 4 degree temperature rise

It’s a decent option, especially combined with renewable sources. But I f that new plant in Georgia fails to get finished, we’re stuck with what we have. So far it’s behind schedule and vastly over budget. The newer design would be safer and produce less waste, but they really need to finish that.

As for climate change, all of this is moving chairs on the Titanic. We’re basically fucked as a civilization. Shit is going to get very bad for a lot of people all over the world, US and Europe included. The refugee crisis we have now is just a small taste of what’s to come, but it’s going to be all of us this time. Some countries like the US will survive in some form and humans will find a way to survive long term, but we may have already peaked as a species.

I’m in my early 30s, I have a lot to look forward too.

Depends on where in the world you are. Here in Australia for example we have a lot of land area for a small population, so renewables make the most sense. Occasionally a politician will mention nuclear power but at this point it would take longer and be more expensive for us than mass-scale renewables with storage.

For somewhere like Japan however it's hard to see a solution that doesn't involve fission plants, at least until we manage to figure out fusion.

That is the opposite of what everyone involved has told me, so I would like to see your source, please.

As for Czernobyl, obviously a dictatorship also invites lies. I'm not saying the incentive only exists in capitalism. But most of the damage done to West German and French populations in the wake of Czernobyl could have been quite easily prevented if they hadn't been lied to by governments bought by domestic nuclear lobbies.

18 years ago, California started experiencing statewide rolling blackouts due to power shortages. It got so bad that our governor at the time declared a state of emergency in 2001. And our governor mishandled it so poorly that he was recalled in 2003.

Today, renewable energy has grown to being 30-40% of our overall energy supply. Our overall supply has increased to the point where we have too much electricity. So much that we have to literally pay other states to take it off our hands.

California is not only the most populous state at around 39 million people, but we grew by 15% since 2000. And we went from being the 7th biggest economy in the world to the 5th biggest. And we still remain the largest state economy in the country, driving major industries like technology, media, and agriculture.

We even reached our 2020 carbon emission cutting goals 4 years early, all while continuing to grow and expand our renewable energy programs.

So for you to say that renewable energy is unsustainable and wouldn't make a substantial difference in our modern, technologically-driven world makes me question whether you are looking at real world results or whether you are stubbornly parroting an ideological stance that number crunchers in think-tanks came up with.

I'm not saying nuclear is a bad option. It's just not the best option because it's merely kicking the can down the road a little further. Why would we settle for the second best solution to a problem that will impact the globe for centuries to come?

Wikipedia's article (emphasis mine) says:

Governments have experts and people who are supposed to provide proper oversight; if they accepted lies by "domestic nuclear lobbies," then they weren't doing their job.

A documentary I saw on Amazon Prime and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_effects_from_the_Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster

I don't know; they have plenty of tidal energy to exploit. Germany is much more densely populated than Australia or even the US, and we get more than a third of our energy from renewables; up from less than 10% a decade ago, once the political will was there. I think we tend to underestimate renewables.

Of course they weren't doing their job, because they were bought. That's what I am saying.

Thank you. I've visited quite close to there twice, and everything the people tell you there is so radically different from the English Wikipedia account that I wonder whether the latter just follows the Japanese government's official version. Reading the Japanese page will take longer, but the German version is very different from the English one. Here's one English source cited there.

https://journals.lww.com/md-journal...in_perinatal_mortality_in_prefectures.45.aspx

This paper discusses perinatal deaths (deaths in infants from 22 weeks gestation to 7 days after birth) and finds a link between contamination and an increased rate of those deaths, which I find perfectly plausible, although the paper itself says this is "conjecture" and "tentative." Of course, contamination during the accident is one thing; contamination today is another.

The 2001 blackouts were an artificially created shortage designed by deregulators in order to profit off price spikes which they themselves created. It was fraud from start to finish by companies like Enron.

The point here is that the evacuation was insufficient to prevent these deaths from contamination; and that these very specific deaths alone are far more than the totals for radiation mortality cited in the English Wikipedia piece.

I'm not arguing either side of this, really, but I'll drop this:

Why yes, capitalism is the cause of our energy woes.

You realise that's a completely different paper, right? The one I quoted pointed out 200 deaths in the Japanese prefectures around Fukushima, but outside the allegedly overcautious evacuation.

Yes, I realize it's a different paper. It just points out that there isn't any known mechanism for such low doses of radiation to cause death, although I don't know if that extends to fetuses.

'Such low doses' referring to what reached the United States, as opposed to measurably higher doses in the prefectures around Fukushima.

Unrelated, but...for real? You've been posting here as long as I have and I thought you were way older than me

That appears to be the same problem that has caused the entire mess.
Capitalists are unwilling to decouple the energy system from fossil fuels, and unwilling (or unable) to decouple growth in resource usage from growth in living standards.
It's one giant externality.

IPCC: 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe

Summary: Because we had not taken the gradual approach when we had the time and space to do so, radical and immediate action is now needed. One commentator that I read compared this to the entire planet reindustrialising on the scale of US mobilisation for WW2 - for decades. The prospect of that is dim to say the least.

It won't be long before geoengineering enters the debate in a serious way, I fear. One strategy that might counter the warming (though not the other effects of CO2 buildup such as acidification of oceans) is to dump large quantities of certain gases into the upper atmosphere to reflect more heat.

You honestly cannot tell the difference between illegal crimes and capitalism? Then you must not be that bright.

I doubt very much if the planet cares whether it's destruction was "legal"

Capitalism allows artificial shortages. Where they are outlawed, the laws deviate from pure capitalism.

No, you are confusing anarchism with capitalism. One is an economic system while the other is a political system. Virtually all capitalists want the rule of law as lawlessness tends to be bad for business.

I don't know, plenty of people get very rich in warzones.

No, I am not saying that capitalism has no laws. I am saying it does not have this particular law.

And yes, capitalism is of course a political system.

You don't get to change definitions just because it suits you.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

Keep reading the first sentence until you finally get it. "Capitalism is an economic system...", "Capitalism is an economic system...", "Capitalism is an economic system..."

I didn't say capitalism isn't an economic system. It is also a political system. It can easily be both, just like you can be both a bad reader and a bad speller.

If only we could get China and India to go in on better pollution controls.

China actually is making more progress than the US and accepted hard restrictions under the Paris agreement. Trump only pulled out of Paris because oil companies were frightened their profits might go down. That is the same reason he tried to roll back fuel economy standards despite every automaker not wanting him to.

India is a tougher nut as they traditionally avoid any hard agreements ehich limit them in any way.