This may be naive, but I feel like we need to treat the climate crisis like it's wartime: spending tons on R&D, massive clean energy deployment and speedy nuclear plants.

For me, climate change is a societal tipping point that will either force us to adapt and change in a hurry or our damage to the planet will result in societal collapse. I read recently that 25,000 deaths in Europe this summer were attributed to extreme heat. It is completely ignored by the media and politicians.

If the greater fool can break the laws of physics, that's even better, means our understanding of them was wrong, and now we can improve it.

Why did you link to a Wikipedia article about Jevon's Paradox that argues that efficiency gains will lower resource consumption? It's not at all clear to what extent this occurs, and it shouldn't be taken for granted that it happens to the degree you claim it does.

"However, governments and environmentalists generally assume that efficiency gains will lower resource consumption, ignoring the possibility of the effect arising.[3]"

If you have something philosophical to say about the merits of capitalism, you ought to make a separate point, or at the very least tie the two together in a coherent way.

Why is everyone so obsessed with fusion 😂. There has not been a single nuclear accident in America that caused injury to the public. Not a single time. Why do we need to chase the unicorn when we already have a viable and safe option.

Oh I read it, and agree with it.

What is happening in the US is very much not the will of the people, it is extremely sophisticated theatre.

Yes, I have seen the idea and think it's one of the ways we can mitigate nuclear waste and is why I'd rather side with nuclear at this point. Nuclear is cleaner than people realize amd through innovation will become cleaner still. It should be the horse we ride

A few things.....

It's really hard to get things into space. We can send up an empty trash can every now and again, sometimes we can send up a half filled trashcan. To send up more just for the purpose of dumping is realistic. We aren't talking about a few dozen trashcan here, we are talking about tens of thousands of barrel of wast and waste products like spent fuel rods, radioactivity cooling water, etc.

It's cost prohibitive. I can't remember the price but per pound it's extradoinarily expensive to send stuff up. I think it's like $40,000 per pound to launch supplies just to the space station. Now extrapolate that out to some location I assume you are thinking the sun, 90 million miles isn't too hard if we get the payload going on the right trajectory I suppose.

Finnally, we would have a duty to track each and every payload making sure we know where and when they make it to their destination. If a waste package doesn't make it to the dun it will likely end up crashing into Venus or mucury, or go jetosoning off into space. It might boomerangs back to earth, last thing we'd want is radioactive flaming trash raining from the skies. We owe it to our future decendants that will likely be off exploring and mining the asteroid belt to not run into Un tracked nuclear waste.

A practical concern I have is the rocket fuel expended in the launch will become radioactive. How many of those trips would it take to poison the air and ground water with nuclear fallout from its exhaust and discarded rocket boosters?

Unfortunately the space idea at this point isn't feasible.

The book Zero to One by Peter Theil talks about this. Really interesting read.

He makes the argument that the United States used to be a definite optimist country- the US looks positively on the future because it’s people plan, build, and achieve, despite risk of failure.

But now, he continues, the US is an indefinite optimist country. It has kept its optimism. But there’s no concrete planning or investment by many members of the US. In order to get something accomplished in the US, you must fight industry red tape, government intervention, and public criticism. So what do people do? Nothing. They spend. They eat, drink, and party.

When the expected public reaction to ideas is to try and destroy them before they even get off the ground, you create an environment that discourages creativity and persistence, which consequently leads to a less productive society.

At some point you need to give credit to the financial system and agree it's efficient.

If we at least assume that, then we are giving incredible leaps towards an even more energy intensive society. At least that's what data shows. What I mean by this is that the market is incredibly good at directing resources, in this case, energy, where its needed. Can we do it better? hell yes. I am not sure how a couple of benevolent geniuses would outperform decades of market capitalism, if you sugest some people actually know better than the decentralized system.

And about pollution: yes, I agree on what you said. But you can't deny that even that can't compare to the absolute wreck chernobyl could have been. That's a huge precedent and actually having fear of it is more than rational.

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also cudn't we just send nuclear waste into space?

My general understanding of why nuclear, despite looking so good has been basically ignored is that countries that have it have a wink wink nudge nudge agreement not to let it proliferate any further because of concerns about nuclear arms proliferation and not for any of the overtly stated reasons.

Thinking about it that way, and looking at how sketchy some of the global state actors are, I'm not sure this is, despite how inefficient it is energy-wise, the worst decision.

>This fallacious idea of capitalism not thinking in long terms has long been refuted.

nope.

industry chose renewables due to the massive short term profits associated with it, if we wanted lowest costs over a 100 year period nuclear would have been done a decade ago.

instead we are gambling on Battery RnD pulling super batteries out of a hat in order to go renewable.

seems to me like a choice motivated solely by profit seeking.

also fucking lol what threat? coal alone has released more radiation than all nuclear technologies and accidents combined, killed more people than all nuclear technologies and accidents combined.

only the irrational fear nuclear or think its worse then fossil fuels.

I'll bite, if you throw out accidents, nuclear waste amd nuclear weapons, how does nuclear have more costs than benefits? I hope your answer is not, "because it allows capitalism to continue"

Personally I can't get over my fear of war breaking out and a missile hitting a reactor and the effects that would have on the surrounding environment. But that's a whole different conversation.

dont bother, most people hear nuclear and think of the simpsons or the intentionally misleading propaganda show, Chernobyl.

what i find funny is nuclear is the lowest profit option of all power generation, taking 10+ years for ROI (even if you build them in 6 years its takes a decade to make money) and somehow it is the 'evil' form of power generation.

its almost like renewables were chosen, not because they were better, because they are just as profitable as fossil fuels (if we went 100% nuclear the energy industry would lose more then half its profits)

> Finally, using a sensitivity analysis, we consider which other aspects of nuclear energy deployment, apart from climate change, have the potential to overturn the ultimate ethical verdict on investments in nuclear energy. Out of several potential considerations (e.g., nuclear waste, accidents, safety), we suggest that its potential interplay — whether beneficial or adverse — with the proliferation of nuclear weapons is the most plausible candidate.

Ok good, I think this is true. With modern nuclear plant designs, it definitely seems like meltdowns or waste disposal are a far smaller concern than putting such powerful tech in the hands of extremely suspect governments

I think you missed the rest of his post.

some people have done enough chemistry and physics to know how radiation works and thus do not fear it.

Coal has killed more people via radiation than all nuclear technologies and accidents combined.

once waste hits 100+ years old its comparable to getting an x-ray ffs.

anti-nuclear activists have harmed the environment as much as fossil fuels lobbyists have, hell they teamed up in the 90s to kill nuclear.

>No one is looking at the prospect of say that Ukrainian reactor melting down from Russia sabotage the same as oil spills.

because they are not rational.

humans are fucking horrid at accurate risk assessment: more people fear planes then cars, more people fear terrorists then police, more people fear weed then alcohol, more people fear the China then the US.

in all 4 cases the one people fear is less deadly then the other but more psychologically impactful.

we have little to no ability to actually gauge risk, its why you look at statistics not peoples feelings.

>for one radiation is either dangerous or lasts for 10,000 years never both. due to how decay works the most dangerous half lives are in seconds minutes and hours, by the time you are hitting 2 hundred years its not much worse then background radiation.
>
>next pyro-processing allows for recycling a good percentage of that total waste and does so by removing the shorter more dangerous half lives to re-use as fuel.
>
>finally coal alone has released more radiation then all nuclear reactors, weapons, tests and accidents combined.
>
>anyone who is afraid of nuclear but not oil or coal isn't rational enough to be part of the discussion.
>
>i love that environmentalists are so ideological they chose to hurt the environment over using nuclear .

>
>all accidents combined have killed less people and released less radiation than coal so what are you afraid of exactly?

>Liberalism is truly a mental disease.

lol, considering its about a hairs breadth apart from conservatism.

you do realise 'liberalism' is a right wing ideology?

id be fine with it as im actually educated on how it works.

for one radiation is either dangerous or lasts for 10,000 years never both. due to how decay works the most dangerous half lives are in seconds minutes and hours, by the time you are hitting 2 hundred years its not much worse then background radiation.

next pyro-processing allows for recycling a good percentage of that total waste and does so by removing the shorter more dangerous half lives to re-use as fuel.

finally coal alone has released more radiation then all nuclear reactors, weapons, tests and accidents combined.

anyone who is afraid of nuclear but not oil or coal isn't rational enough to be part of the discussion.

i love that environmentalists are so ideological they chose to hurt the environment over using nuclear .

Curious thought on religion and the simulation theory.

If this is a simulation and we are not base reality, what’s responsible for the creation of base reality?

I understand that’s something probably impossible to understand without knowing anything about “base reality” if we are simulated but it’s still a question I had running around.

Its over however you turn it.