Koyoto is here

[xoxoxoBruce]

The US never built 2 nuke plants alike, indeed the plants didn’t even have 2 units alike. The long lead times for planning and construction, along with the desire to include the latest thinking/materials, led to a constant barrage of changing regulations coming from Washington. Every unit built included changes on the fly during construction.
It’s pretty obvious to scientists, inventors and auto mechanics that you don’t change more than one parameter at a time if you want to know the effect of that change. The result was no design was proven/tested over time.

France has had success with nuclear power because they standardized from the beginning. They built one design and upgraded all the plants as history and performance proved changes would be fruitful.
I don’t know what kind of effect their design or their whole program for that matter, has had on the long term health of the population but they at least haven’t blown them up.

As TW mentioned, waste is a big problem, not just spent fuels but thousands of barrels of contaminated tools, clothing and such. Imagine that every day after work you change your clothes but the ones you take off can’t be laundered, they must be stored in drums.....forever.
I may be naive but it seems to me we have all that contaminated land where they set off the nuclear tests. Why not put the waste there?

[lookout123]

I may be naive but it seems to me we have all that contaminated land where they set off the nuclear tests. Why not put the waste there?

*rush limbaugh voice* If we used the land for that purpose, where would we bani... i mean allow future generations of poor people to live?

[Troubleshooter]

Originally Posted by jaguar

Nothing more needs to be said really

Why do I find that as unconvincing as others found the reason article?

[jaguar]

because it's easier to put your head in the sand? Cold, hard, peer-reviewed and accepted scientific fact, cute little right wing rant magazines don't make it any less true. There is, in general still a certain level of debate about aspects of global warming inside the scientific community, I spend a fair bit of time talking with a number of people in the cambridge academic community but the only place you seem to find outright denial these days though is the chronically uninformed and laypeople in the US.

[Troubleshooter]

Originally Posted by jaguar

because it's easier to put your head in the sand? Cold, hard, peer-reviewed and accepted scientific fact, cute little right wing rant magazines don't make it any less true. There is, in general still a certain level of debate about aspects of global warming inside the scientific community, I spend a fair bit of time talking with a number of people in the cambridge academic community but the only place you seem to find outright denial these days though is the chronically uninformed and laypeople in the US.

You clearly haven't read the website. Reason is most decidedly not a right wing web site. They're a moderate, independent, science and research based group.

[Schrodinger's Cat]

Originally Posted by Troubleshooter

You clearly haven't read the website. Reason is most decidedly not a right wing web site. They're a moderate, independent, science and research based group.

Er... Have you? They are a Libertarian backed outfit. Whenever you read or hear about some "scientific" study, your first question should be, "Who paid for it?" Ayn Rand is not an impartial funding source for scientific research.

[russotto]

The Reason Foundation is not backed by Ayn Rand; Rand wasn't particularly fond of Libertarians and Libertarianism. That said, _Reason_ is a political magazine.

This latest study I knew Jag would jump on is just as political, though. I wonder how long it took them to tweak the parameters of their favorite model to make them fit the data. Or did they just choose data which was used in the calibration of the model in the first place?

[Schrodinger's Cat]

Originally Posted by russotto

The Reason Foundation is not backed by Ayn Rand; Rand wasn't particularly fond of Libertarians and Libertarianism. That said, _Reason_ is a political magazine.

Ms. Rand is safely in the grave where she can wreck no further harm on this nation's innocent young or anyone else. I was joking about her funding of any scientific studies. I'll take your word regarding her stance on Libertarians. For all her disdain of them, Libertarians seem to have an inordinate fondness for HER, however.

Originally Posted by russotto

This latest study I knew Jag would jump on is just as political, though. I wonder how long it took them to tweak the parameters of their favorite model to make them fit the data. Or did they just choose data which was used in the calibration of the model in the first place?

From my brief perusal of the Reason article and its source, Reason appears to have isolated one statistic out of context and gone on to draw some completely false conclusions from it - such as, petroleum releases less CO2 when burned for fuel than does coal. Actually, petroleum may release fewer particulates into the atmosphere than does coal, but the burning of petroleum is hardly "reason" for good cheer on the environmental front.

[jaguar]

You clearly haven't read the website. Reason is most decidedly not a right wing web site. They're a moderate, independent, science and research based group.

So is newsmax. The frigging tagline is 'free minds, free markets'. It's a site i keep a weather eye on and good stuff does bubble up but please, it's not within driving distance of politically neutral. Just because the articles often make sense doesn't mean there isn't a strong political bias.

[tw]

Remove the extremist political rhetoric, and global warming is a fact. The charts alone of world historical temperatures show a most massive temperature increase in but less than 100 years - when all though history these changes took tens of thousands of years. Furthermore, the increase in global warming gases, especially CO2 has never been higher. World CO2 levels for over 400,000 years remained mostly just above 200 ppmv and never above 300. Suddenly, there is this verticle spike in CO2 to over 400 ppmv - all in 100 years. But that sharp increase in CO2 will not create global warming? Only if you blindly believe that god will determine what happens.

Easy to be a political extremist - to ignore the facts. In science, there is no doubt that man has created a sharp increase in global warming. Only two questions remain. Exactly how much does each factor contribute to the problem and how bad will the problem be. We know global warming is a problem created by man. We know it would be far worse if we had not filled the skies with so much dirt. We just don't know how bad it will become.

Those who see the future are now vying to define national boundaries in the Arctic. Sometime at or after 50 years from now, there will be no polar icecap. Time to start planning for ocean ports on the Northern Norwegian, Russian, and Canadian land masses. This again is not in dispute. The only question remains when will it happen. 2050? 2070? 2090?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Time to start planning for ocean ports on the Northern Norwegian, Russian, and Canadian land masses.

And Kansas City?

[Elspode]

Oh, great...that's just what we need. Bunch of horny sailors running after our daughters around here.

From what I'm able to discern, and I'm no scientist, global warming is occuring. I believe that the main objection to doing anything about it in the USA is financial. I don't know that Kyoto is the end-all, but shouldn't someone somewhere act like there *might* be a problem?

Republicans and Democrats alike will be adversely affected by catastrophic climate change. No matter what happens, the price of energy will go up as a result...worldwide tropics or global ice age.

[Troubleshooter]

If the accellerated global warming is caused by man, and I'm not saying that it isn't, then doesn't it make sense that the most underdeveloped parts of the world, where the fastest population growth occurs, need to be brought up to speed technolgy-wise so that their population growth will slow and their energy consumption will be channeled through more efficient means?

Wouldn't that solve part of the problem as well?

[Elspode]

I think the theory goes something like "if we apply Kyoto to the Third World, it will strangle their economic development, and they'll have no opportunity to reach parity with the rest of the industrialized world."

In other words, it is acknowledged that Kyoto makes everything more expensive to do, Third World nations can't afford it because they fall below a certain level where it can be absorbed or passed on successfully. Meanwhile, the US just looks at it and says "it is bad for the economy, we aren't going to do it."

That is at least a logical conclusion. If it is bad for Third World Countries, then it is going to have a negative financial impact on everyone, everywhere who follows it.

And here we are, still suffocating in our own waste. I don't think the comparison to yeast in a carboy is a bad one.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Elspode

I believe that the main objection to doing anything about it in the USA is financial. I don't know that Kyoto is the end-all, but shouldn't someone somewhere act like there *might* be a problem?

One need only review the 1960s for deja vue. As MBAs took over the auto industry, then auto pollution did not exist? When that was obviously a lie, the industry cried (lied) before Congress swearing they could not possibly meet the 1975 pollution standards. In the meantime, Chrysler already had a fleet of cars in CA using a system called CAP that met the 1974 standards.

We have same today. If these political extremists were innovative, then America would be leading the charge with innovation. But that is too much a change from the status quo, for extremists. Therefore global warming must not exist. Where a patriotic American sees advancement, new products and markets, innovation, and wealth; the political extremist sees costs, messy changes, destruction of the status quo, and fear.

Global warming gases are not increasing. The need to preserve a status quo says so (or somehow god will prevent it from happening). Oh.... facts and numbers now say otherwise. So the new spin is "We can't do anything about it so we should not try". Deja Vue. Those anti-innovative, late 1960s, American auto executives, who refused to innovate, are back masquerading as righteous, right-wing Republicans. Previously American MBAs literally surrendered technology (and therefore the jobs) to Japanese and Germans. So as pollution control (which also means less energy consumption) devices were required, they arrived with Japanese and German patents.

No wonder history only repeats itself every 30 years. How many remember by the American auto industry made nothing but anti-American products in the 1970s and 1980s.

That oxygen sensor now found in all cars? A Bosch patent. A little money goes to Germany for every time a Chevy is sold - because GM stifled American innovators. Those who fear change took the ostrich approach which meant lost American jobs. They denied that pollution was a problem then, as they deny global warming today. They denied that cars getting only 10 MPG could be doing 24. Deja vue. IOW they feared to innovate- the definition of an anti-American.

Denials about global warming mean other nations will prosper when America finally concedes reality. Then America must pay big bucks for technologies developed elsewhere. Ostriches are the classic example of anti-Americans. Ostriches fear facts about global warming. When will the extremists among us stop denying science facts - thereby destroying future American jobs and wealth? When we call them what they are - anti-Americans - people who fear to innovate. Financial reasons are only another excuse to promote and protect the status quo - an anti-American mentality.