Finland Set To Become First Country To Ban Coal Use For Energy (newscientist.com) 249
Finland could become the first country to ditch coal for good. As part of a new energy and climate strategy due to be announced tomorrow, the government is considering banning the burning of coal for energy by 2030. From a New Scientist article: "Basically, coal would disappear from the Finnish market," says Peter Lund, a researcher at Aalto University, and chair of the energy programme at the European Academies' Science Advisory Council. The groundwork for the ban already seems to be in place. Coal use has been steadily declining in Finland since 2011, and the nation heavily invested in renewable energy in 2012, leading to a near doubling of wind power capacity the following year. It also poured a further $85 million into renewable power this past February. On top of this, Nordic energy prices, with the exception of coal, have been dropping since 2010. As a result of such changes, coal-fired power plants are being mothballed and shut all over Finland, leaving coal providing only 8 per cent of the nation's energy.
Second to announce being first. (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe Finland will be doing it earlier in 2030 than Canada. Don't know. Now I'm wondering how many other countries are going to be first.
Re:Second to announce being first. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Our dear leader has a Trumptastic fascist plan to make coal great again.
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If Trump really goes that way I predict economic sanctions against the US by all the other countries around the world.
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Robots will make coal an export winner.
Robots will need repair work, but thats much less staff moving around many sites.
Think of the reduced costs, no unions, less wages, no political lea
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Shilling again eh Hux?
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The funny thing is in 1990 I shared some lab space with a mining engineer working on a robotic mining solution.
Despite a LOT of advances the core problem he faced has not changed and we are no closer.
Mines have a very complex changing geometry which means that while robots are great on assembly lines they are going to suck for a while in a mine environment. Expect something a decade or two after
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Except for all the BHP and Rio Tinto mines that are highly automated. With their self driving trucks and trains and loaders.
Have a look at the Iron Ore mines that exist in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Automation everywhere.
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Re:Second to announce being first. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure you are good are something but the above post is more than a little embarrassing, especially the crack about unions when wages of miners are set by enterprise agreements these days.
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and electricity is cheaper to move around
Which is why coal plants are always close to the mine and not the actual users of the energy.
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Interesting. The Russians will not be pleased by this development.
I think that will count as an extra bonus for the Finns rather than a concern.
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Doesn't seem that difficult - http://annpower.diytrade.com/s... [diytrade.com]
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More likely some country that never started using coal power and thus never sees the need to ban it.
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the US obviously
No, probably a country that lacks the capital/infrastructure to change to a different resource.
Any country that has a large rural population that does not have lots of the conveniences that exist in the handful of modern cities there.
Some countries of South and South-East Asia come to mind.
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So does the US.
Re:Second to announce being first. (Score:5, Interesting)
At the recent Climate Change Conference in Marrakesh, 43 of the developing nations most threatened by climate change – who together form the Climate Vulnerable Forum – committed to transitioning to 100% Renewable Energy.
Don't know how many of these are using coal now but they certainly won't be adding coal and will be phasing it out what they have.
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You sure about that? That's the same conference that kicked all of the media out from recording anything. AKA yet another deal done behind closed doors. People are lauding it, but likely still remember TPP. Also discussed behind closed doors.
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One of the primary concerns about the TPP isn't that it was discussed behind closed doors, it's that the content which was leaked out was truly fucking horrible selling nations, populations, and liberty to corporations who orchistrated the deal.
Every agreement needs its text published before it can be voted on. The closed door issue is a non issue when the debate is short, the agreements are mutual, and you don't have big pharma / MAFIAA lobbyists standing closer to the room than the media.
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Ontario has already shut down all the coal power plants. Québec is almost entirely on hydro, with no coal plants. BC also has no coal power plants. So that covers 75% of the Canadian population. We probably get less than 5% from coal. It was 10% in 2013, but that was before Ontario stopped using coal. Add in the amount of forest land in Canada, and I'm pretty sure Canada qualifies as a carbon sink.
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Ontariowians are not happy [www.cbc.ca]
But the self-righteousness, virtue-signalling and smug quotients are at an all-time record high.
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It could be that the headline is correct, but the first sentence of the summary is wrong. Finland might pass a law forbidding coal power while Canada simply stops using it.
I expect there are island nations which have never used coal power stations - they aren't a good size fit for an atoll. New Zealand might well be coal-electricity free by 2022, judging by the plans [wikipedia.org] for its only significant coal powered plant. (I'm not sure if insignificant power plants exist.) There are probably more examples I am unawar
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Huntly is the only transmission connected coal plant in New Zealand.
According to the Electricity Authority stats for distributed generation...
There is no fuel type on the registry for Coal. "Other" has 120MW from 28 connections and "Undefined" 0.022 MW from 10 connections. From that it is safe to say that there is probably no other coal plants in operation in New Zealand. ( Source [ea.govt.nz] )
Notes:
1. The New Zealand Government has not banned coal plants but they are hard to run economically against hydro, gas an
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A problem might arise for the U.S. should it continue to deny man-made climate warming, regardless of whether it is real or not. If other countries (probably relying on those naughty scientists and their data) decide that U.S. products should be subject to a carbon tariff for the damage the U.S. is causing to the climate they share, then the U.S. will find it's economic might decreased. The longer the U.S. denies and the higher that tariff, the more damage to the U.S. will ensue. China is already on the cli
Finnished (Score:4, Funny)
Stupid Finnish SJWs. Next they'll be telling us they can get energy from heat trapped underground. Sad!
Will these small countries matter? (Score:2)
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The Cheeto cannot put the U.S. back into coal in a big way, cheap natural gas is eating coal's lunch. And the oil companies have a lot more clout than the coal companies...those that are still in business.
Re:Will these small countries matter? (Score:4, Informative)
What else is it good for? (Score:2)
Guess what everyone is going to get in their Christmas stocking this year
Their local coal is better for steel than burning (Score:3)
Also they have been replacing it anyway with tiny generators instead of the capital intensive step of new coal fired units so it's a bit of a non-announcement.
It's like Germany announcing they were giving up on nukes more than twenty years after they had built their last reactor. The real choice was made many years before when it was decided not to build another one.
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The real choice was made many years before when it was decided not to build another one.
There's false attribution there in a global landscape that is hostile towards nuclear power in the face of NIMBYS fearing radiation but championing coal as a solution. Times change and the decision not to build a nuclear reactor 20 years ago is not the same as a decision not to build one now.
That is what makes both cases an announcement. We now have policy decision decided on the current environment, not an inferred position based on what has happened under a different set of circumstances.
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You can do better than that.
Think!
What are the differences that would influence the choices between 1996 and now? The sad thing is even the "cutting edge" reactors such as the AP1000 are the same. Time may march on but some stuff doesn't progress like others and some reasons stay constant for a long time.
Also with something like a nuclear industry once you decide to stop building ne
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What are the differences that would influence the choices between 1996 and now?
I mentioned the one big one which is giving nuclear renewed interest. Mainly that it's not coal, something no one gave a shit about in 1996.
Also with something like a nuclear industry once you decide to stop building new gear you lose the people with the expertise you need to build new stuff later.
Yes and no. The experience wasn't lost. Construction of a reactor is not specialised and through continued support of existing infrastructure vendors keep on providing all the new products you need. The engineering teams are also still there, still working for westinghouse etc because ... well they never stopped. Only in a few western countries. Construction of a reacto
Maybe first to ban (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yeah the only coal powered plant operated by Norway is on Spitsbergen, with locally mined coal
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renewable power = nuclear in Finland (Score:2)
Isn't nuclear power a good thing? (Score:2)
Is there some problem with nuclear energy that I'm not aware of?
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Uranium et al aren't renewable?
(not saying anything about pollution, just that GP was pointing to renewables)
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I know there's a tendency to limit the term "renewable" to the fuel being consumed, because that's the most obvious consumab
Only one way forward (Score:5, Informative)
To replace coal, we're building more nuclear. There's one new reactor being built (actually the biggest in the world at 1700 MW [wikipedia.org], although the project has been seriously delayed and is unfortunately massively over budget/schedule due to problems with the French contractor (Areva) and one additional reactor being planned for 2024. If both of these are successfully completed, it will more than double our nuclear capabilities and increase our energy production capabilities by almost 3000 MW. and should be more than enough to make up for the gap left by abandoning coal.
I'm a fan of nuclear, especially since we're also building the first ever deep geological repository [wikipedia.org] to handle the waste storage. It's just a shame that the project has turned out to be such a screw.up (granted it is partially because the reacrtor type - European Pressurized Reactor [wikipedia.org] - is new and has never been built before), and I'm hoping the authorities here learn something important from this: bidding these types of projects based solely on the price-tag will lead to issues. I do believe though that Areva will end up paying the fees once the case is settled, though whether or not it will actually have the money to do so (it's over 5 billion) is another matter.
Regardless of the difficulties and the cost, nuclear is really the only way forward for us, because we're pretty much tapped out on Hydro and solar doesn't have much use here at commercial scales because for half the year the sun is pretty much gone. So if we want to be rational and dump both coal and the dependency on Russian import gas, going nuclear with modern is the only viable option at this point.
Germany has gone the opposite direction and is shutting down nuclear power plants which is actually leading to an increase in the use of fossil fuels. Here's a TED talk [youtube.com] about why the senseless opposition to nuclear is actually harming the environment because of that.
Shouldn't be too hard in that small a country (Score:2)
With a population of 5.5 million people and a labor force of less than half that and a GDP of roughly 1/75th of the US, that shouldn't be too difficult. Similar observations can be made about Canada.
Re:The priesthood has spoken (Score:5, Funny)
Poor little delicate snowflake. I'm so sorry the laws of physics don't line up with your world view. Why don't you go have a big ol' cry, poor little alt-right denier snowflake
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Finland is not the American Continent.
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I agree that making fun of people who deny even the basic principles of climate change is fun, but there was nothing particularly alt-right about the post.
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Re: The priesthood has spoken (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll bet if you really think about it, you'll figure out why those things are not really equivalent.
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Damn you science on monopoly on science.
Re: The priesthood has spoken (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah... clearly the problem with science is that it's done by scientists. Damn them and their dedication to reasonable conclusions based on empirical evidence! Damn them all!
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What's even better is pols first claiming they are not scientists, but then going on to claim science based claims are hoaxes. Welcome to the alt-right hall of mirrors.
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If attacking pseudoscience is zealotry, I'll wear that title proudly. And if you don't like what I wrote, then don't read it.
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*Salutes* ... ATTEENNNNHUT !
Proud members of the pro-reality zealots army
Reeeeccciiitttteee the oath !
I shall not believe that which has no evidence.
I shall accept evidence that go against my previously held beliefs.
I shall not let my economic or moral ideals trump evidence based scientific conclusions.
I shall not use fallacies to attempt to deceive audiences for profit or political gain.
I shall confront and fight enemies of truth, both foreign and domestic, where-ever I find them.
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You openly admitted here recently that you spent years fighting in online forums against creationists.
I'm struggling to see why this is a bad thing.
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Given that it was coined by a Nazi (Richard Spencer) as a term to whitewash himself, yes.
Re:The priesthood has spoken (Score:5, Insightful)
"the lack of evidence for global warming"
So why is the north pole ice melting, why are the glaciers clearly receding.
Do you also deny that it gets hot in green houses,
Do you deny that mankind releases billions of tons of CO2?
Do you deny that CO2 is a greenhouse gas?
Tell me, which is it?
Re:The priesthood has spoken (Score:5, Insightful)
Hah. Given most people are simply not interested in climate change, this is all moot. [1]
But seeing as this is Slashdot, and a Friday, the thing is, most "climate change deniers" don't have an issue with any of those points. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and mankind releases CO2, and greenhouses do indeed get hot (why this last one is on the list is beyond me, as "greenhouse" is just an analogy here).
The point which EVERYBODY is up in arms about, is how much warming will actually come from feedbacks, and not from CO2 itself.
The mainstream respectable "in the field" "non-denialist" expert view is that the feedbacks could give you 4 or even oh I dunno as it is a feedback who can say where it would stop maybe 8C for all we know... and the denialist view is that this is ludicrous as why didn't the Earth just accidentally cook itself already.
The science issues are really all about feedbacks, not "basic physics". And the people and politics issues are really all about values. [2]
[1] So much for superordinate goals which could appeal to the different values systems of the global population.
[2] Human beings grow through about 6 or 7 major stages of worldview, each with its own values-system. This is why everyone is usually quite sure that their own way of looking at the world is the "right" way. Climate change isn't just science. Climate change is often really about trying to get the world to adopt a particular values-system. (And then when this values-system gets rejected by people, we end up thinking about them as "selfish", "consumerist", etc.) And in many ways climate change is about bringing forward a better set of values for the world. But because nobody seems to know that values cannot simply be imposed, like how you can't impose democracy on Iraq by bombing the old regime out of office, ie. because people actually grow through values in a particular way, in an organic, life experience kind of way, and cannot be made to change, even if the planet is burning or whatever, then the fact remains, most of the world does not care about climate change, because the way climate change is framed, it is all about a particular set of values, and most people are not at that stage of values. They just aren't. And if climate change proponents would stop being so narrow minded, they might see that. Someone somewhere made a huge blunder in trying to tie a new values system to a science theory (theory in the strong sense of the word). The values system should have been made subject of philosophy and ethics and even religion. But no, it was tied to a science theory, as if "reality" would force you to change how you value things. Which is just not how human beings work. So climate change will fail. It has been failing. It'll continue to fail. It'll really not be going anywhere, it is so failed (you Americans seem to like this kind of phrasing!) But as I say, this is Slashdot and a Friday, so who cares anyway.
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Yes, but the thing about feedback, if you understood the term is that it can have one of three effects, increasing, staying the same, or (get this) decreasing activity of the system. So as long as you have a dampening effect, you tend to drift off into an ice world. This has happened before. The problem with increasing activity is it tend to make things hotter. Since you clearly have no clue, do ya feel lucky, punk?
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Go look up your political talking points instructions and then start flinging insults.
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What will naughty boys and girls get if not a lump of coal?
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Traditionally in Finland, it's a bundle of sticks.
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So... biomass, then?
Re: The priesthood has spoken (Score:4, Insightful)
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And was almost certainly black.
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Re: The priesthood has spoken (Score:4, Interesting)
That particular part of Turkey was quite dark skinned, including the Greek part of the population - even for Turks (as in - black). And the oldest known images of the historic St Nick all show a black man. Now these weren't done from life and we don't know how accurate they are - but he was clearly perceived as a black person for at least the first few centuries after he died, the white santa was only invented fairly recently.
We actually know very little about the man - and it's very hard ot tell which parts of the legend (if any) ever actually happened. But the odds are that he was black and this is why he was painted (and depicted in stained glass) as such for centuries.
Re:The priesthood has spoken (Score:5, Informative)
So that's how I know that the glaciers I know of are receding: By actually going there and looking at them.
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Let's say it all together: the problem is not that the Earth is warming, it's how fast the Earth is warming.
A new PETM [wikipedia.org] is not a desirable situation. Yes, Earth has done this experiment before.
Historical Photography, glaciology, satellite (Score:2)
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I guess we can safely assume that you've never flown over Greenland.
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I'm using a very simple rule for scientific results in fields I don't know much about and unless I happen to come up with some generally accepted and confirmed-to-be-successful better way of doing science in that field (which would highly unlikely if I don't know much about it):
I take the current state of the art in the respective field, what the majority of scientists currently agree upon, as my guideline for forming beliefs and informing me for decision making.
Anything else is just stupid. Of course, sc
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How on earth can you possibly be certain that glaciers are receding?
Because most major glaciers have good historical documentation.
Because most major glaciers have for the past century been carefully and accurately monitored.
You're a nobody. And the day you die, you'll be forgotten, forever.
For someone complaining that someone believes something without providing facts you seem very certain about this without actually knowing anything about the person you are talking about.
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Mate you need to have a long hard look in the mirror. Not even sure why you are on Slashdot if you cannot understand the basic science behind climate change
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Yeah, if only there was a way to test materials for what wavelengths of light they absorb.
Too bad such a technology has never been invented.
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Re:The priesthood has spoken (Score:4, Insightful)
At the time of Einstein, it was well understood that something was wrong with Newtonian physics. Light was measured to move at a finite fixed speed, yet this speed didn't change relative to the relative velocities of the sender and receiver. Different reference frames for the same beam of light didn't match up. An explanation had to be found. It was one of the great problems of physics of the day.
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I did.
it was 80f on thanksgiving.
a full 40f warmer than the moving average of the past 100 years, and 45f warmer than the average over the 20th century.
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It's all well and good to reduce dependence on coal, but I think the populace will think different and force their government's hand when 1. they see how damned expensive renewables are
Right now, coal is expensive-- natural gas is much cheaper.
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Re:Political Gamesmanship Of The Moment (Score:5, Interesting)
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"Wind-turbine lubricants freeze at -1 deg C."
So thats why theres no wind farms in North Dakota... Oh, wait...
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You believe there's only one type of lubricant for all wind turbines?
Isn't that cute!
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-20 deg C from October to May.
Wind-turbine lubricants freeze at -1 deg C.
That's why all the new wind mills have lubricant heaters. Once the wind is blowing at sufficient speed the heaters are turned off and the friction of the bearings is more than enough to keep them warm. I'm surprised you don't know this. Of course the heaters add to material and operating costs but that is more than compensated by the increased output from year around operation.
Getting nuclear plants online can take 30 years.
Actually it's more like 40 years, at least in the USA. Trump supports nuclear power though, expect that to get down to 2 years r
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-20 deg C from October to May.
Oh, really? [www.yr.no]
What other factual errors does Vlad wish for you to share with us today?
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You're supposed to expend the nuclear FUEL, not the REACTOR :p
(sorry)
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Unfortunately, nuclear power is the most expensive electricity. High cost, long lead times, unresolved problems with design and waste. Not a good option. Nuclear only gets built with massive subsidies and public liability for cleanup and accidents.
Wind and solar are cheaper and cleaner.
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Unfortunately, nuclear power is the most expensive electricity. High cost, long lead times, unresolved problems with design and waste. Not a good option. Nuclear only gets built with massive subsidies and public liability for cleanup and accidents.
Wind and solar are cheaper and cleaner.
Again, if you fear this more than global warming then I have to conclude that global warming is not a threat.
I thought that global warming was supposed to make the entire earth unfit for human life. Even if we can conclude that building up more nuclear power results in more accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima, then I assume that is a better alternative than the extinction of our species.
You seem to assume that we've learned nothing from past nuclear accidents, that these unresolved issues with nuclear p
Re: Meaningless (Score:2)
I said it's too expensive.
No fear. Just too expensive.
Re:Meaningless (Score:4, Interesting)
Pretty fucked up definitions of both in my opinion if that fits in your mind.
The reason it hasn't been disproved is only because nothing has contradicted it yet and the models have been changing year after year as more is understood about sea currents, cloud formation and a pile of other things. You are blaming scientists for dumbed down soundbites from politicians and economists.
As for nukes, like all massive capital intensive projects economists and bankers hate the things so that's why China and Russia are the only ones going forward with civilian nukes. The choice in the west is TMI painted green - 1970s stuff that nobody trusts and not only looks really disappointing against everything else but takes a decade to build. There was a thorium project with some promise back when Clinton was President (one of those people you are pretending are in the way) but the nuclear lobby, Westinghouse et al, lobbied to have it shut down because they saw it as a danger to their old Uranium designs barely touched since the 1970s. It may seem fun to kick hippies and "the left" over nukes but it wasn't their fault, and it's what you see as "the left" in China (really authoritarian but most people see them as the same as "the left") who are actually getting the things built!
So some of those "CAGW types" really are building nukes.
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Yet another nation announces abandoning coal, a nation with ample hydro resources
"Ample hydro resources" [worldenergy.org], my ass.
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The fact that the DoD has declared that resource wars (over water and oil) will be the biggest military threat to the US in the next 50 years?
I'm not arguing that the DOD got this wrong. I'm arguing that if CAGW is truly a threat to humanity then all options must be explored, not all options except nuclear power.
I saw some very interesting people speaking on this topic from recorded presentations on Youtube. The DOD, and the US Navy in particular, are very interested in addressing a potential threat to the world's oil supply. The USN is fighting hard for more nuclear powered ships. The USN has been doing research on synthesizing aircraft fuel
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You can see the evolution of the global warming argument in that acronym.
When it was just "global warming", the argument was basically "global warming is not happening".
Then, when it got too hard to sustain pure denial, they added "anthropogenic", so the argument became "OK, global warming is happening, but it's not us that's causing it"
Now we see "catastrophic" added and the argument morphs again: "OK we are causing global warming, but it's not going to be as bad as people say".
If things carry on