Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Windrunner on April 30, 2007, 03:12:13 pm
-
I just watched Al Gores documentary "An inconvenient truth", and its really startling to see what is happening to our world. My question to you is if the global warming has affected you somehow? And what does your government do to prevent it?
Discuss
-
I think "An inconvenient truth" exaggerates a bit, but climate change is occurring no doubt.
I'm doing whatever the U.S. is doing, diddly squat.
-
We kind of covered everything in this thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,45922.0.html)...
I don't think anyone has changed their minds since then. :)
-
In an ABC News interview in August 2006, Hawking explained, "The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of methane, trapped as hydrates on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so further global warming. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can."
Scary thought.
-
Yeah, who knows... might even stabilize or something, instead of this unstable leftover from the Ice Age junk that we have now. :rolleyes: Honestly, you think the world was coming to an end before the Ice Age??
-
If you're talking long term, then I don't think there is such a thing as stabilizing for such a complex and constantly moving system as our world's climate. We're always coming to an end anyway, just depends on how you look at it :).
-
Honestly, you think the world was coming to an end before the Ice Age??
It did for 97% of the species on the planet at one point. The world may not end, but that doesn't mean it would be capable of supporting species that rely on a 20/80 O2/N relationship in their breathing, life would probably survive, but human life is another question.
-
Honestly, you think the world was coming to an end before the Ice Age??
It did for 97% of the species on the planet at one point. The world may not end, but that doesn't mean it would be capable of supporting species that rely on a 20/80 O2/N relationship in their breathing, life would probably survive, but human life is another question.
I think that like in all things nature demands balance, if the global temprature continues to rise and the polar icecaps melt the only counter to that is a new ice age that could cool down the entire planet and restore the balance.
-
I think most species would survive both global warming and an ice age. Why? Well, during an Ice Age, correct me if I'm wrong, there are still tropical places, just they are smaller. I don't think the Earth turned into a giant IceBall during the Ice Age, just the cold areas were alot larger, and the warm areas were small. I think an Ice Age would bring alot of migration. Global warming - well, we'd all sweat more. Big deal.
-
I think most species would survive both global warming and an ice age. Why? Well, during an Ice Age, correct me if I'm wrong, there are still tropical places, just they are smaller. I don't think the Earth turned into a giant IceBall during the Ice Age, just the cold areas were alot larger, and the warm areas were small. I think an Ice Age would bring alot of migration. Global warming - well, we'd all sweat more. Big deal.
Most of the species will die when they lose their enviroments, simple as that, period. All mass extinction events have drastically decreased the faunal variety, P-T being the most obvious one. If you really think that a very rapid enviromental change wouldn't decimate a huge amount of species and give immense sociopolitical problems for mankind, then... well.
-
I think balance will restore itself, but balance from an Ecological point of view, not a human one.
There have been several changes to the composition of the atmosphere if research is to be believed, over the last few hundred million years. At one stage, the atmosphere contained an awful lot more methane than it does now, though, tbh, this was back before even triploblasts emerged, so we're talking a more unsettled planet.
The thing is, we aren't talking about a harmony here, The Gaia theory has that one weakness, it assumes that there is an ideal state that the earth wants to be at and it will always return to it. That's not strictly true, what the Earth wants as such is to reach a point of stability, but that stability may not neccesarily be in the 'Gaia' environment from a human point of view, in fact, it does not need to even be life supporting.
Foruntately, life imposes itself on the environment, the more life there is, the more life there can be, and the more suitable the environment becomes, but suitable is not stable, at some point the change in the environment is going to promote a response from it. In many ways Environmentalism isn't about loving planet Earth, it's about finding ways to deal with its indifference to us.
Edit : In short, from a purely ecological point of view, an Ice Age would screw us, as size goes, we are in something like the top 15% largest animals on the planet, and they are the ones most at risk from environmental change because they place the highest demand on their environment.
But we're odd, as far as we are aware, for the first time, an Ice Age threatens a species that can sidestep a lot of the rules, because we can plan ahead and, just possibly, adapt to the environment faster than it can change, even if massive environmental change does come soon, I don't think it would be the end of humanity, though it would certainly be the end of a large percentage of it.
-
...because we can plan ahead...
Of course we can, riiiight after we stop bickering... :rolleyes:
Say it with me now: We're ****ed.
-
Heh, I'm trying to be optimistic here :nervous:
-
Heh, I'm trying to be optimistic here :nervous:
I tried optimism once. I was always getting disappointed.
-
I tried pessimism, but I kept on getting pleasantly surprised. It makes it very hard to be pessimistic when the world keeps on existing and doesn't self-destruct in a ball of fire. :p
-
Pffft! If we really wanted to quit fossil fuels, we could do it now. The technology is available. No, not solar, alternative fuels, hydro or wind.... The technology works quite well, but Not In My Back Yard. (Actually, since I don't freak out over stupid occurrences like Cherynobl, I wouldn't mind.)
-
Minimum wage jobs having people run in wheels like hamsters hooked up to generators.
-
Minimum wage jobs having people run in wheels like hamsters hooked up to generators.
Maybe that could solve the illegal immigration controversy as well.
*runs*
-
Maybe that could solve the illegal immigration controversy as well.
And it could provide a unique way of dealing with criminals. Rather than sticking them in cells, sucking up resources while they contribute little to society, they can be put to some serious work. Rather than getting a sentence measured in time, you get a sentence measured in power. Rather than giving criminals a specified number of years in jail, the Judge merely yells '1.21 GIGAWATTS!!' or whatever and the prisoner has to produce that amount of power on a hamster-wheel.
It would produce a much-needed service to society free of charge, and you could even make a quick buck off it by charging admission for people to come by and watch the dumb bastards run.
-
ROFL sounds like a plan.
-
Minimum wage jobs having people run in wheels like hamsters hooked up to generators.
Puts out lots of carbon dioxide actually.
Those people have to eat chemical fuel in the form of food and CO2 is the waste product when they burn it up.
-
You're joking, right? I know we produce CO2, but that has negligible impact.
-
Pffft! If we really wanted to quit fossil fuels, we could do it now. The technology is available. No, not solar, alternative fuels, hydro or wind.... The technology works quite well, but Not In My Back Yard. (Actually, since I don't freak out over stupid occurrences like Cherynobl, I wouldn't mind.)
Come back to me when you have unlimited uranium deposits and cars running on nuclear power tia
-
The biggest problem with nuclear power isn't the finite quantity of obtainable uranium on the planet, it's that we are still building new reactors based on designs and technology that are 50 years old, and every new or clever idea anyone has come up with or even proved out is either completely ignored or outright repressed. Argonne National Laboratory came up with a completely different reactor design and fuel life-cycle over a decade ago before all their funding dropped out from under them. Even then, they'd already built the reactor and successfully proved they could make it work, and work well.
The basic idea was to combine a liquid-metal cooled reactor (ideally lead-bismuth eutectic) with a pyrometallurgical fuel reprocessing scheme. The liquid metal cooled reactor is inherently safer than the light-water reactors we still insist on using because it is capable of cooling itself passively without any pumps at all. (Ask Russia. They've been using them on their subs since the beginning of the Cold War.) Meltdowns wouldn't be impossible, but with proper reactor design they'd practically have to be deliberately instigated. This type of reactor is also capable of breeding and burning with ease the transuranics currently considered unusable (and highly dangerous) waste in the current reactor/fuel-cycle scheme.
As for the pyro-reprocessing:
# It separates out all actinides, and therefore produces fuel that is heavily spiked with heavy actinides, such as Plutonium (240+), and Curium 242. This does not prevent the fuel from being suitable for reactors, but it makes it hard to manipulate, steal, or make nuclear weapons from. This is generally considered a fairly desirable property. In contrast, the PUREX process can easily produce separated Uranium and Plutonium, and also tends to leave the remaining actinides (like Curium) behind, producing more dangerous nuclear waste.
# It is somewhat more efficient and considerably more compact than aqueous processing methods, allowing the possibility of on-site reprocessing of reactor wastes. This circumvents various transportation and security issues, allowing the reactor to simply store a small volume (perhaps a few percent of the original volume of the spent fuel) of fission product laced salt on site until decommissioning, when everything could be dealt with at once.
# Since pyrometallurgy recovers all the actinides, the remaining waste is not nearly as long lived as it would otherwise be. Most of the long term (past a couple hundred years) radioactivity produced by nuclear waste is produced by the actinides. These actinides can (mostly) be consumed by reactors as fuel, so extracting them from the waste and reinserting them into the reactor reduces the long term threat from the waste, and reduces the fuel needs of the reactor.
It won't by viable forever any more than burning fossil fuels is, but it would buy us more time to develop and implement truly renewable power sources. I don't think liquid metal reactors and pyro-reprocessing should be implemented to the exclusion of renewable technologies available now, but neither do I understand why everyone insists on ignoring it and all it can offer.
-
Pffft! If we really wanted to quit fossil fuels, we could do it now. The technology is available. No, not solar, alternative fuels, hydro or wind.... The technology works quite well, but Not In My Back Yard. (Actually, since I don't freak out over stupid occurrences like Cherynobl, I wouldn't mind.)
Come back to me when you have unlimited uranium deposits and cars running on nuclear power tia
I don't have to. Nuclear power is best suited for central distribution. ie, nuclear power plants power the electric grid, at a much cheaper price than oil or almost anything else. Now, you plugin electric cars begin to make sense. Instead of burning fossil fuels and then losing energy as it is transmitted to the electric car, you use nuclear. Sure, you lose some power in transmition - at the cost of a few wasted atoms, who gives a rip. Start to make sense?
-
Yes, junior, but a highly centralized system (like the one we have) is vulnerable and requires a much more robust transmission system to be able to move huge amounts of power from a few locations to where it is actually needed. Our transmission lines are taxed practically to the limit already and are in dire need of upgrade. It's so bad that much of the power used in Texas during the summer is being routed from Louisiana because the lines from local power plants are already at capacity. It would make much more sense to have a lot of small generation sites throughout the network to help spread out the load and minimize transmission losses.
I'm an advocate of nuclear power (because I think any fossil fuels we don't burn is a very good thing), but I do not think a network comprised solely of colossal power plants (of any kind) is a good idea. What happens when one of those colossal power plants trips? (The northeast blackouts of 2003, anyone?)
-
The same thing as when a power generator of equivalent size powered by fossil fuels trips. Except, well, it'd be a bit more rare for a nuclear generator to go down. But whatever. You can't go wrong by replacing our current generators with nuclear ones. Adding more will only help. IIRC, it's not so much that the distribution network is transmitting too much power as it is that there is not enough power to go around through it. This causes problems, and because the grid is old, the problem is compounded.
-
The same thing as when a power generator of equivalent size powered by fossil fuels trips. Except, well, it'd be a bit more rare for a nuclear generator to go down.
:wtf:
Why would it matter what the source of power was as far as plant trips are concerned? It is a transmission supply/demand problem, not a generation problem. IIRC, there was at least one nuclear plant (probably more considering the region) the did trip during said 2003 outage. And the problem in that outage at least wasn't that there wasn't enough generation capacity available. Yes, the generators were being taxed, but the cause of the problem was a cascade transmission failure where individual lines were cut off from the grid when they became overloaded and the rest of the grid failed to react fast enough to prevent subsequent failures.
-
Hm... what do you people think about the plan Bush had about burying the nuclear waste under a mountain in the Rockies? What ever happened with that, anyway?
-
Yucca mountain, IIRC. IDK about the rest.
-
Built correctly it should be safe. From what I've heard the waste products of the Oklo nuclear reactor haven't moved significantly and they've had 2 billion years to leak out.