Nah, the cost of lifting hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 into space is too much. Every kg of CO2 would be as costly as 1 kg of gold. We don't have that much gold on our poor Earth, or maybe you have some big stash of loot lying around somewhere? [e digicons]^_^[/e]
I've read that in 2012, global CO2 production was about 34 billion tonnes/year. I think it's metric tonnes (the metric system, using meters and gram as basis). In Europe and China, the CO2 production per capita is about 7 tonnes/year. In the USA, the CO2 production per capita is about 20 tonnes/year. Now... if every one of the 7 billion people on the planet would reach the European level, global production would rise to 49 billion tonne
My old AMD quad core bytes the dust :(
Yeah that reminds me, I should really stop writing in this topic, at least for a while. It's so hard to stop. I'll post again when I've found something interesting. Or shall I perhaps make a summary of the top 10 most convincing articles that I've found?? God, the temptation... no I'll try to resist. This time it's real... at least for a while.
Even I got pursuaded that the use of thorium reactors might be a less bad thing than global warming. I don't like them at all, but I would reluctantly accept them as a necessity, because governments and people are too lazy and greedy to look for "safer" solutions. As far as the unavoidable cliff... actually I don't really believe humanity will let it come that far. In the end we'll just build lots of nuclear power plants and extract the CO2 from the atmosphere and put
[quote who="Kantok" reply="1911" id="3432378"]But if the treatment might kill the patient (in this case, the world economy) then maybe we should get more information. We should be more certain. [/quote] I'm not sure if it'll kill the world economy. If we can't pay 2x or even 4x the current price for energy, then we're going to be in shitload of trouble anyway. Do you realize how completely artificial our society is, anyway? Money isn't the r
[quote who="Kantok" reply="1903" id="3432356"]I trust models just fine. When they're accurate and able to predict the things they claim to predict. A lot of these aren't, which calls into question their assumptions. [/quote] There are a lot of things that models cannot predict, but are they really relevant for the bigger picture? The main theme here is the CO2 insulation with feedback from water vapor. This simple aspect of the models gives us a rise of
Yes, unfortunately the climate is a very non-linear system, so there's always something to nag about. I'm just satisfied with a rough, 1st order estimate: just add CO2 and some water vapor and see what happens. And that picture isn't pretty. The rest... well that's for fantasy land. Vegetation feedback, ocean currents, etcetera... all very nice but hard to predict and model. There could also be tipping points for large changes in the future. A freaky se
[quote who="Sinkillr" reply="1897" id="3432318"]is this thread a joke? I can prove global warming in 15 minutes in a high school chemistry class.[/quote] You wouldn't convince anyone here with such an experiment. That's a lab experiment and the result needs modeling to estimate the effect on the global temperature. People here don't trust models. Try to convince them first that models are reliable. They'll just say that they're not, because
http://www.livescience.com/42435-slowdown-in-global-warming-a-mirage.html So we had oceanographer, meteorologists, astronomists and to add to my list of confusion we now have: It's all due to a sampling bias in the Arctic region, a statistician would say. There is no pause in the global warming trend.
A while back I explained that the pause could be caused by ocean oscillations. But this could also be the reason for it: aerosols! http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112847137/sulfur-aerosols-in-cloud-formation-and-climate-change-051513/ Now we all know how much smog China and India produce every day. This produces extra clouds and therefore&nb
[quote who="starkers" reply="1880" id="3432196"]Global warming IS bullshit.[/quote] So your 60 years of observations completely rule out the possibility of warming in the coming centuries? Have you seen something that shows that the entire scientific community is just on a wild goose chase?
Oh this is interesting, and more on topic. It's about a radioactive "plume" that crosses the Pacific towards the west coast of the US. Well the picture shows that the plume is half the size of the Pacific and heavily diluted so really it's a big hype, but still interesting: http://ecowatch.com/2013/09/03/fukushima-radioactive-plume-hit-u-s/ [quote who="EadTaes" reply="
[quote who="EadTaes" reply="39" id="3432172"]So all that radioactive waste that we have from our current nuclear power plants that we do not know what to with because it will continue to be deadly for hundreds of thousands of years we can burn it up and make it go away by using it as an added fuel source. [/quote] I agree with this, it's an advantage. [quote who="EadTaes" reply="39" id="3432172"]Storing and handling Thorium requires no more safety measure ne
I think I've finally found an article that shows the influence of greenhouse gases on the climate more clearly. http://news.rutgers.edu/research-news/new-finding-shows-climate-change-can-happen-geological-instant/20131003#.Us2jeNA1iUm I just hope this doesn't turn out to be just another hype, because you
People who are old are still humans. We all see patterns and cycles everywhere, especially in the Netherlands, where we even see bi-cycles. The thing is, by the time you're 50 or 60, the temperature has risen only 0.5 degrees. JUST HALF A DEGREE. That's just not enough to see any major differences. And then there are also the ocean oscillations that act on a timescale of 60 years and other shorter period oscillations from the sun, and the occasional volcano which all help to blur the
Ok then, looks like you know a lot more about this than I do :) What about the possibility to refine the U233 by a centrifuge? You cannot really prevent this, can you? According to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle a breeder-type reactor which doesn't extract Pactinium to let it decay peacefully into U-233, doesn't only produce U-232 but a
At straws? Pretty strong ones like this: http://www.princeton.edu/sgs/publications/sgs/pdf/9_1kang.pdf "the proliferation resistance of thorium fuel cycles depends very much upon how they are implemented." You're staring blindly at one "perfect" situation where everything goes as you planned, but others might not share your vision, they will find ways... Perhaps you're right tha
[quote who="EadTaes" reply="27" id="3431972"]But that high radioactivity is also the beauty of it since whiting a week the very deadly elements have decayed away, and in 10 years most of it is going to be stable.[/quote] Only if you let significant amounts of U232 build up. [quote who="EadTaes" reply="27" id="3431972"]But that high radioactivity is also the beauty of it since whiting a week the very deadly elements have decayed away, and in 10 years most of it is going to be s
And why would the plant operators want to leave the Pactinium in the fuel so that it can form U232 in the presence of neutrons? The decay of U232 creates hard radiation, which shortens the life time of the nuclear installation... but this can be largely prevented by extracting the pactinium early on and letting it decay into U233, before inserting the U233 back into the fuel. On top of that you're left with this U232, which is a pretty&
A single blast of cold arctic air and suddenly all problems have blown away... yeah right... Such cold spells happened in the past and sure it was cold for a few weeks, but they did absolutely nothing to prevent any of the warming in the decades that followed.
He's still in critical condition. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-06/schumacher-remains-critical-eight-days-after-skiing-accident.html
I've read in the links posted above that the problems at Fukushima were not due to the design, that was fine. It was due to cost-cutting measures: a water barrier that was lower than "recommended", cost-cutting on materials. I wouldn't put too much trust in the words of the thorium-plant advocates. They want to build those things and make a lot of money from them, so of course they downplay any of the problems. <a href="http://www.independentaustralia.ne
What's wrong with duct tape? It's magical! And where are the tie-wraps?? But seriously, one nuclear spill doesn't make the whole ocean radiactive...
That makes me think of a little story: Snowy the dog was running for hours and hours and then had to take a dump. Time to get a short break and to get his bearings. And then continue running... south... or north... he couldn't tell the difference. After a few days of running and taking dumps, Snowy got nowhere. Gosh what a useless ability, he thought. Cursed that primordial bacteria that invented this ability and made us all shit north or south. (End of little st
