This meaningless green drivel: Scientist's U-turn on doomsday claims

Derp Derp said:
Well what risk are you analyzing Tom? Cost benefit or human health and safety?
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Well both actually, there is only so much money to go round and to see it totally squandered on ill thought out renewable energy projects which are mostly monuments to politician's hubris is just shameful. That Greens like Lovelock and Monbiot have arrived at much the same conclusion is at least good news before further shedloads of money are poured down the drain. They both believe nuclear energy is the safest, cleanest and most effective form of energy there is at present.
 
Derp Derp said:
I don't care if it was the NYT or the WSJ. I'm talking about publishing in a peer reviewed scientific journal.
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Well that dealt with the tabloid rag charge anyway. As for peer review, I am not sure how many papers James Lovelock has published over the years but it must run into hundreds. I happen to think that the peer review process isn't all its cracked up to be, for a start it should be double blind meaning that the author and the reviewer should be anonymous to each other. Anyway what he is saying is nothing new either, if you take the time you can see he has been saying much the same for most of this decade.
 
Rune said:
Please provide proof of your theory of the end of ocean currents.
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Well, it's not a "theory" it's something we've studied for years. The ocean has a convection current, which is the support system for all the life in the ocean. Significant cooling, which would be the logical anticipated result of melting ice, would disrupt this convection and it would cease to function, which would result in everything dying in the ocean. The LEAST of our worries would be flooding coastlines, if this were to happen.

Onceler said:
2 things stand out for me here. In the 2nd paragraph, the ONLY logic presented for why this can't happen is because it's simply to horrible to imagine. Which is interesting logic.
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That's not what was presented. The flooding of coastal land is an irrelevant non-existing problem, that IF it were to happen, would be the LEAST of our worries. The flawed logic is believing that our problem is melting ice will cause coastal areas to become submerged and uninhabitable... before that would ever happen, we would need to address the stagnant and lifeless ocean and what that means to humanity's food supply worldwide.

The 2nd is that the bolded is a phrase that Rush Limbaugh often invokes - it's funny to see it just parrotted like that. There is no basis for it, and no logic to it; we're supposed to just believe it because it makes us feel good to think that the planet can withstand anything we throw at it.
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No, you're never supposed to just accept and believe anything... we know this to be the fact, because we have evidence to support it. History has recorded countless catastrophic events, even before mankind was here... the planet has always rebounded. Now, I never said the planet could withstand anything we throw at it, I suppose we could conceivably pollute the planet enough to destroy it, especially with nuclear radiation and such... but we'd have to really try hard to do so.
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
Well both actually, there is only so much money to go round and to see it totally squandered on ill thought out renewable energy projects which are mostly monuments to politician's hubris is just shameful. That Greens like Lovelock and Monbiot have arrived at much the same conclusion is at least good news before further shedloads of money are poured down the drain. They both believe nuclear energy is the safest, cleanest and most effective form of energy there is at present.
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Did he ask the Japanese?
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
Well both actually, there is only so much money to go round and to see it totally squandered on ill thought out renewable energy projects which are mostly monuments to politician's hubris is just shameful. That Greens like Lovelock and Monbiot have arrived at much the same conclusion is at least good news before further shedloads of money are poured down the drain. They both believe nuclear energy is the safest, cleanest and most effective form of energy there is at present.
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But isn't that just an opinion on your behalf? Won't the market itself determine if windmills are economically viable, for example? Not to mention you seem to be condeming the whole of the environmental movement by a policies who's opinions you differ with. That's hardly rational given the history and the results of progressive environmental legislation.
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
Well that dealt with the tabloid rag charge anyway. As for peer review, I am not sure how many papers James Lovelock has published over the years but it must run into hundreds. I happen to think that the peer review process isn't all its cracked up to be, for a start it should be double blind meaning that the author and the reviewer should be anonymous to each other. Anyway what he is saying is nothing new either, if you take the time you can see he has been saying much the same for most of this decade.
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Well that's fine but again, those are his OPINIONS. If he has science that descredits specific environmental theories then I say publish them and let us decide the validity of his conclusions for our selves.
 
Rana said:
Did he ask the Japanese?
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Nobody has ever said that there is no risk associated with nuclear energy but if you compare it to oil, coal, gas and yes, shock horror even wind turbines it is safer. Did you know that there have been more people killed in wind turbine construction than have died from nuclear power. As for Fukushima, if a magnitude 9 earthquake followed immediately by a tsunami that only happens once in a thousand years couldn't cause an apocalypse as many had predicted then I think it speaks for itself. Anyway, the Japanese have spoken as they are now restarting the nuclear reactors that were shut down last year as they have been suffering crippling power shortages.
 
Derp Derp said:
But isn't that just an opinion on your behalf? Won't the market itself determine if windmills are economically viable, for example? Not to mention you seem to be condeming the whole of the environmental movement by a policies who's opinions you differ with. That's hardly rational given the history and the results of progressive environmental legislation.
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No, not at all. I would love for wind turbines and solar power to be the answer, but the economics just don't stack up. The market has already determined that they are not viable otherwise there would no need for huge subsidies.
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
Nobody has ever said that there is no risk associated with nuclear energy but if you compare it to oil, coal, gas and yes, shock horror even wind turbines it is safer. Did you know that there have been more people killed in wind turbine construction than have died from nuclear power. As for Fukushima, if a magnitude 9 earthquake followed immediately by a tsunami that only happens once in a thousand years couldn't cause an apocalypse as many had predicted then I think it speaks for itself. Anyway, the Japanese have spoken as they are now restarting the nuclear reactors that were shut down last year as they have been suffering crippling power shortages.
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Does that include the rate of people dying by disease associated with radiation exposure? Now, what about the waste issue, how will that be addressed?
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
No, not at all. I would love for wind turbines and solar power to be the answer, but the economics just don't stack up. The market has already determined that they are not viable otherwise there would no need for huge subsidies.
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I heard the same thing said in the 70's about IT infrastructure.
 
Rana said:
Notice the word flaws, and will they truly correct them to the point where the system is fail safe and then what of the waste if all countries turn to nuclear power as their main source?
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Yes, it was the word flaws that I was also pointing to. They ignored the safety and planned according to the best case scenario instead of the worst case. That is not an error of nuclear technology, but human judgement. It is similar to the horizon rig disaster. People did not follow safety protocol there either.

no matter what energy source we use... if we use it incorrectly it could lead to disasters.
 
Rana said:
Does that include the rate of people dying by disease associated with radiation exposure? Now, what about the waste issue, how will that be addressed?
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Those are the two biggest issues with Nuclear power. Yes the technology has matured to a point that when operated responsibly under normal circumstances it is quite safe. But as we've seen with Chernobyl and Fukushima when disaster strikes a nuclear facility the results are quite catastrophic. Then there is the issue of waste. The technology does exist to manage the waste but that doesn't change the fact that managing the waste is extremely hazardous, dangerous and extremely costly not to mention that incidents occuring with nuclear waste, when they occur are also quite catastrophic in nature.

So on the whole, Nuclear power can be managed quite safely but to use an analogy risk analysis can demonstrate that flying is much safer than riding a bicycle. The only problem with that analogy is that when you fall off a bicycle you don't fall 30,000 feet. That logic applies to nuclear energy too. Now that isn't said to discredit Nuclear power but rather to demonstrate the hazards of understating the dangers of nuclear power.
 
Derp Derp said:
Those are the two biggest issues with Nuclear power. Yes the technology has matured to a point that when operated responsibly under normal circumstances it is quite safe. But as we've seen with Chernobyl and Fukushima when disaster strikes a nuclear facility the results are quite catastrophic. Then there is the issue of waste. The technology does exist to manage the waste but that doesn't change the fact that managing the waste is extremely hazardous, dangerous and extremely costly not to mention that incidents occuring with nuclear waste, when they occur are also quite catastrophic in nature.

So on the whole, Nuclear power can be managed quite safely but to use an analogy risk analysis can demonstrate that flying is much safer than riding a bicycle. The only problem with that analogy is that when you fall off a bicycle you don't fall 30,000 feet. That logic applies to nuclear energy too. Now that isn't said to discredit Nuclear power but rather to demonstrate the hazards of understating the dangers of nuclear power.
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Well, I don't want it in my backyard till they have covered all those bases, how about you, Tom, nuclear waste disposal
in your neighborhood?
 
Rana said:
Well, I don't want it in my backyard till they have covered all those bases, how about you, Tom, nuclear waste disposal
in your neighborhood?
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Disposal isn't the problem. Deep well injection is very affective and safe for long term. It's the storage, treatment and transportation part of managing HLW that is tricky. Though that technology is quite mature too. I did research on High Temperature Vitrification of HLW using a borosilicate glass matrix back in the early to mid 90's and it was very affective treatment. It was creating the highly radioactive glass monoliths and then transporting them to the deep well injection site that was real problematic.
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
The product life cycle of IT infrastructure is typically no more than 5-10 years these days whereas wind turbines, for instance, you are stuck with for several decades.
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That's not the point. My point is that this is not yet a mature technology and it is quite possible, as you opine, that it never will mature because it is not cost affective. Time will tell.
 
Derp Derp said:
Disposal isn't the problem. Deep well injection is very affective and safe for long term. It's the storage, treatment and transportation part of managing HLW that is tricky. Though that technology is quite mature too. I did research on High Temperature Vitrification of HLW using a borosilicate glass matrix back in the early to mid 90's and it was very affective treatment. It was creating the highly radioactive glass monoliths and then transporting them to the deep well injection site that was real problematic.
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Thanks, I understood only half of what you said, but I will educate myself.
 
Rana said:
Well, I don't want it in my backyard till they have covered all those bases, how about you, Tom, nuclear waste disposal
in your neighborhood?
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Sellafield the nuclear reprocessing plant is not that far from me, it receives nuclear waste from as far afield as Japan and I have no qualms about waste being disposed underground. As Mott and I have discussed before, high level waste can be vitrified and put into containers, so there is no risk. The only real reason why we have so much waste anyway is because of the Cold War and the need to produce plutonium, 3rd generation reactors produce vastly less waste than the older ones. Anyway why do people think it safer to store nuclear waste at nuclear power stations rather than being buried safely underground, there a huge amount of irrationality and emotion on this subject!! I often got the feeling that many people think that they just dig a big hole, chuck it in and forget about it

http://www.sellafieldsites.com/
 
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