?

Two can play
at that.
A big pat
on one’s own back;
lots of words, no core.

!

Two can play
at poetry:
is ‘myopic’
your bigotry?
poetically judgmental, sour.

;-(

(Encore:
No harm is meant.
I did not intend,
to go and waste
so nice a taste!)

http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/lecture-and-seminar-series/colloquium/events/physics-colloquium-oct-23-2008

The point was that the Navier-Stokes equations don’t allow you to “cut off” climate modelling on any scale, and that increasing computational power in order to take smaller “basic” climate cells, given today’s approximation methods, will not yield much in terms of accuracy.

The point was NOT that climate change has not occurred, will not continue, or is not anthropogenic. Certainly even the lower bound on the error predicts a significant warming. What he was looking for is a way to better bound the error. Which is what a lot of Physics is about.

All of which is not to say that certain people are not hacks, or hicks, or that “we” are not tired of the same old pseudo-facts raising their little heads.

(Saying that computer models are not accurate as a blanket statement is silly. Of course they aren’t, but you still use them all the time)

Not a bad point you make but there is luckily a lot of people motivated to cut their CO2 and a lot of governments willing to incentivize it. So much the better for you – the less dust you have to launch, the easier it’ll be ;-)

Extracting it afterwards might be a little bit of a problem ;-( That’s the problem with single shot man-made solutions, the lack of knowledge to support taking them tends to reveal problems as soon as it is too late to take back the solution.

The nice thing about launching dust into space is that you DON’T need all world leaders to agree to it. You just do it. The nasty thing about reducing CO2 output is that if this group of people here cut off their CO2 output entirely, and that group double their’s, the first group have just wasted their time.

In general, it’s a good idea to solve problems in ways that don’t require unanimity. Because that way they actually get solved.

Odd kudo to say the least. There has not been a precedent for almost anything and there not being one has not prevented the worst and the best to happen. Your commitment to this as a coherent argument is a commitment for historicism as, I think, well refuted by Popper.

(no, I’m not in favour of a nuclear option; I posted what I’m in favour of higher but it seems a windmill or two gets less excitement from self-proclaimed ‘denialist’ proclaimers than “a good old” nuclear discussion)

(no, don’t try to belittle my point by referring to anything else that Popper said outside of the reference to historicism – what this type of ‘poetic justice’ can do is abundantly clear from this thread)

(yes, I am annoyed – Maurice thinks he has the better of anybody in 75 taking distance from a couple of bozo’s to shtick it to … (yes: to who?) but the crux of the matter is in fact when is the point of irreversibility and what is the extent of the damage? These are very valid points to be raised and they should not be confined to expert opinion – if the consensus is irreversibility will set in, say by 2020, e.g. John’s reaction is absurdly careless because cost is not the factor, only speed is a factor in considering which solution is the best)

But no: let’s keep it to the ‘Oooh, we have to live differently’-hysteria criminalizing everybody that likes to drive a big car in the week-ends (not me by the way, I don’t like to drive, and least of all in big cars – they make me sea-sick). Let’s avoid the specifics alltogether, leave science to scientists and all that kind of stuff.

My favoured wind-mill park will cost 300 MEuro, it’ll take renewable energy to 100% in EU & the real effect will only kick on somewhere after 2020 – is this enough (alongside taking a crisis we have now as a means to reconvert, rather than close, our industrial plants to new products, preferably not the tanks and planes of WWII?

Well said, well done. Best, most coherent argument against advocating for nuclear power I’ve seen in a long while. And I’ve memorized the question “Where is the precedent for that level of responsible behavior?” for future use: it’s impeccably classic.

And understandable nobody in an identifiable public position would be advocating it.
It is not my position. At all.

For what it’s worth some people close to me are doing work and directing the flow of millions of dollars on geothermal energy projects, for which they make a variety of – to me – mind-bogglingly optimistic claims. They have far more book learnin’ than I do in the area so with luck my incredulity is that of a yokel scoffing at the promise of readily available hot water.

I have a better argument for you to use.

As long as Cape Wind is more dangerous than climate change, it can’t be a real problem.

There is no cure for AGW that doesn’t run headlong into some stupid-ass NIMBY protest or takes money away from those that can afford it least.

-x(corporate tool of “Big Wind”)mas

But, to be absolutely clear, if adequately regulated modern nuclear plants can be built at a competitive price, I’m all for it.

I’m still opposed but “if adequately regulated modern nuclear plants can be built at a competitive price” is an awfully hard thing to disagree with given its openness. Apparently designs like this are less hazardous than the norm. We’ll see I guess.

If you want nuclear power to succeed other than by compulsion, the absolutely necessary condition is a carbon tax or emissions trading scheme to remove the cost disadvantage relative to coal.

Given the lack of useful recent experience, no one really knows how much a modern greenfield nuclear power plant, with the regulatory processes needed to ensure safety, would cost. But the minimal interest shown in new projects under the very favorable regulatory regime of the Bush Administration suggests it’s not only costlier than coal but also costlier than the cheapest renewable sources, such as wind.

But, to be absolutely clear, if adequately regulated modern nuclear plants can be built at a competitive price, I’m all for it.

But really—and I have no expectation that anyone here will actually understand anything about actual politics, given the recent thread on lead in toys, but I suppose it’s worth a try—even if nuclear power were the A-1 panacea that it really isn’t, it would still probably be a bad idea for the Sierra Club to support it. That’s because politics works through coalitions. The Sierra Club need not be boosters for nuclear power, especially when that might turn off the Sierra Club’s base. All that they have to do is be more interested in working to end global warming than they are in opposing nuclear power—which they are—and if it is such a good idea, then industry will be happy to lobby for it and the coalition as a whole will be stronger than its parts.

It isn’t a panacea. Uranium is rare (especially if you want to scale its use up drastically); building power plants takes time; there is waste to deal with; and of course we have a lot of diffuse emission sources. None of these are fatal but they do have to be dealt with.

But the nuclear advocates just keep on repeating their claim even in the face of contrary evidence – e.g. that the folks on the other side are willing to change their beliefs in the face of new information. This only makes sense if nuclear power is really just being used to mock the hippies. They can’t take yes for an answer because they want an excuse for inaction – not nuclear as one component of a response to climate change.