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Climate Change/Global Warming

Renewable energies, sustainability, recycling and everything in between
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isha
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Climate Change/Global Warming

#1

Post by isha »

Hear me out and then correct me. I am open to having my mind changed.


Very important to say firstly that I think we are horribly polluting the place, causing mass extinctions of flora and fauna, and generally being loutish thugs and idiots. The amount of chemicals in the soil, air and water freaks me out. We should all be recycling, upcycling, buying less, buying better stuff that lasts longer, paying people properly who produce food overseas etc etc.
The amount of casual use of glyphosates in rural places is a mind bender, the amount of clothes in Penneys is also a mind binder. And so on and so forth. Not only are other species suffering but I think we humans are reaping the costs for wholesale polluting the place with strange hormonal anomalies such as striking fertility reduction and increase in chronic health conditions etc.

But...global warming leaves me cold. I just cannot get all keyed up about it.

Yep, I know there is an increase in carbon dioxide, we have had an industrial revolution. And that contributes to rises in temperatures. I know it's warmer just now.
But gigantic volcanic eruptions in the past have contributed massive amounts of carbon dioxide. One could pop off tomorrow and feck up up royally.
And we have had hugely fluctuating temperatures on this planet since forever for lots of reasons that had nothing to do with the invention of the steam engine.

Foremost, my biggest issue is that the solution to global warming seems to always be taxes. Which seems like a cop out. Either stop being filthy creatures or fess up that you still want to make money while talking the good talk.
It started off as the polluter pays principle which in effect gave huge corporations decades of simply paying for carbon credits and continuing to be filthy.
When that didn't work, the geniuses in charge seem to think now that the way to dial down the temperature of a planet is to pass on costs to the serfs. Higher prices, more profits for corporations and lectures should do the trick. Big fancy conferences with delicacies for lunch. Lectures, preferably from the top step of your private jet, should help the plebs do their bit to literally reverse temperatures on a planet spinning through space around a mind-blowingly enormous ball of fire whose influence on the planet's temperature changes seems to be completely ignored. :?

Anyway here are some charts.
The recent years ones that are designed to scare the living hell out of us and make us pay money to somehow use that to dial down the thermostat..

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Back to include the warm times in the Medieval era
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Showing the Roman warming period, the Minoan warming just before that (unlabelled) and back to the Holocene warming period after the big Ice Age.

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Back to 65 million years ago when things looked a lot roastier..

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Way back even further and things looked pretty hot by times...

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And alright, if I go along with the consensus and say yes we are in trouble re warming temperatures, and coastal cities are in trouble (which is not new on the planet, nor are catastrophic falls of civilisations due to profound climate change), then what the heck is forcing me to buy a car run on a battery made using mined rare earth minerals going to do to actually turn down the temperature?? I don't get it.



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Lithium Mining in South America

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knownunknown
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Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#2

Post by knownunknown »

The electric vehicle is supposed to cut down on greenhouse gases by not burning fossil fuels, obviously pretty redundant if your electric grid they are powered from is powered by burning fossil fuels.

Like those new bigger plastic bags you need to get about 100 uses out of them before they’re not as bad as our old plastic bags. If the EV gets many uses it’ll save in the space of its lifetime a lot of pollution.

Surely there is man made climate change, I don’t think many disagree with that. Maybe the extent to which it will affect the planet is in dispute. There has always been climate change even ancient civilisations were wiped out by it, getting over reliant on a single source of food or over farming the same area etc…

Honestly I think taxes are the way out of it, at least they nudge people in the right direction and drive innovation. Taxes should mostly be for industry though which are the biggest polluters.

Interesting video making the case for taxes here from a journalist/geologist I follow, Peter Hadfield.

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isha
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Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#3

Post by isha »

Good video, knownunknown.

(I'm not sure him using Donald Trump's opinions, though, as the adversary for ones opposite arguments is all that useful - better to counter more intelligent opponents.)

I have wondered if many of the innovative solutions are already there but kept on a back burner so that the huge corporations already invested in fossil fuels can squeeze out the last of that toothpaste before transitioning to different profit sources for themselves.

Certainly the speaker is very much relying on the idea that we will innovate our way out of trouble. I think this is true. This is what will happen. We should emphasise that to encourage it.

What I don't think is useful is widely taxing whole populations now, because I think that mostly results in wealth and power transfer and doesn't do all that much to effect planetary change. In a way it sets the stage for authoritarian regimes using pretexts of climate alarm to control citizens. "Global warming" is used at the moment as a catch all mantra to explain so many unrelated policies and events.

One can also nudge behaviour via what is available rather than taxing people into what for some is effectively impoverishment. Making pensioners here pay hefty taxes on coal won't really stop carbon emissions. Unless by freezing them to death. What alternative do they genuinely have except to eat less or be colder? Retrofitting houses will take ages. There's been a long time doing not very much except talking.

Subsidising innovation is a better idea in my view.
We seem to be tinkering around the edges all the time. And increasing poverty and power divides while supposedly trying to stop global warming. It breeds dishonesty and propaganda.
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Re: Climate Change/Global Warmingio

#4

Post by knownunknown »

There is a part two of that video that much more addresses your concerns, he picks better arguments to argue, Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson some US senators. I just rewatched to make sure.

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isha
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Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#5

Post by isha »

I don't know why the title of this thread has an io added at the end?

Anyway I read this interesting article yesterday by Vaclav Smil. He talks about the climate catastrophisers (is that a word) who constantly create fear and despair and advocate for carbon zero outcomes versus the magical thinkers who are not getting to grips with the reality of the situation and human capacity.

I don't know who he is so I hope he's not some kind of weird denier, but what he wrote makes a lot of sense to me. Worth a read.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/beyond-m ... ate-change
We are increasingly subjected to opposing propensities to embrace catastrophism (those who say there are just years left before the final curtain descends on modern civilization) and techno-optimism (those who predict that the powers of invention will open unlimited horizons beyond the confines of the Earth, turning all terrestrial challenges into inconsequential histories). I have little use for either of these positions. I do not see any already predetermined outcomes, but rather a complicated trajectory contingent on our — far from foreclosed— choices.

Catastrophists have always had a hard time imagining that human ingenuity can meet future food, energy, and material needs — but during the past three generations we have done so despite a tripling of the global population since 1950. And techno-optimists, who promise endless, near-miraculous solutions, must reckon with a similarly poor record. One of the best-known failures has been the belief in the all-encompassing power of nuclear fission as the solution to our energy needs.
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Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#6

Post by knownunknown »

isha wrote: Fri Jun 03, 2022 12:05 pm I don't know why the title of this thread has an io added at the end?

Anyway I read this interesting article yesterday by Vaclav Smil. He talks about the climate catastrophisers (is that a word) who constantly create fear and despair and advocate for carbon zero outcomes versus the magical thinkers who are not getting to grips with the reality of the situation and human capacity.

I don't know who he is so I hope he's not some kind of weird denier, but what he wrote makes a lot of sense to me. Worth a read.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/beyond-m ... ate-change
The writer seems to be a climate catastrophier himself, maybe just doesn’t like hearing it repeated. I don’t think there is a catastrophe as everyone makes out but maybe that makes me a tech optimist!

We have seen the adoption of cleaner energies and a lot of money and research poured into it. The price of this energy has dropped massively. The author admits this too, “ Even though the supply of new renewables (wind, solar, new biofuels) rose impressively — about fiftyfold during the first 20 years of the 21st century — the world’s dependence on fossil carbon declined only marginally, from 87 percent to 85 percent of the total supply.”

Doesn’t matter how reliant we are on fossil carbon once green energy is cheaper you’d have to be a fool not to use it. That’s the way the trend is heading already.
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Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#7

Post by knownunknown »

There will be more severe weather events and rising water and temperatures due to what we’ve already done, don’t think there’s any way around that. Some places will become uninhabitable and other places more habitable from what I’ve read. Could lead to mass migrations of people and possibly war for fertile land. This is pretty bad but not a catastrophe maybe.

For things to go really tits up you’d have to ascribe to the runaway greenhouse or snowball earth theories, that we would trigger one of these. That’s what I believe these climate activists are trying to warn against, why people warn that we only have 10 years left , etc…

The whole world economy shutdown for over a year and the price of oil went negative temporarily because no one was buying and burning it, that must have had a positive effect. I just googled and found some articles, this from NASA:
When the world went into lockdown, scientists had an unprecedented opportunity to study how human activity interacts with natural Earth system processes at regional and global scales. A team of international researchers led by JPL scientist Kazuyuki Miyazaki used this opportunity to research the two main oxides of nitrogen: nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide, collectively called NOx. They charted the chain of events from reduced fossil fuel burning during lockdowns to reduced local NOx emissions and finally to reduced global tropospheric ozone pollution. The more stringent the lockdown a nation imposed, the greater the reduction in emissions. For example, China’s stay-at-home orders in early February 2020 produced a 50% drop in NOx emissions in some cities within a few weeks; most U.S. states achieved a 25% drop later in the spring.

The total result of the reduced NOx emissions was a 2% drop in global ozone – half the amount that the most aggressive NOx emission controls considered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the authoritative body of international experts on climate, were expected to produce over a 30-year period.”
This is the met office in the UK:
Carbon Brief reported that in the UK, these reductions saw greenhouse gas emissions drop to 51% below 1990 levels – equivalent to temporarily being halfway to meeting the UK’s net zero by 2050 target.
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3089/loca ... asa-finds/
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/n ... he-climate

Of course the guardian are all still doom and gloom merchants pronouncing the lockdowns had minimal effect, what great scientists those guys are. “ Slowdown of human activity was too short to reverse years of destruction, but we saw a glimpse of post-fossil fuel world” in fact in the third paragraph they propose the lockdowns could have made things worse! Talk about fake fecking news!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... the-planet
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Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#8

Post by quodec »

I know every country must do their bit in trying to reduce emissions and aim for a 'renewable ' future of some sort, but when the biggest polluting countries in the world (USA, Russia, China & India) continue to produce and promote fossil fuel use, what benefit is it to us, a small island of 5-6 million souls, to break ourselves over the barrel of 'green' policies. No matter what way I try and tease it out, I just can't see the logic of what WE are trying to achieve! No matter what we do as a nation is largely irrelevant in the great scheme of things!
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Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#9

Post by isha »

I agree quodec. I don't listen to the news but himself does on the way home from work and apparently there's a lot of talk about the environment and climate change and cutting back agriculture here and so on. I was saying last night that one thing that really annoys me is the hopelessness and fear that is being ceaselessly pounded into young people's brains with this constant global death march scenario.

We account for less than 1% (even including UK) of global warming emissions and yet we are raising a generation composed of significant number of anti-natalists who are conditioned to believe the planet is on its last gasp. Imagine living like that - it's a zombie life. And the rest believe that us paying more taxes and self mortifying in various meaningless manners will somehow turn down the global thermostat while those hectoring us to do so use private jets like taxis.

I saw these poor children a few days ago. This is what all the endless disaster programming is producing. Addled, depressed, nihilist extremists. Congratulations to all the MSM content creators, you monsters. Look at one or two of the videos here - https://www.sacrificeforsurvival.co.uk/
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Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#10

Post by isha »

https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/country_profile/IRL

You can check out Ireland on this global emissions database. Might be useful.
IMG_20220722_101725_Easy-Resize.com.jpg
IMG_20220722_101725_Easy-Resize.com.jpg (222.07 KiB) Viewed 3939 times
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Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#11

Post by Cyclepath »

It's a very complex subject and I'm completely pissed off at every government's attempt to place a moral responsibility on the shoulders of people that have little or no power.

There's a slew of sensible policy changes that would alter the landscape overnight. Ban all plastic food wrapping, severely curtail all other unnecessary plastics usage. Bamboo, Hemp, and natural resins etc can be used in myriad ways to replace plastics. Make insulation/heating retrofitting of residences almost free or completely tax allowable. Ban cars from city centres and triple public transport provision (and dig up the acres of land devoted to cars and plant more trees in cities). Ban or heavily tax non-necessary SUVS and diesel engines immediately. Governments need to punish the corporations that are actively ruining the environment for profit.

But the ar5eh0les in government won't do any of this because of powerful lobbyists. Instead we get guilted for watering our gardens or not washing out plastic containers before recycling them into an incinerator (very little plastics are genuinely usefully recycled).

Here's a recap of some related posts I made recently:

100 major corporations are responsible for 71% of global emissions. (https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable ... ate-change)

Meanwhile over 80% of the plastics in the oceans are coming from Asian rivers. (https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics)

And, as for the supposed miracle of electric cars, here's an interesting take on the relative greenness of Petrol/Hybrid/EV.


765489

Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#12

Post by 765489 »

I don't think there is much we can do on climate change. The planet is a living and constantly changing entity. We obviously are not helping things, but with populations constantly rising and our increasingly throwaway and disregard on the resources it takes to produce something and not a care that most resources are finite I can't see any return from this.

The sad thing for me is not the fact that we will eventually make our planet unlivable for ourselves as a species but the fact that we are destroying the beautiful living things on the planet be it birds animals, plants etc as we go on in our current destructive path.

The environment concern shown as far as I can see is more to do with introducing new ways of making money and such agendas. I can not take the likes of the Richard Brandon's and Bill Gates of this world seriously. Preaching about climate change to everyone else while they fly around the world in jets and live up they luxurious lifestyles. Do as I say not as I do. I wouldn't put Greta Thunberg in that category as I think her heart is in the right place. But there are people who will use that or manipulate her message to suit their own agendas.
765489

Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#13

Post by 765489 »

And I'm listening to that preachy arsehole Philip Boucher Hayes on RTE 1 radio, going on about "the science" I feel like going out now and putting my diesel guzzling John Deere up at 1000rpms and leaving it running for the rest of the morning but fortunately for him, the green diesel is now too valuable to waste on such actions. :evil: Science my hole.

I'm sure my carbon footprint is alot lower than his.
765489

Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#14

Post by 765489 »

Just thinking there sorry for all the rambling, look at all the fecking artillery exploding and destroying the earth's landscape over in Ukraine by the Russian and Ukrainian armies. How on earth is climate change or any sort of global fix for this problem going to happen when we can't even live together as a species never mind the beautiful planet we live on ?

We are the scourge of the planet as far as I'm concerned. Leave the poor cows alone. 🐄
765489

Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#15

Post by 765489 »

This lovely little fella is getting all the blame for destroying the planet. I can guarantee you the nesting skylarks would have something different to say on that.
Screenshot_20220722-121240_Gallery.jpg
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Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#16

Post by Hairy-Joe »

I've a few thoughts on the whole climate change debate and I admit some may be contradictory. I acknowledge that we have to do something and the climate change is real.

First is the messaging. The "doom and gloom" merchants have gone too far for a lot of people. I know people that are saying either "if it's so bad, we are fecked so why bother", "that's well for them to say but they've no idea how I live/work" and " why should we cripple our economy when Russia, USA, China emits the most".


Another problem is economic. Basically, "sure that's all well and good, but I can't afford an electric car and deep retrofit". For myself, I priced up a deep retrofit on my little shack. It's €80k plus due to age of house and fittings (I almost died when getting prices for replacement mahogany floors). Due to my age, I've another 30 to 40 years to live so it has to save me €2k a year to pay it back. My heating bill at the moment is a LOT less than that so it's not economically viable.

It's the push towards the big cut here in Ireland with no regard to increasing emissions elsewhere that's totally impractical. They banned commercial turf extraction. Good, lower emissions from turf. But, turf is now being imported from Estonia. Result is higher emissions overall due to transport. The cut to the national heard is another. Sure, emissions will be lower here, but the loss of beef in the world market will be made up by Brazil by cutting the Amazon and their production isn't as green. Result, worse overall.

The push to battery vehicles exclusively isn't going to work. Battery vehicles work for cars for shortish journeys but not for loaded vans or trucks. A friend of mine works in a county council and he said the workers love the new electric diggers. The reason they love them is they get two hours work out of them and then have to charge. So, 2 hours work in an 8 hour day.....

As for the current "farmers are evil" when it comes to emissions, that's horse shite. Farmers make money by growing and harvesting plants and plants soak up carbon. The more farmers grow, the more money they make.

While I acknowledge cows burp, it's the blasé "reduce the national heard" that's makes me shiver as they never explore it's consequences. That means killing off cows (oh, I like a good burger btw). They never say "reduce the human population" in the same blasé manner. That'll make a massive difference for climate. Funny eh?
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Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#17

Post by isha »

The funny thing is there are plenty of powerful elite people who seriously advocate reducing the human population. But somehow they always mean ''others'' in the human population, and never themselves. Because seriously, if you are going to state publicly on TV etc that the population should be reduced as a matter of political urgency, then show by example by reducing yourself first.

I was watching a clip of George Monbiot (not my favourite person) and he was positively bug-eyed talking to Miriam O Callaghan about reducing the herd and farming.

Ireland causes 0.09% of global carbon emissions and the UK is 0.87% or something close (sorry, cannot remember exactly) and he says agriculture is an indulgence we (Ireland and the UK) simply can't afford. He says shut down animal farming altogether. We can live, he says, getting protein from precision fermentation and brewing microbes. I'm a lifelong vegetarian and even I'm fed up of these people. Sure, there is too much land given over to meat but that's been going on for ages - reduce it slowly. Stop promoting weird proteins - eating insects is going to cause massive parasitic and disease risk/problems for humans.

Agriculture is the biggest form of land use on the planet which means that land is used up and cannot be turned over the wild eco-systems, he says. Which may be true. Fair enough. We need ecosystems for wild animals and we need to stop polluting the place. I agree. But these abolitionists seem to forget that we are the species that is living here, being fed, living, learning, evolving, building civilisations, creating art, science, technology etc etc - we need the land to sustain that. We are an amazing species with phenomenal powers of consciousness and awareness that has evolved in an otherwise fairly barren-looking, incomprehensibly vast cosmos and these people definitely want rid of us - I often think these people suffer from nihilistic species-self-hatred.
They are impoverished materialists in a spiritual desert whose religion-substitute is rabid ''environmentalism''. Meh. They are causing suicidal ideation and unending angst in young people. I'm fed up of them.

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765489

Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#18

Post by 765489 »

OMG "we must end our dependence on farming if we are to overcome the realities of climate change" :mrgreen:

Edit What are we supposed to eat ?
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isha
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Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#19

Post by isha »

Ncdjd2 wrote: Sat Jul 23, 2022 12:48 pm
What are we supposed to eat ?
Insects.
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765489

Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#20

Post by 765489 »

isha wrote: Sat Jul 23, 2022 1:06 pmInsects.
The modern day gruel for the peasant masses.
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Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#21

Post by CelticRambler »

Hairy-Joe wrote: Sat Jul 23, 2022 12:18 pmThey never say "reduce the human population" in the same blasé manner. That'll make a massive difference for climate. Funny eh?
Well, no, "reduce the human population" is another simplistic solution, because some humans are worse for the planet than others, and whaddyaknow, they're already the ones that breed the least.

So if we were to engage in a massive cull of the "least productive"/most numerous/poorest "quality" humans (all euphemisms for the poorest African and Asian populations), it'd make feck all difference because it's the Western DINKYs and OAPs that put the greatest strain on our global resources.

I have seen/heard plenty of these same people arguing that they're entitled to contribute more than the average pollution because they have only two, one or no children, so they're "doing their bit." :roll:
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Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#22

Post by Hairy-Joe »

CelticRambler wrote: Sat Jul 23, 2022 3:53 pm
I have seen/heard plenty of these same people arguing that they're entitled to contribute more than the average pollution because they have only two, one or no children, so they're "doing their bit." :roll:
I am one with no children so I could be an arse and say "I'm doing my bit already". I like to think I'm doing my bit by getting rid of the Diesel car (going for petrol as there's no EV that suits), working from home when I can (reducing transport emissions), taking the ferry for holidays rather than flying, turned down the heating 2 degrees for the winter (don't really notice the difference), etc
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Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#23

Post by Del.Monte »

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... cm-climate

Greenland Ice Cap melting is inevitable even if fossil fuel burning stopped overnight but let's keep building Dublin out in to the Irish Sea.
On another related matter - does Ireland have any desalination plants or plans for any? I think I know the answer without searching...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate- ... er-crisis/
'no more blah blah blah'
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Re: Climate Change/Global Warming

#24

Post by CelticRambler »

Researching the current state of play with regards to kitchen hobs took me off on a bit of a tangent at the weekend, which brought me to an unexpected argument against nuclear power, but one which is very much in the news here in France. Apparently, nuclear fission is the most inefficient form of electricity generation, with around 50% of the energy released from the raw material (i.e. the uranium fuel) being lost as heat. I probably wouldn't have paid much attention to such a nugget of information, except for the fact that that's the very reason why several of France's nuclear reactors were taken offline in recent months: the weather was too damn hot, and it was impossible to cool them without boiling the adjacent rivers too.

The main article I read indicated that gas is the most efficient way to generate electricity, but followed through on that point by saying that it makes no sense at all to burn gas to boil water to generate electricity just so that you can use that electricity to boil water tens (or hundreds) of km from the power station - just boil your kettle of water with the gas in the first place! Which is what I've been doing for years.
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Re: Climate Change/Global Warmi

#25

Post by knownunknown »

CelticRambler wrote: Tue Aug 30, 2022 12:43 pm Researching the current state of play with regards to kitchen hobs took me off on a bit of a tangent at the weekend, which brought me to an unexpected argument against nuclear power, but one which is very much in the news here in France. Apparently, nuclear fission is the most inefficient form of electricity generation, with around 50% of the energy released from the raw material (i.e. the uranium fuel) being lost as heat. I probably wouldn't have paid much attention to such a nugget of information, except for the fact that that's the very reason why several of France's nuclear reactors were taken offline in recent months: the weather was too damn hot, and it was impossible to cool them without boiling the adjacent rivers too.

The main article I read indicated that gas is the most efficient way to generate electricity, but followed through on that point by saying that it makes no sense at all to burn gas to boil water to generate electricity just so that you can use that electricity to boil water tens (or hundreds) of km from the power station - just boil your kettle of water with the gas in the first place! Which is what I've been doing for years.
Not sure if this is an argument against nuclear. Nuclear fuel isn’t created it’s dug up and as such it was emitting heat anyway. Maybe it wasn’t heating a river in France but an underground cave in Kazakhstan or Namibia. The overall heat of the earth remains the same.

Gas was never going to emit this heat on its own until we burned it.
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