monkey wrote:

https://quillette.com/2019/02/27/why-renewables-cant-save-the-planet/

Facewon wrote:

Interesting read. I always go back Nd forth on the nuke angle.

Have had the wind farms are unreliable angle play out here in SA. Think I posted about it.

Given how the energy is in a "market" and how it all played out due to a line going down, working out who to blame was a mess.

I think that's it, renewables have never been given a fair crack.
The gov cancelled the buy back scheme on solar panels, now it's just given back to the grid making retrofitted solar an unaffordable option for home owners.

Likewise that sand bar tidal thing off Wales was canned (believe it has been funded again). Yet the Gov pushed through fracking which has proven to be a financial disaster because they cant go a few days without causing an automatic shut down.
Even if fracking working it contradicts their new policy of banning new builds having gas supplies. Another policy that only helps the environment if more electricity is renewable.

Places like Spain are looking to go 100% renewable by 2050 by utilising the best tech for them, mainly solar. Some South American countries are doing the same, they have space and sunlight so solar fields are logical.

We are an island nation, we should be building tidal shit. If it's not good enough we should heavily invest in it until it is. The moon ain't going anywhere.

If the human race survives the next 50-100 years then it will be those nations that invested in renewables now that will be the richest, the new Saudis.

It's silly to dismiss nuclear. Silly journalist.

monkey wrote:

I think the chances of us all getting our shit together to go fully renewable in the time we need to is completely unrealistic. So I’m in favour of new nuclear plants in the U.K. Unfortunately we can’t even do that without fucking it up.

You think we can't build renewable infrastructure in time so we should build something that takes even longer?

What if we just nationalised it?

Easy, just seize the means of production.

In a world threatened with climate change it seems almost trivial to talk about deaths occured thus far. Also, again, who cares about monetary cost?

It is certainly preferable to fracking and sucking Saudi cock.

Thorium isnt viable yet?

Again, if time is not on our side, why put our efforts into something that will take years to begin producing power when we can implement renewables within weeks/months to make a difference right now.

Also, I can't remember if this has been posted but fair play to China and India for this.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-and-india-dominates-the-greening-of-earth-nasa-study-shows

Some good news in a swamp of nightmares.

SpaceGazelle wrote:

We should be doing a combination of all of them and not dismissing any.

This is the Green response to that:

"It might sound reasonable to say that climate change is so urgent, that we need to use all energy options to address it. . But there's a fixed pot of money, and a
fixed amount of political will.

"If the government is putting money into nuclear, it gives the sign to investors that it's still serious about nuclear, then that means that money isn't going into the kind of supergrid that we need with Europe, and into serious investment in renewables and energy efficiency.

"If we were to make a serious investment in energy efficiency, properly capitalise a Green Investment Bank that would be allowed to lend immediately, put billions into, for example, a street-by-street insulation programme, or really invest in renewables, we wouldn't need nuclear. "

• In contrast to new nuclear power plants, renewable energy and energy efficiency projects are cheaper, quicker, and crucially safer, ways of meeting our energy needs and emission reduction targets.

Durr forgot direct link..

http://www.readfearn.com/2014/09/the-australian-newspapers-war-on-the-bureau-of-meteorology/

Also, regarding the just build more nuclear power stations argument, I heard a really interesting report on R4 a couple of months ago. It turns out that just like water and gas, even though it's electrons going down a cable, it needs something to push it, albeit is an electrical force rather than physical for water and gas, so power stations can't just be plonked anywhere you like that's out of sight, they have to be close enough to the sources of demand they're going to generate the power for.

Which inthe UK makes the case for wind and tidal even stronger since we're surrounded by a lot of both.

I used to be a much stronger advocate of nuclear power but I find that's waning over time, from the way they're tendered and built for profit and everything that shouldn't bring with it but always does, to the disposal of the waste, which we have no idea how to deal with since we don't build feeder reactors, just giant underground cave networks in Scandinavia where they have to work out how to make a danger of death signpost that someone would be able to understand in 20000 years time when they find the waste site. It seems like better alternatives are available now, mass localised rooftop solar, onshore and offshore wind and tidal generation.

I can only assume we are not pursuing these things more urgently from government level because they are lobbied to fuck by the fossil fuel and nuclear industries.

China is kind of making up for lost time and pretty much now leading the world in trying to reduce CO2. The benefits of a dictatorship I guess. They're investing in all of it, including 30 reactors that are being built. I'll try and dig up some reports on their findings.