71–76 of 76 posts
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> There is no known way to store anything safely for ~100,000 years Sure there is. You may not like it, but here it is: encase it in a concrete block and put it on a boat, sail boat to middle of ocean, dump it overboard. Done and dusted. That block of problematic nuclear waste is now going to kill less people over the next 100K years than solar will kill this month.
What could possibly go wrong with that?
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Isn't the economics of clean up that the government pays? Is there anywhere in the world where the private operator of a nuclear power plant if covering all their own costs for clean up and decommissioning? Genuine question - I am well aware I could be wrong. My understanding is that nuclear is always about energy independence - not cheap energy. (Don't get me wrong, the sooner we remove coal, biomass, wood and gas f…
What's bad about biomass and wood? A country like eg Finland could probably run on wood burning, couldn't they? > Is there anywhere in the world where the private operator of a nuclear power plant if covering all their own costs for clean up and decommissioning? Genuine question - I am well aware I could be wrong. It's surprisingly hard to (quickly) find who is paying for those decommissioning funds. I imagine there'…
My understanding is that much of the wood that is burnt is actually shipped half way around the world to the UK and other countries just so it can earn 'carbon credits to be burnt there. I may be wrong, it was a while since I read the article. It also generates a lot of localised air pollution.
http://archive.is/zzTVs
I think HN should have a rule that no paywalled link be published without including an alternative.
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> environmentalism sounds great until you realize you're largely advocating economically regressive policies that disproportionately impact the most vulnerable Global warming is going to 'disproportionately impact the most vulnerable' even more. (Is there anything at all that won't? People with fewer resources have fewer options in dealing with new challenges, this seems like a fundamental fact.)
> Is there anything at all that won't? Yes. Decline in stock prices or real estate for example. > People with fewer resources have fewer options in dealing with new challenges, this seems like a fundamental fact. Yes, that's almost true by definition. Even in my examples, in general the people who start out rich will still be better off after a stock market crash than the people who started out poor. Look on the brig…
True that rich people (if they're not being stupid with their money) will be better positioned to buy cheap stocks after a crash and will multiply their fortunes in the long run.
I like your bright side.
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> Is there anything at all that won't? Yes. Decline in stock prices or real estate for example. > People with fewer resources have fewer options in dealing with new challenges, this seems like a fundamental fact. Yes, that's almost true by definition. Even in my examples, in general the people who start out rich will still be better off after a stock market crash than the people who started out poor. Look on the brig…
Decline in stock prices often indicates issues with the economy which also result in companies trimming the fat across the board. This usually hits the more fungible staff first. Likewise, decline in real estate will force rental property owners to sell up, reducing the supply of rental properties - good news for renters looking to make the jump to home ownership but less so for anyone not in that position. True that…
Shouldn't make too much of a difference? The total number of houses and households stays the same after the sale. Basically, you are right, for every such transaction you describe, one rental unit is taken off the rental market, but also one household exits the rental market, too.
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> You are still ignoring the land use of open pit mining as well. The book I linked to mentioned some of that. It's just not much of an issue, since you need so little fuel. (And you could filter that fuel out of the ocean, if you really needed to.) > At the end nuclear is an uneconomic technology with significant unresolved issues even after decades of heavy subsidising, while renewable are cheaper proven and contin…
I predict we will need to stop using GDP as a measure for progress. It was invented as a measure for production in war time (WW2) and was incredibly useful for its purpose. However initially it purposefully did not include banking, advertising, military spending..., because they don't add to a countries production capabilities. It is a terrible measure for human well being. Many things which are actually detrimental…
Btw, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product#History suggests a more nuanced history of the concept.