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Europe's fires are just the start

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Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#81

Post by wongarsu »

modo_mario wrote: post #44
palata wrote: post #4

There is no "new normal", we are in a slope. As long as we emit CO2, the climate will get worse. Year after year. With effects like fires accelerating it, or the loss of the Amazon (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?) that will just result in more CO2 being released. We don't have to adapt to the situation as it is now , because it is pretty much the best scenario. We have to adapt to the fact that it will get…

The fires don't accelerate it much. That wood and shrub would either burn or rot down the line and release methane and co2 anyway. Forests don't sequester much at all despite what people seem to believe. Consequentially running a fireplace is a lot more climate neutral than driving a car, taking a flight, utilising the myriads of high carbon footprint goods or having a gas heater or so. On the other hand the bogs tha…

If we assume that the forests will regrow to their former strength then the fires are indeed not all the consequential. The trees release the stored CO2 when they burn, and new plants will take up an equivalent amount of CO2 again when they grow. The CO2 sequestered in a forest is more or less just the biomass in it (some is in the soil, but not that much)

But if climate change leads to permanently losing those forests, that is an effect we will feel. Still less bad than losing permafrost

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#82

Post by throw-the-towel »

jrflo wrote: post #49
OKRainbowKid wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets repeated again and again, but wouldn't the money required to build/maintain nuclear plants be much better invested in building out renewables and battery storage? They already produce power much cheaper, and cost efficiency keeps increasing. Meanwhile power from nuclear plants are very expensive, comparatively. So why should we invest in nuclear energy? I have the impression a lot of the debate about nuclea…

There will always be a need for on-demand power. Renewables are great, but cannot deal with peaks as easily and capacity is dependent on weather.

But nuclear also can't deal with peaks.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#83

Post by iso1631 »

OKRainbowKid wrote: post #19
cbmuser wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power, climate change cannot be that urgent.

This gets repeated again and again, but wouldn't the money required to build/maintain nuclear plants be much better invested in building out renewables and battery storage? They already produce power much cheaper, and cost efficiency keeps increasing. Meanwhile power from nuclear plants are very expensive, comparatively. So why should we invest in nuclear energy? I have the impression a lot of the debate about nuclea…

Of course it would, but there's less profit for capitalists to make with distributed sovereign renewable energy.

30 years ago the answer was nuclear. Not today, it's just a distraction to try to keep us burning dead dinosaurs for longer.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#84

Post by boringg »

kleiba2 wrote: post #31
cbmuser wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power, climate change cannot be that urgent.

I don't know exactly what you mean by "like Germany", but singling out Germany seems a strange choice given that the main global offenders are orders of magnitude worse in terms of their greenhouse gas emissions. Germany is currently producing more than half of its electricity from renewables. Check out this year's edition of Ember's Global Electricity Review [0]. The table on p. 78 lists the following five countries…

The reason Germany gets singled out is because it was a massive policy misstep and highlights the shortsightedness of the environmental movement. It seems that they have changed their tune about it nuclear - but their entrenched efforts (and concerns in the 80s) killed the last 40 years of nuclear power - arguably inflaming our current CO2 crises by opening the doors wide open for Oil and Gas to fill the void.

In Germany add in that they then needed to rely on Russia to provide natural gas to fill in the void - which drove up the costs of power and made their manufacturing base a little less competitive.... Best intentions don't always prove to be good policy making. That's the TL;DR why Germany gets singled out.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#85

Post by nancyminusone »

>by the end of the century

Maybe I've missed it because I don't follow news on this much (apart from "it will get warmer/worse"), but what happens after that? Seems like I've been hearing "by 2100" for the last 20 years, but now that's only 74 years away. Some people alive today will live to see it. Will it just keep getting warmer or will it level off somewhat? Or is it not worth discussing because preceding events will already be such an overwhelming disaster?

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#86

Post by adrianN »

boringg wrote: post #70
OKRainbowKid wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets repeated again and again, but wouldn't the money required to build/maintain nuclear plants be much better invested in building out renewables and battery storage? They already produce power much cheaper, and cost efficiency keeps increasing. Meanwhile power from nuclear plants are very expensive, comparatively. So why should we invest in nuclear energy? I have the impression a lot of the debate about nuclea…

This gets repeated again and again. They are not in conflict with each other - both need to be done in tandem. It is not a this or that strategy - it is an all of the above strategy. Nuclear is critical for long term generating power. Batteries and solar are good not able to maintain the same level of power quality and duration though are definitely incredibly important.

Nuclear is a high-capex source of electricity. It doesn’t do well economically in a grid where power if essentially free on sunny or windy days but you need a lot of backup power for a few hundred hours per year.

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#87

Post by throw0101d »

OKRainbowKid wrote: post #19
cbmuser wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power, climate change cannot be that urgent.

This gets repeated again and again, but wouldn't the money required to build/maintain nuclear plants be much better invested in building out renewables and battery storage? They already produce power much cheaper, and cost efficiency keeps increasing. Meanwhile power from nuclear plants are very expensive, comparatively. So why should we invest in nuclear energy? I have the impression a lot of the debate about nuclea…

> This gets repeated again and again, but wouldn't the money required to build/maintain nuclear plants be much better invested in building out renewables and battery storage?

Recent report on restarting German nuclear:

> The easiest group of reactors to restart could produce electricity at an average of €37 per megawatt-hour before the end of 2031.The most difficult restarts could produce electricity at roughly €58 per megawatt-hour by the mid 2030s.

* https://www.radiantenergygroup.com/reports/restarting-german...

* PDF: https://www.radiantenergygroup.com/_files/ugd/ae75b7_bc5db59...

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#89

Post by AlexandrB »

OKRainbowKid wrote: post #19
cbmuser wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power, climate change cannot be that urgent.

This gets repeated again and again, but wouldn't the money required to build/maintain nuclear plants be much better invested in building out renewables and battery storage? They already produce power much cheaper, and cost efficiency keeps increasing. Meanwhile power from nuclear plants are very expensive, comparatively. So why should we invest in nuclear energy? I have the impression a lot of the debate about nuclea…

> They already produce power much cheaper, and cost efficiency keeps increasing.

Yet France, which invested heavily in nuclear[1], has energy prices that are 40% lower than Germany's[2]. Something isn't adding up about the repeated claims that renewables are cheaper than nuclear.

[1] https://montel.energy/resources/blog/two-different-energy-sy...

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

Re: Europe's fires are just the start

#90

Post by cedilla »

cbmuser wrote: post #7
palata wrote: post #4

There is no "new normal", we are in a slope. As long as we emit CO2, the climate will get worse. Year after year. With effects like fires accelerating it, or the loss of the Amazon (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?) that will just result in more CO2 being released. We don't have to adapt to the situation as it is now , because it is pretty much the best scenario. We have to adapt to the fact that it will get…

As long as major countries like Germany are keeping their ban on nuclear power, climate change cannot be that urgent.

The last time any company was interested to build a nuclear reactor in Germany was in the 1970s. About thirty years before the eventual (first) ban.

We can rant all day about how stupid it was of the conservatives to re-enact the ban on nuclear power without restarting the subsidies for renewables, and lament that they thus ensured that coal power would thus have to replace more of the lost load, but that's all in the past and we can't change that.

If you think we need more nuclear power to fight CO2 emissions, you're 50 years late. That ship has sailed before most of us here were born.

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