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Its sadder everyday that somehow humanity has failed to become a nuclear society. All our problems could have been solved decades ago but we are still nowhere near a solution.
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> artificially expensive How is it artificially expensive? Is natural gas an infinite free resource now? Do we ignore the oil/gas subsidies?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, except for all the flooding, forest fires, droughts, etc. Climate change doesn't simply mean some areas get warmer. Climate change means the entire climate system changes. Air streams and water currents shift, ground water evaporates or rises, and so on.
If everything changes it is very hard to say who benefits and who loses and how much. In some places there will be more, in others less. Some places will have more droughts in others less. On avg no country is better placed for overall warming then Russia, except maybe Canada.
No problem though, everyone will just pack up and move north east. /s
Its sadder everyday that somehow humanity has failed to become a nuclear society. All our problems could have been solved decades ago but we are still nowhere near a solution.
The potential for loss is much higher with nuclear power.
Its sadder everyday that somehow humanity has failed to become a nuclear society. All our problems could have been solved decades ago but we are still nowhere near a solution.
I used to think nuclear was the way forward, and I kind of still do, but it's understandable why it isn't prevalent. It's all about magnitude of loss/failure. Traditional power plants are much safer and failure isn't nearly as catastrophic as with nuclear. If a nuclear plant fails, look at what can happen - you can lose an entire city indefinitely - Chernobyl. The potential for loss is much higher with nuclear power.
Its sadder everyday that somehow humanity has failed to become a nuclear society. All our problems could have been solved decades ago but we are still nowhere near a solution.
Green Parties the world over are anti-nuclear and have been since the 80s. Considering how much harm to the environment has come by the hand of green parties, I'm beginning to wonder if they aren't lobbied by fossil fuel companies.
Its sadder everyday that somehow humanity has failed to become a nuclear society. All our problems could have been solved decades ago but we are still nowhere near a solution.
Part of the issues of nuclear remain the high costs, hairy security situation in many countries and very limited ability to adapt to demand. This is both in the night-and-day cycle meaning but also in the "we need more power in 10-years" meaning, since nuclear power plants take forever to build. Saying that all our problems could have been solved by nuclear is not close to the truth, especially regarding climate chan…
Don't forget that climate change is good for Russia...
Except for the methane gas that's trapped in the frozen permafrost in Siberia. Once released it will start a positive feedback loop to supercharge our messing up of the atmospheric chemical makeup.
Its sadder everyday that somehow humanity has failed to become a nuclear society. All our problems could have been solved decades ago but we are still nowhere near a solution.
Part of the issues of nuclear remain the high costs, hairy security situation in many countries and very limited ability to adapt to demand. This is both in the night-and-day cycle meaning but also in the "we need more power in 10-years" meaning, since nuclear power plants take forever to build. Saying that all our problems could have been solved by nuclear is not close to the truth, especially regarding climate chan…
In France, the first nuclear plants of the current production group were contracted in 1970, and connected to the network in 1977, so that's 7 years for a pilot industrial project. Later plants were built in 5-6 years.
The kicker is that this work is highly scalable: France built over 6 reactors per year over its program.
The current issue with new generation reactors seem to be related to loss of industrial knowledge, there is no reason to think that the next built in the series would suffer from the same issues.
Don't forget that climate change is good for Russia...
It’s not hard to see: board a (non-express) train from Moscow to St. Petersburg, get off on a small station of your choice somewhere in the middle, the kind that has a couple of platforms if that, then take one of the (cheap) local taxis to a random local settlement that’s not on the railroad. Stay there for several days. The people you’ll see will be fundamentally lovely, but most will be one or more of over 60, deep into the bottle, or only there until they can leave for what passes for a larger settlement. (Stay away from the local disco, though, and don’t expect anybody to speak anything but Russian.)
Or at least that’s how I learned it.
All of this is to say that the main thing keeping Russian agricultural development down is disintegrating infrastructure and a horrid business environment, not an inhospitable climate.
(If you’re wondering why I’m overlooking the enormous three fourths of the country that are known under the unassuming name of the “Asian part”, the simple answer is—with apologies to the wonderful inhabitants of Novosibirsk and many other places—not that many people live there; 20% of the already pretty sparse population, in fact. So if you’re looking at all of those humongous tracts of land and thinking what life would be like if they were used for agriculture, think again. The problem is not that it’s cold there on average, necessarily, even if it is in many parts—the problem is that it’s very continental there, and there is no friendly neighbourhood body of water to even things out. Wikipedia tells me Novosibirsk and Omsk are about as far north as Ontario and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, while Chita and Irkutsk are even further south. There’s also only the one railroad, with a rugged 4x4 your only hope of getting to most other places, and the soil sucks. If it thaws out, which would of course be disastrous in terms of greenhouse gases, it would still suck, only in a more squishy fashion. Can’t farm it, can’t quarry it, can’t build upon it, which is why people hardly ever do. My God, it’s full of empty space.)
As a final note, looking at Russia as an adversary ... serves to tickle the fancy of the powerful arseholes here, of course, but looks kind of silly to me TBH. There’s a lot of good people and interesting stuff happening, but the population is half that of the US and the GDP is less than a tenth. I mean, come on. Not in third world territory, yet, but getting there, definitely. Russia is not an all-powerful boogieman, except in the fever dreams it has on its sickbed. Even if it still contains enough spite to ruin your day repeatedly (as well as enough brilliance to carry the world forward for years).