From the article, it sounds more like they're closing the oldest plants while also looking into newer reactor technology. They're also closing 4 coal-fired power plants.
I'm inclined to believe that even if humanity worked together to slag the entire surface of the planet with high yield nuclear weapons the biosphere would bounce back sooner or later, it's really the "amenable to sustaining billions of large apes" qualities of the biosphere we are looking to preserve rather than the biosphere itself
I'm inclined to believe that even if humanity worked together to slag the entire surface of the planet with high yield nuclear weapons the biosphere would bounce back sooner or later, it's really the "amenable to sustaining billions of large apes" qualities of the biosphere we are looking to preserve rather than the biosphere itself
Actually killing earth is pretty hard. Actually killing technological civilization has historical precedent, and is pretty easy.
He knows what he's doing, he expects that his audience is not very smart and so he defuses the argument that the planet is in danger by making it extremely literal, and hoping that people won't think harder about it than that.
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
I was a big proponent of nuclear power for years, before solar and wind got so cheap. In 2018 it's become cheaper per MWH produced to build new solar and wind generation than new nuclear, gas or coal. The truth of a matter is that we don't need to build new nuclear power plants. There have been so many new and novel ways of storing the excess energy that solar and wind produce to use in less productive times. My favorites have to be the gravity systems. During times of low demand, excess power is used to pump water uphill into resivraros to spin turbines when it's dark, calm or there's a spike in demand. Another cool method is to heat massive balls of sodium and pull energy from that as it cools. Yet another is to spin massive low friction flywheels that you can later tap for energy. An especially interesting idea is to pressurize former underground oil reservoirs. Once EVs become more popular a great option would be to store that excess energy in EVs to tap later through automated power sharing.
As much as people want to trash talk solar and wind, they really are the future. At the grid level, the economics of scale have have pushed solar and wind from niche to viable to the best and cheapest option. Look at what's going on in Scotland with offshore wind farms. The Orkney Islands produce so much cheap wind power that factories around there get paid to use the excess. There's a grid scale EV/Home battery power sharing program up there that totally evens out the ebb and flow of renewables.
I was a big proponent of nuclear power for years, before solar and wind got so cheap. In 2018 it's become cheaper per MWH produced to build new solar and wind generation than new nuclear, gas or coal. The truth of a matter is that we don't need to build new nuclear power plants. There have been so many new and novel ways of storing the excess energy that solar and wind produce to use in less productive times. My favorites have to be the gravity systems. During times of low demand, excess power is used to pump water uphill into resivraros to spin turbines when it's dark, calm or there's a spike in demand. Another cool method is to heat massive balls of sodium and pull energy from that as it cools. Yet another is to spin massive low friction flywheels that you can later tap for energy. An especially interesting idea is to pressurize former underground oil reservoirs. Once EVs become more popular a great option would be to store that excess energy in EVs to tap later through automated power sharing.
As much as people want to trash talk solar and wind, they really are the future. At the grid level, the economics of scale have have pushed solar and wind from niche to viable to the best and cheapest option. Look at what's going on in Scotland with offshore wind farms. The Orkney Islands produce so much cheap wind power that factories around there get paid to use the excess. There's a grid scale EV/Home battery power sharing program up there that totally evens out the ebb and flow of renewables.
You really don't want to keep power stations beyond their expected lifespan, and it takes a fair while for them to get them carbon neutral once you take the building costs into account from what I remember when the new UK ones were being discussed.
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
I was a big proponent of nuclear power for years, before solar and wind got so cheap. In 2018 it's become cheaper per MWH produced to build new solar and wind generation than new nuclear, gas or coal. The truth of a matter is that we don't need to build new nuclear power plants. There have been so many new and novel ways of storing the excess energy that solar and wind produce to use in less productive times. My favorites have to be the gravity systems. During times of low demand, excess power is used to pump water uphill into resivraros to spin turbines when it's dark, calm or there's a spike in demand. Another cool method is to heat massive balls of sodium and pull energy from that as it cools. Yet another is to spin massive low friction flywheels that you can later tap for energy. An especially interesting idea is to pressurize former underground oil reservoirs. Once EVs become more popular a great option would be to store that excess energy in EVs to tap later through automated power sharing.
As much as people want to trash talk solar and wind, they really are the future. At the grid level, the economics of scale have have pushed solar and wind from niche to viable to the best and cheapest option. Look at what's going on in Scotland with offshore wind farms. The Orkney Islands produce so much cheap wind power that factories around there get paid to use the excess. There's a grid scale EV/Home battery power sharing program up there that totally evens out the ebb and flow of renewables.
You really don't want to keep power stations beyond their expected lifespan, and it takes a fair while for them to get them carbon neutral once you take the building costs into account from what I remember when the new UK ones were being discussed.
I may not be understanding you correctly, but none of that really be factors in new renewable generation. Sure it may take a while for a wind turbine to become carbon neutral but a new coal or gas plant will never be carbon neutral. That also assumes you don't recycle the old equipment. Solar panels and wind turbines are nearly entirely recyclable. As more and more generating capacity is added, more and more recyclable material will be available. As efficiency increases the need for new material will decrease at an ever accelerating pace until the new material demands will be minimal. Kind of like where we are with Lead Acid batteries.
Who'd have thought that hosing down vast swaths of the world with DDT might have have side effects?
The scary part of insect collapse is that insects are basically immune to mass extinction. KT was a blip on their radar, Eocene Thermal Maximum was actually a boon for them.
Insects have only suffered one mass extinction, and that was the Great Dying.
The end of the world as we know it is business as usual for insects. It needs to be the literal end of the world for them to care.
Eh, thats basically like saying superman survived everything until the great kryptonite me
Trump and the rights obsession with the world supposedly laughing at us under Obama gets more and more pathetic each time the US is literally laughed at under Trump
I was a big proponent of nuclear power for years, before solar and wind got so cheap. In 2018 it's become cheaper per MWH produced to build new solar and wind generation than new nuclear, gas or coal. The truth of a matter is that we don't need to build new nuclear power plants. There have been so many new and novel ways of storing the excess energy that solar and wind produce to use in less productive times. My favorites have to be the gravity systems. During times of low demand, excess power is used to pump water uphill into resivraros to spin turbines when it's dark, calm or there's a spike in demand. Another cool method is to heat massive balls of sodium and pull energy from that as it cools. Yet another is to spin massive low friction flywheels that you can later tap for energy. An especially interesting idea is to pressurize former underground oil reservoirs. Once EVs become more popular a great option would be to store that excess energy in EVs to tap later through automated power sharing.
As much as people want to trash talk solar and wind, they really are the future. At the grid level, the economics of scale have have pushed solar and wind from niche to viable to the best and cheapest option. Look at what's going on in Scotland with offshore wind farms. The Orkney Islands produce so much cheap wind power that factories around there get paid to use the excess. There's a grid scale EV/Home battery power sharing program up there that totally evens out the ebb and flow of renewables.
You really don't want to keep power stations beyond their expected lifespan, and it takes a fair while for them to get them carbon neutral once you take the building costs into account from what I remember when the new UK ones were being discussed.
I may not be understanding you correctly, but none of that really be factors in new renewable generation. Sure it may take a while for a wind turbine to become carbon neutral but a new coal or gas plant will never be carbon neutral. That also assumes you don't recycle the old equipment. Solar panels and wind turbines are nearly entirely recyclable. As more and more generating capacity is added, more and more recyclable material will be available. As efficiency increases the need for new material will decrease at an ever accelerating pace until the new material demands will be minimal. Kind of like where we are with Lead Acid batteries.
I'll have a look, but you're getting me right - the power generation over the life of a nuclear plant compared to CO2 produced (and other byproducts) is pretty bad compared to other alternative energy sources.
It'd be good if you were replacing coal power stations for nuclear, but France has a lot of nuclear plants already so you'd just be replacing nuclear for nuclear whilst Germany has shown that you can do the same with renewables.
Sounds bad until you realise they're a step ahead already.
Venus is one of the most hostile places in the solar system, possibly including the vacuum of space.
To give a point of comparison, the longest we have ever gotten a probe to survive on Venus is a little over 2 hours. I can't remember if it was crushed by the horrific atmospheric pressure, or just gave into the heat of the hottest planet in the solar system (Mercury is the second hottest, and coldest planet). The surface tempertaure is above the melting point of lead. It is as close to hell as you can get in this solar system. Using it as a comparison point is beyond ridiculous.
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Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
Venus is one of the most hostile places in the solar system, possibly including the vacuum of space.
the vacuum of space is survivable basically until you run out of oxygen, though it is hostile to life someone who fell out of an airlock could conceivably survive to make it back inside.
On Venus it rains sulfuric acid, except it never hits the ground because it's so hot it evaporates before it can get there. Unprotected you'd probably die in seconds.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
I was a big proponent of nuclear power for years, before solar and wind got so cheap. In 2018 it's become cheaper per MWH produced to build new solar and wind generation than new nuclear, gas or coal. The truth of a matter is that we don't need to build new nuclear power plants. There have been so many new and novel ways of storing the excess energy that solar and wind produce to use in less productive times. My favorites have to be the gravity systems. During times of low demand, excess power is used to pump water uphill into resivraros to spin turbines when it's dark, calm or there's a spike in demand. Another cool method is to heat massive balls of sodium and pull energy from that as it cools. Yet another is to spin massive low friction flywheels that you can later tap for energy. An especially interesting idea is to pressurize former underground oil reservoirs. Once EVs become more popular a great option would be to store that excess energy in EVs to tap later through automated power sharing.
As much as people want to trash talk solar and wind, they really are the future. At the grid level, the economics of scale have have pushed solar and wind from niche to viable to the best and cheapest option. Look at what's going on in Scotland with offshore wind farms. The Orkney Islands produce so much cheap wind power that factories around there get paid to use the excess. There's a grid scale EV/Home battery power sharing program up there that totally evens out the ebb and flow of renewables.
You really don't want to keep power stations beyond their expected lifespan, and it takes a fair while for them to get them carbon neutral once you take the building costs into account from what I remember when the new UK ones were being discussed.
I may not be understanding you correctly, but none of that really be factors in new renewable generation. Sure it may take a while for a wind turbine to become carbon neutral but a new coal or gas plant will never be carbon neutral. That also assumes you don't recycle the old equipment. Solar panels and wind turbines are nearly entirely recyclable. As more and more generating capacity is added, more and more recyclable material will be available. As efficiency increases the need for new material will decrease at an ever accelerating pace until the new material demands will be minimal. Kind of like where we are with Lead Acid batteries.
I'll have a look, but you're getting me right - the power generation over the life of a nuclear plant compared to CO2 produced (and other byproducts) is pretty bad compared to other alternative energy sources.
It'd be good if you were replacing coal power stations for nuclear, but France has a lot of nuclear plants already so you'd just be replacing nuclear for nuclear whilst Germany has shown that you can do the same with renewables.
Sounds bad until you realise they're a step ahead already.
Actually the german removal of nuclear has been an absolute environmental disaster. By removing nuclear before the renewables and storage was already built, and removing nuclear while coal was still operation, all Germany achieved was to increase its Co2/MwH year on year for the last decade. Germany's plan shows that 'remove nuclear' is the LAST thing you do, after every fossil fuel power plant is shut down. Germany has replaced its nuclear with wind and solar, but its also replaced it with coal.
1 MW of coal should be immediately replaced with 1 MW of gas
1 MW of gas or oil should be replaced with 1 MW of nuclear if a plant is already in construction, or 2 MW of renewables and 12 MWh of storage
1 MW of nuclear should be replaced with 2 MW of renewables and 12 MWh of storage, but only after the renewables and storage are already operating
Venus is one of the most hostile places in the solar system, possibly including the vacuum of space.
the vacuum of space is survivable basically until you run out of oxygen, though it is hostile to life someone who fell out of an airlock could conceivably survive to make it back inside.
On Venus it rains sulfuric acid, except it never hits the ground because it's so hot it evaporates before it can get there. Unprotected you'd probably die in seconds.
Venus is one of the most hostile places in the solar system, possibly including the vacuum of space.
the vacuum of space is survivable basically until you run out of oxygen, though it is hostile to life someone who fell out of an airlock could conceivably survive to make it back inside.
On Venus it rains sulfuric acid, except it never hits the ground because it's so hot it evaporates before it can get there. Unprotected you'd probably die in seconds.
Seconds is pretty optimistic.
It's more like you wouldn't physically exist as an object any more in seconds.
hippofant on
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
Venus is one of the most hostile places in the solar system, possibly including the vacuum of space.
the vacuum of space is survivable basically until you run out of oxygen, though it is hostile to life someone who fell out of an airlock could conceivably survive to make it back inside.
On Venus it rains sulfuric acid, except it never hits the ground because it's so hot it evaporates before it can get there. Unprotected you'd probably die in seconds.
Seconds is pretty optimistic.
It's more like you wouldn't physically exist as an object any more in seconds.
90 atmospheres of pressure, 750 degrees F (or more!), 95% carbon dioxide in a supercritical state.
Venus is one of the most hostile places in the solar system, possibly including the vacuum of space.
the vacuum of space is survivable basically until you run out of oxygen, though it is hostile to life someone who fell out of an airlock could conceivably survive to make it back inside.
On Venus it rains sulfuric acid, except it never hits the ground because it's so hot it evaporates before it can get there. Unprotected you'd probably die in seconds.
Seconds is pretty optimistic.
It's more like you wouldn't physically exist as an object any more in seconds.
Yeah, in space once you deal with the lack of air and low pressure (which in theory could be dealt with with a sufficiently advanced wetsuit) your main concern is with radiation and heat distribution. Things which will kill you eventually if not dealt with but are survivable over short periods.
On venus your main concern is whether the high temperatures vaporize the water and carbon compounds in your body before or after the incredibly high pressure condenses you into an object the size of a bowling ball.
Edit: Actually reading a bit it would lean towards the first as humans are apparently pretty incompressible. You would die from the pressure as your lungs would basically be fucked and the co2 levels in your body would rise to levels that would make biological activity impossible, but your corpse would still be somewhat human looking rather than bursting like a watermelon or crumpling like a tin can. At least until it all boiled away a second or two later.
Bringing up Venus is such a dumbass comparison. Because of Venus we know that the probability of runaway greenhouse effect being possible is 1. Because of Venus, we have proof that the phenomena exists.
Bringing up Venus is such a dumbass comparison. Because of Venus we know that the probability of runaway greenhouse effect being possible is 1. Because of Venus, we have proof that the phenomena exists.
It’s arguable whether Earth could ever get to venus levels though even theoretically. Earth has much higher hydrogen levels making organics easier to form and probably lower levels of carbon in general. Earth also has a magnetic field to help prevent hydrogen loss and plate tectonics to help bury carbon (Earth’s crust has much more turnover than venus’ crust). Also of course Earth gets less solar radiation in general than venus to fuel the process due to being further away, and the axis tilt causes that radiation to be less evenly distributed.
Which just means our hell world would be cooler and somewhat less dense.
Venus is one of the most hostile places in the solar system, possibly including the vacuum of space.
To give a point of comparison, the longest we have ever gotten a probe to survive on Venus is a little over 2 hours. I can't remember if it was crushed by the horrific atmospheric pressure, or just gave into the heat of the hottest planet in the solar system (Mercury is the second hottest, and coldest planet). The surface tempertaure is above the melting point of lead. It is as close to hell as you can get in this solar system. Using it as a comparison point is beyond ridiculous.
It was the heat. The pressure didn't mean a lot to most of the equipment, the Venera probes were built like submarines, with round pressure domes around everything vulnerable. The heat, though? The cameras had solid diamond lenses that still didn't hold up for more than a couple pictures, and some of the scientific instruments didn't even make it to the ground.
NASA straight up rejects every Venus lander proposal because they'll die too quickly to do anything but take a couple bleak pictures. Flyers/floaters seem to be the plan to effectively explore the planet, but even then... There's a reason everyone keeps sending higher delta-V probes to Mars instead.
Venus is one of the most hostile places in the solar system, possibly including the vacuum of space.
To give a point of comparison, the longest we have ever gotten a probe to survive on Venus is a little over 2 hours. I can't remember if it was crushed by the horrific atmospheric pressure, or just gave into the heat of the hottest planet in the solar system (Mercury is the second hottest, and coldest planet). The surface tempertaure is above the melting point of lead. It is as close to hell as you can get in this solar system. Using it as a comparison point is beyond ridiculous.
It was the heat. The pressure didn't mean a lot to most of the equipment, the Venera probes were built like submarines, with round pressure domes around everything vulnerable. The heat, though? The cameras had solid diamond lenses that still didn't hold up for more than a couple pictures, and some of the scientific instruments didn't even make it to the ground.
NASA straight up rejects every Venus lander proposal because they'll die too quickly to do anything but take a couple bleak pictures. Flyers/floaters seem to be the plan to effectively explore the planet, but even then... There's a reason everyone keeps sending higher delta-V probes to Mars instead.
The sweet spot for exploration/habitation seems to be about 30 or 40 miles up, where the pressure is more like earth and all you have to deal with is 165 degree F temperatures, constant hurricane force winds, and the occasional cloud of concentrated sulfuric acid.
Five years ago, a United Nations panel estimated how quickly the world’s oceans would continue to heat up as the planet warms due to climate change.
The oceans are heating up all right. In fact, the Earth’s oceans are warming 40% faster than that UN panel predicted, according to new analysis published Thursday in the journal Science.
Climate change from human activities mainly results from the energy imbalance in Earth's climate system caused by rising concentrations of heat-trapping gases. About 93% of the energy imbalance accumulates in the ocean as increased ocean heat content (OHC). The ocean record of this imbalance is much less affected by internal variability and is thus better suited for detecting and attributing human influences (1) than more commonly used surface temperature records. Recent observation-based estimates show rapid warming of Earth's oceans over the past few decades (see the figure) (1, 2). This warming has contributed to increases in rainfall intensity, rising sea levels, the destruction of coral reefs, declining ocean oxygen levels, and declines in ice sheets; glaciers; and ice caps in the polar regions (3, 4). Recent estimates of observed warming resemble those seen in models, indicating that models reliably project changes in OHC.
I mean, aside frmo my brain attempting to protect myself from crippling dread?
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
I know a solution. It's not going to be easy but it's probably going to have to happen in the next century. Orbiting space habitats. The first step will be to find a matialic near earth asteroid. There are literally hundreds to choose from. For example let's take 99942 Apophis. It's a Q-type NEO with a mass of around 6.1×10^10 kg. If you aren't in any particular hurry a gravity tractor would be the easiest way to tow it into a more favorable orbit. All that would be needed are one or more massive objects traveling alongside it to slowly alter its orbit to where ever you want. When it's in just the right place to make manned launches easiest you start sending people. Thanks to its high metallic content and close proximity to the sun, the energy provided by a single radioisotope thermoelectric generator could produce all the energy needed to start manufacturing solar panels on site. Once you have enough solar panels you can start manufacturing modular rotating habitats. I'm picturing the end product being a 6km long O'Neal cylinder. It will have an outer drum and an inner drum. Between them will be enough water to absorb the majority of the radiation from space. You really wouldn't want to look out a window for any amount of time on one of these as the stars would be flying by beneath your feet at a rather unnerving pace. At first it will probably just be the super rich living there. Hoping to leverage their money to get away from the worst of what's happening back on Earth. If we continue doing nothing about climate change more and more people will be forced into these orbital habitats. I can't see us ever going "full gundam" and just expelling millions of poor people into space but I can see a sizable percentage of the human population ending up in space due to the instability of life down on earth.
Sounds like it's time to convene the Planetary Council and vote to launch a solar shade.
I think that any geoengineering to cool the Earth needs to happen before the thermohaline circulation/gulf stream breaks down. If we try to cool the Earth after that breaks down, New England and Europe will get really fucked by cooling.
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I know a solution. It's not going to be easy but it's probably going to have to happen in the next century. Orbiting space habitats. The first step will be to find a matialic near earth asteroid. There are literally hundreds to choose from. For example let's take 99942 Apophis. It's a Q-type NEO with a mass of around 6.1×10^10 kg. If you aren't in any particular hurry a gravity tractor would be the easiest way to tow it into a more favorable orbit. All that would be needed are one or more massive objects traveling alongside it to slowly alter its orbit to where ever you want. When it's in just the right place to make manned launches easiest you start sending people. Thanks to its high metallic content and close proximity to the sun, the energy provided by a single radioisotope thermoelectric generator could produce all the energy needed to start manufacturing solar panels on site. Once you have enough solar panels you can start manufacturing modular rotating habitats. I'm picturing the end product being a 6km long O'Neal cylinder. It will have an outer drum and an inner drum. Between them will be enough water to absorb the majority of the radiation from space. You really wouldn't want to look out a window for any amount of time on one of these as the stars would be flying by beneath your feet at a rather unnerving pace. At first it will probably just be the super rich living there. Hoping to leverage their money to get away from the worst of what's happening back on Earth. If we continue doing nothing about climate change more and more people will be forced into these orbital habitats. I can't see us ever going "full gundam" and just expelling millions of poor people into space but I can see a sizable percentage of the human population ending up in space due to the instability of life down on earth.
I'm never quite sure where to fall on the "would space be the place a bunch of rich people flee to" or "is space where the Rich ship all the proles off to"
The history of colonization so far leans toward the latter
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I am sad this person somehow had some real power of a sort.
It's not a threat to the planet. I'm not worried about the planet. The planet will still be here for millenia.
Now the things on the planet... there's your problem.
In the words of George Carlin: "the planet will be fine! The people will be fucked!
Actually killing earth is pretty hard. Actually killing technological civilization has historical precedent, and is pretty easy.
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
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What the fuck?
I was a big proponent of nuclear power for years, before solar and wind got so cheap. In 2018 it's become cheaper per MWH produced to build new solar and wind generation than new nuclear, gas or coal. The truth of a matter is that we don't need to build new nuclear power plants. There have been so many new and novel ways of storing the excess energy that solar and wind produce to use in less productive times. My favorites have to be the gravity systems. During times of low demand, excess power is used to pump water uphill into resivraros to spin turbines when it's dark, calm or there's a spike in demand. Another cool method is to heat massive balls of sodium and pull energy from that as it cools. Yet another is to spin massive low friction flywheels that you can later tap for energy. An especially interesting idea is to pressurize former underground oil reservoirs. Once EVs become more popular a great option would be to store that excess energy in EVs to tap later through automated power sharing.
As much as people want to trash talk solar and wind, they really are the future. At the grid level, the economics of scale have have pushed solar and wind from niche to viable to the best and cheapest option. Look at what's going on in Scotland with offshore wind farms. The Orkney Islands produce so much cheap wind power that factories around there get paid to use the excess. There's a grid scale EV/Home battery power sharing program up there that totally evens out the ebb and flow of renewables.
I've also seen the "Mars' atmosphere is mostly co2 so can your science explain why it's not hot?"
It was equally dumb.
You really don't want to keep power stations beyond their expected lifespan, and it takes a fair while for them to get them carbon neutral once you take the building costs into account from what I remember when the new UK ones were being discussed.
I may not be understanding you correctly, but none of that really be factors in new renewable generation. Sure it may take a while for a wind turbine to become carbon neutral but a new coal or gas plant will never be carbon neutral. That also assumes you don't recycle the old equipment. Solar panels and wind turbines are nearly entirely recyclable. As more and more generating capacity is added, more and more recyclable material will be available. As efficiency increases the need for new material will decrease at an ever accelerating pace until the new material demands will be minimal. Kind of like where we are with Lead Acid batteries.
Eh, thats basically like saying superman survived everything until the great kryptonite me
It’s pretty crazy to think of how much of a death world venus is.
Like the moon and mars are cozy compared to venus. Humans can walk on the surface of the moon and mars, all they need is some air and insulation.
On venus you would literally boil alive within seconds.
https://youtu.be/q-aW538oOik
Trump and the rights obsession with the world supposedly laughing at us under Obama gets more and more pathetic each time the US is literally laughed at under Trump
I'll have a look, but you're getting me right - the power generation over the life of a nuclear plant compared to CO2 produced (and other byproducts) is pretty bad compared to other alternative energy sources.
It'd be good if you were replacing coal power stations for nuclear, but France has a lot of nuclear plants already so you'd just be replacing nuclear for nuclear whilst Germany has shown that you can do the same with renewables.
Sounds bad until you realise they're a step ahead already.
To give a point of comparison, the longest we have ever gotten a probe to survive on Venus is a little over 2 hours. I can't remember if it was crushed by the horrific atmospheric pressure, or just gave into the heat of the hottest planet in the solar system (Mercury is the second hottest, and coldest planet). The surface tempertaure is above the melting point of lead. It is as close to hell as you can get in this solar system. Using it as a comparison point is beyond ridiculous.
the vacuum of space is survivable basically until you run out of oxygen, though it is hostile to life someone who fell out of an airlock could conceivably survive to make it back inside.
On Venus it rains sulfuric acid, except it never hits the ground because it's so hot it evaporates before it can get there. Unprotected you'd probably die in seconds.
Actually the german removal of nuclear has been an absolute environmental disaster. By removing nuclear before the renewables and storage was already built, and removing nuclear while coal was still operation, all Germany achieved was to increase its Co2/MwH year on year for the last decade. Germany's plan shows that 'remove nuclear' is the LAST thing you do, after every fossil fuel power plant is shut down. Germany has replaced its nuclear with wind and solar, but its also replaced it with coal.
1 MW of coal should be immediately replaced with 1 MW of gas
1 MW of gas or oil should be replaced with 1 MW of nuclear if a plant is already in construction, or 2 MW of renewables and 12 MWh of storage
1 MW of nuclear should be replaced with 2 MW of renewables and 12 MWh of storage, but only after the renewables and storage are already operating
Seconds is pretty optimistic.
It's more like you wouldn't physically exist as an object any more in seconds.
90 atmospheres of pressure, 750 degrees F (or more!), 95% carbon dioxide in a supercritical state.
It would be a short, painful death.
smh snowflakes can't handle the surface of venus.
Yeah, in space once you deal with the lack of air and low pressure (which in theory could be dealt with with a sufficiently advanced wetsuit) your main concern is with radiation and heat distribution. Things which will kill you eventually if not dealt with but are survivable over short periods.
On venus your main concern is whether the high temperatures vaporize the water and carbon compounds in your body before or after the incredibly high pressure condenses you into an object the size of a bowling ball.
Edit: Actually reading a bit it would lean towards the first as humans are apparently pretty incompressible. You would die from the pressure as your lungs would basically be fucked and the co2 levels in your body would rise to levels that would make biological activity impossible, but your corpse would still be somewhat human looking rather than bursting like a watermelon or crumpling like a tin can. At least until it all boiled away a second or two later.
It’s arguable whether Earth could ever get to venus levels though even theoretically. Earth has much higher hydrogen levels making organics easier to form and probably lower levels of carbon in general. Earth also has a magnetic field to help prevent hydrogen loss and plate tectonics to help bury carbon (Earth’s crust has much more turnover than venus’ crust). Also of course Earth gets less solar radiation in general than venus to fuel the process due to being further away, and the axis tilt causes that radiation to be less evenly distributed.
Which just means our hell world would be cooler and somewhat less dense.
It was the heat. The pressure didn't mean a lot to most of the equipment, the Venera probes were built like submarines, with round pressure domes around everything vulnerable. The heat, though? The cameras had solid diamond lenses that still didn't hold up for more than a couple pictures, and some of the scientific instruments didn't even make it to the ground.
NASA straight up rejects every Venus lander proposal because they'll die too quickly to do anything but take a couple bleak pictures. Flyers/floaters seem to be the plan to effectively explore the planet, but even then... There's a reason everyone keeps sending higher delta-V probes to Mars instead.
The sweet spot for exploration/habitation seems to be about 30 or 40 miles up, where the pressure is more like earth and all you have to deal with is 165 degree F temperatures, constant hurricane force winds, and the occasional cloud of concentrated sulfuric acid.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6423/128.summary
Well shit
At the very least, Ocean Warming is going to lead to:
- Ocean Life Die off increases
- Acidification, which will bolster the first even further
What else?
Methane release
Sea level rise
Larger and more powerful hurricanes
how do I always forget the methane.
I mean, aside frmo my brain attempting to protect myself from crippling dread?
I think that any geoengineering to cool the Earth needs to happen before the thermohaline circulation/gulf stream breaks down. If we try to cool the Earth after that breaks down, New England and Europe will get really fucked by cooling.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I'm never quite sure where to fall on the "would space be the place a bunch of rich people flee to" or "is space where the Rich ship all the proles off to"
The history of colonization so far leans toward the latter