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If the operators hand't been idiots and the plant had been designed properly like Western reactors it would have happened at all...

Thing is, in the event of an attack, they can just SCRAM the reactor, halting the reaction, leaving behind the reactor fuel. Even if you somehow detonated the core and spread radioactive dust around, it'd be no more dangerous than a big dirty bomb.

And dirty bombs, despite all the media hype, are relatively ineffective at causing actual damage. Most of the 'damage' form a dirty bomb would be the economic distruptions caused by the demand for a clean up operation, and the unjustified terror inflicted as a result.

Someone told me volcanoes can actually shield the planet from the suns rays

I dont know who to believe

kenshin620 wrote:Someone told me volcanoes can actually shield the planet from the suns rays

I dont know who to believe

They do. I forget the specific chemical (sulfur dioxide, perhaps? something with sulfur in it), but it has a net coolant effect, due to it reflecting light before it can reach the ground, in addition to the general cooling effect of giant clouds blocking out the sun.

The ash from the volcano will effect climate for a few years, depending on how long it lasts. Depending on the composition and quantity of ash it could either heat or cool the earth. Krakatoa erupted in 1883 and lowered global temperatures till 1888. When the ash falls out of sky it will have a reduce impact on climate. Now the Krakatoa eruption lasted for several months and was one of largest in recorded history. The ash behaves like a sun shade in your car and CO2 + other gases acts like a blanket. So no extra heat gets in but no extra heat gets out. Tambora's eruption in 1815 created the year with out a summer, also a very large eruption.
Climate change (global warming is an inaccurate term) is a Natural process that humans are able to influence. How ever this is still one of the colder times in earths 4+ billion year history due to the fact that it is one of handful of times when continental glaciation is present.
The fact that nature can and frequently does undo humanities efforts to control nature just proves how little we can actually control.
Lets just hope Yellowstone doesn't erupt again soon or well it will be very bad for everyone that isn't killed directly.
Krakatoa was like 21 cubic kilometers (5 cubic miles) of ejected material and Yellowstone's largest eruption was about 2450 cu kilometers of ejected material.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_volcanic_eruptions- list of some big eruptions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa-Krakatoa

MeanGreenStompa wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

MeanGreenStompa wrote:
It is clear to me now that an extinction or massive reduction in the number of human beings is the only way the planet can recover

Recover? That assumes there's something wrong.

Destructive human activities have led to the current rate of species extinction, which is at least 100–1,000 times higher than the expected natural rate. - WWF

"...Acre-and-a-half is lost every second of every day. That’s an area more than twice the size of Florida that goes up in smoke every year! "If present rates of destruction continue, half our remaining rainforests will be gone by the year 2025, and by 2060 there will be no rainforests remaining." - Rainforest Action Network

In the past two years the number of "dead zones" in the oceans have increased by one third - (Ocean Planet, 1995).


Nothing to worry about then.

The earth doesn't even notice. The day after w are gone, thje process of creating a whole new world of flora and fauna will already have started. All our effects are just a minor blip for future cochroach archeologists to ponder over.

"And here's where our ancestors suddenly exploded from being smaller foragers skulking around, to learning to play with small figurines. Its a mystery why it suddenly occurred."

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0609/australia.html

Australia is considering awarding carbon credits for killing feral camels as a way to tackle climate change.

The suggestion is included in the 'Carbon Farming Initiative', a consultation paper by the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency.

Adelaide-based Northwest Carbon, a commercial company, proposed culling some 1.2m wild camels that roam the Outback, the legacy of herds introduced to help early settlers in the 19th century.

Considered a pest due to the damage they do to vegetation, a camel produces, on average, a methane equivalent to one tonne of carbon dioxide a year.

That makes them collectively one of Australia's major emitters of greenhouse gases.

In its plan, Northwest said it would shoot them from helicopters or muster them and send them to an abattoir for either human or pet consumption.

'We're a nation of innovators and we find innovative solutions to our challenges - this is just a classic example,' Northwest Carbon managing director Tim Moore told Australian Associated Press.

The idea was among those accepted for discussion by the government, which is seeking to 'provide new economic opportunities for farmers, forest growers and landholders' if they come up with ways to cut emissions, according to the document.

Heavily reliant on coal-fired power and mining exports, Australia is one of the world's worst per capita polluters and the government is looking at ways to clean up its act.

Legislation for the Carbon Farming Initiative is set to go before parliament next week.

Orlanth wrote:

ChrisWWII wrote:I think it's fair to note that Chernobyl's Zone of Exclusion has become an impromptu wildlife sanctuary due to the lack of human presence. One of the worst radiological disasters of all history.....and nature is coping along just fine.

People seriously overestimate nukes. Yes they have a lot of power, but they're still extremely limited.

Thats because of biorobots, and a society willing to use them. A war rather than an accident could blow the rooves (not plural) of reactors destroy all containment and prevent any method of cleanup.

A nuclear detonation causes on over-pressure wave of 1-50 psi depending on elevation and distance to target. A reactor containment dome can withstand 60 to 200 Psi, you are not going to blow the lid of a reactor in a war. Unless you deliberately target the reactor with bunker busters, which serves no military purpose

Frazzled- Not really. It takes not time at all to destroy species and a long time for new ones to form. One species might not seem important but its the effects it has on other animals that does the real damage. Life is good at balancing itself out but once you get past that point the damage is very hard to undo. Using MGS example- once the rainforests are gone they won't come back. It's possible to recover from serious damage but complete destruction is the end. And that isn't just for the rainforests. They have a huge impact on life across the planet. Our actions aren't a blip. How much damage will we have done before we are gone. I doubt we are going to leave peacefuly and in the end we will do everything possible to hold on, regardless of the consequences.

Sir Pseudonymous- Life kills on an individual scale. Very rarely does life cause extinctions, and when it does it's usualy becaue something else takes it's place. Without interferrence life is balanced, we have shaken it all up. Humans are careless, we have tried to balance out our actions in the past and most of those didn't end up very well. Life is very delicate and we can't predict the effects of our actions, interferring is bad.

Unfortunately I think MGS is right. We have grown so large that we require resources that earth can't provide. The larger we grow the faster our population increases. We have reached the point where our society isn't sustainable. Personally I just hope something happens before we destroy everything around us. While it's good that people (well some of them) try to help, their ideas are on a tiny scale. Short of changing our entire lives to stop using energy (no electricity, no cars ect..) we aren't going to stop it.

Back on topic: The problem with Ian Plimer's idea is that the amount of CO2 released at any single time isn't the issue. It's how much is being released compared to how much is stored. The earth releases CO2 and it absorbs it. In the end it balances out. What we do releases CO2 and doesn't put it back in.

Watch supervolcano....

The worlds climate could change in just one year, if one single volcano erupted. And there are about 5 of these guys located around the earth, on interlinked tectonic plates. These things could simultaneously erupt.


*shiver*
Makes Cthulu and Yog-Sogoth look pleasant.

4M2A wrote:Sir Pseudonymous- Life kills on an individual scale. Very rarely does life cause extinctions, and when it does it's usualy becaue something else takes it's place. Without interferrence life is balanced, we have shaken it all up.

No, it's not. It's a constantly fluctuating warzone, wherein the end for most things is an agonizing, horrible death. Our triumph is that we are no longer bound by its cycles and comparatively glacial pace, and may conceive of changes that would take countless centuries or millennia to appear, and enact them, within the span of months or years. We are just another natural force.

Humans are careless, we have tried to balance out our actions in the past and most of those didn't end up very well. Life is very delicate and we can't predict the effects of our actions, interferring is bad.

We've also tried to fly by attaching tiny flapping wings to bicycles. Knowledge and engineering march on.

Unfortunately I think MGS is right. We have grown so large that we require resources that earth can't provide.

We haven't. The midwestern plains could support the entire world's population several times over were they fully utilized, and there are roughly equivalent, if slightly smaller, plains in both Europe and India. To say nothing of advances in agriculture that could make hydro/aeroponic towers a viable replacement to arable land.

The larger we grow the faster our population increases.

This is also false. Population growth has slowed to a halt in developed nations.

We have reached the point where our society isn't sustainable.

Civilization has never been indefinitely sustainable, we're just now nearing the point where it will be.

Personally I just hope something happens before we destroy everything around us. While it's good that people (well some of them) try to help, their ideas are on a tiny scale. Short of changing our entire lives to stop using energy (no electricity, no cars ect..) we aren't going to stop it.

That would mean the destruction of all that is human, for the sake of a world that doesn't care or matter, being an abstract concept rooted in romantic eco-fantasy and all.

I'm personally all for recycling and trying to not build mountains of trash all over the place. I do draw the line when people start chaining themselves to trees just so loggers won't cut it down. Personally I would just cut some of the branches off up near the top and see if I could hit them with one and drag their unconcious/dead body away and carry on with my work.

No, it's not. It's a constantly fluctuating warzone, wherein the end for most things is an agonizing, horrible death. Our triumph is that we are no longer bound by its cycles and comparatively glacial pace, and may conceive of changes that would take countless centuries or millennia to appear, and enact them, within the span of months or years. We are just another natural force.

I said species not individuals. While the numbers move up and down species are not constantly fighting to avoid exctinction. If the population falls the predators hunt other animals or die off so the population can regrow. Without changes to the environment (in recent times mostly due to us) species vaery rarely become exctinct.

We've also tried to fly by attaching tiny flapping wings to bicycles. Knowledge and engineering march on.

Even recently our attempts to help are going wrong. Nature is too complex a web for us to be able to predict what the effects of us interferring are.

We haven't. The midwestern plains could support the entire world's population several times over were they fully utilized, and there are roughly equivalent, if slightly smaller, plains in both Europe and India. To say nothing of advances in agriculture that could make hydro/aeroponic towers a viable replacement to arable land.

Space is not the only problem. We need energy, food, living space, ect.. Not all of these can be put everywhere. We are already having problems with food and fuel competing for land.

This is also false. Population growth has slowed to a halt in developed nations.

No it's called exponential growth. While we continue to have more than 2 children per family (which as a species we are) it will continue growing and increasing in speed.

That would mean the destruction of all that is human, for the sake of a world that doesn't care or matter, being an abstract concept rooted in romantic eco-fantasy and all.

I think you mean a world you don't think is important for what you think is human. It's possible to exist without harming the planet- we have been doing it for thousands of years. I don't think it will happen but we could do it. The idea that the world is unimportant is entirely dependant on your view point. I personaly don't think we are all that special and am disappointed in people who think the whole world is to be used by humans. What matters depends on your viewpoint and your values aren't the only ones whose are important.

Thing is....

If you hadn't reduced your carbon emissions by doing all that stuff....there would be twice the amount of co2 in the atmosphere.

also, people who don't believe in climate Change are morons.

I said species not individuals. While the numbers move up and down species are not constantly fighting to avoid exctinction.

The fossil record says otherwise. It might be helpful to research biology in more detail. While there look up short faced bear, just for kicks. Now thats a bad mamma.

Hmm maybe, oh wait i'm a biology student so I already do a fair bit of that. Most extinctions occur due to changes in environment. With the world as it is (without anything changing) species population will increase and decreases but most spcecies won't get anywhere near extinction.

And using your example (we can only speculate as we don't know the reasons it became exctint) it's believed that it was down to changing habitats (end of the ice age) which reduced its food and humans, as it's around this point that we began to seriuosly hunt all of the large animals in the area. It didn't just randomly die out.

4M2A wrote:Hmm maybe, oh wait i'm a biology student so I already do a fair bit of that. Most extinctions occur due to changes in environment. With the world as it is (without anything changing) species population will increase and decreases but most spcecies won't get anywhere near extinction.

And using your example (we can only speculate as we don't know the reasons it became exctint) it's believed that it was down to changing habitats (end of the ice age) which reduced its food and humans, as it's around this point that we began to seriuosly hunt all of the large animals in the area. It didn't just randomly die out.

You need to study more. Species are constantly fighting amongst themselves (and intra species) for survival in a constantly changing environment. We are just a driver to that changing environment.

As a quick note biology =/= paleontology frazz, it is perfectly reasonable for a biologist to know bugger all about extinct species.

corpsesarefun wrote:As a quick note biology =/= paleontology frazz, it is perfectly reasonable for a biologist to know bugger all about extinct species.

Work Harder, not Smarter!

Frazzled wrote:

Mr. Burning wrote:So, we cant win, so don't try?

Oh contraire. Join the winning team. Buy a gas guzzler.

You mean the losing, pathetic team, right?

Gas guzzlers are already big losers. They're going to become bigger and bigger losers as time goes on.

Frazzled wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:As a quick note biology =/= paleontology frazz, it is perfectly reasonable for a biologist to know bugger all about extinct species.

Work Harder, not Smarter!

Ha your posts are always fun

Frazz- species are competing and for most of the time they are locked in that system. It isn't common for one species to get such a lead that another becomes extinct. While it's common for a species's population to drop there are many factors making it unusual for a species to die out entirely. While a species has it's niche it isn't going to die out without outside interferrence. While it's possible for a niche to disappear this is either changing environment or through another species taking it (however this is slow so doesn't happer very often). Just look at the times and causes of extinctions. The vast majority of extinctions happen when environments change or by humans artificialy changing their habitat. Species change so slowly that it's rare for one to get a huge edge over another.

4M2A wrote:

No, it's not. It's a constantly fluctuating warzone, wherein the end for most things is an agonizing, horrible death. Our triumph is that we are no longer bound by its cycles and comparatively glacial pace, and may conceive of changes that would take countless centuries or millennia to appear, and enact them, within the span of months or years. We are just another natural force.

I said species not individuals. While the numbers move up and down species are not constantly fighting to avoid exctinction. If the population falls the predators hunt other animals or die off so the population can regrow. Without changes to the environment (in recent times mostly due to us) species vaery rarely become exctinct.

The error is in framing that as a loss. If they die, they've failed. The only objective qualifier to life is whether or not it is capable of surviving; and when one moves into the subjective frame of reference of humans not even that's a given (case in point: pandas, worthless, feeble creatures that some people are positively obsessed with trying to keep alive for aesthetic or sentimental reasons). There is nothing which we need that we can take away through our actions which we cannot replicate artificially.

We've also tried to fly by attaching tiny flapping wings to bicycles. Knowledge and engineering march on.

Even recently our attempts to help are going wrong. Nature is too complex a web for us to be able to predict what the effects of us interferring are.

And planes still crash due to mechanical failure sometimes. Shall we give up flight because of it?

Space is not the only problem. We need energy, food, living space, ect.. Not all of these can be put everywhere. We are already having problems with food and fuel competing for land.

The food/fuel conflict is mainly because a) people are screaming so about fossil fuels that insane, snappy sounding measures like ethanol production are being implemented so that politicians can point and say "look! I'm doing something!" and b) we have so much greater a capacity for food production than we need that farmers are literally paid not to produce food, so as not to flood the market with cheap food.

The only resource we are in any risk of running out of is crude oil, and that's given a projection of several decades minimum. We're moving towards renewable resources for the sake of common sense, and they'll have matured into viable technologies long before we actually need them, solving issues of energy production.

This is also false. Population growth has slowed to a halt in developed nations.

No it's called exponential growth. While we continue to have more than 2 children per family (which as a species we are) it will continue growing and increasing in speed.

But the more developed a nation becomes, the slower its population grows, up until the point where it drops below the rate of replacement. The booming population we've experienced has less to do with actual reproduction rates than it has with the improvement of medical care to the point where people don't have a life expectancy of "40" anymore.

That would mean the destruction of all that is human, for the sake of a world that doesn't care or matter, being an abstract concept rooted in romantic eco-fantasy and all.

I think you mean a world you don't think is important for what you think is human. It's possible to exist without harming the planet- we have been doing it for thousands of years.

We've also been living on the edge of starvation and dieing in our twenties or thirties for thousands of years too.

I don't think it will happen but we could do it. The idea that the world is unimportant is entirely dependant on your view point. I personaly don't think we are all that special and am disappointed in people who think the whole world is to be used by humans. What matters depends on your viewpoint and your values aren't the only ones whose are important.

In the past hundred years we have accomplished more than the entire previous history of humanity, which was greater than the entire accumulated non-human development up to this point many times over. We're set to have done this again (including the past century in the sum of previous achievements) within the next few decades, and again a decade after that. Everything that nature does we do in a thousandth the time, and we're only getting faster the further along we go. We are a superior version of the very processes which drive the diversity of life to begin with, an evolutionary gamebreaker.

4M2A wrote:Frazz- species are competing and for most of the time they are locked in that system. It isn't common for one species to get such a lead that another becomes extinct. While it's common for a species's population to drop there are many factors making it unusual for a species to die out entirely. While a species has it's niche it isn't going to die out without outside interferrence. While it's possible for a niche to disappear this is either changing environment or through another species taking it (however this is slow so doesn't happer very often). Just look at the times and causes of extinctions. The vast majority of extinctions happen when environments change or by humans artificialy changing their habitat. Species change so slowly that it's rare for one to get a huge edge over another.

The problem though is that there is nothing locked about it. Environments are constantly changing, and even the extent of that enviro change can come in a jarring fashion. New species find their way into existing environments and new mutations create spurts of evolutionary growth. Even the level of oxygen changes. Solar flare impact weather and environments, the earth shifts. Its a system, but its a system in joyous freefall.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Toastedandy wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:As a quick note biology =/= paleontology frazz, it is perfectly reasonable for a biologist to know bugger all about extinct species.

Work Harder, not Smarter!

Ha your posts are always fun

The honor, is to serve.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:The only resource we are in any risk of running out of is crude oil, and that's given a projection of several decades minimum. We're moving towards renewable resources for the sake of common sense, and they'll have matured into viable technologies long before we actually need them, solving issues of energy production.

I think your estimate of "several decades" is way off. But that's not really important because we're never going to run out of oil. As oil is depleted, prices for extraction will increase, making other energy sources more appealing. That final spike in oil prices will occur well before all of the oil is pumped out of the ground.

There are also more problems with renewables than with nonrenewables. There is a practical thermodynamic limit on the amount of solar/wind energy that can be harvested. This sets a maximum limit on technological expansion. Nonrenewables allow us to push beyond this thermodynamic limit by providing a store of extractable useable energy.

Basically, renewable energy is not the future.

Nuclear fusion.

Matrim wrote:Nuclear fusion.

Currently produces a net loss of energy in all of our reactors.

corpsesarefun wrote:

Matrim wrote:Nuclear fusion.

Currently produces a net loss of energy in all of our reactors.

We do have means of producing a net energy gain using nuclear fusion.

It's just not very safe.

biccat wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:The only resource we are in any risk of running out of is crude oil, and that's given a projection of several decades minimum. We're moving towards renewable resources for the sake of common sense, and they'll have matured into viable technologies long before we actually need them, solving issues of energy production.

I think your estimate of "several decades" is way off. But that's not really important because we're never going to run out of oil. As oil is depleted, prices for extraction will increase, making other energy sources more appealing. That final spike in oil prices will occur well before all of the oil is pumped out of the ground.

"So little left that it's not worth trying to get" is not meaningfully distinct from "running out" in practice (after all, we'd "run out" of supplies of it were we to stop harvesting it), and "running out" is a much less awkward phrasing when used in more complex clauses.

There are also more problems with renewables than with nonrenewables. There is a practical thermodynamic limit on the amount of solar/wind energy that can be harvested. This sets a maximum limit on technological expansion. Nonrenewables allow us to push beyond this thermodynamic limit by providing a store of extractable useable energy.

No, there's not. It would be closer to truth were we talking about some conceivable pseudo-perpetual-motion machine or cycle, but we're talking about "renewable" things in a very short frame of reference: the sun isn't "renewable", but from any currently relevant frame of reference it might as well be, since it won't stop dumping vast amounts of energy onto us for billions of years. Likewise wind and wave energy isn't truly renewable: it's most certainly taking energy out of the environment, but it's only a tiny fraction of what's there, and most of the energy is ultimately generated by the sun burning through all its non-renewable reserves of hydrogen and dumping radiation into our atmosphere, in addition to tidal forces caused by the moon, and all the energy dispersed through the movement of animals (and to a less extent machines) in the oceans.

So when people say "renewable" they're referring to significantly larger sources of non-renewable energy than current crude reserves, sources which are so vast that we cannot detect any impact in them from our harvesting, not some theoretical "breaks the laws of physics" technology.


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biccat wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:

Matrim wrote:Nuclear fusion.

Currently produces a net loss of energy in all of our reactors.

We do have means of producing a net energy gain using nuclear fusion.

It's just not very safe.

The issue is actually it's too safe, in that it's exceedingly difficult and expensive to create the conditions in which the reactions occur, and that they tend to stop very quickly. We are getting closer to it, though. Maybe in a few decades we'll have the first working prototypes.

Sometimes I wonder if climate change arguments (pro and against alike) evoke activity in the same portions of the brain as religious arguments...

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:"So little left that it's not worth trying to get" is not meaningfully distinct from "running out" in practice (after all, we'd "run out" of supplies of it were we to stop harvesting it), and "running out" is a much less awkward phrasing when used in more complex clauses.

It certainly is meaningfully distinct. Because the idea of "peak oil" tends to suggest that our world will come to a crashing halt when we run out of oil unless we Do Something Right Now. But that's silly, because economic forces are going to drive a demand for different energy sources well before oil shortages are a concern.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:No, there's not. It would be closer to truth were we talking about some conceivable pseudo-perpetual-motion machine or cycle, but we're talking about "renewable" things in a very short frame of reference: the sun isn't "renewable", but from any currently relevant frame of reference it might as well be, since it won't stop dumping vast amounts of energy onto us for billions of years.

The limit is the amount of solar energy we can expect to harvest for a given time period. For example, if we were to put solar energy cells on every square inch of roof space in the United States, we would only satisfy about 80% of our current annual energy usage.

There is an upper limit on how much solar energy impacts the earth annually. The upper limit on how much power we can produce in a day is also theoretically limited, but would be a lot higher.

Plus, you don't run into the problem of seriously altering weather patterns. I saw one proposal that contemplated harvesting 50% of the gulf-stream ocean current. Want to talk about an ecological disaster?

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

biccat wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:

Matrim wrote:Nuclear fusion.

Currently produces a net loss of energy in all of our reactors.

We do have means of producing a net energy gain using nuclear fusion.

It's just not very safe.

The issue is actually it's too safe, in that it's exceedingly difficult and expensive to create the conditions in which the reactions occur, and that they tend to stop very quickly. We are getting closer to it, though. Maybe in a few decades we'll have the first working prototypes.

I was thinking about this method: