Obama Administration Takes Action on Climate Change--Big Time

[billvon]

The only way it will every work is to get the management problem - the government - out of it.

If you repeal the Anderson-Price act (the biggest piece of law applicable to the US nuclear industry) the industry would collapse almost immediately. Without it nuclear power plants are not easily insurable - and hence would tend not an option for utilities. (Or at the very least be far more expensive.)

[ChrisOlson]

Chris I agree with you on some of th epoints you bring up, but there are some countries who should not be allowed to have reactors. Iran and North Korea are two that come to mind.

And that has to be frustrating for those countries. Anybody with common sense knows that nuclear power is the future. The universe has been running on it for billions of years. Iran pursues a peaceful 5% uranium enrichment program and the US has a fit over it because they MIGHT make a weapon on the sly. All because of a power change in 1979. Prior to that, the US helped Iran with their nuclear power program.

It's all about buddies - who is buddies with who. If you are a buddy of the US then nuclear power is fine. If you are not a buddy of the US, then the US will hassle you over it and bully you - UNLESS you are bigger than the US like Russia or China and then the US leaves you alone.

The US needs to keep their freaking nose out of other people's business, and that includes their nuclear power programs.

[JCP]

The reserves numbers are a joke. The US has not looked for any in decades. Largest known reserves are in Canada and Australia.

Point is just like oil and coal. In the 70's the USA thought we had ran out of oil and low sulfur coal because we could buy it cheaper elsewhere and were not looking for it. Anyone remember the Traitor Jimmy Carter? Today we have the largest known reserves because we started looking for it again. Uranium is one of the worlds most abundant minerals which can be extracted from sea water. The USA quit looking for it because of the price dropped to $10/ton which made it uneconomical to mine and look for in the USA.

Thanks. I read something about the potential technology to harvest uranium from sea water. The concentration is so small that we have no economical or scalable way currently from harvesting much. That may well change though.

[ChrisOlson]

If you repeal the Anderson-Price act (the biggest piece of law applicable to the US nuclear industry) the industry would collapse almost immediately. Without it nuclear power plants are not easily insurable - and hence would tend not an option for utilities. (Or at the very least be far more expensive.)

I view nuclear power much like the US Space Program. Get it out of the hands of the government and let private industry handle it. Private industry gets us to space without spending any taxpayer money, does it more efficiently at less cost/launch, and higher reliability to-boot.

There is nothing the government has ever managed or controlled that became highly successful, efficient or cost-effective.

[ChrisOlson]

The NASA website says Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities. Check it out at http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

What I would like to know is when did science become consensus?

If you take a look around the planet, the US has seen the coldest winter in 38 years and 74% of the country continues well below normal temperatures thru June 6 this year. It even has its own Wiki entry now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013%E2%80%9314_North_American_cold_wave

And not only here, but my wife's home country of Sweden also saw the coldest winter in 109 years (Sweden's climate is normally moderated by the Gulf Stream):

http://www.thelocal.se/20140119/temperatures-hit-41-in-swedish-cold-snap

And it continues into summer...........

Tromso, Norway has seen its first snowfall on record in June:

http://www.icenews.is/2014/06/22/snow-in-june-only-in-norway/

If it's cold in the northern hemisphere, then it must be warmer someplace else, right? Well both Dumont d’Urville Station and Anderson-Scott station just recorded the coldest June on record in the Antarctic:

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/25698/53/

On the other end of the planet, the Arctic ice melt is well behind the peak melts of 2007 and 2012

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

Brisbane, Australia just records the coldest temperature there in 103 years

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/brisbane-hits-coldest-temperature-in-103-years/story-fnihsrf2-1226986116278?nk=767562a05544df33ceccfde076d5ad19

And yet the NOAA claims May 2014 is the warmest May on record - and get this - since it's so darn cold everyplace else we'll tell 'em the heat is in the oceans where nobody can prove or disprove it, and they whip up a graphic with blotches of pink, red and blue all over it that looks "official":

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/06/23/may-climate-report/11260723/

I smell strong fudging in NOAA's "facts", released just in time to coincide with the announcement from the Whitehouse that we're taking action on Climate Change.

[Sunking]

There is nothing the government has ever managed or controlled that became highly successful, efficient or cost-effective.

I would not say that Chris. Just to throw one out there would be the Interstate Highway system. FDIC would be another one off the top of my head. But I do agree the goberment needs to get out of many areas of our lives.

[ChrisOlson]

I would not say that Chris. Just to throw one out there would be the Interstate Highway system. FDIC would be another one off the top of my head. But I do agree the goberment needs to get out of many areas of our lives.

I don't know about the FDIC but the Interstate Highway System is an example of government inefficiency. The original budget to build it when it was push thru by Eisenhower was $25 billion over 12 years. It ended up costing $114 billion and took 35 years.

Today the entire Interstate system has fallen into disrepair. The bridges (over 2,000 of them) are well over their design lifespan and you get this type of thing that happens:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge#Collapse

It could be built only once - just like the moon landings it could never be duplicated today. It is over 50 years old, and has been patched and maintained in a haphazard way to where the funds don't even exist to repair it like it should be repaired today. Individual states maintain their sections of it, but when federal funding to states ran out sections of it were delegated to counties. Today, in the northern states where it snows, there is not enough money to even plow it so they only plow one lane and the passing lane is glare ice with some salted sand spread on it the rest of the winter.

In the summer months, taking state highways 14 and 34 across South Dakota, for instance, to Sturgis and Deadwood is a MUCH better road than I90, which is full of potholes and cracks. Same thing in North Dakota. US2 across the state is much better shape than I94, which is basically a patchwork of patchwork.

So while it may have been a good idea, in the long run the funds and system to maintain it has been poorly managed.

[billvon]

I view nuclear power much like the US Space Program. Get it out of the hands of the government and let private industry handle it. Private industry gets us to space without spending any taxpayer money, does it more efficiently at less cost/launch, and higher reliability to-boot.

That's a good model. But without government investment and research there would be no private space programs today. It took more than 40 years to get private space programs off the ground (pun intended) and even now they exist only because the government pays for their launches.

Similarly without government research and investment we would now have nothing more than fossil fuels (with a few dams here and there) generating our power.

There is nothing the government has ever managed or controlled that became highly successful, efficient or cost-effective.

Mercury, Gemini and Apollo were highly successful. So was the Manhattan Project, the Interstate highway system, the FCC and US air traffic control. Those things could definitely be done more cheaply by private industry, but it's hard to argue with the success of something like Apollo, which never would have happened had private industry been driving things.

[billvon]

What I would like to know is when did science become consensus?

For a few hundred years now. The fact that a few crackpots disagree that gravity operates by pulling masses together, for example, does not invalidate the law of gravity.

If you take a look around the planet, the US has seen the coldest winter in 38 years and 74% of the country continues well below normal temperatures thru June 6 this year.

2013 was the fourth warmest year in recorded history, even with that cold winter you mention.

I smell strong fudging in NOAA's "facts", released just in time to coincide with the announcement from the Whitehouse that we're taking action on Climate Change.

And I know that the oil and coal companies have hundreds of billions of dollars worth of incentives to manufacture doubt, fear and uncertainty over the science of climate change. Follow the money.

[russ]

For a few hundred years now. The fact that a few crackpots disagree that gravity operates by pulling masses together, for example, does not invalidate the law of gravity.

2013 was the fourth warmest year in recorded history, even with that cold winter you mention.

And I know that the oil and coal companies have hundreds of billions of dollars worth of incentives to manufacture doubt, fear and uncertainty over the science of climate change. Follow the money.

We can always trust good old Bill to come up with the loony nonsense he has learned to parrot.

Consensus means zip - nada - when you have a faulty basis all results are likely to be BS.

[ChrisOlson]

Consensus means zip - nada - when you have a faulty basis all results are likely to be BS.

That's the problem with science by consensus. Consensus doesn't lend it credibility or mean that it's accurate. Where I came from in the engineering world designs or models are arrived at thru peer reviews and extensive vetting of data and testing, THEN demonstration of viability. It seems to me that science by consensus skips most of those steps.

If bridges were designed and built by engineering consensus, instead of extensive failure mode testing, there would be a lot of collapsed bridges.

[russ]

Where I came from in the engineering world designs or models are arrived at thru peer reviews and extensive vetting of data and testing, THEN demonstration of viability. It seems to me that science by consensus skips most of those steps.

There are great challenges in scaling up chemical pilot plants from the lab scale to first small commercial to full scale commercial - to many unknowns and not understoods involved. Even with the best and brightest there is always much to learn.

Fortunately for the Holy Church of Climate Change they just work on belief and consensus - no need for that nasty real life stuff. Easier to just produce stupid movies and talk.

I read today that the Australian Shiraz wine is finished - climate change - by 2050 it will be too hot to grow the quality grapes in the present locations. I wonder if the real estate guy had anything to do with that consensus?

[ChrisOlson]

I read today that the Australian Shiraz wine is finished - climate change - by 2050 it will be too hot to grow the quality grapes in the present locations. I wonder if the real estate guy had anything to do with that consensus?

They built most of Southern California in a desert, robbing water from any local resource they could to do it. And now they're out of water, blaming it on droughts caused by climate change. Despite the fact that droughts lasting 200 years have been very common in the area for thousands of years. I wonder if the real estate guys had anything to do with that consensus?

Consensus is used to make excuses and cover for stupidity.

[russ]

Correlation is another good one - with enough effort most any event can be correlated with most anything.

[billvon]

We can always trust good old Bill to come up with the loony nonsense he has learned to parrot.

You should stick to topics you understand, Russ.

Consensus means zip - nada - when you have a faulty basis all results are likely to be BS.

So you don't believe in the consensus theory of gravity, then? After all, some people disagree.