Sunday, September 28, 2008

Global Warming Update:

"Overnight the Global Carbon Project, a network of scientists tracking emissions of carbon dioxide, released its latest update, and it shows that emissions are accelerating and are close to the highest scenarios considered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year."

Questions: Why has the temperature increased lately? IF C)2 leads to global warming, shouldn't there be an push for accelerated building of nuclear power plants all over the world?

link

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't think more nuclear power plants are the answer. Right now the nuclear industry produces about 42 percent of the volume of low-level radioactive waste shipped to disposal sites, according to the Electric Power Research Institute. And we are running out of space.

Common Sense Joe said...

There is Yucca mountain. And they can make more space some place else if they want to.

Anonymous said...

Why not make more use of wind and solar energy instead and not have ANY waste.

Common Sense Joe said...

I am in favor of solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, natural gas, coal, oil, etc. However, without storage capacity, solar and wind cannot delivery power on demand. Without massive investment in power lines, solar and wind can not be delivered to the big cities.

But if the problem is C02, then only nuclear can delivery energy without C02 in the time horizon stated by the global warming alarmist.

Anonymous said...

Human activities, such as the burning of oil, coal and gas, and deforestation, have increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
And that "massive investment" you mentioned would be a lot more worthwhile then the "massive investment" we are having to make on the bail-out.

Anonymous said...

Actually Wind and Solar are now cheaper to build and produce per KwH than nuclear, nuclear makes no economic sense today, except to build a few here and there to stabalize the grid, the electric grid that needs to be built costs nothing compared to the bailout or wars. Clean coal does not yet exist and will be much more expensive than solar when it does, there is no work being done to make oil clean. The real question is can we hold back the methane from escaping the melting ice shelfs and warming oceans, if not it is game over.

Common Sense Joe said...

Even if solar is cheaper per KWH, its footprint, i.e the space required to produce the energy, is so much greater than nuclear. Also, solar doesn't work as well in cloudy and rainy environments. Solar cells may be able to power a house, but not a factory, and especially not a smelting plant. There is a need for reliable, consistent power. Solar and wind cannot provide that now As I have said before, I believe we need to upgrade our infrastructure. But if you want to eliminate C02 within the time frame stated by global warming alarmists, you need to build numerous nuclear plants.now. And if you want to move to electric cars you will need even greater generating capacity.

Anonymous said...

We have a huge empty desert in the United States that could power the entire USA if filled with Solar panels and solar steam engines, we have one working today and it works great. We should have done this 20 years ago but unfortunately Republicans killed every effort to do so

Common Sense Joe said...

The environmentalists would block that. It would endanger wildlife. Just as they have blocked wind turbines for killing birds. Then they people would object to the large power lines, fearing the lines would give them cancer.