Climate Change Deniers/Skeptics or Believer?

[rocketpig]

drkohler said:

rocketpig said:

mid term: Boost the nuclear capabilities of the US while phasing out ancient coal plants. Alongside this, a higher percentage of power from renewable resources should be created every year.

goal: phasing out nuclear plants and relying almost entirely on renewable resources. This may not happen for forty or fifty years but without an intelligent (and reasonable) plan put in place NOW, the only change we'll see will be forced, brutal, and very ugly for the population.

Psst, I let you in in a cool secret: Nuclear resources are even more limited than oil... so building nuclear power plants is an immensely dumb idea (and let's not even talk about nuclear waste). The myth that nuclear power is clean and "freely available" is just that: a myth. (And, as a sidenote, as every engineer will tell you: fission energy is the future! Always was, and always will be..)

The key point in the discussion is what you wrote: "This may not happen for...". As long as every politicians' only goal is to get reelected every few years, we won't see a solution to the energy problem. We get these silly excuses "it is too expensive...", "it takes too much time..", "it will cost jobs..", "blablabla..".

I know that Petrobras is one of the few big oil companies that are actually "on the good side" (I was in a project with Petrobras as a customer for few years).

But back to the topic of climate change: It is very real and can be EASILY observed in Switzerland if you know what to look for (I'm not talking about glaciers although thy are a clear indication).

That's just it; there are limiting factors to EVERY technology available today. While you advocate solar power, you completely ignore the incredible maintenance costs and massive energy loss from having to import it from a good solar climate (say, Nevada) to where ever it needs to go (pretty much everywhere else).

On the other hand, nuclear power plants can be built reasonably close to almost any major population center and we have the technology to do it RIGHT NOW for a reasonable price. The French have proved it and they're even using some pretty outdated nuclear plants compared to what can be manufactured today, especially if money is invested into recycling nuclear waste.

I'm all for going 100% renewable. The thing is that right now, it's not cost effective and the initial expense would be beyond what any voting population will pay so no politician is going to actively pursue the technology in abundance.