[ExI] A Nobel laureate and climate change

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 10:35:27AM -0700, john clark wrote:
> On Sun, 9/18/11, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> "Nukes are dead, Jim. Not that they're even renewable."
> Well yeah, nuclear fission is not renewable in the same sense that solar power is not renewable; the sun isn't making any new hydrogen so eventually it will run out and turn into a dim white dwarf. 

The sun is good for gigayears, peak fissible is less than half human life away.
(No, I'm not interested in discussing that with you). 

> "Don't look right now, but renewable is eathing both nuke and coal's lunch.
> Natural gas' next."
> And that's why wind farms and solar panel companies don't need huge subsidies. 

And this is why fission and fossil don't need subsidies. Oh, wait. They do.

> Oh wait they do. Tax benefits are the only reason wind farms exist and Solyndra 
> just went under taking over half a billion dollars of taxpayers money with it; 
> they found out that selling solar panels for half of what it cost to make them 
> was not a good business model. Maybe we'll need more than moonbeams and 

Snap, buzz, crackle, pop. I'm sorry, did you say anything?

> lollipops to power the world economy after all. Maybe its time to get serious. 

This list was never really about the future, right? We've turned into fucking
reactionary dinosaurs. Time to die.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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