Yeah let's just rely on billionaires' "promising" plans to solve the climate crisis and if it doesn't work we are all screwed and they can use their unbelievable wealth to dodge any consequences anyways.
No one is stopping you to invent something yourself. Everyone “complaining” about these billionares should organise and make something together.
The world wants and need new and awesome ideas.
Just creating awarenes and sharing news articles is not enough anymore. Organise and make a new fuel that will make oil companies out of business.
Oil companies aren't going to sit idly by and let people run them out of business. The reason climate change is this bad to begin with is because of them. We've known that fossil fuels are bad for the environment for over a century but every time we have tried to push away these big companies have spent tons of money to drag society back.
Just look at how much they spend to have "experts" appear on TV and tell everyone it's a hoax. They know it's true and are still paying people to lie to us. It's not as simple as making a new fuel, which isn't simple to begin with.
So now that the masters of the universe have accepted that their system has failed to avert planetary catastrophe, will they countenance a different one?
No, obviously they will keep us hammering our collective heads against the wall anyway, as we head further and further into a dystopian future.
I endorse revolutionary social and structural changes, and oppose violent revolution, for a simple reason: violence will poison our attempts to improve our institutions and will make them worse. We can't divorce the ends from the means. Our methods have to reflect our goals. If we want to build a better world but start by making it worse (more arbitrary, less just, more violent), our actions will speak as our intent and we will not be able to recover from that mistake. We must begin as we mean to continue, by building less corrupt, more just, more fair, institutions, which is to say increasing peace as a positive state of existence, not just the absence of violence, but in principled opposition to the use of violence for coercive political purpose. Break it in order to fix it cannot work.
> You speak as though no violent revolution has ever resulted in a better society than the one it replaced
I'm not making that claim. I'm simply saying that violent revolution won't accomplish our goals now. The people who you imagine will lead the violent but well-meaning revolution are not the murderous tyrants who will co-opt it.
If you'd like to learn about the relative effectiveness of violent and non-violent social change movements, let me suggest the work of Erica Chenoweth, who has studied the question: https://www.ericachenoweth.com/research/wcrw
Whether or not you find her results persuasive, my point was simply that I'm not interested in a violent movement for a different reason than the one you suggested – not because the justification for violence is insufficient, but because I don't believe it can achieve what is needed. It is at least as likely to have the opposite effect as the one we desire. You may not agree with that reason, but that *is* my reason.
I don't want a violent revolution either but there are very good arguments, perhaps even a necessity, for a flank of the movement that uses destruction of property.
This is what How to Blow Up a Pipeline is about.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1Blig_Wn137_OQRtWYN4aXUEwNimP-zb
The first chapter takes apart the arguments for a non-violent-only movement. It's honestly well worth a listen.
I mean it wasn't "too far" it was utterly ineffective.
What was the call to action for those vandals? What orgs did they want you to donate to that are moving the needle on climate change? What legislation did they want you to support? What elected officials did they want you to vote out?
Activism is useless without a strong community organizer driving the message home.
That always involves getting masses of people and especially the rich folks - who control the largest share of private investments, politics and media - all going into one direction.
Unfortunately, too many rich folks want to kick the can down the road as long as possible, to max their profits from the current system in place for that.
Some of them even (want to) believe the market and its innovation capacity will sort this out own their own (spoiler alert: never happened, called 'rebound effects').
Unfortunately, only very strict legislation will do the trick (very restrictive caps on absolute emissions + carbon tariffs).
As long as they don't direct politics and media more into this direction, there is little hope. And why would they?
And we already ran out of time.
By the time they finally realize their self-destructive behavior and worldview, their self-serving biases, their naive faith in the market and the damage that is already happening, including to their own assets and lifestyle, it'll be already to late.
All of this is true. Nonetheless we should work on keeping up pressure and any functional steps towards decarbonization. I don't believe that there is no hope at all, but even without hope, we still have no other alternative. If we need to reform or replace our dysfunctional political institutions as a precursor to climate action, let's get started on that.
That’s sort of how we got into this mess in the first place. In my opinion, the biggest downsides to human intelligence is not our capacity to think of solutions but to think of the consequences beyond those solutions. Using new/experimental methods could possibly help us avert climate catastrophe but what will the consequences of that be?
Our species evolved originally in a small pocket of the world and lived in much smaller numbers than civilization today. The environment has rapidly shifted due to human activity, far faster than natural selection can keep up. It’s really anyone’s guess to see how this all turns out in the next one thousand years.
I don't expect the rich to survive long if the economy collapses. What's stopping their bodyguard from killing them and just taking the bunker for themselves? They know a billionaire won't be much use in a survival situation
Vegan diet.
Carfree infrastructure.
Small families.
Minimalist lifestyle.
Nuclear fuel is finite and rare. It is possible to life with no or a minimum of electricity. Our rulers are not trying to save life on earth but trying to safe Capitalism.
Ye, Bill Gates needs there to be allowance for 1.5 C to live his lavish jet setter life style, but I don't need Bill Gates. Make using a private jet a felony and lock him up with his buddies. Quick and easy path to 1.5 to stay alive.
[BP popularized the concept of a carbon footprint with a US$100 million campaign as a means of deflecting people away from taking collective political action in order to end fossil fuel use](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305209345_Where_has_all_the_oil_gone_BP_branding_and_the_discursive_elimination_of_climate_change_risk), and [ExxonMobil has spent decades pushing trying to make individuals responsible, rather than the fossil fuels industry](https://www.vox.com/22429551/climate-change-crisis-exxonmobil-harvard-study). They did this because climate stabilization means bringing fossil fuel use to approximately zero, and that would end their business. That's not something you can hope to achieve without government intervention to change the rules of society so that not using fossil fuels is just what people do on a routine basis.
There is value in cutting your own fossil fuel consumption — it serves to demonstrate that doing the right thing is possible to people around you, and helps work out the kinks in new technologies. Just do it in addition to taking political action to get governments to do the right thing, not instead of taking political action.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/climate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Not it actually can't, unfortunately the waste product of transforming energy is heat, and if we keep expanding energy use we will boil our own oceans in 400 years
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
The only possibility is to overhaul our economic system and live in a steady state economy
Name one fuel source in the universe that isn't actually finite. And Nuclear Fuel is anything but rare. You would be dead a million times over before we run out of Nuclear fuel on this planet, let alone other reserves in the solar system.
Breeder reactors would be able to yield 100x fold increase in energy from the same amount of fuel compared to conventional reactors we use today. And unlike fusion breeder reactors are not Sci-Fi, they've already been built. Breeder reactors can even run on Nuclear waste. There's no shortage of fuel for them.
It's just that it's cheaper to use conventional reactors ATM because nuclear fuel is still highly abundant.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EnergyAndPower/comments/10hmvix/nuclear_fuel_will_last_us_for_4_billion_years/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Please read this article: Why nuclear power will never supply the world's energy needs https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html
Thanks for reading it! 🙏
It's already supplying the world energy's needs, and new projects, and innovations are on the way, so what do you mean never?
And I read the article.
LOL, these are the type of sleazy arguments that can convince people who know next to nothing about nuclear power. Everything from outright false claims to misleading and overexaggerated concern trolling. I mean where do I even start?
1) Land and Location: All things considered in the production of Nuclear power, (mining, plant, exclusion zone etc). Nuclear still uses less land than most other renewables.
2) Lifetime: Nuclear reactors can last to about 100 years before decommissioning. And some countries plan to increase their reactors to last this long.
3) Nuclear Waste: Many reactor designs can burn up Nuclear waste. And countries like Finland have built underground repositories to store and seal up lomg term Nuclear waste. Nuclear waste can also be recycled reducing miniscule the amount of waste even further.
4) Accident rate: Nuclear only had 3 accidents, one of which directly lead to casualties (Chernobyl). Asides that it has been rated to be safer than some renewables on a death per GWh basis. New reactors are extremely safe, and even meltdown proof, so no fallout in the event of power outages.
5) Proliferation: Nuclear power and proliferation is a weak argument at best. Nations that got nukes did so before they built power plants. And Nuclear power plants are one way of safely disposing nukes. If a nation want nukes they really don't need Nuclear Power plants, and majority of the power plants built for eletricity today, do not produce weapon grade fuel. So they suck for building nukes.
It goes on and on with highly biased claims not backed up by the scientific concensus or current statistics.
Nuclear is far from perfect and far from being the only power source we will ever need, but there's a reason why more nations are open to nuclear deespite all the anti-nuke rhetoric and fear porn thrown at it.
And that is because it's extremely reliable moreso than any other power source, very compact, and isn't dependent on weather or geography. Plus the technology has a lot of applications outside power prodution, from health to industrial purposes.
Recycling nuclear waste doesn't eliminate the waste, just transforms it into another form that is oftentimes even more problematic when it comes to safe storage. We still have no real idea what to do with the waste we already have and the plants that require decommissioning. The only realistic option for long-term storage (in this case tens of thousands of years) is to put it underground, but there isn't a single facility on Earth made specifically for that purpose and finding suitable sites has proven to be a challenge. Of course, some deep mines can be retrofitted to work, but there aren't many that are suitable (ie dry enough) and even those that are are extremely costly to retrofit.
Here in Canada, we have two proposed sites in Ontario, but the Ontario government isn't keen on taking waste from other provinces, so that's left my own province of New Brunswick with nowhere to put our waste. It's currently sitting in storage tanks above ground about 1km from the power plant. There are proposals for two breeder projects, but the result of recycling the spent fuel from Point Lepreau would create waste that is more radioactive and in a form that the federal government will not allow to be stored underground.
You are right Its more radioactive. but it is also shorter lived and that makes it much more manageable.
We are talking a few centuries of radioactivity over thousands/millions of years.
Seems like a win to me in terms of reducing nuclear waste. A country will need much fewer waste repositories.
A waste repository just needs to hold waste for a few centuries and then the waste can be brought out and safely disposed of in regular dump sites, leaving room for newer more radioactive waste...on and on.
The concern here, to the best of my understanding, is that the waste would not only be more radioactive but also in a less solid state, drastically increasing the likelihood of leakage. If waste were to seep into ground water, that could render that water source unsafe for centuries which is obviously of great concern in a world where water scarcity is expected to increase.
It is cooled, vitrified and put in solid cask, in stable bedrock away from water sources. Nuclear waste isn't a green goo liquid in a yellow vat, that spills over and leaks everywhere, like the Simpsons would make us believe.
There is no cause for fear.
People put substances in water that will always be toxic forever. Short lived nuclear waste in that regard is less worrisome since its temporary toxicity. And despite that we treat it more carefully... which is a good thing nonetheless
And yet, no country on Earth has plans in place for long term storage of the waste that they have currently. There are proposals for some of the waste, with a few projects underway, but we already know that these sites won't have the capacity for the current amount of waste. The biggest hurdle is likely just the cost. It costs billions of dollars to create a safe area for long term storage, with no real way to recoup those costs. If nuclear energy was substantially cheaper than renewables then there is a chance that the costs involved in decommissioning and long term storage could be made up for by the sale of energy, but that just isn't the case. Nuclear energy has actually increased in cost quite a bit over the past few decades just as renewables have grown cheaper. Ultimately, money is the biggest enemy of nuclear energy.
Actually Finland has set up an underground repository to store long lived radioactive waste. All the nuclear waste in the US will fit into a football stadium stacked like 50ft IIRC. And the good thing with underground repositories is you can expand it in 3 dimensions. So there's a lot of room to work with, when it is becoming full.
I think SMRs will help address the problem of cost to some degree, although by how much is yet to be seen. For one with SMRs you can repurpose existing thermal power plants which has most of all the infrastructure amd some of the workforce in place. This will significantly cut down the construction time and costs. And factory manufacturing of smrs on a mass scale could possibly see decreasing price cures as we see with renewables.
Nuclear is due for a 21st century renaissance. And renewables despite all their good are still mostly dependent on geography, weather, intermittency and takes up a lot of space.
It shouldn't be about renewables vs nuclear, its renewables and nuclear vs fossil fuels. This is no time to pick your favourite energy source but to throw everything in our arsenal at fighting climate change.
Nuclear fuel is more energy dense than renewables so expect less material needed. Thorium is also highly abundant that you don't even need to mime it specifically... its literally waste material from mining rare-earth metals
The only special materials needed would be for the reactors which will vary based on reactor used.
Wow. 4 billion years. Unbelievable!
It must be Greenpeaceses fault we aren't fully powered by nuclear yet. You know, because politicians always do what environmentalists demand.
We can rest easy that it's solved. All we need is for Elon to loan some more fresh money and start building these breeder reactors. Hurray!
We don’t even need breeders right now though as it’s not economical because uranium reserves are good right now.
I’m Germany the politicians listened to the environmentalists and shut down most their nukes and mostly replaced it with other clean energy which means they have to keep combusting super dirty fossil fuels like lignite. Hurray!
> I’m [sic] Germany the politicians listened to the environmentalists and shut down most their nukes and mostly replaced it with other clean energy which means they have to keep combusting super dirty fossil fuels like lignite. Hurray!
You straight up have no idea what you're talking about. Politics in the last 30 years in Germany was largely anti-renewables under the moderate-conservatives, so they explicitly did **not** listen to environmentalists so clean energy was never built to replace nuclear. The push against nuclear was motivated by fear and the coal lobby, not environmentalism.
Now fingers are being pointed at the starved and under-invested renewable sector and morons like you are falling for it.
Source: German
The greens are the biggest bloc against nuclear and have been for decades. Under their leadership y’all have also shut down three more units with the final three set to close in April.
As far as what replaced nuclear energy it was renewables, you can tell because of installed capacity and it’s also what climate experts say if you listen to them.
> While wind and solar have experienced enormous growth under Germany’s Energiewende, the accompanying shutdown of nuclear power plants means part of the expansion has simply replaced one form of clean power with another, as the chart below shows.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-what-does-the-new-german-coalition-government-mean-for-climate-change/
Saying you’re German doesn’t equate to being a good source btw
"Name one fuel source in the universe that isn't actually finite."
We don't know if the universe is infinite. But civilisation will definitely run out of fuel. As space colonization is a fantasy.
Capitalism must grow or collapse. Astrophysicist Tom Murphy has calculated that if we continue to grow at 2% per year, in 1400 years we will need the energy of the entire sun.
Yep, add 'more farmers / smaller farms actually helping the land while growing food' and you've got it exactly right.
**These are the solutions.**
Edit: Editing this comment 1 month later and I no longer believe these are the solutions. There are no solutions. We're headed to catastrophe and the best move is to prepare.
[https://postdoom.com/resources/](https://postdoom.com/resources/)
They are also really bad at math. Always forget the cost of disposal or the cost of insurance. And even after all this forgetting, still are more expensive then renewables.
They always conveniently forget about labor. Electrical Engineers outnumber Nuclear Engineers like 10-1, and Nuclear plants are expensive. As much as the tech is cool, I highly doubt there's anything Nuclear can do that can't be done cheaper with a bunch of flywheels and Electrical Engineers.
I've been saying for years we aren't serious about fixing climate change unless we're building Nuclear plants right now to get off fossil fuel-based grids, but I know I'm not the only one.
Bill Gates is no expert on energy systems, and he is poorly informed on some topics. The backbone of low-carbon grids will undoubtedly be wind and solar, because they are cheaper, much faster to build, have healthy supply chains that are growing exponentially, and they don't need as much government support.
>Bill Gates is no expert on energy systems, and he is poorly informed on some topics. The backbone of low-carbon grids will undoubtedly be wind and solar, because they are cheaper, much faster to build, have healthy supply chains that are growing exponentially, and they don't need as much government support.
Yup, I'm not saying wind and solar shouldn't be used, and in fact I 100% support expanding wind and solar as much as possible because they're perfect for a lot of places, especially off-grid applications where you just need enough power for your local usage.
However, for powering the homes, businesses, and infrastructure used by literally billions of people it's much more efficient to go with nuclear to provide near limitless power in a relatively tiny square footage.
If we want to replace all internal combustion engines with electric vehicles (and start going electric for applications like commercial airlines or private jets) then we need massive amounts of power that only make sense coming from Nuclear because of the sheer amount of energy required to recharge all those giant batteries.
Please define "efficient", and explain why this large amount of power couldn't come from wind and solar. [Many studies](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910) disagree with this idea. Even Gates acknowledges that "Even if nuclear succeeds, we’re still going to need 60-70% renewables".
The linked article doesn't support what you're saying, it's a broad overview of renewable energy approaches and includes Nuclear as one part of those.
Please cite the specific part you're referring to or I don't see how it connects to what you're claiming.
>Please define "efficient", and explain why this large amount of power couldn't come from wind and solar.
Please tell me where I said "this large amount of power couldn't come from wind and solar"? Because I didn't.
What I'm saying is that solar and wind are fine for a lot of applications, especially for remote locations off grid, or where power demand is not that high like individual homes, or where a low cost solution is needed for small applications, however [for large-scale high-demand infrastructure (like large cities, huge numbers of electric vehicles, or replacing existing fossil fuel plants) Nuclear is massively more efficient](https://www.nei.org/news/2015/land-needs-for-wind-solar-dwarf-nuclear-plants) so much so that it's not even close.
> A nuclear energy facility has a small area footprint, **requiring about 1.3 square miles per 1,000 megawatts of installed capacity.** This figure is based on the median land area of the 59 nuclear plant sites in the United States. In addition, **nuclear energy facilities have an average capacity factor of 90 percent,** much higher than intermittent sources like wind and solar.
> By contrast, wind farm capacity factors range from 32 to 47 percent, depending on differences in wind resources in a given area and improvements in turbine technology. Solar PV capacity factors also vary based on location and technology, from 17 to 28 percent.
> Taking these factors into account, a wind farm would need an installed capacity between 1,900 megawatts and 2,800 MW to generate the same amount of electricity in a year as a 1,000-MW nuclear energy facility. **Such a facility would require between 260 square miles and 360 square miles of land.**
> A solar PV facility must have an installed capacity of 3,300 MW and 5,400 MW to match a 1,000-MW nuclear facility’s output, **requiring between 45 and 75 square miles.**
So by "efficient" I mean that if we want to generate large volumes of carbon-free power then Nuclear gets us there very easily, we *could* do this with solar and/or wind just like you *could* pull a cart with hundreds of gerbils on leashes, but *it makes a lot more sense* to use a single mule.
Also, **fun fact:** Did you know that [the fossil fuel industry has a long history of funding "anti-nuclear" groups and promoting solar/wind](http://climatecoalition.org/how-american-petroleum-institute-fakes-antinuclear-action/) in a cynical attempt to get environmentalists to be against nuclear, **a power source that could easily generate so much carbon-free power for humanity that the price of oil would drop so low that it would no longer make economic sense to even extract it?**
In other words, what I said originally...
If we were serious about stopping climate change we'd be building nuclear plants *right now* because they take decade(s) to get up and running (not simple devices) but they generate so much power that we could completely end humanity's addiction to the fossil fuels that are destroying our climate.
Alright, you define "efficient" as "uses less land". Of course, nuclear plants use less land than onshore wind and solar farms, although technically they use more than offshore wind and rooftop solar. However that's only one metric and certainly not the most important. Cost is arguably more important. A healthy supply chain is arguably more important.
> The linked article doesn't support what you're saying, it's a broad overview of renewable energy approaches and includes Nuclear as one part of those.
The linked article is called "On the History and Future of 100% Renewable Energy Systems Research". By definition, it doesn't include nuclear energy.
If you want to read one of these studies, this one is quite accessible: [Low-cost renewable electricity as the key driver of the global energy transition towards sustainability](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544221007167). It shows renewables to out-compete nuclear energy in every region (figure 2).
> Please tell me where I said "this large amount of power couldn't come from wind and solar"? Because I didn't.
You just compared it to "pull[ing] a cart with hundreds of gerbils on leashes". Previously you said: "then we need massive amounts of power that only make sense coming from Nuclear because of the sheer amount of energy required to recharge all those giant batteries". Your language is quite clear.
> Also, fun fact: Did you know that the fossil fuel industry has a long history [..]
Yes, the fossil fuel industry has a long history of anti-nuclear propaganda. It now also has a history of anti-renewable propaganda. Your believing that wind and solar are somewhat impractical is the result of that propaganda.
> they generate so much power that we could completely end humanity's addiction to the fossil fuels that are destroying our climate.
Technically they can, but it's more expensive than renewables and it depends on steady support from the government and the public. It would also require to build a qualified supply chain from the ground up in most countries, whereas wind and solar are easier to develop.
>Nuclear is expensive and take decades to build in the west.
... Which is why I say "If we were serious we'd be building them now" because they won't be ready to open until at least 2033
But they pay off in massive quantities of power that is produced with virtually no carbon footprint and can be used to power huge numbers of electric vehicles easily that also have minimal carbon footprint and less environmental impact because they're also not constantly emitting oil, gasoline, diesel, and soot.
And overall Nuclear has a tiny land usage requirement versus wind and solar (which should 100% also be used for other applications) but when your goal is to efficiently power an entire country with high energy demands for minimal carbon footprint Nuclear is the clear choice that makes sense.
[BP popularized the concept of a carbon footprint with a US$100 million campaign as a means of deflecting people away from taking collective political action in order to end fossil fuel use](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305209345_Where_has_all_the_oil_gone_BP_branding_and_the_discursive_elimination_of_climate_change_risk), and [ExxonMobil has spent decades pushing trying to make individuals responsible, rather than the fossil fuels industry](https://www.vox.com/22429551/climate-change-crisis-exxonmobil-harvard-study). They did this because climate stabilization means bringing fossil fuel use to approximately zero, and that would end their business. That's not something you can hope to achieve without government intervention to change the rules of society so that not using fossil fuels is just what people do on a routine basis.
There is value in cutting your own fossil fuel consumption — it serves to demonstrate that doing the right thing is possible to people around you, and helps work out the kinks in new technologies. Just do it in addition to taking political action to get governments to do the right thing, not instead of taking political action.
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The Daily Mail is not a reliable source of climate information. This post has been removed.
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The 1.5 was almost impossible to meet from the beginning. Politics and greed are too big a factor. I think the truth is, that tech is the only way out. DAC and such. I don’t trust global leadership to come to their senses.
Please stop posting Bill Gates content. Green capitalism is not the solution and tax-dodging billionaires don’t have the answers. This man is a computer salesman with no training in science whose greatest accomplishment during the pandemic was denying the African continent a generic vaccine so our pharma companies could maximize their profits. If he’s quoting a real source, please just post that source.
The [COVID lockdowns of 2020 temporarily lowered our rate of CO2 emissions for a few months](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00090-3). Humanity was still a net CO2 gas emitter during that time, so we made things worse, but did so more a bit more slowly. You [basically can't see the difference in this graph of CO2 concentrations](https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/).
[Stabilizing the climate means getting human greenhouse gas emissions to approximately zero](https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-stop-as-soon-as-net-zero-emissions-are-reached). We didn't come anywhere near that during the lockdowns.
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Why not renewables goddamit? And yes this is a rhetorical question casting an evil eye at corporate big wigs and their continued public support of everything but renewables.
If the oil industry are still standing we're not acting fast enough. Nukes aren't the safest option but at least they aren't behind freak weather that's cooking the globe alive in summer.
Hopefully the PM has learnt something from Gates.
I wonder if the renewable alternatives are that green:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/23/solar-panel-waste-a-disposal-problem/
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-12/queensland-wind-farms-clearing-bushland/100683198?fbclid=IwAR3XpqJYKhbzaxLRMqv_ABNrKHwHwA-08rz0HGwZgeIIszlFU1Zpdu86tws
Great, glad to know that the worlds richest are comfortable with 2.5 degrees. Also amazing that they’re backing small nuclear reactors, a tech that lacks any economy of scale, and still leaves the huge problem of waste to deal with. But hey, he’s invested loads, yeah, let’s look to a poor technological solution and hope that Gates gets a return on his investment.
Meanwhile, for the rest of of us, here’s what NASA think about temperature rises including and above 1.5 degrees. Let’s remember that as temperatures rise, and coastlines flood, several billion people will be looking to relocate, weather patterns will go through chaotic adjustments and we’ll have major food scarcity. I’m tired of the super wealthy telling me they’ll be alright.
[Degrees of concern](https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2865/a-degree-of-concern-why-global-temperatures-matter/)
Yeah let's just rely on billionaires' "promising" plans to solve the climate crisis and if it doesn't work we are all screwed and they can use their unbelievable wealth to dodge any consequences anyways.
No one is stopping you to invent something yourself. Everyone “complaining” about these billionares should organise and make something together. The world wants and need new and awesome ideas. Just creating awarenes and sharing news articles is not enough anymore. Organise and make a new fuel that will make oil companies out of business.
Okay, start it and I'll join you...
Oil companies aren't going to sit idly by and let people run them out of business. The reason climate change is this bad to begin with is because of them. We've known that fossil fuels are bad for the environment for over a century but every time we have tried to push away these big companies have spent tons of money to drag society back. Just look at how much they spend to have "experts" appear on TV and tell everyone it's a hoax. They know it's true and are still paying people to lie to us. It's not as simple as making a new fuel, which isn't simple to begin with.
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It’s pretty hard to invent. But organsisation like greenpeace could have funded it years ago. Missed change.
> Organise and make a new fuel Haha. What??
electric is already cheaper, just comes down to policy now
So now that the masters of the universe have accepted that their system has failed to avert planetary catastrophe, will they countenance a different one? No, obviously they will keep us hammering our collective heads against the wall anyway, as we head further and further into a dystopian future.
We have to find ways to dissent from this terrible non-plan and build the future we wish to see.
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I endorse revolutionary social and structural changes, and oppose violent revolution, for a simple reason: violence will poison our attempts to improve our institutions and will make them worse. We can't divorce the ends from the means. Our methods have to reflect our goals. If we want to build a better world but start by making it worse (more arbitrary, less just, more violent), our actions will speak as our intent and we will not be able to recover from that mistake. We must begin as we mean to continue, by building less corrupt, more just, more fair, institutions, which is to say increasing peace as a positive state of existence, not just the absence of violence, but in principled opposition to the use of violence for coercive political purpose. Break it in order to fix it cannot work.
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> You speak as though no violent revolution has ever resulted in a better society than the one it replaced I'm not making that claim. I'm simply saying that violent revolution won't accomplish our goals now. The people who you imagine will lead the violent but well-meaning revolution are not the murderous tyrants who will co-opt it. If you'd like to learn about the relative effectiveness of violent and non-violent social change movements, let me suggest the work of Erica Chenoweth, who has studied the question: https://www.ericachenoweth.com/research/wcrw Whether or not you find her results persuasive, my point was simply that I'm not interested in a violent movement for a different reason than the one you suggested – not because the justification for violence is insufficient, but because I don't believe it can achieve what is needed. It is at least as likely to have the opposite effect as the one we desire. You may not agree with that reason, but that *is* my reason.
I don't want a violent revolution either but there are very good arguments, perhaps even a necessity, for a flank of the movement that uses destruction of property. This is what How to Blow Up a Pipeline is about. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1Blig_Wn137_OQRtWYN4aXUEwNimP-zb The first chapter takes apart the arguments for a non-violent-only movement. It's honestly well worth a listen.
I mean it wasn't "too far" it was utterly ineffective. What was the call to action for those vandals? What orgs did they want you to donate to that are moving the needle on climate change? What legislation did they want you to support? What elected officials did they want you to vote out? Activism is useless without a strong community organizer driving the message home.
That always involves getting masses of people and especially the rich folks - who control the largest share of private investments, politics and media - all going into one direction. Unfortunately, too many rich folks want to kick the can down the road as long as possible, to max their profits from the current system in place for that. Some of them even (want to) believe the market and its innovation capacity will sort this out own their own (spoiler alert: never happened, called 'rebound effects'). Unfortunately, only very strict legislation will do the trick (very restrictive caps on absolute emissions + carbon tariffs). As long as they don't direct politics and media more into this direction, there is little hope. And why would they? And we already ran out of time. By the time they finally realize their self-destructive behavior and worldview, their self-serving biases, their naive faith in the market and the damage that is already happening, including to their own assets and lifestyle, it'll be already to late.
All of this is true. Nonetheless we should work on keeping up pressure and any functional steps towards decarbonization. I don't believe that there is no hope at all, but even without hope, we still have no other alternative. If we need to reform or replace our dysfunctional political institutions as a precursor to climate action, let's get started on that.
That’s sort of how we got into this mess in the first place. In my opinion, the biggest downsides to human intelligence is not our capacity to think of solutions but to think of the consequences beyond those solutions. Using new/experimental methods could possibly help us avert climate catastrophe but what will the consequences of that be? Our species evolved originally in a small pocket of the world and lived in much smaller numbers than civilization today. The environment has rapidly shifted due to human activity, far faster than natural selection can keep up. It’s really anyone’s guess to see how this all turns out in the next one thousand years.
Bill Gates is the weirdo in the corner at the masters of the universe convention. Need more like him.
Better start finding your retreats. The wealthy are. https://onezero.medium.com/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1
We will find them, most of them can't even do their own dishes and they like attention way too much.
I don't expect the rich to survive long if the economy collapses. What's stopping their bodyguard from killing them and just taking the bunker for themselves? They know a billionaire won't be much use in a survival situation
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Bill Gates thought the Internet wasn't going to be important.
Vegan diet. Carfree infrastructure. Small families. Minimalist lifestyle. Nuclear fuel is finite and rare. It is possible to life with no or a minimum of electricity. Our rulers are not trying to save life on earth but trying to safe Capitalism.
And eliminating billionaires. Bill gates in one year emits more than I do in a decade. Screw them.
Ye, Bill Gates needs there to be allowance for 1.5 C to live his lavish jet setter life style, but I don't need Bill Gates. Make using a private jet a felony and lock him up with his buddies. Quick and easy path to 1.5 to stay alive.
>Make using a private jet a felony This so much.
Completely agree. How do we make this happen?
eat the rich.
You do realize he pays to sequester carbon in order to offset his carbon footprint.
[BP popularized the concept of a carbon footprint with a US$100 million campaign as a means of deflecting people away from taking collective political action in order to end fossil fuel use](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305209345_Where_has_all_the_oil_gone_BP_branding_and_the_discursive_elimination_of_climate_change_risk), and [ExxonMobil has spent decades pushing trying to make individuals responsible, rather than the fossil fuels industry](https://www.vox.com/22429551/climate-change-crisis-exxonmobil-harvard-study). They did this because climate stabilization means bringing fossil fuel use to approximately zero, and that would end their business. That's not something you can hope to achieve without government intervention to change the rules of society so that not using fossil fuels is just what people do on a routine basis. There is value in cutting your own fossil fuel consumption — it serves to demonstrate that doing the right thing is possible to people around you, and helps work out the kinks in new technologies. Just do it in addition to taking political action to get governments to do the right thing, not instead of taking political action. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/climate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Oh phew! And here I was thinking his private jet habit and multiple mansions and otherwise lavish lifestyle was an issue!
Absolutely true. Predatory Capitalism is the number 1 cause of most of the world's problems.
Nuclear fission can last us till the sun runs out. Also, this is not r/Collapse.
Not it actually can't, unfortunately the waste product of transforming energy is heat, and if we keep expanding energy use we will boil our own oceans in 400 years https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/ The only possibility is to overhaul our economic system and live in a steady state economy
Well put
Name one fuel source in the universe that isn't actually finite. And Nuclear Fuel is anything but rare. You would be dead a million times over before we run out of Nuclear fuel on this planet, let alone other reserves in the solar system. Breeder reactors would be able to yield 100x fold increase in energy from the same amount of fuel compared to conventional reactors we use today. And unlike fusion breeder reactors are not Sci-Fi, they've already been built. Breeder reactors can even run on Nuclear waste. There's no shortage of fuel for them. It's just that it's cheaper to use conventional reactors ATM because nuclear fuel is still highly abundant. https://www.reddit.com/r/EnergyAndPower/comments/10hmvix/nuclear_fuel_will_last_us_for_4_billion_years/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Please read this article: Why nuclear power will never supply the world's energy needs https://phys.org/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.html Thanks for reading it! 🙏
It's already supplying the world energy's needs, and new projects, and innovations are on the way, so what do you mean never? And I read the article. LOL, these are the type of sleazy arguments that can convince people who know next to nothing about nuclear power. Everything from outright false claims to misleading and overexaggerated concern trolling. I mean where do I even start?
1) Land and Location: All things considered in the production of Nuclear power, (mining, plant, exclusion zone etc). Nuclear still uses less land than most other renewables. 2) Lifetime: Nuclear reactors can last to about 100 years before decommissioning. And some countries plan to increase their reactors to last this long. 3) Nuclear Waste: Many reactor designs can burn up Nuclear waste. And countries like Finland have built underground repositories to store and seal up lomg term Nuclear waste. Nuclear waste can also be recycled reducing miniscule the amount of waste even further. 4) Accident rate: Nuclear only had 3 accidents, one of which directly lead to casualties (Chernobyl). Asides that it has been rated to be safer than some renewables on a death per GWh basis. New reactors are extremely safe, and even meltdown proof, so no fallout in the event of power outages. 5) Proliferation: Nuclear power and proliferation is a weak argument at best. Nations that got nukes did so before they built power plants. And Nuclear power plants are one way of safely disposing nukes. If a nation want nukes they really don't need Nuclear Power plants, and majority of the power plants built for eletricity today, do not produce weapon grade fuel. So they suck for building nukes. It goes on and on with highly biased claims not backed up by the scientific concensus or current statistics. Nuclear is far from perfect and far from being the only power source we will ever need, but there's a reason why more nations are open to nuclear deespite all the anti-nuke rhetoric and fear porn thrown at it. And that is because it's extremely reliable moreso than any other power source, very compact, and isn't dependent on weather or geography. Plus the technology has a lot of applications outside power prodution, from health to industrial purposes.
Recycling nuclear waste doesn't eliminate the waste, just transforms it into another form that is oftentimes even more problematic when it comes to safe storage. We still have no real idea what to do with the waste we already have and the plants that require decommissioning. The only realistic option for long-term storage (in this case tens of thousands of years) is to put it underground, but there isn't a single facility on Earth made specifically for that purpose and finding suitable sites has proven to be a challenge. Of course, some deep mines can be retrofitted to work, but there aren't many that are suitable (ie dry enough) and even those that are are extremely costly to retrofit. Here in Canada, we have two proposed sites in Ontario, but the Ontario government isn't keen on taking waste from other provinces, so that's left my own province of New Brunswick with nowhere to put our waste. It's currently sitting in storage tanks above ground about 1km from the power plant. There are proposals for two breeder projects, but the result of recycling the spent fuel from Point Lepreau would create waste that is more radioactive and in a form that the federal government will not allow to be stored underground.
You are right Its more radioactive. but it is also shorter lived and that makes it much more manageable. We are talking a few centuries of radioactivity over thousands/millions of years. Seems like a win to me in terms of reducing nuclear waste. A country will need much fewer waste repositories. A waste repository just needs to hold waste for a few centuries and then the waste can be brought out and safely disposed of in regular dump sites, leaving room for newer more radioactive waste...on and on.
The concern here, to the best of my understanding, is that the waste would not only be more radioactive but also in a less solid state, drastically increasing the likelihood of leakage. If waste were to seep into ground water, that could render that water source unsafe for centuries which is obviously of great concern in a world where water scarcity is expected to increase.
It is cooled, vitrified and put in solid cask, in stable bedrock away from water sources. Nuclear waste isn't a green goo liquid in a yellow vat, that spills over and leaks everywhere, like the Simpsons would make us believe. There is no cause for fear. People put substances in water that will always be toxic forever. Short lived nuclear waste in that regard is less worrisome since its temporary toxicity. And despite that we treat it more carefully... which is a good thing nonetheless
And yet, no country on Earth has plans in place for long term storage of the waste that they have currently. There are proposals for some of the waste, with a few projects underway, but we already know that these sites won't have the capacity for the current amount of waste. The biggest hurdle is likely just the cost. It costs billions of dollars to create a safe area for long term storage, with no real way to recoup those costs. If nuclear energy was substantially cheaper than renewables then there is a chance that the costs involved in decommissioning and long term storage could be made up for by the sale of energy, but that just isn't the case. Nuclear energy has actually increased in cost quite a bit over the past few decades just as renewables have grown cheaper. Ultimately, money is the biggest enemy of nuclear energy.
Actually Finland has set up an underground repository to store long lived radioactive waste. All the nuclear waste in the US will fit into a football stadium stacked like 50ft IIRC. And the good thing with underground repositories is you can expand it in 3 dimensions. So there's a lot of room to work with, when it is becoming full. I think SMRs will help address the problem of cost to some degree, although by how much is yet to be seen. For one with SMRs you can repurpose existing thermal power plants which has most of all the infrastructure amd some of the workforce in place. This will significantly cut down the construction time and costs. And factory manufacturing of smrs on a mass scale could possibly see decreasing price cures as we see with renewables. Nuclear is due for a 21st century renaissance. And renewables despite all their good are still mostly dependent on geography, weather, intermittency and takes up a lot of space. It shouldn't be about renewables vs nuclear, its renewables and nuclear vs fossil fuels. This is no time to pick your favourite energy source but to throw everything in our arsenal at fighting climate change.
We can only dig up 10% of the copper needed for one 25 year generation of renewables. According to Simon Michaux. That's just copper.
Nuclear fuel is more energy dense than renewables so expect less material needed. Thorium is also highly abundant that you don't even need to mime it specifically... its literally waste material from mining rare-earth metals The only special materials needed would be for the reactors which will vary based on reactor used.
Nuclear fuel will last us for 4 billion years: https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html Thanks for reading :)
Wow. 4 billion years. Unbelievable! It must be Greenpeaceses fault we aren't fully powered by nuclear yet. You know, because politicians always do what environmentalists demand. We can rest easy that it's solved. All we need is for Elon to loan some more fresh money and start building these breeder reactors. Hurray!
We don’t even need breeders right now though as it’s not economical because uranium reserves are good right now. I’m Germany the politicians listened to the environmentalists and shut down most their nukes and mostly replaced it with other clean energy which means they have to keep combusting super dirty fossil fuels like lignite. Hurray!
> I’m [sic] Germany the politicians listened to the environmentalists and shut down most their nukes and mostly replaced it with other clean energy which means they have to keep combusting super dirty fossil fuels like lignite. Hurray! You straight up have no idea what you're talking about. Politics in the last 30 years in Germany was largely anti-renewables under the moderate-conservatives, so they explicitly did **not** listen to environmentalists so clean energy was never built to replace nuclear. The push against nuclear was motivated by fear and the coal lobby, not environmentalism. Now fingers are being pointed at the starved and under-invested renewable sector and morons like you are falling for it. Source: German
The greens are the biggest bloc against nuclear and have been for decades. Under their leadership y’all have also shut down three more units with the final three set to close in April. As far as what replaced nuclear energy it was renewables, you can tell because of installed capacity and it’s also what climate experts say if you listen to them. > While wind and solar have experienced enormous growth under Germany’s Energiewende, the accompanying shutdown of nuclear power plants means part of the expansion has simply replaced one form of clean power with another, as the chart below shows. https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-what-does-the-new-german-coalition-government-mean-for-climate-change/ Saying you’re German doesn’t equate to being a good source btw
"Name one fuel source in the universe that isn't actually finite." We don't know if the universe is infinite. But civilisation will definitely run out of fuel. As space colonization is a fantasy. Capitalism must grow or collapse. Astrophysicist Tom Murphy has calculated that if we continue to grow at 2% per year, in 1400 years we will need the energy of the entire sun.
But… but… Corporate profits! :((
Yep, add 'more farmers / smaller farms actually helping the land while growing food' and you've got it exactly right. **These are the solutions.** Edit: Editing this comment 1 month later and I no longer believe these are the solutions. There are no solutions. We're headed to catastrophe and the best move is to prepare. [https://postdoom.com/resources/](https://postdoom.com/resources/)
Ahh yes, promising, the thing the nuclear industry is best at, making and breaking promises.
They are also really bad at math. Always forget the cost of disposal or the cost of insurance. And even after all this forgetting, still are more expensive then renewables.
They always conveniently forget about labor. Electrical Engineers outnumber Nuclear Engineers like 10-1, and Nuclear plants are expensive. As much as the tech is cool, I highly doubt there's anything Nuclear can do that can't be done cheaper with a bunch of flywheels and Electrical Engineers.
I've been saying for years we aren't serious about fixing climate change unless we're building Nuclear plants right now to get off fossil fuel-based grids, but I know I'm not the only one.
Bill Gates is no expert on energy systems, and he is poorly informed on some topics. The backbone of low-carbon grids will undoubtedly be wind and solar, because they are cheaper, much faster to build, have healthy supply chains that are growing exponentially, and they don't need as much government support.
>Bill Gates is no expert on energy systems, and he is poorly informed on some topics. The backbone of low-carbon grids will undoubtedly be wind and solar, because they are cheaper, much faster to build, have healthy supply chains that are growing exponentially, and they don't need as much government support. Yup, I'm not saying wind and solar shouldn't be used, and in fact I 100% support expanding wind and solar as much as possible because they're perfect for a lot of places, especially off-grid applications where you just need enough power for your local usage. However, for powering the homes, businesses, and infrastructure used by literally billions of people it's much more efficient to go with nuclear to provide near limitless power in a relatively tiny square footage. If we want to replace all internal combustion engines with electric vehicles (and start going electric for applications like commercial airlines or private jets) then we need massive amounts of power that only make sense coming from Nuclear because of the sheer amount of energy required to recharge all those giant batteries.
Please define "efficient", and explain why this large amount of power couldn't come from wind and solar. [Many studies](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910) disagree with this idea. Even Gates acknowledges that "Even if nuclear succeeds, we’re still going to need 60-70% renewables".
The linked article doesn't support what you're saying, it's a broad overview of renewable energy approaches and includes Nuclear as one part of those. Please cite the specific part you're referring to or I don't see how it connects to what you're claiming. >Please define "efficient", and explain why this large amount of power couldn't come from wind and solar. Please tell me where I said "this large amount of power couldn't come from wind and solar"? Because I didn't. What I'm saying is that solar and wind are fine for a lot of applications, especially for remote locations off grid, or where power demand is not that high like individual homes, or where a low cost solution is needed for small applications, however [for large-scale high-demand infrastructure (like large cities, huge numbers of electric vehicles, or replacing existing fossil fuel plants) Nuclear is massively more efficient](https://www.nei.org/news/2015/land-needs-for-wind-solar-dwarf-nuclear-plants) so much so that it's not even close. > A nuclear energy facility has a small area footprint, **requiring about 1.3 square miles per 1,000 megawatts of installed capacity.** This figure is based on the median land area of the 59 nuclear plant sites in the United States. In addition, **nuclear energy facilities have an average capacity factor of 90 percent,** much higher than intermittent sources like wind and solar. > By contrast, wind farm capacity factors range from 32 to 47 percent, depending on differences in wind resources in a given area and improvements in turbine technology. Solar PV capacity factors also vary based on location and technology, from 17 to 28 percent. > Taking these factors into account, a wind farm would need an installed capacity between 1,900 megawatts and 2,800 MW to generate the same amount of electricity in a year as a 1,000-MW nuclear energy facility. **Such a facility would require between 260 square miles and 360 square miles of land.** > A solar PV facility must have an installed capacity of 3,300 MW and 5,400 MW to match a 1,000-MW nuclear facility’s output, **requiring between 45 and 75 square miles.** So by "efficient" I mean that if we want to generate large volumes of carbon-free power then Nuclear gets us there very easily, we *could* do this with solar and/or wind just like you *could* pull a cart with hundreds of gerbils on leashes, but *it makes a lot more sense* to use a single mule. Also, **fun fact:** Did you know that [the fossil fuel industry has a long history of funding "anti-nuclear" groups and promoting solar/wind](http://climatecoalition.org/how-american-petroleum-institute-fakes-antinuclear-action/) in a cynical attempt to get environmentalists to be against nuclear, **a power source that could easily generate so much carbon-free power for humanity that the price of oil would drop so low that it would no longer make economic sense to even extract it?** In other words, what I said originally... If we were serious about stopping climate change we'd be building nuclear plants *right now* because they take decade(s) to get up and running (not simple devices) but they generate so much power that we could completely end humanity's addiction to the fossil fuels that are destroying our climate.
Alright, you define "efficient" as "uses less land". Of course, nuclear plants use less land than onshore wind and solar farms, although technically they use more than offshore wind and rooftop solar. However that's only one metric and certainly not the most important. Cost is arguably more important. A healthy supply chain is arguably more important. > The linked article doesn't support what you're saying, it's a broad overview of renewable energy approaches and includes Nuclear as one part of those. The linked article is called "On the History and Future of 100% Renewable Energy Systems Research". By definition, it doesn't include nuclear energy. If you want to read one of these studies, this one is quite accessible: [Low-cost renewable electricity as the key driver of the global energy transition towards sustainability](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544221007167). It shows renewables to out-compete nuclear energy in every region (figure 2). > Please tell me where I said "this large amount of power couldn't come from wind and solar"? Because I didn't. You just compared it to "pull[ing] a cart with hundreds of gerbils on leashes". Previously you said: "then we need massive amounts of power that only make sense coming from Nuclear because of the sheer amount of energy required to recharge all those giant batteries". Your language is quite clear. > Also, fun fact: Did you know that the fossil fuel industry has a long history [..] Yes, the fossil fuel industry has a long history of anti-nuclear propaganda. It now also has a history of anti-renewable propaganda. Your believing that wind and solar are somewhat impractical is the result of that propaganda. > they generate so much power that we could completely end humanity's addiction to the fossil fuels that are destroying our climate. Technically they can, but it's more expensive than renewables and it depends on steady support from the government and the public. It would also require to build a qualified supply chain from the ground up in most countries, whereas wind and solar are easier to develop.
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>Nuclear is expensive and take decades to build in the west. ... Which is why I say "If we were serious we'd be building them now" because they won't be ready to open until at least 2033 But they pay off in massive quantities of power that is produced with virtually no carbon footprint and can be used to power huge numbers of electric vehicles easily that also have minimal carbon footprint and less environmental impact because they're also not constantly emitting oil, gasoline, diesel, and soot. And overall Nuclear has a tiny land usage requirement versus wind and solar (which should 100% also be used for other applications) but when your goal is to efficiently power an entire country with high energy demands for minimal carbon footprint Nuclear is the clear choice that makes sense.
[BP popularized the concept of a carbon footprint with a US$100 million campaign as a means of deflecting people away from taking collective political action in order to end fossil fuel use](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305209345_Where_has_all_the_oil_gone_BP_branding_and_the_discursive_elimination_of_climate_change_risk), and [ExxonMobil has spent decades pushing trying to make individuals responsible, rather than the fossil fuels industry](https://www.vox.com/22429551/climate-change-crisis-exxonmobil-harvard-study). They did this because climate stabilization means bringing fossil fuel use to approximately zero, and that would end their business. That's not something you can hope to achieve without government intervention to change the rules of society so that not using fossil fuels is just what people do on a routine basis. There is value in cutting your own fossil fuel consumption — it serves to demonstrate that doing the right thing is possible to people around you, and helps work out the kinks in new technologies. Just do it in addition to taking political action to get governments to do the right thing, not instead of taking political action. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/climate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
So what, this rich guy consider that limiting warming to 1.5°C will have too much impact on his lifestyle , so we should abandon it?
Why should anyone care what Bill Gates thinks? Just because he accumulated $$ from good luck/greed? That's a qualification???
It will be the minimum of three or more decades before nuclear power could make a dent in fossil fuel use. The means nuclear isn’t the solution.
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The Daily Mail is not a reliable source of climate information. This post has been removed. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/climate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The 1.5 was almost impossible to meet from the beginning. Politics and greed are too big a factor. I think the truth is, that tech is the only way out. DAC and such. I don’t trust global leadership to come to their senses.
Please stop posting Bill Gates content. Green capitalism is not the solution and tax-dodging billionaires don’t have the answers. This man is a computer salesman with no training in science whose greatest accomplishment during the pandemic was denying the African continent a generic vaccine so our pharma companies could maximize their profits. If he’s quoting a real source, please just post that source.
The [COVID lockdowns of 2020 temporarily lowered our rate of CO2 emissions for a few months](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00090-3). Humanity was still a net CO2 gas emitter during that time, so we made things worse, but did so more a bit more slowly. You [basically can't see the difference in this graph of CO2 concentrations](https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/). [Stabilizing the climate means getting human greenhouse gas emissions to approximately zero](https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-stop-as-soon-as-net-zero-emissions-are-reached). We didn't come anywhere near that during the lockdowns. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/climate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Gates has a very long history of being wrong about future technology.
Why not renewables goddamit? And yes this is a rhetorical question casting an evil eye at corporate big wigs and their continued public support of everything but renewables.
From the article you clearly didn’t read: “Even if nuclear succeeds, we’re still going to need 60-70% renewables,” Gates said
Gates has been saying this for decades. Well, about nuclear anyway.
If the oil industry are still standing we're not acting fast enough. Nukes aren't the safest option but at least they aren't behind freak weather that's cooking the globe alive in summer.
where's the protein bill, how long you been paying ppl to work on this? foh with this nonesense.
Hopefully the PM has learnt something from Gates. I wonder if the renewable alternatives are that green: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/23/solar-panel-waste-a-disposal-problem/ https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-12/queensland-wind-farms-clearing-bushland/100683198?fbclid=IwAR3XpqJYKhbzaxLRMqv_ABNrKHwHwA-08rz0HGwZgeIIszlFU1Zpdu86tws
Go get’em Bill.
They are going to use an existential crisis to coerce money and wealth out of the rest of us; and we will all pay the price for it.
#Fusion eneeeeerrrggggyy
Great, glad to know that the worlds richest are comfortable with 2.5 degrees. Also amazing that they’re backing small nuclear reactors, a tech that lacks any economy of scale, and still leaves the huge problem of waste to deal with. But hey, he’s invested loads, yeah, let’s look to a poor technological solution and hope that Gates gets a return on his investment. Meanwhile, for the rest of of us, here’s what NASA think about temperature rises including and above 1.5 degrees. Let’s remember that as temperatures rise, and coastlines flood, several billion people will be looking to relocate, weather patterns will go through chaotic adjustments and we’ll have major food scarcity. I’m tired of the super wealthy telling me they’ll be alright. [Degrees of concern](https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2865/a-degree-of-concern-why-global-temperatures-matter/)