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A2017U1

If only we could get such swift global action on greenhouse emissions. Both problems are essentially the same yet the difference in action couldn't be wider.

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One of the significant differences is that in the 1980s when the issue of ozone depletion was being confronted, politics was not as polarized. One of the great successes of those arguing for action was recruiting Conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a trained chemist, as an advocate

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/energy/2016/10/will-ma...

There is another major difference:

Fossil fuels contribute a lot of energy to the needs of people and organizations. Solar and wind will take time to take over the infrastructure. CFCs on the other hand could be much more easily replaced.

That's the key part. What CPC case teaches us, is that if we could find a good alternative to Fossil fuels, we could likely eliminate their use.

We have a good alternative. France produces ~80% of its electricity with nuclear power.

Transportation makes up 25% of the carbon emissions worldwide.

Cows make up like 8%.

The US military is the world's largest polluter. Most of their most serious crime against the environment is detonation of nuclear warheads.

Here are citations to my numbers (since I seem to be downvoted):

* Transportation: 28%

https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-...

* Livestock is 14.5% of all GHG emissions, cows are 65% of that:

http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/197623/icode/

* Stories on how the US Military is the world' biggest polluters:

https://www.newsweek.com/2014/07/25/us-department-defence-on...

https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2009/08/15/the-worlds-w...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/america-is-the-worst...

Regarding specifically my nuclear detonation comment:

https://www.ecowatch.com/military-largest-polluter-240876060...

In addition, the U.S., which has conducted more nuclear weapons tests than all other nations combined, is also responsible for the massive amount of radiation that continues to contaminate many islands in the Pacific Ocean. The Marshall Islands, where the U.S. dropped more than sixty nuclear weapons between 1946 and 1958, are a particularly notable example. Inhabitants of the Marshall Islands and nearby Guam continue to experience an exceedingly high rate of cancer.

The American Southwest was also the site of numerous nuclear weapons tests that contaminated large swaths of land. Navajo Indian reservations have been polluted by long-abandoned uranium mines where nuclear material was obtained by U.S. military contractors.

TLDR: there's more to greenhouse gas then pollution from power plants. And nuclear power isn't problem free.

Slight correction:

https://theconversation.com/yes-eating-meat-affects-the-envi...

> All of agriculture accounted for a total of 9 percent. All of animal agriculture contributes less than half of this amount, representing 3.9 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

> To its credit, the FAO immediately owned up to its error. Unfortunately, the agency’s initial claim that livestock was responsible for the lion’s share of world greenhouse gas emissions had already received wide coverage.

Thanks, I didn't know of that error. I wish they'd fix the original report!

Cows just confuse the issue though since they’re mostly producing methane which although a ghg doesn’t stick around too long.

Methane is far more potent as a greenhouse gas

And the best case scenario is burning it somehow in which case it just has a CO2 byproduct

Weirdly, burning methane gives you both energy and decreases its carbon footprint by ~30x (the mole ratio is 1:1).

Methane decaying just means the atmospheric concentration doesn't increase as fast. But if you emit more than the previous year then levels will go up. And indeed, levels are currently 3 times what they were from pre-industrial levels [0].

The EPA says its Global Warming Potential over 100 years is 28-36 times CO2 [1]. 100 years sounds like a very relevant time period to me.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#Patterns_o...

[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/understanding-global-warmin...

I hadn't heard that methane didn't last too long in the atmosphere before. What happens to it?

The UV part of sunlight breaks it down into CO2 and water. And before you get too worried about the CO2, that's from "current" carbon in the environment (the grass that the cows ate) not fossilized carbon. So it's not a net addition of carbon to the atmosphere.

The carbon is coming from the methane, though. I don't have a degree in chemistry, but the carbon from the grass doesn't end up in the atmosphere naturally, does it?

The issue is that "green" parties in Europe (and maybe the US) do not want to hear about nuclear either. Germany even had to shut their nuclear power plants down and go back to coal (!!) which is considered as major victory for the environment by the green parties.

It seems impossible to find green political leaders willing to improve our CO2 emissions while accepting that we can't just rely on renewable energy only right now.

Is it a good alternative if it is much more expensive?

France’s energy prices are lower than Germany, Belgium, Italy and Spain.

https://1-stromvergleich.com/electricity-prices-europe/

Italy (where nuclear power was banned by referendum many years ago) is not able to meet its internal demand, and need to source energy from neighboring countries (including France), not really surprising.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Italy

Germany and Belgium are phasing out their own reactors:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out

Does that include government subsidies?

What I'm getting at, is: will governments be supporting nuclear, even if it's considered safe enough? As far as I know the Dutch government has cleared the way for a new nuclear power plant, but no company is willing to build it because they can't recoup the investments. If governments have to subsidise it more than they subsidise wind and solar energy, will they do it?

I don't know if I would call that a good alternative. How many places on the Earth can you no longer go due to radiation? Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island and the list will go on. Also it seams very short sided in terms of planning for out of control cosmic events such as asteroids or coronal mass ejections which could wipe out our grid, leading to nuclear leaks worldwide. If we were to get something like the Carrington Event of 1859 [1] we would be much worse off for centuries if we rely on nuclear energy rather then finding a safer fuel source.

[1] https://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-what-would-happen-if-sol...

You can go to Three Mile Island just fine as long as you don't go inside the Unit 2 containment vessel itself. The meltdown was fully contained inside said containment vessel. Unit 2 has since had its core removed from the site entirely and has had its electrical generator moved to another reactor (in North Carolina), so it's not like people haven't been going in it either. Unit 1 (the other reactor right next to the one that had a meltdown) has remained a fully operational power station and is used as such today; people go there all the time.

Chernobyl and Fukushima I will grant (especially Chernobyl!) but Three Mile Island has a no-go zone that's far smaller than most people think. And it's only sort of no-go at that.

> which could wipe out our grid, leading to nuclear leaks worldwide

Sorry, but citation needed for the causal mechanism via which the grid going down would lead to "nuclear leaks".

I admit a little bit of that is pessimism from what happened at Fukushima from when the plant lost power to run the cooling pumps. from Scientific American

> Pushing water past the core means pumps that are generally run by electricity. What happens when a reactor gets disconnected from the grid? There are emergency diesel generators. You also have a battery system to keep instruments running, but that can also provide power to safety systems [which prevent a meltdown by cooling the reactor core]. It's all meant to provide defense in depth. First you rely on the grid. If the grid is no longer available, you use diesel generators. If there is an issue with the diesels, you have a battery backup. And the batteries usually last long enough for you to get the diesels going. [1]

All I'm saying is that we have a very short term understanding of cosmic events and extreme space weather events [2] and maybe a good percentage of nuclear power plants could withstain these types of events, but I don't see it as a viable long term option.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-cool-a-nuc...

[2]https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...

Right, at Fukushima it wasn't just loss of power that was the problem, it was the loss of all the backup power sources too, _combined_ with a design that required power to operate the cooling system.

I agree that this is something we should be keeping in mind as we build new reactors. And people have in fact kept it in mind. Modern reactor designs use passive cooling systems that don't need power to operate properly.

The single best thing we could do for nuclear safety, including from extreme space weather effects, is replace decades-old plants with modern ones. Unfortunately, people tend to react to that with "we shouldn't build any new nuclear plants, even if we're replacing old and less safe ones".

Just to put this in perspective, the first ever commercial nuclear plant was opened in 1956. Fukushima construction began in 1967, finished in 1971, 40 years before the meltdown. We've learned a good bit about safety in reactor design in the 50+ years that have passed since Fukushima was designed...

Better a hundred Chernobyls than what will happen to the earth if we continue using fossil fuels at the current rate.

Death toll from Chernobyl is presently at 31 with an estimated number of 4000 premature deaths.

So, yeah.

15,000 died from the tsunami that caused Fukushima, radiation exposure killed 1 volunteer cleanup worker.

TMI has already been addressed in sibling comments but I just wanted to point out that both Fukushima and Chernobyl were outdated reactor designs with active cooling. A modern reactor has much safer failure mode - but the hysteria about nuclear means that they don't get built and we keep these dangerous old designs running instead.

There are currently zero reactors worldwide which are using up-to-date designs i.e. Gen IV, as it is still being designed with the first reactor expected to be built by ~2030. All reactors worldwide are Gen II (designed in the 50s), Gen II+ (updated Gen II with a end-of-life extension to 60 years instead of Gen II's 40) or Gen III, which have relatively minor differences according to the World Nuclear Association[0]. The last Gen I reactor finally went offline in 2015.

> Due to the prolonged period of stagnation in the construction of new reactors and the continued (but declining) popularity of Generation II/II+ designs in new construction, relatively few third generation reactors have been built. Generation IV designs are still in development as of 2017, and are not expected to start entering commercial operation until 2020–2030.[1]

[0]: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fue...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor#Reactor_types

> wipe out our grid, leading to nuclear leaks worldwide.

I don’t understand how nuclear leaks could be a result of grid failure.

Also, I read recently that CME could cause DC charge to occur on very long power lines, but that modern systems can handle this. There was a HN thread about this couple days ago, can anyone find it?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18379734

Dr. Margaret Thatcher

EDIT I must apologise to my parent, and to HN in general. Her thesis was undergraduate:

> ... four-year Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree, specialising in X-ray crystallography under the supervision of Dorothy Hodgkin. Her dissertation was on the structure of the antibiotic gramicidin. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher

She may have received honorary doctorates and she was a research chemist, but not a PhD.

Surely the Prime Minister title wins out?

Actually, that’s an interesting question: since “Dr” usually replaces “Mr” for a man, would a male president with a doctorate be “Dr President”?

Probably not. President would take precedent. See Chancellor Merkel for a good example (she has a PhD).

I was under the impression that German titles stacked up rather than overriding one another, like "Herr Professor Doktor". Is that wrong?

Generally that's correct, albeit pretty much only used in writing. There are, however, political titles for which, to my knowledge, that does not apply. Minister, Chancellor and President (of the BRD) should all supersede a PhD title.

Bundeskanzlerin Dr. Angela Merkel is the official formal title.

See the header here: https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/service/bulletin/rede...

For University presidents, in the USA, they usually have both. Though I'm not sure that they always use both at the same time.

Couldn't see from her wikipedia page where she gained her doctorate?

I find it funny that you would try to correct such a small insignificant detail

Tackling ozone depletion is a lot easier: we stop using some chemicals. Not a big deal.

Tacking climate change is asking everyone to stop using energy (as we know it) which is fundamentally existential.

They're not in the same category of proportional impact.

It's not quite that severe, but as you note the substitutes are a lot more painful than they were with CFCs. Plus the problem is much much larger. We aren't getting out of this with just a little sunburn.

One big difference is that you could prove the ozone layers thining and so it was easy to get political backup, plus the solution was fairly simple. The climate debate is mostly political and there is no way to prove the effects only speculate. If just people would let scientists do science and not mix in political agendas we would have been much better of and money could have been spent for things we can actually do rather than being wasted on lofty political projects.

If the environmentalists had concentrated their efforts into educating people about CO2 as a pollutant that causes the acidification of the oceans, I think increases in CO2 emissions could have been slowed and reversed a long time ago. The chemistry is very straight forward and the damage to the oceans very easy to show and explain.

Unfortunately, instead of trying to find replacements for the energy produced by fossil fuel(nuclear was just sitting their, ready), it seems to me the most vocal environmentalists were basically anti-technology and anti-human and hoped the the huge fear of global warming would be enough to get a huge range of policies they had been pushing of decades passed. No such luck and the other side has now politicize global warming to their benefit.

No way to prove the effects? That's a controversial statement, considering the 99%+ scientific consensus that we are headed towards a global catastrophe.

1) There isnt a 97% consensus on what you think 2) Science does not work by consensus but falisifaction 3) climate debate is not scientific but political in its core.

Are you being facetious and saying you can’t prove climate change in the same way you can’t prove gravity exists? Or are you for real? Scientific proof has a different general meaning than what the general population calls proof, but the claim that more CO2 in the atmosphere leads to a warmer planet, and we can quite accurately project that correlation, is not remotely controversial. After a life of following this closely both in and out of academics I’m curious what makes you think differently to everyone that has looked into this closely, including unlikely people like oil companies and Jim Breidenstein. Read Merchants of Doubt if you’re interested in how it got so politicized.

I am saying that the climate debate isn't primarily scientific but poltical as most people (including many of the "climate scientists") are not actually engaging in a scientific debate but in a political one.

This is a very important distinction because most people debate it as if they are debating science.

The 97% is not agreeing that the world is going under in 20 years if we don't do anything. In those 97% there are plenty of so called "climate deniers" who are agreeing that the climate is changing, heating and humans have some effect.

However how much and how catastrophic it's going to be isn't even close to being a consensus or for that matter scientific. The actual science is a small part. The larger part is speculated not demonstrated.

That's fair. The question of what to do about it is purely political - let's take our best estimates of what the effects of climate change are going to be, our best estimates of the cost and ways to reduce the bad effects, and come up with an approach.

I think you're understating the amount of real science that is available for the effects of continued GHG emissions on our climate. Agreed that the effect it will ultimately have on our civilization is truly speculation because that depends on our response over the next 50-100 years.

Your comment made me think of people who say we need to move to Mars because of climate change... there's no shortage of dumb arguments on both sides of the debate. But to be clear, based on what I know, I would still advocate an aggressive move towards decarbonization.

It's not that there isn't real science available it's just that it's not very conclusive besides some obvious trends.

So I am not so sure the current focus on reducing co2 emissions is as rational and useful as many seem to think.

Furthermore, the real question no one asks themselves is what is the goal of this and what is the price (not just economically) you are ready to pay.

I don't see any way to stop co2 right now without putting a ban on residential and industrial heating and electricity and transportation and you don't do that without putting the economy to a halt. You would literally have to eradicate CO2 emission for those categories to get close to anything substantial.

https://www.wri.org/resources/charts-graphs/us-greenhouse-ga...

Cause if this problem is really as dire as some claim then removing the current Paris agreement isn't even close to going to cut it. Especially since more and more people get into the middle class and they want part of the spoils too.

Furthermore it's not just that we would financially become much much poorer the result would be a giant fluctuating food supply and most poor countries are not going to agree that it's ok we can have what we have and they are not allowed to do anything.

So if you are really serious are you ready to hinder them if necessary by force to grow their own economies and secure their own people?

Cause that's the kind of actions you should be ready to take if you are truly worried about CO2 emissions and want to do something about them right now.

I am not too worried about CO2 emissions in fact for some things it's going to be good (14% increase so far in vegetation). That doesn't mean that I am not aware that rising sea levels might have an effect on local areas but I would rather approach that like the Dutch than involve the whole world.

I am also completely agreeing we should decarbonize but the problem right now is that the environmental organizations and the current political climate works against that because of it's opposition to nuclear which is the only real alternative energy to fossil fuels we have which is both reliable, scalable, cheap (at scale), safe and provides 0% CO2 emissions.

They would rather continue to primarily support wind and solar even though it means increased use of coal and oil because of the unreliable nature of wind and solar.

In the current political climate whatever is currently done is doing more harm than good both to the environment, the climate and to the poorest nations. Wind and solar are both linear solutions to exponential problems.

If you truly want to reduce carbon emissions then dedicate all your time to nuclear, fusion, fission, thorium figure out how we can contain plasma in a magnetic field in big enough scale.

I am not too worried although I am aware of the dangers, but if you really are worried you should probably drop everything you have visit the nearest energy lab and offer your help cause there are no feasible political solutions just waiting to be implemented least of all the paris agreement.

P.S. I upvoted you, not because I agree with you 100% but because you aren't just jumping to conclusions. Good style more people could learn from.

They are qualitatively the same, but the public and scientific case for ozone depletion is a lot stronger. If I had to guess there is like 5-sigma significance that (1) CFCs damage the ozone layer (2) the ozone layer is worth saving and (3) regulating CFCs will help.

Even if you fully accept that regulating CO2 is a good idea, the beneficial effects of that action will barely be noticeable for decades.

There’s a scale difference.

CFC was a small part of the economy.

As a first approximation, burning fossil fuel is the economy.

They are not really the same: eliminate the accidental release of niche refrigerant substances for which substitutes are available, versus the mass spewage of CO2 and hydrocarbons.

Note that refrigerants can be substituted without changing the refrigeration hardware at all. No infrastructure changes are required. There is no "tech stack disruption" at all.

I don't totally agree. Modern fridges are worse than old ones in terms of noise and I think that has something to do with replacing CFCs with less effective coolants.

I know this because I tried several of newest quietest models before discovering ammonia absorption cooling.

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