Canada battles more than 180 wildfires with hundreds dead in heat wave

European nuclear advocates really don’t have a satisfactory political response to Chernobyl and Fukushima. Truthfully, the best argument for nuclear power is an extremely unpleasant one: a bit of radioactive contamination (an immediate and visceral threat) is a small price to pay for the emissions offset (still a somewhat abstract and distant threat). The numbers check out but it is undeniably ghoulish.

But pretending people are motivated by sheer hippie-foolishness is just an ignorant ad hominem. It is not “completely nonsensical” to oppose nuclear power, even if the argument is badly flawed. Chernobyl was a traumatic event for many Europeans and they are correct to be suspicious of claims that a proposed nuclear technology is actually safe.

Being so condescending and dismissive doesn’t help anyone.

We have a weird situation in the UK where the green party oppose nuclear power and public transport development in England but are all for an independent Scotland reliant on north sea oil to stay solvent.

I expect very little from our political class but these ones are especially bizarre.

That's about the shape of it, yes.

They grew out of movements opposing nuclear power in the 60s, for various reasons (some of the weapons proliferation concerns were valid enough then, though a detailed understanding of fuel cycles and what does/doesn't generate usable weapons material seldom factors into the objections).

As the concerns shifted, the environmental groups seem to have simply added on various new concerns without re-evaluating old points. So you end up with a lot of the groups now being in a weird state where they're against nuclear, opposed to carbon emissions, and don't actually seem to care much about the actual environment beyond "We have to find a way to keep industrial civilization powered without carbon, and without nuclear." Blowing off mountain tops to extract materials to do this doesn't seem to be a huge concern anymore, and that certainly seems it should fall somewhere under the banner of "environmentalism" - but you mostly hear crickets these days.

If you're looking for something resembling a self consistent environmental group, you can read some of the stuff by the Deep Green Resistance people - their latest, Bright Green Lies, is a decent enough read on their position. That position, simply, is that industrial civilization is incompatible with the planet, and they do a decent job of arguing their position, which is that it doesn't matter how you power an industrial civilization, it does massive and irreparable damage to the planet as a result of the focus on energy and exponential growth. They look at the resource requirements to implement some of the forecast green futures ("We need 3M windmills? Ok, what does that look like in terms of steel, copper, rare earths, and how does that compare with the global production during the timeframe required to build them?") and come to some depressing conclusions. But even if you disagree with them, they show their work decently enough throughout and it's an interesting set of problems to think through.

But in general, you'll find an awful lot of "Climate change is a huge problem; someone else really ought to do something about it!" style thinking in the environmental groups, and I'm pretty comfortable saying that if the last decade hasn't done much useful on this front, continuing the same thing for years to come will accomplish roughly the same "almost nothing."

I'm also not at all sold with the "You can buy your way to green!" solutions that are peddled constantly by those who are interested in ensuring that, no matter what happens, the core of the modern consumerist economy won't be bothered. I'll gesture in the direction of the standard "worried about the climate" somewhat senior tech worker who has a million dollar home, a six figure car, absurdly expensive solar that offsets at least a bit of their power use on their roof, and who feels that they've consumed their way to green, without having really considered any of the resources that actually go into the vehicle, or lower energy/material alternatives to meet their needs. You can directly reduce emissions by simply using less, but this isn't really discussed these days.

I don't see a good path out, sadly. It's very possible we've accelerated growth in a direction that is simply a dead end canyon with no valid paths out that maintain a lot of what we've developed.

So the idea is that:

(1) Nuclear is cheap and makes renewable like solar and wind useless

(2) Solar and wind require fossile fuels

My take is that intermittent renewable are a scam and will never help us fighting climate change. More of them is actually bad.

You mean like this?

[1] https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/12/discovery-ra...

A free market will take care of shortages, the higher price of a particular commodity will mean higher profits and incentives the production of that good. So it's actually opposite. Look for videos from the communist block countries, people were waiting in line to purchase things like bread and toilet paper daily. Its not the Utopia you have in your mind. Take air travel, right now there are extra costs of tests, and quarantine hotels in Canada, can add thousands to a potential trip. Making it financially impossible for many people to afford it. The rich and connected are not nearly as affected, they can still afford it. Or the government will leave loop holes for them to get around the laws. Litteraly

Not OP, but I can address this. Leading by example does not compel anyone to act, it works the same way that nuclear treaties do not reduce nuclear arms. But we still have treaties and we have had no nuclear war in the last 70 years. Leading by example is necessary but not sufficient for carbon reduction. But it removes accusations of hypocrisy when talking about solutions, which makes discussions much more productive.

China does have climate policy and it’s and issue that they do not ignore. They plant trees at the interface of deserts to prevent their expansion, they produce 80% of the worlds solar panels. China is the world's leading country in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over double the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States.

China has a lot to lose from climate change. They will see reduced agricultural production from prairie land, in a country of over a billion people. A starving population will not allow the current regime to continue and the Chinese government has every reason to come to the table.

Naive is only considering the absolute amount of emissions within some arbitrarily drawn lines on a map.

The only metric that is fair, and countries like China will consider fair, is per-capita emissions. A Canadian can't justify causing three times as many CO2 emissions as a Chinese by virtue of being Canadian alone.

>> If you think China gives a crap about your example you’re horrendously naive.

Tell that to the legions of Chinese immigrants who have flocked to Canada in recent years. It happened during the Hong Kong handover too. The Chinese see Canada as the more tolerant alternative to the US. Canada's opinion on China matters because that opinion is shared by the many Chinese people living in Canada. What is naïve is to ignore the family and social connections between the countries.

China cares about its reputation. You can't push China around, but it is a bit sensitive to it.

If that's true, then it's doesn't take a genius to sugget a multi-pronged strategy.

1) Lead be example. If that fails:

2) Import-tax the f@ck out of them, unless they comply with regulations.

3) Goto (1).

Especially when you consider the economic impacts of "going first" it puts the CCP in a position where they're likely to gain the economic output you've banned, and then use that to gain even more of an upper hand against you

> but you are arguing a talking point from a decade ago -- China is definitely taking actions to diversify its power generation, convert to electrical inputs, use higher-efficiency parts like LED lighting, and other important steps.

Indeed. But the major argument against doing anything in the west is still based on the idea that it's futile so long as china doesn't do more.

> This re-hash amongst Western chatty people is well-intentioned perhaps, but the targets really are moving as this debate has not.

It’s not. It’s an excuse for doing nothing whilst blaming the Chinese.

The most trustworthy research I've read [0]/watched [1] is by Gwyneth Cravens.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Power-Save-World-Nuclear-Energy/dp/03...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RKtIs10R6Q (hosted by the Long Now Foundation)

Though a bit thin on info, this page from the DoE is interesting (links to some more in-depth stuff that I haven't read yet): https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-....

And?

Re: China, there's clearly not an effort to move away from coal if they're constructing new plants. The percentages may be less, but if the overarching thesis is to limit things that produce CO2 altogether, this statistic is irrelevant when contrasted with their actions.

Now address the reliability issue. Cost is only one factor.

The #1 contributing factor in this case is the western pine beetle, which exploded in range when winters stopped being cold enough to kill them off, and left stands of dead forests in its wake. Climate change is a direct culprit.

Prior to the 1930's, we didnt even have reliable means of tracking temperature. If that is the sole argument for "this is climate change" an easy rebuttal would be "this is a natural pattern".

For singular events like this, there simply isnt evidence either way... only whatever intuition your predisposition tells you makes sense.

If you had to bet, or put money like you were investing in the stock market, what would you put as your best-guess odds on these records being broken again in less than 70 years (ie, a shorter time than it took to break them)? What about 50 years? 30? Keep in mind that as this record is higher than the previous one, it should be harder to surpass if the climate isn't changing.

Personally, I bet 50-50 we'll surpass these records in the next 20 years.