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submitted 1 year ago by nulluser@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

The world has experienced its hottest day on record, according to meteorologists.

The average global temperature reached 17.01C (62.62F) on Monday, according to the US National Centres for Environmental Prediction.

The figure surpasses the previous record of 16.92C (62.46F) - set back in August 2016.

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[-] traveler01@lemmy.world 90 points 1 year ago

We thank people who disregarded nuclear energy. We could've sliced global emissions by a lot if were not for you, but burning coal is far safer.

[-] AllonzeeLV@vlemmy.net 44 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I thank the oligarchs and their willing consumption enthusiasts. This apocalypse is brought to you by unchecked, insatiably greedy capitalists and capitalism.

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[-] geissi@feddit.de 30 points 1 year ago

That's a false dichotomy. There are more power sources than coal and nuclear.
Also electricity generation is not the only source of emissions. Car traffic, cruise ships, aiplanes, all need to be reduced and can't just be replaced by nuclear power.

[-] b3nsn0w@pricefield.org 32 points 1 year ago

In theory, yes. In practice, nuclear plants that are shut off are almost always replaced with fossils, with the specific fossil fuel of choice often being coal.

Energy is not something where you can just pick one solution and run with it (at least, non-fossils, anyway). Nuclear is slow to ramp, so it usually takes care of baseline load. Renewables like wind and solar are situational, they mostly work throughout the day (yes, wind too, differential heating of earth's surface by the sun is what causes surface-level winds) and depend greatly on weather. Hydro is quite reliable but it's rarely available in the quantities needed. The cleanest grids on the planet use all of these, and throw in some fossils for load balancing, phasing them out with energy storage solutions as they become available.

You can't just shoot one of the pillars of this system of clean energy and then say you never tried to topple the system, just wanted to prop up the other pillars. Discussing shutting off nuclear plants without considering the alternative is pure lunacy, driven by fearmongering, and propped up by no small amounts of oil money for a reason.

Replacing nuclear with renewables is simply not the reality of the situation. Nuclear and renewables work together to replace fossils, and fill different roles. It's not one or the other, it's both and even together they're not yet enough.

So when you do consider the alternatives, moving from nuclear to the inevitable replacement, fossils, is still lunacy, just for other reasons: even if you care about nothing more than atmospheric radiation, coal puts more of it out per kWh generated, solely because of C-14 isotopes. Nuclear is shockingly clean, mostly due to its energy density, but also because it's not producing barrels of green goo, just small pills of spicy ceramics. And if your point is accidents, just how many oil spills have we had to endure? How many times was the frickin ocean set on fire? How many bloody and brutal wars were motivated by oil? Is that really what a safer energy source sounds like to you, just because there are two nuclear accidents the world knows about, and a thousand fossil accidents, of which the world lost count already?

And deflecting to other industries is also quite disingenuous. Especially if your scapegoat is transportation, since that's an industry that's increasingly getting electrified in an effort to make it cleaner at the same logistical capacity, and therefore will depend more and more on the very same electrical grid which you're trying to detract from.

[-] geissi@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago

nuclear plants that are shut off are almost always replaced with fossils, with the specific fossil fuel of choice often being coal.

Being from Germany, I have often read such arguments and at least here that is simply not true.
The decrease in nuclear power was accompanied by a decrease in fossil fuel.
Could that decrease have been larger if nuclear had been kept around longer? Possibly.
But if we are talking about building new power plants, the money is typically better invested in renewables. They're faster to build and produce cheaper energy.

[-] Azrael@fosstodon.org 3 points 1 year ago
[-] geissi@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

I'm not sure what the point is.
German Electricity is dirtier than France's therefor no other sources of electricity exist beyond coal and nuclear?
That would be a weird conclusion seeing as both countries also use other power sources.

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[-] b3nsn0w@pricefield.org 2 points 1 year ago

Germany, specifically, was one of the worst offenders in this category. They do renewables at maximum capacity (like everyone else) but there's still a massive gap to fill, and with issues of strategic dependence around hydrocarbons, the obvious answer to fill in the missing capacity was coal. Most of the time you get a mix of coal and natural gas, whichever is easier, but in Germany's case that mix was almost entirely on the side of coal.

And without abundant hydro power, or an energy storage solution that could store a full night's worth of energy even if the current deployment of renewables was able to generate that (which it's pretty far from), there aren't a lot more options. Germany's strategy to shut off its nuclear plants out of fearmongering has been a heinous crime against the environment.

When oil companies love your green party you know you fucked up.

[-] geissi@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

there’s still a massive gap to fill

in Germany’s case that mix was almost entirely on the side of coal

I'm assuming the 'gap' refers to the reduced nuclear capacity.
So you're saying that Germany replaced the power previously generated by nuclear power almost entirely with coal power?

Do you have ANY statistics to support that?

The only actual increase in coal energy I know of was an unplanned short time rise due to the war in Ukraine and the loss of gas imports.

Edit: Also the original argument was that coal and nuclear is a false dichotomy. Your own comment mentions a mix of coal and gas, mentions renewables, so clearly there are more than those two options, right?

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[-] Shikadi@wirebase.org 6 points 1 year ago

There is massive work being done to improve large scale energy storage (big batteries) so the renewables become less and less situational. Large scale energy storage is significantly less constrained than car batteries, because weight is a one time cost. Even gravity based batteries could become viable.

Also, in response to the previous commenter, electricity generation is by far and large the main source of emissions accounting for more than half, with more than a quarter being agriculture. Transportation is 14%, and given the future transition to electric vehicles, one might argue that half of that can be tack'd on to electricity generation's share. (Half because electric cars are more than twice as efficient at energy conversion than petrol cars. Toss in some power line losses and that's a reasonable estimate)

[-] b3nsn0w@pricefield.org 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

All of that is great, and I'm all for it. Can't wait for the first grids with no fossils whatsoever, once energy storage improves enough that it can take all the balancing load. When we reach that, it will mark the start of the era where nuclear is actually being replaced by renewables rather than fossils.

My point here is that switching off nuclear is premature for now. It's a very clean source of energy once you look at the per kWh numbers and nuclear waste management solutions are actually extremely safe. (The videos where they test the containers by smashing actual trains into them are kinda fun -- and those tests are done with liquid water, which is far more susceptible to leaking than solid ceramics.) Of course, if we reach a point where wind, solar, and hydro can fully replace fossils and start eating into nuclear's share then that's gonna be a very different conversation, and I'm fully with renewables in that situation, but we should always keep the alternatives in mind when we shut something off.

That's why we're not just shutting down coal plants altogether, because there's just nothing to replace them. Although an energy policy where you just flat out ban ~~renewables~~ fossils and tell the market that that's the supply, now go figure it out would certainly be interesting. Very expensive and terrible for the economy, but interesting nonetheless. (Definitely the based kind of chaos if you ask me.)

edit: okay, that was a weird word to accidentally replace, lol

[-] Nataratata@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

There are more problems with nuclear energy, though. The biggest being that we burden future generations for literally thousands of years with a growing amount of waste. I am not sure why this is always missing from the discussions of people who are pro nuclear power.

It is making the same mistake again as we did before: creating a problem for future generations to solve. And in this case the problem is dire and, because of the immensely long timespan, we have no way to reliably plan ahead for so long.

[-] sauerkraus@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Spent fuel can be reprocessed in a modern reactor. Even if that wasn’t possible the storage is extremely safe.

[-] b3nsn0w@pricefield.org 1 points 1 year ago

Because the actual amount of waste that has to be stored for that long is minimal and can be shoved kilometers down into the earth's crust with the same tech that's used to extract oil. Nuclear waste storage is a great headline topic but there have been a lot of innovations in the past ~50 years.

As for lower tiers of waste (as in, less dangerous, more numerous, mostly consisting of stuff like tools used to work on the power plants, which is what actually goes in the yellow barrels usually depicted with grey goo), several reactor projects existed that actively used that radioactive waste for even more energy generation, usually targeted extremely hard by anti-nuclear activists because it would take away their talking points. The science exists, the opposition is usually political and driven by fear tactics. But this is why we store those lower tiers of nuclear waste on the surface, not because it's the best place to put it but because it's where we can retrieve it once we find a use for it.

And again, consider the alternative. Fossils also fuck up the environment and it's not a good thing that they do it faster. The only way their effect would go away that fast is mass genocide of the ecoterrorist flavor, and exactly what future generations are we talking about in that case?

[-] pulsereaction@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 1 year ago

Just make nuclear powered cruise ships, easy.

/s

[-] traveler01@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

As far as I know there are some military ships powered by nuclear energy.

[-] mephiska@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Many Navy ships are nuclear powered. Aircraft carriers have multiple nuclear reactors, submarines are nuclear powered, and many cruisers are nuclear. There's also a lot of nuclear powered icebreakers.

[-] Feirdro@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

They made exactly one nuke-powered cruise ship. It never made money.

[-] traveler01@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You can technically power EVs with nuclear energy. But yeah airplanes and cruise ships are harder.

I'm all for getting rid of the cruise ships. Floating land-whale-buffet reef-destroying pollution devices is what they are. I've seen firsthand the effect they have on Caribbean islands they make their destination, and it's never good.

[-] jerkface@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

It's not a false dichotomy when it's a zero sum game. Our consumption is essentially inelastic, because we are all complete assholes, so all we have control over is what kind of production we build.

[-] geissi@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago

it’s a zero sum game. Our consumption is essentially inelastic, because we are all complete assholes

Even if that's the premise there are still other power sources -> more than two choices -> false dichtonomy.
But then, blaming "people who disregarded nuclear energy" - instead of people who don't want to change anything in the face of a historically unprecedented worldwide disaster - seems a bit short sighted.

[-] Widowmaker_Best_Girl@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago

Thank the good old Green Party of Germany! Restarting all those coal plants and shutting down nuclear reactors!

[-] Regelfall@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, I'll take a source for this one. Coal power generation has not increased in Germany whereas the Green party's policies in 1998 led to the first large scale deployment of solar energy in the world.

[-] SageWaterDragon@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

God, that's so depressing. I genuinely don't understand how we - any of us, in any country - are supposed to be okay with these political mechanisms filled with incompetent, out-of-touch, self-interested codgers. I'm not willing to take action, but when our entire world is being picked apart by the public sector and sold for parts by the private sector, what are we to do?

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[-] grue@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

We thank people who disregarded nuclear energy.

Do you really think governments actually gave a shit about some deluded hippies? Nah, they were just the scapegoats the politicians used to pretend they weren't in bed with the fossil fuel lobbyists.

[-] Anticorp@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Why would you disparage beautiful, clean, coal like that?

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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
1645 points (97.8% liked)

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