https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49773869?fbclid=IwAR2df7fB2tf7DRzTRSiyDEPff1o1-sQZ60tpkP2IjpAPFZuqg2ZN-kLMKko
Climate change is accelerating.
* GLOBAL WARMING
Here’s Your Non-Hysterical Guide To The Science Required To Address Climate Change
Excerpt
We need research and spending in three areas: constant power sources, moderation of demand through improved energy efficiency, and approaches to mitigating the effects and cost of climate change.
One viable alternative energy option would be constructing many dams to provide hydropower. Government regulations, however, would require studies of environmental impacts, battling activists, and obtaining permits—all likely to be expensive and time-consuming. A greater focus on geothermal may be another option, as would finding ways to make nuclear fission disaster-proof and how to improve the handling of nuclear waste.
Since the U.S. Navy already powers many of its vessels using fission plants, we have proof that small-scale nuclear power is possible if properly commercialized. Yet we hear far too little of any of these possibilities. They’re simply not as headline-grabbing as apocalyptic predictions. Case in point is teenage eco-celebrity Greta Thunberg, who seems to think that school boycotts somehow produce energy or reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Although it is likely a few decades away, the ultimate solution likely lies in figuring out how to power our entire civilization with nuclear fusion. Although promising, nuclear fusion is highly energy-intensive to achieve. Unlike the chain reaction of fission, every individual fusion of atoms must be forced by supercharging the environment.
https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/07/guide-scientifically-address-climate-change/
Oh, look! A link for the quote. Thank you, Ward.
None of your quoted piece addresses the first bolded clause, so I will come back to that.
It is entertaining to see something claiming to be non-hysterical choose to misrepresent what Greta Thunberg is saying and doing, almost as if they were afraid she might be successful in getting enough people mobilized to get governmental policy changed.
Fusion is only a couple decades away?
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2016/03/23/nuclear-fusion-reactor-research/#.XYfsQChKjIUhttps://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-fusion-illusion“The fusion community clings to the hope that fusion energy is just thirty years away — and that it will solve all our energy problems,” Seife notes. “The promise of a fusion reactor a few decades away has been a cliché for a half century.”
From Seife's book,
Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking.
https://books.google.com/books?id=ifeh21iGE10C&pg=PT165&lpg=PT165&dq=%E2%80%9CThe+promise+of+a+fusion+reactor+a+few+decades+away+has+been+a+clich%C3%A9+for+a+half+century.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=aaI_BdwGnx&sig=ACfU3U0q9YdkQ-aQ-EZ2ZZTUhm6WKtcFaA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiW9ZrEtuXkAhWKYcAKHdwtBXoQ6AEwAXoECAUQAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CThe%20promise%20of%20a%20fusion%20reactor%20a%20few%20decades%20away%20has%20been%20a%20clich%C3%A9%20for%20a%20half%20century.%E2%80%9D&f=false
It's ironic that the authors are busy touting technology to save us with fusion, while knocking battery technology as a tool from pillar to post. Why they think that the one is viable, while the other (which has made vastly more progress in the last 20 years than fusion has) is hopeless is not explained.
But back to the first comment I made. These are some of the recommendations:
Coping with rising sea levels is likely to be more cost-effective than the trillions of dollars in costs and lost gross domestic product needed to drastically reduce hydrocarbon use in the absence of cost-competitive alternatives.
Last summer:
Published today in Environmental Research Letters, a study led by the UK National Oceanographic Centre (NOC) found flooding from rising sea levels could cost $14 trillion worldwide annually by 2100, if the target of holding global temperatures below 2 ºC above pre-industrial levels is missed.
I've seen an extrapolation that the cost to the US to mitigate sea level rise could be as low as $400 billion.
according to a new report from The Center for Climate Integrity and Resilient Analytics, "High Tide Tax: The Price to Protect Coastal Communities from Rising Seas," it's going to cost about $400 billion in the next 20 years to make sure that doesn't happen.
So what does $400 billion buy? It covers the construction of approximately 50,000 miles of coastal barriers in 22 states, which must be completed, the report said, in half the time it took to build the U.S. highway system.
The center's calculations did not include protection for pieces of land that do not have major public infrastructure, like parks or wildlife refuges.
The center's report focuses on the amount of seawall construction necessary to protect the country's coastal real estate from a one-year storm surge, which is the level to which coastal water rises in any given year during a typical storm, according to historical sea-level data. But, according to experts who contributed to the report, sea level rise will be 6.5 feet by the year 2100. The report also noted that the country can right away expect more of the type of 13-foot storm surges that inundated the New York and New Jersey coasts during Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
In any case, the report's authors wrote that their estimates are based on "modest" sea level rise projections.
Even so, the center said that protecting themselves from sea level rise will cost more than 130 counties a bare minimum of at least $1 billion and that 14 states are looking at a price tag of at least $10 billion. Florida alone, the center said, will have to pay $76 billion in seawall expenses.
These 20-year costs are just 10% to 15% of the total that these communities will have to pay in the future, according to the center.
But it's not that simple:
https://blog.ucsusa.org/guest-commentary/what-is-the-cost-of-one-meter-of-sea-level-riseMeanwhile, the ostriches who wrote this supposed guide had this winning comment:
Warming might increase the overall availability of arable farmland. If we adjust to the “new normal” and increase the availability of genetically engineered plants resistant to droughts, floods, and heat, however, this could permit more resource-efficient production of crops, livestock, and other products.
Then again... "Andrew I. Fillat spent his career in technology venture capital and information technology companies. He is also the co-inventor of relational databases. Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute."
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