this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

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Five Things the “Nuclear Bros” Don’t Want You to Know About Small Modular Reactors (blog.ucsusa.org)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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A realistic understanding of their costs and risks is critical.

What are SMRs?

  1. SMRs are not more economical than large reactors.

  2. SMRs are not generally safer or more secure than large light-water reactors.

  3. SMRs will not reduce the problem of what to do with radioactive waste.

  4. SMRs cannot be counted on to provide reliable and resilient off-the-grid power for facilities, such as data centers, bitcoin mining, hydrogen or petrochemical production.

  5. SMRs do not use fuel more efficiently than large reactors.

[Edit: If people have links that contradict any the above, could you please share in the comment section?]

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

It's a satirical comment made to highlight using mild terms that the comment in question is highly suspect. The implication is that I myself am a member of the 'smokescreen', which is an implied but nonspecific organized group of people engaging with this topic in bad faith so as to shift the narrative in some unfair way, and that I am confessing that the above poster has figured out our secret motivations and because of that, foiled our evil scheme.

This is, of course, an absurd assertion on my part. I'm not a member of the shadow government. There is no shadow government. The regular government is plenty evil enough as-is. Trust me on that, I'm a member of it.

To dismiss an extremely effective and proven technology like that is fine, if you provide any evidence to support your position. But that comment is, to put it politely, "horseshit". To call out just one aspect that irked me, it embodies the extremely tired trope of making a claim while not demonstrating any evidence that said claim is true, then asserting their claim as an obvious and correct conclusion. The issue in specific is that they failed in any way to establish how advocating for an alternative source of power would somehow empower the petrochemical lobby.