The usual suspects - Republicans who would rather have their extra few dollars now and screw the next generation. Also see recent tax cut, trillion dollar deficit.

Based on the "slash and burn" going on with the EPA and finance regulations, it's both corporations and fossil fuel Barons who want to run wild while they can. Repairing their damage may not finish in my lifetime. If I was filthy rich, I'd find a toxic waste area and erect some shacks. These creeps would live out their (now short and miserable) lives in a place so bad it made the Love Canal look like paradise.

Nathanial Rich is correct. By the 1970s it was quite clear toward which direction climate was headed. The basics of global warming were worked out in the 19th century by Joseph Fourier, Eunice Foote, John Tyndall, Svante Arrhenius, and others. All the recent work in climate modeling has done is to improve the specific forecasts of what will happen and where. Blame the fossil fuel industry, a lazy Congress, and a public that is largely scientifically illiterate.

"...and a public that is largely scientifically illiterate."

I confess I am part of that public that is scientifically illiterate. I do not think that is a factor so much as choosing to be willfully ignorant when the facts are presented. It isn't a question of 'knowing' science, it is more a question of being willing to 'understand' what is explained.

Even the scientifically illiterate need more than manipulated data and computer models.

That is a real laugh given that you have amply demonstrated to one and all that you are scientifically illiterate.

How about that global temperatures just spiked around the world...

Right. But you will not see that discussed around here.

Actually, Svante Arrhenius published a paper in the 1890s on the effects of doubling the CO2 content of the atmosphere. His prediction of a 6 C temperature rise is remarkably close to what the climate models are predicting. And by the early 70s it was quite clear from the Mauna Kea data where CO2 levels were heading.

Losing Earth is about right. We've left a lot for those after us to deal with and we haven't equipped them with the tools to deal with the challenge (and that's a euphemistic wording for "incredibly alarming mess"). We did, however, provide them with plenty of distractions.

Have we become the true "Masters of Spin"???

In 1980 it was still possible to think about a sustainable level of human population. That ship has sailed, and all we can really discuss is ways of postponing the inevitable.

In the Fifties, the ZPG (Zero Population Growth) movement made populist noise as WWII refugees swarmed into the US. But when pithier issues, like the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis, arose, ZPG was relegated to the esoteric realms of academia and never really heard from again on street corners. Vietnam and many other subsequent distractions have kept population concerns sidetracked. Even when, at the Millennium, population analysts announced that there were more people alive than had ever died...most folks never blinked. Even today, the knee jerk response to recent immigration surges has been a NIMBY reaction more than concern about world population.

I think you're conflating two issues: immigration and overpopulation of the planet. The more pressing issue at the moment is that we're destroying the planet.

These issues are somewhat intertwined. People have shorter life spans than our planet--even in it's present state of threat.

We have a prez who claims to be pro-life--it gets his base all fired up. Attacks by religious groups on women's issues and birth control make it likely we will see more "accidental" births. No mention about what these stances do to over-population numbers. The spin being used on Americans does more to distract us from real problems by blowing less important issues into "fake disasters". We hear about thousands of people fleeing and dying in countries most of us couldn't find on a map. Are we truly horrified--enough to do anything? No, and some who are closet bigots may even view this as population control.

"...and all we can really discuss is ways of postponing the inevitable."

Not exactly. Our focus should be two-fold: minimizing the damage by eliminating the human-based cause, and adapting to the new norm in an earth-friendly, sustainable manner.

Not that it will help all that much but the fact that each and everyone of us will die and reduce that overpopulation by one tiny digit shows that even unintentionally, we are doing "our part".

Only if we managed to reproduce no more than two offspring. That is zero population growth. Less than two would be a negative population growth.

It comes down to better education in the poorest areas of the planet. The women there are kept virtually (and sometimes literally) barefoot and pregnant. Tragically, that is also the focus of missionaries, who work for an industry that discourages birth control.

When Trump visited the Vatican, the Pope politely implied his desire that Trump back the Paris Accord on climate. If the Pope really cares about the planet, he should abolish the ban on birth control and move the church doctrine closer to the 21st century. Encourage missionaries to do good work without the focus being "recruitment".

Discussions about climate change are inevitably expressed in language about its devastating effect on the planet, but the underlying reality is that the planet has been here for billions of years longer than humans have and the part of the biomass that we're worried might be at risk is us.

But that having been said it's still possible for us to mess things up for a lot of other organisms. The buried carbon we've been burning and dumping into the atmosphere in the course of a few decades is reverting our geochemistry to a CO2 abundance that we haven't seen for 360 million years.

I suppose it's reasonable to note that there were things just starting to walk around on land back then, but it's also worth noting that almost every species that thrived back then is extinct now.

CO2 has only been a catalyst. By far, the atmosphere's primary greenhouse "gas" is water vapor. Added CO2 tipped the instability balance. Warming atmosphere passed heat to the oceans. Warming oceans pass more water vapor to an atmosphere that increases its moisture capacity as it warms. The oceans are also the planet's primary CO2 sink; as they warm, they decarbonate like our warming carbonated beverages. This all combines into a feedback loop that's already acquired its own momentum.

I'd say the oceans are more like a working carbon reservoir rather than a sink. Carbon that went into those Carboniferous Period coal swamps stayed locked in stone for hundreds of millions of years.

CO2 has a solubilty that's maximum near freezing. With temperature increases, it exsolves, effectively degassing as solubility decreases. It wasn't coal swamps that created limestones. That was about excess carbonate salts precipitating in shallow seas as evaporites. Deep oceans are a different chemical concentration environment.

Carbonate rocks like limestone do lock up carbon, but limestone just doesn't burn like coal. It doesn't give shivering humans a reason to dig it all up.

Also worth noting is that while carbonate shoals are continually forming even today in lots of locations, the anoxic conditions that formed those deep beds of Carboniferous plant matter sediment just aren't happening today. We aren't burying new coal.

But you're 100% correct about carbon frozen in the deep oceans. If those reserves are released we're all in big trouble.

Nathan and Candid--weirdly enough, I take some comfort in your descriptions of how this evolves. Mother Earth set the stage with some nasty little surprises. We stumbled on just the right--or wrong ways to trigger those surprises. Our own evolution brought us to this point by making us smart enough to do foolish things.

Isn't this where we say "Bend over and kiss your A$$ Good-bye"???

Can we PLEASE be mindful that President Jimmy Carter tried to address our energy concerns, specifically related to climate issues? This is the biggest cover up a world has ever known!! Solar panels on the White House, 17,000 wind turbines in California and he said in 1979 "It is the moral equivalent of war to be independent of energy." We in Marin County have recognized his endeavors and the incredible cover up BOTH democrats and republicans have done to put this president under the bus. It's time to be held accountable and honor a great president when the people chose NOT to listen. It's the failure of a generation when we had an honest president. Be mindful - Reagan knocked down those energy policies and pushed oil full throttle back into our economy.

We screened the powerful film A Road Not Taken in Marin County last year in honor of Carter's birthday. We remember and will not forget.

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

The typical inertia that ever impedes inappropriately unduly rash decision making and aceptances; also impedes a too rapid historical progression. Similarly, lengthy, and even longer periods have preceded the arrival of humankind on this planet. Also, well over 20 mllions of years were required to lay down the now controversial coal depoits, during the carboniferous period beginning some 200 million years ago. Yet even before such protracted periods, more resolving accretions and resolutions were even then reaching protracted maturation, on even larger scales .

Even so, no such vast lengths of time have been allotted,and can be safely anticipated, by a world af people already feeling the adverse affects of excessive misusages of natural elements, that began forming even billions of years ago. The natural inhibiting interia, fearing loss of the familiar, will not bestow genuine lasting profits, by continuance of delusions that some long term gain can be realized by disregarding the essential allegiance owed to planetary equilibrium and stability; and safety of its numerous long endangered inhabitants.
-----------------

So, the fate of the planet was decided b y John Sununu during the GHW Bush Admin? I hope it doesn't come down to that.

The question is what to do and what difference will it make and at what cost!

While Brazil was burning rain forests and China, India, Central America and much of Africa have increasing populations and are burning carbon based energy any action of the United States is like using a squirt gun to put out a forest fire!

With ever increasing world population requiring ever more food and energy to just provide a basic living standard. In order to provide the highest standard of living to the greatest number of people it will take ever increasing amounts of the denses energy possible.

One thing we can do is help them skip to zero carbon technologies.

Which will have to include modern nuclear designs, even though we fear it so. Which is what some of our own startups are doing in china.

Im going to have to disagree with you there. That is just the fear of the old nuclear technology. If we are going to meet emission goals and still power our countries as expected we are going to have to invest in new types of nuclear plants.

What should happen is all the old water cooled nuclear plants should be phased out. They are to expensive and dangerous and need to be replaced.

Quite frankly even if we ban them in the west, nations lacking regulation restrictions like china are going to build them anyways.

Which is where our own startups are doing that kind of work on reactors that dont need external power to prevent a meltdown and can be powered using depleted uranium, which deals with a waste biproduct we would sitll have to deal with even if every nuclear reactor was shut down.

Theres a good documentary by nova called the Nuclear Option that covers the whole issue.

Sorry if though thought that was my intention. The first and foremost reason people generally are afraid of nuclear is the times its gone wrong.

That is the cost of a conventional water cooled reactor, which was based on the design for the first nuclear submarines. It was not the best technology they had at the time, it was just that you cant use a sodium reactor in a submarine because of what happens to sodium when exposed to water, and yet nuclear physicists continued working on designing better safer and quite likely cheaper reactors up until they were shut down in the 90's.

Im not ignoring that traditonally its to expensive. Tradtionally renewables were to expensive compared to fossil fuesl.

Im just telling you we cannot afford to ignore the possibility that more advanced nuclear reactors like with more advanced renewable technologies, are a possible option.

The cost to continued dependence on fossil fuels is so much greater.

America is reinvesting in nuclear and it would be useful if you took the time to look into it.

Sorry you may want to reread my last comment. I was midedit when you made your followup comment.

What exactly are those problems with the new reactors being designed, Such as with the liquid sodium reactor designed by terrapower?

Of course cost is one. That was the case for other power technologies such as solar panels for years. Refining the technology could make it cheaper.

what about it would make the new reactors that are in development now writen out of the future?

Thats not very convincing. You didnt actually say anything about the reactor or any reactor.

Why is there nothing similar to the price performance curve?

Your inability to actually talk about actual technologies in development or why there isn't a performance curve, a term you yourself used for solar panels, makes me really doubt that you actually know anything.

I asked you to explain and you insult me.

Your use of insults compounds the sense that you dont actually know what your talking about or dont care to really talk about it in a mature manner. Thats the problem with using ad hominem falicy. Ruins any argument you have.

It doesn't help your argument when your still basing it on the failures of water cooled reactors, which was specifically a failure in the united states, where as in the article that yes, i only read the beginning of initially because I wasnt talking about water cooled reactors at all, it does say that france, japan, and canada were able to do a better job of keeping costs down.

The failures in the united states were due to that they tried to make to many to quickly and their regulations were not stable.

The article ends with suggestions for how to make nuclear energy cheap and states that it cannot predict where the future will go with nuclear.

It does not support your argument that its a dead end.

Even if the united states stops using them, china isn't so bothered by such issues.

Nuclear isnt going away, and can be done cheaper than it was in the united states.

Your insults are ineffective means if your intention is to convince me you know anything about what your talking about.

Nuclear power isnt going away just because you say it is.

Your insults are ineffective means if your intention is to convince me you know anything about what your talking about.

Nuclear power isnt going away just because you say it is. There are at least three startup companies currently developing reactors such as the liquid sodium reactor designed by terrapower. Even if the united states never builds them countries like china, south korea, and japan probably are going to.

Insulting me is not a means to make me stop talking.

Actually addressing my questions in a mature manner is.

The main problem with your argument is we cant do without nuclear.

Right now It makes up 20% of Americas clean power. Renewable's only make up 17% currently and simply cant make up that 20%.

I think you do not take nuclear energy seriously because you do not realize the urgency of the situation.

research points to the need to aggressively decarbonise the energy sector by midcentury because carbon dioxide emitted today will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, baking in the effects of global warming for generations to come.

If we shut down all the existing nuclear plants they will be replaced with natural gas, not renewable's, because renewable's right now are not efficient enough to expand to cover the needed power.

Climate change is the real womb to tomb problem, and if we dont act quickly and make use of every zero carbon technology we may cause our own extinction.

https://www.scmp.com/news/w...

More insults. insulting me doesnt mean you win any points.

The market for nuclear starups is in china.

https://www.bloomberg.com/n...

japan is still operating its reactors and is starting to bring its reactors back online. They have to invest in them because without them it cant make its climate goals and has made electricity affordable, because it has no natural resources so it has to import all the fuel it needs.

https://www.forbes.com/site...

Even if they never become a primary source of energy for most countries there is a reason to invest in these newer kinds of reactors.

They can be built on the sites of existing light water reactors and be used to use up spent nuclear fuel, which in itself poses an extreme hazard.

even if all nuclear reactors are shut down, particularly in the united states, that spent fuels not going anywhere.