• 0 Posts
  • 47 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 1st, 2023

help-circle
















  • I use to say “all extremes call for their opposite”. Since almost no information ever transpires about this whole scandal, the opposite is to release all the names to the public. It was to be expected. If we were trusting the justice system, this would seem inappropriate. But we have what we have, and making the whole list public is the only guarantee we have that not one of the “bad” guy can escape public’s attention. That of course, is valid only if the list is comprehensive and some names have not already been taken out.

    It is indeed unfortunate that a lot of people who didn’t deserve and didn’t want any bad attention will get some.

    I’m not saying I agree with the move. I’m saying it was to be expected.

    [Edit made: grammar & missing words]


  • Nuclear plants consist mainly of a shitton of concrete (and only the best sort is good enough). The production of that concrete causes a terrible amount of carbon emissions upfront.

    Actually, if you compare them to solar or wind at equivalent service, it’s not that straightforward:

    Renewables installed capacity is nowhere close to their actual production, nuclear can produce its nominal capacity in a very steady way.

    Wind turbines also need a lot of concrete, and much more metal for equivalent output. Solar panels need a lot of metals.

    Renewables need a backup source to manage their intermittency. It’s most often batteries and fossil plants these days. I don’t think I need to comment on fossil plants, but batteries production also has a very significant carbon emission budget, and is most often not included in comparisons. Besides, you need to charge the batteries, that’s even more capacity required to get on par with the nuclear plant.

    With all of these in consideration, IPCC includes nuclear power along with solar and wind as a way to reduce energy emissions.


  • Scientists have not been hyperbolic. If anything, so far, they’ve been very cautious abut their statements.

    I still remember reading headlines about “likelihood of global warming” then “probably caused by human activities” because 90% level of confidence is not enough, you need more data until you can reach 95% or 98% confidence before boldly writng “most probably”.

    But in their “probably” they predicted we would see more floods, droughts, violent storms, all of these happening one after the other causing devastation.

    And Ô surprise: we see floods, droughts and storms following each other and causing devastation. Yet our leaders will claim “no one could have predicted all of that would happen at once!”.

    Now they start telling us our civilization could collapse (“could” must be what? 75% confidence level???)

    We’re going to spend 20-25 years claiming they exagerate, another 20-25 years saying “well, they maybe right, but we can’t change things too fast because that would be unreasonable and the people would not accept it”.

    By the time, we will start reading articles stating no matter what we do now, we can only push out the end a bit, but we’re doomed. And the first reactions will be “those damned scientists always exagerate and use hyperboles”.