He's 85, his brother died recently, and he's very likely concerned about "legacy". According to Greenpeace, these assholes have poured $145,555,197 into groups that worked counter to climate policy changes being enacted (from 1997 to 2018). _Partisanship_ should be the least of his worries - he'll be remembered as a key figure who spurred inaction at the exact time that we should have been taking drastic action.
The Koch Brothers are also directly responsible for poisoning a generation of poor people who've had the unfortunate luck to live downwind from chemical factories owned by Koch Industries.
What's even more audacious is that all the money they gained from killing people, a lot of them from cancer, they pretend to be patrons of curing cancer funding cancer research.
It's very sad to see people so attached to their egos and external image. Instead of genuinely caring for what will the lives of others be like in the future, they only care about how they will read his name when he is not there. How petty is that, how meaningless? What meaning carries the pronunciation of a name in isolation?
Humanity will only progress once we deeply realize the reality of other minds, that we are made of the same stuff, that our conscious and identity is only pragmatically separated. You and me are the same stuff; helping myself and helping you are effectively the same thing. Helping my children (or your children) is the same as helping myself. I just can't see through their eyes, but they are all like a part of me, equally alive and thinking, that I just cannot access.
Once (and if) we realize this, then we can hope to go on longer than a few decades.
> What meaning carries the pronunciation of a name in isolation?
...And on the pedestal, these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Shelley published Ozymandias more than 200 years ago. Humans are what they are.
For me, when the disagreement is about turning the planet into a hollow cinder for naked protection of wealth accrued in an unjust system and justified by Puritanical memes of free will and individualism, it's either a naughty word ascribing malice or one ascribing stupidity.
There is disagreement about the magnitude of things, but this is hyperboloic.
> for naked protection of wealth
An opinion on their motives.
> accrued in an unjust system
There's so much that can be discussed there. But simple, name one system that isn't unjust in some way. You can optimize for advancement though capitalism, or you can optimize for equality though communism, or some variation thereof. If you optimize too much for capitalism, the lower class are left out, if you optimize too much for communism, after a while everyone is lower than the lower class in what capitalism would result in. Different people will view the right balance differently, so "just" has no meaning here.
> it's either a naughty word ascribing malice or one ascribing stupidity
Or a bit of humility in assuming that you don't know every single thing there is to know about economics, sociology, political theory, and the motives of other individuals.
To be clear, I probably have similar views and beliefs to you on all these topics, but where we differ is in my willingness to put my views forth as fact and condemn others on limited evidence, public relations pieces put out by them and others, and my views on soft sciences that are still very much being worked on and in flux. Thinking someone else is an asshole is not an excuse for adopting bad behavior youself.
>There is disagreement about the magnitude of things, but this is hyperboloic (sic)
It's not hyperbolic. The Earth's new homeostasis after an unchecked greenhouse effect has run its course looks like Venus. If the effect is not stopped the question is not whether this will happen but how long it will take. Quite a while, certainly, but the environment will become inimical to humans much sooner.
The claim isn't that the Koch brothers deny climate change, but that they funded climate "skeptic" think tanks. They knew full well what they were doing.
It highlights the very important point that activist groups will quite often ignore viable solutions. This is usually because they wish to keep on being activists and keep on continuing the fight.
Thus it brings into question anything they claim and all claims should be treated with skepticism.
Have you seen how big the Chernobyl exclusion zone is? are to move your family there?
Have you paid any attention to the after effects at Fukushima? Do you care to realize that we are pushing radiation with unknown effects into the largest body of water (and one of the greatest repositories of life) on Earth? That the effects will likely reverberate for a 1000 years or more?
What is your solution to the problem of accumulating Nuclear waste?
Has it occurred to you that life has succeeded on the planet primarily by a fantastical luck of getting dosed with EXACTLY the right amount of radiation, carefully controlled by an atmosphere that literal took a millennia of millennia in order to develop? That fucking with that balance by inviting disastrous and unknown consequences into that careful envelope might turn some people off?
No. You must be right.. just a bunch of loony activists that are clinging desperately to the activist identity.
How shallow and unconsidered an opinion. Did it make you feel as smug as it sounded when you typed it out?
> Has it occurred to you that life has succeeded on the planet primarily by a fantastical luck of getting dosed with EXACTLY the right amount of radiation, carefully controlled by an atmosphere that literal took a millennia of millennia in order to develop?
Well, no. We aren't in some mystical radiation balance with nature.
Heritable point mutations are primarily driven by DNA polymerase errors and repair failures, not by radiation damage. Ultraviolet light is good at causing thymidine cross-linking, which can give rise to cancers, but this is irrelevant to heritable change. Likewise, higher energy particles can cut DNA, but compared to crossing over events during chromosomal assortment this has approximately no bearing on heritable change.
I gather all of that evidence was collected from Martian samples? Maybe Venus? Was it derived from DNA developed on the Moon?
What does make Earth just right for you to have developed in order to be aware, gain such knowledge, share such knowledge?
Untold eons of carefully controlled radiant energy emitted by our blessed Sun.
The Sun and its ilk are massive emitters of radiant energy. Light is a form of radiation. Heat is a form of radiation. The universe is full of lifeless rocks either burnt by the sun or left out in the cold. In fact, all the ones we know of exist in this state except this one.
I am not advocating some “mystical radiation balance with nature” so much as pointing out that “life” (as we know it) is playing the long game on controlling radiant energy doses. When we muck about with that by playing our dumb little short game without consideration for the consequences we invite disaster upon ourselves. All of this discussion about global warming is pointless if we leave large swathes of the planet uninhabitable by humans.
The atmosphere does a reasonably good job protecting us from the ravages of open space. One of the positive (for us) results of the particular make-up of that atmosphere is to foster life. Absent that protection (or if we were to act to circumvent it) life struggles to find a foothold. Can't think of anywhere life flourishes other than here.
Places that lack this protection tend to get burnt to a crisp or freeze. Lack of energy is a problem. Too much energy is a problem. The wrong KIND of energy is a problem.
What we call "radioactive material" that is the effluent by-product of nuclear fission is all the wrong kind of energy. I won't recount all the reasons why, but the fact that it is the least likely source of scrambling heritable traits in DNA is actually kind of low on the list (especially given the speed with which it scrambles DNA in living entities).
I am suggesting we shouldn't act to circumvent the protection we have been graciously afforded by the atmosphere. Fucking about with fissile material inside the atmosphere and on the surface is stupid and short sighted.
There is nothing mystical about any of this, it is pure science.
The current trajectory of temperature increase is at least 4~5°C (rather optimistic) in 2100, which would mean that a pretty wide area surrounding the equator will, year-round or for significant parts of the year, have a wet-bulb temperature at or above 35°C. It is the limit at which human life (and mammal life in general) is entirely impossible, due to over-heating.
That unlivable area will include most of India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil, etc. Hong-Kong and Taiwan, whether you consider them as part of China or not, will anyway not be livable anymore by then. What do you think will happen when India, a country of 1.3B armed with nuclear weapons, realize it literally has to move somewhere else for survival? Do you think all these people will agree to die in silence, peacefully so as to not inconvenience you?
On top of that grim outlook, agriculture has only been possible relatively recently in human history. Until about 10,000 years ago the climate was not stable enough to reliably grow crops, year after year. That stability is probably already gone. Note that the issue for agriculture (and forests, etc.) is less the actual temperature and more the rain/weather patterns (and evaporation, that links back to temperature).
There is absolutely no guarantee that we will be able to adapt our crops fast enough for agriculture to keep up, especially if there is too much instability around the globe. Without stable crops the number of people that can survive on Earth is not very large. China has recently launched a 'Clean Plate' campaign against food waste. As you can imagine it's not because food is plentiful... but because of excess rain, causing crop failures.
Radioactivity is scary and dangerous in high enough dose. Chernobyl and Fukushima are horrible disasters that should have been avoided, but sadly weren't. But compared to the threat of global warming, risks from nuclear power plants are small, known and manageable. To say it differently, rice from Fukushima may be dangerous, but it's still safer than certain death from lack of rice.
I'm not saying we should be building nuclear power plants everywhere, at all. In any case there's not enough U235 at hand to fill the energy needs of mankind. But I would much prefer we spend fewer resources on closing existing nuclear power plants, and more resources on tackling global warming (looking at my home country, France, and our lignite addicted neighbor, Germany).
I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that "lack of rice" (and lack of clean water) is going to be a major issue whether we build out nuclear or not. I think humanity is in for a dark couple hundred years. The window hasn't closed, but we are hard pressed dealing with all the wrong fights and time is losing.
The less "1000 year tail of disaster" opportunities we can have available when things start to unravel the better. I am less afraid of us killing each other over rice and water than I am of us forcing those that come in the aftermath to deal with our effluence for 50+ generations.
How do you make cement (and by extension concrete)? Limestone calcination: CaCO3 → CaO + CO2
The world concrete production is a larger source of GHG than the entire world fleet of trucks used for goods transportation, with some margin. And that's only accounting CO2 emitted by the chemical reaction itself, not even accounting for the production of the energy necessary for the reaction, that often comes from natural gas.
That CO2 is not being displaced by nuclear power plants, solar panels, wind turbines or batteries in fancy cars. It's being replaced by not using concrete anymore. My point is that GHG emissions go way way further than just electricity production or gasoline to power cars or planes: it's chemistry (fertilizers, concrete, etc) and metallurgy.
I don't hear much about it, not least because I think it's a very hard problem: right now, using less concrete means less constructions. There aren't enough trees, and they don't grow quickly enough, to do everything using wood, although that could be a partial solution. But the construction sector employs A LOT of people. So the path to less concrete is a path to fewer jobs, and a shrinking economy...
There are a whole host of issues that stem from industrialization that are complex and require organized and disciplined action in order to contain. Cohesive action by the entire community of industrial nations is just not on the table at this point without some absolutely massive dislocation of economics or political power. Force is going to be required for change or desperation is going to force compliance. I can only assume based on history that this will all come to force of arms before any other rational solution (systemic enough that it will a difference) is pursued.
I just don't see any road forward without a horrifying body count. It is not impossible to avert that future, it just seems vanishingly improbable.
Look at the current wave of government collapses and civil wars that are exacerbated by the current crisis (ethiopia, peru, bolivia, argentina, zambia, etc.). It will be way worse.
Then think about places that are relatively safe, ie Europe, and relatively easy to migrate from the ME and Africa to. That's 500+M people trying to make their way over. That spells serious unrest in Europe too. And that's not even talking about Vietnam's sand mining catastrophe.
I am highly skeptical of them. It was not my intent to defend them.
I do not consider nuclear energy a viable alternative to the hydrocarbon economy. I have considered it and I have dismissed it. You will not change my mind unless you can produce it off planet. I have dismissed it as a non-viable option (apparently the "non-viable" part is inconceivable to you.) This dismissal is not tied to my need to coddle and protect my identity as an activist.
"It highlights the very important point that activist groups will quite often ignore viable solutions. This is usually because they wish to keep on being activists and keep on continuing the fight."
This line dismisses .. pretty much anyone advocating for change. "I proposed a solution that works for me. They don't like it. They must wish to protect the identity." Pure poppycock.
Not really. Maybe you shouldn't lead with an absolute that you can't possibly claim to know.
> This line dismisses .. pretty much anyone advocating for change. "I proposed a solution that works for me. They don't like it. They must wish to protect the identity." Pure poppycock.
I never claimed that applied for anyone that is advocating for change.
In this case the nuclear power solution could be a viable solution (I don't care for your expertise on the subject). They have rejected a viable solution that could get us X% of the way there. Therefore that tells me they aren't interested in an actual solution. That in tells me they wish to be advocates rather than solving an issue. Therefore anything they tell me is suspect.
Actually, what you wrote was "..activist groups will quite often ignore viable solutions. This is usually because they wish to keep on being activists and keep on continuing the fight."
You surmise in the text that the rejection of nuclear is just out of hand because solving the problem would end the fight. This is what you stated.
Nuclear may be a viable solution to the energy problem. Whether it is a viable solution to the humans altering the planet irrevocably so they can't inhabit it safely anymore problem is open to a bit more conjecture.
There is plenty of energy readily available on the planet without the necessity of continuing to burn off a billion years of carbon capture or splitting atoms, imho.
> Actually, what you wrote was "..activist groups will quite often ignore viable solutions. This is usually because they wish to keep on being activists and keep on continuing the fight."
You surmise in the text that the rejection of nuclear is just out of hand because solving the problem would end the fight. This is what you stated.
No. Note the words "often" and "usually" appear. Therefore not always.
Doses of radioactive elements from high atmosphere Nuclear weapons testing persist in trace amounts in all living things on Earth today. Dispersal of radioactive elements would be faster and point source radioactivity thereby reduced by that due to the nature of the medium into which it was released and the very short duration of the release.
Fukushima because it lacks these characteristics.
Blow up all the shit you want.. nuclear energy (when it fails, and every failure is too often) is way more disruptive then nuclear weapons. Evidence? See Nagasaki today vs Pripyat today.
I don't generally think we should be splitting atoms on the surface of the planet. It has lots of dirty side effects that far outlast our capacity to grapple with the consequences. Humans on the whole are not prepared at this point to think in terms of decades, let alone plan for events that have consequences counted in Milennia.
It changes my evaluation of the claim, which is sourced by Greenpeace.
In the long run I have no doubt that Greenpeace will have caused more damage than the Koch family. We could have clean energy right now if it weren’t for the decades of nuclear fear mongering, and the Koch family isn’t even opposed to nuclear.
Is this a troll? Comparing a single point on greenpiece's agenda to literally hundreds of millions of dollars Koch dollars to climate change deniers as a whole are simply incomparable.
Just in case this is somehow contestable, let me highlight a few points
* Climate change deniers oppose solutions that don't involve oil/gas/coal - this means nuclear power
* Koch funding > greenpiece funding
* greenpeice didn't start nuclear fear mongering, pro-oil lobbyists did - AKA climate change deniers.
Greenpeace's annual budget for activism (as opposed to fundraising, which eats roughly 1/3 of their budget) is on the order of $200 million. That's more than the lifetime spending of the Koch brothers, and Greenpeace does that volume every year. They're not some scrappy little actor, they're one of the single largest lobbying groups in the entire world.
Their expenditures for all their "program services" (their various activism campaigns) was $27.4M in 2019 and $26.3M in 2018. If the Koch Bros. spend about $200M a year on activism, they're actually substantially outspending Greenpeace. Which, well, is to be expected: Greenpeace is a non-profit that's very often taking positions opposing major corporations.
(Greenpeace is actually a collection of quasi-independent groups around the world, but since the Koch's activism is primarily focused in the US, it makes sense to compare them to Greenpeace USA.)
Nuclear energy is still dangerous. For example, it is still not safe against possible natural disasters (Fukushima), as well as from possible terrorist attacks. Imagine a 9/11 type of accident with a nuclear plant as its target. Potential danger is still extremely high, even if the chances of it are very small. We still cannot correctly estimate the risks of nuclear energy, after all these years.
It's also, like, 4x more expensive per kWh (probably 2x more expensive with variability taken into account) than wind or solar and is uninsurable without a government backstop.
I really wonder why people are so keen on it. It made sense to build them 40 years ago to deal with global warming. Today it's only financially viable if it's massively subsidized compared to wind/solar.
What is it that makes that extra cost so worthwhile?
The impression I get is that people are still hung up on nuclear not getting widely adopted decades ago when it was the best option. So they're still trying to make that argument now despite there being better options because they feel wronged.
Or that we do not believe that full renewable grids are viable yet. Every single non-carbon solution (solar, wind, tidal) I have heard hand-waves away baseload and storage as something that will be solved soon(tm) by liberal application of technology(tm).
Either by magical storage solutions or massive continental / intercontinental "smart" grids that are politically unviable (No country will give up energy security by relying on a source hundres / thousands of miles away).
I would rather we start on something we know works now. Perfect is the enemy of good enough and cost is not a critical factor if you believe climate change is an existential crisis to civilisation / great filter.
I would rather have future generations be in a situation where all they have to have to deal with is decommissioning those plants.
There's a variety of non magical storage solutions which are already being used (pumped water storage, molten salt) but demand shifting and overproduction will probably handle the majority of the variability. Thermal storage heaters will make a comeback, industrial users will vary when they consume electricity and car chargers will be programmed to listen to the price and charge when prices are low/free/negative.
A market driven response combined with upgrading grid infrastructure and finer grained pricing will be more than enough and will be cheaper than binge building nuke plants.
Meanwhile we can gradually ramp down usage of natural gas as markets adapt to the new reality.
We are just going to have to disagree on the wide-spread viability of the storage mechanisms and political / market reaction-time here.
However I hope I at least demonstrated that it is not always a case of "So they're still trying to make that argument now despite there being better options because they feel wronged."
Well, the idea of an energy source that never fails, is abundant and reliable has some allure. Solar and wind seem capricious in comparison.
Nevertheless, nuclear has some big issues: try to switch to it now and it will take decades for the power plants to be build. Expensive as well and leaves a lot of toxic and radioactive waste.
The biggest thing it has going for it is constant power without fossil fuels. The grid needs backing power. I've seen a lot of other efforts at this, but (correct me if I'm wrong) there are still none that work, scale, and are affordable.
The grid needs consistent power that is transferrable and responsive to load.
Point sources like nuclear plants add baseload, but are not flexible in supply.
A more resilient grid will have much more interconnection between sources and sinks and much more dynamic control and feedback loops.
Solar power is currently the cheapest form of new power available, it is limited by the hours of daylight.
Wind power is weather limited, but offshore wind power can provide relatively constant generation.
Batteries and equivalent energy storage (eg pumped hydro) provide the short term grid stability requirements that are currently provided by gas-powered peak plants, but with much faster response time and much cheaper capex and opex costs.
As rooftop solar and household battery (including stationary vehicles) expand, dynamic usage will also capture a lot of the energy market from large baseload generation.
All of these are affordable now, work, and, with investment in the grid/network, scale.
I should have phrased that differently; my understanding is that the problem isn't whether renewable energy is relatively affordable, it's whether it beats natural gas plants, and that so far the generation part does but the storage does not--the reason Germany's removal of nuclear energy resulted in an increase in fossil fuel use.
