I love the way you led into that. So we can only discuss using nuclear energy?

Probably, but that's no reason not to make the attempt.

The CO^2 levels are at twice their natural historic high.

The sea levels are still rising, despite Neil's article on Antarctic ice gain.

The temperature continues to rise.

When should we start doing something?

Nuclear is believed to be generally "green", but ONLY if no disasters occur. I.e., if the plant explodes or the radioactive waste leaks into the environment then we're all fucked. Nuclear is clean-ish, but the waste is a big problem, and there's definite dangers. So if we're going to go with nuclear then we need to be careful about it. But yes, at least from what I've read, it is an improvement over the dirtier alternatives, at least in theory. So go ahead and consider that.

The "deadline" isn't some random figure somebody put together for politics (protip: the politicians are bought by the oil companies that don't profit from green ideas). It's what scientists that study this for a living believe is critical. So we can't do too much about the deadline. There are plenty of things we can do. We just don't because they're inconvenient. Of course, humans are generally very stupid animals. We might be generally more intelligent than most of our neighbours, but we're still extremely stupid. On average anyway. And so we're more than likely going to drive our own species to extinction before we sacrifice any luxuries.

We probably already have the means to take comfortable care of everyone on Earth without doing permanent harm to our environment if we were willing to share like we try to teach our 3 year olds to do, but fuck that shit. We're greedy, and we're selfish, and everyone for themselves. So we'll burn this bitch down instead.

In the long run everything will be fine. Life will continue on this rock for thousands of years. It likely won't include humans, or many of the wonderful animals that we take for granted every day, but life will go on, and so will this planet. If there are alien species in the cosmos we'll be one of those extinct life forms they discover in 1000 years having killed themselves with their own greed.

Unfortunately it may not be so easy to predict "tsunami range" for long. Also, nuclear facilities are very ripe for terrorism or military targets. So if we're going to expand upon the facilities we're also going to need to defend them from airplanes, ground forces, etc. As well as defending against "cyber" attacks. It's not as easy as it sounds. And the stakes are quite high. Nuclear is only "green" when things go right. It's far, far worse for the environment when things go wrong.

I think it's pretty naive to think that the solutions to these problems are so simple. They're not. They're a very real concern for lots of large, skilled, experienced groups. Certainly there are things that can be done to limit certain risks, but they all have trade-offs. Google says that Japan is only 230 kilometres wide. That combined with the density probably somewhat limits available land for power plants like this. I think you give human beings way too much credit. The really smart, responsible kind are a very small minority. Maybe 0.00001% or something. The vast majority are lucky to be eating with a fork (or chopsticks).

Unfortunately for Edgar, green energy cannot meet current power needs but nuclear technology can. I appreciate you don't like it, but that's reality.

The majority opinion there seems to be that renewables are getting better, but are still much more expensive than nuclear, whose waste can be safely stored and dealt with. The EIA's 2019 annual energy outlook report seems to say in 2023 solar thermal's LCOE is projected to about twice that of nuclear. Plus you won't get Arizona levels of solar energy just anywhere, so location will matter. It does help that super hot desert isn't attractive for many other uses. Ideally both technologies would complement each other well and should be pursued over coal or gas.

Although nuclear energy is the most efficient in the near term (let's say 10 years), renewables seem to have the potential to be nearly as efficient or more so within 10 years...

It's a matter of "will renewables be more efficient in the timeline it takes to fund and build more nuclear power plants" and I believe the answer will likely be yes.

This is based on fuzzy knowledge, I'd have to actually do research to give exact numbers. But who does research on this forum.

One of the scientists at my work is an engineer with some experience dealing with nuclear power. I asked him once about removing nuclear waste from the planet and he indicated that it's good in theory, except if there's a problem such as a shuttle explosion, then a contained problem was just turned into a contamination disaster. It's safer to improve the technology to deal with the waste on the planet's surface.

It would be nice if renewables become more efficient than nuclear, but if similar effort is spent on improving nuclear, it may possibly remain more efficient than renewables. Improvements in the collection of fossil fuel led to fracking and is the reason why the USA's carbon emissions have dropped so quickly. We don't have to settle on any energy technology being good enough, they can all get better.

For cooking birds, I don't know if there's a good way to make them avoid solar plants other than emitting an unpleasant noise to scare them away. I bet there would be people that would consider that cruel treatment of animals, but it's better than letting them get cooked to death.

That's why I quickly ruled out a shuttle/rocket launch and went for a railgun approach. Of course, it would still potentially have the same dangers, but the hope would be that the system would be more reliable. Less moving parts. Though I'm not sure if railgun technology that works on a large scale even exists yet.

Except that fracking is considered harmful for several reasons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing#Health_risks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing#Environmental_impacts

I don't think noise to scare them away has been overly effective. It's probably a short-term solution anyway. Animals are adaptive so they'd probably eventually stop being afraid of it (or just go deaf and no longer hear it ).

From what I've read the losses aren't necessarily harming the bird population, but then again I don't trust for-profit organizations to properly care enough about the environment to give an honest answer if that weren't the case.

Nevertheless, perhaps they could solve the problem by enclosing the mirrors/focusing beams somehow. I'm sure solutions exist. They just need to be forced to find them. A for-profit organization isn't going to go out of its way to spend extra money.

I'm not sure if a railgun projectile would be much less error prone with such a large weight or travel distance.

It doesn't seem like air pollution of directly toxic chemicals or particulate matter is on a worsening trend, at least in my country. The latest EPA report on it (https://gispub.epa.gov/air/trendsreport/2018/documentation/AirTrends_Flyer.pdf) reflects as such. Of course, some countries are much worse with their pollution.

The reason I think it would be less error-prone is because the launch mechanism/power is all at the launch site. And it's all electronics and magnets. Aside from a power grid failure, and computer glitches, I'm not sure what else would be there to go wrong. Of course, I'm not an engineer, or anything like it, so I have a very basic idea of what a railgun is.

The idea is that if we can be reasonably certain that we can launch then there should be nothing else to stop us from leaving orbit at least. Presumably we could control the airspace, and track/predict obstacles (maybe we'd have to guard against terrorist missiles or something). The bigger mystery would be if the projectile once it escaped Earth's gravity would be able to make it to the Sun without being captured by some other gravity well and brought off course, or collide and spread its waste. It seems like on the one hand we have a pretty good idea what is out there, but on the other hand it seems like objects hide in the shadows until they reveal themselves so perhaps we cannot be too certain. I suppose then the question is what are the chances that such a random collision/misdirection causes the waste to make its way back to us on Earth.

It all seems pretty unlikely, but there are much more intelligent people that study these things that obviously need to be asked first. I'm just offering a stupid simple idea from a stupid simple person. Real scientists and engineers are needed to actually determine if it's feasible. I generally agree that it's safer to just store it on Earth, but I do still worry about the long term effects of doing so. It's 2019 so we like to believe that scientists know everything definitively, and the science gets done in like 15 minutes, and then there's cake that nobody gets to eat. But I don't think it actually works that way. It's more like 3 months of research to yield a "maybe" conclusion. 4 months of engineering a perfect machine, only to have to fix it last minute with on-the-run debugging. No matter how hard we try, humans can never be "certain" of really anything. Our own biology doesn't allow for it.

Then again, it seems like most people die of cancer these days. You have to wonder what the causes are. Though certainly many communities are being poisoned, whether it's in the water or on the job.

A random example, the steel plant operating in my city has pre-defined "benefits" for the families of loved ones that die of certain types of cancers who worked in certain jobs in the plant because cancer is absolutely linked to those dirty jobs. Those people are lucky to make 65 years old before a fast, painful death. And the families aren't getting millions. They might get 50 or 100 thousand or something.

Mind you, it's a comfortable living up until that point (in theory, if you're smart enough to save it). Of course, the plant also pollutes the city air constantly. Certain days they are releasing the waste gases and the entire west end of the city smells of sulphur/methane. It goes right though walls/windows/doors so the insides of houses/buildings/etc. all smell too. Those crossing the border from Michigan unfortunately get to be greeted by it as well.

Absolutely these companies are harming the environment and should be made to pay a price for that. If they're even allowed to at all. It's better to just shut them down and not let them, but when a community pretty much depends on the money to get by it's hard to just shut the city down. But at the very least, we should be working to phase that sort of dirty work out, and penalize those that continue to do it, working towards a future that doesn't depend on polluting the environment that we all depend on to survive. At some point, the money won't matter because the environment will become inhospitable.

I just started watching a series on Netflix called "One Strange Rock" narrated by Will Smith. In the very first episode, it blows your mind how interconnected the entire planet is, and just how fragile our paradise that supports life is.

NO RUSSIAN COLLUSION... the Trump-Russia lies are DEAD. God bless Fox News for standing up for the truth.