Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to Wrong! You wrote: "Nuclear is the ONLY possible scalable technology out there"

(1) We have been through all of this before
Davin :. — (archived)

and (2) You are confused about your logical fallacies. Saying that Nuclear is the only proven scalable technology out there that can replace fossil is not argumentum ad ignorantiam. Your claim about Sea Solar Power, however, is. You are basically saying I can't prove Sea Solar Power wont work (and I can't because it is an emerging technology with little practical data), so therefore it is a viable transition technology. Google it [argument from ignorance] up, David.

Sea Solar Power may very well work, but its simply not proven. Again: Jesus Christ may come down from the clouds and turn wine into light sweet crude, but I'm not going to bank on it.

"Even the most optimistic proponents of nuclear power say that it would only last for a few hundred years, and that would require the breeder. "

And trying to think beyond that is a little absurd, don't you think? In 100 years, we could quite concievbably have fusion generators in our basements and anti-mater injected sports cars in our garages.

"Now, of course, you are going to tell me that it can't possibly work, will be too expensive, .... "

No, I won't, I will tell you that very little or no large scale efforts have been made to use the technology to produce energy in the multi-megawat range, sustained and reliably. Until then it remains one of many possible replacements. Nuclear is the only one out there that is proven and scalable. That makes it the only possible transition technology if we have to get off oil in the next 20 years.

I can also tell you that I have read some fairly convincing stuff suggesting that the environmental impact of tens of thousands of floating generators messing up the thermal layers of the area they operate in may be pretty large, and may result in local and global climate changes. There is simply a lot we don't know about sea solar.

I am not dismissing anything: Solar (land or sea) may mature, the Anything To Oli process might turn out to work well, Fusion might pay off[*], who knows.... I do NOT LIKE the idea of a world chok full of fission reactors, not one bit. But the idea of a Dark Planet and the end of industrial civilization (with the necessary 'scale back' of population and/or wealth) concerns me a LOT more. I don't want to do Chicken Little, but it could bring a whole new meaning to thee term 'dark age'.

HOWEVER, I would not bank the future of modern civilization on technologies that are not proven when we have to begin the transition SOON if we are going to not suffer migtily in the coming decades.

" have been involved in Sea Solar Power for the past 30 years, and I know differently"

Okay, while you are looking up Argument from Ignorance, look up Argument from Authority. I know people who have been doing software engineering for 30 years who I would not trust to program my VCR clock. I'm not saying that I think you don't know what youre talking about, but I am not alone convinced by a simple claim of expertise.

Davin L.

* Improvement in computational techniques alone have cause rapid and substantial gains in Magnetic Confinment fusion. in the last 10 years there has been huge progress towards in/out unity! Fusion would be the goose that lays the golden eggs, but I'm not banking on it.

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