2016 Presidential Candidate

[nereo]

The scariest part for me was all the praise the lord crap.   I didn't see everything.  Did Trump praise Jesus?

can't recall Trump praising Jesus, but at least half the field seemed to.  As soon as a politician starts talking about the lord and jesus i tend to tune out.  If I want spiritual guidance i go to church.  I'm not comfortable with politics being dictated by faith (especially foreign policy) any more than I"m comfortable with my faith being dictated by current politics.

[Rezdent]

I am pissed that I wasn't able to watch the debate.  No cable, no high-speed internet.  Fox didn't broadcast over their regular open channels, which I am now considering to boycott.

[dramaman]

Kasich came across as the most reasonable.

Bush was mostly forgettable - is he supposed to be a front runner? He comes across so mild, that I wonder how much he even wants the job.

Carson seemed out of his league - hesitant - I get the impression that he's just used to delivering a single stump speech.

Rubio quipped that he lived paycheck to paycheck a few years ago - isn't he still living paycheck to paycheck?

I liked Christie's position regarding SSN and would be willing to accept moving the age back 2 years and some means testing. But what about raising the withholding income limits?

Enjoyed the exchange between Christie and Paul on privacy rights, which are important to me.

Paul also had the most reasonable position regarding Iran. I just think Rand comes across as unlikable.

Walker was mostly forgettable (except for his comment about wife, 2 daughters and a motorcycle). Still Walker gets credit in that only he was willing to give specific answers regarding how he might handle a future foreign policy challenge differently than Obama. Everyone else just offered meaningless platitudes - show leadership, show steel, be tougher, blah, blah, blah.

Cruz and Huckabee seem to fade into the background now that Trump is out-crazying them, sucking most of the air from the room.

And Trump was Trump. He made the night entertaining in all his no-apology outrageousness. I'd never want the guy as President, but to be honest, I probably wouldn't have made an appointment to watch the debate if he had not been up there on stage.

[Bob W]

All good points.  For me it was a reminder that Kasich is really, really experienced.

[Mississippi Mudstache]

Kasich came across as the most reasonable.

That's because he is. He actually has admitted that climate change is a problem that needs to be addressed, he expanded Medicaid in Ohio after the passage of ACA, and he has said that repeal of the ACA was "not gonna happen" and stated that "The opposition to it was really either political or ideological." Unfortunately he's been backpedaling on some of his progressive stances to try and align himself with the Republican base, announcing that he's "not sure" what's causing climate change (really??) and stating that his comments in support of ACA only referred to the Medicaid expansion, not the law itself. Oh well, that just makes my vote that much easier to cast for the Democratic nominee.

[MDM]

...he's "not sure" what's causing climate change (really??)

Seems an eminently sensible position.  Before this thread gets derailed, see http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/continue-the-blog-conversation/are-climate-skeptics-always-anti-science/ for various well reasoned perspectives on this issue.  Unfortunately some perspectives were more ad hominem than well reasoned so the thread was locked.

[Mississippi Mudstache]

...he's "not sure" what's causing climate change (really??)

Seems an eminently sensible position.  Before this thread gets derailed, see http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/continue-the-blog-conversation/are-climate-skeptics-always-anti-science/ for various well reasoned perspectives on this issue.  Unfortunately some perspectives were more ad hominem than well reasoned so the thread was locked.

I don't believe for a moment that he isn't sure. I do believe that he's shelving his personal beliefs for political gain. I used to be a climate change denier myself, not so very long ago, so I'm quite familiar with every argument against human causes. And it seemed that most of the discussion in the thread that you referenced implicitly admitted that human-caused CO2 emissions were driving climate change - the only rational argument at this point seems to be about the severity of the predicted changes (and I do agree that this is far from certain, but I don't believe that means we shouldn't be doing anything about it).

[Bob W]

...he's "not sure" what's causing climate change (really??)

Seems an eminently sensible position.  Before this thread gets derailed, see http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/continue-the-blog-conversation/are-climate-skeptics-always-anti-science/ for various well reasoned perspectives on this issue.  Unfortunately some perspectives were more ad hominem than well reasoned so the thread was locked.

I don't believe for a moment that he isn't sure. I do believe that he's shelving his personal beliefs for political gain. I used to be a climate change denier myself, not so very long ago, so I'm quite familiar with every argument against human causes. And it seemed that most of the discussion in the thread that you referenced implicitly admitted that human-caused CO2 emissions were driving climate change - the only rational argument at this point seems to be about the severity of the predicted changes (and I do agree that this is far from certain, but I don't believe that means we shouldn't be doing anything about it).

Glad you converted!   To me it is appalling that the Republican, Energy Party keeps up the climate change is not caused by fossil fuels rhetoric.   How embarrassed most these highly educated men be towing that line of shit?  They'll all have to roll over on it eventually.  Why not this year?

[sol]

That's because he is. He actually has admitted that climate change is a problem that needs to be addressed, he expanded Medicaid in Ohio after the passage of ACA, and he has said that repeal of the ACA was "not gonna happen"

Whew, good thing he can't possibly win the primary, then.  The only possible threat to a centrist Hillary presidency is a non-loony republican candidate.  Fortunately, I'm pretty sure only loons will survive their primary.

the only rational argument at this point seems to be about the severity of the predicted changes (and I do agree that this is far from certain, but I don't believe that means we shouldn't be doing anything about it).

Keep in mind that the remaining uncertainty about the severity of climate response to greenhouse gas inputs is entirely a question of timing.  All of the worst case impacts still arrive eventually, it's just a matter of how long before they happen.

Some folks like to argue that the low-sensitivity climate possibility makes things almost tolerably disastrous by the end of the century, instead of truly catastrophic, without recognizing that this scenario just delays that catastrophy, not avoids it.

Eventually, all of earth's glaciers below 10k feet will melt.  The ocean will warm, the ice sheets will collapse, island nations will disappear, most of Bangladesh will cease to exist, the permafrost will mostly melt, hundreds of species will cease to exist outside of zoos and thousands more will just be gone.  Ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns will shift, severely alerting local climate by swapping historical weather patterns with other places.  Most coral reefs will drown, agriculture and forestry will undergo dramatic long term restructuring, and humanity will spend billions on adaptive infrastructure to deal with it all.

The only unknown question is whether this is a 50 year timeline or a 500 year timeline.  In the context of earth history, those are both essentially instantaneous changes.

[Jack]

The times article (watch for copyright violations, BTW) does put its finger on one thing I have been expecting: backlash against the leftist statist trend of the last several years...

So I see lots of backlash against "leftists"*, but where's the backlash against statists? All I see leading the GOP field are a bunch of totalitarian corpro-fascist dominionists (give or take the slightly-less despotic Paul Ryan) The few reasonable Republicans have no chance according to Fox News, and were shunned accordingly.

(* Well, not really -- I see a lot of extreme rightists claiming there to be a backlash against policies that are actually moderate.)

That's because he is. He actually has admitted that climate change is a problem that needs to be addressed, he expanded Medicaid in Ohio after the passage of ACA, and he has said that repeal of the ACA was "not gonna happen"

Whew, good thing he can't possibly win the primary, then.  The only possible threat to a centrist Hillary presidency is a non-loony republican candidate.  Fortunately, I'm pretty sure only loons will survive their primary.

What's "fortunate" about that? Hillary may be preferable to the totalitarian corpro-fascist dominionists, but that only means she'd be a disaster of slightly lesser magnitude.

[MoonShadow]

...he's "not sure" what's causing climate change (really??)

Seems an eminently sensible position.  Before this thread gets derailed, see http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/continue-the-blog-conversation/are-climate-skeptics-always-anti-science/ for various well reasoned perspectives on this issue.  Unfortunately some perspectives were more ad hominem than well reasoned so the thread was locked.

I don't believe for a moment that he isn't sure. I do believe that he's shelving his personal beliefs for political gain. I used to be a climate change denier myself, not so very long ago, so I'm quite familiar with every argument against human causes

Well, I used to be a Green in my young adult years.  Then I studied the science for myself, and realized that it's all too complex for such simple predictions; and no one really knows what the long term effects of a doubling of carbon in the atmosphere would do.  The irony is that there is only one scalable method of carbon zero energy that is presently available to us, and that method isn't politically possible either.

[forummm]

the only rational argument at this point seems to be about the severity of the predicted changes (and I do agree that this is far from certain, but I don't believe that means we shouldn't be doing anything about it).

Keep in mind that the remaining uncertainty about the severity of climate response to greenhouse gas inputs is entirely a question of timing.  All of the worst case impacts still arrive eventually, it's just a matter of how long before they happen.

Some folks like to argue that the low-sensitivity climate possibility makes things almost tolerably disastrous by the end of the century, instead of truly catastrophic, without recognizing that this scenario just delays that catastrophy, not avoids it.

Eventually, all of earth's glaciers below 10k feet will melt.  The ocean will warm, the ice sheets will collapse, island nations will disappear, most of Bangladesh will cease to exist, the permafrost will mostly melt, hundreds of species will cease to exist outside of zoos and thousands more will just be gone.  Ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns will shift, severely alerting local climate by swapping historical weather patterns with other places.  Most coral reefs will drown, agriculture and forestry will undergo dramatic long term restructuring, and humanity will spend billions on adaptive infrastructure to deal with it all.

The only unknown question is whether this is a 50 year timeline or a 500 year timeline.  In the context of earth history, those are both essentially instantaneous changes.

I don't think people understand how expensive it could be to deal with the consequences. When rain stops falling in one place and starts falling in another, we could build a bunch of infrastructure to reroute the water to where we want it to be. But that will be really expensive and require a lot of energy to pump all that water in perpetuity (water is expensive to pump uphill). But what about loss of fisheries due to the ocean becoming too acidic? That's hard to even compensate for. And losing huge amounts of coastline (where the expensive real estate is). Manhattan is basically at sea level, as is much of Florida. Losing all that real estate and then moving all those people somewhere else will be expensive. And then all the unrest and refugees from nations that are going underwater. There could be a lot of global conflict. And wars are expensive too.

On the other side, the cost of going carbon free isn't that high. Solar power has plummeted in price. It's now beating out coal and nuclear in certain places based on price. With the costs continuing to fall as the scale rises, it's probably going to be taking over the grid in the nearish future. The engineering issues will be in enabling sufficient grid storage to meet nighttime demand, but those are solvable if we try, especially by integrating electric vehicles into the grid. And electric vehicles are already cheaper from a TCO standpoint. As people become more familiar with them and the batteries continue to get better, they are going to take over new car sales as well.

If we wait for markets to figure things out with the current incentive system (where carbon and other pollutants are not priced), it will take a lot longer for the transition to occur. During which time we put another 100PPM CO2 or so up there. If we just priced in the externalities through a carbon tax (and sent a check to each person for the per capita amount of the total revenue received so the tax would be revenue neutral and sunset itself over time) it would accelerate that transition in an efficient and market based manner.

[Mississippi Mudstache]

The irony is that there is only one scalable method of carbon zero energy that is presently available to us, and that method isn't politically possible either.

The thing that pisses me off is that it's only infeasible politically. There's no reason we shouldn't be transitioning to a solar-based energy system on a massive scale right now.

[beltim]

The irony is that there is only one scalable method of carbon zero energy that is presently available to us, and that method isn't politically possible either.

The thing that pisses me off is that it's only infeasible politically. There's no reason we shouldn't be transitioning to a solar-based energy system on a massive scale right now.

I think MoonShadow was talking about nuclear.  But, I would argue we are transitioning to a solar (and wind)-based energy system on a massive scale right now.  In the US more than half of new power generation brought online in 2014 was either solar or wind:  http://cleantechnica.com/2015/02/03/solar-wind-53-new-us-electricity-capacity-2014/

[MoonShadow]

The irony is that there is only one scalable method of carbon zero energy that is presently available to us, and that method isn't politically possible either.

The thing that pisses me off is that it's only infeasible politically. There's no reason we shouldn't be transitioning to a solar-based energy system on a massive scale right now.

I think MoonShadow was talking about nuclear.

Yes, I was.  Solar will have it's place, but it doesn't scale well enough to ever be a base power generation source, regardless of how much sun there is.

[Mississippi Mudstache]

The irony is that there is only one scalable method of carbon zero energy that is presently available to us, and that method isn't politically possible either.

The thing that pisses me off is that it's only infeasible politically. There's no reason we shouldn't be transitioning to a solar-based energy system on a massive scale right now.

I think MoonShadow was talking about nuclear.

Yes, I was.  Solar will have it's place, but it doesn't scale well enough to ever be a base power generation source, regardless of how much sun there is.

Okay, well, I think you're wrong on that count. But I'm very much in favor of expanding nuclear power as well, to establish a steady source of power to act as a baseline for the electrical grid, along with hydro. And to beltim I would argue that we are only adding additional capacity in the form of solar and wind, when we need to be replacing fossil fuel with renewables.

[GuitarStv]

We just need better batteries and solar will scale nicely.  Nuclear is great . . . but is a pretty short term solution.  At current consumption rates, there's only enough Uranium to last about 80 years.  Build more plants and you're just reducing the amount of time it's a viable option.

[beltim]

The irony is that there is only one scalable method of carbon zero energy that is presently available to us, and that method isn't politically possible either.

The thing that pisses me off is that it's only infeasible politically. There's no reason we shouldn't be transitioning to a solar-based energy system on a massive scale right now.

I think MoonShadow was talking about nuclear.

Yes, I was.  Solar will have it's place, but it doesn't scale well enough to ever be a base power generation source, regardless of how much sun there is.

Okay, well, I think you're wrong on that count. But I'm very much in favor of expanding nuclear power as well, to establish a steady source of power to act as a baseline for the electrical grid, along with hydro. And to beltim I would argue that we are only adding additional capacity in the form of solar and wind, when we need to be replacing fossil fuel with renewables.

Okay.  This year about 13 MW of coal is scheduled to be taken offline, which will be more than replaced by wind and solar: http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=20292

Solar has really only been economically competitive with carbon-intensive power sources in the past few years, so it's not really a surprise that it's ramping up very quickly now, or that it's taken until the past few years to ramp up so much.

[Midwest]

We just need better batteries and solar will scale nicely.  Nuclear is great . . . but is a pretty short term solution.  At current consumption rates, there's only enough Uranium to last about 80 years.  Build more plants and you're just reducing the amount of time it's a viable option.

What about the negative environmental impact of the batteries?  Is that an issue?

Also, nuclear has some serious downsides that need to be considered.  Seems like it could be worse than using fossil fuels.

[forummm]

The irony is that there is only one scalable method of carbon zero energy that is presently available to us, and that method isn't politically possible either.

The thing that pisses me off is that it's only infeasible politically. There's no reason we shouldn't be transitioning to a solar-based energy system on a massive scale right now.

I think MoonShadow was talking about nuclear.

Yes, I was.  Solar will have it's place, but it doesn't scale well enough to ever be a base power generation source, regardless of how much sun there is.

Okay, well, I think you're wrong on that count. But I'm very much in favor of expanding nuclear power as well, to establish a steady source of power to act as a baseline for the electrical grid, along with hydro. And to beltim I would argue that we are only adding additional capacity in the form of solar and wind, when we need to be replacing fossil fuel with renewables.

Actually, what's been happening is that solar, wind, and gas have been replacing coal. Electricity consumption has been relatively constant (increased efficiency offset by increased population).
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/

The baseload nighttime power demands are not as high as you'd think. They can be pretty well handled in many locations with current and new wind (with some storage), current hydro, current nuclear, and current geothermal. Gas (including landfill gas) or additional nuclear could be used to make up shortfalls. But solar thermal or solar plus storage are also possibilities. Solar thermal plants can operate around 20 hours per day by storing the heat in molten salts.

[forummm]

http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/why-not-nuclear-energy/

[Mississippi Mudstache]

Okay.  This year about 13 MW of coal is scheduled to be taken offline, which will be more than replaced by wind and solar: http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=20292

Solar has really only been economically competitive with carbon-intensive power sources in the past few years, so it's not really a surprise that it's ramping up very quickly now, or that it's taken until the past few years to ramp up so much.

I thought you were joking, but then I realized you meant they will be taking about 13,000 MW of coal power offline this year. As single typical coal plant is about 600 MW. That's nice. Let's assume these power plants operate at 50% capacity for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That's about 61 TWh. The U.S. consumes 25,000 TWh of energy each year. So we're talking about 0.24% of our energy consumption. I guess it's a start, but it's drop in the bucket.

I would argue that solar is only now catching up to fossil fuels in economic competitiveness because it's so convenient to disregard the negative externalities of fossil fuel consumption. If we accounted for the true costs, the picture wouldn't be so pretty.

[MoonShadow]

We just need better batteries and solar will scale nicely.  Nuclear is great . . . but is a pretty short term solution.  At current consumption rates, there's only enough Uranium to last about 80 years.  Build more plants and you're just reducing the amount of time it's a viable option.

Well, to start, this is off by about 120 years, and that is only considering the amount of economicly accessible uranium 235.  It does not consider possible technological improvements in mining ability (think fracking for uranium mining).  Nor does it consider the use of breed & feed power reactor designs, to transmutate uranium 238 into plutonium 239 and burn it in place.  And most importantly, it doesn't even consider the abundance of thorium, for which all of it is transmutable & fissile, and is roughly three times more abundant in the Earth's crust than tin.

[beltim]

Okay.  This year about 13 MW of coal is scheduled to be taken offline, which will be more than replaced by wind and solar: http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=20292

Solar has really only been economically competitive with carbon-intensive power sources in the past few years, so it's not really a surprise that it's ramping up very quickly now, or that it's taken until the past few years to ramp up so much.

I thought you were joking, but then I realized you meant they will be taking about 14,000 MW of coal (and petroleum) power offline this year. As single typical coal plant is about 600 MW. That's nice. Let's assume these power plants operate at 50% capacity for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That's about 61 TWh. The U.S. consumes 25,000 TWh of energy each year. So we're talking about 0.24% of our energy consumption. I guess it's a start, but it's drop in the bucket.

I would argue that solar is only now catching up to fossil fuels in economic competitiveness because it's so convenient to disregard the negative externalities of fossil fuel consumption. If we accounted for the true costs, the picture wouldn't be so pretty.

Oops.  Yes, I meant GW.

That 13 GW represents about 4% of US coal generation, so that seems like a decently large change for 1 year.  That would result in complete elimination of the use of coal in 25 years.

I agree that negative externalities should be taken into account, but the (fairly limited) reading that I've done on those still would only have moved economic competitiveness by a few years at most.

[MoonShadow]

Also, nuclear has some serious downsides that need to be considered.  Seems like it could be worse than using fossil fuels.

Worse than catastrophic climate change?  Nuclear certainly has some risks related to it, but compared to coal, it has an excellent life safety track record; and the externalities are really low.  I've worked at both kinds of power plants.  I would live near a nuke plant, but I would not live within a mile of a coal plant.  Nothing green still grows around Beckjord power plant on the Ohio River in Ohio east of Cincinnati.  There is more radioactivity released into the immediate environment by Beckjord alone in a single year than all of the nuke plants in the United States have ever done, including 3 Mile Island.

[Bob W]

the only rational argument at this point seems to be about the severity of the predicted changes (and I do agree that this is far from certain, but I don't believe that means we shouldn't be doing anything about it).

Keep in mind that the remaining uncertainty about the severity of climate response to greenhouse gas inputs is entirely a question of timing.  All of the worst case impacts still arrive eventually, it's just a matter of how long before they happen.

Some folks like to argue that the low-sensitivity climate possibility makes things almost tolerably disastrous by the end of the century, instead of truly catastrophic, without recognizing that this scenario just delays that catastrophy, not avoids it.

Eventually, all of earth's glaciers below 10k feet will melt.  The ocean will warm, the ice sheets will collapse, island nations will disappear, most of Bangladesh will cease to exist, the permafrost will mostly melt, hundreds of species will cease to exist outside of zoos and thousands more will just be gone.  Ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns will shift, severely alerting local climate by swapping historical weather patterns with other places.  Most coral reefs will drown, agriculture and forestry will undergo dramatic long term restructuring, and humanity will spend billions on adaptive infrastructure to deal with it all.

The only unknown question is whether this is a 50 year timeline or a 500 year timeline.  In the context of earth history, those are both essentially instantaneous changes.

I don't think people understand how expensive it could be to deal with the consequences. When rain stops falling in one place and starts falling in another, we could build a bunch of infrastructure to reroute the water to where we want it to be. But that will be really expensive and require a lot of energy to pump all that water in perpetuity (water is expensive to pump uphill). But what about loss of fisheries due to the ocean becoming too acidic? That's hard to even compensate for. And losing huge amounts of coastline (where the expensive real estate is). Manhattan is basically at sea level, as is much of Florida. Losing all that real estate and then moving all those people somewhere else will be expensive. And then all the unrest and refugees from nations that are going underwater. There could be a lot of global conflict. And wars are expensive too.

On the other side, the cost of going carbon free isn't that high. Solar power has plummeted in price. It's now beating out coal and nuclear in certain places based on price. With the costs continuing to fall as the scale rises, it's probably going to be taking over the grid in the nearish future. The engineering issues will be in enabling sufficient grid storage to meet nighttime demand, but those are solvable if we try, especially by integrating electric vehicles into the grid. And electric vehicles are already cheaper from a TCO standpoint. As people become more familiar with them and the batteries continue to get better, they are going to take over new car sales as well.

If we wait for markets to figure things out with the current incentive system (where carbon and other pollutants are not priced), it will take a lot longer for the transition to occur. During which time we put another 100PPM CO2 or so up there. If we just priced in the externalities through a carbon tax (and sent a check to each person for the per capita amount of the total revenue received so the tax would be revenue neutral and sunset itself over time) it would accelerate that transition in an efficient and market based manner.

Love that thinking -- I think the total cost of removing the current and newly produced carbon back to 1800 levels (probably still not enough really) would be in the 10s of trillions if not hundreds over a 10 year time period.  So lets be conservative and say 5 Trillion per year.  That is a very doable number worldwide. 

What would that raise a gallon of gas to do you think? And coal?  I'm just guessing the gas would cost $100 per gallon at that rate.    So perhaps I'm off by a factor of 5 on the annual cost and it will only cost 1 trillion (probably that would support 1000 decarbonanation sequester plants worldwide).  In that case would the tax per gallon only be $20.   

So the problem with a significant gas tax (and I agree we need it) is that it won't provide enough to correct the problem and that very quickly ($5?) people would convert to solar electric and there would be no revenue.   The problem with refunding the money to people is that you then have no money to address the clean up aspect.   This shit just isn't going away on its own. 

 So it probably needs to be a combination of taxes on fossil fuels, incentives for efficiency,  incentives for wind/solar/batteries and massive taxes derived from a non energy source.   We screwed the pooch.   We can pay the fiddler now or our grandkids will die as a result of our stupidity. 

Sad,  very sad. 

[Midwest]

Also, nuclear has some serious downsides that need to be considered.  Seems like it could be worse than using fossil fuels.

Worse than catastrophic climate change?  Nuclear certainly has some risks related to it, but compared to coal, it has an excellent life safety track record; and the externalities are really low.  I've worked at both kinds of power plants.  I would live near a nuke plant, but I would not live within a mile of a coal plant.  Nothing green still grows around Beckjord power plant on the Ohio River in Ohio east of Cincinnati.  There is more radioactivity released into the immediate environment by Beckjord alone in a single year than all of the nuke plants in the United States have ever done, including 3 Mile Island.

I'm posing a question.  What about storage of radioactive waste for the ages? 

[Mississippi Mudstache]

We just need better batteries and solar will scale nicely.  Nuclear is great . . . but is a pretty short term solution.  At current consumption rates, there's only enough Uranium to last about 80 years.  Build more plants and you're just reducing the amount of time it's a viable option.

Well, to start, this is off by about 120 years, and that is only considering the amount of economicly accessible uranium 235.  It does not consider possible technological improvements in mining ability (think fracking for uranium mining).  Nor does it consider the use of breed & feed power reactor designs, to transmutate uranium 238 into plutonium 239 and burn it in place.  And most importantly, it doesn't even consider the abundance of thorium, for which all of it is transmutable & fissile, and is roughly three times more abundant in the Earth's crust than tin.

Moon Shadow is right, GuitarStv's number are unnecessarily pessimistic about our source of fissile material for nuclear energy. There are definitely realistic concerns about nuclear proliferation when you consider the alternatives like U233 and P239, however. Do The Math is a great source of info on this:

Some reactors are designed to be especially efficient at generating 239Pu, and these are called breeder reactors, built to make weapons material. On the energy front, breeders open up 140 times more uranium supply than is found naturally in 235U, by using the ubiquitous 238U nuclei. The principle problem with breeders is that plutonium is chemically distinct from uranium, making it very straightforward to isolate and make bombs. Conversely, the two isotopes of uranium are notoriously difficult to separate (enrich). Enrichment is a significant hurdle to those who strive to have nuclear weapons. Abundant plutonium would change the calculus considerably, tipping the scale toward weapons proliferation.

A similar back-door trick can be used to breed 232Th into fissile 233U (taking a month to work through the beta decays). Thorium is several times more abundant in Earth’s crust than uranium. It’s not fissile out of the ground like 235U is: some assembly required. In that sense, it is not terribly different from 238U. One of the main differences is that the bred 233U is often contaminated with 232U, which has a 69 year half-life and is a prodigious emitter of high-energy gamma radiation along its decay chain. After one year, the escalating radiation level from uranium that is 5 parts per million 232U is seven times higher than that of reactor-grade plutonium, and about 50 times worse than weapons-grade plutonium (reference). And because the gamma ray emission is higher-energy than the corresponding emission from plutonium, it is harder to shield.

[MoonShadow]

Also, nuclear has some serious downsides that need to be considered.  Seems like it could be worse than using fossil fuels.

Worse than catastrophic climate change?  Nuclear certainly has some risks related to it, but compared to coal, it has an excellent life safety track record; and the externalities are really low.  I've worked at both kinds of power plants.  I would live near a nuke plant, but I would not live within a mile of a coal plant.  Nothing green still grows around Beckjord power plant on the Ohio River in Ohio east of Cincinnati.  There is more radioactivity released into the immediate environment by Beckjord alone in a single year than all of the nuke plants in the United States have ever done, including 3 Mile Island.

I'm posing a question.  What about storage of radioactive waste for the ages?

This is a popular misconception actually.  Generally speaking, the half-life of a radioactive isotope and the 'intensity' of the radiation are inversely corrolated.  Said another way, the most dangerous isotopes of fission byproducts have relatively short half-lives, of around 4 to 12 years, depending upon what we are talking about.  A typical light water reactor, like what is found across the US, can only support a critical reaction if the concentration of uranium 235 is above 2% in the core.  So fuel rods are typically 91% uranium 238 and 9% uranium 235 at the beginning of a fuel cycle.  This also means that only about 7% of the total mass of the fuel is actually consumed in a normal fuel cycle.  Some of the U238 is turned into plutonium 239, which is also fissile & quite dangerous, but it remains captive in the rod if it's not consumed.  In Europe, these rods are typically kept for a decade or so in cooling pools, then recycled into new fuel rods, with the byproducts sealed up into balls of leaded glass for long term storage.  However, in the US, the rule is that those rods are kept as they are until they are able to be transported and stored 'long term' in Yucca Mountian

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository)

However, the reason for this difference is geo-political, not environmental.  You see, the US doesn't actually have any significant uranium deposits; so Yucca mountain is actually an artificial uranium/plutonium mine, in the event that the US is cut off from it's sources for geo-political reasons.  The fuel rods stored in Yucca mountain would be economically viable as a source for new fuel rods within 200 years, as the way Europe does it isn't actually economically justifiable, because it's so dangerous to re-process them so soon.  Europe does it mostly as an anti-proliferation program, drawing the plutonium back into the fuel cycle quickly.

So 'long term' in this context is a few hundred years, not the 'tens of thousands' of years claimed by so many articles.

[Glenstache]

<snip> ..... (increased efficiency offset by increased population).

This indirectly/partially gets at one part that nobody seems to talk about: population. Over generational time scales, we desperately need to bring our population explosion under control. People get very touchy about this, but as industrialization presumably proceeds and people want more of everything, the energy requirements increase along with all of the other impacts on the environment. At some point, more is not better. 

[MoonShadow]

<snip> ..... (increased efficiency offset by increased population).

This indirectly/partially gets at one part that nobody seems to talk about: population. Over generational time scales, we desperately need to bring our population explosion under control. People get very touchy about this, but as industrialization presumably proceeds and people want more of everything, the energy requirements increase along with all of the other impacts on the environment. At some point, more is not better.

Presumably, but every professional assessment of what that point is has, so far, been proven wrong.  So we really don't know how large of a population the Earth's bio-system can actually support.

[MDM]

...the remaining uncertainty about the severity of climate response to greenhouse gas inputs is entirely a question of timing.

Some do believe this.  Unfortunately, modeling efforts to this point have not been overly successful, so some believe otherwise.

Arguing about data is one thing.  Arguing about predictive model results is another.

[Jack]

<snip> ..... (increased efficiency offset by increased population).

This indirectly/partially gets at one part that nobody seems to talk about: population. Over generational time scales, we desperately need to bring our population explosion under control. People get very touchy about this, but as industrialization presumably proceeds and people want more of everything, the energy requirements increase along with all of the other impacts on the environment. At some point, more is not better.

We have gotten our population under control. In the developed world, people are breeding below replacement rate and population growth is pretty much entirely due to immigration. Once the rest of the world catches up, total population will stabilize.

It's amazing how many people don't understand the concept of "carrying capacity" and the fact that population growth is not exponential but rather logistic. It only appears to be exponential because up to this point we've been observing the first half of the curve.

(Of course, that assumes that developed countries are allowed to maintain the conditions that caused the afore-mentioned demographic transition to happen. Several of the Republican presidential candidates seem Hell-bent on pushing policies that would cause a Malthusian catastrophe instead.)

[Kris]

By the way, more on topic, after last night's debate, I'm calling it: Donald Trump is going to get the GOP nomination.

[MoonShadow]

By the way, more on topic, after last night's debate, I'm calling it: Donald Trump is going to get the GOP nomination.

God, I hope not.

[Jack]

By the way, more on topic, after last night's debate, I'm calling it: Donald Trump is going to get the GOP nomination.

God, I hope not.

I'm conflicted about the possibility: if Trump and Clinton won their prospective nominations, Clinton would win easily (a marginally good thing).

However, I'd be much happier about a race between Bernie Sanders and a Republican who didn't suck. Although the optimal outcome, a Sanders presidency, would be much less assured, either likely outcome would be better than a Clinton presidency.

[MoonShadow]

However, I'd be much happier about a race between Bernie Sanders and a Republican who didn't suck. Although the optimal outcome, a Sanders presidency, would be much less assured, either likely outcome would be better than a Clinton presidency.

Why would a Sanders presidency be the optimal outcome, in your view?

[KittyCat]

Why would a Sanders presidency be the optimal outcome, in your view?

I can't speak for Jack, but as for myself, from what I have seen and heard (which is admittedly limited), he is much less invested in large corporations, and thus, far less likely to enact policies in their favor solely because of their interests.

[Bob W]

I hear Carly fiarino got some traction from the debate.  I can totally see the Pubs getting behind her.

[MoonShadow]

I hear Carly fiarino got some traction from the debate.  I can totally see the Pubs getting behind her.

Yes she did.  She did very well in the 'undercard' debate, and is likely to make it into the regular debate next time.  I don't think Santorum nor Huckabee stand an ice cube's chance in hell, and Dr. Carson is going to drop out, but stands a good chance of getting Surgeon General appointment out of a winning Repub.  As far as political experience goes, the field is deep, and would make a very experienced cabinet.  Ted Cruz would make a respectable vice or Sec of State, but I think he's aiming high for the actual presidency.  Trump is just Trump, and is doing this for his own ego & to direct the talking points in a direction of his choosing; which is working.  He might also get some kind of concessions from the actual nominee, in return for an endorsement.  Maybe.  I don't think Paul did himself any favors at this debate, but nor do I think that he harmed himself.   I don't know what to think of the rest of them, yet.

[Jack]

However, I'd be much happier about a race between Bernie Sanders and a Republican who didn't suck. Although the optimal outcome, a Sanders presidency, would be much less assured, either likely outcome would be better than a Clinton presidency.

Why would a Sanders presidency be the optimal outcome, in your view?

He has the best position on campaign finance reform, Wall Street reform, tax reform, environmental issues, and trade (all of which Clinton, being the status-quo candidate, is weak on). He's also stronger than Paul Ryan on civil liberties and upholding the Bill of Rights, which is the most important issue of all.

I hear Carly fiarino got some traction from the debate.  I can totally see the Pubs getting behind her.

She sucked at running HP; why would anyone think she'd do any better running America?

[Glenstache]

Ted Cruz would make a respectable vice or Sec of State, but I think he's aiming high for the actual presidency.

The thought of him as a  primary point of contact with other nations for statesmanship and diplomacy in negotiations concerning. The word "diplomacy" does not appear to be in his vocabulary. Manipulative and tenacious, yes. Diplomatic, no.

[zoltani]

Yeah I was surprised to see respectable and ted cruz in the same sentence.

[MoonShadow]

However, I'd be much happier about a race between Bernie Sanders and a Republican who didn't suck. Although the optimal outcome, a Sanders presidency, would be much less assured, either likely outcome would be better than a Clinton presidency.

Why would a Sanders presidency be the optimal outcome, in your view?

He has the best position on campaign finance reform, Wall Street reform, tax reform, environmental issues, and trade (all of which Clinton, being the status-quo candidate, is weak on). He's also stronger than Paul Ryan on civil liberties and upholding the Bill of Rights, which is the most important issue of all.

I don't think I agree with any of that.  From what I've seen, all of his positions are either vague or impossible.  Also, he's a self-described socialist after such ideas were already proven self-destructive a generation ago; so how do you expect him to know how to do any of the things he claims to support?

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/wp-content/files_mf/1353953160genovesethequestion.pdf

I hear Carly fiarino got some traction from the debate.  I can totally see the Pubs getting behind her.

She sucked at running HP; why would anyone think she'd do any better running America?

Running a company is, fortunately, not a very good indicator of a good political leader.  Steve Jobs would have made for an incredibly incompetent president, imho.  So, as far as I'm concerned, her history as a CEO of HP is neither a point in her favor, nor against.

[MoonShadow]

Ted Cruz would make a respectable vice or Sec of State, but I think he's aiming high for the actual presidency.

The thought of him as a  primary point of contact with other nations for statesmanship and diplomacy in negotiations concerning. The word "diplomacy" does not appear to be in his vocabulary. Manipulative and tenacious, yes. Diplomatic, no.

That was never a requirement for Clinton or Kerry, so what would that matter now?

[Kris]

Ted Cruz would make a respectable vice or Sec of State, but I think he's aiming high for the actual presidency.

The thought of him as a  primary point of contact with other nations for statesmanship and diplomacy in negotiations concerning. The word "diplomacy" does not appear to be in his vocabulary. Manipulative and tenacious, yes. Diplomatic, no.

That was never a requirement for Clinton or Kerry, so what would that matter now?

MoonShadow, that's just silly. Whether you like Clinton or Kerry (and I am no fan of Clinton), they both have considerable diplomatic experience. Cruz has nothing. 

Preference is one thing.  But come on. Be honest.

[MoonShadow]

Ted Cruz would make a respectable vice or Sec of State, but I think he's aiming high for the actual presidency.

The thought of him as a  primary point of contact with other nations for statesmanship and diplomacy in negotiations concerning. The word "diplomacy" does not appear to be in his vocabulary. Manipulative and tenacious, yes. Diplomatic, no.

That was never a requirement for Clinton or Kerry, so what would that matter now?

MoonShadow, that's just silly. Whether you like Clinton or Kerry (and I am no fan of Clinton), they both have considerable diplomatic experience. Cruz has nothing. 

Preference is one thing.  But come on. Be honest.

I am being honest.  They both have diplomatic experience, yes; mostly since being appointed to Sec of State.  But neither of them are diplomatic.  Both suffer from a terminal misunderstanding of the cultures they are/were expected to engage.  Clinton didn't really bother, save for her self interests & the Clinton Foundation; but at least Kerry honestly tried, but got his lunch eaten by a group whose history & official religion openly support lying to outsiders for personal and collective gain.

As for preferences, I voted for Kerry in 2004, but the lessor of evils is still evil.

[forummm]

the only rational argument at this point seems to be about the severity of the predicted changes (and I do agree that this is far from certain, but I don't believe that means we shouldn't be doing anything about it).

Keep in mind that the remaining uncertainty about the severity of climate response to greenhouse gas inputs is entirely a question of timing.  All of the worst case impacts still arrive eventually, it's just a matter of how long before they happen.

Some folks like to argue that the low-sensitivity climate possibility makes things almost tolerably disastrous by the end of the century, instead of truly catastrophic, without recognizing that this scenario just delays that catastrophy, not avoids it.

Eventually, all of earth's glaciers below 10k feet will melt.  The ocean will warm, the ice sheets will collapse, island nations will disappear, most of Bangladesh will cease to exist, the permafrost will mostly melt, hundreds of species will cease to exist outside of zoos and thousands more will just be gone.  Ocean and atmospheric circulation patterns will shift, severely alerting local climate by swapping historical weather patterns with other places.  Most coral reefs will drown, agriculture and forestry will undergo dramatic long term restructuring, and humanity will spend billions on adaptive infrastructure to deal with it all.

The only unknown question is whether this is a 50 year timeline or a 500 year timeline.  In the context of earth history, those are both essentially instantaneous changes.

I don't think people understand how expensive it could be to deal with the consequences. When rain stops falling in one place and starts falling in another, we could build a bunch of infrastructure to reroute the water to where we want it to be. But that will be really expensive and require a lot of energy to pump all that water in perpetuity (water is expensive to pump uphill). But what about loss of fisheries due to the ocean becoming too acidic? That's hard to even compensate for. And losing huge amounts of coastline (where the expensive real estate is). Manhattan is basically at sea level, as is much of Florida. Losing all that real estate and then moving all those people somewhere else will be expensive. And then all the unrest and refugees from nations that are going underwater. There could be a lot of global conflict. And wars are expensive too.

On the other side, the cost of going carbon free isn't that high. Solar power has plummeted in price. It's now beating out coal and nuclear in certain places based on price. With the costs continuing to fall as the scale rises, it's probably going to be taking over the grid in the nearish future. The engineering issues will be in enabling sufficient grid storage to meet nighttime demand, but those are solvable if we try, especially by integrating electric vehicles into the grid. And electric vehicles are already cheaper from a TCO standpoint. As people become more familiar with them and the batteries continue to get better, they are going to take over new car sales as well.

If we wait for markets to figure things out with the current incentive system (where carbon and other pollutants are not priced), it will take a lot longer for the transition to occur. During which time we put another 100PPM CO2 or so up there. If we just priced in the externalities through a carbon tax (and sent a check to each person for the per capita amount of the total revenue received so the tax would be revenue neutral and sunset itself over time) it would accelerate that transition in an efficient and market based manner.

Love that thinking -- I think the total cost of removing the current and newly produced carbon back to 1800 levels (probably still not enough really) would be in the 10s of trillions if not hundreds over a 10 year time period.  So lets be conservative and say 5 Trillion per year.  That is a very doable number worldwide. 

What would that raise a gallon of gas to do you think? And coal?  I'm just guessing the gas would cost $100 per gallon at that rate.    So perhaps I'm off by a factor of 5 on the annual cost and it will only cost 1 trillion (probably that would support 1000 decarbonanation sequester plants worldwide).  In that case would the tax per gallon only be $20.   

So the problem with a significant gas tax (and I agree we need it) is that it won't provide enough to correct the problem and that very quickly ($5?) people would convert to solar electric and there would be no revenue.   The problem with refunding the money to people is that you then have no money to address the clean up aspect.   This shit just isn't going away on its own. 

 So it probably needs to be a combination of taxes on fossil fuels, incentives for efficiency,  incentives for wind/solar/batteries and massive taxes derived from a non energy source.   We screwed the pooch.   We can pay the fiddler now or our grandkids will die as a result of our stupidity. 

Sad,  very sad.

The first step is to stop dumping more into the air. After we can get there, maybe we can start to remove some from the air somehow. I think a ratcheting tax that starts at $100 per ton of CO2 equivalent and goes up $10/year for 10 years to cap at $200 would be more than enough to do the job. That equates to about $1 per gallon of gas ($2 after 10 years) or 5 cents per kWh of coal or 2.5 cents per kWh of natural gas. That would probably be enough to get utilities to shift to solar and wind quickly and for motorists to switch to electric cars without subsidies. I'm sure some businesses will engage in creative financing models where the sales price of your electric car can be dropped in advance by signing over your next X years of carbon tax rebate payments.

[forummm]

Ted Cruz would make a respectable vice or Sec of State, but I think he's aiming high for the actual presidency.

The thought of him as a  primary point of contact with other nations for statesmanship and diplomacy in negotiations concerning. The word "diplomacy" does not appear to be in his vocabulary. Manipulative and tenacious, yes. Diplomatic, no.

That was never a requirement for Clinton or Kerry, so what would that matter now?

MoonShadow, that's just silly. Whether you like Clinton or Kerry (and I am no fan of Clinton), they both have considerable diplomatic experience. Cruz has nothing. 

Preference is one thing.  But come on. Be honest.

I am being honest.  They both have diplomatic experience, yes; mostly since being appointed to Sec of State.  But neither of them are diplomatic.  Both suffer from a terminal misunderstanding of the cultures they are/were expected to engage.  Clinton didn't really bother, save for her self interests & the Clinton Foundation; but at least Kerry honestly tried, but got his lunch eaten by a group whose history & official religion openly support lying to outsiders for personal and collective gain.

As for preferences, I voted for Kerry in 2004, but the lessor of evils is still evil.

Re the bold: I'm confused. Are you talking about the Republicans and Swift Boaters during the campaign?

Also, other than being born outside the country, I don't know why you would think Cruz would be a good SoS. He's perhaps the most inflammatory and least diplomatic member of the Senate. He would be a disaster.

[Kris]

Ted Cruz would make a respectable vice or Sec of State, but I think he's aiming high for the actual presidency.

The thought of him as a  primary point of contact with other nations for statesmanship and diplomacy in negotiations concerning. The word "diplomacy" does not appear to be in his vocabulary. Manipulative and tenacious, yes. Diplomatic, no.

That was never a requirement for Clinton or Kerry, so what would that matter now?

MoonShadow, that's just silly. Whether you like Clinton or Kerry (and I am no fan of Clinton), they both have considerable diplomatic experience. Cruz has nothing. 

Preference is one thing.  But come on. Be honest.

I am being honest.  They both have diplomatic experience, yes; mostly since being appointed to Sec of State.  But neither of them are diplomatic.  Both suffer from a terminal misunderstanding of the cultures they are/were expected to engage.  Clinton didn't really bother, save for her self interests & the Clinton Foundation; but at least Kerry honestly tried, but got his lunch eaten by a group whose history & official religion openly support lying to outsiders for personal and collective gain.

As for preferences, I voted for Kerry in 2004, but the lessor of evils is still evil.

Look, you may be right as far as they are concerned. But seriously, you are trying to put Ted Cruz on that level? Jesus, man.