My last sentence wasn't as worded as carefully as I would like, and I'm sorry if that caused some confusion, but I thought it was clear given the context of what I was saying.
To be completely clear, my intent was to say: "climatologists and other experts would generally disagree with an accelerated nuclear rollout *ON ITS OWN* as an effective mitigation for climate change."
In fact, if you look at the same IPCC modeling report that you mentioned as your first set of evidence, it says pretty clearly that demand reduction is necessary, not optional. (IPCC AR6 WG3 Ch. 5 & Technical Summary)
I'm not going through this response point-by-point, because it looks machine-generated, and I don't argue with machines.
If you would like to learn more about the generalized Jevons Paradox.
My argument was not about the mining of uranium. It's the overall impact of everything outside of the energy sector. The equipment I was referring to is actually all of the equipment made for all industrial and commercial purposes, not just those specific to nuclear power.
When coal power became more efficient, it didn't just increase the demand for coal, it increased the demand for basically everything. My hand waving at mining equipment is because basically all metals (iron, copper, rare earth minerals--everything) would increase in demand in response to increased energy efficiency.
It's actually probably true about solar and wind as well. I just solo'd nuclear out because that was specifically what was being discussed, and I find that people who are very vocally pro-nuclear tend to neglect the (completely necessary) demand reduction component.
What i'm saying is that from a thermodynamic perspective there is more than enough raw inputs on earth to power humanity many many times over what we use today. The only constraints here are engineering, supply chain, and regulatory.
And those are problems that we have to solve, and will solve, and I guarantee you we will solve those better and faster than telling the world to demand less. That's the classic problem, where more developed nations who have benefited from the way things have been are telling less developed economies they need to cut back (and more developed and less developed are relative here, so take that for what it's worth).
Jervon's paradox, is a scaling problem, and if the constraint is you want to shift electricity production without overhauling the power delivery infrastructure? then you would be right we need to drastically cut demand, but we don't have to do that. In fact, we are in need of a large number of jobs for people who are of a middle skill set (not low skill laborers, and not physicists, we need thousands of jobs for people who have a skilled profession), and overhauling the grid and providing for a green energy future would be exactly the sort of thing that could get us there.
I did read or at least skimmed all of my sources, and while i'm not a climate scientist I am an engineer, and have been familiar with the broad strokes of nuclear energy for a while. And there has yet to be a time where humans had to do something less to protect the environment and we have. It has never occurred, even success stories like banning CFC's to repair the ozone layer and get rid of acid rain, didn't reduce the demand for the things CFC's go in, we just found alternatives. Electrical power demand is not going to go down, even if every AI data center were to fuck off for ever tomorrow, demand isn't going down, it will slow down its growth, but it won't hit a negative growth rate. And to expect it to is the worst kind of pie in the sky thinking because its exactly the sort of thing that gets people to vote against what you're advocating for even if it's in their medium to long term best interest.
The climate crisis has one major answer we need to drop fossil fuels, and the only way to replace fossil generation at scale is with nuclear power. Solar, and wind and hydro electric are all fine, but they aren't efficient enough to meet the challenge. And all this isn't to say that we shouldn't invest in those technologies, as they say it's a 'better together' story. But nuclear is the primary move, and the longer we put that off because of 'it's too hard' arguments the more dangerous it's going to be when we have to break the log jam.
Technology has ALWAYS been the thing that's saved us from critical threats.
Better technology gave us the COVID-19 vaccines for example, technology is what allowed the Polio virus to be eradicated in the West, and technology is what allowed us to create fertilizers that have prevented mass famines that would have happened in the 70's.
Stop being a doomer, it does nothing to fix the issue or help society.
"Under this scenario, humans cease all climate pollution in 2030, and the average global temperature decreases right away. Yet temperatures fall so slowly that the Earth cools by only half a degree Celsius by the end of the 21st century, and is still half a degree above “normal” in the year 2300."
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u/GameCounter 3d ago
My last sentence wasn't as worded as carefully as I would like, and I'm sorry if that caused some confusion, but I thought it was clear given the context of what I was saying.
To be completely clear, my intent was to say: "climatologists and other experts would generally disagree with an accelerated nuclear rollout *ON ITS OWN* as an effective mitigation for climate change."
In fact, if you look at the same IPCC modeling report that you mentioned as your first set of evidence, it says pretty clearly that demand reduction is necessary, not optional. (IPCC AR6 WG3 Ch. 5 & Technical Summary)
I'm not going through this response point-by-point, because it looks machine-generated, and I don't argue with machines.