I’m not keen on nuclear power at all, the Chernobyl disaster didn’t just affect the immediate area, the nuclear fallout swept over most of western europe. It still has effects today. The problem with nuclear power is that one fuck up is enough to cause decades and decades of problems. Not worth it.
Um, GE does not equal Selective Breeding. From wikipedia: “Genetic Engineering is different from traditional breeding, where the organism’s genes are manipulated indirectly; genetic engineering uses the techniques of molecular cloning and transformation to alter the structure and characteristics of genes directly.”
So, GE involves doing things which are entirely new and we can’t predict the results. Once you take the GE out of the lab, you can no longer guarantee that the genes will stay with their hosts. They may transfer to other organisms, and since you haven’t tested for the outcomes, it is a lottery as to what the overall effect will be.
The clincher for me is how GE companies do not want to take out insurance for their activities. They want the community to underwrite the risks, while they pocket the profit. Seriously, fuck that.
Of the above two statements, only the latter is correct. Ironically, this is why the first statement is hopelessly wrong.
The Greens promote Polluter Pays, so the polluters actually have an incentive to clean up their act. Did you know that 95% of New Zealand lowland rivers and unsafe for swimming, let alone drinking ? This is caused largely by the dairy industry - because they do not have to pay for the pollution they cause. Who suffers ? Anything and anyone who lives in or uses the rivers and waterways. Fishes and fisherfolk alike.
With regard to the discussion on energy sources, an important aspect to consider is that we really need to address the demand side of energy use as well. Which is where the Greens $53m initiative on housing insulation comes in. Less overall energy being used, and improved health outcomes due to warmer homes.
A feature of the NZ energy context is that most users are entirely dislocated from energy generation. Which means that they find it concerning that localised energy generation (e.g. windfarms) actually has an impact on their environment (even if largely visual). Take the Awhitu Penninsula. The nay-sayers for the intended wind power project seem to think that wind turbines will disrupte the majesty of their denuded, deforested, bleak and almost barren landscape. Gotta love NIMBYs 
This kind of debate is quite welcome in Chit-Chat, but not really anywhere else. I’m glad that this is not happening in the General Discussion forum, which is about larp stuff.
Concensus? Hmm. I have a list here of 31,000 scientists who actively disagree with the concept that humans cause global warming. We should point out that these are only US scientists and only the ones that actively went out their way to state that humans haven’t caused global warming. It doesn’t include fence sitters.
I can also reference to several thousand peer reviewed articles that claim their may be other mechanisms that cause global warming.
We recently had a debate at the University of Waikato on climate change and we could not find one person who would stand up and argue that humans were causing climate change. This is interesting as we have a Climate Change Group on campus who are paid to take the view humans do cause the warming.
Even if there was a concensus, this does not mean it is right. Science is not about who can shout the loudest. There was a concensus that the world was flat. There was a concensus that the Sun went around the Earth. There was a consensus that tectonic plate theory was a fiction. There was a concensus that humans could never synthesis an organic molecule. Just because there is a consensus, does not mean it is right. That is why we look for emperical evidence. So what emperical evidence is there that humans are causing global waming?
Even the scientists on the IPCC, the group which is repsonsable for spreading the anthropogenic global warming myth stated
“No study to date has positively attributed all or part [of the climate change observed to date] to anthropogenic causes.” Final scientists draft, 2nd IPCC report 1995.
Since that date they have only stated that global warming is definately caused by humans and no other proof is required. There was no emperical evidence in 1995. There is still no emperical evidence now.
So until somebody actually produces some emperical proof I think we can say
[size=150]Myth Busted[/size]
P.s. mike I like the way that you deliberataly confuse the issuse of Global warming with anthropogenic globlal warming. Very funny and helps cause confusion in most people. Very subtle.
I’m not too keen on nuclear power either. A nuclear power station would be an absolutely kick-ass target for terrorism.
As for the climate change thing… I’m really not sure what to believe about it. But our country did sign the Kyoto protocol so I think that regardless of whether we cut our carbon emmisions or not we will be paying for that carbon. Besides putting an emmisions trading scheme into place is all good for promoting the clean green New Zealand image (as well as hopefully making it actually a bit cleaner and greener), and that’s got to be good for our tourism industry.
Funny people should mention nuclear power on this thread. As some of you are aware, I have also conducted research into this field for the University of Waikato and am in fact giving a public speech on this subject tomorrow (Tuesday) night.
What I find funny is that people say that nuclear reactors are unsafe and not very green. This is amusing as to date nuclear reactors are the safest form of bulk power generation known. They are also one of the most enviromentally friendly of all power sources.
As Madwolf pointed out, to generate 1GW of hydro power, in NZ we on average have to flood 44 square kilometers of land. The record death toll from a single accidental hydro failure is over 125,000 direct dead and many more indirect dead. The record for an intentional dam failure is over 500,000.
Wind power is still 100 times more dangerous than nuclear. It also has the problems of causing fires, marring the natural beauty of the environment and usually only being able to be built in areas that don’t need the power.
Geothermal is fun, but even we are limited on its generation capacity. Haven’t found a published fatality rate yet, but it probably compares ok to nuclear.
Coal power is the major baseload source for many countries. It has been estimated that the average 1GW coal station produces over 100,000 tonnes of waste per year. This is now considered toxic and should be stored for 10,000+ years. The average US coal station also emits 18 tonnes of radioactive materials into the atmosphere every year. The death toll in the US from coal power is estimated as 26,000-28,000 people per year. I would hate to think of the total in countries like China.
At the moment nuclear generates 16% of the world electricity. Total deaths attributed to civilian nuclear electricity generation for the last 50 years is less than 100. This includes cancer deaths from Chernobyl. Total fuel used in civilian nuclear power reactors <100,000 tonnes. Total amount of coal ash produced by Huntly every year 100,000 tonnes. Both of these should be stored for a similar amount of time in a place they cannot get into the ground water. It has been observed that sometimes coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste.
Even taking into account Chernobyl nuclear is still safer and safer than most alternatives.
What about the waste produced? Im not being argumentative, Im just curious because you seem to know alot about the subject?
[quote=“Alista”]So until somebody actually produces some emperical proof I think we can say
[size=150]Myth Busted[/size][/quote]
Out of curiosity and because I think it’s a good point that you’ve managed to sidestep - what would such emperical evidence look like? Some of the links Mike posted have some interesting graphs taken from measurements of ice-core samples and tree ring examinations etc. I’m not going to pretend I fully understand how it all relates, but the bottom line is obviously a timeline and the scientists say that the lines spiking up at the end around where is says oh, 1900-ish, is a bad thing.
Ignoring the thinly veiled attempt at personal discreditation, global warming vs global warming caused by humans seems irrelevant when it’s the overall effect that’s going to turn our spherical home into a desert wasteland or a very big icecube. Even if our share of the output isn’t contributing to the changes as much as it’s suggested or believed, the fact that the overall picture is changing should still be a cause for concern and it’s irresponsible of us to wash our hands of it with a “we didn’t cause it so why worry” attitude.
Of the above two statements, only the latter is correct. Ironically, this is why the first statement is hopelessly wrong.[/quote]
Excuse the pun, but this is an entirely different kettle of fish and while I’m sure there are many reasons for it my main gripe is the lack of responsibilty people -not companies - show in this regard. Industrial fishing methods are bad enough without personal allowances and size restrictions (esp. re low population species) being largely ignored and un-enforced or worse leeway being given to specific groups for entirely inappropriate or unjustified reasons. I have no first hand proof of this however, except for the fact that as an avid recreational fisherman that believes firmly in responsible practices (ie taking only what you need, catch and release (ok maybe not as responsible), and obeying size limits so as not to cull individuals with a longer breeding lifespan), I’ve seen it first hand far, far too many times. Either my web-fu is failing me or its well hidden, but I can’t find anything on this in the policies so if you could point it out that would be muchly appreciated, as it seems to be one of those things that politicians try to avoid.
An interesting point that I can’t dispute, but for me (and most others it seems) the potential for disaster is too high - as unlikely as it may be on paper, if something went wrong it would be catastrophic for a country our size with so much to lose. I am also intrigued that wind power generators are more dangerous - can you elaborate on that (no, seriously, I want to know what you’re talking about).
High Grade Uranium Waste is nasty stuff. The main issues are the plutonium and higher actinide. It is recommended storage for about 10,000 years. The essential thing is to stop these leaching into the ground water. The modern technique is to vitrify the waste. By embedding it in a glass matrix it prevents migration. Somebody once worked out if took all of the nuclear waste form all the commercial nuclear power plants in the world and vitrified it, it would make a cube smaller than 200 meters a side. What impresses me is how due to previous governmental polcies they have managed to spred this crap so far over the face of the planet.
The current storage plans are to place the vitrified waste salt mines. The theory being that the salt mines have been geologically stable for the last 100,000,000 years, they should be stable for another 10,000.
One small point. While we call it waste, we can also think of it is a reserve of precious and very useful radioactive isotopes. We should store them carefully because we might to use them in 20 years time.
I read somewhere that Nuclear power plants produce toxic gasses as waste as well, what is done with this?
[quote=“Dave”]
I am also intrigued that wind power generators are more dangerous - can you elaborate on that (no, seriously, I want to know what you’re talking about).[/quote]
To date there have been no people killed by a turbine blade flying off and killing someone. Servicing is a major problem. Also wind genereation produces a real fire threat. In previous years there have been cases of oil leak which have ignited which have destroyed large areas of native land. Also there are incidental cases like a european paraglider that flew into one recently. By 2007 there have been 34 death attributed to wind turbines. The current death rate is 0.15 deaths per tera watt hour produced. This is comparable to safety of mining, transporting and the burning of coal (but not including pollution deaths).Goto wind-works.org/articles/BreathLife.html for a complete list.
Due to the small percentage of the worlds electricity generated by wind, more than one death produces a significant result. At the moment wind would be about 100 times more deadly per Terawatt hour of electricity produced than nuclear. Also envirnomentally, because of this scale factor, wind power is several hundred to several thousand times more damaging than nuclear. If large scale deployment occurs then it is expected this figure will come down to between 10-50 times more dangerous. Even so, most countries will not allow large commercial wind turbines to be built in urban areas due to the risks.
The main gases produced are Krypton-85 , Xenon-133, tritium (H-3) and trace amounts of Iodine 131.
In the scheme of things the Xenon and Krypton are not particularly dangerous. While highly radioactive they are also noble gases and do not tend to form compounds. If you breath these in you will breath them out straight away. Storing for about 100 years seem on take care of the tritium and Krypton. The Xenon lasts less than a week. The iodine 131 should be stored pretty much indefinately. Thankfully it is a small part of the product.
We should note in the modern pebble bed reactors most of this gas stays captured in the pebbles and when you store the pebbles the gas is also stored.
Also that tritium that is produced has a current retail price of US$30,000/gram. That’s thirty million dollars a kg. They sometimes try and recover that stuff.
Correction : I-131 has a half life of 8 days, so should be OK after a few years. Also I-131 has uses in the medical field.
I think this is the wrong forum for this type of discussion. However, as everyone else is sticking an oar in, so will I.
Regardless of the cost per TW of power in dollar spent and lives lost I feel that the most responsible option for the human race is to play with all these technologies and to continue looking for new ones. If we were to throw away every source of power we found that had a negative impact, we’d still be living in caves eating cold food, the concept of fire discarded because of all the waste soot and ash it created.
It isn’t hard to make a case that one way of generating power is better than another, but I think that the most telling numbers are the percentage breakdown of where our electricity comes from.
I believe the most responsible action the government can take regarding power generation is to keep an open mind looking at all sources of electricity and to support the efforts of our scientists and engineers to create working examples of each. Our first wind farms, tidal generators, solar farms, nuclear power stations and what have you will always cost more per TW of power in dollars spent and lives lost, but it is an investment in risk management.
Keeping all our eggs in one basket may be a good short term financial plan, but it isn’t a good long term strategy.
[quote=“Alista”]
Even if there was a concensus, this does not mean it is right.[/quote]
Not true, it does not mean it is correct. Right and wrong are down to a consensus. Praise be to democracy where doing the incorrect thing can be the right thing.
in addition you are missing the real truth here, while WE might be able to maintain and look after a nuklear powerplant as well as manage the waste efficiently by accepting nuclear power as being ok we have to allow all other nations access to the same facilities.
sd-commission.org.uk/pages/060306.html
Nuclear power is not the answer. It doesn’t even come close at the moment.
- Resources on the planet are finite, that includes the materials required to fuel a nuclear power plant. So why not just skip the middle stage (where we dump waste not knowing the consequences) and just bite the bullet. You don’t need to flood entire area’s to get hydro dams. There are plenty of waterfalls in NZ that no one can even see let alone get to and admire - using them as a source of power will effect no one negativly.
Tidal power has alot of potential but no one is willing to invest - its a perminent power source that just needs to be looked at in greater detail.
Wind power: Works, you guys have loads of spare land just stick it somwhere you ain’t gonna notice it. Simple as. - In regards to people killing themselves… erm… yes well done also people get killed by toilets… don’t see people making a fuss about them being restricted.
[quote=“Xcerus”][quote=“Alista”]
Even if there was a concensus, this does not mean it is right.[/quote]
Not true, it does not mean it is correct. Right and wrong are down to a consensus. Praise be to democracy where doing the incorrect thing can be the right thing.
[/quote][/quote]
So you are saying that if everyone agrees that you can fly unaided, that if you jump off a tall building without aids (parachutes etc) you will be fine and not plummet to your death. Can I see a demonstration please.
I have no problems with all nations having access to thorium reactors. These are safer than uranium reators, produce less waste, can’t melt down and you can’t make nuclear weapons with them. If we went to thorium in NZ we have enough known easily accessable thorium in NZ for about 6,000 years.
Like nuclear and coal, tidal power is a non-renewable resource. It generates power by slowing down the spin rate of the Earth thereby converting angular momentum into electricity. This is well known and the change in the Earth’s rotation rate caused by the French tidal power station has been recorded. I’d rather burn thorium then stop the Earth spinning.
I’ll give one statement here only else we could be here all day
To say the sciece in some of them is really bad is an understatement.
increases in carbon in the atmosphere can be traced back to fossil fuels
This article asserts that the amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmopshere each year is 19.30x10^12 kg each year. Doing basic caculations given the data they gave it can be shown that the total increase in CO2 observed is only7.2x10^12 kg. Much of this increase is not of human origan. Why is the bigger figure given rather than the observed figure. Simple, for the anthropogenic global warming theory to work, the CO2 increase must be at least this large. The only trouble is the real data does not agree with the observed data at all.
Hmmm… it’s interesting to see how everyone is actually keeping a (mostly) cool head about this entire discussion. Way to go everyone 
My personal stance on matters is the pros and cons of everything.
Hydro
We’re blessed to be able to draw sop much of our needs from Hydro. Yes, there is a lot of land lost - that is the price paid. As for hydro dams bursting, if you don’t keep an eye on everything, yes - it goes away. But to my knowledge, NZ monitors all the HE dams with an insane amount of care.
Wind
An interesting point was raised about the death rate of about wind turbines. While the servicing of them is undoubtedly dangerous due to their location (high wind areas), it is interesting to note that the only other major problems they have are wind supply, noise for neighbours and the Sky Tower issue (visual pollution). Otherwise they are clean, environmentally friendly and can produce a good amount of energy. In the UK - it’s even becoming required for small wind turbines to be attached to new housing blocks.
Geothermal
This seems the best of all - you deal with superheated steam as your only emission and you can get a high yield of power from a very silent site. This said - it comes at a price. The Geothermal fields can only sustain their power for a shortish period of time and should be a supplement as opposed to a mainstay. If you want to know more, I’ll get the exact figures from my sources (the key one being a world leader in this field, so I kind of know what I’m talking about)
Nuclear
In this country, the word nuclear is a very dirty one indeed. Long Island. Chernobyl. The Rainbow Warrior. Mururoa. ANZUS. All those carry the dark specter of nuclear issues. I’m sure there are more. I personally am utterly dead set against nuclear weapons. Nuclear power… I’ve been looking at the needs and issues around it all. Note - I refer to nuclear power as a catch all. Nuclear fusion is a possibility that could be realised one day. nuclear fission - the waste itself concerns me. I am a simple layperson regarding the waste and the knowledge it hangs around for so long is what bothers me. And yet, there have been 2 major issues that we know about, one that is still broadcast to this day (and was more through the stupidity of men playing god as opposed to a true accident). I do not claim fission to be the saviour, but perhaps it can be looked at more carefully, especially as to how we in NZ could deal with the waste - IE not shipping it away.
Coal
Messy, dirty, a stop gap that has been relied on for too long. Best usedfor heating homes. Wood is better. Leave the coal in the ground is best.
Gas
Slightly leaner than coal re pollution, best used for homes and cooking rather than power for the nation. That said, Hamilton city council has harnessed natural methane (itself a pollutant/greenhouse gas) being produced by a landfill to help reduce their own energy needs. Please correct me if I’ve got the city wrong here
Tidal
High investment, low potential return is possibly the biggest thing that is the problem here. An interesting point has been raised that it is based upon the gradual slowing rotation of the Earth. I would love to see the research to this as I was under the impression that tidal flows were generated by the sun and moon. If you can link me to it, I’d appreciate it.
Wave
One that was not mentioned was wave generation - like tidal, high cost, low return at the present technological level. Off-hand, I can’t think of any places that would be suitable, especially as New Zealand relies on the surfing draw for tourism and wave generators could easily cut down that draw.
People
Soylent green? No. More the simple choices we can make to reduce power requirements. In the UK - they use 3x what they can create for energy usage. I don’t know NZ’s usage, but I’m fairly sure it’s insanely higher than is should be (feel free to link me to documents that support/disprove this one anybody). Reduce light usage. Walk/ride more. Spend more time with friends. Good house insulation - for flatters, check what you have. For new home buyers - same thing and see how much it is to get the house properly checked and re-insulated. Fuzzy door stops are brilliant as well. Keeping fit helps keep the body self-heating, reducing the need for external heating. With cooking, try coming up with other dishes that don’t require heat all the time. Keep doors (and fridge/freezer doors especially) closed. Go for the power efficient items, or the lower usage ones if possible. turn off as opposed to standby. In short - what the government has been saying (finally) for the last few years.
Please note - for the most part - these are my opinions and feelings. Only the geo is based 100% on science, the rest is what I understand… and could work to back up if required. Xcerus is quite right in that democracy is something that is to be cherished - without it, this debate could not occur so freely and openly. As someone once said - I might not agree with what you say or your opinion, but I will fight like crazy to defend your right to express it.
Of course, if your opinion is the oppression of another person in any form or manner, that’s crossing the line…
Tidal power is generated by tides going up and down. This occurs when the sun and moon cause the water surface of Earth to be non-spherical in shape and as the Earth rotates underneath this bulge. Also of interest is that this interaction is gradually causing the moon to speed up. The tides are causing the moon to get 38mm further away every year. Any action that changes the rates of the tides will affect the spin rate of the earth.
To Quote Wikipedia" Tidal movement causes a continual loss of mechanical energy in the Earth-Moon system due to pumping of water through the natural restrictions around coastlines, and due to viscous dissipation at the seabed and in turbulence. This loss of energy has caused the rotation of the Earth to slow in the 4.5 billion years since formation. During the last 620 million years the period of rotation has increased from 21.9 hours to the 24 hours [3] we see now; in this period the Earth has lost 17% of its rotational energy. Tidal power may take additional energy from the system, increasing the rate of slowing over the next millions of years." Nice simple basic physics.
Local water wave power works best on good surf beachs. The best wave beaches are also the best tourist beachs. You can on average extract about 10-20Kw/meter of the coastline. This sounds great until you work out that to make a power station the size of Huntly, you lose 50 - 100km of New Zealands best beaches.
Create natural breakers off the coast line?
Also - clarification on the moon getting further away - I full understand that space is big. Really big. So big that 38mm is not really worth mentioning. Untill you factor in that eventually the earth’s gravity will stop effecting it and it will sail off into the distance. Does decreasing the speed the earth spins at increase or descrease the speed the moon moves away from us at?
Also - Assuming that the tidal measures are slowing the rotation arnt there also problems caused by creating canals? Which speed up the rotation?
Isn’t there potential to create a canal and then apply tidal power to that thus countering the created motion?
(apply maths here plx)
This is something I have always found fascinating, look back through fossil history and you will see that the earth’s biosphere has changed time and again. Let us not forget that 65 million years ago the world was inhabited by Dinosaurs, at other times giant mammals. Change is a natural thing and I often wonder if trying to prevent change in certain circumstances isnt actually unnatural. Organisms evolve and adapt to their environment, and as the environment changes some organisms can no longer compete and die out while others grow to take their place. Hence the biosphere is a fluid and everchanging thing. Climate change is a large part of this cycle, and again consulting the fossil record reveals constant fluxes in global temperature and as a result corresponding change in the climate. Examination of rocks etc even shows that the earths magnetic poles have switched several times. The climate has changed and will continue to do so as long as the earth exists whether humans are here or not. As you might imagine these changes have had massive effects on local and global eco systems, ocean currents and sea levels. At various points in the planets history large areas of our current landmass were underwater, while areas of seabed such as sydney harbour were miles inland. Likewise now fertile areas were arid wastelands and modern deserts such as the Sahara were fertile grasslands. That the earth has changed over and over is a fact and like it or not, we are going to have to face the fact that many areas of the world currently inhabitable will not always remain so with or without our help, and yes a LOT of people in all areas of the world are going to find themselves forced to relocate or face famine and flood. Ice caps will eventually melt, currents will shift. Tectonic movement will force up new mountain ranges and landmasses while sinking others. WE CANNOT STOP THIS. What we need to do is stop trying to prevent these changes and instead work on predicting them so that we can deal with them when they occur.
Its like a volcanoe, people start living around it because of the fertile soil and they thrive… until it erupts and wipes out their farms and settlements forcing the people to move on to safer pastures. Over time people forget about the eruption, remembering it only as stories told by their elders, the plants grow back and people begin living and farming it’s slopes again. Then unsurprisingly it erupts once more and everyone wonders what happened as they look for safer places to live. Likewise as the climate changed, people were forced to move into new areas or adopt new methods of subsistence as their environments changed. Then when the climate changed again, they moved on once more.
Furthermore, people often live in areas more vulnerable to climate change, low lying floodplains for instance are usually very fertile due to the silt that is deposited during floods. Likewise coastal regions have been inhabited throughout history due to the abundant natural resources that they offer. Sadly from a pragmatic point of view people living in such areas are often putting themselves in harms way and sooner or later, they will suffer the effects of climate change. This isn’t to say that these people don’t deserve help, I am simply saying that it is better to equip them to deal with these changes then try vainly to stop the changes from happening.
As far as energy production goes, I also think that nuclear energy is the way to go. Others more credentialled then I have already explained the efficiency and safety benefits better then I could so I will just give you an analogy I like to use. Nuclear energy is like air travel, when you crash the odds are higher that you will die then if you were in any given car accident, but at the same time the number of air crashes are phenomenly small when compared to the number of car accidents. Nuclear energy also has a great deal of untapped potential and with future research could become even more efficient producing more energy output and reducing waste products. Let us not forget that radiation itself is a form of energy and one day we may even be able to harness this harmful byproduct for power production.
As for G.E. it’s like any science the good or bad is in the final application not the science itself and I firmly believe it is a line of research well worth following though it has the potential for some interesting moral questions when it moves into the human field.
P.S sorry for the long and convoluted nature of this post, it’s late and I’m tired 
[size=150]I am still waiting to see emperical evidence that humans are causing global warming. [/size]
If I remember rightly, this thread was started because I stated that a lot of Green party policy is based upon fantasy. We took one example of this, anthropogenic global warming. This is often touted as one of the greatest threats to human life on this planet. I then asked for emperical proof that humans were causing the stated global warming. I am still waiting for any emperical evidence. Considering the Green Party has supported Kyoto and the Emissions Trading Bill based upon the belief that humans are causing global warming it would be nice if they a single shred of emperical evidence to back it. If they have no emperical proof then it is just a fantasy and my statement is correct. So as a physicist I ask “what is your proof ?”
Similarly, with Nuclear power, we are told there are three bad things about nuclear, waste, proliferation, safety. To date nuclear is probably the safest, greenest and most enviromentally friend bulk power generation that we have. I am not the only person that thinks that. People like Mike Moore (Cofounder of Greenpeace), Jack Lovelock (founder of the Gaia hypothosis), Stewart Brand ( the founder of the Whole Earth Catalogue) and the late Bishop Hugh Montefiore (founder and director of Friends of the Earth) are all on record advocating the use of nuclear power. In fact we know that compared to other forms of bulk power generation, modern nuclear is so clean and safe that we can say that people who protest against it are probably anti-envorimentalists.