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[dragdeler]

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[Naturegirl1999]

Oh, it was probably a specific group. A wikipedia article about the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement and the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement Website
Given what you mentioned, I'm thinking this isn't who you are referring to.

[dragdeler]

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[hector13]

They’re an environmental protest group (or rather, started as such) that use civil disobedience to get their point across. Ground London to a halt for a few days a few months back, several times, then got a lot more protests in various cities in the UK more recently, and have now gone international, which is presumably why dragdeler is receiving invites.

[Eschar]

It will probably be raining as I go to sleep. I enjoy falling asleep to rain.

[Arx]

They’re an environmental protest group (or rather, started as such) that use civil disobedience to get their point across. Ground London to a halt for a few days a few months back, several times, then got a lot more protests in various cities in the UK more recently, and have now gone international, which is presumably why dragdeler is receiving invites.

Correct. The "extinction" in the name refers to the current mass extinction event, not voluntary extinction. I'd be more involved with them if they didn't seem to somehow be pathologically allergic to leadership, which makes it very difficult to tell what's actually going on.

[dragdeler]

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[Arx]

XR, at least in my country, is pushing for more than carbon taxes. Disengagement from fossil fuel economy, rapid transition to renewables, and all the ordinary stuff. Disengagement from fossil fuel economy is a big one, because in many places coal is increasingly inefficient and propped up by subsidies as much as its own power.

[LordBaal]

thanks anyways. I am driving stick, actually.

You are very welcome. And kudos on the stick, nothing like driving a manual transmission car. It migth not be that comfortable but the control over the car is priceless

[Iduno]

Whatever, I'm gonna have a beer with Charles if he responds, now that I got a car .

So now that you have a car, you can visit your environmentalist friends. Life has a twisted sense of humor. 

What annoys me about most climate protests is that millions of people don't come up with anything better than a carbon tax, we've been dealing CO2 certificates for years now and IMHO that didn't help. Even if we do get our carbon emissions "straightened out" there is like a the whole table of elements being used recklessly...

It turns out corporations have more power over how the laws turn out, and the money to deal with the consequences than just some citizens.

XR, at least in my country, is pushing for more than carbon taxes. Disengagement from fossil fuel economy, rapid transition to renewables, and all the ordinary stuff. Disengagement from fossil fuel economy is a big one, because in many places coal is increasingly inefficient and propped up by subsidies as much as its own power.

The major issue with renewables is they aren't consistent. So they need to be backed up with a power supply that can be brought online/taken down quickly like coal. Coal and natural gas are as big a problem as they are right now because we moved away from nuclear. Nuclear has its own disadvantages, and certainly isn't the best end solution, but it is consistent and the problems are contained and regulated. Until we have the ability to build large clean batteries safely (and without all of the pollution involved in construction), power will be an issue. Having electricity be a utility that the government provides instead of for-profit wouldn't hurt, either. At least, according to the people in California who don't live in Silicon Valley (only people with money got their power restored quickly).

[Reelya]

Something I've mentioned before is that uranium-based nuclear currently isn't scalable due to the limited amount of extractable uranium that's estimated to exist. 230 years worth, but that includes about 80 years known reserves, plus the 2/3rds of unknown reserves they predict that we will find eventually. If nuclear is scaled up now to solve the CO2 problem, then you're looking at the 80 years worth, and if you quadruple current nuclear capacity, you're down to 20 years worth of viable known reserves, i.e. less than the lifecycle of the plants. So they'll take too long to build, and even if you fix that problem by somehow safely fast-tracking massive numbers of reactors, they burn through the viable fuel too quickly. And even if you solve that problem you have the problem that you're now generating nuclear waste way faster than we know what to do with all the nuclear waste. "reprocessing" is currently science fiction. We can barely "reprocess" what we already generate, and it's a big problem. And not for lack of trying. Anyone who works out how it's viable to turn nuclear waste back into fuel is going to be a trillionaire.

The point is, if you can't currently scale up nuclear by over a factor of four without more or less running out of fuel instantly (lasting a whole two-Trumps worth of time. New unit of time. A Trump = 8 years), then it's not a viable solution to replace coal and natural gas.

We can scale it up only with future tech, and by that time, we won't need it.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/

EDIT: I'll also mention that we artificially boost off-peak usage with variable pricing, to allow more usage of large power stations at night. "Base load" power is thus artificially inflated to smooth things out. If things switch to solar being more dominant you could merely reverse the pricing incentives. And while it's not guaranteed to be sunny where you are, long-distance power transport is surprisingly efficient, only losing about 1% per 160 km. So it might not be that sunny in one place, but the grid evens that out over many places, and 1% per 160 km to transport power is more efficient than storing in a battery. So you can have reverse-off-peak pricing to shift usages towards the sunny times, along with sharing power among the grid across cities, to even out fluctuations in sunniness. Since "base-load" would be a lot less in this scenario than currently, existing base-load sources such as nuclear can continue to service that without needing more capacity.

[Ulfarr]

So you say we have 10 to 29 Trumps to build ourselves a Dyson sphere? Easy 

[dragdeler]

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[Naturegirl1999]

Related to thorium vfs uranium. His other videos are good too, though not related to this particular topic

[Iduno]

EDIT: I'll also mention that we artificially boost off-peak usage with variable pricing, to allow more usage of large power stations at night. "Base load" power is thus artificially inflated to smooth things out. If things switch to solar being more dominant you could merely reverse the pricing incentives.

We're already working people to death for the heavy metals we're using now. You don't want to get into solar being dominant. Natural gas is probably cleaner, anyway, after cleaning up from solar panel production. Not to mention that the sun only shines on about half of the earth at a time, so you'd need worldwide transmission and production. Solar is the "look we're doing something" of power production. At least argue for wind.

Running out of uranium in 20 years if we increase production is a bad reason to just keep using coal. It buys us 20 more years to find alternatives. Nuclear is a middle step from coal to sustainability. It's like riding a mule instead of driving because you want teleporters to be invented. Cars certainly aren't perfect, but I still need to get places.

Also, reprocessing facilities for uranium currently exist in the world, which makes calling them "science fiction" is a bit incorrect. The US doesn't process it, because that's how you make nuclear weapons, and the US is a nuclear weapon free zone.