The October episode of Nature Bats Last featured a discussion between NBL co-hosts Professor Guy McPherson, Kevin Hester and US independent journalist Robert Hunziker.
Robert discussed non-linearity in the climate system which he has covered in an article published on October 2nd, 2017 titled The Great Acceleration Death Trap
“If I take 35 linear steps, I’ll barely reach the coffee stand outside of this room. What happens if I take 35 exponential steps? I’d reach Copenhagen after 21 steps. Three more steps, I’m in New York. Another two steps and I encircle the entire planet. And, if I add another nine steps to my 35, I reach planet Mars.”
Not understanding or worse still willfully ignoring the nonlinear nature of our predicament ensures the failure of any and all remediation or preparation undertaken. This is a major issue I take with Greenpeace, 350.ORG and the main ‘Green Parties”, willfully ignoring this aspect of the predicament is morally and scientifically bankrupt.
Robert discussed at length the never ending nightmare that is Fukushima Daiichi.
One of Roberts numerous articles on the single worst industrial disaster of all time is embedded here; “Fukushima’s Radioactive Water Crisis
I quoted Jem Bendell in the interview,
“Getting busy with action can be a distraction from full acceptance of our predicament”. I respectively think Jem’s having his own struggle with ‘acceptance’.
Jem discusses the issue of nuclear power plants after collapse unfolds here
Robert has written previously about The Dangerous Methane Mystery most especially in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. Watch the interview with Dr Natalia Shakova who Robert mentioned here; Methane Hydrates extended interview with Dr Natalia Shakova
Further relevant reading below:
Ocean ecosystems take two million years to recover after mass extinction
“Killing The Ocean” by Robert Hunziker
Co-extinctions annihilate planetary life during extreme environmental change
I'm an anti-imperialist, environmental activist and blue ocean sailor, who is passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour. Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.
Kevin Hester 
I read Hunziker on counterpunch, which I read pretty much every day (I even give them $25 a year), so I’ve caught most of what he’s published there. Not a speck of what I’ve read in his words gives a flying fart towards the survival much less the continuation of this not-very-civil-ization. That’s just with the catastrophic climate destabilization. Add in 500 meltdowns like Fukushima… oh darn.
Why he lives in LA is beyond me, though! I could have stayed on the beach in OB San Diego in 1987 and kept surfing instead of moving to mountains with my snowboards instead. I just couldn’t take the concrete and asphalt under my feet, or drink the water or breathe the air anymore. Not that shit-hitting-the-frying-pan isn’t going to catch up with me where I am…I just preferred a living biosphere around me. For a while at least.
I really do miss not being able to listen to the conversation you have, Kevin. I just can’t afford anything more than dial-up which does not allow for downloading much.
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We just had the earliest snowstorm in living memory here in the Selkirks at this property’s elevation. That’s from the 80 year olds! I watched it start snowing out the window 28 Sept at 1pm in the afternoon and by dark there was snow covering roofs and fence posts and vehicles. By 29 Sept there was at least half a foot of snow up on my snowboarding hill 49’N, and some idiot had already made a wiggle linked-turn track off the Peak in the snow cam up there. I was kind of jealous to be honest but boarding on 6″ of snow on a steep hill is rather…ummm…stupid?
Down here it rained off by the afternoon on Sunday, and on Monday 30 Sept I was skateboarding in Chewelah (bottom of the valley) where it had rained instead and completely dried off the sidewalks by the time I drove to town.
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I’m reading an old book I snagged out of a donation box to the 2nd hand titled ‘The Final Empire; The Collapse of Civilization’ by Wm. H. Kotke (the ‘o’ has two dots above it) from 1993. Subtitle is the ‘Seed of the Future.’ I wonder what this guy thinks about now with 26 years of absolute disastrous acceleration in every facet of destruction he talks about? I’m in Chapter 2 and what he saw coming…yeah, well.
His book was dedicated to his grandchildren then so…maybe he’s viewing this from a different perspective now…
Book 2 is about small communities surviving…”Creating a Whole New Life.” I don’t think so. He had hopes…
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Funny that you have Robert Scribbler links… he pretty much kicked me off his website for being…not part of the solution when I disagreed with his idea that Hillary Clinton was NOT going to ‘save us.’ He really didn’t like what I started posting (evidence and documentation) and ended up replying with rude, disdainful, and derogatory comments/put-downs before I just quit trying to get through his thick headed used-to-be-a-cop attitude. I wonder if he’s changed his mind about Hillary, eh?
We are so fucked. Do something fun every day, Kevin. The future keeps feeling like it is narrowing down.
sealintheSelkirks
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Hunziker is a reporter. Plain and simple. He’s aware of the issues, sees them accurately, but due to his lack of grasping the subject matter at a deeper level is still in the bargaining phase. We have 2 cliffs facing us. One is the energy cliff that will hit us either way. Once we lose the gains of fracking and ‘cheap’ coal the fossil fuel era and our dependency for our modern world civilizations collapses with it. That ceases our industrial globalized world…permanently.
The aerosol masking effect which keeps that excess solar radiation out will eventually falter and subsequently turns the climate and our environment on a dime.
Even if we could continue fossil fuel extraction than our second cliff of global roasting kicks in soon enough and industrial civilization collapses anyway.
Does Hunziker offer any relevant or tangible solution to that dilemma. I’m not hearing it. Reality is as reality is. Our hopes and desires fall on deaf universal laws of physics ears.
Hope is a religious movement, reality is neither cult nor religion. Reality does not need followers it requires acceptors and those whose actions coincide with its tenets.
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Yup, you’ve summed it up wonderfully. There is no time for ‘Hope’, I rely on what the science tells me and that is that “Collapse is the Only Realistic Scenario”
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Robert Hunziker’s latest on Biosphere collapse;
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/12/19/biosphere-collapse/
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This is a link to a 4’C map (article behind a paywall). It may be the same ‘Kottke’ who wrote the ’90s climate catastrophe book I read recently and mentioned.
https://kottke.org/18/02/a-map-of-the-world-after-four-degrees-of-warming
Depressing as Hunziker was today.
Snowing outside at 49’N latitude since last night, started up again at dark. Snow levels expected to rapidly rise to 5,000 ft by the weekend turning all this freshie stuff into muck and probably freezing at night. Going to be many people falling on it, crashing vehicles if it does do this. End of December rains at my elevation as OZ burns to death…
sealintheSelkirks
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Great to hear Robert Hunziker our former guest on Nature Bats Last calling out Michael Mann for his contention that warming would stop if emissions were halted. That’s patently false knowing the feedback loops we have already triggered.
Bravo to John Doyle bringing up the issue of how we navigate this storm.
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Calling out Mann, eh? I didn’t read anything about that anywhere! But it’s a matter of keeping one’s academic privileges I guess; don’t want to lose those perks and standing by being too…outre, eh? If you scream Doom! from the rooftops, they ARE going to take your grants and next your office will be a broom closet and after that the phone gets turned off and someone comes and takes the carpet and then puts a new name on your parking place sign…and who you identify as suddenly isn’t who you’ve become. That rips the foundations out from under people pretty hard. Seems like Mann may just be trying to survive in comfort as long as he can by ‘go along to get along’ while just ruffling the surface of the bad shit happening. Who knows what’s in his mind? Denial takes many forms I’m thinking.
Hunziker’s rant a few days ago was rather sad, actually.
An Exhausted Planet Limps Into 2021
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/12/an-exhausted-planet-limps-into-2021/
Mainly because none of the suggestions by the Alliance for World Scientists are going to be implemented. It just isn’t in the economic interests of the wealthy elite, ya know…then he puts up this one:
Complex Life Threatened
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/22/complex-life-threatened/
And don’t get me going on Biden and his ‘new’ saying for this country. I mean, “Class, define, as precisely as you can, how Biden’s “Restore American Greatness” (RAG) is thematically different from Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA)? Ahahahahahaha-choke! Bluntly, what fucking moron on his ‘team’ came up with that one I wonder? That quote came from this:
Roaming Charges: New Days, Old Ways
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/22/roaming-charges-new-days-old-ways/
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I really do wish I had high speed to be able to actually listen to some of these intelligent videos you post, Kevin. I don’t even know what most of these people voices sound like…
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Weather in the lower Selkirk Range:
Nothing but brilliantly blue sky days with plenty of sunshine all week, very cold overnight and mornings with my thermometers reading mostly -12’C or colder when the dogs and I go out. Starfields above my head at night have been incredible, though, very clear air. A covering of snow across most of the property, thin and extremely icy with the sun by afternoon turning the dirt areas into a sticky mud layer. Ground keeps defrosting, too, and re-freezing at night. Even the dogs are having a hard time walking on it. Snow levels are extremely high above me, the mountains are freaking bare here. Not kidding!
My book:
It’s been selling, and I’ve been getting extremely complimentary emails from people who’ve bought and read it along with words from those who don’t know me but took the chance and bought it from one of two local shops I’ve got them in here. Most have used the term ‘heavy’ to describe it, and that’s not due to its weight! Sold 15 last week on my website, almost all are people connected to the Hog Farm and the NorCal concert scene of course. And I’ve been contacted by the Shaman I worked with back then, Red Bear, after not hearing from him for over a decade which was a very good email to read! I’ve also been hearing about how many people I worked with down there have died in the intervening 15 years…a lot of friends have stepped through the curtain. People who are in my memories smiling and alive, aren’t anymore. Some younger than me, others older. The wheel of linear time keeps rotating, doesn’t it?
I’ve started writing the next one, putting down remembered stories and ideas so I can go back and fill them in later. Tales from a Concert Security Rover is probably going to be the title. Or something like that. Much more of a ‘fun’ book than Massacre Sites and there are so many laughing incidents (and some not) over the years at all those 3-day outdoor shows that it will probably be larger than the one you’ve got. See how it goes. Maybe I’ll get it out before the balloon pops over all of us, eh?
Best,
sealintheSelkirks
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More excellent work from Robert Hunziker
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/05/21/chernobyl-alert-and-the-doomsday-clock/
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Robert strikes again
https://countercurrents.org/2021/06/lethal-heat-hits-the-planet/?fbclid=IwAR2u22UyNjmOkFtyu5axo8GbMh-1Q3iD6VPvqPe0H_XB0NiXfWiQ-A6v0tY
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Yeah, things are a bit warm up here. For June. Maybe not for the end of August/early September but I’m looking at my calendar that I keep track of weather on and it certainly has been aiming towards this all year. Ten degree jumps in average since February, and a huge jump this month. I can’t wait for July…
Funny that Hunziker still lives in LA but then where the hell would he go? Since none of us are going to escape this coming catastrophe I guess living at ground zero makes a kind of perverse sense… When the water quits coming SoCal is going to die very, very quickly. Especially at these temperatures!
A draft from the IPCC snuck out and is saying worse is coming. Well DUH! But they still call it ‘climate change.’
Climate change tipping points are upon us, draft U.N. report warns: ‘The worst is yet to come’
https://news.yahoo.com/climate-change-tipping-points-are-upon-us-draft-un-report-warns-the-worst-is-yet-to-come
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And this one from Yahoo includes the concept of water wars with the bug-out bag this one climate scientist has packed:
Why this Drought Scientist Has Packed Her ‘Runaway Bag’
https://news.yahoo.com/why-drought-scientist-packed-her-030552242.html
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And then there is this one:
Ground Temperatures Hit 118 Degrees in the Arctic Circle
The ongoing climate crisis is not going to spare Siberia.
https://gizmodo.com/ground-temperatures-hit-118-degrees-in-the-arctic-circl-1847144505
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Inside the Arctic Circle the ground is A HUNDRED EIGHTEEN DEGREES???
And of course reading this just makes me feel so warm and cozy inside:
Planet Earth is Heating Up Faster
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/06/22/planet-earth-is-heating-up-faster/
A new scientific paper just accepted for publication by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) shows that, on the basis of both computations and experimental measurements, the net rate at which Planet Earth is absorbing solar energy has increased between years 2005 and 2019. Planet Earth is heating up — global warming — at a faster rate, and that rate is increasing.
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Selkirk Range:
40 air miles south of the Canadian Border it was 90F/32C at 9:30 am when I walked out to the shop to turn on the swamp cooler and the big floor fan. I’ve been leaving the door open all night to let the heat escape which has been helping. I did the insulation in that building and there are no windows so it’s actually staying cooler during the day than the house at this point. How long that will last I have no idea! The weather weenies are now saying this may last 10 days or more….
Both the house downstairs and the shop are doing okay in the upper 70/80’F range but upstairs in this office goes miserable in the next couple of hours. All house curtains are closed on the double-pane windows that I shut in the early morning to keep direct sunlight out and whatever cooler air inside. I have a Bionaire cooling tall oscillating fan in this office and a fan blowing in the bedroom up here, A floor fan is going in the dojo downstairs blowing towards the door to the music room which has the old metal swamp cooler pointing at the front room (no door or wall between the two). The big ceiling fan never stops in the front room’s A-frame ceiling. The open kitchen has a box fan going, too. Air movement is good!
It was 106F/42C at 5pm yesterday afternoon. It has NEVER been 106’F in June. Ever. Today or tomorrow it is expected to hit 110F/43C. The wind is a warm breeze that blows all day long, not strong but persistent and scary for wildfires. At dark it completely quits for some odd reason so there is no down-canyon (where the creek is) cooling breeze from the east hitting the back of the house that is usually present during the night so the house is struggling to shed the heat before morning. It IS cooling down outside to 58F/15C by about 3am so sleep can be had.
I’ve had baby birds falling dead out of birdhouses the last couple of days. Swallows mostly…they crawl to the doors and drop to the ground and die where the dog finds them and brings them to me. The mama robin who built a nest under the front porch roof has abandoned three eggs…. But the hummingbirds are still coming to the feeders and I see smaller birds hitting the suet feeders in the old apple tree. I am watering that tree in the evenings to keep it alive.
I’m not a ‘lawn guy’ but our fire district is saying to keep watering lawns because of fire danger so I’ve also been doing that to the wild grass/clover/weeds etc mix that surrounds this house and mowing at 2am to keep it way down. I’ve got fire breaks back to 60 feet on the north side (closest point trees) to much farther away on the other sides of the house. And a metal roof. Probably won’t make a damned bit of difference if a mega-fire roars in but I’ve been trying to knock stuff back for years…
Almost noon and it’s starting to get uncomfortable up here. Time to switch to downstairs I think. Wish me luck!
sealintheSelkirks
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So the interviewer is warning people that if you are already disturbed you may not want to listen to this. I’d have to agree with the interviewer about Hunziker and Jamal as they are both equally good at getting the point across. And I did read Farewell to Ice…
So it’s an hour and a half long. Don’t have that much time today so I’ll be listening in pieces.
Oh, and you did hear about what Chernobyl reactor #4 is doing at the moment, yes? Scaring the scientists a bit… That isn’t looking good at all, either…but compared to this it (so far) hasn’t amounted to much. Sorta.
sealintheSelkirks
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Oh my. Hunziker sort of ‘expects’ a massive ‘coming together’ because you can only push people so far before they break, like the French Revolution which he studied. And we need a ‘Marshal Plan’ worldwide that becomes a new world order to forestall extinction…by 2020. So this vid is from…3 years ago?
“I know the people who know the science that have the right answers.”
And he states he’s an optimist. Well, you’d have to be to continue living in Venice Beach California that survives on imported water from a thousand miles away… He also has a big hope in some forms of technology for carbon capture & drawdown. Doesn’t he want to understand that not a single corporate-Capitalist government on the planet is going to invest in anything but more war weapons to fight over what’s left? Yep, he’s an optimist no doubt.
It took me two days to listen to this entire podcast because I had to break it down into segments to catch the data. He throws out a LOT of numbers, too quickly even for me to assimilate. He’s a better writer than a speaker I think. He’s more organized in what he writes.
It’s 80’F or higher today, far too warm for the end of September. But it isn’t 116’F… More conifers are showing water stress, the browning needles are spreading like Covid Delta around this forested mountain county…
sealintheSelkirks
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Our former guest on Nature Bats Last confirms what many of us have been saying that the Arctic marine food web is in collapse and it will domino through the global ocean systems.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/12/27/warnings-from-the-far-north/
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Roberts latest via my Twitter feed;
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And then there is this:
Model Shows Nuclear War Would Cause Millennia-Long ‘Little Ice Age’
“We hope that this new study will encourage more nations to ratify the ban treaty,” one of the paper’s co-authors said, referring to the landmark Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/07/08/model-shows-nuclear-war-would-cause-millennia-long-little-ice-age
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine revives the terrifying specter of thermonuclear annihilation, a scientific study published Thursday revealed that a nuclear exchange involving as few as hundreds of warheads would likely cause a “little ice age” lasting centuries or even millennia.
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Ya know something? I hear reactions of ‘there are so many less missiles than there were back then’ right along with that lovely old favorite ‘god will protect us’ (meaning of course me know you…) to dismiss what they can’t imagine.
Some days I wish that I couldn’t imagine it, too, but unfortunately I have a tiny grasp on just how much more powerful they are than Hiroshima and knowledge of just how many mini-missiles are in each of the minimum 18 missiles that a US Navy Trident sub carries. Each of those enhanced hydrogen-thermonuclear mini nukes are hundreds of times more powerful than the tiny atom bomb used in 1945 and, just to add to the ridiculous destructive power of ONE submarine (that my oldest friend’s younger brother was a captain of now retired), the total number of targets are 144 not 18. Those 18 missiles his brother was swimming under the ocean with had 8 independently targeting warheads on each that will fly where you send them per sub…
So what I’m thinking is that all it would take is ONE damned submarine to do this. Everybody has these, not just the US. More bang for the buck, eh?
Just one could absolutely destroy 144 cities, towns, military bases all within minutes of one another depending on how long the range of these are based on fuel consumption. But combined should be able to put an enormous cloud of smoke into the sky so quickly that I doubt it would take long to completely block sunlight. At least regionally. Days? A couple weeks at most because how long does it take to circle the earth?
There aren’t enough targets on the Washington coast for 144 of these things. Hell, there aren’t enough real targets in the entire state!
Just how many subs are out there I wonder? I don’t think I’ll use a search engine to look up the estimates. Probably ruin my entire day….
sealintheSelkirks
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Well, it just gets more real every day, doesn’t it?
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sealintheSelkirks
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And Russia has rolled out a new missile even ‘better’ and more powerful that what’s in stock already, with more independently targeted warheads per missile passing the US’s MIRVS.
This short vid explains quite well the differences between the wimpy weak tiny little firecracker of Hiroshima/Nagasaki and today’s reality.
What If A Nuclear Bomb Hits New York Tomorrow
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sealintheSelkirks
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This is good:
The ride aboard our “Pale Blue Dot”
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sealintheSelkirks
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I just love the “Never Event” that happens all the time in the medical world, and how easily it transfers to the nuclear:
What Surgical Errors Teach Us About Nuclear Policy
In the persistence of disastrous medical mistakes, an ER doctor sees a dire warning about human fallibility.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/what-surgical-errors-teach-us-about-nuclear-policy/
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sealintheSelkirks
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Some reasonably good coverage from the corporate media with the predictable ‘Hopium” at the end!
Methane levels at 800,000-year high, accelerating the sixth extinction (msn.com)
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A Nuclear Warning From Hurricane Helene*
*Kev: and now 10 days later Hurricane Milton after this article was written. Milton seriously fucked up the West Side of Florida and threw 40 tornadoes at people on the East Side along with 100mph hurricane winds.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/10/08/a-nuclear-warning-from-hurricane-helene/
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Isn’t it amazing how the US have somehow dodged the odds so far, at least for large numbers of deaths? For the most part, anyway. The damage costs are skyrocketing and they will never be completed because it will take YEARS to fix what’s broke or destroyed, and it’s going to keep happening to the same places. We’re already seeing that.
But the odds are stacking up ugly to continue this pattern is what I’m thinking. One after another in the US, a disaster of one kind or another always happening and in increasing frequency. We are all so fucked.
I find it quite…ironic in that George Carlin kind of way that the parts of the country that are most vehemently against the idea of Climate Destabilization and Global Warming isn’t happening and/or it isn’t humans caused, are just getting the fucking shit kicked out of them. Florida where it’s ILLEGAL by State law to mention climate change in any official paperwork? North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee, the entire piece of the country, the Confederate Slave-states full of fucking MAGATS voting for Trump, are now screaming for government hand-outs when their congressmen and Senators and President won’t vote the funding to help people but will cut taxes on the billionaires and never take a dime out of the ever-growing War funds.
Is that Irony or what?
sealintheSelkirks
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Just completely infatuated with ‘AI’ that really isn’t artificial intelligence, it’s just more computer shit that the wealthy can make money off of.
This is how it’s being framed to justify it. It doesn’t add to GHGs!! Except, you know, the mining, refining, and transportation of fuel, or now making new plants and all the concrete, or…
Is Restarting Three Mile Island Really A Good Idea?
Nuclear power doesn’t add to greenhouse gas emissions. But tech companies racing to find new energy sources for A.I. arguably have better clean energy options.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91204023/is-restarting-three-mile-island-really-a-good-idea
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Is it just me or are we going freaking backwards on this?
sealintheSelkirks
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[…] Professor McPherson and I have previously delved into the issue of methane releases: Abrupt Climate Change, the Nuclear Threat, Methane in the ESAS: Robert Hunziker interviewed on Natur… […]
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Hunziker throws us another one:
Nuclear Goes Political
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/10/17/nuclear-goes-political/
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Because all these tech bros need WAY MORE electricity for their giant computer buildings…
Thinking about that, what are they going to do when they’re confined to bunkers that don’t have a big enough electrical system to power all their shit, and the world outside has crashed into chaos?
sealintheSelkirks
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