UN Andrew Yang proposes ‘giant space mirrors’ to combat climate change - Yang Giggedy Gang 2020: This doesn't sound very mathematically sound, Yang

Climate change is just global warming in a clown suit. Andrew Yang is just one of its cultists.

Andrew Yang proposes ‘giant space mirrors’ to combat climate change

“Space mirrors would involve launching giant foldable mirrors into space that would deploy and reflect much of the sun’s light [away from the planet],” he said.

nypost.com

Presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s climate plan aims to get the US to net-zero carbon emissions with a range of new initiatives — including investing in major geoengineering projects like giant mirrors in space.

Like many of his fellow Democratic presidential candidates, Yang has proposed using a wide range of tools to ramp up renewable energy, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, establish new standards on emissions for buildings, cars and the entire electric grid and boost nuclear energy capacity.

However, his 20-year, $4.87 trillion climate plan differs in one way and that’s in terms of geoengineering — the notion that humans should take deliberate and large-scale action concerning climate in order to stop or slow down the planet’s warming.

Yang’s plan would provide $800 million to NASA, the Department of Defense and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to research geoengineering, which includes investigating “giant foldable space mirrors” as an emergency measure of last resort.

Yang2020.com
“Space mirrors would involve launching giant foldable mirrors into space that would deploy and reflect much of the sun’s light [away from the planet]. This method would be extremely expensive, which is why it should be investigated as a last resort. However, since we would be able to ‘undo’ the mirror after deployment if needed, it’s less permanent,” Yang has written.

The entrepreneur proposed that America become a global leader in green technology.

“We’re the most entrepreneurial country in the history of the world. It’s time to activate the American imagination and work ethic to provide the innovation and technology that will power the rest of the world,” Yang wrote.

Although most mainstream climate plans proposed by Democratic presidential candidates have a technology investment component, one expert urged a bit of caution.

Yang2020.com
“I think that he’s essentially on the right track to focus on science and technology, but I think that his faith in technology may be a little bit misplaced,” Steven Cohen, director of the research program on sustainability policy and management at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, told The Verge.

“It’s one thing to do the research … but another thing to count on it to save the world.”

 

[Vecr]

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If you already have a rocket to get to the moon, can't you just launch a nuke with it?

Anyway, the moon is very far away, and people would see the rocks coming long before they landed.

 

[Rancid Flid]

So... nothing on reducing our energy dependence on oil, which is a finite resource? At our current rate of consumption, we'll be out by 2070...ish, which doesn't sound bad, but I'd rather not just kick the can off like the Boomers did.

Nuclear power, motherfuckers. It works. That's literally the solution AND WE HAVE HAD IT FOR EIGHTY GODDAMN YEARS

At school in the mid-80's they were telling us that oil was going to run out during the first part of this century. An area the size of Wales was cut down in the rainforest each year too, which would mean there should be nothing left of it by now, same with the melting of the polar ice-caps, which should have drowned us all if popular opinion was right back then.

I don't know what the facts are regarding how much oil is potentially available but I'd guess it's a similar situation to gold & diamonds, there's probably more than we're told & pretending there isn't is the perfect way to artificially inflate prices.

Perhaps the main downside with nuclear power is the amount of toxic waste it produces, which is a problem we don't know how to effectively deal with yet ? I can see us using space as our waste disposal area in the future, if something hitting the earth from space doesn't wipe us out first.

 

[Vecr]

At school in the mid-80's they were telling us that oil was going to run out during the first part of this century. An area the size of Wales was cut down in the rainforest each year too, which would mean there should be nothing left of it by now, same with the melting of the polar ice-caps, which should have drowned us all if popular opinion was right back then.

I don't know what the facts are regarding how much oil is potentially available but I'd guess it's a similar situation to gold & diamonds, there's probably more than we're told & pretending there isn't is the perfect way to artificially inflate prices.

Perhaps the main downside with nuclear power is the amount of toxic waste it produces, which is a problem we don't know how to effectively deal with yet ? I can see us using space as our waste disposal area in the future, if something hitting the earth from space doesn't wipe us out first.

Natural gas is better then oil anyway, and I think we still have lots of that.

Nuclear is better then anything else, though.

 

[Rancid Flid]

Natural gas is better then oil anyway, and I think we still have lots of that.

Nuclear is better then anything else, though.

Yes, this could well be right, not sure tbh. I'd have to question the potential for explosions & fire if our oil use was mainly switched to gas though & while nuclear is very efficient, it has the potential to go full Fukushima & start producing Godzillas & sheeit.

 

[moocow]

while nuclear is very efficient, it has the potential to go full Fukushima & start producing Godzillas & sheeit.

Still waaaaay safer and cleaner than the alternatives, even including Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island.

 

[Rancid Flid]

Still waaaaay safer and cleaner than the alternatives, even including Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island.

Maybe, I'm honestly not sure. The potential is there for a huge disaster that could affect many people for a long time, compared to the alternatives. Chernobyl is still affecting lots of people, including a friends Polish wife who recently had radiation therapy due to thyroid cancer caused by Chernobyl & it seems a common problem, particularly with women in her age group from parts of eastern Europe. She, like many others, had to stay in isolation for months.
I don't know enough about it all to really disagree with you though, just my opinion.

 

[moocow]

Maybe, I'm honestly not sure. The potential is there for a huge disaster that could affect many people for a long time, compared to the alternatives. Chernobyl is still affecting lots of people, including a friends Polish wife who recently had radiation therapy due to thyroid cancer caused by Chernobyl & it seems a common problem, particularly with women in her age group from parts of eastern Europe. She, like many others, had to stay in isolation for months.
I don't know enough about it all to really disagree with you though, just my opinion.

Including all injuries, illnesses and deaths directly attributable to TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear power has been (and still is) the safest and least harmful method of electric power generation in human history. Coal mining is extraordinarily dangerous. It also gives miners "black lung." Prospecting, drilling for and pumping natural gas is just about as dangerous as it is for oil. Fewer people have died from nuclear accidents than from accidents during mining, drilling, pumping, and operations involving coal & natural gas and from medical issues caused by same. Of course, nuclear fuel is made from uranium, which also has to be mined, but compared to coal uranium is very energy-dense (it takes a lot more coal to produce the same electricity that a small amount of uranium can produce).

Both coal and natural gas are burned to produce heat to drive turbines to generate electricity -- they produce carbon dioxide and other pollutants as they burn. Burning coal also produces radiation (whoops). That's all released into the environment straight from the smoke stacks. Nuclear plants release nothing but steam into the environment when they run. Spent fuel is stored safely on site until it can be moved to permanent storage elsewhere or reprocessed and used again in another reactor. There are new (3rd generation) reactor designs that can use "spent fuel" from 2nd generation reactors, and some are already built and in operation today.

As for nuclear accidents, Three Mile Island didn't actually release any contaminants into the environment (the containment design worked) and Fukushima wasn't nearly as disastrous (environmentally) as Chernobyl despite initial fears that it would be. Chernobyl was fucking awful and killed a lot of people (and still is), but that number is still lower than coal & natural gas' body count. That sounds counter-intuitive since we know Chernobyl's death toll is up in the tens of thousands, but coal and natural gas have produced more pollution and killed more people than nuclear has.

 

[melty]

Why doesn't he propose building giant space arks to leave the planet, like in Firefly? What could that be, like $10 trillion? Lol

 

[Rancid Flid]

Including all injuries, illnesses and deaths directly attributable to TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima, nuclear power has been (and still is) the safest and least harmful method of electric power generation in human history. Coal mining is extraordinarily dangerous. It also gives miners "black lung." Prospecting, drilling for and pumping natural gas is just about as dangerous as it is for oil. Fewer people have died from nuclear accidents than from accidents during mining, drilling, pumping, and operations involving coal & natural gas and from medical issues caused by same. Of course, nuclear fuel is made from uranium, which also has to be mined, but compared to coal uranium is very energy-dense (it takes a lot more coal to produce the same electricity that a small amount of uranium can produce).

Both coal and natural gas are burned to produce heat to drive turbines to generate electricity -- they produce carbon dioxide and other pollutants as they burn. Burning coal also produces radiation (whoops). That's all released into the environment straight from the smoke stacks. Nuclear plants release nothing but steam into the environment when they run. Spent fuel is stored safely on site until it can be moved to permanent storage elsewhere or reprocessed and used again in another reactor. There are new (3rd generation) reactor designs that can use "spent fuel" from 2nd generation reactors, and some are already built and in operation today.

As for nuclear accidents, Three Mile Island didn't actually release any contaminants into the environment (the containment design worked) and Fukushima wasn't nearly as disastrous (environmentally) as Chernobyl despite initial fears that it would be. Chernobyl was fucking awful and killed a lot of people (and still is), but that number is still lower than coal & natural gas' body count. That sounds counter-intuitive since we know Chernobyl's death toll is up in the tens of thousands, but coal and natural gas have produced more pollution and killed more people than nuclear has.

That's interesting, thanks, but I'd have to point out that I don't think it's fair to compare deaths & injuries between nuclear power & traditional mining due to the huge amount of time that man has been mining coal, compared to how long we've been using nuclear power.

Isn't most coal mining done by machines now too ? I'm sure they'd still be mining by hand in parts of the 3rd world & even using machines, there'd be lots of dust around, although I'd guess workers can now use breathing equipment rather than a handkerchief tied round their face.

Is there really such a thing as safe, permanent storage for spent fuel ? don't they still have problems with leakage into the water table ?

 

[Vecr]

That's interesting, thanks, but I'd have to point out that I don't think it's fair to compare deaths & injuries between nuclear power & traditional mining due to the huge amount of time that man has been mining coal, compared to how long we've been using nuclear power.

Isn't most coal mining done by machines now too ? I'm sure they'd still be mining by hand in parts of the 3rd world & even using machines, there'd be lots of dust around, although I'd guess workers can now use breathing equipment rather than a handkerchief tied round their face.

Is there really such a thing as safe, permanent storage for spent fuel ? don't they still have problems with leakage into the water table ?

You would want to look at injuries per terawatt.

 

[TowinKarz]

The "out of oil by 20XX" argument is always predicated on the idea that we'll never find any more and that all viable reserves are currently tapped, and it's loudest proponents aren't environmentalists or anyone in STEM trying to stretch out the viability of fossil fuels or extract them more effeciently, but socialists trying to argue that the imminent tapping out of oil means the imminent death of capitalism, so get on the right side NOW before you have to fight your neighbor like it's Mad Max for the last bits of it's corpse, we only have "X" years to do it, after all. (Ignoring the fact Capitalism came to us on horseback, not a Model-T, the fundamental ideas behind it do not require oil, but I digress) and hippy-dippy people who still think Solar Freakin Roadways (tm) are a viable thing if only the big oil monopolies that suppress them would just go away somehow.....

 

[Calooby]

Fuck the sun! #YangGang2020

 

[(‿ˠ‿)]

That's interesting, thanks, but I'd have to point out that I don't think it's fair to compare deaths & injuries between nuclear power & traditional mining due to the huge amount of time that man has been mining coal, compared to how long we've been using nuclear power.

Isn't most coal mining done by machines now too ? I'm sure they'd still be mining by hand in parts of the 3rd world & even using machines, there'd be lots of dust around, although I'd guess workers can now use breathing equipment rather than a handkerchief tied round their face.

Is there really such a thing as safe, permanent storage for spent fuel ? don't they still have problems with leakage into the water table ?

I'm no nuclear engineer, just someone who has had a passing interest in nuclear power since I was a kid. However as I understand it Chernobyl was the result of a specific type of graphite-moderated reactor called an RBMK, which was designed by the USSR and never duplicated elsewhere due to safety concerns. This was because it was high output and could use uranium that was enriched to lower levels than needed for a PWR or BWR, but in exchange it had a design quirk called a positive void coefficient where it could be very unstable at low power levels and the solid moderator was slow to respond compared to a primarily liquid-moderated design. It also didn't have a solid containment vessel like most other reactor designs, just a lid which was blown off by the massive steam explosion caused by the reactor overheating so quickly. Even then to cause the accident that made reactor #4 go prompt critical and explode, the plant engineers had to circumvent the RBMKs safeties and normal operating procedures in order to perform a poorly designed experiment. IIRC this was seeing how long the cooling system could keep circulating just on the inertia of the pump impellers, which caused heat to build and form steam voids in the liquid coolant around the fuel rods, which allowed neutrons to propagate at a greater rate and start a runaway positive feedback loop.

So, Chernobyl affected a great deal of people but for it to happen you had to have an uncommon Soviet reactor with poor containment and a major well-known design flaw, and then you had to fill it with poorly-trained staff with orders to willfully circumvent all the safeguard mechanisms and procedures that were in place to prevent disaster. Western reactor designs literally cannot do what chernobyl did, the worst-case scenario there was what happened at Fukushima. THAT was the result of a tsunami (which was severe enough to kill 20,000 people) absolutely smoking an outdated reactor from the early 70s and causing a total cooling loss, followed by TEPCO seriously underestimating and then obscuring the severity of the situation. Newer designs like ABWRs, pebble-bed reactors, and the proposed LFTR have drawn from the experiences of the very few major nuclear incidents we've seen in the past 65 years of nuclear power plant operation and would be even safer still. Like others have said, when you take into account the fact that coal is dangerous to mine and dangerous to people around the plants (being carcinogenic and also slightly radioactive) then nuclear is the safest source of power per each kilowatt-hour it generates.

As for fuel storage and disposal, the accumulation of large volumes of toxic waste is largely a manmade political problem:

Policy On Reprocessing | Nuclear Reaction | FRONTLINE | PBS

Most of the waste we have is from "slow" thermal-neutron reactors which leave a lot of useful radioisotopes behind- meaning really that "waste" isn't actual useless waste so much as it is criminally under-utilized nuclear fuel. We could, and used to, take that waste and then use it to power fast-neutron reactors. The end result was far less waste by volume, and what was finally left behind was much less radioactive in general. However, in a well-intentioned but ineffective and incredibly naive anti-proliferation gesture Carter broke that fuel cycle to encourage the rest of the world to do the same. This is because some fast reactors can also easily make weapons-grade plutonium under the guise of power generation, but nobody else followed Carter's example, leaving us still in the midst of widespread nuclear weapons proliferation but now with an ever-increasing stockpile of nuclear waste.

Even then, long-term storage isn't as dire a proposition as it's held up as. The dry casks storage we use now are goddamn neigh invincible to the point where tests trying to crack them open with 100mph speeding trains basically resulted in an intact flask, and a locomotive that exploded into twisted wreckage:

Nuclear Train Flask Collision Test - Operation Smash Hit (1984)

Hereby follows the propaganda: When nuclear fuel is sent from Britain's nuclear power stations to Sellafield for reprocessing, a simple procedure is used whi...

www.youtube.com

And that was using materials and engineering from the 70s/80s. Things have improved even more since then.

As far as I've read, there's no reason we can't be chucking these things into Yucca Mountain. Pretty much every study and whitepaper I've read about that facility says it's safe and should be able to provide stable long-term storage, engineers and geologists and nuclear scientists seem to widely support it. Meanwhile the opposition to storage seems to come mainly from politicians and hand-wringing soccer moms who couldn't tell you how fission works, but all they need to know is that it involves atoms and atoms are fucking scary

 

[Notgoodwithusernames]

For some reason my mind automatically shifts to the second X Wing novel where Rogue Squadron hijacked solar mirrors to help take Coruscaunt. Andrew Yang is a fan of the old eu. He has my vote.

 

[frozenrunner]

4.87 trillion. I wonder if any democrat has any idea of how money works?

They're all pushing for free college, slavery reparations, or economic woowoo bullshit like UBI. The answer is no.

 

[Dracula's Spirit Animal]

Bear in mind that communists will take.any gambit to destroy the capitalist economy and pave the way for superiah fyootchya!

I'm such an exceptional boomer, I had to pronounce fyootchya aloud before I knew what the fuck you were talking about.

 

[TowinKarz]

They're all pushing for free college, slavery reparations, or economic woowoo bullshit like UBI. The answer is no.

Well, once you've got $880 Trillion in debt to give free healthcare, education AND spending money to the world, what's a few trillion more for space mirrors?

 

[Remove Goat]

Considering the Nazis came up with the same thing as a superweapon, I'm going to memoryhole this as an alt-right dogwhistle.

Very bad look for Andrew Yang!

 

[Dracula's Spirit Animal]

So... nothing on reducing our energy dependence on oil, which is a finite resource? At our current rate of consumption, we'll be out by 2070...ish, which doesn't sound bad, but I'd rather not just kick the can off like the Boomers did.

Nuclear power, motherfuckers. It works. That's literally the solution AND WE HAVE HAD IT FOR EIGHTY GODDAMN YEARS

The stupidest thing is, if that narrative is right, then Trump is the vanguard for environmental protection... tariffs. Make every import from every country tariffed to reflect the cost of the envoronmental damage their industry causes. But nope, that shit won't happen. Trump is actually wielding the sword that could be used by environmentalists to effect global environmental issues, but nope: OrangeManBad. I think it's actually one of the dumbest things I've seen in my life, and certainly since the late eighties.

 

[Stoneheart]

. Besides the psychological effect this would have allowed early night vision to work every night instead of only a few night a month.

not so early american night vision...
like 20 years behind...