Yes, and is the vastly most important part of the input of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Really. The rise in CO2 concentration isn't an output of climate models. This is input to the model.

I'm not sure which oil company you learned this from, but you should show data if you're going to make such assertions.

The increasing derivative is well within the meaurement error, but in any case, real or not, it has nothing to do with climate models. Carbon dioxide concentration is an input to the climate models, not an output.

Data for the most recent year is here: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/bluem... and the full record since measurements began is here: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/bluem...

Yes. Have you?

Because this is not a fact, much less an "obvious" fact. We are not below historical averages, unless by "historical" you mean the Miocene epoch, five million years ago. That wasn't even true when those crude hand-drawn graphs you link were made, it's even less true now.

The graphs you link leave out the current global temperature (the right most point is 2005, nearly 20 years ago). Yes, it looks like we're below historical averages ... when you leave out the part that is well above historical averages.

I don't have a "doomsday" narrative. The world is getting warmer. We understand why; it is the greenhouse effect, something which has been known about for over a century, is fundamental to understanding the temperature of all the planets with atmospheres (not just Earth), and is very well researched and well understood. You may disagree, but really, this is well understood and well supported by data.

Didn't we see this story yesterday?

Yes, carbon dioxide ppm is the highest ever measured. No, that's not news: it's a rising curve. Every year is a record high. We're adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere faster than it's being removed.

This year's rise over last year's high was slightly greater increase than usual, but the difference is well within the noise.

I am not proposing nuclear as a solution. I said:

You demonstrate the second part of this statement with every post you make (and other slashdot posters demonstrate the first).

So... you are now confusing warming over the course of thousands of years and even tens of thousands of years with warming over the course of a few decades.

Mildly amusing that only one of the four graphs have a scale attached. For reference, the "little ice age" had an estimated temperature drop of about half a degree C in the northern hemisphere.

No you don't. For any starting point, the current warming would be a needle-sharp spike on the right edge of the plot (or would be, if they bothered to put it on the graph): absolutely nothing like any of the slow variations shown.

What you're really pointing out is that, if you make the time scale long enough, the current variation is so incredibly fast that the spike is too narrow to see. The fact that it's too narrow to see on a graph if you expand the scale enough doesn't make it "not unusual", any more than a bullet isn't dangerous because it moves too fast to see.

No it isn't.

An unsupported assertion.

Unfortunately data does not show that to be true.

You are (deliberately?) confusing warming of a tenth of a degree over the course of centuries with warming of degrees over the course of decades. We have massively exceeded previous warming trends.

You are also missing or ignoring the fact that we currently measure the climate inputs. We know solar energy input to the Earth. If there is another cause of warming, where is it? Why don't we see it?

The fact that you can't think of solutions is not a proof that solutions can't be found.

It is a problem that will continue to be a problem five years from now, and fifty years from now.

They work for some markets. Saying they can work for all power requirements is, in your words, "magical thinking."

No they haven't.

So your argument claiming that nuclear can't work is "it doesn't work now, so therefore it can't ever work."

I've spent decades doing solar cell research. I remember when the argument against solar was "it's too expensive now, so therefore it must always be expensive." It wasn't a good argument when it was anti-solar, and it still isn't.

The rest of your argument is identical: "it isn't practical now, therefore it must always have problems." Nope.

(but, with that said, it's no worse than most of the nuclear advocates, who won't admit that there are any problems in the first place.)

I've seen a lot of economic analyses. In general, the economic analyses starting out "we will prove nuclear power will always too expensive" will reach that conclusion, and the ones starting out "we will analyze the routes to economically competitive nuclear power" will find approaches supporting that conclusion.

For the most part, analyses saying nuclear power can't be cost competitive have the unspoken assumption "...using the technologies and construction approaches we use today," and the ones saying it can be cost competitive have the assumption "assuming changes to the approaches we use today" (which are as-yet unproven on a large-scale).

But if you want to cherry pick only the studies that agree with your opinion, that's easy to do.

Nuclear power is expensive. Today. But, as I said: nuclear advocates won't admit that nuclear power has any economic problems, and the detractors won't admit that economic problems have any solutions.

Worldwide average is six to eight years. But where is the argument saying that it must be six to eight years? There's no physical law saying that construction must take six to eight years, that is simply the number today. The solution would be, ok, deploy them faster.

In any case, all infrastructure changes take time to implement, not just nuclear power plants. But climate warming is not a problem "today." It is a problem for the entire future of the human race. We will continue to need solutions tomorrow, five years from tomorrow, and fifty years from now.

What is your argument saying that nuclear must be expensive? All the analyses I've ever seen say that the approach of taking a single standardized design and deploying it over and over would be cheap. Your counter is?

True. This is the problem that is most often ignored, even by nuclear detractors.

I'd call this one an illusion. Nations grab foreign technology and expertise all the time.

Too complicated to discuss in a slashdot post. Quick answer is, utility markets are all different and have different needs, and the real-world solution has to have a variety of different sources.

Always a concern, of course. If we can't learn from mistakes, will continue to be a concern. There is a huge literature on the subject, far too extensive to summarize. I'd like to see use of one of the inherently-safe nuclear plant designs.

That's the second issue that is way too often ignored. If we went 100% nuclear and didn't reprocess fuel, we'd run out of uranium. The very first answer is, we can't switch to massive nuclear power usage unless we start to reprocess spent fuel. The social and political difficulties of that are monumental (the technical issues are hard but not impossible). In the longer run, we'd need to start breeder reactors. The social and political difficulties of that are even more monumental (the technical issues are not actually hard).

Thorium reactors been made, and shown the basic idea is not crazy. I am not sure whether the new ideas for thorium reactors are going to be as good as the advocates propose, but I'm technologically optimistic: we can make it work if we choose to put in the effort. Thorium, of course, would solve the fuel problem (at least for longer than the reasonable look-forward time span.)

Agree. It was a captivating idea: the big problem with nuclear reactors is that they scale down poorly, so you don't have a path of makimg quick progress on small scales before moving to large scales. Unfortunately, taking a concept that does not scale down well, and saying "I have it! Let's scale it down!" was not a good idea to solve the problem.

I personally am not going to solve the problems (My work is on solar energy, and while I do occasionally slide into nuclear, it's isotope power systems, not terrestrial reactor systems). But I see no fundamental reasons that the problems can't be solved. Most of the arguments "these problems are insolvable" stem from an invisible assumption "the technology we currently have deployed and working is the only technology that we will ever have."

You might read the Wikipedia Little Ice Age article you cite; it's interesting.

For reference, the "little ice age" was about 1/10 of the current warming, and occurred over a period of about ten times as long.

More precisely, the detractors-- the few who actually get past the "problems can't be solved" stage-- move on to "the solutions can't be economically viable."

No actual economic analyses, mind; just the assertion.

This is why I find discussing nuclear power pointless.

This is why I find discussing nuclear power pointless; the advocates won't admit that nuclear power has any problems, and the detractors don't admit that problems have any solutions.

Except most of them aren't. Right now, what people are complaining about are refugees, who are actually not illegal aliens.

I heartily agree that the refugee problem on the border (particularly the southern border) is a problem. But it turns out that the way to ask for refugee status in the US is that you come into the US and ask. Blame the U.S. immigration law, specifically the Refugee Act of 1980.
https://www.rescue.org/article...