@business_kid --

Huh, apparently the author missed the news that China's population has started shrinking.

Interesting video on Thorium reactors and why they haven't really taken off (yet).

Play Bonny!

While you certainly have the freedom to care or not about Fukishima, that is irrelevant to the fact that you used it as an example demanding caution not only for it's specific design but ALL nuclear design. It is IMHO disingenuous avoidance to bring up an event as an analog in a debate and then just dismiss it as unimportant or worse once it is challenged.

Please in all sincerity stop merely stating nebulous, dangling assertions without explanation or backup as axiomatic and be specific. How are critics of Divine Wisdom all mere "armchair critics"? What and how have I dodged "the entire thrust of your case"? Exactly what fundamental points have I failed to answer? Again you take my disagreement with your ideas, not your character, as a personal attack. It is not. You seem a congenial person, interested enough in technology to inhabit these boards and in people enough to share your thoughts. All that is respectable and appreciated. I simply contest how insular your views are, completely closed to the consideration of reason and newer objective evidence at the very least in regards to spiritual beliefs that seem to place an iron guard around what you even can consider and partly by translating any disagreement with a personal attack on your character that at least in my case does not exist. I don't dislike you let alone consider you "the lowest of the low" by any stretch of imagination. You really don't need to be so defensive. AFAIK you are not my enemy.

The somewhat important numbers are in the RATE, not the actual amounts. China's population in 2022 was 1.4 Billion or 1.4 x10^9. That number, including Covid deaths, dropped by merely 800,000, a large number on it's own but less than one ten thousandth of the total which is like worrying one is headed to the poorhouse because you had 100 dollars and lost a penny. That extremely low change over a period of one year makes for very poor statistics in trying to describe it as a trend and it is nit-picking. The salient points of the article are essentially unaffected by that difference, especially since there is some evidence that the Chinese are working toward making good on their promise to drop emissions and in a not unrealistic time frame.

I think it is still hopeful news.

Thank you! That is a very well-balanced and in-depth, as well as explained with decent simplicity, video. Highly recommended but be sure to watch past the 5 minute mark, preferably to the completion. Actually, and more appropriate to the discussion on SMRds be sure to click the link in the description for his episode specifically on SMRs. It's really quite decent and similarly well-balanced and by no means sugar coated.

I don't think it really undermines the article, I just thought it was kind of funny that the article writer missed that headline news.

Understood. I merely wanted to point out that like much of modern "News" which has largely become entertainment, the statistics used don't adhere to good practice for any meaningful results. It's perhaps not quite as bad as leaving out the qualifiers in "Four out of five Doctors smoke Kools" but it is equally misleading.

There'e a very old saying here about spending: "Look after the pennies and the pounds (£££) will look after themselves."

Personally, even as a kid I esteemed it as nonsense and looked after the larger amounts. Here's an example of folks NOT doing that.

1000-super-emitting-methane-leaks-risk-triggering-climate-tipping-points

Funny you mentioned tipping points. Just learned about them today. Tipping point in my mind stands for, it is over.

By CodeOne (blank map), DeWikiMan (additional elements) - This file was derived from: WorldMap.svgThe content is based upon fig. 2 in Kriegler et al. (2009) and Lenton et al. (2008)., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/inde...curid=74405407

Yes and no. Each of the climate "tipping points" represents a particular system going out of equilibrium. For example:

1) Sea ice melts in the arctic, exposing dark water which absorbs sunlight rather than reflecting it. So the sea temperature rises and more ice melts.

2) Exposed permafrost melts, releasing methane from the peat. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, so the temperature rises and more permafrost melts.

3) Lightning strikes cause forest fires. Less forest means less carbon dioxide gets sucked out of the atmosphere, so the temperature rises. Higher temperatures suck more water out of the seas, causing storms, which means more lightening.

If only one such system goes out of equilibrium, the others can perhaps compensate, so it isn't curtains for earth's climate as a whole. But if they all go out of equilibrium together...

Something else has been in the back of my mind.

Canada and the Excited States have recently endured a really cold winter with blasts of Arctic weather. We've had a few blasts of it also. Ireland never gets it too bad because the sea levels things out. But they had temperatures of -14°C last night in Scotland. I haven't had official word, but I'm tentatively blaming an errant Jet Stream, which is the more erratic & airborn relative of the Gulf Stream.

So if all the Arctic cold is being spread over the Northern hemisphere, what level of warming is going on in the Arctic?

@rokytnji: Tipping points aside, do you not think it's over anyhow? This is courtesy of BSD fortunes Our future is in the hands of those who can be bought. You don't get rich from the pay as a politician. But you can get very rich by serving interests.
People won't come to their senses until the tipping points are a distant memory.

Seasonal or local weather extremes mean almost nothing about the climate, which is the long term average where weather is the short term events.
More energy in the atmosphere and oceans means more intense systems and more extreme weather in general. So with everything hotter you can get more massive and powerful winter storms. The cold form a winter storm is there and gone quickly, the heat in the ocean and arctic that powered it have not gone away. That energy over the poles drives and directs the jet streams.

Yes, agreed generally. My question was really about Arctic Warming.

We (Britain, Ireland, &Northern Europe) got the cold snap one year recently - 2010? We had a white Christmas - two months of it! It was a prolonged freeze in November & December. We had -10°C for six weeks or more and everything went wrong, because Ireland was not prepared for it. But IIRC, the Arctic warmed significantly that year.

Mind you, there was one benefit. For my entire life, Radio would go into Silly Season for November & December each year. My hate was concentrated on endless replays on Bing Crosby's 'White Christmas.' After 2 months of a white christmas, the replays stopped . We had had one of those, and we didn't like it one little bit.

Arctic warming is my concern. It's not the cold snap here locally that concerns me. An extensive cold spell has been enjoyed (or not!) by Canada and the Excited States as far South as California. Whatever displaced that cold air from the Arctic must have had some heat wave effect on the Arctic, but I can't find good information on that.

Getting back to my original query as to how to make use of the heat stored in the oceans, I came across this video on Ocean Mechanical Thermal Energy Conversion which looks promising (Video lasts just short of 10 minutes but well worth watching.) A distinct improvement on OTEC.

This was the state of play back at the beginning of 2019 so any progress since is likely to have been hampered by the Covid outbreak. Hopefully it will pick up again especially with the recent IPCC climate change report looking very worrying.

Play Bonny!