One of the worst Ted talks I've ever heard. Seriously. Ridiculously awful. I'd like to see sources for a lot of his assertions.

I wonder how much he's getting paid by the nuclear industry?

Anyone who does a Ted talk to argue that nuclear is better than renewables yet never addresses the question of waste isn't worth listening to. It's a huge issue with nuclear. That waste will be around for zillions of years.

This statement is just laughable and indicates to me he's just spouting propaganda, I paraphrase: "When we stop burning wood we restore our forests." That's just ignorant. Up here, wood is harvested sustainably and responsibility and the harvesting benefits the forest.

Radiation is good for you, didn't you hear??

Why was it the worst Ted Talk you ever heard? Just because his ideas don't meld with your ideas? He is just giving us somethings to think about counter to all the hype surrounding solar and wind energy. It's always good to question what is happening. It's called Science. Remember? We seem to be marching headlong into this mess and nobody is questioning it.

When you stop questioning things, you become one of the "faithful."

I happen to agree that paving the planet with solar panels that require some pretty toxic sh!t to manufacture, and the environmental impact of the manufacturing, transportation, land requirements, and maintenance of both solar panels, and wind turbines, is a serious problem.

If you don't see that, then you are part of the problem.

I am not saying that current nuclear technology is the end all answer. But, it isn't going anywhere. And it will only get better, and safer, even long term. If we did away with nuclear power right now, a large portion of the human population would probably die off, and rather quickly. Solar and wind are just not reliable enough to run the world as it exists right now. Maintenance on a wind turbine is a freaking nightmare. They don't last that long. You would think they would but the reality is very different.

Coal is nasty sh!t. We need to do away with it, but even it is more reliable that solar and wind combined. It will just kill all of us though air pollution.

We need to keep researching nuclear power. To abandon it to ignorance is, well, ignorant.

This is roughly how I think of it:

1. As far as “renewables” go, the Sun is the ultimate source of energy for Earth. (Even though the Sun is not capable of “renewing itself.”)

2. The Earth receives only so much power (rate of energy) from the sun. Expense of energy at a rate greater than the rate at which the Earth receives energy from the Sun is ultimately not “sustainable” if limited to “renewables.”

3. The human race achieved great progress by expensing a lot of energy very quickly, most of it from fossil fuel. Fossil fuel is basically energy accumulated and stored over millions of years. We as a species powered our recent progress by expensing in centuries the amount of energy accumulated over millions of years. We may not be able to keep making progress in the same pace, or even just sustain our currently level of progress, if we scale back our rate of energy usage to the rate below what the Earth receives from the Sun. In my mind, this is the ultimate argument against “renewables.”

4. To keep expensing energy at a rate that is greater than what the Sun provides to Earth, we either keep drawing down the saved energy (from fossil fuel) or we convert matter into energy (that’s “nuclear”, fission or fusion).

5. The only other way out is to extract energy from some other sources from outer space (may be some day we can capture big, energy-dense chunks of space rocks and use them like gigantic batteries to power our civilization).

If we don’t like either option in 4, and 5 does not happen, then we will ultimately have to cut back the rate at which we use energy to the level below what we can naturally receive from the Sun. That might mean getting back to the pre-Industrial Revolution population and way of life.

quote:

Originally posted by markj:
Why was it the worst Ted Talk you ever heard?

Because it was a propaganda piece. Science? He spouted off "studies" without sources. But the biggest reason why I think it's the worst Ted talk I've ever watched is because his objective was to show how bad sustainable energy is vs atomic energy by going through a whole litany of disadvantages pertaining to renewables but only touted the benefits of atomic without ever once mentioning it's biggest disadvantage: hot waste that will be harmful for eons. Not mentioned. Not once. Um, yeah.

Yes. He talk wasn't "perfect". It raises good questions though. Sometimes the things we perceive as being "better" or "greener" are really not as nice as we are lead to believe.

Yes, we need to make nuclear better. And find a solution to the waste issue. Of course we do. I still see his point about how non-green, the renewable path is, in reality. That needs to be addressed as well. Make it so these things are not toxic or dangerous to us and other living things. They still are dangerous, in very real ways.