“Governments, NGOs, and rent-seeking interests often originate and perpetuate issue polarization based solely on political expediency and are adept at stifling debate and fomenting division. Acceptance of contrary opinions is greeted with enthusiasm akin to how the 5th-century Romans must have welcomed the invading Barbarian horde.”
Reasonableness. It’s imbued in our lexicon as the word for which we reach when the need arises to make an appeal for fairness, moderation, tolerance, caution, or logically deduce what outcome is or was most likely: ‘Let’s be reasonable here’. ‘I’m trying to appeal to your sense of reason’. ‘Do we believe that is the most reasonable course of action?’
As a concept, it underpins our modern society. The Age of Reason precipitated this inclusion of intellectualism into our societal fabric where rapid progress in science and philosophy permeated our views, challenging old constructs to improve the human condition.…
Continue ReadingThe saturation effect, the nonlinear, logarithmic relationship between greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing and increases in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), is an important scientific point for the climate debate. Diminishing returns is not as well known as it should be because of a media blackout on its negative implications for CO2 mitigation (reduction) efforts.
The log relationship means that the warming from a doubling of CO2 is not repeated at a tripling but at a quadrupling. This diminishes the fear of future increases that are in severe diminishing returns. This is an optimistic point to not sweat CO2 buildup this century or even next. And if global greening is applauded, the opposite of worry is reasonable.
An Example
I asked Randal Utech to do the math on the diminishment of CO2 forcing today (420 parts per million) versus in the late 1980s (at 350 ppm) when the climate debate took off.…
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Small modular nuclear reactor developer NuScale Power, rocked by collapse of its only project and hammered by a freefall in its share prices, is facing another major threat. Boston-based law firm Block & Leviton announced Monday (Nov. 27) that it has filed a “class-action shareholder lawsuit in federal court, alleging the company ‘made materially false and/or misleading statements and failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company’s business, operations, and prospects.’”
Those who have followed NuScale closely have known that the company’s deal with the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) was in trouble well before its cancellation announced Nov. 8. Just before UAMPS walked out of the deal to supply six 77-MW small modular reactors to serve cities in 16 western states, NuScale announced a deal with a company trying to develop data centers for crypto currency mining operations.…
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