Scientists discovery how to make coral grow 40 times faster

[Riedquat]

Nuh-uh. We have long since produced more efficient, less destructive means of providing all the fruits of modern technology. The producers of those technologies largely hold monopoly however, and have elected to maximize their immediate, personal profit over all other concerns, including their own survival, superior long-term profit, or the desires of their customer base.

Produce a way of doing something twice as efficiently and the result won't be doing the same thing using half as much, it'll be to try to get twice as much. Those producers will simply go out of business sooner rather than later if they don't stay in that game. People want as much as they can get at all levels. You make it sound like a conspiracy; even the big companies, whilst yes, exploiting the situation for their own ends as much as possible perhaps, are certainly not free agents. They wouldn't exist if people didn't buy their stuff.

[CmdrKing]

The demands for electricity are fairly static. Demand for fuel in cars does not 1:1 correlate with cost of fuel. My phrasing about immediate profit was specific: the reason conversion to less destructive energies hasn't happened is simply that building new nuclear plants is a large up-front cost and, despite being much less costly to run in the long term, large up front costs make the quarterly numbers look bad, and that's something no company in the world today will do willingly.

Realistically letting the energy sector form privately in the first place was a massive mistake, but allowing that this would be difficult to correct right now, simply creating sufficient mandates to enforce their compliance with the world's environmental needs will have to do. And timing is important building power plants takes years and the ground hasn't even been broken.
(And let's be real, we should be subsidizing the shit out of such new plants. The leeches may suckle at the teat of society a while longer.)

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

It's weird how much of a challenge it is to get desalination plants up and running. It seems like it'd be such a viable development.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

At the risk of sounding cynical and a bit paranoid, I'd say that a status quo where water is a highly limited resource that you can't acquire from the sea benefits those in power with the price-gouging and pay-or-die systems it allows.

[Riedquat]

The demands for electricity are fairly static. Demand for fuel in cars does not 1:1 correlate with cost of fuel. My phrasing about immediate profit was specific: the reason conversion to less destructive energies hasn't happened is simply that building new nuclear plants is a large up-front cost and, despite being much less costly to run in the long term, large up front costs make the quarterly numbers look bad, and that's something no company in the world today will do willingly.

An interesting view because from the general tone I'd have assumed that you'd be anti-nuclear. Politics plays a very big part there too. But even with all that aside with a large up-front cost a large amount of money is needed now, which has to come from somewhere and is also therefore economically risky. I'd prefer to blame the whole system rather than any individual people or companies or even governments that go along with it (other than them demonstrating no interest whatsoever in even admitting its flaws). Damned if I know what a better one is though, any alternatives start by having a bigger fight against general human behaviour and require competence.

[Darth Wedgius]

It's not just that nuclear power plants are expensive to build, they're very expensive. A lot of care has to go into building them, for obvious reasons. There were no construction starts of nuclear power reactors between 1979 and 2012 in the United States, and since then more new reactor attempts have gone through bankruptcy than be completed. And while they don't need as much fuel as a fossil fuel plant, the fuel is more expensive and still a significant portion of the power cost.

Solar power has actually gotten cheaper in the U.S. than nuclear power, though I don't know if that accounts for power storage for foul weather or night, and that could be a considerable expense

China is doing well on nuclear power right now. They're building a pilot LFTR (liquid flouride thorium reactor) plant expected to be operational in the next decade, and that's a really different approach to nuclear power that might throw current nuclear economics out the window.

[Darth Wedgius]

It's weird how much of a challenge it is to get desalination plants up and running. It seems like it'd be such a viable development.

For anyone curious here's Wikipedia's article on the largest desalination plant in the U.S., covering expense, environmental impact, legal challenges, energy consumption, etc.

I've wondered if power plants with clean turbines could double as desalination plants. If they have to boil water and condense steam anyway... I imagine current power plants probably aren't clean enough for potable water, but maybe new plants in drought-prone areas could be built for double purpose.

[Madner Kami]

It's weird how much of a challenge it is to get desalination plants up and running. It seems like it'd be such a viable development.

For anyone curious here's Wikipedia's article on the largest desalination plant in the U.S., covering expense, environmental impact, legal challenges, energy consumption, etc.

I've wondered if power plants with clean turbines could double as desalination plants. If they have to boil water and condense steam anyway... I imagine current power plants probably aren't clean enough for potable water, but maybe new plants in drought-prone areas could be built for double purpose.

Drought-prone areas tend to be kind of low on one critical resource for a desalination plant: Water.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yeah true I remember the only reason they got that one going is because they can share the waterlines with the power plant for cooling. Kinda ironic.

[Darth Wedgius]

It's weird how much of a challenge it is to get desalination plants up and running. It seems like it'd be such a viable development.

For anyone curious here's Wikipedia's article on the largest desalination plant in the U.S., covering expense, environmental impact, legal challenges, energy consumption, etc.

I've wondered if power plants with clean turbines could double as desalination plants. If they have to boil water and condense steam anyway... I imagine current power plants probably aren't clean enough for potable water, but maybe new plants in drought-prone areas could be built for double purpose.

Drought-prone areas tend to be kind of low on one critical resource for a desalination plant: Water.

I think most desalination plants can be assumed to be near an ocean, and I think "drought" usually refers to a lack of fresh water,rather than not having an ocean anywhere nearby.