So this is a bit incorrect. Teller-Ulam devices (aka: huge fucking nukes like the Tsar Bomba) are three-stage or more weapons. The first stage, the "atom bomb", is the initiator. The second stage is where a normal hydrogen bomb gets its "oomph" from. After a third stage is added, things get very scary very quickly:
" Each stage can be 10-100 times the size of the previous stage. The 50 Mt bomb mentioned above was a three stage weapon."
Edward Teller proposed a (theoretical) T-U bomb that would be in the gigaton range, but reasoned it was impractical because it'd blow off a huge part of the atmosphere into space.
Fun bonus fact! The actual amount of plutonium that achieved pure fission in the Hiroshima explosion was roughly the size of a grain of rice. E=MC^2 is a hell of a thing!

I've never seen #14 (the claw marks in the gas chamber), but it should be required viewing for every human on the face of the earth.
#43 (Anne Frank) is incorrect: a photo of her leaning out of the window of what became known as The Anne Frank House was taken shortly before she and her family were arrested and killed.
#48 (Hirsoshima): the actual amount of Plutonium that achieved pure fission was smaller than a grain of rice.
#54 (Spam): Well, there goes any illusion that this was anything but click-bait.

Oh yes I take ITER as good news, but it still leaves us 20 - 40 years from a... well I wanted to write a commercial fusion plant, however that might be a trifle optimistic.

Lets say we are at best 20-40 years from a functional prototype of a commercialy viable plant.

ITER is very much a test, any way you bend it. DEMO is waiting for ITERs outcome. Of course ITER will work, tokamaks have operated since the 1960s, that is like claiming a rocket will almost certainly fly. Yet we still stand in awe when it does.

It took 50 years from Einsteins nearly blind-guess prediction of a physical phenomenon to fission power plants. 50 years from the Orvilles hops to jet passenger planes. 58 years from Ciolkovskys crazy drawings to a man in space. In my grandfathers lifetime we went from horse-drawn carriages to the SR-71.
In my lifetime we have gone from landing on the moon to almost maybe landing there again some time.

We are slowing down or the going is getting more difficult.

I recently saw a contemporary video about how molten salt nuclear fission is much less risky in terms of meltdowns (not possible) and waste (much more manageable, and some waste products even being useful), and that this now seemingly abandoned method of nuclear energy might be the answer to many of our energy problems today. Does anyone know more about this? Is it a better alternative indeed? This video is a bit too technical for me, but I'd still like to think that this is a forgotten method of generating energy that might save us from completely wrecking the climate...

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

My understanding is that the main barrier to achieving fusion sooner is funding. Unlike fission breeder reactors, there are few weapon applications - so military funding from the US doesn't go there.

Well according to the clip of Stallone's arm wrestling show, apparently drinking automobile oil before a match does NOT make you stronger or better at it (much like Popeye and a can of spinach). BUT, it does seem to show that it has the ability to induce a superpower allowing a seemingly normal person to become schizophrenic...

BTW, I said superpower rather than mental illness, because from the schizophrenic individual's perspective he is surely battling Hell's most dangerous beasts, demons, and devils. Merely with the power of his arm wrestling techniques backed up by the miniature fission based nuclear reactor in his gut. It also leaves him in a perpetual manic state, where much like the Lego Movie, "Everything Is Awesome"...

I imagine that he may upgrade to a mixture of anti-freeze and power steering fluids; absolutely logical.

/insanity
//off-topic

Yes, you did say all that, but you also said none of that is a problem, at least not one to be really worried about. To me, that sounds a lot like climate change denial 3.0, where 1.0 was 'it's not happening at all, don't panic', 2.0 was 'it's happening, but it's natural and normal, don't panic' and 3.0 is 'it's human caused, but no problem, don't panic'. All of those are arguments designed to stall, not to be correct. If I'm reading you wrong, I apologize, but I've heard that argument before from those definitely in that camp.

If the IPCC says it won't be disastrous, yes, we would disagree, because I say it already is, and so have they in their summaries of their last few reports. Just abnormal drought alone is disastrous in many places worldwide already, as is increased flooding in some areas. I did not read the entire PDF's, only what you quoted because they were only linked as downloads/files, and I don't download files from sites I don't recognize.

I linked the first google search pages that came up with water/glacial data, not the other dozen that said the same, or near the same thing, not the NOVA on glacial retreat that said the same thing, not the movie on the same topic with photographic proof of the retreats-Chasing Ice. You ignored that they did list their source for the 2/3 of Chinese cities low on water and the 50% loss of glacial mass per decade as the Chinese military and claimed they were source less so easily dismissed.
As for the diatoms and shellfish, I've seen numerous studies on them, and again just grabbed the first one that came up in a search with data. You seemed to dismiss it as well, but it's not alone. In one snail study I saw, the woman said the last few years it had become nearly impossible to get measurements because the snail shells literally turn to paste in her fingers and weighed nearly nothing! I'm glad to read now that you don't disagree that it's an issue, you only think it's not severe?

I'm not holding my breath on fusion or fission, we've heard the 'we're only 5 years away from fission/fusion' line before about as often as 'Iran is only 2 years away from having a nuclear bomb', but we can agree on wind and solar, except I say it is great for base load, you just need to pair it with micro hydro storage (pump water uphill with surplus solar/wind, then run micro hydro at night). Small solar/wind also decentralizes production, safeguarding from terrorism, and is quite cost effective. Mine paid for itself in well under 10 years.

My issue with your position is that what we do today just with CO2 production reduction won't really effect the atmosphere for 20-200 years (the accepted lifespan of 65-85% of atmospheric CO2, the remaining 15-35% takes thousands of years to be trapped) and that's only IF the ocean CO2 sink continues functioning, so we're already well past the point of avoiding moderate climate change. Without quick action, feedback loops like methane and/or ice sheets melting make the problem exponentially larger and difficult/impossible to manage at all. It may already be too late even if we cut to zero CO2 tomorrow, but it's certainly too late to avoid more, massive, unsolvable global issues if we don't even mitigate them before 2050.

Let's not get into the quagmire of global dimming from sulfur in coal actually mitigating a large part of expected global warming by reflecting sunlight. I've yet to hear a plan or study involving that variable.

Or maybe we tackle this from 180 degrees.

As opposed to what is happening, or how likely, we may find common ground on what it is we should actually be doing.

I've already made the suggestion of electric vehicles and fission, fusion or renewables in place of coal as the road away from emissions. Specifically improving li-ion batteries as Tesla is doing is a major step. Researching sodium-oxygen batteries would be even better as they can hold 4-5 times the power and have cheaper materials and recent results have us close to making them viable, so I'd like to see gov money directed there.

For power solar and wind are currently only cost-competitive because the scale is small enough that we get away with treating coal plants like giant batteries covering our baseline. They simply aren't cost effective to scale up for base load yet, and not likely to be for another 10-20 years. We can have a lot of nuclear plants built in that time. With electric cars coming into the picture, we're also going to need that extra electric capacity. I again would strongly encourage more gov money going into French style large scale nuclear power deployment. China's already doing it, even they've had enough of their current coal literally blocking the sun in the sky on them and nuclear is part of their clean air push. We should be encouraging that and following suit out this way.

I also wasn't kidding about Lockheed-Martin's fusion research. A lot of new ideas are out there for fusion confinement plans and Lockheed has publicly declared their intentions to have a demonstration reactor in 5 years time. I'm hopeful, and if that pans out, the roll out of truly cheap and clean power will start in the next decade for the sole reason that fusion under cuts coal for price.

Part of me reason for these measures versus more drastic ones is we need to keep our economies growing because regardless of what we do the next 30 years, the oceans will continue rising that entire time and the mitigation measures we're going to gradually be spending more and more on are gonna required us to have the money to do them.

If anybody's got better suggestions I'm all ears.

If this comment section's now going to be a big chain reaction, let me be critical and go fission for laughs too.

I think that you will find reactors don't produce weapons grade plutonium, rather, they produce a grade of plutonium known as reactor grade. Weapons grade plutonium is upwards of 95% Pu239. Reactor grade plutonium is what is known as weapons usable, not weapons ready. This is because of the high contamination factor of Pu240, Pu241, and Pu242. These heavier breads of Pu have both high spontaneous fission rates (bad for your fission weapon), and considerable heat, enough so to make weapons fabrication a problem (is it bad when your closed weapons device needs ventilation to not melt itself). While these problems are addressable in advanced weapons platforms, outside of well established nuclear weapons programs, making weapons from them is very challenging.

The main trouble, however, I think is economics, and nuclear is forced to internalize many of their impacts where as other solutions, mainly fossil fuels, do not. That is a pretty key competitive disadvantage.

Also note that electricity is only a fraction of total power, total power includes many non-electrical uses, most notably motor vehicles via liquid fuels. When you look at solar in this light, it represents a sub-fraction of a percent. So 5% of annual solar electrical generation is only a small part of a larger energy picture, and picture which also needs to be weighted against the rest of the world for which solar provides very little power. This isn't an attack on solar, it is a bringing to light of how vast the gulf is to address climate issues with any one technology.

So I think you will find that he isn't off by orders of magnitude, rather, he was being pretty generous to the total amount of energy produced by solar and wind world wide, and climate issues and emissions are world issues.

Key World Energy STATISTICS IEA:

http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/kwes.pdf

(I trust the IEA's numbers)

But I share the sentiment that we need to reduce coal and gas to address climate concerns. The fact that German emissions have risen for 2 years in a row is troubling to say the least. I consider France and Sweden to be better models, lower CO2 per capita and electrical prices in both cases compared to Germany, and both heavy nuclear users...with Sweden using a fair deal more hydro power than France. Nuclear and hydro are the proven heavy lifters in the area of CO2 reductions, which is why I think his criticism of environmental groups in addressing climate issues is justified as they generally oppose both.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND NUCLEAR POWER 2012 IAEA:

http://www.iaea.org/OurWork/ST/NE/Pess/assets/12-44581_ccnp2012_web.pdf

Taylor Wilson: My radical plan for small nuclear fission reactors

Just in general terms, I'm one of those non-nuclear-physicists who was under the (mistaken) belief that fusion and fission reactions were different from each other. One being explosive, the other being incredibly hot. I had thought reactors were fissile, and Chernobyl was a massive steam explosion, and incapable of blowing up like a nu-cu-lur bomb. Instead, melting down and causing the "China Syndrome"

Finding out both fission AND fusion can "go Hiroshima" gives me pause when considering nuclear-electric power..

Yes I saw what people refer to as THEM. I knew of entities entering what some call the afterlife or the breakthrough reality by fission reaction in head experience. But, I thought I was going to see angels or something of that nature.

My breakthrough was terrifying because I had thought I had gotten to know the nature of this drug. And if anyone attempts to play around with it, it can seem like magic, or an alien computer program that shows you the most beautiful landscapes, sacred geometry, infinite electrical grids, the universe. It is as though something is coaxing us into this experience. And what I mean by this is that on my first breakthrough it began normal. I hit it with my EYES closed. Two seconds in there was a huge blue/white pure energy tunnel that appeared and I was excited, oh shit this is going to be huge.

The next thing that happened was instead of going forward like I usually had into the mandala, sacred geometry grid or whatever it is to begin with, it fell to the ground, like a painting in a black room. And I was instantly freaked out. WTF is going on? The place where a beautiful pure light grid existed in an infinite way had just fallen to the floor. Then blackness. My eyes were closed. That blackness began to unfold. That blackness slipped off the wall and unfolded a box that revealed the actual room around me that I was sitting in. Again, my eyes were closed. Then the box unfolded around me. And room went by by as the box trapped me in it and the floor of this dimension was removed. It seemed like a conspiracy,a GOTCHA moment and instantly I thought, why am I doing this again? TOO LATE. I was thinking what the hell is going on, like some alien had coaxed me into this and was capturing my entirety on purpose.

The floor had been removed traveling at lightspeed, like I was a quantum magnet reaching its destination somewhere in the middle of the universe, dissolving through unknown dimensions, I could never have believed this possible and kept thinking, HOLY SHIT, ITS REAL. The box came undone as everything around me was destroyed like all nuclear bombs had gone off on Earth. Then the frequencies began, like a jet engine taking off. There was no way I was going to survive this. From a low drone to the most high pitch sound I had ever heard it blasted me apart. I died. I died materially and consciously. I splattered the instant that frequency reached its unbearably powerful threshold. SPLAT. Up until this point, from my room to this point. I had been literally screaming for dear life in my head. Like I never had before, not like a rollercoaster but holy shit, I am going to die. My subconscious melted completely whilst I saw the quantum physiology of the space around me. Something there was physically turning off my consciousness. And then it went dark.

And then I woke up. And they were there. And at the time even in another life, in another dimension I was still freaking out and they told me like they do everyone, to calm down it is OK. They are the paradox. They are either the root of who you are or they are aliens that make one sound crazy. They are the ones that give you deep lessons on how to live life and yet, you see, we are here talking about them and that makes us sound absolutely batshit crazy but anyone who has seen them will say. THEY WERE FOR REAL with all of their being. And then you ask, so who are they? My main concern has been forgetting them and concentrate on what they taught me. Nothing could have ever prepared me. And actually do not wish for any atheist to do this.

But, if they must go around acting like they know something for fact that cannot be proven, that there is a God or not, well they are just about as good as someone like me taking a drug and coming back saying something is real when there is no way to prove it is real. The main diffierence being I SAW it, I FELT it, I HEARD it. And no Christian in my own personal knowledge has seen, heard, or felt something on this level, and to me certainly means atheists are flat out wrong, like I said I was agnostic. And I have been atheist for long stretches of life. But, like I am saying. It could be aliens out there trying to guide us into its vortex and steal our souls because we venture into a new frequency we normally do not. It could be just a psychedelic and all those percentages of brain activity we do not use creates an infinite experience, a huge puzzle that the brain likes playing with itself and it plays it out with you and you just have to go along for the ride, no turning back. It could be the program that we receive upon birth and death. I have no idea of what this shit is. Except, that it has been used for thousands of years in the Amazon with expert shamans and that it challenges the very seat of atheism and challenges the participant on the grandest scale. It is one whacked out puzzle. But, so is the universe and consciousness.

In order to be a scientist, you have to practice science. Getting an advanced degree does not make you a scientist any more than me studying football make me a football player.

Here's a summary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_science#Scientific_criticism

If scientists are those that practice science then every creation scientist who has published a peer reviewed paper is a scientist.

http://creation.com/do-creationists-publish-in-notable-refereed-journals

And here's the real question. Name one current product based off of any hypothesis/theory that was posited and proven by 'Creation Science'. Too hard? What about any process, maybe based on the geology or biology research.

Read the above link.

You can talk about 'the controversy' all you want, but the proof is that we use technology daily that is based on physical properties discovered by the same individuals that studied Rubidium. Sure, the specific Rubidium research didn't go into daily life, but the research into radioactive isotopes led to Nuclear Fission, and then after that, it 'exploded'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission#Natural_fission_chain-reactors_on_Earth

Some of the greatest scientists who ever lived were creationists, does that make all of their claims valid?

You're not a martyr, and neither is anyone in the US. None of this conversation has anything to do with the religious Zealots that are killing other religious individuals in other countries.

You said there was no persecution today, but in fact there is quite a bit. Christianity is illegal in 51 countries. It's almost getting to the point in America where sharing your faith might become a civil rights issue.

And you're absolutely correct, me slipping in a little jab at comparing Christian Zealots to Islam Zealots definitely reveal a bit about my 'character'... but just because it was an attack doesn't make it, or anything else I said, less true.

God says what is true about you and me, and that's all that matters.

In order to be a scientist, you have to practice science. Getting an advanced degree does not make you a scientist any more than me studying football make me a football player.

Here's a summary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_science#Scientific_criticism



And here's the real question. Name one current product based off of any hypothesis/theory that was posited and proven by 'Creation Science'. Too hard? What about any process, maybe based on the geology or biology research.


You can talk about 'the controversy' all you want, but the proof is that we use technology daily that is based on physical properties discovered by the same individuals that studied Rubidium. Sure, the specific Rubidium research didn't go into daily life, but the research into radioactive isotopes led to Nuclear Fission, and then after that, it 'exploded'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission#Natural_fission_chain-reactors_on_Earth


You're not a martyr, and neither is anyone in the US. None of this conversation has anything to do with the religious Zealots that are killing other religious individuals in other countries.


And you're absolutely correct, me slipping in a little jab at comparing Christian Zealots to Islam Zealots definitely reveal a bit about my 'character'... but just because it was an attack doesn't make it, or anything else I said, less true.