Ah, I see, I definitely agree with everything you’re saying; I just got a bit confused. When you talked about “green option”, I was thinking something like fast fashion vs clothes that will last, for example.

I’m not completely sure of what point you’re making. Would you buy the cheaper product even if you could afford the more expensive green one?

Because if the answer is “no”, then you are still agreeing with OP; and if the answer is “yes” then you are saying you want to knowingly buy something that is harmful for the environment and encourage a company to make more of it, while deflecting responsibly and saying that corpos and govs are the ones who have to do something.

For my comment specifically I’m not worried about the economy, but the unit cost of energy. Simply put if nuclear has a higher unit cost that means we can’t replace as much fossil fuel generation vs other lower unit cost sources of energy for the same price.

I’ll put it another way so you might better understand my point: what would you have said 10 or 15 years ago when someone mentions that solar is a bad idea because it would cost more? Because up until recently it did cost more, and people did use it as an argument against it. And now your (and other people’s) main criticism of nuclear is that it’s not as cheap as an energy source that we’ve been heavily investing into for a decade.

You have, however, picked a very specific and unlikely event here

I showed several examples. The ones you mentioned, such as earthquakes, are not likely to affect one source more than another, but events which block out the sun obviously disproportionately affect the production of solar energy.

it’s no longer the cheapest or fastest way to achieve that

Neither was solar when we started to invest in it, as I mentioned earlier. That came from improving and investing in the technology - which also bumped solar into the safest energy source, right after nuclear, which used to be the safest.

You don’t need sunlight to grow crops, you just need energy; which in this scenario would require an energy source that is not the sun.

And you’ve said absolutely nothing of substance while misconstructing what I’m saying and engaging in the type anti-science behavior that were it to come from climate deniers this community would rip on.

Firstly, the “planet killer” example, was just an extreme example to demonstrate how an unexpected climate event can render solar panels completely useless. Another example I gave you was ashes from volcanic eruptions. This is simple deflection and bad faith argumentation. Secondly, let’s continue on “planet killer event” anyway:

and if it happened now

And if it happened in 20, 50, or 100 years? Is your argument “I think if it happens now we’re fucked, so it’s pointless to prepare for the eventuality of it”?

the dust cloud would essentially kill our civilisation as we know it. a small percentage of people would survive, and it wouldn’t matter if they had nuclear power or not, there are other power sources other than solar

How would it kill civilization as we know it? Define “civilization”, and tell me what it would look like in that scenario, and why it’s not worth to try to minimize its destruction. And what leads you to believe only a small percent of the population would survive? And are they not worth preserving? Because even a small percentage can’t eat or breathe dust, and as I said, with enough power you can grow food, have clean water, and make breathable air. And what other power sources are you referring to? Nuclear is the second safest energy source after solar by a distant margin, and except for maybe wind and solar, it’s also the most environmentally friendly - which is important given these power sources would have to be setup in advance of the events in question, which could take hundreds or thousands of years to happen.

I’m tired of arguing this, especially with someone who doesn’t seem interested in arguing in good faith and is quite stubborn in remaining unscientific, so I’ll be leaving it at this.

then I think we have bigger problems

Care to point them out? As I’ve said, and expect to be common knowledge on a (I would expect) scientifically leaning community, the dinosaurs weren’t killed by the meteor, their death was caused by the blacking out of the sun. You have access to energy, you can make air filters, grow food, purify water. If you don’t have energy, then you die.

Regardless, this is a deflection from the main point, that was merely an extreme example, even volcanic eruptions could cause huge disruptions if you depend too much on solar power.

sight

The meteor didn’t kill the dinosaurs, it was the dust cloud that did so by blacking out the sun. If you have sources of energy that are not reliant on the sun, it is very much possible to survive it. You can use artificial light to make grow food, and you can even make air processors if plants start dying. But you can’t do that if you have no power.

I already mentioned 2.

Or think back to the extinction of dinosaurs, where after a meteorite crashed into earth the sun was blocked by dust for several years.

Picture a super volcano eruption covering the sky in ashes for thousands of miles

Here’s a quote from the wiki on super volcanos:

Large-volume supervolcanic eruptions are also often associated with large igneous provinces, which can cover huge areas with lava and volcanic ash. These can cause long-lasting climate change (such as the triggering of a small ice age) and threaten species with extinction. The Oruanui eruption of New Zealand’s Taupō Volcano (about 25,600 years ago) was the world’s most recent VEI-8 eruption.

Also, you wouldn’t need it to cover all of Australia to be disastrous, just enough to block a significant amount of solar farms.

Lemmy most of the time: Makes fun of people always bringin up “the economy” as if that’s what’s really important

Also Lemmy when it comes to nuclear: “But the economy!”

What happens in case of a sudden abnormal weather event that blocks out most of the sunlight? Picture a super volcano eruption covering the sky in ashes for thousands of miles. Or think back to the extinction of dinosaurs, where after a meteorite crashed into earth the sun was blocked by dust for several years. Or just think about northern European countries that barely get any light in winter; Portugal is a very sunny country, we have invested a lot into solar, and sometimes we still get energy from Spain (who use nuclear btw).

Also, I’ve been hearing this whole “it takes too long to build nuclear plants” since at least early 2010s; imagine where we’d be if we’d just started building plants then. I can picture the same thing being said in 2035-2040, while fossil fuels still have not been completely dropped.

This getting heavily downvoted with no replies shows just how much of anti-nuclear is simply based on propaganda and fearmongering, not science. Nuclear is the second safest energy source in the world, nearly tied with solar for first, and actually was the first until not too long ago. And that is despite the heavy investment into renewables and disinvestment into nuclear. If anyone is that worried about the dangers of nuclear to people and the environment, they should turn their attention to hydro-energy (not to speak of fossil fuels, obviously).

What are even the major disasters regarding nuclear? One, Chernobyl, was in the USSR in the 80s; does anyone remember what phones looked like in the 80s? The other was in Fukushima, which is located in a country known for earthquakes and tsunamis, and it was not build to handle such events; and it still was nowhere near as bad as Chernobyl. I think I’ve also heard about one in the UK, but that was in the fucking 50s, and even smaller than Fukushima.

Until a weather event blocks out most of the sunlight. An extreme scenario would be what happened to the dinosaurs, however smaller scale versions or that, such as large volcano eruptions, seem entirely possible and could heavily restrict the amount of sunlight you have access to for long periods of time.

Portugal lies in Southern Europe, we get plenty of sun, and we make heavy use of solar, but that still isn’t enough sometimes, and I’m pretty sure we sometimes get our energy from Spain, who themselves use nuclear.

I’m very tired and should not be up right now, so sorry if this isn’t super coherent or very well explained, but bear with me.

the people doing the raping, stealing, and killing

I do lean very libertarian/anarchist, but possibly my biggest issue with the concept is that you are now assuming that the people who would be targets of the violence would be the ones doing all that.

Having a monopoly on violence is bad, but on the other hand, the alternative sounds like vigilantism, which often leads to witch hunts. I’ll bring up a practical example to explain myself better:

There’s a streamer on Kick, whose name I won’t mention, who streams himself going after (alleged) child abusers. Recently (yesterday I think) he and other people were confronting a supposed child abuser (they just called him a pedo, but I assume they meant child abuser; otherwise how would they know he’s a pedo?) but they never showed any evidence of it. He was an old man. At one point a random stranger approached them to figure out what was going on, and they told him the old man was a child abuser. As a response, the stranger punched the old man, who fell backwards and hit the back of his head on pavement. He ended up laying unconscious in a large pool of blood. Rumours say he’s probably dead, which doesn’t seem far-fetched given the details.

In a lot of ways, having a monopoly on violence that is subject to hierarchies is quite bad, but the upside is that there is generally a due process where evidence needs to be presented, which will lead someone to be put in prison and not murdered - in most societies I know of. This can also be adjusted through laws and regulations. If someone practices vigilantism and murders someone like that, they themselves are subject to that law and might be put in prison. The vast majority of situations don’t end up with police killing someone; but knocking someone out (or just down) can very easily end up with someone dying from hitting their head on a hard surface.

Basically, what I fear that a completely anarchical society would fall into a spiral of vigilantism, where people kill each other because someone somewhere said they are guilty of something and most people are incapable of evaluating the situation properly and conducting a proper investigation, and will immediately resort to violence. This becomes even more worrying when you consider that me saying that about the old man situation will make some feel justified in using violence against me, because in their head: “that guy was a pedo, and he’s defending him, so he must be a pedo, so he also deserves to die”.

Hope that made some sense, and sorry I’m replying to this 4 days later.