Unintended Consequences by Árni Þór Þorgeirsson

“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.“

~Douglas Adams

I find it interesting that in early days of the universe it was mostly Hydrogen, Helium and Lithium. Hydrogen and Helium the building blocks of the universe and Lithium because intelligent lifeforms will at some point realize that in the time and size scale of the universe, everything you do, whatever you may accomplish and whoever you are is utterly insignificant, and so lithium will at least help to cope with the inevitable existential angst. So contrary to popular belief, the universe is not completely indifferent to your suffering.  

For billions of years the formations and the subsequent collapse of countless stars have slowly given us the universe we have today. Our own earth is the result of countless dying  stars being made anew in another form, every fish in the sea, every bird in the sky and even the French stand as a testament to the miracles that can happen given just slight probability and ample time. But the universe is a messy place full of wonder and perill, it can and will take everything away it has ever given, even our own earth only exists for the grace of the universe, or maybe we are all here doe to some cosmic oversight. But it’s not all sunshine and unicorns. At any moment it can be all over, in an instant like with a sudden asteroid impact, a supernova explosion, a gamma-ray burst or even a rogue singularity, exciting stuff. Or maybe its something more personal, like watching the Icelandic entry to Eurovision, slowly realizing what a gimp suit is, what it is for and having to learn a valuable life lesson about trust, acceptance, and gag balls in the process, ensuring that these principles live on and don’t just die with your parents. But I fear that our end, when it comes it will be unimpressive, undignified, and worst of all, predictable, not to mention entirely our fault.

“There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.”

― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

On our current climate change trajectory we are headed into a world where temperatures will increase by 4°C on average. Our current goal is set to a 2°C increase, realistically we will end up somewhere in between these two points. If this was a frog being slowly heated up, it would now be dead, the only question is, will it just be dead or dead and cooked.

Of course many people have been doing great work when it comes to fighting climate change. Promoting the use renewable energy and sustainable manufacturing. Children largely ignored until now have suddenly found an ear willing to listen. It’s entirely debatable that the the ears that are willing to listen have hands that are willing or able to act, due to political dogma and special interests.

The technology behind renewables are not without their environmental impact. Hydroelectric power cost vasts amount of concrete and produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Materials for solar panels need to be mined and old solar panels need to be replaced, recycled if possible, if not disposed of. Batteries need for solar and wind power grids are also having a huge environmental impact. So at this point it is difficult to say if we are actually solving the climate change problem or exporting it. We need to identify previously unintended consequences on our quest to save ourselves, and think critically about if this is actually the way forward, accept the loss and adapt a more viable option, unfortunately hydrogen is not the option, the energy loss in the process is vast, and you can’t break the laws of thermodynamics, entropy will get you, entropy will get us all.

So what is out there, what may save us. If we ignore the political and economic side for a sake of argument, and also for the sake that if this blog gets any more controversial it will probably not be posted. All we are left with is nuclear power.

“Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”

― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

I agree that nuclear power has had a bad rap, but a bad rap is better than oblivion. Nuclear power plant development have made available nuclear power plants fail-safe except for perhaps the most extreme circumstances. Our fear of nuclear power has largely to do with our psychology. We overreact to rare dramatic events, as opposed to very common and seemingly mundane catastrophes, such as death by air and water pollution, habitat loss and ecosystem collapse. It is also understandable that people fear radiation it is invisible and almost alien it has been a longstanding troup of science fiction horror stories. In actuality it is more fiction than horror. The waste from newer nuclear power plants are also significantly less than of older generations and are disposed of in a manner that will not have effect on the environment at all. In theory the greater efficiency and lower operation costs could create an economic case for using them in carbon capture, and even so far as powering active climate control system by reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to a point where we are able to mitigate some of the effect of climate change. Without having those effort offset by perhaps more severe unintended consequences.