What is climate change?
I am incredibly naïve about climate change. What is climate change? What is the relation with climate change and nuclear plants and coal mines? What are nuclear plants and coal mines? And what does all this have to do with Germany?
My curiosity has been sparked by this photo and the top comment
Posted Oct 19, 2021, 2:12 AM UTC
Certain gases in the atmosphere make the air warmer by absorbing the heat radiating off the warm surface of the Earth. Without these gases, the heat would radiate off the surface and into space, and the Earth would be a lot colder. The most prevalent one of these greenhouse gases (GHGs) is CO2 aka Carbon dioxide. We need some amount of CO2 to stay warm, but too much and the planet gets too hot and the climate becomes inhospitable for us and other species. Extreme weather, rising sea levels, mass extinction, ecosystem collapse.
CO2 is emitted by a lot of things in the natural carbon cycle, and it is eventually reabsorbed by natural processes such as trees and certain sea organisms. The problem is the unnatural CO2 emission: the emissions by us humans. Burning things (namely petroleum products, coal, and natural gas aka methane) produces CO2 which then gets released into the atmosphere.
Humans have been doing this at an ever increasing rate for a couple centuries now. We burn petroleum for our vehicles and for electricity production with coal plants, gasoline-burning plants, and natural gas-burning plants. In doing so, we have increased the level of CO2 in the atmosphere by a staggering amount, far beyond the natural level. This is causing a lot of problems for the planet and for us. Agriculture is disrupted, seaside property gets flooded, people die in "natural" disasters, species die off, etc. This trend will continue for the foreseeable future, and it will get worse and worse.
About nuclear plants... nuclear energy is one energy source that does not emit carbon like the others listed above. It's one of several clean sources of energy. What makes it controversial is the view among many people that it is dangerous and/or bad for the environment in its own way (nuclear waste). These fears stem mainly from disasters like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Germany is relevant to the nuclear debate because the country is staunchly anti-nuclear, partially due to them being downwind from Chernobyl; many Germans still remember having to stay inside their homes because of the radioactive contaminants in the air.
In my opinion, we need nuclear. Not only nuclear, we also need wind, solar, and hydro where it's viable. But those energy sources have some gaps: the sun only shines half the time at best, it's not always windy, and not all areas can feasibly have hydroelectric dams. I personally think that nuclear can fill in these gaps and that the fears of nuclear power are overblown. 3MI was relatively minor (didn't kill anybody, just some livestock died), and Chernobyl, while terrible, was such an extremely odd and unlikely circumstance that it will surely never happen again, especially given that the reactor type is almost entirely out of use now (and the fatal flaw was fixed in the couple of RBMK reactors still in use in Russia).
This was an absolutely amazing breakdown. Thank you very much! :)