Global warming hasn't gone away
In the NRC’s world view, making poor people poorer is unimportant. Global warming is not their business. Harm from alternate sources of electricity is not a consideration. Evacuation and exile costs can be disregarded. The only thing that counts is radiation harm, based on a harm model that is biological nonsense. It is a preposterously blinkered outlook; and it is costing humanity dearly.[Infallible Preacher, over and over]
As we begin to realize that global warming is almost certainly not an immediate existential problem, people like Greta, who must have an immediate existential problem, have moved on to other more immediate concerns. There has been a collective sigh of relief. But the fact that even the IPCC has admitted that the infamous RCP8.5/SSP5-8.5 scenario on which so many apocalyptic claims were based is not going to happen does not mean that the long run problem has gone away.
We are putting more CO2 into the air than ever before, Figure 1.
Atmospheric CO2 is still rising. After a crazy jump in 2024, atmospheric CO2 rose by ‘only’ 2.1 ppm, Figure 2. The decline in the increase was partly due to an increase in CO2 absorption by the planet.
Figure 2. Growth in atmospheric CO2 1960 to 2025.
In 2025, the global average temperature dropped slightly from 2024’s record breaking number, Figure 3; but that just means we are going through an La Nina/El Nino oscillation, in which the ocean soaks up and then releases heat. The long term trend is clear. Global warming is very much with us.
Figure 3. Global average temperature, 1940 to 2025
Figure 4. One set of estimates of sea level rise.\cite{zheng-2026}
My main concern is sea level. Sea level rise is accelerating. There’s considerable uncertainty in the numbers complicated by changes in land level and the switch from tidal gauges to satellites. But most sources put the annual rise in the first half of the 20th century around 1.4 mm per year. By the end of the century, sea levels were rising at about 3 mm/y. Current numbers are in the 3.8 mm/y range. Recently the acceleration has been around 0.8 mm/year per decade. If we heroically assume that the acceleration stabilizes at this level, we get the red line in Figure 5. A 2 meter (6.6 ft) rise by 2200 would be a very expensive problem.
Figure 5. Sea Level Rise at current and no acceleration
Figures 1 and 2 make a mockery of Net Zero. There is no way we are going to stop putting CO2 into the atmosphere. The digression into wind and solar has been an impoverishingly expensive flop. Wind and solar can nibble at the edges in certain areas; but the only way we can put a real dent in global warming is a whole lot of cheap, 24/7, low CO2 electricity everywhere. The only way that can happen is nuclear at its did and can cost of around 3 cents/kWh in today’s money.
Even if we came to our senses tomorrow and stopped claiming via LNT that our bodies can’t repair radiation damage, accepted the dual blessing of DNA repair and a source of electricity whose energy density is 100,000 times better than fossil, the absolute best we could hope for is to cut our CO2 emissions by 50% by 2100.
This would require cheap nuclear pushing fossil out of electricity generation (25%) except for a bit of peaking and backup, electrifying all building heating (6%) and light road transportation (8% battery powered vehicles only cut life cycle emissions by about 2/3rds) and using nuclear to produce green or turquoise hydrogen for ammonia (fertilizer)(2%), hydrocracking(2%), and steelmaking(6%). And that’s the easy half.
The temperature would keep rising. A lot of future ice melt is already baked in since it takes a very long time for a huge chunk of ice to melt. (That’s one of the reasons global warming is not an immediate problem.) The time for the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to equilibrate to a temperature rise can be millennia. I’m guessing the best we can do over the next 177 years is zero acceleration. I’ve plotted that assumption on Figure 5. It leads to a mean sea level rise of about 0.75 m (2.5 ft) in 2200. That’s a lot more manageable than 2 meters, but will still be a very big problem in a lot of places. And that may be the best that can happen. Finally, there’s no reason to expect sea level rise will magically stop in 2200. In 2200, the annual rise is 18 mm/year in the constant acceleration scenario.
My point is just because some unbalanced prophetesses and opportunistic charlatans have decided that global warming is not happening fast enough to meet their psychological or financial needs does not mean that the physics have changed. My Social Cost of CO2 has not changed and neither should yours.
In early 2023. the Gordian Knot News published a piece entitled How much time do we have? arguing we almost certainly have some time --- if you must have a number call it a century --- to respond to global warming. But we need to use it wisely. We must reduce CO2 emissions in a way that does not further impoverish the poor. The only way we can do that is with cheap nuclear, cheap as it was and could be again. That too has not changed.
The only way we can get back to did-and-can cost nuclear is to free it from the dictatorial, auto-genocidal control of a release obsessed NRC. Pass the Nuclear Reorganization Act.
Your focus on the poor in the world is THE right reason for Nuclear Power. It is the one means of power production that can be done locally in every place and is technically simple enough for everyone with reasonable education to implement. It is only political policy that restricts its use. The technical and engineering challenges are on a similar level or scale as most other technologies. The complex regulations are evil. A willing decision to lie through exaggeration and refusal to compare with other ordinary hazards. Yes yes it needs shields. Yes yes radiation can harm you in you stick your head inside a reactor. Got it. If I pump my own gas, I am exposed to more cancer causing agents than would come from even doses higher than the 100 rem level where no harm has been measured. I am EXHAUSTED with the safety mantra. Until we see some folks (10 or 16) working at a NPP actually get cancer from the radiation at that plant, we are over doing the regulations. Business has no motivation to kill its own people. It would kill its own business.
For those who may be more skeptical about warming, don't forget the cost of climate policy, which is having little effect for $1 to 2 trillion dollars a year. Even if good climate policy doesn't solve warming it still solves bad climate policy. Should-cost nuclear is necessary.
I have heard that the adaptation costs necessary to completely adapt to sea level rise would be .2% of GDP by 2100. That may be an idealized figure not truly representing what would happen - but it may indicate sea level rise isn't a critical problem.