LOL.

Obama turned a $100 trillion economy to a depression in 6 mos. It worked for him. Haven't you seen the seas quit rising and the planet was healed?

Perhaps he can give us cold fusion and food replicators like on Star Trek if we asked him real nice......... It makes as much sense as the rest you offered - I'm always amazed how people in CA think that it's the whole world and every place else is some desert.

Strawberries? I grow strawberries that so big that two cover more than the palm of your hand and the coal fired power plant less than 2 miles from my house does not cover everything with soot no matter what you think or read.

We have a very good life here if we could be left alone by the crazy politicians from out there. You guys ought to have a border fence up to keep your wacko law makers from destroying the lives of the rest of us.

FWIW, I buy milk from a dairy farmer a couple miles away for $2 a gallon and eggs for $1 a dozen. I run a aquaponics system for fresh fish and fresh veggies and salad greens. We put out a half acre in corn and watermelons and 15 tomato plants that we can from. Not to mention peppers of several kinds, green beans, peas, squash and potatoes (both red and some huge bakers) and this year we added sweet potatoes to our garden. All in all, I bet we have around 2 acres we tend as a truck garden if you don't include the orchard with apple trees, pear tree (just one), raspberry, blackberry and blueberry plot. Our grape vines aren't too big since we only grow three varieties that we just use for jellies and preserves. One of our friends helps with the vineyard for the majority of the graps that she makes wine from. I planted three Cherry trees this year and added two more apple trees.

My property included a old vineyard that was worked commercially for decades, but had been allowed to go to seed after the owners death 15 before we bought the land. It was operated to produce grapes for jellies. We didn't try to revive it but after 16 years we still have "volunteer" vines sprout up unexpectantly.

I lease out 100 acres that is planted in popcorn and another 25 acres for Sun flowers. The popcorn is a much more valuable crop than grapes in this country today.

All that is just how we survive and flourish is the "shadow" of a large coal fired power plant - that fortunately provides rather inexpensive electricity for us. Nobody suffers from black lung and since the coal is mined not too far away, the entire operation is fairly inexpensive.

So lets make a deal. You keep your crackpot politicians at home, and we'll eat what we grow, hunt, fish or raise.

My point though, you don't turn a $100 trillion dollar economy in 6 months.... doesn't happen, the US can't be the last one in line buying the last barrel of oil. What would you do the day after that? The typical US inhabitant is 3 days from animal. Now, I (for example) can cut my main utility power breaker, live off the fruits & nuts in the orchard in back and take a 2 mile drive or so to where I can hunt game if I really needed to, and being on the high side of a reservoir, water wouldn't be impossible, and I'd have 10,000 watts during the day and 2000 watts at night to live on, with life being more or less normal.

By most though, you realize that California is ⅓ of the US economy. If California seceded, the US would fall to #7 in the world and California would actually be #8 by itself. Things are expensive here because we have a lot of people clamoring for resources. In a way, it's kind of a petri dish of what is yet to come for most of the rest of the country.

Remember when corn used to be 10 ears for a $1.00? So do I, then ethanol came along and human consumption was competing with fuel for cars. People complain about $4.00 gas, but don't really think that milk actually costs more than that.

It's about localization to resources. I also buy vine ripened for something like 5 lbs for $1.00 and most produce (in California) you can buy for cheaper than that, we grow something like half the US produce, but with the lack of water, we pumped so much from the ground that the Central Valley 'fell' 6 feet in the last 10 years. Any idea what a shut-down of agriculture here will do to food prices throughout the US? I'd bet something like a 400% increase for anything fresh-grown.

Speaking of produce, can you imagine how nasty it would look if we had coal power plants here? We could sell the the strawberries as "chocolate covered".

Everything has a reason...

Fortunately, most of the people in the US don't live in CA.

Heat, AC and electric her for a 4500sf home runs $260 a month.

2030 might bring a change, just as cold fusion will when ever things get worked out. Right now it's pie in the sky.

The volume of waste is probably the "true waste", the rest is coolant and inert materials in the rods.

Of course, you are also making the incorrect assumption that we will always use Fission-based nuclear power. In reality, a reactor planned today would be obsolete by the time it is built.

https://lasers.llnl.gov

Are you really suggesting that when 2030 comes around, and we are at 9.5 billion people on the planet, we keep pumping coal into the atmosphere? or that we double the output by then? The estimates you look at do show slowing demand, but it isn't adjusted for population growth, and the fact that power has become much more expensive, so people have dumped the old CRT fishbowls, plasma TV's and shitty air conditioners in favor of newer more efficient ones.

As for DU used in armor, I think it is often used one of the laminate layers in explosive-reactive armor. Advanced armor systems have directional explosives within laminate layers, so when struck by a large artillery round, the armor 'explodes' in the opposite direction, negating much of the inertial force of the projectile.

A large part of the nuclear waste problem (admittedly a problem) is political, not environmental. Much like how in California, we are almost out of water, but we keep releasing water from surface storage into rivers to protect the fish population. It's political, not a technical problem, to avoid a more serious drought.

Much of the waste problem is actually in the coolant, but in some countries (India in particular) they use a liquid polymer mixed with the water in the cooling pools and apparently keeps the coolant quite a bit 'cooler'.

The misnomer though (that you mention) is the reduction in demand for power in the US... not the case at all, in fact it grows in a rather linear fashion and will surge tremendously with EV's.

The differential has been a very large population of people like myself (in the West I would assume) that have solar-powered homes. I have and 8000 watt system on my roof, along with another 2000 watt turbine (experimental) above my barn out back. All-in, I produce a little over a megawatt a month of power, quite a bit more than I can use myself and it discharges into the grid as net-metering. On average, I produce double or triple what my house needs.

I'm not anywhere near alone, I work in the hydro power industry, and I see some of the numbers, and "notice" such things. I have a neighbor on a stream that built an old fashioned water wheel and hooked it to a dynamo. He makes upwards of 7000 watts off that thing and he spent at most maybe $2000 all-in on it.

You see, we spend around $450-$550 a month on average in California on power, if you don't do something like this. We have also pretty much banned any kind of power generation in California for one reason or another (and we don't have any coal, and never would issue a mining permit anyway). Do you run a 200 car train from Wyoming to every power plant in the Western US every day? Let's put this into perspective, I work for the Dept. of Energy, and we have 57 hydro plants in the west, and out of those 57, we "reliably" produce about 10,500 megawatts of power daily. That includes Hoover Dam, Grand Cooly, and the Navajo coal-fired plant in New Mexico, etc. 57 Nuke plants would be at least 60,000 megawatts in comparison and power would be something like $50 / month flat rate, like it is in Canada. Our hydro power into the California is something like 2 or 3% of the California Independent System Operator's daily load demand. The piece that has actually helped that has been the 10s of thousands of homes with heavy-hitter solar systems on them now... a megawatt here and there isn't a lot, but out of 45 million people in the golden state, 100,000 homes (a small estimate) kicks in around 3400 megawatts daily into the California grid, or the same as 3 or 4 base-load generation plants. That has been what has "eased demand", not a reduction in demand. Those feed through reverse-running meters on the houses, and is not seen or trackable by the power generation side, it's just seen as a lower load demand. (We have to adjust generation on a minute-by-minute basis to meet current load demands on the grid, or the frequency of the power would fluctuate, appliances would be flaky or fail, etc.)

Our economy doesn't function with the cost of fossil fuels, and the uncontrollable increases in it. Gas as $0.89 / gallon when I was driving my high-school Mustang around in 1988... any grade... 2014 - pretty much $4.50 anywhere you go. We haven't even gotten into cap & trade on that yet.. (California exempted it so far).

If your average family is dumping $1000 into fossil fuels a month in California... does that make a lot of sense (if I didn't mostly work from home, my Armada can slurp up $200 / week in gas, no problem).

Every recession has been preceded by an energy shock... do you want to make a bet with your train-load of coal and oil that it will never happen again? I've seen it three or four times in my lifetime, and I'm not that old, it would be a stupid bet to take. The $800 billion bailout would have paid for about 400+ nuclear power plants... a couple of billion really is chump change... I'm sorry, but it is. We also have the only economy in the world with currency valued by faith & fiat... hell, we can kind of print money and do whatever we want, to be honest.

You are making an argument that has no basis in reality... assuming that somehow we'll wave a magic wand, and EPA emissions regulations, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and union miner wages will all somehow disappear or greatly reduce, or that OPEC will stop manipulating oil supplies and let oil drop to $30 / barrel or that shipping that coal across the country every day to every power plant is free.

Even with all of the pollution problems set aside, (Exxon Valdez, BP in the Gulf, the coal-sludge mess in West Virginia or wherever it was, or the oil dumped into the Mississippi), and ignoring the fact that oil and fossil fuels tie us to being actively-involved in the Middle East continuously.. you have to ignore all of that to make the argument sound.

Sorry, but that's a lot of assumptions.

Personally, I'll take the pickup truck and dump the stuff at the bottom of the salt mine shafts at Yucca Mountain for the next 10 years until we have a better plan, and worry about it later.

Stargeezer, thanks for that reply. Scojo has so many straw men in his arguments I thought I was reading the history of scarecrows conventions in the mid-west.
Very well done.
Cheers

I really questioned the 8-12 ounce comment, so I started digging for a bit of data. What follows down to the last few paragraphs was gleaned from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pow... and a few other sources. Read and learn and then we can discuss this knowledgably.

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A nuclear reactor is only part of the life-cycle for nuclear power. The process starts with mining (see Uranium mining). Uranium mines are underground, open-pit, or in-situ leach mines. In any case, the uranium ore is extracted, usually converted into a stable and compact form such as yellowcake, and then transported to a processing facility. Here, the yellowcake is converted to uranium hexafluoride, which is then enriched using various techniques. At this point, the enriched uranium, containing more than the natural 0.7% U-235, is used to make rods of the proper composition and geometry for the particular reactor that the fuel is destined for. The fuel rods will spend about 3 operational cycles (typically 6 years total now) inside the reactor, generally until about 3% of their uranium has been fissioned, then they will be moved to a spent fuel pool where the short lived isotopes generated by fission can decay away. After about 5 years in a spent fuel pool the spent fuel is radioactively and thermally cool enough to handle, and it can be moved to dry storage casks or reprocessed.

Comparing radioactive waste to industrial toxic waste

In countries with nuclear power, radioactive wastes comprise less than 1% of total industrial toxic wastes, much of which remains hazardous for long periods. Overall, nuclear power produces far less waste material by volume than fossil-fuel based power plants. Coal-burning plants are particularly noted for producing large amounts of toxic and mildly radioactive ash due to concentrating naturally occurring metals and mildly radioactive material from the coal. A 2008 report from Oak Ridge National Laboratory concluded that coal power actually results in more radioactivity being released into the environment than nuclear power operation, and that the population effective dose equivalent, or dose to the public from radiation from coal plants is 100 times as much as from the ideal operation of nuclear plants. Indeed, coal ash is much less radioactive than spent nuclear fuel on a weight per weight basis.

Waste disposal

Disposal of nuclear waste is often said to be the Achilles' heel of the industry. Presently, waste is mainly stored at individual reactor sites and there are over 430 locations around the world where radioactive material continues to accumulate. Some experts suggest that centralized underground repositories which are well-managed, guarded, and monitored, would be a vast improvement. There is an "international consensus on the advisability of storing nuclear waste in deep geological repositories", with the lack of movement of nuclear waste in the 2 billion year old natural nuclear fission reactors in Oklo, Gabon being cited as "a source of essential information today."

As of 2009 there were no commercial scale purpose built underground repositories in operation. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico has been taking nuclear waste since 1999 from production reactors, but as the name suggests is a research and development facility.

Reprocessing

Reprocessing can potentially recover up to 95% of the remaining uranium and plutonium in spent nuclear fuel, putting it into new mixed oxide fuel. This produces a reduction in long term radioactivity within the remaining waste, since this is largely short-lived fission products, and reduces its volume by over 90%. Reprocessing of civilian fuel from power reactors is currently done in Britain, France and (formerly) Russia, soon will be done in China and perhaps India, and is being done on an expanding scale in Japan. The full potential of reprocessing has not been achieved because it requires breeder reactors, which are not commercially available. France is generally cited as the most successful reprocessor, but it presently only recycles 28% (by mass) of the yearly fuel use, 7% within France and another 21% in Russia.[143]

Reprocessing is not allowed in the U.S. The Obama administration has disallowed reprocessing of nuclear waste, citing nuclear proliferation concerns. In the U.S., spent nuclear fuel is currently all treated as waste.

Depleted uranium

Uranium enrichment produces many tons of depleted uranium (DU) which consists of U-238 with most of the easily fissile U-235 isotope removed. U-238 is a tough metal with several commercial uses—for example, aircraft production, radiation shielding, and armor—as it has a higher density than lead. Depleted uranium is also controversially used in munitions; DU penetrators (bullets or APFSDS tips) "self sharpen", due to uranium's tendency to fracture along shear bands.

** I am very cautious of where we get the DU that is used in our armor, certain ammunition and the tank Sabo rounds. I did not find a answer today. ***

Economics of Nuclear Power Plants.

Internationally the price of nuclear plants rose 15% annually in 1970-1990. Total costs rose tenfold. The nuclear plant construction time became douple. According to Al Gore if intended plan does not hold, the delay cost a billion dollars a year.

The economics of new nuclear power plants is a controversial subject, since there are diverging views on this topic, and multi-billion dollar investments ride on the choice of an energy source. Nuclear power plants typically have high capital costs for building the plant, but low fuel costs. Therefore, comparison with other power generation methods is strongly dependent on assumptions about construction timescales and capital financing for nuclear plants as well as the future costs of fossil fuels and renewables as well as for energy storage solutions for intermittent power sources. Cost estimates also need to take into account plant decommissioning and nuclear waste storage costs. On the other hand measures to mitigate global warming, such as a carbon tax or carbon emissions trading, may favor the economics of nuclear power.

In recent years there has been a slowdown of electricity demand growth and financing has become more difficult, which has an impact on large projects such as nuclear reactors, with very large upfront costs and long project cycles which carry a large variety of risks. In Eastern Europe, a number of long-established projects are struggling to find finance, notably Belene in Bulgaria and the additional reactors at Cernavoda in Romania, and some potential backers have pulled out. Where cheap gas is available and its future supply relatively secure, this also poses a major problem for nuclear projects.

Analysis of the economics of nuclear power must take into account who bears the risks of future uncertainties. To date all operating nuclear power plants were developed by state-owned or regulated utility monopolies where many of the risks associated with construction costs, operating performance, fuel price, accident liability and other factors were borne by consumers rather than suppliers. In addition, because the potential liability from a nuclear accident is so great, the full cost of liability insurance is generally limited/capped by the government, which the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission concluded constituted a significant subsidy. Many countries have now liberalized the electricity market where these risks, and the risk of cheaper competitors emerging before capital costs are recovered, are borne by plant suppliers and operators rather than consumers, which leads to a significantly different evaluation of the economics of new nuclear power plants.

Following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, costs are expected to increase for currently operating and new nuclear power plants, due to increased requirements for on-site spent fuel management and elevated design basis threats.

Nuclear decommissioning

The price of energy inputs and the environmental costs of every nuclear power plant continue long after the facility has finished generating its last useful electricity. Both nuclear reactors and uranium enrichment facilities must be decommissioned, returning the facility and its parts to a safe enough level to be entrusted for other uses. After a cooling-off period that may last as long as a century, reactors must be dismantled and cut into small pieces to be packed in containers for final disposal. The process is very expensive, time-consuming, dangerous for workers, hazardous to the natural environment, and presents new opportunities for human error, accidents or sabotage.

The total energy required for decommissioning can be as much as 50% more than the energy needed for the original construction. In most cases, the decommissioning process costs between US $300 million to US$5.6 billion. Decommissioning at nuclear sites which have experienced a serious accident are the most expensive and time-consuming. In the U.S. there are 13 reactors that have permanently shut down and are in some phase of decommissioning, and none of them have completed the process.

Current UK plants are expected to exceed £73bn in decommissioning costs.

In most reactors the fuel is ceramic uranium oxide (UO2 with a melting point of 2800°C) and most is enriched. The fuel pellets (usually about 1 cm diameter and 1.5 cm long) are typically arranged in a long zirconium alloy (zircaloy) tube to form a fuel rod, the zirconium being hard, corrosion-resistant and permeable to neutrons.* Numerous rods form a fuel assembly, which is an open lattice and can be lifted into and out of the reactor core. In the most common reactors these are about 3.5 to 4 meters long.

*************************************************

Now if you've lasted this long, the suggestion has been made that there is 8-12 ounces of deleted uranium that must be disposed of each year - this is amazingly false. The fuel rods are replaced when they reach about 97% of their uranium stills remains as U-238 and has not been converted to the somewhat less radioactive isotopes. As was stated above, it is the acclimation of very long life half life isotopes are generated and build up in the fuel rods through their 6 year useful life.

Although we commonly refer to these used rods as "spent", that far from reality. The rods are still highly radioactive and the isotopes in them will remain so for about 10,000 years. They will not in their form be able to reach the critical mass required for an explosion, but the radioactivity will make them unhealthy to be around for a very long time.

And the problem is not just the fuel rods, we also need to deal with manufacturing wastes for both the rods and all the other radioactive things we have in our society today, medical, research, industry and more. All this needs to go someplace and since we cannot build a safe fast breeders reactor in this country, we cannot recycle it here.

If I had a train car load of coal ash and a pickup truck load "spent" fuel rods - my life insurance will be much less likely to payoff If I'd take a ride on the train and get as far from the truck as I can.

lol..no tobacco doesn't cause cancer. Smoking tobacco causes cancer. Some suggest that the fertilizers and pesticides makes the inhalation of the smoke more dangerous than it actually is.

Consider this a public service announcement, not a real reply.

Sheep herding mentality. To me, the amusing aspect is the audacity of mankind thinking they can predict the weather. :) I live in Phoenix, it seldom rains, and they still get the day to day weather wrong fairly often. :)

Yes, they are tools to create panic on weak minds. The best shredding of the global warming business was by the recently deceased Michael Crichton in State of Fear.

global warming, global cooling, overpopulation, food shortages (SOYLENT GREEN), etc...all population control tools used by the left to create panic on weak minds. Naturally there enough people ignorant of history and too lazy to think or research for themselves to see through the BS. It gets old.

I remember the global cooling issues. CFC's do form free radicals and react with ozone in the lab. Global warming is another story (more like a myth).

Sorry, Hiraghm. That really isn't green indoctrination. Allen and Shonnard will tell you that global warming is highly overblown. They debunk the hockey stick plot in that PowerPoint presentation.

I've only had a couple of students argue the global warming issue with me. I am as objective on this as I can be. The CFC issue was a valid one. The CO2 issue is pretty minor.

And, no doubt, some of them probably try to argue the truth with you. Some young skulls are thicker than others, I'm sure.

does NOT mean, I meant. We don't have to keep asking the same question over and over.

I agree with all this except I thought the world extracts more oil now than in 1980. At any rate, we have to face the reality that the economy runs on something finite and that's causing a grave threat to the environment. I do not mean to say they'll always find more oil. Rather I think as it gets more expensive it will cause people to come up with alternatives. This will not be an easy process. I'm cornucopian about energy without denying the facts that burning stuff on a large scale threatens the environment and that the oil will run out.

I remember Obama explicitly stating, "...the debate is over. Climate change is a fact...", intimating that U.S. Citizens are going to be paying yet another tax. So my question would be how would sending obama more money going to make it all stop? If you want to get these freaks to roll their eyes ask them exactly how much do humans actually contribute to this. "Any Scientist Will Tell You" that studies have shown the contributions from human activity are in fact inconsequential.

Cheers!

Agreed.

On my truck, lets just say there's a lot you don't know about me. If it weren't for our worthless POTUS and a few groups like the EPA we would be drilling all the oil we need here and not importing a drop, except from our friends. And if they want money to be our friends, no they aren't.

As for Pinatubo, that was just one volcano that was of such size that the effects were immediate and markedly different from any trend. Different enough that the results could be pointed to and with no uncertainty say this caused this. And the effects were worldwide just as Mt St Helens was and any other good sized volcano. Although it's been a few years now since the 10th biggest eruption occurred in the Northwest - Mt St. Helens. While I don't know that st.helens and Glacier are related I know that our winters were suddenly much harsher for several years.

The volcano outside of Mexico City has been in a state of constant eruption since sometime in the late 70's and like the one in Hawaii is constantly erupting at a low level.

All that aside for a moment, please understand my contention is that the output from a coal fired plant in the US, pales compared to what one volcano can spew forth in one event, and we do have numbers of events worldwide at any time. All the CO2 from all the coal fired plants would not equal what Pinatubo gave us.

My first two degrees were earned after I got back from Vietnam, finishing in 77 then a third in 89. Mechanical, Electrical, Civil Engineering. Then I did a little grad work in the mid 90's and a BFA and MFA finishing in 2006. After 268 hours I'm on a break for a while.

***I lost a entire paragraph somehow - late addition.

The most important thing anybody learns in college is how to learn things. Followed by good scientific methodology. I can't help but believe that the astronaut learned this lesson very well and if there was anything he needed to know in order to process data or things that were relevant to his interests, he would know them. You also seemed explain to me about recycled military use of spent fuel elements. I can assure you, despite my advanced years, there's not much in that field I don't know about.

I agree entirely...

If you look at the oil situation though, the argument is that they are finding new sources all the time.. but its getting very, very hard to get. All the easy stuff is gone, or the wellheads produce so little it doesn't cover the cost to drill it. So the only way we produce now is something like shale oil, where at $100 a barrel, it makes sense to extract it. If oil was $30 a barrel like it was before the Gulf War, it wouldn't be happening... They really need $70 or so oil for shale to work.

So as we continue to run out, and China continues to consume more, and India is starting to catch up with China... how's that 11 mpg van going to be working out with $7.50 gas? or maybe $9.00 for ultra low sulfur diesel?

If America hasn't figured it out by then... you want to talk about a "shock" to the economy... it will make the recent recession look like a birthday party.

It always seems like there are more people saying its "bullshit" that live in coal-digging America, or work in the petroleum industry. And I have no problem with that, or with people making a living, but we also don't want to be standing around bidding on that last barrel of oil either.

Peak Oil was reached probably somewhere in the 1970s or 80s' and world production has basically struggled to maintain pace since then. The economies work because we have added other sources of fuels, and increased efficiency, but we don't produce a staggering amount more today than we used to.

One of the best arguments against continuing down the oil path is how the oil producing nations report what they have left. In the 1970's, Saudi Arabia 200 & some-odd billion barrels of oil. Year to year, their report rarely changes, yet they produce a heck of a lot of oil, and it takes thousands of years to make more of it. In 2000, they said they had 250 billion barrels of oil. This year, they said they have 234 billion barrels of oil.

Why? Well, with "large" reserves, OPEC lets them produce more, and it drives their otherwise useless economy. If they said the truth, maybe its 100 billion or less, or the fact that wells produce a lot less when on the last 20 or 30% of the "full" content, they would be ordered to slow down, and their economy of free education, free healthcare, and free money to the people would stop abruptly and the regime would be in trouble.

Look at Venezuela, in 2005, they claimed around 150 billion barrels in reserve, in 2009, this skyrocketed to 300 billion or so, but yet, their actual production has fallen off pretty measurably... somewhat due to political problems, somewhat to safety, but mostly because the stuff they are digging up is pretty thick & sludgy and takes a lot of refining steps to turn it into something. This is basically the case all over the world, the future is harder to get oil, more expensive, and will continue to be more so .

Here's a pretty good article on the problems with power generation... http://www.energytribune.com/2771/unders...

The guy that thinks that about 12 ounces of depleted uranium byproduct every year is a lot harder to get rid of than moving 11,000 tons of coal per day, per power plant, really needs to have a look...

Hydro power is great, but, unfortunately we are running out of water pretty quickly too.. the higher heat in the west creates a high pressure zone over the western mountains and plains that unfortunately keeps moisture from coming on shore from the pacific. The same high pressure zone pulls cold wet air down from Canada and you water in the midwest by the truckload... but there isn't any hydro power in the midwest or the southeast to speak of (if there was, you would have flood control).

Just in my lifetime, I remember growing up in Minnesota and having 6 foot snow drifts and 40 below zero being pretty much the "norm". Now, winters are really pretty mild... zeros, maybe some short stretches of -10 or something, but not the -40 for months that I remember a few decades ago.

You don't see climate change living along the ocean coast or in an area where it rains a lot all summer, you see it in fragile environments .. such as home for me in Northern California. We only get rain from October until around March... that's it, we don't get a drop from February to October until the winds shift. The last decade or so, we don't get much of a wind shift, so it gets dryer, and dryer, and now reservoirs are hundreds of feet below normal water levels and staying there. We don't just need a "wet" year to make up for it, we need a wet decade at this point because we have also drained the aquifers. We actually pump water into the ground from rivers to reduce earthquakes from the land sinking...

I used to remember the temps of the 90s being very warm, last summer, we had 30 days in a row of over 110 degrees.

"Weather" is what you get from year to year. "Climate" is what happens over decades.

"If you read my post, you would see that the argument I'm making is that the lack of resources is going to create a lot more instability in the world."
I agree with most of your post, but I think people have always felt like this-- we're running out of resources. And we are running out of specific things that run our economy today, but human ingenuity will find other resources to use to create value. Oil is a huge issue. Climate change is a huge issue. Once the engineers of the world have fixed the problems, the denialism will move on to other problems.