Maggie's Farm

Where did you hear about a nuclear power plant that requires a continuous supply of diesel power for cooling? The only application I could think of for that is as a backup for utility power.

There are a number of designs for nuclear plants that are passively stable, i.e., do not require a continuous supply of electric power for cooling. The biggest problems, as usual these days, are regulatory inertia, opposition from environmental groups, and uncertainty in the utility industry and investors about the costs and timeframes to get new plants built. In short, we have solutions available but what is lacking is the will and vision to implement them. "Decline is a choice" is the operative principle here.

Agreed. There is an excellent article on "Watts Up With That" that fully debunks the farce that is climate modeling: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/11/10/the-dirty-secrets-inside-the-black-box-climate-models/

The way those models diverge from one another--depending on the chosen "parameters" at initialization--are all you need to see to realize that when you average garbage, the result is still garbage.

Modeling chaotic systems and expecting to get dependable predictions from them is a fair definition of an exercise in futility, yet here we are. And where, on either side of the aisle, is the politician who will take a stand to end the madness? (Trump was a guilty as anyone in letting it slide during his Administration, but obviously the Biden junta is actively pushing it, with prompt and disastrous results.)

Nonsense, on stilts. Have you ever seen a "spaghetti model" of the path of a tropical storm? Hint: It diverges monotonically with time, just as the climate models do, and for the same reasons.

Consider, my mathematically-inclined friend, that a very simple system comprising three gravitationally-bound bodies of comparable mass, cannot be successfully modeled past a few time steps: The future trajectory of the system is chaotic, as that term is used in physics, yet at every instant of time, the only force acting on the system is the bodies' mutual gravitation... which is (at velocities

much less than c) precisely known to extreme precision since the time of Newton.

Before you opine further on this I would suggest, as an exercise, that you program such a three-body orbital system and watch it run for a while on your system from a variety of initial states. It would be even more educational for you if you took the same code and compiled it for another computer that has a different runtime library. See if you get the same trajectory with the same initial conditions. You will not, because of the finite resolution of digital computation.

Talk to me about the climate when you can predict the motion of three gravitationally-coupled rigid bodies. That should be much simpler, let's hear how it goes.

Look, if I were you, I'd quit arguing and get busy with your assignment. Remember, the purpose of doing your homework isn't to invent something new, but to help you make sure that you know what you think you do, of which many of us here have our doubts in your case. So get to it: It's 50% of your grade.