Global Warming woes.

[jkp1187]

[SIZE=1]
But okay - let´s keep it here - i dont wanna do another thread-jack...

Why stop now?

[Unimatrix11]

Okay, but lets stick to the game... (yeah i know, its my fault, i started going off-topic - it was a mistake...)

How about this: Have two possible events for NPPs, one as is, and one representing a "minor incident" - like that in Japan a couple of years ago - giving -1 health in that city (and maybe 1 unhappy in all that have NPPs for a certain time) ?

The thing with nukes and global warming is, that, yeah in real life, nukes, so is the common expectation, would lead to a "nuclear winter", thus distracting from global warming (due to the greenhouse effect). But from the games perspective, it would certainly suck to counter global warming with the usage of nukes (that kind of practice is only part of the wierdest of conspiracy theories, which make even me laugh). The massive fallout idea seems to be the best, i think. Though getting rid of the fallout should be very hard and take a long time.

I think the nuclear branch could still use some beefing up in the game tho. I really loved the variety of nukes in alpha centauri... fission, fusion, neutron... after all, hiroshima was what ? 10 kT ? And a "modern" H-Bomb has what ? 100 MT ? Thats a factor of 10,000...

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11
Why would noise-levels be elevated by highways ?
Why would it be hot around a fire ?

The one thing i know is, that there are no entirely closed systems.

You know, having lost my father (57) to cancer last year, i take this topic rather serious... and i suspect the many parents who lost their children (at MUCH younger age) do so, too.

Especially close to the area where i live (close to Hamburg), near the NPP "Krümmel", the town of Geesthacht and the sourrounding area have complained about this fact for decades, ever since the NPP went into action. It is, btw, also rumored, that in the facilities close to the plant experiments were conducted, probably concerning neutron-bombs (which is illegal - Germany is not allowed to have nuclear weapons or research them - anti-profiliation-treaty - valid for Germany as much as for Iran - (and Israel for that matter btw)) - small, radioactive pebbles have been found around the NPP, the origin of which is yet unknown and the governments seems to be not interested in "learning" more about it at all...

But okay - let´s keep it here - i dont wanna do another thread-jack...

You do know how minimal the radiation from NPP is right? Its like blaming light bulbs for the high temperature in you're room.

Well, it could be that the illegal nuclear research going on has some effect on the study? Here in Slovenia our nuclear plant is quite old (30 years) but the city in which it’s located doesn’t have more cancer patients than the national average.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11
Okay, but lets stick to the game... (yeah i know, its my fault, i started going off-topic - it was a mistake...)

How about this: Have two possible events for NPPs, one as is, and one representing a "minor incident" - like that in Japan a couple of years ago - giving -1 health in that city (and maybe 1 unhappy in all that have NPPs for a certain time) ?

The thing with nukes and global warming is, that, yeah in real life, nukes, so is the common expectation, would lead to a "nuclear winter", thus distracting from global warming (due to the greenhouse effect). But from the games perspective, it would certainly suck to counter global warming with the usage of nukes (that kind of practice is only part of the wierdest of conspiracy theories, which make even me laugh). The massive fallout idea seems to be the best, i think. Though getting rid of the fallout should be very hard and take a long time.

I think the nuclear branch could still use some beefing up in the game tho. I really loved the variety of nukes in alpha centauri... fission, fusion, neutron... after all, hiroshima was what ? 10 kT ? And a "modern" H-Bomb has what ? 100 MT ? Thats a factor of 10,000...

Most of what you said here makes sense.

Perhaps a simple way would be, to make ICBM's produce more of the global fallout (than was proposed in this thread) and inflict more damage as well than a tactical nuke, it might finally make them cost effective. And in addition to that I propose that with the discovery of fusion power ICBM's should be capable of destroying size 1&2 cities and tactical nukes would have a bit less fallout. This would allow you to kill off people close to a cultural victory, if you had an immense production advantage.

Nuking a city in this fashion would cause the “you raised one of our cities penalty” as well as the standard diplo penalty.


Ther is already a sperate thread concerning the implementation of nuclear power plants:
Thread

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by Heraclitus


You do know how minimal the radiation from NPP is right? Its like blaming light bulbs for the high temperature in you're room.

Well, it could be that the illegal nuclear research going on has some effect on the study? Here in Slovenia our nuclear plant is quite old (30 years) but the city in which it’s located doesn’t have more cancer patients than the national average.

1. Except cancer from radiation is a stochastic thing, while the tempearture in the room is not. Its more like having a machine gunner firing away madly in a random fashion in a distance of a kilometer (or a mile or whatnot)... Yeah the chance of a bullet hitting you is still quite low, but if it happens, you stop regarding that as neglectable, i guess. And even if the gunner shoots red bullets, while blue bullets are shooting from the sky all the time anyways (=natural radiation), you´d still start cursing the gunner, if you happen to find a red bullet in the fatal wound of your child... Now, if only the bullets really had different colors... (i tend to get carried away in my own metaphores, as you can see )

2. Well, it could be that the small size of slovenia has some effect on the equal distribution of cancer-cases inside the country ? :P But i agree that "Krümmel" seems to be a special case. BTW "Krümmel" is also very old...

Oops - i did it again ... just cant refrain from getting of topic - sorry...

[jkp1187]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11


1. Except cancer from radiation is a stochastic thing, while the tempearture in the room is not. Its more like having a machine gunner firing away madly in a random fashion in a distance of a kilometer (or a mile or whatnot)... Yeah the chance of a bullet hitting you is still quite low, but if it happens, you stop regarding that as neglectable, i guess. And even if the gunner shoots red bullets, while blue bullets are shooting from the sky all the time anyways (=natural radiation), you´d still start cursing the gunner, if you happen to find a red bullet in the fatal wound of your child... Now, if only the bullets really had different colors... (i tend to get carried away in my own metaphores, as you can see )

2. Well, it could be that the small size of slovenia has some effect on the equal distribution of cancer-cases inside the country ? :P But i agree that "Krümmel" seems to be a special case. BTW "Krümmel" is also very old...

Sigh. The threadjack continues. I, personally, find it quite tiresome when people whose actual level of knowledge is quite questionable fill up game-related threads with off-topic opinions that I don't care about. There's an Off Topic sub forum for a reason, and I strongly encourage you to continue this discussion there. I mean, I'm sure y'all have doctorates in nuclear physics and biology, and have published papers on the subject in several peer-reviewed journals around the world, but if I was interested in this subject, I'd be in the Off Topic forum. (Or, more likely, would be in a forum dedicated to medicine and nuclear power plants, not Civilization.)



Thanks.

Going back to the topic at hand, I would be wary of using the random events mechanic to handle nuclear accidents. As nice as it would be to have a bit of nuance to cover nuclear accidents, all one would need to do is turn random events off from the main options screen, and NEVER have to worry about meltdowns. There would then be absolutely NO reason to not build nuke plants as soon as they become available. (Which is too bad, otherwise I make this mod myself.)

[Asmodeous]

Originally posted by Jaybe
A nuclear power plant meltdown, not just the plant, causes global warming, Asmodeous. Unfortunately, the meltdown probability is way too high. I don't know, but perhaps it is an integer '1' out of 100, instead of 1000. I haven't looked yet, but does anyone know?

Oh right. I keep forgetting about those because I never have them. The probability is actually fairly low so long as the people never get angry in the cities that have the NPPs. Once they go over that point, then there's a problem.

Uni: Actually, I'd say Krummel is a fairly special case. In the area of the US I live we have three NPP's within 60 miles of the city. Yes three. Nine Mile plants 1-3, Nine Mile 4 got shot down because our exitting Governor for some reason felt that the state didn't need to spend the money (then again, they never try to spend money that helps upstate, only NYC. Jerks. :P ) Two of the Nine Mile facilities are between 20 and 30 years old, the Third one is a much more recent plant using all the new NPP technologies (including power-free, gravity-run safety systems which are sweet as all get out...) which gives them an even lower footprint.

Cancer is no higher here than anywhere else in the US. (In fact it's lower if you count small-cell carcinomas {lung cancer} into it because our air is cleaner. . .).

The problem with waste, as a mention, is due to the fact that most Nations, much like the US, have a ban on reprocessing spent fuel rods from NPP's because of the fact that the reprocessing method used for such activities is the same (or strongly similar) process used to enrich weapons-grade Uranium/Plutonium. This means that the spent fuel rods, which still contain anywhere from 70-80% of their radioactive energy, have to be tossed into a landfill somewhere to be disposed of, wasting all of that possible power, and generating huge amounts of radioactive waste.


To which I suggest that it would be a slick idea for them to lessen the problem with NPP's melting down, and at the same time give NPP's +1 or +2 upon the UN passing the Non-Proliferation act.

Me.

[joncnunn]

I think a realistic climate model is currently way too complex to be included in games such as Civ IV.

[Fistleaf]

The Civ3 global warming model of adding points from global pollution to determine desertification chance is actually a decent one, except that there is no way to eliminate pollution once it starts and global warming takes effect even with 1 pollution point.

There should be a certain threshold of pollution before global warming starts and if recycling plants are built, pollution should be minimised. The player shouldn't be punished if he diligently builds recycling plants.

[Unimatrix11]

How about a CO2-model, that keeps track of how much CO2 is in the atmosphere, with this number being displayed in some statistic. Factories and coal-plants and the like would add so much each turn (maybe depending on their absoulute hammer effect - a factory in a 10-hammer city would have less impact than one in a 20-h-city). Every forest growing would distract from the atmosphere´s CO2 level. Also existing forests and the tiles covered with sea, should provide for a threshold, or a sink, that can take so much CO2, before it starts to accumulate in the atmosphere... The higher the CO2 level, the higher the likelihood of desertification. Radioactivity should be handled in a seperate model... Since the whole thing would only be calculated globally, it wouldnt be too complex or taking too much calculation power, yet providing the mechanism desired...

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11
How about a CO2-model, that keeps track of how much CO2 is in the atmosphere, with this number being displayed in some statistic. Factories and coal-plants and the like would add so much each turn (maybe depending on their absoulute hammer effect - a factory in a 10-hammer city would have less impact than one in a 20-h-city). Every forest growing would distract from the atmosphere´s CO2 level. Also existing forests and the tiles covered with sea, should provide for a threshold, or a sink, that can take so much CO2, before it starts to accumulate in the atmosphere... The higher the CO2 level, the higher the likelihood of desertification. Radioactivity should be handled in a seperate model... Since the whole thing would only be calculated globally, it wouldnt be too complex or taking too much calculation power, yet providing the mechanism desired...

I like this idea, its simple and easy to understand.

A very good aspect of this is that it gives you a “happy time” were there is no downside to polluting except the small negative health effect, this could simulate the burning of fossil fuels in the 19th century and the first 60 years of the 20th century not to mention making this this a more fun game mechanic. For game play sake I would recommend that forests & jungles be considered twice as valuable as oceans.

The only thing I might add to it, is to make some special events more likely with higher CO2 levels, thus giving the illusion of complexity to those who want more.

Pollution shouldn’t be one model it should be several simple mechanisms:


1. A global warming-CO2 system like the one Unimatrix11 described, with buildings like nuclear/hydro plants and mass transit reducing the CO2 produced by population and hammers. And the events I mentioned.

2. The health system that we have in the game currently already factors in toxin pollution and poor air quality in the cities themselves.

3. A global fallout system like the one described earlier in this thread. In addition perhaps a +1 permanent unhealthiness in any city that has been nuked. And a tie in to some random events as well.


Afterthoughts:

-Difficulty level and size could determent the base CO2 level at the beginning of the game, let’s say 0 for settler and 100 for noble.
A small map would have less default CO2 than a large one, since otherwise that larger map with all those forests and oceans would be unbalanced, despite the fact that there would be more pollution present later.

-BTW The useless national wonder “forest preserve” or whatever it’s called could add 0,2 to the carbon removing abilities for all worked forests in all titles of your civ or some similar local effect.

[Fleme]

So, no way to change global warming into spewing fallout instead of deserts?

[Jaybe]

Don't know about fallout, but I changed mine from desert to tundra. From my CustomAssets changes log:
GlobalDefines.xml ...
GLOBAL_WARMING_TERRAIN changed from TERRAIN_DESERT to TERRAIN_TUNDRA.

[joncnunn]

Wouldn't that better describe Global COOLING???

Originally posted by Jaybe
Don't know about fallout, but I changed mine from desert to tundra. From my CustomAssets changes log:
GlobalDefines.xml ...
GLOBAL_WARMING_TERRAIN changed from TERRAIN_DESERT to TERRAIN_TUNDRA.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by joncnunn
Wouldn't that better describe Global COOLING???

NW causing nuclear winter makes more sense that for them causing global warming.