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Comments 6401 to 6450:
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Daniel Bailey at 09:20 AM on 22 October 2020Climate's changed before
Hal Kantrud, by definition an ice age is any period with continental-scale ice sheets on land (like now). Within an ice age are warmer periods called interglacials and colder periods, called glacial periods (or glacial phases). The Little Ice Age nor any cool episode in the past 13,000 years do not rise to the standard of a glacial phase.
(bigger image here)
As can be seen below, glacial and interglacial periods are self-evident:
(bigger image here)
When it comes to the modern warming forcing from human activities, it's already comparable to the warming which lifted the world out of the last glacial maximum 24,000 years ago to the height of the Holocene Climate Optimum 8,000 years ago:
"About 2.3W/m2 (from CO2), a few tenths more from CH4 and N2O.Anthropogenic GHG forcing is ~2 W/m2 (CO2) and ~0.5 W/m2 from CH4+N2O+CFCs.
So they are comparable - ice sheets were a bigger term in the deglaciation tho."
(source)
Humans are inducing a phase transition from an interglacial world to a no-glacial world. So we are ending the ice age itself.
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nigelj at 08:30 AM on 22 October 2020What does the global shift in diets mean for climate change?
Wayne @24, I have no dispute with the studies you quote. And yes several things contribute to methane emissions including cattle and other animals, and rice paddies and leaking gas pipelines. The point is reducing red meat consumption is one of the easiest ways to reduce emissions.
Reducing areas in rice cultivation doesnt really make sense and just isnt going to happen. Billions of people are reliant on rice for basic nutrition. Red meat is a much easier target as its not essential in the diet and its such an inefficient use of resources. I think thats pretty much the essence of the issue.
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Hal Kantrud at 08:10 AM on 22 October 2020Climate's changed before
Tom on the 19th. "Within each actual ice age there is a series of glacial periods and interglacial periods" Guess I took that to mean an ice age extends from one peak glaciation to the next. Perhaps you were referring to the 'surges' in glaciers during the peaks.
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scaddenp at 06:55 AM on 22 October 2020Climate's changed before
"I see no dips in atmospheric CO2 following any of the world's worst pandemics"
Others disagree. See Ruddman and Carmichael 2006, vanHoof et al 2006.
Whether such short term effects like pandemics last long enough to affect climate is more debatable (Pongratz et al 2011)
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Tom Dayton at 05:43 AM on 22 October 2020Climate's changed before
Hal Kantrud, you wrote "What threw me off was your statement that LIA's were glacial periods." Who stated that, where?
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Postkey at 04:12 AM on 22 October 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
“Could Russia Floating Nuclear Plants Change World Economy?
By F. William Engdahl
25 November 2019While the EU and United States have all but abandoned nuclear energy as a future power source, with almost no new reactors being built and existing ones being decommissioned, Russia has quietly emerged as the world’s leading builder of peaceful civilian nuclear power plants. Now the Russian state nuclear company, Rosatom, has completed the first commercial floating nuclear plant and has successfully towed it to its ultimate location in the Russian Far East where access to power is difficult. It could transform the energy demands of much of the developing world, in addition to Russia. An added plus is that nuclear plants emit zero carbon emissions so that political opposition based on CO2 does not apply .“
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Hal Kantrud at 03:54 AM on 22 October 2020Climate's changed before
I didn't say the 'wobbles' caused any LIA's. But the evidence seems to show "wobbles" are assoicated with Ice Ages. What threw me off was your statement that LIA's were glacial periods, hence my question about possible evidence of expanding ice caps during these periods.
It is interesting that the Holocene Macimum occurred about the same time as the dawn of agriculture and pastoralism, concentrated on the carbon- and nutrient-rich grasslands of the Old World. So perhaps the slow atmospheric CO2 buildup shown by the ice core studies could have been caused by such 'mining' of grassland soils, followed by the spike in CO2 during the Industrial Revolution as the grasslands of the New World suffered the same fate, aided by mechanical power rather than the draft animals of old?
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John Hartz at 01:13 AM on 22 October 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Recommended supplemental reading:
Regulators have approved designs for 12 small reactors to be built in Idaho, but opponents say the project is dangerous and too late to fight climate change.
Small Nuclear Reactors Would Provide Carbon-Free Energy, but Would They Be Safe? by Jonathan Moens, InsideClimate News, Oct 21, 2020
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MA Rodger at 23:11 PM on 21 October 2020Climate's changed before
Eclectic @834,
Do be aware that London's frozen River Thames was a very rare event and if anything provides evidence against the Little Ice Age being something exceptional with reported freeze-ups occurring even during the Medieval Warm Period. There were perhaps only a half dozen Frost Fairs listed in the records and they stopped appearing, not because of warmer winters but because the old London Bridge was demolished and the river embanked.
Given such reasons for the absence of Frost Fairs since 1813, perhaps a better river to look for evidence of a Little Ice Age (or lack ofevidence) is the Rhine which is recorded freezing 14 times since 1784, the last time in 1963. Of those 14 freezes, most occurred well after any Little Ice Age with seven during the 20th century.
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michael sweet at 20:36 PM on 21 October 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Philippe Chantreau,
When I was young I believed the promises of nuclear engineers. After 45 years of following nuclear power I no longer trust their paper designs and promises of safe reactors. If they ever build a pilot plant we will see if their scheme actually works as they claim. Upthread I cite the French Nuclear Regulatory Agency which does not see safety improvements in these new designs and the Union of Concerned Scientists who fear that false claims of inherent safety will lead to removal of expensive safety features in reactors. There are reasons that they have not yet built even a test reactor or pilot plant after 13 years of work.
I note that NuScale is losing customers now that they are actually trying to build their reactors. The cost is too great. It is not clear to me if their reactor price has increased or if renewable energy is now so cheap that they cannot compete. Probably both.
Nuclear power is uneconomic. It takes too long to build. Even if they achieve their goals it will be 2050 before TRW reactors are ready for a large scale buildout. I see no reason to believe that reactors with complicated double cooling systems can control the problems of using liquid sodium in a cost effective manner. They have not addressed the problems of Abbott 2012. I am especially concerned about the extensive use of rare materials.
In a renewable energy world baseload power is very low value. Peak power on windless nights is most valuable. Current baseload plants are dinosaurs.
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michael sweet at 20:03 PM on 21 October 2020All Renewable Energy Plan for Europe
A $20 billion plan (Guardian article) to build a giant solar farm in the Australian outback has been announced. Much of the electricity will be transmitted to Singapore to replace expensive gas generated electricity. I recently saw a description of a scheme to manufacture hydrogen using electricity from a giant solar array in Australia.
The price of solar power is now so much lower than fossil energy that this type of plan can make money. Hopefully more giant farms will replace current fossil generators. The Southwest USA has a large area perfect for this type of farm. Usable deserts exist in many locations worldwide. Existing gas generators can supply backup power at night while storage solutions are developed.
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One Planet Only Forever at 15:03 PM on 21 October 2020What does the global shift in diets mean for climate change?
wayne,
Thankyou for re-presenting the rice example as a part of your thinking regarding this issue.
My comment is that the sustainability of all food production needs to be the objective. From a climate impact perspective the status quo plant and animal growth activity, not its expansion or other impacting things humans do to grow the food, is not an issue in the planet's surface/atmospheric cycle. The issue is human activity that is harmfully changing things like increasing ghg's in the atmosphere.
There have been many study reports regarding the ghg impacts of different types of agriculture. The general, and consistent or common, conclusion of those investigations appears to be as presented in this OP - reduced meat consumption and changes of how the reduced amount of meat is produced or obtained would be beneficial from a climate impact perspective.
My concern is the broader Sustainable Development Goals which include biodiversity loss and other harmful unsustainable impacts of human activity. Expansion of food production that negatively impacts biodiversity is also harmful and needs to be reduced.
It may be that rice and meat consumption need to be reduced, and for more reasons than the climate impacts. Rice has less nutrient value than potato. And over-consumpton of meat has serious health implications.
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wayne19608 at 10:57 AM on 21 October 2020What does the global shift in diets mean for climate change?
Hi Rob @23 that's why I said it was a start :) and was just adressing the impact of rice cultivation. Do we not think that 22% and 11% methane contributions compare unfavourably with those of cattle?
Organisms vary in their efficiency of feed conversion. Ruminants or foregut fermentation is one of the greatest developments in evolution since it's arrival some 50 million years ago. The benefit and efficiency of this system can be seen in their almost complete dominance of the herbivorous meso/megafauna. Virtually all non-ruminants or complete hindgut fermenters have since that time faced extinction. Out of some 450 ungulates today only about 25 non ruminants survive.
See (Demment MW, Van Soest PJ (1985) A nutritional explanation for body-size patterns of ruminant and nonruminant herbivores. Am Nat 125: 641–672) for an explanation on the distribution and relative efficiencies of these different fermentation systems. Notice that non-ruminants are fermenters as well, just that one of the fermentation products ie., methane comes out the back instead of the front.
This does not just apply to different digestive/fermentation systems but the inputs and outputs themselves.
Feeding high nutrient/digestable feed to ruminants may result in lower enteric methane outputs (Boadi, D. A., Wittenberg, K. M., Scott, S. L., Burton, D., Buckley, K., Small, J. A. and Ominski, K. H. 2004. Effect of low and high forage diet on enteric and manure pack greenhouse gas emissions from a feedlot. Can. J. Anim. Sci. 84: 445–453.), but see their qualification and comparison to IPCC estimates
A concern when evaluating animal feeding and management strategies to determine greenhouse gas mitigation potential is that significant emission reduction in one part of the production system may be negated if emissions are increased in another part of the production system. Table 6 demonstrates that inclusion of whole sunflower seed in general resulted in significantly lower (P < 0.05) total daily emissions of CH4 and NO2 expressed as CO2 equivalents. The observed reduction in total emissions is attributed to a significant reduction in enteric CH4, which contributed 95 to 96% of the total non-CO2 emissions from the feedlot. Enteric emissions by feedlot cattle fed a typical barley-based finishing ration were 72% of that estimated by IPCC (Tier 1). Use of whole sunflower seeds in the high forage:grain diet resulted in even lower emissions relative to estimates. Similarly, manure pack emissions in the current study were approximately 50% of that estimated using IPCC (Tier 1) coefficients.
Indeed over 7.5 times more CH4 kg–1 dung (DM basis) was emitted from grain-fed compared to their hay-fed counterparts.
Jarvis, S. C., Lovell, R. D. and Panayides, R. 1995. Patterns of methane emissions from excreta of grazing animals. Soil Biol. Biochem. 27: 1581–1588
Thus the "thermodynamically impossible" comment, but it goes much further than that.
People do realise that sheep and goats are just small ruminants and cattle are just large ruminants. You can even have cattle and sheep that approach each other very closely on a size basis. On the basis of size alone one of the biggest thermodynamic constraints will be the surface area to volume ratio, smaller organism will be energetically less efficient than larger ones, "having to run all day just to stay in one place". This is literally highschool physics and biology.
Monogut organisms like ourselves and for simplicity sake chickens and pigs cannot handle the feed inputs that hindgut and forgut fermenters can, generally requiring higher quality feed from both a nutrient and digestive quality standpoint. But those feed inputs didn't arrive out of the blue, they required huge (relative) inputs and resulting outputs. By focussing on enteric emissions we are missing the forest for the trees.
I can deal with monogut efficiency and energy inputs/outputs of cash crops later as I am running out of time, but these conversations always remind me of how little people understand about their food whether it be wheat, corn, chicken or cows
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Rob Honeycutt at 09:16 AM on 21 October 2020What does the global shift in diets mean for climate change?
Wayne... As far as I can tell, your statement "the math is wrong, that it is thermodynamically impossible" isn't supported by your references at comment #22.
Can you be a little more specific?
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Eclectic at 09:12 AM on 21 October 2020Climate's changed before
Hal Kantrud, the planetary "wobbles" are much too slow to cause any brief effect such as the Little Ice Age [LIA].
Have a look at the PAGES 2K study.
Many people hear the name "Little Ice Age" ~ and combine it in their mind with old illustrations of Dickensian snow and London "Ice Fairs" on the frozen Thames, and suchlike Christmassy freezes.
But in reality, the LIA was very minor. Less than 0.5 degreesC colder than the usual background for the Northern Hemisphere, and more like 0.3 degreesC cooler for the global whole.
Even the Medieval Warm Period [MWP] was only around 0.3 degreesC warmer than the global historic background. Despite some of the trumpet-blowing about the MWP and the LIA, they were both pretty minor events overall. Their names do greatly exaggerate their size. And they are insignificant compared with the level of warmth of the Holocene Maximum (about 8000 years ago) and the even higher temperature levels of recent decades (which are around 0.5 degreesC hotter than the Holocene Maximum).
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wayne19608 at 09:08 AM on 21 October 2020A Skeptical Science member's path to an experiment on carbon sequestration
Hi RedBaron
I doubt they would have the time, need,or inclination to do what you are doing as it would be a distraction to their primary endeavour. There is another 20 years of articles going forward and the SFJ has another 20 years going back.
How many acres are you looking at converting to no-till?
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wayne19608 at 09:00 AM on 21 October 2020What does the global shift in diets mean for climate change?
ok moderator let's start with rice cultivation, which literally doesn't pass the smell test. Rice cultivation is responsible for 22% of global agricultural methane emissions and 11% of total anthropogenic methane emissions.
Smith P, Martino D, Cai Z, Gwary D, Janzen H, Kumar P, McCarl B, Ogle S, O’Mara F, Rice C, Scholes B, Sirotenko O. Agriculture. In: Solomon S, Qin D, Manning M, Chen Z, Marquis M, Averyt KB, Tignor M, Miller HL, editors. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2007. pp. 498–540.
United States Environmental Protection Agency. Global Anthropogenic Non-CO2 Greenhouse Gas Emissions: 1990–2020 [Internet]. 2006. Available from: http://nepis.epa.gov/ Adobe/PDF/2000ZL5G.PDF
Then there's the N2O
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/39/9720
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Tom Dayton at 08:32 AM on 21 October 2020Climate's changed before
Hal Kantrud: The "Little Ice Age" (LIA) was not a glaciation in any sense. It was a brief period within which some particular regions got colder for a little while before getting warmer again, but not all of them at the same time. From the PAGES 2K study:
"Our regional temperature reconstructions also show little evidence for globally synchronized multi-decadal shifts that would mark well-defined worldwide MWP and LIA intervals. Instead, the specific timing of peak warm and cold intervals varies regionally, with multi-decadal variability resulting in regionally specific temperature departures from an underlying global cooling trend."
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Hal Kantrud at 05:42 AM on 21 October 2020Climate's changed before
Thanks. So if the "wobble" that triggered the Pleistocene glaciation, and less extensive glaciations occur during the interglacial, I guess the proper name would be Interglacial Subglaciations. These must be what misinformed laypersons like myself have termed "Little Ice Ages". How many have there been during the last 12,000 years and could they have dampened atmospheric CO2 levels? Did the extent of polar ice increase during these lesser glaciations?
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wayne19608 at 20:57 PM on 20 October 2020What does the global shift in diets mean for climate change?
one planet, no I'm saying that the math is wrong, that it is thermodynamically impossible and using it to justify your life decisions or as a template for behaviour change is probably a mistake
Moderator Response:[DB] "the math is wrong, that it is thermodynamically impossible"
In the same manner that stating that a dog's tail is a 5th leg does not make it so, stating that "the math is wrong, that it is thermodynamically impossible" without citing a credible source or showing your calculated analysis does not make it so.
You'll need to substantiate your position in order to be taken seriously.
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One Planet Only Forever at 15:03 PM on 20 October 2020What does the global shift in diets mean for climate change?
wayne,
I am referring to much more that needs to be corrected than the climate impacts.
But just focusing on the climate impacts, climate impacts need to be ended - all of them. And reduced impacts are reduced impacts - steps in the right direction.
You seem to be arguing that there can be math done that says that some climate impacts are OK because of comparison to other climate impacts. It is not about which ones are OK or better or worse. None of them are OK.
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RedBaron at 11:49 AM on 20 October 2020A Skeptical Science member's path to an experiment on carbon sequestration
@Wayne 8,
Well I did notice this from your link Wayne,
Cultivating Questions: Evolution of a Permanent Bed System
by: Lou Johns
from issue: 27-3
Crops & Soil • Cultivating Questions • Farming Systems & Approaches
Planting Beds
After three or four years we could see that the nature of our farming practices would continue to have detrimental effects on our soils. We were looking for a new approach, a routine that would be sustainable, rather than a rescue treatment for an ongoing problem. We decided to convert our fields to permanent planting beds with grassy strips in between where all tractor, foot and irrigation pipe traffic would be concentrated.It's pretty similar to what I am testing. But I don't see any soil tests, much less a rigorous trial. So it is interesting, and could even be tested to see what rate that sequesters carbon.
Interesting because they saw that they still had the ongoing problem with soil degradation. (requiring amendments to maintain fertility) And decided to make a change. I might encourage them to test it at experiment.com too. If they are legends, it shouldn't be too difficult to raise the expense money by crowdfunding it for a token donation from their followers.
I can assure you though, that isn't a standard biodynamic approach. They even say it themselves.
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wayne19608 at 10:01 AM on 20 October 2020A Skeptical Science member's path to an experiment on carbon sequestration
RedBaron, I'll think you'll find that the Nordell's and a few others have done quite a bit of experimentation with no-till, which is quite amazing as they are farming with horses. We're talking about real working, succesful, profitable farms. I've never met them but know some very impressive people that have, and quite frankly they are legends
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RedBaron at 09:31 AM on 20 October 2020A Skeptical Science member's path to an experiment on carbon sequestration
At Wayne #6,
Yes Wayne, Biodynamic is a way to grow good crops. But it is not no-till and it has quite limited use as a method to increase soil sequestration of carbon. This produces biomass that decomposes in the labile carbon cycle rather than the non-labile carbon cycle. (fixed carbon that decomposes and returns to the atmosphere as CO2, rather than sequestered carbon that forms stabile humic polymers tightly bound to the mineral substrate)
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wayne19608 at 08:36 AM on 20 October 2020A Skeptical Science member's path to an experiment on carbon sequestration
Hi RedBaron
I'm not sure how relevant it would be to your work, but for gardening techniques there is probably no better source than Anne and Eric Nordell
https://smallfarmersjournal.com/category/cultivating-questions/
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wayne19608 at 08:29 AM on 20 October 2020What does the global shift in diets mean for climate change?
One planet, I'm afraid I don't undertand what you're saying in this response either
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:18 AM on 20 October 2020What does the global shift in diets mean for climate change?
wayne @ 17,
What you state needs a more detailed presentation. I do not understand how your comment applies to what I presented, not even the part where you appear to agree with what I presented.
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Doug Bostrom at 06:41 AM on 20 October 2020A Skeptical Science member's path to an experiment on carbon sequestration
Vertical gardening is a niche method, intended to resuse otherwise wasted space. Within its boundaries, it's a fine idea.
A brief excercise with arithmetic will demostrate how the method is unsuited to making a sufficently substantial contribution to adequately feeding 9-12 billion people for it to be a substitute for more conventional methods.
Meanwhile, hydroponics don't feature carbon capture, which is a key feature here.
We need to sequester carbon and eat. Both things have to happen.
Economics follow reality, in the long term. And "long term" here means "forever." Our systems have to work forever.
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Philippe Chantreau at 05:53 AM on 20 October 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
I was not under the impression that the 2 designs were similar, perhaps I should have conveyed that better. To my defense I can say that at least I mentioned the 2 different types in 2 different paragraphs... :-)
I had not realized that quite a bit of tension seems to have developed in this thread over time, but had no intention to strike any nerve.
I am quite familiar with Terra Power; the article I linked, however, is of a much more detailed and informative nature than the basic info available through the Terra Power website. Especially interesting is the the radiation induced swelling issue, which does require special alloys, but the paper claims to have a workable solution with the HT9 alloy.
I understand that the classic objections to "new" nuclear designs (there isn't one working, economics have not been demonstrated, time to be online, etc) do apply to this one as well. Nonetheless, the advantages of being able to use spent fuel, leaving depleted uranium as a by-product, and the safety features inherent to the design deserve consideration. Not to mention that a 600 MW plant operating as baseload is nothing to sneeze at. If it can be scaled up, as projected, to 1200 MW, I'm imagining how many coal fired power plants can be replaced by carbon free operations (free beyond, of course, material production, initial construction etc), and I find it very appealing. As far as I know, they do have a buildable prototype design, which was going to be started in China but everything fell by the wayside due to the current US administration policies. I find it shocking that a prototype had not been started in the US before 2016.
This is not something to be discounted only on the basis of traditional objections, ideological opposition, or any other preconceived ideas. It offers tremendous advantages if it works as expected. It can produce, and deserves, a prototype and if it turns out as good as projected, it is, in my opinion, a very good solution.
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reviewron at 21:53 PM on 19 October 2020A Skeptical Science member's path to an experiment on carbon sequestration
Yes, It's good to hear that his experiemnts are trying to do something about the soil and the carbon level of the environment. I wish him al lthe best. But, reducing the soil use should be a goal too. In this era we have alternate way of farming. Like as vertical gardening and using the hydroponic system.
Trying to returning back the carbon back to the soil - I just don't think this will be economically viable. Environmentally - Yes, but think about all the people we have to feed.
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michael sweet at 20:53 PM on 19 October 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Philippe:
The TWR reactor you link is a sodium cooled reactor and not an MSR. It is confusing when you discuss MSR's and sodium cooled reactors in the same post. Are you aware that TWR reactors are not MSR's? Sodium cooled reactors have their own, different, set of problems compared to MSR's. Sodium is extremely corrosive and is flammable in both air and water.
The article you link is a progress statement from TerraPower LLC, a company associated with Bill Gates. They claim they are making progress with their design but do not have a buildable design yet. When they have a buildable design we can discuss their future prospects.
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michael sweet at 20:20 PM on 19 October 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Philippe Chantreau:
Thank you for providing a peer reviewed study to support your question.
Your reference is a summary of current knowledge of "freeze valves". The first paragraph states:
"Reliable mechanical valves that can withstand the corrosive and high-temperature conditions in Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) have not yet been demonstrated. In their place, freeze valves (sometimes called freeze plugs) represent a unique nuclear design solution for isolating salt flow during operations." my emphasis.
As I stated above, no alloys to manufacture control valves are known that can withstand the extreme heat, corrosion and radiation fields in an MSR. Reactor designers are looking for other ways to control liquid flow. A freeze plug is a system of a thin pipe where a plug of solid salt is allowed to form. This pipe has to have complicated heating and cooling systems. It takes about 15 minutes to form the plug, during which the molten salt cannot be moving, and about 15 minutes to thaw the plug. Most of the small amount of known data and designs about freeze plugs are from the 1960's. Apparently recently MSR developers have started to investigate freeze plugs again because they have been unsuccessful in finding alloys to build mechanical valves.
Freeze valves are apparently not used in any existing chemical or nuclear processes. Therefore the knowledge of their manufacture, use and failure modes is rudimentary. They are complicated and have many failure modes compared to normal mechanical valves. They open and close very slowly in emergencies. The size of pipes used is restricted. Test valves have suffered catastrophic failure.
The conclusion of the paper you cite says:
"Especially because the technical maturity of all solutions to isolate salt flow is so low, it will be important for MSR stakeholders to advance the state of knowledge surrounding freeze valve systems, and other alternatives under consideration, through a combination of physical tests, computational simulations, and design-related studies." my emphasis
I conclude that it is currently unknown how to control the flow of liquid salt in an MSR. It may be possible to develop a solution but it will take significant research, time and testing. Designers tried to avoid freeze plugs because they have many undesirable properties.
Proponents of MSR's have many significant problems that they need to resolve, including the fact that they do not know how to regulate the flow of liquid through the reactor. It will take many years of research to solve these issues, if they can be solved. Suggestions that a design that can be built exists or will exist in the near future are deliberately false.
Many additional problems exist for MSR's. The designs are complicated and only the nost optimistic proponents envision that they can compete with renewable energy in the foreseeable future. If a reactor is ever designed, there will still not be enough uranium in the world to provide more than a small amount (less than 5%) of energy to the grid.
I think it is a waste of money to attempt to develop a reactor where a pilot plant cannot be designed in less than 10 years. It would take at least 5 years to validate the design and then 10 years to build the first commercial reactor. You are looking at 2050 or later for the first commercial reactor which is too late. The uranium problem has no proposed solutions (thorium has additional problems of its own). The money would do much more good used to build a wind or solar farm.
Your reference is very long and technical. I only read about half of it in detail.
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RedBaron at 17:46 PM on 19 October 2020A Skeptical Science member's path to an experiment on carbon sequestration
Nigel,
As a general rule of thumb, no-till increases yields over tillage systems. There are a few exceptions though. For example organic production with reduced tillage does beat conventional no-till usually. But focusing narrowly on those two would also be misleading, because no-till organic beats both long term. There are very good long term trials proving both those controversial claims.
Yields from a long-term tillage compareson study
Even focusing on that would be misleading though, because farming is a science and a skill too. There is a learning curve. And in both the cases above when people first switched, they generally lost yields per acre at first. Only after they became more skilled at it did they see the gains. Soil health also does not rebound immediately either. So the yield increases seen by improving the soil, even with experienced farmers, can take three years or more. A novice farmer could take decades to really gain the knowlege required.
For those two reasons and more, it is also easy to find shorter term trials that have the opposite result.
If you really want to be a skeptic, you need to always check your premises first. Next step is to check context.
Trust but verify
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Doug Bostrom at 12:59 PM on 19 October 2020A Skeptical Science member's path to an experiment on carbon sequestration
It may be a matter (and I have a completely superficial exposure to this topic so emphasis on "I dunno") that this is a bit akin to other sustainable technologies: no, it's not economically optimal according to some framings, but economics as they're understood from our history don't predict economics we may expect in the future, economics that are dominated by "we've filled the space available and we now need. a plan for how to occupy the available space in perpetuity."
Our history and experience of economics is very short and very warped by circumstances.
One thing I _know_ (and yeah, I have my thumb heavily on the scale here I freely admit) is that more understanding of capacities is what we need, and Scott is offering a means to expand that understanding, help to set brackets on what we can expect.
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nigelj at 12:30 PM on 19 October 2020A Skeptical Science member's path to an experiment on carbon sequestration
I think this experiment sounds very useful, so good luck. I also think some form of regenerative agriculture has merit, and is the way of the future. I haven't always agreed with RB (aka Scott Strough), possibly because I'm a born sceptic (I drove my parents crazy) but I agree on many of the basics.
I came across the following discussion some time ago. No till farming is good for soils, but it reduces productivity and this is apparently why farmers are a little bit reluctant to use it. However reduced till farming hits a sweet spot of significant soil benefits and improved productivity according to this research.
www.no-tillfarmer.com/articles/9378-reducing-tillage-improves-soil-yields
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wayne19608 at 09:29 AM on 19 October 2020What does the global shift in diets mean for climate change?
one planet @ 15 much of what you said may be true, but is irrelevant if people are going to continue to promote these energy/methane/CO2eq numbers that are beyond questionable. But I guess it makes people feel better when they are eating their "organic" baby carrots and rice, and that's all that matters right!?!
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Tom Dayton at 07:09 AM on 19 October 2020Climate's changed before
Hal Kantrud, you wrote that you thinks you read that changes in Earth's axis of rotation may be involved in the Little Ice Age. You might well have read that, because misunderstanding is widespread. But the "Little Ice Age" was not actually an ice age. Indeed, what popularly are called "ice ages" actually are glacial periods nested within actual "ice ages." Within each actual ice age there is a series of glacial periods and "interglacial periods." Currently we are in an interglacial period within an ice age. The Little Ice age in fact was merely a short period of regional cooling within the current interglacial period. See this relevant post--first the Basic, then the Intermediate, and finally the Advanced tabbed pane.
"Wobbles" in the Earth's axis are so slow that they operate on the time scale of triggering the glacial and interglacial periods. See this post about Milankovich cycles.
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Philippe Chantreau at 05:52 AM on 19 October 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
MIchael,
I searched valve issues for MSR and found mostly publications centered around the freze valve problem, but nothing specifically relating to the availability of alloys up to the task. Can you be more specific?
As for myself, I believe that there is immense potential in the TWR model, and I find it hard to understand that a prototype would not already be underway in the US. If construction times can be kept at the necessary levels, it is the only solution that I know about with the potential to solve the energy problem of civilization at the short and medium term. If this was given the public attention it deserves, working plants could be generating commercial electricity even before ITER would start delivering useful data.
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Hal Kantrud at 05:07 AM on 19 October 2020Climate's changed before
"n more depth, human activities have been modifying the climate system for far longer than most people realize. Evidence exists that humans have been doing so since the development of agriculture more than 10,000 years ago, contributing as much as 25 ppm to existing, preindustrial atmospheric CO2 levels.'"
But even from the Antarctic ice data it looks like a gradual rise began about 7000 years ago. This could correlate with the increased use of the high-carbon content grassland soils for cultivation of annual crops such as small grains and also for pasturage.
"During periods of previous pandemics, reforestation of formerly cultivated lands have drawn down atmospheric carbon dioxide levels enough to measurably lower global temperatures."
I see no dips in atmospheric CO2 following any of the world's worst pandemics. "Reforestation" probably means abandonment of cropland where forests once stood, where weeds and annual grasses quickly become dominant. So this perhaps accounts for the lack of dips. I doubt if large scale abandonment of cropland occurred in fire-derived ecosystems like grasslands where forests did not originally exist as these areas would be the first to be returned to agiculture or for domestic livestock by the survivors. Unlike grasslands, forests are shallow rooted and store little carbon, other nutrients, or water underground, so I would think long-term effects of reforestation on atmospheric CO2 would be quite low.
"Scientists understand that the so-called Little Ice Age was caused by several factors - a drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, a series of large volcanic eruptions, changes in land use and a temporary decline in solar activity."
Thought I read where regular changes in Earth's axis of rotation ("wobble") may also be involved here.
"This new study demonstrates that the drop in CO₂ is itself partly due the settlement of the Americas and resulting collapse of the indigenous population, allowing regrowth of natural vegetation."
Whew! Now you are saying that Amerindians had more land under cultivation and overgrazed more acreage than European man?
"it demonstrates that human activities affected the climate well before the industrial revolution began."
I agree with that, but believe the recent upward blip was caused as much by convesion of New World grasslands to cropland as it was by the industrial hydrocarbons used to accompish that task.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:08 AM on 19 October 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #42
nigelj,
I agree with your assessment and would add that a significant part of the problem is that 'Future people' will be the ones to suffer from what 'current day people' do that they can understand, but resist understanding, are causing harmful consequences for 'future people'.
This harmful misunderstanding, or resistance to learning to be less harmful and be more helpful, is an expected result of the human made-up artificial games of competition for impressions of superiority relative to Others. Those games have boosted the tendency for humans to be selfish rather than helpful, and developed the belief that 'Harm Done is justified by Benefit Obtained or Money Made'.
An insidious aspect of the current socioeconomic-political environment is that the more harmful someone can get away with acting the more competitive advantage they can have over more caring and considerate people - including people in the general population who do not need to care about the harm done by their purchasing or vote choices or the choices of how they will enjoy their lives.
Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" is only helpful if the economic-political games are Dominated or Governed by requirements to eliminate harm done, with related constant learning by everyone, especially by people in leadership roles in everything (business, politics, social institutions). Without that Helpful Governing, the "Invisible Hand of Competition" is bound to be Very Harmful.
The solution requires systemic changes that make consideration of impacts on Others, including future generations, an essential part of the evaluation of acceptability of an activity. And the pursuers of benefit should not be the ones to determine the harm done by their actions.
People hoping to benefit from an activity can be biased against ensuring that no harm is done. They may even try to claim that what they want to benefit from is acceptable by comparing their perception of the benefit obtained to their perception of harm done and as long as there is a Net-Positive it must be acceptable. They ignore the undeniable understanding that unsustainable harmful activity must be eliminated in order for sustainable improvements to be developed. That type of selfish evaluation insidiously makes it appear as if "Harm Done is justified by the Benefit Obtained by the people benefiting from the harm being done".
Harmful activity will likely always have a competitive advantage, including the way it can get people to make-up evaluations that justify continuing the unsustainable harmful activity. Those incorrect justifications for actions harmful to future generations include 'discounting the underestimated costs of future impacts' and comparing that 'level of harm done to the future of humanity' to over-stated costs of eliminating the harm being done.
The measure of acceptability needs to be "No Harm Done". And that understanding is resisted because the current developed ways of living are very unsustainably harmful. That understanding illuminates the reality that the socioeconomic-political systems that have developed need to be significantly changed in order for sustainable improvements to develop.
Profit and popularity have failed miserably as means of developing sustainable improvements. In fact, games of popularity and profit have made it harder to limit the harm done by human activity. And being able to get away with misleading marketing, especially in politics, is the major impediment to humanity developing a sustainable improving future.
As a final note I would add that fossil fuels should be kept in reserve for a real future emergency, like keeping people warm after something like a tragic asteroid impact, or using a little bump of CO2 to get through a future period of significant reduced solar energy input.
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michael sweet at 01:02 AM on 19 October 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Apparently the NRC has approved the NuScale modular reactor design. They are set to build a reactor on the Idaho Falls DOE site. A pro-nuclear article in Forbes said:
"NuScale is building its modular SMR on the DOE’s Idaho Falls site and has a contract to sell the electricity to a consortium of rural electric cooperatives, two of which recently dropped out because of spiraling cost projections. This is dampening SMR enthusiasm and attention is returning to the large reactors of 1,000 MWe and above."
Apparently even nuclear supporters are losing enthusiasam for small modular reactors. Nuclear supporters move the goal posts again because the current designs have failed.
The Forbes article supports a molten salt start-up. As I understand it, the alloys necessary to build the valves in a molten salt reactor have not been invented yet. Perhaps they have a supply of "unobtainium". A major cost savings was the claim that a containment structure is not needed.
This peer reviewed article finds that countries that build out nuclear power plants do not reduce carbon pollution while countries that build out renewable power plants reduce carbon polllution. If nuclear is built out than the amount of renewable energy is reduced. It is only a correlation study, more research will be necessary to confirm the conclusions.
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Daniel Bailey at 09:44 AM on 18 October 2020Climate's changed before
Atmospheric CO2 levels reached about 265 ppm about 11,000 years ago, near the end of the last glacial phase and the start of the current Holocene interglacial. From then until just before preindustrial (1850), CO2 levels slowly increased to about 280 ppm, an increase of 15 or so ppm.
(bigger image here)
What this doesn't take into account is that human activities starting around the development of agriculture until preindustrial times added about 25 ppm to those atmospheric levels. This implies that, without the human impacts, atmospheric CO2 levels would have naturally dropped by some 10 ppm over the same interval.
In more depth, human activities have been modifying the climate system for far longer than most people realize. Evidence exists that humans have been doing so since the development of agriculture more than 10,000 years ago, contributing as much as 25 ppm to existing, preindustrial atmospheric CO2 levels. During periods of previous pandemics, reforestation of formerly cultivated lands have drawn down atmospheric carbon dioxide levels enough to measurably lower global temperatures."Scientists understand that the so-called Little Ice Age was caused by several factors - a drop in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, a series of large volcanic eruptions, changes in land use and a temporary decline in solar activity.
This new study demonstrates that the drop in CO₂ is itself partly due the settlement of the Americas and resulting collapse of the indigenous population, allowing regrowth of natural vegetation. It demonstrates that human activities affected the climate well before the industrial revolution began."
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nigelj at 09:05 AM on 18 October 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #42
And it would be better to keep remaining fossil fuel reserves for use as petrochemicals. Make them spin out as long as possible and the CO2 they generate can be released at a much slower pace or buried in landfill.
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nigelj at 09:01 AM on 18 October 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #42
Studies trying to evelauate the costs of climate change and putting a price on carbon, like Nordhaus's study have been heavily criticised as understating the costs of climate change and the price on carbon. It looks like a very difficult exercise to be definitive about any of this.
liu.se/en/news-item/liu-forskare-riktar-skarp-kritik-mot-ekonomipristagare
I would look at it the whole thing a different way. What we know is the very worst case scenario includes as much as 6 degrees c of warming this century, and 12 degrees c of warming, by about the year 2200 - 2300, from the IPCC studies, which would obviously be genuinely catastrophic. Only a fool would think otherwise or need to do nit picking studies. The risk of this is probably small, but the consequences are very grave, so this should be considered. Its not worth taking the risk. Its the entire planet we are talking about.
An immediate plan of infrastructure spending and regulations would stop the worst of this problem eventuating, without strangling the economy and in fact studies show it would create jobs.
Doing nothing will mean being forced at some future date to suck CO2 out of the air, a technology that would cost a fortune to scale up, if its even possible. Wind and solar power along with other policies prevents the problem and provides a tangible benefit with electricity generation. Throw some nuclear power into the mix if it can become economic and built quickly enough, but right now it has to prove that.
Doing nothing also has a huge irony. In about 50 - 100 years time we will be running out of economically recoverable fossil fuel reserves. These are absolutely finite reserves. So we will have no option but to consider things like wind and solar power, so this strengthens the case for more immediate action.
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Hal Kantrud at 04:45 AM on 18 October 2020Climate's changed before
Has there been a gradual rise in atmospheric C0s during the last 10 millenia followed by a spike following the industrial revolution? Does the gradual rise correlate with human agiculture and pastoralism? Does the spike correlate with conversion of North American grasslands to agriculture and pastoralism with the aid of machinery powered by fossil fuels? This makes sense to me because grassland soils contain more carbon than soils of forestland or brushland.
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Hal Kantrud at 04:26 AM on 18 October 2020Climate's changed before
As this is your first post, Skeptical Science respectfully reminds you to please follow our comments policy. Thank You!
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John Hartz at 03:39 AM on 18 October 2020What does the global shift in diets mean for climate change?
I concur with Philippe Chantreau @12's statement:
I see numerous valid points from all contributors so far, suggesting that this is a complex problem and indeed it is.
The complexity of the agriculture's contribution to manmade climate change extends beyond CO2 and methane emissions. For example. it includes the use of nitrogen fertilizer as addressed in:
Nitrogen fertiliser use could ‘threaten global climate goals’ by Daisy Dunne, Science, Carbon Brief, Oct 7, 2020
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:05 AM on 18 October 2020What does the global shift in diets mean for climate change?
wayne,
I am inclined to agree with you about non-cattle food production needing to be better understood and helpfully corrected to be more sustainable. But I am less inclined to disagree with the opportunity, and the need, to dramatically reduce cattle rearing. Correcting how cattle are reared is indeed required, along with reducing how much beef people eat and the resulting reduction of cattle reared for human eating.
The 2015 Sustainable Development Goals always need to be kept in mind. They are based on massive amounts of research and improved understanding that, like all improved understanding, is open to further improvement (the 2030 update will incorporate those improvements and recognize the progress made toward achieving the 2015 SDGs).
The SDGs point to the need to reduce the unsustainable harm done by all human activity, not just food consumption. And they identify the need to address the way that economic competition for popularity and profit has a history of creating harmful results, including creating Desperate Poverty as measures of wealth increase faster than the population.
Some people may claim that the real problem is the total global population increase. I do not disagree. But it is important to remember that harm being done, including the creation of Poverty, has happened while wealth increased faster than the population. And the recent global population study published in the Lancet indicates that achieving the SDGs will reduce the peak global population. So achieving the SDGs, all of them, is the answer to almost everything humanity needs to have a lasting improving future on this one amazing planet we are certain that humanity can thrive on as a part of the robust diversity of life that had developed.
The harm done to the robust diversity of life on this planet, including harm by actions related to rearing massive numbers of cattle for wealthier humans to eat, is harm done to the future of humanity.
A lame but common claim that also needs to be addressed is the claims that reduction of harmful environmental impacts can only be done by having increased wealth. The counter-argument is simple. "Harm Done does not justify Money Made and is certainly not excused by a portion of the money made being applied to partially correct the harm that was done by activities that created the appearance that money was made".
Economics are an unnatural game made up by humans. The economic game can be responsibly governed to limit the harm done and increase the helpfulness achieved by the players in the game. That results in the understanding that the Libertarian Free Market thinking that some people want to promote are actually some of the most harmful ideas humans have ever come up with. It is undeniably incorrect to believe that Good Results will be developed if there is more freedom for people to believe whatever they want and behave however they wish in competition for Superiority relative to Others. All human actions need to be governed by the need to not be harmful and the desire to be more helpful. The economic games would need to be dominated, governed, by people who think and behave that way in order for Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" to be Helpful rather than Harmful.
Humans have been coming up with different versions of those unjust justifications for Superiority of Some relative to Others (including those Political Nationalists), including beliefs that humans are separate from, and Superior to, the rest of life on this planet, for a very long time.
Humanity needs to pursue expanded awareness and improved understanding and apply what is learned to develop a robust diversity of ways for the diversity of humans (more complex than the binary belief) to live as sustainable parts of the robust diversity of life.
Advancement of humanity is not necessarily indicated by technological achievements or measures of wealth. It is measured by how sustainable global human activity is, and its harmlessness.
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jadaasa12 at 18:02 PM on 17 October 2020It's not bad
Almost any scientist looking at a new idea views it with deep skepticism and doubts it, and that skepticism is only overcome by a consistent preponderance of the evidence that keeps supporting the idea that that might be important - that global climate change driven by humans might actually be occurring. As that evidence has been accumulated, skeptic after skeptic among the scientists has decided, "Well, I'd better pay more attention to this." The physics of this is much more well understood. The models that incorporate all of our known aspects of physics and atmospheric chemistry and climatology and so on, all predict that what we're doing is going to lead to climate change. All these bits of evidence keep falling into place. They all keep saying, "Gee, we'd better pay more attention to this global climate change idea," because when we look at some data that maybe would have rejected it, it doesn't. It supports that idea. I guess what I would say is that the idea is so real now. There have been so many attempts to test it, so many attempts to reject the idea that we might be causing climate change which has not been successful, which keep supporting that hypothesis. I think it is now incumbent upon us to take it seriously and to do things to help slow the rate of climate change and hopefully stop it. If we find out in the long-term that climate change is not going to happen, we won't have done much to harm ourselves. But if we don't act now, we could have a runaway climate change that could basically greatly decrease the livability of the earth. The science is now solid enough that any reasonable person examining the scientific evidence would decide, "We have to pay attention to it. It's time to have some action."
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wayne19608 at 08:36 AM on 17 October 2020What does the global shift in diets mean for climate change?
I find it hard to agree with the premise on a lot of this. Cattle don't need grain fed to them, only forage and maybe hay if you have a dry season or winter. Thus you only need to cut and bale the forage, and that's it no more inputs required. The cattle can even cut and bale the forage themselves if you're so inclined. It is a little harder to manage sheep(and to a lesser extent goats). But raising chickens and pigs without grain inputs is a huge amount of work. Grain cropping requires huge energy investment even with no-till. Rumination is one of the greatest evolutionary advancements, so maybe don't just pick on cattle as there a lot of ruminants walking the earth. The non ruminant/livestock methane production just comes out after digestion as their feces breaks down. And for anyone like myself who has stood in a rice paddy in Thailand, let me tell you it reeked, so I question the methane numbers there as well
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