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nigelj at 08:10 AM on 20 January 2020How climate change influenced Australia's unprecedented fires
alisonjane @16, this website focuses on the climate impacts on the bushfires in Australia because its a climate science website. I mean, who would have thought? :) The website has never said other factors aren't involved.
It does seem intuitively obvious at first glance that dead branches etc on the ground wouldn't help the situation, and might make it easier for fires to start and get going. However I'm 99% sure I heard the Fire Service say this wasn't a big factor in these fires. And fire spreads largely between the tree canopies which are quite close together.
Do you think you might give us some specific examples of those regulations please? Or a link that goes to the relevant page?
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nigelj at 07:37 AM on 20 January 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Michael Sweet @132, regarding my scepticism about the LNT model, Doug C @134 has pretty much summed it up with plenty of links to technical discussion.
If liquid fuels storage is low cost, economic and works, why isnt more of this being built? Why are so many countries continuing to build fossil fuels generation?
I think you need to provide some information on costs of a solar and wind powered grid with liquid fuels storage, (and nothing else for the sake of simplicity) so that we can see what is really going on. I should not have to read thousands of pages to find this. You are familar with the material and are arguing the case, so you should post it.
In my last paragraph @130 I described how I think an electricity market should treat nuclear power and renewables. Any disagreement?
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Doug_C at 06:51 AM on 20 January 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
michael sweet @131
I fully disagree with your entire position on nuclear power and the LNT which was the result of Cold War politics not sound science.
It Is Time to Move Beyond the Linear No-Threshold Theory for Low-Dose Radiation Protection
Considering the fact that we are all exposed to ionizing radiation and all life has been from the start of life almost 4 billion years ago on an Earth that had far higher levels of ionizing radiation, how likely is that ionizing radiation is a risk down to a zero dose rate.
The LNT model of risk from ionizing radiation was a response to the threat of nuclear proliferation and the radiophobia that has resulted has been used by a sector that presents an actualy existential threat to life itself on Earth while at the same time causing the early deaths of millions of people a year from air pollution alone before we look at all the other negative impacts of fossil fuels including the wars that are often rooted in the conflicts over fossil fuels. Donald Trump just stated it is an American goal to seize Syrian oil deposits, a war crime.
When we look at the worst scenario nuclear reactor accident with a reactor type that will never be built again as was a function of the lack of competence and respect for safety by the regime that built it, the direct impacts to people is still a tiny fraction of what we accept from fossil fuels daily.
They don't even know how many people died from the Chernobyl accident becaused the increased rates of cancer even under the LNT are so small in relation to the other background causes. The highest estimates are about 500 people. That is about 1/23rd of the deaths that are caused by fossil fuels generated air pollution daily.
Anti-nuclear activists like Helen Caldicott have made totally unsupported claims that close to 1 million deaths resulted from the Chernobyl accident, contradicting even their own ealier claims.
Nuclear opponents have a moral duty to get their facts straight
Arnie Gundersen was making almost the same claims about the Fukushima accident.
Nuclear Engineer Arnie Gundersen: Fukushima Meltdown Could Result in 1 Million Cases of Cancer
What exactly are you afraid of with nuclear power, it's clear that more than a few anti-nuclear activists are not basing their hysterical claims on science or reality itself.
Based on the massively exagerated claims by people who treat all ionizing radiation as an almost inevitable death sentence you'd think that people exposed to the most extreme human generated forms would all die very early deaths.
Let's start with Chernobyl and the several hundred emergency response personnel who were working next to an exposed nuclear core on fire
Health effects in those with acute radiation sickness from the Chernobyl accident.
Of those hundreds of personnel, 134 were diagnosed with ARS, should be and immediate death sentence based on the conventional "wisdom" that holds what an extreme threa to life all ionizing radiation is.
Of those 134 people, 29 died in the following months, mostly from the same kind of skin infections third degree burn victims would. In this case it was the beta burns from the intense radiation.
By 2001 a further 14 had died, does that sound like the death sentence that mainstream radiophobia would have us all treat any IR exposure as.
In a much less savory case who' ethics I'm not going to debate as I think what was done was deplorable, people diagnosed with terminal illnesses in the US were administered without their knowledge plutonium, the "most dangerous" substance on Earth going by the kind of treatment that you claim is based on sound science.
Some of them were misdiagnised and lived for decades with plutonium in their bodies.
Human Plutonium Injection Experiments
I don't work in the nuclear sector, I don't even have a degree, a serious disability has severely limited my life. I don't have children, I do have many nieces and nephews and the world we are leaving for them causes me anguish.
If I can figure out how broken the LNT model is and how totally irrational our entire approach to nuclear power is by book from libraries and online resources, then what does that say about the entire field of science that is still struggling to do anything about this nightmare we are all caught up in.
Some scientists like Fred Seitz, Fred Singer, Richard Lindzen and Tim Ball have and still, used their credientials and standing to totally distort the existential threat we all face from fossil fuels climate change. And yet they are still treated as part of this profession.
I have been taking verbal abuse from the people who they feed their intellectual fraud to online for years in a attempt to advocate for some form of sanity including from Tim Ball at WUWT because I dared to point out that his claims that water vapour were the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere was falacious as could be seen by the very title of his article. It there as a vapour not a gas and therefore isn't stable without the presense of another persisent gas namely carbon dioxide. His response and the many people who chimed in were abusive to say the least. But isn't that the point, to eliminate any opposition to your position no matter the cost to others.
Unlikely as I thought it to be, I find myself facing the same kind of treatment here.
I don't care for your baseless ad hominem against me because I simply want life not death to dominate our future.
As the subtext of your comment is that I and my views are simply not welcome here I won't frequent this site again and will treat it in the end like I do WUWT. As a meaningless spinning of wheels to comfort people as nothing real is done to save ourselves from an existential threat of our own making.
I'll go with the insights of some of the most brilliant scientists to have lived like Eugene Wigner and Alvin Weinberg who both held that nuclear power would be our salvation.
I simply have no time for people who are fomenting the same kind of intellectual fraud that has given us anti-vaxxers.
The Harmful and Fraudulent Basis for the LNT Assumption
At some point we are going to realize that views like yours are what is helping to kill us all, I just hope it's before it's to late to build the tens of thousands of nuclear reactors that we actually need to replace all fossil fuels.
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nigelj at 05:52 AM on 20 January 2020Skeptical Science New Research for Week #2, 2020
GwsB, The increase in ocean temperature of 0.075 degrees Celcius over the 1981-2010 average might be for the oceans as a whole including the deep oceans. The nasa giss graph of ocean temperatures below is for the surface 100 metres or so (I think) and it looks like about 0.5 degrees c for the same period.
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GwsB at 04:32 AM on 20 January 2020Skeptical Science New Research for Week #2, 2020
''Seqenenre at 1. Thank you for pointing out that the ocean temperature has only increased by 0.075 degrees Celcius over the 1981-2010 average. An increase of 0.075 over 25 years is quite small. It will take 25/0.075=333 years for the oceans to heat up by one degree. Hence w may depend on the oceans to cool us down over the next three centuries and we need not worry about rising sea levels, 0.7 meters over the next three centuries.
Either that or the value of 0.075 degrees in the CNN article is a mistake.
Is there anybody out there who can translated 225 zetajoules into degrees Celcius, so we can clear up this issue?''This was posted at 00.57 AM on 18 January, 2020. Since then it has been deleted. Does Skeptical Science use censors? If so, who are they, and where does one apply to find out the reason for deleting the original post?
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John Hartz at 02:26 AM on 20 January 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
The "wicked problem" re nuclear power has been, and continues to be, the disposal of the waste already generated by nuclear power plants (existing and decommissioned) throughout the world. A recent analysis of this issue in Germany begins with:
When it comes to the big questions plaguing the world's scientists, they don't get much larger than this.
Where do you safely bury more than 28,000 cubic meters — roughly six Big Ben clock towers — of deadly radioactive waste for the next million years?
This is the "wicked problem" facing Germany as it closes all of its nuclear power plants in the coming years, according to Professor Miranda Schreurs, part of the team searching for a storage site.
Experts are now hunting for somewhere to bury almost 2,000 containers of high-level radioactive waste. The site must be beyond rock-solid, with no groundwater or earthquakes that could cause a leakage.
The technological challenges — of transporting the lethal waste, finding a material to encase it, and even communicating its existence to future humans — are huge.
But the most pressing challenge today might simply be finding a community willing to have a nuclear dumping ground in their backyard.
Germany is closing all its nuclear power plants. Now it must find a place to bury the deadly waste for 1 million years by Sheena McKenzie, CNN, Nov 30, 2019
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nigelj at 15:19 PM on 19 January 2020How climate change influenced Australia's unprecedented fires
Something related to the bushfires: 'Silent death': Australia's bushfires push countless species to extinction
Also apparently 80% of the Blue Mountain forests have been lost.
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michael sweet at 14:40 PM on 19 January 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Nigelj,
You need to read your own citations.
Claiming that the US National Academy of Science is wrong and saying you will not provide any citations to support your claim is completely unscientific. Their review, published in 2006, is the most up to date consensus report on low level radiation. If you wish to substitute your personal opinion for the National Academy of Science scientific consensus you should stop posting here. This is a scientific site, citations are required.
I read the original paper for your pv magazine citation. I gave you a reference to the paper. They model only wind and solar power for electricity only in the USA. They do not model a renewable energy system that anyone would propose for the USA. They do not model All Power. Nuclear power is not modeled at all in the paper. At the end they speculate that adding nuclear might help but they provide no data or citations to support that wild claim. They do not model costs of their renewable system and they do not give nuclear costs either so speculating that nuclear would lower costs is completely unsupported. I quoted from a peer reviewed paper, you cited a popular magazine.
It is common for nuclear supporters to make up a fake renewable energy system that is very expensive. Then they claim, without data, that nuclear should be added since renewable is so expensive. Even if it were true that renewable was expensive that would not mean that nuclear is reasonable. As Abbott shows, it is impossible to build out more than a trivial amount of nuclear power.
You did not read your reference for nuclear cycling. The first paragraph stated that no reactors in the USA load follow because it is not economic. They say no reactors in the USA can load follow. They suggested that future reactors could be designed to very slowly load follow. It will never be economic. It will never be possible to load follow in real time. In France they shut down reactors on the weekend. For nuclear that is "load following". It is not economic.
Your claims that storage is too expensive is simply ignorant. You have not read the papers I cited that show a well designed renewable system can store all needed power using electrofuels in existing storage facilities. If replacement facilities need to be built it is over 1,000 times cheaper to build liquid electrofuel storage than to build out the pumped hydro you favor. (In any case it is impossible to build out major pumped hydro storage because the environmental damage is too great). Liquid electrofuels are stored in the same tanks that you see if you drive by any chemical storage facility worldwide. "Working prototypes" are everywhere and the costs are well known. Jacobson also documents storage for an all power system without electrofuels and the cost is reasonable. Jacobson details all storage down to the last battery and builds exactly zero pumped storage. Anyone who proposes using extensive pumped storage is trying to mislead you.
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michael sweet at 13:43 PM on 19 January 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
DougC,
We have already covered all this material here at SkS. It took me a little while to find the old posts since you were posting off topic as usual. You are reposting your old posts with no new material which is a violation of the comments policy. You are wasting everyones time with your old, failed arguments.
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nigelj at 13:41 PM on 19 January 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
michael sweet @128, sorry for being a bit off topic.
"The proponents of nuclear power ar RealClimate that you discuss reactor safety with do not count all nuclear related deaths. ...."
Ok. I don't take all that these guys say at face value. Believe me I check what they claim. But you seem a little bit over paranoid for some reason. However I respect your views and maybe you have your reasons.
"Linear response no threshold is accepted by every health agency in the world. "
Sometimes the consensus view is just wrong and the research on this issue is rather old and inadequate. I've had a read of studies, research papers, articles and opinions on both sides of the debate on low levels of radiation, including some of the research that was posted by Doug C on the Forest Fires thread. I'm not going to spend my day listing all this stuff in detail here. I'm just saying there appear to be valid criticisms of the LNT model and your mind appears very closed on it for some reason. I used to be very sceptical of nuclear power, just less so these days.
"Your claim: "If you inject some nuclear power into the mix you get clean energy and need much less storage" is in direct contradiction to peer reviewed papers."
What peer reviewed papers? I posted an article on it previously as below. Its clear an 80% solar and wind grid needs much less storage than a 100% grid. Orders of magnitude less. Nuclear power is one way of filling in the 20%. I have never said its the only way. Hydro would work in some places.
pv-magazine-usa.com/2018/03/01/12-hours-energy-storage-80-percent-wind-solar/
"As for ‘following all paths’ and pursuing a mix of renewables and nuclear, they do not mix well: because of their high capital costs, nuclear power plants are most economically viable when operated at full power the whole time, whereas the variability of renewables requires a flexible balancing power fleet....Please provide a citation to support this wild claim. In a renewable world peak power is required to support renewable wind and solar. Baseload like nuclear is not helpful and has little affect on storage. "
I already provided you a credible study with a link showing nuclear power can be ramped up and down to help renewables intermittency, on the forest fires thread. The article says it already does this in some places.
"Since nuclear is the most expensive power it would be much cheaper to build an excess of renewable energy or design better storage.
This is just an assertion and also assumes we can design better storage. Right now storage is very expensive. Makes nuclear power look attractive.
"The "Smart Energy" papers I have referenced repeatedly at SkS describe using electrofuels to power planes and ships. The electrofuels could be used in existing peaker plants to back up renewable energy if needed. No additional storage would be required. "
This is promising but its theoretical at this stage. Are there working prototypes and are the costs good?
Of course I'm not in a position to make decisions on who builds what power. I feel electricity markets should not discriminate between nuclear power and renewables. They should have equal subsidies (if any) and renewables should be required to have some storage. Then you get a level playing field between renewables and nuclear power, and the issue should sort itself out over time. The best overall system will get chosen and it could be renewables plus storage if storage prices drop.
I just want a clean grid, Im not too concerned what the power source is as such. :)
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michael sweet at 12:16 PM on 19 January 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
DougC and Nigelj:
Here is another link to the NAS review that describes the consensus of science backing Linear Response No Threshold. Please read the background posted above before you make wild claims that have already been discussed at length. Please cite peer reviewed reviews that compare to the NAS review. An individual paper does not mean much compared to a comprehensive NAS review.
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michael sweet at 12:11 PM on 19 January 2020How climate change influenced Australia's unprecedented fires
Nigelj:
I have responded to you here where it is on topic.
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michael sweet at 12:10 PM on 19 January 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Nigelj,
The proponents of nuclear power ar RealClimate that you discuss reactor safety with do not count all nuclear related deaths. For example, they say regulators were responsible for the deaths caused by required evacuations at Fukushima. When you do not count the people you kill it is easy to make it appear that your technology is safe.
Linear response no threshold is accepted by every health agency in the world. The US Nuclear Regulatory agency and FDA also accept LRNT. The nuclear industry propaganda that you spout here is not supported by science. As I posted upthread, the US National Academy of Science in its most recent report strongly supported LRNT. If you wish to contradict accepted, consensus science you must provide citations to support your wild claims.
Your claim: "If you inject some nuclear power into the mix you get clean energy and need much less storage" is in direct contradiction to peer reviewed papers.
"As for ‘following all paths’ and pursuing a mix of renewables and nuclear, they do not mix well: because of their high capital costs, nuclear power plants are most economically viable when operated at full power the whole time, whereas the variability of renewables requires a flexible balancing power fleet"
Please provide a citation to support this wild claim. In a renewable world peak power is required to support renewable wind and solar. Baseload like nuclear is not helpful and has little affect on storage.
Since nuclear is the most expensive power it would be much cheaper to build an excess of renewable energy or design better storage. The "Smart Energy" papers I have referenced repeatedly at SkS describe using electrofuels to power planes and ships. The electrofuels could be used in existing peaker plants to back up renewable energy if needed. No additional storage would be required.
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Doug_C at 11:53 AM on 19 January 2020How climate change influenced Australia's unprecedented fires
Sorry, I didn't see post #11 before making my last comment, I'll post in the relevant section in the future,
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Doug_C at 11:51 AM on 19 January 2020How climate change influenced Australia's unprecedented fires
I have a lot of doubt about the Linear no-Threshold model of ionizing radiation risk, first off the biological response to ionizing radiation is not linear, it shows a definite threshold where the response is dose dependent.
Evidence for formation of DNA repair centers and dose-response nonlinearity in human cells
DNA is not a static target for all damage that accumulates and produces a linear risk of cancer depending on the amount of damage done to DNA strands. A single DNA molecule will experience between 1,000 and 1,000,000 strand breaks a day, most of them single strand breaks that are immediately repaired. Most of the double strand breaks will also be repaired with no errors that could potentially lead to cancer. Even misjoined DNA will not necessarily progress to cancer, that process is complex and still not fully understood.
The main causes of DNA damage are oxidation, that is normal cellular respiration without which we cannot live. Chemical exposure from the substances we introduce into our bodies mostly from food and drink. And brute physical damage from physical injury, if you hit your thumb with a hammer for instance, you are doing massive damage at the level of DNA.
We don't tell people to stop breathing, eating or drinking, we also don't tell people to not do anything that may cause physical trauma to tissue. We do however demand that there is no addition exposure to ionizing radiation when some research indicates that within a certain threshold it may reduce mortality not increase it.
Nuclear shipyard worker study (1980–1988): a large cohort exposed to low-dose-rate gamma radiation
When the US Navy received ancedotal reports in the 1970s that exposure to gamma radiation from activated steel by some of its workers was causing a higher incidence of leukemia it began a large scale study of tens of thousands of worker in three cohorts. The non-nuclear workers, the low dose workers and the high dose workers.
Those workers exposed to the highest rates of gamma radiation, but still within a safe threshold had the lowest mortality of all three cohorts.
And yet the demand from regulators is that nuclear power must not release almost any additional radiation into the environment while at the same time we are making the Earth uninhabital from fossil fuels.
Coal power puts out about 100 times the radiation as nuclear power, yet it is somehow exempt from these restrictions on ionizing radiation that are strictly enforced on nuclear power and used as a rationale to not build any new nuclear power plants. This situation create costs that makes nuclear power unable to compete with "cheap" fossil fuels that have externalized costs that are astronomical.
Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste
The death toll globally mostly from the air pollution that comes from coal burning for power is in the millions of people.
As far as I'm concerned it's radiophobia that is behind this existential threat we face from fossil fuels as much as anything else.
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michael sweet at 11:46 AM on 19 January 2020How climate change influenced Australia's unprecedented fires
DougC,
I have responded to your post here where it is on topic. Please try to post on related threads in the future.
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michael sweet at 11:44 AM on 19 January 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
DougC,
This is the correct place to put nuclear comments. You are currently off topic.
While you paint an amusing picture, the fact of the matter is that the reactors you reference have not been invented yet. Among many other problems, your reference points out that the materials needed for the containment structure and valves are unknown (he suggests using "unobtainium"). Sourcing the required tons of Li7 (a material proposed to be discarded as radioactive waste) would be impossible since Lithium will all be used in batteries by that time.
The most optimistic time lines for thorium breeder reactors like you support are that pilot plants might be built by 2050. The climate problem needs to be solved way before then. In the remote possibility that the pilot plants work it would be decades later before significant numbers of plants could be built.
Try again with a plan the does not first require the invention of the power source.
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nigelj at 09:51 AM on 19 January 2020How climate change influenced Australia's unprecedented fires
ianw01 @7
"Is the "Climate Change Performance Index" implicitly and silently opposed to nuclear energy?'
Don't know for sure, but something might be going on. Nuclear power is a dirty word in many western countries. Its not liked by the general public because of safety problems and disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima for understanable reasons. Policy makers pick up on this.
However the scare stories about nuclear radiation look exaggerated. I've read credible reports that nuclear power (including the nuclear accidents) kills and injures far fewer people per megawatt / hour than fossil fuels power, and moderately fewer than renewables. A surprising number of people fall off ladders erecting solar panels etcetera! Heres a relevant article:
www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928053-600-fossil-fuels-are-far-deadlier-than-nuclear-power/
Like others point out, there are questions about the validity of the linear no threshold model. Its complicated but the impression I get from looking at intelligent commentary and research on both sides of the issue is low dose radiation is likely zero or very low risk, not worth bothering about.
However nuclear power has some big problems. Waste disposal is still not sorted out on a durable long term basis and of course this feeds public scepticism. Its higher cost than wind power and coal power (refer Lazards analysis, free online). Its slow to build for various reasons and this is a big issue given the speed climate change is progressing.
However imho nuclear power has considerable merit, at least as "part of the mix".
Solar and wind power have intermittency issues, and as a stand alone solution require a lot of storage that is currently high cost. They currently typically rely instead on gas back up power which is not ideal. If you inject some nuclear power into the mix you get clean energy and need much less storage.
I think we need all the tools we can get and the grid can have a range of power sources. This article shows that nuclear power can also be used to counter renewable intermittency issues.
news.mit.edu/2018/flexible-nuclear-operation-can-help-add-more-wind-and-solar-to-the-grid-0425
Of course storage costs will drop and renewables may well win the day. But my point is there doesn't seem to be a robust case to deliberately exclude nuclear power.
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Doug_C at 08:31 AM on 19 January 2020How climate change influenced Australia's unprecedented fires
For anyone interested in what a viable nuclear reactor type on the scale necessary to fully replace fossil fuels would probably look like.
Why the molten salt fast reactor (MSFR) is the “best” Gen IV reactor
Also an interesting piece from Forbes on perhaps why nuclear power has found it so hard to compete with fossil fuels especially in America.
Why Renewables Advocates Protect Fossil Fuel Interests, Not The Climate
There's little doubt in my mind that large scale nuclear power is probably the last hope we have to mitigate this growing catastrophe cuased by virtually unregulated fossil fuels use that already kills millions of people each year from air pollution alone.
Advocates for nuclear power like Alvin Weinberg were deeply concerned about climate change long before it became a mainstream issue and Weinberg specifically designed a safe nuclear power reactor in the 1960s as his solution to this existential threat.
Weinberg's mentor was Eugene Wigner, the physicist who did the groundbreaking research that gave us semi-conducting transistors that underlie most of modern technology, we wouldn't have PCs or the internet in the present form without his insights.
He was also the one who came up with the idea of molten salt nuclear reactors way back in the 1940s. A nuclear physics student of his I communicated with said that in 1960 Wigner was telling his students that thorium - burned in his molten salt reactors - would be the salvation of mankind.
From what I can see we definitely need that form of salvation and now.
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Doug_C at 07:02 AM on 19 January 2020How climate change influenced Australia's unprecedented fires
ianw01 @7
A couple to things to add about nuclear power, it is already the safest form of power production, has over a million times the energy density of fossil fuels which in turn have much greater energy density than renewables like solar and wind power.
With new reactor types like pebble bed and molten salt reactors the already high safety factor becomes much higher and with molten salt reactors the nuclear waste issues is mitigated by a factor of about 100.
One of the main issues with the current fleet of nuclear power reactors is that they almost all use pressurized water as a moderator and coolant and so need massive primary and secondary containment which is not perfectly fail-safe. They also use solid fuel which quickly degrades under the intense heat and neutron bombardment in a nuclear reactor core. Reprocessing this spent fuel is expensive and dangerous.
With molten salt reactor cores the fissile material is in solution in an unpressurized molten salt and remains in the reactor until almost all of it is converted to short lived fission products that don't need to be safely stored for the thousands of years that TRUs(transuranic actinides) need to be. Some of those fission products are commercially valuable like the noble metals that are produced as part of the fission process as well as xenon and small amounts of Pu-238 used in deep space exploration as fuel and power production. A molten salt reactor is also a medical isotopes reactor and there would never be a shortage of the Technetium-99m and iodine-131 used in imaging. Bismuth-213 can be used to treat cancer tumors. Most of these fission products can be pulled from an operating molten salt reactor by hydrogen parging of a side stream of the molten core salt.
Exposure to ionizing radiation is the main fear around large scale nuclear power, but this is something all life is exposed to constantly including us.
The evidence is starting to show that life is negatively impacted by the removal of a certain level of ionzing radiation, which would confound the Linear no-Threshold model of risk from ionzing radiation which states that ionizing radiation is hazardous down to a zero dose rate.
For these and other reason we should be taking a much closer look at nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels in combination with low density renewables. It's not an either/or equation, it's about everything we have now to replace all fossil fuels as rapidly as we can before the condition become so catastrophic that it becomes impossible to mitigate climate change.
Reading the article about talking about over a billion organisms killed by the current massive outbreak of wildfires in Australia and how they have almost certainly driven some species extinct, I think we are getting close to that point now.
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ianw01 at 03:34 AM on 19 January 2020How climate change influenced Australia's unprecedented fires
On a slightly different note, I was intrigued by the "Climate Change Performance Index". From what I can see it puts a lot of emphasis on the movement to renewables, but does not give credit for using nuclear as an alternative to fossil fuels. The report contains the word nuclear exactly once, where they make the statement that renewable installations outpace nuclear.
To be specific, a country will get points for reducing GHG emissions by switching away from fossil fuel, but if they move to renewables they get additional points in the "renewable use" category. A move to nuclear earns no such extra ("climate change") points from what I can see.
I'm not thrilled about nuclear, but I believe that its merits need to be weighed fairly. What I think I'm seeing is an quiet anti-nuke idealogy being bundled up under the banner of "Climate Change Performance".
I'd rather not (re-)litigate the merits of nuclear here. It certainly is not clear-cut. But what I would like to know from fellow commenters is whether I have read that right:
Is the "Climate Change Performance Index" implicitly and silently opposed to nuclear energy?
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Hank11198 at 23:09 PM on 18 January 2020Doubling down: Researchers investigate compound climate risks
OPOF @ 45,
“I have worked with many international design codes and am well aware of the basis for wind design and other climate condition design requirements.
I understood what you presented. That is why I replied.”
Your questions about whether the code claims to be anything beyond 1.5C and your interest in seeing the basis for being certain made me think you did not understand how the code determines design wind speeds. That was the reason for my explanation.
“Climate change will result in many regional climate conditions that are more severe than historical records. As a result of the increases of extreme events every item design based on the less extreme history will become less safe than intended. Reread all of my comments with that new awareness and uunderstanding.”
That is pretty much what I stated when I said some structures will be at more risk and some will be at less risk depending on the location. The only difference which is somewhat technical is the engineers I know consider a structure to be either safe or unsafe for a specific loading. If a loading shows the structure to be higher than the point of failure (not the design wind but similar to seismic loading), then the structure is considered unsafe. But it’s not considered less safe because it is at a risk of being loaded with a higher wind speed loading.
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Doug_C at 19:11 PM on 18 January 2020How climate change influenced Australia's unprecedented fires
nigeli @5
I think that's exactly what it is, the same goes for where I live here in BC. The oil and gas sector spends huge amounts of money to make sure the candidates who will support it are elected then to make sure that those politicians know exactly what policies to implement lobby them constantly.
$5.2 million in political donations and more than 22,000 lobbying contacts
In the period in question, oil and gas lobbyists were having an average of 14 contacts a day with government officials in BC. That was on top of the $5.2 million that was committed to political campaigns between 2008 and 2015 in BC, a significant amount of money in this relatively small political forum.
Plus all the wonderful press that the oil and gas sector seems to get here for free.
It's not that we don't have viable options to fossil fuels, it's that because of a pre-existing economic and political advantage the fossil fuels sector is effectively killing their competition before they can even get started.
The tail now wages the dog, we are no longer being served by the fossil fuels sector, everything and everyone is being sacrificed in an endless pursuit of greater market control and profit by this one sector.
In Australia it's coal and natural gas, here in Canada it is all three, but especially the tar sands bitumen that some would sacrifice anything to keep producing no matter the impacts.
The center for tar sands production burned down in 2016 due to an April heat wave with temperatures in the 20s C at a time when it can be -20 C at that time of year. It's highly likely that climate change played some role in that disaster, but it had almost no impact on government, business and public support for the oil and gas sector there.
There is a rare cancers spike in the region almost certainly due to the chemicals emitted by bitumen processing, but that hasn't detered the industry one bit. The doctor who reported it was fired.
Doctor who raised alarm about cancer rates in Fort Chipewyan let go
The fish in the nearby rivers and lakes are also diseased by the massive tar sands projects.
Fish deformities linked to oil pollution in U.S. and Alberta
Exactly who is this sector serving if it destroying the capacity of the Earth to support life including us.
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nigelj at 17:33 PM on 18 January 2020How climate change influenced Australia's unprecedented fires
Doug_C @3 says "There's something totally off at a systemic in government, the press and the private sector. We have international summit after summit going back decades where policy makers...And yet nothing effective at a systemic level has been done."
There sure is, but for the answer perhaps read the recent article on this website titled "Fossil fuel political giving outdistances renewables 13 to one" describing how American fossil fuel corporations fund political campaigns and poltical lobbying far more than renewables corporations do the same. Politicians won't want to offend their sugar daddies. Perhaps its similar in Canada?
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bozzza at 17:18 PM on 18 January 2020Animal agriculture and eating meat are the biggest causes of global warming
Unless you make eating meat illegal there's no way it can make a significant impact because it's consumption is inelastic. Put up the price and people will just eat less vegetables and smoke a few less cigarettes!! They might even refuse to work efficiently and give the ever expanding Governments who think own them less taxes to feed on?
Basically, I can't see it being the first port-of-call.
Population Growth is the elephant in the room and mass immigration is just a confounding factor of that. Sure, it can be argued as you import those who didn't eat much meat to the first world where they will inevitably become bigger consumers of meat then emissions will increase but that aint the fault of the consuming voter of the host country who never invited them in the first place.
It surely does contribute a lot, but to say Population Growth and Mass Immigration don't push it is a corruption of thought.
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bozzza at 17:01 PM on 18 January 2020Animal agriculture and eating meat are the biggest causes of global warming
Alan, CH4 converts to CO2 ....
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bozzza at 16:19 PM on 18 January 2020How climate change influenced Australia's unprecedented fires
What is a system? Governments are designed to work slowly - they can never produce but only consume.
Systems, whatever they happen to be, break down over time just like everything else and only life can put them back together.
"The people lead--> Governments follow..." (I'm sure it wasn't only Arnold Schwarzenegger that said that one!)
Wasn't someone designing a liquid metal battery????
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Doug_C at 14:55 PM on 18 January 2020How climate change influenced Australia's unprecedented fires
There's something totally off at a systemic in government, the press and the private sector. We have international summit after summit going back decades where policy makers supposedly come to agreement on how to ensure ecological integrity without which we won't have an Earth to live on like the Rio summit way back in 1992. Climare change specific international accords to definitively act on this critical issue like Kyoto over 20 years ago and the Paris accord less than five years ago. Story after story in the press about the catastrophic impacts of climate change already. Some nations like Canada have declared a climate emergency.
And yet nothing effective at a systemic level has been done. Canada may have delcared a climate emergency, but some provinces are fighting tooth and nail to maintain massive fossil fuels exploitation for decades more. Even the federal government here claims to be behind a real climate change mitigation plan, but then also touts oil and gas as our main economic driver for the foreseeable future.
It seems that no one with the power to actually implement the critical policy changes is willing to do so. In the US Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Accord and if the conservative party had won the last election in Canada last fall it would have likely done the same.
It ran on the platform of an oil and gas energy corridor spanning all of Canada to ensure that nothing impeded the sector in the future like the delay in building the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion in BC right now.
Conservative government would create national energy corridor, Scheer says Social Sharing
When we look at the catastrophic impacts already and how precarious life itself is becoming on Earth, fossil fuels business as usual should be a reckless fringe cause shunned by all who want an actual future.
But instead the fossil fuels agenda is the linchpin of some of the most powerful nations and parties that govern them.
And we get catastrophic impacts like massive wildfires that are driving some species extinct, the disconnect here is horrific.
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Eclectic at 14:15 PM on 18 January 2020Animal agriculture and eating meat are the biggest causes of global warming
[Apologies for my long post. Skippable, because not overflowing with pearls of wisdom.]
BarbNoon1 , thank you for your reply. And I do appreciate your points of the ethical and environmental aspects of veganism, and I wish you well (though I don't "get" the full Vegans' opposition to the ovo-lactarian diet, especially regarding children).
I hope you do keep a low profile. For analogies, there's the old saying: "Too many cooks spoil the broth". Admittedly it's a rather poor analogy . . . but I am sure you'll understand the relevant aspect of the analogy. Your own medical analogy can be somewhat deficient ~ while true in some cases, yet there are other cases where patients react poorly when hit with several bits of bad news at once. Where they deal with things best if information is presented to them over time, and in a sequential prioritized manner.
At the heart of what I was saying, is that the climate scientists should speak up about the need for (gradual) cessation of fossil fuels. That is the highest priority.
They should not (at least for several decades) even mention veganism. In the same way, Vegans should mention ethical aspects and should not mention global warming. Each group should stay in their own Public Relations sphere.
As I said, it would be counterproductive to combine the messages ~ because the blowback from the Pro-CO2 lobby/propagandists would be huge.
The same propagandists would ramp up the (not-new) idea that veganism is (to Americans) a "Left Wing" lifestyle . . . leading down the slippery slope to Ungodly Socialism (=Communism) and to the overthrow of Sacred Free Market Capitalism & the Constitution, and to the loss of Liberties, and to the installation of Tyranny, and to (most heinous sin of all) the Increase of Taxes. Gasp.
Well, enough humor ~ but BarbNoon1 , you know that's sort of how it would be stated and/or implied, as they welded AGW and veganism into a single political threat.
#
Yet, Vegans of the world ~ time is on your side. A high percentage of the world population is now urban-living, with food coming increasingly in packaged supermarket form, without any of the dirt-under-the-fingernails aspects involved in killing & preparing. While most people are omnivorous and like cooked meat, there is an increasing squeamishness present, which the Vegan lobby can work on. Nor should meat-lovers despair, for the food scientists are gaining expertise in giving plant protein a "meaty" flavor & texture. And on the horizon, is vat-grown muscle-like cell culture (though possibly that approach may be short-circuited by super-hi-tech GM soy, etc.)
All that I ask is that Vegans keep off the AGW bandwagon, and (changing analogies) that they not try to push two barrows at the same time. Because they would almost certainly (and unintentionally) sabotage the climate-change barrow.
And there's a danger it could facilitate the Pro-CO2 lobby in creating "False Flag" veganistic operations, as part of its propaganda efforts. (Even the true Vegans would eventually lose out over that.) There's already enough of trolling & False Flagging in action by the anti-science propagandists.
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nigelj at 12:31 PM on 18 January 2020How climate change influenced Australia's unprecedented fires
The current bushfires are indeed unprecedented in several ways which is particularly concerning. The denialists have leaped on the 1974 Australian bushfire season, which had 117 million hecatres burned for the season as a whole. The denialists do not mention almost all this area was grasslands in central Australia, and had zero effect on their economy and wasn't even noticed until satellite data came in. The Guardian should have mentioned all this in passing, to help neutralise the denialists rhetoric.
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Doug_C at 10:53 AM on 18 January 2020How climate change influenced Australia's unprecedented fires
Canada places right after Australia on the Climate Chnge Performance Index at 55th place. We do have a carbon tax at the federal level, but there are so many expemtions for large industrial polluters that it is next to meaningless. The same goes for the carbon tax that was introduced over a decade ago in BC, but allows exemptions for some of the largest greenhouse gas emitters like the natural gas sector in this province.
John Horgan offers tax break incentives to $40B Kitimat LNG project
When you include methane leakage from gas wells, the sector could have have the same climate change impacts as coal production of the same level.
We also have our wildfire issues here in the Canadian west although the death toll has not been as horrific as in Austrlia. That is probably due to luck more than anything else as thousands of people were driving through flames to escape the early 2016 spring fires in central Alberta.
Harrowing Fort McMurray wildfire escape
In BC in both 2017 and 2018 we were extremely lucky there were no known fatalties from the massive fires across the province. My brother and his family still live in the central BC city where I grew up, he spent most of his career in forestry fighting fires in the summer. 2017 he and his wife went to a small neighbourhood outside of town to help a friend move the essentials out of her house as they were evacuated from a fire my brother said was already burning right in the subdivision. They then hurried home and packed their own essentials as the entire city of over 20,000 received an evacution order.
They were the last car out of the city heading north with fire burning on both sides of the road and went and stayed with family in a small city an hours drive north. Until much of that area was also evacuated, they then drove the seven hours down here witnessing fire after fire along the way.
My brother was still in shock after he was describing this odyssey and as I said, he fought fires as a living starting with rapid response in the 1980s where they were dropped from helicopter into alpine terrain to put out fires before they had a chance to spread.
He's not easily rattled, but these fires are like nothing anyone here has ever seen and it is the same across the globe.
That year wasn't as bad here, partly because the fire services did a stellar job, I spent one Sunday afternoon watching a trio of amphibious water bombers make pass after pass on a small fire buring about 1 kilometer north of my home. It was fascinating to watch, they'd approach from the west over some low mountains about ten seconds apart, drop their loads of water then continue down to the large lake below, scoop another load of water and loop around to make another pass. They did this for six hours with refueling breaks until the fire was out.
There was no stopping the wildfire that started in that area the next year it took off so fast and burned over 4,000 hectares, over 30 homes and shut down the main highway for days. I was ready to leave immediately if the wind have shifted towards this area.
We don't live in normal times, we are not served at all by policy makers who behave as if fossil fuel business as usual is anything else than a growing catastrophe for not just us humans but life itself.
As Australia is finding probably more than most other places on Earth. How many hundreds of thousands or even millions of species will be lost when the last of the Great Barrier Reef dies.
We are being sold a fantasy and getting ashes in exchange.
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Eclectic at 10:51 AM on 18 January 2020CO2 effect is saturated
Sgt_Wookie , I take my hat off to MA Rodger for his short description of the physics. Not a full exposition, but nicely succinct. And for myself, I have taken a copy of his graph of infrared energy leaving the planet ~ it's a fine demonstration of the Atmospheric IR windows and the absorption effect of water, carbon dioxide, ozone, and methane.
Your denialist friend is probably so heavily invested in his Motivated Reasoning that he's not persuadable to change his mind (or his attitude), so there's little point in trying to educate him. Though I'm not knowing the circumstances of your "interaction" with him, nevertheless it's the case that most online interactions have a number of silent observers ~ and they benefit when denialist nonsense gets contradicted. But I am sure you're already aware of that . . . and aware of the old saying regarding: ".... when good men do nothing."
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BarbNoon1 at 10:20 AM on 18 January 2020Animal agriculture and eating meat are the biggest causes of global warming
Eclectic, I disagree that I must "simmer down," "be subtle and indirect," and keep a "low profile." But thanks for trying to give me what you think is good advice.
I am upset about climate change and you should be too, but perhaps you think I am upset simply because of animals, and we certainly know there is no justification for that!
However, let's not quibble anymore. I expected a "Skeptical Science" administrator to answer my first statement, but I made an error above and do not need it answered. I thought the "37% of human-caused methane emissions, and about 65% of human nitrous oxide emissions” above was about the United States, so it seemed way too large for just 3% US GHG emissions in the U.S. However, it says, plain as day, that the figure was “globally” and not “U.S.” I was pretty fatigued last night, but sometimes my brain just refuses to see what I am starting at.
No, I did not know the answer, Eclectic. Since you said that twice, I will answer it twice. I did not know the answer.
I also do not agree with your answer to only talk about fossil fuels. I agree to talk about fossil fuels, but not JUST about fossil fuels. If a man has a heart attack and a slow-growing cancer, the doctor does not tell the man to take medicine for his heart attack, but not tell him to take medicine for his cancer just because the doctor surmises another heart attack will kill him before the cancer. He treats both of them, he gives the truth, he explains the risks and he hopes the patient will comply with his recommendations.
I can do all the cutting down of leaving lights on, keeping the thermostat down, and writing my representatives about doing something about climate change, but I cannot afford a new car, much less an electric or hybrid one. But I can eat no meat and dairy with every meal and every snack.
It is easy once you become determined. With all the damage that animal agriculture is doing (review the original post above as well as my post) I will repeat the statement that environmentalists should be vegan, should be talking about veganism, and should do a positive post on that subject to point out all the ways it can help, without it sandwiched between trying to diminish it, and most of the readers thinking it means it is not important enough to deal with. I am sure they think their readers will do some heavy thinking about their articles, but it doesn't always reflect that way in the comments section.
No, it will not take several generations for a good share of the world to go vegan. The UK is far ahead of the U.S., so if you are in the U.S., you may not be aware of the daily food additions and the number of people trying veganism in other parts of the world. We vegans have a lot of plans (but we remain low key, subtle, and we have a long plan).
I do not see the need for baby steps – most people reading this are adults – take adult steps.
I appreciate the article above, but Cowspiracy has always stated what exact comparison they were making with the animal agriculture to transportation, and they have not changed that post. Skeptical Science has clarified it, stating 3% is U.S., but also stating that 9% of deforestation is from animal agriculture, and many other damages, that show we should be talking about answers to the fossil fuel issue AS WELL AS answers to the issues caused by animal agriculture. -
Sgt_Wookie92 at 08:59 AM on 18 January 2020CO2 effect is saturated
Thank you very much for your responses, 575 Eclectic & 576 MA Rodger.
- this is exactly what I was worried about, incorrect information with enough truth to make it seem legitimate - I fear presenting it won't do much for the comments author who seems wholey subscribed to his reality, but has given me a better understanding to answer any similar points made in the future, and some new papers to read. Thanks again.
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michael sweet at 07:08 AM on 18 January 2020I had an intense conversation at work today.
BobinNH:
I posted a reply to you here where it is on topic.
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michael sweet at 07:07 AM on 18 January 2020Breathing contributes to CO2 buildup
Tallguy1000,
I posted a reply to you here where it is on topic.
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michael sweet at 07:06 AM on 18 January 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
BobinNH and Tallguy 1000,
I am posting here because this thread has many posts about nuclear energy. The thread the moderator linked is much shorter. Please read the previous posts so that we do not have to reargue points that have already been decided.
Abbott 2012 gives about 15 reasons why nuclear cannot produce more than 5% of world power. Nuclear supporters have not responded to this article indicating that they agree with his assessment. Please address the problems Abbott describes including: finding locations for the 15,000 reactors needed to produce all power (if you use modular reactors you need 50,000), the fact that uranium will run out in 5 years if that many reactors are built, there are many rare materials used in the construction of nuclear power plants that will run out if 15,000 plants are built.
In addition nuclear is not economic and takes decades to build.
Tallguy: Nuclear power zealots have been arguing for a long time that renewable energy will take up too much space. Jacobson 2018 has calculated the amount of space required and found that it is very moderate. As Abbott points out, if you build out a nuclear power system you will expect a major accident like Fukushima once a month worldwide and 1-2 times per year in the USA. The restriction zones will quickly become larger than the amount of land used for wind and solar power.
BobinNH: you have obviously not read any papers (there are hundreds) that describe future renewable energy systems. Jacobson et al 2018 above, Connelly et al (unfortuntely now paywalled) and Brown et al (lists many other studies that describe renewable energy systems) answer some of your questions. You worry about "airplanes, trains, shipping and trucks".
Many trains are already electric, problem solved. Much trucking can be shipped in electric trains. Local deliveries can use electric trucks. That could solve all trucking but if some small amount remained electrofuels could be used (although they are ineficient). Airplanes are hard. Designers have announced electric planes with ranges of 1500 miles. Jacobson suggests hydrogen fueled planes. Long haul flights could use electrofuels or people could go by train and ship. Shipping could use electrofuels, biofuels or smaller ships could be fully electric.
If you ignore the solutions discussed in the peer reviewed literature it is easy to claim that nothing can be solved.
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ubrew12 at 04:54 AM on 18 January 2020I had an intense conversation at work today.
BobInNH: They are nonrenewable resources. If you can't operate airplanes without them, then sooner or later you cannot operate airplanes, whether climate action is taken or not. The U.S. Air Force and Navy have funded programs to research biofuels, but Republicans in Congress defunded it. So, I guess airplanes need fossil fuels until Congress says otherwise.
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BobInNH at 02:36 AM on 18 January 2020I had an intense conversation at work today.
You say: "Then I looked right at him and I said "we have to get off gas, oil and coal. We must end its use, completely."
I'm curious, would you ban airplanes, trains, shipping and trucks? Have you thought about the impact of those bans?
Also, based on your article, I'm sure you are a big fan and fully promote nuclear energy. It's by far the cleanest and most environmentally friendly form of power we have.
Moderator Response:[DB] Please take discussions of nuclear power to a more appropriate thread, like this one. Be prepared to support your claims with reference citations.
Sloganeering snipped.
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MA Rodger at 00:53 AM on 18 January 2020Hockey stick is broken
alisonjane @166,
The paper you found had the broken link in the OP is McIntyre & McKitrick (2005) 'Hockey sticks, principal components, and spurious significance'
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Tallguy1000 at 00:43 AM on 18 January 2020Breathing contributes to CO2 buildup
While human population breathing out does not in itself cause harm - more humans mean more homes. The majority of homes use fossil fuels both during construction and while habitated. Homes are often built on de-forested land too, so my argument would be that an increase in population would absolutely cause an increase in CO2 emmissions. The manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels will contribute greatly to the impact on the environment, not to mention the thousands of square miles of land they'll require and their affects on widlife and the countryside. I think it's time we stopped thinking so negatively about nuclear power, and concentrate our efforts into building the thousands of nuclear power plants that will be required over the next 25 years. They will have less net impact on the environment over the long term, and economies of scale will make them cheaper.
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Eclectic at 14:38 PM on 17 January 2020Animal agriculture and eating meat are the biggest causes of global warming
BarbNoon1 , you already know the answer to your question.
And whether the "food from animals" industry is responsible for 20% or 10% of GHG emissions, is largely irrelevant to your point.
The highest priority for the world, is to bring global warming to a halt. For the sake of all animals as well as us humans. And you know that swinging the appropriately-large proportion of citizens to veganism (or near-veganism) would take many generations.
The scientists are having such slow success battling against the "Pro-CO2" lobby . . . and yet you want them to open a second battle-front in this hard-fought war? History teaches you it would be a most unwise move.
Rightly or wrongly, justly or unjustly ~ any major push by scientists to promote veganism in connection with AGW, would result in the severe undermining of the core climate message. The Pro-CO2 lobby/propagandists would see to it, with glee.
BarbNoon1 , you know that.
And when you have simmered down, I suspect you will realize that the best & fastest way to achieve your own aim, is to use a subtle & indirect approach. Low profile. The long game. (Not so emotionally satisfying for you . . . but it is the practical optimum method.)
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BarbNoon1 at 12:41 PM on 17 January 2020Animal agriculture and eating meat are the biggest causes of global warming
AsI am a little confused as to how animal agriculture is responsible for 13–18% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, and only 3% in the USA, when later you say “the livestock sector is responsible for about 37% of human-caused methane emissions, and about 65% of human nitrous oxide emissions (mainly from manure), globally. It sure seems like the greenhouse gas emissions would be higher than 13-18% with the latter figures.
In the comments many people claimed regenerative agriculture would work, but I see in a later post about Savory’s unsupported idea about regenerative agriculture, you address why it would not be beneficial. It’s easy to see that smaller, grass fed cows who take longer to grow and fatten means it will take more cows to feed the same number of people, and yes, more methane into the air, and more land used, more water poisoned.
What I do not understand is why intelligent climate scientists are not urging others to go vegan. This idea of “reducing” meat consumption means that people will maybe switch out one beef meal to a chicken or fish meal. With our oceans losing fish, our chickens, pigs and cows using antibiotics, the animal agriculture requiring more land, more Amazon deforestation, more waste in oceans, etc., environmentalists should not ignore that there are serious environmental problems from animal agriculture. Look at the environmental marches – you see kids eating hamburgers, ice cream and hot dogs while holding their “reduce paper” signs (made of paper). You see large environmental leaders suggesting we “reduce meat a little.” Why say that, when getting rid of meat and dairy altogether would make a much more livable planet? (Comments that usually follow are angry people saying they won't give up meat because it is their choice.)
People protect their cut up animal parts, even after watching the horrid abuse on CATO farms AND “humane” farms and unimaginable treatment in slaughterhouses or from homemade slaughtering. People start pretending they eat all their meals from a farm that looks like a farm sanctuary, and where the animals are killed in an instant. That is a fantasy.
Next farmers will transition to “grass fed” farms and then we will break it to them that it is not sustainable, and they will have to transition again to a sustainable non-animal farm. This takes valuable time and money. We don't have this kind of time! Ideas like "regenerative agriculture" are making us stall in what we must do. -
alisonjane at 12:06 PM on 17 January 2020Hockey stick is broken
Just joined and wanted to read background on hockey stick. I tried Mcintrye 2004, but it just goes to AGU home page. Is there a correct link?
Cheers
aJ
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Eclectic at 11:20 AM on 17 January 2020I had an intense conversation at work today.
Wol@19 refers to video by Mallen Baker : "The best argument AGAINST CO2 causing climate change?" (posted Jan 7, 2020)
Actually quite a good video, properly science-based. My impression is that Mallen Baker composed the title as clickbait for denialists. His video in essence shows that there is not any good argument against CO2.
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ubrew12 at 10:15 AM on 17 January 2020I had an intense conversation at work today.
Wol@19 said: "Here's a first class argument 'against' CO2 causing climate change." For a response, check out this websites 'Most Used Climate Myths' #74.
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nigelj at 06:38 AM on 17 January 2020I had an intense conversation at work today.
barryn56 @42, just my 2 cents worth. Climate models have proven to be quite good at predicting the future, including temperature trends. Go to realclimate.org and theres an article on their home page about half way down.
Yes there are uncertainties about the more distant future due to uncertainties about clouds etc, but the weight of evidence from modelling, temperatures over the last couple of years, and the paleo history suggests we are in for a lot of warming. The thing is a lot of evidence points in the same direction, and it would be foolish to dismiss that.
You mentioned something that appears to have been deleted due to sloganeering rules. You said something like cloudy nights are very warm because of water droplets and ice in the clouds, implying that water vapour and CO2 are very weak greenhouse gases. Please note that humid nights with no clouds are also very warm. I'm not a climate expert, and some healthy scepticism is good, but dont jump to conclusions before doing your homework very carefully.
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I had an intense conversation at work today.
Sorry, the correct revision by Arrhenius was to 4C/doubling of CO2, from the 1908 book Worlds in the Making.
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I had an intense conversation at work today.
barryn56 - See this discussion on attribution; there are numerous papers referenced that demonstrate we're responsible for current warming.
For an earlier reference specifically about the effects of CO2 increases, see Arrhenius 1896 - "On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground". His initial estimate of temperature increase for a doubling of CO2 was high, perhaps 6C, but he revised it a few years later upon reviewing the standard samples he got from Prof. Langley of the Smithsonian (properly compensating for mutual displacement of CO2 and water vapor in the samples) to ~4.3C per doubling - which is within the current 1.5-4.5 range estimated by the IPCC.
It's basic science, and we've known about it for quite a while. Increasing CO2 warms the planet in a way that matches theory and observations; nothing else can account for it.
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MA Rodger at 20:26 PM on 16 January 2020CO2 effect is saturated
Sgt_Wookie92 @574,
You present a 1,000-word denialist essay on why an increase in atmospheric CO2 will not reduce IR out into space. It is an interesting polemic as it does quite a good job of addressing to some extent all the various descriptions of the GHG mechanisms, descriptions both actual and through analogy. It is however, as described by Eclectic @575, a pack of nonsense.
I could go through paragraph by paragraph if you wish. A blow-by-blow account would be required as the central misconception the denialist employs isn't presented entirely within any single paragraph. Perhaps it would be easier to describe the GHG mechanism and allow to pick out the crazy talk for yourself.
....
The planet surface emits IR in the waveband roughly 5μ to 50μ with the peak at 15μ. The profile is dependent on temperature. If there were no GHGs, all that IR would shoot off into space. But the GHGs actually capture pretty-much all of this surface-emitted IR, the energy converted into waggles in GHGs and almost all of those waggles, through collisions, are converted into thermal energy.
But GHGs also go waggly because of those numerous collisions and that ensures the GHGs will effectively emit just as much IR as it is receives. CO2 absorbs/emits at 2.9μ, 4.3μ and 15μ but only the 15μ operates as the atmosphere/planet is too cold for the shorter wavebands.
And at 15μ, CO2 is the only GHG operating so all the IR at 15μ that reaches space will all be emitted by CO2. The amount of 15μ IR is now depentent on the temperature of the CO2 emitting it out into space. For that the CO2 needs a clear shot at space, high enough so the CO2 above it is no longer a complete blanket. Presently that altitude-with-a-clear-shot-to-space is up in the cold upper troposphere. The graphic below shows that CO2 temperature is far lower than the surface temperature. (The black trace is measured, the red is modelled by MODTRAN, an on-line model from UoC.)
If more CO2 is added to the atmosphere, that altitude-with-a-clear-shot-to-space will get higher (CO2 is well-mixed up to 50km, well up into the stratosphere) and, while that altitude remains below the tropopause, the clear-shot temperature will get colder so less IR will be emitted into space. (The very central part of the 15μ waveband does have a higher clear-shot altitude above the tropopause and is seen in the graphic as a little spike. That spike will grow with additional CO2 while the size of the surrounding dip(s) will continue to increase. See Zhong & Haig 2013).
....
Most of the nonsense set out within the denialist polemic should be understandable given this description (although I'd happily expand on individual points, perhaps some brickbats to lob back at the denialist). I'd just add here that some may not be acquainted with Feldman et al (2015) which is the paper that measured CO2's IR on the "Great Plains and North Slope of Alaska."
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