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Eclectic at 19:39 PM on 18 June 2019Arctic icemelt is a natural cycle
Bruce @70 ,
I presume you are talking about Arctic sea ice volume. Ice volume is distinctly more important than ice extent, in showing which way things are trending ~ particularly the summer minimum (for obvious reasons!).
PIOMAS shows a huge decline in summer ice volume over 40 years.
DMI shows the summer minimum volume for 2015 thru 2018 as being below the 2004-13 average. And 2019 YTD is also below the average.
( Sea ice extent in the 1920's and prior, was poorly monitored, for obvious reasons! We won't mention the war . . . or the Titanic. )
Bruce, I must confess I don't see what point you are aiming towards. Please go into details, if possible. Were you leading towards a Pacific oscillation?
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bruce14421 at 17:51 PM on 18 June 2019Arctic icemelt is a natural cycle
Japanese (JAXA), Danish(DMI), US (NSIDC) and US MASIE data show minimum Arctic ice extent has not decreased since 2007.
DMI shows minimum Arctic ice volume has not decreased since 2003 when readings first began, however PIOMAS shows a decrease. One is obviously wrong.
The first IPCC report in 1990 showed sea ice extent from the early Nimbus satellites from 1973 to 1990. (Observed Climate Variation and Change chapter 7) Ice extent grew 500,000 square kilometres from 1973 to 1979 which was probably the highest extent since about 1910.
Ice decreased significantly in the 1920's through to the 1950's and increased until 1979. The current satellite monitoring started in 1979 but if it had started in in the 1920's, it would probably would be about the same as now.
If you look at the Atlantic Multidecadal oscillation index, you will see that there is a close correlation with Arctic ice
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Mal Adapted at 13:34 PM on 18 June 2019Planetary health and '12 years' to act
OPOF:
People should choose to improve their awareness and understanding and strive to help develop a sustainable and improvable future for humanity. The alternative is Harmful. There is no compromise space. A person being less helpful than they can be is being harmful.
WRT climate, anyone who transfers, or causes to be transferred, any fossil carbon to the atmosphere is being harmful. But how many people are prepared to go wholly off grid and be self-sufficient in all their requirements? In economic terms, AGW is a Drama of the Commons, that has already turned tragic for multitudes. Individual, voluntary internalization of marginal climate-change costs may detectably reduce fossil carbon emissions, but can't overcome the free-rider problem. Only collective action can. Collective actions on multiple scales are implemented by government. In the USA, nominally, you and I would muster a voting plurality for an effective national carbon price. How do we do that?
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One Planet Only Forever at 00:53 AM on 18 June 2019Ocean advocates are increasingly concerned about climate change
In your efforts to identify people needing to be corrected regarding their position on climate science, including what political parties a claimed supporter of climate science would consider supporting, I suggest the following connection to Ocean concerns:
If you encounter an Ocean-liker, especially someone who agrees with this concern about climate change impacts on the Ocean systems, ask them if they are aware of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). And help them understand that the SDGs connect the corrections of developed attitudes and activities that are harmful to the future of Humanity, including protecting the Oceans and addressing Climate Change impacts.
Then ask them which political parties they 'consider voting for'.
Be familiar with all the Political Party positions related to all of the SDGs and point out the Parties they are considering that have actually resisted, claimed the need to harmfully compromise, the required corrections that would reduce the harm done to the Oceans, including resistance to climate change impact corrections.
Then ask them if, based on their improved awareness and understanding, they would still consider supporting the Parties that are understandably harmful regarding those 2 of the 17 SDGs.
If they still would consider those parties ask them specifically why. They may not initially offer the answer, but they may offer a main issue that they 'like' the parties position on.
This is when being familiar with all of the Sustainable Development Goals and the corrections of developed harmful popular and profitable attitudes and activities is important.
Knowing the Party positions regarding all of the Sustainable Development Goals you can probably point out that their main reason for considering the harmful Party is actually a harmful impediment to achieving another of the integrated Sustainable Development Goals that undeniably need to be achieved collectively for humanity to have a better future.
Even if they will not offer up 'their main reason' for continuing to consider voting for the Ocean harmful parties, you can point out that the Ocean concern they have is one of the integrated Sustainable Development Goals. And you can point out how many other ways the Ocean-harming Party they are willing to still consider voting for is deliberately and misleadingly harmful to the achievement of other Sustainable Development Goals.
My developed understanding is that the Populist United Right movements growing popularity around the world abuse the power of misleading marketing to prey on people who are easily impressed to support an actually harmful attitude or action, people who will incorrectly apply confirmation bias and motivated reasoning to try to justify their interest in supporting that understandably harmful development that requires correction.
Increasing and improving awareness and understanding of the harmfulness of political leadership, like the people who have taken over Conservative Parties and turned them into harmful United Right correction resistant parties, is a required correction of what has developed. And the SDGs are a robust basis for pointing out the harmful unacceptability of popular or profitable attitudes or actions, particularly for pointing out which groups, political parties or businesses, should not be considered to be potentially acceptable winners/leaders.
Climate Action can only grow leadership action support if people who understand its importance are educated to keep them from being easily tempted to have a poor excuse for considering supporting a harmful political or business group.
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MA Rodger at 23:32 PM on 17 June 2019Climate's changed before
TVC15 @745,
Your denier is of course spouting nonsense. But perhaps it would be helpful to know how to respond to him other than just asking him to generally explain his nonsense.
I would ask your denialist troll how long he expects the effects of AGW to last. Does he expect CO2 levels to remain for ever? That would be very wrong. Or perhaps only a few tens-of-thousands of years which would be more correct? That, of course, is the time-scale that ice-ages operate on.
Ice ages are, of course, mainly driven by changing albedo (due to the changing levels of ice reflecting changing amounts of sunlight back into space). CO2 is not the primary driver.For a bit more background, we can look back at those ice-age CO2 levels.
During the last interglacial (the Eemian) the measured peak-CO2 was 287ppm back 128,400 years before present. (This is from EPIC Dome C ice core data.) From this peak, CO2 dropped to 262ppm in the following 1,240 year, a drop which was the first part of a set of oscillations measured between 280ppm and 260ppm that continued for 15,000 years after the peak. It was only following those oscillations that CO2 began to fall back towards 200ppm, the bulk of this decline (a drop to 230ppm) taking 7,500 years.
We can compare the drop from that ice-age driven CO2 pertubation with the expected future of our own CO2 anthropogenic pertubation. That ice-age pertubation was (287 - 195 =) +102ppm over 8,000 years while out anthropogeinc pertubation is so-far (410 - 280 =) +130ppm over roughly 100 years.
The likes of Archer et al (2009) 'Atmospheric Lifetime of Fossil Fuel Carbon Dioxide' suggest that roughly 80% of an instant CO2 pertubation would be absorbed into the oceans in roughly 1,000 years. (Lord et al 2016 Fig 4 suggests it would be a little higher for our present 600Gt(C) level of emissions, perhaps 87%.) About 55% of our anthropogenic pertubation has already been absorbed so if our CO2 emissions stopped we would expect today's CO2 levels to drop roughly 70ppm over 1,000 years or so, being absorbed mainly within the oceans. But the rise of the ice-age pertubation of the Eemian was far slower than our pertubation (8,00y against 100y) so we can simplistically assume that all the +102ppm represents that remainng 20% of the actual ice-aged-forced emissions. (In reality, much of the CO2 in the ice-age pertubation has been driven from the oceans so will not be re-absorbed there over such timescales.)That remaining 20% (& bulk of the Eemian +105ppm) is expected would slowly be absorbed over following millennia, but surely not as quickly that 7,500 year Eemian period which saw perhaps a 10% drop (of the assumed total ice-age pertubation). This would concur with the proposed reversal of much of the pre-Eemian ice-age driven CO2 increase as the new ice-age develops, when the oceans begin to re-absorb CO2, along with a whole lot of other mechanisms that operate on CO2 through the ice-age cycles.
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michael sweet at 20:20 PM on 17 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Barry:
So nothing peer reviewed to support nuclear power. Your inability to find anything peer reviewed to support your claims tells me a lot.
My handle is Michael Sweet. It is disrespectful to use something different.
You have made approximately 13 posts on the subject of reactor station area. Your claims hinge on your interpretation of a single line of Abbott 2012. We differ in our reading of Abbott.
Frankly, I have never before seen anyone argue that nuclear power plants occupy too much land. Even Jacobson, who does not like nuclear, only counts land area as 3% of his rating system. Examining figure 6 of Jacobson 2009
I see that area is only an issue for biogenic ethanol. Nuclear area is small. If this is the most important issue you can find I think we can all reach a conclusion.
You have made your point, I have made mine. Everyone reading will be able to judge our arguments. It is long past time to move on to new issues.
Moderator Response:[PS] Standing back for a moment. Barry, I believe you are trying to dispute the validity of Abbott's objections. Abbott raises the land area issue (and especially the need for a particular type of land) using Jacobson's figure for area based on plant, buffer zone, mining and waste requirements. Abbott states a figure of as much as 20km2 per plant (ie a maximum of 20km2). Abbott is not disproved by showing some plants are smaller (especially if your examples fail to account for mining and waste area as well). Furthermore, as Michael Sweet has pointed out, the land area is a rather trivial issue in the context of Abbott. I would prefer to see more substantive issues addressed if there is to be a case made for nuclear energy.
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barry17781 at 18:43 PM on 17 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
moderator, your units for appear not to make sense
are you able to convert and show how to convert your figure of 0.08 ha yr Gw h^-1
yr h-1 is a trivial number the number of yearsper hour ie 1/8760
then when we put this into the unit we are left with 0.08/8760 ha Gwatt.
ha Gwatt does not mahe sese.
I would be pleased if you could solve this riddle, putting it as ha per GW h
comes out with a ridiculous answer 500 km^2
Moderator Response:[PS] As indicated, I am cutting and pasting the numbers directly from Jacobson to save people looking it up and to give the complete picture about what Jacobson is stating. The units are ha yr/GWh. Ie the consumption of land per year for each GWh of electricity produced. Jacobson is also simply using numbers from other studies.
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bozzza at 16:08 PM on 17 June 2019Climate's changed before
TV- he's using flawed logic from word one... your denier pal is not entertaining complexity and (supposedly, lol) thinks the world works in straight lines. Just a rich idiot who does know better because when it comes to money all of a sudden he understands there are multiple factors at play...
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bozzza at 16:00 PM on 17 June 2019State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019
" A typical summer now has nearly half as much sea ice in the Arctic as it had in the 1970s and 1980s"
The above is simply not correct.
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Roma at 15:37 PM on 17 June 2019How could global warming accelerate if CO2 is 'logarithmic'?
My intuition on the source of “greater then exponential curve” would be to investigate the role that the loss of the soil/carbon sponge Is playing.
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TVC15 at 11:21 AM on 17 June 2019Climate's changed before
Thank you Scaddenp! I will read it!
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scaddenp at 10:13 AM on 17 June 2019They changed the name from 'global warming' to 'climate change'
yes they do. It is an accurate term. Lukewarmers and deniers to CAGW (catastrophic AGW) for strawman arguements. Scientists never this term.
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scaddenp at 09:37 AM on 17 June 2019Climate's changed before
TVC15 - if are you continuing to engage with deniers, then please, please take the time to read the IPCC WG1 report so you have a grounding in what the science says. At very least, read SPM.
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scaddenp at 09:33 AM on 17 June 2019Climate's changed before
Deniers favourite tactics are strawman and cherry pick. In case, a strawman. Just because your denier doesnt understand the science of how glacial and interglacial feedback cycles work, doesnt mean that scientists dont either. Insist that your denier quotes the actual science that he is supposedly refuting. The missing link here is suppression of natural methane and CO2 emissions as land (especially eurasian wetland) becomes frozen; and importantly, the increased solution of CO2 in oceans as they cool. Of course, scientist do the hard yards of measurement, modelling (check numbers work), and cross-checking, whereas denier are only interested in hand-wavy dismissal.
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TVC15 at 09:26 AM on 17 June 2019They changed the name from 'global warming' to 'climate change'
Do climate scientists use the term Anthropogenic Global Warming?
Is this the proper term used in climate science? If not what is the proper term for human caused climate change?
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TVC15 at 09:23 AM on 17 June 2019Climate's changed before
LOL the denier is back with his silly statments.
The entire global warming hypothesis is nonsense.
If there was any truth to it, then Inter-Glacial Periods would never end.
The CO2 that supposedly accumulates and causes temperatures to rise ending a Glacial Period should continue to cause temperatures to rise, except it doesn't.
No matter how much CO2 accumulates, you always end up right back in a Glacial Period.
Is there any truth to anything this denier is stating?
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barry17781 at 09:08 AM on 17 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
PS] Sweet is pointing out that Abbott says "as much as" which establishes a maximum in my understanding of English. Examples of smaller sites do not refute Abbott.
[DB] Please limit image width,well actually no in here Sweet claims that reactors cannot occupy a small area and ie 20 km^2
now as we can see hinkley is 1/20 th of that abbott and sweet are misleading.
work you lecture us what we should think. Abbott is correct, no citation needed.
"Abbott correctly describes the footprint of a nuclear plant to counter incorrect industry propaganda that nuclear plants only occupy a small area." sweetanything up to 20 km^2 well that could be anything even a small area.
Very good, how can any size up to 20 km^2
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barry17781 at 08:59 AM on 17 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
PS] Sweet is pointing out that Abbott says "as much as" which establishes a maximum in my understanding of English. Examples of smaller sites do not refute Abbott.
let us see what Jacobson says "for the average plant world wide this translates to a total land requirement oper nuclear facility plus mining and storage of about 20.5 km^2" Clearly those people who approved Hinkley point did not hear of this and built one of 2 km^2 and used a planning map, which is actually very much peer reviewed.
Moderator Response:[PS] I can find no evidence that your Hinkey plant includes mining and waste storage. In the interests of clarity for all commentators, the exact quote from Jacobson 2009 is:
"The land required for nuclear power also includes that for uranium mining and disposal of nuclear waste. Estimates of the lands required for uranium mining and nuclear facility with a buffer zone are 0.06 ha yr GWh−1 and 0.26 ha yr GWh−1, respectively, and that for waste for a single sample facility is about 0.08 km2. For the average plant worldwide, this translates into a total land requirement per nuclear facility plus mining and storage of about 20.5 km2. The footprint on the ground (e.g., excluding the buffer zone only) is about 4.9–7.9 km2."
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scaddenp at 07:47 AM on 17 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
i created this article largely to prevent nuclear energy discussions from derailing other threads. It is a highly unusual experiment for Sks and I rather hoped it might become a useful resource where references to authorative published papers might be collected. It is most certainly not a place for expressions of opinion without supporting evidence, and frankly not a place for strawman rhetoric ("peer-reviewed must be correct"). Discussions like this must find another venue.
Michael Sweet @14 provides an excellent example of how a scientific discussion is conducted. Please follow that guideline. The thread cannot be moderated 24/7.
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nigelj at 07:19 AM on 17 June 2019Planetary health and '12 years' to act
Wol @3, yes things are like that, but we have to break through and OPOF is just proposing a few ideas. Its really important to get across to people that quoting the constitution to inhibit change is not what the document intends. The constitution is about limiting government over reach, (and fair enough) not limiting all that governments should do. This should be obvious in the articles, and the most probable intent of the writers. I hope that people can see this.
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barry17781 at 07:05 AM on 17 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Here is link to a map of Hinkley point C a 2 reactor site, grid lines are present on the map and we can see a site of 2km^2 this is 1/20 the are that you are claiming mr Sweet
https://www.tunneltalk.com/images/Hinckley-Nuclear-Point/Hinckley-Point-design.jpg
Moderator Response:[PS] Sweet is pointing out that Abbott says "as much as" which establishes a maximum in my understanding of English. Examples of smaller sites do not refute Abbott.
[DB] Please limit image widths to 450.
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barry17781 at 06:21 AM on 17 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Sweet
You say that a
"From Abbott 2012:
"each nuclear power plant draws upon a total land area of as much as 20.5 square kilometers." My emphasis
Abbott is correct."No it is utter rubbish
Wylfa Newydd footprint is under4 km^2 for 2 reactors!
references have been posted earlier MODERATOR Mr sweet is now denying actual source material,.
barry at 04:35 AM on 16 June, 2019
barry at 09:03 AM on 16 June, 2019
Go and look at the UK documents the footprint of Wylfa newydd is less than 2 km^2.
Now Sweet, this is not a paper it is actual original source material.
you clearly have not bothered to open it
Wylfa newydd is bounded by the grid squares SH 3594, SH 3593, SH3493 and SH3693, which makes the footprint less than 4 km^2
have a look at this one
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/plans-clear-300-acre-site-14019871
Moderator Response:[DB] Links to images found elsewhere only work when another site is hosting the image with a fixed URL. Simply pasting the image into a comment will not work (which is why your image does not show).
Activated URL.
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Eclectic at 05:48 AM on 17 June 2019Welcome to Skeptical Science
JasonChen @55 ,
the 3 sentences you quote are a succinct summary of the "denialist" mindset. The words derive from a decade or more of close study of the speech & actions of a large number of "denialists" (i.e. not deriving from a few minutes of stage-show telepathy ).
And not just from study by John Cook, but also by a considerable number of psychologists and by (informally) a vast number of everyday citizens.
JasonChen, you should educate yourself about the powerful influence of Motivated Reasoning on the human mind ~ on the human mind that is preferring to follow its emotional bias rather than striving for an objective scientific assessment of the situation.
You are welcome to suggest an amended wording, and to suggest alternative analysis of the behavior of those who reject the overwhelming amount of evidence regarding anthropogenic climate change.
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JasonChen at 03:01 AM on 17 June 2019Welcome to Skeptical Science
climate denialism is closed minded. It thinks it knows the truth and wants to interpret the evidence to suit that. It has a preferred answer and wants to look at everything in that light.
John, you might want to reconsider this language on the newby page. This is a mind reading claim, something one expects from a zealot rather than a scientist.
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michael sweet at 02:26 AM on 17 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Barry:
From Abbott 2012:
"each nuclear power plant draws upon a total land area of as much as 20.5 square kilometers." My emphasis
Abbott is correct.
Your link to Jacobson 2009 supports Abbott's claim:
"In the case of nuclear power, a buffer zone around each plant is needed for safety. In the US, nuclear power plant areas are divided into an owner-controlled buffer region, an area restricted to some plant employees and monitored visitors, and a vital area with further restrictions. The owner-controlled buffer regions are
generally left as open space to minimize security risks. The land required for nuclear power also includes that for uranium mining and disposal of nuclear waste. Estimates of the lands required for uranium mining and nuclear facility with a buffer zone are 0.06 ha yr GWh−1 and 0.26 ha yr GWh−1, respectively, and that for
waste for a single sample facility is about 0.08 km. For the average plant worldwide, this translates into a total land requirement per nuclear facility plus mining and storage of about 20.5 km2. The footprint on the ground (e.g., excluding the buffer zone only) is about 4.9–7.9 km2"I am astonished that your only peer reviewed citation contradicts your claims. Your claim that the calculation is hidden in the references directly contradicts the scientific method which Abbott follows. You need to understand the scientific method before you make comments.
Even if there was a problem with Abbott's area claim, you cannot expect to be able to say you do not like Abbott's entire paper and you want to substitute your personal opinion, without any data, for all the facts.
You have cited no papers that support the use of Nuclear power in the future. I have cited at least 6 papers that support phasing out nuclear in the future.
If you cannot find peer reviewed papers in the future I will stop treating your posts as serious. To date you have not presented any argument beyond you think your opinion should be accepted by everyone, apparently because you are smarter than everyone else on the planet. I am surprised you have not been warned by the moderator since you have provided no new information to the discussion.
I am astonished that you continue to refer to the cancelled nuclear plant in Wales. It demonstrates prefectly why nuclear is being abandoned: nuclear is not economic.
It is very difficult to engage with nuclear supporters because they have such a poor knowledge of the background, they insist that they know everything and they do not accept peer reviewed data. They insist that youtube videos, their personal opinion and ignorant blog posts are better than peer reviewed papers.
The opening posts on this thread are a perfect example of this type of behaviour. Nuclear supporters have used their personal opinion to argue against Abbott 2012 and have provided not a single reference to anything beyond industry propaganda to support nuclear.
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:40 AM on 17 June 2019Planetary health and '12 years' to act
Wol @3,
My 'words' were a presentation of understanding in response to nigelj's query about how to respond when someone says <the quote at the top of my response which is quoted from nigelj's comment @1>
When responding to someone all you have are 'words'.
I suggested what I consider to be a rather robust basis of understanding that can be used to formulate the 'words' used to respond to such a statement.
Reality is the result of everyone making their choices based on their understanding.
Leadership that will pursue improving understanding to increase the helpful altruistic empathetic understanding among the population would be nice.
Competitions for popularity and profit amplified by misleading marketing that can appeal to 'selfish gut reaction and related harmful correction resistant confirmation bias and motivated reasoning' rather than 'helpful thoughtful consideration to improve understanding and be more helpful, less harmful' will undeniably develop more harmfully selfish people.
The 'words' used to try to correct harmful incorrect understanding need to be as robustly defensible as possible. Motivated reasoning and confirmation bias do have limits. Some people may still be harmful after improving their understanding, but they will find fewer people they can get support from as more people develop improved awareness and understanding of how harmful some status and leadership competitors actually are.
The response I suggest to anyone you encounter who claims a constitutional right to be harmfully selfish is to point out any of the many examples of the harmful behaviours (like those motivated by greed and intolerance), that developed popularity and profit to the detriment of others. And point out the resistance to correction of that activity. And indicate that it is undeniable incorrect to claim that
"people freer to believe whatever they want to excuse doing what they please in pursuit of status relative to others, personal benefit or gratification does not develop Good results. The evidence is that harmful results that are difficult to correct get developed ... including the harmful belief that people's constitutional rights are being infringed on by any restriction on what they can get away with".
That presentation of understanding makes it rather undeniable that the United Right and anyone supporting that type of political group is the cause of harmful divisive resistance to correction of understandably unsustainable attitudes and actions that unacceptably developed popularity or profitability.
And it should be clear that compromising the required understood correction of attitudes and actions, just to get along (not upset someone), is also a very harmful thing for people to do, especially leaders in a society. A society with too many of those Winners and Leaders (people who are not excellent examples of Humanity), will not have a sustainable future.
A Good Time For a Portion of Humanity, for as long as can be gotten away with, based on Harmful Unsustainable attitudes and actions Always Ends and Never ends Well.
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barry17781 at 23:55 PM on 16 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
sweet
let us look at your assumption, that a published piece of literature is correct.
Abbott is claiming his paper applies to the world
I have already provided data that his power station footprint of 20.5 km^2 is incorrect and that a figure less than a tenth of this is acceptable in Western democracies
ie Wylfa newydd has an exclusion zone of less than 4 km^2 with currnt plans for 2 reactors making the footprint less than 2km^2.
From this it can be seen that your initial premise that a piece of literature is correct is has got misleading.
The paper in my opinion has obscured how the numbers were obtained, in burying it amoungst the references.
You can ask yourself the question did Abbott know about this discrepany . If he did why did he not correct it the second time round? was he never told? Did he not look up the footprint of other power stations? It is very easy just go to google maps. Or if you want grid lines go onto Bing maps as they show grid lines.
It is in my opinion difficult to envisage how this number of 20km^2 has got any creedence, yot you have used it in several argunents against nuclear power. To anyone who is an expert to use this number for sites outside the US to me is astonishing, especially sonce in the US multple occupancy is possible.
One cannot take a paper even peer reviewed at face value.
this was summed up by arguably the greatest American scientist Feyman who never took anything on trust but checked it out for himself.
As a further aside Enrico Fermi in the 1930s wrote a paper on the origin of the Doppler shift. His formula agreed with Doppler equation and so it was taken as read. Nevertherless in the spectroscopic community in the 1970s it was apparent that the formula given by Fermi was an approximation. the correct formula was only publish by someone from Stratchclyde only some ten years ago.
The change is subtule and does not apply to macroscopic emittors, but for particles of atomic mass measurable differnces from the Fermi equation can be observed.
Th lesson in this is that even the Great sometimes let errors go through.;
And as for me providing you with the Fermi paper and the Strathclyde paper, life's too short to pander to someone who is willing to take on trust whatever that is written and then draw completly the wrong conclusions from it.
One can therefore conclude that reliance on a paper already shown to erroneous cannot be assumed to be correct in any other parts. that is not to say that there are other errors
Moderator Response:[PS] Irrelevant. Sweet makes no such claim (nor frankly does Abbott). Peer-reviewed papers are challenged all the time by other peer-reviewed papers. This is normal course of science.
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michael sweet at 22:55 PM on 16 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
This Guardian newspaper article claims extensve cover ups of radiation sickness by the Soviet Government in the Chernobyl accident.
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michael sweet at 20:17 PM on 16 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Barry,
You are not familiar with scientific discussion. In a scientific discussion I say "this paper supports my position". Then you say "this paper supports my position". Then I provide more papers to support my position and show why it is more accurate. You provide papers to support your position. Others read the papers and decide who they think has the best argument.
In this discussion I have provided a paper that supports my position, Abbott 2012. You say you do not like that paper and we should all agree with you. You have provided no reason why we should all agree with you.
Abbott was published in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists by invitation. You must provide data to contradict Abbott and not just loudly state your unsupported opinion. The argument you and DPeppigrass make that you do not like Abbott without providing support for an alternative is a waste of everyones time. Abbott 2011 was published 8 years ago. You cannot even find an industry white paper that addresses his claims. The absence of a rebuttal indicates that the Nuclear industry agrees with Abbotts assessment.
It does not matter that you do not like Abbotts claims about hafnium. Abbott claimed that rare metals used in nuclear plants do not exist in enough supply to build out nuclear plants. You have not shown that enough beryllium, vanadium, zirconium or uranium exist to build out the plants you support.
You originally claimed "halfnium as a control (which is limited to military reactors) civilian reactors use boron and some gadolinium which are far more abundant than halnium". I have provided two examples of hafnium use in civilian reactors so you have shifted the goalposts. We do not know how much hafnium is used in civilian reactors because you have provided no references to show its use is limited.
If you wish to argue that enough enough metals exist for reactors you must provide a peer reviewed report that details all the metals used in nuclear plants and shows they exist. That was done for renewables by Jacobson 2011 after nuclear supporters complained that renewables used too much steel in their construction. We know all materials exist for renewables. Provide a report that all materials exist for nuclear.
You are also confused about citations. Scientific papers are written for peope who have done their homework and understand the subject that is being discussed. Material that is accepted by everyone that is informed is not required to be cited. For example, Abbott is not required to prove the Earth is round or that all material is made of atoms.
You and DPeppigrass are asking Abbott to cite the obvious. Everyone informed knows that it is unsafe to build reactors in Tokyo harbor, that it is unsafe to build reactors on the San Andreas fault in California and that reactors require massive amounts of water for cooling (especially if you build 6 in one location). It is not necessary to cite a reference. If you really want to claim that you think one of these obvious factsneeds support you can ask for references (your complaint above does not specify which of these obvious facts you do not know). If others agree with you it might help your argument. My position is that eveyone who has done their homework knows these facts.
According to Wikipedia, the village of Cemaes in Wales has a population of 1,357. Where I live that is considered unpopulated and suitable for a nuclear reactor. I note that they only planned to build 2 reactors and not the 6 you claim is normal. In any case, the project has been cancelled and the $2 billion they spent was wasted. The fact that the project has been cancelled shows that nuclear is on the way out and not a suitable source of power for the future. The money should have been used to increase the size of their wind farm. If they had spent the money on wind it would be generating power now.
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sidd at 13:50 PM on 16 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
I would like to see financing costs. Every power/utility engineer I know tells me that the major roadblock to building nukes in western countries is reluctance of banks and utilities to commit to financing the investment.
And I'd also like to see costs absent Price Anderson guarantees as in the USA.
sidd
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Wol at 12:01 PM on 16 June 2019Planetary health and '12 years' to act
OPOFEVER@ 2:
Nice words, but only words.
Each individual can make choices, yes, but a few percent of us making choices ain't going to do much.
Governments have to make the choices on behalf of their voters. And in places like the USA in particular, government imposed rules such as those meet hysterical opposition from half the population on the grounds that they violate constitutional freedoms.
(The same might be said about speed limits, taxes, metal detectors at airports and anything else that any individual might consider an "imposition", but rationality is not the strong suite here.
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barry17781 at 10:10 AM on 16 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Michael
the 10 nuclear sites ( Fangjiashan and Qinshan are regarded as the same site) in China have a total of 37 reactors which is an average of 3.7 per site. yet there are at least 12 more in construction on these sites which brings the occupancy to 4.9.
6 sites are planned to have 6 or more reactors.
This is a country that is building nuclear power plants unlike the USA where currently site occupancy is irrelevant because they are not building any.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_China
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Daniel Mocsny at 09:10 AM on 16 June 2019Climate Adam reacts to Bill Nye: "The planet's on f@*&ing fire!"
One Planet Only Forever @19:
The brief video starts with Bill Nye donning his safety glasses then turning to a flip chart that essentially says: Making something ore expensive - discourages people from buying it. Done.Not quite done. Making something more expensive encourages selfish people to look for ways to minimize their costs. Consuming less is only one option. Defeating the policy that makes something artificially expensive is another option.
There are many options for defeating carbon pricing. One is voting for Trump. If people don't care about their individual contributions to global warming, they will resent being forced to pay for the external costs they inflict on others. They can then attack the policy directly (such as with a Trump vote), or they can drive to Washington D.C. in their tractors or trucks to protest high fuel prices, or they can riot like the Yellow Vests, and so on. They can write sob stories to their representatives and beg for exceptions, which will be doled out (if the track record for cap-and-trade is a guide).
History suggest that people tend not to submit meekly to policies they don't personally believe in. Look at the failure of Prohibition in the USA, and the Trumpian success after decades of Republican/Koch efforts to undermine environmental regulation.
The only way to really make fossil fuel more expensive is to change most people's morality, thus instilling them with an internal carbon compass that can't be corrupted by the Kochtopus. Coercive policy can only ever be effective against the remaining tiny minorities. As long as virtually the entire population sees nothing immoral about the high-emitting behaviors a carbon tax would have to target to be effective (such as driving, flying, heating, cooling, eating meat, owning meat-eating pets, and procreating), we won't have any coercive policies that are intrusive enough to be effective. And if we get them, we won't sustain them against the inevitable backlash as long as the vast majority of people remain amoral on climate change.
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barry17781 at 09:03 AM on 16 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
links to power station documents do not work,
try this link then navigate, into 2site preparation and clearances", then "factsheet" and to "planning application drawings"
https://www.horizonnuclearpower.com/our-sites/wylfa-newydd/documents
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Daniel Mocsny at 08:53 AM on 16 June 2019Climate Adam reacts to Bill Nye: "The planet's on f@*&ing fire!"
"But does shouting at the audience about global warming make anyone more likely to do anything about it?"
This is a question for social scientists to investigate. How does a given messaging style influence beliefs and behavior? What factors of personality and prior knowledge affect a person's receptivity?
Military drill instructors have long relied on shouting and verbal abuse to train and indoctrinate recruits. (The stress hormone cortisol may play a role in the formation of long-term memories, as any trauma victim can attest, but prolonged exposure can impair learning.) However, this is always in concert with the training camp environment, which uproots recruits from their familiar surroundings and social influences. "Climate boot camps" might be effective for changing minds but they probably aren't compatible either with democracy or with the scientific ethos of collegial debate.
However, the question from the original post is ill-posed in this portion: "make anyone more likely to do anything about [global warming]." Technically, the typical individual (anyone) cannot do "anything" about global warming. That is, no action available to the typical individual (short of perhaps unleashing a bioweapon epidemic that would depopulate the globe) can have a measurable impact on the rate of global warming.
Rather, the only thing an individual can "do anything about" with respect to global warming is to reduce his/her individual contribution to global warming, and to exert whatever pressure they can on others to reduce theirs. By analogy, suppose a large mob is stoning someone to death. One individual in the mob probably cannot stop everyone else from throwing stones. That individual can only choose not to participate, and to try to influence a few other individuals to stop throwing stones. Framing the problem as "doing anything about the stoning" might lead the individual to conclude there is no reason to stop throwing stones, since the victim will die in any case. The correct framing is about morality rather than efficacy. Suppose the mob cannot be stopped - what then will a morally virtuous person do, when given a choice to participate? A virtuous person will do the virtuous thing, which is not to participate in a collective evil.
Applied to global warming, the first step is to inventory one's carbon footprint. Typically one's sources of greenhouse gas emissions follow a Pareto distribution, with perhaps the four or five largest emitters accounting for 80% or more of one's footprint. These will typically be expensive behaviors (since raping the planet costs a fortune) such as driving, flying, heating, cooling, eating meat, owning meat-eating pets, and procreating.
Thus to speak coherently about an individual "doing anything about global warming", we must really mean an individual doing something about his/her largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, which is to say either stopping or greatly reducing those behaviors or switching to zero-emission alternatives.
Voting in elections for politicians who promise (or aspire to) green policies is another potential way for the individual to "do something about global warming". However, this only has an effect on emissions if vast numbers of other voters vote similarly and durably (and if politicians manage to defeat the giant bag of dirty tricks that fossil fuel interests use to capture governments). Until that happens, green voting is merely gesture politics. It may make a high-emitting individual feel good, but it has no impact on emissions, thanks to winner-take-all elections and the vast constituency ready to defend every source of emissions. The only policy options open to politicians to fight climate change are those that inconvenience no one. In general, convenience is inversely proportional to efficacy, since individuals strongly "feel" their carbon footprints. Your life on a high carbon footprint is obviously different than your life on a low carbon footprint. Much as the life of a slave owner is obviously different than the life of a person who owns no slaves.
By analogy, suppose everybody was addicted to heroin. A few addicts might vote for government policies to eliminate heroin, but they won't make any difference. Until a voting majority demands such policies and accepts the enforcement costs, the only meaningful actions against heroin that an individual addict can take are to quit using and to persuade others to quit.
And, of course, the chances of actually getting policies to eliminate heroin will be higher as more people choose to quit. As more and more addicts quit, they can begin to form a social movement.
The typical messaging from the climate movement tries to put the cart before the horse, by pretending we can get governments to do all the heavy lifting first, or that social movements can be built from people who don't actually change their behavior. As if a society of heroin addicts can vote their way out of their addiction. While governments have a role to play, individuals have a far bigger role. This is easy to verify empirically just by cutting one's own carbon footprint. A motivated individual (which is to say, a morally responsible individual) can attain a lower carbon footprint in a matter of months than any government policy can create for that individual in decades.
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nigelj at 08:00 AM on 16 June 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #24
The first lady in Costa Rica sounds great and is an "urban planner" which shows what is possible environmentally if someone with an environmental background is in charge. And hows the economy doing? Just fine thanks. So much for the doom mongers who fear environmentalists in politics. In the end you get a lot of pragmatism about how to juggle both the environment and economy, the world won't end by having environmentalists in politics.
But according to "renewable energy in Costa Rica" on wikipedia most of their electricity is from hydro and geothermal, and solar power is still in its infancy, so their low carbon electricity is more of a legacy issue.
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barry17781 at 04:35 AM on 16 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Jut thought that I would include some real references,
Here we have the plans for a 2 reactor power station and the area can be scales from the map, or by comparisom with the British OS maps (sheet 114)
https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ about 4 km^2 now Abbotts figure was 20 km^2 per reactor. This real case is at a tenth of that.
If you notice the village Cemaes goes right up to the boundrary
Moderator Response:[DB] Links breaking page formatting shortened and activated.
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RedBaron at 03:59 AM on 16 June 2019State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019
@swampfox,
"Allen Savory "holistic" paradigm is a little wet on theory."
Actually no. Just the opposite. There is some theory , but in general it is mostly "hands on" in the field real world experience and results made available to others in a way they can replicate without needing a PhD in theory.
I have tried to explain HM to people and why your objections and questions simply don't apply. I even wrote a wiki page to document my research on it. However, many of the key elements keep getting removed by other editors including for a long time a concerted attack by dogmatic elements of society, so I keep needing to repeat it over and over. However, just so you can try to get it:
There is a decision making framework that premptively solves all that before you do anything else, and constant monitoring to adapt to changing conditions so problems are actually solved before they even happen. Here is a copy of an important section removed from what I wrote on wikipedia about Holistic management:
The holistic management decision-making framework uses six key steps to guide the management of resources:[1]
- Define in its entirety what you are managing. No area should be treated as a single-product system. By defining the whole, people are better able to manage. This includes identifying the available resources, including money, that the manager has at his disposal.
- Define what you want now and for the future. Set the objectives, goals and actions needed to produce the quality of life sought, and what the life-nurturing environment must be like to sustain that quality of life far into the future.
- Watch for the earliest indicators of ecosystem health. Identify the ecosystem services that have deep impacts for people in both urban and rural environments, and find a way to easily monitor them. One of the best examples of an early indicator of a poorly functioning environment is patches of bare ground. An indicator of a better functioning environment is newly sprouting diversity of plants and a return or increase of wildlife.
- Don't limit the management tools you use. The eight tools for managing natural resources are money/labor, human creativity, grazing, animal impact, fire, rest, living organisms and science/technology. To be successful you need to use all these tools to the best of your ability.
- Test your decisions with questions that are designed to help ensure all your decisions are socially, environmentally and financially sound for both the short and long term.
- Monitor proactively, before your managed system becomes more imbalanced. This way the manager can take adaptive corrective action quickly, before the ecosystem services are lost. Always assume your plan is less than perfect and use a feedback loop that includes monitoring for the earliest signs of failure, adjusting and re-planning as needed. In other words use a "canary in a coal mine" approach.
That's just the framework of the plan every land manager makes before even starting. Each part of the framework will have details to follow that are case dependant.
So to apply that decision making framework to your post at 24:
Where do we get the predators to drive them away from the waterways so that can disperse across the prairie?
Humans are the ones who do this using what fits the local cultural, social, economic and technological tools available and identified by the plan before even starting. So the Masai tribe in Kenya uses herders and monitoring like this:
Rangelands rehabilitation and carbon credits in Kenya
While in the Eastern US a completely different approach is taken:
Polyface farms parts 1,2 and 3
Australian outback another entirely different way:
Tony Lovell - Savory Institute Putting Grasslands to Work Conference
In fact every plan will be different for each and every farm. In fact I use it and I don't even raise any livestock at all currently! I simulate grazing with mowing and compost/mulches. That's actually the big deal about holistic management. It isn't a grazing system, its a way to develop a management system to accomplish those goals according to each and everyone's individual circumstances. So there is the managed intensive rotational grazing system, but it is used in the framework of holistic management.
Polyface solves those issues you spoke about mostly with electric fencing and interns eager to learn for labor. The Masai in Kenya are already nomadic herders, so they change their lifestyle not much at all, for them its just training on soil sample protocol and learning a cooperative rotational system. In South America Horses and sheep or cattle are used a lot. There is a rancher in Texas that uses a helecopter and bison. There is no set way. Each management plan is adaptive and applies to local changing conditions and the tools available to the land manager.
the Great Plains had those vast area where very little surface water exists
It is true now, but very quickly after those regenerative practices are put into effect, the water returns. A big part of all this is the restoration of the natural hydrological cycle. See my citation @post 17. This is key for AGW mitigation as well, because it reduces the water evaporating and returns it to groundwater. Less water vapor means reduced greenhouse effect.
I think you should see by now the rest of your questions are already answered. In some cases yes we could use cowboys. There still are professional cowboys here in Oklahoma and Texas. In other cases sheep or goat herders. In other cases electric fencing. In still other cases barbed wire and/or fencing. The tools and manpower for the job are identified right from the beginning when making the adaptive plan. Also the water sources and planned movements of the animals would be planned months or even a year in advance, with easily changed scheduling if needed due to unforeseen events in the future.
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barry17781 at 01:44 AM on 16 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Moderator,
You are staing that unsuported statements will be struck.
I have not disputed Abbotts numbers, only their interpretation,
if you wish to stick with those so be it
1/ Abbott has used a buffer zone in his calculation and a single occupancy to calculate his area. All I have pointed out is that nuclear sites nowerdays have multiple occupancy Other peole have used Abbotts density to erroneous conclusions. Indeed M sweet states multiple occupancy is used ' but sticks with Abbotts density figures Ah the reference! other commentators are excempt
" no citation needed." - M Sweet
Neverthless here is the one that Abbott cites as his source, stating clearly that most of the area taken by abbott is due to a buffer zone and that the area requirement can be reduced to a fraction using multiple occupancy which is the norm. There is no use citing US because on multiple occupancy as they have only built one facilty (NEF in New Mexico) since the 3 mile island incedent. (
(ref 6 of Abbott)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Enrichment_Facility
2/ Abbott quotes materials that are used in nuclear reactors . I have pointed out that a number of these are not essential materials . Abbotts reply to me was that they were examples of materials used in a reactor.
M Sweet has helpfully provided a note on this matter in which control rods can be made ith halfnium as a very minor constiuent and completly without halfnium. Your requst to provide a reference for somthing not to used is rather difficlt. It is like I cannot prove the absence of Big Fot nor the Loch Ness monster. What I can state is that Halfnium is used as a neutron absorber, which Boron is the normal civilian material for this use and as MS reference shows civilian control rods contain boron. As I stated before
"as for hafnium in civilian reactors I stand by it that it is currently not used to any significant extent" M Sweet has atated that some halfnium is used but in no way does this assetrion that I an wrong hold water.
"Apparently Westinghouse did not get the memo. Westinghouse was one of the largest manufactures of nuclear plants in the world and all of their control rods contain Hafnium." no Michael they can also make them without halfnium so halfniun is not essential control rods are perfectly functional without halnium
"Westinghouse began developing BWR control rods in the mid-1960s. The first control rod, CR 70, was in operation in a BWR plant in 1970. After 45 years, many original rods are still in operation. A vast majority of hafnium-tipped rods (CR 82), the first to be used in the United States in 1983, are still in operation. The CR 82M-1 design was introduced in 1995. The main feature of the CR 82M-1 rod is the change of structural material to 316L stainless steel with high resistance to SCC and a very low-cobalt content. Westinghouse has delivered more than 6,700 BWR control rods worldwide. Out of these, more than 2,300 are the CR 82M-1 design. Westinghouse BWR control rods are licensed in the United
Mr Sweet you citation does not support your assertion that "Westinghouse was one of the largest manufactures of nuclear plants in the world and all of their control rods contain Hafnium." only about a third of them.
Moderator you critcise people for not providing references, what do you do when these references are mis quoted?
It is only an exmple of Gish Gallop
Moderator Response:[DB] Moderation complaints noted and snipped.
Links breaking page formatting were shortened and activated.
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padmadfan at 21:51 PM on 15 June 2019The Methane 'Time Bomb': How big a concern?
It should be noted that the "skeptic" of methane and methane hydrates being a significant contributor to global warming in this video link is Juliana Musheyev. She is not a climate change scientist or researcher and according to this link, she is an "Interfaith Activist" with the Center For Religious Tolerance. While that does not discount her opinion, it should be taken into consideration especially when she has admitted much of her research came from YouTube. https://www.c-r-t.org/events/podcasts/juliana-musheyev/
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MA Rodger at 16:56 PM on 15 June 2019Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
Philippe Chantreau "349,
That is an interesting thought. A rough back-of-fag-packet calculation (using Global Carbon project 2018 figures & H2O/CO2 = 2 for natural gas and 0.8 for oil) puts the count of fossil emissions of these "far more powerful than CO2 could ever hope to be" H2O molecules as 75% of the allegedly 'ever-hopless' CO2 molecules. In weight works out as 11 Gt(H2O) per year.
Of course, there are about ten times more H2O molecules in the atmosphere than there are CO2 molecules so molecule-for-molecule H2O is not so "powerful". And they get rained out in days so the extra fossil-sourced H2O is irrelevant, except all that extra water has to go somewhere. So the back-of-fag-packet answer is that burning fossil hydrogen is adding water onto the surface at a rate that's enough to raise sea levels by 3mm in a century. But even in this, H2O is weaker than CO2-powered AGW as the extra absolute humidity in the atmosphere due to today's AGW is enough to reduce sea levels by about 5mm in a century.
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swampfoxh at 14:21 PM on 15 June 2019State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019
RedBaron
Also the cite you provided regarding the research about the Cenozoic "conditions" was interesting and I have no particular challenge to it, but I'm curious as to whether the last ice age ending around 11,700 years ago might have mitigated the power of the evidence turn up in that paper. Surely, the grinding away of the surface by such a massive quantity of ice made major changes in soil characteristics and its general deposition, perhaps to the point that the post melt period of only 11,700 years was still quite significant in presenting to us what we see in the Great Plains today, less, of course, the effects of the 1930s dustbowl damage to the depth of the soil and what we see as the first several inches of the stuff that didn't blow away.
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swampfoxh at 13:41 PM on 15 June 2019State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019
RedBaron
Your post is a lot of stuff to look at. I'm not challenging your evidence except I think the Allen Savory "holistic" paradigm is a little wet on theory. Let us suppose that deploying massive numbers of herbivores, mainly bovines, to munch and defecate the Great Plains so as to "do" whatever it is that seems necessary to obtain the results. Where do we get the predators to drive them away from the waterways so that can disperse across the prairie, and yet at some point leave them alone so that they can re-hydrate, and since the Great Plains had those vast area where very little surface water exists, how many miles do they have to walk to get that water? Hang with me for minute before we deal with that detail and I will ask one more question. How many cowboys with horses, hollers and lariats will be required to move these bovines, somewhat evenly across thousands of square miles of prairie so these bovine can provide this service to the grass...and once these critters have moved and "fixed" what needs fixing...what then? I think it would be fair to say that it would take millions of bovines to do this line of work and tens of thousands of cowboys to push them around. Seems implausible that millions of bovines, birthing, growing up, aging, dying or being slaughtered and fed to humans would reduce global GGEs, not to mention the problems of deploying cowboys who need to be fed, housed, and perennially made satisfied "riding the range" as a career choice...among other problems...some yet unforeseen. And, of course, we'd have to kill all the bovine's predators since their presence would really foul up the works.
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One Planet Only Forever at 08:10 AM on 15 June 2019Planetary health and '12 years' to act
nigelj@1
"...what difference would it make if I cut my carbon footprint, because I'm just one person, especially when a lot of people aren't cutting theirs?"
My counter to that is to explain that reality is result of Everybody's actions. Everybody's actions add up into the future reality. Every tiny harm done is Harm Done in the Big Picture.
We are stuck with the reality already created by the actions people took in the past. The choices Everybody makes now create the future. And resistance to correction because the required correction is larger now and must be achieved more rapidly and would require giving up developed perceptions of prosperity and opportunity is a harmful attempt to escape responsibility.
It is almost impossible for a person's actions to be Truly Neutral. Actions are either helpful or harmful to different degrees.
People should choose to improve their awareness and understanding and strive to help develop a sustainable and improvable future for humanity. The alternative is Harmful. There is no compromise space. A person being less helpful than they can be is being harmful.
That is a harsh reality. But Reality is Harsh.
And being harmful cannot be excused by some claim of helpfulness by the harmful person. Helping someone across the street does not give a person permission to push someone onto the street. The only evaluation that legitimately balances help vs. harm is when the same person is experiencing the help and the harm and doing it to themselves. And even then, society collectively has a responsibility to try to correct the thinking of a person who would choose to actually harm themselves because of a perceived personal benefit.
It is grossly harmful and unethical and immoral for a person to choose to 'not be less harmful or not be helpful' and attempt to excuse their choice by claiming that others may also behave that way.
For a very robust presentation of this reasoning read Derek Parfit's "Reasons and Persons".
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nigelj at 07:29 AM on 15 June 2019Planetary health and '12 years' to act
All makes sense except I don't think the analogy with the doctor is so great. If we get sick we do something about it, because it effects us directly. Climate change is different because it requires empathy for future generations, and a common complaint is what difference would it make if I cut my carbon footrprint, because Im just one person, especially when a lot of people aren't cutting theirs? What is the counter to those arguments?
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Philippe Chantreau at 02:42 AM on 15 June 2019Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
If water vapor is the driver of climate, perhaps we should stop combining fossil hydrogen with atmospheric oxygen and inject more of it in the atmosphere then. Unless one accepts that it is not a forcing and subscribes to the standard model of Earth climate. Oh well, it's not like this has not been extensively studied by people who actually know what they're doing.
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michael sweet at 02:10 AM on 15 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
DPeppigrass,
It looks like your post will not be deleted by the moderator even though it has no citations to peer reviewed studies to support your wild claims. You have two posts. I will address the second one first. They are long posts with many factual errors so my response is necessarily long.
In your second post you start with several links to long youtube videos of nuclear industry propaganda. I do not have time to waste watching them. Please cite peer reviewed written sources so they can be checked.
You then have a long screed on the topic of radiation safety. I note that I have extensive training and experience using radioactivity while you have claimed no experience or training beyond your reading on the internet. In general, I do not debate radiation safety with nuclear supporters because they do not care about reactor safety or how many people they kill. It is thus a waste of my time to discuss safety.
However, for other readers I have this reference from the French Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the IRSN) .
“At the present stage of development, IRSN does not have all the necessary data to determine whether the systems under review [generation IV reactors] are likely to offer a significantly improved level of safety compared with Generation III reactors”.
The claims you parrot about “safe” generation IV reactors are simply propaganda from the nuclear industry.
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Nuclear Industry claims their new designs are safer so that they can reduce safety factors to make more money. There is no factual basis for the claim the reactors are really safer. This is generation IV of nuclear reactors because the first 3 generations were not safe as advertised and were too expensive.
In your first post you start out calling “citation needed” for Abbotts claim that “nuclear reactors must be placed "away from dense population zones, natural disaster zones, and near to a massive body of coolant water" It takes a lot of brass to call for a peer reviewed paper to provide citations when your post contains none. Let us examine these issues.
It is illegal to locate nuclear reactors in cities. In light of the safety issues cited above it is unlikely that rule will change in the foreseeable future. Abbott is correct, no citation needed.
You are suggesting that it is OK to locate nuclear reactors on top of earthquake faults, in flood zones and in locations that are likely to be inundated by sea level rise. I do not think anyone will agree with you. Your claim strongly supports my claim above that nuclear supporters do not care about the safety of the reactors they build. Abbott is correct, no citation needed.
You claim “ the third one in particular does not really apply to Molten Salt Reactors which can rely on air cooling or on relatively modest amounts of cooling water.”
Reading your link and your discussion it appears that you have confused the amount of water needed in an emergency to shut down the reactor and the amount of water that is needed every day for normal operation. The nuclear designers claim without evidence that their designs can do an emergency shutdown with little water or air cooling. Your calculations may indicate how much water that is. According to you, for normal operations the reactors must remove approximately 1.1 GWth at all times. That can only be done with massive amounts of water. Air cooling is too expensive and inefficient for normal use. Your claim that massive bodies of water are not needed is false. This error demonstrates that you have no idea how a nuclear plant works. In spite of the fact you do not know how the plants work you lecture us what we should think. Abbott is correct, no citation needed.
Abbott correctly describes the footprint of a nuclear plant to counter incorrect industry propaganda that nuclear plants only occupy a small area.
You say “I'd love to hear anyone come up with a theory of how an MSR could produce a hazardous radioactive gas cloud (in all seriousness, e.g. I'm waiting for a chemist to speak up about what would happen if a supersonic jumbo jet mysteriously aims itself directly at the below-grade reactor, and then let's say it had a water-based cooling system that now pours uncontrollably onto the exposed salt.”
Fortunately, I am a professional chemist. In the scenario you describe the water coming in contact with the extremely hot salt would instantly cause a steam explosion that would destroy the facility. In the explosion a lot of hydrogen gas would be generated from the highly reducing salt solution. This would cause a hydrogen explosion. Massive amounts of fallout would be released into the environment. Since the industry does not want to build an expensive containment building the explosion would be uncontained. This supports my claim of lack of care about safety.
Abbott describes how many reactors would need to be built to illustrate the size of the problem. Since only a handful of reactors are currently built each year the rate of building would have to increase by a factor of about 100.
You say “the usual debate over nuclear power is not whether we should build 15,000,000 MW of nuclear capacity, but whether we should build any whatsoever”. Abbott discusses building only 1500 reactors at the end of his paper.
If less than 1500 reactors were built than almost all power would have to come from wind and solar. In a renewable world the most valuable energy is peak power on windless nights. Baseload is not valuable at all. It would be much more cost effective to build out more renewable or storage. We would not need to worry about radiation safety, nuclear waste or weapons proliferation.
You say “Um, you mean heat? Why wouldn't you just call it heat?” No, Abbott means entropy. You obviously did not take college chemistry or physics. Heat and energy are similar. Entropy is complicated but for this discussion it is similar to randomness. As heat increases the drive to increase randomness increases. This causes materials to corrode, crack and fail much faster. The problem is especially bad for MSR’s because the salt is also especially corrosive. Alloys that can withstand the heat and corrosion of MSR”s, for example in the valves that control the salt solution, have not been found. They may not exist. The reactors you favor cannot be built until after the alloys for the valves are discovered. This is another example of something you are lecturing us about that you do not understand at all.
You say” My God, is that a citation? Great, now I have to go look at it to see if it has merit. I need to go to sleep momentarily.” Abbott provides citations for all his claims. If I were moderator I would warn or ban you for making game of citations. Where did you get your PhD in reactor design that you are qualified to determine if the citation has merit??? Since you have proven that you do not understand how reactors work, how will you determine if the citation has merit?
If an airplane crashes it does not cause hundreds of thousands of people to be removed from their homes and businesses. In any case, for only two faults the Boeing 300 airliner was grounded until they fix the problem. If that standard was applied to reactors all the reactors in the world would be shut.
You say “anyone who wants to make nuclear reactors cheaper must necessarily also make them less complex; good Gen IV designs are simpler than Gen III.” For myself, I would prefer that reactors were made safer and not cheaper. If your priority is profits for the nuclear industry that is your choice.
Nuclear is uneconomic. The total costs for a new wind or solar plant including the mortgage is less than the costs of operation and maintenance without a mortgage of a nuclear plant. Industry claims of greater inherent safety are not supported by data. You rely entirely on industry propaganda to support your argument.
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RedBaron at 00:34 AM on 15 June 2019State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019
@John 22,
To answer your question about SOC depends on the testing protocol used. Most importantly is a depth of at minimum 40cm. More commonly 100 cm gives a better more acurate figure. In a mature grassland the depths of soil sequestration can be 5 meters or more though. So a lot really does depend on depth of taking samples and the root depth of the species of grasses and forbs in your pasture. (as well as if they are C4 or C3 dominant blends)
The conversion factor to obtain SOC from SOM is approximately 1.7 - 2 . So your grassland is approximately roughly 2.75% SOC and not even close to saturation even though apparently your gains may have stopped? As a general rule most grassland soils can fairly easily reach 6% SOC. After that they tend to get deeper rather than actually increasing SOC % much. (unless they are muck or peat based soils)
It would take a bit more investigation to say exactly why they stopped? If they did? But I suspect there is room for improvement if your goal is to use them as a carbon farming sink.
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John Wise at 23:45 PM on 14 June 2019State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019
Red Baron: On my farm I take soil samples and send them for testing. Results are reported for various nutrients and for organic matter(OM). My crop land OM runs around 4%. OM in my permanent pastures is constant at around 5.5%. Is the carbon that is sequestered through the anabolic processes you reference reflected in OM percentages in standard lab soil testing?
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michael sweet at 21:48 PM on 14 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Barry,
Your claim "The paractce is much higher and a single reactor is the exception. Typically 6 reactors are nowerdays placed in a facility for infrastructure savings." is false. According to this list only a handful of facilities world wide have 6 reactors at a single location. In the USA the most is 3.
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