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Comments 10351 to 10400:
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icowrich at 20:32 PM on 21 July 2019Antarctica is gaining ice
My understanding is that the GRACE satellite shows that Antarctica was been losing mass throughout the years during which Zwally showed increases in sea ice extent. Since ice extent is a 2D measure, it can't acocunt for ice thickness the way GRACE gravity wave measurements can.
I'm not sure where to find the newest data from GRACE-FO, which llaunched in May, 2018 (I couldn't interpret it, anyway), but I am interested to see how the continent's mass has changed in recent years. -
Daniel Bailey at 08:06 AM on 21 July 201910 things a committed U.S. President and Congress could do about climate change
Because animal agriculture isn't the #1 problem. Read this post for edification and place any related comments on that topic there, not here.
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billev at 08:03 AM on 21 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
The current level of atmospheric CO2 has one cubic foot of CO2 distributed over each 2400 cubic feet of atmosphere. That faint presence is having no measureable effect on global air temperature.
Moderator Response:[DB] The radiative physics of greenhouse gases are well established. Please read this post and the comments for edification on your point. Place any related comments there, not here.
As an FYI, changes in the sun's output falling on the Earth from 1750-2011 are about 0.05 Watts/meter squared.
By comparison, human activities from 1750-2011 warm the Earth by about 2.83 Watts/meter squared (AR5, WG1, Chapter 8, section 8.3.2, p. 676).
What this means is that the warming driven by the GHGs coming from the human burning of fossil fuels since 1750 is over 50 times greater than the slight extra warming coming from the Sun itself over that same time interval.
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_V_Gun at 07:20 AM on 21 July 201910 things a committed U.S. President and Congress could do about climate change
I'd be interested to know why 'going vegan' isn't No. 1, let alone even listed?
If you're serious about the planet you should not be part of the problem.
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Rob Honeycutt at 02:02 AM on 21 July 2019Climate science comeback strategies: Al Gore said what?
Marshall119... I believe the key point is that Gore didn't make such a claim.
Even that phrasing "point of no return" is suspect. What would that even mean? What we know is that there are tipping points in the climate system where the climate issue becomes more of a crisis. We certainly don't know where those tipping points are, nor would we know likely for many years after crossing them.
What we do know is that, the harder we push the climate system outside of the normal bounds of the holocene, the more likely we are to create more climate crises. Emissions to date are going to mean bad stuff. At 1.5C it's going to be much worse. 2C will be worse than that. Beyond 2C is outside the bounds of the past few million years and we really don't know how bad it will get nor do we know how much affect we can have on the eventual outcome after that.
"Point of no return" means return to what? The way things were before the industrial revolution? The way things were in the 1950's? ...I don't know. But I do know things will never be the same. We've created an entirely new planet no matter where we go from here. The only rational question would be, how bad will we make it? A 1.5C planet will be a far more inhabitable place than a 3.5C planet.
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Marshall119 at 16:07 PM on 20 July 2019Climate science comeback strategies: Al Gore said what?
Seems to me the analyses of the comment use straw man responses. The original comment's claims are that 1) Gore predicted a "point of no return" in 10 years, and 2) the apocolypse has been postponed. There's no claim that Gore predicted we'd now be in the middle of a climate apocolypse or that we're not seeing evidence of climate change, as the analyses assert.
None of the strategies address the actual issue: Have we reached the point of no return that Al Gore predicted? If not, then has the point of no return been postponed?
If the answer to the first question is "no", then the comment is entirely correct. Of course "the point of no return" is an oft-used but seldom defined phrase, so perhaps there's argument about what it actually means. I assume it's the 2 deg. increase. If that's still the case, then there is indeed a postponement of Gore's "apocolypse" since since the Oct. UN Special Climate report sets 2030 as the "point of no return".
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scaddenp at 07:13 AM on 19 July 2019The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Schmidt is merely building on a long line of other papers and the paper is effectively a "quick a dirty" for the purposes of informing public discussion. From abstract:
"Much of the interest in these values is however due to an implicit
assumption that these contributions are directly relevant for the question of climate sensitivity."ie. it doesnt have a lot of relevance to the practise of climate science. Actual model codes are integrate over all gases and all absorbtion bands simultaneously. They reproduce observations of the radiation spectra with exquisite accuracy. Climate depends on how the system plays as a whole and the individual contributions of the gases in any particular atmospheric composition is of little practical interest.
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Daniel Bailey at 04:37 AM on 19 July 2019The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Perhaps you need to broaden and deepen your knowledge of the terminology used in this field, given that it is far outside your area of expertise.
For example, per Lacis et al 2010:“Ample physical evidence shows that carbon dioxide (CO2) is the single most important climate-relevant greenhouse gas in Earth's atmosphere. This is because CO2, like ozone, N2O, CH4, and chlorofluorocarbons, does not condense and precipitate from the atmosphere at current climate temperatures, whereas water vapor can, and does.
Non-condensing greenhouse gases, which account for 25% of the total terrestrial greenhouse effect, thus serve to provide the stable temperature structure that sustains the current levels of atmospheric water vapor and clouds via feedback processes that account for the remaining 75% of the greenhouse effect.
Without the radiative forcing supplied by CO2 and the other non-condensing greenhouse gases, the terrestrial greenhouse would collapse, plunging the global climate into an icebound Earth state.”
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/co2-temperature.html
https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/lacis_01/
https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/schmidt_05/
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/vapor_warming.html -
Ddahl44 at 03:30 AM on 19 July 2019The human fingerprint in the daily cycle
Part of my residency training in Emergency Medicine and continuing education involves review of scientific articles of relevance to our specialty including controlled prospective trials, literature reviews, and policy statements. Schmidt’s language, specifically his allocations based on estimated attributions and inferences is quite foreign at least to scientific review in my field. At a minimum it seems somewhat arbitrary, lacks objectivity, allows for author subjective interpretation of data and opens up the potential of bias. This concerns me if this is a go-to reference in the field.
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SirCharles at 23:53 PM on 18 July 201997% consensus study hits one million downloads!
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SirCharles at 23:23 PM on 18 July 201997% consensus study hits one million downloads!
Another peer-reviewed study by James Powell:
=> The Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming Matters
Moderator Response:[DB] Please reduce image widths below 550 to prevent them from breaking the page formatting.
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Eclectic at 12:11 PM on 18 July 201997% consensus study hits one million downloads!
One marker of the success of the 97% from Cook et al., 2013 study is that the 97% figure is still causing major heartburn in the foremost ranks of the denialists, some 6 years on. They still recycle their arithmetic fantasies that the 97% ought to be seen as 33% or even 3% .
And they stay completely silent about the part of the study where the self-assessments survey shows a similar 97% .
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Daniel Bailey at 11:24 AM on 18 July 201997% consensus study hits one million downloads!
How many downloads for Watts' Fall et al paper, again?
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Bob Loblaw at 10:18 AM on 18 July 201997% consensus study hits one million downloads!
That's an impressive, steady rate of downloads - for an impressive volunteer-driven effort of "citizen science".
Queue the usual arguments that science is not driven by consensus.
Queue the debunking that points out that the paper is direct evidence against the argument that the level of disagreement is large.
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Doug Bostrom at 06:57 AM on 18 July 201997% consensus study hits one million downloads!
That's a dandy post. This guy John Cook should write here more often. :-)
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TVC15 at 16:27 PM on 16 July 2019There's no empirical evidence
Geez!
Non-peer-reviewed manuscript falsely claims natural cloud changes can explain global warming
Flawed Reasoning: The authors' argument claims a correlation between cloud cover/relative humidity and global temperature proves that the former caused the latter without investigating whether they have the relationship backwards.
Inadequate support: The source of their claimed global cloud dataset is not given, and no research on their proposed mechanism for climate change is cited.
Fails to provide correct physical explanation: The manuscript incorrectly claims that the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide is caused by release from ocean waters. It also provides no explanation for the claim that an increase in relative humidity causes global cooling.
KEY TAKE AWAY
Warming related to human activities is estimated to be around 1°C over the past century. This document claims to overturn decades of scientific findings but provides neither the source of the data it uses nor the physics responsible for the proposed relationship between clouds and global temperature. -
TVC15 at 16:08 PM on 16 July 2019There's no empirical evidence
Hi everyone!
I've been away on a vaction and while away I found this news article pop up on my Android.
HomeWorld News Finnish study finds ‘practically no’ evidence for man-made climate change
The human caused climate change deniers are jumping all over this! How can this study be credible?
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Eclectic at 10:44 AM on 16 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #28
Nigelj , the "cosmic ray" article has been headlined as a Breakthrough , per that scrupulously-scientific and just-slightly propagandist organization, the GWPF. Also taken up by ClimateDepot & other bloggy deniosphere sites.
On somewhat tenuous grounds, the academicians at Kobe University etc have suggested that the latest geomagnetic reversal ( 780,000 years ago ) had — via a temporary increase in cosmic ray impingement — produced a variation, for several thousand years, in the Winter Monsoon in North-East Asia (but little effect on the Summer Monsoon).
As yet, I have been unable to see that this localized effect so very long ago, could have more than zero relevance to modern global climate or even the climate of the last 100,000 years. We already have experimental, historical, and paleological evidence that Cosmic Rays have negligible effect on world climate.
The GWPF seems to be scraping the bottom of the barrel, in its ongoing attempts to find a whisker of doubt about mainstream climate science. Not that such attempts are anything new, from the GWPF. As yet, the GWPF's batting rate is steady at Zero.
Moderator Response:[PS] Could any further discussion of this article please go to "it's cosmic rays". Thank you.
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nigelj at 07:18 AM on 16 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #28
Found something Here is an article on the new Japanese study on cosmic rays. The essence is they have found good evidence that cosmic rays affect earths climate by more cosmic rays leading to an increase in cloud cover, and this should produce a cooling effect. However cosmic rays have been increasing slightly since the 1980s so do not appear to be an explanation for the recent warming since that period, so its a bit academic.
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nigelj at 07:02 AM on 16 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #28
Regarding "Non-peer-reviewed manuscript falsely claims natural cloud changes can explain global warming". This being an alleged reduction in low cloud cover.
There's another similar research paper produced by a Japanese group (sorry can't remember where I saw this), that mentions that cosmic rays have an influence on cloud cover. They don't attribute the reduction in low cloud cover directly to cosmic rays, but they mention it in passing as if to suggest it might. However cosmic rays have been increasing slightly over the warming period of 1980 - 2018, so this should actually be producing more low cloud cover, so it is not an explanation for reductions in low cloud cover. So this research looks nonsensical as well.
This article is also relevant. It does seem to suggest low cloud cover is reducing.
“But a new study published in the July 24 issue of Science is clearing the haze. A group of researchers from the University of Miami and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography studied cloud data of the northeast Pacific Ocean — both from satellites and from the human eye — over the past 50 years and combined that with climate models. They found that low-level clouds tend to dissipate as the ocean warms — which means a warmer world could well have less cloud cover. “That would create positive feedback, a reinforcing cycle that continues to warm the climate,” says Amy Clement, a climate scientist at the University of Miami and the lead author of the Science study.”
“Getting data on cloud cover isn’t easy. There is reliable information from satellites, but those only go back a few decades — not long enough to provide a reliable forecast for the future. Clement and her colleagues combined recent satellite data with human observations — literally, from sailors scanning the sky — that go back to 1952, and found the two sets were surprisingly in sync. “It’s pretty remarkable,” says Clement. “We were almost shocked by the degree of concordance.”
“The data showed that as the Pacific Ocean has warmed over the past several decades — part of the gradual process of global warming — low-level cloud cover has lessened. That might be due to the fact that as the earth’s surface warms, the atmosphere becomes more unstable and draws up water vapor from low altitudes to form deep clouds high in the sky. (Those types of high-altitude clouds don’t have the same cooling effect.) The Science study also found that as the oceans warmed, the trade winds — the easterly surface winds that blow near the equator — weakened, which further dissipated the low clouds.”
“The question now is whether this process will continue in the future, as the world keeps warming. Scientists create climate models to try to predict how the earth will respond to higher levels of greenhouse-gas emissions, but only one model — created by the Hadley Centre in Britain — includes the possible impact of changing cloud behavior. And the bad news is that the Hadley model contains particularly high temperature increases for the 21st century, in part because it sees dissipating cloud cover as a positive-feedback cycle — meaning the warmer it gets, the less cloud cover there will be, which will further warm the earth. Though it’s just one data set over one part of the earth’s surface, the Science study indicates that the pessimistic Hadley model may be right. “These low clouds are like the mirrors of the climate system,” says Clement. “If they disappear, you might see that positive-feedback cycle.”
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nigelj at 06:38 AM on 16 July 201910 things a committed U.S. President and Congress could do about climate change
And the 11th thing could be incentives for buying electric cars. In New Zealand the government is considering such incentives by taxing cars and utility vehicles that have poor fuel economy and using this money to reduce the price of electric cars, hybrids and ICE cars with really good fuel economy. Imho this is not a bad scheme, because its practical and doesn't use tax payers money, and just gives the new technology a much needed boost.
This proposal is still under consideration, but will almost certainly pass into law even although the governmnet is a complex coaltion of three parties, two left leaning one centre right leaning (yeah its a weird coalition, a product of circumstances). All the parties are sympathetic to the idea, and the coaltion has the numbers to get the law through parliament, and that is all that is required in NZ, we dont have a senate, presidential vetos, and courts only have limited influence on new laws. So stuff actually gets done, and can't be destroyed by one single egotistical president who can do his / her own thing with so called "executive orders" (this looks like a dictatorship to me).
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MA Rodger at 20:03 PM on 14 July 2019Climate sensitivity is low
Penguin @375,
You specifically ask "Do we know what longer series or more recent data would show?"
The paper (or actually the paper of 2014) uses alleged low cloud data for 1983-2008 without describing the source. The dates suggest ISCCP data which has been sourced by the denialists on the Climate4you website to provide identical data. (Elsewhere Exeter University's Richard Betts describes Kauppinen & Malmi's cloud data as "at odds with peer-reviewed papers.") The paper also plots relative humidity 1970-2010 as a proxy for low cloud, again without attribution. A previous paper describes this as 700mbar & 850mbar data but using NCEP reanalysis data it looks more 700mbar than 850mbar. (So that's 3,000m - not exactly low cloud.) The temperature data appears to be based on HadCRUT4.
If you plot NCEP 700mbar data 1948 to date, it shows no change post-2010 while the global temperatures actually show significant rise. And pre-1970 there is a large Relative Humidity change 1948-60s which by Kauppinen & Malmi's grand theory would suggest a there was a rise in global temperature of +0.8ºC when, of course, global temperature was pretty-much flat as a pancake. The 850mbar data is a poorer fit 1970-2010 but also shows the same trends beyond the 1970-2010 period.
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Eclectic at 16:10 PM on 14 July 2019Climate sensitivity is low
Penguin ~ some more details about the JK&PM paper you mentioned :-
It is not a paper in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. It has been described as a re-hash of an older (and non-peer-reviewed) paper from Energy & Environment journal (which is a social journal, not a scientific journal).
It was based on a limited amount of information from old satellite data ~ which was subsequently found to be faulty. You can find extensive criticisms of it, by various respected scientists, at the high-quality blog climatefeedback.org/claimreview/non-peer-reviewed-manuscript-falsely-claims . . . . (etcetera)
Not only that, but JK&PM have made a number of other gross mistakes (such as saying that only a tiny portion of the 20th & 21st Century rise in atmospheric CO2 level derives from human influence).
Penguin, the short version is: the "No experimental evidence (etcetera)" manuscript was authored by crackpots and is rubbish from beginning to end. Laughable !
Penguin, if you'd like to gain some climate knowledge in a relaxed easy-going way, then have a look at "Climate Change — the scientific debate" by youtuber Potholer54 (a science journalist) and the whole follow-up series of videos (most, fairly short!) Not only very informative, but done in an entertaining & often humorous manner.
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Eclectic at 10:41 AM on 14 July 2019Climate sensitivity is low
Penguin, the response to the JK&PM paper is huge laughter.
A paper based on limited observations ( over just 25 years ) and giving a "calculated" climate CO2 sensitivity of 0.24 degreesC (transient sensitivity) . . . is laughable.
Also amusing, is the paper title. JK&PM themselves did no experiment !
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michael sweet at 10:02 AM on 14 July 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Msmith:
I do not usually discuss safety so I did not have citations at hand. Reading some background information I find that the National Academy of Science BEIR VII report, the most recent of 7 NAS reports on radiation, very strongly supports the use of linear response no threshold. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commision also uses LRNT. Apparently every health organization in the world and every nuclear regulatory organization in the world use LRNT. Your claim that you think LRNT is bunk just proves that you do not care how many people the nuclear industry kills.
Apparently nuclear industry shills in the USA oppose the use of LRNT without any supporting data. The nuclear industry does not want to accept responsibility for the people they kill with their nuclear catastrophes.
Since the NAS report shows your claims on LRNT are false I have absolutely no confidence in your wild claims that unbuilt designs will be safer than current unsafe reactors. In any case, it is extremely unlikely they will be available before renewable energy has been built out for all energy. And they will be too expensive. Nuscale executives have publicly stated that they require a several hundred billion dollar contract from the government to build their factory. Some free market.
You have not addressed Abbotts claims that enough rare metals do not exist to build out a significant amount of nuclear. To start out there is not enough uranium, beryllium, hafnium, zirconium or vanadium.
The nuclear industry is responsible for the people they killed during the required evacuations from Chernobyl and Fukushima. No responsible person would leave people next to burning and exploding reactors. Your excuses only show you do not care how many people the nuclear industry kills.
I suggest again that you should change the subject to something that will support your argument better. From my position you have just proven that nuclear supporters do not care how many people they kill. There is an overwhelming scientific consensus for LRNT among health professionals who care how many people are killed.
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michael sweet at 09:32 AM on 14 July 2019Climate sensitivity is low
Penguin,
In hte paper you cite they claim that climate sensitivity is derived completely from cliamte models. That is false. there are several ways to derive climate sensitivity from data includig paleoclimate data. I note they provide no citations to support their claims. They will only be read by skeptics.
They assume that the change in cloud cover forces the change in temperature. That is completely backwards. Cloud cover is a response to the change i temperature and not the casue of the change. In order to chage the temperature you have to add energy. Changes in clouds do not add energy.
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Penguin17935 at 08:27 AM on 14 July 2019Climate sensitivity is low
What's the response to this paper? Do we know what longer series or more recent data would show?
Thanks
No experimental evidence for the significant anthropogenic climate change
Moderator Response:[JH] Please read:
Non-peer-reviewed manuscript falsely claims natural cloud changes can explain global warming, Claims Review Edited by Scott Johnson, Climate Feedback, July 12, 2019
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Rob Honeycutt at 03:09 AM on 14 July 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #27, 2019
Wffrantz... Even your #1 is grossly oversimplified and insufficient. Plant life requires a vast number of things beyond sun, water and CO2 to survive. Example: you can't plant a redwood tree in the middle of the ocean.
All life on this planet is evolved to fit the environment in which it exists. When you change the conditions too rapidly (within a few generations) those life forms struggle and may die out.
As stated by the moderator, all the points you're posting have been addressed in the scientific research and explanations can be found on this site. As usual, I don't expect you'll take the time to learn what the science actually says, but if you are that unique individual who is open to learning more, I wish you the best. Climate science is a very large and complex topic. You have to work extra hard to get a full grasp of the issue.
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Eclectic at 02:51 AM on 14 July 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
MSMITH @103 ,
again, my apologies for my clumsy communication ~ in #101 my phrase "socio-economic conservatives" was poorly chosen. I was intending to mean that particular group which wishes to see no social change, no change in the "economo-technological" structure of our society.
That group is not Conservative (versus Liberal) in the common parlance of political partisanship. Yes, there is much more overlap with right-winger than left-winger ideologies . . . but it is a group wanting zero change (for various emotional reasons). Although they might blandly accept the next model of iPhone !
Essentially, their stick-in-the-mud attitude comes from a complex of resentments.
I believe there are many true conservatives (including right-wingers) who are happy to see the arrival of beneficial societal changes ~ it is just that their "palette" or "agenda" of improvements is somewhat narrower than those acceptable to liberals/left-wingers.
Unfortunately, in the USA, the terms conservative and liberal have become simply slogan-labels to be thrown around, and the mere mention of either word does (in many people) produce a complete cessation of the thinking process.
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MSMITH at 23:49 PM on 13 July 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Eclectic:
I understand your frustration. I experience the same, because, as can be seen above, I could take your post, replace "coal/oil" with "renewable", replace "conservative" with "liberal" and replace "renewable" with "nuclear" and be describing my interaction with Michael Sweet.
Science denialism is alive and well, but it's not a conservative-only malady. It exists on both sides of the argument, but just manifests in slightly different ways.
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MSMITH at 23:43 PM on 13 July 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Michael Sweet:
"claims from you and the nuclear industry that the linear response no threshold model overestimates cancers means that no-one will ever get cancer demonstrate you do not care how many people they kill."
No, it shows that I believe it's bunk. I believe the risk due to low level radiation dose is effectively zero, and nobody has ever been able to prove me wrong.
If something divided by zero is always equal to 1, then I can show 10 = 20.
Well, Lyman is showing that 10=20, and he's doing so in a way that you believe him.
If the LNTH were true, then people desiring to confirm it would simply study a population on the earth who is routinely exposed to higher than normal background radiation, find the difference in cancer mortality, and proclaim their findings far and wide.
Those studies have been made, but
<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2663584/">have not shown a cancer risk.</a>
"People living in Kerala, India, experience lifetime terrestrial irradiation of up to 70 mSv a year, much higher than other populations in India, without an increased risk of carcinogenesis. " (100 Rem = 1 Sv. So, 70 mSv = 7 Rem, which is higher than the limit for US Nuclear workers.)
I know I won't convince you, but I do need to present the counter-point, lest somebody actually believe the bunk put out by Lyman. They can read Lyman, and then read Tubiana et al and judge for themselves.
As for the French Nuclear Regulatory Agency's opinion, I will wait to see those reactors put up for a design certification with a regulatory body, then research the design before I offer comment. I was specifically talking about NuScale, which is progressing very well through the USNRC's review.
And the UCS is an interesting organization. For years they've been saying that reactors are unsafe because they need power after shutdown to maintain fuel cooling. Then somebody goes and makes a design for which that is no longer true, and now they say it's unsafe because the safety design doesn't include pumps.
<a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-power/cost-nuclear-power/retirements">But even they now support nuclear.</a> Or, at least don't oppose it like they used to. (But hey, tepid support is better than outright opposition. Considering the source, I'll take it.)
"I do not buy your improved safety claims."
And that's your right. Of course, it would be helpful to future readers if you were to explain why flooding is a risk to a nuclear reactor that's submerged in a below-grade pool of water and whose safety systems all go to the required safety position when power is lost.
The AP1000 design, which is being built in GA (vastly over-budget, to be sure) is still dependent on DC power to activate the last-line of defense valves. The backup to the backup there to blow the last of these valves in the event DC power is lost is literally one of those Wille E. Coyote dynamite plungers. But that requires an operator to get to the location, make the connections, and blow the valves. So, could I imagine a scenario where flooding causes core damage there? Yeah. It's unlikely, and probably wouldn't result in Fukushima type releases to the public since the AP1000 containment doesn't need DC power to remain cool, but yes, such a scenario could occur.
But I can't imagine a similar scenario for a NuScale reactor.
Can you?
And lastly, the evacuation deaths: If your cousin's home burned down, and somebody ordered an 5 mile radius evacution based on fear that some of the weed killer he stored in his garage might emit a carcinogen when burned, would your cousin be responsible for the deaths that occured during the evacuation?
No. That argument is surely one you would reject. The fault lies with those who order a needless evacuation.
But I could also argue that it's not the politician's fault, since they're only responding to pressure from their constituancy. I could argue that it's your fault for spreading baseless fears.
And this very point has been made with respect to Chernobyl, but orgainizations such as the World Health Organization and others. From Tubiana et al above:
"The Chernobyl accident showed that overestimating radiation risks could be more detrimental than underestimating them. Misinformation partially led to traumatic evacuations of about 200 000 individuals, an estimated 1250 suicides, and between 100 000 and 200 000 elective abortions outside the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics"
And from the <a href="https://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/backgrounder/en/"> World Health Organization</a>:
"The accident has had a serious impact on mental health and well-being in the general population, mainly at a sub-clinical level that has not generally resulted in medically diagnosed disorders. Designation of the affected population as “victims” rather than “survivors” has led to feelings of helplessness and lack of control over their future. This has resulted in excessive health concerns or reckless behaviour, such as the overuse of alcohol and tobacco, or the consumption of mushrooms, berries and game from areas still designated as having high levels of radioactive caesium."
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Philippe Chantreau at 23:23 PM on 13 July 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #27, 2019
Wffranz,
Gish gallop of nonsense, contradictions, demonstably false statements that in no way represent the state of the science, pitiful attempts at appearing concerned. I'm not impressed.
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Wffrantz at 09:43 AM on 13 July 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #27, 2019
Climate change is a critical science. We need to understand how humans impact our home.
But, it's my opinion (don't know it it's allowed) that the movement to get funding from governments will backfire and die a premature death because they have chosen CO2 as the enemy.
1) The long historical record does not support that
... CO2 is a leading indicator of temperature change (the opposite can be shown)
... As CO2 levels increase, that heating rates increase (the correlation is extremely low).
2) Recent records (120 years) does not support that the accelerating rate of CO2 increases and absolute highs are causing accelerating rates of heating (which it should if the science was correct).
3) Before long, it will be clear to the general public that the earth is greening dispite what dismissive climate scientists say about the minor affect to no effect that CO2 will have on crop and plant growth (they are digging a deaper hole). Earth greening contains the word green. That will be difficult to villify.
The movement chose the wrong enemy. They should intead embrace fossile fuels that increase CO2 (lessens poverty) but warn against warming oceans and the decreasing pH of the oceans and what that might do to organisms that rely on the basic pH of the ocean.
Governments need to understand the trade between a more efficient agriculture and damage to the seacoast. That is worth big $$$ in research. It's also real and won't backfire.
Just my opinion.
Moderator Response:[DB] You continue to be off-topic. Thousands of threads exist at SkS on virtually every topic pertaining to climate change. Use the Search feature to find the most relevant one or peruse the Taxonomy listing. Pretty much everything you've said above has been addressed at length before. Repeating failed talking points debunked hundreds and thousands of times before does you no credit. Please read the thread you select before posting and stay on-topic.
Anyone wishing to respond to the above, please do so here.
Future off-topic comments will be removed.
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Wffrantz at 09:20 AM on 13 July 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #27, 2019
The new research referenced above on Greening on the Tibetan Plateau says that "The major significant greening trend of the TP was mainly caused by climate factors." ... and then goes on to talk about warming on the TP.
Has the "CO2 is a poison" parade become so embedded into climate change science that geologists and general scientists have forgotten 4th grade biology class?
Let me get this straight. CO2 causes warming. And it's warming increases plant growth. And associates that accept this research actually want intelligent skeptics that embrace the scientific method to believe what they say?
NASA has it right. But even they have to down play the obvious with qualifiers. At least this site allows scientific discussion without fear of reprisal. For the NASA study ...
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
I hope that we can all agree the CO2 between the 500 and 2000 level is beneficial to a wide range of common flora. Two reasons:
1) The three requirements of most flora life are sun, water, and CO2.
2) As CO2 levels increase, the pores/system that take in CO2 become more efficient, which results in (a) an increase in photosynthetic rate, (b) a decrase loss of water vapor from inside the plant out those same pores (called transpiration) ... allowing plants to grow faster, produce more photosynthesizing green leaf matter, be more draught tolerant, and healthier (more tolerant to disease and insects).
Moderator Response:[DB] Off-topic, logical fallacies and sloganeering snipped.
Please read this thread and the comments on it before you post further on that topic. Place any relevant comments about CO2 fertilization there.
Anyone wishing to respond to the points snipped, please do so there. -
nigelj at 07:32 AM on 13 July 2019Disappearing sea ice is changing the whole ecosystem of the Arctic Ocean
The Orca that are moving into the arctic are apparently eating seals, so competing with the polar bears for the same food source. This video is of whales hunting seals on ice in Antarctica.
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Eclectic at 01:44 AM on 13 July 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
MSMITH @99 ,
sorry ~ my comment was insufficiently unambiguous : I meant that the wide-scale employment of Nu-Scale or similar generation is possible by 2050, but that probably (IMO) it would not come until the tail-end of that important 30-year period (important because of the need for early achievement of zero-CO2-emission). I hope I am wrong about that. But I am pessimistic, because of the current uneconomic state of nuclear generation, and because of its poor track record of on-budget-on-time.
I think you are right that there is, in most people, no overt intellectual opposition to wind/solar generation. Yet there does seem to be (in the USA especially) a hard-core group of science-denialists & socio-economic conservatives who consider "renewables" to be loathesome. Loathesome because representing an acknowledgement that AGW is real.
This point came home to me a few days ago, when I read a brief WhatsUpWithThat website article describing how some researchers were developing a more efficient solar PV panel (higher efficiency in the short-wave/near-UV part of insolation). The efficiency gains were modest, and the economics yet uncertain . . . but the idea that solar-PV could be achieving an extra advantage, seemed to unleash a fury of negativism from the posters in the comments column.
The anger seemed entirely inappropriate ~ and must surely have had an emotional origin, based on the tribal resentment of anything presenting more threat to the traditional coal/oil fandom of this section of the population. And perhaps smaller, subconscious ripples of that sort extend into a wider community than the crackpots who inhabit WUWT .
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Rob Honeycutt at 23:51 PM on 12 July 2019France’s record-breaking heatwave made ‘at least five times’ more likely by climate change
jedaly... You don't seem to be offering up anything more than chiding as a response, though. If you think the science presented is wrong it would be up to you to demonstrate exactly how the science is wrong.
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michael sweet at 23:01 PM on 12 July 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Msmith,
I have worked professionally with large amounts of radiation, I have held a Curie of high energy beta in my unshielded hand, and saw all the information you cite on radiation during my workplace training.
Barry at 75 cites James Conca who writes at Forbes to claim nuclear has the lowest death rate. Doing background reading I found Conca claims only 51 total deaths from Chernobyl including long term cancers. The Union of Concerned Scientists states that 54 people are known to be killed immediately from radiation poisoning. A further 4,000 cancers are expected among the highly exposed gneeral population and 27.000 total cancers are exected worldwide. Conca's estimates are a factor of approximately 500 too low. He is widely cited by nuclear supporters. MIchael Schillenberger uses the same numbers as Conca.
Conca and Schillenberger claim Fukushima killed zero people while peer reviewed studies estimate 1000 killed by radiation, in addition to 600 killed during the required evacuation.
These numbers from spokesmen of the nuclear industry and claims from you and the nuclear industry that the linear response no threshold model overestimates cancers means that no-one will ever get cancer demonstrate you do not care how many people they kill. It has been widley repoorted in the newspaper that exposure to low levels of the many chemicals we have in everyday life result in increased death rates. More radiation has to be bad for a population even if it is not statistically significant.
If we multiply Conca's estimates of deaths from nuclear by 500 to account for his deliberate low balling we see that nuclear actually has a very high death rate compared to other utility generation sources. I note that utility solar generation is deliberately left off Conca's chart since it has such low death rates.
As I have posted already upthread, The French Nuclear Regulatory Agency sees no inherent safety improvements in Generation IV reactors and the Union of Concerned Scienitsts show that claims of greater safety are a scam to get safety standards lowered. I do not buy your improved safety claims.
All of this has been argued upthread already. I suggest you move on to other topics. My experience is that few people will shift their position on safety.
If you want to argue we should only consider new designs I respond that it will be much too late to implement them if they ever get approved. Dittmar 2012 a nuclear Physicist claims that any money spent on nuclear is wasted because nuclear cannot supply more than a small fraction of world energy. Nuclear currently supplies less than 2% of world energy. As MA Rodger points they are already short of uranium.
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MSMITH at 21:42 PM on 12 July 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Eclectic:
"expansion of nuclear power generation is incapable of making a significant abatement of the global warming problem (during the next say, 30 years) "
I would say "next 20 years." But that's a quibble. It is true that people don't want to take the economic risk.
And they should not.
But companies can, subject to approval of their shareholders and board of directors.
As for "build times" the only way NuScale is successful is if they actually build on schedule. And for that plant, it's a 5 year proposed time-line.
"ideologically opposed to wind/solar generation"
I think you might be misrepresenting some opinions. Very few people I know are "opposed" to wind or solar. They may be realists and recongnize that since both wind and solar have capacity factors in the 25% range that substantial additional costs will need to be paid to allow them to be baseload plants.
Can it be done? Sure. Will it be cheap? No. Having the mix of generation, diversity of fuels and technologies, allows for better resource allocation. It doesn't make sense to make the grid entirely nuclear powered.
But for me, the most promising use of something like the SMRs is the "Joint Use Modular Project" (JUMP) that the INL plans to run with one of the modules.
When not making electricity, they can keep the module at full power and use the steam for something else, like production of natural gas, which they can then store.
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jedaly at 21:34 PM on 12 July 2019France’s record-breaking heatwave made ‘at least five times’ more likely by climate change
Sorry boys & girls, Wffrantz is correct. There is nothing resembling credible scientific analysis going on here. Running a few Gameboy programs where garbage in produces garbage out is nothing like what actual scientists do. Especially going in reverse. Wow. And you want to equate economics with atmosperic physics? Huh? It's not propaganda to call out this kind of disinformation. Got a physics degree? Let me know.
Moderator Response:[JH] Sloganeering snipped.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.
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dneise at 18:13 PM on 12 July 2019It's not bad
Hello, not sure if a comment is the correct way to inform you about broken links, but I did not find another way to contact an author.
Please feel free to delete this comment, once the link was restored.
So which link is broken?I was just reading the intermediate version of "positives and negatives of global warming" I think this is the direct link:
https://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives-intermediate.htmUnder "Sea Level Rise" there is a link to "Dasgupta 2009" which leads to a "server not found" page, this is the LINK.
I think either of these links might be better:- http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4095
- https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/4095 -
Eclectic at 14:27 PM on 12 July 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
MSMITH @97 & prior ,
thank you for your useful contribution (of ideas and informations) to this thread.
While (IMO) an expansion of nuclear power generation is incapable of making a significant abatement of the global warming problem (during the next say, 30 years) ~ due to the projected slow-build times and the poor economics of "nuclear"
. . . . nevertheless, on the general principle of it being prudent to add diversity to our energy system, I hope that there will be some progress in the development of NuScale and similar power systems.
It all comes down to exactly how much resource allocation is reasonable, and at what opportunity cost. And whether the needed money would be entirely privately-funded or (largely) governmental. Still, it could be that the societal groups who are ideologically opposed to wind/solar generation . . . might be willing to contribute resources to "nuclear". Which would be something positive at least (even while they are denying that the AGW problem exists ! )
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MSMITH at 08:42 AM on 12 July 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
I am sorry for the broken links. I will try once more, with just the links to see if I can fix them:
Radiation in Everyday LIfe by the IAEA
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MSMITH at 08:29 AM on 12 July 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Michael Sweet:
I need to respond immediately to one thing: "In general I do not discuss radioactive waste or problems that radioactivity causes because nuclear supporters do not care how many people they kill with radioactivity."
I care very much that the death rate from nuclear power, at all levels of the process, from mining to final disposal is much less than that of other technologies. This has been mentioned early. But I would never accuse you of not caring (for example) about the number of people killed during erection of a wind turbine, nor would I accuse you of not caring about the number of people who die falling off a roof maintaining a solar panel.
I therefore consider it a misrepresentation of my position. You imply by your statement the following:
1.) The death rate from nuclear is higher than all other sources of power.
2.) Nuclear supporters know this.
3.) Nuclear supporters choose nuclear anyway, for some other reason.
Number 1 is demonstrably false. Number 2 are therefore rendered irrelevant.
"Personally attacking other users gets us no closer to understanding the science."
You are, however, correct that I did not mention transuranics. But my statement did say "on the order of natural uranium." Yes, transuranics are there, but as there has been no study that has detected any increase in death rates due to radiation exposure on the order of natural background radiation
From the Radiation in Everyday LIfe by the IAEA:
"There are many high natural background radiation areas around the world where the annual radiation dose received by members of the general public is several times higher than the ICRP dose limit for radiation workers. The numbers of people exposed are too small to expect to detect any increases in health effects epidemiologically."
So, if we have been unable to detect the health effects from doses several times higher than the limit for people working in the nuclear power industry, does it not stand to reason that health effects from doses of about 10% of that limit would also be undetectable?
"Nuclear supporters hope to have breeder reactors in 2050 which is too late."
No it's not. For the first 700 - 900 years or so, the radioactivity in spent fuel is dominated by the Sr-90 and Cs-137 I mentioned earlier. If somebody was worried about the dose due to transuranics, storage for even 100 years, followed by reprocessing at that point, provides adequate protection from that portion of the dose that comes from transuranics.
"I note that you have provided no citatioins even to nucear industry propaganda."
As stated in the beginning of my first post, I would establish facts and then support those that you did not agree with. As much of what I said comes from many years of study, from textbooks and in-depth coursework, and from references, it would be useless to go to great lengths to provide adequate references to something that you acknowledged openly.
But now that it's been questioned, I will respond to specifics:
"(90% of current reactors face serious flooding issues which they have not addressed)"
As we are talking about expansion of nuclear power, it makes sense to talk about new designs, not current designs. And specifically, since I did in fact mention SMR in reference to the Clinch River site, we'll simply mention that the flooding issue for the NuScale SMR is simply n/a. The reactor sits in a below-grade pool of water, and requires no power to remain in a safe condition. Flooding is literally not a concern.
And that's not my position. It's the NRCs position. They have accepted that the NuScale reactor needs no AC or DC power to remain safe, which of course is what killed Fukushima, and which all of the flooding concerns ultimately hinge upon.
"It is easy to say a location is suitable without considering the suppy of cooling water,"
A nuclear plant needs about as much cooling water as a coal plant. Replacing a coal plant with a nuclear plant uses the same water a coal plant was using.
"local population, availabiity of land,"
Site boundary sized Emergency Planning Zone. Those words mean something. They literally mean that I could place an SMR facility to replace of a coal plant and not need to worry about evacuations, or off-site dose, and not even worry about zoning, as it stays zoned for industrial.
Again, as reference, Here is the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Clinch River site.
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MA Rodger at 03:47 AM on 12 July 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Philippe Chantreau @84,
Surely, the big problem with scaling up nuclear power generation from 400-odd power plants to thousands is the fuel supply. According to the World Nuclear Association, today's power plants are chewing their way through 65,000 tons of uranium a year. World-wide reserves as of 2017 were 6 million tons with perhaps double that if expected reserves are added. That would power today's level of nuclear power for perhaps 200 years. But increase that level of nuclear power ten-fold and you only have the fuel for 20 years of operation.
The industry response to this limitation of fuel supply is not much more than hand-waving at the potential for new reserves that could be found if there is a need. But this is in the context of far less than a ten-fold increase in nuclear power.
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Philippe Chantreau at 01:57 AM on 12 July 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
It seems to me that nuclear proponents heavily push for technologies that have not really been proven and would take a long time to deploy. The enhanced geothermal plant at Soult sous Foret is a more proven solution, it is producing commercial electricity as we speak.
Nuclear also costs enormous amounts of money, too much for anything but a large public investment, but the public tends to end up with the short end of the stick in these ventures. In most instances I have heard of, the deal amounts to "your taxpayer's money builds us a plant, then we, the company with the know-how, operate it as if we owned it, raking in the profits." Sounds like a really good deal for one side.
The other problem is this: right now there are about 450 nuclear plants in the world, mostly in countries where a strong safety culture can be maintained. If this was scaled up to 10,000 or 50,000 plants in a wide variety of countries, it would be inevitable that some individual driven by a crazy ideology would at some point do something really stupid and criminal.
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michael sweet at 22:13 PM on 11 July 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Msmith,
In general I do not discuss radioactive waste or problems that radioactivity causes because nuclear supporters do not care how many people they kill with radioactivity. Nuclear is uneconomic and takes too long to build.
You have neglected to consider all the transuranic elements in the waste. They have much longer half-live than cesium and strontium. The typical time needed for them to decay is 100,000 to 1,000,000 years.
If you want to use breeder reactors to burn the trans-uranics you must first wait for the technology to be developed. Nuclear supporters hope to have breeder reactors in 2050 which is too late. Nuclear never makes its timelines. The cost of reprocessing the fuel, and the procedure to reprocess it, are unknown. I note that Ritchieb1234, who is a nuclear supporter, suggests that breeder reactors are not practical.
I doubt that you could find hundreds of suitable locations for reactors in the USA. It is easy to say a location is suitable without considering the suppy of cooling water, local population, availabiity of land, issues of flooding (90% of current reactors face serious flooding issues which they have not addressed) and other required issues. Multiple reactors at a single location require even more water. You need to place 4,000 1,000 MW reactors or 14,000 small reactors for the USA alone. Your claim of hundreds of suitable sites is simply false.
I note that you have provided no citatioins even to nucear industry propaganda.
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MSMITH at 11:49 AM on 11 July 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Michael Sweet
I am late to this conversation, as I just found it today. There is much I would like to respond to, but I'll start with your comment #90. Specifically the claim that "the waste must be stored for longer than civilization has existed."
I will not initially cite peer-reviewed articles. I will present facts, and if one of those facts is disputed, I will work to provide the support needed to establish the fact. For background, I have a Master's Degree in nuclear engineering.
The nuclear fission process produces something radioactive from something already radioactive. The splitting of U-235 after absorbing a neutron produces two different particles, each with it's own half-life. Most of these half-lives are measured in terms of seconds, minutes or hours. As a result, the radioactivity level drops rather quickly the first few days after fission stops, and then much more slowly.
So, a pertinent question is "how slowly?" Well, the answer is mostly the result of two isotopes that can be produced by fission (or the decay of another fission product with a shorter half-life.) These two are Sr-90 and Cs-137, both with a half-life of about 30 years. At the time they are discharged from the reactor, they are incredibly more radioactive than the Uranium they started as. But if you do the math, at the 1000 year point, they've dropped in intensity by about 10 factors of 10, or to 1 out of 10,000,000,000.
At that point, the radioactivity level of everything that remains is on the order of the natural uranium that started. WIll it be stored anyway? Yes, of course. But will it present a greater hazard to a person 1000 years from now than natural uranium left unmined?
No. If the source term is lower, the consequence of a leak, if one were to occur, can be no worse than leaving the natural uranium buried.
My quibble is with your use of the word "must." The waste "must" be stored until it is about the same radioactivity level as natural uranium. At that point, further storage is optional, at least from a risk perspective. We may establish a higher storage period, without technical merit, but we should recognize that a chosen period beyond about 1000 years lacks that merit.
And the Egyptians stored wheat in clay pots buried in pyramids for 1000 years. I think technology has advanced a tad since then.
One further comment, directly at the Abbott papers you cite in #90. The "limited available locations." Abbott was writing about the requirements for the locations of large light water reactors. Recently the NRC has reviewed a request for an Early Site Permit for Clinch River near Oak Ridge TN. They, after reviewing all of the technical data for a proposed Small Modular Reactor at the site, have concluded that the site is suitable for a SMR facility with a site-boundary sized Emergency Planning Zone. This one fact opens up the number of suitable locations by several orders of magnitude. I can easily meet Abbott's challenge to find 10 sites that would be suitable in just a few moments. I could find hundreds.
I am not claiming that Abbott was wrong. Simply that he did not have the precognition to apply the requirements of the future technology to the paper he was writing in 2012.
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nigelj at 07:17 AM on 11 July 2019Skeptical Science New Research for Week #27, 2019
Some other research with full text available for free: The influence of social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism on environmentalism: A five-year cross-lagged analysis.
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Philippe Chantreau at 02:09 AM on 11 July 2019It's the sun
ThirdStone,
You should ask yourself how you came to bring the question "why is this being ignored" instead of "is it true that this is being ignored."
You show very little familiarity with the subject in your disk to sphere comment. It is very likely that you were subject to faulty sources of information, which you nevertheless found credible enough to then come here asking a question indicating you accepted as an established fact that these influences were being ignored, when in fact they have been carefully considered and evaluated. Why did you find the faulty information credible? How much scrutiny did you apply to it?
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