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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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michael sweet at 21:28 PM on 14 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Barry:
Your primary objeciton to Abbott and here 2011 is your claim that hafnium is not used in civilian reactors.
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.
This is conclusive proof that your claim hafium is not used in civiian reactors is false. Since that was your primary complaint about Abbott you have no ground for any complaint.
That fact that Abbott 2012 is so similar to Abbott 2011 indicates that the editors of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists invited Abbott's paper because they felt it was important. Your complaints about Abbott are not supported.
Reviewing your previous posts I see that you have provided no citations at all to support your claims, not even industry propaganda. Apparently you want to throw away the published literature and argue based on what you think instead.
Since I have shown that you are not a reliable source of information about reactors that seems to me to be a bad idea. In addition, it is in contradiction to the comments policy here.
You must provide links to confirmed data to support your wild cliams.
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MA Rodger at 20:17 PM on 14 June 2019Climate's changed before
TVC15 @743,
Hansen's book 'Storms of my Grandchildren' is not a scientific work and I have been critical of it for not being scientifc while making overly-bold statements on Sea Level Rise, statements which others take-&-use as being scientific statements. But with both SLR and this Venus Syndrome issue Hansen has made good by later publishing the science. With respect to the Venus Syndrome issue, he references in the Colombia Uni blog (linked @741) the forth-coming paper Hansen et al (2013) 'Climate sensitivity, sea level and atmospheric carbon dioxide' and in particular Fig 7 (below) which shows that above 16 x 310ppm (5,000ppm) the tropopause disappears (the atmosphere stops getting warmer through the stratosphere) which would see the Earth's water begin to leach out into space.
I wouldn't be sure whether burning all the fossil fuel reserves and then precipitating CO2 emissions from the biosphere etc would manage to achieve 5,000ppm CO2 but it is all rather academic. The damage to humanity, indeed to life on Earth would be unconscionable a long way before 5,000ppm CO2 is reached.
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MA Rodger at 20:06 PM on 14 June 2019Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
TVC15 @347,
The (Fig 10) graph is non-controversial & quite well travelled.
TVC15 @346,
Indeed!! Wien's displacement Law is a new one on me. And it is totally irrelevant. Your "very disengenious climate denier" is speaking through a wrong orifice and note he totally fails to quantify the "far more powerful" nature of H2O. He goes not further than effectively say 'See!! Lots of numbers!!!!'
The three primary absorption bands of CO2 do lie at 2.7, 4.3 & 15 microns. The 2.7 micron band features in the tail end of the solar radiation part of the spectrum while the 4.3 micron one sits between the incoming and outgoing part of the spectrum. Our friend ignores the compound absorption bands at 10 microns which is today quite insignificant but would begin to significantly add AGW above 3,000ppm.
Different bands can have a more powerful absorption than others. So the 4.3 micron CO2 band is stronger than the 15 micron one, but of course it requires radiation to operate and there is effectively no radiation at 4.3 microns.
The height of the GHG in the atmosphere is very relevant. If H2O were not "concentrated near the Earth, unlike CO2", its GHG effect would be far srtonger - the "very disengenious climate denier" gets this arse-about-face.
The "very disengenious climate denier" is however correct in saying that H2O provides a far greater amount of GHG-effect that CO2. Without CO2, if H2O levels were maintained somehow, the GHG-effect would be 80% or so of its present strength. But without the CO2, that 80% cannot be maintained as in a cooler atmosphere the H2O levels are lower, and lower and lower as it cools until effectively the GHG-effect disappears.
Thus it is plain. With no CO2, there is no GHG-effect on planet Earth. So saying "water vapor is the driver of climate, not CO2" is another arse-about-face assertion from your "very disengenious climate denier."
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RedBaron at 19:06 PM on 14 June 2019State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019
@20 Postkey,
Its not bad. I would have prefered more citations, but they got the systems science down pretty good.
I just get annoyed when the systems science guys don't "show their work". (to steal a math metaphore) Makes it tough to find and verify the building blocks to the systems they describe. That leaves people like me hunting for them over weeks, months and even years sometimes.
But ultimately yes, they appear to have the view of the forest rather than the trees based on my research of others who have come to the same overall conclusion. (independantly?)
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Postkey at 17:57 PM on 14 June 2019State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019
RedBaron @19.
Hello,
Is 'this' relevant to your 'discussion'?
“July 6, 2018 by Brandon Young
Fixing Climate Change – Boosting Nature’s Cooling System
. . . The best solutions for improving agricultural yields also happen to be the best way to solve climate change. They involve understanding the dynamics of the Earth’s soil-water-carbon system, and how it acts as a great sponge, and that this drives nature’s cooling and carbon draw down system at the local level, at the global level, and at all scales in between.”www.fixingthesystem.net.au/2018/07/06/boosting-natures-cooling-system/#more-312
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TVC15 at 17:08 PM on 14 June 2019Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
Ops sorry for my typos above.
This is the website the denier took the graph from.
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DPiepgrass at 17:07 PM on 14 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Michael sweet, Abbott 2011 is an opinion piece, not a study, and while Abbott is clearly intelligent, so is climate science denier Richard Lindzen, who has "published more than 200 scientific papers and books".
Nuclear issues are clearly not Abbott's main academic focus. He has made claims that are obviously unreasonable, and when such claims are not backed by citations, I see no reason to give them as much weight as the information I've seen in technical presentations by, say, Jesse Jenkins, expert in energy systems, or Dr. Brian Sheron, former Director of the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, or MSR engineers such as Kirk Sorensen or Ian Scott, or even this discussion of how radioactivity decreases over time in HLW. While fair and reliable sources are hard to find, I've been around the block enough times to know roughly what's what.
Anyway, I'll certainly share what I've been able to find from the scientific literature on nuclear issues. Chiefly:
On Radiation Risk
The main disease caused by radiation is non-CLL leukemia (in some cases there are other risks, e.g. radioactive iodine can cause thyroid cancer.) Here is a "meta-analysis of leukemia risk from protracted exposure to low-dose gamma radiation". It concluded, based on 23 other studies, that the excess relative risk (ERR) of non-CLL leukemia from 100 mGy of radiation is roughly 19% (it is unclear to me if 100 mGy is different from 100 mSv). Based on a typical non-CLL leukemia rate of 10 cases per 100,000 people per year, ERR=0.19 would increase this by roughly 1.9 cases per year (1 in 53,000 people). The risk varies as a function of time since exposure, but this particular study seemed to completely ignore the issue. If one assumes ERR=0.19 every year for 25 years after exposure, the chance of cancer from exposure to 100 mGy would be about 0.05%. "25 years" is a guess on my part, so if you can find any study that quantifies the risk more clearly as a "1-in-X chance" or as a loss of DALYs, I'd love to see it! For reference, the natural environment gives an average radiation dose around 2.4 mSv per year (Hendry et al 2009 citing UNSCEAR), though I've heard urban environments tend to block some of this. The Canadian NSC limit for radiation workers is 100 mSv over 5 years.
Waddington et al 2017 concluded that "relocation was unjustified for the 160,000 people relocated after Fukushima," since the radiation dose most residents would have received (after returning from a brief evacuation period) was quite small and the loss of life expectancy was 3 months. The paper notes that
No radiation deaths occurred during or following the accident, however there were a number of deaths directly attributed to the relocation and subsequent relocation of the Fukushima population. Hasegawa et al. (2015) summarise that “After the accident, mortality among relocated elderly people needing nursing care increased by about three times in the first 3 months after relocation and remained about 1·5 times higher than before the accident.”
It also says "Relocation was unjustified for 75% of the 335,000 people relocated after Chernobyl."
It is considered unlikely that cases of thyroid cancer in children have increased around Fukushima due to radiation (Suzuki 2016) as most I-131 disappears within weeks of an accident.
See also the EPA's Q&A for Radiological and Nuclear Emergencies.
Various sources mention that uncertainties remain regarding the risk of low doses of radiation. UNSCLEAR recommends, for example, that
- Increases in the incidence of health effects cannot be attributed reliably to chronic exposure to radiation at levels that are typical of the global average background levels of radiation.
- The Scientific Committee does not recommend multiplying very low doses by large numbers of individuals to estimate numbers of radiation-induced health effects within a population exposed to incremental doses at levels equivalent to or lower than natural background levels.
- Increases in the incidence of hereditary effects among the human population cannot be attributed to radiation exposure.
I would submit that the reason for this uncertainty, despite much study, is that the effects are just too small to measure precisely.
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TVC15 at 17:05 PM on 14 June 2019Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
Hi,
I'm dealing with a very disengenious climate denier who tries to fool everyone that he's a self made scientist. *rolled eyes!
What denier misinformation are they playing when they post things liek this? I think they don't fully understand the graph they posted.
CO2 absorbs at 2.7 microns, 4.3 microns and 15 microns.
Since Earth does not emit Black Body Radiation at 2.7 microns, we only have to look at 4.3 microns and 15 microns, and we'll apply Wien's Law to both.
Wien's Law T (Temperature) = b / wavelength in micrometers, where "b" is a constant equal to 2,900 um-K.
T = 2,900 um-K / 15 um = 193°K = -112°F
T = 2,900 um-K / 4.3 um = 673.9°K = 753°F
What we can infer from science is that 4.3 microns has far greater energy than 15 microns, however the amount of Black Body Radiation Earth emits at 4.3 microns is minuscule, as this link proves:
https://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ee...absorption.gif
Water vapor is far more significant.
Water vapor is the primary absorber of incoming radiation and the largest and most significant reflector of out-going radiation.
Water vapor typically averages 13 TRILLION tons and by weight is far greater than CO2: 0.33% H2O vs 0.04% CO2.
In terms of relative humidity, Earth is about 75% at ground level, decreasing to 45% at about 5,000 meters. That means water vapor is concentrated near the Earth, unlike CO2.
Water vapor absorbs at 5.9, 6.5, 6.9, 7.2, 7.6, 8.2 and 9.6 microns.
Wien's Law:
T = 2,900 um-K / 5.9 um = 491°K = 424°F
T = 2,900 um-K / 6.5 um = 446°K = 343°F
T = 2,900 um-K / 6.9 um = 420°K = 296°F
T = 2,900 um-K / 7.2 um = 402°K = 263°F
T = 2,900 um-K / 7.6 um = 381°K = 226°F
T = 2,900 um-K / 8.2 um = 353°K = 175°F
T = 2,900 um-K / 9.6 um = 302°K = 83°FAs you can see from the graph and from Wien's Law, water vapor is far more powerful than CO2 could ever hope to be and generates far more energy than CO2 ever will.
Water vapor is the driver of climate, not CO2.
What the heck does Wien's Law have to do with it?
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TVC15 at 14:51 PM on 14 June 2019Climate's changed before
@ 737 MA Rodger
Dear MA Rodger,
I deeply appreciate all your knowledgeable responses to my posts with respect to the deniers I deal with! I have learned so much from you!
With respect to that denier who loves to misrepresent Jim Hansen he also loves to quote mine him and this is exactly what he posts about Jim.I don't understand the mindset of folks who behave in this disingenuous manner.
James Hansen is the Grand Imperial Kleagle Wizard of Global Warming and he had this to say:
In his book Storms of my Grandchildren, noted climate scientist James Hansen issued the following warning: "[i]f we burn all reserves of oil, gas, and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate the runaway greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale, I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty."
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RedBaron at 11:19 AM on 14 June 2019State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019
John @18,
Yes I am familiar with this argument. It has three major flaws and many more minor flaws.
- While it may (or may not) be possible to locally saturate with carbon a pasture or even a region, there is no where near enough CO2 in the atmosphere to saturate the soil sink worldwide. And since for any AGW mitigation strategy to be effective we need world wide cooperation, this is really just a merchants of doubt type argument and can be safely dismissed as irrelevant.
- It also relies on the flawed assumption that the soil mollic epipedon when it does degrade and lose its carbon, that carbon would go back to the atmosphere as CO2 in a similar way as forests ecosystems. Rather instead that carbon when it does eventually leave the soil is much more likely to enter the geological long cycle for carbon.
- That approach completely ignores the activity of methanotrophs on methane in grassland environments as if it did not even exist.
No where better can we find an example of how poorly this is applied to regenerative agriculture/ permaculture than this statement right from the beginning:
"This is to be achieved via intensification: for example by improving feed crop and animal breeding, optimising feed formulations, and by reducing the amount of land animals use, either by confining them in production units or by intensifying pastures.1
The extensively reared ruminant – which predominantly feeds on grass – is the most problematic of creatures since its productivity is low in relation to the land and feed it requires, and the volume of gases it emits per unit of meat or milk output is great."
That shows clearly they have not done their homework at all. They are comparing extensive agriculture with intensive (feedlot) agriculture, and actually doing a poor job of even that. But more importantly they are not even attempting to compare it to regenerative agriculture.
Clearly intensive agriculture including CAFOs (feedlots) can in many cases produce more meat, milk and fiber than extensive agriculture, but the grazing techniques being considered for AGW mitigation are also intensive. Called MIRG (managed intensive rotational grazing), they actually produce more meat milk and fiber than conventional intensive ag. So right there it shows the entire work is irrelevant to the subject. They haven't even analyzed the right methods! They are not comparing intensive feedlot agriculture to intensive rotational grazing at all.
I also think they made big systemic mistakes even in their analysis of extensive agriculture. Which for example is a net sink for both NO2 and CH4, yet because they have completely ignored the soil microbiome and its effect on atmospheric gasses, they have actually come to the rather ridiculous conclusion that somehow natural systems are causing anthropogenic global warming? Seriously? So now even breathing and passing gas is considered "emissions"? Clearly that group has a long way to go in understanding ecosystem function of plants, animals and microorganisms in a grassland biome. They are so far removed from reality it is kind of ridiculous and clownish. About the only part they got right is that intensive ag out produces extensive ag .... usually. Even that's not necessarily a given.
Either way though for anyone making any claims of agriculture's impact on atmospheric greenhouse effect must at minimum include this:
Soil Microorganisms as Controllers of Atmospheric Trace Gases
(H2, CO, CH4, OCS, N2O, and NO)Keeping in mind of course, that was the state of the science 23 years ago. Their paradigm is so obsolete that it was obsolete decades ago and it is literally laughably behind now that knowlege of AMF ecosystem function has been added since 1996. Not to mention an orders of magnitude increase in knowlege of the soil food web.
So yes, I know about flawed attempts to discredit attempts to change agriculture to sustainable methods, including flawed attempts to discredit the potential of the soil sink for carbon. However, this is a science based skeptic site and I highly recommend people here avoid going down that rabbit hole.
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barry17781 at 10:27 AM on 14 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Michael,
Abbott is not a definitive paper, it is an engieering "solution".
his 20.5 km^2 number as the requirement of a single reactor is false. It is based 70 % of the area being a buffer Zone, It also is based on only one reactor being placed in this site,
The paractce is much higher and a single reactor is the exception. Typically 6 reactors are nowerdays placed in a facility for infrastructure savings. He also does not take into account hat this buffer Zone is only applied in the USA not in the rest of the world.
Please could you be more circumspect when quoting Abbott
Work it out yourself
Moderator Response:[PS] We are desparately wanting an definiitive paper. Abbott is best we have unless you can provide something else. You are also making statements without providing sources to back them. Any further posts without supporting publications will be deleted.
[JH] Argumentative statement struck.
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scaddenp at 10:22 AM on 14 June 2019Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
I think there is Jesscars is a little confused about what the science actually states. There is a log relationship between concentration of CO2 and the surface irradation. (not temperature). ie, increase in CO2 since pre-industrial has caused average of 4W/m2 increase in surface radiation. To get another 4W/m2 of irradiation, then you have to double concentration again. (ie go to 800ppm). The relationship is always logarithmic, never linear. As to why, well it falls out of the radiative transfer equations but it is anything but straightforward. More recent work on it here.
There is no simple relationship between increase in CO2 and surface temperature, because of all the feedbacks that cut in on different timescales. eg water vapour response is near instant; albedo is complex time scale because of dynamics of ice melt; GHG feedback (eg methane from tundra, CO2 from ocean) are on millenial scales. The Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) tries to estimate this and best guess is 2.8-3C for doubling of CO2 but with wide bounds.
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John Wise at 09:39 AM on 14 June 2019State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019
RedBaron: Are you familiar with Oxford University's Food Clmate Research Network study "Grazed and Confused"? It asserts that regenerating degraded soils by converting them to pasture will indeed sequester carbon, but that soils cannot do this indefinitely. The study says that once a soil reaches capacity, the amount of carbon it can then sequester is minimal, and is outweighed by the methane emissions of the grazing cattle. https://www.fcrn.org.uk/sites/default/files/project-files/fcrn_gnc_report.pdf
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ebelba at 08:06 AM on 14 June 2019Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
Jesscars - just a comment about the log relationship. My intuition is as follows: imagine a completely dense wall of CO2 completely blocking all of the parts of the infrared spectrum that CO2 is known to block. That is the maximum theoretical contribution. As you create gaps by halving that wall, you allow infrared to escape. We are coming at it from below, doubling. It has to be something almost asymptotic to that wall. A log has the right shape - as a practical matter its not really a log, because the total amount of CO2 that could be put in the atmosphere from all stored forms is finite. So a log is a good approximation to the asymptotic relationship as we get to higher levels. At very low starting values close to zero, it could easily be linear (or more).
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scaddenp at 07:49 AM on 14 June 2019It's the ocean
This article is explicitly refuting William Gray assertion. Your points hardly reference that. In the past, CO2 most certainly came from ocean as it warms and it will again in a few 100 years (currently ocean is undersaturated for atmospheric CO2 levels and absorbing CO2). However, the current increase in CO2 is not from oceanic CO2 ( you cant have ocean as source when CO2 content in ocean is increasing), but from our emissions.
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Eclectic at 22:05 PM on 13 June 2019Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
3-d Construct @344 ,
I apologize for my inexpert comments : but I gather that you are in that state of mind (analogous to writer's block) where useful thoughts may be triggered by re-encountering stuff you've already been acquainted with . . . or even by comments which are vapid & klutzy.
So :-
* Quantification. Exactly how important is H2O in the stratosphere? In absolute terms or relative terms. Lower or upper stratosphere. Re-visit lapse rates and TOA concepts?
* Quantification of "supersaturated" water vapor at high altitude. Important, or too transient?
* There are 350 million square Km of ocean surface interacting with a thin rind [a few dozen Km] of planetary atmosphere. Is the high-altitude human contribution of water vapor genuinely significant?
* In comparison, there were subtle but measurable alterations in regional heat flux for the [ocean-free] expanse of the continental USA during the 3-day "shutdown" of jet flights immediately following the 911 terrorist event. IIRC, the lack of contrails did have the expected effect : cooler nights, warmer days. But of course the other 98% of the planet surface has more ocean and/or less air traffic.
* I gather Hansen has rather "walked back" his earlier comments about the dangers of runaway warming . . . and, as you say, the paleo evidence points to "moderate stability/resiliency" of global surface temperature.
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MA Rodger at 21:15 PM on 13 June 2019Climate's changed before
jesscars @739,
The variation of CO2 levels in very ancient times generally resulted from a balance between the amount of carbon being drawn down into the geology by rock-forming and the amount of carbon being ejected by volcanoes. Periods of mountain-building have an impact on that balance, as do periods of extreme volcanism. The results of modelling of very ancient CO2 levels (using GEOCARB III) have been pretty-much supported by the geological evidence.
The mechanisms that are at work at a more detailed level can be much more complex. Thus the last de-glaciation saw a rise in CO2 levels but that was the product of many different mechanisms, many of which didn't actually work to increase CO2 levels. Thus warming oceans increase CO2 levels but the significant increase in ocean volume as the ice melts into the oceans decreases it. Peat exposed to clmate change releases CO2 while increased bio-activity buries it. (See Ganopolski & Brovkin (2017) for a study of these mechanisms.)
You also ask specifically about the ice-age cycles. These have been the major feature of global climate for the last 3 million years and until about 1 million years ago they occurred every 40,000 years but now occur every 100,000 years. It is probably best to see ice-ages as being caused by the unstable nature of the full glacial climate. When triggered by the Milankovitch cycles heating the high northern latitudes, an interglacial will result from northern ice sheets melting out. Thus today, if the melt on Greenland were to become enough to drop the summit significantly (a likely event if AGW reached +1.5ºC for a few centuries), the lowered icy-cold top would warm enough to allow more melting and lower it further. Building it back up with new snowfall is a far slower process, so without the return of an ice-age, once ice sheets like the Greenland one begin to go, they go all the way.
The reason for the change from 40ky to 100ky ice-age timing is not truly understood. The trigger is the Milancovitch cycle, the 40ky from the tilt in axis & the 100ky from a component of the eccentricity variation. One theory is that dust (which increases the sunlight absorbed by ice) was greater in past 40yr ice-ages but now the soils that created that level of dust have been scoured away leaving un-dusty bedrock.
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michael sweet at 21:14 PM on 13 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
DPiepgrass,
you summarize the entire pronuclear argument when you say:
"Granted I'm not a nuclear expert and I have only found numbers like these on the web and in YouTube presentations; if someone can find a scientific paper that looks at nuclear waste and/or other nuclear issues"
We have a scientific paper that addresses nuclear issues. It is Abbott 2011 and Abbott 2012. Abbott 2011 is more readable for me while Abbott 2012 is in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Your reply of " I would think", " I thought I heard" and "My God, is that a citation? Great, now I have to go look at it" describe everything I have heard from nuclear supporters.
It is up to you to provide citations to peer reviewed papers to support your claims. Saying that you think the paper is incorrect does not mean anything.
Referring to wild claims you think you read somewhere on the internet does not compare to a peer reviewed paper written by an Engineer who has over 16,900 citations and an h index of 61.
Undemonstrated wild claims by nuclear designers are also not an appropriate response to a paper.
Perhaps this post should be left as an example of the type of post that is worthless.
Moderator Response:[PS] I have added Abbott 2012 to the article. And yes, we need comments that reference publications.
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