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Comments 10801 to 10850:
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TomJanson at 11:03 AM on 8 June 2019Tree-rings diverge from temperature after 1960
If tree rings are only reliable for part of the instrumental record wht are they considered very reliable prior to the instrumental record?
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RedBaron at 07:40 AM on 8 June 2019State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019
@ELIofVA,
You asked if it includes natural forest areas like your home in VA. The answer is that it includes the open woodland/ savanna biomes that have a grassland understory but not the closed canopy forests.
This includes the other properties too. For example the grassland biome is also a net sink for methane, but a closed canopy forest is a net source for methane. However, the open woodland/ savanna is a net sink just like the open prairie.
Your claim that there were no native grasslands in Virginia is demonstrably false. Indeed the whole Shenandoah valley contained many grassland biomes from from the well-known Big Meadows to smaller areas along stream banks and every changing and evolving successional states scattered throughout. Deer and bison are indeed native species to Virginia that only feed on low vegetation and are not found in closed canopy mature forest. And once before human impact, there were also mastodons who like elephants are an ecosystem engineer keeping vast areas in continual renewal by removing trees and brush.
The ability to sequester carbon in large quantities is capable anywhere we do agriculture now + an addition bit in areas too degraded for agriculture now, but that were at one time capable of supporting a productive grassland before becomeing desertified by mankind.
Biochar is certainly useful and I have done some trials with it too. It is much smaller than the LCP but in fact the "bio diversity" in healthy soil that biochar promotes includes AMF so I do see it as useful together.
You said, "One theory about the Great Plains is that periodic natural fires created over long times charcoal giving it the black soil that holds biologicaly active carbon giving it fertility."
Yes what you are refering to as "black soil" is actually a mollisol. There have been many theories about where that molic epipedon came from including the fire one you mentioned. None of the older theories quite added up though.
The mollic epipedon is a key diagnostic epipedon in Soil Taxonomy (Soil Survey Staff 2010) and is recognized in many other soil classification schemes as black soil, Chernozems, chestnut soils, Brunizems, Phaeozems, and Kastanozems. The origin of the mollic epipedon is only partially understood; however, the relation between Mollisols and grassland or steppe has been recognized for more than a century (Shantz 1923). Soils containing a mollic epipedon are among the world’s most productive soils (Liu et al. 2012). The thickness and high soil organic carbon (SOC) contents of the mollic epipedon mean that these soils have sequestered large amounts of C over long periods of time. Mollic Epipedon
Now we know what can sequester enough carbon to have made this vast mollic epipedon. It is indeed the glomalin producing EMF found in symbiosis with grasses, especially C4 grasses mixed with other grasses and forbs. In other words the vast prairies and also the savannas and open woodlands of temporate areas containing understory grasses.
Fire certainly was a part of grasslands biomes especially when animals for some reason were too low in number to keep up with recycling the huge biomass produced annually. However, most that carbon gets returned to the atmosphere rather than creating new soil. We now know that theory was wrong and the black soils were mainly created by the LCP.
Oh and BTW Glomalin itself is not permanent, although very stable with a 7-42 year 1/2 life in the top A horizons, and up to a 300 year 1/2 life in the deeper B horizons. However, the key difference is that when it finally does decay, it forms humic polymers that tightly bind to the soil mineral substrate instead of decomposing to CO2. (creates the mollic epipedon mentioned above) So while glomalin is not permanent, a high % (~78% iirc) of its carbon is sequestered into deep geological timeframes. (unless we disturb that land with the plow and agrochemicals)
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ebelba at 06:12 AM on 8 June 2019Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
I've read the 1984 paper and the Proistesescu paper and subsequently a bunch of abstracts of papers on the feedback roles of land cover and land use, albedo, etc. It appears that one area causing a dispersion of uncertainty is the role of cloud cover albedo feedback. Is there a single source you would recommend which puts confidence intervals around each of the remaining sources of uncertainty as well as ranks the robustness of the existing models in each area, such as climate+land use, climate+vegetative cover, climate+cloud cover albedo, etc.?
thanks for your prior links, they were good starts.
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ELIofVA at 05:28 AM on 8 June 2019State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019
RedBaron:
Getting the economic indicators to encourage the solution is key. I would modify my above statement, "The only way to reduce atmospheric concentration is to reduces emissions from all sources to less than what can be sequestered from all sources (natural and human influenced). Pricing carbon is the best way to motivate the economy. I want to pay farmers for acieving net sequestration from activities such as reforesting as well as increasing carbon content in their soils. Before any of these kinds of policies can be successful, their needs to be broad recognition in the public of this demand by nature.
In your discussion of the potential to store carbon in soils of grasslands, does this apply to areas that are naturally forest. In my area of Virginia, grasslands (pastures and hayfields) only exist to serve an animal ag which is commonly sited for high emissions. Do you see a pathway to achieve net sequestration in grasslands to cover these other emissions? My intuition is that your claimes mainly apply to areas where grassland is natural such as in the Great Plains of US and Canada. I am studying your point that soil has enormous potential as a carbon sink. The other question is how permanent the storage. Is the Globulin you describe permanent? I am an advocate for biochar because it is permanently sequestered carbon as opposed to biologically active organic material that holds carbon until it decomposes. In a healthy soil, the bio diversity captures those emissions in other biology preventing emission to the atmosphere. One theory about the Great Plains is that periodic natural fires created over long times charcoal giving it the black soil that holds biologicaly active carbon giving it fertility.
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RedBaron at 02:26 AM on 8 June 2019State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019
@3. ELIofVA,
I love the way you have set this up in a way that parallels economics. I strongly believe this is indeed the way to think about carbon and AGW! It took me a while to think of the problem in this way too, years ago. But once I did then it helped clarify my thought processes. I even took a university course on AGW to learn the proper jargon so I could communicate with climate scientists. As it turns out agricultural and soil science uses a different set of technical jargon than climate scientists which use a different set than economists! However, the thought process of all three are often parallel and only differ in terminology.
There is one big flaw in your post though. You are thinking about the problem correctly but got your key terrestrial biome wrong. It is the grasslands rather than the forests that are the key component to cooling the planet.
Cenozoic Expansion of Grasslands and Climatic Cooling
I would hate to see such a high quality way of approaching AGW mitigation fail simply because the wrong ecosystems were used. And not just that, but the wrong part of the carbon cycle itself.
So yes, I am behind you 100%. But the trick is the soil, not biomass. This means trees can help but they are not enough. They would reach biomass saturation long before actually reducing CO2 ppm in the atmosphere low enough to stop AGW. They could reduce the increase for a short while, but they are not a long term solution at all.
On the other hand grassland restoration does not have this limitation because grasslands sequester CO2 differently both short term and long term.
Right from the beginning grasslands start sequestering more CO2 because the C4 pathway is more efficient and productive than the C3 pathway.
C4 carbon fixation - Wikipedia
C4 metabolism originated when grasses migrated from the shady forest undercanopy to more open environments, where the high sunlight gave it an advantage over the C3 pathway.
… Today, C4 plants represent about 5% of Earth's plant biomass and 3% of its known plant species. Despite this scarcity, they account for about 23% of terrestrial carbon fixation. Increasing the proportion of C4 plants on earth could assist biosequestration of CO2 and represent an important climate change avoidance strategy.
But there is more to it than just the initial growth phase. Because grasslands also reach biomass saturation faster than forests too. What happens then is a little known and just recently discovered symbiosis between grasses and mycorrhizal fungi in the soil. It all started with a USDA soil scientist named Dr. Sara F. Wright and her discovery in 1996 of a glycoprotein produced abundantly on hyphae and spores of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in soil, called Glomalin.
Glomalin eluded detection until 1996 because, “It requires an unusual effort to dislodge glomalin for study: a bath in citrate combined with heating at 250 F (121 C) for at least an hour.... No other soil glue found to date required anything as drastic as this.” - Sara Wright.
This was no small discovery, as it turns out that this glomalin producing, highly evolved, mutualistic, symbiotic relationship found between AMF and plants is the most prevalent plant symbiosis known, being found in 80% of vascular plant families in existence today. Dr. Wright had discovered the link between photosynthesis and fully 1/3 of the stored soil carbon.
Glomalin: Hiding Place for a Third of the World's Stored Soil Carbon
But it gets even better. Turns out that being a soil glue like substance, it also locks into the soil other organic substances, holding even more carbon.
Glomalin is Key to Locking up Soil Carbon
Glomalin: The Real Soil Builder
Glomalin, the Unsung Hero of Carbon Storage
Liquid carbon pathway unrecognised
Little Known Glomalin, a Key Protein in Soils
In other words it’s not just the glomalin itself, but rather this is just the missing link in a more extensive biochemical pathway that is an anabolic process, unlike the more well known decomposition of organic matter which is a catabolic process releasing CO2. It has long puzzled soil scientists how the processes of decay could actually at some point stop decaying into smaller and simpler humic substances, then begin to build larger and more complex stable carbon polymers and structures found in building new topsoil. There is still a lot to be researched, but we have found that pathway! The anabolic processes start with AMF which uses those root exudates to provide the energy to combine glomalin with products of decay as building blocks for the stable carbon soil creation process.
Remember too, once biomass saturation is reached an increasingly higher % of the products of photosynthesis are pumped into the soil via this newly discovered liquid carbon pathway (LCP).
Carbon sequestered deep in the soil profile has 3 main advantages over biomass carbon.
- It is safe from forest fires and grass fires. Fires send the biomass carbon right back into the atmosphere. Little if any long term sequestration.
- The soil sink size is larger than all the atmospheric CO2 and biomass CO2 combined. There simply isn’t enough atmospheric CO2 to saturate the soil sink. It’s that large.
- We have to repair our degraded soils anyway so that agriculture can continue. So it kills 2 birds with one stone. SOS: Save our Soils Dr. Christine Jones Explains the Life-Giving Link Between Carbon and Healthy Topsoil
Since we really do have to do it anyway and soon, there really is no excuse.
Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues
There is no free lunch. So yes, we still need solar energy, windmills, nuclear where appropriate and safe, hydroelectric and geothermal just to name a few. However, we certainly do not need to eliminate fossil fuels completely, just use them more wisely.
Executive summary:
Yes we can reverse Global Warming.
It does not require huge tax increases or expensive untested risky technologies.
It will require a three pronged approach worldwide.
- Reduce fossil fuel use by replacing energy needs with as many feasible renewables as current technology allows.
- Change Agricultural methods to high yielding regenerative models of production made possible by recent biological & agricultural science advancements.
- Large scale ecosystem recovery projects similar to the Loess Plateau project, National Parks like Yellowstone etc. where appropriate and applicable. So yes a few trees can help here.
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ELIofVA at 01:01 AM on 8 June 2019State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019
To say the increase in concentration is flat means the rate of increase is not accelerating. In my own effort to project future concentrations with business as usual (2ppm/year), the concentration still rises, even if the rate of increase remains flat. This reminds me of the debate about US government debt. If the rate of the increase was in decline, they would say the annual deficit was declining, even though the accumulative debt was still rising. For a short time in 2000, the US actually had a surplus. However, the overall accumulated debt did not go down. It was still there. That is why I promote using financial metaphor for considering CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. When emissions (expenses) exceed income (sequestration) the difference is made up with loans (debts). The annual imbalance between emissions and sequestrations determine if atmospheric concentrations go up or down. The ONLY way to lower concentration is to reduce emissions below the amount that can be sequestered with the difference subtracted from atmospheric concentration (payment on debt). Sequestration (Income) can be increased by reforestation and possibly geoengineering. Although the net sequestration by nature will likely be our primary income for a long time. When people recognize net emissions as a debt, they will recognize the need to repay the debt by reducing emission to less than what can be sequestered. Treating emissions as free and unlimited in the econmy is leading us to a violent outcome.
Graphs above looked very interesting. Unfortunately, in my Chrome browser, I could not see the whole graph in a single image, requiring scrolling to see the scales. This made them difficult to read. Please consider displaying whole graph as single image. Otherwise, the info on the website is very much appreciated.
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Daniel Bailey at 00:11 AM on 8 June 2019Tree-rings diverge from temperature after 1960
I think the article and the comments in the discussion thread here sum up things pretty well:
- There is a divergence after 1960 or so
- It's not a big deal (because we have the very reliable instrumental temperature record)
- Reconstructions with tree ring data agree well with those without tree ring data (before 1960)
Much ado about not much at all. - There is a divergence after 1960 or so
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TomJanson at 23:39 PM on 7 June 2019Tree-rings diverge from temperature after 1960
The relationship between temperature and tree rings seems quite complex. It doesn’t sound like anyone can properly explain the divergence problem. So how come climate scientists are so confident that past tree ring data is reliable?
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nigelj at 18:35 PM on 7 June 2019Climate Change vs Cosmological Catastrophe
I have a similar reaction that the end of world scenario in the video is a bit irrelevant to the climate issue and beyond our control, however here is something of general interest that I just find personally intriguing: 20 ways the world could end.
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nigelj at 12:43 PM on 7 June 2019State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019
OPOF, that CO2 chart is very illuminating, and yes yearly atmospheric C02 growth rates typically increased after 2011. If you look at trends of emissions they underwent an obvious increase in the rate after 2000 due to an increase in use of oil and coal here, (in Asia I think) so presumably the increase in the yearly rate of atmospheric growth rates from 2011 is a delayed response to this?
Although yearly rate of atmospheric growth rates changed after 2011, If you take the years 2012 - 2018, and adjust 2015 and 2016 down to say 2.4 to reflect the fact they were in the middle of a big el nino (just a guesstimate on my part), then the trend across the whole period is about 2.2 on average, and fairly flat looking. So this might be a good sign that rates of use of fossil fuels are at least not accelerating since 2012, so far anyway.
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One Planet Only Forever at 12:27 PM on 7 June 2019Climate Change vs Cosmological Catastrophe
Nobody should concern themselves with something that cannot be influenced by collective human actions.
It is more terrifying that correction resistant Leaders are still incorrectly Winning support more than 30 years into the improving well established Climate Change understanding.
Leaders are undeniably aware that the incremental impact of everyone who uses fossil fuel accumulates into long-lasting massive future harm and that fossil fuel use creates no lasting benefits (in many cases no benefits beyond the moment of their use).
What is most terrifying is that developed popularity and profitability also develops powerful resistance to correction.
Without changing the systems humans have developed into systems atht actually govern and limit human activity to minimize harmful actions and maximize helpful actions, humanity will fail to develop a better future.
People can be easily impressed by new technological toys, that are also likely to be harmfully unsustainable activities, into believing that things are getting better when the opposite is more likely the reality.
The real terrifying thing is how harmful the thinking of people in supposedly more advanced nations can actually be.
Everybody should be terrified by how correction resistant many supposed winners/leaders are, and the unjust popularity and profitability they can get through misleading marketing.
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AristotleM at 10:51 AM on 7 June 2019If growth of CO2 concentration causes only logarithmic temperature increase - why worry?
Download the excel data and view the chart...that's not a linear relationship. The graph looks to me like a snapshot of a logarithmic curve.
I'm also confused about the Cumulative emissions: how do we know how much CO2 man's activities added to the total, and how much was due to natural sources, like volcanic activity, respiration, or organic decomposition? Why is it being expressed as a cumulative figure, when we know CO2 is absorbed by some things (like plants) and can be separated into its constituent components by natural energy releases at ambient temperatures...like a lightning storm on a warm evening.Also, the emissions are expressed in GtC...Gigatonnes of Carbon. Don't we weight things using an independent standard...like Newtons, Grams...or Pounds? The GtC scale implies that we're only interested in the carbon...which is only part of the CO2 molecule and only 1 of 2 components (one of C & one of O2) and it’s not the heaviest of them. Oxygen is 25% heavier than Carbon...and there are two oxygen atoms per CO2 molecule. Of any amount of CO2, the portion of carbon would be 27.2% of the total...more than a quarter, less than a third. Is the graph saying that the temperature rise between freezing and 5 C (41 F) is the result of accumulating 9191 Gigatonnes of CO2? Has there ever been that much CO2 in the atmosphere at once? Ever?
Moderator Response:[TD] For the airtight evidence that humans are responsible for 100% of the recent rise of the CO2 level in the atmosphere, see the post How Do Human CO2 Emissions Compare to Natural Emissions? There are multiple lines of evidence, but all you really need is the one that relies only on algebra.
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scaddenp at 10:07 AM on 7 June 2019Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
ebelba - doubling CO2 by itself gives an extra 4W/m2 (your equation) to surface of the earth and that corresponds to ~1.1C increase in global temperature. All of the rest of temperature increase is due to feedbacks as you outlined which is why climate models are so complex and why the range of climate sensitivity estimates is so large.
The IPCC WG1 report, starting with the technical summary, is quite definitely the best place to start getting an education because you can go from technical summary to full report and from there down into the referenced papers.
The 1984 "Climate Sensitivity: Analysis of feedback mechanisms" is now dated but not a bad starting point as well. Check out the more recent Proistosescu and Huybers though.
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One Planet Only Forever at 09:16 AM on 7 June 2019State of the climate: Heat across Earth’s surface and oceans mark early 2019
A related important data set is the atmospheric CO2 concentration values.
The presentations of information for CO2 compiled by NOAA include the following about the "Annual Mean Global Carbon Dioxide Growth Rates".
What is glaringly obvious, and cause for concern, is that the growth rates since 2011 have exceeded 2.0 ppm. In the set of earlier years there were some years over 2.0 ppm growth. But they were interspersed with rates well below 2.0 ppm growth.
So far in 2019 the average of CO2 monthly increases also exceeds 2.0 ppm.
I wonder of the 'Business as Usual' case that is often talked about needs to be updated to reflect the reality that 'Increase of Harmful Business has been Becoming More Usual'. That update would result in even higher temperature increases in the nearer and distant future due to more rapidly increased CO2 levels than the apparently outdated 'Business as Usual' case.
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ebelba at 07:28 AM on 7 June 2019Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
PS I noticed you folks are typing quite lengthy responses and spending a lot of time answering a lot of (some quite silly) people with much more patience than I would have with such people. A simple link to read a paper or two would be fine. Math and statistics is not a problem, these are my fields of education, but I have not read much climate science and would like to. Just need a good place to start and I can follow bibiliographies from there. Thanks again.
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ebelba at 07:04 AM on 7 June 2019Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
I think I understand the spectrum graphs and the role of CO2 in the outer layers and the sensitivity to the CO2 concentration relative to the base level in the simple model. My question is: as the global mean temp rises, and water vapor rises, and polar ice cap coverage decreases, a number of things change. Surface reflection changes, ice reflects whereas open ocean absorbs; water vapor convection and absorption change. Is there an equation equivalent to the 5.35 ln (C/C_0) equation with additional terms for these effects? Or is that equation already based on a models which already have these additional feedback effects? Thanks.
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scaddenp at 07:02 AM on 7 June 2019It's magnetic poles
The Kerton argument is obviously codswallop but I have also heard (only once), the suggestion that the weakening of the magnetic field was producing via <unknown physics>, a effort on climate that all of man's ingenuity at measuring physical parameters had somehow missed. However, the lack of evidence for any change in glacial extent associated with the last polar reversal (when magnetic field strength became very weak) is a strong counter-argument.
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MA Rodger at 02:06 AM on 7 June 2019It's magnetic poles
The full text of the article cited at the top of the [absent] OP is available on-line - Kerton AK (2009) 'Climate Change And The Earth’s Magnetic Poles, A Possible Connection'. The bold assertion is that the alleged correlation between global temperature & both change in longitude & latitude of the magnetic North Pole cannot be conicidence. Yet I feel the numbers presented for this change in longitude/latitude is today evidently arrant codwallop. The source cited is from Kyoto University which is showing latitudinal movement in the Magnetic North Pole peaked in 2005 and is now stopped and about to begin to decrease. And the increase in longitude peaked a couple of years bac, but that is purely due to the Magnetic Pole passing close to the rotational North Pole where longitude is rather dense. The link provides this graphic:-
And this is just the northern Magnetic Pole. The northern Geomagnetic Pole is much less cooperative and the sothern equivalents of both would need some serious explaining-away by anybody advocating a link between the northern pole-monement and global or hemispherical temperature.
Sadly, there are other attempts to be found that are trying to breathe life into this dead parrot.
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Daniel Bailey at 01:00 AM on 7 June 2019It's magnetic poles
Besides the obvious, that air is not ferrous, here's what I have:
Scientists understand that the human impacts on the Earth, it's temperature and its climate are the dominant impacts because scientists have thoroughly studied all of the factors capable of forcing the observed changes since preindustrial times.
While the Earth's magnetic axis is shifting somewhat, Earth's rotational axis shifts only a little bit, mostly in response to the mass redistribution of water around the Earth from land-based ice sheet losses. This is a normal response.
The net change in the position of the Earth's rotational axis is about 37 feet. The largest annual change is about 7 inches.
If you move over 37 feet, the climate doesn't change. It changes even less per year if you only move 7 inches.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6332
The research paper itself is here:
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/4/e1501693
While the Earth's magnetic field is weakening a bit and its magnetic axis is shifting somewhat, magnetic field polarity changes have no effects on climate on the timescale of human lifetimes because air isn’t ferrous. The effects on hand-held compasses are insignificant. For purposes of electronic navigation, changes in the position of the magnetic poles are constantly updated in navigational databases.
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/tracking-changes-earth-magnetic-poles
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/world-magnetic-model-out-cycle-release
https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/GeomagneticPoles.shtml
https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/faqgeom.shtml
https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/position-of-magnetic-north-pole-officially-changed"The last time that Earth's poles flipped in a major reversal was about 780,000 years ago, in what scientists call the Brunhes-Matuyama reversal. The fossil record shows no drastic changes in plant or animal life. Deep ocean sediment cores from this period also indicate no changes in glacial activity, based on the amount of oxygen isotopes in the cores. This is also proof that a polarity reversal would not affect the rotation axis of Earth, as the planet's rotation axis tilt has a significant effect on climate and glaciation and any change would be evident in the glacial record."
And
"The science shows that magnetic pole reversal is – in terms of geologic time scales – a common occurrence that happens gradually over millennia. While the conditions that cause polarity reversals are not entirely predictable – the north pole's movement could subtly change direction, for instance – there is nothing in the millions of years of geologic record to suggest that any of the 2012 doomsday scenarios connected to a pole reversal should be taken seriously."
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-poleReversal.html
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/news-articles/earths-magnetosphere"What would happen if the magnetic field of the Earth suddenly changed?
Magnetic field wandering would let the aurora borealis occur at any latitude, but other than that there would be no noticeable effects other than changes in the amount of cosmic rays that penetrate to the ground. Even this effect is minimal because we can visit the Arctic and Antarctic and only receive a slight increase in cosmic rays. So long as the strength of the field remains high during this field wandering event, the effects should be pretty benign."
https://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/q279.html
https://www.livescience.com/18426-earth-magnetic-poles-flip.html
"one total bonus of having a weaker magnetic field is that auroras will be visible from much lower latitudes, so the nighttime skies will be even more epic"
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/01/earth-magnetic-field-flip-north-south-poles-science/
(-technical, non-climate discussion on geodynamics here-)
Apart from the potential light shows, no credible effects on climate on the timescale of human lifetimes. Scientists have this one covered.
Climate Forcings:
Changes in the sun's output falling on the Earth are about 0.05 Watts/meter squared.
By comparison, human activities 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.
https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/2/#fig-2-3
It's not magnetic field changes or the sun or natural cycles.
It's human activities, primarily driven by the human burning of fossil fuels.
Period.
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GrahamC at 21:06 PM on 6 June 2019It's magnetic poles
I could really use some help in arguing against this myth at the moment. Are there any plans for the page to be completed?
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Doug_C at 02:27 AM on 6 June 2019Effects of Global Warming
ianw01 @15
It's not good here.
Although we've had a carbon tax for over a decade in BC, it is next meaningless when the government gives exemptions to some of the largest CO2 emitters.
John Horgan offers tax break incentives to $40B Kitimat LNG project
How exactly are we addressing fossil fuel driven climate change when official policy at the highest level is effectively paving the way for decades more fossil fuel extraction and burning at a massive level.
In BC it gets ever worse than that, the Site C dam has been controversial for decades yet with no real approval process taken a massive hydro-electric project that will cost the people of BC over $10 billion will be built in the middle of the Montney gas formation that will be used to power gas gracking for decades.
This will produce trillions of cubic meters of gas and leak large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Fracking itself endangers ground water and destabilizes the bedrock over large areas producing greatly increased sesmic activity.
Then is no rationality at all in energy policy in BC or anywhere in Canada. The entire nation has become captured by the fossil fuel sector. Instead of debating how to get off all fossil fuels as quickly as possible we're fighting over where to ram new oil and gas pipelines through and even "Green" leaders are claiming Canada must utilize our fossilf fuel reserves for decades more.
Which was the same argument decades ago when climate change was first recognized as an existential threat. The claim here is that because Canada is only responsible for about 2% of the world's CO2 emission we can keep doing what we want and no one will notice.
But Canada makes up about 1% of the global population so on an individual level Canadians are some of the largest emitters of carbon dioxide.
We have a lot of room to change and little political will to actually do so despite all the virtue-signalling of Justin Trudeau who said this at the Paris climate change summit in 2015.
'Canada is back, my friends. Canada is back, and here to help,' prime minister tells delegates
He then went to an oil and gas symposium in Houston Texas and said this to oil execs.
No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and just leave them there,
I'm ashamed to say that Canada as a nation is not going to be part of a solution to this existential crisis we have forced ourselves into by blind greed.
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ianw01 at 01:46 AM on 6 June 2019Effects of Global Warming
Doug_C @ 8: Speaking of cognitive dissonance, let's not omit BC's continued enthusiasm for coal mining and export: https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/yes-anti-pipeline-vancouver-really-is-north-americas-largest-exporter-of-coal
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MA Rodger at 18:28 PM on 5 June 2019Effects of Global Warming
William @9,
Picking up on your "what are we going to call the 2.75 million year period" question, I'm not sure what prompted it. Your preceeding sentences sound perhaps a bit accusative and if so, perhaps you mis-read the OP that actually mentioned "cold periods (so called Ice Ages)" over the past 800,000 years.
The period prior to the Holocene and back +2½million years does have a name, the Pleistocene and it is a period of 'ices ages' and 'interglacials'. The characteristic that makes it different to the periods before was the preceeding formation of the Panama Ismuth and the subsequent arrival of (or perhaps the more extensive arrival which Knies et al 2014[PDF] appears to show) permanent polar ice in the Northern Hemesphere, particularly the Arctic Sea Ice. In light of the permanence of NH ice through the Pleistocene (it apparently didn't disappear in the Eemian, for instance see Stein et al 2017) I think the arrival of ice-free Arctic summers for the first time in millions of years is a strong scientific message that has yet to be wielded properly.
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scaddenp at 12:43 PM on 5 June 2019CO2 is just a trace gas
Not sure that "emitting particle" is right, but radiation spectrum is absolutely dependent on temperature. And, yes, you can use the theory to predict spectrum of radiation at TOA or at surface of earth, or by how much the spectrum should change if you increase say CO2 from 400 to 440ppm. These have all been done (eg here) and predictions match observations with exquisite accuracy (a fair bit of advanced tech depend on these equations being correct).
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Rovinpiper at 12:33 PM on 5 June 2019CO2 is just a trace gas
I see.
So, tell me. Doesn't the spectrum of emitted radiation depend on the temperature of the emitting particle?If that is the case, then doesn't it provide a pretty convenient test of this theory?
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Doug_C at 11:49 AM on 5 June 2019Effects of Global Warming
I also think it is far past the time to keep letting free market forces determine the energy model we use. From all the evidence if energy policy isn't controlled and guided at a global level then we face catastrophic conditions on Earth that make free market economics or any thing else human related moot. Because we keep doing what we're doing much longer then there will be no people left.
I think there need to be hard targets imposed on the energy market that have a 50% reduction in fossil fuels use by 2030 and a 100% by 2050.
This would require somthing like much safer and hihgly efficient Gen IV nuclear power to be implemented on a large scale in conjunction with renewable energy.
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TVC15 at 10:54 AM on 5 June 2019Climate's changed before
Thanks again MA Rodger @ 724
The deniers worship the US climate denier blog sites such as WUWT. It's ridiculous what that site puts out. The US also has the Heartland Institute whose mission is to instill doubt in American minds about the science of climate change than the Heartland Institute.
This is a tyical US denier rant:
"Hot places get hotter in the summer. Weather is not climate, but climate changes naturally due to the Sun, and other factors. If you want to live like a Stone Age Stooge, plus pay exorbitant prices for energy and ALL products and services, be my guest, but don't force others to follow your cult like religion to make yourself feel relevant in the Universe."
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TVC15 at 10:44 AM on 5 June 2019Climate's changed before
Thanks MA Rodger @ 724
The climage deneir was the one who made this statment: And as you know, nature's impact on climate can and has been EXTREME prior to man, and man's industrialization. How do you account for that?
In my orgional post I had it indented so others would know this was not my statment.
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TVC15 at 10:41 AM on 5 June 2019It's the sun
Thanks [PS]!
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Doug_C at 10:41 AM on 5 June 2019Effects of Global Warming
Ger @11
That's probably for the current light water reactors, I'd be really interested to see what the numbers are with MSFRs when they finally get one up and running. With only a fraction of the concrete needed for secondary containment with a light water reactor they should sharply cut the initial carbon output and with the much higher fuel efficiency and greatly reduced waste stream the operational and end of life costs and footprint are probably going to be much smaller.
Instead of large batches of degrading fuel rods being removed every few years as with light water reactors they would be pulling fission products constantly out of solution from an MSFR and either storing them onsite or selling some of the fission products such as medical radioisotopes or xenon to the aerospace sector where it is used as ion rocket fuel. And with very little TRUs the long term waste costs and footprint is also going to be a fraction of current costs with LWRs.
One thing that will be an issue is the meter thick steel neutron reflectors that after several decades of operation are going to be a radiological hazard for decades as cobalt-60 has a half life of 5.6 years.
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Ger at 08:35 AM on 5 June 2019Effects of Global Warming
@Nigelj, @Dougc:
Comparison of the GHG footprint of several generation techniques can be found en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_footprint. Nuclear at 60~65 gCO2-eq/kWh, wind power at 21 and PV solar at 106. I've seen other studies setting Nuclear at 24~85 (mining exclude/included) Windpower 8~30 (recycled-new) and PV 20~80 (production techniques, mining) and also biomass IEA report with carbon negative outcome of -9 g CO2-eq/kWh, presumably from sustainable forest with more growth than extraction. As a note: LCA includes demolition costs of the installation after it's lifetime. Now I have seen that for PV, Wind power and biomass powerplants all on lifetime expectancies of 20~30 years including derating. For coal fired plants that period is taken to be 50 years. There is no derating for coal fired as that is maintained to be at top capacity. I wonder if that is realistic. For NPP the minimum I've found is 60 years and very wide margin for the costs: not enough experience. I would say take the costs of a Fukushima till now and you will not make a big mistake: even in case a NPP is shutdown, it will take a 35 years before one can think of taking it down. And all used fuel in place will be active for another 100 years.
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Doug_C at 07:02 AM on 5 June 2019Effects of Global Warming
william @9
Correlation does not equal causation. Just because humans were present in the Americas when the megafauna went extinct is not evidence that they were the cause of this extinction.
What Killed the Great Beasts of North America?
"The idea that humans wiped out North America’s giant mammals, or megafauna, is known as the “overkill hypothesis.” First proposed by geoscientist Paul Martin more than 40 years ago, it was inspired in part by advances in radiocarbon dating, which seemed to indicate an overlap between the arrival of the first humans in North America and the demise of the great mammals. But over the years, a number of archaeologists have challenged the idea on several grounds. For example, some researchers have argued that out of 36 animals that went extinct, only two—the mammoth and the mastodon—show clear signs of having been hunted, such as cuts on their bones made by stone tools. Others have pointed to correlations between the timing of the extinctions and dramatic fluctuations in temperatures as the last ice age came to a halting close."
If early human arrivals in the Americas killed off some of the megafauna why did they then stop and allow massive numbers of other quite large species to remain like the Bison, Grizzly Bear, Musk Ox and others.
The rapid fluctuations in climate at the end of the last glaciation period and the extinction of species that lost their associated habitats is likely evidence of how dangerous climate change can be to life.
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william5331 at 05:54 AM on 5 June 2019Effects of Global Warming
If we are going to call the recent icy period an Ice Age, which extended between the Eemian interglacial some 125 thousand years ago and the present Holocene interglacial then what are we going to call the 2.75 million year period in which there have been more or less 40 cycles between ice and not much ice. I don't care what we use as long as we use it consistently. It is not just semantics. Some folks, even a program on National Geographic, suggested that the fauna of North America died out because of the climate change at the beginning of the present Holocene interglacial. Nonsense. These animals had survived multiple cycles in fine fettle. The only difference was the advent of man into the Americas. Terminology, especially in science, is important.
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Doug_C at 05:01 AM on 5 June 2019Effects of Global Warming
We are suffering from institutional cognitive dissonance here in Canada.
The newly elected Alberta government where oil and gas production is considered sacrosanct has declared an intention to create a $30 million "war room" to attack anyone threatening the fossil fuel sector in Canada.
Environmental groups shrug off Jason Kenney's 'war room' threat
While significant regions of Alberta are currently under emergency measures due to climate change driven wildfires. They are sending firefighters from across Canada to deal with a climate change driven emergency in Alberta that will only get worse as industry and government there do almost anything to protect the oil and gas sector.
B.C. sending more firefighters to help battle Alberta wildfires
This is highly irrational as the Alberta government has been threatening BC economic interests for several years over the resistance to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion plan.
UCP poised for battle with B.C. over Trans Mountain pipeline expansion
So while BC is treated as the enemy when we don't bow to pressure to not just maintain current levels of fossil fuel use but expand them, when climate change emergencies that have been predicted for decades are in fact now happening we are also expected to respond to the provinces that are driving this sector over all reason.
Federally the Green Party leader of Canada has declared she also supports fossil fuel use for decades as long as we don't import any of it.
Elizabeth May wants to only use Canadian oil — a plan Quebec's Green Party leader can't support
It's not like there isn't awareness at the highest levels of the crucial need to phase out fossil fuels, the Canadian government signed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to phase out fossil fuels and then again in Paris in 2016.
But when it comes time to actually enact policy to do this, government after government balks and the private sector pretends there is no crisis.
While investment in alternative energy has been very low in Canada for years, investment in fossil fuels is still massive here.
Canada’s major banks have financed $464 billion worth of fossil fuel projects since 2016.
What do we as citizens do when the private sector that obviously wants oil and gas use no matter the catastrophic impacts uses part of the proceeds of their business to effectively control policy.
Life is dying on Earth while conditions for people are becoming very dangerous as well as with some of the deadly wildfires in California, Australia and other places. We are lucky we have not lost people here in BC with how critical our wildfire situation has become. In a month or so we probably won't have the firefighting resources to share with other regions when our fires start catching.
Anyone who is still claiming this make sense in any context is totally delusional, we get off all these highly polluting fossil fuels as fast as possible or we in fact do face the horrific prospect of an unlivable world in what is in geological time the blink of an eye.
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Doug_C at 02:02 AM on 5 June 2019Effects of Global Warming
nigelj @5
That is what is needed. A comprehensive breakdown comparing the relative resources that go into making and running a 1,000 MW MSFR nuclear power plant as opposed to how many wind turbines, PV solar panels, tidal generators, etc... are needed to provide the same energy production and what overall ecological impact they both have.
As for weapons proliferation which is a serious concern, the thorium fuel cycle in molten salt reactors effectively addresses this concern. Once the reactor is in operation it needs new fissile material added to it as the initial charge of either U-235 or U-233 is used up by fission. The reactor core would have a blanket loop surrounding it of molten salt with the thorium in solution. The neutron flux from the core fission reaction provides just enough neutrons to keep the core fission reaction going and breed new fuel from transmuted thorium in the blanket, it's a little over a 1-to-1 ratio.
If you start taking out the new U-233 from the Th-232 that has just been transmuted then there is no new fuel to keep the molten salt reactor in operation. Th-232 is also seven neutron captures away from weapons grade Pu-239 while U-238 is only one neutron capture away making uranium the preferred fuel cycle for weapons creation.
A MSFR would be producing about 0.159 kgs of Pu-239 a year while a light water reactor would produce about 110 kgs in that same time period.
Why the molten salt fast reactor (MSFR) is the “best” Gen IV reactor
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John Hartz at 00:09 AM on 5 June 2019Climate's changed before
I accidently deleted the following comment. My bad.
TVC15 at 19:59 PM on 4 June 2019
Is there an easy answser for this question being asked by a climate denier?
And as you know, nature's impact on climate can and has been EXTREME prior to man, and man's industrialization. How do you account for that?
So far from what I've learned from you guys is Earth's orbit, solar output, the sun being cooler, greater volcanic activity, rock weathering, surface ice albedo, massive amounts of Dinosaur gas? (sorry guys I had to toss that in for grins)
Are there other factors I missed?
Thanks!
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MA Rodger at 23:56 PM on 4 June 2019Climate's changed before
TVC15 @724,
There were of course "EXTREME" climate processes prior to mankind arriving on the scene. These can perhaps be classified into two different groups.
The first can include really big changes but they occur very slowly, although sudden on a geological time-scale. So the end of the last ice age saw a rise of perhaps 6ºC in global temperature over 8,000 years or 55 million years ago the PETM which saw similar temperature rises over 40,000 years (long enough for, for instance, horses to adapt to the temperature increases by slowly evolving from pony-size into the size of large dogs).
The second group are far more sudden, the suddenness often obvious. A big volcanic eruption (Mt Toba 74,000 years ago), a meteor strike, or a sudden influx of fresh water that destabilises ocean currents (as per Dansgaard–Oeschger events). This second group can still have very very big local effects but obvious causes that soon dissipate (althugh D-O events can take 2,000 years to return to the prior climate).
But in all this, I'm not sure what a denialist is trying to argue. If we wait long enough there will eventually be a mega-volcano blow its top, or a big meteor will eventually strike the Earth. (There isn't enough ice about for a D-O event to occur without an ice-age.) So is the denialist suggesting we set about creating our own climatic disaster to allow us to practise for how to respond to the real thing? Or does he want an explanation for every wobbly bit of paleoclimate before he will accept the blindingly obvious fact that it is humanity driving todays warming climate and it will not end well if we don't do something about it?
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peter7723 at 22:53 PM on 4 June 2019Effects of Global Warming
This is an excellent summary of the symptoms of the illness.
However, for remedial action to be taken, the question to be answered is "What should we do?". Answers include "Reduce CO2 in the atmosphere", "Eliminate emissions of CO2", "Eliminate emissions of methane". But, these are too general to lead to action.
The questions in turn give rise to "How?" For example, "How can CO2 in the atmosphere be reduced?" with answers such as "Carbon sink", Carbon capture and storage", "Filter CO2 and water from the air and convert to oil" (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09685-x), "Remove carbon from hydrocarbons before burning" (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23230940-200-crack-methane-for-fossil-fuels-without-tears/). Each of these have advantages and disadvantages and give rise to lower level questions.
We must carry such analyses through to actions that people can see make sense. "Climate Emergency" by itself is so abstract and frightening. -
TVC15 at 19:41 PM on 4 June 2019It's the sun
Hi Daniel @ 1262
Would you mind explaining how scientists differentiate between human generated and nature generated CO2?I've found that there are two different isotopes for the human imprint vs. natural CO2.
Are there other methods besides the identifying the different isotopes and what methodologies are used to test these different contributors?
Thank you!
Moderator Response:[PS] that would be offtopic here. Please see this rebuttal for two other methods used to constrain CO2 origins.
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nigelj at 19:03 PM on 4 June 2019Effects of Global Warming
Doug @4, I know what you are saying: A single reactor building producing 1000 mwatt intuitively seems to use less materials than a big solar or wind farm of equivalent output. However it would be useful to see a hard data comparison, because appearances can sometimes be deceiving. And the sciency types on this website would rightly insist on it. I do think it would be a good argument in favour of nuclear power if you are correct, so its interesting.
Molten salt reactors are still somewhat experimental. I agree they have many advantages, although one sticking point is the ability to produde high grade nuclear weapons materials. Its this sort of thing that is slowing development down. In the meantime we obviously have to build what is feasible like solar and wind power. We are lucky we have geothermal power.
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Doug_C at 18:15 PM on 4 June 2019Effects of Global Warming
nigelj @3
The scale of it just doesn't seem right for low density renewables. If as the data says nuclear power has several billion times the energy density of energy sources such as solar and wind power and it would take about 15,000 1,000 MW nuclear power plants to totally replace fossil fuels, wouldn't that require several trillion comparable renewable energy sources.
We're talking about a huge amount of energy needed to replace all fossil fuels and finite resources, space and time to do it.
As for nuclear power, my point about the actual biological response to ionizing radiation in most dose rates anyone will be exposed to is that the requirements placed on nuclear power for nearly zero levels of emissions are part of what makes it so costly.
And we couldn't go with "conventional" light water reactors now anyway as a replacement to fossil fuels because the industrial base to build the thousands of massive stainless steel primary containment vessels simply doesn't exist.
What is being proposed by some is the molten salt fast reactor concept that does away with the need for massively strong primary pressure reactor vessels and the need for equally massive secondary containment in the chance there could be a catastrophic loss of radioactive collant.
Why the molten salt fast reactor (MSFR) is the “best” Gen IV reactor
With a molten salt reactor your primary containment is chenical as the fissile material is held in solution in the molten salt. The reactor is not under pressure and there is no chance of a melt down. The core is already molten.
We know the concept works as ORNL ran one for several years in the 1960s and worked out much of the chemistry and materials issues.
Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment
A fast molten salt reactor simplifies the concept as it does away with the need for a core graphite moderator that needs to be changed every four years and simplifies fuel reprocessing.
They can also be built in modular design so you can have 300 MW moduls that can be conbimed to produce larger plants giving flexibility to implementation.
Waste is also greatly decreased with MSFRs as they produce a fraction of transuranics(TRUs) that are such an issue with light water reactors that use solid fuel rods that break down from exposure to heat and neutron bombardment in the core and become less stable due to the buildup of fission products over time.
You get an almost complete burnup with a molten salt reactor so almost all your waste is short lived fission products that can be safely stored onsite as has been done for decades with the current light water reactors.
Molten salt reactors also use a gas parging system that makes it possible to pull fission products out of the core salt unde4r operation that might interfer with the stable running of the reactor and some are highly valuable for things like nuclear medicine like Moly-99 used in imaging, Iodine-131 and bismuth-213 used in cancer treatment.
MSFRs also produce small amounts of Pu-238 used as a power source for deep space mission and ample xenon with is fuel for ion rockets in the space sector. They also produce noble metals like gold, silver and platinum.
There's so many advantages to MSFRs and once the infrastructure is created to begin large scale production the cost would be a fraction of what nuclear power now costs.
I think it's the way to go for many reasons.
Another is running thorium in molten salt reactors also produces little fissile materials that can be used in weapons manufacture. It is nearly a 1-to-1 ration of fissile material undergoing reaction in the core to thorium in the blanket being converted to U-233 by the neutral flux being produced by the reactor. Take out the new U-233 and the reactor stops running for lack of replacement fissile material.
As I said it's a question of scale. And if thousands of reactors in the 1,000 MW range are required to phase out all fossil fuels and nuclear power has billions of times greater energy density than renewables then a comparable renewables energy model will require trillions of comparable facilities dispersed over large areas of the Earth.
It's still possible to implement solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, etc... energy under a nuclear power replacement regime, it just make it so the scale of that part of the model can be greatly reduced.
As for economics, we will be creating an entirely new economic model to reflect the new energy model. At its basis any economic model must include a viable biosphere to take place in. And then build out from there.
And the best way to acheive that is to use the most efficient sources of energy that use the least amount of finite resources and take up the minimum amount of space that otherwise could be part of a viable ecosystem with sufficient biodiversity indefinitely.
Nuclear power in the form described above would seem to fit that bill far better than low density renewables on the face of it.
Be interested to see that take others have on this.
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climate_watcher at 17:58 PM on 4 June 2019Roy Spencer on Climate Sensitivity - Again
Another Roy Spencer blog post on this topic, posted in our group for climate change news.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2018/04/new-lewis-curry-study-concludes-climate-sensitivity-is-low/?fbclid=IwAR2EU3mgUfELyXzhXEiznTlXGTeMwVK7rV9ZS7jkt-L3kTPo0u9_XWR1bJw -
TVC15 at 17:55 PM on 4 June 2019Climate's changed before
@ RedBaron 721
Those are two truly encouraging links you posted about China and India dominating greening the earth!
Thanks for sharing this!
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TVC15 at 17:44 PM on 4 June 2019Climate's changed before
Hi RedBaron @ 721,
Trust me I am a scientist and I know science is based in evidence not faith.
In thinking about your first response to me with respect to the quibbling over which sector should take the heavier load...do you really think either one is going to simply agree to taking the heavier load? I don't. These two sectors have tons of money to buy any lobbyist or politician they want in order to fight against taking any load. And I'm certain there will be resistance from both sides. Thus this leads me back to it's too late to turn back now.
Just look at the current heat wave hitting India with those crazy high temps! Even with this news you still see the deniers in the US and around the globe.
I am not a doom and gloom type gal, just a realist.
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nigelj at 16:55 PM on 4 June 2019Effects of Global Warming
Doug_C @2, I agree with your first two paragraphs. The main issue with nuclear power is the economics. This is because our civilsation works on what is the most economic option to generate a desired outcome, and right now wind power is lower cost than nuclear power, and solar power is about the same (according to Lazard's analysis), so generators tend to prefer renewable energy, especially given the large scale of nuclear projects and complicated approval procedures.
The space taken up by renewable energy is just not significant, because solar power panels tends to be on building's roofs and can be deployed in waste land and in deserts, and wind tower pylons sit on farming land not taking up significant space.
Of course safety is a big concern as well as economics, and I recall reading something that suggested that radiation below a certain level is harmless and that the relationship is not linear. But nuclear accidents are a nightmare and very costly to clean up.
Resources are an issue to consider, but the world is not about to run out of important minerals not for many centuries yet, and even if we were things won't slow down because capitalism is like a voracious machine. Imho our main hope is smaller global population.
Given nuclear power is not exactly low cost it must use plenty of materials and (fossil fuel) energy in construction and mining those materials, so I'm not convinced its particularly low carbon in terms of manufacturing. Of course I do realise some of the costs are in scarce metals. But do you have some hard data comparisons on carbon content in manufacturing between nuclear power and the other options?
If thorium reactors become economic, and can be shown to have low carbon in the manufacturing process, great, I have no objection. Until then we have to work with what is plausible in the real world.
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RedBaron at 16:13 PM on 4 June 2019Climate's changed before
Don't digress because one is just a symptom of the other, and fixing one fixes both. And more importantly to your lack of faith, please remember. Science is about evidence not faith.
Soil Carbon Sequestration Potential for “Grain for Green” Project in Loess Plateau, China
Sure that paper just discusses potential. But in fact the project did go forward and has indeed suceeded in already restoring ecosystem function to vast acreage and is even now sequestering approximately 25% of China's emissions. The effect is so profound and widespread it can be seen from space.
Human Activity in China and India Dominates the Greening of Earth, NASA Study Shows
So you see? Where the highest human population density on the planet is also the most improvement in ecosystem restoration, which is actually already making significant strides in restoring ecosystem function over vast areas...
Now is not the time to give up with dispare. Now is the time to tighten your belts and get to work! We have a lot of work to do and pouting around with gloom and doom is not helping one bit.
We can do it. Get er done!
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scaddenp at 13:37 PM on 4 June 2019New rebuttal to the myth 'Holistic Management can reverse Climate Change'
Thanks for that. Quite a lot to digest when I get a little more time.
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Doug_C at 13:29 PM on 4 June 2019Effects of Global Warming
Climate change is already becoming catastrophic and everywhere researchers are looking life is being threatened far more than was thought even a few years ago.
Many insect populations are in critical decline, the same goes for avian populations and many others. It's not just climate change that is doing this, but global industrial society overall where there is no long range planning as short term profit making drives almost all economic activity.
I also seriously question that relying on low energy density "green" energy technology is going to prevent a catastrophic collapse of the biosphere in the near future.
They would need to be implemented on a vast scale to replace all fossil fuels and that would require equally vast resource extraction, transportation, manufacturing and construction.
There's only one shot to avoid a systemic collapse now is my take on this.
Nuclear power and one specific type, the molten salt fast reactor running the thorium fuel cycle.
If green renewable energy production can take up to 1,000 times the space - with all the attendant resouces to build it - of fossil fuels;
Renewable energy sources can take up to 1000 times more space than fossil fuels
And in turn nuclear power can have millions of times the energy denisty of fossil fuels.
Then that gives us an energy density of nuclear power several billions times that of green renewables. And where a lump of thorium that can fit in your hand will provide all the energy you need in a lifetime, the mass needed to provide energy from low density renewables - including the space dedicated to it - would be many tons that would crush you.
My question is, do we really have the resources and time to be so idealistic about energy production when the situation is now so critical. And when there are serious question about the actual physical response to ionizing radaition which is the main hazard with nuclear power.
If for instance if ionizing radiation may actually have a beneficial effect on people exposed to slightly higher levels of background radiation as the Nuclear Shipyard Workers study indicated.
Nuclear shipyard worker study (1980–1988): a large cohort exposed to low-dose-rate gamma radiation
And new research seems to indicate that within certain thresholds ionizing radiation isn't just harmless to people but it may in fact be essential to the normal functioning of our cells.
Is Radiation Necessary For Life?
I think it's entirely possible we have been avoiding the solution to many of our problems for decades for fear of something that has never been the risk it has been presented as since the mid 1950s that some researchers consider a scientific fraud for political purposes.
Just my thoughts, we can keep running in fear from something that always has been and always will be an intrinsic part of our being;
Or embrace what is likely our last shot at salvation at a species level. As I said, given the scale needed to implement low density energy production with the misconception it is clean when a vast amount of resources must go into manufacturing it and an equally vast amount of space must be taken up by it, I think going completely "green" is just as dangerous as fossil fuels energy production.
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nigelj at 13:01 PM on 4 June 2019Effects of Global Warming
This is a nice concise summary of all the important points. It might almost be an idea to put it under "IPCC facts " or something similar so there is a permanent link to it.
Another reason young people are becoming vociferous is perhaps because they see the double standards of adults who say there is a problem yet do nothing. It may also be because young people get some of the science at school, and are also not deluged with denialists rhetoric as much as adults are.
However one quibble. I'm not sure that climate change has become more political and partisan because the results of climate change are becoming more obvious. If it is I think you need to explain how, maybe I'm missing the point. If anything increasingly obvious bad weather may make it less political and partisan as it becomes harder to deny.
Climate change is more likely becoming more political as a result of America's culture wars that have complicated causes and have gained a life of their own getting worse and worse for no logical reason. An analogy might be the way WW1 developed and spiralled out of control, in an unstoppable sort of way.
It's unfortunate that the IPCC reports have not at least mentioned the possibility of multi metre sea level rise by 2100. If they have it's certainly buried away in the fine print.
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TVC15 at 10:39 AM on 4 June 2019Climate's changed before
Thank you RedBaron @ 719
To be honesty I have no faith in the human species. Overpopulation leading to humans crowding out and forcing other animal and plant species into extinction on top of the GHG emissions and all the other human activities that's destroying life on this earth is why I have bleak outlook on the human species.
I sometimes wish I did not know of all the mass destruction humans are causing. Climate change is just one in many things humans are contributing to.
I digress.
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