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Comments 3601 to 3650:

3601. michael sweet at 22:36 PM on 31 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      Sekwisniewski:

      Analysis of lifecycle emissions of nuclear power compared to renewables by scientists generally indicate that nuclear plants emit 5-10 times as much carbon dioxide as renewables.  Nuclear industry sources find emissions are comparable.  Who do you believe?.

      Jacobson 2009 reviews the data at that time.   Since 2009 renewables have reduced their emissions while nuclear has not changed.  In addition, Jacobson calculates emissions due to opportunity cost.  

      It takes about 2-4 years to plan and build wind and solar plants.  It takes about 10-14 years to plan and build a nuclear plant.  For the entire time you are building the nuclear plant you have to use fossil fuels.  You save much more carbon by building the rapidly completed renewable energy plants.

      Since 2009 the cost of renewables has plummeted.  Nuclear costs have risen.  Nuclear reduces carbon much slower and at much greater cost.  For me that is not "on par" with wind and solar.   Some people do not care about time and cost and feel nuclear is comparable.

3602. wayne19608 at 22:05 PM on 31 August 2022
      What’s going on with the Greenland ice sheet?
      

      I thought I read that at 425ppm global sea rise would be 25m just based on the geological record?

3603. sekwisniewski at 21:09 PM on 31 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      Both renewables and nuclear decarbonize.

      Fell, H., Gilbert, A., Jenkins, J. D., & Mildenberger, M. (2022). Nuclear power and renewable energy are both associated with national decarbonization. Nature Energy, 7(1), 25-29. [Link]

      ...which is a response to flawed analysis found here:

      Sovacool, B. K., Schmid, P., Stirling, A., Walter, G., & MacKerron, G. (2020). Differences in carbon emissions reduction between countries pursuing renewable electricity versus nuclear power. Nature Energy, 5(11), 928-935. [Link]

      Nuclear is low carbon, on par with wind and solar, right?

3604. scvblwxq1 at 13:13 PM on 31 August 2022
      How not to solve the climate change problem
      

      Your welcome. The US wants to bring factories back from China. They could put some in Brazil in exchange for keeping the rainforest and the factories could provide employment for those that were converting the rainforest into farms and probably many others. Plus the US companies would get cheap labor.

3605. Bob Loblaw at 07:47 AM on 31 August 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      I really like this post, too.

      One of the things that might raise eyebrows is the claim that with science "bad ideas are weeded out and good ideas are built upon". In this sentence, the words "bad" and "good" have a fairly specific context. As described later in the article, this is not about moral good or moral bad, or good/bad as personal preferences. It is about ideas that enable us to make good evaluations of the world around us - evaluations that help us understand and predict how the world works (whether we like it or not).

      Good ideas also gives us clues to the uncertainty in our understanding. People who are dogmatically certain about their viewpoints are not being very scientific. (And, yes, the IPCC looks at uncertainties.)

      One of the ways that science works is by looking at competing explanations from the point of view of "what is the difference in the predictions they make?" If two ideas result in no differences, then they are functionally identical. Only by their differences can you tell them apart - and then going out and observing what actually happens will tell you which idea is more likely to be correct. A track record of accurate predictions gives confidence.

      And we prefer explanations that can make a lot of accurate predictions with fewer assumptions. If every prediction fails and requires adding new assumptions to fit the observations, then the explanation is not very good.

      With good scientific ideas, we can get reliable predictions about things we have not yet seen or measured - what will happen if we add more CO2 to the atmosphere, where to dig to find gold, how to make a faster airplane, what will be most the likely outcome of a particular medical treatment, etc. We know that falling off a tall building is dangerous because we truly do understand that gravity still works.

3606. nigelj at 07:37 AM on 31 August 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      Excellent commentary. I dont recall learning anything  in school about the scientific method or the purpose of science or logical thinking skills. The cynic in me thinks this is because the education system didn't want young people learning analytical skills, and  thinking too much for themselves, and therefore maybe challenging the teachers!

3607. One Planet Only Forever at 05:14 AM on 31 August 2022
      A next-level water crisis: Colorado River Basin faces Tier 2 restrictions
      

      Jimspy,

      Agreed that self interest governed by the pursuit of increased awareness and understanding of what is harmful is essential to sustainably improve things (truly make things better).

      The best 'certain to be viable' futures for humanity appear to require all humans to be governed by the pursuit of learning and accepting the diversity of ways to be human that fit into, are sustainable parts of, the robust diversity of life on this amazing planet.

      Everyone self governing that way would be great ... But that is unlikely (a fantasy). Some people will likely need to be governed by others to limit the harm they cause in pursuit of personal benefit.

3608. BaerbelW at 04:51 AM on 31 August 2022
      Reposted articles from Thinking is Power
      

      Updated the overview page for our Thinking is Power reposts with a mention of Melanie Trecek-King's highly recommended article Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters

3609. jimspy at 04:50 AM on 31 August 2022
      A next-level water crisis: Colorado River Basin faces Tier 2 restrictions
      

      "Self interested pursuit of benefit" is OK as long as it is informed by the human capacity for abstraction and the realization that altruism, or even pseudo-altruism, can inure to one's benefit.  It's called "enlightened self-interest." I fear we as a species have been losing that quality of late.  

3610. One Planet Only Forever at 04:42 AM on 31 August 2022
      Science: What it is, how it works, and why it matters
      

      This is another excellent presentation by Melanie.

      That should be a reasonable common sense understanding. I think the following are related reasonable common sense understandings:

      • Evidence reduces the range of reasonable explanations for what is going on.
      • To be sustainable, explanations have to be consistent with all of the available evidence (observations and information).
      • When reliable new evidence that is not consistent with a developed understanding emerges, the understanding needs to be updated to be consistent with all of the available, now expanded, reliable evidence.
      • Ethical and moral understanding needs to be fundamentally governed by the pursuit of increased awareness and understanding of actions that are harmful to others with the objective being to sustainably improve circumstances for others and make amends for harm done.
      • Scientific discovery of harm done is an important part of moral and ethical development. And morals and ethics should be expected to evolve as more is learned. But people benefiting from understandably harmful beliefs and actions can be expected to resist learning to be less harmful and more helpful (lots of evidence confirms that understanding).
3611. Likeitwarm at 03:19 AM on 31 August 2022
      CO2 effect is saturated
      

      @MA Rodger 657

      Again, my apologies for going off topic.

      Thanks for the lengthy and indepth explanation.  I don't think I have seen such an explanation anywhere else I've looked.  I think it should be more prominently displayed for those like myself who do not understand how GHG's work to warm the atmosphere.

      It'll take me a 7 days of studying and contemplating your explanation, but I'm sure to have better understanding then.

      Best to you.

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] I have added a lengthy moderators comment to your earlier post.

3612. michael sweet at 00:43 AM on 31 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      Macquigg:

      I went to comment on your "more neutral forum" and I have been blocked. I only posted there once and did not violate the site rules.

      The moderators here allow nuclear posters. So much for your "neutral" forum.

3613. MA Rodger at 20:12 PM on 30 August 2022
      CO2 effect is saturated
      

      Likeitwarm @654&655,
      My comment @639 was specifically tailored and indeed a little nuanced to keep discussion within the thread's topic. So straying beyond that topic in a response would not be unsurprising.

      One point to make is that the pressure at the tropopause is usually given as a fifth of surface pressure (200 hPa) and certainly not a tenth. And its altitude commonly given as 12km.
      But more exactly, the tropopause changes in height and pressure a lot by latitude and also a bit by the seasons. It can be as high as 17km with pressures down to 110 hPa over the tropics and as low as 8km over the poles with pressures up to 310 hPa.
      

      CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere up to the top of the stratosphere at 50km altitude. (The bulk of atmospheric water vapour rains out low down in the troposphere, as demonstraed by the moderator-appended graphic @654.)

      You still seem concerned that high up in the atmosphere, the CO2 at altitude is well spread out as the pressure falls (so about a fifth the density at the tropopause) and also colder so there would be less thermal energy.
      And it is fundamentally this reduction in energy with altitude that drives the greenhouse effect.

      The greenhouse effect is all about the altitude at which upward-emitted IR can find holes inbetween the greenhouse gases above**, allowing the IR to escape from the atmosphere and exit into space.
      If that altitude were low down, the atmosphere will indeed be relatively warm and thus thermally energetic. This energy means the CO2 gets a lot of the thumping from air mollecules that sends it into the flap that can emit IR in the 15 micron wave band. And warmer air at this emissions altitude means there is a lot of the flapping CO2 at the emission altitude and thus a lot of IR pouring through the holes into space, cooling the planet.
      Note this emission altitude will always have the same amount of CO2 above. It is this physical presence determines the altitude where those holes appear to allow IR into space.

      When you then add CO2, the altitude with holes out to space becomes higher. And as the troposphere cools with altitude, and the air higher up is less energetic, it gives the CO2 less of a thumping, so with this dropping temperature there is less CO2 flapping and so there is less IR pourng out into space because of that additional CO2. That means less cooling so the planet will have to warm to find a new hotter equilibrium temperature.

      And don't think of this reduction as a small effect. There is 3,000,000,000,000 tons of CO2 in tha atmosphere and ~20% of it (so 600 billion tons) is up there playing a planet-warming game of 'catch the photon' high in the upper troposphere and today shooting something like 5,000TW out into space. (By comparison, today mankind's global primary energy use is 18TW.)
      Add more CO2 and it will still be the top 600 billion tons of it playing that game of catch, but being now higher and thus colder, playing it with a little less vigour and so shooting a little less out into space.

      (** The emission altitude isn't constant across the 15 micron wave band. The very centre of it, a narrow band on 15 microns, emits into space from way up in the stratosphere while the outer edges of the wave band still allow IR into space low down in the troposphere. These all move upwards with extra atmospheric CO2.)

       

3614. John ONeill at 16:42 PM on 30 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      'You keep posing conspiracy theories about governments sabotaging nuclear.'

      Hardly conspiracy theories. Governors Brown in California and Cuomo in New York, Prime Minister Naoto Kan in Japan, and Presidents Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan and Moon Jae-in of South Korea, made no secret of their determination to close their respective nuclear industries. In Europe, Green parties have been demanding the energy portfolio in return for joining coalitions, and then closing reactors even when it means funding new gas plants or resurrecting coal.

3615. John ONeill at 16:07 PM on 30 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      'The nuclear industry in France, the largest adoptor of nuclear, is collapsing because their reactors have reached the end of their life.'

      In fact it's the newest reactors that may have stress cracks in some of the emergency shutdown piping - the older ones are fine.

3616. Eclectic at 13:02 PM on 30 August 2022
      How not to solve the climate change problem
      

      Scvblwxq1 @19 , thank you for the reference to the IPCC source ~ which I found on Page 8, A.3 (the 13% figure) and more on A.3.1.

      The 13% is for all agricultural CO2 nett emission (agricultural, forestry, and other land use activities.  Presumably this includes fossil fuel burn by harvesters & tractors & other field machinery ~ but this was not clearly stated, as far as seen by me.  And are logging trucks and sawmilling included? ).

      (Please note that for USA, the EPA states total greenhouse gas emissions by source as:  11% from agricultural sector;  13% from commercial/residential;  24% from industry;  25% from electricity generation;  27% from transport.    For the Third World countries, "agricultural" emissions would be higher in proportion to GNP but  lower in absolute amounts, owing to a mix of lower machinery yet higher deforestation [in South America and South-East Asia].

      While you are correct to wish to abolish deforestation, I am guessing that you do not wish to abolish all agriculture.

      And even so, it would be more logical for you to aim at abolishing that 75% plus, which constitutes the fossil fuel CO2 emission.  AGW by itself will contribute to deforestation & land degradation, over the coming century or two.

3617. scvblwxq1 at 12:20 PM on 30 August 2022
      How not to solve the climate change problem
      

      Paying to reduce deforestation may not cost too much. According to NBC news it only makes 8.2 billion a year. That should be affordable for the world if they really want to reduce CO2 emissions.

      Rainforest contribution to the economy

3618. Likeitwarm at 12:18 PM on 30 August 2022
      CO2 effect is saturated
      

      I've done it again.  I'll move any other questions to https://skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm

3619. scvblwxq1 at 11:47 AM on 30 August 2022
      How not to solve the climate change problem
      

      Well I went to the source of the 20% figure the IPCC and they said that human land use accounts for 13 percent of human CO2 emissions and the natural response to human use caused 29 percent of total CO2 emissions.

      'Climate Change and Land'
      An IPCC Special Report on climate change, desertification,
      land degradation, sustainable land management, food security,
      and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems

       IPCC Special Report 2019

      This is in Summary for Polymakers>A.3

      page 7

3620. Likeitwarm at 11:24 AM on 30 August 2022
      CO2 effect is saturated
      

      I looked up the preassure at the tropopause.  My bad assumption that that was the altitude of water.  The chart said .1 bar.  Pressure at sea is 1 bar.  Your chart shows 2km.  I agree.  I still have the question about how does CO2 in such small amounts, .04%, act as the control knob for the atmosphere when water is so completely overwhelming?  Is CO2 more populated above 2km? And I add at any altitude.  It doesn't hold the energy. It loses it to surrounding air very rapidly, if it happens to get hit with a photon.  Where is the emperical evidence or laboratory experiment that proves it has caused the increase in temperature?  I read your page at https://skepticalscience.com/CO2-trace-gas.htm.  No emperical evidence just a loose correlation and assumption that because temp went up 1.5F since 1880 and CO2 concentration went up that CO2 caused the increase in temperature.  Recent temperatures have been flat or falling since 2015 and CO2 concentration has continued to climb.

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] Confusion between air pressure and air density would be avoided by reading pretty much any introductory meteorology text.

      You ask how CO2 absorbing photons heats the atmosphere, while in the same breath saying that the energy is lost to the surroundings. Exactly. The energy gets added to surrounding molecules by collision, so the entire atmosphere at that location gets heated. In turn, a more heated atmosphere has more energy, and when energy is transferred to GHG molecules by collision with other molecules, the GHG molecules will sometimes emit that energy as radiation. Those are the fundamentals of radiative transfer in the atmosphere. Then, climate scientists add in all the other energy transfers involved (atmospheric motions, evaporation, condensation, etc.), and - gee golly - adding CO2 causes warming.

      You can read about this absorption process in detail over at Eli Rabett's blog.

      As for temperatures: you link to a site that says "It uses unadjusted surface temperatures." The site gives absolutely no indication on that main page how it handles spatial representation of individual stations, or how varying station numbers or locations affect the result over time. Adjustments are absolutely necessary to account for instrumentation, location, and sampling changes. THe source of data they use - METARS - is real-time weather observations, which have not gone through much QA/QC to weed out bad data. Without this information, it is impossible to know the validity of the analysis and methodology. Honest scientists publish the methodology they use.

      Recently, in response to another comment here, I posted a link to RealClimate's analysis of observed temperatures versus model predictions. They provide an image that includes four reputable global temperature analyses:

      

       

      The only way you can get "no warming since 2015" is by cherry-picking a peak in the noise. By the same methodology, I could say "oh, my, look at how fast it has been warming since 2017!!!". The same "no warming..." claims were being made in the years after 1998 (a huge El Nino year) - until it became obvious that warming was continuing. Then when the post-2015 period came along, the fake skeptic industry appeared to do a search-and-replace, substituting 2015 for 1998. You don't do trend analysis on a noisy by cherry picking a peak (especially one from a known cause - no more than you would conclude that the tide is no longer rising because the water level on the beach isn't as high as it was at the crest of the last wave.

      Guess. what? We have a page on that, too.

      And we have a graphic and a name for the tactic: the Escalator. (It's down the right hand side of every page here.) You can read about how the graphic is constructed here.

       

       

3621. John ONeill at 10:05 AM on 30 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      Thanks, I've been looking over the Sovacool paper.

3622. Likeitwarm at 04:50 AM on 30 August 2022
      CO2 effect is saturated
      

      @MA Rodger 639

      Sorry for taking so long to get back. 

      You said "The essential mechanism is that the CO2 greenhouse effect operates higher up in the atmosphere, above the bulk of of the atmospheric water vapour. Thus it is CO2 which determines the altitude from which the IR in this band is emitted into space, thus the amount of this IR emitted into space (determined by the atmospheric temperature of the point of emission) and thus it is CO2 which determines the amount of greenhouse warming from this waveband."
      Could you explain what is the action of CO2 at those altitudes where the air is 1/10th the density and thus I guess there is a proportionate amount of CO2. With that little CO2 and the fact that it well might have lost a lot of energy by then, I don't understand how such a small amount of ~15um radiation is such a control factor for the whole atmosphere.

      Thanks

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] You are again asserting things that make no sense.

      Have  you actually looked to see at what altitude the air density is 1/10th of the surface value? This is easy stuff to look up.

      Early Google hit: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/standard-atmosphere-d_604.html

      Density is 1/10 of surface value at an altitude between 30 and 40 km. The same table tells you that this is well into the stratosphere, where temperature is now decreasing with height. This is not "the upper atmosphere" that MA Rodger is referring to. The troposphere, where nearly all water vapour is found, is the first 10-12 km. In fact, most of the water vapour is found in the first few km. You are off by an order of magnitude.

      

       

      You are also acting (again) as if 15um is the only wavelength of importance. It is not. And the upper atmosphere (troposphere) is not working in isolation. It is linked to the rest of the atmosphere. Scientists look at this in its entirety - not as isolated compartments of tidbits of information.

      You can use this link to MODTRAN to examine how different parameters and variables affect IR radiation transfer. You would be far better off using your time to experiment with that web site and try to answer your own questions.

      Until you learn how the atmosphere works as a system, you will continue to fail to understand these issues. I suggest that you get yourself an introductory climate and/or weather text book suitable for an undergraduate program, and read it.

       

3623. One Planet Only Forever at 04:41 AM on 30 August 2022
      A next-level water crisis: Colorado River Basin faces Tier 2 restrictions
      

      The failure of leadership of the 7 states to collaboratively agree to limits that would avoid harmful future regional consequences for seems to be a lot like the failure of national leaderships to collaboratively agree to limit climate change harm done to the future of global humanity.

      Regional leadership pursuing regional popularity and perceptions of prosperity, including perceptions of superiority relative to others, is a serious problem. It forces higher level leadership to intervene to try to limit the regional harmful unsustainable activity. And regional pursuers of popular support and perceptions of prosperity can be expected to try to blame external higher level 'leadership by others' for any regional perceptions of loss.

      Self interested pursuit of benefit is potentially one of the most harmful human characteristics. And its developed perceptions of success can make it harder to govern and limit the harm it does.

3624. michael sweet at 02:54 AM on 30 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      The Sovacool et a larticle I cited in 296 was published in 2020 and not 2000.  The free copy link works.

3625. MA Rodger at 18:46 PM on 29 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      John ONeill @295,
      You defence of the analysis of Edgardo Sepulvda is poor to the point of hopelessness. My hypothetical wielding of Luxembourg to demonstrate the absurdity of the use of small and tiny countries in that Edgardo Sepulvda graphic you presented @292 is not well addressed by your bold assertion that "The countries Sepulveda examines are mostly reasonably large," which is eidently untrue. There are (according to Wikkithing) 32 countries where nuclear reactors are currently operational.

      The Edgardo Sepulvda graphic shows just twenty nuclear countries (here I list them with the No of current operational reactors in the order of their significance in the graphic) and most are certainly not "reasonably large," and most have less than half-a-dozen operational reactors which would suggest a 'lumpy' generation introduction, the phenomenon I demonstrated with the Luxembourg hypothesis.
      In order of significance given in the Edgardo Sepulvda:- Sweden 6, France 56, Finland 5, Belgium 7, Lithuania 0, Switzerland 4, Slovakia 4, Canada 19, Taiwan 3, S Korea 25, Germany 3, Bulgaria 2, Hungary 4, Czechia 6, USA 92, Japan 33, Spain 7, Slovenia 1, Ukraine, 15 UK 9.

      Perhaps to add further to the 'lumpy' problem that appears when an analysis addresses a global problem (AGW) by cutting-up the world into individual countries, Germany may be a powerhouse of the world economy but it is only 1.8% of global carbon emissions. In terms of countries, there are only two or three or four that are not small or tiny.
      

      The selective nature of the data in the Edgardo Sepulvda graphic opens the door to possible cherry-picking, and that could extend to the choice of decadal capacity increases rather than some other period. Thus a choice of six years (the usual construction time for a nuclear reactor and so also the length of the 'look-ahead' analysis I presented @294 which you so-far ignore). And note that a six-year period analysis would reverse the placing of Germany Nuclear and Germany WInd.

      And as a final indicator of the Edgardo Sepulvda analysis being more problem than illustrative, the data given by OurWorldInData (the web engines for this linked @294) give markedly different values for those presented for Germany Nuclear and Germany WInd which gives a ratio of 122-to-100 while the graphic shows 132-to-100, a variation rather too big to ignore. (This was the one check I made, and it suggests other big errors.)

      So should we be surprised if others make similar forms of analysis and reach the opposite conclusion from you armed with that Edgardo Sepulvda graphic? Indeed this is the situation we see with the analysis michael sweet presents @296 (and do consider the 'look-ahead analysis I present @294).

3626. Eclectic at 12:04 PM on 29 August 2022
      How not to solve the climate change problem
      

      Addendum -  I was in no way wishing to imply any disparagement of the great state of Texas.    ~A state which would be even greater if it had no school-shooters and no wheelchairs.  [pardon the 2022 political quip]

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] Portion of comment deleted. Let's not poke that bear here.

3627. Eclectic at 11:55 AM on 29 August 2022
      How not to solve the climate change problem
      

      Scvblwxq1 , your assertions [not-quite-arguments] are going off all over the place ~ and are missing the target.  And missing the more appropriate threads, too.

      The 20% figure you mention is cherrypicked from the Environmental Defense Fund ~  other reports/studies point to figures like 8% and 10% . . . and even those are based on short-term periods, and do not look at the bigger picture.   Does it not occur to you that the Environmental Defense Fund has an advocacy role and might be doing its own cherrypicking?    You yourself should be taking a more skeptical view, and be examining evidence/data in a more thorough and nuanced manner.

      Your CO2 growth figures of 2ppm and 80ppm demonstrate your wildly inaccurate arithmetic, and your lack of understanding the basics.

      Your "migration" argument is unscientific.  What can we really conclude about rich elderly Noo Yorkers retiring to Florida?   Or some Wisconsinites & Michiganders moving south to the warmer Texas . . . while Mexicans & others are moving north to the cooler Texas    ;-)

      Sun energy and cloud feedbacks are issues again pointing to your needing to educate yourself about these basics.

      I suggest it would be logical for you to study the practicalities of reducing the 75% bulk of fossil-derived CO2.

3628. scvblwxq1 at 11:48 AM on 29 August 2022
      How not to solve the climate change problem
      

      I think the evironmental defense fund estimate of 20% of CO2 emissions was probably 20% of human-caused CO2 emissions. I think that makes more sense.

3629. macquigg at 04:33 AM on 29 August 2022
      IPCC Explainer: Mitigation of Climate Change
      

      Michael Sweet and [BL]: I was not intending to re-start any discussion on this forum, and I will not respond here to any criticism. I am inviting your participation in a more neutral forum.

      The article on cost is new. I am doing my best to collect the most important facts on a controversial issue.  This forum seems to be the most technically informed on the anti-nuclear side, so I value your participation in the debate. From our earlier discussion, I as able to distill two critiques on the ThorCon article, one of which (Cs-137) has not been adequately answered by the ThorCon engineers.

      I am about to submit the earlier articles for final peer review, and I am intending to put an invitation on the other post where those articles were discussed. This post on climate change seemed like the better place to invite discussion on a more general topic. If you would rather I communicate privately, send and email to macquigg at gmail.  I value the work here on climate change, and I don't want to distract you with the nuclear issue.

3630. michael sweet at 03:47 AM on 29 August 2022
      IPCC Explainer: Mitigation of Climate Change
      

      Macquigg,

      Nuclear is on the tree of solutions, read more carefully.

3631. macquigg at 03:11 AM on 29 August 2022
      IPCC Explainer: Mitigation of Climate Change
      

      This presentation seems to be ingoring nuclear power as a low-cost solution to our CO2 problem.  I understand there are worries about safety, waste management, weapons proliferation and cost. I have been designated editor for a series Nuclear Power Reconsidered in Citizendium to address those issues.

      There is a discussion of our latest article examining the cost issue at Renewable vs Nuclear Debate. If you having some good information to contribute, please join that discussion.

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] You have your run on about your other blog when you brought it  up on the "What role for small modular nuclear reactors in combating climate change?" post.

      Please do not re-start that same unproductive discussion.

3632. AWS at 02:09 AM on 29 August 2022
      New temperature reconstruction vindicates ...
      

      The Problem with this article is not only that you've done the same stirching job which was supremely questionable with the Mann Graphs to begin with, but even that aside, you have used alarmist graphs which double the amount of warming we've experienced vs the actual observations. If the stitching were done with a non-manipulated Temperature graph, then you find that the temperatures we have today are *Still no different than the range of temperatures that were experienced in the MWP.   

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] The problem with this comment is that it makes unsupported accusations of dishonesty, and throws in a few unsupported claims. All items that have been discussed elsewhere on this site:

      On Mann and the reviews of his work:

      https://skepticalscience.com/Climategate-CRU-emails-hacked.htm

      https://skepticalscience.com/CRU-tampered-temperature-data.htm

      https://skepticalscience.com/Mikes-Nature-trick-hide-the-decline.htm

      On the myth that observations show less warming that predictions:

      https://skepticalscience.com/Earth-expected-global-warming.htm

      https://skepticalscience.com/ipcc-global-warming-projections.htm

      https://skepticalscience.com/ipcc-overestimate-global-warming.htm

      ...also covered in a post over at RealClimate with more up-to-date observations:

      https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/01/update-day-2021/

      ...and lastly, the Medieval Warm Period

      https://skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period.htm

      Unsupported assertions will gain you no credibility here.

       

3633. scvblwxq1 at 02:03 AM on 29 August 2022
      How not to solve the climate change problem
      

      The 20% figure for deforestation is from the Environmental Defense Fund.

      It looks to me like defostation is a major cause of CO2 increase. Deforestation has certainly increase over the years.

      CO2 growth has been around 2 ppm per year. The level is abot 400 ppm. The 20% figure is about 80 ppm. That is about 40 years of CO2 increase from deforestation alone. Deforestation in the Amazon dramatically increased around 1991 and has countinued to increase since then.

      It would take many decades and trillions of dollars to get rid of fossil fuels and it certainly hasn't warmed enough for most people to want to pay much extra for it. Buying up the rain forests would probably be much cheaper. Florida and Texas are still getting large immigration from people in the north seeking a warmer environment.

      The Sun is also emitting less energy and we don't know how much less  it will drop and when it will return to normal. The feedback effects will mean more clouds and rain as well as a cooler environment for an unknown amount of time. We may be needing fossil fuels more than ever.

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] You continue to treat this web site as if it this single post is the only place you want to comment.

      Please learn to use the Search tool. You have been pointed to other blog posts that look at deforestation. There are also several hits if you search for "Amazon", including

      https://skepticalscience.com/amazon-carbon-study-unnerving.html

      https://skepticalscience.com/statistic-of-decade-massive-amazon-deforestation.html

      Your claims about the cost of getting off fossil fuels also has better places:

      https://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-too-hard.htm

      https://skepticalscience.com/too-expensive.htm

      Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right.  This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.

      Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it.  Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.

3634. michael sweet at 22:35 PM on 28 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      John Oneill

      Sovacool et all 2000   (free copy linked here in the right column) reaches a different conclusion from your web page.   Was yours peer reviewed?  Sovacool et al find:

      "we use multiple regression analyses on global datasets of national carbon emissions and renewable and nuclear electricity production across 123 countries over 25 years to examine systematically patterns in how countries variously using nuclear power and renewables contrastingly show higher or lower carbon emissions. We find that larger-scale national nuclear attachments do not tend to associate with significantly lower carbon emissions while renewables do."

      I prefer peer-reviewed links.  I doubt that we will come to agreement on this point.

      Most of the nuclear improvements in your ten year list were made decades ago, with that remainder being single plants that took decades to build in small countries  Then people learned that nuclear was not economic and stopped building.  By contrast, all the wind and solar builds are recent.  Next year more wind and solar builds will be on the list and they will rise in the amounts of electricity generated.  You are comparing the best years of an old, failed technology to a new, rapidly expanding technology.  And you forgot solar.

      Renewable energy has only been the cheapest energy for a few years.  Nuclear has been around for 70 years.  More reactors shut down every year because they are worn out than are built.  Gas and wind have been built lately because they were cheapest.  Now, solar is also being built because it is cheap.  With the increase in the price of gas, all new build power will be renewable.

      The nuclear industry in France, the largest adoptor of nuclear, is collapsing because their reactors have reached the end of their life.  Your link from post 290 says future heat waves could cause 30% of France's nuclear to shut down during periods of highest need.  So much for "always on".  We see this already in 2022, except so many plants are closed for emergency repairs the shut downs from drought and heat are smaller.

      in post 289 you state that 60% of Frances nuclear is currently shut down during the worst electricity crisis in Europe.  Most are closed for emergency repairs with no restart date.  You keep posing conspiracy theories about governments sabotaging nuclear.

      You cite data from the 1980's to support nuclear.  Meanwhile the reactors built in the 80's are wearing out and shutting down.  Come back when you have recent data that supports nuclear.

      Nuclear is too expensive, takes too long to build and there is not enough uranium.

3635. John ONeill at 20:34 PM on 28 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      The countries Sepulveda examines are mostly reasonably large. Those with more than 50% of their power from nuclear include France and Ukraine, large countries at opposite ends of Europe both geographically and in wealth. Germany and Japan, both economic giants, got almost 30% of their power from nuclear before the Fukushima meltdown led both to turn off most of their plants - unwisely, in my view. Making an unrealistic example of a small country is mostly a crime of the renewables enthusiasts. I've often seen lists online of places 'approaching 100% renewable', those including my own homeland, New Zealand. New Zealand has actually been receding from the '100% RE' ideal lately, as low hydro production led to record imports of coal. In fact, nearly all the places touted as nearing 100% RE are small, most rely largely on hydro, and many are quite poor, with low electricity use, and associated low rankings for general well-being. Brazil is an outlier, a large economy that used to get the great majority of its power from hydro, but climate change has been causing problems with that. There are a few countries which have reached around ten percent of their power from solar, but even by that level, intermittency, and usually, out of control incentive payments, are causing intractable problems. The two countries with a large share of power from wind are Denmark and Uruguay - both comparatively small, and both able to export their surpluses, and import to cover their deficits, from the much larger economies either side of them. (Uruguay also relies mainly on hydro, which can fill the wind gaps.) Your citing of Luxembourg is a bit rich - they used to have some of the most coal-heavy power in Europe, but still felt entitled to back Austria in taking legal action against other EU countries trying to decarbonise with nuclear. Conversely, Lithuania used to get over 90% of its electricity from two Soviet-era reactors, which it was forced to close to be allowed into the EU. Instead of exporting plenty of low-carbon power, the Lithuanians now import most of it - often from Sweden, which is roughly one third nuclear-powered, and which, like France till its recent problems, exports copious clean juice to all the countries around it.

      I just listened to an interesting podcast on grid economics, among other things. The Australian interviewee points out that leaving power planning to the market, as has been the fashion of late, is getting increasingly problematic - the Australian grid operator has a 'rule book' 1,700 pages ong, but the one for the PJM ( Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland) has 4,000 pages! The way the market rules are set tends to mean that just one type of generation is built in a period - nuclear in the early eighties, coal in Australia in the eighties, wind in Germany, gas and wind in the US lately. This was a reaction against the perceived socialism or dirigism of top-down control, but has led to a situation where nobody is really making long-term, coherent plans for the infrastructure that underpins our whole existence. Stephen Wilson: Adjunct Professor at University of Queensland

3636. MA Rodger at 16:41 PM on 28 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      John ONeill @292,

      Really?

      Maybe I've missed something but it is quite easy to demonstrate that nuclear is not delivering.

      It is not a particularly clever analysis by this economist Edgardo Sepulvda. Cutting the world into tiny bits such that a small country with a nuclear power plant or two will suddenly have a big chunk of low carbon electricity capacity arriving in short order. Isn't that inevitable?

      Imagine. Shoe-horn a nuclear reactor into Luxembourg, press the on button and bingo - we have a winner!!

      A cleverer approach would surely be to take the global view of this. AGW is after all a global problem requiring a global fix.

      OurWorldInData shows the meatiest increase in nuclear generation occurred back in 1984 & 1985 when generation jumped by 221TWh/y & 234TWh/y respectively. This compares with the almost exponential rise in wind generation which jumped 265TWh/y in 2021. Or if longer periods are compared, both nuclear and wind  increased massively from under 100TWh/y, wind achieving 1,860TWh in the last 17 years, and nuclear 1,730TWh/y over a similar 17 year period. So the numbers are not dissimilar but the nuclear stuff was back over thirty years ago.
      
      Of course, we don't know for certain how tomorrow will shape out but the near-exponential growth in wind generation will presumably continue in coming years, so presumably easily exceeding a linear increase which would be 265TWh/y. Meanwhile for nuclear we know there is 0.058TW of new build expected to switch on in the next six years which. if it arrives on time to give say 90% load factor and none of the existing capacity shuts down, that would result in 76TWh/y increase in low carbon generation, a level well below 30% of the wind delivery.

      And that is why I say that, in comparison with wind, a sensible analysis shows nuclear not delivering. But then, have I missed something?

3637. One Planet Only Forever at 09:44 AM on 28 August 2022
      Cranky Uncle: a game building resilience against climate misinformation
      

      JasonChen,

      Perhaps a clarification of the issue being discussed would help. Discourse is only possible when there is a common understanding of what is being discussed.

      The issue is the need to help people be less tempted to believe misunderstandings regarding climate science.

      There is undeniably a problem of successful efforts to selectively/misleadingly tempt people to want a product or service that they do not 'need'. There is even the hope that people will be so powerfully tempted that they will consider an 'unnecessary want' to be an 'essential need' which will keep them from investigating or recognising harm done. Those marketing efforts include deliberately failing to investigate and inform about, or misinforming about, harmful risks or results of the 'hoped to be popularly needed' product or service.

      'Does it work' is therefore regarding how effective the 'game' is at helping a person be less likely to be misled into misunderstanding climate science matters. The objective is to reduce the popular support for unnecessarily harmful human activity.

      So it is possible that your perception of the issue is 'a good distance', remote, from the common sense of what the issue is. The popularity of the 'game' is not the issue. Neither is the possibility that someone who is fond of misunderstanding climate science matters would feel 'manipulated' by the game.

      If you believe there is a better tool to help limit the popularity of harmful misunderstanding offer it up. It could be helpful beyond the challenge of the popularity of harmful misunderstandings regarding climate science. But it is common sense that it would be wise to use any such 'better' tool in addition to, not instead of, other helpful tools.

3638. Doug Bostrom at 06:40 AM on 28 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      As (mostly) a bystander to discussions of this kind, I keep thinking that I'm hearing something along the lines of "are winter tires the solution to driving with good traction?"  Emphasis on "the."

      There's no "the," it seems, if one looks at reality as it unfolds on a daily basis: USEIA Electric Power Monthly with Data for June 2022. 

      We want simple, "the," but that's very unlikely, is contradicted by plain evidence and facts on the ground. What we actully get is "it depends."

3639. John ONeill at 23:43 PM on 27 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      Economist Edgardo Sepulvda has analysed the electricity generation profiles, and the concomitant emissions reductions, for thirty OECD  countries. 'Over the last 50 years, countries that adopted nuclear power consistently reduced emissions intensity, by more than three times as much as those that went without nuclear.' 

      https://edecarb.org/

       He proposes that the faster nuclear builds in the 70s and early 80s occurred when electricity demand was growing faster than GDP, whereas demand more recently in the richer countries has been flat, so long-term investment was discouraged. To have any hope of reducing the impact of climate change, we'll have to increase non-fossil power generation by about 3x at least. Nuclear generation has been static, but that's hardly surprising when some of the governments of many countries with high nuclear percentages - Germany, Japan, South Korea, France, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan - have been actively trying to reduce or eliminate the industry. So have regional governments - Governor Brown in California, and Governors Mario and Andrew Cuomo, in New York, spent forty years trying to sabotage their respective States' largest low-carbon generators. 

      Of the twenty fastest deployments of electricity generation per capita, measured by increase in MWh produced per person during deployment, eight were from hydro and nine from nuclear - only three involved wind power.

      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FWpposPaIAIqYC6?format=png&name=900x900

      The Olkiluoto reactor in Finland has been a byword for how slow reactor projects can be to come to completion - it has in fact taken seventeen years, just being brought up to full operation now. ( Chinese, Japanese, South Korean, and formerly French reactors have been built and powered up in about four years.) Yet this troubled plant will produce more power than all the wind turbines built in Denmark over the same period. Denmark and Finland have similar populations, though the Danish economy is larger. Denmark is famous for having the world's highest proportion of power from wind, but the electricity emissions of Finland, which has five nuclear reactors, are almost always lower.

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] Links activated.
      
      The web software here does not automatically create links. You can do this when posting a comment by selecting the "insert" tab, selecting the text you want to use for the link, and clicking on the icon that looks like a chain link. Add the URL in the dialog box.

      You have been advised about this before. Please make the effort to make it easier for readers to follow your links.

3640. Eclectic at 13:59 PM on 27 August 2022
      How not to solve the climate change problem
      

      Scvblwxq1 , now you are talking sense, I reckon.

      Your tropical deforestation 20% component is rather too high for a long-term nett figure . . . but 25% would be nearer the mark by the time you add in production of cement and steel.

      Deforestation is obviously self-limiting . . . as we approach zero natural forest remaining.  And even half of that Climate Change legislation's USD369 billion (over 10 years, I gather) would not go far against the underlying causes (Third world poverty and entrenched corruption etc).   In perspective: USD369 billion is about 5% of US military expenses over 10 years.

      #  More effective and logical, imo, would be to aim more at reducing the other roughly 75% of the CO2 problem that comes from fossil fuel usage  ~ that is a formidable problem, yet not as intractable as the example you have chosen.

3641. scvblwxq1 at 09:09 AM on 27 August 2022
      How not to solve the climate change problem
      

      Getting rid of tropical deforestation would drop greenhouse gas emissions(probably mainly CO2) by 20% would drop the CO2 ppm value from about 420 ppm to about 336 ppm, about the 1980 value.

      The US Climate Change bill was $369 billion. The US and the other countries should consider spending most of that money buying up the forests they are burning and making arrangements to take care of displaced people.

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] If you wish to discuss deforestation, there are better places than this thread.

      https://skepticalscience.com/trillion-trees.htm

      https://skepticalscience.com/REDD_and_climate.html

       

3642. scvblwxq1 at 08:35 AM on 27 August 2022
      How not to solve the climate change problem
      

      The article doesn't mention 3 major sources of CO2 that have been producing more CO2 in modern times. 

      Forests and grasslands are being converted to farmlands worldwide. Both forest and grasslands take up CO2 constantly compared to cropland that only takes up large quantities of CO2 when the plants get larger and shortly after that they are harvested and no CO2 is taken up by that land until more crops are planted.

      Tropical deforestation contributes about 20% of annual global greenhouse gas emission alone. 'Measuring Carbon Emissions from Tropical Deforestation: An Overview' Environmental Defense Fund

      The other major source of CO2 that has changed is insects. Insects comprise more than 50% of all animals by weight and are major CO2 producers. The population of the birds that control the insects has dropped by 30% in the United States in the last 50 years and the decline in bird populations is worldwide. Fewer birds means there are more insects eating the plants that have taken up CO2 and releasing it when they exhale.

      Moderator Response:

      [BL] Then maybe it is off-topic? You've been warned. Pay attention to those warnings.

      ...and reposting comments that have had things moderated out is a rapid path to having comments deleted completely.

3643. BudRoberts at 07:33 AM on 27 August 2022
      CO2 lags temperature
      

      The other thing apparent from that graph is that temperature climb rate early in the post-glacial period seriously flattens at the peak. That seems to imply a variation in sensitivity that is not mentioned in the Shakun paper. If that were not the case, the temperature would continue to climb at the faster rate.

3644. BudRoberts at 06:58 AM on 27 August 2022
      CO2 lags temperature
      

      Figure 2a in the Shakun paper seems to confirm that the very minor warming due to higher CO2 after the peak temperature is reached following deglaciation is substantially smaller than the effects of the Milankovitch cycles, which clearly dominate earth's climate. Is that not apparent from the graph?

3645. MA Rodger at 04:48 AM on 27 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      John ONeill @289/290,
      You can blame all them cooling problems on the fishes if you like and point to wondrous solutions, but the access to cooling water from rivers for existing nuclear reactors is a problem. Yet in the grand scheme of things, the various problems nuclear would have to address are all-of-them fixable with enough time and effort, even the uranium fuel constraint. And surely even the constraint which Abbott (2012) describes as the "harder one, ... An increased demand for rare metals" is not beyond the wit of man.
      But time is a ticking and time-&-tide waits for no man, while there are also limited resources available to address AGW with the competing available technologies.
      The challenge set by the OP above is for "nuclear proponents" to provide a demonstration of approaches for fixing all these problems, and fixing them all in a useful and timely manner such that nuclear can then play a significant part of the non-carbon-emitting power required by humanity (which Abbott 2011 totals as 15TW), this within the next couple of decades and without costing an arm and a leg.
      Now that is quite a daunting challenge, but perhaps that is the measure of what is needed to set out a case for nuclear.

      So as 2050 draws ever closer, while discussion of the different approaches to cooling nuclear reactors may be an interesting one, where would demonstrating cooling problems as being fixable (or not) get us?

      Perhaps the question should be "How is the ramping-up of global nuclear capacity going?" (Note this is my 'Pudding Test' from up-thread.)
      
      We do have a start-point in today's 0.39TW global nuclear capacity and as of today, the output of that nuclear capacity has been flat-lining for the last two decades.
      
      So not an encouraging start. But maybe there is a new dawn for the technology.

      The WNA list 53 reactors under construction completing 2022-28 (totalling 0.058TW and comprising 0.019TW, 0.008TW, 0.005TW & 0.009TW in successive years, so no sign of any accelerating in the building although an increase on the 0.004TW/yr average new capacity 2000-16 graphed in this CarbonBrief piece from 2016), this WNA listing seemingly smack up-to-date and pointing to a 0.01TW/yr of new capacity.
      The WNA also talk of 0.09TW "on order or planned and over 300 more [that's 300 reactors = 3TW pro rata] are proposed."
      Strangely, the WNA also quote numbers from the IEA for 2050 nuclear capacity variously as 0.525TW amd 0.669TW, neither of which seem to match the level of planned/proposed new nuclear described by WNA on the same webpage, a mismatch which goes without comment. But that is the nature of the WNA commentary.
      I note they have a page in which it addresses the question "In practice, is a rapid expansion of nuclear power capacity possible?" and they argue in reply that the 1980s saw a large increase in nuclear capacity with a new reactor starting up "an average of one every 17 days. .... So it is not hard to imagine a similar number being commissioned in a decade after about 2015." The actual increase in nuclear generation seen 1980-90 was 0.14TW which would pro rata add 0.39TW 2022-50, less closures of 0.15TW, yielding simplistically a 66% increase to 0.65TW by 2050.
      Perhaps it should be a more thoughtful analysis presented in the WNA's Harmony Programme which talks of a 0.033TW build rate 2025-50 and 1.25TW capacity by 2050, although if it is a more thoughtful analysis, that thought is not evident.

      So "a nuclear realist" as described by Abbott (2011) who "would only suggest that we need about 1 TW of nuclear power as part of our world energy mix" has less daunting challenge, although Abbot (2011) does conclude that "one only has to divide the results, in this paper, by fifteen to see that 1 TW still stretches resources and risks considerably." And the rate of build is yet still deep in the inadequate zone.

3646. JasonChen at 21:45 PM on 26 August 2022
      Cranky Uncle: a game building resilience against climate misinformation
      

      That's a good distance from what I said, so I don't have an answer for you.

3647. John ONeill at 17:33 PM on 26 August 2022
      Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
      

      Article on adaptation of French nuclear to climate change.

      https://bonpote.com/en/will-nuclear-power-plants-withstand-climate-change-1-2/

3648. Doug Bostrom at 17:08 PM on 26 August 2022
      Cranky Uncle: a game building resilience against climate misinformation
      

      Whoa there, Jason. We're still stuck at your first question. You've started a discussion— don't scurry away now.

      You asked "does it work?"  You were shown where that question is answered. You say you've read those cites, and to have found your question unaddressed.

      So in a nutshell, you're saying that Cook is making unsupported claims. 

      Specifically,  how are Cook's assertions "Inoculation has been found to be effective in neutralizing misinformation casting doubt on the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming [2, 6]. Inoculation messages are also long lasting [8]"  unfounded?

3649. JasonChen at 14:18 PM on 26 August 2022
      Cranky Uncle: a game building resilience against climate misinformation
      

      If you don't want to discuss the article, Doug, obviously there's no obligation to.  I followed the first two citations you recommended, found they didn't address any of the interesting questions, and one has limited time for data mining expeditions.  I also tried out the app.

3650. Doug Bostrom at 12:27 PM on 26 August 2022
      Cranky Uncle: a game building resilience against climate misinformation
      

      We can lead you to water, Jason, but we can't force you to drink.

      Sincerely: do youself a favor by finding the answers yourself. You'll find most (if not all) of your questions addressed in the list of citations.  Whatever your attitude, belief or intentions, you'll be the better for investing some effort.

      Many of the citations above will show up with a link to given article in our glossary/cite system if you hover your cursor over titles. What I personally can do to help is to render the entire citation list into a set of clickable links. Would you like that? 

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