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Comments 46851 to 46900:

46851. gws at 00:29 AM on 27 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       JvD @390,

       This is not helpful. Again, you simply repeated your assertion.

       So far, the only unchallenged argument you made with respect to the 100%-impossible-claim is an economic one (you cited an EU report), and I asked @356 if that is set in stone. You did not address that. I may be naive, but usually economic forecasts assume BAU and use statistics of past data to extrapolate, so whatever bleak economic forecast re renewables there is, it is not likely very reliable, meaning it can change quickly given changing circumstances.

       I quote that EUR 24996 report from 10/2011, preface:

       The policy implication of this analysis is that there are increasing costs associated to the deployment of intermittent generation technologies in the EU-27. If the cost of integrating intermittent generation was to be limited to about 25 billion EUR per year, no more than about 40% of intermittent generation can be integrated in the European power market. The final choice of an acceptable cost increase will be a political choice.

       Clearly, the calculated limit of of 40% is created by the artifical 25 billion EUR per year cap with the implication that political choices need to be made. May I say ... duh. Somehow I think that report is hardly the last definitive word out there ...

       Furthermore, I got the impression that you argue from the narrow view that renewables basically mean wind and solar and that 100% use of these cannot work (although even your arguments for that were contested here strongly). That may be correct on small scales and ignoring other renewables such as hydroelectric, wave and tidal power generation (hello The Netherlands!), and biomass, presuming the latter is done responsibly.

46852. CBDunkerson at 23:59 PM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       There are dozens of countries currently generating more than 35% of their electricity from sources other than fossil fuels, biomass, and nuclear. Eleven of these countries generate more than 99% of their electricity without using fossil fuels, biomass, or nuclear.

       Granted, most of that power is hydro (and geothermal in Iceland) rather than wind and solar, but it is obviously not true that we have no choice other than 'nuclear vs combustion'. Wind and solar account for greater than 35% electricity generation in several sub-national regions (e.g. German states) and will soon be reaching that point on a national level (e.g. Italy and Spain).

46853. DSL at 23:53 PM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       bjchip, try Skyllingstad et al. (2000), Schewe & Leverman (2010), the wiki on Langmuir cells, the wiki on Ekman pumping, and Stewart & Thompson (2012).  Wind can drive vertical circulation in a variety of ways, from micro to macro scales.

46854. bjchip at 21:53 PM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       "So what's causing this transfer of heat to the deeper ocean layers? The authors suggest that it is a result of changes in winds related to the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and more frequent La Niña events."

       OK... I'm sort of puzzled here.  The PDO is what it is and the Meehl paper seems to explain the heat transfer.... though warm water going down seems "odd"  ... but how does the wind carry heat into the deep ocean?  Wind can carry less heat away from the surface?   Is this a loosely worded summary that misleads?  Looking at what the links to the briefs on Meehl say I am missing something   ?  

46855. Leto at 21:15 PM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       Craig King wrote:

       "Likewise surely the atmosphere cannot be warmed by the ocean to a temperature higher than the ocean."

       I think this reveals a misunderstanding, though I'd be hapy to be educated by the climate scientists. The ocean can be cooler than the atmosphere and still modify the atmosphere's temperature in an upward direction compared to an even colder ocean. It doesn't have to provide the heat (which comes from the sun); it just has to modify the heat flows.

       Can cold milk make a hot coffeee hotter? Simplistic thinking would say no, because how could heat flow from the milk to the coffee?

       But what if I usually whiten my coffee with icecream, and one day I replace the icecream with cool milk? The use of cool milk will lead to a warmer coffee than the original situation - not because heat has flowed from cool milk to hot coffee, but because less heat has flowed into the whitener than when icecream was used.

46856. JvD at 21:09 PM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       @gws, I already replied to KR 372. My reply is that I do not dispute that intermittent renewables could provide 35% of supply. I dispute that it can supply a majority of the required 100%. The difference will be made up with fossils or (worse) biomass, if we don't use nuclear. That is why I am pro-nuclear. Not because I am against solar or wind (which I am not!) but because I am against GHG emissions and against blackouts. If we don't use nuclear, the only way forward is continued use of fossils, or blackouts.

46857. JvD at 21:06 PM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       gws: "Everyone should focus on a smaller issue first, say "why is the economic forecast (in the EU paper link you gave) so bleak?" and "is that an accepted fact we cannot hope to change?", or "how can we (best) make renewables provide baseload power?", I suggest. Then take it from there."

       Intermittent renewables cannot provide baseload power, per definition. Only fossil fuels, nuclear, hydro and biomass can do that. Biomass and hydro are not large enough, which leaves fossil and nuclear. The only way to make intermittent sources supply baseload is by using electricity storage. Hydro is too small for this, while engineered storage is too expensive. If money is not issue, there would be no problem, but money is an issue, and while it is, intermittent renewables will never provide baseload.

46858. JvD at 20:56 PM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       Andy Skuse: "I have one question for Joris. What do you think of this report: California’s Energy Future - The View to 2050?"

       I think it is a very good report. I recommend everyone read it, because it does justice to pointing out the *serious* problems associated with banking on intermittent renewables to provide the majority of sustainable energy, let alone firm capacity, which is the topic of this thread.

       The report unfortunately appears to dismiss the option of producing fully synthetic liquid fuels on the grounds that it would require (too) much energy. I don't agree and neither does the US navy. Recently, the US navy has shown that shipborne nuclear power could supply synthetic liquid jet fuels at reasonable cost, allowing nuke powered navy fleets to go without refueling for decades, and still fly regular air superiority sorties.

       So since California has a high technological skill base and reputation for innovation, my recommendation for Californians is to push for building nuclear powered synfuel facilities which makes liquid fuel from carbonates in seawater. Initially, they could be built to make synfuel from coal, but ultimately they should switch to using seawater. The cost per gallon ofequivalent liquid fuel will then be only slightly higher than current prices at the pump, and would be completely GHG free. Such facilities could be built at the 10GW scale, or 50GW or even higher. Studies have already shown that inherently safe liquid metal cooled fast reactors or breeders could arguably be built at that scale, and possibly even up to 100 GW capacity per reactor. (source: AFAIK as yet unpublished research by a PhD friend of mine specialised in LMR technology.)

       Additionally, another PhD friend has shown that such applications could benefit from molten salt heat storage, which doubles as a credible indirect eletricity storage. In other words: building such nuclear powered synfuel facilities allows coupling with intermittent renewables by damping fluctuations in energy supply by storing and retrieving process heat from molten salt heat stores in tandem with increasing and dereasing wind speed or solar insolation. However, while technically feasible, the economics would not favour this as a long term strategy. Still it could help in absorbing large penetrations of intermittent energy sources until such time as there is a global superconductor grid that would actually make a fully solar/wind power system slightly possible, as opposed to impossible.

       To be clear, Is support wind and solar energy and further build out of those technologies. What I do *not* support is the nonsensical idea that intermittent energy sources can replace stable supply from fossil or nuclear power plants. I view that as a very dangerous and unfortunately very prevalent myth, and I take time out every once in a while to point this out since the future is also mine, not just of greenpeace. Note that I bring up Greenpeace, because the IPCC has used the Greenpeace vision as the lead scenario in there press-release statement about the SSREN study. This is a major mistake. Part of my intention is that the Greenpeace scenarios are exposed as nonsense and removed from the IPCC documentation until such time as they are made rational, which will happen as soon as Greenpeace ends it's counterproductive crusade against nuclear energy and also acknowledges the grave difficulties with switching to 100% intermittent renewables. They will do both sooner or later, since logic and truth requires it.

46859. gws at 20:27 PM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       Okay, so it took a while after me and now KR suggested to get back on topic. There is not much to add re nuclear here, Joris, and while I see some folks here correcting there own comments, I see few of your points being convincing.

       Joris now finally returned to his 100%-impossible-claim, but now beats Greenpeace as a strawman. This post is not about them ... obviously a small country like yours should and need not attempt an island solution. Care instead of responding to my post @356 and KR's @372 ?

46860. JvD at 20:21 PM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       @Glenn: "The concepts behind Fast Breeder Reactors are certainly a major advance over earlier designs - much greater intrinsic safety, massively lower dangerous wastes produced, able consume a lot of existing wastes, and can even run on Thorium. However, they are still at the proof of concept/pilot stage. They are years away from serious scale commercial deployment."

       They are years away from serious deployment because there is not yet a need for fast breeders. But the technical knowhow to build them is there already, after decades of research and demonstration in multiple countries. The argument that fast breeders are not commercial (if you are making it) is a non argument. The only reason they are not (strongly) commercially pursued today is because we already have licenced thermal reactor technology that will be applied first. But there is no technical reason why we could not equally build fast reactors. In fact: almost all nuclear countries such as the US, Japan, Russia, etc, have proven and demonstrated the technology through decades. It's here. It's real. If we want them, they can and will be built. And you are right: they have all sorts of advantages over traditional thermal reactors.

46861. JvD at 20:14 PM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       @JasonB. We do not need fast breeders for at least a few centuries if we don't scale up nuclear power. Only if the world would embark on a rational nuclear build-out, then most new reactors would be fast reactors, fast breeders or breeders. China's long-term energy plan calls for a majority of such reactors, which they will start building toward the second half of the century (or earlier, according to recent announcements, but that aside). India's long term plan is to use thorium breeders, which deliver similar benefits as fast breeders.

       Fast breeder technology is a proven technology. the US EBR-II operated as a (inherently safe!) fast breeder IFR for years, though only at a small (research) scale. The French Phenix reactor was very succesfull, although the Superphenix suffered from teething problems. Still, much was learned from that and the current state-of-the-art of fast reactor technology is highly advanced. 

       There is no serious person who knows the technology who claims that fast reactors are not feasible. The reason for not building them today is mainly that the once-through uranium fuel cycle is still economical, and because of technological lock-in of traditional thermal reactors, which makes it hard to make a case for spending billions on new licencing regimes and designs while the traditional thermal technology is completely developed and licenced. If getting a new thermal reactor through the red tape is extremely costly. Imagine how expensive a 4th gen design will be! They can be made, and they will be made, but arguably not while uranium is still dirt cheap. This says nothing about the feasibility of fast breeders, but is just a matter of basic economics and the current status of uranium supplies which still gives the cost advantage to a once-through fuel cycle.

       Finally, note that the actual nuclear component of a typical new nuclear power plant is only 5% of the project cost. 95% is for redundant safety, financing and red-tape. So even if a fast-reactor is more expensive than a thermal reactor, it will change nothing to the overal cost of the reactor. Arguably, since fast reactors can be built inherently safe, there are cost *savings* available, if licencing regulations can evolve to incorporate the inherent safety. However, politically, evolving licencing regulations is very difficult. It takes more than a decade to change something in the licencing system in the USA. Licencing regulation has prevented nuclear innovation, which is the main cause of a percieved lack of innovation.

46862. JvD at 19:54 PM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       KR: "While the advantages/disadvantages of nuclear power are an interesting topic, they are a red herring in regards to the actual topic of this thread - the capabilities of renewable power to supply baseload/ongoing energy demands.

       In that regard, and in reply to a number of assertions made recently:

       [...]NREL has also shown that 35% penetration by wind/solar in the Western US can be accomplished, and "not require extensive infrastructure if changes are made to operational practices", contrary to assertions re: penetration made on this thread."

       KR, I don't dispute that 35% penetration is possible (although it will be very expensive, as shown by the OECD report I linked to). Rather I dispute that 100% is possible.

       I linked to an excruciatingly obtuse Greenpeace study that says that in my country, the Netherland, 70 GW (!) of solar and wind farms should be installed by 2050, even while maximum power demand is 13 GW. This is a dream. No scratch that: it is a fantasy. No, scratch that too, it is a LIE! It will never happen and cannot happen. In my country, we will NOT build 70 GW of batteries to store the power of 70 GW of intermittent renewables. Greenpeace places itself outside of normal rational discussion, and is thereby the enemy of all parties who sincerely want to solve the GHG emissions problem. Fortunately, I know some people within Greenpeace who are as sick and tired of such nonsense as I am. I dare to predict that Greenpeace will abandon its deadly obsession with destroying the nuclear option within ten years. Greenpeace has already recently abandoned its deadly embrace of biofuels (I like to think partly due to the almost 10 years I have spent reminding them of the deadly facts about biofuels), and similarly, Greenpeace will abandon its nuclear sabotage ideology sooner or later.

46863. Salamano at 19:36 PM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       Couple Questions...

       1. The purple line "overall depth" ... Is this 0-2000m, or is this 0-700m? (I'm looking for a chart that shows 700m-2000m warming over the past 30 years. (presumably this is the whole matter being discussed anyway). From what I think I'm seeing, the purple line minus the blue line gives us the bottom 1300m?

       2. More frequent La Ninas and the negative phase of the PDO are the reason for the increased transfer of Global Warming contribution into the deeper oceans in the last 15 years... This means previously the oceans were not the receptor of as much GW heat content? What allows us to track with relative certainty the variable contribution percentage of GW into the deep ocean?

46864. JvD at 19:34 PM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       @Michael Sweet. I don't care whether some people claim nuke EROI is less than one. And I don't care whether the American Scientists sees fit to cite such wild claims. Note that they also published the WNA figures of 40-60. The WNA figures are credible. Vattenfall published figures for their Swedish Forsmark plant which demonstrates EROI > 50. This is not a controversial figure, and I trust you will find the Forsmark figures using google and not muddle this discussion again. If nuke EROI was 1, there would never have been any nuke plants built, so it is completely silly to pursue this wild claim and frankly it makes you look like a troll, I'm sorry to say. Stop doing it. Start learning.

46865. JvD at 19:31 PM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       KR. "I did not see your source for truck mounted fission reactors before. Reading it I see that they are not praticable. No shielding for operators! Keep up trying to convince people."

       I brought up the truckmounted nuke plant only as an example of what is possible. You are trying to make it sound as if this is a major part of my argument. Shielding reactor cores is as simple as pooring concrete, by the way. Concrete is an excellent radiation shield.

        

46866. Craig King at 19:29 PM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       @Glen . . thanks for that analogy but surely ultimately the two pools would be at the same level. Likewise surely the atmosphere cannot be warmed by the ocean to a temperature higher than the ocean.

       With regards to the evaporation, surely while it does lower the temperature of the water it cannot raise the temperature of the air above that of the ocean. I am thinking at a global rather than a topical sense.

46867. Pierre-Normand at 19:17 PM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       Rob Painting,

       That's very useful. Thank you. If there indeed was this slowdown in sea level rise, aerosols and ENSO would seem to possibly account for everything, including Figure 1 above. Aerosols would account for part of the reduction in OHC trend, while El Nino dominated ENSO would further flatten this trend while contributing to the remaining small rate of sea level rise through water run-off (adding up to the small contribution from continued ice-sheet and glacier melt). Everything seems to fit.

46868. philipm at 19:02 PM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       Add in the fact that much more of the Antarctic than previously thought is grounded below sea level (reported on the BBC web site; full paper here), and things have taken a decided turn for the worse. Warmer oceans + lots of ice grounded below sea level … do I need to join the dots?

       Maybe Hansen was right back in 2007 about the potential for very rapid sea level rise:

       There is enough information now, in my opinion, to make it a near certainty that IPCC BAU climate forcing scenarios would lead to a disastrous multi-meter sea level rise on the century timescale.

       – and the scary thing is that Hansen issued this warning without the latest data on how much of the Antarctic is grounded below sea level.

46869. Rob Painting at 18:47 PM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       Pierre-Normand - There is some scientific literature that suggests a slowdown in sea level rise (SLR) coinciding with the slowing of ocean heat content during the 1960's to 70's. 

       Church (2004) has this SLR slowdown during the 1960's, and Kohl & Stammer (2008) have this persisting into the 1970's.

       There is a great deal of variation between all the sea level estimates prior to modern satellite-based observations, but it may not be necessary to invoke novel mechanisms. 

46870. Rob Painting at 17:10 PM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       Brenty - The increased level of atmospheric sulfate aerosols from tropical volcanoes over the last decade, blocked sunlight reaching the Earth's surface, which has contributed to a very slight reduction in warming. This is not the same as your claim.

       There are a number of problems with the idea of undersea volcanoes warming the ocean, but the greatest obstacle is that the volcanoes would have to be upside down on the sea surface, because the heat is originating at the surface and propagating downwards.

46871. Pierre-Normand at 17:02 PM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       Bob Loblaw,

       Tanks for helping me there. Reading your post I had an 'Aha!' moment and wondered how I hadn't thought of that obvious time delay explanation. I knew a bit about the mixed layer, thermocline, etc. But trying to think it through, much of my puzzlement remains. Such an explanation would possibly explain a pause in sea level rise while OHC continues to rise. But how can the reverse occur? If the ocean rise is a delayed response to past warming, this means that heat previously sunken in deep layers is now moving to upper layers... How might this happen?

       El Nino or neutral events that follow La Nina events also tend to result in a net transfer of run-off water from lands to oceans. So this may also contribute to the sea level rise in spite of the reduced OHC increase. El Ninos events of course promote such a reduction.

46872. Brenty at 15:33 PM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       Given that the increased activity of above ground volcanoes is supposed to be stopping global warming, I presume this increased activity is limited to those 30% of volcanoes and not the 70% that we can't see under the oceans. Given that there are enormous numbers of undersea volcanoes (I have seen estimates of a million or more) I guess there would have to be some extra deep ocean warming when more erupt than usual.

       The tectonic plates are now supposed to be moving a little more than they were in the 20th C. This should manifest in a higher incidence of great (8+) earthquakes. In fact since 2004 the incidence rate has increased by around a factor of 6 or 7. I don't think there a good enough records to measure how much the above ground volcanic activity has increased but if Alex Kirby is correct then the same must be occuring undersea.

46873. Glenn Tamblyn at 14:23 PM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       The concepts behind Fast Breeder Reactors are certainly a major advance over earlier designs - much greater intrinsic safety, massively lower dangerous wastes produced, able consume a lot of existing wastes, and can even run on Thorium. However, they are still at the proof of concept/pilot stage. They are years away from serious scale commercial deployment.

       Should money be poured into developing them? Absolutely. Particularly if that development can produce modular designs that don't need to be specially designed for each installation.

       But that does not justify any slowdown in deployment of Renewables. Any and every technology that can save a kilogram of CO2 going into the atmsphere now should be used to the maximum possible now! FBR's, as a viable option are quite some years away. But our CO2 problem is today.

46874. JasonB at 14:18 PM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       I wrote:

       According to the World Nuclear Association, your reserves are off by a factor of ten: 5,327,200 tonnes. Oops. And right now, with nuclear power representing less than 6% of world energy production, the consumption rate is 68,000 tonnes/year. That means that at the current rate of consumption we have less than 80 years' worth of uranium left.

       Oops indeed — it's not JvD's reserves that were off by a factor of ten, it was the consumption rate per reactor per year that was off by a factor of more than 100. Not sure how I misread the "5.000.000" but my conclusions stand.

       Anyway, current consumption rate divided by the 435 reactors in use equates to 156 tonnes of Uranium/year, not 1 tonne/year. It seems likely that JvD was referring to the rate of consumption of U235 per year, which would be about 1 tonne/year, but the problem is that the reserves are not reported as tonnes of U235 but as tonnes of Uranium, of which only about 0.7% is U235.

       There are many different estimates of the actual time left at the current rate of consumption but they're all in the 50-100 year ballpark, including the OECD's red book. I'd certainly be concerned about embarking on a program to build over 6,000 conventional reactors that I'm budgeting on running for 60 years under those circumstances, even if we can assume that more reserves will be found and exploited as demand went up.

46875. Glenn Tamblyn at 14:00 PM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       Craig

       'The ocean lag means heat will come out of the oceans' idea is a common interpretation of the meaning of the lag but it is wrong. An anlogy might help.

       I have two swimming pools I want to increase the level of, a little toddlers pool and an olympic size pool. They are connected by a pipe so water can flow between them and they will have the same water level. I start adding water to the toddlers pool and it's level rises. As that happens water starts to flow through the pipe to the olympic pool. But it's level rises much more slowly because of its much greater volume.

       Eventually I might even see the rise in the level in the toddlers pool slow down so that it is only rising as fast as the olympic pool. What is happening is that as fast as I add water to the toddlers pool, the same amount flows out through the pipe to raise the level of the big pool. This will continue until I stop adding water to the toddlers pool and they can all reach equilibrium.

       The big pool is restricting the rate at which the little pool can rise. But when I stop adding water, the final level in the toddlers pool isn't because water starts flowing into it from the olympic pool. It is because water stops flowing out of it to the olympic pool.

       The water in my anaolgy is heat, toddlers pool is the heat content of the atmosphere, the olympic pool is the heat content of the oceans.

       To extend the analogy, instead of just turning on a tap to fill the pools, imagine that I have a float valve - if the level is too low, water flows in until the level rises to the setting on the valve then the valve closes. The height setting on the float valve is the Greenhouse Effect. This determines how much heat needs to be in the system.

       So if I increase the GH effect by adding CO2, I am doing the equivalent of adjusting the float valve to a higher level. If I was just filling the toddlers pool (atmosphere) the level would have risen very quickly. But since most of the extra water (heat) actually has to go into filling the olympic pool (ocean) that retards the rise of the toddlers pool.

       If I make a one-off adjustment to the float valve, it takes some time for it all to catch-up. In reality I am continually lifting the valve higher and higher; continually adding more and more CO2. So even the toddlers pool alone would need to keep rising to catch up although alone it could do that quickly. But even if I stopped right now, and didn't adjust the valve any further, it would still take substantial time for the Olympic pool to catch up and all rising to stop.

       But at no time does water (heat) need to flow the other way.

       We could extend this analogy; instead of 1 olympic pool, we could have a linked series of mini-olympic pools, each one connected to the next. The rise of each pool would be retarded by the delay in raising the level of the next pool in the chain. Each of these mini-olympic pools would then correspond to different layers and regions in the oceans.

46876. JasonB at 13:54 PM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       KR — sorry, yes, the quotes were from JvD but the initial sentence was in response to your request to stay on-topic. :-)

       As an aside, I'm not that strongly against about nuclear power, as long as it's not in my backyard; if the Chinese want to go ahead and build 30 new reactors in addition to their wind farms, I see that as a useful reduction in CO2 emissions vs what would be the case if they built coal instead. What I don't like is people with massive blind spots in regard to the issues with nuclear power blowing every little problem with renewables out of proportion in their efforts to capitalise on the potential benefits of AGW to their favoured solution. Nuclear has been around for a long time now, it still costs a lot of money, has unique hazards, and major obstacles that need to be overcome if it is to scale up to a useful level. China has been able to build nuclear power plants on time and on budget, but that's partly thanks to a skilled workforce willing to work 10 hour days, 7 days/week, for Chinese wages, and (although I have no proof of this) I suspect partly because the Chinese probably aren't as demanding when it comes to safety. Olkiluoto, on the other hand, is now up to €8.5 billion for one conventional 1.6 GW reactor that has taken eight years to build so far and counting. And we're supposed to believe that magically we can now build fast breeders at scale, starting any day now, without any problems?

       It seems to me that solving the storage and distribution problems with intermittent renewables will be a lot easier.

       As an interesting aside, the global nuclear power production has been roughly 2500-2600 TWh per year for the past decade. From 2010-2011 wind power production increased by 118 TWh (from 341 TWh to 460 TWh). At that rate of increase it would take only 20 years to be generating as much power per year as the entire world's nuclear fleet just with wind power alone, and there have only been four years since 1980 where the increase in nuclear power generation per year has exceeded that rate of increase (1984, 1985, 1987, and 1988). (Note that I'm talking about actual power generated here, not nameplate capacity, so it's taking into account the fact that wind has a capacity factor of only about 30% while nuclear has a capacity factor of about 90%. The only difference between them is that wind is intermittent while nuclear is flat; demand, of course, fluctuates.)

46877. Bob Loblaw at 12:42 PM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       Pierre-Normand:

       Due to time lags in moving energy/heat around, there is no reason to think that deeper ocean temperature changes will be in lock-step with surface changes. The upper ocean mixed-layer (60-100m) will interact with the atmosphere quite quickly, but deeper ocean temperatures can be responding to surface changes from decades ago.

       A similar phenomenon happens on land: at depths of a few tens of cm, the daily cycle of surface temperature is both reduced in amplitude and lagged in time. The maximum or minimum temperature at 10-20 cm depth will happen several hours after the surface max/min. (Details depend on the thermal properties.)

46878. Bob Loblaw at 12:29 PM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       barry:

       I remember Roger Sr.'s arguments in favour of using ocean heat content (OHC), rather than atmospheric temperatures. I think he was active in discussions at both SkS and RealClimate at the time. A few things I remember were:

       - I had the impression he really only wanted to look at recent OHC, particularly Argo data, and particularly the 0-700m depth. I also had the impression that he wanted to do that because it suggested less warming (compared to 0-2000m data) and was a much shorter record than surface temperatures. The short record made it easier to justify a "wait and see" position - a "we don't have enough data for long enough" position. Overall, an argument for the status quo, AKA "business as usual". I thought his preference was based on the conclusions he could draw from it (avoiding stuff that gave the "wrong" message), rather than a rigorous scientific analysis.

       - I remember discussions (particularly at RC) about him claiming that you could "see the heat moving" and actually estimate the fluxes just by looking at changes in ocean temperature. He seemed to not have a clue about the differences between "flux" and "flux divergence", and could never actually describe a methodology by which you could calculate the fluxes. It was all pretty hand-wavey, and left me with the impression that he really didn't know what he was talking about.

       That said - yes, the total energy content of the earth-atmosphere system would be a nice thing to have, but keep in mind a couple of things:

       - even though it is noisier, the records of surface air and sea surface temperatures go back a long way, and we have well over 100 years of near-global coverage

       - surface temperatures and deeper ocean temperatures are linked by physics, so the long surface temperature record can't wander willy-nilly all over the place, independent of deeper ocean temperatures.

       - thus, limitations noted, the surface temperature record is still useful.

46879. John Hartz at 12:17 PM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       @mehus #19:

       The article that you have provided the link to is:

       Volcanic Eruptions May be Masking ‘Lost’ Warming by Alex Kirby, Climate News Network/Climate Central, Mar 11, 2013

       As fate would have it. the following article by the same writer was posted today: 

       Volcanic Eruption in Iceland Did Little to Lower CO2 by Alex Kirby, Climate News Network/Climate Central, Mar 25, 2013

       Both articles are based on peer reviewed published papers that suggest volcanic aerosols have played a part in the recent slow down of atmospheric warming.  Neither article suggests that volcanic aerosols were the sole cause.

46880. dana1981 at 11:49 AM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       mehus @19 - I believe that paper is actually discussing the lack of warming higher in the atmosphere, but it could also explain the slight slowdown in ocean warming over the past few years.

46881. mehus at 11:25 AM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       I have a question for the crowd.  A recent paper suggested that volcano aerosol emissions were to blame for a lack expected warming over the last decade or so.  Here's a link to climatecentral's coverage: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/volcanoes-may-mask-lost-warming-15683

       This research would seem to contradict that paper.  Are these papers in fact contradicting each other or ????

46882. Pierre-Normand at 11:25 AM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       The apparently very low rate of ocean heat content increase from 1958 to 1984 was very puzzling to me, even accounting for the error bars. I had assumed for some time that despite the 1940-1970 slowdown in global surface warming (partially explained by a rising concentration of sulphate aerosols) the OHC was still increasing very much during that period as the continued sea level rise apparently testifies. But now, if the mid 20th century slowdown in global surface warming occurs at the same time as a slowdown in OHC increase, how do we account for the lack of slow down in the rate sea level rise from 1958 to 1984?

       StBarnabas's remark seemd very enlightening and suggestive to me. Could it have been that much more heat was propotionately gained by the upper warmer layers of the oceans (where the thermal expansion coefficient is much higher)? Unfortunately, the breakdown of layers in Figure 1 above doesn't seem to support that hypothesis. So I remain puzzled. What caused the sea levels to rise so much during that period of very slow OHC increase? (Melting ice sheets contributed little, I think).

46883. Andy Skuce at 11:04 AM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       As a Skeptical Science contributor and  regular, I should say that I am grateful for this discussion about a subject that I really should learn more about. It is frustrating for me that such discussions actually range a little too widely and it might help if we isolated one subject at a time (nuclear waste, intermittency and the grid, uranium ore resources, energy storage options, demand management etc). I realize that all these subjects interact and can't be entirely considered in isolation but some better focus would be helpful for beginners.

       Some of the comments in this thread are longer than some SkS blogposts, so I would encourage everyone here to consider submitting a focussed blog post on some aspect of this huge and important problem.

       I have one question for Joris. What do you think of this report: California’s Energy Future - The View to 2050?

46884. John Hartz at 10:52 AM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       Beleive it or not, the State of Kansas has visions of becoming the "Saudi Arabia of Wind." Read about it in the article, New transmission lines funnel wind-generated electricity out of Kansas. by Dan Voorhis, Wichita Eagle/McClatchy Newspapers, Mar 25, 2013.

46885. Mark-US at 10:47 AM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       As for mechanisms, for one thing, Antarctica is producing a lot less very-cold "bottom water" in the offshore basins. 

       http://www.skepticalscience.com/Southern-Ocean-research-shows-continuing-deep-ocean-change_CSIRO.html

46886. barry1487 at 10:18 AM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       chriskoz @ 1

       That confirms my opinion pronounced here a year or two ago, that we should use OHC as the measure of GW rate.

       
       That has long been the opinion of Roger Pielke Senior, whose views have received some attention here at SkS. While OHC may be the best indicator, nothing would be better than the completest accounting of all the energy in the system - surface, ocean, ice, atmosphere etc.

46887. KR at 10:08 AM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       JasonB - I assume you are responding to JvD with these quotes? You might want to identify whose comments you're talking about :)

       I suspect a well-written SkS post on nuclear options and possibilities for mitigating greenhouse gases would be useful, but quite frankly that hasn't been (as far as I know) a recurring denial myth - it's not even on John Cooks list. 

46888. JasonB at 09:34 AM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       KR,

       Apologies for the off-topic post but if I could just correct the record on two points that would be great.

       If you think we cannot ramp up nuclear to replace fossil fuels, then what hope is there that solar panels and wind turbines will do it?

       The "production" I was referring to was uranium fuel production, which naturally isn't an issue for wind or solar because neither need fuel.

       To put things into context, Olkiluoto reactor 3, a 3rd generation conventional reactor, was started in 2005. Since 2005, the world has added 223 GW of wind capacity (http://www.gwec.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/GWEC-PRstats-2012_english.pdf), equivalent to about 80 GW of nuclear power, or 50 Olkiluoto reactors.

       One nuclear power plant requires one ton of uranium per year. So if we build 10.000 nukes, we need 10.000 tons of uranium, per year. Known reserves are more than 5.000.000 tons, so we have at least 500 years of fuel for 10.000 nuclear generating stations in known reserves. In other words, we don't have to turn to the oceans or the other unconventional resources for at least 500 years. So what is the problem?

       The problem is your numbers.

       According to the World Nuclear Association, your reserves are off by a factor of ten: 5,327,200 tonnes. Oops. And right now, with nuclear power representing less than 6% of world energy production, the consumption rate is 68,000 tonnes/year. That means that at the current rate of consumption we have less than 80 years' worth of uranium left.

       Scale consumption up by a factor of 15 and what happens?

       And that's not even the whole problem. Right now, primary production (i.e. what is coming out of the mines) is only enough to satisfy 58% of current demand. Do you really think that Olympic Dam and Ranger can nearly double production overnight, just to satisfy current demand when Russia stops selling its stockpiles? Even under modest expansions of nuclear power there are question marks about uranium supply through to 2030.

46889. BBD at 07:24 AM on 26 March 2013
       Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
       

       Late to the party, as usual.

        

       I see that Brad Keyes has been quoting me, albeit now snipped. As I have explained to BK elsewhere, I was completely wrong in what I said and admit it freely. I have put some effort into un-fooling myself since. It would have been very easy to change my screen name when I changed my views, but I chose not to. This is periodically embarrassing, but I prefer to acknowledge my errors and post only under one screen name.

46890. citizenschallenge at 07:09 AM on 26 March 2013
       Recursive Fury: Facts and misrepresentations
       

       Sphaerica at 02:01 AM on 26 March, 2013
       citizenschallenge,

       Shorter answer: Science needs defending from people who declare that science needs defending as an excuse to tear down actual science, because they don't like what the science is telling them.

       ==============

       Well said.  I tip my hat to you sir.

46891. CBDunkerson at 04:46 AM on 26 March 2013
       New Study, Same Result - Greenhouse Gases Dominate Global Warming
       

       TNiazi wrote: "Is there any credible graph that shows the relation between green house gases and surface temperature on a time scale of days or weeks instead of years and decades !"

       Depends on which greenhouse gases you are talking about. Gases like CO2 and methane quickly mix throughout the atmosphere and thus take a long time to accumulate a significant change in any given area. Water vapor, on the other hand, can vary wildly in concentration by locale. You might have a 100 degree Fahrenheit day in both Florida and Utah, but the humidity (i.e. water vapor level) in Florida is almost always going to be much higher. As a result, once the sun goes down Florida and other humid areas lose heat more slowly than Utah and other arid regions due to the difference in greenhouse gas levels. That is, as most people know, deserts get cold fast once the sun goes down while humid areas can stay hot and sticky all night.

       Offhand, I don't know of any graphs showing this greenhouse impact of water vapor on temperatures over short time frames, but it generally falls into the realm of 'common knowledge'.

46892. michael sweet at 04:28 AM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       JvD,

       I did not see your source for truck mounted fission reactors before.  Reading it I see that they are not praticable.  No shielding for operators!  Keep up trying to convince people.  You have certainly convinced me that nuclear is not an option at all.  I used to be agnostic about nuclear and have worked with radiation so that is not a big deal for me.  Seeing the material you cite I no longer consider nuclear much of an option.

46893. michael sweet at 04:23 AM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       JvD,

       The background for my citation is here.

       Nuclear: As with hydroelectricity, the EROI estimates for nuclear power span a very large range. Some claim that the EROI is actually less than 1—which would mean that the whole process is not a source of energy, but rather a sink—whereas others (such as the World Nuclear Association, an industry group) estimate that the EROI is much higher than perhaps any other source of energy, around 40 to 60 when using centrifuge enrichment. I drew on a paper that reviewed many studies, and estimated the EROI to be 5. Lenzen, “Life cycle energy and greenhouse gas emissions of nuclear energy: A review,” Energy Conversion and Management (2008) (my emphasis)

       As usual, nuclear makes wild claims of energy returned.  I notice you did not cite a source, even though you ask me for one.  Scientific American has a good reputation as a neutral observer.  You still have not provided a citation for truck mounted fission reactors.  I will not comment on this thread again until you provide this citation since if you do not it shows you are not debating in good faith, just making up stuff as you go along.

46894. KR at 03:37 AM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       While the advantages/disadvantages of nuclear power are an interesting topic, they are a red herring in regards to the actual topic of this thread - the capabilities of renewable power to supply baseload/ongoing energy demands. 

       In that regard, and in reply to a number of assertions made recently:

       • Widespread distribution has been shown to reduce irregularity of supply by many orders of magnitude.
       • The US NREL has studied and considers a US 50% electrical supply with wind/solar, and a total of 80% for all renewables, possible by 2050.
       • NREL has also shown that 35% penetration by wind/solar in the Western US can be accomplished, and "not require extensive infrastructure if changes are made to operational practices", contrary to assertions re: penetration made on this thread. 
       • European integration in a heterogenous environment will be more challenging, but it may be that the majority of the issues are political/regulatory. 
       • See the several other studies listed in the opening post (OP) in this regard - there is a great deal of evidence supporting baseload renewable capabilities. Note that varying supply is addressed in these studies. 

       Please - stay on topic. 

46895. DSL at 03:26 AM on 26 March 2013
       New Study, Same Result - Greenhouse Gases Dominate Global Warming
       

       And, of course, it would be strange if CO2, CH4, etc. exhibited different behavior if put into the atmosphere by natural process versus being put into the atmosphere by human emission.  CO2 can be a forcing or a feedback.

46896. Bob Lacatena at 03:17 AM on 26 March 2013
       New Study, Same Result - Greenhouse Gases Dominate Global Warming
       

       TNiazi,

       Could temperature increase be leading and not lagging the green house gases increase?

       No.

       1. There is a known physical mechanism by which increased greenhouse gases would increase temperatures.  The known physical mechanisms by which increasing temperatures increase (or, in some cases, decrease) atmospheric greenhouse gases of various types (e.g. ocean outgassing, melting permafrost and methane hyrdates, large scale die-off of forests due to climate change, etc.) primarily operate over very, very large time scales -- not days.
       2. There is a good accounting for the various sources and sinks of carbon in the earth system.  See Climage Change Cluedo (Clue for North Americans) for one of many good breakdowns on this site.  Another (again, of many) is this discussion.
       3. If the temperature increase were somehow raising greenhouse gas levels, you still need to (a) explain what is causing the temperature increase if not GHGs and (b) explain why rising greenhouse gas levels are not, contrary to the physics, causing warming.  So in your hopes of simplifying the problem by dissociating GHG from temperature, you've instead introduced two new, insurmountable issues.
          
          3a is difficult, because based on all other known climate factors (solar activity, aerosols, etc.) the earth should be cooling. 
          
          3b is difficult, because the basic theory of greenhouse gas effects on climate has been proposed, studied and reinforced through a variety of fields (physics, chemistry, atmospheric physics, paleoclimate studies, etc.) over hundreds of years.  You need to disprove several hundred years of science to make and prove the claim that GHGs do not influence temperatures.

       So, in the end, your request is a fool's errand.  You need to erase a million other points of data in order to get to the conlusion you are hoping to reach with a simple graph of daily temperatures versus GHG levels.

46897. KR at 02:35 AM on 26 March 2013
       New Study, Same Result - Greenhouse Gases Dominate Global Warming
       

       TNiazi - No, nothing credible. On the short term the noise from basic weather, not to mention the seasonal CO2 signal seen from hemispheric growth cycles (drop in CO2 over hemispheric spring/summer, rise over the fall/winter), far outweigh the slow changes from greenhouse gas forcings.

       A number of 'skeptic' blogs have made such short-graphs, often removing long term trends (differencing or just detrending), and attempting from that to argue a disconnect between GHGs and climate - but such attempts are invariably flawed depictions of short term trendless variation with the long term changes removed. 

46898. Pete Dunkelberg at 02:26 AM on 26 March 2013
       Arctic freezing season ends with a loud crack
       

       Thanks Neven. I'll watch for your winter review. Clear sky lets more radiation out while strong winds out of the Arctic must be replaced by possibly warmer air from elsewhere. Transfer of energy to the Arctic and from there to the universe is a large element of global heat balance, and evidently easy to underestimate. 

46899. StBarnabas at 02:19 AM on 26 March 2013
       New Research Confirms Global Warming Has Accelerated
       

       C_p is in fact very constant with pessure and temperature, (less than 1% for realistic values). Though it does vary with considerably with salinity (drops in saline water such as the Med where the salinity can be about 37-38ppt rather than the more normal 35ppt). What varies considerably with temperature is the thermal expansion coefficient. Warm water expands a lot more than cold water. Typical values of the thermal expansion coefficient are 0.0551e-3 0.1690e-3 0.2591e-3 and 0.3351e-3 for 0, 10, 20 and 30 degrees C respectively.

       a) Heat going into the deep ocean slows sea level rise

       b) Monitoring sea level rise will give clues as to where the heat is going. The fact that it is seems to be a fairly constant 3.2 mm/year despite rapidly increasing ice melt indicates that a lot more of the heat must be going into the lower ocean

46900. JvD at 02:14 AM on 26 March 2013
       A Detailed Look at Renewable Baseload Energy
       

       "I read an article in the most recent Scientific American that stated that nuclear power has the lowest Energy Invested for Energy Output of any of the currently used power systems. That doesn't look good for the long term."

       Isn't that just dandy. You read an article. Care to provide a source? A scientific one? Even in a worst case scenario, nuclear power stations have an EROEI of 12. In the best case, such as Vattenfall's generating stations in Sweden, the EROEI is >50. In future, with gen4 nuclear power plants, EROEI could be >100.

       Now, what is your source saying that nuclear power has the worst EROEI? I bet you have none.

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