Climate Change(d)?

[Elixir]

In the news tonight. There are upsides. You will be bale op dock your boat at your Manhatten condo.

No doubt about it, changes are common that make the pandemic disruptions look like a small sneeze.

Likely collapse of world’s widest glacier could be catastrophic for sea levels, research finds

Thwaites, the widest glacier in the world, has doubled its rate of melt in the last 30 years, a researcher said.

www.nbcnews.com

An Antarctic ice shelf could crack and disintegrate within the next decade, allowing a Florida-size glacier to slide into the ocean and raising sea levels by feet, scientists warned Wednesday.

A dramatic chain reaction in the ice could occur by 2031, starting with the Thwaites Glacier, said Erin Pettit, a professor at Oregon State University who studies glacier and ice sheet dynamics.


The glacier, a river of flowing ice, is blocked from falling into the sea by the eastern ice shelf, which sits atop an underwater mountain and is disintegrating.

Yeppers, the collapse of the ice shelf will foretell the end for cities like Miami. But it will take decades for the glacier to reach the sea and cause the estimated ten foot rise in sea levels.

 

[steve_bank]

Miami has been moving roads back from the coast for a number of yeras, coastal washout is already occuring.

The problem is except for a relatively few in political power, in the USA there is no long term contingency plan. We are chronically unable to do lng term planning beyond the next election and personal poical interest. Nothing new there. The national highway system and electrification were one time only flukes. Since then we are still dragging our feet on upgrading the grid and transposition infrastructure.

Yet we spend billions and billions on new mu.tray systems.

NYC is working on ways to seal off the subways.

On the west coast the ports of Seattle, Tacoma, San Francisco, and Los Angeles are at risk. The major busness in Seattle is few hundred feet above sea level, the port facilities will have to moved or elevated. From our roof top er look down on the port od Seattle and container ships in the bay.

China on the pther hand has built highly automated ship loading and unloading systems. China may seem Draconian to us with a heavy hand, but they get things done that have to be done. We do not.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I've read a bit about nuclear power. It's probably good in the short-term but there are sober experts who oppose it for good reasons. Given this controversy, it seems odd to think that "Just listen to bilby" should end the debate.

Some experts think renewable power (wind, waves, solar) is a sufficient path forward. This power is much cheaper than nuclear. Great strides are being made on the energy storage problem. And efficiency is an important (but under-emphasized) part of the solution.

If you and bilby insist that nuclear is the way to go, and I insist that I'm not sure of the answer, does that make me wrong by default? There are smarter people than me that don't know the answer either!

We have greatly improved batteries for our phones and the like--but it's still a drop in the bucket compared to what we need for grid-scale storage. We need to get rid of the carbon now and there's nothing remotely ready in terms of grid-scale storage. Without it solar & wind can only offset some natural gas usage. Thus nukes are essential.

And note that nukes are not actually expensive. The insane cost is due to the regulators defining nuke as too expensive--nuke suffers under a standard of as safe as practically attainable--which means you can't build a cheap nuclear plant because you could pile more safety systems on it. Set nuke to a standard of as safe as it's safest competitor and you'll find the price much more reasonable.

 

[thebeave]

So, record all-time flooding multiple regions of the world record all-time national temperatures in multiple regions of the world, potentially the longest tornado path on record in the US, a very busy hurricane season in the Atlantic.

But climate change is a lie... or is past tense... whatever.

Climate change is not a lie, but then again, your seemingly confident attribution of specific harsh weather events, such as the recent tornado event in Kentucky, to climate change is not a leap scientists working in the field are willing to make. Did you see 60 Minutes last weekend? Check out the interview with the climatologist starting at about the 5 minute mark.

60 Minutes - Kentucky Tornado

One word, aggregate. The aggregate of the unaverage weather is the indication of change, not any single thing.

Agreed. The aggregate of unaverage weather over a extended period of time supports the notion of climate change. You included the events of a single day (a freakishly severe tornado) in your list of things suggesting climate change is not a lie. How do you know that particular tornado was not just a 1 in 100 year (or say a 1 in 500 year)

Cute... we had three 1% chance of exceeding rain events (100-yr) in five or so years where I live. One of them was closer to 500-yr. Canada set a record for warmest temp ever, as did the US. Europe did so as well. And the record flooding in several regions of the world. These would be aggregated together. Leaves on the trees where I live are dropping 6 weeks later than they did 20 years ago.

event...something that has happened many, many times going way back...even long before humans began burning fossil fuels? Even a "busy hurricane season in the Atlantic" isn't a very convincing argument for climate change not being a lie.

The Atlantic has been busier and stronger for a few decades now. We are just exhausting or close to exhausting the letter naming system the past couple of years.

The interesting part of the whole conversation is you are arguing whether we are experiencing climate change, after the climate changed.

You keep veering off onto tangents and throwing stuff on the wall to see what sticks, rather than sticking with the original point. I was specifically referring to the big tornado event one day this month as possibly being a 1 in 100/500 year event that YOU included as evidence that "climate change is not a lie". You diminished my comment by calling it "cute" which I interpret as you saying, "Har har, no, that can't be a 1 in 100 year event, because... other stuff. It IS evidence of climate change, despite what the real scientists are saying." Then you change the 2021 Atlantic hurricane single season comment to decades of hurricane seasons.

I don't deny that the climate has changed over the last many decades/centuries. I'm merely questioning your evidence of that change, which is demonstrably weak and not supported by the science. Its on par with the reporters on TV news remarking about the weather last week being super hot, so therefore climate change.

 

[Elixir]

I'm merely questioning your evidence of that change, which is demonstrably weak and not supported by the science.

The weakness of single anecdotes as evidence has been discussed and agreed upon ad nauseum. Which begs this question:

I don't deny that the climate has changed over the last many decades/centuries.

So you don't deny climate change. But apparently you don't agree that exceptionally rapid climate change over the last 50 years is real, and human-caused.
Amirite?

If you DO think it's real, and human-caused, I have to ask why. You scoff at charts like this one, so
what's your basis for not denying climate change?

 

[thebeave]

I'm merely questioning your evidence of that change, which is demonstrably weak and not supported by the science.

The weakness of single anecdotes as evidence has been discussed and agreed upon ad nauseum. Which begs this question:

I don't deny that the climate has changed over the last many decades/centuries.

So you don't deny climate change. But apparently you don't agree that exceptionally rapid climate change over the last 50 years is real, and human-caused.
Amirite?

If you DO think it's real, and human-caused, I have to ask why. You scoff at charts like this one, so
what's your basis for not denying climate change?

What in the world? Have you even read what I wrote recently? Show me where I made any claim at all regarding climate change over the last 50 years? Or "scoffed" at your graph (which I'm seeing here for the first from you). For the record (once and for all) I do think climate change is real and a significant amount is due to human causes. As to how much of it is human caused versus natural is not something that's easily determined with a great deal of certainty by even the best minds.

And my whole original point in this thread was addressing Jimmy's faulty weather anecdotes, which I see you agree with me there. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[Elixir]

Sorry Beave, I seem to have mixed you up with meta or Swiz. I apologize.

I think the anthropogenic contribution is clearly indicated by the slope of the temperature curve vs that shown in historic records (ice cores, lake varve data etc).
From what I’ve seen it looks pretty clear that humans have been THE major cause of CO2 increase and its correlated temperature increase over the last 150 - and especially the last 50 years.

 

[Swammerdami]

And note that nukes are not actually expensive. The insane cost is due to the regulators defining nuke as too expensive--nuke suffers under a standard of as safe as practically attainable--which means you can't build a cheap nuclear plant because you could pile more safety systems on it. Set nuke to a standard of as safe as it's safest competitor and you'll find the price much more reasonable.

the March 2011 accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.... The large quantity of radioactive material released has caused significant human suffering and rendered large stretches of land uninhabitable. The cleanup operation will take decades and may cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

In your proposal, would the Fukushima plant have had FEWER insane safety systems?

IIUC, the insanely huge amount of steel and concrete used in containment structures is a major cost. Do your sources show how thick sane containment structures need to be? (I'll admit that the present U.S. standard — "strong enough to withstand the impact of a fully loaded passenger airliner without rupture" — might seem high. But ...)

Meanwhile, great strides are being made on the energy storage needed to increase the viability of wind and solar power. Lithium batteries have been halving in price every six years. Economic gravitational energy storage is in view, e.g. at https://heindl-energy.com/ . (No plug! Just a Google hit.) And wave or tide power doesn't even really need storage.

If the high priority is to cut down on carbon fuels quickly, should nuclear be kept in the picture? Sure! All I ask is for a wider perspective, and acknowledgement that economic storage systems are in view, making renewable power very cheap. And that nuclear power does have real drawbacks.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And note that nukes are not actually expensive. The insane cost is due to the regulators defining nuke as too expensive--nuke suffers under a standard of as safe as practically attainable--which means you can't build a cheap nuclear plant because you could pile more safety systems on it. Set nuke to a standard of as safe as it's safest competitor and you'll find the price much more reasonable.

the March 2011 accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.... The large quantity of radioactive material released has caused significant human suffering and rendered large stretches of land uninhabitable. The cleanup operation will take decades and may cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

In your proposal, would the Fukushima plant have had FEWER insane safety systems?

Fukushima had a serious hole in it's safety design. It didn't need more safety systems piled on top of the existing ones, it needed some way to maintain power after a tsunami. It was a system with a single point of failure, that's a bad idea.

And note that Fukushima killed nobody, the political reaction to it killed a lot of people.

IIUC, the insanely huge amount of steel and concrete used in containment structures is a major cost. Do your sources show how thick sane containment structures need to be? (I'll admit that the present U.S. standard — "strong enough to withstand the impact of a fully loaded passenger airliner without rupture" — might seem high. But ...)

I don't mind the containment domes. I'm talking about all the layers upon layers of safety systems. Make sure there isn't a single point of failure and you've done 90% of what's needed.

You go through the design and make sure there's no reasonable single event that can cause a substantial containment breech. There's nothing in the plant that can fail and cause a breech. You don't need to go through and say if X failed and Y failed and Z failed there still needs to be protection (unless X, Y & Z can be taken out by a single reasonable event. Fukushima happened because the two systems of powering the pumps were both subject to tsunami damage.)

Note that the very fact we are talking about Fukushima is an indication of the safety of nuclear power--in what other industry would a zero-death industrial accident be worldwide news?

Meanwhile, great strides are being made on the energy storage needed to increase the viability of wind and solar power. Lithium batteries have been halving in price every six years. Economic gravitational energy storage is in view, e.g. at https://heindl-energy.com/ . (No plug! Just a Google hit.) And wave or tide power doesn't even really need storage.

Lithium batteries burn out pretty quickly when used to cover the day-night cycle. There are grid-scale "storage" facilities but they're meant to give time to spin up plants, not meant to cover the day-night cycle.

If the high priority is to cut down on carbon fuels quickly, should nuclear be kept in the picture? Sure! All I ask is for a wider perspective, and acknowledgement that economic storage systems are in view, making renewable power very cheap. And that nuclear power does have real drawbacks.

 

[steve_bank]

3 Mile Island put the kaibosh on nuclear power in the USA.

The Japanese reactor was under designed for the location. Adding to it was the Japanese hierarchical social structure that inhibited quick action by those on site and management close to the problem. This was acknowledged in the Japanese report.

We still do not have a long term nuclear waste program, back again to a lack of political will to make hard decisions. National control of anything is opposed by conservatives, a national electric plan is not possible.

Texas divorced itself from the rest of the country and suffered when they had a freeze that ishut down with power generation that was not protected against extreme cold.

Nuclear could be safe if we had a standard well tested common design. Nuclear power does have costs above a cial plant. Welds have to be to a higher standard. Materials have to witstand long term radiation. Periodic testing.

You can construct a moderate scale natural gas plant 'off the shelf'. Turbines, boilers, control systems, piping are all standard items.

I belive the containment vessels are required to withstand a 911 type commercial et crash.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

And note that Fukushima killed nobody, the political reaction to it killed a lot of people.

It may have killed one person, though of course the absurd panic killed a lot more. But the solar industry kills a lot more than the nuclear industry (several times more), even counting Fukushima (an old design with flaws not present in present-day ones).

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Nuclear could be safe if we had a standard well tested common design.

But it could be safer than anything else if it were...just as it is. Or even twice as dangerous.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Germany to pull the plug on 3 of its last 6 nuclear power plants

"For the energy industry in Germany, the nuclear phase-out is final," said Kerstin Andreae, the head of energy industry association BDEW.

www.nbcnews.com

Germany will pull the plug on three of its last six nuclear power stations on Friday, another step towards completing its withdrawal from nuclear power as it turns its focus to renewables.

So sad.

And more generally, here one can find more examples of nuclear phase out. It's a terrible idea, and it's the result of pressure from left-wing "green" activists and panic, not from right-wing climate change deniers.

 

[steve_bank]

And western Europe wants a new natural gas pipe line from Russia.

Fukushima did not kill any civilians, but it made a large residential area uninhabitable.

 

[steve_bank]

Nuclear could be safe if we had a standard well tested common design.

But it could be safer than anything else if it were...just as it is. Or even twice as dangerous.

Wow, simply stunning analysis.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Nuclear could be safe if we had a standard well tested common design.

But it could be safer than anything else if it were...just as it is. Or even twice as dangerous.

Wow, simply stunning analysis.

It's not a stunning analysis. I am pointing out that nuclear already is safe, at least better than anything else by a large margin.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

And western Europe wants a new natural gas pipe line from Russia.

Fukushima did not kill any civilians, but it made a large residential area uninhabitable.

Did it? What area?

 

[bilby]

And note that nukes are not actually expensive. The insane cost is due to the regulators defining nuke as too expensive--nuke suffers under a standard of as safe as practically attainable--which means you can't build a cheap nuclear plant because you could pile more safety systems on it. Set nuke to a standard of as safe as it's safest competitor and you'll find the price much more reasonable.

the March 2011 accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.... The large quantity of radioactive material released has caused significant human suffering and rendered large stretches of land uninhabitable. The cleanup operation will take decades and may cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

In your proposal, would the Fukushima plant have had FEWER insane safety systems?

IIUC, the insanely huge amount of steel and concrete used in containment structures is a major cost. Do your sources show how thick sane containment structures need to be? (I'll admit that the present U.S. standard — "strong enough to withstand the impact of a fully loaded passenger airliner without rupture" — might seem high. But ...)

Meanwhile, great strides are being made on the energy storage needed to increase the viability of wind and solar power. Lithium batteries have been halving in price every six years. Economic gravitational energy storage is in view, e.g. at https://heindl-energy.com/ . (No plug! Just a Google hit.) And wave or tide power doesn't even really need storage.

If the high priority is to cut down on carbon fuels quickly, should nuclear be kept in the picture? Sure! All I ask is for a wider perspective, and acknowledgement that economic storage systems are in view, making renewable power very cheap. And that nuclear power does have real drawbacks.

No human has suffered due to the effects of ionising radiation from Fukushima, other than two workers who sustained beta burn to their legs after wading through radioactive water in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami. Both recovered fully, were discharged from hospital within twenty four hours of presenting with symptoms, and are not expected to suffer any long term health effects.

No part of Japan has or had radiation levels that rendered it dangerous for humans to inhabit. Declaring land 'uninhabitable' when it is less dangerous than areas of the world that have been inhabited for centuries without any ill effects, is just a consequence of awful criteria based on discredited methodologies and baseless fear.

Declaring perfectly good land 'uninhabitable', evacuating it, and then saying "look at all these poor evacuees whose homes are uninhabitable; Clearly this is a massive disaster" is as excellent an argument as that of a defendant who when accused of murdering his parents, begs the court for mercy on the grounds that he is an orphan.

 

[bilby]

Note that the very fact we are talking about Fukushima is an indication of the safety of nuclear power--in what other industry would a zero-death industrial accident be worldwide news?

^THIS

If airliners (one of the safest technologies in history) were as dangerous as nuclear power plants, there would have been three plane crashes in history worldwide, only one of which, a poorly designed soviet aircraft, resulted in any fatalities.

Nuclear power is so ridiculously safe that people literally cannot believe how safe it is. Nothing humans have ever done comes anywhere close to being as safe as generating electricity from nuclear fission. Nothing.

 

[bilby]

We still do not have a long term nuclear waste program, back again to a lack of political will to make hard decisions. National control of anything is opposed by conservatives, a national electric plan is not possible.

You still don't have a long term heavy metals waste program, or a long term plan for handling the waste from electronics, solar panels, wind turbines, mine tailings, or, well, anything at all.

Why would you expect or demand a standard for partially spent nuclear fuel that you don't apply to any other waste stream?

Radioactive materials literally go away over time on their own. Unlike most waste.

Nobody has ever been harmed by the 'waste' from nuclear power generation; And it is the ONLY technology in human history that has contained and is managing its waste. For no other waste streams is that even attempted.

The current systems (which have been completely effective for your entire lifetime) are perfectly adequate for use indefinitely - though as the "waste" in question is only hazardous at all because it is energetic, it likely won't need to be stored for long before we use it as fuel for fast reactors.

The entire 'waste' issue is a fabrication of the anti-nuclear lobby. We know exactly how to deal with it, but they won't let us because they don't want solutions, they want to be angry at the absence of solutions, so any solution that is offered gets rejected.