New report on climate change released today

[Jimmy Higgins]

*cues music*

Instructions to perform the anti-AGW Tango
Step 1:

Deny CO₂ is a global warming gas of any significance.

I don't remember Perth, I have only been there once decades ago to attend a wedding, but almost anywhere I have been except for above the Arctic Circle in the summer, the sun sets at night and doesn't heat the atmosphere. Are you saying that the sun doesn't set on Perth or are you saying that you didn't know that the sun doesn't heat the atmosphere at night?

CO2 is supposed to trap the sun's heat, day or night shouldn't make a day reach say, 30C max and during the night get to a freezing -2C as is predicted to do tonight in low laying areas of Perth and surrounds. Unless someone switches off the CO2 button allowing heat to escape during these cold late Winter nights.

Step 2:

Indicate CO₂ release that is causing global warming is from volcanoes. (Advanced dancers make these claims back to back)

This has been discussed and ignored before.

But human caused GW/CC/CD could possibly be insignificant as compared to volcanic, both erupting and non erupting volcanoes according to this research. Link.............https://climatechangedispatch.com/massive-volcano-emissions-warming/


Discovery Of Massive Volcanic CO2 Emissions Puts Damper On Global Warming Theory
Recent research shows that the volume of volcanic CO2 currently being emitted into Earth’s atmosphere is far greater than previously calculated, challenging the validity of the man-made global warming theory.

Congratulations. With practice you can deny AGW with this easy two step dance.

 

[George S]

Volcanoes that spew particulate matter into the upper atmosphere provide loci for cloud nucleation. Coincidentally they spew CO2 as well.
As was pointed out to me in this very thread the "year without a summer" was volcano caused. Cloud caused.
If something provides more nucleation sites cooling can ensue. Another cause of nucleation sites is cosmic rays. The number of cosmic rays reaching the atmosphere is moderated by the Earth's magnetic field. If the magnetic field becomes lowered it could well become cooler due to clouds. The magnetic field is changing. Well, the poles have always wandered a bit, but today the south magnetic pole has left Antarctica while the north magnetic pole is moving from Canada to Siberia so quickly that they had to reissue the magnetic map (usually adjusted every 5 years) a year early because pilots' magnetic compasses did not match the runway number. Some runway numbers were recently changed.
Those who make a living trying to predict volcanoes have noted a correlation between magnetic connection from coronal holes to Earth and volcanic activity.

If this kind of cooling occurs -- unexpected major volcano(s) -- the impact of man-made CO2 disappears. The last eruption that cooled the planet: https://www.thoughtco.com/mount-pinatubo-eruption-1434951

 

[bilby]

Volcanoes that spew particulate matter into the upper atmosphere provide loci for cloud nucleation. Coincidentally they spew CO2 as well.
As was pointed out to me in this very thread the "year without a summer" was volcano caused. Cloud caused.
If something provides more nucleation sites cooling can ensue. Another cause of nucleation sites is cosmic rays. The number of cosmic rays reaching the atmosphere is moderated by the Earth's magnetic field. If the magnetic field becomes lowered it could well become cooler due to clouds. The magnetic field is changing. Well, the poles have always wandered a bit, but today the south magnetic pole has left Antarctica while the north magnetic pole is moving from Canada to Siberia so quickly that they had to reissue the magnetic map (usually adjusted every 5 years) a year early because pilots' magnetic compasses did not match the runway number. Some runway numbers were recently changed.
Those who make a living trying to predict volcanoes have noted a correlation between magnetic connection from coronal holes to Earth and volcanic activity.

If this kind of cooling occurs -- unexpected major volcano(s) -- the impact of man-made CO2 disappears. The last eruption that cooled the planet: https://www.thoughtco.com/mount-pinatubo-eruption-1434951

Sure. But none of these things are of unknown magnitude, all are in a medium-term equilibrium, and anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions add a very strong warming trend over the top of them.

A major volcanic eruption every thirty years or so that cancels out that years human contributions to warming is irrelevant to the big picture - there are still twenty nine years of anthropogenic warming that are not cancelled out by volcanic activity.

And cyclic (and small) variations in cosmic radiation are likewise irrelevant on timescales of decades.

All these effects are real, but tiny.

You might as well say that while driving towards a cliff edge, the speed of the car varies due to wind speed and direction (which it does), so it doesn't matter how much throttle or brake you apply (which is nuts, because even in a hurricane, these control inputs are likely to dominate your final speed, and hurricane conditions are rare).

Humanity has its foot firmly on the (greenhouse) gas pedal. To suggest that occasional strong gusts of headwind mean that's not a problem is irresponsible to the point of insanity.

 

[SimpleDon]

Actually, the night time temperature averages are getting hotter faster than daytime temperatures.

Since carbon duoxide is an insulator than makes sense.

If it was from solar output then it be hotter (above historical average) in the day than the night since heat would be bleeding out easily.

You are correct, carbon dioxide reduces the nighttime cooling by radiation resulting in higher average nighttime temperatures, that is comparing the temperature last night with the nighttime temperature on the date a year or a decade ago. However, Halflife's original post asked us to explain why the daytime temperature of 30° drops to -2° at night. This is because the sun goes down at night. No matter how much CO2 is in the atmosphere.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Volcanoes that spew particulate matter into the upper atmosphere provide loci for cloud nucleation. Coincidentally they spew CO2 as well.
As was pointed out to me in this very thread the "year without a summer" was volcano caused. Cloud caused.
If something provides more nucleation sites cooling can ensue. Another cause of nucleation sites is cosmic rays. The number of cosmic rays reaching the atmosphere is moderated by the Earth's magnetic field. If the magnetic field becomes lowered it could well become cooler due to clouds. The magnetic field is changing. Well, the poles have always wandered a bit, but today the south magnetic pole has left Antarctica while the north magnetic pole is moving from Canada to Siberia so quickly that they had to reissue the magnetic map (usually adjusted every 5 years) a year early because pilots' magnetic compasses did not match the runway number. Some runway numbers were recently changed.
Those who make a living trying to predict volcanoes have noted a correlation between magnetic connection from coronal holes to Earth and volcanic activity.

If this kind of cooling occurs -- unexpected major volcano(s) -- the impact of man-made CO2 disappears. The last eruption that cooled the planet: https://www.thoughtco.com/mount-pinatubo-eruption-1434951

Major stratovolcanoes can produce a temporary cooling from all the particulates they toss into the stratosphere. In time the particulates fall and the cooling goes away--but the CO2 remains and in the long run the temperature is even higher than it would have been without the volcano.

It's like the blast of cool air when someone opens the door to an air conditioned building. The door is closed and soon it's just as hot as it was before the door was opened.

 

[repoman]

Actually, the night time temperature averages are getting hotter faster than daytime temperatures.

Since carbon dioxide is an insulator than makes sense.

If it was from solar output then it be hotter (above historical average) in the day than the night since heat would be bleeding out easily.

You are correct, carbon dioxide reduces the nighttime cooling by radiation resulting in higher average nighttime temperatures, that is comparing the temperature last night with the nighttime temperature on the date a year or a decade ago. However, Halflife's original post asked us to explain why the daytime temperature of 30° drops to -2° at night. This is because the sun goes down at night. No matter how much CO2 is in the atmosphere.

Everything is getting warmer, but colder things will get warmer from past averages faster.

Night temp averages will increase faster than day and polar temp averages faster than tropical. Let me bullshit artist quibble proof this previous by saying something totally obvious - night temps will not exceed day and polar temps will not exceed tropical. And if "someone" here says "you didn't Simon Says AVERAGE temperature so you are a liar" I won't be surprised.

Temperature differences will flatten out slowing some aspects of air streams despite higher heat energy and more moisture, but this is complicated.

In fact if Angelo had researched abouf this aspect first he might not have somehow painted himslef into the odd mental corner he is in now.

 

[angelo]

Amazing. I click on reference after reference and find I get data until I click on crucial evidence to argument and get "hey nobody lives here"

To wit:

This major problem with the AGW principle has been rationalized away by consensus climate scientists who insist, based supposedly reliable research, that volcanic emissions are minuscule in comparison to human-induced CO2 emissions (Gerlach 1991).

Thanks bilby.

What that article points out is that we know FA about visible and invisible CO2 emissions from the thousands of undersea vents and volcanoes that exist between the continental tectonic plates crashing into each other and the release of enough energy to sometimes cause major earthquakes and perhaps place the amount of human caused CO2 in the shade in comparison.
But I realise the folly of trying convince the cultists that their doomsday god doesn't exist.

 

[SimpleDon]

How can this guy be right if global warming is happening? Using the heuristic measure of degree-days he shows a cooling trend. He is a big fan of sun cycles. (We may have just seen the last sunspot of cycle 24 today.) Cycle 25 (coming soon to a sun near you) is predicted to be even cooler at its peak than 24. Time will tell, of course, if CO2 can override the natural cooling enough to lead to long-term warming.
[YOUTUBE]1ZQaNL4RN-E[/YOUTUBE]

He isn't right.

He makes the tired old error of believing that "the USA" and "the world" are synonymous.

Global warming is a global phenomenon. The clue is in the name.

And solar cycles are well understood, have been examined in detail for their effects on global temperatures, and shown not to account for the observed variation unless and until you add a very large correction to account for the effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.

YouTube is an utterly shit source of information on any topic; It's popularity, like that of religion, stems from its ability to support any argument, no matter how stupid, inaccurate, or immoral.

The only value YouTube has is as an indicator of who is utterly mired in confirmation bias - people who are interested in reality don't use YouTube (or the Bible, or Quran) as supporting evidence for their arguments.

I think that you have little chance of finding any reasoned opinions on Youtube. Even the TED talks are increasingly a mixed bag. I think that Youtube is an example of the failure of democracy. The fact that anyone can make a video and voice their opinions should improve the discussion but the exact opposite is true. It has something to do with that there is only one truth about something but many lies are possible.

The following fun fact is the most convincing argument for me that GW is not the product of a natural phenomenon. The current rate of the CO2 build up and the resulting increase in heating is 100 to 1000 times faster than anything seen in the million or so years of atmospheric gases we have encased in the ice in Antarctica. This not only covers solar cycles and the earth's spin and orbit irregularities but the worse case of all happening at the same time.

Please note that I am talking about the rate of the heating that is, degrees per century, for example.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Amazing. I click on reference after reference and find I get data until I click on crucial evidence to argument and get "hey nobody lives here"

To wit:

This major problem with the AGW principle has been rationalized away by consensus climate scientists who insist, based supposedly reliable research, that volcanic emissions are minuscule in comparison to human-induced CO2 emissions (Gerlach 1991).

Thanks bilby.

What that article points out is that we know FA about visible and invisible CO2 emissions from the thousands of undersea vents and volcanoes that exist between the continental tectonic plates crashing into each other and the release of enough energy to sometimes cause major earthquakes and perhaps place the amount of human caused CO2 in the shade in comparison.
But I realise the folly of trying convince the cultists that their doomsday god doesn't exist.

Oh, are you back on the CO₂ being a greenhouse gas again? Your position on that shifts like the wind.

 

[bilby]

What that article points out is that we know FA about visible and invisible CO2 emissions from the thousands of undersea vents and volcanoes that exist between the continental tectonic plates crashing into each other and the release of enough energy to sometimes cause major earthquakes and perhaps place the amount of human caused CO2 in the shade in comparison.
But I realise the folly of trying convince the cultists that their doomsday god doesn't exist.

Oh, are you back on the CO₂ being a greenhouse gas again? Your position on that shifts like the wind.

"We don't know anything, therefore I know I am right", would be a shithouse argument even if the first premise were true.

But it's not true. Imperfect knowledge isn't zero knowledge. We know that volcanic activity hasn't increased much since the industrial revolution, but that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have. So whatever the volcanic contribution to carbon dioxide concentration is, it's not responsible for the observed increase.

As I said before, if your car has a broken speedometer, then you don't know how fast you are going. But that doesn't mean that it's reasonable to claim that you exceeded the speed of sound, nor does it mean that anyone who says you didn't is wrong.

Not knowing the exact answer isn't the same as saying anything is possible; But if it was, it wouldn't be support for EITHER side of the debate.

angelo's logic is broken, AND his premises are false. It's fucking embarrassing for someone to seriously present such pathetic arguments.

 

[SimpleDon]

Amazing. I click on reference after reference and find I get data until I click on crucial evidence to argument and get "hey nobody lives here"

To wit:

This major problem with the AGW principle has been rationalized away by consensus climate scientists who insist, based supposedly reliable research, that volcanic emissions are minuscule in comparison to human-induced CO2 emissions (Gerlach 1991).

Thanks bilby.

What that article points out is that we know FA about visible and invisible CO2 emissions from the thousands of undersea vents and volcanoes that exist between the continental tectonic plates crashing into each other and the release of enough energy to sometimes cause major earthquakes and perhaps place the amount of human caused CO2 in the shade in comparison.
But I realise the folly of trying convince the cultists that their doomsday god doesn't exist.

We do have a handle on the natural sources of CO2 that leak out of the earth as well as how much CO2 is scrubbed out of the atmosphere and into the ocean because they balance each other out to no net increase in the CO2 in the atmosphere. This has to be true when the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere stays steady over a long period of time like it was before the industrial age. These are facts and pretty much flow from the definitions of "steady-state," i.e. not increasing or decreasing.

I am hardly a believer in a doomsday god. I don't think that AGW is an event that presents us with really even much of a threat. We identified the problem early and the solutions are well underway. There is no reason to believe that the solutions will require efforts beyond those that we already have or that aren't unachievable. It will cost us a nominal amount for things like an increased casualty from more destructive storms, the loss of valuable land from the rising seas, added costs for the displacement of food production, etc., say 5% of the worldwide GDP, paid for by the developed countries, of course.

We have to reduce our burning of coal and oil but we don't have to eliminate them. The number one technology that we need for this is to continue to increase the efficiency of our homes, businesses, industries, etc. and of our automobiles and trucks. We already have the technology to achieve this, it is only a matter of applying them.

It is easy now, for example, to build a home, school, or a light commercial building that not only doesn't require any energy to heat it and cool it but which produces more energy than it consumes, at a net increase of 10 to 15% of the cost of the construction, a reasonable amount that can be paid off either by reducing the size of the original house or building or by 5 to 7 years of the reduced energy bills, with this savings continuing for the life of the building. The buildings will last much longer and are much more comfortable and much less expensive to live, work and shop in that eventually older, less expensive buildings will lose value or will have to be retrofitted to the new standard.

Thanks to the efficiency standards imposed on it the worldwide automobile and truck industry achieved absolutely amazing increases in the efficiency of their vehicles. We stand on the cusp of having highly efficient, high range, practical electrical vehicles that will be the standard in the future. In short order, they will be self-driving, able to form high speed, safe virtual trains on the roadways, reducing accidents while making the best use of the existing roads, more than doubling their capacity to handle vehicles.

We do need some evolutionary technologies. First, an inherently safe nuclear reactor design, a true Gen V fission, atmospheric pressure, gas (not steam) high-efficiency design. Probably a molten salt cooled and moderated design capable of being built in a factory and one time fueled for thirty years of automated operation, intially designed to burn weapons' grade materials and refined nuclear waste, the two largest sources of available nuclear fuel. We need research funds for this and for both high and low energy fusion designs, able to make more fuel than they burn, to burn our nuclear waste from our current power plants and with low to no waste themselves.

We don't even need a new battery design to store power from solar panels and windmills. We need a backbone, high capacity power link from the West to the East, chasing the sun. To convert coal-fired power plants to natural gas, which has turned out to be much more abundant than we ever imagined, the product of "drill baby, drill."

These things happened without your support and will continue to happen even if you continue to be skeptical of AGW. Once again, proving that conservatives don't matter. Trump and you can't stop progress.

What you deserve is to be ignored in the body politic. You aren't ignored right now because so many of the people in politics who are working to advance the interests of the very rich claim to be conservatives because they need to fool you into voting for them. But they aren't conservatives, they fully support progress, they just want to claim the majority of the returns from that progress for the oligarchy. They secretly laugh at your gullibility for voting to do something that they would never do, to reduce your own wages in order to increase their profits.

 

[starwater]

Amazing. I click on reference after reference and find I get data until I click on crucial evidence to argument and get "hey nobody lives here"

To wit:

This major problem with the AGW principle has been rationalized away by consensus climate scientists who insist, based supposedly reliable research, that volcanic emissions are minuscule in comparison to human-induced CO2 emissions (Gerlach 1991).

Thanks bilby.

What that article points out is that we know FA about visible and invisible CO2 emissions from the thousands of undersea vents and volcanoes that exist between the continental tectonic plates crashing into each other and the release of enough energy to sometimes cause major earthquakes and perhaps place the amount of human caused CO2 in the shade in comparison.
But I realise the folly of trying convince the cultists scientists that their doomsday god doesn't exist not to believe in science.

FIFY

 

[bilby]

What that article points out is that we know FA about visible and invisible CO2 emissions from the thousands of undersea vents and volcanoes that exist between the continental tectonic plates crashing into each other and the release of enough energy to sometimes cause major earthquakes and perhaps place the amount of human caused CO2 in the shade in comparison.
But I realise the folly of trying convince the cultists that their doomsday god doesn't exist.

We do have a handle on the natural sources of CO2 that leak out of the earth as well as how much CO2 is scrubbed out of the atmosphere and into the ocean because they balance each other out to no net increase in the CO2 in the atmosphere. This has to be true when the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere stays steady over a long period of time like it was before the industrial age. These are facts and pretty much flow from the definitions of "steady-state," i.e. not increasing or decreasing.

I am hardly a believer in a doomsday god. I don't think that AGW is an event that presents us with really even much of a threat. We identified the problem early and the solutions are well underway. There is no reason to believe that the solutions will require efforts beyond those that we already have or that aren't unachievable. It will cost us a nominal amount for things like an increased casualty from more destructive storms, the loss of valuable land from the rising seas, added costs for the displacement of food production, etc., say 5% of the worldwide GDP, paid for by the developed countries, of course.

We have to reduce our burning of coal and oil but we don't have to eliminate them. The number one technology that we need for this is to continue to increase the efficiency of our homes, businesses, industries, etc. and of our automobiles and trucks. We already have the technology to achieve this, it is only a matter of applying them.

It is easy now, for example, to build a home, school, or a light commercial building that not only doesn't require any energy to heat it and cool it but which produces more energy than it consumes, at a net increase of 10 to 15% of the cost of the construction, a reasonable amount that can be paid off either by reducing the size of the original house or building or by 5 to 7 years of the reduced energy bills, with this savings continuing for the life of the building. The buildings will last much longer and are much more comfortable and much less expensive to live, work and shop in that eventually older, less expensive buildings will lose value or will have to be retrofitted to the new standard.

Thanks to the efficiency standards imposed on it the worldwide automobile and truck industry achieved absolutely amazing increases in the efficiency of their vehicles. We stand on the cusp of having highly efficient, high range, practical electrical vehicles that will be the standard in the future. In short order, they will be self-driving, able to form high speed, safe virtual trains on the roadways, reducing accidents while making the best use of the existing roads, more than doubling their capacity to handle vehicles.

We do need some evolutionary technologies. First, an inherently safe nuclear reactor design, a true Gen V fission, atmospheric pressure, gas (not steam) high-efficiency design. Probably a molten salt cooled and moderated design capable of being built in a factory and one time fueled for thirty years of automated operation, intially designed to burn weapons' grade materials and refined nuclear waste, the two largest sources of available nuclear fuel. We need research funds for this and for both high and low energy fusion designs, able to make more fuel than they burn, to burn our nuclear waste from our current power plants and with low to no waste themselves.

We don't even need a new battery design to store power from solar panels and windmills. We need a backbone, high capacity power link from the West to the East, chasing the sun. To convert coal-fired power plants to natural gas, which has turned out to be much more abundant than we ever imagined, the product of "drill baby, drill."

These things happened without your support and will continue to happen even if you continue to be skeptical of AGW. Once again, proving that conservatives don't matter. Trump and you can't stop progress.

What you deserve is to be ignored in the body politic. You aren't ignored right now because so many of the people in politics who are working to advance the interests of the very rich claim to be conservatives because they need to fool you into voting for them. But they aren't conservatives, they fully support progress, they just want to claim the majority of the returns from that progress for the oligarchy. They secretly laugh at your gullibility for voting to do something that they would never do, to reduce your own wages in order to increase their profits.

What's wrong with just using nuclear plants that are as safe as, or safer than, the next safest electricity generation technology?

Gen I and II plants are FAR safer than any non-nuclear power source except onshore wind, which is about equally safe. And nobody builds Gen I and II designs anymore - modern reactors are the even safer Gen III and III+ designs.

You don't need to outrun the tiger. You just need to outrun your friends.

Do you have a revolutionary technique for manufacturing, installing, and repairing wind turbines and solar panels that is "inherently safe"? Perhaps you have a design for an "inherently safe" hydroelectric dam?

Or are you applying an irrational double standard here?

Gen IV reactors, MSRs, fast spectrum reactors that burn spent PWR and BWR fuel, all these will be very nice to have. But we sure as shit don't need them FIRST. We need to start building existing reactor designs, in large quantities, ASA fucking P.

The best time to start this would have been twenty years or more ago. (France and Sweden did it; Everyone else should have too). The second best time is NOW.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What that article points out is that we know FA about visible and invisible CO2 emissions from the thousands of undersea vents and volcanoes that exist between the continental tectonic plates crashing into each other and the release of enough energy to sometimes cause major earthquakes and perhaps place the amount of human caused CO2 in the shade in comparison.
But I realise the folly of trying convince the cultists that their doomsday god doesn't exist.

Sorry, but we can get a reasonable estimate of undersea emissions--the CO2 will go into the water where it can be measured.

 

[angelo]

I wonder why all doomsday predictions are in the future and not in the present day where alarmists can point to and say: there's the proof right before your eyes. The same decades old scenarios of a soon happening doomsday keeps on being put forward. Yet the sea hasn't risen 4-5 meters, the low laying islands are in fact growing not being submerged by the rising seas as predicted even 2 decades ago. Forecasters can't even tell you if a tornado will make landfall within days, yet we are to believe their forecasts in centuries to come.
Besides, humanity is in danger of another ice age not a rise of around 1.5C in temperature in the year 2100 and beyond. Cold kills millions, not heat. The human body adapts from below 0C in Winter to 40-50C in Summer. So WTF is the drama about if not for the biggest scam since religion was invented!

 

[DBT]

You must be watching too much sky news, angelo.

 

[George S]

So I found this article: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2019.00223/full

This one is in my wheelhouse. [Twirling mustache] M'Speciality.

In the briefest of nutshells the methodology of climate computer modeling sucks eggs. Goose eggs. Through a garden hose. Lots of suck.
To project the future N years they run the model N times. A single run of any model has an error bar. A second run, using the error-bar-ridden input, introduces its own error bar as a multiple thus propagating the error. In the above paper he shows that the error bars as they themselves claim far exceed the claimed CO2 forcing. The CO2 forcing is like a fart in the wind.

The unavoidable conclusion is that an anthropogenic air temperature signal cannot have been, nor presently can be, evidenced in climate observables.

 

[angelo]

Climategate and Manns's Hockey Stitch destroyed any credibility the warmists/alarmist may have had. As it stands at the present time, they don't have a leg to stand on, or are ever likely to. Saying what may happen in years to come has as much credibility as an astrologer or a psychic and that's Zilch.

 

[SimpleDon]

What that article points out is that we know FA about visible and invisible CO2 emissions from the thousands of undersea vents and volcanoes that exist between the continental tectonic plates crashing into each other and the release of enough energy to sometimes cause major earthquakes and perhaps place the amount of human caused CO2 in the shade in comparison.
But I realise the folly of trying convince the cultists that their doomsday god doesn't exist.

We do have a handle on the natural sources of CO2 that leak out of the earth as well as how much CO2 is scrubbed out of the atmosphere and into the ocean because they balance each other out to no net increase in the CO2 in the atmosphere. This has to be true when the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere stays steady over a long period of time like it was before the industrial age. These are facts and pretty much flow from the definitions of "steady-state," i.e. not increasing or decreasing.

I am hardly a believer in a doomsday god. I don't think that AGW is an event that presents us with really even much of a threat. We identified the problem early and the solutions are well underway. There is no reason to believe that the solutions will require efforts beyond those that we already have or that aren't unachievable. It will cost us a nominal amount for things like an increased casualty from more destructive storms, the loss of valuable land from the rising seas, added costs for the displacement of food production, etc., say 5% of the worldwide GDP, paid for by the developed countries, of course.

We have to reduce our burning of coal and oil but we don't have to eliminate them. The number one technology that we need for this is to continue to increase the efficiency of our homes, businesses, industries, etc. and of our automobiles and trucks. We already have the technology to achieve this, it is only a matter of applying them.

It is easy now, for example, to build a home, school, or a light commercial building that not only doesn't require any energy to heat it and cool it but which produces more energy than it consumes, at a net increase of 10 to 15% of the cost of the construction, a reasonable amount that can be paid off either by reducing the size of the original house or building or by 5 to 7 years of the reduced energy bills, with this savings continuing for the life of the building. The buildings will last much longer and are much more comfortable and much less expensive to live, work and shop in that eventually older, less expensive buildings will lose value or will have to be retrofitted to the new standard.

Thanks to the efficiency standards imposed on it the worldwide automobile and truck industry achieved absolutely amazing increases in the efficiency of their vehicles. We stand on the cusp of having highly efficient, high range, practical electrical vehicles that will be the standard in the future. In short order, they will be self-driving, able to form high speed, safe virtual trains on the roadways, reducing accidents while making the best use of the existing roads, more than doubling their capacity to handle vehicles.

We do need some evolutionary technologies. First, an inherently safe nuclear reactor design, a true Gen V fission, atmospheric pressure, gas (not steam) high-efficiency design. Probably a molten salt cooled and moderated design capable of being built in a factory and one time fueled for thirty years of automated operation, intially designed to burn weapons' grade materials and refined nuclear waste, the two largest sources of available nuclear fuel. We need research funds for this and for both high and low energy fusion designs, able to make more fuel than they burn, to burn our nuclear waste from our current power plants and with low to no waste themselves.

We don't even need a new battery design to store power from solar panels and windmills. We need a backbone, high capacity power link from the West to the East, chasing the sun. To convert coal-fired power plants to natural gas, which has turned out to be much more abundant than we ever imagined, the product of "drill baby, drill."

These things happened without your support and will continue to happen even if you continue to be skeptical of AGW. Once again, proving that conservatives don't matter. Trump and you can't stop progress.

What you deserve is to be ignored in the body politic. You aren't ignored right now because so many of the people in politics who are working to advance the interests of the very rich claim to be conservatives because they need to fool you into voting for them. But they aren't conservatives, they fully support progress, they just want to claim the majority of the returns from that progress for the oligarchy. They secretly laugh at your gullibility for voting to do something that they would never do, to reduce your own wages in order to increase their profits.

What's wrong with just using nuclear plants that are as safe as, or safer than, the next safest electricity generation technology?

Gen I and II plants are FAR safer than any non-nuclear power source except onshore wind, which is about equally safe. And nobody builds Gen I and II designs anymore - modern reactors are the even safer Gen III and III+ designs.

You don't need to outrun the tiger. You just need to outrun your friends.

Do you have a revolutionary technique for manufacturing, installing, and repairing wind turbines and solar panels that is "inherently safe"? Perhaps you have a design for an "inherently safe" hydroelectric dam?

Or are you applying an irrational double standard here?

Gen IV reactors, MSRs, fast spectrum reactors that burn spent PWR and BWR fuel, all these will be very nice to have. But we sure as shit don't need them FIRST. We need to start building existing reactor designs, in large quantities, ASA fucking P.

The best time to start this would have been twenty years or more ago. (France and Sweden did it; Everyone else should have too). The second best time is NOW.

No, of course, we should be building water-cooled nuclear power plants right now. Not only are they the safest way of generating power, but they also do so with only carbon emissions associated with fuel mining and enrichment, a trivial amount considering the carbon-free power production gained. But the uranium is a scare element and the portion of it that is fissile and able to be burned in a reactor is only 0.2 to 0.3% of the uranium. Meaning that the fissile Ur235 is as rare as platinum. If this wasn't bad enough the high-pressure water-cooled reactors are only capable of burning a portion of the Ur235 in their fuel rods because of the design of the fuel rods that contain the waste products of the process. The xenon gas produced will rupture the fuel rod long before the Ur235 is all consumed.

What I said is that we need research funds to other reactor designs to see a way forward, including handling the waste produced by the current reactors. Well, I didn't phrase it that way but it is what I meant. I was responding to anglo who is so confused he doesn't seem to grasp that the sun can't heat anything at night. I didn't want to confuse him any further, probably an impossibility.

I have no problem with building nuclear power plants with the current technology of water-cooling and the fuel rod design of ceramic pellets, to provide the thirty-year bridge to new reactor designs. Storing the spent rods in the power plants until they can be used for fuel. We also need a nuclear power oversight board that is a little more accepting of the idea of nuclear power and innovations. The current regulations are locked into the current technology, much to the advantage of the fuel processors and providers.

The other thing that we have to do is to push back the idea that renewables can be used for base power generation. They can't be. The solar advocates seem to be as confused as anglo, except they don't understand that solar panels don't generate power at night. At least this is implicit in the claim that solar power is cheaper than coal-fired power production. While it is true that solar power is cheaper than coal on a kW basis, what is important is kilowatt-hours, kWh. The amount of energy used. In other words, for solar panels to be base generation they would have to generate power twenty-four hours a day, which is impossible. Even if there was a dirt-cheap battery available right now to store the power from the solar panels to be used when the sun isn't shining, you would need about three to four times the kW of panels over the kW of coal-fired power production. Energy, what we need, is power times a unit of time.

At the same time, I advocate for both wind and solar power. When they are generating they unload the coal plants, reducing the carbon emissions. We can also fire natural gas either as an auxiliary or replacing coal in existing plants, reducing the amount of carbon emissions, albeit at a reduction in the output of the plant.

Until two years ago I had about 4½ kW of solar panels on my roof. My insurance company replaced my roof because of hurricane damage and my wife told them not to put the solar panels back on the roof. I didn't know this, we were staying in a hotel while they repaired the water damage. My wife never liked my solar panels on her roof. I have been paying more every month for electrical power, about 50 to 70 dollars a month.

 

[bilby]

What's wrong with just using nuclear plants that are as safe as, or safer than, the next safest electricity generation technology?

Gen I and II plants are FAR safer than any non-nuclear power source except onshore wind, which is about equally safe. And nobody builds Gen I and II designs anymore - modern reactors are the even safer Gen III and III+ designs.

You don't need to outrun the tiger. You just need to outrun your friends.

Do you have a revolutionary technique for manufacturing, installing, and repairing wind turbines and solar panels that is "inherently safe"? Perhaps you have a design for an "inherently safe" hydroelectric dam?

Or are you applying an irrational double standard here?

Gen IV reactors, MSRs, fast spectrum reactors that burn spent PWR and BWR fuel, all these will be very nice to have. But we sure as shit don't need them FIRST. We need to start building existing reactor designs, in large quantities, ASA fucking P.

The best time to start this would have been twenty years or more ago. (France and Sweden did it; Everyone else should have too). The second best time is NOW.

No, of course, we should be building water-cooled nuclear power plants right now. Not only are they the safest way of generating power, but they also do so with only carbon emissions associated with fuel mining and enrichment, a trivial amount considering the carbon-free power production gained. But the uranium is a scare element and the portion of it that is fissile and able to be burned in a reactor is only 0.2 to 0.3% of the uranium. Meaning that the fissile Ur235 is as rare as platinum. If this wasn't bad enough the high-pressure water-cooled reactors are only capable of burning a portion of the Ur235 in their fuel rods because of the design of the fuel rods that contain the waste products of the process. The xenon gas produced will rupture the fuel rod long before the Ur235 is all consumed.

What I said is that we need research funds to other reactor designs to see a way forward, including handling the waste produced by the current reactors. Well, I didn't phrase it that way but it is what I meant. I was responding to anglo who is so confused he doesn't seem to grasp that the sun can't heat anything at night. I didn't want to confuse him any further, probably an impossibility.

I have no problem with building nuclear power plants with the current technology of water-cooling and the fuel rod design of ceramic pellets, to provide the thirty-year bridge to new reactor designs. Storing the spent rods in the power plants until they can be used for fuel. We also need a nuclear power oversight board that is a little more accepting of the idea of nuclear power and innovations. The current regulations are locked into the current technology, much to the advantage of the fuel processors and providers.

The other thing that we have to do is to push back the idea that renewables can be used for base power generation. They can't be. The solar advocates seem to be as confused as anglo, except they don't understand that solar panels don't generate power at night. At least this is implicit in the claim that solar power is cheaper than coal-fired power production. While it is true that solar power is cheaper than coal on a kW basis, what is important is kilowatt-hours, kWh. The amount of energy used. In other words, for solar panels to be base generation they would have to generate power twenty-four hours a day, which is impossible. Even if there was a dirt-cheap battery available right now to store the power from the solar panels to be used when the sun isn't shining, you would need about three to four times the kW of panels over the kW of coal-fired power production. Energy, what we need, is power times a unit of time.

At the same time, I advocate for both wind and solar power. When they are generating they unload the coal plants, reducing the carbon emissions. We can also fire natural gas either as an auxiliary or replacing coal in existing plants, reducing the amount of carbon emissions, albeit at a reduction in the output of the plant.

Until two years ago I had about 4½ kW of solar panels on my roof. My insurance company replaced my roof because of hurricane damage and my wife told them not to put the solar panels back on the roof. I didn't know this, we were staying in a hotel while they repaired the water damage. My wife never liked my solar panels on her roof. I have been paying more every month for electrical power, about 50 to 70 dollars a month.

Fair enough.

Though I don't agree that uranium is scarce.

Environmentalists have a habit of declaring minerals to be on the verge of exhaustion, by incorrectly declaring the known reserves to be the entire resource. I have seen plenty of people argue (apparently with a straight face) that we only have enough uranium for perhaps two centuries of nuclear power using current reactor designs.

These people don't seem to learn - they have been predicting the end of various resources (copper, iron, phosphate, oil, uranium, coal, etc.) since at least the 1960s, and yet these things not only don't run out; They get cheaper and more readily available.

The reason that peak <insert mineral> predictions never arrive is simple - the people making these predictions don't know (or deliberately don't take into account) the difference between a reserve and a resource.

A reserve is the stuff we know, in detail, where it is and how much, at what grade. It takes a lot of expensive drilling and assaying to define a reserve, and typically prospecting companies won't do it if there's more than five to ten years supply of a mineral. Of course, some materials are strategic, and prospectors in (say) the USA might want to ensure that they have a defined domestic reserve of five to ten years; So global reserves can be much more than a decade. Also, materials like uranium, which have low demand compared to what was once anticipated, often have much larger reserves - that's where the two hundred years figure comes from.

But a reserve is a TINY fraction of a resource - a resource is the estimated total amount of a mineral in the entire world that could be extracted if it were needed. By necessity, the exact size of any mineral resource is unknown. But it's a BIG planet. We are not running out of anything, and we can recycle most stuff, in the unlikely event that we did start to run short.

Perhaps the difference is best illustrated by analogy. I have a car key, without which I am stuffed. So, I keep a second key in reserve. If I lose my key once a decade, that reserve key will help me keep going. But that means (horror!) in about twenty years, I will have lost both my current key, and my reserve - and my car will never move again. It's a looming disaster! Peak car key is imminent, and civilisation will collapse!

Perhaps not. The local hardware store has at least a half-dozen, and maybe as many as a dozen, blanks for that type of key. If I lose one, I can replenish my reserve (at some expense) from this well known and understood resource. There's sixty to a hundred and twenty years of known resource there.

But even if my great grand-children still need (but keep misplacing) that car key, they will be OK. The hardware store can obtain an unknown (but very large) number of further key blanks. In fact, it's unlikely that they will run out ever - they will continue to be available long after they are unnecessary.

This is why we haven't run out of stuff yet. And it's why we won't run out of uranium, even if we run our PWRs with their 4% burnup for the next several thousand years. (Though of course, we won't - reprocessing of spent fuel is a well established technology, banned in the USA, and discontinued in the UK, but still done in France; And it allows much higher burnup than once-through fuel use).

I am all for the more efficient fast reactor and breeder designs that use more of the available fuel, but these designs are not particularly necessary. Fuel cost is a tiny fraction of the operating cost of any nuclear reactor design. Unlike a coal or gas plant, in the nuclear industry, the largest ongoing costs are capital amortisation and staffing (particularly regulatory and compliance staff, who can make up as much as two thirds of the payroll - people who do nothing other than ensure that other people do their job in exact accordance with the regulations).