Scientists mull Solar Radiation Management – a potential climate-change stop-gap At the American Geophysical Union annual meeting (AGU23) in San Francisco the other week, the 25,000-plus science folks in attendance pretty much all agreed on one unequivocal fact: the Earth is warming and it's warming quickly. Discussions centered not on "if" — that's been settled — but on how to best measure that rise, how to …
a. Ozone Depletion.
b. Disruption of Precipitation Patterns
c. Regional Climate Inequities.
d. Stratospheric Heating.
e. Shifts in Atmospheric Circulation.
f. Aerosol Deposition.
g. Ethical and Social Risks.
h. Unpredictable Climate Responses.
i. Long-Term Environmental Impact.
With any of these approaches you end up with two problems instead of one, the second being the unexpected consequences of pumping the atmosphere full of sulphates or whatever.
Ask Australians what they think about the introduction of cane toads or rabbits - or a hundred other examples of "by doing X we can fix Y ... oops, we didn't think that it would also do Z".
And there's a third problem which hasn't been mentioned. Any mitigation activity like this is, by its very presence (or even the possibility of it taking place), is going to prolong the emissions of GHGs by the entrenched interests, who will see it as an excuse for business-as-usual. That feedback loop will surely reduce or even negate any benefit from the mitigation.
There's an argument that it could be used *after* we've stopped emitting GHGs, to get the climate back to where it should be more quickly. But genuine question: how long would the climate take to recover naturally?
how long would the climate take to recover naturally?
The climate is already recovering from an ice age. About every 100-150k years or so we go through an ice age, which lasts for most of that time period. CO2 increases because it is actually too low and the oceans are apparently still warming, which causes the equilibrium concentration of atmospheric CO2 to increase as well. Humans' 3% of total CO2 every year, combined with the TINY fraction of effect CO2 has on GHG [2% vs 95% for water] means that even if it WERE being affected by accumulating human CO2 it would only increase temperature by:
(15C - -15C) * 2% * 3% or 0.018C per year, or roughly 1.8C per century. That is nothing to panic over, nor do eco damage to block the sun for. And CO2 does not accumulate because of plants and rain, so basically CO2 isn't the control knob for climate. The SUN is.
"The climate is already recovering from an ice age."
The Earth goes through warmer periods too as archeologists find based on what humans build as shelter.
I can see how humans can have a measurable effect on climate, but that is partially how good we have become at measuring things. The Earth is also a very dynamic system so to think that humans can maintain the climate that has existed over the last couple of centuries as we have built up industry and overpopulated, is mad. As the population increases, it take more dirt to turn diesel into food. Petroleum is finite and the dirt is getting tired.
As for that rhetorical question 'What could possbly go wrong'...
How about these "scientists" being JUST PLAIN WRONG about the "settled science" - and then doing so-called "corrective" things that actually DO make everything worse...!
25,000 scientists know that if they say the right key words and tricky phrases, and then DEFECATE the right "analysis" to the right people, they'll get LOTS of FUNDING for their labs to do what they REALLY want to do. Get while the getting's good, right?
Dear "scientists" - do NOT mess with *MY* SUNLIGHT!!!
(Regardless, I happen to LIKE hot weather, CO2 is good for plants, and COLD WEATHER kills WAY more people than HOT weather!!!)
CO2 is responsible for around 2% of GHG effect (as opposed to WATER, which is around 95%). Given that the effect of CO2 has been saturated for quite some time (and is limited to a VERY small band of IR radiation, unlike WATER) and only about 3% of CO2 is put into the atmosphere by humans (which is at chemical and biological equilibrium ANYWAY as rain depletes the added CO2 and it winds up as carbonates in the ocean with atmospheric CO2 driven by water temp and NOT the other way around, and also algae and plant growth increases with increased CO2 and helps deplete it faster) and so for the 3% of the 2% "they" want to spend $ZILLIONS of OTHER PEOPLE's money to BLOCK THE SUN.
*FACEPALM*
Anything that dims solar radiation that requires constant action (like marine cloud brightening) is not a risk for causing an ice age. All you have to do is slow down or stop the action you are taking, and it quickly reverses.
It would be hard enough to scale solutions to the point where it is feasible/affordable to provide that constant input (and that input will have to go up over time as more warming mitigation is required) so there isn't much legitimate concern that it would be overdone. It is more likely there would be side effects, or the mitigation would have disparate impacts - i.e. if you do something involving ships it can only happen where ships travel, meaning it may work great in the tropics but not affect the poles all that much. Since the poles are where the biggest temperature increases are seen, and also where warming has the greatest impact on sea levels it would at best fix only part of the problem.
"All you have to do is slow down or stop the action you are taking, and it quickly reverses."
I think it would be a good idea to run those sorts of experiments on Venus first just to be sure they're reversible. Triggering a chilling cycle (short of an ice age) could render vast regions of food producing areas useless and many would starve. To say something would "quickly" reverse is highly subjective. In a geological sense, 300 years would be a blink of the eye. In a human sense, 3 centuries is billions dead of exposure and starvation.
know which solution to go for.
Just wait until the eco-green lobby come up with a solution ......... and then do exactly the opposite.
Biofuels........... nope ends up in vast areas of rainforest cut down making co2 levels higher
No nuclear power .... just means we end up burning more fossil fuels making more co2
Solar power... works at night. oh never mind
wind power ... except it needs backup for when its not windy... darn those fossil fuels.
The sulpher injection system should be fairly straight forward though, center tank of a passenger jet gets high sulpher fuel... switches to that tank while at high altitude. job done.
Or drill 2 miles down into yellowstone park, plant a tsar bomb, and standby to see the fireworks and cooler temps. caution : side effects may include ash fallout, loss of farming land between the great lakes and the pacific and death of several billion people
I don't like that idea. Right now I'm about an hour and a half from ground 0, or would that be ground -2?
I don't think a nuke would work at the temperatures that far down. But then you probably don't need to go that deep. But 2 miles down is probably as good a starting point as any to work out that plans feasibility.
and death of several billion people
Which is the goal of the Nazis from Davos. Whole planet only for the rich and enough slaves to support them.
The whole net zero thing is to make life a nightmare for average person, to the point they stop thinking about having children.
If people don't have children, they are no more. It's less graphic than having the gas chambers, but effect is the same.
"Why else is uncontrolled immigration allowed or ignored by assorted overlords ?"
There really isn't that much need for raw labor. A domestic servant is more of a menace if they don't have any experience with a microwave oven or garbage disposal. Somebody that doesn't understand that the collection bag in the hoover will need replacing from time to time can spend ages being very ineffective. A skilled tradesman can still dig a ditch, but somebody without skills isn't good for much better and ditches are mostly dug by machinery these days where possible.
My take on the uncontrolled immigration is political. They might be seen as hordes of new voters. There's plenty of stories in the news of non-citizens voting and some large cities are or plan to allow non-citizens to vote in local elections if no further. It can be very good for those politicians as becoming mayor of a large city can be a stepping stone to more important elected offices.
Biofuels - true, its a crazy idea, though more off the wall solutions (such as walls of algae) may provide fuels without using agrecultural space.
Nuclear power is wonderful if it wasn't for the fact that no one has worked out how to make it finantialy viable if you include the costs of dealing with the waste and decommisioning of the plant. Private industry is happy to build and run them as long as government (you and I) pay for end of life.
Solar power - not available at night... well spotted and a cheap shot! Many fuels are the result of solar power (biofuels, wind, wave power, oil etc). The thing that is messing from direct Solar is storage. One of the major power type used is heat. You can easily push your excess Solar electricity onto heat production (heat pumps, or simply imersion heaters) it all helps reducing fossil fuel use. You can also use direct Solar heat collectors to help with hot water and heating.
Wind -yes, it doesnt blow all the time, but in many places it blows a lot. This is why you need storage.
What we need is a mosaic of less harmful technoogies, backed up by inovative and posibly off the wall storage solutions
> Are they making progress?
No, they are not. not really.
A summary of my previous posts on the subject:
It's horrendously difficult to get energy out of a fusion reaction. Mostly because fusion produces its energy in the form of Neutron radiation, which destroys and makes radioactive almost every material there is, and because it has to happen at temperatures and pressures even higher than in the sun to achieve a decent power density. (the Sun has a power density of a few hundred watts per cubic metre. It's similar to that of a garden compost heap. Whereas fission reactors have nearly a factor of a million higher density than that i.e. 100MW/m3)
Because of the neutron radiation and low power density, fusion reactors produce much, much more nuclear waste per MW than fission reactors do. The only advantage is that the waste is slightly less long-lived i.e. it's hot for 100 years instead of 10,000 years.
However, there are some really interesting new fission designs that we could have built by now if we weren't spending all our nuclear engineers' time pissing about with Fusion.
Traditional Fission reactors only use ~2-3% of their fuel before it is considered "spent". Whereas Thorium reactors and sub-critical fission reactors (using a controllable neutron source to burn low-enriched uranium or old weapons plutonium) can use more than 50% of their fuel i.e. 10-20 times more, and are intrinsically much safer than the old fission reactors. They are also much better for non-proliferation because they don't involve high-enriched fuel.
And whilst Fission fuel is technically finite, it isn't really. There is so much of it in "waste" from old reactors that could only burn 2% of their fuel, and from old warheads from the stockpile which can supposedly annihilate the earth 10 times over, that we shouldn't need to mine Uranium at all. Much better to peacefully and safely burn that stockpile than to use it for its intended purpose.
fusion produces its energy in the form of Neutron radiation, which destroys and makes radioactive almost every material there is
Well, not entirely. And neutrons are just one group of the radiated particles. I would expect gamma to exceed neutrons due to momentum conservation, even with 2H + 3H -> 4He + N reaction.
Even so collecting neutron energy is relatively easy. 1 meter thickness of water should absorb about 90% of it, 2 meters about 99% of it. Some materials can withstand very high neutron flux without significant activation (or depletion). So it's a problem, just not an unsolvable one. Just surround the reactor (protected by a metal shell) with the boiler water or a pressurized water vessel.
The sustained fusion reaction seems to be the biggest hurdle. I think they need higher fuel density. How about 'heavy oil' i.e. oil with heavy hydrogen? With carbon maybe you get CNO cycle too?
In any case the fact that the same people who want to reduce "carbon footprint" are ALSO trying to stop fission reactors from being used tells me that their agenda has NOTHING to do with climate. More than likely it is political, i.e. power, control, and money.
oh one more thing
Traditional Fission reactors only use ~2-3% of their fuel before it is considered "spent".
Not actually true. Burnable poisons (like Boron) are typically added with the fuel so you can greatly increase the fuel load, and poison chemistry control is used in part for the same reason. As the fuel ages you adjust the poison level in the coolant accordingly. There are also other ways to increase fuel load, like core geometry, different control rod configurations that change during core life and so on. You should be able to get 50% or higher utilization with a properly designed core, even low enrichment cores.
Not sure where you got your numbers. Thorium is interesting but apparently impractical.
But yeah I'd like to see more nuclear energy. It makes too much sense for the greenies to want it, though.
I got those numbers from a talk i attended by Roger Cashmore in 2015, the then UKAEA chair. The main focus of his talk was lamenting the cancellation of the Dounreay fast reactor, so he was talking about thermal reactors i.e. the majority of those in current service, not more modern designs that we COULD have built but were largely cancelled
"It's horrendously difficult to get energy out of a fusion reaction."
The power conversion aspect isn't even being worked on that much right now. First, they need to get a reactor to burn in a long term stable way that's energy positive. The kick it takes to get them going is a concern too. Restarting a Fusion reactor after a grid accident is going to be difficult and require that the grid is at a certain minimum. A fission reactor can be much simpler to start up and doesn't need as much input from outside which can be accomplished with an onsite petroleum generator. The generation is also important for emergency shutdown as well as seen by what happened at Fukushima so not installing it below grade in a tsunami prone region is important.
"The technology will be ready for showtime in 15 years."
It will be sooner than that. The Chinese are hard at work on LFTR as I type. Since the US had the first two iterations up and running in the 1960's, it's had a good head start since the Chinese were able to get all of the information. They'll burn coal as long as they need to so they can continue to take over all manufacturing, but they do realize they need to switch over to clean power generation as quickly as they can so the air over the country doesn't kill off the population too fast.
I can go along with not seeing the same technology deployed outside of China due to politics, patents, etc for another 15 years. In the US, any non-PWR light water reactor is "un-proven" technology so there will be no license granted for any of it. This makes jobs at the regulatory agency very easy. They just have big stamps with "No" on them and a day's work is just stamping any application that is for something not currently deployed with that stamp.
> Nuclear power is wonderful if it wasn't for the fact that no one has worked out how to make it finantialy viable if you include the costs of dealing with the waste and decommisioning of the plant. Private industry is happy to build and run them as long as government (you and I) pay for end of life.
The reason that it's not "finantialy viable" as you put it, is because certain people have regulated nuclear to within an inch of it's life, and have spread fear and disinformation about it. Basically Greenpeace and the CND were played for fools by big oil, and now there's a new renewables lobby that doesn't want to see nuclear power become a reality either.
Coal and Biomass plants emit far more toxic and radioactive waste (radioactive due to trace amounts of Radon etc in the billlions of tonnes of feedstock that they burn) than the entire nuclear industry, accidents included.
Nuclear plants have to waste masses of money to ensure that emissions are "As Low As Reasonably Achievable" (which means that there is no upper limit on how much they have to spend - ii someone can say that they have a method to reduce emissions from sod all to bugger all, then the nuclear plants are legally obliged to adopt it at any cost, even if they are already below background)
Privatisation and the short political cycle hasn't helped either - nobody is going to take the plunge to build a plant if in 4 years time the next government might pull the rug out from under it.
Saying that coal is worse than nuclear is not particularly helpfull and doesn't deal with the waste.
Of course we want clean and safe power, that is part of the reason to shut down coal. Nuclear is not clean, particularly the end of life senario.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/05/dirty-30-dangerous-sellafield-nuclear-site-ponds-safety-fears
Nuclear CAN be clean. Just because the stuff we did 50 years ago was not clean, doesn't mean that modern fission isn't.
Sellafield frankly is a testament to just how safe nuclear is. We did about the worst possible thing we could do for nuclear safety (chuck a bunch of fuel rods into a wine rack with a big fan to keep them cool but they caught fire) and yet Sellafield is the worst we have to show for it. Yes, Cockroft-Walton saved the day with his electrostatic scrubber (branded "Cockroft's Folly" before the fire) but even worse disasters such as Chernobyl have not resulted in the mass destruction and zombies that we feared at the time.
Fukushima in particular gets labeled as a disaster, but as far as I can see, it is a triumph for nuclear safety. It was an old design of plant with what today are considered serious safety failings. It was hit by a tsunami that killed tens of thousands of people, yet the so-called "nuclear catastrophe" has killed nobody, except the few who died in the mass-panic that ensued. Even the 50 who went in on what they thought would be a suicide mission to stabilise it, are still alive and well.
Low-levels of radiation are not dangerous, yet the ridiculous "Linear No-Threshold Model" used by nuclear regulators makes the completely-unfounded assumption that any piece of radioactive substance that is enough to kill one person, will still kill one person if distributed across the globe. That's complete nonsense. Life on earth has evolved over millions of years to thrive in a constant low-level of background radiation.
What we have NOT evolved to cope with, are PM2.5 nanoparticles like those emitted from modern emissions-compliant diesel engines and coal/gas/biomass power stations.
Bananas cause cancer? This suggests the opposite... https://www.leeds.ac.uk/news-health/news/article/5128/a-banana-a-day-could-keep-cancer-at-bay
Homoeopathic radiation therapy, right?
"One in six people who eat bananas die of cancer. Scoff all you like, the numbers don't lie!"
There is a story in the local news about how people of color are disproportionately cited for traffic violations in the Los Angeles area. The percentage of black people in the US is around 5.5% and in this region black people were issued around 14% of citations. No control for local population. No admission that perhaps they DID account for a greater amount of people that drive so poorly that they attract the attention of police. No mention that when an officer pulls somebody over, they often don't see the driver until they walk up. No mention of how many black people are issued citations from black officers. It's the whole correlation/causation dilemma. That won't stop the politicians from doing stupid things in response. I have to mention that given the state of journalism, the article may have left out loads of information and have been written to be more inflammatory rather than informative.
Fukushima was more of a stupid decision problem than a failed design problem. The backup generators that were supposed to provide power for a controlled shutdown were installed in a hole in the ground on the ocean shore. Tsunami comes in, generators go underwater and short out, and suddenly there's no power to do a controlled shutdown anymore. Mounting the generators higher up than an expected taunami wave would have meant loud generators when runningz but also would have meant power for a controlled shutdown.
Quote
"Of course we want clean and safe power, that is part of the reason to shut down coal. Nuclear is not clean, particularly the end of life senario."
well there is the question where to build them.
If we place them on Bodmin moor in cornwall, it would be very hard to tell the difference between most of the power station and the granite its built on in terms of radioactive output.
Dont forget, Germany phased out its nuclear power stations after the 2011 Japanese earthquake, so now it relies on French nuclear power / burning lignite coal which is the most polluting coal possible to burn.
Oh well... score 1 for my original point of listen carefully to the eco-green lobby, then do exactly the opposite.
Meanwhile... back to dumping 1000s of PCs/laptops as microsoft has decreed that a perfectly good computer cant run windows 11 because of 'software incompatability'
We're fucked basically
"Meanwhile... back to dumping 1000s of PCs/laptops as Microsoft has decreed that a perfectly good computer cant run windows 11 because of 'software incompatibility'"
Or use Linux as the operating system. Something like Mint or Ubuntu is easy to install, and easy to use.
People panicking and trying to scrap perfectly good computers means more cheap computers for the rest of us - I'm not complaining.
""Meanwhile... back to dumping 1000s of PCs/laptops as Microsoft has decreed that a perfectly good computer cant run windows 11 because of 'software incompatibility'"
"
Apple is doing the same thing. My old cheese graters are loaded with OS versions that are far from the last officially supported version and work just fine. The only issue I have is one doesn't recognize the Bluetooth module (solvable with a different version of BT module), but since I don't use it for anything and I have another computer that doesn't have that problem, no big deal. Some clever people have made workarounds to fool the OS installers and they've constructed patches for this and that. There's a couple of iMacs I've picked up at estate sales for free that I need to drag out of the closet and see what can be done with them. I'd like to have something in the kitchen for the security cams and to display recipes and something in the workshop so I don't have to go in the house to look up things when I'm stuck in a project. I still need to string an ethernet cable to the garage since Wi-Fi is agonizingly slow in comparison.
Despite all the regulations around nuclear (currently, "fission") power, it's still not "safe." The reasons it's still not "safe" are:
(1) enough scientists are amoral gits* that they cause ecological disasters when they're given money and opportunity: they want to see what happens when they do X, regardless of the reasonably-foreseeable bad consequences, and,
(2) enough managers and decision-makers are amoral gits that they cause ecological disasters by saving large amounts of money (and/or possibly taking bribes) by taking shortcuts in the design, construction and operation of nuclear plants.
These people simply cannot be trusted to do "the right thing." Not all scientists, managers, and decision-makers in the nuclear power industry are amoral gits, but we have no way of effectively determining which ones are, and which ones are not, short of letting them do as they will, with the risk of ecological disaster.
*Read up on the history of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in the United States, and on what was done there.
The reason that it's not "finantialy viable" as you put it, is because certain people have regulated nuclear to within an inch of it's life, and have spread fear and disinformation about it. Basically Greenpeace and the CND were played for fools by big oil, and now there's a new renewables lobby that doesn't want to see nuclear power become a reality either.
Take your meds. Stop watching Fox News.
> Coal and Biomass plants emit far more toxic and radioactive waste (radioactive due to trace amounts of Radon etc in the billlions of tonnes of feedstock that they burn) than the entire nuclear industry, accidents included.
This came from my recollection of this article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/
"Accidents included" is complete bollocks, i hold my hand up. But I stand by the rest of my post.
My point is that the rest of industry seems to get away with murder, chucking whatever it likes into the atmosphere and waterways, but Nuclear is made a special case.
I think this is simply because nuclear emissions are so easily detectable, measurable and traceable, whereas other more toxic emissions from other industries are not.
Nuclear plants are made to count single Bequerels of emissions (a Becquerel is, in nuclear terms, like a grain of sand on a beach), yet as soon as someone lets off a nuclear bomb, that effort is dwarfed by unfathomable orders of magnitude. Like maintaining Clean Room conditions only to have Thames Water to pipe a sewer into it.
There are also plenty of powerful interests who stand to gain from throwing mud at nuclear, and thanks to the tight regulation and public fear, it is very easy to do
> "This came from my recollection of this article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/"
This link is from 2007 and it is based on a paper from 1978. Anything more recent and more verifiable?
"This link is from 2007 and it is based on a paper from 1978. Anything more recent and more verifiable?"
There are plenty of videos on YouTube of people having a stroll on ash dumps with a Geiger counter in hand. Some are more competent using one than others, but the clicky noises are hard to miss.
>Nuclear power is wonderful if it wasn't for the fact that no one has worked out how to make it finantialy viable if you include the costs of dealing with the waste and decommisioning of the plant.
Actually, the same is true for fossil fuel plants. If they were held to the same waste management requirements as nukes (i.e. every last bit of waste that just might be harmful must be handled), then they would be disallowed from releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, given it's abundantly proven harmful. That would make them financially non-viable.
Basically, the only reason coal/oil/gas looks cheaper than nukes is because they are not on a level playing field. One is allowed to just vent harmful waste into the atmosphere, the other isn't.
It's not even just CO2; coal plants emit more radiation than nuclear plants, and then there's the outright toxic crap - and apparently that's just OK for nearly everyone.
It's like comparing a regular car to a car that, for whatever reason, was allowed to ignore most health, safety and emissions regulations. Of course it would be a lot cheaper.
Seriously? That's a pretty well established fact, not propaganda.
Of course, it is talking about radioactivity released to the environment though. Nobody is saying that coal ash is more radioactive than a barrel of high level vitrified waste
What's your solution then, Mr. Coward?
The amount of nonsense you've already published in that thread is quite enough to get anybody bored. But OK.
> Seriously? That's a pretty well established fact, not propaganda.
There is no fission reaction in a nuclear plan. So the amount of radioactivity that comes out cannot exceed what comes in. What science says is that coal comes with INFINITESIMAL TRACES of Uranium and Thorium and that these are released in the ashes. These levels are STILL LOWER than natural rock radioactivity. Ashes are not more radioactive than coal itself.
Now of course nuclear plants don't release ashes in the atmosphere (except when nuclear disaster strike). But they PRODUCE A LOT MORE NUCLEAR WASTE than any other human activity.
This is the disingenuous part. Conflating coal plant trace level atmospheric release with millions of tons of radioactive nuclear waste from nuclear plants. It's nothing more than a talking point. Dishonest propaganda. Relaying it reveals poor ethics standards.
I'm quite prepared to change my views if you point out the nonsense logically.. What other nonsense would you like to disagree with?
I assume you meant to say "There is no fission reaction in a coal plant" rather than "There is no fission reaction in a nuclear plan."
I agree with your point, but it deflects from my argument that it is far worse to dump waste into the atmosphere than to safely store it underground. That's the whole point of Carbon Capture etc, isn't it?
As I said: Please explain what your ideal solution is? Perhaps it is Hydrogen or Gravity storage or perhaps it is Coal- and tree-burning?
> Please explain what your ideal solution is?
You're approaching the problem from the engineering angle (which means that you are implicitly assuming that your level of understanding of the relevant technical matters is sufficient to forge yourself an authoritative opinion - a common nerd-with-big-ego attitude. But that's fine, as your sphere of influence is negligible).
That's two bad assumptions:
1 - In reality, smarter brains than you and me are 1/ pushing the technological limits, and 2/ approaching the problem with an end-to-end multi-path, value-chain perspective.
2 - Secondly, technologies are only enablers. What matters is the economy. To achieve the paradigm shift, a completely new ecosystem has to be put in place, gradually replacing the current one. Every economic actor in the value-chain has to do the right thing - not because it is the right thing to do (and risk getting out of business), but because it has the best TCO, and offers the best business model (and stay in business). That involves displacement of long established verticals as well as refactoring of powerful economic actors. That involves market creation in a whole lot of new niches (in home production, home storage, appliances). Yet this is a moving target, because new techniques are emerging every year in hundreds of labs across the world; because demographics and development needs are evolving fast, and because economic environments are difficult to predict.
Thankfully, things are actually moving quite fast. Thanks to financial support from visionary states, a number of technologies have managed to displace long established ones, previously deemed to be too entrenched to budge. Like solar and wind energy, which are now cheaper than coal and oil in many developing countries. Thank you Japan, Germany and China. Rabid naysayers claiming, on technical grounds, that solar panels would never be able to compete with nuclear power have been proven wrong. By one order of magnitude, now.
The change of scale is also beneficial to the spread of renewable solutions. With the spread of communal renewable energies, no need for unrealistic investments in redundant hierarchical grids anymore. Production units capacity are not counted in Gigawatts but in kilowatts. Therefore, grids are not mandatory. Renewables therefore spread much faster. Adding storage is also increasingly affordable with immediate ROI.
Electric vehicles too, have spread much faster than anticipated. With EVs, storage technologies are becoming cheaper by the day and improving rapidly. Another piece of the puzzle is falling into place.
IoT and smart grids are following suit. Demand shaping and local storage are pulling down the duck curve. And yes, H2 has a huge role to play. First, to de-carbonize industries, and then to earn its central place in tomorrow's global energy management architecture and economy. We are getting there very fast. Prices of low cost electrolysers are tumbling down. PPAs give visibility to investors. States are initially compensating for Green/Grey H2 costs/prices spreads.
Yes, there will be bumps on the road. Yet, more solutions will appear, more roadblocks will be cleared, and the whole picture will rapidly improve. Plenty of strongly opinionated "Hiroo Onoda-type" people will remain in denial for decades. But that's irrelevant. Because the rest of us are all onboard.
So it's not "my AC solution". It's THE COMMON global solution. All you have to do in order to understand it, is, as usual, to look around at what people smarter than yourself are doing and ask yourself why they are doing it that way. With humility. Unless you're fine with wasting your own time.
Like solar and wind energy, which are now cheaper than coal and oil in many developing countries. Thank you Japan, Germany and China. Rabid naysayers claiming, on technical grounds, that solar panels would never be able to compete with nuclear power have been proven wrong. By one order of magnitude, now.
What an utter load of bollocks. Or as wiki might put it, citation needed
But it's strange how many people believe this nonsense. Since 'investing' in 'renewables', our energy costs have steadily increased. The UK has 'invested' massively in 'renewables', and now has some of the most expensive electricity in the world. Ok, much of this is due to an extremely broken energy market, but..
The 'renewables' industry keeps telling us their product is the cheapest ever, and prices are going to keep falling. And yet-
In July 2022, Ørsted was awarded a contract for difference (CfD) for Hornsea 3 at an inflation-indexed strike price of GBP 37.35 per MWh in 2012 prices. The CfD framework permits a reduction of the awarded CfD capacity. Ørsted will use this flexibility to submit a share of Hornsea 3’s capacity into the UK’s upcoming allocation round 6.
The initial CfD allowed the 'renewables' scumbags and assorted useful idiots to claim wind was really cheap. But then Orsted decided it couldn't actually afford to meet their contractual obligations, and so want to rebid capacity into AR6 and this get a price of probably £100/MWh+ And the useless shower of shite we have in government, present or future given a Labour win will come complete with an Ed Milliband, will probably let them do it.
As already noted, you don't understand anything about CfDs.
First of all, CfDs are maximums. Auctions result in lower prices than CfDs.
Second, your whole rant is full of "probably"s. Rest your case, old man. Bring hard, indisputable, facts before drawing conclusions confirming your bias.
If your yardstick is CfDs, then have at least the honesty to compare with UK CfDs for nuclear power: Hinkley Point C CfD. £92.50/MWh (2012 prices),
IRENA databases show that wind and solar power are now cheaper than coal, globally. It's been the case for the last two years, and figures keep decreasing, year after year. End of story. Only crackpots keep arguing the opposite.
Again, you still can't wrap your mind around the difference between costs and prices. What matters to producers are costs. The market makes the price (with merit-order driven prices guaranteeing the margins).
Anything to add?
First of all, CfDs are maximums. Auctions result in lower prices than CfDs.
That's the theory, yes. Except as I pointed out the facts are rather different. Orsted bid low, decided they'd bid too low and couldn't afford to deliver per contract and now want to rebid at a much higher strike price.
If your yardstick is CfDs, then have at least the honesty to compare with UK CfDs for nuclear power:
And offshore wind CfDs that are actually delivering are.. ?
IRENA databases show that wind and solar power are now cheaper than coal,
Well, they would say that, wouldn't they? After all IRENA = International Renewable Energy Agency. The scumbag's scumbag with the remit to promote 'renewables'.
Again, you still can't wrap your mind around the difference between costs and prices. What matters to producers are costs.
Indeed. I've pointed this out many times before wrt to the way windmills prices are indexed to the cost of food and gas. I'm reasonably certain they're not input costs. But wait, there's more from Orsted's announcement-
Most of the capital expenditure for Hornsea 3 was contracted ahead of recent inflationary pressures, securing competitive prices from the supply chain and allowing time to work collaboratively on value creation opportunities. The larger wind turbines and the synergies with Hornsea 1 and 2 lead to lower operating costs than we have seen before in our portfolio.
Ok, so that's from an official Orsted company announcement, so has to be more honest than it's press releases. So they're saying they contracted at costs that should have allowed them to deliver on their £37.35/MWh bid.. But for some reason, subsequent 'inflationary pressures' now mean they want to re-bid at £100/MWh or more. Obviously I can see how that's extremely good for margins, if you're using inflation that you've just stated isn't a cost to inflate your profits and generate yet more massive windfalls.
But the fundemental point still remains. If 'renewables' are so cheap, how is it that the more we 'invest', the more our electricity prices go up? Obviously if the 'renewables' scumbages weren't lying their asses off, our electricity prices should be amongst the lowest in the world. See also Germany and the way their energy policy is leading to de-industrialisation.
Again I'm guessing you work in the 'renewables' industry, based on your level of dishonesty.
So you're basing all your argumentation on just one tiny negotiation event, nobody heard about but you? Now we understand how you got trapped into that alternative parallel universe of yours. Your level of confirmation bias is well above the average.
BTW, I work in IT (and I'm not on Putin's payroll). Do you (did you) work in mining (in Canada) by any chance?
So you're basing all your argumentation on just one tiny negotiation event, nobody heard about but you? Now we understand how you got trapped into that alternative parallel universe of yours. Your level of confirmation bias is well above the average.
Err.. No. What tiny negotiatioon event are you weaving straw from this time? I base my argumenation on a whole series of events. We built windmills, we discovered steam engines, we obsoleted windmills, and made ever better steam engines.. But now a bunch of slick sales people have convinced a bunch of gullible idiots to reverse centuries of progress and go back to windmills. We can now build 1GW+ steam engines, but no, we must build weather dependent windmills instead.
And gullible idiots like you think this is progress. But again, the evidence is to the contrary. Ever since we've invested in 'renewables', our electricity costs have rocketed. How can this be? And how can so many of our 'leaders' still hell bent on following this folly. And it's not that we're alone in this given Germany discovered the same thing.
BTW, I work in IT
Then I feel sorry for your employer and it's shareholders.
"Ever since we've invested in 'renewables', our electricity costs have rocketed. How can this be?"
What a muddleheaded gibberish. Renewables tend to prevent costs and prices drift. This is supported by data collected in the decade before covid. Look at Eurostats numbers Green and ochre charts (adjusted for inflation and tax free are remarkably stable from 2008 to 2020 - Flat).
I'm not even commenting the "windmill" rant. You've surpassed yourself this time. Please feel free to carry on using your "steam engines" (which you seem to confuse with steam turbines - not exactly the same thermodynamic model for a guy who "can math").
"Then I feel sorry for your employer and it's[sic] shareholders."
Just pay your bills. Our shareholders don't expect more from you.
Renewables tend to prevent costs and prices drift.
Uhuh. Except say, a decade of electricity bills would show inexorable price rises ever since we started tilting at windmills again. But nice to see you've spun from 'cheaper' to 'preventing costs'.. In much the same was as Drax helps prevent forests I guess..
Please feel free to carry on using your "steam engines" (which you seem to confuse with steam turbines
Well, for my sins I am an enigne-er.
engine
[ en-juhn ]
noun: a machine for converting thermal energy into mechanical energy or power to produce force and motion.
Describes the core principles behind a nuclear power station rather succinctly, no? And I'll try to head off your next deflection by offering you a nice, shiney Joule..
Well it looks like the "enigne-er" still can't grok the difference between prices and costs.
Your bills are tax inclusive. They also reflect inflation. The chart I showed you was tax-exclusive and corrected from inflation (in addition to not being as anecdotal as the bills of Jellied Eel but being, instead, official stats). Got it now?
Just FYI, every time you knowingly and incorrectly use the term "windmill" WRT renewable energy production, it makes people like me overlook your comment as borne from delusion and bitterness. A mill is something you use to grind flour.
Would it add to your delusions and bitterness if I pointed out that modern windmills just grind money?
But the usage is intentional. We used to have windmills that ground grains. They existed for around 2,000yrs and were rendered obsolete by technology that allowed us to produce flours cheaper and more efficiently. So that industrial revolution stuff that greatly benefitted society.
Now, we get neo-luddites claiming that wind turbines are somehow new technology and more modern that old fashioned stuff like nuclear power. But this is, of course bollocks. Wind turbines for generating electricity predated nuclear fission, but weren't popular for the same reasons as today. They're intermittent and unreliable, just as windmills were. Calling them windmills just makes the comparisons and deficiencies more obvious. We may have reinvented the windmill, but we can't change the fundamental dependencies on the weather, which is why the Age of Sail was replaced with the Age of Steam.
Of course it's much the same with EVs. Henry Ford's wife had one, and the idea is nothing new, and neither are their drawbacks.
"They existed for around 2,000yrs and were rendered obsolete by technology that allowed us to produce flours cheaper and more efficiently."
I don't know about efficiency on this, but it did allow flours to be processed according to a schedule set by management and not mother nature.
"But it's strange how many people believe this nonsense. Since 'investing' in 'renewables', our energy costs have steadily increased. The UK has 'invested' massively in 'renewables', and now has some of the most expensive electricity in the world. Ok, much of this is due to an extremely broken energy market, but.."
A country or utility company investing in 'renewables' is different than an individual installing solar panels on their roof. The city I live in partnered with a company on a local solar field. Since the city is like most other small cities, the staff are amateurs and they hadn't been getting reports or payments from the partner. Nobody was tasked to monitor the contract so it was some time before anybody noticed and then there were problems getting that information, so by the time the lawyers had to be given stacks of money to write some letters of demand, much time had passed. This reminds me that I need to see if it's been resolved. There will be no such issues as I put panels on my roof. No transmission loses. No big infrastructure upgrades. Planning and public hearings to erect loads more pylons won't come into play.
The UK has wasted loads of money on renewables when they would have done much better offering grants to property owners and upgrading council housing since those homes would otherwise never get solar installed. I'm not a big fan of subsidies and grants, but if they are going to come about, the big projects are the ones with the most amount of graft and waste.
In fact realism will probably demand that to be "least bad mixture".
There were signs of this following the last COP jolly in Dubai, ie a recognition that nuclear energy is a really good thing. Unfortunately it's a thing with a long lead time, and for the UK at least, we need solutions now to lower energy costs and thus inflation. Problem is of course the useful idiots and the 'renewables' scumbags say "NO! Give us billions more to build even more windmills!". Except that of course is currently guaranteed to be inflationary.
If 'renewables' costs are falling, as they keep trying to convince us.. Why do they need indexed contracts? They can maintain healthy margins and profits thanks to those falling costs.
> "COP jolly in Dubai, ie a recognition that nuclear energy is a really good thing"
Except that IPCC experts acknowledge that any thermal power generation (coal[s], gas, oil or nuke) are at risk in times of global warming (due to their reliance on large quantities of water as heat sink.
> "Except that of course [it] is currently guaranteed to be inflationary."
Like what? German negative prices? You can't have it both ways JE: if renewables are intermittent, then in times of plenty, overproduction will fatally pull prices down. In times of scarcity, instead, established technologies are still there to guard against blackouts and uncontrollable price hikes. Recent inflation events caused by energy prices were due to unstable prices of fuels (mainly natural gas) and the inertia of production means after a brusque pandemic reopening. Deployed renewables, as per their definition, are immune to combustible market jitters. Therefore, in the long run, costs and prices can only come down, as renewables are becoming more prevalent.
> "If 'renewables' costs are falling, as they keep trying to convince us.. Why do they need indexed contracts? They can maintain healthy margins and profits thanks to those falling costs."
It's simple business. We need to generate far more power from renewable sources. Remember that CO2 emissions from energy needs account only for a quarter of all emissions. So get ready for more occasions to rant. Till your last breath in fact.
Except that IPCC experts acknowledge that any thermal power generation (coal[s], gas, oil or nuke) are at risk in times of global warming (due to their reliance on large quantities of water as heat sink.
But I thought the IPCC 'experts' were climate scientists? If so, why are they insisting on promoting windmills and solar panels? Sure, there's a lot of money to be made from that, but they're not energy experts. Most are far from it. The original article makes this point clear. It talks about cooling the Earth by reducing insolation, which obviously reduces the effectiveness of solar panels. And you've obviously not noticed that we exist on a planet that has rather a lot of water. Perhaps your planet is different in that respect..
..overproduction will fatally pull prices down. In times of scarcity, instead, established technologies are still there to guard against blackouts and uncontrollable price hikes.
At considerable additonal costs. Most of this is policy driven. So it was a dark and stormy night. Windmills spun furiously, and some probably collapsed. But like with most of your nonsense, you miss something very obvious-
https://gridwatch.co.uk/Wind
Current demand is 29.27GW. Normally, if supply exceeds demand, then yes, you'd expect prices to fall. Yet with 'renewables', it's been rigged to pretty much do the exact opposite. When supply exceeds demand, the excess is curtailed to avoid expensive stuff going <bang>. So the wind farmers get paid constraint payments to not blow up the grid and not despatch their unneeded energy. Those costs are of course added to our energy bills. So for last month-
Wind: minimum: 0.538 GW maximum: 17.485 GW average: 11.106 GW
Demand: minimum: 2.598 GW maximum: 46.826 GW average: 31.861 GW
Demand varies, wind varies, but unless we go back to pre-industrial economies (as the Greens want), supply and demand are fundamentally decoupled and unless we adapt our economies to the weather, it will always be this way. We've wasted tens of billions on windmills that sometimes can't even deliver the energy a single modest nuclear power station could, and the NPP could deliver 500MW (or more realistically 1GW) of energy 24x7x365, regardless of weather.
But such is politics, and sharp sales techniques. We've installed tens of GWs of windmills at massive costs and yet at times, the entire 'investment' can only deliver 538MW. Far from enough to power all the households the wind scammers claim they can, yet alone support the decarbonisation of transport and heating. So useful idiots like you rely on deceptive sales practices that verge on outright fraud to gloss over the problems. When Orsted lowballed their bid of £40/MWh, the 'renewables' scumbags and their PR companies like the Bbc spewed out press releases claiming wind @£40/MWh is so much cheaper than coal, nuclear or gas.
Of course they lie, and rely ignorance and ignorants like yourself. When demand exceeds the supply from wind & solar.. Something else has to take up the slack, so the true costs are the costs of the windmills, plus the costs of those stand-by systems.. Or the massive costs of battery storage. These costs are, of course pushed onto electricity consumers rather than suppliers. If our capacity auctions were simply changed to firm capacity, it would be a more honest and fair system. Bid for 1GW increments, and guarantee delivery so the stand-by costs are included. We don't care if that's wind+CCGT or wind+battery, except the 'renewables' scumbags really don't want to do that because it makes the collosal costs of their garbage even more obvious.
Recent inflation events caused by energy prices were due to unstable prices of fuels (mainly natural gas) and the inertia of production means after a brusque pandemic reopening.
Translation: Our useless shower of shite decided to sanction cheap Russian gas in favour of expensive US LNG. An entirely predictable consequence of a political decison that had inevitable consequences given our dependency on intermittent/unreliable 'renewables' also increased our dependency on gas. The panicdemic was also largely irrelevant. That set in and demand dropped. People realised it was mostly a nothingburger and business resumed. Energy demand pre- and post- panicdemic was largely unchanged, although probably decreased somewhat due to all the businesses that were forced out of business by a cough.
But given energy costs are an input costs to pretty much every activity in the UK, as energy costs continue to rise thanks to brain-dead energy policy, inflation will continue to rise. But modern economics are strange like that. Politicians think energy bills increasing by at least 2% annually is a good thing. Yey! My electricity bill has gone up again! The economy must be booming! Despite most of the useful idiots warming seats in Westminster having PPEs, they can't seem to grasp that if energy bills halved, people and businesses might spend money elsewhere and benefit our economies instead of increasing energy poverty and handing UK cash over to non-UK windmill operators.
Hey, JE has woken up in Canada with new year resolutions to be even more boring.
> "But I thought the IPCC 'experts' were climate scientists? If so, why are they insisting on promoting windmills and solar panels?"
JE: "How can they be expert? They don't agree with me!" Going full circle. Pathetic.
The rest I did not read.
JE: "How can they be expert? They don't agree with me!" Going full circle. Pathetic.
So.. you don't know the difference between paraphrasing and quoting? But you do know how to make ad homs out of straw. Climate experts may be experts in their own narrow discipline, but the vast majority the Bbc and rest of the MSM rent quotes from aren't power systems experts, economists etc. Then there's all the useful idiots from lobbyists like Greenpeace who don't understand nuclear power either, but it terrifies them, and they're paid to promote 'renewables' anyway. And then cover this green and pleasent land in giant windmills and solar panels.
Why do we pay so many climate 'scientists' anyway, when the 'science' was supposedly 'settled' ages ago? We know everything important right now, so funding should be switched to adaptation and mitigation.
The rest I did not read.
You've clearly demonstrated that reading and comprehension are not your best skills, so this doesn't suprise me at all.
"Normally, if supply exceeds demand, then yes, you'd expect prices to fall. Yet with 'renewables', it's been rigged to pretty much do the exact opposite. When supply exceeds demand, the excess is curtailed to avoid expensive stuff going <bang>. "
Yet, nobody seems to be working on uses that can be intermittent and be used when the wind is blowing. There doesn't seem to be a push to upgrade the grid so pricing can be transmitted to the end user where they can program things like EV charging to take advantage of times of high supply/low prices.
It's silly to pay wind turbine operators to not produce electricity in the same way as paying farmers to NOT grow food. If a product I make isn't selling, that's my problem. A retail clothing shop varies its stock by the season since there's no point ordering and stocking thick jumpers at the warmest month of the year. If that was their specialty, the government shouldn't come in and give them a subsidy.
> This is the disingenuous part. Conflating coal plant trace level atmospheric release with millions of tons of radioactive nuclear waste from nuclear plants.
"Millions of tonnes of radioactive nuclear waste" is also disingenuous, is it not?
Fission reactors produce only a few tons, if that, of High Level Waste (HLW) i.e. Fission products. And even then, most of that is the vitrification glass used to passivate it so that it cannot leak when stored.
Intermediate-level waste (ILW) is irradiated metals i.e. old reactor casings, pipework etc. Fusion reactors will produce many hundreds of times more ILW than fission per MW. This I know from having spent 5 years working in Fusion at Culham.
The only thing that makes "millions of tonnes" is Low-Level Waste, which is not radioactive at all. It is simply single use gloves, overalls and other clothing used by nuclear workers, non-radioactive bits of machinery that has been inside a controlled area, which is tested regularly to show no trace of radioactivity, yet the rules are that it must be treated as nuclear waste.
Again, Fusion will produce even more of this LLW.
"The only thing that makes "millions of tonnes" is Low-Level Waste, which is not radioactive at all."
Ah OK. Public safety policy is wrong then. And you are right. I'm sure there is room for it in your garden then.
"It is simply single use gloves, overalls and other clothing used by nuclear workers, non-radioactive bits of machinery that has been inside a controlled area"
Millions of tonnes of gloves, overalls and other clothing? Seriously? SMH.
UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority definition:
"Low Level Waste (LLW) contains relatively low levels of radioactivity, not exceeding 4 gigabecquerel (GBq) per tonne of alpha activity, or 12 GBq per tonne of beta/gamma activity."
So basically: up to these limits.
So, do you still maintain that these wastes are NOT radioactive?
For most of us these wastes fall into the "radioactive waste" category. Claiming otherwise just reveals your bias and does not change the fact of the matter.
For most of us these wastes fall into the "radioactive waste" category. Claiming otherwise just reveals your bias and does not change the fact of the matter.
Errm.. You do realise that much of that waste actually comes from hospitals, where it's been fed to patients as part of radiotherapy or diagnostic imaging? But making it harder to produce all the isotopes used in medicine and industry is just one of the many ways the Greens use to try and kill people, or make them suffer needlessly.
I've said it before, but the JWs established the right to deny medical treatment on religious grounds. Greens could do the same thing and refuse x-rays, iodine traces and of course radiotherapy. They may also have to refuse some chemotherapy on the same religious grounds as some of those probably include fossil fuel extracts. Why won't Greens lead by example, show the world how to live radiation and fossil-fuel free. Darwin would be really proud of them!
Errm.. You do realise that much of that waste actually comes from hospitals, where it's been fed to patients as part of radiotherapy or diagnostic imaging?
Yeah right. Millions of tons of hospital refutes. You're not even funny anymore, JE.
You realise that Bequerels are photons-per-second..
I have a glow-in-the-dark keyring fob with 1GBq of Tritium in it, it glows dimly for the past 20 years..
a GBq is still a miniscule unit of radioactivity.
How many GBq/tonne in standard biological matter? I dread to think of Bananas or Brazil nuts, granite, never mind the dreaded coal ash??
See: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/exemption-level
Can you, Mr. AC, tell me logically, why those double standards referenced above are just and fair?
> "You realise that Bequerels are photons-per-second.."
Ahm.. no.
Sorry but the SI definition is number of decays per second. Check again. For Alpha decay we're talking count of "He" nucleus emission per seconds. For Beta decay, count of electron or positron(+neutrino) emissions per seconds.
1/ Then explain that part of the definition UK NAD "not exceeding 4 gigabecquerel (GBq) per tonne of alpha activity," What's the number of photons per second in alpha radioactivity?
2/ And then "12 GBq per tonne of beta/gamma activity." What's the number of photons per second in beta radioactivity?
I'm really wondering with what kind of authority you so confidently lecture others about radioactive hazards while harbouring such gross misconceptions.
Obviously I know that it is decays per second, I was trying to put it into perspective. For gamma it is literally photons per second
I am simply trying to make you realise how ridiculously small a billion decays per second is, even though it sounds like a huge amount to most people
Argh. This is why we can't ever have cheap and sustainable low emissions power, because any attempt to say Look, this stuff really is not as scary as you think it is, just look at the wildlife sanctuary that is Pripyat after all the humans ran away etc.. gets labeled as a Lame attempt to diminish the importance of radioactive hazards.
We let bombs off for goodness sake. Hundreds of them. In the open air. Squillions of times more radioactivity than the civil industry gets its knickers in its twist about. Yet the world is not a zombie filled wasteland
It's obvious what your bias is, would you like to remove your cowardly mask? I thought not.
Well, I think we'd better stop here before we invoke Godwin's law.
> "This is why we can't ever have cheap and sustainable low emissions power,"
We can.
It's just not the one you're a fanboy of: last century's nuclear (which, btw, has never earn the sustainable moniker, unless fissionable material comes from the sun).
The whole world is marching at brisk pace towards the "cheap and sustainable" transition. Sustainable because renewable - energy harvested from our star. Cheap thanks to the last 30 years of technological progress and inspired economic governance.
And, I dare say, affordable by everyone. On the eve of 2024, any underserved village lost in the hinterland of your favorite developing sub-Saharan African country can be powered up with solar panels and batteries in a matter of days. Compare that to the time it would take for a nuclear powered national grid to reach that same village - if ever. Compare that to a solution based of costly fuel and unreliable power generator. More CO2 emission avoided at very low CO2 and monetary cost.
unless fissionable material comes from the sun
It does. Well maybe not OUR sun but one that went supernova a few gazillion years ago
It is extremely likely that molten Uranium etc. exist in the center of the earth's core, possibly enough to keep it molten. Stratification over 4.5 billion years would make the heaviest stuff go there
But in asteroids the incidence of Uranium would be higher. Heavy elements in Earth's crust were deposited by meteors after the crust hardened.
Millions of tonnes of gloves, overalls and other clothing? Seriously?
The first mention of "millions of ton[nes]" in this thread is in this passage:
"This is the disingenuous part. Conflating coal plant trace level atmospheric release with millions of tons of radioactive nuclear waste from nuclear plants. It's nothing more than a talking point. Dishonest propaganda. Relaying it reveals poor ethics standards." in a A/C statement.
The problem with A/C comments is that it's not possible to link them so we've no idea whether that was yours or not but if it was yours why are you now disputing the expression being used by cyberdemon and Jellied Eel in the course of rebuttal?
> why are you now disputing the expression being used by cyberdemon and Jellied Eel in the course of rebuttal?
I'm not disputing the "expression". I'm not disputing the numbers. These are public. Although, technically, spent fuels are often not counted as "waste" because they can allegedly be "reused" in breeders.
1/ I'm disputing the attempt to minimize their quality of waste (cd: "come on, AC! It's just gloves and stuff". AC: "how many pairs of gloves do you need to make millions of tons? It's irrelevant anyway, public safety bodies recognise them as potentially harmful").
2/ I'm also disputing the deflection of the alleged medical origin. ("JE: "come on, AC! It's mainly radiotherapy and imaging stuff". AC "even discounting the radioactive wastes of medical origin, we still have millions of tons of LLW from power gen origin on our hands").
LLW is "anything that may be potentially contaminated", "not exceeding" a few gigabequerels per tonne. So it is everything that "has come from a controlled area/building and therefore might be radioactive, but isn't, otherwise it'd be ILW". It's gloves and overalls, it's hazmat suits, it's bricks, it's equipment, it's any and all "garbage" from any nuclear site and some hospital wards. It's ordinary stuff the rest of us simply throw in landfill. It's not worth anyone's time & money to classify as VLLW* because a banana would chuck it out. So of course it's millions of tonnes! Especially where the rules say everything must be single-use to minimise contamination risk. No rechargeable batteries in fred's radio which itself can never leave the controlled area. And if the nasty boss is on shift then fred's radio itself has gone in the LLW bin and he needs a new one.
So if my keyfob was in a 10kg bin, the bin would need to be treated as intermediate level waste. That's horrifyingly.. wasteful.
Why are these limits set so low, and why only for the nuclear sector?
* ok I just looked up VLLW. It was a proposal to test some waste (ordinary rubbish- crisp packets, water bottles etc.) down to the kilobequerel level and treat it as normal landfill waste, but it was withdrawn, presumably because testing for 10kBq/tonne is completely and utterly ridiculous, and the hippies wouldn't trust it anyway, no matter how low level it is. Even though it's literally just household refuse. It all just goes in the LLW bin. And then people like AC scream "but you're making millions of tonnes of radioactive waste! Millions!! Nuclear is soooo dirty!"
No, it's just that we need the bin men like everyone else, but they won't come cos they are scared of our bins :'(
Hi. Still here? Can't concede huh?
Why don't you apply for a job at the NAD? Surely, if everyone agrees with you, you will be able to set the record straight (rectify people's perception about radioactive hazards, save the nuclear industry and the planet by the same occasion). Nice plan, uh?
Coincidentally, most nuclear safety agency in the world agree with each other that these "keyfobs" should be treated as hazardous. Surely they must all be wrong.
Surely you wouldn't complain if they'd be buried just above the water table exploited by your local water utility! Right? Also take your wife's opinion. And your GP's opinion. It's all too easy to play Mr Educated-pro-science on macho nerd forums. But that's not real life. In real life, even when disposing of single use consumables, nuclear plant workers are more likely to die from leukemia than the rest of the population (n=135,193).
I'm sure you will argue, this has nothing to do with LLWs.
I'm sure JE "de la mancha" will even argue, that it's because of the "windmills".
All in all, people, and epidemiologists, could be forgiven for thinking that "Nuclear is soooo dirty!"
Still here.. So are you apparently.
At this point, we all know you're a troll. And by replying I am only feeding the troll and spamming the thread. But sod it, I have little else to do on this wet and miserable bank holiday!
You could be a bot, for all I know... You work in IT, or are you a piece of IT?
What an utterly pathetic figure you have pulled out of the hat this time! So you're an epidemiologist now too, eh? I suppose you have figures for leukemia-rates for heavy industry in general? Magnet and winding factories for wind turbines? Or for people working at the top of them? Bit nearer the sun.. Have to take trips in helicopters.. Frankly, such a piffling increase in cancer rates could be attributed to the stress of working under an idiotic pig-headed pointy-haired boss like yourself. (I left my politeness in my coat pocket, perhaps)
The running joke among nuclear engineers is that the honest folk in the IAEA, NDA and AWE are outumbered 3:1 by CND fifth-columnists. It's one of those bad jokes that could actually be true. The AWE for example cannot open their X-Ray machines for several hours after use, "in case of residual X-rays"...
Your news about tritium keyfobs just confirms my assertion that these people are so inept that they must be either dogmatic, or malign, or both. Obviously a tritium keyfob is not dangerous. Even if the tritium was dangerous (which it isn't, not unless you burn it to make tritiated water which is mildly dangerous, but only in higher doses than you could produce from a keyfob, and water gets flushed out of your system very quickly even if you did drink a lot of it) So the safest thing to do would be to release the tritium into the atmosphere, where it will safely float up to the exosphere and be blown away by solar wind. (Unlike the radon from coal stacks, which does not float.) Perfectly happy for the empty fobs to be buried in my garden.
Anyway, new year or not, this is getting tiring. May you be squished by a falling blade of an exploding wind turbine. Those things kill a lit of people you know.. And how many of them do you need per cancelled/decommissioned nuclear plant?
Just because I disagree with you and I debunk your pro-nuke propaganda, just because I underline your misconceptions in nuclear physics, just because you don't like to be proven wrong over and over again... I'm a troll. Riiight.
You're the guy selling nuclear to fight global warming but you can't be bothered to install solar panels at home. I'm supposed to be a "pathetic figure" but when you are faced with a well known epidemiology study you resort to ad hominem and unamusing jokes. Thank god I did not get into the mechanistic interpretations and cumulative effects of ionising radiations on proto-oncogenes. Yes, there are people who know more than you do. Probably a fair amount. Cope.
You're the one bringing up "keyfobs" every other post. Remember? So I spoke your language. Why tritium? When did I mention Tritium? Did you just read sth about it? You can cancel that pseudo scientific strawman paragraph. It's irrelevant.
Long story short, if you don't like to be on the losing side of an argument, my humble suggestion is that, next time, you pick an easier battle than claiming that people are wrong thinking that nuclear is dirty.
The thing is, i'm not actually saying that nuclear is not dirty. It of course does produce some very hazardous waste. What I am saying is that we need some perspective! This article is talking about blotting out the sun, ffs.
You have massively inflated the amount of dangerous waste by talking about "millions of tonnes" of LLW as if it were all radioactive, when the vast, vast majority of it is not at all radioactive, and in practice anything that is measurably radioactive more than background gets treated as ILW, not LLW, The limits we discussed are upper limits, and they are set very low. No well-managed nuclear plant would try to smuggle anything out as LLW if it was anywhere near the limit. (and anything that is acutely, dangerously radioactive is obviously HLW, of which there is very little compared to toxic waste from other industries. And some of that HLW we can actually burn as fuel, in future, better designs of fission reactor)
Meanwhile Germany have shut down all their nuke plants on a complete knee-jerk reaction to Fukushima and replaced them with the dirtiest type of coal, dumping its waste straight up the smoke stack, and is allowed to do that.
Not all hazards are nuclear hazards, the only thing special about radioactive isotopes is they are detectable down to the tiniest amount, whereas we largely ignore other cancer-causing and general mortality-causing pollutants because we can't so easily test for them and see where they came from. Microplastics, plasticisers and PFAS are a big problem. Nanoparticulates are a big problem. Heavy metals are a problem. CO2 is, we are told, a huge problem.
But for some reason you are focusing on minute amounts of radiation to the exclusion of all other hazards and benefits, when we know the world is already covered in low levels of ionising radiation, most of it from nature, some of it from the bombs we detonated, a little from Chernobyl, which was the only really bad civil nuclear accident we have ever had (windscale was not civil nuclear, they were making bombs), and a really, really, tiny insignificant amount that you for some reason latch on to, from civil nuclear waste. This waste is handled incredibly well by modern facilities. The only facilities where it is not are historic horrors like Sellafield where they had no idea what to do with it except chuck it in a pond. Seagulls fly in and land on the pond. It's really, really bad by nuclear standards, yet I don't see a lot of evidence of its ill effects on the people of Cumbria.
When people bang on about Chernobyl and that it was the worst disaster humanity has ever had, I like to remind them of Bhopal. There's also some very nasty things to go wrong with Carbon Capture and Storage
Even the COP agrees: We NEED nuclear. Energy storage and renewables are NOT going to keep the lights on, because storage on that scale is infeasible, and makes even nuclear look cheap, safe and clean. If we continue to worry about near-background radiation levels in LLW, then we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. War is also a hazard btw, it causes lots and lots of deaths, and by cancelling the only reliable source of energy we have when the fossil fuels are running out or being banned, war is what you will get. Not every country will agree to stopping fossil fuels, and there will be a big fight over who gets to burn the last of it.
And I didn't call you a pathetic figure btw, I called your figures pathetic. Did you find those figures for other industries yet?
A troll for a troll: What do you think of "radiation hormesis"?
> "You have massively inflated the amount of dangerous waste by talking about "millions of tonnes" of LLW as if it were all radioactive, when the vast, vast majority of it is not at all radioactive,
Sorry but you are being dishonest again.
1/ The least radioactive wastes are the VLLW (Very Low Level Wastes). LLWs are more radioactive than VLLWs and can even be LLW-LL (long life). Publicly released official inventory reports show that volumes of these VLLW wastes range from one tenth to one fifth of LLWs volumes. So the largest contributor to radioactive wastes are the LLWs. And THEY ARE radioactive. Even VLLWs are radioactive. As per their definition.
2/ Inventory reports (like Euratom reports) show that LLWs are numbered in millions of m³. So definitely MILLIONS OF TONNES.
3/ LLWs are "disposed of" (i.e. buried in landfills) like in Drigg's Low Level Waste Repository in the UK. Probably your idea of being "handled incredibly well by modern facilities". Granted, thanks to Greenpeace, they're not dumped in the sea anymore.
4/ In Europe, France is the first emitter of radioactive wastes (with ~45% of Euratom stats). Then comes the UK (~36%).
So I did not "inflate" the figures. That's the official figures. It's just that you are in denial, or misinformed. Your disposable gloves are in the VLLW category. Not the LLW category.
The rest of your whataboutism is irrelevant. You have no reason to believe that I'm not informed about other sources of hazards like pesticides, food additives and other chemicals. So I don't "focus" on LLWs. It's just the talk of the day, until you admit they're a hazard. Another day we can discuss organochlorine pesticides or the adverse effects of SDH inhibitors on the metabolism of mitochondria. In my experience there is no shortage of hazard deniers in these domains either.
nuclear physics. been there, done that. I still like to study it from time to time. And health physics is very important in the industry. "Time Distance and Shielding"
Nuclear fission reactors are an excellent idea. I think we need more of them. And CO2 is not the control knob of climate (the Sun is), so we should go ahead and cleanly burn whatever carbon-based fuels we can extract from the ground. There is a LOT more carbon in the mantle causing hydrocarbons to be created in the Earth's crust (so only a portion is actual 'fossil' fuel). After all, carbon is lighter than silicon so it 'floats', then works itself up through the crust into oil and coal deposits, as well as CFCs HCs and CO2 belching out of volcanoes.
Either that, or enrich the CCP after they cornered the market on the materials needed to make batteries, and use slave-wage labor (often children) to mine it. Ya think maybe if we followed the money you'd find the CCP funding a LOT of this anthro-climate-change NONSENSE...?
> "And CO2 is not the control knob of climate (the Sun is)"
And another one. Been in same school as Jellied Eel?
> "There is a LOT more carbon in the mantle causing hydrocarbons to be created in the Earth's crust (so only a portion is actual 'fossil' fuel)."
Rubbish. This abiogenic origin of alkanes is mainly taught in Russia. You Russian? No credible evidence for this in meaningful quantities.
> "Ya think maybe if we followed the money you'd find the CCP funding a LOT of this anthro-climate-change NONSENSE...?"
QAnon "wisdom" again. What a mess!
You're the one bringing up "keyfobs" every other post. Remember? So I spoke your language. Why tritium? When did I mention Tritium? Did you just read sth about it?
And here, we see the behaviour of the common troll. So earlier you said-
Coincidentally, most nuclear safety agency in the world agree with each other that these "keyfobs" should be treated as hazardous. Surely they must all be wrong.
So you consulted the NSAs to find out about keyfobs. Which means you presumably knew the alleged 'hazard' was the tiny amount of tritium they contain. But you're not alone in this irrational fear, after all one Gordon Brown Esq prowls Scotland's lochs looking for radioactive particles. But he's the same G.Brown Esq who flogged off most of our nuclear industry to help out EDF.
Try to follow, proud windmill slayer, you will avoid embarrassing yourself. This a reference to all previous post (they have timestamps, you know, ctrl-u will show them) from cyberdemon mentioning this "keyfobs" as a way to minimise the importance of wastes. Hence the quotes. He uses "gloves" also quite happily. Verstanden?
Also, commenters harvesting thousands of down-votes per month should avoid calling others "troll". You're far ahead of anyone in this forum. But don't seem to realise it.
from cyberdemon mentioning this "keyfobs" as a way to minimise the importance of wastes. Hence the quotes. He uses "gloves" also quite happily. Verstanden?
Yes, and? You think minimise, but it highlights the realities of radioactive wastes. Much stuff is classified as radioactive waste even though the hazard level is extremely small, and the risk to human health or any environmental damage extremely minimal. And yet because a keyfob contains a teeny quantity of tritium, it could attract very large fines if you just chucked one in your general waste bin. The cost of dealing with possible radiation contaminated stuff in the NHS is enormous, and unnecessary in the most part. But those costs have been imposed on the NHS, industry and consumers by decades of anti-nuclear zealots like you.
Also, commenters harvesting thousands of down-votes per month should avoid calling others "troll". You're far ahead of anyone in this forum. But don't seem to realise it.
You're assuming I care? I call things as I see them, and you're a very obvious troll.
a falling blade of an exploding wind turbine
The materials they make those things out of are
* Impossible to recycle
* brittle, not ductile, and become weaker from cyclic stress
Therefore wind turbine blades will need to be regularly replaced
(as for the old ones, maybe we can grind 'em, up and mix with coal for making electricity...!)
Remember that mini sub made from carbon fiber composite materials? A few too many stress cycles visiting the Titanic and it added itself to the wreckage site (along with the occupants)
"Millions of tonnes of gloves, overalls and other clothing? Seriously? "
Yep. There's so much of it that it adds up quicker than you would think. 3 shifts of workers, 365 days/year times 1/2-1kg each and extra when fuel changes are being done and PPE goes beyond Tyvek overalls, nitrile gloves and shoe coverings.
And finally, may I recommend to you this book: Climate Gamble: Is Anti-Nuclear Activism Endangering Our Future?
It's by a pair of paid-up card-carrying Greenpeace members, who have realised just how much damage the anti-nuclear movement has done to the planet, because the alternative has been to burn coal, oil and gas. I went to one of their lectures.
"There is no fission reaction in a nuclear plan. So the amount of radioactivity that comes out cannot exceed what comes in. What science says is that coal comes with INFINITESIMAL TRACES of Uranium and Thorium and that these are released in the ashes. These levels are STILL LOWER than natural rock radioactivity. Ashes are not more radioactive than coal itself."
The science is weak in this one.
Yes, the outgoing radioactive component of reactive material coming out of a reactor can be much more radioactive than that what went in. Not only that, many decay products are much more dangerous to life than the original Uranium. If you take coal with trace amounts of radioactive materials included, burning away the coal and leaving behind those components concentrates them in a problematic way. The same has to be said for whatever heavy metals were in the coal as well.
Uh, yeah, I'd love to have a healthy debate on this! I've learned the radiation-from-coal tidbit in a similar conversation, many years ago - I was thoroughly surprised, and had to verify carefully before being convinced. Talking can be useful!
However, your post doesn't seem to be looking for a honest debate. I've also skimmed the posts below, and they very much confirm the initial impression; your style appears to be insult, superficial point, insult, joke, something that might be worth talking about if it had room to breathe, insult, misquote, joke, insult. I think I can safely assume it's all or mostly you, even though it's all AC.
Sometimes, I try to educately respond to troll posts - not to convince you, as that's obviously impossible, but for the benefit of any third party reading the conversation. Right now, though, I'm not in the mood - the signal-to-noise ratio is just too low. By all means, feel free to take this as a "win", if that's the kind of thing you're looking for.
I salute cyberdemon for putting up with this.
Funny that the guy debunking propaganda is labelled as the "troll" (surely that's not an "insult" from your side, btw).
I honestly think you should revisit the "coal plants emit more radiation than nuclear plants" argument in an unbiased way. Granted, that might prove to be a bit of a challenge, given the pro-nuclear tone of your initial contributions.
But again, no fission reaction occurs in a coal plant. Therefore, output "emissions" cannot be more radioactive than the input combustible. Which means in practice: negligible traces. Now compare that to nuclear power plants, where intensive nuclear fission is taking place, and don't just interpret "emits" in the restrictive meaning of "as smoke escaping through the flue-gas stack" but more as "outputs" or "produces" (irrespective of whether the release is in the form of smoke in the atmosphere or vitrified radioactive wastes cast in drums). After all, nuclear plants don't burn anything and don't need these chimney stacks. So, let's not compare apple with oranges.
To help you in your research, you might consider US EPA's clarification about "Radioactive Wastes From Coal-fired Power Plants": "Generally, these wastes are only slightly more radioactive than the average soil in the United States. The amount of natural radiation in wastes from coal-fired power plants is so small that no precautions need to be taken."
You can easily push your excess Solar electricity onto heat production (heat pumps, or simply imersion heaters) it all helps reducing fossil fuel use.
Do not do this. It is wasteful to use a "higher" form of energy, when a "lower" form of energy can be used. Electricity is the "highest" form of energy; heat is the "lowest" form of energy.
It also is wasteful to convert energy forms, as the conversion process is inefficient. Conversion isn't literally "lossy", as the "losses" are hopefully-relatively-small amounts of energy converted to heat and sound. The problem is the heat created from conversion losses "escapes" and isn't located where you want it to be. As an example, eddy currents in old-style electrical transformers were converted into inside-the-transformer-heat and into the 50- (or 60-) cycle hum you used to hear outside electrical substations.
Instead, use electricity for things which only electricity can run (computers, TVs, radios). Use heat for things which require heat.
Trap heat locally in a heat sink, and release it where and when you need it. (Industrial needs - smelting, etc. - might be met by an array of movable parabolic mirrors focussed on a spot.)
Unlike the cases of electricity, gas, and oil, there's nothing analogous to a national "heat transmission grid" or "heat transmission pipeline". Heat is most-efficiently-utilized via local production and consumption.
There is no point into converting "excess" solar electricity into heat, and then converting it back to electricity (with double conversion "losses"). Instead, just put it into the national power grid. That's what they do around here with people who have solar cell panels on the roofs of their houses. It's converted from DC to AC, and the existing electricity meters run "backwards" as needed when a house's production exceeds its internal demand.
A second thing we have to do is develop and use "things" which run on lower-grades of energy. This would reduce the amount of fossil fuels we'd need to burn, which in turn would reduce the amount of GHG emitted.
People in first-world countries are culturally-blinded with the assumption that everything has to run on electricity, which is false. For example, many industrial power tools run on compressed air. There's no physical reason why a, say, household vacuum cleaner, could not be made to run on compressed air. In my youth, I saw a freezer which was powered by propane. I think the internal mechanism used ammonia (which has its own set of potential problems) to do the cooling. My point here is we have to think of ways of making things which use "lower" grade energy, and, yes, test them to see if they are sufficiently-efficient. There's a whole set of industries opposed to us doing this: the companies which currently make and sell electrically-operated appliances. For those who gnash their teeth and cry, "Think of the lost profits! Think of the disruption!", I say, sarcastically, "Boo-hoo-hoo."
Somehow our societies survived the waning of buggy-whip-, telegraph set-, punched-card-stock-, and celluloid film-manufacturers.
Hi old dog, I agree with much you have said. Using electricity in applications that requre high quality energy is obviously the way to go. Imersion heaters are better than nothing but are a poor solution - heat pumps less so due to the multiplier effect. In terms of heating though conservation of recources (insulation) is key otherwise you are just pissing it away.
Buildings full of racks of computers should be heating nearby buildings, that way you get two bangs for your buck. Similarly with industrial pricesses - venting energy to the environment is wrong particularly when there are applications for the heat - heating people, greenhouses (so we dont need to import green beans from Kenya).
Air conditioning is another source of madness - in this world of global warming why not build a nice new city in the desert...FFS. In the more normal world cooling overheating appartments or offices with aircon vented to the environment is just reckless - use passive methods where you can or at the very least push the excess heat into your hot water system.
Basicly, stop digging stuff up and burning it and when we do use energy use it carefully and frugaly - stop pissing on our own bed.
This arrogant attitude to the worlds recources has been going on for only 200 years and in that time we have made quite a mess. As a race we are ingenious, but we must change our attitudes to consumption.
@Man with a Spanner: you reminded me of something I'd forgot: the single most effective thing people can do to conserve energy is to insulate their windows. There's an xkcd cartoon about this, but I wasn't able to find it, or I'd post the link.
It also is wasteful to convert energy forms, as the conversion process is inefficient
2nd Law of Thermodynamics and entropy are big reasons for this. It even limits potential efficiency of solar cells, thermocouples, and peltier devices, as well as any kind of engine, though conversion to pure heat energy is most likely 100% efficient.
Thermal, friction, and other losses are tiny by comparison.
Solar power will operate 24x7 - if done properly. A solar sodium tower heats salt until molten, then the salt is used to boil water in a closed loop system and run a steam turbine. The steam condenses back into water and is reheated. When operating, the sodium stores enough heat that it can operate for a full week of heavily overcast weather, ie no sun for a week, so generating electricity 24x7 is no problem. This system is in use in the American Southwest, but get this - the econuts want them shut down because some desert tortoise might not like looking at them. And desert tortoises is the actual reason cited for shutting down these sites.
And therein lies a rather large problem - the econuts don't like it when engineers give them what they want, because what they really want is something to protest.
Nuclear power is only expensive compared to fossil fuels for the simple reason that nobody cared about the emissions, whether that is CO2 or anything else.
If the emissions from fossil fuels had been understood better before we became totally dependent on them the humanity would not be in the mess it is now,.
Fossil fuels were too easy to use and not worry about the consequences because people did not get ill or die as a direct result of it's use. Looking back the issues relating to acid rain and particulates that we now do understand suggest that people simply don't care enough.
@hoola
"If the emissions from fossil fuels had been understood better before we became totally dependent on them the humanity would not be in the mess it is now,."
Really? So the world knows about it and yet every developing country wants a better life, better standards of living, better and longer lives, serious improvement to their existence which is achieved by affordable, plentiful energy. Hell even smog is an improvement on the pitiful existence before it. Unfortunately people have become so accustomed to the current amazing standards of living and think it is somehow normal or easy.
Also biomass - a "lovely" piece of marketing wank to rebrand wood burning at a collosal scale, with the add on of shipping it half way across the world in ships running some of the dirtiest fuels.
Add on "lifestyle" articles and doomsday preppers pushing an invented need for everyone to have a woodburner and air quality is taking a serious hit.
Local authority put a biomass burner right next door to a sports centre and wouldn't hear any criticism of it's "green credentials" ditto the local SNP bod who fell back on "doing nothing isn't an option"
We are fucked and climate engineering is just asking for trouble
Highlander 2 was a bad enough potential future, let alone snow piercer (which seems to defy logic....if it's snowing that hard constantly how in hell would you keep a railway passable??? Clearly network rail aren't involved )
One quick comment about biomass: According to most biomass studies, only a small percentage would be from burning wood, and that wood would largely be waste from industrial logging. The vast majority of biomass energy conversion would be from urban and rural waste — food waste (of which there is an enormous amount) and other waste. Don’t worry about forests; they’ll be fine (and necessary).
Is that what Drax told you?? Drax's "waste wood from industrial logging" is whole trees that have been sent to the pellet mill.
Sorry, but you just can't get to Gigawatts from burning waste.
And if you did burn a Gigawatt of waste, the stink would be enough to kill anything except rats, cockroaches and seagulls.
The other point about Biomass is that it produces more CO2 per MWh than the dirtiest of dirty brown coal. (and nano-particulates, heavy metals etc from all the crap that is in the waste that you add)
Not burning stuff is the point. Coal/oil is about digging up old biomas and releasing the carbon.
New biomass is about growing stuff this rear and recycling the carbon sequested back into the atmosphere next year. Not great, but better than oil (a bit). Using trees as new biomass crazy though, you can make furnature or houses out of them
I agree (and have an upvote). Not burning stuff is the point. So why are we handing "green subsidies" to Drax?
Most of what you call "new biomass" though, takes up farmland and so is akin to burning food, which we are also short of. The same goes for solar panels in inappropriate locations (on viable farmland instead of on rooftops or in deserts)
Sadly, I think the only thing that is going to reduce our consumption of combustible fuel any time soon, is to drastically reduce the human population, either with a global pandemic (oops, tried that, didn't work) or WWIII.
As I said in another thread: If I were a billionaire, I'd be building my self-sufficient bunker. Ideally complete with mini nuclear reactor depending how many billions I have.
There is a vast amount of resl estate out there that could/should accomadate solar electricity and/or solar heat collector panels. You should use panels that can do both idealy.
All the car parks should be covered as should flat roofs, particularly industrial or comercial ones. A roof tax any one?
We should NOT be covering fields with them.
The underlying advantage of Solar PV is conversion efficiency ~20% vs <1% for energy crops e.g. oil crops (there are some higher efficiencies, but they produce products that are less efficient)
The issue with small solar installations is labour efficiency. A big solar farm costs much less to design, permit, install, maintain, and significantly less for the power conversion equipment. It is also better able to interface with the grid control to maintain stability in future.
We should NOT be covering fields with them.
Actually mixed solar farming appears to be lucrative. To get maximum utilisation of solar panels (no shading) in mid latitudes, there are large gaps between them. You can pastoral farm under them - in fact you need sheep to keep the grass down or you have a fire problem, and there are quite a few high value food crops that are happy in partial shade.
The panels reduce transpiration, and thus help balance the rainfall-transpiration loss ratio in summer. Oftentimes rainfall is the growth rate limiter not sunlight. In that case there may be no loss in productivity at all.
In some crop scenarios, you can lower the density - think of spacing rows further apart, and reduce disease and pest problems.
This is currently a big thing - I have installation work booked for the whole year. There are zero subsidies on these projects, it is now self funding.
Savvy farmers are very interested, as they see an income stream which is largely decoupled from commodity price cycles, drought, floods and storms. Most other (crop) diversification choices, are all at the mercy of the same weather effects.
Since plants don't use UV-Bl-Gn light, we may see development of red transparent panels, that let most of the light plants can use through - this is one of the better reasons for organic PV materials.
Plants do need UV, even though chlorophyll doesn't use it. It helps keep down disease, and stimulates the production of various chemicals the plants use for protection - many of which humans find quite tasty.
There's a lot of research ongoing into the effects of various wavelengths of light on crops. Rather like the article, it turns out to be a lot more complex than assumed!
Mixed PV/sheep farms seem to be fairly successful already. I'm expecting other mixes to be found, although the machinery needed to harvest a mixed PV/crop field may be a bit complicated.
Plants do need UV, even though chlorophyll doesn't use it. It helps keep down disease, and stimulates the production of various chemicals the plants use for protection - many of which humans find quite tasty.
Yup. Or.. entertaining. Can't think why pot growers use UV growlamps. But as you say, different plants have different responses to sunlight and it's spectrum. Which has spawned a.. growing market for people flogging grow lights to optimise efficiency.
There's a lot of research ongoing into the effects of various wavelengths of light on crops. Rather like the article, it turns out to be a lot more complex than assumed!
Also very old. See for example-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Herschel#Sunspots,_climate_and_wheat_yields
where correlation may or may not equal causation. But given we've got a lot of tax and crop price data, it can provide clues as to what climate conditions were good or bad for crop growing. Also provides opportunities for amusement, eg Phil Jones once used orange prices as a proxy, but wasn't aware China changed it's calendar system and thus his data was wrong, along with his conclusions.
Mixed PV/sheep farms seem to be fairly successful already. I'm expecting other mixes to be found,
I've seen the future, and the future is mutton and goat meat. Except of course the loony Greens want everyone to go vegetarian, and preferably vegan. So instead of letting sheep and goats turn the inedible into edible, we're going to need a lot more land to grow crops. And if that's all under shade, the yields are going to be lower, and the food far more expensive. It's not like we don't already have labour shortages for non-mechanical harvesting already.
WTF?
These clowns talk about Direct Air Capture, etc. How can you say that is credible?
These guys are scientists, (likely paid for by a system of funding bodies with vested interests), they are NOT engineers. Just because something looks like it might work on paper or in a lab, doesn't mean it can work on the scale needed to make a dent globally.
And as for CCS: If you think that we can't store a tonne of nuclear waste safely, what makes you think we can store a Billion tonnes of CO2 safely??
These clowns talk about Direct Air Capture, etc. How can you say that is credible?
Most of it isn't. Thunderf00t thoroughly fisks one brilliant example here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VT9WAxh0iI
A train carriage with a few solar panels and some CCS gubbins that will remove CO2 from the atmosphere! If only people will give generously and gloss over the physics and engineering..
Yes I remember that one. I don't go in for youtubers but IIRC they made their pretty picture from Train Simulator, and somehow conned investors to give them money, based on little more than a screenshot from a computer game showing a bright green train carriage that magically strips CO2 from the air ...
You say "most of it isn't" credible, implying that you believe some of it is. Can you think of any DAC scheme that actually does look credible? i'm just curious.
Oh well, happy 2024, all! (see icon)
Especially you, my anonymous opponent. Macroecomomics visionary, health physics authority, electrical power systems genius, and IT bod by day. I hope your servers are all powered by solar panels and gerbil farts.
happy 2024 too.
> "I hope your servers are all powered by solar panels and gerbil farts."
Solar panels and powerwall only I'm afraid. Was a bit costly, but ok (believe it or not there is huge demand for this kind of config).
What about you? Today is the perfect occasion for good resolutions.
Solar panels and powerwall -only-, eh? Good luck with that ;)
Well, may your 2024 be nice and sunny and your powerwall never run dry :D
Me, i'm on the grid. But I have a generator and a tank of propane, just in case.
I remain skeptical on the smart grid, renewables etc, but I shall keep an open mind and always happy to have a reasoned debate :)
From the report you referenced:
For Direct Air Capture, you need between 1.6 and 6 tonnes of water (presumably fresh water) and around 1MWh of electricity, per tonne of CO2 extracted. To extract the required 100 billion tonnes, that's er, ~300 billion tonnes of water and 10 Terawatt-years of electricity. Are these guys insane?
Assuming you can even get all the raw materials together to build such a machine, and that the solvents used are not toxic and never leak, and that the CO2 stays in the ground, will it ever recoup the CO2 from its construction and operation? That's extremely doubtful.
The only credible "benefit" that I can see in the report is "Jobs". Jobs for the Boys, basically.
Not knowing anything about the technology, but it seems to me that spending huge amounts of energy and effort to remove carbon seems crazy.
We should not be putting it up there in the first place + investing in natural sequestation (trees etc) that to a large extent looks after themselves would seem to be the most effective solution as you also get a saleable product as well as carbon removal.
Direct air capture is obviously a non-starter simply due to the physics.
The binding energy needed to break apart CO2 and H2O and form it into a hydrocarbon is huge, and that's why we burn hydrocarbons.
It's only feasible if the technique uses some energy source that cannot be used for any other purpose, as otherwise it is far more efficacious to use said energy source for said other purpose.
If you want to capture carbon, make a swamp and toss fast-growing plants into it. Like in the carboniferous period.
carbon capture is as bad an idea as blotting out the sun (back to the article topic)
* CO2 is NOT the 'control knob' for climate. GHG-wise, 2% max. H2O is 95%. Humans contribute 3% of CO2.
* If CO2 were cut in half nearly all plants would stop growing. 200ppm means death for plants
* doubling CO2 would have little effect - along with H2O the narrow IR band covered by CO2 is already saturated
Best use for that CO2, if they insist on extracting it, is to find a way to spray it on crops to grow plants faster
Figuring out a way to reuse waste is good, even if it's just burning it for power. Unfortunately, there just isn't that much energy inside waste, or it wouldn't be waste.
Unless you're burning enormous amounts of biomass, in which case you're not getting it from waste alone. Which means you're getting it from something that was grown somewhere for that purpose. Something which got that energy from photosynthesis. Which means sunlight.
Which means you are basically getting solar power through an extremely convoluted process. Might as well install PVs.
"which seems to defy logic....if it's snowing that hard constantly how in hell would you keep a railway passable???"
The whole thing is a great big allegory, with the train being a convenient way to keep everybody in a fairly confined area for dramatic purposes. We've already had secret underground bases, Moonbase Alpha, and random mining colonies on asteroids. I guess they decided to use a train because it looked cool. You're not supposed to ask questions like "how do they keep the tracks clear" or "why isn't there a second engine to cover if the first breaks down" or "you'd need way more agriculture than could fit in a train to feed those on board" or "why does the track go around the world? why not just a big loop around the American border?" or "they built this track around the world for a select group of people and everybody else died, yet none of the dead eight billion thought to plant a bomb or sabotage the rails" or, or, or...
Just enjoy the scenery. Don't think too hard about the plot holes, for there are many.
Who claim solar and wind are useless because they don't solve the entire problem on their own?
Granted today they don't obviate the need for burning fossil fuels, but "all we need" is better battery technology to allow power storage at a reasonable cost using sustainable materials. There is a lot of advancement being made towards that goal, but we aren't there yet. The fact we don't have that last piece of technology required doesn't mean we should abandon all efforts for solar and wind. There are no laws of physics standing in the way, so we should insure the research into that last piece of battery technology gets all the resources it requires.
The best thing is that once we have that final piece it solves OTHER problems that anti green morons like you constantly whine about, like "EVs aren't practical because we'll need massive upgrades to national grids to supply sufficient power!" That won't be necessary when the battery technology is available, because that decentralizes power production and distribution. Those batteries will be located in every substation, able to store energy produced by rooftop residential and light commercial solar arrays or random wind farms wherever they may be located.
Now granted that battery technology is not here today, but even if it was it would take decades to build enough wind and solar to meet needs, just as it would take decades to phase out fossil fueled vehicles no matter how quickly EVs take over the market - the average age of a car in the US is 12 years so even if every new car sold from tomorrow was an EV they wouldn't be a majority of the cars on the road until 2035. And obviously it will take a lot longer than tomorrow before even the majority of cars sold are EVs, let alone 100% of them.
Who claim solar and wind are useless because they don't solve the entire problem on their own?
We can math.
Granted today they don't obviate the need for burning fossil fuels, but "all we need" is better battery technology to allow power storage at a reasonable cost using sustainable materials.
But that does not exist. So you take solar & wind at say, £100/MWh. You store it at a cost of another £100/MWh. Congratulations! Your 'solution' has just doubled the cost of energy. The actual numbers are a lot worse, but I CBA to look those up right now. Plus much of the costs rely on the current subsidy scams, including requiring battery farms to stabilise the grid, provide some synthetic inertia and trouser billions for 'fixing' a problem the 'renewables' scumbags have created in the first place.
> "We can math."
LMAO. Sure Steve McIntyre.
So, according to you, all math experts are climate change deniers like yourself? All math experts are against renewable sources of energy like yourself? That's your... ahm... logic? What can of math are you in exactly? Imaginary numbers?
So, according to you, all math experts are climate change deniers like yourself? All math experts are against renewable sources of energy like yourself? That's your... ahm... logic? What can of math are you in exactly? Imaginary numbers?
Err, no. That would be a classic example of a strawman. But when you have undergrad level maths people attempting to argue with maths or statistics proffessors, on the basis of probability, which is likely to be right? But here's probably my favourite example of when climate 'scientists' discover that a little maths can be a dangerous thing-
http://www.burtonsys.com/climate/rahmstorf/
The so-called "Rahmstorf Method" for predicting accelerated sea level rise has been thoroughly demolished by a number of other scientists, and by the progression of time. Here are some relevant links:
with the original claim being-
https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1135456#bibliography
This holds to good approximation for temperature and sea-level changes during the 20th century, with a proportionality constant of 3.4 millimeters/year per °C. When applied to future warming scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this relationship results in a projected sea-level rise in 2100 of 0.5 to 1.4 meters above the 1990 level.
It's 'peer-reviewed', and in 'Science', so it must be true.. right? Well.. not exactly-
"...this statistical analysis (Rahmstorf, 2007) is based on an application of statistics ... violating basic assumptions of the statistical methods used."
Schmith, T., Johansen, S., and Thejll, 2007. Comment on A Semi-Empirical Approach to projecting Future Sea-Level Rise, Science, 317, 1866c.
Oddly (or perhaps not) the criticisms in Science are broken links. The links to the sceptics demolition however, are mostly intact-
https://climateaudit.org/2009/07/03/the-secret-of-the-rahmstorf-non-linear-trend/
with this comment, which is also relevant for any other software devs who just grab a library or routine, without really understanding how it works. Having done a fair bit of signal processing theory, this is one of the reasons why I became a sceptic. Some climate 'scientists' are just doing it wrong-
“It is impossible to provide a reasonable estimate of the local slope at the last data point. It all depends on what happens next, which is the great unknown. Various methods have been applied, but in essence they are all cheats. Some of the dishonest tricks used are quite gross, as happened with the notorious “Hockey Stick” This predicted that temperatures were rising sharply, when in fact they were declining. Among other enormities was packing a smoothing routine beyond the end-point with manufactured data that assumed the desired outcome. The moral is: treat any smoothed data with care and, if they are smoothed up to the end point, with disdain.”
About only 100 or so years ago some techno nerd "scumbag" invented a solution to a problem that didnt exist... and so cars and lorries were invented. Horses, trains and canals were perfectly useable but the new teck started to get use even though people suffrred from range anxiety as fuel was not abundent and wasnt where it was needed when you ran out of petrol.
Solutions to this problem were invented and we are where we are now.
I dont know what the final solution will be, it may be lithium batteries, or some other chemistry, or bio fuels made from algae, or hydrogen converted to ammonia so that it is handlable with current transport methods or something else.
One test of whether a technology is acceptable environmentaly is would you be happy to have your house next to it.
Would you live next to:
a sewage outfall next to a river
A nuclear processing plant
A coal fired power station etc.
If you wouldnt live there you shouldnt expect other to do so. Lets have some ambition for my and your children please.
But who will bell the renewable cat and build these batteries made of unobtanium and fairy fart electrolyte?
In the end hte cost of a totally (or even partially) renewable grid far far exceeds a nuclear one, which doesn't need all the fairy farts. And handwavey technology that not only does not exist, but cannot.
Nature does not change the laws of electrochemistry just because someone wants to sell you a windmill.
"Nature does not change the laws of electrochemistry just because someone wants to sell you a windmill."
Yet another omniscient guy who knows the "laws of electrochemistry" like the back of his hand and can confidently conclude that wind power is more expensive than nuclear power (it's not). Aren't we all blessed?
A modern smartphone will last on standby for over a week. But the thing is, people use those for more than laying on a table or sitting in a pocket waiting for someone to call you, so the number of people who leave the iPhone or Galaxy on standby and never touch it is approximately zero.
"Solar power... works at night. oh never mind
wind power ... except it needs backup for when its not windy... darn those fossil fuels."
That doesn't mean both of those are useless, they just aren't exact replacements. I also don't see talk of using wind/solar for uses while they are available rather than according to an MBA's carefully planned out calendar. A client of mine is thinking about adding solar panels to her installation since she still pays a fair amount for grid power. The trouble is she has no idea what her usage looks like over anything narrower than an entire month. When I brought this up, she thought maybe a battery would help. Those are expensive so the ROI is negative in many cases. She didn't consider putting the heater for the hot tub on a timer so it didn't switch on at 2am and wasn't running much during the day when the solar system was putting the whip to the pixies.
I can do no better than quote a recent letter in new Scientist:
"Published 27 December 2023
From Arthur Dahl, Geneva, Switzerland
The study that found there is a weekend boost to plant productivity in Europe because of reduced air pollution by aerosols, which block sunlight, should be a warning to those who seek to address global heating by injecting aerosols into the atmosphere (25 November, p 11).
This research shows how sensitive plants are to any drop in sunlight. Addressing climate change through atmospheric geoengineering will reduce plant photosynthesis on land and at sea globally, with probably catastrophic impacts on nature and agriculture."
The article referenced is at: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2403856-plants-are-more-productive-on-weekends-thanks-to-cleaner-air/
And states:
"The team analysed satellite measurements of how much light is emitted by the green pigment chlorophyll in the leaves of plants – which corresponds to how much photosynthesis is occurring – across Europe between 2018 and 2021.
By comparing this with satellite measurements of air pollution over the same period, the team found that photosynthesis rates increased when there were lower levels of aerosols, a type of pollution that includes dust as well as smoke from wildfires and human activity."
As a species we have alreadyy tampered with the atmosphere a great deal without understanding the consequences, I reckon it is time to reduce our meddling, rather than increase it.
Mostly what you say seems reasonable although there are large arid and semiarid regions where I suspect there is more than enough sunshine and plant growth is limited not by sunlight, but by availability of water. Spend some time in the Mojave or Texas west of the Balcones escarpment, and I think you'll conclude that too much sunshine is quite possible.
But what I really want to point out is that the only experience humanity has with deliberately tinkering with the atmosphere is cloud seeding to increase precipitation. The results of that seem not especially encouraging. It works fine on cocktail napkins. In practice, often not so much. Overall, it does seem to work sometimes. Probably. It often isn't all that clear that it wouldn't have rained or snowed anyway. It's rather expensive. And it can be argued that forcing rain/snow in one place likely diminishes rain/snow in downwind areas that might need the water as much or more.
There are large areas of the oceans where the limiting nutrient for plant growth is iron. Adding iron to the low productivity areas of the ocean would cause an increase of CO2 absorption in those areas thereby lowering the atmospheric CO2 levels. One of the small scale tests in 2004 (EIFEX) showed a capture ratio of 3000 molecules of CO2 per atom of iron.
However many of the "Climate Change" and "Green" lobbies have opposed large scale trials because if successful it could reduce the perceived importance (and thereby funding) of the climate change lobbyists.
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 3.29 trillion metric tons which is an increase of just over 1 trillion tons since the middle of the 18th century.
This excess amount of CO2 equates to approximately 280 billion tons of carbon.
If the same capture ratio that was achieved in the 2004 EIFEX experiment could be repeated at large scale it would take approximately 440 million tons of iron to completely remove all the excess CO2 which is approximately 25% of one year's iron production.
Yes, all a conspiracy by the elites to keep their important and highly paid positions.. sigh.
If only there were some way to lookup the possible ramifications of *iron fertilizing* to see why these green meanies are so bent on wrecking everyone's fun....
I hope you're being facetious, mevets, otherwise I might conclude that conspiratorial paranoia is possible even among folks intelligent enough to be Reg readers ...
Plenty have already drunk the kool aid. But to point you at something you might find interesting-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emiliania_huxleyi
A cute little critter. Grows it's own body armour for reasons best known to itself, and has a number of interesting properties. Blooms have a number of albedo effects, being reflective. They've also evolved their own air conditioning by being able to produce dimethyl sulfide, which is a potent GHG. Over their long history, they've also produced collosal amounts of calcium carbonate, and left productivity logs in the form of very persistent organic molecules called alkenones.
Which for an inquiring mind, should raise a few questions. Given the amount of calcium carbonate in and around the oceans, why would they ever 'acidify'? And given it's evolution stemmed from the Archean Eon, and it survived at a time when the Earth's CO2 and temperature levels were higher than today.. Why would organisms like this be threatened by 'Global Warming'? But the same is true for much of life on Earth. Then if you want to dig deeper, you'll see there are some uncertainties around the humble coccolithophore. Like how it responds to both temperature, and CO2. Which is kind of an important point given the alkenones they produce are used in marine sediment cores as a proxy for temperatures.
They're also a candidate for geoengineering, but given the uncertainties, it's perhaps a good idea to not get too carried away until some of those questions are answered. They will happily form massive blooms all by themselves, with observable effects on climate.
Yes. Great idea. Let's go modify our oceans just like we've modified our air in the last two centuries.
What could possibly go wrong ?
Clue : check out Australia and our wonderful history of introducing foreign animals into an ecosystem and what the consequences were there.
We need to stop shitting our bed and start cleaning up our act.
If we want to stay alive as a species, that is.
That's nature auto-regulating: Humans are a nuisance, so they have to go. The ecosystem will change (it has constantly changed since the very beginning: Earth looked very different back when dinosaurs were the dominant species), a new era will come in which all that is left of Humanity will be just some traces (mostly plastic waste) which will eventually disappear underground, until some tectonic movement brings them back to the surface (only to be buried again, and so on).
We are arrogant to think we will be here forever. Just ask the Trilobites.
The science is never settled as history has shown us time and time again.The climate change narrative has many plot holes wide enough to drive a beer truck through. But then again, the narrative has been hijacked by ideology and politics that are treated by followers as an orthodox religion in which nothing is allowed to be challenged. The true scientific debate has been made impossible by people who have been led astray, unaware of how little they actually know.
Am I a climate scientist? No. But do you need to be a connoisseur to establish that a bottle of wine left open for three days has gone sour? There are so many scientific principles being trampled on by what purports to be climate science that it largely departs from reality.
Denial is a river in Egypt
Also calling those who disagree "Deniers" (first done by the 'warmists') is a typical ad hominem attack method, an attempt to silence opposition rather than refute with logic.
Why is it that higher taxes, personal sacrifice by the masses (but NOT for the elites), mandates, regulations, and more control over our personal lives has ALWAYS been the "solution" ? To me this is evidence enough that it MUST be based on a lie. (of course the actual SCIENCE proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt, and I could write a THESIS on the subject - check my other posts in these comments if you want more, trying not to repeat myself too much)
Ok, buckle up, because this is a long one. Let us start with the basics then. Methodology:
1. The principles of the IPCC state that: “The role of the IPCC is … understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change”. So, from the outset in 1998, the IPCC assumes there is climate change and that it is caused by humans. This reversal of the null hypothesis is a big scientific no-no. This starting point biases everything that comes after it. The proper null-hypothesis is to start from the point that there is no climate change and then assess whether there is evidence to disprove this.
2. The main KPI for climate policy is to keep the average deviation of the baseline temperature below 1.5 °C. Apart from that it is a gross simplification to characterise the change in the thirty types of climate our planet has in a single variable, it also hides a lot of information. A serious positive temperature excursion one way can be masked with an excursion in another direction. On average everything looks good while we in fact have a major problem. A better measure would be to look at the standard deviation, however, this is something most policy makers and the general public would not be able to wrap there head around. It also does not work because of the next point.
3. Temperatures measured with thermometers represent the temperature for a certain volume of air around them. The main worry of rising atmospheric temperatures is that it might negatively impact natural processes on Earth. It is possible to take the numerical temperature values and perform statistics on them, but the result is unphysical.
Case in point: if I have two volumes of dry air at 1000 mbar, one at 0 °C and one at 20 °C and I allow these volumes to mix without external influences, what do you think the final temperature is? Many people would say 10 °C and they would be wrong. The actual value is 9.65 °C. A significant difference.
The proper way to calculate this is to determine the enthalpy of each volume, add them together and from that calculate the final temperature. The enthalpy of air depends on temperature, pressure and humidity and this dependency is non-linear. Any HVAC engineer with knowledge of psychrometrics can tell you this. The outcome of 9.65 °C becomes easier to understand once you realise that air at 0 °C has 7.3% more specific weight than air at 20 °C.
In the 17 years of tracking climate science, only once have I come across a paper that takes air pressure and humidity into account. Blindly averaging temperatures biases the result to warm values, although there are instances where averaging yields a value that is too low (high humidity warm air at 1040 mbar mixed with dry cold air at 980 mbar for example). Anyhow the method is fundamentally flawed.
And yes, temperatures are also measured with satellites, but they too do not measure air pressure and humidity.
4. Next plot hole: models. Ever wonder why tens of models are used to make climate projections? Because after decades of research not a single one has been found fit for purpose. So it was decided to bunch the results from many models up in the hopes that the outcome would be more accurate. The necessary prerequisites for this to work is that: a) the models are independent and b) the errors have a gaussian distribution. Both requirements are not met. Many models share parts of the same core source code and are therefore not independent. The errors in the models have far from a gaussian distribution, they are systematically wrong. The researchers working on the most recent CMIP-6 project themselves have said that their models run too hot. The average of a bunch of outcomes wrong in the same direction, is a wrong outcome.
Not only that, the models were all taken into account to avoid having to select the best one because all other research groups would be clamouring about this as they would lose their funding. It would also spark much debate that was deemed to draw energy away from progressing climate science. This was a political decision, not a scientific one.
Further consider this: if you feed climate models pink noise, i.e. zero trend slightly autocorrelated time series as temperatures, you would expect climate models to sometimes predict warming climates and sometimes colder climates. In practice they all predict warming, it is built in to their algorithms.
5. Another nail in the coffin: more not following the scientific method. Quote from Phil Jones, Director of Climate Research Unit, UEA, UK: "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?". The whole point of the scientific method is show your work and make sure it is reproducible. There are many instances of institutions and researches declining to show their data and explain their methods. Older temperature records are mysteriously cooler over time and newer ones warmer.
The above just scratches the surface of what is wrong with climate science, there are many more topics that I not have touch upon here. My conclusion is that climate science is unfit as an input for policy making.
>The whole point of the scientific method is show your work and make sure it is reproducible.
If the method is not being followed, then it's not science. It's biased, faked results, with whatever motive (usually money).
So why do you repeatedly call it 'climate science' and then deride it?
That's kinda crazy...
I call it climate science because that is what it is commonly called in the world. Climate science is one of the most complicated fields, covering many sciences, from astronomy, to physics, geology and biology, just to name a few. Just to show you how broad the field is, Ross McKitrick wrote a paper thoroughly refuting a high-profile attribution study that the IPCC relies on to determine the "human fingerprint" in global warming. His comment that stuck with me was:
"If someone trained in econometrics had refereed their paper 20 years ago the problems would have immediately been spotted, the methodology would have been heavily modified or abandoned and a lot of papers since then would probably never have been published" (emphasis mine).
The problem was with the statistics used, something that many scientists and engineers often do not have sufficient knowledge of.
I believe that there are many scientist that do their work with integrity and a number of bad ones who are truly disingenuous. But even the good scientists self censor or pay lip service to the climate orthodoxy, because if the don't, they will not get published, or even worse, lose their jobs. That is the state of the world today.
2. The main KPI for climate policy is to keep the average deviation of the baseline temperature below 1.5 °C.
It's actually way worse than that. The 1.5C target used to be 2C, but then the 'scientists' realised we can't get to 2C at the current run rate and assumptions wrt CO2 climate sensitivity. So we can avoid 2C by simply doing nothing, and the science supports this conclusion. The false urgency around the revised 1.5C figure is being used to create a false sense of urgency and extract as much cash as possible before reality provides a very inconvenient truth. Plus if you read the IPCC's WG3 & 4 reports, <1.5C warming can actually be beneficial given the good'ol 'Greening of the Earth'.
The biggest trick is the 1.5C is an 'anomaly' figure with a baseline of 1850. So a very crude and simple presentation trick. 1850 is a good year because Industrial Revolution. But also that pesky Little Ice Age. If you take the start point of your trend line or 'anomaly' calculation as a cold year, you'll get an exagerated warming trend. If you pick, say, 1922 and the heights of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl, you can get cooling.. even after temperatures around those years have been 'adjusted' downwards. Because prior warm periods are terribly inconvenient for CO2 dogma.
Seems obvious you've never heard of Fourier.But please do show us where Fourier was doing it wrong.
Why would Fourier be relevant? I mean amongst other things, he did improve cannon designs.
But mainstream climate 'science' relies on a lot of simple con tricks. Rik showed this by starting his gish-gallop with good'ol S-B and a false assumption. Reality is, of course far more complex. Then along the way it uses plenty of other tricks.
So the infamous 'Hockey Stick' hid the decline. Recent tree samples showed an opposite trend. They're calculated from measuring wood density in each growth ring. More wood, better growing conditions. Tree rings require calibration, so compare density to temperature measurements, which can only be done where you have accurate data. So you can't calibrate for say, the MWP because there aren't reliable temperature records. But samples showed an opposite response to the desired one, and temperature records were spliced onto the tree data to hide the decliine. Ok, that wasn't specifically done in the actual MBH98 paper, but was done when the Hockey Stick was presented to the gullible public.
But other mistakes were made. There was screening creating selection and confirmation bias. If you select samples that show a hockey stick, you get a hockey stick. Other samples existed that didn't show this, so were discarded.. And in fact hidden from other scientists who wanted to try and replicate the results. Data was also cherry picked, with inconvenient chunks truncated. Then there were other statistical errors, like using wrong methods. Temperature responses aren't random, so using methods that assume randomness to try and tease out signals from noise don't work, because temperature data is not truly random. Temps won't randomly jump from 10 to 17 then 5C, data points will be higher, lower or constant depending on sampling rate.
Or there was the Rahmstorf example I mentioned earlier, or perhaps the greatest con-trick of choosing start points to create exagerated trends, like temperature 'anomalies'. There are still honest climate scientists, but if they dare challenge the consensus, or dogma, their careers are usually threatened because there's a collosal industry that's sprung up around the whole Global Warming scam.
He "can math", So, according to your own logic, he should be right.
No, that's your logic. And as usual, it's rather poor logic. But that's the problem with math. It tends to be absolute and rigid, and when you use it incorrectly, it tends to be rather obvious. Rahmstorf Smoothing again, or Mikey's Hockey Stick.
But I am curious why Fourier would be relevant, other than maybe demonstrating that the French are responsible for global warming in maths and engineering classrooms. Someone like Laplace might be more relevant, especially some of his collaborations, eg Lavoisier and their Memoir on Heat and kinetic theory of molecular motion, which is still being liberally reinterpreted by climate 'scientists' today. Or his collaboration with Lagrange. There's a great video about that here-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg9cNGHl-bg
> But I am curious why Fourier would be relevant
So you "can Math" but you nevertheless ignore Fourier's contribution to the science of greenhouse gas effect? Are we understanding this correctly, windmill slayer?
Here is a link to a Rutgers university MATH blog, to enlighten your starved neurons.
"Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830), French mathematician and natural philosopher, did groundbreaking work in mathematics and the theory of heat. He was the first to propose that the Earth's atmosphere acts to raise the planet's temperature."
So you "can Math" but you nevertheless ignore Fourier's contribution to the science of greenhouse gas effect? Are we understanding this correctly
I can say with 97% certainty that you are not understanding this correctly. Or probably anything. But my comment was to the OP, who asked-
But please do show us where Fourier was doing it wrong
For some reason, the OP decided to pick on Fourier, but obviously hasn't provided any context to where any of Fourier's work might be relevant. You, on the other hand..
Fourier’s answer was that the heated surface emits invisible infrared radiation, which carries the heat energy away into space. He lacked the theoretical tools to calculate just how the balance places the Earth at its present temperature.
He also lacked the data to quantify the 'greenhouse effect'. But also used the idea of a planet in a bottle to demonstrate the theory, thus spawning the whole 'Greenhouse Effect' nonsense. We don't live in a bottle, and the radiation is simply carried away into space. Projects like Earthshine also measure this, yet deniers like you are still convinced the 'heat' is trapped in the bottle with you. But again there are simple experiments to test this. Fill a greenhouse with representative levels of CO2, observe the temperature difference. In which you'll quickly discover that despite all the deadly CO2, it makes a lousy way to heat a greenhouse.
If you are referring to Fourier analysis, he got it right, as long as it is applied to bandwidth limited applications on stationary signals. Bandwidth limited also implies strictly periodical. For signals varying in frequency and time, newer methods, such as Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (CEEMD) are much more appropriate. Each situation requires its own tool and in that sense, Fourier's work is incomplete, and therefore imperfect.
A few years back, I think the most outspoken person on their staff was Lewis Page who was deeply into the global-warming-is-a-conspiracy stuff. They're been slowly shifting since he left in 2015 - though as you can see there are a number of enthusiastic commentors who are into the same stuff.
Please support your assertion — with appropriate data, of course.
No problem-
https://climateaudit.org/2023/12/13/four-twelve-alaska-a-jacoby-series/
Four Twelve (Alaska) was one of the 11 Jacoby and D’Arrigo series used in MBH98. In our original 2003 article, we observed that the MBH98 version of this chronology differed substantially from the chronology officially archived at NOAA, and, in our sensitivity study, used the archived version (after using the MBH version for benchmarking.) Among other things, Mann objected vehemently to the very idea of the sensitivity analysis that we had carried out:
And there's plenty more appropriate data showing inappropriate data and methodologies used by the Tree Ring Circus.. And this, of course assumes trees ever made decent thermometers in the first place. But then that's what the 'hide the decline' fiasco and fakery was all about.
Citing from the Climate Audit blog of mining consultant Steve McIntyre (BSc math., MA philo. polit. econ. -- no physical sci. at all) is super genius.
Says someone who hasn't read any of his articles. The thing about climate 'science' is most of it is maths, statistics and signal processing. Something that most climate 'scientists' are not expert in, and hence frequently make mistakes. Which then creep into the literature, and in the case of MBH98 and the 'Hockey Stick', the world of fiction. Again assuming you can actually derive a reliable temperature signature from a tree. But aside from that, was just a case study in bad science. For example-
I checked Mann’s assertion alleging that the data was “not available prior to AD1500 at the time of MBH98”. This was contradicted by NOAA, who confirmed that the chronology that we had used had been available since the early 1990s...
...however, the MBH98 version excludes all values prior to AD1580. There is no good reason for this exclusion. There are 28 cores in the ak033.rwl in 1579, far above usual minimums. In the 15th century, there are more cores for Sheenjek than for the Gaspe series which was used by MBH98 in its AD1400 network, even when it only had one core. (And even no cores for the first five years.)
There is no good scientific reason, but the Climategate showed the political reason, ie erasing the very inconvenient Medieval Warm Period, and then later, the Little Ice Age. An honest reconstruction would show current temperatures are far from 'unprecedented' and CO2 cannot be causative. So it's basically a case study in selection and confirmation bias. Screen for hockey sticks, and after torturing the data some more, you get a Hockey Stick.
This is so not a banana in my pocket!
Probably just as well. You wouldn't want to get radiation sickness now, would you?
Honestly Rik I expected better coming from you.
Supposing someone dug up an ice core or found other evidence that clearly showed CO2 levels higher than today, or perhaps a reverse causative link between CO2 and temperature - i.e. high solar radiation and wildfires causing CO2 rises, rather than CO2 (from where) causing high temperatures and wildfires.
Do you expect that this scientist would be respected and listened to, or do you think the peer reviewers would just say "Have fun with your denialist ramblings" as you just did, and dismiss it out of hand without bothering to consider it?
Supposing someone dug up an ice core or found other evidence that clearly showed CO2 levels higher than today, or perhaps a reverse causative link between CO2 and temperature - i.e. high solar radiation and wildfires causing CO2 rises, rather than CO2 (from where) causing high temperatures and wildfires.
Oddly enough, not long ago there were some papers concerning ice cores, and problems with their use as proxies. I'll need to dig those out, but if you accept the previous dogma where they showed temperature rises preceed CO2 increases. So effect preceeds cause, which.. isn't the way science usually works. It also has implications for other proxies, like oxygen isotopes, which are problematic because there's no direct correlation between temperature and O-18. They're kind of proxies of proxies given they rely on changes in ratios between the 3 stable isotopes of oxygen.. which are in our atmosphere mostly thanks to stellar fusion.
But there's a fun video here-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rap6cnebDsI
Featuring Henrik Svensmark and his CCN hypothesis and mentions some of the concerted attempts to keep that out of the literature because it goes against climate 'science's carbon fixation. More on that here-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Svensmark
Do you expect that this scientist would be respected and listened to, or do you think the peer reviewers would just say "Have fun with your denialist ramblings" as you just did, and dismiss it out of hand without bothering to consider it?
This is sadly normal for climate 'science' and psychology. People convince themselves that something must be true, and then it becomes hard to change that view. It's the essence of confirmation bias, which is something real scientists try hard to avoid. Rik isn't a climate scientist, just someone who's drunk the kool aid and become a believer. Anyone who's looked at how hard it can be to de-program cult members know how challenging it can be to get people to overcome deep seated beliefs. Rik also demonstrates how climate 'amplification' works. Because CO2 is a weak GHG, it's effects have to somehow be amplified to make it a threat worth throwing trillions at.
Anyone with experience in what passes for climate 'debate' knows the symptoms to look out for. They usually start with the gish-gallop, loosely tying together sciencey sounding stuff. That generally starts with this-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law
For an ideal absorber/emitter or black body, the Stefan–Boltzmann law states that the total energy radiated per unit surface area per unit time (also known as the radiant exitance) is directly proportional to the fourth power of the black body's temperature, T:
And anyone with a passing familiarity with our planet should quickly realise that the Earth isn't, and never has been an ideal black body. And then-
The form of the Stefan–Boltzmann law that includes emissivity is applicable to all matter, provided that matter is in a state of local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE) so that its temperature is well-defined
Which we know also isn't true because, well, climate changes past, present and future. Deniers then chain this into leaps of faith like this-
Simple physics (such as the Stephan-Boltzmann Law, for you aspiring climate geeks) proves the Earth would average about a frigid -15°C without our planet's blanket of GHGs.
Sure, S-B is simple, but the Earth isn't a black body and would never be -15°C.. but that's again a cause-effect problem. We're warmer because we have an atmosphere and massive oceanic heat pump orbiting around a star with a variable energy output. But on the plus side, the concepts of emissivity and albedo are important to understand real climate change. We know that varies, and natural events like snow, cloud cover and even the good'ol coccolithopore can alter albedo far more than CO2 can.. But aren't as easy to tax or force social changes with.
And then there's the usual if-then-CO2 garbage. Sea levels are rising! Ohnoes! But then we'd expect them to after an Ice Age, large or small. The ice sheets are melting! Or they're not, given current arctic sea ice measurements show gains. There are some other interesting things happening though, like a rather large iceberg/shelf calved off from Antarctica and is now going on a slow cruise. Again nothing to do with CO2, but as it's fresh water, could have some interesting effects as it melts.
Climate sceptics find learning about all this stuff rather fascinating. Climate (or reality) deniers just take everything on faith and blame everything on CO2. Which leads to climate related disasters like this-
https://www.gov.wales/draft-budget-2024-2025
Capital funding of £1.6bn, and revenue funding of £979m. Which means next year, Wales is planning to spend far more on 'climate' funding than it is on health, education and all other services combined. There's probably an amplification effect there as well because the sliver of funding Welsh education gets compared to the £2.6bn in funding for fighting climate change probably includes Rik-like indoctrination of school kids so they don't ask awkward questions, like why the Welsh government is wasting so much of their money.
Yeah, but, cyd, neither Jellied Eel nor Steve McIntyre are scientists. The McIntyre has a BS in math, so he could teach math in grade school. He has a Masters in arts, so maybe he could paint like robodog Spot or something, or, seeing how his art is politics, he's probably quite good at masterful BS (as evidenced by his blog). Either way, there's no basis I can see for giving credence to his climate-oriented hallucinogenic mushrooms, without trying them for myself!
Yeah, but, cyd, neither Jellied Eel nor Steve McIntyre are scientists.
Do we need to be, if we're right? But this is a simple appeal to authority. But this is a common problem with climate 'science'. After all, the world's greatest living climate scientist cut his teeth doing this..
...using similar Monte Carlo methodology to investigate the superconducting properties of yttrium barium copper oxide, modelling transitions between ordered and disordered phases
before moving into the fabrication of hockey sticks. So although starting out in a field requiring maths and statistics, by the time he got to post-grad and doctoral work, he'd clearly forgotten a lot. But that's climate 'science' for you. When a stats professor says they're doing it wrong, the climate 'scientist' is obviously correct. And of course climate 'scientists' are free to wax lyrical on subjects waaay outside their area of expertise, providing the cheque clears of course.
Such is climate 'science'. It's rife with people who don't understand the arguments, so just attack the Mann instead..
They put the temperature measuring meters in places that they will show artificially higher temperature readings. Then they scream global warming. The fake readings mean nothing. It's all BS so they can spray chemtrails, with all kinds of poisons in them to lower the population, by poisoning us directly and poisoning the food, thus killing us off. It's that simple.
CO2 caused global warming is 100% BS.
There is NO global warming and the climate scientists and others pushing global warming are morons or psychopathic criminals!
The CO2 level is .04%. That means it is 4% of 1%
If the CO2 level goes to .02%, then the plants start dying.
1 min. 47 sec.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/HxO1kJvBAVrP/
Interesting. I’m a psychopathic criminal. What’s more, I frequently associate with many other psychopathic criminals. Who knew? I think I’ll spend the evening on a gleeful spree of rape, plunder, murder, and rooting for Real Madrid over Man City. Thanks for the by-your-leave …
Or rather book, called Termination Shock" is quite fun, and does point up a couple of problem, amusingly:
1. If we stop it, it rebounds
2. Someone will find it politically convenient to be injured, and take action to stop it.
Also, being American, it includes The Biggest Gun in the World.
I enjoyed it.
Stick the model(s) where the sun does not shine and all the other garbage these morons spout on about. Here is radical idea how about we make some actual changes to the way things are done and consume less of the resources that cause the problems. Rather than trying to think up new ways to continue using them by using some supposed method to do it that has no basis in fact. Like these BS electric cars, green hydrogen ... the list is endless just because you have put electric motor in the car , no usually some monster sized truck or SUV, does not eliminate the resources used to build it. What is needed is electric buses and trains. Those type of things that need to run on schedules that allow people to use them to live their life and move around. The work from home wherever a job can be done, but the parasite corporate control freaks cannot allow that. Anything that uses less resources than we do now should be implemented and screw those who do not want to come along for the ride to saving a reasonably habitable planet for our descendants. They can whine on about their freedom this or that well fuck them, their freedom does not include allowing them to kill me or my family.
Here is radical idea how about we make some actual changes to the way things are done and consume less of the resources that cause the problems.
Indeed-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_United_Nations_Climate_Change_Conference
Over 70,000 people were accredited for the summit, with 400,000 more granted access to the surrounding "blue zone"
Half a million people travelling to Dubai, looking to change the world. Or just for a handout. So one very simple change would be to make COP29 the first Zero Carbon COP. No fossil fuels used, or fossil fuel derived products permitted. Lead by example. Show the world just how it could be done!
Totally agree. We need WW2-scale sacrifices, from everyone. Unfortunately no government would ever consider this because it would be be political suicide. It's possible to get support for sacrifices on this scale if there's a really obvious and immediate threat, e.g. an evil army massing on the borders. But climate change is happening too gradually, and it looks a lot like the danger won't appear severe enough to justify the necessary drastic steps until it's too late to turn things around.
There are a lot of scientists who think the phase out of high sulfur "bunker fuel" in ships is responsible for 2023 being a record warm year (not just "record" in terms of new record high temperatures but in terms of by how much this year's temperatures beat the previous records) There has been a notable reduction in cloud cover over the open ocean, which is especially noticeable in the area of heavily traveled routes.
Reducing acid rain is a laudable goal, but maybe we should consider pushing back those regulations and dropping the low sulfur requirements for shipping. That's basically the same thing as the mitigation being proposed with the advantage that it 1) saves money instead of costs money and 2) we know the downside of acid rain, versus all the potential unknowns of geoengineering by salting clouds etc.
From the website of the International Maritime Organization (IMO):
"Known as “IMO 2020”, the rule limits the sulphur in the fuel oil used on board ships operating outside designated emission control areas to 0.50% m/m (mass by mass) - a significant reduction from the previous limit of 3.5%. Within specific designated emission control areas the limits were already stricter (0.10%). This new limit was made compulsory following an amendment to Annex VI of the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL).
The resulting reduction in sulphur oxide (SOx) emissions from ships is having major health and environmental benefits for the world, particularly for populations living close to ports and coasts. Sulphur oxides are harmful to human health, causing respiratory, cardiovascular and lung disease. Once released in the atmosphere, SOx can lead to acid rain, which impacts crops, forests and aquatic species and contributes to the acidification of the oceans."
Overall a laudable initiative, although I much dislike the term "ocean acidification" because the oceans are nowhere near having a PH lower than 7 and because depending on time and place the PH value varies quite much.
What if we were able to generate weather systems that would just lift the heat up from the ground? Maybe we could make them spin too! I think we'd need a lot of them though. We should probably start warning people we're going to do that.
This is probably easier than a lot of the funding grabs from assorted geo-engineering peddlers. I read a book where the inevitable happens with a bunch of large vortex generators. We could build these now given the physics and engineering are relatively simple. After all, we're already building collosal fans right now in the form of post-modern windmills. In fact, we could even combine the technologies and ring the vortex generators with windmills to harvest the energy from the inrushing air!
Then there are other potential applications, like injecting aerosols to seed clouds, confetti for reveal parties, or something flammable, just for fun. But nature already shows us this can work, so hurricanes can be tracked from space using IR that shows the cooler waters in their wake. Yet some think hurricanes are a sign of 'global warming', despite the obvious cooling effect. Cognitive dissonance is mandatory in climate 'science'.
The best chill I know of, at geological scales, contrary to what the spoilsport killjoy party-poopers would have you believe, yes, them of the cleansing effects of a dry January, is, by far, a rastaman's ganja. Legalize that I and I say, and you will see, that we can all live in harmony, without a need to pump more GHGs into the atmosphere, or do much of anything else at all really, except find a nearby White Castle ... Jah love to the ¡Bong! [100], in exodus to the Mamalakis!
[100] https://www.theregister.com/2014/08/24/steve_bong_no_i_will_not_code_for_the_caliphate/
Proposal to increase the water evaporation rate at selected ocean locations.
Place strong black sheeting verically, approximately 2 metres beneath the ocean surface, thus avoiding wave engagement. The sheeting is retrivable attached to the seabed. It is envisaged that 0.5 kilometre by 100 kilometres surfaces be created to harness a larger proportion of the suns energy for immediate surface water evaporation.
The sheeting's effect will be to capture the sun's energy in the upper
most portion of the ocean. Normally sunlight falling on the ocean is converted to
thermal energy which is spread out across the upper 300 metres. The sheeting captures
this energy in the top layer of water, warming it. The water in the lower layers is
receives no new energy in comparison to normal unsheeted ocean conditions.
The ocean thermocline is adjusted to be more like that of a coast thermocline. And Earths Albebo can be increased!
Well, that's one way to kill large patches of the oceans. Also, how do you propose making those sheets in a fossil fuel free world? Plus when the anchors break, you get this-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sails_(TV_series)
Couple of points to help flesh out your research though..
How deep does wave action extend?
How deep does the downwelling IR radiation that allegedly 'warms the oceans' penetrate anyway?
And why not just set all the offshore windmills from suck to blow, and cool the oceans that way? Windmills do this already due to vertical mixing and have a measurable cooling and drying effect downwind. Which is of course unfortunate if you happen to be a farmer down wind..
"How deep does wave action extend?
How deep does the downwelling IR radiation that allegedly 'warms the oceans' penetrate anyway?
"
Like so many things, it depends. It's also not a problem that lends itself to modeling due to all of the unknown variables so a very poor idea.
"Place strong black sheeting verically, approximately 2 metres beneath the ocean surface"
The firms trying to make tidal generation work find that the ocean is particularly good at tearing apart man-made structures. Your sheeting would wind up on shores around the world in tatters. It would also open up a massive container of unintended consequences likely in the form of ocean life die-offs which would also wash up along shorelines.
A conspiracy seems unlikely to me, it looks more like an emergent phenomenon where several schools of thought and interests align:
- politicians - we need a new cause that we can all rally behind
- scientists - ooh, shiny new field of interest that I can leave my mark on
- misanthropists - a new cause where all humans are guilty
- consultancy firms - if there is no money in solving a problem, there is money in prolonging it
- famous actors - this should be good PR to show that I care for humanity
- neo-colonialists - lets deny developing countries their access to cheap energy to stunt their development
- school kids - this is what my teacher has taught me
- climate activists - yaay, another conference in places like Bali and Rio that tens of thousands of of us can take the plane to and attend every year
- keeping up with the Jones's - now we can have Tesla's and solar panels to signal our virtue
There are undoubtedly many people who are sincere in their motives. Nevertheless, even if you disagree with some of the above, if there are enough people of the types mentioned, no conspiracy is needed to explain what is going on in western society today.
Disruption is coming one way or the other.
We either do it in a somewhat controlled way or catastrophes and disasters do as they please.
Place your bets on which is more likely. Because you are. Betting your life that is.
As for pipe dreams of solar shading, keep smoking whatever is in that pipe and see where that gets you.
My first thought was of the ecologist who decided killing Elephants would slow deforestation. I know some people are absolute in their religious devotion, but since the religion is far from usable it would be better to fix the science and gain some understanding of if there is a problem.
"the 25,000-plus science folks in attendance pretty much all agreed on one unequivocal fact: the Earth is warming and it's warming quickly."
Is this like the 97% of scientist agree that was really far short of that number (something in the low 30% I seem to remember). Go to church and ask how many believe in god, I still wont accept it as a fact.
@AC
"Citation or, Hmmm, total bollocks?"
I know your a troll but that you got 4 upvotes? Either you like to pat yourself on the back or some people really dont know! Anyway very fast and lazy search, first link- https://www.fastcompany.com/2681518/this-man-shot-40000-elephants-before-he-figured-out-that-herds-of-cows-can-save-the-planet
This post has been deleted by its author
There is NO global warming and the climate scientists and others pushing global warming are morons or psychopathic criminals!
The CO2 level is .04%. That means it is 4% of 1%
If the CO2 level goes to .02%, then the plants start dying.
1 min. 47 sec.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/HxO1kJvBAVrP/
while the politicians and "scientists" the UN claims are all hot and bothered about reducing the burning of fossil fuels, the local councils are working their hardest to make sure it's not economic to install solar panels on one's home. They demand plans in a format that isn't used anywhere else in industry. There's a fee for every step of the process and most of them outrageous such as $2/page to make copies or $100/hour to have a re-submitted set of plans examined. Examined by somebody that may have very little background in electrical/electronics. Just getting through planning can add 25% to the cost and that's before the fees for inspection during and after installation. I've looked into it where I live and since I only need a small system, the city fees double the cost. Fortunately, I didn't make any official inquiries (they publish the fee schedule) so initially I'm not going to let them know what I'm doing. It's not a problem as I won't be connecting the system to the grid (the electric company requires a city sign off before they'll install a meter that will run backwards).
The possibilities of natural habitat adjustment hasn't appeared very much to me over the seven years since I calculated climate change in accounting in industry class. I haven't sited too much results in changing outcomes by anything artificial when predication can only goes so far because earth knows its own cycles that return the environment to habitable states. Casing an interruption in the mass of earth is not a light effect either way. What I see will have the best effect is to immediately stop any degradation the what humans already can live in and use every resource to survive and ride over the mess mankind has made for him/her self already. (Donna Toone, io-ma)
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