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thunderhead
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PostTue Mar 05, 2019 4:28 pm 
AND France is about half the price or so of Germany. A very clear and obvious proof of the superiority of fission over renewables, at least at this point in time.

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PostTue Mar 05, 2019 4:40 pm 
Anne Elk wrote:
OK, good point - SOPs have improved a lot since Hanford was operational. I'll look at the citations you listed re Chernobyl and Fukushima, but am inclined to be skeptical of UN committee report (based on whatever sources). They're likely erring on the side of minimization - that's what's bureaucracies and gov'ts do. I suspect there was a lot of "sloshing" right into the ocean during the Fukushima even that no one has an idea about. An acquaintance who's from Japan thinks the Japanese gov't was covering up the full extent of the damage/exposure.
I've been skeptical of UN reports from time to time myself. But a lot of the uncertainty on health impacts comes down to whether or not we accept the linear no-threshold model of radiation exposure risk. Some good discussion of that here: https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima? One last pro-nuclear plug: Robert Stone's film Pandora's Promise is a great intro to the case for nuclear energy. Formerly anti-nuke people who have changed their minds.
Anne Elk wrote:
But to get back to the main topic - after considering Sculpin's contributions here and your input, I'm beginning to think that climatology (paleo and otherwise) is another one of those systems that's so complex that humans can't fully grasp it, much like biological systems. Look how much we didn't know about immunology until HIV caused us to spend more time researching that.
I agree - it is incredibly complex, and while we've learned much in the past 30 years, you have to wonder what we'll learn in the next 30 years that contradicts what we think we know today. That's partly why I appreciate people like Bjorn Lomborg whose attitude is kind of like, don't panic, don't pretend that climate change is everyone's most immediate problem, don't squander our resources on misguided solutions, don't make the cure worse than the illness, and do invest in research into new technology. Good interview here:

John
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PostTue Mar 05, 2019 4:44 pm 
thunderhead wrote:
AND France is about half the price or so of Germany. A very clear and obvious proof of the superiority of fission over renewables, at least at this point in time.
Germany's Energiewende is a good example of people panicking and making poor choices about their future.

John
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PostTue Mar 05, 2019 5:02 pm 
RandyHiker wrote:
Building up nuclear generation isn't a "quick fix"
That's probably true under current conditions, but it would help if we would quit shutting down existing plants, which seems to be happening due to a combination of economics and lack of support from the environmental community. If the big enviro groups would get behind nuclear, things could turn around pretty quickly. The obsession with wind & solar isn't helping.

John
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Bedivere
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PostTue Mar 05, 2019 5:09 pm 
Molten salt nuclear reactors sure seem to be the way to go from what I've been reading. Biggest concern for me, which is hardly mentioned in the "rah rah" articles is the corrosiveness of the salts and how do you build a vessel that won't corrode away over time?

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PostTue Mar 05, 2019 5:16 pm 
Parked Out wrote:
That's probably true under current conditions, but it would help if we would quit shutting down existing plants, which seems to be happening due to a combination of economics and lack of support from the environmental community. If the big enviro groups would get behind nuclear, things could turn around pretty quickly. The obsession with wind & solar isn't helping.
I think for nuclear fission to be safe and effective in the USA significant engineering and social changes need to be made. 1) Adopt a "Manufacturing" mindset for plant design and engineering-- plant construction in the past has seems to use the "not invented here" approach and design each plant from scratch-- standardization of design and applying incremental improvements learned from prior standardized plants would both improve both safety and reduce build time. 2) Politically there needs to be support for this approach so that every plant construction isn't tied up in court for years. Sadly given the rise of anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers and climate change deniers in recent times and the vested interests of the coal and oil business interests in encouraging coal and oil consumption -- I expect that there will be heavy political resistance to nuclear power development, both explicit and through disinformation campaigns.

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thunderhead
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PostWed Mar 06, 2019 10:18 pm 
Parked Out wrote:
Germany's Energiewende is a good example of people panicking and making poor choices about their future.
Agreed. German energy policy is the textbook case of what not to do.

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Malachai Constant
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PostWed Mar 06, 2019 10:27 pm 
Reactor containment’s are a problematic environment due to the high neutron flux which cause most materials to change their composition. Hydrogen embrittlement is another issue. These effect long time life. That being said a properly operating coal plant produces far more radiation pollution than a properly operating nuke. The problem is people have more of a problem with nukes than coal. The statements of safety by “experts” prior to 3 mi. island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima did not help.

"You do not laugh when you look at the mountains, or when you look at the sea." Lafcadio Hearn
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PostThu Mar 07, 2019 9:29 am 
Anne Elk wrote:
I'm beginning to think that climatology (paleo and otherwise) is another one of those systems that's so complex that humans can't fully grasp it
If the word "yet" were added to the end I would say that is exactly the message of my essay. The water vapor cycle is particularly problematic in that it cycles far more heat in and out of our climate than CO2 ever possibly could, and we hardly understand it at all. One topic I did not spend much time on is "system stability." We know that the climate is an amazingly stable system. Consider that typical nocturnal/diurnal variations - 20F or more in many locations - exceed the variation in average temperature over 500 million years by an order of magnitude. That is a complicated sentence so I will elaborate: in many locations, the daily temps can vary by 20F, but the average, long-term temp has remained within a few degrees over hundreds of millions of years. This type of stability requires that feedbacks be strongly damped; if they are not temps would eventually run away (not Pliocene run away, boiling oceans run away). Since the absorption wavelengths of CO2 are and always were saturated, AGW requires amplifying feedbacks (did you know that?). I have seen the technical arguments for those amplifying feedbacks in great detail, and I will tell you that it takes considerable arm-waving. The scariest climate models are the ones tuned to show the largest amplifying feedbacks. Note that because CO2 has increased recently, you can fudge in large amplifying feedbacks in your model and still hindcast well. I do think we will eventually understand all this, but it will require decades of precise satellite measurements to tease it all out. We hardly have any of that data now. One giant benefit of AGW concern is that we are accelerating that data gathering.

Between every two pines is a doorway to the new world. - John Muir
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PostThu Mar 07, 2019 9:15 pm 
Sculpin wrote:
I spent my career performing root cause analysis of technical systems. Because of my pre-existing interest in paleoclimate, I spent hundreds of spare hours reading climate science papers. So I wrote an essay describing what I found. Here is my essay on global warming published on Judy Curry's blog:* https://judithcurry.com/?s=root+cause+analysis+of+the+modern+warming
Matt, It took me a couple of days to get around to reading it but glad I didn't put it off any longer. This is an excellent essay on the core issue of the entire climate debate: attribution. Clearly explained and accessible, I think for anyone who's truly interested you've provided a very helpful framework for thinking about where science is (and where it isn't) on the path to understanding our climate. Thank you.

John
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Anne Elk
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PostFri Mar 08, 2019 1:04 am 
Parked Out wrote:
Matt, ...This is an excellent essay on the core issue of the entire climate debate: attribution. Clearly explained and accessible, I think for anyone who's truly interested you've provided a very helpful framework for thinking about where science is (and where it isn't) on the path to understanding our climate. Thank you.
Agreed. I read it today and also looked at the video interview you put up. Not too difficult to follow the gist of Matt's blog post despite my lack of science/engineering background. The holes in the modeling become apparent, and I suppose the problem is even more complex for having to deal with nonlinear systems.
Sculpin wrote:
The water vapor cycle is particularly problematic in that it cycles far more heat in and out of our climate than CO2 ever possibly could, and we hardly understand it at all.
And we've messed around with that a lot, too, haven't we - with our ongoing deforestation & urbanization of the planet. Global warming aside, it would be great to get off carbon fuels just because extraction makes such a toxic mess. Wait until the full extent of contamination from fracking starts to have an impact.

"There are yahoos out there. It’s why we can’t have nice things." - Tom Mahood
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drm
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PostWed Mar 13, 2019 10:40 am 
The Lancet, a peer review journal based in the UK, has an annual report on climate change impacts called The Countdown, with a focus on the impact on public health. You can look it up and download, though you have to register an account on their website to get the full report. Here are their key conclusions from the most recent version, release at the end of 2018: IMPACT: Present day changes in heat waves labour capacity, vector-borne disease, and food security provide early warning of compounded and overwhelming impacts expected if temperature continues to rise. DELAY: A lack of progress in reducing emissions and building adaptive capacity threatens both human lives and the viability of the national health systems they depend on, with the potential to disrupt core public health infrastructure and overwhelm health services. OPPORTUNITY: Despite these delays, trends in a number of sectors see the beginning of a low-carbon transition, and it is clear that the nature and scale of the response to climate change will be the determining factor in shaping the health of nations for centuries to come.

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PostWed Mar 13, 2019 11:06 am 
Sculpin wrote:
The water vapor cycle is particularly problematic in that it cycles far more heat in and out of our climate than CO2 ever possibly could, and we hardly understand it at all.
We understand that with it's extremely short lifespan in the atmosphere compared to carbon that water is not a forcing component, but is responsive instead to those components, like CO2, that are forcing.

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PostThu Mar 14, 2019 7:44 am 
drm wrote:
We understand that with it's extremely short lifespan in the atmosphere compared to carbon that water is not a forcing component, but is responsive instead to those components, like CO2, that are forcing.
You can read NOAA's page on water vapor here: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/greenhouse-gases.php?section=watervapor There is a statement in there that is consistent with what you wrote: "...changes in [water vapor] concentration [are] also considered to be a result of climate feedbacks related to the warming of the atmosphere rather than a direct result of industrialization" The problem is that if you try to source that information - which I did - you will discover that there is no scientific basis for it. Water vapor is the largest forcing in our climate. If you look at both CO2 and water in a mid-infrared spectrum, which is where the sun's heat energy is mostly absorbed, you will see that CO2 has three relatively narrow doublet absorption bands. Meanwhile, water vapor absorbs across most of the spectrum. In fact, due to its really oddball hydrogen bonding, water absorbs like nothing else in the universe. NOAA says: "The feedback loop in which water is involved is critically important to projecting future climate change, but as yet is still fairly poorly measured and understood." ...and "The future monitoring of atmospheric processes involving water vapor will be critical to fully understand the feedbacks in the climate system leading to global climate change. As yet, though the basics of the hydrological cycle are fairly well understood, we have very little comprehension of the complexity of the feedback loops. Also, while we have good atmospheric measurements of other key greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, we have poor measurements of global water vapor, so it is not certain by how much atmospheric concentrations have risen in recent decades or centuries, though satellite measurements, combined with balloon data and some in-situ ground measurements indicate generally positive trends in global water vapor."

Between every two pines is a doorway to the new world. - John Muir
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drm
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PostThu Mar 14, 2019 7:54 am 
It's rather simple. If there is excess water in the atmosphere, as determined by relative humidity, it is removed via precipitation, usually in hours or days. Which means such excesses cannot affect longterm climate, they react to it, as you said. Excess CO2 is removed too, but over thousands and tens of thousands of years, via geologic processes. It really is high school physics, so maybe they didn't feel the need to provide references. Meanwhile, I just did a search on "how much extra water vapor from global warming" and found this from NASA:
Quote:
With new observations, the scientists confirmed experimentally what existing climate models had anticipated theoretically. The research team used novel data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite to measure precisely the humidity throughout the lowest 10 miles of the atmosphere. That information was combined with global observations of shifts in temperature, allowing researchers to build a comprehensive picture of the interplay between water vapor, carbon dioxide, and other atmosphere-warming gases. The NASA-funded research was published recently in the American Geophysical Union's Geophysical Research Letters.
So maybe it isn't such a mystery after all?

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