Nuclear Power at TED Conference

[Skipjack]

Well, I prefer a nuclear plant over a coal plant. A coal plant, during normal operation, pumps quite a lot of radioactive material into the air. Any nuke would be closed down if it did that (in Germany anyway).

[Cyberax]

Climate Change?

Typical. Climate-change deniers take ONE datapoint, lie about it (and then usually accuse everybody of being a part of world conspiracy).

Here's a more detailed graph: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress. ... eb2008.png

Yes, we are at a local minimum. So frick what? Do you plan to die next year?

Draw a trendline using your own data and you'll plainly see an upward trend: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/ua ... -negative/

[chrismb]

Climate Change?

Typical. Climate-change deniers take ONE datapoint, lie about it (and then usually accuse everybody of being a part of world conspiracy).

Whereas climate-change advocates take their data, then change the way they interpret it after a while if the data trends go in a direction different to their expectations.

This HAS happened recently - a rolling average has been fine up til a year or two ago, and all of a sudden the folks who were happy with that way of handling the data now have changed the way they handle the data because of this recent "cold weather", else (they say) it would "skew the graphs".

The data you link to there (http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/ua ... -negative/) suggests a highly cyclic behaviour until 2000, then some anomaly followed by much more diffuse data. If that was a 1st year's experimental result, I'd say to them "go away until you've got an explanation for the change in data pattern at 2000, because it looks like you've got some experimental systematic errors there?"

(CLUE: We stopped taking buoy temperature data below the sea surface and started using satellite imagery instead from 2000?)

The point being, this is just politicised nonsense anyway and is off topic. I am happy to sit on the fence on this one, maybe there's man made warming, maybe there isn't, maybe there is, maybe there isn't, blah-de-blah-de-blah-de-blah.

In the meantime I see no reason whatsoever not to simultaneously support new energy development, whatever you 'believe' about our climate. On the whole, I've come across maybe 2% of engineers who "believe" in man made global warming, whereas I come across 99% of engineers who'd love to build a 200mpg car, or a GigaWatt power station that runs on farts, or whatever - so what the heck is the argument about????

That's all I have to say about 'global warming', and is probably more than I should've been bothered to say. I say climate change is waay off topic, it's about new energy sources, so start a new thread...

[MSimon]

Climate Change?

Typical. Climate-change deniers take ONE datapoint, lie about it (and then usually accuse everybody of being a part of world conspiracy).

Here's a more detailed graph: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress. ... eb2008.png

Yes, we are at a local minimum. So frick what? Do you plan to die next year?

Draw a trendline using your own data and you'll plainly see an upward trend: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/ua ... t-negative

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... atures.png

Well dude. Even the IPCC says the climate will be cooling until 2020. i.e. the cooling has just started. Some other Climate guys think the cooling will be going on until 2030. And some solar guys say 2040.

Evidently CO2 is not as forcing as it once was.

http://www.climatedepot.com/a/1979/UN-I ... le-anymore

Key Excerpts: It is a scientific conclusion that the data does not indicate whether future warming or cooling will occur. And it is a political decision to ignore that unarguable scientific conclusion. But deniers of natural climate change do ignore it and they proclaim that human activities alone cause global warming: their climate change denial is pure superstition. [...] Even RealClimate (i.e. the Alamo of discredited so-called climate scientists) now admits the fact that the Earth is experiencing global cooling and suggests that global warming will not resume "until roughly 2020." And they are trying to provide excuses for the cooling. In other words, these global warming propagandists have recognized that their natural climate change denial of the last decade is not sustainable anymore. So, they have abandoned any pretence that global warming exists at the moment, and they are presenting their excuses for why the globe is cooling together with their assertions of when global warming will resume (presumably they will claim with a vengeance). Simply, nobody can now plausibly deny that the globe is cooling while the emissions and the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide both continue to increase.

Evidently there are still some folks out there in denial of the data. Most unfortunate.

BTW none of the Climate models predicted this cooling - i.e. the models are bad and will need to be fixed. Once we get "new and improved" we can wait 10 years and see if the models match reality.

http://thedeadhand.com/Journal/tabid/16 ... oling.aspx

January 2, 2008

Today, the Space and Science Research Center, (SSRC) in Orlando, Florida announces that it has confirmed the recent web announcement of NASA solar physicists that there are substantial changes occurring in the sun’s surface. The SSRC has further researched these changes and has concluded they will bring about the next climate change to one of a long lasting cold era.

Today, Director of the SSRC, John Casey has reaffirmed earlier research he led that independently discovered the sun’s changes are the result of a family of cycles that bring about climate shifts from cold climate to warm and back again.

“We today confirm the recent announcement by NASA that there are historic and important changes taking place on the sun’s surface. This will have only one outcome - a new climate change is coming that will bring an extended period of deep cold to the planet. This is not however a unique event for the planet although it is critically important news to this and the next generations. It is but the normal sequence of alternating climate changes that has been going on for thousands of years. Further according to our research, this series of solar cycles are so predictable that they can be used to roughly forecast the next series of climate changes many decades in advance. I have verified the accuracy of these cycles’ behavior over the last 1,100 years relative to temperatures on Earth, to well over 90%.”

For the latest solar numbers:

http://www.hamqsl.com/solar.html



It would be really nice if the deniers kept up. It gets so tiresome educating people who should know better. Well it is a dirty job but some one has to do it.

The #1 rule in science: follow the data.

[MSimon]

BTW I'm with chrismb.

What ever the climate is doing we are going to need some new energy sources sooner or later. The sooner the better.

[passenger66]

I just finished reading James Lovelock's 2009 book "The Vanishing Face of Gaia". In chapter 2 he shows a very simple model of the earth in which he starts with a low level of CO2 and then gradually increases it: as CO2 is increased temperature changes little, however as CO2 rises further instability in temperature starts to become evident (associated with increasing instability in sensitivity of the feedbacks of the system) and shortly after this is observed the system suddenly jumps in temperature. His point is that in the non-linear system being modeled it will have a state characterized by negative feedbacks within a certain range of CO2 but at a threshhold level of CO2 there will occur positive feedback resulting in a jump to a new state. It is entirely possible (and was observed) that prior to the jump to a new state the temperature can wobble up and down.
Further he notes that once it jumps to the hotter state, it cannot be brought back just by bringing CO2 back to the starting point. It is stable in the hotter state.

[chrismb]

Further he notes that once it jumps to the hotter state, it cannot be brought back just by bringing CO2 back to the starting point. It is stable in the hotter state.

if that were true, how come in the past the planet had much higher CO2 and was hotter, yet we still arrived at where we are today.

Best not to forget that the early mammals, and later on the early primates, actually evolved in a world of +8C hotter than now and with 1500ppm CO2. If one were to believe the theory of evolution, one should also conclude that a hotter and more CO2 rich environment is a positive benefit.

How did we get from that state to now, if the system can't 'correct' itself? It is clearly a bogus argument. Feed '2000ppm' into these CO2 simulations and you get an uninhabitable world, yet chordata evolved when the world was at 7000ppm. Explain....

[MSimon]

I just finished reading James Lovelock's 2009 book "The Vanishing Face of Gaia". In chapter 2 he shows a very simple model of the earth in which he starts with a low level of CO2 and then gradually increases it: as CO2 is increased temperature changes little, however as CO2 rises further instability in temperature starts to become evident (associated with increasing instability in sensitivity of the feedbacks of the system) and shortly after this is observed the system suddenly jumps in temperature. His point is that in the non-linear system being modeled it will have a state characterized by negative feedbacks within a certain range of CO2 but at a threshhold level of CO2 there will occur positive feedback resulting in a jump to a new state. It is entirely possible (and was observed) that prior to the jump to a new state the temperature can wobble up and down.

Further he notes that once it jumps to the hotter state, it cannot be brought back just by bringing CO2 back to the starting point. It is stable in the hotter state.

Fine. Now how was water vapor (the great heat pipe in the sky) modeled? And about those clouds.....

But I do get it. When the models don't follow reality there must be an error in reality.

[bcglorf]

I just finished reading James Lovelock's 2009 book "The Vanishing Face of Gaia".

Well that's your problem right there, isn't it? Anyone talking about Gaia is a religious nut, not a scientist.

Cyberaz said: Yes, we are at a local minimum. So frick what? Do you plan to die next year?
Draw a trendline using your own data and you'll plainly see an upward trend.

The graph only starts in 1975, isn't 25 years kind of a small window for climate change? Over the only 25 years we have a record for, we see a slight warming trend. We do not see any evidence of unprecedented warming. Not even any sign of accelerated warming. If all one wants to say regarding global warming is that the trend over the last 25 years appears to be warming, then nobody is gonna argue. If one wants to suggest unprecedented, accelerating, or even catastrophic warming then the data just isn't there to support that.

[passenger66]

The starting point of Lovelock's model was pre-industrial levels of CO2 - 280ppm. CO2 might have to become much less than 280ppm for an eventual return from a hotter state to be possible.
Just because the model did not immediately return to the original state does not mean it could not eventually return, after enough time.
OTOH, the Earth is now subject to 25% higher heat from the sun than when the Earth was formed. It might be more difficult to come back from a hotter state.
I doubt I can explain James Lovelock's thinking very well. But my limitations do not invalidate his analysis. I would guess your best chance to understand and critique his analysis would be to read his book(s).

[MSimon]

Climate Scares In the News - Since 1895

http://www.businessandmedia.org/special ... andice.asp

[MSimon]

I'm sure there is a CO2 explanation for this:

[MSimon]

P66,

How can you be sure that the PDO positive of the last 30 years (ending around 2005) wasn't aliased for CO2?

After all when the last models were done in 2007 the PDO wasn't included. Despite being known since 1997. I suppose it was inconvenient to add it until the cooling started.

[KitemanSA]

HAH!! Another topic highjacked by the climate debate!

Oy, vhat a suprise.

[passenger66]

P66,

How can you be sure that the PDO positive of the last 30 years (ending around 2005) wasn't aliased for CO2?

I'm not sure about anything.
I "like" Lovelock's analysis, because I like clever little models and because I'm inclined to think we're better to assume what we don't know will get us rather than assuming otherwise.
I really don't like Lovelock's conclusions - he thinks we will see a massive human population loss sometime this century (not to speak of the non-human population loss). If I've understood what he says, he thinks this will occur quite fast even without the jump to a hotter state because there are too many of us for the earth to sustain, and after the jump to a hotter state it will occur very fast and cause a 99% cull of human life. Not nice at all as far as I can see.

Either way I want to see the biggest possible emphasis on a move to non-fossil fuel energy solutions. If Lovelock is a crackpot, at least he's a crackpot who believes nuclear power is the best solution for major electricity production (followed by solar thermal, and after that, very little else in the renewables, especially not wind, geothermal, photovoltaic or biofuels (except from biochar), for reasons I'll leave it to you to read his book to evaluate).

As far as I can see, we should be developing the LFTR, since it is proven enough that we can be confident of implementing it and it offers the most efficient use of fissile material (including leveraging fertile thorium), and we should be pushing for the Polywell, since it is so cheap to check it out, and the lead researcher, who I assume is credible, thinks it offers a good chance of working and even a real possibility of aneutronic fusion, which would be perfect, especially as it appears it would be very cheap to implement.