GLOBAL WARMING FACTS
 ENDING GLOBAL WARMING                      to Home Page  Return Site Map                    thoriumapplications .com
(The author's view of Global Warming.)

Just like we punched a hole in Planet Earth's UV-blocking ozone layer,
we also unwittingly set climate change forces in motion that will be extremely difficult to stop. 

Global Warming and Global Cooling
Over the last 542 million years

Environmentalists Stoking Global Warming's Fires     Is Carbon Dioxide Really Tuckered Out?    
Shutting More Global Warming Down   Mother Nature's Oxygen Revenge?   Plans for Ending Global Warming

Global Warming In Perspective.

If you notice, for most of the history of Planet Earth, it has either been too hot or ice age cold for man.  For some reason, at the end of the last ice age Mother Nature settled on a temperature favorable to man.  Modern man has been around since the middle of the ice age before last but had to live an animal-like life due to the harsh climate.  Today's climate was favorable to the development of agriculture, which, in turn, provided a life style favorable for large civilizations and their far more comfortable lives. 

Early civilizations depended upon animals and slaves to power their lifestyles.  In the 1800's the Watt steam engine first made animals uneconomic (railroad trains, steam farm tractors, etc.), then steam powered factories made slaves uneconomic.  Eventually slavery was abolished in almost all societies. 

The bad side effect of this was that the machines that were doing so much of the work emitted so much greenhouse gas that the 250 ppm CO2 which made the world's climate so nice for man became a Global Warming 350 ppm CO2 climate that pushed Planet Earth's thermostat up.  And we don't know how to push it back down.  Worse, we are still pushing it higher still by burning coal, natural gas, and oil. 

So there are really two problems: 1) how to get people to stop pushing the thermostat up even more, 2) finding a way to begin pushing it back down.  Think about when you push your thermostat up on a cold morning - it takes a while to reach the new set-point.  Planet Earth is a really big place and it will take perhaps a thousand years for the heat to reach Global Warming's new set point.  Even if we could pull the trillion tons of excess CO2 that is causing Global Warming out of the air tomorrow, it would take a long time for the earth's temperature to return to the pre-Global Warming point.

What does Global Warming mean?  The thinking is that any major climate change is a change for the worse.  This explains why climate scientists are worried about climate change.  It does not explain why environmentalists are blocking the fight to end climate change by replacing fossil fuels with nuclear fuels.

Fossil fuel's carbon dioxide vs. modern wood's carbon dioxide.  When things rot, they re-join the environment, keeping it in balance.  Fossil fuel's organisms were trapped (or sequestered) underground and could not rejoin the environment so a potential un-balance accumulated over time.  Large scale burning of these accumulated fossil fuels creates an extra slug of carbon dioxide from the time of the dinosaurs.  This upsets Planet Earth's modern heat balance.  It is as if fossil fuel's carbon dioxide came from another planet.  Modern fuels are part of Planet Earth's current environment.  Huge forest fires are OK with Mother Nature, burning ancient plants in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas is not.

 

250 ppm worth of Global Warming had kept Planet Earth "about just right" for 10,000 years.  We were deep into man-made (Anthropogenic) Global Warming by the time Guy Stewart Callendar (a steam energy engineer) realized in the late thirties that carbon dioxide was playing a major role in what was causing Planet Earth to begin slowly heating.  Because he did not have a PhD, for 20 years all the world's scientists refused to listen to him.  From:  http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html  The discovery of Global Warming.
Carbon dioxide, Planet Earth's major thermostat:

 (Above) What we burned to make Global Warming.  (Click to enlarge.)

 

 

 

 

 

Global Warming began to kick in about 1850.  This was when coal use became widespread in all modern countries.  Atmospheric CO2 concentration in 1850 was about 290 parts per million (ppm), now it is about 390 ppm.  The big question is: "How delicately balanced are Planet Earth's climate systems?"

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As A Global Warming Gas, Is Carbon Dioxide Really Tuckered Out?
 "Tuckering Out" might be more appropriate.  Adding more Global Warming CO2 still has almost as much punch as when the age of Global Warming began in 1850.  But, as you can see, it is fading a bit.  Since the beginning of the age of Global Warming, carbon dioxide has been able to push the global thermostat up about 2°C per square meter of Planet Earth's surface.  Planet Earth's ability to return the sun's heat to space has been reduced from about 229 Watts per square meter to about 227 Watts per square meter - about the size of a card table.  That doesn't sound like much, but Planet Earth has a lot of square meters of surface.

Methane is a "Heat Monster" no one wants to talk about.  Just a small amount of methane has the potential to quickly push Planet Earth's thermometer up an additional 5°C for a total of 7°C.  Because it is at a different part of its saturation curve, methane causes far more Global Warming per pound and, once freed by man-made Global Warming heat, could go on an uncontrollable natural rampage.  Methane is natural gas.  Natural gas leaking into the air is bad news.  When it is burned it turns into carbon dioxide.  That is why anytime an oil or gas well is leaking natural gas it must be flared off, turning it into 20 times less Global Warming carbon dioxide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Left & Above)  Carbon dioxide's current level is almost 400 parts per million (ppm).  Both of the above charts illustrate the fact that carbon dioxide's incremental ability to add to Global Warming's intensity is diminishing.  Going from 300 ppm to 400 ppm has nowhere near the same impact on Global Warming as going from 100 to 200 ppm.  Things are now in the long linear mild slope portion of CO2's impact on Global Warming.  Not so with methane.

 

How long will these current levels of CO2 hang around on their own if we stopped burning all fossil fuels immediately?
 350.org isn't being honest with us.  We can't go back to 350 ppm.  No matter what we do.

(The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Q&A web site produced the chart at right.)  In short, we are already locked in for hundreds of years.  A 75% reduction in fossil fuel burning would only "flat-line" Planet Earth at the current CO2 level. 

"As Charles H. Greene, Director, Ocean Resources and Ecosystems Program, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Cornell University, and others recently noted in a paper, "A Very Inconvenient Truth," due to the ocean's thermal inertia this build up of energy in the ocean makes atmospheric warming essentially irreversible for the next thousand years even if we immediately stopped adding CO2 to the atmosphere."

http://www3.telus.net/gwmitigationmethod/index.htm

The best we can do is to get our fossil fuel CO2 emissions down as far as possible and hope for the best.

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The methane monster from under the oceans is Methane Clathrate.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis 

By wasting time fooling around with micro-power renewables, we are running a real risk of triggering serious releases of methane clathrate (CH4•5.75H2O), also called methane hydrate.  Notice in the "Temperature of Planet Earth" chart (repeated below) the world would freeze slowly but come out of an ice age very fast.  The concern is that Global Warming might trigger a hot thawing cycle just at the time the planet was already hot due to Global Warming.  This would bring on a "Superhot" climate that could be like the time of the dinosaurs, 150 million years ago.

It is thought these hot thawing periods happened because large amounts of methane hydrates trapped in the oceans were released when glacial recession of the ocean levels due to water consumption by the glaciers exposed the methane hydrates to air, freeing them and bringing about a strong warming effect by the sun, thus ending that ice age period and setting things up for the next ice age cycle.  Man has demonstrated survival during ice ages.  It is not known if man can survive a protracted "Heat Age."  

The book, "Climate Trap" by Melvin Visser, explains.        (Click to enlarge)

 

 

 

Greenhouse Effect Reminder: 

(Right)  Visible light energy coming in from the sun and striking Planet Earth gets converted into invisible heat energy.  Carbon dioxide in the air, like the glass in the window, traps this invisible infra-red heat energy underneath the window (or underneath the air's carbon dioxide).

Carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) are both powerful greenhouse gases and have the same effect as glass in the sky.

 

 

 

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Today's Global Warming picture

Isn't the 29 giga tons of CO2 involved in Global Warming just a tiny fraction of all of Planet Earth's CO2?
Yes, but look at the net annual carbon flows.  They are what count.  (Right, source: author.)  Where CO2 is coming from, where CO2 is going.  The CO2 sinks bar indicates we could harmlessly crank out 11 giga tonnes of CO2 per year forever.  According to Dr. Hansen, about half of that is possible.  He says about 46% of all of man's CO2 emissions remain in the air.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Which CO2 emitters do the most Global Warming Damage?

(Below, Right, source: author.)  The author ranked all the fossil fuel burning power stations in the world by annual CO2 emissions.  He discovered that only 2% of them were making about 30% of ALL Global Warming.  In large part, these were the mega-coal plants that were built instead of the mega-nuclear plants the environmentalists talked the world out of building.  Undoing what the environmentalists did is a wonderful opportunity to quickly end 30% of ALL Global Warming growth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Above) Just 2% of all power plants, the 1,200 largest contributors to Global Warming, are making about 30% of ALL Global Warming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few thoughts about the overall Global Warming situation.  Values approximate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the decay rates shown above, even if we stopped Global Warming dead in its tracks it doesn't look as if it will do much good for several centuries.

 

 

 

Most of Global Warming comes from a relatively few large sources

(Old data, but gives perspective.) The IPCC special report on CO2 capture and storage gives global CO2 emission in 2000 at 23.5 GT with nearly 60% of this attributed to 7,887 sources above 100,000 tonne/year including 4,942 electric power stations which emitted 10.5 GT/year CO2. The remaining 40% of emissions were mainly from transportation systems. 

The 4,942 electric power stations noted in the report were the very largest, usually coal burning.  In all, there are about 30,000 fossil fuel burning power stations - many just pairs of small diesels in remotely located villages - and about 30,000 small hydro stations and wind farms.  2%, or 1,200, of the 30,000 fossil fuel power stations produce 30% of ALL Global Warming CO2.  Most of these are fairly modern coal-burning mega-power stations, built after the world returned to coal after being discouraged about building nuclear mega-power stations. 

In the author's opinion, all that is needed to convert these 1,200 coal-burning mega-power stations to nuclear is to replace their coal burning boilers with the next generation high temperature unpressurized molten salt nuclear boilers currently under development by the Chinese.  This could be achieved quickly and at relatively little expense with the added bonus of switching from costly coal heat to almost free thorium heat.

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How much carbon has Mother Nature packed away in Planet Earth over millions of years?
 Enough to make dozens of Global Warmings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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What About Oxygen?

Mother Nature might strike back with a surprise answer to the fires that stoke Global Warming.

When the author was an energy engineer adding building energy management, security, and fire management systems to a company with over 200 large buildings, he had an unusual and interesting assignment.  His employer had two large IBM 360 mainframe computer centers.  Computer centers were different back the days of slide rules.  Programs and data were brought in on carts covered with boxes of punched_paper_tape rolls and boxes of punched cards.  The process of punching quickly created waste baskets full of confetti-like waste called "chad."  The paper tape and paper data cards were lightly impregnated with oil to aid their passage through both the punches and readers.  One heck of a fire hazard.  And those early computers caught fire frequently.

The mainframe centers were protected from fire by large tanks of Halon (freon) gas to smother the fire without harming the electronics or smothering the occupants.  We had to convert from Halon to  ANSUL's Inergen in both the large business and research computer centers when it was learned that a Halon discharge would harm the ozone layer.  And OSHA required that any fire suppressant not pose a hazard to room occupants. 

The ANSUL workbook states that the composition of normal atmospheric air is: 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, 1% Argon, 0.03% Carbon Dioxide plus some moisture, other gases and particles.  They go on to say that when oxygen is reduced below 15% most ordinary combustibles will not burn. 

Their fire suppressant, INERGEN, (52% Nitrogen, 40% Argon, 8% Carbon Dioxide), when discharged into a room in a 40% to 50% concentration, reduces the Oxygen to 12.5% and raises Carbon Dioxide to 4% - [4,000 ppm].  Raising Carbon Dioxide a bit stimulates the human body to breathe more deeply and rapidly to compensate for the lower oxygen content of the now-altered atmosphere.  They claimed it was like going from sea-level to Denver.

So, we have a self-limiting situation here.  Fossil fuel fires will simply stop burning once the air's oxygen level goes from 21% to 15%.  Is that likely to happen?  No.

Inergen sounded almost too good to be true.  An almost no effort project.  All the project would require from me was substituting Inergen and increasing the size of the discharge manifold pipe.  The fire detection electronics needed no change at all.  One work order and one purchase order and it would be done.  Just be damn sure it would really, really work.

I wound up at Ansul's sales office sitting in a plexiglas box about the size of a telephone booth while they activated an Inergen bottle connected to the box near the floor.  I then tried repeatedly to light several wood matches and a propane cigarette lighter.  The matches would fizzle out.  The lighter, which worked perfectly before, wouldn't even start to burn.  I didn't notice any breathing change at all but was sitting on a chair and very focused at the moment trying to get things to burn. 

Someone from Ansul said the Germans developed the Inergen gas mix for fire control in submarines during WWII.

 

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2010 emissions per kiloWatt-hour:  Denmark 650g,  France 90g. 

Anti-Nuclear - Why Germany Is Ditching Nuclear Power .pdf
If the nuclear industry – as small and unfocused as it is – really wanted to take action to isolate the apocalyptic antinuclear activists, it could take a page from the effective campaign of the fossil fuel lobby. It could start an integrated campaign to help the rest of us to remember that, despite the dire predictions, the sky never fell, the predicted unnatural deaths never occurred, the deformations were figments of imagination, and the land is not really irreversibly uninhabitable for generations. - - - Rod Adams, May 2, 2012

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Shutting More Global Warming Down

Almost the worst of Global Warming has already occurred.
Still The Environmentalists Continue To Stoke The Fires Of Global Warming
How environmentalists are making Global Warming much worse than it needs to be.

If you want to attack Global Warming, pick off the low-hanging Global Warming first.

By low-hanging Global Warming, the author means the 1,200 supersized coal burning power plants that were built after the environmentalists persuaded the world to stop building climate-clean supersized nuclear power plants and return to coal burning power plants.  These few power plants make 30% of ALL Global Warming.  Considering there are more than 30,000 fossil fuel burning power plants, 1,200 is certainly low-hanging fruit.

It is difficult to understand why environmentalists are not going for quick and easy Global Warming reductions wherever they can find them.  Their hysterical resistance to nuclear in the midst of a world pigging out on coal, gas, and oil makes them the biggest AGW deniers of all.  How stupid can the environmentalists be?  Don't they care for the environment at all?

prag·mat·ic [prag máttik]   adjective   1. Concerned with practical results: more concerned with practical results than with theories and principles.

sustainable   1. able to be maintained;   2. ENVIRONMENT maintaining an ecological balance: exploiting natural resources without destroying the ecological balance of a particular area. 

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Antinuclear Environmentalists
Who caused Global Warming to get so bad, so fast?
 

Fear and ignorance, not the wind and sun, drive the renewable energy industry.

 

Part  1:  Oops, antinuclear environmentalists are caught making Global Warming worse.
Part  2:  20-20 Hindsight.  Are Environmentalists to blame for Global Warming?  Dr. James Lovelock thinks so.
Part  3:  The shopping list of 'standard objections' to nuclear energy.  None of these arguments stands up to scrutiny.
Part  4   Nuclear energy deniers.

Know Your Enemy Department

 

 

Part  1:                                                       

Oops.  Honey, I just Supersized Global Warming !

The first time we tried going nuclear
How the antinuclear environmentalists just made things worse when they opposed nuclear in the '70's and '80's.

Global Warming became much worse because we lost the courage to stick to President Eisenhower’s 1953 “Atoms for Peace” advice that "we should convert from coal electricity to nuclear electricity" after the Three Mile Island accident happened 26 years later in 1979.  

After World War II, the economic rivalry of the "Cold War" between Capitalism and Communism motivated nearly every country in the world to rebuild and/or industrialize rapidly to grow their economies.  Industrializing meant they needed abundant cheap electrical energy to power their industries and commerce, so the motive then was to build nuclear powered electricity plants to produce “Electricity Too Cheap to Meter."  Naive sounding today, but a far wiser goal than we realized at the time. 

Then came Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986.  Neither were major disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, or even airplane crashes, but nuclear energy was still largely a mystery to the average person back then and the public recoiled in fear of the unknown - spooked by outrageous scary lies told them by the antinuclear environmentalists.

1953:  Atoms for Peace.  In 1953, President Eisenhower addressed the United Nations proposing his "Atoms for Peace.pdf" idea for, among other things, worldwide production of nuclear electricity.

We didn't realize it then, but "Atoms for Peace" was the world's only chance to avoid Global Warming.

 

When we blew it and restarted Global Warming.  The beginning of the "Global Warming" epoch.

When Global Warming's growth was stopped for a few years.

(Data: U.S. EIA  http://www.eia.doe.gov/iea/elec.html )

1980: Black line traces Global Warming's growth path.  The horizontal black arrow shows that there were a few years during which fossil fuel emission increases were halted, effectively halting the growth of Global Warming.  In the early 1980s, many new nuclear power plants were coming on line.  Few additional coal burning power plants were coming on line, and the amount of Global Warming CO2 coal power plants were making was not increasing. 

Three Mile Island in 1979, followed by a more serious accident at Chernobyl in 1986, made it very easy for the antinuclear environmentalists - such as Sierra Club and GreenPeace - to persuade everyone to stop building nuclear power plants and resume building coal burning power plants.    About Supersized Power Plants

1989: New nuclear power plant construction ended.  (Notice dark blue line going flat.)  The fossil fuels - mostly coal - were back in the driver's seat again, many of the new coal, natural gas and oil burning power plants, mimicking nuclear's rapid growth (blue) in power output, were much larger than before - becoming true boilers from hell - supersized units, along with more boiler units per power plant, producing far more Global Warming.  This is what put Global Warming permanently into high gear.  Note the vertical arrow in the above graph pointing out the additional coal electricity - and, by implication, the surge of Global Warming's CO2, that fossil fuel's return brought.  Over recent years the U.S. has seen a move to natural gas electricity, driven in part by the introduction of wind turbines, which has brought large numbers of gas turbines - which produce 2/3 the CO2 of coal - into operation.

2009: Global Warming is now becoming much worse much faster.  Few seem to understand that what the world is doing now - building windmills and hoping something good will happen - amounts to environmental cargo-culting.  This is not fixing the power plant mess the antinuclear environmentals led us to build.

We now know nuclear is safe, coal is always dangerous, and we have to end Global Warming pronto.  To end Global Warming mankind has to go back and convert all those big power plant boilers from fossil to nuclear.  Building some windmills and hoping for the best isn't ever going to end Global Warming but does benefit the coal companies enormously.  They know only nuclear is clean enough and powerful enough to put them out of business.  Everyone needs to understand that also.

A hundred books and movies could be written about how the antinuclear environmentalists sucked the world into making Global Warming much worse. 

Polluted by Profit .pdf

The author would like to think this data could be interpreted in some different way.

Notice that the time of victory for the antinuclear environmentalists - the 1980's - coincides with the "350" parts per million CO2 levels today's environmentalists say we must return to.  Ironic, isn't it?  Notice also emissions had actually begun to fall as nuclear was beginning to come on line just before the antinuclear environmentalists prevailed?  A global recession?

As far as the author knows, no one else in the world is writing about how to replace the fossil fuel burning boilers that cause over 70% of all Global Warming.  No government, no environmental organization, no nuclear organization, no school of engineering.  Only this web site.   

Three Mile Island's unfounded, but paralyzing, nuclear fears remain to this day, causing us to ignore the fact that whatever the problems of nuclear, they are nothing compared to Climate Change. 

Unlike the constant institutional advertising (happy talk) by the coal, natural gas, and oil industries, there has been virtually no effort over the years on the part of the nuclear industry to set the record straight.  This has given the public the clear, deep, and lasting impression that nuclear is, in fact, sinister.

Nuclear industry's "Cowardly Lion" behavior in response to this situation has left the entire world unimpressed and more than a little disappointed.

One result of the antinuclear environmentalist's abuse of our legal system in their efforts to paralyze United States' nuclear energy growth is that it was the environmentalists who promoted both fossil fuel burning and Global Warming's growth. 

The United States has become a nuclear backwater in the global nuclear industry, which is now dominated by France, Russia, Japan, and Korea.  As a consequence, we are now impotent in the area of influencing who gets the ability to enrich uranium.

Sierra Club's and Greenpeace's antinuclear activities have pulled many teeth from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

 

Part  2:

20-20 Hindsight:

Are Environmentalists To Blame For Global Warming?

"Had the United States gone on with its nuclear power plant building program after Three Mile Island, it's likely there would be no climate change crisis today."- Dr. James Lovelock, (World's top environmental advocate, author of the GAIA theory.)  His papers

Exceptionally eminent figures in the environmental movement such as James Lovelock have long since recognized that, whatever the challenges of nuclear power, they are as nothing compared to those of global warming.

Reasoning anything nuclear must be bad, combined with strong antinuclear funding support from the public and their very understandable fear and loathing of nuclear war, environmentalist organizations such as the Sierra Club made a mistake by throwing their support behind the antinuclear advocates in the 1960s. 

By helping to prevent the general evolution from coal electricity to nuclear electricity under Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program, environmentalists inadvertently helped to bring about Global Warming. 

Between 1960 and 2005, world coal burning quadrupled as electricity use quadrupled.

By about 1995, climatologists identified dirty electricity from coal-burning power plants as being the cause of 2/3 of the accumulating CO2 problem.

Real antinuclear advocates will continue doing all they can to oppose nuclear technology in any form except when they personally need nuclear medicine.

Environmentalist opposition to nuclear electricity has become the biggest single barrier to ending the Global Warming CO2 crisis.     

Environmentalists must now decide whether the environment or their continued opposition to clean nuclear electricity is most important to them.

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Part  3:   The shopping list' of 'standard objections' to nuclear energy.
FROM:   http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/07/28/nuclear-power-yes-please-for-cc/#more-3012

There is a shopping list of ‘standard objections’ mounted by those who challenge the viability or desirability of nuclear power.  None of these arguments stands up to scrutiny.

1. Opponents claim that if the world ran on nuclear energy, uranium supplies would run out in at most a few decades and nuclear power plants would then have to shut down. This is false. The nuclear fuels, uranium and thorium, are both more abundant than tin, and with the new generation of fast spectrum breeders and thorium reactors, we would have abundant nuclear energy for millions of years. Yet even if it lasted a mere 1000 years, we would have ample time to develop exotic new future energy sources.

2. Critics argue that past nuclear accidents mean the technology is inherently dangerous. However, this simply ignores the fact that it is already hundreds of times safer than the coal, gas and oil we currently rely upon. Moreover, passive safety features do not rely on engineered intervention and remove the chance of human error, making it impossible to have a repeat of serious accidents such as Chernobyl.

3. Some contend that expanding commercial nuclear power would increase the risk of spreading nuclear weapons. Firstly, this has not been true historically. Furthermore, the products of modern ‘dry’ fuel recycling in fast reactors cannot be used for bombs. Indeed, burning plutonium in fast reactors takes this material permanently out of circulation, and is the most practical disposal mechanism imaginable.

4. Those opposed to nuclear energy claim it would leave a legacy of nuclear waste which would have to be managed for tens of thousands of years. This is true only if we do not recycle the uranium and other heavy metals in the waste (called “transuranics”) to extract all their useful energy.

5. Right now, mined uranium is cheap. However, in the longer term, a once-through-and-throw-away use of nuclear fuel – which extracts less than 1 per cent of the energy – will make no economic sense. Feeding ‘nuclear waste’ into fast reactors will use all the energy in uranium, and liquid fluoride thorium reactors will access the energy stored in thorium.

6. After repeated recycling, the tiny quantity of fission products (shattered uranium atoms) that remain will become less radioactive than natural granites and monazite sands within 300 years.

7. To claim that large amounts of energy (generating greenhouse gases) would be required to mine, process and enrich uranium, and to construct and later decommission nuclear power stations simply ignores a wealth of real-world data. Authoritative and independently verified whole-of-life-cycle analyses have repeatedly shown that energy inputs to nuclear power are as low as, or lower than, wind, hydro and solar thermal, and less than half those of solar photovoltaic panels.

That is today’s reality. In a future all-electric society – which includes electric or synthetic-fuelled vehicles supplied by nuclear power plants – greenhouse gas emissions from the nuclear cycle would be zero.

8. Finally, when all other arguments have been refuted, critics fall back on the claim that nuclear power takes too long to build or is too expensive compared to renewable energy. These arguments are perhaps the most regularly and transparently false arguments thrown up by those trying to block nuclear power from competing on a fair and level playing field with other energy sources. - Barry Brook, July, 2010.

 

Professor Barry Brook, B.Sc. (Hons I), Ph.D., Macquarie University, holds the Foundation Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change and is Director of Climate Science at The Environment Institute, University of Adelaide.  His web site:  http://bravenewclimate.com/ 

He has published three books and over 150 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and regularly writes opinion pieces and popular articles for the media. He has received a number of distinguished awards in recognition of his research excellence, which addresses the topics of climate change, computational and statistical modeling and the synergies between human impacts on Earth systems.

His most recent book is: Brook, B.W. & Lowe, I. (2010) Why vs Why: Nuclear Power. Pantera Press, Sydney. ISBN 978-0-9807418-5-8.

Sodhi, N.S., Brook, B.W. & Bradshaw, C.J.A. (2007) Tropical Conservation Biology. Blackwell Science, Oxford, UK. ISBN 978-1-4051-5073-6.336, 344 p.

 Sodhi, N.S. & Brook, B.W. (2006) Southeast Asian Biodiversity in Crisis. Tropical Biology Series, Cambridge University Press, London, UK. ISBN 978-0-521-83930-3, 212 p.

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Part  4                                                            Nuclear Energy Deniers

Energy amateurs advocating RENEWABLES are a major reason our struggle with Global Warming is not going well.

By golly, Spiro Agnew was right.  There really are "effete" intellectuals out there: 

 

 

 

 

These people are worse than evil.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I must admit that I am generally a bit suspicious of people in Lovins's generation who dropped out of Harvard in 1967 and migrated to Oxford. My question would be - what was his draft lottery number? While nominally studying at Oxford, Lovins began working for Friends of the Earth and living in London, never getting around to completing any formal requirements for a degree."
 - - Rod Adams.  For the entire article see:  http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2009/08/resume-inflation-can-skew-discussion.html 
 

(A comment appearing on the above link:)

"And, many of those who think they know what they are talking about never learned anything about the subject to begin with, they've merely adopted myth as fact. I mention this because I wish I knew what the best way was to convey the message that nuclear energy does not and will not make nuclear bombs. 
 
I think you are touching on an important idea here. Many of the people who oppose nuclear energy are frighteningly bright people, but they are often lawyers and politicians who are "quick studies". They did very well in school and in their professional careers by being able to quickly absorb written material and feed it back to their teachers/bosses.  
 
This is why I think it is so terribly important to question the credibility of popularly anointed "experts" who actually know very little about the topic or who write prose that is aimed to obscure reality. People like Carter, Lovins, Caldicott, Mahkijani, Wasserman, Gunter, Riccio, and Cochrane are the ones who need to be shown to have little to no credibility. One possible and sometimes effective way to help intelligent people to change their assertions of learned "facts" is to shake their belief in the source of the written material."  - - Rod Adams, Atomic Insights Comment Feedback, Sunday, August 23, 2009, 8:53 AM.

 

Know Your Enemy Department:

The nuclear boom is a myth.  Atomic energy can't compete with renewables, can't get private financing and can't get significant liability insurance.  Renewables are outstripping it in all areas except the lobbying that comes with huge, unregulated campaign contributions and media hype.  In other words, the only boom in nuclear energy in the US has been the $645 million the industry has spent lobbying Congress.  The long lead times and soaring expense of building these obsolete plants dooms the industry.  France's decision to go nuclear has been catastrophic.  The Asian push is disturbing and dangerous, given the realities of non-regulation in those nations. Let us hope we can stop the residual momentum of this insane technology before the Chernobyls start coming in waves.

Harvey Wasserman
Senior Advisor, Greenpeace USA
Editor, Nukefree.org

Nuclear & Renewable Energy Facts

[I think it is important to know where these folks are coming from.  Harvey appears to be about as intelligent as they get, so his "Platform" should be a good example of the typical antinuclear environmentalist's bad advice. 

The one thing you cannot find anywhere is a well-thought-out argument against converting from fossil fuels to nuclear fuels. 

Not a well-educated Dr. James Hansen, a Dr. Barry Brook, nor even a semiliterate Engineer like Jim Holm, Harvey Wasserman's rants resemble statements read by Arab terrorist organizations - an almost incoherent stream of antinuclear "hot-button" phrases to incite the antinuclear faithful - and his technical gaffes about nuclear workings makes one think his understanding of nuclear technology has been translated from foreign-language "Popular Science" magazines. 

As long as Harvey does not change his web site's page names, the subject links should take you to his full page presentations.  - - JH]

NUCLEAR Energy
 

Global Warming
Nuclear power makes global warming worse. It is not a clean solution to the climate crisis, but instead diverts scarce resources from the green techologies that really work: renewables, conservation, and efficiency technologies that can really can solve the climate crisis while also generating wealth, jobs and economic stability.

Atomic Economics
The nuclear power industry has gone to Congress demanding loan guarantees for one basic reason: atomic reactors are not economically sound. Nobody will finance new ones without the taxpayer being forced to take the ultimate risk. Nuclear power is not a new technology. What Forbes Magazine has called "the largest managerial disaster in business history" is a proven economic failure.

Terror and Error
The terror attacks of September 11, 2001, made it clear that every atomic reactor is a pre-deployed potential weapon of radioactive mass destruction.

The first jet that flew into the World Trade Center passed one minute earlier over the Indian Point reactor complex, 45 miles to the north. There are three reactors there---two active and one inactive---plus thousands of tons of high level radioactive fuel.

Thankfully, humankind has never experienced the horrifying event of a jet plane flying into the containment dome of an active atomic reactor. The industry likes to claim that there would be no penetration. But that's wishful thinking. It has no hard data---and let's hope it never does.

The Uranium & Weapons Connection

Despite the nuclear energy industry's well-funded efforts to convince the public otherwise, uranium fuel for atomic power plants is in limited supply. Like coal, oil and gas, it will soon run out, leaving scores of giant reactors useless and abandoned.

Waste Storage and Transport
Fifty years ago, the nuclear power industry promised there would be a solution to the problem of high level radioactive waste. Today, we are no closer to managing these uniquely lethal materials than we were in 1957, when the first reactor opened.

renewable energy
 

A Green Revolution
Renewable energy and increased efficiency comprise the true solution to global warming.

Wind, solar, bio-fuels and other forms of renewables form a proven, immensely profitable multi-billion-dollar industry, with rapid growth on the horizon. In concert with increased efficiency, currently available green power technology can power our entire planet, while solving the global warming problem and guaranteeing our future prosperity.

Indeed, what was in 1979 viewed by many as “marginal” and “impractical,” renewables are now America's leading source of cheap, new energy supply.

Wind Power
Commercial-scale wind farms, now a $15 billion/year industry, have jumped forward as the world's cheapest and fastest-growing new energy producer.

Solar
Photovoltaic (PV) cells, which convert sunlight directly to electricity, can make buildings energy self-sufficient. New breakthroughs are allowing solar features to be integrated into roofing shingles, windows and even paint. Big desert-based power towers and trough-mirror arrays are proving increasingly profitable.

Biofuels
Soy diesel and corn-based ethanol can profitably supplant fossil fuels. Advances using easily grown perennials like switchgrass, hemp, kudzu, algae and a wide range of trees and weeds will make biofuels even cheaper and cleaner.

The Great Biofuels Debate
Skyrocketing demand for energy has carried over to bio-fuels, most importantly corn-based ethanol and soy diesel. Serious environmental objections have been raised against both of them, including the increased pressure on food prices. But is this a function of bad agricultural practices? And what sense does it make to use annual food crops for bio-fuels, when inedible perennials such as switchgrass, hemp and algae could be far cheaper and more ecologically sound? This huge debate will help define the human future.

Geothermal
Geothermal technology uses superheated steam from the Earth's core to create energy in more than 20 countries worldwide. The steady 55-degree heat of the Earth's crust also works the building of homes and offices, including large urban skyscrapers. This nature-based technology provides valuable supplemental heat in winter and base-line cooling in summer.

Power from the Waters
The ceaseless power of the oceans' waves, tides and currents is being harvested with extremely simple new technology whose profitability is advancing quickly.

Closing the Loop on Waste
Conservation and efficiency can save ten times as much energy per dollar invested as nuclear power can produce. When we tighten up our system and cut down on waste, we open the door to a green-powered Earth.

 

 

 

 

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Some Plans for Ending Global Warming

Few of the following plans exhibit any awareness that Global Warming might have something to do with fossil fuel boilers.  Few seem to understand fossil fuels and nuclear fuels are the only real games in town.

http://www3.telus.net/gwmitigationmethod/index.htm  Uncommonly spectacular web site.

http://dieoff.com/  Die off.
http://www.azimuthproject.org/azimuth/show/HomePage  A Wiki for plans for saving the world.

Whole Hog
http://www.withouthotair.com/  SUSTAINABLE ENERGY - Without the Hot Air.  David C. MacKay, FRS.  (Downloadable)
http://www.beyondzeroemissions.org/   STATIONARY ENERGY PLAN by Beyond Zero Emission
http://www.desertec-australia.org/   DESERTECH Foundation, Australia
 http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/climate-change/energyrevolution/   ENERGY [R]EVOLUTION  by GreenPeace
http://wwf.org.au/ourwork/climatechange/cleanenergyfuture/   CLEAN ENERGY FUTURE by World Wildlife Fund Australia
http://energy.unimelb.edu.au/uploads/Australian_Sustainable_Energy-by_the_numbers3.pdf   AUSTRALIAN SUSTAINABLE ENERGY  by Peter Selgman
http://www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/books/pb4  PLAN B 4.0: MOBILIZING TO SAVE CIVILIZATION  by Lester R. Brown - Free pdf Download of book.
http://101-solutions.org/english.html  BELLONA'S 101 SOLUTIONS WEB SITE

Constrained
 http://prescriptionfortheplanet.com/  PRESCRIPTION for the PLANET  by Tom Blees
http://www.terrestrialenergy.org/   TERRESTRIAL ENERGY  by William Tucker
 http://www.BeyondFossilFools.com/   BEYOND FOSSIL FOOLS  by Joe Shuster

Do we call this "Geoengineering" or "Bioremediation"?
http://www.yeomansplow.com.au/  PRIORITY ONE: TOGETHER WE CAN BEAT GLOBAL WARMING  by Alan Yeomans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Yeomans
http://www.yeomansconcepts.com.au/    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyline_design   His father was P.A.  Yeomans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Yeomans  P.A. Yeomans wrote four books; The Keyline Plan, The Challenge of Landscape, Water For Every Farm, The City Forest.

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IEA: Global CO2 emissions up by 1.0 Gt (3.2%) in 2011 to record high

24 May 2012   http://www.greencarcongress.com/2012/ 

Global CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel combustion reached a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2011, according to preliminary estimates from the International Energy Agency (IEA). This represents an increase of 1.0 Gt on 2010, or 3.2%. Coal accounted for 45% of total energy-related CO2 emissions in 2011, followed by oil (35%) and natural gas (20%).

The “450 Scenario” of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2011, which sets out an energy pathway consistent with a 50% chance of limiting the increase in the average global temperature to 2 °C, requires CO2 emissions to peak at 32.6 Gt no later than 2017, i.e. just 1.0 Gt above 2011 levels.

The 450 Scenario sees a decoupling of CO2 emissions from global GDP, but much still needs to be done to reach that goal as the rate of growth in CO2 emissions in 2011 exceeded that of global GDP, the IEA noted.

The new data provide further evidence that the door to a 2 °C trajectory is about to close.

—IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol

In 2011, a 6.1% increase in CO2 emissions in countries outside the OECD was only partly offset by a 0.6% reduction in emissions inside the OECD. China made the largest contribution to the global increase, with its emissions rising by 720 million tonnes (Mt), or 9.3%, primarily due to higher coal consumption. However, China’s carbon intensity—the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of GDP—fell by 15% between 2005 and 2011. Had these gains not been made, China’s CO2 emissions in 2011 would have been higher by 1.5 Gt, the IEA said.

India’s emissions rose by 140 Mt, or 8.7%, moving it ahead of Russia to become the fourth largest emitter behind China, the United States, and the European Union. Despite these increases, per-capita CO2 emissions in China and India still remain just 63% and 15% of the OECD average respectively.

CO2 emissions in the United States in 2011 fell by 92 Mt, or 1.7%, primarily due to ongoing switching from coal to natural gas in power generation and an exceptionally mild winter, which reduced the demand for space heating. US emissions have now fallen by 430 Mt (7.7%) since 2006, the largest reduction of all countries or regions.

This development has arisen from lower oil use in the transport sector (linked to efficiency improvements, higher oil prices and the economic downturn which has cut vehicle miles travelled) and a substantial shift from coal to gas in the power sector. CO2 emissions in the EU in 2011 were lower by 69 Mt, or 1.9%, as sluggish economic growth cut industrial production and a relatively warm winter reduced heating needs. By contrast, Japan’s emissions increased by 28 Mt, or 2.4%, as a result of a substantial increase in the use of fossil fuels in power generation post-Fukushima.