Lawrence @ 46 I’m not familiar with the actual weather situation in your area leading to that particular flood. I do know that in the normally dry regions of the western U.S., extremely heavy rain can be triggered by an unusual incursion of moist tropical air into places where it doesn’t often get. Very moist air is also very unstable air, and can allow strong thunderstorms containing very heavy rain to focus in a small area.
Patrick 027says
Re 42 AIC – it can be useful to use the K scale for % changes in temperature in some contexts – maybe not so much the impacts of climate change – but anyway, one of the more visceral ways of communicating the relative importance of a 2 to 4 + K warming is to compare it to the difference between the preindustrial climate and the peak of the last ice age, which I think is something like 6 K, though I could be a little off. One can also consider the geographical distance that such a temperature change occurs over now – for example, find a state to the south that has an annual average T 3 K warmer than another state (but actually, in that case one should consider using the expected climate change for that region, which I think may be significantly larger than the global average depending on where you are).
Edward Greischsays
34 Ron R: “industry propaganda from wasting people’s time”
That is an insult! Standard Disclaimer: I do not now and never have received any money or anything else of value from the nuclear power industry except electricity which I pay for. I have never worked for the nuclear power industry or any of its advertisers. I do not own stock in any corporation. I have never owned stock in the nuclear power industry and I don’t even know anybody who does to my knowledge. My sole income is from my federal government retirement.
My sole motive for commenting here is that GW is dangerous, and I want to help RC.
The nuclear thread was started by 9 Geoff Beacon: “A review of the safety of Nuclear Power is being carried out by Dr Mike Weightman, the Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations, following the trouble at the Fukushima plant. Are the following points I have sent to Dr Weightman sensible or just paranoia?”
…….
“You might like also to note this recent article by Natalie Kopytko in the New Scientist of 24 May 2011. The climate change threat to nuclear power, The climate change threat to nuclear power
Yours faithfully
Geoff Beacon”
The next person who mentioned nuclear was 10 wili:
[edit–more than enough on this discussion. It goes nowhere.]
Michelesays
Let me point out a matter very important but usually ignored.
The popular climatologic Earth’s energy balance diagrams (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_energy_budget) tell us that the incoming solar radiation which reaches the ground is Ig=52%, whereof the 6% is directly reflected to space as SW, the 46% is absorbed, transformed in frequency and re-emitted as LW to space (9%) or yielded to atmosphere as sensible heat (Is=13%) and as latent heat (24%). The increase of the air temperature close the ground is caused by Is013%.
A solar panel intercept Ig=52% and totally yields it to the atmosphere as sensible heat after the use of the transformed energy. In this case the forcing to warm for the air close the ground increases by Ig/Is=400%.
It is very appalling for the installation site of the solar plant.
Walter Pearcesays
John E. Pearson@45: Thank you for that link.
Interesting to note the overarching finding 2: “The full deployment of cost-effective, energy-efficient technologies in buildings alone could eliminate the need to add to U.S. electricity generation capacity.”
The rub, of course, consisting of policy/legal/institutional not technical barriers.
First.
The installation of a solar plant cuts of the 15% of the power reflected and re-radiate to the space by the ground and the waste heat modifies from (52-15)% to 52% increasing by 52/37=141%.
Further.
If we want obtain the power Pe by a traditional thermo-electric plant having the efficiency Eth, we have to provide it the combustion power Pc=Pe/Eth all of that eventually will become waste heat added to the atmosphere.
If we use a PV plant having the efficiency Es we have to capture the incoming solar power Ps=Pe/Es and the 15/52=29% of it will result waste heat added to the atmosphere.
The thermal pollution of the PV plant will be 0.29*Pc*Eth/Es.
Assuming Eth=65% and Es=10% the thermal pollution of the PV plant would be the 189% of the thermal pollution of the traditional thermo-electric plant.
Then, where is it the propagandized advantage to use the solar panels if the Earth’s energy balance is penalized so heavily and given that, if the skeptics are right, we don’t obtain any useful effect?
MARodgersays
If the reduction in albedo caused by solar panels were relevant, I’d be up on my roof painting it white, or better still covering it in aluminium foil. What is critical is the ability of a technology to provide power without pumping loads of CO2 into the air – lifecycle power output v lifecycle emissions.
(That’s not to say we might all end up with shiny roofs as a way of holding back a portion of future global temperature increases.)
Patrick 027says
Re Michele – A typical commercially available PV panel has an efficiency of around 10 %, but can be higher (crystalline Si). Some (thin films) are closer to 5 % (but some thin films are closer to 10 % or even surpass it) – as technology matures the numbers tend to go up. …
(this paragraph from memory): Solar cells may be thought of as solid-state heat engines – the incoming solar radiation has a high brightness temperature (this is true even if the solar radiation is diffuse rather than direct – consider how hot an object would have to be to emit as much blue intensity as seen in the clear sky away from the sun, or as much visible radiation as seen even through the base of a cloud; anyway); in typical cells (there’s an idea of using ‘hot carriers’ but I won’t go into that) the radiation excites electrons into a conduction band from a valence band; the electrons and holes in each band tend to settle into two seperate (quasi-?)Fermi distributions at the cell’s temperature, with the difference between (quasi-)Fermi levels being a potential energy that is available to do work. Waste heat is given off to the cell’s crystal (or amorphous) lattice, as I understand it, and increases in the cell temperature would reduce the efficiency by increasing the temperature of the electrons and holes, which for a given population in each band, tends to bring their quasi-Fermi levels closer together, reducing the available work. But it isn’t generally necessary to actively cool a solar cell unless it is in a concentrating device. There is also required loss as the excited electrons fall back to the valence and and emit photons at a rate such that absorptivity = emissivity (at the effective temperature for a given energy, which won’t be the cell temperature) at each frequency and direction (and polarization), but the effective temperature (the temperature for an effective Fermi distribution that gives the same actual population of electrons and holes at a pair of energy levels) can be small so a solar cell can absorb more energy than it radiates – but as I understand it, if current is not being drawn from a cell, electron-hole populations would stabilize such that emission and absorption of photons (not of energy, I think) balance, with emission being at longer wavelengths (for an idealized cell; real cells have other routes to recombination). (PS For direct solar radiation that isn’t concentrated, the solid angle over which an intensity is being absorbed is less than what can be emitted; utilitizing total internal refraction to absorb radiation in thinner layers helps, as does using concentrated solar radiation). )
… anyway, the amount of energy extracted from the cell is about the same as would be extracted from some other source and used by people – anyway most isn’t converted to heat on site (some may be via wiring, etc.); so for a zero-albedo solar panel, the local effective albedo is the efficiency of the panel. Many surfaces have albedos of 10 % to 25 %; deserts may get up to around 30 %, I think. So the additional heating on site is only comparable to the amount of energy being extracted (exception: installations used where there the panels replace snow cover – this would typically be a seasonal effect – compare this to the effect of clearing roads of snow); the total additional heating is only 2 or maybe 3 or 4 or (depending on the type of cell, etc.) times the energy used. The average conventional power plants converting fuel to electricity gives off roughly 3 times the total energy that is used (except for cogeneration). And the total energy used by humans is very small; it is between the global tidal dissipation and the global geothermal flux, the later (and bigger) being less than 0.1 W/m2, which is less than a tenth of the the forcing from anthropogenic CO2. Note that rooftop installations may use waste heat for water, improving the overall efficiency.
Future improvements in efficiency would reduce the global heating effect of using solar power, and possibly in some cases allow a localized cooling effect at the plant (depending on how evapotranspiration is affected). Hypothetically a solar panel could be made to reflect the photons that are below band-gap energy. CSP or CPV power plants using mirrors can and do reflect diffuse solar radiation, and I think they have a higher efficiency of converting direct solar radiation to electrical energy. The reflected radiation would have both a local and global cooling effect.
The bottom line is that the climatological effects of solar power would not be significant on the global level.
Patrick 027says
… and of course, the so-called ‘skeptics’ are N O T right (about climate change, nor about solar energy in so far as the idea of energy payback time being too large).
EG: The power plant survived the earthquake and a 46 foot high wall of water.
BPL: Survived??? Four of the reactors have melted down so far. Obviously this is some strange new definition of “survived” I’ve never run across before.
Patrick 027says
Re my For direct solar radiation that isn’t concentrated, the solid angle over which an intensity is being absorbed is less than what can be emitted; utilitizing total internal refraction to absorb radiation in thinner layers helps, as does using concentrated solar radiation
Utilizing TIR and concentrating solar radiation do different things:
Emissivity (at the appropriate effective temperature for the electron-hole pairs) = absorptivity at a given frequency, direction (comparing absorption from and emission toward), and polarization.
At any particular point on the cell surface, the emissivity (for the effective temperature) and absorptivity (for a particular frequency and polarization) are equal for any particular direction, even if rays going in are scattered at the back surface and reflected between the front and back of the cell with repeated scattering – the distribution over which photons are absorbed from the original ray entering the cell from a direction will match the distribution of emission of photons which eventually reach the same point and exit the cell into the same direction (provided constant effective temperature within the cell – otherwise you have to integrate the product of the corresponding Planck function over and the emission weighting function over the volume to find the emitted intensity, but the emission weighting function is equal to the distribution of absorption).
For perfect antireflective treatment, 100 % of diffuse radiation on a cell is concentrated into a smaller solid angle of directions going into the material (refraction); within the material, only those rays within this solid angle (cone of acceptance) escape (and 100% do escape with perfect antireflective treatment); the rest are reflected (total internal reflection). The concentration or spreading out of radiation into solid angles of different sizes keeps the intensity (absent emission, absoroption, scattering and reflection) proportional to n^2 (n being the real component of the index of refraction) – the Planck function is also proportional to n^2, thus the Second law of thermodynamics still applies(antirefletive texturizing may break up the cone of acceptance or make it probabilistic(?) but refraction produces the same overall effect of trapping some portion of radiation while stilly obeying the second law of thermodynamics).
Radiation emitted by the cell may exit the surface in all directions, while direct solar radiation enters from a very small solid angle. For the same intensity of radiation, the population density of (excited) electrons and holes that can be sustained is increased if the absorbed radiation comes from a larger solid angle, so that a greater amount of radiation can be absorbed per unit that must be emitted for a given population density (for constant cell temperature, increasing population density will increase the effective temperatures between different energy levels by pulling the quasi-Fermi levels farther apart – PS all hell breaks loose if the quasi-Fermi levels are seperated by as much as the band-gap energy. I actually don’t know what happens, but the Planck function goes to infinity for photons of the same energy as the difference between quasi-Fermi levels).
But diffuse solar radiation has a lower brightness temperature to begin with; assuming absorptivity is independent of direction, taking the same flux of solar radiation and making it diffuse rather than direct would do nothing to cell performance (but reduces the brightness temperature of the incoming radiation, which has implications for the efficiency of conversion that can be achieved if concentrated radiation is not used).
However, concentrating direct solar radiation (or, so far as I know, using luminescent concentration – which can use diffuse solar radiation – but with some additional conversion loss before radiation reaches the cells, and I don’t think the intensity will generally be the same as that for direct solar radiation) increases the solid angle over which radiation of the same intensity and thus brightness temperature (or for luminescent concentrators, so far as I know, any large intensity and brightness temperature) enter the cell (it also increases the flux per unit area). Thus a larger population density of excited electrons and holes can be sustained, other things being equal. The conversion efficiency of the solar cell will also increase. Alternatively, if absorptivity were small in directions outside the solid angle of the direct solar radiation, that would help, but then you’d have to aim the panel at the sun more precisely than otherwise anyway.
Using a scattering reflector at the back of the cell allows some fraction of photons not absorbed over one round trip through the cell another opportunity, by taking them out of the cone of acceptance. This also increases the emissivity of the cell, but a thinner layer of absorbing material can be used, which has benifits.
Of course, radiation emitted by the cell tends to be concentrated toward the band gap energy, so having absorptivity decreased toward the band gap energy would also help – but at the cost of reducing the absorption of solar photons with the minimal useable energy (which would be, other things aside, the most efficiently used photons – if only photons at the band gap energy were used, it’s concievable that the electrons and hole would actually absorb heat from the cell, as in a heat pump).
Anyway, their are other sources of innefficiency that can be addressed, and to approach the thermodynamic limits of conversion efficiency, you need to direct radiaton of different energies to cells of different band-gap energies (either stacked cells or side-by-side or layers of luminescent concentrators…) – or else maybe have some nanostructures that can produce multiple electron-hole pairs from single photons (don’t know what the limits are for that), … etc.
Re Geoff, you might take a look at this 2009 summary as well. Though with “current” emissions in the past, we had 300% increased earthquake activities.
Climate forcing of geological and geomorphological hazards
Papers included in this issue are a reflection of new research and critical reviews presented in sessions on: climates of the past and future; climate forcing of volcanism and volcanic activity; and climate as a driver of seismic, mass-movement and tsunami hazards. Two introductory papers set the scene. In the first, McGuire summarizes evidence for periods of exceptional past climate change eliciting a dynamic response from the Earth’s crust, involving enhanced levels of potentially hazardous geological and geomorphological activity. The response, McGuire notes, is expressed through the triggering, adjustment or modulation of a range of crustal and surface processes, which include gas-hydrate destabilization, submarine and subaerial landslides, debris flows and glacial outburst floods, and volcanic and seismic activity.
Re Wili #10 writes:”Thanks for mentioning the hydrate beds, but in the letter you might make clearer how they might be destabilized by GW. I actually don’t know how likely it is that beds 500 m deep would feel much affect from warming of the surface”
Some more precise estimates…
Gas hydrates (clathrates) are a solid, ice like form of
mostly methane, which occur beneath and possibly within
[Dallimore and Collett, 1995] onshore permafrost and also
in subsea permafrost that persists in some high‐latitude
regions to water depths as great as ∼90 m. Both permafrost‐
associated gas hydrates and the shallowest part of the
deepwater marine gas hydrate system are susceptible to
GB2002
dissociation (breakdown to methane and water) under con-
ditions of a warming Arctic climate.
[20] The most recent review of the numerous published
estimates of the amount of methane sequestered in global
gas hydrate deposits converges on a range of 3 to 40 × 1015 m3
of methane [Boswell and Collett, 2011], which converts to a
range of ∼1,600 to 21,000 Pg C. This consensus range
brackets some older estimates (3000 Pg C in the work of
Buffett and Archer [2004]) and a recent estimate of 1,000 to
10,000 Pg C by Krey et al. [2009]. Based on the estimates
by Soloviev et al. [1987], Shakhova et al. [2010a] conclude
that one quarter of the Arctic ocean shelf contains 540 Pg
CH4 in gas hydrates. This yields an estimated ∼1,600 Pg C
within gas hydrates associated with subsea permafrost on the
Arctic Ocean continental shelves. It is important to note that
the formerly terrestrial sediments on these very shallow
shelves contain significant additional carbon in nonhydrate
form. Like the carbon trapped in terrestrial permafrost, this
additional carbon is subject to microbial degradation and
CO2 and CH4 production as the subsea permafrost thaws.
[21] In the deep geologic past, CH4 releases from gas
hydrates may have been triggered by, but also possibly
exacerbated, the extreme warming event at ∼55 Ma before
present [Dickens et al., 1995, 1997; Lamarque et al., 2006;
Renssen et al., 2004; Schmidt and Shindell, 2003]. In this
study we estimate a range of potential future methane
emissions from the various Arctic gas hydrate populations:
[22] 1. Subsea Permafrost: There is substantial evidence
that subsea permafrost is undergoing rapid degradation at
high northern latitudes [e.g., Rachold et al., 2007; Shakhova
et al., 2005]. The current rate of subsea permafrost degra-
dation is unknown, and acceleration in this degradation with
recent changes in sea ice cover and thus ocean temperatures
is expected, but not yet fully documented. Still, dissociation
of methane hydrate that is currently capped by or contained
within subsea permafrost is very likely occurring now [e.g.,
Shakhova et al., 2010b] and should increase as warming
affects the ocean‐atmosphere system. Methane released
from these hydrates would be emitted into shallow seas
where relatively little is likely to be oxidized before reaching
the atmosphere. Shakhova et al. [2008] speculate that 50 Pg
CH4 could be released abruptly at any time from gas hydrates
associated with subsea permafrost.
And
“Thawing of permafrost at a rate of 0.04–0.10 m yr−1
has been observed in some terrestrial upland regions
[Osterkamp, 2005], and it is shown that temperatures have
increased at depths as great as 25 to 30 m below the surface
at some locations in the Arctic during the last two decades
[Isaksen et al., 2007; Osterkamp and Jorgenson, 2006].” http://folk.uio.no/gunnarmy/paper/isaksen_gbc_2011.pdf
Re John Monro ““Venus Syndrome” here on Earth as a consequence of anthropogenic CO2 emissions continuing to increase, how accurately does this view reflect the view of other climate scientists?”
Michele @54, and several others. I can’t believe a discussion of the direct SW effects of solar energy is going on on RC. The total human energy budget is roughly one part in ten thousandth of the planetary heat budget. The forcing due to CO2 and other greenhouse gases is a couple of orders of magnitude higher than that. Panels could not create a significant global impact on climate forcing unless human energy consumption increases by roughly two orders of magnitude.
About Kelvin versus Centrigarde. I prefer the former, a 3C warming is about a one percent increase in the temperature in absolute units, which reasonably reflects the roughly 1% perturbation in the planets energy balance (forcing) caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
wilisays
Thanks, pro. Any thoughts about the likelihood of hydrates being destabilized at depths of 500+ m?
Edward Greischsays
54, 57 Michele, 59 Patrick 027 “global heating effect of using [X] power”
There is none of that. Waste heat is irrelevant to Global Warming. If CO2 is low enough, the heat quickly dissipates into the 2.7 degree Kelvin cold of deep space. If CO2 is too high, human waste heat is still irrelevant, it gets too hot on Earth.
I didn’t realize that that was what you were worried about. CO2 is worth something like 100,000 times as much as waste heat for a coal fired power plant. Check my numbers, I’m not sure how you make the equivalence. Again, I could have relieved you of that problem some time ago if I had understood what you were worried about.
2.7 degrees Kelvin is 2.7 degrees Centigrade above absolute zero. It is the temperature of the universe. Absolute zero is 273 below centigrade or 459 below Fahrenheit. We have the sun to warm us and a much larger universe to cool us. It is entirely the heat flow through the atmosphere that determines the Earth’s temperature. There is just no way that any human waste heat source could ever matter at all to GW. Waste heat is something for design engineers to consider.
Another way to look at it: Compare our waste heat to solar input. Our waste heat is so small in comparison it is nonsense to inquire further.
We are only interested in “greenhouse gasses,” the reference greenhouse gas is CO2. We can control the climate by controlling greenhouse gasses.
Edward Greischsays
61 Barton Paul Levenson : As opposed to the containment building and the reactor vessel and the fuel rods disintegrated, dumping 20 tons each of spent fuel over a 20 mile square area.
For having been hit by a 46 foot wall of water going at X mph at that point, the containment vessels did amazingly well. The tsunami was going 500 miles per hour in the deep ocean. Do you know the wave speed when it hit shore? When the relative speed is high, water hits very hard, almost like a solid. Have you ever designed anything for the Navy? They require enormous strength in the shell of anything that may be hit by a wave. So can you calculate the energy deposited on the containment building by the tsunami?
So yes, the containment building performance was awesome. And those reactors were 40 years old and ready for replacement anyway. So what did we loose? Radiation: The radiation leaked out of the containment building is still less than the natural background for that spot when averaged over a year. A single spinal CT scan gives you 600 millirem. My wife got 2 spinal CT scans this year. The average American gets 350 millirems/year. In Iran, there is a natural background of 12 rems/year. Not a decimal place error. I would not evacuate Fukushima.
64 Prokaryotes: Thanks for the URL to the downloadable paper.
“In order to have sustained anaerobic conditions in thermokarsting soils, meltwater needs to be retained in the yedoma complex.”
Are they saying that we can slow down the release of CH4 and CO2 by draining these swamps?
I see the “timescales of centuries to millennia.” Figure 4 shows additional CO2 that is similar to what we are doing.
So my question is: What do we have to do to keep these arctic CH4 sources from taking over from us? How soon do we have to stop making CO2? It looks to me like the answer is rather soon. What do we have to do to stop the melting of permafrost and methane hydrates?
Jonassays
Cold Fusion Claims
Is this the beginning of the end of the CO2 debate ?
“So my question is: What do we have to do to keep these arctic CH4 sources from taking over from us? How soon do we have to stop making CO2? It looks to me like the answer is rather soon. What do we have to do to stop the melting of permafrost and methane hydrates?”
The question is rather, what could we do to prevent PETM 2.0.? Though things are melting and maybe so irreversible with all it’s consequences. But we can change the potential, the current emission path(energy budget input), if we act at large we gain time and might be able to avert a major climate shift. Thus, it requires combined worldwide affords to artificially balance the energy budget of the biosphere. Required are revolutionary policies to transition to a carbon low economy/life-style. Which btw is a much more, enjoyable life experience, then living through a polluted environment.
Pete Dunkelbergsays
Jonas @ 71, in the unlikely event that it works, all you need is an unlimited supply of hydrogen, which would be a better energy supply if used directly.
You should do a little studying regarding the nature of traveling waves. The speed of a tsunami may be high, but the actual molecular motion is small and slow, so the rate of travel on the open ocean has little to do with destructive power. What is important is the amount of energy in the wave and the morphology of the ocean bottom near the shore and the shore itself. On land a tsunami is more like a rapid outgoing and incoming tide and is therefore more like a rapid flooding event with the rate of water flow determined mostly by the height the wave achieves as it slows down and trades shortening of wavelength for increasing wave amplitude in shallow water.
Steve
CMsays
Re: Runaway greenhouse and Venus syndrome,
I just came across this wonderfully apposite quote from a 17th-century millenarian treatise:
The Stoicks tell us, When the Sun and the Stars have drunk up the Sea, the Earth shall be burnt. A very fair prophecy: but how long will they be a-drinking?
— The Reverend Thomas Burnet, Telluris theoria sacra (The Sacred Theory of the Earth), 1691
(hat tip: S. J. Gould, Questioning the Millennium)
CMsays
Lawrence #46,
> I know that the absolute humidity can be higher in hot air,
> but why does it get dumped out so quickly?
This may not have anything to do with your desert observations, but AFAIU there can be a lot more humidity to dump out for a given temperature drop (say 5 °C) in hot air (say from 30 °C to 25 °C) than in cooler air (say from 25°C to 20°C), since specific humidity at saturation grows quasi-exponentially with temperature (cf. the Clausius-Clapeyron equation).
dhogazasays
EG:
The tsunami was going 500 miles per hour in the deep ocean. Do you know the wave speed when it hit shore?
About 50 mph. Any strong, reinforced concrete structure of sufficient size will be able to absorb a blow of that nature.
SecularAnimistsays
I am generally trying to ignore Edward Greisch’s repetitive, ill-informed pro-nuclear silliness, and even sillier and more ill-informed denigration and disparagement of renewable energy technologies.
But given the realities of the situation at Fukushima, I have to say that I find his comments about it actually offensive. They trivialize and come close to mocking the very real suffering and very grave dangers that the Fukushima disaster is imposing on a great many people in Japan.
Prokaryotes. @#63. Thanks fo that very useful reference.
Ron R.says
Edward Greisch at 11:27 PM
Some news for you. According to this article, dependent on where rad readers were placed The measured levels range from two to 1000 times normal background radiation. Most of the radiation has concentrated to the northwest of the plant which is why there is such a divergence in readings. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6032/908.full
The chart below from the site shows radiation spiking on March 15 and 16 then slowly declining when they started adding sea water to cool the plants (which sea water is now eroding the steel inside and causing suspected leaks of radiation outside the containment buildings). Note that it says “Exposure has dropped but remains 35 times above background.” http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6032/908/F1.expansion.html
Radiation from Fukushima has been detected across most of the northern hemisphere as anyone who’s been paying attention to the news knows.
The levels of radiation within the stricken reactors continues to rise. Unit 4 is in danger of collapsing. Workers are desperately trying to contain the situation. I guess it’s a good thing this fiasco didn’t happen in say, Pakistan or Mexico, which also have nuclear reactors. One hopes that the Japanese get a hold on things before things get much worse.
Edward Greisch is your pro-nuclear stance not just the whole CO2 story again. We will make the mess cheaply, some body else can pay to clean it up?
James
Patrick 027says
Re 68 Edward Greisch – I didn’t realize that that was what you were worried about. – if that was directed at me then my response to Michele must have been too unclear. Perhaps I spent too much time going through the numbers (albeit roughly).
(I used some rough comparisons in a few spots because I didn’t remember what the numbers were most recently; I said 0.1 W/m2 was less than a tenth of anthropogenic CO2 forcing; I could have said it was about 1/17 that (and also pointed out that CO2 forcing keeps going and tends to keep going upward as emissions occur, except when emissions are sufficiently low, etc.). Anyway, I recall reading the global geothermal heat flux is somewhere around 40 TW (which would be ~0.08 W/m2), I think tidal dissipation is around 4 TW; anyway, U.S. primary energy consumption is about 3 TW; if 2/3 of U.S. per capita consumption were the global average -(it isn’t, this is a projection) with 9 billion people, that would be 60 TW, which would be just over 0.1 W/m2. If the extra heating from solar power were about the same as the waste heat from conventional power plants, then that would be the global forcing – small. I mentioned solar power could in some cases have a cooling effect. However much energy is supplied from hydroelectric or wind or waves or tides, that would not tend to affect the climate energy budget, even by such a small amount as 0.1 W/m2.)
Ron R.says
Edward Greisch — 2 Jun 2011 @ 3:54 PM said:
Fukushima has not yet gone beyond natural background radiation except temporarily very close to the reactor
Fukushima Debacle Risks Chernobyl ‘Dead Zone’ as Radiation in Soil Soars
Radiation from the plant has spread over 600 square kilometers (230 square miles), according to the report
….
Soil samples showed one site with radiation from Cesium-137 exceeding 5 million becquerels per square meter about 25 kilometers to the northwest of the Fukushima plant, according to Kawata’s study. Five more sites about 30 kilometers from Dai- Ichi showed radiation exceeding 1.48 million becquerels per square meter. When asked to comment on the report today, Tokyo Electric spokesman Tetsuya Terasawa said the radiation levels are in line with those found after a nuclear bomb test, which disperses plutonium. He declined to comment further.
….
Restoring the land may be more critical in Japan than Belarus, where the population density is about 46 people per square kilometer, according to United Nations data. That’s more than seven times less than the metric for Japan, where 127.6 million people live on about 378,000 square kilometers.
But given the realities of the situation at Fukushima, I have to say that I find his comments about it actually offensive. They trivialize and come close to mocking the very real suffering and very grave dangers that the Fukushima disaster is imposing on a great many people in Japan.
Curiously I’ve found this intentionally misleading minimization and rationalizing of nuclear’s serious negative impacts true for many if not most nuclear power advocates. It betrays a disgusting sort of ‘who cares’ attitude about human (and non-human) suffering and damage to the environment. Everything seems to takes a backseat to the God of Nuclear Power for them. That’s why I call them a nuclear cult.
What is it Admiral Rickover called them, a “nuclear priesthood”.
Patrick 027says
… of course that assumes that 60 TW would be primary energy equivalent, which could, if it were all converted to electricity, just be ~ 20 TWe + any used ‘waste’ heat. Setting aside cogeneration, if this were all from solar energy, that would be 20 TW average power from solar plants, which, if they averaged 8 % efficiency and had (in the area of the panels/collectors) zero albedo (and very small amounts of emitted radiation associated with recombination) and replaced surfaces with albedos of ~ 24 %, would then have a total warming effect of 60 TW.
Edward Greischsays
81 Ron R.: “1000 times normal background radiation”
for 1 hour. I read that too. Continuing, “average 1.6 microsieverts per hour. “That’s what [the radiation] has come down to for some time now,” he says.”
That is why I said: “Averaged over a year.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6032/908/F1.expansion.html
2 microsieverts/hour = 20 nanorem/hour It takes 1 billion hours to equal 20 rem. There are 8760 hours in a year. 1 billion hours is 1,114,155. years. 20 rem won’t make you sick, especially if you have to wait a million years. Thanks for the reference. You proved my point. Remember Iranians get 12 rems/year every year.
“One point from this article is that there Are NO natural background levels of radioactive cesium or iodine. ”
So what? I drank a lot of milk in the 1950s when those bomb tests were going on in the air in Nevada. I still don’t have cancer.
“Radiation from Fukushima has been detected across most of the northern hemisphere as anyone who’s been paying attention to the news knows.” Yes, I know. We are very very good at detecting these days. That doesn’t mean there is any danger.
So be afraid of bananas already. You get more radiation from eating one banana than you are getting from your favorite phobias. But you can’t live without potassium and all potassium contains radioactive potassium40.
I invite you to invest all of YOUR money in wind and solar. You won’t be the first person to loose your shirt by doing so. Yes, please do convert YOUR town, not mine, to run on wind or solar only, and detach from the grid. The news from your town will be amusing.
83 James: “Cleanup” cost is included in the prices I gave you before.
82 Adam R.: Do you know “Grist?”
Michelesays
@ 58 – MARodger
The matter must be faced with a little more critical analysis.
You are right. It is possible to perfectly readjust the local thermal budget inserting close to the PV panels other reflecting panels (a mirror would perhaps go rather than better than a white panel but we don’t subtilize); it is done soon rather: with the same data of budget from me adopted it is enough that the surface of mirrors is the 29% of the surface of PV because the exchanges surface – space and surface – atmosphere of power post/ante stay unchanged.
I want to draw your attention to the fact that the problem of the located sensible forcing would still stay heavy.
If the mirrors are set in a place distinguished by that of the PVs we can readjust the global thermal budget but the sensible forcing of the site of installation of the PVs would stay unchanged, that is, still equal to four.
If the mirrors are installed together with the PVs the sensible forcing would pass from four to few less than three, that is so much still.
Let’s keep in mind that a greater sensitive forcing post/ante means greater daily thermal excursion and less water vapor in the air. Let me to be a little more alarmist: also with the correction due to the mirrors the site of installation would strongly be penalized as it would be pushed toward a microclimate having conditions proper of the desert-like regions.
@ 59 and others – Patrick 027
The concentration of the incoming solar power increases the specific power (W/sqm) yielded by the cells but introduce a lot of losses that penalize the specific power of the catching surface of the PV and then of a conventional PV. All that will make worse my forecasts.
@ 66 – Thomas, 68 – Greisch
You are right. The order of magnitude of the thermal pollution is very little with respect to total sun–earth–space power exchange.
Anyway, the solution remains a very irrational technical choice.
2) Footnote three references a 30-year trend in the numbers displaced WRT to this figure from emdat. Of course, there are confounding variables to sort out, but still, is this significant, statistically speaking?
81 Ron R.: “1000 times normal background radiation”
From the graph on http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6032/908/F1.expansion.html
For the first 9 days: Add up the readings and multiply by 24. You get 3696 microsieverts total = 3.696 millisieverts. Check my arithmetic. I could have made a mistake in your favor. Converting to rems, you get 369.6 millirem. One spinal CT scan is 600 millirem. For the first 9 days at Fukushima, if you had stood still at that one spot, you would have received a dose of a little over half of a spinal CT scan.
Yesterday, I was looking at the radiation in the tail, which is the long period.
So, Ron R, be very afraid of CT scans. You need to have a basis for comparison and you must do the arithmetic. Otherwise, you will be mislead by mere words. Words without the numbers and the comparison mean very little.
Greg Elliottsays
Readers wishing to confirm the science of Climate Change may wish to examine the Admiralty Charts drawn by William Bligh. The same Bligh of Bounty fame.
200+ years ago Bligh drew some of the most amazingly accurate charts ever made of the remote islands in the Pacific. Many of these areas have never been resurveyed and the charts are unchanged. Except for footnotes for GPS correction factors, they have not been adjusted for lat/long or for sea level change over 200+ years.
We spent many years sailing the Pacific in a small boat. Our boat drew 6 feet – one fathom – so we were very aware of the 1 fathom mark on Bligh’s charts. It is like the centerline on the highway. Cross over at the wrong time and you risk serious damage or death.
The amazing thing for us is that these old charts are still accurate today. The soundings do not show any measurable rise in sea level. If the charts say you will run aground in Tonga at low tide 200 years ago, you still run aground in Tonga at low tide today. If the charts say a rock in Fiji draws 4 feet at low tide 200 years ago, the rock still draws 4 feet at low tide today.
Ron R.says
Edward Greisch at 12:41 AM
No. Here’s what you said:
2 Jun 2011 @ 3:54 PM:
Fukushima has not yet gone beyond natural background radiation except temporarily very close to the reactor.
That’s been proved wrong. Will you continue to repeat that falsehood?
You: “1000 times normal background radiation”
for 1 hour. I read that too
No, that exposure was not for just one hour. It stretched over two days. Read again.
Now you say “averaged over a year”. Do you think it’s perfectly fine to be exposed to all the background radiation you’d get in a year at one time? And do you realize that this situation is ongoing and that radiation in the environment will continue to rise, that people are continuing to be exposed to unnatural levels of radiation? Do you care?
BTW, your continuing anecdotal stories about your drinking milk during the bomb tests and not getting cancer has NO scientific validity whatsoever. Zip, None, Nada.
Ron R.says
Edward Greisch at 9:00 AM said.
So, Ron R, be very afraid of CT scans. You need to have a basis for comparison and you must do the arithmetic. Otherwise, you will be mislead by mere words. Words without the numbers and the comparison mean very little
Thanks but I’ll take medical advice from the NAS before I take it from you.
“Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation May Cause Harm” “A preponderance of scientific evidence shows that even low doses of ionizing radiation, such as gamma rays and X-rays, are likely to pose some risk of adverse health effects, says a new report from the National Research Council. In living organisms, such radiation can cause DNA damage that could eventually lead to cancers. The report provides a comprehensive assessment of these risks based on a review of the scientific literature from the past 15 years. It is the seventh in a series of assessments from the Research Council called the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation.” http://www.nas.edu/gateway/foundations/jul05.html#2560
Might I suggest that since you are such a nuclear expert that you use your considerable talents to figure out a way to stop the growing disaster in Japan rather than wasting time here arguing about the glories of nuclear power? If you’re feeling particularly honorable you might even consider joining Japan’s new Skilled Veterans Corps (a.k.a. Suicide Corps). I hear TEPCO is interested.
Re Nuclear and why it’s unreliable (Beside the threat of earthquakes/tsunamis/superstorms etc)
EDF to Rely on Seaside Reactors as Drought Cuts Water Levels.
Electricite de France SA will limit planned maintenance at nuclear reactors near the English Channel and Atlantic Ocean as the driest spring in about 50 years reduces river water for cooling inland plants.
EDF, Europe’s biggest power generator, operates France’s 58 nuclear reactors that provide about three quarters of the country’s power needs. Most require river water for operations, prompting the utility and the country’s nuclear safety watchdog to step up monitoring.
Measures being taken by the utility include the “limitation of summer outages in seaside nuclear plants,” EDF said in a presentation last week. The dozen French reactors that rely on seawater for cooling include Gravelines, Penly, Paluel, Flamanville and Blayais.
EDF schedules planned refueling and maintenance sometimes years in advance to coincide with a greater need for base nuclear power during cold winter months and hot summer months. The utility was forced to reduce output at some riverside reactors during a 2003 heat wave that left 14,000 people dead.
Re 88 Michele – first, in your original two posts, it was unclear where you got the 400 % from. If a surface gets hot it will also radiate more…
(as do the energized electrons and holes, and as would the target of a concentrating device (that can be made smaller if emmissivity is lower at the lower frequencies – you could put a greenhouse around the target of concentrator – actually, solar ponds are greenhouses too) but it’s interesting to point out that this inefficiency wouldn’t necessarily be a source of heating – it depends on how much of that the radiation is absorbed/blocked by the atmosphere)
… some of which will go up to space (PS if more solar power plants are sited in relatively cloud free areas, then, depending on humidity, a greater fraction of emitted radiation could escape to space than would otherwise. Radiation emitted from (ideal) solar cells (from the PV layer, as opposed to the transparent layer on top, which will emit according to it’s temperature and optical properties in the LW part of the spectrum) will have photon energies equal to or greater than the band gap, which would (likely) be somewhere within the SW (solar-dominated) portion of the band; but water vapor has some absorption there too.) – anyway, if it is absorbed in the air, depending on how high up, it might still be somewhat dispersed from the plant.
Actually, another way solar power plants could cause warming (or cooling) is by changing the LW emissivity of the overall surface. For glass mirrors and covered-panels, I don’t think there’d be a large effect, but using an alumimum surface as a reflector for CSP could make a difference. Even with 100 % LW albedo, though, the surface would still reflect radiation emitted downward by the atmosphere, and the net effect on the upward flux above the surface will still be greater than that at the top of the atmosphere (LW emissivities – see page 92 Hartmann “Global Physical Climatology” – I think 1994). Also, surfaces aimed at the sun wouldn’t present the same area upward or overall.
Solar power plants may remove some evapotranspiration but that evapotranspiration could just occur next the plant instead. Possibly advantageous to growing crops or feed in semi-arid land.
What you say about CSP being worse (setting aside from the LW emissivity of mirrors) doesn’t make sense. Diffuse solar radiation would be reflected back up – some would be reflected/scattered back down by the clouds and air, or absorbed by the atmosphere, but consider the blue sky light would be reflected upward in clear skies while the power plant is capturing direct solar radiation. I don’t know what fraction of solar radiation reaching the surface at favorable CSP sites is typically diffuse; I think globally it might be roughly 2/5 but I could be off. You need more area of collector because you can’t use the diffuse radiation, but you need less if the conversion of direct radiation is more efficient.
Supposing 1/5 of solar radiation were diffuse, a CSP plant would leave the albedo at 20 %, which is similar to some land surfaces although perhaps lower than some deserts; if it were 30 % efficient at converting direct radiation to electricity, setting aside the emission of radiation from the hot target of concentrators, then the local effective albedo would be (20 + 80*.3) % = 44 %. If there were no diffuse radiation, this goes down to 30 %, which is still relatively high for many land surfaces.
SecularAnimistsays
Edward Greisch (#13) wrote: “The power plant survived the earthquake and a 46 foot high wall of water.”
Three of the reactors experienced “full meltdowns”, there were multiple explosions, corrosive sea water was used for emergency cooling, there is NO possibility that any of those reactors will ever operate again, the Japanese are still struggling to “stabilize” the reactors, and authorities are now questioning whether the reactors can in fact be “stabilized” within a year of the tsunami event, and the costs of dealing with even the best case situation that is now imaginable are astronomical. It is likely that TEPCO will be bankrupted and will have to be taken over by the Japanese government, which means that the Japanese taxpayers will have to absorb ALL the costs of this disaster.
What can you possibly mean by “survived”? Do you mean that burnt-out, corroded, highly radioactive, unstable and dangerous ruins are likely to “survive” at the Fukushima site for years to come?
Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced full meltdowns at three reactors in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami in March, the country’s Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters said Monday.
The nuclear group’s new evaluation, released Monday, goes further than previous statements in describing the extent of the damage caused by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11 … Reactors 1, 2 and 3 experienced a full meltdown, it said.
The plant’s owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., admitted last month that nuclear fuel rods in reactors 2 and 3 probably melted during the first week of the nuclear crisis.
It had already said fuel rods at the heart of reactor No. 1 melted almost completely in the first 16 hours after the disaster struck. The remnants of that core are now sitting in the bottom of the reactor pressure vessel at the heart of the unit and that vessel is now believed to be leaking.
Finally, human civilization is starting to get global warming events that it can FEEL.
Earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes. Something real, something hard, fast, and impossible to ignore. Increasing evidence and statistical analysis links increased seismic activity to global warming.
This alarming notion was first discussed in 1998 and is now more widely mentioned in university studies and recent publications – from the Journal of Geodynamics to National Geographic, to blogs reporting opinions of scientists (below).
Some intuitive calculation may help understanding: A cubic yard of ice weighs nearly a ton. The Antarctic ice sheet is a few miles thick. Earth adjusted to that immense weight over the millennia – now, as ice caps melt, this weight is slowly lifting..
Today the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica is quickly melting downward from the surface – dropping in altitude at nearly 16 meters per year. With an area over 5 thousand square kilometers, this glacier holds a lot of cubic meters of ice and means that a lot of weight is now getting shifted into the ocean. Similarly, the melting of glaciers in Greenland and elsewhere will trigger seismically elastic reactions that should be noted for their frequency, intensity and novel locations.
“…relative to the time period from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, Earth has been more active over the past 15 years or so.” — geophysicist Stephen S. Gao, Missouri University of Science and Technology.
This idea is consistent for our age: The Anthropocene Epoch – a geological age where humans make a significant impact. Who knew that human industrial CO2 emissions warming the atmosphere then melting the ice and then the shifting weight would provoke such a rapid and palpable reaction. Such a sudden, fast impact of global warming has so far been missing from this crisis. http://www.climatedebatedaily.org/2009/10/seismic-activity-linked-to-global-warming.html
Lawrence @ 46 I’m not familiar with the actual weather situation in your area leading to that particular flood. I do know that in the normally dry regions of the western U.S., extremely heavy rain can be triggered by an unusual incursion of moist tropical air into places where it doesn’t often get. Very moist air is also very unstable air, and can allow strong thunderstorms containing very heavy rain to focus in a small area.
Re 42 AIC – it can be useful to use the K scale for % changes in temperature in some contexts – maybe not so much the impacts of climate change – but anyway, one of the more visceral ways of communicating the relative importance of a 2 to 4 + K warming is to compare it to the difference between the preindustrial climate and the peak of the last ice age, which I think is something like 6 K, though I could be a little off. One can also consider the geographical distance that such a temperature change occurs over now – for example, find a state to the south that has an annual average T 3 K warmer than another state (but actually, in that case one should consider using the expected climate change for that region, which I think may be significantly larger than the global average depending on where you are).
34 Ron R: “industry propaganda from wasting people’s time”
That is an insult! Standard Disclaimer: I do not now and never have received any money or anything else of value from the nuclear power industry except electricity which I pay for. I have never worked for the nuclear power industry or any of its advertisers. I do not own stock in any corporation. I have never owned stock in the nuclear power industry and I don’t even know anybody who does to my knowledge. My sole income is from my federal government retirement.
My sole motive for commenting here is that GW is dangerous, and I want to help RC.
The nuclear thread was started by 9 Geoff Beacon: “A review of the safety of Nuclear Power is being carried out by Dr Mike Weightman, the Chief Inspector of Nuclear Installations, following the trouble at the Fukushima plant. Are the following points I have sent to Dr Weightman sensible or just paranoia?”
…….
“You might like also to note this recent article by Natalie Kopytko in the New Scientist of 24 May 2011. The climate change threat to nuclear power, The climate change threat to nuclear power
Yours faithfully
Geoff Beacon”
The next person who mentioned nuclear was 10 wili:
[edit–more than enough on this discussion. It goes nowhere.]
Let me point out a matter very important but usually ignored.
The popular climatologic Earth’s energy balance diagrams (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_energy_budget) tell us that the incoming solar radiation which reaches the ground is Ig=52%, whereof the 6% is directly reflected to space as SW, the 46% is absorbed, transformed in frequency and re-emitted as LW to space (9%) or yielded to atmosphere as sensible heat (Is=13%) and as latent heat (24%). The increase of the air temperature close the ground is caused by Is013%.
A solar panel intercept Ig=52% and totally yields it to the atmosphere as sensible heat after the use of the transformed energy. In this case the forcing to warm for the air close the ground increases by Ig/Is=400%.
It is very appalling for the installation site of the solar plant.
John E. Pearson@45: Thank you for that link.
Interesting to note the overarching finding 2: “The full deployment of cost-effective, energy-efficient technologies in buildings alone could eliminate the need to add to U.S. electricity generation capacity.”
The rub, of course, consisting of policy/legal/institutional not technical barriers.
Thanks, Chris.
Other points about the matter.
First.
The installation of a solar plant cuts of the 15% of the power reflected and re-radiate to the space by the ground and the waste heat modifies from (52-15)% to 52% increasing by 52/37=141%.
Further.
If we want obtain the power Pe by a traditional thermo-electric plant having the efficiency Eth, we have to provide it the combustion power Pc=Pe/Eth all of that eventually will become waste heat added to the atmosphere.
If we use a PV plant having the efficiency Es we have to capture the incoming solar power Ps=Pe/Es and the 15/52=29% of it will result waste heat added to the atmosphere.
The thermal pollution of the PV plant will be 0.29*Pc*Eth/Es.
Assuming Eth=65% and Es=10% the thermal pollution of the PV plant would be the 189% of the thermal pollution of the traditional thermo-electric plant.
Then, where is it the propagandized advantage to use the solar panels if the Earth’s energy balance is penalized so heavily and given that, if the skeptics are right, we don’t obtain any useful effect?
If the reduction in albedo caused by solar panels were relevant, I’d be up on my roof painting it white, or better still covering it in aluminium foil. What is critical is the ability of a technology to provide power without pumping loads of CO2 into the air – lifecycle power output v lifecycle emissions.
(That’s not to say we might all end up with shiny roofs as a way of holding back a portion of future global temperature increases.)
Re Michele – A typical commercially available PV panel has an efficiency of around 10 %, but can be higher (crystalline Si). Some (thin films) are closer to 5 % (but some thin films are closer to 10 % or even surpass it) – as technology matures the numbers tend to go up. …
(this paragraph from memory): Solar cells may be thought of as solid-state heat engines – the incoming solar radiation has a high brightness temperature (this is true even if the solar radiation is diffuse rather than direct – consider how hot an object would have to be to emit as much blue intensity as seen in the clear sky away from the sun, or as much visible radiation as seen even through the base of a cloud; anyway); in typical cells (there’s an idea of using ‘hot carriers’ but I won’t go into that) the radiation excites electrons into a conduction band from a valence band; the electrons and holes in each band tend to settle into two seperate (quasi-?)Fermi distributions at the cell’s temperature, with the difference between (quasi-)Fermi levels being a potential energy that is available to do work. Waste heat is given off to the cell’s crystal (or amorphous) lattice, as I understand it, and increases in the cell temperature would reduce the efficiency by increasing the temperature of the electrons and holes, which for a given population in each band, tends to bring their quasi-Fermi levels closer together, reducing the available work. But it isn’t generally necessary to actively cool a solar cell unless it is in a concentrating device. There is also required loss as the excited electrons fall back to the valence and and emit photons at a rate such that absorptivity = emissivity (at the effective temperature for a given energy, which won’t be the cell temperature) at each frequency and direction (and polarization), but the effective temperature (the temperature for an effective Fermi distribution that gives the same actual population of electrons and holes at a pair of energy levels) can be small so a solar cell can absorb more energy than it radiates – but as I understand it, if current is not being drawn from a cell, electron-hole populations would stabilize such that emission and absorption of photons (not of energy, I think) balance, with emission being at longer wavelengths (for an idealized cell; real cells have other routes to recombination). (PS For direct solar radiation that isn’t concentrated, the solid angle over which an intensity is being absorbed is less than what can be emitted; utilitizing total internal refraction to absorb radiation in thinner layers helps, as does using concentrated solar radiation). )
… anyway, the amount of energy extracted from the cell is about the same as would be extracted from some other source and used by people – anyway most isn’t converted to heat on site (some may be via wiring, etc.); so for a zero-albedo solar panel, the local effective albedo is the efficiency of the panel. Many surfaces have albedos of 10 % to 25 %; deserts may get up to around 30 %, I think. So the additional heating on site is only comparable to the amount of energy being extracted (exception: installations used where there the panels replace snow cover – this would typically be a seasonal effect – compare this to the effect of clearing roads of snow); the total additional heating is only 2 or maybe 3 or 4 or (depending on the type of cell, etc.) times the energy used. The average conventional power plants converting fuel to electricity gives off roughly 3 times the total energy that is used (except for cogeneration). And the total energy used by humans is very small; it is between the global tidal dissipation and the global geothermal flux, the later (and bigger) being less than 0.1 W/m2, which is less than a tenth of the the forcing from anthropogenic CO2. Note that rooftop installations may use waste heat for water, improving the overall efficiency.
Future improvements in efficiency would reduce the global heating effect of using solar power, and possibly in some cases allow a localized cooling effect at the plant (depending on how evapotranspiration is affected). Hypothetically a solar panel could be made to reflect the photons that are below band-gap energy. CSP or CPV power plants using mirrors can and do reflect diffuse solar radiation, and I think they have a higher efficiency of converting direct solar radiation to electrical energy. The reflected radiation would have both a local and global cooling effect.
The bottom line is that the climatological effects of solar power would not be significant on the global level.
… and of course, the so-called ‘skeptics’ are N O T right (about climate change, nor about solar energy in so far as the idea of energy payback time being too large).
EG: The power plant survived the earthquake and a 46 foot high wall of water.
BPL: Survived??? Four of the reactors have melted down so far. Obviously this is some strange new definition of “survived” I’ve never run across before.
Re my For direct solar radiation that isn’t concentrated, the solid angle over which an intensity is being absorbed is less than what can be emitted; utilitizing total internal refraction to absorb radiation in thinner layers helps, as does using concentrated solar radiation
Utilizing TIR and concentrating solar radiation do different things:
Emissivity (at the appropriate effective temperature for the electron-hole pairs) = absorptivity at a given frequency, direction (comparing absorption from and emission toward), and polarization.
At any particular point on the cell surface, the emissivity (for the effective temperature) and absorptivity (for a particular frequency and polarization) are equal for any particular direction, even if rays going in are scattered at the back surface and reflected between the front and back of the cell with repeated scattering – the distribution over which photons are absorbed from the original ray entering the cell from a direction will match the distribution of emission of photons which eventually reach the same point and exit the cell into the same direction (provided constant effective temperature within the cell – otherwise you have to integrate the product of the corresponding Planck function over and the emission weighting function over the volume to find the emitted intensity, but the emission weighting function is equal to the distribution of absorption).
For perfect antireflective treatment, 100 % of diffuse radiation on a cell is concentrated into a smaller solid angle of directions going into the material (refraction); within the material, only those rays within this solid angle (cone of acceptance) escape (and 100% do escape with perfect antireflective treatment); the rest are reflected (total internal reflection). The concentration or spreading out of radiation into solid angles of different sizes keeps the intensity (absent emission, absoroption, scattering and reflection) proportional to n^2 (n being the real component of the index of refraction) – the Planck function is also proportional to n^2, thus the Second law of thermodynamics still applies(antirefletive texturizing may break up the cone of acceptance or make it probabilistic(?) but refraction produces the same overall effect of trapping some portion of radiation while stilly obeying the second law of thermodynamics).
Radiation emitted by the cell may exit the surface in all directions, while direct solar radiation enters from a very small solid angle. For the same intensity of radiation, the population density of (excited) electrons and holes that can be sustained is increased if the absorbed radiation comes from a larger solid angle, so that a greater amount of radiation can be absorbed per unit that must be emitted for a given population density (for constant cell temperature, increasing population density will increase the effective temperatures between different energy levels by pulling the quasi-Fermi levels farther apart – PS all hell breaks loose if the quasi-Fermi levels are seperated by as much as the band-gap energy. I actually don’t know what happens, but the Planck function goes to infinity for photons of the same energy as the difference between quasi-Fermi levels).
But diffuse solar radiation has a lower brightness temperature to begin with; assuming absorptivity is independent of direction, taking the same flux of solar radiation and making it diffuse rather than direct would do nothing to cell performance (but reduces the brightness temperature of the incoming radiation, which has implications for the efficiency of conversion that can be achieved if concentrated radiation is not used).
However, concentrating direct solar radiation (or, so far as I know, using luminescent concentration – which can use diffuse solar radiation – but with some additional conversion loss before radiation reaches the cells, and I don’t think the intensity will generally be the same as that for direct solar radiation) increases the solid angle over which radiation of the same intensity and thus brightness temperature (or for luminescent concentrators, so far as I know, any large intensity and brightness temperature) enter the cell (it also increases the flux per unit area). Thus a larger population density of excited electrons and holes can be sustained, other things being equal. The conversion efficiency of the solar cell will also increase. Alternatively, if absorptivity were small in directions outside the solid angle of the direct solar radiation, that would help, but then you’d have to aim the panel at the sun more precisely than otherwise anyway.
Using a scattering reflector at the back of the cell allows some fraction of photons not absorbed over one round trip through the cell another opportunity, by taking them out of the cone of acceptance. This also increases the emissivity of the cell, but a thinner layer of absorbing material can be used, which has benifits.
Of course, radiation emitted by the cell tends to be concentrated toward the band gap energy, so having absorptivity decreased toward the band gap energy would also help – but at the cost of reducing the absorption of solar photons with the minimal useable energy (which would be, other things aside, the most efficiently used photons – if only photons at the band gap energy were used, it’s concievable that the electrons and hole would actually absorb heat from the cell, as in a heat pump).
Anyway, their are other sources of innefficiency that can be addressed, and to approach the thermodynamic limits of conversion efficiency, you need to direct radiaton of different energies to cells of different band-gap energies (either stacked cells or side-by-side or layers of luminescent concentrators…) – or else maybe have some nanostructures that can produce multiple electron-hole pairs from single photons (don’t know what the limits are for that), … etc.
Re Geoff, you might take a look at this 2009 summary as well. Though with “current” emissions in the past, we had 300% increased earthquake activities.
Climate forcing of geological and geomorphological hazards
Papers included in this issue are a reflection of new research and critical reviews presented in sessions on: climates of the past and future; climate forcing of volcanism and volcanic activity; and climate as a driver of seismic, mass-movement and tsunami hazards. Two introductory papers set the scene. In the first, McGuire summarizes evidence for periods of exceptional past climate change eliciting a dynamic response from the Earth’s crust, involving enhanced levels of potentially hazardous geological and geomorphological activity. The response, McGuire notes, is expressed through the triggering, adjustment or modulation of a range of crustal and surface processes, which include gas-hydrate destabilization, submarine and subaerial landslides, debris flows and glacial outburst floods, and volcanic and seismic activity.
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/368/1919/2311.short
Re Wili #10 writes:”Thanks for mentioning the hydrate beds, but in the letter you might make clearer how they might be destabilized by GW. I actually don’t know how likely it is that beds 500 m deep would feel much affect from warming of the surface”
Some more precise estimates…
Gas hydrates (clathrates) are a solid, ice like form of
mostly methane, which occur beneath and possibly within
[Dallimore and Collett, 1995] onshore permafrost and also
in subsea permafrost that persists in some high‐latitude
regions to water depths as great as ∼90 m. Both permafrost‐
associated gas hydrates and the shallowest part of the
deepwater marine gas hydrate system are susceptible to
GB2002
dissociation (breakdown to methane and water) under con-
ditions of a warming Arctic climate.
[20] The most recent review of the numerous published
estimates of the amount of methane sequestered in global
gas hydrate deposits converges on a range of 3 to 40 × 1015 m3
of methane [Boswell and Collett, 2011], which converts to a
range of ∼1,600 to 21,000 Pg C. This consensus range
brackets some older estimates (3000 Pg C in the work of
Buffett and Archer [2004]) and a recent estimate of 1,000 to
10,000 Pg C by Krey et al. [2009]. Based on the estimates
by Soloviev et al. [1987], Shakhova et al. [2010a] conclude
that one quarter of the Arctic ocean shelf contains 540 Pg
CH4 in gas hydrates. This yields an estimated ∼1,600 Pg C
within gas hydrates associated with subsea permafrost on the
Arctic Ocean continental shelves. It is important to note that
the formerly terrestrial sediments on these very shallow
shelves contain significant additional carbon in nonhydrate
form. Like the carbon trapped in terrestrial permafrost, this
additional carbon is subject to microbial degradation and
CO2 and CH4 production as the subsea permafrost thaws.
[21] In the deep geologic past, CH4 releases from gas
hydrates may have been triggered by, but also possibly
exacerbated, the extreme warming event at ∼55 Ma before
present [Dickens et al., 1995, 1997; Lamarque et al., 2006;
Renssen et al., 2004; Schmidt and Shindell, 2003]. In this
study we estimate a range of potential future methane
emissions from the various Arctic gas hydrate populations:
[22] 1. Subsea Permafrost: There is substantial evidence
that subsea permafrost is undergoing rapid degradation at
high northern latitudes [e.g., Rachold et al., 2007; Shakhova
et al., 2005]. The current rate of subsea permafrost degra-
dation is unknown, and acceleration in this degradation with
recent changes in sea ice cover and thus ocean temperatures
is expected, but not yet fully documented. Still, dissociation
of methane hydrate that is currently capped by or contained
within subsea permafrost is very likely occurring now [e.g.,
Shakhova et al., 2010b] and should increase as warming
affects the ocean‐atmosphere system. Methane released
from these hydrates would be emitted into shallow seas
where relatively little is likely to be oxidized before reaching
the atmosphere. Shakhova et al. [2008] speculate that 50 Pg
CH4 could be released abruptly at any time from gas hydrates
associated with subsea permafrost.
And
“Thawing of permafrost at a rate of 0.04–0.10 m yr−1
has been observed in some terrestrial upland regions
[Osterkamp, 2005], and it is shown that temperatures have
increased at depths as great as 25 to 30 m below the surface
at some locations in the Arctic during the last two decades
[Isaksen et al., 2007; Osterkamp and Jorgenson, 2006].” http://folk.uio.no/gunnarmy/paper/isaksen_gbc_2011.pdf
Re John Monro ““Venus Syndrome” here on Earth as a consequence of anthropogenic CO2 emissions continuing to increase, how accurately does this view reflect the view of other climate scientists?”
For example, Stephen Hawking warning about the worst case scenario http://climateprogress.net/blog/climate-science/32-videos/41-hawking-sagan.html
Michele @54, and several others. I can’t believe a discussion of the direct SW effects of solar energy is going on on RC. The total human energy budget is roughly one part in ten thousandth of the planetary heat budget. The forcing due to CO2 and other greenhouse gases is a couple of orders of magnitude higher than that. Panels could not create a significant global impact on climate forcing unless human energy consumption increases by roughly two orders of magnitude.
About Kelvin versus Centrigarde. I prefer the former, a 3C warming is about a one percent increase in the temperature in absolute units, which reasonably reflects the roughly 1% perturbation in the planets energy balance (forcing) caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
Thanks, pro. Any thoughts about the likelihood of hydrates being destabilized at depths of 500+ m?
54, 57 Michele, 59 Patrick 027 “global heating effect of using [X] power”
There is none of that. Waste heat is irrelevant to Global Warming. If CO2 is low enough, the heat quickly dissipates into the 2.7 degree Kelvin cold of deep space. If CO2 is too high, human waste heat is still irrelevant, it gets too hot on Earth.
I didn’t realize that that was what you were worried about. CO2 is worth something like 100,000 times as much as waste heat for a coal fired power plant. Check my numbers, I’m not sure how you make the equivalence. Again, I could have relieved you of that problem some time ago if I had understood what you were worried about.
2.7 degrees Kelvin is 2.7 degrees Centigrade above absolute zero. It is the temperature of the universe. Absolute zero is 273 below centigrade or 459 below Fahrenheit. We have the sun to warm us and a much larger universe to cool us. It is entirely the heat flow through the atmosphere that determines the Earth’s temperature. There is just no way that any human waste heat source could ever matter at all to GW. Waste heat is something for design engineers to consider.
Another way to look at it: Compare our waste heat to solar input. Our waste heat is so small in comparison it is nonsense to inquire further.
We are only interested in “greenhouse gasses,” the reference greenhouse gas is CO2. We can control the climate by controlling greenhouse gasses.
61 Barton Paul Levenson : As opposed to the containment building and the reactor vessel and the fuel rods disintegrated, dumping 20 tons each of spent fuel over a 20 mile square area.
For having been hit by a 46 foot wall of water going at X mph at that point, the containment vessels did amazingly well. The tsunami was going 500 miles per hour in the deep ocean. Do you know the wave speed when it hit shore? When the relative speed is high, water hits very hard, almost like a solid. Have you ever designed anything for the Navy? They require enormous strength in the shell of anything that may be hit by a wave. So can you calculate the energy deposited on the containment building by the tsunami?
So yes, the containment building performance was awesome. And those reactors were 40 years old and ready for replacement anyway. So what did we loose? Radiation: The radiation leaked out of the containment building is still less than the natural background for that spot when averaged over a year. A single spinal CT scan gives you 600 millirem. My wife got 2 spinal CT scans this year. The average American gets 350 millirems/year. In Iran, there is a natural background of 12 rems/year. Not a decimal place error. I would not evacuate Fukushima.
Background radiation references:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation
http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/publications/2000_1.html
[United Nations] UNSCEAR 2000 REPORT
64 Prokaryotes: Thanks for the URL to the downloadable paper.
“In order to have sustained anaerobic conditions in thermokarsting soils, meltwater needs to be retained in the yedoma complex.”
Are they saying that we can slow down the release of CH4 and CO2 by draining these swamps?
I see the “timescales of centuries to millennia.” Figure 4 shows additional CO2 that is similar to what we are doing.
So my question is: What do we have to do to keep these arctic CH4 sources from taking over from us? How soon do we have to stop making CO2? It looks to me like the answer is rather soon. What do we have to do to stop the melting of permafrost and methane hydrates?
Cold Fusion Claims
Is this the beginning of the end of the CO2 debate ?
http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=497&cpage=4#comments
http://nickelenergy.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/chief-scientist-at-nasa-langley-acknowledges-andrea-rossi-e-cat/
“So my question is: What do we have to do to keep these arctic CH4 sources from taking over from us? How soon do we have to stop making CO2? It looks to me like the answer is rather soon. What do we have to do to stop the melting of permafrost and methane hydrates?”
The question is rather, what could we do to prevent PETM 2.0.? Though things are melting and maybe so irreversible with all it’s consequences. But we can change the potential, the current emission path(energy budget input), if we act at large we gain time and might be able to avert a major climate shift. Thus, it requires combined worldwide affords to artificially balance the energy budget of the biosphere. Required are revolutionary policies to transition to a carbon low economy/life-style. Which btw is a much more, enjoyable life experience, then living through a polluted environment.
Jonas @ 71, in the unlikely event that it works, all you need is an unlimited supply of hydrogen, which would be a better energy supply if used directly.
Arnie Gundersen podcast about the Fukushima nuclear disaster:
Exclusive Arnie Gundersen Interview: The Dangers of Fukushima Are Worse and Longer-lived Than We Think
Friday, June 3, 2011, 3:54 pm
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/exclusive-arnie-gundersen-interview-dangers-fukushima-are-worse-and-longer-lived-we-think/58689
Edward Greisch:
You should do a little studying regarding the nature of traveling waves. The speed of a tsunami may be high, but the actual molecular motion is small and slow, so the rate of travel on the open ocean has little to do with destructive power. What is important is the amount of energy in the wave and the morphology of the ocean bottom near the shore and the shore itself. On land a tsunami is more like a rapid outgoing and incoming tide and is therefore more like a rapid flooding event with the rate of water flow determined mostly by the height the wave achieves as it slows down and trades shortening of wavelength for increasing wave amplitude in shallow water.
Steve
Re: Runaway greenhouse and Venus syndrome,
I just came across this wonderfully apposite quote from a 17th-century millenarian treatise:
(hat tip: S. J. Gould, Questioning the Millennium)
Lawrence #46,
> I know that the absolute humidity can be higher in hot air,
> but why does it get dumped out so quickly?
This may not have anything to do with your desert observations, but AFAIU there can be a lot more humidity to dump out for a given temperature drop (say 5 °C) in hot air (say from 30 °C to 25 °C) than in cooler air (say from 25°C to 20°C), since specific humidity at saturation grows quasi-exponentially with temperature (cf. the Clausius-Clapeyron equation).
EG:
About 50 mph. Any strong, reinforced concrete structure of sufficient size will be able to absorb a blow of that nature.
I am generally trying to ignore Edward Greisch’s repetitive, ill-informed pro-nuclear silliness, and even sillier and more ill-informed denigration and disparagement of renewable energy technologies.
But given the realities of the situation at Fukushima, I have to say that I find his comments about it actually offensive. They trivialize and come close to mocking the very real suffering and very grave dangers that the Fukushima disaster is imposing on a great many people in Japan.
http://www.businessinsider.com/fukushima-radiation-record-levels-2011-6
Prokaryotes. @#63. Thanks fo that very useful reference.
Edward Greisch at 11:27 PM
Some news for you. According to this article, dependent on where rad readers were placed The measured levels range from two to 1000 times normal background radiation. Most of the radiation has concentrated to the northwest of the plant which is why there is such a divergence in readings.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6032/908.full
The chart below from the site shows radiation spiking on March 15 and 16 then slowly declining when they started adding sea water to cool the plants (which sea water is now eroding the steel inside and causing suspected leaks of radiation outside the containment buildings). Note that it says “Exposure has dropped but remains 35 times above background.”
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6032/908/F1.expansion.html
You can compare the above chart to these.
http://fleep.com/earthquake/
Then we learn that radiation readings were underestimated.
http://enenews.com/vast-underestimation-of-radiation-levels-by-japan-govt-blames-caluclation-errors
Article comparing background and Fukushima radiation levels.
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2011/03/comparing-japans-radiation-release-to.html
One point from this article is that there Are NO natural background levels of radioactive cesium or iodine.
http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/docs/source-management/csfinallongtakeshi.pdf
Above legal levels of radiation have been detected in four prefectures around and including south of Tokyo which itself is 135 miles southwest of Fukushima.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g9aovzVPAKenPs04KbQUVWRvtECw?docId=CNG.078f707aa6b4c476782f62e5539ecb3e.4e1
Radiation from Fukushima has been detected across most of the northern hemisphere as anyone who’s been paying attention to the news knows.
The levels of radiation within the stricken reactors continues to rise. Unit 4 is in danger of collapsing. Workers are desperately trying to contain the situation. I guess it’s a good thing this fiasco didn’t happen in say, Pakistan or Mexico, which also have nuclear reactors. One hopes that the Japanese get a hold on things before things get much worse.
http://gamutnews.com/20110605/15760/video-record-radiation-levels-at-fukushima.html
Nuclear power is expensive and uninsurable:
http://www.grist.org/nuclear/2011-06-04-nuclear-power-is-expensive-and-uninsurable
Edward Greisch is your pro-nuclear stance not just the whole CO2 story again. We will make the mess cheaply, some body else can pay to clean it up?
James
Re 68 Edward Greisch – I didn’t realize that that was what you were worried about. – if that was directed at me then my response to Michele must have been too unclear. Perhaps I spent too much time going through the numbers (albeit roughly).
(I used some rough comparisons in a few spots because I didn’t remember what the numbers were most recently; I said 0.1 W/m2 was less than a tenth of anthropogenic CO2 forcing; I could have said it was about 1/17 that (and also pointed out that CO2 forcing keeps going and tends to keep going upward as emissions occur, except when emissions are sufficiently low, etc.). Anyway, I recall reading the global geothermal heat flux is somewhere around 40 TW (which would be ~0.08 W/m2), I think tidal dissipation is around 4 TW; anyway, U.S. primary energy consumption is about 3 TW; if 2/3 of U.S. per capita consumption were the global average -(it isn’t, this is a projection) with 9 billion people, that would be 60 TW, which would be just over 0.1 W/m2. If the extra heating from solar power were about the same as the waste heat from conventional power plants, then that would be the global forcing – small. I mentioned solar power could in some cases have a cooling effect. However much energy is supplied from hydroelectric or wind or waves or tides, that would not tend to affect the climate energy budget, even by such a small amount as 0.1 W/m2.)
Edward Greisch — 2 Jun 2011 @ 3:54 PM said:
Fukushima has not yet gone beyond natural background radiation except temporarily very close to the reactor
Fukushima Debacle Risks Chernobyl ‘Dead Zone’ as Radiation in Soil Soars
Radiation from the plant has spread over 600 square kilometers (230 square miles), according to the report
….
Soil samples showed one site with radiation from Cesium-137 exceeding 5 million becquerels per square meter about 25 kilometers to the northwest of the Fukushima plant, according to Kawata’s study. Five more sites about 30 kilometers from Dai- Ichi showed radiation exceeding 1.48 million becquerels per square meter. When asked to comment on the report today, Tokyo Electric spokesman Tetsuya Terasawa said the radiation levels are in line with those found after a nuclear bomb test, which disperses plutonium. He declined to comment further.
….
Restoring the land may be more critical in Japan than Belarus, where the population density is about 46 people per square kilometer, according to United Nations data. That’s more than seven times less than the metric for Japan, where 127.6 million people live on about 378,000 square kilometers.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-30/japan-risks-chernobyl-like-dead-zone-as-fukushima-soil-radiation-soars.html
SecularAnimist — 5 Jun 2011 @ 2:34 PM
But given the realities of the situation at Fukushima, I have to say that I find his comments about it actually offensive. They trivialize and come close to mocking the very real suffering and very grave dangers that the Fukushima disaster is imposing on a great many people in Japan.
Curiously I’ve found this intentionally misleading minimization and rationalizing of nuclear’s serious negative impacts true for many if not most nuclear power advocates. It betrays a disgusting sort of ‘who cares’ attitude about human (and non-human) suffering and damage to the environment. Everything seems to takes a backseat to the God of Nuclear Power for them. That’s why I call them a nuclear cult.
What is it Admiral Rickover called them, a “nuclear priesthood”.
… of course that assumes that 60 TW would be primary energy equivalent, which could, if it were all converted to electricity, just be ~ 20 TWe + any used ‘waste’ heat. Setting aside cogeneration, if this were all from solar energy, that would be 20 TW average power from solar plants, which, if they averaged 8 % efficiency and had (in the area of the panels/collectors) zero albedo (and very small amounts of emitted radiation associated with recombination) and replaced surfaces with albedos of ~ 24 %, would then have a total warming effect of 60 TW.
81 Ron R.: “1000 times normal background radiation”
for 1 hour. I read that too. Continuing, “average 1.6 microsieverts per hour. “That’s what [the radiation] has come down to for some time now,” he says.”
That is why I said: “Averaged over a year.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6032/908/F1.expansion.html
2 microsieverts/hour = 20 nanorem/hour It takes 1 billion hours to equal 20 rem. There are 8760 hours in a year. 1 billion hours is 1,114,155. years. 20 rem won’t make you sick, especially if you have to wait a million years. Thanks for the reference. You proved my point. Remember Iranians get 12 rems/year every year.
“One point from this article is that there Are NO natural background levels of radioactive cesium or iodine. ”
So what? I drank a lot of milk in the 1950s when those bomb tests were going on in the air in Nevada. I still don’t have cancer.
“Radiation from Fukushima has been detected across most of the northern hemisphere as anyone who’s been paying attention to the news knows.” Yes, I know. We are very very good at detecting these days. That doesn’t mean there is any danger.
So be afraid of bananas already. You get more radiation from eating one banana than you are getting from your favorite phobias. But you can’t live without potassium and all potassium contains radioactive potassium40.
I invite you to invest all of YOUR money in wind and solar. You won’t be the first person to loose your shirt by doing so. Yes, please do convert YOUR town, not mine, to run on wind or solar only, and detach from the grid. The news from your town will be amusing.
83 James: “Cleanup” cost is included in the prices I gave you before.
82 Adam R.: Do you know “Grist?”
@ 58 – MARodger
The matter must be faced with a little more critical analysis.
You are right. It is possible to perfectly readjust the local thermal budget inserting close to the PV panels other reflecting panels (a mirror would perhaps go rather than better than a white panel but we don’t subtilize); it is done soon rather: with the same data of budget from me adopted it is enough that the surface of mirrors is the 29% of the surface of PV because the exchanges surface – space and surface – atmosphere of power post/ante stay unchanged.
I want to draw your attention to the fact that the problem of the located sensible forcing would still stay heavy.
If the mirrors are set in a place distinguished by that of the PVs we can readjust the global thermal budget but the sensible forcing of the site of installation of the PVs would stay unchanged, that is, still equal to four.
If the mirrors are installed together with the PVs the sensible forcing would pass from four to few less than three, that is so much still.
Let’s keep in mind that a greater sensitive forcing post/ante means greater daily thermal excursion and less water vapor in the air. Let me to be a little more alarmist: also with the correction due to the mirrors the site of installation would strongly be penalized as it would be pushed toward a microclimate having conditions proper of the desert-like regions.
@ 59 and others – Patrick 027
The concentration of the incoming solar power increases the specific power (W/sqm) yielded by the cells but introduce a lot of losses that penalize the specific power of the catching surface of the PV and then of a conventional PV. All that will make worse my forecasts.
@ 66 – Thomas, 68 – Greisch
You are right. The order of magnitude of the thermal pollution is very little with respect to total sun–earth–space power exchange.
Anyway, the solution remains a very irrational technical choice.
Some interesting data.
1) A new report on ‘disaster refugees’ in 2009 and 2010 documents tens of millions displaced by flooding, drought (and of course, earthquake.)
http://tinyurl.com/internaldisplacementreport2011
2) Footnote three references a 30-year trend in the numbers displaced WRT to this figure from emdat. Of course, there are confounding variables to sort out, but still, is this significant, statistically speaking?
http://www.emdat.be/sites/default/files/Trends/natural/world_1900_2010/2c.pdf
81 Ron R.: “1000 times normal background radiation”
From the graph on
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6032/908/F1.expansion.html
For the first 9 days: Add up the readings and multiply by 24. You get 3696 microsieverts total = 3.696 millisieverts. Check my arithmetic. I could have made a mistake in your favor. Converting to rems, you get 369.6 millirem. One spinal CT scan is 600 millirem. For the first 9 days at Fukushima, if you had stood still at that one spot, you would have received a dose of a little over half of a spinal CT scan.
Yesterday, I was looking at the radiation in the tail, which is the long period.
So, Ron R, be very afraid of CT scans. You need to have a basis for comparison and you must do the arithmetic. Otherwise, you will be mislead by mere words. Words without the numbers and the comparison mean very little.
Readers wishing to confirm the science of Climate Change may wish to examine the Admiralty Charts drawn by William Bligh. The same Bligh of Bounty fame.
200+ years ago Bligh drew some of the most amazingly accurate charts ever made of the remote islands in the Pacific. Many of these areas have never been resurveyed and the charts are unchanged. Except for footnotes for GPS correction factors, they have not been adjusted for lat/long or for sea level change over 200+ years.
We spent many years sailing the Pacific in a small boat. Our boat drew 6 feet – one fathom – so we were very aware of the 1 fathom mark on Bligh’s charts. It is like the centerline on the highway. Cross over at the wrong time and you risk serious damage or death.
The amazing thing for us is that these old charts are still accurate today. The soundings do not show any measurable rise in sea level. If the charts say you will run aground in Tonga at low tide 200 years ago, you still run aground in Tonga at low tide today. If the charts say a rock in Fiji draws 4 feet at low tide 200 years ago, the rock still draws 4 feet at low tide today.
Edward Greisch at 12:41 AM
No. Here’s what you said:
2 Jun 2011 @ 3:54 PM:
Fukushima has not yet gone beyond natural background radiation except temporarily very close to the reactor.
That’s been proved wrong. Will you continue to repeat that falsehood?
You: “1000 times normal background radiation”
for 1 hour. I read that too
No, that exposure was not for just one hour. It stretched over two days. Read again.
Now you say “averaged over a year”. Do you think it’s perfectly fine to be exposed to all the background radiation you’d get in a year at one time? And do you realize that this situation is ongoing and that radiation in the environment will continue to rise, that people are continuing to be exposed to unnatural levels of radiation? Do you care?
BTW, your continuing anecdotal stories about your drinking milk during the bomb tests and not getting cancer has NO scientific validity whatsoever. Zip, None, Nada.
Edward Greisch at 9:00 AM said.
So, Ron R, be very afraid of CT scans. You need to have a basis for comparison and you must do the arithmetic. Otherwise, you will be mislead by mere words. Words without the numbers and the comparison mean very little
Thanks but I’ll take medical advice from the NAS before I take it from you.
“Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation May Cause Harm” “A preponderance of scientific evidence shows that even low doses of ionizing radiation, such as gamma rays and X-rays, are likely to pose some risk of adverse health effects, says a new report from the National Research Council. In living organisms, such radiation can cause DNA damage that could eventually lead to cancers. The report provides a comprehensive assessment of these risks based on a review of the scientific literature from the past 15 years. It is the seventh in a series of assessments from the Research Council called the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation.”
http://www.nas.edu/gateway/foundations/jul05.html#2560
Might I suggest that since you are such a nuclear expert that you use your considerable talents to figure out a way to stop the growing disaster in Japan rather than wasting time here arguing about the glories of nuclear power? If you’re feeling particularly honorable you might even consider joining Japan’s new Skilled Veterans Corps (a.k.a. Suicide Corps). I hear TEPCO is interested.
http://www.google.com/url?q=http://articles.cnn.com/2011-05-31/world/japan.nuclear.suicide_1_nuclear-plant-seniors-group-nuclear-crisis%3F_s%3DPM:WORLD&sa=U&ei=IAjtTaTJGYOWsgOi2LGDDg&ved=0CB4QFjAB&usg=AFQjCNFfHLsTrgx6eyGw-UPDaUqsKT0mOw
Re Nuclear and why it’s unreliable (Beside the threat of earthquakes/tsunamis/superstorms etc)
EDF to Rely on Seaside Reactors as Drought Cuts Water Levels.
Electricite de France SA will limit planned maintenance at nuclear reactors near the English Channel and Atlantic Ocean as the driest spring in about 50 years reduces river water for cooling inland plants.
EDF, Europe’s biggest power generator, operates France’s 58 nuclear reactors that provide about three quarters of the country’s power needs. Most require river water for operations, prompting the utility and the country’s nuclear safety watchdog to step up monitoring.
Measures being taken by the utility include the “limitation of summer outages in seaside nuclear plants,” EDF said in a presentation last week. The dozen French reactors that rely on seawater for cooling include Gravelines, Penly, Paluel, Flamanville and Blayais.
EDF schedules planned refueling and maintenance sometimes years in advance to coincide with a greater need for base nuclear power during cold winter months and hot summer months. The utility was forced to reduce output at some riverside reactors during a 2003 heat wave that left 14,000 people dead.
“We have to pay attention to reactor operations. A decline in water flow and increase in temperatures have an impact on cooling,” French Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko- Morizet said at a news conference today. “If the water flow becomes too low, a reactor will be halted.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-16/edf-to-rely-on-seaside-reactors-as-drought-cuts-water-levels-1-.html
Re 88 Michele – first, in your original two posts, it was unclear where you got the 400 % from. If a surface gets hot it will also radiate more…
(as do the energized electrons and holes, and as would the target of a concentrating device (that can be made smaller if emmissivity is lower at the lower frequencies – you could put a greenhouse around the target of concentrator – actually, solar ponds are greenhouses too) but it’s interesting to point out that this inefficiency wouldn’t necessarily be a source of heating – it depends on how much of that the radiation is absorbed/blocked by the atmosphere)
… some of which will go up to space (PS if more solar power plants are sited in relatively cloud free areas, then, depending on humidity, a greater fraction of emitted radiation could escape to space than would otherwise. Radiation emitted from (ideal) solar cells (from the PV layer, as opposed to the transparent layer on top, which will emit according to it’s temperature and optical properties in the LW part of the spectrum) will have photon energies equal to or greater than the band gap, which would (likely) be somewhere within the SW (solar-dominated) portion of the band; but water vapor has some absorption there too.) – anyway, if it is absorbed in the air, depending on how high up, it might still be somewhat dispersed from the plant.
Actually, another way solar power plants could cause warming (or cooling) is by changing the LW emissivity of the overall surface. For glass mirrors and covered-panels, I don’t think there’d be a large effect, but using an alumimum surface as a reflector for CSP could make a difference. Even with 100 % LW albedo, though, the surface would still reflect radiation emitted downward by the atmosphere, and the net effect on the upward flux above the surface will still be greater than that at the top of the atmosphere (LW emissivities – see page 92 Hartmann “Global Physical Climatology” – I think 1994). Also, surfaces aimed at the sun wouldn’t present the same area upward or overall.
Solar power plants may remove some evapotranspiration but that evapotranspiration could just occur next the plant instead. Possibly advantageous to growing crops or feed in semi-arid land.
What you say about CSP being worse (setting aside from the LW emissivity of mirrors) doesn’t make sense. Diffuse solar radiation would be reflected back up – some would be reflected/scattered back down by the clouds and air, or absorbed by the atmosphere, but consider the blue sky light would be reflected upward in clear skies while the power plant is capturing direct solar radiation. I don’t know what fraction of solar radiation reaching the surface at favorable CSP sites is typically diffuse; I think globally it might be roughly 2/5 but I could be off. You need more area of collector because you can’t use the diffuse radiation, but you need less if the conversion of direct radiation is more efficient.
Supposing 1/5 of solar radiation were diffuse, a CSP plant would leave the albedo at 20 %, which is similar to some land surfaces although perhaps lower than some deserts; if it were 30 % efficient at converting direct radiation to electricity, setting aside the emission of radiation from the hot target of concentrators, then the local effective albedo would be (20 + 80*.3) % = 44 %. If there were no diffuse radiation, this goes down to 30 %, which is still relatively high for many land surfaces.
Edward Greisch (#13) wrote: “The power plant survived the earthquake and a 46 foot high wall of water.”
Three of the reactors experienced “full meltdowns”, there were multiple explosions, corrosive sea water was used for emergency cooling, there is NO possibility that any of those reactors will ever operate again, the Japanese are still struggling to “stabilize” the reactors, and authorities are now questioning whether the reactors can in fact be “stabilized” within a year of the tsunami event, and the costs of dealing with even the best case situation that is now imaginable are astronomical. It is likely that TEPCO will be bankrupted and will have to be taken over by the Japanese government, which means that the Japanese taxpayers will have to absorb ALL the costs of this disaster.
What can you possibly mean by “survived”? Do you mean that burnt-out, corroded, highly radioactive, unstable and dangerous ruins are likely to “survive” at the Fukushima site for years to come?
From CNN today:
For Greg Elliott: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818110001013 (more about surface area than depth, but relevant)
Why do we correct for UHI?
If it is really hotter downtown, what do we care if it comes from blacktop?
Why not adjust be distributing our temperature sensors based on urban as a percent of total land area?
Just wondering.
Seismic activity linked to global warming
Finally, human civilization is starting to get global warming events that it can FEEL.
Earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes. Something real, something hard, fast, and impossible to ignore. Increasing evidence and statistical analysis links increased seismic activity to global warming.
This alarming notion was first discussed in 1998 and is now more widely mentioned in university studies and recent publications – from the Journal of Geodynamics to National Geographic, to blogs reporting opinions of scientists (below).
Some intuitive calculation may help understanding: A cubic yard of ice weighs nearly a ton. The Antarctic ice sheet is a few miles thick. Earth adjusted to that immense weight over the millennia – now, as ice caps melt, this weight is slowly lifting..
Today the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica is quickly melting downward from the surface – dropping in altitude at nearly 16 meters per year. With an area over 5 thousand square kilometers, this glacier holds a lot of cubic meters of ice and means that a lot of weight is now getting shifted into the ocean. Similarly, the melting of glaciers in Greenland and elsewhere will trigger seismically elastic reactions that should be noted for their frequency, intensity and novel locations.
“…relative to the time period from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, Earth has been more active over the past 15 years or so.” — geophysicist Stephen S. Gao, Missouri University of Science and Technology.
This idea is consistent for our age: The Anthropocene Epoch – a geological age where humans make a significant impact. Who knew that human industrial CO2 emissions warming the atmosphere then melting the ice and then the shifting weight would provoke such a rapid and palpable reaction. Such a sudden, fast impact of global warming has so far been missing from this crisis.
http://www.climatedebatedaily.org/2009/10/seismic-activity-linked-to-global-warming.html