Happy New Year, and happy new open thread.
As per usual, nuclear energy is off-topic – it’s not that it’s uninteresting, but it ends up dominating conversation to the total exclusion of everything else and just becomes repetitive and dull. Recent excursions on this topic shows what happens when we relax the moderation, so back to being strict about this. If you want to discuss this, please go somewhere else.
Chuck Hughes:
Following a recent drought, there was a mass die-off of pinyon pine (Pinus edulis) across the southwestern US during 2002-2003 that was more widespread and severe than one after a comparable drought in the 1950s. Multiple peer-reviewed publications have implicated AGW in the scale of the recent die-off, with Breshears et al. (2005) in PNAS perhaps the best that’s accessible to most RC readers. The conclusion was that a period of reduced precipitation between 2000-2003 was no worse than that between 1953-1956, but the recent tree mortality was greater because temperatures were higher; also that “cessation of drought conditions may be insufficient for reestablishment of P. edulis and associated plant species”.
Edward Greisch wrote: “And show us your diploma.”
Yes, we all know that you like to boast about your “diplomas” — as though those boasts somehow legitimize your repeated false statements about today’s solar, wind, storage and grid technologies.
Your engineering “diploma” does not make your false statements true. Nor does it make your childish, belligerent insults and name-calling any less boorish.
> Carrington events/solar flares have nothing to do with EMP.
EG, please, Google your opinions before posting them.
It would save everyone much recreational typing.
Pasting your sentence into Scholar search, from the first page:
http://www.evaluationengineering.com/2015/09/24/coping-with-extreme-solar-storms/
For engineers, by engineers. You could read a bit.
EG 292: Look who is making the pro-renewable energy statements. They are not engineers, nor are they scientists.
BPL: I have a degree in physics.
alan 294: You claim Malthus was a bad guy who had a bad influence, and to prove this you quote… Friedrich Engels? I hate to tell you this, but the influence of Marxism on human history has not been all that benign, either.
alan 300: China’s one-child policy was a late comer, being introduced AFTER China’s big fertility decline from ~6 to under 3. That decline came as a result of greatly improved general conditions after the revolution, between 1947 and the mid-70s (about the time that one-child was introduced).
BPL: You seem to be skipping over the famine that followed Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” and killed something on the order of 30 million people. So you like Engels, you like Mao, but you find Malthus detestable. Let me guess… you like the labor theory of value and dialectical materialism, too.
#293, Killian–Thanks for the response. I am not persuaded, but I am interested, and will continue to listen to your ideas.
Speaking of perceived “gigantic demographic juggernauts”, even India is making great progress, with fertility at 2.5 and falling. That’s still over replacement, but only slightly. As they develop, they will reach replacement and sub-replacement.
The big problem is still selected areas of sub-Saharan Africa.
Comment by alan2102 — 17 Jan 2016 @
I’m going to go out on a bit of a limb here… regardless of our admirable progress on fertility rates, the population is STILL increasing. Carrying capacity is debatable based on a variety of factors, but for the sake of argument, lets assume that by 2050 population has leveled off. There will be massive crop failure, resource depletion along with steadily rising temperatures and sea levels. When you take into account the potential environmental impacts of Climate Change and it’s rate of progression, I don’t think fertility rates matter all that much. You have physical realities to contend with that your assessment doesn’t seem to take into account.
Add another China and 1/2 to what we have now and let’s see what happens. I’ll bet the ranch that Mother Earth will have already begun chipping away at the population. The same goes for CO2 levels. We’re not going to bargain our way out of this by promising to do better.
What are all these refugees coming from North Africa going to do? Where are they going to go? We already have a problem. 35 years from today @ 9 billion people? I don’t see it happening.
“The greatest shortcoming of Al Bartlett is his denial of and/or inability to comprehend modern demographic trends.” — Me
Comment by alan2102 — 17 Jan 2016 @
A “trend” is NOT a final result. Numbers matter.
Your turn…
Killian,
Sustainable agriculture would be great but it doesn’t tell us how to run sustainable societies.
#307 Kevin McKinney said #293, Killian–Thanks for the response. I am not persuaded, but I am interested, and will continue to listen to your ideas.
Be persuaded. Since you are with CCL, let’s talk off-list. I have an idea that makes Fee and Dividend worthwhile, i.e. more than just kicking the can and making lattes via electric power. Have talked to CCL personnel about it before, but they couldn’t grasp it, as well as being too thin-skinned. Why do people always get emotionally attached to their politics?
#309 Mike Roberts said Killian,
Sustainable agriculture would be great but it doesn’t tell us how to run sustainable societies.
Who said it did? To clarify: Sustainable societies tell us how to run sustainable societies. If I could figure out how to link an image here, I could show you how.
Help?
BPL, at the risk of making a pro-hominem: you restore my faith in humanity.
300 alan2102: China has a problem food-wise: The Gobi desert is growing at the rate of one Rhode Island per year. China is buying up agricultural land in Africa. The current government is in trouble if a famine hits.
302 SecularAnimist: The fact that you don’t like the truth will carry no weight with Mother Nature. Homo Sap can just as easily and just as quickly go as extinct as the dinosaurs. I am not wrong.
Nature isn’t just the final authority on truth, Nature is the Only authority. There are zero human authorities. Scientists do not vote on what is the truth. There is only one vote and Nature owns it. We find out what Nature’s vote is by doing Scientific [public and replicable] experiments. Scientific [public and replicable] experiments are the only source of truth. [To be public, it has to be visible to other people in the room. What goes on inside one person’s head isn’t public unless it can be seen on an X-ray or with another instrument.]
Science is a simple faith in Scientific experiments and a simple absolute lack of faith in everything else.
Your popularity will not make Nature do it your way. In obsolete language: SecularAnimist is trying to tell God how to run the Universe. God does not take orders from SecularAnimist. So if SecularAnimist wants to try to give orders to Nature, I will say good luck with that and somebody will try to give you a funeral.
Ed Greisch is merely reporting the messages from Nature. Ed Greisch is not trying to tell Nature what to do.
303 Hank Roberts: Your web site agrees with me on EMP; namely that EMP comes from nuclear bombs. As your article says: coronal mass ejections lead to low frequency events. Low frequency events are much easier to short out than EMPs which are very high frequency events. High frequencies are exceedingly difficult to exclude from equipment. Protecting something from EMP is possible, but very expensive. Uncle Sam has hardened Abrams Tank to EMP, but most systems were left unprotected. The price is too high. If an EMP is encountered, forget about it. You are back to the year 1850.
304: BPL: Yes I know you have a degree in physics and you were not in the group I was referring to.
309 Chuck Hughes: Reference “Overshoot” by William Catton, 1980 and “Bottleneck: Humanity’s Impending Impasse” by William Catton, 2009. Per Catton, the max permanent carrying capacity of this planet is 3 billion. Since there is an equal undershoot for every overshoot, the probability of going extinct is very high. I’ll make a prediction I don’t like but see as likely anyway: Refugees will be shot on sight by automated [robotic] guns very soon. As soon as Angela Merkel comes to her senses.
Remember: This is not what I want. It is what I foresee.
“What are all these refugees coming from North Africa going to do?” They are going to die. There is simply no other choice. Sorry
A huge number of to maybe all of the northern 1/3 of the planet will die as well. Being a do-gooder is counter-productive.
@chuck hughes 308,
So Chuck, what’s your plan?
Someone suggested a separate thread for people who want to discuss these non-climate-science issues, but I think the problem is not the topics, it’s just that many of the people involved are not interested in solving anything– for whatever reason, it is all about being negative, unless everyone agrees with their particular grandiose and unrealistic science fiction/fantasy scenario. And those people dominate the conversation.
We have EG, with his “Wings Over The World” approach, and Killian, who I suspect dreams of something that might be called “The Rodale White Council”, with wizards all over the world communicating telepathically with each other and the plants and animals as well. Classic sci-fi themes from different eras. And then there’s the guy with Brussard Ramjets, “reaching for the stars”…sigh.
The point, which I made earlier, and that the people who actually move things rather than dreaming get, is that you have to start by doing something. And that thing has to work on/in the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be.
Discussing what things might act to change the existing paradigm is worth the bandwidth, I think, but creating a separate thread will not help if it continues to be about why everyone else is wrong and nothing can be done.
What is your positive contribution?
Kevin McKinney: “Here’s a brief but interesting piece on the integration of renewable energy into existing grids:”
Killian replied: “Someone show me a complex, fragile, sustainable system. They don’t exist. Never will.”
Responding to informational links with dogmatic bumper sticker slogans is all well and good, but it would be nice if they had something remotely to do with what you are responding to, rather than being a complete non sequitur.
Edward Greisch wrote: “Look who is making the pro-renewable energy statements. They are not engineers, nor are they scientists.”
That, of course, is a textbook example of the classical rhetorical fallacy known as an ad hominem. Which for Mr. Greisch is a step up from his usual insults and name-calling.
And look at “who is making” renewable energy TECHNOLOGY — look at who is designing, developing, building and deploying advanced wind turbines, photovoltaics, battery storage and microgrids: they are ALL engineers and scientists.
Edward Greisch wrote: “SecularAnimist is trying to tell God how to run the Universe. God does not take orders from SecularAnimist. So if SecularAnimist wants to try to give orders to Nature, I will say good luck with that and somebody will try to give you a funeral.”
Yeah, sure, and “global warming is a religion” is such a great argument too.
#315–Indeed. In fact, it’s a point I’ve made to Ed before. There are engineers as authors on some of the papers cited here showing the positive contributions RE can and does make. But of course that’s all ‘in one ear and out the other.’
What is your positive contribution?
Comment by zebra — 18 Jan 2016
I don’t have a plan. There are lots of independent plans floating around but it’s scattershot. I hear more people telling each other what won’t work instead of what will. Ultimately you have to get it across to our “elected” leaders and not one Republican candidate talked about Climate Change that I know of. That’s a serious problem and I don’t have a solution for that.
As for positive contributions… I’m talking to you. You responded to something I said. At least we’re talking to each other. It probably helps me more than it does you but, I think if we could get more people talking we might make some progress.
I personally see this as more of a political problem than a scientific one. Maybe if some scientists would run for President on the Republican ticket, someone like Richard Alley. He’s a Conservative and he’s very good at explaining the science to people like myself.
I wish I had some answers but I don’t. I hope you do. You’re a lot smarter about this stuff than I am.
> EG … Low frequency events are much easier to short out …
I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m saying you seem to be all alone, when I google what you say and read what’s published on the subject.
E.g.: http://www.dhs.gov/news/2012/09/12/written-testimony-nppd-house-homeland-security-subcommittee-cybersecurity
And solar and wind inputs to the grid are how hard to manage by comparison?
The grid is being rebuilt.
If you are sure they’re doing it wrong, you need to convince the people who are doing it.
The people you’re arguing with are not here.
zebra @313
Three people like the idea of separate climate-science and climate-action threads. The idea is to make life simpler for the busy climate scientists who host this site. They can respond (if necessary) to the few comments on the climate-science thread and ignore the majority of comments on the climate-action thread.
But I do understand why we have this dichotomy. Climate science tells us we have a problem and it’s our nature then to look for solutions. There’s seldom any commenter here who doubts the science.
316 SecularAnimist, you are being a provoker with intentional misinterpretation. You are on “ignore” from now on. Now that I know that you are a provoker, I know how to deal with you.
How many other provokers are there out there?
319 Hank Roberts: Look up Starfish Prime. If anybody is using the “word” EMP to mean coronal discharge or solar magnetic storm or aurora, they have borrowed the term from nuclear weapons effects and corrupted the language. That happens when somebody wants to appear knowledgeable but isn’t. Like truckers calling ketchup “red lead,” not knowing what a red Light Emitting Diode is.
An EMP is from a nuclear weapon, has a rise time of less than a nanosecond and has decayed away within something like a millisecond. EMP was one of those secrets from the American people that the Soviets and we and the British were researching at the same time. It was classified “Secret NATO or Secret restricted data.” I managed to avoid top secret. Declassified long since.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime
“Starfish Prime was a high-altitude nuclear test conducted by the United States on July 9, 1962, a joint effort of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the Defense Atomic Support Agency (which became the Defense Nuclear Agency in 1971).
A Thor rocket carrying a W49 thermonuclear warhead (manufactured by Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) and a Mk. 2 reentry vehicle was launched from Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean. The explosion took place 250 miles (400 km) above a point 19 miles (31 km) southwest of Johnston Island. It was one of five tests conducted by the USA in outer space as defined by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI). It produced a yield equivalent to 1.4 megatonnes of TNT. It was the largest man-made nuclear explosion in outer space.
…………..
Starfish Prime caused an electromagnetic pulse (EMP), which was far larger than expected, so much larger that it drove much of the instrumentation off scale, causing great difficulty in getting accurate measurements. The Starfish Prime electromagnetic pulse also made those effects known to the public by causing electrical damage in Hawaii, about 1,445 kilometres (898 mi) away from the detonation point, knocking out about 300 streetlights, setting off numerous burglar alarms and damaging a telephone company microwave link. The EMP damage to the microwave link shut down telephone calls from Kauai to the other Hawaiian islands.[5]”
I was still in high school in 1962, but some of my first bosses were there.
Smith(2016) doi:10.1038/NCLIMATE2870 has numbers on resources for various carbon uptake methods. One of my pet ideas, Afforestation/Reforestation has land use given as follows (i have clipped the BECSS estimates):
“Total agricultural land area in 2000 was ~4,960 Mha, with an area of arable and permanent crops of ~1,520 Mha … AR (at 1.1–3.3 Gt Ceq/yr negative emissions; 320–970 Mha, respectively) represents 6–20% of total agricultural land, and 21–64% of arable plus permanent crop area. This range of land demands are 2–4 times larger than land identified as abandoned or marginal. Thus, the use of … AR on large areas of productive land is expected to impact the amount of land available for food or other bioenergy production, as well as the delivery of other ecosystem services, which may prove to be a limit to the implementation of AR. One uncertainty is the future rate of increase of food crop yields and whether this will meet future food demand 79 , thereby potentially freeing more cropland for … AR, even if at a higher price.”
Another one i am watching is Enhanced Weathering, and seems to have large energy costs, as expected, but not impossible.
Good review paper, worth reading.
sidd
Dear Scientist hosts,
Whadda dis mean for da Earth System Sensitivity?
Ocean heat content doubles?
Actually, the potential damage from a Carrington Class solar particle event is something I looked into for a couple of talks I gave in 2014.
Yes, SPE can give rise to EMP like events. The Carrington Event in 1859 did take down telegraph offices, and it even caused fires in a few. Yes, there was a study that showed up to $2 trillion in damages to the global economy from another direct hit. Yes, the Quebec Hydro outage was caused by a solar particle event much smaller than the Carrington Event. And yes, there was a Carrington-like event in 2012 that hit Stereo B. This shows Carrington was not unique.
However, in general, the more modern transformers are less susceptible, rather than more susceptible. This is all the more reason to modernize the grid, so why not make it more robust for renewables as well?
FWIW, what makes for such big events is that there are in fact 2 coronal mass ejections that follow roughly the same path. The first clears out the interstellar plasma, allowing the second to follow unattenuated. This leads to much higher particle fluxes and velocities. NASA has lots of good material on the Science Visualization Studio.
313 zebra: Interested in solving something? Try http://bravenewclimate.com/2015/10/25/open-thread-23/#comment-444267
What is a “Wings Over The World” approach? Doing something: Do you expect a federal retiree to have billions of dollars to invest?
303 Hank Roberts: There is nothing in your reference that is new to me even though I worked at the EME lab from Feb 1968 through August of 1972.
Hank Roberts, please, Google your opinions before posting them.
It would save everyone much recreational typing.
319 Hank Roberts: I am talking to legislators. More state legislators than federal legislatures because state legislators are easier to talk to. Federal congresspersons have more layers of lobbyists and money in the way.
Solar weather and lightning are low speed events amenable to correction with ordinary lightning arrestors. EMPs definitely are high speed events that do their damage before lightning arrestors have time to turn on. EMPs require picosecond rise time high pulse power zener diodes called transzorbs.
Space weather, being low speed, is most important on long wires. Voltage can build up over 1000 miles on long lines.
EMPs can get into small holes and through the skin of a metal box. EMP can even damage stuff in a buried sealed box. An EMP cannot continue for more than a microsecond. Long wires are less important for EMP. An EMP can get inside a generator and initiate an arc that continues with the generator’s energy. If an EMP is coming, you want to turn everything off and short circuit everything before it arrives.
Preparing an Abrams tank for an EMP requires pointing the front of the tank toward the burst, turning everything off, short circuiting all of the inputs and outputs, plugging all of the holes, etcetera, then waiting until after the EMP has gone away.
What’s published on the subject is not likely to tell you much. I’m not telling you anything I shouldn’t either.
As climate talks open, many candidates flunk science test
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/climate-talks-open-many-candidates-flunk-science-test
AP FACT CHECK: Most GOP candidates flunk climate science
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/3e946f29fa534a0b9c1d064b16e06b61/ap-fact-check-most-gop-candidates-flunk-climate-science
@digby scorbie 320,
Yeah, it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do to allow for those actual climate science questions. My point was simply that the “climate action thread” itself will still not be much use to people who want to have a real discussion. You have my vote for the split, FWIW.
#314 SecularAnimist said Waaaa…
Yes, it seems the Peanut Gallery is back up and running.
Seccy, old pal, aka NotKevin SoWhyAreYouResponding, try not to be a bobblehead to people who understand things better than you do. You might need them someday. Besides, Kevin responded without the childish taunting you came out with.
You quoted Kevin McKinney: “Here’s a brief but interesting piece on the integration of renewable energy into existing grids:”
Killian replied: “Someone show me a complex, fragile, sustainable system. They don’t exist. Never will.”
with a sophomoric, completely-missed-the-point, dang-it-went-right-over-my-head response. To wit:
Responding to informational links with dogmatic
Son, look up the words dogma and dogmatic because you use the latter here incorrectly. Whereas Ed invokes nature then goes on and on about engineering, I actually work with principles found in natural systems. You, apparently, are clueless in this regard given you call such “dogmatic.”
bumper sticker slogans is all well and good
See, the whole issue we face is tied intimately with complexity and fragility. Or, antifragility, if you will. To call such talk “bumper sticker slogans” is a degree of ignorance I can only smile and shake my head at. *Pats SA on the head.*
but it would be nice if they had something remotely to do with what you are responding to, rather than being a complete non sequitur.
Let me see, electric grids to power society and the fragility of said is a non sequitur? Dude, your response is the non sequitur, and nonsensical. To be extra special clear, just for you, it makes no sense whatsoever to build out a fragile, overly complex system that is unsustainable, so discussing doing so also makes no sense. Thus, I am suggesting not doing either.
Boring. Just don’t respond. Your schlock is always of this grade.
@Edward Greisch 326,
Most actual scientists and engineers I’ve worked with are eager, when given a simple challenge, to respond– not to engage in internet rhetorical games, change the subject, and so on.
I’ll repeat this one more time, not really expecting an answer, and note that it is “equal opportunity”:
EG dreams of a future nucleo-topia.
Killian dreams of a future eco-topia.
Others dream of a future Aeolo-topia.
And so on.
The question I’ve posed, which you (EG) have continually dodged, is: How. Do. You. Get. There.
The answer isn’t “But wind is intermittent!, nor is it ” ‘We’ should just replace every coal plant with a NPP.” (there is no ‘we’, since you aren’t willing to invest your own money), nor “silly hippies are just scared for no reason”, nor any other such handwaving and deflection.
I live in the USA, and I am asking at least for the USA, what actual national policy proposals you have that would lead to your goal. (In a timely fashion with respect to the buildup of CO2, obviously.)
I also note that my proposal given above is an example of such a policy proposal. A policy proposal has to be concrete: “This is how we achieve the goal.” Not a restatement of the goal.
Chuck Hughes #308: “regardless of our admirable progress on fertility rates, the population is STILL increasing.”
True. What do you suggest?
Population can be reduced by:
1. reducing fertility
2. increasing mortality
Those are the only options.
What do you suggest?
I suggest that we work on reducing fertility in the still-high-fertility areas (like Africa).
CH: “There will [by 2050] be massive crop failure”
There will? Maybe, but it seems unlikely. A LOT could be said on that subject, and this is probably not the place for it. (Or is it?)
CH: “when you take into account the potential environmental impacts of Climate Change and it’s rate of progression, I don’t think fertility rates matter all that much. You have physical realities to contend with that your assessment doesn’t seem to take into account.”
“My assessment” was mostly just a statement of clear historical facts. Fertility rates have collapsed, and this has had a huge impact on population. If fertility had not collapsed we would be at 8-9 billion (or more) right now, with many more to come. You can claim that population is still too high, that carrying capacity has been exceeded and that we are heading for dieoff, etc., etc. — but that’s something different. That’s your judgement of things. I was talking about what HAS actually happened. And, to a lesser extent, based on those clear facts, what reasonable guestimates we can make about what will happen over the next few decades. Your speculations about crop failures and so forth are noted, and it is possible that you will prove to be correct.
Nevertheless, what has actually happened HAS actually happened, and is likely to keep happening for some time. There have been no crop failures as yet, at least not big ones of the sort you seem to be anticipating. Climate change will doubtless have a negative impact on agricultural productivity, but the extent of that impact is far from known. It is a complex subject, with many BIG variables, and this is probably not the place to discuss them. (Or is it?)
CH: “A “trend” is NOT a final result. Numbers matter.”
True. But final results are the results of trends.
The trend toward crop failures and dieoff — which you foresee, correct? — must begin somewhere. If it happens, it will happen by degrees over some years, and it will become a trend. Right? Or do you think it is going to happen suddenly, like Armageddon?
…………………………….
BPL writes:
http://www.ajournal.co.uk/pdfs/BSvolume13%281%29/BSVol.13%20%281%29%20Article%202.pdf
“Twenty percent of Earth’s land surface is now in severe drought, compared to 10% from 1948 to 1970. At what point does failing agriculture collapse the system?”
Good question. Here’s more: At what point does the large increase in surface area in severe drought have any impact at all on agricultural productivity? At what point does a sign of agricultural failure occur at all, even a little bit? How wise is it to be talking excitedly about the collapse of civilization due to massive crop failures when there has been no sign as yet of any globally-significant crop failure? And when, in fact, the opposite has been the case almost to the present moment (see links below)? And when, in fact, there exists a vibrant discussion among intelligent and knowledgeable agronomic and other scholars regarding climate change and agriculture, including various models of possible outcomes going out to 2050 and beyond, with no mention of imminent (or even any) possibility of massive crop failures and civilizational collapse? I’m not saying these guys are infallible; far from it. But, as a group, they are not idiots or ignorant fools, either. Just like climate scientists are not idiots or fools, generally, or as a group.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2012-september/global-agriculture.aspx
September 20, 2012 — New Evidence Points to Robust But Uneven Productivity Growth in Global Agriculture
http://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2013-november/growth-in-global-agricultural-productivity-an-update.aspx
November 18, 2013 — Growth in Global Agricultural Productivity: An Update
Hank Roberts wrote: “The grid is being rebuilt.”
Ray Ladbury wrote: “This is all the more reason to modernize the grid, so why not make it more robust for renewables as well?”
Yes. It’s a work in progress:
http://energy.gov/doe-grid-modernization-laboratory-consortium-gmlc-awards
Ruddiman has a paper out doi:10.1002/2015RG000503, this time incorporating data from Antarctic cores. I do believe he has a case for early anthro modification of the glacial cycle.
Robert Scribbler reports that the unusual January hurricane may have set off a massive Greenland melt in winter. http://robertscribbler.com/
http://blogs.agu.org/fromaglaciersperspective/2016/01/17/what-is-up-in-disko-ummanaq-bay-greenland-this-week/
How worried should we be?
CO2 level yesterday at MLO 402.43
last year level was 399.45
So, just shy of 3 ppm increase in one year as measured yesterday.
If there is a market for a safe weather system, my advice would be to short that market. but, hey, what do I know? I just look at the numbers and the news and draw some crazy conclusions.
325 Ray Ladbury: No, SPE can not give rise to EMP like events. A Carrington Class solar particle event is something you can get industry to protect equipment from because they happen often compared to EMPs. As far as the utility companies [electric, copper wire internet and land line telephone] are concerned, lightning arrestors are a good investment and they install lightning arrestors. If an EMP happens, it is war. Protecting from an EMP is financially out of reach for utility companies. The price is just too high.
You can’t get industry to invest in EMP protection because:
Carrington Class solar particle events don’t compare with EMP.
Lightning arrestors and other protections for lightning and solar flares have no effect on EMP. MOV lightning arrestors are about 4 or 5 orders of magnitude too slow. Wikipedia: “response times for the MOV are in the 40–60 ns range” Transzorbs respond in the picosecond range. Transzorbs are gold doped to get them to respond fast enough.
More resilient transformers don’t help with EMP.
Carrington Class solar particle events hurt things that have long wires attached. That would be land line telephones, the grid, etcetera. Fiber optic data lines are unaffected by Carrington Class solar particle events. But an EMP would destroy the electronics at both ends of an optical fiber, disregarding the optical fiber.
“Ancient” electronics with tubes instead of transistors are more likely to survive an EMP. Big and old things are more likely to survive EMP, the opposite of what a solar flare would do. Starfish Prime didn’t destroy the grid in Hawaii.
EMPs destroy small things like cell phones and also missiles in their silos with the lid on, everything electronic. Being a few feet underground doesn’t help. A solar flare wouldn’t hurt your cell phone, but it might hurt things at the towers.
At EME lab, we destroyed every piece of electronics in the army, and we were at a tiny percentage of threat level. We french fried every transistor, not just some of the parts. The things we tested did not have external wires attached.
After Starfish Prime, there was a ~500% increase in avionics failures over the Pacific basin over the next ~6 months, if my memory is right.
Protecting equipment from EMP is too expensive for the US army. The US can’t afford it except for the M1 Abrams tank, and advance notice and preparation is required even then.
That is enough about this subject.
Edward Greisch #312:
“China is buying up agricultural land in Africa.”
Yes. Great idea, too. They will develop Africa’s vast untapped agricultural potential.
“Per Catton, the max permanent carrying capacity of this planet is 3 billion.”
Well, that settles things then, doesn’t it? Surely Catton could not be wrong. His perfect understanding of the implications of technical developments over the past half-century, and perfect anticipation of the developments of the centuries to follow, allow him to speak with total authority. It is good to know that carrying capacity is fixed, unchangeable, and that the exact number is known. Saves us all the trouble of reading, thinking, experimenting and discovering.
I don’t know if this has much to do with Climate Change but I was thinking about the need to feed 9 billion people somewhere in the near future. The pressures of a changing climate will affect our ability to grow food. I’ve heard both pros and cons about Monsanto. I was wondering if genetically modified crops will be necessary to feed that many people and if it’s a good thing or not. I need a reliable source to find out what the big deal is so if anyone has any information I would appreciate it.
http://assets.amuniversal.com/74e805709ac0013331e1005056a9545d
Science vs. Everything Else
Comment by alan2102 — 19 Jan 2016 @
It’s hard to be wrong when you keep talking to yourself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_suicides_in_India
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/millions-at-risk-as-crops-fail-in-central-africa-2064802.html
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7cbc024c-2998-11e2-a5ca-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3xr36HkwG
http://naturalsociety.com/china-blames-us-gmo-corn-crop-failure/
https://www.oxfam.org.au/media/2015/10/super-el-nino-and-climate-change-cause-crop-failures-putting-millions-at-risk-of-hunger/
“ERS data also show that within these broad developed, transitional, and developing economy groupings, productivity varies widely among countries. For example, while recent productivity growth in East and South Asia has been impressive (particularly in China and Indonesia), TFP growth has been lethargic in some other parts of Asia. Sub-Saharan Africa faces perhaps the biggest challenge in achieving sustained, long-term productivity growth in agriculture. Over the last decade, the region averaged around 1 percent TFP growth annually yet is projected to have the world’s highest population growth rates in coming decades. While a few African countries have raised their agricultural TFP growth to over 2 percent per year, some that appear to be experiencing rapid TFP growth (like Angola) are simply recovering from earlier decades when their agricultural sectors suffered from the effects of war.”
The above is from one of your links. The output or productivity you claim is expanding is heavily skewed in favor of developed countries while Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are facing famine. Of course “developed” countries will fair better in the short term. (Shock!) We always knew the poor would be the first to suffer the consequences of Climate Change but other areas will soon follow.
There are some others on the innertubes who agree with you but they’re not scientists and it’s all opinion based, just like you.
I left out Antarctica and Greenland but if you need more examples of Crop Failure let me know.
RE # 336
Edward Greisch #312:
“China is buying up agricultural land in Africa.”
ALAN: Yes. Great idea, too. They will develop Africa’s vast untapped agricultural potential.
—-
Good point. imho China w Russia along for the ride, could do to Africa what the Brits and French did 200-300 years ago in North America. Bring some sanity, some human rights, intelligent development and more ethics to the place.
HANK: Science vs. Everything Else
That’s Cute!
337 Chuck Hughes: Other things affecting our ability to feed 9 billion people:
Aquifers running dry California Central Valley is sinking because of ground water depletion. Farmers drill deeper and deeper at higher and higher cost to find water. It is already uneconomical for some farmers. The Colorado river no longer gets to the Gulf of California. Same thing applies in India and China. Shanghai, China is pumping water back into the ground to stop the city from sinking.
We have been living on “mined” water for some time now, all over the world. As aquifers run dry, the food will stop. Northern California is in a big drought.
Lake Chad is becoming a dry flat area.
This is the #1 thing that is wrong with 336 alan2102’s idea that the Green Revolution can go on for ever. And Catton is not the only one saying the same thing. See also:
“Ecological Footprints and Bio-Capacity: Essential Elements in Sustainability Assessment” by William E. Rees, PhD, University of British Columbia and “Living Planet Report 2008” also by Rees.
India has rivers that run with industrial waste only, no water.
Fertilizer mines mined out
Soil eroded away. It doesn’t last for ever.
Oceans fished out: There are a lot of jelly fish but not many fish that we want to eat. Do you know any recipes for jellyfish?
Genetic Engineering can do great things, but not anything. Genetics Engineers are scientists and engineers, not gods. Maybe they can make food grow in salt water, but desalinization is still too expensive to use for irrigation. They may be able to get wheat to grow in a slightly higher temperature, but not a much higher temperature or without water.
“Africa’s vast untapped agricultural potential”: Well maybe not quite that vast, and not vast at all given that there are already native people there who do not wish to leave and we want to leave space for the elephants, lions, and other wild species. So yes, the Chinese can make the land produce more food because the Chinese will bring money, machines, and modern methods, but I hope they find a place for the natives.
337 Chuck Hughes: It definitely has everything to do with Climate Change right here in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Minnesota, Texas, and so on. The rain has been doing weird things due to climate change. So has the climate. Farmers need to both irrigate and put in drain tiles to take excess water out. Farmers also need to be able to store far more water than there is any place to put it. Droughts and floods have been interfering with farming for ever, and they are getting worse.
GM foods from Monsanto: Are helpful, but the price is very high.
Feed 9 billion people? I don’t believe it will happen. I think the population will crash before it gets to 9 billion. Have you heard about “migrants” trying to get into Europe? Just because they were dying in Syria, Africa, Iraq and other places? That is how the crash starts. Pretty soon the Europeans will realize that Europe can’t contain another 4.5 billion people.
What happens when you factor in an increase in population from 7.28 billion to 9+ billion in the next 35 years. This will put even greater pressure on our resources, which are insufficient now and likely to be more so as climate change begins to show its effects.
Is population growth part of the “Oh Crap” modeling?
zebra 329,
I would begin by levying a tax of $150 on each metric ton of CO2 emitted. I would tax foreign imports with a tariff based on how much CO2 was emitted in their production, with parity as close to US as could be fairly achieved. I would stop all subsidies for fossil fuel production and refining research, and all tax subsidies, e.g. the oil depletion allowance. I would ban any further oil or gas drilling. I would mandate minimum levels of insulation in new homes, offices, and commercial buildings, and require new construction to have at least 1 kWe (peak) of photovoltaic rooftop. I would fund a national plan to put wide-area smart grids in place all over the nation.
I would repeal the Price-Anderson act, but would continue research on advanced reactors and allow new ones that were of a non-meltdown type (e.g. Thorium-fueled pebbled bed reactors). I would reactive Yucca Flats or some other national nuclear waste storage facility, since we’re stuck with earlier wastes even if all nuclear shut down tomorrow.
I would encourage municipalities to put co-generation in place wherever practical. I would subsidize biomass production of liquid fuels and all kinds of EVs. I would subsidize passenger and freight trains, and urban mass transit, and de-emphasize cars and trucks to the extent politically possible.
I would work on sustainable agriculture, minimizing the use of artificial fertilizer, subsidize biochar, and encourage urban agriculture and “food parks” for the needy.
I would encourage recycling of all possible materials rather than mining and primary production. I would mass-produce those floating garbage-suckers those brilliant Aussie surfers recently came up with, and unleash them on the ocean.
I would fund crash-priority research on methods of taking CO2 out of the air permanently.
I would repeal all laws against contraception and abortion, and all laws hindering them, and encourage real-world sex education in schools. I would repeal the Hyde amendment, and encourage countries around the world to take the same sort of steps I was taking (as hypothetical US dictator and Head Brain).
I can probably think of more steps if I take more time, but this is what comes to mind offhand.
alan 330,
Apparently you have missed the work of Aiguo Dai, Kevin Trenberth, and many others who are saying approximately what I’m saying, plus the recent UK foreign office computer simulations that anticipate complete global economic collapse in 2040. Everyone in the field is NOT saying there will be foreseeable agricultural disruption; far from it. And as for no massive crop failures occurring–apparently you don’t live in Australia, or Syria, or Brazil, or Texas.
#343–RC is not the place to argue about it, but I will note that IMO, this comment vastly overestimates the ‘civilizing’ effects of colonialism on both sides of the analogy.
@BPL #342,
Me too. But then I am a rationalpragmato-topian, unlike EG and others for whom I intended the question.
Which was, I remind you, about how they would “win” and get their favorite flavor to be imposed on everyone else.
My main departure from what you are saying is that the second order of political business (after pricing CO2) is to end anti-competitive practices in all relevant areas. This is a hard fight, and breaking one of the opponents’ main weapons is a necessity.
Looks like China cut emissions last year. http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2016/01/19/china-emissions-likely-fell-in-2015/
Edward Greisch,
When it comes to solar particle events, you pontificate from a perch of profound ignorance. I know about manmade radiation environments. I know about natural radiation environments. They are, in fact, my day job.
There has been precisely one Carrington Class event that has struck Earth. We have record of a similar event in 2012 hitting one of the STEREO spacecraft. We have many, many EMP events, including one in orbit. EMP events–except those in space–are local and brief. SPE can affect the entire planetary magnetic field and go on for days.
345 zebra: Win? Impose? Nonsense! If you think I want to impose anything on anybody, you have not understood anything I have said.
Again: Humans cannot win. Mother Nature always wins.
I am only warning you of what Nature will do. You may go ahead and do it your way, but use your money, not mine. And keep yourself isolated from where I am. Yes, get your group of like-minded individuals and build your utopia. Keep to your own grid interconnect area with no connections to my part of the grid.
Make sure you follow your own dictates to the letter. No cheating by using another grid as a battery. Your grid must be 100% wind and solar powered. OK? That would be fine with me. Go ahead and try it. Take the entire states of California and Oregon and disconnect them from all other electricity.
Do you understand yet? If not, how could I say it in a plainer way?
Nature isn’t just the final authority on truth, Nature is the Only authority. There are zero human authorities. Scientists do not vote on what is the truth. There is only one vote and Nature owns it. We find out what Nature’s vote is by doing Scientific [public and replicable] experiments. Scientific [public and replicable] experiments are the only source of truth. [To be public, it has to be visible to other people in the room. What goes on inside one person’s head isn’t public unless it can be seen on an X-ray or with another instrument.]
We build confidence by repeating experiments.
Reference: “Science and Immortality” by Charles B. Paul, 1980, University of California Press. In this book on the “Eloges of the Paris Academy of Sciences” (1699-1791) page 99 says: “Science is not so much a natural as a moral philosophy”. [That means drylabbing [fudging data] will get you fired.]
Page 106 says: “Nature isn’t just the final authority, Nature is the Only authority.”
Reference: “Revolutionary Wealth” by Alvin & Heidi Toffler, 2006
Perhaps reading “Science and Immortality” would help you understand.
Again: I am not trying to “win.” I am too old to expect to still be alive in 2040 to collect on any bets, as if I would gamble. I am trying to give you a warning. This is not rhetoric. Rhetoric is wrong.
99% of all species that ever lived on this planet are extinct. Homo “sapiens” can easily go extinct. Your choice has a profound meaning: Homo Sap will either live or die depending on your decision. If you don’t understand the science and the engineering, Homo Sap goes extinct. Zebra does not even understand what I am saying, never mind the science and the engineering.
On solar storm intensity, some evidence of earlier very large events, e.g.
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/151026/ncomms9611/full/ncomms9611.html
Multiradionuclide evidence for the solar origin of the cosmic-ray events of ᴀᴅ 774/5 and 993/4
On Twitter, for Gavin
http://www.kevinandkell.com/2016/strips/kk20160121.jpg
#342 Barton Paul Levenson said …levying a tax of $150 on each metric ton of CO2 emitted. I would tax foreign imports with a tariff based on how much CO2 was emitted in their production… stop all subsidies for fossil fuel production and refining research, and all tax subsidies… ban any further oil or gas drilling… I would mandate minimum levels of insulation in new homes, offices, and commercial buildings, and require new construction… 1 kWe (peak) of photovoltaic rooftop… wide-area smart grids in place all over the nation… repeal the Price-Anderson act… continue research on advanced reactors and allow new ones that were of a non-meltdown type… reactive Yucca Flats or some other national nuclear waste storage facility… co-generation in place wherever practical… subsidize biomass production of liquid fuels and all kinds of EVs… subsidize passenger and freight trains, and urban mass transit, and de-emphasize cars and trucks… sustainable agriculture, minimizing the use of artificial fertilizer, subsidize biochar, and encourage urban agriculture and “food parks” for the needy.… recycling of all possible materials rather than mining and primary production… mass-produce those floating garbage-suckers… fund crash-priority research on methods of taking CO2 out of the air permanently.
repeal all laws against contraception and abortion… encourage real-world sex education in schools… repeal the Hyde amendment…
Because we must have our lattes. Yes, I am making a point. Let’s see if anyone susses it out.