A bimonthly open thread on climate solutions. Perhaps unsurprisingly this is always the most contentious comment thread on the site, but please try and be constructive and avoid going off on wild tangents.
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554 Responses to "Forced Responses: May 2021"
Killiansays
242 Barton Paul Levenson says:
2 Jun 2021 at 5:01 AM
K 234: 20. Maunder’s Law of the Minimum
BPL: Liebig’s.
Yes, so thanks for correcting an 8 year old brain fart, but, umm…
For those who still think regenerative agriculture is somehow dangerous to humanity so should be used… mostly? (kind of like mostly not drinking rat poison)… here is a nice Twitter thread on resources that perhaps “mostly” should be read… maybe by “most.”
Here’s one showing that agroecological farming systems provide a more comprehensive set of ecosystem services than conventional, and proposes that any shortcomings in production will likely fall off over time
Etc.
Yesterday, this cross-sectional study showed that meats produced with organic practices have less bacterial contamination than meats produced in conventional practices. This is true for antibiotic resistant and non-resistant strains of bacteria
In 2017, researchers found that organic vineyards promote more biodiversity, particularly among butterflies and vascular plants
And here’s a *great* essay on the linked social and ecological rationales for transitioning to agroecological practices
Susan Andersonsays
Richard Caldwell. To give the Bible one chance, don’t start with the sensationalist Revelations. Stick with the Gospels. Start with the Sermon on the Mount. If you want more, Isaiah has some wicked good poetry.
Revelations is all too easily turned into conspiracy ideation and certainly not part of the core teachings, even if it is quite fun for adolescents; it might be an idea to grow up rather than judging based on the most biased form of the core documents you wish to be superior to.
We’re not going to get away from religion (I am, personally, an atheist, but appreciate and incorporate spiritual ideas in my life) but nobody learns anything if they assume they already know.
a little more back to Nigel at 241: Tainter’s premise is that challenges are resolved by complexity that snowballs over time and that complexity is expensive to establish and maintain. That’s the way I understand that first part of his ideas.
Civilizations collapse when the cost of maintaining the complexity becomes too great. You mentioned that military consumes about 2% of resources, but that is not the calculation that arises from Tainter’s ideas. The cost of defense is about 15% of federal budget and about 50% of the discretionary part of that budget, so it is much larger than the 2% you are thinking about.
I think it is unlikely we will see any significant reduction of global military expenditure, but that does appear to be the lesson that we might learn from the Byzantine civilization if we were so inclined.
We could do a lot of green climate work with 50% of the US discretionary budget. We might hit net zero in short time with that kind of commitment. It is too bad that we are unlikely to do anything like that.
Cheers
Mike
Killiansays
Go ahead, keep doubting regenerative practices to solve our problems.
https://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/thread/739/long-duration-storage?page=1
The last link is to a review of a very clever way to store energy long term. Carbon dioxide is split with the components stored which is easily done. The carbon is burnt in the oxygen to generate heat. Rankin cycle recovers the electricity at about 30% efficiency.
Inefficient but the assumption is that the input is throwaway electricity anyway.
David B. Bensonsays
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-06-farms.html
Is about wind farms interfering with downwind further wind farms. So the value of the downwind farm is so diminished. Suggests serious limits on the proportion of wind farms supporting the grid load requirements.
Of course nuclear power plants have no such interference.
Piotrsays
Re: David B. Benson (258) – wind farm wind-shadow may be a problem if you:
1. pack windfarms within 35-40 km of each other. This may be needed in some places – but there are no problems with spacing in many others places – most of Australia, interior Asia, steppes, prairies and pampas of Eurasia and Americas, most of Canada, Alaska etc…
2. AND you pack them in the dominant direction of the wind – if my winds are mainly westerlies – I just put my farm S-N … and no shading then
3. and it all applies only to periods of calmer conditions (when your power generation is not that great anyway) – in stronger winds the effect either disappear or actually may be beneficial (if original winds were above the safe operating speed)
And that potential for 20-25% drop when ALL 3 conditions are met – applies
only to the downwind farms (the upwind ones are OK)
DBB: “Of course nuclear power plants have no such interference”
You wouldn’t be DBBenson if you didn’t add it … But since you opened this topic
– with wind – no, with cooling water if you wanted to put your nukes on the same river too close of each other – it would depend how much cooling water was lost to evaporation, and how far the warmed water would stay warm downstream.
But for nukes to work sub-optimally you don’t even need a nearby nuke warming water – ALL warm water, even warmed by weather alone – makes the nuclear power plants thermodynamically less effective
– if there inn addition there is not enough water in the river coming in or if the waste water would heat the river downstream too much for fish and other river critters to survive – you may end up with shutting down thermal plants, as happened in recent years both with nukes (France) and with coal(Poland). And this happens typically at the worse possible time – during a heat wave – i.e. when you need your power most to run your freezers and air condition and your still working thermal generation is less efficient.
And it will get worse in the future – higher mean temperature and larger frequency of heat waves; and precipitation becoming more “discrete” – either you get flood when you can’t use all the water passing by, or you get draught, and it is not enough of it. making you shut down.
And that’s in Europe – if you expand nukes into the countries where … the most of the 8 billions of people live, i.e. warm countries, your baseline is already hotter.
So while your concern for the potentially lower effectiveness of wind farms under some conditions is touching, sometimes the beam in your eye is larger than the straw in the eye of another.
nigeljsays
Mike @247, yes in hindsight you are right about the military issue. Any change in Americas spending on the military would be a small step towards some form of simplification, but a small step is still useful. The money would ideally have to go into something simplified and perhaps low tech.
Personally I feel countries are wise to have some sort of self defence but it should be kept to only what is really required. Nobody in their right mind is going to attack America, because they have enough weapons to obliterate anyone. Quite why they need more and more weaponry mystifies me. The point being their is room to be a bit more prudent in spending. This is just my opinion of course and is going off on a bit of a tangent.
That said, would a significant reduction in Americas spending weaponry have any political chance of success? I think small cut backs might, when I look at the actions of various administrations. And that is the thing with so called simplification. Real world realities suggest to me its possible, and in a wider sense than just military spending, but it will be a rather slow process. For that reason we probably have to build a renewable energy grid even althout it ‘adds’ complexity short term. This is where I differ from the extreme de-growth people.
nigeljsays
Killian @245
“We cannot know with certainty what the needs of future societies will be but we can certainly anticipate the most likely crises future societies will face”
“Because climate change was anticipated by the Romans….Can you not admit when you are wrong without it taking three years of nauseatingly repetitious brow-beating?”
The Romans didn’t have science. They couldn’t anticipate anything more than a few years out. We have a much better understanding of potential future risks. Obviously we can’t anticipate everything, I said that, but we can anticipate the most likely future problems.
Stopping mining and leaving minerals in the ground is a big thing to do on the basis that there might be some possible problem in the future: an “unknown unknown”. It’s just crazy basically. I would bet serious money 99% of people would agree with me. Its in the same category as don’t get out of bed in the morning because the sky might fall in. You have to balance known needs and aspirations in the present, against possible and realistic future risks.
Please note I’m not suggesting we use the earths wealth recklessly with impunity and that technology will solve every problem, and we will never run out of anything. The situation we are in is rather complicated to fix and probably beyond any one persons ideas. Imo its going to require a team effort of thinking and a phased slowdown and perhaps some of the things you mention, but not some sort of rapid and massive reductions in consumption, or attempts to copy ancient cultures who never had to try to manage modern technology.
————————————————–
Killian @246, you haven’t actually rebutted / falsified anything I said, and have just deflected and made assertions. I think pretty much everyone else will see that, so there is no need for me to say more. Whew, thats a relief. Thank goodness for small mercies.
I do “see” what you are getting at by the way. I just think we need slightly different solutions.
————————————
nigeljsays
Piotr, just revisiting this idea of our modern climate change of about 1 – 2 degrees already cancelling or substantially reducing another glacial period. I’m having second thoughts. Assuming we stop emissions soon, atmospheric CO2 levels fall quite significantly by 100 years from now, and nearly completely after 1000 Years. This means warming would stop or be just a fraction of a degree when we start really descending into another glacial period. How could that possibly stop or even reduce the severity of an glacial period. Have I missed something?
nigeljsays
Killian @256
“Go ahead, keep doubting regenerative practices to solve our problems.”
Nobody here has said that. Typical strawman.
Mikesays
Rewilding is in the news:
“The world must rewild and restore an area the size of China to meet commitments on nature and the climate, says the UN, and the revival of ecosystems must be met with all the ambition of the space race.
Existing conservation efforts are insufficient to prevent widespread biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, the global body has warned at the launch of the decade on ecosystem restoration, an urgent call for the large-scale revival of nature in farmlands, forests and other ecosystems.”
David Benson @258 Interesting article about wind farm interference.
Of course, nuclear power plants, and others relying on a generous water supply, have interference problems of their own due to the positive correlation between extreme heat, drought, and power demand. Serial generators up and down the same river may encounter critically low water, or the remaining water may be too warm to allow it to run through multiple generators for cooling without endangering the remaining aquatic life in the river.
Mikesays
I read the bible in 1999 – year of the bible with a discussion group. Daily readings jumped around from OT to NT with proverbs and some other sprinkled in to make the reading a little easier. It’s just my opinion, but I think the bible is a complete mess as a “book.” It is an interesting human artifact.
I would be happy to see the bible and religious discussion move elsewhere.
Maybe we can just discuss science here at real climate?
Cheers
Mike
Richard Caldwellsays
Susan,
I am a follower of Jesus, but not in the way Christians often are. I grew up Methodist. I know the Stories. I put much thought into the Parables, into what Jesus was trying to develop while locked in an Old Testament cage.
You ever wonder why Jesus, a kid who was enamored by and excelled in study and debate with the land’s finest adult minds…
…ended up with zero surviving words in writing?
Parables can survive a purge-and-rewrite. Just sayin’
nigeljsays
Killian @246
“Until you learn to see what is rather than what you want to see, you will continue to flail. It’s a simple thing: Stop thinking what you wish to think, have been told to think, are willing to think, and Just. See. This is sincere advice.”
Just see is good advice. I certainly dont claim to be perfect in that regard and always try to do better. But you don’t seem to see the things people like me, KM, EP, BPL and others say about some of your comments. We reach broadly the same conclusions about what you write despite being such different people with different formal qualifications, politics, and world views in many cases. That’s pretty much how consensus works. We could be wrong, but its more likely you are wrong.
[Wind farm wake effects] extend 35 to 40 kilometers—in certain weather conditions even up to 100 kilometers. The output of a neighboring wind farm can thus be reduced by 20 to 25 percent, which ultimately leads to economic consequences. If wind farms are planned close together, this wake effects need to be considered in the future.
I don’t think that that actually “Suggests serious limits on the proportion of wind farms supporting the grid load requirements.”
Anything specific? I ask because I see MANY DOZENS of posts all by “Actinide” (=DBBenson). Oh, wait – there is one by somebody else … “Fast Neutron” (= … Engineer Poet???), saying only … “ Wrong link“.
Clearly and painfully VERY wrong link! Et tu DBBenson contra me?!!
“The evidence clearly points to nuclear being the least effective of the two broad carbon emissions abatement strategies, and coupled with its tendency not to co-exist well with its renewable alternative, this raises serious doubts about the wisdom of prioritizing investment in nuclear over renewable energy. Countries planning large-scale investments in new nuclear power are risking suppression of greater climate benefits from alternative renewable energy investments.”
Stop it! STOP IT!
“ Published today in Nature Energy, the study reveals that nuclear and renewable energy programs do not tend to co-exist well together in national low-carbon energy systems but instead crowd each other out and limit effectiveness.”
I am not ……..LISTENING! La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la ….!
“ “While it is important to acknowledge the correlative nature of our data analysis, it is astonishing how clear and consistent the results are across different time frames and country sets. In certain large country samples the [negative] relationship between renewable electricity and CO2-emissions is up to seven times stronger than the corresponding relationship for nuclear.
Explore further: Pro-nuclear countries making slower progress on climate targets”
Way OT here, so caveat lector, but a thought–RC said:
You ever wonder why Jesus, a kid who was enamored by and excelled in study and debate with the land’s finest adult minds…
…ended up with zero surviving words in writing?
(I assume this means “zero words originally written (as opposed to spoken)”, since the NT obviously contains quite a few words attributed to Jesus, not least the parables of which we are speaking.)
I hadn’t actually wondered about that, but it occurs to me that a very probable reason was lack of materials with which to write. The only paper was made from papyrus–laborious to make, with the raw materials an import from Egypt (I think). So it was pricey; a couple of centuries later, vellum parchment from animal skins–also laborious to make–was actually *cheaper*.
So I’m guessing that paper was just out of the realm of the possible for an itinerant preacher living a life of voluntary poverty. Then, secondarily, once written, what were the disciples going to do with scrolls anyway? Carry them around as they begged for the evening meal?
Tertiarily, the disciples also expected the world to end sometime soon, IIU/RC. “…it is generally held that the preaching and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth and the activities of his followers in the 1st century ad can be properly understood only in the context of contemporaneous Jewish apocalyptic beliefs.”
Not much motivation for a written record, I’d think.
Piotrsays
nigelj says “Piotr, just revisiting this idea of our modern climate change of about 1 – 2 degrees already cancelling or substantially reducing another glacial period. I’m having second thoughts. Assuming we stop emissions soon, atmospheric CO2 levels fall quite significantly by 100 years from now, and nearly completely after 1000 Years”
Don’t think so – the drop off Co2 after net zero-emissions is reached is not symmetrical to the increase – many (most?) most of the processes that took
up 50% of the human emitted CO2 – would weaken or actually slow the drop (as the oceans starts returning the surplus CO2 back to the atm; CO2-fertilization negative feedback working in now the opposite direction). Some idea for that is the timescale of after a pulse of CO2: Archer et al 2009: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1070.8969&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Ultimately the CO2 would be reduced by dissolution of CaCO3 (and perhaps other minerals) which takes time particularly if we already dissolved some of the easily
accessible CaCO3 in the last century or two.
Then you have also the matter of the heat in the system – we will be losing ice
long we started reducing CO2 levels – probably as long as it takes for the temps to reach preindustrial, which would be delayed not only by CO2 being above preindustrial, but albedo being much lower.
See also Wikipedia:
“Work by Berger and Loutre suggests that the current warm climate may last another 50,000 years.[9] The amount of heat trapping (greenhouse) gases being emitted into Earth’s oceans and atmosphere may delay the next glacial period by an additional 50,000 years.”
You can also see it for yourself: https://www.bas.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/003.jpg
Each recent ice-age cycles is about 100,000 year, with most of it being creeping into full glaciation then interrupted by Milankowitch which triggers the 4 feedbacks of apocalypse (CO2, CH4 , H2O vap, and albedo) into rapid deglaciations.
So if you need say 70,000 years to get to the ice maximum, and you already lost 50,000 yrs or more of that, and the next Milankovitch warming trigger
doesn’t change but come on cue as originally scheduled…
And that’s assuming that we didn’t alter biology on land and/or global thermohaline circulation/biology in the ocean in a major way
– because the creeping into a ice age requires that positive feedbacks with dropping CO2 down to 180-200 ppm.
“ In theory, the next ice age could be even further into the future, but there is no real practical importance in discussing whether it starts in 50,000 or 100,000 years from now,” Andrey Ganopolski from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said.“
David B. Bensonsays
Nuclear power plants can be air-cooled. Looses maybe 5% in efficiency, not a big deal.
The NuScale modules planned for Idaho National Laboratory are to be air-cooled.
Killiansays
264 Mike says:
4 Jun 2021 at 10:17 AM
Rewilding is in the news:
“The world must rewild and restore an area the size of China to meet commitments on nature and the climate, says the UN, and the revival of ecosystems must be met with all the ambition of the space race.
Existing conservation efforts are insufficient to prevent widespread biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, the global body has warned at the launch of the decade on ecosystem restoration, an urgent call for the large-scale revival of nature in farmlands, forests and other ecosystems.”
I like this idea.
It’s a bad idea based on a false premise of pristine Nature. Humans have been impacting all of Nature beginning at least 65k years ago. Even in the Americas that number may extend back as far as ~30k years. The “nature” we see is co-created with humans. Removing us from that pretends that is not a fact, ignores the role of apex species, leaves huge swaths vulnerable to abuse by the unethical, immoral greedy if there is nobody living there, and, worst of all, would require pushing more and more people into the planet-destroying cities.
If we follow regenerative (natural) practices we can end all unsustainable human systems in the (very) long run, speed the rehabilitation of ecosystems, and enhance biodiversity and extend “green” space to include… ALL of the Earth.
Well-meaning, but a concept ignorant of the power of regenerative systems to heal, produce and enhance.
“The world must rewild and restore an area the size of China to meet commitments on nature and the climate, says the UN, and the revival of ecosystems must be met with all the ambition of the space race.
Existing conservation efforts are insufficient to prevent widespread biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, the global body has warned at the launch of the decade on ecosystem restoration, an urgent call for the large-scale revival of nature in farmlands, forests and other ecosystems.”
I like this idea.
They’re right, conservation doesn’t work. But “conservation” is never done holistically, regeneratively. It’s well-intentioned mechanistic thinking applied to very complex systems that need to be managed in a way that enhances them.
The proposal is yet another well-intentioned bad idea based on a false premise of pristine Nature. Humans have been impacting all of Nature beginning at least 65k years ago. Even in the Americas that number may extend back as far as ~30k years based on brand new research. The “nature” we see is co-created with humans. Removing us from that pretends that is not a fact, ignores the role of apex species, leaves huge swaths vulnerable to abuse by the unethical, immoral greedy if there is nobody living there, and, worst of all, would require pushing more and more people into the planet-destroying cities.
If we follow regenerative (natural) practices we can end all unsustainable human systems in the (very) long run, speed the rehabilitation of ecosystems, and enhance biodiversity and extend “green” space to include… ALL of the Earth.
Well-meaning, but a concept ignorant of the power of regenerative systems to heal, produce and enhance.
…publication in 2011, Bill Gammage’s The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia…
Revealing pre-colonial Australia as a landscape of grassy patches, open woodlands and abundant wildlife, Gammage’s groundbreaking book details how Aboriginal people followed an extraordinarily complex system of land management. This system used fire and the life cycles of native plants to ensure plentiful wildlife and plant foods throughout the year, all based, says Marcia Langton, on an encyclopaedic knowledge of their environments, seasonal weather patterns and biota.
Native Americans’ use of fire to manage vegetation in what is now the Eastern United States was more profound than previously believed, according to a researcher who determined that forest composition change in the region was caused more by land use than climate change.
The forest is an artifact of modification. It has nothing to do with the kind of practice we are seeing nowadays – large-scale, clearing monoculture. These people were combining small-scale agriculture with management of useful tree species. So it was more a sustainable kind of land use.
—-
This is very flawed, (e.g.”What kind of industry would be optimal for our bioregion for us to develop that would contribute to a healthy bioregion rather than be driven by its potential to export to other regions of the country or world?” “How do we re-regionalise and re-vitalise manufacturing in local economies where services and digitalisation has come to dominate economic aspiration?”) but the right kind of thinking in terms of bio-regions: https://medium.com/activate-the-future/an-economy-of-place-part-8-bioregionalism-as-economic-regeneration-de3222b2aa58
Killiansays
268 nigelj says:
5 Jun 2021 at 1:41 AM
Just see is good advice. I certainly dont claim to be perfect in that regard and always try to do better.
No, you really don’t. How many years of pointless posting from you?
But you don’t seem to see the things people like me, KM, EP, BPL and others say about some of your comments.
You think the non-experts are educating the expert here. The thing about rising to your level of incompetence or not knowing what you don’t know, it makes people think thise teling them they are wrong or just don’t get it “don’t see” what you are saying. You think you can school me on mitigation when you hve no background in the subject, no experience doing it, have never added anything novel to the discussion of it, etc. You don’t even admit the shit you were saying years ago vs today is different, moving incrementally toward where I have led you. You cannot admit you have been led where you are (though you continue to try to put the breaks on mitigation out of your on-going lack of knowledge, experience, awareness, insight, etc.)
The very definition of hubris.
All while you fail to grasp the simplest of logic.
You have never educated me, never refuted any analyses or predictions or scenarios I have put forward.
But yeah, dude, it’s all you. I “don’t get” your banal, pointless, uneducated critiques, your claims 2+2=6, your insistence on “People wont!” or “Can’t be done!”
You’re a clone, dude, following your programming.
————-
263 nigelj says:
4 Jun 2021 at 4:17 AM
“Go ahead, keep doubting regenerative practices to solve our problems.”
Nobody here has said that. Typical strawman.
At every turn you crow about it being useful, but implementation should be partial. That we must keep digging more resources out of the ground just because. And on and on. Drivel, nonsense, illogic… Every. Fucking. Time.
How do people stand your lies and… useless prattling about things you clearly have no understanding of?
“So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
Thou art spued.
Mikesays
at Killian: Rewilding to me means that we/humans stop interfering with what grows in an area. We just leave the area alone and let it grow and host organisms. My sense is that a “natural” ecosystem like this would move to its apex state over time and that the apex state is likely to be a somewhat stable ecosystem that supports some species of apex predators. The general health and vitality of the apex predator population is a reasonable indicator that the ecosystem itself is in decent condition.
I understand that rewilding does not mean the same thing to everyone who uses the term.
Nuclear power plants can be air-cooled. Looses maybe 5% in efficiency, not a big deal.
Can be but won’t be anytime soon, because there are very few air-cooled designs even on the books, let alone built. Per the WNA, “…the only nuclear power plant where [air-cooling] is in routine use is for the very small reactors at Bilibino in the Arctic permafrost region of Siberia, though the THTR-300 experimental reactor in Germany in the 1980s was also air-cooled.”
The NuScale modules planned for Idaho National Laboratory are to be air-cooled.
“Hardly any US generating capacity uses dry cooling, and in the UK it has been ruled out as impractical and unreliable (in hot weather) for new nuclear plants.
A 2009 US DOE study says they are three to four times more expensive than a recirculating wet cooling system.
All US new plant licence applications have rejected dry cooling as infeasible for the site or unacceptable because of lost electrical generating efficiency and significantly higher capital and operating costs.
For large units there are also safety implications relating to removal of decay heat after an emergency shutdown with loss of power.[…] It is unlikely that large nuclear plants will adopt dry cooling in the foreseeable future”
“You don’t even admit the shit you were saying years ago vs today is different, moving incrementally toward where I have led you.”
I haven’t changed my views much on the science. I can’t recall anything specific. If I have changed my views its because the science has changed, not because of you. Regarding your version of simplification. I can’t see where I’ve changed my mind. I’ve always said the same thing since day one that simplification sounds problematic, but a light weight version would be ok. You just don’t always understand what other people write. This is obvious when I see your responses to Piotr.
“At every turn you crow about it (regenerative agriculture) being useful, but implementation should be partial”
I have to some extent. I’ve said what I want to say @ 203. You have never been able to refute/ rebut any of this. All you do is crow about your alleged expertise and swear and curse. I can’t find ANY hard independent evidence that regenerative agriculture can equal or better the yields of industrial agriculture. You posted a link once to The Rodale Institute, but the best they could claim is yields of one single grain crop were “similar” to industrial agriculture, and this is a group of regenerative farmers doing their own work. It does not qualify as an independent field trial written up in a scientific journal like Nature.
Independent studies of organic agriculture are easily googled and show it has at least 30% lower yields than industrial farming. Its hard to believe regenerative agriculture would be massively better. Regenerative agriculture has value in a general sense, but ways will have to be found to overcome the yield issues sooner or later. Or provide links to published, peer reviewed scientific research that proves me wrong.
nigeljsays
Piotr @272 , I said “Assuming we stop emissions soon, atmospheric CO2 levels fall quite significantly by 100 years from now, and nearly completely after 1000 Years” The following seems roughly consistent with what I said:
“About 50% of a CO2 increase will be removed from the atmosphere within 30 years, and a further 30% will be removed within a few centuries. The remaining 20% may stay in the atmosphere for many thousands of years.”
However I accept what you said on everything else . It does suggest next glacial period has been postponed a very long time, and yes absolutely we have already locked in significant sea level rise.
I would be interested in your thoughts on my comment back @249. Appreciate you may be too busy or not interested.
David B. Bensonsays
Ukraine to plant one billion trees over the next 3 years — Unian
Piotr at 280:
How cruel of you to quote the World Nuclear Association in your claim that nuclear plants cannot be air cooled. We all know they are secret supporters of renewable energy ;). I will remember that cite in the future.
DB Benson @ 273: Why do you make such obviously false claims in support of nuclear? You realize that your credibility on nuclear is about zero because of absurd claims like this one. There are exactly zero large commercial power plants that air cool.
Piotrsays
Nigelj (282) “The following seems roughly consistent with what I said”
Eerr, not exactly: you said: “[surplus CO2 drops] nearly completely after 1000 Years” while your new sources says: “The remaining 20% may stay in the atmosphere for many thousands of years.”
And it is that 20% that is enough to delay/cancel onset of the ice age: even if we stop at 430 – that’s surplus of 150 ppm over XIX- 20% of that is 30 ppm.
So 280ppm + 20% of surplus = 310 ppm.
And the Ganopolski paper says that the most recent Milankovitch trigger could have already triggered us toward the next glaciation, IF pCO2 was 240ppm. It was 280 ppm, so we didn’t. If it is 310ppm for may thousand years – it won’t happen then either. In fact Ganopolski et al., speculated that as long as those values stay so moderately elevated we could enjoy a happy equilibrium –
“remain in the present delicately balanced interglacial climate state, steering clear of both large-scale glaciation of the Northern Hemisphere and its complete deglaciation, for an unusually long time.”
Nigelj (282) “I would be interested in your thoughts on my comment back @249. Appreciate you may be too busy or not interested.”
I cannot say “No” to you. And I mean it: the “N” key on my laptop died.
So each time I want to say an n-word – I have to bring up virtual keyboard, or copy and paste the letter from a quoted text.
Dam , it’s aoying – I have to see if I ca fix it myself (tricky o a laptop though). So you may eed to wait util the, igel.
nigeljsays
In New Zealand we have some conservation estates essentially comprising native forests with their natural populations of native wildlife and some introduced predator species running wild. They are off limits to everyone except conservation workers and and hikers (trampers). Nobody to my knowledge lives in these areas on a permanent basis. There is an ongoing campaign trying to eradicate introduced predators like rats, possums and stoats because the are decimating native bird life. The typical problem island nations have.
The issue is we have massively depleted areas of native forests so not much is left, and some of their bird species are on the brink of extinction. Allowing people to live in such areas would only risk further depletion of the area of the resource and bird species and general environmental impacts. When bird species recover (some are making progress) and areas of native forests expand, it may be that a few people could live in these areas, but I think we are a fair distance away from this. But how would you decide who could live there, and in what numbers?
The kiwi bird populations are recovering, to the extent that a private company said it would contribute to conservation efforts, if it could sustainably farm the birds for profit. The department of conservation was not convinced, and the public was mostly not amused. The indigenous Maori people want more rights to eat a certain type of pigeon that is on the endangered list. It has been their custom to eat these birds but the fact is there are not many of these birds left. Its hard balancing these things up. Our reliance on urban living in concrete jungles is obviously concerning. Maybe one day humans can be fully “part of nature” , but with 7 billion and counting its going to be difficult.
David B. Bensonsays
michael Sweet @284 — Wrong. The Four Corners Power Station uses air cooling up to air temperature 100 °F, water cooling when it is quite hot.
The NuScale module installation on the Idaho National Laboratory site will use air cooling.
Killiansays
279 Kevin McKinney says:
6 Jun 2021 at 12:35 PM
Money quote:
By 2025 20% of all new cars sold globally will be electric, according to the latest forecast by the investment bank UBS.
That will leap to 40% by 2030, and by 2040 virtually every new car sold globally will be electric, says UBS.
Yes, but I’m guessing not for the reason(s) you think. What this illustrates is the reality we do not have time for a tech-based, #greenwashed version of (faux) sustainability. That’s 19 years just to change over cars. Meanwhile many credible analyses are saying we have half – or less – that time. Looking at Greenland alone (tipping point possibly passed at +0.8C) says there are not 19 years left.
This is a time issue. Time’s up if one *always* bears in mind long-tail risks.
If one’s discussion steps away from this to explore secondary, tertiary, and beyond, issues, it becomes very likely they will lose sight of limits they *cannot* successfully ignore. And that is the space this forum spends virtually all of its time in: Quibbling and barking words over issues that are essentially moot.
A tech-based climate response to climate ignores resources. It ignores time. Because…? It requires building out at global scale industries that are now a fraction of what would be required. And that’s if we actually want every human to have access to that electrified future – but that is not at all in the works. You pay to play, and most humans cannot. And it will take DECADES for these buildouts.
Such simple concepts, but ideology, fear, magical thinking, ignorance of regenerative principles, etc., lead too many to ignore them.
It’s 2+2, but the world keeps getting 5.
Killiansays
277 Mike says:
6 Jun 2021 at 12:12 PM
at Killian: Rewilding to me means that we/humans stop interfering with what grows in an area. We just leave the area alone and let it grow and host organisms. My sense is that a “natural” ecosystem like this would move to its apex state over time and that the apex state is likely to be a somewhat stable ecosystem that supports some species of apex predators. The general health and vitality of the apex predator population is a reasonable indicator that the ecosystem itself is in decent condition.
I understand that rewilding does not mean the same thing to everyone who uses the term.
Dammit! Mike, I had written a great response, but somehow closed the tab and lost it all. Rather than spend another hour doing that again, I’m gonna get permacultural on you and suggest you clear your head of any preconceptions, SEE, then think, *then* we talk:
New research showing “pristine nature” is a severe misunderstanding of the past (it irks me this write-up treats this like some bold, new discovery, but it’s good confirmation of what “we” already know):
‘Forest gardens’ show how Native land stewardship can outdo nature
Patches of forest cleared and tended by Indigenous communities but lost to time still show more food bounty for humans and animals than surrounding forests.
Counting and identifying the species growing on and around the former settlement sites, she found they harbored a far more diverse mix of plants than the surrounding conifer forests. The plant species also filled a wider range of ecological niches. “It’s striking to see how different forest gardens were from the surrounding forest, even after more than a century,” says Jesse Miller, a Stanford University biologist and co-author on the study.
The forest is an artifact of modification. It has nothingu to do with the kind of practice we are seeing nowadays – large-scale, clearing monoculture. These people were combining small-scale agriculture with management of useful tree species. So it was more a sustainable kind of land use.
Remember: Probably the single most powerful technique we have to build soils quickly and permanently is what made human occupation in Amazonia possible, and is THE key to naturally drawing down carbon: Terra Preta//bio-char
In The Biggest Estate, Gammage supports his thesis with exhaustive and compelling research from primary sources to prove that prior to British colonisation in 1788, Australia was an “unnatural” landscape, carefully and systematically managed by its traditional owners to ensure that “life was comfortable, people had plenty to eat, few hours of work each day, and much time for religion and recreation.”
Little did he know, but Lawton had just discovered the ancient food forest of Inraren—a cultivated patch of 65 acres, lost in the jungle and fed by deep, underground springs. Experts believe it’s been harvested continually since before Christ, which makes it one of the oldest sustainable agriculture systems in the world.
Before modernization, food forests were a staple of indigenous communities in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and beyond. Though most have vanished, vestiges have been identified in places as diverse as Tanzania, southern India, Indonesia, the Amazon Rainforest, Central America, and the Caribbean islands.
“This method of agriculture was used throughout the world, but particularly in tropical regions, where multi-species food forests were once the dominant method of production,” says John F. Munsell, Virginia Tech professor of agroforestry and co-author of 2018’s The Community Food Forest Handbook. Though little is known about their early history and adaption, Munsell says forest gardens began with villagers seeking to make their lives easier.
——
Oversimplified: Observe first, determine needs, think of solutions. People are doing it backward.
Killiansays
Nope, no problem mining the oceans. Nope, nope, nope!
THE ALLURE OF TIN UNDER THE SEA
Timah has been ramping up production from the sea. Company data shows its proven tin reserve on land was 16,399 tonnes last year, compared with 265,913 tonnes offshore.
The huge expansion, coupled with reports of illegal miners targeting offshore deposits, has heightened tension with fishermen, who say their catches have collapsed due to steady encroachment on their fishing grounds since 2014.
Logic suffices. Civilization would be massively impacted if we had ice sheets covering NYC and many other major cities, etc., so it behooves us to keep FFs around to manage Milankovich cycles.
And 265~280ppm will suffice.
As I have been saying for a long time.
And it is that 20% that is enough to delay/cancel onset of the ice age: even if we stop at 430 – that’s surplus of 150 ppm over XIX- 20% of that is 30 ppm.
So 280ppm + 20% of surplus = 310 ppm.
And the Ganopolski paper says that the most recent Milankovitch trigger could have already triggered us toward the next glaciation, IF pCO2 was 240ppm. It was 280 ppm, so we didn’t. If it is 310ppm for may thousand years – it won’t happen then either. In fact Ganopolski et al., speculated that as long as those values stay so moderately elevated we could enjoy a happy equilibrium –
“remain in the present delicately balanced interglacial climate state, steering clear of both large-scale glaciation of the Northern Hemisphere and its complete deglaciation, for an unusually long time.”
John Pollacksays
David Benson, I no longer find your personal assertions about nukes to be the slightest bit credible. References, please! I’m going to quote from Wikipedia, not because it is authoritative, but it does tend to be neutral, and offers references that can be checked further.
@273 you assert “Nuclear power plants can be air-cooled. Looses maybe 5% in efficiency, not a big deal.
The NuScale modules planned for Idaho National Laboratory are to be air-cooled.”
Wiki on NuScale modules: “Its designs use the light water approach to cooling and power generation that is common in conventional nuclear plants. Water is heated by the nuclear core at the base of the reactor vessel. Heated water flows upwards inside the riser, then down over steam generators. As heat is transferred to steam generators, the water becomes cooler and denser, sinking back to the bottom of the device, where the cycle is repeated. Heat transferred to the steam generators is used to create steam that turns a turbine, which drives an electrical generator.”
No mention of air cooling there.
Further from Wiki: “NuScale’s design does not rely on powered water pumps or circulatory equipment.[2][5] The company claims it can shut down and continue cooling itself indefinitely during most accidents.[5][b] The devices are intended to be kept in a below-ground pool, to absorb the shock of earthquakes, with a concrete lid over the pool.[38] In the event that AC power is lost for normal cooling systems, the pool water in the pool begins to absorb heat and boil.”
It appears that your air cooling would kick in once the water has boiled out of the cooling pool, and the meltdown commences. Blowing that concrete lid off the pool would assist the air cooling, I suppose.
@287 you assert: “Wrong. The Four Corners Power Station uses air cooling up to air temperature 100 °F, water cooling when it is quite hot.”
Wiki: “The station is cooled using water from Morgan Lake, which is man-made and is replenished by about 28 million gallons of water each day from the San Juan River. The plant burns sub-bituminous coal delivered from the nearby Navajo Coal Mine by the Navajo Mine Railroad.”
No mention of air cooling. Not even a nuclear plant!
Mikesays
at Killian: I am not talking or thinking about “pristine nature” when I think or talk about rewilding. I am not thinking about restoration to a previous state of wilderness for any particular plot of land. I am thinking about our species stepping back from interfering with a particular plot of land and letting that plot go “wild” with minimal treatment/planning or care from our species.
Along those lines, I would probably be comfortable with the presence of trails that could accommodate hikers. I would probably be comfortable with the removal by hand of invasive species like ivy, but still, the interference and “improvement” that humans might offer to an area being rewilded should be minimized. Maybe no chemical/pesticides etc. no improvement that requires machinery, etc.
I think this kind of rewilding already happens in places around the world these days, but not on a large or grandly organized scale.
You may like this kind of rewilding or you may not, that doesn’t really matter any more than whether I like this kind of rewilding, but that is what I think about when I talk about rewilding.
Cheers
Mike
siddsays
Re: Four Corners power station air cooling
Coal burner,not nuke, right ?
sidd
michael Sweetsays
DB Benson @287:
According to Wikipedia, the Four Corners Power Plant has shut down. It was a coal burning plant, not a nuclear plant. Perhaps their expensive cooling system led them to be shut down.
The EIA says that it is more expensive to air cool and large nuclear and coal do not use air cooling. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=36773 Piotr’s quotes at 280 from the World Nuclear association say it all. You are a hopeless fanatic.
Nuclear is not economic even with water cooling. Add even more cost using air cooling and it is impossible to compete with renewable energy. Not to mention the safety issues with not having cooling water.
Mr. Know It Allsays
EVs greenwashing their usefulness to combat CC. Good comments below the article:
In other news, while Democrats bicker about how to arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, Republicans teaming up with Bill Gates are going to save the world from climate change with Nuke Power in Wyoming:
264 – Mike
““The world must rewild and restore an area the size of China to meet commitments on nature and the climate, says the UN, and the revival of ecosystems must be met with all the ambition of the space race.
.
.
.
I like this idea.”
Sounds like you and Killian should form a team. Seriously though, the UN? That’s funny.
260 – nigelj
“Personally I feel countries are wise to have some sort of self defence but it should be kept to only what is really required. Nobody in their right mind is going to attack America, because they have enough weapons to obliterate anyone. Quite why they need more and more weaponry mystifies me. The point being their is room to be a bit more prudent in spending. This is just my opinion of course and is going off on a bit of a tangent.
That said, would a significant reduction in Americas spending weaponry have any political chance of success?”
Please define “…what is really required”. America is under attack on a daily basis even today via cyber war – a successful cyber attack could make many of our current weapons useless. More and better weaponry is the history of all weapons and is one of the main drivers for technological progress for humanity. Why more weapons? Who do you think is standing in the way of the entire world being taken over by communist totalitarians? It’s the USA. Seeing as how your President recently took away NZ citizens’ self defense tools, how are your Chinese lessons coming along? FYI: US defense spending is trending down steadily as a percentage of GDP: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget
266 – Mike
“Maybe we can just discuss science here at real climate?”
How do you know AGW isn’t part of the BIG GUY’s plan?
283 – David B. Benson
“Ukraine to plant one billion trees over the next 3 years — Unian
We need much more:”
How about 1,000 times as many? President Donald Trump, the most environmentally progressive president in US history, has ordered it to be so:
Just as Trump’s Operation Warp Speed saved the world from COVID, his EO will do it again by negating carbon emissions via the trillion tree initiative. Unless creepy Joe repeals that EO – would not be surprised!
nigeljsays
Mr KIA @296 “Just as Trump’s Operation Warp Speed saved the world from COVID, his EO will do it again by negating carbon emissions via the trillion tree initiative. Unless creepy Joe repeals that EO – would not be surprised!”
America was already producing vaccines at warp speed before Trumps so called “warp speed” initiative. In other words it would have happened anyway.
Trump had America join some global group promising to plant trees called the trillion trees initiative. There’s no evidence that Trump administration planted ANY tress, funded trees, anything like that. Its all just Trump BS. You have been sucked in, again:
In the more encouraging direction, some nuclear power plants are licensed for 90 years. I expect that to continue with new SMR designs.
David B. Bensonsays
Oh dear, oh dear. Several here need to learn the Rankin cycle of a steam turbine.
The source of heat is irrelevant. What is that at the bottom of the cycle the steam must be condensed. The condenser is usually water cooled but can be air-cooled. There is a coal burner in central Europe which uses air cooling, but I don’t remember where.
This is completely separate and has nothing to do with the safety features of the NuScale nuclear reactor. That is entirely a different matter.
Read about the Rankin cycle, please.
Piotrsays
Michael Sweet (284) “Piotr at 280: How cruel of you to quote the World Nuclear Association in your claim that nuclear plants cannot be air cooled. We all know they are secret supporters of renewable energy ;). I will remember that cite in the future.”
;-) you are welcome, if my experience is of any value, I doubt it would do much good:
it didn’t stop our Nuclear Poet several weeks back when he dismissed the shutting of some nukes in France during a heat wave, as an easy fix (“Let them have air” to paraphrase his French intellectual predecessor), and I doubt it would do much now to his fellow nuclearista, DB Benson.
As TRUE believers they are impervious to contrary facts. Anybody can follow ideas that supported by the facts, but it takes a true believer, and an act of belief – to believe against the facts… ;-)
242 Barton Paul Levenson says:
2 Jun 2021 at 5:01 AM
K 234: 20. Maunder’s Law of the Minimum
BPL: Liebig’s.
Yes, so thanks for correcting an 8 year old brain fart, but, umm…
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/07/unforced-variations-july-2011/comment-page-2/#comment-209612
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2017/12/fall-agu-2017/#comment-688380
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/03/forced-responses-mar-2021/comment-page-3/#comment-788167
…got it covered.
For those who still think regenerative agriculture is somehow dangerous to humanity so should be used… mostly? (kind of like mostly not drinking rat poison)… here is a nice Twitter thread on resources that perhaps “mostly” should be read… maybe by “most.”
https://twitter.com/ConserveChange/status/1400107534904709129
Etc.
Richard Caldwell. To give the Bible one chance, don’t start with the sensationalist Revelations. Stick with the Gospels. Start with the Sermon on the Mount. If you want more, Isaiah has some wicked good poetry.
Revelations is all too easily turned into conspiracy ideation and certainly not part of the core teachings, even if it is quite fun for adolescents; it might be an idea to grow up rather than judging based on the most biased form of the core documents you wish to be superior to.
We’re not going to get away from religion (I am, personally, an atheist, but appreciate and incorporate spiritual ideas in my life) but nobody learns anything if they assume they already know.
https://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/thread/697/power-world?page=9P
The latest link on this page leads to a report on a new method to extract lithium from seawater, ensuring a ‘forever’ supply of lithium for the smaller batteries.
a little more back to Nigel at 241: Tainter’s premise is that challenges are resolved by complexity that snowballs over time and that complexity is expensive to establish and maintain. That’s the way I understand that first part of his ideas.
Civilizations collapse when the cost of maintaining the complexity becomes too great. You mentioned that military consumes about 2% of resources, but that is not the calculation that arises from Tainter’s ideas. The cost of defense is about 15% of federal budget and about 50% of the discretionary part of that budget, so it is much larger than the 2% you are thinking about.
I think it is unlikely we will see any significant reduction of global military expenditure, but that does appear to be the lesson that we might learn from the Byzantine civilization if we were so inclined.
https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison
We could do a lot of green climate work with 50% of the US discretionary budget. We might hit net zero in short time with that kind of commitment. It is too bad that we are unlikely to do anything like that.
Cheers
Mike
Go ahead, keep doubting regenerative practices to solve our problems.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-15/the-biggest-ideas-in-farming-today-are-also-the-oldest
https://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/thread/739/long-duration-storage?page=1
The last link is to a review of a very clever way to store energy long term. Carbon dioxide is split with the components stored which is easily done. The carbon is burnt in the oxygen to generate heat. Rankin cycle recovers the electricity at about 30% efficiency.
Inefficient but the assumption is that the input is throwaway electricity anyway.
https://techxplore.com/news/2021-06-farms.html
Is about wind farms interfering with downwind further wind farms. So the value of the downwind farm is so diminished. Suggests serious limits on the proportion of wind farms supporting the grid load requirements.
Of course nuclear power plants have no such interference.
Re: David B. Benson (258) – wind farm wind-shadow may be a problem if you:
1. pack windfarms within 35-40 km of each other. This may be needed in some places – but there are no problems with spacing in many others places – most of Australia, interior Asia, steppes, prairies and pampas of Eurasia and Americas, most of Canada, Alaska etc…
2. AND you pack them in the dominant direction of the wind – if my winds are mainly westerlies – I just put my farm S-N … and no shading then
3. and it all applies only to periods of calmer conditions (when your power generation is not that great anyway) – in stronger winds the effect either disappear or actually may be beneficial (if original winds were above the safe operating speed)
And that potential for 20-25% drop when ALL 3 conditions are met – applies
only to the downwind farms (the upwind ones are OK)
DBB: “Of course nuclear power plants have no such interference”
You wouldn’t be DBBenson if you didn’t add it … But since you opened this topic
– with wind – no, with cooling water if you wanted to put your nukes on the same river too close of each other – it would depend how much cooling water was lost to evaporation, and how far the warmed water would stay warm downstream.
But for nukes to work sub-optimally you don’t even need a nearby nuke warming water – ALL warm water, even warmed by weather alone – makes the nuclear power plants thermodynamically less effective
– if there inn addition there is not enough water in the river coming in or if the waste water would heat the river downstream too much for fish and other river critters to survive – you may end up with shutting down thermal plants, as happened in recent years both with nukes (France) and with coal(Poland). And this happens typically at the worse possible time – during a heat wave – i.e. when you need your power most to run your freezers and air condition and your still working thermal generation is less efficient.
And it will get worse in the future – higher mean temperature and larger frequency of heat waves; and precipitation becoming more “discrete” – either you get flood when you can’t use all the water passing by, or you get draught, and it is not enough of it. making you shut down.
And that’s in Europe – if you expand nukes into the countries where … the most of the 8 billions of people live, i.e. warm countries, your baseline is already hotter.
So while your concern for the potentially lower effectiveness of wind farms under some conditions is touching, sometimes the beam in your eye is larger than the straw in the eye of another.
Mike @247, yes in hindsight you are right about the military issue. Any change in Americas spending on the military would be a small step towards some form of simplification, but a small step is still useful. The money would ideally have to go into something simplified and perhaps low tech.
Personally I feel countries are wise to have some sort of self defence but it should be kept to only what is really required. Nobody in their right mind is going to attack America, because they have enough weapons to obliterate anyone. Quite why they need more and more weaponry mystifies me. The point being their is room to be a bit more prudent in spending. This is just my opinion of course and is going off on a bit of a tangent.
That said, would a significant reduction in Americas spending weaponry have any political chance of success? I think small cut backs might, when I look at the actions of various administrations. And that is the thing with so called simplification. Real world realities suggest to me its possible, and in a wider sense than just military spending, but it will be a rather slow process. For that reason we probably have to build a renewable energy grid even althout it ‘adds’ complexity short term. This is where I differ from the extreme de-growth people.
Killian @245
“We cannot know with certainty what the needs of future societies will be but we can certainly anticipate the most likely crises future societies will face”
“Because climate change was anticipated by the Romans….Can you not admit when you are wrong without it taking three years of nauseatingly repetitious brow-beating?”
The Romans didn’t have science. They couldn’t anticipate anything more than a few years out. We have a much better understanding of potential future risks. Obviously we can’t anticipate everything, I said that, but we can anticipate the most likely future problems.
Stopping mining and leaving minerals in the ground is a big thing to do on the basis that there might be some possible problem in the future: an “unknown unknown”. It’s just crazy basically. I would bet serious money 99% of people would agree with me. Its in the same category as don’t get out of bed in the morning because the sky might fall in. You have to balance known needs and aspirations in the present, against possible and realistic future risks.
Please note I’m not suggesting we use the earths wealth recklessly with impunity and that technology will solve every problem, and we will never run out of anything. The situation we are in is rather complicated to fix and probably beyond any one persons ideas. Imo its going to require a team effort of thinking and a phased slowdown and perhaps some of the things you mention, but not some sort of rapid and massive reductions in consumption, or attempts to copy ancient cultures who never had to try to manage modern technology.
————————————————–
Killian @246, you haven’t actually rebutted / falsified anything I said, and have just deflected and made assertions. I think pretty much everyone else will see that, so there is no need for me to say more. Whew, thats a relief. Thank goodness for small mercies.
I do “see” what you are getting at by the way. I just think we need slightly different solutions.
————————————
Piotr, just revisiting this idea of our modern climate change of about 1 – 2 degrees already cancelling or substantially reducing another glacial period. I’m having second thoughts. Assuming we stop emissions soon, atmospheric CO2 levels fall quite significantly by 100 years from now, and nearly completely after 1000 Years. This means warming would stop or be just a fraction of a degree when we start really descending into another glacial period. How could that possibly stop or even reduce the severity of an glacial period. Have I missed something?
Killian @256
“Go ahead, keep doubting regenerative practices to solve our problems.”
Nobody here has said that. Typical strawman.
Rewilding is in the news:
“The world must rewild and restore an area the size of China to meet commitments on nature and the climate, says the UN, and the revival of ecosystems must be met with all the ambition of the space race.
Existing conservation efforts are insufficient to prevent widespread biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, the global body has warned at the launch of the decade on ecosystem restoration, an urgent call for the large-scale revival of nature in farmlands, forests and other ecosystems.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/03/rewild-on-massive-scale-to-heal-nature-and-climate-says-un-decade-on-ecosystem-restoration-aoe?utm_campaign=Carbon%20Brief%20Daily%20Briefing&utm_content=20210604&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20Daily
I like this idea.
Cheers
Mike
David Benson @258 Interesting article about wind farm interference.
Of course, nuclear power plants, and others relying on a generous water supply, have interference problems of their own due to the positive correlation between extreme heat, drought, and power demand. Serial generators up and down the same river may encounter critically low water, or the remaining water may be too warm to allow it to run through multiple generators for cooling without endangering the remaining aquatic life in the river.
I read the bible in 1999 – year of the bible with a discussion group. Daily readings jumped around from OT to NT with proverbs and some other sprinkled in to make the reading a little easier. It’s just my opinion, but I think the bible is a complete mess as a “book.” It is an interesting human artifact.
I would be happy to see the bible and religious discussion move elsewhere.
Maybe here:
https://answersingenesis.org/environmental-science/climate-change/climate-change-and-the-bible/
Maybe we can just discuss science here at real climate?
Cheers
Mike
Susan,
I am a follower of Jesus, but not in the way Christians often are. I grew up Methodist. I know the Stories. I put much thought into the Parables, into what Jesus was trying to develop while locked in an Old Testament cage.
You ever wonder why Jesus, a kid who was enamored by and excelled in study and debate with the land’s finest adult minds…
…ended up with zero surviving words in writing?
Parables can survive a purge-and-rewrite. Just sayin’
Killian @246
“Until you learn to see what is rather than what you want to see, you will continue to flail. It’s a simple thing: Stop thinking what you wish to think, have been told to think, are willing to think, and Just. See. This is sincere advice.”
Just see is good advice. I certainly dont claim to be perfect in that regard and always try to do better. But you don’t seem to see the things people like me, KM, EP, BPL and others say about some of your comments. We reach broadly the same conclusions about what you write despite being such different people with different formal qualifications, politics, and world views in many cases. That’s pretty much how consensus works. We could be wrong, but its more likely you are wrong.
#258, DBB–
The cited paper says:
I don’t think that that actually “Suggests serious limits on the proportion of wind farms supporting the grid load requirements.”
David B. Benson (250): Other aspects of farming:
https://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/thread/731/more-less-farming-warming-world
Anything specific? I ask because I see MANY DOZENS of posts all by “Actinide” (=DBBenson). Oh, wait – there is one by somebody else … “Fast Neutron” (= … Engineer Poet???), saying only … “ Wrong link“.
Link indeed is wrong, VERY, VERY wrong: it says nothing about food production, but instead favourably compares … renewables over nuclear (“Two’s a crowd: Nuclear and renewables don’t mix” https://techxplore.com/news/2020-10-crowd-nuclear-renewables-dont.html)
Clearly and painfully VERY wrong link! Et tu DBBenson contra me?!!
“The evidence clearly points to nuclear being the least effective of the two broad carbon emissions abatement strategies, and coupled with its tendency not to co-exist well with its renewable alternative, this raises serious doubts about the wisdom of prioritizing investment in nuclear over renewable energy. Countries planning large-scale investments in new nuclear power are risking suppression of greater climate benefits from alternative renewable energy investments.”
Stop it! STOP IT!
“ Published today in Nature Energy, the study reveals that nuclear and renewable energy programs do not tend to co-exist well together in national low-carbon energy systems but instead crowd each other out and limit effectiveness.”
I am not ……..LISTENING! La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la ….!
“ “While it is important to acknowledge the correlative nature of our data analysis, it is astonishing how clear and consistent the results are across different time frames and country sets. In certain large country samples the [negative] relationship between renewable electricity and CO2-emissions is up to seven times stronger than the corresponding relationship for nuclear.
Explore further: Pro-nuclear countries making slower progress on climate targets”
AaaaaaaRRRRGHH!!!!!
RC, #267–
Way OT here, so caveat lector, but a thought–RC said:
(I assume this means “zero words originally written (as opposed to spoken)”, since the NT obviously contains quite a few words attributed to Jesus, not least the parables of which we are speaking.)
I hadn’t actually wondered about that, but it occurs to me that a very probable reason was lack of materials with which to write. The only paper was made from papyrus–laborious to make, with the raw materials an import from Egypt (I think). So it was pricey; a couple of centuries later, vellum parchment from animal skins–also laborious to make–was actually *cheaper*.
So I’m guessing that paper was just out of the realm of the possible for an itinerant preacher living a life of voluntary poverty. Then, secondarily, once written, what were the disciples going to do with scrolls anyway? Carry them around as they begged for the evening meal?
Tertiarily, the disciples also expected the world to end sometime soon, IIU/RC. “…it is generally held that the preaching and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth and the activities of his followers in the 1st century ad can be properly understood only in the context of contemporaneous Jewish apocalyptic beliefs.”
https://www.britannica.com/topic/eschatology/Christianity
Not much motivation for a written record, I’d think.
nigelj says “Piotr, just revisiting this idea of our modern climate change of about 1 – 2 degrees already cancelling or substantially reducing another glacial period. I’m having second thoughts. Assuming we stop emissions soon, atmospheric CO2 levels fall quite significantly by 100 years from now, and nearly completely after 1000 Years”
Don’t think so – the drop off Co2 after net zero-emissions is reached is not symmetrical to the increase – many (most?) most of the processes that took
up 50% of the human emitted CO2 – would weaken or actually slow the drop (as the oceans starts returning the surplus CO2 back to the atm; CO2-fertilization negative feedback working in now the opposite direction). Some idea for that is the timescale of after a pulse of CO2: Archer et al 2009:
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1070.8969&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Ultimately the CO2 would be reduced by dissolution of CaCO3 (and perhaps other minerals) which takes time particularly if we already dissolved some of the easily
accessible CaCO3 in the last century or two.
Then you have also the matter of the heat in the system – we will be losing ice
long we started reducing CO2 levels – probably as long as it takes for the temps to reach preindustrial, which would be delayed not only by CO2 being above preindustrial, but albedo being much lower.
See also Wikipedia:
“Work by Berger and Loutre suggests that the current warm climate may last another 50,000 years.[9] The amount of heat trapping (greenhouse) gases being emitted into Earth’s oceans and atmosphere may delay the next glacial period by an additional 50,000 years.”
Similar results were from Ganopolski et al. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature16494
You can also see it for yourself:
https://www.bas.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/003.jpg
Each recent ice-age cycles is about 100,000 year, with most of it being creeping into full glaciation then interrupted by Milankowitch which triggers the 4 feedbacks of apocalypse (CO2, CH4 , H2O vap, and albedo) into rapid deglaciations.
So if you need say 70,000 years to get to the ice maximum, and you already lost 50,000 yrs or more of that, and the next Milankovitch warming trigger
doesn’t change but come on cue as originally scheduled…
And that’s assuming that we didn’t alter biology on land and/or global thermohaline circulation/biology in the ocean in a major way
– because the creeping into a ice age requires that positive feedbacks with dropping CO2 down to 180-200 ppm.
To wrap it up let me quote Ganopolski after BBC piece on the subject:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35307800
“ In theory, the next ice age could be even further into the future, but there is no real practical importance in discussing whether it starts in 50,000 or 100,000 years from now,” Andrey Ganopolski from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said.“
Nuclear power plants can be air-cooled. Looses maybe 5% in efficiency, not a big deal.
The NuScale modules planned for Idaho National Laboratory are to be air-cooled.
264 Mike says:
4 Jun 2021 at 10:17 AM
Rewilding is in the news:
“The world must rewild and restore an area the size of China to meet commitments on nature and the climate, says the UN, and the revival of ecosystems must be met with all the ambition of the space race.
Existing conservation efforts are insufficient to prevent widespread biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, the global body has warned at the launch of the decade on ecosystem restoration, an urgent call for the large-scale revival of nature in farmlands, forests and other ecosystems.”
I like this idea.
It’s a bad idea based on a false premise of pristine Nature. Humans have been impacting all of Nature beginning at least 65k years ago. Even in the Americas that number may extend back as far as ~30k years. The “nature” we see is co-created with humans. Removing us from that pretends that is not a fact, ignores the role of apex species, leaves huge swaths vulnerable to abuse by the unethical, immoral greedy if there is nobody living there, and, worst of all, would require pushing more and more people into the planet-destroying cities.
If we follow regenerative (natural) practices we can end all unsustainable human systems in the (very) long run, speed the rehabilitation of ecosystems, and enhance biodiversity and extend “green” space to include… ALL of the Earth.
Well-meaning, but a concept ignorant of the power of regenerative systems to heal, produce and enhance.
Argh! Please do not post this version: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/05/forced-responses-may-2021/comment-page-6/#comment-791711
Please do post this:
264 Mike says:
4 Jun 2021 at 10:17 AM
They’re right, conservation doesn’t work. But “conservation” is never done holistically, regeneratively. It’s well-intentioned mechanistic thinking applied to very complex systems that need to be managed in a way that enhances them.
The proposal is yet another well-intentioned bad idea based on a false premise of pristine Nature. Humans have been impacting all of Nature beginning at least 65k years ago. Even in the Americas that number may extend back as far as ~30k years based on brand new research. The “nature” we see is co-created with humans. Removing us from that pretends that is not a fact, ignores the role of apex species, leaves huge swaths vulnerable to abuse by the unethical, immoral greedy if there is nobody living there, and, worst of all, would require pushing more and more people into the planet-destroying cities.
If we follow regenerative (natural) practices we can end all unsustainable human systems in the (very) long run, speed the rehabilitation of ecosystems, and enhance biodiversity and extend “green” space to include… ALL of the Earth.
Well-meaning, but a concept ignorant of the power of regenerative systems to heal, produce and enhance.
https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/pre-colonial-australia-natural-wilderness-or-gentleman-s-park
—-
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190521162443.htm
—-
https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/pre-columbian-amazon-not-so-virgin-after-all-009810
—-
This is very flawed, (e.g.”What kind of industry would be optimal for our bioregion for us to develop that would contribute to a healthy bioregion rather than be driven by its potential to export to other regions of the country or world?” “How do we re-regionalise and re-vitalise manufacturing in local economies where services and digitalisation has come to dominate economic aspiration?”) but the right kind of thinking in terms of bio-regions:
https://medium.com/activate-the-future/an-economy-of-place-part-8-bioregionalism-as-economic-regeneration-de3222b2aa58
268 nigelj says:
5 Jun 2021 at 1:41 AM
Just see is good advice. I certainly dont claim to be perfect in that regard and always try to do better.
No, you really don’t. How many years of pointless posting from you?
But you don’t seem to see the things people like me, KM, EP, BPL and others say about some of your comments.
You think the non-experts are educating the expert here. The thing about rising to your level of incompetence or not knowing what you don’t know, it makes people think thise teling them they are wrong or just don’t get it “don’t see” what you are saying. You think you can school me on mitigation when you hve no background in the subject, no experience doing it, have never added anything novel to the discussion of it, etc. You don’t even admit the shit you were saying years ago vs today is different, moving incrementally toward where I have led you. You cannot admit you have been led where you are (though you continue to try to put the breaks on mitigation out of your on-going lack of knowledge, experience, awareness, insight, etc.)
The very definition of hubris.
All while you fail to grasp the simplest of logic.
You have never educated me, never refuted any analyses or predictions or scenarios I have put forward.
But yeah, dude, it’s all you. I “don’t get” your banal, pointless, uneducated critiques, your claims 2+2=6, your insistence on “People wont!” or “Can’t be done!”
You’re a clone, dude, following your programming.
————-
263 nigelj says:
4 Jun 2021 at 4:17 AM
“Go ahead, keep doubting regenerative practices to solve our problems.”
Nobody here has said that. Typical strawman.
At every turn you crow about it being useful, but implementation should be partial. That we must keep digging more resources out of the ground just because. And on and on. Drivel, nonsense, illogic… Every. Fucking. Time.
How do people stand your lies and… useless prattling about things you clearly have no understanding of?
“So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
Thou art spued.
at Killian: Rewilding to me means that we/humans stop interfering with what grows in an area. We just leave the area alone and let it grow and host organisms. My sense is that a “natural” ecosystem like this would move to its apex state over time and that the apex state is likely to be a somewhat stable ecosystem that supports some species of apex predators. The general health and vitality of the apex predator population is a reasonable indicator that the ecosystem itself is in decent condition.
I understand that rewilding does not mean the same thing to everyone who uses the term.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewilding_(conservation_biology)
Cheers
Mike
DBB, 273–
Can be but won’t be anytime soon, because there are very few air-cooled designs even on the books, let alone built. Per the WNA, “…the only nuclear power plant where [air-cooling] is in routine use is for the very small reactors at Bilibino in the Arctic permafrost region of Siberia, though the THTR-300 experimental reactor in Germany in the 1980s was also air-cooled.”
First deployment expected ~2030. Like I said…
The Beeb on logistics curves and EVs: a “sooner than you think” story.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57253947
Money quote:
David B. Benson says: (273) “ Nuclear power plants can be air-cooled. Looses maybe 5% in efficiency, not a big deal.”
Yeah, what the “renewablistas” from World Nuclear Association could possibly know:
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/cooling-power-plants.aspx
“Hardly any US generating capacity uses dry cooling, and in the UK it has been ruled out as impractical and unreliable (in hot weather) for new nuclear plants.
A 2009 US DOE study says they are three to four times more expensive than a recirculating wet cooling system.
All US new plant licence applications have rejected dry cooling as infeasible for the site or unacceptable because of lost electrical generating efficiency and significantly higher capital and operating costs.
For large units there are also safety implications relating to removal of decay heat after an emergency shutdown with loss of power.[…] It is unlikely that large nuclear plants will adopt dry cooling in the foreseeable future”
==
See also FR from January, with Nuclear Poet playing the part of DBB: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/01/forced-responses-jan-2021/comment-page-7/ my(315)]
Killian @176
“You don’t even admit the shit you were saying years ago vs today is different, moving incrementally toward where I have led you.”
I haven’t changed my views much on the science. I can’t recall anything specific. If I have changed my views its because the science has changed, not because of you. Regarding your version of simplification. I can’t see where I’ve changed my mind. I’ve always said the same thing since day one that simplification sounds problematic, but a light weight version would be ok. You just don’t always understand what other people write. This is obvious when I see your responses to Piotr.
“At every turn you crow about it (regenerative agriculture) being useful, but implementation should be partial”
I have to some extent. I’ve said what I want to say @ 203. You have never been able to refute/ rebut any of this. All you do is crow about your alleged expertise and swear and curse. I can’t find ANY hard independent evidence that regenerative agriculture can equal or better the yields of industrial agriculture. You posted a link once to The Rodale Institute, but the best they could claim is yields of one single grain crop were “similar” to industrial agriculture, and this is a group of regenerative farmers doing their own work. It does not qualify as an independent field trial written up in a scientific journal like Nature.
Independent studies of organic agriculture are easily googled and show it has at least 30% lower yields than industrial farming. Its hard to believe regenerative agriculture would be massively better. Regenerative agriculture has value in a general sense, but ways will have to be found to overcome the yield issues sooner or later. Or provide links to published, peer reviewed scientific research that proves me wrong.
Piotr @272 , I said “Assuming we stop emissions soon, atmospheric CO2 levels fall quite significantly by 100 years from now, and nearly completely after 1000 Years” The following seems roughly consistent with what I said:
https://blogs.edf.org/climate411/2008/02/26/ghg_lifetimes/
“About 50% of a CO2 increase will be removed from the atmosphere within 30 years, and a further 30% will be removed within a few centuries. The remaining 20% may stay in the atmosphere for many thousands of years.”
However I accept what you said on everything else . It does suggest next glacial period has been postponed a very long time, and yes absolutely we have already locked in significant sea level rise.
I would be interested in your thoughts on my comment back @249. Appreciate you may be too busy or not interested.
Ukraine to plant one billion trees over the next 3 years — Unian
We need much more:
https://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/thread/694/trillions-trees
Piotr at 280:
How cruel of you to quote the World Nuclear Association in your claim that nuclear plants cannot be air cooled. We all know they are secret supporters of renewable energy ;). I will remember that cite in the future.
DB Benson @ 273: Why do you make such obviously false claims in support of nuclear? You realize that your credibility on nuclear is about zero because of absurd claims like this one. There are exactly zero large commercial power plants that air cool.
Nigelj (282) “The following seems roughly consistent with what I said”
Eerr, not exactly: you said: “[surplus CO2 drops] nearly completely after 1000 Years” while your new sources says: “The remaining 20% may stay in the atmosphere for many thousands of years.”
And it is that 20% that is enough to delay/cancel onset of the ice age: even if we stop at 430 – that’s surplus of 150 ppm over XIX- 20% of that is 30 ppm.
So 280ppm + 20% of surplus = 310 ppm.
And the Ganopolski paper says that the most recent Milankovitch trigger could have already triggered us toward the next glaciation, IF pCO2 was 240ppm. It was 280 ppm, so we didn’t. If it is 310ppm for may thousand years – it won’t happen then either. In fact Ganopolski et al., speculated that as long as those values stay so moderately elevated we could enjoy a happy equilibrium –
“remain in the present delicately balanced interglacial climate state, steering clear of both large-scale glaciation of the Northern Hemisphere and its complete deglaciation, for an unusually long time.”
Nigelj (282) “I would be interested in your thoughts on my comment back @249. Appreciate you may be too busy or not interested.”
I cannot say “No” to you. And I mean it: the “N” key on my laptop died.
So each time I want to say an n-word – I have to bring up virtual keyboard, or copy and paste the letter from a quoted text.
Dam , it’s aoying – I have to see if I ca fix it myself (tricky o a laptop though). So you may eed to wait util the, igel.
In New Zealand we have some conservation estates essentially comprising native forests with their natural populations of native wildlife and some introduced predator species running wild. They are off limits to everyone except conservation workers and and hikers (trampers). Nobody to my knowledge lives in these areas on a permanent basis. There is an ongoing campaign trying to eradicate introduced predators like rats, possums and stoats because the are decimating native bird life. The typical problem island nations have.
The issue is we have massively depleted areas of native forests so not much is left, and some of their bird species are on the brink of extinction. Allowing people to live in such areas would only risk further depletion of the area of the resource and bird species and general environmental impacts. When bird species recover (some are making progress) and areas of native forests expand, it may be that a few people could live in these areas, but I think we are a fair distance away from this. But how would you decide who could live there, and in what numbers?
The kiwi bird populations are recovering, to the extent that a private company said it would contribute to conservation efforts, if it could sustainably farm the birds for profit. The department of conservation was not convinced, and the public was mostly not amused. The indigenous Maori people want more rights to eat a certain type of pigeon that is on the endangered list. It has been their custom to eat these birds but the fact is there are not many of these birds left. Its hard balancing these things up. Our reliance on urban living in concrete jungles is obviously concerning. Maybe one day humans can be fully “part of nature” , but with 7 billion and counting its going to be difficult.
michael Sweet @284 — Wrong. The Four Corners Power Station uses air cooling up to air temperature 100 °F, water cooling when it is quite hot.
The NuScale module installation on the Idaho National Laboratory site will use air cooling.
279 Kevin McKinney says:
6 Jun 2021 at 12:35 PM
Yes, but I’m guessing not for the reason(s) you think. What this illustrates is the reality we do not have time for a tech-based, #greenwashed version of (faux) sustainability. That’s 19 years just to change over cars. Meanwhile many credible analyses are saying we have half – or less – that time. Looking at Greenland alone (tipping point possibly passed at +0.8C) says there are not 19 years left.
This is a time issue. Time’s up if one *always* bears in mind long-tail risks.
If one’s discussion steps away from this to explore secondary, tertiary, and beyond, issues, it becomes very likely they will lose sight of limits they *cannot* successfully ignore. And that is the space this forum spends virtually all of its time in: Quibbling and barking words over issues that are essentially moot.
A tech-based climate response to climate ignores resources. It ignores time. Because…? It requires building out at global scale industries that are now a fraction of what would be required. And that’s if we actually want every human to have access to that electrified future – but that is not at all in the works. You pay to play, and most humans cannot. And it will take DECADES for these buildouts.
Such simple concepts, but ideology, fear, magical thinking, ignorance of regenerative principles, etc., lead too many to ignore them.
It’s 2+2, but the world keeps getting 5.
Dammit! Mike, I had written a great response, but somehow closed the tab and lost it all. Rather than spend another hour doing that again, I’m gonna get permacultural on you and suggest you clear your head of any preconceptions, SEE, then think, *then* we talk:
New research showing “pristine nature” is a severe misunderstanding of the past (it irks me this write-up treats this like some bold, new discovery, but it’s good confirmation of what “we” already know):
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/forest-gardens-show-how-native-land-stewardship-can-outdo-nature
Same research:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/04/pacific-northwest-s-forest-gardens-were-deliberately-planted-indigenous-people
—-
https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/pre-columbian-amazon-not-so-virgin-after-all-009810
Amazonia? One huge garden.
Remember: Probably the single most powerful technique we have to build soils quickly and permanently is what made human occupation in Amazonia possible, and is THE key to naturally drawing down carbon: Terra Preta//bio-char
Burn: Using Fire to Cool the Earth
https://biochar-international.org/burn-using-fire-to-cool-the-earth/
——
Australia, too.
https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/pre-colonial-australia-natural-wilderness-or-gentleman-s-park
—–
Ancient Morroccan Food Forest
https://adventure.com/ancient-food-forests/
Same, place, different article:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-permaculture-food-forests
——
Oversimplified: Observe first, determine needs, think of solutions. People are doing it backward.
Nope, no problem mining the oceans. Nope, nope, nope!
THE ALLURE OF TIN UNDER THE SEA
Timah has been ramping up production from the sea. Company data shows its proven tin reserve on land was 16,399 tonnes last year, compared with 265,913 tonnes offshore.
The huge expansion, coupled with reports of illegal miners targeting offshore deposits, has heightened tension with fishermen, who say their catches have collapsed due to steady encroachment on their fishing grounds since 2014.
https://news.yahoo.com/indonesian-tin-miners-target-ocean-231250536.html
Logic suffices. Civilization would be massively impacted if we had ice sheets covering NYC and many other major cities, etc., so it behooves us to keep FFs around to manage Milankovich cycles.
And 265~280ppm will suffice.
As I have been saying for a long time.
And it is that 20% that is enough to delay/cancel onset of the ice age: even if we stop at 430 – that’s surplus of 150 ppm over XIX- 20% of that is 30 ppm.
So 280ppm + 20% of surplus = 310 ppm.
And the Ganopolski paper says that the most recent Milankovitch trigger could have already triggered us toward the next glaciation, IF pCO2 was 240ppm. It was 280 ppm, so we didn’t. If it is 310ppm for may thousand years – it won’t happen then either. In fact Ganopolski et al., speculated that as long as those values stay so moderately elevated we could enjoy a happy equilibrium –
“remain in the present delicately balanced interglacial climate state, steering clear of both large-scale glaciation of the Northern Hemisphere and its complete deglaciation, for an unusually long time.”
David Benson, I no longer find your personal assertions about nukes to be the slightest bit credible. References, please! I’m going to quote from Wikipedia, not because it is authoritative, but it does tend to be neutral, and offers references that can be checked further.
@273 you assert “Nuclear power plants can be air-cooled. Looses maybe 5% in efficiency, not a big deal.
The NuScale modules planned for Idaho National Laboratory are to be air-cooled.”
Wiki on NuScale modules: “Its designs use the light water approach to cooling and power generation that is common in conventional nuclear plants. Water is heated by the nuclear core at the base of the reactor vessel. Heated water flows upwards inside the riser, then down over steam generators. As heat is transferred to steam generators, the water becomes cooler and denser, sinking back to the bottom of the device, where the cycle is repeated. Heat transferred to the steam generators is used to create steam that turns a turbine, which drives an electrical generator.”
No mention of air cooling there.
Further from Wiki: “NuScale’s design does not rely on powered water pumps or circulatory equipment.[2][5] The company claims it can shut down and continue cooling itself indefinitely during most accidents.[5][b] The devices are intended to be kept in a below-ground pool, to absorb the shock of earthquakes, with a concrete lid over the pool.[38] In the event that AC power is lost for normal cooling systems, the pool water in the pool begins to absorb heat and boil.”
It appears that your air cooling would kick in once the water has boiled out of the cooling pool, and the meltdown commences. Blowing that concrete lid off the pool would assist the air cooling, I suppose.
@287 you assert: “Wrong. The Four Corners Power Station uses air cooling up to air temperature 100 °F, water cooling when it is quite hot.”
Wiki: “The station is cooled using water from Morgan Lake, which is man-made and is replenished by about 28 million gallons of water each day from the San Juan River. The plant burns sub-bituminous coal delivered from the nearby Navajo Coal Mine by the Navajo Mine Railroad.”
No mention of air cooling. Not even a nuclear plant!
at Killian: I am not talking or thinking about “pristine nature” when I think or talk about rewilding. I am not thinking about restoration to a previous state of wilderness for any particular plot of land. I am thinking about our species stepping back from interfering with a particular plot of land and letting that plot go “wild” with minimal treatment/planning or care from our species.
Along those lines, I would probably be comfortable with the presence of trails that could accommodate hikers. I would probably be comfortable with the removal by hand of invasive species like ivy, but still, the interference and “improvement” that humans might offer to an area being rewilded should be minimized. Maybe no chemical/pesticides etc. no improvement that requires machinery, etc.
I think this kind of rewilding already happens in places around the world these days, but not on a large or grandly organized scale.
You may like this kind of rewilding or you may not, that doesn’t really matter any more than whether I like this kind of rewilding, but that is what I think about when I talk about rewilding.
Cheers
Mike
Re: Four Corners power station air cooling
Coal burner,not nuke, right ?
sidd
DB Benson @287:
According to Wikipedia, the Four Corners Power Plant has shut down. It was a coal burning plant, not a nuclear plant. Perhaps their expensive cooling system led them to be shut down.
The EIA says that it is more expensive to air cool and large nuclear and coal do not use air cooling. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=36773 Piotr’s quotes at 280 from the World Nuclear association say it all. You are a hopeless fanatic.
Nuclear is not economic even with water cooling. Add even more cost using air cooling and it is impossible to compete with renewable energy. Not to mention the safety issues with not having cooling water.
EVs greenwashing their usefulness to combat CC. Good comments below the article:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/inconvenient-truth-due-li-ions-heavy-carbon-footprint-evs-may-offer-negligible-co2
In other news, while Democrats bicker about how to arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, Republicans teaming up with Bill Gates are going to save the world from climate change with Nuke Power in Wyoming:
https://www.wyomingnews.com/news/local_news/gordon-bill-gates-driven-nuclear-power-plant-to-be-built-in-wyoming/article_48882a97-7b99-5d16-ba61-465bf9cf763a.html
264 – Mike
““The world must rewild and restore an area the size of China to meet commitments on nature and the climate, says the UN, and the revival of ecosystems must be met with all the ambition of the space race.
.
.
.
I like this idea.”
Sounds like you and Killian should form a team. Seriously though, the UN? That’s funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qypnQkdg89g
260 – nigelj
“Personally I feel countries are wise to have some sort of self defence but it should be kept to only what is really required. Nobody in their right mind is going to attack America, because they have enough weapons to obliterate anyone. Quite why they need more and more weaponry mystifies me. The point being their is room to be a bit more prudent in spending. This is just my opinion of course and is going off on a bit of a tangent.
That said, would a significant reduction in Americas spending weaponry have any political chance of success?”
Please define “…what is really required”. America is under attack on a daily basis even today via cyber war – a successful cyber attack could make many of our current weapons useless. More and better weaponry is the history of all weapons and is one of the main drivers for technological progress for humanity. Why more weapons? Who do you think is standing in the way of the entire world being taken over by communist totalitarians? It’s the USA. Seeing as how your President recently took away NZ citizens’ self defense tools, how are your Chinese lessons coming along? FYI: US defense spending is trending down steadily as a percentage of GDP:
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget
266 – Mike
“Maybe we can just discuss science here at real climate?”
How do you know AGW isn’t part of the BIG GUY’s plan?
283 – David B. Benson
“Ukraine to plant one billion trees over the next 3 years — Unian
We need much more:”
How about 1,000 times as many? President Donald Trump, the most environmentally progressive president in US history, has ordered it to be so:
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/articles/president-trump-signs-one-trillion-trees-executive-order-promoting-conservation-regeneration-nations-forests/
Just as Trump’s Operation Warp Speed saved the world from COVID, his EO will do it again by negating carbon emissions via the trillion tree initiative. Unless creepy Joe repeals that EO – would not be surprised!
Mr KIA @296 “Just as Trump’s Operation Warp Speed saved the world from COVID, his EO will do it again by negating carbon emissions via the trillion tree initiative. Unless creepy Joe repeals that EO – would not be surprised!”
America was already producing vaccines at warp speed before Trumps so called “warp speed” initiative. In other words it would have happened anyway.
Trump had America join some global group promising to plant trees called the trillion trees initiative. There’s no evidence that Trump administration planted ANY tress, funded trees, anything like that. Its all just Trump BS. You have been sucked in, again:
https://archive.curbed.com/2020/9/30/21494849/presidential-debate-billion-tree-project-trump-biden
Solar panels decaying more rapidly than expected::
https://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/user/3819/recent
In the more encouraging direction, some nuclear power plants are licensed for 90 years. I expect that to continue with new SMR designs.
Oh dear, oh dear. Several here need to learn the Rankin cycle of a steam turbine.
The source of heat is irrelevant. What is that at the bottom of the cycle the steam must be condensed. The condenser is usually water cooled but can be air-cooled. There is a coal burner in central Europe which uses air cooling, but I don’t remember where.
This is completely separate and has nothing to do with the safety features of the NuScale nuclear reactor. That is entirely a different matter.
Read about the Rankin cycle, please.
Michael Sweet (284) “Piotr at 280: How cruel of you to quote the World Nuclear Association in your claim that nuclear plants cannot be air cooled. We all know they are secret supporters of renewable energy ;). I will remember that cite in the future.”
;-) you are welcome, if my experience is of any value, I doubt it would do much good:
it didn’t stop our Nuclear Poet several weeks back when he dismissed the shutting of some nukes in France during a heat wave, as an easy fix (“Let them have air” to paraphrase his French intellectual predecessor), and I doubt it would do much now to his fellow nuclearista, DB Benson.
As TRUE believers they are impervious to contrary facts. Anybody can follow ideas that supported by the facts, but it takes a true believer, and an act of belief – to believe against the facts… ;-)