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human output of CO2 is the cause, when it's about 1% of natural output

Only when you ignore the absorption side of the natural carbon cycle.

Humanity's 2004 CO2 emissions: 7.9
Oceanic CO2 outgassing: ~90
Terrestrial CO2 outgassing: ~120
(gigatons carbon - GtC)

Based solely on those numbers: 7.9 / 210 ~= 3.8%

Yes - insignificant. However...

Oceanic CO2 absorption: 92
Terrestrial CO2 absorption: 121.3
(GtC)

The oceans and land surface are net CO2 sinks. Since 1751 roughly 315 billion tons of carbon have been released to the atmosphere from the consumption of fossil fuels and cement production. Half of these emissions have occurred since the mid 1970s.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/CarbonCycle/carbon_cycle4.html
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob.htm

Coal appears to be worse than nuclear
According to http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html
"For comparison, according to NCRP Reports No. 92 and No. 95, population exposure from operation of 1000-MWe nuclear and coal-fired power plants amounts to 490 person-rem/year for coal plants and 4.8 person-rem/year for nuclear plants. Thus, the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants. For the complete nuclear fuel cycle, from mining to reactor operation to waste disposal, the radiation dose is cited as 136 person-rem/year; the equivalent dose for coal use, from mining to power plant operation to waste disposal, is not listed in this report and is probably unknown."

If the meteorite was of Iron/Nickel composition there's a good chance a fair amount of nickel was boiled off and carried into the area, possibly some produced by the head of the impact and blast.

Please see: Toxicity Summary for NICKEL AND NICKEL COMPOUNDS

Acute inhalation exposure of humans to nickel may produce headache, nausea, respiratory disorders, and death (Goyer 1991, Rendall et al. 1994).

It's the unprecedented rate of change that is "unatural" and a "clear and present danger".

It's worse, much worse. Burning coal releases copious quantities of radioactive isotopes into the air.

Building a *safe* nuclear plant is expensive

And since regulations require safe nuclear power plants, building *a* nuclear power plant is expensive.

The "economic" calculations do not factor the long term storage of Nuclear waste

Long-term storage of nuclear waste is not due to a lack of funding. A kilogram of *unenriched* uranium (like you'd burn in a CANDU) produces something like 10 million kWh of electricity (i.e., several hundred thousand dollars of income). For just a single kilogram. The funding is there. The reason for a lack of long-term storage of nuclear waste is due to NIMBYism and NIMBYism alone. Nobody wants a repository in their backyard.

the decommisioning of exising plants

This is one of the main "subsidies" in existence currently that the hope is will be able to be phased out.

or the poorly researched medical consequences of long term exposure to the elements that Nuclear plants vent (Noble gasses that decay into deadlier elements) as standard operating proceedure

In normal operation, a nuclear reactor releases less radioactivity, *including* releases from mining and processing, than burning coal. And we're talking only about *radioactive elements* here, which are not the prime threat from a coal power plant. Here's a guide to how much radiation you're exposed to by various sources.

Additionally alot of greenhouse gasses (as yet unfactored costs) are produced from mining the ore to refining the fuel.

What, you think they get fuel for free? Come on. You better believe it's factored into operating costs. The thing is that you need so darn little of the stuff that the marginal operating costs on a nuclear power plant are very low compared to fossil plants. A kilogram of coal will run a hundred watt lightbulb for 4 days or so. A kilogram of *unenriched* uranium, 200 years.
Carbon dioxide output used to power the enrichment process, CFC 114 (20000 times more potent than c02 as a greenhouse gas) and Uranium hexafluoride [wikipedia.org].

Yes, uranium processing is dirty (although they don't *vent* hex or CFC 114 in any significant quantities -- and CFC-114 is not universal, and is being phased out, just like other industrial CFCs, while hex is what they want to process (venting it would be wasting money)). No, it's not anywhere even remotely approaching as dirty as coal mining, nor anywhere remotely approaching as bad for the environment as coal usage.

Reflecting the true cost of of a well engineered plant and the cost of doing business even when subsidised by government. If nuclear power is so good, why should it need massive subsidies

I just explained why; go back and read my earlier post. Nobody wants to deal with the nightmare having a project that you can be sinking money into for decades only then to have a regulator say, "We've decided not to grant you an operating license". It was a regulatory nightmare. Not the safety regulations, which were quite reasonable -- the licensing procedure was the primary problem.

If you want to see how nuclear has become more economical even *ignoring* new designs, go back and look at the history of power generation in the US. Despite no new construction of nuclear power plants, nuclear has been holding steady as a percentage of US energy production. How? Improved efficiency of operation. In the 1970s, nuclear power plants spent nearly half their time as downtime -- very different from the present day. This extra power is nearly pure profit. Some modern reactors, like the CANDU, now are designed to have *no* downtime -- they can be refuelled while the reactor is running. It's a whole different ballgame. Combining this with the new regulatory environment, and the fact that now *coal* and other fossil fuels are an insurance liability (due t

The drought in the southeastern US has not yet been conclusively linked to global warming.

...is overloading the capacity of the river system as it is by over reliance on nuclear power so that it is increasing costs for rate payers.

will doubtfully be more than about 80% efficient (electrically).

Compare to direct solar heating, where damn near 100%

It got more bizzare with the bit about burning nuclear fuel - a bit of a hint there that coal is more radioactive than nuclear fuel perhaps or is it an even more bizzare fantasy?

If nuclear plants simply INCINERATED their waste, they would be WAY ahead of even the cleanest coal plants as far as radiation and toxic emissions are concerned. And of course, that's not even getting INTO the mercury that coal plants spew out. Naturally, no one intends to incinerate nuclear waste; the point is simply that nuclear waste is a concern only to stupid people with too much free time and too little common sense.

Here's a reference that you might find helpful (including a very good list of further sources).

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/ colmain.html

Commercial nuclear power is unfortuantely still stuck in the 1950s

Of course, there have been setbacks, and there will inevitably be more of them. But I'd like to think that we're not so cowardly and meek as a species that a few setbacks will stop us from exploring such a promising set of technologies.

...perhaps accelerate thorium...

Wind and solar are nice, but there needs to be a stable backbone -- and nuclear offers that in spades. We've got enough nuclear technology RIGHT NOW to keep the lights on, and with the research happening right now we can make sure that the next generation of plants are so clean and safe that our grandchildren will wonder why we ever screwed around with fossil fuel plants at all. It would be nice if we could save the oil and coal for things that don't have alternatives yet, like making plastics. The petrochemical industry still doesn't have a whole lot of alternative feedstocks yet.

Your first point is exactly the response I was going to make, but luckily I found that you had already made it. The only thing I have to add to that point is a link.

As for your second point, in a perfect world I would agree. Unfortunately, reprocessing that spent fuel also makes it more usable for nuclear weapons, dirty bombs, etc. I'm not against reprocessing, but honesty requires one to acknowledge the downsides to reprocessing as well.

Your last point almost went without saying. Almost, except for the fact that it hadn't seemed to occur to him.

For instance, the main reasons for the favourable trend in Germany in the 90s are an effort to increase efficiency in power plants and the restructuring of the industry of the former DDR after reunification

s/restructuring/collapse.

Why do you think Europe was so keen to pick 1990 as the base year, and the USA/Canada are not so keen on it? Why do you think Russia signed on to Kyoto at all? The collapse of the communist economies led to emissions reductions, all right, giving Germany a big head start (their CO2 emissions reduced 16% from 1990-1995 as the former DDR's economy collapsed; their emissions have flat-lined since) and Russia a bunch of "hot air" credits that they could sell to the highest bidders (their emissions fell almost 30% in the early 90s and have also flat-lined since).

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L3012256. htm

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/emissions/rus.dat

Actually, if you look at the numbers http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/emissions/bra.dat (not the abstract http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_bra.htm) Brazil is reducing its CO2 emissions. At a conference I attended last week http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/05/juicing.html I found out more about why. Their renewable fuels program is really taking off.

Actually, if you look at the numbers http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/emissions/bra.dat (not the abstract http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_bra.htm) Brazil is reducing its CO2 emissions. At a conference I attended last week http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/05/juicing.html I found out more about why. Their renewable fuels program is really taking off.

Stop trolling, troll. You know, people had setellites in space using misterious things called "SOLAR PANEL"s for their power production for a few decades now. And guess what? The EM flux from the sun didn't change, yet, global warming!

According to
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide
Earth's atmosphere contains about 3 trillion tons of CO2.

Now, let's get some real data about emission,
    http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob.htm
In 2003, 7.303 billion tons of additional CO2 emitted from fossil fuels

See the nice graph they have,
    http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/graphics/cumulat ivedata.JPG
Now if they just add India and China accelerating consumption, we would see a huge spike at the end.

So, we are have an ADDITIONAL 7.3/3000 => 0.24% of CO2 by weight per year to the ecosystem.

Now, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_the _Earth's_atmosphere, ALL volcanoes release about,
    130-230 MILLION tons of CO2.

So humanity is releasing, oh, 30-50 TIMES the amount of CO2 by volcanoes during the SAME AMOUNT OF TIME., well, back in 2003.

This also means that current natural system is balanced at volcanic emissions of CO2, not 50 times that, hence CO2 is rising and not being tanked.

Also, if 3000 billion tons of CO2 is 380ppm, then 7.3 (from fossil fuels in 2003) is only 1ppm.. So, that doesn't even account for the total increase of CO2 now hence the number is too low (additional release of CO2 from burning forests probably accounts for the rest, but who weights forests??). CO2 is going up at a current rate of 2 ppm per year and accelerating.

Anyway, what you say is bullshit as seen above. Volcanoes do not account for even a fraction of what is happening in CO2.

Just wait a little bit and "mother nature" will help us increase the CO2 rate much, much faster than even currently. When the Siberian and Canadian bogs defrost and warm up, the Atlantic (aka. Bermuda Triangle) and Black Sea releases their methane (it just needs to warm a little bit more), well, then we'll see global warming. CO2 will be over 1000ppm by end of the century and then, well, you or your kids may just see what happens then.

Stop trolling, troll. You know, people had setellites in space using misterious things called "SOLAR PANEL"s for their power production for a few decades now. And guess what? The EM flux from the sun didn't change, yet, global warming!

According to
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide
Earth's atmosphere contains about 3 trillion tons of CO2.

Now, let's get some real data about emission,
    http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob.htm
In 2003, 7.303 billion tons of additional CO2 emitted from fossil fuels

See the nice graph they have,
    http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/graphics/cumulat ivedata.JPG
Now if they just add India and China accelerating consumption, we would see a huge spike at the end.

So, we are have an ADDITIONAL 7.3/3000 => 0.24% of CO2 by weight per year to the ecosystem.

Now, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_the _Earth's_atmosphere, ALL volcanoes release about,
    130-230 MILLION tons of CO2.

So humanity is releasing, oh, 30-50 TIMES the amount of CO2 by volcanoes during the SAME AMOUNT OF TIME., well, back in 2003.

This also means that current natural system is balanced at volcanic emissions of CO2, not 50 times that, hence CO2 is rising and not being tanked.

Also, if 3000 billion tons of CO2 is 380ppm, then 7.3 (from fossil fuels in 2003) is only 1ppm.. So, that doesn't even account for the total increase of CO2 now hence the number is too low (additional release of CO2 from burning forests probably accounts for the rest, but who weights forests??). CO2 is going up at a current rate of 2 ppm per year and accelerating.

Anyway, what you say is bullshit as seen above. Volcanoes do not account for even a fraction of what is happening in CO2.

Just wait a little bit and "mother nature" will help us increase the CO2 rate much, much faster than even currently. When the Siberian and Canadian bogs defrost and warm up, the Atlantic (aka. Bermuda Triangle) and Black Sea releases their methane (it just needs to warm a little bit more), well, then we'll see global warming. CO2 will be over 1000ppm by end of the century and then, well, you or your kids may just see what happens then.

It's fractional distillation and the heat is recovered from both the water and the ammonia. This is a good document on GAX Absorption Heat Pumps and the wikipedia Gas Absorption Refrigerator entry.

The step-by-step detail PDF outlines what is happening in the SHPEGS cycle along with the Flow Animation.

Ammonia/water is also not the only possible working pair, but it is commonly used in heat pumps and Industrial Heat Transformers and was used in the system to simplify explaining the concepts. A commercial absorption heat pump powered by a geothermal source with images and diagrams.

I can get 60MPG in city driving if I drive at a fixed 35-40MPH with no stops and use cruise control. The magic number in the Prius is 42MPH. Above this speed, the gasoline engine must run or one of the motors will spin too fast. At or below this speed, it can run pure electric. The other part is everything must be warmed up which usually takes 5 minutes or so according to the graph. Not only the engine has to warm up, but so does the transmission and electric motors (which have oil in them). A couple of very useful documents I found are http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/890029-WI fqPO/890029.PDF and http://www.ornl.gov/~webworks/cppr/y2001/rpt/12258 6.pdf. These documents are great for geeks like me since they show detailed pictures and graphs of what's inside the hybrid system.

I think if Toyota put in more powerful motors, bigger batteries, and a more powerful engine they could actually improve milage further since the electric only system could run better at higher speeds and help more during acceleration. This is what Toyota is doing for the 2009 model, changing to Lithium Ion batteries, more powerful motors, and making it so you can plug it in as well.

I find it impressive how efficient the electric hybrid system is, with the inverter getting 95%+ efficiency and the motor also getting over 90% efficiency. Their simple CVT design also is fairly efficient as well.

I agree that the old EPA tests were severely flawed, though. Car manufacturers could by law not give any other numbers other than the EPA ones.

I have one simple question about this whole 'Global Warming will kill us all and is the work of the devil' debate.

What's the right temperature?

Was it when we had sheets of ice covering 50% of the earth's surface? Was it when Vikings were setting up farming communities on Iceland?

The Vostok ice core seems to show a cyclical C02 level, with spikes at approximately 400 thousand years ago, 325 thousand years ago, 225 thousand years ago, 125 thousand years ago, and one that we're in the middle of. When compared with these time scales, looking at levels in times we can directly measure is as useless as picking a random 1 minute period to watch the stock market, and using that to predict market trends for the next 20 years. We cannot demonstrate that industry is causing this 'problem' because, not only do we have no direct readings from before industry, we don't actually know that there's a problem. This could easily be all natural.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/ vostok/vostok_data.html
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/vostok.c o2.gif

I own a 2007 Prius. IMHO, you're correct about the regenerative braking not being the big money maker in the vehicle. It's the hybrid train switching off the engine when you're on the freeway on slight declines.

It's got a screen that shows your energy consumption, including the net gains from the regenerative braking, and I watch it fairly closely as I drive. If you're on a slight decline, the car gets around 75mpg with the gas engine providing minimal torque. The scale maxes at 100 when the engine shuts off, and that'll happen on the freeway sometimes too. Occasionally I can drive the thing on a non-flat road under 35mph it'll switch to all electric as well. On slight incline, it's about 20-25mpg, depending on if I'm trying to accelerate. A round trip averages out to around 50mpg, and that's what I'm seeing. My average is 52mpg.

As for the regenerative braking, the display will show you how much energy you net in a five minute period by a collection of little green "leaves". For every 50 watt-hours, you get a green leaf. Usually I net a half of one in a five minute period. That's not much at all. Best I've done is 4 I think, and I was coasting downhill a lot on that 5 minute segment.

So a really good five minute drive will net you three leaves, or about 150w/h. If we do the math on that, here's how that breaks down. (no pun intended)

A gasoline engine is about 20% efficient. A gallon of gas holds 115,000 BTUs, which is 33.69Kwh. A car will make use of about 20% of that, so a gallon of gasoline will provide you with 6.738Kwh, or 6378wh. Those three leaves add up to 2.35% of a gallon of gas. With gas at $3/gallon, those three leaves save you $3 * 2.35% = 7 cents.

Nope, not much money there. The big savings is when the thing coasts or nearly coasts on the freeway. That's why the smart-car idea that makes you coast a lot produces similar savings. No surprises there.

Let's do some math!

"For bituminous coal it is assumed that 16 pounds of mercury per trillion Btus is emitted; for anthracite coal, 18 pounds per trillion Btus (USEPA 1997a);"
www.epa.gov/nrmrl/pubs/600r02104/600r02104chap4.pd f

"1 BTU = 0.00029307107 kilowatt hour"
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox- a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs= ooc&q=BTU+to+kilowatt+hour&btnG=Search [google.com]

293,071,070 KWH per 16 pounds Hg, that makes 18,316,942 KWH per pound of HG,
that makes 40.3819444 KWH per milligram Hg released from coal-burning utilities in the US

So, one 15watt CF lasts 6000 hours, conservatively, and so compared to 60 watt incandescents, it saves 45 watts * 6000 hours = 270,000 watt hours or 270KWH of juice,
270 / (KWH per mg Hg released) = 6.6861565 miligrams of Hg not emitted to power the CF (as compared to an incandescent, and assuming that your power comes from coal)

This is 270 KWH generated (i.e. raw BTU content of coal), and Hg "emitted" (unsure if scrubbers and cleaned coal have been accounted for)

Assuming that coal to your light socket involves a 50% loss, then it's more like 500KWH saved, or 12 miligrams of Hg kept out of the environment.

"The mercury content of compact fluorescent bulbs varies between 2 and 15 mg per bulb, depending on the model."
http://www.productstewardship.net/productsMercuryF luorescentFAQ.html [productstewardship.net]

So, I'm not convinced that even if you just throw your CF in the trash that you have actually put more Hg into the environment than you've taken out. Of course, we should dispose of CF's responsibly (I'm sitting on a pile of about 6-7 dead bulbs).

And yeah, Steve Milloy is a troll.

More links:

According to
http://www.nei.org/doc.asp?catnum=2&catid=106 [nei.org]
it takes 1 pound of coal to generate 1 kilowatt hour

According to the DOE, one kilowatt hour from coal releases 2 lbs of CO2
www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/co2_report/ co2report.html

"according to Environmental Protection Agency figures released in 1984, average values of uranium and thorium content have been determined to be 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm"
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/ colmain.html [ornl.gov]

"Approximately 75 tons of mercury are found in the coal delivered to power plants each year and about two thirds of this mercury is emitted to the air, resulting in about 50 tons being emitted annually" (which, in turn, is about one third of all domestic mercury emissions)
http://www.epa.gov/mercury/control_emissions/index .htm [epa.gov]

Let's do some math!

"For bituminous coal it is assumed that 16 pounds of mercury per trillion Btus is emitted; for anthracite coal, 18 pounds per trillion Btus (USEPA 1997a);"
www.epa.gov/nrmrl/pubs/600r02104/600r02104chap4.pd f

"1 BTU = 0.00029307107 kilowatt hour"
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox- a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs= ooc&q=BTU+to+kilowatt+hour&btnG=Search

293,071,070 KWH per 16 pounds Hg, that makes 18,316,942 KWH per pound of HG,
that makes 40.3819444 KWH per milligram Hg released from coal-burning utilities in the US

So, one 15watt CF lasts 6000 hours, conservatively, and so compared to 60 watt incandescents, it saves 45 watts * 6000 hours = 270,000 watt hours or 270KWH of juice,
270 / (KWH per mg Hg released) = 6.6861565 miligrams of Hg not emitted to power the CF (as compared to an incandescent, and assuming that your power comes from coal)

This is 270 KWH generated (i.e. raw BTU content of coal), and Hg "emitted" (unsure if scrubbers and cleaned coal have been accounted for)

Assuming that coal to your light socket involves a 50% loss, then it's more like 500KWH saved, or 12 miligrams of Hg kept out of the environment.

"The mercury content of compact fluorescent bulbs varies between 2 and 15 mg per bulb, depending on the model."
http://www.productstewardship.net/productsMercuryF luorescentFAQ.html

So, I'm not convinced that even if you just throw your CF in the trash that you have actually put more Hg into the environment than you've taken out. Of course, we should dispose of CF's responsibly (I'm sitting on a pile of about 6-7 dead bulbs).

More links:

According to
http://www.nei.org/doc.asp?catnum=2&catid=106
it takes 1 pound of coal to generate 1 kilowatt hour

According to the DOE, one kilowatt hour from coal releases 2 lbs of CO2
www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/co2_report/ co2report.html

"according to Environmental Protection Agency figures released in 1984, average values of uranium and thorium content have been determined to be 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm"
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/ colmain.html

"Approximately 75 tons of mercury are found in the coal delivered to power plants each year and about two thirds of this mercury is emitted to the air, resulting in about 50 tons being emitted annually" (which, in turn, is about one third of all domestic mercury emissions)
http://www.epa.gov/mercury/control_emissions/index .htm

You would think but you would be wrong.

You see a landfill gets many things dumped into them that should not be. The major problem with this is that many of these chemicals end up reacting with mercury which causes more problems then most people realize, please see some of the URL's below as to why you are mistaken in assuming that mercury is a noble gas. On top of this you also have the problem that it appears bacteria found in landfills are able to convert mercury into the much deadlier form of methylated mercury which is again bad.

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20010707/fob1. asp

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/20 01/jul/science/kc_landfill.html

http://www.esd.ornl.gov/people/lindberg/lindberg3. html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb4814/is_20 0507/ai_n17457809

The Prius was never for real environmentalists anyway. It's for lazy yuppies who want to put out an environmentally conscious image.

I came to that conclusion when I did a calculation of the energy saved by turning off my computer when I wasn't at work. It's amazing how many people leave them on all night to save minor hassle (I know sometimes there good reasons, but not for most cases where I see it).

I worked out turning my one work computer off as I leave the office keeps about 1 ton of CO2 per year out of the atmosphere (workings below), plus an amount of mercury and other pollution, assuming the electricity here comes from coal. It takes 100 gallons of gasoline to produce 1 ton of CO2. Please correct me if I'm wrong

• My machine: a twin Xeon, draws 140W at idle. More efficient machines may draw little more than half of that. Laptops, significantly less again.
• If it's off 15 hours at night and all weekend: 123 hours
• Coal generation produces about 2.3lb CO2 per KW/h (reference)

0.140 * 123 * 52 * 2.3 = 2059lb

• CO2 per gallon of gasoline: ~19.4lb (reference)

therefore 2059 lb is produced by around 106 gallons of gasoline.

That's about how much I'd save if I had a Prius (I do ~8000 miles/year). Sure, many people do more, and have more efficient computers, but it puts it in perspective.

If cellulosic becomes attainable, and it will, then the pressures on corn will decrease tremendously.

Link to article about the program And then there are those wacky ORNL researchers making both ethanol and hydrogen from algae..

The future seems bright enough for ethanol production, with new ideas popping up all the time. Its pretty fun to drink too... :)

Exactly. During the summer when the grids are already at full capacity it would be a very bad idea to have hundreds of thousands of electric cars charging at the same time. Then you won't pay your hard earned $$$ to BP or Exxon but instead to power companies like Enron. We actually need two things - 1) more energy and 2) a good way to store it (this implies a safe and economical way to distribute it as well...). It would also be nice not to make much of a mess in the process. Nuclear power seems like the way to go. In US they have not build a nuclear power plant in ages instead they burn tons and tons of coal that ironically enough releases a lot more radio-isotopes into the environment than nuclear power plants would, not to mention other more obvious pollutants. Check this link out.

How much CO2 is human activity producing?

Google makes possible some rough estimates:

• Annual global coal production: 50,000 million metric tonnes (World Coal Institute)
• Global oil production: 85 million bbl/day, converts to the equivalent of 128 million metric tonnes of coal per year (as reported here and in other stories, with conversion from bbl/day to tonnage/yr here)
• Annual global natural gas production: 2,500,000 million cubic meters, converts to the equivalent of 2 million tonnes of coal per year (UNCTAD estimate of 2000, with conversion factors from above)
• Total annual release of fossil fuels into the global environment: 50,130 million tonnes
• Percentage of carbon in coal (by weight): 90% for anthracite, which is what these numbers are based upon (Encarta)
• Percentage of carbon in CO2 (by weight): 27%
• Annual introduction of CO2 into the biosphere from fossil fuels: 167,100 million metric tonnes
• Estimate of atmospheric CO2: 2,870,000 million metric tonnes (CDIAC)
• This suggests that the use of fossil fuels would have increased atmospheric CO2 by 5% in the last year, disregarding all other factors
• Measurements at Mauna Loa suggest that there is a net increase in atmospheric CO2 of about 1% per year (NOAA Global Monitoring Division).

Evidently something is buffering the increase in atmospheric CO2. While this has been beneficial in the sense that it has limited the impact of burning fossil fuels, it is also very worrisome since homeostatic mechanisms like this one tend to failover very rapidly into alternative stable patterns when the buffering capacity is exceeded. There is no way to determine how close we are to a tipping point. And there is no way to predict the nature of the new stable pattern. For instance, there are mechanisms that could kick in to significantly increase the Earth's albedo and toss us into an ice age, despite the increased greenhouse effect.

This is reintroduction of carbon into the biosphere that had been sequestered away for a hundred million years or more. The last time there was this much carbon in the biosphere was before the age of dinosaurs. It is possible that the last time there was this much carbon in the biosphere was before there was enough free oxygen for chordates.

Humans produce about 150x the CO2 output by volcanos.

Methane and CO2 levels are way, way up since the industrial revolution.

Basically, it's pretty irrefutable that mankind is having a significant effect on global warming. The fact that the sun is also warming doesn't mean, as the summary implies, that global warming is "not a human-induced" phenomenon, just that it also has other contributing factors. This should, if anything, spur humanity to greater levels of effort to reduce emissions.

Humans produce about 150x the CO2 output by volcanos.

Methane and CO2 levels are way, way up since the industrial revolution.

Basically, it's pretty irrefutable that mankind is having a significant effect on global warming. The fact that the sun is also warming doesn't mean, as the summary implies, that global warming is "not a human-induced" phenomenon, just that it also has other contributing factors. This should, if anything, spur humanity to greater levels of effort to reduce emissions.

methane, use say. Now I'm assuming you have NOT checked ANY sources at ALL. Or only crackpot websites. So,

http://www.epa.gov/methane/scientific.html

so at about 1700 ppb (billion) or 1.7ppm at about 21 times greenhouse effect than CO2.

CO2 concentrations are at 380ppm (million),

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-mlo.htm

So methane "heat trapping equivalence" would be 1.7ppm*21 => 38ppm CO2. CO2 is at 380ppm or 10X that of methane equivalent. So, methane does not account for the greenhouse. It only accounts 10% of the greenhouse effect.

Oh, and since you are comparing uneducated people with idiots, then you must be a big one. Methane *used* to play the vital role in keeping Earth warm. That was, 4 billion years ago. As soon as oxygen jumped to ~0.1% or 1% of atmosphere, methane disappeared and CO2 became THE major source of keeping the Earth warm. That disappeared about 500 million years ago when O2 spiked to over 20% (quickly - plants developed). Each of the events caused Earth to freeze for some time. Anyway, I'm sure you'd not research these facts either... (facts - they are in rocks!)

I think it means something like this

I worked for a company, that wrote its own distributed computing system (in Java/XML). It sucked awfully by all measures (latency, CPU-load, memory requirements, bandwidth), but they would not dump it in favor of PVM or one of the MPI implementations because:

1. We don't know, who wrote that PVM thing and how to support it.
2. The guys, who wrote our own system are both really nice and dumping their work would offend them...

This is such a common problem, there is a term for it...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapReduce provides a nice model of parallel computation to be exploited: in a multicore chip, you can treat each core as a node with a very reliable network and fast I/O.

Don't like MapReduce and want something more... heterogenous... you could use PVM: http://www.csm.ornl.gov/pvm/ ; which later became MPI: http://www.hlrs.de/organization/par/services/model s/mpi/ or a nice collection of learning materials at: http://www.hlrs.de/organization/par/par_prog_ws/ .

Want something from Sun? OpenMP: http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/articles/openm p/openmp_content.html

I think that we have the software to do it, already, yes.

Read http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/ colmain.html it will surprise you!

A government physicist, Alex Gabbard, calculated that the general public is directly exposed to 100 times more radiation each from coal-fired plant, than from each nuclear plant of the same megawatt output.

He also says that, while it is very widely distributed, lessening the danger, in 1982, each typical coal-fired plant released 5.2 tons of uranium, and 12.8 tons of radioactive thorium in to the environment. These elements are extremely long-lived, and accumulate in the environment over time.

On top of that, massive amounts of heavy metals, sulfur dioxide, and carbon dioxide are released by burning coal.

The other thing about nuclear waste is that you know where it is, you don't just go pumping it out into the atmosphere and hope for the best.

Trace quantities of uranium in coal range from less than 1 part per million (ppm) in some samples to around 10 ppm in others. Generally, the amount of thorium contained in coal is about 2.5 times greater than the amount of uranium. For a large number of coal samples, according to Environmental Protection Agency figures released in 1984, average values of uranium and thorium content have been determined to be 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively. Using these values along with reported consumption and projected consumption of coal by utilities provides a means of calculating the amounts of potentially recoverable breedable and fissionable elements (see sidebar). The concentration of fissionable uranium-235 (the current fuel for nuclear power plants) has been established to be 0.71% of uranium content.

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/ colmain.html

You have to keep in mind that it doesn't matter whether ionizing radiation is destroying the atomic bonds within nanorobots (and therefore gradually disrupting the normal function of the nanorobots) so long as there is either (a) sufficient redundancy in the nanorobot to tolerate gradual loss of functional components (as is the case in many biological systems); or (b) the nanorobot can remanufacture damaged parts faster than the radiation can destroy them. That is something which should be possible for relatively sophisticated nanorobots (though not the most simple variants). Even simple "bionanorobots" such as E. coli, if supplied with sufficient materials and energy, could replicate to the mass of the Earth in less than 2 days. So having nanorobots (or microscale nanofactories) recycling radiation damaged nanorobots and replacing them with functional nanorobots doesn't seem to present a significant problem.

1. http://www.ornl.gov/sci/isotopes/
2. http://www.nanomedicine.com/NMI/6.3.7.1.htm

Of all of the possible uses of Nuclear power, using it to power a rocket out of the atmosphere is perhaps the last one I'd want to see actually implemented. It is hard to think of a better way of spreading radioactive particles all over a huge landscape, not to mention what happens when you crash.

I'm sure it'd be trivial compared to the spread of radioactive particles from coal power plants.

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/ colmain.html

This article gives some numbers, they are not 'barely detectable' at all.

How can you patent something that is a 'naturally' (using that term loosely) occurring genetic abnormality?

click

Bollocks to you, this is about my Country. I do not agree with you at all.

That's fine, you don't have to. However, if you would like to learn a few things, I would recommend you read this. It does a nice comparison between coal and nuclear including a comparison of radioactive wastes (broken down by type), radiation exposure and consumption levels. It also points out how various regimes could use coal to get their weapons grade material.

Now, you can choose not to believe a scientist from Oak Ridge National Labs, but they are experts in the field. If you still don't believe them, check their references.

Perhaps you should do some research on that before making such an authoritative statement.

The only value of mice tests is to ...

Please, read more of the same site I linked above.

Perhaps you should do some research on that before making such an authoritative statement.

The only value of mice tests is to ...

Please, read more of the same site I linked above.

Saying that nuclear power isn't "safe" is ignoring the facts:

A nuclear reactor under normal operating conditions releases less radiation to the environment than a comparably-sized coal power plant. http://www.ornl.gov/info/reports/1977/344560511508 7.pdf

Containment-breaching accidents in the entire history of nuclear power amount to exactly 1 in approximately 10,000 reactor-years of total operation, and the RBMK (Chernobyl) is a dog of a design that under any rational oversight system would never even have been built. This is in line with probabilistic risk assessments which indicate a CMF (core melt frequency) of 1 in 10^4 reactor-years, and a LRF (large release frequency) of 1 in 10^5 reactor-years. Current designs (specifically the AP1000) reduce these to 4x10^-7 and 4x10^-8 respectively. http://www.nuclearinfo.net/twiki/pub/Nuclearpower/ WebHomeCostOfNuclearPower/AP1000Reactor.pdf

Nuclear power isn't without its problems: high capital costs, mostly as a result of legal fees associated with brain-dead NIMBY protesters, and the waste management issue, although even that is only a problem for at most 10,000 years under a competent, well-thought out fuel cycle (e.g. NOT in the US).

Compared to the global economic and environmental consequences of our current fossil fuel addiction, whether or not to transition to nuclear power, and quickly, is no choice at all. But rational inquiry doesn't play as well on the news as "OMG IT'S NUCULAR THINK OF TEH CHILDRENZ!!!!1`one"

I'm with you in calling shenanigans on the content and source of that article. Plus, wasn't this little tidbit of information missed altogether by the authors of the article? And, there's a post below this saying "clean, potable water" being in short supply globally. Well, yeah, duh, but you don't need clean, potable water to produce hydrogen. You need clean, potable water to drink. I can suck up some water out of a puddle on the street and make hydrogen through electrolosis. Actually helps if the water is ionized, and any impurities will be left behind.

Consequently, the energy content of nuclear fuel released in coal combustion is more than that of the coal consumed! Clearly, coal-fired power plants are not only generating electricity but are also releasing nuclear fuels whose commercial value for electricity production by nuclear power plants is over $7 trillion, more than the U.S. national debt. This figure is based on current nuclear utility fuel costs of 7 mils per kWh, which is about half the cost for coal. Consequently, significant quantities of nuclear materials are being treated as coal waste, which might become the cleanup nightmare of the future, and their value is hardly recognized at all.

OK, according to the Chromosome FAQs:
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome /posters/chromosome/faqs.shtml
The X chromosome comprises ~5% of the genome while the Y chromosome is ~1%. Since women are XX and men are XY, men and women differ by ~6%.
If chimps are only 2% different from men, then men are more closely related to chimps than women. QED

Recent Greenhouse Gas Concentrations
The atmospheric lifetime of carbon dioxide is difficult to define because it is exchanged with reservoirs having a wide range of turnover times; IPCC 2001, (page 38) gives a range of 5-200 years.

The lifetime of excess atmospheric carbon dioxide (Global Biogeochemical Cycles - American Geophysical Union)
If one assumes a terrestrial biosphere with a fertilization flux, then our best estimate is that the single half-life for excess CO2 lies within the range of 19 to 49 years, with a reasonable average being 31 years. If we assume only regrowth, then the average value for the single half-life for excess CO2 increases to 72 years, and if we remove the terrestrial component completely, then it increases further to 92 years.

We now wait for the traditional round of excuses.

We'll save the excused for actual facts, shall we? The Southern hemisphere is warming, despite recent assertions to the contrary from certain unreliable sources.

graph

context

You are entitled to your own opinions but you are not entitled to your own facts.