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Global Warming To Leave North Pole Ice-Free
cwolfsheep writes "Tonight, Yahoo & AFP news are
reporting on a study, further backing up a
previous report, that suggests the North Pole will be ice-free in the summer by the next century. Oddly enough, they say the melting will not
add to the sea-level of the ocean (since the ice is already in the ocean) and that the extra water will help absorb more greenhouse gases. Maybe we need to start using more
aerosols."
Boy howdy. Did you read the CNN Article?:
"...Johannessen works at the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center in Norway. 'This will make it easier to explore for oil, it could open the Northern Sea Route (between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans)," he said of the report, dubbed the Arctic Ice Cover Simulation Experiment. '"
I dunno, its theoretically possible (though pretty improbable) that there's absolutely nothing to worry about when our polar ice caps melt completely, but I'm of the mind that when the article is more concerned about the new oil drilling prospects and trade routes than climate instability, cancer-causing UV rays, and so on, maybe its time to get a second opinion.
Solution: Build more nuclear plants.
In 2000, there were 9351 plants producing power levels of 604,514MW in the summer and 615,030MW in the winter. (I'll use the summer numbers since those are the lowest and arguably the most important.) Of those 9351 plants, 91 were nuclear, representing 0.97% of the power plants by number but producing 86,163MW in the summer -- about 14% of overall output.
Of the remaining, there were 1024 coal plants, 3007 petroleum (oil) plants, and 2068 gas (methane) plants, combining to produce 419,852MW. Taking the average output of 947MW per nuclear plant, it would take 444 plants to take up the slack, though I suspect plants being designed now are more powerful than that. Westinghouse believes their new AP1000 1000MW reactors can be built for $1400 per KW for the first few, and $1000 per KW starting around the seventh plant. The total construction cost is about $447 billion, which, if spaced over 20 years, is a bit more than $22 billion per year. In 2000, the US burned 995 million tons of coal, 195 million barrels of petroleum, and 6.2 billion MMBtu of gas. The costs of these fuels? In today's terms, it would be, at $25 per ton, $30 per barrel of undistilled petroleum, and $5 per MMBtu (all approximations, but close to current prices), $24.9 billion, $5.9 billion, and $31 billion, or a total of about $61.8 billion. The cost for those plants, spaced out, would be a little more than a third of what we pay for fuels as it is.
Aside from the virtual end of power plant-produced carbon dioxide emissions, and that some of these reactors could be breeder reactors, helping to make better use of nuclear fuel (of which we have centuries of supply in the United States alone), this would shut down much of the incredibly damaging coal mining in the country, drop natural gas prices to reasonable levels so that people can pay for their homes, and slash oil consumption drastically.
The construction of these plants would also create thousands of jobs at each site for two to three years, spurring the local economies. Even if there were only 1500 jobs created per site, that's 33,000 jobs if 23 plants were built at a time. There would probably be enough to offset job losses at conventional power plants, and my understanding is that nuclear construction work carries higher paychecks than standard construction work.
Nuclear reactors are fairly close to terrorist-proof. In California, they've survived earthquakes, and they're designed to handle most airliners crashing straight into them. Their common dome housings also would help to deflect anything larger than they were designed for, and the lessons learned from Three Mile Island have gone a long way in improving responses and designs.
I want a nuclear reactor in my backyard. I don't see why the fears about them are so prevalent. I almost wish the planes had hit a reactor instead of the WTC just so that people could see how they wouldn't crack, though part of me fears that it would heighten the fears of others attacking such plants.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
I'm also a global warming skeptic and that's the only argument I buy. Hedge on the side of assuming it's our fault, because by the time we're sure it's going to be way too late.
The scientific consensus is strong. Perfect, no, but outside of right-wing talk show hosts and oil company shills, there is no real doubt that human activity is altering the climate.
Having studied this issue intensely, that is flat wrong. There are two effects going on. First, modeling climate is exceptionally difficult, and the most difficult aspect is predicting the activity of clouds. On one hand, they reflect light (cooling), but on the other hand, they act as a blanket (warming). Depending on the thickness and density of the clouds, these parameters are traded off. So scientists have to predict more than the levels of CO2 produced. And it ain't easy.
The second effect is the "grant effect." All grants are peer-reviewed - that is, when you apply for money, people in your field decide if your current and prior work makes you a valid candidate for getting $$$. Now, obviously, this gets very cliqueish, and if you consistently advocate a contrarian position (ie, global cooling or stasis), you will have a very hard time getting money. In other words, if you are a climatologist and you don't predict warming, have fun getting funding. In this way, the "answer" in the global warming debate is shaped by who can still get funding, and this is a very dogmatic, polarized field. And on this, the liberals are every bit as biased as the oil company asshats. The people I would listen to are the ones not blustering on either side, but who consider cooling/stasis to at least be a possibility. They're rare, but they exist.
So bottom line, there is very much debate as to the origins tot the current warming trend. Especially when you consider that a single decent volcanic eruption releases more greenhouse gases than man does in a year. Like I said though, I'd rather not find out the hard way either.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat