TV Coverage of Cycling Races Can Help Document the Effects of Climate Change (phys.org)

Researchers from Ghent University were able to detect climate change impacts on trees in Belgium by analyzing nearly four decades of archive footage from the Tour of Flanders. The findings were published in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution. Phys.Org reports: Focusing on trees and shrubs growing around recognizable climbs and other 'landmarks' along the route of this major annual road cycling race in Belgium, the team looked at video footage from 1981 to 2016 obtained by Flemish broadcaster VRT. They visually estimated how many leaves and flowers were present on the day of the course (usually in early April) and linked their scores to climate data. The ecologists found that the trees had advanced the timing of leafing and flowering in response to recent temperature changes. Before 1990, almost no trees had grown leaves at the time of the spring race. After that year, more and more trees visible in the television footage -- in particular magnolia, hawthorn, hornbeam and birch trees -- were already in full leaf. These shifts were most strongly related to warmer average temperatures in the area, which have increased by 1.5 degrees Celsius since 1980.

Comments

Re: Climate change

[Anonymous Coward]

https://xkcd.com/1732/

Please explain how temperatures are rising at unprecedented levels then, oh genius

Re:Climate change

[Kaenneth]

It's the fault of stupid, short-sighted hippies like Greenpeace that we are stuck on fossil fuels instead of atomic energy.

Re: Climate change

[Dzimas]

Let's test your "it's been warming since the end of the last ice age" hypothesis. The global land-ocean index has risen by about 1 C in the past 50 years, and it's forecast to warm another 2 C in the 21st Century. At that rate, the planet will be uninhabitable in only several centuries. So I think we can safely conclude that normal climate cycles aren't responsible.

Oh, fuck it. Let's put it a different way. Imagine that the planet is a fishbowl and the fish have a nasty habit of chain smoking. They've noticed that the water is getting cloudy and their gills are having to work harder to breathe, but they're convinced it must be due to silt from the bottom, not from their dim-witted behaviour in a closed system.

Why this has to be a political issue is beyond me. It's only a matter of time before the raging masses start challenging the existence of gravity and the laws of physics. Faith based engineering is just around the corner...

Possible solutions?

[Kernel Kurtz]

Maybe they could spray those trees with something to prevent this problem.

Re: Climate change

[LynnwoodRooster]

The problem is that the data doesn't match the models, and it's those models that say it is supposed to be 2 deg C warmer. The data doesn't support the models' claims. Science says that when data and theory/model conflict, the theory/model is wrong.

Additionally, the theory is that a warming world should have more and stronger hurricanes, yet the trendline since 1992 is down and this year is forecast to be lower still. More data and theory conflicting...

Furthermore, look at the GISS temperature record from 1988 and from 2018. You'll see that it's been adjusted to eliminate the peak in 1940, and the cooling from 1940 to 1970. When you can adjust away the past, then you can dictate the present. But it's not quite honest now, is it?

Lastly, look at HadCRUT4 from 1895 to 1943, and then again from 1957 to 2005. They are essentially the same - yet the former (1895 to 1943) is supposed to be not affected by the sudden rise in CO2. If we had the same type of climate change with and without the impact of CO2, then what does that say about the impact of CO2?

Re: Climate change

[angel'o'sphere]

Cherry picking links?

What the funk is wrong with you?

Re: Climate change

[LynnwoodRooster]

So the data presented is bad?

Blah blah blah

[blindseer]

Yet another story about how the world is getting warmer. I'll get excited when I see the federal government start building nuclear reactors to replace the coal power we have now.

Nothing is safer than nuclear. Nothing has a lower CO2 footprint than nuclear. If it wasn't for the government bureaucracy holding up the issuance of licenses then we'd be seeing new nuclear reactors going online at a rate of about one per month.

Here's my conspiracy theory. I am admitting up front that this is approaching tin foil hat territory. The government doesn't want to actually solve the problem of global warming, they just want to be able to use the threat of global warming as an excuse for what they want to do.

I look at the EPA estimates on where the CO2 the USA produces comes from. 34% is electricity. Okay then, go hand out some nuclear reactor licenses and get those coal plants replaced. I find it impossible to believe that the government has not been able to find anyone capable of producing a nuclear power plant for 40 years. We get 20% of our electricity from nuclear power now so it's not like we don't know how to do it. Add in some wind, hydro, maybe even some solar and we can be on the path to taking CO2 production from electricity down to the level of a rounding error. I'm guessing if we really put our minds to it we could get a new nuclear reactor online at a rate of one per month very quickly. I say this because there was a time when the USA had half the population it has now and was able to build them at a rate of one every two months. Keep the paperwork to a sane level and we can keep the cost of electricity the same as it is now.

The next largest chunk of CO2 production in the USA is transportation, also about 34%. This is a more difficult problem because people can't merely be told to buy a new energy efficient vehicle. What happens though with the shift of electricity from coal and natural gas to nuclear then natural gas gets real cheap. While natural gas as a fuel isn't perfect it still gives half the CO2 output than gasoline per mile. I'm not sure the government needs to really do much on getting people to buy a natural gas car but merely set the rules on how to make them safe to drive. This has been done for a large number of vehicles used in commercial fleets so just make it clear to the auto makers that offering these same cars to the public will not meet resistance by regulators. This might mean road funding not being from gasoline taxes any more, so have people pay for the roads through sales taxes or something.

Here's another tin foil hat theory. No one is more addicted to gasoline vehicles than the federal government. The government makes more money through road taxes than the oil companies do in selling the fuel. The only way to break that addiction is to wean off the taxes.

Of course electric cars will play a part but passenger cars are not near as much a tax income for the government as over the road trucks, same goes for CO2. We haven't figured out long haul trucking on electricity yet, but we know how to make natural gas burn. No need for subsidies to make this work, just shift the electricity market from natural gas with nuclear power, make it clear that natural gas for transportation won't have any regulatory barriers beyond what already exists, and the market will move naturally.

There, a plan to more than halve the CO2 output from the USA. Making that happen could take less than a decade once it gets started and with proper motivation.

Don't give me more about the problems. I want solutions. Telling me the trees look different on a bicycle race is nice and all but let's get this done already.

Re:Blah blah blah

[religionofpeas]

The government doesn't want to actually solve the problem of global warming, they just want to be able to use the threat of global warming as an excuse for what they want to do.

Funny how all the governments in the world want the same thing, supported by all their scientists.

Re:Blah blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's right, it's those wicked Democrats who are the problem. If it were up to the Republicans we'd all be living in endless free energy nirvana by now.

Grow up already.

Re:Blah blah blah

[drinkypoo]

Blah blah blah yet another post where you ignore reality in order to jerk off nuclear power. All anyone has to know to understand that nuclear is a boondoggle is that it is absolutely slaughtered by basically everything else at cost per watt. Even if there were not lots of other good reasons why nuclear is crap, that would be sufficient.

P.S. We have a solution for long haul freight using electricity, it's called rail.

Re:Blah blah blah

[blindseer]

All anyone has to know to understand that nuclear is a boondoggle is that it is absolutely slaughtered by basically everything else at cost per watt.

Maybe that's true in whatever nation you are from but here in the USA nuclear is quite inexpensive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Before you say that solar and wind will get cheaper and beat nuclear, consider what the price of nuclear can do in the mean time. That's right, nuclear can get cheaper too. Of course there is a limit on what the bottom can be because of the prices of materials and such. I have a pretty good idea on where that bottom lies, and it doesn't look good for solar. Wind might stay reasonable, the technology for that is pretty simple. Depending on the location it's easy to run out of room for them though.

P.S. We have a solution for long haul freight using electricity, it's called rail.

You have no idea how many trucks are on the road, how far they travel, or how much freight they carry. Electric freight trucks are a fantasy, so don't even bother bringing them up.

I gave my plan on how to reduce CO2 in the USA, what's yours? I saw the math and here's a hint for you, unless you include large helpings of nuclear and/or natural gas it won't work. Maybe you can project out current trends and assume price/performance advances but that's just a fantasy then. The world doesn't run on fantasy.

Re:Blah blah blah

[Maxo-Texas]

Nuclear energy is not safe and is not inexpensive when humans are involved.

Decommissioning costs are running two orders of magnitude more expensive than proponents said they would be.
* This means that nuclear is actually much more expensive than it's stated cost and that means the next generatiosn subsidizes nuclear power used by the prior generations.

Securing the nuclear waste costs millions of dollars per site per year for the foreseeable future.
* This cost increases over time. What cost $6 million 10 years ago, costs $8 million a couple years ago.

Private insurance will not cover the risk. That's evidence right there that the risks are unknowable or larger than proponents say.
* This means citizens are on the hook for unlimited losses. Corporations and executives get the profits up front and dump the costs on citizens.

It has benefits for CO2 but we sail thru the 2 degree celcius increase about 2024. Nuclear plants wouldn't be done for 20 years. The public hate them.

I could see using Nuclear only in extreme lattitudes where alternative energy is less practical.

Re:Blah blah blah

[blindseer]

Nuclear energy is not safe and is not inexpensive when humans are involved.

It's safe...
https://ourworldindata.org/wha...
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/...

It's inexpensive...
https://www.eia.gov/electricit...
https://insideclimatenews.org/...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...

Decommissioning costs are running two orders of magnitude more expensive than proponents said they would be.
* This means that nuclear is actually much more expensive than it's stated cost and that means the next generatiosn subsidizes nuclear power used by the prior generations.

That's just a lie. The Forbes article above explicitly point out that decommissioning costs are included in the price. They also point out that past cost overruns in nuclear power were often the result of poor money management, not any flaws in the technology or construction.

Securing the nuclear waste costs millions of dollars per site per year for the foreseeable future.
* This cost increases over time. What cost $6 million 10 years ago, costs $8 million a couple years ago.

Prove it.

Private insurance will not cover the risk. That's evidence right there that the risks are unknowable or larger than proponents say.
* This means citizens are on the hook for unlimited losses. Corporations and executives get the profits up front and dump the costs on citizens.

The risks are large. That's what happens with any large project. A multi-billion dollar anything will be more than any private insurance company is willing or able to cover. This is a financial risk, which again is often a problem of poor money management and not any flaw with nuclear power itself.

It has benefits for CO2 but we sail thru the 2 degree celcius increase about 2024. Nuclear plants wouldn't be done for 20 years.

Mean construction time for a nuclear power plant is about 7.5 years, though many have been completed in 3 years. Just because the TVA took 42 years to complete a reactor at Watts Barr does not mean all reactor projects are doomed to take as long.

The public hate them.

That's changing.
https://www.statista.com/stati...
https://www.thedailystar.net/o...

I've seen people flip on their stance on nuclear power right before my eyes when I point out that Fukushima was older than Chernobyl. We don't build nuclear reactors like Fukushima and Chernobyl any more. People understand this. You can complain about nuclear being unsafe, too expensive, and so on, but that's technology from 1980 if you are lucky. I can make wind and solar look bad too if I'm taking state of the art from 1978 and compare that to modern nuclear. Should I base my car purchases from what I learned by reading Unsafe At Any Speed?

I could see using Nuclear only in extreme lattitudes where alternative energy is less practical.

Then you need your vision checked.

Re:Blah blah blah

[Barsteward]

"Nothing is safer than nuclear." - bollox, it is dangerous, expensive to commission/decommission, single point of failure, lovely target in the event of war, makes the land uninhabitable as soon as its built and for years after decommission, needs constant subsidy and then the owners can screw you over on how much they want to charge if they have a monopoly
You could cover millions of roof with solar panels (and provide battery storage) / create wind farms by the time you've built a nuclear power station and have plenty of change in your pocket compared to the cost of multiple nuclear power stations

Nuclear may have an upside but the downsides are not worth it. Keep whats there until their end of life and then all the nuclear supporters can put their hands in their pockets to fund the decommission of each nuclear site.

Re:Blah blah blah

[Barsteward]

An article of subsidies for nuclear Nuclear Subsidies
"The Forbes article above explicitly point out that decommissioning costs are included in the price." since when is the price agreed on the initial contract the actual price at the end of the build? They are always massively under quoted to try and make it seem a reasonable venture. it doesn;t matter what the reasons are for cost/time overrun, its the reality. "They also point out that past cost overruns in nuclear power were often the result of poor money management, not any flaws in the technology or construction." precisely and thats why they are so crap in built time and cost overruns. How many have actually been built on time/cost, I couldn't find any, all i can find is massive cost and time overruns.
You are living in the land of unicorns

Re:Blah blah blah

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Here is the reason why nuclear is so "inexpensive":

The demolition of a nuclear power plant is a technically complicated undertaking that can take between 15 and 20 years to complete. In the case of Obrigheim, dismantling the power plant will cost energy utility company EnBW, which owns the facility, an estimated â500 million ($684 million). Compared to other plants in Germany, this pressurized-water reactor is relatively small. The dismantling of larger plants like Gundremmingen B or Isar 2 in the state of Bavaria are estimated to cost as much as â1 billion each.

Most Germans have assumed that these costs will be picked up by the energy utility companies, which have gleaned billions of euros in profits from these plants. Besides, why should different rules apply to nuclear plant operators than to normal car owners, who have to pay to scrap their car when it's no longer fit for the road?

But the heads of Germany's three major electric utility companies -- E.On CEO Johannes Teyssen, RWE chief Peter Terium and EnBW head Frank Mastiaux -- have come up with what they think is a brilliant plan to transfer the billions in risks related to dismantling nuclear plants. They want to punt responsibility to the state and taxpayers.

Article: Utility companies want public trust for winding down nuclear plants

1. Make big $$$ while plants operate.
2. When it's time to shut down, involve taxpayer
3. Profit!

Re:Blah blah blah

[blindseer]

I noticed a lack of citations on your claims. Here's mine:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/...

Nuclear power is in fact the safest source of energy we have today.

The claim on nuclear power being a prime target in war is cute. Have you seen a modern nuclear power plant? Did you notice something? A big concrete dome perhaps? I'm sure if someone dropped a big enough bomb on the dome it would break open but if that's your standard then consider this, how well protected are windmills from an attack in a time of war? What of solar panels? You want to put windmills off shore too? I wonder how well protected those would be from an attack, or a drunken container ship captain.

If you want to talk about making land unusable then consider how much land would have to be plastered over with solar collectors. We can't grow crops in the shade. Oh, we put the solar panels on the roof you say? That doubles or triples the cost. When prodded on price solar power advocates talk of the price on utility scale solar, which by some estimates is as cheap as coal. When prodded on the enormous amounts of land use it suddenly and magically becomes far more expensive rooftop solar. Well, make up your mind. Do we get cheap solar and make that land unavailable for crops or housing, or do we get expensive solar and put it on our rooftops? You get one or the other to make your case, you can't have both.

Oh, another argument I hear often is that solar will get cheaper in the future. Well, nuclear will get cheaper in the future. We've been subsidizing solar for decades now with the promise that someday, with enough research and development, it will be cheaper than coal. Well, why not subsidize nuclear too to make it cheaper than coal, safer than wind, and lower CO2 output than solar? Oh, wait, we don't have to do that because nuclear is already there. You think that's "bollox"? Show me your numbers.

Re:Blah blah blah

[blindseer]

Yep, the nuclear power industry got about one billion dollars year after year for 50 years in government subsidy. Nuclear power also provides 20% of the electricity generated in the USA. Compare this to what wind and solar get in subsidies. I did some searching on this and I've been getting some conflicting numbers, they vary from 7 billion dollars to 15 billion dollars based on who is providing the number and which year is being discussed. That alone is disproportionate subsidies. Consider that wind and solar combined provide less than 10% of our electricity that is very disproportionate. That's something like a 20 times difference in subsidies, based on money spent and energy produced.

How many have actually been built on time/cost, I couldn't find any, all i can find is massive cost and time overruns.

Probably because being on time and on budget isn't newsworthy.

I'll hear people complain about the money spent on Yucca Mountain. A nuclear waste site that's been a money pit for years and still has not been declared fit for disposing of waste. Well, that's what you get with a government run project that's so politically charged. We had US senators approve funds for the building of the site, because that's federal money spent in states where senators can buy a lot of votes. When it comes to funding the inspections and licensing for declaring it suitable for nuclear waste these same senators deny the funds. Now they can play the hero to their voters because dangerous nuclear waste won't be traveling on the roads through the neighborhoods where their kids play. There is no technical reason we can't put waste in this site, it's been held up only by politics. I imagine this money pit is included in the "nuclear industry subsidy" column when it contains no nuclear material, and may never contain nuclear material if it's not maintained. Maintaining it costs money, even if it's just a security detail to keep homeless and pot smoking teens out of it.

You are living in the land of unicorns

Yep, and it seems you are as well.

Re:Blah blah blah

[blindseer]

Funny how all the governments in the world want the same thing, supported by all their scientists.

Here, let me fix that for you...

Funny how all the dictatorships in the world want to take America's wealth, supported by all their government employed scientists.

We have the UN IPCC issue reports periodically on how the world will be uninhabitable in 100 years unless the USA hands out money to all the poor nations of the world. They aren't demanding the USA stop burning oil, in fact if the USA stopped burning oil then many of these dictatorships would collapse as they have nothing else of value to offer in international trade. These nations couldn't bear the USA to stop burning coal either, because then coal mining in the USA could flood the market and make the coal from many of these shithole nations worthless.

What can these shithole nations make that the USA might actually buy? SOLAR PANELS!!! Because of some market manipulations and accidents of history much of the world's silicon production has landed in China. There's some others around the world but mostly if the USA is going to "go green" and still hand out dollars to foreign nations then it has to be through solar panels.

Using natural gas in cars would cut CO2 production per mile traveled in half compared to diesel fuel or gasoline, but the USA makes more than enough natural gas for itself. So, even though natural gas was "good" for the environment maybe a decade ago we see the UN declared it "bad" because exporting natural gas from shithole nations is expensive. Again because of market manipulations and accidents of history the USA imports all kinds of batteries instead of making them domestically. Oh, and same for the rare earth metals used in electric motors and windmill generators.

With the help of a UN funded adverts, compliant international media companies, and a whole lot of useful idiots in the USA, we can't have natural gas cars in the USA to cut down the CO2 we produce. Instead we get electric cars made from a whole lot of imported materials and components. Thankfully, for these shithole nations, electric vehicles are worthless for the big consumers of oil, like large trucks, trains, ships, and aircraft, so there's no real threat of the USA stopping the importation of gobs of oil.

It seems I just talked myself into another conspiracy theory.

The UN might not have created the global warming scare but they've twisted it into knots in a way that the USA is kept handing out dollars for things that it could produce equivalents on its own. If the USA started building nuclear power to replace much of the natural gas it now burns for electricity that leaves a lot of production for something else. That "something else" could be planes, trains, and automobiles. Well, maybe not planes. The USA still produces plenty of its own oil so there would be plenty for aircraft fuel without needing any imports. No need for importing solar panels either if we move to nuclear. No importing large car sized batteries. Yep, that's it. The UN worked up a scare over global warming and then crafted an excuse for the USA to not expand use of domestic nuclear and natural gas to address this scare.

If enough Americans figure this out then the whole global warming scare can't be used as a way to siphon wealth from the USA to the rest of the world. I don't know if I believe my own conspiracy theory but its been fun to think this out.

Re:Blah blah blah

[religionofpeas]

Funny how all the dictatorships in the world want to take America's wealth, supported by all their government employed scientists.

Most climate scientists are in the US and Europe. When is the last time you counted dictatorships in those places ?

Re:Blah blah blah

[kackle]

I recently read that 1 pound (weight) of nuclear material yields roughly the same energy as does 8,000 tons of coal. That's amazing. However, it made me wonder whether this incredible fact distracts everyone involved from the fact that nuclear plants create permanent (for all intents and purposes) poison as a waste by-product. (Humans are good at focusing on one, not-so-important fact.) And it's apparent that our feckless, ever-changing, governmental administrations aren't handling that waste properly, even if it ever could. I wonder whether it's worth it, especially since we seem to be one battery-technology leap away from an energy revolution.

Re:Blah blah blah

[houghi]

Well, Several countries have a King or Queen at the top and that is almost like a dictator, but it stays in the family. Like North-Korea. Then there is France that has an emperor and they smell and Germany has Hitler. So all of them.

BTW I really like going to school in Kansas. I e-learned a lot about God and Evalutian.

Re:Blah blah blah

[angel'o'sphere]

Using natural gas in cars would cut CO2 production per mile traveled in half compared to diesel fuel or gasoline,
Cut down by a 1/3rd perhaps, probably less ... certainly not halved.

Re:Blah blah blah

[angel'o'sphere]

It is a long established fact that Yucca Mountain is not suited as a nuclear waste deposit.
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwast...
http://www.sciencemag.org/news...
http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Why don't you just change flags and advocate for Solar and Wind and Pumped Storage?

Re:Blah blah blah

[angel'o'sphere]

We can't grow crops in the shade.
Of course we can ... plenty of plants don't like direct sunlight, and you can cover a field in a way that at any time only 1/3rd is in shadows.

BTW: the amount of space to power the whole world with solar alone is astonishing small.

Re:Blah blah blah

[Maxo-Texas]

Oh come on. That's obviously underbid amounts even now.

Decommissioning costs are 10%-15% of construction costs and rising.

Companies have repeatedly not set aside the money to decommission and so the it will fall on the citizens.

We need clawback provisions on nuclear industry executives pension and savings if we want the money set aside.

Humans always become careless, sloppy, and cut corners for everything. Nuclear power is no different in that regard.

I don't think your information is very realistic.

As you'll note from my post above, I'm not absolutely opposed to nuclear power but we should avoid it based on experience over the last 6 decades. The actual costs of nuclear are always paid later by citizens who see little to none of the benefits.

I understand you are passionate about nuclear power but I think you are rationalizing and ignoring anything that contradicts your world view. Fortunately, your view that the public is going to accept nuclear power is unrealistic too.

While researching this, I see that china is planning to build many of these plants. Given their history and their culture, that is a catastrophe waiting to happen.

I can't think of many cultures which could handle nuclear power safely. I would have thought the japanese but they cut costs in the face of hard evidence. So maybe the Swiss or the Germans.

Certainly not americans- and certainly not the chinese.

Re:Blah blah blah

[blindseer]

I don't think your information is very realistic.

I noticed you offered no links for me to see where you got your information.

Re:Blah blah blah

[blindseer]

I point out that nuclear is cheaper than coal, safer than wind, and lower CO2 output than solar and you come back with a comment on how if we space out the solar panels enough we might be able to grow handpicked strawberries in between? That's telling me that you have nothing to counter the safety, cost, and CO2 output of nuclear.

I will concede some points about solar power. It is possible to make solar as cheap as coal, quite safe (though perhaps still not safer than nuclear), low CO2, with storage, and an ability to load follow. This can be done if we figure out molten salt storage, solar thermal collection, and site the collector properly. This might not be technology we have today but if someone puts enough effort in it then it should work in a decade or less. Here's the problem, if you space out the mirrors on your sun tracking solar thermal collector so you can have your organic vegetable garden under the mirrors you've now tripled the space needed and reduced the efficiency. This drives up costs. Now solar isn't cheaper than nuclear any more.

That same molten salt storage, and the same turbines, as that solar thermal plant can be mated with a molten salt nuclear reactor. This gives the same load follow capability, the same energy storage capability, but doesn't require all that land around it for mirrors. You can still have your organic vegetable garden around the power plant too. Put some money on molten salt nuclear reactors and we can have prototypes in 5 years. Another 5 years and we can have some demonstration commercial plants. Another 5 years and we'll have something that can be mass produced. We can invest in solar during that time too but there's no reason we should not start building conventional nuclear now and invest in next generation nuclear for the near future.

Go find a place to plant your solar collectors and strawberries, I won't stop you. Just don't expect it to be profitable in 5 or 10 years. If competition from natural gas doesn't kill it then something else will.

Re:Blah blah blah

[Plumpaquatsch]

The claim on nuclear power being a prime target in war is cute. Have you seen a modern nuclear power plant? Did you notice something? A big concrete dome perhaps? I'm sure if someone dropped a big enough bomb on the dome it would break open but if that's your standard then consider this, how well protected are windmills from an attack in a time of war?

Israel proved you don't even have to hit the dome to destroy a nuclear plant. Bomb the control center and turbines next door, and the best case scenario is a pristine reactor dome that won't produce power for many months and that's with a super fail safe design. Fukushima had less damage and resulted in core melt.

Re:Blah blah blah

[Plumpaquatsch]

However, it made me wonder whether this incredible fact distracts everyone involved from the fact that nuclear plants create permanent (for all intents and purposes) poison as a waste by-product

Indeed it does, but we have already had proposals to reduce the waste through reprocessing, but for reasons unknown the American government just hates to do it.

Because they aren't ignoring all the problems that have come up at nuclear reprocessing plants?

Re:Blah blah blah

[angel'o'sphere]

I point out that nuclear is cheaper than coal, safer than wind, and lower CO2 output than solar
You claim that. But your claims are wrong. No one ever died to wind power ...
and you come back with a comment on how if we space
Because you claimed, there would not be enough space to power everything with solar.

If competition from natural gas doesn't kill it then something else will. Har Har Har, natural gas is only cheap in the states. And as most nations are phasing out CO2 producing power plants, gas plants can not be build so easy anymore.

You have an extremely kleingeist point of view on the worlds energy production and evolution in changing it.

denialist links to denialist sites

[CaffeinatedBacon]

Film at 11.

Re: Climate change

[religionofpeas]

When you can adjust away the past, then you can dictate the present.

So that's how the trees in the TV recordings extended their growing season ? Because NASA adjusted the thermometers ?

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another variable not counted for in climate models.

And a variable never accounted for by armchair climate scientists: plants don't live forever, and when they die and decay the carbon is released back into the atmosphere. Net result: nothing.

Re: Climate change

[dryeo]

Don't be stupid, we're talking NASA. They adjusted the seasons. Think about it, they have space craft up there, they use them to adjust the orbital tilt of the Earth and get thousands of extra dollars in funding, some even say the funding dollars are even higher, and they all come out of your taxes.

Re: Climate change

[bavarian]

Renewable energiy isnât a toy, but a reality:
https://www.energy-charts.de/power.htm?source=all-sources&year=2018&week=26
https://www.energy-charts.de/energy_pie.htm
Here in Germany weâ(TM)re close to producing 50% of all electricity from renewable sources. And thereâ(TM)s a lot of free roof space to add more solar panels. What these production charts donâ(TM)t show is that we are currently producing much more energy than we consume because the coal and nuclear plants canâ(TM)t easily shut down when their power isnâ(TM)t needed. So, in terms of total power consumption, once the storage problem is addressed, the solar and wind peaks, together with the bio gas and water plants that can be shut down in times of over-production, can be used to deliver energy all day and night.

Re: Climate change

[bavarian]

Are you telling me that it is 2018 and this site is still not getting character encoding right? :-(

Re:Climate change

[dryeo]

I'd lay the blame on companies like Exxon for funding those hippies.

Re: Climate change

[Maxo-Texas]

When you cut and paste, Slashdot fails.

When you make a mistake or your phone autocorrects badly, Slashdot fails because you can't fix it.

I've been using slashdot less over the last year and can see a time when I'll just drop it.

Re:Cool

[Maxo-Texas]

You can sequester that by burying them or making protected objects out of them (like tables and chairs).

But even if we covered the earth with plants, it's under 1/20th of the problem. It would consume about 3 gigatons of carbon per year assuming we perfectly sequestered all of it.

Last I saw was we release 37 gigatons of carbon per year. That's down from 50gigatons a couple decades ago but we only have about 115 gigatons before we pass 2 degrees celsius. And the easy carbon reductions are mostly all gone now.

Re:Cool

[solanum]

Except, of course, it is accounted for in the models. If only those climate modellers didn't have a better idea of climate modelling than the general public. Then you might have been right.

More interestingly, in the late 80's and early 90's there was a 'missing sink' in that atmospheric CO2 wasn't increasing as much as the emissions models suggested it would. It turned out that the estimates of increased plant C sequestration were higher than originally thought and the oceans were absorbing more than originally thought (thereby acidifying and damaging corals and molluscs etc.). Of course that was more than 20 years ago now.

Re:Cool

[serviscope_minor]

Yet another variable not counted for in climate models.

This is called "making shit up to support your beliefs".

Re: Climate change

[phantomfive]

I like the way you think.

Re:Cool

[phantomfive]

Yet another variable not counted for in climate models. Not only do plants grow faster with elevated levels of CO2, they also grow for time each year when the average temperature increases.

You can also add that changing the color (brown to green in this case) will change the albedo of the earth, which is another factor estimated by the climate modelers.

Re:Climate change

[blindseer]

Greenpeace's latest stunt was to crash a drone into a nuclear power plant containment structure. They did this to prove that a terrorist could crash a drone into a nuclear power plant containment structure. In other words they proved themselves to be terrorists.

I was going to say that no damage was done but that's not quite true. Go do a search for Greenpeace and find a news site that allows for people to comment. The drone didn't even leave a mark on the concrete wall but Greenpeace is just looking like idiots right now. The commenters are tearing Greenpeace apart and there seems to be a lot of support for nuclear power.

Here's a video of the founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, talking about why he left and how Greenpeace has lost any basis in facts and science to their arguments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Cool

[Barsteward]

shit... you'd better get onto the climate scientists and tell them what they've missed out as they are so stupid.

Re: Climate change

[thegarbz]

No, just your analysis of it. Also posting the data out of context is intentional dishonesty. 30 seconds on Google will tell you exactly why and how GISS data was adjusted. Now go on and refute the actual adjustment itself. We're all waiting to hear your big conspiracy on an adjustment that was completely independent of time itself or temperature measured at the the time, and everything to do with the source of the measurement itself.

Re: Climate change

[AmiMoJo]

Even your own carefully cherry-picked GISS temperature record shows a "cooling" of 0.1 degrees compared to a warming of 1.5 degrees since 1880.

Here's a better graph based on Nasa data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

As you can see there is a very clear trend, excepting the spike for WW2 and subsequent reduction in emissions as industry recovered.

That's Kinda Clever

[Ferretman]

They can probably find even earlier photographic evidence with a bit of effort and extend out the range to get a more better picture of the gradual greening uptick. It would be interesting to see such data from a regional perspective and see how it matches.

Very clever idea.

Ferret

Re: Climate change

[Ferretman]

There's no evidence that the first AC is of any particular political party.

Yours is pretty obvious though.

Ferret

Re:Climate change

[Mashiki]

Didn't Europe just have two weeks where wind power produced 0 energy? Yes, pretty sure it did. Didn't Ontario have the same thing happen? Yes it did. Didn't multiple US states have the same thing happen? Why yes it did. All during a heat wave no less. Ah yes, total capacity of 4300MW and producing 30MW...so great. Guess it's a good thing we can buy from Quebec and Michigan, otherwise there'd have been rolling blackouts.

Greenpeace is very happy with expensive electricity, which makes people poorer. Nuclear power is among the cheapest solutions, unless you're living in a country that has a strong anti-nuclear stance like over in Europe, or the US. Because of 40 years of nuclear fear mongering by groups like Greenpeace.

Climate change is real... And it doesn't matter.

[dredwolff]

The weather has never been predictable, life on this planet is capable of dealing with changes in climate. Watching trees adjust their growing cycles in reaction to changes in the entire climate isn't scary, it isn't bad, it's proof that they can handle a little change even if it scares the crap out of us hairless monkeys Plants have more CO2 which makes them healthier, they have longer growing seasons, which makes them bigger. The "Green" movement is literally fighting against something called "Global Greening" right now, and if that doesn't make you laugh, then you just need to chill.

Re:Climate change

[AmiMoJo]

Er... Nope.

Zero days this year of no wind power in the UK: http://www.ref.org.uk/fuel/ind...

Zero days of no wind power last month and last year in the UK: http://gridwatch.co.uk/Renewab...

That's just the UK, the wider EU is even larger. Where do you read this nonsense?

Re: Climate change

[Plumpaquatsch]

Based on theories and models that serve the globalist agenda. Those CO2 numbers are not written down in plain site, they are inferred from ice core samples or some made up BS.

Even a complete moron like you could measure CO2 levels - but you are afraid of the truth.

Re: Climate change

[Plumpaquatsch]

According to satellite data,

First of all: You do know that this doesn't actually measure temperature, but determines a temperature value for some atmosphere layer above a point on Earth by calculating together different microwave emission bands measurements from different angles and taken at different times.

If "satellite data" didn't (supposedly) show what you want, you'd deride it as unscientific without thinking about it (which you don't do anyway).

Re:Cool

[AvitarX]

I can't tell if this is satire or not.

Well poe'd

Correlation causation and all that

[0dugo0]

Maybe stuff is greener because we fixed acid rain..

Re:Climate change

[angel'o'sphere]

Didn't Europe just have two weeks where wind power produced 0 energy? Yes, pretty sure it did.
No it had not. If you refer to that stupid bloomberg article, it was completely made up.

BTW: Europe is big. It is impossible to have no wind all over Europe at the same time.

Nuclear power is among the cheapest solutions
That is just nonsense, regardless of your "unless" points.

Re:Climate change

[angel'o'sphere]

But you had 7 ZERO COAL days ;D hurray!

Where do you read this nonsense?
There was a bloomber article a few days ago, proclaiming that we had a heat wave in Europe (especially UK) and no wind at the same tim, oh shudder, I'm so scared now ...

Re: Climate change

[Muros]

Water vapour is the number one cause of heat retention, not of rising temperatures. Also, cattle don't dig up buried carbon.

Re:Climate change

[Mashiki]

No it had not. If you refer to that stupid bloomberg article, it was completely made up.

So the article which provided stats was made up. Gotcha.

BTW: Europe is big. It is impossible to have no wind all over Europe at the same time.

Europe is tiny. I can drive across it in a day, it takes me 7-9 days to drive across Canada, if I drive 14hrs/day. Ontario is roughly the size of UK, Spain, France, Germany, NL, and Italy, and we've just had 11 days with pretty much zero wind.

That is just nonsense, regardless of your "unless" points.

It is the cheapest, unless you live in some backwards country that thinks nuclear is dangerous because of 40 years of environmentalist bullshit. Which you seem to be doing.

Re: Climate change

[Layzej]

According to satellite data...

-geekpoet

Satellite data is consistent with land measurements

Trend for the NASA GISTEMP surface station record: 0.1732 per decade.

Trend for RSS remote sensing satellite record: 0.1948 per decade

Satellite shows a higher rate of warming, but roughly consistent with surface station record.

Re:Climate change

[Mashiki]

That's just the UK, the wider EU is even larger. Where do you read this nonsense?

In actual publications that have a good reputation? What have you been looking at, the BBC telling you that NG Plant emissions are the source of wind power? Looking at the site you've listed, I can see multiple days with 1% generation across just the UK. Yeah that's sure paying for itself.

Re:Cool

[angel'o'sphere]

Of course that was more than 20 years ago now.
That is why the armchair scientists have forgotten it already.
And after you pointed it out to them, they will forget it again next week.

Re:Climate change

[angel'o'sphere]

Europe is tiny.
It is bigger than a dozen "no wind cells", so it is to big to have no wind at all, that was the point.

I can drive across it in a day
No you can't. If you drive 100mph for 24h you manage 2400miles, obviously ... Europe is bigger than that in every direction. And If I pick you a worst case route you drive 4 days, good luck.

Re: Climate change tracking projections

[Layzej]

The problem is that the data doesn't match the models

IPCC projected warming of about 0.2C/decade. The trend on the satellite record is 0.19C/decade. Pretty damn good.

Look at HadCRUT4 from 1895 to 1943, and then again from 1957 to 2005.

The trend from 1895-1943 was somewhere between 0.045 C/decade and 0.109 C/decade (2).

The trend since 1957 was somewhere between 0.112 C/decade and 0.154 C/decade.

They're not really close - there's not even overlap in the uncertainty - and possibly the current trend is over three times greater than that of the early 1900s.

Nonetheless, if you want to understand this period you shoudl read the literature rather than conspiracy blogs: "Attribution studies estimate that about a half (40–54%; p >.8) of the global warming from 1901 to 1950 was forced by a combination of increasing greenhouse gases and natural forcing, offset to some extent by aerosols. Natural variability also made a large contribution..."

Re:Climate change

[Muros]

BTW: Europe is big. It is impossible to have no wind all over Europe at the same time.

Europe is tiny. I can drive across it in a day, it takes me 7-9 days to drive across Canada, if I drive 14hrs/day. Ontario is roughly the size of UK, Spain, France, Germany, NL, and Italy, and we've just had 11 days with pretty much zero wind.

Europe is bigger than Canada, by slightly less than 2%.

Re:Climate change

[Muros]

BTW, I checked your claim about Ontario. It's about half the size you said.

Welp

[squiggleslash]

Another way in which clean, non-polluting, energy efficient, forms of transportation like cycling helps the environment.

Re:Welp

[Opportunist]

Cycling is one of the most polluting ways of transportation once you take into account just what's required to fuel the muscles of the person riding the bike. That's a bit like saying electricity is a clean energy source because it doesn't pollute (other than heat), but you have to generate electricity from other sources of energy first.

Re:Welp

[squiggleslash]

You'd burn most of that energy anyway, it only becomes polluting if you're creating new people purely so they can be used as bicycle motors.

Re:Climate change

[Layzej]

Guess it's a good thing we can buy from Quebec...

Yeah, thank goodness for Quebec: Quebec generated 99.8% of its electricity from renewable sources in 2016, and had the highest percentage of renewable generation in Canada.

Nuclear power only viable path forward on climate

[Layzej]

If you're serious about climate change then you need to support nuclear power. James Hansen, Kerry Emanuel, and others outline why nuclear is the only viable path forward on climate change. Nuclear power will make the difference between the world missing crucial climate targets or achieving them

Re:Climate change

[Plumpaquatsch]

The U.K. is not Europe retard.

Are you pretending the Brexit has already been completed? Or are you just what you call others?

Re:Climate change

[Plumpaquatsch]

No it had not. If you refer to that stupid bloomberg article, it was completely made up.

So the article which provided stats was made up. Gotcha.

If the stats are clearly wrong, chances are that article was made up. There is of course always the possibility it was written by a complete moron, or a faulty AI. Are you the author?.

Re: Climate change

[LynnwoodRooster]

And no data has been presented to show the 2018 data is superior, either. The point is that if the underlying data is so fragmented and malleable, then how firm of conviction can you reasonably be about conclusions from that dataset?

It's popcorn time!

[Opportunist]

Crack out the popcorn, it's yet another climate change article. People from both sides of the fence will throw various more or less sensible arguments at each other, not even remotely interested in listening.

Personally, I don't care anymore. I have no kids. I'll be dead in 50 years. Yes, I know the planet is going to hell, but why bother trying to educate the stupid? You want your kids to live in a hellhole, so who am I to keep you from being eventually cursed and wished to hell or worse by your descendants?

Re:Climate change is real... And it doesn't matter

[Opportunist]

Do you have a faint idea how much carbon we pull out of the ground in form of oil and coal every year? To sequester this in plants, we'd need to grow another amazon forest. And those plants better never die and release that carbon again.

Re:Cool

[Plumpaquatsch]

You can sequester that by burying them or making protected objects out of them (like tables and chairs).

Only if you do it a couple hundred feet down, and never ever throw away those chairs.

Re:Nuclear power only viable path forward on clima

[angel'o'sphere]

You can build in your country as much nuclear power as you want.
I don't support nuclear power in Germany or the EU, it is to dangerous. And to expensive.
And we don't need it.
Why do you care how we make our power as long as it is without producing CO2?

Re: Climate change

[angel'o'sphere]

Why don't you just download the data that you are interested in and check yourself?