"What you also casually ignore is we don't know what sort of feedback loops might engage as CO2 levels continue to soar."
Sadly, we do. Quite a few more gigatons of carbon dioxide coming from releases of permafrost and release of methane from clathrate deposits in shallow seas, such as the Arctic Ocean. Both have already begun as is arctic amplification caused by the loss of reflective ice. The feedback loops are beginning to be understood and the results will not be pretty.
Yes, the technical issues of dealing with the potential for radiation poisoning are expensive, very expensive, especially after a meltdown or two like Chernobyl or Fukushima.
If they are so great, why isn't anyone willing to invest in them. Fewer plants are scheduled to be built than will be decommissioned, except in China where the entire funding exercise is strictly government controlled. Germany and Denmark are proving that solar is the way to go and even China is investing far more in solar than in nuclear. If you want to make money on the market, it won't be by investing in nuclear.
Why is it there is this ground swell of the need for Thorium reactors, yet if you look at the actual nuclear industry the markets are pretty much all saying there is no future in nuclear power without massive government subsidies? The market for nuclear is shrinking and more plants will be decommissioned over the next 25 years than will be built, largely because they are way too expensive and uneconomical.
Maybe someday, should fusion work, but the smart money is pouring into solar, wind, and tidal. That's where I'm putting my money and if you don't put any money in, well it doesn't matter too much what you think as you are just along for the ride.
Sadly, Edward Teller may well have seen what will happen, when he predicted that should humans perish, it will be because they simply can't understand or appreciate the concept of an exponential equation.
I am always amused by those who think that soon because the world is heating rapidly, particularly at the poles, we will be able to grow crops at very high latitudes. Forget about it, the soils are just way too poor for that and the winters will be just as dark so at best it would be annuals. Just how much top soil do you think is left after tens of thousands of years of glacier scouring?
Just out of curiosity can you explain how we will subsidize nuclear power if we keep cutting taxes?
Everywhere I look these days on Wall Street or other burses, nuclear power is not much of a growth industry. In fact, if it were for constant government subsidizes the industry would be already dead because it is so uneconomical.
I'll put my money in solar, wind, and tidal, as at least I can expect to make money rather than loose it, while I hope for yet another government bailout.
You sound like just the guy to sell some very inexpensive property to in and around Chernobyl, Ukraine. Or maybe you would prefer to buy your vegetables from Fukushima.
You need to study the dynamics of carbon dioxide sinks. The deeper waters of the ocean are absorbing the bulk of the carbon dioxide, which is one of the reasons global warming is so dangerous as it is rapidly lowering the pH of the world's oceans, from which humans derive about 50% of their protein.
If you are not seeing "the data", then you simply aren't reading the scientific literature. Wake up and smell the coffee. You will find it stimulating.
To understand why you need to look at the isotopic ratios of carbon in the atmosphere. It mimics that seen in rock and not that seen in living plants. This is exactly what one would expect if the source of most carbon in the atmosphere comes from fossil fuels. As it turns out ratios of heave to light carbon closely track the amount of fossil fuels produced and burned.
What data are you talking about?
You might ask yourself, why it is, if it isn't getting any warmer, all the world's glaciers are melting at the fastest rates ever recorded? You might also ask yourself why is it that deniers of global warming never are able to answer this question and in fact, avoid it like the plague?
No need for nuclear when solar, wind, and tidal can do the job at much less cost. Germany and Denmark are proving it can be done and quickly and these are hardly countries with lots of sunshine.
Keep in mind that a Chernobyl or Fukushima every few decades is very, very expensive and will remain so for another few thousand years. Indeed, if you look at the economics of nuclear power installations, you see that in the next 10-20 years, more will be phased out than will be built as they just aren't economical. Ever ask yourself, who is going to pay the cost for decommissioning and cleaning up these installations?
True, but not the same mammals. The entire idea that just because carbon dioxide levels were lower than they were 55 million years ago we as humans will be OK, is to use your terminology, just bullshit.
What causes extinction is the rate of change. If the rate of change is too great, most species go extinct. When the asteroid hit the Yucatan it was pretty much instantaneous and very few species survived in the immediate vicinity. During the Eocene/Paleocene Thermal maximum that occurred about 55 million years ago about 60% of the mammal species then in existence went extinct over a period of roughly 30,000 to 60,000 years. Currently, the Earth is heating at about 36 times that rate, so we can expect lots of extinction, particularly at the top of the food chain, which is most dependent upon those elements of the food chain below it.
Major problems for humans will continue to be 1) the consequences of rapid climate change to the pollinator-plant symbiosis, which is already disrupting agricultural production, 2) the rapid change of freshwater resources (either too much rain in places, too little in others, or too unpredictable given the species being raised for food), and 3) the dramatic drop in pH now being seen in world oceans from which humans derive about 50% of their protein. All are now at risk on time scales measured in hundreds of years, not tens of thousands. If you add in the consequences of political instability and other unrelated causes of ecosystem collapse including the potential for nuclear weapons to be used or abused to increase, the time frames may be a lot shorter.
There was an incredibly diverse biosphere 55 million years ago. The problem for us humans is that it wouldn't have been hospitable to us as a species nor will it be should carbon dioxide rise to those levels again.
Too bad its carbon dioxide that is producing most of the forcing of ecosystem change. You seem to be worried about the cost of mitigating the economic losses to those who generate lots of carbon dioxide. These losses pale in comparison to the loss of agricultural production and fisheries resources, as well as the cost of dramatic changes in freshwater resources that will occur over the next 50-100 years as a result of elevated carbon dioxide levels. Ask yourself, how much will it cost to rebuild or retrofit every port in the world? You think that won't be expensive? However, in 100 years time it will be a necessity.
Because carbon dioxide levels were higher in the distant past than they are now is hardly an indication that we don't face an existential threat. The issue is one of what is the rate of increase, since it is the rate of change that will determine whether or not species have enough time to evolve.
Currently, we are tracking a rate of increase of about 36 times that which took place during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal maximum that you are referring to. This spike occurred over a period of about 30,000 to 60,000 years and in the process the flora of North America changed from largely coniferous forests to a situation where palm tree forests grew in Wyoming and the composition of the vast majority of species the native mammal fauna changed entirely.
You might ask yourself, what is going to happen if it gets so hot and dry in Wyoming that palm trees will again flourish there, or when places like Las Vegas, already less than 50 feet away from water levels in Hoover Dam when no power will keep the lights on the strip? Where will the folks who live in Southern California go, when there no longer enough runoff from the Sierra Nevada or when the Colorado River runs dry further upstream than it does now? You would think that this alone would get republicans thinking more seriously about the consequences of global warming.
Three major immediate threats beyond sea level rise, which will result in the migrations of hundreds of millions of people globally in the next 100 years given the many very low lying countries, will be 1) the rapid alteration of existing freshwater resources 2) and the disruption of pollination caused by an increasing mismatch between flowering times and the seasonal activity patterns of their pollinators that are extremely sensitive to temperature changes, and 3) the rapid acidification of the oceans, which provide about 50% of human protein and which are the sink for the bulk of the carbon dioxide humans are producing. World oceans are seeing a rapid drop in pH (remember its a logarithmic scale) and virtually the entire marine ecosystem is built upon species with either calcareous exoskeletons (many if not most invertebrates) and virtually all vertebrates that have calcareous endoskeletons, both groups being particularly sensitive as larvae.
You have no idea what you are talking about, when you say there is a "mildly rising carbon dioxide level". The ratio of carbon dioxide produced by human activities is already nearly 100 times that generated by natural processes. This is simple enough to demonstrate given the isotopic composition of the carbon in the atmosphere.
What you and those who share your optimistic and erroneous assumptions suggest is that we have as much as few hundred years to tackle this problem. The amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere is causing the Earth to warm at a rate 36 times faster than it ever has in the past 100,000,000 years of Earth History, including the Paleocene Thermal maximum that saw the growth of palm tree forests in Wyoming as well as a total change in the composition of North American mammal species. This, not to mention the most rapid drop in oceanic pH at any time in Earth history, which has already placing oyster fishing in the Pacific Northwest in jeopardy of total extinction in less than 50 years. Few recognize that the pH drop has been steep, about 20% in the last 100 years (remember the pH scale is logarithmic) or that humans extract about 50% of the protein they consume from the oceans, so oysters won't be the only losers.
Life can cope and evolve if change is slow enough. However, when it occurs too rapidly one sees extinction instead and as all indications of studying the biodiversity of just about any taxon on the planet indicates that extinction of most life forms is the path we are headed toward at an every increasing speed. Ecosystems are simply not things that humans are good at understanding, much less putting back together, even though we depend upon them for our survival. Such ignorance, is easy to demonstrate. Simply step outside and identify a hundred species in your immediate surroundings. Most people will be unable to identify 20 or tell you much about their biology, much less one hundred, even though even in the harshest of environments there are typically thousands of species, many of them beetles.
Unfortunately for humanity, the rate the Earth is warming is accelerating exponentially and we are now beginning to see several predicted effects that will further propel the exponential rise in temperatures: 1) arctic amplification caused by the loss of polar ice cover that will accelerate heating in the relatively shallow Arctic Ocean, 2) incipient release of about 2-3 trillion gigatons of carbon as the permafrost melts primarily as methane, which is already occurring throughout Seberia and Northern Canada, and 3) elevated release of carbon dioxide trapped in near short and shallow Arctic clathrates, which will add another few trillion gigatons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. As Edward Teller aptly noted, humans will perish because they fail to appreciate the nature of exponentation and its consequences.
With just the few degrees of warming that we have seen so far in the past 100 years, the critical link between plants and their pollinators, which is highly sensitive to temperature, is already being disrupted worldwide, one of the major reasons crop yields are declining globally. Many species, such as humans, simply won't be able to cope with the consequences of the loss of pollination within 100 years time, which will almost certainly occur as we see another 5-10 degree temperature rise within the next 100 years. Entire governments and economies are collapsing already and the temperature dial has only moved about 1-2 degrees and equilibrium temperatures with the existing carbon dioxide load has still yet to be attained, even without considering the release of more than 5-10 times as much as can be expected in the next 100 years given existing trends.
With his libertarian-no regulation ideas, no doubt his floating nation will simply discharge raw sewage directly into the ocean. Just the kind of thinking we need to save marine ecosystems and humans from extinction.
At the heart of every libertarian is the notion that "I want the freedom to sh*t on you". No wonder there are so many corporate sponsors.
Thanks to the work of Keller and others, we now know that that least some and possible a very large component of the Deccan vulcanism predated the bolide as did significant amounts of change in species composition.
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"What you also casually ignore is we don't know what sort of feedback loops might engage as CO2 levels continue to soar."
Sadly, we do. Quite a few more gigatons of carbon dioxide coming from releases of permafrost and release of methane from clathrate deposits in shallow seas, such as the Arctic Ocean. Both have already begun as is arctic amplification caused by the loss of reflective ice. The feedback loops are beginning to be understood and the results will not be pretty.
Yes, the technical issues of dealing with the potential for radiation poisoning are expensive, very expensive, especially after a meltdown or two like Chernobyl or Fukushima.
No, its that they've watched too many commercials and are happy paying more for energy than they would if solar was more widely employed.
If they are so great, why isn't anyone willing to invest in them. Fewer plants are scheduled to be built than will be decommissioned, except in China where the entire funding exercise is strictly government controlled. Germany and Denmark are proving that solar is the way to go and even China is investing far more in solar than in nuclear. If you want to make money on the market, it won't be by investing in nuclear.
Why is it there is this ground swell of the need for Thorium reactors, yet if you look at the actual nuclear industry the markets are pretty much all saying there is no future in nuclear power without massive government subsidies? The market for nuclear is shrinking and more plants will be decommissioned over the next 25 years than will be built, largely because they are way too expensive and uneconomical.
Maybe someday, should fusion work, but the smart money is pouring into solar, wind, and tidal. That's where I'm putting my money and if you don't put any money in, well it doesn't matter too much what you think as you are just along for the ride.
Sadly, Edward Teller may well have seen what will happen, when he predicted that should humans perish, it will be because they simply can't understand or appreciate the concept of an exponential equation.
I am always amused by those who think that soon because the world is heating rapidly, particularly at the poles, we will be able to grow crops at very high latitudes. Forget about it, the soils are just way too poor for that and the winters will be just as dark so at best it would be annuals. Just how much top soil do you think is left after tens of thousands of years of glacier scouring?
Just out of curiosity can you explain how we will subsidize nuclear power if we keep cutting taxes?
Everywhere I look these days on Wall Street or other burses, nuclear power is not much of a growth industry. In fact, if it were for constant government subsidizes the industry would be already dead because it is so uneconomical.
I'll put my money in solar, wind, and tidal, as at least I can expect to make money rather than loose it, while I hope for yet another government bailout.
You sound like just the guy to sell some very inexpensive property to in and around Chernobyl, Ukraine. Or maybe you would prefer to buy your vegetables from Fukushima.
If it is really just "bullshit" then how do you explain why virtually all the world's glaciers are melting simultaneously?
Why is it that those who deny global warming never want to address this question?
You need to study the dynamics of carbon dioxide sinks. The deeper waters of the ocean are absorbing the bulk of the carbon dioxide, which is one of the reasons global warming is so dangerous as it is rapidly lowering the pH of the world's oceans, from which humans derive about 50% of their protein.
If you are not seeing "the data", then you simply aren't reading the scientific literature. Wake up and smell the coffee. You will find it stimulating.
To understand why you need to look at the isotopic ratios of carbon in the atmosphere. It mimics that seen in rock and not that seen in living plants. This is exactly what one would expect if the source of most carbon in the atmosphere comes from fossil fuels. As it turns out ratios of heave to light carbon closely track the amount of fossil fuels produced and burned.
What data are you talking about?
You might ask yourself, why it is, if it isn't getting any warmer, all the world's glaciers are melting at the fastest rates ever recorded? You might also ask yourself why is it that deniers of global warming never are able to answer this question and in fact, avoid it like the plague?
You confuse Robert and Edward Kennedy.
No need for nuclear when solar, wind, and tidal can do the job at much less cost. Germany and Denmark are proving it can be done and quickly and these are hardly countries with lots of sunshine.
Keep in mind that a Chernobyl or Fukushima every few decades is very, very expensive and will remain so for another few thousand years. Indeed, if you look at the economics of nuclear power installations, you see that in the next 10-20 years, more will be phased out than will be built as they just aren't economical. Ever ask yourself, who is going to pay the cost for decommissioning and cleaning up these installations?
You are obviously not a biologist are you.
True, but not the same mammals. The entire idea that just because carbon dioxide levels were lower than they were 55 million years ago we as humans will be OK, is to use your terminology, just bullshit.
What causes extinction is the rate of change. If the rate of change is too great, most species go extinct. When the asteroid hit the Yucatan it was pretty much instantaneous and very few species survived in the immediate vicinity. During the Eocene/Paleocene Thermal maximum that occurred about 55 million years ago about 60% of the mammal species then in existence went extinct over a period of roughly 30,000 to 60,000 years. Currently, the Earth is heating at about 36 times that rate, so we can expect lots of extinction, particularly at the top of the food chain, which is most dependent upon those elements of the food chain below it.
Major problems for humans will continue to be 1) the consequences of rapid climate change to the pollinator-plant symbiosis, which is already disrupting agricultural production, 2) the rapid change of freshwater resources (either too much rain in places, too little in others, or too unpredictable given the species being raised for food), and 3) the dramatic drop in pH now being seen in world oceans from which humans derive about 50% of their protein. All are now at risk on time scales measured in hundreds of years, not tens of thousands. If you add in the consequences of political instability and other unrelated causes of ecosystem collapse including the potential for nuclear weapons to be used or abused to increase, the time frames may be a lot shorter.
There was an incredibly diverse biosphere 55 million years ago. The problem for us humans is that it wouldn't have been hospitable to us as a species nor will it be should carbon dioxide rise to those levels again.
Too bad its carbon dioxide that is producing most of the forcing of ecosystem change. You seem to be worried about the cost of mitigating the economic losses to those who generate lots of carbon dioxide. These losses pale in comparison to the loss of agricultural production and fisheries resources, as well as the cost of dramatic changes in freshwater resources that will occur over the next 50-100 years as a result of elevated carbon dioxide levels. Ask yourself, how much will it cost to rebuild or retrofit every port in the world? You think that won't be expensive? However, in 100 years time it will be a necessity.
Because carbon dioxide levels were higher in the distant past than they are now is hardly an indication that we don't face an existential threat. The issue is one of what is the rate of increase, since it is the rate of change that will determine whether or not species have enough time to evolve.
Currently, we are tracking a rate of increase of about 36 times that which took place during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal maximum that you are referring to. This spike occurred over a period of about 30,000 to 60,000 years and in the process the flora of North America changed from largely coniferous forests to a situation where palm tree forests grew in Wyoming and the composition of the vast majority of species the native mammal fauna changed entirely.
You might ask yourself, what is going to happen if it gets so hot and dry in Wyoming that palm trees will again flourish there, or when places like Las Vegas, already less than 50 feet away from water levels in Hoover Dam when no power will keep the lights on the strip? Where will the folks who live in Southern California go, when there no longer enough runoff from the Sierra Nevada or when the Colorado River runs dry further upstream than it does now? You would think that this alone would get republicans thinking more seriously about the consequences of global warming.
Three major immediate threats beyond sea level rise, which will result in the migrations of hundreds of millions of people globally in the next 100 years given the many very low lying countries, will be 1) the rapid alteration of existing freshwater resources 2) and the disruption of pollination caused by an increasing mismatch between flowering times and the seasonal activity patterns of their pollinators that are extremely sensitive to temperature changes, and 3) the rapid acidification of the oceans, which provide about 50% of human protein and which are the sink for the bulk of the carbon dioxide humans are producing. World oceans are seeing a rapid drop in pH (remember its a logarithmic scale) and virtually the entire marine ecosystem is built upon species with either calcareous exoskeletons (many if not most invertebrates) and virtually all vertebrates that have calcareous endoskeletons, both groups being particularly sensitive as larvae.
You have no idea what you are talking about, when you say there is a "mildly rising carbon dioxide level". The ratio of carbon dioxide produced by human activities is already nearly 100 times that generated by natural processes. This is simple enough to demonstrate given the isotopic composition of the carbon in the atmosphere.
What you and those who share your optimistic and erroneous assumptions suggest is that we have as much as few hundred years to tackle this problem. The amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere is causing the Earth to warm at a rate 36 times faster than it ever has in the past 100,000,000 years of Earth History, including the Paleocene Thermal maximum that saw the growth of palm tree forests in Wyoming as well as a total change in the composition of North American mammal species. This, not to mention the most rapid drop in oceanic pH at any time in Earth history, which has already placing oyster fishing in the Pacific Northwest in jeopardy of total extinction in less than 50 years. Few recognize that the pH drop has been steep, about 20% in the last 100 years (remember the pH scale is logarithmic) or that humans extract about 50% of the protein they consume from the oceans, so oysters won't be the only losers.
Life can cope and evolve if change is slow enough. However, when it occurs too rapidly one sees extinction instead and as all indications of studying the biodiversity of just about any taxon on the planet indicates that extinction of most life forms is the path we are headed toward at an every increasing speed. Ecosystems are simply not things that humans are good at understanding, much less putting back together, even though we depend upon them for our survival. Such ignorance, is easy to demonstrate. Simply step outside and identify a hundred species in your immediate surroundings. Most people will be unable to identify 20 or tell you much about their biology, much less one hundred, even though even in the harshest of environments there are typically thousands of species, many of them beetles.
Unfortunately for humanity, the rate the Earth is warming is accelerating exponentially and we are now beginning to see several predicted effects that will further propel the exponential rise in temperatures: 1) arctic amplification caused by the loss of polar ice cover that will accelerate heating in the relatively shallow Arctic Ocean, 2) incipient release of about 2-3 trillion gigatons of carbon as the permafrost melts primarily as methane, which is already occurring throughout Seberia and Northern Canada, and 3) elevated release of carbon dioxide trapped in near short and shallow Arctic clathrates, which will add another few trillion gigatons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. As Edward Teller aptly noted, humans will perish because they fail to appreciate the nature of exponentation and its consequences.
With just the few degrees of warming that we have seen so far in the past 100 years, the critical link between plants and their pollinators, which is highly sensitive to temperature, is already being disrupted worldwide, one of the major reasons crop yields are declining globally. Many species, such as humans, simply won't be able to cope with the consequences of the loss of pollination within 100 years time, which will almost certainly occur as we see another 5-10 degree temperature rise within the next 100 years. Entire governments and economies are collapsing already and the temperature dial has only moved about 1-2 degrees and equilibrium temperatures with the existing carbon dioxide load has still yet to be attained, even without considering the release of more than 5-10 times as much as can be expected in the next 100 years given existing trends.
I have quite a bit of extra unused CPU time. Where do I sign up to donate to such a DOS strategy?
With me its not political. I just can't stand the haircut, so I'd like to vote no.
With his libertarian-no regulation ideas, no doubt his floating nation will simply discharge raw sewage directly into the ocean. Just the kind of thinking we need to save marine ecosystems and humans from extinction.
At the heart of every libertarian is the notion that "I want the freedom to sh*t on you". No wonder there are so many corporate sponsors.
The only problem with that is that some volcanic activity predated the bolide impact.
Thanks to the work of Keller and others, we now know that that least some and possible a very large component of the Deccan vulcanism predated the bolide as did significant amounts of change in species composition.
and about as convincing as "evidence of life on the moon" because there is a rock with what looks like a face on it.