Global Climate Change Science News

[macdoc]

as i said ....not a science.

[Brian Peacock]

As I said... not a single thing, and one can absolutely apply the scientific method to economies if one is interested in doing that. i.e. drawing testable conclusions from verifiable facts.

[Brian Peacock]

Dramatic climate action needed to curtail ‘crazy’ extreme weather

Heatwaves, wildfires and floods are just the ‘tip of the iceberg’, leading climate scientists say

The “crazy” extreme weather rampaging around the globe in 2023 will become the norm within a decade without dramatic climate action, the world’s leading climate scientists have said.

The heatwaves, wildfires and floods experienced today were just the “tip of the iceberg” compared with even worse effects to come, they said, with limitations in climate models leaving the world “flying partially blind” into the future.

With fears that humanity’s relentless carbon emissions have finally pushed the climate crisis into a new and accelerating phase of destruction, the Guardian sought the expert assessments of more than 40 scientists from around the world.

They said that the rise in global temperature was entirely in line with decades of warnings and was being boosted this year by the return of the El Niño climate pattern. But they said that people and places were more vulnerable to extreme weather than expected and were suffering effects never previously experienced as climate records were shattered.

“July was the hottest month in human history and people around the world are suffering the consequences,” said Prof Piers Forster at the University of Leeds, UK. “But this is what we expected at [this level] of warming. This will become the average summer in 10 years’ time unless the world cooperates and puts climate action top of the agenda.”

“The impacts are frighteningly more impactful than I – and many climate scientists I know – expected,” said Prof Krishna AchutaRao at the Indian Institute of Technology.

Dr Christophe Cassou, a CNRS researcher at the Université Paul Sabatier Toulouse III, in France, said: “Changes in [climate] hazards have not been underestimated at global scale. But the impacts have been underestimated because we are much more vulnerable than we thought – our vulnerability is smacking us in the face.”...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... me-weather

The tiny window of opportunity is getting smaller by the day. If we don't act now political complacency and corporte greed will kill even more of us even more quickly.

[Sean Hayden]

What’s the increase without El Niño? Is the average summer an El Niño summer? ie without El Niño this year am I even noticing the difference…

[Brian Peacock]

What’s the increase without El Niño? Is the average summer an El Niño summer? ie without El Niño this year am I even noticing the difference…

I don't know, but El Niño/La Niña oscillations have some kind of multiplying effect. Every year since 1983 the global avg temp has been in the top-ten of hottest years on record. Last year was a La Niña year, meaning that the Indo-Pacific ocean temperature oscillation cycle was in (or coming out of) it's 'cool phase', and yet it was the hottest year on record. This year is an El Niño year, so it's going to be hotter than 2022.

===========
The impact of the Southern Oscillation on global temps and weather patterns is significant (Britainica).
Historically, how has El Niño influenced summer temperature and precipitation around the world? (NOAA)

[macdoc]

Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance
Swedish teenager Ia Anstoot says group’s ‘unscientific’ opposition to EU nuclear power serves fossil fuel interests
Helena Horton Environment reporter
Tue 29 Aug 2023 05.00 BST
An 18-year-old climate activist has called for Greenpeace to drop its “old-fashioned and unscientific” campaign against nuclear power in the EU.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ear-stance

about time ...nuclear has a role and the knee jerk anti-nuke stance is stupid.
Financially nukes don't work tho SMR has some role to play especially where there are existing nuclear plants.

[pErvinalia]

What does Greta think? We could have a teenage Swedish slap down.

[Brian Peacock]

Young climate activist tells Greenpeace to drop ‘old-fashioned’ anti-nuclear stance
Swedish teenager Ia Anstoot says group’s ‘unscientific’ opposition to EU nuclear power serves fossil fuel interests
Helena Horton Environment reporter
Tue 29 Aug 2023 05.00 BST
An 18-year-old climate activist has called for Greenpeace to drop its “old-fashioned and unscientific” campaign against nuclear power in the EU.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ear-stance

about time ...nuclear has a role and the knee jerk anti-nuke stance is stupid.
Financially nukes don't work tho SMR has some role to play especially where there are existing nuclear plants.

Unfortunately nuclear is a bust. It doesn't work financially, or in terms of energy requirements and carbon emissions either.

[macdoc]

Pontification with zero support....
France would disagree

France has one of the largest nuclear power programs in the world. Nuclear power plants in France generated 361 billion kilowatthours of electricity in 2021, accounting for 68% of the country's annual electricity generation, the highest nuclear generation share in the world.

So would Ontario where I live and more coming. We eliminated coal from 25% to ZERO in 10 years.

Reuters
https://www.reuters.com › business › energy › ontario-pl...
ontario nuclear from www.reuters.com
Jul 7, 2023 — Nuclear power currently provides about 50% of Ontario's electricity supply and the four SMR units are expected to produce a total 1,200

Nuclear Power in the World Today
https://world-nuclear.org › information-library › nucle...
total nuclear power world from world-nuclear.org
Nuclear energy provides about 30% of the world's low carbon electricity. There are about 450 commercial nuclear power reactors operable in 30 countries.

It's 10% of the total now and there is NO baseload to replace it.

Nuclear power is an important low-emission source of electricity, providing about 10% of global electricity generation.

So what are you going to replace this with??.....and prove it...talk is cheap.....

It doesn't work financially,

It certainly does in some situations and China proves you wrong and other areas SMR adds to existing reliable safe baseload,

or in terms of energy requirements

What a crock

and carbon emissions either.

ditto

No idea where you get your information from but it's very misguided.

[Brian Peacock]

Pontification with zero support....
France would disagree

..snip...

Well, France is not the world, and I did say 'unfortunately', because it really is a lovely idea. But in a practical sense it's just another feel-good, future-tech non-solution. Don't get me wrong (like you continue to reflexively do), nuclear is a proven technology with minimal GHG emissions at point of generation when compared to fossil fuel driven power generation, but the stats just don't add up. Consider this...

There are currently 430 active nuclear reactors in the world (c.20 of which are earmarked for decommissioning in the next 15 years), and even though nuclear meets around 10% of global electricity needs today (a steady decline from a peak of 17% in 1993) it meets less than 1% of current global energy needs overall. The problem we have, of course, is one of scale, particularly given that c.70% of global energy use is not attached to the grid (road, air, and ocean transport, manufacturing etc) and that off-grid use is primarily served by hydrocarbon combustion. The nature of the problem is this: simply put, we need to get everything we can that's off-grid and put it on the grid asap, and then power it all from lo-to-no emission energy sources.

Nonetheless, let's imagine we could increase global nuclear provision 10-fold before 2050. That would require building about 130 new plants a year, every year for the next 30 years. Generous estimates suggest this could meet around half of our current global electricity needs - that is, current electricity needs, not accounting for the increased demand that would follow from moving everything possible that's currently off-grid onto the grid.

Still, it's possible. For the sake of argument, let's ignore the fact that nuclear power plants take on avg 6-8 years to build from breaking ground to producing the first unit of electricity, that building a nuclear plant is a highly technical endeavour requiring a large and particularly skilled workforce, and that because of the potential pitfalls and inherent dangers of nuclear power generation the planning and approval stage can take at least as long, and often longer. Let's also put aside things like finding appropriate, secure, safe locations for the plants or the task of building new or upgrading existing infrastructure. We might also want to assume that every reactor works at optimum efficiency without fail (because working without fail is pretty important when it comes to nuclear power) and we'll not factor-in the lifespan of the plants or the replacement rate needed to maintain that 10-fold increase in capacity over the long-term. We'll also completely scoot over the volatile, toxic waste issue.

So now it's 2050 and we've miraculously managed to build 4000+ nuclear reactors. What do we feed them with? There isn't enough good, clean, accessible uranium in the world to feed that amount of reactors. In fact, we'd run out of the good stuff around the 2000 mark, so aside from having to massively upscale extraction and processing to feed the first 2000 we'll also need to explore for additional replacement sources, and then mine, process, and transport dwindling and increasingly dirty and inaccessible stocks to feed all the reactors once the good stuff does run out - all of which is carbon intensive, degrades efficiency, and spirals the unit costs upwards over the lifetimes of the plants.

Even in the medium-term of 2050 nuclear is a bust. It certainly doesn't work economically, or in terms of our global energy needs, nor does it really touch GHG emissions from the current c.70% of energy use that's off-grid. However, we have everything we need to hand to decarbonise the energy sector right now, and in such a way as to rapidly scale up lo-to-no emission energy sources that reduce unit costs over time. We've talked about them in this thread already I believe - several times. But these kind of solutions require taking an explicitly strategic system dynamics approach to energy generation and use globally, rather than falling for comforting 'silver bullet' narratives that say we can just drop future-tech solutions into the old paradigm and carry on as usual.

====

• How long does it take to build a nuclear reactor? Sustainability By Numbers, 2023
• Nuclear Energy - Our World in Data
• How Long Can a Nuclear Reactor Last? - Scientific American, 2009
• Nuclear power and climate change: Decarbonization - IAEA, 2019
• Why nuclear power isn’t the answer to climate change - World Economics Forum, 2015

[Strontium Dog]

Anyone who doesn't like global warming would do well to move to the UK, height of summer and it's bloody freezing here! Struggling to breach 16C and dropping almost to single figures at night.

[macdoc]

At least you have some data worth browsing tho most a decade out of current.

Very few reactors are decommissioned anywhere near projected lifespan and you are projecting in a vacuum sans supporting technologies.

You ignore efficiency gains entirely.
https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1002 ... costs-down

There is enough existing useable uranium in holding ponds to power the planet for 400 years via fast breeder technology since only 5% of the power from current fission is used up....95% remains of which 90% is extractable reducing the volume of nuclear waste to 10% and half life by magnitudes. Fast breeder avoidance is a policy decision, not a technological barrier. FB is also needed to decommission nuclear weapons.

Fast Breeder Reactors: A solution for nuclear waste ...
innovationorigins.com
https://innovationorigins.com › ... › Sustainability
Apr 11, 2023 — Fast-neutron reactors, a type of FBR, can improve fuel efficiency and reduce waste by up to 80%. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) prioritizes FBRs.

There is near infinite supplies of uranium extractable from seawater.

CNNC launches test platform to extract uranium from seawater
18 May 2023
China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) has commissioned a seawater uranium extraction test platform, said to be the largest such test platform to be built in the South China Sea.

Thorium is abundant and proven.
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/th ... a-analysis

Why Thorium is key to our net zero goals
The Hindu BusinessLine
https://www.thehindubusinessline.com › business-tech
Feb 6, 2023 — Apart from coal, thorium is the only abundant energy source in India. ... One is the 'Indian high-temperature reactor' (IHTR), which is designed to produce ...

With SMRs, useable life span of a site can be extended and expanded and we can abandon 60s tech for modern tech in producing in volume.
You ignored Ontario entirely ...doesn't fit your agenda I guess.
https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1002 ... ar-reactor
Canada is the 9th largest world economy and Ontario 40% of that yet it went to essentially carbon neutral in a decade and is building more of the safe nuclear facilities that has powered the province for 70 years.

There is no one solution to climate change. It will take all carbon neutral technologies including nuclear to mitigate the existing carbon load.

There is no choice but to develop carbon reduction technology and there is no other tech that can power that extraction 24/7
Fusion might resolve some of fission issues but it is still over the horizon.

And once more per usual .....what is YOUR magic solution to baseload?

[Brian Peacock]

At least you have some data worth browsing tho most a decade out of current.

Very few reactors are decommissioned anywhere near projected lifespan and you are projecting in a vacuum sans supporting technologies.

You ignore efficiency gains entirely.
https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1002 ... costs-down

There is enough existing useable uranium in holding ponds to power the planet for 400 years via fast breeder technology since only 5% of the power from current fission is used up....95% remains of which 90% is extractable reducing the volume of nuclear waste to 10% and half life by magnitudes. Fast breeder avoidance is a policy decision, not a technological barrier. FB is also needed to decommission nuclear weapons.

Fast Breeder Reactors: A solution for nuclear waste ...
innovationorigins.com
https://innovationorigins.com › ... › Sustainability
Apr 11, 2023 — Fast-neutron reactors, a type of FBR, can improve fuel efficiency and reduce waste by up to 80%. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) prioritizes FBRs.

There is near infinite supplies of uranium extractable from seawater.

CNNC launches test platform to extract uranium from seawater
18 May 2023
China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) has commissioned a seawater uranium extraction test platform, said to be the largest such test platform to be built in the South China Sea.

Thorium is abundant and proven.
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/th ... a-analysis

Why Thorium is key to our net zero goals
The Hindu Business Line
https://www.thehindubusinessline.com › business-tech
Feb 6, 2023 — Apart from coal, thorium is the only abundant energy source in India. ... One is the 'Indian high-temperature reactor' (IHTR), which is designed to produce ...

With SMRs, useable life span of a site can be extended and expanded and we can abandon 60s tech for modern tech in producing in volume.
You ignored Ontario entirely ...doesn't fit your agenda I guess.
https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1002 ... ar-reactor
Canada is the 9th largest world economy and Ontario 40% of that yet it went to essentially carbon neutral in a decade and is building more of the safe nuclear facilities that has powered the province for 70 years.

There is no one solution to climate change. It will take all carbon neutral technologies including nuclear to mitigate the existing carbon load.

There is no choice but to develop carbon reduction technology and there is no other tech that can power that extraction 24/7
Fusion might resolve some of fission issues but it is still over the horizon.

And once more per usual .....what is YOUR magic solution to baseload?

Look at what you wrote. You're not addressing the issue systematically. For example, thorium could be a viable reactor fuel, but at the moment there's only 5 research reactors. Fast breeders are a similar case in point: touted as a near-term solution since the 50s only 19 were built and the last one was decommissioned in 2014 - none were ever commercially viable because FBs are expensive to build, complex to operate, susceptible to prolonged shutdown as a result of even minor malfunctions, and difficult and time-consuming to repair. Although FBs reduce the half-life of transuranics they also shift the waste storage problem of uranium-235 reactors to the so-called 'reprocessing' stage. Like thorium reactors they could have potential, but we need to address energy demand and use now and over the medium-term with what we have now and can bring to the problem rapidly. This is the only way to secure a future in which the potential of (often yet to be proven) tech can be developed and implemented.

I agree there's no silver bullet, that we have to try everything we can all at once, but scaling up nuclear now in the way I described, to meet just half of our current electricity needs by 2050, will not be a realistic, viable part of the mix, for the reasons given - at least not without huge systemic change. If there is a single solution it is that; systemic changes focused on rapidly decarbonising the economy.

I stated the nature of the energy problem quite clearly, and the solution to that problem: our energy economy is primarily fossil-based and GHG emitting, therefore we need to massively up-scale lo-to-no emission energy sources and rapidly get as much as we can that's currently burning hydrocarbons off-grid (transport, industrial processes etc) onto an almost entirely decarbonised electricity grid, asap. Yes, to do that we need alternatives to hydrocarbon combustion, but that requires either using forms of so-called synthetic fuel--using electricity to make sufficient quantities of things like hydrogen, for example--or using so-called 'biofuels'--growing plants, and using electricity to turn them into efficient, burnable fuel. In either case we need to up-scale electricity while downscaling fossil. And at the same time as shifting away from fossil as our primary energy source and towards clean electricity we also need to address overall energy demand and reduce it over an increasingly shortening time-frame through a mix of efficiencies and restructuring the energy economy.

As I said, nuclear is a lovely idea - particularly if one ignores the caveats I listed. Nuclear could make a significant contribution as a 'bridging technology' as we transition to clean and sustainable energy sources, but only if there was a coordinated global energy strategy accounting for planning and implementation around questions like: how may reactors we will need; what locations will we need them in; what fuels will they use; how and where will the fuels be mined and processed; what will we do with the waste; how much will it cost(?) etc, and then only if the ground work for implementing such a strategy was being laid now. It isn't. There is no plan. Nuclear is a bust. This is why I'm highly-sceptical about the presumed 'vital role' that nuclear is said to play in a transition to clean and sustainable energy sources - even putting aside the fact that it's neither clean nor sustainable itself.

Given that tech like turning CO2 in jet fuel, or replacing oil with liquid hydrogen, are unproven, energy intensive technologies that require new kinds of infrastrucutre, the only viable bridging technology is biofuel, and we all know what that means. With c.70% of agricultural land given over to livestock, and 80% of arable land given over to feeding them, it's estimated that we could reduce agricultural land use by around 50% and still feed ourselves and produce enough biofuels to bridge the transition to clean and sustainable energy sources. Reducing agricultural land use by half would have a huge impact on our collective carbon footprint, managing the rewilding of that liberated land would be hugely beneficial to biodiversity and see the return of a significant portion of the planet's natural carbon sinks, and we could actually feed ourselves while burning relatively carbon-neutral fuels that could be phased out over time as renewable provision was ramped up.

Of all the solutions to the energy paradox we have at hand today, halting meat production is by far the easiest to implement, and by far the most cost effective suggestion on the table; it would have significant carbon benefits and the broadest of ecological benefits; it does not require the invention or implementation of new or novel technology, could be achieved with the infrastructure we have at present, and would have a profound and rapid beneficial impact on global heating and climate change. However, for some reason many people find it a lot easier to imagine building 100 nuclear reactors a year, creating a global liquid hydrogen infrastructure from scratch, or even living on Mars! than giving up meat. If the global goal is to reduce suffering and secure the ecological and climate conditions under which we have evolved, and upon which we rely for our existence--and upon which we will always rely--then going vegan is one of the most practical, achievable, viable options left open to us, along with returning half of the planet's land mass to natural wilderness.

[macdoc]

No meat?? Easiest to implement ??? Pardon my laughter.
Hardly a negative for nuclear and completely unacceptable to the populace.

Nuclear build outs continue, which are concrete reductions of current emission problems.
Even the bloated Finnish reactor is putting out big power.
Fast breeders are in use, can be built but often are not due purely to proliferation concerns.
It will remain in the energy picture even if fusion pans out as ALL will be needed to phase out FF.

State or market: Investments in new nuclear power plants ...
ScienceDirect
https://www.sciencedirect.com › article › abs › pii
by F Zimmermann · 2023 · Cited by 3 — Furthermore, the French government announced plans to build six new nuclear power plants and to extend the technical lifetime of the existi

Agriculture /landuse reform is a huge weapon in the low carbon armory but it is not a silver bullet......but rather one more of the "million Manhattan projects" needed.

[Brian Peacock]

I think you're generalising from the particular again. French or Canadian energy policy is not going to address a global ecological and climate crisis or the energy paradox which they present.

Yeah. I get more push-back on the no-meat idea than anything else, even given the obvious environmental benefits. I can talk about driving political policy through direct or participatory democratic reform, restructuring economies to meet the basic needs of everyone on the planet in the most carbon neutral way possible, or reforming education systems with climate and sustainability at their core, and have interesting debates and disagreements. And yet as soon as I raise the subject of land reform and moving agricultural economies away from industrialised meat production people can really lose their shit. But as we collectively dropped the climate ball and missed the global heating boat some time ago, we're into the realms of radical solutions now. When it comes to the energy paradox, building 100+ nuclear plants a year is also a radical solutions, so is creating a liquid hydrogen economy from scratch. Global veganism is in exactly the same ballpark, but I think people are so quick to baulk because its something tangible that seems to effect them personally.

I didn't give up meat and dairy because I didn't like the taste you know. By taking this small but radical action myself I demonstrate how any regular person can have a full, active and fulfilling life (rich in culinary experience btw) without animal agriculture. The only thing I lack is my old eating habits. Your answer is that going vegan is not acceptable to the populace, but then again more and more people are choosing to adopting it specifically in response to climate and environmental concerns. Nobody is asking you to saw a leg off or anything!

This crisis is so pressing and so severe that any and every solution is going to come at a high cost. We should be realistic about that. But the personal cost of going vegan is very low for the individual. Global heating is going to break the meat industry in the end, so why not think about managing that decline in a just and ordered way that will benefit as many people as possible in the long run?

Given the potential ecological and climate benefits of repurposing the c.40% of habitable land that's given over to meat production in some way, not to mention enhancing the potential of increasing production of bridging biofuels while limiting (and indeed reducing) further environmental degradation, global veganism asks a basic question about what people are prepared to do now to reduce the suffering and secure the well-being of their kids and grandkids, and the ecologies upon which they will depend for their survival. It also asks a basic question about what costs we're collectively prepared to, and not prepared to pass on to future generations.

Is it really acceptable that the ecological and climate costs of your burger today are going to have to be met by others tomorrow?