Nuclear Power

I read that before I posted. My question still stands, perhaps I am just not seeing it there or elsewhere; where do you get the numbers that a single volcanic event produces more "pollutants" than humans produce in 1000 years?

 

actually the first couple sentences were my response.. the rest was just a rant not toward you

 

slam-dunk

 

All I know is that America is waaay behind at this point. The sad thing is we have the technology to build the best nuke plants in the world. Now I'm not going to get into semantics and politics but the truth as I see it is glaring and worrisome.
The ChiComs are right now building dozens of pebble bed nuke reactors. Along with their new hydropower they will have an energy surplus in the next 20 years to be the new industrial superpower.
We need to catch up to keep America safe and have enough energy. No just oil. We need clean coal, new nuke plants, wind, geothermal, etc.
Our power grid is stretched thin and getting thinner. You take a few large coal plants down and look out brownout city..
I'm sayin we need to build nuclear plants starting yesterday and get busy on reviving our energy sources. That includes offshore oil. If it's there then damnit go suck it out and use it.

 

The eruption you are referencing is Mt. Pinatubo. It was the second largest in the nearly 200 years.

Now, I am still not saying you are wrong; I just don't see any support for your math. Where are you getting the total green house gas output of humans? I am not finding anything that supports that Pinatubo put out more than 1000 years worth of human activity.

Don't get me wrong, 20 million tons is a lot of "stuff" but how does that actually compare to human output? While not apples to apples, but just to show the size of numbers; human global output of co2 is around 27 billion tons.

 

I agree that we need to step up electricity production, and nuke ought to be the core of our strategy.

 

At the same time almost all evergreen plants/trees use CO2 in order to live. they convert CO2 to oxygen. just like we convert oxygen to CO2.. it's the balance of nature.

 

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1922411/posts

 

Too bad the world has logged a large portion of those natural forests.

Wow nuclear power with salt water desalination. Thats an interesting idea. I heard somewhere that the US hasn't built a nuclear power plant in like 25 years or something, and that the new power plants are a lot more efficient and safer! I still think a diverse power grid is essential though, including solar, wind, ect.

The US is way behind in power, especially California, they have been buying power from BC for 10+ years now...I don't think they've paid for it all though..

Now to fling some poop,

The most respected scientific bodies have stated unequivocally that global warming is occurring, and people are causing it by burning fossil fuels (like coal, oil and natural gas) and cutting down forests. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, which in 2005 the White House called "the gold standard of objective scientific assessment," issued a joint statement with 10 other National Academies of Science saying "the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action. It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions."

MYTH: Global warming is just part of a natural cycle.

FACT: The global warming we are experiencing is not natural. People are causing it.

People are causing global warming by burning fossil fuels (like oil, coal and natural gas) and cutting down forests. Scientists have shown that these activities are pumping far more CO2 into the atmosphere than was ever released in hundreds of thousands of years. This buildup of CO2 is the biggest cause of global warming. Since 1895, scientists have known that CO2 and other greenhouse gases trap heat and warm the earth. As the warming has intensified over the past three decades, scientific scrutiny has increased along with it. Scientists have considered and ruled out other, natural explanations such as sunlight, volcanic eruptions and cosmic rays. (IPCC 2001)

Though natural amounts of CO2 have varied from 180 to 300 parts per million (ppm), today's CO2 levels are around 380 ppm. That's 25% more than the highest natural levels over the past 650,000 years. Increased CO2 levels have contributed to periods of higher average temperatures throughout that long record. (Boden, Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center)
http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1011

There are few scientists now that deny we are causing global warming, there was a recent "emergency" meeting of top world climatologists and other scientists just recently in Geneva. There recent findings are not good, they're finding that things are happening faster then first thought, the candle is indeed burning at both ends.

 

Was this before or after the white house gave them massive research grants?

I wasn't aware we kept logs of scientific data 650,000 years back

 

They find the past CO2 level by drilling ice core samples.


I saw a really neat show a while back on crude oil showing how carbon has transformed over the years and I learned something that I didn't know about crude oil deposits, they aren't really the results of dinosaurs as I was taught in school but from plankton deposits.
The Plankton consumed CO2 and then sank creating large deposits of concentrated carbon ie crude oil.
That is why the middle east has such a large reserve because the deserts were once perfectly bowl shaped oceans where the plankton settled.

 

Just like the massive research grants given to the other side of the issue. As a general consensus across the scientific community I don't really think it is an issue of who's funding the research at this point. It isn't just here, but in Europe and Asia that a large majority of scientific community is in agreement on this issue.

Are you in disbelief of ice coring, or did you just not know of its existence?

 

there are also many arguments against the reliability of Ice Coring.

 

hmmm. I always thought the scientist were full of bellshit, maybe they are right.

I guess I better go drive my truck and do my part to help increase those carbon output statistics.

 

How reliable are air bubbles in ice core samples for determining historic levels of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere?
In: Global Warming

This question is crucial to the validity of the entire theory of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming. You see, the theory is that human CO2 emissions are the cause of the 1-degree-C or so rise in global mean temperatures that has been observed since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The burning of fossil fuels releases carbon, which combines with oxygen in the atmostphere to form carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a so-called "greenhouse gas", which, along with other greenhouse gasses, keeps the earth much warmer than it would otherwise be. This "greenhouse effect" is, generally, a good thing, because without it, the earth would be much too cold for life, as we know it, to exist. The problem, according the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) alarmists, is that the CO2 produced by human industry has raised atmospheric carbon dioxide to levels not seen at any time in the last 100,000 years, and that this amount of CO2 is causing warming well above what we SHOULD be seeing.

Now, prior to 1958, no one was measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide, so we have no DIRECT OBSERVATIONAL DATA about what those levels were prior to 1958. So, in order to have historical atmospheric CO2 data, scientists have had to come up with a variety of "proxy" data. The most common source of this proxy data is CO2 concentrations in air found in bubbles trapped in ice thousands, or even millions, of years ago.

The assumption is that, over time, the concentrations of the various atmospheric gasses are LOCKED when the air bubble is "trapped" in ice. And therefore, as long as you can determine WHEN the air bubble was trapped, you can measure the concentration of CO2 therein and state, with confidence, that the atmosphere itself had that same concentration at the time the air bubble was trapped.

But the assumption is wrong! It is a well-known fact that liquid water absorbs carbon dioxide. It is also a well-known fact that carbon dioxide is more soluble in cold water than in warm water. In fact, solubility increases geometrically as temperatures decrease.

A much lesser known (but nonetheless true) fact is that ice, though composed mainly of SOLID water, does still have some molecules that are in a liquid state. Whether a given molecule is in a solid or liquid (or even gaseous) state, at a given time, depends on how much energy that molecule has at that time. The energy of individual molecules can vary greatly from moment to moment, due to any of various physical events going on in the substance. Now, when water is "solid", the vast majority of these molecules, at any given time, will not have enough energy to be in the liquid state. But SOME of them will. And those that are liquid will absorb a great deal of carbon dioxide, even more than they can absorb at the freezing point.

Another much lesser known (but equally true) fact is that, at low temperatures, among the three main components of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide is seventy (70) times more soluble than nitrogen and thirty (30) times more soluble than oxygen. This means that, when an air bubble is trapped in ice, not only does the liquid in the ice continue to absorb gasses, it does so SELECTIVELY, favoring carbon dioxide, by a huge margin, over the other common gasses in the air bubble. Of course, every molecule of carbon dioxide that passes into a solution is REMOVED from the air within the air bubble. And therefore, since more carbon dioxide is removed, less carbon dioxide will appear in the remaining air. And therefore, after thousands, or millions, of years, when that air bubble is tapped, and the gasses within it measured, the concentrations of the various gasses can no longer said to be the same as when that air bubble was trapped, all those years ago.

 

I have just two words: Solyent Green