Climate crisis equal to nuclear arms threat
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Independent Minds
Climate change poses as great a threat to the world as the nuclear arms race, scientists warned yesterday as they called on leaders to take urgent action to tackle the problem.
The scientists and Nobel laureates attending a three-day conference hosted by St James's Palace drew up a memorandum calling for global greenhouse gas emissions to peak by 2015. The memorandum from the experts, who included the US energy secretary Steven Chu, said a new global deal on emissions expected at the UN conference on climate change in Copenhagen in December was urgently needed.
It must undertake to cut greenhouse gases by half by 2050, the document urged. And while developed countries should take the lead, with cuts of 25 per cent to 40 per cent by 2020, every nation must act, on the "firm assumption that all others will also act".
Professor Hans Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, said that with "probably the biggest concentration of brains on the planet" drawing up the memorandum, it could be more vital than many mass protests on climate change. "We are in a crisis as deep as the times of the arms race," he added.
The memorandum from the conference said that without protecting tropical forests, there was no solution to tackling climate change. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warned that the impacts of climate change could cause havoc in many of the poorest places in the world.
The experts' memorandum called for resources being used to aid economic recovery to put the world on to a path towards a low-carbon economy.
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Comments
Ignoring the fact that seeing London under water might be slightly amusing to the rest of the country, does anyone know if Charlie knows anything about Global Warming or is he just spouting whatever nonesense is put in front of him? Perhaps he should get back on his horse and settle for trying to look important for the tourists, what.
All we can say for sure is that the climate is changing, it is caused by man, and what happens next is unpredictable and dangerous.
What is holding up change is the usual inertia that slows down most changes. We could dramatically reduce CO2 production in Britain within a decade by a massive building programme of Fission Power Plants, whilst increasing R&D on Fusion and other renewables (see if you can get Greenpeace et al to agree to that and you may see some of that inertia in action - or rather inaction).
IPCC global warming by a trace gas is dubbed pseudo science not least because it is backward. It was generally accepted (consensus), then it failed the proof test and now it is being belittled and ridiculed. CO2 cannot drive climate change, global warming or global cooling. Any additions our atmosphere may see in the coming millions of years, even thousands of parts per million, cannot drive climate change. History proves it, ice cores prove it, common sense says it is so. CO2 variation follows temperature. Temperature change cannot be predicted by something that happens after the event. CO2 does not produce heat. Ask any honest scientist. Or Clarkson.
ENSO plus solar variation can be used to predict climate change. It's been done. These poet laureates or whatever obviously don't yet know about internet or else they are demented. Or liars. At the very least they are further belittling the value of awards following a tradition started by Al Gore.
Among the most expert organisations, the British Met. can't get a climate forecast right even months ahead. They keep telling us "this year will break records". If you keep saying it will snow tomorrow, one day you will be right, perhaps this year will see a barBq summer - one weekend.
Belittlement:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/26/h
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/05/26/mis
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/05/t
(Spencer also comments on climatically irrelevant white rooves here:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/05/whi
Using ENSO to predict climate change:
http://www.john-daly.com/soi-temp.h
What is all this bureaucratic dishonesty really doing for grand kids? If it continues it will saddle them with a debt the repayment of which will take far longer than their lifetimes. The necessary trillions will most likely come from China. The US already owes them both legs and an arm. If nuke power goes ahead on the scale envisaged, we will be leaving them with radioactive waste to dispose of. We can't do it safely. A shift of power from the West to the East, means the West will be controlled by the East. Chinese as a first language.
The EU like eulab doesn't have any leadership quality as proved again and again by the disasters they create, clinging desperately to power is all they are capable of.
The wind turbine maker that gave 1500 or whatever number of workers the boot is investing in China. That tells a story.
This is assuming that Laser Inertial Fusion-Fission Energy does not work (allowing us to "burn" the Waste).
"bury it underground". How many earthquakes has the UK seen in the last decade? Will they continue increase in frequency? Still, there must be some advantage to water that glows in the dark, I just can't think of any right now. Perhaps the French can tell us, they have experience of underground radiation leaking. Making underground sites moderately secure is a hugely expensive operation and eventually the stuff has to be unearthed to be disposed of properly. The only safe place is off the planet and until Branson comes up with an expensive radioactive trash shuttle, it is a problem. Keeping it a small problem is a good idea. Safe, economical fusion is within decades of reality. Why not stick with clean coal that produces tree food as a bonus?
We are still stuck with oil until probably hydrogen powered engines become an economic reality. Leaving our descendants impoverished will handicap their ability to solve the problems we are causing. Far better to continue with tried and proven energy tech, forget about carbon capture but clean up the real pollution, help China and India in every way possible to do the same. That makes the kind of sense the whole world can get behind.
Had we had leaders with vision instead of what we've got, the tens of billions spent trying to prove CO2 causes climate change could have been better invested in cleaning up emissions of real pollutants, despite that causes the Arctic to melt (reducing sulphates).
Or else I'm a screw short of a shilling and we should all paint our houses and cars white and wear white hats.
:-)
Making a Depository secure is not hugely expensive as you say. They are expensive to construct but the running costs are nugatory compared to the Power produced (providing you do not make every Company build their own but have one state-run unit). The stuff does not need to be removed eventually (unless, in future, we find a way to use it or convert it to a safer form) but a properly designed Depository would allow this to be done cheaply.
The U3O8 is in the ground already - what is so frightening about using it and then putting the waste back in the ground (by which time it is of a lower intensity and, mainly, a shorter half-life than the original yellowcake)?
As for clean coal - it depends on whether AGW is completely correct or not.
And the low level waste e.g. such as warehoused across France?
I stand by moderation. I'm not opposed to nuclear per se, just the proliferation. My opinion is that there are over claims from both sides that use to balance out. Now the AGW nonsense has given the pro nukers an edge, that needs to be addressed. That construction, power pricing, profits and control of reactors will be in a the hands of foreigners bothers me too.
While the UK is nowhere near in the same league as high seismicity areas such as California, Taiwan and Japan, it nevertheless has a moderate rate of seismicity, sufficiently high to pose a potential hazard to sensitive installations such as, nuclear power stations, dams and chemical plants. Consideration also has had to be made for other large construction projects such as the Channel Tunnel.
http://www.geologyshop.co.uk/ukequa
Cumbria was struck by a magnitude 3.7 earthquake on 28 April 2009 at 10:22 UTC (11:22 BST). Detailed analysis by the British Geological Survey shows that the epicentre was 5km southeast of Ulverston in south Cumbria. The earthquake was felt widely across Cumbria and Lancashire. ?An earthquake of this size occurs somewhere in the UK roughly every year. It is unlikely to have caused significant damage.? said Brian Baptie from the British Geological Survey.
http://www.earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/recent
The Dogger Bank earthquake of 1931 was the strongest earthquake recorded in the United Kingdom since measurements began. It measured 6.1 on the Richter Scale.
The tremor began at around 1:30am on 7 June 1931 with its epicentre located on the Dogger Bank, 60 miles (97 km) off the Yorkshire coast in the North Sea. The effects were felt throughout Great Britain and in Belgium and France.[2]
The location of the earthquake in the North Sea meant that damage was significantly less than it would have been had the epicentre been on the British mainland.
We certainly have underground structures in Britain that have been stable for hundreds of thousands of years but that is after the event, of course.
However, these longer-lived isotopes would be a very small component of the Waste mass. I have no detailed knowledge on the matter but I would think that the high-level Waste is a very small risk (even if it was released) after about 5 to 10,000 years which is a predictable timescale for us in terms of Tectonics (The Northwich salt domes in Cheshire, for example, have been around a lot longer than that, as I understand it). If the original U3O8 (used to make yellowcake) is left in the ground, then we are looking at the major part of the mass being radioactive for millions of years (though not a British problem as the bulk of it is in Canada, Australia, USA, Kazhakstan, Namibia etc.).
All this assumes that we cannot re-use or modify the Waste, in future, which seems an unlikely assumption to me. Certainly experience in Petrochemicals suggests that we will find uses for the Waste.
The low-level waste would also be stored in the Depository but only in timescales of a few decades and it could then be removed.
Please bear in mind that we are not talking vast volumes here - all the high-level waste ever produced in Britain to date would not cover a football field to much more than a couple of metres or so in depth.
The fact that Government dithering for 30 years has almost destroyed our homegrown expertise is a problem, I must admit, but that is for Politics rather than Science to solve. The 5 to 10,000 years quoted above is from chatting with a Nuclear Engineer who I worked with in the early eighties who had left the Industry because he could not find work in his discipline (what a waste of expertise).
Sorry that I cannot be more exact but the data seems to be a bit lacking on the Web. I will keep looking and post, in future, if I can find more specific data.
I know for a fact accidents go unreported, there was one at BNF (over 20 years ago) a couple of drivers (friends) delivering there were present when people in white coats fled a nearby building. They died within 6 years of leukemia. Coincidence no doubt. Accidents happen in any industry and so far nuke industry has a good record compared to the other energy industries.
I think the radiation that escapes is comparable to that released by burning coal but I can't find data on that.
On the last, I agree, what a waste of expertise.
Couple of links worth skimming:
http://www.forces.gc.ca/health-sante/pu
http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/pur
Would you trust French nuclear plant builders to tarmac your drive?
http://clothcap.livejournal.com/3493.ht
I put it on my blog as I don't know if a subscription is required to access the original at:
http://www.energyblogs.com/magneticpowe
I have more on this topic at witsendnj.blogspot.com
You said "The problem is, we have changed both temperature and precipitation patterns faster than long-lived species can adapt." By our fosfuel CO2 emissions?
I wonder how the deforestation of Britain, Europe, the US etc. affected the local climates? Our CO2 (tree food) is helping forests to recover.
Even supposing the absurd idea that CO2 is a miracle gas and the human emitted fraction of the less than 2 in 1,000,000 parts per year was to cause grand kids to toast, is there even a nanogram of commonsense in EU or US dictated energy policies?
An emphatic NO.
As Fareed Zakaria notes in his book "The Post-American World": "The combined carbon dioxide emissions from the 850 new coal-fired plants that China and India are building between now and 2012 are five times the total savings of the Kyoto accords."
So why are we sacrificing our economic growth to fight their pollution?
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(http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticl
A study from NASA?s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland looking at climate data over the past century has concluded that solar variation has made a significant impact on the Earth's climate. The report concludes that evidence for climate changes based on solar radiation can be traced back as far as the Industrial Revolution.