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I'd sure like to know a references for your "FACT", since it is in disagreement with the reports from the International Panel on Climate Change reference NOAA (ref), the national academies of science, engineering and medicine, (ref), NASA, (ref), the AGU (ref) and everyother reputable scientific organization on the planet.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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BTW, Rabbit, congratulations on your restrained response. I deleted mine several times for lack of compassion.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Are you saying that replacing coal and oil fired power plants with nuclear will result in net increase in global warming? Please explain.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Here is my evidence, complete with references. Here is some more information.
Please try to explain the hard data away before trying to claim that flawed computer models are superior, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY CAN'T EVEN PREDICT PAST TEMPERATURES ACCURATELY.
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I don't like Michael Chrichton too much, but that is more of a personal issue. What gets me worked up though (and hence the yelling) is that the vaunted computers that predict global warming can't give us the correct temperatures of history. If it is incorrect in dealing with the past, how can we be sure it is going to predict the future correctly?
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Or slightly more seriously, love leads to children, and over the lifespan of that child, massive amounts of energy have to be spent heating thier homes and feuling their cars.
You could actually say that love led to populations exceeding food supply of the hunter/gatherer tribes, leading to the agricultural and industrial revolutions that are the actual cause of global worming.
Quote: Prof Roy Spencer, at the University of Alabama, a leading authority on satellite measurements of global temperatures, told The Telegraph: "It's pretty clear that the editorial board of Science is more interested in promoting papers that are pro-global warming. It's the news value that is most important."
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Actually, I am banking on global warming for personal reasons. I am told that the southern United States will turn to an arrid climate most like a desert from Florida up through Virginia. That will leave Pennsylvania with a climate remarkably like Florida's right now. This should send my property value through the roof considering what a hotspot this will be for retirees.
This might also explain why there are so many fossils that can be found here in PA if this was indeed the case millions of years ago, but I am no geologist or climatologist for that matter. Just makes sense.
Posts: 1870 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Rakeesh, other than thermal pollution, what pollution does nuclear power generate? (If we used breeder reactors, there wouldn't be any radioactive waste.)
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Breeder reactors DO produce "waste". That much of this waste can be reused, doesn't mean all of it can. Eventually fissile material is used up.
And none of this affect transportation, which accounts for a large part of global warming pollutants.
I'm a major supporter of nuclear energy, but it is only a stopgap (a necessary one, I think), as fossil fuels have turned out to be. We can't assume it will solve all our pollution problems.
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"Are you saying that replacing coal and oil fired power plants with nuclear will result in net increase in global warming?"
No, Tatiana, I don't know enough about nuclear or coal/oil/gas-fired powerplants to make that claim. However, I do know enough to find "Nuclear power doesn't cause global warming." to be misleading.
Though I discounted it earlier, we'll start with direct thermal pollution via inefficiency in transforming potential power into electricity. Currently, a combined cycle gas turbine can transform 54% of potential energy into electicity, though the average of already on-line newer powerplants is a lower 48%. It takes time for the newest commercial technology to be incorporated. Meanwhile, current technology nuclear powerplants tend to average around the 32% efficiency of LightWaterReactors. Which ain't a whole heck of lot different than one could get outta using an automobile gasoline-motor&generator mutually tuned for maximum efficiency. Admittedly (which is why that specific link was chosen), a nuclear-fueled HighTemperatureHeliumGasReactor could produce electricity with greater efficiency, but HTHGRs have intrinsic problems which aren't mentioned in the article. Which I'll explain along with the indirect pollution problems.
So basicly a combined-cycle gas-turbine has to use (100% divided by 54%) or ~185units of potential energy to produce 100units of electrical energy, while a nuclear reactor has to use (100% divided by 32%) or ~312units of potential energy to produce 100units of electrical energy. ie A nuclear reactor produces ~(312-100) divided by ~(185-100) or ~2.5times as much direct waste-heat pollution to produce the same amount of electricity as a dual-cycle gas-turbine.
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Okay, let's start by saying that I believe that nuclear powerplants probably produce less greenhouse emissions than fossil-fuel plants. But until recently hydroelectric power production was also believed to be non-polluting. Turns out that dams may produce as much as a fourteenth of all man-made greenhouse gases. More troubling is that they may produce as much as a fifth of all man-made methane: a pollutant which is about twenty times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So, let's look for indirect greenhouse contributions of nuclear powerplants.
Okay, LWRs produce 2.5times as much waste-heat. Which means it hasta go somewhere. A common means of keeping the reactor within its operating temperature is through using heat-exchangers, with the heat-exchangers in turn being water-cooled. Eventually heated water is dumped into rivers, lakes, or oceans. (No, there is never a point of direct contact between the reactor coolant and the disposed water).
The thing is warming water encourages algae growth. Which is fine up to a point. The point being when man-made warmth meets up with man-made nutrients from sewage treatment plants, fertilizer run-off from farms, manure run-off from ranches, etc.
At which point algae growth can increase tremendously, essentially to the point where hypoxia -- depletion of oxygen -- at night chokes off all growth other than aerobic bacteria which can survive periods of oxygen-deprivation, algae, and anaerobic bacteria. The dead&decaying plants and animals in turn provide food for an increase in anaerobic bacteria, which leads to even more nutrients being released for algae to use during the sunlight hours. And since anaerobic bacteria don't use an oxygen metabolism to feed on the dead material, they also produce greenhouse gases -- methane and carbon dioxide -- during their respiration. Which leads to further eutrophication until only the top layer of water churned by the wind -- ~20inches/~0.5metre or so depending on wind speed -- can support algae and the aerobic/oxygen-breathing bacteria which feeds on it. Any algae trapped in the algae pile beneath that oxygenated layer dies, providing food for the anaerobic bacteria and nutrients for the surviving algae. Which create more algae during the day and more algae dying at night until the algae, the algae-eating aerobic bacteria, and dead-algae scavenging anerobic bacteria reach a somewhat equilibrium state. ie Algae and anaerobic bacteria continue producing greenhouse gases even after the original triggers for eutrophication are removed.
When it comes to greenhouse gas production, it's a case of "dammed if you do and dammed if you don't" in the choice between hydropower and nuclear power.
Unless of course the nuclear plants' heat pollution is combined with the sewage treatment plants' nutrient pollution in ponds designed to grow algae for harvesting and conversion into biodiesel. (Thanks, Mike) But fat chance of that. The majority of advocates on all of the various sides of the Energy vs Environment debate are so driven by ideological nonsense that they'd prefer to watch society crash down into complete&utter chaos and the environment turn into hell rather than concede that the problems are serious enough to warrant combining everybody's ideas.
More on nukes and the greenhouse but posting now to avoid accidental deletion.
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How about we just decrease the Earth's population? I have a list of people I'd like to get rid of, including several relatives. Posts: 1512 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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