It turns out that global warming means actual global warming, as in we’re in the frying pan and the burner is on. It means we’re accidentally cooking ourselves along with everything else.
Punishing heat waves gripped three continents on Tuesday, breaking records in cities around the Northern Hemisphere less than two weeks after the Earth recorded what scientists said were likely its hottest days in modern history.
Not just a little upward bump in average temperatures but raging heat waves that kill people by the thousands.
Firefighters in Greece scrambled to put out wildfires, as parched conditions raised the risk of more blazes throughout Europe. Beijing logged another day of 95-degree heat, and people in Hangzhou, another Chinese city, compared the choking conditions to a sauna. From the Middle East to the American Southwest, delivery drivers, airport workers and construction crews labored under blistering skies. Those who could stay indoors did.
For hundreds of millions of people on Tuesday, the heat was hard to escape. In the United States, Phoenix broke a nearly half-century-old record on Tuesday, with the city’s 19th consecutive day of temperatures above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius).
Remember, kids: not everyone can just turn on the air conditioning. Also, turning on the air conditioning contributes to the warming.
Firefighters helping a man at his home in Phoenix, where he collapsed after working on his roof on Saturday.Credit…Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
Wildfires raged on for yet another week in Canada, having burned a staggering 25 million acres so far this year, an area roughly the size of Kentucky. With more than a month of peak fire season to go, 2023 has already eclipsed Canada’s annual record, from 1989.
Fires also forced evacuations in villages south, west and north of Athens, burning an estimated 7,400 acres of forest in Greece despite aerial water bombardments to bring the blazes under control.
All those forests gone up in smoke can no longer absorb carbon dioxide.
And didn’t Texas just repeal a law that mandated water breaks for outdoor workers? Every one of the legislators who voted for that, plus the governor who signed it, should have to work outdoors with no water breaks. See how they like it.
Not to blame the victim here, but the roof, during the day, in temps over 110F, is the absolute worst place in your house. I would wait at least until evening, and for damn sure wear a Camlback with electrolyte fluids instead of water.
So many of the denialists think the are smarter than climate experts, and tweet “don’t they know that climate is cyclical?” Har har. We are in a glacial cycle, and should be cooling. Tree ring data and ice core samples show scientists what happens when carbon dioxide reaches a higher concentration. Even a 3rd grade pupil could understand why this sudden, catastrophic, increase in global warming (MEAN temperatures,) is an aberration from the normal cycles, and the destruction of the planet’s regulators and the inability of the ocean to absorb more heat is not right.
But not someone who wants to keep driving their 8CYL diesel lifted truck with bull balls on the receiver hitch. Not someone who wants to cruise up the Mississippi or down the Danube, sand bars and all. Not someone who needs the roar of an engine and thinks that battery powered cars are for the effete snobs.
Rain has been falling on the AGW denialist parade for donkey’s years, but an essential ingredient of said denialism is a most fundamental natural law of all, even trumping the laws of thermodynamics. The law states that the (lesser) laws of physics, chemistry and all the other sciences only work according to the needs of the private interests in charge of the human economy, and change as the needs of that economy change. Thus, it cannot be allowed that CO2 is a heat-trapping gas, with atmospheric and climatic consequences, nor that fossil-carbon is finite, nor that ‘nuclear’ has flies all over it. That leaves for the future only the renewables: which the AGW deniers detest: solar (both photovoltaic and direct solar-thermal) wind, hydro, geothermal, tidal, and others to be found using Google; .
Nor can it be allowed that fossil carbon has other more important uses than turning water into steam in power stations: eg for the ubiquitous plastics used in electrical insulation and much of the construction of any typical modern automobile.
As the renewables (particularly all forms of solar) are impossible to privatise, it is important for fossil-carbon shills that publicity of their limits be maximised, and that of the problems of their alternatives be minimised.
Otherwise, we could find ourselves as a species in the position of my late long-widowed grandmother, who got up with the sparrows and went to bed when they did too, and grew all the firewood she needed as a privet hedge that it was my job as a teenager to hack down and chop up for her every year. She ran chooks, sold their meat and eggs around her neighbourhood, kept a house cow, grew all her own vegetables, and was generally self-sufficient: all on 1.25 acres in the then semi-rural Sydney suburb of Seven Hills.
In other words, she cut her clothes to fit her cloth; until she died aged 95.
I have yet to read an argument against using nuclear for much of humanity’s energy needs that stands up to examination.
Selective reading? There’s a lot of info Jim if you broaden your horizons. Here is one summary from a few years back. Ziggy Switkowski is a nuclear physicist and former head of The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. So, he’s not a greenie.
Now, this article is 3 years old and the modular reactors mentioned are still nowhere near being commercially available.
As usual, it pays to follow the money. Australia has the world’s greatest reserves of Uranium, but not a single power generator, not one investment bank, nor any other private enterprise is campaigning to have the nation’s ban on nuclear power generation removed. That tells me they see better profit potential in other forms of generation.
And their actions support that. Privately owned power generators are closing their coal-fired power stations and replacing the capacity with renewables. They are not mounting the case for nuclear.
0730 on an overcast day, and South Australia is still running at 89% renewable with more capacity being installed.
I have yet to read an argument against using nuclear for much of humanity’s energy needs that stands up to examination.
My late friend and mentor, the theoretical physicist-turned-ecologist Dr Alan Roberts of Monash University, called nuclear energy “The Phantom Solution,’ and wrote an article on it at the first link below.
Dictators like Vlad Putin (not to be confused with Vlad Dracula; easy to do, I know) have form when cornered and facing defeat, for dragging as much as possible of the rest of the world down with them as they go. If Hitler had had nuclear weapons, with or without a delivery system or two, he would have used them I am sure, instead of just miserably shooting himself in the head. The Roman Emperor Nero did much the same as he exited the historical stage.
Nearly four decades later, many at home and abroad denounced him [Robert Mugabe] as a power-obsessed autocrat willing to unleash death squads, rig elections and trash the economy in the relentless pursuit of control.
When every tin-pot dictator from Albania to Zimbabwe has a modular reactor or a nuclear something else to use in blackmailing his opponents, I doubt the world will be safer or more certain than it is now; and it could be a damned sight hotter, climate change or no climate change.
The article gets off to a bad start by making a fuss about the drawbacks of enrichment, but doing ctrl F and searching for CANDU gets no hits in the article. The CANDU reactor uses non-enriched uranium.
It will take a little while to read all the links from you and David Brindley. Expect more comments later
And didn’t Texas just repeal a law that mandated water breaks for outdoor workers? Every one of the legislators who voted for that, plus the governor who signed it, should have to work outdoors with no water breaks. See how they like it.
Not to blame the victim here, but the roof, during the day, in temps over 110F, is the absolute worst place in your house. I would wait at least until evening, and for damn sure wear a Camlback with electrolyte fluids instead of water.
So many of the denialists think the are smarter than climate experts, and tweet “don’t they know that climate is cyclical?” Har har. We are in a glacial cycle, and should be cooling. Tree ring data and ice core samples show scientists what happens when carbon dioxide reaches a higher concentration. Even a 3rd grade pupil could understand why this sudden, catastrophic, increase in global warming (MEAN temperatures,) is an aberration from the normal cycles, and the destruction of the planet’s regulators and the inability of the ocean to absorb more heat is not right.
But not someone who wants to keep driving their 8CYL diesel lifted truck with bull balls on the receiver hitch. Not someone who wants to cruise up the Mississippi or down the Danube, sand bars and all. Not someone who needs the roar of an engine and thinks that battery powered cars are for the effete snobs.
Rain has been falling on the AGW denialist parade for donkey’s years, but an essential ingredient of said denialism is a most fundamental natural law of all, even trumping the laws of thermodynamics. The law states that the (lesser) laws of physics, chemistry and all the other sciences only work according to the needs of the private interests in charge of the human economy, and change as the needs of that economy change. Thus, it cannot be allowed that CO2 is a heat-trapping gas, with atmospheric and climatic consequences, nor that fossil-carbon is finite, nor that ‘nuclear’ has flies all over it. That leaves for the future only the renewables: which the AGW deniers detest: solar (both photovoltaic and direct solar-thermal) wind, hydro, geothermal, tidal, and others to be found using Google; .
Nor can it be allowed that fossil carbon has other more important uses than turning water into steam in power stations: eg for the ubiquitous plastics used in electrical insulation and much of the construction of any typical modern automobile.
As the renewables (particularly all forms of solar) are impossible to privatise, it is important for fossil-carbon shills that publicity of their limits be maximised, and that of the problems of their alternatives be minimised.
Otherwise, we could find ourselves as a species in the position of my late long-widowed grandmother, who got up with the sparrows and went to bed when they did too, and grew all the firewood she needed as a privet hedge that it was my job as a teenager to hack down and chop up for her every year. She ran chooks, sold their meat and eggs around her neighbourhood, kept a house cow, grew all her own vegetables, and was generally self-sufficient: all on 1.25 acres in the then semi-rural Sydney suburb of Seven Hills.
In other words, she cut her clothes to fit her cloth; until she died aged 95.
“nor that ‘nuclear’ has flies all over it.”
I have yet to read an argument against using nuclear for much of humanity’s energy needs that stands up to examination.
As for renewables. Hydro and geothermal are great where you have them, but the part time nature of solar & wind greatly limit their usefulness.
Selective reading? There’s a lot of info Jim if you broaden your horizons. Here is one summary from a few years back. Ziggy Switkowski is a nuclear physicist and former head of The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. So, he’s not a greenie.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/risk-of-catastrophic-failure-if-australia-adopts-nuclear-energy-20190829-p52m2h.html
Now, this article is 3 years old and the modular reactors mentioned are still nowhere near being commercially available.
As usual, it pays to follow the money. Australia has the world’s greatest reserves of Uranium, but not a single power generator, not one investment bank, nor any other private enterprise is campaigning to have the nation’s ban on nuclear power generation removed. That tells me they see better profit potential in other forms of generation.
And their actions support that. Privately owned power generators are closing their coal-fired power stations and replacing the capacity with renewables. They are not mounting the case for nuclear.
0730 on an overcast day, and South Australia is still running at 89% renewable with more capacity being installed.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/AU-SA
I can only speak for Australia, things may be different elsewhere.
Jim @ #4:
My late friend and mentor, the theoretical physicist-turned-ecologist Dr Alan Roberts of Monash University, called nuclear energy “The Phantom Solution,’ and wrote an article on it at the first link below.
But I go one further: what is the probability of a core meltdown in a nuclear reactor if it is (a) hit by artillery fire, (b) bombed from the air, or (c) deliberately internally sabotaged? This is not an academic question: see https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-nuclear-zaporizhzhia-iaea-explosives-1798382.
Dictators like Vlad Putin (not to be confused with Vlad Dracula; easy to do, I know) have form when cornered and facing defeat, for dragging as much as possible of the rest of the world down with them as they go. If Hitler had had nuclear weapons, with or without a delivery system or two, he would have used them I am sure, instead of just miserably shooting himself in the head. The Roman Emperor Nero did much the same as he exited the historical stage.
When every tin-pot dictator from Albania to Zimbabwe has a modular reactor or a nuclear something else to use in blackmailing his opponents, I doubt the world will be safer or more certain than it is now; and it could be a damned sight hotter, climate change or no climate change.
https://go.gale.com/ps/i.dop=AONE&u=googlescholar&id=GALE|A132866578&v=2.1&it=r&sid=AONE&asid=f98dfb34
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-zimbabwe-mugabe-obituary-idUSKCN1VR0HK
Jim @#4: Have a look at https://cen.acs.org/environment/pollution/nuclear-waste-pilesscientists-seek-best/98/i12
Also: https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=googlescholar&id=GALE|A132866578&v=2.1&it=r&sid=AONE&asid=f98dfb34
Something wrong there. But better still: https://www.alanroberts.net.au/nuclear-power-is-a-phantom-solution-to-climate-change/
Omar
Thanks for getting the link after a few tries.
The article gets off to a bad start by making a fuss about the drawbacks of enrichment, but doing ctrl F and searching for CANDU gets no hits in the article. The CANDU reactor uses non-enriched uranium.
It will take a little while to read all the links from you and David Brindley. Expect more comments later