Losing Earth:The Decade We Almost .......
 

Losing Earth:The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change,by Nathanial Rich,THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE,available online today.
This was mentioned by Hari Sreenivasen,on PBS NEWSHOUR WEEKEND,last Sunday.
I just took a look.The whole issue is dedicated to this report.
It's packed with prima facie,bonfides from sources,some of which I never knew existed,drawing from as far back as 1859.
It's very dense with data,dates,people,and organizations which are part of the ever-changing climate-change landscape.
This weekend,I'll purchase a hard copy to add to my reference materials.
Without this new material,it will be impossible for an individual to intelligently discuss the issue.:thumbup:

I saw this too, but too much work for me to take the time and read yet. Thanks for the reminder!

We didn't almost do anything.
The US CO2 emissions have been declining since 2004 to 2006, thanks largely to hydraulic fracturing allowing cheap natural gas to displace coal as a power generation source.

China on the other had has exploded their CO2 production during that time blowing way past what the US makes.

This ship is going down. Smoke 'em if you've got 'em!

China
 

China is pursuing a diversified portfolio of energy technologies and is already a world leader in alternate energy, renewables,and grid-scale power storage.
It's not unrealistic to believe that the United States will simply be left behind in the dust as the rest of the industrialized world races away from us technologically.
Scott Pruitt wouldn't appologise for our filth.
I don't expect the Chinese to appologise for theirs.

China is the world leader in CO2 production.

The US has had a diverse energy portfolio since the 1930s.
Large scale wind power generation may not have been invented here but this is where it was perfected.
Nasa inverted solar panels.
I don't know if the US invented geothermal power generation but we brought it up to grid scale.
Same with hydroelectric.
Nuclear power originated here.

Most of the country was built on and around cheap fossil fuel power because that's all there was at the time. Most of China was built long after these things were invented and perfected. So yeah they are going to see a little more wide spread use.

Yeah, there are advantages to being late to the development game in that it's easier to build new infrastructure on new technology than to retrofit old infrastructure with new technology.

China invented gunpowder, china (pottery), and big walls. It then took everything the world had invented and is just now applying it. China isn't leaving anyone behind, rather they are being pushed forward.

That isn't to say the US isn't in danger of being left behind. If the trend of attacking meritocracy continues, we'll slowly lose the spirit of innovation.

Fracking natural gas is not going to help - a large amount leaks at the fracking site, and in the area around it. Also, pipelines leak a lot. Methane is a far stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. It is barely better than coal, and may even be worse, because of all the possible leaks.

And in a short period of time, methane breaks down, and we get more carbon dioxide. The climate doesn't "care" who or where greenhouse gases are produced. Most of what has already been emitted - came from the USA.

If we want to avoid 2C warming, then we have to leave 4/5ths of the known fossil fuel reserves - IN THE GROUND.

https://informationisbeautiful.net/v...gatons-of-co2/

If you think that nuclear power is going to be needed going forward - let's see how well we handle the decommissioning of the plants we already have.

Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim are both owned by Entergy, and they are going to be the first commercial nuclear plants to be decommissioned. Entergy wants to sell both to other companies, and let them do the dirty work.

Here's a radio report on the Pilgrim plant, which is located in Plymouth MA - where the Pilgrims are supposed to have landed:

Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant Is Up For Sale | Bostonomix

If the original "plan" was to take up to 60 years, and cost up to $1 Billion, and the waste was going to be stored at Yucca Mountain - then how is it possible it will be done in 9-10 years, and all the nuclear waste will be stored in New Mexico?

Do the people living in New Mexico know about this? How will all the nuclear waste GET to New Mexico? How can the total decommissioning be done safely in such a short period of time?

Not leaving most of the fossil fuels in the ground.

Bring the nuclear waste to new Mexico this state really isn't good for much. In 100 years it will probably be part of Mexico again anyway.

The department of energy developed how to move nuclear waste in the 1960s and 1970s. Lots of spectacular rocket sled crash testing down in Holloman air force base on the test range.
This problem was solved before most of us were born.

Well 6 more years of trump there is 0 chance fracking is going to stop. Obama didn't even really try to stop fracking in his second term, he said they would talk about it. Obama saying it would be talked about was the extent it was talked about.

I have not seen much of New Mexico or Nevada, but I hate driving through Nevada. When I was a kid we drove through and I thought "This place is so ugly someone should drop a nuclear bomb on it." When I was an adult I mentioned that and a friend smiled and pointed out they did.

I do not know why I dislike Nevada so much, but I actually plan on visiting Las Vegas, New Mexico.

"Prince Piero Ginori Conti invents the first geothermal power plant at the Larderello dry steam field in Tuscany, Italy." https://www.energy.gov/eere/geotherm...energy-america

Yeah, I drove from Vegas back home to Portland and it was pretty desolate and boring. Best use of the land is probably those reflective solar heat power plants. Pretty sure I have seen those while flying in to Vegas.

Red Rocks is ok. Valley of Fire is really neat.

I was in Las Vegas nm 22 years ago. Not much there then
I described what I saw 22 years ago to a Co worker with family there and he said nothing has changed.

China
 

China's hybrid government may allow them advantages we'll never see here.
With their pursuit of a market basket full of energy technologies,they may be in a perfect position to shed carbon combustion faster than we.
We can blow a $trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan but we can't spend a $trillion on technology that'll get us out of that part of the world.That would just be some left-wing attack on personal freedom,limiting consumer choice,stifling profits,royalties, some U.N.-style bureaucratic conspiracy to steal the American dream,command and control nightmare.

Whelp, I guess going forward I can't intelligently discuss the issue, but if you don't mind as you are perusing your purchase make note of whether it includes Buckminster Fuller's work.

• Utopia or Oblivion
• 1940 Fortune magazine Resource Inventory [3 articles]
• World Game

There is also a resource flowchart that was commissioned by the State of Oregon and then disowned in the 1970s that was very interesting. A copy exists among my books but they're all boxed up. :( Maybe I can find it.

Bucky
 

Everything in the article is free and online.
When PBS NEWS HOUR mentioned it,they covered enough material to suggest to me that it would be worth the investment,for the material they managed to cover.
Since I have only limited time each week on the computer I've decided to wait for the magazine.I can look at it at home without a computer.I can barely keep up with you guys,now doing Wednesdays as well as Saturdays.
I did speed -scan the online article.I don't recall any mention of Bucky.He would have passed before there was an introduction to climate change for the general public.
I'll go by Barnes & Noble on the way home 'n see if they have the mag.It's the only surviving bookstore in Denton.

This article turned my wife into an armchair environmentalist overnight.

Human rights abuse, political prisoners, people regularly sickened by pollution, no minimum wage, no government organization to protect the environment.
The government of China has no interest in the environment or saving the world. Hell they have started using R-11 to make Styrofoam, something that hasn't been done in the US for at least 40 years.
They are in the position to do what ever they want with little to no opposition. Some times their will appears to help the environment, but most of the time it just destroys and pollutes.

Worth a link then? If it's NYT you can follow the article at https://botwiki.org/bot/nyt_diff/ and see if the story changes (they a bad at errata).

1989? He passed and everyone's mind was smoothened so that the messages of hope and wisdom for us all wouldn't take root. People are trying to reinvent World Game today.

human rights,environment,
 

*The people of a country doesn't matter.And until the UN came along,no nation would interfere in the internal affairs of another nation,regardless of what they did to their people.We didn't bomb China over Tiananmen Square.They didn't bomb us over Kent State,or the Santa Marta Massacre.
*Is it legal for them to use CFCs?
*They told us that when they're all 'warm' for the first time in human history,then they'll begin to be concerned about the environment.
Our lack of participation in the 2016 Paris Climate Accord may reveal something about the US commitment to the environment.

1989
 

I believe that Bill McKibben is given credit for introducing the American general public to the concept of global climate change in 1988.

Their main advantage is having a relatively blank slate to start with. Much easier to employ advanced techniques to infrastructure when you're initially building it, than to try to retrofit it into existing infrastructure.

No minimum wage, if that's true, would be largely responsible for China's rapid development. Had labor been relatively expensive there, the factories would have been built elsewhere and China would continue in poverty. Minimum wage is what wealthy economies implement to ensure the undesirable jobs are done elsewhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

From the 1920s to the 1970s the concern was global cooling. Given what we now know about Cosmic Rays and the Beaufort Gyre, it will be interesting to see which is right. Right?

I hope they are right about global warming.
The cooling periods are what killed off large numbers of people.

The world ban on R-11 didn't have a cause to exempt china. R-11 is one of the big Ozone destroying CFCs.

The Paris climate thing was a scam.
The United States has environmental laws and enforces them and we are reducing CO2 production.
While germany, China and Japan appear to be increasing CO2 production. If Japan isn't hasn't increased CO2 it looks like they are set to, by being afraid to restart their nuclear reactors. Their bright idea is to burn Chinese coal for power production.

cool/cosmic/gyre
 

*Boy,the cooling sure was a backfire! Some will never let the scientists off the hook for that one!
*I've yet to see a peer-reviewed correlation between cosmic rays and climate change.I'll just keep looking.
*Fresh melt water was the premise behind 'The Day After Tomorrow',as it would impact the 'conveyor'.Since it's a water density issue it's very relevant to water and heat transport or lack thereof,thermoclines,deep water mixing,salinity,pH,phytoplankton,zooplankton,ocean ic food chains,etc..things Guy McPherson would be acquainted with.

cool/warm/CFCs/Paris.....................
 

*looks like climate change is capable of regional anomalies which could mean cooling and warming,depending.
*If China was not a signatory of the Montreal Protocol,it may not have any binding legal responsibility to forego the use of CFCs.Don't know.
*Some climatologists believe that the Paris Climate Accord would amount to very little,climate-wise,other than a goodwill gesture to the rest of the world.That would make it sort of an intellectually dishonest public relations move.I would have felt better about the US had we signed it.PR or no.
*US CO2 emissions are on a downward trajectory and that's good.
*I'll have to look the other way as to what other nations are doing.Perhaps they can look into the Thorium-based nuclear technology.I'd like to see it here.
*Coal sucks big-time! Boo-hiss!

The Paris climate accord was an excuse for rich dictatorcrats to fly to Paris on their privet jets paid for by tax payers so they can discuss how the tax payers should be allowed the live.

to fly
 

Yes,and all their aircraft run on 'magic' Jet-A1, which never produces carbon dioxide.
(mere mortals might have 'teleconferenced' the whole meeting and skip the air travel altogether;with 'selfies' in front of a green-screen,then photo-shopped).

Adding energy increases chaos.

Compared to the signatories trajectory heading up. :)

Like giving sugar to children?

That's what I was thinking too, but they probably didn't want anyone being able to listen in or recording everything they talked about, a good portion likely had nothing to do with saving the world. Probably had something more in the neighborhood of making the proletariat live off less and ensure those worthy of the conference and their handlers having more.

We will see more warming that ever before in human existence.

It doesn't excuse what we do, if others are not doing the right thing.

But, many of them are doing the right thing. China has more to do than any of us - and they are doing more than most.

Not likely.
Around 14,000 years ago ice melted and put an area about the size of Russia and Europe under water. It also happened fast at the highest point of melt the sea level may have been rising by nearly 1 foot per year.
Now everyoneis freaking out over 2ft of sea level rise in 100 years. We aren't going to see anything on the scale of what happened at the end of the last ice age until the next ice age starts.

China is doing more, they eclipse us in current CO2 production and are still projected to continue to grow their CO2 production for up to another 50 years before leveling off. The entire developed world is projected to produce more CO2 in the coming years. Germany and Japan are all of a sudden afraid of nuclear power so they won't use nuclear out of fear and ignorance. Germany is making up for that energy by burning natural gas from Russia and Japan is making up their nuclear power gap by burning coal from china.

The US is already past peak CO2 and has been declining since 2006. The United States is already doing our part.
It would seem the rest of the world stopped believing in man made climate change in favor of cheap power.

There is not going to be another ice age for a very, very, very long time. We are warming a lot - even with a lower than expected output from the sun.

That ice that melted 14,000 years ago is still melted - and now virtually all ice on earth is melting; faster and faster.

Nuclear power is the dumbest way possible to boil water. It takes at least 20-30 years of construction / deconstruction to get 50 years of production. And we have poisonous and radioactive waste that will be here for tens of thousands of years.

Just great!

Good.
Hopefully it stays melted.
With out global warming the next ice age could start anytime between now and no more than 1,000 years for now. Looking at the ice core data says we are probably over due.

Radioactive waste only stays dangerous for thousands of years when it's not recycled. Try not to base everything you know about something on lies, fear and propaganda.

Germany and Japan already proved what happens when the reactors are turned off and stay off. If it were possible Germany would have gladly committed economic suicide to go to solar and wind power but the solar panels to do it don't exist and wind can't be built and put up fast enough. They proved nuclear can't be replaced by wind and solar, maybe with 20 or 30 years lead time.

On 20010911 we learned what happens when you ground all the airliners. :)

When you hear about the dangers of geo-engineering, think about the covert governmental programs to seed the atmosphere with chemtails of who-knows-what to combat anthropogenic global warming, when it's the only thing staving off the glaciers.

I hear these arguments over and over.
 

Yet, the same people who believe in the cleanliness of solar and wind ignore the huge waste streams implied in the production and maintenance of these renewable sources.

Nuclear power is in an infant stage. What? Yes, the power plants in the majority of the worlds nuclear collection are half a century old! Modern designs will be more compact and produce lower volumes of waste.

Much of the cost of construction is due to legislation and protest. If we could modularize and standardize components costs would come down drastically instead of a custom construct for each plant. Also, the costs of security could be better distributed if reprocessing of spent fuel was done on-site.

And waste? The fearful populace forces the governmental overseers to err on the side of overt caution. Chernobyl's fall out zone has radiation below background over most of the outlying fallout area. It is still a forbidden zone. And Chernobyl was a stupid design. Why has radiation fallen so low so fast if the nuclear waste lasts thousands of years? Just like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the really bad stuff is gone in a matter of years. Stuff like cesium and iodine are awful as they are ingested and retained. But, they have short half-life spans. 30 years or less. Modern nuclear power plants can avoid fission paths that minimize the more dangerous trans-uranics. The activated metals that make up the structure of a reactor can be simply simply stored on site until they "cool down".

For the giga-watts of power a nuclear reactor can produce in it's lifetime, the waste is small in comparison.

I dare you to find out the recycling costs of many square kilometers worth of solar cells and millions of wind and tidal generators and compare that to a few thousand tons of easily handled nuclear "waste".

And you can find a thousand years worth of nuclear fuel on most continents. Better yet, the ocean holds another thousand years or so of nuclear fuel dissolved in it's trillions of tons of water with the theorized replacement from undersea magma up-wellings from the earths core.

Practical fusion power may not happen in our lifetimes, but practical fission power should.

The US military played with "weather" quite a bit in SEAsia in 1960-1970's.

I read a DoE report years ago, published well before I was born saying that when the unwanted nuclear waste isotopes are removed from nuclear fuel that they lose 99.9% of their radioactivity after 40 years then at 200 years it's only marginally above background.
The belief that all nuclear waste always stays furiously radioactive for thousands of years is nothing more than sensational lies and ignorance.
It will stay very dangerous for thousands of years if the 90% of useable fuel and the less than 10% of waste isotopes contaminating the fuel are not separated from each other.
Trust me you can't even comprehend how dangerous spent nuclear fuel is.
If people had the faintest idea how dangerous this stuff is they would demand it be recycled immediately and any one who tried to stop the recycling process be jailed and charged as a terrorist.