nuclear bombs caused global warming ??? ... !!! ... seriously dude?

[ArmadaBC]

You blew your point in the first sentence...

Look you have no idea what your talking about, you've posted nothing of actual value, you have not figures, no stats no nothing. I get it you don't like nuclear, that's a belief and nobody cares about what your belief is just like nobody cares what mine is. I want knowledge, give me some facts about how nuclear is more dangerous than other forms of generation, particularly coal.

That's a pretty drastic overstatement and the exact opposite is true in many cases: dispersed generation that delivers power directly to the consumer is the cheapest option of all with respect to infrastructure. Think solar cells on your roof: they actually reduce the load on the grid. Nuclear is the exact opposite of that: you generate centrally and then have to deliver it. Until you can build the plant in NYC the infrastructure argument goes against you. Your other statements seem valid to me, but I have not watched any documentaries so I'm sure I'm behind the median present opinion.

ETA: Nuclear's biggest problem is their history (Hanford Downwinders?) and the fact that they always focus more on their image than their reality, which argues against believing they will change in the future. Leaks and broken promises ever since the forties. The industry is subject to some huge regulation and they rely on those regulations in ways that don't fly in other industries while complaining about them every step of the way. I've watched people undertake questionable interpretations of some pretty black and white math because they figured the safety element they were analyzing would never come into play. Probably true--unless the same attitude was applied to the other links in that chain. Since this is one of those giant industries with lots of lobbyists and shareholders and friends in power, people naturally expect that the loftiest promises won't make it to operation as they get compromised along the way. I don't work in the industry directly, but the people I know there leave me thinking that's pretty reasonable.

Decentralized cogeneration is a whole different ball of wax. Your right though in cogen your grid costs are alot lower than renewables mixed into the current system though to be fair nobody has really done the cogen thing. Denmark maybe.

Cogen is more expensive than centralized per watt but your making that up in less transport loses, particularly because we don't do HVDC. Cogen by an reasonable measure has the following issues.

Control and protection is not ready for Cogen, it would take a sizable investment but is certainly obtainable. Pehnt and Schneider lead the way on the control issues at a high level, transformers are the big fucking issue. As of right now you don't have alot of return feed across step down networks, in co-generation your assuming a decent amount of power has to return from the low voltage network back to the medium and from the medium back to the high voltage and then on to other consumption areas. At peak demand this will be tough so a production forecast would need to be developed at a reasonably high level of specificity.

Voltage specs, this is highly dependent on the number of generators but again assuming (difficult to see otherwise) they are on low voltage networks the lines aren't spec'd out for that kind of voltage, so you either replace or develop a pretty advanced control system.

Protection, obviously in embedded systems internal faults and islanding are more of a concern particularly when you think of something like peak loading requirements. You can go to the big producers and say hey it's going to be warm today but I need you to hold X mwh's for Alcoa (alum requires lots of elec.) that's all together a different beast in cogen systems.

Denmark ran into a bunch of these problems in 2003 and came up with a virtual power plant system of sorts called Cell Architecture. Basically a bunch of independent generators get together for grid management purposes, they can island or they can operate as a single group depending on what's needed obviously if you scale this concept up you solve alot of the protection and control issues as well as the Alcoa example above though this requires a great deal of integration of information, communication and management systems.

The 10000lb elephant in the room though is regulatory, big players got big friends and they have created a system that does not really allow for play by others. Network tariffs alone are a major unknown hurdle. Current though is divided between deep and shallow connection charges, deep you pay everything associated with the connection (upstream network reinforcements), shallow is just the connection cost. The first is a major issue for a distributed system.

It's certainly interesting and has many truly excellent ideas but I'm not sure how fast it could be done and if the dg players could match the political firepower of the big players.

For the old fucker who does nothing but throw stones I didn't watch some documentary though it's cool that one is out there about nuclear power. My sources are - http://www.springer.com/engineering/...-3-540-25582-6 and http://digital-library.theiet.org/co...ks/po/pbpo031e shit I read because I work in the industry sort of.

What I'm ultimately getting after is simple, GW according to the people that know best has a high likelihood of really fucking up our day. The people that have spent there entire lives studying the arctic, the people that have knowledge rather than belief say it's too late baring some kind of massive geo engineering project. Google East Siberian Arctic Shelf, Shakhova and Semiletov have produced evidence of km long methane vents. I'm not ready to go that far because of dumb human emotional reasons but if they are even half right were in serious serious fucking trouble. The PETM is not something we can adapt to, we simply die. Humans are not going to reduce consumption in any meaningful sense and they would rather die than go back to some kind of agrarian pre-electical society. Therefore the only tech that is capable of currently putting out butt tons of super high EROEI electricity without green house gases is nuclear.

AMEG/ESAS shit - http://ameg.me/ - look at the scientists these are not crack pots and their message is way more serious than cancer.

[creaky fossil]

Cut and paste, the device of chumpeeins.

[DasBlunt]

"completely", "essentially", "studied a lot". as succinct as my calling bullshit.

I certainly am not concluding anything, and the speculation is entertaining, but to say thousands of nuke detonations of VARIED size, cannot cause any biological change, and hypothetically no climatic change ( either flora/fauna/ocean destruction, or actual atmospheric change) is slightly arrogant?

Maybe we can argue about how deforestation and turning otherwise fertile living land into dead lifeless desert is, or is not, causing actual climate change ( which it is).

If you have kids, all of these scenarios should make you VERY scared.

What is scary is that this world has many people like Das Blunt, obliviously ignorant yet totally certain they are right... so certain that they won't listen to people who are actually knowledgeable on a topic.

Come give me facts. You just telling me I am wrong is complete bullshit.

[summit]

Come give me facts. You just telling me I am wrong is complete bullshit.

I don't have to Google Nuclear Winter for you. I have explained in multiple posts how nuclear bombs cause, if anything, a cooling effect. I've explained that atmospheric tests almost all occurred in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s (France and China did a few more).

You haven't put forward one shred of evidence to support your idea that nuclear bombs caused global warming.

[jono]

There were lots of oceanic tests and water vapor accounts for the vast majority of global warming. Do you really know what else went up every time?

Just because someone had an untested theory doesn't make it fact. I'm not saying you're wrong and I'm not saying dasnut deserves it, but proving yourself knowledgeable because of your opinion isn't much proof and the debate certainly deserves better.

[jono]

(cogen and other stuff no one asked about deleted)....
What I'm ultimately getting after is simple, GW according to the people that know best has a high likelihood of really fucking up our day. The people that have spent there entire lives studying the arctic, the people that have knowledge rather than belief say it's too late baring some kind of massive geo engineering project.... I'm not ready to go that far because of dumb human emotional reasons...

And that's where this thing always winds up looking stupid: the evidence/theory we're all supposed to believe says we need geoengineering or we're going to die. But the people telling us we should believe that favor solutions which are patently ineffective if the accepted line is true. You can't have it both ways: either you believe we need to do something about it or you just want us to do less of something and you're using this as the crutch.

Full disclosure: I happen to think we will need to do something, but the fact that the experts claim to disagree about that leaves me pretty non-committal on the whole topic.

[summit]

There were lots of oceanic tests and water vapor accounts for the vast majority of global warming. Do you really know what else went up every time?

Just because someone had an untested theory doesn't make it fact. I'm not saying you're wrong and I'm not saying dasnut deserves it, but proving yourself knowledgeable because of your opinion isn't much proof and the debate certainly deserves better.[/QUOTE]

The science works is the person claiming the untested idea has to provide some evidence to support it. Until then, it carries only the weight that the reasoning behind it can supply.

Except that Das Blunt and the OP's coworker cannot even supply reasoning, much less evidence.

Yet, I and others have supplied reasoning and evidence against the ideas.

Your idea about water vapor from underwater tests carries little weight. There were only 7 underwater tests (last was 1962), total combined yield of all tests was ~100kT, which is not even enough energy to vaporize 75 million gallons of water (do that math if you want, assuming ~35% thermal yield of course that wouldn't be totally concentrated). Say everything was perfect at you managed to instantly vaporize 75 million gallons (massive overestimate), or 0.25 cubic kilometers of ocean, you just increased the water vapor in the atmosphere by less 0.002% for a moment... but much of that rains out anyway.

Sources:
The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, 1977
USGS Water Science School Archive
Comprehensive Nuclear Test List

Just because you can think up a wild idea that has not a shred of evidence doesn't mean anyone needs to spend time illustrating that the idea has no scientific rationale underpinning it.

[creaky fossil]

FSM knows, just ask it -- water vapor is the cause of global warming. Look at those damned clouds, let's be rid of them. Damn them all to hell. They caused shifts in temperature all around this big rock we call home. If we could be rid of the clouds globally, we'd have no more global warming. It's a lot like how regulations make capitalism work destructive ends, if people were free to do whatever they liked and consequences be damned, everyone would behave like Gandhi. As regulations cause loss of profit and white collar crime, so do clouds cause global warming.

Also, we should trust any statistic we find regarding nuclear weapons testing. It wasn't ever done secretly by anyone. Ever. Most times they invited my Aunt Hilda, who was an expert on rads exposure thanks to reading Jules Verne's pop-sci-fi, which is admittedly the finest source for Real Science and Real Nuclear Data. Oppenheimer thought Hilda was courteous and wise. Hard to gainsay that.

[old goat]

The only person stupider than someone who denies human-caused global warming is someone who thinks he can change their mind.

[Adolf Allerbush]

And that's where this thing always winds up looking stupid: the evidence/theory we're all supposed to believe says we need geoengineering or we're going to die. But the people telling us we should believe that favor solutions which are patently ineffective if the accepted line is true. You can't have it both ways: either you believe we need to do something about it or you just want us to do less of something and you're using this as the crutch.

Full disclosure: I happen to think we will need to do something, but the fact that the experts claim to disagree about that leaves me pretty non-committal on the whole topic.

As for nuke energy we should, as a country, make it stupid for an energy company to build anything but a nuclear power plant or renewable energy power plant. Literally everything we do for energy should be geared towards the goal of going off of fossil fuels. This would mean massive incentives for EVs, solar panels on roofs, micro wind turbines, battery storage, etc.

As far as the nuclear bombs detonated to date theory discussed, other than the multiple scientific papers describing the exact opposite effects, it would seem to me to be a drop in the bucket compared to other pollution sources (man-made or naturally occurring...for example volcanoes) over the same time period. PM and other emissions from a atomic blast are described here: http://www.nv.energy.gov/library/pub.../AppendixE.pdf Doesn't seem like a huge component of climate change to me.

[jono]

The science works is the person claiming the untested idea has to provide some evidence to support it....

Your idea about water vapor from underwater tests carries little weight. There were only 7 underwater tests (last was 1962), total combined yield of all tests was ~100kT...

I never said underwater, I said oceanic. How much of the US testing in the Pacific Proving Grounds could reasonably be expected to carry water vapor I don't know, but the most cursory investigation shows about 210 MT of testing was done there by the US alone. I don't expect you're off by 2100x but the range of possibilities certainly seems to go quite a bit higher. How many percentage points do you need before it seems meaningful?

I don't really care; I also find it hard to imagine that more than a fraction of climate or weather can be attributed to any one source, but without knowing who said what I'm not willing to assume the OP's buddy is blaming all GW on nukes either; maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, you called bullshit and offered a theory and I'm offering a counter-theory. The whole thing looks quantitative, and as Creaky implies I don't think we have the data.

[creaky fossil]

I'm not implying anything in particular, but I agree with OG's statement:

The only person stupider than someone who denies human-caused global warming is someone who thinks he can change their mind.

Precisely. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. It would be useless after all.

"But Creaky -- WHY?," asks the pleader with sorrowful eyes. I never want to make someone sad, so I will explain.

I'm sure ArmadaBC is the global architect for Nukes or Not? We Say YES, YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES! and in that role, will ensure that regardless of what ignorant naysayers whinge keen moan greet wail and gnash teeth over, nukes are the future, technology is a god, and only a kook would deny this.

[ArmadaBC]

I'm not implying anything in particular, but I agree with OG's statement:



Precisely. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. It would be useless after all.

"But Creaky -- WHY?," asks the pleader with sorrowful eyes. I never want to make someone sad, so I will explain.

I'm sure ArmadaBC is the global architect for Nukes or Not? We Say YES, YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES! and in that role, will ensure that regardless of what ignorant naysayers whinge keen moan greet wail and gnash teeth over, nukes are the future, technology is a god, and only a kook would deny this.

Lol what a strange place when I find myself in general agreement with you.

This is mostly futile but I will go to my grave extolling the virtues of the IFR. I do believe you can change what people believe but mostly because I'm mostly unable to keep my fat mouth shut. Hahaha

I'm still right and your still a dumb asshole....

[summit]

I never said underwater, I said oceanic. How much of the US testing in the Pacific Proving Grounds could reasonably be expected to carry water vapor I don't know, but the most cursory investigation shows about 210 MT of testing was done there by the US alone. I don't expect you're off by 2100x but the range of possibilities certainly seems to go quite a bit higher. How many percentage points do you need before it seems meaningful?

I don't really care; I also find it hard to imagine that more than a fraction of climate or weather can be attributed to any one source, but without knowing who said what I'm not willing to assume the OP's buddy is blaming all GW on nukes either; maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, you called bullshit and offered a theory and I'm offering a counter-theory. The whole thing looks quantitative, and as Creaky implies I don't think we have the data.

I agree it is multifactorial and so must be the solution, but I definitely lean towards the nuclear power, orbital solar collection, and climate engineering solution.

As to the on Pacific testing, some were surface, some were air drop, but most were tower. You'd be pretty generous to say that 1% of the yield went in to vaporization of water, so take 21 times <0.002% (which was an over estimate) and then split it over 15 years... except you still have to assume that the vast majority rains out on the storm scale, most of the rest on the mesoscale with only some persisting on synoptic scale and having little global scale effect AND NO PERSISTENT EFFECTS OVER TIME.

[the Cock]

blah, blah, blah

I wish it had been you and not Hugh.

[jono]

Still a quantitative problem, regardless; which is probably most of the cause for so much disagreement on the subject.

Lagrange point solar collection has the handy side effect of putting up a little sunshade. How much do we need to block? Quantitative problem again. And who gets to decide? The future is messy.

[summit]

And who gets to decide? The future is messy.

I think this is the hardest part, much harder than the technical challenges.

[Shadam]

many facts, much arguement and far too much dick waving ...

yo summit, please tell us more about me? clearly you can read me perfectly ...

buddy did seem adiment that nuke testing caused global warming ...

when I get home I'll make sure to stir him up on it and let ye'all know the out come ...

[Shadam]

but please ... back to the subject please ...

except summit ... I'm looking forward to his description of me ...

[summit]

but please ... back to the subject please ...

except summit ... I'm looking forward to his description of me ...

Hmmm the only thing I said about you was that I assumed you were Generation Y or a Millenial based on not having the terrors of the Cold War engrained in your mind... but hey I didn't mean that in an offensive way so sorry if it was. I come off that way a lot unintentionally.

[uglymoney]

So I agree nuclear power is part of the way forward even though I have deep reservations about the power plant up the road for me that is the same design and has vulnerabilities just as Fukushima did. I do believe these flaws could be overcome with the proper nuclear strategy but I'm not completely convinced it wouldn't be cheaper and easier to get there with wind/solar/storage technology so until we get our nuclear program into some kind of strategic carbon reduction program that looks to reprocessing waste that is currently being babysat in pools of water just up the road and river from my family and building newer safer plants/shuttering older plants I think a wind/solar strategy should be put into overdrive.

How do we geoengineer the carbonic acid out of the ocean? How much lime will that take? Is it even possible? I have read about a couple tiny little small scale studies on reefs but the idea seems implausible to me. Even if we get temperatures to stabilize with 'climate engineering' it seems we have a problem with rapidly acidifying oceans.

And if we are going to 'climate engineer' the atmosphere shouldn't the first and immediate step in that direction be absolutely limiting human carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions and maximizing our carbon reabsorption? It is those human emissions that have overcome the natural ability of the earth to reabsorb the carbon so that should be the first step in any cimate engineer's plan. No?

[alfajores]

^Dude the people who think nuclear power is terrible are the same exact type of people as global warming deniers, vaccine and gmo alarmists. Just different sides of the aisle and apparently not swayed by facts because, and I'm speculating, they only look at information that seems to support their side of the argument. That is why arguing with global warming deniers is a total waste of time just like telling my chiro friend he is an idiot for not vaccinating his kids serves no constructive purpose nor will this post sway you into believing global warming scientists are telling us the facts and not the servants of a liberal conspiracy to rid the world of capitalism.

Nuclear power has its place but let's not pretend nuclear power in America with our aging plants and decaying infrastructure is without problems or risks - which could mostly be addressed with the proper amount of investment and political will - which we don't seem to have. When you have to put fences around nuclear accident areas and close the valuable land to human habitation for years on end it seems like that should be clear. But it is mostly a human problem. One that could be solved.

This is not true. Berkeley CA is "Nuclear Free" and so is Bariloche, AR. Two very hippy places on opposite hemispheres. This is also not an anomaly. I heard someone once make a comparison between tea party politics and politics anarchists, so who knows what makes sense.

One thing we need to increase is power storage technology. This is a must and will help make renewable sources a lot more useful. I just can't get my head around a molten salt battery in the house. When will these nuclear fusion reactors start up? It seems that renewable energy that is expensive to store can be applied to adding energy to fusion reactions and then we can harvest the additional created energy later.

[uglymoney]

This is not true. Berkeley CA is "Nuclear Free" and so is Bariloche, AR. Two very hippy places on opposite hemispheres. This is also not an anomaly. I heard someone once make a comparison between tea party politics and politics anarchists, so who knows what makes sense.

Wait. You are agreeing with me here...I think. I lot of hippies aren't vaccinating their kids. More news out of Disney today on how this idiocy is working out.

One thing we need to increase is power storage technology. This is a must and will help make renewable sources a lot more useful.

Yep. The feds had money budgeted for studying and possibly implementing a proposed compression plant that would use power from windmills and solar during the day to pump air into old limestone mines and then making energy at night via compressed air run through turbines but the money dried up. Even if that idea is impractical (and it might be) there is other off the shelf technology available today (pumping water uphill) and we are completely ignoring it.

[creaky fossil]

And that's where this thing always winds up looking stupid: the evidence/theory we're all supposed to believe says we need geoengineering or we're going to die. But the people telling us we should believe that favor solutions which are patently ineffective if the accepted line is true. You can't have it both ways: either you believe we need to do something about it or you just want us to do less of something and you're using this as the crutch.

Full disclosure: I happen to think we will need to do something, but the fact that the experts claim to disagree about that leaves me pretty non-committal on the whole topic.

Not only that, but I'm pretty sure that when the decisions are made for The Future of Our Energy Source(s), they're not consulting TGR's Padded Room generically nor its participants individually, so whatever we _________ (choose one: debate - argue about - trade insults over), it's not affecting the decisions to be made, those made already, nor those in process now.

I could be wrong, however. It might be that despite all outward appearances, TGR forums actually are populated exclusively by people who run businesses like Exelon or The Shaw Group or Bechtel.

Gathering random facts (or reasonable facsimiles thereof) in service of an advocacy position that's uninformed, it might help one feel great about one's ideological viewpoint, but it's not really bearing on big picture decisionmaking.

I wish it had been you and not Hugh.

I'm reaching for a slug of empathy sauce here, but unsure of the context so I'll keep the flask stoppered.

[DasBlunt]

Funny, all the "facts" presented, but no one mentioned the amount of actual heat and "fire" released in the massive number of explosions as possibly being the reason for the massive shift in weather patterns throughput the world....and the strange thread drift on nuclear power....so quick to that tangent.

Speaking of doomsday speculation with no facts.....I heard about "the" asteroid on the way today....again.....any details?


Shadam, great thread. You Kanucks sure come up with some funny shit. As a side note,; does Canada have nuclear reactors?