Is Carbon Dioxide Just a Normal Part of the Atmosphere?

[chevyontheriver]

I wonder what role nuclear power may play in powering the grid, given its gradually increased attention and demand for electricity.

It’s great until it does the Fukushima thing or the Chernobyl thing or the Three Mile Island thing. Or until you have to take care of the radioactive leftovers for 100,000 years.

 

[eclipsenow]

I'm Australian and our culture is just anti-nuclear. I became SO concerned about our reliance on fossil fuels - both because of peak oil looming sometime soon, then peak gas, and eventually even peak coal, that I debated some nuclear types - and then was won over. Nukes are a lot safer than coal, oil, and gas which kill millions of people a year through particulates. But nuclear waste? Doesn't that have to be stored for 100,000 years?

Here's what I found out. Nuclear 'waste' is not a problem, but could be another solution to climate change!

There are special reactors called nuclear BREEDER reactors.
Breeders actually reprocess used nuclear fuel rods, and get 90 TIMES the energy out of it.
We can get important medical isotopes out of it.
It fissions away much of the quantity of waste as all those atoms keep splitting.
Finally - we take the REAL waste (the broken atoms we call Fission Products) and melt it into ceramic tablets and bury them in a bunker on site.
Then in just 500 years it’s safe! Radioactive waste goes in, produces heaps of energy, and never comes out again.
See this Argonne Labs video - 4 minutes.

But after over a decade of being pro-nuclear - I now don't think most of the world will need it because renewables are now SO cheap that I've flipped back to them again. They're just so cheap we can Overbuild them across a vast area and have super-abundant energy.

But what about all that nuclear waste? I say if a larger nation like the USA or EU or China wanted to do the world a service, they could have a few big nuclear breeder reactor parks that slowly eat through the world's radioactive waste. Those huge concrete & steel dry cask storage cases go in - and never come out again. And who knows? Maybe that nuclear reactor park is running the local steel industry or desalinating water for a desert country somewhere. It's just more expensive. Yet I would be happy it was there - dealing with the waste and making useful products.

 

[Job 33:6]

It’s great until it does the Fukushima thing or the Chernobyl thing or the Three Mile Island thing. Or until you have to take care of the radioactive leftovers for 100,000 years.

It sounds like newer generations of nuclear plants are designed in ways that will mitigate these issues. Such as reactors that are generated with use of nuclear waste rods, thus decreasing radioactive leftovers.

 

[timewerx]

Not quite. The cost is higher due to the price of the panels. Payback is on the order of 20 - 30 years, not including maintenance. How many of those panels will require replacement after the end of the payback time is an open question.

Energy storage isn't included in this expense. Unfortunately, solar doesn't work well in the dark and cloud cover can diminish output. To make both solar and wind live up to their potential, you need some way to store that electricity for when output is less than optimal or non-existent. While there's various schemes for doing so, there isn't enough to back up installed capacity.

Manufacturing of solar cells and lithium batteries produce toxic by-products.

Erecting dams for hydroelectric power destroys local ecosystems and can introduce harmful species into the area.

Wind turbines kills lots of birds as well as solar furnaces.

It seems that there is really no "clean energy". Perhaps the best solution is just cut down on activities that use up lots of energy.

 

[prodromos]

There doesn't seem to be an issue with digging up radioactive materials from underground to supply nuclear power plants, so I'm not sure why anyone would take issue with putting the radioactive waste back where the raw materials were found.

 

[Tuur]

There doesn't seem to be an issue with digging up radioactive materials from underground to supply nuclear power plants, so I'm not sure why anyone would take issue with putting the radioactive waste back where the raw materials were found.

Some of it may be the level of radioactivity and half-life. Let's see...A check shows Cesium 137 is one byproduct, and that has a half-life of 30.05 years. Keep in mind that half-life means half will be decayed in 30.05 years, then half of what remains will have decayed in another 30.05 years, and so on. Strontium 90 has a half-life of 28.8 years. Plutonium 239 has a half-life of 24,211 years. How much Pu 239 is in waste, though? Same for Iodine 129, which has a half-life of 15,700,000 years.

Attempts at a quick check for how long nuclear power waste will remain dangerous turns up so much conflicting info I can't sort it out. It basically depends on what's in it.

Meanwhile, arsenic, once used to control boll weevils and now shows up in rice grown where there was run-off, hangs around forever.

Nuclear waste might hang around for a while, but produces less harmful byproducts than other fuels.

The Power of a Uranium Pellet

Considering that 1 US ton of coal produces roughly 3.7 tons CO2 and since CO2 is the topic in the OP, that seems to be significantly less waste.

 

[chevyontheriver]

It sounds like newer generations of nuclear plants are designed in ways that will mitigate these issues. Such as reactors that are generated with use of nuclear waste rods, thus decreasing radioactive leftovers.

The Uranium fuel cycle is complex all the way, with mining and concentrating not being as clean as we would like to pretend. Then there is the production of strange isotopes that need to be 'handled' for who knows how long. The use of Thorium instead of Uranium may be more promising. Another thing that MAY be of some utility is low level plants whose basic purpose is desalinization, not requiring excessively hot new cores.

 

[eclipsenow]

Manufacturing of solar cells and lithium batteries produce toxic by-products.

Barely - compared to nuclear. Once we get the legal framework right, there are technologies that can recycle solar panels and they'll get cheaper with scale.

Australia faces solar waste crisis

Australia is world leading in its uptake of residential rooftop solar, installing new solar panels at ten times the global average rate. This means, on a per capita basis, the solar waste problem facing Australia is far greater than that experienced in any other country. New research from the...

www.sydney.edu.au

Erecting dams for hydroelectric power destroys local ecosystems and can introduce harmful species into the area.

I totally agree! Because wind and solar are so cheap we don't need normal ON-river PHES. But as a battery? It's awesome! The world has an abundance of potential electrical storage in OFF storage in PHES (Pumped Hydro Electricity Storage.)

I'm not talking about normal ON-River hydro-power generation. Those have the reputation of destroying fragile river ecosystems - and also most of the best sites are already used.

But if wind and solar are our power sources, we can view pumped hydro as a big battery. That lets us look OFF-river. Satellite maps show the world has over 100 times the sites we could need! Without a river to divert and spillways to build, off-river PHES is about half the cost and much faster to build. https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/pumped_hydro_atlas/ Cover in solar panels to reduce evaporation - and it will only use 10% of the energy-water we currently lose to cooling coal and nuclear thermal stations. Batteries get hyped, but pumped hydro provides the vast majority of long-term energy storage essential for renewable power – here’s how it works

Wind turbines kills lots of birds as well as solar furnaces.

WIND power has the reputation of killing rarer birds of prey, and many bats. The tips of the turbine blades are moving at 300 km per hour. But many wind farms now have bird radar that will switch off wind farms if threatened species fly through. Air-horns blast near some wind farms. Sonic devices ward off bats. Phd in Wind technology Rosie Barnes explains.

By Solar Furnaces do you mean Concentrated Solar Power towers? They're not that economical - we don't really need them.

It seems that there is really no "clean energy". Perhaps the best solution is just cut down on activities that use up lots of energy.

Of course! The Energy Transition requires a lot of mining as well. But if we monitor all these things and improve on them as we go, boy are there some opportunities to save some money!

WHO estimates that fossil fuel pollution costs our global budgets $5 Trillion a year!

Stop funding pollution

Financial reform will be unavoidable in recovering from COVID19, and a good place to start is with fossil fuel subsidies.

www.who.int

The IEA estimates we need to spend $4 Trillion a year on the Energy Transition. Net Zero by 2050 – Analysis - IEA

The sooner we get this done, the sooner it starts to pay for itself! And that’s not even costing the extra natural disasters and geo-political stressors from Petro-Dictators pushing their weight around as they invade other countries, let alone the horrors of climate change.

Weaning off fossil fuels is just the patriotic thing to do to rob the Putin's of their power, save citizens lives, and prepare for peak oil, gas, and coal. Remember - the industrial world has been built on ever increasing mining of cheap fossil fuels, not ever declining vastly more expensive fossil fuels. Peak fossil fuels is coming.

 

[Dale]

You might not have wanted to bring up the Maldives. They were supposed to have been underwater. The Canberra Times on Monday, September 16, 1988, ran a story predicting that the Maldives would be underwater within 30 years. We are now six years past that point, and the Maldives are still above water.

The odd thing is that the number of islands in the Maldives may be increasing. Found this behind a paywall at The New York Times. It matches some research I'd heard of that turned up the same thing in other parts of the Pacific , but didn't know that this same thing was observed in the Maldives. It could be widespread elevation rise of the seabed itself or something else going on, but suffice to know that the Maldives are still with us six years after they were supposed to have vanished beneath the waves.

Science is supposed to happen when someone notices something and says "That's funny," The Maldives are a case in point. They were predicted to vanish by 2018 but didn't. Why? Just like you'd expect Savannah, Georgia, to be warmer now than it was in the 18th Century, but the official recorded high, from the 20th Century, ties an observed high from the 18th. Why wasn't the official high warmer? The local weather recording station I keep up with has shown a decline in temperatures since about 2015. Why? Something's not tracking here.

What then? Throw out observations that doesn't agree with "experts?" Accept by faith that the experts must always be right and are without error? Give experts the same deference once reserved for high priests?

I’m sorry I’ve been off the Board a few days. I was managing my financial empire.

Tuur: “It could be widespread elevation rise of the seabed itself …”

That is possible. I thank God for saving the Maldives, if that is what happened. We don’t know how long this mysterious force will continue.

Tuur: “The odd thing is that the number of islands in the Maldives may be increasing.”

This isn’t true, from the information I’ve seen. The following is talking about the Maldives.

<< Fourteen islands have already had to be abandoned due to intense coastal erosion and natural disasters. >>

Source
https://only.one/read/sinking-islands-rising-costs

There are things you don’t know about the Maldives.

Caption: << Caption: Concrete cylinders line a beach on Dhiffushi to protect against sea level rise. Maldives is the lowest lying country in the world and a number of techniques are used to protect islands against flooding and erosion. Nevertheless, the country is expected to be entirely submerged by 2100. Dhiffushi, Maldives, 2021. >>

Caption: << Caption: Sandbags line a beach on Dhiffushi to protect against sea level rise. Maldives is the lowest lying country in the world and a number of techniques are used to protect islands against flooding and erosion. Nevertheless, the country is expected to be entirely submerged by 2100. Dhiffushi, Maldives, 2021. >>

A couple more quotes from the same article.

<< Because we may be surrounded by water and being swallowed by water, but we’re also running out of freshwater that we can use. >>

<< But as weather patterns have become more unpredictable, irregular rainfall and droughts have depleted these sources and rising sea-levels caused saltwater to seep into them — making groundwater unfit for cooking, watering plants or growing food. >>

Source
https://www.unicef.org/rosa/blog/were-being-swallowed-ocean-and-running-out-freshwater

 

[eclipsenow]

Yeah I saw that on the news recently - how low lying islands get these big storm surges and while the sea level has not overtaken the island yet - the salt goes down into the fresh water reserves underground and wrecks it.
The thing is - the Maldives are "only" 500,000 people. That's nothing compared to the human dislocation in Bangladesh as the storm surges flow up into their agricultural lands and salt their lands.

 

[JesusFollowerForever]

Top Study Confirms Carbon Dioxide Has Zero Impact on ‘Global Warming’​

Top Study Confirms Carbon Dioxide Has Zero Impact on 'Global Warming' - Slay News

A major new study has debunked the narrative that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from human activity is causing so-called "global warming."

slaynews.com

it is all about carbon taxes and to get in our pockets, Madness, and greed.

 

[Dale]

Why are the wealthy elites still buying beach front properties if they truly believe sea levels are going to rise significantly?

There are several answer to that. One is that many of the people who own beachfront property, or even a condo near the ocean, are elderly and they don't expec;t to live long enough for sea leve rise to be a problem ... for them. Another answer is that they will use their political influence and call on the state to build barriers to protect them. Than again, we are living in a world where many people, and many of the affluent, are scientifically illiterate.

 

[rturner76]

Carbon Dioxide IS a natural atmospheric gas. What is not natural is the way that humans add to that gas with combustion engines, burning coal, and clearcutting swaths of rainforest. the Earth does go through natural changes from hot to cold and there have been extinction events that have killed of most of the world. The only difference is that this time, human beings have had considerable influence on global climate change.

 

[eclipsenow]

Top Study Confirms Carbon Dioxide Has Zero Impact on ‘Global Warming’​

Top Study Confirms Carbon Dioxide Has Zero Impact on 'Global Warming' - Slay News

A major new study has debunked the narrative that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from human activity is causing so-called "global warming."

slaynews.com

it is all about carbon taxes and to get in our pockets, Madness, and greed.

Really? You read one study without reading the peer review?

----CARBON BRIEF REPLIES BELOW----​

As previously mentioned, people continue to make claims questioning CO2’s ongoing capacity to function as a greenhouse gas – namely, that it can ‘no longer warm Earth’s atmosphere because CO2 is saturated’. However, this claim is far from being new. In fact, it originated in the early 20th century when the study of the greenhouse effect (prior to be coined as such) was in its infancy. From the timeline we shared earlier, you will recall that in 1896, Svante Arrhenius quantified the warming effect from increasing atmospheric CO2. In 1900, Knut Ångström, Swedish physicist, used experimental data – later found to be inaccurate[4] – to claim that CO2 is unable to affect Earth’s climate because of saturation of the center of the absorption band (around 15 nanometers) and overlap between the absorption bands of CO2 and water vapor. Despite being debunked decades ago (as will be explained below), people continue to share these claims. Below we will explain why these claims are incorrect based on available evidence...​

How CO2 warms Earth through the greenhouse effect and why CO2 is not ‘saturated’ in Earth’s atmosphere - Science Feedback

There is no doubt about it – climate science can be complex. But sometimes this complexity is mistaken for uncertainty. A recurring example is our scientific understanding of carbon dioxide’s (CO2) effects as a greenhouse gas[2]. However, the evidence for CO2 as a greenhouse gas is...

science.feedback.org

The reality is climate science is hard, and people online get into echo-chambers often funded by Big Oil and then think there's an 'authority' they can just believe that the whole thing is a conspiracy theory. It's easy to write a controversial paper and then have

It was a century and a half before the UN even existed when Joseph Fourier discovered that the Earth's atmosphere is what keeps the Earth so much warmer than the moon. He discovered this in the 1820's - about 200 years ago - and decades before Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto! Or how did some mythical “Cabal of the Elite” in the UN get to Eunice Foote in 1856 when she discovered CO2 is the primary warming gas? ⁠Scientists understood physics of climate change in the 1800s – thanks to a woman named Eunice Foote

What about the fact that CO2’s effects can be studied and confirmed in any decent physics lab or even a backyard workshop on the planet? Variations of this next test can be replicated in any decent physics lab on the planet. Check this test -

Mythbusters even ran a backyard test that confirmed it.

 

[JesusFollowerForever]

Really? You read one study without reading the peer review?

----CARBON BRIEF REPLIES BELOW----​

As previously mentioned, people continue to make claims questioning CO2’s ongoing capacity to function as a greenhouse gas – namely, that it can ‘no longer warm Earth’s atmosphere because CO2 is saturated’. However, this claim is far from being new. In fact, it originated in the early 20th century when the study of the greenhouse effect (prior to be coined as such) was in its infancy. From the timeline we shared earlier, you will recall that in 1896, Svante Arrhenius quantified the warming effect from increasing atmospheric CO2. In 1900, Knut Ångström, Swedish physicist, used experimental data – later found to be inaccurate[4] – to claim that CO2 is unable to affect Earth’s climate because of saturation of the center of the absorption band (around 15 nanometers) and overlap between the absorption bands of CO2 and water vapor. Despite being debunked decades ago (as will be explained below), people continue to share these claims. Below we will explain why these claims are incorrect based on available evidence...​

How CO2 warms Earth through the greenhouse effect and why CO2 is not ‘saturated’ in Earth’s atmosphere - Science Feedback

There is no doubt about it – climate science can be complex. But sometimes this complexity is mistaken for uncertainty. A recurring example is our scientific understanding of carbon dioxide’s (CO2) effects as a greenhouse gas[2]. However, the evidence for CO2 as a greenhouse gas is...

science.feedback.org

The reality is climate science is hard, and people online get into echo-chambers often funded by Big Oil and then think there's an 'authority' they can just believe that the whole thing is a conspiracy theory. It's easy to write a controversial paper and then have

It was a century and a half before the UN even existed when Joseph Fourier discovered that the Earth's atmosphere is what keeps the Earth so much warmer than the moon. He discovered this in the 1820's - about 200 years ago - and decades before Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto! Or how did some mythical “Cabal of the Elite” in the UN get to Eunice Foote in 1856 when she discovered CO2 is the primary warming gas? ⁠Scientists understood physics of climate change in the 1800s – thanks to a woman named Eunice Foote

What about the fact that CO2’s effects can be studied and confirmed in any decent physics lab or even a backyard workshop on the planet? Variations of this next test can be replicated in any decent physics lab on the planet. Check this test -

Mythbusters even ran a backyard test that confirmed it.

that experiment in the video shows that CO2 absorbs heat yes but how much per volume? how much CO2 was there in that tube?, he said filled so about 100% co2, do you agree?

You dont know that at equal atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and H2O water vapour, the water vapour absorbs 300 times more infrared ( HEAT) than CO2! they don't tell you that in the news.

atmospheric concentration of CO2 is now 420 ppm ot 0.042%

atmospheric concentration of water vapour varies between 2 % and 5% dependant on humidity levels.

atmospheric gases have been given a relative greenhouse warming potential number

C02 is 1 ( the lowest) water vapour is 300!

the sun cycles are the cause;

in the news you see;

But they do not show you guys these;

there are plenty more of these graphs and in much more details also thay vary a bit accordintg th the methods used but are in agreement, now we are in a warming phase cycle.

if you really want the truth, go to a science library and do a search for GWP and atmospheric gases and also heating and cooling cycles of the earth but science articles before 1975-1980 the internet is not reliable now a lot of data has been scrubbed and replaced by information that confuse people like the video on the co2 filles tube, people who are not in the science field wont see the difference.

I will no longer reply but will post occasionally.

Peace

 

[eclipsenow]

that experiment in the video shows that CO2 absorbs heat yes but how much per volume? how much CO2 was there in that tube?, he said filled so about 100% co2, do you agree?

It's not relevant - it's just to illustrate the physics. Watch the mythbusters one which tries to simulate our atmosphere more accurately.

You dont know that at equal atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and H2O water vapour, the water vapour absorbs 300 times more infrared ( HEAT) than CO2! they don't tell you that in the news.

I don't know much at all - I have a social sciences background, not physics and chemistry. But I can read what actual climatologists say - and the cherry-picking lies funded by Big Oil never add up. There are always inconsistencies or just half truths.

It's not God honouring for Christians to fall for this stuff. We're meant to be about the truth!

atmospheric concentration of CO2 is now 420 ppm ot 0.042%

And a tiny little funnel-web bite at even smaller concentrations of venom per volume of blood will still kill you.
It's not the percent of something that matters - it's the efficacy.

atmospheric concentration of water vapour varies between 2 % and 5% dependant on humidity levels.

Water vapour is the most dominant greenhouse gas. Water vapour is also the dominant positive feedback in our climate system and amplifies any warming caused by changes in atmospheric CO2. This positive feedback is why climate is so sensitive to CO2 warming.​

Explaining how the water vapor greenhouse effect works

<p>Water vapour is the most dominant greenhouse gas. Water vapour is also the dominant positive feedback in our climate system and amplifies any warming caused by changes in atmospheric CO2. This positive feedback is why climate is so sensitive to CO2 warming.</p>

skepticalscience.com

the sun cycles are the cause;

Oh it's the sun! It's only number 2 on the climate sceptic scale.

See - there Joseph Fourier was 200 years ago wondering why the moon was so much colder than the earth, and realising it was something in our atmosphere. And then Eunice Foote analysed actual CO2 in 1856 as one of a few powerful greenhouse gases. But they somehow forgot to look at the big burning thing in the sky!

In the last 35 years of global warming, the sun has shown a slight cooling trend. Sun and climate have been going in opposite directions. In the past century, the Sun can explain some of the increase in global temperatures, but a relatively small amount.

Sun & climate: moving in opposite directions

<p>In the last 35 years of global warming, the sun has shown a slight cooling trend. Sun and climate have been going in opposite directions.</p>

skepticalscience.com

But they do not show you guys these;

View attachment 352085

Yeah - "they" DON'T show us fraudulent graphs from a Christian end-times type that gets his reading of climate science from the bible - but has NO climate credentials whatsoever. Randy Mann is a geographer.

https://web.archive.org/web/20090624120056/http://www.spokesmanreview.com/tools/story_pf.asp?ID=176325

12 years ago these guys predicted an ice age. In case you haven't heard - the planet is cooking with record breaking heatwaves all over the place.

Imagine asking actual climatologists instead?

 

[JesusFollowerForever]

49 Former NASA Scientists Send A Letter Disputing Climate Change​

49 Former NASA Scientists Send A Letter Disputing Climate Change

NASA scientists challenge mainstream climate change narratives, sparking heated debates in the scientific community.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[FireDragon76]

It’s great until it does the Fukushima thing or the Chernobyl thing or the Three Mile Island thing. Or until you have to take care of the radioactive leftovers for 100,000 years.

Bill Gates wants to build small reactors that are cooled by liquid metal and can't melt down.

 

[FireDragon76]

I'm Australian and our culture is just anti-nuclear. I became SO concerned about our reliance on fossil fuels - both because of peak oil looming sometime soon, then peak gas, and eventually even peak coal, that I debated some nuclear types - and then was won over. Nukes are a lot safer than coal, oil, and gas which kill millions of people a year through particulates. But nuclear waste? Doesn't that have to be stored for 100,000 years?

Here's what I found out. Nuclear 'waste' is not a problem, but could be another solution to climate change!

There are special reactors called nuclear BREEDER reactors.
Breeders actually reprocess used nuclear fuel rods, and get 90 TIMES the energy out of it.
We can get important medical isotopes out of it.
It fissions away much of the quantity of waste as all those atoms keep splitting.
Finally - we take the REAL waste (the broken atoms we call Fission Products) and melt it into ceramic tablets and bury them in a bunker on site.
Then in just 500 years it’s safe! Radioactive waste goes in, produces heaps of energy, and never comes out again.
See this Argonne Labs video - 4 minutes.

But after over a decade of being pro-nuclear - I now don't think most of the world will need it because renewables are now SO cheap that I've flipped back to them again. They're just so cheap we can Overbuild them across a vast area and have super-abundant energy.

But what about all that nuclear waste? I say if a larger nation like the USA or EU or China wanted to do the world a service, they could have a few big nuclear breeder reactor parks that slowly eat through the world's radioactive waste. Those huge concrete & steel dry cask storage cases go in - and never come out again. And who knows? Maybe that nuclear reactor park is running the local steel industry or desalinating water for a desert country somewhere. It's just more expensive. Yet I would be happy it was there - dealing with the waste and making useful products.

Nuclear could still be useful to provide enhanced stability of electrical grids.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Bill Gates wants to build small reactors that are cooled by liquid metal and can't melt down.

I am reassured.

I am reassured?