[ RadSafe ] Cold winters, Nuclear Power, etc.

[JPreisig at aol.com]

Dear Radsafe:
 
 
       From:    _jpreisig at aol.com_ (mailto:jpreisig at aol.com) 
 
 
       Hope you all are well.  Last  night's Trenton Times (Trenton, NJ, 
USA) had an article about an eminent
scientist doing work in global warming.  He works for the NOAA  Geophysical 
Fluid Dynamics Lab
at Princeton University.  He has received a prize of roughly  $500,000.00 
dollars from BBVA Foundation
Frontiers of Knowledge Climate Change Category.  Sounds almost better  than 
a Nobel prize in physics
divided 2 or 3 ways.  Nice work if you can get it, huh???  His  work has to 
do with CO2 and global
warming.  I guess you can refer to the Trenton Times website or the PU  
NOAA GFDL website,
to read about his work.  His work involves human impacts on our  
atmosphere, I guess.
 
      I've been writing here on Radsafe about the  influence of the Earth 
wobbles (annual wobble and a
433 Chandler wobble) on the angle at which the Earth dips towards the Sun  
versus time.  VLBI and
other polar motion data can be gotten through the NASA Goddard Space Flight 
 Center and other
French and USA websites.  (The wobbles make up a significant portion  of 
the Earth's geometric
polar motion).  Books on all this are Munk and MacDonald and Lambeck I  and 
II.  The wobble
amplitude peaks have occurred in 1910, 1954, 1998, and so on.  My  posts to 
Radsafe discuss all this
in some detail.  Read them if you wish (posts are in the Radsafe  archive).
 
     The global warming cycle (recent) extends from  1976 to 1998 (and a 
bit beyond as I stated 
earlier).  From 1998 to 2020 the next global cooling cycle due to  Earth 
orientation should occur.
(and a bit beyond).  The next polar motion peak should occur in  2042.  
Curiously, Princeton U's
expert in Earth polar motion, Dr. Tony Dahlen, passed on just a while  ago. 
 In the next 5-10 years, 
winters should be a bit less cold on the average and summers should be a  
bit less warm on the 
average.
 
      The preceding represent some of what is  going on, research-wise, in 
the field of global warming.
We should not ignore any of this work --- our ability to breathe and live a 
 full life may depend on
the outcomes of such work.   Better safe than sorry on this  scientific 
issue.  (I haven't made any
money lately doing polar motion research).  Researchers in polar  motion, 
climate, atmospheric
science, paleontology???!!!! are getting on the global warming research  
funding wagon!!!!  It's big
business (started by Al Gore???!!).
 
      So, what can we do about global warming  now???!!!   I think we can 
replace aging coal plants
(which are to replaced soon???) with nuclear power plants, if  possible.  
Homeowners can buy their
own solar energy systems, if they can afford them.
 
     Governments with high population densities and/or  very high 
populations, can encourage
families to procreate on a more limited basis.  One country in the  world, 
I know of, enforces family
growth limitation, and I think it is because it needs to happen.  If  the 
world population could be 
brought down by a factor of 1/2, I think life on the planet would be better 
 off.  1970's books like
THE LIMITS TO GROWTH discussed what would happen if population growth etc.  
didn't slow 
down.
 
      Hopefully new homes being built in the USA  and elsewhere are more 
energy efficient than their
predecessors.
 
      Recent posts on RADSAFE about the Central  Limit Theorem, for various 
experimental
situations were read by me, and I enjoyed hearing about all this.   Some 
parameters in life are well
represented by summations (i.e. infinite series).  Other parameters  
involve products of
numbers (i.e. infinite products, factorials, Gamma Functions).  These  
mathematical items are 
discussed in some detail in the Mathematical Physics book by Arfken and  
elsewhere.
 
     If we end up combining human impacts global  warming data and/or Earth 
orientation data, there
may be a need to combine data (and the relevant probability distributions)  
in the manner suggested
lately on Radsafe.  See the Radsafe Archives for the last several  weeks 
for the relevant posts.
(Normal, Gaussian distributions and LogNormal Distributions).
 
    This all does have to do with the future of Nuclear  Power, but isn't 
all so much having to do with
radiation safety, so I'll end this post now.
 
    Have a good week!!!!
 
    Regards,   Joseph R. (Joe) Preisig, PhD