[ RadSafe ] Climate change

Tue Feb 26 13:55:53 CST 2013

Dear Radsafe,

     If there is some CO2 effect and/or effects from  other gases, then 
grow trees and build new nuclear plants.
These steps might help alleviate some of the CO2 etc. problem.   
Fortunately or unfortunately, the USA
is cranking on all cylinders, and burning coal, gasoline, natural gas, and  
much of these materials are now
garnered from US sources.  Beats buying hydrocarbons from another  country. 
 Hey, we might even pay off some debt if taxes are collected for  each 
volume of hydrocarbon sold.  This will probably go on for 100 years or  so, at 
least.  Coal and nuclear fission will be available for 100's of  years.  How 
Cool.  Keep working on fusion also, I  guess.   

     I like the idea of having solar cells, especially  higher efficiency 
solar cells that are being developed at
Princeton University and elsewhere.  These solar cells minimize  reflection 
losses.  Wonder when this PU
professor will issue a public stock offering with this technology.???

     There are two armed camps about global warming  right now.  Many 
academics back the global 
warming ideas.  There are data to support this idea.  Hockey  stick or 
whatever.  Another armed camp
doesn't believe in global warming... they have data too.  Some rather  
serious scientists are in this armed camp also.

     With respect to the Earth Wobbles (Annual wobble,  Chandler Wobble 1, 
Chandler Wobble 2), these
Earth orientation phenomena (beats of Earth orientation frequencies --- sum 
 and difference frequencies)
are quite real and will affect USA and global weather (with droughts and  
serious snowstorms) for the
next 12 years or so.  The ice caps will re-solidify (on the average)  
during this time period, thus causing less
moisture to be available in Earth non-polar regions (i.e. droughts) and  
will cause cold areas (the ice at the 
Earth poles) to be available to create good-sized snowstorms.  The  
severity of the droughts and snowstorms 
are not really known to me, based on the limited data I have available to  
me at my PC.  People like Chopo Ma (Goddard Space Center), Jean Dickey  
(JPL), the National Weather Service etc. should be able to make
some pretty good predictions of Earth weather for the next 20 years.   With 
computer codes like SOLVE and
CALC, Chopo can tell you all the position and orientation of the Earth  
(Precession, Orbit, Nutation,
Wobbles, Earth Spin etc.) for the next 20 years as good as almost  anyone.  
They make VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry) estimates of  these 
parameters every 5 days or so, for the US Government (Army,
Navy, Air Force etc.).  Upfront the folks at Goddard will tell this  work 
is being done to study
earthquakes, the atmosphere etc.  However, these data are also rather  
tactical nature, and allow us to
do the pinpoint bombing (remember Bunker Buster bombs hitting directly in  
the middle of crosshairs???).

    The global warming problem will probably be well-solved  in the next 10 
years --- the data quality for such
studies are getting better every day.  I'm sure Al Gore was taught  well 
about CO2 etc. in his classes at
University.  Unfortunately, he wasn't taught everything there.   We'll see 
what happens.

    Funny many of the guys who believe in global  warming are probably 
anti-nuclear folks.  And nuclear
energy is one of the solutions to this CO2 etc. problem.

    Oops, guess we weren't supposed to discuss this on  RADSAFE anymore.  I 
can't let some email posts
go unanswered.

     Believe what you will.  It is probably not a  good idea to totally 
ignore global warming.

    Regards,   Joe Preisig

In a message dated 2/26/2013 1:41:13 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
Kjell.Johansen at nexteraenergy.com writes:

With  regard to the 4 previously mentioned options regarding climate change 
[warmer,  colder, no change, or being hit by an asteroid], I am in the camp 
that has  come to the conclusion that the climate will move to higher 
temperatures. [We  were discussing this back in the '70s in my meteorology and 
oceanography  classes at the University of Michigan and those profs were smart 
guys.]   Any change in the solar output or axis wobble will make some small 
 changes.  Continuing to pump greenhouse gases (methane, CFCs, and carbon  
dioxide) into the atmosphere increases the heat containing capacity of the  
atmosphere. (Ok, to be technically correct, you are increasing the capacity 
of  the atmosphere to capture outgoing radiation and radiating back to the 
earth  as heat.  But, in the overall picture, it results in an increase in 
the  earth's temperature.) By analogy with solar output and axis wobble, 
compare  the water content of an 8-oz glass to that of a 16-oz glass.  No matter  
how the rate at 
which you fill the glasses, the 16-oz glass will always  contain more 
water.  Therefore, more greenhouse gases, higher  temperatures.

Look at the records in the oceanic sediment cores and the  ice cores.  When 
the greenhouse gases CO2 and methane concentrations are  high, so are all 
of the geochemical markers for increased temperature, ie, the  O18/O16 
ratios, etc.  To deny any link between greenhouse gases and the  average earth 
temperature is an extreme case of reverse hubris.

Too  many people who regularly contribute to RADSAFE tend to dismiss the 
data which  lead climatologists to be concerned about higher earth 
temperatures because it  does not fit their already formed conclusions.   Being 
flippant is  not worthy response to scientific concerns.

As always, these words are  my own and I do not intend to formulate any 
official position for my  employer.

Kjell Johansen, PhD
Nuclear Chemistry  Analyst
kjell.johansen at NextERAEnergy.com

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