[ RadSafe ] Edward Teller on Climate change

[JPreisig at aol.com]

Kjell,
 
    I like nuclear power.
 
    Ice caps melting totally???  Don't count on  it.  They will be making a 
big comeback in the next 12
years or so.
 
    I know the ice caps melting has been a big help to  Northern Hemisphere 
shipping.  See today's google 
news.
 
    Joe Preisig
 
  
 
 
In a message dated 3/5/2013 2:43:49 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
Kjell.Johansen at nexteraenergy.com writes:

Victor  Anderson wrote:

One inconvenient fact; 70 million years ago carbon  dioxide levels were 
about 6,000 ppm.  The earth did not change into a  "hot house" planet like 
Venus.
Life is still very sustainable.  So  what if the global temperature is 
rising.  Go look at number for human  generated carbon dioxide emissions and 
divide it my the mass of the  atmosphere. You come out with a number in the 
range of 20 ppm.

This is  not a good argument.  It does not address the effects of increased 
CO2  and climate change.  It merely says no big deal.
1)     70 million years ago there were no humans ( as we now understand  
humans) or humans living in the types of societies we now have.  Our  society 
today requires that we have enough food to feed people.  What  types of 
plants grew under an atmosphere with a CO2 concentration of 6000  ppm?  There 
are two photosynthetic pathways, one of which favors high CO2  concentrations. 
 Today's food crops use the low CO2 pathway and are more  nutricious than 
the high CO2 pathway plants based on what I have read.   Also, if climate 
changes move the earth's food growing areas away from the US,  what are we 
going to do?  Are we going to invade those countries where  there is food and 
take it?  Not a good solution for what we consider a  society based on 
Judeo-Christian principles.
2)        With the loss of the Antarctic and Greenland icecaps, are you 
prepared to have  New Orleans, New York, London and other less know cities and 
various Pacific  Islands flooded?  Where do all of these people go? It does 
not make sense  to let global climate change happen by continuing to pump 
more greenhouse  gases into the atmosphere.
3)       With regard to 70 M  years ago, where did all of those plants go?  
They were buried by plate  tectonics and other procesess and turned into 
coal.  So you take millions  of years of carbon and over a short period of 
several hundred years you  release it back into the environnment.  In which way 
do you think the  biogeochemical processes will go?  For one, the oceans 
become more acidic  over a time period in which natural adaptation can not 
cope.  Without all  those phytoplankton, we lose a lot of oxygen.
4)        If climate change were not important, why does the Pentagon and 
CIA have  synarios in which climate change is an important driver in 
initiating  events?

Well there are a lot more items on which I could comment with  regard to 
all of those on this list who dismiss global climate change, or, as  the media 
likes to call it because sells, global warming.  Needless to  say, as an 
oceanographer and a member of one of the world's major religions, I  take my 
stewardship of the earth and its resources very seriously.   That's why I am 
in nuclear power.

My own comments and not necessarily  those of my employer.

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

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