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RE: Only nuclear power can now halt global warming
Greenland's ice is not sitting on the water, but on the island of Greenland.
If the Greenland Ice flows cover an area of say 10,000 square miles and are on average 1 mile thick, then the melting of the ice covering greenland would add an additional 10,000 cubic miles of water to the oceans. Whether this is significant I can't say since I don't know the present volume of the oceans. However, there are lots of places on earth that sit within a few feet above sea level. For instance a sea rise of about 10 feet would result in most of Bangladesh being flooded (a good portion of Florida also).
"Riely, Brian P." <brian.riely@ngc.com> wrote:
In the reference article, it states:
"...the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which will raise global sea levels significantly..."
On a simplistic level, when a chuck of ice that is floating in a glass of water melts, the water level does not rise; so, why would the melting of the Greenland ice sheet cause sea levels to rise significantly everywhere. I can think of several scenarios where the above would be true--for example, the earth's surface has changed such that the gravitational potential that initially held the water in Greenland would no longer hold the water--but they would be just made up stories. Does anyone know the reason why professor Lovelock 's statement is true?
Brian
-----Original Message-----
From: John_Sukosky@DOM.COM [mailto:John_Sukosky@DOM.COM]
Sent: Monday, May 24, 2004 11:57 AM
To: radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu
Subject: Only nuclear power can now halt global warming
Maybe this will cause reasonable people to re-think an unreasonable
position they may hold on nuclear power:
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=524313
Leading environmentalist urges radical rethink on climate change
By Michael McCarthy Environment Editor
24 May 2004
Global warming is now advancing so swiftly that only a massive expansion of
nuclear power as the world's main energy source can prevent it overwhelming
civilisation, the scientist and celebrated Green guru, James Lovelock,
says.
His call will cause huge disquiet for the environmental movement. It has
long considered the 84-year-old radical thinker among its greatest heroes,
and sees climate change as the most important issue facing the world, but
it has always regarded opposition to nuclear power as an article of faith.
Last night the leaders of both Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth rejected
his call.
Professor Lovelock, who achieved international fame as the author of the
Gaia hypothesis, the theory that the Earth keeps itself fit for life by the
actions of living things themselves, was among the first researchers to
sound the alarm about the threat from the greenhouse effect.
He was in a select group of scientists who gave an initial briefing on
climate change to Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Cabinet at 10 Downing
Street in April 1989.
He now believes recent climatic events have shown the warming of the
atmosphere is proceeding even more rapidly than the scientists of the UN's
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) thought it would, in their
last report in 2001.
On that basis, he says, there is simply not enough time for renewable
energy, such as wind, wave and solar power - the favoured solution of the
Green movement - to take the place of the coal, gas and oil-fired power
stations whose waste gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), is causing the atmosphere
to warm.
He believes only a massive expansion of nuclear power, which produces
almost no CO2, can now check a runaway warming which would raise sea levels
disastrously around the world, cause climatic turbulence and make
agriculture unviable over large areas. He says fears about the safety of
nuclear energy are irrational and exaggerated, and urges the Green movement
to drop its opposition.
In today's Independent, Professor Lovelock says he is concerned by two
climatic events in particular: the melting of the Greenland ice sheet,
which will raise global sea levels significantly, and the episode of
extreme heat in western central Europe last August, accepted by many
scientists as unprecedented and a direct result of global warming.
These are ominous warning signs, he says, that climate change is speeding,
but many people are still in ignorance of this. Important among the reasons
is "the denial of climate change in the US, where governments have failed
to give their climate scientists the support they needed".
He compares the situation to that in Europe in 1938, with the Second World
War looming, and nobody knowing what to do. The attachment of the Greens to
renewables is "well-intentioned but misguided", he says, like the Left's
1938 attachment to disarmament when he too was a left-winger.
He writes today: "I am a Green, and I entreat my friends in the movement to
drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy."
His appeal, which in effect is asking the Greens to make a bargain with the
devil, is likely to fall on deaf ears, at least at present.
"Lovelock is right to demand a drastic response to climate change," Stephen
Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said last night. "He's right
to question previous assumptions.
"But he's wrong to think nuclear power is any part of the answer. Nuclear
creates enormous problems, waste we don't know what to do with; radioactive
emissions; unavoidable risk of accident and terrorist attack."
Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth, said: "Climate change and
radioactive waste both pose deadly long-term threats, and we have a moral
duty to minimise the effects of both, not to choose between them."
John M. Sukosky, CHP
Dominion
Surry Power Station
(757)-365-2594 (Tieline: 8-798-2594)
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