Coal...

Take a couple of deep breaths. That's the worst case scenario if all the icecaps totally melt, which is unlikely to happen this millenium. Even the IPCC predicts less than 1 metre sea level rise by the end of the century, and similar results in the foreseeable centuries after that. So it woiuld take 7,000 years to rise 70m at that rate. And we will almost certainly have blown ourselves off the face of the earth by some other means by then. Mr Trump is giving it a good try already.

Agree with you on nuclear power though. The big problem is going to be when a billion or more people in the emerging middle classes, and even the poor people, of the developing nations all want electricity in their homes in the not too distant future. The coal being burned now is nothing compared with what it would take to power up what are now developing nations.  And that is going to happen in just a few decades. There is no way the existing solar panel and wind turbine factories could keep up with demand to do it by other than coal fired power. But a nuke station can be built in about 10 years and power a whole developing nation.

Edited By Hopper on 30/04/2017 12:55:41

The problem with Nuclear Power stations is that, if you build one, it provides you with the essential ingredient to turn a fission bom into a fusion one.

Then you have a real problem.

The supply of raw Uranium isn't that good, so we need either fusion or fast breeders in the medium term if we are to keep nuclear. Fast breeders are not good, Pu is a horrific toxin even if it weren't radioactive. It provides a use for all the depleted Uranium, but not the one I'd like. And fusion still seems 50 years off. We need to use less power. Which is why DAB radio is a technology in the direction against the curve - it uses much more power than analogue. How many DAB radios last 3 months at 8 hrs a day on a pair of AA batteries like my analogue FM radio?

Regards

Richard.

Yes that's most probably right.

However, although a millennium seems like a long time to us and our "three score years and ten", it's a mere blink in time when you consider the big picture. Humans have already been around for about 100,000 years and they were descended from human-like apes dating back a further million years or so. Those apes were only a recent development - it took about 2 billion years of evolving life to get to them.

As individuals we are pathetically mortal. But our genes live on through our children, with luck for millions of good years yet. In that sense I worry about what might be left to my descendants in 20 or 30 generations.

On the other hand there must have been puritans on the Titanic who kept fit, avoided carnal pleasures, and refused the sweet trolley, much good it did them...

Dave

Whilst not trying to minimise the care with which plutonium must be handled, it isn't actually much different from other heavy metals in terms of chemical toxicity. Although it is radioactive, it is an alpha emitter, and so can be very easily shielded, plastic bag for instance. Where it is a problem is if it gets into the lungs by inhalation, or into the bloodstream, when the alpha radiation can damage internal organs. This doesn't mean we can treat it lightly, as it degrades slowly into other elements which are beta and gamma emitters. Even so it's not the killer element some would have us believe. To quote wikipedia "There were about 25 workers from Los Alamos National Laboratory who inhaled a considerable amount of plutonium dust during 1940s; according to the hot-particle theory, each of them has a 99.5% chance of being dead from lung cancer by now, but there has not been a single lung cancer among them."

The oft quoted Three Mile Island 'disaster' had very little radiological impact: "The average radiation dose to people living within ten miles of the plant was eight millirem, and no more than 100 millirem to any single individual. Eight millirem is about equal to a chest X-ray, and 100 millirem is about a third of the average background level of radiation received by US residents in a year." A financial disaster yes, but hardly a public health disaster.

To make bomb grade plutonium you have to design a special reactor, a commercial PWR would be pretty useless. How to do it is fairly well known, our not building more commercial stations won't stop rogue states.

Yes Nuclear Power has to be handled carefully, but remember Bhopal, where some estimates suggest 8000 deaths within 2 weeks, and a further 8000 have died since. Hydro isn't without its risks. In 1975 the Banqiao dam in China burst, resulting in 26,000 dead from flooding, 145,000 dead from subsequent famine and epidemics, 11 million homeless.

Pu is such an intense alpha emitter Pu dust eats its way through that plastic bag you mention in a matter of weeks by breaking the bonds between the constituent atoms. Not nice stuff.

Regards

Richard.

If I had a choice, I would still take my chances with a few smuts every time, against more Chernobyl's,

Fukashima's ,Windscale's, 3 Mile Island's ,etc.

I would still take my chances with a few smuts every time, against more Chernobyl's,

Especially if they are situated downwind of everywhere! Now, what are our prevailing winds? SW by any chance?Apparently not tsunami proof either? Not happened lately but about 2-400?years ago, there may have been a bit of a 'surge' along the SW coast due to part of an island (or Ireland)

falling into the sea somewhere, after a rather large earthquake?

Check out: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunamis_affecting_the_British_Isles

It does happen ..... Only needs to happen once ....

I hope that I have been doing my part. I operate and maintain a 73 year old hydro power station that produces on average 10 gig watts per year. and most of the time I am on my own. and in todays world of accounts it would not be economical to install so what is the real cost of renewables.

All the talk about CO2 emissions made me look on Wikepedia and find out the composition of Earth's atmosphere.

I was amazed to find that just 0.04% of our atmosphere is CO2. At the risk of being vilified (like the scientists of old who said that the Earth was spherical and went round the sun) I ask how can such a relatively small amount of gas be responsible for all the alleged man made climate change? Note how that has changed from "Global warming".

From what I've read, the Earth has been warming up (apart from the odd dip) since the last Ice Age. Still, I suppose the Government needs some excuse to increase our taxes. In my opinion, the biggest threat to the planet is over population.

**LINK**

Russell.

In 1977 I was recording CO2 in the atmosphere at around the 280ppm,Retiring in 2005, it was around 340ppm.

Since then ('77), we (UK) have de-industrialised, and Max. Demand is roughly where it was back in 1977.

However, trips to the Far East from 1967 to date show massive increases in electricity demand as they try to

emulate our climate, with air-conditioning. No guesses needed to know what is powering that demand, coal.

Melting polar stuff doesn't bother me. Where I live in the UK used to be under a mile of solid ice 10,000 years ago

Compared to the ice age the ice that remains now is nothing more than that last sliver of ice you see on a rum and coke, the bit that melts away really fast, (that surface area to volume ratio thing still applies at planetary level)

The only thing that stays the same is that things change

Edited By Ady1 on 01/05/2017 09:26:32

I'm also very sceptical about the accuracy of data before 1990

We did sea temperature stuff in the Carribean in the 1970s early 80s and it was very hit and miss, chucking wire guided kit off the bridge wing. We did what we could but it could never ever be called high quality data

Scientists didn't even believe that rogue waves existed until the mid 1990s, as far as scientists were concerned the only wave that existed in the universe was the sine wave, sailors have known different for hundreds of years

I have no doubts that "the climate is changing" either, it's been changing for 10,000 years

Edited By Ady1 on 01/05/2017 09:22:57

Poor Wiki is getting edited to death nowadays.

That Draupner wave page used to be a large interesting article which included the first theory postulated by a German mathematics chap in the late 1980s who tried to prove how non-sine waves could exist in the real world

Maybe this is why our summer in NZ was a bit cooler than usual, the coastal sa temperature was between 1*C, and 3*C cooler that the usual temperature at that time of year, I havn't checked the sea temperature of the last few months.

Ian S C