Swedish school strike activist demands economists tackle runaway global warming. Read her Davos speech here,
Our house is on fire. I am here to say, our house is on fire.
According to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), we are less than 12 years away from not being able to undo our mistakes. In that time, unprecedented changes in all aspects of society need to have taken place, including a reduction of our CO2 emissions by at least 50%.
And please note that those numbers do not include the aspect of equity, which is absolutely necessary to make the Paris agreement work on a global scale. Nor does it include tipping points or feedback loops like the extremely powerful methane gas released from the thawing Arctic permafrost.
At places like Davos, people like to tell success stories. But their financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag. And on climate change, we have to acknowledge we have failed. All political movements in their present form have done so, and the media has failed to create broad public awareness.
But Homo sapiens have not yet failed.
Yes, we are failing, but there is still time to turn everything around. We can still fix this. We still have everything in our own hands. But unless we recognise the overall failures of our current systems, we most probably don’t stand a chance.
We are facing a disaster of unspoken sufferings for enormous amounts of people. And now is not the time for speaking politely or focusing on what we can or cannot say. Now is the time to speak clearly.
Solving the climate crisis is the greatest and most complex challenge that Homo sapiens have ever faced. The main solution, however, is so simple that even a small child can understand it. We have to stop our emissions of greenhouse gases.
Either we do that or we don’t.
You say nothing in life is black or white. But that is a lie. A very dangerous lie. Either we prevent 1.5C of warming or we don’t. Either we avoid setting off that irreversible chain reaction beyond human control or we don’t.
Either we choose to go on as a civilisation or we don’t. That is as black or white as it gets. There are no grey areas when it comes to survival.
We all have a choice. We can create transformational action that will safeguard the living conditions for future generations. Or we can continue with our business as usual and fail.
That is up to you and me.
Some say we should not engage in activism. Instead we should leave everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the politics needed are nowhere in sight?
Here in Davos – just like everywhere else – everyone is talking about money. It seems money and growth are our only main concerns.
And since the climate crisis has never once been treated as a crisis, people are simply not aware of the full consequences on our everyday life. People are not aware that there is such a thing as a carbon budget, and just how incredibly small that remaining carbon budget is. That needs to change today.
No other current challenge can match the importance of establishing a wide, public awareness and understanding of our rapidly disappearing carbon budget, that should and must become our new global currency and the very heart of our future and present economics.
We are at a time in history where everyone with any insight of the climate crisis that threatens our civilisation – and the entire biosphere – must speak out in clear language, no matter how uncomfortable and unprofitable that may be.
We must change almost everything in our current societies. The bigger your carbon footprint, the bigger your moral duty. The bigger your platform, the bigger your responsibility.
Adults keep saying: “We owe it to the young people to give them hope.” But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.
I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.
This is an edited version of a speech given by Greta Thunberg at Davos this week.
Welcome to “The New Abnormal” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists By Bulletin Staff, January 24, 2019 A new abnormal: It is still 2 minutes to midnight Humanity now faces two simultaneous existential threats, either of which would be cause for extreme concern and immediate attention. These major threats—nuclear weapons and climate change—were exacerbated this past year by the increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy around the world, amplifying risk from these and other threats and putting the future of civilization in extraordinary danger.
There is nothing normal about the complex and frightening reality just described.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – January 24, 2019 – Citing lack of progress on nuclear risks and climate change dangers as “the new abnormal,” the Doomsday Clock remains at 2 minutes to midnight, as close to the symbolic point of annihilation that the iconic Clock has been since 1953 at the height of the Cold War. The decision announced today to keep the Doomsday Clock at two minutes before midnight was made by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board in consultation with the Board of Sponsors, which includes 14 Nobel Laureates.
Why Excluding Nuclear, Fossils With Carbon Capture, & Biofuels From The Green New Deal Makes Financial & Climate Sense, Clean Technica January 24th, 2019 , By Mark Z. Jacobson & Mark A. DelucchiThe Green New Deal and multiple proposed laws and resolutions in the U.S. House (HRes.540, HR.3314, HR.3671) and Senate (SRes.632, S.987) call for the United States to move entirely from fossil fuels to clean, renewable electricity and/or all energy. A new bill was just introduced by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Los Angeles County) and Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA), calling for the U.S. to produce 100 percent of its electric power from renewables by 2035.
Recently, though, some vocal advocates have pushed back, claiming that the only way prices will stay low with large amounts of renewables on the power grid is to use nuclear power, fossil fuels with carbon capture, and biofuels, which they claim are “zero carbon.”
Here is why nuclear, fossils with CCS, and biofuels should be excluded.
All three technologies are opportunity costs. They raise costs to consumers and society, slow solutions to global warming and air pollution by increasing carbon and emissions relative to clean, renewables (thus are not zero carbon), and/or create risks that clean, renewables don’t have.
For example, onshore wind and utility PV are now the cheapest forms of electricity in most countries, including the U.S. New nuclear today costs 4 to 6 times that of new solar or wind to produce the same electricity. Further, a nuclear plant takes 5 to 17 years longer between planning and operation than does a solar or wind farm.
Thus, every dollar spent on nuclear results in 1/5th the energy production and 5 to 17 years more coal and gas burning than if wind or solar were installed instead. This delay and lower energy production from new nuclear condemns millions more to die from air pollution, which today kills 4 to 9 million people worldwide.
By choosing to build several nuclear plants a decade ago that have yet to operate, China suffered an increase in its overall CO2 emissions by 1.4 percent between 2016 and 2017 rather than seeing a decrease of 3.4 percent if it had spent the money on wind and solar instead.
Given that many 100% renewable policies call for a full transition of electricity by 2035, and given the financial and time requirements of nuclear, it is all but impossible for any more than a few new nuclear plant to be in place in by then.
In terms of emissions, nuclear is not zero carbon. A new plant emits 9 to 37 times the carbon emissions over its life as onshore wind, partly due to the fossil fuels used in mining and refining uranium continuously and building the facility but more because coal and gas plants are emitting during the long planning-to-operation time of a nuclear plant.
Just as importantly, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there is “robust evidence and high agreement” that nuclear power raises concerns about weapons proliferation, core meltdown, creation and storage of radioactive waste, and land-use degradation from mining. Wind and solar power do not have these concerns.
Next, neither coal nor natural gas with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is remotely close to zero carbon. For example, the Petra Nova project in Texas combines a coal plant with CCS. However, a natural gas plant was built just to run the CCS equipment, and when accounting for the actual efficiency, natural gas combustion emissions, CO2 combustion emissions, and methane leaks from mining the gas, the plant reduces only 22 percent of the carbon it was designed to over 20 years – at an additional cost of $4,200/MW. That same investment could have been spent on wind and solar to replace the entire coal plant and 100% of its emissions.
Adding CCS to coal plants also increases air pollution and land degradation by about 25 percent. Finally, the captured CO2 is used for enhancing oil recovery, causing even greater damage to climate and health. Thus, CCS represents an enormous opportunity cost compared with developing wind or solar.
Bill Gates comes to Washington — selling the promise of nuclear energy, WP, By Steven Mufson, January 25
Bill Gates thinks he has a key part of the answer for combating climate change: a return to nuclear power. The Microsoft co-founder is making the rounds on Capitol Hill to persuade Congress to spend billions of dollars over the next decade for pilot projects to test new designs for nuclear power reactors.
Gates, who founded TerraPower in 2006, is telling lawmakers that he personally would invest $1 billion and raise $1 billion more in private capital to go along with federal funds for a pilot of his company’s never-before-used technology, according to congressional staffers…….
Gates said in his year-end public letter. “The problems with today’s reactors, such as the risk of accidents, can be solved through innovation.” …..
But many nuclear experts say that Gates’s company is pursuing a flawed technology and that any new nuclear design is likely to come at a prohibitive economic cost and take decades to perfect, market and construct in any significant numbers.
Lawmakers are listening to him. Through the Energy Department, Congress approved $221 million to help companies develop advanced reactors and smaller modular reactors in fiscal 2019, above the budget request. But Gates and TerraPower, which received a $40 million Energy Department research grant in 2016, are looking for more. …….
Edwin Lyman, a nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said TerraPower is one of many companies that is raising the public’s hopes for advanced nuclear reactor designs even though they’re still on the drawing boards and will remain unable to combat climate change for many years.
“We think the vendors of advanced nuclear power designs are saying they can commercially deploy them in a few years and all over the world,” Lyman said. “We think that is counterproductive because it is misleading the public on how fast and effective these could be.” ……
Many nuclear power experts say that the technology Gates is promoting — called a “traveling wave reactor” — does not work as advertised, at least not yet. “These designs . . . require advances in fuel and materials technology to meet performance objectives,” a Massachusetts Institute of Technology report said last year.
TerraPower has changed key elements of its design and has still not resolved critical problems, experts say……
critics say TerraPower has been stumbling over a handful of obstacles.
First, TerraPower has discovered that the traveling wave didn’t travel so well and that it would not evenly burn the depleted uranium in the “candle.” Second, and partly as a result, it needed to change the design to reshuffle the fuel rods — and do that robotically while keeping the reactor running. Third, it has struggled to find a metal strong enough to protect the fuel rods from a bombardment of neutrons more intense than those commonly used in reactors — and for a much longer period of time…….
In many ways, TerraPower’s design resembles fast breeder reactors. Fast breeders have faster moving neutrons, the subatomic particles that trigger fission.
Allison Macfarlane, former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said earlier versions of fast breeder reactors have turned in a “dismal performance.” The United States built two small reactors at a government laboratory in Idaho, Japan built a commercial unit called Monju, and France built two called Phenix and Superphenix — and all of them have been shut down.
………TerraPower has also been working with the Energy Department on another reactor. If it moved ahead, it could obtain federal funds for 60 percent of the cost of a test reactor, Burkey said. That design would rely on molten salt as both coolant and fuel. TerraPower believes an advanced molten salt reactor could be more efficient and produce less waste than current models.
They said the Republican decision could allow plants to avoid protections against risks of natural disasters that have become apparent with science methods that have evolved since most plants were built about 40 years ago. …….
Commissioner Jeff Baran, a Democrat, said NRC staff had included the extra safety measures in the draft after years of work, but Republicans had jettisoned them.
“Instead of requiring nuclear power plants to be prepared for the actual flooding and earthquake hazards that could occur at their sites, the NRC will allow them to be prepared only for the old out-of-date hazards typically calculated decades ago when the science of seismology and hydrology was far less advanced than it is today.”
NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki, a Republican, said after the vote that the commission’s work since 2011 has resulted in “tangible safety improvements at every U.S. nuclear power plant.” ……..
A nuclear power safety advocate said new information showed that plants may experience bigger floods and earthquakes than they are now required to withstand, and that it is possible the commission will not require nuclear plants that face greater hazards to make upgrades.
The U.S. Military Wants Tiny Road Mobile Nuclear Reactors That Can Fit In A C-17
The power demands to sustain American military operations are only increasing, but small nuclear power plants could present new problems.The Drive, BY JOSEPH TREVITHICK, JANUARY 24, 2019 The U.S. military’s secretive Strategic Capabilities Office, or SCO, is asking for potential vendors to submit proposals for small mobile nuclear reactors to help meet ever-growing demands for power during operations in remote and austere locations. This request for information comes as the U.S. Army, in particular, is looking to extend the amount of time its units can operate independent of established supply chains, but portable nuclear power could introduce new risks to the battlefield.
SCO first announced that they were looking for “information on innovative technologies and approaches” relating to a possible future “small mobile nuclear reactor prototype design” on FedBizOpps, the U.S. government’s main contracting website, on Jan. 18, 2019. The organization posted an amended version of the notice, which outlines a “multi-phase prototype project” as part of what it is calling Project Dithulium, four days later. …..
SCO basic requirements envision a reactor that can generate between one and 10 megawatts of energy, less than the average output for even a small research reactor, and weigh less than 40 tons. The final design would need to be portable by semi-trailer truck, ship, or a U.S. Air Force C-17A Globemaster III cargo plane.
The goal is to develop a system that personnel can set up in three days or less and shut down and pack up in less than a week. The reactor itself would remain functional for at least three years without needing new fuel.
SCO is hoping to consider up to three designs under the first phase of the project, which would be an in-depth design study that would last between nine and 12 months. The plan is to then down select to a single design for Phase II, in which the winning contractor would build and demonstrate their prototype reactor.
There are a number of potential concepts already in various stages of development that could meet SCO’s requirements. The U.S. Department of Energy’s own Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), in cooperation with the Westinghouse power company, has been working on one design called MegaPower for some time now. Westinghouse is separately working on its own eVinci micro reactor design……….
There is no fixed timeline yet for when Phase I might begin, but as the request for information notes, there is already significant demand for this kind of miniaturized portable power plant. …….
The Army is certainly watching the SCO’s Project Dithulium, if it isn’t involved in it directly. In October 2018, the service put out its own report on the potential uses of nuclear power on the battlefield………
The other branches of the U.S. military have their own requirements for this kind of portable power, as well. The Air Force and the Marine Corps are both actively exploring new concepts for rapidly establishing bases that could benefit from the addition of power from small nuclear reactors.
But this is hardly the first time the U.S. military has explored using mobile nuclear reactors to meet its power needs. The Army experimented with a host of land-based designs between the 1950s and 1970s, before shelving the concept………
However, one of the biggest potential problems with battlefield nuclear power continues to be safety. There are obvious concerns about what happens when you begin deploying dozens, if not hundreds of small nuclear reactors into areas that are, by definition, full of hostile threats……
even if the reactor itself cannot catastrophically fail, something that may be a tall order to ensure in austere conditions regardless of the design, powering remote and austere bases with nuclear power could run other risks. If hostile forces end up destroying the reactor, it could potentially lead to the hazardous dispersal of radioactive material.
This, in turn, could produce short- and long-term health and safety concerns for U.S. forces and innocent civilians in the surrounding area. Even if the risk is minor, the perception of those dangers could impact public opinion about American military activities ….
There’s also a proliferation issue in building a large number of mobile reactors and placing them in war zones. There is also a matter of disposing of the nuclear waste material they’ll produce. …..
A reactor that is by design mobile would almost certainly be an attractive target for terrorists or militants looking to build a so-called “dirty bomb” that mixes radiological material and conventional explosives. ….
On top of that, unlike existing portable generators, any mobile nuclear reactor would require much more robust control systems to ensure its safe and reliable operation. Depending on the reactor’s exact configuration, there is the possibility that a cyber attack might be able to shut it down or otherwise hamper its operation at a critical point.
A renewed nuclear arms race, rising greenhouse gas emissions and the emergence of state-sponsored disinformation campaigns have left the modern world as close to annihilation as it was at the height of the Cold War, atomic scientists said on Thursday.
What is the Doomsday Clock?
The Doomsday Clock, created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists as an indicator of the world’s susceptibility to apocalypse, remained at two minutes to midnight for a second year running in what the scientists called a dangerous “new abnormal.”
“Though unchanged from 2018, this setting should be taken not as a sign of stability but as a stark warning to leaders and citizens around the world,” the Chicago-based group said in a statement.
Two main factors
Humanity’s two simultaneous existential threats of nuclear war and climate change were exacerbated during the past year by the “increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy around the world,” the group said.
“In many forums, including particularly social media, nationalist leaders and their surrogates lied shamelessly, insisting that their lies were truth, and the truth ‘fake news,'” it said.
Nuclear threat
Since the election of US President Donald Trump in 2016, the clock has closed in on midnight in successive 30-second moves in 2017 and 2018, in part because of escalating tensions with North Korea over its nuclear program.
The last time the clock was as close to midnight as it has been in the past two years was in 1953, when the US-Soviet arms race escalated as Moscow tested a hydrogen bomb in August after the detonation of an American H-bomb the previous November.
Despite a softening of barbed rhetoric between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over the past year, the group saw rising threats in nuclear-armed nations’ programs of “‘nuclear modernisation’ that are all but indistinguishable from a worldwide arms race.”
On climate, the group said carbon dioxide emissions resumed an upward climb in the past two years.
Clocking out
To turn back the clock, it recommended steps including fortifying and extending US-Russian nuclear treaties with limits on modernisation programs, adopting safeguards to prevent peacetime military incidents along NATO countries’ borders, citizen demands for action on climate change and multilateral talks to discourage the misuse of information technology.
The bulletin was founded by scientists who helped develop the United States’ first atomic weapons. When the clock was created in 1947, it was set at seven minutes to midnight.
Company defends plans for nuclear waste storage facility https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Holtec-defends-plans-for-nuclear-waste-storage-13558485.php, By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN, Associated Press Jan. 24, 2019 ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)— A New Jersey-based company on Thursday defended plans to build a multibillion-dollar facility in the New Mexico desert to store spent fuel from commercial reactors around the United States, citing long-standing yet unmet obligations by the federal government to find a permanent solution for dealing with the tons of waste building up at the nation’s nuclear power plants.
The project proposed by Holtec International would allow for spent fuel rods to be transferred from dozens of sites around the country to a more secure temporary home in southeastern New Mexico, said Jay Silberg, an attorney representing the company.
“We believe that this is an extremely important facility for this nation,” Silberg told members of a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission panel during the second day of a public meeting in Albuquerque.
It will be up to the panel to decide which environmental and nuclear watchdog groups have standing to intervene in the case and which objections they can pursue as federal regulators weigh whether to grant a license to Holtec.
Reams of documents have already been submitted to the commission, and the overall process is expected to be lengthy.
A Texas-based company also has applied for a license to expand its existing hazardous waste facility in Andrews County to include an area where spent fuel could be temporarily stored.
Opponents have raised concerns about the legality of the project, the safety of transporting the high-level waste across the country and the potential exposure and water and soil contamination if something were to go wrong along the way or at the site once the material was delivered.
Attorneys for the Sierra Club, Beyond Nuclear and other groups also are worried that risks could escalate if Holtec is allowed to reject and return damaged, leaking or contaminated casks that are transported to New Mexico.
The attorneys also focused on the proposed location, which is more than 30 miles from the nearest city but still in the heart of a congested region that’s experiencing a major oil and gas boom.
Holtec experts testified that there’s no evidence of land caving in at the site, that earthquakes are not believed to be a credible threat and that while it would not be able to repackage the waste if a container is damaged, it would be able to “take steps” to remedy problems that might arise.
Carlsbad City Councilor Jason Shirley told the panel that his community supports the project, saying it would result in more jobs and local tax revenue.
We are in a strong position where electricity supplies are secure and costs are falling, says Greg Clark, in a letter to the Financial Times this week. He should know since he is the UK’s business secretary. Never mind that the contractors behind two nuclear power stations have pulled out because they dare not take the risk, while a third promises to be an epic financial disaster, and that the remaining two on the drawing board seem increasingly likely to stay there.
Mr Clark is relentlessly upbeat: “Britain’s electricity requirement for the 2030s is not a problem of shortages but the much better challenge of abundance.” This challenge has already translated into a rise of 8 per cent last year in the cost of domestic electricity, and a looming 11 per cent rise in the absurd “price cap”, as the cost of subsidies for “green” energy slides sneakily into household bills. However, he is right about abundance. The fracking revolution has utterly changed the balance for both oil and gas supplies, and made a nonsense of the UK government’s decade-old assumptions about ever-increasing prices.
As Dieter Helm, Mr Clark’s go-to expert on energy costs, argues in a paper this week, the trouble dates back to when the Liberal Democrats were tossed the energy brief in the coalition government. Chris Huhne and Ed Davey were achingly green, but because they assumed oil was running out, the pair reluctantly supported new nukes, laying the foundations for today’s meltdown.
The grim truth is that these huge projects are a financial dead end, driven there by changing technology along with escalating safety requirements and the costs of decommissioning. As Mr Helm argues, there is a powerful case for abandoning nuclear altogether. Mr Pollyanna Clark, meanwhile, promises yet another energy white paper this summer. Oh dear.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday agreed to temporarily delay issuing a new operating license for Seabrook Nuclear Power Station, a massive 1,244-megawatt generator owned by NextEra.
In a notice, the NRC said it would delay relicensing the coastal New Hampshire plant through 2050 until the commission meets with the public.
Last week, congressional delegates from Massachusetts and New Hampshire wrote to the NRC seeking a delay until a hearing can be held this summer on problems with the plant’s structural concrete.
The concrete suffers from alkali-silica reaction, or ASR. The swelling and cracking was identified by plant operators in 2009. NextEra developed a plan to manage and monitor the deformation, a plan that the federal commission has accepted.
A hearing on the concrete problems, to be held before a panel of administrative judges, is set for this summer. A nuclear watchdog group, the C-10 Research & Education Foundation, plans to challenge NextEra’s plan for managing the ASR……..
Last week, Massachusetts Sens. Edward J. Markey and Elizabeth Warren joined U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton to ask that licensing be stayed until the ASR hearing can be held. From New Hampshire, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, Sen. Margaret Wood Hassan and Rep. Chris Pappas also wrote to the NRC, saying more public involvement was needed. ……..https://www.masslive.com/politics/2019/01/feds_agree_to_delay_relicensin.html
Forget nuclear woes and increase offshore wind targets, says boss of leading utility, Owjonline 25 Jan 2019 by David Foxwell The chief executive of one of the UK’s leading utility companies has called on the government to increase targets for offshore wind energy after plans for another nuclear power station were put on hold.SSE chief executive Alistair Phillips-Davies said the UK should be grateful that in offshore wind it has an ‘off the shelf’ answer to the problem of how the country can decarbonise energy cost-effectively while securing jobs and growth for the UK economy.
He is well-qualified to comment on energy policy in the country, having become chief executive of SSE in 2013 after working in the energy industry since 1997, when he joined Southern Electric.
“Later this year our Beatrice offshore windfarm, the largest project in Scotland, will be completed, and will begin exporting low carbon electricity to the grid,” he said. “It is one of many projects delivered to time and budget, which have helped bring the costs down substantially.
“Last year UK Energy Minister Claire Perry set out an ambition of an additional 1-2 GW of offshore wind per year during the 2020s taking the UK to a total of between 20 and 30 GW, meaning it could be the generation technology with the largest installed capacity in the UK.
“The sector has responded, and an Offshore Wind Sector Deal will be finalised later this year setting out the industry’s substantial commitments to the UK’s industrial strategy. The question now is whether 30 GW by 2030 is ambitious enough,” Mr Phillips-Davies said.
“In the coming months, the government will receive advice from the Committee on Climate Change on the implications of increasing its decarbonisation target from an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050 to net zero.
“In light of the IPCC report last year, SSE supports the adoption of a net zero target, and the implications will be a need to go faster and harder on decarbonising electricity as the driver for decarbonising heat and transport.”
Weather and climate aren’t the same thing, meaning you can expect harsher winters in a warming world.
BY SARAH GIBBENSA record-breaking cold snap is relentlessly descending on parts of the U.S. this month. It spawned from a split polar vortex that sent cold, Arctic air across the continent.
In a time when climate change is discussed in the context of record highs, droughts, and wildfires, cold weather and blizzards can seem out of place. For those who deny that climate change is happening, it’s an opportunity to undermine scientific consensus.
How do you explain a cold winter in a world that scientists say is getting hotter?
First, it’s important to understand the difference between climate and weather. Climate is defined as the average weather patterns in a region over a long period of time. It’s the difference between Europe’s temperate and Mediterranean zones versus the harsh cold conditions of the Arctic tundra. Each of these climate regions experiences day-to-day fluctuations in temperature, precipitation, air pressure, and so on—daily variations known as weather.
How warming can lead to cooling
When the term global warming was popularized a few decades ago, it referred to the phenomenon of greenhouse gases trapping heat in the atmosphere and warming the average temperature of the planet. Though record high temperatures in many places have been one impact of this decades-long shift, scientists now understand that an atmosphere changed by rising levels of gases like carbon and methane leads to more climate changes than just warming.
Scientists believe Earth will experience more extreme, disastrous weather as the effects of climate change play out.
n response to President Trump’s January 20 tweet about cold temperatures, Potsdam University physicist Stefan Rahmstorf noted on Twitter that, while North America was experiencing cold Arctic air, the rest of the world was abnormally hot. And, the polar vortex bringing that cold air to the U.S. may actually become increasingly unstable, Rahmstorf noted.
As more Arctic air flows into southern regions, North America can expect to see harsher winters. That was the conclusion of a study published in 2017 in the journal Nature Geoscience. It found a link between warmer Arctic temperatures and colder North American winters. A separate study published in March of last year in the journal Nature Communicationsfound the same link but predicted the northeastern portion of the U.S. would be particularly hard hit.
“Warm temperatures in the Arctic cause the jet stream to take these wild swings, and when it swings farther south, that causes cold air to reach farther south. These swings tend to hang around for awhile, so the weather we have in the eastern United States, whether it’s cold or warm, tends to stay with us longer,” said study author Jennifer Francis in a press release.
A future of extreme weather
Record cold temperatures and blizzards aren’t the only extreme weather patterns expected.
High altitude, east-to-west winds known as jet streams rely on the difference between cold Arctic air and warm tropical air to propel them forward. As the air in the Arctic warms, those jet streams slow and prevent normal weather patterns from circulating—floods last longer and droughts become more persistent. One study published in Science Advanceslast October predicted extreme, deadly weather events could increase by as much as 50 percent by 2100.
But we don’t have to wait until 2100 to see how climate change is leading to deadly weather.
Here’s how many billions the US will spend on nuclear weapons over the next decade, Defense News
By: Aaron Mehta 26 Jan 19, WASHINGTON — If the U.S. carries out all of its plans for modernizing and maintainingthe nuclear arsenal, it will cost $494 billion over the next decade, an average of just less than $50 billion per year, a new government estimate has found.
The number, part of a biannual estimate put out by the Congressional Budget Office, is 23 percent over the previous estimate of $400 billion released in 2017. That 2017 figure was a 15 percent increase over the 2015 number.
Japan Times, 26 Jan 19, DAVOS, SWITZERLAND – North Korea must make concrete pledges toward curbing its nuclear weapons program, such as dismantling its main nuclear complex and allowing international inspections to confirm the process, when leader Kim Jong Un meets U.S. President Donald Trump as soon as next month, South Korea’s foreign minister said.
Kang Kyung-wha said in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos that she is optimistic North Korea will agree to concrete steps toward abandoning its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, developed in violation of United Nations resolutions.
“The (North Korean) leader has promised to his people many times that ‘I’m going to take this country toward economic development.’ He has to deliver that, and he’s not going to get the kind of significant assistance unless he takes concrete steps toward denuclearization and somehow eases the sanctions regime,” she said on Thursday.
“Given the strong political will on the part of the top leaders of the two sides. … I think we will see concrete results.”
World War 3 fears SURGE as experts warn Saudi Arabia could be seeking ‘NUCLEAR weapons’
FEARS Saudi Arabia could be seeking to build nuclear weapons have surged following reports the Kingdom has launched a domestic ballistic missile programme. Express UK By JAMES BICKERTON, Jan 25, 2019 According to a report published in The Washington Post, Saudi Arabia appears to have constructed a ballistic missile factory, which could threaten to trigger a new Middle Eastern arms race. Saudi Arabia already owns foreign-brought ballistic missiles but has yet to construct its own. A number of experts have warned this could signal a Saudi desire to become nuclear armed.
Satellite images taken in November appear to show a ballistic missile factory near the town of Al-Watah, according to the report.
The site is situated next to an existing Saudi Arabian missile base.
A team led by nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis, from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, uncovered the pictures.
This paper attempts to refute the myth of “clean nuclear energy”, and discusses the unethical impact on the environment of the overall process of the nuclear energy electricity production industry, from mining to decommissioning, through the problematic framework of “health risk analysis”, “economical feasibility” and “sustainability”. It also focuses on the economic and safety fragility of developing countries in the South to deal with big loans or a possible catastrophe, not to mention managing nuclear waste for a very long period of time.
Finally, the paper diverges all the inductions of the different criteria discussed towards inferring a global categorically imperative ethical perception based on a biocentric stance that takes United Nations recommendations into consideration, such as the “Precautionary Principle”, the declarations on Human Rights and the rights of future generations to a healthy and sustainable environment, in order to settle down to an “ecosophical” conclusion.
1- Introduction: The “clean nuclear energy” myth!
Nuclear energy is still one of the options used today across the world, thought to be a clean source of energy that produces neither CO2 nor other Ozone related pollutants into the atmosphere. However, it is now been verified that the complete fuel cycle of nuclear energy production is generous in producing GHG as well as CFCs; from mining and milling to fuel enrichment, constructing and operating the nuclear facility, transportation of nuclear fuel, safety and security measures, reprocessing and recycling the depleted nuclear fuel, manufacturing by-products, encasing and burying the nuclear waste and eventually decommissioning the nuclear facility and its surrounding environment, including the contaminated soil(1).
Concerned communities in Japan who are removing contaminated soil and conducting clean up operations are using independent researchers because they have lost faith in their government: “The roots of mistrust came out after authorities issued radiation readings that often turned out to be incorrect”(2). This comes as a proof that governments don’t consider life cycle assessment mechanisms in calculating accurate GHG emissions, insurance, cost of KWh of electricity produced or genome radioactive infuriation. Most of the research is government sponsored or controlled by nuclear commissions, thus falling in “conflict of interest” controversy.
The nuclear fuel cycle is a generous CO2 emitter that can exceed 288 grams of CO2 e/KWh, or (66)g as a mean value, even when existing studies fail to consider emissions of co-products (3) which cause global warming too. Research on light water nuclear reactors showed CO2 emission up to 220 g/KWh (4), yet this value is expected to rise as uranium ore grade worldwide is deteriorating by time. The USA ore grade average, for example, dropped from 0.28% U3O8 to 0.07 – 0.11% (1100 ppm) in 40 years (5). The complete life cycle assessment mechanism considered to calculate CO2 equivalent (CO2 e/KWh) in the previous analysis can raise this value significantly!
A comparative study on GHG emissions of thin-film photovoltaic electricity generation yielded a range of carbon foot print of 14-26 g/KWh under 2400 KWh per square meter per year, through a performance of 80%, for a life time of 30 years(6). A median value of carbon foot print for wind power was calculated to be 11 g/KWh(7), compared to the 66 g for nuclear without considering co-products emissions, uranium ore grade deterioration …etc.
The nuclear fuel cycle also produces chemical compounds that can harm the Ozone layer due to the generous emissions of CFCs during uranium enrichment. CFC 114 produced is an Ozone layer depletory, where as 93% of the CFC 114 released in the USA is from uranium enrichment (8).
Further more, the enrichment of uranium is a highly polluting industry during which U238 (Depleted Uranium) is produced; a heavy metal, 1.7 times heavier than lead, used in encasing ammunition among other things. It burns upon impact and 80% of its weight disintegrates into aerosol powder (half – radioactive life 4.5 billion years, the same as the Earth’s age) (9).
Regardless of these justified arguments, some might still argue that nuclear energy emits far less CO2 than some fossil fuels, particularly coal. However, we would like to counter-argue that claim on the basis that nuclear energy production is unethical on the bases of a set of criteria:
Health risk analysis, economic feasibility, sustainability, security and liability, which will be discussed in this paper. Additional arguments would be based on the “Precautionary Principle”, United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and the right of future generations in a healthy, safe and sustainable environment.
For those who might still believe that moral responsibility and ethical stances don’t change the world just have to wait and see how an ethics committee decision shaped the future of nuclear Germany!…………”
