Is climate heating becoming irreversible?
I started this website many years ago, because I was appalled at the lies promoting nuclear power – lies that minimised the horror of nuclear weapons, nuclear accidents, and the radioactive legacy that we are passing on to our grandchildren and beyond.
Well – those lies are still being spread, by writers paid by the nuclear industry.
A big one is the story that nuclear will beat climate change. (the irony of it – as it’s the other way around).
Nuclear is irrelevant to climate change, except for taking funding from real solutions.
But – my dilemma now is that climate change is the biggie, because it is sure close to irreversible. (Theoretically, nuclear could be stopped, now)
Perhaps it’s because I am Australian, that I am feeling this problem so acutely right now. Yes, nuclear is still a horror threat, and still must be covered.
But – omigawd! Greta Thunberg is so right! Surely we all know this, in our hearts. We must all act on climate change.
The oceans are getting hot
![]() Each year, unfathomable amounts of energy are added to the oceans. Scientists measure heat in joules; the amount of heat in the oceans is so large that we report it in zettajoules. What is a zettajoule? It is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules. The amount of heat we are putting into the oceans is equivalent to about five Hiroshima atom bombs of energy every second.
I am part of the team of researchers that published a paper on ocean warming that shows the total heat of Earth is increasing with global heating, as scientists have predicted for decades. Each year, we take Earth’s temperature to try to determine what is happening to our climate. Each year the news is worse than the year before. There is hope, which I will discuss later. But first, let’s talk about the new study. As humans emit heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, it creates an energy imbalance. There is more heat coming in than going out. That means the Earth is out of balance, and temperatures are rising. The vast majority of the excess energy – more than 90% – ends up in the oceans. Consequently, ocean temperatures are rising, and we can measure it. Global warming is really ocean warming, and it has severe consequences. First, it makes ocean levels rise, because warming water expands. Scientists estimate that by the year 2100, oceans will be about 3ft higher than they were in the year 2000, displacing 150 million people around the world. Warmer oceans also make our weather more extreme. They supercharge typhoons and hurricanes. They make rains more deadly and flooding more severe. The rising temperatures are also threatening sea life. We are experiencing major die-offs of coral reefs, which are incredibly important to ocean biodiversity. Rising ocean water is not just a problem for fish and sea life, it is a problem for everyone. The leader of our team, Dr Lijing Cheng, developed an innovative way to measure ocean temperatures. We only get data where we place temperature sensors, and sophisticated mathematics are used to fill in the gaps and create a continuous picture of what is happening. His method of filling in the data gaps has been shown to be very accurate and scientists around the world have adopted the techniques. Often when scientists report climate data, they try to show trends. It isn’t so important what the ocean temperatures were last year or what they will be this year. What really matters is the trend: are the oceans getting hotter or colder? Using the late 1990s as a reference, we see that years prior are colder and years after are warmer. In fact, we see that the oceans have warmed continuously since about 1990. This long-term trend is what climate breakdown looks like, and it is terrible news for the future of the planet. All reasonable people know that the climate is warming and humans are the cause. Sometimes, I am asked for proof of warming, and there are many things I can point to: ice is melting, air temperatures are increasing, sea levels are rising, etc. But the best proof of warming is in the oceans. No one can dispute the data. The oceans are unequivocally warming. So, what do we do about it? Well, we can begin to use energy more wisely. This will not only help with the climate crisis but save money as well. Secondly, we can maximise our energy from renewable sources such as wind, water, and solar. One of the things that gives me hope is that energy from solar and wind power is now cheaper than dirty coal. The benefits of solar and wind depend, of course, on how sunny or windy the conditions are, but with the drop in green energy prices, it no longer makes economic sense to build coal plants. Another bit of hope is represented by the growing actions of our youth. Make no mistake, the Greta Thunbergs of the world will change things in ways that privileged middle-aged white men like me cannot. Their generation will inherit a dire situation, but they have the passion to act, and decades of unarguable evidence that they must. So yes, 2019 set yet another dire record for Earth’s climate. But the fight continues to make the future more habitable for our children and their children.
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Significant drop in France’s nuclear energy production

power output tumbling in the final month of 2019 by 15.2% to 33 TWh. The
operator of France’s 58 nuclear reactors, covering about 75% of the
country’s electricity needs, had revised its 2019 nuclear production
target from 390 TWh to between 384 TWh and 388 TWh in November because of reactor maintenance and safety checks after an earthquake.
Britons want real action on climate change, but Boris Johnson’s govt missing in action on this
Britain’s Sizewell nuclear project in jeopardy, as EDF struggles to get funding
Letter from Canberra: The apocalyptic fires in Australia signal another future — RenewEconomy
It’s impossible to suppress an incipient rage against the political leaders and coal lobbyists who have only pretended to take the scientific warnings seriously, or dismissed them as fantasies. The post Letter from Canberra: The apocalyptic fires in Australia signal another future appeared first on RenewEconomy.
via Letter from Canberra: The apocalyptic fires in Australia signal another future — RenewEconomy
Bottled Water Use – Many West Cumbrians frightened to drink the tap water —
The Guardian reports in the news on Friday – Harrogate Spring Water plans expansion threatening woodlands. Why are so many people drinking bottled water? In West Cumbria there is a reason. People are frightened to drink the tap water for fear of it making them ill – this is not hysteria – it is being […]
via Bottled Water Use – Many West Cumbrians frightened to drink the tap water —
January 13 Energy News — geoharvey
Science and Technology: ¶ “Can solar geoengineering mitigate both climate change and income inequality?” • Research from the University of California San Diego finds that solar geoengineering – the intentional reflection of sunlight away from the Earth’s surface – may reduce income inequality between countries. The study was published in Nature Communications. [EurekAlert] World: ¶ “EIB […]
The fallout from a false nuclear alarm
Associate Professor of Disaster and Emergency Management, York University, CanadaJanuary 14, 2020 On Sunday at 7:23 a.m., residents of the Greater Toronto Area were abruptly awakened by an alert issued by Ontario’s Emergency Alert Ready System stating: “An incident was reported at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. There has been NO abnormal release of radioactivity from the station and emergency staff are responding to the situation.”At 8:06 a.m., the Ontario Power Generation released a statement that the alert was issued in error and that there was no danger to the public or the environment. At 9:11 a.m., another message from the Provincial Alert Ready System stated that the initial nuclear alert was “in error.”………..
Other false nuclear alerts This false alarm is not the first time that a nuclear-related alert has been issued during in error during an exercise. In January 2018, an alert was issued in Hawaii warning of an impending ballistic missile attack. Thirty-eight minutes later, the alert was rescinded as a false alarm.
In the Hawaii case, similar to what happened in Ontario on January 12, a public alert was accidentally issued during a routine internal test of the Emergency Alert System. The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency released a statement that the false alert was due to human error.
Jeopardizing trust
Within hours of the false nuclear alarm, the office of Ontario’s Solicitor General released a statement of apology and said a full investigation has been launched into the error made during the routine training exercise. Those initial actions are only the first steps in attempting to repair the damage.
If we take the incident in Hawaii as a guide, the fallout was far-reaching. In the immediate term, all upcoming emergency drills and exercises were suspended. Changes were put in place, such as a two-person verification rule along with a new cancellation command system for public alerts. As the false alarm became a scandal, state-level emergency management officials resigned. Human error and poor software design were identified as root causes, and investigations suggested revamping the system, specifically in terms of oversight of the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System in the United States.
The bottom line is that a false alarm for an incident at a nuclear power station erodes public safety efforts. Fortunately, the risks realized from the Ontario emergency alert were not related to actual radioactive fallout. The fallout from the false alarm is that the public’s trust in emergency alert systems was jeopardized. https://theconversation.com/the-fallout-from-a-false-nuclear-alarm-129766
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