As always, hard to know what is the most important issue this week. But, for sure, the coronavirus pandemic is still there. Latest global data: Total cases 2, 534, 611 deaths 771,106. New daily cases 212,487 – deaths 4,181. In the USA, in states such as Texas, a prevailing libertarian spirit prevents people from taking precautions, such as wearing masks. The world is headed for an economic depression, and recovery depends on a vaccine and effective treatment for Covid-19.
Meanwhile – global heating moves on inexorably. The last decade has been the Earth’s hottest on record-bringing weather extremes, heatwaves, fires, storms. AND – there’s the pandemic infectious diseases connection, too – while heat brings an increase in mosquito-affected areas, with the diseases that they transmit, it also thaws permafrost, releasing microorganisms. Climate study looks at humans’ exposure to extreme temperatures during 21st century.
Hiroshima and the normalisation of atrocities. In August, attention goes to the nuclear disarmament movement,. There are moves towards achieving a nuclear weapons-free world, for example, steps that put pressure on the nine nuclear weapons nations. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons is working hard to achieve the 50 national ratifications that will make the Treaty on the Prohicition of Nuclear Weapons become international law. United Nations promotes the role of young people in ridding the world of nuclear weapons.
We must commit to a nuclear-free world, Guardian, Frank Jackson, 16 Aug 20“………….. For 75 years we have lived under the threat of a nuclear holocaust, avoided more by luck than by judgement. The longer nuclear weapons continue to exist, the greater the probability of that self-inflicted catastrophe happening, by accident, miscalculation or design. With the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (not the Union of Concerned Scientists, as I mistakenly said) set at 100 seconds to midnight, closer than even at the height of the Cold War, it is more urgent than ever that mankind must be freed from this scourge.
Surprisingly, of the two major existential threats (now exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic) that led the Atomic Scientists to this calculation, the nuclear one is the easier, in principle, to remove. It requires the political will of the leaders of just nine states. Of course, the lack of that political will is precisely the problem. They must be pressured to implement the following, as urgent first steps towards a nuclear-weapon-free world:
1. Individually and jointly reaffirm the Reagan-Gorbachev declaration of 1987-88, that ‘A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought’.
2. Adopt a “no first use” policy, as China has done.
3. Take all nuclear weapons off instant alert. This could be done almost overnight.
4. Physically separate warheads from their delivery systems, removing any possibility of accidental detonation.
5. Implement their commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to “pursue negotiations… to nuclear disarmament”.
6. Develop a phased programme to dismantle nuclear infrastructure and safely dispose of all fissile material.
ICAN chief: Japan sabotaging nuclear disarmament, NHK World, Aug. 15, 2020. Nishikawa Mitsuko NHK World Correspondent …….. Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or ICAN, spoke to NHK about the possible game changers in the drive to get rid of the weapons of mass destruction.
Fihn’s organization won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for its efforts to bring people to the negotiating table to pledge to work toward nuclear disarmament. The adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations was a step forward, in which ICAN played a major role.
Fihn says the next few months are crucial, as her team has given itself until the end of the year to get enough signatures to put the treaty into effect. Just this month, Ireland, Nigeria, Niue, and Saint Kitts and Nevis have signed up, bringing the total number on board to 44.
“We always aimed that we would be getting 50 in 2020.” She says. “And obviously COVID-19 has slowed down some processes, but we still think that there’s a really good chance that we can get the 50 ratifications needed this year. So we’re working very very hard on this.”
What about Japan?
But Japan remains one of the countries that’s yet to sign the treaty. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has said every year at the memorial ceremonies that it’s Japan’s mission to, “realize a world without nuclear weapons.”
But Fihn wonders why the commitment hasn’t been backed up by action. “There is no leadership right now on nuclear disarmament from Japan’s side — rather the opposite,” she says. “Japan is going backwards as well and undermining its own resolutions that it’s supported for a long time ago, weakening language and documents.”
“That’s very serious. And I think that’s an insult to the survivors — to the hibakusha,” Fihn says. “We really know the Japanese people want the government to sign the treaty.”
“It’s very often that we look at nuclear armed states as the problem, but we have to recognize that the nuclear-allied states, like Japan for example, are protecting them. They are standing in a circle around them and protecting nuclear weapons. Until those countries stop doing that, it’s going to be very hard to convince the nuclear armed states.”
“How am I going to convince North Korea, the United States and Russia to disarm, if Japan cannot say that nuclear weapons should be illegal?”
Nuclear war ‘like the coronavirus’
Fihn says the coronavirus pandemic is proof that a global emergency could happen anytime. “Health experts have warned about this, and they have been preparing, thinking about it,” she says. “Yet people have been surprised that it happened. It’s the same thing with nuclear weapons. We don’t know when, we don’t know how exactly, but experts say it’s going to happen.”
She warns that nuclear weapons will be far more lethal than the coronavirus. “What we have to do with nuclear weapons — there’s no mitigating it once it happens.” she says. “When we feel the consequences, when the bombs are starting to fall on cities again, then it’s going to be too late to prevent it.”
Nuclear weapons don’t protect us
Fihn says the ongoing pandemic further highlights why governments should be investing in people, not weapons. “This pandemic has shown us where the threats to our security are and how we can’t absorb these things with nuclear weapons,” she says. “Nuclear armed states spend 73 billion dollars on nuclear weapons. Just imagine how many ventilators, doctors, nurses ICU, beds we can have… how many vaccinations we could develop.” …….. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/1251/
Nearly 40 years of satellite data from Greenland shows that glaciers on the island have shrunk so much that even if global warming were to stop today, the ice sheet would continue shrinking.
Nearly 40 years of satellite data from Greenland shows that glaciers on the island have shrunk so much that even if global warming were to stop today, the ice sheet would continue shrinking.
The finding, published today, Aug. 13, in the journal Nature Communications Earth and Environment, means that Greenland’s glaciers have passed a tipping point of sorts, where the snowfall that replenishes the ice sheet each year cannot keep up with the ice that is flowing into the ocean from glaciers.
“We’ve been looking at these remote sensing observations to study how ice discharge and accumulation have varied,” said Michalea King, lead author of the study and a researcher at The Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center. “And what we’ve found is that the ice that’s discharging into the ocean is far surpassing the snow that’s accumulating on the surface of the ice sheet.”
King and other researchers analyzed monthly satellite data from more than 200 large glaciers draining into the ocean around Greenland. Their observations show how much ice breaks off into icebergs or melts from the glaciers into the ocean. They also show the amount of snowfall each year — the way these glaciers get replenished.
The researchers found that, throughout the 1980s and 90s, snow gained through accumulation and ice melted or calved from glaciers were mostly in balance, keeping the ice sheet intact. Through those decades, the researchers found, the ice sheets generally lost about 450 gigatons (about 450 billion tons) of ice each year from flowing outlet glaciers, which was replaced with snowfall.
“We are measuring the pulse of the ice sheet — how much ice glaciers drain at the edges of the ice sheet — which increases in the summer. And what we see is that it was relatively steady until a big increase in ice discharging to the ocean during a short five- to six-year period,” King said.
The researchers’ analysis found that the baseline of that pulse — the amount of ice being lost each year — started increasing steadily around 2000, so that the glaciers were losing about 500 gigatons each year. Snowfall did not increase at the same time, and over the last decade, the rate of ice loss from glaciers has stayed about the same — meaning the ice sheet has been losing ice more rapidly than it’s being replenished.
“Glaciers have been sensitive to seasonal melt for as long as we’ve been able to observe it, with spikes in ice discharge in the summer,” she said. “But starting in 2000, you start superimposing that seasonal melt on a higher baseline — so you’re going to get even more losses.”
Before 2000, the ice sheet would have about the same chance to gain or lose mass each year. In the current climate, the ice sheet will gain mass in only one out of every 100 years.
King said that large glaciers across Greenland have retreated about 3 kilometers on average since 1985 — “that’s a lot of distance,” she said. The glaciers have shrunk back enough that many of them are sitting in deeper water, meaning more ice is in contact with water. Warm ocean water melts glacier ice, and also makes it difficult for the glaciers to grow back to their previous positions.
That means that even if humans were somehow miraculously able to stop climate change in its tracks, ice lost from glaciers draining ice to the ocean would likely still exceed ice gained from snow accumulation, and the ice sheet would continue to shrink for some time.
“Glacier retreat has knocked the dynamics of the whole ice sheet into a constant state of loss,” said Ian Howat, a co-author on the paper, professor of earth sciences and distinguished university scholar at Ohio State. “Even if the climate were to stay the same or even get a little colder, the ice sheet would still be losing mass.”
Shrinking glaciers in Greenland are a problem for the entire planet. The ice that melts or breaks off from Greenland’s ice sheets ends up in the Atlantic Ocean — and, eventually, all of the world’s oceans. Ice from Greenland is a leading contributor to sea level rise — last year, enough ice melted or broke off from the Greenland ice sheet to cause the oceans to rise by 2.2 millimeters in just two months.
The new findings are bleak, but King said there are silver linings.
“It’s always a positive thing to learn more about glacier environments, because we can only improve our predictions for how rapidly things will change in the future,” she said. “And that can only help us with adaptation and mitigation strategies. The more we know, the better we can prepare.”
This work was supported by grants from NASA. Other Ohio State researchers who worked on this study are Salvatore Candela, Myoung Noh and Adelaide Negrete.
Story Source:
Materials provided by Ohio State University. Original written by Laura Arenschield. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
Michalea D. King, Ian M. Howat, Salvatore G. Candela, Myoung J. Noh, Seonsgu Jeong, Brice P. Y. Noël, Michiel R. van den Broeke, Bert Wouters, Adelaide Negrete. Dynamic ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet driven by sustained glacier retreat. Communications Earth & Environment, 2020; 1 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s43247-020-0001-2
POTSDAM INSTITUTE FOR CLIMATE IMPACT RESEARCH (PIK) The dynamics of the current COVID-19 pandemic could offer valuable insights for the efforts to mitigate climate change. Highlighting the parallels between the global health and the climate emergency, a team of researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) has analyzed what policy makers and citizens can learn from the corona outbreak and how to apply it to the global effort of reducing CO2 emissions. Their proposal: A Climate Corona Contract that unites the younger and the older generations.”The corona crisis is a test case for global emergency prevention and management in general,” says lead author Kira Vinke. “The pandemic has shown that when reaction time is kept to a minimum, a larger public health crisis can be averted. In fact, we should take this very lesson to heart and apply it to managing the climate emergency.”
Assessing risks and predicting outcomes
Vinke and the team of authors have looked at four dimensions of risk management: diagnosis, prognosis, therapy, and rehabilitation. They deduced which lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic could be used to stabilize global mean temperature. “The risks and causes of both the coronavirus and the climate crisis have to be scientifically assessed and quantified,” explains PIK director and co-author Johan Rockström. But just as important as diagnostics are prognostic approaches: “Countries like New Zealand and Germany were able to predict the outbreak’s possible effects and moreover had the ability of immediate action. In the same vein, the global community must integrate climate risks assessments into decision making and act accordingly.”
The authors argue that insights from the Corona crisis can help to identify pathways for treating the causes and symptoms of climate change. “Both the Corona and the climate crisis are the result of increasing human pressure on the planet,” says co-author Sabine Gabrysch, “But the good news is that the pandemic has demonstrated that with a combination of government action and individual lifestyle changes, it is possible to prevent damages. If there is a will, there is a way.”
Compassion and solidarity as guiding principles
The researchers conclude by proposing an intergenerational Climate Corona Contract informed by reason and the principle of social justice. . Former PIK director and co-author Hans Joachim Schellnhuber explains: “Younger generations would agree to protect the elderly from COVID-19 by adhering to social distancing measures, while the older generations would push for measures to keep global warming in line with the Paris Agreement.” Thus, the researchers’ outlook is cautiously optimistic: The outpouring of generosity and new forms of social interactions in the wake of the pandemic show great potentials for cooperation towards the much needed stabilization of the global climate.
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Article: Kira Vinke, Sabine Gabrysch, Emanuela Paoletti, Johan Rockström, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (2020): Corona and the Climate: A Comparison of Two Emergencies. Global Sustainability. DOI: [10.1017/sus.2020.20]
Urgent need’ to stop erosion of nuclear order, Modern Diplomacy, 16 Aug 20, The lack of trust and cooperation among States, and the diminished faith in “the very multilateral institution that was designed to maintain global peace and security”, must be overcome, a high-level UN official told a prominent disarmament conference on Thursday.“There is an urgent need to stop the erosion of the nuclear order. All countries possessing nuclear weapons have an obligation to lead”, Director-General of the UN Office at Geneva (UNOG) Tatiana Valovaya, told the Conference on Disarmament, which she also heads.
The big question is to what extent the TPNW will make a difference to the actions of nuclear states. None has signed, but they will all be affected, in part because the treaty prohibits companies and individuals from signatory countries from assisting in weapons development. And because the TPNW is an intergovernmental agreement, nuclear-weapons countries will need to send delegates to its meetings, whether or not they agree with it.
The TPNW is a historic achievement with a lot riding on its young shoulders. It will still take decades to achieve a weapons-free world, but every journey needs to begin somewhere. Altering the balance of decision-making so that it is shared more equally between the nuclear states and the international community is that necessary first step.
Researchers: help free the world of nuclear weapons, Nature, 4 Aug, 20,
Seventy-five years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a new treaty offers renewed hope for a nuclear-free world.
……….. 50 years of nuclear diplomacy has made one thing clear: the nuclear nations are not ready to give up their weapons just yet. Progress has been made in reducing stockpiles, but these countries are simultaneously investing in updating their arsenals to last well into this century.
So what could persuade the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea to begin fully dismantling their stocks, and to agree never again to develop nuclear weapons?
One idea, which has been in gestation for some years, could be about to have its break-out moment. A new agreement, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), is expected to become international law next year — and scientists have a chance to play a part in helping it to succeed.
An urgent task will be to establish a new global network of researchers with knowledge on different aspects of nuclear science and technology. The treaty has yet to establish a formal scientific advisory mechanism. Some research groups, notably the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University in New Jersey, have been advising the treaty’s founders on various facets of nuclear science, such as how to accurately verify that stockpiles have been permanently dismantled1. But a more-permanent arrangement, whereby researchers from different countries can offer — and respond to requests for — advice will be needed. Because relations between Russia and the United States have worsened, the many formal and informal networks of nuclear scientists that once existed between these countries are now “practically non-existent”, says former US energy secretary Ernest Moniz, co-chair of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a think tank based in Washington DC. A new global network will be essential to ensuring the safety of nuclear arsenals, because a lack of communication increases the chance of accidents and misunderstandings, heightening the risk of nuclear weapons being used.
In deft, distressing ‘Apocalypse Factory,’ Seattle author details Hanford’s role in the dawn of the nuclear age, Aug. 5, 2020 By Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times
Book review
On the list of self-inflicted threats to humanity that we shove to the side in order to preserve our sanity, nuclear disaster — along with climate change — ranks at the top. And in Washington state, the toxic legacy of the Hanford nuclear reservation is the chief reminder of that threat.
Hanford produced the plutonium used in the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945 — 75 years ago this Sunday. It also supplied the plutonium for most of the thousands of American nuclear weapons manufactured since then. But in the popular imagination, Hanford looms less prominently than Los Alamos when it comes to stories about the dawn of the nuclear age.
In “The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age,” Seattle writer Steve Olson — who grew up in the small town of Othello, roughly 25 miles northeast of Hanford — capably fills in the gap.
As a young writer, Olson studied with John Hersey — the author of the 1946 book “Hiroshima” — so it’s fitting that “The Apocalypse Factory” includes an expansive, Hersey-like chapter on the horrific consequences of the Nagasaki bombing, drawn from Japanese eyewitness accounts. Nagasaki residents, of course, didn’t know what had hit them and were confounded by the “atomic bomb sickness” that killed people who initially appeared to be uninjured.
The book also encompasses the political and military strategies of the period, along with the “fiendishly difficult” challenges of producing plutonium in a way that wouldn’t kill its makers. Olson writes lucidly, making even the most recondite details of the science involved clear to a nonscientist. And he’s eloquent in his chronicling of the lives affected — and sometimes destroyed — by the invention and use of the world’s most deadly weapon.
“Hanford,” he acknowledges, “represents one of humanity’s greatest intellectual achievements; it also embodies a moral blindness that could destroy us all.”………
The secrecy surrounding the bomb didn’t end with World War II. Censorship of details about Nagasaki’s destruction and vital info on what radiation sickness could do to humans continued for years. A story by one Chicago Tribune reporter who wangled his way to Nagasaki wasn’t just censored but destroyed. The carbon copy he kept only came to light 60 years later.
Initial jubilation at Japanese surrender was soon tempered by a realization among scientists of just how nightmarish the bombs’ effects were. Decades later, the radioactive pollution at Hanford likewise became impossible to ignore.
“The leaders of the Manhattan Project,” Olson concludes, “did not devote much thought to the mess they were creating.”
In this deft, informative, sometimes terrifying book, that sentence reads like a stinging understatement.
_____
“The Apocalypse Factory: Plutonium and the Making of the Atomic Age” by Steve Olson, Norton, 336 pp., $27.95
Hitachi seeks to resurrect Welsh nuclear plant plans, Ft.com, 16 Aug 20,
Japanese industrial group wants clarity from UK ministers on financing model,
Hitachi is talking to the UK government about resurrecting plans for a nuclear power plant in north Wales, which were frozen at the start of last year.
Horizon Nuclear Power, a UK-based subsidiary of Hitachi, has been holding “detailed conversations” with the government in recent weeks to persuade ministers that the proposed Wylfa Newydd plant on Anglesey could be quickly re-mobilised if they can produce a new financing model for large nuclear power stations in Britain.
Hitachi suspended the £20bn Wylfa project at the start of 2019 after failing to reach an agreement over financing. The Japanese group decided at the time the project still posed “too great a commercial challenge”, despite the UK government offering to take a one-third equity stake and provide debt financing.
But Hitachi has maintained a skeleton staff at Horizon and continued to pursue planning permission for Wylfa after the government launched a review into a “regulated asset base” funding model, which would see consumers pay upfront through their energy bills for a new plant and significantly reduce the construction risk for developers.
There has also been talk in the industry of the state taking majority stakes in nuclear schemes, which could enable developers such as Horizon to become contractors. A decision on Wylfa’s planning application is expected by the end of next month. ……….
the clock is also ticking for Horizon, which has to submit a business plan to its parent company by December before its funding expires early next year. It wants clarity from government on its nuclear strategy and a potential funding model by the autumn, when ministers had been expected to publish a delayed energy white paper and national infrastructure strategy.
If sufficient commitment isn’t forthcoming, Mr Hawthorne conceded it would be “easy” for Hitachi to “say we’re out of here” and sell the site, raising fears CGN could potentially move in. …….
Originally posted on Protect Water for Future Generations.: DEADLINE IS AUGUST 26, 2020.? NOTE: Updated with Items to Use for Comment The Dewey-Burdock uranium mining project in the southwestern Black Hills is trying to take a step forward. We have only a few weeks to generate and write comments on the latest effort to destroy…
Big German utilities now earn more money from renewables than they do from fossil fuels and nuclear, and their share prices are outperforming the overall market. The post German energy utilities now earn more money from renewables than fossil fuels appeared first on RenewEconomy.
Readers sound off on the costliness of nuclear power, By VOICE OF THE PEOPLE, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |AUG 15, 2020
Nuclear is not so cost-effective
Manhattan: Re “The inconvenient truth: We need nuclear” (op-ed, Aug. 10): Nothing is more expensive than nuclear power. Estimates for the cleanup of Japan’s 2011 Fukushima disaster range as high as $300 billion, albeit total removal of radioactivity from that land, and ocean, is impossible. In Japan, as everywhere, the costs of such disasters are born by the taxpayer, not the utility companies: There is no such thing as a $300 billion insurance policy.
The cost of creating nuclear-waste storage sites (we don’t know how to do that, so we don’t have any) will also be borne by the taxpayer. And, transporting nuclear waste from 95 reactors in 29 states to storage sites yields a high likelihood of spills. Today, the waste is stored at reactor sites, many of which show signs of leaking. Additionally, it is not possible to “shut down” nuclear reactors even after they have run their life spans. They remain a radioactive danger indefinitely, and will always require flawless maintenance of containment domes — assuming we design domes that can function indefinitely.
The Indian Point power plant, where numerous leaks and mechanical breakdowns have already occurred, is 36 miles from Midtown Manhattan. Since there is no way to evacuate NYC in the event of a serious accident, no such plan exists. Not to mention that Indian Point is already years past its original 40-year operating permit. The list of nuclear power’s unsolvable problems is much longer than this. Per capita, no country consumes and wastes more energy than the U.S. Let’s stop that. Ingrid Eisenstadter https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-letter-august-15-20200815-z5emj4x33zaclka7efi4et3mme-story.html
Politico 5th Aug 2020, U.S.-Russia relations are at a dangerous dead end that threatens the U.S.
national interest. The risk of a military confrontation that could go
nuclear is again real. We are drifting toward a fraught nuclear arms race,
with our foreign-policy arsenal reduced mainly to reactions, sanctions,
public shaming and congressional resolutions. The global Covid-19 pandemic
and the resulting serious worldwide economic decline, rather than fostering
cooperation, have only reinforced the current downward trajectory.
