Akademik Lomonosov — the first floating nuclear power stations – both a nuclear and a climate danger
‘It is not just a nuclear risk, but a climate risk’ https://www.downtoearth.org.in/interviews/climate-change/-it-is-not-just-a-nuclear-risk-but-a-climate-risk–66520
Jan Haverkamp, a nuclear expert of Greenpeace (Central and Eastern Europe), spoke to Down To Earth on about Akademik Lomonosov — the first floating nuclear power stations — in Russia
By Rajit Sengupta, 04 September 2019 Akademik Lomonosov is the first among a fleet of a dozen floating nuclear power stations to be used for fossil fuel exploration and exploitation in the Arctic. Jan Haverkamp, a nuclear expert of Greenpeace (Central and Eastern Europe), spoke to Down To Earth on how this project is not only about increasing nuclear risk, but also increasing climate change risks.
How safe is Akademik Lomonosov?
Unlike nuclear submarines, the Akademik Lomonosov is a barge without own propulsion, meaning it can only float (or sink) and not dive. It means that if the mooring is broken, the barge is steerless, adding considerable to the risk when compared to a submarine or an ice-breaker.
It can also not dive away from an iceberg or avoid sea-ice by going deep. For its operations, it will be partially dependent on a coastal electricity link, which will also be used for electricity intake in times of trouble. The cable is lot more vulnerable than that of an on-land reactor.
Accidents with naval reactors have happened in the past. In 1970, an uncontrolled start-up of the reactor of the nuclear submarine K-320, at the Krasnoye Sormovo wharf in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, caused the release of larger amounts of radioactivity. It led to 12 casualties and hundreds of people getting exposed to above-limit radiation doses.
An accident during fuel loading of the reactor of a nuclear submarine in Chazma Bay, in 1985, irradiated 290 workers leading to 10 casualties and 49 injured.
The radioactive content of the two reactors on board of the Akademik Lomonosov is around 25 times smaller than that of the Chernobyl nuclear power station, but is still considerable. A severe accident with bypass of the containment could cause substantial contamination kilometres downwind.
Will Akademik Lomonosov lead to further nuclearisation in Northern Sea Route?
The Akademik Lomonosov is a new step in the nuclearisation of the Arctic. The first was the introduction of nuclear submarines, followed by nuclear weapons, nuclear marine vessels, a few nuclear merchant ships and nuclear ice-breakers and the Bilibino nuclear power station, which is to be closed down soon.
Akademik Lomonosov is the first of a fleet of a dozen floating nuclear power stations that are to power ports to enable transport through the Northern Sea Route, and substantially increase fossil fuel exploration and exploitation in the Arctic. So it is not only about increasing nuclear risk, but also increasing climate change risks.
Russia plans to sell the technology to other countries including Sudan. Why are countries so interested in this technology?
The interest is much lower than what Rosatom (Russia’s state nuclear corporation) wants us to believe. Indonesia and Cabo Verde have already denied interest. I think Sudan, which was a military dictatorship a few months ago, is an exception.
Rosatom is making tall promises to sell the technology, which is unlikely to be fulfilled. It has promised financing, cheap or competitive electricity and waste management with little historical experience to back it up.
What has Russia benefitted from the project?
The Akademik Lomonosov is a symbol of the power-struggle between the old nuclear dinosaurs gathered in Rosatom and the upcoming and already much larger global clean renewable industry.
The Akademik Lomonosov is extremely expensive, certainly in comparison with viable renewable alternatives for Chukotka. Now nuclear power is being used to exploit more gas, oil and coal. Rosatom is a bad energy advisor for Russia and for foreign partners.
St. Lucie and Turkey Point nuclear power stations on alert for Hurricane Dorian
Hurricane warnings issued across Florida
- Closure to begin if hurricane-force winds predicted at sites
- State has two plants, St. Lucie and Turkey Point, owned by FPL
Florida’s two nuclear plants are ready to shut down if forecasts show hurricane-force winds hitting the facilities when Dorian finally moves on shore.
Both plants — St. Lucie, north of Palm Beach, and Turkey Point, south of Miami — sit on Florida’s Atlantic coast, and both lie within the possible path of the storm.
Their owner, NextEra Energy Inc.’s Florida Power & Light, has been preparing since Monday for the possibility of shutting down the plants, said spokesman Peter Robbins. It’s poised to do so once forecasts predict hurricane-force wind speeds at the sites, he said.
“We do it in advance,” Robbins said. “We don’t wait.”
Dorian’s path, however, remained uncertain enough Friday that FPL hadn’t yet made the decision to power down. “We’ve seen the path and intensity of the storm change a lot,” Robbins said. “Like most hurricanes, it’s got some tricks up its sleeve.”
The company, Florida’s largest utility, temporarily closed both facilities in 2017 as Hurricane Irma bore down on the state. Should FPL shut down the plants for Dorian, they would remain offline until the storm had passed and the facilities had been inspected, Robbins said. The company also would consult with local and federal officials before restarting operations.
“It’s a coordinated thing,” Robbins said. “We don’t make the decision by ourselves.”
Climate change is destabilising the Earth’s marine environment
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Oceans turning from friend to foe, warns landmark UN climate report, Phys Org, by Marlowe Hood, Patrick Galey 30 Aug 19, The same oceans that nourished human evolution are poised to unleash misery on a global scale unless the carbon pollution destabilising Earth’s marine environment is brought to heel, warns a draft UN report obtained by AFP. Destructive changes already set in motion could see a steady decline in fish stocks, a hundred-fold or more increase in the damages caused by superstorms, and hundreds of millions of people displaced by rising seas, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “special report” on oceans and Earth’s frozen zones, known as the cryosphere. As the 21st century unfolds, melting glaciers will first give too much and then too little to billions who depend on them for fresh water, it finds. Without deep cuts to manmade emissions, at least 30 percent of the northern hemisphere’s surface permafrost could melt by century’s end, unleashing billions of tonnes of carbon and accelerating global warming even more. The 900-page scientific assessment is the fourth such tome from the UN in less than a year, with others focused on a 1.5-Celsius (2.6-Farenheit) cap on global warming, the state of biodiversity, and how to manage forests and the global food system. All four conclude that humanity must overhaul the way it produces and consumes almost everything to avoid the worst ravages of climate change and environmental degradation. Governments meet in Monaco next month to vet the new report’s official summary. While the underlying science—drawn from thousands of peer-reviewed studies—cannot be modified, diplomats with scientists at their elbow will tussle over how to frame the findings, and what to leave in or out. The final advice to policymakers will be released on September 25, too late to be considered by world leaders gathering two days earlier for a summit convened by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to extract stronger national commitments in confronting the climate crisis. Guterres may be disappointed by what the world’s major greenhouse gas emitters put on the table, according to experts tracking climate politics in China, the United States, the European Union and India……….. 1,000-fold flood damage increase By 2050, many low-lying megacities and small island nations will experience “extreme sea level events” every year, even under the most optimistic emissions reduction scenarios, the report concludes. By 2100, “annual flood damages are expected to increase by two to three orders of magnitude,” or 100 to 1,000 fold, the draft summary for policymakers says. Even if the world manages to cap global warming at two degrees Celsius, the global ocean waterline will rise enough to displace more than a quarter of a billion people. The report indicated this could happen as soon as 2100, though some experts think it is more likely to happen on a longer timescale……… Marine heatwaves Oceans not only absorb a quarter of the CO2 we emit, they have also soaked up more than 90 percent of the additional heat generated by greenhouse gas emissions since 1970. Without this marine sponge, in other words, global warming would already have made Earth’s surface intolerably hot for our species. But these obliging gestures come at a cost: acidification is disrupting the ocean’s basic food chain, and marine heatwaves—which have become twice as frequent since the 1980s—are creating vast oxygen-depleted dead zones. In the Tasman Sea, for example, a 2015-16 heatwave lasted for 251 days, causing disease outbreaks and a die-off of farmed shellfish.https://phys.org/news/2019-08-oceans-friend-foe-landmark-climate.html |
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A freezing and deathly aftermath would follow a US-Russian nuclear war
 HERE’S WHAT WOULD FOLLOW US-RUSSIA NUCLEAR WAR https://www.futurity.org/nuclear-war-united-states-russia-2144632/ AUGUST 28TH, 2019 Indeed, death by famine would threaten nearly all of the Earth’s 7.7 billion people, says coauthor Alan Robock, a professor in the environmental sciences department in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.
The study in the Journal of Geophysical Research–Atmospheres provides more evidence to support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons the United Nations passed two years ago, Robock says. Twenty-five nations have ratified the treaty so far, not including the United States, and it would take effect when the number hits 50. Lead author Joshua Coupe, a doctoral student at Rutgers University, and other scientists used a modern climate model to simulate the climatic effects of an all-out nuclear war between the United States and Russia. Such a war could send 150 million tons of black smoke from fires in cities and industrial areas into the lower and upper atmosphere, where it could linger for months to years and block sunlight. The scientists used a new climate model from the National Center for Atmospheric Research with higher resolution and improved simulations compared with a NASA model used by a research team Robock led 12 years ago. The new model represents the Earth at many more locations and includes simulations of the growth of the smoke particles and ozone destruction from the heating of the atmosphere. Still, the climate response to a nuclear war from the new model was nearly identical to that from the NASA model. “This means that we have much more confidence in the climate response to a large-scale nuclear war,” Coupe says. “There really would be a nuclear winter with catastrophic consequences.” In both the new and old models, a nuclear winter occurs as soot (black carbon) in the upper atmosphere blocks sunlight and causes global average surface temperatures to plummet by more than 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Because a major nuclear war could erupt by accident or as a result of hacking, computer failure, or an unstable world leader, the only safe action that the world can take is to eliminate nuclear weapons, says Robock. Additional researchers from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and University of Colorado, Boulder contributed to the study. Source: Rutgers University |
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’12 Years to Act on Climate Change’ – what does this really mean?
What Does ’12 Years to Act on Climate Change’ (Now 11 Years) Really Mean? https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27082019/12-years-climate-change-explained-ipcc-science-solutionsIt doesn’t mean the world can wait until 2030 to cut greenhouse gas emissions, or that chaos will erupt in 2030. Here’s what the science shows., BY BOB BERWYN, INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS, AUG 27,2019We’ve been hearing variations of the phrase “the world only has 12 years to deal with climate change” a lot lately.Sen. Bernie Sanders put a version of it front and center of his presidential campaign last week, saying we now have “less than 11 years left to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy, if we are going to leave this planet healthy and habitable.”
But where does the idea of having 11 or 12 years come from, and what does it actually mean?
The number began drawing attention in 2018, when the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report describing what it would take to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, a goal of the Paris climate agreement. The report explained that countries would have to cut their anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, such as from power plants and vehicles, to net zero by around 2050. To reach that goal, it said, CO2 emissions would have to start dropping “well before 2030” and be on a path to fall by about 45 percent by around 2030 (12 years away at that time).
Mid-century is actually the more significant target date in the report, but acting now is crucial to being able to meet that goal, said Duke University climate researcher Drew Shindell, a lead author on the mitigation chapter of the IPCC report.
We need to get the world on a path to net zero CO2 emissions by mid-century,” Shindell said. “That’s a huge transformation, so that if we don’t make a good start on it during the 2020s, we won’t be able to get there at a reasonable cost.”
How Do Scientists Know?
Basics physics and climate science allow scientists to calculate how much CO2 it takes to raise the global temperature—and how much CO2 can still be emitted before global warming exceeds 1.5°C (2.7°F) compared to pre-industrial times.
Scientists worked backward from that basic knowledge to come up with timelines for what would have to happen to stay under 1.5°C warming, said Scott Denning, who studies the warming atmosphere at Colorado State University.
“They figured out how much extra heat we can stand. They calculated how much CO2 would produce that much heat, then how much total fuel would produce that much CO2. Then they considered ‘glide paths’ for getting emissions to zero before we burn too much carbon to avoid catastrophe,” he said.
“All this work gets summarized as ‘in order to avoid really bad outcomes, we have to be on a realistic glide path toward a carbon-free global economy by 2030.’ And that gets translated to something like ’emissions have to fall by half in a decade,’ and that gets oversimplified to ’12 years left.’
“There’s certainly a grain of truth in the phrase, but it’s so oversimplified that it leads to comically bad misconceptions about how to get there, conjuring up ridiculous cartoon imagery suggesting we just go on with life normally for the next 11 years and then the world ends,” Denning said.
That’s not what the IPCC writers envisioned, he said.
The science on the 2030 date is clear, said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University. The controversy stems from people mischaracterizing the carbon reduction timeline as a threshold for climate disaster. He noted that people promoting climate science denial and delay have also latched on to the phrase “to intentionally try to caricature the concern about climate change.”
What Would Success Look Like?
It would be helpful if people looked at the 2030 target in terms of what success looks like rather than what failure means, Denning said.
“Solving the problem by 2030, 2040 or 2050 requires a new global energy infrastructure, which is arguably easier and less expensive than past infrastructure shifts like indoor plumbing, rural electrification, the automobile and paved roads, telecommunications, computers, mobile phones or the internet.
“All of these past changes cost tens of trillions of dollars, adjusted for inflation. All of them were hugely disruptive. All of them took a decade or more, completely changed the industrial and economic and social landscape, and created bursts of growth and productivity and jobs. And arguably, all of them made life better for huge numbers of people.”
This time, the shift is from heavy reliance on carbon-emitting fossil fuels to carbon-free energy sources, like wind power. And even with a speedy energy transition, the IPCC says keeping temperatures from warming more than 1.5°C will also likely require removing CO2 from the atmosphere on a large scale.
Missing the target doesn’t imply the onset of cataclysmic climate change in 2030, Denning said.
“Things just keep getting worse and worse until we stop making them worse, and then they never get better,” he said. “But no matter what, the world has to move on from fossil fuels just as we moved on from tallow candles and outhouses and land lines.”
What Would Exceeding 1.5°C Warming Mean?
The IPCC report described how increasing greenhouse gas emissions will result in more dangerous and costly disruptions to global societies and ecosystems, including longer, hotter heat waves and more frequent crop-killing droughts.
Mountain glaciers will melt faster as the planet warms, creating new risks for settlements in the valleys below. The meltdown of polar ice sheets is also projected to accelerate, intensifying flooding and speeding up sea level rise to a rate that will be hard to adapt to. More Arctic permafrost will thaw, releasing more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
Despite the rising risks, it’s important to understand that, “in the physical climate system, there are no scientists claiming that there is a magical threshold that we breach or don’t breach that determines whether we have a habitable climate system,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Center for Climate and Weather Extremes.
The 2030 target is useful because it shows how the “next decade is incredibly consequential for what we do.” Swain said. “But I think the emphasis that’s being placed on this specific 12-year window as a differentiator between existential crisis or not is problematic.
“First of all, it negates some of the risks that already exist and that will continue to build no matter what. And it also potentially suggests that anything short of complete victory in the next 12 years is pointless, which is exactly the opposite of the truth. At any point along the spectrum, more progress is always going to be better than less progress, less warming is always going to be better than more warming.”
Have We Passed Tipping Points Already?
In some ways, the “12 years” narrative may set up a deadline that’s too lenient, because some key part of the climate system may already be at or past tipping points, Swain said.
It creates the false illusion that there is some sort of guardrail moving forward, that if we just get in under the deadline we’ll be OK, he said. But “twelve years from now, it could be too late for some of these things, like the ice sheets.”
Research in the past few years reinforces the idea that some climate tipping points have already been breached. Studies show some parts of the Greenland Ice Sheet are unlikely to recover, and parts of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may also be at or very near a tipping point to rapid disintegration.
A study published in June suggested that the rate of permafrost thawing is progressing much faster than climate models projected. And scientists studying the link between global warming and European heat waves said those recent extremes are also outside the scope of what they expected at current levels of warming.
The world will still exist if we breach 1.5°C and 2°C, but “the climate impacts and risks will be higher and the temperature will be higher,” said Glen Peters, research director at the CICERO climate research center in Oslo. That all seems to be sinking in to public awareness, he said.
“But in terms of deadlines, we have already missed the deadline,” he said. “We should have started mitigating decades ago, then we would have the problem solved.”
International calls for urgent action on climate, as new fires rage in Amazon forests
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As New Fires Rage in Amazon, Global Calls for Urgent Action to Avert ‘Astronomical’ Impacts to ‘Life on Earth’, Pope Francis urges protection of “that lung of forests” and French President Macron says G7 nations pledged help at summit August 25, 2019 by Common Dreams by Andrea Germanos, staff writer The military operations involving C-130 aircraft to put out fires came after Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro triggered global protests over his government’s policies and failure to take swift action to combat the flames. Official data released Saturday backs up the call for swift action. Agence France-Presse reported, “Some 1,130 new fires were ignited between Friday and Saturday, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE).” So far this year, the country has witnessed 79,513 fires, more than half of which occurred in the Amazon, according to the agency. That marks an 82 percent increase from 2018. The fires were discussed by global leaders meeting in Biarritz, France for the G7 summit. French President Emmanuel Macron said Sunday, “We are all agreed on helping those countries which have been hit by the fires as fast as possible.” “Our teams are making contact with all the Amazon countries so we can finalize some very concrete commitments involving technical resources and funding,” said Macron. The French leader and Bolsonaro last week sparred on Twitter over the fires. “Our house is burning. Literally. The Amazon rain forest—the lungs which produces 20 percent of our planet’s oxygen—is on fire,” tweeted Macron. Bolsonaro then accused Macron of using the fires “for personal political gains” and said the French president had a “sensationalist tone.” Pope Francis on Sunday added his voice to the chorus of concern. “We are all worried about the vast fires that have developed in the Amazon,” he said, speaking to the public in St Peter’s Square. “That lung of forests,” the pontiff added, “is vital for our planet.” Bolsonaro—who previously asserted there weren’t resources to battle the fires—has baselessly suggested the fires could have been started by NGOs upset with his policies. But environmental campaigners say his policies promoting deforestation and other manifestations of Amazon exploitation are the main culprits…….. As conservation group WWF said in a tweet Friday, further loss and destruction of this key carbon sink and biodiversity hotspot will affect us all. “If this vital ecosystem continues to burn,” said WWF, “the implications for life on Earth will be astronomical.”https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/25/new-fires-rage-amazon-global-calls-urgent-action-avert-astronomical-impacts-life |
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Trump on climate change- USA companies’ profits more important. He is expert on environment
Trump’s climate session no-show, ABC News, 27 Aug 19
A $US20 million ($29.5 million) pledge to battle wildfires raging across the Amazon is being seen as one of the few solid agreements to come out of the meeting — but it appears to have come about with little input from Mr Trump.
“The President had scheduled meetings and bilaterals with Germany and India, so a senior member of the administration attended in his stead,” press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
CNN and the Guardian reported Mr Trump appeared to be unaware of when the climate session would be held when asked by reporters. He thought it had not happened yet…..
The US president up-ended last year’s G7 summit in Canada, walking out of the meeting early and disassociating himself from the final communique having initially endorsed the document. …..
World leaders’ closing remarks
US President Donald Trump: …….
- On climate change: “We are the number one energy producer in the world. It is tremendous wealth — I am not going to lose that wealth on dreams, on windmills, which frankly are not working that well.”
- “I want the cleanest water on Earth, I want the cleanest air on Earth … I think I know more about the environment than most people.” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-27/trump-ready-to-meet-irans-president-to-solve-nuclear-impasse-g7/11451490
Donald Trump’s idea – use nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States
https://amp.axios.com/trump-nuclear-bombs-hurricanes-97231f38-2394-4120-a3fa-8c9cf0e3f51c.html
Jonathan Swan, Margaret Talev, 26 Aug 19, President Trump has suggested multiple times to senior Homeland Security and national security officials that they explore using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States, according to sources who have heard the president’s private remarks and been briefed on a National Security Council memorandum that recorded those comments.
Behind the scenes: During one hurricane briefing at the White House, Trump said, “I got it. I got it. Why don’t we nuke them?” according to one source who was there. “They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they’re moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can’t we do that?” the source added, paraphrasing the president’s remarks.
Asked how the briefer reacted, the source recalled he said something to the effect of, “Sir, we’ll look into that.”
Trump replied by asking incredulously how many hurricanes the U.S. could handle and reiterating his suggestion that the government intervene before they make landfall.
The briefer “was knocked back on his heels,” the source in the room added. “You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting. People were astonished. After the meeting ended, we thought, ‘What the f—? What do we do with this?'”
Trump also raised the idea in another conversation with a senior administration official. A 2017 NSC memo describes that second conversation, in which Trump asked whether the administration should bomb hurricanes to stop them from hitting the homeland. A source briefed on the NSC memo said it does not contain the word “nuclear”; it just says the president talked about bombing hurricanes.
The source added that this NSC memo captured “multiple topics, not just hurricanes. … It wasn’t that somebody was so terrified of the bombing idea that they wrote it down. They just captured the president’s comments.”
The sources said that Trump’s “bomb the hurricanes” idea — which he floated early in the first year and a bit of his presidency before John Bolton took over as national security adviser — went nowhere and never entered a formal policy process.
White House response: A senior administration official said, “We don’t comment on private discussions that the president may or may not have had with his national security team.”
A different senior administration official, who has been briefed on the president’s hurricane bombing suggestion, defended Trump’s idea and said it was no cause for alarm. “His goal — to keep a catastrophic hurricane from hitting the mainland — is not bad,” the official said. “His objective is not bad.”
“What people near the president do is they say ‘I love a president who asks questions like that, who’s willing to ask tough questions.’ … It takes strong people to respond to him in the right way when stuff like this comes up. For me, alarm bells weren’t going off when I heard about it, but I did think somebody is going to use this to feed into ‘the president is crazy’ narrative.”
Trump called this story “ridiculous” in a Monday tweet from the G7 summit. He added, “I never said this. Just more FAKE NEWS!”
The big picture: Trump didn’t invent this idea. The notion that detonating a nuclear bomb over the eye of a hurricane could be used to counteract convection currents dates to the Eisenhower era, when it was floated by a government scientist.
The idea keeps resurfacing in the public even though scientists agree it won’t work. The myth has been so persistent that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. government agency that predicts changes in weather and the oceans, published an online fact sheet for the public under the heading “Tropical Cyclone Myths Page.”
The page states: “Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.”
About 3 weeks after Trump’s 2016 election, National Geographic published an article titled, “Nuking Hurricanes: The Surprising History of a Really Bad Idea.” It found, among other problems, that:
Dropping a nuclear bomb into a hurricane would be banned under the terms of the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. So that could stave off any experiments, as long as the U.S. observes the terms of the treaty.
Atlantic hurricane season runs until Nov. 30.
Long history of misguided suggestions to nuclear bomb hurricanes
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The idea has evidently surfaced multiple times in the administration, as Swan outlined, including during a hurricane preparedness briefings at the White House. “I got it. I got it. Why don’t we nuke them?” the president evidently interrupted, according to Swan’s source. “They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they’re moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can’t we do that?” Even in a White House system engineered to respond quickly and authoritatively to a president’s whims, questions, or orders, no one knew what to do with an idea so obviously batty. As one source reportedly told Swan, “You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting. People were astonished. After the meeting ended, we thought, ‘What the f—? What do we do with this?’” (Trump denied the reports in a tweet Monday.) The truth, though, is that Donald Trump’s apparent brainstorm—as terrible an idea as it is—actually has a long history. Seventy years ago, it was at the forefront of American scientific thought. What makes Trump’s embrace of nuking hurricanes unique is that, broadly speaking, no policymaker has seriously considered it a good idea since the days that the 73-year-old president was wearing diapers. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—when the US unleashed a destructive technology more powerful than anything in history—at first spurred unbridled excitement over the power of the atom…… Engineers dreamed of the day when nuclear engines would replace gasoline-powered automobiles, when a lump of Uranium-235 the size of a vitamin pill would power the family car for years at a time. In those heady early years of the atomic age, many scientists imagined a world where humans could routinely use nuclear weapons to cleave the earth and remake its climate. Decades before climate change became a major concern, one book, Almighty Atom: The Real Story of Atomic Energy, suggested using atomic weapons to melt the polar ice caps, gifting “the entire world a moister, warmer climate.” Thought experiments exploded over how harnessing the power of the atom would finally unleash humans’ ability to control and reshape their environment through geo-engineering. “For the first time in the history of the world, man will have at his disposal energy in amounts sufficient to cope with the forces of Mother Nature,” ……. One of the first tourist attractions in Las Vegas was the chance to wake up early, stand outside your hotel, and watch the flash and mushroom cloud from the bombs rolling into the sky. The after-effects of radiation—the invisible and inescapable poison spread by nuclear explosions—became clear soon enough. With that awareness, early atomic enthusiasm waned, particularly as bombs leapt from nuclear to thermonuclear, the atomic bomb’s power of kilotons—that is, a thousand tons of TNT—growing to the hydrogen bomb’s megatons, the equivalent of a million tons of TNT….. nuking hurricanes entered the conversation. According to International Spy Museum historian Vince Houghton, whose book Nuking the Moon details wacky military and intelligence schemes, an American meteorologist named Jack Reed, one of the nation’s earliest hurricane hunters, appears to be the first to seriously consider bombing a hurricane. His calculations held that maybe one or two 20-megaton bombs might be able to deflect a hurricane from land. He called for a test of the theory, but found it embraced by precisely zero policymakers …. Reed’s idea would actually now be prohibited under international law by the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty. Yet the appeal of nuking hurricanes has never really gone away. The issue is such a MacGuffin that NOAA has dedicated a webpage to debunking it: “During each hurricane season, there always appear suggestions that one should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms,” the weather service writes. “Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.” The idea has enough staying power that the meteorologists at NOAA even took on the underlying science, pointing out that there’s little evidence that even a successfully placed atomic bomb would do anything to alter a hurricane’s formation —the systems are simply too large, too strong, and most of all, a nuclear explosion wouldn’t affect the underlying dynamics, …… Even for Donald Trump, launching 80 nukes a year seems extreme https://www.wired.com/story/nuking-hurricanes-polar-ice-caps-climate-change/ |
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Nuking a Hurricane Would Probably Just Create a Slightly Bigger, Radioactive Hurricane
Nuking a Hurricane Would Probably Just Create a Slightly Bigger, Radioactive Hurricane https://www.livescience.com/trump-hurricane-nuclear-bomb.html By 26 Aug 19, o Planet Earth
Has Trump been reading old Live Science articles about nuking hurricanes? And if not, should he be?
President Donald Trump wants to nuke hurricanes into submission before they reach the Atlantic coastline, according to a bizarre article published yesterday (Aug. 25) on Axios. “Why can’t we do that?” he reportedly asked. This raises an important question: Has Trump been reading old Live Science articles? And if not, should he be?
Live Science answered this very question in a 2012 article.
“The theory goes that the energy released by a nuclear bomb detonated just above and ahead of the eye of a storm would heat the cooler air there, disrupting the storm’s convection current,” Rachel Kaufman wrote at the time. “Unfortunately, this idea, which has been around in some form since the 1960s, wouldn’t work.”
The problem is the energy involved, Kaufman reported, citing writing by Chris Landsea, a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research meteorologist.
A hurricane is essentially a powerful, super-efficient country-size engine for pulling heat out of the ocean and releasing it into the atmosphere. As a hurricane’s low-pressure system moves over warm water, that water evaporates and then condenses as droplets in the atmosphere. As the water condenses, it releases the heat it’s carrying into the surrounding air. About 1% of that heat energy gets converted into wind; the rest sticks around as ambient warmth, according to the article.
A hurricane can release 50 terawatts of heat energy at any given moment — a significantly greater output than the entire power system, and comparable to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb detonating every 20 minutes. Trying to stop a hurricane with a nuke would be “about as effective as trying to stop a speeding Buick with a feather,” Kaufman wrote, and might even add energy to the storm
Stopping a smaller tropical depression with a nuke might be more realistic, but there are just too many of them and no good way to tell which will develop into powerful, landfalling hurricanes.
“Finally, whether the bomb would have a minor positive effect, a negative effect, or none at all on the storm’s convection cycle, one thing is for sure: It would create a radioactive hurricane, which would be even worse than a normal one. The fallout would ride Trade Winds to land — arguably a worse outcome than a landfalling hurricane,” Kaufman wrote.
The best way to avoid the destruction of a hurricane, remains a boring one: prepare. In case that’s the route you want to go, how to prepare for a hurricane.
New fires – hundreds – in Amazon rainforests
Amazon rainforest burning at record rate
Leaders of the world’s major industrialised nations are close to an agreement on how to help fight the Amazon forest fires and try to repair the devastation.
French President Emmanuel Macron said the G7 countries comprising the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Britain and Canada, were finalising a possible deal on “technical and financial help”.
“There’s a real convergence to say: ‘let’s all agree to help those countries hit by these fires’,” he told reporters in Biarritz on Sunday.
Macron shunted the Amazon fires to the top of the summit agenda after declaring them a global emergency, and kicked off discussions about the disaster at a welcome dinner for fellow leaders on Saturday.
An EU official, who declined to be named, said the G7 leaders had agreed to do everything they could to help tackle the fires, giving Macron a mandate to contact all the countries in the Amazon region to see what was needed.
“It was the easiest part of the talks,” the official said.
A record number of fires are ravaging the rainforest, many of them in Brazil, drawing international concern because of the Amazon’s importance to the global environment……. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/hundreds-of-new-fires-rage-in-the-amazon-as-g7-leaders-offer-assistance
The Green New Deal – Bernie Fraser
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The Green New Deal, The climate crisis is not only the single greatest challenge facing our country; it is also our single greatest opportunity to build a more just and equitable future, but we must act immediately. Bernie Fraser, Climate change is a global emergency. The Amazon rainforest is burning, Greenland’s ice shelf is melting, and the Arctic is on fire. People across the country and the world are already experiencing the deadly consequences of our climate crisis, as extreme weather events like heat waves, wildfires, droughts, floods, and hurricanes upend entire communities, ecosystems, economies, and ways of life, as well as endanger millions of lives. Communities of color, working class people, and the global poor have borne and will bear this burden disproportionately. The scientific community is telling us in no uncertain terms that we have less than 11 years left to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy, if we are going to leave this planet healthy and habitable for ourselves, our children, grandchildren, and future generations. As rising temperatures and extreme weather create health emergencies, drive land loss and displacement, destroy jobs, and threaten livelihoods, we must guarantee health care, housing, and a good-paying job to every American, especially to those who have been historically excluded from economic prosperity. As President, Bernie Sanders Will Avert Climate Catastrophe and Create 20 Million JobsAs president, Bernie Sanders will launch the decade of the Green New Deal, a ten-year, nationwide mobilization centered around justice and equity during which climate change will be factored into virtually every area of policy, from immigration to trade to foreign policy and beyond. This plan outlines some of the most significant goals we have set and steps we will take during this mobilization, including:
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MEDIA MATTERS finds that mainstream news is practically ignoring Amazon fires
The Notre Dame fire garnered wall-to-wall cable news coverage. The Amazon fires are barely breaking through. https://www.mediamatters.org/msnbc/notre-dame-fire-garnered-wall-wall-cable-news-coverage-amazon-fires-are-barely-breaking LIS POWER 23 Aug 19
The current fires raging in the Amazon aren’t garnering anywhere near the same level of coverage on cable news, despite the effects the wildfires will have on the global environment.
As noted in The Washington Post, the Amazon “serves as the lungs of the planet by taking in carbon dioxide,” and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service is warning that “the fires have led to a clear spike in carbon monoxide emissions as well as planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions, posing a threat to human health and aggravating global warming.”
Despite the serious implications, the Amazon fires haven’t gotten even close to the amount of coverage Notre Dame’s fire received. So far, coverage has peaked at 11 segments that mention the fires per day on cable news networks combined — as opposed to around 150 segments a day that mentioned the cathedral fire during the peak of Notre Dame coverage — according to Media Matters’ internal database. Additionally, the coverage has often come via short headline reads or passing mentions rather than thorough, in-depth analysis about the events and global consequences.
The disparity in coverage is glaring and raises serious questions about cable news priorities when it comes to covering our environment.
Media Matters’ internal database includes weekday cable news programming on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC between the hours of 6 a.m. and midnight. Segments are coded in near-real time by analysts for pertinent information. We searched our database for segments during the week of April 15 that included “Notre Dame” in the segment notes and segments during the week of August 18 that included “Amazon” in the segment notes.
The awful dilemma for the world’s climate scientists
The Amazon fires and the dilemma for climate scientists, https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/the-amazon-fires-and-the-dilemma-for-climate-scientists-20190825-p52kiq.html, By Andrew Glikson
They tend not to gloat, however, about the tragedy that confronts us all.
Brazil alone has had 72,843 fires this year. The pace of global warming is exceeding projections, astounding climate scientists. Within the past 70 years or so major shifts in climate zones and an accelerating spate of extreme weather events—cyclones, floods, droughts, heat waves and fires— is ravaging large tracts of Earth.
Scientists Jos Barlow and Alexander C. Lees write in The Conversation that “climate change itself is making dry seasons longer and forests more flammable. Increased temperatures are also resulting in more frequent tropical forest fires in non-drought years. And climate change may also be driving the increasing frequency and intensity of climate anomalies, such as El Niño events that affect fire season intensity across Amazonia.”
And yet the human causes of climate change remain subject to extensively propagated denial and untruths, despite their foundation in the basic laws of physics and the empirical observations of global research bodies such as NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the World Meteorological Organisation, and our own CSIRO.
Climate scientists find themselves in a quandary similar to medical doctors who need to break the news of a grave diagnosis. How do they tell people that the current spate of cyclones, devastating islands from the Caribbean to the Philippines, or the flooding of coastal regions and river valleys from Mozambique to Kerala, Pakistan and Townsville, can only intensify in a rapidly warming world?
How do scientists tell the people that their children are growing into a world where survival under a mean temperatures 2C above pre-industrial levels may be painful, and in some parts of the world impossible, let alone under 4C rise projected by the IPCC?
The Cassandra syndrome is alive and well. (Apollo gave Cassandra the gift of prophecy but, humiliated by her unrequited love, he also placed a curse on her, ensuring no one would believe her warnings.)
Throughout history, messengers of bad news have been rebuked or worse. Nowadays, many scientists are reticent to publish their climate change projections. Given the daunting scenarios they confront, many find it difficult to talk about it, even among friends and family.
Atmospheric levels of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide have reached a combined level of almost 500 parts per million, intersecting the melting threshold of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets and heralding a fundamental shift in the state of the terrestrial climate.
As fires consume large parts of the land, it would appear parliaments – including Australia’s – are preoccupied with economics and international conflicts while they hardly regard the future of civilisation as a priority.
Dr Andrew Glikson is an earth and climate scientist at the Australian National University.
Life on Earth threatened by climate change – loss of Amazon Forests
ONE OF the easiest ways to combat climate change is to stop tearing down old trees. This is why it is everyone’s problem that new Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro seems determined to chop away at the Amazon rainforest, the world’s greatest reserve of old-growth forest.
According to a recent analysis in the New York Times, “enforcement actions by Brazil’s main environmental agency fell by 20 percent during the first six months of the year, compared with the same period in 2018.” Fines, warnings and the elimination of illegal equipment from preservation zones are among the measures Brazil’s authorities are doing less often. “The drop means that vast stretches of the rain forest can be torn down with less resistance from the nation’s authorities.” The result has been a loss of 1,330 square miles of rainforest since January, a loss rate that is some 40 percent higher than a year previous, according to Brazilian government records.
Mr. Bolsonaro has called his own government’s information “lies,” stripped the environment ministry of authorities and slashed the environmental budget. When eight former environment ministers protested in May, current environment minister Ricardo Salles allegedthat there is a “permanent and well-orchestrated defamation campaign by [nongovernmental organizations] and supposed experts, within and outside of Brazil.”
In its reality denial, Mr. Bolsonaro’s brand of right-wing populism closely resembles that of President Trump. Both leaders stoke unfounded suspicions that environmental concerns represent foreign plots to undermine the domestic economy. Both are committed to breakneck resource extraction while dismissing expert warnings. And both lead nations with special responsibilities in the global fight against climate change. Global warming cannot be successfully addressed without the engagement of the United States, the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases and erstwhile leader. The Brazilian Amazon, meanwhile, is a unique natural treasure, its abundance of plant life inhaling and storing loads of planet-warming carbon dioxide day and night. Without “the world’s lungs,” life on the planet is doomed.
Earlier this month, the journal Science published a paper finding that, if world leaders made reforestation a priority, the planet’s ecosystems could accommodate massive numbers of new trees — perhaps hundreds of billions more. True, reforestation advocates would no doubt have to compete with those who would use land for other purposes, particularly as the world population increases. Even so, the paper’s authors note, their work “highlights global tree restoration as our most effective climate change solution to date.”
This is not to say that the fight against global warming is as easy as planting a few, or even billions, of trees, if such a thing were politically or logistically feasible. As long as humans depend on carbon-emitting sources of fuel for energy, the atmosphere’s chemistry will continue to change and the climate will be in peril. But it does suggest that leaders such as Mr. Bolsonaro, who are leading in the opposite direction, can do particularly extreme damage to the effort to restrain climate change.
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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