Climate change and the great disruption, Press Republican 5 Nov 17 RAY JOHNSON Climate Science “…… The pie chart from the Environmental Protection Agency website titled “Total U.S. Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions by Economic Sector in 2015” indicates that “Electricity” generation accounts for 29 percent of the total while “Transportation” is not far behind at 27 percent.
Let’s concentrate on one portion of the U.S. GHG emissions: “Electricity.”
A reduction in GHG emissions here will greatly help in addressing climate change. Technology disruption can be observed in the graph “Swanson’s Law.” It’s based on an observation by Richard Swanson, “that the price of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules tends to drop 20 percent for every doubling of cumulative shipped volume” (Wikipedia). The log-log graph shows the cost reduction for the price of crystalline silicon PV cells in $/watt. In 1977 the cost was $76.67/watt, and by 2014 the price had dropped to $0.36/watt.
Thus the cost is more than 200 times lower than in 1977 (based on 2014 data). This graph is also called “the learning rate.”
Module costs have dropped in half since 2008. The implication is that if one made a business decision in 2008 to proceed with a nuclear or fossil-fuel-burning generating plant based on the cost of PV modules at that time, that business plan may have to be scrapped today due to the rapidly falling PV costs. It would not be economical.
And, this is exactly what is happening around the world. Hundreds of coal-burning plants are being retired, mothballed and/or construction stopped, with China taking the major initiative.
The bar chart “Global Solar Energy Capacity (GW)” details this extraordinary PV growth. It highlights the gigawatts of PV capacity and its near exponential growth in the last 15 years. Separately, for the U.S. alone, this trend indicates that solar could contribute 20 percent of total electricity consumption by 2030.
This growth in solar will reduce coal mining, number of coal-burning plants, nuclear power facilities and even oil sand extraction and drilling in locations that are expensive (deep water, difficult locations — Arctic) and so on.
And we have not even discussed the impact of wind turbine technology yet. Next time.
Meanwhile, our planet continues to warm. The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration bar chart shows that warming trend with the first nine months of 2017 among the top three warmest in the 137-year climate record.
Donald Trump accused of obstructing satellite research into climate change https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/nov/05/donald-trump-accused-blocking-satellite-climate-change-research Republican-controlled Congress ordered destruction of vital sea-ice probe, Guardian, Robin McKie, 6 Nov 17, President Trump has been accused of deliberately obstructing research on global warming after it emerged that a critically important technique for investigating sea-ice cover at the poles faces being blocked.
The row has erupted after a key polar satellite broke down a few days ago, leaving the US with only three ageing ones, each operating long past their shelf lives, to measure the Arctic’s dwindling ice cap. Scientists say there is no chance a new one can now be launched until 2023 or later. None of the current satellites will still be in operation then.
The crisis has been worsened because the US Congress this year insisted that a backup sea-ice probe had to be dismantled because it did not want to provide funds to keep it in storage. Congress is currently under the control of Republicans, who are antagonistic to climate science and the study of global warming.
“This is like throwing away the medical records of a sick patient,” said David Gallaher of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. “Our world is ailing and we have apparently decided to undermine, quite deliberately, the effectiveness of the records on which its recovery might be based. It is criminal.”
The threat to the US sea-ice monitoring programme – which supplies data to scientists around the world – will trigger further accusations at this week’s international climate talks in Bonn that the Trump administration is trying to block studies of global warming for ideological reasons.
Earth’s sea ice has shrunk dramatically – particularly in the Arctic – in recent years as rising emissions of greenhouse gases have warmed the planet. Satellites have been vital in assessing this loss, thanks mainly to America’s Defence Meteorological Satellite Programme (DMSP), which has overseen the construction of eight F-series satellites that use microwaves sensors to monitor sea-ice coverage. These probes, which have lifespans of three to five years, have shown that millions of square kilometres of sea ice have disappeared from the Arctic over the past 20 years, allowing less solar energy to be reflected back into space – and so further increasing global temperatures – while also disrupting Inuit life and wildlife in the region.
At present three ageing satellites – DMSP F16, F17 and F18 – remain in operation, though they are all beginning to drift out of their orbits over the poles. The latest satellite in the series, F19, began to suffer sensor malfunctions last year and finally broke down a few weeks ago. It should have been replaced with the F20 probe, which had already been built and was being kept in storage by the US Air Force. However it had to be destroyed, on the orders of the US Congress, on the grounds that its storage was too costly.
Many scientists say this decision was made for purely ideological reasons. They also warn that many other projects for monitoring climate change, including several satellite missions, face similar threats from the Trump administration and Congress.
Such losses have serious consequences, say researchers. “Sea-ice data provided by satellites is essential for initiating climate models and validating them,” said Andrew Fleming of the British Antarctic Survey. “We will be very much the poorer without that information.”
After all, the spent fuel is located in what many say is the most vulnerable site imaginable — about 100 feet from the Pacific Ocean, next to one of the most heavily traveled freeways in the country (Interstate 5), in an area with a history of seismic activity and within a 50-mile radius of where 8.4 million people live.
But often overlooked is what will eventually happen to the land where the plant currently sits, which is carved out of an 85-acre chunk of Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, owned by the U.S. Navy.
Back in 1964, an easement was issued by the Department of the Navy to Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric to construct SONGS.
About one-third of the waste at SONGS is sitting in what is called “dry cask storage.” The remaining two-thirds are in “wet storage,” where the assemblies are being cooled. Dry storage is considered safer than wet storage.
Starting next month, workers at SONGS will begin the slow process of transferring the fuel assemblies in wet storage to a dry cask storage site that recently wrapped up construction.
By Itai Vardi • Tuesday, October 31, 2017Kathleen Hartnett White, President Trump’s nominee to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), has recently made money from both leases on oil drilling and speaking fees at conferences sponsored by the fossil fuel industry. These new details come from Hartnett White’s financial disclosure, obtained by DeSmog.
If her nomination is confirmed, Hartnett White will be charged with interagency coordination of science, energy, and environmental policy and with overseeing crucial environmental review processes for new energy and infrastructure projects. The CEQ, a division of the Executive Office of the President, was established in 1969 as part of the landmark National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
Hartnett White also enjoyed income from an interest in four oil leases — two in Texas and two in Kansas. These rigs were operated by Central Crude, Linn Operating, CHS Operating, and CVR Refining. Hartnett White indicated in her disclosure that she recently gifted these interests to her nephew.
Additionally, she reported royalties from her co-authored book Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy, a text that copiously celebrates fossil fuels as the “lifeblood of the modern world.”
Other sources of reported income include a dog breeding business, co-owned with her husband, Beau Brite White.
Derek Seidman, a research analyst at the Public Accountability Initiative, a nonpartisan watchdog research group focused on corporate and government accountability, says that Hartnett-White’s recent earnings from fossil fuel interests is cause for concern.
“It’s unsettling to learn about the close ties that White has to the very interests and entities that she’s been tasked to oversee at the CEQ,” says Seidman, who has reviewed the financial disclosure. “Her cozy relationship with the oil and gas drilling industry is particularly troubling. These types of conflicts undermine public trust in regulatory institutions and open the door to all kinds of potential problems and abuses.”
Kathleen Hartnett-White did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Texas Public Policy Foundation said that she is not available for interviews.
Stanford professor sues critics of his 100% renewables article, Washington Post, By Chris MooneyNovember 1 2017, Mark Z. Jacobson, a Stanford University professor who has prominently contended that the United States can fully power itself with wind, water and solar energy, is suing the National Academy of Sciences and the lead author of a study published in its flagship journal that criticized Jacobson’s views — pushing an already bitter academic dispute into a courtroom setting.
The suit, which asks for more than $10 million in damages and retraction of the study, charges that lead author Christopher Clack “knew and was informed prior to publication that many of the statements in the [paper] were false.” It adds that the NAS “knowingly and intentionally published false statements of fact” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences despite being aware of Jacobson’s complaints.
Jacobson declined to comment on Wednesday, and William Kearney, a spokesman for the academy, said it does not comment on pending litigation……..
Clack’s study had 21 authors, but Jacobson’s lawsuit only names him and the academy. The other authors include a number of high-profile academic names in energy and climate change research and policy — a list that Jacobson charges magnified the impact of the article in the media and thus the damage to his reputation.
“We stand behind the paper, and we think this is a scientific issue that needs to be debated by scientists and not in the courts,” said one co-author, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing litigation.
The suit was filed in late September in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.
The dispute turns on Jacobson’s idea, itself published in the PNAS and other journals, that it is feasible to construct a grid for the entire country that would be powered entirely by wind, solar and water energy (hydropower), with additional help from forms of energy storage. “No natural gas, biofuels, nuclear power, or stationary batteries are needed,” Jacobson and his colleagues wrote in 2015.
This idea of “100 percent clean energy” has been embraced by many environmental and climate change advocates, including actor Mark Ruffalo and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). And no wonder, for it presents a highly ambitious and optimistic outlook on how the current transition toward clean energy — which would be central to stopping climate change — could continue to develop.
But Clack argued in PNAS earlier this year that Jacobson’s idea was not only infeasible but also that his work used “invalid modeling tools, contained modeling errors, and made implausible and inadequately supported assumptions.” He and his co-authors said the transition toward cleaner energy will require “a broad portfolio of energy options,” which presumably includes nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, and more.
That’s where the legal dispute begins, since Jacobson charges that after seeing that study prior to publication, he sent a list of its purported errors to the NAS. These were not corrected in the final published version, his lawsuit says. …..
One of his greatest objections is over the claim that his work contained “modeling errors,” which turns on a technical dispute over how much U.S. electricity could be provided by hydropower and how much the current system of dams can be altered to increase their electricity-generating capacity.
This claim is “particularly harmful and damaging to Dr. Jacobson’s reputation because his primary expertise is in computer modeling,” the suit asserts……
Defector: US strike would trigger automatic North Korea retaliation, Miltary Times, By: Matthew Pennington, The Associated Press WASHINGTON 2 Nov 17 — A high-ranking North Korean defector told a congressional hearing Wednesday that a pre-emptive U.S. military strike on the country would trigger automatic retaliation, with the North unleashing artillery and short-range missile fire on South Korea.
The testimony from Thae Yong Ho, former deputy chief of mission at the North Korean Embassy in London, underscored the high risk in using military force against North Korea. The Trump administration has said this is among its options in stopping leader Kim Jong Un from perfecting a nuclear-tipped missile that could strike the United States.
Thae, the highest-level North Korean defector in two decades, appeared to confirm what has long been suspected but rarely articulated by U.S. officials — that even a selective American strike could rain a potentially devastating North Korean military response on the South Korean capital and its environs, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of the heavily militarized frontier.
Thae, who is making his first visit to Washington since his defection last year, said the U.S. and allied South Korea would win a war after a preventive military strike on the North, but there would be a “human sacrifice” inflicted on the South from the “tens of thousands” of artillery guns and short-range missiles the North has at the frontier.
“North Korean officers are trained to press their button without any further instructions from the general command if anything happens on their side,” Thae told the House Foreign Affairs Committee, referring to a U.S. bombing or military strike. “We have to remember that tens of millions of South Korean population are living 70 to 80 kilometers away from this military demarcation line.”
He urged Washington to use “soft power” instead …….
Thae’s comments come ahead of President Donald Trump’s five-nation trip to Asia that will include a stop in South Korea. The U.S. administration says it seeks a diplomatic solution to the nuclear standoff but “all options” are on the table. Trump has threatened the total destruction of North Korea if the U.S. is forced to defend itself or its allies.
A Congressional Research Service report published last week said that conservative estimates anticipate that in the first hours of a conflict, North Korean artillery situated along the frontier could cause tens of thousands of casualties in South Korea, where at least 100,000 and possibly as many as 500,000 Americans live — including nearly 30,000 U.S. troops. It said a protracted conflict, particularly one in which North Korea uses its nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, could cause enormous casualties on a greater scale.
Some analysts contend the risk of Kim acquiring a nuclear weapon capable of targeting the U.S. homeland is greater than the risks associated with the outbreak of a regional war, the report said.
U.S. pursues direct diplomacy with North Korea despite Trump rejectionArshad Mohammed, Matt Spetalnick WASHINGTON (Reuters) 1 Nov 17, – The United States is quietly pursuing direct diplomacy with North Korea, a senior State Department official said on Tuesday, despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s public assertion that such talks are a waste of time.
Using the so-called “New York channel,” Joseph Yun, U.S. negotiator with North Korea, has been in contact with diplomats at Pyongyang’s United Nations mission, the official said, at a time when an exchange of bellicose insults between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has fueled fears of military conflict.
While U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Oct. 17 said he would continue “diplomatic efforts … until the first bomb drops,” the official’s comments were the clearest sign the United States was directly discussing issues beyond the release of American prisoners, despite Trump having dismissed direct talks as pointless.
There is no sign, however, that the behind-the-scenes communications have improved a relationship vexed by North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, the death of U.S. university student Otto Warmbier days after his release by Pyongyang in June and the detention of three other Americans.
Word of quiet engagement with Pyongyang comes despite Trump’s comments, North Korea’s weapons advances and suggestions by some U.S. and South Korean officials that Yun’s interactions with North Koreans had been reined in.
“It has not been limited at all, both (in) frequency and substance,” said the senior State Department official………
At the start of Trump’s presidency, Yun’s instructions were limited to seeking the release of U.S. prisoners.
“It is (now) a broader mandate than that,” said the State Department official, declining, however, to address whether authority had been given to discuss North Korea’s nuclear and missile program.
In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China welcomed any dialogue between the United States and North Korea.
“We encourage North Korea and the United States to carry out engagement and dialogue,” Hua told reporters, adding that she hoped talks could help return the issue to a diplomatic track for resolution.
…… Speaking at the United Nations on Sept. 19, Trump vowed to “totally destroy” North Korea if it threatened the United States or its allies, raising anxieties about the possibility of military conflict.
Twelve days later, after Tillerson said Washington was probing for a diplomatic opening, Trump said on Twitter that his chief diplomat was “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man” – his mocking nickname for the North Korean leader.
Democratic U.S. senators introduced a bill on Tuesday they said would prevent Trump from launching a nuclear first strike on North Korea on his own, highlighting the issue days before the Republican’s first presidential trip to Asia.
…… The New York channel is one of the few conduits the United States has for communicating with North Korea, which has itself made clear it has little interest in serious talks before it develops a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the continental United States.
The last high-level contact between Yun and the North Koreans was when he traveled to North Korea in June to secure the release of Warmbier, who died shortly after he returned home in a coma, the State Department official said.
……. The official said, however, that “the preferred endpoint is not a war but some kind of diplomatic settlement” and suggestions that Washington is setting up a binary choice for Pyongyang to capitulate diplomatically or military action were “misleading.”
Diplomacy, the official said, “has a lot more room to go.”
But Trump’s threats against North Korea are believed to have complicated diplomatic efforts.
The climate report, obtained by NPR, notes that the past 115 years are “the warmest in the history of modern civilization.” The global average temperature has increased by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over that period. Greenhouse gases from industry and agriculture are by far the biggest contributor to warming.
The findings contradict statements by PresidentTrump and many of his Cabinet members, who have openly questioned the role humans play in changing the climate.
“I believe that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said in an interview earlier this year. “There’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact.”
That is not consistent with the conclusions of the 600-plus-page Climate Science Special Report, which is part of an even larger scientific review known as the fourth National Climate Assessment. The NCA4, as it’s known, is the nation’s most authoritative assessment of climate science. The report’s authors include experts from leading scientific agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the Department of Energy, as well as academic scientists.The report states that the global climate will continue to warm. How much, it says, “will depend primarily on the amount of greenhouse gases (especially carbon dioxide) emitted globally.” Without major reductions in emissions, it says, the increase in annual average global temperature could reach 9 degrees Fahrenheit relative to pre-industrial times. Efforts to reduce emissions, it says, would slow the rate of warming.
“This is good, solid climate science,” says Richard Alley, a geoscientist at Penn State University, who says he made minor contributions to the report’s conclusions on sea level rise. “This has been reviewed so many times in so many ways, and it’s taking what we know from … a couple of centuries of climate science and applying it to the U.S.”
The assessments are required by an act of Congress; the last one was published in 2014. Alley says this year’s goes further in attributing changes in weather to the warming climate, especially weather extremes. “More heat waves and fewer cold snaps, this is very clear,” he says. The report also notes that warmer temperatures have contributed to the rise in forest fires in the West and that the incidence of those fires is expected to keep rising.
Some of the clearest effects involve sea level rise. “Coastal flooding, you raise the mean level of the ocean, everything else equal you get more coastal flooding,” Alley says. The report notes that sea level has risen 7 to 8 inches since 1900, and 3 inches of that occurred since 1993. The report says that rate is faster than during any century over the past 2,800 years.
The report also points out that heavy rainfall is increasing in intensity and frequency across the U.S., especially in the Northeast, and that is expected to keep increasing.
Other connections are harder to nail down, Alley says, such as whether a particular hurricane can be attributed to climate change.
“The Climate Science Special Report is like going to a doctor and being given a report on your vital signs,” says environmental scientist Rachel Licker of the Union of Concerned Scientists. She notes that the authors assessed more than 1,500 scientific studies and reports in making their conclusions.
Alley adds that the new report “does a better job of seeing the human fingerprint in what’s happening.” He says that while he hasn’t read all of it yet, he sees no evidence that it has been soft-pedaled or understates the certainty of the science.
Alley notes that “there’s a little rumbling” among climate scientists who are concerned that the Trump administration will ignore this effort. “I think the authors really are interested in seeing [the report] used wisely by policymakers to help the economy as well as the environment.”
The report has been submitted to the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House. Trump has yet to choose anyone to run that office; it remains one of the last unfilled senior positions in the White House staff.
The South’s legacy of abandoned nuclear reactors, The Slate, BY CAROLINE PEYTON AND SPECIAL TO THE STATE’S EDITORIAL BOARDNOVEMBER 02, 17 COLUMBIA, SC “……..The cancellation of the V.C. Summer expansion project testifies to innumerable missteps, but our collective amnesia has missed the bigger story: The South’s long, messy nuclear history is a catalog of modest successes and epic failures.
Sadly, the V.C. Summer project shutdown is nothing new for the South. It has happened at least 22 times since the 1970s. Some plants existed merely as blueprints, while others were canceled mid-construction. Across the region, half-finished projects stand as emblems of bungled industry efforts. At its core, this history has been defined by secrecy, miscalculations and decisions made by the few at the expense of ordinary people.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Southern politicians envisioned regional transformation through atomic energy; the South would become an “energy breadbasket.” A network of elected officials, utility companies and industry lobbyists sold these projects as job creators, an endless source of cheap energy and boons to the rural communities located near reactors.
This building spree resulted in more than 40 commercial nuclear reactors operating at 23 sites and earned the South industry admiration for its “nuclear friendly citizenry.” Yet those reactors represent only a fraction of what could have been; approximately 35 additional reactors were proposed for Southern states, including a half-dozen where construction had started and billions of dollars were spent on the nuclear road to nowhere.
So what happened to those ill-fated reactors? By the late 1970s, projections for energy demands declined, construction costs didn’t match initial projections, and the accident at Three Mile Island soured public opinion. Local concerns mattered too.
In South Carolina, the failed nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Barnwell County, along with the staggering influx of radioactive waste, helped spawn the South’s largest anti-nuclear protest. Protestors flocked to Barnwell denouncing South Carolina’s role as the nation’s trash can.
In Mississippi, infuriated ratepayers gathered outside the Grand Gulf nuclear plant and burned their utility bills. Other plants were plagued with serious safety issues and community opposition, like the now-operating Waterford 3 reactor in Louisiana.
The most notorious episode occurred with the Tennessee Valley Authority, where a corporation fought landowners in Hartsville, Tenn., to build the “world’s largest nuclear plant” — only to pull the plug. What remains in this bucolic setting are half-finished remnants and a lone cooling tower, fittingly called a “used beer can” by residents. TVA ultimately canceled seven reactors after spending billions, which tarnished its legacy, permanently marred local landscapes and exacerbated a climate of distrust.
Today, the cavernous structures attract photographers seeking dystopian backdrops. Mostly though, they continue to rust away, a symbol of a beleaguered industry that has never resolved fundamental problems — namely projects mired in secrecy and unrealistic cost estimates.
Despite industry reforms since the 1970s, V.C. Summer’s collapse sounds familiar to those well-acquainted with the region’s nuclear past. Bad legislation, the Base Load Review Act of 2007, placed the cost burden upon the ratepayers and limited SCE&G and SCANA’s accountability. A secret report, along with internal emails between SCE&G and state-owned Santee Cooper, reveal a troubling array of warning signs and uncorrected problems.
While it’s true that there were new problems here, such as the Westinghouse bankruptcy, the broad outlines of the V.C. Summer fiasco could have been ripped from any headline in the late 1970s. In the case of those canceled projects, no genuine attempt at restitution was made. Those abandoned plants offer guidance for today.
Legislators and public service commissions must prioritize ratepayers first, better understand the risks involved in large-scale reactor projects and let history inform their decisions as well. If the industry wants to retain the South’s “nuclear-friendly citizenry,” it, too, must confront the nuclear ghosts of its past, and reject the hubris, secrecy and overblown projections that have doomed so many plans and, in some cases, left Southerners with little more than nuclear ruins.
House Tax Bill Trims Wind Tax Credit, Extends Nuclear Provision, Bloomberg, By Ari Natter,
GOP measure preserves threatened wind and solar tax credits
Legislation could change is it winds through Congress
Tax credits cherished by the wind and solar industry remain under a rewrite of the tax code revealed by House Republicans, but the measure would trim the wind energy’s production tax credit by more than a third.
The bill, unveiled by House GOP leaders Thursday, also extends an estimated $6 billion tax credit for the nuclear industry, which would benefit Southern Co. Without the extension, the credit may have gone unused before the 2021 deadline. Southern’s Vogtle project in Georgia faces construction delays and is not on track to be completed before the deadline.
The bill also adds tax credits for other energy sources, such as geothermal, small-scale wind and fuel cells that were left out of a 2015 budget and spending deal.
The House tax overhaul cuts the wind industry’s 2.3-cent-per-kilowatt hour tax credit to 1.5 cents. The solar industry’s 30 percent tax credit remains unchanged. Under that 2015 deal the wind credit begins phasing down this year before expiring in 2020 and the solar industry’s credit winds down before expiring in 2022. Those phaseouts continue as planned, but projects would now need to be completed by those dates to qualify…….
Russia AND the US send nuclear bombers to North Korea as tensions with Kim Jong-un soar
The US sent a nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bomber from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri on a long-range mission to the Pacific this weekend, The Sun, By Sam Webb, 31st October 2017,
RUSSIA and the US have flown nuclear bombers near North Korea as tensions grow over tyrant Kim Jong-un’s atomic threats.
President Donald Trump sent a nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bomber from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri on a long-range mission to the Pacific this weekend.
And the Russian Defence Ministry today announced that US and Japanese jets escorted Russia’s missile-carrying Tupolev-95MS strategic bombers during flights over the Sea of Japan and the Pacific.
A spokesman said: “Two strategic bombers Tupolev-95MS of Russia’s Aerospace Force have carried out routine flights over international waters of the Sea of Japan and the western part of the Pacific Ocean.
At certain sections of the route the Tupolev-95MS crews were accompanied by a pair of F-18 fighters (of the US Air Force), and a pair of F-15, F-4 and F-2A fighters (of the Japanese Air Force).”
US nuclear arsenal to cost $1.2tn over next 30 years, independent CBO report finds https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/31/us-nuclear-arsenal-cost-cbo-report CBO finds total price tag marks 25% increase from previous estimate
Nuclear Posture Review under way and expected by end of the year, Guardian, Julian Borger 1 Nov 17, The cost of the US nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years will be over $1.2tn, even before any new weapons ordered by the Trump administration, and is unlikely to be affordable without cuts elsewhere in the defence budget, according to a independent congressional report.
The total price tag marks nearly a 25% increase from previous estimate, taking in the modernisation programme established under the Obama administration, which account for $400bn, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found. The costs would peak in the 2020s and the 2030s.
A new Nuclear Posture Review is under way and expected around the end of the year. Trump has repeatedly vowed to bolster the nuclear stockpile, and the defence department is reportedly considering the development of a low-yield warhead for a ballistic missile, and reintroducing a sea-launched cruise missile, among a variety of new options.
The CBO report warns that such new capabilities would increase the total bill for the US arsenal yet further.
“If these plans reach fruition, it would be the largest nuclear build-up since the Reagan administration. This is not affordable,” said Stephen Schwartz, an independent nuclear analyst and editor of the book, Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of US Nuclear Weapons Since 1940.
Pursuing nuclear modernization will be challenging in the current environment,” the report said, adding that it would compete with parallel ambitions to upgrade the navy and the air force, and increase the size of the army.
It is the first comprehensive costing of the US nuclear weapons programme. The report offers three approaches for cost reductions to make it affordable. One would keep the programme as is currently planned but delay elements of it, bringing potential savings of 5%.
The second looks at ways of reducing the programme but keeping to the existing ceiling agreed with Russia of 1550 deployed strategic warheads. One variant of that approach examined by the CBO would be to do without one leg of the nuclear ‘triad’, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and keeping air-launched and sea-launched weapons. That would generate savings of 10%, the report said.
The third approach would incorporate a reduction of the deployed strategic stockpile to 1000 warheads, a cut the defence department under the Obama administration said could be made without affecting the US nuclear deterrent, which would save 5% to 11% of the total.
“The report blows apart the “do everything or do nothing” false choice repeatedly posited by Pentagon officials,” Kingston Reif, the director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, said. “But perhaps the biggest contribution of new CBO nuclear cost study is the evaluation of options to manage and reduce the mammoth price tag.”
Reif added: “Meanwhile, the Trump administration is reportedly considering adding new weapons to the arsenal, which would increase the budget train-wreck odds, and undermine US security.”
IT’S known as the birthplace of the atomic bomb. But a letter written to the bomb’s laboratory has us all extremely concerned. Matt Young@MattYoung, IN 2011 something alarming happened at a United States nuclear weapons laboratory that was deliberately kept quiet.
According to The Centre for Public Integrity, a pair of workers with “cavalier attitudes” at the Los Alamos National Laboratory stuffed “so much plutonium into a small space that they came close to triggering an accidental nuclear chain reaction, all to get some photos”.
“Plutonium is the unstable, radioactive, man-made fuel of a nuclear explosion, and it isn’t amenable to showboating,” it said. “When too much is put in one place, it becomes ‘critical’ and begins to fission uncontrollably, spontaneously sparking a nuclear chain reaction, which releases energy and generates a deadly burst of radiation.”
And it gets much, much worse.
Los Alamos National Laboratory in Santa Fe, New Mexico — responsible for the design of nuclear warheads — was a top secret facility during World War II and the birthplace of the atomic bomb.
But it is in a state of chaos — in fact, it has been for years.
A damning letter by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, released this week and seen by news.com.au, said it had found “numerous weaknesses” in the lab’s safety standards dating back to 2014.
It had also failed recent safety tests indicating how it would respond to an emergency including radioactive leaks or earthquakes.
Referred as Project Y after it was established in 1943, the laboratory was one of a series of top secret labs in the United States given codewords to maintain secrecy at the time.
It was known as the “heart” of the nuclear project and was primarily responsible for the Manhattan Project, which developed the first ever nuclear weapons. The scientists within its labs were responsible for the creation of several atomic bombs, including the Fat Man, which was detonated in the Japanese city of Nagasaki in August, 1945.
It is also responsible for the hydrogen bomb.
Since the end of WWII, the lab continued its focus on bomb designs. It is still open today and is one of the largest science and technology institutions in the world with a focus on national security, space exploration and nuclear fusion, among other “non-war” technology.
“Though the world is rapidly changing, this essential responsibility (nuclear) remains the core mission,” it states on its website.
It is also “responsible for the safety, security, and effectiveness of the nuclear explosive packages in the stockpile”.
But over the years, more and more mistakes have begun to leak from its labs, with critical, radioactive material breached, dumped and mishandled.
Last week, the US Department of Energy, which is responsible overseeing the United States’ nuclear arsenal, put out a final request for proposals to manage the site.
Government Scientist Blocked from Talking About Climate and Wildfires
Critics are accusing the Trump administration of stifling the dissemination of taxpayer-funded science, Scientific American , By Brittany Patterson, ClimateWire on October 31, 2017
A U.S. Forest Service scientist who was scheduled to talk about the role that climate change plays in wildfire conditions was denied approval to attend the conference featuring fire experts from around the country.
William Jolly, a research ecologist with the agency’s Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula, Mont., was supposed to give a 30-minute presentation titled “Climate-Induced Variations in Global Severe Fire Weather Conditions” at the International Fire Congress in Orlando, Fla., next month. The event is hosted by the Association for Fire Ecology (AFE).
The travel denial follows reports last week that U.S. EPA blocked three scientists from making presentations at a conference in Rhode Island featuring climate change. Critics accused the Trump administration of stifling the dissemination of taxpayer-funded science……..
Jolly’s presentation was slated to be part of a special session exploring the connection between wildfire and climate change. It focuses on what scientists can learn about fire behavior in a warming future by looking at clues from the past, according to Anthony Westerling, a professor at the University of California who is moderating the session.
“It’s kind of weird that they would make it hard for a government scientist to take part in this because managing wildfire is a huge challenge logistically and financially on a vast array of federal lands,” he said. “These scientists, by participating in these kinds of society meetings, share their thoughts and hear other people’s thoughts, which is important because their work is supposed to form how these lands are managed and how we prepare for and adapt under climate change.”
Jolly is not the only scientist whose request was denied. No travel authorizations were given to researchers from the Rocky Mountain Research Station’s Human Dimensions Science Program, according to AFE. That includes Karin Riley, a research ecologist who studies the relationship between climate and wildfire. Riley is vice president of AFE’s board of directors.
Three U.S. Geological Survey researchers who are scheduled to give presentations at the wildfire conference next month have been in limbo for months while their travel request is reviewed. All three scientists are slated to speak about climate change…….
The science shared at the Fire Congress draws on real world catastrophes. The United States is experiencing its most expensive fire season in history, with more than 8.8 million acres burned, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
Massive fires have rained chaos on communities in Montana and California, in part due to climate change increasing the number of fires and making them more severe. A 2015 report by the Forest Service found that modern fire seasons are 78 days longer and burn twice as many acres as they did in 1970. The agency predicted that the number of acres burned could double again by 2050 (Climatewire, Aug. 6, 2015)……. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/government-scientist-blocked-from-talking-about-climate-and-wildfires/
California governor heads to Europe for climate talks http://m.startribune.com/california-governor-heads-to-europe-for-climate-talks/454332843/?section=nationBy KATHLEEN RONAYNE , ASSOCIATED PRESS October 31, 2017 SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Jerry Brown is continuing his international fight against climate change with an 11-day trip to Europe starting Saturday including stops at the Vatican and a United Nations conference in Germany.
Brown is a chief adversary to Republican President Donald Trump in the battle over U.S. climate policy, promising to help the country reach its emissions reductions targets even as Trump withdraws from an international climate accord. He’s been named the special adviser for states and regions at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany.
“While the White House declares war on climate science and retreats from the Paris Agreement, California is doing the opposite and taking action,” Brown said in a statement announcing the trip. “We are joining with our partners from every part of the world to do what needs to be done to prevent irreversible climate change.”
The non-profit California State Protocol Foundation, which accepts donations from private businesses, pays for Brown’s international travel. Travel for Brown’s staff members will be partially covered by money from the non-profit Climate Registry and the Climate Action Reserve, a program that deals with carbon offset projects, spokesman Evan Westrup said.
Brown’s November trip follows visits to China and Russia earlier this year to promote international collaboration on climate change. Next year, he plans to host a summit in San Francisco.
He will give a speech Saturday to the Vatican Pontifical Academy of Sciences symposium. During the week, Brown will address European Parliament leaders, the state parliament in Baden-Wurttemberg Germany, meet with representatives from national scientific academies and serve on several panels at the U.N. conference.
Govs. Kate Brown of Oregon, Jay Inslee of Washington and Terry McAuliffe of Virginia — all Democrats — will join him on a panel about states’ roles in fighting climate change. California Senate leader Kevin de Leon, also a Democrat, is scheduled to speak Friday at a Vatican workshop on climate.
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