Future summers could regularly be hotter than the hottest on record

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/news/21431/future-summers-could-regularly-hotter-hottest-record

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Future summers could regularly be hotter than the hottest on record[/font]

[font size=4]Reducing carbon emissions could cut risk of record-breaking summertime heat in half[/font]

June 13, 2016

[font size=3]BOULDER — In 50 years, summers across most of the globe could regularly be hotter than any summer experienced so far by people alive today, according to a study by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

If climate change continues on its current trajectory, the probability that any summer between 2061 and 2080 will be warmer than the hottest on record is 80 percent across the world's land areas, excluding Antarctica, which was not studied.

If greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, however, that probability drops to 41 percent, according to the study.

"Extremely hot summers always pose a challenge to society," said NCAR scientist Flavio Lehner, lead author of the study. "They can increase the risk for health issues, but can also damage crops and deepen droughts. Such summers are a true test of our adaptability to rising temperatures."

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http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-016-1616-2

[yourpaljoey]

1. There will come a time, and it won't be long, when we will fear the weather

[NNadir]

2. You mean all those "solar breakthroughs" we've been hearing about for half a century...

...won't work? Now that's a surprise!

Well, super hot summers, in which people drop dead from heatstroke could never be as bad as the ABSOLUTE WORST DISASTERS EVER!!!!! at Chernobyl and Fukushima, could it?

According to this paper Death toll exceeded 70,000 in Europe during the summer of 2003 (Comptes Rendus Biologies Volume 331, Issue 2, February 2008, Pages 171–178).

70,000 dead in one summer?

That doesn't compare to what could have happened at Fukushima, at least according to all those people here who know nothing at all about nuclear engineering but hate nuclear power anyway.

It would be interesting to count the number of references on the internet to those 70,000 dead and compare them to references on Fukushima, almost none of which refer to the 20,000 people who died from the earthquake but talk endlessly about those who might have died, but, um, didn't, from radiation.

Many of those same people prattling about the great tragedy at Fukushima come here with pop news links about the newest, bestest, superest, solar technology all the time, because, um, nuclear energy isn't "safe" or at least not as safe as waiting two or three centuries for that grand "renewable energy nirvana" that's somewhat Godot like, but worth dreaming about all the same.

These same people have the unmitigated gall to complain about climate change, as if they cared. For them the means easily outstrips the ends, or, in the present case, the lack of ends.

Have a nice day tomorrow.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. A “nuclear renaisance” will not solve things either.

Have a nice day!

[NNadir]

4. Nuclear energy is, and has remained for the last 1/4 of a century, the world's largest, by far...

...source of climate change gas free primary energy.

It's rather disingenuous to declare by fiat that it will not solve things or that it in fact, needs a "renaissance" to be vastly superior to more expensive and less productive things.

The world built more than 400 reactors in less than 20 years, with nearly 1/4 of them in the United States, a nation which has enjoyed some of the lowest electricity prices in the world while operating them.

Instead of making foolish claims about what nuclear energy can't do - this from a prism of people who have never, not once, taken a single course in nuclear engineering - it would be interesting if the mindless critics of the nuclear industry can point historically, based on real experience (as opposed to tiresome fantasies) anything that has done as well.

The nuclear industry has routinely provided between 25-30 exajoules for three decades. It has saved nearly 2 million lives that would have been lost to air pollution had it not been built. It has prevented the dumping of more than 60 billion tons of carbon dioxide.

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power

The solar industry has not produced 2 exajoules of primary energy in any of the last 50 years. After soaking the world economy for a trillion dollars in the last decade alone, the solar industry has nothing to prevent the increases in dangerous fossil fuel waste concentrations to reach the highest level ever observed, which is where they are right now, in 2016, having passed 3.00 ppm a year for the first time in history.

And what is the response? More and more and more and more and more "SOLAR BREAKTHROUGH!!!!!" announcements on the internet.

One wonders with a sense of sheer amazement about the qualifications that nuclear critics have to make such sweeping statements as "The nuclear 'renaissance' will not solve things either." No "renaissance" is required to make nuclear energy continue to be what it has been for about 30 years, the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free energy.

Again, what has done as much, in all history, as much as commercial nuclear energy has done while injuring such a small number of people?

Nuclear energy need not be a panacea to be vastly superior to everything else. It only needs to be vastly superior to everything else, which it is. It is experimentally superior to everything else, and except in fantasy land, experiment trumps theory, 100% of the time.

Should Nuclear Energy Be a Panacea?

Were it not for pop thinkers cruising the internet to find specious criticisms of nuclear energy written by ignorant journalists, while demanding that people sink trillions upon trillions of dollars uselessly on so called "renewable energy," nuclear energy might have done what it could have done. But that's not what happened. What happened instead was the triumph of fear and ignorance - with emphasis, given the lack of even a smidgen of insight into nuclear engineering on the part of nuclear critics, on ignorance - at the expense of the technology invented by some of the finest minds of the 20th century, men and women like Fermi, Meitner, Wigner, Hoffman, Seaborg, etc.

I really have very little patience for indulging this "NUCLEAR WON'T WORK!!!" garbage, because it's clearly and unambiguously garbage.

I breathlessly await the next "Solar Breakthrough!!!!" announcement, zero of which, among the thousands I've read here over the years, has made any dent at all in the accelerating collapse of the atmosphere.

Have a nice day tomorrow and, um, keep cool!

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. Cutting emissions to 0 won’t be sufficient.

We need to actively remove CO₂ from the atmosphere.

[NNadir]

6. The thermodynamics of this "requirement" has been studied extensively.

Overcoming the entropy of mixing involves the expenditure of energy.

I gave a reference to one fairly interesting paper on this subject (Reference 6A in the text) here: Technetium: Dangerous Nuclear Energy Waste or Essential Strategic Resource?

I'm not sure that there are any "solar breakthroughs" on the horizon, other than photosynthesis that can do this. Let me know. It would appear that the existing photosynthesis technology has failed to prevent the accelerating rise of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide to concentrations above 400 ppm.

Have a nice day.

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. Artificial photosynthesis could do this, but probably won't be used for this purpose

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1127102282

By “existing photosynthesis technology” I assume you mean green plants.

Some sort of Carbon Capture and Sequestration is necessary, that will (as you suggest) require the expenditure of energy.

[NNadir]

8. Artificial photosynthesis is discussed a lot, but no, it can't do what existing photosynthesis,...

...by which I do mean green plants, can do.

If once compares the photosynthetic green plant carbon fixation rates with the rates of release associated with dangerous fossil fuels, one will get a sinking feeling in one's stomach, something I know because I have compared these figures.

Green plants are self replicating systems that can and do cover large surface areas without (or more often in spite of) human activity. Artificial photosynthesis can make for some very sexy papers in the scientific literature - one can come across hundreds in a year without even trying - but as is the case with so called "renewable energy" solar schemes, the materials requirements associated with the low energy to mass ratio these systems necessarily entail, render the case just the North side of impossible.

Have a nice day.

[OKIsItJustMe]

9. It depends on what you are trying to accomplish

If you want to do large scale carbon capture and sequestration, green plants may be a bad bet.

[NNadir]

10. If you are trying to accomplish saving the atmosphere from destruction - which is certainly what...

...a rational set of human beings, as opposed to the current set of human beings, would do - you expand nuclear energy as fast as is possible, at a rate at least as fast, if not faster than than the historical rate observed 40 years ago.

If necessary, you simply use the technology from that period, which became fairly rapidly, the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free primary energy.

You stop claiming, stupidly, that what has already been done is impossible.

If you are interested in tinkering around in an insipid fashion you piddle around uselessly with lab scale photocatalysts and other very unsuccessful so called "renewable energy" schemes, which are neither sustainable nor practical, you concede that you are uninterested in results and are willing to let the world and all future generations cook to death on the grounds that you are more concerned with, say, a few radioactive cesium atoms in a tuna fish than you are with the complete and total destruction of the atmosphere and thus the future for all current and future generations.

Nuclear energy is not perfect, nor is it without risk, but it is easily and clearly, based on half a century of direct experience, the only option that works, and the only option left in the short time remaining to save what still can be saved.

Why is this so damned hard to figure out? It's as plain as day.

We, particularly those in the West, are fiddling while the planet literally burns to death.

Have a nice day tomorrow.