NNadir
NNadir's JournalMy "eating the cat" story.
About 10 or 12 years ago, my sister-in-law separated from her husband who she ultimately divorced. They really worked hard, both of them, despite real hard feelings, to remain civil with each other for the benefit of the kids, but lived separately, tried to remain on superficially "friendly" terms.
My ex-brother-in-law took my niece's cat to live with him; in the separation the cat was "his."
My sister-in-law, in the meantime, decided to adopt a dog which she said was part Dingo. The dog seemed like a nice dog, except it developed that the dog had this habit of attacking small animals, squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks all ended up dead in the dog's mouth.
Meanwhile, my ex-brother-in-law fell into some financial difficulties and asked to move in, with the cat.
This of course, created a problem, for the cat, who the dog chased immediately and was only saved by hiding behind furniture.
So they put the cat in the basement, and restrained the dog whenever they opened the door to feed the cat, change the litter box. The cat couldn't stop crying.
So my sister-in-law asked us to watch the cat for a few weeks until her ex found a place to live. The cat, now an old lady, has now been here for about 10 years.
For the first week or two, on arrival, the cat was traumatized, hiding on beds, behind furniture. She had been stuck in a basement after being chased by a huge dog, then unceremoniously stuffed into a cat carrier, driven from Western Massachusetts to Central Jersey, released into a home to people she didn't know. Finally, one day, after she'd hidden under my son's bed for a few days, and we worried she might starve or become dehydrated, my boys lifted the bed up, I captured the cat in my arms, walked her around the house to show it, scratching her head and petting her, offering her a can of tuna - which she wouldn't touch - and finally shutting the doors to the bedrooms so she couldn't get back under a bed, put her down, were she immediately ran behind the love seat, and wouldn't come out. Eventually, my oldest son, a tall young man with very long arms, began reaching behind the love seat, petting her head. We decided to get her stoned with catnip toys, and eventually she came out and interacted with my boys, and my wife, but remained terrified of me.
Slowly but surely, she stopped running behind the love seat whenever she saw me. In my sense of humor, when finally she let me pet her, I started saying to her while petting her, "Nobody likes cats! I don't know why I have a cat! What I wanted was a dog that eats cats! Somebody gave me a cat instead!" Well, I couldn't stop this rhetoric, and now - she's a pretty smart cat - she thinks that whenever I repeat these phrases, this means she's going to be petted, fed, played with, etc. People come in the house and hear me say these things to the cat and are amazed she comes over and starts purring.
The dog in question - which remains alive and is still a terror and has graduated from destroying small animals to destroying furniture, but is otherwise friendly - was not from Haiti, and although he is descended from Australian dogs or quasi-dogs, was born in the USA, and thus is not an immigrant.
Thus far nobody has actually eaten the cat; she's still here, but freaks out whenever she's put in a carrier for a trip to the vet. I calm her on the drive by purring, "Nobody likes cats! I don't know why I have a cat! What I wanted was a dog that eats cats! Somebody gave me a cat instead!" It makes her feel better, and generally she calms on the drive.
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it; there's no one eating cats around here.
I'm having a joyous day at DU today, clicking that rec button like mad. That's all...
I didn't watch the debate last night, but got through half today, but couldn't stand to finish.
I agree that she dominated him, got under his fragile skin, made him look weak, old, senile, tiresome and disgusting, which of course, he is, but that's just it:
He is so disgusting I really, really, really couldn't stand to watch that sick senile fraud drool his bizarre drivel.
In several months, I have high hopes that he'll be in prison, where he should have gone a long time ago. No mikes, no TV appearances, just nightly checks by the guards.
How some one this disgusting got on the national stage at all is a black mark on our history that will stain it for many years to come.
Take This Heart of Gold and Melt It Down
The Presidential Election Nearly Tore the Country Apart.
Historic Presidential ElectionsSixty years later a Presidential election did tear the country apart and when it came together, it was a better, albeit still very much imperfect country, transformed linguistically from "The United States are" to "The United States is," but still a country that was a long way to go in meeting its ideals, as, in fact, it remains.
For the record, I'm a huge admirer of John Adams I Sr., and for that matter, John Q. Adams, his son.
Thomas Jefferson, not so much.
I note that in all of the cases mentioned above, none was involved with the self-absorption of any of the players.
Everything that felon touches dies, but hopefully, Phoenix like, our country can get up off the floor again this time, to quote a great man, involved in such a bitter election, "Let us here highly resolve that a government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth."
During a year of extremes, carbon dioxide levels surge faster than ever: NOAA News Release
This article was released a few months back, but I missed it. It confirms what I've been seeing in my efforts to monitor the data, as I've reported on this website, most recently, and after the article was published, here:
Latest Update on the Disastrous 2024 CO2 Data Recorded at Mauna Loa
The NOAA news release:
During a year of extremes, carbon dioxide levels surge faster than ever
Subtitle:
Some excerpts:
Levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) measured at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory by NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory surged to a seasonal peak of just under 427 parts per million (426.90 ppm) in May, when CO2 reaches its highest level in the Northern Hemisphere. That’s an increase of 2.9 ppm over May 2023 and the 5th-largest annual growth in NOAA’s 50-year record. When combined with 2023’s increase of 3.0 ppm, the period from 2022 to 2024 has seen the largest two-year jump in the May peak in the NOAA record.
CO2 measurements sending ominous signs
Scientists at Scripps, the organization that initiated CO2 monitoring at Mauna Loa in 1958 and maintains an independent record, calculated a May monthly average of 426.7 ppm for 2024, an increase of 2.92 ppm over May 2023’s measurement of 423.78 ppm. For Scripps, the two-year jump tied a previous record set in 2020.
From January through April, NOAA and Scripps scientists said CO2 concentrations increased more rapidly than they have in the first four months of any other year. The surge has come even as one highly regarded international reportoffsite link has found that fossil fuel emissions, the main driver of climate change, have plateaued in recent years.
“Over the past year, we’ve experienced the hottest year on record, the hottest ocean temperatures on record and a seemingly endless string of heat waves, droughts, floods, wildfires and storms,” said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, Ph.D. “Now we are finding that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing faster than ever. We must recognize that these are clear signals of the damage carbon dioxide pollution is doing to the climate system, and take rapid action to cut fossil fuel use as quickly as we can.”
Ralph Keeling, director of the Scripps CO2 program that manages the institution’s 56-year-old measurement series, noted that year-to-year increase recorded in March 2024 was the highest for both Scripps and NOAA in Keeling Curve history...
Of course, any disasters associated with this outcome are minor compared with the big bogeymen Fukushima and Chernobyl, one of which wiped out East Asia and the other, wiped out Eastern Europe. At least people use a lot of electricity generated using dangerous natural gas and dangerous coal to tell me so, although I'm, um, um, um, slightly skeptical about whether this is actually true.
And of course, we shouldn't worry; we should be happy. Afterall we're spending trillions of dollars on our reactionary impulse to make our energy supplies dependent on the weather just like the good old days before and including the 19th century. It's not like we need to spend money wisely; it's the thought that counts.
IEA overview, Energy Investments.
The graphic is interactive at the link; one can calculate overall expenditures on what the IEA dubiously calls "clean energy."
Chant after me: "Solar, wind, batteries, hydrogen, Solar, wind, batteries, hydrogen, Solar, wind, batteries, hydrogen, Solar, wind, batteries, hydrogen, Solar, wind, batteries, hydrogen, Solar, wind, batteries, hydrogen, Solar, wind, batteries, hydrogen, Solar, wind, batteries, hydrogen..."
It's working out just swell, all this chanting, isn't it?
Have a pleasant week.
My son traveled to Nebraska recently for an art forum, and everyone had a runza festival in honor of Gov Walz.
A few people were citizens of China; others were Chinese-American and four Caucasian-Americans, including one from Nebraska.
One Caucasian was a vegetarian and declined, but everyone else had runzas for lunch, and did so, indeed, in honor of Tim Walz.
Checking out the Writing in Historical Writing Can Be a Real Joy: Ian Toll.
I will never forget reading the opening passage of Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August describing Europe's assembled royalty at the funeral of Edward VII. It was simply beautiful writing and I was mesmerized.
Recently I took all three volumes of Ian Toll's Pacific War Trilogy out of the library, and read the books out of order, the second volume The Conquering Tide first, Twilight of the Gods second, and am now reading the first volume Pacific Crucible first.
I must say there is some very powerful writing therein; exhaustively researched, and brilliantly presented.
The way he captures people, Yamamoto, (with reflections on Nelson), Roosevelt; the way he understands the politics of the time, well, it's just outstanding writing.
Good stuff.
Discerning Melting and Volatilization Process of Fukushima's Fuel After the Tōhoku Tsunami.
The paper I'll discuss in this post is this one: Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident: Understanding Formation Mechanism of Radioactive Particles through Sr and Pu Quantities Junya Igarashi, Kazuhiko Ninomiya, Jian Zheng, Zijian Zhang, Miho Fukuda, Tatsuo Aono, Haruka Minowa, Hideki Yoshikawa, Keisuke Sueki, Yukihiko Satou, and Atsushi Shinohara Environmental Science & Technology 2024 58 (33), 14823-14830.
The tsunami associated with the Tōhoku Earthquake on March 11, 2011 killed about 20,000 people. The deaths were more or less instantaneous, the results of collapsing buildings, drownings, trauma's associated with being caught in energetic flows of seawater, etc. This demonstrated that living in coastal cities can be, and sometimes is, dangerous, something that we can expect to only get worse since we are doing effectively zero to address extreme global heating.
The deaths resulting from living in a coastal city of course, receive little attention, falling into the "ho hum" area concern. There is no movement to phase out coastal cities as a result of this disaster.
Of course, the tsunami associated with the Tōhoku Earthquake also destroyed three nuclear reactors, and unlike the attention paid to the deaths resulting from living in a city inundated by seawater, there is a lot of attention paid to the possibility that someone may have their lifespan shortened by exposure to leaked radioactivity associated with the failure of the fuel in the nuclear reactors. There is, at this point, little or no evidence that anyone was immediately killed by radioactivity associated the failure of nuclear fuel, and more than 13 years later, it's not clear that a large number of people have had their lives shortened by this release of radioactive material, although it's possible, if not clearly discernable, that there will be or have been some such shortened lives, but the numbers are clearly not huge.
The paper cited at the outset is not about health risks, but rather is an interesting account of the nature and types of radioactive materials that were ejected from the reactor as the result of the hydrogen explosion associated with the oxidation of the zirconium based cladding with the concomitant reduction of water to hydrogen gas. At the temperatures in the fuel when cooling was interrupted by the failure of pumps, some elements were volatilized, that is boiled away, and deposited in the environment when they cooled.
I am interested in the elements in nuclear fuel that are volatile, since this has potentially, to my mind at least, many practical implications, in particular with respect to the radiation based destruction of the fluoride gases, refrigerants, insulation gases, etc., that along with CO2, are driving extreme global heating.
From the introductory text:
...Most radionuclides released during the FDNPP accident have undergone decay over the past decade, making their identification challenging. However, long-lived radionuclides persist in the environment. Cesium-137 is one of the most notable radionuclides in nuclear accidents due to its large inventory of nuclear fuel and long half-life property (30.2 y). Other important long half-life radionuclides include 90Sr (T1/2 = 28.7 y) and Pu isotopes such as 239Pu (T1/2 = 24100 y) and 240Pu (T1/2 = 6560 y). Due to their low volatility, the release amounts of these radionuclides were limited during the FDNPP accident. For instance, the concentration of 90Sr in the soil and dust sample was 3–4 orders of magnitude lower than that of 137Cs. (7,12,13) Zheng et al. (8) estimated the release amount of 239+240Pu to be 1.0–2.4 × 109 Bq through Pu isotope measurements in litter samples. Subsequent investigations aimed to elucidate the accident mechanism, such as the release amounts and timing of the radionuclides from the reactor. However, the complexity arises from environmental samples accumulating deposition at various emission events from reactor Units 1, 2, and 3, posing challenges in discerning the release processes from each reactor...
The paper demonstrates that the amount of plutonium released from the reactor was very small, which is unsurprising, and difficult to distinguish from fallout from open air nuclear testing in the 20th century. However distinction is possible, because the ratio of two isotopes of plutonium 240Pu to 239Pu is much higher in reactor plutonium as opposed to that released in a nuclear weapon. The authors report that for the small amounts ejected from the Fukushima reactors as a result of the hydrogen explosion was roughly 33% 240Pu on an atomic ratio basis, from which one can show that roughly 36% of the Pu radioactivity results from the decay of 239Pu and 64% from 240Pu, owing to the shorter half-life of the latter. The data for Pu is reported as a sum, as above, of 239+240Pu. The figure for the amount of plutonium ejected into the environment, 239+240Pu to be 1.0–2.4 × 109 Bq suggests, using the upper limit, that the amount of plutonium that escaped into the environment was less than a gram, around 370 mg of 239Pu and around 180 mg of 240Pu.
It appears that in the cases examined here, radioactive particles, the isotopes studies are insoluble, encased in SiO2, essentially glass, the source of which is believed to have been concrete in the reactor floor and walls. Thus they are not really biologically accessible unless deposited as particles and located in close proximity to living tissue, for example lungs.
There is a great deal of interesting stuff in this paper, and unfortunately I will not have an opportunity to discuss it at length owing to time constraints. One of the most interesting pieces of information actually comes from a reference, reference 39 in the paper, Estimation of fuel compositions in Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant which gives a full (Origen-2) estimate of all of the nuclides that were present in the reactors at the time of the natural disaster in tabular form. It is, understandably, written in Japanese, although the tables themselves are in Western symbols and numbers and are easy to follow. Google Translator does an excellent job translating the Japanese into coherent English.
From the ejecta, the authors are able to describe an estimated process by which the reactor melted.
Cs forms oxide precipitation, and Sr dissolves as oxides in the fuel matrix. (48) At the accident, these elements were volatilized from these oxide forms and were incorporated into the SiO2 matrix under a temperature of 2000–2500 K, which was estimated in the previous section using the MELCOR code. The fuel fragment, which is the main source of Pu injection into the radioactive particle, was formed by core degradation under high-temperature conditions of the nuclear fuel. The XR2-1 test is one of the representative simulation studies that investigated the collapsing behavior at core damage in a boiling water reactor. (49) The meltdown of nuclear fuel in the FDNPP accident may occur in the same manner as this experiment’s results. First, the Zr covering the fuel rods melted and dropped under high-temperature conditions. Then, the UO2 pellets, which are the nuclear fuel, were infiltrated by the molten Zr and collapsed, producing many fuel fragments, and at the same time, fuel debris containing Pu was produced. Pu injected into the radioactive particles was derived from the Pu-containing fragments. Some of these particles were released into the environment by hydrogen explosion of the Unit 1 reactor. The source of SiO2, which is a matrix of radioactive particles, is still unclear. However, Satou (50) and Martin et al. (51,52) pointed out that the heat-insulating material presented in the PCV and the operation floor wall were the only source of SiO2, while the other ones mentioned the possibility that the source of SiO2 was concrete in the reactor. (25,28−30)
The amounts of Cs, Sr, and Pu contained in nine radioactive particles categorized into the type B from Unit 1 were investigated. The injection processes of these elements into the radioactive particles were discussed from the viewpoint of the volatilized behavior of these elements. We concluded that Cs and Sr were introduced into the particles by the volatilization process, whereas the fine particles of the nuclear fuel injected Pu into the radioactive particles during meltdown. While the emission of radioactive particles was only a portion of the overall release event from the reactors in the FDNPP accident, the emission behavior of Sr and Pu exhibited stark differences: the former occurred in a gaseous form, whereas the latter involved fine fuel fragments. The detailed analysis of Pu released into the environment by the FDNPP accident has been challenging due to the relatively high concentration of Pu contamination from global fallout. Investigating the Pu emission inventory from the accident can be accomplished through the determination of 239+240Pu/137Cs activity ratio, as analyzed in the radioactive particles. This study predicts the presence of numerous fine fragments containing Pu, offering valuable insights for the future decommissioning process of the FDNPP reactors.
I have argued that expending large amounts of money to "decommission" the Fukushima reactors is not justified beyond perhaps a sarcophagus for each reactor, since few lives are actually at risk from declining to do much more. The money would be better spent building more reactors to address to the maximal extent possible, extreme global heating, the effects of which dwarf any events or risk of events associated with nuclear power, media frenzies and public stupidity notwithstanding. As the paper noted, many of the nuclides that were highly radioactive have decayed to stable elements. This process will only continue. For example, as of this writing, 4930 days after the tsunami struck, less than 1% of the 134Cs, an induced radionuclide that does not form directly in fission because of the stability of 135Xe, but is formed by neutron capture in nonradioactive 133Cs that does form from nuclear fission, remains as of today. (This isotope 134Cs was involved in the very stupid media brouhaha over the Fukushima Tuna Fish).
Anyway, it's an interesting paper.
I trust you're having a pleasant weekend.
The Canadian Summer Forest Fires and Toxic Particulate Pollution in NY/NJ
The paper I'll discuss in this post is this one: Physicochemical Characterization of the Particulate Matter in New Jersey/New York City Area, Resulting from the Canadian Quebec Wildfires in June 2023 José Guillermo Cedeño Laurent, Hooman Parhizkar, Leonardo Calderon, Denisa Lizonova, Irini Tsiodra, Nikolaos Mihalopoulos, Ilias Kavouras, Mahbub Alam, Mohammed Baalousha, Lila Bazina, Georgios A. Kelesidis, and Philip Demokritou Environmental Science & Technology 2024 58 (33), 14753-14763.
I was flying into NJ from a business trip during the haze event from the Canadian fires that blanketed the Northeast when the pilot came on to announce that despite the smell in the cabin, the plane was not on fire; it was smoke from vast burning fires.
Often, when I am confronted about my advocacy of nuclear energy with balderdash about Fukushima, Chernobyl, (even TMI) blah, blah, blah, I am inclined to ask how these much hyped disasters, often discussed on servers and home computers powered by electricity generated using dangerous fossil fuels which kill during normal use (roughly 19,000 people per day), compare to the planet being in flames. Sometimes, albeit rarely, the point gets through.
Um, wildfire smoke, the ongoing result of extreme global heating driven by dangerous fossil fuel waste, isn't good for you. On the contrary, it's bad for you. Particulate matter in biomass smoke, and many of the associated chemicals are powerful carcinogens. The ratio of cancers caused by smoke to that caused by radiation leaks over the 70 years of commercial nuclear power is a big number.
I won't have much time to discuss this paper in detail, but I'll just excerpt a few bits and offer up some of the graphics.
From the introduction:
In the US, over 60,000 wildfires burn an average of 2.8 million hectares of land every year. (4) Due to climate change-driven drought, extreme heat, and reduced snowpack, recent wildfire season lengths are expanding dramatically. (5) In 2020, over 28 million people, approximately 70% of the population in California (CA) experienced more than 100 days of unhealthy air quality as specified by the US Environmental Protection Agency Air Quality Index values above 100 from elevated ambient particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) and ozone. (6) During the 2020 wildfires in CA, daily PM2.5 levels often reached 350–500 ug/m3, significantly higher than the 24 h average limit of 35 ug/m3, which is specified by the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). (7)
The impacts of wildfires, however, are not limited to the US. Worldwide, 2.2 billion people were exposed to ≥1 day of substantial wildfire pollution per year in 2010–2019, with the average person having almost 10 days of exposure per year. (8) The same analysis determined that, globally from 2000 to 2019, the population weighted average WFPM2.5exposure was 2.5 ug/m3. It is significant to mention that, since WFPM is dominated by nanoscale PM, which has less mass compared to micron-scale particulates, a 2.5 ug/m3 add on is translated to millions of particles per volume of air with different and unique chemical composition. Therefore, relying on PM mass concentrations may underestimate the associations between WFPM and health outcomes given the nanoscale nature of such particles. Furthermore, wildfire air pollution poses a significant health threat, particularly to socially vulnerable Americans living in environmental justice communities already burdened with compromised air quality. Davies et al., 2018, identified 29 million Americans at risk for extreme wildfires, of which 12 million belonging to Black, Hispanic, or Native American communities face approximately 50% greater vulnerability to wildfires compared to other census tracts. (9)...
("u" has been substituted for the greek letter "mu" which is no longer accessible at DU.)
The sampling was done at the Rutgers campus, a relatively short drive from where I live.
Some graphics from the paper:
The satellite image of the smoke in this case (available at the abstract to the paper) :
The caption:
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The paper concludes with some wishful thinking, the idea of regulating the effects of air pollution driven by extreme global heating:
I'm not all that interesting as a person, but if I were, if one really wishes to know why I consider opposition to nuclear energy as insane as Trump trying to talk about the cost of childcare, which one DUer eloquently characterized as being like a junior high school kid giving a verbal book report on a book he hadn't read, thinking about the consequences of extreme global heating, which I do all the time, might help.
We are, collectively, not "reading the book" but here's a report.
Have a wonderful weekend.
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Gender: MaleCurrent location: New Jersey
Member since: 2002
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