Mathematician: sunspot could mean mini ice age from 2030 Astronomers working in the years 1645 to 1715 observed many fewer sunspots than they were accustomed to seeing. The lower-than-expected rate of sunspots has since come to be known as the “Maunder Minimum” and a new theory suggests we're about to get another one. So says Professor Valentina Zharkova of Northumbria University, …
Or, in the spirit of compromise : it would be a good idea to accept the 'Climate Change' argument and cut back heavily on use of fossil fuels, so that come 2030 (if this prediction turns out to be right) we'll have a stockpile of stuff to burn to keep us warm.
AGW-skeptic right here, and you might be surprised to find that many of us are actually in favour of moving away from fossil fuels. Just not out of some (imo) terror of AGW. They are polluting and cause adverse health effects. They are finite, meaning we must start changing away from them. They are heavily produced in regions ruled by despotic regimes we should not be supporting.
All of these are good reasons to be moving away from fossil fuels. Though not to wind power which is a dreadful ideal, but to nuclear which is cleaner, has plentiful fuel and doesn't result in us protecting the Saudi royal family from those they oppress.
AGW doesn't come into it, as far as I'm concerned
Have you seen where a lot of the uranium comes from?
I'm all for building up our nuclear power production but claiming you want to do it for the good of the people is just nutty. Have a little read about what human rights watch has to say about Kazakhstan: https://www.hrw.org/europe/central-asia/kazakhstan
Uranium comes from bad countries too, but the fuel is only a small fraction of the cost of nuclear power. We'd be giving bad suppliers far, *far* less money, compared to using fossils. And newer designs use thorium which is a lot easier to find.
Also, solar panels are made in China. Just saying.
>>"Have you seen where a lot of the uranium comes from?"
Kazakhstan may mine Uranium, but there are also plenty of other sources globally where it can be mined very economically. For example, whilst Australians are frequent complainers about their government, I doubt even they would refer to their government as a despotic regime (mostly). And that's just Uranium. When you get onto Thorium reactors, fuel is so globally plentiful it's absurd.
You can get oil from places other than Qatar, Saudi, et al. But with oil, Western support of despotic regimes seems to have been intractable. Nuclear power, the fuel is so easily sourced that if we decide we don't like Kazakhstan's human rights, shifting to another provider is perfectly doable with only a modest financial impact. Maybe even none.
"Have you seen who has the biggest uranium reserves?"
Uranium is everywhere, just like thorium. The problem is that it's a toxic bitch to extract and needs shitloads of energy applied to it simply in order to make it usable as LWR reactor fuel (CANDU will take natural uranium, but they're not common or lightwater jobbies)
Places like Canada (Cigar Lake) and Australia (Olympic Dam)?
Uranium is mined all over the place, it's not particularly scarce or very expensive. It can even be extracted in useful quantities from seawater although that's not as cheap as digging it up, extracting it from mine spoil heaps or underground leaching.
"Have you seen where a lot of the uranium comes from?"
Yes, but Uranium is a poor fuel for civil nuclear power(*) and water-cooled reactors are a fundamentally BAD idea.
Lester's been pushing Thorium(**) on ElReg for years. Do try and keep up, or acquaint yourself with LFTRs and the Oak Ridge MSRE of the 1960s.
Uranium was a great starter fuel inasmuch as proving controlled nuclear reactions are possible but the plants are wildly inefficient. Molten Salt systems are James Watt's engine to Water-based systems' Newcomen engine.
(*) It's rare, hard to extract, mindbogglingly expensive to enrich to usable levels (Gigawatts of gas centrifuges churning away in the USA producing fuel for civil plants) and you end up throwing away about 30% of the uranium as "useless" after enrichment - not good when it's a toxic heavy metal. On top of that you only use 1-2% of the stuff in a civil reactor before throwing the rest out as "waste".
(**) On the other hand we have more thorium than we know what to do with, even if thorium nukes were rolled out everywhere in the world for 11 billion people and it produces less than 1% of the waste that Uranium cycle systems do. Nice side effect - they can burn that left over waste from uranium plants too.
An up vote for you Sir/Madam, very nice to read something about climate change, that is actually sensible! We all know that the Earths Climate has always been changing, for one reason or another.
I have no doubt it will continue to do so whatever we do. It's not to be denied that cleaning up our act is a very good idea.
> nuclear which is cleaner, has plentiful fuel and doesn't result in us protecting the Saudi royal family from those they oppress.
Nuclear also has the advantage that it reliably makes towns and cities uninhabitable. So there won't be much fossil fuel use happening there.
What's that Sooty? You say "But those were accidents"?
Yes. Yes they were. In an industry well known for having a creative and lateral approach to safety, very nasty accidents do happen - which is a complete surprise to everyone. But there it is.
I guess we still have to work out what to do with all the waste. But if it's cold enough, we can just freeze it at the bottom of a rusty pool for a decade or two and let the next generation deal with it.
A bit like we're doing now, in fact.
@ TheOtherHobbes
"Nuclear also has the advantage that it reliably makes towns and cities uninhabitable."
Eh? We have Chernobyl, the fantastic and predictable work of communism providing the best for its people in propaganda but not in practice. Lacking in safety or hope the inevitable happened. Then we have the second worst nuclear disaster to grace our planets nuclear power generation Fukushima. This devastating event managed to kill a grand total of zero people and due to the doom it has brought upon us, is predicted to have zero deaths attributable to it.
2 natural disasters killed many. These were unexpected disasters with very low chance of occurring, the plant was an old design, the backups were even taken out!!!! And still zip. If this is the worst we have then we are pretty good.
The regulations are so excessive on nuclear that my watch would be classed as a hazardous material.
Fukushima. This devastating event managed to kill a grand total of zero people and due to the doom it has brought upon us, is predicted to have zero deaths attributable to it.
Allow me to preface my question with this statement. I love nuclear power and I think it is the future for our species.
However, is it still the case that there have been no deaths due to Fukushima? I can't clearly recall where, but I do remember reading about 1300 deaths, though did not at the time ascertain the source.
@Myself
Well, I had a spare 30 mins and have done some very basic research. Essentially it boils down to this:
I can't find a single credible source of information that links any deaths at all to the nuclear plant at Fukushima. Even the Samurai are still with us.
That's not to say it was "free", for certainly there are increased risks of cancer, particularly among those living near the plant when it went pop and those clearing up the aftermath. Risks increase by upto 70%, but that will account for around 15 additional cases for Thyroid cancer, and its entirely possible none of those cases will be terminal due to the fatality rate standing at 4%ish and halving every ten years.
Genuinely, I'm impressed. It'd be better to modernise plant design, location, and operation, but as it stands.... This, in terms of deaths, seems less of a disaster than letting 17 year olds called Billy drive Ford Fiestas while in posession of ginger hair.
ETA: D@v3 - no, you have it entirely right and I've upvoted you for that.
@ LucreLout
Technically I think there was 1 death caused by hydrogen buildup which caused an explosion if I remember right but as far as death due to nuclear the number is (as far as I am aware) still zero and the predicted deaths attributable to the event will remain at zero.
>>"However, is it still the case that there have been no deaths due to Fukushima? I can't clearly recall where, but I do remember reading about 1300 deaths, though did not at the time ascertain the source."
There have been no deaths attributable to radiation or other direct effects of Fukushima. There have, however, been a number of deaths due to the hysterical ways of responding to it. That's hysteria in the clinical sense, not the humorous one. For example, many aged people have become ill or passed away from stresses and emotional trauma brought on by being moved away from their homes, from loved ones, kept in evacuation centres, loss of livelihood and financial devastation from losing homes. There have been many cases of severe depression and trauma amongst people who have basically seen their entire community and life taken away from them as villages are emptied and the inhabitants scattered to the wind. I'm not sure about your figure, but statistically many people have suffered adverse health effects and mortality has increased amongst affected demographics. The great tragedy being that it's avoidable. Nearly all of the evacuated areas are fine to live in and even the areas really close are essentially just a "you have a very slightly increased risk of cancer, statistically speaking".
However, the Japanese government was and is terrified of being accused of not doing enough. You're familiar with the way someone will always show up to tear down a government with claims of how they could have done X and why didn't they do Y. They even upgraded the rating of the nuclear disaster to its highest level (despite not meeting the criteria at all) because someone accused them of not taking the disaster seriously enough by putting it lower than the maximum. Disastrous evacuations and traumatic break up of communities and families followed.
I'm not exactly sure of your numbers, but that is likely what you have seen referred to as "deaths due to Fukushima". The media loves its disaster porn.
@Harmony
There have been no deaths attributable to radiation or other direct effects of Fukushima. There have, however, been a number of deaths due to the hysterical ways of responding to it.
Yep. When I looked for the source of the numbers I recalled, it turned out that none were due to actual health effects of radiation and all were linked to increased stress due to relocation away from communities, or unnecessary panic over the radiation which then impacted their health far more significantly.
For the avoidance of doubt, my view is now that there have been zero deaths due to radiation at or from Fukushima and there are expected to remain zero deaths in the future.
" For example, many aged people have become ill or passed away from stresses and emotional trauma brought on by being moved away from their homes, from loved ones, kept in evacuation centres, loss of livelihood and financial devastation from losing homes. "
The same problem occurred in Christchurch NZ after the quakes there. Rest homes moved residents to other towns because the local infrastructure was broken and ~25% of them promptly popped their clogs.
Old folk don't take change very well, if at all
"However, is it still the case that there have been no deaths due to Fukushima? I can't clearly recall where, but I do remember reading about 1300 deaths, though did not at the time ascertain the source."
Well, you see, there was this humongus earthquake and ginormous tidal wave that occurred at the time. That's what killed 1300 people and left thousands more homeless.
But that was hardly covered in comparison to the "OMG!! A NUCLEAR POWER PLANT BROKE!!! WE'S ALL GONNA DIE!!" scare headlines that get eyeballs for the media.
After all, who cares about a natural disaster affecting thousands, when you can big up a nuclear accident that had very little effect?
Well, you see, there was this humongus earthquake and ginormous tidal wave that occurred at the time. That's what killed 1300 people and left thousands more homeless.
Well, you see, it didn't. That killed about 18,000 people. When trying to be clever, first be clever ;-)
After all, who cares about a natural disaster affecting thousands, when you can big up a nuclear accident that had very little effect?
Quite.
Ah the old nukes is deadly brigade turn up at last. Lets see now, how do you define disaster?
Chernobyl: old reactor design more suited to making stuff that goes bang, badly trained staff, badly run and the staff did everything possible to make it break. Yep, true disaster, but not really the technologies fault. Cars kill more people, every month.
The effort in Japan is probably next in fear parade. Built beside the sea in a tsunami prone place, with the emergency pumps in the basement. Wow, real disaster planning there. Hit by an earthquake 3 times it was designed for and so far, only definite injuries are 24 burned ankles. Lots of fud, because now we can measure tiny amounts of radiation. Unsettling, and probably going to be worse because of cultural avoidance of issues to save face, but not a catastrophe.
So since human (usually PHB ) stupidity can be counted on, a rational decision is to use one of the multiple new reactors, designed to produce only energy, not plutonium. These designs are fail safe. They shut down if cooling stops, even if the idiots are in charge. Thorium would be nice, especially as it can burn light water uranium waste in some designs. or the 4G types if you must use uranium.
How many workers killed in windmill construction ? How much wild life killed by solar cookers and wind mills ?
In meantime h4rm0ny, well put. It is also silly to burn chemical feed stocks.
"Chernobyl: old reactor design more suited to making stuff that goes bang, badly trained staff, badly run and the staff did everything possible to make it break. "
Not only that but they attempted to cover it up for a week past the accident.
Fukushima got as bad as it did because the japanese refused to ask for external help and incompetent management kept giving stupid orders which made things worse until the onsite engineer grew some cojones and told them to fuck off - it was at that stage things started improving.
See a pattern here?
"Nuclear also has the advantage that it reliably makes towns and cities uninhabitable. "
Nuclear scares people. Radiation levels are higher in the Yorkshire Dales (or downtown Helsinki) than anywhere in Fukushima province other than right next to the reactor vessels. Those big tanks of contaminated water are less radioactive than the thermal pools at Bath.(*)
Chernobyl is a bit harder but other than a few concentrated spots it's safe - and for all the fearmongering, and with those accidents and including all the military accidents and even the 2 bombs on japan, the deaths-per-TWh of nuclear generation is a factor of several thousand less than for coal (and there's still a lot of room for improvement on the nuclear generation plant)
On the subject of coal: Burning coal releases entrapped radioactive particles - the radium content alone of coal emissions is larger than several Chernobyls each year, but we don't care about that just like we don't care about the high radiation dose we get from cosmic rays every time we fly (civil transport aircrew have the highest radiation exposure levels of any profession and they're not exactly dying off like flies or even developing cancers at statistically unusual rates)
On top of that the largest ecological disaster in the USA in the last decade wasn't Deepwater Horizon - it was a coal sludgepond in Tennessee breaking its dam - there are 5000 more sites just like that which are known about in the USA (they didn't have to be notified until 15 years ago, The EPA is still discovering them).
(*) A lot of the problem in Japan is down to the authorities slashing allowable radiation levels by 90% immediately after Fukushima in a total panic kneejerk. Even if the meltdowns hadn't happened most of the radioactivity levels in fish, etc would have been above those new limits.
To many greenies, modern living is evil and should be attacked. There is no need to attack it rationally - just attack it via any mechanism available: AGW, occupy Wall St, taxing, cell phones, pesticides...
It does not matter whether or not AGW stacks up logically, or is scientifically sound, modern society is evil and if it gets attacked via the wrong mechanisms, well that's just poetic justice.
Unfortunately getting it right does matter if you're actually trying to find any engineering solution to a problem.
The hype around AGW is so large that it has completely swamped other real environmental issues which we understand way better and have the ability to actually fix with far lower expenditure.
Obama has said that AGW is the biggest threat out there, yet surely there are far larger issues for both mankind (long term economic prospects) and the environment (degradation in some areas).
No matter that during the last 50 years our consumption of fossil fuels has increased, yet much of our pollution has decreased. There are now fish in the Thames River again. New Jersey rivers don't catch firs any more. Nobody worries any more about acid rain eating the buildings in Europe.
>>"Genius. It's not even compromise. Superb"
It's not some clever method of tricking AGW-skeptics into supporting anti-climate change measures. I AM a skeptic. And for example, I get very unhappy when I see extras tacked onto my electricity bill and am forced to subsidise wind farms which are hugely inefficient. (Solar and nuclear I'm in favour of, wind power is downright destructive).
I just happen to be an AGW-skeptic who would like to head off staggering rises in energy costs (which increasingly expensive to extract fossil fuels inevitably lead to), who detests regimes that stone women and would like to see London's vehicles emit water vapour rather than black filth.
There is no shortage of stuff to burn, at least for the next 30-50 years. No need for compromise in order to conserve the stockpiles. What we do need to do is stop wasting money on pretending that the current technologies are worth a wide roll-out. More research, more fission (in the medium term), prepare for adaption.
Actually there is no ammo - at least for Europe.
Both when modeled produce the same result for Europe - climate goes more continental. Colder winters, hotter (albeit shorter) and drier summers. Up to 10-15 degrees colder and up to 5-10 degrees hotter respectively.
So we are looking not at the Maunder minimum but one of its predecessors like the turn-of the first millenium small ice age. If historical references are to be believed the Black Sea regularly froze up to several hundred kilometers from the shore. The Northern Adriatic, bay of Venice, bay of Marseilles and Mare Marmaris froze too. North Sea and Baltic was regularly frozen too.
There is a reason why all the Vikings who could, packed their stuff in a boat and went to conquer Normandy, the Slavic tribes along the Dnepr (to form what is today's Russia) with some of them ending up as far as the Mediterranean. Regardless of will, on average, the Earth warm up or chill down we will observe that reason again in Europe and it ain't going to be pretty.
By the way, Texas, New Mexico, etc got many times more rainfall in places during the same period (at the expense of Mexico proper which saw drought). I would suggest to any denier to reconsider and buy an amphibious vehicle or a boat about now.
Don't quite get all of the down votes. Wunderground.com has been saying the same thing about colder winters, hotter summers and blaming it on climate change.
So if it does happen the climate change people are still going to blame climate change.
It'll be interesting to see how this pans out as that big orange ball in the sky is a variable that has been ignored an awful lot by both sides.
The problem is that by the time we reach 2040, the damage done to developed and developing economies will be epic (in the proper sense of the word). The hockey team and other enviroMentalists will have killed more people than socialism by the time we get to 2040, and all they'll do is move the goal posts again.
Keep driving they said, and by the millenium the UK will have the climate of Portugal. I guess the 2800 hours of sunshine they get are tourist board propaganda?
Every barrel of oil is going to be dug up and burned/used at as faster pace a civilisation requires. It just is. So instead of endlessly over egging their warnings, they'd be better off looking at mitigation technology, otherwise they'll achieve literally nothing between now and their much vaunted apocalypse.
Here's a hint that will save the warmists a very joyless and ultimately fruitless life: It isn't that we haven't heard your message. It isn't that we haven't understood. We do as we do because either we do not beleive you or because we do not care. Shouting louder is only giving you a sore throat and the rest of us a head ache. So quiet down.
The wise man changes his view depending on the facts. The fool changes the facts to fit his view.
In either case, as I've said before, I don't get involved in this increasingly silly and partisan argument, I'll just re-iterate the fact that we are using more energy than we ever have before and will keep on doing so, therefore we should use the energy we have more efficiently (note: this does not involve living in yurts or wearing hair shirts) that way we a) reduce emissions and b) buy ourselves sometime to get alternatives such as Fusion working.
Win-win.
I'll just re-iterate the fact that we are using more energy than we ever have before and will keep on doing so, therefore we should use the energy we have more efficiently
We're using less today than we will tomorrow, for almost any value of tomorrow you want to pick.
Using the energy more efficiently means getting more done for the same input, not using a lower input, meaning a) reduce emissions isn't going to happen. Only by ensuring efficiency increases faster than economic growth / world population could you achieve that, and sadly, that's just not realistic. Greater efficiency means lower price and lower price makes other consumption viable - patio heaters, air conditioning, etc etc being examples of this from history.
buy ourselves sometime to get alternatives such as Fusion working.
We should be working on alternatives certainly, but there is no time based rush - we will not run out of oil for several generations to come.
How far, I wonder, could a car drive on a litre of fuel had we spent the tax income from enviroMentalism there, instead of on windmills? How far could a plane fly on a tank of fuel had we spent the tax on R&D for jet propulsion? Perhaps aerodynamics would have been a better target. Who knows. What I do know, is that while we persist with the AGW scare stories and foot stomping, actual real world scientific advances are being held up due to misallocating their funding to AGW initiatives.
Being green, where I grew up, meant naive. Little seems to have changed.
Not exactly. We're using more total energy but we're using it more efficiently. "We" in this instance being the entire planet and not just the GB or the US. There is some debate about how much less we might be using if all the places coming online were using current technology.
I think your essential point still stands: we're not on the exponential curve the alarmists cry havoc about. More probably a straight line and possibly asymptotically decreasing.
Some interesting questions, I agree.
Now here's a couple for you: How much less fuel would the USA be using if their politicians hadn't caved to the automobile industry lobbying to define SUVs as light trucks, thus exempting them from fuel economy regulations?
How much less power would people be using if, instead of using AirCon or central heating, houses were better insulated which keeps temperatures more stable? (Of course this makes houses a bit more expensive to build...)
It is not simply a case of "getting more done with the same input", but also "getting the same done with less input". It's not either/ or, it can be both.
It is not simply a case of "getting more done with the same input", but also "getting the same done with less input". It's not either/ or, it can be both.
No, for as long as we're using progressively more energy, and we are, then efficiency is only about getting more done for the same input. We'll never use less.
How much less fuel would the USA be using if their politicians hadn't caved to the automobile industry lobbying to define SUVs as light trucks, thus exempting them from fuel economy regulations?
With the advent of shale / fracking, I'm not sure it matters anymore. Peak oil is quite possibly something our great grandchildren will need to conquer, but only if they don't continue our work to increase efficiency, find more oil, or develop better extraction techniques. For anyone alive today, there is no peak oil.
How much less power would people be using if, instead of using AirCon or central heating, houses were better insulated which keeps temperatures more stable?
Given the utterly inexpensive price of loft insulation and energy efficient LED bulbs, it does make me wonder why the green lobby waste so much time and money trying to force the rest of us to believe their fallacy, when if they believed it themselves, they could have spent their time and money insulating their homes, those of their neighbours, and pretty well their whole street by now. Instead, they've achieved, well, nothing since about the late 80's.
I'd quite like to insulate my own house further, but as it's single skinned, I'd have to have the outside rendered, which would cost about £10k. In economic terms, that will simply never pay for itself, at least not within any time I'll own the house. Amazingly, none of the environmental lobby groups seem interested in contributing to the cost, which would permenantly lower that houses energy use..... which pretty much tells you all you really need to know about them and how much the believe their hype.
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