Nuclear Winter and Global Warming?

[Kerbart]

8 minutes ago, Darnok said:

He was wrong WWIII was cold war, now we will have WWIV and it won't be war on nukes, but war on biological weapon and after that war only one race will remain the one that first release virus killing all other races.

 • ← You missed it.

[peadar1987]

1 hour ago, Darnok said:

He was wrong WWIII was cold war, now we will have WWIV and it won't be war on nukes, but war on biological weapon and after that war only one race will remain the one that first release virus killing all other races.

The Cold War doesn't belong in the same bracket as the World Wars. It was marked by a series of relatively minor skirmishes and proxy wars, as opposed to the all-out battles between major powers that characterised the other two conflicts.

Releasing a virus that kills all other races would be no different in Mutually Assured Destruction terms than firing nuclear weapons. You back someone into a corner and they're going to hit you with everything they've got. You'd have to be pretty desperate or pretty stupid to make a first strike with a weapon like that. Especially as, unlike nukes, you don't even have the slim possibility that the enemy will all be wiped out before they have the chance to fire back.

[Darnok]

23 minutes ago, peadar1987 said:

The Cold War doesn't belong in the same bracket as the World Wars. It was marked by a series of relatively minor skirmishes and proxy wars, as opposed to the all-out battles between major powers that characterised the other two conflicts.

Releasing a virus that kills all other races would be no different in Mutually Assured Destruction terms than firing nuclear weapons. You back someone into a corner and they're going to hit you with everything they've got. You'd have to be pretty desperate or pretty stupid to make a first strike with a weapon like that. Especially as, unlike nukes, you don't even have the slim possibility that the enemy will all be wiped out before they have the chance to fire back.

Ok, you think that kill = you have to kill in one second...

You can release virus that will make group of people (for example entire race) infertile or make females of that group unable to have natural childbirth (natural = without sharp tools involved). In past there was Hundred Years' War, why we can't have one long war today?

[K^2]

9 hours ago, m4v said:

Pollution is going down, renewables are rising and that all is awesome but everybody agrees that change isn't coming fast enough, you're too worried about the economic consequences that "draconian" policies will cause today but not worried at all about the economic consequences of runaway global warming.

That's precisely the alarmist attitude I'm talking about. When driving on icy road, the last thing you want to do is slam the brakes. Even if you're certain you can't make the turn ahead. You're much better off tapping the brakes gently and try to minimize the damage on impact.

So far, we have established that global temperatures are climbing, that it will almost certainly have major negative impact on climate if the trend continues, and that we are contributing. But that's not the bad news.

The bad news is that we don't yet know how much we are contributing, and whether we've hit a runaway point yet. Suppose we contribute only a little, and temperatures keep climbing almost as rapidly even if we put on major brakes on the industry. What do we do then? What if it's actually all our fault, but we are past the point of no return already? In both of these scenarios, the last thing you want to do is hurt the industry right now. Sure, left unchecked, maybe it will bring about the catastrophic outcome a decade sooner. But if it's inevitable, I'll take it if it means we can be prepared for it.

One way or another, drastic climate change will happen on this planet. We all hope it won't happen during our life time, and maybe we can have impact on that. But we don't know. We might be heading for disaster either way. And I'm far more interested in making sure we can actually survive it. That my children and their children will be able to survive it. And the only way we can do that is with better technology.

We have no idea what set off major climate change in the past. We aren't certain about causes of changes we see today. But we do know what the consequences will be. Large temperature variations, flooding, droughts, and subsequent food shortage. None of it is pleasant, but all of it is something we have learned to manage. We have learned to heat and cool our houses. We have learned to irrigate dry land. We have learned to make fresh water out of sea water. We have learned to manage the floods. And we have learned to genetically engineer our crops to withstand all sorts of adverse conditions. We've not always been successful with these things, and we've never done it on  this scale. But it's something we understand, and it's something we know how to manage. We can survive a runaway global warming on the scale that the most pessimistic prognosis holds. We can do it if we do our homework and prepare for it. We will need very strong infrastructure for dealing with water distribution. We will need a power grid that can handle the additional demand. And we'll need to get people to get over the GMO fear. Which, by the way, is just another example of alarmists making life worse for everyone.

While we are doing all of that, we'll also learn a lot more about climate, and learn to rely on renewable resources instead of fossil fuels. And if that helps us not have to deal with catastrophic climate change this century, or maybe even this millennium, that would be absolutely fantastic. But if all we do is simply slam the brake, we'll just ruin our infrastructure and have no hope of saving ourselves from what's coming if it is already inevitable. I don't wish to gable the entirety of civilization on chance. Do you?

Edited January 26, 2016 by K^2
some typos

[Yourself]

24 minutes ago, K^2 said:

And we'll need to get people to get over the GMO fear. Which, by the way, is just another example of alarmists making life worse for everyone.

Can we get them over the nuclear fear too?  It just seems like nuclear energy has so much potential.  Not really as a renewable, but we're going to run out of oil eventually and I'd like us to keep our options open when it comes to energy production until we get settled with renewables.  I just don't have the confidence that fossil fuels will successfully bridge that gap.

Also there's a nuclear heated lake nearby and the warm water extends the season for water-based leisure activities quite significantly.  I quite like that.  It's also a wildlife refuge because parts of the lake never freeze.

[K^2]

I don't think we are going to run out of oil. Not only have we found tons and tons more of it that we can tap into, but also electric cars and solar power are catching up really fast. It's already cheaper to put up solar panels than to burn coal in some places. Yes, thanks in part to reasonable environmental regulations. We are well on our way to phasing out oil. Peak oil will still happen, but it will be due to dropping demand, not dropping supply.

But yeah, I agree. Nuclear is a fantastic option for a lot of places. We can't switch to 100% nuclear for an array of reasons, not least of which availability of nuclear fuel, but we don't need to, either. Running nuclear along side renewables will give us clean energy and a good safety margin on supply.

Edit: By the way, peak oil will have an exciting side-effect. We are currently relying on oil industry by-products for a lot of our carbon polymer supply. When gasoline consumption starts to drop, we'll suddenly be experiencing a shortage. Which will lead to carbon-capture as an economically viable way to supplement this supply. In the end, it will be economic forces that will get us to clean up the environment. Not that economy isn't in need of a guiding hand of policy, but certainly not a throttling one.

Edited January 26, 2016 by K^2

[fredinno]

1 hour ago, K^2 said:

I don't think we are going to run out of oil. Not only have we found tons and tons more of it that we can tap into, but also electric cars and solar power are catching up really fast. It's already cheaper to put up solar panels than to burn coal in some places. Yes, thanks in part to reasonable environmental regulations. We are well on our way to phasing out oil. Peak oil will still happen, but it will be due to dropping demand, not dropping supply.

But yeah, I agree. Nuclear is a fantastic option for a lot of places. We can't switch to 100% nuclear for an array of reasons, not least of which availability of nuclear fuel, but we don't need to, either. Running nuclear along side renewables will give us clean energy and a good safety margin on supply.

Edit: By the way, peak oil will have an exciting side-effect. We are currently relying on oil industry by-products for a lot of our carbon polymer supply. When gasoline consumption starts to drop, we'll suddenly be experiencing a shortage. Which will lead to carbon-capture as an economically viable way to supplement this supply. In the end, it will be economic forces that will get us to clean up the environment. Not that economy isn't in need of a guiding hand of policy, but certainly not a throttling one.

Why would it cause the carbon polymer supply to drop? You can make it out of methane too, more easily than Co2, you know.

[K^2]

9 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Why would it cause the carbon polymer supply to drop? You can make it out of methane too, more easily than Co2, you know.

Most of our natural gas is also a byproduct of the oil industry. Methane's bound to get far more expensive once oil demand drops. But you might still be right. Either way, our CO₂ output is bound to start going down soon.

[fredinno]

6 minutes ago, K^2 said:

Most of our natural gas is also a byproduct of the oil industry. Methane's bound to get far more expensive once oil demand drops. But you might still be right. Either way, our CO₂ output is bound to start going down soon.

Also, I doubt Oil would be in shortage. Less production might increase prices slightly, but it might not, as the only oil wells left would be drilling 'cheap oil' with a high EOREI.

[K^2]

I never said it would be in shortage. I'm saying there would be low demand, and consequently, low use of it.

[Chakat Firepaw]

23 hours ago, WedgeAntilles said:

Sigh. This is what happens when you ditch a thread for five days.

Science has not been able to eliminate natural causes of recent (alleged) warming, for these very simple reasons:

#1: There have been three previous warm periods (which were global, as I forgot to mention--the charts all showed global average temperatures going up during the Minoan, Roman, and Medieval climate optima--so the arguments that they were regional warming is dead)

Those "warm periods" involve a total temperature range smaller than the past fifty years of warming, (warming from a baseline that was already a match for all but the warmest of those earlier periods).

You should also know that when one region is warm and the rest of the world maintains its earlier average, the overall average goes up.

23 hours ago, WedgeAntilles said:

#2: Science doesn't know what caused those previous three warm periods.

Irrelevant, there is much data available for the current warming period that was not available for those.

Not that you're correct about the European/North African warming in the early 2nd millennium:  It's actually known to have been a solar maximum combined with a volcanic minimum with some shifts in ocean currents that focused heat gains.

This argument is basically "we don't know why a house burned down last year, so we cannot determine that the one yesterday was arson."

23 hours ago, WedgeAntilles said:

#3: The next warm period is scheduled to occur right now.

As I already pointed out:  That is based on a pattern which does not exist.

Remember, 3000 years ago was a local  _minimum_, not a local maximum.  If you were to assume a pattern, you would get:

c3500y - Minoan

c2000y - Roman

c800y - Medieval

Placing the expected next maximum somewhere 400-700 years from now.

23 hours ago, WedgeAntilles said:

Conclusion: the claim that we "can" observe human actions causing warming right now is bogus.

It's actually quite simple.  You measure the spectrum of the light reaching the Earth and the spectrum of the light leaving the Earth, (both reflected and emitted).

It is easy to determine the spectrum of the light emitted by the ground, (it's reasonably close to a blackbody), which means that we can determine how much of what wavelengths are absorbed by the atmosphere.

Given that we know what's being absorbed, we can tell what compounds are doing the absorbing.  CO2 is a big contributor to that absorption.

We also know how much human activity has increased CO2 levels, which means we can determine how much of the absorption is caused by that human caused increase.

23 hours ago, WedgeAntilles said:

Natural causes alone account for all of what we're supposedly seeing right now.

Nope, even comparing to the 1850s the natural forcings are tiny compared to the anthropogenic ones.  Furthermore, those natural forcings had most of their impact about a century ago, when working from the mid-20th century or later they are utterly irrelevant.

Just what natural cause do you think is behind this unprecedented warming?

23 hours ago, WedgeAntilles said:

One can think up theories about what "might" happen all day long, but when you observe things have have happened and they don't square with your theory, said theory must be discarded.

 So why haven't you discarded your theory yet?

 

[magnemoe]

6 hours ago, K^2 said:

I don't think we are going to run out of oil. Not only have we found tons and tons more of it that we can tap into, but also electric cars and solar power are catching up really fast. It's already cheaper to put up solar panels than to burn coal in some places. Yes, thanks in part to reasonable environmental regulations. We are well on our way to phasing out oil. Peak oil will still happen, but it will be due to dropping demand, not dropping supply.

But yeah, I agree. Nuclear is a fantastic option for a lot of places. We can't switch to 100% nuclear for an array of reasons, not least of which availability of nuclear fuel, but we don't need to, either. Running nuclear along side renewables will give us clean energy and a good safety margin on supply.

Edit: By the way, peak oil will have an exciting side-effect. We are currently relying on oil industry by-products for a lot of our carbon polymer supply. When gasoline consumption starts to drop, we'll suddenly be experiencing a shortage. Which will lead to carbon-capture as an economically viable way to supplement this supply. In the end, it will be economic forces that will get us to clean up the environment. Not that economy isn't in need of a guiding hand of policy, but certainly not a throttling one.

We will not run out of oil, ceiling is at $120 barrel coal to oil is profitable. 
Peak oil is an hypothetical setting where oil production fall fast while the demand is constant, the idea was that the Saudi deposit was running dry and this was kept secret by them or something like that. 
At an oil price at $30 barrel that prediction was as wrong as most alarmist warning, as more wrong than a steady state. 
Note that an major war in the Middle East might give an peak oil setting by reducing the supply, but this would be temporary until production is restored. 
Plastic and other oil products are not very oil priced dependent 

[fredinno]

13 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

We will not run out of oil, ceiling is at $120 barrel coal to oil is profitable. 
Peak oil is an hypothetical setting where oil production fall fast while the demand is constant, the idea was that the Saudi deposit was running dry and this was kept secret by them or something like that. 
At an oil price at $30 barrel that prediction was as wrong as most alarmist warning, as more wrong than a steady state. 
Note that an major war in the Middle East might give an peak oil setting by reducing the supply, but this would be temporary until production is restored. 
Plastic and other oil products are not very oil priced dependent 

Actually, peak world oil has only really been delayed by things like shale. Peak oil (or peak theories in general) have been proven time and time again.

[magnemoe]

4 minutes ago, fredinno said:

Actually, peak world oil has only really been delayed by things like shale. Peak oil (or peak theories in general) have been proven time and time again.

Who products has peaked in price because of lack of raw materials?
Note that peak oil require an setting where oil production fall hard over pretty short time and stay low. 

Yes agriculture products might get serious price jumps because of bad harvest one year, coffee and corn since 2000, 
Hard drives had an price jump because flood in Thailand took out most of the factories making motors used in them. 

Outside of external events like war and ignoring long term solutions like coal to oil we would get an gradual price increase over time. This also ignores electrical/ hybrid cars. 

[fredinno]

6 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Who products has peaked in price because of lack of raw materials?
Note that peak oil require an setting where oil production fall hard over pretty short time and stay low. 

Yes agriculture products might get serious price jumps because of bad harvest one year, coffee and corn since 2000, 
Hard drives had an price jump because flood in Thailand took out most of the factories making motors used in them. 

Outside of external events like war and ignoring long term solutions like coal to oil we would get an gradual price increase over time. This also ignores electrical/ hybrid cars. 

In practice, there would be a peak, but more due to lower demand than anything else.

[magnemoe]

39 minutes ago, fredinno said:

In practice, there would be a peak, but more due to lower demand than anything else.

Peak in production because of lowering demand is common, either at market get saturated or that other products taking over. 

Again peak oil is an setting where supply of an raw material falls sharply because an lack of the resource. Not an catastrophe or bad harvest reducing supply for some time.
Historical this has happened sometimes with hunting including wailing where the output has been far higher than replacement rate and the population crashes.
Don't know other examples. 

[peadar1987]

4 hours ago, Chakat Firepaw said:

 

It's actually quite simple.  You measure the spectrum of the light reaching the Earth and the spectrum of the light leaving the Earth, (both reflected and emitted).

It is easy to determine the spectrum of the light emitted by the ground, (it's reasonably close to a blackbody), which means that we can determine how much of what wavelengths are absorbed by the atmosphere.

Given that we know what's being absorbed, we can tell what compounds are doing the absorbing.  CO2 is a big contributor to that absorption.

We also know how much human activity has increased CO2 levels, which means we can determine how much of the absorption is caused by that human caused increase.

 

I wouldn't even bother. This is the guy who thinks that greenhouse gases block a greater proportion of incoming radiation than outgoing.

17 hours ago, Darnok said:

Ok, you think that kill = you have to kill in one second...

You can release virus that will make group of people (for example entire race) infertile or make females of that group unable to have natural childbirth (natural = without sharp tools involved). In past there was Hundred Years' War, why we can't have one long war today?

So you believe that there is going to be a massive race war whose sole purpose is not to improve the lives or increase the power of anybody living today, but to wipe out entire races. It's an interesting thought, but I'd like to know what you're basing your certainty about this on. Who do you think is going to fire the first "shots" in this war?

[magnemoe]

18 minutes ago, peadar1987 said:

So you believe that there is going to be a massive race war whose sole purpose is not to improve the lives or increase the power of anybody living today, but to wipe out entire races. It's an interesting thought, but I'd like to know what you're basing your certainty about this on. Who do you think is going to fire the first "shots" in this war?

First is doubtful that you will find an genetic marker who is accurate enough. Yes you might get something who work on populations who has been isolated an long time but killing all the Inuits or something would be pretty pointless outside of getting you invaded by nato. 
More so as most wars is between neighborhood countries so have fun finding an marker who don't kill off half of your own population and just as important don't kill off an million Americans or similar who would make your own causalities pretty irrelevant. 

 

 

[fredinno]

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Peak in production because of lowering demand is common, either at market get saturated or that other products taking over. 

Again peak oil is an setting where supply of an raw material falls sharply because an lack of the resource. Not an catastrophe or bad harvest reducing supply for some time.
Historical this has happened sometimes with hunting including wailing where the output has been far higher than replacement rate and the population crashes.
Don't know other examples. 

Peaks have also happened with US Oil, and British Coal.

3 hours ago, magnemoe said:

First is doubtful that you will find an genetic marker who is accurate enough. Yes you might get something who work on populations who has been isolated an long time but killing all the Inuits or something would be pretty pointless outside of getting you invaded by nato. 
More so as most wars is between neighborhood countries so have fun finding an marker who don't kill off half of your own population and just as important don't kill off an million Americans or similar who would make your own causalities pretty irrelevant. 

 

 

The Japanese are surprisingly pure-bred due to their culture being against immigration.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, fredinno said:

Peaks have also happened with US Oil, and British Coal.

Add that most mines who are started are now closed down.
However this is pretty different, less and less materials and price to extract it increases, at some point the cost are higher than the market price and it will increase so you close it down. 

Again peak oil is an different scenario, production fall rapidly without much warning, think the conspiracy is that the Saudi keeps it secret that most of their wells are about to run dry or something similar. Point here is secrecy, apparently the Saudi keeps this secret to prevent unrest as long as possible rather than be open and increase the revenue as price would skyrocket
At around $120 barrel coal to oil is economical so this is the ceiling on oil price long term. 

1 hour ago, fredinno said:

The Japanese are surprisingly pure-bred due to their culture being against immigration.

Don't think they are so different from Koreans or Chinese you can get good markers who don't kill lots of your own population. 
Making an bioweapon who kill off population groups would be far more dangerous than invade and shoot everybody. Less risk that others will nuke you, and less risk that the disease kill lots of your own population. 

[GeneralVeers]

11 hours ago, Chakat Firepaw said:

blah blah blah blah

Yeah......you called me a liar twice in this thread, with nothing to back either up. If you think you're going to pull that and then get invited out for a round of golf? Not happening.

 

6 hours ago, peadar1987 said:

I wouldn't even bother. This is the guy who thinks that greenhouse gases block a greater proportion of incoming radiation than outgoing.

Wrong. I don't "think" greenhouse gases block more incoming than outgoing. They DO block more in than out. Huge difference.

 

Moving on. Random note on peak oil. A while back it was predicted by pretty much everybody that the world had 40 years of oil left.

That was 40 years ago. Peak oil isn't happening.

[K^2]

12 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

At around $120 barrel coal to oil is economical so this is the ceiling on oil price long term.

I don't think we'll ever see these sort of oil prices again. Like any prediction about oil prices, I could be way off on this, but I really don't see a mechanism. After we're done with current oil wars, it might climb back to $50/$60, but by that point, every step oil makes up will just rocket-boost all of the electrics and renewables. The demand just isn't going to climb like it has, and we'll have more and more ways of extracting oil in more economical ways.

I suppose, a civil war in Russia could, potentially disrupt the supply sufficiently, but that seems unlikely. Even with a gov't collapse over there, oil supply is unlikely to suffer a bigger disruption than it did after USSR collapse, and oil never topped $30/barrel then.

[fredinno]

13 minutes ago, WedgeAntilles said:

Yeah......you called me a liar twice in this thread, with nothing to back either up. If you think you're going to pull that and then get invited out for a round of golf? Not happening.

 

Wrong. I don't "think" greenhouse gases block more incoming than outgoing. They DO block more in than out. Huge difference.

 

Moving on. Random note on peak oil. A while back it was predicted by pretty much everybody that the world had 40 years of oil left.

That was 40 years ago. Peak oil isn't happening.

Peak oil is real, it's just that we've found enough oil and ways to extract more from things like tar that it's been delayed a lot. The peak theory itself still has merit.

[GeneralVeers]

Disagree. If nobody has any idea when the supply is going to run out, then there's no way to know IF it will run out.

Yes, I realize how that sounds. Keep in mind--the Earth itself is creating new oil deposits right now, at an unknown rate.

[Chakat Firepaw]

1 hour ago, WedgeAntilles said:

Yeah......you called me a liar twice in this thread, with nothing to back either up. If you think you're going to pull that and then get invited out for a round of golf? Not happening.

Translation:  You can't actually defend your position and have decided to run away with the classic pseudoscience believer's cry of "he said something mean to me!"  I also find it rich that someone who make zero-citation posts is complaining about citations.

And the question stands:  Just what natural cause do you think is behind this unprecedented warming?

(Here's a hint:  It can't be the sun, which is in a 'cool' phase right now.)

1 hour ago, WedgeAntilles said:

Wrong. I don't "think" greenhouse gases block more incoming than outgoing. They DO block more in than out. Huge difference.

The solar emission peak is at wavelengths compounds like CO2 are transparent.

The Earth's emission peak is pretty much bang on a CO2 absorption peak.

This has been pointed out to you before and it's just as much of a falsehood now.

Now, you might want to point to the Earth's albedo and how much of the light reaching Earth is reflected.  The human emissions that significantly increase this are things like sulphur aerosols, (which are bad things for other reasons, mainly acid rain), CO2 doesn't increase it.

1 hour ago, WedgeAntilles said:

Moving on. Random note on peak oil. A while back it was predicted by pretty much everybody that the world had 40 years of oil left.

That was 40 years ago. Peak oil isn't happening.

You have left off the little detail that those forecasts in the 1970s were specifically for what was then considered "conventional oil".  That doesn't include anything like deap-sea drilling, fracking, shale oil or tar sands.

There's a reason we have been going after crude that's more expensive to extract.