NNadir
NNadir's JournalMore of the 2016 disastrous CO2 climate year, May 22, 2016 4.54 ppm worse than May 25, 2015.
Some remarks from previous posts on 2016, which is rapidly shaping up as an unparalleled disaster for the accelerating accumulation of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere:
Right now, if trends continue, 2016 will blow that level away.
Something very, very, very, very disturbing is happening if the Mauna Loa observatory's CO2 measurements are correct.
For clarity, I will repeat some text from one of my earlier posts, showing how I store and analyze this data available from the Mauna Loa observatory's website's data tab:
The data goes back to 1974, and comprises 2,090 data points.
I import this data into a spreadsheet I maintain each week, and calculate the weekly increases over the previous year. I rank the data for the increases from worst to best, the worst data point being 4.67 ppm over the previous year, which was recorded during the week ending September 6, 1998, when much of the rain forest of Southeast Asia was burning when fires set to clear the forests for palm oil plantations got out of control during unusually dry weather. Six of the worst data points ever recorded occurred in 1998 during this event, another was recorded in the January following that event.
Of the twenty worst data points ever recorded out of 2090 two of them have occurred in the last four weeks. The week ending January 31, 2016 produced a result of a 4.35 ppm of increase. The week just passed, that ending, 2/14/2016, produced a result of 3.79 ppm increase, tying it for the aforementioned week in January 1999, that ending on January 24, 1999, and that of January 2, 2011.
Of the twenty highest points recorded, 9 have occurred in the last 5 years, 10 in the last 10 years.
It's looking very bad these last few weeks at the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide observatory.
The above comes from a post in this very, very, very depressing series on May 1 of this year: For April 2016, the average weekly increase in CO2 levels compared with April 2015 is 4.16 ppm
For the week ending May 25, 2016, the recorded increase over the same week of last year was 4.54 ppm. The data set now contains 2104 points; 4.54 ppm is tied, with February 3, 2013 for being the 3rd worst such data point ever recorded. Of the 30 worst data points recorded going back to 1975, 2016 has registered 10 of them. Thirteen of the worst 30 have been recorded in the last 5 years, 17 of the worst 30 have been recorded in the last 10 years.
2015 represented the worst yearly increase ever observed, the first to exceed 3.00 ppm in a single year, coming in at 3.05 ppm over 2014. The average value for weekly reading for increases over 2014 in 2015 was 2.25 ppm. The average value for weekly reading for increases over 2015 in 2016 is 3.51 ppm. The average of these values in the last 4 weeks is 3.81 ppm.
In 2011, as a result of the Fukushima earthquake, which killed 20,000 people, with, thus far, zero among them resulting from radiation exposure, Japan shut its nuclear reactors to see if they were "safe." This was, in effect, a decision to kill even more people, since fossil fuels replaced the nuclear plants. Fossil fuel plants kill continuously, whenever they operate; the global survey of disease study published a few years back in the medical journal Lancet reported that the death toll from air pollution is seven million people per year.
Nobody cares; although many people can prattle on endlessly, and in my mind mindlessly, about whether the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free energy, nuclear energy, is "safe."
The average values for weekly increases in carbon dioxide concentrations over the same week of the previous year since Fukushima is 2.30 ppm; the average for the 21st century, 2.07 ppm; the average for the 20th century, 1.54 ppm.
Our response to climate change internationally is to promote so called "renewable energy," which amounts to "more of the same," in my view. More than 2 trillion dollars was "invested" in so called "renewable energy" in the last ten years. The degradation of the atmosphere is accelerating, not decelerating.
Yet the faith in so called "renewable energy" which is neither effective, inexpensive, or - given its reliance on increasing rare and often toxic metals and other materials - sustainable, remains unabated. And let's be clear, this is a faith based approach to climate change. It hasn't worked; it isn't working; and it won't work.
Someone has to say this, however much it flies in the face of so called "conventional wisdom," which in fact, is not "wisdom" at all, any more than so called "renewable energy," is actually "renewable," given as stated above, its reliance on depleting materials. It has to be said because it's, um, true.
Enjoy the rest of the weekend.
Very pleased to announce that my wife has switched from Sanders to the Hill.
In more than 30 years of a wonderful marriage to a fine, loving woman, I can't recall that we ever disagreed on an election until now.
She "liked" Bernie Sanders, and as time went on, beginning with some respect for his intentions if not his capabilities, I never felt Sanders showed enough competence to be nominated for the Presidency.
Mostly my wife despises Trump, as does any decent human being as far as I'm concerned.
Sanders Trump promoting "debate" - it was going to be nothing more than a group Hillary bash - has made my wife recognize what a pernicious and probably senile fool Sanders is.
In the New Jersey Primary, we've just added another vote for the Hill.
Happy Memorial Day Weekend.
Wow. Now Bernie Sanders, St. Bernie, is also FDR.
A Powerful Attack on the "Destructive" Populist "Platitudes" of Bernie Sanders.We can hope, or worry, or something, that Germany will go fascist, invade France, bomb Britain, all so Bernie can show us how Roosevelty he is.
If anyone uses the word "platitude" - and frankly I'm very fond of the word where St. Bernie is concerned - they are obviously attacking FDR.
Sheesh.
This is the worst political season I've lived through, worse than Bush v. Gore, McGovern v. Nixon, but not worse, apparently than Hoover v FDR or for that matter Wendell Wilkie v. FDR.
More of the 2016 disastrous CO2 climate year, May 8, 2016 4.01 ppm worse than May 8, 2015.
Some remarks from previous posts on 2016, which is rapidly shaping up as an unparalleled disaster for the accelerating accumulation of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere:
Right now, if trends continue, 2016 will blow that level away.
Something very, very, very, very disturbing is happening if the Mauna Loa observatory's CO2 measurements are correct.
For clarity, I will repeat some text from one of my earlier posts, showing how I store and analyze this data available from the Mauna Loa observatory's website's data tab:
The data goes back to 1974, and comprises 2,090 data points.
I import this data into a spreadsheet I maintain each week, and calculate the weekly increases over the previous year. I rank the data for the increases from worst to best, the worst data point being 4.67 ppm over the previous year, which was recorded during the week ending September 6, 1998, when much of the rain forest of Southeast Asia was burning when fires set to clear the forests for palm oil plantations got out of control during unusually dry weather. Six of the worst data points ever recorded occurred in 1998 during this event, another was recorded in the January following that event.
Of the twenty worst data points ever recorded out of 2090 two of them have occurred in the last four weeks. The week ending January 31, 2016 produced a result of a 4.35 ppm of increase. The week just passed, that ending, 2/14/2016, produced a result of 3.79 ppm increase, tying it for the aforementioned week in January 1999, that ending on January 24, 1999, and that of January 2, 2011.
Of the twenty highest points recorded, 9 have occurred in the last 5 years, 10 in the last 10 years.
It's looking very bad these last few weeks at the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide observatory.
The above comes from a post in this very, very, very depressing series on May 1 of this year: For April 2016, the average weekly increase in CO2 levels compared with April 2015 is 4.16 ppm
For the week ending May 8, 2016, the recorded increase over the same week of last year was 4.01 ppm. The data set now contains 2102 points; 4.01 ppm is tied, with April 13, 2014, and May 6, 2012 for being the 11th worst such data point ever recorded. Of the 30 worst data points recorded going back to 1975, 2016 has registered 10 of them. Thirteen of the worst 30 have been recorded in the last 5 years, 17 of the worst 30 have been recorded in the last 10 years.
Until 2015, the worst year ever observed was 1998, at 2.93 ppm over 1997, this undoubtedly because of the massive forest fires in Southeast Asia when rain forest clearing fires set to clear land for palm oil plantations went out of control. Seven of the worst of the 2102 data points were recorded in 1998.
It is almost certainly the case that the recent Fort McMurray fires in Canada are not helping, but it must be said that 2015 and 2016 were already disastrous before those fires started. 2015 was the first year to exceed 3.00 ppm over the previous year; interestingly not one of the 30 worst weekly data points occurred in 2015.
Everything we think we're doing to address climate change is failing, and failing dramatically.
Recently in this space I had a wonderful conversation with a "renewables will save us" advocate about how wonderful it is that US carbon dioxide emissions to generate electricity have fallen. As I will show in a future post analyzing the carbon dioxide output of electricity production of US electricity, the bulk of this reduction actually have very little to with so called "renewable energy" - a trivial form of electricity in the United States despite the huge sums of money squandered on it - but rather from the awful increase in the use of dangerous natural gas, which has released 287,000,000 metric tons more carbon dioxide in 2015 to generate electricity than it did in 2005, concomitant with a reduction, but hardly an elimination, in the use of dangerous coal, the carbon dioxide emissions of which have fallen by 722 million tons per year from 2005 to 2015.
The third largest source of electricity in the United States is nuclear energy. The nuclear output in the United States exceeds, by a factor of three, all other forms of electricity combined, excepting coal and natural gas.
But as the climate figures above show, it's too little, too late, and any case, all the use of dangerous natural gas on the entire planet is at the expense of all human beings who will live after us.
Worldwide human activities are adding, not even counting forest fires, significantly more 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the planetary atmosphere each year.
If any of this upsets you, don't worry, be happy. Bernie Sanders is here to tell us that renewable energy will work some day, even if it's proved useless this far in the 21st century thus far, at least where actual measurements of the contents of the atmosphere are performed. Wishing is always better than reality.
Enjoy the remainder of the weekend.
The experimental danger, observed over half a century of direct experience of nuclear energy...
...is trivial compared to the danger of fossil fuels over the same period.
I don't know why this is mysterious. It's clear simply by doing a body count.
Anyone who can count can directly experience this effect, if and only if, they don't ignore the effects of dangerous fossil fuels.
Right now, despite all the crap handed out a myriad of anti-nuke sites, each provision of links to these organizations being more stupid than the previous such link, seven million people die each year from air pollution.
Lots of physicians, most physicians in fact, are aware of this, even if the so called "physicians for social responsibility" couldn't care less. Maybe some of the members of the "Physicians for Social Responsibility" should take some time to open up the scientific medical journal, The Lancet to see where, exactly, in the comprehensive paper assembled by physicians and epidemiologists around the world of the 67 major causes of mortality worldwide, nuclear energy appears as a risk. The linked paper is whence my 7 million per year figure comes.
Or maybe, just maybe, some one so lazy as merely to produce a link to this idiot website could open the paper themselves to see if the rhetoric on the "Physicians for Social Responsibility" website is valid.
If not maybe someone with enough stomach - I don't qualify - to endure the website of the "Physicians for Social Responsibility" can tell me the source of their claims.
How many deaths did the gas bags, um whoops, I mean the "physicians for social responsibility" identify for the half a century of commercial nuclear operations worldwide? How did they accumulate their data?
Surely this data is available. After all, nuclear energy is, by far, the largest and most mature form of greenhouse gas free primary energy. After 60 years of operations, I'm sure there's some data, is there not?
Please provide the answer in terms time, the unit of time having a conversion factor of 19,000 deaths per day, the number of people who die from air pollution each day. Thus if you can identify - using something called "the primary scientific literature" as opposed to yet another link to the self-referential anti-nuke websites citing each other - 1,900,000 people killed by commercial nuclear power operations, you would report "The Physicians for Social Responsibility assert that nuclear power is as dangerous as 100 days of air pollution."
If the Lancet paper cited and linked above - unread as it may be by "Physicians for Social Responsibility" - is correct, it takes between 7 to 9 years for air pollution to kill as many people as died from all causes, genocide, combat, maltreatment of prisoners, bombings and cross fires, in World War II.
I wouldn't consider it "social responsibility" to ignore that fact, but perhaps my ethics are peculiar, I don't know.
Thanks in advance for providing your answer. I'm sure it will be illuminating.
Best regards,
NNadir
P.S. Have a nice evening.
Oh. Oh. Finally a discussion of the toxicology of solar cells is appearing in the scientific...
...literature.
The solar industry, in my view, is useless. World wide, after the "investment of" - I would choose the words "squandered" on - of trillion dollar scale resources for this industry, it does not produce even two of the five hundred sixty exajoules of energy that humanity consumes each year. Moreover, this industry has done nothing, absolutely nothing, to arrest climate change. Despite the massive investment in solar energy, 2015 was the worst year ever recorded for increases in carbon dioxide - dangerous fossil fuel waste - the first year in which these concentrations rose by more than 3 ppm in a single year, 3.05 ppm exactly as recorded at the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide observatory.
2016 is clearly on track to blow 2015 away as the worst year ever observed.
Solar energy is often referred to as "renewable energy," although this too is a joke, since the industry is entirely dependent on access to increasing rare materials, many of which are highly toxic, and which must be mined at great risk to the miners. As I've pointed out many times, one element utilized in the solar industry, cadmium, is now widely found in rice in large stretches of China.
One sees, occasionally, if one takes the time to look, lots of discussion of heavy metal poisoning associated with some of the elements utilized in the solar industry, although seldom is the linkage explicitly made. One must both know the composition of solar materials, the toxicology of the metals involved, and something about their environmental distribution to understand this relationship, at least generally.
Twice a month, as issues are released, I undertake readings in one of the world's most prominent environmental scientific journals, Environmental Science and Technology, a favorite journal of mine.
I was very pleased to read a paper that explicitly refers to the risks associated with solar cells as solar cells.
The paper is here: Bulk Dissolution Rates of Cadmium and Bismuth Tellurides As a Function of pH, Temperature and Dissolved Oxygen
(Environ. Sci. Technol., 2016, 50 (9), pp 4675–4681) (Full access to the paper may require a subscription, payment, or access in a good scientific library.)
Some excerpts from the text:
...Cadmium is known to be extremely toxic to all forms of life,(11) the toxicity of tellurium is still little understood,(11) even though clear adverse health effects have been known for nearly a century,(12) whereas bismuth—used for more than a century in medicine in the treatment of disorders of the digestive tract and in dermatology(13)—is generally considered as environmentally benign(11, 14) although there are reports of genotoxicity of Bi2O3 nanoparticles,(15) inhibition of growth of soil microorganisms(16) and the neurotoxic potential of some bismuth compounds has been confirmed.(17, 18)
Thin films of CdTe, as they are employed in solar modules, are believed to be environmentally quite safe, because the compound is thermally extremely stable (melting point 1042 °C)(19) and it is sealed within glass plates and contained in between thin layers of other compounds. Fortunately, CdTe can be recycled from used modules in excellent yield.(20) Nevertheless, the rate of release of problematic elements such as cadmium and tellurium from these important industrial materials ought to be known, as accidental release (due to inadequate handling or disposal of the finished products or the compounds themselves) can never be ruled out...
From the conclusion of the paper:
The way I read this conclusion is that the authors find that the solar cells are "safe" for now, but they may have tragic consequences for future generations.
Don't worry, be happy. The way we now conduct our lives shows that it is socially acceptable, completely consistent with our practice in every aspect of our lives, to not give a rat's ass about future generations. The reason we are having children, and grandchildren, and great grandchildren is because we expect them to clean up our mess, and if they can't do that, that's their problem and not ours.
Screw 'em if they can't take a joke.
I'm not really sanguine about the conclusion that "release of these compounds would hardly pose a threat." Other literature shows that they are a threat already, that they are tracked, and nothing, absolutely nothing can be done to remediate exposure to them. Were it possible to remediate these exposures, hundreds of millions of Chinese wouldn't be eating rice laced with cadmium.
Still, the authors failings aside, it's very clear that at least the topic is coming up. Distributed energy, I have long contended, is nothing more than distributed pollution, for the long term at least, and the fact that the solar industry - a failed industry in terms of environmental goals - is still insanely popular is, um, well, insane, and a full measure about how little we care about what we do.
Have a great evening.
April 2016 over April 2015 sets the all time monthly record for increases in atmospheric CO2.
According to the data just released at the Mauna Loa website, the increase in the average concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere in April 2016 is 4.16 ppm higher than it was in April 2015. This is the first instance in the entire history of carbon dioxide measurements at Mauna Loa extending back to 1959 that the determination of a monthly average has exceeded 4.00 pm over the same month of the previous year.
This is, um, disturbing, since 2015 was already the worst year ever observed for carbon dioxide increases over the previous year.
The previous monthly record, 3.76 ppm, was set in February 2016. (March 2016 was "only" the 8th worst such data point ever observed.)
The worst year, 2015 only had two monthly data points that were higher than 3.00, the recent November and December at respectively, 3.03 ppm and 3.07 ppm respectively.
Of 685 such points recording monthly increases over the previous year since the establishment of the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide observatory, only 15 have been higher than 3.00 ppm. Five of these have occurred in the last 6 months. (January 2016, at 2.54 ppm over January 2015, was "only" the 53rd worst such data point ever recorded.
All of our efforts to address climate change - efforts that were never, in fact, serious - have failed, and failed spectacularly.
There has been more effort to attack the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free energy, nuclear energy, than there has been to attack dangerous fossil fuels, and the signature of that effort is written plainly, unambiguously, and undeniably in the accelerating degradation of the planetary atmosphere.
This may sound like Schadenfreud, but the heat will cook the just and the unjust alike. Every morning I have to wake up, face my two sons, and reflect on the world my generation is leaving for theirs.
If any of this disturbs you, don't worry, be happy. DONG (Danish Oil and Natural Gas) is "consulting" on the world's largest wind farm.
One may note that all the wind farms built around all the world for all time have done zero, nothing, zilch, nada, bupkis to address climate change, but it's the thought that counts, not results.
And don't forget, they're building a solar roadway in France.
Have a great weekend!
For April 2016, the average weekly increase in CO2 levels compared with April 2015 is 4.16 ppm.
As I've remarked many times in this space, the year 2015 was the worst year ever recorded at Mauna Loa's carbon dioxide observatory for increases in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, at 3.05 ppm.
Right now, if trends continue, 2016 will blow that level away.
Something very, very, very, very disturbing is happening if the Mauna Loa observatory's CO2 measurements are correct.
For clarity, I will repeat some text from one of my earlier posts, showing how I store and analyze this data available from the Mauna Loa observatory's website's data tab:
The data goes back to 1974, and comprises 2,090 data points.
I import this data into a spreadsheet I maintain each week, and calculate the weekly increases over the previous year. I rank the data for the increases from worst to best, the worst data point being 4.67 ppm over the previous year, which was recorded during the week ending September 6, 1998, when much of the rain forest of Southeast Asia was burning when fires set to clear the forests for palm oil plantations got out of control during unusually dry weather. Six of the worst data points ever recorded occurred in 1998 during this event, another was recorded in the January following that event.
Of the twenty worst data points ever recorded out of 2090 two of them have occurred in the last four weeks. The week ending January 31, 2016 produced a result of a 4.35 ppm of increase. The week just passed, that ending, 2/14/2016, produced a result of 3.79 ppm increase, tying it for the aforementioned week in January 1999, that ending on January 24, 1999, and that of January 2, 2011.
Of the twenty highest points recorded, 9 have occurred in the last 5 years, 10 in the last 10 years.
It's looking very bad these last few weeks at the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide observatory.
The data now comprises an even 2100 data points. Of the ten worst ever recorded, five have occurred in 2016. Two have been in the last four weeks or released data (up to April 24, 2016). The average for the last two weeks is a whopping 4.16 ppm.
Of the 25 worst data points ever recorded, 7 have come in 2016, 11 have occurred in the last 5 years, and 13 in the last 10 years. Of the 12 points not in the last ten years, seven of them occurred in 1998 when fires designed to clear rain forest for palm oil plantations (so we could have "renewable" biodiesel) in Southeast Asia went out of control and burned vast stretches of those forests in Indonesia and Malyasia.
It would seem that whatever it is we think we're doing about climate change, it isn't working.
If any of this disturbs you, don't worry, be happy. Iberdola Renewable Energy is building 15 wind turbines on the ridgeline of Green Mountain National Forest. Even if the last trillion dollars sunk into wind energy in the last ten years has had zero effect on climate change, wishing always trumps reality.
Enjoy your Sunday afternoon.
Handlesblatt: Germany has a big new problem, dealing with its failed wind turbines.
A while back, on another website, using the exhaustive database available on the Danish Energy Agency's website, I showed that the average lifetime of a wind turbine is rather short, of the thosands decommissioned, the average turbine lasted considerably less than 20 years. Sustaining the Wind Part 1 – Is So Called “Renewable Energy” the Same as “Sustainable Energy?”
In the above, I provided references showing that in just ten years, from 2004 to 2015, the planet foolishly invested $711 billion dollars in wind energy, which has no effect, no effect whatsoever, on the rate of the degradation of the planetary atmosphere: 2015 was the worst year ever recorded for increases in atmospheric concentrations in carbon dioxide, and the figures being recorded thus far in 2016 are, for anyone who bothers to look, nothing short of terrifying.
Note that $711 billion dollars his hardly a trivial amount: It is more than each of the gross national products of countries like Sweden, Norway, Argentina, and, um, yes, Denmark. It is slightly less than the GDP of Saudi Arabia. Surely by the end of 2016, the "investment" in wind energy will surpass one trillion dollars since 2004 and of course, unless the world comes to its senses, considerably more by 2024, when the wind turbines built in 2004 will have become useless junk.
The following comes from a German financial newspaper, Handlesblatt.
The original version (in German) is here: Sprengen, fällen oder gebraucht verkaufen
The text of the article involves the fact that many of Germany's wind turbines built in the 1990's are now failing or useless; in addition, apparently the German regulatory authorities require that after 20 years, any wind turbines that have not already been abandoned must be recertified as safe.
The following translations of excerpts are mine, the caveat being that I haven't been reading in German that much in recent years, and am quite rusty in executing translations from that language:
More than 25,000 wind turbines are spinning across the Republic. For some, this represents the mutilation of the landscape, for others, they are symbols of the transformative power of German energy to renewable energy...
...In the 1990’s a large number of wind turbines were built in the Federal Republic. It follows that now many of these have reached old age. In the coming year, more than 7,000 turbines will have reached 15 years of age. After 20 years, they must be shut down and dismantled, unless the owner can prove that they remain stable and operational…
The brief article reports graphically that 511 wind farms in Germany have been abandoned.
The choices of recent generations will be hell to pay for future generations. The most sobering commentary on which it has been my misfortune to report in this space, other than the raw data for recent increases in carbon dioxide concentrations, is this one, from a commentary in the scientific journal Nature:
"Current models of climate economics assume that lives in the future are less important...than lives today, a value judgement that is rarely scrutinized and difficult to defend..."
The wind industry and so called "renewable energy" remain popular, but the data shows very clearly that embracing this "renewable energy" strategy is a grotesque failure, and is a mere affectation in which one pretends that doing nothing is the same as doing everything necessary. It is not the people who bought into this cockamamie fantasy who will suffer from the results of our decisions; it is future generations. Today's wind farms are just another part of the useless junk and waste we will leave behind for them to clean up.
Future generations, should they survive what we have done to the planet, will not forgive us, nor should they.
Enjoy the remainder of the weekend.
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