Climate Change

[kladner]

Fuel Tanker Plunges Through Ice Road On Arctic Circle After Weight Limit Quadrupled

After the hottest winter on record, one Canadian territory raised the weight limit on an ice road crossing at the Arctic Circle from 10 metric tons to 40 metric tons. What could possibly go wrong?
Last Saturday, a fuel tanker broke through an ice road in northern Canada. Fortunately, no one was injured. Just four days prior to this accident, the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) provided this helpful tweet:

Great Bear Ice Crossing has been increased to 40,000 kgs. Drive safe!
— GNWT Transportation (@GNWT_DOT) March 2, 2016

The fact it was a fuel tanker that crashed through the ice during record heat driven in part by fuel combustion just compounds the irony. As Cantech Letter, “one of Canada’s premier technology newsletters,” put it, “Giant metaphor crashes through the ice in Canada’s North.”

[only_human]

This Animation Lets You Watch Global Warming Heat Up Over 166 Years

[ewmayer]

Time to offload a several-months-long backlog of links:

o Obama Approved Over 1.5k Gulf Offshore Fracking Permits: Media Ignored It | Steve Horn

o Earth is Tipping Because of Climate Change | Scientific American

Around 2000 the [rotational North] pole took an eastward turn; it stopped drifting toward Hudson Bay, Canada, and started drifting along the Greenwich meridian in the direction of London. In 2013 Jianli Chen, a geophysicist at The University of Texas at Austin, was the first to attribute the sudden change to accelerated melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. The result startled his team. ‘If you’re losing enough mass to change the orientation of the Earth—that’s a lot of mass,’ says John Ries, Chen’s colleague at U.T. Austin. The team found that recent accelerated ice loss and associated sea level rise accounted for more than 90 percent of the latest polar shift.

Their use of 'meridian' seems in-apt, since 'eastward' implies movement along a constant latitude, not longitude.

Pair of NC links:

o A Wake-Up Call on Climate Change and Clean Energy

A new study from the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School and the Smith School for Enterprise and Environment, University of Oxford, shows that we are uncomfortably close to the point where the world’s energy system commits the planet to exceeding 2°C.

In the paper, to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Energy, the authors calculate the Two degree capital stock – the global stock of electricity infrastructure from which future emissions have a 50% probability of staying within 2°C of warming. The researchers estimate that the world will reach Two degree capital stock next year, in 2017.

o Radioactive Waste Still Leaking Five Years After Fukushima Nuclear Disaster

What I find most distressing about the whole clusterfuck is that the government is actively conspiring with TEPCO in the ongoing coverup:

So there are a lot of cancers that are not associated with radioactivity, so in order to know, you know, what was the added risk from the radiation exposure, you have to have very thorough studies, and I am not confident that these thorough studies are being done. It’s very hard for us to know, because not long after Fukushima the Japanese government passed a kind of anti-freedom of information law where it became illegal to diffuse and acquire and talk about certain kinds of information, so you know they have something to hide when they’re doing that.

The ice-wall-containment idea sounds like something from a cheesy Japanese monster movie ... perhaps because it *is* something from a cheesy Japanese monster movie.

Note also the comment by reader Paul Tioxon on the TVA’s "post-Fukushima safe!" Watts Bar 2 nuke plant.

[ewmayer]

Scientists warn of ‘global climate emergency’ over jet stream shift | Independent

[VictordeHolland]

Yes, the fukushima nuclear disaster is getting very little media attention, while it is still leaking radiation after 5 years.
Japan and TEPCO are keeping it out of the media as Japan is mostly powered by nuclear.

I hoped our government would close our single nuclear power plant still operational (Borsellen). Since it was completed in 1973, but they did the opposite and postponed it to 2033! I still find it irresponsible to use such an old nuclear plant in a densely populated country.
Not to speak of the new coal plant they completed last year in the Rotterdam harbor. We have very little to none coal deposits in the Netherlands and lots of natural gas (North sea), so I fail to understand that decision also.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by VictordeHolland

Not to speak of the new coal plant they completed last year in the Rotterdam harbor. We have very little to none coal deposits in the Netherlands and lots of natural gas (North sea), so I fail to understand that decision also.

Were you aware that coal-fired power stations generate about the same amount of radioactive waste per kilowatt-hour as nuclear plants?

They generate vastly more chemical waste too, of course, including greenhouse gases and components of acid rain such as SO₂

Filthy stuff is coal. The sooner it is banned and replaced by nuclear the better.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by xilman

The sooner it is banned and replaced by nuclear the better.

Indeed. Particularly that big fusion reactor we have in the sky....

[xilman]

Originally Posted by chalsall

Indeed. Particularly that big fusion reactor we have in the sky....

Fair do. s/nuclear/fission/g

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by xilman

Were you aware that coal-fired power stations generate about the same amount of radioactive waste per kilowatt-hour as nuclear plants?

Nuke plants generally keep their radioactivity far better contained.

[only_human]

Originally Posted by Uncwilly

Nuke plants generally keep their radioactivity far better contained.

A week ago, the GOP platform inserted the word "clean" alongside "coal":
GOP party platform claims coal is clean. - Slate

During these hearings, one of the topics was the use of coal. David Barton, a delegate from Texas, had an edit he wanted to make to a sentence in the platform. Watch:

Here’s what he said:

I would insert the adjective “clean” along with coal particularly because [of] the technology we have now. So, “the Democrat party does not understand that coal is an abundant clean affordable reliable domestic energy resource.”

Stupid Democrats listening to scientists instead of rewording mission statements. Haven't they had enough of experts yet?

[VictordeHolland]

Originally Posted by xilman

Were you aware that coal-fired power stations generate about the same amount of radioactive waste per kilowatt-hour as nuclear plants?

They generate vastly more chemical waste too, of course, including greenhouse gases and components of acid rain such as SO₂

Filthy stuff is coal. The sooner it is banned and replaced by nuclear the better.

Indeed, filthy stuff it is. Better to use it for the BBQ : .
But I don't think nuclear is the solution in densely populated area's. Better to build more windturbines and solar. Or import energy from Germany when they are selling it on sunny days at negative prices, yes they paid to use their electricity. And yes that really happened a couple of times last year.