Can We Delay a Greenhouse Warming? (1983) [pdf]
nepis.epa.gov
nepis.epa.gov
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/clim...
It's funny how the conversation have changed now to Climate Change instead of global warming.
A lot of this has been pushed by the environmental organizations who despite their claims that CO2 is the biggest threat to humankind still are overwhelmingly against nuclear energy despite it being both safer, more scaleable, more reliable and actually able to provide energy compared to unrealiables like wind and sun.
If anything this just shows how long this discussion have been going on and how much of this is politics and ideology rather than science.
Fair enough, I will try and reduce my comments on this topic but people are asking me questions often with lots of personal attacks in there and I am trying to answer the questions.
I am seriously trying to understand how my comment is not mostly civil or substantive or how they are crossing into flamewar which is defined as:
"A flame war is a series of flame posts or messages in a thread that are considered derogatory in nature or are completely off-topic. Often these flames are posted for the sole purpose of offending or upsetting other users."
That's not at all my intention quite the contrary. I am trying to get balance into the very one-sided nature of this debate which is easily verified by looking at the claims of the posted articles/essays.
I am totally fine with being in the minority when it comes to what I think is substantive but I frankly do not see how it's not civil any more than some of the comments I get which doesn't get treated or told off or downvoted into oblivion.
Also, they're tedious, except to the minority whose passions happen to be inflamed on that topic, and people tend not to know when to stop. These are the sorts of thread that make HN worse, and which all users are asked to have the discipline to refrain from. I know it's hard sometimes.
I'm sure that some of the replies you're getting are also breaking the guidelines, but we don't see all of those. Flagging them helps bring them to our attention. If there's anything particularly abusive you can email us at hn@ycombinator.com.
"Both of the terms in question are used frequently in the scientific literature, because they refer to two different physical phenomena. As the name suggests, 'global warming' refers to the long-term trend of a rising average global temperature ...
'Climate change', again as the name suggests, refers to the changes in the global climate which result from the increasing average global temperature. For example, changes in precipitation patterns, increased prevalence of droughts, heat waves, and other extreme weather, etc."
Singling out environmentalists as hypocritical is as unreasonable as singling out Japanese who are overwhelming aware of climate change but dislike nuclear.
Harmful change is the most significant result of the warming. We could instead call it "North Carolina Estuary loss" but that would not capture the issue adequately. Heating, coastal erosion and change are all happening whatever the name and some of that is more important than other.
It's making a comeback. The initial released documents for the Green New Deal called for phasing out all nuclear power within 10 years.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2019/02/07/691997301/rep-alexandria-ocas...
[1] https://apps.npr.org/documents/document.html?id=5729035-Gree...
> Means must be found to explore the advantages of climate change where they appear, and to minimize the adverse effects.
Did you read the paper, or the title only?
Global warming used to be the term that was used, then we had a period of non-warming and it was changed to climate change.
Terminology changed because "global warming" was too simplistic. And because it encouraged simplistic thinking.
Sure, increased greenhouse forcing from CO2, CH4, etc will lead to increasing global average temperature. But the specifics will be far more important.
For example, polar temperatures will increase more than equatorial temperatures. And generally, winter temperatures will increase more than summer temperatures.
More importantly, peak winter and summer temperatures will increase more than averages. And weather variability will increase. Mainly because there'll be lots more water in the atmosphere, and so lots more energy available to drive stuff.
Edit: There have been periods of global cooling (mid 60s to mid 70s) and ~stable global mean temperature (late 90s to late 00s). Even though atmospheric CO2 levels have been increasing, the whole time, at an increasing rate.
So how can that be? The key factor, I believe, is changes in SO2 emissions. SO2 reduces greenhouse forcing through increased cloudiness (and so increased reflectivity) and stratospheric haze (and so increased absorption and IR emission at high altitude).
SO2 emissions decreased dramatically during the late 50s to early 70s. So that allowed greenhouse forcing to increase, commensurate with atmospheric CO2 etc levels.
And then, since the 80s, China has ramped up coal use, and released increasingly massive amounts of SO2. So that counteracted, somewhat, increased greenhouse forcing from CO2 etc.
The fit will seriously hit the shan as China implements emission controls on coal plants. So we'll still get their CO2, but much less SO2.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-global-warmi...
What conversation has changed?
These aren't terms of fashion, these are terms used to try to be as descriptive as possible within the best understanding of science (as it continues to learn).
https://pmm.nasa.gov/education/articles/whats-name-global-wa...
Are you really arguing that the reason we haven't addressed climate change (or global warming) (or increasing CO2 levels) is because some environmental organizations were anti-nuclear power?
I am arguing that the very sorry fact that we are focusing on inferior technologies like solar and wind instead of nuclear is pretty ironic given the claims by anyone who claims co2 emissions and climate change is the biggest threat to our existence. If you can't see the irony I am not sure what to say.
You are, I think, arguing that it is the fault of environmentalists that our climate is changing as fast as it is. Because they opposed nuclear power. I think that's a fantasy. The oil and gas industry never made a serious push for nuclear power. US "energy-friendly" administrations never made nuclear power a serious priority (unlike the vast amounts of attention and resources that oil and gas have received).
It's also rather pathetic that the discussion on HN is basically political wanking.
Paper itself (only read first 50 pages) is interesting in that it is basically saying what people are still saying (aka about 2 degrees warming by 2050, or 0.3 a decade). It's also remarkable for the lack of screeching or weird opaque models. It's simple stuff anyone can understand.
And AFAIK, the US has never exported domestic reactor waste.
Instead, let's over-regulate Western markets, because there's definitely not any private investment going towards renewable energy, and the US definitely doesn't lead in carbon emission reduction /s
Of course, it can't be limiting development in places like India, it's gotta be shaping it in the direction of being less carbon intensive without being overly restrictive.