Earth’s Rate Of Global Warming Is 400,000 Hiroshima Bombs A Day

[kristopher]

Earth’s Rate Of Global Warming Is 400,000 Hiroshima Bombs A Day
BY JOE ROMM ON DECEMBER 22, 2013 AT 11:21 AM

Conveying abstract or hard-to-visualize ideas is always a challenge. That’s a core reason why the best communicators have always used metaphors.

As Aristotle wrote in his classic work Poetics, “the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor.”

How can one convey the Earth’s staggering rate of heat build up from human-caused global warming — 250 trillion Watts (Joules per second)? The analogy to the energy released by the Hiroshima bomb has been used in recent years by a number of scientists, such as NOAA oceanographer John Lyman, and Mike Sandiford, Director of the Melbourne Energy Institute. In his TED talk Climatologist James Hansen explained the current rate of increase in global warming is:

“… equivalent to exploding 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day, 365 days per year. That’s how much extra energy Earth is gaining each day.”

That comes out to more than four Hiroshima bombs a second, which is a metric Skeptical Science has turned into a widget. I prefer the 400,000 Hiroshimas per day metric simply because the heat imbalance is occurring over a very large area, which four Hiroshimas don’t do justice to.

The deniers don’t like the metaphor because, they assert, it is inexact and sensationalistic. But the deniers don’t like the literal facts because they think those are inexact and sensationalistic, too, so we can safely ignore them....

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/22/3089711/global-warming-hiroshima-bombs/

[NNadir]

1. It's always amusing to hear Romm complain about a situation he worked so damn...

...hard to cause.

He's a pure Amory Lovins trained anti-nuke crackpot, who spent his whole career selling whirlygigs and glass coated with toxic metals, this while demonizing the world's largest source of climate change gas free primary energy, nuclear energy.

As a result of his efforts, 2013 is proving to be the very worst year ever observed for the increases in dangerous fossil fuel waste in the planetary atmosphere ever observed, even worse than 2012.

Since the 1960's, nuclear energy avoided the injection of about 64 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the planetary atmosphere and saved 1.84 million lives.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3051197

Romm, and the asses who buy into his tiresome tripe are against that form of energy, and thus are morally responsible for this outcome.

[kristopher]

2. That's your view as head of the nuclear powered shale oil sands DU lobby?

I guess you've got to keep feeding that SUV and HD pick'em up, eh?

MAY 11, 2007
Nuclear powered oil sands

UPDATE:A Globe and Mail article appears to show that the business and political pieces are in place. Formalities of approval are still needed. Shell will buy 70% of the power. Local support (300 to 5), provincial and federal support are in line

In order for nuclear power to replace the burning of natural gas to power the extraction of oil from the oilsands involves about 4.4 GW of nuclear power per million barrels per day of oil extracted (according to Wayne Henuset,director of Energy Alberta Corporation. estimate of a 2.2 GW reactor separating 500,000 bpd). 10 million bpd would take about twenty 2.2 GW twin reactors. A detailed analysis is provided from the Nuclear Energy journal. It was written by Atomic Energy Canada and Canadian Energy Research Institute scientists.

http://nextbigfuture.com/2007/05/nuclear-powered-oil-sands-follow-up.html

Tell us again how nuclear is going to change things...

[NNadir]

3. Once again, you are talking on subjects you know nothing about.

You know nothing about me personally, and to be sure, I would never under any circumstances associate with you in any social setting since as I have made clear that I find your ideas pernicious.

I generally limit most of my social interactions to reasonably intelligent and educated people, except in unavoidable cases, and usually these cases involve family members or friends of friends, a category in which there are zero anti-nukes here who would apply.

I have consistently opposed the use of all fossil fuels, and on like the failed expensive renewable energy industry, I have consistently stood in opposition to all of them.

When I explicitly asked, by contrast, the former Executive David Eaglesham of First Solar, who discussed in his talk at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment - during his talk on how the wonderful solar industry dovetails perfectly with the wonderful dangerous natural gas industry - whether he could imagine any circumstances phasing out dangerous natural gas, he emphatically replied "No!" Of course not. The tenuous house of cards that his financially weak company represents would fail completely without gas.

http://acee.princeton.edu/events/highlight-seminar-series-eaglesham-to-speak-on-state-of-the-art-photovoltaics/

Without gas, coal and oil, the wasteful and toxic solar and wind industries would collapse in a New York second, since there are very few people - including people posting silly remarks on the internet about how the renewable industry "could" replace everything, although in 50 years of cheering it doesn't even produce 1% of world energy demand - who would agree to do without electricity when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining.

The evidence for this is very plain to see, as evidenced by the fact that that anti-nuke hellhole Germany is building huge new coal plants, which I oppose, just as I oppose every coal, gas, and oil facility on this planet, including the tar sands company that pays anti-nuke Amory Lovins big bucks to greenwash them, Suncor.

Famous Anti-nuke Amory Lovins describes his revenue sources:

Mr. Lovins’s other clients have included Accenture, Allstate, AMD, Anglo American, Anheuser-Busch, Bank of America, Baxter, Borg-Warner, BP, HP Bulmer, Carrier, Chevron, Ciba-Geigy, CLSA, ConocoPhillips, Corning, Dow, Equitable, GM, HP, Invensys, Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi, Monsanto, Motorola, Norsk Hydro, Petrobras, Prudential, Rio Tinto, Royal Dutch/Shell, Shearson Lehman Amex, STMicroelectronics, Sun Oil, Suncor, Texas Instruments, UBS, Unilever, Westinghouse, Xerox, major developers, and over 100 energy utilities. His public-sector clients have included the OECD, the UN, and RFF; the Australian, Canadian, Dutch, German, and Italian governments; 13 states; Congress, and the U.S. Energy and Defense Departments.

I have a long record of opposing dangerous fossil fuels, and (albeit before I changed my mind about so called "renewable energy" industry and recognized is as an expensive failure) wrote extensively on how the coal, oil and gas industries might be phased out using nuclear energy.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/06/17/347616/-The-Utility-of-Light-Getting-Real-with-the-Existing-Energy-Infrastructure.

Have a happy holiday. If you have a chance, why not write us to tell us all about, for example, the advantages of solar powered christmas lights in bourgeois circles.

[kristopher]

4. MIT 2005 Integration of Nuclear Power with In-Situ Oil Sands Extraction

Nuclear Technology & Canadian Oil Sands: Integration of Nuclear Power with In-Situ Oil Extraction
A.E. FINAN, K. MIU, A.C. KADAK
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering 77 Massachusetts Avenue, 24-105 Cambridge, MA 02139-4307

Abstract - This report analyzes the technical aspects and the economics of utilizing nuclear reactors to provide the energy needed for a Canadian oil sands extraction facility using Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) technology. The energy from the nuclear reactor would replace the energy supplied by natural gas, which is currently burned at these facilities. There are a number of concerns surrounding the continued use of natural gas, including carbon dioxide emissions and increasing gas prices. Three scenarios for the use of the reactor are analyzed 1) using the reactor to produce only the steam needed for the SAGD process; (2) using the reactor to produce steam as well as electricity for the oil sands facility; and (3) using the reactor to produce steam, electricity, and hydrogen for upgrading the bitumen from the oil sands to syncrude, a material similar to conventional crude oil. Three reactor designs were down-selected from available options to meet the expected mission demands and siting requirements. These include the Canadian ACR- 700, Westinghouse’s AP 600 and the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR). The report shows that nuclear energy would be feasible, practical, and economical for use at an oil sands facility. Nuclear energy is two to three times cheaper than natural gas for each of the three scenarios analyzed. Also, by using nuclear energy instead of natural gas, a plant producing 100,000 barrels of bitumen per day would prevent up to 100 megatonnes of CO2 per year from being released into the atmosphere.

http://web.mit.edu/pebble-bed/papers1_files/OilSands.pdf

Of course, that cost analysis was almost certainly based on the same fictional figures they gave the Dept of Energy in 2005 about how little the nuclear renaissance would cost.

[NNadir]

5. Who the fuck cares?

Just because there are some people who support utilizing clean energy for nefarious purposes doesn't mean I support it. I have spent a good part of my adult life studying ways to use nuclear heat to reduce carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, a subject about which you know, um, zero.

I note that the first nuclear weapon, the one dropped on Hiroshima, used ²³⁵U that was separated using electricity from TVA dams. This doesn't mean that everyone who supports trashing rivers to utilize this form of so called "renewable energy" is working on nuclear weapons programs.

Look, Kiddie. I don't work for, support, approve of, or apologize for tar sands processing. Your hero Amory Lovins, anti-nuke, by contrast does get paid by these people. Any nuclear plant that was built for the purpose of processing tar sands would be a diversion of excellent technology for dubious value.

In case you missed it the first time, the fifth time, the 20th time, let me direct you directly to the pestilential anti-nuke's website, where he proudly tells us he "consults" for Suncor, the oil sands company, as well as Anglo-American, the coal mining giant.

Famous Anti-nuke Amory Lovins describes his revenue sources:

Mr. Lovins’s other clients have included Accenture, Allstate, AMD, Anglo American, Anheuser-Busch, Bank of America, Baxter, Borg-Warner, BP, HP Bulmer, Carrier, Chevron, Ciba-Geigy, CLSA, ConocoPhillips, Corning, Dow, Equitable, GM, HP, Invensys, Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi, Monsanto, Motorola, Norsk Hydro, Petrobras, Prudential, Rio Tinto, Royal Dutch/Shell, Shearson Lehman Amex, STMicroelectronics, Sun Oil, Suncor, Texas Instruments, UBS, Unilever, Westinghouse, Xerox, major developers, and over 100 energy utilities. His public-sector clients have included the OECD, the UN, and RFF; the Australian, Canadian, Dutch, German, and Italian governments; 13 states; Congress, and the U.S. Energy and Defense Departments.

Here's the "Suncor" website's page on their "green" activity, processing tar sands: http://www.suncor.com/en/about/242.aspx

These are the people who pay your fucking hero, the paid off well bribed anti-nuke Amory Lovins.

If you have a problem with tar sands - and I don't take any of the "renewables will save us" anti-nukes seriously when they object to the industry that supports their mindless rhetoric, the fossil fuel industry - I suggest you take it up with Lovins, by asking him to take his lips off the asses of BP, and Chevron, and Royal Dutch Shell executives to explain to you how it is, exactly, that he works for Suncor.

Have a Merry Christmas, or holiday of your choice, as the case may be.

[kristopher]

6. Toshiba Nuclear Reactor For Oil Sands To Be Operational By 2020: Reports

Toshiba Nuclear Reactor For Oil Sands To Be Operational By 2020: Reports
The Huffington Post Canada | Posted: 01/18/2013 2:27 pm EST | Updated: 01/18/2013

Toshiba Corporation has developed a small nuclear reactor to power oil sands extraction in Alberta and hopes to have it operational by 2020, according to news reports from Japan.

The Daily Yomiuri reports Toshiba is building the reactor at the request of an unnamed oilsands company.

The reactor would generate between one per cent and 5 per cent as much energy as produced by a typical nuclear power plant, and would not need refueling for 30 years. It would be used to heat water in order to create the steam used to extract bitumen from the oil sands.

Toshiba has completed design work on the reactor and has filed for approval with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Nikkei.com reported. The company is expected to seek approval from Canadian authorities as well...

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/01/18/toshiba-oil-sands-reactor_n_2505738.html