IGX

Sangoma wrote:These are issues with verifiable outcomes. It makes sense to put more resources into developing more efficient solar cells and wind generators. Or safety of nuclear power reactors. Practical solutions of practical problems.

Buttfux wrote:What is 2 + 2?

The light water breeder reactor was a technical success. It demonstrated a sophisticated way to more effectively use a proven technology and to make better use of natural resources. It even demonstrated a way to significantly reduce the volume of high level nuclear waste per unit of electrical power output.

There was little effort to promote the technology. Knowledge of the program is rare even within the nuclear industry. There is little chance of an unknown idea – particularly one with as much potential impact as a light water breeder reactor – becoming a new technical standard.

The core engineers did not pay enough attention to production difficulties. The assembly of the core modules required a great deal of manual labor including 2,000 precise measurements for each module. This effort implies a high production cost even if raw materials are used more efficiently.

There was no effort to develop other uranium-thorium reactors in an effort to help spread the fixed cost of fuel material production.

The program was viewed as Admiral Rickover’s pet project.

Professional rivalry or ingrained hard feelings against Rickover probably helped seal the fate of the program. By the time the experimental core was shut down, the Secretary of the Navy had already declared his intention to retire Rickover. By the time that the core had been analyzed, Admiral Rickover was dead and many of his strongest political supporters were either retired or dead.

It may be that the light water breeder reactor is not a viable alternative to conventional light water reactors. It seems that there is an abundant supply of fissile materials and that the higher costs of core manufacture will not be overcome without a significant automation effort. However, it is useful to know that efficient conversion – even breeding – is not only possible in a thermal reactor without the use of liquid metals, it has been actually demonstrated in a large scale experiment.

scientists reported on Wednesday that the Earth reached its highest temperature on record in 2016 — trouncing a record set only a year earlier, which beat one set in 2014. It is the first time in the modern era of global warming data that temperatures have blown past the previous record three years in a row.

bennyonesix wrote:Global Warming or Climate Change or whatever the new empty term or tautology they are using is bullshit.
...
Again, Global Warming etc is a lie and has always been. It's purpose is to convince regular folks that there is an emergency that needs to be solved. And this is done for three reasons:

bennyonesix wrote:I am a radical enviromentalist of the old school. I want people in cities and death to suburbia. I want the vast majority of land to be wild.

The last three years have all been within the margin of error.

dead man walking wrote:yes, but all within the margin of error

2016 Temperature Records

To nobody’s surprise, all of the surface datasets showed 2016 to be the warmest year on record.

Barely more surprising is that all of the tropospheric satellite datasets and radiosonde data also have 2016 as the warmest year. . . .

There a few more technical issues that are worth mentioning here.

Impact of ENSO [i.e. El Nino]

The contribution of El Niño to recent years’ anomalies in the GISTEMP data set are ~0.05ºC (2015) and ~0.12ºC (2016), and that means the records would still have been set even with no ENSO variability. [emphasis added]

I calculated these values using a regression of the interannual variability in the annual mean to the Feb-Mar MEI index. . . . [w]hich brings us to another key point…

Impact of the Arctic

It’s perhaps not obvious in the first figure, but the magnitude of the record in 2016 is much larger in GISTEMP and Cowtan&Way (and in the reanalyses), than it is in HadCRUT4, NCEI and JMA. This is in large part due to the treatment of the Arctic. The latter 3 records all ‘conservatively’ don’t include areas where there aren’t direct observations in their global means. This is equivalent to assuming that the missing areas are, on average, warming at the same rate as the global mean. However, this has not been a good assumption for a couple of decades. Arctic anomalies this year were close to 4ºC above the late 19th Century, over 3 times as big an anomaly as the global mean. [emphasis added]. . . .

Do I have to mention the ‘pause’?

Apparently yes. The last three years have demonstrated abundantly clearly that there is no change in the long term trends since 1998. A prediction from 1997 merely continuing the linear trends would significantly under-predict the last two years.

U.S. Crop Harvests Could Suffer with Climate Change
Future harvests of wheat, soybeans and corn could drop by 22 to 49 percent, mostly due to water stress

dead man walking wrote:

U.S. Crop Harvests Could Suffer with Climate Change
Future harvests of wheat, soybeans and corn could drop by 22 to 49 percent, mostly due to water stress

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... te-change/

bennyonesix wrote:What is the margin of error?