Methane Concentrations : Losing Control

Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Neutron

February 2011

http://nuclearstreet.com/nuclear_power_industry_news/b/nuclear_power_news/archive/2011/02/18/premature-deterioration-detected-in-ge-hitachi-control-rod-blades-at-nuclear-plants021802.aspx

“Premature Deterioration Detected in GE Hitachi Control Rod Blades at Nuclear Plants : Nuclear Street News Team Fri, Feb 18 2011 : GE Hitachi has discovered unexpected cracking and material distortion in some of the companies’ control-rod blades, according to a report made public Wednesday by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. GE Hitachi reported to the NRC that the problems could present a safety hazard, and the design life of the companies’ Marathon Blades may be reduced. Malfunction of control rods can limit operators’ ability to control the nuclear reaction within a reactor. “A recent inspection of near ‘end-of-life’ Marathon Control Rod Blades (CRB) at an international BWR/6 has revealed crack indications…”

http://www.tradingmarkets.com/news/stock-alert/mncof_xel_report-hints-at-problems-with-nuclear-plant-control-rods-at-monticello-1503507.html

“Report hints at problems with nuclear plant control rods at Monticello : Posted on: Fri, 18 Feb 2011 : Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy will replace four control rod blades at its Monticello Nuclear Power Plant next month after a major nuclear industry manufacturer reported a potential “substantial safety hazard” with control rods at more than two dozen nuclear reactors around the country. GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy sent the warning Tuesday to all the affected plants, including Monticello…The cracking and distortion could prevent the cross-shaped rod blades, which typically are 12 feet to 14 feet long, from inserting into the core when plant operators want to reduce power or shut down a plant, said Ken Riemer, chief of reactor programs for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission regional office outside Chicago. “They may get stuck and not move in and out of the core,” he said…”

March 2011

http://minnetonka.patch.com/articles/minnesota-nuclear-reactor-safe

“Minnesota Nuclear Reactor—Safe : As a meltdown seems almost certain at a boiling water plant in Japan, Xcel Energy, which operates two similar plants in Minnesota, is watching—closely. By Mike Schoemer : March 14, 2011 : The situation is worsening at the three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in quake-ravaged Japan. At last estimates, Japan has evacuated more than 150,000 people from a 30-mile radius around the plant. Meanwhile, nuclear administrators and workers at the local Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant, less than 40 miles from Minnetonka, are watching with vested interest. And an uneasy local public wonders, “Could it happen here?” The short answer is probably not – the two plants in this state aren’t anywhere near a major fault line and a tsunami risk is virtually nil. But the long answer to a deadly one-two punch scenario like the one that hit Japan is, simply, unknown…”

http://climateprogress.org/2011/03/17/nuclear-energy-reactors-safe-the-onion/

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail allows us to be concerned about the things that really, really matter :-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1366875/How-Japan-crisis-affect-money.html

“How will Japan crisis affect your money?”

Everything seems a bit gloomy for financial whizzkids :-

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/16/us-japan-quake-idUSTRE72A0SS20110316?pageNumber=1

“Japan scrambles to avert nuclear disaster, global fears mount…A stream of gloomy warnings and reports on the Japan crisis from experts and officials around the world triggered something of a meltdown in U.S. markets on Wednesday, with the Japanese yen surging to a record high against the dollar and all three major stock indexes slumping on fears of slower worldwide growth. European markets fared similarly. Traders were glued to their screens, hitting the sell button every time officials gave ever bleaker assessments of the situation on the ground in Japan…”

Tears like rain

OceanLab – Miracle (Official Music Video)

Oceanlab | Myspace Music Videos

Richard Black : “Bad Boy” ?

Richard Black takes the subject of Climate Change as far away from the actual science as possible, by apparently giving in to resentment over his treatment at the hands of Joseph Romm :-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2010/09/something_new_and_not_altogeth.html

“‘Warmist’ attack smacks of ‘sceptical’ intolerance : Richard Black | 16:42 UK time, Wednesday, 22 September 2010 : It seems that something new, and not altogether welcome, may be happening in the politicking over climate change. I have written before of the orchestrated villification that comes the way of climate scientists from some people and organisations who are unconvinced of the case for human-induced climate change – “sceptics”, “deniers”, as you wish. Journalists, including your humble correspondent, receive our fair share too. This week, for the first time, I am seeing the same pattern from their opponents. Joe Romm, the physicist-cum-government-advisor-cum-polemicist, posted a blog entry highly critical of the Arctic ice article I wrote last week. Headlined “Dreadful climate story by BBC’s Richard Black”, it takes me to task, essentially, for not mentioning human-induced climate change explicitly. He then gives my email address and invites his readers to send in complaints. Many have, perhaps swayed by judgemental terms in his post such as “spin”, “inexcusable”, and “mis-reporting”, with several citing his interpretation as gospel truth. He is as entitled to his views as anyone else. But this is, at least in my experience, the first time that “warmers” – those who, like Dr Romm, believe climate change is taking us to hell in a handcart and who lobby for more urgent action on the issue – have resorted to the internet equivalent of taking banners onto the street in an attempt to influence reporting of the issue. At least, that is the surface complaint; what my omission hides, he hints heavily, is an agenda aimed at downplaying the impacts of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions…”

What makes Richard Black, or his editor, think it’s a good use of his time to cover this matter ?

He has admitted, in my direct hearing, that he hasn’t really read the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report, so maybe he should start there instead of covering the A, B, C of normal BBC “environmental reporting protocol” ?

Read the rest of this entry »

This Is What Overwarming Looks Like

http://vimeo.com/15028423

“We have to believe what we are witnessing with our own eyes — floods, fires, melting ice and feverish heat: from smoke-choked Moscow to water-soaked Pakistan, to soaring temperatures in the US and a deteriorating landscape in the High Arctic, our planet seems to be having a breakdown. It’s not just a portent of things to come but real signs of very troubling climate change already under way.”

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/dlashof/this_is_what_global_warming_lo.html

NRDC Advocacy Website

“Tell Congress not to weaken Clean Air Act protections : As the EPA prepares to set standards for global warming pollution from power plants, refineries and other major polluters, some members of Congress want to weaken the Clean Air Act and give industries free rein to dump harmful pollution into our air…”

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/09/37-states-set-nighttime-high-temperature-records-this-summer.php

“With January to August 2010 found to be tied for the hottest year on record by NOAA, new analysis from NRDC shows that it wasn’t just daytime temperatures that’ve been soaring. In fact, 37 states in the US set record high nighttime temperatures this summer…”

Arctic Meltdown : A Very Big Deal

Found at : Green Man

It continues to astonish me that environmental reporters cannot pick up the Arctic meltdown ball and run with it.

The trend in meltdown in the northernmost latitudes is a very big deal – and it’s ongoing, it hasn’t stopped, gone into remission or gone away.

The nature of the ice is changing – so much so that scientific monitoring equipment was confused.

It is now clear that Arctic summer sea ice is in a “death spiral”, a phrase first used very recently, in an attempt to properly describe what is happening :-

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/death-spiral/

Richard Black : Missing Data

[ UPDATE : JOE ROMM OF CLIMATE PROGRESS IS ALMOST CAUSTIC : "Dreadful climate story by BBC’s Richard Black" ]

Richard Black has noticed that the Arctic sea ice is melting – bravo ! But I can’t help thinking there’s something missing in this report of his. I know he probably didn’t write the headline, but he could have included a discussion on record low volumes of sea ice as well as nearly record low extent :-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11322310

“16 September 2010 : ‘Rapid’ 2010 melt for Arctic ice – but no record : Ice floating on the Arctic Ocean melted unusually quickly this year, but did not shrink down to the record minimum area seen in 2007. That is the preliminary finding of US scientists who say the summer minimum seems to have passed and the ice has entered its winter growth phase. 2010′s summer Arctic ice minimum is the third smallest in the satellite era…Walt Meier, a researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado, where the data is collated, said ice had melted unusually fast. “It was a short melt season – the period from the maximum to the minimum was shorter than we’ve had – but the ice was so thin that even so it melted away quickly,” he told BBC News…”

That’s right, Walt. And it should concern us.

The amount of older ice has dropped away – see graph at the top of this post – which suggests that the overall volume of ice could be much reduced as only older ice is thick.

But what does Richard Black focus on ?

“…computer models projecting a disappearance [ of summer Arctic sea ice ] very soon – 2013 was a date cited by one research group just a few years ago – seem to have been too extreme…”

Well that’s alright then. We can relax. The Arctic sea ice will be here for many summers to come. Or not. Who cares, really ? The important thing is that we have established by our cleverness that the whole Global Warming situation is not as bad as those alarmists/warmists say.

The Arctic is melting away and Richard Black needs to deny dire projections ?

The BBC : managing public perception for the benefit of a generally positive state of mind ?

Roger Harrabin : Potentially Alarming

I have been rather, erm, critical, of Roger Harrabin’s approach to reporting the “Climate Change narrative” in the past, but I have to say, I think he has pulled up his socks somewhat with a two-part Radio 4 presentation “Uncertain Climate” :-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00tj525/Uncertain_Climate_Episode_1/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00tmcz3/Uncertain_Climate_Episode_2/

But of course, the BBC has to keep people sweet, and obviously continues to “play both sides”, don’t they ? How else did Roger get to interview Steve McIntyre of the truly annoying Canadian whine (it’s not his fault, I have to add, that I find his voice unbearable) and Nigel Lawson ? And Judith Curry ?

Or maybe not. Roger Harrabin admits to a stand-up row with Al Gore. Hopefully he’s still welcome in the United States of America.

There seem to be about 50 mentions of the word “uncertainties”, and an obsession about temperature rise projections – with no focus on the melting Arctic – which is not at all uncertain as it is a demonstrable fact.

Wake up ! The Arctic’s melting !

Climate Weak

An e-mail trail with a certain amount of political content…

from: Kate Shepherd
date: Tue, Aug 10, 2010
subject: Climate Week

Hello Jo

It was lovely to speak with you today about Climate Week and I’d be grateful if you could pass on the information to the rest of your team.

Climate Week, 21st – 27th March 2011, is a new national occasion on climate change, backed by the Prime Minister, Al Gore and Kofi Annan. During Climate Week, thousands of events will be run by organisations from every part of society to highlight the positive steps being taken to help prevent climate change.

I have attached a document for further information, the document includes a list of supporters of Climate Week, which range from every part of society: from the Chief Fire Officers Association to the Women’s Institute, the Girl Guiding UK to several Regional Development Agencies.

Read the rest of this entry »

Arctic Sea Ice Crunching

Movie Credit : Fool Me Once
Hat Tip : A Few Things IllConsidered

To check the most recent graphs :-

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/IceVolume.php

Read the rest of this entry »

The Rate of Change

I well remember the huffing and puffing over the release of James Hansen’s paper “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?” :-

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf

“…Decreasing CO2 was the main cause of a cooling trend that began 50 million years ago, large scale glaciation occurring when CO2 fell to 425 +/- 75 ppm…”

The sceptic-deniers laughed and scoffed and said things to the effect that clearly there’s nothing to worry about that the current concentration of Carbon Dioxide in the air is over 390 parts per million – it won’t melt the polar ice caps.

What the sceptic-deniers haven’t understood, or pretend not to have understood, is that it is a combination of factors that caused major lasting glaciation on Earth. Yes, the level of Carbon Dioxide in the air is important. But the rate of change of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is a significant component.

If the levels of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere change rapidly, the heating or cooling effect is amplified, in effect. You have to take account of the relative change in levels of Carbon Dioxide, not just its level at any particular point in time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wake Up ! Greenland’s Melting !

Greenland’s ice sheet probably first formed something like three million years ago, and drilling ice cores there has produced reliable data on changes in the Climate since then :-

Read the rest of this entry »

Antarctica Is Melting : Official

Oh, you know, the Arctic Sea Ice is in a “death spiral”, but good old Antarctica is holding firm – ice sheets as strong as ever, colder and more concrete a Polar Ice Cap than ever before.

Wrong.

Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t Believe The Heat ?

Don’t believe that the globe is warming up ? Not even after scanning the available sources ? Well, that’s probably down to the failure of your public and private Media, who are, for the most part, seemingly institutionally incapable of telling the full unexpurgated facts :-

http://www.climateshifts.org/?p=5505

“19 June 2010 : Contrary to the impression you might have gained from the media, the global climate is NOT cooling. In fact, the last twelve months, June 2009 – May 2010, has been the hottest June-May period on record, in both the 31-year satellite record of lower atmosphere global temperature and the 131-year surface global temperature record. In both data series the last 12 months have been more than 0.4C hotter than the average temperature of the last two decades of the 20th century…”

And why just stop at the evidence from the temperatures ? Don’t believe the oceans are deteriorating ? Why not look at the full range of research ?

Read the rest of this entry »

Cold Focus : Disturbing Trends

After several key projects to alert the general public to the melting of the Arctic, some have concluded that pictures of unusual calving icebergs, sea ice scans and time lapse series of glacier disappearance are not enough, not sufficient, to make the case.

Read the rest of this entry »

Methane Rising

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/methane-levels-may-see-runaway-rise-scientists-warn-1906484.html

Behind Paywall :-
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127011.500-arctic-meltdown-is-a-threat-to-humanity.html?full=true

Select “CH4″ for Methane :-
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/iadv/

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ndps/alegage.html

http://agage.eas.gatech.edu/data.htm

http://agage.eas.gatech.edu/images/Data_figures/gcmd_month/ch4_monS5.pdf

Sea Ice Not In Recovery

Watch it while it all melts away…this isn’t modelling, it’s data :-

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/

http://climateprogress.org/2010/05/21/arctic-sea-ice-area-extent-volume-record-low/

http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/IceVolume.php

http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?p=2&t=73&&n=182

http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/05/three-views-on-sea-ice.php?utm_source=sbhomepage&utm_medium=link&utm_content=channellink

http://psc.apl.washington.edu/IDAO/rothrock_zhang_2004JC002282.pdf

Polar Bear : Poster Child

So, I’m standing in the G2 theatre at the School of Oriental and African Studies, after the “Sceptic Backlash” event, talking with two Climate Change activists, one Irish, one American.

The question arises : since our lifestyles are causing deadly Climate Change for people in other parts of the world, maybe we should have communications based around pictures of suffering children ?

I disagree. I point out that when the environmentalists put out posters about Polar Bears, that the audience pretty quickly realised that the Polar Bears were being used as a “poster child” for Climate Change, and they started to mock the campaigning.

Read the rest of this entry »

Early Bud Catches Warm

If you’re reading this in the Southern Hemisphere, you will probably already know that the temperatures have been somewhat heated since the beginning of this year.

If you’re reading this in the Northern Hemisphere, and I know most of you are, because I’ve checked, you will probably not have the faintest idea that local cold does not mean global cold.

What’s been happening, to use colloquial, ordinary, everyday language, is that the Climate has been changing at the top of the world, the region near the North Pole. Winds have changed, patterns of heating and freezing have changed, rain and snowfall have changed.

This has had a knock-on effect – some of the areas further South have had a great deal of cooling over Winter. The Arctic has been acting like a giant air conditioner for parts of Northern Europe and Northern America.

You shiver in Paris (or London, or New York), but the Siberian and Canadian permafrost is melting.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nightmare on Easy Street

Every now and again, some well-meaning, or even lightheartedly jokey relative or friend lets me know I should calm down with the story of the risk of Climate catastrophe as it’s (a) not effective; (b) not necessary or (c) way off the end of the scale. Apparently I’m crying wolf, but there’s not even a messy puppy in the neighbourhood.

There are two narratives at work here. One is that people don’t like being preached too (neither do I), and they feel that the sum total of Climate Change communications amounts to somebody high up the authority chain telling them to change their behaviour, somehow making the common man (and woman) responsible for a problem that should actually be fixed by the governments, who have the power (or large companies and international corporations, who have the financial resources).

The moral of nearly every cultural telling of the Climate Change story is “ten things you can do to make a difference”, and a lot of people feel it will mean shivering in the dark with no car and more tax. People are so not into self-sacrifice and abstention from consumerism, and they react badly, even to the extent of skin rashes, to the fear of micromanaged austerity being thrust upon them.

But that’s not why I talk about Climate Change.

Read the rest of this entry »

Greenland Melts Down : Greens Up

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Greenland-ice-mass-loss-spread-to-northwest.html

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010GL042460.shtml

http://news.discovery.com/earth/more-greenland-ice-melting-faster.html

http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-CO2-level-would-cause-Greenland-ice-sheet-collapse.html

http://www.the-cryosphere-discuss.net/4/233/2010/tcd-4-233-2010.html

“…Collapse of the ice-sheet was found to occur between 400 and 560 ppmv…”

Read the rest of this entry »

Meltdown Himalaya

In all the uproar about the typographical error, and poor research citation, about terminally melting Himalayan glaciers in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, the facts have been overlooked.

Indian Scientists are reporting that Himalayan glaciers lost 16% in the last 50 years :-

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/Himalayan-glaciers-shrank-16-in-50-yrs-Isro/articleshow/5733386.cms

““Investigations on glacial retreat were estimated for 1,317 glaciers in 10 sub-basins from 1962. This has shown an overall reduction in glacial area from 5,866 sqkm to 4,921 sqkm since 1962, showing an overall de-glaciation of 16%”, says the latest annual report of Isro. Snow cover monitoring of all basin has been completed, it said. Atlases for three years are ready and one for the fourth year is being prepared. Modeling response of Himalayan cryosphere to climate change has been initiated, Isro added. Meanwhile, a study on the impact of temperature and carbon dioxide (CO2) rise on the productivity of the four major cereal food crops — wheat, rice, maize and pearl millet — revealed that yield of all of them showed reduction with increasing temperature…”

Now, I don’t know about you, but I think that’s pretty serious, and should merit a barrel-load of news articles. People still need to be made aware that melting snow and ice pack around the world is a serious and permanent problem.

And they might just be bothered to care if they realise that Global Warming can affect their own future food and water supplies.

CURRU : First Service Award Announced

Joe Romm from Climate Progress has been awarded the first service award of the week from CURRU, the Climate Unscience Rapid Response Unit, for his sterling, hard-working, thorough piece on the meltdown in the Arctic :-

http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/22/thin-ice-arctic-winds-sea-ice-extent-global-warming/

“Misreported study: “It is clear … that the precipitous decline in September sea ice extent in recent years is mainly due to the cumulative loss of multiyear ice.” Physicist: “If temperatures change just a few tenths of a degree then this oh-so-thin ice cap is doomed.”"

Read the rest of this entry »

Slow-Moving Meltdown Catastrophe

The IPCC is out of date. No, really, the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report from the IPCC is now way out of date :-

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-02/ul-plr021710.php

Read the rest of this entry »

Glaciers Melting in the Himalayas

Video Credit : Asia Society

The satellites and cameras do not lie : glaciers in the Himalayas are melting, and the loss of any part of this “third pole” ice cover threatens the freshwater supply for billions.

This weekend’s Media clamour on the subject focuses on the trail of a mis-attribution of a claim regarding the complete meltdown of the mountain glaciers.

Just because somebody’s got their references wrong, doesn’t mean that the glaciers have magically not been melting after all.

Yes, the IPCC process has failed to pick up this prediction error. No, it doesn’t throw the whole of the IPCC reports into the trash can.

Read the rest of this entry »