Explanation of man-made CO2 for nuclear experts (Howard Cork Hayden) USofA

Explanation of man-made CO2 for nuclear experts Howard Cork Hayden October 26, 2014 There is no such thing as safe energy. To ask for such is to ask for gasoline that doesn't burn. Nuclear is the safest generation scheme for electricity, but one should always bear in mind that energy saves far more lives than it costs, no matter what the source.

In talking about coal, oil, and natural gas, one should be careful to distinguish between matters of pollution (SO2, O3, …), physical damage (dams and pipelines breaking), and CO2, which is not a pollutant to anybody except the benighted EPA and SCOTUS. IF there is a case to be made against CO2, it should be made on that basis alone, not by bringing in irrelevancies (such as SO2, Hg, and train wrecks.)

For years, I have offered the following advice to pro-nukes: Do not pollute a strong pronuclear case with weak arguments ("climate change"). If the weather turns cold for a year or two, the anti-nukes will push the argument that you (pro-nukes, like me) lied to them about global warming to inflict nuclear power on an unwary public.

Remember this. The anti-nuclear crowd is anti-energy. EVERY means of generating energy, and EVERY means of transporting energy, and MOST uses of energy are opposed by people who lovingly call themselves environmentalists. One of their tactics is divide-and-conquer, and they delight in having pro-nukes oppose coal. Don't win the battle and lose the war!

Everybody understands that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that—absent any feedbacks—a doubling of CO2 concentration would raise worldwide temperature by 1.1 ºC. For anybody interested in checking it out, the “forcing” is; use of the Stefan-Boltzmann radiation law finishes the argument.

Thanks are due to Willis Eschenbach for the following analysis. The word diabatic (used in thermodynamics) and diabetic (used in medicine) are essentially the same word, meaning “passing through.” In one case, it refers to heat and in the other, to urine. Thermodynamiscists use the term adiabatic (not passing through) to refer to cases where there is no heat transfer into or out of a system.

When a mass of air rises through the atmosphere, it expands, owing to the reduction in atmospheric pressure. There is no heat input, so the gas cools down because some internal energy is expended in expanding the gas. Accordingly, the air cools down by an average of 6.4 ºC per kilometer (5.5 ºF/1000’) of elevation. This figure, called the adiabatic lapse rate, is well known to pilots. (For moist air, cooling results in

1

precipitation of water vapor, so the adiabatic lapse rate for this case is about half as large.)

Let us express the adiabatic lapse rate in more human terms. For a 2-meter tall person, the temperature difference due to elevation between the feet and the head is 0.013 ºC. Now, we’ll start being more realistic. The amount of CO2 residing in the atmosphere is now about 2.8 trillion metric tons, and the US annually emits about 8 billion metric tons of CO2. About half of the CO2 emitted by humanity goes into the ocean and the biosphere; the other half remains in the atmosphere. So, about 4 billion metric tons of annual US emissions remain in the atmosphere and contribute to the dreaded global warming.

At current rates, it would take 2.8 trillion 4 billion, or 700 years for US emissions to double the atmospheric concentration of CO2. Using the inflated IPCC estimate of 3 ºC temperature rise to correspond to a doubling of CO2 concentration, we find that all US emissions would increase temperature by 3 ºC in 700 years, or 0.004 ºC/year. If we reduced emissions by 20%, then the rate of temperature rise would be reduced 0.0008 ºC per year. In 20 years, the avoided temperature rise would be 0.017 ºC (the EPA’s estimates are hardly different) slightly more than the temperature difference between your feet and your head due to the adiabatic lapse rate.

Figure above from latest IPCC report. Reserves are in units of 1012 kg of carbon (multiplied by 44/12 to get CO2), and fluxes are in units of 1012 kg of carbon per year. Total human emissions are about 4% of natural emissions.

There have been times in the past when CO2 levels have been very high—up to 20 times the current value. Most have been largely coincident with high temperature. A major exception is the ice age of 450 million years ago in the Ordovician, when CO2 concentration was over 4,000 ppmv. Indeed, there could hardly be enough food for the huge dinosaurs to eat without a high atmospheric concentration of CO2 to feed the plants.

That much said, we turn to astronomy. About every 150 million years, the solar system is within one of the arms of the Milky Way, and those times are characterized by ice ages. (Wave speed is not the same as particle speed.) We are presently in an interglacial of an ice age that has lasted longer than a million years, with a drop of about 10 ºC from the temperature of about 25 million years ago.

For about a million years, the earth has gone through cycles of 100,000-year glacial periods, interspersed with 10,000-year interglacials (such as the one we’re in right now). The periodicities of the cycles match those of the Milankovitch cycles, which are due to variations in the orbital eccentricity, axis tilt, and axis precession.

The figure below shows the reservoirs and fluxes of carbon. (The atmospheres has CO2, trees have lignin and sugars, petroleum has hydrocarbons, the ocean has CO2 and carbonates … so the IPCC keeps track of carbon, which is the commonality.)

2

How is it that CO2 levels have been high when the temperature was high? Coincidence?

High CO2 caused high temperatures? Why is all that coincident with orbital variables?

One thing to remember is the first principle of causality: The cause has to come before the effect. (How would you like a morning-after pill for men? Posthumous suicide, anybody?)

Howard (Cork) Hayden Perhaps you should subscribe to The Energy Advocate, ....................a monthly newsletter (on real paper) about energy.

What? You're not a subscriber? There's a remedy for that! www.valeslake.com, www.energyadvocate.com PO Box 7609, Pueblo West, CO 81007 corkhayden@comcast.net FAX: (719) 547-7819 People will do anything to save the world ... except take a course in science Consensus is the enemy of science 3