Global Warming

 

There is a demonstrated natural connection between the climate and the solar sun spot cycles.  See the following link for information on this natural phenomenon, which makes both short term and long term climate predictions:

Solar Cycle and Climate Change

Clearly there is a large natural component to climate change which is not influenced by human activities. While burning fossil fuels and other carbon sources may increase the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere, the origin of climate change is more complicated than the simple burning of carbon fuels. There are many other contributors to climate change, some of which are also caused by man and others that are natural which are more important than burning carbon based fuels.

The nuclear industry and its Government promoters such as the DoE and the NRC make many references to “climate change” in arguing that nuclear power is a solution to global warming. Although they express concern about the survivability of reactors and spent fuel storage sites under expected extreme weather conditions caused by global warming, they claim there is no release of “greenhouse gasses” from nuclear facilities and thus it is a solution to global warming. Here are some facts that they do not mention. One of the many myths about nuclear power is that it is a carbon-free energy source. Unfortunately, the construction of a nuclear plant, together with its containment structures, fuel storage pools, reactor vessels, heat exchangers, casks and storage pads and their replacement every 100 years, etc. requires prodigious amounts of steel and concrete. Steel production requires burning large amounts of coal or coke and concrete requires cement which is made by burning fossil fuels to heat limestone. Carbon dioxide is released both from the fuel combustion and the limestone decomposition. In short, the only energy source which releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, during the construction phase, is hydro-power due to the massive amount of concrete used in dams. Renewable power sources such as wind, solar and biomass have a much smaller carbon footprint than fossil, nuclear or hydro. Another consideration is that thermal energy sources are only about 30% efficient in converting heat into electrical energy. The rest, 70%, of the energy produced must be discarded as waste heat which contributes to the heat load on the planet. Hydro sources, on the other, hand are around 90% efficient. Much of the incident radiative energy from the sun is reflected back into space because its visible wavelength remains unchanged on reflection. The waste heat from thermal sources of electricity such as nuclear and fossil fuels, on the other hand, is transmitted in the infra-red and so is mostly trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gasses, thus contributing to global warming. Also problematic is the fact that nuclear fuel continues to emit waste heat into the environment even centuries after the plant has ceased to produce electricity. Fossil fuel plants cease to produce waste heat immediately upon shutdown.

The operation of nuclear reactors and spent fuel storage pools have a deleterious effect on aquatic organisms. Reactors and spent fuel pools continue to be cooled by external sources such as river, lake or ocean water using one-time pass through cooling systems or by recirculated pond water with atmospheric cooling towers. Aquatic organisms sometimes block the circulation and so are removed by the application of pesticides and chemicals. The organisms can also be affected by radioactive materials, such as tritium which contaminates the cooling water circuit or simply by heating during transit through the reactor piping. One unintended consequence of this destruction of aquatic organisms is that many of them are essential to carbon fixation as part of the global carbon cycle. Aquatic organisms with carbonaceous skeletons are required to complete the cycle and permanently sequester carbon dioxide by precipitation to the sea floor. These organisms produce an enzyme called carbonic anhydrase, which catalyzes the conversion of dissolved carbon dioxide into carbonate anions. Dissolved carbonate in equilibrium with carbonic acid then combines with calcium cations in the water to produce calcium carbonate which is incorporated into the organism’s skeleton, through biological mineralization, much like the process by which bones are formed in humans, shells in clams or egg shells in chickens. When the organism dies it sinks to the sea floor where the skeleton becomes incorporated into great limestone sheets, which are eventually lifted by geological forces back to the surface to become new land masses and parts of continents. Those limestone sheets which form the ocean plates are subducted underneath the continental plates through the motions of plate tectonics.  At the edge of the continental plates in the  subduction zones, limestone is subjected to heat and pressure and the calcium carbonate  decomposes to form gaseous carbon dioxide.  Where the crust is weak this increased gas pressure gives rise to volcanoes along the ocean rims.  Volcanoes release millions of tons of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere to begin the atmospheric phase of the carbon cycle again.  Eventually the subducted limestone sheets are uncovered by erosion and lifted by geological forces back to the surface to become new land masses and parts of continents where they are subjected to acid rain which again releases the carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.

Thermal power plant cooling systems can contribute to global warming both by dumping waste heat into the environment and by killing the aquatic organisms which sequester the atmospheric carbon dioxide. Atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolves in both fresh and salt water. This solution process is reversible and depends on the temperature and pH of the water. At higher water temperatures and lower pH less carbon dioxide can remain dissolved unless it is converted to calcium carbonate and precipitated. The reversible solution of carbon dioxide in water creates a global buffering system which regulates the atmosphere concentration of carbon dioxide. The set-point for this buffering system is the equilibrium constant of the carbonic anhydrase enzyme in these aquatic organisms. Thus in a healthy ecosystem, not poisoned by chemical and radioactive toxins, the biology can process large amounts of carbon dioxide. Radioactive and chemical wastes produced by the nuclear industry can poison the biological systems for millennia and hamper the ability to recycle carbon dioxide.

The nuclear industry is also too expensive and too slow in permitting and construction to be useful in combating climate change. The problem of safely disposing of radioactive waste and the poor public perception of safety following the reactor meltdowns and widespread radioactive contamination at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima make this option a non-starter in the climate argument.

Other methods for combating climate change are much more affordable and more sensible. One big problem for global warming can be found in the man-made changes to the albido (reflectivity) of the earth’s surface. It simply takes an awareness of the problem in human minds to change their behavior such as using white shingles on roofs instead of dark or using concrete instead of asphalt on roadways to make a big difference on the reflectivity of the surface. Another huge problem contributing to global warming is deforestation. This is particularly problematic in Indonesia where slash and burn is used to clear forests for agriculture. More carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere during this activity than the entire burning of fossil fuels. Deforestation has a four-fold effect on climate; (1) It changes the surface albedo to make the earth less reflective; (2) It produces huge amounts of carbon dioxide during the burning of the felled trees; (3) It removes the future capacity of the now absent trees to sequester carbon dioxide into biomass and (4) It changes the humidity and cloud cover over the earth, Clouds act as a reflective shield to prevent the incident sunlight from reaching the surface where it can be absorbed and re-radiated in the infrared which is trapped by the greenhouse gas layer in the atmosphere.

The stigmatization or demonization of carbon dioxide as the agent primarily responsible for climate change is absurd. Greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere are essential to maintain a temperate climate and a surface temperature which can support life; and carbon dioxide is one of the best. Without greenhouse gasses, i.e. an atmosphere, the earth would be too cold to be habitable. Carbon dioxide is, in fact possibly the most important chemical compound on earth because it is “food” for all of the photosynthetic autotrophic organisms on the planet. “Green” organisms such as leafy plants use chlorophyll and sunlight to decompose carbon dioxide into reduced carbon and molecular oxygen. Reduced carbon is used to synthesize more complex organic molecules which become the source of all food and energy consumed by heterotrophic organisms such as ourselves and become the constituent organic chemical building blocks of our bodies.

Marine algae plumes, or blooms as they are called, can be the size of small continents and are sometimes called the lungs of the earth because they, together with photosynthetic plants, are responsible for all the breathable oxygen in the atmosphere. We have to remember that with every breath we take we are inhaling life-giving oxygen molecules that once were part of carbon dioxide molecules. Marine algae decomposition of carbon dioxide into reduced carbon and oxygen is also responsible for the organic compound synthesis which forms the basis of the ocean food chain and gives life to all the marine creatures. Thus, every carbon atom, in every organic molecule, in every living organism on earth was once carbon bound up in atmospheric carbon dioxide. I think that rather than demonizing carbon dioxide we should rather glorify it as the essential elixir of life. The real demon here, if we must find a demon, is the destruction of “green” photosynthetic plants and the poisoning of the marine algae which together are the source of all the food and breathable oxygen on earth. These autotrophic organisms recycle the atmospheric carbon dioxide into life-giving food and oxygen through photosynthesis and create a global buffering system which keeps the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and oxygen in balance, creates our food and keeps the surface of the earth at a livable temperature.

One Response to Global Warming

  1. Israeli scientists have suggested that too much emphasis has been placed on atmospheric carbon dioxide as the main cause of global warming. Their arguments are quite persuasive. See an article by Doron Levin first published by Forbes magazine and then removed as not meeting the magazine’s editorial standards, i.e. not supporting their political position on global warming at:

    https://www.thegwpf.com/revealed-the-climate-story-forbes-doesnt-want-you-to-read/

    I think we should be able to think for ourselves. Anyway it is worth a read. Censorship has no place in an informed world.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.