Climate Change

[Michael Scally MD]

Severnini E. Impacts of nuclear plant shutdown on coal-fired power generation and infant health in the Tennessee Valley in the 1980s. nature Energy. 2017. http://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy201751 /
http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/nenergy.2017.51

The Fukushima nuclear accident in March 2011 generated deep public anxiety and uncertainty about the future of nuclear energy. However, differently to fossil fuel plants, nuclear plants produce virtually no greenhouse gas emissions or air pollutants during power generation.

Here we show the effect on air pollution and infant health in the context of the temporary closure of nuclear plants by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in the 1980s.

After the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission intensified inspections throughout the nation, leading to the shutdown of two large nuclear power plants in the TVA area.

In response to that shutdown, electricity generation shifted one to one to coal-fired power plants within TVA, increasing particle pollution in counties where they were located. Consequently, infant health may have deteriorated in the most affected places, indicating deleterious effects to public health.


New Study Finds Surprising Health Benefits of Nuclear Power
http://www.environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/4/4/new-study-finds-surprising-health-benefits-of-nuclear-power#

In recent years, support for and fear of nuclear energy have both increased. A growing number of climate scientists and environmentalists have advocated for nuclear, which is the largest source of low-carbon electricity in the USA and other countries. But the 2011 accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan also increased popular fears.

Experts have long recognized the negative impact of fossil fuel pollution on public health, and the relative safety of nuclear power. But prior studies have been limited in their ability to directly measure health trade-offs from moving from nuclear to fossil fuels.

Now, a new study in Nature Energy by a young economist at Carnegie Mellon University, finds that the temporary closure of two nuclear plants in the early 1980s led directly to lower birth weights — a key indicator of poor health outcomes later in life

…

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Foster GL, Royer DL, Lunt DJ. Future climate forcing potentially without precedent in the last 420 million years. Nature Communications 2017;8:14845. Future climate forcing potentially without precedent in the last 420 million years : Nature Communications

The evolution of Earth’s climate on geological timescales is largely driven by variations in the magnitude of total solar irradiance (TSI) and changes in the greenhouse gas content of the atmosphere. Here we show that the slow ∼50 Wm−2 increase in TSI over the last ∼420 million years (an increase of ∼9 Wm−2 of radiative forcing) was almost completely negated by a long-term decline in atmospheric CO2. This was likely due to the silicate weathering-negative feedback and the expansion of land plants that together ensured Earth’s long-term habitability. Humanity’s fossil-fuel use, if unabated, risks taking us, by the middle of the twenty-first century, to values of CO2 not seen since the early Eocene (50 million years ago). If CO2 continues to rise further into the twenty-third century, then the associated large increase in radiative forcing, and how the Earth system would respond, would likely be without geological precedent in the last half a billion years.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

On Tuesday, the Mauna Loa Observatory recorded its first-ever carbon dioxide reading in excess of 410 parts per million (it was 410.28 ppm in case you want the full deal). Carbon dioxide hasn’t reached that height in millions of years.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Climate pollution equal to about 27 times humans’ 2015 carbon dioxide emissions may have to be removed from the atmosphere and locked underground forever in order to keep the globe from warming beyond 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial levels, according to a new study.

The research, led by scientists at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, or IIASA, in Austria, adds to the mounting evidence that countries will have to physically remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to prevent global warming from exceeding dangerous levels.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

New Posters Imagine National Parks in 2050; It’s Not Pretty
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/posters-imagine-national-parks-in-2050-21353

A new poster series takes the landscapes that have inspired countless road trips and daydreams of summer vacation and imagines what they’ll look like in 2050 if climate change is allowed to continue unchecked.

Hannah Rothstein, a Berkeley-based artist who created the series, said she was interested in doing a climate project that reinvented art people were familiar with. And national parks are some of the most iconic, visited places in the U.S. Last year, a record 325 million visited parks around the country.

But with countless images of parks, Rothstein wanted to cut through the noise. She settled on recreating a series of classic Works Progress Administration posters printed between 1938 and 1941. The originals were created to signal to a Depression-weary public that the parks were open and full of spectacular sites to see.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

President Trump’s environmental onslaught will have immediate, dangerous effects. He has vowed to reopen coal mines and moved to keep the dirtiest power plants open for many years into the future. Dirty air, the kind you get around coal-fired power plants, kills people.

It’s much the same as his policies on health care or refugees: Real people (the poorest and most vulnerable people) will be hurt in real time. That’s why the resistance has been so fierce.

But there’s an extra dimension to the environmental damage. What Mr. Trump is trying to do to the planet’s climate will play out over geologic time as well. In fact, it’s time itself that he’s stealing from us.

What I mean is, we have only a short window to deal with the climate crisis or else we forever lose the chance to thwart truly catastrophic heating.

 

[ronin17]

Severnini E. Impacts of nuclear plant shutdown on coal-fired power generation and infant health in the Tennessee Valley in the 1980s. nature Energy. 2017. http://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy201751 /
http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/nenergy.2017.51

The Fukushima nuclear accident in March 2011 generated deep public anxiety and uncertainty about the future of nuclear energy. However, differently to fossil fuel plants, nuclear plants produce virtually no greenhouse gas emissions or air pollutants during power generation.

Here we show the effect on air pollution and infant health in the context of the temporary closure of nuclear plants by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in the 1980s.

After the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission intensified inspections throughout the nation, leading to the shutdown of two large nuclear power plants in the TVA area.

In response to that shutdown, electricity generation shifted one to one to coal-fired power plants within TVA, increasing particle pollution in counties where they were located. Consequently, infant health may have deteriorated in the most affected places, indicating deleterious effects to public health.


New Study Finds Surprising Health Benefits of Nuclear Power
http://www.environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/4/4/new-study-finds-surprising-health-benefits-of-nuclear-power#

In recent years, support for and fear of nuclear energy have both increased. A growing number of climate scientists and environmentalists have advocated for nuclear, which is the largest source of low-carbon electricity in the USA and other countries. But the 2011 accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan also increased popular fears.

Experts have long recognized the negative impact of fossil fuel pollution on public health, and the relative safety of nuclear power. But prior studies have been limited in their ability to directly measure health trade-offs from moving from nuclear to fossil fuels.

Now, a new study in Nature Energy by a young economist at Carnegie Mellon University, finds that the temporary closure of two nuclear plants in the early 1980s led directly to lower birth weights — a key indicator of poor health outcomes later in life

…

Thank you for all the energy and time you devote to trying to inform others. From this thread to your medical threads. Thanks.

It's a shame so many are willfully ignorant to what's happening right in front or them.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

President Donald Trump's aggressive rollback of the Obama administration's climate policies is already changing the trajectory of the world's efforts on global warming, with some analysts estimating it will mean billions more tons of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere during the next decade and a half.

It could be one of the most durable legacies of his young presidency — regardless of whether Trump decides to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

A report by a leading research body monitoring the Arctic has found that previous projections of global sea level rise for the end of the century could be too low, thanks in part to the pace of ice loss of Arctic glaciers and the vast ice sheet of Greenland.

It’s just the latest in a string of cases in which scientists have published numbers that suggest a grimmer picture than the one presented in 2013 by an influential United Nations body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The new Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic report presents minimum estimates for global sea level rise by the end of the century, but not a maximum. This reflects the fact that scientists keep uncovering new insights that force them to increase their sea level estimates further, said William Colgan, a glaciologist with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, who contributed to the sea level rise section.

“Because of emerging processes, especially related to the Greenland ice sheet and the Antarctic ice sheet, it now looks like the uncertainties are all biased positive,” Colgan said.

The assessment found that under a relatively moderate global warming scenario — one that slightly exceeds the temperature targets contained in the Paris climate agreement — seas could be expected to rise “at least” 52 centimeters, or 1.7 feet, by the year 2100. Under a more extreme, “business as usual” warming scenario, meanwhile, the minimum rise would be 74 centimeters, or 2.43 feet.

The new findings were published Tuesday as part of a broader overview report by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, a working group of the intergovernmental Arctic Council, which unites eight Arctic nations, including the United States, and six organizations representing the indigenous peoples of the Arctic.