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The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

climate.gov

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Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#281

Post by cyberax »

ForOldHack wrote: post #266
tfourb wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a Look at the statistics, before nitpicking. Solar and wind dwarfs nuclear in China and increasingly so.

"Once again, China's nuclear program barely added any capacity, only 1.2 GW, while wind and solar between them added about 278 GW." Dwarfs is the most apt description. (~250x)

Nope. The devil is in the details.

You're looking at the nameplate capacity. However, for solar the actual capacity factor can be anywhere from 10-25% of that. So you're looking anywhere from ~25-70GW of the average capacity. Nuclear reactors can operate at 90-95% capacity factors.

And the unsolved problem is storage. Right now, solar can partially replace natural gas and, to a lesser extent, coal.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#282

Post by avianlyric »

xg15 wrote: post #178

> Second, though the impacts of March sudden warmings are very similar to those in mid-winter, spring is coming, so any Arctic air brought down in the US won't "feel" as cold compared to if it happened in January because we are in a warmer part of the year. This part seems really handwavey. Could someone explain what they mean with "warmer part of the year" if not air temperature? Increased warming through more sunli…

Imaging increased warming from sunlight raising ground and building temperatures probably impacts “felt” temperature quite a bit.

There a few different heat transfer mechanisms, with conduction and radiation being the big ones we care about here. Cold air impacts heat transfer via conduction, but temperature of surrounding surfaces (like buildings and the ground) impacts radiative heat transfer, which makes us a significant portion of your bodies heat transfer into it’s surrounding environment. Which is the reason why a clear night is colder than an overcast night. The clouds above reflect a significant amount of radiant energy back at you on a cloudy day, and on a clear night you’re directly exposed to cold emptiness of space which will radiate effectively zero heat back at you.

Good place to experience the difference between conduction and radiative heat, is being near a camp fire on a cold night. The camp fire doesn’t really warm the air around your body, but the emitted IR has a huge impact. Hence you end up with a very warm front, while still having a very cold back.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#283

Post by dwighttk »

dagss wrote: post #212
y33t wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The base units of the metric system are often not very ergonomic. Why is a meter so damn big? And why is a gram so damn small? I can barely detect a gram. And a meter is frickin huge, causing people to usually divide it into hundredths of a meter, which you can hardly picture in your mind unless you already know what it looks like, especially arbitrary counts of cm. Metric's only real advantage is that it shares the…

As a metric user: This is about your lack of familiarity. E.g. can picture lumber expressed in cm or mm very easily. E.g., if you work with beams that are 48mm / 5 cm or 98mm / 10cm a lot then those sizes becomes second nature. Just as easy to picture as 2 inch, 4 inch, 1/2 inch, 3/4 inch etc that is in use in US. And saying that something is 200m away is exactly as intuitive as however many feet that is. A large met…

Ah but are 48x98s nowhere near 48mm and 98mms like our 2x4s?

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#284

Post by epicureanideal »

zeagle wrote: post #6

Interesting article. We are past the usual -20 or lower six weeks where I am so feels like a typical year. If I choose a random northern place like Rankin Inlet NU it is still cold up there with a low of -33 tonight. It is a sign of the times when I think huh, climate.gov… is that a reputable source?

> It is a sign of the times when I think huh, climate.gov… is that a reputable source?

Some have been wondering that for years already.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#285

Post by kulahan »

OKRainbowKid wrote: post #63
kulahan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly figured it’d be one of the first. That being said, France, UK, and USA are all moving towards more nuclear power. It might be at the point where it’s no longer possible to pretend we care about solar/wind, and can no longer realistically ignore climate change. I’ve been saying for years that we’d know when governments were finally getting scared of climate change because we’d see real, very fast moves to i…

I don't understand why acknowledgment of climate change would lead to nuclear over solar/wind.

Because solar and wind are extremely inefficient and dangerous when compared with nuclear. Nuclear and enhanced geothermal are both closing in on their dream forms (fusion and supercritical fluids), and are already sufficient as they are.

It’s not necessarily “over” them, it’s that it will get tons of attention because that level of power generation would take wayyyyy too long to build out and take wayyyy too much space before even getting into the fact that neither solution can work anywhere at any time.

Nuclear got a bad rap, but it is way too essential to ignore in this problem we’re facing. When the focus shifts, you can tell people are getting serious. Simple as that.

Edit: I did not realize this had somehow become a conservative viewpoint? I am a leftist.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#286

Post by tfourb »

cyberax wrote: post #281
ForOldHack wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Once again, China's nuclear program barely added any capacity, only 1.2 GW, while wind and solar between them added about 278 GW." Dwarfs is the most apt description. (~250x)

Nope. The devil is in the details. You're looking at the nameplate capacity. However, for solar the actual capacity factor can be anywhere from 10-25% of that. So you're looking anywhere from ~25-70GW of the average capacity. Nuclear reactors can operate at 90-95% capacity factors. And the unsolved problem is storage. Right now, solar can partially replace natural gas and, to a lesser extent, coal.

Even considering the capacity factor solar and wind still grows by 60x compared to nuclear. And storage is no longer an „unsolved problem“. You could manage the current grid with current chemical battery technology, levelized cost of electricity of that solution is cheaper than nuclear. And foreseeable technical advances will improve that while no comparable development is on the horizon for nuclear.

The real tricky thing will be stuff like chemical processes that depend on hydrocarbons, but nuclear is no help for that.

Nuclear didn’t deliver on an every revolution in the 50s and it won’t today. It’s nice for submarines and to have an industrial base to build bombs but it inherently can’t solve the world’s energy demands.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#287

Post by ForOldHack »

mmaunder wrote: post #118
zeagle wrote: post #6

Interesting article. We are past the usual -20 or lower six weeks where I am so feels like a typical year. If I choose a random northern place like Rankin Inlet NU it is still cold up there with a low of -33 tonight. It is a sign of the times when I think huh, climate.gov… is that a reputable source?

Probably is. NOAA and other gov sources help us predict things like clear air turbulence related to the jet stream. One probably doesn’t want to politicize those kinds of predictions too much or risk scraping passengers and their dinners from ceilings.

Dinners were the least of the problems that Bush's admin had with NASA Goddard. It was the climatology, and long term predictions.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#288

Post by ForOldHack »

arunabha wrote: post #272
transcriptase wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair there have been a bunch of headlines about a great many things, like office closures without mentioning the minor detail that the offices haven’t been used in years, the workforce is remote, and there is no impact on service delivery or staffing. Doesn’t stop journalists from dancing around the implication if it makes the orange man and mars man look bad though.

I think you're trying to impart a political motive where it can be argued that none existed. I understand that your mind is made up, however consider that the whole initial effort by DOGE was clearly poorly planned and resulted in a lot of chaos. For a journalistic perspective, when events are moving fast, you report what is known at a given time. Hindsight is always 20/20 and no doubt there are some cases like you p…

It is a realistic and accurate way to see the politicization of climate science. Bush, and the head of NASA Goddard is the documented and publicized example sans vacuum of disinformation.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#289

Post by ForOldHack »

guelo wrote: post #197
transcriptase wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair there have been a bunch of headlines about a great many things, like office closures without mentioning the minor detail that the offices haven’t been used in years, the workforce is remote, and there is no impact on service delivery or staffing. Doesn’t stop journalists from dancing around the implication if it makes the orange man and mars man look bad though.

how do you know that the offices haven't been used in years and there is no impact unless a journalist told you? Is there any reason to trust rando twitter accounts besides the fact that it makes you feel better about "your side".

Simple. There is photographic evidence, and eyewitness accounts, by a celebrated journalist ego happens to be a friend of mine.

Re: The polar vortex is hitting the brakes

#290

Post by olddustytrail »

nukem222 wrote: post #68
artursapek wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what country do people encounter -40 degrees

Russia, canada, sweden, norway, finland, us... probably missing a few. Edit: mongolia too, I think. curiously, nothing in the southern hemisphere?

Antarctica
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