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Glacial pace picks up

Greenland's ice is breaking up at an increasing rate.

Greenland's glaciers, which have since the last ice age slipped into the ocean at a sedate, glacial speed, are beginning to pick up the pace.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones on February 16, 2006
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For those of us living in the northern hemisphere, like east-coast US or Scandinavia, an almost unnoticed Scientific insight should be remenbered, that of Mitrovica et al, Nature, 409, 1026-1029 (2001), which shows that our coasts will only experience 10-15% of the eventual sea-level rize from Greenland melting, as the water flows away from Greenland when the gravitational pull of the ice-sheet disappears. This does not help people of the pacific or any other place "down-under". What would impact us in the north more directly, is the potential melting of West-Antarctica. Interestingly, from tide gauges and the distinct pattern of various sources, Mitrovica et al infers a sea-level rize contribution (global average) from Greenland of 0.58 mm per year during the last century, as Rignot et al estimate 1996-2005.

Jesper Gundermann, Danish EPA

Posted by: Jesper Gundermann | February 21, 2006 01:45 PM

A proposal to provide all nations with energy independence and end the threat of further Global Warming

Our 200-year-old fossil fuel energy infrastructure is obsolete. It operates by extracting fuel materials from the earth and burning them with oxygen from the air to produce energy and waste. We use the energy and discard the waste. The gaseous waste (carbon dioxide) is vented into the atmosphere and the solid waste is placed in a landfills. As a result, atmospheric carbon dioxide has increase by 35% since 1800. The atmosphere function is similar to the function of our blood circulation system. The atmosphere and our circulatory system both transport heat and critical substances. If the carbon dioxide content of your blood increases by 35%, you will be near death. Let us hope the 35% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will not have this effect on living things (like you and me) that depend on the atmosphere for circulation.

The 35% increase in carbon dioxide has today caused measurable global warming. Over the long haul, global warming has the potential cause a worldwide catastrophe. It can destroy farms, spread disease and melt ice. If sufficient ice melts, the sea level will rise to the point that most major cities must be abandon. If the carbon dioxide we have already placed in the atmosphere causes current warming, consider the consequences in the year 2020, of the carbon dioxide from 1.2 billion Chinese and a billion Indians as they improve their economies and start driving cars and SUVs.

In addition to the environmental challenge presented by the use of fossil fuels, it is a political and economic imperative that the world have an energy source other than Middle East oil in place as soon as feasible. In 2020, the Chinese and the Indians will compete with the United States, Japan and Europe for Middle East oil A new energy system is needed to prevent contentious competition for the remaining reserves in the Middle East from becoming lethal. For our own interest and the sake of future generations, we need to replace our energy infrastructure.

Potential replacements for fossil fuels include the renewable energy sources (solar, wind, water, geothermal, ocean thermal gradients), nuclear fission, and nuclear fusion. We must harvest as much renewable energy as possible but these sources are too dilute and unreliable to serve all our needs. Renewable energy source can be effectively harvested when coupled to a robust base-load system. Nuclear fission might provide the base-load energy if we could find a satisfactory method of disposing of radioactive waste. No good scheme to protect the ecosphere from the waste for the desired 25,000-year exists. Because of the potential for weapons of mass destruction and intractable waste nuclear fission appears to be far too dangerous to provide future base-load energy.

Nuclear fusion (fusion not fission) has the properties desired for a long-life base-load energy supply. The basic fuels, deuterium and lithium (needed to produce tritium) are sufficiently abundant to power a growing civilization for thousands of years. The waste product of the fusion reaction is non-radioactive helium. A fusion reactor cannot run away and/or explode. The only radiation hazard comes from activation of the reactor's structure by the neutrons produced when deuterium fuses with tritium to yield helium. Structure activation is an environmental issue only when decommissioning the reactor. Because there are no radioactive by-products, the radiation hazard presented by fusion reactors is infinitesimal compared to the hazard from fission reactors. Unlike fission reactors, it is not practical to make nuclear weapons with fusion reactors

In 1962, scientists and engineers knew how to build a moon rocket but we did not have the hardware to make the trip. The United States formed the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) and it met the challenge with the Apollo Lunar Lander program. NASA placed men on the moon in less than 8 years. In 2006, scientists and engineers know how to build a fusion reactor but have not developed the hardware. It is highly likely that a concerted National Goal development effort, similar to the Apollo Lunar Lander program, can produce a commercial fusion reactor in less than 10 years.

With today's understanding of fusion, the first reactors will likely have a very large output. The future energy system must make practical use of this large size. Current power plants are sized at 1 to 2 gigawatts. The optimum size for the fusion power plant may be as large as 10 to 30 gigawatts. Serious consideration should be given to floating the reactors at sea where the large size and output of the fusion reactors can be easily accommodated. This ameliorates site selection problems, costs and muffles the “Not In My Back Yard” criticisms. To keep cost in check the power plants should be manufactured in a single place like aircraft carriers or oil tankers. The purchasing nation will supply the operating staff.

Fusion reactors produce only heat, and from heat electricity. A chemical fuel is required because electricity is not storable or portable. Electrical energy can be used to decompose water into its component elements, hydrogen and oxygen. This process (called electrolysis) is simple and efficient. Hydrogen is the only "zero" pollution chemical fuel. Desalinated seawater can be used in the electrolysis process to produce hydrogen and oxygen. Seawater is a good source of the deuterium and lithium needed for the fusion process. The seawater can also carry away heat, the only waste product from this system. In the final design, each power plant will be a complete entity using seawater to produce hydrogen and oxygen.

Hydrogen is the best medium for moving zero pollution energy. Hydrogen can be transported in underground pipelines just as natural gas is today. Much of the gas pipeline system that is in place today can be used. High winds, floods, ice, lightening, solar storms and the like often disrupt electrical power transmission but seldom disturb buried gas transmission lines. This makes energy supplied by pipelines more reliably than electric transmission lines. Most important, pipelines provide a reservoir of gas that can serve as a buffer for the hour-to-hour mismatch between the constant output of the source and the widely varying daily requirements of civilization. Additionally bulk hydrogen can be stored at sea or on land to provide seasonal load matching.

A number of demonstration projects have shown that hydrogen can be used to fuel items as diverse as kitchen stoves and automobile internal combustion engines. In about 1960, hydrogen was demonstrated as the fuel for one engine of a B-57 bomber. Hydrogen delivers about 2.5 times more energy per unit weight than is supplied by jet fuel. As a result, the future hydrogen fueled airplanes will have greater range and carrying capacity. Hydrogen is also the ideal fuel for the air fuel cell.

Products using fuel cell technology are beginning to enter the market. A hydrogen fuel-cell car may launch in 2004. The promise of the fuel cell is to turn hydrogen directly into electricity at very high efficiency. Fuel cells may ultimately be applied to generating all electricity. The advantage of generating all electricity with fuel cells range from high efficiency, to elimination of overhead transmission lines, to a great increase in reliability of the electrical energy supply for the home, hospital, industry or office.

When water is electrolyzed eight kilograms of oxygen are produced with each kilogram of hydrogen. The oxygen can be sold to ameliorate other environmental challenges. Low cost oxygen enhances treatment of sewage. Oxygen can be used to purify lakes and rivers. Oxygen enhanced incineration has been investigated and found to be desirable. Oxygen enhanced incinerators will have the potential for powerful processing capability and innocuous vent gas.

In 1992, a fusion reactor at Princeton produced energy for a short time. This success motivated an international program to build a working reactor. The program was named ITER for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. In July 2005, NATURE reported that an agreement was reached. After 13 years of procrastination it was finally possible to overcome the resistance from the current fossil fuel industries. This is good news! ITER will be located at Cadarache, France. In other reports, Raymond L. Orbach of the United States Department Of Energy (DOE) told the United States press that the ITER might lead to a power plant in the year 2040. This is bad news. The agreement that approved the ITER design provides a reactor one-half the size desired by the technical team; this is also bad news. The small size is reputed to save money; but it magnifies the potential for failure.

In rebuttal to Mr. Orbach’s schedule, see the 1976 report, FUSION POWER BY MAGNETIC CONFINEMENT, ERDA-76/110/1, UC-20, Page 8. (ERDA is the United States Energy Research and Development Administration, a precursor to the current DOE). This 1976 ERDA report states that building a pilot fusion reactor would take 10 to 13 years with a Maximum Effective Effort (using 1976 computers and technology).

The notion that developing fusion is expensive is very exasperating. Currently the world consumes approximately 80 billion barrels of oil per year. At $50.00 per barrel, 4 trillion ($ 4,000,000,000,000.) is spent on oil. A similar, possibly somewhat smaller, amount is spent on coal, nuclear and other forms of energy for a total of $6 to $8 trillion for energy. Spending 1/2% of $6 trillion, ($30 billion) to develop the replacement energy source would seem a bargain. This would be an expenditure of $30 billion per year for about ten years. At this level, a Maximum Effective Effort could easily achieve a facility fusion reactor within a decade. The facility reactors can be sold worldwide and the initial development cost quickly recovered. Saving humanity’s energy dependent civilization and the earth from debilitating climate degradation is worth far more than $30 billion per year.

Development of the Renewable Fusion Hydrogen (RFH) energy system described above is well within the financial and technical resources of several individual advanced nations or a consortium of nations. Today, beyond ITER, there are fusion research programs on going in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, Italy and Russia. The various laboratories and companies currently working with fusion can form development teams to work on various aspects of the development effort. The coordination agency (possibly modeled on NASA) can conduct a competition to select the teams to perform the development. The agency will have the responsibility to keep the world informed regarding the mission, goals and timetables. This will allow the free market to develop the supporting hardware including items such as hydrogen-fueled automobiles, hydrogen refueling stations, airplanes, home heating plants, oxygen incinerators, and oxygen sewage treatment plants.

The development of the sea based fusion hydrogen production plants will probably take 5 to 10 years. Construction of the individual plants will take 2 to 5 years. As a result, the first plant will become available 7 to 15 years after initiation of the program. Construction of sea-based utility reactors will continue over the next 20 to 30 years. The 20-30 years required to implement a worldwide system would allow the current fuel industries to convert from production of fuels to primary production of petrochemicals.

The combination of fusion energy and hydrogen will allow us to retire our obsolete fossil fuels energy system. It will end the open cycle addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and eliminate smog and acid rain. It will reduce surface damage from extraction and transportation of fuels. Fossil fuel chemicals will be reserved for higher value use. Oxygen treatment of wastewater will dramatically reduce pollution in ground water, lakes and rivers and reverse some past pollution. Oxygen enhanced incineration will greatly reduce solid waste problems and aid in recycling of materials. With this system, the material cycle is closed. All the hydrogen produced and used as fuel will burn to water and return to the sea.

In 1998, the United States spent $1.87 billion studying "Global Change", (primarily Global-Warming). Similar diagnostic activities are under way in Europe, China and Japan. These and other activities resulted in the Kyoto protocols. They are the only substantive activity directed at solving Global-Warming. The Kyoto treaty writers are correct; something must be done to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide placed in the atmosphere. The U. S. Senate is probably correct in rejecting the Kyoto treaty. The Kyoto notion that a group of nations should trade the right to pollute the atmosphere cannot be a proper solution for the health of the earth.

This plan, or something very similar, is critical to preventing enormous disruption of the environment and world economy from the continued use of fossil fuels. Encourage your associates and your government to implement this solution or to come up with another. We are running out of time.

Posted by: Laurence Williams | February 21, 2006 09:45 PM

Sun-Earth environment and its possible relationship with Greenland glacier
thickness.
Saumitra Mukherjee
School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New
Delhi-110067, India.

The middle portion of the Greenland was growing and breaking from its
fringes ,which is responsible for the increase in sea level (Rignot & Kanagaratnam, 2006,Marris, 2006) . Star flares during low Planetary Indices (Kp) and low Electron flux (E-flux) conditions of the Sun-Earth environment might result in lowering further the magnetic field as well as the electron flux in the Sun-Earth environment through the repulsion of the magnetic field in the Sun-Earth environment by star flares. The E-flux
variation will in turn induce variations in the production of ionosphere currents. Ionosphere currents are produced by geomagnetic storms originating
from the star-sun-earth environment. Can ionosphere current variations have
an influence on atmospheric temperature? On 25 December 2004, hailstorm
and snowstorm were reported in large areas in the northern hemisphere, while
in the tropics a sudden drop of temperatures has led to foggy and smoggy
conditions. This temperature variation is different in different parts of
the earth as a possible effect of the solar flare would be dependent on the
geomagnetic coordinates. Similar phenomenon has been found in 2005, 2006
winter across the world. There were sudden fall in temperature and its subsequent sharp rise has been noted as abnormal phenomenon.

References:
1Marris,E.(2006)Glacial pace picks up
Greenland's ice is breaking up at an increasing rate.Published online: 16 February 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060213-11

2.Mukherjee,S.(2006).Influence of starflare on the Sun-Earth environment and its possible relationship with snowfall.The Eggs,Issue#14 pp.1-6,25 February 2006

3.Rignot E.& Kanagaratnam P. Science, 311 . 986 - 990 doi:10.1126/science.1121381(2006).

Posted by: Dr.Saumitra Mukherjee | February 28, 2006 06:47 AM

I like the article about nuclear fussion with hydrogen, but until the governments apply these principles couldn't we just extract hydrogen from seawater with the use of offshore windmills or underwater turbines, the ones used in ny east river. These water and proposed offshore wind turbines would power pumping extraction of seawater and run the electrolysis process to create hydrogen, the byproduct being oxygen. release the oxygen to help combat global warming and you have an abundant amount of free fuel from alternative means. like the article above states can be used in the products we have today. a little refining but not a catastropic change. The only difference is you are simply replacing fossil with a zero global warming fuel such as hydrogen from an endless supply, seawater ( which will be rising in the years to come so extracting seawater to desalinate with the use of solar, wind and water power for electrical means for electrolysis isn't a bad idea). By the way shoreham nuclear power plant that is still in operation but not using nuclear power is ahuge extraction staion for sea water. nuclear power plants need water to cool the reactors. since it is allready set up why not use it to extract seawater, desalinate with desalination plant and use solar, wind and water turbines to suply electrical power to desalination plant. It would work perfictly cause the plant is situated near all the possible power situations. Its on long Island (sorrounded by water) with plenty of inlets to supply underwater turbines to. The best part is that instead of a 5 billion dollar disaster that it has become , it could be billion dollar sollution if turned into a desalination hydrogen factory from alternative means other than nuclear. It could fuel the new area with an infinite zero emmissions power from the sea.

Posted by: michael howell | February 15, 2008 11:15 AM

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