Fukushima? comments! facts! myths!

[Smokin_Cache]

I have seen global warming mentioned in this thread more than once. I am still waiting on evidence that we are indeed warming and then that is caused by humans.

What radiation? Hard data is real hard to come by. Someone is spinning every angle

 

[macfixer01]

I have seen global warming mentioned in this thread more than once. I am still waiting on evidence that we are indeed warming and then that is caused by humans.

What radiation? Hard data is real hard to come by. Someone is spinning every angle

The only warming I've seen is all the hot air from Al Gore!
Also I'd be a little more concerned about the horse story if it wasn't such a blatantly whacko news site. Lets see... We have stories on chemtrails, "Rainbow Cloud Thingies", UFO's, was Joan Rivers really murdered?, the aliens are already here, theories about what may happen on 9/11 from a stock market crash to a false flag operation, and more evidence that Obama is the antichrist (well I already believed that one anyway!).

 

[steyr223]

The aliens killed joan rivers
And mork to

 

[Harold_V]

The aliens killed joan rivers
And mork to

And Frankenstein, as well as Dracula.

Harold

 

[4metals]

I have seen global warming mentioned in this thread more than once. I am still waiting on evidence that we are indeed warming and then that is caused by humans.

What radiation? Hard data is real hard to come by. Someone is spinning every angle

Evidence is not something you will see on network news, it's not the kind of thing that sells newspapers, it's really kind of boring to most but it does exist. You have to read about the research being done in the scientific journals and come to your own conclusions. If all people do is spout off what they hear from their favorite news channel all they are doing is making it more difficult to understand.

The world is a big place, and while some places may be getting warmer, some are getting colder and some are getting wetter. It's a very difficult thing to track, it''s not like the button that pops out of the turkey to say it's done! It is much more subtle than that. Just recently the fact that we do not know enough about the deep oceans acting as a heat sink has caused science to look into gathering more deep ocean data. The theory is the deep ocean currents are warming up and they hold heat in a place we are not even measuring extensively yet. I have no doubt that global warming exists and it is very real. Mind you, as much as I love his invention of the internet, I am no Al Gore fan either.

Read some of the science (notice I said science, not sensationalized reporting but science that can be verified) about the ice cores and what they tell us about climate. These are in-disputable facts. Please note I did not say who is causing the warming, I think the first thing we humans must do is agree that the planet is warming up without casting blame and then figure out the sources. We know CO2 is making a large contribution, we know methane is making a big contribution but nature does it's thing with carbon and it is a by product of life but people have to get around and gasoline is hard to beat. People like to eat meat and cows like to pass gas (a large contributor to methane is animal flatulence, who would have thought?) We need to find the main players in the problem and work together to resolve the issue.

If you are interested in what the ice cores tell us, read Climate Crash by John D Cox, it's some of the stuff network news never tells you.

 

[g_axelsson]

Totally agree with what 4-metals wrote.

Scientists are debating how much and why, not if the world is getting warmer.

... and blaming hair loss and death of some horses on radiation from Fukushima is just stupid. It would hit not only horses, all kind of animals would be affected and the levels easily measured. More plausible explanations could be poisoning, virus, fungus or parasites... but that wouldn't give as good headlines.
Here in Sweden we have measured the levels of nuclear isotopes from atom bomb tests that ended up in reindeer meat, the levels were as high around 1960 as just after Chernobyl blew up and dumped the nuclear fallout over my country. We can still measure the levels but we have never seen any horses losing the fur and die, nor any other animal. And we can still measure the levels of radiation left by Chernobyl with simple equipment.

Göran

 

[macfixer01]

Scientists who support global warming theory get funded. Those who have conflicting views either don't get funded, or worse yet they get fired. That doesn't make for good science, it makes for a religious dogma!

 

[4metals]

Maybe you're right and all of the research is wrong. Reproducible, verifiable, and in compliance with scientific principle, but wrong. All the weather patterns are changing and the severe weather events are just made up to sell newspapers.

Not worth an argument, we are here to discuss refining and we should keep it at that.

 

[Claudie]

The title of this thread is "Fukushima? comments! facts! myths!"
The horse story is just one of many stories floating around on the internet. There is every kind of nutt out there writing stories of whatever they can dream up. Not only about Fukushima but about everything. When reading anything on the internet today, one needs to use common sense, you can't believe everything out there. Many stories have an ounce of truth hidden in them somewhere, but not all of them. Even scientists can lie to further their agenda or to get more funding, it has been proven over the years. Polls have shown that polls will always lean towards what the surveyor wants. Pepsi surveys show that people prefer Pepsi over Coke, Coke surveys show that people prefer Coke over Pepsi. It's up to us to figure out where the truth lies. Many of us believe what we want to be the truth without seriously researching it to make sure.
As for me, I did the research, I tried them both, Pepsi is better unless you are mixing it with whiskey. :|

EDIT: You shouldn't mix whiskey with anything.

 

[Anonymous]

it''s not like the button that pops out of the turkey to say it's done!

4metals what IS this strange alien technology to which you refer sir?

Jon

 

[Geo]

Consider the amount of green house gasses expelled by just one volcanic eruption. The earth cycles through this ever so often and people can swear it's caused by humans if they want to but I believe that humans are being a little vain to think that they can truly effect the overall scheme of things. There is X amount of carbon on the earths surface. It's predominantly either in the atmosphere or in the oceans. When there's more carbon in the air, green house gasses. When it's in the oceans, carbonic acid. Either way, the carbon is there and always has been. millions and millions of tons of carbon (CO2,methane,crude oil seepage just to name a few), sulfur (sulfur dioxide and all it's derivatives) and other green house gasses are released naturally every year. It cycles through the atmosphere and then moves back to the oceans through precipitation. Man may contribute but even the seemingly huge amounts reported is a drop in the bucket compared to mother nature.

 

[alexxx]

I can't believe people are still debating about the truth around global warming...
If you don't know and understand that it does exist and we are already way too far into it, I personally believe you are totally disconnected... Well, probably not living on the same planet...

There's tons of quality information out there, quality documentaries about ins and outs around this question.

Regarding Fukushima... well, after reading a lot on the subject, and trying to make my own personal opinion about it (according to the tinny bits of information available).
I tend to believe that this is by far the worst nuclear catastrophy in human / nuclear history... Way more dramatic than Chernobyl or Hiroshima...

Plain & simple... If building 4 goes before all the fuel rods are removed (they say they have removed 3/4 of them but is it true ?), the whole site must be abandoned (there's no debate within the scientific community about this one)...
That means that all 3 other reactors are going + all the cooling pools of spent fuel rods will go too...
That's a global extinction of all life forms over the face of the earth probably within 20 years.

How many Fukushimas are needed before we understand that we don't know enough about this technology to play with it ?
We don't know how to deal with the current meltdowns... the cores are... somewhere... in god knows what state... and nobody has any clue on how to deal with that...

Fukushima is not a Tepco problem, it's not a Japanese problem... It's the biggest problem humanity is facing right now... There's nothing more important...
Than comes global warming as the 2nd great challenge of humanity...

 

[g_axelsson]

Consider the amount of green house gasses expelled by just one volcanic eruption.

Looking at CO₂ : Total emissions from volcanoes on land are estimated to average just 0.3 Gt of CO2 each year. Total human emissions in a year is 6 Gt, 20 times more than all the volcanic eruptions put together!

The nature was in balance more or less before man started the industrial revolution. The large emissions from volcanic eruptions is balanced by absorption via various sources, for example chemical weathering (feldspar + carbonic acid -> clay + calcium carbonate).
When we started burning fossil fuels and constantly adding extra carbon to the atmosphere it doesn't disappear, the carbon sinks were balanced to the emission and can only absorb a bit more (circa 40% of the human emissions). The extra carbon we have added (the other 60%) have accumulated and today it is a quite large increase.

From wikipedia (with external references)

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (taken as the year 1750), the burning of fossil fuels and extensive clearing of native forests has contributed to a 40% increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, from 280 to 392.6 parts per million (ppm) in 2012.

The few drops in the bucket have made it overflow a long time ago and we are not stopping or even slowing down.
Time to wake up Geo and see the truth. Carbon in the ground or in the oceans doesn't affect the atmosphere, but carbon in the atmosphere does. It traps heat.

A natural change of 100ppm normally takes 5,000 to 20,000 years. The recent increase of 100ppm has taken just 120 years. Nature will survive but the question is in which form. More energy in the atmosphere means more water vapor which gives more rain in some places, more and larger flooding. More energy in the atmosphere also means more intense winds, many species will not adapt to the fast climate change and become extinct. We are facing a future with fewer wonders of nature...

As an example on what higher energy content in the atmosphere could bring, look at this diagram about number of tornadoes in USA since 1950.

Göran

 

[shaftsinkerawc]

This thread does nothing to bring us together, quite the contrary. It divides! Nothing to do with refining or recovery.

 

[patnor1011]

I agree, it will be much better if this thread just disappear. Internet is so full of crap it is actually hard to find good piece of information. Do we really need to pile up more of nonsense in this fine place?

 

[Harold_V]

Consider the amount of green house gasses expelled by just one volcanic eruption. The earth cycles through this ever so often and people can swear it's caused by humans if they want to but I believe that humans are being a little vain to think that they can truly effect the overall scheme of things.

Quite the contrary, really. Humans are allowing their ignorance to make decisions about what's going on, and why. Many choose to think global warming is a ruse, but if you follow the money it won't take long until you understand why.

Global warming can not be denied. The records at hand do not lie. Why we are warming may be debatable, but there's overwhelming evidence that says it is not. Do keep in mind, I am a man of science, not witchcraft.

I have no argument that a handful of people will have little effect on the environment, but we're not talking about a handful, we're talking about what, seven billion? Each of which expects the other guy to throttle back, all the while doing as they damned well please, disregarding the fact that they are, indeed, altering the very conditions that allow for life (as we know it) to exist on this planet. Surely you've seen pictures of air conditions in China? I've seen it that bad here in the US, years ago, in Santa Fe Springs, California. Is that the world you prefer?

One thing I know. Humans can not destroy the planet. It will go on, regardless of conditions, but those conditions may or may not be capable of supporting life. That's what the concern is, and it's damned reckless of anyone to disregard the information at hand, as if it is correct, our very existence hangs in the balance.

Scientists have been chastised and even dismissed because of their sharp stance that global warming is caused by man. Who's to say who is right or wrong in this instance? The only thing I know is that we are experiencing unprecedented rainfall, along with extraordinary temperatures, both hot and cold. That's precisely what has been predicted by science, assuming global warming is true.

We are not going to resolve this issue on this board. Far more intelligent people than us have beaten it to death, and thanks to the lies told by both sides, none of us will be exposed to the truth, and, should we be, the opposing party is sure to cast doubt on what is known to be (sound familiar?).

When you render it down, this topic is akin to politics. Folks will believe what they want to believe, and will have NOTHING to do with evidence that is contrary to what they wish to believe. That's a lesson I learned a couple years ago as a neighbor and I didn't agree on either subject. We no longer speak to one another (my choice). I was sick to death of his blindness and bigotry.

Harold

 

[Geo]

Honestly, it wasn't the CO2 so much as sulfur I was referring to. One eruption can lower global temps as much as 1.5°F and we have one of these eruptions at least once a decade or more. The effects are relatively short lived (a year or two at most) but it is an accumulative effect. It may not be in our best interest but it is a natural process what humans do. If you follow some of ancient text, man has been this advanced before, maybe more times than one. Modern man has been around for 200,000 years. Man went from thinking the world was flat to going to the moon in a relative blink of an eye (500-600 years). I can't believe that modern man lived for thousands and thousands of years without advancing. Without naming any particular book, what comes to mind for me is one ancient text that says, (taken out of context) "should a man say, look at this thing, it is new. It has already been of old times and there is no remembrance of former things." If one thinks along these lines, what man is doing is actually natural for man to do. It's not good but it is nature. I in no way condone polluting in any form. I don't throw trash from my vehicle even if it means trashing my car. Industry pollutes unabated and just pays the fine every year. The earnings are such that the fine is considered part of the expenses.

I am not trying to convince anyone of anything and am not asking anyone to subscribe to any particular way of thinking. I'm not trying to argue and concede that humans are ruining their natural environment. All I'm saying is I believe it's part of natural selection. Things will come to an end and civilization will end and humans will start over, again. Whether it's an asteroid, comet, biological, nuclear, seismic, solar, man made or whatever the event is, it will have the same effect. one poison is just as good as another. The steel will rust away and the concrete will crumble. Man will move out of the caves and start all over. By the time they reach this point of technology, someone like me will be saying the same things but there will be no remembrance of what we did.

 

[4metals]

There is a natural process of carbon sequestration which has been going on for millions of years and the product of this sequestration is coal, oil, or natural gas. (depending on time, pressure, and location) All of this has been provided by mother nature without our intervention. Likely everyone is still in agreement up to this point.

The amount of time it takes for this sequestration process is very very long but once man discovered it and discovered that it is a form of packaged energy and began to use it for its energy, well that tilted the entire equation. Keep in mind it took millions of years of slow accumulation to package the energy and at the rate we are going we will have used all of it up in less than 200 years. We can mine or drill the stuff and burn it so much faster than it was made, and now that the world has so many people and so many of those people drive cars and use this packaged energy in all of its forms, the equation is skewed towards the byproduct of its use, (CO2) rising. It's a very complicated algorithm, if it even is an algorithm, and natural things like volcano eruptions figure into it as does warming deep ocean currents and a few things that we likely haven't even realized yet.

If we (mankind that is) are even capable of figuring it out it will only come from working together, from sharing what we know and admitting what we don't know and drawing conclusions from good data. Ironically it would work just like this forum does, you come here and talk about what you know and what you don't and you ask questions and answer questions and you work at it, if you do your homework and put in the time, you come away with real useful knowledge. Refiners or hobbyists come here because they want the knowledge, they realize if they come with the right attitude they will receive all the information they need. Maybe Noxx can start a global warming forum for the good of mankind!!!!

 

[Claudie]

There is a natural process of carbon sequestration which has been going on for millions of years and the product of this sequestration is coal, oil, or natural gas. (depending on time, pressure, and location) All of this has been provided by mother nature without our intervention. Likely everyone is still in agreement up to this point.

I'm not in agreement with that.
There are several cases where coal has been known to form in a very short time, but back to global warming. The Arctic ice may very well be growing smaller, but at the same time the Antarctic ice is growing in size. Maybe this is a cycle that has been repeating for thousands of years.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/arctic-antarctic-ice.html

http://phys.org/news/2013-10-antarctic-sea-ice.html

 

[alexxx]

The Arctic ice may very well be growing smaller, but at the same time the Antarctic ice is growing in size. Maybe this is a cycle that has been repeating for thousands of years.

http://phys.org/news/2013-10-antarctic-sea-ice.html

Completely wrong.
The Antarctic ice is also melting at an incredible pace. And this has been very well documented during the past 2-3 years.

Especially the Thwaites Glacier on the west end of Antarctic is a real issue.

There is tons of reports from credible sources showing that the Antarctic ice caps are not spared. Global warming affects the whole planet, that's why we call it global...