Saturday, February 27, 2016

Compare and Contrast


Everett Sargent points out that Hansen & Co have revised their paper for Atmospheric Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 °C global warming is highly dangerous", it has now been accepted and is available in the arXiv.
Chemistry and Physics, bunnies know this as the paper with the associated shit storm, both in the discussion and the blogs.  Formerly known as "

Perhaps a good place to start are the abstracts, which now reads
We use numerical climate simulations, paleoclimate data, and modern observations to study the effect of growing ice melt from Antarctica and Greenland. Meltwater tends to stabilize the ocean column, inducing amplifying feedbacks that increase subsurface ocean warming and ice shelf melting. Cold meltwater and induced dynamical effects cause ocean surface cooling in the Southern Ocean and North Atlantic, thus increasing Earth's energy imbalance and heat flux into most of the global ocean's surface. Southern Ocean surface cooling, while lower latitudes are warming, increases precipitation on the Southern Ocean, increasing ocean stratification, slowing deepwater formation, and increasing ice sheet mass loss. These feedbacks make ice sheets in contact with the ocean vulnerable to accelerating disintegration. We hypothesize that ice mass loss from the most vulnerable ice, sufficient to raise sea level several meters, is better approximated as exponential than by a more linear response. Doubling times of 10, 20 or 40 years yield multi-meter sea level rise in about 50, 100 or 200 years. Recent ice melt doubling times are near the lower end of the 10-40 year range, but the record is too short to confirm the nature of the response. The feedbacks, including subsurface ocean warming, help explain paleoclimate data and point to a dominant Southern Ocean role in controlling atmospheric CO2, which in turn exercised tight control on global temperature and sea level. The millennial (500-2000 year) time scale of deep ocean ventilation affects the time scale for natural CO2 change and thus the time scale for paleo global climate, ice sheet, and sea level changes, but this paleo millennial time scale should not be misinterpreted as the time scale for ice sheet response to a rapid large human-made climate forcing.
As compared to the previous
There is evidence of ice melt, sea level rise to +5–9 m, and extreme storms in the prior interglacial period that was less than 1 o C warmer than today. Human-made climate forcing is stronger and more rapid than paleo forcings, but much can be learned by combining insights from paleoclimate, climate modeling, and on-going observations. We argue that ice sheets in contact with the ocean are vulnerable to non-linear disintegration in response to ocean warming, and we posit that ice sheet mass loss can be approximated by a doubling time up to sea level rise of at least several meters. Doubling times of 10, 20 or 40 years yield sea level rise of several meters in 50, 100 or 200 years. Paleoclimate data reveal that subsurface ocean warming causes ice shelf melt and ice sheet discharge. Our climate model exposes amplifying feedbacks in the Southern Ocean that slow Antarctic bottom water formation and increase ocean temperature near ice shelf grounding lines, while cooling the surface ocean and increasing sea ice cover and water column stability. Ocean surface cooling, in the North Atlantic as well as the Southern Ocean, increases tropospheric horizontal temperature gradients, eddy kinetic energy and baroclinicity, which drive more powerful storms. We focus attention on the Southern Ocean’s role in affecting atmospheric CO2 amount, which in turn is a tight control knob on global climate. The millennial (500–2000 year) time scale of deep ocean ventilation affects the time scale for natural CO2 change, thus the time scale for paleo global climate, ice sheet and sea level changes. This millennial carbon cycle time scale should not be misinterpreted as the ice sheet time scale for response to a rapid human-made climate forcing. Recent ice sheet melt rates have a doubling time near the lower end of the 10–40 year range. We conclude that 2 oC global warming above the preindustrial level, which would spur more ice shelf melt, is highly danger- ous. Earth’s energy imbalance, which must be eliminated to stabilize climate, provides a crucial metric
The paper is now a svelte 64 pages, but, of course, the page size is a bit larger.  It is a nice day and Eli left his grep in the garage, so have at it.

91 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now we need to build a fence around West Virgina too. To keep them in.

A solar powered electrified fence.

angech said...

"We use numerical climate simulations, paleoclimate data, and modern observations to study the effect of growing ice melt from Antarctica and Greenland."
Such a shame , really.
Climate simulations could also show the effect of growing ice melt on Mars, if they wanted to.
Meanwhile back on planet earth, outside the West Virginian fence lies the real world.
With Modern observations
"The US space agency research claims an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is "currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from melting glaciers."
If only we really knew.

angech said...

I see you have parsed the DMI controversy and wisely stayed out of it Eli.
Taking a graph out just when it contradicts the ice melt theme.
Why oh why did they not do it 8 months earlier in Summer,
When it was still OK.
Instead they wait til it is at an all time peak, pull it without explanation, reinstate it, pull it again without explanation then chuck in the lane excuse that they actually upgraded the redundant map in Summer.
When the lack of ice meant the new and old graphs were the same, added a new mask with more area to only the new data.
A Mike Mann technique I believe if I may be so bold.
Any scientist with a new technique would have added the masking to both the new and old data to preserve the integrity of the the change.
Thank you for your voice of abstention on this.

Anonymous said...

Does anyone here speak stupid? I need a translation and I can't find it in Google Translate.

Kevin O'Neill said...

Angech - you are a conspiracy nut aren't you? They announced months ahead of time the 30% graph was being deprecated. Perhaps you'd like to pay the cost of continuing it? Oh wait - deniers like yourself are cutting science funding around the world. LOL. Nuttier than a fruitcake.

Kevin O'Neill said...

BTW Angech, Eli reads Neven. Neven has dealt with it already - Grasping at uncorrectable straws. Perhaps Eli didn't feel it was even worth giving it another thought. Neven basically apologized for even covering it.

You know, just cuz Anthony and the Nutters sing about it don't make it a popular song. If I were on American Bandstand I'd give it about 72 - same as your IQ.

Peter Thorne said...

It'll be more 'fun' when the final version gets published in ACP because in the metadata tab will be the intermediate versions and reviews that happened after the public discussion. A stock market tip is to invest in popcorn futures, clearly ...

angech said...

Kevin O'Neill said...
"If I were on American Bandstand I'd give it about 72 - same as your IQ."
Thank you Kevin, a very well reasoned argument and I like you too.
I see you have parsed the DMI controversy and wisely jumped in Kevin.
Your comments at Neven's show similar reasoning.
I loved your Walt Meier argument "I suspect that since the older version was no longer supported, the QC wasn’t being watched and something went wrong that they didn’t bother to fix (or maybe didn’t even notice) because the new 15% version is the official DMI output.”
Pity you both did not notice that DMI actually were active on the 30% graph.
So active that they actually added [they claim] a new mask in Summer 2015 to improve the graph contradicting Walt's claim of nobody watching the QC.
They were actually trying to improve the QC and stuffed it up right royally. As well as shooting you both in the foot.
By the way talking to a mate and getting him to agree with you is not actually a totally valid argument, Though I agree Walt is pretty good value. Such a shame he didn't say outright what the problem was. I suspect it was because he did not want to let a good mate down\but hey its only a suspicion, not really a proof, is it.
Happy to debate it further here if Eli allows and you want to put up your claims, if you have any genuine claims, for me to acknowledge or knock down .

angech said...

"Neven basically apologized for even covering it."
He did a lot more than that.
He engaged at Judith Curry and WUWT and with Paul Homewood and Ron Clutz.
"They announced months ahead of time the 30% graph was being deprecated."
No,just setting the facts out. they changed to a 2 graph format years ago. Two years ago at least they announced they would discontinue the 30% graph[not months ahead ]but they kept putting it out,
Then they improved it,[LOL] so much they were forced to discontinue it.

EliRabett said...

Hexadecimal drivel: sou does the best job translating & his guppies so you might look over there

Anonymous said...

Sou is fun but I prefer Tamino and Neven because it's more substantive. I only comment here occasionally because of the satire and because I can. And until that changes, I will. And I do occasionally because of obvious obstructionists like BBD and Connelley.

Mal Adapted said...

LSoRC, AKA Hexadecimal drivel: "I only comment here occasionally because of the satire and because I can. And until that changes, I will. And I do occasionally because of obvious obstructionists like BBD and Connelley."

LSoRC, please stop helping!

Anonymous said...

Please start communicating. For instance, helping what, obstructionists obstruct?

Oh we have to have newcwear, in fact, we need to burn thorium! Oh, wind and solar can't help, oh, the grid is terrible for transporting alternative energy, oh, roads and highways are terrible for transporting electric cars and truck, oh, it won't work, therefore it can't work, oh, we should just keep doing what we're doing and hope the natives will suddenly adopt morality. Oh, we should just keep studying the problem so we know just how fucked we are, rather than actually do something about a problem that has been a hundred times over demonstrated to be a real bad problem.

Get a clue, there are a whole slew of new quantum physics results that given even a small amount of federal money thrown at precise points will produce real products. Not only is this a civilian problem, it is an institutional problem. This is what happens when you trash your educational institution, thirty years later you get civilians, politicians and SCIENTISTS utterly incapable of thinking anything through. If you think post Reagan educational policy was bad enough to produce what we have today, just think what current educational policy will produce in thirty years. Serious, idiot fascists are encoding this crap into legislation and law.

Fascists are running for the President of the United States of America.

You're an idiot. Enjoy your idiocracy.

Susan Anderson said...

boy oh boy do I love the "said" silencer. Thanks for the references, Sou will be just the ticket. Meanwhile, glad Hansen has arrived at a final version. Cue Revkin? Probably not, he's busy with Gates at the moment.

However, there's some seriously dishonest stuff out there, CSIRO, and Lamar Smith echo chamber. It would be nice if the MSM really covered this stuff and got rid of the false balance. Rep Smith appears able to get published any day he likes, those who know what they're talking about not so much. Ugh!
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/opinion/science-in-the-national-interest.html

Sounds plausible if you don't know what he's talking about, too.

Kevin O'Neill said...

Angech - you are a conspiracy nut. Once upon a time Lamb 1963 was the one true graph. Now it is DMI 30% (deprecated).

Yes, all the other sea ice extent graphs are wrong. Only the DMI 30% is correct. This requires that all the satellite operators be in on it. All the other sea ice extent data compilers be in on it. All the people who collect in situ observations be in on it. The people who do ice area and ice volume be in on it. The list goes on.

Now, you can either believe in a vast conspiracy that encompasses thousands or you can believe that no one was spending much if any time on a metric that was announced months ahead of time (BTW, 2 years = 24 months) was going to be discontinued.

Obviously you and Anthony and Paul Homewood and all the other nutters believe in the conspiracy. This makes you nutters. Oh, I know AW claims he's not a conspiracy believer, but he also claims the DMI graph is correct - you can't have it both ways. He likes to think of himself as a non-nutter, but actions and beliefs say otherwise.

Do you need it spelled out any simpler?

Probably, cuz you're a nutter.

BBD said...

Argue for a pragmatic, holistic energy policy providing the best chance of rapid decarbonisation and you are an 'obstructionist'?

There's no pleasing some people.

Anonymous said...

Holistic AKA Woo woo. AKA more carbon, more nuclear, more of the same.

AKA Obstructionist. Obstruction of science.

BBD said...

Holistic AKA Woo woo. AKA more carbon, more nuclear, more of the same.

AKA Obstructionist. Obstruction of science.


Another nutter.

Anonymous said...

Decarbonization and denucleariztion (since it isn't even competitive with anything anymore, let alone carbon) is nutty. I get that. You're an obstructionist. Active scientific obstructionism is so embarrassing.

For the obstructionist. Holistic science! It's the next big thing.

BBD said...

8c

You *still* haven't explained how arguing for the appropriate use of all low-carbon technologies in the effort to decarbonise as rapidly as possible is obstructionist.

Please, do so.

Andrew said...

BBD -

You're obstructing the magic energy faries again. Cheap as chips, always on, nonpolluting faries at that. That's got to upset some people.

Anonymous said...

Because you arguing nonsense will not produce the instant almost retroactive decarbonization we need. Nuclear isn't even in the game. You are obstructing the conversation with nonsense. You are not contributing to the solutions. You are are worse than skeptical, you are actively obstructing solutions to a very serious immediate problem.

You are labeling those who are promoting and practicing the proper solutions as 'nutters', when in fact, you yourself are the nutter. But don't worry, the complete collapse of your educational and financial system will occur long before the weather floods your home. You're good.

Anonymous said...

Last time I checked they were called 'optical excitons', but I do understand your need to argue about things you know little or nothing about, and thereby obstructing those who do know a bit about physics.

A skeptic arguing from a position of ignorance with no evidence is entertaining indeed. But that won't solve your problems.

angech said...

Kevin O'Neill said...
"Angech - you are a conspiracy nut."
Thanks for another substantive , pleasant argument Kevin.
"no one was spending much if any time on a metric that was announced months ahead of time (BTW, 2 years = 24 months) was going to be discontinued."
Admire your sense of time.
Months is months 1-11.
12 months is a year.
two years is a lot different to months.
So when you state discontinued months ago everyone else would understand that to mean less than a year.
I appreciate that someone with an IQ of 157 might not want to waste time on such a minor, though important distinction.
Especially when trying to make something look immanent

BBD said...

8c

Because you arguing nonsense

What nonsense? Why is arguing for the appropriate use of all low-carbon technologies in the effort to decarbonise as rapidly as possible nonsense? Let alone obstructionist. Which you also haven't explained.

You are labeling those who are promoting and practicing the proper solutions as 'nutters'

The proper solutions don't dismiss an existing low-carbon technology as 'out of the game' because arm-waving hypothetical physics. The proper solutions concentrate on maximising the pace and extent of decarbonisation.

angech said...

Kevin O'Neill said..
"Yes, all the other sea ice extent graphs are wrong. Only the DMI 30% is correct."
Well you said it Kevin.
Note I did not say this. Anywhere, anytime, and certainly not in this blog stream.
So you chose to make up, fabricate an idea.
Then ascribe it to another person, in this case me.
Then make up a conspiracy theory and ascribe it to me.
Great style, appreciated.
"Now, you can either believe in a vast conspiracy"- No I don't.
In your conspiracy thought stream you say.
"This requires that all the satellite operators be in on it. All the other sea ice extent data compilers be in on it. All the people who collect in situ observations be in on it. The people who do ice area and ice volume be in on it."
In on what?
Yes, all the other sea ice extent graphs are consistent.
Europe’s National Meteorological Services and, by extension, the International Users and Science Community, share data from the 30 different satellites. 10 American including NOOA [5], 6 European,5 chines, 2 Russian, 2 Japanese etc. Everyone likes cooperating.
Galileo 7 & 8 launched on 27 March from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on top of a Soyuz rocket.
The CDOP-2 consortium is constituted of Meteo-France, as host institute, and of the following co-operating institutes : MET Norway (Norway), DMI ( Denmark), Ifremer ( France), KNMI ( Netherlands).
The Ocean and Sea Ice Satellite Application Facility (OSI SAF) supplies the 15% product to DMI.
DMI do not even touch it other than to put their name on it.
All I said was that the 30% product which uses a different Algorithm, which was being actively updated, and had nothing wrong with it, unless you believe a major stuff up to split a new data graph on an old data graph was done, was withdrawn when it did not match. the other, ubiquitous 15% graph.
This was a nucifragous summary of your pithy argument, Kevin

Anonymous said...

Nobody is arguing immediate decommissioning of existing nukes you idiot. What the market and the physics is saying that that only idiots argue for more nukes. The rest of what you argue is sheer nonsense. Your only other alternative are solar and wind. What I am arguing is solar provides you with nearly unlimited scaling, both area, from irradience and from fundamental physics, the mythical optical excitons.

BBD said...

8c

Nobody is arguing immediate decommissioning of existing nukes you idiot.

Where did that come from? Strawman or what?

What the market and the physics is saying that that only idiots argue for more nukes.

Why is arguing for the appropriate use of all low-carbon technologies in the effort to decarbonise as rapidly as possible 'idiotic'?

The rest of what you argue is sheer nonsense.

Why is arguing for the appropriate use of all low-carbon technologies in the effort to decarbonise as rapidly as possible sheer nonsense? You *still* haven't explained this.

Your only other alternative are solar and wind. What I am arguing is solar provides you with nearly unlimited scaling, both area, from irradience and from fundamental physics, the mythical optical excitons.

There is a fundamental gap between the trivial truth that solar could power the world and getting it to do so. Pointing this out isn't obstructionist.

Anonymous said...

You are obstructionist because what you say is simply not true, and then you wave around the term 'appropriate' without any quantification. Nuclear is going to be phased out over time whether you like it or not, because it is neither safe nor economically viable and on top of that it's bad for the environment. You have to mine, ship and process the fuels. It's a non starter, but you continue to insist it is 'appropriate'. The only reason countries want it is because they want the techology for other reasons. So what does that leave you? Solar and wind and hydro. You're in luck because although right now the entire world is not run on solar, none of the problems are insoluble. And all of the trends are positive. Cost, price, availability, grid management, transport, everything is going in the right direction even when you don't add in atomene and elemene van der Waals monolayer and heterostructure sandwiches. That new technique alone cinches the case for solar.

So continue to obstruct all you want, your cult is on the way out. You're irrelevant, yet you continue to obstruct. You just don't get it. You are a shill for the nuclear and carbon industry.

Kevin O'Neill said...

Angech - the DMI graph could not be correct and all the others *also* correct. One or the other had to be incorrect. Obviously it was DMI 30%. You believe otherwise. Thus, by implication you believe all the others are incorrect.

This requires a conspiracy.

You are a nutter.

angech said...

Kevin, The DMI 30% graph was right,
for the data and algorithm it used.
Your saying it is wrong belittles a great Danish Institute and their scientists.
It is quite easily possible for 2 graphs using different algorithms to vary on the same data.
There are no other "all the others.
The "few others" all link together in their use of the 15% measurement.
If you were to use MASIE, PIOMAS [You used to love PIOMAS 3 years ago before it went sky high, remember} and other indicators of Sea ice volume [different metric, same substance] They do not move in line with the 15% graphs, do they?
Calling names is puerile but it is very satisfactory when arguments lack substance.
Keep going and prove my point by all means, or argue substantively and logically.
I repeat they updated their so called obsolete graph recently [they say] , not the act of an institution about to dump it shortly was it?

BBD said...

8c

You are obstructionist because what you say is simply not true

What is 'not true'?

Here are some things that you say that I would regard as not true, just biased assertion:

Nuclear is going to be phased out over time whether you like it or not , because it is neither safe nor economically viable

And:

It's a non starter

And:

The only reason countries want it is because they want the techology for other reasons.

And:

That new technique alone cinches the case for solar.

All assertions. Your standard MO. That and vehement denial of the increasingly evident technical implausibility of a 100% renewables-powered world by mid-century, which is when we need it.

Arguing for a limited approach to decarbonisation as you do is to argue for more carbon.

Anonymous said...

All I need to do is extrapolate out a 2008 quantum topological breakthrough, now 8 years old, out another 35 years, to dismiss you.

Let me show you to the door.

BBD said...

Unicorn farts.

Anonymous said...

Arxiv science and publications, inorganic optical excitons and inorganic excitonic solar cells using extremely small amounts of readily available, cheap, non-toxic elements creatively arranged and manufactured via directed self assembly. I'll let the reader decide, since you've already made up you mind based on obsolete decades old technology.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1512.01675

EliRabett said...

And a fine dish of irrelevant Berry phase to you hexadecimal drivel

Anonymous said...

And where exactly do you think this technology is going to be in 35 years, Mr. Bunny? Assuming the global financial system doesn't collapse. And remember, once you get up to speed on this you need to apply half of the energy produced to pull down the atmospheric carbon dioxide by reducing it into carbon products. For instance, multilayer heterostructures. Inquiring wolves want to know. Wolves with money.

E. Swanson said...

The character string points to an abstract:

Three excitonic solar cells (XSCs) based on the phosphorene$-$TiO$_2$ heterojunctions have been proposed, which exhibit high power conversion efficiencies dozens of times higher than conventional solar cells...

Conventional PV cells have demonstrated efficiency above 20%. Suppose these new cells would increase that value only one dozen times and you get an efficiency of 240%, a truly great scientific advance! And, these new cells could even provide 2 dozen times the convention efficiency!! One might even think of such cells producing electricity while being left in a closet (where they probably belong). Oh, look, a smiley face on the browser tab. The joke's on you, flash boy...

Anonymous said...

I admit their claims are a little over the top, and the result at this time is entirely theoretical, but it's not like I'm not tracking every single published result and paper in this area, and it's not as if the theoretical results are not accurately reproducing the experiments.

They've already built working photodetectors. Two dimensions is topology, this isn't exactly the same as what is happening in three dimensional Weyl semimetals and Dirac fermion systems. Those are value added features to something that was only first demonstrated on October 22, 2004. So you can chuckle at your jokes all you want.

I dismiss it as uninformed drivel.

KAP said...

Nuclear is going to be phased out over time whether you like it or not, because it is neither safe nor economically viable and on top of that it's bad for the environment.

Not safe? Nuclear is safer than either solar or wind.

Not economically viable? Absent subsidy, nuclear can't compete with cheap fracked natural gas in the US, but then neither can solar or wind. (Just watch wind installations drop to virtually zero every time Congress allows the subsidy to lapse.) In countries like India and China, with huge demand and no cheap gas, they are installing wind AND solar AND nuclear as fast as their economies allow.

Bad for the environment? Nuclear uses 7 times less concrete than wind per MWh generated, 10 times less steel than wind per MWh generated, and 700 times less copper than wind per MWh generated. (Weißbach, D., et al. Energy 52 (2013): 210-221). And if you think spent nuclear fuel is a big problem, you've been misled. All the spent fuel in France is stored under a single room the size of a basketball court. All of the US Navy's spent nuclear fuel, from 1955 until today, is stored in a single building in Idaho. Compare that to the amount of coal ash the US generates every single year: 50 million tons. And coal ash is radioactive. And it's unregulated.

You have to mine, ship and process the fuels.

True, but the lifetime amount of fuel used by a nuclear plant amounts to about 1% of the steel in the plant. And since wind uses 10 times more steel than nuclear, if you're concerned about mining impacts, wind is still far worse.

The only reason countries want it is because they want the techology for other reasons.

Yeah, we're all waiting for that Finnish nuclear bomb any day now. The fact that Finland has almost no sun, and is too flat for hydro, certainly has nothing to do with their desire for nuclear power. Meanwhile, it's worth noting that of 9 nuclear weapon nations, eight of them built their first bomb before they had their first operating nuclear power plant. (Israel and North Korea still don't have NPPs.) Power plant technology is simply not on the path for building nuclear weapons. It's like saying cars lead to TNT because they both use combustion.

BBD said...

I admit their claims are a little over the top, and the result at this time is entirely theoretical

As I said at the outset, unicorn farts. And this nutter wants to bet the Earth on unicorn farts. Dangerous lunacy.

Anonymous said...

I'm going with solid state quantum physics because the morality and the intelligence of the nuclear power industries and the governments that promote them just doesn't seem to be working out too well for you. Good luck with the nuclear morality thing. And I don't bet. It's guaranteed by physics, and backed up by theory, numerical computation and then experimental verification. Kind of like ... gravitational waves, only stronger and more accessible.

Anonymous said...

Sure it is, solar panels are very dangerous targets for terrorism. Some kids from the hood might steal them. If they drop one there might be glass fragments. Very dangerous for people without shoes,

E. Swanson said...

The long string complains about "uninformed drivel".

But, it's not MY joke, the paper is an obvious joke, which the long string apparently hasn't the capability to comprehend. But, think of the possibilities! Use the device to run some LED lights pointing at the surface. Set it to run with a flashlight and the output would be able to run your entire house! Hurry, hurry, buy some stock in the company, before they vanish into the dark with all the money!!!...:-)

Allow me to remind you that energy conversion efficiency can never exceed 100%.

BBD said...

@ nutter

Sure it is, solar panels are very dangerous targets for terrorism. Some kids from the hood might steal them. If they drop one there might be glass fragments. Very dangerous for people without shoes

Powering the world on solar will require long distance HVDC interconnectors which are too expensive for multiple redundancy. These would be extremely vulnerable to terrorism. The energy security of entire regions could be profoundly compromised by a couple of simultaneously detonated small demolition charges.

Mind you, still somewhat less risky than betting the world on unicorn farts. In the real world, the Shockley-Queisser limit for SPV efficiency remains 31%. Yes but multiple junction PV I hear you say. Where's the product? you hear me reply. This chatter about panel efficiency is all a strawman anyway. The issue is seasonal storage and / or secure (and affordable, buildable) wide-area grid interconnection.

Anonymous said...

Sure, first I'm a nutter and then I'm dangerous. A dangerous nutter.

Right, houses and villages won't have solar panels and wind generators to get them through the rough spots. That might require you to change their lifestyles a bit, though. So much for your morality. Keep digging.

When discussing a charge separation membrane a single atomic monolayer thick, the prospect of strongly bound charge transfer excitons becomes apparent as in the cited article. Although the maximum theoretical efficiency of the technique is the same, the amount of material is vastly reduced, efficiency at low light levels in increased, and the thermal energy to fabricate them into useful devices is decreased. And this allows moving from organics to inorganics that are cheap, abundant and nontoxic and thus lowers the costs to the environment in their manufacture and deployment.

Here is a device : http://arxiv.org/abs/1601.01814

It's not the first device, but it's a device. There is a ton of this kind of stuff being published daily. Transistors and integrated circuits had to start small too. My how far we have come. I suppose now you demand that they be in toys by Christmas.

BBD said...

[Laughs out loud]

That's not even a lab bench prototype of a solar panel!

* * *

As for the personal, off-grid stuff it's all part of the mix. Especially where there isn't a grid to start with. But powering the USA? Industrialised European nations? Don't be a clown. For that, you need big infrastructure and it comes with problems and price tags all of its own.

I noticed that you flatly avoided even addressing any of the points raised above.

Anonymous said...

Your immorality is showing. Wave your immorality flag high, BBD.

It's a working photodetector. Or did you miss that?

Now extrapolate to Intel and beyond and consider that we have actual working production 14 nm electronics to speed up the evolutionary process. And also remember we do have a grid, and some highways. And of course in your world where evolution is a nutty theory, that grid will never evolve. What you want is a painless solution and the problem with your reasoning is that energy is the easiest and simplest problem to solve, because the world is fill with assholes just like you. Even with your energy problems solve, your immorality is still a problem. A really big problem, far bigger than global warming.

BBD said...

[Still laughing]

It's a working photodetector. Or did you miss that?

But not a working PV panel and I asked you for product. All you've got are unicorn farts. We established this yesterday, so perhaps time to move on.

your immorality is still a problem

Foamed the lunatic...

What is it with RR and energy nuttery?

Anonymous said...

The way I'm looking at this, you are calling people nutters, making juvenile fart jokes and waving your hands, and I am citing peer reviewed published papers. Again, I defer to the readers here.

First you asked for multilayer demonstration products, and now you want full solar panels on people's roofs connected to the grid with superconducting load balancers. We already have that, and then you claim that can't be improved to handle a large scale alternative energy gird, and on top of that you are unwilling to do any of the work yourself, because it will be too painful and costly and you complain when others do that work while at the same time saying its impossible. You are the epitome of the ugly tourist, BBD. Bravo.

BBD said...

I am citing peer reviewed published papers.

And I asked for product. So your reference is a waste of pixels.

now you want full solar panels on people's roofs connected to the grid with superconducting load balancers

Nope. All lies.

What I want you to do is to stop your endless and increasingly tiresome bullshitting.

Why I want it is because I've already been through exactly the same bollocks with that other nutter BP and I don't enjoy repeating myself at great length.

Like you, BP endlessly lied about what I actually said (which I find offensive in the extreme).

Like you, BP was apparently incapable of understanding the difference between inclusive and exclusive energy policies.

Like you, BP was a fruitloop anti-nuclear troll.

Like you, BP was in denial about the *actual* issues arising from large-scale renewables integration and

Like you, BP refused point-blank even to acknowledge the many real engineering issues that need urgently to be addressed (instead of denied, ignored, swept under the carpet etc).

Like you, BP was a nutter.

Anonymous said...

You made a bunch of hand waving authoritarian demands and I graciously provided you with a peer reviewed publication that verified that the modern quantum many body simulations in the form of density functionsl theory does in fact accurately model reality enough to build working devices, plan production process and produce usable products in the area of atomic and molecular multilayer heterostructures.

Like I said, keep digging, while it's vaguely amusing and entertaining to watch an uninformed and disinterested pedestrial flail around when presented with actual science and technology, it's not particularly funny. But again, I will let the reader decide. All I can recommend to you is keep commenting. You'll just have to excuse me when or if I decide your hand waving is so easily dismissable since it contains no actual substantive discussion and content that I might quit reading them in their entirety or entirely. You know, since I have more important things to do.

Anonymous said...

You remind me of a scene out of Superstar, where the nutters are frothing at the mouth through the classroom window, complaining that the students are frothing at the mouth.

BBD said...

You made a bunch of hand waving authoritarian demands

Nope. Lies. And you provided nothing of relevance at all.

Anonymous said...

Other than pointing out with a legitimate peer reviewed scientific and technical cite that the general consensus in the condensed matter theory and experiment world is that DFT and other computational methods of verifying theory have now reached a level of sophistication and accuracy that when it says something will work, it generally works.

I could give you hundreds if not thousands of recent cites that verify the veracity of this, but I won't bother because it would be wasted on you. It has been one correct prediction after another in this field.

BBD said...

You are a sciency-sounding blowhard, 8c. Nothing more.

Anonymous said...

I'm current on the leading edge published literature and production technologies across multiple fields, so you'll just have to excuse me for dismissing your hand waving while presenting just of a few of the things I know to be possible given the laws of physics as I understand them. I'm also intimately familiar with multiple approaches to entropy.

I reiterate. Keep commenting. It's ... educational.

Anonymous said...

Now that I've covered the peer reviewed scientific literature, let's see what the main stream media has to say about nuclear power.

https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/statement-governor-andrew-m-cuomo-regarding-indian-point-nuclear-facility

BBD said...

I'm current on the leading edge published literature and production technologies across multiple fields

After the stuff you've posted recently on this thread, you really should refrain from this sort of self-aggrandising nonsense.

Stick to claiming that you were the leading light (!) in clandestine marijuana cultivation back in the '70s. It's not inherently any more plausible than the rest of your self-promoting guff, but at least it's funny.

EliRabett said...

Now some, not Eli to be sure might suggest how bout taking this to email?

Anonymous said...

And some, not snarkrates to be sure, would suggest 8c take his meds.

Anonymous said...

Now where have I seen that awesome debating technique before?

Bernard J. said...

Now some, not Eli to be sure, would suggest that I am pouring oil on the fire, but...

8c, you didn't answer my question a while back about the budget for interplantary relocation of the Earth's biosphere. Specifically...

1) Where is the new ecosystem to be located?

2) What technology will take our seed ecosystems there?

3) What is the energy source and quantity required to transport all (quantified) resources and (quantified) personnel, and what is the energy source/quantity required to establish the new biosphere, and what is the ongoing energy source for the new habitat?

4) What is the source for the physical resources required to send our seed biosphere to its new location? If you are proposing off-planet sources for these physical resources, what are your energy budgets and forms for recovering them?

What is the time frame for establishing this new biosphere: start time, and period required to acheive full functionality?

There's no page limit to your answers - the more detail the better. And a reminder, anything written Victor Appleton II doesn't count as a reliable primary reference.

Anonymous said...

Since I have already written numerous essays on this subject it would help if you brushed up on the prior state of the art. You probably need to get up to speed on something like this first before you will be able to ask cogent and reasonable questions.

http://lifeform.net

Eli deleted my references to the prior state of the art in high intensity hydroponic plant growth so there is probably no sense in repeating all that. The first thing probably is to rewrite NASA's charter to encompass off world development and colonization because the past decadal surveys and prior and current administrators and congress have essentially reduced NASA to a Disneyesque clown show.

After that, take your pick, poles of the moon, solar, tunneling, poles of Mars, solar, tunneling. You don't transport, you bootstrap, and your primary payload is polyethylene, for radiation shielding and hydroponics, water, in the form of residual hydrogen fuel and oxidizer, improving throw mass and habitation volume, and methane, for carbon dioxide, water and long term fuel storage. Since Musk is already aiming for the Martian surface you can exclude that. No sense repeating what somebody else has already decided to do, no?

When you get up to speed do come back with some better questions. Ceres has a lot of possibilities if you insist on a nuclear world.

Since Musk is dead set on going to the surface of Mars, which has abundant soil, water and carbon dioxide, I came up with this for him.

http://lifeform.net/tsiolkovsky/Phobos_Deimos.pdf

The rational plan, of course, requires the quantum multilayer heterostructures for photon absorption and thermoelectrics to reverse and remediate the immediate problem, lasers and electron beams to clean up orbital debris, geosynchronous orbit for laser telecommunications and large scale solar energy development and then the poles of the moon where a nearby active biosphere is always present. Or at least it will be until financial collapse and the zombie apocalypse. I don't do much write in this field much anymore because I've already worked out most of the details for this thing.

Bernard J. said...

Thomas Lee Elifritz, the problem is that I don't see any meat on the bones. I see speculative assertions, but no experimental validation of anything, and most especially no validated quantification of the parameters about which I asked above.

I'm even having difficulty establishing your presence on Scopus. Perhpas you publish under another name? Only one Elifritz is recognised by Elsevier, and it's not you.

As an aside, I heartily endorse your interest in earth-covered buildings. Therein is found much useful and vindicated work.

Anonymous said...

Sure, the US has whole heartedly embraced superinsulated earth homes since I did that work back in the mid 70's. Right. And why are you insisting on credentials over credibility, since you read one, maybe two essays which are published in a folder on the internet? And since the space age barely began what, fifty years ago? What is there to quantify since NASA an impotent federal agency run by a congressional freak in the area of deep space development and colonization and where the upper stages and reusable rockets involved won't even have credible propulsion until 2020 at the earliest? Like I said, get back to me when you are up to speed on this. It's not my fault you're willfully ignorant. Your ignorance is curable. Read some peer reviewed space cadet literature. I'd stay as far away from the AIAA as possible.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for pointing me in this direction angech. Most entertaining!

I'll repeat here what I said at Judy's, just in case it gets [snipped] by the mods. In the Queen's plain English:

The DMI 30% graph was wrong. They inadvertently displayed an "artifact" in a product that had been unsupported for ages. Period!

The DMIGate Dodo Is Pushing Up The Daisies

BBD said...

soulsurfer7

Not to mention Gross deception about DMI's "Missing Graph"

It's a travesty, I tell you...

angech said...

soulsurfer7 said... Thanks for pointing me in this direction angech. Most entertaining!
The DMI 30% graph was wrong. They inadvertently displayed an "artifact" in a product that had been unsupported for ages. Period!
BBD said...Not to mention Gross deception about DMI's "Missing Graph"
Oh dear.
Not an artifact The graph had been running for 11 years and was constantly updated til Xmas 2015.
In fact the DMI made the amazing claim that they had upgraded the graph in Summer 2015 disproving your claim that it had been unsupported for ages.
BBD'S link to Jim Hunt shows an article that is too scared to even show what you call the "artifact".
The rise in sea ice extent 30% being th highest in 11 years of doing the graph.
Two explanations.
One the graph is real, based on their original algorithms and shows a disconcerting [for warmists] rise in30% concentration ice.
This will be proved or disproved by looking at PIOMAS and MASIE as comparators.
The other is that the graph is real and DMI spliced a different interpretation of the way sea ice extent was calculated from summer 2015 onto the preceding graph.
This conveniently explains the real rise [still not an artifact in any sense of the word] but is too cute. It suggests the DMI graph compilers were dummies.
BBD, I see you are having no problems arguing with 8c, you are using your sublime arguing skills and tactics to demolish his arguments one by one, bravo.
You should listen to Eli.

Bernard J. said...

"Read some peer reviewed space cadet literature."

Said without the slightest trace of irony, I see.

Thomas, I read thousands of scientific papers every year. I rely heavily on the peer review system of the professional literature. You don't seem to have a presence there, which rings warning bells with me, and it supports the fact that you don't seem to have addressed the ecological (my own field) issues of artificial ecosystems, as well as the fact that I can find no clear and succint budgeting and methodology for your proposals.

Speculative discussion is not proof.

Anonymous said...

And I also notice you are not an American. How is your space program coming along over there? Are you from a nation who lavishes vast wealth on an old hag with a long line of inbred children and grandchildren for no reason at all? Tell me about your space program.

After you finish with that, tell me about our space program where we are saddled with a scientific community and an aerospace industry driven by a NASA, an AIAA and AIC which has given us the monstrous debacle of Constellation, Ares I, Ares V and now the SLS and Orion, where the alternative which I have worked on for decades, call commercial space and billionaire funding, has now produced not one but two commercial propulsion concerns and two independent reusable launch vehicle programs, both with their own UNPUBLISHED or self published space commercial development and colonization approaches?

Not including my own, of course. Let me explain it to you, in the area of space development, the status quo has been an utter failure. We are saddled with a space station and national laboratory that cost a hundred billion dollars and the congressional freak show want to turn it into a space hotel for tourists. So when you and your peer reviewed papers written by your scientists and engineers manages to get a single thing to orbit on your own, get back to me. The space cadet literature and enthusiasts forums is the only place you can find the information you will need to get up to speed on this. You can take that to the bank.

Anonymous said...

Oh, I'm sorry, I must have confused you with another Brit commenting here. Are you Bernard J. Nebel the self published author complaining about self publishing here?

Anonymous said...

Anyone claiming they are a scientist and then demanding proof really needs to go back to school and study mathematics.

cRR Kampen said...

Wordplay. TOGTFO.

Anonymous said...

That's funny, when you don't hear what you want to hear, all you can do is suggest that the debate be shut down. With a vague acronym too.

I also find it amusing that he is demanding proof of clandestine technology developed underground over four decades due to a harmless medicinal weed being classified as a schedule 1 narcotic punishable by felony convictions and harsh federal prison sentences. Seriously dumb.

BBD said...

8c

It's possible that Bernard J is objecting to the fact that you keep appealing to your own authority but you don't actually have any established bona fides, including a publication history in the academic literature.

I may have mentioned the word 'blowhard' upthread.

Anonymous said...

The colonization of deep space and the complete evacuation of humanity from the planet is NOT an academic subject. It never has been. It's now the purview of commercial development operations funded entirely by wealthy individuals. Perhaps you failed to that. What I am doing is inventing that scientific domain and attempting to elevate it to academic study. And I'm one of the few people who has been engaged in that multidisciplinary effort over the last four decades, knocking off the problems one by one as they come up. This is a directed effort, by me, for the benefit of the biosphere and not for you and humanity. Those are just value added features to my efforts. I'm beginning to think you and humanity don't have much value, but I continue anyways.

Bernard J. said...

"Oh, I'm sorry, I must have confused you with another Brit commenting here. Are you Bernard J. Nebel the self published author complaining about self publishing here? "

No.

And nor am I British...

"Anyone claiming they are a scientist and then demanding proof really needs to go back to school and study mathematics."

I didn't demand "proof". I requested peer-reviewed support of your claims, and references to other peer-reviewed science, just as any scientist would.

"I also find it amusing that he is demanding proof of clandestine technology developed underground over four decades due to a harmless medicinal weed being classified as a schedule 1 narcotic punishable by felony convictions and harsh federal prison sentences."

(Unless you're referring to another poster on this thread...) I should point out that I have not been asking you about your adventures in hydroponic marijuana cultivation.

"The colonization of deep space and the complete evacuation of humanity from the planet is NOT an academic subject."

It also doesn't seem to be one that is supported by numbers.

Don't get me wrong, Tom, with my ecology focus I too tend to have a jaded view of the place of humans in the biosphere, but my inclination is to respond to our impact with terrestrial solutions, as that is where the overwhelming majority of the 7 billion+ people are, and where they will remain. I've seen nothing in your discussions of the subject that indicates any possibility of this being other than a terrestrial problem, despite your dreams to the contrary.

Anonymous said...

Are you claiming that modern launch vehicles and upper stages cannot reach the destinations that I have indicated? The number seem pretty clear on that. The number on high density high intensity hydroponic plant growth are pretty clear too, there is an entire industry built up on those numbers. You seemed to be hung up on numbers for an original space architecture that I've developed and my peers that have thus far reviewed it are billionaires and they don't publish numbers on this sort of thing. But if you are really interested one of them will be publishing some numbers on the 26th of September of this year at the International Aeronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico.

You are beating a dead horse, you demands for 'proof' are ludicrous. And your skepticism of self publishing are hilarious considering that you are a self publisher. You are uniformed, skeptical without being familiar with the subject material, and quite hypocritical. There are no priors for original work here.

Anonymous said...

So if you aren't Mr. Nebel you must be Bernard J. Cosby, a Research Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, USA. He is an environmental scientist and ecological systems modeler, and is the developer of the MAGIC model. Have I outed you?

Prove me wrong. I generally use phosphoric acid to prevent calcium sulfate turbidity. So tell me Bernard, how do you proposed to contribute to the solving of this massive environmental problem.

Be specific. Use numbers.

Bernard J. said...

"So if you aren't Mr. Nebel you must be Bernard J. Cosby, a Research Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, USA. He is an environmental scientist and ecological systems modeler, and is the developer of the MAGIC model. Have I outed you?"

No.


The rest is a straw man. We're talking about your plan to take humans and a functioning biosphere into space. So far there's been no checkable material to support this notion.

Stay on piste.

Anonymous said...

Where did I say functioning biosphere? Go back thread, what I said was biosphere simulations. And why are you so uptight about being outed Mister Cosby? As your peer in the field of global warming solutions I find your contributions to be inadequate and less than satisfactory. You haven't read any of my essays, I checked. You aren't competent in the field, you are unfamiliar with the subject matter and you demand some kind of 'proof' for hard conceptual ideas in space colonization.

You are not doing very well with this. What I plan to do, besides my work in quantum energy conversion devices which is my latest side track on this, is make sure that when the financial collapse and the zombie apocalypse occurs, not too long from now by the looks of it, that there is some sort of viable Plan B for the next president. The commercialization of space via wealthy billionaire reusable rocket enthusiasts is a side project that already has been completed. One thing at a time, you know, a person can only do so much. It would be great to get some foreign governments involved but NASA is a complete waste. The space colonization is just one element of the solution. Or did you miss that?

Lately I've become vaguely interested in nuclear options again since some discussions here, maybe I will take a look at it. But the oceans and aquifers are horribly polluted so you can write that off. So you will have to distill using solar going forward as well, since the distilled water you have in the form of ice caps are going too.

My suggestion to you is to come out of the closet.

Bernard J. said...

"Are you claiming that modern launch vehicles and upper stages cannot reach the destinations that I have indicated?"

No, I haven't said that.

But as you raise this aspect of the matter, I would say that current technologies will not be able to take more than a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of humans to space, and that none of your destinations offer conditions where self-sustaining ecosystems could be established that have any functional or biodiversity capacity representative of the systems on Earth.

Certainly not without continuous, stupendously high-intensity input of anthropogenically-sourced energy, and not on any scale that would allow a self-sustaining population of humans completely independent of Earth. And this is not about a few dozen or even a few hundred people in space, this is about the 7-10 billion people who will inhabit the planet in the 21st century (and more in the period beyond) and who will have no choice but to maintain a functioning biosphere or suffer the consequences of FURBARing it for themselves and for many other species in Earth.

I look forward to 26 September, when apparently the first of the numbers will be revealed...

Anonymous said...

I think biology makes this possible with a minimum of two but you run into some inbreeding problems right away. Nature doesn't give a damn about human choices, it will be fine with a scorched Earth. It's your problem, not nature's problem, it just keeps cranking away until extinguished or driven deep underground. I'd be happy to see you go.

The idea is to keep people alive with a minimum or resupply and then tap into extraterrestrial resources, like sunlight for instance. But I have no problems understanding that this does require completely original research with no precedent, which I've been happy to do.

If you don't like what I'm doing or saying, tough, just your requiring complete evacuation of all existing humanity shows my how uniformed you are about what modern scientifically and technologically competent space cadet engineers discuss regularly, in conference rooms in corporations and universities, unpublished. Much of it proprietary. Institutional knowledge that you should be a little more grateful for when space cadets choose to share it with you. You being anonymous and all that. I have a name. It's 8c. People know who I am and where to find some of the things I've written. Plants absorb carbon dioxide. But it's too late for that here.

Bernard J. said...

"The commercialization of space via wealthy billionaire reusable rocket enthusiasts is a side project that already has been completed."

Yeah, Ben Elton already wrote the report. It's called "Stark".


"You are not doing very well with this."

Tom, I am familiar with the magnitudes and flows of energy through terrestrial trophic levels, the human coöption of the same, and the human use of non-biological energy in their endeavours. I am familiar with the laws of thermodynamics, having studied them in physical chemistry at university, and I am in fact familiar with a least half a dozen of your papers as the purple shading indicates for hotlinks on the homae of your site.

And I've seen nothing yet offered by you that addresses the fundamental budgeting for relevant requirements in the areas of energy, materials resources, distances, timetablings, ecosystems construction, and sundry other components germane to the resilience of an extra terrestrial ecosystem and society.

The involvement of billionaires is hardly support. Heck, we have one here who's in government and had notions of rebuilding the Titanic, which is technologically much more feasible - except that he's starting to leak money like a sieve...

Bernard J. said...

"And why are you so uptight about being outed Mister Cosby?"

I'm not, because I'm not.

Bernard J. said...

"I think biology makes this possible with a minimum of two but you run into some inbreeding problems right away."

"Some"?

Riiight...


"Nature doesn't give a damn about human choices, it will be fine with a scorched Earth."

I didn't say that it did.

"It's your problem, not nature's problem..."

Which has been my point all along. Although I don't discoun the ethical issue of wiping out a huge chucnk of contemporary biodiversity, irrespective of whether "Nature" cares or not.

"I'd be happy to see you go."

That's lovely of you Thomas. ALl I'm trying to do is to verify the validity of your claims.

"If you don't like what I'm doing or saying, tough, just your requiring complete evacuation of all existing humanity shows my how uniformed you are..."

I didn't say that I "requir[ed] complete evacuation of all existing humanity". I did say though that only an infinitesimal number of "all existing humanity" will ever leave the planet, which is the crux of the problem.

"I have a name. It's 8c."

Then why not use it rather than a string of randomness? I'm merely being efficient, and given that you're Thomas Lee Elifritz it seems that using that handle is more efffective. However, if you prefer 8c I'm more than happy to call you that.

Tomayto, tomahto.

Anonymous said...

When there is no humanity left on the planet, the only humanity left will be those who left. Mass extinctions take out the larger mammals and that's where we are headed if you failed to notice. So when there are no humans left on the planet, it will be far more than an infinitesimal number of them living off the planet. I can't help you if your belief system does not allow you to comprehend that. I'm not parsing every thing you say, your thoughts aren't worth that much to me and that's what I do when I do science, not debating cranks in the internet comment sections. What I am claiming is that short of a zombie apocalypse, billionaires are going to build giant reusable cryogenic launch vehicles and launch giant spaceships into space housing humans long enough to get to buried habitats with solar power, efficient radiative cooling, possibly nuclear power (I haven't really looked into that yet, but certainly it will be required) and intensive high efficiency lighting systems using dense hydroponic plant growth and aerobic composting. Whether or not there are little bunnies running around is up to you. You have to feed them like I do. But certainly it won't be any crap like Biosphere 2.

Oh, and I'm guessing there will be robots building robots too, maybe they can do that on the Earth after you scorched it and turned it into a hellhole of slavery. That's the way you are headed anyways.

Anonymous said...

RE: angech said... 2/3/16 5:15 PM

I note that ^C/^V is working well for you, and that evidently the cat has got your (virtual) tongue. So at the risk of repeating myself:

Here’s a couple of suggestions for you angech.

1) You display the “Real DMI graph” that you allege I’m “too scared to”

2) Pick any one of the dozens of graphs proudly on display at:

http://GreatWhiteCon.info/resources/arctic-sea-ice-graphs/

Then let’s discuss what they reveal, shall we?

Anonymous said...

If anyone is still interested, although my space development and colonization architecture is far more comprehensive than this, here is a link to someone's best guess at Musk's Mars surface architecture gleaned from the space cadet forums, which is far more effective in getting up to speed on this than referring to the non-existent academic peer reviewed literature, other than Gerard K O'Neill's initial presentation in Physics Today.

http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/organizations/space-exploration-technologies/spacexs-mars-colonial-transporter-rumors-realities/

O'Neill's obsolete initial work:

http://www.nss.org/settlement/physicstoday.htm

Thank you for your time. I'll be looking more closely at nuclear options from a scientific and technical perspective shortly, but I am still convinced that's not the appropriate way forward for Earth. But what I can tell you is that if you do not proceed with refugia construction underground in any number of deep space destinations, the fall of civilization will only accelerate from its current state. The only way you will learn to live sustainably on Earth is to honestly attempt to simulate it in deep space where you have no choice but to tighten up your biological and technical pathways.

BBD said...

8c

Thank you for your time. I'll be looking more closely at nuclear options from a scientific and technical perspective shortly, but I am still convinced that's not the appropriate way forward for Earth.

Well, I'm glad that this discussion has at least made you think again about nuclear (although possibly in the context of space habitats). One thing invariably gets lost in these type of exchanges so I'd like to repeat it as a closing note. It is that I am *not* arguing for nuclear and against renewables. I am arguing for both. This is what I meant by 'holistic and pragmatic' energy policy. No low-carbon technology should be excluded at this (late) stage in the game. Unfortunately, there are so many (usually) right wing climate change deniers who attack renewables and advocate nuclear that it has rather poisoned the well.