More CO2 makes plants grow taller, but not with more grain. Being taller, grasses (like wheat) often snap and fall over, particularly in storms. Crop fail.
We are at the shallow end of the changes that are coming. An exponential increase in CO2, means an exponential increase in temperature, slowed down by ocean cooling. The current +1'C is almost beneficial, the predicted +3'C..+8'C in 2100 will be devastating. The rain-forests will go brown and fail before +4'c. But currently it all seems so lovely.
> To find a time when the planet’s air was consistently above 400 ppm you have to look much farther back to the warm part of the Miocene, some 16 million years ago, or the Early Oligocene, about 25 million years ago, when Earth was a very different place and its climate totally dissimilar from what we might expect today.
Towards the end Miocene was when grasses began to emerge significantly
> The higher organic content and water retention of the deeper and richer grassland soils, with long-term burial of carbon in sediments, produced a carbon and water vapor sink. This, combined with higher surface albedo and lower evapotranspiration of grassland, contributed to a cooler, drier climate. C4 grasses, which are able to assimilate carbon dioxide and water more efficiently than C3 grasses, expanded to become ecologically significant near the end of the Miocene between 6 and 7 million years ago.
There are 3 possibilities: we go extinct we lose civilisation, we do just fine. Science does not us 30 years, it gives us 12, nowhere near enough to build nukes. With the loss of coordinated civilisation, whatever spent fuel pools, will dry up and catch fire. Spent fuel needs 3 decades onsite before it can be moved anyway. So to prevent all the SFP's putting their toxic load into the atmosphere, and killing everything bigger than bacteria, we need to decide to take an alternative to the scorched earth policy.
To clarify - your argument against nuclear energy is that the world is going to collapse in 12 years;therefore something with a 30 year investment and maintenance cliff is foolish? Because it may start post-apocalyptic wasteland fires?
70 is a a lot closer to the truth. That 11 is a selective figure.
None of these numbers includes the carbon used to bulldoze the East side of Japan, or Belarus. And again, as the first attempt was clumsy, and a minimum.
Which study are you using to suggest 70? That's on the high end on any study, but not the highest.
The IPCC has min, median, and max estimates on these kinds of things. See Table A.III.2 in [1], 12 being the median.
So worst case by any estimate is that nuclear emits 110 gCO2-eq/kg. Solar PV (utility) max is 180. Hydro is an astounding 2200 (twice as bad as coal, due to biogenic methane associated with large reservoirs). By any estimate, nuclear is a very low-carbon energy source, in a whole different class than fossil fuel and biofuels. In other words, it's one of the few low-carbon options we have.
That process absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere at low concentrations (400 ppm) onto stones coated with X-material. Later the stones are heated (using more fuel) to release CO2 at much higher concentrations (more than 75%). Then what? It is a gas. You need to bury the carbon. They suggest feeding it to greenhouses, to grow food, which re-releases it later.
We have the opportunity now, to decide to not kill everything bigger than bacteria. We could shutdown nukes, and store the waste. Or we could go for broke - if we go extinct - everything goes extinct.
Something of a one sided wet dream. If all those NPP's had been built there would have been ... well the article completely fails to mention any downside. And the conclusion: the screw-up was the need to "prepare environmental impact statements". hmmm
A vote LEAVE will not take us completely out, a vote REMAIN will take us in so deep, we never vote again, the pound becomes 'fixed-rate' and the central banks own us.
The EU did not really help Greece, in it's difficulties. The UK has a better starting position, but that is everybodies future, in or out, and will be worse in.
The EU, as one of the largest 'countries' in the world, has not addressed the problems of climate change. Our beaches might be cleaner, but our skies are melting the Arctic, and the world's approach to carbon mining, is 'business-as-usual'. Climate distruction and ocean acidification are not even mentioned in the governments advice pamphlet (remain), nor in TTIP.
We are at the shallow end of the changes that are coming. An exponential increase in CO2, means an exponential increase in temperature, slowed down by ocean cooling. The current +1'C is almost beneficial, the predicted +3'C..+8'C in 2100 will be devastating. The rain-forests will go brown and fail before +4'c. But currently it all seems so lovely.