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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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Ironic twist alert: most electricity production requires vast amounts of water. Cold water. Which means that climate change is going to be bad for electricity supplies.
Why's that ironic? Here's how we make electricity. In the U.S., we burn coal or natural gas, which produces massive quantities of the greenhouse gases causing climate change, or we fission uranium. The heat from those processes boils water that makes steam that spins a turbine. And those turbines produce more than 90 percent of our electricity.
Massive cooling towers then help chill the power plant back down using river water, for example. Only river water isn't quite as cold as it used to be, or as available. As a result, in recent years, such thermal power plants in the southeastern U.S. have had to decrease power production because river temperatures were too high or water levels were too low.
That problem is only going to get worse, according to an analysis in the journal Nature Climate Change. By the 2040s, available electricity could be down by 16 percent in the summertime. When you’d most like electricity. To run your air conditioner. To beat the heat. Told you it was ironic.
—David Biello
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
[Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.]
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19 Comments
Add CommentBy 2040, we will be able to use our car batteries, that will be charged by solar, to power our houses. Now isn't that ironic?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@JamesDavis, it is highly unlikely that by 2040 it will be lucrative anymore to exploit existing oil reserves.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven battery cars will be, to put it mildly, severely affected by this. Ever looked inside your car and considered how many of its components are actually oil based? You know, plastics?
Now, how ironic is that?
I believe that Isaiah 30 predicts a massive solar event. December is my favorite date. A 700 % solar output for a week seems to be called for. The grid will likely collapse from that. I can only imagine how the southern hemisphere will do.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere you go again, trying to pass off bad theory as scientific fact. "Tell a lie often enough and loud enough and soon it will be accepted truth." - Joseph Goebbels. That is the tactic of the 'global warming' crowd. The fact is that there is no positive scientific evidence to support man-made production of CO2 as the cause of so-called global warming. Many respected scientists now debunk the man-made global warming theory. As for this pseudo-scientific article, it is full of half truths designed primarily to panic the average reader. True electric power plants for the most part make steam to turn turbines that provide the motive force for the electrical generators. True that steam needs to be cooled in order to turn it back to water. It is False that the cooling water needs to be "cold." The boiling/condensing temperature of water is 212 degrees F at sea level and lower at higher elevations. In order for power plants to operate efficiently the cooling water temperature should be less that 100 degrees F, but can go much higher and still operate. Many locations do not have a source of cooling water and rely instead on cooling towers. Cooling towers are those large hour-glass structures that the media wants us to believe mark the site of nuclear power plants. Cooling towers can be and are used for all types of power plants. They are nothing more than very large radiators that work by evaporative cooling.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe author of this propaganda piece would like you to believe through innuendo that nuclear power plants also somehow contribute to global warming, but has provided no facts to substantiate that claim (see J. Goebbels quote referenced earlier) because it is a lie.
To sum it all up, this article is nothing more than environmentalist propaganda designed to cause panic amongst its readers.
Hold your breath... so you don't miss the event.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBwaaaaahhhahahahahahaha
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry, but what else is there to say? The Earth is flat, the world was created in 4871 BC, etc etc etc.
Bollux.
Gatnos, have you taken over for Carlyle, priddseren, and poker? Good to see that the four of you get your "prescription" from the same dealer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Which means that climate change is going to be bad for electricity supplies."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course. It is the religion du jour. Climate change is bad for everything except for those things for which it is good.
But this constant hand-wringing causes me, at least, to look at stories such as this more for possible entertainment value and wonder, perhaps out loud, "So, whatcha gonna do about it?"
I suspect that many advocates of AGW are trying to stimulate fear among skeptics, not perhaps realizing that by now, anyone not converted to the AGW religion is not going to be converted by more of the same.
Constant stimulation of fear without a corresponding demonstration of the thing to be feared is like trying to make people afraid of Sasquatch without ever succeeded to produce a Sasquatch. It may be that some people will indeed fear Sasquatch, but eventually you had better produce a Sasquatch.
So, cough up a power station that has ceased because of human induced climate change. Show me!
"As a result, in recent years, such thermal power plants in the southeastern U.S. have had to decrease power production because river temperatures were too high or water levels were too low."
Oh? Water temperature too high for what exactly? Fish, most likely. Environmental rules dictate water discharge temperature.
Water levels too low? Why is that? Is it because of human caused climate change; or just too dang many humans in the Phoenix metropolitan area all clamoring for the same water?
Be scientific! Reveal your data and methods (or lack thereof).
"tharter in reply to Gatnos"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd me in reply to you. Yes, the earth IS flat, but only in places such as Ohio and the Red River valley of Minnesota and North Dakota.
As to when the earth was created, it sort of depends on what state of existence you are willing to consider *complete*, perhaps a stated percentage decline of infilling asteroids and intrastellar matter. Perhaps a moment in time along the evolutionary scale of life.
For religious purposes, the clock started ticking when there was someone here sentient enough to contemplate clocks and calendars and start writing a history.
I see what's going on here. Gatnos writes a lengthy, detailed reply to the article and the AGW advocates mistake it entirely for an assertion that the earth is flat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKudos to Gatnos and shame on the rest of you for being unable and unwilling to speak to either the topic of this article or to Gatnos' commentary which was still on topic.
As is usually the case with AGW advocacy; plenty of hand wringing, FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) but not much mention of a solution to what the writer and his followers consider to be a problem.
Climate changes. It's what it does. What makes some human beings unique is their ability to adapt. No water in Phoenix? Bring it in or go to where it is. Duh! Was it really wise to build a huge nuclear power plant where water is scarce? I think not.
My father tried to prevent Glen Canyon dam from being built. He was terrified of all the water loss from evaporation. But like many people that are partially scientifically literate, failed to consider the "rest of the story" -- the hydrologic cycle. Where exactly does that water GO? Well, it goes to the Rocky Mountains, is precipitated, and ends up in Lake Powell right where it started from. But some of it rains out on farms along the way and thus seems to me to be a "good thing" to hydrate the western air mass.
@Mgordon,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou have no rational critique of this article. What have given to this debate is an argument from incredulity and insults.
Yet the Colorado River never even reaches the sea anymore, lol. Yes, I know it isn't all because of Glenn Canyon Dam, but it does contribute.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere's the thing, we ARE changing the climate in ways that are quite unusual, and changing many other things along the way. This seems like a dumb experiment and I'm not satisfied that it go on. You can try to just dismiss climate change, but you'd be a lot less likely to do that if you're one of the people with more to lose than to gain. Of course the losers will be alive NEXT generation, so you don't have to listen to them and they don't get to vote.
Too bad for them...
Locate power plants in coastal Washington because it's downright chilly here. We're hoping it hits 60 degrees today!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMeanwhile the environmentalists push using tens of millions of irrigated acres of marginal farmland to grow biofuel feedstock. Water vapor is 95% of global warming gases. How much is the evaporation of irrigation water adding to global warming??? The cure is worse than the supposed disease.
Vice President Joe Biden told the graduating seniors of Cypress Bay High School in Florida on 6/4/12 that they should imagine a world where hunger no longer exists because crops grow without the need of soil, water or fertilizer. That world will soon be here. So why worry about anything. Why worry. Our government thinks money grows on trees, and food just appears in the supermarket. http://cnsnews.com/news/article/biden-imagine-world-which-hunger-vanquished-crops-don-t-depend-soil-water-or-fertilizer
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou miss the point. Nobody dismisses climate change. We all accept it. The issues is mankind's ability to significantly influence climate change one way or the other.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOK, well lets just have this little discussion for the how many-ith time with you guys...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm
Right, it is ENVIRONMENTALISTS perpetuating this retarded corn ethanol thing? I know people on all sides that got THAT ball rolling and it is a pure money thing now. Don't blame ME for other people's idiot ideas. You can't just tar everyone with one big brush, that's ridiculous.
Read, follow that link, look around there. It isn't by any means proof by itself of anything, but you can read all sorts of papers and you'll easily find them from there. At least get educated on the other side of the argument you're in.
The only way alarmism will be bad for electricity is if the alarmists succeed in their destructive OCD-like behavior against fossil fuel electrical generation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt that point in time, the grid will be unstable, break down and they will say, "See, we were right"
Also to JamesDavis pipedreanm of cooking his breakfast from the electricity stored in his car batteries: Good luck with that one. What happens then when you want to drive your car somewhere? Oh, right; the electricity will come from your neighbors batteries too. But what if they leave to work early? Will your porridge be cold?
There's no free lunch (or breakfast as it were).
I think one disadvantage of burning coal and using gas to produce electricity is that make lots of problems like polutian, lack of fossil fuel, But these days we can produce electricity by getting energy of sun, for example, using solar systems to pruduce electricity and heat the water that we use in our home. I'm sure that by 2040 we will use more natural energies because these technologies are developing every day. And I gusse in future we won't have any electricity problem
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think we will likely use a lot of renewable energy, yes, but even in 2040 we're going to STILL be mostly burning fossil fuels by the current trends. Huge shifts in basic infrastructure take time and investment. If people are too short-sighted to make the investment, then all we'll have is a big mess and much higher costs from worse climate change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Shosin No, what will happen is in the next 5-10 years the consequences of today's disastrous policies will become so apparent and acute that we'll be FORCED to reduce the amount of fossil fuels we use regardless of the consequences. And then yes, someone will be seeing the consequences of their shortsightedness. Of course I'm sure you'll all find some way to blame someone else for it. That's always the next phase of denial...