As Sea Levels Rise, Are Coastal Nuclear Plants Ready? (nationalgeographic.com) 302
mdsolar writes with this National Geographic story about the danger of rising sea levels to low-lying power plants across the country. According to the story: "Just east of the Homestead-Miami Speedway, off Florida's Biscayne Bay, two nuclear reactors churn out enough electricity to power nearly a million homes. The Turkey Point plant is licensed to continue doing so until at least 2032. At some point after that, if you believe the direst government projections, a good part of the low-lying site could be underwater. So could at least 13 other U.S. nuclear plants, as the world's seas continue to rise. Their vulnerability, and that of many others, raises serious questions for the future."
At My Door (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:At My Door (Score:5, Informative)
The one one Hutchinson Island? I used to stay there every summer. This article is (surprise!) alarmist. Read carefully, it claims nothing prior to 2032 - and makes references only to things that could happen in the fairly distant future. Compared to the cleanup costs, shoring up a road or building a berm along the Indian River would be pretty cheap.
Re:At My Door (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm shocked, shocked, that an alarming article about nuclear power was submitted by a guy named mdsolar.
Re:At My Door (Score:4, Insightful)
He is a Shill's Shill.
Legendary among Solar Trolls.
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completely stupid premise
If the premise is to truly ask a question, they would be asking it to engineers, not a public forum. If the premise is to create some sort of fear and or outrage to boost sales of their magazine, then it makes more sense.
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Re:At My Door (Score:4, Interesting)
In the U.S. we already have entire cities that are below sea level. Fortunately, we have these things called dikes, levees, and cofferdams that we can build when we need to to protect them from actually being underwater (as long as they're properly built and maintained). So even if sea levels do rise as predicted, these plants aren't going to be flooded unless for some bizarre reason we allow them to be flooded.
But hey, alarmism sells.
Cities below sea level [Re:At My Door] (Score:4, Informative)
In the U.S. we already have entire cities that are below sea level.
City, singular: We have exactly one city below sea level, New Orleans, elevation -2 meters.
Not sure if I'd call that the best example of why it's ok to have levees keeping out the ocean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Yes, only one!
http://grist.org/cities/miami-... [grist.org]
http://www.theguardian.com/wor... [theguardian.com]
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If you honestly believe that Miami is below sea level, why don't you edit the Wikipedia and give citations for it?
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Is it? I thought most of the Florida swamps were fresh/brackish water, which would suggest that they're at least slightly above sea level.
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Oh bullshit. Swamps are created by having level land that drains slowly. Missouri has swamps ffs.
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Yes, *one* city, where the dikes etc. where built over a course of hundred years? What about New York, was't there bizzar damage during the last hurricane? Or Miami?
So even if sea levels do rise as predicted, these plants aren't going to be flooded unless for some bizarre reason we allow them to be flooded.
A few years ago a nuclear plant made the news (in the US) in the middle of a flooded river area. For some reason the river was up to the edge of the hand made sand bag wall. So: you obviously are quite of
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What should probably be looked at more closely is if the plant would be in any kind of danger at a moderate amount of flooding. What are we actually talking about here? A flooded basement where some old filing cabinets and broken office chairs might rust a bit, but the plant can be safely idled until a crew gets on site to pump the overflow out, or a Fukushima catastrophe where the backup generators are underwater and access to the plant is completely severed?
Also, are these coastal plants designed so tha
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Re:At My Door (Score:4, Informative)
Fortunately, we have these things called dikes, levees, and cofferdams that we can build when we need to to protect them from actually being underwater (as long as they're properly built and maintained).
Dikes and levees to keep the sea out don't work very well in much of Florida because the underlying bedrock is largely porous limestone. Even if you build a levee the water will just come up through the ground.
"Conventional sea walls and barriers are not effective here," says Robert Daoust, an ecologist at ARCADIS, a Dutch firm that specializes in engineering solutions to rising seas. "Protecting the city, if it is possible, will require innovative solutions."
Link [rollingstone.com]
Re:At My Door (Score:4, Insightful)
A SJW's idea (if we understand what 'social justice' means) of having a conversation is everyone talks without some immature fuckwhippet in the corner disrupting the conversation because he doesn't like how gay/black/straight/white/Muslim/Christian some other participants are.
Translation: Everyone talks as long as they agree with me. Anyone who disagrees with me is an immature fuckwit who deserves to be silenced.
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No, they're not. They're expressing their belief that dave420 wishes to violate immature fuckwhippet's ability to exercise his right to free speech with the specific aim of silencing opinions dave420 disagrees with. This is worrisome, because it's essentially killing off the soul of the democrat
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I wish we could switch over to molten salt reactor, They can be easily shut off if needed.
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That, and build them away from areas prone to natural disasters.
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How exactly do you propose to cool nuclear plants that aren't built on rivers? There is a reason nuclear power plants are built on moving water (or large pools of water), and it is to allow them to run more efficiently, and not require giant cooling towers.
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The power plant evaporates the water from the treated sewage from several nearby cities and towns to provide the cooling of the steam that it produces.
So, evaporating water that could be reused while existing in a desert where there is a significant lack of water...poor planning.
Sure, that will work everywhere, we should get right on building every nuclear power plant to these specs. We could name them thinkwaitfast plants, then when multiple of them go supercritical in droughts, you can get full credit for your idea of using this cooling method.
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Calling attention to a problem that is likely to occur after the plants in question are all shut down is, in fact, alarmist. The only possible impact is on cleanup, and that's not something to prepare for right now. Keeping water out for a while is a straightforward engineering problem that has been more or less mastered for over a century.
Alarmist (Score:2)
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Trojan Nuclear Generating Station in Oregon was shut down in 1992, and demolition completed in 2005. That's 13 years from the last volt going out, to the reactor vessel being buried a couple hundred miles upriver at Hanford, and the cooling tower being imploded. Not decades, plural. Today, the only thing that remains on the site is a helipad, a couple of warehouses, a guard shack thing, the spent fuel storage, and a remaining office building. The spent fuel is only still there because Congress won't get
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You have a couple of ways to handle the decommissioning of a power plant. The fastest and most complete choice is called DECON, which basically returns the land to whatever other use. This does not take as long as you indicate. For instance, the (admittedly small) Humbolt Bay reactor stopped running in 1976 and they are currently wrapping up the DECON process. Zion, a large (2GW) plant near Chicago, stopped operating in 1998 and is scheduled to be cleaned up by 2020. I'm the first to admit that the schedule
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Re:At My Door (Score:5, Insightful)
Note, I am not discussing the technical merits of the facility in question, I am merely pointing out that there was a plan.
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What would you like them to do about it? Every time the government comes up with a solution, NIMBYs lose their shit over it. Yucca Mountain had a minor incident due to someone not folowing procedures. The incident caused no issues that were not planned for in the construction of the facility, but it was shut down because "OMG Nuclear!".
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I see nothing about that here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Please, link to a source for this falsification of data. The stories I have read were that some peon used the incorrect kitty litter in several of the barrels, and it didn't perform the function the kitty litter is put in for because it was paper based instead of clay based kitty litter.
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What would you like them to do about it?
Me? REPROCESS the fuel assemblies and separate out the fissionable materials from the toxic waste and high level radio active materials. Hang on to the plutonium and uranium and other useful stuff, package up the rest in glass/ceramic blocks and bury it or dump it into the deepest part of the ocean where it will be safe for a few thousand years.
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I believe the GP's point is that the storage there wouldn't be necessary (outside of the cooling pools, of course) if they could put the dry-cask stored waste on a train and get it to a proper storage facility, as was planned decades ago. Then the senior Senator from Nevada became part of the Senate leadership, and ended responsibility for this issue in favor of NIMBYism.
Was Yucca Mountain perfect? Probably not, but it's far better than what we're doing today.
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the report said a review of modeling reports and notebooks didn't turn up evidence that information actually was falsified or modified as the e-mails suggested.
Re:At My Door (Score:5, Informative)
You do realize that if the road gets wiped out while they are trying to decommission the plant ... they'll just build one on a bridge, right? As a Floridian, you're probably aware of just how good Florida's construction crews are at rebuilding after the REGULAR hurricanes and tropical that come pretty much every year ...
Building roads and bridges is pretty trivial and cheap compared to decommissioning a nuclear power station. And do you know how they brought a lot of the construction materials to the site ... probably by barge actually (thats what happened at the Crystal River plant)
And decommissioning takes years because its cheaper to wait out certain things than to deal with them while hot. You have to shut the planet down, get it into cold shutdown (no need for active cooling measures), remove the fuel, then wait for all that shit to 'cool down' radioactively enough that it doesn't require robots to work on it. During that time you go tear down all the other crap thats not radioactive and wait for 10 years. Then you come back and get the rest of it with men in some radiation suites that cost about 1000 times less than trying to do it with the robots you'd have had to design, build and use if you tried to do it immediately after shutdown.
But to answer you actual question.
Yes, thats all been thought of, before the plant was even built, its all part of the initial environmental studies and is public record if you really want to go digging for it. At one point Looked up all that information for the Crystal River plant, so unless the state was thinking completely differently between the studies for the two stations we're referring to, yes, they've thought of all that already. It might no longer apply (environment changes, hence this discussion), but its been considered.
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At My Door
The expression is "in my backyard", and this is why a lot of people don't want nuclear power plants in theirs.
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Because they are ignorant morons? We already know that.
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your property won't even exist above water 50 years from now
This was taught in schools in the 70's. The end is closer than you think.
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Yea, according to Al Gore's movie, we should all be just about dead now.. Either drowned by the sea, blow away by a hurricane or burnt to a crisp from the baking heat.
Non Issue (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes the sealevels will rise, but they already rise with every hurricane or tides of the moon.
After Fukushima everyone knows that you need big ass dams, flood walls, protected and working backup generators etc.
If you build a 10m high floodwall or a 11m high one to also protect against global warming induced sea level rise simply doesn't really matter. If someone hasn't already built said 10-15m high flood wall, it's not global warming that is an issue but the regulatory commission in your country. A much more immediate problem too.
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Yes, sealevels will rise.
Of course, we're talking a century-plus before they rise as much as a meter.
Hardly a problem today. Hardly an issue in a century, really. A meter high floodwall doesn't actually require a century to build (more like a few weeks one summer).
And if worse comes to worst, well, we add a meter to the floodwall every century (that's about four inches a year for the Amis among us), which is hardly a major undertaking....
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It only takes a slight change to see large changes in storm surges. That's the real worry at this stage.
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we add a meter to the floodwall every century
The issue is the cost. In Miami alone they are spending between $400-$500 million over the next five years [miamiherald.com] to keep up with the rising sea level which is already causing salt water incursions into streets and fresh water supplies during high tide. And the costs will only accelerate along with sea level rise. Economists agree that a revenue neutral carbon tax is the most cost efficient way forward [economist.com].
After Fukushima (Score:2)
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A floodwall is not a permanent dam. No where on Earth has anyone ever successfully held back the sea permanently. And there are many places where they have tried. There is a big difference between knowing how to build a wall a meter high, and knowing how to build a working sea dam.
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No where on Earth has anyone ever successfully held back the sea permanently. ... our dikes hold quite well.
Well, as time is open end, and we don't know what the future brings, you are obviously right.
However I beg to look at the Netherlands or Germany
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The conventional power plants on the same coast of Japan were destroyed to thier foundations, meanwhile the Fukushima Daini, Just 12km from Fukushima Daiichi suffered almost no damage at all ...
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Higher sea level makes a given amount of storm surge a much worse problem.
They don't need to be 'ready' (Score:4, Interesting)
We can move them. Yes, it would suck complete and total ass and be ridiculously expensive and environmentally dangerous, but the sea doesn't rise over night without an Earth quake so in the many many many years while the water is creeping up the shoreline towards the plant ... we can decommission it and move the dangerous bits to higher ground.
Well, in theory we can ... unfortunately the utterly retarded NIMBY anti-nuke crowd will ensure that instead we'll leave it right where it is cause god fucking forbid some accident might happen ... and instead we'll just let it pollute thousands of square miles of sea and destroy our food stocks instead ... because thats way better than moving some dangerous materials in a controlled and actually very safe method.
So you either move it and don't tell anyone, so that NIMBY morons don't have a chance to stand in the way of the trucks doing the moving (which makes it way more fucking dangerous!) before you get it to higher ground. Remember these are the same morons who would swallow coal dust and get cancer for sure rather than take the risk that if they hang out at the nuclear plant after a major disaster they might have a slightly higher chance of thyroid cancer ... that can't be proven scientifically anyway.
Besides ... nuclear reactors are water tight from the start, at ridiculously high pressures, if you get them into a cold shutdown state, you can just leave them under water for centuries without anything actually happening. Put a concrete sarcophagus around it so that nothing can easily damage it and forget about it. By the time it actually starts leaking it will have decayed to something we don't care about nearly as much.
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We can move them.
Are you a Poe, or auditioning for the titular role in a remake of Dr Strangelove?
Many are hopelessly apathetic when convenient. $ (Score:2)
Hello,
When $$ is involved, people can be hopelessly apathetic, willfully ignorant, utterly selfish, blind, even.
--PeterM
mdsolar writes.... (Score:3, Insightful)
mdsolar writes with another sensationalist article about how we will all die a nuclear death.
In the mean time I live in a country that is mostly below sea level, yet somehow my feet have kept dry. Is it possible that humans are capable of engineering their way around problems? What does this mean for the future of the human race? We'll explore all of these questions and more at 11.
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mdsolar writes with another sensationalist article about how we will all die a nuclear death.
Just remember, that solar is such a great choice. I mean it's not like we haven't had 17 consecutive days of overcast skies or anything in my neck of the woods here in Canada. The solar panel(30x30ft) nearby has reported a grand total of 1.28kWh of generation for that entire period. Which of course is why we have the second largest nuclear generation plants in the world here.
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You're also in late fall, which is a terrible time for solar generation in northern climates. Where I'm at there's also been a massive solar build-out, but nuclear is such a horrible, evil technology they built new coal plants and new natural gas plants instead. Yep, both natural gas and coal emit radiation in their waste, so thanks ignorant dumbfucks.
Well... (Score:2)
I live below sea level too. Far in the midwest with dry feet. However I remember watching the levy break in New Orleans on live tv so my cynicism of engineering all our lives in to a utopian wet dream remains.
Elevation of the United States [Re:Well...] (Score:3)
I live below sea level too. Far in the midwest with dry feet.
Unless you think that Death Valley and the Salton Sea basin are in the "midwest", or you live in a hole several hundred feet below the surface-- no, you don't live below sea level in the midwest.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1... [usgs.gov]
Big River (Score:2)
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Your feet won't always be dry. It took a massive tragedy for Dutch sea defences to be as good as they are now, and with every rise in sea level, the amount of work required to hold it off grows massively, as the storm surges will get larger, and the frequency of dangerous storms will increase.
So yeah - looking at the present is not a great way to evaluate the future. Shocker.
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It's almost like we need a massive tragedy in the nuclear industry to remind us on the importance of keeping the water out. It's a shame I can't recall of one happening.
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Yes, and to set it into a right perspective, for centuries the land you live on behind the dikes was kept "dry" by: wind power
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It's almost like they picked whatever was cheap and available at the time.
"sea levels rise" from TFA (Score:2)
"Estimates for how quickly sea levels could rise vary widely, from up to 4 feet by 2100 to almost 30 feet anywhere between the next two centuries and 2,000 years from now."
So in the next 90 years, during which time we'll probably build and retire two generations of nuke plants, we might have a whole four feet of sea level rise.
Please excuse me if I don't take the title seriously.
Retirement (Score:2)
er (Score:2)
We can build nuclear submarines. Presumably we could build nuclear power reactors that live underwater from the get-go.
AND refineries AND chemical plants (Score:2)
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Vicious circle (Score:2)
Pitard hoist (Score:2)
Re:Pitard hoist (Score:4, Interesting)
Wind and solar turn out to be so much cheaper, that really it is the opportunity cost of nuclear power that has delayed climate action. The politically promoted and protected nuclear industry has slowed progress for decades.
Solar power is more polluting, more toxic, less efficient, more destructive of habitat and much less safe than nuclear. Better than coal, sure, but better than coal isn't good enough. Mankind is better off without solar power. It would be much better to focus all of our resources on next gen nuclear power instead of going down the dead end of solar.
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You just can't do power purchase agreements under 4 cents/kwh with nuclear as you can with solar. http://www.utilitydive.com/new... [utilitydive.com] Nukes are just too expensive.
Try doing that in New York, Chicago, Seattle or Boston... and then try doing that without solar panels made with a coal and diesel powered supply and manufacturing chain. You have so many externalized costs and negative effects with solar right now it isn't funny.
Nuclear builds in every cost and provides a safe, clean and reliable source of energy for decades.
With nuclear you set up a plant, dig up and refine a relatively small amount of fuel and plug it in to a grid designed for large reliable point sourc
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A matter of Scale (Score:4, Insightful)
I understand that the point of the article is really just to spread FUD, but even the terrified masses must understand that "warming" sea level rise is expected to measure a double handful of inches over the next century. Normal daily wave variation is more than that; if your nuclear plant designers aren't planning for bigger variation you have much more serious problems than what's going to happen a 100 yrs from now (and which of these plants is expected to run a century anyway)?
Global Warming complicates real problem (Score:4, Informative)
Miami Beach Florida already has issues with tides - certain high tides of the year flood the city, leaving it deep enough for fish to swim into major roads. In some areas they had to raise the roads a full meter above land level so that at least the roads are clear. Of course this leaves the houses, parking lots, businesses all flooded.
The main problem with Florida is that the water doesn't come from one direction it comes from all six directions. Rivers flow from the other states into Florida, sea water on 3 sides, rain falls down onto it and finally the land itself is porous limestone that sea water seeps into and UP out of the ground. Basically, most of the state of Florida is not solid land, but a sponge. That's why it has sink holes and why floods are so bad. Florida, unlike Holland, does not have a sealing salt/anihydrite layer that blocks water movement.
For this reason, unlike the Dutch, merely building a huge dike is not enough. As global warming raises the sea level it invades deeper into the center of Florida's porous, limestone ground. What used to be safe relatively dry land, miles from the dangerous shore, is now wet, eroded limestone. Fresh water wells turn into salt water wells, sink holes open up, new springs suddenly appear where there were none before.
Some of those new springs will be INSIDE the grounds protected by the dikes built around the nuclear power plants.
In such circumstances, to truly protect a nuclear power plant, you have to put a solid layer of water proof concrete UNDER it, connect that to the water proof 10 ft wall around the nuclear power plant and then arrange for a pumping station to drain out any rain water that falls into the plant area. Good luck with that.
Dungeness shingle spit (Score:2)
so? (Score:2)
Sea levels will have risen maybe a foot by the end of the century. Contrary to the magical thinking of some people, a foot is just a foot. The main area it makes a difference is in the height of dikes and other protective structures: a foot in sea level rise may significantly increase the probability that some water goes over such a structure if it is already marginal. That's ea
Re:Poor planning (Score:4, Interesting)
That's an extremely gradual process. However, we've just recently learned about the collapsing ice sheets in Antarctica, which appear likely to cause the much more rapid rise in sea level over the next few decades. Nobody had planned on that, and it will cause headaches, hazards and costs far beyond this example of nuclear power plants.
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You mean the expanding ice sheets in Antarctica ?
https://www.nasa.gov/content/g... [nasa.gov]
Re:Poor planning (Score:5, Informative)
There you go again confusing sea ice with land ice. You do this every single time, and it gets pointed out to you every single time. Your failure to take on board such simple information is staggering, but would go quite some way to explain why you believe abject nonsense in the face of scientific rigour. Or, maybe, you do understand the difference, but are prepared to lie in order to make some point. Pick one. Please. It's tragic, but fascinating.
Re:Poor planning (Score:4, Insightful)
At least he cited a source. Do you have a link to nasa.gov which explains the difference?
Seems like the "climate change" alarmists are willing to constantly manipulate their data and revise their models to reach the preordained conclusion.
What's tragic is that no matter how many times they're fooled, people are still completely vulnerable to a barrage of fear mongering. "Climate change" is just the latest iteration of the Red scare and the terrorist scare. One that appeals to the political left more than the right. Be afraid! Be afraid! We're all going to be burned alive! Only government can save us!
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http://journals.ametsoc.org/do... [ametsoc.org]
And no thread is complete without a self righteous zealot being incorrect on the volume
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Why don't you read links before you post them?
Modeled Trends in Antarctic Sea Ice Thickness
That is the title of the paper. (*facepalm*)
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Perhaps you should take your own advice
The model successfully reproduces observations of mean ice concentration, thickness, and drift, and decadal trends in ice concentration and drift, imparting some confidence in the hindcasted trends in ice thickness
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And for a triple score you can continue on in your religious belief
http://phys.org/news/2015-10-m... [phys.org]
Thank you for playing.
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And the funny thing is, your later reply demonstrates you were aware of the full extent of the information.
So that makes you a liar ? or what ?
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(Okay, I don't actually believe any of that, but.
Then don't post it.
The answer to misinformation promulgated on one side of a debate is not even more misinformation posted supporting the other side.
Yes, sea level were rising... (Score:2)
[It would be a problem if sea level were rising...]
but it's not.
to the contrary, it is.
http://www.tribune242.com/news... [tribune242.com]
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi... [wikimedia.org]
http://gizmodo.com/miamis-alre... [gizmodo.com]
https://www.skepticalscience.c... [skepticalscience.com]
The fact that sea level is rising is not even controversial; and it's not particularly new information. The harder, and more controversial question is, is that rise going to accelerate due to melting ice?
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10 inchs last century, likely 100 this century.
if the climate alarmists are right, we will need a lot more nuclear.
For what? What reason would there be that we (in the west) need more electric power?
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If climate alarmists are right, we will have to convert all of our fossil generation baseload to nuclear. Renewables will help, but we can't run our entire economy on fluctuating sources and there isn't enough new hydro potential available in developed countries.
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