Which is a bigger problem: CO2 or radioactive waste?

[Covenant]

What do you mean? There's a huge methane hydrate shelf off in the Gulf of mexico.

[Winston Blake]

The worst ecological disaster the Earth has ever seen was the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, killing 96% of all marine life and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrate life. Most mass extinctions happen extremely slowly and this one lasted for at least 300 000 years; for scale, Homo sapiens has only existed for 250 000 years. One theory is that the methane hydrates under the sea (which we only recently realised existed in such vast quantities) melted once the temperature got too high.

That count is by species, and even then it wasn't 95% of the entire biosphere... anyway...

I wasn't specifically supporting AV's 95% figure. I'm not in the 'World => Epic Fail' camp.

Comparing it to the end of the Permian is... insane. The Siberian Traps were the largest release of carbon dioxide known, and the Deccan Traps - much smaller - some 33 trillion tons.

I doubt humanity will ever put so much CO2 into the air. It takes a generate estimate of remaining fossil fuels for that to even be possible.

And the Wikipedia entry talks about this still not being enough, so adds in the releasing of deep-sea methane deposits due to heating, but most deposits are located near the poles these days.

Another important point to consider is that global temperatures are also rather cold - the ice caps are an anomaly of our current continental configuration. The P-T extinction was taking place on an Earth already sans icecaps.

'Worst case scenario'. Upper limits on anything are typically unlikely.

[Erik von Nein]

(Note: Girlfriend is using my account temporarially since she's interested in joining. This is her post.)

My honest opinion on Global Warming vs. Nuclear Waste: (please note that I'm adding my two cents and this is my boyfriend's account)

Global Warming affects the ecology of the world since it changes the climates of each ecosystem.

Nuclear Waste affects the watertables, ground and security of people, to name a few things.

Both need to be addressed and solved.

There are several ways to ensure that greenhouse gasses are lessened and that Nuclear Waste is stored safely or reprocessed without affecting our water supplies, ground or causing the people against the safe storage of said Wastes to fear for their safety.

If we encourage more people to walk or use other methods of transportation that don't require the use of petrochemicals and if more corporations encouraged carpooling and if the government incentives for carpooling in order to reduce greenhouse gasses when alternative communiting methods can't be used. Another thing that would help would be to lessen the use of appliances that require electricity during the day and encouraging funding for alternative energy sources.

Nuclear waste is going to be around for quite a while due to its half-lives of more than 4,000 years individually when broken down respectively into each nuclear reaction byproduct classification. While nuclear waste is a very prominent issue due to the inherent radioactivity that it has I feel that US government isn't doing enough to find alternative methods to long term storage besides Yucca Mountain nuclear repository. Looking at other first world countries' nuclear programs the US can do more by reprocessing and incorporating waste and weapon's grade material into a glass matrix or Mixed Oxide fuel and using it in reactors. The most common short term methods of storage are wet storage and dry cask storage. Both get the job done but space is limited especially since most if not all is stored on site where the fuel assemblies are used for around four years and deemed "spent."

What the US government can do to ensure the security of nuclear waste is to keep the public informed. Because the media loves panic and disaster.

[Sikon]

Global warming is a greater issue than nuclear waste whether from a short-term or long-term perspective.

Short-term

There were 5700 work-related fatalities in the U.S. in 2005, and 0% were from nuclear waste storage. Nor is it causing even 1% of public radiation exposure, not like radon and other natural sources. The degree of public concern over nuclear waste is curious from a quantitative perspective, particularly when such is used as a reason to not have more nuclear power (a poor decision). Many people die every year mining coal, the primary competitor to nuclear power by electricity generation share, a number of miner deaths annually even in the U.S. and thousands worldwide. And that's not getting into air pollution from coal power...

Global warming is more troublesome.

World economic output is growing at a rate of tens of percent per decade, including industrial output from electricity generation to steel production. For example, the rate of growth in world steel production from 2000 to 2005 was equivalent to a 30% increase per decade. Energy is the lifeblood of the expanding industrial capabilities which are decade by decade allowing more people to rise above being dirt poor, instead of mainly just the small percentage of the total who were lucky by birth like Americans, Europeans, etc. A problem is that fossil-fuel based civilization is the wrong template.

For example, among other developed countries, Sweden has lower per capita GDP than most at ~ 5.9 tons of CO2 per capita annually,
a population more willing to do energy conservation than a country like the U.S. with ~ 19.8 tons per capita. Yet if the world's population in the foreseeable future of 7 to 9 billion people didn't consist mostly of people in poverty, even average emissions per capita like those of Sweden would still be 40 billion to 50 billion tons of new CO2 emissions per year, multiple times current carbon dioxide emissions ... unless there is a drastic change with different technological choices, such as industry running on nuclear power instead of primarily fossil fuels.

Changes are possible in principle and may start occurring more in the aftermath of peak oil, but the trillions of dollars involved are one of various factors making such far more trouble than nuclear waste disposal.

Geoengineering to counter temperature change in an emergency is possibly for shockingly small expense, such as a few hundredths of a gram per square meter of stratospheric dust injection as described here, one reason mankind will survive global warming, but some trouble is approaching. The world should have already switched away from fossil fuels, for multiple reasons, but, for what will happen with global warming, one must consider what limited actions will realistically be done in the near future. Part of the problem is that most people will not get really motivated until there is blatant, obvious, undeniable trouble that they can personally see.

What people do varies depending upon perceived benefits versus cost. For example, in a 1998 U.S. poll, respondents were asked their support for the Kyoto treaty. Of them, 76% said they would support it if energy costs were to increase by $10 per month extra for the average household. Yet such dropped to 36% assuming $50/month, then further to only a mere 11% assuming $100/month. Obviously, one could discuss what would be the exact economic effect of the treaty on the U.S., and there is something to be said for major negative effects of fossil fuel and oil dependence indirectly including trillions of dollars of Middle East involvement over the decades. But the point here is that most people tend to support global warming countermeasures only if they think the benefit to cost ratio makes it worthwhile from their perspective. Unfortunately, the overall result is very limited effort.

From the perspective of the average person in developed countries, it gets cold and snows in the winter, gets warm but tolerable in the summer, and they aren't motivated enough for major change when they don't study the issue much beyond personal experience. Nor does it help that few people know how little of a portion of total GDP could accomplish a change if only the right techniques were utilized. Meanwhile, the poor in developing countries tend to be more focused on survival and having enough money to live on than more abstract concerns, not feeling that they have much money to spare for environmental issues. The world will unfortunately continue to emit greenhouse gases at an increasing rate for some time. An illustration of what has happened in recent history is in the following chart:



Global warming would be occurring even if there wasn't an increasing rate of new emissions, considering what builds up in the atmosphere from past emissions, so the above graph is not good. I am not sure exactly how severe, obvious consequences from global warming will occur before people get more motivated, but quite likely a substantial amount of trouble will occur first.

So, due to the preceding social factors, global warming will tend to accelerate for some time, with the resulting negative consequences.

Long-term

Of importance is how global warming, measures taken against it, and related decisions impact what future is left to the descendents of this and future generations. It matters greatly if there is technology, infrastructure, and economic capability that will help humanity survive and prosper in the long-term, including expansion into space. Long-buried nuclear waste is of far less importance.

Nuclear waste even becomes less radioactive over time. Many anti-nuclear people are impressed by hearing of isotopes with very long half-lives, thinking of such as exceptionally dangerous. Actually, the one reason that the thousands of tons of human nuclear waste today have even a millionth the radioactivity of the trillions of tons of natural radioisotopes in earth's crust is because some of them have half lives many orders of magnitude shorter than the natural radioisotopes most common by mass.

Radioactivity is inversely proportional to half-life, due to conservation of energy, or, more specifically, due to a limited number of radioactive atoms. For example, the average person contains 17 milligrams of radioactive potassium-40 in their body, but they survive because its half-life is so high at 1.3 billion years that only a correspondingly miniscule portion of total atoms decay per second. A good way to think of the principle is that that the difference between a radioactive toxin and a stable chemical toxin like lead or arsenic is that the latter has effectively infinite half-life; the radioisotope can be much more hazardous per unit mass, but its degree of danger depends upon it having a short enough half-life for enough of its atoms to decay per unit time, to deliver enough radiation per unit time to its surroundings.

A thousand years from now, if future civilization hasn't reprocessed today's nuclear waste or shipped it out in mass drivers, its radioactivity would still be vastly less than it is today, because most of the current radioactivity comes from those isotopes which have most of their radioactive atoms decay in small number of years or less.

Here is a relevant quote from one publication, with one part highlighted:

They point out that very few of the structures we build can be counted on to last that long, and that our political, economic, and social structures may be completely revolutionized within that time period. The fallacy in that reasoning is that it refers to our environment here on the surface of the earth, where it is certainly true that most things don't last for hundreds of years. However, if you were a rock 2,000 feet below the surface, you would find the environment to be very different. If all the rocks under the United States more than 1,000 feet deep were to have a newspaper, it couldn't come out more than once in a million years, because there would be no news to report. Rocks at that depth typically last many tens of millions of years without anything eventful occurring. They may on rare occasions be shaken around or even cracked by earthquakes or other catastrophic events, but this doesn't change their position or the chemical interaction with their surroundings.

One way to comprehend the very long-term toxicity in the waste is to compare it with the natural radioactivity in the ground. The ground is, and always has been, full of naturally radioactive materials — principally potassium, uranium, and thorium. On a long-term basis (thousands of years or more), burying our radioactive waste would increase the total radioactivity in the top 2,000 feet of U.S. rock and soil only by 1 part in 10 million. Of course, the radioactivity is more concentrated in a waste repository, but that doesn't matter.

[Sikon]

EDIT: In the second large paragraph of the above post, the reference to 2000-2005 growth being 30% a decade should be corrected. Growth was about 51% between 1995 and 2005. The 2.4% annual average for 1995-2000 was a cumulative factor of about 1.13, while the 6% annual average for 2000-2005 was a cumulative factor of about 1.34.

[His Divine Shadow]

What is the reason for such a massive drop in forrests? Droughts?

[Durandal]

The stuff with long a long half-life has a long half-life for a reason: it doesn't emit radiation very quickly, and thus is not very radioactive. If the stuff was very highly radioactive, it would decay very quickly and be much more dangerous.

[Sikon]

What is the reason for such a massive drop in forrests? Droughts?

At least much of deforestation has been caused by the conversion of land to agriculture, a greater cause than urbanization. Here is an illustration for the world's 13 billion hectares, 130 million square kilometers of land area, which would be originally from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization:*



* Total world land area is a little higher at 149 million square kilometers, but the graph must skip some areas, probably mostly Antarctica.

Clearing of forests for farms and pasture includes slash-and-burn techniques in many rainforest areas. While logging can be sustainable if done in a limited locations with new trees planted and tree plantations, commonly it hasn't been in much of the world, another major cause of deforestation.

A combination of deforestation, overgrazing of grasslands, and other anthropogenic factors have contributed to desertification as well.

Much of the problem in general indirectly relates to poverty, especially farmers in some developing countries clearing large areas of land for farming to survive, unfortunately lacking the ability to apply the techniques and technology to have enough crop yield on existing land areas. For example, compared to this illustration of increased yields per unit area over time for U.S. farmers, in much of the world yields have not been increased to comparable levels:



Even in developing countries, yields are increasing but not fast enough. Here is an illustration from 1990:

Looking forward, the FAO anticipates that developing countries will raise their crop production from 1990-2010, in part by raising yield and growing more crops per year on the same land, but also by expanding area. The anticipated area expansion is greatest in subSaharan Africa, East Asia, and Latin America. Over all developing countries, FAO expects arable area will expand 12% while population expands 47%. The rising production will come 66% from higher yields, 13% from more frequent cropping, and 21% from expanding area (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1993[FotUN93], 104).

[Baal]

Of course begs the question what's an archaeologist doing trying to give professional advice on global warming?

About the same thing as a political moron like Gore is doing? At least the archaeologist has had some fairly decent one would hope scientific training. Gore the whore flunked out of divinity school.

[Spyder]

Of course begs the question what's an archaeologist doing trying to give professional advice on global warming?

He's part of the great archaeological conspiracy to prevent danger to future archaeologists from ancient radioactive disposal sites.

[Darth Wong]

Of course begs the question what's an archaeologist doing trying to give professional advice on global warming?

About the same thing as a political moron like Gore is doing? At least the archaeologist has had some fairly decent one would hope scientific training. Gore the whore flunked out of divinity school.

Your argument would have some merit if Gore were touting his own expertise and knowledge, instead of trying to get people to listen to the scientists. Of course, since that's not the case, your argument is thoroughly useless.