The nuclear, biological and climate threat – 2011 reviewed
In this special issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published by SAGE, experts reflect on 2011 and highlight what to look out for in 2012 in the areas of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, biosecurity, and climate change. Topics that have made the headlines during the previous 12 months, including the increased tension surrounding Iran’s nuclear programme, the aftermath of the Fukushima incident, and the state of US policy on climate change, are analyzed in detail in this special issue.
At the Doomsday Clock Symposium on January 9-10 in Washington, DC, the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board will evaluate the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock. In 1947, the Bulletin first displayed the Doomsday Clock on its magazine cover to convey, through a simple design, the perils posed by nuclear weapons. The Clock evokes both the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero). In 1949, the Clock hand first moved to signal the assessment of world events and trends. The essays within this special issue are a glimpse into the topics the Bulletin’s board will consider when evaluating the minute hand.
Gerald Epstein, director of the Center for Science, Technology, and Security Policy (CSIS) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, says that 2011 saw progress on approaches to address biological threats posed by non-state groups at both the Seventh Biological Weapons Convention (BWC)Review Conference and the G8 Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
In his paper, Biosecurity 2011: Not a year to change minds, Epstein writes that the BWC is evolving to adapt to the nature of the biological threat. Going forward, biosecurity will hinge upon the international community’s ability to cooperate, whether it can think creatively and strategically, and whether it enters partnerships with scientists from all world regions.
Steven E. Miller, director of the International Security Program at Harvard University, writes in his paper, Nuclear Weapons 2011: Momentum slows, reality returns that 2011 was short on breakthroughs in the arms control arena, following something of a landmark year in 2010. Miller highlights five events that unfolded during 2011 that he suggests “seem certain to cast a powerful shadow in months and years to come.” The current tension with Iran over weapons, the spread of nuclear technology in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and difficulties in the US relationship with Russia are among them.
The Fukushima incident was a sudden and dramatic shock in 2011, writes Mark Hibbs, a senior associate in Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program, but what continued to be a concern throughout the year was the incremental escalation of continuing crises in Iran, North Korea, and South Asia. In his paper, Nuclear Energy 2011: A watershed year, Hibbs reviews reassessments undertaken around the world after Fukushima, and underlines Europe’s critical role in nuclear energy’s global future.
In Climate change 2011: A status report on US policy, Steven Cohen and Alison Miller highlight a growing partisan divide in US Congress. This divide has stalled the country’s federal climate policy, frustrated efforts to pass a cap-and-trade carbon permitting system, and spawned a battle between the US Environmental Protection Agency and Congress. Climate change policy has been pushed down to the municipal level, and the divide has also hindered US ability to effectively negotiate an international climate agreement. Meanwhile, US cities have enacted far-sighted climate policy initiatives, and growing fossil fuels costs have stimulated renewable energy investment, bringing commercially viable fossil fuel alternatives closer.
“The inevitable shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources would be greatly hastened by federal action to tax carbon dioxide emissions and use the revenue generated to support alternative energy technologies,” writes Cohen, executive director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. “That action is extremely unlikely to occur unless climate change comes to be seen in the United States as a practical, rather than ideological, issue.”
The articles are available to access free for a limited period here: http://bos.sagepub.com/content/current
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The Bulletin is an independent nonprofit 501 (c) (3) organization that publishes analysis and conducts forums about nuclear security, climate stabilization, and safety in the biosciences. Founded by Manhattan Project scientists from the University of Chicago, it links the work of scholars and experts with policymaking entities and citizens around the world. An international network of authors assesses scientific advancements that involve both benefits and risks to humanity, with the goal of influencing public policy to protect the Earth and its inhabitants. The organization’s scientific advisory boards include 19 Nobel laureates, ambassadors, leading scholars, distinguished NGO officials, and public policy experts. The Bulletin is closely followed in Washington and other world capitals and uses its iconic Doomsday Clock to draw international attention to global risks and solutions.
SAGE is a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. Since 1965, SAGE has helped inform and educate a global community of scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students spanning a wide range of subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, and medicine. An independent company, SAGE has principal offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC. http://www.sagepublications.com
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A spokesman for a similar organization, The Union of Concerned Scientists, Kenji Watts said in response to the question: “How do you feel about the year 2011 as evaluated by the BAS draft release?” His response: “ruff”
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It is symptomatic of these times that every person and government worries about nebulous ideas of climate change when we have faced real threats of nuclear war and terror from nation states and terrorist organizations for some time. Yet few private citizens are active in support of controlling nuclear proliferation and nations give it lip service only. Can you imagine if GreenPeace got hold of a nuclear bomb?
“The organization’s scientific advisory boards include 19 Nobel laureates, …”
…no doubt including Al Gore.
Theo Goodwin says:
January 6, 2012 at 10:02 pm
Theo, re: gerbils on wheels…
They eat carbon then poop carbon and methane…
I don’t think that’s the end result the politicians are looking for…
It’s a stinker.
gerald wilhite says:
That’s a maintenance problem, not non-renewability. You could dredge the lake for a lot less power use than the electricity gained in 100 yeasrs.
@William Howard says:
January 6, 2012 at 7:01 pm
Very important, you have discovered a new “idea-force”: “Economic sustainability versus “Green irresponsible spending” : Greens have bankrupted countries where politicians, conveniently “greased”, chose the “Green Way”, and bought like madmen, all kind of crazy and discardable alternative energy apparatuses, which in a real free market would have never appeared.
The original word in greek means: Oἰκονόμος, i.e. “One who manages a household”, a composite word derived from οἴκος (“house”) and νέμω (“manage; distribute”); Oἰκονομία (“household management”). It remembers us all how serious is our responsibility with our own household, where we and our family live.
What weapons, foreign armies could´t do an irrational ideology could do it: Our household is at risk and this is not an innocent game.
gerald wilhite says:
January 6, 2012 at 8:00 pm
WUWT comment contributor ‘treegyn1′ says above: “… in the People’s Republic of Oregon, the “brilliant” policy genius’s have declared that hydroelectric is NOT renewable.”
“You are right that hydroelectric power is typically classified as a “renewable”. However, I’m inclined to go along with the Oregon folks. Hydroelectric power production resulting from man-made dams does indeed have a long life, But sediment does fills the lake behind the dam after a hundred years or so, and it’s effectively over.”
One word: dredging.
Since mankind crawled out of Olduvai Gorge a million or two years ago, we have demonstrated time and time again that our genus and species names, Homo sapiens (thinking man), is a most apt descriptor. When faced with problems that at first seem overwhelming, we figure out technological solutions.
The basic technology of dredging has been around for centuries.
“”””” Interstellar Bill says:
January 6, 2012 at 11:42 am
Sunlight is renewable, solar cells are not.
Wind is renewable, windmills are not. “””””
Solar energy is FREE, CLEAN, GREEN, RENEWABLE, WIDELY AVAILABLE.
So what is YOUR problem with it ?
Well the key is in that “widely available”
The energy is free etc; but the rounding up of it is NOT; in fact it is very expensive.
I’ve spent a good part of my industrial career, doing “Photon Herding”, and so far I have not devised a way to access more than about 1 kW per square meter , of projected area on the sun earth direction. As near as I can tell, there is no known way to increase that number; well at least at ground level.
Apparently BOTH Mark Twain, and Will Rogers are reported to have said; “Buy land; they aren’t making any more of it.” although one aparently said “don’t wait to buy land.. etc”
So the problem with the free solar energy, is that you have to round up a lot of land, just to get access to it, and current means of access are quite inefficient.
I don’t pay a lot of attention to photon herding these days; currently “photon stampeding” is more interesting, and also more likely to succeed (in bettering mankind).
But there is some distant future hope for the roundup. Conversion efficiencies of above 60% are no longer just a pipe dream; not a reality; but no longer a dream; 80% might be a pipe dream.
But then the tax man cometh with his property tax bill on “improvements”. Nobody who ever “improved” the value of land, ever escaped the tax man.
“”””” Ron House says:
January 7, 2012 at 12:12 am
gerald wilhite says:
You are right that hydroelectric power is typically classified as a “renewable”. However, I’m inclined to go along with the Oregon folks. Hydroelectric power production resulting from man-made dams does indeed have a long life, But sediment does fills the lake behind the dam after a hundred years or so, and it’s effectively over.
That’s a maintenance problem, not non-renewability. You could dredge the lake for a lot less power use than the electricity gained in 100 yeasrs. “””””
A feature of Hydro dams, is that they also double as a storage facility for water, which is an increasingly valuable and scarce commodity.
Now why is it not possible to use just a small fraction of that stored water power to continually pump the accumulating sediment around the dam, and back on to its natural path.
The entire Panama canal water system, is powered and operated simply by releasing solar powered water from the Gatun Lake; and it has been doing that for over 100 years with no sign of stopping any time soon.
Dear Anthony Watts,
Thanks you for your post, Now that a new “smoking gun” report was just annonced and will be released by 600 scientists (and reviewed by 600 more scientists and edited by bureaucrats from 154 countries) that says global warming does exist and presents a major problem for the entire world’s population — do you still deny that it exists and is a major problem?
And now that the CEOs of ten major American corporations (including Alcoa, BP America, DuPont, Caterpillar, General Electric, and Duke Energy) have declared global warming to be a major problem that requires the federal government to issue mandatory reductions in climate-changing pollution — do you still deny that global warming exists and is a major problem?
And now that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the “doomsday clock” forward two minutes, declaring that “dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons” — do you still deny that global warming exists and is a major problem?
Well, do you?
All the Best
with the goal of influencing public policy
translation: We are a political body of policy wonks, not real thinkers, agenda driven, not factual.
to protect the Earth and its inhabitants.
Prepare for fear hype driven greenwash…
The organization’s scientific advisory boards include 19 Nobel laureates, ambassadors, leading scholars,
we have a collection of folks who suck cash from the public trough and get party favors from their friends in high places. They have great PC Credentials from the Nobel socialist progressives.
distinguished NGO officials, and public policy experts.
well connected to government lobby groups, agenda driven cash laundries, and specializing in parasitizing public agencies to remove cash to private uses.
/endtranslation>
So these folks have nothing at all to offer, near as I can tell, other than hype, fear, and nonsense.
And that bit about biological threats? Why are they not busting the chops of that university type who made a vial of flu bugs that can kill 60% of the planet if accidentally dropped? THAT belongs in a maximum level biohazard bioweapons grade lab, not some university biosci department… Stupidity and clumsiness are a greater risk to humanity than ANY weapon system on the planet.
@george E. Smith:
It is even easier than that. We have a few dozen reservoirs around us. They just did maintenance on a couple of them. What do they do?
Open the drain at the bottom of the dam and let the water out. This takes a lot of sediment with it. Then leave it open for a year or two ( as more washes out from rapid erosion of the soft silt). Inspect dam, make repairs, install new valves etc. during this time. While I’ve never seen it needed, you could simply send earth movers down into the lake to collect the remaining fine silty soil and use it as excellent fertility additions to farms, if desired or needed.
I’ve also heard that some lakes have shown the sediment basically self clears as it copes with the annual depth cycling, but that is more anecdotal. I personally observed the lake bottom of the local reservoirs having maintenance.
The folks claiming it is not renewable energy seem to be unaware of the existence of valves and skip loaders… Though even if for some reason you could not completely drain it, a nice mud pump will suck up the muck very easily and you can again haul to where it is a feature. Why let all that soil wash out to sea if you can enhance farm land with it…
@Nickolas Conway:
See the top of this comment for the merit of the Atomic Clock Hand Wringers.
Per the CEOs of places like GE and Duke Energy: Gee, companies who stand to make a bundle of money off of the Corporatist Progressive Policies via feeding at the “mandates” and “subsidy” tough think it is a good idea… what a surprise…
Per “smoking”: It’s not a gun that they are smoking… So we’ve got another 154 govt folks who have job and status tied up in the game, with 600 “scientists” and their pals all wanting to keep the funding gravy train going (largely funded by those same governments and NGOs via more insider pals). This matters more than that it is colder than it was in 1998? It has any merit at all when all the predictions have failed to happen?
Oh, right, it’s a money grab, not actual science, so that makes it ok… Shall we talk about the missing tropospheric hot spot? How about the growing ice in Antarctica? Perhaps the ClimateGate emails showing intimidation of editors, packing of committees, influence pedaling, suborning of the peer review process, rampant insider self dealing and self promotion in the quest for funding and awards.
IF any of these folks ever find their moral compass and start to listen to it, I MIGHT consider listening to their opinions. As it stands, it looks much more like a central core of RICO candidates and a circle of hangers on than anything else.
So while I do not speak for Anthony, I’ll answer your question for me:
Yes, Human Caused Global Warming is a hoax at best and self delusional error if feeling charitable. Convection and the water cycle completely dominate the earth and CO2 is irrelevant. (There is a slight chance that the added CO2 might do something: As convection dominates the troposphere, heat is dumped at altitude where the added CO2 can assist in the IR radiation moving heat to space. Damp air is cooled by CO2 and adding more IR radiator at altitude is also cooling.) Most likely,though, it is UV modulation of atmospheric depth and cosmic ray modulation of clouds that controls changes in planet temperatures.
We have just warmed out of the Little Ice Age and ALMOST (but not quite) gotten back to the beneficial warmth of the MWP. At the same time solar output and sunspots have increased in proportion. Coincidence? I think not. This solar cycle the sun has quieted and the AMO, PDO and other planetary states have swapped to ‘cold’. After a short lag these lead to significant global cooling. (We’ve had a tiny part of it already as we’re now back below the zero line of ‘climate change’… and with significant cold events the last few years. The peak of this 11 ish year solar cycle is ALMOST getting us back to the warmth of the bottom of the prior cycle…)
So you have 2 years of “OK, but cool” before the “brutal cold” starts returning as this solar cycle peters out ( IMHO, based on my admittedly ‘amateur’ skills at reading PDO / AMO / etc. and making long cycle weather predictions.) Oh, BTW, defining ‘climate’ as the 30 year average of weather is a lie. Yes, a flat out lie. Climate depends on your latitude, altitude, distance from water and land form. Weather has 11, 60, 180, and 1500 year CYCLES in it. Using any average shorter than 3000 years is just finding a weather artifact, not a climate issue at all.
Then we have that it is irrational to average intensive / intrinsic variables, and temperature is an intensive variable. All of “climate science” panic comes out of average temperatures, so lacks ANY basis in physical philosophy. What is the average temperature of the water if you mix two pots of water, one at 0 C and the other at 20 C? It is not possible to say. Was the 0 C frozen, or not? What are the relative masses? No, it is NOT OK to just assume it all ‘averages out’; yet that is what “climate science” does.
So take the ‘appeal to authority’ argument ( or ought I say “appeal to those getting money from the game” argument) and stuff it in the waste bin. They can’t even get basic computer programming done decently ( I’ve read, run, and FIXED some of their code and it’s a horrid mess, as Harry Read Me agrees), they ignore fundamentals of calorimetry (don’t move or change the thermometers!!!), and can’t figure out that a ton of snow is different from an ounce of air at 0C. I see no reason to accept their self serving self dealing appeal for more money as any more valid that that of the street beggar holding up a sign….
Seen as a ‘practical’ rather than ‘ideolgical’ action? But cap-and-trade is not practical and is ideological. We could just as well say that taxing paper and spending the money subsidising computers for the poor would stimulate the computer and software industries creating ‘digital jobs’. Of course it would, but it is not how sensible economies are operated.
If there were some measurable, quantifiable, detectable risk from increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, that would be a different story. As everything we know (actual knowledge, not speculative die-in-the-sky alarmism) about increasing CO2 and or temperatures is positive for humanity and in fact the whole ecosystem, declaring CO2 to be a pollutant is the height of economic absurdity.
Taxing CO2 to give money to support economically unviable ‘cherished’ industries is nothing more than industrial pork-barrelling. There is a long history of pork-barrel politics in the USA but that does not make it sensible.
“Green” these days is just ‘Greed’, misspelled. They have removed the ‘D’ for Dollar and replaced it with the ‘N’ for nature hoping you won’t see the old switcheroo.
What these “experts” fail to comprehend is that when huge malinvestments of land, labor and capital are inflicted on the world economy (i.e. cap & trade legislation, expensive/inefficient “alternative” energy projects, Solyndra, GM VOLT , etc.) there are compounding negative impacts to the world economy, which ironically prevent or greatly delay real solutions from being developed.
Governments SUCK at picking winners and losers in technology. The billions and eventually trillions of dollars that are wasted on ethanol, solar power, wind, wave, geothermal subsidies, research grants for bogus CAGW “research”, carbon taxes, bogus EPA CO2 & O3 regulation compliance costs, etc. eventually contribute to the destruction of the world economy.
Free market capitalism (not crony Crapitalism and especially not Socialism) has proven to be the most efficient long-term solution to healthy economic growth and scientific breakthroughs to meet the needs of an ever-changing world.
TRM says “I consider thorium renewable”
I concur. Check this out: