Anthropogenic Global Warming ... how hot is it ?

[Shiftless2]

Another win for the "know-nothing brigade"

Trump to repeal EPA finding that greenhouse gases threaten public health​

Joey GarrisonDinah Voyles Pulver

The Trump administration is preparing to rescind an Obama-era scientific finding that has served as the legal underpinning for federal regulations targeting greenhouse gases for more than a decade.

In a major blow to federal efforts to combat climate change, the Environmental Protection Agency will take action on Feb. 12 to repeal what's known as the "endangerment finding," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a Feb. 10 briefing with reporters.

The EPA's endangerment finding, signed in 2009 during the Obama administration, says current and projected concentrations of six key greenhouses gases in the atmosphere "threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations." A related EPA finding, signed in tandem, singles out ....

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[sear]

" Trump to repeal EPA finding" #541​

"Repeal" refers to legislative reversal, not unilateral executive contradiction.
"Finding" is the result of investigative process. Political opposition can reverse policy. It does not revise the rules of logic that produced the finding.

 

[Shiftless2]

"Repeal" refers to legislative reversal, not unilateral executive contradiction.
"Finding" is the result of investigative process. Political opposition can reverse policy. It does not revise the rules of logic that produced the finding.

Agreed - while he can get the EPA to retract the relevant papers and change their official position he can't "repeal" the results.

 

[sear]

Trump directs military to strike new deals with coal-fired power plants: ‘Going to be buying a lot of coal’​

President touts 'more reliable power and stronger and more resilient grid power' while criticizing wind energy as 'crazy windmills'​

By Jasmine Baehr Fox News Published February 11, 2026 7:19pm EST

Trump says coal ‘critical to our national security,’ orders military to buy more​

President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced an executive order directing the Department of War to pursue new agreements with coal plants to ensure a "more reliable" electric grid. (Pool)
"That’s why I'm also pleased to announce that, in just a moment, I will sign an executive order that directs the Department of War to work directly with coal plants on the new power purchasing agreements, ensuring that we have more reliable power and stronger and more resilient grid power," Trump said.
"And we're going to be buying a lot of coal through the military now, and it's going to be less expensive and actually much more effective than what we have been using for many, many years."

Trump directs military to strike new deals with coal-fired power plants: ‘Going to be buying a lot of coal’

Trump signed an executive order Wednesday directing the Department of War to purchase coal power for military installations, calling coal "essential" to national security.

www.foxnews.com

 

[Shiftless2]

The Royal Gazette is Bermuda's daily newspaper and it's unusual for them to post an article that's this long so obviously they thought it's important.

Why is an article in a Bermudian paper important to the US and the rest of the world? Simple - Bermuda is the third largest insurance and reinsurance center in the world (after New York and London) and if natural disasters continue to increase in frequency or magnitude, insurance is going to become much more expensive and harder to obtain.

Companies will be forced to: (i) increase premiums probably substantially, (ii) curtail writings, or (iii) withdraw entirely from certain areas. And since those Bermuda companies provide reinsurance to those companies insuring US properties their actions will directly affect Americans.

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The insurance crisis is about to get even worse​

Mark Gongloff

The Trump Administration will soon make it the official policy of the US government that greenhouse gases don’t endanger Americans’ wellbeing and therefore don’t need federal regulation. Insurance companies, meanwhile, live in a parallel universe where greenhouse gases are heating the atmosphere and intensifying natural disasters, harming human health, destroying property and raising insurance costs.

The US government’s universe is an increasingly lonely fantasy world. You’re trapped in the real one.

The oxymoronically named Environmental Protection Agency will this week formally renounce its 2009 “endangerment finding”, which gives it regulatory power over emissions from cars, power plants, factories and more. This move, which the climate-change deniers running the White House call a “total victory”, is for now mostly symbolic.

But what it symbolises is still troubling: a government putting outdated ideology and corporate profits above the health and financial welfare of the people it governs. In the process, it’s stoking the flames of dual insurance crises that are harming growing numbers of Americans and putting trillions of dollars at risk.

For what it’s worth, it’s also illegal. The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the 1963 Clean Air Act required the EPA to regulate planet-heating emissions, a sentiment Congress endorsed in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and didn’t try to undo in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Environmental groups have vowed to subject the EPA to years of legal brawling before its vision can become reality.

Nor does it make much practical difference. Under administrator Lee Zeldin, the EPA has .....

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[Rigby5]

I am oddly ambivalent because although coal produces twice the CO2 of natural gas, we have only about 50 years of natural gas, and over 500 years worth of coal?

 

[sear]

"I am oddly ambivalent because although coal produces twice the CO2 of natural gas, we have only about 50 years of natural gas, and over 500 years worth of coal?" R5 #546

I'm not sure where that fits in the "keep your powder dry" planetary husbandry protocol.
I'm grateful we had enough fossil fuel to enable us to bridge from fire at the mouth of the cave, to completing the conversion to renewable energy (or whatever replaces it). Do we get a depletion $bonus?

Why not save a little for later?

 

[Rigby5]

I'm not sure where that fits in the "keep your powder dry" planetary husbandry protocol.
I'm grateful we had enough fossil fuel to enable us to bridge from fire at the mouth of the cave, to completing the conversion to renewable energy (or whatever replaces it). Do we get a depletion $bonus?

Why not save a little for later?

I remember when I saw the movie "China Syndrome" with Jane Fonda and Jack Lemon, and had such strong feelings against nuclear power.
Now that I know how much worse fossil fuel is, I vastly prefer nuclear power, and am embarrassed by my previous rush to judgement.
But it still makes me a little more hesitant.
For example, geothermal will cool off the earth eventually, causing the loss of our ionosphere.
Tidal energy will eventually slow the earth's rotation.

 

[sear]

"I remember when I saw the movie "China Syndrome" with Jane Fonda and Jack Lemon, and had such strong feelings against nuclear power.
Now that I know how much worse fossil fuel is, I vastly prefer nuclear power, and am embarrassed by my previous rush to judgement." R5 #548

Nope.
That sir is revisionist self-criticism.

iirc around the time China Syndrome hit the big screen, Three Mile Island hit the front page.
That nuclear waste would be a radioactive albatross around the necks of one hundred human generations, a full millennium, was no secret.
That atmospheric Carbon was worse wasn't as clear, at that time.

It's a new millennium.
Opposition to commercial electric power isn't directly the issue. What matters is that plans are made, actions taken, compliance insured, that nuclear waste mitigation measures are applied as long as the waste is toxic.

"But it still makes me a little more hesitant.
For example, geothermal will cool off the earth eventually, causing the loss of our ionosphere.
Tidal energy will eventually slow the earth's rotation." R5 #548

Astrophysicists have reached consensus that our sun will turn red giant, and subsume Earth's orbit. "So don't buy any green bananas."
I don't know the timelines for the scenarios you cite. But it's based on a static model. But projections over the time periods involved in the geothermal & tidal scenarios don't apply to such static premise.
That doesn't excuse Trump stoking coal. INEXCUSABLE !
The generations that will suffer most severely for Trump's caprice have not yet been born.

 

[Rigby5]

Nope.
That sir is revisionist self-criticism.

iirc around the time China Syndrome hit the big screen, Three Mile Island hit the front page.
That nuclear waste would be a radioactive albatross around the necks of one hundred human generations, a full millennium, was no secret.
That atmospheric Carbon was worse wasn't as clear, at that time.

It's a new millennium.
Opposition to commercial electric power isn't directly the issue. What matters is that plans are made, actions taken, compliance insured, that nuclear waste mitigation measures are applied as long as the waste is toxic.


Astrophysicists have reached consensus that our sun will turn red giant, and subsume Earth's orbit. "So don't buy any green bananas."
I don't know the timelines for the scenarios you cite. But it's based on a static model. But projections over the time periods involved in the geothermal & tidal scenarios don't apply to such static premise.
That doesn't excuse Trump stoking coal. INEXCUSABLE !
The generations that will suffer most severely for Trump's caprice have not yet been born.

I thought along similar lines, but then I began to understand that all radioactive material in the earth actually came from stellar nuclear fusion billions of years ago.
That means nuclear reactors actually do not create "nuclear waste", but instead they cause the already existing nuclear material to decay in reactors that actually reduced their radioactivity. So nuclear reactors actually are a net positive in using up radioactive waste instead of creating it.
By speeding up decay, they release heat.
If we ever get fusion working, that will be different in that it will increase radioactive wastes.

 

[sear]

"I thought along similar lines, but then I began to understand that all radioactive material in the earth actually came from stellar nuclear fusion billions of years ago.
That means nuclear reactors actually do not create "nuclear waste", but instead they cause the already existing nuclear material to decay in reactors that actually reduced their radioactivity. So nuclear reactors actually are a net positive in using up radioactive waste instead of creating it." R5 #550

Wild guess?
I'm not a nucular physician, but I suspect if your suggestion is accurate, the problem is that by mining & refining we concentrate the toxic properties, so that after we extract a little energy, what's left over is a long-term problem, even if global gamma radiation is reduced.

R5:
Which is more radioactive?
A pound of nuclear fuel? Or the waste it generates / becomes when removed from service?
Seems to me that's information basic enough for an informed voter to know. I do not know.
And the time I spent groping about the Internet for details was time wasted. Are they keeping this secret? Do we have to study Hanford?

 

[Rigby5]

Wild guess?
I'm not a nucular physician, but I suspect if your suggestion is accurate, the problem is that by mining & refining we concentrate the toxic properties, so that after we extract a little energy, what's left over is a long-term problem, even if global gamma radiation is reduced.

R5:
Which is more radioactive?
A pound of nuclear fuel? Or the waste it generates / becomes when removed from service?
Seems to me that's information basic enough for an informed voter to know. I do not know.
And the time I spent groping about the Internet for details was time wasted. Are they keeping this secret? Do we have to study Hanford?

Good question.
Over all, the fissile material is decayed by being used in the reactor.
But in the reactor, the decay process is accelerated.
So the amount of radiation given off could be increased, even though then it will get used up faster.

But I am not too worried about the nuclear wastes because if we bury it near the reactor, no one should be surprised by it.