A scientist searches for truth; a man who searches for evidence to bolster up preconceived opinions is a charlatan. This newsletter has sound reasons for being pro-nuclear, but it will not accept half-baked arguments in its favor. One such argument is that unless we go nuclear, fossil-fired power plants will produce too much carbon dioxide, leading to the greenhouse effect (sunlight in, infrared heat radiation unable to get out through the atmosphere) and the earth warming up intolerably.
This could be true, for all we know, but we know very little.
In 1909, physicist R.W.Wood performed a famous experiment: He compared the temperature in two greenhouses, one of which had a glass roof, the other one made of rock salt (which is transparent to infrared rays); what warmed up both to almost the same temperature was not the misnamed greenhouse effect, but the lack of ventilation. What would happen in the atmosphere is a guess as good as the used computer model.
Since we last wrote about this issue (Dec. 1977), much work has been published, and at least one result is now gaining acceptance: The dominant reason for the present slight increase in the CO2 content of the atmosphere (I part per million per year) is not fossil-fired plants, but forest clearing, especially in the tropics. (Vegetation acts as a CO. recycler by absorbing it and releasing oxygen in the photo-synthesis of its constituent sugars.)
Second, computer modeling (by General Motors Research Labs) that has been partially verified by its correct prediction of ice build-ups in the arctic and early frosts in certain years shows that the most influential factor in global temperature changes is not CO2, but albedo¾the ratio of reflected to incident solar energy, determined by the composition and surface properties of the reflecting surface. It is followed by scattering of light by particles in the atmosphere, and by the humidity (i.e., scattering of sunlight by water molecules) in the lower troposphere, the layer between the earth and the stratosphere. Only then, in fourth place, comes the CO. content, but even so, the no.2 cause, particle scattering, works against the CO. greenhouse effect.
An international workshop on "CO., Climate and Society" was held early last year in Austria (Proceedings $30 from Pergamon Press, Headington Hall, Oxford, England), but the subject is far from being properly understood and the policy statements produced the inevitable waffling:
"It is premature to implement at this time policy measures that require reduction in the use of coal and other fossil fuels. . . On the other hand, policies which emphasize the use of coal, because of its great abundance, in preference to non-C02 producing systems [such as nuclearl are equally unjustified. . ."
Moral: Keep on studying and ignore semiliterate propagandists like Dennis Hayes.
[More on the GM computer model: Global Temperature Changes: Relative Importance of Different Parameters (a scientificmathematical paper) by Ruth A. Reck, free from Tech. Info. Dept., GM Research Labs, Warren, Ml 48090.]
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Vol. 6, No. 8
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Volume 6 Issue/No.: Vol. 6, No. 8 Date: April 01, 1979 08:08 AM Title: The cost of retrogression
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