Second Short Quiz – Climate Change and Thorium Fission

[johnkarls]

.

Our current focus book “How The World Really Works” is a virtual clone of our 12/8/2021 focus book --

President Obama’s Dept of Energy Under-Secretary for Science (Prof. Steven Koonin) on “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters” (BenBalla Books 4/27/2021 – 320 pages).

**********
Author Bio

Dr. Steven E. Koonin is a leader in science policy in the United States. He served as Undersecretary for Science in the US Department of Energy under President Obama, where he was the lead author of the Department's Strategic Plan and the inaugural Quadrennial Technology Review (2011). With more than 200 peer-reviewed papers in the fields of physics and astrophysics, scientific computation, energy technology and policy, and climate science, Dr. Koonin was a professor of theoretical physics at Caltech, also serving as Caltech's Vice President and Provost for almost a decade. He is currently a University Professor at New York University, with appointments in the Stern School of Business, the Tandon School of Engineering, and the Department of Physics. Dr. Koonin's memberships include US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the JASON group of scientists who solve technical problems for the US government. Since 2014, he has been a trustee of the Institute for Defense Analyses and chaired the National Academies' Divisional Committee for Engineering and Physical Sciences from 2014-2019. He is currently an independent governor of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and has served in similar roles for the Los Alamos, Sandia, Brookhaven, and Argonne National Laboratories.

[BTW, in addition to being almost on a par with MIT, a little-known fact is that CIT (aka CalTech) is the long-time manager and operator of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.]

********************
Our 11/19/2021 Short Quiz entitled “What We Already Know About Global Warming”

Since our current focus book is a virtual clone of our 12/8/2021 focus book, and since our 12/8/2021 meeting is the most-recent that has focused on global warming, it is appropriate to simply re-publish our 11/19/2021 Short Quiz on “What We Already Know About Global Warming From Past Focus Books and Meetings” which is also available at viewtopic.php?f=669&t=2134&sid=0ccb2f27 ... 25e85ab20f.

HOWEVER, before doing so, it would be valuable to quote from our many letters to the nation’s decision makers (this is an example of our 4/5/2019 letter to each of the Democratic-Party Presidential Candidates) --

The Hon. Cory A. Booker
U.S. Senator – New Jersey
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
540 Broad Street
Newark, NJ 07102

Dear Senator Booker:

Re: Solving Global Warming 100% Without Military Action - A Subject We Will Be Requesting Every Presidential-Debate Moderator To Raise

For the past 13.5 years, I have facilitated a public-policy study group in the vicinity of my Utah ski house comprising approximately 150 members including numerous science professors and including a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the U.S. National Nuclear-Research Laboratory at Oak Ridge - U/Tenn.

[Our Nuclear Engineering PhD has led several of our studies over the years concerning thorium fission and other nuclear issues.]

Every time our group has focused on global warming, I have begun the discussion by asking for a show of hands by anyone who favors invading militarily, for example, China to prevent it from bringing on stream every week one new monster-size coal-burning electrical-power generation plant.

In all of those meetings over the years, nobody has ever shown the slightest interest in using military force to coerce any country into using an uneconomic energy source, thereby reducing the standard of living of its citizens.

However, luckily there is an economic energy source that is abundant and safe.

You may not be aware that thorium/fission was proved feasible in the 1960’s when the U.S. National Nuclear-Research Laboratory at Oak Ridge TN conducted a successful 18-month continuous demonstration project comprising a thorium-fueled nuclear reactor. And that President Nixon caused the nation to turn away from thorium (and toward uranium and plutonium) because thorium is incapable of exploding or being utilized to produce nuclear weapons.

Both conventional uranium fission and proven thorium/fission share all of the following advantages: (a) producing no greenhouse gases; (b) eliminating the dependence of the U.S.* and its allies on members of OPEC (the long-standing Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries) and, in the case of Europe, natural gas imports from Russia (in addition to oil & gas imports from OPEC); and (c) eliminating the gaping U.S. balance-of-payments deficit and resulting piling up of our foreign national debt.

However, proven thorium/fission has the following advantages over conventional uranium/fission –

[These advantages are virtually identical to those listed by Dr. Victor Stenger in The Huffington Post – https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lftr-a-l ... _b_1192584.]

(1) LFTR’s (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors) require minimal containment chambers because meltdowns are physically impossible since LFTR’s operate near atmospheric pressure (this is both a safety and cost factor).

(2) LFTR’s do not require elaborate cooling systems because they operate well below the boiling point of molten salt and can be passively cooled (this is also both a safety and cost factor).

(3) Thorium is so stable that, as mentioned above, it is impossible to make a nuclear weapon from thorium which is why the U.S. turned to uranium and plutonium instead of thorium.

(4) Thorium has such an incredibly-high “burn-up” that there is virtually no long-lived radioactive waste.

(5) LFTR’s can safely consume uranium from decommissioned nuclear warheads and from spent uranium-reactor fuel rods. Indeed, the Oak Ridge MSRE in the 1960’s was able to use U-235, Pu-239 and U-233 at the same time as thorium. [NB: Since former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of NV prevented the opening of Yucca Mountain NV as the repository for our spent uranium-nuclear fuel rods, the spent uranium-nuclear fuel rods have been left on site at each uranium-nuclear plant to remain cool in the equivalent of home swimming-pools even though many of those uranium-nuclear plants are situated in high-volume air corridors!!!]

(6) Because LFTR’s are economically practical in small sizes, they can be mass-produced in factories and assembled near electrical demand so that the huge energy losses during electricity transmission are virtually eliminated -- though to replace huge uranium reactors, it would only be necessary to assemble several of the small modular thorium reactors into a larger plant.

(7) In addition, thorium is so plentiful that proven thorium supplies are capable of supplying 100% of the world’s energy (not just electricity) for more than 1,000 years. Indeed, virtually all of India’s “sand” beaches comprise thorium.

[Our calculation was 80 years of “proven” reserves of uranium for current (electricity only) usage multiplied by 3 (the minimum abundance factor of “proven” thorium reserves vs. “proven” uranium reserves) multiplied by 99 (usable thorium energy content vs. usable uranium energy content) multiplied by 5.8% (the percentage of total worldwide energy including transportation fuels, that comes from nuclear plants) = 1,378 years.]

Proven thorium/fission has all of these advantages and only needs 2-3 years of final development = the equivalent of having already produced a Ford Model T proving an automobile is feasible but still needing 2-3 years of development (and relatively-modest funding) to design a Ford Fusion for mass production.

The relatively-modest funding for the 2-3 years of final development has been estimated by many experts at $5 billion to build the first commercial prototype.

[ThEC15 was a worldwide conference on thorium research that was held in Mumbai, India, in 2015 by the Government of India and two of its agencies, BARC and NPCIL, along with HBNI and IThEO. The ThEC15 website (http://www.thoriumenergyworld.com/thec15-mumbai.html) contains 127 papers and speeches by 46 speakers from 30 different nations.]”

[Governmental funding request and closing valediction omitted.]

PS: It is well known that large volcanic eruptions will throw into the atmosphere gases and dust particles whose shading of incoming solar radiation can cool the earth for months and even years.

[This has caused some wags to remark (however, true) that Global Warming can be solved by occasional, small nuclear wars which, of course, will be much more likely if a nuclear-arms race occurs between “The World’s Greatest ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism’” (The U.S. State Department’s long-standing legally-required description of Iran) and “The Gulf Cooperation Council” (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, The United Arab Emirates, and Oman).]

In a similar vein, there has been research on seeding the earth’s atmosphere with various substances to achieve the same effect as volcanic eruptions or small nuclear wars. Such an approach (vs., for example, merely adopting the most economical energy source which happens to have no carbon emissions) is likely, at the very least, to incur legal liability. After all, The Russian Federation refused to ratify The Kyoto Protocol for many years because Global Warming would increase Siberia’s growing season -- until the European Union finally agreed to subsidize Russia’s economic loss. [Similar economic disparities were bridged in the Paris Climate Accord by the U.S. promising to adopt uneconomic measures virtually immediately in return for the world’s other great carbon polluters’ adopting uneconomic measures in the distant future.]

**********End of Quotation From Our 4/5/2019 letter to each of the Democratic-Party Presidential Candidates**********

Copies of our letters that were sent to each of the Moderators of all FIVE Democratic-Party Presidential Debates in 2019 (together with USPS tracking numbers) are available at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1781&sid=127ffbf55 ... 99e91d0539.


********************
********************
Our 11/19/2021 Short Quiz entitled “What We Already Know About Global Warming”

*****
Section A – Our 7/13/2011 Meeting on “America’s Climate Problem: The Way Forward” by Robert Repetto (Routledge Publishing 2/3/2011)

A-1. Could a good case could be made that animals generally and, in particular, human beings and the animals raised for their food supply, are the world’s greatest carbon polluters?

A-2. Was Vice President Al Gore the head of the American delegation that negotiated the Kyoto Protocol in 1997?

A-3. Did the U.S. Senate, which would have to ratify any treaty with a 2/3 vote, by a 95-0 vote before V.P. Gore left for Kyoto instruct him NOT to agree to anything which exempted China or India (the world’s two largest carbon polluters) AND NOT TO AGREE to anything that impacted adversely the U.S. standard of living?

A-4. Did V.P. Gore agree to the Kyoto Protocol EVEN THOUGH it exempted China and India AND EVEN THOUGH it impacted adversely the U.S. standard of living?

A-5. Is V.P. Gore’s defiance of the 95-0 vote by the U.S. Senate the reason why President Bill Clinton refused to submit the Kyoto Protocol to the U.S. Senate for ratification as required by the U.S. Constitution?

A-6. Is there an additional wealth of information in Q&A-6 thru Q&A-38 of the Short Quiz for our 7/13/2011 meeting at viewtopic.php?f=218&t=791&sid=2f9a3d825 ... b7debbd15f?


*****
Section B – Earlier Meetings

Is there much information that is still valuable from earlier meetings such as –

10/11/2007 - “Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future” by Jeff Goodell © 2006?

11/12/2008 – Al Gore’s 7/11/2008 Challenge to Re-Power America’s Electricity Grid Within 10 Years?

11/18/2009 – General Motors and the EPA Perpetrating Fraud Re The Chevrolet Volt [Electric Car]?


*****
Section C – The Three Possible Reasons For Combatting Global Warming (aka Climate Change)

C-1. Is one reason prominently bandied about that polar ice caps will melt and sea levels will rise, endangering the world’s sea ports?

C-2. Indeed, did rising-sea-level alarmists establish at least one website on which the user could call up a map of any seaside port or landscape and plug in sea-level rises of even a foot or more to see what areas would be flooded?

C-3. Since many of us have spent considerable time in NYC, were we intrigued to see that there would be hardly any flooding in the NYC area except on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River facing Manhattan which is populated primarily by multi-zillion dollar dwellings occupied by multi-zillionaires who have paid for their unbelievably-beautiful view of Manhattan AND WHO COULD EASILY AFFORD TO CONSTRUCT DUTCH-STYLE DIKES A FOOT OR TWO IN HEIGHT RATHER THAN EXPECT THE REST OF THE WORLD TO DESTROY THEIR ECONOMIES IN ORDER TO SPARE THE MULTI-ZILLIONAIRES THE EXPENSE OF A DIKE?

C-4. Did our members also use such websites to ascertain that there are no areas in the world, individually or collectively, that justify ruining the world’s economies in order to save the expense of building Dutch-style dikes?

C-5. Was a second possible reason conjured by Yours Truly when we were studying for our 1/13/2016 meeting Elizabeth Kolbert’s “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” (Henry Holt & Co. 2014)?

C-6. Was Yours Truly’s conjured reason based on Elizabeth Kolbert’s documentation that the earth is in the middle of it sixth extinction in the last 500 million years, that as many as 50% of the world’s species will have become extinct during the sixth extinction, and that this extinction is almost solely caused by human activity (global warming)? Did Elizabeth Kolbert herself suggest any adverse effects from such an extinction?

C-7. Was Yours Truly’s conjured reason based on his supposition that most medical cures are discovered by ascertaining the natural enemies of the species causing a disease and that the loss of 50% of the earth’s species means that cures for 50% of human diseases will probably never be discovered, because the species that kept in check the disease-causing species will no longer exist? Coupled with my supposed “double barreled” effect that epidemics will become more likely as species become extinct that held in check disease-causing species?

C-8. Was Yours Truly told he was an ignoramus by the U/Utah’s Radiology-Research Professor and by the retired Air Force doctor who was the long-time head of the medical staff at the U.S. Defense Department’s Regional Medical Center at Landstuhl Germany, the first hospital to which wounded American service personnel in the Middle East have been taken since Gulf War I (1990-91) and who had retired to ski Utah?

C-9. Did they tell Yours Truly that Big Pharma NEVER investigates whether there was a species that had been holding in check the disease-causing species in order to base a cure on what it was about the disease-checking species that enabled it to hold in check the disease-causing species?

C-10. Did they tell Yours Truly that cures are almost always found by Big Pharma testing their existing cures for other diseases to ascertain which would be effective against the new disease?

C-11. Is a third possible reason (and the second reason commonly bandied about) that Global Warming will create “climate refugees” whose homelands become too arid to support life?

C-12. Is this because Global Warming will create “winners” and “losers”? For example, did the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 fail to become effective for many years for participating countries (NOT including the U.S. as explained in Section A above) because it was not ratified by the minimum number of countries specified in the Protocol to become effective? And was Russia refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol because Global Warming would INCREASE THE GROWING SEASON IN SIBERIA? So that to obtain Russian ratification (the final vote needed to bring the Kyoto Protocol into effect), the European Union paid Russia zillions of dollars to compensate it for the loss of a longer growing season in Siberia?

C-13. Did this cause many skeptics to think the European Union wanted to provide massive foreign aid to a Russian economy that had collapsed simultaneously with the collapse of the old Soviet Union only a few years earlier in 1991 – but that the E.U. believed such massive foreign aid for a collapsed Russian economy (which the E.U. believed necessary to help a starving Super-Nuclear Power for real politik reasons) was easier to “sell” to the European public opinion as a Climate Change initiative?

C-14. But what about the “other side of the coin” – all the “climate refugees” who face the prospect of starving or migrating?

C-15. In this regard are we back to the familiar question posed by all of the world’s major religions (defined as having had more than a billion adherents before China cracked down on Buddhism – the other three being Christianity, Islam and Hinduism) – ALL OF WHICH ARE BASED ON “THE GOLDEN RULE” (do unto others as you would have the do unto you)? So should Christian/Muslim/Hindu/Buddhist countries open their borders to “climate refugees”?


*****
Section D – Thorium Fission

D-1. Since our first meeting on thorium fission on 10/10/2012, have we ascertained that only nuclear fission is more economical than fossil fuels – except hydropower which is extremely limited relative to world demand for energy due to the lack of sites for damming rivers?

D-2. Since 2015, have we recognized since the Paris Climate Accord was adopted 12/12/2015 that it does NOT require India or China to begin doing anything at all until 2030 while the U.S. and Europe punish their economies immediately?

D-3. Do you really believe India or China will ever do anything to reduce/eliminate Global Warming that is not cheaper than their fossil-fuel alternatives?

D-4. Accordingly, has Yours Truly requested a show of hands at every one of our meetings relating to Global Warming by anyone who would favor a military invasion of China and/or India to compel them to combat Global Warming?

D-5. In all of those meetings (more than a dozen including the meetings of our Thorium Working Group), has there ever been anyone who raised her/his hand in response to Question D-4?

D-6. BTW, have all of our meetings dealing with nuclear issues since our 4/3/2011 meeting on Fukushima Daiichi been led by Calvin Burgart (PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the U/Tenn – Oak Ridge National Nuclear-Research Laboratory and B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from Penn. State where he happened to have enough spare time to serve as President of Phi Gamma Delta) who headed his own company in Southern California before retiring to ski Utah? Did Cal earn his PhD while the Oak Ridge National Nuclear-Research Laboratory was conducting during the 1960’s its successful 18-month continuous-demonstration project comprising a thorium-fueled nuclear reactor which was described in our 2019 letters to the Presidential-Debate Moderators and Candidates described in Questions E-2 and E-3 of the next section?

D-7. Also BTW, did President Nixon cause the nation to turn away from thorium and toward uranium and plutonium because thorium is incapable of exploding or being utilized to produce nuclear weapons – as also explained in our 2019 letters to the Presidential-Debate Moderators and Candidates?


*****
Section E – Thorium Fission (cont’d)

E-1. Does Section 1 of www.ReadingLiberally.com contain six (count them six) Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaigns promoting thorium-fission starting with our 10/10/2012 meeting through 6/21/2019?

E-2. Did we then, in addition to the six campaigns, send letters to each of the Moderators of the first five Democratic-Candidate debates (Miami June 26/27, Detroit July 30/31, Houston Sep 12, Westerville OH Oct 15, and Atlanta Nov 20) – with copies each time to each of the candidates – imploring the Moderators to ask the candidates about nuclear power as the only practical solution to Global Warming noting that two candidates (Sen. Cory Booker of NJ and Sen. Michael Bennet of CO were strong supporters) and ask them about thorium fission as the safest and cheapest form of nuclear power?

E-3. Is a copy of the letters sent to those Moderators and Candidates available for download as Adobe.pdf files (together with USPS tracking numbers) at viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1781&sid=c29999a54 ... 00394bde1e?

E-4. Is it disgraceful that none of the Moderators at any of those first five debates OR ANY OF THE SUBSEQUENT DEBATES asked a single question about Global Warming, much less about nuclear fission?

E-5. As noted in our letters, does Bill Gates provide massive financial support for both developing nuclear power and for pushing nuclear-power legislation (for which Senators Booker and Bennet were recruited)?

E-6. Indeed, did Bill Gates author a book extoling the superiority of nuclear power for solving Global Warming entitled “How To Avoid A Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Need and the Breakthroughs We Need” (Knopf 2/16/2021)? Was this the focus of our 5/12/2021 meeting?

E-7. Is Bill Gates a “johnny come lately” to the issue of solving Global Warming with nuclear fission? And does he inexplicably promote uranium-fission despite the facts that thorium fission is safer (incapable of producing a nuclear explosion – indeed, the largest thorium reactor is the earth itself which is why molten lava billows from any rupture in the earth’s surface and why the center of the earth is 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit which is hotter than the sun’s surface) and that thorium has many other advantages catalogued in our letters to the Debate Moderators and Candidates including its being vastly cheaper (most of India’s beaches comprise thorium rather than silicon)?


*****
Section F – Miscellaneous

F-1. Did Naomi Klein author a famous book ““This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate” (Simon & Shuster – Sep 2014) which many Climate-Change activists treat as their “Bible”?

F-2. Was Klein’s “This Changes Everything” the focus of our 2/17/2016 meeting?

F-3. Were we appalled that Klein “turned a blind eye” to nuclear power with a short confession that she had not focused on it at all and was leaving it to nuclear proponents to make their case?

F-4. Did our 4/5/2019 letter to each of the Democratic Candidates (available for download as explained in Question E-3) contain a “PS” on its page 4 that said -

“It is well known that large volcanic eruptions will throw into the atmosphere gases and dust particles whose shading of incoming solar radiation can cool the earth for months and even years.

“[This has caused some wags to remark (however, true) that Global Warming can be solved by occasional, small nuclear wars which, of course, will be much more likely if a nuclear-arms race occurs between “The World’s Greatest ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism’” (The U.S. State Department’s long-standing legally-required description of Iran) and “The Gulf Cooperation Council” (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, The United Arab Emirates, and Oman).]

“In a similar vein, there has been research on seeding the earth’s atmosphere with various substances to achieve the same effect as volcanic eruptions or small nuclear wars. Such an approach (vs., for example, merely adopting the most economical energy source which happens to have no carbon emissions) is likely, at the very least, to incur legal liability. After all, The Russian Federation refused to ratify The Kyoto Protocol for many years because Global Warming would increase Siberia’s growing season -- until the European Union finally agreed to subsidize Russia’s economic loss. [Similar economic disparities were bridged in the Paris Climate Accord by the U.S. promising to adopt uneconomic measures virtually immediately in return for the world’s other great carbon polluters’ adopting uneconomic measures in the distant future.]”

F-5. Was the approach described in the last paragraph of the “PS” developed and promoted by Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (aka SEAS)?

F-6. Is this Harvard SEAS approach what was described in the “Description” of this month’s focus book “Unsettled” on its inside fly cover with the reference to “geoengineering” in the comment –

“Koonin also tackles society's response to a changing climate, using data-driven analysis to explain why many proposed 'solutions' would be ineffective, and discussing how alternatives like adaptation and, if necessary, geoengineering will ensure humanity continues to prosper.”

F-7. On a slightly different topic, did we have a campaign approved at our 11/13/2019 meeting entitled “Saving Global Warming Solution From Being Killed”?

F-8. Did it address the 8/19/2019 presentation of Proton Technologies (a Calgary Alberta-Canada corporation) to the Goldschmidt Conference announcing that it had invented (and obtained patents for) a method of obtaining vast amounts of hydrogen economically which involves injecting oxygen into reservoirs of heavy oil and tar sands, and into coal seams, in order to separate the hydrogen from the oil/tar/coal thereby enabling the hydrogen to float to the surface through hydrogen filters that will trap behind all remaining material including carbon for sequestration in situ?

F-9. Was it sent to the Assistant U.N. Secretary General for UNEP and also to the Director General of the UN’s Worldwide Intellectual Property Organization entitled “Saving Global-Warming Solution From Being Killed” recommending invalidation of any Proton patents if Proton were acquired by any malefactor (e.g., Saudi Arabia) that wanted to put the technology “on ice”?