Thought this would be a usefull link

Russia is one place I have never visited and have wanted to. I know that your experiences there were heightened by Chernobyl.

Impressed with this discussion.

BTW, I was in Kiev on a citizen diplomacy tour two weeks before chernobyl, and met people who shared my profession of teaching and their families. My reaction to the accident was quite different from others in that I had met real people and was now concerned about their welfare. Went back to Kiev less than a year later and learned of the horror stories of them shipping all the kids out by train…. Hard to even contemplate what their situation is by now, hope ok… One teacher and his family were outside having a picnic along the river when it happend…

Back then we were volunteering outside the work day with Palo Alto based Beyond War and others educating to end the nuclear arms race in the 1980’s between the US and then USSR. To think there are 20,000 plus still around boggles my mind. The relationship with the USSR changed, Beyond War metamorphed into the Foundation for Global Community. It has recently been reorganized under that name (see http://www.beyondwar.org).

For the last three years or so years Laura and I taught high school, which we retired from two years ago, we and some students were involved in a project with the Center for Non Proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies, the Naval Post Graduate School, and others in Monterey, California. They would brief we secondary school teachers in the fall on a topic related to weapons of mass destruction nonproliferation efforts and treaties etc, then we would facilitate student research and bring the students back in the spring to make their reports.

What struck me then listening to experts on weaponization and radical islam and vested scientific and industrial interests in this country, and continues to concern me now, is how relatively little is being done to retire our old nukes, not to mention old chemical weapons, which we saw pictures of piled in tepees out in a place that you would not believe … now there are plans to make more and ‘better’ ones….

In the City of Austin where we lived since the mid 70s, which owns its own utility company, voters got us out of participating in the South Texas Nuclear Power Project and all of its continuing problems–but we cannot really get away from it, only four hours away north by car and the prevailing wind is from the south.

The local newspaper published a graphic that showed measurable fallout made it to Texas from Chernobyl. My car breaks down, your car breaks down, mechanical things have problems, people get sloppy and make mistakes. Though I agree that terrorist activity is a concern, a far greater concern in my view is the near permanent problems of nuclear waste and power plant and weapon maintenance.

I think we should be concentrating all our treasure and creativity to get rid of the nuclear power plants and bombs. This post is about climate change….My contribution has rambled, sorry about that. Nuclear winter is not my idea of a good time. How to do something about it? Me up here in the ac with my laptop hooked into the grid….

As far as I can remember that was the biggest scare about nuclear power in the US. In April 26, 1986, Chernobyl made the world aware that these power plants could be a disaster waiting to happen .

With the growth of terrorist activity around the world, the importance of safety at these plants has more to be concerned about than run away nuclear fission.

http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-59/iss-2/p19.html

Thanks for the critique on the Australian article. I will check out the article that you posted.

My comments on the Colorado & California were somewhat facetious - whenever there is a heat wave or unusually long periods between rain events, the media usually attributes it to the impacts of global warming. Next time I will clearly indicate my sarcasm.

There are many periods in history where the temperatures were much higher than they are today. In a climatological sense, having a series of 11 out of 12 years being the warmest may or may not have real significance. But it certainly indicates a bias towards warmer temperatures. If the warming is due to anthropogenic sources, then I am surprised that the folks that believe in global warming aren’t promoting greenhouse-friendly nuclear power as one solution. But that is a discussion for another day.

Rob Alan

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/early-warning-signs-of-global-warming-coral-reef-bleaching.html

I forgot to address the quiet 2006 Atlantic hurricane season. It is really quite simple. An unexpected El Nino suppressed western Atlantic activity, but the Pacific had an very active season. Rising sea surface do not in themselves guarantee an active season. Other conditions have to be in place (low wind shear, low Afican dust, etc.). However, all other factors equal, warmer water increases hurricane intensity. How well I know from experiencing the wrath of “Charley” here in Florida. Temperatures in the eastern Gulf of Mexico that year was neart record levels and Charley blosssomed quickly into a Category 4 storm as it came off the coast of Cuba in a matter of hours.

With regard to the comment about the cold weather in California and Colorado, I can only say that we have to be careful to make a distinction between weather and climate. At the same time the west was enveloped in arctic air mass, the northeast had unprecedented warmth. At this point, 2007 is poised to be the warmest winter on record. Moreover, 11 of the warmest years in our climatological history have occurred during the last 12 years. I think we’re all in agreement that the planet is warming, whether naturally or as exacerbated by Man’s activities. Warming at this juncture in our planet’s history more be more consequential that at any other time because terrestrial populations are restricted to small, fragmented habitats. They are no longer able to migrate to more thermally comfortable environments as in the past..