Chris Moody Mrs. Cummings Advanced Composition 17 September 2012 Nuclear Power “The report called nuclear technology costly, potentially exceeding $7,000 per installed kilowatt, which could make it twice as much as a scrubbed coal-fired plant or three times as expensive as a combined-cycle natural gas-fired plant,” stated Jim Hempstead the Vice President and Senior Credit Officer of Moody’s Investor Service. America should switch to wind and water power generating instead of disaster-lurking nuclear power. Nuclear power is unsafe for the environment, expensive for the economy and unpredictable accidents can occur. Understanding the effects of nuclear power can be difficult because people first need to learn how it is made. Uranium or Plutonium fuel pellets housed in a reactor vessel heat water to six hundred degrees Fahrenheit.
These industrial activities have raised atmospheric gases such as carbon dioxide which contribute to greenhouse gases. The extra amount of these gases mean there is a thicker layer, meaning the gases absorb outgoing long-wave radiation which traps in too much heat. Increasing amounts of CO₂, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapour and ozone all contribute to this. The main cause in this rise is the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, natural gas and petrol. Since the industrial revolution the levels of atmospheric CO₂ have increased from 280 parts per million to 380ppm for the past 10,000.
Although we may be able to sustain a planet with some kind of civilization, the earth that we knew is gone. Oil and fossil fuels are attributed to manual labor and why we are prosperous and why our economies have grown. It is also why we have global warming and acid oceans. Rising temperatures and depleting oil reserves go hand in hand. Modernity may cease with global warming as half the biggest companies are oil companies, and oil is the essence of life.
| | In biological magnification toxins concentrate at higher trophic levels because at these levels biomass tends to be lower. | | Sometimes harmful substances persist for long periods of time in an ecosystem and continue to cause harm. | | Since the Industrial Revolution, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased greatly as a result of burning fossil fuels and wood removed by deforestation. | Carbon Dioxide Problems | One pressing problem caused by human activities is the rising level of atmospheric carbon dioxide. | | The FACTS-I experiment is testing how elevated CO2 influences tree growth, carbon concentration in soils, and other factors over a ten-year period.
Greenhouse gases are mostly comprised of carbon dioxide and methane. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities have increased by 14 percent from 1990 to 2008” (Climate, 2010, slide3). In the last century, the carbon dioxide “concentration in the atmosphere has risen from 280 ppm [parts-per-million] to more than 380 ppm because of the industrial activities of humans” (Ruddiman, 2008, p. 86). We’ve had strong levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the past from volcanoes, but what does this really do to the environment? First off, it raises the temperature, and also the excess carbon dioxide that does not go into the atmosphere eventually gets dissolved in the oceans causing them to acidify.
Another destruction that he talks about is the global warming. Researchers are trying to find expensive ways to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide as it pours from power plant smokestacks and finally won’t enter the atmosphere. But Mckibben claims that the cars and factories and furnaces will keep belching carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as long as we burn fossil fuels. He also cited what Yale economist William Nordhaus says, “the damage from global warming will be confined to farming and forestry, which represent only 3 percent of the
Global warming Do you believe in global warming? I don’t global warming has been a huge debate that will never come to an end. The liberals believe that humans play the biggest part of global warming because we burn fossil fuels and think we need to find a cleaner way to produce energy. The conservatives show that it’s the earth natural cycle and that the earth has been heating and cooling through out history. My views lean toward the conservatives side I believe in facts and proof.
Global warming is found to be caused by the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect has been described, by the US Vice President Al Gore, as the potentially most dangerous environmental problem facing mankind, with consequences second only to nuclear war (CS, What is the Greenhouse Effect?). The Green house effect is the process in which gases build up thermal energy in the atmosphere by absorbing infrared radiation (NS, p625). This process is naturally occurring, it has kept the earth warm enough for the humans to keep living. The earth is about 60% warmer than it would be without the greenhouse effect.
Period-7 Pros: If the Yucca Mountain is used as a nuclear waste depository then it will help store the large amount of nuclear waste that has been piling up in the nuclear power plants for many years. This build-up of nuclear waste poses a hazard to the areas that surround the power plants (such as New York City). The Yucca Mountain Depository resides is in a sparsely populated area and lies over 100 miles from the nearest city. Also the government already owns the land so it would be a waste if they did not use it for anything. The government has spent 10 billion dollars on the Yucca Mountain project already so it would be a waste to not use it, don’t we want our tax dollars to be well spent?
Bobby Carl Neal Peters English 102 26 April 2012 What a Fracking Opportunity The United States has an energy problem. We are dependent on Petro-dictators for the energy needed to fuel our economy. But recently, due to a new technology called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, new estimates of accessible natural gas reserves have increased dramatically. Used throughout the United States and worldwide, this process has profitably unlocked Trillions (emphasis added) of cubic feet of natural gas here at home in just the past few years. Concern about this new technology spans the political divide.