But it warms the water!!! - Thermal plants

[OVERKILL]

Already read it. I'll leave it at I work in the area of Key Message 5.

Ahhhh:

So a vested interest in water management. Makes sense.

 

[Shannow]

Capping some of the points...
Like a thermal vent (extreme), the heated water (Oz stations have both temperature rise limits and outlet temperature limits) changes the ecosystem bery locally. As a kid, the best fishing in Adelaide was the Torrens Island power station outlet, which we did reguarly...and in NSW, the size of the fish and diversity around Lake Macquarie (Eraring and Vales point are amazing - trespassing is common, and discouraged...deep fast moving water...Eraring has "attemperating" water, where additional cool fresh water is released into the discharge to bring both delta T and absolute T down to limits...some stations also use "thermal shock" to clean heat exchange tubes where there's buildup of muscles and biofouling in the tubes themselves.
Back to Huron...
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14634980802098705?journalCode=uaem20
"Monthly mean total heat flux ranges from −155 W m− 2 in December to 154 W m− 2 in June".

So given the thermal discharge and areas, and if my HP15C skills are still functional, that's another 0.27 watts per square on top (yes, there's more localised, but the measurement quoted is average of the whole show.

A natural draft cooling tower - would extract and evaporate 320+ML/day...then deal with the salts left after evaopration.

 

[bbhero]

No insult was attempted, if this is going sideways, I'll have the thread locked, I honestly thought you didn't see the legend.

Yes, and those yellow areas cover most of the lakes in question, while Superior, which doesn't have any plants on its northern border, is clearly experiencing the biggest changes and is upstream from all of these other lakes. Yes, the plants are in the yellow section, but, as I said, that's most of the lake(s). It would be difficult for them not to be.
View attachment 118562
Subsequently, not seeing the "gotcha" you seem to think this is?

Again, that's almost the entire lake with Huron and Ontario. Yet there are no thermal plants on the northern shore of Superior, and it's clearly the most affected.

Perhaps all of the above. Superior is by far the biggest lake, and the source of most of the water for all of the others, so if it is getting warmer, that's going to have a trickle-down effect.

True ^^^^^^

Used to be a extremely thick and massive ice sheet across that entire region, the upper US Midwest and upper part of the northeast US.

Cold times aka much shorter growing seasons, loss of crops to cold, loss of domesticated animals to cold weather, loss of acreage to cold weather conditions led to far harder times for people vs it being warmer than average for a long period of time.

Funny.... Precipitation changes.... That hilarious.... Don't think Lewis and Clark discovered lots of natives with rain gauges back in that time.


Real.... Real accurate temperature observations, hurricane information and measurements and rain measurements are exceedingly and exceptionally short in terms of just how old this planet is. Like it's practically... Hardly nothing.

 

[MNgopher]

While I agree that the record in terms of the planet's lifespan is short, does that mean we should just ignore that data that we do have - since its "too short" of a time period?

As an example, most of the work I do is based on statistics from the very data we are saying is exceptionally short. In my career, we've revised the rainfall data three times that we size drainage features with. The last one increased our major design size by over 20% in the areas I work, and most practicing in the arena agree it isn't large enough of an increase...

 

[wpod]

True ^^^^^^

Used to be a extremely thick and massive ice sheet across that entire region, the upper US Midwest and upper part of the northeast US.

Cold times aka much shorter growing seasons, loss of crops to cold, loss of domesticated animals to cold weather, loss of acreage to cold weather conditions led to far harder times for people vs it being warmer than average for a long period of time.

Funny.... Precipitation changes.... That hilarious.... Don't think Lewis and Clark discovered lots of natives with rain gauges back in that time.


Real.... Real accurate temperature observations, hurricane information and measurements and rain measurements are exceedingly and exceptionally short in terms of just how old this planet is. Like it's practically... Hardly nothing

BB, you are not one of those that actually believed there was an ice age and the climate changed, the Earth warmed and the ice melted are you !!!

 

[IndyIan]

True ^^^^^^

Used to be a extremely thick and massive ice sheet across that entire region, the upper US Midwest and upper part of the northeast US.

Cold times aka much shorter growing seasons, loss of crops to cold, loss of domesticated animals to cold weather, loss of acreage to cold weather conditions led to far harder times for people vs it being warmer than average for a long period of time.

Funny.... Precipitation changes.... That hilarious.... Don't think Lewis and Clark discovered lots of natives with rain gauges back in that time.


Real.... Real accurate temperature observations, hurricane information and measurements and rain measurements are exceedingly and exceptionally short in terms of just how old this planet is. Like it's practically... Hardly nothing.

While our brief time of direct measurements is short, with our large changes in land use, and pollution, over population, the industrial age is on the scale of a large meteor strike, taking only 100's of years instead of an instant... Both are a blink in geologic time, but for people 100's of years is both short and long.
I think some day, the belief or hope that humans aren't effecting the climate or planet in a huge way will be seen like the catholic church denying that the planets circle the sun... The only problem is that the longer we wait, the worse the situation becomes.

 

[OVERKILL]

While our brief time of direct measurements is short, with our large changes in land use, and pollution, over population, the industrial age is on the scale of a large meteor strike, taking only 100's of years instead of an instant... Both are a blink in geologic time, but for people 100's of years is both short and long.
I think some day, the belief or hope that humans aren't effecting the climate or planet in a huge way will be seen like the catholic church denying that the planets circle the sun... The only problem is that the longer we wait, the worse the situation becomes.

Compounding the problem is that many areas of the earth are still "underway" in their industrial revolution. Third world economies struggling to join the first world and going the same route as we did using FF's. China and India, while both with very ambitious nuclear programs, are still building coal capacity to keep pace with demand increases due to their emerging economies.

Efforts by Western nations to curb their emissions are overshadowed by these places. But this is not just due to their pursuit of a higher standard of living; a Western level standard of living, but also because much of our heralded "emissions reduction" is actually emissions relocation. Rare earth mining in China for example, is huge. Smelting, casting, fabrication, much of this has been offshored to places with more lax environmental standards, which, coupled with cheaper labour, is a prime motivator. So, not only are you not actually reducing emissions, you are, in effect, making things worse by allowing that manufacturing to take place under less stringent standards, AND, you are now imposing the emissions penalty of shipping these components halfway around the globe. All of this so you can pat yourself on the back and claim you are working to "clean things up".

 

[Owen Lucas]

Oh no the poor fishies! Thank you for explaining this Overkill, a drop in the bucket thermally speaking, especially from such a massive power plant.