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There was an article posted on /. a while back that showed a two pronged attack on the bees by I think a mite and a pathogen that caused the death of whole hives.

This sounds like some anti-pesticide religious fanatic trying to whip up hysteria while trying to make the FDA and the pesticide industry look bad.

The FDA screens pesticides for how they will be used, how mobile the pesticide is and how long the residue lasts. If this was not done then cry foul.

This is what I could find in a few minutes searching http://www.thefederalregister.com/d.p/2006-12-13-E6-20898 I have not found the application for use as a seed coating but Bayer would have needed to go through a process to get that approved by the EPA.

Ah, here is the fact sheet http://www.epa.gov/opprd001/factsheets/clothianidin.pdf

Endangered Species
Clothianidin is expected to present acute and/or chronic toxicity risk to endangered/threatened birds
and mammals via possible ingestion of treated corn and canola seeds. Endangered/threatened non-
target insects may be impacted via residue laden pollen and nectar. The potential use sites cover the
entire U.S. because corn is grown in almost all U.S. states. The registrant must provide information
on the proximity of Federally listed birds, mammals, and non-target insects to the proposed use sites.
This information may best be provided via the FIFRA Endangered Species Task Force, but may be
produced independently, providing the information is of sufficient quality to meet FIFRA and
Endangered Species Act requirements. The information will be used by the EPA to develop specific
recommendations to avoid adverse effects to listed species.

To address ecological concerns, labeling will be required that mandates treated seed bags be printed
with advisory language regarding hazards to wildlife and will include specific instructions to cover
or collect clothianidin treated seeds that are spilled during loading. In order to fully evaluate the
possibility of chronic exposure to honey bees, a complete worker bee life cycle study will be
required, as well as an evaluation of exposure and effects to the queen. Sediment toxicity testing
will be required to address the uncertainty of possible risk to communities of invertebrates and fish
that inhabit or come into contact with sediment from fields planted with treated seed.

The public will react the same way that they reacted to fifty years of nuclear fallout. Don't accurately measure the radiation dosage to start with and you can never attribute the mass death and suffering to the radiation exposure! Easy peasy. As long as you feel safe on the airplane, all other worries go roght out the window.

The biggest question this article raises in my mind is.... why does the USDA need 120,000 employees? There are only around 960,000 farmers in the USA - is it really necessary to have 1 USDA employee for every 9 farmers?

Do you seriously believe that unregulated markets are immune to manipulation? My god, man! What's the free market price on a bushel of corn in Mogadishu this time of year?

I didn't say an unregulated market can't be manipulated. I said that rules that aren't made can't be broken. If there are no rules, the buyers make their own rules.

You can bet no one is selling corn at the Mogadishu market where the Bacillus Thuringiensis level is above the norm.

Not necessarily. Ships have to follow rules and regulations of the countries they disembark at. The US EPA is starting to clamp down on such pollution, so I am not sure the breathless rant in TFA is really warranted.

It's also not true that ships are "utterly uncontrolled, free to emit whatever they like." See, for example, these regulations. Note the MARPOL, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution From Ships, treaty conventions.

Oh you mean the ozone that protects everyone here on earth is suddenly gone when flying?

No, the ozone isn't gone, but you are flying partly outside of its protection. At ground level, the entire atmosphere offers you maximum protection from cosmic radiation. The higher you go, the more you'll get, and aircraft aluminum has little to no shielding effect.

The "ozone layer" is not something like a Star Trek shield that offers 100% protection from everything until it suddenly vanishes. Protection from cosmic radiation is offered because the Earth has a very thick atmosphere and most (not all) cosmic radiation is absorbed into that atmosphere at various levels. While it is true that the actual ozone layer offers a lot of the protection, the rest of the atmosphere plays a significant role, and the higher up you go the more your exposure to radiation.

Fortunately, even at 50,000 feet, it's not a massive megadose of radiation, but if you fly a whole lot (like, say, a pilot), it's something you need to be aware of.

I have heard lots of people saying that but absolutely no science to back that statement up.

According to the EPA, radiation exposure on a cross-country flight is 2-5 millirem(1). The World Health Organization agrees with that number (2). The FAA has a web page dedicated to the levels of exposure for their pilots (3). NASA is even more concerned about the radiation exposure on polar flights, where protection is even weaker (4).

(1): http://www.epa.gov/radtown/cosmic.html
(2): http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/env/cosmic/en/
(3): http://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/aeromedical/radiobiology/reports/
(4): http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/AGU-NAIRAS.html

If you mistrust scientists and want to see the science for yourself, carry a radiation dosimeter on your next flight (provided you buy one that measures in millirem or lower) and test it for yourself.

For a typical cross-country flight in a commercial airplane, you are likely to receive 2 to 5 millirem (mrem) of radiation, less than half the radiation dose you receive from a chest x-ray.

So you may be right about that. However, the observation posted by commodore64_love above about the concentration of the scanner dose in the skin does alter the picture a little.

You both understand that the Clean Air/Clean Water Act made it possible for common citizens to sue over pollution, right? Citation

I assume that you also realize, that, before the act, you couldn't, right?

Mod parent up.

Here is an EPA article confirming this.

You're not taking into consideration the energy required to make the book, or to transport it to the marketplace. The amount of carbon sequestered in the physical pages of a book is insignificant in comparison.

The production of a book releases 8.85 lbs. of CO_2:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/emeraldcity/2008/06/paper-vs-paperl.html

Here's a page which indicates most CO_2 production is for energy:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html

And here's a page which indicates that CO_2 production is a much larger problem for the manufacturing of electronics:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49730
w/ a ratio of 12 to 1 for energy usage to weight, so my PRS-505 weighs roughly 9 ozs., so presumably required 108 ounces of fuel to manufacture (on-going energy usage is trivial and not considered)
http://www.epa.gov/oms/climate/420f05001.htm
gives us a figure of 19.4 pounds of CO_2 per gallon of gasoline which equals roughly 16.36875 pounds of CO_2 to make the ebook reader.

So getting two books for the Sony should make it roughly break even, and each printed book beyond that which is not purchased should result in a net reduction of CO_2 emissions, since the energybulletin.net page indicates that the embodied energy usage for electronics is much greater than the lifetime usage.

(1) Remember that diesel has about 1/3rd more BTUs per gallon than gasoline, so achieving 70mpg is no great feat. VW sold a Lupo that got 88mpg highway, and built a three-person family prototype that had 120 mpg.

Citation please? The US EPA cites that diesel is 137,000 btu/gal, all of 7,000 Btu/gal more than gasoline, at 130,000 Btu/gal. A 5% difference, but not a 30% difference.

http://www.epa.gov/ttn/chief/ap42/appendix/appa.pdf

Diesel is also arguably dirtier than gasoline. It's a bit of tradeoff.

The EPA ban on DDT only covered the United States. The EPA doesn't have the authority to make a worldwide ban. DDT is still in use in other parts of the world to combat malaria. The US gets around 1500 cases of malaria every year, but as far as I am aware there are no deaths.

Your linked article is very misleading.

I have three old hard drives. When can Japan pick them up?

I'm pretty sure you were making a joke, but the best option is to get off your ass and take them to your local recycler (the EPA has a partial list). I find that a lot of people who crow about how important that we recycle our waste, that is, how other people should recycle their waste, can't be bothered to actually take care of recycling their own crap.

not a bacteriological one. Antibiotics will do absolutely nothng against a viral disease.

But antimicrobials do work against viruses, and they are overused as well.

Falcon

Yep, but you usually output about 100-200 gr of feces (that's the figure I remember from my Physiology class, can't find a citation; The best I found on-line is here). Since we usually eat a lot more than that, the mass should be leaving the body by other means. We don't lose much heavy molecules through the urine and perspiration. The latter contains mostly water and salts, while the former also contains some waste molecules, but not in a meaningful amount (weight-wise). That leaves only one other venue - CO2 in our respiration.

Bingo: water.
Not just feces and urine should account for a lot of what comes out, most folks forget that most things we eat also have a lot of water.

Also your conclusion is wrong, since breathing puts out a lot of water (as does keeping our skin nice-looking; "hydrating" creams acts by sucking water from the lower skins layers to the top).

I think the amount of carbon we emit in the form of CO2 has got to be puny. But let's see:

Normal breathing uses 6 l/min of air and when it comes out it goes from 0.04% CO2 to (4 to) 5% CO2.

Now, 6 l/min = 8640 l/day or (340 to) 430 liter of CO2 exhaled per day. That's (630 to) 790 gram of CO2 output per day. That is actually in line with an estimation of 1 kg.

But the O2 was not actually coming from us; it is taken from the air and given back with the C attached to it. The carbon atom is 27.3% of the CO2 atomic mass, so we are actually putting out (172 to) 216 gram of carbon per day.

So let's peg that as 200 gram/day of matter output through CO2 rejection. Now, to put this into perspective, we need to somehow estimate how much mass a person inputs per day. The problem is that this varies wildly. I think we can agree on 2 kg/day of water from drinking fluids. On top of this we have food; I just looked up a couple of snacks (150 g) and instant meals (350 g) and I think that a 3 meal day with a couple of snacks could easily get to 1.4 kg/day of food.

That's a total of around 3.4 kg/day of mass coming in and 0.2 kg/day of mass going out through CO2 in breathing. That's around 6% of our mass loss.

So, please tell your nephew - supposing he has a good diet with plenty of fluids - that >90% of what he ingests goes out as urine, perspiration, water loss in respiration and feces.

ps - I have not counted nails, hair and skin cells, which are always growing (the former) and being renewed (the latter).
pps - I found a study that puts feces at 300 g/day and a post that puts water loss at 2.8 kg/day. Add to that the 200 g/day of carbon out through CO2 and you get a good match to the supposed 3.4 kg/day total input.

Nonetheless, CFLs are not exactly harmless or carefree either; e.g., from the EPA recommendations for "Cleaning Up a Broken CFL":

"If clothing or bedding materials come in direct contact with broken glass or mercury-containing powder from inside the bulb that may stick to the fabric, the clothing or bedding should be thrown away. Do not wash such clothing or bedding because mercury fragments in the clothing may contaminate the machine and/or pollute sewage."

[snopes quotes much of this same text, but for some reason that particular section ("4. Clean-up Steps for Clothing, Bedding, etc.") was omitted from the snopes story.]

Bulbs do break, and it's pretty much guaranteed that a large proportion of such breakages in the home won't follow the recommended cleanup procedures.

we pick up and vacuum up the pieces of broken CFLs without hazmat suits all the time,

Actually vacuuming is the one thing you are not suppose to do!

http://www.epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup.html

And sure the ill effects of one or two might not be noticeable but if you have young'ns in house it may long term

I crunched the numbers on this a while ago ( http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=619831&postcount=11 ).

Given that each hardcover book releases ~8.85 pounds of CO_2 ( http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/emeraldcity/2008/06/paper-vs-paperl.html )

And a Sony ebook reader (I used the weight of my old Sony PRS-505, 9 ozs.) requires ~16 pounds of CO_2 to manufacture (CO_2 footprint for energy: http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/carbon.html role in manufacturing: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49730 and ratio of 12 to 1 for energy usage to weight: http://www.epa.gov/oms/climate/420f05001.htm )

Reading 3 books on an ebook reader (which otherwise would have been purchased as printed books) puts one ahead (of course in a library situation this is ameliorated by the sharing out of the book among many readers).

That said, I mostly read public domain classics which I get from sites like www.mobileread.com

William

Oh, look, a Wordpress blog. Try this:
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/models/ngm/may04/crc0304c.pdf
http://www.scribd.com/doc/1694562/Environmental-Protection-Agency-eberhardt

Drop the worshipping finally; it will only bring trouble down the line / your deamons had similar faithfull at the beginning who pushed them too much.

Actually, it is thought that nearly ALL of their coal is loaded with more mercury than is America's. The problem is that it is not known fully. China has tried to keep it quiet
In fact, back in the 90's, China became the number 1 polluter back around mid 90's, and And continue to grow. Several studies have claimed that china has accounted for over 1/2 of all mercury emissions of all times by 2006 (or was it 2005). This is caused by their coal being such low grade, but also because they refuse to use their pollution control (it costs money to run it).
Now, I did in fact hear about all the other issues, HOWEVER, the mercury issue is a bigger issue. The reason is that the clean-up on that will be difficult. The rest will sort itself out globally, once emissions comes to a stop, or are brought under control. BUT, the mercury that China has, and continues to emit, will continue in our environment for decades, if not CENTURIES, to cause issues. The clean up on that will be so costly, that it will never occur. And china will never take responsibility for their actions.

Finally, their emissions CONTINUE TO INCREASE at an increasing rate. Neither the amount, nor the rate, are decreasing. If their gov. would require that they run all pollution control, then overnight, they would drop their mercury emission to 1/3 of what they have today. Of course, their electrical costs will jump 50-100%, but that is another issue.

I agree if you define "not being stupid" as buying the most economical used car. I picked the Accord because it's a similar size to the Prius. Presumably some buyers get a Prius despite it being a midsize car, because if you buy a smaller new car such as a Mini or Smart, you can only get worse mpg (!). If size and refinement don't matter, definitely get a 40mpg 1992 Civic (35 city / 43 highway) or the stellar 1994 Geo Metro XFi shitbox that Wired mentions and you're ahead on energy efficiency. (Quite a bit worse on smog, but that's a different analysis.)

However, as I pointed out that doesn't work for the auto fleet as a whole. It's not full of 40mpg econocars! Average passenger car mpg was 22.1 mpg in 2001 and if you think many "light trucks" are just car substitutes, it may have gone down since then. If you assume buying a new fuel-efficient car puts a 22 mpg car off the road, you're back to it being more energy-efficient than buying used.

One other point. My comparison was strictly based on weight of car vs. weight of fuel it consumes, the point being a car consumes far more petrol than it weighs. When you change one side of the equation to 1000 gallons of energy to produce the car, you need to change the other side to add the energy it takes to produce the gasoline. Oil companies are notoriously secretive about their production costs and processes, but I've seen estimates of 0.23 gallons to get one gallon in your tank, and it's only getting worse as we burn up the easy oil and shift to boiling tar and drilling in deep water.

29% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions comes from transportation and it is the fastest-growing source of GHGs as explained here. So yes, the SUV does matter. A lot.

Perhaps you have magic eyes that can look at a piece of fish and see the mercury in it. Do you have any useful advice (i.e. not platitudes) for those of us with normal vision?

The cocksucking regulators do. As do a large number of medical, consumer, and environmental advocacy groups.

You use and switch between two different currencies, then have numbers that don't indicate which currency you are using. This is confusings.

No, I don't; I used CAD throughout. I just got tired of writing "CAD" after every number, so I started only writing it in the places where I felt it was needed for emphasis.

You choose an average annual driving distance that is around 12,000 miles, but the average in the U.S. is around 15,000 miles, per the USFDOT.

I didn't choose the number; the study did. And where did you get that number for the average annual driving distance in the US? It's about 12,000, too.

but then you shift over to the average age of a car in the U.S. as opposed to Canada.

Yes; I don't have that data. But I assume it's the same.

Rebates are pretty self-explanatory. Financing costs are interest, processing fees, and the other costs associated with an automobile loan. You do not support your contention that they seem to cancel each other out.

I assumed the readers could do basic math. You have the price of the vehicles. You have the gas costs. You have the final cost of price + gas + fees + rebates. Are you telling me that you can't determine (fees + rebates)?

You make the assumption that the used Prius will be an excellent deal, but you do not support this

What do you think the lifespan gas savings calculation was for?

there is the specter of battery replacement.

Which even today is only $2.3k if you get a new battery, and far less if you get a used one (you must have missed all of the price drops). It's now like getting your transmission replaced, and it'll be even cheaper in the future. And, FYI, given that almost none of the batteries end up getting replaced during the warranty period, what makes you think they're all going to drop dead the instant the warranty expires? Data from Prius taxis strongly suggests this is not the case. Lastly, there are advantages in hybrid maintenance as well relating to the engine getting to operate in a more optimal torque/rpm environment, less wear on the friction brakes, etc.

My point in bringing it up was not that you were wrong, but that you were not being critical and honest. Wow, you are really sensitive to ad hominems, but you call me "George Bush" which is quite obviously an ad hominem. At least mine was in response to a claim you actually made.

Right. So I'm not wrong I'm just "twisting the truth". So it's not an ad hominem attack it's just a flat out insult. Why the fuck wouldn't I be sensitive to the connotation that I'm a liar. Take a step back and have some manners and I won't ridicule you in return. That behavior is typical of Nuclear Fanboi's > stdout when it should be > /dev/null. Don't do that stdarg if you sincerely want to have an intelligent conversation.

You should have mentioned that

As I said "I'm short on time so I'll summarise" because I do have *other* obligations.

CFCs are currently used in the refinement process but that the plants responsible for them were designed and built in the 1950s before CFCs were even on the radar. Further, efforts are underway to develop a new process that does not use CFCs. And already, the CFC use was reduced by 2/3 since 2001.

That's awesome but it doesn't change the facts CFC 114 is STILL USED for enrichment TODAY, and that up to 1 million pounds of CFC114 have leaked into the atmosphere per year since the inception of the Montreal protocol in 1995. CFC 114 attacks the ozone layer, the ozone layer that protects that algae that makes THE OXYGEN WE BREATHE.

But you don't have to believe me just read the submissions made to the UN for the Montreal Protocol. Or of course Environmental effects of ozone depletion: 1998 Assessment. and the epa data is available for your analysis.

Do you think your remarks, which left out even a mere mention of these developments, were critical and honest about the requirement of CFCs in uranium production?

I did mention them, I said "So you're saying that all the problems with ultracentrifuge technology has been solved, it's commercially implemented on an industrial scale in America and that Paducah has been shut down.". If we were having a specific conversation about enrichment I might ask you if they have solved the problems with bearing technology in the devices or improved the energy efficiency per SWU or some other thing that changes the status quo. I see nothing in the article you sent me about an actual implementation date or that the unit was functioning in an industrial capacity. So since ultracentrifuge, American Centrifuge etc are not actually implemented industrial processes, absol-fucking-lootley I think it's not only critical and honest but more importantly completely specifically relevant.

Otherwise, did you run across that information and find something conflicting and credible to reject USEC's claims, and then decide the whole thing is not worth mentioning? Presenting pertinent facts and honest reporting about *both sides* is essential to being critical and honest.

What's critical is an article, link, or what ever that Paducah has been shut down, that the CFC114 process has been retired and then might be worth mentioning, it might be pertinent. What's honest is UltraCentrifuge is what might be, not what is. Sure it will be great if they actually get it going and stop using CFC114, one day.

But even if they do it won't change the energy equation for the Nuclear industry. That why wind and solar are far more useful and usable technologies.

Citation? That seems like basic economics and common sense to me. The energy used to gather and refine the fu

http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/sources/tobacco.html

The article gives almost no information about what the funding is used for other than: renewable good, fossil fuels bad. If you look at the current renewable power production in the US it is 7% of the total and coincidentally the total funding worldwide for renewable energy is roughly 7.5%. While you can argue about giving more funding to renewable energy, they article gives zero information about what the money is used for. The funding could have been used for implementing cleaner technology on existing power plants (oddly enough they won't disappear overnight no matter how much you want them to). Just this year the EPA passed Boiler MACT II which will require large capital costs to install additional environmental equipment.

If you want to make the largest impact possible to reduct emissions you can't neglect your current power grid.

Umm... HOV lanes increase congestion by reducing the number of available lanes for most drivers while rewarding the environmentally conscious ones with a special no/limited congestion lane. If you go to http://www.epa.gov/oms/ld-hwy.htm and scroll down to High Occupancy Vehicle Exemption Proposed Rule you may notice that it's the EPAs website and that it talks about pollution not congestion. I am curious to know where your idea that it was about congestion came from though.

Naturally occurring levels of arsenic in drinking water is legal.

False. Over 10 ppb arsenic naturally occurring in your water source? Guess what? Yeah, you have to remove the arsenic before you send it to people as drinking water. That’s expensive? Too bad.

Oh, and the regulatory limit on uranium levels in drinking water is 30 ug/L. Anthrax in the water supply? You’d better be achieving at least 4-log removal/inactivation for virii – that’s 99.99%. In fact, there’s a whole list of regulated contaminants.

Naturally occurring levels of arsenic in drinking water is legal.

False. Over 10 ppb arsenic naturally occurring in your water source? Guess what? Yeah, you have to remove the arsenic before you send it to people as drinking water. That’s expensive? Too bad.

Oh, and the regulatory limit on uranium levels in drinking water is 30 ug/L. Anthrax in the water supply? You’d better be achieving at least 4-log removal/inactivation for virii – that’s 99.99%. In fact, there’s a whole list of regulated contaminants.

Calling your opponent a fucktard hardly helps make your case. In fact, reasonable undecided readers will likely write you off for using the word.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

http://www.pewclimate.org/global-warming-basics/facts_and_figures

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.html

http://www.skepticalscience.com/

http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/

http://www.ecosalon.com/top-10-global-warming-denier-arguments-debunked-part-2/

http://earthfirst.com/desmogblog-debunks-the-global-warming-skeptics-handbook/

http://mediamatters.org/research/200601250007

Hope this helps.

Of course, they could have turned down the President. Of course, in that case they probably would have been sued by the Federal government into even greater oblivion for the damages they have caused.

I doubt it. There is a federal law capping damages such as this. They're required to pay for the CLEANUP, but thanks to George H. W. Bush (Bush Sr.) and 101st Congress, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 was passed that limited liability to $75 million plus cleanup costs.

So there is a specific federal law dealing with the. And there is a specific Constitutional clause that prohibits Ex Post Facto laws. So, the Fed would have lost in court and BP... well, probably not much would have happened to BP other than some regulatory issues to begin with. However, some more cocaine, hookers and bribes would have taken care of that over time.

Don't believe me? Tell me how fast and how much Exxon was made to pay in compensation for the Exxon Valdez disaster. (A hint: decades and not much) And how is Exxon's reputation today? Not bad, judging by the amount of business they do and how much money they make. (Hint: An assload and a mega assload).

In highly sealed buildings they actually need to install air exchangers due to indoor air pollution. Remember: synthetics (carpet, formica, your freezer and rerigerator) outgas, mold grows (I don't care HOW much you clean, if you live in a region where humidity resembles a steam room you WILL get mold), people sneeze, insects and other wild creatures (small rodents, etc.) will find or make a way into your home and they pollute. All mammals, including people, shed. Cooking creates pollutants (oils, soot, etc.) and so forth.

So, in a modern semi-airtight building you need an air exchanger. Check this out:

http://www.epa.gov/iaq/ia-intro.html
http://www.epa.gov/iaq/is-imprv.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_exchanger

In highly sealed buildings they actually need to install air exchangers due to indoor air pollution. Remember: synthetics (carpet, formica, your freezer and rerigerator) outgas, mold grows (I don't care HOW much you clean, if you live in a region where humidity resembles a steam room you WILL get mold), people sneeze, insects and other wild creatures (small rodents, etc.) will find or make a way into your home and they pollute. All mammals, including people, shed. Cooking creates pollutants (oils, soot, etc.) and so forth.

So, in a modern semi-airtight building you need an air exchanger. Check this out:

http://www.epa.gov/iaq/ia-intro.html
http://www.epa.gov/iaq/is-imprv.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_exchanger

The problem with geothermal is that after you extract the heat from the rocks, it takes time for the surrounding rock to heat up the cool spot you've created.

The problem with geothermal power is cleaning up the toxic waste.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: geothermal power is a total failure on all levels. I live within shootin' distance of The Geysers, the most geothermally active region known to exist on Earth. We have a geothermal plant here which is continually over budget and under-producing. The turbine blades are built by Halliburton, which is a disaster in itself. After they have been in service for a certain period of time, they must be cleaned of buildup of toxics like Arsenic which are released from the vent along with the steam. Most of the hot springs in town have measurable Arsenic content. This is simply pressure-washed off, and the slurry stored in open pits for evaporation. After this process has been repeated a sufficient number of times the pit is covered over and the walls raised. They used to put it in drums and bury them in a field on one of the roads out of town but the drums started leaking and cows were being born with two heads and that sort of thing, so they "cleaned it up". Oh, sorry, THEY didn't clean it up, we did. It was a superfund site; we still have one of those operating in town, for similar compounds. The "solution" was to dig it all up, put in a rubber liner, and bury it again.

There are other types of geothermal power options, like heat pipes, but all you have to know about them is that they are terribly inefficient (not that any geothermal plant in the world is producing any amazing amount of power) and they don't last, just like the turbine blades in our example. You're always digging things up and replacing them, which is terribly impractical. The simple truth is that solar panels could repay the energy cost of production in under seven years back in the 1970s and if all the money spent on geothermal plants was spent on even PV solar plants we would have produced a lot more power for the same amount of money.

Anyone promoting Geothermal power for low environmental impact is either ignorant or trolling.

There are always proposals to replace MPG with gallons per hundred miles or something of that sort, since the latter would show the even decline.

You know what else shows the "even decline" -- and uses units that are more familiar to people and more directly state the personal impact? Stating the estimated fuel cost in dollars/year using consistent assumptions across a class of vehicles.

Which, incidentally, the current EPA fuel economy label already does. So the complaint that we need a prominent consumption measure instead of a mileage rating is misguided -- not because we don't need to have a consumption measure on the fuel economy label, but because that's what is already dead center on the label.

Just because it's funny to say "Straight from the horse's mouth":
http://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/pressreleases?id=1109

But here's the primary link:
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment.html

They're using the endangerment clause ("air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare") of the Clean Air Act (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode42/usc_sec_42_00007521----000-.html), intended to be used to regulate actually dangerous emissions, to regulate CO2.

Enough links? =)

Actually you are not allowed any CO2 from a ZEV either. Zero CO2, CO, HC, particulates, and CO2. At least that is the common use of the term. This allows plugin hybrids WHEN IN ELECTRIC ONLY MODE, mostly straight electrics, and at least in theory, hydrogen (only) fuel cells. The whole point of the recent CO2 regulatory rulings is that CO2 _IS_ now to be regarded as a pollutant.

A PZEV on the other hand is so watered down that it can just be a clean conventional vehicle with an extra good emissions warranty. PZEV is basically horse shit. What the hell is "partial zero," anyway? However, the term is at least well defined.

Updated The Zero Emission Vehicle Regulation - Frequently Asked Questions - warning PDF

EPA Sets Thresholds for Greenhouse Gas Permitting Requirements

The article says the difference is about 500 times the volume of the great lakes, which have a volume of 5,439 mi^3. That would be about 2.5 million cubic miles, or a bit less than a 1% change between the old and new estimates.

She only mentioned the undersea patches in the context of downplaying press reports about the severity of the impact:

http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doc/2931/552671/

(I haven't figured out the owner of that site, but the EPA links it, so it isn't way off the reservation: http://www.epa.gov/bpspill/dispersants.html )

Citation:
http://www.epa.gov/radtown/cosmic.html

Try Googling cosmic ray exposure airplane flight.

Ya, my memory was off by an order of magnitude or so, 6 hours in the air is a week's worth of radiation, not a month's.

And note to self: Reply to an earlier post instead of the story, gets you so much higher up the 'food chain' that is the Slashdot comment system.

More on the saturation limit of any greenhouse effect on earth:

http://met.hu/idojaras/IDOJARAS_vol111_No1_01.pdf

The EPA has dealt with this one. See comment 3-34

ya know, I hear this all the time but no-one ever provides a citation. Do you have a citation? (don't go look one up, you said it with such authority, you should have one already).

I don't know if you are trying to be funny or if you are just too lazy or stupid to google it yourself. Either way, I took the liberty of doing it for you. I typed in "Methane greenhouse gas" (no quotes) in the google box and pressed enter. The first link, first paragraph showed me this:

Methane

  Methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas that remains in the atmosphere for approximately 9-15 years. Methane is over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 100-year period and is emitted from a variety of natural and human-influenced sources.

From now on, I expect you to be a big boy and find your own citation.

Seriously, if you were trying to be funny, then I guess the joke's on me because I don't get it. I'll be an optimist and hope that a Slash reader and contributer would know better. Allow me to "woosh" myself in the hope that it truly was a joke.

I think making them pay the actual total cost of cleanup might be a better solution.

Unfortunately, their liability was limited to $75M under the 1990 Oil Pollution Act. Of course, wanting to close the barn door after the horse has burned it down, the White House now wants to increase that to $10B, a figure slightly more in line with something that would make an oil company slow down and think about how shoddily their operations are being run.

I wonder whether our civilization will collapse. We have a problem. But instead of arguing about how big this problem is, and what to do about it, too many of us are in denial. It may be that the consequences are mild enough that we can get away with such behavior. If we acted that way towards every problem we face, we would die.

But I wouldn't care to bet on this problem being no big deal, particularly when we don't have to and it's actually more costly to do so. Contrary to the knee jerk thinking that this is all going to be very expensive, the solutions will make our civilization more efficient. That's right, switching to WWS (wind, wave, and solar) and weaning ourselves off of oil would be worth doing even if AGW wasn't real. We'll save money. We could leave the Middle East alone at a huge savings in money and lives.

Maybe you have not appreciated just how wonderful an electric motor is compared to a combustion piston engine? Engines are smelly, polluting, noisy, complicated, unreliable, bulky, cumbersome, expensive, dangerously hot, and hard to operate. An electric motor turns on and off in an instant, and is so quiet, smooth, steady, and small. Doesn't need oil changes. Doesn't vibrate its load, causing more wear and forcing the use of heavier components to withstand it. Converts more than 90% of its input into useful work, versus 30% for engines. If that isn't enough, to maybe better see how awful engines are, imagine using a fan powered by a gasoline engine. You'd be choking on the fumes it'd be blowing in your face. You'd have to rig up some kind of belt drive so you could put the engine outside, maybe add a flue to exhaust the fumes, maybe put it in a closet to muffle the noise. What is the matter with you that you can bear to continue living with piston engines and other assorted inferior tech if you don't have to? Is familiarity worth that much? It's not as big a change as you might think. Trains have been halfway there for decades, with the diesel electrics. For railroads, the advantages of driving wheels with electric motors have been so big that it's been more than worth the losses involved in the conversion. Everywhere we can, we use electric motors in preference. The reason they aren't yet widespread in cars is that their "fuel" is hard to store and transfer quickly.

I see little hope for us if a seemingly intelligent person (like yourself?) can't go see for yourself and be honest enough to admit that this information is not fake or wrong or flawed. It would help if there weren't all these liars out there pretending to be scientists-- and have no doubt, those sorts aren't making innocent mistakes, no. They are lying, and they know it. What they may not understand is that they aren't doing good science. Don't seem to get what good science is. They actually think that real scientists make up bull like they do, and that doing so is somehow not the same thing as lying, or that being careful with the facts is not important. There is no way a group as widespread, diverse, numerous, and contentious as real scientists could or would engineer a massive conspiracy to fake something like this, or that lies or mistakes could long go unnoticed and unremarked. Nor is it conceivable that all of us are so stupid as to be mistaken or wrong, and wrong in the same way when there are infinitely many contradictory and mutually exclusive ways to be wrong. Nor can you put this down to "groupthink". If you give that notion any credibility, you fail to understand how competitive and factual real science is.

If you've understood how improbable it is that we're lying or wrong, then how can you not see that our information on the climate does show a break from the past, and that it coincides with the rise of our fossil fuel usage and this is not a coincidence b

I find it amusing that the industry thought they could get away with that one. That they thought such a law could withstand the will of hordes of enraged and ruined people. No, BP is going to pay far, far more than $75 million.

My money says you are wrong.

This law was specifically written for exactly this type of incident. The fact that you don't think it will remain in force is naive on your part. The "industry" won't suffer until you no longer need petroleum products. Which is.....not in your lifetime.

It makes a difference when people systematically make corrections in the same direction without documentation (and then throw away the original data), delete rural stations, fail to account for urban heat islands, use defective sensor sites, use an abnormally small number of stations to estimate the temperature for vast areas, etc.

This is mere hand-waving. In fact, nobody has shown that any of these corrections make a substantive difference in the conclusions. Everybody who has tried to replicate this kind of analysis, with or without corrections, has come up with substantially the same results. Numerous peer-reviewed studies have examined this issue, and have concluded that this is not a sufficient source of bias to account for the observed trends. For a detailed review of the evidence, see The EPA's Response to Public Comments (PDF), particularly responses 2-27 through 2-39

Basically the natural seepage in the northern Golf of Mexico it's about 120,000 barrels a year. For the entire Golf of Mexico it's about 625-1,875 barrels a day (or 2.5 to 6.9 x 10^5 barrels a year).

The "problem" I suspect with the current oil well is the localization of the spill, and thus higher concentrations of the oil. Kind of like trying to eat a teaspoon of hot sauce directly versus adding a teaspoon of hot sauce to a bowl of chili. It's the same amount of the stuff, just dispersed over a larger area.

Canadian nuclear plants emit 40 times more tritium every day when functioning normally than the Vermont Yankee leak emitted in a year:
http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-much-tritium-leaked-from-vermont.html

A 1 GW(e) natural gas turbine will emit about 9 curies/year,* which is 20 times the rate of radiation from the VT Yankee leak at its highest.

Oh, and natural gas "fracking" produces toxic and radioactive wastewater. This article from last summer discusses EPA tests that found nasties from the fracturing fluid in domestic well water:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=chemicals-found-in-drinking-water-from-natural-gas-drilling
New York State is doing fracking in something called Marcellus shale. This article from last fall says that surface wastewater from these sites was found to contain Ra-226 in concentrations "thousands of times" the limit for drinking water:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=marcellus-shale-natural-gas-drilling-radioactive-wastewater
This page
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/tenorm/oilandgas.html
says, "more than 18 billion barrels of waste fluids from oil and gas production are generated annually in the United States".

-Carl

* Radioactivity of fossil gas. This abstract
http://rpd.oxfordjournals.org/content/97/3/259.abstract
gives 200 Bq/m^3. It doesn't say where they measured, but given context of the paper I'll assume it was at the consumer end of the line, at STP. I don't know if gas used at electrical plants is any fresher, but I'll assume it's no more stale. Pure methane has an energy content of 55.5 kJ/g and a density of 667 g/m^3, or about 5 Wh(e)/L from a 50%-efficient combined-cycle plant. So about 40Bq/Wh, or 1 nanoCurie per Wh, or 9 Curies/GW-yr.