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http://www.epa.gov/emissweb/wgn-07.htm

I see Subaru wagon's pretty much everyday with 3-4 teenagers with snowboards or ski equipment on the top or in the back. The newer Legacy wagons get between 19 and 30 mpg depending on the configuration.

Yeah I'll be the first to admit that 19mpg doesn't sound that great until you consider that the Ford Explorer, one of if not the most popular vehicles of the last 15 years, gets between 15 and 21mpg.

The problem is that there's just too many people. Trying to control or influence all of them is nigh on impossible

Wrong. Simply offering consumers an alternative by enforcing a phase-out of damaging products/technology can be enough, as was the case of ozone-damaging CFCs.

Actually, not driving SUVs doesn't help much. The real alternative to SUVs (and trucks, minivans, etc.) is lighter vehicles. Hybrids sound good, but really their efficiency is almost entirely based on their weight, not the fact that the oil is being burned at a powerplant rather than in your car. In fact, power generation is the largest contributor to greenhouse gasses.

What would help quite a lot is converting from coal and petroleum to nuclear power generation. That would pretty much solve the problem over-night, slashing our CO2 production by nearly 50%! What impact that would have on the climate... isn't actually 100% clear. It certainly is likely to have some impact, though.

Personally, I'm not concerned. I'd rather address mercury pollution than greenhouse emissions any day of the week. After all, warmer weather never caused my father to stop being able to tie his own shoes .... :-/

One Acre of Pine can sequester One Metric Ton of Carbon per year for 90 years.
So, you just need to plan 1.5 million square miles of Pine Trees.
(numbers from http://www.epa.gov/sequestration/faq.html and google calculator)

That's more than the land mass of India. Good luck!

DCA is one of several haloacetic acids (HAA) that are disinfection byproducts (DBPs) water. When chlorine (or chloramine) are added to natural water to kill microorgamisms, the chlorine reacts with natural organic matter in the water to produce several byproducts, most notably trihalomethanes (THMs) and HAAs. The other HAAs have different levels of bromine and chlorine substitution. Disinfection byproducts are regulated because they may increase your cancer risk (surprise!). It's a problem because drinking water represents a chronic exposure.

The regulated concentration of DBPs is several orders of magnitude below the doses of DCA that are listed in the linked articles, so don't count on getting (or killing) cancer from your drinking water.

List of common Drinking Water Contaminants

Is there any evidence that a scientist has changed their opinion based on the money received for Exxon/Mobil?

The article is VERY clear. You must not have read it. They are asking for people to write papers that come to a specific conclusion. They are NOT finding scientists who agree with them and funding them. Please RTFA before asking questions that can very easily be answered by doing so.

I seem to recall scientists sounding the alarm over Ozone depletion winning the Nobel Prize. Yet, I don't have skin cancer.

Lucky you. The ozone hole is still a huge problem. Skin cancer rates are skyrocketing. In southern hemisphere countries it's even worse. I hope no one who has had to suffer through this horrible type of cancer has to read your drivel. "OOh, I don't have it, therefore it must not exist!" What ego-centric, solipsistic nonsense.

Mostly we disagree because the total energy system is extremely complex among the different choices. Especially when considered in the context of existing infrastructure and current pollution. Which have their own unacceptable costs, even measured only in energy, especially counting the energy cost to cope with environmental collapse. But my analyses show ethanol to be the best bet, with some exceptions in the huge complex of niches that define how we consume fuel.

"Close" energy content depends what we mean by "close". The relative energy contents are gasoline: 42.7Mj:Kg; biodiesel: 37.8Mj:Kg; petrodiesel: 42.5Mj:Kg ethanol: 26.8Mj:Kg. Ethanol has 63% the energy content of gasoline, 63% of petrodiesel. Biodiesel is 89% of gasoline, 88% of petrodiesel. Ethanol is 71% of biodiesel. However, ethanol burns more completely than does bio/diesel or gasoline, more energy efficiently in the total process (including manufacturing the fuel). That makes their net energy budget even closer. The differences are outweighed by the rest of the system's inefficiencies.

Meanwhile, the carbon content is directly relevant, even when dealing with a "closed system" of bioproduction. Because we need more than just reduced emissions: we need net carbon decrease from our current overall pollution production. Reducing the carbon emissions while replacing petrofuel products like fertilizer and pesticide with ecological biomass strikes a triple whammy on current emissions and energy budgets. The carbon contents of various fuels were too tedious to compile for the sake of this argument, but also considering the "carbon equivalence" of different emissions, the biofuels' lower Greenhouse damage multiples are much greater than the petrofuels' energy efficiency.

Many fewer cars use diesel to replace with biodiesel than gasoline to replace with ethanol. The delivery infrastructure for diesel is also much less deployed. Biodiesel does have a place in this complex calculus, because diesel engines last dozens, perhaps hundreds of years, so replacing them has a higher energy cost than the inevitable replacement of gasoline engines with newer technology. This is especially true in diesel-fueled stationary power plants. But that's a fraction of gasoline use, especially in new markets like India and China. Where new tech is driving the production as much as new money to spend (usually both in the same hands).

I don't know how you can call fuelcells just a government subsidy scam when they already offer greater energy efficiency. Fuelcells are already operating at 60% energy efficiency, while gasoline internal combustion is still about 20% efficiency - their tech maturity suggests they're going to stay that inefficient. Fuelcells, just getting started with industrial R&D money, will gain to at least 80% within the next 10 years, while all our fuel options are still available to use in the infrastructure conversions. And since fuelcells perform better with ethanol than with gasoline, the relatively small advantage in gasoline energy content is completely wiped out in the multiple of extraction efficiency.

I suggested methanol because its higher toxicity is offset by its much lower emissions than even ethanol. These fuels are all toxic, so some form of handling is necessary, and some cost of damage inevitable. We generally don't handle any of the petrofuels properly - millions of Kg are spilled just at the pump nozzle every year. If we handled them all properly, the difference in handling the more toxic methanol would be small, especially in light of its advantages in emissions, which is ultimately the most toxic when it destroys our environment.

There is already recent biotech increasing

Google is your friend. Check page 7.

2) People create a lot of greenhouse gases, and pump them directly into the atmosphere. This comes by way of car exhaust, factory air pollution, power plants, and a host of other things. Automobile pollution is probably the single biggest cause though.

Actually, transportation fuels (which car exhaust is a subset of) are only the #3 contributor of greenhouse gases behind industrial emissions (#2) and power plant emissions (#1). Coal power plants are by far the worst emitters of greenhouse gases (among other nasty stuff, like radioactive Uranium, Thorium, and Potassium-40).

While cars are definitely part of the problem, I think the world needs to first focus on the biggest conributors, and start realizing that we need nuclear power plants. This is a big problem in the US, where public opinion is fairly galvanized against going nuclear.

Some interesting links:
EPA CO2 emission inventory (PDF)
Wikipedia page on Greenhouse Gas
good comparison between Coal and Nuke plants
Excellent article in Wired about this issue

Since 1967, the estimated total worldwide reduction in O3 in the upper stratosphere is approximately 2%. This very slow trend has not changed.

The following NOAA report directly contradicts your statement:
INTERNATIONAL TREATY DESIGNED TO RESTORE/PROTECT OZONE LAYER WORKING, SAY SCIENTISTS

The following FAQ from the EPA contradicts your underlying implication that human activity may not be the primary cause of the depletion of "good" ozone: Brief Questions and Answers on Ozone Depletion

If you continue to research the issue, you'll find these same basic facts stated and supported over and over: 1) The depletion of "good" ozone was and is caused by man-made chemicals. 2) Treaties were signed to reduce and eventually eliminate the chemicals that cause said depletion. 3) The reduction in emissions has resulted in a measurable slowing in the rate of depletion and should eventually lead to the restoration of the ozone layer. 4) There are no alternate theories of the cause of this depletion (i.e. the significant man-made part) that are supported by evidence, including natural cyclic variations or solar activity.

An important point to keep in mind is that, even though action was taken relatively quickly to curb our ozone-depleting emissions, it is estimated that we won't see a full recovery for roughly another 60 years. I really don't know of a more poignant example of how important it is that we recognize the damage we are causing to the environment and take action to change course quickly. Time is not on our side when it comes to climate change.

As for the Kyoto treaty, people are very naive if they think there were no politics involved. Less industrialized nations are very eager to put limits on the US industry because is helps close the technology gap.

Well, a treaty is a political construct pretty much by definition, right? Anyway, I think I know what you meant. The problem with getting caught up in the political winners and losers here is that our choices sort of boil down to this: refuse to give an inch economically but suffer a worldwide economic catastrophe later (at the very least) or work seriously towards a relatively smooth transition to new sources of energy. And by "work seriously" I mean be ready to give up a few things to acheive that goal. The U.S. has enjoyed a lot of advantages over other countries by not having to pay the costs of our pollution. Giving up some of those advantages to keep our overall economic prosperity and security sounds like a reasonable political compromise to me.

The reality is that the treaty called for a meager 5.2% reduction in industrially produced CO2 world-wide.

That's better than the 0% reduction we're engaged in now, isn't it? Look, no one is going to agree to curtail emissions by 20% over night. The important thing is to get the ball rolling. Get people and governments to accept our role in climate change and to start thinking about the changes in behavior and technology that will be required to assure our survival in the future (and hopefully a comfortable survival at that!).

I'm skeptical of both sides and believe the truth is somewhere in the middle. It's not the doom-gloom that environmental groups preach, or the rosy-nothing-is-wrong view espoused by our current administration.

A couple of problems with that. First, it's the scientists and their climate models that are predicting doom and gloom if we don't make drastic changes soon. The environmentalists simply bring as much attention to the issue as they can. Second, being "somewhere in the middle" on this issue is tantamount to saying that nothing needs to change. *Not* advocating for meaningful reductions in greenhouse gasses is, in practice, not much different th

Since this will devolve into a debate about global warming in general, I'd like to jump the gun a bit.

I'm not entirely certain if global warming is entirely the cause of humans. The limited research and reading I've done makes me learn towards the side that says it is, but my degree-in-earning is Computer Science, not Environmental Science, so I won't rule without doing far more research.

However, I think there are two facts that can't be denied by anyone:
1) The Earth is, in general, becoming warmer.
2) Polution and trash from humans is affecting the environment in some negative manner.

I know of no person who will deny that CFCs (Chlorofluorocarbons- say that three times fast) affected the ozone layer (oddly, I haven't heard much about that in the Global Warming blurbs I see on Slashdot daily), though I'm sure a few exist, mainly in the industry that made their money off such things. No one thinks smog is a good thing.

So, whether we like it or not, humans are contributing in some form to the degredation of the environment, which can include global warming- I'll let the scientists hash out just how much. So, with that in mind, something should be done. Perhaps not the far-reaching suggestions some of the more "hardcore" environmentalists suggest, but a gradual process to decrease trash and pollutants would be useful.

As the saying goes, "A pinch of prevention is worth a pound of cure". Or something like that.

The main reason that there always was and will be an ozone hole over the Antarctics is that ozone decays in the lack of sunlight, and it's pretty dark half of the year out there.

How could this account for the accelerated growth of the ozone hole that exactly correlates with the period that human beings started using CFCs?

As a point of reference, in Michigan, this tax comes to ~$0.62/gallon, or approximately 30% of the price of the fuel. Every time that I fill up the tank on my 1997 Dodge Ram, I am paying ~$17 towards the building , maintenance, and repair of roads.

If we stick with the state of Michigan, in the USA, we have approximately 6.4 MILLION people between the ages of 18 and 65. Assuming that these people are all licensed drivers, and that they drive an average of only 16 miles/day, 5 days/week, in vehicles which get an average of 20 mpg, then we are talking about more than $817 MILLION dollars/year for Michigan, alone, from fuel taxes. That's an extremely conservative estimate, and it does not even begin to consider e.g. commercial traffic, joy-rides, &c. (16 miles/day? I drove ~556 miles this past weekend.)
Sticking with Michigan, the Department of Transportation has a budget of ~$3.1 Billion dollars. That's not exactly a huge leap from the extremely conservative estimate above.
In short, your $10/gal figure is absurd.

At least here in the UK I would say it does for a lot of smokers.

Someone smoking a pack a day would pay about £1,500 a year solely in tax on their cigarettes, plus 11% of their income towards national health insurance. That's a hell of a lot of money over a life time.

If you take a 50 year smoker that's £75,000 in tax, and if they worked a job earning £20,000 a year, they'd pay an additional £110,000 in NI. A quick Googling shows some research claiming lung cancer treatment at around $30,000US (£16,000 odd?) for 6 months for a terminal patient, and $26,000US (£14,000 or so) initially for a surviving patient for the first 3 months, then $11,000US (about £6,000) per year thereafter. (source PDF: http://www.epa.gov/oppt/coi/pubs/II_5.pdf)

These are of course extremely simplistic / general figures on my part, I've ignored inflation and probably a whole bunch of other factors, YMMV etc. I can't be bothered to research too deep into it because quite frankly, I'd rather sit around playing Oblivion or doing some coding than calculate the cost of cancer, but I would say combined UK taxes involved for smokers more than make up for a potential medical treatment needed. Particularly when you consider that smoking doesn't automatically mean lung cancer (and non-smokers can suffer from it anyway) and people here don't always use the NHS for treatment for various reasons.

no need to worry about spewing a bunch of ionized air particles all over the place.

http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/ozonegen.html

But why are 2-strokes particularly desirable?

As somebody else pointed out, a two stroke has approximately twice the power for the displacement, which means that you could more than halve the weight of the engine for similar performance in a car. After all, once you've eliminated several hundred pounds of engine and associated materials, you need less power for a given amount of performance. Two strokes also don't need quite as many parts as a four stroke, and have some advantages elsewhere.

Now, I remember seeing an ad on television a couple years ago where a group had apparently developed a clean, computer controlled two-stroke marine engine. The EPA apparently includes Direct Fuel Injection 2-Stroke Marine Engines as 'low pollution' for marine use.

Europe and Japan have a very large market for small city cars where the buyers aren't so concerned about power and really don't give a fig about engine size as long as it works well enough on a test drive.

I wish US car makers would stop trumpeting engine size and horsepower quite so much. Believe me, it's a somewhat neglected market because the profit margins aren't out there, but there's quite a segment in the USA that's the same way.

As somebody else said - It'd be a risky development process and there are technological and cost hurdles to meet.

From the EPA site itself http://www.epa.gov/fueleconomy/420f06009.htm#fuele stimates

A site to enter your own observed information http://www.fueleconomy.gov/mpg/MPG.do?action=addGu estVehicle

or lookup what others have recorded http://www.fueleconomy.gov/mpg/MPG.do?action=addGu estVehicle

The US Environmental Protection Agency knows it, doctors know it. Radiation causes cancer. The only variable is how much. I would venture to say that they amount of concentrated radiation that is being blasted out of a cannon causes enough radiation to have long term side effects. If you don't believe me, ask the EPA, "Cancer is considered by most people the primary health effect from radiation exposure."

• If it is real, is it permanent and not just an earth/solar cycle?

According to NOAA and NASA data, the Earth's average surface temperature has increased by about 1.2 to 1.4F since 1900. The warmest global average temperatures on record have all occurred within the past 15 years, with the warmest two years being 1998 and 2005. Most of the warming in recent decades is likely the result of human activities.

• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), is it due to greenhouse gases? (i.e. not deforestation, urban heat islands, the hole in the ozone, or other causes or even a combination of these causes)

If greenhouse gases continue to increase, climate models predict that the average temperature at the Earth's surface could increase from 2.5 to 10.4F above 1990 levels by the end of this century. Scientists are certain that human activities are changing the composition of the atmosphere, and that increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases will change the planet's climate.

• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), what is the real impact if nothing is done? (Even if the cause is greenhouse gases, it may make more sense to grow the necessary number of forests to absorb the gas as our gas output increases or find some other way to solidify/trap greenhouse gases.)
• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), can anything be done to reverse it? (If not, then while it's common sense to try to reduce the impact, it makes a lot of sense to either invest in technologies to either live with it or leave earth).

• Future Atmosphere Changes in Greenhouse Gas and Aerosol Concentrations
• Future Temperature Changes
• Future Precipitation and Storm Changes
• Future Sea Level Changes

• If it is real, is it permanent and not just an earth/solar cycle?

According to NOAA and NASA data, the Earth's average surface temperature has increased by about 1.2 to 1.4F since 1900. The warmest global average temperatures on record have all occurred within the past 15 years, with the warmest two years being 1998 and 2005. Most of the warming in recent decades is likely the result of human activities.

• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), is it due to greenhouse gases? (i.e. not deforestation, urban heat islands, the hole in the ozone, or other causes or even a combination of these causes)

If greenhouse gases continue to increase, climate models predict that the average temperature at the Earth's surface could increase from 2.5 to 10.4F above 1990 levels by the end of this century. Scientists are certain that human activities are changing the composition of the atmosphere, and that increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases will change the planet's climate.

• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), what is the real impact if nothing is done? (Even if the cause is greenhouse gases, it may make more sense to grow the necessary number of forests to absorb the gas as our gas output increases or find some other way to solidify/trap greenhouse gases.)
• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), can anything be done to reverse it? (If not, then while it's common sense to try to reduce the impact, it makes a lot of sense to either invest in technologies to either live with it or leave earth).

• Future Atmosphere Changes in Greenhouse Gas and Aerosol Concentrations
• Future Temperature Changes
• Future Precipitation and Storm Changes
• Future Sea Level Changes

• If it is real, is it permanent and not just an earth/solar cycle?

According to NOAA and NASA data, the Earth's average surface temperature has increased by about 1.2 to 1.4F since 1900. The warmest global average temperatures on record have all occurred within the past 15 years, with the warmest two years being 1998 and 2005. Most of the warming in recent decades is likely the result of human activities.

• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), is it due to greenhouse gases? (i.e. not deforestation, urban heat islands, the hole in the ozone, or other causes or even a combination of these causes)

If greenhouse gases continue to increase, climate models predict that the average temperature at the Earth's surface could increase from 2.5 to 10.4F above 1990 levels by the end of this century. Scientists are certain that human activities are changing the composition of the atmosphere, and that increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases will change the planet's climate.

• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), what is the real impact if nothing is done? (Even if the cause is greenhouse gases, it may make more sense to grow the necessary number of forests to absorb the gas as our gas output increases or find some other way to solidify/trap greenhouse gases.)
• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), can anything be done to reverse it? (If not, then while it's common sense to try to reduce the impact, it makes a lot of sense to either invest in technologies to either live with it or leave earth).

• Future Atmosphere Changes in Greenhouse Gas and Aerosol Concentrations
• Future Temperature Changes
• Future Precipitation and Storm Changes
• Future Sea Level Changes

• If it is real, is it permanent and not just an earth/solar cycle?

According to NOAA and NASA data, the Earth's average surface temperature has increased by about 1.2 to 1.4F since 1900. The warmest global average temperatures on record have all occurred within the past 15 years, with the warmest two years being 1998 and 2005. Most of the warming in recent decades is likely the result of human activities.

• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), is it due to greenhouse gases? (i.e. not deforestation, urban heat islands, the hole in the ozone, or other causes or even a combination of these causes)

If greenhouse gases continue to increase, climate models predict that the average temperature at the Earth's surface could increase from 2.5 to 10.4F above 1990 levels by the end of this century. Scientists are certain that human activities are changing the composition of the atmosphere, and that increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases will change the planet's climate.

• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), what is the real impact if nothing is done? (Even if the cause is greenhouse gases, it may make more sense to grow the necessary number of forests to absorb the gas as our gas output increases or find some other way to solidify/trap greenhouse gases.)
• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), can anything be done to reverse it? (If not, then while it's common sense to try to reduce the impact, it makes a lot of sense to either invest in technologies to either live with it or leave earth).

• Future Atmosphere Changes in Greenhouse Gas and Aerosol Concentrations
• Future Temperature Changes
• Future Precipitation and Storm Changes
• Future Sea Level Changes

• If it is real, is it permanent and not just an earth/solar cycle?

According to NOAA and NASA data, the Earth's average surface temperature has increased by about 1.2 to 1.4F since 1900. The warmest global average temperatures on record have all occurred within the past 15 years, with the warmest two years being 1998 and 2005. Most of the warming in recent decades is likely the result of human activities.

• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), is it due to greenhouse gases? (i.e. not deforestation, urban heat islands, the hole in the ozone, or other causes or even a combination of these causes)

If greenhouse gases continue to increase, climate models predict that the average temperature at the Earth's surface could increase from 2.5 to 10.4F above 1990 levels by the end of this century. Scientists are certain that human activities are changing the composition of the atmosphere, and that increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases will change the planet's climate.

• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), what is the real impact if nothing is done? (Even if the cause is greenhouse gases, it may make more sense to grow the necessary number of forests to absorb the gas as our gas output increases or find some other way to solidify/trap greenhouse gases.)
• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), can anything be done to reverse it? (If not, then while it's common sense to try to reduce the impact, it makes a lot of sense to either invest in technologies to either live with it or leave earth).

• Future Atmosphere Changes in Greenhouse Gas and Aerosol Concentrations
• Future Temperature Changes
• Future Precipitation and Storm Changes
• Future Sea Level Changes

• If it is real, is it permanent and not just an earth/solar cycle?

According to NOAA and NASA data, the Earth's average surface temperature has increased by about 1.2 to 1.4F since 1900. The warmest global average temperatures on record have all occurred within the past 15 years, with the warmest two years being 1998 and 2005. Most of the warming in recent decades is likely the result of human activities.

• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), is it due to greenhouse gases? (i.e. not deforestation, urban heat islands, the hole in the ozone, or other causes or even a combination of these causes)

If greenhouse gases continue to increase, climate models predict that the average temperature at the Earth's surface could increase from 2.5 to 10.4F above 1990 levels by the end of this century. Scientists are certain that human activities are changing the composition of the atmosphere, and that increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases will change the planet's climate.

• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), what is the real impact if nothing is done? (Even if the cause is greenhouse gases, it may make more sense to grow the necessary number of forests to absorb the gas as our gas output increases or find some other way to solidify/trap greenhouse gases.)
• If it is real (whether or not it is caused by us), can anything be done to reverse it? (If not, then while it's common sense to try to reduce the impact, it makes a lot of sense to either invest in technologies to either live with it or leave earth).

• Future Atmosphere Changes in Greenhouse Gas and Aerosol Concentrations
• Future Temperature Changes
• Future Precipitation and Storm Changes
• Future Sea Level Changes

My truck gets 40mpg highway. I can show you the logs. Or you can google for other people who have the nissan 720 with sd22 engine. You're right about the Datsun name - in 1981 it was branded Datsun by Nissan, in 82 it became simply Nissan. I refer to it as Nissan because that's how spare parts are listed.

Anyway, my point was using 1981 technology you can build a pickup that gets 40mpg. I can't buy a new truck because the mileage is much lower than what I have now. I WANT a new truck but I can't HAVE one because our 2006 tech is INFERIOR to 1981 regarding fuel efficency in light trucks!!! I'm very sensitive about this!!!

It doesn't matter what is typical, I was talking about potential fuel efficiency. Your point that cars are twice as efficient as 20 years ago is simply wrong.

If you want to talk about fleet efficiency, the chart here shows that cars now get worse mileage than 1987, and are heavier than any time since 1975 (when the chart begins)

So you're double super wrong. Cars are LESS efficient, HEAVIER, and you are WRONG about fuel efficiency. I'll grant that cars now pollute less than cars from 20 years ago, and safety features have come a long way. I'd just like to see some actual progress regarding efficiency instead of going backward. Attitudes like yours hinder this, in addition to being factually incorrect.

Draw your own conclusions.

Annually, whenever I seal my Hemoccult card in the self-addressed stamped envelope my personal physician provides and drop it into a mailbox, I wonder whether I'm going to get a visit from Homeland Security for illegally mailing biohazard waste.

So far, I've yet to have the doctor "The lab doesn't understand what's happened. They couldn't run the test. They say it's almost as if the sample got electron-beam sterilized somehow."

Basically, everything you wrote was wrong except for the bit about the Greenpeace founder.

1. There is no global warming on Mars

2. DDT is dangerous to the environment

3. The Kyoto Treaty exemptions are based on CUMULATIVE emissions, not annual emissions. The US and Western Europe have released the most CO2 into the atmosphere by far. That's not even when you factor equity into account on a per capita basis.

EDUCATE YOURSELF!

$31.5 Trillion Investor Coalition, the Carbon Disclosure Project, Spurs Disclosure of Climate Change Strategies from World's 500 Largest Companies: http://www.cdproject.net/

Learn about how reducing greenhouse gases is GOOD for business! Carbon Down, Profits UP, a report by the Climate Group: http://www.theclimategroup.org/assets/CDPU_2005_v2 .pdf/

Learn about how cap and trade works and how it effectively solved the acid rain problem under the U.S. Clean Air Act - COST-EFFECTIVELY: http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/trading/basics/index .html/

And most importantly, climate change is inextricably linked to national security and energy independence. A carbon constrained economy equates to opportunites and investments in a host of clean and efficient energy technologies that are good for all. That's why Silicon Valley is saying that clean tech is the best investment of the 21st century! Just do a little research. The stuff we're told about economic impact of GHG reductions is hogwash.

Just a couple recent articles:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 006/11/04/BUG07M5S481.DTL/
http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/2006/commentar y06111704.htm/

Bathed in radon, no doubt.

They're going to regulate a common substance (colloidal silver) that's been around and caused no problem (other than gun metal gray skin) in humans consuming it daily at high concentrations? I don't think it's a miracle cure, but it's been used as a mild disinfectant to treat burns and non-potable water for over a hundred years. Come on, if you're worried about Argyria you can't be that worried about toxicity.
http://homepages.together.net/~rjstan/index.html

Silver is highly reactive (with oxygen) so with such a high surface area it won't remain silver for very long at all, but will react with something else to become inert. I do suppose that if you fed huge amounts to a fish, and it turned black then predators might eat it more quickly, but that's silly. If the quantities were actually significant (like the amount of chlorine and ammonia we release) then I might be worried, but right now the cost of the material and manufacturing process make large quantities absurdly expensive ~$200/gallon.

Let's worry about something that's actually a problem rather than jumping on the "nano" everything bandwagon. There are much bigger environmental problems, they just happen to make big companies money.

What total idiots!
Their own study indicates that humans who have consumed "a bottle a day for 30 years" suffered from argyria and little else.
http://www.epa.gov/iris/subst/0099.htm#reforal.%20 Last%20accessed%202/01/05

And concentrated manure can be anaerobically treated to produce methane (epa) Even more surprising is that the bulk of methane produced from manure comes from pork production - and that is an industry that has consolidated holdings to make it very easy to tack methane based energy production to the "tail end" of the feed cycle.

Wetlands 76%
Termites 11%
Oceans 8%
Hydrates 5%


http://www.epa.gov/methane/sources.html#natural

So my first guess would be a global reduction of wetlands. Nope, I shall not look for evidence now, it is 3a.m. .

CC.

And to top it off....

Commodore's former chip fab facility is on the EPA's superfund site for extreme damage to the environment.

http://www.epa.gov/reg3hwmd/super/sites/PAD0937301 74/index.htm

I hope Medi Ali and Gould burn in hell for what they did. They ruined a perfectly good computer/OS AND dumped toxic waste!

Sorry, I lost a few orders of magnitude there, that should be half a microgram
(as opposed to half a milligram). For reference, lead poisoning is measured in
micrograms per deciliters.

The leaching study yielded up to 400 mg Pb/l (weighted average) in leachate from
a small sample, not more than 100g of crushed CRT. Prolonged exposure to the
environment might yield more, and a single CRT certainly masses more than 100g.
So estimate 280 tons of mobile lead per year from CRTs (with average composition,
leaching and no recycling). This exceeds anthropogenic mercury
emissions (160 tons per year).

I would imagine in much the same way that leaches out of your dinner crystal and into
your wee doch-an-dorrach. Or is that fictitious too? And of course, if your local MSW
is incinerated all bets are off.

For a more direct answer (a study specifically about CRT leeching) see this study.

See also http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/riafile.nsf/vwAN/S9 9-23.pdf/%24File/S99-23.pdf (It's probably not a bad idea to recover the Yttrium either.)

P.S. Intellectual laziness is pathetic.

...shouldn't we be seeing reduced global warming since the 1970's when governments all over the world started efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

The US is already a Carbon Sink to begin with, including all the CO2 that the US releases.
http://www.epa.gov/sequestration/faq.html#6

>They are the ones who completely banned DDT.
DDT was banned in America in 1972 largely due to "large public outcry". However, "DDT continued to be the insecticide of choice in the battle against malaria as recently as 1994". DDT is not "completely" banned; it continues to be used where it is the most effective and wise choice.

>it's not part of their philosophy to *help* other human beings in any realistic sense
>Environmentalists don't have much room to complain about starving children dying of malaria
Regarding DDT, is is largely not debatable that DDT is fat-soluble, so as long as you are a vertebrate animal with greater than 0% body fat, being exposed to DDT either by inhalation or ingestion means it will be digested and settle in your body fat and is not flushed out by most any natural body cleansing process (studies in the US taken 10 years after the ban on DDT was enacted showed that there were still traces of DDT detectable in human subjects). Whether or not this has long term ill effects is still debatable, but wouldn't you rather know to be cautious about a compound that is very hard to get out of your system?

Additionally, with the recent publicity about the global climate issues, a large portion of environmentalists are not solely looking out for animal rights and well treatment. Instead they are concerned for those poverty-stricken and victims of epidemics such as malaria, and realize that finding a cure for malaria will doubtless please many people who are afflicted with it currently, but it will be of no use if those same people die of a water-borne illness from polluted rivers or from toxins obtained by eating the meat and fat of an animal exposed to a fat-soluble carcinogen (not saying DDT is this, but it or others could be) before the malaria cure is found.

>God forbid we should lose our precious polar bears! God almighty what will become of Churchill Manitoba?!
Yes, Churchill Manitoba, the "Polar Bear capital of the world" will lose its tourist trade. Additionally, without Polar Bears, they won't be around to predate upon the ringed seals (one of their more popular food choices), nor scavenge upon the carrion of beached whales and other carcasses. Meaning, the elderly, sick and diseased of the seal population will not be weeded out and lead to an increased population for the seals, leading to likely overcrowding and a greater chance of spreading disease around the population of seals, which will have a direct impact on the Inuits who hunt those seals as well. So, by assisting the Polar Bears, environmentalists are also preventing causing more 'starving children' in another portion of the world. Yes, preventative thinking (rather than reactionary) requires more speculation and time to come to fruition, but just because someone's paying attention to polar bears rather than the people starving right now doesn't mean they're not concerned about human starvation issues, nor are they simply not thinking.

As was mentioned by Ash Vince, the above posts by Dravik and Asrynachs were not based on serious facts (and indeed don't cite any references for their claims), and (hopefully) were intending to be more humorous than serious (Mod them Humorous rather than Insightful, please...). For those reading these threads who are still forming an opinion on the matter, hopefully the links I've pulled together here will help you make a more informed decision on the issues.

Although Bush has done much to harm the environment, denying anthropogenic global warming is not in his toolbox. I mean, as much as I hate to defend the man, we should be clear about the few things he hasn't done wrong. :)

And did the poster ever look to find out why that date became later and later? Maybe 'cause a lot of alarmist screamed "It's the end of the world!" So we did something about it. http://www.epa.gov/otaq/cert/mpg/fetrends/420s0600 3.htm (it is the summary of fuel efficiency trends spanning from the 1970s to the present) Also, it is hard to deny confirmable evidence, like if the oceans are fine, why are the dead zones getting larger?http://www.livescience.com/environment/0610 19_ap_dead_zones.html Maybe not all is well... Maybe we should do something now, rather than wait for an mass extinction event. (I just love the words 'extinction event.' Doesn't it just roll off the tongue?)

First, wow, not to be rude but "Is uranium naturally radioactive" is a grade 6 science fact. You might want to look into brushing up a bit on your Science 101, if only so you can be more confident of choices you make based on science (and recognizing when things aren't based on such.)

Next, there are, well really were, natural reactors. Wikipidia has a short entry on this, a great webpage on it from the US Dept. of Energy, here's also a picture from Astronomy Picture of the Day showing what it looks like in a mine today. The article that first brought this to wide attention is "A Natural Fission Reactor" by George A. Cowan in Scientific American, July 1976. (Pages 36 - 47) (apparently not available online, visit your local library to read this fascinating article for free.)

Uranium ores are found all over the planet. Australia has 40% of known Uranium ores and is the largest exporter, the US West has 7 active mines, and Canada has 3 very large mines for both domestic use and export. Uranium ores are not always deep in the ground, surface mines are common, indeed there are places, including in the US, where rocks & soil sufficiently "hot" (in terms of emitted radiation, they're generally not warm enough to discern by touch) to harm folks in long term exposure can be found laying around on the surface.

However rocks are a rare, purely local danger, radioactively contaminated water is much more common & dangerous, and also Radon gas. Indeed there are parts of the US, for example Massachusetts, where radon gas detectors are routinely recommended for residential basements.

Finally, the University of Manchester has been doing research* on using bacteria to bioremediate radioactive materials, in short to use biological processes to convert dangerous radioactive compounds into less dangerous (but still radioactive) ones. These biochemical processes can't convert elements, no lead-to-gold, but they can "lock up" materials into less chemically active, or insoluble, forms. Doubtless discovery of bacteria already evolved to take advantage of highly radioactive environments will be of great advantage to their research.

* This is to an archived version of the University of Manchester website, the current website doesn't seem to have as widely informative a page.

capable of instantly eradicating all life within an 10 km radius,

Do you have a source for that figure?

all of the examples you gave above are cleanable to an extent.

You do realise that coal-fired plants release radioactive waste into the atmosphere during normal operation, right?

Sources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/climate/adaptation/nuclear_po wer.shtml
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/ colmain.html
http://www.epa.gov/radtown/coal-plant.htm

But feel free to google it for more; they're just the top few results for a search for "coal power station radioactivity".

Circuit Boards:
Integrated Circuit Recycling from Finished Product Printed Circuit Boards
PCs Don't Die--They Become Road Fill
What to do with your printed circuit boards?
USNavy: PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARD RECYCLING
Printed Circuit Board Recycling Equipment

CRT Glass:
Cascade's CRT Glass-to-Glass Recycling Program
EPA: Glass-to-Glass Recycling
WRAP identifies four potential markets for television glass (26.01.04)
Cathode ray tube glass recycling: an example of clean technology, mostly in Italian usage in ceramic tiles.

Environmentalists :
-> CO2 will cause mass extinctions

Now, this is reading it very unscientifically. Just how did you produce "will"?

Everybody else
-> There is not sufficient evidence to really change our policy (this btw, is unfortunately very true)
-> Therefore CO2 does not cause problems (this conclusion may be true, but the honest answer is : we don't know)

Read up on CO2 and global warming. The projections for the future are not 100% certain, but there IS enough evidence that it's harmful to change policy and it DOES cause problems. Try reading at least the MOST obvious and easily accessible sources before you get all insightful on us:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming#Danger ous_global_warming
http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/cont ent/index.html

Perhaps non-green corporations can financially out perform green ones because they can pass on the environmental costs on to future generations and the government.

Iron Mountain Mine in northern California. It is an abondoned open pit pyrite mine. Whenever it rains, it produces sulphuric acid, combined with heavy metals, which would eventually feed into the Sacramento River, if it were not for two intervening dams. During heavy rains, the polution does get past the dams before being sufficiently diluted.

For the rest of time, someone will have to operate a combination of a lime neutralization plant on site, combined with releases of water from the dams timed with large seasonal flows from Shasta Dam. This site was actively mined off and on from the 1860s through 1963. At one time, the site was the largest producer of copper in California.

Another EPA document gives a explanation of the problem, photos of the neutralization plant, and some history. Here is a quote from that document:

When extraction of the ore was suspended from the
various stopes above the Lawson, the ground was in
very bad shape, and the conditions regarding heat
and gas were so terrible that it seemed advisable to
abandon any attempt to work from that level.
In fact it was a case of walking away and leaving the
job for the next generation" (William F. Kett,
General Manager, Mountain Copper Co., August 1944)

Mining at the site was abondoned, at least in part, because the ground became too unstable to mine it anymore. So when the mine was operated, the company was profitable. I don't know the relationship of the company that did the mining to the current owner of the site.
But it is possbile for a company to cease to exist once the mine is worn out. So the companies that mined this site were profitable while the mine was open, mostly by avoiding paying for the environmental damage they caused.

The EPA has successfully gone after the current owner of the site. In my mind, it is not fair to have a company that did not create the problem pay for cleaning it up. But it is also not fair to have taxpayers pay for it either. Once all the ore is gone and the mining company folds, there is no way to go back and make the owners pay for the damage they caused.

So maybe green companies might underperform non-green companies TODAY. But that is true because often they can skip out on paying all the costs of their activites. The Sacramento River provides drinking water for a significant portion of the population of California. I was astonished when I heard of this site.

Perhaps non-green corporations can financially out perform green ones because they can pass on the environmental costs on to future generations and the government.

Iron Mountain Mine in northern California. It is an abondoned open pit pyrite mine. Whenever it rains, it produces sulphuric acid, combined with heavy metals, which would eventually feed into the Sacramento River, if it were not for two intervening dams. During heavy rains, the polution does get past the dams before being sufficiently diluted.

For the rest of time, someone will have to operate a combination of a lime neutralization plant on site, combined with releases of water from the dams timed with large seasonal flows from Shasta Dam. This site was actively mined off and on from the 1860s through 1963. At one time, the site was the largest producer of copper in California.

Another EPA document gives a explanation of the problem, photos of the neutralization plant, and some history. Here is a quote from that document:

When extraction of the ore was suspended from the
various stopes above the Lawson, the ground was in
very bad shape, and the conditions regarding heat
and gas were so terrible that it seemed advisable to
abandon any attempt to work from that level.
In fact it was a case of walking away and leaving the
job for the next generation" (William F. Kett,
General Manager, Mountain Copper Co., August 1944)

Mining at the site was abondoned, at least in part, because the ground became too unstable to mine it anymore. So when the mine was operated, the company was profitable. I don't know the relationship of the company that did the mining to the current owner of the site.
But it is possbile for a company to cease to exist once the mine is worn out. So the companies that mined this site were profitable while the mine was open, mostly by avoiding paying for the environmental damage they caused.

The EPA has successfully gone after the current owner of the site. In my mind, it is not fair to have a company that did not create the problem pay for cleaning it up. But it is also not fair to have taxpayers pay for it either. Once all the ore is gone and the mining company folds, there is no way to go back and make the owners pay for the damage they caused.

So maybe green companies might underperform non-green companies TODAY. But that is true because often they can skip out on paying all the costs of their activites. The Sacramento River provides drinking water for a significant portion of the population of California. I was astonished when I heard of this site.

I used to work in a university lab that did these tests using rainbow trout as the test species. The relevant EPA standards are here, in case anyone is interested in how the tests are conducted.

My gosh, don't these people know that the largest atmospheric polluter is not automobiles but our coal power plants? As far as I remember, automobiles produce ~30% of our C02 emissions, while coal power plants account for ~40% of our C02 emissions (and not to mention the other pollutants they produce).

SUE THE POWER COMPANIES FIRST!!!

http://yosemite.epa.gov/OAR/globalwarming.nsf/Uniq ueKeyLookup/RAMR6MBLP4/$File/06ES.pdf

Look at Figure ES-16. See how much more coal is harming our atmosphere?

The silliest one is the EPA method, which simply measures emissions and plugs them into a government mandated formula.

-- Prius owner (BTW, I got 60 MPG on my most recent long trip, with 2 adults and 5 children in the car. But I'm lucky to see 50 MPG in the city)