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Okay, I know this is probably a troll, but I'll bite. A quick glace at the EPA website shows that the US is currently responsible for 24% of the world's carbon emissions. The US has far less than that proportion of the world population. Per head of population, the US is the world's biggest polluter.

Show me the evidence suggesting that there is some widespread consensus that I'm not aware of. I'll wait

Global temperatures are rising. Observations collected over the last century suggest that the average land surface temperature has risen 0.45-0.6C (0.8-1.0F) in the last century.

The earth's climate is predicted to change because human activities are altering the chemical composition of the atmosphere through the buildup of greenhouse gases - primarily carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. The heat-trapping property of these gases is undisputed. Although uncertainty exists about exactly how earth's climate responds to these gases, global temperatures are rising.

These sources do not agree on all the details, but they do agree that the earth is warming. Whilst you are right to point out that the earth's temperature has changed before, you seem to miss the point that many others have made: just because climate change happens naturally does not mean it is good. Climate change could kill us all, just as previous climate changes wiped out a large percentage of all life on earth. Whether or not we are the largest cause of global warming, we should be doing everything in our power to slow it down, and the best evidence seems to be that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the way to achieve this. Moreover as the problem is one that threatens our future as a species, I'd suggest that it would be incredibly stupid to wait for climate models to be perfectly fine-tuned: by then it may be too late for any greenhouse gas reductions to make a difference.

Aside from the sheer tastelessness of these "sport utility vehicles," there is the issue of inflated fuel consumption. Using more fuel to do less hurts the environment at every step: you must extract more from the wilderness, refine more in huge chemical complexes, transport more (think exxon-valdez), pump more, and burn more, which releases extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

As for diesel fuel being dirtier... diesel has some advantages in fuel efficiency, and some disadvantages in the area of soot, ozone, and other chemical emissions. Hopefully some of these problems will be mitigated in the future.

If the busses in your city go mostly unused, you must live in a rich suburb or something, because I live in Cleveland, and our busses are always full during the day. It is the same in Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, and any other real city. Public transportation really is a good idea, and your comparions are silly. It is dirty compared to what? If the ten or fifteen people who rode the bus to school every morning with me had to drive cars separately, that would be at least ten times the pollution. Moving things in bulk uses less resources, even if they are people. But I forgot: you probably live in a suburb a half hour or more away from any real urban area, where your car is a status symbol which you would not think of giving up. Oh well.

Neither the NRC nor the EPA show any record of Golf Manor (the city in which this supposedly occurred), nor of David Hahn. (There is a David Hahn-Baker listed as a member of an advisory board.)

When I was in HS (early 90s), I worked at a small KFC. Whenever we had greese to dispose of, we put it in a bucket (we had another bucket for fat and other chicken parts). At the end of the day, the fry cook had the job of taking the buckets and dumping them in 55 galon drums out back. About once a month or so, someone would come out and haul this stuff off and sell it for use in making makeup and soap and other stuff.

Personally, my bigest question as far as biodiesel is concerned is emmissions. Diesel engines do not have catylitic converters. Even if they were required to have them, the technology is not in place. I know people where I am a grad student (Northwestern University), who are curently actively working on new technologies to go into such a device. The American auto manufacturers are interested in this sort of thing. They all used diesel engines in their PNGV concept cars.

The EPA actually has ratings of various cars as far as emissions go and give the cars a score of 1-10. The Bentley Continental rates a 3 (where 10 is the best) and the Volkswagon TDI Golf, Jetta, and Bug are the only cars sold in the US to get a rating of 1, the worst.
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When I was in HS (early 90s), I worked at a small KFC. Whenever we had greese to dispose of, we put it in a bucket (we had another bucket for fat and other chicken parts). At the end of the day, the fry cook had the job of taking the buckets and dumping them in 55 galon drums out back. About once a month or so, someone would come out and haul this stuff off and sell it for use in making makeup and soap and other stuff.

Personally, my bigest question as far as biodiesel is concerned is emmissions. Diesel engines do not have catylitic converters. Even if they were required to have them, the technology is not in place. I know people where I am a grad student (Northwestern University), who are curently actively working on new technologies to go into such a device. The American auto manufacturers are interested in this sort of thing. They all used diesel engines in their PNGV concept cars.

The EPA actually has ratings of various cars as far as emissions go and give the cars a score of 1-10. The Bentley Continental rates a 3 (where 10 is the best) and the Volkswagon TDI Golf, Jetta, and Bug are the only cars sold in the US to get a rating of 1, the worst.
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A pesticide is any substance or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling, or mitigating any pest. Pests can be insects, mice and other animals, unwanted plants (weeds), fungi, or microorganisms like bacteria and viruses. Though often misunderstood to refer only to insecticides, the term pesticide also applies to herbicides, fungicides, and various other substances used to control pests. Under United States law, a pesticide is also any substance or mixture of substances intended for use as a plant regulator, defoliant, or desiccant.

However several rather frightening changes have been seen in the temperature and saltiness (haline) of various important currents off the northern coast of Scandanavia . One apocalyptic scenario is indeed for the Gulf Stream to shutdown, which would ****up western Europe nicely.

However this is a *local* effect in the context of the global climate. The whole system is *extremely* complex (chaotic, even) and hard to model or predict. Broad, long-period predictions are easier to make than short term ones - we can model nice equilibrium states, but it's highly likely that in the short term (a few hundred years) that the entire planet will see wild fluctuations in precipitation, temperature, sea levels, yadda yadda.

Ob links:

• UN IPCC Third Assessment Report: Summary (PDF) This is especially sobering reading; contributed to by ~1000 leading world authorities on the science)
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change main site
• GEO-2000 report
• Worldwatch
• EPA Global warming site
• New Scientist special report

Note to the inevitable sceptics: if you accept (say) evolution, Relativity, Quantum mechanics (random eexamples) as being very very very likely to be true, then at least read the damn docs, look at the scientists who are putting their reps on the line on this, and consider whether it's more likely that we *are* affecting the global climate in unpredictable ways, or that vested interests are funding astroturf movements to try to convince American voters that it's all a commie plot...

--
If the good lord had meant me to live in Los Angeles

on the off chance that you're not a troll and simply horribly misinformed, a quick google search turned up EPA 402-F-94-005, released in June 1994. http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/strsfs.html

Here's an excerpt from the introduction:

In early 1993, EPA released a report (Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking: Lung Cancer and Other Disorders; EPA/600/6-90/006 F) that evaluated the respiratory health effects from breathing secondhand smoke (also called environmental tobacco smoke (ETS)). In that report, EPA concluded that secondhand smoke causes lung cancer in adult nonsmokers and impairs the respiratory health of children. These findings are very similar to ones made previously by the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Surgeon General.

The introduction also blows away your claims on metabolization of carcinogens. Here are there conclusions:

First, it is indisputable that smoking tobacco causes lung cancer in humans, and there is no evidence that there is a threshold below which smoking will not cause cancer.

Second, although secondhand smoke is a dilute mixture of mainstream" smoke exhaled by smokers and sidestream" smoke from the burning end of a cigarette or other tobacco product, it is chemically similar to the smoke inhaled by smokers, and contains a number of carcinogenic compounds.

Third, there is considerable evidence that large numbers of people who do not smoke are exposed to, absorb, and metabolize significant amounts of secondhand smoke.

Fourth, there is supporting evidence from laboratory studies of the ability of secondhand smoke both to cause cancer in animals and to damage DNA, which is recognized by scientists as being an instrumental mechanism in cancer development.

Finally, EPA conducted multiple analyses on the then-available 30 epidemiology studies from eight different countries which examined the association between secondhand smoke and lung cancer in women who never smoked themselves but were exposed to their husband's smoke. Since the epidemiology studies are the major thrust of the tobacco industry arguments against the EPA report, these studies are examined in more detail below.

for more information, including numerous studies and references to studies, check out the dmoz category on secondhand smoke.

As a result of the increasing
concentrations of greenhouse gases, it is now believed that in the first half of the next century a rise of global mean temperature could
occur which is greater than any in man's history.

Oh yeah, that's an unbiased look at the science alright. 10 sentences on the "science", and pages and pages on the economic disaster the Kyoto treaty is foisting upon us! 68 cents/gallon higher gas taxes! 2.4 million American jobs lost! And a little "instant expert" page that tells you among other things, "the best strategy to pursue is one of 'no regrets.'" - doesn't that tell you something?

Have you tried reading the REAL sites on global warming, like
the EPA's site? They don't just TELL you everythings terrible (or OK, like the globalwarming site) - they show you in pages after page of graphs, numbers, and statistics. Read through that stuff, and then go back to the globalwarming.org site and decide which one looks more believable to you.

For all intents and purposes, this is completely true. Thankfully, the Emissions Protection Agency (aka EPA) is doing something about it -- see their page for more info. They even have a page about current impacts, though many more of course are expected to come soon. Global warming is a rather slow process if I say so myself.

For all intents and purposes, this is completely true. Thankfully, the Emissions Protection Agency (aka EPA) is doing something about it -- see their page for more info. They even have a page about current impacts, though many more of course are expected to come soon. Global warming is a rather slow process if I say so myself.

The EPA recently launched their brand new global warming web site, complete with great facts about global warming. Apparently, naturally occuring carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide gases are causing more harm than artificial hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), perfluorocarbons (PFC), and sulfurhexafluorides (SF6). I'd say they need more sinks.

The EPA recently launched their brand new global warming web site, complete with great facts about global warming. Apparently, naturally occuring carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide gases are causing more harm than artificial hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), perfluorocarbons (PFC), and sulfurhexafluorides (SF6). I'd say they need more sinks.

I'm sure what you meant to say there was "SUVs are safer than smaller cars because you can drive them over other cars more easily". Although technically that's still wrong because SUVs are officially trucks. Also, here's a small collection of links about SUVs.

It's perfectly fitting that this inefficient bloated monster should run Java onboard...

Wow! Great post!

For those who are wondering what PCBs are, here's an EPA site about 'em. They're also an important part of Neal Stephenson's novel Zodiac.

This behavior doesn't appear to be unusual; recently in San Francisco, where the Navy has an old shipyard that's filled with random toxic waste, an underground fire burned for a month without public notice. See the SF Cronicle article here.

On most economic issues, yes, they'll end up in roughly the same place. But there are also things a President can affect unilaterally:

• Abortion Rights -- the President appoints new Supreme Court Justices. He also appoints the FDA, which has the authority to allow or withdraw RU-486.
• the environment -- the President appoints the the EPA, Interior, etc. They control mileage and emission standards for vehicles. They choose between spotted owls and logging companies. etc.
• Microsoft -- the President appoints the Attorney General and DOJ prosecutors. They decide whether or not to keep Bill Gates in court for the rest of his life. The President also appoints the federal judges who hear these cases.

If you care about these issues, then there is a difference between them.

Secondly, while there may be no consensus as to the impacts of global warming, there is a concensus that it is in fact occuring and changes are being measured (rising sea levels, temperatures, etc). Check the EPA website if you don't believe me.

I've read about 50 articles on both sides of the issue, and it's pretty obvious that humans are measurably changing the planets' climate. it would be wise to see what trouble we are getting ourselves into instead of dismissing it out of hand.

See the bottom of this for the phase diagram, which indicates that at room temperature you need 30 plus atmospheres of pressure, or more than 450 lbs per square inch.

Here is a demo/video of dry ice turning into liquid CO2! (get rid of the space after the L near the end of the URL. Sorry, the submission form is wrapping it.)
Ask A Scientist - Liquid CO2
Liquid Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Surfactant System For Garment Care

Why CO2 in Fire Suppression Systems
CO2 Snow Cleaning and what it's best used for.

I want to know how they know that liquid CO2 has a slightly acidic taste and odor!! Did they get inside a 30 atmosphere room temperature container with some liquid CO2 and take a taste?

And finally - test your knowledge of Liquid CO2

Sometimes humanity makes me sick. We Europeans aren't much better than you Americans (we use half as much energy per head, which of course is still 10-100 times more than the 3rd World.) And the third world of course can't be held back: China and India and the Pacific Rim are /developing/ countries.

Sorry for the pessimistic rant. But seeing the jokey responses to this story fills me with despair.

Here is a list of current regulations in the USA for the disposal of electronic equipment including CRT's. National Recycling Coalition EPA and the Display Industry State of Massachusetts CRT Recycling Right now, it is the consumer's responsability to dispose of these electronics following national & local regulations. In the future, it will be the electronics manaufacturers' responsability.

There are many horrors lurking in our homes and offices. Perusal of this article (text-only link here) could lead you to live out your life in a tent. However the "big, bad three" ( formaldehyde, benzene and trichloroethylene) are largely scrubbed from the air by plants. The book referred to above looks at the most effective. You are correct in thinking that Chlorophytum comosum (Thunb.) Jaccques (The spider plant) is particularly useful. An important point is that plants are an effective, low-tech solution, self-replicating and aesthetically-pleasing - this beats expensive, quick-fix high-tech solutions any time.

It should come as no surprise that vascular plants do this so well as they have been cleaning earth's atmosphere for hundreds of millions of years (and much longer in the case of their predecessors).
- Derwen

There are many horrors lurking in our homes and offices. Perusal of this article (text-only link here) could lead you to live out your life in a tent. However the "big, bad three" ( formaldehyde, benzene and trichloroethylene) are largely scrubbed from the air by plants. The book referred to above looks at the most effective. You are correct in thinking that Chlorophytum comosum (Thunb.) Jaccques (The spider plant) is particularly useful. An important point is that plants are an effective, low-tech solution, self-replicating and aesthetically-pleasing - this beats expensive, quick-fix high-tech solutions any time.

It should come as no surprise that vascular plants do this so well as they have been cleaning earth's atmosphere for hundreds of millions of years (and much longer in the case of their predecessors).
- Derwen

Aren't ionizers bad for your health?

Of course, there's always the popular conspiracy theory!

But I'd be interested in hearing what particular air filter you've used... Do you think they are all the same (ie: ineffective)?

From http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volg as.html:

Emission rates of SO2 from an active volcano range from 10 million tonnes/day according to the style of volcanic activity and type and volume of magma involved. For example, the large explosive eruption of Mount Pinatubo on 15 June 1991 expelled 3-5 km 3 of dacite magma and injected about 17 million tonnes of SO2 into the stratosphere. The sulfur aerosols resulted in a 0.5-0.6C cooling of the Earth's surface in the Northern Hemisphere. The sulfate aerosols also accelerated chemical reactions that, together with the increased stratospheric chlorine levels from human-made chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) pollution, destroyed ozone and led to some of the lowest ozone levels ever observed in the atmosphere.

From http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/glossary.html:

Mount Pinatubo. A volcano in the Philippine Islands that erupted in 1991. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo ejected enough particulate and sulfate aerosol matter into the atmosphere to block some of the incoming solar radiation from reaching Earth's atmosphere. This effectively cooled the planet from 1992 to 1994, masking the warming that had been occurring for most of the 1980s and 1990s.

CO2 and H2O are both powerful greenhouse gases. Without greenhouse warming the global average temperature would be about 0 degrees Fahrenheit. One of the big concerns of increasing CO2 concentrations is that if the atmosphere warms up, the amount of water vapor present in the atmosphere will also increase. In layman's terms, a warm atmosphere can "hold" more water vapor than a colder atmosphere; see the Clausius Clapyeron equation which shows that saturation vapor pressure (the total "capacity" of the air to "hold" water vapor) increases exponentially with increasing temperature.

As an atmospheric scientist I belive we are carrying on a great experiment, one which has no control experiment to run in parallel. Separating natural climate variability from anthropogenc (man-made) change is one of the biggest challenges we face today. However I encourage anyone who thinks humans aren't having an effect on the environment to take a look at CO2 traces from Mauna Loa which have been kept for over fifty years. There is a steady trend upward that occurs in concert with human emissions. There is little doubt where this CO2 came from.

Concerning the ice ages: variations in the earth's orbit (tilt, eccentricity, precession) are strongly linked with the big ice ages. These occur on scales of tens of thousands of years. However, ice core samples and sea floor samples suggest that the transitions between "normal" climates and "anomalous" climates have happened over only a handful of years, not gradually as was once thought. If we perturb the system hard enough, we could get into another "anomalous" regime (turn off deep convection near Greenland which would shut off the Gulf stream, chilling England etc.).

The truth is, if our climate changes significantly, the earth will keep on turning, millions if not billions of humans may die (think of rising sea levels, mosquito-borne disease etc.), but life will continue. In the end it will not matter who caused what or who was right or who was wrong.

Leigh Orf

I don't think they are biased. Excel spreadsheets are often wildly mangled when opened then saved in SO. For example, lines/borders get screwed up, and printing headers/footers get added/changed.

Then there are the many spreadsheets it can't open at all (especially ones with macros). Until it can read spreadsheets such as the one from http://www.epa.gov/ada/ftp/models/bio scrn.exe (this is a self extracting zip file), then I will have to continue to dual boot.

I wanna know why in the mid 1970's one could buy a cheap little Honda Civic that got 50mpg. 25+ years later we've advanced all the way to 70mph for an EXPENSIVE "hybrid" Honda?

There's virtually no value to the Insight beyond it's EPA numbers! No cargo space, only carries 1 (one!) passenger...

25 years of arguably the best automotive engineering the planet has ever seen and THAT's all we got for it?

I smell a rat.



References/Resources:

Historical and current data and abaility to compare vehicles at fueleconomy.gov.

Toyota Prius & Honda Insight stats

Here's all the info I could find at the EPA. They have data going back to only 1978.

Break this .zip file down and you'll find either comma or tab-delimeted files. Import to your favorite spreadsheet and see line 505, column L (or 12 if you've got numbered columns) of the file called 78FG.DAT.

I wanna know why in the mid 1970's one could buy a cheap little Honda Civic that got 50mpg. 25+ years later we've advanced all the way to 70mph for an EXPENSIVE "hybrid" Honda?

There's virtually no value to the Insight beyond it's EPA numbers! No cargo space, only carries 1 (one!) passenger...

25 years of arguably the best automotive engineering the planet has ever seen and THAT's all we got for it?

I smell a rat.



References/Resources:

Historical and current data and abaility to compare vehicles at fueleconomy.gov.

Toyota Prius & Honda Insight stats

Here's all the info I could find at the EPA. They have data going back to only 1978.

Break this .zip file down and you'll find either comma or tab-delimeted files. Import to your favorite spreadsheet and see line 505, column L (or 12 if you've got numbered columns) of the file called 78FG.DAT.

ground level ozone is made from sunlight "cooking" smog. it is most often a problem on hot, sunny, wind-less days in major cities.
from the epa:
Ground-level ozone is formed by a chemical reaction between VOCs and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) in the presence of sunlight.

And don't forget the waste recycling plants who are on EPA's Superfund NPL list, such as Scientific Chemical Processing and Curio Scrap.

Recycling is held up as a major solution to saving the planet. And while recycling works very well with aluminum and glass recycling, it doesn't work very well with paper (which is often bleached with toxic chemicals), or with scrap metal (which if not handled correctly may contaminate the air and ground water with heavy metals).

Personally I would like to see a market created for unbleached recycled paper pulp products, such as for the inner cardboard boxes and box liners for software (as an example) or computers. But that's just my wishful thinking...

And don't forget the waste recycling plants who are on EPA's Superfund NPL list, such as Scientific Chemical Processing and Curio Scrap.

Recycling is held up as a major solution to saving the planet. And while recycling works very well with aluminum and glass recycling, it doesn't work very well with paper (which is often bleached with toxic chemicals), or with scrap metal (which if not handled correctly may contaminate the air and ground water with heavy metals).

Personally I would like to see a market created for unbleached recycled paper pulp products, such as for the inner cardboard boxes and box liners for software (as an example) or computers. But that's just my wishful thinking...

Check out http://www.3drealms.com/images/duke/ dukesymbol.jpg

It's basically a slightly stylized version of the the international symbol for radioactivity.
(See http://www.epa.gov/radiation/stu dents/symbols.html)

Now, on the policy page: http://www.3drealms.com/policy/index.html

they claim that this is an Apogee trademark.

Bwa ha ha ha. And I was kind of looking forward to Duke Nukem Forever. Oh well.

Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

One of the first gases to be used in warfare, phosgene, smells like grass or hay in low concentrations. So if some country uses this, can we sue for patent-infringement?

//rdj

Think flywheels.

Yes, I shout at the TV when those ads are on. :-)

But you shouldn't be too cynical, either. Some companies really do make an effort. A bunch of semi companies here in Austin have signed up for "Green Choice" power from the electric co - paying about 4% extra which will buy power from wind farms, etc.

And although that press release from Applied Materials did look a bit cheesy, this one (yeah, another release... the EPA has a corroborating story here) points out that they got a Climate Protection Award from the EPA in 1999.... "This year's award recognizes only ten individuals and organizations worldwide that have made exemplary efforts and achievements to protect the global climate."

So yeah, be wary, but applaud those who ARE doing good things...

---

Your laptop will produce visible steam when the humidity is high enough. Don't try to use it in a closed box, it will suffocate.

The methanol fuel is toxic, but the by-products aren't. see the EPA's chemical summary This isn't much different from batteries which are generally also toxic.

The methanol must be very pure, or the fuel cell will stop working.

Making methanol is a lot easier than making batteries, so it should be a lot cheaper eventually. Safe packaging and purity requirements will make it more expensive at first.

The Environmental Protection Agency (for whom I am a contractor) is shut down for the weekend, save for a little message on their home page.

"... a view promoted by environmentalists that don't understand how big the planet is...".

Oh boy, yeah this planet is large. How long until I'll have to start lookin' where I'm steppin' to avoid your trash piles! :()

According to the EPA's own projections (Circa 1996), most of the Northeast will use up their Landfill capacity in the next 5 years or so. Do you want a dump in your backyard? Probably not, and a lot of people in the northeast probably don't want anymore dumps either. Hell, it's dirty enough already (in spots).

The EPA also projects that the Midwest and Southeast will use up their space in 10 years or so. Well, they have a little more room to spare, so you might see dumps migrating to the Great Plains, since it's probably more cost effective to turn the land there into dumps, since the farmers will probably get more money for storing garbage then the paultry sums they've been receiving recently for cash crops like corn, wheat, and hogs.

As for the Western States, the EPA projects more than 10 years worth of capacity left in pre-existing dumps.

The good news is that the overall trend (according to their data) is that total yearly deposits to dumps are decreasing due to improvements in packaging, recycling, etc.

sheesh. it disturbs me to see how little people posting here think global warming is likely to occur(or that it is occurring). The '90s have been the warmest decade of this century, and this century has been significantly warmer than any in the past millenium.

fact: even though cars pollute less in general than they used to, carbon dioxide(the chief greenhouse gas) is inherently released in the combustion process.

fact: the number of cars on the planet has increased tenfold since 1950. i don't even want to think about the number of jet airplanes, which are far worse in terms of how much carbon dioxide they spew out.

fact: the automobile and oil industries are two of the richest, most entrenched groups of corporations the world has ever seen. i don't think they're happy about the prospect of consumer opinion turning against them because of global warming. especially the oil industry--we can make electric or hydrogen-powered cars, but burning oil byproducts is a chief cause of global warming.

global warming is not a figment of the imagination, otherwise why would there be such a stir about it, especially among the scientists who have been studying it the most?

the trends are there for anyone who wants to see them. look at www.epa.gov/globalwarming for example. i agree that this distributed project(as proposed) has a lot of unresolved flaws, but i completely agree with its purpose.

and i can't resist some personal anecdotal evidence: the northeastern u.s. experienced one of its warmest and driest summers ever this year. for a while areas of vermont were about 7 inches below normal in rainfall. two wells in my town went dry, something which has not happened in the 24 years of my lifetime, nor in the greater span of my parents'. perhaps all this is coincidence--but i want to know for sure.

According to the EPA faq, paper represents 36% of waste. It may not seem like it, but most of that is actually in the form of cardboard boxes, not printer paper.

I too print stuff out on rare occasions, like pdf or ps docs. With postscript, the problem is the blurry fonts, and with both pdf and ps my 17" screen is too small to display the whole page which is frustrating. You also can't mark up a pdf doc with highlighter.

And for goodness sakes, how long do Slashdotters take to shit? If it's more than five minutes, then eat more dietary fiber or just concentrate harder.