Slashdot Mirror

We're only talking about a one-time $700 item,

No. We are not. They're trying to put in a catalytic element, same as they do with cars. These are expensive; Just like your car. It's not a "one time" $700 item, it's a $700 item every 2-6 years. At least. Catalytics decrease efficiency and mean you produce a lot less heat -- you have to burn more fuel to get an equivalent BTU output because it's having to shove all that exhaust through a maze of tiny little tubes.

They also require regular maintenance and cleaning to keep those tubes open... which means you have to let the whole stove cool down, and the cinders burn out. This can take days before such maintenance can be performed, which means removing the catalytic, which means partial disassembly of the stove. It is a significant fire hazard if done incorrectly. And it also completely disallows the possibility of using only wood heat for your home; It basically mandates a secondary heating source, like (wait for it) a propane or natural-gas powered furnace.

And all of this so that you can reduce your particulate output from "15-30 grams per hour" to "2-7 grams per hour". [Source. For comparative purposes, check this link out. The EPA's own study put a wood stove in 1998 at 8.2 grams per hour. This 15-30 grams per hour is less than burning the damn log in open air, which clocks in at 8 grams per hour. If you burned sawdust an oil mixed together, you'd get somewhere around the numbers their crack-smoking analysts came up with.

Epa has a article on the site, it says you need heat, time, turbulence, air. At 1100 to 1500 f range with sufficient oxygen, for 3 seconds you should get only co2 and water. Or a secondary burn, that re lights the escaping smoke. http://www.epa.gov/burnwise/workshop2011/WoodCombustion-Curkeet.pdf

On the other hand, many of the people in Fairbanks that burn wood do so because it's the cheapest method they can use to heat their houses, and they can't afford other methods

Wood stoves are still legal, of course. Any NEW stoves sold need to be much more efficient gasifer-style. The kind that have been around since the 19th century.

We're only talking about a one-time $700 item, rather than whatever ancient piece of junk they would have purchased otherwise. And over time, should save people lots of money thanks to burning 1/3rd less wood for the same amount of heat.

http://www.epa.gov/burnwise/woodstoves.html

Right but some of them put out more particulate matter than others. Like on the website he mentioned the big "EPA APPROVED" banner.

Over here, there is a list of EPA approved stoves:

http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/publications/monitoring/caa/woodstoves/certifiedwood.pdf

This.

I don't care how big the farm is (and, btw, most farmland in production is still not corporate-owned, they are still family farms: see http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/ag101/demographics.html), the industry is heavily dependent on the flow of oil. Not just for the tractors and combines: most all of the chemicals (and, face it, a farm MUST rely on chemicals to meet demand in this day and age, as bad as it is) are petroleum based as well. The output of a farm is only as good as it's ability to get the product to the market: again, fully dependent on oil.

If oil goes away, so does our food. If oil goes away, we as a country will starve. Those of us who still live in rural America will be OK and will be able to survive, but I feel for you guys who live in urban America.

According to the EPA, sea level rise is predicted to be 30 to 70 inches over the next 100 years. That sounds much closer to all the other estimates I have heard. That sea level rise is enough to cause hundreds of millions of people and the corresponding infrastructure to relocate. And there's no reason that the sea level will magically stop rising after 100 years. It'll keep rising unless we can somehow scrub the excess CO2 out of the atmosphere.

There is a lot of uncertainty on the sea level rise, because it's not clear what people are going to do in the next century. Even so, I've never heard of an estimate as low as 4". I'm curious where you get your information if you don't trust, you know, the climatologists that work on this. (Admittedly, the EPA description dumbs it down a bit too much, but still....)

Still, a devastating effect can come from even small changes. You may be thinking "ah, if the sea level rises a few inches, it changes nothing!"... but say that when the storm hits, and your seawall is just barely holding back the storm surge now....

...and modern coal doesn't even pollute. Modern coal burning process in new power plants alone removes most of the nasties like NOx and SO2 emissions and modern filters can eliminate particle exhaust by turning it into ash which can be kept out of atmosphere..

I'm not sure where you got your information, but it's totally wrong. It sounds like some sound byte, smacks of broad generalizations and seriously lacks technical understanding. Reduction of NOx and SO2, as well as particulate matter, is all technically possible, but to suggest it's "clean" is totally incorrect. Also, there is no "turning particle exhaust to ash", as combustion particulate is already (either fly or bottom) ash, except where it's "consensable" particulate matter (after it's already left the stack). This latter version is also usually the smallest particulate and therefore most injurious to human health & the environment.

The US EPA keeps records on control technology and related emissions for most coal units permitted in the US: http://cfpub.epa.gov/RBLC/

A quick search shows one unit, with proposed industry-accepted best available control for NOx, emitting (after control) up to 1,100 lbs of NOx per hour. A second unit may emit NOx up to 1,800 lbs/hr. The same search shows emissions potentials of 30-70+ lbs/hr, and that's after industry-best controls at 99.9%; the higher number is for the smaller, more injurious particulate, as it's obviously more difficult to capture. Moreover, NOX and SO2 are among the pre-cursors to the formation of aforementioned smallest particulate matter (see: http://yosemite.epa.gov/oa/eab_web_docket.nsf/Filings%20By%20Appeal%20Number/CD5F1D01895E1B6585257719006E71BC/$File/Exhibit%2027%20Damberg...3.11.pdf [PDF Warning]).

...and modern coal doesn't even pollute. Modern coal burning process in new power plants alone removes most of the nasties like NOx and SO2 emissions and modern filters can eliminate particle exhaust by turning it into ash which can be kept out of atmosphere..

I'm not sure where you got your information, but it's totally wrong. It sounds like some sound byte, smacks of broad generalizations and seriously lacks technical understanding. Reduction of NOx and SO2, as well as particulate matter, is all technically possible, but to suggest it's "clean" is totally incorrect. Also, there is no "turning particle exhaust to ash", as combustion particulate is already (either fly or bottom) ash, except where it's "consensable" particulate matter (after it's already left the stack). This latter version is also usually the smallest particulate and therefore most injurious to human health & the environment.

The US EPA keeps records on control technology and related emissions for most coal units permitted in the US: http://cfpub.epa.gov/RBLC/

A quick search shows one unit, with proposed industry-accepted best available control for NOx, emitting (after control) up to 1,100 lbs of NOx per hour. A second unit may emit NOx up to 1,800 lbs/hr. The same search shows emissions potentials of 30-70+ lbs/hr, and that's after industry-best controls at 99.9%; the higher number is for the smaller, more injurious particulate, as it's obviously more difficult to capture. Moreover, NOX and SO2 are among the pre-cursors to the formation of aforementioned smallest particulate matter (see: http://yosemite.epa.gov/oa/eab_web_docket.nsf/Filings%20By%20Appeal%20Number/CD5F1D01895E1B6585257719006E71BC/$File/Exhibit%2027%20Damberg...3.11.pdf [PDF Warning]).

The US law and EPA says otherwise. It is not for the lifetime of the vehicle but is for 2years/24,000miles or 8years/80,000miles depending on the part. Now things get a bit dicey with aftermarket modifications as manufactures seem to want to blame any failure on anything not from the factory so if you go around mucking with the cars computer expect to have them say tough shit.

15 minutes?

Try closer to 5.

The US fuel flow rate at filling stations is 10 gallons per minute.
Your twenty gallon tank is full in two minutes.
Allow another minute for fumbling with your wallet, swiping in your card at the pump.

Nobody pays cash inside these days. And I don't need snacks every time I fill up the tank.

Nice idea but: New cancer clusters starting in. 3...2...1

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

Yes. Carbon dioxide emissions have been generally dropping since around 2007. cite Some of that is due to the economic depression, but most is due to converting a significant number of coal power plants to natural gas. There are also many states that have required electrical utilities to produce a certain percentage of electricity generated from renewable sources. For example, in Minnesota, 25% of electricity will be required to be from renewable sources by 2025. There are also higher nationwide fuel economy standards that are phasing in over a number of years, though vehicle emissions are relatively small compared to utilities/industry.

Dealing with your 'blockquote' style is way too hard. I suspect this is a rathole, and nobody else is reading it, and that you know what you said, so I'll omit the quotes.

So, your assertion is that changes in CO2 levels is NOT caused by human activity, or that the contribution by humans is negligible. Sadly, most authorities disagree with you. I have no way of measuring the effect, so I can't weigh in, other than to mention that I trust folks who do this for a living far more than I trust you. Here are a few links:

EPA
IPCC
NOAA
More IPCC
RealClimate

According to folks that study this, the sea level is rising. Here are some links:

Union of Concerned Scientists
National Geographic
EPA
NASA, scroll down.

The ice core mystery has been explained in such a way that the time differences are in the noise. Here is a link that attempts to explain it: arstechnica. However, one obvious reason why CO2 might follow temperature rises is that lots of CO2 is released in the arctic tundra when the permafrost melts. As solar cycles cause warming CO2 is released. However, it could easily be a situation where small changes in temperature cause CO2 spikes, which then contribute to a feedback loop. Since nobody was there, nobody really knows for sure. However, this article describes a paper in Nature 2012 that describes the feedback loop. Note the paper assumes that excess CO2 causes temperature rises. That is pretty much not contested at this point, I believe, due to a strong theoretical understanding of the interactions. Since there were no excess sources of CO2 in the Pleistocene, the temperature rise precedes the CO2 rise. Since we are artificially increasing CO2, we trigger the warming effect without a requirement for excess solar radiation.

I have read 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' by Taubes. The book is very convincing. The view of nutrition as a power game, with no real science behind it is quite interesting. Sadly for your case, there is LOTS of science to back up the assertions of Global Warming caused by human activity. Too many to simply dismiss.

If there is no problem with CO2 causing global warming, and we are going to be ok despite these emissions, well, that would be wonderful. Due to lobbying by Koch and friends, that is probably what we are going to end up with anyway. However, if there is only a 1% possibility that the worst will happen, and hundreds of millions of people will die because of it, I will still support doing whatever we can to prevent it. Can you really be so sure of your facts, many of which are supported by papers paid for by Koch subsidiaries who have a real financial interest in stopping any action on climate change?

Dealing with your 'blockquote' style is way too hard. I suspect this is a rathole, and nobody else is reading it, and that you know what you said, so I'll omit the quotes.

So, your assertion is that changes in CO2 levels is NOT caused by human activity, or that the contribution by humans is negligible. Sadly, most authorities disagree with you. I have no way of measuring the effect, so I can't weigh in, other than to mention that I trust folks who do this for a living far more than I trust you. Here are a few links:

EPA
IPCC
NOAA
More IPCC
RealClimate

According to folks that study this, the sea level is rising. Here are some links:

Union of Concerned Scientists
National Geographic
EPA
NASA, scroll down.

The ice core mystery has been explained in such a way that the time differences are in the noise. Here is a link that attempts to explain it: arstechnica. However, one obvious reason why CO2 might follow temperature rises is that lots of CO2 is released in the arctic tundra when the permafrost melts. As solar cycles cause warming CO2 is released. However, it could easily be a situation where small changes in temperature cause CO2 spikes, which then contribute to a feedback loop. Since nobody was there, nobody really knows for sure. However, this article describes a paper in Nature 2012 that describes the feedback loop. Note the paper assumes that excess CO2 causes temperature rises. That is pretty much not contested at this point, I believe, due to a strong theoretical understanding of the interactions. Since there were no excess sources of CO2 in the Pleistocene, the temperature rise precedes the CO2 rise. Since we are artificially increasing CO2, we trigger the warming effect without a requirement for excess solar radiation.

I have read 'Good Calories, Bad Calories' by Taubes. The book is very convincing. The view of nutrition as a power game, with no real science behind it is quite interesting. Sadly for your case, there is LOTS of science to back up the assertions of Global Warming caused by human activity. Too many to simply dismiss.

If there is no problem with CO2 causing global warming, and we are going to be ok despite these emissions, well, that would be wonderful. Due to lobbying by Koch and friends, that is probably what we are going to end up with anyway. However, if there is only a 1% possibility that the worst will happen, and hundreds of millions of people will die because of it, I will still support doing whatever we can to prevent it. Can you really be so sure of your facts, many of which are supported by papers paid for by Koch subsidiaries who have a real financial interest in stopping any action on climate change?

Can you cite an example of "lots of radioactive steel parts" becoming cars?

Not in the US, and not cars but here are references to elevator buttons http://uk.reuters.com/article/2008/10/22/oukoe-uk-france-lifts-radioactive-idUKTRE49L69320081022 And belt buckles. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/05/29/asos_investigation_into_radioactive_belts_demonstrates_scrap_metal_problem.html Bonus link to the EPA http://www.epa.gov/radtown/orphan-sources.html

Tritium decays to He3 a low energy beta (an electron) and a neutrino. Everything except the beta is non-radioactive.
The emitted low energy beta is not strong enough to penetrate the first layer of skin.
And there are no secondary radiation effects.

Essentially, you would have to breathe the tritium to get any real exposure,
you could immerse yourself in tritium with impunity by wearing an oxy tank and a mask,
which you would also need to do if it was normal Hydrogen, just so you could breathe..

And even if you misplaced your mask during a tritium leak,
tritium is so buoyant that it wouldn't hang around in the lower atmosphere very long at all.
It would diffuse up into the upper atmosphere, where it is naturally produced anyway.

The worst thing that could happen is if the tritium was burned with oxygen.
A droplet or so of the resulting water might find its way into your body,
where it would immediately get diluted (dramatically reducing the intensity of the radioactivity).
And then you could just drink lots of normal water to dilute it some more and to flush it out.
This will happen normally in about a month.

As the EPA says "for a given amount of activity ingested, tritium is one of the least dangerous radionuclides"

Oh and also, fusion reactors don't really hold a lot of material. Just half a gram of tritium/deuterium.
Loss of magnetic containment stops the fusion reaction immediately. No big kaboom.

You might have to fix a little damage to the magnets (where a few milligrams of hot plasma might have come in contact)
But the biggest problem by far is having to go through the really long startup procedure again.

Seriously, you should spend just a few minutes of time googling your ideas before typing them into a website.

http://cfpub.epa.gov/oppref/bedbug/

Maybe we could burn the plastic we cannot recycle in coal-fired power plants. We produce 32 million tons of plastic waste a year, but burn one billion tons of coal. If the coal feed had 3% plastic added to it the entire waste stream would be consumed while producing some electricity, and slightly reducing the CO2-to-energy output ratio.

http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/materials/plastics.htm http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/report/coal.cfm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ozone_cfc_trends.png

Seems it is going down.

On September 21, 2007, approximately 200 countries agreed to accelerate the elimination of hydrochlorofluorocarbons entirely by 2020 in a United Nations-sponsored Montreal summit. Developing nations were given until 2030. Many nations, such as the United States and China, who had previously resisted such efforts, agreed with the accelerated phase out schedule.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorofluorocarbon

Regarding HFCs, the United States and China agreed to work together and with other countries through multilateral approaches that include using the expertise and institutions of the Montreal Protocol to phase down the production and consumption of HFCs, while continuing to include HFCs within the scope of UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol provisions for accounting and reporting of emissions.

HFCs are potent greenhouse gases used in refrigerators, air conditioners, and industrial applications. While they do not deplete the ozone layer, many are highly potent greenhouse gases.

http://www.epa.gov/ozone/intpol/mpagreement.html

CFCs will remain in the atmosphere for another 100+ years, but at least we'll have some ozone layer left in the meantime. If Montreal Protocol was not implemented, there would be much less ozone about now, and none by 2020. UV rating would not be 10, but closer to 60.

No, because you've forgotten that there are two tritium atoms to a molecule, and you're assuming all the tritium atoms delay in the first year; the halflife is twelve years so each year 0.94 remains (since 0.94 ^ 12 ~= 0.5). So you're out by a factor of eight or so, I reckon.

The fact is we have scarcely even started to recycle, or for that matter avoid producing waste in the first place.

So why dont you look at the range of years +/- 5 or 10 years around 1983 and compare it with a -5 to -10 years period of recent years?

Because that would be cherry picking weather. You are selecting a period of cold years that ended in the late 70's to early 80's when you were a kid and citing these as some norm. Climate doesn't have a norm.

I too can remember those winters. I was a kid in the N.E. US in the winter of '78-79 and I remember -50 deg. F or worse for days on end. I don't miss it. Mild winters don't mean there is something wrong you have to fix.

My source is http://blog.epa.gov/blog/2009/09/where-does-my-electricity-come-from/ and as it says in the article there is no state that is even at the 50% level of it's electricity being provided by renewable sources. So, by that factor every state in the union has at least 51% or more of it's electricity provided by some sort of fossil fuel, whether it be natural gas, coal, oil, etc... Therefore, at the current status quo the situation will worsen, not get better as the number of electric cars increase unless we start increasing the number of renewable electricity sources.

This, in turn, is bad for both the environment - [...] and economy

The negative effects you describe are minor next to the dramatic negative effects from continued carbon release, where estimated social and environment costs run into the hundreds of billions in the US alone.

Every major study has concluded that the costs of inaction greatly outweigh the costs of action on climate change, and that these costs are both increasing as we delay.

You can call any data made up data, but I'd like you to read over the extremely detailed study they did in Pavillion, Wyoming, and in particular the conclusions from the report they did on this study in 2011, and tell me again all about how you've concluded that the data is made up.

You can call any data made up data, but I'd like you to read over the extremely detailed study they did in Pavillion, Wyoming, and in particular the conclusions from the report they did on this study in 2011, and tell me again all about how you've concluded that the data is made up.

The advocates of this study want you to think that hydrofracking doesn't affect groundwater, and that the study says that, but of course it doesn't say that, and the link I gave you shows evidence to the contrary. Having said that, since you ask, here's an EPA study from Wyoming that shows contamination from fracking fluids: ReportOnPavilion.pdf

The truck burning 14.28 gallons of diesel generates about 145 grams of CO2. [1]

The energy losses for the transmission line (considering it comes from coal) generates about 7 tonnes of CO2. [2]

Hopefully my calculations are correct. Obviously a huge difference here.

But after dumping all that CO2 into the atmosphere, we now find ourselves at a gas station with 10K gallons of gasoline and 1000 MWh of energy.

The Tesla S would be able to drive about 2.857.142 miles with that energy. [3]
Driving these miles, it would "release" about 936 metric tonnes of CO2 (at the coal plant).

A BMW 5 Series 520i would be able to drive about 915.294 miles with that gasoline. [4]
Driving these miles, it would release about 91 metric tonnes of CO2 (in the streets).

Conclusion: fuck the coal plants, we need more renewable energy sources!

[1] http://www.epa.gov/otaq/climate/documents/420f11041.pdf
[2] http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=74&t=11
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_S#Powertrain
[4] http://www.bmw.com/com/en/newvehicles/5series/sedan/2010/showroom/compare.html?model_1=

Sure you cut down on CO2 but natural gas is leaky as hell and methane is VASTLY worse in the atmosphere than CO2. It just makes no sense at all.

Everyone says this, but it doesn't appear to be showing up in the measurements:

http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html

"Methane (CH4) emissions in the United States decreased by 8% between 1990 and 2011. During this time period, emissions increased from sources associated with agricultural activities, while emissions decreased from sources associated with the exploration and production of natural gas and petroleum products."

Stipulating that at present *every* method does not include all the externalities, the actual cost of any product, method or system reflects the environmental cost to the extent that the cost has been de-externalized. One way that happens is that, increasingly, cleanup costs are charged to and paid for by the producer/shipper and their insurance companies. And reporting is at least one, maybe two orders of magnitude better than it was 30 years ago. That _should_ be true for oil, for wind, for solar, etc. And it is increasingly true. At this point it's probably more true for oil than for any of the others (I suspect coal is still getting a break but I dunno.)

One example of externalities not presently charged to the electric vehicle industry is the lack of cleanup and mitigation in Canada and Russia around the big nickel mining areas, where according to legend 100s of square miles of territory are devoid of living vegetation. (/.ers: is this true? I keep hearing it...)

As it turns out, shipping the oil is not one of the bigger costs of oil. IIRC from two-three years ago, the cost of shipping is only about 18c per gallon (US cost). I think the actual bulk-carrier-tanker-ship part of that is only two or three cents - my memory may have failed me on that but Wikipedia agrees. That includes the cost of insurance and the overall amortized risk to the companies involved (if it were not, the companies would have been out of business long ago). Which means that it includes the costs to the companies including fines and mitigation costs, of all the oil spills and other pollution. It also includes the costs of the newer double-hull ships with additional spill prevention and mitigation equipment that is now required. One cost that isn't being included yet is the smokestack pollution from the tankers, and all other shipping.

To the extent that externalities of all the methods are included, that cost demonstrates that pollution is actually not a very large problem for oil _compared to total production_, so electric vehicles and their power sources (wind, whatever) will have to work hard to match the true cost/benefit of oil.

Discussion: people don't realize the sheer volume of oil that goes through the system every day - counting fuel and products, around 150 million barrels (6+ billion gallons, 24+ billion liters) per day. As of 2000, the total amount spilled in 20 years in the US from causes was about 300 million gallons (about 1/576000 over 20 years), and had decreased by 50% in that 20 years. The rate has continued to decrease since then. This is equivalent to about 2/100 of one cc out of a barrel - or an invisible speck that pops out of a bubble when you open a carbonated beverage and little bubbles pop.

note: some of this data was loosely adapted from this analysis. Also, a USA Today article followed that trend - from 2005 to 2009, there were an average of 22 spills per year of more than 50 barrels (down from some 8000 in 1980. This is not to excuse, but to provide perspective. Interestingly, the New England states had the highest number of spills per square mile 1980-2002.

The goal of Kyoto was not 5%, it was 7% below 1990 for the USA.
http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/3145.php

And the US is nowhere near that goal.
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/images/ghgemissions/USCO2EmissionsTimeSeries.png

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the United States increased by about 10% between 1990 and 2011.

As far as is publicly known, the B-3 bomber only exists as a concept, a plan for a future bomber, not as a flyable aircraft.

You can see a clip of what they are referring to here. It is from a famous film.

Fluoridation of water is generally considered safe, and in widespread use. You may not want to hear this, but the position you seem to be taking is often associated with the fringe or cranks, even if there might be a valid concern due to specific circumstances. There are communities that do remove it from drinking water.

You may find this useful:
How to Remove Fluoride from Drinking Water
Basic Information about Fluoride in Drinking Water

Arizona doesn't reformulate their gas. California dilutes their gasoline with alcohol and other additives, and before that, MTBE, primarily due to lobbying by Chevron, since it allows them to manipulate the gas market in California by not allowing out of state refineries to ship gas into California.

You will find the same mileage improvements in states that do not reformulate during winter months (so called "winter gas" vs. "summer gas") if you refill your tank there during those months.

By the way, California gas is significantly worse for your engine, fittings, and gaskets than non-reformulated gas. This is one of the reasons there is a separate "aviation gasoline": to prevent an engine failure due to a hose or gasket failure due to it being eaten away by the alcohol or other substances.

Here is the reference for my statement about Arizona not reformulating:

http://www.epa.gov/region9/air/phoenixcbg/

"EPA published a separate notice approving Arizona's opt-out from the federal reformulated gasoline program, effective 90 [days] after the effective date of this final rulemaking."

Alternately, if you actually read those emails then you should be armed with precise quotes of the "deceptions and manipulations" which you found so powerfully convincing, or at least have some mental construct of their findings to provide us, rather than just a brief handwave in their direction preparatory to an ad hominem slur devoid of substantive content.

As, for instance, these quotes from 7 unrelated investigations which I find convincing:

"even if the data that CRU used were not publicly available—which they mostly are—or the methods not published—which they have been—its published results would still be credible: the results from CRU agree with those drawn from other international data sets; in other words, the analyses have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified."
-"The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia" http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/387/387i.pdf

"We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it. Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention. As with many small research groups their internal procedures were rather informal. "
- "Report of the International Panel set up by the University of East Anglia to examine the research of the Climatic Research Unit." http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/SAP

"Dr. Michael E. Mann did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community."
- "Final Investigation Report Involving Dr. Michael E. Mann" http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/Final_Investigation_Report.pdf

"On the specific allegations made against the behaviour of CRU scientists, we find that their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt. ... In addition, we do not find that their behaviour has prejudiced the balance of advice given to policy makers. In particular, we did not find any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments."
- "The Independent Climate Change E-mails Review" http://www.cce-review.org/pdf/FINAL%20REPORT.pdf

"Petitioners say that emails disclosed from CRU provide evidence of a conspiracy to manipulate data. The media coverage after the emails were released was based on email statements quoted out of context and on unsubstantiated theories of conspiracy. The CRU emails do not show either that the science is flawed or that the scientific process has been compromised. EPA carefully reviewed the CRU emails and found no indication of improper data manipulation or misrepresentation of results."
- "Myths vs. Facts: Denial of Petitions for Reconsideration of the Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act" http://epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment/myths-facts.html

"In our review of the CRU emails, we did not find any evidence that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data comprising the GHCN-M dataset or failed to adhere to appropriate peer review procedures. In addition, we found no evidence to suggest that NOAA was non-compliant with the IQA or the Shelby Amendment. "
- "Examination of issues related to internet posting of emails from Climatic Research Unit" http://www.oig.doc.g

back in the 70s I used to Surf the beach down there. It was great because the cooling pipe system went out into the ocean and you could expect the water temps to be a bit warmer.

It's sad to see this facility close but I have to believe having a bunch of sites sitting idle during decomissioning will create more eerie industrial abandonment issues. Don't believe me? Look at the old Packard Plant in Detroit It's been abandoned since 1958 and it's just sitting there, decaying with nobody cleaning it up. If the Power Industry in this country is going to just let things sit to "cool down" then there has to be some way the government can ensure that it does get dismantled properly and doesn't become another EPA Superfund site.

I haven't followed the story much until recently but are they sure there's no more economical and safe way to remediate the problem other than shutting it down or is it just economics or just another example of "Californication" and Nimby of industries not in keeping with the left wingnut views again? I mean the plant supplied power for 1.2 million homes and while Natural Gas prices are cheap right now I have bigger concerns of the Carbon Footprint.

For those that don't know, the EPA does consider it a pesticide: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/biopesticides/pips/pip_list.htm

Where are numbers giving personal transport as percentage of all transportation?

In the US it is 62-65%, in Europe it is quite a bit lower. I do not know the world wide number but given the state of the economies, personal transportation is likely to be significantly lower than US and Europe for obvious reasons.

Source: http://www.epa.gov/otaq/climate/420r06003.pdf

Your article doesn't say anything at all mostly. Here are some numbers that are actually useful, but that put the transportation number significantly lower than I did. I stuck with higher numbers from another source to make the impact of cars as high as possible. Going by the world-wide numbers from the link above, the move to electrical cars will have even less impact than I stated.

The IPCC report from 2007 (referred in this article) puts the number at 13% for all forms of transportation, that includes, personal vehicles, professional vehicles, trains, planes, boats etc. Large ships are huge emitters of both CO2 and also bad pollutants (CO2 is not a pollutant as such).

Have you ever tried to have a conversation about environmental topics with a non-scientifically-literate Green?

Nice straw man. I'll remember to use the non-scientifically-literate-anti-Green next time I need one.

The US has plenty of landfill space, and Styrofoam is as close to inert as we can come up with.

It's also thought to be carcinogenic by the EPA and by the International
Agency for Research on Cancer.

you still see places that think it's green to use paper instead of Styrofoam cups, even though Styrofoam is a better insulator and requires much less energy to make and transport.

Styrofoam requires quite a few nasty chemicals to manufacture and can't easily be recycled. It ends up in landfill where it won't decompose for a long, long time. Landfill sites cost money to montior to make sure they are not leaking anything problematic into the air or groundwater. While Styrofoam itself might not release any of those things it does take up space and thus leads us to create more sites, with more monitoring.

On the other hand paper can be recycled fairly easily into things like disposable cups where quality and colour are not too important, so the cost of manufacture is amortized over many uses.

So after all that railing against your straw man it turns out you are the one whose knowledge of the situation is lacking. Delicious.

So what exactly are you calling bullshit on?

Cattle don't produce significant methane? Is the EPA not authoratative enough for you?
http://www.epa.gov/rlep/faq.html

Or that methane causes climate change? I can't really help you if you believe climate change is a hippie conspiracy, but maybe this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/climate/evidence/methane.shtml

Human beings causes a huge, measureable impact on the environment in may other ways, it is not a leap of logic to believe in anthropological climate change.

I'm not joking. We really do dump it into the ocean.

According to the EPA, that stopped completely by 1992.

That's about when they started splicing foreign elements into corn and soy, isn't it? I wonder where all that waste is going...

I'm not joking. We really do dump it into the ocean.

According to the EPA, that stopped completely by 1992.

"The main objective of the federal Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1988 has been realized--we have stopped dumping sewage sludge into the ocean," Reilly said. "EPA will continue to enforce the consent decrees which require the establishment of long-term, land-based disposal alternatives. We will also continue to encourage solutions that have beneficial uses. Through these efforts, not only are we preventing pollution by protecting the ocean from use as a dump, we are now seeing sludge recognized more and more as a resource, not as a waste.

Motor vehicles are behind about 15% all CO2 emissions.

True on a world-wide scale. However, in the US, 32% of CO2 emissions is from transportation. It's harder to find numbers on motor vehicles in the US, but the closest I get within 3 minutes of Google is almost a quarter of annual US emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2). (...) The US transportation sector emits more CO2 than all but three other countries' emissions from all sources combined.

Unfortunately, it looks like there is no simple way to reduce CO2 emissions. Just saying "just cut all the CO2 sources except the my car, my airconditioning, and my incandescent bulbs" is a bit too easy.

Underground gasoline storage tanks are banned????

Not all of them, just the type prone to leakage.

I'd better go tell my every gas station in the US, they're got a problem!

Well, as a matter of fact this was a problem for them. Many smaller stations that did marginal volume were forced out of business.

As far as your claim that you can't quantify the risks, why don't you try and do so? Here's a hint: It's doable. There are several ways you can do it, either from a geology direction (Hint: what are the characteristics of a hydrocarbon reservoir?) or from a public safety direction (Perhaps deaths and injuries/year? It's not like we don't have a massive amount of field testing from the past two decades.... Just to be fair, do a comparison to a comparison to the technology that cheap gas is reducing, which is coal).

OK, the question "stupid, or industry shill?" has been answered. There are problems with the industry's claims about the geology, and it's not all replacing coal.

You should note that I would not advocate for a ban, but rather much stricter oversight, which I'm sure you'll deride as unnecessary.

It doesn't take 40 years to clean up after a fertilizer plant explodes. BTW, what happens if they get another tsunami while they're cleaning up the mess?

On the other hand, it doesn't take an explosion for a fertilizer company to leave land toxic, uninhabitable, and a risk to groundwater for over 30 years:

http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/sfund/r9sfdocw.nsf/vwsoalphabetic/Frontier+Fertilizer?OpenDocument

Interesting link! the ground water rule http://www.epa.gov/fedrgstr/EPA-WATER/2000/May/Day-10/w10763.htm would be the specific one that applies here? It will be fun to see how quickly the EPA or other organisations mobilise based on this data. It sounds like a lot of work to remedy these problems once found.

The article states that viruses in drinking water aren't regulated by the EPA. That's a bit misleading. Regulations pertaining to pathogens in surface water and ground water sources in drinking water are largely based on disinfection criteria that would remove or inactivate 99.99% of viruses from the water.

http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/pathogens.cfm#What%20pathogens%20does%20EPA%20regulate%20in%20drinking%20water,%20and%20what%20are%20their%20health%20effects?

Steve Robertson, PE
Las Vegas Valley Water District
Planning Division
Water Quality Team

Finally, after 15 years, a Slashdot article in my field.

That would be the cyanide

When one of the CFL's broke in my kids room, I followed the EPA rules to clean it up. What a pain.

The EPA page basically says, "Be very careful and take these steps to safely clean up a broken CFL. If you can't follow this procedure, well, it's really no big deal."