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It is amazing that such a man gets quoted by Dick Cheney on a Christmas greeting card that says:

"And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?"

Talk about out of context ...

1. The study suggesting Teflon in cookware is harmful to humans was based on PFOA.
   No, but nice try. There have been teflon cancer scares that had nothing to do with PFOA since teflon started being made into consumer products. One of these resurgencies occurred in the 1980s, which was what made me aware of the issue in the first place. As a kid.
2. Scorched fumes from pans without teflon (but with traces of cooking oil, food residue, etc) also kill birds.
   True. They are also not good for humans to breathe.
3. People are not birds. Birds are extremely vulnerable to resperatory problems. People are more durable.
   However, our historical use of birds as signifiers of atmospheres dangerous to humans suggest that there is in fact some useful overlap.
4. There is no evidence whatsoever that people suffer any ill effects (other than psychosomatic) or the specific resperatory maladies caused to birds by overheated teflon (and other fumes) at the doses in question.
   A quick google search turns up some of the evidence in question:
   

   "At 554 degrees Fahrenheit," said Houlihan, "studies show ultrafine particles start coming off the pan. These are tiny little particles that can embed deeply into the lungs."

   The hotter the pan gets, the more chemicals are released. "At 680, toxic gases can begin to come off of heated Teflon," Houlihan said.

   It turns out, DuPont has known about the "Teflon flu" for years.

   "You get some fumes, yes," said Chowdhry, "and you get a flu-like symptom, which is reversible." Chowdhry said the flu is temporary and lasts at most for a couple of days. She also added that a warning about the flu, while not on the pans themselves, is on the DuPont Web site.

   In the demonstration for 20/20, a piece of bacon was just getting crisp when the Teflon pan went beyond the initial warning point of 500 degrees.

   "I've never cooked bacon," said Chowdhry. "I can't comment."

   (http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Teflon/Non-Stick -Sick14nov03.htm)

5. Canaries were used in mines to detect excessive levels of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. Which has nothing to do with this.
   Canaries were chosen because they have a delicate respiratory system in general, meaning they will succumb to any particular respiratory distress quickly, which makes them useful as a signifier.
6. Toxicidity is about the dosage (sometimes dosage per kilogram of the test subject) for a particualar substance - not the substance itself.
   Very true. From the same article linked above:
   

   Now the unexpected discovery of the almost universal contamination of Americans' blood from C-8, combined with worrisome laboratory studies, has led to a high priority investigation by the EPA of the chemical's risks.

   "It's a potential threat," said Houlihan. "And the EPA's moving fast in studying this. Human blood levels are too close to the levels that harm lab animals. That's why they're moving too fast."

   
   (here is another story with the same significant content.)

Got any arguments I can't poke holes in, Coward? I suggest you quit your job at Dupont as a corporate shill before you, too, suffer genetic damage due to toxic chemicals. Er, before you suffer more damage.

Photos of Babies Deformed at Birth as a Result of Depleted Uranium (DU) 2003
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/DU-Baby2003.htm

Low levels of ionizing radiation seems to be actually beneficial to human health.

This is called radiation hormesis. And this theory started after they found that people who lived in such a distance from hiroshima and Nagasaki that they received low radiation doses. And, years later, this population, exposed to radiation, had much lower cancer rates than non-exposed similar populations.

You can check some references:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1150419 7&query_hl=3&itool=pubmed_docsum

http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v5/n1s/full/74 00222.html

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00019A7 0-0C1C-1F41-B0B980A841890000&catID=4

http://www.angelfire.com/mo/radioadaptive/inthorm. html

http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/2004/Hormesis-T heory-Toxins27feb04.htm

Adherents.com, which cites Kane, Joseph Nathan. Facts About the Presidents (Fourth Edition). New York: The H. W. Wilson Co. (1981), pg. 360; DeGregorio, William A. The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents (Second Edition). New York: Dembner Books (1989).

I agree that Jefferson was a deist but that still doesn't change the fact that he admired much of the philosophy of Christianity. Rejecting Jesus's divinity and refusing to cede to fundamentalist demands that the Government recognize the primacy of Jesus does not mean rejecting what's good about Christianity. I wish Evangelicals who are up in arms about church-state separation could understand this as Jefferson did.

Actually, for every molecule of CO2 added to the system,
you are subtracting one molecule of O2 to the system.

So, humans are running out of oxygen far faster than they need to worry about freezing to death.

The Global drop in available oxygen is under reported, most likely to prevent widespread panic.

The Oceans Primary Oxygen Producting Plankton levels have been dropping radically since the 1980s (they make more than 50% of the oxygen you need) and the green space of trees and plants continually gets reduced by urbanization, suburban sprawl, slash and burn, and ongoing desertification in Africa and elsewhere (They make the rest of your O2).

Reseachers have linked the real cause of mass extinction events not to just some rock falling from the sky, but for the worldwide drop of oxygen from 35 percent down to 15 percent of the atmosphere. The Giant Dinos ran out of air.

With the ongoing death of land plants and primary oxygen producing plankton, VERY few humans will survive the upcoming drop from the current 21 percent oxygen levels down to only 9 percent oxygen levels.

Here are some sources of the biggest coverup in human history: 'The Oxygen is vanishing.':

LONG-TERM ATMOSPHERIC OXYGEN DECREASE
- AN UNDERESTIMATED FACTOR FORCING THE PERMIAN-TRIASSIC MASS EXTINCTION.
O. Weidlich (1), W. Kiessling (2) and E. Flügel (3)
(1) Inst. f. Geowissenschaften, Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel,
(2) Inst. f. Paläontologie, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin,
(3) Inst. f. Paläontologie, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität
Erlangen-Nürnberg (ow@gpi.uni-kiel.de/Fax: +49-431880-5557)
direct link: http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EAE03/05406/EAE03-J -05406.pdf
Referenced and Link Located on:
List of Accepted Contributions -
CL32 Phanerozoic history of atmospheric gases (co-sponsored by BG)
EGS-AGU-EUG Joint Assembly. Nice, France, 06 - 11 April 2003
Copernicus Online Service + Information System
http://www.cosis.net/members/meetings/sessions/acc epted_contributions.php?p_id=38&s_id=779

Vulnerability Assessment of the North East Atlantic Shelf Marine Ecoregion to Climate Change
West Coast Energy Limited. Trevor Baker, Project Manager August 2005
World Wildlife Fund (WWF)

Monitoring the Earth from Space with SeaWiFS
http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/SeaWiFS/TEACHERS/s anctuary_7.html

Decline in Oceans' Phytoplankton Alarms Scientists
David Perlman - SF Chronicle 6oct03
http://www.mindfully.org/Water/2003/Phytoplankton- Decline-Ocean6oct03.htm

Ocean primary production and climate: Global decadal changes
Watson W. Gregg, Laboratory for Hydrospheric Processes, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, USA

PS: If you blind someone with a laser you always deal permanent damage, the question is only how much. and no, most sunglasses won't protect you.

Googling turns up this:
- Radioactive Elements in Coal and Fly Ash: Abundance, Forms, and Environmental Significance - Radioactive elements in coal and fly ash should not be sources of alarm. The vast majority of coal and the majority of fly ash are not significantly enriched in radioactive elements, or in associated radioactivity, compared to common soils or rocks. This observation provides a useful geologic perspective for addressing societal concerns regarding possible radiation and radon hazard.

- Coal Combustion:Nuclear Resource or Danger - Third, large quantities of uranium and thorium and other radioactive species in coal ash are not being treated as radioactive waste. These products emit low-level radiation, but because of regulatory differences, coal-fired power plants are allowed to release quantities of radioactive material that would provoke enormous public outcry if such amounts were released from nuclear facilities. Nuclear waste products from coal combustion are allowed to be dispersed throughout the biosphere in an unregulated manner. Collected nuclear wastes that accumulate on electric utility sites are not protected from weathering, thus exposing people to increasing quantities of radioactive isotopes through air and water movement and the food chain.

I've heard it elsewhere before. Googled for stats yesterday. Seems like 1982 is the most popular year.

OK, dude, just because you watched some episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit doesn't make you an expert on this stuff. There are people, like me, who have a legitimate problem with recycling SOME materials becuase it's more wasteful to do it. Your little "I want to destroy the world" argument is really childish and just damages the reputation of those trying to make a legitimate point against misinformation.

Economically speaking, it is viable to recycle metals and things containing harvestable metal. Aluminum cans, computer equipment, old wiring, and scrap metal can all be resused for products that are equal in quality and at a lower cost. I recycle all my cans and old computer equipment because of this.

Paper is a friggin waste to recycle. It's biodegradable for one. The tree's used to make it in America all come from tree farms. These trees are grown specifically for this purpose, so no one is running into virgin forests cutting down all the trees for paper. There does exist opposing research for both sides on the topic of set asides and the increased cost to consumers for packaging. I think the cost difference is negligible and definitely worth the process of forest conservation. On the topic of pollution, no one really talks about it. It's kinda like a dirty secret. To recycle paper you need to put it through basically the same process as making it - which is horrible for the environment. So, instead of making an inferior product that causes the same amount of environmental damage to produce and doesn't save the forests - I have to say no. Tree farms save the US forests in conjunction with set asides.

Plastic. This ones a toughie. Not the most biodegradable stuff on the planet and it uses up oil to make it. There is also the issue of what can and cannot be recycled. Number 1 and 2 can. Numbers 3 through 7 cannot because of the PVC content. So what to do? Alot of centers ship it to China. That doesn't really sound like recycling, that's more like putting the problem somewhere else. Economically, the cost of recycled plastic is on par with that of plastic made with virgin petroleum, so there is no real incentive to use recycled. Notice on your plastic bottle labels that they say "contains recycled plastic" not made from recycled plastic. If they throw one small batch of recycled plastic into the mix, that statement is true. The corporations ARE NOT recycling shit, thats all marketing baby. And almost everyone buys it. The best thing to do here, don't buy stuff in plastic, or at least cut down on what it is you buy. Look for things contained in glass. Buy your soda in cans. Quit buying water in bottles, which is another scam altogether, and purchase a water purifier. Wash plastic to-go boxes and use them like tupperware.

Glass. Not economically the best, but it is easier on the consuption of resources. The process to sort glass into a usable, high quality material is expensive - so it's not necessarily saving anyone any money to do so. The technology used is getting better though, and I firmly believe that it will one day result in a profitable manner in which to make recycled glass the prefered resource. On a consuption of resources perspective, it requires much less energy to process recycled glass than it does to create it from raw materials. I haven't been able to find any numbers that allow me to detirmine if the costs to sort are offset by the costs to reshape, so the jury is still out on that one. On this matter I err on the side of caution. I recycle my glass.

SO yeah kid, recycling in all cases may not be the best - but please make up your own mind and do some research, not adopt a stance fed to you by two guys with a good argument that you were too lazy to research and adopted as your own.

If navies start using these toys, then it wrecks the sea creatures' hearing, making survival (hunting, avoiding predators) impossible. In the worst case, the damage done can kill them outright. And not just in the immediate area, but for hundreds of miles around. Never mind Japanese whalers, the US navy could wipe out whole speices of whales overnight with this stuff if they decided to us it on a big scale.

This problem has been around for some time now: 1 2 3 4 5.

My question, though, is - WHY does the US need this shit ? I mean, how much does the US really rely on its navy these days for national security. Its not like Al Quaeda or even the Iranians/Syrians/North Koreans/[insert-this-weeks-axis-of-evil-member-her e] could do any conceivable damage to a US warship (unless maybe a suicide bomber managed to sneak onboard). Maybe the Chinese or Russians, but really, does the US really NEED this new level of naval capability with the technological lead it already has ?

After watching several people send their lives up their nose, I have to call bullshit on the mortality numbers regarding cocaine. Smoking a cigarette will never make you drop dead on the first drag, but it is quite possible to die the first time you try cocaine through a number of causes. It may not be as physically addicting as nicotine but it is certainly psychologically addictive. Doing it long term is pretty much asking for cardiovascular problems, at the very least, if not even the Jerry Garcia teflon nose inserts.

In regards smoking, Smoking is a net positive for the Czech government, at least :b

Reminds me the old canard about the US SSA doing a study showing that the early death of smokers results in reduced health care and transfer payment costs and therefore is a good deal for them.

Because you are polluting the air that I breathe

There's an argument going down the drain (from the Ford website):
Standard 4.0L 2V V6
The 2006 Explorer 4.0L engine is certified to produce 74% fewer smog emissions than the previous model version and will be ULEVII compliant in California (and states adopting California emissions requirements).
The 4.0L will be EPA Tier 2 Bin 4 compliant in all other states.

(Yes, I know they still burn more fuel per mile)

What I'd really like to see is geeks going after the government on things like lawnmowers, snowblowers, weedwackers, etc. that have no regulation. See here and here for instance .

Or at least, not any time soon.

One of the most feasible design for a solar car that I've seen was the TNE III, from Team New England. The folks who run Sunrayce (GM) specifically changed the rules after 1995, to make sure that the design, or anything resembling it, wasn't allowed again.

What was different about their design? They didn't keep the solar panels in a charging configuration while the vehicle was in motion. They would charge up, pack up the array, then race for the finish line. If they ran out of power, they'd have to stop, unpack the array, then sit and charge for a while.

Besides that their car was one of the only ones with trunk space (although, it was filled with the solar array), their design gave more space to the driver compartment. Provided it's used for simple commuting (office, home, charge, repeat), their design makes perfect sense.

Now ... why won't solar cars ever come into real use? They're not strong enough to pass crash safety tests. They draw at most 2kW. That results in major weight stripping -- they weigh at most 700lbs with a driver in them. They also reduce the cross section ... maybe 0.5 to 1 m^2 ... which means it has about the visibility of a motorcycle (worse, as they're so low to the ground).

Combined with a Suburban or a semi, whose driver isn't paying attention, and it's a death trap on wheels.

The only way that I see fully electric vehicles really coming into their own is in a controled environment where they're not mixing with larger vehicles. (planned cities, golf courses, etc.)

I'm personally for planned cities -- visit a town like Venice, and you'll see that it's perfectly possible to get around without owning a vehicle, so long as they're a little bit of public transit Think about how much cleaner New York could be if people couldn't bring vehicles in from outside, and there were only delivery vehicles, mass transit, and taxis.

I would actually expect alternative fuels, most likely oil, but not necessarily petroleum based, to be the most likely candidate for the next generation -- biodiesel, or byproducts from trash digestion or biomass recycling.

I'd say that the car companies realize that people are willing to pay a premium for more environmentally friendly cars (just like they used to be able to sell 'agressive' looking cars, more comfortable rides, 'luxury', or carrying capacity), but they have to weigh that against making sure it's reliable. They could go bankrupt from lemon laws if they don't make sure they're rock solid, and aren't hazardous to their passengers.

none. but, to be fair, they do occasinally bomb them 500 lb, laser-guided missles, like this one.

Different AC, but you're still an ass if you think nuclear decomm, [illegal and legal] disposal and clean up are _not_ costing billions (and going to cost more in the future after the denial ends) or are not using illegal immigrants for the dirty work - then I have two words to start you off with:

YuccaFuckingMountain Project
and the two big spook companies behind it; working hand-in-hand, synergistically to create the most highly secured place on earth where they and their friends can hide nuclear waste or anything else they want to hide.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&oi=scholarr&start=2 &num=3&q=http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2001/ nn11459.pdf
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ articles/2004/7/12/165520.shtml
http://www.atomicinsights.com/FTROU/02-02-02.html
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/Yucca-Mountain-Cost- Uncertainties-GAOdec01.htm
http://www.greenscissors.org/energy/yuccamountain. htm
http://www.google.com/search?q=nuclear+waste+dispo sal+costs&btnG=Search&hs=JWI&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1

I meant Giant, not guant :( I hate shifty mice to make sure this post is not offtopic: I found this link: http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/Microwave-Crowd-Di spersal.htm

It is perhaps worthwhile to check the original JAMA article on the topic, too.

The total is 225,000 deaths per year, from(1)

12,000 deaths/year from unnecessary surgery

7000 deaths/year from medication errors in hospitals

20,000 deaths/year from other errors in hospitals

80,000 deaths/year from nosocomial infections in hospitals

106,000 deaths/year from nonerror, adverse effects of medication

Nearly half were due to nonerror adverse effects of medications. While this is also unfortunate, patients were receiving medication to treat some malady or affliction. (These were the 'nonerror' cases, remember--these people were receiving the proper drugs in accordance with established best practices.) What number of patients would have died in the absence of the given drug therapy?

We're left with the 39,000 deaths per year that could be classified as "doctor's mistakes"--really, errors of the whole medical establishment, since hospital errors are included in that tally. That ranks ninth as a cause of death, rather that third...and I dare say that many of those might not be due to mistakes in diagnosis by my doctor, so why shouldn't I trust him?

Of course, if medical care were capable of curing any disease, then the only causes of death would then be acute-onset illnesses and trauma that kill you before you can get to medical care...and medical error.

(1) Starfield B. "Is US health really the best in the world?" JAMA 284(4):483-5 (2000).

If we do nothing and the environmentalists turn out to be right, we're screwed.

CAUTION: Post contains politically incorrect crimethink.

which is why they advocate for safe technology (wind and solar power) that is economically and environmentally responsible

Note that wind power, particularly high density sited systems capable of powering more than a farmhouse, have their own consequences: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/programs/ bdes/altamont/altamont.html

Solar installations raise similar issues, related primarily to siting. The best solar power generation locations are those with little overcast, relatively close to the equator. That makes the Southwest United States a good location, but the combination of all that construction and the permanent shading of huge regions of the desert will be fought as causing more ecological damage.

Yes, solar power sats and a microwave downlink to an 'antenna farm' would cause much less damage. The land under the antenna grid can be safely farmed, and the power density (watts/square foot) would be lower than direct sunlight. That won't stop the 'deadly microwave radiation' . http://www.mindfully.org/Technology/2004/Electroma gnetic-Fields-EMF1jun04.htm (Note that Arthur is someone who would be much better off if he took his medication. Seriously.)

I think alternate energy sources, from wind and geothermal though powersats, AND nuclear fission plants, would be a good thing. Never assume that the politically correct choice will be the best one, though, or that it will be blessed by all.

Ooops, as someone else has pointed out, albeit in an offensive way, my chemistry is way off: PTFE doesn't contain any chlorine. Its Carbonyl fluoride probably. When I have worked with Calcium fluoride at elevated temperatures, that evolves fluorine. That can then react with moisture to form hydrofluoric acid.

THis link contains lots of interesting information on the decomposition of PTFE.

http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/teflon/PTFE-Pyreh ttp://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Teflon/PTFE-Pyroly sis-Combustion-Hazards.htm exposure of a smoker to 0.4mg of ptfe powder is enough to induce fume-fever.

Anyway, I am an engineer, not a chemist.

Steve

Mad Canadian Beef. Yummy!

Well, at least one study
(http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/More-GM Os-Less -Pesticide.htm)
correlates GM crops with increased pesticide use, so they may not be quite as helpful as originally claimed.

last year I had a research assignment based on modifying our dna and transgenics, and it's quite an interesting subject, i won't be so arrogant as to link to that assignment, but I will post links to some of the articles i referred to..

http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Today-Food-Tomorrow-Hu mans.htm
http://www.fda.gov/cvm/index/fdavet/1999/july.html #transgenics
http://www.ifgene.org/proscons.htm
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0317,baard,43560, 1.html
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1640

and no, i did not RTFA.

Examine US states that voted for Bush and their IQ levels.

Mindfully.org note: While it does have the bright side of getting rid of a lot of trash, burning the oil from the process is about the same as burning any oil. The combustion waste of burning the byproduct of this technology is definitely toxic and most likely causes global warming. If burning petroleum causes global warming, then so does this.

If it were used, it would prolong oil supplies. But then, we shouldn't be burning oil in the first place.

Beyond it being a get-rich-quick scheme, it is a cure for a symptom, not the problem(s). We need to combat the problems of this world. Rather than compounding the errors of the past, we need to see things for what they really are and deal with them. Adding technology does not solve anything in a sustainable manner.

They are almost completely wrong. Here was my response:

I have to disagree with your rating of Brian Appel's Changing World Technologies, as appended to the May 2003 Discover.com article about it. You give it a unanimous prolonged thumbs down. This shows a lack of knowledge about the petroleum products industry.

The oil produced by the process patented by CWT is invaluable as a source to produce plastic products, even though, Godwilling, we will move to more efficient and less environmentally impactive energy sources than burning hydrocarbons (produced from oil).

Plastic is an excellent material. The word plastics refers to an entire world, not limited to what most people think of as plastic. It may not be best stated as even a class of materials but a currently very developed system of manufacturing a particular class of materials. The problem it has is that it is not cheap to recycle, so it gets put back into the environment. While it is almost never toxic, it still causes problems because of its natural physical properties--its impermeability, and all the other properties that make it useful to us. All of those properties make it bad outside of its intended setting, and in some random place in the biological environment. It is usually very tailored to a precise function.

The other problem with plastics is that they are derived from petroleum--oil. This impacts the environment as it must be removed from the ground. They are also derived from various other chemicals, like, well, like the chemicals described resulting from CWT's processing of plastics and other various organic and mixed feedstocks. These chemicals are now procured from a wide variety of processes, some of them *extremely* deliterious to the environment.

CWT's system is the BEST way I have seen to recycle what society depends on. The replacements for current plastic products are often worse for the environment than plastics themselves, if you take the whole manufacturing system into account. We will always depend on these products. Now we can do so ad infinitum.

We will ween ourselves from consuming our precious oxygen and heating our environment to produce usable energy. This story isn't even tangential to that change in my mind though.

We will alway use plastics in one form or another. This is how we will do it without destroying anything. That's the good story about CWT.

The real problem is that there just aren't enough turkey guts in the world to replace crude oil

Yes, but this is not a turkey-specific process. Consider, e.g., biomass (waste or otherwise). From TFA:


Unlike other solid-to-liquid-fuel processes such as cornstarch into ethanol, this one will accept almost any carbon-based feedstock. If a 175-pound man fell into one end , he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water. While no one plans to put people into a thermal depolymerization machine, an intimate human creation could become a prime feedstock. "There is no reason why we can't turn sewage, including human excrement, into a glorious oil," says engineer Terry Adams, a project consultant. So the city of Philadelphia is in discussion with Changing World Technologies to begin doing exactly that.

From TFA:


Thermal depolymerization, Appel says, has proved to be 85 percent energy efficient for complex feedstocks, such as turkey offal: "That means for every 100 Btus in the feedstock, we use only 15 Btus to run the process." He contends the efficiency is even better for relatively dry raw materials, such as plastics.

No, some of them are not peer-reviewed, they're inconclusive but they're still food for thought.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4113989.stm
http://www.mindfully.org/Health/2002/Mobile-Phone- Radiation20jun02.htm
http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/08/link_betwe en_mobile_phones/
http://www.microwavenews.com/clearerpicture.html
http://www.emrnetwork.org/schools/macopinion.htm

humans and gorillas were 98% the same geneticaly

Although true, some context is needed... the figure is as high as 85% for mice. 50% for a damn banana!

First, the question posed had no time period specified. It was simply "have you ever experienced this", not have you experienced it under the current administration. Anyone who's been employed for 8 years or longer has spent more time under another (Democratic) administration than the current one.

And, of course the Clinton administration would never, ever put politics before policy. I love how these debates always degenerate into "your side is evil, my side is pure."

There have been several news stories about this. For instance Where Computers Go to Die

There is no doubt that volcanic eruptions add CO2 to the atmosphere, but compared to the quantity produced by human activities, their impact is virtually trivial: volcanic eruptions produce about 110 million tons of CO2 each year, whereas human activities contribute almost 10,000 times that quantity.

If the above were completely true, humans would produce about 1 TRILLION tons of C02 each year. according to http://www2.biotech.wisc.edu/jeffries/faq/carbon%2 0dioxide/CO2.html and http://www.mindfully.org/Air/CO2-US2000-DOE.htm US CO2 production is about 1.3 to 1.5 Billion tons each year. Given that the US produces about %25 of CO2, that means that Global CO2 production is at most 6 Billion tons or about 55 times as much as volcanic eruptions. Hardly anywhere near the 10,000 number you and they throw out.

Using the USGS All of humanity produces 22 Billion a year and volcanoes 130-220, that is 100-170 times the volcanoes, still much less than 10,000.

Now for large volcanic explosions such as Mt. Saint Helens and, Krakatoa? Still trying to find info on them, but has to be much more than their average.

So really, we are talking about 0.02% of the (usable) Earth's surface. My point is that it just so happens to be the 0.02% where more than 1 billion (and counting) people live, in the neighborhood of another country (China) that is in the path of the fallout with another 1 billion (and counting) people.

Powder keg... meet Mr. Match.

"I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable"

This report reviews the results of over 8,200 university-based soybean varietal trials in 1998 and reaches the following conclusions regarding the magnitude of the RR soybean yield drag -

* The yield drag between top RR varieties compared to top conventional varieties averages 4.6 bushels per acre, or 6.7 percent.
* When comparing average yields across the top 5 varieties tested in 8 states, the yield drag averages 4.1 bushels, or 6.1 percent.
* Across all varieties tested, the yield drag averages 3.1 bushels, or 5.3 percent.
* In some areas of the Midwest, the best conventional variety sold by seed companies produces yields on average 10 percent or more higher than comparable Roundup Ready varieties sold by the same seed companies.

It is important to place the RR soybean yield drag in perspective. From 1975 to 1994 soybean yields rose on average about 0.5 bushels per year. In 1999 the RR soybean yield drag could result in perhaps a 2.0 to 2.5 percent reduction in national average soybean yields, compared to what they would likely have been if seed companies had not dramatically shifted breeding priorities to focus on herbicide tolerance. If not reversed by future breeding enhancements, this downward shift in soybean yield potential could emerge as the most significant decline in a major crop ever associated with a single genetic modification..2

On whether RR soybean systems reduce pesticide use and increase grower profits, our analysis shows that -

* RR soybean systems are largely dependent on herbicides and hence are not likely to reduce herbicide use or reliance. Claims otherwise are based on incomplete information or analytically flawed comparisons that do not tell the whole story.
* Farmers growing RR soybeans used 2 to 5 times more herbicide measured in pounds applied per acre, compared to the other popular weed management systems used on most soybean fields not planted to RR varieties in 1998. RR herbicide use exceeds the level on many farms using multitactic Integrated Weed Management systems by a factor of 10 or more.
* There is clear evidence that Roundup use by farmers planting RR soybeans has risen markedly in 1999 because of the emergence of a degree of tolerance to Roundup in several key weed species, shifts in weeds toward those less sensitive to Roundup, price cuts and aggressive marketing.
* Roundup use on soybeans may well double from 1998 levels within the next few years. But if current trends continue in the way RR technology is used, the efficacy and market share of Roundup may then fall just as quickly.
* The RR soybean yield drag and technology fee impose a sizable indirect tax on the income of soybean producers, ranging from a few percent where RR varieties work best to over 12 percent of gross income per acre.

I missed an absolute freakin' classic opportunity in 1999.

I had this plan. I was going to build myself a "universal Y2K compliance tester" -- a simple plastic box with a power socket and some flashing lights, basically -- and then travel from town to town, going around residential areas, offering to "Y2K test" their small appliances (kettles, toasters, microwave ovens &c) for an extortionate ..... sorry, for a reasonable fee. Then move on to a new town and do it all again another day. I'd even be able to effect a "fix" by changing the fuse in the mains plug {in this country, every plug contains its own fuse, there is a 30A wire fuse or trip switch for all the power points on a floor} for a "special" one. After which the tester would of course pass that appliance.

I suppose I ought to say that I would only have ripped off people that I thought deserved it, so of course I would have stayed away from council estates and any house with a Mini on the drive, and not gone overboard anyway with the charges unless I thought my victims were just walking stacks of pound notes.

Back in '99, most VCRs had a 14-day timer: you wanted to record a programme at nine o'clock next Thursday, you set it to THU 21:00, or if you wanted the Thursday after next you set it to 2ND THU. Didn't even care what month it was, let alone the year. The more sophisticated ones had a range of years spanning from before they were made to longer than they could be expected to last. Boiler time clocks usually kept track of the day of the week -- so you can have an extra hour's worth of DHW on working days, for a bath in the morning. Some microwaves had -- if not a simple electromechanical timer -- just a 12-hour clock. After all, they don't even care if it's morning or evening -- but that VFD needs a way to earn its keep somehow while the oven isn't being used to turn innocuous foodstuffs into deadly poisons, and counting how many times the mains is reversing is as good a job as any. As for the {actually very few} DOS and Windows PCs that genuinely minded the rollover, I was prepared. As well as some simple test programmes, I'd written a pair of DOS batch scripts, one for startup and one for shutdown, that could also be run through windows 95 or 98 even. The idea was that you stored the "real" date in a text file and picked a "safe" date before switching the computer off; then added the number of days the machine must have spent switched off to the stored date at start-up. Fine, unless midnight struck between telling it you were going to shut down and shutting it down, but we all need a bug. {My general experience was that almost all mobos of the time could live through the transition from 1999-12-31 23:59:59 to 2000-01-01 00:00:00 if they were switched on as it actually happened, and would correctly store dates beyond 2000; but would not roll over properly if they were switched off at the critical moment. Therefore, I didn't expect Linux users would have any problems. They all seemed to know what they were doing, anyway.}

But I lost the nerve to do it. Now I'm just sitting here on this bar stool telling you this story about how I almost could have made me a fortune out of some dimwits who had more money than they were smart enough to be looking after, when I should be describing the thrill of the chase, cops on my tail, need to get out of here fast; buying second-hand suits in charity shops, watching myself on the TV news, a dozen times over and larger than life in the window of D.E.R.; travelling for free, hitching lifts or being inhumanly quiet in unlocked bogs on the trains. The way I came out of nowhere and went back just as quick, as though the money hardly weighed me down. And perhaps I could have got in a f

No, your statement comes from thin air between you ears.

There have been lots of reports in the last 5 months about the control of digital systems through direct brainwave interpretation--email, video games, prosthetics, etc. The Air Force and Duke U. have had monkeys flying flight simulators by thought for 1-2 yrs now. Their work has been the result of interpretation of understood wave patterns for arm and hand movement, and not requiring the "training" the UW subjects needed for playing pong. The target system would mimic a mechanical response the subject is already familiar i.e. arm hand movement.

But this success so far has only been acheived intrusively, by putting a hole in the subject's head and directly accessing the brain to capture EM activity. The real problem now is interpretting the brainactivity through the skull, scalp and hair. With the many amputies coming back from war, a great deal of effort is being made to develop these type of systems for control of prosthetic limbs in hope of improving quality of life for these soldiers...but to do it without putting more holes in their heads. The goal is to have such a system functioning within the next year or two.
http://www.angelfire.com/az3/newzone/mku.html
http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/~magsig/pinecone.htm
http://www.mindfully.org/Technology/2003/Brain-Imp lant-Read10nov03.htm

That wasn't due to an evil corporation though so it doesn't count.

Article

Over 85 thousand died as a result of the dam failures. There was little or no time for warnings. The wall of water was traveling at about 50 kilometers per hour or about 14 meters per second. The authorities were hampered by the fact that telephone communication was knocked out almost immediately and that they did not expect any of the "iron dams" to fail.

Article

KARABOLKA, Russia - One of the world's ghastliest nuclear accidents happened just upwind of here, in a nameless atomic city that never appeared on a map, when an explosion of radioactive sludge produced a toxic plume that contaminated a quarter of a million people.

General Ludd if you please!

...unlike corn and so forth, which is where that Canadian case came from

That case actually involved canola, and canola pollen is heavy and not normally carried long distances by wind. However, according to the farmer who lost that case, the judged ruled that it didn't matter how the GM plants ended up in the field. See here for an account in his own words.

Wow... "Tentacles of Rage," huh? LOL Quite a rare, comedic gem, you've found here.

Seriously, have you even read the thing? I wouldn't blame you if you haven't; it's hilariously terrible! It's written in first person with evidence that, the majority of the time, borders on anecdotal. The author was so hard-pressed to find conservative media outlets that, for one table, he only managed to find TWELEVE among the THOUSANDS of newspapers, television networks, radio shows, and so on! Two of them are even websites! LOL

...it can put out memes about leftist ideas to match the rightwing ideas that have dominated political discourse over the last 35 years or so

What evidence do you have to back up this assertion? Do you even live in the US? Political "discussion" is quite liberal at times. How do you explain the political discourse around Affirmative Action? Abortion? Gay marriage?

I think you--and the distinguished author of "TENTACLES OF RAGE!!"--are vastly over-estimating the ability of conservatives to be heard in the U.S. Sorry, pointing to well-funded, conservative think-tanks without even touching the multi-billion dollar liberal Hollywood establishment just doesn't cut it. In fact, if you want a counter-argument, click here.

-Grym

Maybe it's a disease. Maybe it's a mutation. Maybe these particular bass cross bred with some frogs. Nobody can say for sure at this point, but they sure can speculate that it's all our fault. And that's just bad science.

Yeah, the Potomac is famous for its purity. So despite the fact that it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, in all probability it is actually a fish-frog hybrid.

It's not as if we have any scientific evidence that human-created pollutants like chemicals released by common household plastics can produce weird hormonal reactions in humans and animals. By the way, please stop chewing on your pen, Bobby.

Corporations and Investors want a Race to the Bottom, which increases profits by decreasing wages and benefits. The end result will be a large amount of wealth concentrated in the hands of a few.

Workers want a Race to the Top by increasing wages and benefits. THe end result here will be a large amount of wealth dispersed into the hands of many.

As we can see here on Slashdot, the real problem we have is that the wealthy and the corporations have funded a network of think tanks and foundations that have spent the last 30 years spewing propaganda to make everyone think that a Race to the Bottom is good and that a Race to the Top is Bad. And most Americans (and most Slashdotters!) are buying into the corporate propaganda!

It just goes to show you the power of propaganda over a long period of time--if you spend billions of dollars saying that black is white and white is black, that after 30 years, you will have a bunch of people walking around telling you black is white and that high labor costs and protective trade laws are bad....

THe details of the this RightWing/Corporate propaganda machine are starting to be made public. You can get more info about these "Tentacles of Rage" in the lastest edition of Harpers Magazine here.

Yeah, the power of corporate/investor propaganda has been incredible. If you could time travel back to 1970 and tried talking about how bad all these "high labor costs" are, you would have been put in an insane asylum (we had the tax base to care for our mentally ill back in those days; the corporate propaganda has robbed us of our progressive tax system).

But nowadays, after 30 years of concerted corporate propaganda, we have all these bots walking around moaning about high labor costs and tariffs and protectionist trade policies. What is so sad is that they are workers themselves.
Read more about the details of these "tentacles of rage", the corporate propaganda machine, in this month's Harpers magazine.

The main reason we are in this mess is that our leaders, our elite, operate not in the best interests of the general welfare, as the Constitution requires them to, but in the best interests of the corporations and the investor class. Bush is the most extreme example of this, but Clinton did it, too, as did Reagan. Bush the Elder may have been the worst. Carter practically started it.

The reason our leaders have been able to do all of this is because some ultra-rich people and the multinational corporations spent billions of dollars over the last 30 years or so to convince all of America that liberalized trade and immigration policies would benefit Americans. In a way, they obtained our consent to do this, but they actually "manufactured" our consent.

For a more detailed explanation of this 30-year propaganda blitz, See this September 2004 article in Harpers magazine about these "Tentacles of Rage."

The massive propaganda machine was built around think tanks and foundations that literally from the ground up built a vocabulary and worldview favoring free trade (and liberal immigration, which just one part of "free trade"), all designed to drive down wages and taxes for corporations and the rich, and increase corporate profits and increase unemployment and underemployment, and in general disempower the average worker.

It worked! Corporate profits are way up, and they pay less in taxes, while the average worker is scrambling.

What do you call politicians and bureaucrats who willingly go along with such a scheme?

I call them traitors, guilty of treason. I think our leaders, including our Presidents, present and past, should be held accountable in a court of law for this treason.

>Seems to me that most folks define 'fair' as "whatever I happen to agree with"

Actually most people I know want the fairness doctrine back, which was removed by Reagan and the Republicans in the 80s, so it guarantees that at least two sides of controversial issues are presented. Your whole "both parties are the same, people are all biased partisans" is an easily knocked-over strawmen when you factor in millions who want a real media, more public media, and laws which make those who use our national airwaves at least present the full picture.

Its no coincidence that after the fall of the fairness doctrine did the rise of the super-slanted talk radio/news start. The attack on fair media continues with GOP promises of deregulation, which will give us an even worse media ecology and empower "owner's bias."

You wrote:

So the gap between the rich and the poor grows - so what? Suppose you earn $10,000 a year and I earn $100,000 year, working for the same company. The boss comes in and says that due to increased sales, you and I both get a raise. I'm now making $10,000,000 a year, while you make $100,000 a year. You used to be earning 1/10 of what I made, but now it's 1/100th. The gap between us got bigger, but so what ? You're still a hell of a lot better off than you were. Does it affect you, in any way, shape or form, how much money I make? No! All that matters if how much you make and what you can buy with that money


THat is not what is happening. What is happening is that an ever-decreasing percent of the population (Group A) is obtaining an ever-increasing amount of money (Amount M) . And conversely and ever-increasing percent of the population (Group B) is obtaining an ever-decreasing amount of money (Amount N). That is the very essence of neoliberal econonics/lasseiz faire economics/corporate capitalism. It is a system designed to place an ever increasing amount of wealth in a ever-decreasing number of hands. Witness it happening before your eyes.

Yes, the overall pot is increasing because Amount A is growing faster than Amount B is decreasing. But so what?

Also, since this is The Law of Jungle, i.e., that is the basis of Neoliberalism/Lassiez Faire economics, we can see what effects this will have by looking at animal behavior when the balance of power shifts dramatically. What happens in the nest of certain types of birds when one of the chicks gets bigger than the other chicks? The bigger chick pushes the smaller one out of the nest. Or when one of the young male lions gets bigger than the others? It runs off the rest.

So when some humans get more resources than the others, they exploit the ones who have less resources. There is no "rising tide lifting all boats," but instead suddenly powerful entities that inexorably impoverish, enslave, and eventually push out of the nest, all the little ones. THe means of control are many. Wherever there is animal entity that gains more power than its competitors, it uses that power to improve its own position. And when these powerful entities exist in a democracy, they use propaganda to lull the lesser humans, to fool them by whispering sweet, lasseiz-faire nothings into their ears. "Hey, Little Red Riding Hood, look at my Cornucopianism Religion I created for you. A rising tide lifts all boats, Little Red Riding Hood. I would never hurt you."

They do this with a vast array of think tanks and foundations that have been created with over $2 billion dollars of funding over the last 30 years or so. Read Tentacles of Rage from this month's Harper Magazine to find out more.

I used to be under their spell, too.

You wrote:

Even the poorest of the poor have cell phones, air conditioning, automobiles, refridgerators, color TV's and 2000 calorie diets. They don't have to worry about dying of typhus, malaria, diptheria, diaherra, the flu, measles, mumps, smallpox, or rubela. A man can work just 40 hours and a week and easily support himself. Roman Emperors couldn't possiblly have imagined the life of luxury that the poorest of americans enjoys.


This is simply the result of an accretion of knowledge. We stand on the shoulders of giants. And by the way, a lot of the basic research to obtain these improvements were funded by taxes. But the profits were taken by corporations. Hmm. Sounds like a peculiar form of socialism to me.

http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Republican-Pr opaganda1sep04.htm

From the harpers mag article cited above, here are some of the details from the RightWing Media Machine that has promoted free trade, outsourcing, regressive taxation, mass immigration, etc:


$2 BILLION ASSETS CONSERVATIVE FOUNDATIONS (200I ASSETS)
(in $ Millions)
The Bradley Foundation $584M; Smith Richardson Foundation $494M; Scaife Family (Four Foundations) $478.4M; Earhart Foundation $84M; John M. Olin Foundation $71M; Koch Family (Three Foundations) $68M; Castle Rock (Coors) Foundation $50M; JM Foundation $25M; Philip M. McKenna Foundation $17.4M;

Departed but not disbanded. As the basic American consensus has shifted over the last thirty years from a liberal to a conservative bias, so also the senator from Arizona has come to he seen as a prophet in the western wilderness, apostle of the rich man's dream of heaven that placed Ronald Reagan in the White House in 1980 and provides the current Bush Administration with the platform on which the candidate was trundled into New York City this August with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the heavy law enforcement, and the paper elephants.*

The speeches in Madison Square Garden affirmed the great truths now routinely preached from the pulpits of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal--government the problem, not the solution; the social contract a dead letter; the free market the answer to every maid-en's prayer--and while listening to the hollow rattle of the rhetorical brass and tin, I remembered the question that Hofstadter didn't stay to answer. How did a set of ideas both archaic and bizarre make its way into the center ring of the American political circus?

Once again, here is that link. Read this article well if you want to understand American politics. Harpers is a well respected magazine. Over 100 years old. They have no website, so this article has been reproduced from the September 2004 issue.