Slashdot Mirror
The Arctic is Full of Toxic Mercury, and Climate Change is Going To Release it (washingtonpost.com)
We already knew that thawing Arctic permafrost would release powerful greenhouse gases. On Monday, scientists revealed it could also release massive amounts of mercury -- a potent neurotoxin and serious threat to human health. From a report: Permafrost, the Arctic's frozen soil, acts as a massive ice trap that keeps carbon stuck in the ground and out of the atmosphere -- where, if released as carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas would drive global warming. But as humans warm the climate, they risk thawing that permafrost and releasing that carbon, with microbial organisms becoming more active and breaking down the ancient plant life that had previously been preserved in the frozen earth. That would further worsen global warming, further thawing the Arctic -- and so on. That cycle would be scary enough, but U.S. government scientists on Monday revealed that the permafrost also contains large volumes of mercury, a toxic element humans have already been pumping into the air by burning coal. There are 32 million gallons worth of mercury, or the equivalent of 50 Olympic swimming pools, trapped in the permafrost, the scientists wrote in a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. For context, that's "twice as much mercury as the rest of all soils, the atmosphere, and ocean combined," they wrote.
>> There are 32 million gallons worth of mercury, or the equivalent of 50 Olympic swimming pools, trapped
Wait - how many Library of Congresses does that convert into? Or is there a car analogy you could use?
For context, that's "twice as much mercury as the rest of all soils, the atmosphere, and ocean combined,"
Why is there twice the mercury in the arctic? Or, should I just RTFA?
A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"
I am a bit disappointed in this one, msmash.
I mean, you knocked it out of the park with the AGW fear mongering, but it lacks pretty much completely in all other SJW categories. You could at least have found a link that blamed the patriarchy for all this.
It's like you just aren't trying anymore.
My personal favorite on this is the lack of knowledge about mercury in this. They make it sound like the melting of the ice caps will release a torrent of liquid mercury, even though the melting point of it is -38C, a temperature we regularly get above right now in the arctic, and also that mercury is usually caught up in various sulfate forms and is very rarely found in its metallic form in nature and as such doesn't melt until you get it up to several hundred degrees.
I for one liked Freddie
I found out what that thing you just incinerated did. It was a glacier they installed after I flooded the earth with a deadly neurotoxin to make me stop flooding the earth with a deadly neurotoxin, so get comfortable while I warm up the neurotoxin emitters.
Ah, that glacier may have had some ancillary responsibilities. I can't shut off the flooding defenses. Oh well.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Not at all.
The conclusions from the study include the following:
This makes the reservoir of Hg in permafrost soils vulnerable to release over the next century, with unknown consequences to the environment.
and
Northern Hemisphere permafrost soils contain nearly twice as much Hg as all other soils, the ocean, and the atmosphere combined, indicating a need to reevaluate the role of the Arctic regions in the global Hg cycle. This Hg is vulnerable to release as permafrost thaws over the next century.
I think they did a good job pre-empting Joe Sixpack telling scientists to stay out of politics. Anonymous Coward seeing left wing bias in the news is a another story.
They make it sound like the melting of the ice caps will release a torrent of liquid mercury, even though the melting point of it is -38C, a temperature we regularly get above right now in the arctic,
Thank you for that factoid. Time to draft another Slashdot narrative.. I mean "news article" that says IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT because Global Warming has pushed the arctic above -38C for the FIRST TIME EVER IN RECORDED HISTORY THIS YEAR!
We'll just ignore the rest of your post about how mercury binds to other compounds. It's not science if it doesn't fit the narrative.
This just in: Trump pledges $1B to innovative Clean Mercury plants
That a popular article doesn't give a perfectly accurate description shouldn't be shocking but if you go to the actual research article http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL075571/full?wol1URL=/doi/10.1002/2017GL075571/full there concern is pretty clear about airborne and water soluble organic mercury compounds which are far more dangerous than metallic mercury or most inorganic mercury compounds. Metallic mercury and inorganic mercury is pretty safe. You can hold a ball of mercury in your hand without any real consequences. But organic mercury compounds can be much more dangerous. It took just a drop of dimethyl mercury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethylmercury on the outside of a glove to kill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn. Of course, no one is going to directly die from this, but an increase in atmospheric and oceanic mercury levels could have a real negative impact on both the ecosystems and general human health.
OK, 50 olympic pools of mercury sounds pretty dangerous. If someone dropped 50 pools of mercury somewhere, this definitly would be dangerous. But then again: How did it get there? Why concentrated in the arctic? I'm pretty sure no one disposed the worlds obsolete mercury thermometers there, so... coal burning? How many coal was burned in the arctic? Probably not much compared to past and modern industrial centers.
So I'm setting up this hypothesis: If coal burning is the main source of mercury, the arctic received much less of mercury than any other part of the world. Only due to the climatic situation there, it was trapped in the ice. But then, even tose 50 pools can only be a fraction of mercury pollution compared to the rest of the world.
bickerdyke
The New American? Respectable scientists? What world are you in?
It says there is a bunch of mercury in a vulnerable system, not that it will be equitably distributed into your lunchables.
you should look up what "permafrost" means. also, mercury sulfates have non-zero bio-availability.
i guess they didn't cover these in young earth geology.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Correct. Consider, however,
- many people have insurance is because an accident could happen to them.
- many people choose to live a healthy lifestyle because not doing so could increase their risk for heart diseases/diabetes/cancer/...
So as long as it affects you personally, you consider potential undesirable outcomes and take counter measures.
When it comes to the planet, however, who cares...
It's probably wise to start preparing for the changes that are coming. We're inherently lazy. It doesn't take a genius to notice that when it comes to protecting the environment or heath a lot of folks wait until it's almost too late before doing anything. It's one of the reasons why I find people who deny climate change for the most part disappointing. Most are playing the let's ignore it until it becomes a serious issue at which point it's either harder to fix or fatal. And in many ways it's already starting, many areas are seeing more flooding, fires and general weather damage that they have never seen before. The flood of migrants into Europe are primarily folks in Africa fleeing multi-year droughts for example. Now I'm not one to say that the world will end but at the very least it might be a good idea to be prepared for it. Insurance companies for example are taking this seriously because they're often on the paying end when things go south because they don't want to go bankrupt when the next disaster hits.
As humans, we should take responsibility for our actions and clean up the messes we make, even if it's not an immediate threat. The environmental problems we face are a tragedy of the commons. To solve these issues, every product sold should have an additional tax for how much environmental damage was done in it's construction. The tax would go directly to companies that actually clean up the messes being made. This would solve the landfill problem in it's entirety and create a massive new job market dedicated toward reversing the damage already done.
The only remaining problem is the people who don't care about how badly they are damaging the planet as long as they save a buck.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
From the study : "The turnover time associated with the microbial decay of frozen organic matter is ~14,000 years (Figure S28), making the Hg locked in permafrost effectively stable on human time scales. However, projections indicate a 30–99% reduction in near surface permafrost by 2100, and, once thawed, the turnover time for microbial decay drops to ~70 years (Koven et al., 2013; Schaefer et al., 2011). This makes the reservoir of Hg in permafrost soils vulnerable to release over the next century, with unknown consequences to the environment."
The title suggests a factual statement where the paper suggest a possible scenario outcome based on predictions. a possible sample of a clickbaity WPost science article which may require more study into how much of it is 'fake news' ?
I did however approve of the moderators including the original paper in the post, most impressive.
Agree, but Fox has been doing it for awhile on the right. The news has devolved into propaganda from both sides of the aisle. I don't see a solution and I don't see it ending well either.
No, it's not alarmism. I guess you don't want to be told there's a car coming, because that would "alarm" you and you're such a precious snowflake you cannot be allowed to hear discouraging words, no matter what.
asshole.
Learn some science and find out how wrong you are.
Another msmash abortion of an article about doom and gloom that probably won't happen.
And yet it melts...
Oh you absolutely do "show problem," but the mercury affected you in a way that prevents you from seeing it.
During the Bush era, I said that the only difference between liberal (or more like "progressive left") and conservative news people is that the latter don't try to hide the fact that they are assholes. Never been more true than today seems to me.
That said, I prefer if someone doesn't pretend.
Why must you be so precious? He wasn't spiteful,you were wrong and you have to find some way to make it THEIR fault YOU were wrong.
Own up to your errors. Stop blaming everyone else for them.
That absolutely wrong. Mercury, like just about all liquids, evaporates at room temperature. I mean, you don't need to know much about science to notice that if you leave a puddle of water on your kitchen floor alone it will eventually evaporate. Most of the mercury in the atmosphere is in its "metallic" or elemental form because mercury compounds are frequently reduced in nature.
Mercury distribution is driven by air mass movements, precipitiation patterns and the availability of oxidizing agents, most likely halogens, that are frequently found in higher amounts in the north polar region.
Since when does the "sniff test" trump a paper in a peer-reviewed journal, written by scientists from the US Geological Survey? The introduction to the paper suggests a mechanism (with citations) by which mercury is concentrated in the permafrost.
Does it...
Want to Break Free?
First, it is far less toxic in those forms, but it is still toxic. Also there are numerous ways in which mercury transforms into toxic methylated forms; older chlor-allkali plants can produce large amounts of methylmercury (chemically identical to bacterially-created methylmercury), methylation can possibly happen in the body itself, and it can occur through abiotic processes in the water column.
Secondly, mercury inhalation can occur at temperatures far below the substance's boiling point. That's why cinnabar miners -- not just smelters -- are frequently exposed to dangerous amounts. I really don't get why so many people on slashdot think that evaporation only happens at boiling, when there are so many real-world, easily observable processes that contradict that.
It's no longer alarmism. It's basically cynical gallows humor. At least on my side.
I don't give a fuck anymore. I have about 30 years left. Maybe 40. More likely 20. The world will survive that long, and after that you can all go to hell with me as far as I'm concerned. I'm no longer trying to save your planet for people who don't give a fuck themselves.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We aren't talking about a river of silvery mercury running down the Hudson. What we're dealing with here, and what you'd know if you actually bothered to read the article, is mercury trapped in plants that cannot decay due to temperatures too low for natural decay to occur. Mercury, and that's what makes it such a dangerous stuff, binds readily to organic material. Any mercury that does exist gets sequestered in the plants that can actually live in such an environment, many of which never decay properly to release that mercury back into the environment.
Thaw them and they will.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Is this before or after the projected 10-year pause in global warming due to decreased solar activity? Google search is pulling back articles from 2012 to say global warming wasn't linked to solar activity, except that it has for the last 5 years, and could happen again for at least another decade or more.
That's an awful lot of words for "Whew, finally someone writes something that I understand and supports my preferred narrative!"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It evaporates into the air, where it can circulate around the globe until it is deposited into aquatic ecosystems by either dry (settling of elemental forms) or wet (oxidation and subsequent scavenging by precipitation). After it's oxidized (and elemental forms can oxidize through a number of different processes in the terrestrial and aquatic environments) it is methylated through mostly bacterial action and can bioaccumulate to dangerous levels.
It doesn't stay in the arctic; evaporated elemental mercury can travel in the atmosphere for 6 months to a year before it's deposited.
Didn't get the memo? "Common sense" and "I feel it's that way" is the new gold standard for truth. Welcome to the post-factual times.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
First, mercury is NOT toxic neither in liquid nor in solid (cinnabar) forms. Full stop.
You're right. Here, catch this vial of dimethylmercury!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
From TFA: "...the Arctic is special. Normally, as plants die and decay, they decompose and mercury is released back to the atmosphere. But in the Arctic, plants often do not fully decompose. Instead, their roots are frozen and then become buried by layers of soil. This suspends mercury within the plants, where it can be remobilized again if permafrost thaws."
The same way that big fish have a higher mercury content than little fish. If an organism consumes mercury laden air/water, it collects in their bodies. With fish, that collection time is their lifespan. With the arctic, it remains trapped even after the organism dies due to the preservative effect of the cold.
I'm part of that rest, but my patience wears thin. If we're willing to let those idiots run the planet into the ground, we deserve what we get.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Metallic mercury and inorganic mercury is pretty safe. You can hold a ball of mercury in your hand without any real consequences. But organic mercury compounds can be much more dangerous. It took just a drop of dimethyl mercury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethylmercury on the outside of a glove to kill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn. Of course, no one is going to directly die from this, but an increase in atmospheric and oceanic mercury levels could have a real negative impact on both the ecosystems and general human health.
Wikipedia dry humor
Karen Wetterhahn
Known for Work on toxic metal exposure, dying of toxic metal exposure
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
We survived Mount St Helens just fine and it doubled atmospheric mercury exposure world wide by throwing it into the air. I'm thinking this stuff won't be all that airborne, being in the thawing ground and not thrown into the air.
Have any other possible routes here? As I see this, the issue will be it getting into the food chain, and given there isn't much from the Artic in the human food chain, I'm thinking we are going to be fine. In other words, this won't be an issue, at least not a serious one. So this is scare mongering.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The article describes 32 Million gallons of mercury being released, 3.2E7 gallons
The US federal drinking water standard is 2 parts per billion or 1 part in 500 million, 1:5E8 gallons
Multiplying, that means this is safe if it is diluted in 1.6E16 Gallons of water.
The volume of the ocean is 3.52E20 gallons.
Is there a proposed mechanism that could cause the mercury to be concentrated in a specific region?
you should look up what "permafrost" means.
The name is a lie; There are bones under the ice from time before frost. My home town used to be under kilometers of ice just ten thousand years ago.
Mount St. Helens absolutely did not double mercury exposure worldwide. And like I've said repeatedly on this slashdot story, mercury emissions from permafrost will be able to travel around the world. And you absolutely do eat fish from the Arctic; the Alaska pollack fishery is in the largest in the world.
I'm not debating the properties of CO2, I'm talking about the inability to validate the claims that there is all this CO2/Methane/Heavy Metals etc frozen in the Arctic.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Volcanos are the largest natural source of mercury in the atmosphere and often create huge spikes. So take a look at this: https://toxics.usgs.gov/pubs/F...
St Helens is the large spike around 1989... This from some ice cores looked at by the USGS....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Its not right for these folks to hold onto our planets financial resources as such. These resources are needed to clean up our planet...but the $$ is being held and nothing is being done with it. Maybe GREED is the great filter that determines whether life makes it to the stars or not... greed I would imagine to be quite universal.
[($)]
Sorry, type-o correction that spike is 1980... not 1989...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
So you are wrong on St Helens... Care to go for double or nothing?
And you absolutely do eat fish from the Arctic; the Alaska pollack fishery is in the largest in the world.
So, please describe HOW these fish will consume mercury laced food from this possible source? Also, care to guess how little this is likely to affect Pollack? At this point the mercury content of this fish is exceedingly low, being 100X less than Tuna. So unless you can invent a way this affects their food chain, I'm guessing you are just guessing and don't really know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
There's this activity that humans engage in called "mining" in which giant kidneys are constructed to separate various useful elements from the entropic ooze.
No, wait, I was reading from the "40 billion years old" column.
Under the four billion column, everything we mine is found in deposits or clusters of high concentration, many of which were discovered long before a proposed mechanism was a proposed possibility.
The Falun Mine is actually an important player in the history of the corporation, which it also predates, by many centuries.
It's no longer alarmism. It's basically cynical gallows humor. At least on my side.
I don't give a fuck anymore. I have about 30 years left. Maybe 40. More likely 20. The world will survive that long, and after that you can all go to hell with me as far as I'm concerned. I'm no longer trying to save your planet for people who don't give a fuck themselves.
Kindly have some consideration for the people who do give a fuck. There are more of them than you think. And they have existed for all of recorded history -- acting imperfectly and selfishly at times, but leaving a legacy that the next generation can use to help make things better.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Property.
What the city does potentially affects your property value, otherwise these people would ignore their cities, too.
The New American? Respectable scientists? What world are you in?
The World of Denial.
It's called truthiness, and it isn't really all that new anymore.
Let me repeat, what I wrote — for you and the reading-challenged moderators, with emphasis:
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Its safer on mars... soon to be more hospitable to life than earth.
[($)]
During the Bush era, I said that the only difference between liberal (or more like "progressive left") and conservative news people is that the latter don't try to hide the fact that they are assholes.
Really?
Which side purports to be "Fair and Balanced?"
Which side has the slogan "We report. You decide" that really means "We decide what to report. You believe you decided?"
Being biased is not being an asshole. Being biased and trying to claim you aren't? That's being an asshole.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
You're correct, however consider this also:
- Many people don't have insurance because the up front cost is too high or does not correlate with the risk mitigated.
- Many people choose not to live a healthy life because they prefer the comforts that come with an unhealthy life - even when they are aware of the negative consequences.
When it comes to mitigating "potential undesirable outcomes", people will often choose not to because the personal cost is too high - either in new costs or in reduction of day to day quality of life.
When it comes to the planet, those "potential undesirable outcomes" have been so badly over sensationalized that it is impossible to tell what we should actually be worried about. I mean mercury? Really?
Your link clearly shows that the article claims half of all life science research is flawed. You appear to be an example of the "truthiness" that Opportunist (the GP) laments.
Science is a human endeavor, and thus is subject to human error. But it embraces a philosophy of continual review and self-correction.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
thats usually down to idiot journalists who cannot understand the original reports in order to sell newspapers etc or there have been solutions put into place to help mitigate the problems identified (this is usually not considered by those that think everything is a scare story)
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I'll just let Dave Barry illustrate for me the bias in the press via his 2016 Year in Review, the month of November:
"Trump’s victory stuns the nation. Not since the darkest days of the Civil War have so many Americans unfriended each other on Facebook. Some even take the extreme step of writing “open letters.” Angry, traumatized protesters cry, march, shout, smash windows, set fires —and that’s just the New York Times editorial board."
Once I thought Fox was pretty bad, in the last 2+ years CNN, NYT, WaPo et al have pushed me to Fox. At least they are fun and have more attractive anchors. I still do check google news headlines though to see what the left press is talking about.
The whole review thing is a great read btw: http://www.miamiherald.com/liv...
"The consumption of fish is by far the most significant source of ingestion-related mercury exposure in humans and animals.[4] Mercury and methyl mercury are present in only very small concentrations in seawater. However, they are absorbed, usually as methyl mercury, by algae at the start of the food chain. This algae is then eaten by fish and other organisms higher in the food chain. Fish efficiently absorb methyl mercury, but excrete it very slowly.[5] Methyl mercury is not soluble and therefore not excreted." - from the wiki. or did i misunderstand your question "So, please describe HOW these fish will consume mercury laced food from this possible source?"?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
So wait - they are SOOO concerned about mercury in the artic being "released" but not concerned about the mercury in vaccines (or should I call an "adjuvent"). They tells us mercury is good for you that's why it's in the vaccines. So why should we give a raging rats ASS about mercury being released from the artic.... Make up your minds you stupid global warming conspiracy theorists.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
I've been to the US. Thanks, but no thanks.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nope. Sorry, but nope.
Remember Spain and their discovery of the "new world"? Spain brought home tons (literally) of silver to Europe, enough to trash the silver price. Before the influx of that Spanish Main silver, silver and gold had almost the same value in Europe. Afterwards, silver was valued at a fraction of the gold value.
Yes, gold does have applications, too. And if there is cheap(er) gold available, more gold will probably be used where cheaper materials are used now, but generally, the price of gold is to no small part due to its rarity. Dump cheap gold into the market and watch the gold price plummet.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The point is that the GP claimed that mercury is not toxic as a liquid or solid, when practically all mercury compounds are toxic and all organic mercury compounds are highly toxic.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Again... I think you are wrong on this one. Tuna has 100X more mercury than Pollack now and we eat that with few limitations. So the amount of mercury goes up by double in Pollack, no big deal. It's a smaller fish, doesn't live as long and I believe doesn't consume other fish so the bio-amplification of mercury in it is not as bad of an issue. I don't see the mercury getting airborne and I don't see it making it into common fisheries food chains in significant enough amounts to matter.
Personally, I'd be more worried about mercury exposure from other sources like used neon lamps we've all been using of late instead of incandescent light bulbs and the effluent that comes from all those land fills these energy efficient light bulbs end up in. But even then, here in the USA this exposure is pretty limited unless you work in specific industrial or waste disposal fields.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
global warming hysteria is being used to seize control and give it to the bankers
In disaster situations, you'll see some people charging more for essentials to people in distress. There's always going to be some people looking to exploit real disasters, people looking to exploit the fear of disaster and people trying to whip other people into a state of fear even when there's nothing to fear for the opportunity to exploit them.
Identifying that powerful people or groups of people are exploiting a situation doesn't mean that the situation falls into that last category.
Follow the money, and it's obvious that the hysteria is a deliberate product of a marketing campaign deliberately crafted to gain political and economic power.
No. You may be correct in that some people have a vested interest in pushing for certain solutions, but you haven't demonstrated that discussion about global warming remediation is either 'hysteria' or that it is entirely the result of people seeking power.
That makes reasonable people suspicious of all unverifiable climate claims
Nice use of rhetoric. In one sentence you claim your objections as suspicions, call the consensus of scientific opinion 'unverified' and declare that your position is reasonable.
None of that has anything to do with science
Neither does your position. The consensus of the scientific community is that we are experiencing anthropogenic climate change; that this will result in a wide range of negative consequences for many people. Discussion of remediating some of those problems may well attract people pushing an agenda that includes personal power, but _that_ doesn't invalidate the discussion of how to slow future warming and deal with the consequences that we are already experiencing and are going to experience.
which will eventually come up with an answer that can be verified
Please. The preponderance of evidence, the sheer, overwhelming assent of just about every person qualified to make a comment on the topic isn't enough?
This is a pretext. Your hand waving about 'reason' and hints of cabals of the powerful are excuses.
You've got a lovely internalised justification for inaction.
Throwing away the economy
"When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money."
Your position, cleverly but unconvincingly argued, is nothing more than a justification of 'I've got mine'.
Holy shit the Talos Principle is real! We have to get to work creating AIs that are humanlike to take over when we all die!
My Grand Dad brought home a large Lipton instant Tea jar full of Mercury. He claimed it was used at work for cleaning.
I've swallowed Mercury, not on purpose - was going to shoot it like a empty Bic Pen spit wad when it fell down my throat.
Couldn't get rid of it, putting it down the drain was an experience. It would sit in the U-tube of the sink thwarting any attempt to remove and unclog (no one knew Mercury was poured down it). One day the U-tube shattered spilling Mercury all over, the Mercury had crystallized the metal.
Finally buried it, and it stayed for awhile; until company was over, me digging idly in the soil and look a Mercury mine. He came over regular to dig after that.
This was in Junior High and I haven't seen any problems.
I've seen Nervous system damage to the Japanese due to Mercury fumes, I'm not too sure it can hurt one otherwise.
2016 EU price for a 76 pound "flask" of mercury was $1400, but there are export bans in place that make exploiting finds pointless.
Unless we're looking to farm the Arctic, I don't see a problem.
Scientific "findings" isn't a binary black box. It's a long process from gathering samples and measuring them all down to distilling this results and maybe, eventually, using them to formulate a hypothesis, test it against competing hypotheses, maybe formulate a theory even. And yes, at every step there's human error possible.
So yes, your results may be wrong. Does that invalidate your measurements? No. At least not necessarily. It means you drew the wrong conclusions and maybe someone found an explanation that explains the results better, with fewer contradictions.
Example: Miasma theory. Observation: People get sick in areas where there is lots of shit and decaying stuff. Conclusion: It smells bad, so there is something in the air that they breathe in that makes them sick. Solution: Make sure the air doesn't smell bad and people won't get sick. Results: Poor, people still got sick even if they covered their faces with clothes soaked in perfume.
Classic example of a correct observation and drawing the wrong conclusion. The observation is correct, because people got sick of the bacteria in the feces that contaminated drinking water and from handling infected people and their belongings. The conclusion was not correct because they thought it was the stench that made people sick, not that there was something that created the stench AND made people sick.
So yes, I don't doubt that 50% (likely more) of the end results of research is thrown out if reevaluated. Does that mean that 50% or more of the measurements are bogus? Most likely not.
We have been measuring temperature for centuries. The earliest recorded temperature measurements date to the 1600s. Are they valid? Yes. They are not as accurate as our measurements today and we have to assume a fairly large margin of error compared to modern thermometers, but that does not invalidate their measurements, all it means is that we have to take that error into account when using these values.
Likewise, measurements, unless they are for some reason invalidated by circumstances or forgery, are valid working material, even if the result that they were the foundation for turns out to be wrong.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You always have a choice. If someone points a gun at your head and wants to make you do his bidding, you always have the choice to say "shoot" instead of becoming his accomplice.
The choice may not be something you like. But there is ALWAYS an alternative.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I wonder how much that mercury compares with the amount released into our environment by the fluorescent light bulbs mandated around the world to replace the incandescent light bulb? Just wondering, you know?
Why? It's your world. Fix the problems yourself.
Aye, there's the problem. If you want a next generation, then you fix the world. Not a concern of mine.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
So did the mercury get there in the first place by entirely natural means? I gather the /melting/ is supposed to be human-induced. But was there more mercury in those decomposing plants due to pollution of some kind? Or is it just the natural amount of mercury in living things since forever. I couldn't find a definite answer to that.
Bob Stein, http://bobste.in
Yep I stupid. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sci...
You're misreading the chart. Even taking it as accurate, it simply means that about half the worldwide atmospheric deposition in that year came from Mt. St. Helens. The total exposure is a function of the mercury in the environment, not the mercury that popped up in one year.
First, the amount of mercury in pollock is far more than 100x that in tuna (https://www.fda.gov/food/foodborneillnesscontaminants/metals/ucm115644.htm).
Second, mercury evaporates and goes into the environment. I am continuously puzzled how you don't understand a fundamental geochemical process like that. You seem to think that since you, an uneducated layperson on the subject, can't think off the top of your head how this mercury can be a danger, then nobody else can figure it out either which is insane. Why don't you read this article:
http://www.annualreviews.org/d...
Maybe that will clear things up.
you know what would make the world better? if you stopped whining and moving the goalposts like a little bitch, and started killing yourself.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
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