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Recent Posts
- ‘The oil we eat’. Following the food chain back to iraq
- Vanishing open spaces: population growth and sprawl in America
- Admiral Rickover 1957: Energy Resources & Our Future
- The Green New Deal is not a solution for the real problem: Overshoot
- A transition from fossil fuels to renewables could take a century – if it ever happens
- Electrifying freight trains in the U.S. is a bad idea
- Why Nuclear Power can’t replace fossil fuels
- Energy, Water, & Climate Change are interdependent
- Why fusion power is Forever Away
- Climate Change dominates news coverage at expense of other existential planetary boundaries
- Excerpt from “The Geopolitics of Resource Wars”
- Homes & Buildings
- Book Review “The Outlawed Ocean” by Ian Urbina
- Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future
- Motherboards: too complicated to make after oil
Category Archives: Pollution
We’ll all be Flint Michigan someday: U.S. water infrastructure is falling apart
NRC. 2006. Drinking Water Distribution Systems: Assessing and Reducing Risks Committee on Public Water Supply Distribution Systems: Assessing and Reducing Risks. National Research Council, National Academies Press. [ According to this Free National Research Council report, most water systems and … Continue reading
Posted in Water Infrastructure, Water Pollution
Tagged contamination, disease, failure, infrastructure, water
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External costs of coal: probably over $500 billion per year in USA
Paul R. Epstein, et al. 2011. Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal in “Ecological Economics Reviews.” Robert Costanza, Karin Limburg & Ida Kubiszewski, Eds. Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1219: 73–98. This paper tabulates a wide range of … Continue reading
Posted in Chemicals, CO2 and Methane, Coal, Hazardous Waste, Water Pollution
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Biomass Electricity More Polluting Than Coal and Waste Incinerators
Trees, Trash, and Toxics: How Biomass Energy Has Become the New Coal Mary S. Booth, PhD Partnership for Policy Integrity April 2 , 2014 Executive Summary Highlights Because of a perfect storm of lax regulation and regulatory rollbacks , biomass … Continue reading
Posted in Air, Biomass, Hazardous Waste
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Mercury pollution
August 9, 2014. Missing mercury pollution is enough for mass poisoning. NewScientist. New data suggests that we still don’t know where our emissions of toxic mercury end up. Somewhere out there are tens of thousands of tons of missing mercury. … Continue reading
Posted in Gold & Silver, Hazardous Waste
Tagged hazardous waste, mercury, pollution
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Nuclear Winter in China: Chinese Smog will lower food supplies
Scientists liken Chinese smog to ‘nuclear winter’ February 27, 2014. by Kim Kyung-Hoon. Reuters. Air pollution in parts of China is now so extreme it could lead to conditions similar to a “nuclear winter,” scientists say. The smog that covers … Continue reading
Posted in Air
Tagged china, crop failure, nuclear winter
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Pesticides & Parkinson’s in California’s Central Valley
Horowitz, J. 2012. Parkinson’s Alley. Recent studies have found statistical links between pesticide use and an outbreak of Parkinson’s disease in California farm towns. Researchers even know which chemicals are the likely culprits. What’s the government doing about it? Not … Continue reading
Posted in Pesticides
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Algal blooms more toxic due to climate change and crop fertilizer runoff
Paerl, H.W. et al. October 25, 2013. Blooms Bite the Hand That Feeds Them. Science Vol. 342 no. 6157 pp. 433-434 Eutrophication from climate change, dams, higher carbon dioxide concentrations, drought, and nutrients from farm and urban runoff is increasing … Continue reading
Posted in Disease, Water Pollution
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Hazardous Waste Overview
To give you an idea of how much waste is generated, here are some 10+ year old stats from the Department of energy Table AF-2. WASTE FUN FACTS 1 ounce = NOx emissions generated from 3.6 gallons of gasoline 3 … Continue reading
Posted in Hazardous Waste
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Phosphates add heavy metals such as cadmium to soils
Larsen, A., et al. March 1, 2001. Re-engineering the toilet for sustainable wastewater management. Environmental Science and Technology Vol 35(9):192-197 http://www.internal.eawag.ch/~maurer/abstracts/09larsen.html Current fertilizer production and use consume limited resources and harm the environment. At current extraction rates, reserves of phosphate … Continue reading
Posted in Hazardous Waste
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Soot warming earth even more than thought
Richard A. Kerr Science 25 January 2013: Vol. 339 no. 6118 p. 382 DOI: 10.1126/science.339.6118.382 Soot Is Warming the World Even More Than Thought A new study finds that soot is warming the climate about twice as fast as scientists … Continue reading
Posted in Climate Change, Pollution, Runaway Greenhouse
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