What is Digg?80 Comments
- Aliwalla, on 07/27/2008, -1/+33I wonder if we'll only come across pollution choked, dead planets full of the decaying remains of industrial civilizations, if we survive long enough to do some serious extrasolar exploration.
- h0ser, on 07/27/2008, -3/+28I keep posting crap like this in those co2 cultists articles. They always get voted down. Pollution is a HUGE problem, much worse then co2 and its relation to global warming. The earth can be the perfect temperature, but that doesn't matter if the whole thing has become poison.
- slifty, on 07/28/2008, -1/+24My friend studied in China last semester, apparently someone asked him if "it was really true that there are blue skies in U.S. cities."
Yikes. - phreak79, on 07/27/2008, -0/+21Quite. All the talk is of climate change, but things like energy and pollution are facts. Just a pity they don't get the attention they deserve.
- inactive, on 07/28/2008, -1/+21If you ever go to China prepare to not see the sky!
- Tape99, on 07/28/2008, -0/+13The Pollution got to him.
RIP woodsy - macrophage33, on 07/28/2008, -1/+14I believe that the answer is clean nuclear. There is a way that was over looked because we wanted to build a nuclear weapons stock pile and needed economies of scale in Uranium enrichment. Early advocates of nuclear power wanted to use Thorium rather than Uranium as a fuel source. With a pure thorium fuel cycle you get very little transuranic waste and the isotopes that are produced are decayed to background in around 300 years, which is easy to build containment for, and the volume produced is very small.
Check this link out:
http://www.energyfromthorium.com/forum/viewtopic.p ...
A 1 GWhr coal plant consumes 100 million tons of coal. Coal sits in the ground like a brita filter, absorbing heavy metals, including Mercury, Arsenic, Chromium, Lead, Copper, Uranium and Thorium. As the carbon matrix these toxic metals are encased in burns away they are concentrated in the fly and bottom ash. A lot of it is vaporized and spread over the planet to return to you conveniently packaged in the form of tuna cans. It is estimated that the energy contained in the Uranium that goes out the smoke stack of a coal plant is 22 times the energy derived from burning the coal itself. Almost half of all Mercury and most of the Arsenic pollution on the planet comes from coal burning. Nuclear is much cleaner, the mercury and arsenic will be around longer than most nuclear waste, it doesn't decay, and it is not contained in any way. It is in your lungs now. - MacBookForMe, on 07/27/2008, -1/+12Air pollution is really everywhere...
- inactive, on 07/28/2008, -2/+12Sadly there will be "scientists" who will claim air pollution is not man made.
Or some other bogus lie, to spin it. - doctechnical, on 07/28/2008, -0/+10Um, how much coal would you have to burn to power those giant air filters?
- xedd, on 07/28/2008, -0/+10Those damn hippies and their "Clean Air" legislation...
- inactive, on 07/28/2008, -1/+11There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all.
- inactive, on 07/28/2008, -0/+9This is why I quit breathing.
- inactive, on 07/28/2008, -0/+7Good point, but it's not the buzz topic right now.
- Kazimieras, on 07/28/2008, -1/+8Author raises excellent points and something should be done on this matter.
buried for lack of evidence and referencing sensational items using CORRELATION and not CAUSATION:
"smaller fish stocks" - Is due to overfishing. And while pollution isn't likely helping them... we have less fish because we hunted and killed them.
"reduced agricultural production" - Still at an all-time high. Areas that are reduced are due to either change in market costs, or using more natural methods (which isn't a bad thing).
"decline in honey bee populations" - Caused due to virus. Not pollution, not cell phones... mother nature.
Problems with using correlation vs. causation:
Correlating evidence would suggest that an increase ice cream sales causes more boating accidents. Since:
Fact - On hot days, ice cream sales increase.
Fact - On hot days, there are more boating accidents.
Causation would look at how the two are unrelated, and perhaps that more accidents occur on these days due to more boats being on the water. - treehugger87, on 07/28/2008, -0/+7It seems like it would be a heck of a lot easier if we could simply scrub out the toxins at their source. This might be a good solution, but from a practical standpoint, it's kind of like putting gas in your car by buying oil and refining it at home.
- InfiniteNothing, on 07/28/2008, -0/+7There have been successful implementations of cap and trade programs for pollutants like SOx
- addicted68098, on 07/28/2008, -2/+8It is kind of liberating to read an article about the environment without a mention of global warming
- sodade, on 07/28/2008, -0/+6It seems like it would be a heck of a lot easier to tax pollution to the point that it becomes unprofitable to ***** dioxins into the air.
- inactive, on 07/28/2008, -1/+7Where's Woodsy the Owl when we need him?
- inactive, on 07/28/2008, -1/+7Ever heard of simultaneous problems? Hint just because pollution is a problem doesn't mean C02 isn't also a problem.
- aaronadms, on 07/27/2008, -4/+10I might be underestimating how much air is in a city, but wouldn't it be possible to build a giant air filtration facility? I'd say a few cooling tower sized filters spread around New York or Detroit would have a significant impact on the air quality.
- inactive, on 07/28/2008, -0/+6Yes, well aside from your opinion.
On what is the dumbest/whiniest thing you have evar heard.
There will undoubtably be some paid off "scientist" on Fox News or from some conservative think tank.
Who will claim air pollution is natural and is not created by man. - GidsR, on 07/28/2008, -1/+7"The more we look, the more evidence we find, and the worse it seems to get."
— Tim Tear.
I think Tim's right. - SkippyDoorknob, on 07/28/2008, -0/+6"Eliminating private ownership of automobiles is a logical step towards saving the planet." - the politician who proposed that will get exactly one vote (yours) in the next election.
- RudeTurnip, on 07/28/2008, -3/+8Can you imagine the ***** storm that would ensue if an Olympic athlete (most likely a runner) dropped dead in Beijing due to the air pollution? I'd wager that if it happened to an American, the price of Walmart's stock would plummet the next day.
- kingUssop, on 07/28/2008, -0/+5They do get attention, but if you mean the US government, who can raise awareness about anything right now? It's like asking a bank robber to stop and sign your petition... they're busy with fleecing the nation.
- blast_flame, on 07/28/2008, -0/+5Are you trying to give those who say global warming is nothing more than a communist lie more ammunition? We don't need to give up our econimic liberties to fight global warming, we can tackle in quite fine with science and technology. Global warming isn't happening because of capitalism; it's happening due to industrialization, something which is overall highly benificial even when the effects of global warming are taken into account. In fact when you count all the ways the government, the same government you expect to do all this, has stifled alternative energy technologies (ie no new nuclear plants or fuel rod reprocessing) we might have global warming on the retreat by now or at the very least it wouldn't be as bad. That's before tackling other things like the economic problems with this idea, the fact that due to the political system you will not be able to get this implemented as you invision and the moral problems with using the force of governments to enforce your vision of how society should be. You're just hoping that in the midst of fear about global warming people will give up their rationality and skeptism and look for a "strong man" aren't you. Please give up this collectivist fantasy.
- slifty, on 07/28/2008, -1/+5Relevance can be in terms of geography or topic.
- inactive, on 07/28/2008, -0/+4Nobody's arguing that we should go live in huts. Get a grip, will ya? Anytime anyone points out any problem with our current lifestyle, people like you freak out like we're saying it's the end of the world and we need to completely abandon our way of life. It's like some sort of guilt reflex or something.
- doctechnical, on 07/28/2008, -0/+4Then they were doing it wrong.
- IphtashuFitz, on 07/28/2008, -1/+4But that only addresses one source of pollution. Elements like mercury and lead cause a fair amount of pollution, as do chemicals like PCB's. The runoff from the farms that feed the world introduce all sorts of pollutants from fertilizer runoff, pesticides, etc. Mankind does an excellent job of polluting the environment in numerous ways. Simply switching from fossil fuels to nuclear for power will help in some ways but it certainly won't cut back in other forms of pollution.
- RudeTurnip, on 07/28/2008, -1/+4It's pretty simple...almost all of the stuff Walmart sells comes from China. The moral outrage could lead to a boycott of everything Chinese. "Freedom noodles" anyone?
- inactive, on 07/29/2008, -0/+2Geoboy for literally 1/10th of what was spent on George Bush's disastrous wars of aggression we could have probably fixed both problems.
- DestroyFascism, on 07/29/2008, -0/+2Yes. stupid tree huggers telling us of our ways back in 1980...
- kd1s, on 07/28/2008, -0/+2I'm glad someone is raising the alarm flag on this. I live in RI and over the past few years we've seen massive fish kills and had lots of days of red algae blooms in Narragansett Bay. It's bad.
I was in East Greenwich last week and right on the shore of Greenwich Bay. First I've never seen so many shells in the sand which means the bottom feeders are even dying off. - ImperialRome, on 07/28/2008, -0/+2Except for one thing, the pollution that is "worse than we thought" is actually not increasing, its decreasing.
The EPA has been doing monitoring of the very mercury and ozone levels nationwide since 1980, and their monitoring shows that air quality is improving, not worsening.
Ground level ozone is down, Nitrogen Dioxide is down, and mercury is down a lot.
Atmospheric mercury is mainly the result of coal fired electric plants, but unless you can generate electricity with more hydro power, or you create a national electric grid, i.e. energy superhighway, you will not be able to supply our power needs without burning coal.
http://www.epa.gov/air/airtrends/nitrogen.html
http://www.epa.gov/air/airtrends/ozone.html
I believe the purpose of this "report" is to put pressure on the government and the EPA to implement the critical loads policies that were recently struck down by the courts. - sodade, on 07/28/2008, -0/+2Government regulation should be making it unprofitable to ***** toxins into the air. Then the wonderful free market would come up with a clean way to produce goods. Period.
- inactive, on 07/28/2008, -0/+2http://www.cynical-c.com/archives/bloggraphics/Cry ...
- megaloid, on 07/28/2008, -0/+1And Nixon to sign the legislation. Strange world we live in.
- fulibs, on 07/28/2008, -8/+9The sky is falling, the sky is falling!
- kokoshka, on 07/28/2008, -0/+1pollution > global warming
- geoboy, on 07/28/2008, -0/+1Boycotting Chinese products? I don't think any kind of incident short of a full blown war with China could bring that to a reality.
- jbmcb, on 07/28/2008, -0/+1So the stuff gets made in Korea, or India, or Slovakia, or Taiwan, or Vietnam, or Mexico, or a hundred other countries with cheap labor. What's the problem?
- duckyinc, on 07/28/2008, -0/+1But an air tax would >:D
- inactive, on 07/31/2008, -0/+1I think that is the funniest thing I've ever read on Digg
- yingjai, on 07/28/2008, -1/+2lol people don't care. China bashing is all the rage right now.
- tomarocco, on 07/28/2008, -2/+3OMG We're all gonna die!
- jodimcmullen, on 07/29/2008, -0/+1Pretty soon they will commercialize oxygen... oh wait they already have.
-
Show 51 - 82 of 82 discussions
Digg is coming to a city (and computer) near you! Check out all the details on our 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is 