July 14, 2015

Just pathetic.

> “This is a prominent, misleading attack on bottled water that has no justification,”

= "We want to continue our very profitable polluting con-trick whereby the public
pay through the nose for the very stuff that we've stolen from them."


Anyway, the National Park Service can *still* stop selling bottled water and *still*
provide fountains for the public to re-fill their re-usable ones (and, of course,
still sell re-usable ones of different sizes & colours to encourage people in the first
place).

They can also make sure that there are plenty of posters showing discarded
plastic bottles - making sure that the labels for "Deer Park, Fiji, Evian" and the
others in the IBWA are prominent - in order to discourage people from the
ridiculously wasteful practice whilst drawing their attention to the free water services.

If the "ban" has been blocked by typically corrupt politicians, the NPS can still
*discourage* people from being so wasteful and *educate* them in more
considerate (and cheaper!) habits.

Hell, if they really want to go for it, they could introduce a range of "traditional"
water carriers so that hikers could carry the same sort of water-skins as the
first people who travelled over those trails, way before the Age of Plastic.

June 22, 2015

It's option 2: It is very well known but too few people care.

This effect has been a documented reference in geology textbooks & courses
ever since the 1960s ...

(FWIW: BA in Earth Sciences + BSc (Hons) in Geology & Physics.).


The initial study concerned how injection into a 3-km-deep well at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal
triggered earthquakes.

(Healy JH, Rubey WW, Griggs DT, Raleigh CB. The Denver earthquakes. Science. 1968;161:1301–1310.)


Soon after the above, it was shown experimentally that earthquakes could be turned on and off
by varying the rate at which water was injected and thus modulating reservoir pressure.

(Raleigh CB, Healy JH, Bredehoeft JD. An experiment in earthquake control at rangely, colorado. Science. 1976;191:1230–1237.)

Extract from the second reference (via http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17737698):

Abstract
An experiment in an oil field at Rangely, Colorado, has demonstrated the feasibility of earthquake control. Variations in seismicity were produced by controlled variations in the fluid pressure in a seismically active zone.
...
The results of this experiment confirm the predicted effect of fluid pressure on earthquake activity and indicate that earthquakes can be controlled wherever we can control the fluid pressure in a fault zone.

There is no "ignorance" or "mistakes" or "accidents" involved in this situation: it is
all very well-known & proven science.

The decision to proceed with it is purely financial - yes, even up to good old POTUS.

June 19, 2015

If it needs wheels, it is not "hand-luggage".

Nothing with wheels attached should ever be counted as "hand" luggage.

The only things with wheels on that need to go into the cabin with a passenger
are wheelchairs (for the elderly or infirm) or pushchairs (for infants) and they
get stowed in specific areas.

June 12, 2015

Taxing EVs (and hybrids) is just a Republican ploy to maintain Business As Usual.

The "wear & tear" from electric & hybrid vehicles doesn't even make it
onto the scale when you include all road vehicles. Their contribution is
best collected by an annual road tax with the rates proportionate to the
CO2 emissions at the exhaust pipe. (*)

e.g., https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables


In addition, with regards to public charging stations, it can be done if there is
sufficient will:

https://www.goultralow.com/how-do-i-power/charging-on-the-go/

And that's from a country that has been run by Conservatives (or Tory-lite)
for decades ...



(*) For the folks who want to throw in the "but what about the pollution from
the power stations", that is addressed in the same way that domestic and
industrial electricity use pollution should be being addressed - a true carbon
tax at the generator end (i.e., no farting around with "carbon credits" but a
blanket "£X for Y g/kW" approach). Until the domestic & industrial usage is
taken into account, there is no point in piddling around with the tiny fraction
that EVs/PHVs will use.

June 9, 2015

Besides, any sane person would already be concerned about the proven facts that they *did* state ...

> The agency determined that "there are above and below ground mechanisms by which
> hydraulic fracturing activities have the potential to impact drinking water resources,"
> and identified "specific instances where one or more mechanisms led to impacts on
> drinking water resources, including contamination of drinking water wells."

Read that second section again.
They identified "specific instances where one or more mechanisms led to impacts on
drinking water resources, including contamination of drinking water wells."

i.e., not just proving that such mechanisms existed in potentia but that they had already
been proven to do precisely what was predicted: poison aquifers.

No such mechanisms (potential or proven) exist for removing the toxic pollution from
the previously freshwater aquifer but they are active today for adding it.

What sane person would allow such activity to continue?

June 4, 2015

Great ... another destructive scam.

By mixing NOx with titanium oxide, "a chemical reaction occurs when hit
with sunlight, that turns the toxic gas into a harmless powder".

Observations:

1) This is not "smog-eating concrete" but a "smog-eating concrete coating".

2) This coating will need to be renewed at the same rate as it does its
"cutting pollution by 42%" act or the smog-eating is a one-off.

3) After conversion, the modified coating - "a harmless powder" - is now
available to be breathed in by anyone in the vicinity (pedestrians, cyclists,
street cleaners, workmen).

4) If not consumed by the above, the remaining dust will be washed into our
waterways.

5) The production of the "titanium oxide" (which one?) spray-on coating is
apparently being left out of the equation with regard to resources & pollution.


All of this is to maintain Business As Usual with the obsession with
a) personal vehicles and b) internal combustion engines.

Fuck that.

June 4, 2015

Whilst true, I would venture that the *wastage* of that domestic animal biomass has increased more

... i.e., while the animals (and their supporting feed) were being reared in smallholdings rather
than CAFs, the efficiency when measured in terms of input to consumed output has decreased
whilst the amount of simple waste (i.e., input discarded and not used, whether at the feeding stage,
the overuse of artificial fertilizer, the development/transport/insertion of hormones & drugs, the
losses from transport, the wastage of the end product - thrown away after the "fresh period&quot
has greatly increased.

So yes, your point is most definitely valid but so is Nick's.

We all agree that there are far too many people and that is the spark of the problem.

The accelerant is the mindset that the only way forward is to mine/grow/produce/consume more
of everything.

The resulting conflagration is all around us and in the projections for the near future.

JMO.

May 21, 2015

Fixed it for ya ...

> Industry has complete regulatory capture control of our government agencies

It's a top-down process.

April 29, 2015

No, not directly but indirectly it becomes a "Possibly".

The fractional increase in temperature that will cause so much harm to so many creatures
(including humans) is totally insignificant so the idea that this extra heat will (a) penetrate
and (b) influence the heat balance of the planet is a complete non-starter. It is not just a
surface effect but a "tiny, tiny sliver of the surface" effect and so neither competes with
nor affects the massive energy flows within the planet proper - certainly not down to the
mantle.

The forces behind earthquakes of this nature (pardon the pun) are phenomenally large,
truly hard to understand in human terms. The energies contained, transmitted and released
by earth engine events (volcanoes, earthquakes, tectonics in general) are almost impossible
to comprehend unless you've spent some time looking into that field.

However, when a bullet is fired from a gun, the energy transmitted in that last fraction of
an inch of trigger movement is totally out of proportion to the energy released to project
the bullet - the indirect effect of tiny changes can indeed have large & widespread impacts.
(One could make the analogy with the last ounce of pressure on the trigger of a handgun in
Sarajevo and the resulting years of World War I - "the bullet that killed 16 million people".)

A small reduction in ice thickness over a large area means that a significant weight has
been removed during a blink of geological time. The rebound of that section of the crust
due to the rapid change in forces upon it affects the adjoining crust and any faults now
have also had a change of the forces previously locking them in place.

Added to this, there are two other effects: the "ripple" of change that spreads out,
weakening all of the time but still potentially (and historically proven) powerful enough
to affect any contacted "trigger point" in order to effectively propagate the event; and
the "ringing" effect where the shock from a major earth event (volcano, earthquake)
reverberates around the planet (i.e., not just to adjoining areas but through deeper
transmission paths).

Whether these changes are sufficient to release (cause) earthquakes in a *particular* case
is beyond our ability to accurately determine but in practice, it can and it does have this
capability in general so yes, the ongoing rush to the cliff of Chaos is even having effects
of a far greater nature than "just a change in temperature".

That doesn't mean that *this* earthquake was "caused" (or even "triggered&quot by human
activity but, as the scale of the impact continues to increase, the frequency & scale of
earthquakes *will* be affected thanks to "Business As Usual" winning out.

April 24, 2015

Propaganda bullshit of the same level as "Clean Coal" (tm)

> In a number of CCS projects, the co2 is utilized to enhance oil recovery from mature wells.

This means that MORE oil is being burned to produce MORE CO2 (for MORE profit of course
and MORE political bribes as a result).


And, to tie the complementary scams together, one fifth of the headline number was from
this crock of shit:

> demonstrating a state-of-the-art system to capture carbon emissions from two steam methane
> reformers used to produce hydrogen. Air Products retrofitted its steam methane reformers with
> an advanced system that separates CO2 from the process gas stream. The CO2, in compressed
> form, is then delivered by pipeline to enhanced oil recovery projects in eastern Texas.

So, the CCS (greenwash) scam is being used to support both the hydrogen (greenwash) scam
AND the Business As Usual fossil fuel industry.

Yeah, real fucking progress there people ...