Questions tagged [environment]
Referring to the surrounding ecosystem of the planet Earth, its natural mechanisms and balances, and study of the effects of human interaction with it.
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Did the fallout from American nuclear tests kill hundreds of thousands of American civilians?
A recent paper has been making the social media rounds, that estimates the number of American deaths due to radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing to be between 340,000 and 690,000 between ...
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Do colder temperatures increase our hunger?
I've heard this multiple times as an explanation to eating more in relation to being exposed to colder temperatures (restaurants that are colder, during the winter, etc.) but I have yet to be able to ...
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Does the US Federal Government want to cut down and burn trees on a property to protect an extinct frog?
Edward Poitevent made a claim on the Tucker Carlson show that the government wants to take his land in Louisiana without paying, cut down all trees and burn it in the name of protecting an extinct ...
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Is air pollution reaching a crisis point?
A recent report by the Lancet Commision on Pollution and Health led to some scary headlines in the news:
Pollution linked to one in six deaths
Global pollution kills 9m a year and threatens 'survival ...
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Do electric cars emit half the CO2 as diesel from a life-cycle perspective?
From The Guardian:
"On average, electric vehicles will emit half the CO2 emissions of a diesel car by 2030, including the manufacturing emissions,” said Yoann Le Petit, a spokesman for the T&E ...
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Does a personal choice to eat less meat help the environment? [duplicate]
An oft-quoted way to reduce one's Carbon footprint is to eat less meat. I believe there is even a day of meatless meals that is planned, presumably as an awareness campaign, every year. However, I ...
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In Miami, can you see fish from the ocean swim on the streets because of the sea level rise?
I was reading this article at theBlaze.com that talks about an interview Al Gore had with Chris Wallace (shown on Fox News on Sunday Jun 4, 2017).
The article focuses on claims that Al Gore had made ...
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Do solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear-power plants?
From Slashdot:
A new study by Environmental Progress warns that toxic waste from used solar panels now poses a global environmental threat. The Berkeley-based group found that solar panels create ...
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Are Maryland's vehicle emissions tests a net benefit for the environment?
I am skeptical that vehicle emissions programs like Maryland's VEIP are a net win overall.
You generate emissions by driving there in the first place, and idling while you wait your turn.
Almost all ...
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Is drinking collected rain water proven to be beneficial for your health?
Rain is liquid water in the form of droplets that have condensed from atmospheric water vapor and then precipitated—that is, become heavy enough to fall under gravity.
After reading the article ...
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Is credit card use more environmentally friendly than cash?
A popular organic food store in Amsterdam has this sign posted near the entrance:
Welcome!
Marqt accepts all credit or debit cards, free of charge. Thank you for contributing to a safer and ...
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Do candles create more carbon dioxide than light bulbs?
During the annual ritual of Earth Hour:
...around one billion people are expected to switch off their lights for one hour as a political statement against climate change and fossil fuels, and in ...
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To what extent do needle trees contribute to fine dust pollution?
Today I ran into an article concerning cars and their effect on the existence of particulate matter. Especially the last paragraph caught my attention where it is claimed that coniferous also ...
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What if everyone in a city flushed their toilets at once?
"The applied theory of price", by Donald N McCloskey claims:
If all people flushed their toilets at once, the city water mains would burst.
How much damage (if at all) will a drainage system in a ...
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Does the Kiri Tree reduce carbon dioxide emissions ten times more than the average tree?
The About section of the Kiri Tree website says:
The tree is known to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions ten times
more than the average tree and also in return produce ten times more
oxygen ...
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Did the Standing Rock protestors potentially damage the environment and the local watershed through their own human waste and garbage? [closed]
Reuters has this to say about the mess left behind at Standing Rock and the effort to clean it:
Dump trucks and heavy machinery rolled into the protest camp near the site of the Dakota Access ...
user37696
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Can current flooding in California end the years-long drought?
California has been stricken by severe drought for years now, to the point that the governor has been required to mandate water rationing. In an Accuweather piece about the storm currently ravaging ...
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Is Russia funding environmentalist groups to protest fracking?
Leaked transcripts from a private Clinton speech suggest that Russia has given large amounts of money to environmentalist groups in Europe and the US to promote protests against fracking, according to ...
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Is water vapor responsible for 95% of the greenhouse effect?
This question is not about man-made global warming, but about the total greenhouse effect.
According to http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html , 95% of the greenhouse effect is due ...
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Are we in a low CO2 period, compared to the last 590 million years?
In 2012 Burt Rutan, the aircraft designer, posted these slides summarizing his take on global warming/climate change.
Slide 14 is
In the big picture we are now in a low CO2 period. The 20th ...
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Is animal agriculture the leading cause of species extinction?
The cause of species extinction interests me.
Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret is a documentary that attacks the environmental damage caused by animal agriculture.
Their facts page states (with ...
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Can Waterseer extract as much as 37 L per day from the air?
Treehugger.com article on Waterseer
Wind-powered device can produce 11 gallons per day of clean drinking water from the air
[...]
The WaterSeer is relatively simple device, designed to be operated ...
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Has the Orca infant mortality rate been 100% since the Fukushima disaster?
This has been going around Facebook lately. All accounts seem to stem from this NaturalNews article. I don't tend to see them as a reliable source of information, but I also haven't found any proof ...
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Does the meat industry cause 414 billion dollars in externalized costs?
About 34 minutes into the 2014 Documentary Cowspiracy, there is a statement by David Simon, the author of Meatonomics, about hidden costs of animal food production.
I've added up the costs of ...
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Are towers being built in China that can turn smog into diamonds?
This article about a new project that builds towers that can turn smog into diamonds makes some pretty incredible claims. It claims that:
Towers intended to turn carbon in the air into diamonds have ...
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Does 80-90% of the environmental and health damage a car causes come from manufacturing?
Claim from the video The First 3D-Printed Supercar:
How we make them [cars] is much more important than how we fuel them and whether they have a tailpipe or not. 80 to 90 percent or more of the ...
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Did Germany produce so much renewable electricity on May 8th 2016 that their power prices went negative?
This picture has been floating around the internet
On May 8th, 2016, Germany's solar, wind, hydro and biomass plants generated so much energy, power prices actually went negative.
Is this true? I ...
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"One year without beef saves 3432 trees"
This statement is doing the rounds on Facebook:
Going one year without paper saves 8.5 trees
Going one year without beef saves 3,432 trees
Alas, as with so many of these 'claims' on FB, actual data ...
user22865
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Can a person lose weight by being cold?
I encountered a person not wearing a jacket in cold weather. He said he does this to lose weight.
He explained his theory: By allowing his body to lose calories (heat energy) to the environment, his ...
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Does the Constitution of Bhutan state that 60% of Bhutan must be forested?
Transcription:
Did you know?
The constitution of Bhutan specifies that 60% of the country must remain forested.
-- MightyFacts.com
Title and picture is pretty self explanatory. Is the ...
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Can magnets be used to clean laundry?
According to the Magnetic Laundry site, magnets can be used instead of detergent to clean laundry!
For a "scientific" explanation, their video states:
These magnets work at an atomic level to ...
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Microbeads - needless and damaging?
A Greenpeace petition says:
Plastic microbeads are needlessly used in cosmetics. They damage our oceans and the creatures that live in them.
Are microbeads used needlessly?
Are they damaging to ...
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Does an e-bike produces only 1/10 carbon emissions for each mile of an conventional electric car?
According to Lin, Bo (Deputy General Director at Furi E-Bike1): he says the following in an interview in the program Horizons from WOBI:
Bicycles to lead acid battery generates some pollution. The ...
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Do trees soak up pollution?
You often hear a variation on the idea that plants "absorb" air pollution. For example, in a Yahoo News article on Beijing smog, the reporter writes:
The China Daily said there are also not enough '...
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Does one Volcanic eruption release more CFC's into the atmosphere than all man made CFC's combined since their invention?
There appears to be a large number of people who are under the impression that Volcanos release ozone-depleting CFC's into the atmosphere. What's more is that they believe a single eruption expels ...
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Are latex balloons biodegradable?
The Balloon Council, a pro-balloon lobbying organization, makes the following claims on its website:
A latex balloon is made from 100 percent organic material and is 100 percent biodegradable. ...
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Is vertical farming viable? [closed]
Are vertical farms a “a global solution” to the world’s urban food needs." - Professor Dickson Despommier or just bad math written large?
Vertical farms are portrayed as amazing solutions, but I can'...
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Is dolphin hunting in Taiji unsustainable?
In the article "Dolphin hunt claim denied" (page 3 of mX Sydney, 25 March 2015), Australia for Dolphins chief executive Sarah Lucas refers to "the violent and unsustainable dolphin hunts in Taiji". ...
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Did Canada go from 2.5 million protected lakes and rivers, to just 159?
This claim, apparently originating with the Canadian New Democratic Party, states that under the Harper government, the number of protected lakes and rivers has dropped dramatically:
On Facebook this ...
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Do honeybees disrupt native pollinators in North America?
One of my colleagues at work is vegan, and I became curious about why vegans don't eat honey.
After a search on the internet I found a website explaining why honey is not vegan.
However what baffled ...
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Does a dog have a larger carbon footprint than a SUV? [duplicate]
In his song, The Fence, Tim Minchin makes the claim that
dogs have a larger carbon footprint than a four-wheel drive.
YouTube video of The Fence
Is this actually the case?
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Does using paper contribute to deforestation? [closed]
Does paper use contribute to deforestation?
Many people and groups insist that it does because large amounts of trees are cut down to produce paper. Thus some amount of the forest lost every year ...
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Did Volkswagen, Chrysler and/or GM cut diesel tailpipe emissions by ~99% over a decade?
This article, dated Jan 5, 2014, makes a rather vague claim that
Companies such as Volkswagen AG, Chrysler Group and General Motors have invested billions to make that happen, outfitting vehicles ...
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Is it more environmentally friendly to stir hot drinks with pasta?
In the café where I work, somebody tried introducing pasta, spaghetti in particular, in place of purpose-made wooden sticks, for stirring hot drinks, as it was thought to be more "environmentally ...
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Do Jet Skis produce in an hour equivalent pollution to 100,000km of a new/small car?
I recall this claim being published in a newspaper a while back but time has buried it in the Interwebs, though it does come up from time to time as e.g.
Driving a jet ski for one hour will produce ...
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Did SF grocery bag ban cause at least an additional 5.4 deaths a year due to bacteria in reusable grocery bags?
The paper Grocery Bag Bans and Foodborne Illness (Klick & Wright, 2012) claims that
Our results suggest that the San Francisco ban led to between 5.4 and 15.8 additional
deaths.
The logic ...
user17967
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Does temperature drive CO₂?
The blog THE HOCKEY SCHTICK claims that "temperature drives CO2 levels, not man-made CO2".
The paper "Atmospheric verification of anthropogenic CO2 emission trends" is cited as proof.
The claim is ...
user20862
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Does Beck's chemical analysis of CO₂ discredit the Law Dome ice core findings?
On RealC02 summarizing Ernst-Georg Beck's work, this history of CO₂ levels are posted for the 19th century:
SkepticalScience, on its "How reliable are CO₂ measurements?" page says "CO₂ levels are ...
user20862
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Did fertilising the ocean with 100 tons of iron sulphate increase the salmon catch by over 100,000 tons?
In July 2012 American businessman Russ George, dumped 100 tonnes of iron in the ocean off British Columbia to encourage plankton growth and thus increase salmon stocks (link). It is now claimed that ...
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Does unadjusted NASA climate data show no long-term global warming?
The Real Science blog by "Steven Goddard" claims that NASA have altered their data in the USA and other countries to show global warming.
Right after the year 2000, NASA and NOAA dramatically ...
user20862