260
votes
Accepted
Are cars in Arizona melting in the 2018 summer heat?
The weather is not melting cars. But there was a big fire in Tucson and the heat from the fire melted plastic parts on a bunch of cars in the parking lot. The pictures in this article fairly clearly ...
- 7,458
222
votes
Do solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear-power plants?
This study, by a nuclear advocacy group, is based on treating a cubic meter of used solar panels as being equivalent to a cubic meter of spent uranium.
Just digging around the links, I find the ...
- 3,655
174
votes
Accepted
Do 10 Asian and African rivers generate 90% of plastic trash in the ocean?
No, rivers and other land-based sources account for 10-12%
From Wikipedia:
Sources of ocean-based plastic pollution
Almost 90% of plastic debris that pollutes ocean water, which translates to 5.6 ...
- 11k
155
votes
Accepted
Does the Constitution of Bhutan state that 60% of Bhutan must be forested?
The Constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan, Article 5, paragraph 3:
The Government shall ensure that, in order to conserve the
country’s natural resources and to prevent degradation of the
...
- 7,565
136
votes
Accepted
Did Germany produce so much renewable electricity on May 8th 2016 that their power prices went negative?
This is pretty much true, and has happened multiple times in the past. In fact, they were introduced in the German intraday market in 2007.
For example, the same situation occurred in May 2014, when ...
- 18.5k
122
votes
"One year without beef saves 3432 trees"
The cartoon seems to originate from Resources Spent on Consumption of Animals (citing to a video from Bite Size Vegan) which gives slightly more detail:
1 lb of beef = 55 square feet of forest (45-55 ...
- 98.3k
117
votes
Accepted
Does Germany produce more waste than the US?
The reason for this discrepancy is because the data from the Umweltbundesamt includes construction and demolition waste (see figure below and surrounding text on your linked webpage) whereas the data ...
- 14k
113
votes
Accepted
Does the production of a Tesla battery produce as much CO2 as driving 200,000 km?
tl;dr: The claimed range is 50% higher than the worst assumptions for battery production, and 500% higher than the best assumptions. But it's not an apples to apples comparison.
Carbon emissions ...
- 9,269
73
votes
Accepted
Is only 4% of original forest left in the US?
Yes, this figure is consistent with estimates from 20 years ago.
The 1995 paper Endangered Ecosystems of the United States:
A Preliminary Assessment of Loss and Degradation collates some relevant ...
- 133k
70
votes
Does the production of a Tesla battery produce as much CO2 as driving 200,000 km?
In addition to all the other great answers there is one very important fact that's always ignored in these comparisons (Google translation, lightly corrected by me):
The total emissions of petrol ...
- 679
50
votes
Accepted
Was plastic from a seaplane shot down in 1944 recently found in an albatross stomach?
There are earlier sources and more information about this story.
The 23 April 2006 Pacific Northwest Sunday Magazine published by the Seattle Times says:
Take a piece of plastic marked "VP-101&...
- 98.3k
48
votes
Have we wiped out 60% of vertebrate populations since 1970?
To get a littler closer to the horse's mouth -- the news article is about the Living Planet Report 2018 as published by the WWF (the wildlife people, not the wrestling people.)
On page 7 of that ...
- 3,051
47
votes
Accepted
Does a dishwasher consume less water than manual dish washing
Yes, a dishwasher almost always uses less water than manual washing.
According to a study published by the University of Bonn[1], both the energy and water consumption of a dishwasher is better:
...
- 2,492
46
votes
Is "Earth Overshoot Day" a useful or reliable metric of humanity's effect on the world?
Yes, the 'ecological footprint' can be useful in suggesting areas where humanity has unsustainable practices which need to be improved.
However, the footprint is usually presented in a very ...
- 11.4k
38
votes
Accepted
Do windmills in freezing climates require power so they don't seize up?
Yes, but it's a small fraction of what they produce.
Wind turbines need measures to deal with cold and ice. Heating is one of them.
Canada address the problem in Wind Energy in Cold Climates.
Based ...
- 11.1k
36
votes
Do termites produce 10 times more CO2 than humans?
Leaving aside the fact that termite CO2 production is on few, if any, secondary school syllabuses, its more complicated than that.
Termites are not burning fossil fuels. The carbon they produce comes ...
- 15.7k
34
votes
Are cars in Arizona melting in the 2018 summer heat?
A search on https://tineye.com led me to this tweet by @AyeElleJay with the caption "Slimmmmm! Arizona weather real different 😩" against that image.
Replies to the tweet questioned its validity, and ...
- 5,942
32
votes
Have we wiped out 60% of vertebrate populations since 1970?
What is the claim?
Are you asking about total biomass, biodiversity, regional populations, ...?
Are you asking about specific areas / countries, or worldwide (which will be hard to exactly quantify)?
...
31
votes
Accepted
Did Canada go from 2.5 million protected lakes and rivers, to just 159?
Summary
The figures are correct. However, the definition of "protected" in the claim is very specific.
The Harper Government decided to remove protection of navigation for all bodies of water in ...
- 29.8k
28
votes
Are we in a low CO2 period, compared to the last 590 million years?
According to GEOCARB III: A Revised Model of Atmospheric CO2 over Phanerozoic Time and the corresponding paper
Calculated paleolevels of atmospheric CO2 from the GEOCARB III model, which
models ...
- 98.3k
26
votes
"One year without beef saves 3432 trees"
The claim really originates from 1986, and over the years has been stripped down to a factoid, to fulfill Bradbury's prophecy "Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of ...
- 98.3k
25
votes
Are we in a low CO2 period, compared to the last 590 million years?
The question points to Rhutan's source as this page, which has the original diagram, and attributes the numbers to
CO2 after R.A. Berner, 2001 (GEOCARB III) PDF
This GEOCARB III model is ...
- 133k
25
votes
Accepted
Does rolled sod produce 40x as much oxygen as a pine forest?
As the top answer to this related question states, plants in general are oxygen neutral. In other words, whatever oxygen is emitted today will be emitted as CO2 later. So what really matters from a ...
- 7,049
24
votes
Accepted
In Miami, can you see fish from the ocean swim on the streets because of the sea level rise?
Miami did have sunny day flooding, 3 feet above mean sea level, (2 feet higher than average high tide) in October and November of 2016.
In November, it was reported that fish and an octopus were in ...
- 98.3k
24
votes
Does the US Federal Government want to cut down and burn trees on a property to protect an extinct frog?
The frog is not globally extinct. However, it is extinct from Louisiana. It does not live on the property in question, or in the state where the property is located. See Mississippi gopher frog ...
- 98.3k
23
votes
Accepted
Did the US ban the Volkswagen XL1 for being too fuel efficient?
Safety rules
According to a December 2013 article in USA Today, the XL1 cannot meet US safety rules.
The latest teaser: XL1. It's a spaceship-like, ultra-high-mpg, plug-in diesel-electric hybrid. VW ...
- 24.8k
22
votes
Do 10 Asian and African rivers generate 90% of plastic trash in the ocean?
If the question is about those specific countries:
No, plastic in those rivers can have come from a different country.
..Therefore, the rivers might be Asian/African, the plastic is not (therefore, ...
- 377
21
votes
Accepted
Do Jet Skis produce in an hour equivalent pollution to 100,000km of a new/small car?
Driving a jet ski for one hour will produce the equivalent amount of pollution as driving a new car 100,000 km.
This claim seems to be INCORRECT.
First, the claim appears to be credited to Stienstra ...
- 29.8k
21
votes
Is only 4% of original forest left in the US?
Entirely possible
I'm assuming that by "original forests" the video refers to old-growth forests, and that the point considered 100% is the total forest area of year 1630.
U.S. Forest Resource ...
- 2,357
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible