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 ...
- 7,787
223
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 ...
- 3,657
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
...
- 9,295
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 ...
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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 ...
- 104k
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 ...
- 14.1k
115
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 ...
- 9,911
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 ...
- 140k
71
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 ...
- 689
61
votes
Accepted
Does flying a small GA aircraft use less fuel than driving the same distance by car?
This article (in German) has done further research and calculations that all seem to add up. Their verdict is that Friedrich Merz's flight did not use less fuel than other German cabinet member. In ...
- 1,344
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&...
- 104k
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 ...
- 3,031
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 ...
- 17k
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 ...
- 15.8k
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 ...
- 8,079
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)?
...
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 ...
- 104k
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 ...
- 104k
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 ...
- 140k
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 ...
- 7,194
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 ...
- 104k
23
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 ...
- 104k
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
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 ...
- 2,427
21
votes
Was the 2023 Ohio train derailment the 'worst environmental disaster in US history'?
I'm just going to use Wikipedia for this because the claim is obviously hyperbole.
This is East Palestine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Ohio_train_derailment
Of the 51 derailed cars, 11 of them ...
- 5,368
20
votes
Accepted
Are drinking straws a minor source of ocean plastic pollution?
Yes. Drinking straws are a relatively minor source of oceanic plastic pollution.
That is in perspective: Plastic drinking straws are a big problem in itself. But in comparison that problem is still a ...
- 44k
20
votes
Do "smart meters" bring about any significant savings?
There have been a number of studies that investigate how consumer behaviour changes when feedback from a smart meter allows them to understand their usage habits.
2010, The impact of informational ...
- 140k
20
votes
Does having one fewer child reduce my carbon footprint as much as 71+ people going vegan?
To come up with the emission per child, the original source Reproduction and the carbon legacies of individuals Global Environmental Change Volume 19, Issue 1, February 2009, pages 14-20, is ...
- 104k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible