263
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 match the cars, parking lot, and background building in the picture you attached.
So, are cars in Arizona melting in the heat? A few that were unfortunately ...
215
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 following:
Yes, slashdot's description is pretty accurate.
"Environmental progress" is a pro-nuclear advocacy group. The website initially presents as a general ...
171
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 million tons, comes from ocean-based sources. Merchant ships expel cargo, sewage, used medical equipment, and other types of waste that contain plastic ...
145
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
ecosystem, a minimum of sixty percent of Bhutan’s total land
shall be maintained under forest cover for all time.
134
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 prices for energy became negative.
However, the reason that renewable energy had temporarily negative prices is that it is difficult to store energy, and that ...
121
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 trees)
One year using NO paper saves 8.51 trees vs. foregoing 1 lb of beef, which saves 45-55 trees
One year eating no beef saves 3,432 trees
So ...
118
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 from the EPA "does not include everything that is landfilled in MSW, or nonhazardous, landfills, such as construction and demolition (C&D) debris, municipal ...
80
If you asked about Nickel Metal Hybrid batteries, the answer would be extremely easy. A large amount of studies have been done with these, usually concluding that they have lifespan comparable to those internal combustion engine vehicles. To cite the 100,000-Mile Evaluation of the Toyota RAV4 EV study,
The five-vehicle test is demonstrating the long-term ...
79
Blackle actually cite a real reference to backup their claims. Credit to them!
On their About page they quote a line from a Energy Use and Power Levels in New Monitors and Personal Computers, Roberson et al, Environmental Energy Technologies Division,
Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UCLA.
The quote is:
"Image displayed is primarily ...
78
The answer to your first question is already in the article you linked. It contains the following referenced quote:
In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.
The paper ...
75
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 estimates from the literature in Appendix A.
50 United States
85% of original primary (virgin) forest destroyed by late 1980's (Postel and Ryan 1991).
...
56
This calculation is pretty much worst-case for the bicycle. It doesn't take into account that food production has actually stored CO2 from the atmosphere which is now just released back, while fuel was originally underground and its CO2 is added to the carbon cycle. Neither does it take into account mercury/other emissions, nor the wear-and-tear in cars and ...
55
From the World Health Organisation (2005)
The total number of deaths already
attributable to Chernobyl or expected
in the future over the lifetime of
emergency workers and local residents
in the most contaminated areas is
estimated to be about 4000. This
includes some 50 emergency workers who
died of acute radiation syndrome and
nine ...
53
I know of no studies but it is well-known that
life expectancy has increased drastically since ancient Egypt and that
cancer prevalence increases with age.
About the first point, life expectancy in ancient Egypt was around 25 years, and even in the middle ages no more than 30 years. Compare that to today’s 67 years. Granted, once you take infant mortality ...
51
There are some (in)famous experiments done by Rupert Sheldrake who claims that a so-called "morphogenetic" field is responsible for this sort of thing. Alas, his experiments had quite sloppy methodology.
The feeling itself is real, as most here will testify. But it has nothing to do with being actually stared at/observed.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/...
50
Yes, public buses appear to be worse than cars, at least based on the data I found for the US.
(At present and on average. See the "Caveats" section for a discussion about this.)
Edit: the answer from DJClayworth appears to be based on the same information, I just noticed. bbc.co.uk just links to the overview for the Dept. of Energy report, but doesn't ...
48
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 report we have:
The Living Planet Index also tracks the state of global biodiversity by measuring the population abundance of thousands of vertebrate species ...
47
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:
As regards the normal household practice of
washing small amounts of dishes and heavily
soiled articles, our comparison confirms the
advantages of ...
46
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 misleading way, as it dramatically oversimplifies sustainability and implies that all efforts to achieve sustainability are equal. If such a score was used as a basis ...
45
That "myth" was started by Newsweek and irresponsible journalism more than any peer reviewed publications. Time was equally responsible. However, if you look at the number of actual papers published on the subjects of climate change, you will see that most were actually more concerned about warming:
Or viewed another way:
Keep in mind that climate change ...
42
According to Popular Mechanics, who I assume probably did their homework, it's worthwhile recycling newspaper and a couple of types of plastic in addition to aluminum (that aluminum recycling is wise should be utterly uncontroversial--aluminum refining is amazing, but not a low-energy process!). There was an article in the Economist a few years ago that ...
42
The production of meat is much less efficient than the production of the crops the animals eat. If you would use all the grain to feed people directly instead of producting meat, it has been estimated that the US could feed about 800 million people with that grain.
One paper about "Sustainability of meat-based and plant-based diets and the environment" ...
39
No, that’s not true. In fact,
Humans emit 100 times more CO2 than volcanoes. [source]
so it’s the exact opposite.
For example, in 2008 humans emitted about 36 billion metric tons of CO2. In that same year, the highest (!) estimates for all volcanoes combined (submarine volcanoes included) were just 270 million metric tons (Gerlach, 2010).
The claim to ...
38
Firstly, we need to consider the different isotopes of Helium differently.
Shortage of Helium-3
Source: The Helium-3 Shortage: Supply, Demand, and
Options for Congress, Sep 2010
Helium-3 is a
a rare isotope of helium with applications in
homeland security, national security, medicine, industry, and science
So, this isn't the stuff you use in ...
37
Yes, people are exposed to more radiation from coal power plants than from nuclear power plants:
Dosage comparison from Wikipedia:
According to U.S. NCRP reports [source says 92 and 95], population exposure from 1000-MWe power plants amounts to
490 person-rem/year for coal power plants and
4.8 person-rem/year for nuclear plants during normal ...
37
In a word, no. Weather stations are (as their names suggest) designed for collecting information for weather forecasting (i.e. short term variations in temperature, precipitation etc.), they were never intended for collecting information for climate research (long term statistical behaviour of the weather). As a result, the instruments used tend to have ...
36
Cornell psychologist Edward Titchener (who studied under Wundt) tested the ability to detect unseen staring and published in Science (1898). His conclusion: people cannot detect when they are being stared at, though a great many believe they can.
Though others have tested this `ability' over the years (e.g., Rupert Sheldrake), the results are mixed, and ...
35
Before I start, I always remind people that cancer is NOT one specific illness with one specific cause or treatment. In fact, most people would be amazed at how many types of cancer there are.
One of the first depictions of cancer in historical medical literature dates back to about 1600 BC, from what's known as the Edwin Smith Papyrus. For a ...
35
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 a user named @TheMutHouse replied "this is from a recent fire in tucson, the neighboring apartment buildings cars were melted."
I'm not sure if it's the ...
33
David JC MacKay's excellent book Sustainable Energy - without the hot air (free ebook), has a nice chapter on public transport.
At its best, shared public transport is far more energy-efficient than individual car-driving.
A diesel-powered coach, carrying 49 passengers and
doing 10 miles per gallon at 65 miles per hour, uses 6 kWh per 100 p-km (...
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