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 ...
216
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 ...
174
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
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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
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 ...
34
No, The Register has misrepresented the story.
There are several parts to this question. The summary is:
"Peak Wind" is a myth: there is nothing similar in wind to how hydrocarbon stocks will get to such a depletion point that annual production will decline inexorably thereafter.
The modelling methodology smackdown - Have previous estimates over-estimated ...
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 (...
32
The short answer is that no, electric cars are most definitely not at a thermodynamic disadvantage compared to a combustion engine. Quite the reverse, they have the advantage.
Electric cars are about 4x as efficient as fossil-fuelled combustion engines, tank-to-wheel: ICE engine efficiency is around 20%. Electric engines tend to be around 80-90%. And the ...
32
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)?
Are you asking about whether we have wiped out at least 60%, or are you asking whether a ballpark figure of about 60% is plausible?
And are insects exempt ...
30
TL;DR: Yes, a plant-based diet does use less resources than a meat-based diet. However, neither diet is currently sustainable.
First off, this is the (very long) "recent United Nations report" PETA is referencing on their website and this is the press release for it
The press release: (emphasis mine)
Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than ...
30
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 Canada. These bodies were formerly protected by the 1882 Navigable Water Protection Act.
The original Navigable Waters Protection Act protected the lakes from any ...
29
The question is invalid, as we already produce way more than enough food. There is no more "world hunger" problem due insufficient food production. Currently much greater problem is an epidemic of obesity.
The lowest calorie intake is in sub-Saharan Africa, where on average people eat 2,176 calories per person per day.
Highest in US with a average of 3,...
28
This quote apparently comes from a 1916 USDA study on Hemp Hurds as a Paper-Making Material,
The most important point derived from this calculation is in regard to
areas required for a sustained supply, which are in the ratio of 4 to
1. Every tract of 10,000 acres which is devoted to hemp raising year by year is equivalent to a sustained pulp-...
28
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 the carbon cycle on long time scales (here a 30 million year resolution).
The long term carbon cycle is primarily geochemical, a result of the exchange of
...
27
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 pastepudding norm".
It started from the editorial Our steak in the jungle BioScience (November, 1986), page 642 on the effect of Central American beef production on ...
26
This appears to be inspired by Japan vs. Korea disputes that continue to plague us.
According to Yahoo News Japan...
"Japanese people create meat from human
feces; Korean net users say
'President's office should buy'"
According to the Korean "No Cut News",
a Japanese scientist has created "dung
meat" out of human feces. It is said
to be ...
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