Climate Strike September 20

[Corso]

I had this vision of you and a grandchild hanging on to a piece of floating wreckage after the tidal waves hit the north shore. The child asks "Grandpa Corso why did your generation let this happen?" and you reply "Benghazi!"

Atta Boy Guy! I knew you could be creative if you applied yourself!

And when your grandchildren ask "Grammy, why does Grampy have those old. peeling & faded "Hillary" and "Warren" bumper stickers on his Prius?"
"Shhh child, Gramps likes to live in the land of "could have, should have been..."

Hmmmm. food for thought:
>>Consider the Toyota Prius, the most popular car of its kind. The National Center for Policy Analysis considers the Prius to be a source for some of the worst pollution in North America. According to their report, “the nickel contained in Prius’ battery is mined and smelted at a plant in Ontario that has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers.”<<

The Dark Side of the Hybrid: Lead Acid Batteries

[guido]

Hmmmm. food for thought:
>>Consider the Toyota Prius, the most popular car of its kind. The National Center for Policy Analysis considers the Prius to be a source for some of the worst pollution in North America. According to their report, “the nickel contained in Prius’ battery is mined and smelted at a plant in Ontario that has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers.”<<

The Dark Side of the Hybrid: Lead Acid Batteries

Nice myth but it is not true.

Does hybrid car production waste offset hybrid benefits? | HowStuffWorks

[thollandpe]

Hmmmm. food for thought:
>>Consider the Toyota Prius, the most popular car of its kind. The National Center for Policy Analysis considers the Prius to be a source for some of the worst pollution in North America. According to their report, “the nickel contained in Prius’ battery is mined and smelted at a plant in Ontario that has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers.”<<

1.6 million Priuses have been sold since 1999. If you go on a Prius owner’s forum you will see that the batteries last a very long time. During that time they are actively recovering braking energy, saving butt-tons of fuel, the emissions from burning that fuel, and wear and tear on physical braking components. The brakes also last a very long time. Pretty useful and honorable service for a battery (imho, atmo, ipso facto).

Americans throw away 3 billion batteries every year.

99 million lead-acid batteries for "normal" cars are made and sold every year.

Worldwide, over 10 billion single-use alkaline batteries are produced every year.

Prius batteries are not the problem. Misinformation is a problem.

[Corso]

Well ok then. I'm convinced.

How about we, the people, require (or demand -Greta style) our elected officials to drive Prii? Set the example!

Or other hybrid or full electric cars.

I'd get behind that.

[vertical_doug]

Atta Boy Guy! I knew you could be creative if you applied yourself!

And when your grandchildren ask "Grammy, why does Grampy have those old. peeling & faded "Hillary" and "Warren" bumper stickers on his Prius?"
"Shhh child, Gramps likes to live in the land of "could have, should have been..."

Hmmmm. food for thought:
>>Consider the Toyota Prius, the most popular car of its kind. The National Center for Policy Analysis considers the Prius to be a source for some of the worst pollution in North America. According to their report, “the nickel contained in Prius’ battery is mined and smelted at a plant in Ontario that has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers.”<<

The Dark Side of the Hybrid: Lead Acid Batteries

You are referring to the Inco Superstack in Sudbury Ontario. The superstack went into operation in 1972, and there were smaller smelters, chimneys there since the 1920's. The image as the moon was already established in the 50's from all the pollution and acid fog.

Regreening projects were started in the 90's And the stack which was purchased by Vale was decommissioned in 2014.

So the pollution and damage you blame on Prius batteries occurred long before there was a Prius. That's the problem with some of the research from 'thinktanks' like The National Center for Policy Analysis. It has a very misleading name. You can look up John C Goodman a libertarian economist who founded it.


If you want to take analysis to the extreme, aggregated world nickel usage from 1995-2017 from World Nickel Handbook is 31.898 million tons. If you say 1.6mm prius were sold, allocating the heaviest usage of nickel in a Nickel, Cobalt Aluminum battery which weighs about 132 pounds and is 80% nickel, you get about 84,000 tons of Nickel for Prius batteries. Or 0.26% of aggregate global demand. So to blame the prius on the Ontario pollution is absurd. Think stainless steel if you want a culprit.

[guido]

Given examples of good behavior folks still seem to be doing the wrong thing.

It is actually more efficient to set fleet standards for economy and emissions. California, Massachusetts and other states had agreements with the auto makers to a schedule of higher and higher standards.

But those were just rejected...

[Dallas Tex]

You are referring to the Inco Superstack in Sudbury Ontario. The superstack went into operation in 1972, and there were smaller smelters, chimneys there since the 1920's. The image as the moon was already established in the 50's from all the pollution and acid fog.

Regreening projects were started in the 90's And the stack which was purchased by Vale was decommissioned in 2014.

So the pollution and damage you blame on Prius batteries occurred long before there was a Prius. That's the problem with some of the research from 'thinktanks' like The National Center for Policy Analysis. It has a very misleading name. You can look up John C Goodman a libertarian economist who founded it.

FWIW I drove through Sudbury in maybe 1979 on a road trip. I visited the nickel mine, went down into the mine. But most of all I remember the mountains of what they referred to as 'slag' from the nickel mine. The entire place was definitely a moonscape dotted by giant piles of slag refuse from the mining process. It was definitely devoid of life and looked otherworldly.

[bcm119]

......

Hmmmm. food for thought:
>>Consider the Toyota Prius, the most popular car of its kind. The National Center for Policy Analysis considers the Prius to be a source for some of the worst pollution in North America. According to their report, “the nickel contained in Prius’ battery is mined and smelted at a plant in Ontario that has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers.”<<

The Dark Side of the Hybrid: Lead Acid Batteries

This is a great example of how facts can be presented with bias and subsequently become viral misinformation.

The statement “the nickel contained in Prius’ battery is mined and smelted at a plant in Ontario that has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers.” is 100% true.

What the statement leaves out:
1) The environmental damage and resulting 'moonscape' peaked in the 1960s, and efforts beginning in the late 1970s to mitigate the damage has resulted in one of the most successful environmental cleanup efforts to date.
2) The entire disaster and cleanup cycle occurred decades before Priuses were invented.
3) Prius batteries account for less than 1% of the nickel mined at this site today.

[woodworker]

I don't know if it's been mentioned in this thread, but there's a great book on the subject of how science has been manipulated to provide a debate on issues (such as the health effects of smoking tobacco products and climate change). The book is entitled Merchants of Doubt (link below), and the basic thesis, with plenty of evidence to back it up, is that business interests have repeatedly engaged a small group--often the same group--of highly regarded scientists to manufacture controversies in order to maintain some doubt on important public policy issues. As an example, research scientists funded by the tobacco companies would argue that "the science is not in" an that "the effects are not known" on health impacts from smoking. Their arguments would be based upon research showing that not all people who smoked developed lung cancer, or that not all babies of mothers who smoked developed certain health issues. They would then argue to journalists that the "fairness doctrine" meant that their arguments should receive equal treatment in the news media.

What they would leave out is that it was researched and documented (even by their own buried research studies) that a smoker is X times more likely to develop lung cancer, or that children of mothers who smoked were X times more likely to develop certain adverse health effects. ...so they knew that smoking was bad for your health, they just didn't know all of the science around it, and they used the developing science, and the resulting unknowns, to generate the appearance of a debate on the overall issue when much of it was well settled.

Even the laissez faire capitalists and free market economists recognized that the profit motive could not account for externalities. Left to their own devices, corporations (such as the tobacco industry) would take every available measure (e.g. hiring scientists to market doubt, or more blatantly, dumping toxic waste) in order to maximize profits. If you don't have a someone (government) looking out for affected third parties (us, the planet), then the profit motive will win out. If you believe in free markets, then you have to recognize that government has a decisive role to play in regulating corporate activities. How that's implemented is another story entirely....

Ok, now off my soapbox.

https://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Dou.../dp/1608193942

[Dallas Tex]

I don't know if it's been mentioned in this thread, but there's a great book on the subject of how science has been manipulated to provide a debate on issues (such as the health effects of smoking tobacco products and climate change). The book is entitled Merchants of Doubt (link below), and the basic thesis, with plenty of evidence to back it up, is that business interests have repeatedly engaged a small group--often the same group--of highly regarded scientists to manufacture controversies in order to maintain some doubt on important public policy issues. As an example, research scientists funded by the tobacco companies would argue that "the science is not in" an that "the effects are not known" on health impacts from smoking. Their arguments would be based upon research showing that not all people who smoked developed lung cancer, or that not all babies of mothers who smoked developed certain health issues. They would then argue to journalists that the "fairness doctrine" meant that their arguments should receive equal treatment in the news media.

What they would leave out is that it was researched and documented (even by their own buried research studies) that a smoker is X times more likely to develop lung cancer, or that children of mothers who smoked were X times more likely to develop certain adverse health effects. ...so they knew that smoking was bad for your health, they just didn't know all of the science around it, and they used the developing science, and the resulting unknowns, to generate the appearance of a debate on the overall issue when much of it was well settled.

Even the laissez faire capitalists and free market economists recognized that the profit motive could not account for externalities. Left to their own devices, corporations (such as the tobacco industry) would take every available measure (e.g. hiring scientists to market doubt, or more blatantly, dumping toxic waste) in order to maximize profits. If you don't have a someone (government) looking out for affected third parties (us, the planet), then the profit motive will win out. If you believe in free markets, then you have to recognize that government has a decisive role to play in regulating corporate activities. How that's implemented is another story entirely....

Ok, now off my soapbox.

https://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Dou.../dp/1608193942

But aren't scientists always right? If you question these 'highly regarded scientists' shouldn't you be publicly beaten as a denier?

[guido]

But aren't scientists always right? If you question these 'highly regarded scientists' shouldn't you be publicly beaten as a denier?

If you arrive at the denier position without adequate data to back up your position (except for the Koch money flowing to you), yes beating is probably appropriate.

[Matthew Strongin]

But aren't scientists always right? If you question these 'highly regarded scientists' shouldn't you be publicly beaten as a denier?

No. Some are bad scientists. Some are "scientists" in the pockets of corporations. But the collective body of scientific findings generally reflects our best understanding possible at the time. But understanding the nuance in this makes for less of a contrarian sound byte.

[woodworker]

But aren't scientists always right? If you question these 'highly regarded scientists' shouldn't you be publicly beaten as a denier?

No, interesting semantics, but no. I never argued or stated that scientists are always right.





By pointing out that these brilliant scientists (typically brilliant in fields that they weren't addressing) were

[davids]

Acknowledging that science is practiced imperfectly and that scientists can be as immoral and prevaricating as any other human beings hardly throws its methods and all its conclusions into doubt. But it's a great thing to be able to toss in people's faces when you don't like its conclusions!

Do you folks who doubt the planet is warming also doubt that mass bends space and time? Do you doubt that species' gene pools change over time as a result of pressures from the environment that the species lives in? Et cetera.

More ad hominum arguments, just targeted at scientists instead of a teenager.

[randonneur]

if you look at the amount of physical space needed to layout wind farms and solar to get what we want it was staggering.

Is it though? I came across some articles that made me think otherwise. 0.6% of the US' landmass. yeah, infrastructure, batteries, etc... All I'm saying is that it might not be as much as you (they) think.


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[Dallas Tex]

No, interesting semantics, but no. I never argued or stated that scientists are always right.

Oh, I know you weren’t. I was just having some some fun at the expense of the folks that use terms like ‘science denier’ and similar.

[sk_tle]

Is it though? I came across some articles that made me think otherwise. 0.6% of the US' landmass. yeah, infrastructure, batteries, etc... All I'm saying is that it might not be as much as you (they) think.


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For a start, shutdown Las Vegas and replace the city with solar panels.

[theflashunc]

For a start, shutdown Las Vegas and replace the city with solar panels.

Now that is a bridge too far. Where else will I get to see Wayne Newton's performance in residence?

[guido]

Now that is a bridge too far. Where else will I get to see Wayne Newton's performance in residence?

There is that...

[randonneur]

For a start, shutdown Las Vegas and replace the city with solar panels.

I think between that and maybe using army base lands in Nevada you could probably get pretty close. And then make up the difference using the land easement adjacent the border wall and everybody wins!