Wednesday, February 20, 2019


Roast dinners are pollution!

I believe every word of what they say below.  The interesting thing is that Australia has huge numbers of nonagenarians tottering about (they are why Australia has such a long average lifespan) and most of them had a roast dinner every Sunday for most of their lives.  So all that PM2.5 pollution cannot be very bad after all can it?  We have evolved to live with a lot of atmospheric pollution.

Cooking a Sunday roast can drive indoor air pollution far above the levels found in the most polluted cities on Earth, scientists have said.

Researchers found that roasting meat and vegetables, and using a gas hob, released a surge of fine particles that could make household air dirtier than that in Delhi.

Fine soot and tiny organic particles from gas flames, vegetables, oils and fat combined to send harmful PM2.5 particulates in the house to levels 13 times higher than those measured in the air in central London. Peak indoor pollution lasted for about an hour.

“We were all surprised at the overall levels of particulate matter in the house,” said Marina Vance, who led the research at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She advised people to open windows and use extractor hoods if possible to ventilate the home while cooking.

PM2.5s are particles that are smaller than 2.5 micrometres across. They are small enough to be inhaled deep into the lungs where they exacerbate respiratory disorders and cardiovascular disease. Smaller particles can spread from the lungs into the bloodstream where they build up in the liver, heart and even the brain, where they may contribute to depression and other mental health issues.

In what Vance described as the most comprehensive investigation yet into chemicals in the home, the researchers cooked a series of meals in a three-bedroom test house fitted with indoor and outdoor pollution monitors. One day they cooked a Thanksgiving dinner with roast turkey, roast Brussels sprouts, boiled sweet potatoes, bread stuffing and cranberry sauce.

During the day of cooking, PM2.5 levels in the house rose to 200 micrograms per cubic metre for one hour, more than the 143 micrograms per cubic metre averaged in Delhi, the sixth most polluted city in the world, and far higher than the central London average of 15 micrograms per cubic metre.

Ranked on the US air quality index, a measure applied to city pollution, the indoor air was either “unhealthy” or “very unhealthy” for nearly two hours. The levels breached World Health Organization guidelines of 10 micrograms per cubic metre for eight-and-a-half-hours. The simple act of making toast sent PM2.5 levels up to 30 micrograms per cubic metre.

While gas flames and charred food churned out fine soot particles, others came from animal fat, cooking oils, and grime in the oven and and on pots and pans used in making the meal. Still more came from tiny particles of skin that the cooks and their guests shed from their clothes.

“We know that inhaling particles, regardless of what they’re made of, is detrimental to health. Is it equally bad as inhaling exhaust from vehicle emissions? That we don’t know that yet,” Vance said. “This compares to a very polluted city, but what’s important to remember is that this was for a short period of time. When you live in a polluted city you’re in it for 24 hours a day.”

Instruments around and inside the test home in Austin, Texas, found that when no one was cooking, the house kept outdoor air pollution out. But during a full day of cooking, the levels of particles indoors rose to about 30 times that outside.

Ian Colbeck, an expert in air pollution at the University of Essex who was not involved in the study, said he had measured particulates in his kitchen for the past 10 Christmases. “PM levels are much higher than in cities in the UK,” he said. “A roast is one of the worst ways of cooking as regards indoor air pollution.”

Vance was speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington DC where researchers highlighted the risks of indoor air pollution from cooking, home furnishings, and household products such as bleach, window sprays and paint. Unlike outdoor pollution, which is regulated, indoor pollution is not, even though people spend as much as 90% of their time indoors, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

In one study, researchers looked for chemical contaminants in the blood and urine of children in 190 families. Some came from homes that had sofas containing flame retardants, and had six times the levels of the chemicals in their blood than other children. When children lived in homes with vinyl flooring, levels of hormone-disrupting phthalates in their urine were 15 times higher than those found in other children.

“As with any pollution there will be more susceptible groups such as the young and elderly,” said Joost de Gouw, another pollution researcher at the University of Colorado. “What’s clear is people spend a lot of time indoors and they are exposed in some cases to much higher levels than what you see outdoors.”

Vance advises people open windows and use kitchen extractors to remove the invisible pollution, but said it was unclear whether fans would help, since they recirculated air without adequately filtering it. “The joke we’ve been telling each other is boil everything, avoid roasting, but it’s too delicious,” she said.

SOURCE





AOC says America should lead the world

In committing national economic suicide and sending living standards back to 19th century

Paul Driessen

29-year old ex-bartender and freshman U.S. Representative (D-NY) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez received thunderous environmentalist and media acclaim when she introduced her Green New Deal resolution in the House and Ed Markey (D-MA) submitted it in the Senate. It was quickly endorsed or cosponsored by scores of House and Senate Dems, including many who want to run against President Trump in 2020.

But within days the GND was subjected to rigorous analysis (and ridicule) by energy experts, President Trump, Republicans, conservative pundits and even some Democrats. Their disdain is well-founded.

Asserting yet again that “manmade climate change” poses an “existential threat” to people and planet – with only a dozen years before total disaster strikes – the Green New Deal demands that the United States convert to 100% “renewable” energy within ten years. It also proclaims an equally urgent need to abandon free enterprise capitalism in favor of 100% socialist economic and “social justice” policies.

In the energy arena, AOC’s GND requires that fossil fuels, nuclear power and even waste-to-energy and large-scale hydroelectric facilities be eliminated from the US energy mix. Coal, oil and natural gas leasing and development on federally controlled Western lands would be banned, as would exports of those fuels.

Internal combustion cars, trucks, buses, trains and boats would be replaced with electric versions, or eradicated. Airplanes would be replaced by high-speed rail. And every house and building in America would be gutted, rebuilt or retrofitted with “state of the art efficiency” technologies. That’s for starters.

The original “draft” resolution (since replaced on AOC’s website) even called for getting rid of “farting cows” – to prevent methane from increasing above its current minuscule 0.0017% of the atmosphere. So “bugs not beef” in our diets – and no more cheese, milk, yogurt or Baskin Robbins.

In the “social justice and fairness” arena, the Cortez-Markey GND provides that every American would get government-guaranteed jobs, with “family-sustaining” wages and pensions; free college or trade school; “healthy organic” food; “safe, affordable, adequate” and energy-efficient homes; and support for ethnic and economic “communities” that “historically” were harmed “first and most” by “dirty energy.”

Saturday Night Live could not have crafted a better parody of energy, economic and scientific reality.

But Ms. Cortez is determined to have her GND brought up for a vote in the House, where Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) worries about the spectacle that would ensue. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is equally determined to have a vote. Mr. Markey is outraged; he claims Republicans just want to sow discord within the Democratic party, portray Dems as favoring extremist policies and sabotage the plan.

Meanwhile, Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) threatened to call police on a reporter who was “harassing” him merely by asking for his views about the Green New Deal.

Ms. Cortez has no such qualms. When asked whether implementing her GND would require “massive government intervention,” she replied: “It does. Yeah. I have no problem saying that.” Moreover, she added, we shouldn’t point fingers and say China or India or Russia isn’t doing anything like this. We shouldn’t “hold ourselves to a lower bar.” We should “choose to lead” the world in this transition.

Lead the world in economic suicide, environmental degradation, plummeting living standards, shorter life spans and societal upheaval would be a more accurate description of her GND.

But at least Democrats and environmentalists have now made clear what they will do to America’s energy, economy, jobs, transportation, infrastructure and society if they regain control of the House, Senate, White House, Deep State and courts.

What they are not doing, discussing or even thinking about is how they intend to get achieve their energy-climate-socialist nirvana … how many trillions of dollars it would cost … how many millions of good jobs would be eliminated before their promised job-creation programs theoretically kick in … and exactly how they plan to deal with the enormous human and environmental impacts.

AOC says don’t worry about the price tag. Just tax the rich more and borrow trillions more. Whether the cost is $1 trillion per year or $40 to $100 trillion in total, that is an ignorant, cavalier response. Either way, she must provide the numbers, calculations and wherewithal – transparently and with full debate.

But on environmental matters, Ms. Cortez and her cosponsors have no clue what they are talking about.

America has over a century of coal, oil and natural gas that we should use. We have vast quantities of limestone, copper, iron, and rare earth and other strategic metals that would be essential for the wind turbines, solar panels, biofuel operations, massive backup battery arrays, and thousands of miles of new electricity transmission lines that their Green New Deal envisions. Is there a snowball’s chance in Hell that they would open highly mineralized Western and Alaskan lands for exploration and mining?

Their intransigence on those resources means giving up bonuses, rents, royalties, taxes and millions of high-paying jobs. Billions of dollars in revenues to government will be replaced by billions of dollars in subsidies from government. America won’t even be able to manufacture GND energy systems because we will not have either the reliable, affordable fuels to operate factories nor the necessary raw materials.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world will continue to use fossil fuels, emit greenhouse gases, surge ahead of us economically – and sell us trillions of dollars of Green New Deal energy systems. Those that come from China might even have grid-hacker-friendly portals built right into their motherboards.

Shuttering nuclear and hydro power plants – and converting our transportation and shipping systems from gasoline and diesel – would mean the USA will need twice as much electricity as it generates today. Closing waste-to-energy facilities would add to those demands – and to landfill requirements.

Energy journalist Ron Bailey estimates that the GND would require installing some 154,000 offshore wind turbines, 335,000 onshore wind turbines, 75 million residential photovoltaic systems, 2.75 million commercial solar systems, and 46,000 utility-scale solar facilities sprawling across millions of acres. My guess is that it would require a lot more than that – plus millions of Tesla-style battery arrays.

Manufacturing and installing all those units … and the transmission lines to connect them … would require removing hundreds of billions of tons of rock, to reach and extract tens of billions of tons of ores, to create billions of tons of metals, concrete and other materials. That would be expensive, fossil fuel-intensive and habitat destructive. If it is done overseas, as most of it is today, it would involve virtually no health, safety, environmental, human rights, child labor or fair-pay protections. That is not acceptable.

One would hope their commitment to environmental protection and “social justice” would make GND supporters stalwart advocates for reform. Amendments to the GND or stand-alone bills should require that that all future wind turbine, solar panel and battery components and raw materials be “responsibly sourced” under tough US standards addressing all these issues – or we don’t import them.

There’s more. Contrary to claims by GND advocates, electricity rates would likely skyrocket – to at least the 38¢ per kWh families and businesses are already paying in Germany and Denmark. That’s four times as much as Americans now pay in states where coal, gas, nuclear and hydro generate most of the electricity. Those rates are job killers for factories, hospitals, schools and businesses.

They also literally kill people, by making it hard for poor families and pensioners to afford adequate heat in wintertime. And just imagine countless stranded electric cars, trucks and buses clogging highways, especially during snow storms, as their batteries go dead … and hundreds of people die of exposure.

GND advocates seek a total, virtually totalitarian transformation of the US energy and transportation system, economy, buildings, industries, employment base, living standards and individual freedoms. They are using American citizens as guinea pigs in this grand experiment.

They need to tell us what resources will be required … how and where they will get them … how this scheme will work. That’s not likely to happen – because they don’t have a clue, and don’t care. They also can’t prove climate fluctuations and weather events are unprecedented and caused by fossil fuels.

So let’s have those House and Senate votes on the Green New Deal. Let’s see who stands where on this.

Via email





Cold outbreaks are not caused by global warming

Global cooling – and global totalitarian socialism – are the catastrophes we should fear most

Dr. Jay Lehr and Tom Harris

What do heat waves, floods, droughts, rising sea levels, forest fires, hurricanes, African wars, mass extinctions, disease outbreaks, and human and animal migrations from South America and the Middle East have in common?

According to climate activists, they are all caused by dangerous man-made global warming. And this, in turn, is supposedly caused by rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels resulting from our use of fossil fuels.

They might as well add alien invasions to the list, because it is all nonsense. Indeed, the climate scare industry has achieved such a level of absurdity that, on February 1, journalist Andrew Revkin reported in a National Geographic article that, “Many stories in recent days highlighted studies concluding that global warming is boosting the odds of cold [weather] outbreaks.”

(As we delve into the realm of absurdity, however, let us not forget that, in 2011, scientists from NASA’s Planetary Science Division and Michael Mann’s Penn State University actually presented a report speculating that extraterrestrial environmentalists could be so appalled by our planet-polluting, climate-changing ways that they could view humans as a threat to the entire intergalactic ecosystem and decide to destroy humanity!)

Among the most absurd of recent climate alarm statements is the one attributing recent cold spells to manmade global warming came from University of Michigan professor emeritus of environment and sustainability Donald Scavia, who said: “In the past there was a very strong gradient of cold air at the poles and warmer air south of the poles. That gradient kept the cold where it is.... As the poles are warming faster than the rest of the planet, that gradient weakens, allowing the cold air currents to dip south."

Dr. Tim Ball, an environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba, said that Scavia’s statement “is utter rubbish.” Ball explained, “It’s wrong in every aspect, from the basic assumption to the interpretation. In fact, a gradient makes things move. It doesn’t ‘keep the cold where it is.’”

It’s also a mistake to think that, if human-produced CO2 is actually causing global warming, the poles will warm first. “There is no evidence of that; they just are assuming it to be the case,” Dr. Ball emphasized.

And, if the poles did warm first, Ball explained, the reduced temperature difference between the poles and lower latitude regions would reduce extreme weather events, not intensify them, as climate campaigners claim. After all, weather and extreme weather events are driven by the temperature gradient between latitudes. A warming Arctic would result in less intense cold outbreaks and a lesser intrusion of cold artic air colliding with warm moist air in warmer regions. Climate alarmists have their science backwards.

Ball noted that the real cause of the severe cold outbreaks in the United States is a wavy Jet Stream.

The Jet Stream is a thin band of strong winds that flow rapidly around the planet from west to east at approximately 10 km altitude. The Jet Stream divides warm air masses, typically found at low latitudes towards the tropics, from cold air masses, usually found at high latitudes near the poles.

However, a very wavy jet stream, as we are experiencing now (and have many times in the past), allows frigid Arctic air to move south to normally warmer latitudes and warm tropical air to push into Polar latitudes. The result is an increase in extreme weather events, including the cold outbreaks in the USA. It has nothing to do with global warming. In fact, the most common cause of a wavy Jet Stream is global cooling. History shows that severe weather increases with a cooling world, not a warming one.

As to fears of more cold outbreaks due to global warming, Ball laughed, “They’re making it all up!”

Clearly, there is no end to the deceptions that the climate lobby will tell the public in order to deprive the world of reliable, inexpensive fossil fuel-based energy, the foundation of modern living standards. Perhaps the greatest deception of all is what real scientists call cherry picking – highlighting data that advance their theory and agenda, while ignoring data that do not support their politics.

The graph below explains how they do it. The overall trend of the data is obvious: as variable “A” declines, variable “B” increases. But if you choose only a small portion of the data (or just a few years out of 100 or 1,000), you can declare the trend to be anything you want – including having “A” stay the same as “B” increases, and even having “A” increase as “B” increases. 



This is the sleight-of-hand used by global warming alarmists who want the public to believe that burning fossil fuels and increasing the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide must be stopped at all costs. They want to run the nation and the world on expensive, inconvenient, unreliable wind and solar energy. They ignore the fact that those energy must be totally backed up by dependable energy sources like fossil fuel or nuclear in order to stop the grid from collapsing. It has been calculated that, were the Midwest to be dependent only on wind and solar power, at least one million people would have died of hypothermia during the recent minus-50 degrees F cold spell.

As demonstrated by Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels, the latest report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, the impact of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) has been overwhelmingly positive. The report’s Summary for Policymakers states:

“Fossil fuels have benefited humanity by making possible the prosperity that occurred since the first Industrial Revolution…. Fossil fuels also power the technologies that reduce the environmental impact of a growing human population, saving space for wildlife…. Nearly all the impacts of fossil fuel use on human well-being are net positive (benefits minus costs), near zero (no net benefit or cost), or are simply unknown.”

Besides raising living standards across the world, fossil fuel use has helped elevate CO2 in our atmosphere from a level dangerously close to the point at which plants start to die – to where we are today, with the Earth once again “greening,” as crops, forests and grasslands grow faster and better.

The global warming scare has never been about science, or even climate for that matter. The long-term goal of many activists is to unite the world under a single socialistic government in which there is no capitalism, no democracy and no freedom. After all, personal freedom is fueled largely by access to affordable energy.

An intermediate goal of climate alarmism is thus to limit the amount of energy that is available and place it under tight government control. Inexpensive fossil fuels remain an obstacle to their vision, and so must be done away with entirely, climate campaigners maintain. We must not let them succeed.

Dr. Jay Lehr is the Science Director of The Heartland Institute which is based in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition.





Diversity of species living on the planet has NOT increased since the death of the dinosaurs, study of 30,000 sites worldwide reveals

The Green/Left often produce shoddy evidence that various species are dying out but that's just not so it seems

The diversity of species living on the planet has stayed the same for the 60 million years following the extinction of the dinosaurs, new research suggests.

Rapid increases in biodiversity were discovered in the fossil record, followed by plateaus of stability in species' numbers lasting tens of millions of years.

Experts previously thought that biodiversity had steadily increased over time, but researchers now say this is not the case.

Scientists from the University of Birmingham analysed 200 years of finds from 30,000 fossil sites around the globe.

They found the average numbers of land vertebrate species across the planet had not increased for tens of millions of years.

Their results suggest the creation of new species and extinction rates on land find a natural equilibrium that lasts 'tens of millions of years'.

Lead study author Dr Roger Close said: 'Scientists often think that species diversity has been increasing unchecked over millions of years, and that diversity is much greater today than it was in the distant past.

'Our research shows that numbers of species within terrestrial communities are limited over long timescales, which contradicts the results of many experiments in modern ecological communities - now we need to understand why.

'Contrary to what you might expect, the largest increase in diversity within land vertebrate communities came after the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period.

'Within just a few million years, local diversity had increased to two or three times that of pre-extinction levels - driven primarily by the spectacular success of modern mammals.'

Biodiversity describes the rich diversity of life on Earth, from individual species to entire ecosystems.

The term was coined in 1985 – a contraction of 'biological diversity' – but the huge global biodiversity losses now becoming apparent represent a crisis equalling and quite possibly surpassing climate change.

In the latest study, experts focused on data from land vertebrates dating back to the very earliest appearance of this group nearly 400 million years ago.

They found peaks in biodversity 300, 110 and 15 million years ago, followed by plateaus of stability in species numbers lasting tens of millions of years.

The new findings sheds light on our understanding the effects of falling rates of biodiversity seen across the world today. 

The results also suggest that interactions between species, including competition for food and space, limit the overall number of species that can co-exist.

The full findings of the study were published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

SOURCE





Climate change farce: How every Australian household contributes $200 a year to those lucky enough to be able to afford to put solar panels on their roof

Subsidies to pay for solar panel installation are set to add almost $200 to power bills across Australia.

The federal Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme together with state rebates - used to pay for subsidies to homeowners for installing solar panels - are set to rise by 45 per cent.

The cost to each household for the subsidy will soar from $134 in 2018 to $195 this year, The Australian reported.

Subsidies to pay for solar panel installation are set to cost almost each home almost $200 (stock image) +2
Subsidies to pay for solar panel installation are set to cost almost each home almost $200 (stock image)

More than two million Australians use solar energy in their homes, and capacity is growing at 50 per cent each year.

Energy Minister Angus Taylor said the cost of small-scale technology certificates - used as an incentive for homeowners to install solar panels - made up three per cent of an average power bill.

Small-scale technology certificates are given to consumers installing solar panels and are then bought back by power companies.

Mr Taylor said Australia's biggest electricity retailers such as Origin, AGL Energy and EnergyAustralia were responsible for a bigger part of power bills.

'The big cost is the profits being taken by the big energy companies in the wholesale market, without innovation or new products, and it is time for them to deliver a fairer deal for their customers,' he said.

'According to the Australian Energy Market Commission, the small-scale technology certificate cost is less than three per cent of the bill, whereas 46 per cent is going to the big generator retailers.'

Solar panels are growing in popularity, with state governments offering incentives for installing them.

Victorians can set up solar in their homes for half the usual price under a scheme introduced by Premier Daniel Andrews' government, while in New South Wales Labor plans for 500,000 homes to have renewable energy technology in a capped rebate program.

The average price in Australian capital cities for a 5kW system is $5,100, according to Choice.

It takes from two to seven years for solar panel systems to begin to pay for themselves and allow homeowners to save money.

SOURCE 

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1 comment:

C. S. P. Schofield said...

"But on environmental matters, Ms. Cortez and her cosponsors have no clue what they are talking about."

I suppose there must be SOMETHING on which Ms. Cortez knows what she is talking about. I haven't seen any evidence, though.