Monday, September 19, 2005
Pollution...
Few thing illustrate the folly of environmentalists to me more than this story
At what cost environmentalism? Consider these articles
Finally in nuke news, I would love to know the tech numbers from this story
I just hope this story is true.
The federal government has given a California group permission to kill one species of owl in an attempt to save the Northern Spotted Owl from extinction, but the process has left some people in the timber industry shaking their heads.This appears to me to be a classic case of "survival of the fittest" -- after all better adapted species have been displacing and wiping out other species for the totality of life on earth -- that is after all the basis of evolution. I thought the problem was mankind was "interfering" with that natural process? Isn't it interference to stop it as well as speed it up?
The government recently gave the California Academy of Sciences permission to kill 20 Barred Owls in an effort to learn why they are thriving in the same forests where Spotted Owls continue to decline.
At what cost environmentalism? Consider these articles
About a third of frog, toad and salamander species are facing extinction; threats include fungal disease, pollution and habitat loss.
The Washington DC meeting is expected to call for the establishment of a large-scale captive breeding programme.
The cost of preserving amphibians from extinction may run into tens of millions of US dollars per year.
Consumers could be paying about a billion pounds a year to subsidise green energy projects like wind farms, according to a group of MPs.Those are enormous figures! It is said that communism hasn't disappeared, it just turned from "red" to "green." When I see figures like that I tend to agree. As the environmental probelms grow in scale and the monies demanded to "solve" them increse seemingly exponentially, one cannot help but wonder if some sort of "world domination" isn't a genuine goal here.
The Public Accounts Committee said in some cases the government is paying out twice as much as the wind farm companies need to break even.
Finally in nuke news, I would love to know the tech numbers from this story
Almost 12 million tons of radioactive waste will be moved from the banks of the Colorado River, the source of drinking water for more than 25 million people across the West, the government said Wednesday.What they are talking about here are uranium mine tailings. Raw uranium has very low radioactivity levels to begin with, and this is the mine tailings, which will be the lowest grade of all from the mine. Couple that with the fact that the concern is leaching from the tailings pile into the Colorado river, a very real thing that can happen, but which will serve to even further dilute this already dilute material. Without the numbers it is impossible for me to say, but this smells of public hysteria more than genuine problem. $400 million is a lot to spend to squelch fear when there are real problems to solve.
I just hope this story is true.
After a gap of three decades in orders for nuclear power plants, two companies interested in building new ones announced Thursday that they had formed a partnership intended to create a new business model for the industry.Properly managed, nuclear power generation remains the cheapest, most efficient method we have, bar none. We have to overcome some prejudices, but it is the future's best hope.
