Moving in the Wrong Direction

It's really sad to know that the destruction of our world is being caused by greed, ignorance, apathy, and laziness. One of the greatest tools in our arsenal against global warming is nuclear power. It is clean, safe, and efficient. Unfortunately for decades the coal and oil industries as well as the media and entertainment industries have used fear and misinformation to persuade governments and the public to move away from nuclear to technologies that are more polluting or less efficient and has actually sped up global warming rather than slowed it down.

Think about this. The navy's latest aircraft carrier has two nuclear reactors that will power the ship for next 50 years and submarines are powered by reactors that allow them to stay submerged almost indefinitely while emitting no radiation and no CO2. If nuclear were so unsafe how could crew members be able to spend months at a time on these ships without being harmed? Unfortunately many nuclear power stations have been shut down; replaced with burning more coal that releases CO2, heavy metals, arsenic, and toxic sludge. Renewable power generation such as wind and solar is a nice idea, but nuclear generates 100x more electricity than solar per year on 1/5 of the land. Wind produces double solar, but would need 4,000 giant turbines to equal nuclear and is still weather dependent.

I just finished watching Oliver Stone's documentary Nuclear Now. It's well worth watching and reinforces what I've been saying for a number of years. We must build new modern and safe nuclear plants to replace our coal and oil plants as well as old and outdated nuclear plants. While wind and solar are nice, they're too little, too late. Nuclear is a green technology that exists now and is orders of magnitude safer than coal. More people die from coal in a couple of weeks than have ever died from nuclear, which was all from the one accident in Chernobyl, which occurred when technicians attempted a poorly designed experiment where they shut down key safety systems. The Fukushima event, which was caused by a natural disaster on a poorly designed power plant, resulted in no direct deaths or cases of radiation sickness.

Nuclearnowfilm.com

How close are we to the tipping point?

I just watched a very interesting episode of Nova called Artic Sinkholes with shocking revelations. Years ago I posted about how global warming can create a positive feedback loop that can accelerate global warming. This feedback loop is caused by gasses that previously were held in the earth. This episode showed that it's actually much worse. Beneath the permafrost in the artic circle are pockets of ancient methane that due to global warming are forming chimneys through the permafrost that are releasing large amounts of methane gas, a gas that is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

This is very scary stuff

Like most people, we use Cascade dishwashing detergent, it's reasonably priced and works well. I don't think switching to a different brand is a good option because I'm pretty sure other brands use the same chemical as well or maybe even worse. I'm glad there's investigative journalists like ProPublica that uncover stories like this. Rather than have to be discovered by investigative journalists, companies such as BASF should take a proactive approach to reduce harmful emissions ahead of profits to help protect the communities where they operate. Additionally environmental regulations and funding of the EPA need to be strengthened rather than weakened by politicians who would rather take money from corporations and lobbyists who put profits ahead of health and safety. If you have a good product, you don't need to poison the people around you to save a few pennies in order to be successful. Unfortunately there's far too many companies like BASF, Medline, Dow, and hundreds of others you may not even know about that put profits first to make the products you use everyday.

The Dirty Secret of America’s Clean Dishes

The Most Detailed Map of Cancer-Causing Industrial Air Pollution in the U.S.