Humans and the Environment

Intended for constructive conversations. Exhibits of polarizing tribalism will be deleted.
IlliniDave
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by IlliniDave »

@C40,

Correlation doesn't mean causation. No doubt the new presence of humans put pressure on N. American mega-fauna, but it's difficult to argue humans are the sole cause of their extinction. Fairly large animals (bison, elk, caribu, Moose, bears, wolves, etc.)--many of which are good to eat--survived for the tens of thousands of years since humans to the Americas. And the place on the earth where the largest land animals to survive until modern times (Africa) is where humans have lived the longest.

That said, humans are definitely the primary cause of some extinctions. Read up on North American locust plagues in the 19th century for an example of one that didn't turn out so bad. Many others are quite sad.

jacob
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by jacob »

@Fish/all

+1

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=4654&start=550
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5877
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=8376

We're actually 0/3 on climate science at this point in forum history. Experience suggests that any further progress when it comes to debating climate science is highly unlikely at this point. We've tried and failed too many times already.

If this thread eventually turns into yet another CC thread in disguise, I'll quickly make it 0/4 once it's gone yet another few pages w/o any sign of peer-reviewed references or physics-based arguments. If you add up the other three CC threads, we get to 54 pages already!! Nobody needs that!

I'm willing to entertain the possibility of once again opening up the CC debate in 2020 to see if anything has changed in the interim, but until then, I much prefer that those who haven't already gone through the previous ~1000 posts to please do so before continuing this line.

If I had to "advise" this thread in terms of survivability when it comes to orbital bombardments from the moderators so as to preserve a decent level of signal/noise, I'd suggest to maybe first and primarily focus of establishing a basic level of agreement from which you can all proceed from. And to stay far away from climate issues since three threads and many many hundreds of posts have already demonstrated that reconciling that issue is practically unpossible at this point.

Indeed, if any of you guys want to make my day, try to bring up some points on human progress, you can all agree on, like indoor plumbing?

7Wannabe5
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I think we can all agree that bringing the small pox virus to near extinction was a good thing. The Mortage-Lifter variety of tomato, pretty good and humans made that happen too. One of the things that fascinates me is the distinction between species and variety. Wolf/Dog or Wolf/Gray Wolf or Dog/Pekingese. Also, it is my understanding that biotechnology has advanced to the point that it is currently possible to attempt "rebirth" of extinct species or human-mediated creation of wholly new ones, and only ethical considerations stand in the way. How much acreage do we wish to reserve as free range for Castoroides? Of course, it also may be the case in the world of the not-so-distant future that it would prove more energy efficient to simply upload the genetic code and all related phenotype behavior outcomes into a super-computer which would generate virtual model indistinguishable from "real" Castoroides. Dunno.

jacob
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by jacob »

Okay, eradicating small pox (aside from preserving a few samples in select weapons labs for "future research") was a good start ...

Actually, I'm thinking that maybe it would be a good idea to split this thread into two. Then the Pollyannas and Cassandras can present their points respectively?

1) What's the worst thing that could happen?
2) What's the best thing that could happen?

This would avoid waisting time generating tons of noise disagreeing between the two frameworks and instead providing a useful range that we can plan for.

Lucky C
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by Lucky C »

The worst thing that could happen is that humans consume all of Earth's resources and then move on and consume other planets' resources with no regard for the life that exists there. We become the bad guys from an alien invasion story - the brutes that will blast other lifeforms to bits, not the skinny type that just want to do some spooky abducting.

The best thing that could happen is we develop the capability to create/terraform our own planets with their own unique environments. Everyone can create their own ecosystems and try to do better than mother nature, and our most beloved species are backed up in redundant arrays of independent planets. This creation of diverse life on a much grander scale than Earth more than makes up for our little pollution and population issues we're now facing.

As this is the ERE forum I'm sure we can all agree that this ultimate form of planet consumption is bad, and this ultimate form of planet production is good. So which path are we more likely to achieve? Maybe that's looking too far in advance...

Campitor
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by Campitor »

Hyperbole scenarios: The worst thing that can happen is we destroy ourselves by using technology in the most malevolent or careless way (killer robots/super virus/extinction level explosion). The best thing that could happen is humanity sheds its selfish and destructive ways and proceeds to peacefully colonize the stars (we evolve into Vorlons a la Babylon 5 - https://youtu.be/9SRkjOL3tNM?t=44).

More realistic worst case: We waste time/energy/resources cyclically polluting and then cleaning up the environment thereby wasting human capital that could be directed towards better and more future thinking endeavors. Realistic best case: countries work collaboratively and find impactful resolutions to pollution, starvation, violence, education, and economic stability for everyone.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Best case scenario: We create machines that run on renewable energy source that can produce anything we want by manipulating wide variety of input materials at molecular level.

Worst case scenario: I walk out of my front door in the morning and avoid dirty oil slicked puddles left by unseasonable heavy rainfall in giant craters formed by crumbling asphalt infrastructure. Then I encounter screaming insane human in litter-strewn alley, so must change my path. I arrive at my destination, where I planned on exerting some life energy educating refugee-status children from over-populated or war-zone regions, and I am informed that there will be no school today due to 48 hour "boil your water" warning. Yeah, that might be my prediction, if that wasn't what really already happened to me this morning. So, I'm thinking situation could get even worse.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@jennypenny: Just started the Bateson book you linked above. Excellent.

enigmaT120
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by enigmaT120 »

7Wannabe5 wrote: Worst case scenario: I walk out of my front door in the morning and avoid dirty oil slicked puddles left by unseasonable heavy rainfall in giant craters formed by crumbling asphalt infrastructure. Then I encounter screaming insane human in litter-strewn alley, so must change my path. I arrive at my destination, where I planned on exerting some life energy educating refugee-status children from over-populated or war-zone regions, and I am informed that there will be no school today due to 48 hour "boil your water" warning. Yeah, that might be my prediction, if that wasn't what really already happened to me this morning. So, I'm thinking situation could get even worse.
Wow. But you are working on making it better and I think you will make progress.

Riggerjack
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by Riggerjack »

OK, just a few comments. C40, your link is BS. Not your fault, it is a chart of crap, from a presentation of crap, presented to crap eaters. The whole document can be found here:
http://scholar.law.colorado.edu/do/sear ... xt=5543161

"When everyone's thinking alike, no one is thinking." Unfortunately, this is the case with environmentalists. This allows for crap charts like this to be presented, unquestioned.

Let me back up. Extinction is definined in the common lexicon as the end of a species. None left. Now, biologists have confused that issue, species used to mean a population that bred true. the classic example: Horses are a species, horse plus horse equals horse. Donkey plus donkey equals donkey. Donkey plus horse equals mule. Mules can't be bred, so are not a species.

This isn't as well defined anymore. No complaints, there seems to be some good reasons for expanding the definition and I will admit to not being too interested in the details, so I haven't read into it extensively.

However, expanding this gray area allows for some serious funny business when accounting for extinction of species. Now, it is an extinction when a species isn't where we want it to be,or behave the way we want it to.

Example, Coho Salmon. Endangered, threatened, extinct, and in your grocery store, and there's no contradiction there... Every river and stream the Coho used to be in, and is not anymore is listed as a separate extinction. They are so rare and endangered that a angler who kills one faces felony charges in WA state, but common enough that WA state allows the commercial harvesting of coho.

In WA state, steelhead are endangered. Rainbow trout are not. A steelhead is a rainbow trout that has gone into saltwater. Some fry from the same batch of eggs will go into saltwater, and some stay freshwater. We.now use the endangered species act to endanger behaviors. We spit up orcas into separate species, based on behavior, coincidentally driving down the numbers of each species, now they are each more endangered. We have a subspecies of deer that is just an inbred population on an island in the Columbia river.

So, from a technical standpoint, if you count every population that isn't where you want it to be, doing want you want it to do, as an extinction, then I'm sure you can find 50,000 discrepancies between your fantasy world and the real one. But if you mean extinction in the common lexicon, this chart is at best, fan fiction by a devoted reader of silent spring.

I'll be back later to pick apart the DU/cancer link on page 1.

In the meantime, steveo, you argue like a child. Baseless assertation followed by links to someone else's opinion, followed by a change of stance, and repeat. Define your position, and defend it. This isn't Reddit.

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C40
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by C40 »

Thank you Riggerjack. It's refreshing to get an actual explanation in this thread :-). That helps me understand the situation better.

What do you think about the other chart I posted, the one showing masses of land mammal types? When I read Sapiens, that was the one piece of the book that stood out and surprised me the most. I wouldn't have thought it was that imbalance and that struck me a lot more than the extinction numbers

Riggerjack
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by Riggerjack »

@ c40

Sorry, I didn't look at it. The extinction chart was so bad I went out to look at source data. I just got around to this thread, because steveo's threads follow a pattern I tend to avoid.

So I missed all the posts from last night, and the general change in tone since Jacob posted, as I dug into the extinction issue. Sorry if I ruffled feathers.

For the record, I think a world wide population of around million would be ideal. Limit the footprint by limiting the size of the foot. I'd have a lot more respect for environmental types who walked the walk, but it is usually screams of sacrifices others need to make. IE, how many think the world is overpopulated, yet still need to produce children... Yeah "other people" need to stop breeding...

Anyone who thinks humans are good for the environment is trolling, but the situation is nothing like it is portrayed by environmental groups, either.

I'll take a look at your chart and get back to you

Riggerjack
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by Riggerjack »

So the land mammals by weight chart is pretty skewed, in that it choose to specify mammals, always pretty high on the food chain, by weight. We humans like our farm animals big and easy, so we don't farm beaver, for instance. I would like to see how they determined the weight of wild mammals...

On the other hand, I expect it could be fairly representative.

I live on whidbey island, in what I call suburban woods. We have deer, and rabbits, bald eagles and feral dogs/coyote, but we don't have wolves/bear/cougar.

I expect, that there are more people than deer here, but deer plus rabbits plus mice plus racoon etc probably out weighs people plus pets plus livestock, but it could be close. And we live on the fringes. The population here is nothing like human norm for this climate.

Cruise Google earth and compare with Germany for a typical human pattern.

I spend a lot of time on Google earth, not doing my job at work. So I can say that the wild areas in North and South America are fairly common. North Asia has lots, too. I expect lots of wild mammals there. Even China has plenty of wildland. But looking at India, most of the middle east, Africa, Europe, all slants back toward your chart.

If the chart included lower life forms, it wouldn't be nearly so bleak. If it went by populations, it wouldn't be so bleak. But it was created to tell a bleak story.

Life likes relatively level land. That is where soil and water are most abundant. That is where people have gone as well, and where we go, we dominate.

Campitor
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by Campitor »

Riggerjack wrote: I'll be back later to pick apart the DU/cancer link on page 1.
I hope you didn't give up on the DU/cancer analysis/commentary. I truly like to read what you have to say about it. From the few studies I could get my hands on (military and civilian), the range of analysis is "nothing to worry about" to "we can still detect DU in soldiers' urine 10 years after last known exposure".

Riggerjack
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by Riggerjack »

The land I live on used to belong to a family with a beach cabin. They bought it to provide firewood for use at their cabin, while on vacation.

As the owner got older, she had it logged, to pay medical bills. Then she died, and her son got the cabin, her daughter (jane) got the 17 acres firewood lot. Jane split up the land into 3 lots. I bought the best, just over 5 acres. I cleared a road, moved an old house up it, saving it from demolition, brought in utilities, and settled in. I cleared maybe an acre, and it started growing back immediately.

Then, in 2011, I bought the neighboring 5 acres. I did it because it was cheap, and I didn't want it logged. I reasoned that real estate would come back (it has) and I could adjust the property line more to my liking and resell it at a profit (I haven't).

Then, a strange thing happened. I ran into an idea on permies about gravel mining. I have a hill on that 5 acres that seems to be made of gravel. It seems that hill could be worth more than the value of the 5 acre undeveloped land. My minimal research shows that the typical arrangement is for the landowner to be paid a royalty on each ton that leaves site, and when the gravel is gone, reclamation (landscaping) begins. I would end up with more level land, and money in the meantime. I have a few dozen 30+ year old trees that would be sacrificed, ( I would have more hobby wood), but I wouldn't see them grow bigger. Gravel pits mean noise and dust, but currently gravel is mined, crushed, and hauled a truckload at a time, from 2 hours away. The hill is right next to wetlands (a ditch that extends along the road from one county culvert to another). And keeping dust and silt out of that would be a concern, but this is established technology. I'm not a huge fan of tiny wetlands, and the all encompassing regulation that accompanies them, but I do like having frogs and salamanders on the property...

I bring all this indecisive garbage to this thread, because this is how environmental decisions are made. One person at a time, and the more prosperity the decision maker has, the more aesthetics (such as environmental tradeoffs) matter. And every decision involves tradeoffs, in this case, huge amounts of diesel use, wear and tear on roads and dump trucks, vs dust, silt, noise and younger trees.

And I believe that is relevant to the discussion.

Riggerjack
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by Riggerjack »

@ campitor, nope. I was doing some digging to get good links, but will need my PC to post it all, the phone won't work.

Uranium is about as common as tin, it is probably in the water you drink and most foods you eat. Everyone has urainium in their urine, all the time. It is very easy to measure in tiny traces. I am in no way surprised to hear it is soldier's urine, 10 years later.

DU is used in armor, (not usually left behind, our armored vehicles pretty much came out unscratched) and armor penetrators. This means armor piercing tank rounds, only really used on enemy tanks, ( tanks are still manually loaded, so the loader chooses the right kind of ammo) and the big offender is the A-10, close support aircraft. These use 30mm miniguns, and because they need to keep up a hypervelocity for tank busting, they use lots of DU.

DU is much heavier than lead. In a tank, this isn't an issue, in a plane, using DU means reduced payload. You would only use it if you are expecting to need to disable armored vehicles. This is one of the reasons that DU hasn't been used in the ME since 2003 (until for some damned reason it was used in Syria a few months ago, confirmed by the military 2 weeks ago)

DU is about 60% of the radioactivity of urainium ore, which as I said above, is already all over, common as tin. Adding in tons more in a desert isn't the disaster it is partayed to be.

As an example, ( I'll link later) Boeing uses hundreds of kilos of DU in their 747 as balast. They had a 747 hit an apartment, and burn, at temps high enough to burn DU. They only recovered 1/2 the DU. As I pointed out above, DU is easy to find and separate. Yet they couldn't find the missing 100 kilos or so. This was an urban setting, and there were survivors in the apartment, first responders exposed, and a huge corporation with deep pockets. And those people haven't shown increased risks from exposure.

I have links to various real-time logging giegor counter networks. This afternoon, Baghdad was showing 12 CPM on one, and 30 on the other. For reference, Colorado usually runs about 60 (rocks and high elevation) and Seattle runs about 12 (low elevation and sedimentary soils). Also a first person account of someone with one of those networks working with NGOs in Iraq.

But first I need to get home...

Riggerjack
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by Riggerjack »

ok, links to DU, as promised.

http://www.veterans.gc.ca/pdf/Reports/s ... terans.pdf This is a study of DU exposure by Canadians. Done by doctors, with some nice quotes.
Uranium has been part of our planet's crust since it was formed, and is present in
variable amounts in its rock, soil, air and water. Having entered our bodies via the air
that we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, its presence can be detected
in all humans. It does not play a metabolic role in the human body.
the use of DU as
ballast in airplanes. This has no impact at all on human health except for those
occasions when an airplane crashes and burns, and the DU burns as part of the
conflagration. This occurred outside Amsterdam in October 1992 when a Boeing 747-
258F cargo plane crashed into two apartment buildings short of the runway at Schiphol
airport (TRS 2002; Bijlsma et al. 2008). The crew and many people in the apartments
were killed by the crash and the resulting fire. Firefighters and police officers responded
immediately to fight the fire and rescue victims. Consequently, these workers were at
much higher risk to exposure to DU than people residing in the neighbourhood.
Subsequently the wreckage was moved to a hangar where it was inspected and
catalogued by workers. The plane carried 282 kg of DU as ballast but only 130 kg was
recovered (TRS 2002). It was assumed that the remainder was consumed in the fire
which created the possibility that uranium oxide particles could have been produced and
dispersed in dust and smoke, and subsequently inhaled or ingested. This concerned the
rescue and hangar workers and led to a study started in 2000 of the health effects of
their participation in the tragedy. A total of 2,499 workers participated and the results
showed that the exposed workers did not have significantly higher U concentrations
than the non-exposed comparison group, nor did they demonstrate any presence of DU
in their bodies (Bijlsma et al. 2008).
150 kg of DU burnt. And someone had to put out that fire. Those firefighters would have to be far more exposed than people driving on a highway that was sprayed by DU rounds (wrapped in lead) back in the 90's. As I said above, it was the A-10's that were dispersing the DU rounds. That means most of that was spent out in the middle of the desert, where the Republican guard was getting chased down. But there was that whole "highway of death" thing. We sent planes and choppers in to kill everything on the main highway at the start of Desert Storm, the goal being to shut down the highway as part of a strategy to crush the Iraqi army by eliminating their ability to resupply. If civilians are getting exposure to DU, this is the best place for it. DU is not nice stuff. But it's also not the source of invisible death rays, either. (Well, yes, it literally is the source of invisible death rays, if you have 4.4 billion years to wait for them...)
A 2002 study that examined uranium levels in the urine of Canadian Forces Veterans of
the Gulf and Balkans conflicts (Ough et al. 2002) concluded that their uranium level was
comparable to that of the Canadian civilian population exposed to normal and safe
background amounts of uranium. No DU was detected in the urine of any member of
the study group. Similar studies have been conducted by many NATO nations on their
respective military populations: UK; (UK DUOB 2007; Bland 2007); Germany (Oeh et al.
2007); US (Squibb and McDiarmid 2006; Dorsey 2009); France (Cazoulat et al. 2008);
Belgium (Hurtgen 2001); Italy (Ministero della Difesa 2002) and Sweden (Sandström
2001) and they have arrived at the same conclusions. The US studies are interesting in
that they include Veterans with historically high levels of documented inhalation
exposure and those with retained DU fragments. The only elevated levels of urinary U
were amongst those with retained fragments. All others had levels similar to those of the
general population.
With the exception of the US cohort of friendly fire soldiers from the Gulf War, the
Committee found no evidence of any allied soldiers having been directly and specifically
exposed to DU. With respect to Canadian military personnel, a few Canadian soldiers
may have been exposed to DU during the Camp Doha fire, but this has been estimated
to be at levels too low to produce adverse health effects. These soldiers would have
also been exposed to other inhalations during this fire, which makes the attribution of
any effect to DU specifically, very difficult. Large urinalyses studies designed to
retrospectively assess prior exposure to DU have reported levels that were comparable
to those of normal civilian populations.
This study also sums up all the similar studies done by all the other Gulf war Allies, and critiques them.
Summary
We have found, after assessing the mortality and cancer incidence cohort studies
conducted by several countries, that there is limited evidence, at the moment, to
suggest an association between being involved in the Gulf and Balkans conflicts, and
an increased risk of cancer or mortality. The comprehensive follow-up surveillance
program of US Gulf War Veterans with embedded DU fragments has not detected, after
18 years, any significant adverse health effects in this unique group that is chronically
exposed to DU
If embedded DU shrapnel isn't causing detectable problems, after 20+ years, I think we need more than just "increased cancer and birth defect rates" to trace the problems to DU exposure. Iraq had higher than normal rates prior to Desert Storm, and there is plenty of really unhealthy shit to be exposed to when your country hosts a war. So I would expect cancer and birth defects to increase. Lots of burning X, Y, and Z. Lots of dispersed X, Y, and Z. Poor health infrastructure. Sanctions cutting off medical supplies for a decade, decades of Saddam's decisions. The chemical weapons used on Kurds and during the Iran-Iraq war, burning oil fields... There are plenty of real, documented reasons for health problems in Iraq. DU just isn't a credible threat in that environment.

more links:
Real time Geiger-counters:
http://www.radmon.org/ 168 in Isreal, what's up there!?!
http://www.gmcmap.com/
http://blog.safecast.org/2014/04/safeca ... pen-doors/
safecast keeps an open source radiation database. Seems awesome. Odd there doesn’t seem to be an equivalent for weather/climate data. I remember someone was trying to set something up with iphones, but haven't heard anything more in a while...

general radiation information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose
The average radiologic profile of bananas is 3520 picocuries per kg, or roughly 520 picocuries per 150g banana.[3] The equivalent dose for 365 bananas (one per day for a year) is 3.6 millirems (36 μSv).
After the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, the NRC detected radioactive iodine in local milk at levels of 20 picocuries/liter,[6] a dose much less than one would receive from ingesting a single banana. Thus a 12 fl oz glass of the slightly radioactive milk would have about 1/75th BED (banana equivalent dose).
A nice chart for simple visualization of radiation dosing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_eq ... y_Xkcd.png

OK, I'm sure I have exhausted your patience and interest, but I think it needed to be said.

Campitor
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by Campitor »

@ Riggerjack

Thanks for posting the DU information and the links. I'll try to post my sources later - I need to go to work. The main criticisms I have seen, from individuals hired by the military to oversee DU risks and cleanup, is the military puts pressure on researchers to cherry pick data or discard data altogether that doesn't fit the DU-is-harmless narrative. According to them, DU becomes an aerosol when exploded and releases heavy metals and DU in micron sizes that easily pass the lung barrier. The sizes are so small that they pass in and out of cells easily and are not removed efficiently by the kidneys for the same reason. And since the DU particles are smaller, more surface area is exposed per dose which allows DU to release Alpha radiation more efficiently within the body.

Everything you posted, which I've read, makes sense and refutes a lot of what I've read. But some of the interviews and data that I absorbed prior to your post states the risks are completely different when DU is used as a kinetic weapon because of the changes it undergoes upon impact. Even if the radiation is harmless, the heavy metal residue left behind is not (their words not mine). You haven't exhausted my patience or interest - you've only increased it. I look forward to being better educated on the subject.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I wrote:
Worst case scenario: I walk out of my front door in the morning and avoid dirty oil slicked puddles left by unseasonable heavy rainfall in giant craters formed by crumbling asphalt infrastructure. Then I encounter screaming insane human in litter-strewn alley, so must change my path. I arrive at my destination, where I planned on exerting some life energy educating refugee-status children from over-populated or war-zone regions, and I am informed that there will be no school today due to 48 hour "boil your water" warning. Yeah, that might be my prediction, if that wasn't what really already happened to me this morning. So, I'm thinking situation could get even worse.



enigmaT120 replied: Wow. But you are working on making it better and I think you will make progress.
The average per capita income in the tiny city within much larger city I currently inhabit is around $10,000 and the population density is around 10,000 humans/square mile. The average per capita income in Michigan as a whole is around $30,000 and the population density is around 100 humans/square mile. The city of Detroit was first able to support a public library and a symphony orchestra in the late 19th century when it achieved a population of around 100,000 people inhabiting 142 square miles. The affluent suburb to which my BF transported me when I informed him that I had to boil my water has a per capita income of around $40,000 and a population density of around 1000 humans/square mile. The nearby rural county where we went canoeing and had the river almost completely to ourselves and experienced a bald eagle swooping right down over our heads has a population density of around 35 people/square mile.

I don't think if you took a poll and correlated tendency to identity as "environmentalist" and number of offspring you would detect a good deal of hypocrisy. As Riggerjack noted, it does have a lot to do with preferred aesthetic. Preferred aesthetic has a lot to do with human psychology. For instance, what quality is being promoted in both of the below images? Since it is my aesthetic preference to live in a world that supports libraries, symphonies, clean rivers and wildlife, my overall preferred population density for Michigan would be somewhat less than current level, so I am willing to only have 2 grandchildren (reduce population by 50% over 2 generations.)

Image

Image

Riggerjack
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Re: Humans and the Environment

Post by Riggerjack »

Before I get accused of painting a rosey picture, (because radiation=death, anyone who says otherwise is just covering up for corporations/government/alien overlords, whatever...)

Here is a link to a site that completely disagrees with me:
http://www.ccnr.org/du_hague.html
Each atomic transformation produces another radioactive chemical: first, uranium 238 produces thorium 234, (which has a half life of 24.1 days), then the thorium 234 decays to protactinium 234 (which has a half life of 6.75 hours), and then protactinium decays to uranium 234 (which has a half life of 2.47E+5 or 247,000 years). The first two decay radioisotopes together with the U 238 count for almost all of the radioactivity in the depleted uranium. Even after an industrial process which separates out the uranium 238 has taken place, it will continue to produce these other radionuclides. Within 3 to 6 months they will all be present in equilibrium balance. Therefore one must consider the array of radionuclides, not just uranium 238, when trying to understand what happened when veterans inhaled depleted uranium in the Gulf War.
All true. DU has even more U238 than U ore or refined U. and look, you don't just have to worry about U238 with DU, you have to worry about all those other radioactive elements in the chain. But consider:

From http://ataridogdaze.com/science/uranium-decay-rate.html
Decay of uranium-238 alone
The 1.000 gram of uranium contains 0.993 gram of uranium-238.

Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.47 billion years. Let's convert that to seconds:

(4.47 x 109 years) x (365.25 days/year) x (24 hours/day) x (60 minutes/hour) x (60 seconds/minute) = 1.411 x 1017 seconds

The get the mean lifetime of a radioactive isotope, designated τ (Greek letter tau), divide the half-life by the natural logarithm of 2:

mean lifetime τ = half-life / ln(2) = (1.411 x 1017 seconds) / 0.6931 = 2.035 x 1017 seconds

The decay rate, designated λ (Greek letter lambda), is the fraction of the total mass that decays in one unit of time. It is equal to the inverse of the mean lifetime:

decay rate λ = 1/τ = 1 / (2.035 x 1017 seconds) = 4.914 x 10-18 per second

This is the fraction of the uranium-238 that decays in one second, so a mass of 0.993 gram of uranium decays at a rate of 0.993 x 4.914 x 10-18 = 4.88 x 10-18 gram per second. To convert this decay rate from grams per second to atoms per second, you use the atomic mass of uranium-238, 238 grams per mole, and the Avogadro constant, 6.022 x 1023 atoms per mole:

(4.88 x 10-18 gram / second) x (1.0 mole / 238 grams) x (6.022 x 1023 atoms / mole) = 1.23 x 104 atoms/second

This is 12,300 atoms/second or 12,300 becquerels (12.3 kBq)
For reference, an average smoke detector for domestic use contains about 0.29 micrograms of Am-241 (in the form of americium dioxide), so its activity is around 37,000 Bq (or about 1 µCi). So, really, it's not the radioactivity of U238 we need to worry about. It is the toxicity.

from:http://www.chelationmedicalcenter.com/t ... metal.html
Because most thorium salts are excreted via urine, a high urine thorium level indicates exposure and probably increased body burden of this element. Thorium is considered mildly toxic for two reasons, low-level radioactivity and slight biochemical toxicity.
From:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protactinium
Protactinium is homogeneously dispersed in most natural materials and in water, but at much lower concentrations on the order of one part per trillion, that corresponds to the radioactivity of 0.1 picocuries (pCi)/g. There is about 500 times more protactinium in sandy soil particles than in water, even the water present in the same sample of soil. Much higher ratios of 2,000 and above are measured in loam soils and clays, such as bentonite.[24][27]
As protactinium is present in small amounts in most natural products and materials, it is ingested with food or water and inhaled with air. Only about 0.05% of ingested protactinium is absorbed into the blood and the remainder is excreted. From the blood, about 40% of the protactinium deposits in the bones, about 15% goes to the liver, 2% to the kidneys, and the rest leaves the body. The biological half-life of protactinium is about 50 years in the bones, whereas in other organs the kinetics has a fast and slow component. So in the liver 70% of protactinium have a half-life of 10 days and 30% remain for 60 days. The corresponding values for kidneys are 20% (10 days) and 80% (60 days). In all these organs, protactinium promotes cancer via its radioactivity.[24][53] The maximum safe dose of Pa in the human body is 0.03 µCi (1.1 kBq), which corresponds to 0.5 micrograms of 231Pa. This isotope is 2.5×108 times more toxic than hydrocyanic acid.[62] The maximum allowed concentrations of 231Pa in the air in Germany is 3×10−4 Bq/m3.[53]
I think we can all agree, U238, Thorium 234, and protactinium 234 are all things you do not want to brush your teeth with. It's ALL toxic. But as with all toxins, the dose makes the poison. If you injest or inhale U238 in quantities small enough that the U238 doesn't kill you, the miniscule amounts of Th234 and Pa234 are too small to measure, within the sample of U238 (thus far less likely to interact in any way with tissues), and there for a short time. To even raise the issue is clear evidence of an intent to "muddy the waters".

And it is this that bothers me. Using "science-iness", rather than science. The truth is we really don't know how bad any of this really is. It takes a crackpot to declare it to be good for us (but of course that's been tried...) but when you have websites dedicated to obscuring the already less than intuitive science of radioactivity, that's where my hackles get raised. I don't like being lied to.

I don't have any irons in this fire. I don't work in these fields. In fact, I only got interested when I was surfing, looking at using foam insulation as forms for gunite, and ran into a nuclear engineer's blog about how he built his pool, and then clicked a link to "how toxic is plutonium". Then more clicks, as I saw there was a whole line of BS I'd swallowed from a kid onward. If being lied to is the kind of thing that bothers you, here's that first link: https://atomicinsights.com/how-deadly-plutonium/
One man, Dr. Bernard Cohen, went so far as to volunteer to eat as much plutonium as Ralph Nader would caffeine in an attempt to demonstrate the folly of the severe toxicity claims.

Mr. Nader refused the challenge.
The more I find out about Nader, the more I regret voting for him.

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