The environmental cost of spam

Tree-hugger or not, here's some news from the BBC we can all take an interest in:

Spam produces 17m tons of CO2

Is there any hope for more nuclear power in the US?

Is there any hope for more nuclear power in the US? Probably not, as long as the news outlets are so biased against it.

Exhibit A:
Headline on CNNMoney website: "Nuclear Plant Shutdown Causes Massive Florida Power Outages"
Excerpt from the actual story: "A problem with the electrical grid in Florida caused power outages stretching from Miami up almost to Jacksonville that affected as many as 3 million people Tuesday and caused a nuclear plant to automatically shut down ..."
Truth: A problem outside the nuclear generating facility caused instability in the electric grid, so the power plant shut down (safely) as a precaution. The headline doesn't just give the impression that the plant was at fault, it blatantly says so.

The fact is that most Americans have an irrational fear of nuclear power. The amount of radiation release in the Three Mile Island incident was less than is released in the average chest X-ray. And Chernobyl ... well, that reactor was not built to any reasonable safety standard. The reactor building was not even encased in concrete. FAR more radiation occurred in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania from the Chernobyl incident than from the one at Three Mile Island.

And here's something I didn't know: One big concern with nuclear power is the waste. Fortunately, most of the waste can be recycled and used for medical and other beneficial uses. France, which generates a huge percentage of it's power with nuclear plants, stores all of it's waste in a small room. We can't do that in the USA thanks to Jimmy Carter. He was concerned that terrorists and other countries might use waste to make bombs, so he outlawed ALL recycling of nuclear waste. Didn't make any difference. The bad guys have found many cheaper sources of what they want.

Until laws and attitudes change, we have little hope for the inexpensive, clean and safe power that the nuclear option offers.

There's an EXCELLENT article in this month's Imprimis magazine on the future of nuclear power in the USA. Well worth the 5 minutes or so it takes to read it.

A major meterologist on global warming

I have long been a "fan" of Dr. William Gray. Well, OK. Not a fan, but at least I know who he is. He's recently spoken out about global warming and the effects humans have on it. A brief story about it appeared on Focus on the Family's Citizen Link website. Good reading, and good to hear that Dr. Gray has his head screwed on straight. I always thought he did.

That blurb on the FotF website references an organization called Cornwall Alliance. I had not heard of that group, but their website is worth a look, especially for Christians who care about God's creation but remain skeptical about how much damage we humans do to it. It's here.

San Franciscans and water

San Francisco is full of funny people, but I doubt if that catches you by surprise. They want to be so eco-friendly. They try hard, they really do. Until it comes to water, that is.

Just like most of the rest of the US, they're all caught up in the bottled water craze. During my week there, I was served water called Calistoga (or something like that). My mind immediately began to picture semi trucks coming down out of the mountains of California loaded with bottles of this stuff. As if water weren't heavy enough, they bottle it in glass. So you can imagine the diesel fumes that are spewed every day just to cart water into San Francisco.

Another day, I was served Fiji water. Yes, it's actually from Fiji. It's bottled at the source from an ancient aquifer. The source is sealed, and the water is never exposed to the atmosphere until you open the cap of the bottle you bought. And it's good water, I'll admit. But then I think about shipload after shipload of it being transported to the US from Fiji. And then I think about truckload after truckload of it going all over the US. (You can even buy Fiji water in Wamego!) And then I think about the tons of fuel being burned to move ... water. So when you do open it, the first atmosphere it's exposed to is full of diesel fumes!

The most amazing part of it all is that I found the San Francisco tap water (at least in my hotel room and at the drinking fountains I used) to have excellent flavor.

In the interest of fairness, I must admit to the occasional purchase of a bottle of water. Sometimes for convenience, but mostly it's because I don't like the taste of Manhattan water. So I buy a case of Wal-Mart's best about once a year. Then I use the bottles to carry water from my house to my office, using a handy canvas totebag. After a year or so, the bottles begin to show too much wear, so they get tossed and I buy another case.