Free Republic

A UC Riverside study found that commercially cooked hamburgers cause more air pollution than diesel trucks. The study, which focused on commercial charbroilers found in burger restaurants, said the equipment generates grease, smoke, water vapors and combustion products, which emit a large amount of particulate matter into the air.

With gas prices rising and the massive drought making ethanol a tough sell as a gas alternative, India's Tata Motors has hit on the perfect time to debut the Airpod, a small urban vehicle that, as its name suggests, runs on air. If you don't know much about how regular cars use fuel, natural gas or, alternatively, hydrogen is compressed in a pressurized tank, hence the 'pssf' sound when you unscrew the gas cap. Now think about air rifles. If you had the bad luck to grow up with an older brother obsessed with using you as a target (or...

A state program created to redevelop polluted areas is doling out tax breaks for companies that lease offices in downtown high-rises, build on pastureland and open restaurants on busy highways, even when there is no proof they are on contaminated land. From January 2011 through April 2012 alone, about $11 million in tax refunds have been approved for dozens of businesses, according to a database accidentally released in June by the state Department of Economic Opportunity.... .....Companies are getting the breaks largely because Florida's brownfield initiative has a major loophole, critics say. To be eligible, there is no need to...

Yes, transit in the Milwaukee region should be improved to give citizens, especially the many inner city residents without driver's licenses, better transportation options. And, yes, the state should ramp up transit aid and road maintenance even at the expense of new highway projects. But none of that means that reconstruction of the Zoo Interchange in Milwaukee County should be delayed and that planning for the interchange rebuild should go back to square one, as a lawsuit filed last week seeks to do. The interchange, the busiest in Wisconsin, is vital to commerce and the state's economy. It needs the...

I’m absolutely terrified that the end of the political campaign season, with its cavalcade of negative advertising, is here. Exactly how am I going to be able to determine who is attempting to tear the very fabric of our nation apart, or who shipped my job overseas, or for that matter, who is forcing their constituents to bow bound and gagged before a false God? This is the kind of stuff I need to know about. These people are out there amongst us, and with the big political machines in idle they’ll now be able to go about their dirty...

The NGO Major Group Organizing Partners have finalized their key document for the Rio+20 Summit. “TheFutureWeWant” outlines the common vision for “sustainable development” throughout the planet sought by those nongovernmental organizations - mostly social and environmental activist groups. There are many noble sentiments in its 283 statements. There also is much that raises serious concerns. “Sustainable,” “sustainability” and “sustainable development” appear in the text an astounding 390 times. Like “abracadabra,” these amorphous words are supposed to transform even corrupt societies into Gardens of Eden under United Nations auspices. They will use less, pollute less, be sustainable, get along and save...

China tells U.S. to stop tweeting Beijing's bad air BEIJING — China told foreign embassies Tuesday to stop publishing their own reports on air quality in the country, escalating its objections to a popular U.S. Embassy Twitter feed that tracks pollution in smoggy Beijing. Only the Chinese government is authorized to monitor and publish air quality information and data from other sources may not be standardized or rigorous, Wu Xiaoqing, a vice environmental minister, told reporters. China has long taken issue with the U.S. Embassy's postings of hourly readings of Beijing's air quality on a Twitter feed with more than...

A simple three-step chemical reaction which could herald the introduction of new sustainable feedstocks for the chemical industry has been developed by scientists at The University of Nottingham. Scientists in the School of Chemistry have developed a recyclable system for converting carbon monoxide (CO) directly into more complicated organic molecules using depleted uranium. The research, funded by the Royal Society and European Research Council, was led by Dr. Stephen Liddle, an expert in inorganic chemistry. Details of the new procedure — which can return the molecule that performs the transformation back to its start point — have been published in...

Israeli scientists have cultivated a cannabis plant that doesn't get people stoned in a development that may help those smoking marijuana for medical purposes, a newspaper said on Wednesday. According to the Maariv daily, the new cannabis looks, smells and even tastes the same, but does not induce any of the feelings normally associated with smoking marijuana that are brought on by the substance THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol. "It has the same scent, shape and taste as the original plant -- it's all the same -- but the numbing sensation that users are accustomed to has disappeared," said Tzahi Klein, head...

As I report in Friday’s Times, disposing of the waste produced by natural gas drilling will become a larger and more contentious issue if New York State gives the go-ahead to horizontal hydraulic fracturing, which uses millions of gallons of fluids per well to release gas from the Marcellus Shale. New York already deals with waste from about 6,800 active vertical and horizontal gas wells upstate. Although these wells require just a fraction of the water that would be needed for fracking in the Marcellus, they still produce waste that needs to go somewhere. Officials with the New York Department...

Human trials vainly tried to prove air pollution is deadly Which do you find more shocking: that the Environmental Protection Agency conducts experiments on humans that its own risk assessments would deem potentially lethal, or that it hides the results of those experiments from Congress and the public because they debunk those very same risk assessments? JunkScience.com recently obtained through the Freedom of Information Act the results of tests conducted on 41 people who were exposed by EPA researchers to high levels of airborne fine particulate matter - soot and dust known as PM2.5. [snip] Just to clarify what Ms....

Although negotiations over a package of tax increases and a proposed casino collapsed Monday night, the Maryland General Assembly passed a lot of bills this session — 791, to be exact. Of those, 96 percent were passed in the last week, including hundreds in the hours and minutes before midnight on Monday. Here are some highlights from the 90-day session’s last day: STORMWATER FEE The Senate spent much of the session’s waning hours fiercely debating a stormwater fee bill that was on few people’s radar earlier in the session. The bill requires localities to fund projects to reduce polluted runoff...

Credit: NASA; (inset) Chi M. Phan Two years ago, the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig covered hundreds of square miles of the Gulf of Mexico with oil (main image). The oil floated because it is less dense, and therefore lighter, than water. But now scientists say that water can sometimes float on oil—and their findings, which were published last month in Langmuir, could help to mop up oil slicks like the one created by the 2010 disaster. Using a theoretical model, the scientists calculated the forces acting on water when it is dripped onto an oil surface....

Won’t those tax-subsidized electric cars solve heaps of problems? Not exactly. There are two examples that run against the politically correct grain: . . .

Every year, coal-fired power plants produce more than 386,000 tons of hazardous air pollutants -- including mercury, arsenic, lead and acid gases. Mercury, a potent neurotoxin, is a particular threat to pregnant women and young children. The Environmental Protection Agency has announced plans to issue strong, sensible protections from power plant pollution on December 16th of this year. Unfortunately, industry special interests are trying to block this critical safeguard. Tell President Obama to strongly support the EPA's efforts to clean up mercury pollution and protect the health of mothers, children and families. This is an email that I received from...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Democrat-controlled Senate on Thursday rejected a Republican attempt to block a regulation intended to curb power plant pollution that blows downwind into other states. By a 56-41 vote, senators defeated a resolution by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who said the step was needed to rein in what he called the Obama administration's overzealous job-killing approach to environmental protection. "We are simply asking that the clean air regulations already on the books stay in place and we do not make the regulations so onerous that they put utility plants out of business and we have an...

It is time for Lisa P. Jackson to resign. Last Friday at Howard University, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) railed against the coal industry, saying, “In [the coal industry’s] entire history - 50, 60, 70 years or even 30 - they never found the time or the reason to clean up their act. They’re literally on life support. And the people keeping them on life support are all of us.” This is patently false, of course, as emissions from U.S. coal-fired power plants are quite heavily regulated. Those emissions controls are the reason U.S. air is clean...

SALT LAKE CITY — Motorists who leave their vehicles idling for more than two minutes in Utah's capital city run the risk of being fined. The Salt Lake City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to approve an ordinance making idling of vehicle engines a crime punishable by a fine of between $50 and $210, depending on the number of offenses and how quickly fines are paid. The goal, city leaders said, is to improve air quality in the Salt Lake Valley, where more than 50 percent of air pollution comes from vehicle exhaust. "Anything we can do to reduce pollution on...

Those bracing dips in the local lake or river may not be as healthy as they were cracked up to be judging by a new list of polluted waterways released last week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Recent tests have found more toxic material, bacteria and pollution in California rivers, streams, bays and lakes than has ever been documented before, according to the federal agency. The study shows a 170 percent increase in the number of waterways showing toxicity in 2010 compared with 2006, the last time the study was done. Less than half of the state's lakes, bays...

Any American watching cable TV over the past few months can hardly fail to have noticed the seemingly ubiquitous advertisements extolling the virtues of extracting oil from Canadian oil sands, which the commentators assure their audience has a carbon footprint largely comparable with traditional fossil fuels, and which, if developed will provide not only millions of new jobs but billions of dollars for governments as well as energy security by weaning the Western Hemisphere off its addiction to terrorism-tainted Middle East oil. But don’t break out your checkbook just yet. Apparently those pesky Eurocrats in Brussels haven’t gotten the message,...