DISQUS

I grew up in the Pioneer Valley, many years ago, in the most rural part of Massachusetts. I can vouch for its pastoral beauty, and its desperate need for jobs (cheesy or not).

150 pounds of mercury per year is a chilling statistic. I hate the thought of that much mercury being spewed into the air each year.

Well done, David. Please keep us posted on the impact, such as on your heating bills.

A good story to pursue. Thanks for doing so.

Well done. I am scheduled to do this myself in December.

You've probably seen how they tackled this on the show, Mythbusters. It helps to have a forklift and a steamroller.

Do you know if this is an addition to the existing coal-burning locomotive, or a replacement for it?

I look forward to your report on the UNH energy conference. I had hoped to attend--had even registered--but have too many conflicts on my schedule to attend.

I myself am a big fan of mass transit. For travel to Boston, the Seacoast area is served by C&J Trailways, adjacent to Route 33 at 95. C&J provides hourly service to Logan, and approximately hourly to Boston's South Station. I use it frequently to travel to Logan, and judging by the parking lot, many other people do as well.

In another lifetime, I actually had the good fortune to work on maglev studies as part of the National Maglev Initiative, back in the early 90's. It's very interesting technology, but the transportation applications so far have been pretty sparse. The only working passenger systems I know of are the Transrapid test system in Germany, and one or two low-speed, people-mover tram systems in Asia. I think the infrastructure costs are pretty daunting to make a large scale, high volume passenger system.

It will be interesting to see what comes of this venture.

You might enjoy reading Dawkins' book, "The God Delusion". In it, he makes some interesting points against Gould's magisterium argument.

Great article, David. Thanks for bringing that story to light.

And I would add unintelligible as well.

Everyone knows it's at least $14.24 billion.

If memory serves, isn't Vermont Yankee the sister plant to Rowe (Mass.) Yankee? Rowe was, I think, the first US commercial nuclear plant to be de-commissioned. The process started several years ago. It may not yet be done.

Great post, Earle. Any pictures of the old windmill?

Hi Cody,
I'm participating in the "thinking blogger" meme, and I've tagged your site with a <a href="http://seacoastnrg.org/2007/06/20/tagged-i-think/
">thinking blogger award. Please keep up the good work.
Regards,
Adam

I guess it's not live free and die...at least not in public.

Yes, in fact I did read it. And you are asking me to take a letter to Science in place of peer reviewed publications.

And here are some links where the the author in your original link (Peiser) refutes his own letter.

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1...

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/ep...

http://timlambert.org/2005/05/peiser/

In the above, an unvetted, non-reviewed followup interview (in short, some junk available on the internet, just like what you found) Peiser states: "Which is why I no longer maintain this particular criticism. In addition, some of the abstracts that I included in the 34 "reject or doubt" category are very ambiguous and should not have been included."

He then states:
"I do not think anyone is questioning that we are in a period of global warming. Neither do I doubt that the overwhelming majority of climatologists is agreed that the current warming period is mostly due to human impact."

Of course there is disagreement. Of course others will argue with global warming and its causes. Of course there will be skeptics.

But you have been stating what is or isn't science. A letter to the editor that you found on the internet, and that the author himself later retracted, isn't science. And yes, I'm going to continue to appeal to recognized authorities and experts, like NOAA.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/pa...

I don't think the argument is really about whether or not we are in any optimal climate for the planet. The climate is, however, optimal for our lives and communities in the sense that our homes, farms, industries and economies have developed to the current state at least in part because we've had some experience and history, on a scale that exceeds human lifetimes, that the climate is relatively stable, and does not change rapidly.


Established, accepted, peer-reviewed and published scientific studies of the earth's temperature over the last 2000 years show similar patterns of historical temperature fluctuation, and concur that the warming trend since the 19th century has been dramatic, to the point that the last 15 years have not only been some of the warmest in the instrumental record, but also the warmest in at least the last 1000 years, and likely the last 2000. Yes, temperatures over the millenia have gone up and down. Yes, there were some articles in the 70's about cooling--a 30-year perturbation that was superimposed on the overall trend of the last century: warming. Yes, there will still be record cold days, and you can point to any number of these weather events. But it is a clear, unambiguous fact that the climate system--not simply today's weather in some isolated location--is warming.


Similarly, established, accepted, peer-reviewed and published scientific studies of the sources of this warming, such as
summarized by the recent UN IPCC reports, concur that the net effect of human activities over the last 250 years has been to cause warming, chiefly by the production and emission of greenhouse gases. In the language of the UN reports, these conclusions can be stated with a very high degree of confidence, greater than 90%. Even if anthropogenic greenhouse gas
emissions were sharply reduced now, the warming will continue for decades, if not centuries.


This is what science is telling us. The climate is clearly warming, and rapidly, due to human activities. The effects are
such that they are observable, salient, and have measurable impact on relatively short time scales. The changes and effects are happening right now. And as these climate changes continue, they will likely be extremely disruptive to our way of life, including our homes, farms, industries and economies.


Yes, thankfully there will always be those who voice dissent. But it's not as if these voices have not been heard. They've in fact had a powerful advocate, in the form of our President. And even he is willing, although I think it begrudgingly, to accept some of the facts that climate science has presented.

Good article! The New Yorker recently ran a piece on another origami/phd, Robert Lang. It may interest you. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/02/19/0...

A interesting and optimistic column, Dave. Good work.

I forgot to ask, any pictures of the triangular manhole covers available?

Dave, a very interesting story! I hadn't heard of this before. Thanks.

I have to assume that our New Hampshire coal plants in Bow and Newington have something to do with it, too. I can't imagine that all that soot you mentioned in your "lung association" post originates from the Midwest.