Reply #88: Safe Compared to What? [View All]

[Coastie for Truth]

My dad was born and grew up just outside of Donora, PA - as in the "Donora Killer Smog" -- http://www.docheritage.state.pa.us/documents/donora.asp
and worked in Clairton PA - site of the principal metallurgical coke operation of USSteel (same off gases as coal burning generators, and exactly the same off gases as coal->gasoline Fischer Tropsch plants) and he died of cancer.

After we left the "Valley" (that the Monongahela Valley) and moved to "The City" (that's Pittsburgh) - I was always laid up with asthmatic type conditions and upper respiratory conditions -- until Mayor Lawrence's ban on coal for home heating kicked in.

S0 - I ask "Compared to What"

I was part of the US Coast Guard team that did the study on massive LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) Super Tankers bringing imported LNG into American ports. "My" failure mode effect analysis was published by the Coast Guard and presented at the October 1969 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Conference in Washington.

S0 - I ask "Compared to What"

Read Nukes Are Green by Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, Saturday, April 9, 2005, link at: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/09/opinion/09kristof.html?

S0 - I ask "Compared to What"

As peak oil hits we will not go back to some idyllic, 1890's farm scenario that James Howard Kunstler (a favorite of many of use Progressives) alludes to in The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century (yes - I have a pre-publication order with Amazon). And, what makes anyone thing that the 1890's were idyllic.

S0 - I ask "Compared to What"

I am an acolyte of Amory Lovins and Stan Ovshinsky (except on nuclear power), and an acolyte of Ivan Itkin --- and I did study engineering and work as an engineer (in photovoltaics, fuel cells, high energy batteries, electric vehicle systems, hybrid electric vehicle systems - and nuclear power)