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Friday, July 18, 2008
Harry Reid Says “Coal Makes Us Sick”
The Republican blogosphere is up in arms over this video of Harry Reid pointing out that “Coal makes us sick:”
The right-wing blogs responded by calling him names and arguing that the oil industry provides for us, but completely ignoring the real question, Do fossil fuels make us sick?
Let’s Review:
Continuous contact with motor oil causes skin cancer. Diesel Truck drivers are 50% more likely to get lung cancer, while auto mechanics are more likely to die from a wide variety of cancer-related diseases. 12,000 Coal Miners died of black lung disease between 1992 and 2002. According to the UK’s Health and Safety Executive, Vehicle exhaust emissions:
…irritate the eyes and respiratory tract, and are a risk to health by breathing in. Petrol or gas (LPG) fuelled engine fumes contain up to 10% carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas. Prolonged exposure to diesel fumes, especially blue or black smoke, could lead to coughing, chestiness and breathlessness, and there is evidence that long term exposure may increase the risk of lung cancer.
Run a car in a closed space, like a garage, and you will asphixiate very quickly. One gallon of motor oil can ruin a million gallons of freshwater if dumped into the public water system “- a year’s supply of water for 50 people.” At the Coast Guard base where I work, a small amount of jet fuel, which is kerosene-based, leaked into the ground at one site, it will take years of phytoremediation to make the field usable again.
In Ecuador cancer rates were found to be 150 percent higher in an oil-drilling area than in other parts of Ecuador. Lukemia rates in those same areas where three times the norm.
Coal Fired power plants shorten nearly 24,000 lives a year, including 2,800 from lung cancer. Fish populations across the globe are increasingly becoming contaminated with mercury, dumped into the environment by these plants. With levels rising, the American Geological Institute has issued fish advisories warning the public about the health risks posed by eating certain fish.
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All of these issues, and then there’s this:
The Department of Energy is currently seeking $648 million for “clean coal” projects in its 2009 budget request, “representing the largest budget request for coal RD&D in over 25 years.”
And then there’s that whole Global Warming thing, of which fossil fuels is a major contributor to greenhouse gases, which many people still don’t believe despite all of the following organizations and scientific bodies making statements asserting their acceptance of the Theory:
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G8
Brazil’s Academia Brasileira de Ciéncias
France’s Académie des Sciences
Italy’s Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei
Russia’s Academy of Sciences
United State’s National Academy of Sciences
Royal Society of Canada
Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina
Science Council of Japan
Academy of Science of South Africa
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Indian National Science Academy
Academia Mexicana de Ciencias
United Kingdom’s Royal Society
Malaysia’s Academy of Sciences
New Zealand’s Academy Council of the Royal Society
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Australian Academy of Sciences
Woods Hole Research Center
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
American Meteorological Society (AMS)
National Research Council
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)
Federal Climate Change Science Program
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
UN Project on Climate Variability and Predictability
American Geophysical Union
Geological Society of America
American Chemical Society
American Association of State Climatologists
US Geological Survey (USGS)
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS)
World Meteorological Organization
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospherice Sciences
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Australian Meteorological And Oceanographic Society
Pew Center on Climate Change
928 peer reviewed scientific journal papers
With all this evidence, and this being just the tip of the iceberg, the real sickness is arguing that we should be finding more oil to poison ourselves rather than investing in solar, wind, hydrogen, and other clean energies.
