March 17, 2011 by Walter Schneider.

I made a few entries at facebook:

Walter H. Schneider Radiation jumped significantly from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Tuesday during a fire near reactor No. 4, but dropped quickly after the fire was extinguished.  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/16/world/asia/20110316-japan-quake-radiation.html

Walter H. Schneider There is evidence of a lot of irrational fear of the radiation that is emanated by the Japanese nuclear power plants. In a nutshell, those fears are largely baseless, but don’t take my word for it. Go straight to what the experts have to say, and what they say is not hard to understand.

Introduction to Radiation Health Effects and Radiation Status at Fukushima | MIT NSE Nuclear Science and Engineering

Radiation is energy that propagates through matter or space. Radiation energy can be electromagnetic or particulate. Radiation is usually classified into non-ionizing (visible light, TV, radio wave) and ionizing radiation. Ionizing radiation has the ability to knock electrons off of atoms, changing its chemical properties….

For anyone whose life is presently dominated and controlled by fears of radiation, and that includes all governments who issue orders for their staff to evacuate Japan, you should not let yourself be ruled by irrational fears and superstitions fueled by sensationalist media hype. Go instead to the experts: http://mitnse.com/

–Walter

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March 15, 2011 by Walter Schneider.

Do you fear serious health problems due to being exposed to radiation from the Japanese nuclear plants?

You are not alone.  There is now a run on potassium-iodate in the land of the fearful and many pharmacies have run out of it.  What is that hysteria all about?

There is little to fear.  The situation in Japan is a far cry from being as harmful as other nuclear accidents were, and the dangers from those, too, were blown out of all proportions.  Here is a very informative account of that:

From the Summer 2010 Issue
of 21st Century of Science and Technology

Observations on Chernobyl after 25 Years of Radiophobia
Zbigniew Jaworowski, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc.

The worst possible nuclear plant accident produced no scientifically confirmed fatalities in the general population. But there was enormous political and psychological damage, mainly the result of belief in the lie that any amount of radiation is bad.

Here is another item that will do much to allay hysterics, specifically with respect to the nuclear energy plant in Fukushima, that presently and increasingly raise fears of nuclear-energy-induced radiation impacts to heights that have not been seen since the tidal wave of fear about the consequences of the Chernobyl incident was set into motion.

Why I am not worried about Japan’s nuclear reactors. | Morgsatlarge – blogorific.

There exists a copy of this post on Barry Brooks excellent blog, where you can still use the discussion function: http://bravenewclimate.com

Last but not least, see this:

MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub

Information about the incident at the Fukushima Nuclear Plants in Japan hosted by http://web.mit.edu/nse/ :: Maintained by the students of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT

It is extremely difficult not to become influenced by the fear mongering promulgated by the media. The sad reality is that “The News” are vehicles by which to bring advertising to the people.  One must make a deliberate effort to avoid becoming influenced by the media.  After all, their primary purpose for existence is to influence people and thereby to make a profit.  The media employ professionals schooled and trained in influencing people, all for the sake of profit.

The best news of all to accomplish that with are bad news, better yet, alarming news, and, if the news are not bad enough to achieve that with, then news that have been invented or have been made alarming when they were not and should not have been presented as alarming news in the first place will do better than all others.  “Dog bites man” is not news, “Man bites dog!!” is.

Randolph Hurst was someone who had the reputation of being ruthless in inventing and presenting alarming news for boosting the circulation of his newspapers.  I believe that it was he who once said: “There is no such thing as bad News,” meaning that, for the purpose of increasing circulation, the more alarming the news are, the better, because the greater the circulation numbers, the larger the advertising revenues.

Newspapers derive the vast majority of their revenues from advertising.  The prices charged for copies of their newspapers pay for nothing more than just the paper they are printed on and perhaps putting them into circulation.  The reporting, the editorializing, the writing, the composing, the typesetting, the wages and salaries of their staff, and all of the capital and operating expenses of newspapers are paid through advertising revenues.

Of course, very similar considerations apply to other branches of the media, such as broadcasting.

Increasing the circulation (or the size of a listening or viewing audience) increases the advertising revenues.

I believe that the recognition of that reality is one of the most important things any activists should engage themselves in.

There is an enormous media bias regarding feminism and men’s issues.  I admired many of the human rights activists whom I met throughout my life for being fully aware of that.

Now get this.  That bias in the media is not driven by an evil conspiracy.  It is driven by greed for media profits.  It just so happens that some ideological opportunists exploit the greed of the media for their own purposes.

That happens not only with respect to vilifying men and fathers for the purpose of creating and enlarging a rift between the sexes and to aid the systematic deconstruction of the traditional nuclear family.  The same principle creates opportunities for other fanatical ideologists or pain alarmists such as those who wish to promote their agenda for world domination or perhaps nothing more than their greed for power and wealth by creating unfounded fears about specific environmental issues.

One little aspect of the manufacturing of fears for profit is the creation and intensification of fears regarding nuclear energy.  Accidents such as those at Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima are god-sends for environmental-alarmism opportunists and carpetbaggers.

__________
Note: Dr. Jaworowski’s report on radiophobia may seem at first to be difficult reading, but get into it and become fascinated.

By understanding what Dr. Jaworowski stated about radiophobia and in reading his explanation of how it was created and exploited in connection with Chernobyl you may be making the most important contribution you could ever have imagined to becoming enlightened in your career as a human rights activist.

There is no shame in being duped once…

Posted in Alarmist Insanity, Propaganda debunked, Health issues, Alternative Energy Sources, Pollution: Health Issues, Explosions & Fires, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | No Comments »

January 26, 2011 by Walter Schneider.

Someone wrote to me today, sending a message that has been circulating on the Internet for about a year, an article that warns that CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Lamps) can and may cause fires.

That claim has been debunked by a number of sources.

I wrote back to the individual: Check this link: CFL Bulb Fire Risk

Given the much-higher purchase price for CFLs, it seems that there is little advantage for anyone living in Canada in using CFLs instead of traditional incandescent light bulbs.  Here is more on that.

Heating and cooling

If a building’s indoor incandescent lamps are replaced by CFL’s, the heat produced due to lighting is significantly reduced. In warm climates or in office or industrial buildings where air conditioning is often required, CFL’s would reduce the load on the cooling system when compared to the use of incandescent lamps, resulting in savings in electricity, in addition to the energy efficiency savings of using CFL’s instead of incandescent lamps. However, in cooler climates in which buildings require heating, the heating system will need to replace the inadvertently generated heat. While the CFL’s are still saving electricity, total greenhouse gas emissions may increase in certain scenarios, such as the operation of a natural gas furnace to replace the unintended heating from CFL’s running on low-GHG electricity. In Winnipeg, Canada, it is estimated that CFL’s will only generate 17% savings in energy when switching from incandescent bulbs, as opposed to the 75% savings that can be expected if there were no heating or cooling considerations.^[21]
Source: Compact fluorescent lamp, Heating and cooling; Wikipedia

The Wikipedia article on CFLs contains this information about fire:

Fire hazard

When the base of the bulb is not made to be flame-retardant, as required in the voluntary standard for CFL’s, then the electrical components in the bulb can overheat which poses a fire hazard.^[80] The latest ENERGY STAR CFL specification (which went into effect December 2, 2008) requires all ENERGY STAR qualified CFL’s to incorporate end-of-life requirements and higher safety standards.^[81] The Electrical Safety Authority of Canada has stated that certified bulbs do not pose a fire hazard as they use anti-fire plastics.^[82]

Source: Compact fluorescent lamp, Design and application issues; Wikipedia

The article at the following link is reasonable with respect to it properly summarizing safety concerns.  Moreover, it is more recent than the year-old item you had forwarded.

CFL fire hazard a misconception
Fluorescent bulbs have safety measures built in

Full Story

However, that article promotes the misconception about CFLs being able to provide for large energy savings.  That CFLs will do so is quite simply not true for anyone living in an area requiring heating of one’s home, unless air-conditioning costs are substantially higher than heating costs.

I have not done a proper examination of the causes of fires.  It seems to me that I have read far more reports about incandescent lights causing fires than about fires caused by CFLs.  Nevertheless, I would play it safe and would not leave a CFL lit unattended if it is placed so that sparks from it, when it should fail catastrophically, could fall on any combustibles — such as upholstery — placed below it.  I seem to recall one report about a fire having been caused in Edmonton last year, involving those circumstances.

Nevertheless, any discussions about the relative merits of CFLs over incandescent lamps are now largely moot, unless anyone affected was smart enough to lay in a life-time supply of incandescent lamps.  The incandescent light bulbs we all had become accustomed to during the past hundred years are no longer being manufactured by General Electric, who closed down their last plant for manufacturing them in September of 2010.  In that area, too, climate alarmism won out over common sense.  Read this article: An end of an era – the incandescent light bulb (by Anthony Watts, Dec.27, 2010).

Posted in The New World Order, Propaganda debunked, Energy Issues, Explosions & Fires | Print | 3 Comments »

September 10, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Those Deadly, Green Solar Panels

August 21, 2010—Not only does solar energy cost more to produce than
it gives back, but rooftop solar panels are dangerous to your health and
hearth. In Germany, Australia, and the U.S.A. fire departments are
warning of the deadly threat of fighting blazes associated with solar
panels….(Full Story)

That story is referenced in the article accessible through the following link.

Larouche Political Action Committee
Solar Cells versus Plant Cells: In Defense of Chlorophyll
September 8, 2010 • 10:30 AM
by Oyang Teng and Sky Shields

Posted in Propaganda debunked, Alarmist Insanity, Electric Energy Prices, Energy Issues, Explosions & Fires | Print | No Comments »

September 3, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Sulphur fire sparks evacuation warning

Boxcar mishap raises fears of toxic smoke

By Benjamin Alldritt, North Shore News August 13, 2010

(Full Story)

Posted in Health issues, Community & Industry, Explosions & Fires, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | No Comments »

August 1, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Greenpeace and other Greens have for decades promoted an atmosphere of alarmism that has been the major cause of wide-spread bans on the development of nuclear power generation in many developed nations, while at the same time far more deadly, damaging and excessively-costly alternative energy-generation schemes were rammed through development.

The hype and hysteria fueling that alarmism is being brought to a well-reasoned and practical end in Belarus.

Belarus to Repopulate Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
by Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski
July 28, 2010

On July 23, Novosti, Interfax, Interia, other Belarusian, Russian, and Polish news agencies announced that the government of Belarus decided to resettle hundreds of thousands of people back into the 2,000 ghost-villages in the Chernobyl exclusion zone from which they had been hastily removed 24 years ago.  (Full Story, PDF file, 82kB)

Dr. Jaworowski identifies in his article that,

Calculating by unit of energy produced, the Chernobyl catastrophe caused 0.86 deaths per gigawatt-year of electricity produced, which is 47 times less than for hydroelectric power stations (40 deaths per GWe-year), including the 230,000 fatalities caused by the 1975 collapse of the dam on the Banqiao river in China.

(More on the negative aspects of alternative sources of energy)

Posted in Energy Issues, Propaganda debunked, Alternative Energy Sources, Community & Industry, Explosions & Fires, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | No Comments »

June 18, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

The other day, some one sent some information to me about a vastly greater catastrophe that is surely bound to happen in consequence of the Gulf Blowout.  Here is another option that will most likely not be used either, although it would be the cheapest of all.  It won’t be used because it is not politically correct.

The Nuclear Option against British Sabotage in Our Gulf
by Laurence Hecht
Editor, 21st Century Science & Technology

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2010/BP_nuclear-option.pdf

The option that will be used, successfully, is most likely the one that was used to plug Atlantic #3, which blew March 8, 1948, near Edmonton, I don’t know exactly where it was and assume that it was in the Leduc Area, SW of Edmonton (that is where the Nisku formation is located into which it had drilled).  That well blew and spilled about as much oil per day as the well at the bottom of the Texas Gulf does right now.  It blew that oil for a lot longer than the Texas Gulf well has been blowing it until now.  It blew for the same reason the Gulf well blew.  Someone decided to dispense with using drilling mud.  It seems that BP learned nothing from Atlantic #3, and it should be severely punished for that.

The June 14, 2010 edition of the Edmonton Journal had an article on Atlantic #3.

Read the article at that link.  You will find that there is little but one difference between the two blowouts.  The pressures involved are about the same, and so are the daily volumes of oil spilled.  Other than that, Atlantic #3 was on top of solid ground, and the Texas Gulf well is at the bottom of the ocean.  Here are some quotes from the article.

Atlantic No. 3 blew wild for six months, spewing 10,000 to 15,000 barrels per day of crude, which made it the biggest blowout in Alberta history. When it later caught fire [in September of 1948] and burned for two months in a spectacular inferno, it made movie theatre newsreels around the world….

Oilpatch historian David Finch says the Atlantic No. 3 disaster created a massive oil spill that was five times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill off the coast of Alaska in 1989.
Fortunately, most of the 1.2 million barrels of oil pouring out of Atlantic No. 3 was corralled by dikes and pumped through a pipeline to Leduc where it was being shipped to refineries in rail cars. But some escaped into the nearby North Saskatchewan River and temporarily contaminated Edmonton’s drinking water supply.

Oilpatch historians have suggested drilling “dry” — without drilling mud — was a flawed technique that led to the disaster. When the rig drilled into the Nisku formation, the uncountered pressure caused the well to blow, and months of effort by wild well fighters failed to stop it. They tried using everything, including tons of sawdust and even chicken feathers to plug the hole, but it blew wild until a relief well was drilled and the formation was flooded with river water…..

Read more: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Alberta+blowout+disaster/3150830/story.html#ixzz0rD8DxpTv

Notice that nothing stopped the fire resulting when the blowout eventually caught on fire until river water was pumped through a relief well into the oil-bearing formation.  Do you recall an oil volcano blowing its top at that time?  No, that did not happen then and won’t happen now.

Nevertheless, stories about “unprecedented” spills, sea floors erupting into oil volcanoes and catastrophic tsunamis resulting from that do get a lot more attention.  To attract attention it is not necessary to tell the truth or what is most likely to happen.  All it takes is to engage in wild, unsubstantiated speculation about extreme possibilities, however unlikely catastrophes.

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April 19, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

The current air flight ban in Europe is not necessarily a panic reaction of the masses, even though it is caused by “great terror without any visible ground or foundation.”  After all, although the ban affected a good portion of the masses, namely a few million of stranded passengers, the cause of that inconvenience was largely an overreaction by the European air control authorities at Eurocontrol.

The problem with central control is that the larger the number of people controlled by it, the greater will be the impact of its diktats — regardless of whether those diktats reflect right or wrong decisions.

It will be some time before things in European airspace will return to normal.  However, without a doubt, eventually common sense will prevail. The first signs of that are emerging:

• Cowardly Europe has lost its nerve over volcano ash and this absurd air travel ban
• Volcanic ash cloud restrictions ‘embarrassing’, say airlines

As those two articles indicate, some airlines conducted test flights this weekend, something that should have been done far sooner rather than relying on predictions by computer models.  The test flights showed no adverse effects on the airplanes used.

We now know what is the right thing to do.  All that remains is to do it: “Let the people go.”

________
Update 24 04 2010: Posted in Explosions & Fires, Pollution: Health Issues, Emission Incidents & Issues | Print | No Comments »

March 22, 2009 by Walter Schneider.

TheRecord.com, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

French authorities confine thousands indoors over sulphur leak

March 21, 2009
The Associated Press
Web edition

LILLE, France — Authorities warned some 80,000 people in northern France to stay home and close their windows and doors for nearly five hours Saturday after a large cloud of sulphur leaked from a chemicals factory….

Dozens of rescuers and chemicals teams fanned out near the chemicals factory in an industrial suburb of Dunkirk where a fire broke out around 5 am.

The alert was called off nearly six hours later. The site converts liquid sulphur into a solid….(Full Story)

Update 2009 03 22, 10:30 hrs:   According to this Reuters article (in French), “Pollution au soufre à Dunkerque après un incendie” , in L’EXPRESS, 2009 03 21, “Sulphur in suspension is not toxic and does not present a danger to health, but it is irritating, specifies the prefecture.”

That statement is technically correct although very questionable in the context of the Dunkirk sulphur fire.  The cloud of pollution was not a sulphur cloud.  It was a cloud of sulphur dioxide gas, a gas that is deadly in relatively low concentrations.

Anyway, is is not clear from any of the reports on the Dunkirk sulphur fire how much sulphur actually burned and how much sulphur dioxide was produced by the fire. Although the article in L’EXPRESS stated that 250 tonnes of sulphur in storage had been ignited, none of the media reports stated how much sulphur had been consumed in the fire.  Just for the record, when burning, one tonne of sulphur produces three tonnes of deadly sulphur-dioxide gas.

____________
More about sulphur fires (some with catastrophic and deadly consequences)

Posted in Explosions & Fires, Emission Incidents & Issues, Sulphur-Dioxide | Print | No Comments »

February 12, 2009 by Walter Schneider.

The Hindu

Fire breaks out at FACT in Kochi

Kochi (PTI): A fire which broke out at the Sulphur handling facility of the Fertilisers and Chemicals Travancore (FACT) on Wednesday, gave some anxious moments to Kochi port authorities.

The fire at the Q10 berth was immediately brought under control, port sources said….(Full Story)

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