If you're really concerned about the environment, your best vehicle is still a diesel. Thinking of a hybrid? Think again...
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comments:
Anonymous
said...
I read the article. I come from the city of Sudbury, the city that the author claims is the source of the nickel in the batteries. If the author is as correct in the rest of the article as he is about Sudbury, then we should all go buy a Prius. Why? Well, all you have to do is step into the forest surrounding Sudbury to realize that the author never bothered to check his "facts"!
Perhaps you put the word facts in quotations because you are being sarcastic, but just in case you are serious, try on these facts:
Have you ever seen google maps anonymous? Use it to search for 46.5, -81.0 and zoom out a couple levels. Notice anything? The green around sudbury is just that. Around it. Look at all the brown area that is between Sudbury and the nice green forests that you are clamouring about. From Whitefish to Hanmer to Chelmsford to Wahnapitae to Skead. Lots of deforested area there. Those satellite shots are from around the year 2004 because my sister in law's house is in the satellite shots, but her newer garage is not.
And what about Inco's soil study that was recently published that detailed how heavy metals in the soil around Sudbury made it difficult for pine trees among other species to grow? Sudbury is still a long way off to full recovery.
The pdf of a 1989/1990 study, available at the http://www.city.greatersudbury.on.ca/content/lakewaterquality/documents/Fish%20Species_UrbanLakes_1989_1990.pdf link, includes this wonderful ditty, "[t]he water quality sampling indicated that acid deposition is a serious problem for Sudbury area lakes." I have not seen any people swimming in Kelly Lake for one.
John, I was born in Sudbury, grew up in Garson (8 miles from Sudbury), lived in Sudbury for many years, worked in a few of the nickel mines including Frood mine which is actually in Sudbury, and have worked at the INCO smelter. My son lives in Capreol and works in Sudbury. I've hunted and fished all over the Sudbury basin for years. I've gone swimming in lots of the lakes, including Kelly lake. But there is some validity to the damaged soil comment. The ore has a high sulphide content and when they first started mining it (around 1907) they used to roast it in huge open pit fires. They would layer the ore over piles of logs and let it burn. The sulphur smog was extremely damaging to the environment and did cause a lot of damage. But that was stopped well before I was born. Now most of the sulphur is captured at the Copper Cliff refinery and sold commercially. Also, there is a monitoring network set up in the Sudbury basin that checks for pollution from the smelter and refinerys. INCO is very careful about pollution because the government has hit them with very heavy fines over the years. So, yes, they used to be environmentally unfriendly in Sudbury, but that was many years ago. And if that is to be held against them, then I suppose we should also hold other industries responsible for their past practices. Can't use steel, oil, gas, coal, etc... because they used to pollute.
BTW, much of that deforested area you are talking about is actually farmland. Don't find many trees in farmers fields.
"The large impact crater filled with magma containing nickel, copper, platinum, palladium, gold and other metals. As a result of these metal deposits, the Greater Sudbury area is one of the world's major mining communities. The region is one of the world's largest supplier of nickel and copper ores. Most of these mineral deposits are found on the outer rim of the Basin. Due to the high mineral content of its soil, the floor of the Basin is among the best agricultural land in Northern Ontario, with numerous vegetable, berry and dairy farms located in the Valley. However, due to its northern latitude, it is not as fertile as agricultural lands in the southern portion of the province. Accordingly the region primarily supplies products for consumption within Northern Ontario, and is not a major food exporter."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Basin
More info about the unique terrain features found in the Sudbury Basin.
I visited Sudbury a couple times a year through most of the 1970s. I moved here in 1988.
You make a good point when you mentioned that much of the damage was done starting a hundred years ago. As I said, Sudbury has come a long way. I was very proud of the re-greening effort that Sudbury has made until I saw the satellite shots. While it is good that those areas are brown and not black, it is still worrisome. One fault in your logic is when the trees are green, so are most of the farmer's fields. The problem is with the soil.
It is impossible to say that the current smelting methods are good enough when we only just did the soil study. If one had been done 20 years ago, then we could evaluate our progress; however, that is not the case. All we can do is go off of current evidence. After decades of liming and stocking area lakes and rivers, many of our waterways are still in poor condition. After decades of re-greening, the area right around Sudbury is not green. After decades of trying to bring back other native species, primarily only birch and poplar thrive in our polluted soil. Perhaps, the next time we do a soil study, we will be able to evaluate the benefit of pollution regulations and the dissipation of smoke over a wider area via the Superstack. For that we must wait.
Since you like wikipedia, try the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstack link. That page talks of permanent damage before the 1972 Superstack was built, acidification of up to 7000 lakes from 1972 to the late 1980s. It ends on a high note of how sulphur dioxide emissions were reduce by 90% starting around 1994. That is quite a long time after we stopped using open pit smelting techniques.
Google maps shows what we are like 10 years after that latest effort.
10 comments:
I read the article. I come from the city of Sudbury, the city that the author claims is the source of the nickel in the batteries. If the author is as correct in the rest of the article as he is about Sudbury, then we should all go buy a Prius. Why? Well, all you have to do is step into the forest surrounding Sudbury to realize that the author never bothered to check his "facts"!
Perhaps you put the word facts in quotations because you are being sarcastic, but just in case you are serious, try on these facts:
Have you ever seen google maps anonymous? Use it to search for 46.5, -81.0 and zoom out a couple levels. Notice anything? The green around sudbury is just that. Around it. Look at all the brown area that is between Sudbury and the nice green forests that you are clamouring about. From Whitefish to Hanmer to Chelmsford to Wahnapitae to Skead. Lots of deforested area there. Those satellite shots are from around the year 2004 because my sister in law's house is in the satellite shots, but her newer garage is not.
And what about Inco's soil study that was recently published that detailed how heavy metals in the soil around Sudbury made it difficult for pine trees among other species to grow? Sudbury is still a long way off to full recovery.
He could be talking about the huge nickel mine on the west side of Sudbury
Try google maps
Looks pretty barren
The pdf of a 1989/1990 study, available at the
http://www.city.greatersudbury.on.ca/content/lakewaterquality/documents/Fish%20Species_UrbanLakes_1989_1990.pdf link, includes this wonderful ditty, "[t]he water quality sampling indicated that acid deposition is a serious problem for Sudbury area lakes." I have not seen any people swimming in Kelly Lake for one.
Wow, funny no one else is saying this. They need to check facts before they tell us what to buy. Dammit I'm sick of not trusting anyone anymore.
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What I really wanna know is... are the Corgis gonna get behind the Cat Ownership Offsets program?
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John, I was born in Sudbury, grew up in Garson (8 miles from Sudbury), lived in Sudbury for many years, worked in a few of the nickel mines including Frood mine which is actually in Sudbury, and have worked at the INCO smelter. My son lives in Capreol and works in Sudbury. I've hunted and fished all over the Sudbury basin for years. I've gone swimming in lots of the lakes, including Kelly lake.
But there is some validity to the damaged soil comment. The ore has a high sulphide content and when they first started mining it (around 1907) they used to roast it in huge open pit fires. They would layer the ore over piles of logs and let it burn. The sulphur smog was extremely damaging to the environment and did cause a lot of damage. But that was stopped well before I was born. Now most of the sulphur is captured at the Copper Cliff refinery and sold commercially. Also, there is a monitoring network set up in the Sudbury basin that checks for pollution from the smelter and refinerys. INCO is very careful about pollution because the government has hit them with very heavy fines over the years. So, yes, they used to be environmentally unfriendly in Sudbury, but that was many years ago. And if that is to be held against them, then I suppose we should also hold other industries responsible for their past practices. Can't use steel, oil, gas, coal, etc... because they used to pollute.
BTW, much of that deforested area you are talking about is actually farmland. Don't find many trees in farmers fields.
More about the Sudbury Basin
"The large impact crater filled with magma containing nickel, copper, platinum, palladium, gold and other metals. As a result of these metal deposits, the Greater Sudbury area is one of the world's major mining communities. The region is one of the world's largest supplier of nickel and copper ores. Most of these mineral deposits are found on the outer rim of the Basin. Due to the high mineral content of its soil, the floor of the Basin is among the best agricultural land in Northern Ontario, with numerous vegetable, berry and dairy farms located in the Valley. However, due to its northern latitude, it is not as fertile as agricultural lands in the southern portion of the province. Accordingly the region primarily supplies products for consumption within Northern Ontario, and is not a major food exporter."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudbury_Basin
More info about the unique terrain features found in the Sudbury Basin.
http://www.ottawa.rasc.ca/articles/odale_chuck/earth_craters/wanapitei/index.html
I visited Sudbury a couple times a year through most of the 1970s. I moved here in 1988.
You make a good point when you mentioned that much of the damage was done starting a hundred years ago. As I said, Sudbury has come a long way. I was very proud of the re-greening effort that Sudbury has made until I saw the satellite shots. While it is good that those areas are brown and not black, it is still worrisome. One fault in your logic is when the trees are green, so are most of the farmer's fields. The problem is with the soil.
It is impossible to say that the current smelting methods are good enough when we only just did the soil study. If one had been done 20 years ago, then we could evaluate our progress; however, that is not the case. All we can do is go off of current evidence. After decades of liming and stocking area lakes and rivers, many of our waterways are still in poor condition. After decades of re-greening, the area right around Sudbury is not green. After decades of trying to bring back other native species, primarily only birch and poplar thrive in our polluted soil. Perhaps, the next time we do a soil study, we will be able to evaluate the benefit of pollution regulations and the dissipation of smoke over a wider area via the Superstack. For that we must wait.
Since you like wikipedia, try the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstack link. That page talks of permanent damage before the 1972 Superstack was built, acidification of up to 7000 lakes from 1972 to the late 1980s. It ends on a high note of how sulphur dioxide emissions were reduce by 90% starting around 1994. That is quite a long time after we stopped using open pit smelting techniques.
Google maps shows what we are like 10 years after that latest effort.
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