I feel like there’s a reasonable optimization. Everything has an environmental cost, even the production of green energy infrastructure. I think we can reasonably compare and contrast the probable lifetime impact of an energy source, including decommission and possible recycling. That is nothing is perfect but it’s about what’s the best we can manage given what the market can financially support.
Yes, that is my point. It is completely unreasonable to make gas clean enough to not affect air quality. We do what we reasonably can. And that results in pollution.
I’m still not fully sold that it appreciably does affect air quality, I’m aware it’s not zero but is it causing like cancer and birth defects in people around the powerplant? I think you and I are more aligned than the others on this thread.
To keep on topic what I could find was 17% of all lung cancer cases in heavily impacted regional studies. That is communities within a 2- to 5-kilometer. It seems fairly insignificant or inconclusive for people further outside that range. Seems like there just needs to be a buffer zone around said gas fired powerplants which honestly I think everyone wants. I can’t imagine home prices near any form of powerplant or data center are amazing.
Just fyi, asthma is not “off topic”. Natural gas is one of the leading causes. I tell you this as someone who now has life long asthma, likely because of my family’s natural gas stove.
A “buffer zone” doesn’t do anything when an inversion happens, because an inversion traps the bad air at lower levels (you know, where people breathe) and the bad air spreads much further because of that.
I feel like there’s a reasonable optimization. Everything has an environmental cost, even the production of green energy infrastructure. I think we can reasonably compare and contrast the probable lifetime impact of an energy source, including decommission and possible recycling. That is nothing is perfect but it’s about what’s the best we can manage given what the market can financially support.
Yes, that is my point. It is completely unreasonable to make gas clean enough to not affect air quality. We do what we reasonably can. And that results in pollution.
I’m still not fully sold that it appreciably does affect air quality, I’m aware it’s not zero but is it causing like cancer and birth defects in people around the powerplant? I think you and I are more aligned than the others on this thread.
Yes it is.
Then again everything causes cancer. Aging causes cancer.
But cancer like coffee or cancer like strong ionizing radiation?
Cancer like cancer alley in texas, where life expectancy is a full decade lower than the nice neighborhood five miles further.
Gas plant pollution is currently responsible for approximately 21% of asthma cases in the country.
To keep on topic what I could find was 17% of all lung cancer cases in heavily impacted regional studies. That is communities within a 2- to 5-kilometer. It seems fairly insignificant or inconclusive for people further outside that range. Seems like there just needs to be a buffer zone around said gas fired powerplants which honestly I think everyone wants. I can’t imagine home prices near any form of powerplant or data center are amazing.
Just fyi, asthma is not “off topic”. Natural gas is one of the leading causes. I tell you this as someone who now has life long asthma, likely because of my family’s natural gas stove.
A “buffer zone” doesn’t do anything when an inversion happens, because an inversion traps the bad air at lower levels (you know, where people breathe) and the bad air spreads much further because of that.