Harvestman, you certainly do highlight the public's perception of the dangers of nuclear power. How accurate those perceptions are is an entirely separate matter. In the entire history of the nuclear power industry, there have been three major accidents: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi. Of those three, only Chernobyl resulted in fatalaties and detectable public health problems. According to UN estimates, to date the Chernobyl accident has resulted in 59 deaths among plant staff and cleanup crew, and about 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer with a survival rate of 99%, for a total of 119. For the entire nuclear industry. Even the grimmest estimates, which don't appear to stand up to scrutiny, that claim that the true death toll is in the thousands, still pale in comparison to the estimates of the deaths caused directly and indirectly from coal fired power plants. This mode of power production, which the public perceives to be safe, produces 13,000 excess fatalities every year in the US alone. Similar estimates for the rest of the world (which I'll hunt down if you'd like) range into the millions. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/nuclear-facilities What irreversible environmental catastrophe has the worst nuclear accident in history produced? Google "Chernobyl wildlife" and see what you find. It would seem that the exclusion zone is a sanctuary for wildlife that are thriving by any measure. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120411084107.htm http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/nuclear_power/2013/01/wildlife_in_chernobyl_debate_over_mutations_and_populations_of_plants_and.html All of this is sort of irrelevant when you're considering nuclear energy from liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR), because this method of power generation is completely different from the nuclear technology we use today. LFTRs physically cannot melt down because in order to operate, the fuel already has to be molten. They are extremely efficient too. I'll chase down the source, but I saw a lecture on this topic, and the presenter showed three standard sized shipping containers and explained that all the thorium fuel we'd need to power the entire US for a year would fit in those shipping containers, and so would the by-products it would produce. Those by-products wouldn't entirely waste either - many of them have uses in a wide number of applications, including medicine. You might wonder why we don't already generate power this way. Working models of this reactor were built in the US in the 1960s and early 1970s. Funding for the program to develop the technology was canceled under the Nixon administration because nuclear power from Thorium is a terrible way to try to produce weapons-grade fissile material, and at the time, it was determined that commercial nuclear power generation needed to work synergistically with our nuclear weapons industry. The nuclear power industry we have today is a legacy of the cold war. In a sense, we don't have nuclear power from thorium because it's too safe. This is really exciting technology and I urge you to take a look a the link I included in a previous post. It is a link to a 5 minute video put together by a nuclear engineer talking about the virtues of this form of power generation. (By the way, I have absolutely no connection whatsoever to the nuclear industry.) Here is a link that might be useful: WHO: True Scale of Chernobyl Accident

I have a science background, so for me, there isn't a big debate for me. Thoughts: 1: Al Gore. The movie was too fluffy. I realize he was trying to reach out to the broader audience, but it wasn't enough science for me. Call me a geek.... 2: Ethanol. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Not thought out properly. So, we convert our farm fields to this ethanol corn and South American is destroying rainforests in order to grow corn for said new fuel....we need to be feeding people with corn. 3: Listening to pundits online or on tv isn't the way to go. If you really want to understand global warming read a scientific publication. Be careful on listening to a non-global warming scientist...many are in the pockets of big businesses. 4: There is a huge difference is weather patterns versus climate change. It annoys me to no end to listen to this yearly when the north gets too much snow and they complain about 'where's global warming??!', when the bigger picture is noticing when the earliest signs of spring are, when does winter start, noticing the migration of the birds, plants that are moving northward that used to have a southern limit. THESE are the changes you should be noticing. It's called phenology. US Phenology Network. 5: I know some people mentioned here that just because they don't 'believe' in global warming that doesn't mean they don't care about the environment, which is great. I like to hear that. I can't stand to hear people go off that they don't believe in global warming so it doesn't matter if they drive their car the world over, or throw their cigarette out the window, or leave litter on the beach. Trash and pollution have huge impacts that are costing us taxpayers a lot of money every year. If you don't 'believe' in global warming, at least recycle, reuse, grow your own food (easy on this forum!), and find better alternatives to chemicals you use around your house. You can make the area around you healthier at least! 6: Trinigemini, I'm going to point you out here, sorry...you said something about the government just wants to make you think the Earth will suffer but that you don't think that is true. The earth IS suffering from everything we do. With 6+billion people, we have a huge footprint. This isn't the wild where there are other predators to take us out. We're conquering diseses all of the time, which IS good, but it's also allowed us to continue on the path we are. So say, if the many third world countries were to be brought into first world status, do you not think that they would exploit their natural resources to the point that we already have? Damming rivers, relocating water, pushing plants and animals into extinction, polluting cities, producing mounds of trash. This will happen. It's inevitable if we keep increasing our population. There is a threshold of having a balance of keeping our ecosystem in a shape that still benefits us but also allows it to survive, and then we can keep going because if we have supposed...

Sammy, Florida has a huge blackspot problem because of the warmth and humidity. My friend Harold says it's impossible not to spray in their region. They have problems with blackspot and a particular nematode which will kill every single one of their roses unless they are grafted onto Fortiana root stock. What blackspot doesn't afflict is the dry, arid and hot zones of California and Arizona. I still say that one shouldn't water the leaves if one can help it. Sammy, do you experience wilt leaves if you stop watering the leaves and just water the roots? Have you ever tried this? or have you always kept on watering the leaves. You might try an experiment--2 same-type roses. One with the watered leaves and one without. You see I did a similar experiment to assess Vitamin B1 root nourisher versus my Gardenville Sea Tea. I had identical transplanted lavender plants in the same soil. One I gave Vitamin B1 nourisher and the other I gave sea tea. The Vitamin B1 did very absolutely nothing; the Sea Tea created a boom in growth, vitality and number of leaves. The only way is to do controlled experiments in one's own garden. I have 2 identical Lincolns, same soil. Next spring I will do 2 different kinds of foliar feeds to see which one is the most protective against the blackspot. I think what Maureen is saying is that keeping leaves dry is pointless if one has bunches of rain anyway. But! what both articles say is that if you keep the leaves dry as much as you can possibly control-- that indeed will keep the blackspot from spreading. Dew, Maureen does not count! Dew only lasts briefly, about one hour and as soon as the sun rises it dries! Dew will not cause blackspot because it dries so quickly. Blackspot takes several hours of wetness before it starts to spread. Both articles really stress that it is important to keep moisture away from the leaves as much as possible. There are certain things you can't control. If it's gonna keep raining for days, you will get the blackspot. The article gives specifics on the hours in between that blackspot will take to spread. Whether it be a span of greater than 7 hours of dryness (blackspot won't spread). However! if you have a resistant variety of rose, the slower the spread of the blackspot. If you combine watering the leaves then a few hours later it rains, you are actually increasing the time of wetness, making it opportune for the blackspot to have its ideal conditions.

I think if you dig a bit further back, the older map may be similar to the latest map. 1990 may be a bit skewed by 1983 and 1989 'Super' freezes when it was very cold in the single digit temperature in north Texas (I can recall how cold it was in Houston at that time). Since I moved to Dallas area in 2001, the coldest I've ever seen was 14*F, the only time it went below 20*F that I can recall. I don't understand what USDA is trying to do. Maybe they're being extremely conservative or cautious. Winter events like 1983 or 1989 could strike any year.