Rush Limbaugh cited one of my discoveries on his show

Climate-Debate.com > Discussion Forum > Climate debate in general > Rush Limbaugh cited one of my discoveries on his show > Page 3

Page 3 of 4

21-08-2023 03:33
IBdaMann★★★★★ (14507)	HarveyH55 wrote:But, wouldn't it be cool if bacteria could change lead into gold? I see you've met my bacterium alchemist. He's pictured here with one of my gold molecules. Attached image:
21-08-2023 04:16
Spongy Iris★★★★☆ (1643)	IBdaMann wrote: HarveyH55 wrote:But, wouldn't it be cool if bacteria could change lead into gold? I see you've met my bacterium alchemist. He's pictured here with one of my gold molecules. It's called bio heap leaching. Extracting gold deposits from ore.https://www.911metallurgist.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/BioHeapLeaching.pdf I don't think the ores you get lead out of, are usually the same as the ores you get gold out of. Although the ore called Galena has lead and silver deposits in it. Edited on 21-08-2023 04:27
21-08-2023 14:56
IBdaMann★★★★★ (14507)	Spongy Iris wrote:I don't think the ores you get lead out of, are usually the same as the ores you get gold out of. Gold is very valuable. Lead is not. An alchemist is a mage of legend (i.e. fictional) who could turn lead into gold. The idea of turning things into gold has always been a popular theme in stories, leading to classics such as Rumpelstiltskin and King Midas. There are no alchemists, and there certainly aren't any bacteria alchemists, which is Harvey's original point, and the reason I made the meme ... well, that and the opportunity to put my gold molecule in Swan's face. It's fun messing with swan.
21-08-2023 20:11
HarveyH55★★★★★ (5197)	But, where did the arsenic come into all this? Don't ever remember any reference to methane, other than rantings here. Don't figure it's very healthy for bacteria. Think arsenic was used as rat poison, probably to kill many other pests as well. Though, can't image anyone too concerned about rats in the landfill. Though, polar bears in the landfill could be a problem. Obviously not picky eaters. Just really sad to see those photo-ops, and blamed on all their ice has melted. Wouldn't think ice was nutritious.
RE: at the risk of repeating myself21-08-2023 23:28
Im a BM ★★★☆☆ (725)	HarveyH55 wrote: But, where did the arsenic come into all this? Don't ever remember any reference to methane, other than rantings here. Don't figure it's very healthy for bacteria. Think arsenic was used as rat poison, probably to kill many other pests as well. Though, can't image anyone too concerned about rats in the landfill. Though, polar bears in the landfill could be a problem. Obviously not picky eaters. Just really sad to see those photo-ops, and blamed on all their ice has melted. Wouldn't think ice was nutritious. The arsenic was already there in the soil before anybody drilled a gas well. It was harmless - bound up mainly as arsenate attached to the surface of iron, manganese, and aluminum (hydr)oxide clay minerals. The methane was new to the system, and it changed the state of the arsenic. The methane, leaking from the old gas well, never interacted directly with arsenic. Methane was used by bacteria which oxidized it to get energy. Unfortunately, the best available oxidants were attached to arsenic, as Fe(III) or Mn(IV), or were the arsenic itself, as arsenate or arsenic(V). The bacteria released the arsenic into solution because methane was available in the absence of oxygen. Introducing oxygen into the system would reverse the process to take the arsenic out of solution and put the arsenic back into the solid material where it cannot enter ground water. This is straightforward biogeochemistry, but a person has to study at least a little bit to understand it.
22-08-2023 04:04
HarveyH55★★★★★ (5197)	Im a BM wrote: HarveyH55 wrote: But, where did the arsenic come into all this? Don't ever remember any reference to methane, other than rantings here. Don't figure it's very healthy for bacteria. Think arsenic was used as rat poison, probably to kill many other pests as well. Though, can't image anyone too concerned about rats in the landfill. Though, polar bears in the landfill could be a problem. Obviously not picky eaters. Just really sad to see those photo-ops, and blamed on all their ice has melted. Wouldn't think ice was nutritious. The arsenic was already there in the soil before anybody drilled a gas well. It was harmless - bound up mainly as arsenate attached to the surface of iron, manganese, and aluminum (hydr)oxide clay minerals. The methane was new to the system, and it changed the state of the arsenic. The methane, leaking from the old gas well, never interacted directly with arsenic. Methane was used by bacteria which oxidized it to get energy. Unfortunately, the best available oxidants were attached to arsenic, as Fe(III) or Mn(IV), or were the arsenic itself, as arsenate or arsenic(V). The bacteria released the arsenic into solution because methane was available in the absence of oxygen. Introducing oxygen into the system would reverse the process to take the arsenic out of solution and put the arsenic back into the solid material where it cannot enter ground water. This is straightforward biogeochemistry, but a person has to study at least a little bit to understand it. Arsenic is a very reactive metal though, and quickly find something else to bond with. The amount of arsenic never increases, it's just which compounds are formed. It'll still find it's way into water.
RE: the sad, final days of Rush's life30-04-2024 21:31
sealover ★★★★☆ (1560)	sealover wrote: Rush was a funny guy. He was a local celebrity here before he went national. In the fall of 1998, he cited one of my discoveries on his show. It had just been published in the journal Nature, but it wasn't my big one. He used it as "proof" to support his assertion. Humans are not responsible for eutrophication and fish kills in the reservoir. It's actually Mother Nature's fault. Rush loved it. It was more proof that he had been right all along. Rush was a funny guy. I loved it when he explained how climate change is a hoax. He even had a graph illustrated with cartoons to prove it. Mt. Pinatubo had emitted megatons of sun-blocking aerosols. The earth had cooled for a year. Rush showed us the scientific proof that global warming was a hoax. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The final months of Rush Limbaugh's life were sad and tragic. Shortly after the 2020 election, Rush was APPALLED that Trump was claiming that the election had somehow been "rigged". In a nearly tearful plea for sanity, he said "You have to have evidence!" Of course, there wasn't any. He was smart enough to realize how harmful it was to our nation. But by January 6, he had been persuaded to come around for the team. He dutifully referred to the protesters as "patriots".
30-04-2024 22:25
Into the Night★★★★★ (21879)	sealover wrote: sealover wrote: Rush was a funny guy. He was a local celebrity here before he went national. In the fall of 1998, he cited one of my discoveries on his show. It had just been published in the journal Nature, but it wasn't my big one. He used it as "proof" to support his assertion. Humans are not responsible for eutrophication and fish kills in the reservoir. It's actually Mother Nature's fault. Rush loved it. It was more proof that he had been right all along. Rush was a funny guy. I loved it when he explained how climate change is a hoax. He even had a graph illustrated with cartoons to prove it. Mt. Pinatubo had emitted megatons of sun-blocking aerosols. The earth had cooled for a year. Rush showed us the scientific proof that global warming was a hoax. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The final months of Rush Limbaugh's life were sad and tragic. Shortly after the 2020 election, Rush was APPALLED that Trump was claiming that the election had somehow been "rigged". In a nearly tearful plea for sanity, he said "You have to have evidence!" Of course, there wasn't any. He was smart enough to realize how harmful it was to our nation. But by January 6, he had been persuaded to come around for the team. He dutifully referred to the protesters as "patriots". You don't get to speak for the dead, Sock. The Parrot Killer Debunked in my sig. - tmiddles Google keeps track of paranoid talk and i'm not on their list. I've been evaluated and certified. - keepit nuclear powered ships do not require nuclear fuel. - Swan While it is true that fossils do not burn it is also true that fossil fuels burn very well - Swan
01-05-2024 05:25
IBdaMann★★★★★ (14507)	Into the Night wrote: You don't get to speak for the dead, Sock. Rarely have I seen someone so bent on revising history, from claiming that thriving coral reefs are somehow dead, to all the rampantly increased "extreme weather" that I somehow missed, to Rush Limbaugh pulling a full-180 and fervently denying his own prediction of stolen elections.* In Robup's case, he doesn't even seem to be trying to make any kind of coherent point, i.e. he revises history for the sole aim of creating a strawberry snowflake happy-place safe-space refuge in his own mind ... you know, the one in which he's a bioclimatechemist who wields the mighty gamma-spec and saves the tannins and the planet by dispensing geo-justice? * (note: I beat Rush Limbaugh to the announcement of how the DNC was going to steal the election, which I thereafter posted on Just Plain Politics months before the election, but Rush Limbaugh was right there with me saying the same thing. My pesumption was that Rush Limbaugh was my secret follower who asked "What would IBDaMann say?" Both Rush and I were watching for it on election night and commenting on it heavily as the DNC was counterfeiting votes over the days following the election until, as was no surprise, CNN announced that Biden had somehow edged out Trump's overwhelming lead ... by a hair ... and was thus the actual winner. It is absurd to claim that Rush Limbaugh, after warning the country for months and calling play-by-play during the electo-theft, somehow became an indignant regurgitator of DNC-Marxist disinformation)
RE: science fiction?01-05-2024 22:03
sealover ★★★★☆ (1560)	Rush Limbaugh loved that we showed humans were being falsely accused of causing eutrophication, hypoxia, and occasional massive fish kills in a reservoir. But sometimes humans try to blame Mother Nature when it's really our fault. It doesn't help if an overzealous biogeochemist wants to make their career being the first to show "natural" hexavalent chromium in any groundwater outside of a desert. Trust me, it wasn't me. My part was ten years earlier. My job was to use Gamma Spec and Beta Scint to measure radium and strontium 90. And to use x-ray fluorescence to measure lead, mercury, and chromium. These particular samples didn't come from the radioactive zone. They were from the leaching field by the old septic tank. They showed very high chromium. But chromium wasn't an issue. No hexavalent Cr had ever been found in any groundwater samples. I dutifully reported the numbers. Even took it upon myself to get additional samples from inside the old septic tank and from the leaching field area. x-ray fluoresesclej... I can't even spell today. XRF showed chromium more than ten times higher in those samples than anywhere else on the site. x-ray fluorescence is a rapid convenient tool, but it can only see the very surface of soil particles. It picks up atoms in surface coatings on soil particles, but can't see inside the crystal lattice of a rock mineral. I dutifully reported my findings. A higher up looked into it. Well, the soil in this area is naturally rich in chromium. In fact, if the most extreme digestion procedure is used to extract every last atom of chromium, the numbers were similar to what I was getting with XRF. But XRF doesn't extract every atom. That's why all the other samples showed chromium only a tenth as high. Even though an extreme digestion would have been able to get the same ten times higher number in all. It was over my head. Nothing to chase here. Besides, there's never been an issue with chromium at the site. They were only testing it because they had to. Nothing to see here. Don't worry your pretty little head about it. The XRF was able to see the anthropogenic chromium because it had deposited as the uppermost layer in coatings on soil surfaces. Ten years later, they finally got their hexavalent chromium in groundwater problem. And it kept getting worse. And another scientist thought this was so cool because he could prove that naturally occurring hexavalent chromium was being found for the first time in an environment not at the margins of a desert. And they stuck to their guns. And they "remediated" with calcium polysulfide. Temporary reduction in hex chrome as the powerful reductant Ca polysulfide turned it back into chromium(III). The reductant also turned a bunch of Mn(IV) back into Mn(II). When aerobic conditions were reestablished, the Mn(II) oxidized back to Mn(IV). Some by product Mn(VII), a very powerful oxidant, then oxidized some of the chromium(III) to hexavalent chromium. Now the groundwater hex chrome was even higher than before they "fixed" it. But it was "natural". So don't bother checking back up the subsurface flow path from that old septic system. We know it wasn't anthropogenic. We'll just have to do some more environmental chemotherapy with polysulfide.
01-05-2024 23:37
IBdaMann★★★★★ (14507)	sealover wrote: But sometimes humans try to blame Mother Nature when it's really our fault. That would be you, trying to blame everybody and everything else for your own confusion and your own gaffes. sealover wrote: It doesn't help if an overzealous biogeochemist wants to make their career being the first to show "natural" hexavalent chromium in any groundwater outside of a desert. It doesn't help when the pretend-chemist can't even figure out if he's a singular or a plural.
02-05-2024 04:48
Into the Night★★★★★ (21879)	sealover wrote: Rush Limbaugh loved that we showed humans were being falsely accused of causing eutrophication, hypoxia, and occasional massive fish kills in a reservoir. You don't get to speak for the dead, Sock. sealover wrote: But sometimes humans try to blame Mother Nature when it's really our fault. Another religion of yours? sealover wrote: It doesn't help if an overzealous biogeochemist wants to make their career being the first to show "natural" hexavalent chromium in any groundwater outside of a desert. No such thing as a biogeochemist. sealover wrote: Trust me, it wasn't me. My part was ten years earlier. I deleted the made up story about yourself. sealover wrote: But it was "natural". So don't bother checking back up the subsurface flow path from that old septic system. We know it wasn't anthropogenic. What is 'anthropogenic'? There is no such word except as a religious artifact. Buzzword ballacy. sealover wrote: We'll just have to do some more environmental chemotherapy with polysulfide. There is no such thing as 'environmental chemotherapy'. Polysulfide is not a chemical. The Parrot Killer Debunked in my sig. - tmiddles Google keeps track of paranoid talk and i'm not on their list. I've been evaluated and certified. - keepit nuclear powered ships do not require nuclear fuel. - Swan While it is true that fossils do not burn it is also true that fossil fuels burn very well - Swan
RE: more science fiction?02-05-2024 17:33
sealover ★★★★☆ (1560)	Government environmental regulators mandated "pH adjustment" of a very large volume of dredged sediments that had been exposed to oxidation in a storage area. This environmental chemotherapy was required because a scientifically illiterate individual believed they were "toxic". After all, the sediments were strongly acidic. The pH was often as low as 4. They must be toxic, right? They needed to be detoxified. Beet lime, a highly soluble form of calcium carbon was applied liberally. The liming requirements were enormous. The target pH had to be at least 6.5. The solubility of soil organic matter is highly pH dependent - more soluble at higher pH. Liming released a whole lot of soil organic matter into soluble form. When the organic-carbon rich soil solution leached down into the low oxygen zone, the giant dose of organic carbon started a feeding frenzy. Reductive dissolution of ferric-iron-bound arsenic by bacteria that consumed that organic carbon caused groundwater arsenic to increase 500%. And the paranoid regulator thought the landowner illegally dumped arsenic herbicide and would have to be taken to the cleaners to clean it up. Through an agonizing process, regulators were finally persuaded that there was no liability. Perhaps the fact that they were the ones who mandated the environmental chemotherapy had something to do with it. But nobody wanted to talk about groundwater arsenic after that. As part of an unbelievably expensive required investigation, more than 300 monitoring wells were installed and sampled for regular testing throughout a sub sea level (leveed off) delta island. An enormous data set had already been collected, reports had been filed, and the regulators were satisfied that all was well. That was all before I got there. The people who prepared the reports excluded virtually all the data from the wells with highest arsenic. Statisticians saw way too much variability within those wells and followed the official method for excluding the data based on its high variability. That's seasonal variability for you. So, buried deep in the appendix of the report was the complete original data set showing the exceptionally high arsenic. But none of that got into the main body of the report. Years later, the botched "pH adjustment" brought arsenic to attention. We had an incredible data set I could have published, just from the report for bureaucratic paperwork. The correlation between dissolved organic carbon and arsenic was highly significant. Nobody ever published that before. It was a chance to make an important contribution to science, with implications for environmental management and public health. I didn't even have to go to the field or lab. All the data, methodology, etc. was already handed complete on a silver platter. But it would have revealed too many controversial issues. Nobody wanted that data or those findings to see the light of day in a scientific journal. When my report was finally filed as a Technical Memorandum, it was years after the dust had settled. Even then a NEW paranoid regulator was sure that this was a major scandal. Just getting official approval for the Technical Memorandum was going to be over his dead body. He looked everywhere for evidence of the conspiracy and cover up and finally had to be overruled. By then, biogeochemical discovery had gone stale. Others beat me to the punch publishing the correlation between dissolved organic carbon and arsenic.
02-05-2024 19:57
Into the Night★★★★★ (21879)	...removed spam... sealover wrote: Government environmental regulators mandated "pH adjustment" of a very large volume of dredged sediments that had been exposed to oxidation in a storage area. This environmental chemotherapy was required because a scientifically illiterate individual believed they were "toxic". No such word as 'environmental chemotherapy'. sealover wrote: Beet lime, a highly soluble form of calcium carbon was applied liberally. The liming requirements were enormous. The target pH had to be at least 6.5. There is no such thing as 'calcium carbon'. Carbon is not calcium. sealover wrote: When the organic-carbon rich soil solution leached down into the low oxygen zone, the giant dose of organic carbon started a feeding frenzy. Carbon is not organic. sealover wrote: Reductive dissolution of ferric-iron-bound arsenic by bacteria that consumed that organic carbon caused groundwater arsenic to increase 500%. Arsenic is not iron. Carbon is not organic. Arsenic is not water. sealover wrote: Through an agonizing process, regulators were finally persuaded that there was no liability. Perhaps the fact that they were the ones who mandated the environmental chemotherapy had something to do with it. There is no such word. The Parrot Killer Debunked in my sig. - tmiddles Google keeps track of paranoid talk and i'm not on their list. I've been evaluated and certified. - keepit nuclear powered ships do not require nuclear fuel. - Swan While it is true that fossils do not burn it is also true that fossil fuels burn very well - Swan Edited on 02-05-2024 19:58
RE: CORRECT for the first time02-05-2024 20:03
Im a BM ★★★☆☆ (725)	For the first time, ITN is actually CORRECT in one of his claims. Dyslexia sometimes causes omission or alteration of key words. "Beet lime, a highly soluble form of calcium carbon, was applied liberally." Lime, of course, is calcium CARBONATE, not calcium carbon. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Into the Night wrote: ...removed spam... sealover wrote: Government environmental regulators mandated "pH adjustment" of a very large volume of dredged sediments that had been exposed to oxidation in a storage area. This environmental chemotherapy was required because a scientifically illiterate individual believed they were "toxic". No such word as 'environmental chemotherapy'. sealover wrote: Beet lime, a highly soluble form of calcium carbon was applied liberally. The liming requirements were enormous. The target pH had to be at least 6.5. There is no such thing as 'calcium carbon'. Carbon is not calcium. sealover wrote: When the organic-carbon rich soil solution leached down into the low oxygen zone, the giant dose of organic carbon started a feeding frenzy. Carbon is not organic. sealover wrote: Reductive dissolution of ferric-iron-bound arsenic by bacteria that consumed that organic carbon caused groundwater arsenic to increase 500%. Arsenic is not iron. Carbon is not organic. Arsenic is not water. sealover wrote: Through an agonizing process, regulators were finally persuaded that there was no liability. Perhaps the fact that they were the ones who mandated the environmental chemotherapy had something to do with it. There is no such word.
02-05-2024 21:42
Into the Night★★★★★ (21879)	Im a BM wrote: For the first time, ITN is actually CORRECT in one of his claims. Nah. You just deny chemistry and physics. Im a BM wrote: Dyslexia sometimes causes omission or alteration of key words. "Beet lime, a highly soluble form of calcium carbon, was applied liberally." Lime, of course, is calcium CARBONATE, not calcium carbon. Lime is also a citrus fruit or a flavoring. The Parrot Killer Debunked in my sig. - tmiddles Google keeps track of paranoid talk and i'm not on their list. I've been evaluated and certified. - keepit nuclear powered ships do not require nuclear fuel. - Swan While it is true that fossils do not burn it is also true that fossil fuels burn very well - Swan Edited on 02-05-2024 21:44
RE: and "All iron is ferric (hence the Fe in the periodic table)."02-05-2024 21:46
Im a BM ★★★☆☆ (725)	Into the Night wrote: Im a BM wrote: For the first time, ITN is actually CORRECT in one of his claims. Nah. You just deny chemistry and physics. Im a BM wrote: Dyslexia sometimes causes omission or alteration of key words. "Beet lime, a highly soluble form of calcium carbon, was applied liberally." Lime, of course, is calcium CARBONATE, not calcium carbon. Lime is also a citrus fruit or a flavoring. ============== It is good to know how to use a dictionary. A word like "lime" might not have one rigid single "unambiguous definition" Yes, and "All iron is ferric..", didn't you say?
RE: greased pigs always slip away02-05-2024 23:50
sealover ★★★★☆ (1560)	Im a BM wrote: Into the Night wrote: Im a BM wrote: For the first time, ITN is actually CORRECT in one of his claims. Nah. You just deny chemistry and physics. Im a BM wrote: Dyslexia sometimes causes omission or alteration of key words. "Beet lime, a highly soluble form of calcium carbon, was applied liberally." Lime, of course, is calcium CARBONATE, not calcium carbon. Lime is also a citrus fruit or a flavoring. ============== It is good to know how to use a dictionary. A word like "lime" might not have one rigid single "unambiguous definition" Yes, and "All iron is ferric..", didn't you say? ------------------------------------------- Of course, ITN will never own up to this. Or perhaps he'll double down and insist that ALL iron is ferric. Of course, "ferric" is not an element. Isn't iron an element? Never mind. There is only one member who really knows what an element or chemical is.
03-05-2024 00:49
Into the Night★★★★★ (21879)	sealover wrote: Im a BM wrote: Into the Night wrote: Im a BM wrote: For the first time, ITN is actually CORRECT in one of his claims. Nah. You just deny chemistry and physics. Im a BM wrote: Dyslexia sometimes causes omission or alteration of key words. "Beet lime, a highly soluble form of calcium carbon, was applied liberally." Lime, of course, is calcium CARBONATE, not calcium carbon. Lime is also a citrus fruit or a flavoring. ============== It is good to know how to use a dictionary. A word like "lime" might not have one rigid single "unambiguous definition" Yes, and "All iron is ferric..", didn't you say? ------------------------------------------- Of course, ITN will never own up to this. Or perhaps he'll double down and insist that ALL iron is ferric. Of course, "ferric" is not an element. Isn't iron an element? Never mind. There is only one member who really knows what an element or chemical is. There are several here. You're not one of them. The Parrot Killer Debunked in my sig. - tmiddles Google keeps track of paranoid talk and i'm not on their list. I've been evaluated and certified. - keepit nuclear powered ships do not require nuclear fuel. - Swan While it is true that fossils do not burn it is also true that fossil fuels burn very well - Swan
03-05-2024 00:56
Im a BM ★★★☆☆ (725)	It is good to know how to use a dictionary. A word like "lime" might not have one rigid single "unambiguous definition" Yes, and "All iron is ferric..", didn't you say?[/quote] ------------------------------------------- Of course, ITN will never own up to this. Or perhaps he'll double down and insist that ALL iron is ferric. Of course, "ferric" is not an element. Isn't iron an element? Never mind. There is only one member who really knows what an element or chemical is.[/quote] There are several here. You're not one of them.[/quote] ---------------- You made the ABSURD claim that "All iron is ferric (hence the blah blah)" Supposedly, you were correcting some kind of error in the post you (analyzed?) How would YOU know, anyway? Why don't you stick to the threads where you guys pretend to know something about "thermodynamics"? You don't know shit about chemistry.
03-05-2024 02:20
Into the Night★★★★★ (21879)	Im a BM wrote: It is good to know how to use a dictionary. You don't. Im a BM wrote: A word like "lime" might not have one rigid single "unambiguous definition" Dictionaries do not define any word. Im a BM wrote: Yes, and "All iron is ferric..", didn't you say? No. Im a BM wrote: Why don't you stick to the threads where you guys pretend to know something about "thermodynamics"? We do. It is YOU that is ignoring them. You can't project YOUR problems on anybody else, Sock. Im a BM wrote: You don't know shit about chemistry. You are describing yourself again. You can't project YOUR problem on anybody else. The Parrot Killer Debunked in my sig. - tmiddles Google keeps track of paranoid talk and i'm not on their list. I've been evaluated and certified. - keepit nuclear powered ships do not require nuclear fuel. - Swan While it is true that fossils do not burn it is also true that fossil fuels burn very well - Swan
10-05-2024 08:40
Im a BM ★★★☆☆ (725)	Rush was a funny guy. He was a local celebrity here before he went national. In the fall of 1998, he cited one of my discoveries on his show. It had just been published in the journal Nature, but it wasn't my big one. He used it as "proof" to support his assertion. Humans are not responsible for eutrophication and fish kills in the reservoir. It's actually Mother Nature's fault. Rush loved it. It was more proof that he had been right all along. Rush was a funny guy. I loved it when he explained how climate change is a hoax. He even had a graph illustrated with cartoons to prove it. Mt. Pinatubo had emitted megatons of sun-blocking aerosols. The earth had cooled for a year. Rush showed us the scientific proof that global warming was a hoax.
10-05-2024 08:47
Im a BM ★★★☆☆ (725)	What Rush Limbaugh Cited as Mother Nature's Fault. Reference. 1998. Contribution of bedrock nitrogen to high nitrate in stream water. Nature. 395:785-788. Occasional massive fish kills in a reservoir impacted drinking water quality for nearly a million consumers. Excess nitrogen in the water, in the form of nitrate, was fertilizing algae blooms. As old algae died and decomposed, microorganisms consumed so much oxygen that there wasn't enough left to keep the fish alive. The false accusation was that forest management practices were causing nitrogen to enter the river as runoff. In fact, the source of the nitrogen was bedrock in a very limited area of the watershed. An area precisely where the Mother Lode of California Goldrush fame is located.
10-05-2024 08:50
Im a BM ★★★☆☆ (725)	What Rush Limbaugh Said on RECORD! I do not speak for Rush Limbaugh. I do not HAVE TO. He spoke about it just fine for himself. There was buzz in the scientific community about a new article in Nature. Rush didn't provide the volume number or pages, but he named the journal as "Nature". He wanted to play up that is was perhaps in a tie for the world's most prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal, and the article supported the Rush Limbaugh Paradigm. You see, in those rare cases when they believe that science is on their side, suddenly scientists become credible after all. Like when they correctly measured surface temperatures in the year following the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. But ONLY during THAT year
10-05-2024 08:52
Im a BM ★★★☆☆ (725)	Clearing deep rooted perennials for pasture - a missed opportunity. I completed my part of the investigation in 1995, but the paper didn't come out until 1998. At least they acknowledged my initial field work. Finding the first nitrogen rich tributary was an accident. Following it upstream for the most nitrogen rich one of all was deliberate. Rattlesnake Creek was unusual. The trees had fine roots branching into the water. Tons of them. The chaparral vegetation had been cleared for pasture in that part of the watershed. The deep rooted perennials had been replaced with shallow rooted annual grasses and shrubs. Human activity had removed the natural mechanism that intercepted the nitrogen released from the weathering bedrock. Without deep roots to pick it up, ammonium released from bedrock was oxidized to nitrate, a highly mobile anion that found its way into subsurface flow and eventually into surface water such as Rattlesnake Creek. There was a reason the eutrophication, hypoxia, and fish kills had not happened in previous decades. Humans hadn't cleared the chaparral yet. But all they really had proof for was that the bedrock was the source of nitrogen getting into the reservoir.
10-05-2024 08:53
Im a BM ★★★☆☆ (725)	Wild ideas in science are not always wrong. The first post of this thread (below) was about a surprise discovery that was published in the journal Nature in 1998. It turned out that ammonium contained in bedrock was the source of nitrate entering surface waters to periodically cause eutrophication, hypoxia, and massive fish kills in a northern California reservoir that was a major source of drinking water in the east Bay. The nitrate didn't get picked up by the river until it came down to a very narrow zone of elevation in the area known as the "Mother Lode" during the California Gold rush. Before I came to work with RD a few years before this discovery, he had already published another surprise discovery in the journal Nature about another site where ammonium in bedrock was causing extreme soil acidification in a relatively small area of watershed. When oxygen is present, bacteria oxidize ammonium to nitrite, then others oxidize nitrite to nitric acid (hydrogen nitrate). This nitric acid made a the soil in part of a watershed extremely acidic. That issue of Nature selected this paper as one considered important enough for a separate review article titled "California acid rock". What did the Mother Lode and this other site have in common? They were in the narrow range of altitude in the lower Sierras where the bedrock is comprised of uplifted sea floor sediments that only experienced low grade metamorphism. These sea floor sediments were loaded with the remains of dead microorganisms full of organic carbon and nitrogen. Low grade metamorphism wasn't enough to bake out the nitrogen or squeeze it out, so it remained as ammonium. RD loved to quote his former mentor as saying that to make big advances in science, "You cannot think rationally. You have to think irrationally." You have to set aside the biases of what was assumed to be true. None the textbooks with lists of sources of nitrogen known to enter waters included rocks as a potential suspect. But when the geologic map revealed the very same metasedimentary rock formation underlying both sites, the irrational became the obvious. Reflexive naysayers, even on this very project, insisted it was not possible. They were overruled by the evidence when the chemical analysis of the rocks came back from the lab. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- sealover wrote: Rush was a funny guy. He was a local celebrity here before he went national. In the fall of 1998, he cited one of my discoveries on his show. It had just been published in the journal Nature, but it wasn't my big one. He used it as "proof" to support his assertion. Humans are not responsible for eutrophication and fish kills in the reservoir. It's actually Mother Nature's fault. Rush loved it. It was more proof that he had been right all along. Rush was a funny guy. I loved it when he explained how climate change is a hoax. He even had a graph illustrated with cartoons to prove it. Mt. Pinatubo had emitted megatons of sun-blocking aerosols. The earth had cooled for a year. Rush showed us the scientific proof that global warming was a hoax. [/quote]
10-05-2024 08:59
sealover ★★★★☆ (1560)	What Rush Limbaugh Cited as Mother Nature's Fault. Reference. 1998. Contribution of bedrock nitrogen to high nitrate in stream water. Nature. 395:785-788. Occasional massive fish kills in a reservoir impacted drinking water quality for nearly a million consumers. Excess nitrogen in the water, in the form of nitrate, was fertilizing algae blooms. As old algae died and decomposed, microorganisms consumed so much oxygen that there wasn't enough left to keep the fish alive. The false accusation was that forest management practices were causing nitrogen to enter the river as runoff. In fact, the source of the nitrogen was bedrock in a very limited area of the watershed. An area precisely where the Mother Lode of California Goldrush fame is located. The five posts immediately above this one detail the story
10-05-2024 21:55
Into the Night★★★★★ (21879)	You don't get to speak for the dead. Stop spamming.
11-05-2024 11:51
sealover ★★★★☆ (1560)	Rush was a funny guy. He was a local celebrity here before he went national. In the fall of 1998, he cited one of my discoveries on his show. It had just been published in the journal Nature, but it wasn't my big one. He used it as "proof" to support his assertion. Humans are not responsible for eutrophication and fish kills in the reservoir. It's actually Mother Nature's fault. Rush loved it. It was more proof that he had been right all along. Rush was a funny guy. I loved it when he explained how climate change is a hoax. He even had a graph illustrated with cartoons to prove it. Mt. Pinatubo had emitted megatons of sun-blocking aerosols. The earth had cooled for a year. Rush showed us the scientific proof that global warming was a hoax.
11-05-2024 11:52
sealover ★★★★☆ (1560)	Government oversight in environmental regulation can be pretty friggin' stupid sometimes. Some of those guys are actually on a personal vendetta, seeking to blame landowners for things beyond their control. A few of them.. Fortunately they are the rare exceptions, but a few of them even believe that there is a conspiracy of deception to cover the misdeeds of evil land owners. My participation began when the landowner was severely punished for doing a good deed. They had provided dredged sediment, truckloads of it on an emergency basis, to fill in the breach of a levee break. A town was saved from flooding. An overzealous regulator with no comprehension of science then concluded that the sediments were actually toxic. Incredibly expensive "remediation" would be required to address the imaginary problem. We proved that the sediments were harmless, but not until after regulator mandated "pH adjustment" had caused groundwater arsenic to skyrocket. Then we had to prove that the landowner hadn't dumped arsenic-based pesticides anywhere near where they could have reached groundwater. The regulator was sure it was all a cover up. It is very difficult to teach science to someone who has gone so far down the rabbit hole with their belief in evil conspiracies.
11-05-2024 11:53
sealover ★★★★☆ (1560)	] Government oversight in environmental regulation has its drawbacks. Imagine a Superfund site being cleared of the most dangerous materials scientists ever played with. Now you have to backfill it with something. How about this pristine virgin soil from site X? Technically, it's not good enough. The naturally occurring materials in it exceed the standard for pristine. What about soil from site Y? Site Z? No. You're going to have to buy something a lot more expensive than that.
11-05-2024 11:54
sealover ★★★★☆ (1560)	Government environmental regulators mandated "pH adjustment" of a very large volume of dredged sediments that had been exposed to oxidation in a storage area. This environmental chemotherapy was required because a scientifically illiterate individual believed they were "toxic". After all, the sediments were strongly acidic. The pH was often as low as 4. They must be toxic, right? They needed to be detoxified. Beet lime, a highly soluble form of calcium carbon was applied liberally. The liming requirements were enormous. The target pH had to be at least 6.5. The solubility of soil organic matter is highly pH dependent - more soluble at higher pH. Liming released a whole lot of soil organic matter into soluble form. When the organic-carbon rich soil solution leached down into the low oxygen zone, the giant dose of organic carbon started a feeding frenzy. Reductive dissolution of ferric-iron-bound arsenic by bacteria that consumed that organic carbon caused groundwater arsenic to increase 500%. And the paranoid regulator thought the landowner illegally dumped arsenic herbicide and would have to be taken to the cleaners to clean it up. Through an agonizing process, regulators were finally persuaded that there was no liability. Perhaps the fact that they were the ones who mandated the environmental chemotherapy had something to do with it. But nobody wanted to talk about groundwater arsenic after that. As part of an unbelievably expensive required investigation, more than 300 monitoring wells were installed and sampled for regular testing throughout a sub sea level (leveed off) delta island. An enormous data set had already been collected, reports had been filed, and the regulators were satisfied that all was well. That was all before I got there. The people who prepared the reports excluded virtually all the data from the wells with highest arsenic. Statisticians saw way too much variability within those wells and followed the official method for excluding the data based on its high variability. That's seasonal variability for you. So, buried deep in the appendix of the report was the complete original data set showing the exceptionally high arsenic. But none of that got into the main body of the report. Years later, the botched "pH adjustment" brought arsenic to attention. We had an incredible data set I could have published, just from the report for bureaucratic paperwork. The correlation between dissolved organic carbon and arsenic was highly significant. Nobody ever published that before. It was a chance to make an important contribution to science, with implications for environmental management and public health. I didn't even have to go to the field or lab. All the data, methodology, etc. was already handed complete on a silver platter. But it would have revealed too many controversial issues. Nobody wanted that data or those findings to see the light of day in a scientific journal. When my report was finally filed as a Technical Memorandum, it was years after the dust had settled. Even then a NEW paranoid regulator was sure that this was a major scandal. Just getting official approval for the Technical Memorandum was going to be over his dead body. He looked everywhere for evidence of the conspiracy and cover up and finally had to be overruled. By then, biogeochemical discovery had gone stale. Others beat me to the punch publishing the correlation between dissolved organic carbon and arsenic in shallow groundwater of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
11-05-2024 11:56
sealover ★★★★☆ (1560)	The good thing about "fiction" is that it can't get you prosecuted for violating non disclosure agreements. In the previous story about groundwater arsenic, there was hazardous material of genuinely natural origin. Humans were being falsely accused of being responsible. Rush Limbaugh loved that we showed humans were being falsely accused of causing eutrophication, hypoxia, and occasional massive fish kills in a reservoir. But sometimes humans try to blame Mother Nature when it's really our fault. It doesn't help if an overzealous biogeochemist wants to make their career being the first to show "natural" hexavalent chromium in any groundwater outside of a desert. Trust me, it wasn't me. My part was ten years earlier. My job was to use Gamma Spec and Beta Scint to measure radium and strontium 90. And to use x-ray fluorescence to measure lead, mercury, and chromium. These particular samples didn't come from the radioactive zone. They were from the leaching field by the old septic tank. They showed very high chromium. But chromium wasn't an issue. No hexavalent Cr had ever been found in any groundwater samples. I dutifully reported the numbers. Even took it upon myself to get additional samples from inside the old septic tank and from the leaching field area. x-ray fluoresesclej... I can't even spell today. XRF showed chromium more than ten times higher in those samples than anywhere else on the site. x-ray fluorescence is a rapid convenient tool, but it can only see the very surface of soil particles. It picks up atoms in surface coatings on soil particles, but can't see inside the crystal lattice of a rock mineral. I dutifully reported my findings. A higher up looked into it. Well, the soil in this area is naturally rich in chromium. In fact, if the most extreme digestion procedure is used to extract every last atom of chromium, the numbers were similar to what I was getting with XRF. But XRF doesn't extract every atom. That's why all the other samples showed chromium only a tenth as high. Even though an extreme digestion would have been able to get the same ten times higher number in all. It was over my head. Nothing to chase here. Besides, there's never been an issue with chromium at the site. They were only testing it because they had to. Nothing to see here. Don't worry your pretty little head about it. The XRF was able to see the anthropogenic chromium because it had deposited as the uppermost layer in coatings on soil surfaces. Ten years later, they finally got their hexavalent chromium in groundwater problem. And it kept getting worse. And another scientist thought this was so cool because he could prove that naturally occurring hexavalent chromium was being found for the first time in an environment not at the margins of a desert. And they stuck to their guns. And they "remediated" with calcium polysulfide. Temporary reduction in hex chrome as the powerful reductant Ca polysulfide turned it back into chromium(III). The reductant also turned a bunch of Mn(IV) back into Mn(II). When aerobic conditions were reestablished, the Mn(II) oxidized back to Mn(IV). Some by product Mn(VII), a very powerful oxidant, then oxidized some of the chromium(III) to hexavalent chromium. Now the groundwater hex chrome was even higher than before they "fixed" it. But it was "natural". So don't bother checking back up the subsurface flow path from that old septic system. We know it wasn't anthropogenic. We'll just have to do some more environmental chemotherapy with polysulfide.
11-05-2024 11:58
sealover ★★★★☆ (1560)	"sealover" - Saving Taxpayers and Landowners MILLIONS OF DOLLARS! It's true. That was one of the reasons Rush Limbaugh loved it so much. The state agency in charge of forest management was being sued by the municipal agency in charge of providing drinking water to more than a million people. Now and again, too much nitrate in stream water fertilized algae blooms in reservoirs, with eutrophication followed by hypoxia and massive fish kills. This was the drinking water supply we're talking about. We were contracted to help defend the state taxpayers from a baseless lawsuit. As biogeochemists specialized in forest watersheds, we knew that state forest management was not in any way responsible for contaminating the drinking water supply. The stakes were VERY high if the state agency was held liable and financial compensation to the municipal agency were required. That's how sealover saved the taxpayers MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. What about private landowners? SEA LOVER SAVED PRIVATE LANDOWNERS MILLIONS OF DOLLARS TOO. Like when they were falsely accused of poisoning the surface water supply after they saved a delta town from flooding. Like when they were falsely accused of poisoning the groundwater with arsenic. Like when they followed government mandates at the old mine and created a methyl mercury hazard they were then expected to pay to fix. Come on guys! Don't be hatin'! It's true. "sealover" saved taxpayers and landowners MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. That counts for something, doesn't it?
11-05-2024 11:59
sealover ★★★★☆ (1560)	Speaking Startrekese - The Art of Sounding Scientific The highest ranking bullshitter I ever confronted in federal court will remain nameless in this story. The master of BS actually had a PhD! In engineering, but STILL a PhD! So, sealover is sworn in as an expert witness to testify in federal court. Credentials and other irrefutable qualifications clarified. So, the PhD engineer set the standards for chemical analysis to be used to identify which materials are hazardous to water quality. Using a citrate buffer, it is possible to extract alarmingly high concentrations of potentially toxic metals from dredged sediments exposed to oxidation. According to Dr. BS, this PROVES that the dredge sediments cause contamination of surface waters. According to Dr. BS, this proves that dredged sediments CANNOT BE USED AS LEVEE CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL. That's going to make it hard to maintain the levee system. According to Dr. BS, the results from the citrate buffer extraction PROVE that dredged sediments must be stored as potentially hazardous waste, at an incredibly high cost. But Dr. BS was just BS'ing. When sealover pointed out that citrate anion formed an inner sphere chelation complex with the potentially toxic metals of concern, the look on Dr. BS face was worth a million dollars. He had no idea what the gibber babble buzzwords meant! He had no response that would mean shit in federal court. The dredged sediments were reclassified back again as useful, safe construction material. The citrate buffer test was rescinded as a predictor of toxicity to surface waters. Dr. BS had been sitting on his little throne for years and years. "sealover" pointed out that the emperor had no clothes, and the jury agreed. A landowner was spared MILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF USELESS MITIGATION COSTS. A levee system was spared having to search far and wide for material to fill in the breach during levee breaks, and to shore up the system as sea level rises.
11-05-2024 12:00
sealover ★★★★☆ (1560)	Nothing Runs Like a Snake - Soil Sensor Catch and Kill. Variable rate technology can dramatically reduce the use of agricultural chemicals and improve yields at the same time. "Farming by the foot" allows higher rates to be applied where higher rates are needed, while avoiding over application everywhere else. In 1996 I was contracted by some aerospace engineers in a high tech start up to help develop a soil sensor for on the go variable rate fertilizer application. The initial plan was to reverse engineer a device that turned out to be a scam. We'll just call it "soil nurse". It was a glorified salt meter. It actually gave decent correlation to fertilizer needs in many cases, but all it was measuring was specific conductance. But near infrared reflectance spectroscopy was showing great promise in research I was familiar with. These engineers were freaking SMART. Combining hyperspectral imaging with the known wavelengths of near infrared absorption of major organic bonds. All they needed then was a good calibration data set. The variable of interest was total organic matter content, which correlated nicely with nitrogen supplying capacity. But soil has a lot more than organic matter to interfere with near infrared spectroscopy. No one size fits all algorithm could be obtained from one single soil type. So I found six different sites of agricultural soil to collect from. Knowing the geologic parent material at each site to ensure a broad range of agricultural soil types. Finding a site off the edge of each field under a tree. Then collecting just the top six inches. One quarter inch at a time. So, each soil set contained a range of organic matter content, highest at the top. Each soil set contained a unique mineral matrix that was essentially uniform in the top six inches. With that we had a sensor with an algorithm that could measure organic matter content across a broad range of soil types. Got a very attractive offer from a major tractor company. A contract would give them rights of first refusal. They would finance it to the tune of millions if the prototype worked. The prototype worked perfectly. But it was catch and kill. They had no intention of ever developing the sensor. They just wanted to be sure that nobody else could. Each year, there was a new excuse for the last minute budget change that required them to temporarily cut the funding for the sensor. Just for now. After the third year passed, the US Navy bought it for an entirely different application. Now it can't even be used as a soil sensor because its military. Nothing runs like a snake.
11-05-2024 12:01
sealover ★★★★☆ (1560)	Clearing deep rooted perennials for pasture - a missed opportunity. I completed my part of the investigation in 1995, but the paper didn't come out until 1998. At least they acknowledged my initial field work. Finding the first nitrogen rich tributary was an accident. Following it upstream for the most nitrogen rich one of all was deliberate. Rattlesnake Creek was unusual. The trees had fine roots branching into the water. Tons of them. The chaparral vegetation had been cleared for pasture in that part of the watershed. The deep rooted perennials had been replaced with shallow rooted annual grasses and shrubs. Human activity had removed the natural mechanism that intercepted the nitrogen released from the weathering bedrock. Without deep roots to pick it up, ammonium released from bedrock was oxidized to nitrate, a highly mobile anion that found its way into subsurface flow and eventually into surface water such as Rattlesnake Creek. There was a reason the eutrophication, hypoxia, and fish kills had not happened in previous decades. Humans hadn't cleared the chaparral yet. But all they really had proof for was that the bedrock was the source of nitrogen getting into the reservoir.
11-05-2024 12:02
sealover ★★★★☆ (1560)	Other places where chromium will come back to haunt us. Hexavalent chromium was widely used in the past for many purposes. Virtually all of it was reduced to the harmless form, chromium-3. In most places where it got disposed of, it was accompanied by a lot of organic carbon, with additional organic carbon continuously added. The hazard now it that the supply of fresh organic carbon has been cut off. Most of the septic tanks that kept adding new organic carbon to subsurface flow paths are no longer operating. Many of the landfill sites where chromium-3 is bound to organic matter, along with manganese(II), are no longer receiving new material, with its fresh organic carbon content. As the humic-bound chromium-3 and manganese(II) has its organic matrix decomposed, both metals become free to oxidize. As manganese(II) oxidizes to manganese(IV) through microbial metabolism, there is a tiny bit of by-product manganese(VII). Manganese(VII) is a powerful enough oxidant to abiotically transform chromium-3 into hexavalent chromium. Hexavalent chromium will start showing up in groundwater where they never saw it before, decades after the initial disposal of anthropogenic Cr-6.
11-05-2024 12:04
sealover ★★★★☆ (1560)	2nd note to SD - methyl mercury in different thread A different thread, called "Maximizing carbon sequestration in wetlands", which was started on March 11, includes the methyl mercury to Cache Creek stuff The post is titled "Chemical pitfalls of new wetlands", just before mid March. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ note to SD This particular thread includes more than just the local hexavalent Cr thing. It also covers groundwater arsenic in the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta, and methyl mercury generation upstream of Cache Creek. And, as the first post indicates, geologic nitrogen in the Mokelumne River.
11-05-2024 12:04
sealover ★★★★☆ (1560)	Wild ideas in science are not always wrong. The first post of this thread (below) was about a surprise discovery that was published in the journal Nature in 1998. It turned out that ammonium contained in bedrock was the source of nitrate entering surface waters to periodically cause eutrophication, hypoxia, and massive fish kills in a northern California reservoir that was a major source of drinking water in the east Bay. The nitrate didn't get picked up by the river until it came down to a very narrow zone of elevation in the area known as the "Mother Lode" during the California Gold rush. Before I came to work with RD a few years before this discovery, he had already published another surprise discovery in the journal Nature about another site where ammonium in bedrock was causing extreme soil acidification in a relatively small area of watershed. When oxygen is present, bacteria oxidize ammonium to nitrite, then others oxidize nitrite to nitric acid (hydrogen nitrate). This nitric acid made a the soil in part of a watershed extremely acidic. That issue of Nature selected this paper as one considered important enough for a separate review article titled "California acid rock". What did the Mother Lode and this other site have in common? They were in the narrow range of altitude in the lower Sierras where the bedrock is comprised of uplifted sea floor sediments that only experienced low grade metamorphism. These sea floor sediments were loaded with the remains of dead microorganisms full of organic carbon and nitrogen. Low grade metamorphism wasn't enough to bake out the nitrogen or squeeze it out, so it remained as ammonium. RD loved to quote his former mentor as saying that to make big advances in science, "You cannot think rationally. You have to think irrationally." You have to set aside the biases of what was assumed to be true. None the textbooks with lists of sources of nitrogen known to enter waters included rocks as a potential suspect. But when the geologic map revealed the very same metasedimentary rock formation underlying both sites, the irrational became the obvious. Reflexive naysayers, even on this very project, insisted it was not possible. They were overruled by the evidence when the chemical analysis of the rocks came back from the lab.

Page 3 of 4

Join the debate Rush Limbaugh cited one of my discoveries on his show:

Threads	Replies	Last post
B-17 and Bell King Cobra collided at Dallas air show today. Story at 11	0	13-11-2022 01:38
Thwarting the Warmizombies' Rush to Wikipedia	64	08-08-2021 05:10
The Recent Floods In Europe & Fire In Frozen America Show How Stupid Their Government Are	1	18-07-2021 20:36
I The Messiah Will Help The Jewish Zionism Group Have Their Final Settlement If They Show Desire	6	03-02-2021 21:24
Limbaugh Is Suggesting Secession	11	13-12-2020 21:06