Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

We're headed to Boston next week while the weather here is pretty nice, and there is not so nice.

Down here in Texico we've had devastating ice storms in February of both 2021 and 2023.  I'm hopeful that the pattern doesn't repeat in 2025.

What percentage of the warmth from the Sun do you think is retained by the Earth?  

This is a trick question really.

We get radiation from the Sun that turns into heat, often as not, and some is radiated back into space.  So, how much of that heat is retained here?  Ten percent?  Fifty?  One?

https://www.chron.com/news/science-environment/article/coal-plant-fort-bend-20066495.php

Articles like this really bug the crap out of me.  The gist of it is that there is a very large power plant about 40 miles from my house, just SE of Houston, south of what is called Sugarland.  The plant is on a very large tract of land, several thousand acres I'm assuming, and has a giant cooling lake next to it.  The plant has a capacity of 3.7 MW, which is a very large amount of power.  

The plant was first built in the 1950's with natural gas generation, and then the coal part was added in the 1970's.  It's very large, has very tall smoke stacks, and generally is kinda what you think of when you think of what power generating plants have looked like in this country from inception until now.  

This area was once upon a time extremely rural, probably up until the late 1990's and is still on the edge of where suburbia meets extremely rural.  In other words, this place was out in the boondocks until city swallowed up boondocks.  

When you read the article linked all it talks about is how nobody knew it was there, how dirty it is, how much pollution it puts out.  

Thomas, who is a student officer at her school's Eco-Patrol Club, a student-led organization focused on environmental awareness, says that the signs are invisible, but there. Passing by a pond near the local library always left her with "a particular smell." When the Thomas family moved from the back of the neighborhood in Sienna into a newer and bigger home at the front of the suburb, closer to the plant, her father's upper respiratory issues and abdominal pain worsened.

"I didn't know about [the plant] when I started going to Ridge Point. It's kind of hidden because I know multiple people that have told me they didn't realize it was there," Thomas said. 

It's weird because I live ~40 miles away and I know for sure it's there.  It's visible from miles and miles away, and if you pass by it there are big signs that say it's a power plant.  I'm not saying we don't need clean air but I just dislike the way the article presents that these people are just unknowingly suffering when they have been building out suburbia for years and years towards this thing, and benefit from the power it generates.  Newsflash:  If you don't like it, don't move there, and don't keep building subdivisions next to it and then complain about it.  It's literally been there for 70-80 years, burning coal for 50 years.  

Don't fall for the Big Lie of nuclear energy
Don't fall for the Big Lie of nuclear energy

Opinion piece, antinuclear of course, which one can expect more of as folks start to turn more to nuclear as the "Big Lie" of solar/wind starts to become more evident.

Everything has negatives.  I can pretty well dismiss any option by talking only about negatives and providing no perspective.

I live less than 10 miles from a similar coal plant, been here since 89.
the ponds don't smell, you can't smell the exhaust of the plant
the steam from the stacks is very impressive on a cold morning or afternoon with no wind
I call bullshit...........

Passing by a pond near the local library always left her with "a particular smell." When the Thomas family moved from the back of the neighborhood in Sienna into a newer and bigger home at the front of the suburb, closer to the plant, her father's upper respiratory issues and abdominal pain worsened.