Health, Mathematics, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary

A “Tenuous Grasp Of Science”

19 Comments

That’s certainly a polite way to describe these fools:

A half-liter of urine dumped in a 143 million-liter reservoir would get a urea concentration of about 3 parts per billion, according to Slate. (We calculated it would be a 50 nanoMolar solution.) Meanwhile, the EPA allows concentrations of arsenic in drinking water up to 10 ppb. Salt water has a salt concentration of around 35,000,000 parts per billion, or 600 milliMolar.

Do these morons have any idea how many birds poop in that lake every day? In drought-stricken California, that wouldn’t be just a firing offense — they’d be strung up. But I’ll bet he’s all on board with battling climate change.

As Glenn says, the nation is increasingly being run by chuckleheads.

19 thoughts on “A “Tenuous Grasp Of Science””

  2. I brought this up with my 16-year old neighbor yesterday, and he argued that of course they had to drain the water – because it was contaminated with urine. So I asked him where he thinks shoreline animals pee. He said there was probably a big fence around the reservoir. I asked him where he thinks fish poop, and he said there couldn’t be fish in the drinking water. I pointed out that there are no open bodies of potable water that don’t have fish in them, because birds fly over and drop them. Then I pointed out that birds also fly over and poop directly in the water, and sometimes they just up and die and fall right in. Finally he started to see the light.

    1. Mike E, at that level of dilution, it’s gotta be the most powerful homeopathic “remedy” in the history of mankind.

  5. Since an engineer or two had to be called in to actually empty the reservoir, why didn’t one of them point out the fallacy here?

    1. You presume the people calling for the reservoir would listen to the engineers. Just because they can do something useful doesn’t mean they know anything. /sarc

  6. RRob, a commenter from the link had the best suggestion:

    Sounds like the cheapest solution is to get rid of the security cameras.

    1. Actually, the bowdlerized version is “Fish [crude four-letter word starting with “F” for copulate] in it.”

      Which has the additional virtue of being alliterative.

  8. The raving loonies from California took over Oregon when I was a kid. Ruined Portland, took over state government, and here we are.

    And, aren’t we all “Earth Day, nature good?” Heck, water doesn’t get much more organic than that!

  9. Rand, instead of (quite rightly IMHO) criticizing the knuckleheads involved, we’d best be glad that kid didn’t pee in the Pacific – draining that would be even harder, and given their current plans, I suspect they’d want to do it.

    Uhoh… they might anyway; guess where all that water they drain out will go? First to the Willamette river, then the Columbia, then the Pacific.

  10. I hate seeing these “they don’t understand science” posts on this subject, as the original articles made it quite clear, complete with quotes, that the people that made this decision knew quite well that there was no scientific reason to dump the reservoir. It was done entirely in the name of public perception, they’d rather have lots of articles calling them stupid than lots of articles calling them heartless penny pinchers that want their customers drinking urine.

    1. Doing a vastly wasteful and stupid thing because you don’t want to be called names by stupid people is somehow better than doing a vastly wasteful and stupid thing because you yourself are stupid?

  11. One day when my oldest son was 11, he was drinking a can of Pepsi. Looking for trouble, I asked him “Hey, getting your daily dose of birdshit extract?”

    “Da-ad!”

    “No, seriously, look at the label. What’s in there?”

    Reading from the can, “Filtered carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, natural flavor, phosphoric acid…”

    “There you go!” I interrupted him. “Where do they get phosphoric acid from?”

    Bright kid, watches science programs- “Uh, phosphate rocks?”

    “Yes! And where do they get phosphate rocks from?”

    (Frowning) “From islands in the pacific… oh, Dad, that’s disgusting!”

    Troll Dad grosses out his kids by the Socratic Method.

  12. Trust me, the Portland Water Bureau has a very tenuous grasp on not only science by fiscal responsibility.

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