Crackhead 'Water Conservation' interview on NHPR

[tcharron]

So... is there any evidence in the "adding chemicals to prevent freezing" claim? I've heard this before, but find it hard to believe.

http://www.yorksnow.com/products/snomax/index.htm

http://www.yorksnow.com/products/snomax/safety.htm has an overall description. It's a biological protein. It's *NOT* a chemical additive. It's a protein that snow 'likes' to form on. And it doesn't prevent anything. It just serves as the the 'dust stuff' that snow forms on naturally.

 

[drjeff]

I didnt want to write anything about this but I just had to when I read SIKSKIERS last line. My daughters were born this past summer. Unfortunitly, they had to spend a month in the NICU unit. Over the course of the month, I became friends with other parents of multiple births. One of these mothers called us up the day after she left and told us that a group of "enviornmentalists" were standing in front of the hospital heckling her as she was putting her new born triplets into the car.
sure enough, 2 weeks later as my wife and I were placing our girls into the car...you guessed it. Some bit_h starts up with "you should have only had one. why didnt you abort one? your selfish for having more then 1. get your tubes tied" crap like that. Then she started with "think about your carbon footprint. that extra baby is an unnecesarry strain on the envoirnment, what were we thinking when we let that extra baby into the world to use up extra oxygen and our natural resources?" before I knew it, she had another a**hole chime in with pretty much the same crap about "the damage" my girls would do to the earth.
even today, I still notice that for every 25 or so well wishes or nice comments, I get some schmuck who wants to comment about my enviornmental impact.
Nice testament to the stupidity of some people.

The Constitution defends our right of Free Speach. Unfortunately there are a few folks out there that lack a sufficient quantity of brain cells to intelligently use them!

If I was in that situation, *if* I was able to maintain my composure, I would have asked for their name and their organizations name so that your prescious newborn could find them down the road and let them repeat those vial words to their face!

 

[tcharron]

The Constitution defends our right of Free Speach. Unfortunately there are a few folks out there that lack a sufficient quantity of brain cells to intelligently use them!

If I was in that situation, *if* I was able to maintain my composure, I would have asked for their name and their organizations name so that your prescious newborn could find them down the road and let them repeat those vial words to their face!

Getting way offtopic, one could reply..

"Why should I listen when your mom obviously didn't.."

 

[drjeff]

So... is there any evidence in the "adding chemicals to prevent freezing" claim? I've heard this before, but find it hard to believe.

You'd think that if good 'ol Maude thought about it a little bit before her ski area bashing part, that the ski industry just might want to use a subtsance that would promote, not prevent freezing. Just a thought

 

[drjeff]

Getting way offtopic, one could reply..

"Why should I listen when your mom obviously didn't.."

I tried to steer it back on topic with my post below yours though

 

[tcharron]

You'd think that if good 'ol Maude thought about it a little bit before her ski area bashing part, that the ski industry just might want to use a subtsance that would promote, not prevent freezing. Just a thought

Even better, just spray molten teflon droplets onto the mountain and ski all year long. :-D

 

[deadheadskier]

I didnt want to write anything about this but I just had to when I read SIKSKIERS last line. My daughters were born this past summer. Unfortunitly, they had to spend a month in the NICU unit. Over the course of the month, I became friends with other parents of multiple births. One of these mothers called us up the day after she left and told us that a group of "enviornmentalists" were standing in front of the hospital heckling her as she was putting her new born triplets into the car.
sure enough, 2 weeks later as my wife and I were placing our girls into the car...you guessed it. Some bit_h starts up with "you should have only had one. why didnt you abort one? your selfish for having more then 1. get your tubes tied" crap like that. Then she started with "think about your carbon footprint. that extra baby is an unnecesarry strain on the envoirnment, what were we thinking when we let that extra baby into the world to use up extra oxygen and our natural resources?" before I knew it, she had another a**hole chime in with pretty much the same crap about "the damage" my girls would do to the earth.
even today, I still notice that for every 25 or so well wishes or nice comments, I get some schmuck who wants to comment about my enviornmental impact.
Nice testament to the stupidity of some people.

UNBELIEVABLE

It's like the Westboro Babptist Church in Reverse

I would have told them, "Why don't you help your own cause and kill yourself before I do it for you"

 

[wa-loaf]

I didnt want to write anything about this but I just had to when I read SIKSKIERS last line. My daughters were born this past summer. Unfortunitly, they had to spend a month in the NICU unit. Over the course of the month, I became friends with other parents of multiple births. One of these mothers called us up the day after she left and told us that a group of "enviornmentalists" were standing in front of the hospital heckling her as she was putting her new born triplets into the car.
sure enough, 2 weeks later as my wife and I were placing our girls into the car...you guessed it. Some bit_h starts up with "you should have only had one. why didnt you abort one? your selfish for having more then 1. get your tubes tied" crap like that. Then she started with "think about your carbon footprint. that extra baby is an unnecesarry strain on the envoirnment, what were we thinking when we let that extra baby into the world to use up extra oxygen and our natural resources?" before I knew it, she had another a**hole chime in with pretty much the same crap about "the damage" my girls would do to the earth.
even today, I still notice that for every 25 or so well wishes or nice comments, I get some schmuck who wants to comment about my enviornmental impact.
Nice testament to the stupidity of some people.

Wow, that's nuts. Those people aren't environmentalists, they're just a**holes. Lump them in with the "God hates fags" people and move on.

Did the hospital warn you about them before you left? Seems like something they might want to prepare you for when leaving with a new baby.

 

[ckofer]

<snip> I still notice that for every 25 or so well wishes or nice comments, I get some schmuck who wants to comment about my environmental impact.
Nice testament to the stupidity of some people.

How about a simple reply to the thoughtless, tactless nutcases:

"You're right, this world would be a better place if some people were removed. You're defective, let's start with you."

Jeezum.

 

[Bumpsis]

http://www.yorksnow.com/products/snomax/index.htm

http://www.yorksnow.com/products/snomax/safety.htm has an overall description. It's a biological protein. It's *NOT* a chemical additive. It's a protein that snow 'likes' to form on. And it doesn't prevent anything. It just serves as the the 'dust stuff' that snow forms on naturally.

Actually, Pseudomonas Syringae is not a protein, but a living organism, a bacterium, to be precise.
It is a plant pathogen, meaning that it can infect (and damage) plants.
The links to snomax , the commercial product that consists of these bacteria, of course will say that it is safe. So considering the source, one needs to excersize a bit of skepticism.

Now, I'm not saying that snowax is harmful, I just don't have any facts on this but I do wonder if the ski mountain runoff does contain higher than normally found in nature concentartion of this bacterium. That in turn can quite easily alter the microbial balance of the streams nearby.

Whether or not that in itself has any lasting consequence on the ecology of the surrounding watershed would be the real question.
My guess would be that the temporary spike in P. Syringae concentration probably doesn't mean a thing, but technically, it could be called a pollutant. But that's just semantics.

 

[tcharron]

Actually, Pseudomonas Syringae is not a protein, but a living organism, a bacterium, to be precise.
It is a plant pathogen, meaning that it can infect (and damage) plants.
The links to snomax , the commercial product that consists of these bacteria, of course will say that it is safe. So considering the source, one needs to excersize a bit of skepticism.

Now, I'm not saying that snowax is harmful, I just don't have any facts on this but I do wonder if the ski mountain runoff does contain higher than normally found in nature concentartion of this bacterium. That in turn can quite easily alter the microbial balance of the streams nearby.

Whether or not that in itself has any lasting consequence on the ecology of the surrounding watershed would be the real question.
My guess would be that the temporary spike in P. Syringae concentration probably doesn't mean a thing, but technically, it could be called a pollutant. But that's just semantics.

SnowMax ISN'T Pseudomonas Syringae. SnowMax is a protein taken from the cellular wall of the bacteria.

 

[ckofer]

Put on your pocket protectors and read this:

http://aem.asm.org/cgi/reprint/61/1/273.pdf

 

[Bumpsis]

SnowMax ISN'T Pseudomonas Syringae. SnowMax is a protein taken from the cellular wall of the bacteria.

OK, so now I'm a bit confused. The paper that ckofer attached a link to (thank you, nice bit of research), cleary describes snowmax as "..Snowmax, a freeze-dried preparation of P.Syringae cells", meaning whole bacteria, not a protein extracted from cell walls of that bacterium.

It also has been my understanding that the process of ice nucleation requires a decent size particle to be involved. A bacterium's size is something on the order of 2 -5 microns which actually would fulfill such criteria.
The linked research paper also uses whole cell preparations to carry out their nucleation experiments, which confirms my understanding of that process.

tcharron states that SnowMax is actually a protein derrived from the cell wall of the bacterium, which I suppose it well may be, but if so, it probably wouldn't be a good nucleating agent because being simlpy a component of the cell wall, it is miniscule in size by multiple orders of magnitiude compared to the size of the entire cell.
Additional thought would be that purification of a specific protein from a bactereial cell wall on a commercial scale, is a much more costly process than just simple freeze drying the whole bug which then can be reconstituted by adding water.

Not that it really makes that much difference to me, but I'm just curious, is the SnowMax just a protein from P.Syringae or the whole bacterium?

 

[tcharron]

OK, so now I'm a bit confused. The paper that ckofer attached a link to (thank you, nice bit of research), cleary describes snowmax as "..Snowmax, a freeze-dried preparation of P.Syringae cells", meaning whole bacteria, not a protein extracted from cell walls of that bacterium.

It also has been my understanding that the process of ice nucleation requires a decent size particle to be involved. A bacterium's size is something on the order of 2 -5 microns which actually would fulfill such criteria.
The linked research paper also uses whole cell preparations to carry out their nucleation experiments, which confirms my understanding of that process.

tcharron states that SnowMax is actually a protein derrived from the cell wall of the bacterium, which I suppose it well may be, but if so, it probably wouldn't be a good nucleating agent because being simlpy a component of the cell wall, it is miniscule in size by multiple orders of magnitiude compared to the size of the entire cell.
Additional thought would be that purification of a specific protein from a bactereial cell wall on a commercial scale, is a much more costly process than just simple freeze drying the whole bug which then can be reconstituted by adding water.

Not that it really makes that much difference to me, but I'm just curious, is the SnowMax just a protein from P.Syringae or the whole bacterium?

Snomax Technologies grows Pseudomonas syringae in a controlled environment in sterilized fermentation equipment. Processing involves freezing the micro-organism, similar to the process used to produce freeze-dried food, to yield a protein as the end product. The resulting pellets are then sterilized in the same type of equipment used to routinely sterilize surgical instruments. The by-product of this process is Snomax, a very active ice-nucleating protein.

 

[bobbutts]

I didnt want to write anything about this but I just had to when I read SIKSKIERS last line. My daughters were born this past summer. Unfortunitly, they had to spend a month in the NICU unit. Over the course of the month, I became friends with other parents of multiple births. One of these mothers called us up the day after she left and told us that a group of "enviornmentalists" were standing in front of the hospital heckling her as she was putting her new born triplets into the car.
sure enough, 2 weeks later as my wife and I were placing our girls into the car...you guessed it. Some bit_h starts up with "you should have only had one. why didnt you abort one? your selfish for having more then 1. get your tubes tied" crap like that. Then she started with "think about your carbon footprint. that extra baby is an unnecesarry strain on the envoirnment, what were we thinking when we let that extra baby into the world to use up extra oxygen and our natural resources?" before I knew it, she had another a**hole chime in with pretty much the same crap about "the damage" my girls would do to the earth.
even today, I still notice that for every 25 or so well wishes or nice comments, I get some schmuck who wants to comment about my enviornmental impact.
Nice testament to the stupidity of some people.

This makes no sense at all.. I cannot imagine a less useful thing to protest. If this really happened I believe you just encountered a real world troll.