About ten I think. Organic was still pretty niche before then, and only really started to come to mainstream about then, not just foodies and environmentalists.
I believe I've heard that heat pumps are good all the way down to -30 or so, though the efficiency at that point is pretty bad. That said, geological heat pumps can circumvent that as long as the ground doesn't freeze too deep where you live. Dig far enough and heat pumps work anywhere that's not permafrost, and I'm talking about 20-30 meters deep, not something insane like tapping underground magma.
As a Torontonian, I support this.
As things stand, you can walk faster than drive the Gardiner during rush hour, and the thing's crumbling anyways. On top of that, most of it is completely surrounded by sky scrapers anyways, so it's perfect for high rises. The Greenbelt is only going to provide 50k homes, out in the middle of nowhere that also requires roads, electricity, water, sewage, and probably more infrastructure. Aparently that alone will take 25 years to install, not to mention the millions of dollars. All that is pretty much already there around the Gardiner.
And as for the number of housing, 50 floors with 30 units per floor means that you need 33 buildings to get the same number of homes, and each building can be put up in under a decade, if not five years. Not only is it far faster, but cheaper and easier. And the tax revenue would be massively higher. In fact, I imagine that greenbelt homes wouldn't even have a positive tax revenue due to all the infrastructure needed to be built first.
Greenbelt housing not only is low quality, expensive, and too far away to actually be able to reasonably commute to any sort of job, but actively harms the environment, risks doing lots of damage to nearby cities in the far more recently frequent major weather events, and can be done easier, fast, and cheaper by simple alternatives like the one proposed here.
Greenbelt housing is political corruption at its finest.
Kinda hoping it's a combined shot or something. It'll make it easier to do as long as the side effects aren't any more severe, and most people will just forget to do one after doing the other otherwise.
I already have a hard enough time remembering to get the flu shot, so being asked to come again in a week to get the other is a sure way for me to forget one, if not both shots.
Well of course the moment you've processed the crop it's too late to wash them. I was mostly just talking about fruits and vegetables.
But for grains and legumes, washing them before hulling them shouldn't be a problem. Of course there's the issue of added costs, but spraying additional pesticides is also a cost.
I don't remember which one, but I have read about two different organic pesticides that were particularly dangerous. One had high mercury levels, and the other had something about it that made it illegal to use outright in the EU, but was legally used in the US.
It's been a while since I heard about this sort of stuff, as organic was only starting to become mainstream when I had originally heard about them.
I seem to recall something like that.
Frankly speaking, I don't think there's any actively used pesticide that is particularly fine to ingest on a regular basis, even at extremely low levels. That stuff circulates throughout your entire body, and is particularly harmful to both fetuses and breastfeeding infants. And I imagine that pregnant/breastfeeding women are the group that is most conscious about eating healthily, which means tons of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Local farmers, sure. But from what I know, industrial farmers all use pesticides unless if it's grown indoors. And a lot of the organic pesticides are more dangerous than artificial ones. Especially since the farmers need to use more.
I understand to a degree allowing an increase in pesticide use (though that'll seriously impact the water quality due to runoff), the only thing that the industry needs to do to reduce pesticide residue is to just spray the produce with water.
It's just a way to cheapen out the process at the expense of people's health. And I don't just mean the end shoppers', but also all the industry workers along the way. While I imagine the amount isn't a lot, but an increase in pesticide residue that makes it all the way through the supply chain increases how much the workers are exposed to as they handle the produce.
This article goes in circles and repeatedly contradicts itself. Basically saying that it's not a failure of the markets, but one of exploitation.
Except, it is exactly a failure of the markets. It states that the exploitation comes from the ability of landowners to charge whatever they want, but they don't address the fact that they can only charge high prices because of the lack of those who are willing to charge low prices. And nobody should be expected to charge a low price if they can charge a high price and still sell/rent easily.
It's an issue of people treating homes as an investment, and that can only happen because the price of homes skyrocket far faster than inflation and wages. And that happens because of a lack of supply.
Sure, treating homes as an investment is fine for apartments and condos, but if the land itself ends up being worth a million for a single lot, there's no way anybody can afford it without both a high wage and putting themselves into debt for a half century. And if that happen, the entire spectrum of housing goes up in price as there is a lack of competition to lower prices.
The only real way to lower home prices (from houses to apartments and condos) is to significantly increase competition, and that can only happen if supply actually comes close to demand, not falling so far behind that people share a single place, even to the point that they bribe the local authorities to look the other way that they have too many people in a single unit.
This summer? This winter was insane as well! (at least in my area). Two weeks of actually below zero, and virtually no snow outside of those two weeks this entire summer. The average temperature, once you exclude those two weeks, was like +5-10! It felt like we were living a good 20 degrees further south or something this winter.
This is literally the reason why free markets are the bane of all that is good. Sure, it's nice to get the shinies quickly and cheaply, but then you find out the cost of that is how the world is being torn apart because it's cheaper to do it that way.
The only solution is government regulations to force companies to become responsible for their actions. And the only way to have that is for politicians who think about the country first and have the will to enact the necessary change.
I mean, down south the erosion of government regulations is bringing back child labour. Imagine a 15yo working in a steel mill, as it's recently been legalized in some states.
I thought ones that shallow are only good if the ground doesn't freeze much? I know there are horizontal ones about that deep or so, and vertical ones that are designed for places where the ground freezes, or if you have little space for a horizontal installation.