blackhawk887 Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
9y
19,694
100% TNT equivalent is crazy. Even 25% is probably twice a reasonable figure. The FAA uses 14% for LOX/hydrogen and 10% for LOX/kerosene. Hydrogen is more than twice as energetic per mass of methane, and kerosene about 80% as energetic as methane.

LOX and liquid methane are miscible, unlike the other combinations, but there aren't any plausible scenarios where you'd get better mixing than a rocket falling back on the pad shortly after liftoff, which both kerolox and hydrolox are also perfectly capable of doing. //

mattlindn Ars Centurion
7y
231
NASA's current blast range evacuation area ranges from 3 to 4 miles as shown in the diagrams in this article (I measured it on google maps).

It's worth mentioning that the privately run Rocket Ranch down in South Texas where people can pay money to get closer to the Starship launches is only 3.9 miles from the launch site. The people who watch from the Mexico can get as close as 2.4 miles.

Where most people (including myself) watch(ed) from, South Padre Island, is almost exactly 5 miles away.

So yeah this seems kind of excessive. //

Jack56 Ars Scholae Palatinae
7y
672
For the nth time, a fuel-oxidiser explosion is not a detonation. It is a deflagration. They are far less violent. An intimate mixture of gaseous oxygen and methane can detonate but liquid methane and liquid oxygen cannot mix intimately - are not miscible - because methane is a solid at lox temperatures, especially the sub-cooled lox which Starship uses. A detonation takes place in under a millisecond. Deflagrations are fires. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be bad but comparisons with an energetically equivalent mass of TNT are way out of line. //

mattlindn Ars Centurion
7y
231
Jack56 said:

For the nth time, a fuel-oxidiser explosion is not a detonation. It is a deflagration. They are far less violent. An intimate mixture of gaseous oxygen and methane can detonate ....

Didn't think about this, but yes you're correct. The boiling point of Oxygen is 90.2 K and the melting point of Methane is 90.7 K. If you mix the two together, before any Methane can melt all the oxygen has to boil off. Though there should still be some local melting given the outside air temperatures are MUCH warmer than the liquid oxygen.

Though at the same time given the temperatures are so close together I don't think much Methane will freeze before an explosion happens. So maybe the point is moot? //

SpikeTheHobbitMage Ars Scholae Palatinae
3y
1,745
Person_Man said:

I have to imagine a fully fueled stack with optimal mixing for the biggest explosion would probably be the largest non nuclear explosion ever.

Most of Starship's propellant is oxygen. The full stack only carries 1030t of methane (330t on Ship, 700t on SuperHeavy). Methane also has a TNT equivalent of only 0.16. Using the omnicaluclator, I get 1030t of methane* = 164.8t of TNT. That doesn't even make the top 10 list.

*omnicalculator lists natural gas, which is mostly methane. //

blackhawk887 Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
9y
19,694
mattlindn said:

Didn't think about this, but yes you're correct. The boiling point of Oxygen is 90.2 K and the melting point of Methane is 90.7 K. If you mix the two together, ...

Mixing with oxygen should depress the freezing point of methane. For example, if you take water at its freezing point, and mix it equally with alcohol that is itself, say, 10 degrees colder than the freezing point of water, the resulting mix will be well below 0 C but will not contain any frozen water.

Also, you can mix butane and water under a little pressure, even though at atmospheric pressure butane boils a half-degree below the freezing point of water. They aren't miscible, but that's just because of polarity - they are happy to both be liquids at the same temperature and a little pressure.

Methane and LOX are considered miscible and were even considered for monopropellants at various mix ratios. The mixture is reportedly a bit shock sensitive though. //

SpikeTheHobbitMage Ars Scholae Palatinae
3y
1,745

Mad Klingon said:
For the many debating using eminent domain to expand launch facilities, that would likely be the simple part of the issue. Most of that area is considered sensitive wildlife area and dealing with the current piles environmental regulations and paperwork could take decades for a major expansion. Look at all the grief SpaceX gets when they build on the relatively bland bit of Texas coast they are currently using. It would be much worse at the Florida site.

One of the great legacies of Apollo was we got a well built out area for launching stuff before most of the environmental legislation was passed.

One of the great legacies of Apollo was that the exclusion zone around Cape Canaveral preserved enough of the wetlands in good enough condition to become a protected nature reserve.

However, the state’s partnership with Inversa is a big deal.

The company started working with the Sunshine State back in 2024 — and they’ve done incredible work ever since. Between May and July 2025, 1,022 pythons were removed — nearly triple the number caught during the same period in 2024.

“The new program accomplished more removals in July 2025 alone than in the entire year before,” DeSantis said in a statement. //

Ferré noted that “increasing hunter pay by leveraging the fashion sector has led to a significant increase in removals” and shared that Inversa has found that fashion brands are seeking out these types of materials to meet their sustainability goals.

Yesterday, in his periodic letter to the world, Bill Gates shared three truths about climate change — and shook up the climate discussion. While the longer term implications of his letter are uncertain, early signs are that Gates has injected a welcome dose of climate realism into the discussion.

Here are his three truths (and I encourage everyone to read his whole letter):

1. Climate change is a serious problem, but it will not be the end of civilization;
   1. Temperature is not the best way to measure our progress on climate;
   2. Health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change.

For most THB readers, these truths will be well understood, even common sense, and will seem neither shocking nor scandalous.

But for some steeped in climate advocacy grounded in visions of “existential threat” or a looming apocalypse, Gates’ truths have rocked their world.

Back in the Bad Old Days when the wealthy started to enjoy the fruits and freedoms of the Industrial Revolution with steam trains and coal-fired ocean-going liners, the damage to Britain was all too apparent in the coal mines, open-cast mines, the filthy air and disgusting rivers.

Today the solution is simply to relocate the devastation somewhere else. The Chelsea Tractor EV comes with its own consequences. The problem is lithium for batteries and the skyrocketing demand for it, which requires the use of vast evaporation pools in Chile, the world’s second-largest source after Australia: //

There is a common argument from people who support lithium mining: that even if it damages the environment, it brings huge benefits via jobs and cash.

If cases targeting American energy continue to prevail, ‘it could result in shutting down the oil industry.’ //

Senators met yesterday for a subcommittee hearing to discuss claims that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), foreign donors, and leftist legal activism are behind a “systematic campaign” to dismantle American energy dominance.

Throughout the hearing, Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, emphasized how foreign funding and activist litigation are undermining U.S. energy infrastructure, posing a national security threat. His four Democrat colleagues repeatedly dismissed the concerns as a “conspiracy theory,” instead focusing on energy costs and “global warming.”

The “assault by the radical left,” “paid for by the [CCP],” seeks to “seize control of our courts [and] to weaponize litigation against U.S. energy producers,” Cruz said. He noted the assault is “three-pronged,” weaponizing “foreign funding, mass litigation, and judicial indoctrination” against “American energy independence.”

Life on Earth is in crisis crop failure, social and ecological collapse, mass extinction. We have a moral duty to take action. These statements made by Extinction Rebellion reflect the climate alarmist narrative that has continued to escalate across the Western world. Hysteria over climate change can be seen throughout history, from the human sacrifices of the Aztecs to bring back rain, to the Salem witch trials to eliminate the women they blamed for crop failure during the little ice age.

Today the climate industrial complex is funded by trillions of dollars seeking to control what we buy, eat and where we are allowed to travel, all in the name of sustainability and achieving net zero carbon emissions. This fear campaign is rooted in the belief that we will not look into the data ourselves, but instead look to the governments and to the media to tell us what is true. //

Historical temperature records indicate that we are not in the climate crisis western governments claim. We are looking at a graph of the past 65 million years from NOAA. The Earth today seems to be in a particularly cool period; in fact the Earth is still coming out of an ice age. History demonstrates that life has existed and thrived in much warmer temperatures, and that temperatures have been much higher without the human influence of industrial CO2 emissions. //

Although the mainstream media has tried to alarm its consumers with the accelerating emissions of CO2, the Earth is actually in a CO2 famine. Current levels are about 423 parts per million; however in the past they have been at least a thousand parts per million and have likely reached 8,000 parts per million. //

This is how you do it. And she did it as a high school senior science project.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3CfBG8uppw8&t=16s&pp=2AEQkAIB

Logging, we might note, involves a renewable resource - trees. Here in the Great Land, the implementation of the so-called "Roadless Rule" in 2001 hampered logging in places like the Tongass National Forest. Yes, in a national forest; part of the justification for the national forest system was the preservation and availability of a strategic asset, timber. The Biden administration('s autopen) enforced the "Roadless Rule" with vigor, and that rule was used to lock up 58.5 million acres of National Forest land.

On Monday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke L. Rollins announced that the Roadless Rule has gone the way of the dodo. //

Rescinding this rule will remove prohibitions on road construction, reconstruction, and timber harvest on nearly 59 million acres of the National Forest System, allowing for fire prevention and responsible timber production.

This rule is overly restrictive and poses real harm to millions of acres of our national forests. In total, 30% of National Forest System lands are impacted by this rule. For example, nearly 60% of forest service land in Utah is restricted from road development and is unable to be properly managed for fire risk. In Montana, it is 58%, and in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, the largest in the country, 92% is impacted. This also hurts jobs and economic development across rural America. Utah alone estimates the roadless rule alone creates a 25% decrease in economic development in the forestry sector. //

Bogia
14 hours ago
One of my first jobs in the 90s was installing flooring. I learned way back then that there are more trees in the world BECAUSE of the hardwood flooring industry. There are very responsible ways to harvest this truly renewable resource. Unlike, say, the strip-mining methods used for rare earth minerals that are so precious to our green energy cultist friends. //

Musicman
15 hours ago
Here in New Mexico we have had millions of acres burned over the last 10 years. I'm not suggesting that was because of the particular rule you mention, but rather the attitude that created that rule: better to let forests burn and add to air pollution and "global warming" than let Americans use that lumber to build stuff. Because that is what it comes down to. I'm not a builder but I have done enough diy stuff to have watched the price of wood go up and up and up, while the quality gets worse and worse. Doesn't it make sense to harvest enough wood from our national forests to prevent or at least greatly mitigate these disasters? //

Yes Hemp Now
16 hours ago edited
Better late then never. The idiocy started in California over 30 years ago when the Sierra Club lobbied to stop harvesting our forests. The result is permanent destruction of what was the most beautiful forests in the world located in California. Natural fires happened, slow and meandering in the 60's usually ignited by lightening burning the pine needles mostly. If those fires lit by nature in a forest floor that was maintained through natural function, they were controlled with a couple of fire trucks if they threatened structures. The "do gooders" let the forest over grow and that is why we see the wild fires we have for decades now. After thes fires nothing grew back except manzanita and hand planted trees. The fires burned so fiercely it destroyed the topsoil. Save what we have and re-plant what was destroyed. Grow it and manage it. This is good news Thank You Secretary Rollins!

But in the name of "renewable" energy, Germany is tearing down a forest that may well have been known to Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and may have even inspired some of their stories.

In the Reinhardswald near Kassel, known as the Fairytale Forest, a previously untouched natural and cultural landscape with trees over 500 years old, is today being irreversibly destroyed. Why? To protect nature and the climate, the wind industry and green proponents claim. //

The region, which plays a central role in the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, is being transformed into a large-scale industrial construction site comprising of 18 large scale turbines.

To build the 244-meter-high wind turbines, large roads are cut into the forest, thousands of trees felled, slopes leveled and large quantities of gravel piled up on the forest floor. All this will cause irreversible damage and destruction to the forest biotope. Critics and conservationists emphasize that the extent of the destruction goes far beyond what one would expect from the construction of a wind turbine in an open field.

Or why I hate costly nuclear. //

Poverty has a Lost Life Expectacy(LLE) of the order of tens of billions of years per year. And we reject should-cost nuclear for fear of an occasional release that worst case, Chernobyl, properly handled, will have a public LLE of less than a 1000 years? This makes sense only if we assume a malthusian level of selfishness. But that is precisely where the nuclear establishment is. //

Jack Devanney
May 19
Edited

I rarely compliment the choir, but I do want to give a shout out to the choristers for whom nuclear's main attraction is its low CO2. For them, this was a very tough sermon. It was a call to change focus, metanoeite if you will, from what nuclear can do for the climate to what nuclear can do for the poor, and for all humanity. That's not an easy switch. For one thing, it implies that costly nuclear is not good enough. It's immoral. We must have should-cost nuclear, and that will require a complete rethink about how we regulate nuclear.

I expected something like a 5% subscriber cancellation rate. Instead we lost 7 of 2900. I thought that was impressive.

Here's your reward. If and only if we push nuclear down to its should-cost, not only will nuclear push fossil fuel out of power generation except for a bit of peaking and backup fo r unplanned outages and do so automatically, not only will EV's now be very attractive economically, but now we can talk seriously about synfuels starting with synthetic methane.

Rob Pyers @rpyers
·
The vote to repeal California's ban on gas-powered cars, however, was supported by 35 Democrats in the House (including 2 Democratic representatives from California), and 1 Democrat in the Senate.

Ashley Zavala @ZavalaA
·
California voters did not vote on CA’s 2035 ban on gas powered cars, neither did state lawmakers.

Gov. Newsom signed an executive order in 2020, then had his @AirResources set the rule.

When I asked about it, he said the rule had buy in from people all across the U.S.
Embedded video
10:51 PM · May 22, 2025

‘You can’t reuse turbines, and there are now thousands upon thousands of blades just sitting there in warehouses already … It’s an environmental disaster.’ //

While green advocates commonly use the terms renewable, sustainable, and net zero to describe their efforts, the dirty little secret is that much of the waste from solar panels and wind turbines is ending up in landfills.

The current amounts of fiberglass, resins, aluminum and other chemicals — not to mention propeller blades from giant wind turbines — pose no threat currently to local town dumps, but this largely ignored problem will become more of a challenge in the years ahead as the 500 million solar panels and the 73,000 wind turbines now operating in the U.S. are decommissioned and replaced.

Greens insist that reductions in carbon emissions will more than compensate for increased levels of potentially toxic garbage; others fret that renewable energy advocates have not been forthright about their lack of eco-friendly plans and the technology to handle the waste. //

“Globally, we produced 20-25 million tons of solar panels in 2023. They will come offline in roughly 20 years. That is 20-25 million tons of solar waste a year in 2045.”

The International Renewable Energy Agency puts the potential mountain even higher, pointing to studies that put the 2050 figure at 78 million metric tons.

For now, 90 percent of this detritus goes to landfills. And the panel fields and towering turbines must be dismantled, trucked away, usually by diesel-powered vehicles, and then sent to landfills or ports, where they are shipped to poor, developing countries. Fossil fuels may foul the air, but renewables may pollute the ground. //

In many cases, when highly regulated power companies look to build a new plant, laws require them to set aside money in bonds or escrow accounts to cover or defray decommissioning costs, Mills said. That is not always the case. A recently decommissioned coal mine in northern Louisiana may cost $300 million to break down, according to the Alliance for Affordable Energy, which says those costs will probably be borne by ratepayers. But Isaac and Mills believe financial decommissions requirements have been either ignored or insufficiently funded in the renewable market. ///

Compare the millions of tons of renewable waste that is not renewable and the thousands of tons of nuclear waste that is mostly reusable: nuclear waste is easily manageable and won't be scattered all over the landscape.

Thursday, the Senate voted to block a package of vehicle emissions regulations issued by California, including a highly controversial rule that would have banned the sale of gasoline-powered (aka real) cars by 2035. In the process, tears were shed, threats were issues, and knickers became tightly knotted by leftist Democrats out to cripple the US economy. //

Only a month before leaving office, the [Biden administration] approved a California regulation that banned the sale of new cars and trucks in California in 2035. This was a decision of earthshaking import. Given the size of its market, unilateral economic actions affect the entire country as businesses adjust their processes to accommodate California regulations. Making matters worse, 11 other states were in the process of enacting similar bans. All told, this would have reduced the market for new gasoline-powered automobiles in the US by 40%. This approval was an obviously malicious act by the outgoing EPA management. The EPA had been sitting on the approvals since 2022 but dumped this burning bag of ordure on the front porch of the Trump White House for political points.

The House teed up the action with a bipartisan vote of 246-164 to disapprove three EPA waivers granted to California: a "zero emissions" standard for trucks, a regulation that would have essentially banned heavy-duty off-road vehicles, and the 2035 ban on real cars and trucks.

When the resolution of disapproval arrived in the Senate, its fate was in question. The General Accounting Office had rendered a "legal opinion" (funny how that phrase has become synonymous with "anti-Trump mischief-making") that a mere waiver of an existing law did not rise to the level of being a regulation that the mere collective vote of Congress could override. In this assertion, the GAO was joined by the Senate parliamentarian. //

Neither the GAO nor the parliamentarian has binding authority over the will of the Senate, but what Republicans wanted to avoid was the appearance of steamrolling the parliamentarian. This is where the solid leadership of South Dakota's John Thune came into play in a clear contrast to the "failure theater" directed by Mitch McConnell whenever he was majority leader. //

Thune decided to go around the bureaucratic obstacle. “What I didn’t want to do was vote to overturn the parliamentarian," said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), "and with help from a lot of experts the leader came up with an approach that avoids that outcome, and I’m glad.” //

What Thune did was get a ruling from the floor that the situation was not as cut and dried as the GAO and parliamentarian had claimed and that the waivers did, indeed, fall under the provisions of the Congressional Review Act. //

DaveM
8 hours ago
"[Schumer]: This Senate vote is illegal,"

Apparently we have more than a few Senators sworn to uphold the Constitution that have never bothered to read it.

Article II Section 5 Paragraph 2:
"Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings..." //

Romeg
7 hours ago
After carefully scouring my copy of The Constitution of The United States of America I have to report that I was unable to find that article, clause, paragraph or amendment that grants California the power to regulate interstate commerce. Perhaps someone reading this can help me out. //

anon-hlc8 streiff
7 hours ago
Sometimes the problem is that whomever is prosecuting the case does not bring that point of law up in their briefing. If they do not bring up that states may not regulate or impede interstate commerce, the judge is not going to help them out. //

Romeg streiff
5 hours ago
I cannot avoid the conclusion that such rulings utterly negate the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. Wickard v Filburn went in the completely opposite direction making ALL commerce, in effect, Interstate Commerce and thus subject to congressional regulation. The ruling you cite along with past failures to challenge CA's high-handedness seem to be judicial nullification of at least certain aspects of that clause in the Constitution.

Malaria and the Silent Spring
Clip | 12m 30s
Video has Closed Captions|
CC

In 1963, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring sparked a government investigation into pesticides

Aired 01/24/2017 | Rating NR

The host wasn't done , though, in her crusade, bringing up the judge's stay on the district court's order that the Trump EPA "unfreeze" $20 billion in funds that Team Biden had ready to go to clean energy grants. Zeldin was off to the races in his thorough answer:

I'm glad you pointed out that the circuit court then stopped what the district court was saying. So, self-dealing and conflicts of interest, unqualified recipients, lack of sufficient EPA oversight, these were all concerns that we had. First were- had the alarm raised when a Biden EPA political appointee in December was on video saying that they were tossing gold bars off the Titanic, rushing to get billions of dollars out the door before Inauguration Day. And also said, with an eye towards getting themselves jobs at recipient NGOs. So for example, as it relates to unqualified recipients, there was one recipient NGO that only received $100 in 2023, they got $2 billion in 2024. They also have in their grant agreement requirement to complete a training in 90 days called "how to develop a budget." They were amending the account control agreements days before the inauguration, reducing EPA oversight.

Wind power is killing a lot of eagles. The federal government is tracking this destruction, but it is all a big secret. We have a right to know what is happening to our eagles. //

By David Wojick
Published April 3, 2025
Imagine there is an industry product that is killing thousands a year and the number is growing. The government is tracking it closely, while keeping the data secret in order to protect the product. Outrageous, right? But that is exactly the case with wind power killing eagles.

Every wind-killed eagle found at an industrial wind site is quickly reported to the federal Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Every year each site also submits an annual kill report to FWS. None of this data is publicly available.

The FWS eagle kill data is all a big government secret designed to protect the wind industry from public outrage. This has to stop.

Power lines, though, are not a major source of eagle fatalities. The big "green energy" windmills are, though - or, at least, we think they are. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, whose job it is to keep this data, won't release the numbers.

https://heartland.org/opinion/the-feds-are-hiding-the-eagle-death-data/

Every wind-killed eagle found at an industrial wind site is quickly reported to the federal Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Every year each site also submits an annual kill report to FWS. None of this data is publicly available.

The FWS eagle kill data is all a big government secret designed to protect the wind industry from public outrage. This has to stop.

The public has a right to know about all these eagle kills. In addition, this data would support research on ways to reduce the killing. For example, it has been suggested that painting the blades black would help the eagles avoid the blades. In fact, there are a lot of technologies that could be studied given comprehensive kill data. //

The only possible reason I can think of is that the numbers of eagles and other birds killed by these contraptions is shockingly high, higher than any of us may have suspected. We should note as well that, were you to come across one of these dead eagles and pluck a feather from the carcass, you would be subject to criminal charges and a hefty fine - but the builders of these windmills are in no way held responsible for these eagle and other raptor deaths.

And where is the Audobon Society in all this?

The New York Times, ever ready to preach the faith of “climate responsibility,” recently published a piece titled “What Shopping Bags Should I Use?” It’s a fascinating read, not because it provides clarity, but because it demonstrates just how convoluted eco-virtue has become. Spoiler alert: you can’t win. But you can feel like you’re winning, and maybe that’s the point. //

Plastic bags, we are told, are the spawn of fossil fuels, and as such, must be banished. Their recycling rate is a dismal 10%, and their afterlife often involves floating past a turtle’s nose or breaking into confetti-sized microplastics that haunt us for centuries. But here’s the twist—according to not one but two studies cited by the article (from Britain’s Environment Agency and Denmark’s Environmental Protection Agency), those unholy plastic bags actually have the smallest environmental footprint of the lot when judged by greenhouse gas emissions.

So how did they become public enemy number one? Simple. They look bad. They’re flimsy, crinkly, and associated with other people who don’t bring their own bags to Trader Joe’s. //

Then there’s paper—renewable, biodegradable, and about as sturdy as wet tissue paper and prone to tearing dramatically halfway across the parking lot, right as your oat milk makes a break for it. Surely this is the sanctified option? Not quite. Paper bags, according to the same British study, need to be reused three times to match the global warming impact of a single plastic bag. Which, for anyone who’s ever had a soggy-bottomed paper bag explode in the rain, is optimistic bordering on delusional.

Still, paper has better PR. Its recycling rate is 43%—respectable, though still meaning most paper bags end up decomposing into methane and carbon dioxide in landfills. Methane, for those keeping theological score, is one of the top demons in the pantheon of greenhouse gases. That’s right: while plastic might just sit there, paper actively farts its way through the afterlife.

Pete Hegseth @PeteHegseth
·
John is, of course, correct.

The @DeptofDefense does not do climate change crap.

We do training and warfighting.

Haley Britzky @halbritz
In response to a list of questions from CNN about military readiness as it relates to climate programs, Pentagon Spox John Ullyot said “Climate zealotry and other woke chimeras of the Left are not part” of DOD’s mission.
8:09 PM · Mar 9, 2025 //

The Army set a deadline of 2035 for all of its administrative vehicles to be electric and 2050 for tactical vehicles. //

If climate change is real, it will be addressed at home and abroad by agencies not called the Department of Defense. When the Defense encounters it, it will come in the form of weather and terrain; how we got there will be an academic exercise. Secretary Hegseth is right; his focus has to be on training troops, structuring forces, modernizing equipment, and building warrior spirit to win wars, something Defense has gotten out of the habit of doing over the last 41 years. //

anon-ymous99
9 hours ago
Y’know what’s bad for the environment? Destructive wars, that wouldn’t have started if a strong President and militarily focused US Armed Forces were in place.
Prevent those and the environment will benefit.

The Supreme Court struck down some of EPA's rules regulating the discharge of treated sewage. The rules allegedly enforced the Clean Water Act. In a 5-4 decision, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett crossing to join three progressive justices, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA can't play Humpty Dumpty and say the legal standard "means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."

It started when the EPA fined the City of San Francisco nearly $10 billion because of alleged violations of its sewage discharge into the Pacific Ocean. There were $313 million in assessed fines and about $10.6 billion in mandated upgrades to its treatment plant. San Francisco did not deny that the EPA had the authority to police sewage discharge; its objection was that the standards were so vague that the city could not meet them because they were forever shifting.

“We simply want to understand our prohibition limits so we can comply with them,” Tara M. Steeley, the San Francisco deputy city attorney, told the justices.

This is how Justice Alito described the situation in his opinion.

Instead, this case involves provisions that do not spell out what a permittee must do or refrain from doing; rather, they make a permittee responsible for the quality of the water in the body of water into which the permittee discharges pollutants. When a permit contains such requirements, a permittee that punctiliously follows every specific requirement in its permit may nevertheless face crushing penalties if the quality of the water in its receiving waters falls below the applicable standards. For convenience, we will call such provisions “end-result” requirements. //

This case marks the latest entrant in the list of court cases that roll back the incredible authority that the EPA has arrogated to itself to manage the US economy.

The findings from UC Riverside and Caltech were derived by using a widely used modeling tool from the US Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA model translates the estimated air quality and human health impacts into a monetary value.